San Onofre, RIP (no more nukes)

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"No news is good news" went right out the window last Friday. San Onofre's nuclear power plant has announced it will close permanently.

After failed and costly equipment swaps and steam generator failures, So Cal Edison threw in the towel. A half billion in unpaid bills is its legacy.Read more »

A map of SF's wealth -- and poverty

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There's a cool interactive map that gives you a visual picture of wealth and poverty in San Francisco. Check it out here. Just type in "San Francisco, CA" and click "income."Read more »

Save the white lion: Author on a quest to re-wild rare kitties

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WE DO NOT EAT THE KITTIES. I mean, some people do/would be excited to do so, given the meat-lust stirred up by the recent appearance of lion meat skewers on the menu at a Burlingame restaurant. But not us, not meow, not ever. 

Let's instead focus on the arrival in the Bay Area of a woman famed for her work rescuing the technically-extinct white lion. Linda Tucker, take the bad taste out of our bewhiskered mouths, will you? Read more »

Democratic Party chair signs on with Realtors

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Gee, which is worse: Having the chair of the local Democratic Party working for Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which blows up neighborhoods, or for the San Francisco Board of Realtors, which pushes anti-tenant legislation and whose members profit from gentrification and evictions?Read more »

The "L" word

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Friend of mine sent me a great piece from the (I hope this isn't verboten) SFGate about the gentrification of South Boston, the section of Boston once ruled by the iron fist of Jim "Whitey" Bulger. Landmarks that were once the alleged mobster's HQ's now turned wineries, the death of the local Irish pub, all Read more »

Solomon: Historic challenge to support the moral actions of Edward Snowden

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Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”

In Washington, where the state of war and the surveillance state are one and the same, top officials have begun to call for Edward Snowden’s head. His moral action of whistleblowing -- a clarion call for democracy -- now awaits our responses.

After nearly 12 years of the “war on terror,” the revelations of recent days are a tremendous challenge to the established order: nonstop warfare, intensifying secrecy and dominant power that equate safe governance with Orwellian surveillance.

In the highest places, there is more than a wisp of panic in rarefied air. It’s not just the National Security Agency that stands exposed; it’s the repressive arrogance perched on the pyramid of power. Read more »

City College overseers bar most speakers from meeting

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The Accrediting Commission of Community and Junior Colleges has the power to close City College of San Francisco, and students and faculty in line at the San Francisco Airport Marriott June 7 were there to hear about the fate of their school.

But at the only public meeting available to meet with City College’s accreditors in more than seven months, some 30 people were barred from entry.

The doors were were shut, police said, because there were only about 20 seats available.Read more »

Light bulbs, birth defects and sin

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Try though I may, I cannot understand the American right in 2013.

Thumbing through the news this morning, I came across two stories that are absolutely mind-boggling. The first is a sad commentary on the kind of mindset that is damaging and pervasive to and among the people that have it. The second is simply incredible.Read more »

Pride weekend in LA

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It appears that I have pissed off more than a few people as per my opinions on the issue of "Pride Weekend." To clarify then:

 Anyone anywhere that regards gay, lesbian, transgendered or bisexual people as second class citizens in any way is an idiot than can fuck off this page immediately. I have no use for you--any relationship I can be in legally, so can everyone. That this is even an issue is asinine.Read more »

Arturo Vega, RIP

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Arturo Vega, creative designer and lights operator for the de facto inventors of punk rock the Ramones, died this morning. He was 65.Read more »