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The Southern California Major Dailies Failed Miserably in “Commemorating” the 10 Year Anniversary of the Iraq War

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The LA Times and the U-T San Diego Continue the Deception of Ten Years With Their Failure to Discuss the War

Southern California is home to two major daily newspapers – each from the major cities in this part of the country: the Los Angeles Times and the U-T San Diego.

In a review of their coverage of the ten year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, I found them to be woefully inadequate in any discussion about “lessons learned” on the war, the invasion, or the run-up to the conflict.  I especially searched to see whether they went further and exposed the falsehoods and lies that the Bush administration told the public to convince us to go to war.

Those of us who suffer the U-T would not be too surprised to learn that the Manchester daily would not get too involved with a critique of the Bush’s deceptions and misrepresentations.  However, one would have thought the LA Times – once the bastion of liberalness on the West Coast – would have at least attempted to put together some kind of journalistic endeavor in examining all the ways that the American people were misled a decade ago.   [Read more…]

America at a Crossroads: The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time

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Will the Supreme Court reinstate the “separate but equal” doctrine that was overturned in 1951?

The Supreme Court of the United States today takes up the first of two cases involving the rights of gays and lesbians to marry. Today, they heard oral arguments in Hollingsworth v Perry, the challenge to California’s Prop 8, banning same sex marriage. On Wednesday, the justices will hear arguments in United States v Windsor, the challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

It boils down to this: Should gays and lesbians have the same rights as straight people? Or should we as a society be allowed to discriminate against them because of who they are? In reality it is an issue that has implications that extend far beyond whether or not the marriages of gays and lesbians should be legally recognized. It is no different than the civil rights fight of the 60’s, where African Americans were routinely discriminated against for no other reason than the color of their skin.

This is a losing battle for social conservatives who continue to want to drag this country back to the 1950’s, and they know it. Our society has evolved on marriage equality, doing almost a complete 180 even since Prop 8 passed with just over 52% of the vote in 2008, despite polling showing at the time that 51% of Californians accepted same sex marriage. Prop 8 reinstated the ban on gay marriage in California that had been overruled by state courts.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line –A Day of Reckoning for Proposition H8

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There’s only one story that matters today for millions of Americans: Hollingsworth v. Perry.

The US Supreme Court will hear arguments today challenging the legality of California’s Proposition 8, a measure passed by voters in 2008 that banned same sex marriage.

Hundreds of San Diegans, including prominent politicians from both sides of the aisle, converged on the federal courthouse downtown last evening to rally in support of same sex couples having the fundamental right to marry.

But you wouldn’t know about that outpouring of support by reading the morning paper. UT-San Diego studiously ignored the rally. There was no mention of the dozens and dozen of similar events around the country.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Anti Gay Editorial Shakes Up City Council Race

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The stench of hate rolled over South San Diego this week as the Voice and Viewpoint, a newspaper that has traditionally represented the opinions of the old school Black community, made their endorsements for the District 4 City Council special election, slated for March 26th. (See more SDFP coverage on this contest here.)

Read it for yourself:

Dwayne Crenshaw, who lists himself as a Community Nonprofit Director/Educator looks and sounds like a great candidate, however, Mr. Crenshaw has a tremendous amount of baggage from the issues surrounding his days with the Coalition of Neighborhood Councils (CNC). His openly confessed gay lifestyle is at odds with a great deal of the District’s African American residents in spite of his family’s history in the community. His positions in leadership and advocacy in the Gay community does not lead itself to the building of the kinds of coalitions between the religious and civic community that the Fourth District has enjoyed in the past and needs to build on during this critical period of restructuring. Mr. Crenshaw is not our choice at any time for this position.

Crenshaw responded forcefully over at SDGLN.com, pointing out the history of anti-gay bigotry directed at his campaigns. In the 2004 campaign, the V&V went so far as to say he ‘had bad judgment because God’s judgment was against gays’.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Protestors Claim Closing La Jolla Beach at Night to Protect Seals is Unconstitutional

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That’s right. A group calling itself Friends of the Children’s Pool has denounced Mayor Filner’s decision to restrict nighttime access to the La Jolla Beach for the duration of seal pupping season, which ends May 15. They even staged acts of civil disobedience Wednesday night when a dozen ‘supporters of beach access’ showed up and crossed the rope barrier. One individual received a citation for refusing to leave after sunset.

The Mayor’s decision to issue an emergency order to close the beach came in the wake a video that “captured people breaching the rope barrier at night, kicking, punching and sitting on top of the mother seals and their pups, and driving them from their resting places.”

“The behavior was shocking, reprehensible and certainly not a reflection of how most citizens in our fine City believe animals should be treated,” said Mayor Filner.

His actions drew an immediate response, via an unsigned opinion piece published in the La Jolla Patch on Wednesday   [Read more…]

10 Years of Lying About the Iraq War Has to Stop Now – Bush and Cheney and Co. Must Be Held Accountable for the Sake of America

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From the OB Rag

Ten years of lying about the Iraq war has to stop now – immediately. The government – our government – lied to us, the America people, about the reasons they said it was necessary to go to war with Iraq – a country that was not threatening us. One decade ago to this day, their lies produced action: the “shock and awe” “bunker-busters” unleashed on the capital of Iraq, March 19th, 2003.

They lied to cover up their invasion of Iraq a decade ago to this day.

And now ten years later, after more than 4400 Americans killed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, 30,000 Americans injured, after we have spent over $3 Trillion dollars, we have come to the realization that, if America is to be honest with itself, we must now demand that someone be held accountable for these lies and the wastes of lives and resources.

Those to be held accountable, of course, must include the leaders of our government at that time: George W. Bush, President, and Dick Cheney, Vice-President and those who demanded the war which includes then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.   [Read more…]

Ten Years On: A Dying Mother, The Invasion of Iraq, and Samsay on the Porch

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Memory is a capricious thing- it shuffles all of those cards that signify the days, weeks and years of our lives and lays them out in a manner that doesn’t necessarily cleave to chronology– or even the truth.

 

I cut the deck, turn two cards face up on the table- the Queen of Hearts and the Jack of Clubs. It is March 13, 2003. I say that with certainty even though I do not trust my memory.

I have finished zipping up my suitcase and am nervously walking around the house stroking the cats and staring at the art on the walls as if it were for the last time. I will be taking a red eye flight to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. My brother and sister have persuaded me that our mother is close to death. I would have one more chance at total denial of that indisputable fact.

My normal propensity for high drama was heightened significantly by the war drums that had been sounding for weeks, the rumblings that we were about to go to war, to invade Iraq. The sheer loathsomeness of Bush-Cheney had turned into something much darker, frightening and utterly incomprehensible. I was going to be 3,000 miles from My Beloved and my home while George W. Bush was explaining why war was necessary and inevitable.

So there you have the setting- The Queen of Hearts. The Jack of Clubs. But now one more card- The Joker. City Heights is always the Wild Card, the Joker, that becomes part of the mix. This place that I have called home for longer than anywhere else is a shape shifting character that looms large in my life, and so it was on March 13, 2003.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – San Diego’s Double Standard on Electioneering Dirty Tricks

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Last week I reported on misleading mailers being sent to residents in San Diego’s District 4. There’s a special election on March 26th for the City Council seat vacated late last year by Tony Young. I profiled District 4 and the nine candidates last week.

Chances are nobody will win this contest outright (50%+1 is required), so the real deal next Tuesday is about who will make it into the runoff. And it looks to me like our local Republicans, even though they don’t have anything more than a token candidate in the race, are trying their best to influence the outcome.

This contest is important to all San Diegans because the winner will likely be a key vote on a City Council hesitant to get with Mayor Filner’s program to shift the emphasis of development away from downtown and towards the many neighborhoods of our city. And it’s already very clear that our downtown interests aren’t going to give up their privileged position at the public trough without a fight.   [Read more…]

Hotel Interests Battle to Preserve Business As Usual in TMD Fight

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Mayor seeks to turn over a new leaf in San Diego governance.

For decades San Diego has been governed by the principle that what’s good for our big corporate employers is good for San Diego as a whole, resulting in an arguably outsized influence by private moneyed interests over our elected officials, often leading to sweetheart deals and diminished public control over public assets.

That characterization manifested itself in last November’s mayoral election. The ballot reflected not only a choice between Carl DeMaio and Bob Filner, Republican and Democrat, last November’s election offered a referendum on the way San Diegans wanted business conducted at City Hall on their behalf. DeMaio represented a move even further toward deference to the Doug Manchesters of the region, while Filner offered a shift in focus toward neighborhood development over corporate development; a middle out approach rather than a top down approach.

Bob Filner won convincingly, signaling that San Diego was anxious for a change, with the fight over the Tourism and Marketing District reflective of the changes represented by Filner’s election.   [Read more…]

Former ATF Agent Talks Straw Purchasers, Background Checks and the NRA’s Relentless Attacks on Gun Laws

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by Kimberley Beatty

Starting in 1990, I was a federal agent with both the DEA and ATF. My first assignment was with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms at their Richmond, Virginia office. At that time Virginia was a major source for illegal gun trafficking to urban centers in the eastern United States.

Over an 18 month period, 1,627 guns were obtained from crime scenes in New York. 41% of those guns had been purchased in Virginia and 10% of those guns were traced to 1 store in Richmond, called the Virginia Police Equipment Co. That gun shop was not far from the federal building where I worked.

Weak federal gun laws permitted out-of-state criminals to purchase large quantities of weapons from gun stores by using straw purchasers. The straw purchasers were often drug addicts needing money to fuel their habit or a poor single mom. When confronted by law enforcement the straw purchaser would first claim their cache of guns had been stolen and then admit to buying them for out-of-state drug dealers, gunrunners and other criminals, often known only by first names.   [Read more…]

Should We Be Outsourcing Public Higher Education in California?

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Suggesting we drop existing standards for the wild west of market based online education will do for education what deregulation did for banks and the stock market.  

Last week State Senator Darrell Steinberg proposed what he thinks of as a bold new way to reshape higher education in California and to deal with the bottleneck of students who have trouble getting into “gateway” classes in our community colleges and universities.  What is Steinberg’s answer to our access ills?  Sadly, it is outsourcing higher education to the corporate interests who have long been aggressively lobbying to get a piece of the publically funded pie that is California’s public education system.   [Read more…]

Award-winning film “Greedy Lying Bastards” pulls back curtain on corporate-funded climate denialism

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Pay no attention to the Koch behind the curtain

By Eclectablog / Daily Kos

Greedy Lying Bastards is a new documentary released to theaters this past week that reveals the intentional, corporate-funded deception campaign that has shaped our conversation about climate change in profound and dangerous ways. While it’s long been known that the fossil fuel industry — “Big Oil” — has been throwing up a smokescreen (pardon the pun) to confuse the debate over the existence of human-caused climate change, Greedy Lying Bastards picks up where Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth left off to show us just how deliberate and well-funded this effort has been.

The film has already won numerous awards including the 2012 Burbank Film Festival, the Eco-Award at the 2012 Boston Film Festival and was an official selection at the 2012 United Nations Film Festival, 2012 Bahamas International Film Festival and 2012 Costa Rica International Film Festival.   [Read more…]

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