Posts from — September 2010

According to Meg Whitman, former Governor Moonbeam, who is attempting to regain the office of California’s Hippie in chief, is responsible for her employment of an undocumented worker for almost a decade. Since she is obscenely wealthy, obviously nothing can be her fault. 😈

Discussing Rahm Emanuel’s exit from the White House, NPR’s Mara Liasson, a voice of Conventional Wisdom, says it doesn’t matter, because he was part of the team that was needed to steer Obama’s legislative program through Congress, and the White House has done everything it intended to do. Unusually, I think she’s probably correct that the White House has no new projects, because it is time for them to move the 2012 campaign to the front burner.

Maybe its the proximity of Disney World, but Central Florida is a breeding area for whackoes.

The Miami Herald reports that a Central Florida group seeks ouster of 2 high-court judges.

The Republican legislature passed 6 amendments for the November ballot, but three of them were rejected for failing to meet the requirements of the Florida constitution and/or laws. This group is upset because the Florida Supreme Court rejected Amendment 9, a thinly veiled attempt to block some provisions of Obama’s bogus health insurance corporations enrichment law.

Supreme Court justices in Florida are subject to periodic retention elections, and these two guys, both newly appointed, are up for their first one. What they did was refuse to usurp the power of the legislature and change the wording of the ballot summary.

Understand, everyone agreed that the wording that the legislature supplied for their amendment was inaccurate and misleading, but the proponents wanted the court to substitute new language. The court found that it has no power to do that, and just threw out the amendment, which is the standard procedure. Essentially these two justices are being attacked for not exceeding their authority.

The legislature should just stop trying to get “cute” on its summaries and just tell people what they are. They propose amendments for only three reasons: pandering to their base, pandering to campaign contributors, and/or negating amendments sponsored by outside groups. If they just label all of their amendments with one or more of those explanations, they would be cleared for the ballot every time.

Position: 24.5N 80.0W [ 4 PM CDT 2100 UTC].
Movement: North-Northeast [020°] near 12 mph [19 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Wind Gusts: 50 mph [ 80 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 345 miles [555 km].
Minimum central pressure: 996 mb.

Currently about 165 miles [270 km] Southwest of Nassau, Bahamas.

Nicole has dissipated into an elongated low pressure area over the Straits of Florida. All Watches and Warnings have been canceled. This is the final advisory.

There will still be wind and rain generated in the area, but Nicole has lost the organization of a Tropical Storm.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

There are six amendments on November’s ballot after the pruning by the Florida Supreme Court.

Project Vote Smart does its usual thorough job of providing all of the relevant facts at their page, Six Amendments on the 2010 General Election Ballot. They include the summaries that will appear on the ballot, the actual text of the amendments, and the standard statements from supporters and opponents.

I will give you my reaction to each, but make your own decisions. My reactions are for my circumstances, YMMV:

Amendment 1 – NO This is the Republican legislature’s attempt to undo a citizens’ initiative to provide public financing of elections. There is too much corporate money in our elections, and I’m not thrilled by millionaires deciding they want to dabble in government while waiting for their yachts to be fixed. Government is not a business. The goal of business is to maximize profits, and that is definitely not the goal of government.

Amendment 2 – NO This was legislature pandering to the military, and while it sounds good on the surface, it will be a nightmare if passed. It provides an extra homestead exemption on property taxes when a member of the military is deployed. First off, outfits like Special Operations and Special Forces don’t publish deployment information, and don’t want their troops talking about it, so how will anyone know about it? Second, if you are going to give this benefit, why not just give it to serving members of the military? This is a gimmick, not real relief.

[Read more →]

Since I don’t dare attempt your comments again –

JS-Kit went nuts when I published the comment this morning. I had to hit the red X to break out of some sort of loop. It seems to have decided to reprint that comment forever, and it clearly wasn’t that memorable.

So, now I will add Echo/JS-Kit to the growing list of commenting systems that hate me. Usually they simply don’t allow me to comment or ignore my comments, so this reaction is a bit different.

Position: 21.9N 81.9W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northeast [035°] near 8 mph [13 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [ 55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [ 70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 997 mb.

Currently about 95 miles [155 km] South-Southeast of Havana, Cuba.

I knew wouldn’t last, but another day or so wouldn’t have been bad.

The pressure continues down, but this is a very large system and it will take a long time to spin up the wind.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for all of the Cayman Islands; the Cuban provinces from Mantanzas eastward to Ciego de Avila; the northwestern and central Bahamas including the Abacos, Andros Island, Berry Islands, Bimini, Eleuthera, Grand Bahama Island, New Providence, Cat Island, the Exumas, Long Island, Rum Cay, and San Salvador; and the Florida coast from Jupiter Inlet southward to East Cape Sable, and for all of the Florida Keys, including Florida Bay and the Dry Tortugas.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for the West Coast of Florida from north of East Cape Sable to Chokoloskee and for the East Coast of Florida from north of Jupiter Inlet to Sebastian Inlet.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

The Pensacola News Journal reports that Roger Hedgecock is speaking over there on some silly subject.

Apparently Roger is now a national radio personality, but I remember him as the star of one of my favorite events in San Diego – the annual re-trial of the mayor. It had everything politics and Ponzi schemes, computer simulations and ruined lives.

I don’t resent his success. I think ex-cons should be able to re-join society, but I do wonder why so many of them end up as conservative radio personalities.

That’s what the Republican Party of Florida is all about.

They have two ads running attacking Alex Sink that are totally bogus.

First off “the pension ad” – Politifact rating “Barely true”

Now let’s return to the key claim, that state pension fund staffers “lost billions. Then Sink gave them bonuses.” This ad accurately highlights Sink’s oversight role of the state’s pension fund but after that, this ad stretches the facts and misleads the viewer. The $24 billion is not gone. Sink did not personally make the risky investments or give bonuses to staffers, and the staff bonuses preceded the fund’s loss in value. We rate the RPOF ad Barely True.

That’s entirely too generous. The Chief Financial Officer is one of three people on the pension oversight board, and the other two, the majority, were Republicans during this period.

The Republicans fail to mention that they blocked Ms Sink’s attempt to reform the board by adding an investment professional and a representative of the government employees.

[Read more →]

October 4^th is the last day you can register in Florida and vote in this year’s election. This is Okaloosa County’s Registration Information link, which covers the process.

You could have done it on-line, but I wouldn’t chance it this close to the end, nor would I trust snail mail. Remember, Republicans are in control of the state, and they will use any excuse to stop people from voting.

If you don’t vote, you forfeit your legitimate right to complain. Not voting is the same as voting for the results, so, unless you are happy with the way things are, do what is necessary to vote against what is going on.

If you don’t like the choices offered, write in your own name, or anyone you know who is old enough to qualify for the ballot.

For the first time since Danielle popped up on August 21 until Lisa and Matthew faded yesterday, there are no tropical storms of any kind in the Atlantic Basin.

During the period there were ten tropical storms, six of them became hurricanes, and of the six, only Lisa didn’t become a major hurricane [category 3 and above].

The effects of Karl are still being dealt with in the upper Midwest, primarily Wisconsin, as flooding from Karl’s moisture dumped rain in the watersheds that far North.

It will be months before Newfoundland can repair the damage from Igor, even with the assistance of the newly arrived Canadian military units.

The nations around the Caribbean have experienced almost constant tropical rain as system after system sprang up down there, causing flooding and landslides.

Even with a late start, this has been an active season, and it continues through the end of November.

The Local Puppy Trainer has a brief article on them today covering the explanation by the Supervisor of Elections, Paul Lux, GUIDE: Get the lowdown on the 6 proposed state amendments.

Not a lot of detail, but my state senator managed to get a Republican talking point slipped into the article about Amendments 5 & 6. The Republicans already lost their bid to negate these amendments when the court threw out Amendment 4 7 [my mistake] as a con job.

These are the amendments on redistricting, and the Republicans don’t want to give up their power to control everything by creatively constructing the districts to guarantee them a majority of legislative seats at the state and Federal level.

Fair Districts Florida is the group behind the amendments which are very simple and straight forward – districts should be compact and not drawn for political purposes.

On their web site they have examples of the current districts to show you what the problem is. If you look at the voter registration statistics you will see that the state is 42% Democrats, 36% Republicans, 19% independents, and 3% minor parties. Compare that with the reality that 65% of the state legislature and Congressional delegation is Republican. The 22% who aren’t members of the two major parties have no representation at all.

Elections shouldn’t be decided in party primaries, but that’s the way the system currently works.

This is an important change. This is a way to attempt to bring accountability back to the state government.

The people in the US are really a bunch of wimps. The era of the Hedgemony has left huge swaths of the country filled with paranoid xenophobes.

I dealt with the difference between the US and the UK before, but skippy has another wonderful example that discusses the reaction of a British school to the unexplained appearance of a Dalek on the school grounds.

The British school officials were concerned about returning something that they viewed as valuable to its rightful owner. The British police didn’t set their sonic screwdrivers to “disassemble”, but initiated a found property investigation.

I mentioned not long ago that an expensive toy pony appeared on the grounds of a school in Orlando. The Orlando police blew it up.

A survey noted that nearly 99% of British children knew what a Dalek is – an evil device bent on conquering the universe on the Dr Who television series, while most of the world views ponies as non-threatening, but the British are investigating a found property inquiry while the Americans set off explosives.

Ellroon reminded me about Banned Books Week (Sept. 25 – Oct. 2, 2010) which fits with my latest addition to the Quotes on my sidebar:

“Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.” [Where they burn books, in the end they will burn people.]

That was written by Heinrich Heine, a poet, at the beginning of the 19^th century. Over a century later his books were burned in Germany by a government that did, indeed, burn people in the end.

If I am willing to tolerate the existence of the ordure… excuse me, oeuvre of Ayn Rand without grabbing charcoal starter fluid and a Zippo anything should be acceptable.

Actually, that should be plural, as there are two out there: Matthew and Lisa.

Matthew is still causing trouble in Mexico south of the Bay of Campeche with the rain associated with the system. It will officially dissipate shortly, but the remnant low may be absorbed by the new wave forming in the Caribbean that may cause trouble during the week.

Lisa managed to become a hurricane for a day last week, but hasn’t accomplished much. The storm is wandering vaguely northward towards the Azores, but fading in the somewhat hostile environment off the West Coast of Africa. A lack of steering currents left Lisa stuck for days before the march to the North began.

After a slow start things got very busy for a while. It is not a season Canada will forget soon, and there are still two months to go.