The Four Men who Made Modern Florida

Henry Flagler
Henry Plant
Fidel Castro
Walt Disney

Fidel Castro has died

BBC

Saying Hillary should have won

…because she got more votes is like saying, after the game, that my team won because we moved the ball more yards than yours did, even though yours scored more touchdowns.  If that had been the rule going into the game both coaches would have had a different game plan.
There is not really anything wrong with the structure of he Electoral College but it has been abused by the states that use winner take all as their allocation scheme.

Governor John Morgan?

Yikes!
But then, why not?  His sons have pretty much taken over the firm’s commercials and he just lost his star employee to Congress.

Trump’s likely plans for LGBT people

…might surprise some folks on both sides.  And it’s not just a position recently adopted for the campaign.

From The Hill

Memo to the LGBT community: Donald Trump is not your enemy

In the 1980s & 1990s Trump donated heavily to charities that focused on the AIDS outbreak. When he floated a third party presidential run in 1999 he went on record saying he would consider adding sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act. Trump is also believed to be the first private club owner in Palm Beach — in this case Mar-a-Lago — to admit a gay couple. This is not the resume of an LGBT foe.

He is inviting them to participate.

During the…convention, Trump asked gay Silicon Valley tycoon Peter Thiel to address the Republican delegates. Thiel accepted then and is now a part of Trump’s transition team. And now Trump is said to be considering Richard Grenell, an openly gay man, to be his ambassador to the U.N.

He’s “fine” with same sex marriage

“It’s irrelevant because it was already settled. It’s law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it’s done,” Trump told Lesley Stahl when the CBS reporter asked the president-elect whether he supported marriage equality. 
Trump doubled down and suggested he would not appoint judges that would seek to overturn the ruling. “It’s done. It-- you have-- these cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They’ve been settled. And, I’m fine with that.”

And there’s plenty more.  Read it.

Hillary should get behind this choice

…if she’s really as concerned for the children as her ads claimed.  Betsy DeVos is known to a lot of Orlando Magic fans as her husband used to run the club.  If she is nominated that would signal that Trump is more concerned about educating kids than about teachers’ unions.

Will Trump be the one to finally fix the Everglades?

The Miami Herald thinks he might.

To weary Floridians, he was far from the first politician to make such promises. Thirty years after Lawton Chiles vowed to clean up the marshes, the Everglades remain as threatened as ever, going from too wet to too dry, the coasts repeatedly hammered by algae outbreaks and Florida Bay slammed by massive seagrass die-offs. Water quality and quantity in the state face increasing pressure from sea rise and growing demand.
But Trump is the first developer to occupy the White House. Everglades restoration, the largest environmental project ever undertaken in the nation’s history, is essentially a giant infrastructure job. And many of the solutions to climate change in South Florida come down to construction: raising roads, fortifying coastlines and updating flood controls.

It does have some doubts, though.

But what Trump didn’t mention, and what alarms scientists and other environmental advocates, are broader policies on climate change and energy production that would derail the progress Florida has made to protect its fragile resources. Trump has vowed to slash environmental regulations, revive the sagging coal industry and increase drilling — moves that could make Everglades restoration a moot point. They worry Trump’s macro policies could undo his micro promises.

Solving the Everglades problems is likely to result in solutions that can be applied to other environmental issues, too, which could make some of them moot.

If you were hollering for gun control a few weeks ago

…but now that Trump's been elected you want to buy one, here’s some help for you.  Actually, it's pretty good info whether you were hollering or not.

A couple of post election options

 Aimed at the left, particularly Clinton voters, a few minor tweaks makes these worth considering on the right as well.

Secede and Decentralize: An Open Letter to _________ Supporters

Option 1, move stuff out of DC that doesn’t need to be in DC, I endorse heartily.

Nothing Obama signed into law or created through regulatory diktat had to be done at the national level. Not the Affordable Care Act. Not raising minimum wages. Not identifying tax rates. Not regulatory agencies. Not even food stamps and various other welfare programs. None of it has to be done in Washington DC. All of it can be done at your State level and even locally.
…
By eliminating these programs wholesale on a national level and utilizing your existing State systems, you can avoid any disruptions in the programs and also enjoy a less expensive process. Instead of the Federal government collecting its pound of flesh, you will send it to your State capital. This not only allows you to continue the policies and even amend and adjust them more readily without having to convince up to 59 other Senators, hundreds of House representatives and a sitting president, along with an unknown and distant bureaucracy.

Option 2, for some states to secede, also deserves a look.

(A) benefit of secession is the ability to further harmonize the new nation with more desirable trade practices, immigration policy, foreign policy, military spending, court systems, and monetary policy. These decentralized entities even have the option of altering how the government itself works, such as dispensing with individual State identities, removing the Electoral College and applying a direct vote system or even converting into a European-style Parliamentary system. Secession allows for even greater self-determination missing in today’s system.

Polls weren't the only ones to get it wrong

ETF Daily News headline

 Trump Wins, And The Dow Tanks

but...



Dang!  I was hoping to get some deals while stocks were on sale.  Guess it was just a Doorbuster tease.

Kansas State has only one free speech zone...

...the whole campus.

via Campus Reform:

“The whole campus is a free speech area,” the K-State Office of General Counsel states in its October legal briefing, noting that as a public university, the school cannot and will not require anyone to register with the university prior to having a public demonstration or protest.


Even when the speech in question is “controversial or offending,” such as a speaker shouting derogatory remarks at passersby, the school’s attorneys declare emphatically that only behaviors rising to the level of criminality are subject to intervention. more...

 How it ought to be everywhere.

Will your next doctor be your fitbit?

A lot of the technology is already out there, according to Information Week...

People will no longer need to take a half-day from work to read three-year-old print magazines in doctors' waiting rooms.

Instead, smart devices will be able to track blood glucose, body temperature, blood pressure, the bacteria and gases in your breath, and more. They will also be able to provide feedback and recommendations based on these regular inputs.

If needed, the feedback may include referrals for further testing or an actual doctor visit. This Gartner Maverick report says that this new combination of technologies, many of which are already available, could replace annual physicals with primary care physicians by 2025.

 Most of the time my PCP spends with me is simply going over a printout showing the results of my lab work.  The paper shows the measurements, normal or acceptable ranges and brief explanations of what they mean.  When there are aberrations or opportunities for improvement, he provides any relevant prescriptions, referrals or advice.  When everything's okay, did I even need to see him?  If he didn't have to spend time monitoring healthy people, perhaps he would have more time for those who are sick.  This could ease the pressure from the increasing shortage of doctors expected over the next few years.

Of course there are some areas of concern, like security and last week's DDoS.

And most importantly, if I like my fitbit will I be able to keep it?

Political parties stand for…

… election, nothing else.

Coyote Blog:

As I grow older, and have had more time to observe, I find the shifts in party positions fascinating and oddly opaque to most folks who are in the middle of them - perhaps this is one advantage to being part of neither major party.   Some of the shifts are generational -- for example both parties have moved left on things like homosexuality and narcotics legalization.   Some of the shifts have to do with who controls the White House -- the party in power tends to support executive power and military interventionism, while the opposition tends to oppose these things.   Some of the shifts have to do with who controls intellectual institutions like college in the media -- the group in control of these institutions tends to be more open to first amendment restrictions, while the out-of-power group become desperate defenders of free speech (look how the campus free speech movement has shifted from the Left to the Right).

This is only surprising if you expect a party to have some underlying doctrine or system of beliefs. What they really have is a style consisting of strategic positions and tactical actions they think will get them the most votes. It’s a lot like a sports team that assembles talent they think will win. Whether you get a passing game or an isolationist party depends on the preferences of strategists, skills of the players, the opposition they face and the current mix of attitudes among the fans and society.

The changes Coyote describes are pretty much inevitable. Just as an exciting passing game may sell more tickets for any team, if society moves away from a hard-line position on drugs all parties will do that as well even if not to the same extent. Any party in power will have a greater ability to influence other institutions and will try to do so. Out of power, a party has to resist by embracing free speech and other Bill of Rights guarantees that were created for just that purpose.

There are big changes over time, the most obvious being the race struggle.  One team carried that ball for more than a century only to fumble and see it carried since by the team that had been standing in the schoolhouse door. Or a candidate may be vilified for doing something his opponent did the week before, no different than a coach lambasting the ref are not calling on the other team is a man was guilty of the same thing two plays earlier. To them it’s not really about doctrine or ethics but merely style and what tactic will move the team closer to the goal at the moment.

Please don’t vote…

… unless you care.

Lately, you’re probably hearing a lot of “no matter how you vote, just vote!” But say you want something and vote for it while I flip a coin and oppose it. I have just robbed you of your vote just so I can say I voted. Of course, it would be better to familiarize myself with each choice and find something in it to care about. I did try to do that but there were some questions that truly didn’t matter to me one way or the other and I left those blank. To those of you to whom they did matter, you’re welcome.
Given the choices we have for president, I almost selected the reform candidate simply because it would be cool to have a President Rocky.