Category — Florida

The polls are open tomorrow from 7AM to 7PM local. If you have not already voted by Absentee ballot, or gone to an early voting location, be sure to stop by your normal polling place to make a choice for the names to appear on the ballot in November. If you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the people elected.

If Florida started throwing high profile people like Ann Coulter and Steve Bannon in prison for violating our election laws, there would be no election fraud in the state.

The regular Florida Primary for all of the offices except the President is on Tuesday, August 30^th. Early voting is now occurring in most counties.

Libertarians will have their own ballot for the first time and the Democrats have a real live left of center candidate for the nomination for the US Senate: Alan Grayson.

Voting in primaries makes politicians aware that you vote in all elections, not just in the general election during Presidential years.

Florida woman accidentally killed in police academy exercise: “Mary Knowlton, 73, was participating in a role-playing exercise when an officer mistakenly shot her with a live round, the Punta Gorda Police Department said.”

The officer probably changed the magazine in his weapon and neglected to clear the live round he had chambered. Even if you are firing blanks, you do not aim at a live target. The wad in a blank round can injure or kill.

This wasn’t an accident, the Punta Gorda Police Department was negligent and a woman died.

Drumpf came out with his “economic policy” based on the “Laughter Curve” that says the closer the tax rates approach zero the closer the government revenue approaches infinity. It hasn’t worked any of the times it has been tried since Reagan, so it must be tried again… 😈

Fair is fair. I ragged on Georgia cops who couldn’t tell the difference between okra and marijuana, so I have to note that Orlando cops can’t tell the difference between crystal meth and doughnut glaze.

Via Mustang Bobby a Mother Jones article highlighting the absurdity of trying to combat the Zika virus at the same time you are rejecting the expansion of Medicaid and trying to close down women’s health centers. Rick Scott, Florida’s Fraudster in Chief, says that he has $26 million in state funds to fight the disease, but no one can see any evidence that it is being spent.

At the Blackhats security conference in Vegas they are having a a “Hackers for Hillary” fundraiser. Some people are apparently annoyed that Drumpf seems to believe that you have be from the former Soviet Bloc to be a decent hacker.

Given all of the problems that the Dems have had with their e-mail systems, they should have used Hillary’s which was one of the few that wasn’t hacked. For all of the people who think that 30,000 is a lot of e-mails to delete – send me your e-mail address and I’ll send you my Spam folder which is nothing compared to what she must receive. The Shrubbery’s crew used RNC e-mail servers and deleted everything.

Earl died in the interior of Mexico. I’m watching a trough in the Gulf sitting the Big Bend/Armpit of Florida. It has provided me with thunderstorms every day for a week. Another area of interest is north of the Dominican Republic. There is a chance of the two systems meeting off the Atlantic Coast to provide some interesting weather next week.

In response to several Zika cases in Miami-Dade they have been saturation spraying malathion and have been approved for ‘Frankenbugs’, genetically modified mosquitoes to do battle with the Zika mosquitoes [ and after drinking the malathion in the outflow of a nuclear plant that was tainted by the algae blooms they bite all of the Cubans who then vote for Jill Stein…

The daily temps have been 5°F higher than normal with daily thunderstorms possible and heat indices in the 110-115° range. Yesterday I had the choice of being killed by the heat, UV radiation, or my allergies with a 12 out 12 pollen level.

The Presidential selection process is finally over so we can get down to being annoyed by the state primary for all of the other offices. Let the yardsigns sprout.

After an extended lull we have two areas of interest out in the Atlantic. Not a lot of enthusiasm for their chances of becoming more than low pressure areas.

After looking at the people running for the Republican nomination for Senate in Florida, apparently a whole group of people decided that Marco “No Clue” Rubio who said he hated the job and had one of, if not, the worst attendance record in the Senate, has filed to run again.

On the Democratic side you have Congressmen Patrick Murphy [Blue Dog] and the ever entertaining Alan Grayson with the world’s worst collection of neckties.

It apparently occurred to Rubio that he was going to have to find a job and he panicked.

NPR has a piece that covers the atmosphere in Mouse Town: Orlando’s Tourism Industry Hopes To Overcome A Nightmarish Week

This is the beginning of ‘the season’ when the majority of the tourist businesses make their big money and their workers can pay off their credit cards. The only thing left is for PETA to put out a video showing what they claim are SeaWorld employees throwing live kittens and puppies into the shark tank.

There are reports that the Westboro Baptist Church is going to picket the funerals. Now that would be a real shame … if they fell into the shark tank…

This time it was the Seven Seas Lagoon at the Disney World Resort, a two-year-old child was killed by an alligator.

Orlando and Orange County are going to have some burned out first responders.

Orlando is the home of the Mouse, Universal Studios, Sea World and other tourist destinations. This is not a good time for ‘Fantasyland’.

First it was Christina Grimmie gunned down by an apparent stalker after a concert in Orlando, and now it’s 50 known dead and 53 injured at a nightclub in Orlando. This just doesn’t fit in with ‘The Wizarding World of Harry Potter’, the dolphin shows, or princesses.

As I listen to the expensive explosions from the Billy Bowleg Festival, I note that Bonnie got back to the Atlantic and regained tropical storm status for a short time as it passes over the Gulf Stream. It will return to post-tropical cyclone status some time tomorrow.

There are floods in Paris and other West and Central European cities, in Eastern Australia, and across Texas caused by heavy rainfall. Of course, none of these floods can be conclusively shown to be the result of global climate change – it’s just a coincidence … really …

In order to generate “local excitement” [sell stuff] the chamber of commerce is once again annoying people with the Billy Bowlegs Festival. This year the unavoidable part runs from Friday, June 3^rd and finishes up on Monday. The really obnoxious parade on Monday screws up traffic and sends a lot of noisy people through my neighborhood.

Almost as bad as the parade traffic jam are the Friday fireworks. I know a lot of people enjoy fireworks, but they probably have not seen what loud noises and flashes of light can do to people and aircraft – I am definitely not a fan.

With luck it will rain the rest of the week… 😈

There is still a chance that April will only have an average amount of rain, rather than the two or three times normal amounts that we have been experiencing. Of course doing that requires that there won’t be any more rain this month because we had the average amount of rain for the entire month yesterday.