Your Morning Sift

Good morning.

I like the way Sundays feel on 3 day weekends. Enjoy a rather entertaining morning Sift...

A- Licorice Pizza notes three recent celebrity passings.

The idea that death comes is threes is an old superstition, extending to the idea that death in a family or community comes in threes and that bad luck in general comes in threes. A book titled “How Did It Begin” explains that the superstition of three may have started with British troops in the Boer War who thought it bad luck to light three cigarettes from one match.

B- The oil spill is on Justice Building Blog's mind.

From a practical standpoint two ideas emerge from this disaster: we shouldn't be drilling a mile beneath the ocean when we clearly can't control accidents. And also this- the wide spread ecological disaster that will come to define our time will also unfortunately define the Obama Presidency. And that is a shame, because this man is so talented, and he has brought back talented and smart people to government. And none of that will matter because this oil spill will over shadow it all.

C- Miami's DASH [Design Architecture Senior High] recently put on a fashion show and Swampstyle was there with his camera.

D- I love it when The South Florida Watershed Journal goes walking in the Everglades with his camera although the sounds aren't always what you expect.

E- Fort Lauderdale Daily Photo posts a nice picture of a unique Fort Lauderdale scene.

F- Eye 0n Miami confronts the effect the Gulf oil spill will have on the Obama presidency.

It is clear today--after the implosion of the financial and insurance industries and environmental disaster--that trillions of taxpayer dollars could have been saved if government had invested in professionalizing and raising up the status of service in government agencies, building competence and high standards, instead of enabling insider dealing, the revolving door between the lobbyists and government staff, and 'regulatory capture' by industry. There is no profit or glee in saying, "I told you so". The genie is out of the bottle, and the Obama presidency will never be the same.

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