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San Diego For Free – The New Children’s Museum

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SD For Free- A weekly column dedicated to sharing the best sights and activities in San Diego at the best price – free!  We have a great city and you don’t need to break the bank to experience it.

 
The New Children’s Museum is a great place to take young children and thanks to sponsorship from Target, the museum is free to all the second Sunday of every month.  The free day for August was during the past weekend, August 12th, but mark your calendars in advance for September 9th to take advantage of this great free family outing.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — Veterans Group to Start Weekly Vigil on Domestic Predator Drone Use Outside General Atomics Poway Location

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Say ‘no’ to Predators overhead… Tomorrow, Thursday, August 16th, San Diego Veterans for Peace will begin a weekly vigil at the General Atomics plant in Poway, where the Predator Drone is built. The goal of this series of demonstrations is to get people thinking about the threat drones present to American liberties.  Congress has passed legislation mandating that the Federal Aviation Administration create a comprehensive program for the integration of drone technology into the national air space by 2015. The agency is predicting that there will be 30,000 drones crisscrossing the skies of America by 2020.

San Diego Veterans for Peace is concerned that the melding of law enforcement with Homeland Security is producing the basis for a big brother state. Certainly there has been little to no public discourse about the implications of the ability of local law enforcement agencies sending drones to look in our back yards or bedroom windows, streaming the video to people unknown, without our permission. What could be a powerful tool for crime fighting could easily become an easily abused loophole that negates the Fourth Amendment. Sadly, the track record of law enforcement agencies utilizing technologies developed for combat use in domestic situations is very poor.   [Read more…]

Taking Note of City Heights Job Creators

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We are reminded time and time again that the only human beings in a position to rescue us from our economic woes are the enormously wealthy “job creators.” The bad news is that they are just too uncertain about the economy to tap their accumulated wealth parked far far away from City Heights to start investing again in the US, anywhere in the US.

We are also told that they simply can’t do their “job creating” job without more tax cuts and less government regulation. And they also want us to know that their feelings are very very hurt that we don’t love them enough. None of these wealthy aggrieved individuals live on my block, so I am of course getting this information second hand, but I extend the invitation for tea, even though it will not be accompanied with much in the way of sympathy.   [Read more…]

As to Alaska, All I Can Say is “Wow!” (with a sprinkling of other “W” words)

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The other day we rented a car from Enterprise in Anchorage, Alaska, to drive south of the state a ways. Up to then the only words we had to describe what little we had already seen in the state they call the “Last Frontier” was: “Wow!”

And it had barely begun. Believe me. Those mudflats and sparkling waters, near where we hiked the day before, along with a stop on a mountain called Flat top, where cold winds gave life to our aging bones – all that was, indeed, “Wowful” but when I steered our midsized Kia onto the highway to Homer it was like rolling along a highway in the Twilight Zone, watching a world open up to us unlike any we had ever seen or dreamed of.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Escondido Denies Permit for Voter Registration Drive on National Voter Registration Day

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Here’s an example of too much government... San Diego’s ACLU chapter is challenging an Escondido ordinance that requires citizens to give the City two months advance notice in order to receive a permit for a special event. The group became aware of problems with the North County city’s permitting policies when they applied for a permit to hold voter registration and get-out-the-vote event at the Grape Day Park on September 25, 2012, to coincide with National Voter Registration Day. A city staff member told the San Diego ACLU that the event would require at least 60 days advance notice, and declined to accept the application.

A press release issued by the ACLU asserts that “Escondido’s ordinance represents an illegal prior restraint, pitting the public’s right to protected expression against the government’s power to approve or disapprove an application. On a number of fronts, the city’s current ordinance violates First Amendment protections…” The group is currently negotiating with the Escondido city attorney’s office, but indicates that litigation remains an option if necessary.   [Read more…]

Field of View: San Diego Free Press Meet-and-Greet

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More than 30 people attended the San Diego Free Press meet-and-greet held Sunday in Lemon Grove. Presentations on the history of the internet, how to write a blog post and the original SDFP were given before opening up the floor to general introductions and collaboration. Food and drinks were shared as well as ideas about how those in attendance could best contribute to the SDFP.

Papa Doug, if your ears were burning yesterday, this was why.

All photos by Annie Lane.   [Read more…]

From Petrolia with Love: Alexander Cockburn RIP

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Progressive media is only worth a damn when it has the courage to think bad thoughts and consistently afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

I learned of Alex Cockburn’s death when I picked up a copy of the North Coast Journal in a gas station minimart in Eureka. My family and I were in transit between the deep woods near the California-Oregon border and our next destination off the Lost Coast Highway when we stopped to fuel up and get snacks. While I stood waiting for my son to finish buying a candy bar I picked up the paper and randomly flipped it open to an article entitled “Cockburn Country” in which Marcy Burstiner chastised the local daily, the Times Standard, for failing to adequately comment on Cockburn’s demise.

To rectify this omission Burstiner details how Cockburn had been living in Petrolia for two decades where he co-edited the left online journal and publishing outlet CounterPunch, continued to pen his column for The Nation, and published many books challenging the sacred cows of American Empire and skewering the pieties of the right and left alike. Burstiner tells the story of Cockburn giving a speech in 2009 to “a rag tag bunch of nobodies” in the rain inEureka with incredible passion and energy despite the circumstances. She then ends her tribute by musing, “Alexander Cockburn, if your spirit hovers over me at some rainy Eureka rally in the future, know that one of your fellow residents appreciated you for being a thinker in a world where most people avoid thinking, for calling out the bullshit you saw in the world around you, for exasperating people around you of all political stripes and for being part of our little world out here.”   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Water Gun Party Goes Out of Control: Balboa Park Pond Left Ruined

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Virtually all the news media in America’s Finest City have been breathlessly reporting on the vandals that trashed the lily pond in front of the Botanical Building on Saturday night. And, at least from what I saw on twitter yesterday, lots of people were very angry about the damage done to the park. Here’s a 39 second video of the chaos that ensued.

What started as a public late night water pistol showdown at the big fountain in Balboa Park got out of hand as a crowd, variously estimated at between 1500 to 2000 people arrived at midnight for the social media driven event. Although some organizers claimed that they originally expected about 100 people, over 6000 invites were sent out via a Facebook event page (since deleted), with over 1000 people RSVPing for the occasion.

The primary organizer for the “2nd Annual Water Gun Fight in Balboa Park” was Ken St. Pierre, until recently Sales Director for San Diego Gay and Lesbian news and San Diego Pix, owned by Jonathan Hale (partner of Carl DeMaio). A recent press release from Hale media indicated that Pierre is leaving that organization to accept a similar position with ultra-luxe Riviera Magazine. The event was promoted in SDGLN last Thursday   [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 Starting Line – ‘Dump Romney’ GOP Group Surfaces Prior to Convention

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But he hasn’t even been nominated yet… Former backers of GOP candidate Rick Santorum have released a memo sent to delegates bound for the GOP convention later this month that calls for RNC delegates not to vote vote for Mitt Romney, even if they are bound to him.  Calling themselves “Jews and Christians Together,” the group briefly gained notoriety back in March for their connection with robocalls in Ohio that accused Romney of supporting “open homosexuality in the military, the appointment of homosexual judges, and the ENDA law, making it illegal to fire a man who wears a dress and high heels to work, even if he’s your kid’s teacher.”  Website Buzzfeed.com reports that “Jews and Christians Together” is the brainchild of Steve Baldwin, former head of the Council for National Policy, a low-profile, well-connected conservative group. The memo was reportedly sent out to 20,000 people in politics and the media, as well as RNC delegates.   [Read more…]

Field of View: Sweet Home Chicago

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Tell anyone you’re headed to Chicago and you’ll get a list of must-sees and -dos. I couldn’t even begin to scratch the surface during my short stay, but here’s what I learned:

  • They don’t call it the Windy City for nothing. A more appropriate name might be The Wrath of God.
  • As soon as you feel one raindrop, no matter how small, run for f$%*ing cover. Whatever you do, don’t listen to the locals when they, “Should be nothing―just some scattered showers later.”
  • People don’t honk a quick f$%* you in Chicago; they scream full-on sentences with their horn that’ll make you blush.
  • The views are breathtaking, especially from the John Hancock Observatory and the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower).
  • If you can, load The Blues Brothers soundtrack onto whatever device you have. You’re going to want to listen to it.
  • The buildings go all the way up, and the architecture is remarkable.
  • Visit Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria.  I preferred the “Lou,” which had the freshest tomatoes that I have ever tasted. But if you’re a meat lover, the “Malnati Chicago Classic” is for you. Just beware that beneath the cheese is a layer of thinly-sliced sausage covering the entire pie.
  • Oh, while visiting Lou Malnati’s you might see Trueblood actor Joe Manganiello and squeal like a little girl before calling your husband to get credit for not chasing the hottest werewolf on TV down the street. I’m just saying that might happen.

All photos by Annie Lane, except where noted.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — A Much Grander Vision for San Diego; Public Market Project Underway

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At no cost to taxpayers!… Unlike other visions for San Diego (a football stadium and Convention Center expansion come to mind), Dale Steele and Catt White are making their plans for a City Public Market along the lines of Seattle’s Pike’s Place, San Francisco’s Ferry Building and Barcelona’s La Boqueria into a reality via crowd source funding on the internet’s KickStarter. As of July 2012, KickStarter has 4,048 projects funded and has raised a total of $241 million in start-up capital.

Both Steele and White are long time players on the San Diego market scene; White currently manages neighborhood farmers’ markets in Little Italy, North Park and Pacific Beach. They have already leased a 92,000 square foot property near Petco Park and are renovating more than two acres of warehouse space. Plans for the market include two days a week with farmers’ stalls, booths with local crafters and artists, music festivals, movie nights and quinceañeras, chef’s tasting events and art exhibits, along with the occasional Chaldean Festival, Chinese New Year’s parade, Filipino fiesta or charity fundraiser.   [Read more…]

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