San Diego Free Press

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First Cuppa Coffee – April 11, 2012: San Diego Drag Queens and Fat Cats Edition

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The University of San Diego has a real-life controversy on its hands… It’s not like the fake manufactured crises that its well-heeled financial backers like to generate… In better times they call them debates, institutes or forums, and spend copious amounts of cash on them hoping that the great policy conclusions that emerge will reflect positively on the University. This time around USD’s marvelously wealthy groupies are throwing cash at stopping something from happening at the school.

It seems as though USD Pride, a student organization, has organized a Drag Show on campus, wherein boys will dress up as girls and vice versa. It started out as a bit of harmless fun designed to heighten awareness, yada, yada, yada. Now thanks to an article on the California Catholic Daily website (owned by the Reader’s Jim Holman), the angry alumni are circling the wagons, passing out petitions and yearning for the good old days when men were men except when they dressed up as women to sneak into the San Diego College for Women (true fact). The minions at the Daily website are screaming about “Perversion at its highest level” and saying mean things like “USD stands for Undeniable Satanic Destruction”. The drag show will take place at the University Center, Forums B/C. 7 – 9 p.m. There is no cover charge.
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First Cuppa Coffee – April 10, 2012: All GOP Stars Edition

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Why it seems like it was just yesterday that we here at ‘Cuppa” were whining about how the excitement over Income Tax Terrorism was part of the Tea Party/GOP plot to provide the American public with yet another reason to hate President Obama. Oh, yeah, it was yesterday. Well never mind yesterday, because today Tax Paying is Patriotic…and it makes El Presidente look like a sure thing in the upcoming elections.

A tax time hangover… Some months ago candidate Willard Romney told South Carolina voters that he wouldn’t release his tax returns out of fear the Obama campaign would pick them apart. GOP voters in that state weren’t happy with his explanation and promptly dealt him a devastating primary loss. Romney quickly released his 2010 return and 2011 estimated taxes. Now it appears that ol’ Willard was right. The Obama campaign has demanded that Romney release an additional 23 years of tax returns (since that’s what he coughed up to Sen. McCain back when Romney was vetted for consideration as a Vice Presidential candidate.). And they want to know more, more and more. More about his Swiss Bank account. More about his Cayman Islands investment fund. And more about his 13.9 percent tax   [Read more…]

SeaWorld Had Banner Year With Record Earnings in 2011 But Paid No Taxes

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Editor: If you’re asking yourself how could SeaWorld have a banner year in 2011 with record earnings for the company, and yet pay not one nickle in taxes, you’re on the right track. Doug Porter’s First Cuppa this morning turned us on to what article most newspapers in this country ran about the SeaWorld financial saga, which is reposted below. The U-T San Diego ran a similar but different article. Can you find the differences?

For SeaWorld, record earnings and no income tax

McClatchy/Tribune / Originally published April 4, 2012

ORLANDO, Fla. _ SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment had a banner year in 2011. Attendance and guest spending rose across its U.S. theme parks. Earnings set a company record.

But SeaWorld won’t have to pay a dime in federal income tax. It will not have to pay any Florida corporate income tax, either.

Thanks to big tax deductions for capital investment and interest payments, SeaWorld’s record 2011 will actually go down as a loss for tax purposes.   [Read more…]

The Crowd at the Ball Game

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Having emerged from the season opening series against the hated Dodgers with no beer or blood stains on my jersey, I thought a few observations on the nature of watching baseball were in order as we amble toward the sweet days of summer, win or lose.

In William Carlos Williams’s fine poem “The Crowd at the Ball Game” he notes the beauty, love, and menace of the crowd:

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly
by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them —
all the exciting detail
of the chase
and the escape, the error
the flash of genius —
all to no end save beauty
the eternal –

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful
for this
to be warned against
saluted and defied —
It is alive, venomous
it smiles grimly
its words cut —
The flashy female with
her mother, gets it —
The Jew gets it straight –
it is deadly, terrifying —

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution   [Read more…]

First Cuppa Coffee – Monday, April 9, 2012: Get Smart Edition

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It’s Tax Time… One of the mainstays of contemporary Republican legends has to do with the terror of tax day. To hear them tell it—aided by the mainstream media more interested in sensational headlines than facts—millions of Americans are traumatized annually during April by the prospect of having to file their income taxes. Never mind the 50% of taxpayers that either receive refunds or owe nothing. Never mind that over 70% of all taxpayers file on-line these days. It’s Tax Terror Time! And that means it’s the season for the annual Tea Party Tax Protests, which didn’t start until taxes went down a bit and we had a Democrat in the White House who happened to be Black.

I’m sure we won’t see any Tea Party types out in front of SeaWorld this month protesting the big corporate fat cats who spend April worrying that the public will find out how they’ve managed to acquire all those government services for free. Like SeaWorld, for instance, with $380 million in earnings and ZERO dollars in Federal taxes for 2011. Oh, and for those you who are feeling warm and fuzzy about the fact that our Daily Fishwrap ran a story about SeaWorld’s bad citizenship, consider the fact that other newspapers around the country ran with this story last week.   [Read more…]

Scott Peters’ case for election to Congress comes across as weak kneed

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Former City Council member and current Port Commissioner Scott Peters tries to sell his candidacy, but his argument leaves behind more doubts than assurances.

When our intrepid Editordude asked if I would cover the Ocean Beach Planning Board meeting last Wednesday night and I found out that Scott Peters was coming to speak, I have to admit that I was pretty excited. (Yeah, I know…..I’m pathetic, but whatever.) I really didn’t know much of anything about Peters, and this was my first chance to form some sort of impression of him heading into the June primary.   [Read more…]

First Cuppa Coffee – April 6, 2012: Disgusting Wisdom Edition

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Speaking out against slavery… Come Saturday, the Radical Feminists of San Diego are putting together a mobilization in support of Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) to demand the abolishment of human trafficking, the modern-day form of slavery. The event will start at noon on the southeast corner of 30th and El Cajon Blvd. They’ll march east ending at the south-side bus stop at the intersection of El Cajon Blvd and the Rt 15 on ramp where human rights advocates will speak out human trafficking.

The sneaky feminist plot… Phyllis Schlafly, the happy right wing warrior chiefly known for defeating the Equal Rights Amendment and hating gays (except her gay son) gave an exceptional speech to young military cadets at the Citadel, South Carolina’s boot camp for middle class crackers this week. She passed on some serious wisdom to our future military leaders, like: “Feminists are having a hard time being elected because they essentially are unlikable,” and “Find out if your girlfriend is a feminist before you get too far into it,” she said. “Some of them are pretty. They don’t all look like Bella Abzug.”   [Read more…]

Silencing the Drums – Continued attacks by Balboa Parks and Recreation threaten World Beat Center

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San Diego’s best known cultural center with a history of celebrating the cultural diversity of the region and the people who work there have become the targets of discrimination.

The World Beat Center needs our support. This prized venue of music, art, and creativity is at the center of San Diego’s Black, Hispanic, and Native American cultures. Located on the fringe of Balboa Park, the World Beat Center (WBC) is under increasing attack that has been described as systematic, “institutionalized racism”.   [Read more…]

Today I Washed Feet – Maundy Thursday in Ocean Beach

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The morning grey still hung over OB as I parked my car up the street from the Episcopal Center Church on Sunset Cliffs Blvd. It was my first day of several much needed weeks off and I had made the mistake of responding to the Editordude’s request an hour earlier to cover the Maundy Thursday for the Needy at the Center. Groggily, as I walked down the street, I saw several familiar faces reclined on the grass outside the sanctuary, and the end of a line of folk stretching out to the street.

Ooops, I forgot my audience… what is Maundy Thursday you ask?

Come inside for the photo gallery…   [Read more…]

Ocean Beach Planning Board Elects Officers for New Term

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Port Commissioner and candidate for Congress Scott Peters shares news about plans for San Diego Embarcadero, offers warning about UT San Diego stadium proposal for marine terminal.

On March 13th, the OB Planning Board held its annual election to select half of its membership. A new term brought new leadership—and a few new faces—to the Ocean Beach Planning board.

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Friday press conference at San Onofre Nuclear Plant in response to “visit” by NRC Chairman

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Apparently, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, is coming to check out the troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station tomorrow, Friday, April 6th.

In response, leaders of local community groups are holding a press conference near the facility on Friday, April 6th at 10am. The location of the press conference will be near the San Onofre State Beach guard shack on Beach Club Road.

These activists are asking supporters to join them   [Read more…]

First Cuppa Coffee – April 5th, 2012: Spring Bling Edition

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Part Deux, Kony 2012 hits the interwebs… Invisible Children, the makers of Kony2012, the video about a Ugandan tyrant that took the internet by storm just a few weeks ago were all set to release “Part 2” of their campaign earlier this week. But then it was mysteriously delayed until today. It’s out there now in the interwebs, and early reviews are saying that it is mostly an attempt to answer criticisms of the first video. Complaints about the original video included the assertion that Kony 2012 was too American-centric, that the group spends too little money directly on the people it intends to help, and that it oversimplified the 26-year-old conflict involving Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Noticeably missing in part two is the voice of the organization’s cofounder, Jason Russell, who was diagnosed with brief psychosis last month after witnesses saw him pacing naked on a sidewalk in a San Diego neighborhood, screaming incoherently and banging his fists on the pavement.

But wait! There’s more! Reports out of Washington DC are now painting a picture of Invisible Children that ties them financially and politically to the mysterious politico-evangelist group called The Fellowship (aka, the Family) which, among other things, has been credited with inspiring and providing “technical support” for Uganda’s internationally-denounced Anti Homosexuality Bill, also dubbed the “kill the gays” bill.   [Read more…]

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