Category Archives: Florida

Today's news brings yet more evidence of how smart, and how dangerous, Jeb Bush is. (As distinguished from G.W. who is just dangerous in a ham-handed way.) One part is the coverup of his involvement in Florida felon's list fiasco; the other part is his very smart announcement today that he won't run for President in 2008.

Jeb's brilliance is evident from his disclaiming any Presidential ambition for 2008. This will make his heavy-handed influence in the Florida polls seem a tiny bit less self-interested.

More importantly, though, this disclaimer reflects a shrewd calculation that Jeb would be unelectable in 2008. After all, there are only two possibilities: Either GW is re-elected or Kerry wins. If Kerry wins, odds are he governs as Clinton II and gets re-elected; any Republican nominated against him, especially a Bush, would lose. On the other hand, if GW gets re-elected, the dollar tanks, Iraq remains a quagmire possibly even requiring a draft, social security privatization either goes the way of Hillarycare or tears the country apart, and at the end of it all (barring death in office) Jeb would be even less electable in 2008 then he would be if he were running against Kerry. So better to disclaim now and take the credit. Smart. Very, very smart.

Read on the for the latest about the Florida felons list, the dangerous part.

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Looks like I'm not the only one having fun with this. Jim Defede is the Miami Herald's best local muckraker, but he took a break from that to induldge in some speculation today:

The juice is loose — and it's windorific: Lately, I've begun to wonder if there were some sort of biblical implications to the recent storms. Red wine and reading Revelations by flashlight during a hurricane will have that effect on you.

“And the fifth angel sounded and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth; and to him was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace …''

When I read that section I recalled those fires on the western edge of the county two months ago and how the smoke billowed across the whole county.

“And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth …''

Come on people — mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus?

And now four hurricanes.

“… Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed … ''

REPENT — NOW!

Hello! Don't most hurricanes come out of Africa? And isn't that where the Euphrates is located?

OK, let's be clear. I'm not saying that Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne are some version of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but I'm not saying they aren't, either.

For a while I seriously considering slaughtering a lamb and smearing its blood over my doorway. But then I realized I was confusing my Old Testament with my New Testament.

Besides, where can you get a live lamb on short notice in this town? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure if I had the right connections I could score a really good sacrificial lamb easier than you can Dolphins tickets.

The demonstrably silly post I made the other day Hey Florida, Have You Got the Hint Yet? got linked to by Atrios and many other blogs. So it got more than seventeen thousand visitors in a couple of days, very very few of whom then went on to look around the rest of the blog. A few clearly thought I was in earnest.

So, for the record, just because Jeanne did a dispsy doodle and is now heading straight for Palm Beach does not mean anything about Fate, Warnings, Butterfly Ballots, or who should be President.

Unless, of course, the fear that this just might be a Sign would make you more likely to vote for Kerry in order to begin to undo the consequences of the ballot mess in Palm Beach four years ago. In which case, yes, it's a Sign, and we can expect continual disaster until we all get the message. Notice how the predicted track hugs the East Coast right up to Washington, DC? But like Pharoah before him, the current ruler will not heed the warnings…the people must repent before it's too late…

Actually, come to think of it, we can expect disaster until this lot is out of Washington. Trouble is, the disasters are man-made.

Apparently, if you take a map of how Florida's counties voted in 2000 (red for Bush, blue for Gore) and overlay a map of the track of the hurricanes that have been beating up Florida this year … you get something amazing. I haven't checked it myself, and I don't actually believe that divine providence directs the weather.

But.

(Click for a full-size version.)

Update: More on Hurricanes and Divine Providence

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that Nader should be on the ballot. Its decision basically ignores the factual findings by the trial court — findings that I thought were dispositive — on the theory that the statute at issue is vague as to what constitutes a “national party” and in particular failed to give potential candidates the guidance they were entitled to as to their ballot entitlement.

In light of this vagueness, and Florida's strong policy in favor of ballot access, the court said it was unwilling to conclude that the legislative intent was to have candidates like him thrown him off the ballot. This is a plausible argument, but I don't think it imposes the excessive legislative clear statement requirement that the court found. Even if it's not exactly clear where the line is, there are some things that clearly don't qualify as a “national party” and today's Reform Party is I think one them. But what I think doesn't matter, and that's that.

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