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The Last Refuge of Sore Losers: UT-San Diego Proposes Splitting California in Two

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By Doug Porter

The editorial board at UT-San Diego finally crossed the line from delusional to just flat out insane this weekend.  After reading Sunday’s paper a rational human being might even be open to arguments suggesting that the satirical Onion website has surreptitiously taken over our Daily Fishwrap.  But this weekend’s fare wasn’t funny…

Our city has many pressing issues, as the many debates leading up the special mayor election prove beyond a doubt.  Now UT-SD is trying to frame the upcoming runoff in the context of our city’s desperate need for a new football stadium, saying they’ll step in from Day One to pressure our next mayor to “get it done”.

Forget those potholes, declining city services or neighborhood empowerment; a sports venue tops all those needs.

If that singularity of bad policy wasn’t enough, they’ve also come out full bore for secession. California, they reason, needs to be split in two to save us from the evils of the nanny state and excessive taxation. They’ve even published a wish list of conservative wet dreams they’d like to see included in a new constitution.   [Read more…]

On Black Friday: I Would Prefer Not To

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By Jim Miller

As the Salon story reposted here on Black Friday noted there were about 1,500 protests around the country on our annual day of consumer madness mostly designed to shine a light on the horrendous corporate practices of Walmart, America’s beloved externalizing machine. While Walmart’s propaganda insists that the company is a provider of good jobs and many benefits to our communities, the facts suggest otherwise.

Protesters took to the streets outside Walmarts across the country to splash some cold water on the consumer delirium. Indeed, even Santa got hauled into the pen for civil disobedience at one demonstration.

Inside the stores, away from the protests, things were a bit more disturbing and, as ABC News reported, many customers documented the holiday fun by taking “photos and videos of bloody noses, paramedics wheeling stretchers, women smacking one another on the head, security officers wrestling shoppers to the ground and employees yelling at shoppers to stop recording the melees on their cellphones.” And for those who want to keep a tally of shoppers who were truly dying for a bargain, there is now a website called, “Black Friday Death Count” that does precisely that.

While all of this makes us want to condemn those few “nuts” out there engaging in murderously uncivil behavior, the meaning of Black Friday is much deeper than we’d like to think.   [Read more…]

Urban Corps Begins Work for Barrio Logan MAD

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Nonprofit to clean community five days a week

By Brent E. Beltrán

Barrio Logan has not been the cleanest community in San Diego. For years this predominantly Mexican American neighborhood has been neglected by the city, the transient population that lives on its public spaces and even its own residents.

Graffiti has been ubiquitous throughout the alleys, walls and fences of property owners and businesses. Trash has been strewn along the streets and sidewalks due to a lack of receptacles and youth not caring. Weeds have overgrown green areas and sprouted through cracks in concrete and asphalt. Trees and bushes on public property have become unruly.

But not any longer.

The nonprofit Urban Corps has been called upon to help clean the dirty streets, alleys and sidewalks of Barrio Logan. Under the direction of the Barrio Logan Association and the city of San Diego Urban Corps began servicing the assessed parts of Barrio Logan in early November.   [Read more…]

Is the Pope Getting the Catholics Ready for an Economic Revolution? (Maybe He Read Marx)

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A spectre is haunting the Vatican.

By Lynn Stuart Parramore / AlterNet

In 1992, the Catholic Church officially apologized for persecuting 17th-century astronomer Galileo, who dared to assert that the Earth revolved around the sun. In 2008, the Vatican even considered putting up a statue of him.

Could a certain 19th-century atheist philosopher be next?

It is true that in 2009, a Vatican newspaper article put a positive spin on one Karl Marx. The author, German historian Georg Sans, praised Marx for his criticism of the alienation and injustice faced by working people in a world where the privileged few own the capital. Sans suggested that Marx’s view was relevant today: “We have to ask ourselves, with Marx, whether the forms of alienation of which he spoke have their origin in the capitalist system….” Indeed.   [Read more…]

Restoring Fairness to the World of California Water

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By Kate Poole/Natural Resources Defense Council

The Los Angeles Daily News penned a noteworthy editorial last week titled “California is drowning in ancient and unfair water rules.” It’s noteworthy because the editorial correctly debunks some of the common myths about California’s water system and, in doing so, points the way to several needed reforms:

  • Myth 1 – urban southern California is the biggest water hog in the state.

Wrong. As the editorial points out, “farming accounts for more than 80 percent of the state’s water usage, while providing less than 5 percent of its gross domestic product.” This is not to say that farming is not important – it certainly is. But because farmers laid claim to a huge amount of California’s water rights in the 19th and early 20th century, the State’s first-in-time, first-in-right system means that they continue to control a vast majority of the state’s water supply, even though agriculture is a far smaller piece of the State’s economic pie than it once was.  Meanwhile, many urban southern California water agencies have impressive plans to be highly efficient in their use and reuse of their piece of the remaining 20 percent.  When will we demand that agriculture be as efficient with this scarce resource?

Pass the Dinosaur, Pardon My Turkey and Love the Ones You’re With

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A Thanksgiving Cornucopia of Good Reads and Videos

By Anna Daniels

This year many of us will be thankful to sit around tables laden with wonderful food in the company of friends and family. And for many of us, a dinosaur will be the main dish. Seriously. We accept the fact, with a few stubborn creationist holdouts, that dinosaurs died out millions of years ago before humans were on the evolutionary scene. No more T Rex, Velociraptors or Stegosaurus.

But those were the non-avian dinosaurs. The dinosaurs that didn’t die out are the avian dinosaurs, more commonly known as birds. This is a fun fact for the kids at the Thanksgiving table, but it’s a heavy lift to mentally shift from the lifeless, plucked Butterball on the table, even if it’s a twenty-five pounder, to memories of Jurassic Park. A marauding wild tom turkey however is quite another thing. It may be a much scaled down tyrannosaurus, but admit it- it’s a dinosaur.   [Read more…]

A Taste of Colombia on Imperial Avenue: Antojitos Colombianos

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By Avital Aboody

If you’ve eaten on Imperial Avenue before, you’ve probably enjoyed some great tacos or perhaps pupusas. But you might not know about the newest gem on the corridor: “Antojitos Colombianos,” the first and only Colombian restaurant in San Diego. The doors at 2851 Imperial Avenue opened for business in January 2012, and this home-grown restaurant has been happily providing customers with a truly authentic Colombian experience ever since.

The owner of “Antojitos Colombianos,” Javier Rodriguez, is from Cali, Colombia. He moved to San Diego 28 years ago to study business at San Diego City College, and then decided to build his life here. Javier capitalized on his previous experience in hotel management, as well as his love for food, and spent the next twenty years managing various restaurants. In 2005 he got together with a couple of Italian friends and opened his first business, a continental restaurant in La Jolla.   [Read more…]

Talking Turkey About Climate Without Starting a Food Fight

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Via the Environmental Defense Fund

Climate change has become one of those divisive, polarizing issues that confound our political system. It’s often hard to even have a civil conversation with folks who disagree, even with close relatives or friends.

But it is clear that the climate crisis has arrived. And the key to solving it is educating those around us.

Chances are your friends and family fall into one of the following six categories:

Who Deserves Our Thanks for Truly American Food?

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Until 1492, Europeans had never tried potatoes, cranberries, corn, or turkey.

By  / OtherWords.org

What do turkey, sweet potatoes, and cranberries have in common?

Yes, you eat them on Thanksgiving. Additionally, they are all distinctly American foods. So are potatoes and the corn in your corn bread.

Believe it or not, the day that Columbus blundered into the Americas back in 1492, Europeans (and Asians and Africans) had none of those foods.

Thanksgiving is perhaps the one day a year when we Americans celebrate with truly American food.   [Read more…]

McDonald’s Advice To Underpaid Employees: Break Food Into Pieces To Keep You Full

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The “advice” was published on the “McResource” website, meant to give tips to fast-food workers.

By Alex Kane / Alternet

The latest friendly advice from McDonald’s to their low-wage workers includes tips on how to better handle stress–as well as how to fill yourself up better with dinner. The fast-food corporation instructs workers that breaking food “into pieces” will keep you full.

The advice was published on the “McResource” website, meant to give tips to fast-food workers. While you need to be a McDonald’s worker to log-in to the website, details of the advice have been publicized by the group Low Pay Is Not OK, a union-backed group seeking to organize low-wage workers at McDonald’s. The effort is part of the larger campaign to push for living wages, benefits and the right to organize among low-wage workers across a variety of industries.   [Read more…]

How the Kennedy Tragedy Made Me a Better Teacher

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By Ernie McCray

On November 22, 1963, I was a twenty-five year old sixth grade teacher enjoying my second year serving students at Perry Elementary. Before recess that day we had gotten the news that the president was shot. The radio in our classroom verified what we had heard with the words “President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is dead.”

We were absolutely stunned. But, as a result of this man losing his life, I was a transformed educator when the day was done, so much more attuned to what was required of me if I wanted to nurture young minds in truly helpful ways. Now, when I woke up that morning my teaching was pretty good. I had respect and all that. My lessons were planned adequately enough.
  [Read more…]

America’s Big Lie: Fifty Years of the Cover-Up of the John F Kennedy Assassination

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By Frank Gormlie

Fifty years ago this Friday, the 22nd of November, I walked out of my English class at Point Loma High School and full of disgust threw my brown bag full of lunch away in a trash can. I felt sick to my stomach and couldn’t bare to think ab0ut eating – we had just heard that the President had been shot by someone from an overpass while he was riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

Classes were cancelled and we all went home, most of us saddened and confused. I remember very vividly sitting in our Point Loma home watching the news that Sunday, the 24th with my dad. It was almost all we did that weekend – watch the news on our black and whites, fiddling with the rabbit ears or electrically moving the antenna on the roof.

We had heard that the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was going to be moved and all the news cameras were there to broadcast the live event. The nation was riveted on the tube – and I know my father and I sure were.

“Here comes Oswald!” someone shouted, cameras rolling, and there he was – evil incarnate – his arms gripped by big guys in suits – on live TV – being brought out from some back office into full view of millions of Americans.

We all now know what happened next – we’ve seen it a dozen replays since. But on that Sunday, before Jack Ruby rushes out from the crowd, it was just a few days from Thanksgiving; yes, we had lost Kennedy but the killer was in custody and the nation would get to the bottom of this dreadful and tragic act. We had a new president and everything would get back to normal after Kennedy’s funeral – which was the next day.   [Read more…]

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