Sunday Morning Coming Down

It has been a quiet summer hurricane season so far. But as folks that have lived in Miami for a while know you only need one direct hit to screw stuff up.  Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was a real game changer for me. In the past the Hurricane Center Director was a rock star of sorts. Neil Frank, Bob Sheets and Max Mayfield explained what would be happening and when should you start putting up your shutters. If you already had them. I've noticed a subtle change about the coverage of hurricanes and weather in general on the tube these days.  The weather has moved up in the amount of coverage it receives in national news and in the local news as well.  A significant amount of money is invested in weather coverage down here. Miami and daily thunderstorms during the rainy season and beautiful weather from late fall through spring is hardly newsworthy but it is reported on early in each newscast. During hurricane prime time tropical waves, depressions, storms, and hurric...

Citizenship in the United States of America would be a different issue and might be able to be discussed more rationally if it were not for the issue of  SLAVERY and its history in this country. In more an a few ways this a matter of history. Folks can ignore history, folks can try to change history, but many times in spite of our issues with history it just keeps marching on. Some folks go on and on about the Constitution. The South might have been happy to count all their slaves to make their states more powerful but they would not have been happy to be taxed for their slaves. The 3/5ths compromise was about representation and taxes and probably less about slavery until the Constitution was ratified. Article 1, Section 9.  The importation of more slaves into the country was not popular, however another compromise in the new Constitution prohibited the Congress from legislation restricting the importation of slaves until 1808. Article 2, Section 3 requi...

Wednesday Evening you could watch "The Donald" in action in a New Hampshire town hall meeting on MSNBC. The event was televised on Hardball and took up a significant part of All In. Don't remember there being a lot of commercials while it was on. You may not like everything he says about issues, you may not like anything he says about the issues or you may disagree with almost anything he says about the issues. But when an oligarch talks about other Republican candidates and their big money sponsors and how they are beholden to their backers and he has gumption to validate that this is how the political game is being played, it resonates with folks that are of both parties. "Make America Great Again" is about as effective a campaign slogan as I've heard in  my life time. His operation is slick and so far his past hasn't affected his poll numbers and his take downs of  the other Republicans is withering, if not always entirely accurate. His crowd ...

Do you remember Travon Martin and George Zimmerman? First off, I think living in Florida I thought it was the direct result of our "stand your ground laws".  If you felt threatened you could shoot first and invoke self defense as a reason for your actions. As a result of this tragic killing there was a twitter hash tag #Black Lives Matter. As these things go there was a twitter hash tag #All Lives Matter. I don't have a twitter account and have had only a literal understanding of "Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter".  Maybe one tweet was trying to be even more inclusive than the other tweet. Not so... In fact if you look at the internet the hash tags are at odds and generating their own steam. I'm not sure what the evolutionary process for civil rights, criminal justice, economic justice or other social movements is or should be. This is from a web page About Us on # Black Lives Matter. #BlackLivesMatter is working for a world where Black ...

I've played all three major little league sports, baseball, basketball, and flag football one year.  I was going to try out for freshman basketball in high school, but was offered the job of manager and participated as manager for basketball and football through my sophomore year. I was very busy and spent almost as many hours at practice and games as the players. Spring of my sophomore year I played golf, but never was good enough to be one of the best seven players that would play in matches. In fact, while the team was on the bus for a match, I was usually practicing at Mohawk or White Pines. I got my picture in the yearbook for my participation for whatever I did if it related to the high school sports I participated in. I was on the varsity golf team for three years. By the Spring of my senior year I was eligible for a varsity letter for my time as team manager and playing on the golf team. I would have been ready to play if needed, but never had one of...

Unitarians believe that they are too good to go to hell. Universalists believe God is too good to send them to hell. And then we have Planned Parenthood, Ben Carson, the Republican Party, Charles Darwin, Margaret Sanger and lots of other women out there. I'm not surprised that Dr. Ben Carson would call out Margaret Sanger regarding some of beliefs about eugenics. I'm also not surprised that Dr. Ben Carson would have used fetal tissues in medical research. I'm also not surprised Dr. Carson might connect the anti abortion debate with the discredited science of eugenics. It might not be science but I'm sure there are an awful lot of folks out there who would like to think you can breed intelligence, hard work, and good hygiene out there. Science and politics don't always mix really well. Politicians often hide what they do with rhetoric that doesn't match reality and a lot of science isn't very scientific or it needs a lot more study to make sure it meets e...

Settling down from an afternoon at Canterbury Park where Effortlessly Strut finished 3rd in the North Central QH Association Futurity, I found the Cubs game on TBS. The Cubs were leading the Giants 2-0 and were on the verge of sweeping the SF Giants. The 9th inning was pretty nerve wracking.  Cub closer Rondon almost gave the game away, he loads the bases, and then strikes out the side, technically a save, but a very ugly save at best.  Cubs are having to play like champions to qualify for the wild card.  Still a lot of baseball left but the Cardinals seem to have the Central locked up. Effortlessly Strut earned $4200 for finishing 3rd. .012 seconds between 1st and 3rd place times and only .006 behind the 2nd place finisher. Lugged in slightly.  It was a blanket finish.  Maybe PRM will be luckier.  

I don't know Senator Rubio's exact address in West Miami. The fact that he is trying to sell his house for about $675,000 and move closer to Washington and that he recently sold a residence in Tallahassee is kind of typical for Florida real estate in general. Many older houses built after WWII are getting razed and what is getting built is much bigger and probably out of the reach for most families unless they are two income families with good jobs. The average family income for the West Miami zip code is about $38,000. West Miami is a small town that is mostly a bedroom community and mostly Hispanic. It is a nice neighborhood in a very convenient location, near the airport, shopping and other stuff people like to do. Senator Rubio probably has one of the higher incomes in the town, he was a city commissioner at a very young age and has probably just outgrown his old home town and by all accounts he did grow up in West Miami. There are probably things to look at regardin...

I've taken to listening to the commodity report on Country Radio, which is sort of like the Racing Form for grain, pork and cattle. The folks talk about the price of the basic elements of stuff which we all end up buying in the grocery store. There is also a lot of talk about the weather, the Chinese economy, the strength of the U.S. dollar. Plant diseases and stuff like avian flu can also make farmers and traders worry from minute to minute. And if that isn't enough information the stuff we eat is also produced in South America, Europe and other places as well Too much rain, too little rain, too hot or too cold, the dollar makes our grains more expensive for people overseas, and if the economy is weak we buy fewer steaks, drive less, the price of corn can go down and who knows next year how many acres of corn will be planted. And that doesn't even include the price of oil which is an important factor in the cost of production of our food and I've heard it said that...

I know this was a long time ago but history seems to happen again and again.  George McGovern was the eventual nominee of the Democratic Party but there were a lot of candidates for the job. McGovern, Humphrey,Wallace, Muskie, Jackson, Chisholm, Sanford, Mills, Hartke, Lindsay, McCarthy, Mink, Yorty, Harris, Bayh, and Hughes were all candidates for the nomination. When all the votes in the primaries were counted Hubert Humphrey received 4.121 million votes and McGovern received 4.053 million votes. McGovern wasn't really considered a prime time candidate until April when he got about 30% of the vote in Wisconsin. I think the Republican Party has given way too much power to Fox News and the oligarchs and has minimized the importance of Republican voters. The Democrats aren't out of the woods either. The primaries seem a long way away.

The Miami Herald reported Friday on the closing night for the Fox Lounge in South Miami. The South Miami bar and food joint lasted sixty nine years. Back in 1973 it had a little bit of elegance compared with other places I would stop for a beer. The lounge area was dark and always a little bit smoky. If you went in during the daylight ours you were well advised to watch your step and kind of feel your way around until you eyes adjusted. My parents enjoyed dinner there when they visited Miami, food was good, and they drank martinis and manhattans back in the day. Thursday night was prime rib night which affordable but you had to reserve one. Snooze you lose if you forgot to call ahead before leaving from work. Once, while waiting to eat at the bar, who should I see sitting two stools down the bar but Dave Barry, Miami Herald humorist and author. I told him I liked his book about being 40. He nodded and we both went back to our drinks. Another customer engaged him after a...