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First Cuppa Coffee – April 4th, 2012: They Who Would Be King Edition

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Cry me a river… What’s a Republican gotta do to get some ink in this town, anyway? With the national press all gaga over Nathan Fletcher’s decision to dump the Grand Old Party, the Brian Bilbray campaign is hoping that they’ll get some ink (probably not in the OB Rag, though) when House Speaker John Boehner speaks out at a campaign fundraiser on Thursday at a Pacific Beach condo at Pacific Beach Drive and Cass Streets. Festivities are slated to begin at around 5pm, and rumor has it that there will be protesters.

The primaries are over, really…. For those of you who may have missed this morning’s pronouncements in the mainstream media, Former Mass. Gov. Willard Romney’s sweep of the elections in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia means that he’s won the race to become the lucky Republican to take on the incumbent Democratic President. Word hasn’t apparently reached Rick Santorum, who’s decided to one up the other clueless contender, moon man Newt Gingrich, by visiting Mars. (Mars, Pennsylvania, that is.) By the way, in Wisconsin, four out of 10 voters in the Republican primary weren’t even Republicans.   [Read more…]

My Dancing Feet

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Sometimes I get dancing feet.
I’ll hear a song
and can’t help but want to move
to its rhythm,
to its beat.   [Read more…]

Shame and Injustice in San Diego and America

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The killings of Trayvon Martin and Shaima Alawadi tell us something about our society. And what they are saying is not good.

The entire nation is currently up in arms about the killing of Trayvon Martin, the 17 year old Floridian who was shot and killed over a month ago by a neighborhood watch vigilante. And rightfully so. Martin’s only crime was to enter a gated, middle-class community where his father lived while black, wearing a hoodie, and carrying a pack of Skittles and an iced tea.   [Read more…]

First Cuppa Coffee – Monday, April 2, 2012 : Cash for Carl Edition

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Thanks for the cash, Carl… The OB Rag April Fool’s post yesterday claiming that Fox News had purchased this site was a big hit with readers. Obviously, for those of you that missed the “sarcasm” tag, it was in jest. We’re all still poor this morning. A whole bunch of other progressive leaning blogs did hit the jackpot this weekend, thanks to Mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio. Surfers logging in from computers ID’d as being located in the San Diego area are seeing DeMaio’s ads on websites like Daily Kos, Truthdig, Talking Points Memo and The Nation. It is a little strange reading about the latest GOP outrage with DeMaio’s beady little eyes staring at you from the screen.

TV’s Morning Madness…. Former Alaska Gov. (And reality show host) Sarah Palin has agreed to co-host the Today show Tuesday. She’ll be lining up against Katie Couric, who be stepping in over at Good Morning America. There’s been no word from either network over whether Couric’s “gotcha moment” video interview with Palin will be rebroadcast on either network. NBC’s not taking any chances on losing the ratings war this week, though… other high profile guests appearing this week include: “Octomom” Nadya Suleman, Kim Kardashian, the Duggar family and rapper Nicki Minaj. Observers expect the nation’s IQ to drop by five to nine points this week.
  [Read more…]

Play Ball!

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Opening week is upon us and the Padres ownership debacle has already done a lot to dampen the spirits of local baseball fans even before the first pitch has been thrown. With Jeff Moorad unlikely to ever take over the majority share of the team from John Moores, many fans rightly feel they have been bamboozled once again–left to sit in a park that their tax dollars built and pay through the nose for bad baseball and overpriced beer while the swooning friars stumble uncertainly around the bases toward yet another losing season. If you watch the Vegas line, the Padres are picked to finish last in the National League West with only 70 wins. Oh, the horror!

But, of course, that is the destiny of the Padres fan: losing. As I only half-jokingly tell my friends, I have taught my son to love baseball and love the Padres so he knows from a young age the first noble truth: life is suffering.   [Read more…]

A Hopeful Youth Town Hall Meeting at Jacob Center in Lincoln Park

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This old dude was so tired that evening but there was no way I was going to miss a Town Hall Meeting with such a compelling theme as “Silence is Worse than Violence” – especially considering that a number of youth leaders decided that such a gathering was needed to begin a conversation for solutions to the problem. I love it when our children take the lead.

The night was kicked off with a bumping rap about how, “We got to rise up above it” followed by a spoken word piece about love and respect and honoring our ancestries and histories. Amen.

That set a tone that was soothing to my aging bones and the featured speaker and moderator of the evening, Kevin Powell, a prominent voice in the hip hop generation, jumped right in without missing a beat with anecdotes about the rough edges of his youth and how he turned it all around and has devoted his life to positive hopeful causes like ending violence, in keeping with why we were all gathered at the Joe & Vi Jacobs Center.   [Read more…]

San Diego Women to Rally Against Attacks on International Women’s Day – March 8th

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Women from all over San Diego County will rally in front of the US Federal Courthouse in San Diego on Thursday, March 8th, to support women’s rights to contraception on International Women’s Day. The rally will be held from noon to 1pm, and the Courthouse is located at 940 Front Street, in downtown San Diego.

The rally will address a number of recent attacks on a woman’s right to contraception and family planning:

  • US Rep. Darrell Issa convenes a hearing about contraception with 5 men on the panel, and no women.
  • Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum touts the “dangers” of contraceptives and that sex is “only for purposes of procreation.”
  • Foster Friess, main donor to a super PAC for Rick Santorum, suggests women use aspirin as a contraception method.
  • Rush Limbaugh, on a national radio show, calls a young woman a slut and prostitute because she speaks out in favor of birth control.

  [Read more…]

OB Ragster quoted in Washington Post on why she cancelled her subscription to the San Diego U-T

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Seems OB Ragsters are getting quoted everywhere these days. Doug Porter was quoted by the San Diego U-T just this past Sunday on why their former comment policy turned people off – particularly newbies to town. And today, we are overjoyed to announce that our own Anna Daniels was quoted yesterday in a Washington Post […]

What’s the Big Idea?

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By Jim Miller

Information Overload and the “Post Idea Age”

In a recent New York Times opinion piece, “The Elusive Big Idea,” Neal Gabler makes the case that we are living in a “post-idea” age where mundane observations have taken the place of big ideas. We have left behind the Einsteins for entrepreneurs. As he puts it:

If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé.   [Read more…]

Reprogramming NPR After the Right Wing Video Sting

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As you may have heard, the right wing’s darling provocateur James O’Keefe, the conservative activist whose previous heavily doctored videos targeting ACORN eventually led to that organization’s demise, has revealed yet another “gotcha” video that purports to have NPR officials turning a deaf ear to radical Islamicist rhetoric in the hope of gaining major donations. […]

Sharing a Note I Once Wrote to a Very Artsy Guy

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Recently I sat and wrote and chatted with some of the coolest people alive. No jive. Most of them happen to be gay or lesbian but among us there were straight allies like me. Man, I’ll be glad when our gay brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts and cousins and […]

Life Flying By

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I pause with a picture to just look at my face, the wrinkles, the gray in my beard, the few strands of black in my hair slowly fading away to mere memories of yesterday. Hey, there are no complaints from me, by the way, considering “It’s better than the alternative” as people are wont to […]

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