Sorry Sebastian & Bitter, but it is payback for the chad thing and whenever them Northerners laugh at the sight of us wearing jackets if the temperature drops under 60 degrees.

Getting used to Hurricanes is not easy, but doable and eventually you develop a sense for them. It is not bravado when you hear a South Floridian commenting he would not bother to put up the shutters unless the hurricane goes over 80 mph but experience and also the fact we have a much stringent building code, specially Miami-Dade County. We know what our abodes will take and what we shoud do.

Lots of lessons were learned after Hurricane Andrew and amazingly, a nice balance between government and populace has been achieved for emergencies like this. People have learned that they are the first responsible for their own safety during a hurricane and nobody else. This helps local government to concentrate resources where needed the most and not running around trying to satisfy everybody.

One example is safety. Even though it is not advertised, no self-respecting South Floridian faces a hurricane without the proper amount of firepower. Having every other house with somebody ready and willing to lay some fire on looters makes for very peaceful after-hurricane living. Police then can concentrate in patrolling the few commercial areas that owners themselves are not guarding. In 2005, Katrina and Wilma did their dirty deeds on us, yet you will be very hard pressed to find anything that resembles looting on the news. I saw on TV about a case in downtown Miami where looters broke into a store and got promptly arrested by PD; and I did hear assorted tales of miscreants trying to do their deeds only to run away leaving a brown trail behind them because the home owner offered visual and aural dissuasion in the form of both long and hand guns.

I think I felt the proudest when three days after Wilma, there was a news crew from somewhere up north at a FEMA resource center in some big parking lot. This center had water, food and ice for free to anybody who wanted it. One idiotic woman was loudly complaining about the government not helping as she was stacking MREs and water into her jalopy of car. A guy waiting behind her got pissed and asked her where had she been for the past 2 weeks because that was pretty much the time we have been keeping track of Wilma. She finally relented and drove away to give a chance to the people behind her. Everybody else just wanted one thing: Ice. Nobody wanted water or food and all said the same “We are good. Give it to somebody who might need it. We need the ice to keep some stuff cold.”

The news crew packed and went home after that. There was no “suffering” so they could not sell.

Damn it! I was proud.

PS: We do throw great Hurricane Parties. You have not lived till you find yourself sipping your favorite spirit while watching the rotating inside of the eye of a hurricane….outside your house.

PS2: We don’t have trouble with basement flooding. We don’t have basements. Water table is usually 3 feet below surface.

Last night, an AM radio station in South Florida was transmitting the direct feed of a news station in Manhattan. I want to say it was FM 100.9 all news but I can’t pin a website for it. Initially I have to say I was amused at the amount and loudness of hysterics about a hurricane that it had not hit yet. One reporter sent home called totally frazzled because there were two (2) trees knocked down on the particular highway he was driving and was warning how he could lose a tire if he rode over them (Huh? Down here we drive around them.)

The Newscaster were taking calls in between interviews with authorities and assorted End Of The World advice. One particular caller had already lost electrical power and was getting her light out of a candle. The words that came out of the mouth of the female newscaster floored me:

The Mayor doe not like candles!

Are you frigging kidding me? His Highness Bloomer The First does not like candles? What gigantic level of stupidity and servile attitude! Does thye Mayor actually think that NY people are so stupid that they cannot properly manipulate and conquer the use of a candle?

Thank God Bloomberg is the Mayor up there and not anywhere in South Florida. Would he dare making such a statement down here would immediately create a Foxtrot Yankee response and so loud he would think an 9.0 earthquake just erupted.

New York version of hurricane proofing a car. I don’t think shrink wrapping is not a good defense againt flying debris and falling trees. It is way up there with putting a duct tape ‘X’ on a window.

A casino in Monterrey was set on fire while people were still inside. Apparently it is the work of the Cartels and so far some 53 victims have been recovered.

We demand stricter gasoline control in this country. With our love for gas guzzling vehicles, we are inciting this kinds of crimes in Mexico. If we were not a country thirsty for gasoline, Mexicans would not be drilling for oil and selling it to us but instead would be riding around in eco-friendly donkey carts.  I blame NASCAR for this awful mass murder.

It does sound stupid, right? But somehow and for some idiots in our Administration the same idiocy applied to guns makes all the sense in the world.

Go figure.

Now it appears to be the turn of Luthiers. Gibson Guitars was raided by the Feds for allegedly buying wood that might have not come from environmentally-approved sources even though Gibson had no reason to suspect otherwise.

Outrage ensues obviously; I mean, this is the US of A damn it! Innocent until Proven Guilty? Nope, in “special” cases do not apply. Antique instruments built prior to this stupid law? Only if you can prove it is not regulated under the new rules; Burden of Proof now resides with you. And if you cannot prove it, you go to jail, pay the fine and that gorgeous Steinway grand piano built in the 19th century with Ivory keys will be destroyed. Does the thought of Government agents driving a steamroller over classic guitar, violins and other instruments make you sick to your stomach?

Welcome to our reality in the Gun Culture.

I caught this tweet by Alan Gura yesterday and I am a bit surprised about the childish tone of it.

The whole bad blood started because one (1) article in NRA’s First Freedom where apparently not enough laurels were tossed to Alan Gura for the Heller decision. Apparently Gura’s ego could not take it and things escalated after that to the point it is open season (again) on the NRA and people on the side of the Second Amendment are sounding like the Brady bunch .

The NRA has played it cool and stayed away from the antics. Unfortunately this has only encouraged Gura and others to actually say stupid stuff like that tweet. Alan, you did great with SCOTUS, but you did not do all the work and neither did SAF. The NRA laid the field for you and had been working on that field for many years. It was the NRA that got people to vote for Pro-Gun members of the Senate under a Pro-Gun president who gave you Justice Roberts and Justice Alito ensuring a Supreme Court that would rule in your favor.

Because I do not care how good you are, you wouldn’t had a chance in hell with President Gore, a Democrat-majority Senate and Liberal Supreme Court Justices.

If I wanna see prima donas throwing temper tantrums there is always Bridezilla on TV. All of us are working towards the same goal, if we cannot be nice to each other, let’s be mute.

We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
Benjamin Franklin