Thursday, December 10, 2015

Confirming what most of us have long suspected, apparently, some #Broward cities & communities must be divided so that some political careers can manage to stay afloat. For instance, Eleanor Sobel's. Her track record in office is cringe-worthy!; Matt Dixon: Deposition questions partisan emails of redistricting plaintiffs

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Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Our new German problem: lack of effort. Have you really considered how little #Germany has been doing and is prepared to do in the future against #ISIS? Why is this topic continuing to be ignored in Washington and by the U.S. news media?

Our new German problem: lack of effort. Have you really considered how little #Germany has been doing and is prepared to do in the future against #ISIS? Why is this topic continuing to be ignored in Washington and by the U.S. news media?

Have you really considered how little #Germany has been doing and is prepared to do in the future against #ISIS? Why is this topic continuing to be ignored in Washington and by the U.S. news media?

For months I've closely followed the glacial pace of things in Germany largely via DW,
Deutsche Welle, both on TV and in print, since the U.S. news media has seemed to decide to give Germany and their current Ambassador to the U.S., Peter Wittig, a 'hall pass' on all controversial topics, like #Ukraine #Russia #sanctions #ISIS. 
Any one of which, Once Upon a Time in the '70's, '80's or '90's, would have gotten him an invite he could not really turn down.

If you didn't know it, even for something as insignificant as sending 100 German military 
"advisors" to Iraq who would never be put in a position to actually face the enemy, there
was months and months of Sturm und Drang in the Bundestag, in the country 
where Sturm und Drang was born.

As someone who spent LOTS of time over at the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. pre and post Fall of the Berlin Wall, on trade and economic issues, and who made enough 
friends there to attend the party at the Embassy celebrating the unification in 1991 -even bringing a German chocolate cake with the German flag's colors on it that I ordered at the #1 German bakery in greater DC, not far from my house in Arlington County- I was especially aghast last year that Germany's policy was, despite all the evidence to the contrary, to be firmly against arming Ukraine so that it could better defend itself.

Which is how it came to be that back on February 8th, before Chancellor Merkel's visit to DC, I asked the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, @SenBobCorker - 
How is #Merkel #Germany an ally vs. Isis if sending 100 Bundeswehr 2 TRAIN Iraqis is political crisis? 

Condescending, patronizing pols in Germany acted like their troops were almost too important to actually deploy them to the Mid-East to accomplish something tangiblethat was in the West's best interests. But did you see anything about this in the newspaper or on network TV at the time?

And not once in all the many long months since the shoot down of the Malaysian flight 
MH17 over Ukraine last August by Russian-armed and trained separatists has the Ambassador Wittig gone on a single American Sunday morning TV chat show to lay out the position of Germany to the American people, whose own sons and daughters, husbands and wives continue to be stationed in Germany in the tens of thousands to defend Germany against the existential threat that President Obama claimed in one of his 2012
debates with Mitt Romney did NOT exist -Putin's Russia.

Well, history has shown us who was right about that question, haven't they?
And the Russia reset, too.

No, these days, the Foreign Ministry geniuses at the German Embassy on Reservoir Road prefer to employ their old standby, checkbook foreign policy, and simply pay for ads on Foreign Policy magazine's email newsletters, like this one I received, below, so they aren't forced to explain or defend their policies in-person to people who know the facts and could pin them down.
Yes, it sort of explains a lot about the current Foreign Policy Establishment and what it just winks at:

And paying for ads also means they don't have to deal with curious ethical issues like this:
#Germany hires ex #Stasi to check #Facebook for critics of #immigration policy. 

So, to sum it up, Peter Wittig, the German Amb. to the U.S. has not appeared on one of the most guest-friendly forums he could possibly appear on in all of DC, esp. for an important ally like Germany, Sunday morning chat shows, and been forced to defend Germany's feckless position on all these important matters, even while smaller countries with much less resources are continuing to punch above their weight.

Meanwhile, Germany, the European economic giant opts largely to stay on the sidelines as a spectator in the fight against ISIS, preferring to play the role of pit-crew grease monkey,
and not be one of the actual participants.
How much longer is this kind of unhelpful behavior going to be allowed to continue -and continue to be unremarked upon by the American press?




















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Wednesday, November 25, 2015

#SoFL - Rare win for govt #ethics! .@dwightyoakamfan on North Miami's vote to torpedo #FL state Rep. Joseph S. Geller & Greenspoon Marder. Stephanie Kienzle connect-the-dots yet again, this time on what was really at stake for the public of North Miami.

http://www.votersopinion.com/2015/11/25/city-attorney-decision-north-miami-1-lobbyists-0/

 For once, I have a blog post today that hardly needs any additional commentary or useful context from yours truly, because it's written with such care and concern by my friend, Stephanie 
Kienzle, who says everything that needs to be said -and more- about what was really at risk recently to the long-beleaguered citizenry of North Miami.
Specifically, in the way of lobbyists taking over more territory at yet one more City Hall in South Florida, and one lobbyist in particular, Evan Ross.

 North Miami is a place I know intimately from growing up in next-door North Miami Beach from 1968-1979, when North Miami was not only home to some of my favorite people and place -and my barbers, the fabulous Spinelli Brothers, who used to cut my hair at their sports and show-biz memorabilia-filled shop on West Dixie Highway in the 1970's, when they still had many famous sports and show business clients who would always visit them when in Miami for a personal or business trip.
People whose faces and names you would instantly recognize today. 

 (The Spinelli Brothers were even kind enough to sponsor me for Optimist football, even though I played for North Miami Beach Optimist, not North Miami, but they still received one of those very large sponsor photos of me in my uniform anyway in exhange for a donation to NMB Optimist. They hung the photo up in their shop, and trust me, when I walked in there with my Dad, it was always one of the first things I checked out upon entering, to make sure it still had its prime location!) 

North Miami was also home to some of the best though sadly, no-longer extant restaurants in all of South Florida, including Marcella's, on West Dixie Highway and N.E. 138th Street, with their legendary lip-smacking garlic rolls and amazing food smells that made both kids and adults salivate like crazy while you waited to get a table in a place that was almost always packed with happy customers.

Of course, North Miami is also home to the North Miami HS Pioneers were also the arch-rival of my school, the North Miami Beach HS Chargers, and thus the combatants in what was then an often bitter rivalry that split families, since until NMB opened in the early 1970's, North Miami High was the most northern public high school in NE Dade County.

I was personally eyewitness to many epic and hard-fought battles (and screaming matches) between fans over the years in soccer, football, basketball and even Girls gymnastics, in the years when I was the NMB Gymnastics team manager and the PA announcer for home meets, when NMB was far-and-away the best team in Florida, and had many hundreds of people attend our home meets.
We capped that my senior year by winning yet another GMAC County title, as well as a state title for our beloved coach -and amazing AP Science teacher- Pete Saponaro
That state championship was one we hosted in NMB, with me handling all the travel planning and logistics for all the invited teams from around the state, as well as media czar for the media that covered the meet. 

 But even that had a North Miami angle.
"Sap" himself was a North Miami High grad before leaving for Penn State, where he was an All-American and co-captain one of the years that Penn State was the NCAA Mens Champion.

Before I was a Hoosier, I was an NMB Charger, Class of 1979.

My last blog post on the antics and activities of Florida state Rep. Joseph S. Geller was just over two months ago, on September 17th, in a post I titled, 
#Ethics still matter in South Florida! Stephanie Kienzle of Votersopinion.com keeps her eyes firmly on what's going on with the VERY CURIOUS legal antics of FL state Rep. Joe Geller, even as most of South Florida's news media keeps ignoring what's right in front of us.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2015/09/ethics-still-matter-in-south-florida.html
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