OB Rag

Meeting Wednesday night inside the community room of the OB Rec Center, the Ocean Beach Planning Board found themselves with a full agenda.

By the end of the evening, they had approved a remodel / addition to a single family house on Santa Monica, formed a sub-committee on short-term vacation rentals, reviewed recent applications for alcohol permits, enjoyed a full discussion on a proposal to modify their bylaws about signature gatherings, and confirmed their upcoming annual election details.

“Teaching Fire Fighters how to swim and perform river rescue is not acceptable.”

By Ed Harris

On December 15th, 2016 San Diego Lifeguard River Rescue team members were holding a deployment briefing prior to an imminent storm.

Fifteen minutes before they were to deploy, they were given a new standard operating procedure. The new SOP was part of an executive order mandated by the new Fire Chief.

There were several changes that have a negative operational effect on the Lifeguards as well as a negative budgetary effect for all of us.

A big change is that now San Diego Fire Dispatch will handle inland calls for water emergencies and that Firefighters will automatically dispatch multiple engines, trucks personnel and a helicopter to calls that have been successfully handled by a few Lifeguards for over 40 years.

The OB March 4 Impeachment is gaining momentum as it will happen this Saturday, March 4th, where participants will spell out “Impeach” just north of the OB Pier.

There will be a Beach Clean-up and March from Dog Beach to the Pier, says the facebook and the main event will be to “Replicate Human Protest Banner from Ocean Beach, San Francisco,” just that here in Ocean Beach, San Diego, participants will spell out “IMPEACH”. The OB Rag and Indivisible San Diego support this action.

When the 3 two-story modular units planed for the south-east corner of Voltaire and Abbott were approved by the OB Planning Board in early September 2014, one of the applicant-owners stated to the Board unequivocally that he planned to live in one of the units. Now that they have been built, it appears that the units – at least one of them – are listed on Airbnb – for $229 to $349 a night.

During Tuesday’s demolition and repair of the ramps to OB’s mid-block crosswalks, some memory tiles were removed and damaged. These are the special tiles installed along the curb on Newport Avenue for several blocks that people purchased over the years.

This reporter while visiting the project asked the foreman of the work crew working on the ramp widening if he planned to save the tiles that his guys removed. He said no, and I advised him to keep them. So he said he did.

By Dianne Lane

A couple of activists hosted a Sanctuary House Party/Teach-in at their home in Ocean Beach on Saturday, February 25th.

The impetus for the event sprang from a “Teaching Positive Alternatives to Trump Teach-In” last month in Balboa Park.

The aim is to build a San Diego network of sanctuary homes in resistance to Trump’s fascism and to corporate capitalism.

Over the next few months, a series of neighborhood house parties throughout San Diego …

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry in the US and abroad, and highlights the efforts of those who are working for a nuclear free world. Here is out February 2017 report:

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

1. Fire and explosion at French nuclear plant.

Various media outlets reported that on February 9, a fire and explosion happened at the Flamanville nuclear plant, forcing the shutdown of one of its two reactors there. The nuke is located in Normandy on that country’s northwest coast, facing the English Channel.

The BBC reported: “The explosion and fire happened in the turbine room.”

By Bob Dorn

Hi. I’m a robot?

Are you amazed I can talk like a freshman on speed?

Don’t be. It’s all just zeroes and ones, yeses and nos, exes and minuses that can account for the way I so humanly can flick my long blonde hair over my earpiece, or, in the case of my boyfriend, yell Wahoo!!! when there’s a story about the Chargers pledging $1 million for a new stadium on the waterfront.

He’s so cute. He’s a third generation drone and has been on active duty somewhere around the North Pole… isn’t that near Russia? … helping some country or the other design the best routes through the new Northwest Passage. He has to watch out for icebergs. I wonder why there are so many of them up there. Icebergs, I mean.

The Ocean Beach Planning Board has a few spicy items to juggle at their upcoming monthly meeting, held this Wednesday, March 1st, over at the OB Recreation Center, 4726 Santa Monica Avenue.

Alcohol Permits

One of the more juicy agenda items on the agenda is a Board review of an application for a new alcohol permit for OB’s latest beer pub – which hasn’t opened yet – Little Miss Brewing Company, at 4861 Newport Ave.

Two blocks of Newport Avenue were nearly closed down today, Tuesday, Feb. 28th as construction crews and their equipment took over OB’s main street and some nearby streets as well in the downtown area.

Part of it all was the beginning stages of the re-paving of Newport Avenue – the widening of Newport Ave’s two mid-block crosswalks. One crew worked on that.

Another separate crew was re-asphalting Cable Street, while a third crew cleaned out a main sewer line between Newport and Niagara.

There’s some kind of a sick and nefarious game being played out on national politics right now. It’s called, “Special Prosecutor, Special Prosecutor, Who’s Got the Special Prosecutor?”

Even as Congressman Darrel Issa walked back part of his solitary Republican call for a special prosecutor to look into Trump’s ties to Russia, White House press spokesguy Sean Spicer, was denying the need for one and that it would all be a waste of time. When pressed by a reporter to respond to Issa’s call for a special investigator, at a news briefing Monday, Feb. 27, Spicer said:

“ A special prosecutor for what?”

They’ve made the calculation that most of their constituents won’t care

By Dartagnan / Daily Kos

On February 28, 2017, the United States will witness the what may be the single greatest act of collective treachery by its elected government officials since the Confederate States voted to secede from the Union in 1860 and 1861.

And in all likelihood, the U.S. media will completely ignore it.

On Tuesday the Republican-dominated House Judiciary Committee is expected to reject House Democrats’ Resolution for a formal inquiry into the the potential ethical and legal violations committed by the Trump campaign apparatus in its contacts, communications and financial transactions with Russia during the run-up to Trump’s election last November, and throughout the transition since then.