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Judge Gary Kreep & Reasons to Avoid Slate Mailers

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Here’s a reminder as election day nears: direct mail voter guides from seemingly innocuous organizations are a bad resource for making ballot decisions.

A tip from a reader in this morning’s email about Judge Gary Kreep’s presence on the  ‘Election Digest, a Project of the Coalition for Literacy’ slate mailer prompted me to post an updated version of the warning I made prior to the primary.

Kreep is an eccentric ultra-conservative who made it to the bench in 2012 because nobody thought he’d be taken seriously. “Everybody knew” he was a birther, associated with conspiracy crazed tea party types. “Everybody knew” Kreep’s peers at the San Diego County Bar Association rated him “Lacking Qualifications,” the lowest rating in their evaluation system for judges up for election.   [Read more…]

GOP Campaign Fodder: Transgender Humans, Birth Control, Immigrants, Jews, Muslims, and Californians

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Republicans and their standard-bearer President are stepping up the pace of hate in political campaigns from coast-to-coast. Buying into their rhetoric means buying into the belief Republican candidates are the only thing standing between the ‘good people’ of the United States and mob rule.

Crusades against the ‘other’ aren’t just limited to political rallies. The administration’s bureaucracy is also doing its part.

Transgender people learned what’s in store for them on Sunday, via an article in the New York Times, which disclosed a memo seeking to reverse the Obama administration’s more fluid recognition of gender identity.
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The Trump of Pahrump, the Unholy Trinity and Other Dystopian Tales

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The Trump of Pahrump is dead.  

Yes, the world’s most famous brothel owner, Dennis Hof, left this world peacefully last week in bed at the Love Ranch only hours after celebrating at his birthday party/campaign rally.  The event was held to aid Hof in his quest to secure a seat in the Nevada state legislature as a Republican, a race he was heavily favored to win. Hof is best known for his HBO reality TV show about the Moonlight Bunny Ranch and his biography, The Art of the Pimp, which gleefully riffs off of the title of the President’s paean to himself.  

Just hours before his untimely demise, Hof was cheerfully holding court at an event that featured the trio of porn star Ron Jeremy, Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  To top it all off, they were joined by Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson, who offered birthday wishes to America’s Pimp by video feed. It was a good night for Hof who, despite the uncomfortable facts that he is both now dead and accused of rape by several former employees, is still a sure bet to win the election in his heavily Republican district largely populated by good Christian folks committed to Making America Great Again.     [Read more…]

President Obama Demolishes These 7 Excuses Not To Vote | Video Worth Watching

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I’m guessing that if you’re reading the San Diego Free Press, you’re politically engaged enough that you have committed to vote this November. If I’m mistaken, or if you have friends that may be waffling or still undecided on whether or not to vote, here are some voter excuse-busters from our last president, Barack Obama, delivered with his signature low-key sense of humor.

And of course, to vote, you must be registered. To check your registration status go here. If you are not already registered, the deadline to register in order to vote on November 6th is today (Monday, 10/22) at midnight. The place to do that online is here. [Live links inside]   [Read more…]

Trump Cheers Assault on Journalist as Republicans Smear Murdered Washington Post Columnist

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By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos

On Thursday evening, Donald Trump went to Montana to make jokes about assaulting journalists and the rally crowd responded by laughing and making threats against the reporters on hand at the event. If Trump and his followers seemed particularly cruel … that’s exactly where the whole Republican Party is going. Because even as the evidence piles up that Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered inside the Saudi consulate on orders from crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, Republicans are planning their response — smear Khashoggi.

As the Washington Post reports, both conservative congressmen and media hosts have mounted a campaign against Khashoggi to paint him as someone who was friendly with terrorists and who conspired against the United States. The purpose of the campaign is to make the gruesome dismemberment of the US resident acceptable, make Saudi actions ugly but necessary, and most of all to make Trump’s continued refusal to speak out against bin Salman acceptable.

Republicans in the House have been swapping links and posts from alt-Reich websites that have already turned Khashoggi into a founding member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a close associate of Osama bin Laden, and a supporter of terrorists. Those same reports are getting more attention on right-wing talk radio, where they’ve been blown up even larger than the original sites — making the whole idea that Khashoggi was allowed into the United States in the first place seem like a mistake.   [Read more…]

‘Duncan Hunter Jr. Is a Coward’ | Video Worth Watching

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The campaign for Duncan Hunter, Jr., the indicted U.S. Congressional Representative from California’s 50th Congressional District, has been running ads portraying his opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, as a security threat to the country. The reality: Ammar has had an FBI security clearance allowing him to serve in the federal government as recently as 2016. The real security threat: Duncan Hunter, Jr.

MSNBC’s All In’s Chris Hayes spoke with Ammar Thursday night about Hunter’s indictment and Paul Ryan’s stripping Hunter of his assignment on the Armed Services committee; Hunter’s refusal to participate in any debates; Hunter’s plan to raise the Social Security retirement age to 72, and his unwillingness to campaign on issues, relying instead on baseless fear-mongering. More info in Doug Porter’s Wednesday Starting Line column. Bye!   [Read more…]

California Politics | Odious Prop 8 Money, Questionable Prop 6 Polling, and a Nasty Ad for Marshall Tuck

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Ballot propositions draw big money like shit draws flies. The scatological reference is deliberate on my part because today I’m going to look at some election news that just plain stinks.

I have to admit to missing the ominous backstory on 2018’s Proposition 8, the one about kidney dialysis companies. I bought into the narrative that this was a battle between corporate ‘care’ companies and organized labor. And while it is true workers for these companies are trying to organize despite fierce opposition, the battle over this measure is a metaphor for the much bigger struggle over the future of healthcare.

Michael Hiltznik of the Los Angeles Times has unearthed the truth behind the motivations of the corporations willing to spend $99 million to defeat this measure.   [Read more…]

This Is What Voter Suppression Looks Like | Video Worth Watching

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From the Black Voters Matter Facebook page:
Voter suppression is real, y’all and it happened to us today in Louisville, Georgia in Jefferson County. We had a whole busload of beautiful black elders ready to go vote when the county commisionner shut us down and made our elders get off the bus without having the chance to vote. This is voter suppression pure and simple. These elders have been through this time and time again so today was fuel to our fire! Instead of bring five family members and friends, they’re gonna bring twenty! Can’t stop, won’t stop. When we work together, we win. Share this video for us to get out the word that we need a record turnout in Georgia from now untiol Election Day! And tell us if and where you voted yet in the comments!!   [Read more…]

The Duncan Hunter(s) and Various Other Threats to Our National Security

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Any doubts about Congressional candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar’s moral code should have been resolved on Tuesday, as the 29-year-old Democrat shook Duncan Hunter, Sr.’s hand after listening to the old man lie to the assembled news media in the shadow of the USS Midway on San Diego’s waterfront.

If Campa-Najjar was the terrorist threat the retired Congressman made him out to be, he should have punched the old son of a bitch in the face right then and there. Hell, that’s what I would have been at least tempted to do if I’d been anywhere nearby. (I guess that’s why nobody’s clamoring for me to run for office.)

Instead, Duncan Hunter Jr’s challenger has issued what he says is his final statement on what the Washington Post called “the most vile political ad of this year’s midterm elections.”

“The FBI throughly vetted me, my family history and connections. After doing so, they determined my allegiances to the United States were unquestionable and I was given security clearance to serve in the federal government as recent as 2016. I am not a security threat, Duncan Hunter is, however.”
  [Read more…]

Fanita Ranch Development Opposed by Santee City Council District 1 Candidate

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Evlyn Andrade-Heymsfield is vying for Santee’s District 1 City Council seat. Rumor has it, she is giving eight-year incumbent Rob McNelis a run for his money. 

People in District 1 can’t turn their heads without seeing signs that read, “Evlyn.” She’s running on her first name, not only because her last name is unwieldy for some tongues, but because she truly is on a first-name basis with so many of the voters. 

Santee, which always had an at-large, citywide voting system, was divided into four election districts in April of 2018. The smaller voting pool of the district system has enabled newcomer candidates, like Evlyn, to hit every resident’s door.    [Read more…]

Longtime I.B. Resident Supports Paloma Aguirre for City Council | 2018 Candidate Profiles | Readers Write

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By Drew Douglas

My family lived five blocks from the ocean in the heart of Imperial Beach when I was born, and there I was raised for most of my formative years. Life in our beach town was always closely tied to the waves and the tides, and it still is. It defined much of my childhood. Skateboarding or riding our bikes to the beach wasn’t just a ritual, it was a luxury we took for granted.

Walking home from the beach on a sunny summer afternoon, wearing a bathing suit, draped in a towel, the warm sun on your skin still freckled with dried salt and sand from the ocean — this is quintessential Imperial Beach. But we have continually battled a constant threat to this tranquility. And it hasn’t just hampered our way of life, it has hindered the economic growth of the community.

They say “all politics are local” but too often we become so engrossed in national political spectacles that we forget about our own backyard. I spent many a summer and winter day on the beaches of I.B. swimming, bodyboarding, fishing with my father from the pier, climbing on the rocks of the jetties to watch the sunset with friends or just soaking up the sun in the sand.   [Read more…]

The How and Why of Measure YY, the San Diego Unified School District Bond Ask

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Back in the old days before Proposition 13, local schools were funded locally. School boards had the authority to raise property tax rates, constrained by the understanding that the electorate would vote them out come election time if they went too far.

In practice, this meant school districts with lower property values ended up with inferior education facilities and programs. Court cases in the 1970’s began the erosion of local control in the cause of rectifying these inequities; Prop 13 put the state in the driver’s seat.

School boards can no longer levy property taxes. They can, however, ask voters to support local funding for schools through parcel taxes and bond measures. And in the majority of cases, voters have agreed with this method of filling the holes blown through local education budgets.   [Read more…]

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