Category — Florida

During the Easter/Spring Break period so we had the usual Tornado Watch, Severe Thunderstorm Warning, High Surf advisory, Rip Tide advisory … all of the usual.

It didn’t really rain, it was more like living on the bottom floor of 10 story apartment building and everyone threw their dishwater out the window at the same time. There were red glows that I interpreted as cars on the road, but I couldn’t actually see individual lights, or the outlines to determine what kind of vehicles they were. It wasn’t that the street was flooded – the air was flooded.

This really doesn’t help the tourism industry. Student loan costs had already killed the concept of going somewhere for spring break for a lot of students, so the weather just made a bad situation worse.

As usual there was no one else voting when I went at 10AM. Two precincts use the town hall for voting, but I have never seen a crowd.

There was a new system. I gave them my ‘photo ID’ and they stuck it in a scanner attached to a laptop and had me do a signature on a small touchscreen. I miss the old lineprinter 14 inch green & white paper ledgers that you had to sign with actual ink, but at least I still get a paper ballot to write on, so my vote will probably be counted.

Super Tuesday II,”The Judgement of Mario”, really is Rubio’s Last Stand. If he doesn’t win Florida his campaign is toast. It is all irrelevant because there is no lesser evil among any of them. Kasich is better at pretending he’s not a fascist whack job, but that is all that is left.

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

That was Barry Goldwater in his acceptance speech as the 1964 Republican candidate for President. This isn’t a new phenomenon for the Republicans. The only thing that changed was their rhetoric until they had to suck up to the “Tea Partiers”.

Tomorrow is Florida’s primary election and every registered voter who is a member of either of the two major parties should definitely go out and vote. It is going to be an historic event, because you have to go back to the 19th century to find this much hatred openly expressed in a Presidential primary.

Marco Rubio is running ads saying that voting for Cruz or Kasich is a vote for Trump. Marco doesn’t understand that Florida Republicans have already given him one job he hasn’t done, so they aren’t likely to give him another.

So, I have been dealing with Tornado warnings and watches, Severe thunderstorm warnings, Flash flood warnings, Coastal Flood advisory, High wind advisory, High surf advisory, Rip tide advisory – in other words: Tuesday. There have been minor interruptions of the utilities, but I have been avoiding anything with a direct wired connection because of my low level of trust in the ability of any of the utilities to actually install a decent ground.

In Nevada they are playing the GOP version of the caucus game which will probably be won by Trump. Now, everyone but Trump and Republican primary voters have decided that it isn’t possible for Trump to win the Republican nomination for President, even though he is obviously well on his way to doing just that. So when I hear or read people claiming that Bernie Sanders can’t beat Trump in the election, I realize that I was correct to back him.

There will be over 20 million Hispanics eligible to vote in the Presidential election, and they won’t be voting for a Democrat, they will be voting against Donald Trump and his stupid wall. Bernie is bringing out new, young voters, and GOTV is the winning strategy in any election.

Having had multiple cold fronts move through with heavy rains for over a month, it appears that the latest front is going to actually take the local temperature down to around freezing early Monday, so I have been making some preparations.

The Pacific Northwest and Northern California seem to be in a wet cycle, which is good news for them, but their good news is balanced by the bad news in Australia, which has been having destructive bushfires. Both circumstances are part of the effect of a strong El Niño condition.

Ellroon has found a wonderful Photoshop of the Oregon occupation.

To live in Florida, but we get more than our share.

The BBC notes Florida woman charged after streaming drink driving:

Viewers of Periscope, Twitter’s live-video streaming app, alerted police to a woman who appeared intoxicated and was streaming a video of herself driving around Lakeland, Florida.

Police eventually found Whitney Beall, 23, and charged her with driving under the influence.

“I am…drunk,” she said at one point in the video, swearing.

Periscope users sent her messages on Saturday night imploring her to stop driving before she hurt someone.

No-one was hurt in the incident, police said.

Ms Beall said on the video that she had a flat tyre and did not know where she was. Periscope viewers helped police pinpoint Ms Beall’s location after they spotted local landmarks in the background.

Her attorney entered a Not Guilty plea at arraignment. The plea indicates that the attorney is hoping for a deal in the sentencing, because the entire Periscope stream is admissible, as is the field sobriety test captured by the patrol car’s dash cam. She should have agreed to the Breathalyzer if she wanted to drive again…

The critical questions: What is a cubit and what is the current price for gopherwood?

In the eastern Pacific Tropical Storm Marty is pushing humid Pacific air across Mexico into the Gulf of Mexico where it is being added to the Gulf air that Invest 99L was already moving around producing 10 inches+ of rain on the northern Gulf Coast.

Locally it has been raining since 11PM CDT yesterday, but it didn’t serious until Noon when the rate jumped to 1½ inches/hour.

We have flash flood warnings or watches covering the entire northern coast, but the sand that makes up the land on the immediate coast tends to limit our flood problems to parking lots and roadways.

Apparently because the native coral snake, a colorful and deadly member of the Elapidae family, isn’t impressive enough, we have a King cobra kept as pet escapes from Florida home. Understand that this was totally legal with a state license.

People who support marijuana legalization don’t like the referendum in Ohio. It turns out that ten investor groups are financing the referendum that limits the number of sites where the legal marijuana can be grown to the ten sites that the investors own.

Kentucky clerk jailed for defying court orders on gay marriage

A US judge has ordered a Kentucky official jailed for contempt of court after she has repeatedly refused to issue marriage licences to gay couples.

Kim Davis has said that her Christian faith should exempt her from signing the licenses.

The US Supreme Court declared gay marriage legal in June.
…

US District Judge David Bunning said he had “no alternative” but to jail her, because issuing fines would not change her mind.

“Her good faith belief is simply not a viable defence,” said Mr Bunning. “Mrs Davis took an oath. Oaths mean things.”

It should be noted that Ms Davis essentially “inherited” her position from her mother, and she is so enamored of marriage that she has had four of them.

Having already failed to provide the state with an budget, the Republican leadership of the Florida legislature has been informed that they have redraw the election districts because the Florida Supreme Court has just ruled that the last map they created is too political to pass the standards that were put in the Florida constitution by a referendum. This means calling one or more special sessions to get this done, and those sessions cost Florida taxpayers a lot of money.

The remnants of Bill are still causing problems, currently in Arkansas on its way to the Ohio Valley.

Another Bush is running for President. The former governor of Florida, John Ellis Bush, is running as a monogram – J.E.B.

Donald Trump rubs salt in the wounds of a lot of investors in his real estate disasters by noting that he is a billionaire while his projects keeping going bankrupt. College students can’t cancel their student loans, but billionaires don’t have to pay for anything.

I see that the usual suspects are trying to spin the attack in Charleston, South Carolina as the act of a ‘lone wolf’ who was a mental defective, rather than another white supremacist terror attack.

With next to nothing going on right now the most interesting Florida story was about Doug Hughes, a Ruskin, Florida mailman, who wanted to deliver letters to the Congresscritters about campaign finance reform and decided to fly his gyrocopter to DC and land on the lawn near the Capitol building.

Lots of people took videos of the flight, which is low and slow, and the consensus is that the videos are funnier with the Inspector Gadget theme playing.

A gyrocopter flies so low and slow that it stays below radar, and shooting it down would probably cause more damage that following it to see what was going on. It can’t carry much weight beyond a pilot, so even if there were explosives on board, it would be less dangerous to move people out of the way, rather that bringing it down.

So, Marco finally admitted he was running for President, which is good because it means he can’t run for re-election to the Senate. You can only appear on a ballot once in Florida, so if he puts his name on the ballot in the Presidential primary, he can’t have it on for the Senate primary challenge by the Tea Party if no one else.

I have seen people who are actually treating him as a viable candidate, which is absurd. He isn’t crazy enough to win the wingnut vote, and he lacks the fund-raising capability to make it through the early round without those voters. Further, if Jeb Bush takes the nomination, Marco isn’t viable for the VP slot because of the requirement that Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates be from different states.

In local news the weather forecast is for thunderstorms for the next week. We have already had more than twice the normal rainfall for the entire month, and it is just going to get soggier as a cold front has stalled north of us.

It isn’t of Biblical proportions, but it is at least one book’s worth. Mobile had over 7 inches of rain yesterday.

Okaloosa wasn’t the only county with an odd violent incident this week. In the county just West of us things got really strange: Santa Rosa deputy attacked by man with Samurai sword.

The guy sliced the first deputy on the scene pretty badly. but the second deputy who arrived started shooting as soon as the guy headed for him, killing him.

The wounded deputy is now listed in good condition at a local hospital. No one has figured out the reason behind the attack.

The moon wasn’t full and the weather was pleasant. No report yet on possible ‘chemical’ involvement.

So, current governor, Rick “the fraudster” Scott, mistakenly said that he was in favor of the Medicaid expansion when he was running for re-election, but has ‘corrected the record’ to show that he always against it, even when he said he was for it.

Then you have former governor, John Ellis “JEB” Bush, who says that he isn’t a Latino, even though he checked the box on his voter registration form saying he was, and signed the form under penalty of perjury.

There are a lot of Republican officials in this state who haven’t mastered the concept of checking boxes.