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Lights in the Darkness of Mount Soledad

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By Frances O’Neill Zimmerman

A veterans’ group led by the owner of the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club wants to light up inky-dark Mount Soledad nights and is seeking official approval next week for this unprecedented alteration to the highest viewpoint on the west side of the city of San Diego.

At stake is encroaching light pollution within our urban area and maintaining Mount Soledad as a sacred dark space for viewing the night sky — shooting stars, unusual planetary alignments, spectacular moonrises, eclipses of the moon. Generations of San Diegans and visitors to San Diego have experienced the beauty of the nighttime sky and the 360-degree panorama of the city below from atop Mount Soledad.   [Read more…]

The Truth About Religion in America: The Founders Loathed Superstition and We Were Never a Christian Nation

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By Kerry Walters /Alternet

Once they begin to circulate, falsehoods—like counterfeit currency—are surprisingly tenacious. It doesn’t matter that there’s no backing for them. The only thing that counts is that people believe they have backing. Then, like bad coins, they turn up again and again.

One counterfeit idea that circulates with frustrating stubbornness is the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation. It’s one of the Christian Right’s mantras and a favorite talking point for televangelists, religious bloggers, born-again authors and lobbyists, and pulpit preachers. Take, for example, the Reverend Peter Marshall. Before his death in 2010, he strove mightily (and loudly) to “restore America to its traditional moral and spiritual foundations,” as his still-active website says, by telling the truth about “America’s Christian heritage.” Or consider Wall Builders, a “national pro-family organization” founded by David Barton, whose mission is “educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country.” Called “America’s historian” by his admirers, Barton is a prolific writer of popular books that spin his Christian version of American history. And then there’s Cynthia Dunbar, an attorney and one-time professor at Liberty University School of Law. She’s another big pusher of the Christian America currency. Her 2008 polemic One Nation Under God proclaims that the Christian “foundational truths” on which the nation rests are being “eroded” by a “socialistic, secularistic, humanistic mindset” from which Christians need to take back the country.   [Read more…]

Trans-Pacific Partnership – Leaked Trade Document Reveals Corporations Favored Over Public Interest

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A leak today of one of the most controversial chapters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) reveals that extreme provisions have been agreed to by U.S. officials, providing a stark warning about the dangers of “trade” negotiations occurring under conditions of extreme secrecy without press, public or policymaker oversight, Public Citizen said.

“The outrageous stuff in this leaked text may well be why U.S. trade officials have been so extremely secretive about these past two years of TPP negotiations,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “Via closed-door negotiations, U.S. officials are rewriting swaths of U.S. law that have nothing to do with trade and in a move that will infuriate left and right alike have agreed to submit the U.S. government to the jurisdiction of foreign tribunals that can order unlimited payments of our tax dollars to foreign corporations that don’t want to comply with the same laws our domestic firms do.”   [Read more…]

Darrel Issa’s Fixation on Attorney General Eric Holder

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Five Things To Know About The Republican Witchhunt Against Attorney General Holder

By Ian Millhiser / Think Progress /Jun 13, 2012

In 2006, during the presidency of George W. Bush, the Justice Department launched the first of a series of misguided “gunrunning” schemes that eventually led to the death of federal Agent Brian Terry. Rather than look to ways to prevent such a tragedy from happening again, however, House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) spent his tenure as a committee chair trying unsuccessfully to embarrass Attorney General Eric Holder.

This week, Issa escalated this witchhunt by holding an committee vote on a resolution to hold the Attorney General in contempt of Congress. Here’s what you need to know about this vote:

1. Issa Has No Case: Issa’s uncovered no evidence showing Holder bears any blame for the botched operations begun under George W. Bush, even though the Justice Department turned over thousands of pages of documents concerning the operations.   [Read more…]

Arizona Latinos Prepare for Civil Disobedience as Supreme Court Reviews Immigration Law

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In Arizona, Latino communities are preparing for acts of mass protest and civil disobedience ahead of Monday’s Supreme Court ruling on the controversial immigration law SB1070. Should the law go unchallenged, police will be allowed the power to investigate the immigration status of any person they may have “reasonable suspicion” of being undocumented.
“No one, from the governor down, has provided any guidance on what constitutes ‘reasonable suspicion’,” said Allesandra Soler Meetze, ACLU’s director in Arizona. In the absence of proper training, she added, “police officers will rely on their own prejudices and go by how people look and speak. That will push law enforcement into racial profiling.”   [Read more…]

Book Review: Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life

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By Mel Freilicher / Special to the OB Rag

Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life
By Vivian Gornick
Yale University Press, 2011; 151 pages; $25

Rather than write a political history of Emma Goldman’s very full life (which is already documented in great detail, including in her own hefty, 2 volume autobiography, Living My Life), Vivian Gornick has chosen to “concentrate on the force of her extraordinary rebelliousness and try to understand it in light of the existential drive behind radical politics.”

To illuminate what she believes to be at the heart of many dedicated radicals’ commitment, Gornick delivers a provocative portrait of Goldman’s soul, really: embodied in what’s famously paraphrased as, “If I can’t come to your dance, I’m not coming to your revolution.”   [Read more…]

Only You Can Save Balboa Park!

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The good folks at SOHO – Save Our Heritage Organization – are fighting angry. And for good reason. They are upset that the San Diego Planning Commission approved billionaire Irwin Jacobs’ plans for Balboa Park at its June 7th meeting. SOHO wrote us:

After eight hours of presentations and public testimony on June 7th, with little thoughtful deliberation, the San Diego Planning Commission voted 7-0 to recommend approval of the Plaza de Panama project. Their conduct was one of extreme disappointment as they let down both the public and forfeited their stewardship of Balboa Park in an embarrassing display up one-upmanship of who could thank Dr. Jacobs the most for gracing their presence. This is no exaggeration.

The meeting in its entirety can be viewed at this video link. But for those of you who haven’t the time or inclination, please view the following short clips. These remarks from the Planning Commissioners will give you a good idea of just how endangered Balboa Park is in the hands of decision makers who are unable or unwilling to show real leadership and why your involvement is so crucial.

  [Read more…]

Sex In San Diego: Women Aren’t Meeting Breastfeeding Goals

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by Denise Mann / WebMD Health News

Despite having every intention to breastfeed for at least three months, more than 85% of mothers don’t meet their goals. A recent study takes a look at what makes moms most and least likely to succeed.   [Read more…]

FDA releases nutritional guide to insects, vermin and pests

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(BOCA RATON) Americans can stretch their dwindling food budgets and broaden their taste horizons if they’d only consider eating more insects, rats and vermin, according to Uncle Sam.

That’s the message from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which today released a report on the nutritional value of more than 700 common insects, reptiles, rodents, amphibians and spiders.

The report, Let Them Eat Snake: The Nutritional Benefits of Insects, Vermin and Household Pests, hopes to “broaden American perspectives on food in the 21st Century.”

While initial response has been one of alarm, the FDA is assuring the public that the report does not signal any pending problems with the food supply.   [Read more…]

How Wall Street Hustles America’s Cities and States Out of Billions

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We all know that America’s cities and towns are in the throes of a deep financial crisis. And are told, over and over, what’s supposedly behind it: unreasonable demands by grasping state and municipal workers for pay and pensions. The diagnosis is a grotesque cartoon. Many of the biggest budget busters are on Wall Street, not Main Street.

In a country as big and locally diverse as the U.S., any number of wacky pay and pension schemes are likely to flourish, though some of the most outrageous turn out to cover not workers, but legislators. But overall state and local pay has not been growing faster than in the private sector for equivalent work for many years now.

What has driven cities and towns to the brink is not demands from their workforce but the collapse of national income and the ensuing fall in tax collections. Or, in other words, the Great Recession itself, for which Wall Street and the financial sector are principally to blame. But many powerful interests have jumped at the opportunity to use the crisis to eviscerate what’s left of the welfare state, roll back unionization to pre-New Deal levels, and keep cutting taxes on the wealthy. The litany of horror stories that now fills the media is ideal for their purposes.   [Read more…]

Some observations on the end of the Presidential Primary and San Diego

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By Mateo Camarillo

The Presidential Primary election is over. The following are some observations.

The election day turn out in the city of San Diego was 28%. Some mail in ballots are still being counted that will raise the level to +/- 1/3%. This is the lowest level since voters were debating whether the country should enter WWII in 1940. This level of disinterest is reflected in several ways including two city council districts races that were uncontested (only one candidate).

In District 9, a Latino majority District, the civic participation as reflected in 9,880 total votes cast out of 53,098 eligible voters was 18.6% voter participation for a contested race. Two districts had only one candidate needing a total of one vote to win. They had almost twice the number of votes cast than the votes cast in D 9. A democracy works when voters have a choice and the majority participates.   [Read more…]

Ramona School Board Finds Easy Target: Public Unions

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By Dave Patterson / Special to the San Diego Free Press

Nothing bold, nothing new.

The seminal message delivered at the Ramona School board meeting on June 7th, 2012, was that the problem is the unions. While concessions from the unions will certainly be part of it, the real solution is much more complex. Too bad that the Administration and all but one of the school board members were willing to turn away from the reality, and instead cast a stone at a politically reliable target, public unions.

Dawn Perfect, the lone dissenter in approval of the 2012~2013 budget, remarked courageously that the administration had failed to produce a plan toward future solvency, paraphrasing here. The County schools executive told the board that the deficit projections are “huge” for years 13~14, and “beyond belief” for 14~15. They warned that if the school board fails to reign in the budget the state will take over and everyone will lose, particularly our children.   [Read more…]

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