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Summer Stephan’s Racist and Anti-Semitic Crusade for the Office of San Diego County District Attorney

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Any discussion about the criminal justice system needs to start and end with an acknowledgment of the role racism plays in the United States. The electoral contest for County District attorney in San Diego is no exception.

Now that billionaire George Soros is being accused of fomenting anarchy by supporting an anti-establishment candidate, this discussion needs to be expanded to include the stereotype of the rich Jew as an evil “other.”  She doesn’t even have to use the word “Jew”, wink, wink. 

I don’t believe appointed incumbent DA Summer Stephan and her backers in the law enforcement establishment think of themselves as racists or antisemites. I’m sure they’ll tell you some of their best friends are people of color. I’m sure our interim DA means well when she speaks of dealing with implicit bias. I’m sure she’s horrified by reading accounts of the Holocaust.   [Read more…]

Duncan’s Daddy to the Rescue in East County Congressional Race

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San Diego Congressman Duncan Duane Hunter is, once again, the subject of a feature news story in Politico. He’s facing legal problems, a spate of scandalous sounding stories in the local press, and spending more money on lawyers than getting re-elected. Now Papa Hunter is tamping down and inter-party competition.

The last time Hunter made the national news we learned about all the local Republicans circling round his not-yet-politically-dead corpse. The time before we learned about his “freewheeling Washington lifestyle,” with hints of an extramarital affair and hefty bar tabs in all the right places around town.

The Republican Congressman faces allegations of misusing campaign funds as a locally empaneled grand jury heard testimony from Hunter’s parents, former aides, and a female lobbyist. Although he has the repaid campaign more than $60,000, federal prosecutors are interested in tens of thousands of additional charges.   [Read more…]

The Trump Administration’s Stupefying Hypocrisy About the Well-Being of Children

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By Abby Zimet / Common Dreams

In another day of unfathomable cognitive dissonance, a blindingly heedless Melania unveiled her (stolen-from-Obama) initiative to keep kids safe from cyber-bullying and drugs so they can “do all they can to be best in everything” even as, in a galaxy really not very far from there, the soulless cretins of her philandering husband’s administration were doing everything in their depraved power to make life hell for said children.

Melania’s “Be Best” campaign – proving she can multi-task by both plagiarizing and committing heinous crimes against grammar – is based on “the pillars of well-being, social media and opioid abuse” (wait, what?), featuring a website and leaflet that turns out to be a page-by-page replica of an Obama-era Federal Trade Commission website and leaflet “Net Cetera: Chatting with Kids About Being Online,” with very minor tweaks.   [Read more…]

Incumbent Zapf Dodges District 2 Town Council Candidate Forums

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San Diego Councilwoman Lorie Zapf – incumbent for District 2 – has gone missing for at least 3 district town council candidate forums now.

Zapf failed to show at all three area forums; the Pacific Beach Town Council candidate forum, the Ocean Beach Town Council forum on April 25 and then most recently the Clairemont Town Council forum on May 3. (The Mission Beach Town Council calendar didn’t show any recent or upcoming candidate forum.)

Zapf – the only prominent Republican in the race for District 2 – has amassed more campaign funds than other candidates for city council throughout all the council races. So, perhaps she feels she’s safe or knows she’ll at least be in the November run-off.   [Read more…]

Hinky Political Ads, San Diego 2018 Primary Edition | Gun Toting, Tree Hugging & Fighting Trump

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Tis the season for misleading and attack political advertising. I’ll be doing an irregular showcase featuring the campaigns and “Independent” committees willing to sling mud, spin tall tales, make unkeepable promises, or engage in fear-mongering.

Today we’ll start with ads from the Working Families Council in support of Lori Saldaña for supervisor, simply because those were the first to land in my mailbox. Feel free to send me ads you think are hinky via the email address at the bottom of the page.

This will be a non-partisan endeavor, mostly because I can’t stand being talked down to, regardless of political party. “They all do it” is a tired excuse from people who fundamentally don’t believe in Democracy but are not honest enough to say so.   [Read more…]

Crib Sheet | Progressive Voter Guide | June 2018

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Here’s a quick and easy way to vote in the June 5, 2018, primary election.

Many San Diego County races, including District Attorney, Sheriff, and Assessor will be decided in this election since any candidate getting better than 50% gets a pass on the November election.

City and State races, on the other hand, allow the top two finishers to go on to November. We’re told there will be a ballot measure in November to bring the county into sync with the rest of California.

Not every candidate listed here will appear on your ballot. If you don’t live in a district, you don’t get to vote on their candidates.   [Read more…]

What Does Ohio’s Primary Tell Us About Ourselves? | Dear Ohio, Part 6

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Dear Ohio,

You are America’s portrait artist. As our bellwether election state, your results on Tuesday will be like a fine, sharp pencil, sketching the outlines of a new America, struggling to get the shading just right, the lines clear, the white space well-defined. Your results will begin to tell us once again who we are. Or what we have become.

In your last big portrait of America in 2016, our image was one of anger, creased with lines of cynicism, parched of human kindness, cloaked in a shredded garment of self-righteousness.

I can’t say I blame you for letting your pencil run away with your resentment. You are just as American as we are here in California and the other 48 states. All of us were reared on a diet of civic values that sang the praises of the people as the true governors of our democracy. But over the last few decades, largely because we were not paying attention, we discerned a new reality – one in which we had absolutely no importance to the people who hold the reins of our country.   [Read more…]

US Senate, Local House of Representatives Seats & Ballot Measures | Progressive Voter Guide, June 2018

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Today: US Senate, Local House of Representatives & Ballot Measures

Already Published:

Progressive Voter Guide for County of San Diego Elected Offices

San Diego City Council Progressive Voter Guide

California Statewide Offices & Local Legislative Seats

The San Diego Free Press and OB Rag are pleased to present part four of our 2018 Primary Election Progressive Voter Guide. As usual, we tried not to let perfect be the enemy of good in our decision making. This year we’re breaking it into parts to make it more digestible.   [Read more…]

The Trump-Pence Theocracy Continues to Take Shape, As “Abstinence” Is Elevated To National Policy

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By Dartagnan / Daily Kos

Between 2007 and 2015, the rate of teen pregnancies in the United States dropped approximately 50%. Much of the credit for that goes to federal and state educational programs that teach teenagers about birth control and making informed choices about sex. The Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, implemented in 2010 during the Obama Administration, was one of the most effective of these efforts, providing annual grants totaling 200 million dollars to the states to operate and evaluate their public health programs aimed at preventing unwanted teen pregnancies.

These programs are vital because more than 25% of American girls become pregnant by age 20. Many of these pregnancies are neither expected or wanted. The drastic negative economic and social implications of that fact–to women and American society— should be obvious. The real beneficiaries of programs such as the TPP are women because it is women (in this country at least) who have been burdened socially with major responsibility for contraception. It is women’s lives and futures that are impacted the most by an unwanted pregnancy.

In August of last year the Trump Administration, through its Department of Health and Human Services, effectively ended funding for the TPP program two years before it was to be re-authorized. In its place, the Administration specified that any recipients of grants from the TPP must follow one of two “abstinence-based” agendas,  de-emphasizing birth control as a method of preventing pregnancy.   [Read more…]

Oh, If We Could Listen With Heart Like Nipper

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When I was a child there was a commercial about a dog named Nipper who was supposed to be listening to his “master’s voice” on a windup disc gramophone. I thought about him early one morning recently.

On this morning I woke up a little earlier than usual because my iPhone SE startled me awake, vibrating and buzzing like crazy, kind of like those European police sirens.

And, hey, I’ve got to say I didn’t know I had an app for such as all that. I shut that little device up by grabbing it like a cowboy wrestling a steer he’d just roped only to find out that its histrionics was regarding an article about a book Arizona Senator John McCain had written.

I was forced to question the very notion that I was in possession of anything approaching a smartphone.   [Read more…]

Don’t Be So Sure About That Blue Wave | Video Worth Watching

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Feeling pretty good about those recent special election results that show twenty point gains in Democratic votes? Before becoming too complacent about that Blue Wave, check out Amy Hoggart’s reporting on a recent Trump rally in Michigan.   [Read more…]

California Statewide Offices & Local Legislative Seats | Progressive Voter Guide for June 2018

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Today: California Statewide Offices & Local Legislative Seats
Upcoming: 
Monday:Federal Offices, plus Ballot Measures
Tuesday: Voter Guide Crib Sheet (All Contests)
Already Published:
Progressive Voter Guide for County of San Diego Elected Offices
San Diego City Council | Progressive Voter Guide 2018 

The San Diego Free Press and OB Rag are pleased to present part three of our 2018 Primary Election Progressive Voter Guide. As usual, we tried not to let perfect be the enemy of good in our decision making. This year we’re breaking it into parts to make it more digestible.   [Read more…]

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