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Paul Ryan: Will Swap Unborn Babies for Vice Presidency

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By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / Published Aug. 25, 2012

Less than two weeks after joining Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign as the GOP’s presumptive vice presidential candidate, U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan has publicly confirmed his erstwhile inner opportunist.

Ryan, who is “very proud of [his] pro-life record,” was faced with a choice between the dangling prize of the vice presidency and remaining true to the source of his pridefulness. Lo and behold, Ryan is surprisingly pro-choice, albeit in a 1-percent sort of way.

Ryan chose to abandon his 100-percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee (a rating based partially on his rejection of abortion ban exceptions for rape and incest), to jump on board the Romney presidential campaign, which, at least for the moment,* supports an abortion ban with exceptions for rape, incest and threat to a mother’s life.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Mission Valley Hotel Workers Allege Unlawful Treatment; Father of Prop 8 DUI Busted (Updated)

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Hotel employees blow the whistle… Employees at the Hilton Mission Valley will speak at a press conference today, detailing claims that they have filed against HEI Hospitality, owner of the property, for nearly a quarter million dollars in lost wages with the State Labor Commissioner. The event, scheduled for noon in front of the Hilton, will be hosted by Alor Calderon of the Employee Rights Center and Rabbi Laurie Coskey, Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice.

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Are You Eating Genetically Modified Foods Laced with Pesticides?

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In a quest to eat a healthier diet, I made smoothies containing a couple scoops of a soy protein product I bought at Trader Joe’s. I also started eating a lot of berries, high in anti-oxidants, which are supposed to be good for you. Then one day I woke up and realized that the soy I had be eating was actually genetically modified (GMO) soy created by the Monsanto Corporation for the sole purpose of being resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup, a powerful herbicide which will kill every plant in a soybean field except genetically modified soy plants. So the soy I had been eating was not only GMO soy containing herbicide within its seeds, but it had been drenched in a powerful herbicide prior to having been harvested and brought to market.

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The Future Versus the Austerity Crowd: Why We Must Support Proposition 30

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Near the end of August, I helped organize the Governor’s visit to City College and stood with him, despite the many fierce disagreements that I have had with Jerry Brown’s policy positions and political judgment. I did so because it’s not an overstatement to say that the future of our children is on the line this coming November. While much of the attention will be on the Presidential race at the national level, here inCaliforniathe destiny of our children and the education system is up for grabs. Specifically, Proposition 30 represents a chance to put a halt to years of cuts to education and vital public services. If it fails, we will be throwing our kids under the bus. It’s that simple.

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What’s Going on at Ft. Rosecrans Now? Its Watering Schedule is Out of Sync…

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Three of my widow support group have husbands buried at Ft. Rosecrans cemetery. A fourth one has a fiancé buried there also. All of our men are in very close proximity to each other – probably because they all passed away at just about the same time.

Three of us try to visit our husbands once a month, if for no other reason than to make sure they are still there. I usually use the time to berate him for leaving me. Sometimes I bring flowers from our garden; sometimes one of the other women bring a sticker to put on the plaques – a forbidden practice but we do it anyway; sometimes we bring individual windmills to stick in the rocks below the walls that hold their remains.

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The Starting Line – Romneyfest Rained Out By Issac as Paul, Protestors Steal the Thunder in Tampa

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The “We Can Do Better” theme that Republicans had planned for day one of their National Convention in Tampa Bay has been set aside, usurped by a hurricane named Isaac, ten thousand raucous Ron Paul supporters, a thousand social conservatives, a couple hundred Occupy demonstrators and one former Florida governor who’s decided to break ranks with the GOP.  The deluxe $2.5 million stage, which was supposed to frame the highly choreographed ascension of Republican wonderfulness starting today will sit dark.

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San Diego City Attorney Backs Out of ‘Equality Nine’ Prosecution

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More than two years after the arrest of the “Equality Nine” ― activists who enacted a sit-in at the San Diego County Clerk’s office and demanded that marriage licenses be issued to same-sex couples ― six of the members have been vindicated.

The legal proceedings against them ended with a “motion to dismiss” by the city attorney yesterday.

The activists said they see the end of this case as a victory in the struggle against restrictions on free speech, the inequality of LGBT marriage rights, and an overzealous San Diego City Attorney.   [Read more…]

Learning from the Cascading Power Failures that Brought Down the Power Grid in India

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Government studies show that cascading blackouts, like the one San Diego experienced in 2011, are still possible due to fundamental flaws in the nation’s power grid.

By Deb Severson

On Tuesday, July 31, 2012, India’s interconnected power grids failed, leaving 600 million people — half the population — without electricity. Cascading failures occur in systems of interconnected parts. They usually begin when one part of the system fails. Nearby system parts must then compensate for the failed component, which can then overload or in other ways fail, triggering a vicious cycle as successive parts fail.

When Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) chairman Jon Wellinghoff was asked if power problems in the Northeast could spread all the way to California, he told ABC News, “It’s very, very unlikely that ultimately would happen.” Part of why the risk is low, the ABC story conveyed, is due to our nation’s grid being divided in the middle. Unfortunately, this division still leaves hundreds of millions at risk for cascading failures, and increased investment in transmission is in NOT the answer.
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We Un-Nominate San Diego as Convention City for GOP If Hurricane Hits Tampa – We’re Still Paying for the 1996 Republican Convention in San Diego

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We un-nominate San Diego as a convention city in case Hurricane Isaac forces the Republicans to flee Tampa. What?

Today’s news had two items of interest: Hurricane Isaac barreling toward Florida just may disrupt or adversely affect the Republican Convention being currently set up in Tampa. Romney & Co may have to relocate their shindig.

The other bit – actually an editorial in the U-T San Diego – had this headline: “If Isaac Roars, San Diego Should Welcome GOP”, and goes on to declare:

“But if the worst should happen, and Republican officials are suddenly forced to relocate the GOP national convention to begin Monday in Tampa, we nominate San Diego as the new convention host city.”

It goes on and gets into what’s available here:

“The logistics in moving the convention anywhere at this stage remain monumental, of course. While the San Diego Convention Center is not booked this week, the halls are busy with preparations for events the following week.”

  [Read more…]

The Starting Line –Carl DeMaio Visits the Beach, Discovers the Environment (Not a Flip-Flop)

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Inhaling the OB vapors?.. Mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio got a taste of Ocean Beach the other night, when he attended a forum sponsored by the OB Town Council, and he’s emerged from the experience a changed man, judging from his actions yesterday. The City Councilman, whose San Diego League of Conservation Voters Environmental Report Card scores for the past years have averaged D minus, took to Twitter to declare “We must make our environment a priority” and added a link to his campaign website to back up the claim. UPDATE: The OBRag responds to DeMaio’s new-found cause.

DeMaio announced a “Clean Coasts 2020 Plan” with six bullet points and a pledge to release additional “reforms” over the weekend as part of a coastal walking tour. The main idea contained in his web announcement was the creation of  a new “Environment & Stormwater Department” as part of city government during a DeMaio administration. We can only hope that he doesn’t encounter any of the “storm waters” on the side streets of Pacific Beach in the evenings this weekend.   [Read more…]

Cesar Chavez’s Thoughts a While Back on What our Schools Are Facing Today

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 As we consider Proposition 30, we might want to reflect what Cesar Chavez had to say in Sacramento on April 3, 1991.  (A transcript of this speech is in the United Farm Workers Papers at Wayne State University.) A friend, David Valladolid, who is the President and Chief Executive Officer of PIQE (Parent Institute for Quality Education), emailed this vital piece of history to me.

This statement was made to Cesar:

“People may ask, ‘Why should the farm workers be concerned about the condition of public schools in California?’”

Cesar replied:

“Who do you think are in the public schools today in California?   Public schools serve more farm workers than any other publicly financed social institution in society. Public schools provide the greatest opportunity for upward mobility to Hispanics and to all ethnic minorities in this state.   [Read more…]

We Built It? 2012 Republican National Convention Site: Publicly Financed, Publicly Owned

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Next weeks Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida will be held at The Tampa Bay Time Forum, an indoor arena that is publicly owned and whose construction was paid for primarily with tax dollars. Seven bond issues issued in 1996 for construction, according to the St. Petersburg Times, are being paid off with a combination of revenues from sales taxes, tourist development taxes, and ticket surcharges. The facility is legally owned by Hillsborough County, which leases it the Tampa Bay Sports Authority. County ownership keeps the property off the local property tax rolls.

So it’s ironic, to say the least, that the GOP has adopted “We Built It” as their theme for the 2012 convention. As Media Matters has pointed out, this premise is build upon the Fox news’ distortion of one part of President Obama’s remarks tying the success of businesses to “this unbelievable American System” that includes government spending on infrastructure and education.

The Federal Election Commission, financed by 33 million tax payers who direct $3 of their taxes towards election costs, has given the Republican Party more than $18 million in grants to be used towards the costs of the “We Built It” convention. (The Dems received a matching amount towards their convo.)  Tampa Bay & Charlotte, NC have each received $50 million in grant money from the federal government to beef up law enforcement capabilities.

The majority of the grant money in Tampa will be used for paying the costs of public employees brought in from other jurisdictions to aid in security August 27-30.  Downtown has been wired up with an additional 60 cameras, which, along with airborne surveillance equipment, will feed data into tax payer funded databases running facial recognition software (developed for the Pentagon) that boasts facial recognition rates of 99.7 percent for well-lit, frontal photos. And local tax payers have coughed up an additional $2.7 million for “beautification” projects around the city.   [Read more…]

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