The wild card in the race for the Republican nomination to U.S. Senate is the endorsement of Jeb Bush. To get a read on whether he's leaning toward Charlie Crist or Marco Rubio, I consulted a source who -- in exchange for his or her candor -- we will simply call a high-ranking Bush associate. My sense is that this source speaks for a great many Floridians who have fond memories of Bush's time in the governor's office and in whose eyes Crist's tenure has been very frustrating by comparison. From the source:
Jeb Bush always put the state first, then the party and his own ambition last. Toward the end of his term, he was being recruited to run for the U.S. Senate, and he turned it down because he wanted to finish his term strong. He could have been the NFL commissioner, but he turned it down because he wanted to finish strong. You can't even begin to compare Jeb's passion for Florida and his respect for the office of Governor with Charlie Crist. Jeb didn't see the office as a stepping stone. He saw it as an opportunity to make meaningful changes and he worked until the clock ticked to zero.
It wasn't so long ago that Wisconsin had five dog tracks, second only to Florida in terms of total live-racing facilities. This week, the operators of the Dairyland Greyhound Park in Kenosha announced that the track will end racing on New Year's Eve. This will mark the end of greyhound racing in the state.
Apparently the track has lost $17 million over the past seven years. And it's not totally clear yet what will become of all the dogs.
Antiracing groups like the Massachusetts-based GREY2K USA are delighted. "New Year's Eve will be a very special one for the greyhounds this year," GREY2K's president, Christine Dorchak, told me. Dairyland joins Raynham Park in Massachusetts and Phoenix Greyhound Park, which will both cease live racing the same day.
Long before George LeMieux was selected by Charlie Crist to be the state's newest U.S. Senator, he was the most powerful figure in the North Broward Hospital District.
An episode from this past March illustrates LeMieux's godfather-like role. That month Marc Goldstone was still the general counsel of the North Broward Hospital District. He found himself in an awkard political position.
On one hand, his job called for him to be certain that the district made smart legal decisions -- and the district's willingness to participate in a class action suit against bond rating agencies failed that standard. There are only so many bond rating agencies, and a $1 billion public hospital district may not want to antagonize them, lest those agencies be inclined to give Broward Health's bonds a low rating. Or maybe Goldstone just thought there was no way to win the class action suit. Whatever it was, he wanted to get the district out of this legal loser.
On the other hand, he may have recognized that the district's participation in the suit had been brokered through Commissioner Joseph Cobo, who was appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist. In addition, he may have known that the attorneys who stood to profit from the suit belonged to the firm of a major Crist fundraiser: Scott Rothstein.
In Washington, D.C., the St. Petersburg Times politics blog Buzz button-holed Sen. George LeMieux, who's holding that seat for his benefactor, Charlie Crist. Here's what LeMieux had to say about young, handsome, impeccably conservative Marco Rubio, who's been hammering Crist over supporting the federal stimulus:
It's very easy to be a critic, and the speaker now is not in office. He wasn't there when the state was facing the challenges of the huge recession and the stimulus. He didn't have to vote on that. All of the folks that were in his administration voted for the stimulus money.
If you're headed to Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City, you can leave your Sunday best in the closet. Services are streamed online. For communion-by-computer, you can bless your own bread and wine. And if you're a newcomer, fill the bathtub, because Flamingo Road also does virtual baptisms. See above.
In February 2008, the church, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, performed what it billed as the world's first internet baptism. How can that sacrament pass through a high speed connection? Well, I set out to find out.
It sounds good in theory: Send our most ruthless Turnpike terrorists through a battery of training courses that will teach them the dangers of their driving ways. I just wonder whether a program like the one being offered next week by the Ford Motor Company Fund is going to attract the kinds of reckless youth who need it the most.
But then I suppose if it saves just one accident... et cetera. The free training course, to be held Wednesday beginning at noon at the Homestead-Miami Speedway will school rookie road ragers in sevral key skill areas 1.) NOT treating the streets like a bull in a China shop, 2.) the art of NOT tailgating, 3.) proper handling of the parental unit's vehicle, and 4.) hazard recognition (aka stop texting and open your eyes).
Seeing as car crashes are the number one killer of teens in the country, Audrey Stone of Florida's Direct Impact for Ford Motor Company says the Miami classes are worth the trek for teen drivers in the Palm Beach area.
Long before Demi met Ashton, Boca Raton has been a cougar's lair. You see those botox-boosted, silicone-pumped ladies prowling everywhere, especially Mizner and Blue Martini, occasionally displaying a barely pubescent piece of arm candy.
That was Darin Riggio once. The Boca native was 19 when he first became cougar prey. His predator was 43.
Riggio is now 24, and recently he boasted of his cougar exploits to the AP. The weird thing we noticed: He's now in New York. They should have asked him why he moved from one cougar-rich location to one where they're much more scarce.
Maybe it's more fun to fish in a lake (New York), then to have fish in a barrel (Boca).
With mega swindlers like Madoff and Rothstein running rampant, a rapacious capitalist like Donald Trump is almost a sweetheart in comparison. But he does not come without flaws. The Donald faces litigation in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale for allegedly falsifying his role in the construction of two luxury towers.
The $300 million Tampa project went bankrupt last year, and now buyers are planning to sue. They're outraged to learn that the tycoon merely lent his name in a licensing deal with Tampa Bay developer SimDag Robel LLC. Buyers apparently hoped they were getting both the Trump name and the mogul's sterling reputation as an honest deal-maker. I swear, I almost wrote that last part with a straight face.
In a post yesterday that's part of our Panning for Gold series, I made a crack about how it's rather foolish to trust a charter fisherman's hunch about the sustainability of fish population -- not just for the obvious fox-running-the-hen-house reasons. Mainly, it's because there's a much more reliable, objective means for ascertaining fish population: the federal government's science-based research tools.
As if on cue, Florida's Broward-born, shiny-new senator, George LeMieux, can be seen in the video above (also from yesterday) asking the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to relax restrictions against fishermen like those who protested recently in Fort Walton Beach, claiming they knew the fish population better than government researchers.
This week's feature follows one kind of internet scam: 419 fraud, usually originating in Africa or Asia, and the people fighting the scammers at 419Eater.com. But one of the fastest growing scams in tough economic times is the "work from home" fake employment scam, and many of these can be traced to scammers in the U.S.
New Times' classified ad department receives hundreds of
employment scam ad insertion orders every year. Most of the ads claim you can
work a few hours a week and earn as much as $2,000. Take this ad, which landed
in our in-boxes this week. It's identical to ads placed on monster.com,
usjobscatalogue.com, hotjobs.yahoo.com, and newspapers like the Fort Meade
Ledger:
If you haven't seen Mattel's newest addition to the Adult Barbie Collector line, it's an appalling creation they're calling "Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken." This week brought news that the doll is, in fact, a real product the company is really selling to real adult collectors (and really warped, seriously outcast children). A Mattel spokesperson explained to the New York Post that the doll's name has nothing to do with a May-December cash-for-sex-style relationship like you might have guessed.
See PBSD Ken comes with several accessories: a bright-green jacket, a bright floral bathing suit, a bottle of water, some tanning lotion, and an expensive-looking designer dog apparently named Sugar. This confirmed bachelor Ken is Sugar's daddy. Get it? Ironically, while PBSD Ken's name hints at one South Florida stereotype, it seems his character implies another.
To celebrate Ken's unveiling, the odd, eccentric characters at the Juice have put together a list of ten more Florida stereotypes that would make good adult Barbie dolls.
It would have been a more fortuitous sign for Marco Rubio if Doug Hoffman hadn't lost his congressional race in upstate New York, but the fact that a Conservative Party candidate won 45 percent of the vote has Rubio more hopeful than ever. The same can be said for the right wing of the Republican Party, which is now treating Florida Senate seat as its biggest priority.
The Wall Street Journal is so eager to cover that it treated the New York campaign as a mere undercard to the Rubio-Crist title bout in August.
The article makes no mention, however, of the scandals brewing in Broward County among some of Crist's most active supporters.
Jeff Owens, a Sunrise native who wants to punish his home state school.
So many talented high school football players in South Florida. So few South Florida universities. And when some of those players must leave the state to play college ball, it breeds resentment. It also adds some extra hostility to games like today's between the Gators and the Georgia Bulldogs.
"I wanted to get out of the state," said fifth-year senior defensive tackle Jeff Owens, from Sunrise, Fla., located in South Florida. "Florida had a new coaching staff coming in, so you didn't know what to expect. I went with someone that I knew would be committed and had a long tradition here and I loved Georgia."
Three other players with a Florida ax to grind in today's heavyweight SEC bout: tight end Michael Moore from Fort Lauderdale, kicker Blair Walsh from Boca Raton, and defensive tackle Geno Atkins from Pembroke Pines.
Famed South Florida attorney, Willie Gary, always in the spotlight
Famed South Florida attorney and tabloid dream Willie
Gary is making headlines, again -- but not for his own flamboyant behavior. The Rolls Royce riding,
property tax evading, proud sex tape producer's son Kobie was busted in the Treasure Coast for allegedly
operating an elaborate pot-growing house equipped with all the bells and
whistles -- from special lights to extra ventilation to mask the scent of the
sticky stuff. All the Little Trees air freshener in the world
couldn't stop cops from getting a contact high by just driving by the joint (no
pun intended).
It's not unusual for politicians to want to hide controversial details of their lives: adulterous affairs, DUI arrests, bankruptcies. Leave to the reliably kooky city of Lake Worth to have this week's most interesting political scandal: rivals of mayoral candidate Rene Varela -- a marine mammal veterinarian -- say that he helps sell wild dolphins for profit.
On his campaign website, Varela claims that he has taught at such esteemed institutions as Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and the University of Florida. His website says nothing of his involvement with Ocean Embassy, a company that is building a $500 million Sea World-style resort in Panama. Ocean Embassy's website says Varela has been director of veterinary services since 2005. No one answered the phone at Ocean Embassy's offices today, and Varela has yet to respond to an email seeking comment.
Ocean Embassy has been no stranger to controversy.
In what may come to be called the Great Swine Flu Fuck-Up,
local health officials have vaccinated thousands of schoolkids this year with
the regular seasonal flu nasal mist -- a vaccination which unfortunately
promises to protect them not at all.
The seasonal flu vaccine purportedly
protects against three viral strains that aren't very common this year -- those
three strains together will probably account for as little as five percent of
flu illnesses. But the kicker is, once kids get the seasonal vaccine, they have
to wait an extra month to get the Swine Flu vaccine, which contains a live
virus. The two vaccines given too close together can prevent an effective
immune response.
According to this Palm Beach Post article, parents are livid that their kids can't get vaccinated for the Swine Flu strain, H1N1, that the Post says may have sickened as many as 300 Palm Beach County school kids already this year. But parents should relax. According to an excellent article in the new issue of The Atlantic Monthly, flu vaccines don't work worth a damn anyway.
As parents in the Palm Beach County School District tries to roll back Jeb Bush's shameful legacy of FCAT drilling, the former Florida governor is roaming around, looking to get his voice heard, apparently to gauge interest in a 2012 run for president (though he'd never admit that).
Bush made a very brief -- and somewhat shocking -- appearance as an Obama booster in today's column in the New York Times by David Brooks -- apparently the ex-governor's a fan of what the president has done with national education policy. Really? Yeesh! Good thing good Republicans boycott the Times.
On Wednesday Bush gave a speech at George Washington University, calling out his fellow Republicans for being "the party of no" and for not being "forward looking" -- points similar to those he was making last spring in an appearance in Virginia with Rep. Eric Cantor and Mitt Romney.
Today, newswires were abuzz with the information that a Washington-based nonprofit group called the Cancer Project, on behalf of two plantiffs in Connecticut, filed a class-action lawsuit against Burger King, McDonald's, and Friendly's. The lawsuit alleges that chicken sold by the three restaurant chains contains a chemical, PhIP, which causes cancer. PhIP can form during the grilling/barbecueing/flame-broiling process.
The best visits to tattoo studios are usually spontaneous, but Hollywood Sen. Eleanor Sobel is not your typical patron. She has scheduled an appointment at 10 a.m. Monday at Stevie Moon Tattoo NE 26th Street in Fort Lauderdale. There she'll meet her foe-turned-friend, Stevie Moon, who earlier this year led the revolt against the bill Sobel sponsored in this past legislative session, which he says would have over-regulated Florida's tattoo industry.
Another conservative U.S. Senator has defied party leaders to give an endorsement to Marco Rubio over Charlie Crist. And check out the statement by Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, particularly this part:
"Like me, Marco believes that the federal government works best when it returns dollars, decisions and freedom to our local communities and families. In the Senate, Marco will stand up for America's taxpayers, not with President Obama and dangerous big government spending," he added.
A none-too-subtle swipe at Crist's appearing with Obama in Fort Myers during the heat of the stimulus controversy. And there may be more "true conservatives" going Rubio after today's news of how the young former speaker has narrowed Crist's lead from 29 points to 15 in the latest poll.
A young AmeriCorps volunteer rolls up her sleeves to rehab a house in St. Charles, Louisiana.
Take it from a recent college graduate: It's rough out there. With the national economy in a shambles and entry level employment opportunities scarce, AmeriCorps can be a saving grace for recent college grads.
That population is part of the reason that in the past 11 months, AmeriCorps received over 144,000 more
applicants than it did this time last year. It's been bolstered by the $200 million
in funding it received this past year, when President Obama inked the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act.
The organization partners with local or national nonprofits according to those organizations' area of expertise. For post-grads bogged down with debt, it's a way to pay student loans, offering steady work for the time being and a guaranteed job in an otherwise uncertain future.
I can empathize with the young South Floridians who were recently interviewed for a USA Today feature story about AmeriCorps. People like 23-year-old Chris Kowlish from Boynton Beach who picked a college major similar to mine.
Crazy, charming Marco Rubio -- but you're serious about the Jets vaccine, right? Do NOT toy with us, boy wonder. Anyway, video of his appearance one week ago at the Broward GOP Women's Club, whom he charmed as surely as the Palm Beach Republicans who would give him an overwhelming victory against Charlie Crist in their straw poll two days later.
Seems Rubio's the only one of the three leading senatorial candidates who can afford to have a sense of humor at this stage of the campaign.
Ronald Murphy, getting ready to bed down in Delray
We wrote about sex offender Ronald Murphy last week here and here, a man released from prison in September after serving 13 years on a rape conviction, and stuck in limbo ever since.
Murphy's home is currently a bench outside the Delray Beach Florida Department of Corrections Probation and Parole Office on the corner of NE 3rd Ave. and NE 2nd St. Murphy, wearing an ankle monitor, is confined there from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. every night, obliged to sleep on a bench so narrow it barely accommodates his portly frame.
We caught up with Murphy Friday night around 7:30. The neighborhood is deserted, and Murphy must feel like a sitting duck. The sounds of gunfire and passing trains make it impossible to get much shut-eye, he said. Murphy can't move beyond the parking lot without setting off his ankle monitor. He has his wardrobe -- a few pairs of jeans and t-shirts -- spread out on an adjoining bench. He was reading a paperback to pass the time, The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah.
Don't call it the Titanic, but there's a new history-making ship soon to make a posh premiere in Fort Lauderdale. On December 1, Royal Caribbean's $1.2 billion, 5,400 passenger Oasis of the Seas will cruise out of Port Everglades. Nearly four football fields long, boasting 18 decks, with a crew of 2,165 and the capability to accommodate 1,600 extra guests, it will be the world's largest-ever cruise ship.
As you can see from the virtual tour above, it's gonna be a real Poseidon adventure, complete with themed neighborhoods, ranging from Central Park with live greenery (minus the lurking pervs), to a Boardwalk with carnival rides and Coney Island-style fortune tellers (only not as creepy -- Brooklynites, you know?).
Super Democratic awesome-man Rep. Alan Grayson, from Orlando, is like the a left wing version of Joe Wilson, but slicker and funnier. After proposing a a federal paid-vacation law and his hilarious rants against the Republican health care "plan"--Plan A: don't get sick, Plan B: if you do get sick, die early--Grayson has become, as they say in the political game, a rising star. And as any liberal star must do before coronation, he appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher last night.
Florida Fish and Wildlife has yet to respond to a July 30th letter from Lori Kettler, senior counsel for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), concerning humane death for Florida's thousands of Burmese pythons. Tori Perry, senior cruelty caseworker at PETA, told the Juice today that the guidelines for hunters going after the giant snakes, as posted on FFW's website, are too vague.
Perry says PETA would like to see Florida Fish and Wildlife update its
guidelines for hunters. "The permit says that pythons may be killed
with a blunt or sharp hand-held device," Perry told us. "We direct
people to the American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines for
euthanizing snakes, which says that you should apply blunt trauma to
the head with enough force to stun the reptile and then decapitate it.
It's horrible to decapitate a fully conscious snake; their brains can
stay active for up to three hours."
In advance of world leaders' December meeting in Copenhagen for a new climate treaty, Palm Beach County residents are heading to Atlantic Dunes Beach Park, where on Saturday October 24, they'll participate in a demonstration that's gone global.
That day marks the International Day of Climate Action, in which activists in more than 150 countries will highlight the consequences of increasing CO2 emissions and the dire need for caps on greenhouse gas.
"World leaders need to do the right thing for our planet, not the right thing for politics," says Bobette Wolesensky, a Greenpeace lead activist and Palm Beach Community College professor.
Sierra Club and MoveOn.org are sending committed members from as far away as Winterhaven.
The Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition, which is collaborating with Greenpeace on the effort, asks that their veggie-oil-fueling supporters carpool to the hourlong rally by 3 p.m. After the jump, let's consider the stakes in this battle.
Sheree Silver is the psychic who, for an episode of the TV series "Wife Swap" left Florida for a week to live with the Heene family in Colorado earlier this year. In that episode, which originally aired in the spring, Silver remarks on camera that the show will be her destiny. Still, she didn't quite expect that the Heenes would make world news yesterday when it was feared that the youngest member of the family, six-year-old Falcon Heene, had accidentally flown off in his dad's makeshift silver balloon. He was later found safe at home and speculation grew that the whole incident had been a publicity stunt. Silver, reached at home in St. Augustine, was gracious enough to answer a few questions: As a psychic, did you predict this at all? Yes. This morning I woke up and felt the need to call First Coast News [the TV station in Jacksonville]. My children had been cast in an Edgar Allan Poe play at the Limelight Theatre. They were all set to put me on the news for that, and within two hours, [I saw on CNN that Falcon was feared to be in the runaway balloon]. But you know, I didn't sense danger; I didn't pick it up. I wasn't panicked.
Did you stay in touch with the Heene family after filming was over? I actually did. I sent presents to the boys, care packages.
People are now speculating that the father, Richard Heene, may have staged a hoax. I wouldn't put anything past Richard...
Contributors: Eric Barton, Michelle Centrone, Deirdra Funcheon, Keith Hollar, John Linn, Michael J. Mooney, Bob Norman, Lisa Rab, Nicole Rodriguez, Gail Shepherd.
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