By Terez Williamson / Smartly Smitten
I freely admit I hate Valentine’s Day.
I hate the superficial sentimentality created around it. But most of all, I hate it is yet another holiday which has been hijacked by the voracious, for-profit appetite of corporations.
Christmas is the only other holiday advertisers spend more effort on to convince you the ultimate expression of love is the spending of money.
Unfortunately, they seem to be succeeding. [Read more…]
By Dennis Bernstein / Flashpoints
DB: We continue our discussion of the revelations around a memo coming out of the Justice Department that the administration plans to keep up these assassinations and expand the program.
Joining us to take a legal look at this is Marjorie Cohn, Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former President of the National Lawyers Guild. She is also the editor of “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse.” Welcome back to Flashpoints, Marjorie. You say the White Paper runs afoul of international and US law. Please explain.
MC: The White Paper allows the government to kill a US citizen who is not on the battlefield, if some high government official who is supposedly informed about the situation thinks that the target is a senior Al Queda leader who poses an imminent threat of a violent attack against the United States. [Read more…]
I crawled groggily out of bed this morning and ambled out to the kitchen. My Beloved turned to me and said “I don’t know how many more State of the Unions I can handle.” Last night we listened to President Obama’s hour long speech, then Republican Savior-in-Training Senator Marco Rubio’s, followed by Congressman Rand Paul’s, as the voice of the Tea Party, which is the other white meat of the Republican party. Afterward, we smoked.
The Designated Survivor One odd little factoid that was revealed during the pre-speech(es) buildup was that Energy Secretary Steven Chu was selected to skip this year’s address.
Because the president, vice president, lawmakers, Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices and members of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff are all sitting together in a confined space in the Capitol, one Cabinet member is chosen to skip the speech every year.
The concept of a designated survivor is an interesting one. [Read more…]
Last week a court invalidated the City’s scheme for renovating Balboa Park, saying that lawmakers blatantly ignored a city statute. The judge liked the plan, which included building a parking garage and a by-pass, but couldn’t abide the process.
Yesterday an administrative judge with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) ruled that former Mayor Jerry Sanders violated state labor law by failing to offer unions the opportunity to negotiate on pension issues prior to launching a ballot initiative.
Could these rulings portend that an era of lawlessness going back decades in America’s Finest City is coming to an end? I’m not so sure. After all, San Diego does have a rich tradition of politicians just doing whatever the hell they want to and hoping they don’t get caught.
INSIDE: The State of the Union, Poor, ‘Misunderstood’ Doug Manchester, Why Carl DeMaio Won’t Ride the Trolley [Read more…]
By Mic Porte
The folks on Ray Street, one block just off University Ave. in North Park, on second Saturday evening of the month host San Diego’s longest running ART event: Ray at Night.
Last week’s event (February 9) held on a a crisp San Diego evening, saw the usual friendly crowd of artists and art lovers from all over, locals and tourists alike. Several art and craft galleries, shops and offices turned into galleries for the evening; the Art Center opened their doors, and art spilled out onto the street. Vendors of food, clothing and accessories, and objets d’art sprouted along the sidewalks tempting the passers-by.
Until 8pm, when the band starts up, poets (many of them students from San Diego State) take turns at the open microphone set up in the street, sharing their latest. I would call it a “poetry slam”, but “slam” wouldn’t do justice to the sensitivity, wordcraft , and humor, of the poets. Very cool. [Read more…]
“Gang Girl”
Friday, March 1, 2013
ECC (Education Cultural Center)
4343 Ocean View Blvd.
Showtime 7pm
“Gang Girl: The Story of a 22-Year-Old Girl in the LA Bloods Gang,” is a work of art in the form of a documentary that I had heard about and now I’m glad that I have the opportunity to see it, thanks to the San Diego Chapter of the Association of Black Psychologists. They’re bringing it to town so that all who care can spend an evening exploring critical issues and strengths in the lives of inner-city youth and their families.
[Read more…]
I have a birthday coming up in a few days. My last experience with on-line dating made me find my birth certificate – yes, they had them back then – to check and see if I was really born many years ago, or if there could have been a typo and I was really born in 1995. Many of the men I am meeting remind me of my youth – yes, I can remember back that far – and the titillating things we talked about during the dating process.
I am not happy to report that things have not changed significantly. Men still want to talk about all the things we read about in “Catcher in the Rye” or “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” So let me tell you about my latest.
I “met” J. on line about 5 months ago. He, like me, is a widower; a year older than me; lives in Henderson, Nevada, and is about to embark on a million dollar solar plant in the desert. He told me right away that all of his monies were tied up in this project – one that he has been working on for over ten years – and that he didn’t have much discretionary money to play with. As we continued our daily conversations, we found that we had much in common and even though I did not believe a lot of what he said, he was fun and interesting to talk to. [Read more…]
The San Diego City Council arrogantly and knowingly ignored its own laws in supporting the planned Balboa Park renovation.
Last week Judge Timothy Taylor ruled that the proposed Balboa Park redevelopment plan put forward by the Irwin Jacobs sponsored Plaza de Panama Committee violated city law and could not move forward. The controversial plan to remove parking and vehicular traffic altogether from the Central Mesa of Balboa Park, build the Centennial Bridge that would circumvent the museums around to the south as an offshoot of the historic Cabrillo Bridge, and build a three story paid parking structure to the south of the Organ Pavilion, would have cost a projected $45 million, with $25 million being donated by Dr. Jacobs himself.
The plan was highly suspect from the very beginning, and tensions on both sides ran rather high. Shortly after the City Council voted to approve the plan, I wrote a piece explaining how the plan could very well be found illegal, laying out the several ways that the plan was legally flawed.
Turns out that Judge Taylor agreed, at least in part, reaching “the reluctant conclusion” that in approving the Plaza de Panama plan, the City did in fact violate city law. In order to approve the project, city law clearly states that the City Council must find that there is “no beneficial use” for the property; that without the Jacobs plan, Balboa Park would be useless to the public, the entity for whom the park exists. [Read more…]
The Tweets were flying last night after the associate regional editor for Patch (AOL/Huffpo’s hyperlocal web news outfit) reported on twitter that a “source” told her UT-San Diego publisher Doug Manchester told a group of Republican women that he is “in negotiations” to purchase the Tribune Company.
For San Diegans, this prospective purchase would mean that the Los Angeles Times, long considered a viable source of news for non UT-SD readers, would now be joining Manchester’s media empire.
There’s plenty of reason to be skeptical about this story. I might choose to “negotiate” for a new Mercedes Benz; that doesn’t mean I’ll be buying one. And IF Manchester does buy the LA Times (and the other newspapers in the company) it’s just one step closer to the end of the road for dead tree journalism. [Read more…]
As of January 1, 2013, the cap-and-trade portion of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, went into effect. Over 300 major polluters in California will face emissions reductions obligations, and in 2015, the program’s size will double to include transportation fuels and natural gas. These companies were given an allowance as to how much carbon pollution they can dump into the atmosphere. They can buy additional “allowances” from the state which held its first sale November 2012. There are more auctions scheduled.
Eventually companies will be able to trade allowances among themselves. So a company that emits less CO2 than they are allowed to can sell the remaining portion of its allowance to a company that exceeds its allowance. As years go by, the allowances will be reduced thus reaching California’s goal to cut its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. [Read more…]
The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) is in the planning process of a project to improve the bicycle infrastructure in the North Park – Mid-City area. The first Advisory Group meeting for this project was held on January 30th in City Heights and will be followed by additional meetings open to the public to solicit ideas and insights into what this plan should include.
The project is schedule to be in the planning and feedback stage until Fall 2013 at which time a final report will be issued and the results of community input will be taken into consideration by engineering and then construction. The dollars allocated to this project have not yet been determined. (Read: The more people that show up, speak up, and act up the more likely this project will receive attention and funds to make it a reality and not just another plan that finds itself in a waste bin rather than implemented on our streets.) [Read more…]
The Gathering
902 W Washington St San Diego, CA 92103
(619) 260-0400
When my husband was alive, we had season tickets to most of the live drama venues in San Diego. Frequently we went on Wednesday evenings, because there was less of a crowd; sometimes the tickets were less expensive and it was more convenient for us. The problem was that we went right after work and by the time the play was over there was no place to go for a bite to eat except the fast food restaurants or places like “Denny’s.” And then we discovered “The Gathering.” [Read more…]
