Okay, I made that headline up… The reality here is that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration sent a one ton landing craft–the size of a small SUV- 154 million miles and landed it on target. Mars rover Curiosity is equipped with a collection of powerful instruments, including 17 cameras (four of which were made in San Diego), lasers and a radiation detector. It features equipment that can bore into rock and ingest samples, drawing them into an on-board chemistry lab and transmitting detailed analyses back to Earth. The mission cost an estimated $2.5 billion, slightly more than one third the $7 billion that Americans spend on potato chips annually. Yesterday’s landing day coincided with the birthday of Neil Armstrong, the first moon walker. (And don’t worry, there is coverage of the UT-SD’s silly Sunday editorial predicting a Romney landslide below!) [Read more…]
Reader Rant: The Chicken and the Cross
Editors Note: Sometimes we get letters from readers that we think deserve a life of their own. So we publish them as ‘Reader Rants’. Send us your thoughts, and if we like them, we’ll run them. Be warned – the selection process is totally subjective.
The century of hate began with the prosecution of Oscar Wilde on account of his homosexual relations. No matter how brilliant or entertaining the writer who loved women but felt attracted to men, Wilde would be sentenced to prison. His homosexuality did not bother him, but the persecution destroyed him.
The hounding of gays continues to this day.
For some reason the treatment became greatly amplified during WWII. [Read more…]
Why a Major Food Organization Is Teaming Up With Monsanto and Friends to Block Your Right to Know What’s in Your Food
Big Food companies like ConAgra, Smucker, Hormel, Kellogg, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo want to block Proposition 37
By Ronnie Cummins / AlterNet
[The California Ballot Initiative to label genetically engineered food is] “a serious, long-term threat to the viability of agricultural biotechnology. Defeating the Initiative is GMA’s single highest priority this year.” — Pamela Bailey, President of Grocery Manufacturers Association, speech to the American Soybean Association, July 9, 2012
This November, Californians will vote for or against Prop 37, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act. The outcome of that vote will likely determine whether the U.S. will one day join the nearly 50 other countries that allow their citizens to choose between genetically engineered and non-genetically engineered food through the enactment of laws requiring mandatory labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
U.S. Border Patrol Gone Wild: “If the U.S. is not a Police State now, it soon will be!”
By Herman Baca / President, Committee on Chicano Rights
The stopping, detaining, and the senior citizen abuse of 96 year old ex.-Governor (1974-77), of Arizona, Raul Castro along with his wife and Ms. Anne Doan (driver) by the U.S. Border Patrol raises legal and constitutional questions that the Committee on Chicano Rights (CCR) has requested the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate. The history of the U.S. Border Patrol… the agency was organized in 1924 and is the only national police force in the U.S. The agency was created specifically to deal with persons of Mexican ancestry and was modeled after the infamous Texas Rangers that served as the private army for Texas cattle barons and agricultural business interests. Their primary enforcement job was to insure that no person of Mexican ancestry (citizens, documented, or undocumented) got to “uppity” and started to demand the same rights, wages or working conditions as their Anglo counterparts. Since 1924 that law enforcement job has been carried out nationally by the U.S. Border Patrol.
Bert Corona, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez, Cesar Chavez and numerous others have rightfully labeled the U.S. Border Patrol, “the Gestapo of the Mexican People.”
[Read more…]
The Starting Line – Controversies Plague Local, National GOP Campaigns
It may be August, but the back and forth between political campaigns continues at a pace that leads us to wonder just how crazy things will get come post-Labor Day, which is when these sorts of contests usually heat up. Here in San Diego, today’s coverage highlights differences of opinion within the GOP regarding the ‘non-partisan’ race for Mayor of San Diego, which is actually hyper-partisan this year. And on the national scene, Democrats continue to dog presumptive GOP candidate Mitt Romney with allegations designed to raise questions about his character. So join me today as we take a peek into the sausage making process that passes for selecting our leaders in this day and age.
“I hope Tom enjoys his 30 pieces of silver…” Political consultant Tom Shepard’s decision to sign on with Mayoral candidate Bob Filner continues to have repercussions on the local political scene. Republican Party leader Tony Kraric’s comment over at conserv blog SDRostra comparing Shepard to Judas unleashed a lively exchange (this is excerpted, there’s plenty more over at their site) :
From Tony Krvaric…Long-time Republican consultant Tom Shepard today signed on as a consultant for Bob Filner. Yes, you read that right and no, this is not a joke. This is a betrayal of our entire reform effort that so many have been working on for so long.
That said, I have no doubt that we will prevail in November because Carl DeMaio is a superior candidate and the voters are with us on the issues. Plus, Tom’s two latest campaigns in the City of San Diego were abysmal failures; Proposition D (sales tax increase) and a certain failed mayoral campaign.
I hope Tom enjoys his 30 pieces of silver.
Best, Tony
P.S. The Republican Party of San Diego County will not do business with him ever again as long as I remain chairman. Elephants don’t forget – and principles matter.
more inside… [Read more…]
Bilbray shreds environment amid sprint to center
by Lucas O’Connor/Two Cathedrals
Some predictable theatre played out in Washington over the last week, as the House GOP took up legislation to waive environmental protections and give the Department of Homeland Security unlimited access to national parks within 100 miles of the border. That would effectively impose martial law over national parks near the border. It passed, with the support of Brian Bilbray.
Purely by coincidence, the debate over whether to essentially declare a state of immigration emergency to overrule environmental laws comes just days after President Obama announced a policy shift to provide relief from deportation to immigrant young adults brought to this country by their parents at an early age. [Read more…]
CA GOP Continues its Death Spiral, Seeks Help From Prop 32 Supporters
California Republican Party faces fiscal, organizing questions, banks on special exemptions.
by Brian Leubitz/Calitics.com
The California Republican Party is in something of a desperate situation. They hold no statewide offices, and then they had a story in the New York Times titled “Republican Party in California Is Caught in Cycle of Decline.”
That’s never a good thing, especially when it is combined with a follow-up from the San Francisco Chronicle with some worrying financial numbers. Without getting deeply into the nitty, gritty, it is pretty bad. They are expected to reveal a deficit of nearly half a million dollars, and are considering closing their Sacramento office. [Read more…]
GOP’s Three Biggest Fears in 2012
Only an insecure and ideologically bankrupt political party has to game the rules to stay in power.
by Steven Rosenfeld/AlterNet
As the 2012 presidential campaign takes a breather, we need to consider why today’s Republicans are no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt or Richard Nixon, but instead a truly toxic aberration.
As James Fallows noted a year ago in the Atlantic, the modern GOP’s biggest sin is discarding “political norms” that everyone once understood would hurt the country—such as not paying 74,000 federal air traffic controllers and construction workers to attack labor unions, a drama that played out last August.
Since then the GOP’s bad behavior has only worsened. In the introduction to their recent book, It’s Even Worse Than It Appears, centrists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote, “However awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” [Read more…]
Polls Show Local Races up for Grabs; National Parties Ante Up
DCCC reserves $1.65 million from national funds, NRCC pledges $1.6 million to Bilbray–Updated
It’s the end of July, and some important political races in San Diego are beginning to heat up. Two polls released yesterday started to bring both the San Diego mayoral race and the 52nd District Congressional race into focus for the general election campaign.
According to a report by Roll Call, a Washington, DC based publication, the race between Democratic Challenger Scott Peters and Republican incumbent Brian Bilbray is a dead heat with each candidate receiving 40% of the projected vote. The poll showed a significant 19% of those questioned as undecided. [Read more…]
In Wake of Prop B, Filner Sidelines Pension Refinance Plan
Candidate accepts the will of the voters; critics accuse him of abandoning his principles
Mayoral candidate Bob Filner is taking heat again this week for saying that he would go along with the law. Last week he was challenged for saying that as mayor he would enforce Prop B—the so called pension reform initiative that he so vehemently opposed during the primary—and essentially flip-flopping and supporting the controversial plan. This time he’s being accused of abandoning his own principles.
During the primary Filner touted a plan to refinance the pension debt, issuing 30 year bonds to do so. It was a plan he claimed would save the city $500,000 over the next 10 years, citing all-time low interest rates and comparing it to a homeowner who refinances his or her mortgage and in the process cuts the interest rate they pay nearly in half. That’s a lot of money the homeowner gets to keep. [Read more…]
The Starting Line – ‘Let’s Not Be the Last Generation to Retire’; Seniors Push Back Against GOP Plans to Slash Medicare and Social Security
As the LA Times fronts today with an article detailing GOP lawmakers’ plans for dismantling Medicare, a senior citizens group supported by organized labor has began a national campaign to educate seniors on Medicare and Social Security issues. The Times article details how conservative critics of Medicare are readying a new push to dramatically scale it back should the GOP win control of the White House and Congress in November. GOP governors are leading the fight by blocking expansion of Medicaid to meet the goals of the Affordable Care Act.
Yesterday senior citizens groups around the country participated in events marking the 47th anniversary of the Medicare act. Billed as the ‘Let’s Not Be the Last Generation to Retire’ Campaign, the DC-based Alliance for Retired Americans will be sponsoring additional educational events at senior centers in coming months and organizing protests outside offices of lawmakers who have voted against the needs of local retirees. [Read more…]
The Starting Line – The San Diego Mayoral Contest Heats Up; Poll Shows Filner with 8 Point Lead
The 2012 mayoral contest here in San Diego is front and center in the news today. Polling results released yesterday show Rep. Bob Filner with an 8 point lead over City Councilman Carl DeMaio. According to San Diego Politico, the race currently stands at 40% – Filner, 32% – DeMaio and 29% – Undecided. These polling results (which are likely drawn from internal Democratic surveys) closely mirror party registration in San Diego. Other polls reportedly show Filner in the high 30s and DeMaio peaking in the low 30s.
Voice of San Diego has an article up this morning that leads by quoting former Filner opponent and modern day China-phobic economist Peter Navaro calling the Congressman “the Grand Canyon of assholes.” The VOSD piece focuses on the narrative that candidate Filner’s abrasive personality is a political liability; it does explore the roots of his willingness to be combative–his roots in the civil rights movement–but the overall thrust is not particularly complimentary. [Read more…]
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