Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.


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Is Team O tone-deaf or do they just not care?

President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is considering moving the final day of the Democratic National Convention to Bank of America Stadium to sell more skyboxes to wealthy donors, three Democrats involved in the fundraising told Bloomberg News.

The 74,000-seat home of the Carolina Panthers also would have room for the convention to sell more floor passes close to the stage. Planners are struggling to meet a $36.6 million fundraising goal, according to the Democrats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter.

Hey, Occupy, that is your guy, right?







Progressive and very much selective totalitarianism neatly summed up in a smoking ordinance in, where else, Marin County.

Marin's war on smoking was blunted Tuesday as a measure cracking down on tobacco and other "weed" was sent back for revision to make clear the crackdown does not include marijuana.

Although supervisors were in agreement with the policy when county staff last month asserted an ordinance outlawing smoking in unincorporated-area apartments included marijuana and other herbs as well as tobacco, the county board Tuesday abruptly called for revisions making clear tobacco was the only weed at issue.

The move came at the urging of Supervisor Kate Sears, who called for changes in ordinance language defining smoking as puffing "tobacco, weed, spices, herbal or other plant life" to make clear only tobacco products were involved.

Distraction of the week:

A lot has been said over the last two days about the White House’s now-infamous “Alice in Wonderland” Halloween party from 2009. It was an extravagant affair featuring actor Johnny Depp and filmmaker Tim Burton in costume. Conservatives have panned the president for having such a party during economic turmoil, and generally keeping it hush-hush. Liberals (and even some conservatives) have defended the president, either saying the party was mentioned to some degree, or that the president‘s Halloween plans shouldn’t be national news.

Anything, anything to avert eyes from the train wreck.






Business leaders and CEOs Un-Occupy a White House jobs conference presser:

Dozens of journalists packed into the East Room at the White House today for the president's remarks on "in-sourcing," at least 60 of them lining the press risers and walls.

But what many couldn't see in press coverage of the event — held with roughly 120 executives to discuss bringing jobs back to America from overseas — were the dozens of empty seats in the audience.

At one point during Obama's speech, Vice President Joe Biden strolled to the empty section and sat in a row by himself, listening.

A White House spokeswoman, asked about the 49 empty chairs, said some invitees didn't show up.

"Like with many of these events here at the White House, we invited representatives from outside groups, businesses and community leaders involved in this issue to attend, and unfortunately some folks invited were not able to attend at the last minute," spokeswoman Amy Brundage said.

West Wing events typically are carefully planned and staged, and this one seemed more staged for the media than the guests who ostensibly were invited to discuss with the president ways to create more jobs in the United States.

The job creators of this country aren't stupid... nor are they stooges. Who wants to be played as a stage craft prop for an administration that has demonstrated they really don't give a damn what you have to say about job creation?





And you were just waiting for us to get around to the Marines piss on dead Taliban weren't you?

You've seen the video so we are not even going to post it.

Here's B-Daddy on the incident and resulting kerkuffle:

Now I understand that it is not in the political interests of the United States for our Marines to act in this fashion. To some extent, as Clausewitz famously pointed out, war is politics carried out by other means. To the extent that this allows our enemies to frame the conflict as a religious one, these actions are detrimental to the interests of the United States. But we should leave it at that, and reserve our moral outrage for true acts of oppression.

Here's Iraqi war veteran Allen West (R-FL):

"I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah. All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

"The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

We have the most highly-trained, effective and professional fighting force on the planet. We expect better from our soldiers, sailors and Marines. Having said that, putting rifles into the hands of 20-year olds, sending them off to a foreign land and asking them to take out an enemy that they cannot tell from the rest of the civilian population that they are there to protect is going to produce some entirely inevitable results.

No greater gulf exists between the sentiments of the political class and the country class than is demonstrated by incidents like this.

Stay off his ass and pray for his safe return instead.

And they prayed to their secular gods but those gods did not answer...

Via KT on the global progressive crack-up:

Above all, our citizens were betrayed by the sense of security that had been cultivated for decades -- that they need not worry, that when the time came, the state would come to the rescue. Even as we discovered repeatedly that this was an illusion -- that the state was either incompetent or cruel or indifferent -- we maintained the hope that some kind god would protect us. Now we fear everything: that neither our health system, nor our pensions, nor our deposits are safe. The old social contract does not apply. On the issue of pensions alone, we see that those who paid dutifully all their lives are those who are suffering the greatest losses.

It's official: San Diego is recognized as a beer-cation destination. Checking in at No. 14 on The New York Times' top 45 vacation destinations.

Even in times of tight budgets, finely crafted beer remains a relatively approachable luxury, and few American regions have more brewing momentum than San Diego County. Maybe it’s time, then, to think about building a beer safari in the land of sunshine, fish tacos and hopped-up American IPAs. Long established craft breweries like Karl Strauss Brewing Company and the cheeky Stone Brewing Company have mentored brewmasters and created demand for some seriously offbeat ales.

The area has long been a hotbed of garage-based hobbyists, so it’s no surprise that the region also has a tradition of dedicated home brewing. The result is a cluster of small breweries, like the tiny but soon-to-expand Hess Brewing.

And there are numerous opportunities for rigorous but never dour beer tastings, at staggeringly comprehensive shops like Bottlecraft Beer Shop & Tasting Room and Pizza Port Bottle Shop, as well as beer-obsessed taverns like Hamilton’s and O’Brien’s and restaurants like Local Habit. Those looking for full immersion can pack a stein for the fourth annual San Diego Beer Week in November.

We give America's paper of record endless yet much deserved grief but was that not an excellent summation of our scene here in San Diego?








OK, gang. That's a wrap. We'll be back sometime tomorrow to chronicle and help make sense of the days of our lives here in the United States of America.

Pax.