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#BlackOutNFL: Pro Football Has Lost Me and I’m Good With That

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On Sunday, I should have been watching football, but wasn’t. The Chargers leaving San Diego, the reports of brain damage to players, the banality of network coverage, and –above all–the racism has ruined what used to be one of my favorite pastimes.

Mid-afternoon on the first regular weekend day of play,  I realized I just didn’t care anymore. I didn’t go to ESPN to check the scores. I didn’t watch any of the recaps on the evening news. And the few mentions I saw on social media had no impact.

My malaise concerning the NFL didn’t happen overnight. Back in the day, I worked at a sports bar in Washington DC. It didn’t matter who was playing, we were always packed on game days. Drinking was part of the fun. So was gambling–mostly through pools, though one of the bartenders was married to a bookie and I assumed he got some action.

Now things are different for me. The greed at the top is so blatant it’s no longer possible for a reasonably aware human to believe in ‘their’ team.      [Read more…]

Hurricane Irma: Bringing Out the Stupid in Florida

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Natural disasters bring out the best and worst in people. Typically the worst, as defined by mass media, is Black people looting; white people merely ‘find’ food in hurricanes.

Watching Twitter today, I have seen some amazing people doing their best under trying circumstances. And then there are the… less than amazing people.

We won’t know if any of these people actually ending up qualifying for the Darwin Awards until later. In order to qualify they have to contribute to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or sterilization by their own actions. And some of them are merely wishful thinking on my part.   [Read more…]

If Only We Had Some Sort of Sign Climate Change Was Real – Progressive Calendar for September 8-18, 2017

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I lived in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands for eight wonderful years of my life. I forged bonds with some wonderful people, had experiences good and bad that changed me for the better.

This week my heart is broken. Hurricane Irma ripped the leaves off the trees that somehow didn’t topple. Some of my old friends are homeless. Most don’t have jobs anymore. And the places I once haunted are no more.

Not long ago, Houston Texas and environs saw the most rainfall ever dumped on the lower 48 states by Hurricane Harvey: 33 trillion gallons of water fell from the sky.

Hurricane Irma had sustained winds of 185 mph for 37 hours, the longest any tropical cyclone around the world has maintained that intensity. It beat the old record by 13 hours.   [Read more…]

Republican Dumanis Declares for County Supervisor

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Former County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis has formally declared her intention to run for the Fourth District Supervisor seat. Finally.

This will be one of four San Diego County contests I will focus on throughout the coming year. Simply put, the County government is the biggest entity impacting the most lives in San Diego. And if you look closely, it’s apparent the decisions of the Board of Supervisors regularly favor interests whose fundamental values do not align with those of most of the people living in the region.

The 2018 election represents an opportunity to begin changing that reality. As is true with any big institution, change will not happen overnight. But you have to start somewhere.   [Read more…]

San Diego Rallies in Response to Ending DACA (Photos)

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A Tuesday night rally at the County administration building by immigration advocates and allies was part of a nationwide response to the announcement that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA program was finished.

The beauty of a San Diego sunset provided a vivid contrast to the ugliness being thrust upon nearly 8 million people in the United States brought in as children by undocumented parents.

In New York and Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles, along with dozens of other cities around the United States undocumented immigrants and supporters of immigrant rights turned up in droves to condemn the Trump administration’s decision, and compel Congress to take action to protect DACA recipients and the other millions of people living in the United States without legal status.

Today’s column will be a roundup of reactions, with photos from last night’s rally.   [Read more…]

Standing Up for Dreamers in San Diego as Trump Trashes DACA

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“No one should fall for the White House spin that there was a modicum of humanity embedded in their decision today”

Ignore all the misdirects coming out of Washington. President Trump is ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program,  protecting DREAMers — unauthorized immigrants brought to the US as children or young teenagers — from deportation.

It’s time to take the streets, burn up the congressional phone lines, and in every way possible stand in solidarity with the 800,000 people the administration is set to ship off to places they have little or no connection to.

These are the demonstrations in San Diego today (Tuesday, September 5)…   [Read more…]

A Powerful and Peaceful Chicano Park Solidarity Rally – Photo Gallery

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Hundreds of people from communities throughout San Diego converged Sunday to show support for Chicano Park, in response to an SDFP story indicating local ultra-rightists were plotting to “take down” its historic murals in response to Confederate monuments being removed around the nation.

Rumors quickly spread through Facebook and other social media, escalating a what likely a reconnaissance mission into a full-blown white supremacist rally. A couple of folks decided it might be a good idea to have a picnic in the park as a gesture of solidarity and put it up as a Facebook event. Hundreds of people RSVP’d. Fortunately, the Chicano Park Steering Committee stepped in and took control of the event.

A PA system was procured, security was arranged, and speakers from the community were invited. The San Diego Organizing Project encouraged religious leaders from a variety of faiths to attend.   [Read more…]

DACA, California Values Act in the News; Progressive Activist Calendar September 1-11, 2017

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Following reports out of Washington broadcast by Fox News saying President Trump would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) on September 1, the White House has postponed taking any action.

DACA, a policy instituted during the Obama administration, temporarily shields illegal immigrants brought to America as children. Polling indicates bipartisan support for the program, and voices across the political spectrum, from Warren Buffett to Rep. Paul Ryan have appealed to the president to reconsider any such move.

Molly Ball at the Atlantic reports Trump make have been backed into a corner by hardliners.  Republican state attorneys general are threatening to add Dreamers to a likely-to-be-successful lawsuit making its way through the courts if the administration didn’t revoked the policy by September 5.   [Read more…]

UPDATED: Chicano Park Murals Targeted as Revenge for Confederate Statue Removals

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Local right wingers, calling San Diego’s Chicano Park a “huge monument honoring Communism and La Raza ultra nationalism,” are campaigning to “take down” the site and its associated murals as a payback for the Confederate monuments being removed around the nation.

UPDATE: To be clear, there is no right wing protest scheduled for Chicano Park on Sunday or any other time at this point. (The article doesn’t say there is; try reading it before declaring you’re willing to shed blood.)

City Councilman David Alvarez’s office has received “many racist emails” calling for the park’s destruction after an extremist site called for readers “to make them more nervous to know that the effort is spreading nationwide.”

It all started with an interview with “local patriot activist” Jeff Schwilk on Carl Demaio’s radio talk show.  The former Minuteman leader commiserated with the host about the indignity of removing a plaque from the Daughters of the Confederacy honoring Jefferson Davis from Horton Plaza, moving on to complain about “Nazi symbols**” and “Communists” in the murals at Chicano Park.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s 2018 District Attorney Election: The Issue is Justice for ALL

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One San Diego electoral contest in 2018 has national implications and doesn’t involve petulant Republican Congressmen hoping to avoid the Trump taint at the ballot box– County District Attorney.

Even as California voters have repeatedly favored criminal justice reforms at the ballot box in recent years, the state’s bloc of DAs has obstructed, obfuscated, and delayed those reforms.

Elected and nearly always re-elected with financial support from the likes of bail bond companies, correctional employee and police unions–which have funded opposition to reforms–, the state’s 58 County District Attorneys remain the least scrutinized players in the criminal justice system.   [Read more…]

Reforming Taxes and So Much Other Winning

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Taxes are going to be in the news a lot this week. The word itself is now used in mostly pejorative declarations, shorthand for a collection of victimization stories puffed up around a kernel of truth by grifters wearing Brioni suits with 24-karat gold thread woven into the fabric.   

President Trump is giving a ‘populist’ tax policy speech in Missouri. The crowds cheering his promises apparently haven’t gotten the word about the administration not actually having a legislative proposal.

The crackling sound you’re hearing around California is the hair on fire of Howard Jarvis’ minions since the state Supreme Court decided citizen driven tax initiatives maybe don’t have to meet the two-thirds threshold for approval.   [Read more…]

Hurricane Harvey: Mirroring a Planet and a Nation Gone Amok

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Hurricane Harvey hits Houston. This story is much bigger than one Texas city and one Category 4 hurricane. Today I’ll attempt to tie some of the threads of this story together, as President Trump tours nearby cities and does his best to live up to today’s NY Times headline predicting he’s gonna reclaim his mojo.

San Diego has a piece of this story, as local lifeguards packed and ready to travel to Texas were told to stand down rather than aid in rescue efforts.

Undocumented immigrants made headlines, as ICE dumped 50 women and children at a bus station as the storm made landfall, while the Houston city government pledged to help everyone, regardless of status.

A Twitterstorm focused on the obscene wealth of Houston-based evangelist Joel Osteen and his role (or lack thereof) in aiding victims.

The GOP’s lie machine has been busy casting partisan aspersions on Obama/Democrats. Perhaps they should just rename the St. Andreas Fault after the 44th President and just get it over.   [Read more…]

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