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Movie Review of ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’

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A thrilling adventure film held back only by the lead heroine’s need for a savior.

By Melissa Phy

Screaming tweens and indulgent adults finally got to check back in with Katniss, Peeta, Gale and the rest of The Hunger Games crew this week after the second installment of the series, Catching Fire, was released Friday.

The movie starts out nearly a year after the last hunger games, in which Peeta and Katniss (tributes from District 12 in the futuristic Panem) both survived, making headlines as the first dual winners of the barbaric games in which two children from each district (there are 12 total, with a former 13th reportedly obliterated by the capitol for rebelling) duke it out in an arena in a fight to the death.

Katniss, now a sign of hope for the starving and suffering districts, is considered a threat by Panem’s president. In an effort to eliminate Katniss and restore order among the districts, the 75th’ Hunger Games has a twist: all participants will be pulled from the pool of previous victors, meaning Katniss and Peeta must return to the arena. The catchphrase of the film? “Remember who the enemy is.”   [Read more…]

Who Deserves Our Thanks for Truly American Food?

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Until 1492, Europeans had never tried potatoes, cranberries, corn, or turkey.

By  / OtherWords.org

What do turkey, sweet potatoes, and cranberries have in common?

Yes, you eat them on Thanksgiving. Additionally, they are all distinctly American foods. So are potatoes and the corn in your corn bread.

Believe it or not, the day that Columbus blundered into the Americas back in 1492, Europeans (and Asians and Africans) had none of those foods.

Thanksgiving is perhaps the one day a year when we Americans celebrate with truly American food.   [Read more…]

How the Republican Tempest Over the Affordable Care Act Diverts Attention from Three Large Truths

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By Robert Reich /RobertReich.org

Having failed to defeat the Affordable Care Act in Congress, to beat it back in the last election, to repeal it despite more than eighty votes in the House, to stop it in the federal courts, to get enough votes in the Supreme Court to overrule it, and to gut it with outright extortion (closing the government and threatening to default on the nation’s debts unless it was repealed), Republicans are now down to their last ploy.

They are hell-bent on destroying the Affordable Care Act in Americans’ minds.

A document circulating among House Republicans (reported by the New York Times) instructs them to repeat the following themes and stories continuously: “Because of Obamacare, I Lost My Insurance.” “Obamacare Increases Health Care Costs.” “The Exchanges May Not Be Secure, Putting Personal Information at Risk.”   [Read more…]

McDonald’s Advice To Underpaid Employees: Break Food Into Pieces To Keep You Full

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The “advice” was published on the “McResource” website, meant to give tips to fast-food workers.

By Alex Kane / Alternet

The latest friendly advice from McDonald’s to their low-wage workers includes tips on how to better handle stress–as well as how to fill yourself up better with dinner. The fast-food corporation instructs workers that breaking food “into pieces” will keep you full.

The advice was published on the “McResource” website, meant to give tips to fast-food workers. While you need to be a McDonald’s worker to log-in to the website, details of the advice have been publicized by the group Low Pay Is Not OK, a union-backed group seeking to organize low-wage workers at McDonald’s. The effort is part of the larger campaign to push for living wages, benefits and the right to organize among low-wage workers across a variety of industries.   [Read more…]

50 Years of the Big Lie – the Cover-Up of the JFK Assassination – Part 2

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JFK assass colorcropHere’s Part 1.

By Frank Gormlie

It’s finally here, Friday, November 22nd – exactly 50 years after President Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.

Of course you’ve noticed it – you can’t help but … as everywhere you go there are signs that everybody in the media is commemorating the half century mark of the end of the Kennedy Era – an era that was terminated with bullets.

It’s been 50 years since the end of Camelot and we are told it was the end of the “idealism of the Sixties”.

Well, it has been fifty years, and it’s been fifty years of the Big Lie – the Big Lie that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman, and that Kennedy’s killer was then killed himself – which wraps it all up rather nicely, – case closed. The Big Lie is the Warren Commission Report – and all its apologists and defenders.

The Big Lie includes the failure of government to adequately and fairly investigate the execution of America’s chief executive, it includes the dismissal, omission, suppression and misrepresentation of evidence, it includes the manipulation, dismissal and intimidation of witnesses – and ultimately elimination of witnesses.

The Big Lie represents the plot necessarily carried out by a conspiracy to eliminate JFK and then to cover it up; the Big Lie is the half century of a carefully calculated deception laid on the American people, a deception that allowed governmental policies involving getting the US out of Vietnam, restricting the war industry, ending nuclear brinkmanship with the Soviet Union, and reproachment with Cuba to be reversed. The Big Lie is treason incarnate.

But the Big Lie is also very personal, as many Americans of my generation – the Sixties Generation – were all individually deeply affected by Kennedy’s murder and the subsequent shenanigans involving Jack Ruby killing Oswald on live TV. And we were all affected as a generation, as a class of humans by what happened in Dallas.   [Read more…]

Barrio Logan Group Faces an Uphill Battle Trying to Stop Shipbuilder Scam

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By Doug Porter

Superior Court Jeffrey Barton will hear from the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) seeking a temporary restraining order aimed at stopping a referendum overturning the Barrio Logan Community Plan.  EHC and community supporters are saying signatures were fraudulently gathered on petitions submitted by the Protect Our Jobs Committee, a group created by shipyard repair companies.

The coalition has submitted affidavits from witnesses claiming petition gatherers were not truthful about the community plan’s details.  News media accounts and videos caught paid signature gatherers claiming the US Navy would leave San Diego should the community plan be implemented.

Posted around shopping centers in areas of the city where residents were likely to be unaware of the past history of callous disregard of health hazards by funders of the Protect Our Jobs group, voters were also told that 46,000 jobs were at stake and that the purpose of the plan was to allow developers to build condominiums in the area.   [Read more…]

How the Kennedy Tragedy Made Me a Better Teacher

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By Ernie McCray

On November 22, 1963, I was a twenty-five year old sixth grade teacher enjoying my second year serving students at Perry Elementary. Before recess that day we had gotten the news that the president was shot. The radio in our classroom verified what we had heard with the words “President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is dead.”

We were absolutely stunned. But, as a result of this man losing his life, I was a transformed educator when the day was done, so much more attuned to what was required of me if I wanted to nurture young minds in truly helpful ways. Now, when I woke up that morning my teaching was pretty good. I had respect and all that. My lessons were planned adequately enough.
  [Read more…]

How Privatizers Are Killing Our Schools

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Apparently working together as a community is anti-American ‘Communism’ now.

By Paul Buchheit / Alternet

Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast called the public school system a “socialist regime.” Michelle Rheecautions us against commending students for their ‘participation’ in sports and other activities.

Privatizers believe that any form of working together as a community is anti-American. To them, individual achievement is all that matters. They’re now applying their winner-take-all profit motive to our children.

  [Read more…]

America’s Big Lie: Fifty Years of the Cover-Up of the John F Kennedy Assassination

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By Frank Gormlie

Fifty years ago this Friday, the 22nd of November, I walked out of my English class at Point Loma High School and full of disgust threw my brown bag full of lunch away in a trash can. I felt sick to my stomach and couldn’t bare to think ab0ut eating – we had just heard that the President had been shot by someone from an overpass while he was riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.

Classes were cancelled and we all went home, most of us saddened and confused. I remember very vividly sitting in our Point Loma home watching the news that Sunday, the 24th with my dad. It was almost all we did that weekend – watch the news on our black and whites, fiddling with the rabbit ears or electrically moving the antenna on the roof.

We had heard that the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was going to be moved and all the news cameras were there to broadcast the live event. The nation was riveted on the tube – and I know my father and I sure were.

“Here comes Oswald!” someone shouted, cameras rolling, and there he was – evil incarnate – his arms gripped by big guys in suits – on live TV – being brought out from some back office into full view of millions of Americans.

We all now know what happened next – we’ve seen it a dozen replays since. But on that Sunday, before Jack Ruby rushes out from the crowd, it was just a few days from Thanksgiving; yes, we had lost Kennedy but the killer was in custody and the nation would get to the bottom of this dreadful and tragic act. We had a new president and everything would get back to normal after Kennedy’s funeral – which was the next day.   [Read more…]

A Tale of Two Cities: North and South of Interstate 8

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By Doug Porter

It’s been touted as fact of life in San Diego politics: the electorate south of Interstate 8 votes heavily Democratic while those on the north side votes Republican.

After all, the northern part of San Diego is generally wealthier, older and whiter than the city’s southern half.  Even as the GOP’s partisan advantage in the city has disappeared in recent years, the party’s candidates and causes have done well, leading to the general perception that the electorate in the regions favors conservative causes.

A succession of Republican Mayors and a track record for mostly voting with that party’s positions on initiatives re-enforce that perception.  It’s a commonly accepted view in news media accounts; a local report on this weeks special election taps National University’s “policy analyst” Vince Vasquez, who says “You see that deep geographic divide among voters. It’s something not going away. If anything its more pronounced,” –

But not everything is as it seems.   [Read more…]

The “Most Walkable” Cities in San Diego County – La Mesa Scores Highest

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By Bill Adams/UrbDeZine San Diego

Walk San Diego rated La Mesa as 2013′s most walkable city in San Diego County. The number one reason for the City’s walkability happened 100 years ago.

It’s the traditional town pattern of it’s historic center. It’s a pattern that is relatively rare in Southern California but seen everywhere in the East and Midwest U.S.:

OB Bamboo Bicyclist Lives to Inspire “Earth-Friendly Lifestyles”

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Activist to Give Away Free Seeds

By Rob Greenfield

This spring I left my comfortable beachside home in sleepy Ocean Beach to wake America up. On April 16th I hopped into a van with a stranger from a Craigslist.com rideshare board, stopped in Santa Cruz to pick up a bamboo bike, and arrived in San Francisco a with a few days to prepare for a 4,700 mile bike ride across the USA.

The journey, coined Off the Grid Across America, was designed to inspire Americans to start living a more earth-friendly lifestyle for themselves, their community, and the earth.

To lead by example I followed a set of rigorous ground rules:   [Read more…]

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