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Sweetwater Authority’s $49,083,000 Water Rate Increase! (The Impact on the Poor)

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By Herman Baca / President, Committee on Chicano Rights

There are many things that individuals in the community can do without; water is not one of them. Poor people, especially in National City (NC), the poorest in SD County, median income of $39,000, and others on fixed income in the South Bay could find themselves if the increase is approved choosing to pay their water bill, over lives’ other necessities…food, rent, clothing, etc..

The Sweetwater Authority serves 187,000 customers in Bonita, parts of Chula Vista and NC. A public hearing to “consider adopting increases to its water service fees” will be held on August 27, 2012. In the last seven years the Sweetwater Authority has approved rate increases 6 times, but failed to raise rates in 2011, because of outraged Bonita residents. The CCR has gone on record in opposing the proposed water rate increase.

Most San Diego County residents, voters and water customers have little, if any idea that 16 water agencies even exist, what they do, or that they have become private fiefdoms, private ATMs and cash cows for self-serving individuals and politicians.   [Read more…]

Duffy Hoax Revealed – Medical Marijuana Advocates Tell All

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By Eugene Davidovitch / Americans for Safe Access

BACKGROUND: On October 7, 2011, at a press conference in Sacramento, US Attorney Laura Duffy, along with several other US Attorneys, announced a statewide crackdown on medical cannabis cooperatives, collectives, gardens, and others.

Without citing any specific violations in state law, Duffy’s office claimed all were out of compliance and would be targeted for eradication including those fully licensed and regulated by local government and law enforcement.

Since this proclamation of war on California’s medical marijuana program, Duffy’s office sent hundreds of letters to landlords threatening asset forfeiture if they did not immediately evict their dispensary tenants. As a result of these backhanded tactics, many landlords were forced to comply. Within six months, Duffy closed over 200 dispensaries in San Diego alone.

These closures forced thousands of employees into unemployment, left hundreds of properties vacant and most importantly, left the 70,000 plus medical marijuana patients in San Diego county wondering where to get their medicine.   [Read more…]

Sex In San Diego: The War on Pubic Hair Must End

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KevinMD.com / Emily Gibson

I must have missed the declaration of war on pubic hair.

It must have happened sometime in the last decade because the amount of time, energy, money and emotion both genders spend on abolishing every hair from their genitals is astronomical. The genital hair removal industry, including medical professionals who advertise their specialty services to those seeking the “clean and bare” look, is exponentially growing.

But why pick on the lowly pubic hair? A few sociological theories suggest it has to do with cultural trends spawned by bikinis and thongs, certain hairless actors and actresses, a desire to return to childhood, a misguided attempt at hygiene or being more attractive to a partner. Surely human beings are not so naïve as to be susceptible to fashion trends and biases.   [Read more…]

COURTS: Lawsuit says press credentials issued by SDPD violate First Amendment

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Ramona Videographer Thinks As Himself As a Watchdog – Police Think Otherwise But They Issue Press Passes

By Brandon Lowrey / North County Times / August 14, 2012

A Connecticut-based news agency is suing San Diego city and county officials in federal court, claiming that press credentials issued by the San Diego Police Department violate the First Amendment.   [Read more…]

Has President Obama Lost the Black Women’s Vote?

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By Carolyn Zellander

Recently, I had an interesting conversation with an acquaintance; she asked me if I would join a group called “Black Women for Obama“. I said “Why black women, why not ‘Women for Obama?’ What is the distinction?”

She said “Obama lost black women with that gay marriage endorsement, and they will not be voting for him in this election.”

About this time, I am really becoming intrigued with that statement, as I personally thought it was about time he stepped up to the plate and acknowledged that constitutional rights are not just for the heterosexual. Nevertheless, she felt it was a slip-up on his part. I said that was no slip-up on the part of the President. You see Mr. Obama knows on which side to butter his political bread. The LBGT community is a growing and important constituency and besides it was just the right thing to do.

She continued, “You know homosexuality is a sin don’t you? It is in the Bible.”   [Read more…]

Surviving Higher Education: A mad feminist gets her degree in Women’s Studies

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There is a nice little pool outside my office door. I recall thinking late one night that the thing would kill me before it ever became a reality. My excavated yard had metamorphosed into a mud pit, transformed by a malevolent deluge, and I was down, sinking into the sucking miasma, my flashlight lifted to the heavens, afraid that my corpse might be found in the morning’s muck.

Turns out, all I had to do was sit up: The mud was barely a foot deep.

But that sense of inundation, of being caught in a vortical force that I could not escape, that became my operating mode as I pursued a degree in Women’s Studies for the past 18 months.   [Read more…]

I Me Mine: The Unholy Trinity Of Ayn Rand

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By OTOOLEFAN

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.” – Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand was out of her Vulcan mind.

This is a simple fact that can be verified by anyone with even minimal Google skills. She was the Albert Schweitzer of Selfishness and the Mother Theresa of Greed all rolled into one. This, naturally, makes her a hero to the Right and qualifies her for sainthood. Too bad she was an Atheist.

Her philosophy, so she said, was one of pure reason, unstained by taudry emotion. But as sane people know, one of the quirks of being a human is serving the heart as well as the mind.  Ayn Rand believed you should only serve yourself. In her world, everyone was free to agree with her version of individual freedom and all others were worthy of contempt and scorn. She considered altruism immoral and selfishness a virtue.

Ayn Rand called her philosophy “Objectivism”. For the layman, “Objectivism” is Latin for “I don’t give a shit about anyone but myself.” It’s self-absorption with a bow on top. She makes the Kardashians look like Anna Karenina.

“The best aspect of Christmas, is that Christmas has been commercialized.” – Ayn Rand
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Ryan, The Conservatives Long Term Downfall, Be Careful of What You Ask For

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By Daily Kos / Daily Kos Member

Paul Ryan was probably one of the worst picks for conservatives. Strangely enough, it’s because Ryan is a true conservative and now makes the ticket a truly conservative ticket.

Most conservatives, and people across the country, had their doubts about how conservative Romney really is. If you look at his health care law in Mass., some of the other laws he passed, and his past statements, he certainly comes across more as an opportunist rather than a conservative.

This past week, conservatives everywhere were putting pressure on Romney to pick not only a conservative VP, but specifically, Paul Ryan. Now the conservatives have exactly what they asked for.   [Read more…]

Inside the Romney-Ryan Bromance

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The Atlantic / By Nancy Cook and Rebecca Kaplan

In the weeks before Rep. Paul Ryan released his latest budget blueprint this year, he urged all of the presidential candidates to follow his fiscal lead. He critiqued GOP front-runner Mitt Romney’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference as “pretty good,” but cautioned that all of the candidates needed to take bold policy stances. “We need to have an election with a mandate, so we can fix these problems,” he said at a breakfast with reporters in mid-February.

He was equally noncommittal about his allegiances weeks later, when he praised both Romney and Rick Santorum for broaching the topic of entitlements on the campaign trail. “Their specifics have jived perfectly well with what we’ve been saying,” he told National Journal. “We’re all saying the same thing, and that’s very good in my opinion.”   [Read more…]

DUMBSHIT Airways

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By Bob Dorn

Nowhere can ostentatious American dumb be seen in such sharp relief as when your international flight lands and you board the connecting flight home. Maybe you were impressed by the effete flight attendants and Spanish passengers who spoke your language and two others, but now, exhausted and nearly unconscious aboard the plane bound for San Diego, you look at the in‐flight television offerings and find blurbs meant to attract your eyes; words like these describing an installment in a Showtime serial: “Sean and Matt spend a day bonding together.”

Aside from the whisper of man‐sex in there, that blurb could only appeal to people whose kids bear those names. It’s a cinch that Delta did not for a minute consider offering Sean and Matt’s special day to fliers on the Madrid to Atlanta run; after all, passengers could see more interesting stuff going on in the seats around them. But look at the phrase, “bonding together.” That’s where stupid really lives in Delta’s in‐house tv guide. Which word could best be eliminated? Why didn’t Delta simply say S and M “spend a day together”? I know, I know, that’s inert, and lays there all flat, like Mitt Romney’s version of “America the Beautiful,” or the joke he might tell. Like Romney himself, the phrase, “spend a day together,” seems to lack something. So, the Delta blurber inserted “bonding.”   [Read more…]

The NFL has a new lockout; football preseason starts with scab referees

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by Laura Clawson / Daily Kos 

In 2011, the National Football League locked out its players to get them to accept contract concessions. In 2012, it’s the referees’ turn. Preseason play started this week with replacement officials brought in from college football and, apparently, the Lingerie Football League. If the NFL’s efforts to force players to take pay and benefit cuts and weak safety policies didn’t convince you that this is all about greedy billionaire owners, a second lockout of a second group of (much lower-paid) workers, again with possible safety repercussions for players, should go a ways toward convincing you.

The reviews of the officiating coming in are … not good. There’s the ref who confused Atlanta and Arizona and also, after forgetting to set the first down marker, had to announce that “the first down chains were not set prior to the snap so we shut the play down prior to the snap.”    [Read more…]

New Weight-Loss Drugs Could Well Be America’s Next Health Care Disaster

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San Diego Company’s Belviq Drug Ok’d After ‘Concerned Citizen’ Petitions FDA to Override Advisory Committee Concerns

By now, most people are aware of the obesity statistics. Thirty-four percent of US adults are obese, 34 percent are overweight and more than a third of children are either obese or overweight. The average American man weighs 194 and the average woman, 165. (This trend brings to mind an old New Yorker cartoon in which a doctor tells an overweight patient, “According to this chart you should be seven feet and two inches tall.”)

Not everyone agrees on the reasons for the ballooning American physique. Is it inactivity? Overeating? The wrong foods? Environmental factors? The Centers for Disease Control report that excess weight is linked to coronary heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, liver and gallbladder disease and osteoarthritis. One statistical report says obesity is actually more harmful than smoking, drinking or poverty. And that’s assuming the overweight aren’t afflicted with those conditions, too.
  [Read more…]

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