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Archives for October 2012

Proposition 31: Reform the Rube Goldberg Way

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Should We Support This Manifestation of Stalinist Treason?

It’s a good thing the weather’s so damn nice in much of California, because if you had to spend anytime actually experiencing what passes for governance up in Sacramento, North Dakota or even Somalia might start looking mighty good. Let’s face it folks, things are mighty screwed up. And we all know it’s somebody else’s fault, right?

So when anybody talks “reform” these days, it strikes a chord with voters. I hear there are politicians in Los Angles (boo, hiss) that can take their dog for a walk, call it animal digestive reform and even raise funds off it.

Proposition 31 is the handiwork of a ‘long view’ reform group calling itself California Forward. It’s a package of measures, many of which sound perfectly reasonable. It is, so its supporters say, intended to bring more transparency to the budgeting process while giving Californians value for their tax dollars. Sounds okay, huh? Except that it isn’t. Step inside while I give you a tour of this mirage that calls itself a reform.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Rape in the Military

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Even as a little girl Claire Russo wanted nothing more than to grow up and serve in the military. At 14, she was a Senate page for Dan Coats, worked at the Republican National Convention in San Diego, and interned for Senator Judd Gregg the following year. Later she said “I became obsessed with the Marine Corps after that. I knew the legacy of the Marine Corps was elite and the legacy of Guadalcanal. They were pretty tough and if I was going to join, I’d join the toughest out there.”

When she grew up, she became a Marine who served in Iraq and later as an advisor for the Army in Afghanistan. At Officers Candidate School, where she finished fourth in a class of 65, she started hearing stories about women who had been raped by other Marines. One of her drill instructors told her, “You’re either a bitch or a slut.”   [Read more…]

SD For Free An Old Favorite – The Public Library

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A weekly column dedicated to sharing the best sights and activities in San Diego at the best price – free!  We have a great city and you don’t need to break the bank to experience it.

Website: http://www.sandiego.gov/public–library/

Best For: Readers, thinkers, learners, children

I love to read and my earliest memories of books are from reading at bedtime with my parents and trips to the library for reading hour.  Many years later, and many states away, I am on the other side of these memories and trying to foster a love of reading in my daughter.  We often visit the library to find new books, meet other children, and read together.   [Read more…]

Sex In San Diego: The 10 Weirdest Sex-cessories

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Alternet / April De Costa

No judgement: Everyone has their own sexual preferences, predilections and fantasies, and it’s also understood that sex with one, or two, or however many of the same person(s) can grow tedious. The Internet has grown, in part, to accommodate everyone’s erotic interests, and to capitalize on niche fetish markets. So I’m not here to lower your freak flag, and of course this third party could never understand the nuances of your beaudoire repertoire. All that said, here are 10 weird sexcessories used by consenting adults that seem somewhat unnecessary, or even counterproductive to the whole enterprise.   [Read more…]

Staged Events– Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and Juanita LaRue

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Teresa has spent the last two decades addressing the impacts of inter-generational poverty, drug addiction and incarceration upon our young people– the very issues our presidential candidates have chosen to overlook. She carefully unwinds these young people’s stories resulting in fully realized, complex human beings who deserve not only our compassion and our understanding, but more importantly our commitment to finding solutions.   [Read more…]

Brian Bilbray and Carl DeMaio: San Diego’s Republican Shapeshifters

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By Lucas O’Connor / Special to the San Diego Free Press

If there’s one thing that’s been particularly consistent to campaigns of the far right in San Diego this fall, it’s the unusually desperate attempts to hide the real agenda from voters. It’s one that should be cause for optimism as long as voters pay attention, and betrays an almost impressive self-awareness from the top of the GOP that the party’s agenda has drifted well outside the mainstream.

From the special exemptions of Prop 32 to Brian Bilbray’s teetering re-election bid to Carl DeMaio’s bizarre mayoral campaign, extreme conservatives are doing everything they can to hide their record and who they are.

For the backers of Proposition 32, the deception was part of the design from the very beginning. They surveyed the political landscape and found that, unsurprisingly, nobody wants millionaires and corporations to be able to buy off our political process. Rather than abandon a wildly unpopular idea, they came up with a different plan: fake it.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – ‘Pray the Gay Away’ Seeks to Live Another Day

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The ultra conservative Pacific Legal Institute has joined forces with an ordained minister/counselor of Rancho San Diego’s Skyline Church in filing a lawsuit seeking to overturn a newly signed California law that bars licensed mental health professionals from utilizing “reparative therapies”, on teenagers. Also known as conversion therapy, reparative therapies claim to change sexual orientation, and, although they have been widely condemned by medical authorities, are popular with fundamentalist Christian groups and other right-wing religious organizations.

The suit, filed on behalf of Dr. Donald Welch, who is also affiliated with a chain of Christian Counseling Centers throughout the San Diego region, who claims the law, which is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, violates First Amendment and equal protection rights. A Culver City man who claims to have benefited from the therapies is named as the official plaintiff.

Much of the core of so-called “pray the gay away” therapies is based on scientific work done by Robert Spitzer, who has recanted his conclusions and apologized to the gay community for making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. California will become the first to outlaw the practice for people under the age of 18 in America.   [Read more…]

Prop 37: 8 Reasons for Voting Yes for Labeling GMO Foods

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The French prime minister announced on September 15, 2012 that France would maintain a ban on Monsanto’s MON810 maize, the only genetically modified organisim (GMO) currently allowed in Europe. Thanks to activism by French citizens and serious political outcry, Monsanto is now effectively blocked from Europe’s gigantic marketplace. This is even more true when you consider that France is the largest agricultural producer in Europe.

But that’s not all. Following the ground-breaking French study that graphically linked the lifetime consumption of Monsanto’s GMO corn in rats to massive tumors and direct organ failure, Russia’s premiere consumers rights organization has suspended both the importation and use of Monsanto’s GMO corn within the nation’s borders.
  [Read more…]

San Diego Residents: Keep San Onofre Shut Down

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By Michael Steinberg

A recent poll of Southern California residents found that most of them want to keep the troubled San Onofre nuclear power plant shut down . The poll also found that the residents don’t trust its majority owner and operator, Southern California Edison, to keep safety as its first priority at the nuke plant.

” A strong majority of Edison customers want to keep San Onofre shut down and almost half don’t trust Edison to put safety before profit,” environmental group Friends of the Earth reported on October 1.

Friends of the Earth (foe.org) commissioned David Binder Research to carry out the poll. The company talked to 700 registered voters in the counties San Onofre provides electricity to.

The results: “58% of respondents said they oppose reopening the plant…Only 32% said San Onofe should reopen,” Friends of the Earth reported.   [Read more…]

Eyewitness Account: Man Dies After Fatal Stabbing in Sherman Heights

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by Remigia (Remy) Bermúdez

According to witnesses, passers-by and police officers, at approximately 5:30pm on Monday (October 1st) an altercation that started in Logan Heights at 22nd Street and the southern side of Imperial Avenue resulted on a man stumbling down at the corner of 22nd and L Streets in Sherman Heights bleeding from repeated stab wounds. According to a SDPD press release, sent to this San Diego Free Press’s (SDFP) contributing writer, the man died en route to the hospital.  Homicide detective Lt. Duran added, “The deceased victim has been identified, but his name will be withheld until his family can be notified.”

 It was like a scene from a movie, as the SDPD corded off the area with yellow plastic tape, topping fences of surrounding properties in the eastern and western sides was 22nd Street from L Street heading southerly through what appeared to be Commercial Avenue. The area remained cordoned off from around 6pm Monday evening through Tuesday’s morning hours of October 2nd to protect evidence from being disturbed, according to SDPD officers.

The first media on the scene was the San Diego Free Press, as this contributing writer lives nearby.    [Read more…]

Stadium at San Diego’s 10th Ave Marine Terminal Site Potentially a VERY Bad Idea

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UT San Diego​ CEO threatens port commissioner in effort to intimidate local officials into supporting development plan.

San Diego has a stadium problem. I know. You’re shocked—SHOCKED!—to hear this. I mean, after all, it’s been the best kept secret in San Diego this side of peanut butter. We’ve only been talking about a new football stadium to replace the aging and crumbling city owned Jack Murphy/Qualcomm Stadium for the Chargers (and Aztecs) for over a decade now. And yes, it has been that long. It may only seem like yesterday.

The Chargers have long contended that in order to remain financially competitive in the NFL they would need a new football only stadium with all the bells and whistles of the rest of the modern facilities that have cropped up throughout the league. And there have been a LOT of them. Of the 32 NFL teams, almost all of them are playing in new or completely refurbished stadiums.   [Read more…]

Vigil for Valeria “Munique” Alvarado – Young Mother Killed by Border Patrol

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Question is raised – is this our ‘Trayvon Martin’?

Nearly two hundred people attended the vigil for Valeria “Munique” Tachiquin Alvarado in Chula Vista Monday early evening. Family, friends, supporters and strangers – and the media – gathered at the intersection of Moss Street and Oaklawn Avenue – where she was shot to death by a plainclothes border patrol agent on Friday afternoon, September 28th, while in her car.

The 32 year old mother of 5 had been fatally killed during some kind of interaction with the agent. Reports of what happened differed wildly. And during the at times emotional vigil family members, including the young woman’s father, called for answers and justice.

Speaking first, Christian Ramirez of the American Friends Service Committee spoke about the evening being a sober one. He said the community vigil “was called by the family to remember her life and bear testimony to the tragedy that occurred 72 hours ago. They demand justice.”   [Read more…]

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