OB Rag

By Kate Callen

I am always delighted to get an assignment from Frank Gormlie. Writing for the OB Rag is the best reporting gig I’ve ever had. But when Frank asked us to think about the aspects of democracy we will miss if Donald Trump is elected, my brain shut down. I just could not go there.

In 2016, the prospect of Trump becoming president was unthinkable. Eight years later, it’s all we seem to think about.

It’s making us despondent. And here’s the kicker: It might not even happen. We’re obsessing about something that might not take place.

By Dani Miskell / 10News / Oct 25, 2024

Locals noticed something bizarre inside USPS drop-off mailboxes: a sticky substance found on the delivery door. Reports came from locals using mailboxes at USPS stores in Point Loma and La Jolla.

Judy Chayka, of Point Loma, went to the USPS store on Canon St earlier this week to drop off her and her husband’s ballots. Chayka said she noticed her mail wasn’t falling down the chute. Instead, they were sticking to the back of the delivery door.

“Both of them had like a severe, sticky glue type substance on them,” Chayka said.

By Joni Halpern

When the Donald Trump was elected President, he stood at a podium and said, “I wonder what my father would think of me now.”

We cannot know the answer to that inquiry, because we know little about the intricacies of the Trump family’s relationships within their own household.  The facts we do have suggest it was not a warm-hearted, nurturing household in which moral character was an imperative.  It seems to have been more of an intense training ground in how to triumph over all obstacles that threaten the achievement of riches, notoriety, class standing, and acclaim.

There were winners and losers in that struggle, the losers being abandoned to future irrelevance, the winners moving on to ever larger prizes of fame, glory and ardent followers.

What might be a better measure of what Donald Trump has achieved is what our own fathers would think if one of their children had achieved what Donald Trump has achieved — extreme wealth, political power, and millions of followers who have openly conceded that a complete loss of decency is a small price to pay for the political environment they seek.

I can’t speak for anyone else’s father, but I know what my dad would think of me or my siblings if we had risen to fame and fortune by the same means as Donald Trump.

Last “Workshop” Under-Attended Partly Due to Refusal of Union-Tribune to Announce It

By Geoff Page

The City of San Diego held the final Ocean Beach Pier Renewal workshop, concerning the eventual replacement of the San Diego Municipal Fishing Pier, Saturday, October 26, at the Liberty Station conference center. This event was not nearly as well attended as the previous four workshops. The Union Tribune was partly responsible for that — and ironically, so was the City.

It seems word of this last pier workshop did not get out as well as it had for prior events. The OB Rag published the event information ahead of time on for over a week before the event.

The Union Tribune not only did not carry any advance notice of the event, the newspaper actually refused to run the notice when requested. Jon Schmid, of Cook and Schmid, the consulting firm that has handled the public outreach efforts, confirmed that the UT was asked to run an advance notice and refused, with no explanation.

By Lisa Mortensen

This is a clarion call to all voters in San Diego.

A vote for Todd Gloria is a vote for more massive ugly buildings that are destroying our neighborhoods.

Be clear, those of us who are not voting for Todd are not anti-growth but we support what we used to call ‘smart growth’ which are projects of all income levels that are reimagined and enhance our well-planned communities.

That means that we have sufficient infrastructure (roads and transit), utility (water/sewer) and essential services (like grocery stores, pharmacies, or post offices) in place before new development is built.

You know what I’d really like to do right now? Escape into video games. I’m too depressed to really want to do anything else.

I don’t want to think about this election — the national one — much less write about it. Who wants to think about all the horrible things Trump will do if he wins? I don’t. I’d rather log onto my favorite computer game and get lost in that. Why grow gray hairs worrying about something I don’t have any control over?

Being an editor of a news and opinion blog right now is not very enjoyable. Especially one that is progressive and grassrootie like the Rag. I mean, we’re supposed to be able to give voice and expression to our “progressive” values and perspectives on all that’s relevant locally. One of the strengths of the Rag is its focus on local, local news and events and people and restaurants — our readers really appreciate that.

“Denialism: the practice of denying the existence, truth, or validity of something despite proof or strong evidence that it is real, true, or valid.”

By Barton Kunstler / Nation of Change / October 24, 2024

Faced with an overwhelming threat, our first instinct is often to deny that is exists—”there must be some mistake, this can’t be happening.” That is normal and understandable.

However when large portions of a society live in continuous denial of self-evident truths—like rejecting reams of scientific evidence or insisting an obvious con man is a hero—the entire society suffers. Behind such mass denialism often lies a long-standing corrosive anxiety about the future that can easily turn into paranoia, confusion, and rage until something snaps—it’s reality that must be wrong! It is then that many flock to another template, one that eases their fears and that represents “Truth” no matter how much evidence to the contrary.

Denialism is rampant in America; elsewhere too, but given its role in the upcoming election, it’s of pressing concern here.

By Michael Smolens / San Diego Union-Tribune / October 25, 2024

A new television spot suggests Mayor Todd Gloria has homelessness on the run.

Running in place might be a more apt description, and a charitable one at that.

There’s plenty of evidence that San Diego is actually backsliding in its efforts to reduce homelessness, which continues to grow.

But you wouldn’t know that from the advertisement produced by an independent committee supporting Gloria’s re-election on Nov. 5 against challenger Larry Turner, a San Diego police officer.

The piece relies on selective and dubious statistics to make the case for progress under Gloria, along with pointing to some legitimate, if general, policy advancements.

One candidate can rant about gibberish while the other has to be perfect.

By Eugene Robinson / Washington Post / October 24, 2024

Something is wrong with this split-screen picture. On one side, former president Donald Trump rants about mass deportations and claims to have stopped “wars with France,” after being described by his longest-serving White House chief of staff as a literal fascist. On the other side, commentators debate whether Vice President Kamala Harris performed well enough at a CNN town hall to “close the deal.”

Seriously? Much of a double standard here?

Somehow, it is apparently baked into this campaign that Trump is allowed to talk and act like a complete lunatic while Harris has to be perfect in every way. I don’t know the answer to the chicken-or-egg question — whether media coverage is leading public perception or vice versa — but the disparate treatment is glaring.

This week, it became simply ridiculous.

Editordude: Here is Fox5 reporter Jaime Chambers’ report on the community workshop held by Midway Rising on October 22. Was it well-attended? You decide. (Chambers once told me that he was born in OB during a homebirth.)

By Jaime Chambers / Fox5 / Oct 23, 2024

The long-awaited Midway Rising project is in its full entitlement phase, designing out the nuances which will modernize the face of the sports arena area long beloved but starved for new investment for decades.

“Cities are living things and so now is the time to pivot to a new set of memories, a new set of opportunities,” said Jim Andersen, the Chief Development Officer at Chelsea Investment Corp.

by The Border Chronicle / Times of San Diego / October 23, 2024

For a retired federal employee, Tom Homan, an acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration, is a very busy man. For the last year, he’s crisscrossed the country with a team of former state and federal law enforcement officers, who call themselves Border911, speaking in theaters and event halls from Phoenix, Arizona, to Mission, Texas, to Ronkonkoma, New York, to promote the propaganda that the U.S.-Mexico border is under invasion and that President Joe Biden and his allies are admitting “llegal aliens” so that Democrats will “be in power for years to come.”

The Voice of San Diego opened today with a salvo against Mayor Todd Gloria’s percentages of increasing homeless shelter capacities. It is alarming. Here it is:

Mayor Todd Gloria wants you to know an important fact: He has increased shelter capacity by 70 percent.

Only, he hasn’t.

Across the airwaves and in his ballot statement, voters are blasted with the 70 percent figure. It’s a key reason, Gloria wants San Diegans to vote for him.

The Voice’s reporter, Will Huntsberry, found that Gloria has increased shelter capacity by only roughly 32 percent. The online newspaper says, “That’s not too shabby. Nor is it anywhere near 70 percent.”