Your Morning Sift

Good morning.

I have a great Tuesday morning Sift for you. So get comfortable and let's get going.

A- Bark Bark Woof Woof summarizes the latest idiocy from the right side of the aisle where some some conservative senatorial candidate from the Midwest [and other Republicans] think that there are legitimate and illegitimate forms of rape, while Man or Maniac? breaks out some definitions. From the former...

This "you can't get pregnant from rape" meme has been with them for a good long while, too. Rick Santorum, when he wasn't obsessing about gay sex, basically ran his entire presidential campaign on the issue of the sanctity of one-celled organisms over the life and health of the woman serving as host. As for bearing the child of a rapist, he said the woman should "make the best out of a bad situation."

B- Obalesque aims his scorn at Florida pill mill doctors.

They went to school for ten years to get rich, and to bask in all the glory riches bring. It wasn’t about saving the earth or helping its people, it was about their own well-being and material success. This career decision to prescribe drugs rather than practice medicine wasn’t even difficult. It even seemed right and logical. Some of them are surprised they’re even in trouble for making it.

C- Go Hydrology! pulls out the charts and graphs to give us an update on hurricane season.

D- The Green Parrot Bar posts some images for this past weekend's benefit for a couple of the bar's bouncers who were recently beat up.

Well, here they were again, the vendors, the musicians, the artists, the bartenders, the waiters, the cops, the city workers, city commissioners and the mayor, oh and yes, even the tourists, people who when walking by inquired just what was this all about and before long were walking around with freshly purchased boas of raffle tickets around their necks asking things like, "Which one is the Dude again?", or "does that singer Robert Albury really live here, he gives me goosebumps". And you know what it didn't matter if those tourists were day-trippers from Miami, cruise ship folks shuffling on their way to the Hemingway House, or some well-heeled snowbirds from Truman Annex. It didn't matter a whit who they were, tourist or local, street-busker or professional, young or old, or perhaps those who could not make it but were there in spirit.

For a few hours on the corner of Franklin and Einstein it was obvious who was really going to benefit from this, it was clear the beneficiaries were not just Tim and Dude, the real benefit, the real payoff, went home inside each and every one of those folks that showed up Saturday.

E- South Floria for Beginners takes an in-depth look at the political make up of the State of Florida.

In many ways, Florida is like a microcosm of the country. As is apparent, there are more Republican regions than Democratic ones, but the latter have more people and more votes. The regions that are culturally more “Southern” vote Republican—if the voters are white, which most of them are. Even within these regions, the urban core tends to vote Democrat, but the further out into the suburbs and exurbs you go, the more Republican—and Tea Partyish—they become, a pattern familiar throughout the country. I have always attributed this largely to conservative whites’ fear of blacks and other non-Anglo minorities and to their unshakable belief that these minorities are getting undeserved benefits at taxpayers’ (i.e., their) expense.

F- The Cuban-American hardliner influence has waned in 2012 and On Two Shores explains why, month by month.

Imagine a courageous Republican candidate (los viejitos will only back a Republican) who calls the embargo for what it is, a perennial loser, and instead proposes a policy coherent with the opinion of the majority of Cuban-Americans, the American population and indeed the world. A policy that recognizes the political realities and reform process in Cuba, stops making the U.S. a convenient enemy for propaganda purposes inside the island, stops wasting money in patronage and ill-advised programs, favors engagement to benefit the incipient civil society in Cuba, aligns with U.S. business interests, and stand up for human rights. It’s how we deal with every other dictatorship in the world, rarely to worse result than our 53-year approach to Cuba has produced. I predict that such a candidate would not only differentiate himself from the tired rhetoric of the hardline machine, but will also attract significant support from Cuban-Americans, who have all but abandoned their support for an intransigent Cuba policy and are living their lives as if the hardliners no longer existed.

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