Sunday Morning Coming Down

I wonder how long the habit of washing your hands before and after just about everything will continue.  My hands have never been this clean since I washed dishes at the "Farm". I'm not a person who hugs a lot, in fact hugs have been reserved for family in the past like Mom and Dad, sisters and seeing folks at wakes and weddings, but shaking hands with friends and the public while at work was normal and friendly.  I've been a late implementer of the fist bump.  And this has been replaced by waving.  

Just read that governmental actions actions just passed by Congress and The Fed might be 30% of the GDP for 2020.  I guess we are all socialists. I spent my career working in DOL programs related to job training, welfare, and unemployment insurance.  The way back machine of taking claims, applications, by hand along with in person interviews then processing the applications was difficult back then.  Working with folks that lost jobs, their houses and their belongings after Hurricane Andrew was also challenging. It was wrenching when folks lost their jobs at Eastern or Pan Am Airlines.  A lot of these folks worked their whole lives for those companies, had great jobs, good pay, nice houses, health insurance and they could fly for next to nothing.  I wonder about the future of the cruise ship industry as COVID 19 statistics have been reported in at least two cases by the name of the cruise ship when compiling cases for the CDC. Now almost all applications fo...

Fonner Park in Grand Isle Nebraska ran races on Monday.  I don't know if there are any lessons there but it is something to consider when we talk about stuff that boils down to issues about "moral hazards".  Racing without the fans was  A) a huge success, B) it depends, C) who cares. Handle $1.3 million dollars. That was an all-time record at Fonner. There were $1.2 million days in 1983 and 1990. The one in 1983 was exclusively bet at Fonner Park, while the one in 1990 included out-of-state wagering. “Monday, March 23, was a monumental day in the history of Fonner Park,” Kotulak said. “Unfortunately that was not the case for recouping expenses to conduct racing. The horsemen and Fonner Park retain only a tiny sliver of the overall money that’s raised.” And so it goes.  There will be racing on 3/24 and 3/25 as the "experiment" continues.

And the seasons they go round and round And the painted ponies go up and down We're captive on the carousel of time We can't return we can only look Behind from where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game. In Florida the beaches,bars and sit down restaurants are closed.  Essential businesses like pharmacies, grocery stores and gas stations and marinas may stay open and: Liquor Stores may remain open along with Gun Shops. This is Miami, I wonder when the first bust will be made of a COVID 2020 "speakeasy".

The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Miami decided to have its services broadcast on its new you tube channel  UUMiami.org  This will be a chance to see what being a UU is all about.  11:00AM on Sunday. I will miss the coffee before the service and all my church family, but look forward to seeing them soon in person.

According to reports from the Bloodhorse: NBC Sports and TVG announced March 21 a partnership to bring more horse racing to more fans beginning this weekend as NBCSN simulcasts TVG's Trackside Live March 21-22 from 4-8 p.m. ET. Anchored by TVG host and NBC Sports reporter Britney Eurton, TVG's Trackside Live provides fans with live horse racing from various tracks across the country. If you can't go to the track you can watch some live races on the tube. 1-800-Admit It. I already have an account with TVG.  $2.00 to win seems almost sane, fun and entertaining compared to CNBC.

A lot of places had St. Patrick's Day events planned and in motion last night and then just about everything was shut down.  Places were supposed to close at 5:00 pm on Tuesday.  In a dramatic step to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus outbreak in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered all bars and nightclubs to shut down at 5 p.m. Tuesday for the next 30 days, and required restaurants to cut their crowd capacity in half. Last week it was the schools that were closed for a month and colleges around the state are going to computer based classes. Should you go out?  The answer is increasingly no.  Assume you have COVID19 are asymptomatic and stay home so you don't spread the virus.  Going to the grocery store or the pharmacy and to throw out the garbage is acceptable if the trip is essential. From the NYT and Albert Camus, The Plague: "All human beings are vulnerable to being randomly exterminated at any time, by a virus, an accident or the actions ...

The Horse Racing Industry is in disarray.  A few weeks ago I was going write a kind of bucolic piece about my experiences being in a quarter horse partnership and spending some time on the back stretch at Hialeah Park. Then twenty seven folks were indicted including Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro trainers of Maximum Security and X Y Jet respectively.   Maximum Security won the Kentucky Derby but was disqualified, X Y Jet won the Golden Shaheen in Dubai in 2019.  From the Washington Post: As FBI agents raided barns in Florida, federal prosecutors in Manhattan unveiled charges that paint Navarro and others not as reverent caretakers but ruthless cheats who gamed the system to administer performance-enhancing drugs with names such as “monkey” and “red acid” to their horses. Those drugs and others, prosecutors said, were engineered to avoid detection by regulators and net the conspirators untold millions of dollars — all to the detriment of the animals, dozens of w...

This is a story from Alan Watt: Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer, whose horse ran away. And all the neighbors came around to commiserate that evening, “So sorry to hear your horse has ran away. That’s too bad.” And he said, “Maybe.” The next day the horse came back, bringing seven wild horses with it, and everybody came around in the evening and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You’ve now got eight horses.” And he said, “Maybe.” The next day his son tried to break one of these horses and ride it and was thrown and broke his leg. And they all said, “Oh, dear that’s too bad.” And he said, “Maybe.” The following day the conscription officers came around to recruit to force people into the army and they rejected his son, because he had a broken leg. And all the people came around and said, “Isn’t that great.” And he said, “Maybe.” Read more: http://lifestoogood.net/karma-reciprocity-taoism/#ixzz6GI3clG3P . A few days ago, Sp...

Chris Mathews resigned/retired abruptly on Monday with an apology for inappropriate comments to women at the age of 74.  He had also made some on air flubs but the final straw was an essay by Laura Bassett GQ about Mathew's serial insensitivity related to comments to women. Chris Mathews spent his adult entire life in politics and political journalism. A native of Philadelphia but a creature of Capitol Hill — his first job in Washington was as a Capitol Police officer — he wrote speeches for President Jimmy Carter and battled the Reagan White House as press secretary for Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill before moving into print journalism as a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle. Matthew got his on-camera start as a regular fill-in panelist in the early days of “The McLaughlin Group,” along with the likes of Lawrence O’Donnell, another young Hill staffer who would also eventually make his way to ­MSNBC. The show, launched by...

The race for POTUS means getting 270 or more electoral votes in however many states necessary.  I'm not sure how many candidates will end up on the ballot for the general election in November but the most important thing will be to win a majority  the electoral college. Arizona (11), Florida (29),  Maine(4), Michigan(16), Minnesota(10), New Hampshire(4), North Carolina(15), Ohio(18), Pennsylvania(20), and Wisconsin(10) and their electoral votes have been identified as "battleground states in the race for the Presidency.  Along with these states you might add Iowa and Georgia. It's going to be all about the turn out.  More specifically about who turns out to vote.  The country is fairly evenly divided ideologically between conservatives, moderates, and liberals according to a 2018 Gallop Poll.  WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' assessment of their political ideology was unchanged in 2018 compared with the year prior when 35% on average described th...