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America’s Right: Anti-Establishment Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party

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By Jim Miller

UCSD Professor of Communications Robert Horwitz will be reading from his new book America’s Right: Anti-Establishment Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party on Wednesday, May 29th at 7:00 PM at the Grove bookstore at 3010 Juniper Street . Recently, Professor Horwitz was kind enough to do the following interview with me on his current project.

Why do a book on American Conservatism?

Conservatism has arguably been the most important political doctrine in the United States over the last three decades. It has dominated the intellectual debate and largely set the policy agenda, even during years of Democratic electoral control. But this is a particular kind of conservatism, one focused not just on customary topics of conservative concern as government spending and low taxes, but one anxious and angry about the purported homosexual agenda, the hoax of climate change, the rule by experts and elites…   [Read more…]

Tío Emilio and the Secrets of the Ancestors: Chapter 1 — Along For The Ride

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“With friends like this, who needs enemies?”  Henry Youngman

By Richard Juarez

I didn’t want to get in. Tony and I were already halfway home. We didn’t need a ride. Not with them. It seemed like every time I was around these guys, something bad would happen. I didn’t need more trouble, and I certainly didn’t want to hear more yelling from my mother about hanging out with these guys again.

“Get in, cabrón!” yelled Eddie, “I ain’t gonna sit here all day waiting for you to decide.”   [Read more…]

Spanking in the Name of the Lord

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When Children are Maltreated by Religious Groups

By Dave Rice

Child sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church have repeatedly rocked the nation for more than a decade now, and in 2010 spread locally to reach the San Diego Diocese. The so-called “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and early ‘90s brought the prospect of harm to children through mysterious and violent rituals to the forefront of the nation’s attention (though such focus turned out to be largely overblown), while periodically stories reach the news involving the tragic death of a child raised by a family of religious separatists. Incidents such as the aforementioned remind us that institutions of faith are capable of inspiring misplaced trust that can bring harm to the most vulnerable amongst us: our children.

These stories, however, just scratch the surface of a more widespread problem concerning the mistreatment of children in the name of religion, says Janet Heimlich, author of Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment.   [Read more…]

Book Review: In Praise of Tomatoes A Year in the Life of a Home Tomato Grower

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A Golden Hill Vegetable Chain Letter that Knits the Neighborhood Together

By Anna Daniels

…It is Shepherd’s passion for growing tomatoes, resulting in his tomato patch close to the sidewalk in one of San Diego’s mid-city neighborhoods, that provides the framing “story” for his book. The story encompasses numerous connections that begin with soil and seeds and soon include family, neighbors, friends, a neighborhood and strangers past and present whose interests have also been ignited by the tomato.   [Read more…]

Dirty Wars and Drones: Real National Security?

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Author Jeremy Scahill Examines the Ugly Reality

By Jay Powell

Thursday night, Jeremy Scahill, author of “Blackwater” gave a preview of his new book “Dirty Wars” to a full house at Hoover High School auditorium in City Heights a community that is home to many refugees from countries torn by war. With a large scale model of an armed Predator drone provided by Veterans for Peace as a backdrop, a good portion of his talk focused on the use of drones, cruise missiles and cluster bombs to assassinate suspected terrorists in countries thousands of miles away.

The next morning, to no one’s surprise—no coverage by the UT-SD of the event. But there was a feature article about US Navy drones and copters program. Near the end reporter Jeanette Steele noted that “even though the military has seen the effectiveness of land-based Predator drones in making surgical strikes … some Americans have started to oppose the idea of ‘killer’ drones on moral grounds.”   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Whoa! Stop that Walmart! UFCW President Calls for ‘Extreme Measures’ in Wake of State Audit

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By Doug Porter

So much news, so little time… Here is today’s roundup.

A fifty eight page report from State Auditor Elaine Howle examining the City of San Diego’s practices regarding permitting for construction projects has raised serious ethical and legal questions about a Walmart location under construction in Sherman Heights.

Community groups opposed to the destruction of the Historic Farmer’s Market building in Sherman Heights were joined by organized labor in protests and lawsuits aimed at halting Walmart. But their complaints fell of deaf ears as city officials claimed all appropriate reviews had been conducted and touted the mega-retailers plans to create jobs in business-friendly San Diego.

Now it’s come out that the City didn’t even issue permits until after construction was underway, even after the lawsuits were filed.   [Read more…]

Shining a Beam on Black and White

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Thoughts on the “Fluency of Light”

By Ernie McCray

As I sit writing as a still new 75 year old, I’m so glad I’ve lived, in spite of how scary our world is at times, to see shreds of promise rise before my eyes, hopeful happenings like Arab Spring, gays marrying, and Occupy. I love anything that keeps hope alive.

That being said, I just read the most inspirational memoir, “The Fluency of Light,” by Aisha Sabatini Sloan, the niece of a new friend of mine. I was feeling good about the book before I even fluttered the pages because I found out on the back cover that Aisha lived in my hometown for a spell and has a masters from the University of Arizona, as do I. And she taught creative writing there too. All of that, alone, represented hope to me as back in my day at the U of A it was very unlikely that she would have even been invited for an interview to teach Wildcats. My school has come a long way.   [Read more…]

Desde la Logan’s Las Monthly Ondas May Edition: Cinco de Mayo is Not Mexican Independence Day

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By Brent E. Beltrán

Cinco de Mayo commemorates El Día de la Batalla de Puebla (The Day of the Battle of Puebla) where in 1862 a ragtag Mexican army lead by General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated a much superior and better equipped force of the French army. Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day. It’s not even a significant holiday in Mexico except in the state of Puebla where the battle took place.

After the great liberal Mexican president Benito Juarez decided to stop paying Mexico’s foreign debt for two years to help it’s near bankrupt national treasury France’s Napoleon III, pissed off by this move, decided to invade and build up it’s empire.   [Read more…]

Trying to Stay Wise at 75

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By Ernie McCray

Just turned 75.
As I think about being a year older,
my first thought is
I’m so glad to be alive.
No jive.   [Read more…]

You Make My Heart Sing

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A Shout Out to the Arizona Wildcat Basketball Team

Hey, you, Wildcats!
Man!
You could never understand
how you make my heart sing
when you take to the courts and do your thing.
It’s downright thrilling, appealing,
exhilarating, fulfilling…
And I’m sitting here in my den, chilling,
thinking of rhymes about how y’all beat Belmont
like they were no more than children out to play,
no more than feathers in a hurricane’s way,
and you attached yourselves to Harvard
like leeches feasting on fat prey,
like gloom on a nasty stormy day.
…..   [Read more…]

An Afternoon with Pancho Segura

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by Hilary Paul McGuire, USPTA

Seated in a wheel chair watching his son Spencer Segura play at the Bobby Riggs Tennis Club and Museum in Encinitas, CA was 92-yearold Pancho Segura.

His full mane of neck-length silver hair bespoke his presence from afar. His imposing form hovered as a sentinel over the courts.

I showed him my newly-released book Tennis Saves: Stewart Orphans Take World By Racket. Though I’m a long-time USPTA pro, he didn’t know me from Adam. With scarcely a sidewise glance, he growled, “Everyone writes a book—too many books. Tennis books don’t sell, not even my Little Pancho.” Caroline Seebohm published that much-touted biography in 2009.
  [Read more…]

Dying for Free

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Dying for free

In the familiar comfort of your home, with your own family,

No No No cost of doctors and hospital fees,

No strangers, no logistics, no legal-ease,

Just old age, if you please, natural as can be,

Just dying for free.

“My body is old, and you can’t fix me, so just let me be, with my old tv…

Just dying for free.”

More inside….   [Read more…]

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