Another example of a winning Democratic primary campaign ad. Although not the candidate endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Davids is still running on a campaign of affordable health care, quality education, economic opportunity, gun safety and environmental responsibility. If successful in the general election she will represent a number of firsts: the first lesbian congresswoman from Kansas, one of the first Native American women in Congress, and the first congresswoman with a mixed martial arts history. Definitely not your run-of-the-mill candidate. [Read more…]
UPDATED: No Deal! Says Council. Comic Con is Gone and Other Colossal City of San Diego Schemes Gone Wrong
Pow! Doink! Yikes! FacePalm!
The latest grand plan for saving San Diego from the shame of not having a big enough Convention Center flopped on Wednesday.
Yes! For a Better San Diego, the coalition seeking an increase in a hotel tax, failed to get enough signatures for its ‘citizen’s initiative’ to qualify for the November 2018 ballot.
San Diego City Clerk Elizabeth Maland reported a random count by the county Registrar of Voters triggered the requirement for a full verification of all signatures. Such a count would take up to 30 days to complete, causing the proposed measure to miss Friday’s deadline for placing anything on the ballot. [Read more…]
Crashing Sean Spicer’s Book Tour, or Trolling with Unicorns | Video Worth Watching
The Full Frontal crew shadows Sean Spicer during his book tour, trying to get answers to pressing questions such as “How do you feel about profiting off of lying to the American public?” And in an obvious homage to Spicer’s descriptive genius, for his Rhode Island Country Club appearance the crew recreates with an actual costume, one of the jaw-droppingly inspirational passages from Spicer’s work: “[Trump] is a unicorn, riding a unicorn over a rainbow.” You have to see it to believe it. [Read more…]
August Elections: Organized Labor Wins Big in Missouri | Women Win Big Everywhere
There were primary elections in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington on Tuesday. And a special election in Ohio for a traditionally Republican House seat.
It was a big night for labor and an even bigger night for women running for office.
While I wouldn’t bet the farm on the long-term significance of elections held mid-summer, on balance it was a good night for those of us rooting for Democrats come November. Team Blue had a lot of wins and a few close losses. What encourages me is the hard work of the campaigns and the resulting voter turnout. [Read more…]
Lived Experiences, Microaggressions, and Good Deeds in the Classroom | Readers Write
By Vanessa Torres
As a college student, I now have about a decade’s-plus worth of experience with the benevolence of well-intentioned teachers. I say this as a student that grew up in low-income school districts and a high school in San Diego where the majority of students were minorities and the teachers were not.
Overcrowded classrooms and sharing a dilapidated textbook with your classmate was not out of the norm. The school year was initiated with the teacher’s usual disgruntled disclaimer that there would not be enough books to go around for the school year in yet another overcrowded class.
Teaching in and of itself is a tremendous responsibility a person undertakes as their professional career. Few other professions carry the weight that teaching does. A teacher has the ability to mold and inculcate a young person’s mind which ultimately adds to the prosperity of our community.
Some teachers take the seriousness of their profession and the resulting responsibility to heart; it’s not like they are doing it for the money. But I have to wonder about the others: As the incentive of a high paying salary is nonexistent, what is their reason for choosing such a significant profession? Were they looking for life-fulfillment? Or did they choose this profession as a way of escaping their inherent guilt? [Read more…]
Richard Nixon resigns – August 8, 1974 | Video Worth Watching
On this day in 1974, Richard M. Nixon delivered his resignation speech. How times have changed. For some insightful reflection on how and why, check out Will Bunch’s column in The Inquirer. Well, we can dream (and still fight back!) (h/t to AGD) [Read more…]
GOP Ghouls Ready to Go After Green Card Holders, Legal Immigrants Looking for Citizenship
According to NBC News, the Trump administration is in the late stages of developing policies aimed at keeping as many as 20 million legal immigrants from gaining green cards or applying for citizenship.
Using the same rationale employed during the 1930s to block Jewish refugees from settling in the U.S., persons deemed as potential, past, or current “public charges,” will be deemed ineligible for permanent residency. The slight of hand needed to make this happen involves labeling virtually all government programs as ‘welfare.’
The NBC report profiles a 55-year-old Haitian man who has been in the country since 1989, works eighty hours a week at two jobs, and is a homeowner. Because he required government assistance to care for his US-born daughter’s severe disabilities, his quest for citizenship–already in trouble due to another policy reversal–is likely to end in failure. [Read more…]
“Earth Will Be Annihilated”: On 73rd Anniversary of Hiroshima Bombing, a Warning Against Nuclear War | Video Worth Watching
From the Democracy Now! YouTube page:
[Monday marked] the 73rd anniversary of the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, which killed 140,000 people and seriously injured another 100,000. In remembrance, we turn to the words of a Hiroshima survivor, or hibakusha. Koji Hosokawa was 17 years old when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. His 13-year-old sister Yoko died in the bombing. He gave us a tour of the city when Democracy Now! was in Japan in 2014. He spoke to us near the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, one of the few structures in the city that survived the atomic blast.
San Diego’s Deplorables: Jerry Sanders & Carl DeMaio Want to Sell ‘Son of B’ to Voters
Not all deplorables are running for office. Today’s politicos covered in this column are not on the ballot this fall, but their influence has shaped local politics over the past decade. They’re really excited about an upcoming opportunity to sell the public on a rehashed version of what they call pension reform.
Faced with the prospect of burning, looting, and potholes, San Diego voters overwhelming approved Proposition B in 2012. This flavor of ‘pension reform’ was sold as the only possible solution to the city’s budget crisis. It was ‘vote for this, or your city will fail.’
The measure switched all new city hires, except police, from pensions to 401(k)-style individual investment plans. It hasn’t been a financial solution for the city’s money problems as much as it has changed the employee-employer relationship. [Read more…]
Summer Chronicles 2018 #8: “Already Dead”: A Lunch Poem for Golden Hill
On the back cover of Frank O’Hara’s classic City Lights Books collection, Lunch Poems, he defines his efforts succinctly:
Often this poet, strolling through the noisy splintered glare of a Manhattan noontide, has paused at a sample Olivetti to type up thirty or forty lines of ruminations, or pondering more deeply has withdrawn to a darkened ware- or firehouse to limn his computed misunderstandings of the eternal questions of life, coexistence, and depth, while never forgetting to eat lunch his favorite meal….
While I have always loved O’Hara’s work and sought in my own writing to emulate his temporal discipline and culinary wisdom, what I find most useful about the form he invents is how it can present the most ordinary of moments in a way that captures the extraordinary. [Read more…]
Don’t Shoot: Thoughts on AB 931
I was just about to write down my thoughts on a meeting I attended a little while back, but I thought I’d check my email first so I could really settle in with what I wanted to say.
One particular email in my inbox got my attention right away: news the San Diego City Council hadn’t taken a step that was necessary in the process of readying an amendment regarding the creation of a Commission on Police Practices for placement on the November ballot.
They just let it drop. And although that’s shocking to me, I’m not the least bit surprised because, and I can only speak for the years I’ve been in San Diego since 1962, our City Councils, on the whole, have never been about much of anything beyond empty “America’s Finest City” kind of platitudes. [Read more…]
Sen. Kamala Harris’ Remarks on Identity Politics Given During Netroots Nation Address | Video Worth Watching
Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) spoke at the Netroots Nation convention in New Orleans. During this portion of her speech identifying some “difficult truths” and after some observations on the role of black women in electing Doug Jones to the Senate, her remarks addressed the issue of what has sometimes been referred to as “identity politics”. [To listen to the entire address, when this four minute segment ends, click on the “replay” arrow in the lower-left corner of the video box] [Read more…]
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