San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Trump Confirms His War on Press at First Press Conference in Nearly 6 Months

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By Frank Gormlie / The OB Rag

For the first time in nearly six months, today, January 11th, Donald Trump held a news conference. You remember news conferences, you know, those lop-sided but necessary events where politicians actually have to appear to answer questions from reporters. His last one had been on July 27th – almost half a year ago and none since his election.

During today’s 90 minute spectacle – which I dutifully watched – Trump actually answered some of the questions thrown at him by reporters.

Yet, one thing was instantly and crystal clear – Trump is continuing his war on the press. This press conference confirmed it.

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Adios Chargers: Don’t Let the Door Hit You Where the Good Lord Split You

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The San Diego Chargers are headed to Los Angeles. Halleluja!

“After much deliberation, I have made the decision to relocate the Chargers to Los Angeles,” team owner Dean Spanos wrote in a press release and letter to season ticket holders. “Today we turn the page and begin an exciting new era as the Los Angeles Chargers.”

The slightly less than 44% of the voters who supported the team’s plan for a downtown stadium in the last election combined with the ‘only’ $375 million final offer involving monies from the County, the City and San Diego State University for some future venue were certainly factors in the decision to move.   [Read more…]

Homeless Advocates Plan Response Tonight To Mayor Faulconer’s 2017 State Of The City Address

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By Women Occupy San Diego

After attending the Mayor’s 2017 State of the City address at the Balboa Theater, Women Occupy San Diego, Voices of Our City Choir and other concerned San Diegans will gather nearby to share reactions to what he proposes as solutions to homelessness.

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My Neck

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I love Nora Ephron’s book, “I Feel Bad About My Neck”. I have been feeling bad about my neck since I was about 55. As the years passed, my feelings grew as my weight increased and my necked sagged. All my photos are full face – no side shots allowed.

At 62 I had a consult with a plastic surgeon. When I told him I wanted to lose weight, he told me to wait on the surgery until I reached my weight loss goal – no point in sucking out the fat, cutting the muscles and stretching the skin just to have it sag again on an otherwise svelte neck – assuming I actually lost the weight.

Soon I’ll be 68 and my weight loss goal is almost complete (btw, eliminating alcohol can do that for you). So I decided it was time to head back to the plastic surgeon (who btw, seemed to have gained the weight I lost). I learned that the procedure would cost $8500 and I’d need to spend at least 2 weeks recovering. Incisions would be made to suction out the fat, tighten the muscles and pull back the skin. There would be pain and suffering and I’d have to keep my head bound and elevated even during sleep – assuming I was lucky enough to catch a few winks in such an altered state.   [Read more…]

Trumped Up Trickle Down

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Oh, what a week. And it’s only Wednesday.

While the current President was bidding a dignified farewell and leaving hardly a dry eye in the audience on Tuesday, his successor was tweeting in response to accusations of water sports.

An opposition report, dog-eared from months of circulation around the national press corps, surfaced. It was, we were told, compiled by an ex-British spy with some credibility in intelligence circles, and the internet went wild over claims about Russian dealings with President-elect Donald Trump, including blackmail involving sex workers in a luxury Moscow hotel in 2013.   [Read more…]

Trump’s Goldman Sachs Connections

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Restocking the Swamp

Trump’s new pick for Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, his top campaign fundraiser, was a Goldman Sachs executive. Mnuchin spent 17 years working at Goldman Sachs where he became a partner. He also worked for hedge fund manager George Soros, founded a hedge fund of his own and was the lead investor in IndyMac, a failed subprime lender that turned into a “foreclosure machine” during the housing crisis.

As the financial crisis worsened, Mnuchin was looking to make a profit off of homeowners who couldn’t pay their mortgages. In 2009, he got together with a group of billionaire investors and bought a failed California-based bank, IndyMac, which had been taken over by the FDIC after its portfolio went bust. Mnuchin and his partners bought IndyMac on the condition that the FDIC agree to pay future losses above a certain threshold. They renamed the bank OneWest Bank and, after running it for six years, they sold it last year for a profit, estimated at close to $1.5 billion.   [Read more…]

Oceana Restaurant at Catamaran Hotel in Mission Beach

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By Judi Curry / OB Rag

We were seated inside the restaurant – there was outside seating also but it was a cold afternoon – and in the center of the restaurant is a beautiful pseudo aquarium that has jelly fish swimming around in it. It is lighted, and I would imagine at night it is spectacular.

The menu was served to us on heavy boards, with the drink menu on one side and the food menu on the other. It was interesting in that printed on the back of each menu was the other side of the menu. The heavy board was not needed and the menu kept slipping out of the rubber band holding it in place.   [Read more…]

Groups Nationwide Create Campaign of ‘United Resistance’ to Trump

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From Advancement Project to Free Press, progressive organizations vow to stand up, speak out—and litigate

By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams

Progressive organizations across the U.S. are joining together in the latest showing of widespread resistance to President-elect Donald Trump’s right-wing agenda, from climate policies to civil rights.

Dozens of groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, United We Dream, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, on Tuesday launched a campaign called United Resistance, pledging to “stand together in support of racial, social, environmental, economic justice for all, and against Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, homophobia, sexism, and all those forces which would tear apart a democracy of, by, and for all the people.”   [Read more…]

Grand Theft, GOP-Style: Art Today, Civil Rights Tomorrow

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Trump’s day of triumph is rapidly approaching, and it has become clear his administration’s policies will amount to open season on the assets of the United States.

Congressman Duncan Hunter couldn’t wait for the inauguration and lifted a painting that displeased him from a Congressional art exhibit. Also, House members quietly changed a rule last week allowing them to hide records from future ethics probes. (More on these later in the story)

Not all assets are measured by monetary value, and this is today’s big story. In a hearing room originally used for inquiries into the sinking of the Titanic and the Teapot Dome Scandal, Senate Republicans are lobbing softballs at Attorney General nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions in the hope they can kick-start the erosion of civil and human rights in this country.   [Read more…]

The Destruction of Experience: How Ecopsychology Has Failed

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I do not remember the first time I saw my mother’s face, though I know she remembers the first time she saw mine. It was the very beginning of my life, my birth. I do not remember the first time I saw my mother’s face, but, I do remember the first time I saw my mother’s face at what would have been the end of my life after I tried to kill myself.

This is what I’m thinking about as I hold my fifteen-month-old baby nephew Thomas while he falls asleep.

A soft darkness blankets the room. The curtains are tied back on either side of the room’s only window and the night pours in. A wet snow falls with the starlight in a sprinkling of silver and gray. A few nights before full and the moon is strong. Shadows flicker on the floor below the window. A pine whispers outside where the wind brushes powder from her branches.   [Read more…]

Senator Elizabeth Warren Denounces Trump’s “Horrifying” Education Pick

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By Deirdre Fulton / Common Dreams

In a scathing memo sent Monday to Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined a growing chorus of opposition to the nominee, probing her past support for “privatizing and defunding K-12 education” as well as her “paper-thin record on higher education and student debt.”

“There is no precedent for an Education Department secretary nominee with your lack of experience in public education,” Warren wrote (pdf) to DeVos ahead of the billionaire’s Wednesday confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, on which the senator sits.   [Read more…]

Big Questions for Local Labor in 2017

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2017 awaits us fierce as a tiger with major assaults looming on multiple fronts. As I have written here quite recently, it is not an overstatement to say that we face existential threats. With so many things to worry about in the near future, what should labor and progressives be focusing on in anticipation of the coming storm?

Let me start by saying that our first order of business should definitely not be whether you are with or against the imperiled San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council President. It should also not be about which side you choose in a toxic internal struggle between factions inside of the San Diego labor movement. As I have said elsewhere, the honorable and prudent course of action would be for labor leadership to take these issues off the table because they will prove to be fatal distractions if we allow them to stop us from confronting a long laundry list of crises to come after inauguration day.   [Read more…]

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