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New Weight-Loss Drugs Could Well Be America’s Next Health Care Disaster

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San Diego Company’s Belviq Drug Ok’d After ‘Concerned Citizen’ Petitions FDA to Override Advisory Committee Concerns

By now, most people are aware of the obesity statistics. Thirty-four percent of US adults are obese, 34 percent are overweight and more than a third of children are either obese or overweight. The average American man weighs 194 and the average woman, 165. (This trend brings to mind an old New Yorker cartoon in which a doctor tells an overweight patient, “According to this chart you should be seven feet and two inches tall.”)

Not everyone agrees on the reasons for the ballooning American physique. Is it inactivity? Overeating? The wrong foods? Environmental factors? The Centers for Disease Control report that excess weight is linked to coronary heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, liver and gallbladder disease and osteoarthritis. One statistical report says obesity is actually more harmful than smoking, drinking or poverty. And that’s assuming the overweight aren’t afflicted with those conditions, too.
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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…]

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…]

The Starting Line — Trash from Foreclosed House Deposited at Bank of America Branch in San Diego

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Residents from southeast San Diego’s Mountain View neighborhood took matters into their own hands yesterday; cleaning up garbage accumulating at a foreclosed property owned the Bank of America, and “depositing” it outside a nearby branch office of that financial institution. The doors were locked at B of A’s 36th and National location as reporters and TV camera crews watched community members, led by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, unload furniture, appliances and litter gathered from the shuttered, but uncared for, property currently owned by the bank.

The dramatic protest was staged to call attention to the proposed Property Value Protection Ordinance, under consideration by the San Diego City Council.  The law would require banks to register homes in the city upon the filing of a notice of default, with a $100-a-day fee for failure to obey the act. If lenders register a distressed home but fail to properly maintain the property (leading to blight), the bank would be subject to a fine of up to $1,000 a day. This, proponents say, would help the city cover the true cost of neglected properties.   [Read more…]

Mr. President : Legalize Marijuana and You’ll Get the Youth Vote and Win the Election.

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A Majority of Americans Support Legalization of Marijuana Now for the First Time

This is an Open Letter to President Barack Obama Calling on him to legalize marijuana.

If you legalize marijuana, Mr. President, you’ll get the youth vote and win the 2012 Presidential election. It’s as simple as that. However you do it, Mr. President, if you legalize cannabis, you’ll then do for the young of this country what you did for the Mexican-American and Latino populations, and then what you did for the gay and lesbian communities earlier this year.

How is this so?

It just so happens, that here in the midst of campaign 2012, the issue of marijuana legalization and the status of medical cannabis have perhaps paradoxically both become highly charged topics. Legalization initiatives are on three state ballots, there’s a whole array of other reform measures up for vote, and there’s polls that show a majority of Americans support straight-out legalization of pot – all that makes this year 2012 an historic year for marijuana reform.
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ACLU Sends Warning to US Attorney Duffy: “Stop the Threats” of Del Mar City Workers

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By Marcus Boyd/ Americans for Safe Access / August 6, 2012

San Diego, CA – In an ever increasing waste of federal funds to circumvent state medical marijuana laws, last month US Attorney Laura Duffy fired off this threatening letter to City of Del Mar employees. In response late last week the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties (ACLU) posted an article on their blog titled; “U.S. Attorney Shouldn’t Be Threatening to Prosecute City Employees” and fired fired this letter back to the US Attorney.

On their blog, the ACLU writes:

“The San Diego U.S. Attorney is treading dangerous legal ground with a legal opinion that seems to be threatening Del Mar city employees with prosecution if they comply with an ordinance on medical marijuana up for a vote in November.”

Duffy’s intensified war against the civil liberties of sick and dying patients caught the attention of ACLU Legal Director, David Loy, after the director received an email blast and supporting materials from San Diego ASA detailing Duffy’s attempts to threaten lawmakers with federal prosecution for adopting ordinances that regulate dispensaries.   [Read more…]

East County Communities Want Answers from SDG&E on “Mitigation Grants”

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Meeting August 7 in Deerhorn Valley on fire mitigation funds

By Kim Hamilton / East County Magazine / August 6, 2012

Deerhorn Valley–We are now well into a perilous fire season. SDG&E, in its guise as the “Sunrise Powerlink Fire Mitigation Group,” has notified some 1,300 at-risk homeowners along the Powerlink that they are “potentially qualified to receive grant funds for the creation of defensible space or structure hardening…” Up to $2,000 per parcel is being made available on a yearly basis.

Make no mistake: this is not done out of the goodness of their hearts. Nor will it eliminate the increased danger we now face from Powerlink. It was simply a requirement for approval. A “partial mitigation.”

We, the at-risk and soon-to-be-crushed (as our Governor threatened last week), need answers to some serious questions about these “grants”:
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Back here in the reality based reality….

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“Papa Doug’s” UT San Diego Editorial Board pens a fantastical version of existence with no connection to the world we live in.

In politics, just like in life, we have choices to make. Some of us choose to make those choices based on the facts as they exist, some of us make choices based on the facts as we wish them to be. For the better part of three decades now, the Republican Party has based their decision making process on the latter. From their near maniacal belief in supply side economics (or “trickle down” economics, or my favorite “voodoo economics” as then candidate George H. W. Bush called it) to their insistence that they’re party represents a “higher morality,” there seems to be little connection with the reality the rest of us live in.

Last weekend San Diego’s esteemed daily fishwrap ran an editorial entitled “Romney in a Landslide.” It reads more like a religious proclamation than a bold prediction; a fantasy conjured up in the halls of the Mission Valley fortress newly rededicated to Republican virtue.   [Read more…]

Bulletin: Alleged Sikh Temple Shooter Former Member of Skinhead Band

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by Mark Potok / Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch
The man who allegedly murdered six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee yesterday, identified in media reports as Wade Michael Page, was a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band.

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Hiroshima / Nagasaki Remembered – Veterans for Peace

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By Barry Ladendorf
In many parts of the world, people will pause to commemorate what happened 67 years ago on August 6, 1945, when the United States unleashed the most diabolical weapon in the history of mankind on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later on August 9th, the same hellish fire consumed the city of Nagasaki. It is estimated that 250,000 people died as a result of the bombs. As many as 60% died from flash or flame burns, 30% from falling debris and 10% from other causes. How will Americans remember this day?   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – ‘Obama Launches Unprovoked Attack on Mars’

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Okay, I made that headline up… The reality here is that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration sent a one ton landing craft–the size of a small SUV- 154 million miles and landed it on target. Mars rover Curiosity is equipped with a collection of powerful instruments, including 17 cameras (four of which were made in San Diego), lasers and a radiation detector. It features equipment that can bore into rock and ingest samples, drawing them into an on-board chemistry lab and transmitting detailed analyses back to Earth. The mission cost an estimated $2.5 billion, slightly more than one third the $7 billion that Americans spend on potato chips annually.  Yesterday’s landing day coincided with the birthday of Neil Armstrong, the first moon walker. (And don’t worry, there is coverage of the UT-SD’s silly Sunday editorial predicting a Romney landslide below!)   [Read more…]

Why a Major Food Organization Is Teaming Up With Monsanto and Friends to Block Your Right to Know What’s in Your Food

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Big Food companies like ConAgra, Smucker, Hormel, Kellogg, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo want to block Proposition 37

[The California Ballot Initiative to label genetically engineered food is] “a serious, long-term threat to the viability of agricultural biotechnology. Defeating the Initiative is GMA’s single highest priority this year.”  — Pamela Bailey, President of Grocery Manufacturers Association, speech to the American Soybean Association, July 9, 2012

This November, Californians will vote for or against Prop 37, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act. The outcome of that vote will likely determine whether the U.S. will one day join the nearly 50 other countries that allow their citizens to choose between genetically engineered and non-genetically engineered food through the enactment of laws requiring mandatory labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

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