Category: History

‘It’s Not the Time to Panic; It’s the Time to Get Ready’

By Mona Charen / The Bulwark – Reader Supported News / September 4, 2026

THE SUPREME COURT GAVE US A START this week with what looked, at first glance, like a win for Donald Trump’s efforts to suppress mail-in ballots. But, as Andrew Egger explained, that isn’t quite what happened. In broad outline, the Court stayed a lower court injunction while the legality of Trump’s attempted interference will be decided later. It was a temporary procedural win for Trump, but not a permission slip.

Not yet, anyway. After the 2024 immunity ruling, you’d be ill advised to assume anything about this Court. Until three years ago, it was axiomatic that the president was not above the law. The Roberts Court undermined that key principle. And here too, it seems an open-and-shut case that the Constitution grants power over elections to Congress and the states, not to the executive branch. But we’ll see.

Still, the Court’s little summer fright is a good reminder that early voting will begin in some places in as little as four weeks, and while the polls and projections look good for Democrats, this is not an ordinary election year. Trump is weakened and flailing, yes, but he remains determined to prevent a free and fair election in November if he possibly can. And he does not lack for lackeys.

The Supreme Court touched on just one of his efforts to subvert the election: his executive order directing the Postal Service to work with states to determine whether voters requesting mail-in ballots were citizens.

There have been other below-the-radar efforts to subvert election security.

From 10News – CNS / September

Homes in Ocean Beach and Loma Portal Eligible

The Federal Aviation Administration Tuesday, September 1, awarded the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority $15.3 million for its Quieter Home Program to provide sound insulation for around 400 homes in the airport’s flight path.

The funding comes from the FAA’s Airport Improvement Program centered on infrastructure projects.

“We are grateful to receive this funding for our Quieter Home Program,” said Atif Saeed, president and CEO of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. “We appreciate the unwavering support from Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, Congressman Scott Peters, and the entire San Diego congressional delegation. This funding will help us work with our neighboring communities and provide sound insulation treatment to reduce noise inside eligible homes located around the airport.”

By Tanja Kropf / Explore Clairemont / Sept. 2, 2026

Linda Vista has always been a scrappy neighborhood, fighting to avoid being overlooked, with fiercely loyal residents leading the charge to protect their home turf. One of Linda Vista’s earliest scrappy residents was a woman who fought the pending evictions of Linda Vista’s public housing residents and led the way for them to become proud homeowners instead.

[Please go to original for all the great links.]

A neighborhood of small homes and big dreams
Besides being a Linda Vista resident, Margaret Hottell was the editor and founder of the local newspaper, the Linda Vista Reflector. In 1952, she used it as the platform for her movement to keep her neighbors, who were military and defense workers, in the homes they’d lived in for a decade. The Defense Housing Act of 1951 had recently passed, allowing the enforcement of certain guidelines that were squeezing residents like the Hottells out of their homes.

Housing in Linda Vista was erected at a fever pace in the early 1940s. Despite the City of San Diego’s objections, the federal government pushed forward, building thousands of homes as World War II raged on. San Diego’s population had exploded 67% from 1939 to 1945, and military families and employees of local defense companies desperately needed homes. The federal government chose Linda Vista because the land was cheap, vacant, and easy to acquire. The Linda Vista Housing Project became the largest low-income defense housing project in the world.

By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag

In 1925, a trip through Point Loma could include a stop at the Point Loma Service Station on Rosecrans Street, where motorists could get their automobiles serviced while traveling on one of the peninsula’s main roads.

A photograph from that year, preserved by the San Diego History Center, shows two men working on an automobile outside the station. Their names aren’t recorded, but the image captures a time when the automobile was changing the way San Diegans traveled — and creating an entirely new type of neighborhood business.

Service stations were becoming familiar sights during the 1920s as automobile ownership expanded. Gasoline, repairs, and maintenance were no longer occasional needs for a small number of motorists. They were becoming part of everyday life.

Point Loma was well positioned for that transition. Rosecrans Street connected the peninsula with the rest of San Diego, making it an important route for motorists heading toward Point Loma and the military reservation at its western end.

The Point Loma Service Station became part of that automobile landscape.

by Karen Pearlman  / Times of San Diego / Aug. 31, 2026

The California Coastal Commission in mid-August voted unanimously to approve the city of San Diego’s De Anza Natural plan — but with some important changes required to what was passed by the San Diego City Council in May 2024 as the De Anza Natural Amendment to the Mission Bay Park Master Plan.

The plan to “re-wild” DeAnza Cove, a plan discussed by environmentalists and the city as far back as 2015, will eventually convert Campland on the Bay and much of the current Mission Bay RV Resort into wetlands. It will expand habitat in the area from about 70 acres to a little over 260 acres, and relocate some camping spots further inland.

“This is one of the last opportunities the city is ever going to have to really recreate the wetlands that were so characteristic of the Mission Bay area, and frankly the entire coastline,” said San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava.

By JW August

As the current MLB playoff picture reaches the final stretch, I find myself asking AI for help on what I think is a tough question:  Stats on the success rate for Major League umpires when challenged on balls and strikes.

I am particularly sensitive about the quality of umpires coming to San Diego for the Yankees-Padres series.

It was an umpire’s terrible call in a World Series game that favored the Yankees that possibly changed the history of baseball and has tormented many Padre fans since that black day.

It was Tuesday, Oct. 20, 1998.  I would suspect most Padres fans that evening were watching the game on television when the call was made.  It was about 8 p.m Pacific Time.

My AI assistant provided me with the estimated time and explained how it figured out the time of the pitch.

It was the 7th inning, Game 1 of the series, Yankee Stadium. Tie Game. Padres reliever Mark Langston threw a changeup right down the middle.

By Paul Krueger

Barnes Tennis Center executives are willing to renegotiate a lease agreement that pays the city just $50 per month on yearly revenues of more than $7 million.

The controversial lease for city-owned property in Point Loma was signed in 1994. The lease expires in June, 2029, and does not include any periodic increases in the $600 annual payment over the life of the agreement.

Committee member Vivian Moreno said she is “extremely angry” that the city has for decades received such a minuscule share of the Tennis Center’s $7.2 million in revenue. “Any San Diegan would love to have their rent frozen at 1994 levels,” Moreno said.

Committee member Henry Foster was also critical of the agreement.  “If we are writing contracts that aren’t beneficial to the city, shame on us,” Foster said during Wednesday’s meeting. “Quite honestly, this is a mess, and it’s a pattern. And (city) leadership needs to get this problem resolved.”

Details about the lease came to light last week with the release of the City Auditor’s investigation, which was prompted by an call to the city’s fraud hotline.

HMCS Yukon Was Bought by San Diego to Eventually Scuttle for an Artificial Reef

By Team Global / The Economic Times / August 31, 2026

In 2000, the City of San Diego, working with the San Diego Oceans Foundation, acquired and refurbished HMCS Yukon, a decommissioned 366 foot Canadian warship, to scuttle it as an artificial reef about 1.85 miles off Mission Beach. However, there were some issues with the actual sinking of the ship. On July 14, 2000, the ship unexpectedly began to capsize and sank before divers could position it properly, settling on the seafloor at depths ranging from about 60 to 105 feet.

A 366-foot warship sinks prematurely off Mission Beach

After the Yukon was sunk, one pressing concern that arose for researchers was whether an artificial reef such as this one truly contributed to the production of marine life or merely drew fish populations that were already living elsewhere into the vicinity of the reef.

“It’s not a wave you can surf” or see but it will register on tidal instruments

By Anthony Edwards / Yahoo News – San Francisco Chronicle / September 2, 2026 

Sea levels along the California coast are expected to rise by a foot as soon as late September, as El Niño-warmed tropical water pushes a slow-moving wave up the coast of North America.

The swell isn’t something seen crashing at a beach but a planetary-scale process known as a Kelvin wave that is triggered by changes in wind at the equator.

“It’s not a wave you can surf,” said Dillon Amaya, an assistant professor of marine science at North Carolina State University. “You’re not gonna be able to see it from your boat, but our instruments will see it as it passes by, like tide gages.”

The coastally-trapped Kelvin wave, as it’s called, originated along the equator and hit the South America coast before turning north at about 6 mph. It raised water levels about nine to 14 inches (relative to 1993-2025 averages) along the coast of Central America in late August. That surge will hit Cabo in late September and eventually reach San Francisco the first or second week of October.

By Devin Robertson / Newsweek / September 1, 2026

Before Slightly Stoopid could fill Petco Park, Miles Doughty and his bandmates asked listeners for places to sleep. “We’d literally ask people if we could sleep on their floor,” he recalled, and the fans who opened their homes during those early touring years helped build a community capable of following the Ocean Beach group from cramped bars to destination festivals. Three decades later, Doughty is preparing the band’s 10th studio album while protecting the same independent spirit behind its ascent.

“We’re always just excited to keep making music,” Doughty said. The coming release makes the band feel like “kids again,” he added, because anticipation can still cut through the blur of sold-out shows, border crossings and late-night drives; for a group built on forward motion, a fresh collection of songs offers another beginning.

A New Record, Shaped by a Changed Life
The long interval since the group’s previous album arrived during a period when its members started families, and although touring continued, domestic life shifted their attention and changed the experiences feeding the songs. “We’ve all started families,” Doughty said, describing a stretch when the band remained active on the road even as its members entered a different stage of life. With the group focused again on recording, he sees the new work as a record of its present moment, while flashes of the punk rock and ska from Slightly Stoopid’s early years reconnect the musicians with the urgency of their youth.