Sunday Morning Coming Down

Jose Fernandez, ace baseball player, died in a tragic boating accident in September, that happened late at night and early the next morning.  Two other friends were killed.  The toxicology that was released Saturday and almost as expected drugs and alcohol were involved. One of the dead was a celebrity otherwise the boating accident would have been forgotten and the report filed for the lawyers to sort out later.  The families continue to mourn.  I'm not sure the official report is news as it is hardly new because it was so predictable and avoidable.

Los Alamitos Race Track is in Cypress, California and home of the Bank of America Challenge Championship, a series of stakes races for quarter horses.  The finals are being held on Saturday, October, 29, 2016. The realist in me says Bank of America has made a business decision to support a group of folks that use credit cards frequently. And on the other hand they have also promoted a sport, and folks in the sport that will never have a chance to run in the All American Futurity or the All American Derby or some of the million dollar races run in Texas or Oklahoma.  Quarter horses from Challenge races can qualify for the finals on a win and you're in basis. My best quarter horse friend Randy Weidner has a horse in the Challenge Championship from Ajax, Ontario.  Fantsy Pants will run out of the four hole. He knows his horse will be 50-1, I think she will be more than 50-1.  In a twelve horse race she will have to beat the eleven other horses.  Who knows?...

There is a big business in getting autographs to sell or going to a convention and paying somebody and in return getting an picture and an autograph.  There are celebrities that get paid for showing up at clubs?  Baseball player sign baseball cards and jerseys and a lot of fans wait till players have showered and stick a program or baseball in their face to sign. And presidential candidate will sign posters, hats, take selfies, and all sorts of other things. I'm really disappointed that former presidents have seemingly gone in this way to pay for a lifestyle to which they have become accustomed while being in office. This kind of self dealing may not be exactly illegal but  it really doesn't do much to allay the fears of most folks that the whole thing is rigged.

1)Finished the ballot just before 12:30pm at the Coral Gables Library. 2) The process was smooth, weather was good. 3) Most selfishly, I hope the phone calls will stop once they figure out I've voted.

Yes it is true the Marlins of Florida screwed up World Series dreams of the Cleveland Indians in 1997 and the Chicago Cubs in 2003.  Now that the Marlins are out of the way, Chicago or Cleveland will go onto win the World Series in 2016. Jeff Conine, who played on both Marlin teams, hopes the Chicago Cubs will win this year.

If the Cubs can win five more games this year they will have won the World Series for the first time since 1908.  I invite everyone to become fans of the 2016 Chicago Cubs.  This may seem silly, juvenile, and unimportant. If you live in Europe, Africa, or Asia you can take a pass on this invitation, but that does not mean the story isn't important. I think a lot of baseball fans will breathe a sigh of relief if  the Cubs win.  Things can go right, the team that played best this year, will be the champions and the USA can cross that off the country's bucket list, elect a president and try to be a better place to live, there are lots of other things to focus on. But the celebration will be monumental if we fly the "W".

The 2000 Election in Florida was screwed up.  Punch card ballots had pregnant chads, hanging chads, and a butterfly ballot that confused some folks in Palm Beach and to complicate matters the result were virtually a dead heat. Fast forward 2016 Election, and the candidate that is trailing is complaining about the election being rigged even before the first ballots are counted. And the conventional wisdom from Republicans is that they have once again missed an opportunity to win the presidency.  And the conventional wisdom may be correct one more time. It won't be because the election is rigged, the reason will be the rejection of a candidate that is tragically flawed and hardly a Republican.

All told it has been reported that Joe Scarborough on MSNBC makes $99,000 a week for his time on cable TV pontificating. You can interpret that anyway you please.  Not a bad gig for a former member of congress.

This is race track talk.  If your horse is faster, can run longer, your jockey is good and your horse is fit, the race is over probably before the race starts.  The jockey might fall off, the horse might make a bad step but when it is all said class and speed can make all the difference.  In a two horse race the loser will be looking for excuses or another race.  The winner takes a pee and the sample goes to lab. It isn't always this simple.

Not feeling very good about continued divided government in the U.S.A.  Given the last few days of this campaign the country will have spent a lot of time nominating these two candidates.  The amount of money spent on the elections may be a billion dollars or more and one of the candidates spouses and the other party's nominee are being compared for their piggish behavior when it comes to women.  One was disbarred and the other should never have been nominated as his party's candidate. Which leads me to the legislative branch of government that isn't exactly doing its job very well either.  Senator McConnell should be held responsible for the actual wasting time while the 2016 presidential race has occurred. What about the Supreme Court vacancy?  Fixing Obamacare, fixing medicare which will being broke should be part of the debate.  How about funding a highway bill properly? How about discussing a bipartisan foreign policy.  Combating cyber warfare...

POTUS is an acronym for president of the United States, but it might also mean people of the United States, or politics of the United States. Yesterday I listened to an entire speech by Michelle Obama, (FLOTUS) in New Hampshire.  If you were a democrat I imagine you might think it was a really great speech given by a really good speaker.  I liked it a lot because it seemed very much from the heart and spoke to what she thought was important. “This is not normal,” she said. “This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful, it is intolerable, and it doesn’t matter what party you belong to. No woman deserves to be treated this way — none of us deserves this kind of abuse.” Her speech lit up Twitter and the Internet. She spoke as Trump was waiting to appear, and on the cable networks — two at least — the images showed a fiery first lady dominating the screen with a tiny box in the corner of the crowded arena awaiting the GOP nominee. Both CNN and MSNBC broke away f...

Seems to me that Paul Ryan's decision to decouple from Donald Trump is very logical and something all folks should be allowed to do. Duh?  And just moments ago on Morning Joe I hear about a medicine that treats hepatitis C that costs a dollar to make and the drug company sells it for $1000 and the profits for Gilead Science go to Ireland. Your insurance company pays top dollar and your premiums are higher than they could be. Where are the lobbyists for the people that need the drug, or the tax payers that will eventually have to pay for the drug or the interest on the deficit that this kind of policy helps create. Is this a Republican/Democratic issue.  I don't think so. And then we go back the Senate where is is more important to control the levers of power than working on solving problems.  And folks how is that working?  Governing is difficult, legislating is difficult, I wonder how much Gilead is spending on this election.  I wonder how much John Milig...

Yesterday, I started plotting the coordinates of the center of Hurricane Mathew.  Miami, Florida is at 25.0 N latitude and 80.1 W longitude.   Time   Latitude  Longitude 8:00am   18.4N    74.2W 11:00am 18.9 N   74.3 W 2:00pm   19.4 N   74.3 W 5:00pm   19.8 N    74.3 W 8:00pm   20.1 N    74.3 W 11:00 pm 20.4 N   74.4W 2:00am    20.7 N   74.4W 5:00am   21.1 N    74.6W 8:00am   21.5.N    74.9W                   Current track is NNW at about 10mph.  I started doing this exercise be cause the charts and graphics were a little bit busy and confusing.  The next advisory is at 11:00am. 10/6/2016 Miami has dodged another very serious hurricane.  But the future path is very strange.

Hurricane Mathew seems to be blowing through the western tip of Haiti.  In Miami most folks are starting to watch the advisories that are happening every three hours.  8:00 AM, 11:00 AM, ... The Hurricane is to the south and east and the storm isn't forecast to be really close until early Thursday Morning.  The plastic jugs will be filled with water on Wednesday, ice trays are full and getting emptied as they freeze solidly.  I've been al banco for cash, la gasolinera for gas and bought batteries for radios.  Hopefully, I won't need to use the cash for anything other than food and beer, and the car will still have a full tank of gas on Friday, and the batteries will sit in the drawer until much later. Where I live, when the power goes out and it probably will if we get serious tropical storm winds, the next big issue will be when power is restored.  This is the bitch about storms.  What happens next and when will it happen is not something to look ...

It seems to me that most Americans would fail badly at naming the important people leaders of the G-20, which is shorthand for the 20 largest economies in the world.  I know of Justin Trudeau of Canada, Nieto of Mexico, Hollande of France, Merkel of Germany, Abe of Japan, Putin of Russia, and Modi of India.  There are some openings for leaders in Brazil and Great Britain. President Obama will be serving for only a short time.  Beyond those names I've mentioned I know there are important people at the head of China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Italy, South Africa, Turkey, Argentina, and Australia, and the European Union but I doubt I could pick those leaders out of a reunion picture at their latest meeting. Sadly, I doubt I did better than a lot of my fellow country men or women.  I would also wager that there are folks that can't name their state's senators or their local representatives to congress and it gets worse when you name representatives to local Florida go...

The Republicans and Democrats voted to override President Obama's veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Bill.  President Obama warned the Congress about passing legislation that might have "unintended consequences".  The most simple consequence being citizens of other countries going to court to sue the United States if they think the United States is involved in terrorism.  I'm not a lawyer but I could imagine folks going to court in this country for drone strikes we have undertaken. The JASTA Bill veto was overridden 97-1.  Now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has changed his mind at least somewhat and is criticizing President Obama for nor lobbying more forcefully against a bill he vetoed. Maybe the debate should have happened on the Senate Floor or Senator McConnell could have spoken to the President if he needed a power point presentation about the weakness of the bill the Congress passed.