December 2024

Escondido December 26, 2024

Escondido’s 2025 Cosmic Compass: A year of awakening and expansion is written in the friggin’ stars, believe it.

May the stars guide you, Escondido. Cosmic Affirmation for Escondido 2025: “With harmony as my guide and the stars as my compass, I rise from the Hidden Valley to shine with brilliance and balance.”Escondido, the universe weaves your path with the threads of change, opportunity, and renewal. As you walk through 2025, remember that your greatest strength lies in your ability to unify: past with…

Immigration, Opinion December 26, 2024

Stephen Miller’s fear factory targets California leaders

Stephen Miller, our self-appointed prophet of jurisprudence, has descended once more from his ivory tower, pen in hand, to dispatch 249 missives of divine judgment to the unwashed, lawless hordes of California and beyond. These epistles, dripping with righteous indignation and the ink of a bureaucracy in heat, are not merely letters—they are commandments, etched in the stone of Miller’s towering ego. Each one a…

Animals and pets, Education December 25, 2024

USD prof says your calamari once was sentient creature

We named him Squirt – not because he was the smallest of the 16 cuttlefish in the pool, but because anyone with the audacity to scoop him into a separate tank to study him was likely to get soaked. Squirt had notoriously accurate aim. As a comparative psychologist, I’m used to assaults from my experimental subjects. I’ve been stung by bees, pinched by crayfish and…

Agriculture, Community, History December 25, 2024

Think The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry died in the 19th Century? Don’t tell Ramona.

For many a year, Karen Carlson, a steadfast farmer and rancher in the rolling hills of Ramona, has tilled the soil and tended her groves with an unyielding spirit. Now, she’s setting her sights on something larger than her own five-acre spread. With a heart as big as the valley itself, she’s rallying to breathe new life into the California State Grange and rekindle the…

Blogs, Columns/Blogs, Health, Opinion, San Marcos December 23, 2024

Riehl World’s Christmas gift — an ET brain

Today I agreed to donate my brain to medical science. (I’ll pause here to allow regular readers of my published opinion pieces to stop laughing.) Twenty-two years ago, after an afternoon of heavy yard work, I reached for a cold beer and sat down to rest. As I brought the bottle up to my mouth I couldn’t keep my hand from shaking. I had to…

Transportation, Travel, Weather December 22, 2024

You ain’t going nowhere as fog bedevils SD Int. Airport

The fog, thick and unrelenting, crept from the coast to the valleys early Saturday morning, clinging to the ground like a conspiracy no one could escape. Visibility dropped to a quarter mile or less, stranding thousands of would-be flyers at San Diego International Airport, their plans grounded by a phenomenon as indifferent as it was inevitable. The dense fog advisory was supposed to lift by…

Editorial, Immigration, Public Policy December 19, 2024

Sanctuary: Defending faith and humanity against fear

The sun had barely risen, casting a pale, hesitant light over a land that seemed unsure of itself, when the news came down like a hammer on an old anvil. The announcement wasn’t made with fanfare, nor with the solemnity one might expect from something so grave. No, it was delivered with the cold efficiency of machinery, as if humanity were an afterthought in the…

Transportation, Travel December 19, 2024

Holiday travel tips; pack some patience, plan ahead

Well, folks, the holidays are upon us, and that means two things for Southern Californians: traffic jams and more traffic jams. Now, you might think the airports would be the worst of it, but no, sir, most of y’all will be playing bumper cars on the freeways. A record-breaking 8.7 million of you are set to hit the road over the next 12 days. And…

Courts/Law, Police, Police/Fire December 18, 2024

Welcome to a sometimes continuing series covering a never-ending story, people behaving badly, allegedly

Well, lawdy, lawdy, lawdy Miss Clawdy; hear ye, feel ye, this way comes some of the worst of the worst in a December to disremember in the wonderfully wanky world of People Behaving Badly: Get it over with already edition. Lot of missing people not appearing well Monday morning. Dec. 9, San Diego. 5:58 a.m. A call comes in about a body washed ashore near…

Entertainment/Arts, Media December 17, 2024

25 iconic films from ‘Star Trek’ to ‘Texas Chainsaw’ and Cheech to Chong added to National Film Registry

Twenty-five films have been selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2024 due to their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today. The new selections date back nearly 130 years and include a diverse group of films, filmmakers and Hollywood landmarks. The selections span from a silent film created to entice…