OB Rag

By Sean Wilentz / Rolling Stone – RSN / November 1, 2024

A leading historian looks back at Philip Roth’s novel and how it perfectly predicts the rise of Trump and his willing collaborators

Early in the 2016 campaign, months before Donald Trump won his first presidential nomination, I wrote my friend Philip Roth an email about his novel, The Plot Against America, which had appeared twelve years earlier. The book was Roth’s fanciful but chilling fiction about a fascist takeover of the presidency in 1940 by the pilot and American hero Charles A. Lindbergh. I was curious about the possible connection between the novel and Trump’s all too factual political emergence.

Over the years, several pundits had claimed that Plot was really Roth’s roman-a-clèf commentary on the George W. Bush administration. Having myself written critically of Bush (including a piece here in Rolling Stone in 2006 asking if he was the worst U.S. president in history), and having talked politics often with Roth, I knew that he agreed with me that Bush, with all of his flaws, was no fascist or fascist sympathizer, as Lindbergh was. Roth went on to say as much, repeatedly, in interviews and public appearances. But what did he make of Trump?

By Mat Wahlstrom

We’re being told that the election this Tuesday is most consequential of our lives, possibly even in U.S. history since 1860. And what’s at stake is “saving democracy” from the cancer of fascism.

It’s maddening trying to understand how we got here, that the entire country appears split down the middle over whether to continue “the last great experiment.” But the warning signs have been evident for a long time, and sadly the Democrats have failed to pay attention.

As recently as July, Pew Research found that fully 72% of the population believes the United States is no longer a good example of democracy. And that less than a quarter of those who identify as Democrats think it still is.

By Robert Vardon /Point Loma – OB Monthly San Diego Union-Tribune / October 24, 2024

The city of San Diego is soliciting operators to continue its “safe parking” program for homeless people who live in their vehicles and to expand it to a new lot planned for the former H Barracks site across the boat channel from Point Loma’s Liberty Station.

The request for proposals, or RFP, announced Oct. 23 asks prospective operators to respond with bids by Monday, Nov. 25. The bid website lists 22 prospective bidders.

The San Diego safe parking program currently has four locations on city-owned lots with a total capacity of about 220 vehicles. They are designated for people living out of their vehicles to park overnight, with services available to help them move toward permanent housing.

In these modern times, there are many reasons that will delay the announcement of who won the presidential election come next Tuesday, November 5th. From slow ballot-counting to logistical challenges, we know ahead of time that by midnight next Tuesday, the victor may not be known.

Many of those reasons are reasonable and America will have another safe and secure election.

But we also know Trump. And we know in this temporary vacuum that Trump will declare himself the victor and set in accelerated motion his efforts to stage a coup. Reportedly, he already has “an army” of local election officials who are ready to do his dirty work and attempt to gum up the works of democracy.

So, we need to prepare ourselves for this eventuality and get ready for his deadly shenanigans. He will attempt something akin to the January 6th attack on the Capitol — but it will be much worse.

But if we are ready, then his success will be extremely limited and will fail.

It was 1965 and I remember very well staring at the cover of Life magazine. It had a young woman, a local Point Loman, on the cover doing a handstand on a skateboard. It was an amazing picture and even more of an amazing stunt. The young blond on the cover was Patti McGee.

Skateboards were brand new back in the mid-sixties and most kids who had them had made them themselves. Take the metal skates available and attach them to a wood board covered by a piece of carpeting. Voila! A skateboard.

Patti McGee has just passed; she was 79. She broke so many records, it’s difficult now to imagine a world without her. Fortunately for us, U-T writer Maura Fox has just laid out McGee’s history and significance, and to let the rest of us know that a nonprofit named Exposure Skate will hold a ceremony for McGee at its annual skate event for women and nonbinary skaters in Encinitas this Saturday, November 2 at 5 p.m.

As many know, one of the most contentious contests in this election cycle is between incumbent County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer and former Republican mayor Kevin Faulconer. They’re both running in District 3, which includes much of the coast and has much of a liberal bent.

Faulconer knows this, so he’s currently appealing to those liberal voters, touting his old climate policies when he was mayor.

However, many see this contradiction. His “old climate polices” don’t match his current policies. The Voice of San Diego shows this attempt at being a liberal is really just a campaign lie. The Voice:

When Kevin Faulconer was mayor of San Diego, he signed a Climate Action Plan requiring the city build densely in urban areas to reduce driving and planet-warming emissions. The county recently passed its own Climate Action Plan modeled after former Mayor Faulconer’s. But as a supervisor, he’s proposing to open the county to development anywhere which defies a major component of climate policies: Concentrate development so people drive less.

By Geoff Page

A week ago editor dude asked Rag writers to write something about “…the things and aspects of American democracy that you will miss once…” Meaning if the man with the orange hair wins. While no one who knows me would describe me as a wild-eyed optimist, I am definitely not a complete pessimist. To put such thoughts to paper just feels like admitting defeat. That I cannot do.

This is not a comment on editor dude’s request. Several people have risen to that in a number of ways. At a time like this, with something so historical taking place, I don’t feel like my opinion matters much to anyone, or will have any effect on anyone. This is also a function of age after a lifetime of not even being able to get family to see how brilliant I am, how perfectly correct my opinions are. Go figure.

But, in this case, since my opinion is not completely negative, I thought I’d write something a little bit positive.

The problem is modern media, the media that most of the country sees and reads. In an effort to outdo the other guy, the media looks for and creates sensational stories. The most obvious example of this is in weather reporting.

Just look at the names they have cooked up to make weather sensational. A big rainstorm is now an “atmospheric river.”

By Sahil Kapur / NBCNews / October 29, 2024

Kamala Harris called on Americans to “turn the page” on the Donald Trump era at a rally Tuesday, rallying thousands of voters at the site where the former president addressed the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.

On a chilly fall evening one week before Election Day, the Democratic nominee criticized her Republican rival as “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.” She vowed to govern as a pragmatist by listening to everyone, including “people who disagree with me.”

“He says one of his highest priorities is to set free the violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers on January 6,” Harris said. “Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him -people he calls ‘the enemy from within.’ This is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better.”

By Tony Barboza / Editorial Writer – LA Times / Oct. 29, 2024 

Donald Trump’s closing campaign rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday was a stunningly racist display where speakers mocked Latinos, Jews and Palestinians, likened the event to a “Nazi rally” and called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” It was capped by a 78-minute speech in which the former president repeatedly attacked the intellect of the first woman of color to lead a major party presidential ticket, calling Vice President Kamala Harris “a vessel” who “can’t put two sentences together.”

[Please see original for all links]

In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Trump is treading dangerously familiar ground, spewing a torrent of racist and xenophobic insults, threats and lies as he escalates his attacks on immigrants and non-white Americans.

By Julie Meier Wright / Op-Ed San Diego Union-Tribune / October 23, 2024

Women — and the men who support them — can elect a president in 2024 who will protect our Constitution and treasured freedoms.  She happens to be a woman.  It is time.

Forty years ago, Maureen Reagan, our dear friend Judy Miller and I, tackled the gender gap

By Lynne Miller

All over the finest city, we can see the destruction of the Todd Gloria and City Council policies.

Now, instead of distinct neighborhoods, fine in design and unique in character, we see block towers – apartment after apartment.  The tall ugly towers placed in residential neighborhoods block the sun and congest streets.

by Ernie McCray

When I think of
another Trump presidency,
I shiver to my bones
from just knowing
that he will,
based on his granted immunity
if he commits a crime,
devise, out of his love of dictators,
some yet to be seen
extremely obscene
form of autocracy
that will relatively-speaking
bring our society
to its knees.