Sunday Morning Coming Down

 I bought a loaf of bread and a couple other items at Publix in Coral Gables a few days ago.  Since the pandemic I've kind of avoided grocery store crowds as much possible.  The store I visited has always been clean and the staff has been friendly.  Grocery stores are staffed by essential workers and Publix is no different. In fact Publix prides itself on its employees.   Founded in 1930 by George W. Jenkins,  Publix  is a private corporation that is wholly owned by present and past  employees  and members of the Jenkins family.   It has been reported that a member of the Jenkins family donated at least $300,000 for the January 6, 2021.  The employees of need to distance themselves from the Jenkins Family quickly to blunt calls to boycott Publix. “Is it any surprise that DeSantis is rolling out the vaccine only in Publix stores, the heir of which gave $300,000 to the incitement to insurrection January 6th?” asked Twitter user K...

 Two things should take place in the next legislation to restart parts of the economy that have been hurt by the pandemic.  Hospitality, travel, tourism, entertainment and restaurants are going out of business left and right and since those businesses are also part of commercial real estate operating at 25% or 50% or "outside doesn't cut the mustard. Lower income folks and folks adversely affected in hospitality, tourism, travel and restaurants and other closely related industries need to be targeted for assistance. As the vaccine rollout continues more folks will spend more money eventually and maybe more rapidly.   Any economic predictions are contingent on how quickly the COVID 19 can be controlled and the palpable fear of COVID 19 can be mitigated.

I hope this is the last time I write about the 45th president.  He has reportedly discussed forming a new political party and ostensibly his own political party called the Patriot Party. The War Between the States was about "states rights", ending slavery, and preserving the union. I think the Patriot Party will first be a fictional party to allow the last Republican president to collect political contributions for his own personal benefit.  Patriots should be concerned as the result could give patriots a bad connotation and it might drift over to republicans.   It's bad enough that the President of the United States of America thought it was possible to brow beat the Senate to follow the the lead of  138 Republicans in questioning the vote totals in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and several other states which he lost in the 2020 election. It's even worse that the President of the United States spoke at a rally on January 6th that devolved to a riot and then wo...

 Yesterday or the day before I added my name to Twitter.  I don't have much to tweet, I added my name to get an early warning the JMH or the Miami Dade Health Department would be taking names for the COVID 19 vaccine.   Last night I got two 15 minute warnings, one from my sister and another on my laptop.  By the time I got to the website to sign up all the appointments had been filled.  You might think that I think that this was an epic failure.  Actually the system worked and the appointments were filled quickly and vaccine will be administered less chaotically. This morning after checking vaccine availability "religiously", I searched "abolish" on twitter.  Kind of hard to follow.

Early this week I went online to renew my Florida Driver's License and the registration for my 2015 Chevy Sonic.  The cost for these two items were $48.00 and $66.85 with a $2.00 service charge.  In case I do not receive the license and registration, the e-mail confirming purchases authorizes me to keep driving my car until 4/19/2021.  Both items should be delivered in 7-10 days.   Two items have been crossed of my bucket list for the coming year. The Miami Dade Elections Department sent a notification that my vote by mail request had expired but but could be renewed by sending in a new request that had been enclosed or by calling the office and asking it to be renewed. I prefer voting early and in person but really appreciate the information should the pandemic linger on. The Miami Dade COVID 19 Vaccine sign up page is now on my front page so it is easier to check should vaccine become available.  Baptist Health, CVS Pharmacy, and my primary care physician...

Between long term incumbency and gerrymandering in Congress, folks get elected that are hard to unelect but easy to reelect in general elections. They only get thrown out of office for stealing or accepting bribes from people or interest groups. The modern way of removing a democrat or a republican from a safe seat has become a primary contest, retirement, or death. I live in a neighborhood in Miami Dade County that voted for Joe Biden but flipped two congressional districts from democrat back to republican after electing two democrats in 2018 so maybe what I said wasn't completely correct but an example of two districts that aren't safe seats yet as the growth in South Florida as resulted in two new districts that were redrawn in 2012. If the election had been stolen from the current president why didn't the scheme work in Miami Dade County like it did in 2018? The most obvious answer is that more people voted for Gimenez and Salazar than their opponents. Am I concerned, y...

 The democrats hold small majorities in both houses of congress and the presidency.  This may not be the time for grand legislative efforts but it is certainly a time for people of good will to make efforts to work across the aisle for compromises that serve the better aspects of the majority and allow folks that were elected to show that they are capable of legislating and serving the best interests of the country. Further complicating matters is the Hastert Rule.   The Hastert Rule, also known as the "majority of the majority" rule, is an informal governing principle used in the United States by Republican and Democratic Speakers of the House of Representatives since the mid-1990s to maintain their speakerships and limit the power of the minority party to bring bills up for a vote on the floor of the House. The rule keeps the minority party from passing bills with the assistance of a minority of majority party members.  It's no wonder the country is tied in su...

The next time I get on an airplane, my first question of the pilot or crew won't be his party registration. Last night I came across a face book post that listed a whole slew of aggressions  that democrats, people who used to be republicans, independents, moderates, and liberals might have committed during the last four years of a failed presidency.  Or maybe they just voted for Joe Biden because the alternative left them at home, struggling with a failed COVID 19 policy, possibly job loss and a more than a little trepidation going to grocery shop, a bar, restaurant, a store, or visiting family, tired and were again looking for a change. It started out like this: "We tolerated 44 (Obama) and kept our mouths shut". Nothing was said about how thrilled they were as the Senate Majority Leader did his best to make (Obama) a one term president. None of grievances voiced them remotely resembled the riot that took place on January 6, 2021, and nothing about the votes in the Elect...

Just a couple of thoughts about the execution of vaccine shots in South Florida. 1) Driving from Boca Raton in Palm Beach County on the Turnpike to Tropical Park in southwest Miami Dade County to get your first shot of the COVID 19 Vaccine because you were lucky enough to get an appointment that was probably intended for Dade County residents over 65 and then complaining about the process and the service is beyond the pale.  The fact that you had an 11:00 AM appointment and were inconvenienced by the traffic and some opening day mix ups on Saturday seems childish and born of privilege.     From the Miami Herald: But Lynn Lubell said that even though her mother, Millie Radlauer, had an appointment scheduled for 11 a.m., she was turned away after she arrived by car with Lubell’s husband 90-minutes early. The pair, along with another group of friends who had appointments booked, had driven from Boca Raton. Saturday afternoon, after the Herald reached out to Miami-Dade C...

Before leaving Miami, Carlos Gimenez said this:  “It’s all about collaboration and results,” Gimenez, a 66-year-old Republican, said during the Nov.6  farewell ceremony at a PortMiami terminal . “People want their elected leaders to work together for the greater good. They don’t want us to get stuck in partisan, broken potholes.” from the Miami Herald  Carlos Gimenez, the former Miami Dade County Mayor, even before he has gotten a committee assignment , in one of his first votes:  “Though I acknowledge my objections to these particular slates of electors would never have changed the outcome of the election,” Gimenez said, “it is my duty as a member of Congress to exercise congressional oversight powers in order to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Carlos Gimenez cast his lot with twelve other Florida House Republicans who "ostensibly" voted to exercise congressional oversight powers at 3:08 AM, January 7th, 2021.  The former mayor who su...

Two weeks from today the United States of America will have a new president.  I've been wrong before but this time even the Senior Senator from Kentucky has finally come down on the side of democratic institutions in governing this country. Yesterday was an historic day in this country. Two new Senators were elected in the State of Georgia. The President spoke before a crowd that gathered as the Congress met to certify the results of the November 3, 2020 election which he lost . "We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” Trump told the crowd to whoops and loud cheers, falsely claiming that President-elect Joe Biden’s victory was based on fraudulent vote counts. “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.” “Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy,” Trump  told his supporters  at a “Save America” rally. “After this, we’re going ...

I've lived in Florida for a long time and this is the classic "hoisted with your own petard" of "state's rights.  Voting has always been something that states have been in charge of.  Each state makes their own rules and that is the way it has been.  Virtually all of the court challenges to the results of the election have been dismissed.  The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discrimination in voting on the basis of race.  Florida was subject to the various aspects of the 1965 law because of its systematic discrimination and circumvention of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments passed after the end of the civil war, the failure of reconstruction, and the "compromise of 1877" which seated Rutherford B. Hayes as the next president and the start of Jim Crow laws. It's 2021 and the current president has been complaining that he lost the election because of wide spread voter fraud in Georgia, a state he won narrowly in 2016  because democratic and other...

 A taped phone conversation between the Georgia Secretary of State and the President of the United States took place last weekend and the gist of the conversation according to the transcript published by the Washington Post was to find enough votes to overturn the election results in the presidential contest held in November. There have been hand recounts of ballots cast in Georgia.  The Republican Governor and Secretary of State both stand by the results of the election that has been certified. “There are no seized machines in Ware County, not true, did not happen,” Secretary of State Implementation Manager Gabriel Sterling said.  “This is another of the falsehoods being pedaled by conspiracy advocates trying to convince the gullible of why the presidential election didn’t turnout as they’d hoped,” said Walter Jones, he Secretary of State Office's communications manager. “No voting machines have been seized. No one has unearthed evidence of ‘vote flipping’ because i...