It's ugly out there. Word in the newsroom is that Julian, a really nice little town, is in imminent danger of being wiped out by the blaze. Palomar Mountain is also being evacuated. Though the fire is apparently turning away from Escondido, the smoke there today was worse than yesterday. As I drove down from […]
As reported by the local ABC affiliate: Cedar fire: 206,664 acres burned Paradise fire: 30,000 acres burned Otay fire: 45,291 acres burned 881 homes destroyed (San Diego County only) 12 deaths The firefighting cost has been estimated at about $100 million and the damage is in the billions of dollars.
I can't get too close -- though if I wanted to I'm sure I could use my Union-Tribune ID to bluff my way past the police lines -- but the Paradise Fire here in the Escondido area is still going strong. The Wild Animal Park has been closed and the California Condor exhibit has been […]
But all the local stations have gone off the aire for the night -- I guess that's a good sign. Check out the San Diego Union-Tribune Web site, it's got a ton of good information. The numbers at this time: At least 11 dead 250,000 acres burned in Southern California 800+ homes destroyed in So. […]
Forget Sunday football. The local TV stations are showing football -- at times -- in a small picture-in-picture. At the time of this writing: 10 12 people dead 4 separate fires 100+ 250+ structures destroyed I-15 is closed Highway 52 is closed from I-15 to Route 125 Several electricity transmission lines down 800+ firefighters fighting […]
At 8 p.m. the polls here in California closed. The networks took a deep breath, and they all immediately made their calls. Gray Davis out. Arnold Schwarzenegger in. Prop. 54 down. The first set of absentee ballot returns has Davis being recalled 63.4 percent to 36.6 percent and Schwarzenegger with a majority of the tally. […]
The Sacramento Bee's Dan Walters column today reports on the flip side of the allegedly Republican-supported military-industrial complex: the enviornmental-corporate complex. In contemporary California, we should be equally concerned about the rising political power of what one might term an "environmental-corporate complex," whose game works something like this: A corporation acquires land, proposes development and […]
I was flipping through some of the excerpts from former President Ronald Reagan's letters in TIme magazine, and this one made me laugh out loud: Andy Smith, a seventh-grader in Irmo, S.C., wrote the President in 1984, "Today my mother declared my bedroom a disaster area. I would like to request federal funds to hire […]
An article in today's San Diego Union-Tribune recounts some gross stupidity by the immigration service that should result in some firings. In short, the wife of a Navy sailor, and her 8 1/2-month-old American daughter, was detained for several days after returning from her native Australia. "They didn't listen," she said, during a telephone interview […]
Just finished listening to all four hours of legal arguments before the Supreme Court on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. It's enough to put one to sleep. In fact, I listened to the first two hours last night before drifting off to sleep, then the remaining two hours this morning. The arguments are difficult […]