HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND II

The view from the beach we're running on every morning. (OK. Part walk, part run. But it's still exercise.)

Here's a Memorial Day Weekend update because we're just in one of those moods.

Here's a nice Sun Sentinel article on Federal Judge James Cohn. "A true southern gentlemen" is how he is described. Judge Cohn will be sentencing Former Broward School Board Member

Beverly Gallagher on June 2. A week later he will be sentencing Scott Rothstein and on July 2 he will be sentencing former Miramar City Commissioner Fitzroy Salesman.

Quite a trifecta for the Judge.

WORLD WIDE ECOLOGICAL DISASTER.

The latest attempt to cap the gushing oil well in the Gulf Of Mexico has failed. It is reasonable to assume that the well will continue gushing until August, when a relief well will be finished.

The Gulf of Mexico is considered the "nursery" of the seas. Species as far flung as Blue Fin Tuna, which are harvested off the coast of Massachusetts, Dorado (Dolphin), several species of Turtles, Grouper and Snapper, not to mention several species of whales, all spawn in the Gulf. Currents from the Gulf reach the Atlantic and the Caribbean oceans within a short period of time, and other oceans thereafter. The world and our oceans are much more interconnected than we realize.

Even if the well was plugged today, there would be an ecological collapse of monumental proportions. When a species like Blue Fin Tuna which spends it life in the northern atlantic collapses, it effects the entire food chain below it. Some species will explode in volume, and others will collapse, all upsetting the delicate natural balance that has existed for thousands of years.

And all of these results are from the known problems of oil spills. Who knows the effects the chemical dispersants will cause when it is dumped on currents we barely know about 5000 feet below the surface? When it comes to the effects of humans on nature this much is true- there are things we know and can control; there are things we don't know and can't control; and most importantly- there are things about which we don't know we don't know. And that is the truly scary part because we will soon find out about that.

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.

This is a whole lot worse than we've even begun to wrap our minds around. But let us leave you with this- if you are a cook, or an accountant, or a lawyer, or a taxi cab driver in Miami- just how to do think your life will change when the entire tourist industry in our town collapses? No one visits beaches and oceans ruined by oil and chemicals.

Sorry to be so morose, but this is what is on our mind.