Next weekend, April 5, there will be protests in 600+ locations in the US, with really big ones in Washington DC and London. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of our neighbors to the north choose to exercise their right to free speech in Canadian cities. These won’t be your ordinary protests. There are thousands of reasons to raise our voices. Everybody participating will own…
Big Tepee? Do you know the way, Jose’? Go around Escondido. Ask anyone about the Big Tepee. Since we can’t bet dollars against donuts anymore — some donuts cost much more than a dollar — let’s wager dollars against Chargers super bowl appearances that people asked that question will believe you should go to a big tepee of the medical kind. There’s an answer to…
Nobody, especially Trump, knows it yet. His fate, his downfall, and his doom is, as we speak, being set in stone. And considering the roll he is on, few will believe what I am writing here. Just as well. Best not to believe or repeat what I’m telling you. Fortunately, Trump is so full of himself and too stupid to see what he is doing…
Elon Musk’s role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, is on the surface a dramatic effort to overhaul the inefficiencies of federal bureaucracy. But beneath the rhetoric of cost-cutting and regulatory streamlining lies a troubling scenario. Musk has been appointed what is called a “special government employee” in charge of the White House office formerly known as the…
The Musk/Trump administration is running into roadblocks in the courts and getting pummeled in public opinion polls. Much of legacy media has succumbed to their madness and we’re seeing more instances of gorilla dust* being kicked up. (* A term popularized by Ross Perot referencing the tactic of male gorillas kicking up dust to confuse challengers.) While many seemingly tactical actions are being called out,…
Fifteen years ago this week the Witch Creek Fire devastated Escondido, Rancho Santa Fe and North County San Diego. This is part of my first-hand coverage done as editor of the Rancho Santa Fe Record. I won the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s first place prize for local news coverage for this, and the other 26 stories, numerous photos, and overall coverage I produced during, and…
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…
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…
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…
I am a Facebook voyeur, and I have been guilty of shameless schadenfreude. Several years ago, I got a friend request from a man I didn’t know, but we had friends in common, so I accepted. All I knew is that he was a widower in his late 70s. He sent me a nice message. But after a few months of seeing his posts, I…