Sunday Morning Coming Down

Last night I fell asleep and the the wall air conditioner was left on.  And it ran and ran, on and on.  I don't like making the electric company rich, and I've been in Florida long enough that a setting at 78 degrees is more or less comfortable.  Others in my house feel differently and it is always an issue. Waking early it was cold in my room and even colder in the living room.  So cool that dew had formed on the windows.  I turned the window unit off.  The dew point in Miami was 75, the ac unit had done yeoman's work. The Weather Service has a statistic regarding heating and cooling.  65 degree is the magical number and if the average temperature for the day is 65 there will be little need for heating or cooling on that day. A lot of people in Miami use air conditioning year round.  In November the mean average temperature in Miami will hopefully drop to 75 degrees, at my house the windows will open, the electric bill will plummet and if i...

A party at a club in Miami was interrupted by gunfire as 15 were shot on Sunday Morning.  Witnesses reported that dozens of rounds were fired at a storefront club called The Spot. The victims were between the ages of 11 and 25. Police were interviewing the young people after the shooting that took place shortly after 1:00 am. The Spot is a nightclub located at 6400 NW 7 Avenue. Club shootings are not unheard of and as of Monday Morning there were thankfully no deaths. This is way too Miami Vice, but the victims seem really young this time around.

Prairie Meadows Race Track is located near Des Moines, Iowa and at this time of year cowboys race their quarter horses.  Friday and Saturday they run at night and on Sunday they run in the afternoon.  I'm very glad I found this race track because the races are almost always done by 10:30pm.  When I got into quarter horse racing after they came back to Hialeah Park I was sort of stuck on night races from Los Alamitos in Cypress, California and they did not start until about 10:00 pm.  It made for a very long night. The first race at PRM was an 870 yard race.  A long race for the quarters. I had downloaded the form and was busily handicapping the races and listening to John Hernandez go over his picks for the evening.  John works at Hialeah after his Iowa gig is over writing for the track. He sort of "casually" mentions that $15,000 has been bet in the show pool on Gun Powder Kid. Immediately, I check the pools and there is less than $100 has been bet on ...

Derek Jeter played twenty years for the New York Yankees and if you were, are, or ever been a Yankee fan he will always be known as the "Captain". Baseball was at one time "America's Game", it's been replaced by football, but through good fortune and something almost mythical in the sporting realm, #2 is right up there with #3 (Gehrig)   #4 (Ruth) and  #6 (Mantle) when it comes to Yankee uniform numbers. Playing twenty years for any one team is almost unheard of these days.  Having a twenty year career in baseball happens but is becoming rare. Jeter, living in New York, handsome, unmarried, rich, and a celebrity made the gossip columns but his life has been scandal free.  It's been reported that girl friends receive gift baskets with baseball memorabilia suitable for framing.  I'd say this would hardly be news, I've never dated any sports figures but I've known somebody that got to the White House and he was happy to grab anything from ...

Hard to believe the Miami Vice, the TV Show is 30 years old. If you lived in Miami during the 1980's, there were a lot of changes going on and Miami Vice was a catylist for all the changes.  The music, the fast editing and colors, all complemented the influx of drugs, refugees, and a new feeling for South Beach. In 1981, TIME Magazine had a cover about Miami being Paradise Lost.  Tourism was losing steam, there were some heavily publicized murders of tourists, and crime in the Sunshine State was being fed by drugs, imports, exports, and local sales.  The Mariel Boatlift was a complicating factor, and there were other problems caused by rapid and almost uncontrolled growth in the area But the Sun and Fun Capital of the U.S.A. if not the World rallied.  Art Deco, Crockett and Tubbs, and a resurgent University of Miami Football, and nice winter weather brought Miami and The Beaches Back

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced it was divesting themselves from the worst of the fossil fuels, tar sands and coal. The Charleston Gazette reports the following:   After John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil in 1870, the company quickly became the world’s largest oil refiner and a major source of the family’s future wealth. ExxonMobil is Standard Oil’s largest successor today. Standard Oil also began other companies, including Chevron and Amoco. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is an heir of the Rockefeller family but has never been part of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Andrew Beckner, a spokesman for Rockefeller, said Tuesday, “He is not going to comment. He has nothing to do with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It is a foundation, not an investment fund. He has no money invested in the fund and is not involved in any of the decision-making” The Rockefeller Brothers Fund was founded in 1940. - See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20140923/GZ01/14092969...

Today I read a post from a Peace Corp volunteer that was recalled from Liberia as the result of the Ebola epidemic.  His host mother has died from the disease and the host father is sick as well.  The host family has children that are being taken care of by other family members. The Peace Corp volunteer is the nephew of a high school classmate, we were neighbors when I lived in Bensenville, Illinois over forty years ago.  He was to teach Biology/Animal Science but that was cut short by the Ebola outbreak/epidemic. When he was evacuated, it was done for his safety and in bureaucratic speak out of an abundance of caution.  At the time, reading an earlier post Dane was not a happy camper about being removed from something he had spent a great deal of effort preparing for. A few days ago President Obama announced that 3,000 troops to West Africa to ramp up the fight against Ebola.  This fight is very important and needs to be taken seriously. Dane's blog is ...

Turkey, the EU, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Iraqi Kurds and the US are friendly countries in the fight against ISIS, while Russia, Syria, Syrian Opposition, Syrian Kurds, Iraqi government, Iraqi Shia, Iran, and Al-Queda dislike ISIS but have problems with Turkey, the EU, Israel and Saudi Arabia, Iarqi Kurds and the U.S to some extent or another. A chart from the Economist September 13th, 2014, calls this a messy political mosaic.  And you wonder why things in the Middle East are a little bit crazy, dangerous, and to some hopeless.  Who is to say that just because the enemy of your enemy is your friend today, what about a week from today? Amazingly Iran is going from pariah in the region to a very important backstop in the region. We need to continue to roll back the threat of terrorism, but anything less than all hands on deck is problematic and even that is no guarantee of anything.

Vested.org allows a person participate in bond offering that support projects in the public good that support loans to small businesses, housing, support of women's empowerment and other projects. This is not a donation, the bonds pay interest, and the investment can be as little as a double sawbuck ($20.00).  If you can help somebody and get your money back with a little interest, I think it is better than handing out money to folks on the corner with a card board sign. It's also better than going around pointing your phone and a product's bar code to find out if the grocery store products are from Republicans or Democrats as a BuyPartisan App says it will reveal. There is sure a difference between an organic grocery store and those all you can eat buffet joints in the South, but if I have a taste for fried chicken, original recipe, I really don't care about the politics of Yum Foods. I used to think that buying an American Ford,Chevy, or Dodge would benefit Am...

Florida, University of Miami, Florida International University, and Florida State University all play football later this afternoon or this evening.  A place with multiple screens would be helpful but I think I may be toggling back and forth between the UM, Nebraska match up and the Roosevelts. There are also quarter horse races at Prairie Meadows in Iowa to consider. Florida will hopefully make it a close game.  Playing at Tusculoosa, the alumni will be watching and a Crimson Tide blowout and last year's four win season may send Coach Mushcamp to the unemployment office, sooner rather than later.  Good luck Gators FIU is going to get crushed by Louisville as they rally after a loss to Virginia last week.  FIU plays the game close they can call it a morale victory.  Good luck Panthers UM playing Nebraska on the road is a 7.5 point underdog.  The Hurricanes would like to bring back that old magic when National Championships happened when they beat Hu...

Immigration hearings have long term delays built into the process.  Immigration judges have a lot of cases.  So many that I'm sure "justice" can get twisted into pretzels.  Some easy cases, where people should be sent home, get delayed and people are allowed to hang around much longer than you would ever think, and others who may have legal reasons to stay in the country also have their cases delayed.  Detention isn't cheap and you wonder why there are so many folks in this country without legal status? If this was the DMV the all ready long list of folks driving without licenses would be even longer.  In fact this is what happens when states restrict drivers licenses to citizens, permanent residents, and those with a valid immigration status. Folks still drive to jobs, but they don't carry insurance and live in fear of being stopped.  The Miami Herald editorial board favors a state law which would allow the state to issue licenses to folks waiting for t...

A scorpion asks a frog to carry him over a river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip, but the scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, both would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog agrees and begins carrying the scorpion, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion points out that this is its nature. The conflicts in the Middle East just seem like that. And on another front Joe West, an MLB umpire is skewered by the media for grabbing Joe  Papelbon by the jersey during an argument after the player seemingly made an obscene gesture to Philly fans.  Papelbon was suspended for seven games for his actions.  It is unclear if the league will take any action against the umpire. Conventional wisdom is that fans in Philadelphia forget they are in the City of Brotherly Love. And on a third front Charles Barkley spoke his version of the truth when he weighed in on the way some...

The Viet Nam War went into high gear after the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the second Iraq War was based on claims about weapons of mass destruction.  The ends justify the means. There needs to be a debate about going back into Iraq about our objectives, the potential outcome of creating more terrorists, making sure we are not just doing the dirty work in a war that looks like a civil war and religious struggle between Sunnis and Shiites. Politicians, captains of industry, and their zealous aides too often resemble circus barkers, shilling for attention and advantage, with little regard for accuracy or veracity, using the press and the news media not to enlighten but to bamboozle the public in pursuit of votes, profits and power. When necessary, they even employ the wiles of deception to conceal, disguise, or justify unseemly and sometimes outright criminal behavior. As George Orwell wrote, in words that still ring true more than half a century after they were written, “Politi...

It's been about 106 years since the Chicago Cubs won The World Series in baseball.  They have the record for futility in the MLB. The Associated Press has announced what we Cub fans have all become too accustomed to, the Cubs have been mathematically eliminated from post season play again. The rebuilding process is taking place and it seems like they have some good young players that need to get better in a hurry.  If the renovation of Wrigley Field is completed before the team gets to the playoffs, it may be a business success, but it will only continue the litany of baseball failure on the North Side. I don't want to make light of Tom Brokaw and his term the "Greatest Generation", but along with those WWII Veterans, Baby Boomers are getting older and we are still waiting. I'm over the curse of Steve Bartman, The Billy Goat and what ever the latest lame excuse is, the clock is running.

A few days ago Turner Classic Movies was airing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and I went back to the days when I was 18 years old and went to the movies almost on a weekly basis.  For quite a while after that I thought of myself as a regular movie goer at least through college and graduate school.  Movies on campus were cheap and accessible. In 1969 Butch Cassidy, Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, The Wild Bunch, The Sterile Cuckoo, Goodbye Columbus, They Shoot Horses..., and True Grit were popular at the box office. Movie soundtracks and songs from movies were popular.  BJ Thomas made a fortune from Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head. From 2009 the only movie I've seen was Up.  A surprising entertaining movie from Disney that resonated with an almost 60 year old at the time and was fun for a nine year old. I think the trend will continue.  I like some of the old movies on Amazon Prime, the price is right and it is easier all the way around.  

I'm hardly a person to discuss relationships.  I don't know Ray Rice or his wife and the fact that they have become the face of domestic violence is nothing to aspire to. Prior to domestic violence there is almost always emotional abuse.  One party or another feels free to go off on the other.  Personal attacks, happen too often and communication often just becomes a litany of shortcomings between the parties. Alcohol, drugs, job, housing, and money problems can make these problems much worse. Nobody likes being bullied or being used at work, home, school, and society sure gives out some mixed messages that make living difficult. Look out Sisyphus.

The City Commission wants to talk about crime at today's meeting, and the City Beautiful's Police Chief resigns. In the past few days there have been at least three high profile burglaries, the mom of a former mayor, a channel 23 tv anchor women, and a Miami Heat basketball player have been the victims of burglaries or break ins. The police chief had some difficulties finding a place to live in Coral Gables when he was hired.  The chief's response was to commute about 180 miles a day at city expense, for almost a year.  The police chief also applied for an opening for chief in Miami Beach Now the commission is wondering if some crime statistic reports issued by the which may be too good to believe. The City Beautiful would like you to believe that even one burglary is one too many in Coral Gables. The Commission must now deal with two high level openings .  The City Manager left in April. The former police chief does not plan to attend today's meeting.

I've been intriqued by the the FYI Tiny House Show where folks downsize to a small trailer size house of approximately 200 square feet.  After watching a few shows the designs seem about the same with a few adjustments for the owners personal ideas.  This is some serious downsizing and part of the show is going to the client's house and going through an exercise, in some ways more drastic than"Hoarders" because these folks seem normal. And on the other hand, you can buy a $1,000,000 underground parking space at 42 Crosby Street, New York, New York.  The parking spaces will range from $5,000 to $6,666 @ square foot which is more per square foot than the apartments upstairs. Thank you, Michelle Higgins of the New York Times for this little tidbit. And so

Perspective is always the problem.  The prisons of the world are filled with innocent folks.  One countries national interest almost always conflicts with another countries national interest at some point. The Venn Diagram of  almost everything that happens is incomplete and ever changing. Experts may provide options, but execution of a plan can be difficult. Even stuff that seems simple is more complicated, you would think everybody should just wake up, go to work, do your job, have lunch, come home, have dinner, play with the kids, check your e-mail, watch tv, read a book, go to bed. There are choices and they should be made wisely. Gluttony, pride, lust, laziness, wrath, envy, and greed are all things were would agree we should avoid except for the exceptions. Gluttony, may actually be related to not enough exercise, which may be related to sitting at a desk, which may be related to having a job, that pays the bills for stuff we bought, which we may not need,...

If you are determined, something happens.

I've heard about freezing your bluejeans if they get a little funky.  Baking Soda in your smelly gym shoes makes sense but I don't think I'll be spraying vodka on other clothing to rid them of perspiration or other odors.  The washing machine is probably more cost effective. So much for bit of Internet wisdom. I was for a time an owner of a horse named Stolicknaya,  I wonder what he would think of spraying a little Stoli to 86 the smell of a not so little Stoli.

Politically, immigration reform in what ever for it eventually takes is probably as big an electrified third rail as there is.  Hardly anybody is going to be satisfied and there is almost certainty the fringe groups will try to scuttle the regulations whatever they are. Folks emigrate for economic reasons.  Folks emigrate for political reasons. Folks emigrate to reunify their families.  As long as the United States can provide enough opportunities for people, immigration can be a good thing for the country. In 2009 about 1.3 million people became lawful permanent residents of the US.  I believe that number was about 780,000 million since 2013.  Most of the permanent residents are the result of close family relationships, having needed job skills or being a political refugee. As of 2014 it has been estimated that there are about 11 million people who do not have any proper immigration status, the undocumented.  This number has been stable since 2009. ...

I'm hardly a stock market analyst.  Money for retirement comes from deferred compensation, savings in banks, and a few stocks and bonds that I have bought over the years.  I cashed my first check from an employer when I was a little bit over fourteen years old. These days I realize I've been fortunate to have a pension and have just started receiving social security benefits. My investment advisor thinks we might be better off raising some cash.  I wonder what is he thinking.  Maybe a stock with a small dividend has risen in price since 2009, selling it would raise cash but then what do you do with the cash?  Buy a new car, fix up the old apartment, go on a vacation, or park it in a savings account, while waiting for a market correction. Warren Buffet is sitting on a ton of cash, George Soros is betting the market will be going down, and who knows what the next big short will be. From a book titled Can You Win, the first chapter is Life Is A Gamble, is s...

Wednesday evening, while walking I see this big F-350 Ford Truck parked at the local Chevron Station which is locally famous for having the highest price for gas in the neighborhood.  Twenty cents a gallon more than its closest competitor. The dark brown truck is late model and the hub caps/ wheel covers/ or what ever they might be called are spike like cones that are custom for sure and make the truck even bigger and wider than the normal truck would be.  This was NO plumber or roofers work truck. This was a good excuse to buy a lottery ticket and get a closer look and at classic trophy vehicle and maybe get a glimpse of who buys this kind of monster. Approaching the door it opens, and out comes Chris Andersen, Miami Heat Center, all 6 feet 10 inches.  He held the door for me.  The clerk asked me if I recognized his last customer.  I nodded and asked for a quick pick on the Powerball. The spikey wheels are an interesting branding move.

On one extreme in education there are no grades, there are classes, there may be tests that are scored, but there are no grades given.  Everyone passes, unless you don't show up.  On the other hand there may be very rigidly structured exams where scores mean everything.  If you missed a certain question it was assumed you needed remediation on that kind of question and what the correct answer meant to teach. By default I was the test giver at a job training center for an extended period of time.  The school board couldn't send a teacher or para professional to administer either the Stanford Test of Academic Achievement or the TABE which was short for test of adult basic education. To be accepted in the various vocational programs you needed to score at least 7.0 in reading, math, and language.  There were various levels of the test and they basically related to previous formal education and competancy in English. Frankly, in Little Havana where there were ...

Last weekend The Miami Herald wrote that it would not be covering FIU's home opener football game against Bethune Cookman College.  FIU didn't like the beat reporter from the paper and refused to give him a press pass.  The newspaper could have sent another reporter but thought Dave Neal had reported both the ups and downs of the program fairly enough to leave the coverage of the game to little more than the final score.  FIU lost 14-12. FIU has a lot of students.  Maybe not a lot of subscribers, but FIU needs to be covered by the major metropolitan newspaper in the area.  These kind of squabbles should not be news.  This is football and I don't think there are any national security issues involved. Covering stories, hand holding of advertisers, free tickets to events happen, but getting the facts right are the most important things a reporter can do.  Unfortunately, as sports becomes more entertainment, more money, and more opinion I guess this ki...

The Unitarian Universalist Association voted to divest its investments in fossil fuels including oil, natural gas, and coal at its General Assembly in Rhode Island in June.  In spirit I think it's not a terrible idea.  In practice I doubt it is anything more than a symbolic gesture in the short and maybe in the longer term. Very few people walk to our services (my estimate is 0) on Sundays.  We don't stream our services on the Internet.  We have no charging stations for electric cars.  I see a lot of Toyota Prius cars in the parking lot.  We still get our electricity from natural gas and nuclear power provided by Florida Power and Light and there is a significant group of folks that aren't very sure about nukes.  We are in a relatively pastoral place, relatively unserved by public transportation.  No Hummers, F350, and there was a member that ran his diesel car on used cooking oil and it did smell like French fries. The roof of the sanctuary a...

AOL posts about the dire situation regarding gambling in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Too many places to gamble and not enough players.  According to the article there are three casinos that will be closing in September, The Showboat, Revel, and Trump Plaza will be going dark, maybe not forever but for a while for sure. One thing is to look at casinos on TV and its another thing to look at it closely.  Miami has added gaming at its parimutuel facilities and Dania Jai Alai which was the last player to the party is closing temporarily they say for remodeling.  The slot machines were supposed to be the savior of the parimutuel industry and just recently Calder Race Course cut back the days it will have racing to the state minimum of forty days so that it can keep their slots. One thing is for sure, the slot machines have improved the looks at all the parimutuel facilities somewhat.  A new paint job, more entertainment activities, new carpets, new jobs for some a...

About fifty years ago almost 35% of the workforce were union members.  Now, about 11% of the workforce are union members.  In the private sector only about 7% of the workforce is unionized and there is a question about whether or not unions are relevant at all these days. I worked in the public sector and benefited from the unions that were spread through out government there is no doubt.  As a mid level supervisor I did not get the perks of my bosses and I did not have all the protections of the folks I supervised.  Shortly before I left the County where I worked the mid level supervisors were trying to organize a union.  For about 2/3 of my career pay rates were capped, promotional opportunities were limited, opening required special approval to be filled, and there were ongoing reorganizations, where folks were reassigned or just quit in frustration.  It became chic to hire non profits to do the work of county employees.  Cheaper, yes, but getting...