The Miami Herald, under the current crew at McClatchy, continues to sink into irrelevancy.... Even when they should have Home Field Advantage on one of the biggest stories going: Zika

Here's the reality of South Florida journalism in the Summer of 2016: While the appearance of the Zika virus in Miami in four people who did not have risk factors associated with all known previous victims in Florida -and reportedly acquired in one of South Florida's most-popular tourist areas, Wynwood- was one of the top stories nationally, and this morning's headline strory in the Drudge Report, under, MOSQUITO NIGHTMARE HITS MIAMI and yet the Miami Herald's version of the story 

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article92566182.html

appears in today's Miami Herald website NOT near the top, but rather, buried towards the bottom, under dozens of other stories that are of much less consequence and importance to people who live and work in South Florida. 

I mention this because I just checked and it's clear that many of my earlier misgivings about Zika in Miami are going to be coming true this year.

@RonaldKlain #Zika worries grow as #DC fiddles. I still think #Miami is inching closer to a bullseye than ever :-( https://t.co/r5H3h7WvPK

— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) July 14, 2016

In case you never received my previous emails or read my tweets about him, unlike Hoosier-by-choice me who went to IU from North Miami Beach, Ron Klain is a native-born Hoosier, but he chose to go to Georgetown and then Harvard Law instead of IU. 

Despite that choice, things have worked out pretty well for him, though, since along the way 

Ron's been a Supreme Court Law Clerk for Justice Byron White, was Vice President Al Gore's Chief of Staff and later performed the same duties more recently for Vice President Joe Biden. 

He's now General Counsel for one of the top tech and investment firms in the entire DC area, 

Revolution LLC, a firm with some truly amazing talent and resources, and is lead by former AOL founder Steve Case.

As it concerns today's news, though, Ron was also President Obama's Ebola Czar.

I know from personal experience that Ron has been talking clearly and seriously about the Zika virus funding crisis for many, many months, appearing on many TV and cable TV shows and even written some Op-Eds in the Washington Post to try to educate people and sound the alarm about this. 

Despite his very hard work, the Miami Herald has never mentioned him since noting his Ebola appointment in October 2014.

Do you you see a pattern here?

The Miami Herald, under the current crew at McClatchy, continues to sink into irrelevancy.... 

Even when they should have Home Field Advantage on one of the biggest stories going. 

I've got more posts coming soon about Zika in Miami, including one I've been working on now for over two months.

Dave
David Bruce Smith 

Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth

https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

Even The Drudge Report is now sleeping on weekends! Today's deadly al-Shabab terrorist attack at #WestgateMall in Nairobi is more proof, as if needed, that on Saturdays, in the year 2013, just like the past 15, the U.S. News Media has left the building and only the JV team is manning HQ -and that includes Fox News, which should've been airing Sky News' coverage but didn't. Heaven forbid something bad or important actually happens on a Saturday and we need to know the actual details

Channel Four News video: Kenya attack: Al Shabaab claims responsibility
Story at: http://www.channel4.com/news/kenya-nairobi-mall-shooting-gunmen-killed-shopping

Latest harrowing ITV video at: http://www.itv.com/news/story/2013-09-21/gunmen-open-fire-in-kenya-mall-nairobi/

http://www.itv.com/news/

Gunmen Open Fire In Kenyan Shopping Mall http://t.co/iYivMgoFeV
— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 21, 2013

Sky News hasn't updated this tweet in over seven hours even as more and more people have died in the terrorist attack. 
NOT impressive.
https://twitter.com/SkyNews

Hero of the day, a police officer carries a baby to safety on the barrel of his gun #WestgateMall attack. pic.twitter.com/doHvCezH6U
— Mohammed Hersi. (@hersimohammed) September 21, 2013

Keep up with tweets at: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23WestgateMall&src=hash&f=realtime

Toll has gone from 20 dead to 25 to 30 within a few hours.

Sky News is still sticking with 22 dead.

Witnesses say people were executed on scene.

Terrorists yelled out beforehand, "Muslims get out, we are here to rescue you."

Similarities to Mumbai attack already being made.

I've been watching and listening to SkyNews LIVE for hours at:

http://news.sky.com/templates/watch-live

So should you.

Disappointingly, but in keeping what I and many other have seen and commented on privately, even The Drudge Report has had nothing about this incident many, many hours after-the-fact.

That only adds fuel to the, first, speculation, and now, common belief, among myself and people I know throughout the country in the media that despite the record numbers of readers going to that website, the people who are actually physically manning the Drudge Report on weekends, whoever they are, are NOT doing as good a job as readers were used to, and came to expect on weekends years ago.
Boring stories stay up far too long -sometimes 3-4 days- and stories that ought to be up stay unposted after even lamestream media has them.
What the hell is going on? 

As I've detailed here on the blog more than a few times before, contemporaneously, largely as a result of MSNBC and CNN continually sleeping on the job while breaking news was happening around the world overnight -while I was awake and listening to the BBC or Sveriges Radio or watching the morning TV shows on SVT and TV4 in Sweden- Fox News Channel is what I usually turn to first when some Breaking News happens, but today they are TOTALLY f-ing missing the boat.

Watching them today is painful, like watching portfolio videotapes of some once-cute girl doing Community College TV newscasts in Oklahoma, circa 1987.
Why, why, why???

You have a family relationship with Sky News -you are the younger, dumber and more shallow brother in case you forgot- and yet Fox News is refusing to use any of those amazing resources, including video of the situation and reporters in the area.
Why?
What are you waiting for, an invitation?

We have a huge country where real news is happening all the time and yet Fox News is doing another story with three guests about funding Obamacare? Really???
Can you you please stop kicking Obama and contemplating your navel and your ass for just a couple of hours?
It's embarrassing for me as a regular Fox News viewer to see this disregard for viewers intelligence and be served up this swill.

And at 2 pm, as I just flipped the TV back to Fox from a college football game, they give us a tan John Boehner, the soon to be ex-Speaker of the House because of what a horrendous job he's been doing the past two years.
(It's a reflection of how much everyone within the House GOP either hates or dislikes Eric Cantor that he can't push over a push-over like Boehner that is barely coherent at times.)
Is everyone in New York today inside a TV studio sleeping?

Also, I've wanted to say this for quite a few days and since i haven't seen anyone else say it anywhere -that I've seen- let me be clear.
IF hundreds of people were missing from New York City's Upper West Side after a flood there, you better believe the national news coverage would've been a lot more intense, professional and lengthy than what we saw in Colorado this past week, which many NY and DC-based news organizations treated like another bus in India or Bangladesh that went off the side of a mountain and killed all aboard.
Colorado, they still consider you "flyover country," even if they come visit you to go skiing.

Oh well, hurricane season isn't over yet here in South Florida! 
And we all know how the people in New York at the TV networks root for us to get hit hard by one so they can fly in and do stories where they can 'act' like brave journalists facing the elements!
Just saying...

Dear Europe: No, it wasn't your imagination. In the year 2013, the only current African-American member of the 100-member U.S. Senate was NOT invited to the 50th Anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech. It wasn't an oversight, it was intentional by the event organizers. And some African-American members of the U.S. news media are quick to say they're happy about that decision. Really! When Obama arrives in Sweden soon, if you see some of these "journalists," like DeWayne Wickham, you might want to ask them about that

Screenshot of The Drudge Report of 2013-08-29 at 1:45 a.m.

Dear Europe: 

No, it wasn't your imagination. 
In the year 2013, the only current African-American member of the 100-member U.S. Senate was NOT invited to the 50th Anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech. 
It wasn't an oversight, it was intentional by the event organizers. 
And some African-American members of the U.S. news media are quick to say they're happy about that decision. Really! 
When Obama arrives in Sweden soon, if you see some of these "journalists," like DeWayne Wickham, you might want to ask them about that.

This was our front page after the #MarchonWashington in 1963 http://t.co/tYG67jHIYt pic.twitter.com/DkaCvTNWsW
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 24, 2013

Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog
Where Was Senator Scott?
by David W. Almasi
August 28, 2013 at 10:12 PM

This morning, the Project 21 office received an e-mail asking for the organization’s comment on the fact that Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush would not be attending today’s event to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

Obviously, the person asking for the comment assumed it a slight among the highest order of racism that neither living Republican president would be there while Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were there with the current Commander-in-Chief.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.conservativeblog.org/amyridenour/2013/8/28/where-was-senator-scott.html

Nobody is suggesting that South Carolina's junior U.S. Senator Tim Scott should've been speaking at the ceremony. 
Nobody -not even his supporters.
But why wasn't he even invited?

Here's what all honest and smart people I know inherently know, regardless of ideology.

If this had been a scene from a documentary film being directed by any number of the top dozen or so American film directors of the past 50 years, say Steven Spielberg or Sydney Pollack, they'd have figured out a way to not only shoot it on a day when it didn't rain, they'd have figured out a powerful way to end the film by showing via quick succession of shots of the assembled crowd the many elected Black leaders that make up American society, and show that it was many people, familiar and unfamiliar who benefitted from Dr. King's words.
Not just Barack Obama.
You know, inclusive, not exclusive.
Unlike the event organizers' way of doing things.

Lest anyone forget March on Washington 50th anniv is Al Sharpton production, Sharpton is introduced for keynote as 'the voice of this era'..
— Byron York (@ByronYork) August 24, 2013

CNN Guest: Why Should ‘Appointed’ Sen. Tim Scott Have Been Invited to MLK Anniversary?
by Noah Rothman, 5:13 pm, August 28th, 2013
Video at:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnn-guest-why-should-appointed-sen-tim-scott-have-been-invited-to-mlk-anniversary/

Mini-History lesson for Today: Something to keep in mind as you watch this video excerpt.

In case some of you longtime readers of the blog have forgotten, or, you are one of the newer readers to the the blog who never knew in the first place, I was one of Bill Clinton's first supporters in Northern Virginia in early 1991, though to be honest, I'd been waiting since 1988 for him to run. 

1992 Bill Clinton for President buttons from my collection

(c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

I actually thought long-and-hard about running to be a DNC delegate to the 1992 Convention in Los Angeles from my Congressional District, then as now represented by pugnacious Jim Moran. In fact, in early 1991, I was the first person in the whole state to ask the Virginia Democratic Party down in Richmond for the information and forms I needed to file and run as a delegate. (They didn't have them yet.)

Because I'm me and have my personality, interests and background, and was blessed to have as my best friend in all of the world when I lived in the Washington, D.C. area in the 1990's, a wonderful woman was not only from the same small town in Arkansas that Bill Clinton was born in, Hope, a woman whose own mother had grown-up across the street from him before he and his mother moved him down to Hot Springs with her parents while she was out-of-state studying nursing -my friend had a framed photo of herself while in high school and then-Governor Clinton on her desk at the National Press Building two blocks from The White House, where she worked as a producer and sometimes on-air reporter and was a member of the White House press corps- there is almost nothing about Bill Clinton pre-1997 that I don't know, haven't heard and then heard repeated as well.

My "license" to talk about Arkansas -which I first saw in 1965. That is, my Arkansas key chain 'license' is courtesy of Shannon, my thoughtful, beautiful, brainy, beguiling, globe-trotting and multi-lingual friend. (And Asian foreign policy expert, too!)

So, that said, since many of you might not know it, when Clinton worked on Capitol Hill as an intern, he worked in the office of one of the most-powerful senators in the country, especially on foreign policy: Arkansas Sen. J. William Fulbright. 
(Correct, the Fullbright of the Fulbright Program.)
Another thing they had in common besides their great love of Arkansas was that like Clinton, Fulbright was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

But whatever else he was besides being a strong voice for an American foreign policy that has a strong multi-lateral approach, Senator Fulbright, being from Arkansas and having the background he had, was also an ardent segregationist.
No, being a Rhodes Scholar didn't prevent him from voting against the 1964 Voting Rights Act, as did a powerful senator from neighboring Tennessee -Al Gore's father, Al Gore, Sr.

(Blog historical nugget: My family moved from San Antonio where I and a younger sister were born, to Memphis on Easter Weekend in 1965. We left in 1968 for Miami just months after Dr. King was assassinated there while supporting striking city sanitation workers. I was there for all the rioting. Saw the Army tanks come rolling down the street from the armory towards downtown. Not that most people appearing regularly on TV today could even tell you who Dr. King was in Memphis to see unless a show producer whispered it into their hidden earpiece. But history matters!)     

The Voting Rights Act of 1964 only passed because of the votes and influence of Northern Republicans in Congress, and among the Black Republican voters in New York who championed it was someone whom you may've heard of: Jackie Robinson.
Did you know that Jackie Robinson was a Republican?

I'm guessing not.
Yes, given the generally sorry state of political discourse today, and the embarrassing lack of knowledge about basic American history among many people who regularly appear on U.S. TV, to say nothing of the Mainstream Media's well-known bias for liberal orthodoxy and hiring policies, there are a lot of otherwise smart people who would prefer that you not learn the true history that happened, but rather the history that best supports their political narrative and view of the world.
But as we know, facts are funny.
Sometimes they get in the way.

That's why in this particular case, with smug and history-deficient USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham in the video above, it's great that he was given the opportunity to publicly show that when it comes to all sorts of common knowledge, he's someone who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground -and certainly shouldn't be lecturing anyone on anything.
He's just further proof of the powerful role of the Peter Principle in American journalism.

And see, now you know that he's a horse's ass, so that mystery is solved and the next time you see him on TV, you'll know enough to change the channel.
The worst part of all is not his embarrassing performance, and showing his ignorance, but that by CNN putting someone of his ilk on the air, it prevented someone we've never heard of with something original and insightful from appearing and sharing their insight.
I'd love to play him in Jeopardy!!!

-----
The State (Columbia, South Carolina)
A Tim Scott-Rick Wade U.S. Senate race would be historic
Published: August 29, 2013
TIM DOMINICK/TDOMINICK@THESTATE.

By Warren Bolton — Associate Editor
http://www.thestate.com/2013/08/29/2947208/bolton-a-tim-scott-rick-wade-us.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._William_Fulbright

2012 was another record-setting year for both The Drudge Report and yours truly here at the Hallandale Beach Blog! December 2012 was the third record-breaking month in a row for Hallandale Beach Blog's monthly average with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or an average of 2,029 views per day

Above, looking south on U.S.-1/S. Federal Highway, in front of Hallandale Beach City Hall. At the bottom of the FDOT sign you'll notice the grafitti that I mentioned two years ago at a HB City Commission meeting, where I noted with disgust how most of U.S.-1, one of the three main roads in and out of the city, had grafitti on nearly every sign and pole -and had for years- due to the city and FDOT doing such a piss-poor job of keeping it under control, thus creating a bad first-impression for visitors. Typically, then-City Mgr. Mark A. Antonio's response to my recitation with specificity was that he'd never noticed any of that before. This from the same person who had worked in that same building since it'd opened over ten years years prior. I then retorted that one didn't need to go far to see it, only walk out the door of the commission chambers we were all in and walk to the sidewalk in front of City Hall. There was no missing it, since it's all been there for years, along with the gang tags on other signs and light poles. As of today, it's all STILL there, as responsible parties continue ignoring the problem, the perfect metaphor for the city's myopia, something I said to conclude my remarks that night. April 17, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

2012 was another record-setting year for both The Drudge Report and yours truly here at the Hallandale Beach Blog! December 2012 was the third record-breaking month in a row for Hallandale Beach Blog's monthly average with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or an average of 2,029 views per day

Matt Drudge's 17-year old news and information website, the invaluable 24/7 tool in a sea of increasingly incurious, biased and not-so-bright American news media, set a new record in 2012, besting his 2011 total by over a BILLION pageviews. 
Or to be specific, 1,007,231,416. 
http://www.drudgereport.com/

Meanwhile, farther north in South Florida from the Drudge HQ, but much closer to home for your purposes, 2012 was another record-breaking year at the Hallandale Beach Blog, with a total of 343,830 pageviews.

December 2012 was another record-breaker, not only setting a record for THE busiest month EVER in the now six years of the blog, with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or a daily average of 2,029 views, but with a new daily record set the Sunday before last, two days before Christmas, December 23, 2012 with a total of 5,324. 

It was the third record-breaking month in a row!
Yes, thanks to readers from South Florida and around the world who let their fingers do the walking, December 2012 was, indeed, awesome!

Just to give you an idea of how things have looked this year -and the last two weeks- here's some numbers to crunch and wrap your head around:

January 2012             Pageviews: 26,636
February 2012           Pageviews: 22,584
March 2012                Pageviews: 19,167
April 2012                   Pageviews: 20,626
May 2012                    Pageviews: 23,979
June 2012                   Pageviews: 21,971
July 2012                     Pageviews: 23,036
August 2012               Pageviews: 22,312
September 2012        Pageviews: 23,290
October 2012             Pageviews: 35,433
November 2012         Pageviews: 41,898
December 2012 Pageviews: 62,898

Total: 343,830

Individual daily pageviews at HBB for the second half of the month:

Dec 14, 2012 Pageviews:  1,226, 
Dec 15, 2012 Pageviews:  4,455, 
Dec 16, 2012 Pageviews:  4,651, 
Dec 17, 2012 Pageviews:  1,834, 
Dec 18, 2012 Pageviews:  2,906, 
Dec 19, 2012 Pageviews:  4,156,
Dec 20, 2012 Pageviews:  2,289
Dec 21, 2012 Pageviews:  2,476
Dec 22, 2012 Pageviews:  4,519
Dec 23, 2012 Pageviews:  5,324
Dec 24, 2012 Pageviews:  2,229
Dec 25, 2012 Pageviews:  1,464
Dec 26, 2012 Pageviews:  1,230
Dec 27, 2012 Pageviews:  1,054
Dec 28, 2012 Pageviews:  1,155
Dec 29, 2012 Pageviews:  1,059
Dec 30, 2012  Pageviews: 1,214
Dec 31, 2012  Pageviews:  970

Violence by Sarasota youth football team at game is yet another embarrassing black-eye for Florida's well-earned bad rep. Where are the adults?

SNN6: YOUTH FOOTBALL FIGHT UPDATE, Sarasota County, FL

http://bcove.me/0jesys9h

Debbie Ismail video: Raw video of the fight, Sarasota County, FL

http://bcove.me/ezk86qyd

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Four suspects in youth football brawl

By Carrie Wells & Todd Ruger

Published: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 5:32 p.m.,

Last Modified: Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 10:43 a.m.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110831/ARTICLE/110839898/2416/NEWS?Title=Youth-football-player-tackles-referee-leading-to-brawl

Res ipsa loquitur!

An update to the story appeared even while I was posting this:

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110831/ARTICLE/110839898/2416/NEWS?Title=UPDATE-Four-suspects-in-youth-football-brawl

The league that the Sarasota Gators belongs to have been banned from playing on Sarasota County school fields, but where's the community outrage from people who usually have an opinion on everything, regardless of the facts?

Nope, All Quiet on the West Coast Front!

I have not seen a single report on this Saturday incident in Sarasota in the South Florida news media. Not in the Miami Herald or South Florida Sun-Sentinel or on Channel 4, 6, 7 or 10. Way to serve the community!

What else is new?

Instead, I found out about it at Matt's site, The Drudge Report.

Once that happened, the Miami Herald, which still boasts that it's the state's largest newspaper, finally woke-up from its slumber and at 11:16 a.m. today, finally posted this AP story.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/01/2385378/charges-could-be-filed-in-youth.html

Obviously, being the largest doesn't mean what it once did since they still haven't printed anything in the actual newspaper itself, five long days later.

That, my friends, is what passes for fast-paced journalism down here in the year 2011.

Turner Classic Movies: His Girl Friday (Peter Bogdanovich intro for The Essentials)

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/107639/His-Girl-Friday-Peter-Bogdanovich-intro-for-The-Essentials-.html

No, South Florida journalism in the year 2011 is nothing like His Girl Friday.

It's pokey and largely indifferent to news events and wants to know in advance why it ought to show-up to cover it.

Really.

Sun-Sentinel & Miami Herald snooze for hours as websites have ZERO on earthquake & tsunami in Japan as other sites move quickly; NHK's LIVE coverage

Screen-shot of CNN coverage of Japanese earthquake and tsunami at 2:25 a.m. Eastern

Early this morning I was watching the 12:30 a.m. repeat airing on The BigTenNetwork of IU's loss to Penn State in the Big Ten basketball tourney in Indy at Conseco Fieldhouse, their ninth loss in a row.



Screen-shot of BigTenNetwork at Big Ten basketball tourney
During a second-half commercial break, l flipped over to Fox News Channel and it was then that I first saw the story that is developing as South Florida's news media snoozes -THE largest earthquake in the recorded history of Japan, and the seventh largest ever recorded in the world.
A tsunami warning is now in place for the entire Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada, with six-foot waves expected to hit Hawaii around 9 a.m. Eastern and smaller waves hitting California, Oregon and Washington state at 11 a.m. Eastern.

Evacuation orders for all beach hotels in Hawaii are already in place, with nobody permitted to remain after 8 a.m. Eastern.


Screen-shot of Fox News Channel at 2:15 a.m. Eastern

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel finally posted something about the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in northeast Japan at about 3:45 a.m., two hours AFTER other major newspapers started posting information to their websites, usually screen-shots from NHK-TV in Japan.

Watch NHK-TV's LIVE streaming coverage in English at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42025198#42025198

After flipping around to check certain key news websites to see who was asleep and who was awake on this amazing story, the Miami Herald was in its customary state -sound asleep.
At 4 a.m. Eastern there was still NADA on the Herald's website.



Screen-shot of Miami Herald at 2:30 a.m. Eastern
http://www.miamiherald.com/



Screen-shot of The Drudge Report at 2:30 a.m. Eastern
http://www.drudgereport.com/



Screen-shot of The New York Times at 2:18 a.m. Eastern
http://www.nytimes.com/


Screen-shot of The Los Angeles Times at 2:30 a.m. Eastern
http://www.latimes.com/



Screen-shot of Svenska Dagbladet at 2:45 a.m.
http://www.svd.se/

MSNBC even got into the picture for a change on this story, unlike their invisible news coverage early-on last year during the Polish Prime Minister's airplane crash in Russia and the Moscow subway bombing, where they stuck to their curious 'crime-block' programming, featuring repeats of their 'Predator' series or profiles of U.S. prisons, which is still a weird programming choice no matter how many years they run that overnight and on weekends, instead of actual news programming.

They were, however, 'punked' at 4:04 a.m. by someone claiming to be at Narita Airport, outside Tokyo, who ended his personal account with the new maxim of 2011: "Winning!"
That's the lasting power of Charlie Sheen.


Screen-shot of MSNBC's coverage

The unseen male MSNBC anchor seemed a bit stunned but didn't let on that anything unusual had just happened.

Sometime around 4:30 a.m., the Miami Herald finally awoke and posted something. Better late than never I suppose, huh?

Watch NHK's LIVE streaming coverage in English at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42025198#42025198
------
1:15 p.m. Friday Update:

If you're looking for some LIVE coverage from Hawaii, try Hawaii News Now at
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/Global/category.asp?C=176904&nav=menu55_1_1

Remember, Hawaii is five hours behind Eastern, the same amount we are behind
GMT, to give you some perspective.
Hawaii gets roughly 4,000 Japanese visitors a day and the latest news that Narita Airport is going to remain closed due to physical damage from the disaster is NOT good news. According to what I heard on Hawaii News Now around Noon Eastern-time, three airports in Japan hope to resume flights soon to Hawaii, including Nagoya.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser newspaper website;
http://www.staradvertiser.com/

UnsuckDCMetro's post on poor management of D.C.'s Metro system and its parallels to our part of South Florida are hard to miss. Accountability is MIA.

On Monday, UnsuckDCMetro blog had the latest in a series of amazing (and sometimes downright scary) stories about the poor government management, oversight and public outreach being done by WMATA, i.e the Washington Metro, the Washington, DC-based multi-jurisdictional agency that manages and operates the Metro train system that links Washington, D.C. to suburban Virgina and Maryland. http://www.wmata.com/

It's a story that was first picked up by WTOP Radio in Washington, the All-News station, and then picked-up in turn and linked to on The Drudge Report.

http://www.wtop.com/
Listen live at: http://www.wtop.com/?sid=599366&nid=162
The one and only Drudge Report: http://www.drudgereport.com/

It lays out for all to see the sort of incredibly irresponsible behavior and CYA attitude of both
both its employees and management and the sort of nonchalance that has plagued WMATA for years, part of the reason, undoubtedly, that UnsuckDCMetro came into existence.

When you're a transportation agency that has recently seen people die, needlessly, it would seem to me that half-assed doesn't really cut it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro

My comments continue after the post:

Monday, January 3, 2011
How 'bout some iPotties Instead?

There was a lot of Metro news over the holidays.

Metro started random bag screening, they paid a communications firm $1.2 million to help market themselves through "guerrilla marketing," they managed to get the government to give them $150 million with no apparent additional oversight, and they doled out cash and iPads to executives on the finance team.

Read the rest of the amazing post at:
http://unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-bout-some-ipotties-instead.html

Having taken the Metro into downtown D.C. for work for almost 15 years from my home on Capitol Hill, then Tenleytown and finally Arlington County for 13 years, this story is NOT exactly Breaking News, per se, to most observant transit riders standing at underground train stations.
In fact, I think I can pretty well guess where the worst offenses took place.

UnsuckDC Metro http://unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com/, the insightful and observant blog that this story originally appeared in before being picked-up nationally, ran an amazing
story on Dec. 16th that is scary as hell, and will ring familiar to anyone living in South Florida who is observant in the ways that government works -or doesn't.

For those of you living in South Florida who have been following my thoughts in this space for four years, tell me that the actions described in the above post don't sound EXACTLY like the sort of obtuse thinking coming out of Hallandale Beach City Hall for years under the Joy Cooper and Mike Good/Mark Antonio regime, where their primary goal has always been to obfuscate, and to look at everything BUT the real problem here -genuine lack of accountability and ZERO punishment for continual, unsatisfactory performance:

Thursday, December 16, 2010
Mystery Worker Removed Barrier at Tenleytown

So much for taking some time off for the holidays.

On Nov. 16, several Metro riders were greeted with a scary sight at Tenleytown.

As they climbed what appeared to be a run of the mill broken escalator, they arrived near the top to see a gaping hole where some steps were missing because the escalator was under repair.

Read the rest of this jaw-dropping story at:
http://unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com/2010/12/mystery-worker-removed-barrier-at.html

If you read that post, too, it's hard not to think about all the many, many longstanding issues and problems around HB that have NEVER been 'fixed' or resolved to anyone's satisfaction, least of all, ours, even while city tax money continues to flow out to sleep-walking contractors and city employees, but where are the tangible results?
Where's the accountability?

More proof of THAT lack of accountability to the hard-working citizens of this community comes via an email that soon will be going to two of Tallahassee's newest residents, Rick Scott and Pam Biondi, the new Florida governor and attorney general, both of whom I voted for.

In the weeks and months ahead, they are going to know EXACTLY what has been going on for YEARS in Hallandale Beach, Florida.

Rasmussen Poll: In Texas, 31% Say State Has Right to Secede, But 75% Opt To Stay; Texas won't give Driver Licenses to non-compliant non-citizens

Above, earlier today reading the The Drudge Report,

Chez Hallandale Beach Blog

As a fifth-generation born Texan, there's only one thing

that anyone born there knows more implicitly than

"Remember the Alamo" and that's

"Don't Mess with Texas."

No, not this version, http://www.dontmesswithtexas.org ,

the other one.

People much smarter than Barack Obama and Janet

Napalitano have learned that lesson the hard way.

I predict that Napalitano's personal/policy unpopularity

will be such that she will be out of the Administration before

July 4th, 2010.

Rasmussen Reports

In Texas, 31% Say State Has Right to Secede From U.S., But 75% Opt To Stay

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/states_general/texas/in_texas_31_say_state_has_right_to_secede_from_u_s_but_75_opt_to_stay

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Gov. Perry Backs Resolution Affirming Texas’ Sovereignty Under 10th Amendment

http://governor.state.tx.us/news/press-release/12227/

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See also:

http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/director_staff/driver_license_appeal.pdf

April 10, 2009

DPS appeals driver license ruling

The Texas Department of Public Safety has appealed a ruling by a state district judge ordering DPS to issue driver licenses to temporary visitors and non-citizens who do not meet current DPS identification requirements. The appeal means that current DPS rules will remain in effect.

Non-citizens or temporary visitors to the United States who appear at DPS driver license offices will not be issued driver licenses if they do not meet current identification rules.

One of the reasons DPS is appealing the ruling is that it will have a major impact on business operations at the agency, and could in fact shut down the agency’s ability to appropriately and securely identify driver license applicants.

The Legislature is actively addressing the challenges of certain non-citizen and temporary visitor licensing issues and DPS is also waiting for guidance from that governing body in addition to a higher court in the Salazar case.