Wednesday, April 02, 2008

San Diego Flavors

Updated: Apr 2, 8:30am (below)

In one of the bluest of states, San Diego County has not given its vote to a Democrat for president since 1992 and indications are that it may not do so this year. You thought all of Southern California was a seething cauldron of liberals, didn't you? Come on, admit it.

We've had 3 car-to-car shootings in the last 12 days, attributed to "road rage" and resulting in three deaths. A friend of mine, who has since moved to the rural East Coast, used to say that road rage should be made legal; that doing so would solve the traffic problem and the population crisis at the same time. We may not need to legalize it.

The three incidents did not include a shooting by an off-duty police officer, also attributed to road rage of some sort although it happened in a parking lot. The woman who, along with her eight-year-old son, got shot was tested for drugs and alcohol while the officer was not. She had a former DUI and was driving without a license, but the officer could not know that because neither of them had gotten out of their cars. The police will not allow the officer to speak and is not speaking for him, and the woman does not remember what happened prior to the shooting.

The wheels are coming off in Iraq, but the lead story on the San Diego Union-Tribune front page is about beer prices at the Padres ballpark. Up again this year, $9.50 for a 20oz glass. They generate $846 in sales on a keg that costs $76, which is pretty good profit. The Iraq news was on the last page of the first section. San Diego has its priorities, you know.

But it's consistent with MSNBC News, as Countdown included stories about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise and endless discussion about which actor was narrating McCain's latest campaign commercial and who is leading in which poll. The word "Iraq" was never mentioned, even in passing.

San Diego used more water in 2007 than any previous year, so the City is taking bold action. They are launching a bigger-than-ever public relations campaign to urge people to use less water. No mention is made of the City itself actually using less water at its own facilities.

At the same time the City Council is applauding the builders who are proposing developments of more than 200,000 new residential units in an area that is already filled with homes that are unsold and being foreclosed upon, streets that are clogged with traffic, and water and sewer systems that are breaking down due to old age and overuse.

So the people who are already here need to use less water because we are running out of water, but by all means let's bring in hundreds of thousands of new people to use the water we don't have. Good plan.

But we have great beaches and awesome weather.

Update: Apr 2, 8:30am
From a commenter at Media Matters regarding the crowd booing President Bush when he threw out the "first pitch" at the Washington Nationals game,
Probably the only ballpark where Bush would encounter any level of cheering (at least no booing) is San Diego.

Back to reminding myself about our beaches and weather.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous9:17 PM

    methinks you are being sarcastic... with good reason I might add.

    ReplyDelete