At least one California legislator has retaliated with a popgun attack against Nevada’s million dollar ad campaign to lure Golden State businesses to the Silver State. What started as a tongue-in-cheek snarky campaign by Nevada which has inundated the major California markets via cable television advertising the past two weeks is now being greeted by Assemblyman Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana) who told The Los Angeles Times: “It’s one thing to compare states in a factual way, but when...

I live across the street from Chaparral High School in Temecula, Calif., and every school morning and afternoon dozens of yellow school buses roll in and out of the campus’s sprawling parking lot. Temecula is a semi-rural area 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles and its boundaries extend miles in all directions. As most school districts, Temecula offers bus transportation to students living outside a determined radius, usually 1.5 miles, and by law for all handicapped and special education pupils....

If you thought seniors fighting phantom cuts in their Medicare benefits at those town hall meetings were angry, wait until the first of the year when it dawns on all of them they’re getting no cost of living increase for the next two years. In fact, six million of Social Security’s 50 million recipients will suffer a pay cut and all will pay more for drugs. I say “phantom” cuts because all of the health reform proposals in Congress are no where near being enacted into law....

Believe me when I tell you how hard I gritted my teeth and refrained from commenting on the clucking chatter of First Lady Michelle Obama stepping off Air Force One wearing short shorts in 108-degree temperature on a visit to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. “Smart, lady,” I say to myself. “Very practical.” But, nooo. Her critics among the fashion police piously complained she was showing too much leg for a First Lady. Her fans — myself included but who, for one, remained...

One of the great things working for newspapers for so many years is the corrections we needed to print. Some editors were more sensitive to the process than others. A few were impervious to the point of neglecting their responsibility until the filing of a lawsuit. Some may recall the recent plight of The New York Times when its ombudsman corrected a story written by the paper’s TV critic who committed seven errors in the Walter Cronkite obituary. But, the Los Angeles Times, plagued by recent...

I have been a sports fan all my life but concede in the twilight of my existence what once was fiery passion has turned to embers. I’m not really jaded, bored or turned off because of steroids or performance enhancing drugs. No. What bothers me are the superstar athletes who don’t know when to call it quits. I’m undecided whether it’s the money or a severe ego problem. Probably a lot of both. Toss in the possibility they spent only minutes wondering what the devil they would...

When a political party stacks the deck in their favor, the cards they are dealt sometimes fall the wrong way. Such is the case of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) who has sent a letter to Massachusetts elected leaders seeking a change in the 2004 state succession law and allow his Senate seat to be filled rapidly. Kennedy, who liberals love and is affectionately called the Lion of the Senate, is suffering from brain cancer and has missed most of this year’s Senate sessions. The 2004 law was enacted...

I had a dream. It took place in the White House. At the dining table was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sipping a glass of California sherry and nibbling on one of those dainty sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid stared at his plate of fried zucchini and glass of iced tea. Vice President Joe Biden was telling stories of his youth in Scranton while talking with his mouth full of tuna salad. President Barack Obama was nursing a bottle of Perrier between bites of blueberry...

We call her Dr. E., one of the most remarkable women I have had the privilege of knowing almost exclusively through TMV and one delightful hour-long telephone conversation on her nickel. We share numerous ailments brought about by the scavenging effects of diabetes but, if you read her post today, it dwarfs my ailments to a mere pittance. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes in simple terms argues for insurance carriers to drop their nasty policy of denying coverage to patients with pre-existing medical conditions....

I feel connected with Michael Corleone in Godfather III when he was on the brink of ridding himself from Mafia past, they pull him right back. Take today’s news. Please. Item: One of candidate Barack Obama’s agent of change messages was to improve the professionalism of our diplomatic corps. So far, 38 of his first 65 ambassadorial appointments have been political. Among them, Charles H. Rivkin, a Hollywood mogul who contributed $500,000 to Obama’s presidential campaign. Rivkin’s...

Sean Hannity, one of the conservative commentators on Fox News I usually find repugnant, deserves credit for calling national attention to a tragic scenario that is playing out in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley. The nation’s largest bread and fruit basket is experiencing a third year of drought made worse by severe cutbacks in imported water because of federal protection of an endangered species, a tiny minnow-sized fish critical in the ecological life-support system for orcas...

My friend Maurice and me were talking about the high cost of health care and ways Congress is searching to reduce the inflationary spiral dealing in the trillions of dollars neither one of us could truly comprehend. “How about hospitals refusing treatment for illegal Mexican workers?” Maurice asked. “No,” I opined. “The courts have ruled everyone is entitled to emergency trauma services.” “Okay,” Maurice replied. “Deny them all those other freebies....

I wouldn’t go as far as comic/satirist Bill Maher saying the American public is stupid. Rather, a large percentage is gullible as we have seen time and again on the town hall video clips Congressmen are conducting this August recess. Wrote Maher in The Huffington Post: I’m the bad guy for saying it’s a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. Twenty-four percent could not name the country...

A riot among predominately Latino and black inmates Saturday night at a medium security prison in Chino, Calif., injured 250 in which 17 remained in hospitals this morning. All were inmates in the 11-hour melee which razed one dormitory in flames and seriously damaged another six. The riot turns the spotlight on the California penal system which the Los Angeles Times contends is the most overcrowded in the nation. Chino’s California Institution for Men is desegregated in compliance with a U.S....

Several weeks ago, about 425 active and retired employees of The San Diego Union-Tribune were asked in an email newsletter they publish what they would do if they were dictator for a day. Naturally, most of the replies were humorous. Allow me to don the imperial crown for a moment. I would tell the demonstrators disrupting town hall meetings with their elected representatives on the proposed health care reform legislation to shut the you-know-what up and stop acting like unruly Third World agitators....

I wrote my living will yesterday rather than posting my column. It served a myriad of purposes, the least of which gave the gatekeeper a day off fending those slings and arrows from both extremes of the political spectrum picking apart my prose and carrying on about stuff I didn’t write nor intend but rather squabbling among themselves over some intangible twist introduced by gremlins commenting on that post. (Just kidding, folks.) It felt oh so good mocking with in-your-face defiance those...

The propaganda wheels are spinning in overdrive as former President Bill Clinton returns from his North Korea journey with released hostages, journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling. The New York Times in its NEWS report SPECULATED in its FIRST paragraph that Clinton’s successful mission opens the door for fruitful negotiations between the two countries over the nuclear weapons issue. John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations...

I was watching video clips of Republican congressmen criticizing the ever-popular “cars for clunkers” program and it got me thinking. Here is one scenario: If there is anything Americans love most, it’s their cars and bargaining a good deal buying one. The government’s auto stimulus program plays right into that emotional bonding by offering up to $4,500 credit for trading in their old gas-guzzling vehicles which are destroyed forever and replaced by higher-mileage and more...

The August recess by Congress will make or break the healthcare insurance reform plans as advocates on all sides will make their pitch to the people. The battles will be fought primarily in town hall meetings and media commercials. I forecast a major glitch in this scenario. Opponents will stack the town hall meetings and those who should listen most likely will be on vacation. As far as I can tell, the Obama administration must answer this question: How can you cover the estimated 47 million uninsured...

I would suggest must reading of Ian Shapira’s story in today’s Washington Post for those of us who use the Internet to write articles and opinion pieces plundered from reliable properties such as WaPo, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist and others of that ilk. Shapira said his ego was stoked when the snarky cultural website Gawker cherry picked the best lines from his 1,500-word article on “Anne Loehr, who charges her early-Gen-X/Boomer clients anywhere from...

On a recent Thursday company bus ride taking a group of my fellow seniors to shop at local grocery stores, Rosa announced how shamed she was because President Obama was born in Kenya and wanted to kill the elderly to save medical costs. “What gives you that idea?” I asked. “It’s true,” Rosa said. “It’s all over TV and radio. My neighbors John and Mary said the same thing. I’m scared out of my wits where our country is headed.” “They’re...

That sucking sound you may have just heard was the government’s billion dollar “cash for clunkers” slush fund drained in a week as consumers stampede new car malls for once-in-a-lifetime deals. The highly publicized stimulus program has caught the public’s imagination in a fad not seen since the land and gold rush days of the last 150 years. The House acted quickly today in a 316-109 vote to plunk another $2 billion into the program. The Senate is expected to vote on the additional...

Let’s see if I got this right. According to The Washington Post, a $636 billion military spending bill scheduled for vote by the House today or tomorrow contains about $7 billion in new ships, planes, helicopters and armored vehicles Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon does not need. The waste Gates decried as “business as usual” represents about 1% of the House’s version for military spending this coming year. Gates is trying to reform Defense Department procurement...

I normally don’t pay much attention when high-profile conservatives such as Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin label President Obama a racist for sparking the national debate over the black Harvard professor arrested by Cambridge police. That is, until I read a story that made me wonder if there really is a cause and effect between what people as Beck and Malkin propagate and the nuts out there who carry this diatribe to extremes. The story was written by a friend, San Diego Union-Tribune reporter...

I will come right out and say it. No federal funding for abortion procedures should be stipulated in the healthcare legislation now being deliberated in Congress. It pains me to say that because on principle I am pro-choice. The decision should rest with the doctor and the woman, the father, perhaps the pastor and definitely not the government. I realize this position is contradictory because it penalizes women who cannot afford abortion. Basically, I’m saying let’s keep the status quo...