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The Starting Line – Congressman Darrell Issa’s Plan to ‘Save’ the Internet

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Reddit’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) feature, where people of influence open themselves up to questions posed by Redditors, can get pretty wild. Conversational threads, where remarks build upon other comments and spark new lines of inquiry, can spin off into areas far removed from their starting place.

Yesterday Congressman Darrel Issa climbed to the virtual dais on Reddit to explain (as much as you can in the AMA format) and get feedback on his proposed legislation that would bar ‘new regulations or burdens on the internet for two years’. This broad shouldered bit of legalese really is all about keeping Federal regulators from doing anything (good or bad) for the duration of the 113th Congress.
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Celebrating the 30 Foot Height Limit As It Turns 40

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The room was packed, standing room only the other night as the OB Historical Society led all of us in a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the 30 foot height limit. The downstairs community room of the Methodist Church on Sunset Cliffs Blvd. opens its doors every month to the OBHS presentations, and the night of November 15th was no exception as Society president Pat James welcomed the crowd.

Nearly 50 OBceans and friends had come to hear speakers and presentations on this historic fight four decades ago to preserve San Diego’s coast, and I saw many people in the audience who had waged their own battles to save OB over the years.

After a few brief announcements, Pat introduced the main speaker, Alex Leondis, who was one of the main organizers in the effort to place the thirty-foot limit on coastal construction onto conservative San Diego’s ballot – way back in the early 1970’s. The initiative did pass in 1972 – marking this year as its 40th birthday.   [Read more…]

Dancing on the Playing Fields

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The other day I turned a game on just as some dude was standing over a quarterback he had sacked and before I could sit down he commenced to prancing around like James Cagney portraying George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy or, to the young crowd, like Chris Brown doing the James Brown. Then I saw the score and this guy’s team was about 30 points down.

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Readers Write: San Diego Community and Workers Stand Up and Speak Out Against Walmart

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This article was submitted to us via our Facebook Page.

On Friday, November 23, 2012, the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year, community members and workers protested outside of several Wal-Mart locations throughout the country.

In San Diego the community focused on ten locations including one located in the College Grove shopping center.  As shoppers came into the store community members greeted them with stickers for shoppers to wear inside the store that read “We Support Wal-Mart Workers”.  Many of the community were very supportive and one shopper said “she would wear the sticker proudly and ask management why they retaliated against it’s own employees”.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Sorry Republicans, Being Nice to Latinos Won’t Save You from Extinction

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Tax fighter and former libertarian Richard Rider took the virtual podium at conserve blog SDRostra this weekend to ruminate about and refute the notion that the Republican Party is headed for extinction.

He starts out by comparing the GOP’s defeat with Barry Goldwater with its most recent losses, noting that, despite predictions of doom and gloom, the party did rise again. In the 1964 election LBJ received 61.1% of the national popular vote

And I agree with Rider that one electoral loss, no matter how lopsided, does not equate with the death of a political party.   [Read more…]

Christmas on Earth? Try Buying Nothing

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Here we go again: the day after Black Friday was filled with the now all-too-familiar news of shopping mayhem.

There was the man who threatened to stab his fellow shoppers for pushing his kids outside a Sacramento K-mart, the melee of frenzied Georgia shoppers mauling each other to get at a stack of cell phones in a Walmart, the trampling that followed after a man brandished a gun in a line outside a Sears in Texas, the gang fight in a Michigan mall, arrests of hysterical consumers in Florida, the vicious brawling over lingerie, etc. etc.

This ritual has come to define us as much or more than Thanksgiving.   [Read more…]

Twinkies’ Twisted Tale: Junk Food Devoured By Junk Bonds

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All the late night talk shows laughed it up over the supposed demise of Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, Wonder Bread etc as the news came out that Hostess Brands was going bankrupt. But delve beneath the surface and you will find something more akin to a Shakespearean tragedy than talk show banter. It’s a tale involving two unions, one private equity fund, two hedge funds and a whole cast of former CEOs. There is sacrifice, greed and betrayal. 18,000 workers will be losing their jobs while some vulture capitalists will be walking away with millions. Another vulture capitalist will itself have been devoured in the process.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – San Diego County Sheriff Stonewalls Freedom Of Information Requests About Drones

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A national effort to track drone deployment by domestic law enforcement agencies has run into a brick wall with the San Diego County Sheriffs, who have refused to provide information about efforts to purchase Scout UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicle).

The Electronic Freedom Foundation and MuckRock.com have sent over 200 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to local governments and police departments, seeking to find out information on domestic drone utilization, according to a story in OpposingViews.com.

Although the San Diego Sheriffs office initially denied possessing any documents relevant to the collection effort, an email from manufacturer, Datron World Communications, to Seattle police quoted technical information from a bid that was sent to local officials.

Inside: Angry Republicans, Running Democrats, Border Patrol Cover Up Unraveling
Notice: I’ll be taking the weekend off. See you Monday, news junkies.   [Read more…]

Border Economy to see Greater Emphasis under Filner Administration

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Also, is the UT-San Diego editorial bias leeching into the newsroom?

Mayor-Elect Bob Filner announced last Friday that he was going to open an office just south of the border in Tijuana. Some people scratched their heads and asked “why?” Some people undoubtedly were infuriated because they thought it was just another stupid move by an ultra-liberal politician to kowtow to the illegal immigrant population and cede more of our own nation’s authority to foreign entities. After all, we’re ‘Mericans, and we don’t take a back seat to nobody, and all these stinkin’ liberals can go to hell if they don’t believe in the superiority of ‘Merica!

Still, there were others who no doubt thought, “Now why didn’t we do this sooner?” And that’s a very good question. The City of Tijuana, apparently, has an office right here in Downtown San Diego. We are two major cities, each with a population of roughly 1.3 million people, and separated only by a demarcation line on a map (and a very large fence). Look to the south from Mar Vista High School in Imperial Beach and you’re staring not at other parts of San Diego, but at the hills of Tijuana.

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We all know about the editorial bent of the UT-San Diego; how rabidly right wing they are. As in the craziest of the crazy Tea Party right wing. This is the editorial board that predicted that Mitt Romney would win the presidency “in a landslide,” over Barack Obama (Obama won in a landslide). This is also the editorial page that presented us with an apocalyptic view of post-election America entitled “A Eulogy For America,” lamenting that “there are dark days ahead for the country,” and that “this country has been remolded by socialists and communists who have wormed their way into our government, news media, and our education system. “

This is the kind of irrational, far right wing, Tea Party lunacy that has absolutely zero foundation in reality that we’ve come to expect from the UT-San Diego opinion pages since “Lynchester” (apologies to Doug Porter, but I’ve grown fond of said moniker instead of “The Dougchester) purchased the paper. I mean, Fox News and the World Net Daily ain’t got nothin’ on Lynchester’s publication. But we don’t expect this kind of thing from the newsroom.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – North Park Shooting Prompted by Death Wish

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It seemed like a nightmare in the making for residents of North Park on Saturday night. A man in a camouflage suit wandered about near the intersection of Louisiana and University Aves. firing a rifle.

I was headed down University Avenue on my way to get a pizza not long after it happened. The street was completely blocked off; there were enough flashing lights going off so that it was immediately clear this was no traffic stop or disturbing the peace call.

I live in North Park. For all of its ups and downs as a hipster neighborhood (at least that’s what Forbes calls it) it’s a pretty safe place to live. Whatever was going on here was obviously more than the delayed conclusion of a bar fight.

It didn’t take long, via Twitter, to find out the reason for the commotion: a man carrying a rifle had been shot by police.   [Read more…]

Buried News Story of the Week

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By Bob Dorn/Special the SDFP 

The Ayn Randians in the leadership of The Reader can usually be counted on to keep the San Diego diocese safe for local conservatives, relying on snark to make clear they belong to neither party, nor to the city’s rulers, and especially not to the rest of the city’s readership.    Last week, though, the weekly wetted down the dynamite in a piece of work from their fearless, bright and always readable Don Bauder.  The story, a failure by UT-San Diego’s chief executive officer, John Lynch, to pay $23,332 worth of property taxes on a house he owns here, was relegated to page 50, and pared to just three long paragraphs. Two of those were dedicated to Lynch’s own explanation of how it came to be he’d failed to pay.   [Read more…]

Spreckels Organ Concerts – Outdoor Auditory Enjoyment in Balboa Park

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A weekly column dedicated to sharing the best sights and activities in San Diego at the best price – free! We have a great city and you don’t need to break the bank to experience it.

Spreckels Organ Concerts – Outdoor Auditory Enjoyment in Balboa Park

Best For: Music players, music listeners, picnickers, people watchers

Free concert times: Sundays at 2pm, see Website for additional special performances

2215 Pan American Road San Diego, CA 92101, Balboa Park

Every Sunday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park is the site of a free organ concert, performed by Dr. Carol Williams, the San Diego Civic Organist since 2001.   [Read more…]

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