Category — Florida

There are a lot of good things in the Water Bill – Gulf Coast recovery money, levees for New Orleans and Lake Okeechobee, the Indian River Lagoon and Everglades restoration work – to name a few of local concern, but they should have been approved on their own. The problem is that anytime there is an appropriation that seems to benefit a particular area, it must be loaded down with garbage from other areas to get passed in Congress. This is wrong.

Each of the items I pointed out are, in fact, Federal issues, not local. They involve Federal lands, and in the case of the levees, Federal screw-ups. The Federal government injects itself into an area, allows things to get messed up, and then tells the local governments to clean up the mess. They won’t regulate, refuse to permit the states to regulate, and then disclaim any ownership of the problem. This is why they aren’t trusted in a lot of the country. Of course, a study would so that the GOP is generally in power at the “birth” of these disasters, and keeps claiming that it is government action that caused them without mentioning that they are responsible for those actions.

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A weekend feature of Why Now.

We may not be able to reclaim the state for sanity very quickly, but Florida Dems have a sense of humor and creativity. That’s the logo for a party conference.

The latest proof is Draft Katherine Harris dot Com. The video has been all over the ‘Tubes, but if you look at the bottom of the page you will see that is is paid for by the Florida Democratic Party.

The people over at the Florida Progressive Coalition are hosting the Netroots Awards for Florida bloggers.

Check out And the Nominees Are…, and then vote by sending an e-mail to quinnelk@hotmail.com until Friday at 12PM [noon] EDT.

Edited for clarity on the time.

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A weekend feature of Why Now.

Hipparchia has a great idea: since Florida Democrats don’t get to join the Democratic presidential nominating convention on an official voting basis because of the shift in the primary date, Florida Dems should cast a symbolic vote for Chris Dodd to show support for his action in defense of the Constitution and demonstrate our distaste for the Democratic leadership.

We have to vote or the Repubs will slip some sort of nastiness by us in the form of a ballot initiative, and we may as will stick it to the DLC puppets who control things.

Y’all recall Exodus 7:14 when the Nile turned to blood, well around here its called the red tide, an algal bloom that turns the emerald green waters the color of dried blood.

The October 16 update reports:

Water samples were collected early this week from Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton counties in northwest Florida. High concentrations of Karenia brevis, the Florida red tide organism, were detected near Pensacola Beach (Escambia County), Henderson Beach (Okaloosa County) and Dune Allen Beach (Walton County). Medium to low concentrations of K. brevis were also detected along portions of Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton counties. Reports of fish kills and respiratory irritation have been received from Escambia, Okaloosa and Bay counties.

Karenia brevis produces a wonderful little cocktail of neurotoxins that kill the fish and anything that eats them. It is also aggravates any respiratory problems, beyond the stench of the dead fish and birds.

Hopefully the heavy rain with break up the bloom and flush the bayou and bay.

But you might want rethink the swimming and surfing.

From the Associated Press some good news about fishing in the Gulf south of me: ‘It was like ‘Jaws” — 844-pound shark caught

The fight by Adlee Bruner and friends to pull the 11-foot mako shark onto the boat from the Gulf of Mexico took more than an hour on Saturday. But when they made it back to land, it was a record for the decades-old Destin Fishing Rodeo.

And when they cleaned the shark they didn’t find anything that could be readily identified as a swimmer or surfer…that they reported about…if they found a watch or cell phone they would have reported it…probably. Hemingway gave them a bad rap just because one ate the old man’s fish. Okay, so that leaping into boats thing isn’t very nice, but they didn’t ask us to visit.

Florida License Plates

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A weekend feature of Why Now.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Matt Stearns of McClatchy Newspapers asks: Can broken primary system be fixed?

WASHINGTON – Florida’s defiant decision to hold its presidential primary weeks earlier than both national parties dictate highlights one inescapable fact: There’s no easy fix for this mess of a presidential nominating system.

Parties set rules and dates, but self-interested states ignore them with little fear of meaningful consequence or much concern for the national interest. Would-be reformers tout a variety of fixes – which the states find lacking. Congress suggests that it might step in, but the Constitution may not allow it.

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Florida License Plates

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A weekend feature of Why Now.

CNN has a new story about the arrest at the Kerry event on the University of Florida campus, Cops on leave after Taser incident, student’s behavior under scrutiny, asks more questions than it answers. The two officers on paid leave is standard when there’s a use of force, but they have called in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to conduct the investigation, which is the University covering itself.

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