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Archives for November 2012

The Dove and the Cockerel: Chapter 11

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“Clarence, Clarence…Clarence!” barked Charlie. “Look at me!”

Clarence responded obediently and robotically. His eyes were red and bloodshot. He had been unable to wipe his nose and a sheen of snot covered the space over his upper lip. “What’s going to happen to me?” he asked no one in particular, in a quiet trembling voice.

“That is entirely up to you m’boy. It depends on how well you can pull yourself together here and tell me about your friend in jail last night,” said Charlie in a serious voice.

“What friend?” asked Clarence.

“The guy you told me about. The one who killed a cop, Clarence,” Susan interrupted.   [Read more…]

The One Infographic You Need To See for Black Friday

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Catherine Ruetschlin at Demos

With more than 15 million workers in the sector, and leverage over workplace standards across the supply chain, retail wields enormous influence on Americans’ standard of living and the nation’s economic outlook. It connects producers and consumers, workers and jobs, and local social and economic development to the larger US economy. And over the next decade, retail will be the second largest source of new jobs in the United States.

Given the vital role retail plays in our economy, the question of whether employees in the sector are compensated at a level that promotes American prosperity is of national importance. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the typical retail sales person earns just $21,000 per year. Cashiers earn even less, bringing home an annual income of just $18,500.   [Read more…]

An Open Letter to President Obama

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By Michael Moore 1/19/2012 MichaelMoore.com

Dear President Obama:

Good luck on your journeys overseas this week, and congratulations on decisively winning your second term as our president! The first time you won four years ago, most of us couldn’t contain our joy and found ourselves literally in tears over your victory.

This time, it was more like breathing a huge sigh of relief. But, like the smooth guy you are, you scored the highest percentage of the vote of any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, and you racked up the most votes for a Democratic president in the history of the United States (the only one to receive more votes than you was … you, in ’08!). You are the first Democrat to get more than 50% of the vote twice in a row since Franklin D. Roosevelt.   [Read more…]

Video Pick: Talking Pictures

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During last night’s Thanksgiving dinner, the guests would suddenly freeze during a conversation or while lifting a forkful of food to their mouths when a voice would sing out- “Picture!” All the pictures were taken on digital cameras or smartphones and end up being stored digitally for future retrieval- on a computer.

It is doubtful that any of these images will ultimately end up in a box of old photographs at some future flea market table or estate auction. No stranger will pull out a photo of the eight year old boy who flashed a Halloween pumpkin grin with his new grown-up front teeth or a closeup of the aging woman’s hand, now speckled like a fish, gracefully holding a champagne flute.   [Read more…]

‘Walkout on Walmart’ Shines Over Interstate 15 Last Night

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The Overhead Light Brigade (OLB) of San Diego was out last night on I-15 with their new lighted letters. Photo courtesy http://overpasslightbrigade.org/   [Read more…]

How to Win the Social Security Argument at Thanksgiving Dinner in 5 Easy Steps

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 By Lynn Stuart Parramore / AlterNet

Trying to convince the public to cut America’s best-loved and most successful program requires a lot of creativity and persistence. Social Security is fiscally fit, prudently managed and does not add to the deficit because by law it must be completely detached from the federal operating budget. Obviously, it is needed more than ever in a time of increasing job insecurity and disappearing pensions. It helps our economy thrive and boosts the productivity of working Americans. And yet the sharks are in a frenzy to shred it in the upcoming “fiscal cliff” discussions.

The most popular red herring Social Security hustlers have unleashed into the waters of public discourse has grown into such a massive whale of a lie that liberals frequently subscribe to it. The idea goes like this: We need to somehow “fix” Social Security because people are living longer – “fix” in this context being code for “cut.”
  [Read more…]

A Poem for Thanksgiving

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We’re taking the day off. Enjoy! Poem By M. Porte   [Read more…]

The Beach is My Church. Giving Thanks for the Great Pacific.

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The beach is my church.

Standing barefoot and humble in the sand, looking out past the crashing breakers to the big blue beyond, my mind and heart vibrating with the sound of eternity in the song of the ocean, I am filled with peace and gratitude (and respect) for the strength and the forever-ness of the great ocean, our birth waters.

A poem by Robert Frost says it well: “The heart can think of no devotion/ greater than being shore to the ocean/ holding the curve of one position/ counting the endless repetition.”

The yin/yang of geography: shore and ocean forever and ever.   [Read more…]

Angry Republican Calls for San Diego Party Leader’s Ouster

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A GOP activist from Carmel Mountain Ranch is pushing for San Diego Republican Party leader Tony Krvaric’s ouster, citing the party’s losses in the recent elections.

Karen Grube, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the party’s Central Committee from the 77th Assembly District back in June has created a Facebook page entitled Tony, You’re Fired hoping to rally other GOP members to her cause.   [Read more…]

Border Patrol Story About Chula Vista Shooting Death Unraveling

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A new witness has come forward in the shooting death of 32-year-old Munique Tachiquin. According to accounts by Border Patrol officers, the mother of five was shot after she attempted to run over a plain clothes agent attempting to serve a warrant.
Prince Watson, a former Marine and Iraqi War veteran who lives nearby, told TV10/ABC News that he was reluctant to come forward, but said his sense of civic responsibility compelled him   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – San Diego County Sheriff Stonewalls Freedom Of Information Requests About Drones

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A national effort to track drone deployment by domestic law enforcement agencies has run into a brick wall with the San Diego County Sheriffs, who have refused to provide information about efforts to purchase Scout UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicle).

The Electronic Freedom Foundation and MuckRock.com have sent over 200 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to local governments and police departments, seeking to find out information on domestic drone utilization, according to a story in OpposingViews.com.

Although the San Diego Sheriffs office initially denied possessing any documents relevant to the collection effort, an email from manufacturer, Datron World Communications, to Seattle police quoted technical information from a bid that was sent to local officials.

Inside: Angry Republicans, Running Democrats, Border Patrol Cover Up Unraveling
Notice: I’ll be taking the weekend off. See you Monday, news junkies.   [Read more…]

Ted Lieu, the VLF and the supermajority

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Senator backs down from car tax discussion

by Brian Leubitz/Calitics.com

If you ever wonder about the gaping hole in our budget that we’ve been trying to close for the last decade or so, there is one part of that larger pie that is bigger than the rest. That is the Vehicle License Fee. Back when Arnold Schwarzenegger was running in the recall election, it was dubbed simply the “car tax.”

And give him credit for this, when elected he did, in fact, slash the “car tax.” We were able to backfill with a few years of budgetary “smoke and mirrors” but the hole was stubborn. And when 2007-8’s big recession hit, we were proverbial budgetary roadkill. The cuts just couldn’t come fast enough to match the speed of declining revenue, given that we had already made cuts to cover the loss of the VLF revenue.   [Read more…]

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