OB Rag

by Ernie McCray

On July 31st, in an effort to get on with my life after the death of my precious soul mate, I wrote in my journal: “I’m on my way down a long highway, trying to make my way to something faraway called normalcy where I used to live before the tragedy. But I’ll get there. Just you wait and see.”

By E.J. Dionne Jr. / The Washington Post / September 3, 2009

Health-care reform is said to be in trouble partly because of those raucous August town-hall meetings in which Democratic members of Congress were besieged by shouters opposed to change.

But what if our media-created impression of the meetings is wrong?

Originally posted August 21, 2009

by Frank Gormlie

No other corner in all of Ocean Beach has had as much attention and been the point of so much contention and conflict within the community as has the corner of Voltaire Street and Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. The northwest corner to be exact.

The Point Loma Actors are at it again, and this time they are bringing the classic French playwright Moliere’s “The Forced Marriage” to Ocean beach on Sep. 5th and 6th!

Local Congressman Darrel Issa appears to be trying to capture the right-wing momentum sputtering here and there at town hall meetings across the nation. He all of a sudden announced that he, too, is holding a health care reform town hall meeting – this one is tonight in Vista.

A line wrapped down the block and around another one in Hillcrest Tuesday morning. If you didn’t know, you would think they were handing out free money not free nectarines and bread.

One after another, young and old collected plastic bags filled with fresh produce — bread, cantalope, nectarines, bananas and potatoes — from volunteers.

by George Mitrovich

At the tribute to Senator Ted Kennedy Friday night at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Mr. Kennedy’s closest friend in the Senate, told a story of how he recently underwent prostate cancer surgery and when he came out of recovery his first phone call was from Mr. Kennedy, who said, “Given the choice between prostate cancer surgery and going to town hall meetings, you made the right choice.”

It is beastly hot in my tiny house eight miles inland from Ocean Beach and I have just spent a number of hours culling through the news online and I am really really grumpy.

I’ve printed out a copy of Robert Reich’s recent posting The Guns of August: How the Republican Right Fired on Health Care …

OCEAN BEACH, CA. This is the OB Rag’s weekly Community Bulletin and Discussion Board. Discuss anything that is bugging you, or exciting you, or of interest. Do it in the comments section. Not only that, if you or your buds are having a meeting or event you would like to inform the rest of us about, do so here.
Come inside for each of these sizzling stories …

* GO INSIDE FOR OPEN THREAD FOR DISCUSSION

OCEAN BEACH, CA. We were finally able to meet Chris Bowd after all this time. Patty and I went to his OB home and presented him with this OB Rag T-shirt that a friend had bought him. Chris is the OBcean knocked unconscious July 4th during a mystery assault.

The arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge police again raised the issue of racial profiling of People of Color in North America.

As evidenced in President Obama’s attempt at a ‘teaching moment,’ the idea of racial profiling produces heated debate.

Most African Americans remain convinced that law enforcement agencies routinely use their race as criteria in criminal investigations while a majority of Whites and police vigorously dispute this claim.

OCEAN BEACH, CA. This news web/ blog is always responsive to our readers. There has been much complainin’ of late among you lefties about the lack of a progressive movement to get the country moving again, to fight for health care reform, to fight the right-wing crazies funded by the health care insurance companies, to generally acknowledge that on November 4, 2008, the country moved from a center-right nation to a left of center nation. We want to save our democracy by ending the empire.

In order to get it right, er, left, uh, … I mean … we need a T-shirt that says it all.