OB Rag

By Jim Miller

Last week brought us the stark news that America’s middle-aged white working class is killing itself.

Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case released a report documenting that:

“The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014.”

And strikingly, “rising annual death rates among this group are being driven not by the big killers like heart disease and diabetes but by an epidemic of suicides and afflictions stemming from substance abuse: alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids.”

$400 Needed to Make Switch

The OB Rag needs to change servers and we need some help from our readers and supporters.

Much as our associates over at San Diego Free Press did, we have found our present server – Arvixe – unresponsive and seemingly over-whelmed by their “success”. Tech support has become literally unavailable.

San Diego Free Press – March 1969

Hippies Move To Ease Tension in Ocean Beach

(no byline)

Relations between Ocean Beach Hippies and the San Diego Police Dept. continue to deteriorate according to Ocean Beach residents.

Police patrolmen have apparently shifted their tactics from Field Interrogation type harassment to outright threats and intimidation. Officer McLean told a gathering of youths in front of the In-Between on Newport Ave –

Gianni Buonomo Winery Opens Its Doors

The very first winery in Ocean Beach had its “soft” opening on November 10th during OB’s Restaurant Walk. The Gianni Buonomo winery – at 4836 Newport Avenue – opened its doors to the few passing by and invited them in for a taste.

I visited vintner Keith Rolle a few days before the opening at his new location and was given a tour of the place. Keith told me he has a “zoning affidavit” that allows wine manufacture on site – which he’ll do for only about 10 days a year max, he said. He’ll get his grapes from 3 growers up in Washington state – connections he made while attending Enology College up there.

Customers will be able to come in and watch the manufacture, Keith added, plus, of course, take part in the tasting.

An unidentified guy set fire to a unit at the Ebb Tide Motel in Ocean Beach Thursday night, Nov. 12th, and then was arrested by San Diego police. Fox5 reported on the incident.

A neighbor tried to put out the flames but the guy began throwing things at the neighbor.

Report of OB Community Development Corporation Meeting of Thursday, November 12

By Lois Lane

The OB CDC Board Meeting Agenda held at the Ocean Beach Recreation Center promised “Veterans Plaza Committee Report – Closed Session” and it was right. After some usual financial reviews, the President, Tom Perrotti, announced that the Board would take a five minute break and then enter a closed session meeting.

When asked why items related to the Veterans Plaza were not public, he replied “President’s Decision,” and left the room. When he returned after five minutes, he announced,

“We are a 501(c )3 that is not subject to the Brown Act.”

The San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition invites you to join us at Al Gore’s Global Day for Climate Action!

It’s Saturday November 14th at Noon at the Federal Building on Broadway and Front Street, San Diego 92101.

In conjunction with Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project and leading up to the December Paris talks we will be calling on the U.S. Government to begin the national mobilization to make the transition off fossil fuel and on renewable energy!

We encourage organizations to have a contingent present for the rally. Artistic expression via signs, banners, costumes, street theatre is encouraged.

By Terry Ratner

Photos as memory has a menacing side. Our own appearances and faces are now stored and saved in hundreds, thousands, of photographs: pictures made by ourselves or made by others.

Our faces are becoming not only unforgettable, but inescapable.

Photography is at the nerve center of our paradoxical memorial impulses.

Last Leg of Update Process Took 2 1/2 Years

Timeline of Update Process of the OB Community Plan 2002 – 2015

When the final City Council vote came down last Monday, November 9th, as it approved the OB Community Plan Update, it was a signal to all the OBceans and city planners who have been part of its creation over the last months and years to heave a great collective sigh of relief.

The vote was the final step in a long, long – but glorious – process …

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those who are working to create a nuclear free future.

Millstone and Me: 2015

This October I returned to the place I come from, southeast Connecticut on Long Island Sound, off the Atlantic Ocean. The region promotes and prides itself as “The Submarine Capital of the World.”

The General Dynamics Electric Boat Company in Groton, CT, has built almost all the nation’s nuclear powered submarines. These include each and every of the Trident subs, which along with nuclear missiles and bombs constitute the US “strategic forces.”

Each Trident carries nuclear missiles, each one consisting of multiple warheads that can be independently targeted.

Thus Tridents are submersible Armageddons.

Price-Gouger Martin Shkreli Becomes Known as ‘Most Hated Man in America’

By John Lawrence

Turing Pharmaceuticals chief Martin Shkreli will face new competition for Daraprim, the drug he recently hiked 5,000 percent in price, after competitor Imprimis Pharmaceuticals said it would market a similar drug for just $1 a tablet. Daraprim is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that’s common in AIDS and HIV patients, as well as cancer sufferers.

Greedy buttwipe Martin Shkreli, the hedge fund guy that bought the drug Dariprim and then raised the price from $13.50 to $750. a pill will actually lose his ass on this venture.

By Ernie McCray

One of my most cherished honors is being among some pretty good Wildcat athletes in the “University of Arizona Sports Hall of Fame.”

I’m a member because I could snatch rebounds like a machine and get the ball in the hoop as a routine. But what does it really mean? For me, it hasn’t been something I’ve thought that much about day to day.

But a few months ago I got a little excited seeing a very familiar name on the list of super-jocks who were to join the club this year.

Dave Baldwin is the name. Pitching a baseball was his game. And I’m stoked that he and I are going to be in such a place of esteem together – because we go back before our college days, back to the Class of ’56 at Tucson High. Back to when I was stepping high, doing teenage boy things, testosteroned to the bone.