Stay classy!

So, why not call it a day? If you're ridiculously astute, you have noticed that the old Southflorida.com Web site is already down -- the address transfers directly to the Sun-Sentinel's entertainment page. Over the next week, more stuff will be happening online. The end result is that the entire Southflorida.com domain name is going to come down and, when it does, so will this blog.

It's been a great place to vent, and I hope some of you have enjoyed the ventings (I get a few thousand hits a month, so I know somebody must be paying attention.)

However, this is not the end. I'm working on Doomed Generation, v. 2.0. Hope to have it up in a couple weeks, and I hope that by then you haven't forgotten. I'll post the new URL sometime before Sept. 6, when this blog goes down for good.

Cheers!

Next to the Cubans was a large group of Ron Paul supporters. Yes, you read that right. I used "Ron Paul" and "large group of supporters" in the same sentence. They numbered maybe 30 or 40. I felt sorry for them. They seemed to consist mostly of people who were angry at the corruption of the current Republicans, angry at the war, but couldn't bring themselves to vote Democratic because of some inexplicable, visceral hatred. And so, they intended to go with the darkest of dark horses. The few I talked to said that if Paul didn't win the primary, they'd stay home on election day.

Inside the auditorium, we had to sit and wait through about four (4) hours of speakers and musicians before Obama came on. Every candidate for office in Miami-Dade and Broward counties wanted to say a few words. Most were unremarkable, though Javier Betancourt, running against incumbent Republican state representative Carlos Lopez-Cantera in district 113, made a lasting impression. In any case, I'll save most of my commentary on the candidates for my upcoming political prognostication entries, which I'm currently working on and should post by mid-Sept. or so.

The crowd grew more and more impatient and annoyed as time went on, but all was forgiven when Obama finally hit the stage after a warm introduction by State Senator Frederica Wilson, who was dressed, as usual, in a costume that looked like something out of a '70s blaxploitation flick.

Sen. Wilson -- what she wore Saturday made this look tame.

While I've said before that I tentatively support Obama, and I do agree with him on most of the issues, that's not what the title of this entry is about. When I say he's the best, I'm not talking about his position on the issues. What I mean is that, despite what I believe to be an honest optimism, Obama may be the most brilliant political animal of my lifetime. He oozes charisma the way Karl Rove oozes malice. He makes Bill Clinton look like a cheap conman trying to pick up floozies in a bar -- yeah, he's that good.

At one point, someone in the huge crowd from the University of Miami yelled, "We love you, Obama!" She hadn't even gotten out the whole sentence before Obama returned, "I love you too, baby."

And that was only the first of about a half dozen times that someone yelled something at the senator during a lull in the applause. Every time, he had a snappy rejoinder, delivered without even a second's hesitation. When he said he didn't like the administration's misusing our troops and someone called out, "Or our Constitution!" I didn't even have time to blink an eye before Obama retorted, "Oh, we'll get into that too," and then launched into a several-minute litany of the current administration's brutal pillaging of our founding document.

Hell, Senator Obama's almost too perfect. I still believe that his calls for hope, for optimism, for great changes in Washington are real. But after Saturday, part of me can't help but wonder if I've simply fallen under his spell.

Senator Obama -- my mancrush

As for me, I'm already planning to be in Miami tomorrow for the Barack Obama event. If it's been confirmed by then that Castro's a dead man, I'll even get down into the madness on Calle Ocho. It's a once in a lifetime thing, and whenever I have the opportunity to be an active participant in history, I take it. I am, after all, a professional.

Coming tomorrow: A rare weekend edition blog post or two, covering the Obama event and the possible Castro Death Party.

Autumn is nearly upon us now. Down here in South Florida, it's almost impossible to tell from the weather. Each day is a sweaty, messy struggle filled with the whines of blood-sucking mosquitos and the shouts of Haitian cabbies and cracked roads only slightly less traffic-filled than in season, when the Creole of the Haitians mixes with the French of the Canadian snowbirds, and none of them can quite recall what drove them to come here in the first place.

But autumn is nevertheless on its way. Football is finally back on the television, which is certainly one of the first indicators. In a few weeks, General Petraeus will come before Congress and, if early reports that the White House itself will write his words are any indication, will tell our congresspeople that the war is progressing nicely. Sure, there's problems, but they'll all be overcome with another surge or three. Nothing that anyone outside the military needs to worry about.

Of course, we all know that's not true. Very few people take the White House seriously anymore, and after going through generals as though they were Kleenex, it's pretty obvious that the man they finally ended up with was not necessarily the best man for the job, or the brightest. Just the one willing to say the right things.

What is left of the Iraq War, the historic debacle that I have come to call The Big Dumb? General Peter Pace, the chairman of the joint chiefs, intends to call for withdrawing half of our troops from Iraq. This will doubtless be greeted poorly in the West Wing, and Karl Rove is no longer around to properly spin the news.

But Pace's point is that the military simply cannot keep up with the demand, which has been apparently to all but the most obtuse observers for quite some time now. I'm actually rather amazed that none of the Democratic presidential contenders has drawn the distinction that we either need to end the war or start a draft, a notion that would likely get a few more people on the right side of history.

Because at this point, history is all it comes down to. Even Bush has nothing anymore except for bizarre, convoluted comparisons to Vietnam. At least we now know where the president stands -- he wants a war lasting more than a decade and costing at least 50,000 American lives. And even after all that, he doesn't want us to leave.

No, history will not be kind to Bush, or to The Big Dumb. Of course, our president is right to compare Iraq to Vietnam, just not in the way he did. In reality, the apt comparison is that wasting the lives of our family and friends a half a world away for reasons that are never properly explained is never a good thing. Vietnam ended before I was born, but as a student of history, even I am smart enough to take that lesson from America's adventure in Indochina.

Which makes me quite a bit smarter than our president, I suppose, but that's hardly comforting. Perhaps the lesson America will take away from these times is this -- who we elect as president should be decided on something more than whoever makes us feel good. The president should be the best among us, not someone who reminds us of Norm from Cheers, only a little meaner and stupider. Because autumn is coming, and Iraq has shown us what happens when we make the same mistake twice.

Dodd at 5th for the Dems seems more of a "why not?" than anything else. He stands about as much chance as Biden, Gravel or Kucinich, which is to say, no chance at all. The top 4 Dems have been the same, in the same order, for almost the entire campaign season thus far.

I disagree with Cillizza's take on the GOP. Like him, I was quick to dismiss Giuliani as a serious GOP contender, but unlike Cillizza, I still am. He may poll well, but when Republicans step into the voting booth, that's gonna change. It seems odd that the Christian conservative base has been all but forgotten, in Cillizza's take on this thing and elsewhere. That base would probably swing Thompson, assuming the guy finally gets in the race. At this point, Thompson's like Ted Kennedy in the late 70s and early 80s -- a constant presidential threat that never actually materialized. If he dries up the way Kennedy always did, who do the so-called values voters turn to? Pro-abortion, pro-gay rights Giuliani is out. And Romney's Mormon faith dooms him to a lot of these voters, right or wrong. Believe me, ace, I spent four years in Colorado Springs, the beating heart of American Christian fundamentalism. Romney's faith is a problem, no matter what touchy-feely platitudes about tolerance the fundies may throw out.

So, now that we've discounted both the front-runners, and if Thompson fails to show, we're once again left with Huckabee. (McCain, as we all know, is finished, and this is the only time I'm mentioning him). I keep coming back to the preacher from Arkansas.

And indeed, the forthcoming rise of the Huckster may take place here in Fort Lauderdale, at the Values Voter Debate on Sept. 17. They call themselves the largest voting bloc in the country, ace, and they're really not willing to concede things like abortion and gay marriage. And when they tune in to the debate in mid-September, they will see:
1) A relatively liberal New Yorker
2) A Mormon
3) A Baptist preacher

See that? And, hell, ValuesVoter.org has only confirmed the presence of seven out of nine candidates. They haven't released names yet, but the chances are good that Giuliani and Romney are the ones skipping the event. After September, if Thompson isn't in yet, and especially if the other "values voter" candidate, Sam Brownback, has dropped out, expect Huckabee to be No. 3 with a bullet, if not No. 2.

Graber, who is a longtime supporter of the Clintons, was an advisor on healthcare reform to the White House in 1993 after successfully passing groundbreaking health reform in Florida. Graber’s bill reached far beyond the state and was used as a model for health reform in several other states.

“I am excited to lend my support to Hillary,” Graber said. “She is the most experienced candidate and understands the issues facing our nation today.”

___________________________________________________________________________

Hey, good for Graber. At least he's finally supporting a Democrat. Back in the 2006 elections, that wasn't the case.

OK, my headline may be a little off, but still, the idea that a billion-light-year-wide void has just been discovered is certainly jaw-dropping news to an astronomy buff. Of course, since the void is 6 to 10 billion light years from us, it may not even exist anymore, since we're seeing it as it was 6 to 10 billion years ago. The old adage that truth is stranger than fiction is particularly true on the largest scales possible.

It was obvious some months ago, after he pointed all his fundraising pals in the direction of Mitt Romney's campaign, that Brother Jeb had no designs on the 2008 presidential campaign. And the more board positions he gets, the more fat paychecks he collects for allowing corporations to use his name, the more likely he is to sit out 2012 as well.

My thoughts: Sweet Jesus, won't somebody else hire this guy?

"A video, posted on YouTube, shows three young men, their faces masked by bandannas, mingling Monday with protesters in front of a line of police in riot gear. At least one of the masked men is holding a rock in his hand.

The three are confronted by protest organizer Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Coles makes it clear the masked men are not welcome among his group of protesters, whom he describes as mainly grandparents. He urges them to leave and find their own protest location.

Coles also demands that they put down their rocks. Other protesters begin to chime in that the three are really police agents. Several try to snatch the bandanas from their faces.

Rather than leave, the three actually start edging closer to the police line, where they appear to engage in discussions. They eventually push their way past an officer, whereupon other police shove them to the ground and handcuff them.

Late Tuesday, photographs taken by another protester surfaced, showing the trio lying prone on the ground. The photos show the soles of their boots adorned by yellow triangles. A police officer kneeling beside the men has an identical yellow triangle on the sole of his boot."

Major kudos to Dave Coles. The story doesn't do him justice. Here is the YouTube video of the altercation. It's definitely worth watching. Here are the same people being arrested by the police. Note the yellow markings on the soles of the "protesters" shoes, identical to the markings on the soles of the officers' shoes:

This occurred up in Canada during a meeting between the heads of state of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, mostly dealing with the same issues that had Miami cops beating the hell out of us down here in Nov. 2003.

Of course, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that American police use the same tactics, or even used them in Miami four years ago. After all, Miami police chief Timoney is perfectly willing to break the law when it suits him. And using undercover officers as an excuse to invoke a police state for a few days would certainly suit that jack-booted yahoo.

Meanwhile, our president was back in the U.S. As news of Canada's use of police-state tactics hit the wires, Bush was speaking to a Veterans of Foreign Wars audience, comparing Iraq to Vietnam -- FAVORABLY!

I have truly seen it all.

Like many Republicans, Mom doesn't like any of her options in the primary. She's a sweet 69-year-old lady who doesn't smoke, rarely drinks, and jokingly offers to "pray for all of us heathens" when the rest of the family refuses to attend church with her. She is, quite simply, as American as apple pie. I love Mom.

And surprisingly, Mom's best options, in her opinion, this year look like Edwards or Obama, or maybe Richardson or Biden. She likes a lot of the Democratic candidates much better than she likes any of the Republicans. But the front-runner? We ended our political conversation with my mom saying, "I can't believe that bitch Hillary might be president."

Mom never curses.

But, really, I think it's more about stupid criminals than brilliant police. The case really broke open after Trucchio and Mackey's roommate, Douglas Stein, walked into the Port Orange Police Department headquarters and relayed how his roommates had told him all about how they had murdered and dismembered a woman. After police picked up Trucchio and Mackey, Trucchio told a similar story to a fellow inmate, sealing his fate.

The mind reels. Look, if you're going to kill a woman, then dismember her and hide the various parts, maybe you should try never speaking of it for the rest of your life. Just a suggestion.

But in the meantime, whatever the reason, it's at least good to know that these two degenerates are off the street.

I wouldn't call that definitive confirmation, but it's as close as we'll get before an official announcement.

My reaction? Meh. This isn't the real Smashing Pumpkins, it's a Billy Corgan vanity band (whether the original was the same thing is certtainly open for debate, admittedly), and Kanye West would be cool to see, but it'll take an impressive second-tier lineup to make this festival pop.

MERV GRIFFIN!

Tommy Thompson is gone too. ... So is Phillip Tattaglia. Moe Greene. Strachi. Cuneo. But all of them pale in comparison to the news that Karl Rove has resigned and will leave office at the end of the month.

But this laser-like focus has meant that a few important stories have been ignored. In Spain, they're burning 400,000 hectares of crops in a mad effort to exterminate a giant plague of voles.

The Spanish Plague

In Bangladesh and other areas of Southeast Asia, millions have fled their homes in front of the worst floods in memory.

The Amazing Race: Bangladesh Flood Edition

In Philadelphia, a political columnist is actually hoping for another 9/11, saying it will bring our country together and failing to even mention the thousands more Americans who would be killed in such an event.

Stu Bykofsky, who is at least decent enough to identify himself as a "bastard" in the above-mentioned column

But more important than any of this -- for our politically minded purposes here at Doomed Generation, in any case -- is brain fog. Wikipedia defines brain fog as "episodes of cognitive dysfunction or confused thinking. Brain fog is associated with forgetfulness, losing one's train of thought, depersonalization, the inability to remember the correct words when speaking or writing (aphasia)."

Sound like any presidents you know? You bet, ace. Brain fog, notably, is a symptom of long-term Lyme Disease, and the news just came out yesterday that Bush suffered from that tick-born plague.