JUSTICE BUILDING BLOG

WELCOME TO THE OFFICIAL RICHARD E GERSTEIN JUSTICE BUILDING BLOG. THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED TO JUSTICE BUILDING RUMOR, HUMOR, AND A DISCUSSION ABOUT AND BETWEEN THE JUDGES, LAWYERS AND THE DEDICATED SUPPORT STAFF, CLERKS, COURT REPORTERS, AND CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS WHO LABOR IN THE WORLD OF MIAMI'S CRIMINAL JUSTICE. POST YOUR COMMENTS, OR SEND RUMPOLE A PRIVATE EMAIL AT HOWARDROARK21@GMAIL.COM. Winner of the prestigious Cushing Left Anterior Descending Artery Award.

Thursday, November 25, 2021

GRATITUDE

 Because of our anti-Happy-Thanksgiving-rant earlier this week, we cannot send such felicitous thoughts at this time. But can take stock of all we are grateful for. Starting with the important and ending with the sublime. 

If you peruse our Great Jail Adventure post yesterday, it may become apparent that before heading out to the jail, we were actually in the Old Gray Lady (The REGJB) and went inside a courtroom for the bond hearing. We walked into several courtrooms and this is what we saw: Judges in Masks, PDs and ASAs (mostly maskless); clerks; corrections officers, bailiffs, and all of the people needed to run a court calendar and run a court system. We are grateful for all of you. In the face of a pandemic, you marched into court and kept the system running, at personal risk to your health and life. Thank You. And while we are at it- you twenty something prosecutors and PDs who feel the invincibility  of youth- you're not. Wear a mask please.  

Second, we are grateful for the opportunity to blog. We couldn't do it if this was Beijing. The equivalent of Chief Judge Soto and now Sayfie would have had us arrested and sent to a reeducation camp. Instead, because of the First Amendment, our chief judges, our administrative judges, our judges, endured the slings and arrows of the blog with public grace. True, we've been dressed down privately in scathing emails from a certain Judge - but it was mostly deserved  and we reached a detente. 

We are grateful for our health.  "Good health...the most important thing." (identify the movie quote for valuable prizes). 

About ten days ago we walked into a medical facility and got a booster shot. It took all of thirty minutes with a reservation, including observation time. We are grateful to live in a country that protects intellectual property rights and rewards innovation. This is why we had scientists who had the knowledge and skill to develop a vaccine. Want the Pfizer or Moderna or the one from Russia or China? Moderna please we said, and we got it (get the full dose BTW). 

We are grateful for Hulu TV which we discovered during the pandemic. If not for the NFL ticket, we would cut the cord on cable. 

We are grateful for our Kindle. We can read whatever we want where ever we are. If you like to read, get one. Trust us. You won't miss the feel of books and the ability to manipulate the font and lighting makes reading so much easier. 

We are grateful for our barista at our local Starbucks, who five days a week has our favourite drink ready for us when we walk in. Just the right amount of espresso and coconut milk and shots of vanilla and she even knows that on Friday, just to mix things up, we want it on ice. She was out sick one day and called a colleague to have our drink ready.  You don't see that attention to customers much these days.

In no particular order, we are grateful for home baked crusty bread, the coffee and croissants  at the Pierre in Manhattan that they bring to our room every morning, our Peloton,  the Bills getting beat last week, the series the Kominsky Method on Netflix- Alan Arkin is brilliant and the most underrated comedic actor of his generation, the Noability App on our iPad, which makes reading discovery a breeze, a certain recent opinion in the First, and last, but not least, a majority of our readers, who make writing the blog a fulfilling experience. 

Happy You Know What. 


17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy Thanksgiving Rumpole. One question. You mention in your post to ask for the “full dose” of the Moderna vaccine. You have the option to ask for different amounts of the Moderna vaccine? I have been vaccinated with Pfizer twice and received a third shot as the booster. I was told by the people who did the vaccination that the booster is identical to the first two shots. The chemistry and amount of the booster is the same as the first two shots. Are Moderna and Pfizer vaccines different in this respect? The person getting the Moderna vaccine can choose the dose amount he wants while the person getting Pfizer cannot choose the dose amount?

Anonymous said...

Rumpole. We are GRATEFUL to you. Thank you for writing this blog. It is truly the best and we appreciate all of the hard work that you put into this.

Rumpole said...

Moderna is offering a half does booster unless you have an underlying medical condition and then you get the full Monty. Just say you have high blood pressure and you will get a full dose.

Rumpole said...

1138. Thanks mom.

Anonymous said...

"We are grateful to live in a country that protects intellectual property rights and rewards innovation. This is why we had scientists who had the knowledge and skill to develop a vaccine"

Er, most of the vaccines were developed by or with great help from US government scientists and investment (see for example https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20210512.191448/full/_ ). hen rather than have ownership, or even a share of ownership, belong to the public, private firms tried to claim ownership (in the case of Moderna, they didn't wholly get away with it, and recently had to agree to put government scientists on the patents). Privatizing government-created and government-funded research causes higher prices here and especially in poor countries which cannot easily afford it (so the pandemic blows back here eventually...)

The private sector did play a big and important role in getting vaccines done quickly -- but the patent system was not helpful and won't be helpful next time either, cf. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/06/03/why-intellectual-property-and-pandemics-dont-mix/

Rumpole said...

So what country developed the vaccines ? What country were the corporations in who developed the MRNA technology ? Venezuela ? Cuba ? China ? Or the US ? Tell us who you want the fate of the world’s hands in? Venezuela or the US?

Anonymous said...

"So what country developed the vaccines ? What country were the corporations in who developed the MRNA technology ?"

BioNTech developed the MRNA vaccine technology and it is a German corporation founded by scientists of Turkish origin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioNTech

Pfizer put up the money, but BioNTech was definitely the brains who originated the technology.

Anonymous said...

Wasn't the vaccine marketed by Pfizer developed by BioNTech, a German company owned by a Turkish-German couple who are vaccine scientists and have become billionaires in the vaccine-creation business?

Anonymous said...

COMES NOW the Darrell Brooks High Bail and Mandatory Pre-Tirla Detention Act.

Anonymous said...

I am so grateful for this blog Rumpole BUT:

I wish you would post a monthly opinion on your investment and STOCK and CRYPTO thoughts. We all love your thoughts. Truly.

Anonymous said...

Who is left in the Survivor Pool?

CAPTAIN JUSTICE said...


“OMICRON” …….

Rumpole said...

Colby, Fake Freddy, and Clay Kaeiser.

Anonymous said...

Rump! I thought Colbe was disqualified. He's a retired Judge in Ohio. No connection to Miami. I thought we voted him out. Being a traffic magistrate here in the 80's hardly qualifies him to play a Miami game on a Miami blog.

Anonymous said...

Wait! wasn't he partners in a big Miami firm for a while? Max Engel. Julio Jimenez. Jimenia Theibaud. Bobby Caldwell. All the old timers.

Anonymous said...

2:47 pm, they called it "Omicron" skipping Nu and Xi, apparently to avoid offending Xi Jinping.

Anonymous said...

Be kind. Of course Judge Jon Colby can play the survivor pool. He was a former Miami Dolphin on the undefeated 1972 team. One of the greats. Plus he is best friends with Hanzman. You know what Rumpole says - “Don’t Fxxx with Judge Hanzman!” Colby is good to go.