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http://www.zennie62.com -- Rush Limbaugh's idiological rants are out of touch with an economic reality that will keep The Democrats in power for at least the next 10 years. The reason is the economy itself and the need for government investment. Between 1960 and 1999 the U.S. Economy added 20 million new jobs every 10 years, but from 1999 to today, only about 4.7 million new jobs. What happened to the 15 million jobs? They went overseas to countries like India, France, and north to Canada. And with jobs goes wealth. It's a key reason America's now the 3 largest exporter whereas we were number one for years, until 2004. We're now behind Germany and China. All of that wealth lost has resulted in wrecked credit over time. We have to have jobs to afford our mortgages and our population did not stop growing through this period. But what happened was that we started to lose jobs from the remaining stock of them. Remember, we have millions of people that aren't e...

More at Oakland Tribune : “OAKLAND — The family of Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old man shot and killed by a BART police officer early New Year's Day, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit for $50 million against BART in federal court Monday. The shooting prompted massive public outcry and protest in Oakland, and Johannes Mehserle, the BART officer who resigned in January rather than submit to questioning in BART's investigation of the shooting, is charged with murder in the incident. "This is the most egregious police shooting case that I've been involved in," said John Burris, the attorney representing Grant's family who has been involved numerous high-profile police-misconduct cases. Burris filed a $25 million tort claim against BART and Mehserle in January. He said he increased the dollar amount after learning more about what happened before and after the shooting, as well as learning more about the officers who were at the scene and about Grant and his family.” -- A...

I attended a great launch party of a new and innovative magazine called BARE. It was started by UC Berkeley student Doreen Bloch and captures the Bekeley fashion style, but also taps into the lucrative college student fashion scene.

Dave from Spot.us and I finally met, totally by accident, at a meeting regarding the permits for the Bay To Breakers race. You know, that infamous meeting where protesters came to express their frustrations with the race organizer because the race people wanted to officially ban public urination and drunkeness, which I already thought was illegal. Whatever. My take I gave Dave was I expressed concern over how Oakland has become racially fragmented in a way I've not seen in a while. Perhaps then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown considered it noble to take on the Black Power structure as he said he did, but I considered the act racist. Sorry I did. A lot of people of various backgrounds were excited to have Ron Dellums as Mayor, but he's failed to live up to the promise his own legacy established. Now we have an Oakland that's the home of a kind of "downer mentality" that is in the very DNA of the culture. There are places too where Oakland is almost all White and n...

I came up -- within a minute in the shower -- a song about how I stopped using my American Express Gold Card and distributed it to various outlets. It's on iReport and CNN used it to my surprise! So for those who want to sing the Gold Card song, the video and lyrics and reasons for them are here! read more | digg story

I attended my first meeting of the Sports and Entertainment Task Force last Thursday, and which was its second meeting.  It appears that we're on track to produce a document by the April deadline, and I don't write this because I'm on the task force.  I do want this thing to work, and by that I mean we have to create a set of recommendations for the Mayor that's workable and doable.  But I must explain many of the task force members fear the "politicians" will not do anything.  More on that in a bit. This is where we are:  the first meeting was used to explain what the task force is, and what the Mayor expects to see.  We're a collection of concerned citizens who represent various concerns and backgrounds, from restaurant owners, to Internet business owners (me), to activists like Steve Lowe, and journalists like Chris De Benedetti, who's the chairman, to the Mayor's office, who has a staffer that records the action.  What the Mayor expects to s...

From the AP: Surveillance video released in an assault case against a King County, Wash. sheriff's deputy shows him kicking a young girl, slamming her to the jail cell floor and striking her repeatedly. The deputy has pleaded not guilty in case This is racist and terrible. She's a 15-year old girl. Deputy Paul Schene apparently claimed she kicked a shoe but the tape does not show that. Another "Oscar Grant" example of a cop acting out of racist intent. We must punish officers who behave this way with jail time of their own. She is defenseless and did nothing wrong.