Sunday Morning Coming Down

The bar maid pretty assumes I want to watch horse racing on TVG when I go to LOOM 1825.  Sometimes I even challenge her to pick a horse and we make a friendly wager.  She gets first choice, she can pick the favorite or whatever she likes.  Sometimes other fellow travelers get in on the action.  Rarely does anybody pick two winners and sometimes we go several races before either of us picks a winner.  Saturday, "The Chef" asked me who I liked in the Derby.  At this stage of the game I'm kind of clueless or at best undecided.  Not wanting to kill a conversation I said Baffert's horses. We were off to the races.  The guy likes playing a future book out of Ireland and he mentions a horse named Catholic Boy.  The horse has been in four races, three of them graded stakes races and winning two of those stakes races and finishing 4th in the Breeder's Cup Juvenile Turf Race. The Chef has backed his opinion with a small bet on Catholic Boy but he i...

My memories of juke boxes revolved around how many songs you got for a quarter or two bits.  Three songs for 25 cents seemed to be the standard and then I found one that played five songs for a quarter.  The tavern that housed that juke box and the 45's it played are long gone. The new juke boxes are hooked up to everywhere through the internet and while the songs are much more expensive, the selections you have are almost unlimited. For $2.00 you can play three or maybe more of your favorites from the 40's through today's hits.  Some music stands the test of time, other tunes maybe don't.  For an extra credit you can have your song played first, jumping the line.  Other similarly sneaky folks will play songs using their smart phones.  The response can be anywhere from "wow, I've never heard that", "who played that", or "if I hear another song by Abba, I'm going to take your phone". The music that you choose to play in public,...

There was a field trip made to Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Florida on Wednesday.  The Walking Ring was sunny, there was a warm breeze and the traffic getting from South Miami to the Broward line was easy.  Parking was free, the beer was cold, there were lots of visitors from the North based on a quick survey of license tags in the parking lot.  I haven't been to see live racing at Gulfstream for a couple of years and I was ready to see some live racing.  Watching races on TV is ok but it can't compete with live racing. There is nothing wrong with racing in Ohio at Mahoning Valley, or at Aqueduct in New York, Turfway Park in Kentucky or Parx in Pennsylvania.  But it just doesn't seem to be right.  Snowstorms and freezing temperatures are good reasons to not go to the races Saturday, The Pegasus World Cup Invitational Race will be held at Gulfstream Park.  It's a $16,000,000 race. Twelve owners each put up $1,000,000 for the right to enter a horse...

It's not surprising that the government has shutdown as of midnight Friday.  The Wall, DACA, CHIP, and Military Funding have been melted together in a toxic brew.  All four issues have their supporters and in the case of DACA and the Wall opponents. As long as these four issues are fused together I don't see much chance for compromise, progress or the government getting back to business. And as long as you can raise money from your base by doing stuff that doesn't look like compromise, it is going to happen over and over again.  It's not particularly one sided partisanship it's decidedly bipartisan partisanship.    

It is January 19, 2018 and I am about two months away from being 67 years old.  Sometimes it takes some time to remember a name or a password or why I went to the kitchen and am opening the refrigerator. This morning I was confronted by a Facebook Post about a news story about a once in a lifetime Chicago snow storm that happened in 1967, was remembered in 2014 as a 47 year throwback Thursday memory and reposted again by a high school friend yesterday. I remember that blizzard but counting backwards 47 years from today made the year 1971 and I wasn't in high school, I was in Normal, Illinois, 20 years old. It took a little time to unwind that timeline.

The Viking/Saints game last night was great, top notch, entertaining, fun, and the best football game and I've seen this year. The Viking War Cry is everywhere!

There are lots of places in the world where the average wage is $3.00 a day or less.  In fact there are estimates that about 1/2 of the world's population makes less than $3.00 a day and that about 10% of the worlds population goes to bed hungry. Nation building isn't easy. In many of the poorest places places on earth there is a lack of access to education, inadequate roads, bridges and electrical grids and healthcare.  The rule of law is missing and tribalism keeps groups fighting each other instead of working together. Natural disasters like hurricanes, drought, earthquakes, fires and floods can complicate even difficult situations and make them worse. We need to really understand the reasons for such poverty, inequality, lack of opportunity, quit scapegoating and working to solve these problems on a worldwide basis.

There are three races this weekend that will give the owners and the horses points towards getting into the Kentucky Derby in May. Saturday "The Jerome" will be run at Aqueduct. The race is named after Jerome Park which was the original site of the Belmont Stakes, the third jewel off the Triple Crown. The Fair Grounds in New Orleans will host the Lecomete, a $200,000 race that is a prep for the Louisiana Derby and the Kentucky Derby.  The race is named after a horse sired by Boston who was the leading stallion in 1841, 1842, and 1843. Monday "The Smarty Jones" will be run at Oaklawn Park in Hot Spring, Arkansas.  Smarty Jones almost won the Triple Crown in 2004.  After wining the Derby and Preakness he was upset by Birdstone in the Belmont.  At Oaklawn Park he won the Rebel, Southwest, and Arkansas Derby. 

A few days ago the federal government opened virtually the entire coastline to oil and gas exploration announcing that it would possibly open leases on the Atlantic Coastal Shelf and expand areas on the Pacific Coast and offshore Alaska. The political push back came from South Carolina, Florida, California and it wasn't just tree hugging environmentalists, the Sierra Club, or the Audubon Society leading the charge.  The Florida Governor and Senators seem to have stopped drilling in waters that could affect Florida's beaches according to reports rom the Miami Herald Tourism is big business.  It employs millions of people and generates a lot of tax revenue for states throughout the nation.  The Deepwater Horizon Blowout is enough to limit more offshore drilling anywhere.

Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas opens on Friday, while Gulfstream Park(FL) and Santa Anita(CA) have been open for a couple of weeks.  The preparations for the Kentucky Derby are in full bloom and the list of contenders are being compiled. Bolt d' Oro, Good Magic, Mask, Mckinzie and a whole lot of other horses are trying to accumulate points to qualify for this year's run for the roses on the first Saturday in May. The Smarty Jones kicks off the qualifiers at Oaklawn next Monday(15th) followed by the Holy Bull at Gulfstream park on February 3, 2018.  There were about 22,000  TB foals registered in 2015. Mask, who won the Mucho Macho Man at Gulfstream Park last Saturday is trained by Chad Brown, is owned by Lane's End Racing, sired by Tappit, he brought $685,000 at the Keeneland, 2016 September Yearling Sale.

I think medical marijuana might be ok and I think recreational marijuana might be ok and as a resident of Florida I voted to allow the use of medical marijuana like over 70% of the Florida voters did in 2016.  I'm not a medical doctor, I'm not a pot user at this time, I have no plans to open a pot dispensary, and I am not in law enforcement or related to the correctional system.  I have no dog in this fight. President Obama established a policy that allowed states to regulate marijuana in their states as long as it did not conflict with Federal enforcement policies related to distribution to minors, gang and criminal enterprises profiting from sales, preventing the diversion of marijuana from legal states to other states where it is illegal, using state laws as a cover for other illegal trafficking in drugs, preventing the use of violence and fire arms related to marijuana, driving while impaired, and the use and possession of drugs on federal lands. Twenty nine states hav...

Tonight it is going to be cold if you are a Miami native or an iguana.   For the second night in a row it will be in the 40’s just after sun up which is not beach weather or particularly good for all the stuff grown in South Florida agricultural areas  On January 19 th , 1977, it snowed in Miami, and the January 20 th , 1977 Miami Herald’s headline was about the snow in Miami which didn’t last and the battle the farmers to save their crops which were winter vegetables.   The Inauguration of Jimmy Carter made the front page below the fold and was almost an afterthought to all the shivering Miamians. I was sent to hand deliver a grant modification to Atlanta on the 19th which would have been a really plum assignment except that it was a lot colder in Atlanta.   I think I got the assignment because I had an almost new winter coat and everybody else with more seniority passed because it was so cold. The Department of Labor Regional Office in Atlanta was cele...