OB Rag

With approval ratings underwater, why not follow Bush’s advice and launch a “little war”? What could possibly go wrong?

By Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams / Jun 23, 2025

In the modern era, it was probably George W. Bush who first said it out loud and then acted on it: When you’re unpopular and losing politically, just start a little war that’s easily winnable and you’ll be back on top.

As he told his biographer, Mickey Herskowitz, in 1999 about his plans for an Iraq war as a strategy to get himself reelected in 2004:

One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of (Kuwait), and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed I want to get passed, and I’m going to have a successful presidency.

It worked for Bush, although history hasn’t been kind to him as a result. Donald Trump’s second presidency, meanwhile, has been an unmitigated disaster, both in real terms and politically as his approval ratings have slipped so far underwater they’re in late-years Richard Nixon territory:

• Inflation is up, and the tariffs aren’t bringing jobs home.
• Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires bill is in trouble.
• The GOP war on our schools and libraries is creating a huge backlash.

The back-and-forth legal battle over yoga classes at San Diego beaches continues. The City of San Diego has filed an appeal to a recent court decision that temporarily lifted a ban that some viewed as controversial.

Earlier in June, an appeals court issued a preliminary injunction against San Diego’s prohibition on yoga classes with four or more people at public parks and beaches.

That judgement, which reversed a lower court ruling that yoga instruction is not protected by the First Amendment, clears the way for plaintiffs Steven Hubbard (aka “NamaSteve”) and Amy Baack to resume their fee-optional oceanfront yoga instruction.

For their 19-page opinion, Steve Hubbard, Amy Baack v. City of San Diego, No. 24-4613, the three-judge appellate panel reached back into the annals of yoga case law. They cited a 2015 9th Circuit ruling, Bikram’s Yoga College v. Evolation Yoga, No. 13-55763, which held that “a sequence of yoga poses and breathing exercises was not entitled to copyright protection.”

By Kate Callen / June 23, 2025

If you are furious because City Hall intends to get out of the fiscal mess it created by charging you unlawful trash fees, Mike Aguirre wants your help.

Aguirre is the lead attorney on a lawsuit seeking to block the trash fees on state constitutional grounds. He and co-counsel Maria Severson outlined the key legal issues to a packed forum on June 21 at the Mission Hills Library.

The 70 people who attended expected to be asked for donations. But Aguirre and Severson weren’t there for money. They wanted volunteers.

“To the extent you want to help us,” Aguirre said, “I want to use the Public Records Act to dig into the public records that are available to build a mountain of evidence to present to the judge. … We can’t take [the city] at their word. We need to find out all the particulars.”

By Jeff McDonald / SD Union-Tribune / June 21, 2025

Earlier this year, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria fired Chief Operating Officer Eric Dargan and personally assumed those day-to-day city responsibilities.

At the time, Gloria was confronting a $258 million budget deficit and said the restructuring would slash the bureaucracy and better position San Diego going forward. He also promised more changes to come.

Dargan did not see his firing that way. The next month, he filed a lawsuit accusing Gloria and the city of racial discrimination and of targeting him because he is Black.

In his lawsuit, Dargan said the mayor and the city had failed to provide three months’ notice of its plans to part ways and — perhaps most important — the three months’ severance called for in his contract.

City officials rejected the allegations, saying he had been fired for cause, and pledged to fight.

But on Tuesday, the City Council is scheduled to consider a $146,000 settlement with Dargan — more than it would have cost to honor the severance agreement.

By The Prebys Foundation / June 22, 2025

What happens in Washington doesn’t stay there.  It reaches all the way into San Diego’s labs, hospitals, and classrooms.

Proposed federal cuts to medical research threaten the life-changing work happening right here at home. From childhood cancer breakthroughs to ensuring diverse voices shape the future of medicine, local researchers are at risk of losing the support they need to keep pushing science forward.

To explore these impacts, the Prebys Foundation and the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network are hosting a public forum on “This Affects All of Us: The Real Impact of Cutting Medical Research Dollars” on Thursday, June 26, 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the Neil Morgan Auditorium, San Diego Central Library, 330 Park Boulevard.

By Eric DuVall / Point Loma- OB Monthly (SDU-T) / June 17, 2025

Picture if you will a shaggy individual of indeterminate age deftly negotiating a gently curving garden path among several small dwellings.

He is evidently returning home from an evening’s revelry — and he might have stopped at the store for a quart of half and half. He grips his bowling ball a little tighter as he fumbles for his keys.  Entering his cozy abode, something seems amiss. Before he can even put his half and half in the fridge, our protagonist — we are talking about “The Dude” here, in Los Angeles (with a hard “g”) — finds himself the victim of a home invasion due to a case of mistaken identity. That aggression would not stand, it is later revealed, but we have been introduced to Jeffery Lebowski and his charming and classic California bungalow court in the movie “The Big Lebowski.”

Bungalow courts seem ubiquitous in certain San Diego neighborhoods, and early suburbs such as Ocean Beach still claim plenty of them. Bungalow courts are still popular, right? Desirable domiciles? Absolutely.

So, similar arrangements probably have been part of most urban areas, correct? Nope. You might be surprised to learn, as I was, that the bungalow court is almost exclusively a Southern California phenomenon. In fact, experts tell us that more bungalow courts were built in San Diego than in any city other than Los Angeles.

by Ernie McCray

I’m usually chill
but let me tell you,
it’s been a bitch
having to deal with
the shit
that went down
when ICE’s hoods
disturbed the peace
in my beloved old neighborhood.
Talking about people who are absolutely
up to no good.

But as I was going through
taped shows on my TV,
Bonnie Raitt, one of my all-time
Favorite musicians,
suddenly
came to my rescue

by Lynne Miller

Applause to each person and organization that helped put the brakes on the building frenzy! Take a breath, celebrate your hard work, and realize that your voice matters!  I know we often feel that there is no way to win, especially against a government that appears to be deaf to our concerns.

The Who’s down in Whoville come to mind.  Dr Seuss wrote a book, Horton Hears a Who, and to shorten the wonderful rhyme to a sentence, “their whole world was saved by the smallest of all”!

The Who’s were heard because they worked together and got everyone to shout.  I hear that there were 527 speakers who were ‘heard’ on June 16th in a meeting that ended at 9:00 pm!

Chris Poblete of Linda Vista brought his three children to Monday’s City Council Bonus ADU hearing. The four of them waited nearly 4 hours until he was called to speak. If you were there, you will remember him. Here is his testimony:

By Chris Poblete / June 20, 2025

I took time off work to be here. I’ve never been to a Council meeting. I wouldn’t know most of these wonderful people here if it weren’t for this issue that’s affecting me that I heard about five weeks ago.

Let me be clear. I am an ADU builder. I’ve built ADUs on two of my properties. Each ADU has two parking spaces. All my ADUs have below-market rental rates. It’s possible.

I encourage all my colleagues at work to do the same thing: Buy a house. Build an ADU. Help solve the housing crisis. You don’t have to be greedy about it.

This issue is affecting my cul-de-sac. It’s a safety concern because there is no parking. Christian Spicer of SDRE is building 10 units on a single-family lot. I didn’t know about this until four weeks ago when the excavator showed up and started digging for the construction.

By Jacob Aere and Carolyne Corelis / KPBS / June 18, 2025

Carl Luna has been observing political engagement in the San Diego region since the 1990s.

He said the crowds that showed up for the local portion of what organizers called Saturday’s nationwide “No Kings” protests were “unprecedented.”

“You had numerous events across the county, from Escondido down to the waterfront in San Diego. And in the city of San Diego you had the largest protest crowd I think that we’ve ever seen,” said Luna, who is director of the University of San Diego’s Institute for Civil Civic Engagement.

Take Action San Diego was one of the groups that organized the protest. Larry Stowell is a volunteer with the group and was in charge of tracking the crowd’s size.

Their crowd estimate on the day of the march was more than 60,000. Stowell said it came from a method, which looks at the density of people in one section of a protest, and multiplies that over the whole crowd. It’s called the Jacobs Crowd Formula.

The newly updated estimate of roughly 69,000 protestors uses a method that’s a little more high-tech — combining aerial news footage with on-the-ground video from the group’s own stationary cell phone.