Sunday Morning Coming Down

I guess the criticism of healthcare reform as income redistribution was inevitable.  I'm sure the same thing was said about Social Security, Medicare, and every other social safety net program.  Charity is wealth redistribution too.  Volunteering, to the extent that it helps someone is also wealth redistribution.  I guess helping people live longer, healthier lives through insurance subsidies to the poor and middle class is not something we should strive for. If you have a crappy job and your employer doesn't provide health insurance and you have a low birth weight baby and get an astronomical bill, should the hospital keep your baby until you pay the bill, or refuse to provide care, and make the survival of the baby a problem. There will be winners and losers, I'm sure.  It took us a relatively long time to get to such an expensive system of health care and adding folks with preexisting conditions and providing reasonable basic levels of cove...

At the most simple level I feel it is better that the leaders of Iran and the United States are on speaking terms.  It is also better that there seems to have been progress in Syria related to chemical weapons. They are however still killing each other in Syria, Iraq may be returning to something like the civil war between the Shias and the Sunnis and from the last statistics I can find there were almost 31,000 gun related deaths in the United States of America.  Not much progress on that front either.  Afghanistan needs our help and money but can't stand us. I'm not sure how much absolute progress is possible. Saudi Arabia and Iran are still in a proxy war with serious religious overtones and Israel seems to be marching to the tune of its own drummer. Nobody said it was going to be easy and it isn't.  At least we are pumping more of our own oil but even that doesn't seem to be of much help. 

I got up early this morning.  The dry season is taking a little time off.  Rainy and gray, if this had been Chicago we would have digging out of a whole season's worth of snow.  About all I can complain about is mud on the backside and some pretty big puddles. Stolicknaya was out on the track this morning.  He looked really good and was really motoring through the finish line.  After he finished working I hung around to watch the clockers do their thing as about ten horses worked out and they tried to get the name of the horse and the time the horse ran right.  This seemingly simple task can be screwed up quite easily.  Most of the horses don't stick out in a crowd and identifying horses requires, the clockers, exercise riders, and trainers to cooperate.  There is little benefit for the connections to report a bullet workout unless the horse needs a published work to race. Back in the barn the horse looked good and the trainer complained ...

November 18, 2013,I'm now an official horseman at Hialeah Park.  It's kind of neat.  I paid for the Florida owners license a few weeks ago and yesterday I got a picture id.  Right now it is sort of like an all access pass and you can watch some real horsemen taking care of their horses.  It's a 24/7 job, new horses are arriving all the time and when the track is open early in the meet it can be busy with horses eating breakfast, working out on the track, practicing at the starting gate, getting bathed, groomed, and having their stalls cleaned, hay distributed and their feet checked out daily. After the morning rush, things slow down but there are still things to do.  The help and the horses all have their schedules.  Thunderstruck Stable has entered Stolicknaya in the Orange Blossom Stakes on November 29, 2013.  I'm doubtful he will make the race because he has only won a little over $20,000 in his lifetime and will be up against ...

I've spent a little time at Hialeah Park this weekend.  This isn't like hard time.  It isn't very much different than weekends in South Miami.  The venue is a little bit different, but there is beer, food and sports on multiple TVs.  There are also slot machines and backside of the race track is open and it's almost like the rodeo is in town.  Western shirts, worn blue denim and cowboy hats are very obvious signs that Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana and places out West are here and there will be races. This is also about logistics, communications, and animals.  The trainer said he is itching to get on the road.  The message was received on Friday morning.  Ocala is about 300 miles north of Miami.  The trainer also said he needs to make two trips to get set up at Hialeah.  One trip hauling the horses and stuff for racing, the other trip to bring the camper and get it set up. Like it or not this is a little bit complicated.  R...

I'll be frank this story is a few days old and it seemed so Miami that I did not pay much attention to it. Gerardo Nales boards a small aircraft at Tamiami airport, he and pilot, Felipe Fons fly out over the Biscayne Bay off Key Biscayne. The pilot tells investigators Nales opens the door of the plane and falls 2000 feet to his death. The police can't find the body.  The police won't say why the two were out flying, and as of this morning are unsure if a crime has been committed. This happened one other time.  A lady chartered an airplane and jumped out of the plane over her parents house in South Dade.  The pilot was quoted as saying "my passenger just left the airplane".

Ted Arison, the father of the owner of the Miami Heat and Carnival Cruise Line died a citizen of Israel after being born in Palestine, moving to the United States, becoming a U.S. citizen and making his fortune in two cruise lines, Norweigiean and Carnival Cruise Lines and then renouncing his citizenship to avoid estate taxes.  His daughter is the richest person in Israel and his son Mickey is the 73rd richest person in the U.S. and is a major owner in Carnival Cruise Line and and the Miami Heat. I'm in favor of creating jobs and the cruise industry is huge in Miami.  It is an affordable vacation option for a lot of Americans.  When things go well it can be a great experience.  If there are problems a refund of your ticket and a big discount on a future cruise may or may not make up for your discomfort. People have jobs in Miami selling cruises, taxis have passengers, hotels sell rooms while passengers wait for their cruises to start, and restaurants ha...