Please sir, can I have some more?

Pecunia non olet said Vaspasian, or so they say. Money doesn't stink, or so you'd think looking at the way Florida governor Rick Scott laps it up like a cat with spilt milk. Showing up Monday at a  Boca Raton, Florida home of GEO Group CEO George Zoley for his $10,000 a plate fundraiser ( another $3K if you want to come to the reception) would suggest that Scott can't  smell dirty money, as Zoley's company is in the business of running private prisons -- some say the worst in the country -- that squeeze the life and health out of prisoners as well as exposing the guards to unnecessary danger.

Of course it may be that Scott smells it all too well and, like a culture, is attracted to the smell of graft and corruption and human suffering. You'll recall his involvement with the largest Medicare fraud ever exposed. You may not recall that Zoley gave Mr. Scott $20,000 to add to the $800,000 of taxpayer money to pimp up the governor's mansion. Yes, it was a drop in the bucket compared to the great flood of lobbyist money soaked up by the Governor, but Scott is not one to forget his obligations to contributors.


No money doesn't care who owns it and it doesn't stink even though the people and deeds connected to it may reek. The dollars saved by understaffing prisons and serving substandard, sometimes maggot infested food to prisoners adult and juvenile affirm his credentials with his party and particularly because so many of the inmates rotting and starving and being beaten in GEO prisons are immigrants. Last year a group of protesters  chained themselves to the doors of the GEO Group corporate headquarters in Palm Beach in protest over  GEO's "pivotal role in promoting discriminatory laws that target people of color,

immigrants, youth, transgender individuals, and the poor."   There have been hunger strikes.  There have been investigations looking into accusations that inmates were being served rotten food and suffering from food poisoning at the Broward  County, Florida facility. There were also allegations of sexual assault among detainees and reports of several suicide attempts says the Broward/Palm Beach NewTimes blog.  Did I mention that Scott is a Republican?

But we can't accuse old snake eyes of total blindness to appearances.  After all Zoley was a second choice after it became known that the original host, real estate mogul James Batmasian, was convicted of tax evasion in 2008. Batmasian, who spent eight months in federal prison and completed a two-year supervised release program, also had his legal license suspended in Florida. That stinks, even if his money doesn't.   It stinks almost as much as his rather dishonest and scurrilous accusations made against his likely opponent, Charley Crist, but to his supporters it doesn't matter any more than facts do. Rick Scott saved us money by abusing prisoners and a penny saved is a penny you can spend on yourself.  And besides, prisoners can't vote.

Nomad Exquisite

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned Palm
And green vine angering for life,

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth hymn and hymn
From the beholder,
Beholding all these green sides,

And blessed mornings,
Meet for the eye of the young alligator,
And lightening colors
So, in me, come flinging
Forms, Flames, and the flakes of flames.

-Wallace Stevens-



I spent the better part of last week washing, weeding, pruning, mulching, painting, planting; fixing the landscape lighting, scrubbing the patio pavers and the pool screen. You'd think I could take a few hours and sit in the sun and enjoy my little paradise and the two new bronzes we installed last week, but no: there will be no Sunday breakfast by the pool, no afternoon tea in the sea breeze -- that immense dew came blowing in at 40 miles per hour, dumping 13 inches of rain, littering everything with palm fronds and tree branches and leaves; flinging flakes of vegetation and patio furniture, toppling flowerpots and shaking the house so that I haven't slept in two days.

In Florida, we don't bother to give such little storms names. Those without boats to worry about, getting up before dawn to run down the road to the club and add extra spring lines and fenders, for those it's just another weekend without Golf watching football; another weekend with lightening colors like night club strobe lights and cannonades of thunder on long, sleepless nights of relentless wind where tall palms wave like sea grass in a shallow lagoon.

You can hear the surf in the interlude between the wind gusts, the angry Atlantic eating away at immense Florida, knowing it's only a matter of time, hymn and plangent hymn as it eats the land.

Indian River

the trade-wind jingles the rings in the nets around the racks
by the docks on Indian River.
it is the same jingle of the water among the roots under the
banks of the palmettoes,
it is the same jingle of the red-bird breasting the orange-
trees out of the cedars.
yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu,
nor on the nunnery beaches.

-Wallace Stevens-

______________

Autumn is the Spring here, down at the bottom end of the Indian River, where the long lagoon becomes the Jupiter Narrows right behind my house. It used to be impassible to anything bigger than a skiff until the Government dredged it so that the steamboats could travel further south than Peck's lake where I often anchor my boat to enjoy the solitude.

The Autumn is the season of rebirth, not from the stark, cold death of bleak, white Winter, but the crawling death, the Silurian wet death and ferment of endless insect and reptile life; the rot and crawling mildew that turns my paving stones black and stains the sides of my house green and you can smell the rank mud at low tide - just there behind those white mangroves in the corner of the lot. On steaming, foetid summer nights, that still eternal boskage rings with frog voices and palm leaf clack and insect rattle and snakes and owls hunt in the night heat and the quiet bobcat's padded feet pass by unnoticed until you hear some rabbit scream.

Autumn and Spring; the only difference is the anticipation of the next phase, dreaming about cool nights and opened windows and dry ground, the two or three winter nights when you can wear that old leather jacket or the sweet, sad smell of April jasmine prophesying June's thick and breathless heat.

Autumn is for planting vegetables if you don't want them to burn and wither or rot at the roots from the rain soak and the ravage of Summer insect hunger; for watching the oranges and bananas turn color as the brief Winter approaches with it's red-burned tourists on beaches picking up shells: the seasonal retirees in white socks and sandals eating at Appleby's and driving slowly home at dusk in black sedans with license plates on front bumpers, braking for green lights. It's a renewal for those without many more cycles of renewal left in them.

Autumn, when Africa grows tired of launching storms into the Atlantic, when evening dinners on the patio need candle light in the early dark and swimming pools glow turquoise and cool. We feel born again into the outside world and the mild November air is sweet in the lungs and the night sounds change and the stars grow clearer as the great, dark numinous night embraces you to her wild bosom with her fragrant arms.

Season's greetings

If you thought there was a silly season in Florida, you're right. If you think the season is shorter than 52 weeks, then I would disagree, although a case can be made that as long as the legislature is in session, idiocy is in season.

But there are high points, special events worthy of special status, although which ones to celebrate differ from political faith to faith. I don't know how Florida's "smaller government" believers took the statement by one state representative against a bit of legislation forbidding anyone to participate in or watch for purposes of pleasure any sexual act including animals with the exception of the requirements of animal husbandry, but she seemed to understand that as allowing female humans to marry animals and she certainly opposed that, thank you very much. It's hard to stand out as an idiot in a Florida crowd, but perhaps the following resolution, which was introduced last Christmas Eve by Sen. Gary Siplin, an Orlando Democrat, that would designate "Merry Christmas" as the official state greeting for December 25 will come close:

WHEREAS, Christmas, a holiday of great significance to most Americans and many other cultures and nationalities, is celebrated annually by Christians throughout the United States and the world, and
WHEREAS, on December 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, and
WHEREAS, popular modern customs of the holiday include gift-giving, music, the exchange of greeting cards, a special meal, church celebrations, and the display of Christmas trees, lights, and nativity scenes, and
WHEREAS, many Christians and non-Christians throughout the United States and the rest of the world celebrate Christmas as a time to cherish and serve others, NOW, THEREFORE,
Be It Resolved by the Senate of the State of Florida:
That “Merry Christmas” is recognized as the State of Florida’s official greeting for December 25.

Can anyone make up stuff like this? I can't, and I wouldn't dare clog up the wheels of progress, if I'm still allowed to advocate it, with such Christmas fruitcake legislation while Florida is at the top of the unemployment and foreclosure heap. And yes, Siplin is a Democrat and no, there's no false equivalence here. I report, you decide and let the batshit fall where it may.

If it passes or does not, it's a gift to cynics that keeps on giving and it seems that every time the legislature meets it is indeed Christmas. Just don't ever call it a holiday.

Sharia in Flori-Duh

I used to bridle at the popular smear: Florid-Duh -- after all I live here, but perhaps it's time to recognize that this smelly shoe fits pretty well and we can't avoid wearing it. My suspicion began back when a State Representative balked on passing a bill mentioning Animal Husbandry for fear it would lead to legalizing marriage between people and animals and now that I read about Daniel Webster, candidate for the US Congress, who is endorsed by the Orlando Sentinel and former Governor and Presidential brother, Jeb Bush as well, I have to confess. We're not just the Sunshine State; we're Flori-Duh.

Webster is no political neophyte and hardly an outsider to the Republican Party. He was Speaker of the Florida House, Majority Leader of the Florida Senate and was in the State Legislature for 28 years. While there, he introduced a bill which was meant to create something he calls "covenant marriage" and others have called the "Roach Motel Marriage." You can check in, but you can't check out. Under this law, so closely resembling what one sees only in Taliban controlled areas, there is no excuse for divorce except for the infidelity of one partner. If both are unfaithful, you don't check out. If your partner beats hell out of you, sets you on fire or molests your children, you live with it for the rest of your life. So much for the Republican fable that it's the Liberals looking to institute Sharia law in the US.

Certainly, the history of bizarre Congressional proposals is rich with idiotic attempts such as this, but remember, Dan Webster is not considered beyond the pale of modern conservatism, he's a favorite son of what's left of the Republican Party; a party not satisfied only to roll back all progress in human rights since the 1960's, but the 1860's and perhaps the 1760's. Don't forget the recent and still popular Vice Presidential candidate who spoke of Witches as a real problem or the elected officials who don't believe in evolution and think Geology and Archaeology are fraudulent.

If there are many of them who can smell the idiocy, they're too partisan to mention it and indeed, the ride they've been taking on the wave of superstition, suspicion and stupidity has taken them a long way and they're along way from giving it up. The wave never seems to break and it won't until we break it.

Dumb and Dumber

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to vote for Rick Scott or Bill McCollum for Governor of Florida in the November election but there'a an obvious winner if I look at the contest as a test of who can put the biggest DUH in Flori-DUH.

In the last few gubernatorial elections, the very dominant theme here has been taxation. Florida has been known for low taxes yet there have been ads featuring a full minute of a voice chanting taxtaxtaxtax while showing the tap dancing feet of the opponent. If zip codes had their own flags, mine, which is always in the top three in wealth in the country, would have a banner showing a chisel and a pinched penny, but this year the carrot dangling from the GOP stick has been the Mexican Menace.

Scott has been spending large sums of money on a media blitz based on his support of Arizona's "show me your papers" law and features raw mockery of McCollum's attempt to cozy up to Miami Cubans with his speeches on the benefits of immigration. "We don't need it here" has been a McCollum theme. It's common sense to let police check for immigration status, says Greene. I could write a lengthy treatise on the use of common sense as a basis for argument, but I'll spare you.

I'm afraid the majority of hysterical, racist wankers here agree that no method is too dangerous in protecting us from illegal busboys and dishwashers, but on either side, there's little conversation about the license it gives to law enforcement to find some reason to stop anyone who looks Central American or Haitian and force them to prove citizenship or be arrested. There's no discussion touching in any way on the idea that a real problem does not justify a bad solution and of course there are no end of Republican scholars willing to twist the constitution into a mockery of itself in support of anything that will elect Republicans.

I'm not saying that more than a small minority of cops would misuse this travesty of Probable Cause, but enough will to be able to drive any minority they like out of their towns. Florida has an unbroken history of using the police for this purpose already. There's no discussion in Republican circles about instituting a government of men along with their intuitions, hunches and prejudices instead of a government of laws. There's no discussion of the constitution unless it's about our rights to bring guns to presidential speeches or our 'right' to tell lies that harm other people.

The most egregious ad yet, which ran last night, ended with " Bill McCollum: too liberal for Florida!" Face it - the Constitution is too liberal for Florida and it always has been.

As goes Arizona. . .

I'd like to give notice. There must be someone, some registry I can add my name to as one who wishes to officially disassociate myself with the idiocy of America. Those who doubted that our experiment in including the rabble in government would fare any better than the French Revolution did would, if they could, be smiling to read Florida gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott's campaign rhetoric and would spit up in their coffins to read the comments on his website from people responding to his appeal to "stand with Rick Scott" in pushing for an unconstitutional immigration policy. The end should justify the means in Florida and not just in Arizona.

The United States Constitution, like the Bible and the Qur'an are mirrors in which we see our thoughts justified, venal and noble. I hear from people who insist that Arizona is doing what's necessary and if immigrants are second class citizens, required to wear yellow stars and carry papers at all times, it simply doesn't bother them. Of course if the Coast Guard hails and boards their yachts and fishing boats asking for papers; asking about weapons aboard and checking registration and proof of ownership? Why that's unconstitutional!

In fact the constitution demands that the US protect our states from "invasion" by gardeners, fruit pickers, dish washers and day laborers, says one Scott supporter. And of course, it's not racism, says another. It's simply our distaste for infractions of the law, you see. If we were being "invaded" by Canadians, we'd need to do the same thing although since nobody seems to bother tallying up the number of Canadians in the US illegally and fair skinned blue-eyed, people named McKenzie or Scott aren't being stopped in Home Depot parking lots for interrogation. I frankly don't think anyone gives a damn about immigration law or quotas or visas or green cards. I think it's about an ethnically pure America, just as it always has been.

No, I don't deny the need to control immigration. I don't deny that there is a problem with porous borders. I do deny that the problems need to be dealt with by taking away yet another bit of American freedom.

I don't notice much damn being given at all about US agents shooting a Mexican 14 year old on Mexican soil for throwing rocks either. Fox News of course assured us that it was all OK, since the kid was "known to authorities," although in Fox Fashion, no actually authorities were identified or quoted and more than likely weren't actually consulted. Why bother, why care? Something needs to be done and so anything can be done and let's just be done with it.

Will Florida join the Arizona Confederacy and force people with Spanish accents and other unspecified characteristics to stop and furnish papers or be arrested? Will we fire teachers with accents and punish schools that mention Cesar Chavez or that the Seminoles were hunted down like animals and killed and tortured or that an entire Florida town was murdered and no one was prosecuted for it or that (yes, it's true) our fair state tolerated de facto slavery until the 1940's?

If I'm looking at the future when I look at Arizona and listen to Rick Scott, if the near unanimous opinion of my peers is that we have a disaster in the Gulf because of "too much government regulation" I want no part of the insanity, the stupidity, the animal rage, the drooling masses yearning to bring back what my parents' generation and my generation fought to free us from.

Inglorious bastards

I never thought the Confederacy would take health insurance reform lying down; accept it any more than they willingly endured integration, voting rights for women or their former slaves, equal rights and opportunities for "cullids" and Jee-Yews and anything else that interfered with good, old fashioned, plantation feudalism. They're against anything those Yankees do even if in the long run insurance companies will profit from it and undoubtedly show their gratitude to the Gucci shod rebels in Tallahassee and other red state Capitals.

Even though the ten thousand or so of my county's uninsured residents that now overwhelm the capacity of community outpatient clinics and emergency rooms are a liability and expense to me similar to uninsured motorists, the former are victims of Northern aggression while the latter do need to be forced to have liability insurance. Why? Well because a Yankee Democrat proposed it and Democrats did some of what the public elected them to do.

OK, it's not quite a volley of cannon fire at Fort Sumter yet, but that was then and today's attacks on the concept that the government has any function beyond shocking and awing third world countries and keeping the slaves in line are more insidious. What else would you call slipping a rider into an innocuous and popular Life Insurance bill that declares the new Federal Health Insurance legislation unconstitutional. I know, I know, that's hardly the job of the Florida Legislature, the same distinguished body of statesmen who last year balked at adding an exclusion to a bill outlawing the observation of and participation in animal sex if it was for purposes of animal husbandry, because -- wait for this -- some Representatives thought animal husbandry referred to women marrying animals. But the spirit of Southern freedom isn't about the government standing up for freedom, it's about leaving us alone in our fantasy of primitive self sufficiency where we can do as we please and damn everyone else.

Likewise the protection against being discriminated against by health insurers and protection against the public's indirect funding of health care for the uninsured must be about

"defending the rights of individuals"

as Rep. Ryan Nelson, R-Apopka told those assembled representatives of Florida Crackers, Swamp rats and toothless road-kill eaters called the Florida House of Representatives.

"every person within this state is and shall be free from governmental intrusion" in selecting health insurance coverage,

says the amendment. What nasty things might escape from that Pandora's box should this thing be passed into law! After all, keeping companies from dropping you when sick or weaseling out of legitimate claims by stalling until you die or your daughter dies is "intrusion." isn't it? Making you take responsibility for staying off the welfare rolls and clogging up the hospitals or walking around spreading TB is just egregious "intrusion." Let's give absolute immunity from the law to insurers and all in the name of individual freedom. Massa knows what's best and what's best is that you only shop at the company store.

What's more, the Florida Attorney General shall have the power to sue the Federal Government on behalf of any neo-Confederate who thinks I have to pay when his diseased ilk inflate the local hospital operating costs because he doesn't believe in health insurance - sue at the Taxpayer's expense, of course.

I don't like slippery slope arguments and I'm not saying that this will lead to revolts against mandatory car insurance or boat insurance or any kind of required liability insurance, but the principle is indeed the same: "Damn Gummint cain't tell us what to do" even if that government is elected to do what it's doing by a majority of voters who presumably still have the right to decide such things: a right not inferior to the right of corporations to do as they please. The principle is the same: government is about what we the people want, not what we the voters want. Upside down elitism and corporate feudalism at it's purest.

Yes, I'm surrounded by people who tell me that the 1861 revolt, or "the War of Northern Aggression," was about "freedom" without any sense of irony and they feel likewise about almost anything that requires any funding, except of course farm subsidies and special tax breaks for Exxon Mobil. Their revolt is about the same kind of "freedom" I guess. Sometimes that's my freedom, not theirs, since they're concerned about my heirs' inheritance taxes while theirs won't pay any, and a couple of percent more on my income taxes while more than half of them won't pay any this year. Of course their freedom to go about uninsured Makes my outrageous health insurance premiums more outrageous, but it's the thought that counts, isn't it?

Feeding the birds.

We had only a jumble of disconnected phrases from which to discern Sarah Palin's plans for the future and a possible reason for her abandonment of the governorship of Alaska. We have a few more complete and coherent sentences from Florida Republican Senator Mel Martinez but probably no better idea of why he's walking away and where he's going. "Feeding the birds" is the clearest hint he's given us of his plans.

I wouldn't blame anyone for not being aware that a US senator from a large state spontaneously resigned yesterday. The press has been otherwise occupied with trying to make it less obvious that Big Pharma and the Republicans are trying to disrupt any rational discussion of health care reform using violence and intimidation and symbols and tactics of the Third Reich. Martinez tries hard to emphasize however that it is indeed spontaneous and of his "own free will" and nobody is pressuring him. That he brings up that strange notion, rather suggests that someone is.

It will be up to Governor Charlie Crist to replace Mr. Martinez, but Crist will be leaving the Governorship to run for Senator himself and so isn't going to be motivated to replace him with anyone unbeatable -- which is a nice, but unavoidable conflict of interest.

On a more local level my State Representative Ken Pruitt recently resigned "for family and financial reasons." As Pruitt wasn't shy about endorsing the fundamentalist agenda, I'm not sorry to see him go, even though I have to wonder what the family and financial problems were and what improprieties might be involved. Of course his replacement is no less fond of government support of Christian institutions and the first thing one notices about him is his striking lack of intelligence, but one has to expect that in Florida.

But something is happening here and neither I nor Mr. Jones knows what the hell it is.

Only a paper moon

Yep, it's only a tropical storm in a place far away - not worthy of national coverage since there aren't a lot of bodies floating down the street as there were in New Orleans and there are so many distractions elsewhere, but don't tell that to the guy looking at his missing roof and most of his waterlogged furniture lying in the front yard or the guy with just the top of his SUV sticking out of the 6 foot deep inland sea that used to be a parking lot. Keep in mind that most people don't have flood insurance and are just this morning finding out that their home owner's policy doesn't cover any of this.

Of course there's a lighter side to everything from nuclear holocaust to leprosy, and you may find more favorable ears attached to the carefree guy using his pickup truck as a tow boat so his kids can water ski down the highway or the deranged iPodal skateboarders with improvised sails doing 90 over bridges 60 feet above the water or the surfidiots who, so desperate for waves, can't resist the temptation to go out in hurricanes to the delight of the local shark population - or worst of all, the kite surfers who read in the papers that it's only a tropical storm.

Yes, the winds rarely exceeded 60 mph where I live, but it's the flooding that does all the damage - well, that and the tornadoes. Have a look at some slides from the Palm Beach Post while I go out in the wind and rain and see how my boat rode out the storm.

Fay go Away!

If you've been through a direct hit by a category three or four hurricane -- if you've been hit directly by three major hurricanes in 18 months and lived under the imminent threat of several more, you've learned to take them seriously. As with many possibilities of disaster, the waiting is the worst part.

We cut short a cruise this weekend, coming northward up the Indian River as the sun set; gliding into the Manatee Pocket in the dark, the shore lit up with points of light like holiday decorations from houses and marinas and restaurants and resorts, the engines rumbling softly at idle as the full moon rose pumpkin orange in the east, it was tempting to feel profound awe and reverie and indeed I did, although the mood was deeply eroded by the possibility of yet another of nature's screaming tantrums.

And so we sit and wait and pull up the National Hurricane Center's report again although we know it will be the same as it was ten minutes ago and hope that Fay will somehow continue to drift westward and stay away from my house, my boat and all the things people hold dear and that hurricanes love to smash and scatter.

So I'll make one last trip in the rain, making sure we have gas for the generator, that the spider web of dock lines are properly set, that my prescriptions are filled, the emergency batteries for the Amateur radio equipment are charged and then, with little else to do, I will take some aspirin for the headache, tums for the heartburn, blog a bit for the anxiety -- and wait.

Florida: no more old folks at home.

All de world am sad and dreary,

Ebry where I roam,

Oh! darkies how my heart grows weary,

Far from de old folks at home.

-Stephen Foster- Old Folks at Home

Time marches on, but Florida just wanders around in the heat. Tomorrow, Tuesday marks the inauguration of some new laws and other changes that may or may not make life here different, but will reflect the push and pull of activists, lobbyists and variously impassioned people.

For one thing, Florida boosters will no longer be singing about "darkies." Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home" is no longer the State Song, Governor Christ's feeling being that the rendering of 1850's dialect is condescending at best. I have to agree about the old Minstrel show song, although as with Mark Twain's use of the N word, it reflects the way people spoke at the time, not they way certain words are taken today - both Foster and Clemens sympathized with abolition and the plight of enslaved people. "Florida Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky" has been designated as the state's new official anthem.

Republican fiscal responsibility having impoverished a sizable number of Floridians to the point where a traffic fine might mean bankruptcy, one can now do community service as penance.

Despite the tragic revenue shortfall the Bush economic miracle has brought about, they're bringing physical education back to elementary and middle schools. Let's hope it's not dodge-ball. Now, if they will teach literacy and history, we might begin to break the Republican stranglehold on young minds.

In the "why the hell didn't we do this 20 years ago" department, a second conviction for molesting a child will earn the perp a life sentence without parole. Let's just hope we don't extend the definition of "lewd and lascivious molestation" as far as certain activists would like. as it stands, "mooning" can be classified as molestation if a kid sees it.

Be careful about picking on us old people too. Aggravated abuse of an elderly person or disabled adult will be a first-degree felony and don't forget that many of us geezers are excellent marksmen.

And Florida has finally put a price on freedom: it's $50K a year if they wrongfully imprison you -- but not if you have a prior record. That gets the Fogg Say What? award for 2008.

But all in all, things may be getting better here. Looks like there's really going to be a substantive effort to restore the Everglades and to stop supporting the sugar cartel at the expense of our formerly pristine environment. With developers going bankrupt and people fleeing to a cheaper lifestyle in the Carolinas, it's getting greener all the time.

Florida

A place where life is a long summer afternoon of the smells of cut grass and jasmine and new rain drops on dusty hot sidewalks and the feel of bicycle tires on dirt roads and the mysterious newness of old things and memories.

A parallel but separate plane perhaps as is the Florida of the arrivalists who see a clean slate for writing a new story in the old iconography of stucco and concrete and mink coats and champaign and Cadillacs and imported palm trees and grass lawns and condominiums and malls and money.

That shell shop has been here since the 30's and that restaurant -- see where the tourist cabins used to be when there was nothing but sand and pine scrub for miles along the Federal Highway that took you from Maine to Key West, mostly at 35 mph. That little grocery now cut off from the main road, the old, black woman smiling behind the counter who inherited it from her grandmother who ran the only store for miles back when segregation had a long future. That Thai restaurant used to be a fish camp long, long before the new bridge where people would come up from Palm Beach and from way up North to fish in the St lucie.

Nobody tries to grow pineapples out on Hutchinson Island any more, unless it's in the tailored garden of some big house. Most of it has gone back to the impenetrable wetland it used to be when there were bears here, and the Loxahatchee is still a wild and scenic river lined with cypress and oak and filled with alligators. It's still a good place to stop counting the days and to live them as you did when you thought they were endless. There's enough of it still here. Empty beaches still run for miles and miles and people still live in pink houses in charming towns where a cup of coffee is still called a cup of coffee and the restaurants aren't national brands and the fish isn't frozen and sometimes you have to put the engines in neutral to let the dolphins cross the channel and Miami Beach is still a hundred miles away.
















White mangroves on Hutchinson Island


















The Loxahatchee















Nothing but wilderness
















Picturesque Stewart, by the St. Lucie estuary















Dolphin, riding my wake















The Blue Moon and her Captain

One thing after another

Floridians can, for the moment at least, relax some vigilance over the safety of their lives, liberty and property as the Legislature has ended it's current session as of Friday last. As is often the case, the greatest relief may be felt at their failure to pass certain bills. Of course the results were mixed. The death of the bill requiring restaurants to provide ample toilet paper may rightly be mourned by civilized folk, while the failure to allow the police to issue tickets for having plastic bull testicles displayed on one's trailer hitch will result in red neck rejoicing. All in all, it does give one pause to wonder what more pressing matters were avoided by such trivial pursuits.

The religious insurgents won some battles this year, murdering a bill that would require the schools to teach a little more about sex than that it should conform to the ancient and rarely observed codes of abstinence. It should be another good year for gonorrhea and unwanted pregnancy. They crucified another that would have required health facilities to tell rape victims they can get emergency birth control pills. They did lose the battle for a license plate showing a cross and stating I Believe however, and they failed to get the law to protect teachers from any repercussions from teaching the Sunday School science instead of Paleontology. They even failed to mandate that causing the death of a fetus always be classified as murder. Even the American Jesus can't win them all.

Some failures do seem to defy reason. Providing that the State can deport illegal aliens incarcerated for crimes seems to beg the question: why not? Some measures are too obviously sleazy even for Florida, like the bill allowing a special tax break for a dog track's slot machine income.

But it's over and although I'm truly disgusted by the failure, once again to pass a bill forcing slow moving cars to relinquish the left lane, I have to be grateful it wasn't worse. We've survived another legislative session and can now devote our attention to surviving the next hurricane season, which while equally devastating and in need of constant monitoring, is quite a bit more unresponsive to special interests.

Change, anyone?

As for the Republican issue, none of it was unpredictable: the beautiful, sunny 74 degree day, the end of ridiculous Rudy, the recrudescence of the McCain campaign, the Floridian fizzlement of Ron Paul and the success of Governor Charlie Crist's Cure All tax cut. As for the Democratic, officially moot exercise in electronic voting, it was less so. I suspected that Obama might edge out Clinton, but I was wrong and of course we lost Edwards and I'm sad to see him go.

Apparently saying change a lot wins the cigar although the notion that McCain represents change in any discernible direction other than a less hysterical approach to immigration seems unsupported. I've seen him making out with George and talking up the forever war too often. Obama was my choice, which figures, since anyone I vote for usually loses, but don't ask me why. I actually didn't decide until I was in the booth. OK, so I thought he represented change although I still don't know why or what or how he would change anything.

So Nothing but Ambition Hillary scored a big win, but no delegates against Barak who won't get any Florida delegates either leaving Nothing but Ambition Edwards to go home. Nothing but Ambition McCain will get all the Republican delegates Florida has to offer. Nothing but Ambition (and bucks) Romney will have to keep slogging and smiling and pretending while Nothing but Ambition Huckabee has yet to decide whether God has forsaken his campaign along with Florida's Evangelicals.

So it's another gorgeous morning. Perfect day to put the top down again and go visit a local yacht broker to talk about boosting the local economy. Is there any change yet?

Indecisions and revisions

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Another sunny morning in the Sunshine State and I soon will be off to my local polling place; a VFW hall about 3 miles from here, sitting all alone between large tracts of parkland that still show signs of the three hurricanes that passed through here a few years ago.

I always vote and I always know who I am going to vote for long before the primary, but this morning I have two big questions I have to answer: do I put the top down on the car and who the hell do I vote for? The second question may very well not be decided until I'm under way and perhaps not until I walk between the big, green howitzers into the building. I'm going to have to vote for someone.

Of course the Florida vote has been made all but moot by the Democratic Party's little hissy fit that deprived us of delegates and I'm convinced that as usual, the most preposterously unsuitable candidate will prevail on both sides and of those two, the less likely to fix our national mess will win - but there are local issues that need to be decided and it's a nice day for a drive in the country. . .

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

-T.S. Eliot-

The way we celebrate

Most newspapers today have pictures of big-city fireworks around the world. One might be tempted to think this is the way people all over the vastness of the United States celebrate, but they would be wrong. In Chicago, where I used to live for many years, private ownership of fireworks is looked upon with horror and fear. If one is caught driving into Illinois with fireworks purchased in more liberal States, there is a risk of having the car confiscated on top of heavy fines or worse. Public displays are pretty much limited to July 4th. Who wants to risk hypothermia?

Here in small town Florida, where the local fireworks supermarket does a brisk business this time of year, the warm night sky was filled with brilliant color from countless back yard rocket launches, and the barrage of firecrackers along with the occasional blast from the family shotgun made it hard to watch the safe and sanitary display of colored light emitting diodes from Times Square.

Florida is a big state with a variety of cultures. The locals here are very proud of their Christian affiliations and would love to see a bible based legal and educational system, but down in Key West last night, thousands of inebriates of all persuasions and levels of undress were out in the street at midnight to watch Sushi, a drag queen of some local prominence being lowered from a Duval Street balcony in a high heeled ruby slipper.

Of course since my town has suffered a great deal more of God's wrath lately than has the island home of debauchery, one might speculate that diversity is really not so dangerous and perhaps even that governments have better things to be concerned about than sparklers and firecrackers, but one way or another we and most of the world seem to have survived not only New Years Eve but the year 2007 itself. Who knows what 2008 will bring, but as the old song goes: I've been down so long, it looks like up to me.

Happy New Year!

Cross posted from The Impolitic

There's one law for us

And another law for them. Very little in our nation, under Bush, is private. There's really no impediment to the government's desire to snoop around your house, read your e-mail, tap your phones, look into your back yard from satellites, monitor your reading or anything else, probable cause or not.

Unless, of course, you're a former Congressman. Good old Mark "page pincher" Foley, the disgraced representative from my district in Florida is under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, an agency that most would agree has probable cause to suspect that Foley might have exhibited a bit too much interest in minors. They'd like to have a look at the Federally owned computers he used when sending those incriminating e-mails to congressional pages and at first glance one might see little reason to say the government cannot inspect its own property - but no.

According to FDLE, the House of Representatives has refused access, citing case law. It may have been monkey business, but his "work papers" are legislative business and access is denied. Only Foley can authorize the police to see them, they say and of course Foley will not cooperate. Obstruction of Justice charges are only for little people, to paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley.

Foley who, when the e-mails hit the fan, fled Washington with the excuse that he was entering rehab, has been seen of late dining in exclusive Palm Beach restaurants and is being described by his wealthy Palm Beach supporters as a fine Palm Beach gentleman. They get remarkable results, these rehab places.

It's not over

Not until the fat lady sings or the skinny skank is convicted of felony voter fraud. When I wrote last May 12th that the case against her had been dropped after the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office got a call from an FBI agent Ann Coulter had been sleeping with, I was sure it had all gone the way of any case against a Republican insider. But now it seems that perhaps she's not completely off the hook.

The Palm Beach Post reports today that FEC Case No. 07-211 is still alive and well and that Coulter is still under investigation. WPB campaign consultant Richard Giorgio has filed a complaint accusing her of false swearing and fraud to which Giorgio claims to have been an eye witness.

"This was willful. Anyone else would have been prosecuted."

Undoubtedly so and I have to remember how tens of thousands of people were turned away at the polls because they had been falsely added to the Felons list by the Florida Republican Machine. But this is a Red State and the law only applies to little people.

Coulter is refusing to talk. Her lawyer is refusing to talk and according to the Post the FEC could impose $2,000 in fines and refer the case to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement or the state attorney's office for criminal prosecution.

So far she's escaped being tried for committing fraud in front of several witnesses, though the evidence is there in black and white. If somehow her money, hired guns and scurrilous lawyers don't manage to get her out of this latest accusation, she will have finally to face the Florida Elections Commission. Did I mention that all seven members of that body were appointed by Jeb Bush?

Maybe it is over.

Hail, hail Rock and Roll

“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

-Thomas Jefferson

Imagine calling a town Hail Mary. If you can't that's all right, because there is a real one. The town of Hail Mary, Florida is now open for occupancy.

Florida is a state full of such things: trailer parks and campgrounds, Church retreats and theme parks with religious themes. "Jesus is lord at Sheffields" was declared on billboards in the days when I used to drive from Chicago to Florida. Perhaps he still is, although I never spoke to them about whether he was Lord elsewhere. It's a state full of cars and trucks festooned with religious slogans and quotes and even sales fliers I get in the mail tend to have bible quotes and that little fishy symbol on them.

Nobody ever seemed to mind that I've noticed, but when I read on the ABC News website about the completion of Pizza man Tom Monaghan's project intended "to help people get to heaven," as he says, I was struck by the defensive nature of the comments. A heavenly host of straw opponents was invoked to make it seem like the town and it's inhabitants were being persecuted and attacked (Just the way Christians all over the country are) by Liberals, non-Christians, the ACLU and other heretics who "attack Christian values." I'm not sure whether Protestants are included, but that's their fight, not mine.

Unless you consider freedom of religion to be a license to interfere with others' freedom, this is of course, nonsense or worse: an attempt to justify aggression by using a manufactured enemy.

I'm very much inclined toward a live and let live policy and whether you say Hail Mary or Hare Krishna; whether you say Allahhu Akhbar or like me, worship doughnuts at the snack bar, I really don't care as long as you leave me alone and don't make me pay for it. I think most Americans agree and our laws are based on such sentiments, but evidently that's not enough. They have to pose as victims, carry chips on their shoulders and vilify laws that are there to protect the freedom they enjoy.

I am not a believer. I am a Liberal. I belong to the ACLU. I don't care that Ave Maria exists or that people want to live there as long as they don't indulge in the religious persecution that so often abounds in sectarian enclaves. My only regret is that another piece of Florida's natural beauty has been paved over and that we have to put up with another batch of professional victims spoiling for a fight. Otherwise. . . .