Sunday Morning Coming Down

I had two UU moments this week.  One was to think about something I was passionate about and share it with someone in a small group at church.  I mentioned something about getting better communication.  After the group broke up I mentioned to a complete stranger from a different group that what I was really passionate about was cold beer.  The later being something about which I thought often and with a sense of anticipation regularly. The second UU moment was a UU minister trying to explain the symbolism of Steve Bartman.  Allegedly he interfered with Moises Alou catching a foul ball and continuing the Cubs streak of ineptness.  Steve had to be lead from the stadium with police protection ans became a perfect example of a scapegoat for this UU minister who was interviewed for the ESPN series 30 on 30. Last night was a good night for baseball.  The lead up to the wild card may be even better than anything the playoffs will produce unless Detro...

This is something I have been thinking about a lot.  Sometimes people need to be fired even though they work hard, you mostly agree with them, but they just don't quite get the job done.  Much has been said about leadership these days.  As an academic exercise the arguments always make sense.  You have to fire the manager because you can't fire all the players.  The sports analogy applies but the consequences are not pretty.  The facts are that leadership is a fleeting thing and sometimes what is leadership to one person also motivates an opposite reaction.  Not all followers are on the same page even though they need leadership these days possibly more than ever.  Children need functional parents to succeed.  Businesses need leadership to make produce something and make a profit.  Why should it be different with government?  The policies of government are not always as negative as those who decry taxes would make t...

I went to the second last game the Florida Marlins will play in their former home field in Miami Gardens.  There was a rain delay, it was warm, the field looked like there had been a football game a few hours ago and yet I view with some trepidation the new stadium.  Honestly there has always been something missing at JR, PP, LS and lately Sunlife Stadium. Even though the stadium has hosted several World Series Games, College National Championships in football and more Superbowls than I can remember and the place has been around for a while, it is not a place that generates a lot of excitement even though there have been exciting games there. I hope the new Marlin Stadium is comfortable, easy to attend, but most importantly I hope it can generate some excitement and make it a venue people will want to go to.  Too often JR, PP, and Sunlife have been a place where it is an easy ticket but even worse a place better appreciated on TV rather than in person. The ...

This week I has the good fortune to watch two movies that I enjoyed.  And I have to admit that at times there have been some classics on TCM that have filled some of my retired hours in the evenings. Almost a year ago I saw Secretariat at the movies.  Rewatching the movie on the small screen was almost as enjoyable as it got me back to a book about Secretariat.  Sometimes movies lose their luster if you know the story but I remember like it was yesterday watching the Belmont with my Uncle Wil in California on TV.  I knew that race was special.  I've written elsewhere that there has not been a bad movie made about horse racing.  The sport appeals to me but I think there is something about the track that would appeal to me even if you could not bet.  The second movie of the week was "The Lemon Tree", which was a story about a Palestinian women whose lemon grove was condemened to better protect the defense minister in Israel from terrorism....

Here we go again.  If you are having problems with the current tax code but don't want to raise taxes you can casually mention that 50% don't pay income taxes now. The unemployment rate is 9.1% in the nation as a whole and if it was 9% in Miami now we would think things were a lot better than they are  A lot more people qualify for food stamps and unemployment also and for all the problems in the administration of these programs the money is spent and maintains a level of demand that is helpful to the economy.  Those working part time instead of full time understates the employment problem we have. The "righteous" 50% that do pay taxes need to ask the question of themselves what is the "righteous" tax rate for the working poor family of four with two minimum wage earners and a family income of $30,000.  If you go to a grocery store or fast food establishment, the baggers or clerks are adults.  These jobs used to be filled by teenagers.  This is...

I wonder how many people fight about air conditioning.  It's either too hot or it's too cold.  I can put up with a little bit of sweat because I dislike getting electric bills beyond a certain amount.  It colors much of what I do and how I live.  Some people think I walk on my elbows to save shoe leather.  There is a lot of truth in this matter.  In fact the latest repair of my truck's ac unit was because I think I will get most of the money spent on the repair back when I trade in the car. There are some things I take religiously and that it is difficult to air condition Florida and way too many places leave their doors open to entice customers or to get you to do thing to just cool off.  After Hurricane Andrew and for a shorter period of time after Katrina or Wilma I had no electricity.  I was without power for 5-21 days.  It was a disaster for some and for others a massive inconvinience.  I made appointments to wash my clothes, I ...

The Miami Herald did a front page story on how much money public sector employees make in retirement and how it is bankrupting local governments.  This as most reporting about government will be cited to justify distrust and to vilify public employees.  And they talk about class warfare.  There are abuses in public pension plans and they take place because elected officials don't do their jobs.  This is as much a story about shoddy accounting, political corruption and self dealing as anything else. The City of Miami is financially in trouble because its police and fireman can retire making more money in retirement than they ever did while working.  AND highly paid supervisors are able to job the system to inflate their pensions by doing some unseemly things in the period just before retirement to maximize the payout.  Assigning themselves overtime and other payouts can inflate compensation levels that dramitically affect pensions. Should supervisors...

This last weekend I listened to Joe sing an anti war song and then this morning I watched as the camera show Mika ponding away a text message on her phone.  This is something different.  I'm not sure that there is anything new in the political dicussion although the tone is a little more civil than most on tv these days. Moviewise it was a quiet day as I did some job searching in the morning and then was waiting for a call to coordinate some transportation issues.  Then in the evening I visitied Parie Meadows and made some money.  For this I am thankful.  The announcers must really need to have strong backbones as they tout and seemingly have bigger bank rolls and still manage to burn the rent money. There are 800 numbers for people that watch that show too much.  I find it somewhat more soothing that since I have access for about twelve hours a day I don't have to make a desparate play or do too much chasing.  I can target my action and ...

Sometimes I think that there are names no one should be allowed for commercial purposes.  Given what has happened to the "Bank of America", I think the reasons are evident.  The responsibility of having such a name is great and to treat the name as poorly as the directors and managers have by some of their practices is shameful. I'm a customer of Bank of America by default.  A community bank is bought by a larger bank, that is bought by another bank and then Bank of America buys that bank.  This has happened over 40 years in Florida and one of Bank of America's latest screw ups is buying a mortgage company that issued a lot of really crappy loans for housing in Florida.  And they call Social Security a ponzi scheme. It has been announced that there may be as many as 30,000 jobs lost as BOA is going to "downsize". I also had a small account at a community bank known as Bristol, bought by the Bank of Florida, that was not  too big to...

I'm glad yesterday is over and we can do something other than watch airplanes crash into the WTC.  It was beyond terrible ten years ago.  On a related note the first pick 3 series at Belmont Park in New York was 911.  You just sort of notice these things, like the digital time when you are driving in the morning.  But there doesn't seem to be a way to escape these reminders big and small. In an effort to escape the 24/7 nature of the 9/11 remembrances I watched some old movies on TCM.  They had Pride of the Yankees and Casablanca on at various times.  "Pride" was a really great baseball movie and human story.  The courage and attitude to say you are the luckiest guy on the face of the earth while facing a terrible disease was historic at the time and is no doubt repeated on a daily basis as people face down mortality.  Gary Cooper made a career of these kind of roles and I thank for his judgement. Bogart and Bergman in "Casablanca" d...

The College Football season has started.  I'm not sure which story line will be the biggest as the year goes forward.  Will the University of Miami get the "Death Penalty"?  What will come of other programs under investigation?  Will there be any reforms in college football?  What of the realignment of conferences? There is a potential that the possible realignment will make the names BIG TEN, BIG TWELVE, and PAC TEN something from another era.  The talk is that is all about the Benjamins, television contracts, conference playoffs, and again more money as the football factory programs get bigger and the rest of the schools not in the biggest four conferences less relevant. I think that rivalries will become less important as the push will become even more desperate to get to what will morph into a "playoff" of sorts to determine a national champion in football that might pass muster for the public and the NCAA. So much for being a student athlete....

I'm dreading the coming week.  Ten years might seem like a long time and it is but I think I've heard enough about the 9/11 attacks.  My Mom, two cousins, an aunt died within a couple of weeks of the time of the attack on the twin towers.  I thought it might have been the beginning of the end of the world for a short period.  It was a trying time. A few simple memorial services would be in order but that is not the way of the world these days.  There is so much space to fill that next Sunday will have way too many replays of stuff we have already seen too many times.  What have we learned in ten years?  Two wars, and too many changes in the way we live to count and the lessons who knows if they were the right lessons.  I avoid airports.  I figure just about any privacy I thought I had is gone.  This country has embraced globalism and at the same time become scared of people from foreign countries whether they are from the Americas or...

The most disturbing aspect of the republican debate on Thursday night was the poll on taxes.  If all the candidates on the stage say they would not sign off on a deal that included $10 in cuts fot $1 in increased revenues in a deal to reduce the budget there is a problem. This is what politics is all about these days.  Everyone seems more interested the campaign that never ends, the fund raising that never ends, the direct or indirect sale of influence, polls and lots of other things that don't have anything to do with governing.  Lobbyists too often seem to tell our representatives what to think say and do as a condition for continued support.  I say this because this is what I read about in the media and its horse race goverage of politics.  This is giving horse racing a bad image.  Serious discussions of politics, policies and sadly even filling administrative positions are now held up for nothing other than the the ability to fund raise fro...

The "U" doesn't have its first game until Monday.  However this Saturday provides more than enough opportunities for a football fix.  I'm not sure if all that many games will mean much because most of the teams schedule cupcakes for their openers. The exception being LSU vs Oregon.  Even this game has lost a little bit of its luster as there are players serving suspensions for bad behavior.  I don't want to go into details because I really don't care too much about either team and if by chance they get to a post season bowl game that will be enough time to do some research. I would like to comment on Northwestern becoming a football factory in the Big Ten, Eleven or Twelve.  Big Ten Football is a good show but it also has some of the crappier aspects of major college football.  All told the opportunity to market the school, entertain the alumni, and get some face time on TV with the band, tailgating and giving "the student body" an excuse to bing...

There are lots of reasons to have a bad attitude these days.  If you don't have a job, no outside income, and limited assets I could see being pissed.  And in the end your attitude about your situation is going to be key to solving your situation.  A lot of people have stopped looking for a job, I realize that it is difficult to get work of almost any kind these days in certain places.  There are a lot more people applying for opening than there are opening.  You might invest in yourself by getting updated skills, you might increase your networking and take temporary employment if you can find an opening.  But at the least you can make sure that you are not being a burden on others by helping out. Cleaning fixing stuff up and helping others is another positive way to spend your time.  Getting up late, bitching, lots of other negative things need to be eliminated.  I think you need to figure out a way to stop the downward trend of unemployment ...