The strangest, cold winter rain in memory fell on South Florida yesterday. At the Everglades Coalition meeting inside the very toasty PGA Resort in West Palm Beach, the Democratic candidate for governor, Alex Sink, made a lackluster luncheon speech. She seemed distracted, straining to fit the environmental theme into the straight shapes of her stump speech: 'daddy taught me that farmers are environmentalists'. She talked about jobs for the Everglades. Shovel ready Everglades restoration projects. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Was there something else distracting Alex? Rumor that Jeb, once governor, may run for governor again. I don't know what it means to be a Republican any more. The Republican kumbayah session in Orlando, reported in the Sunday Herald, did nothing to dispel the fog of nonsense surrounding the insurgent campaign of Marco Rubio: who stands in relation to Crist, for what difference exactly?
The Age of Stupid is pulling at us like quicksand. Candidate Sink pulled a quote in the Saturday paper from the executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, "If only there were some way we could be more creative with this," Carol Wehle told the St. Pete Times-- referring to the backlog of projects and lengthy permitting delays. Sink noted that the best creative minds for the Everglades were all gathered at the luncheon and summoned the hope that everyone could come together and push forward some bright new ideas. Polite applause. But every good new idea for the Everglades is covered in political slime mostly having to do with the excessive nutrients of campaign cash from the Chamber, the engineering cartel, rock miners and Big Sugar. The Florida GOP is flailing away, but Democrats don't seem to be gaining traction either. Another few more degrees, and the roads in Florida would be covered with ice.
9 comments:
Sink isn't a rock star speaker, but she didn't seem distracted at all. She hit on jobs, the Everglades (of course), and even solar energy.
She tied them all together saying that the Everglades and alternative energy were our ticket to a better future for our State. And while the speech may have lacked fireworks, it was clear and offered a message of a "new economy" for Florida based on an economic model that didn't include a dependence on home building and bulldozing wetlands.
I thought you would have appreciated that since it has been your screed for as long as this blog has been around. Did you sleep through that part because she didn't have any big zingers to keep you entertained?
C'mon man, find any other candidate saying we have to move on from growth at any cost as a economic strategy.
Newsy post! I especially enjoyed the clarification by your commenter... on Sink's intentions.
Where is that video from? Here in FL?
Blah BlaH Blah Blah Blah Blah BLAH and the polticians just can't shut their trap.
Did Sink(ing ship) give advice on how to save those poor Iguanas from the freezing weather? Maybe an adopt an Iguana program is needed. Or maybe we can train alligators to harbor Iguanas in their mouth without eating them.
The only thing thats shovel ready is what comes out everytime a politician opens his mouth.
Aw Cato, I expect less banal comments from you that that. All politicians are rotten, blah, blah, blah. Comments like that belong on the Herald blog.
And the weather may finally kick the iguana and python population down a notch for a while.
The parks people go and collect them like fallen mangos.
Speaking of excessive nutrients, is anyone paying attention to what is happening in Judge Alan Gold's federal court room with respect to the state's failure to impose phosphorous standards? It's going to get interesting, very very quickly in Florida.
Went for a 13 mile run today, and saw at least 100 dead (or at least cryogenicly frozen) iguanas.
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Here's a rich environmental story. Despite global warming, we're having an historically-cold winter in the South. In FL, invasive reptiles, particularly gator-eating Burmese pythons, will be easy pickin's for hunters as they come out to sun themselves. But they are warned not to eat the meat because it is so high in mercury due to the upstream sugar industry. Be careful of torpid iguanas falling out of the trees.
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/jan/08/fwc-reminds-hunters-cold-weather-pythons-are-sun/
Bob, FL ex-pat in CA
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Was that a 13 mile run through Key Biscayne? You could have done the county a favor and scooped up some of the beasts on the Crandon Golf Course
The ones on Crandon Golf Course only "play dead", to lure you in closer, and then WHAM! they get you.
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