Miami, Florida

At this time of year in Pennsylvania, when temperatures are in the 20s, a lot of folks start dreaming about Miami.  

And whenever I tell people I grew up in Miami, people always say the same thing:

“Why did you ever leave?”

Don’t get me wrong:  I like Miami.  It was interesting growing up there and I still like to go back from time to time.  There are parts of Miami that are beautiful, exciting and fascinating.  And the blended culture – Anglo and a hodge-podge of Caribbean and Latin American influences – makes it an adventure; it’s like leaving the continental U.S. and going to a largely Hispanic tropical country that doesn’t require a passport and accepts U.S. currency at face value.

What’s not to like about that? 

However, when people ask me why I ever left, it’s obvious that they’re from someplace else.  Probably the Northeast or the Midwest.  Chances are they’ve only visited there.  Or have only seen something on the Travel Channel. 

Clearly they’ve never lived there for any period of time, as I did. 

If they did, they’d know the following:

Living in Miami is different than visiting there …

First of all, Miami is not all of South Florida, but all of South Florida is pretty much like Miami. The only difference is that the further south you go, the flatter and hotter it is, the more congested the traffic, the more hostile the natives are, and the less English you'll hear.  

The killer is really the heat and humidity.  If you’ve flown there, you‘ll remember when you landed and the door opened to the jet way. 

That first rush of hot moist air was like walking into a steam room.  It felt good then. 

Now imagine day after day of that same unrelenting heat and humidity.  You’re always hot.  You’re always sweaty.  And nothing ever dries.  Including you. 

In a polo shirt and shorts it’s tolerable.  But think of wearing long pants and a long-sleeved shirt, and on top of that a jacket.  You can’t go out to a nice place for dinner – or a wedding or funeral -- in shorts, so guys will at some time be wearing a sport coat and long pants. You will suffer.

Now it’s true that practically every place in Miami is air-conditioned, so you just have to scurry from one air-conditioned outpost to another.  

Another strategy is to wait until the sun goes down and the temperature may drop from 85-88 degrees to a “refreshing” 78 degrees.  Still 80-90% humidity.  Time to open the windows, right?  

But you still have to get from your house to your car to wherever you’re going, so you will be outside and trust me, that heat and humidity day after day will wear you down.   

Nice for a week’s vacation after you’ve been freezing your butt off.  Sucks after a year or so. 

  

Miami is flat, and every day is pretty much like every other …

A friend of mine in Florida – who moved to South Florida from Canada – once remarked how flat it was. 

“You can watch your dog running away for three days …” is how he put it. 

Now when you’ve never been anyplace else, you don’t know anything different.  But once you’ve been someplace with hills you realize how flat Miami is.  There’s no going back. 

That leads to a kind of sameness about Miami.  You’re never going up or down or over a hill, unless you’re in a highway with overpasses and underpasses.  There’s nothing new or exciting over the ridge because there is no ridge.  The only things that break the flat horizon line are buildings.  The only change in the topography is manmade. 

The same goes for the weather.  There are hot, really hot, and somewhat less hot days.  There’s really little difference.  It’s pretty predictable.  It will rain someplace every day.  It will be cooler early in the morning – but only in a relative way – and hotter with a breeze later that day. 

The only thing that breaks this monotony is a severe tropical storm—common – or a hurricane – not that common.  When a big tropical storm dumps inches of rain, as soon as it passes steam rises up from the roads adding even more humidity.  There are occasional freak cold snaps where it might dip down into the 60s, or God forbid the 50s – time to break out those winter clothes – but those are rare.

There aren’t seasons as most of us know them.  It’s always summer; there’s no fall, winter or spring.  The leaves don’t change color.  There’s never a crisp snap in the air for a few weeks.  No snow.  No watching trees budding in spring.  That’s because nothing ever really changes; there’s nothing to look forward to except more of the same.    

There’s only a season when there are more out-of-towners, and a season when there are somewhat fewer.  It’s not quite as hot in the former; a bit hotter in the latter. 

While that monotony appeals to the winter-weary in the North, when you live there year round it can seem like you’re unstuck in time.  And you’ll find you miss the seasons. 

Habla espanol? 

If the answer is no, you’re in for a surprise. And you can pretty much kiss off getting a good job in Miami if that job entails dealing with the local public. 

That’s because the majority of people in Miami speak Spanish a lot of the time; some only speak Spanish, or pretend not to understand English when it serves them.  Like virtually all service people you’ll have to deal with.  Like every place you try to call locally – the bank, the auto repair shop, the air-conditioner guy – and most waitstaff in hotels and restaurants.

It’s not such a big deal for most locals – they’re used to it.  And most Hispanics there do speak a little English, but it’s not their first choice.  Plus, when they know you don’t speak any Spanish, they can talk about you to each other freely.

And they will. 

Here are some key terms to listen for:

• Pendejo (pendeja – female) means “asshole”  …  As in: “Que el pendejo” (what an asshole …)

• Marico means “faggot” ; maricon means “huge faggot” … (the worst insult to a Hispanic)

• Besame el culo means “kiss my ass” …
  Don’t let that warm smile fool you.  To the local Hispanics, most native Anglos – and ALL tourists – are pendejos in Miami.  And if you think differently, you can besame el culo. 

It’s Mother Nature’s funhouse …

Thanks to the climate, some well-meaning but misguided early residents, and gross stupidity by some current inhabitants, South Florida is an ad hoc ecological experiment gone haywire. 

It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature and upset her balance.  This is her blowback. 

Every strange tropical species lives there – giant, fearless cockroaches that fly; walking catfish; piranha; scorpions; exotic ants; boa constrictors; poisonous toads; and of course alligators and many, many more creepy, crawly, biting, bizarre things on land and in the water.

The ever-present dampness and heat also offer you a rich variety of otherwise unusual fungal diseases, rashes and infections, not to mention almost epidemic athlete’s foot and jock itch. In Miami, there’s almost always a fungus among us.

Alligators, mosquitos, a species of deer, some birds, a few flowering plants, and a few other animals and insects are actually indigenous to Florida. Practically everything else was brought in by somebody, either intentionally or by accident.   

Most of the more exotic flora was brought in from Indonesia.  Florida’s famous oranges originally came from Spain.  Most of the tropical fruits – like bananas – also came from somewhere else.  Then you have the experiments gone awry, like Melaleuca trees from Australia – planted in the Everglades to drain the swamp –and now a nasty invasive species. 

And if it ever grew, crawled or slithered in a rainforest – plant, beast, or insect – it thrives in South Florida.  It’s probably there right now.  And surprise – because the genius that brought it didn’t bring along its natural predators that kept it under control in whatever steaming, mucky, pestilent environment where it grew naturally, it’s now out of control.  Thanks a bunch. 

You and the kids might find all this biodiversity fascinating.  Residents, not so much. 
The first time you see a coral snake in your front yard, find scorpions in your garage, see something crawling on you that looks like it’s from a Tim Burton movie, or have giant roaches fly toward you in broad daylight, you’ll be less than enthused. 

In South Florida, and especially Miami, Mother Nature is a bitch.    

Have a great time.  

 

Repeal the 22nd Amendment?

That Amendment limits a President to two terms.  Now, some Representative from New York has proposed a bill to repeal that.

Not surprisingly, it’s a Democrat.  And it’s not something new – the same guy has been proposing the same bill about every two years since the late 1990s.

In the past, it’s gone nowhere.  The odds of it getting all the way through the legislative process successfully would seem to be slim.

However, we need to remember that Obama has said he’d like to have a third term.  He believes he should have a third term.  A lot of Democrats apparently concur. 

There’s just that pesky, old-fashioned Constitution in the way, and we know the disdain some have for the Constitution these days.  You know the argument:  how the Constitution’s practically irrelevant today because it was drafted so long ago by a bunch of rich white guys who couldn’t foresee how the world would change.

As specious as that argument is, it still has a lot of traction, especially among the far left who prefer a nation of whims rather than a nation of laws.  They wrap themselves in the Constitution when it suits their needs, but attack the Constitution as hopelessly out of date and out of touch with today’s realities when it doesn’t.  

Well in this case, it’s not like the 22^nd Amendment dates back all that far.  It was only enacted after FDR was elected to four consecutive terms.   

And it was enacted for good reason.   After seeing how FDR used the power of incumbency, people realized that more than a couple of terms might open the door to an Imperial Presidency.  Or worse – a dictator for life.   

There’s no doubt that FDR was a gifted public speaker and communicator and well-loved by the masses in his time.  First elected during the Depression, he positioned himself as a champion of the little guy and the unions, always fighting against the greedy banks and rich capitalists.   

He was a master manipulator of the media of his time and the media loved him in return.  They also largely ignored anything negative about him.  He was their bigger-than-life hero.   

He helped create Social Security – which was a good, altruistic idea.  But he also made the use of massive government spending, soaring deficits to cover that spending, and ever expanding government bureaucracy a foundation of Democrat ideology for decades to come. 

Unfortunately, he also ran roughshod over the Constitution at times to achieve his goals.  His New Deal spawned a variety of work programs and agencies out of nowhere, and often with little regard to accountability, expense or even legality.  When many of those programs were subsequently struck down by the Supreme Court, he didn’t hesitate to criticize the Court publicly as “nine old men” and strong-arm them.  He even threatened to expand the Court by as many as six justices to try to get his way.    

And as to the claim that FDR’s leadership pulled us out of the Depression, well some now believe that many of his free-spending economic policies and big-government approaches may have actually extended the length of the Depression unnecessarily.   Eight years into FDR’s first two terms – and when all his New Deal programs were in full swing – unemployment was still at about 17% and we were even deeper in debt.  It was WWII that pulled us out and brought our economy back; not FDR’s WPA

Now as I write this, it occurs to me that this is sounding more than just a little familiar. 

Honestly, I wasn’t planning on tying Obama to FDR when I started drafting this.  I was just going to make the case for maintaining Presidential term limits at two terms.  But I realize that the similarity outlined above is inescapable.

Like FDR, Obama believes he is above the law.  He considers his re-election as confirmation of his authority to do whatever he wants.  The Constitution and the equal balance of power among the Congress, the Judiciary and the Executive branches be damned. 

He surrounds himself with allies who also believe the ends justify whatever means.  Nancy Pelosi – who famously said Congress had to pass ObamaCare to learn what was in it.  Geitner, who thinks simply minting a worthless trillion-dollar coin and depositing that in the Federal Reserve Bank, and then using that as collateral to print more money, is a perfectly acceptable way to avoid hitting the debt ceiling.    

If Obama can’t get his way through proper channels, he’ll simply sign an Executive Order and dare the other two branches to challenge it.  Or task one of his minions to find some dubious technicality he can exploit.  The trillion-dollar coin is just one of those.  He’s also exploring using an obscure clause in the Constitution to start making the case that he doesn’t need any Congressional approval to raise the debt limit unilaterally. 

He intimidated the Supreme Court into deciding that a key provision of his ACA was indeed a tax, and as such permissible, even when his own attorneys had argued that it wasn’t. 

He doesn’t really care how he wins, just that he wins. Like FDR. 

Also, like FDR, the media loves Obama and refuses to acknowledge any mistakes he’s made.  And he’s made a boat load.  His massive stimulus programs haven’t worked.  His bailouts to GM and Chrysler are largely smoke and mirrors.  His green energy projects have wasted untold dollars with little in return.  Unemployment remains high.  As much as he cooks the books and fudges the numbers to appear otherwise – with the media complicit in promoting this nonsense – the economy’s in shambles and practically nothing he’s done is turning it around. 

And now there’s talk of allowing him to run for a third term.  Honestly, that’s just delusional.  He didn’t deserve a second term, much less a third.

But with the media on his side, he probably thinks he has a shot.

The 22^nd Amendment is the only thing stopping him.  He and his supporters know there’s not much of a chance they can get that tossed out in time. 

So I’ll bet they are working on some way of getting around it.  Maybe have Michelle run.  Maybe run Biden as a figurehead.

Or maybe he'll just issue another Executive Order to ignore the 22nd Amendment. 

Trust me, they are trying to find some technicality as I write this.  It’s his style. 

He wants to be king with unlimited powers; he’s been acting like one for the past four years, and will for the coming four.  That’s more than enough. 

“Go f*** yourself …”

John Boehner said that to Harry Reid’s face.  Without the asterisks, of course.    

It came after Reid publicly blasted Boehner for running a “dictatorship” in the House and near the end of the recent fiscal cliff legislation fiasco. 

I’m sure Reid was surprised.  He asked Boehner to repeat what he’d said – and to his credit, Boehner did.  Just so there was no misunderstanding.   Boehner said it and he meant it.    

Good for him. 

Now maybe you were offended that Boehner used such language. 

I wasn’t.  Sometimes it’s completely warranted. 

In fact, Boehner probably just articulated – with enviable brevity – what a lot of us would like to say to any number of sitting members of Congress and to the President and Vice-President as well.  And let’s not forget the political hacks like Axelrod and Plouffe that surround them.

Go ahead … tell me that you haven’t had those words cross your lips.  Ever? 

When some Democrat lectures us on TV that Obama and his party have a mandate from the American people to do whatever they want, I know my response.  Maybe yours as well. 

Sure, I may be saying it to the TV; I still wish they could hear me.    

I also wish John McCain had said it to Obama after the 2008 election.  You know, when Obama staged a “bipartisan” meeting to exchange ideas and then cut off suggestions from McCain and other Republicans by saying:  “The election’s over … I won.” 

What a perfect time for McCain to say “Go f*** yourself.”  We would have cheered. 

There’s still time for Mitt to do it, but I think McCain would have been more likely to drop the F bomb than Mitt.  Not saying Mitt isn’t thinking it; just that he doesn’t seem the type.  Pity. 

Back to you … can you honestly tell me you haven’t had those three little words at least cross your mind, if not your lips at some point recently? 

Like, say, when some Democrat acquaintance unjustly accuses you of being a racist, bigot, or worse, simply because you don’t agree with everything Obama’s doing?

Or perhaps when government officials try to make you feel bad because you run a business? 

Or when politicians attempt to make you feel guilty because while you’re working your ass off every day, you tend not to have a lot of compassion for those people who’ve taken a two-year paid vacation on their unemployment benefits – and now they want even more? 

And when somebody attacks you as a heartless monster merely for expressing your view that some social programs might be a waste of money – those three words don’t occur to you?     

I know they do to me. 

  

Granted, saying the words doesn’t change anyone’s mind.  But the act of saying them can make you feel better.    

So take a moment.  Take a breath.  And say them out loud, without the asterisks.

Sometimes they are precisely the right words, at the right time. 

Give it a shot.