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The Starting Line – Water Gun Party Goes Out of Control: Balboa Park Pond Left Ruined

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Virtually all the news media in America’s Finest City have been breathlessly reporting on the vandals that trashed the lily pond in front of the Botanical Building on Saturday night. And, at least from what I saw on twitter yesterday, lots of people were very angry about the damage done to the park. Here’s a 39 second video of the chaos that ensued.

What started as a public late night water pistol showdown at the big fountain in Balboa Park got out of hand as a crowd, variously estimated at between 1500 to 2000 people arrived at midnight for the social media driven event. Although some organizers claimed that they originally expected about 100 people, over 6000 invites were sent out via a Facebook event page (since deleted), with over 1000 people RSVPing for the occasion.

The primary organizer for the “2nd Annual Water Gun Fight in Balboa Park” was Ken St. Pierre, until recently Sales Director for San Diego Gay and Lesbian news and San Diego Pix, owned by Jonathan Hale (partner of Carl DeMaio). A recent press release from Hale media indicated that Pierre is leaving that organization to accept a similar position with ultra-luxe Riviera Magazine. The event was promoted in SDGLN last Thursday   [Read more…]

I Me Mine: The Unholy Trinity Of Ayn Rand

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By OTOOLEFAN

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.” – Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand was out of her Vulcan mind.

This is a simple fact that can be verified by anyone with even minimal Google skills. She was the Albert Schweitzer of Selfishness and the Mother Theresa of Greed all rolled into one. This, naturally, makes her a hero to the Right and qualifies her for sainthood. Too bad she was an Atheist.

Her philosophy, so she said, was one of pure reason, unstained by taudry emotion. But as sane people know, one of the quirks of being a human is serving the heart as well as the mind.  Ayn Rand believed you should only serve yourself. In her world, everyone was free to agree with her version of individual freedom and all others were worthy of contempt and scorn. She considered altruism immoral and selfishness a virtue.

Ayn Rand called her philosophy “Objectivism”. For the layman, “Objectivism” is Latin for “I don’t give a shit about anyone but myself.” It’s self-absorption with a bow on top. She makes the Kardashians look like Anna Karenina.

“The best aspect of Christmas, is that Christmas has been commercialized.” – Ayn Rand
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Ryan, The Conservatives Long Term Downfall, Be Careful of What You Ask For

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By Daily Kos / Daily Kos Member

Paul Ryan was probably one of the worst picks for conservatives. Strangely enough, it’s because Ryan is a true conservative and now makes the ticket a truly conservative ticket.

Most conservatives, and people across the country, had their doubts about how conservative Romney really is. If you look at his health care law in Mass., some of the other laws he passed, and his past statements, he certainly comes across more as an opportunist rather than a conservative.

This past week, conservatives everywhere were putting pressure on Romney to pick not only a conservative VP, but specifically, Paul Ryan. Now the conservatives have exactly what they asked for.   [Read more…]

Inside the Romney-Ryan Bromance

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The Atlantic / By Nancy Cook and Rebecca Kaplan

In the weeks before Rep. Paul Ryan released his latest budget blueprint this year, he urged all of the presidential candidates to follow his fiscal lead. He critiqued GOP front-runner Mitt Romney’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference as “pretty good,” but cautioned that all of the candidates needed to take bold policy stances. “We need to have an election with a mandate, so we can fix these problems,” he said at a breakfast with reporters in mid-February.

He was equally noncommittal about his allegiances weeks later, when he praised both Romney and Rick Santorum for broaching the topic of entitlements on the campaign trail. “Their specifics have jived perfectly well with what we’ve been saying,” he told National Journal. “We’re all saying the same thing, and that’s very good in my opinion.”   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – ‘Dump Romney’ GOP Group Surfaces Prior to Convention

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But he hasn’t even been nominated yet… Former backers of GOP candidate Rick Santorum have released a memo sent to delegates bound for the GOP convention later this month that calls for RNC delegates not to vote vote for Mitt Romney, even if they are bound to him.  Calling themselves “Jews and Christians Together,” the group briefly gained notoriety back in March for their connection with robocalls in Ohio that accused Romney of supporting “open homosexuality in the military, the appointment of homosexual judges, and the ENDA law, making it illegal to fire a man who wears a dress and high heels to work, even if he’s your kid’s teacher.”  Website Buzzfeed.com reports that “Jews and Christians Together” is the brainchild of Steve Baldwin, former head of the Council for National Policy, a low-profile, well-connected conservative group. The memo was reportedly sent out to 20,000 people in politics and the media, as well as RNC delegates.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — A Much Grander Vision for San Diego; Public Market Project Underway

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At no cost to taxpayers!… Unlike other visions for San Diego (a football stadium and Convention Center expansion come to mind), Dale Steele and Catt White are making their plans for a City Public Market along the lines of Seattle’s Pike’s Place, San Francisco’s Ferry Building and Barcelona’s La Boqueria into a reality via crowd source funding on the internet’s KickStarter. As of July 2012, KickStarter has 4,048 projects funded and has raised a total of $241 million in start-up capital.

Both Steele and White are long time players on the San Diego market scene; White currently manages neighborhood farmers’ markets in Little Italy, North Park and Pacific Beach. They have already leased a 92,000 square foot property near Petco Park and are renovating more than two acres of warehouse space. Plans for the market include two days a week with farmers’ stalls, booths with local crafters and artists, music festivals, movie nights and quinceañeras, chef’s tasting events and art exhibits, along with the occasional Chaldean Festival, Chinese New Year’s parade, Filipino fiesta or charity fundraiser.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — Trash from Foreclosed House Deposited at Bank of America Branch in San Diego

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Residents from southeast San Diego’s Mountain View neighborhood took matters into their own hands yesterday; cleaning up garbage accumulating at a foreclosed property owned the Bank of America, and “depositing” it outside a nearby branch office of that financial institution. The doors were locked at B of A’s 36th and National location as reporters and TV camera crews watched community members, led by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, unload furniture, appliances and litter gathered from the shuttered, but uncared for, property currently owned by the bank.

The dramatic protest was staged to call attention to the proposed Property Value Protection Ordinance, under consideration by the San Diego City Council.  The law would require banks to register homes in the city upon the filing of a notice of default, with a $100-a-day fee for failure to obey the act. If lenders register a distressed home but fail to properly maintain the property (leading to blight), the bank would be subject to a fine of up to $1,000 a day. This, proponents say, would help the city cover the true cost of neglected properties.   [Read more…]

Back here in the reality based reality….

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“Papa Doug’s” UT San Diego Editorial Board pens a fantastical version of existence with no connection to the world we live in.

In politics, just like in life, we have choices to make. Some of us choose to make those choices based on the facts as they exist, some of us make choices based on the facts as we wish them to be. For the better part of three decades now, the Republican Party has based their decision making process on the latter. From their near maniacal belief in supply side economics (or “trickle down” economics, or my favorite “voodoo economics” as then candidate George H. W. Bush called it) to their insistence that they’re party represents a “higher morality,” there seems to be little connection with the reality the rest of us live in.

Last weekend San Diego’s esteemed daily fishwrap ran an editorial entitled “Romney in a Landslide.” It reads more like a religious proclamation than a bold prediction; a fantasy conjured up in the halls of the Mission Valley fortress newly rededicated to Republican virtue.   [Read more…]

The Dark Side of the Rainbow

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by Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Writing about prejudice can be a challenge. I was born into a happy little privileged space. I’m basically a nice white gal, a daughter of the hegemonic norm. What the hell do I know from prejudice, right? There’s racism, homophobia, misogyny, classism, ageism, a vast spectrum of “otherisms” — the dark side of the rainbow — all of them designating certain groups of people as “other.” And I write a lot about them, 25% of my columns, I just figured out, despite my pallid skin, humdrum heteronormativity, and prissily privileged class.

That’s not to say that one must be victimized to crave justice for all; neither does it suggest that I’ve never been the target of prejudice. My body parts of the female persuasion make me a daily bull’s-eye for the slings and arrows of misogyny. My advocacy for LGBT civil rights makes me a target for car window bashers. I once married a Puerto Rican and was promptly removed from several invitation lists (omissions admittedly devoid of disappointment). And I’ve witnessed the resulting issue of that union, my daughter, struggle with the rampant prejudice so freely expressed by the otherists in our Southern California community.   [Read more…]

Homelessness: Man’s Inhumanity to Man

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There is no question that every political issue has at least two sides – the pros and the cons. Issues involving homelessness are no different. However, when weighing the impact of both sides of homelessness issues, often one side appears to have a greater impact upon humanity than the other. In other words, in analyzing the issues of homelessness, the sides are not necessarily even. In fact, sometimes the impact of the political decisions relating to homelessness can be cruel.

For example, there are municipal ordinances in many cities prohibiting sleeping on public land, including beaches and parks. On the positive side, these laws protect public property from overuse – an important goal so that members of these communities can continue to share open spaces. However, homeless people may experience the impact of these laws as depriving them of a legal place to sleep.   [Read more…]

Bulletin: Alleged Sikh Temple Shooter Former Member of Skinhead Band

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by Mark Potok / Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch
The man who allegedly murdered six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee yesterday, identified in media reports as Wade Michael Page, was a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band.

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Hiroshima / Nagasaki Remembered – Veterans for Peace

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By Barry Ladendorf
In many parts of the world, people will pause to commemorate what happened 67 years ago on August 6, 1945, when the United States unleashed the most diabolical weapon in the history of mankind on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later on August 9th, the same hellish fire consumed the city of Nagasaki. It is estimated that 250,000 people died as a result of the bombs. As many as 60% died from flash or flame burns, 30% from falling debris and 10% from other causes. How will Americans remember this day?   [Read more…]

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