San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Restaurant Review: Bay Park Fish Company

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By Judi Curry

Bay Park Fish Company
4121 Ashton Street
San Diego, CA
(619) 276-3474 (FISH)

One of my best friends from Massachusetts is visiting me right now, and she wanted to take me out to dinner. Her 27 year old son is with her, and he said he would really like to have some fresh fish, so I called my daughter and asked her for suggestions as to where to go. Her recommendation was the Bay Park Fish Company right off of Morena Blvd., (next to Siesal’s Meat Market) and after checking to see if they were open on Monday night – they were – we made plans to eat dinner there. Unfortunately, her son Dan was not feeling well so just Susan and I went alone.   [Read more…]

Adventures in Comic-Conlandia: A Nerds-eye View Day Two

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Story and Photos by Brent E. Beltrán

For the second full day of the greatest popular arts convention in the universe my wife Olympia and I had grand plans. We were going to spend the entirety of it in the Convention Center’s infamous Hall H.

Hall H is the largest programming room at Comic-Con. It seats 6000 or so people (not sure how many Wookies it might hold) and has the some of the best and most attended panels. And this Friday’s lineup was spectacular.

The two of us thought that if we got to the convention by 10am we might at some point get inside.

We were wrong.   [Read more…]

Flags and Flogging at the Filner Recall Rally

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By Tom Hunter

There were two American flags held up by the children of Filner recall organizer Michael Pallamary, and much talk of scripture, but the free puppies were a no show.  Very little was said of the sins of the Mayor, although we were asked to love and pray for Bob Filner as the trapdoor was slamming open.

They had a good crowd of a hundred or more, but they definitely were not all there to scorn Mayor Bob. The spectacle was part of the draw.  There was a feisty lady standing all of 4’6″ tall who just couldn’t take the Filner disparagement anymore later on and just lost it, letting the pulpit have it with both barrels.   [Read more…]

Why Mayor Bob Filner Isn’t Going Anywhere

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This leads me to wonder if we’ll get to see Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez and Carl DeMaio side-by-side in a shopping center somewhere collecting signatures.

By Doug Porter

We’re into week two of the outrage centered on allegations of sexual harassment by San Diego’s Mayor and so far the score is Bob Filner 1, Accusers 0, Power Brokers 0.

Despite the calls for resignation, the certainty in the media that these charges bode ill for the city and the rumble of a recall election, Mayor Bob Filner remains firmly ensconced at City Hall.

Those hoping to shame hizzoner with sordid details and finger wagging have failed to comprehend his obstinacy.

It’s as if downtown is surreal rerun of the old TV game show Family Feud, with UT-SD hit man Trent Seibert filling in for Richard Dawson.  “Survey Says”, he proclaims loudly, “Resign!”  The lights and bells go off, the contestants jump up and down… and nothing happens.   [Read more…]

Adventures in Comic-Conlandia: A Nerds-eye View Day One

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Photos & Story by Brent Beltran

Just as expected Thursday, July 18, the first full day of San Diego Comic-Con International, was the nerdgasm I knew it would be. I’ve been to numerous San Diego Comic-Cons dating back to 1985 and I feel at home here amongst my fellow misfits.

I’m comfortable geeking out with the multi-cultured, multi-generational masses that make up the Comic-Con audience, all of whom are here for the sole purpose of enjoying and indulging in their favorite sci-fi/fantasy/horror/comic book/movie characters, stories and assorted items.   [Read more…]

NASA Scientists Awakened by Potential Arctic Methane Release

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by Frank Thomas

In my February 2013 writing, “Arctic Methane Release is a Near Term Potential Global Environment Disaster in the Making,” I tried my amateur best to alert people to the breakneck pace at which we are altering the Arctic permafrost environment by anthropogenic global warming (heat from the Earth’s surface) and its feedbacks … including melting of the Arctic sea ice, thus enabling more Arctic Ocean seawater to absorb – rather than reflect – solar energy. This in turn intensifies the ocean warming and melting of permafrost top soils under which a HUGE amount of carbon lurks.

The ticking time bomb from this process is the release of potential massive amounts of the ultra-toxic, heat-trapping methane gas (CH4) into the atmosphere. In fact, CH4 levels in the lower atmosphere over Arctic regions are already showing alarming new elevations.   [Read more…]

Filner Supporters Speak Out, Calling for Due Process

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By Tom Hunter
About 50 Mayor Bob Filner supporters and assorted press gathered at the Community Concourse plaza Thursday afternoon to demand Mayor Filner be given due process in response to charges of sexual misconduct.

Press conference organizer and longtime progressive advocate Enrique Morones opened with a comparison between Mayor Filner’s record on human rights and that of Nelson Mandela.  One theme stressed by every speaker was that everyone including Mayor Filner deserves to face his accusers and receive due process.   [Read more…]

Terrorized by a Magazine Cover – Rolling Stone Magazine Banned in Boston

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By Doug Porter

Dating back to the days of the New England Watch and Ward Society, Boston has a (not so) proud history of banning publications deemed to be objectionable.  H.L. Mencken was arrested for selling a banned copy of his American Mercury magazine in 1926.  Lillian Smith’s novel,Strange Fruit which featured an interracial relationship, was banned.

Others proudly “Banned in Boston” included Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass), Eugene O’Neill (Desire Under the Elms), Sinclair Lewis (Elmer Gantry), Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises) and even the song “Wake Up Little Susie” by The Everly Brothers.

The banning agencies and tactics have varied over the years, but the results have usually been the same: “Banned in Boston” is a badge of honor for publishers and authors…

It’s day three of my Filner-less news roundups, prompted by a desire to make this website something more than All-Bob-All-The Time, and I’ve got to say it’s been tough. Tomorrow I unleash the Kraken    [Read more…]

Unbelievable Directions and Instructions from Judge Sway Jury in Zimmerman Trial

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By Marjorie Cohn

A Southern jury of six women – none of them black – found 28-year-old George Zimmerman’s shooting of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin to be justifiable homicide because he acted in self-defense.

The jurors were prohibited from considering race. They were instructed only on the parts of self-defense law that helped Zimmerman, and the chief police investigator improperly testified that he believed Zimmerman.

Jury prevented from considering race

None of the jurors thought race played a role in the case, Juror B-37 told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. In fact the question of Zimmerman profiling Martin because he was African-American didn’t even come up in deliberations, the juror said.   [Read more…]

Privacy Coalition Sues NSA to Halt Dragnet Surveillance

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By Candice Bernd / Truthout / July 17, 2013

A broad and seemingly unlikely coalition of 19 organizations including church leaders alongside environmental and gun advocacy groups represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) in a San Francisco federal court Tuesday in a case that could determine the constitutionality of an admitted dragnet surveillance program on the telephone records of millions of Americans.

The lawsuit, First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA seeks an injunction against the NSA, FBI and the Justice Department, alleging that the government violated the plaintiffs’ First and Fourth Amendment rights by collecting information about their phone calls. The lawsuit focuses on an NSA surveillance program called the “Associational Tracking Program,” which collects metadata on telephone calls from the top U.S. telecommunications companies. The program is part of a vast operation of NSA spying programs revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.   [Read more…]

Cashing in on Kids: 139 Legislative Bills Have Been Introduced in 2013 that Promote ALEC’s Private, For-Profit Education Models

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By Brendan Fischer / PR Watch

Despite widespread public opposition to the education privatization agenda, at least 139 bills or state budget provisions reflecting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) education bills have been introduced in 43 states and the District of Columbia in just the first six months of 2013, according to an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, publishers of ALECexposed.org. Thirty-one have become law.

ALEC Vouchers Transfer Taxpayer Money to Private and Religious Schools

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch has called public education a “a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.”

But this “transformation” of public education — from an institution that serves the public into one that serves private for-profit interests — has been in progress for decades, thanks in large part to ALEC.

ALEC boasts on the “history” section of its website that it first started promoting “such ‘radical’ ideas as a [educational] voucher system” in 1983 — the same year as the Reagan administration’s “Nation At Risk” report — taking up ideas first articulated decades earlier by ALEC supporter Milton Friedman.   [Read more…]

If My Vagina Was A Gun

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By Katie Heim

If my vagina was a gun, you would stand for its rights. You would ride on a bus and fight all the fights.

If my vagina was a gun, you would treat it with care. You wouldn’t spill all its secrets, because, well, why go there?

If my vagina was a gun you’d say what it holds is private. From cold dead hands we could pry; you surely would riot……..
  [Read more…]

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