Obama Monday: June 14 BP Oil Spill Update

1. Oilcast.

That large oil sheen that's been hanging around anywhere from a few miles to half a mile off Pensacola Beach is bound to come ashore, and probably sooner rather than later. What we don't need is yet another BP storage tank washing up on Pensacola Beach.

2. Obama in Pensacola Tuesday.

Details are still sketchy and conflicting about President Obama's fourth trip to the Gulf Coast. He will be in Pensacola Tuesday, the PNJ says. And he will address the nation Tuesday night. That much seems certain.

CNN and the Associated Press separately are reporting this morning that he will return to Washington Tuesday night to "address the nation..." There are a few scattered reports that he will stay in Pensacola. The PNJ is reporting late this morning that traffic on Highway 98 through Gulf Breeze and across 3-mile Bridge will be closed Tuesday morning from 8 to 11 am.

If the president does stay in the Pensacola area it probably would be Monday night but it's anyone's guess where. We'd like to think it would be somewhere along Pensacola Beach. With just two road entrances to the island, security to protect the president from all the right-wing nuts around here would be easier.

And we have tarballs. If there aren't enough for mind-numbing TV visuals, maybe Orange Beach, Alabama, would lend us some oily pancakes.

Whadda ya think? If you were President Obama, would you rather stay in Julian MacQueen's Hilton Hotel with room service from its very fine H2O restaurant, or Republican Robert Rinke's Portofino condo complex where $10,000-a-week units now are so cheap you could put up the entire White House press corps for peanuts, or Jimmy Buffett's brand-spanking new, almost-ready-to-open Margaritaville Beach Hotel? (See left) The staff might be a little green, but the view of the oil slick should be breath-taking.

We'd be happy to offer President Obama the guest room in our humble home, but the BP oil catastrophe has She Who Must be Obeyed feeling stressed out lately. And, it might undermine her recent vow to follow Erma Bombeck's advice, which a friend says she imparted as she was dying, to "entertain more and clean less."

Actually, that's not an accurate quote and the late Ms. Bombeck didn't write it as she was dying. But shsh! Don't tell her. Life has been good lately as we entertain our friends, even if "the carpet is stained or the sofa is faded."

3. Shrimp Boats Are A-Skimming, They're Skimming Today.

The BP oil spill is giving new life to the very first, truly terrible Country-Western tune we can remember hearing as a child. "Shrimp Boats Are A-Coming" is a classic of this dubious genre. But it sounds a lot better if you slightly alter the idea to include the "collection of heavy, thick, dispersant-treated oil," as Rick Outzen reports an oil spill subcontractor has done:

The crew of one of the thousands of Vessels of Opportunity (VOO) working in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill recently recovered approximately two tons of tarball material in the Gulf of Mexico.

The recovery was the result of the kind of creative thought and innovation at work among the more than 27,000 people working around the clock in the Gulf of Mexico in the largest oil spill response in U.S. history.

Designed by Gerry Matherne, a BP contractor and nearshore task force leader, the idea is simple. A shrimp boat with outriggers on each side drags mesh oil-collection bags made of perforated webbing near the ocean surface. As the boat trawls to collect oil patches, the bags, attached to an aluminum frame, collect oil. When filled, the bags are disconnected from the frame by crew on support vessels, and then towed to a lift barge for hoisting into a collection barge.

Apparently, praise is pouring in: "creative" ... "efficient"... "effective"... "a great example of the heart and soul of the response." Rick has more, including a photo of showing some of the collected oil.

4. Florida Fishing Closed.

Late Sunday afternoon, state agencies "issued an executive order" temporarily closing about 27 miles of coastal state waters "offshore of Escambia County." The harvesting of "saltwater fish, crabs and shrimp" is banned, although "catch and release" is permitted.

A map has been issued showing the extent of the fishing ban (see above). Locally, the Pensacola Beach Fishing Pier (left) remains open for sight seeing and catch-and-release fishing.


5. Hurricane Watch.

A tropical wave of interest to hurricane watchers has formed about 1,400 miles East-Southeast of the Windward Islands. The National Hurricane Center said this morning that conditions are thought to be "conducive for development during the next day or so."

Computer spaghetti forecast models at this point are, so to speak, all over the map:

In addition to the National Hurricane Center, a useful web site for those who want to keep abreast of tropical developments is Jim Williams' HurricaneCity.com. Another is Central Florida Hurricane Center. Both have been at it for over a decade. We've found them essential resources in tropical times like these: reliable, responsible, and well informed.

Jim also maintains "Cane Talk," a message board where quite a few storm chasers, hurricane gurus, and others (including some Pensacola Beach residents) share storm information, answer questions from readers, and hash out where they think storms are headed. Spend a little time there and you'll soon figure out who has a good crystal ball and who is in need of serious counseling.

Surprise, Surprise

Pensacola's Independent News reports that late yesterday "the State Attorney announced ... that they have reviewed the ruling of Judge John Simon concerning death of Victor Steen. The State is in agreement with Judge Simon’s ruling that no crime was committed. Therefore, this office will take no further action in this matter."

What a surprise. We expected the State's Attorney to wait at least a day or so before announcing his foregone conclusion.

"Citizen Contact"

An Escambia County small claims-type judge, sitting by request of the State's Attorney office and informed exclusively by evidence presented only by the prosecution without any opposing counsel's presence, has ruled "that Officer Jerald Ard's pursuit of Victor Steen after spotting him in the early morning hours of Oct. 3 was lawful." The county judge's full opinion is here.

Now, who could have predicted this?

A number of things leap out at anyone who reads the opinion closely. Some that may support the police officer's defense and some that cast doubt on it. For now, however, we want to focus on just one of them. It's a minor issue in some respects, but one that affects everyone who may have the misfortune to be peddling past a Pensacola police officer in the future.

The judge explicitly finds that when Officer Ard began chasing the teenaged bicycler with his patrol car, he had no probable cause to believe a crime had been committed, much less that Steen might have committed it:

Officer Ard intended to make a "citizen contact" with Mr. Steen in an effort effort to discover whether there was any criminal act committed...

Nevertheless, the judge concludes that the patrol car chase (at speeds never mentioned) was "lawful" in part because "Mr. Steen operated his bicycle between sunset and sunrise without the appropriate front and rear lamps." In other words, the boy was bicycling through the dark without a light or reflectors.

In very nearly two decades' residence in the Florida Panhandle, we have not seen the day -- or, rather night -- pass without spotting at least one bicyclist in the Pensacola area navigating through the gloom without lights. It shocked us years ago when we first moved to the beach. The fact is, almost no one in Escambia County rides a bicycle with the "appropriate front and rear lamps."

We can't explain it, other than by inferring it reflects a chronic, long-term lack of enforcement of the bicycle laws. Too bad some lawyer wasn't allowed in the "inquest" courtroom to inquire about the last time Officer Ard, or any other Pensacola policeman or county deputy sheriff for that matter, arrested a bicyclist for violating Florida Statute 316.2065.

Now, all of a sudden, they're free to willfully run them down whenever they want to make "a citizen contact"?

Avoiding 'Nomadic Thievery'

"We live in a gangster state, and our days of laughing at other countries are over."
-- Matt Tabbi, Rolling Stone

In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi has a caustic summary of the Jefferson County sewer fiasco that has reduced Birmingham, Ala. to "the status of an African debtor state." Today, every single resident of Birmingham, from new-born babes to the oldest nursing home resident, now owes Wall Street $4,800. ["Looting Main Street: How the Nation's Biggest Banks are Ripping Off American Cities with the Same Predatory Deals that Brought Down Greece"].

In Birmingham --

Here you can see a trail that leads directly from a billion-dollar predatory swap deal cooked up at the highest levels of America's biggest banks, across a vast fruited plain of bribes and felonies — "the price of doing business," as one JP Morgan banker says on tape — all the way down to [Birmingham resident] Lisa Pack's sewer bill and the mass layoffs in Birmingham.

Once you follow that trail and understand what took place in Jefferson County, there's really no room left for illusions. We live in a gangster state, and our days of laughing at other countries are over. It's our turn to get laughed at. In Birmingham, lots of people have gone to jail for the crime: More than 20 local officials and businessmen have been convicted of corruption in federal court. Last October... Birmingham's mayor was convicted of fraud and money-laundering for taking bribes funneled to him by Wall Street bankers — everything from Rolex watches to Ferragamo suits to cash. But those who greenlighted the bribes and profited most from the scam remain largely untouched. "It never gets back to JP Morgan," says Pack.

At the root of the scandal one finds--

• ordinary city department heads unable to understand the impossible complexities of financing contracts cooked up by Wall Street
• a local politically-connected fixer paid by Wall Street to offer 'consultant' expertise who recommends those contracts to municipal officials
  
• criminal bribes handed out like Easter candy by Wall Street to greedy local politicians
• good-ol'-boy pay-offs by one Wall Street bank to another Wall Street bank to preserve the first bank's lucrative monopoly on farming Birmingham residents for every last nickle they own, and
• predatory lending practices that "at one point" left Birmingham holding more worthless toxic credit default swaps than New York City.

It's a cautionary tale for any municipal board of modest talents with an ambitious development project that's spending oodles of money for nothing much visible in an effort to find financing from out-of-state sources who won't make their own financial statements public except to a limited number of insiders.

What you want to avoid is the Birmingham fiasco, where the bankers "find suckers in some municipal-finance department, corner them in complex lose-lose deals and flay them alive."

In a complete subversion of free-market principles, they take no risk, score deals based on political influence rather than competition, keep consumers in the dark — and walk away with big money. "It's not high finance," says Taylor, the former bond regulator. "It's low finance."

And even if the regulators manage to catch up with them billions of dollars later, the banks just pay a small fine and move on to the next scam. This isn't capitalism. It's nomadic thievery.

Pensacola Tip: Where to Make Powerful Friends

Apropos of what passes in Pensacola as local news worthy of big, bold headlines and editorial comment, we are reminded of a conversation we had over beers about a dozen years ago with a real estate developer. He had been in business in south Florida, he told us, "until the place got crapped up so bad by people like me that I couldn't stand it." So, he moved to Pensacola.

"Nobody knew me here. I needed to get in with the movers and shakers. You know, the people with the power and the money. So, the first thing I did was to join AA. Sure enough, that's where they all were. Never had a drinking problem in my life, to tell you the truth, but it was the best business decision I ever made."

Pensacola Bridge to Nowhere But Hate

It's something of a local tradition that the 17th avenue train trestle near the shore of Pensacola Bay is available for spray-paint graffiti. Years ago after it proved counter-productive to police the bridge, city and train officials gave up and declared the bridge a brain-free zone. Now, they obligingly white wash it every so often to make room for the new.

We assume it's mostly bored kids and borderline delinquents who avail themselves of the concrete canvass late at night. Normally, the graffiti one sees there doesn't rise much above the "Bubba Loves Barbi" variety; and it sinks only so low as to make it clear that Pensacola isn't likely to be sending any locally educated children to the National Spelling Bee contest, much less the Banksy School of Fine Art.

Until yesterday. Today's Pensacola News Journal:

The words "MURDER OBAMA" sprayed on the CSX train trestle on 17th Avenue in Pensacola were painted over Monday evening, said Tommy McCorvey, a CSX train master.

The Independent News has the photo.

What can one say? It's no accident that expressions of violence like this are occurring all across the country in support of the Republican ticket -- at McCain rallies, on cable television, and in the intellectual dark of talk radio. As Russell Goldman reported several weeks ago for ABC News, the McCain campaign has devised a deliberate plan "to spend these final weeks of the election going negative." The plan is inspiring all manner of violent outbursts by the unhinged "base" of the Republican party.

McCain and Palin don't expressly condone violence but their desperately inflamed rhetoric, scary telemarketing calls, despicable robo-calls, and absurd, extremist name-calling has created an atmosphere in which violence and threats of violence against the Democratic ticket and, weirdly, the media are becoming more and more common. It's getting worse by the day, as Eric Ose detailed a week ago (with video footnotes) for Huffington Post.

As Paul Buchanan writes:

The rage at McCain/Palin rallies is palpable. In contrast to the giddy (delusional?) displays at the GOP convention, they have become anger fests punctuated by boos and jeers as the specter of nuclear attacks, communism, terrorism and the loss of Christian values under an Obama-led democratic administration are invoked as reasons to vote Republican. The prospect of national collapse is held to be imminent otherwise.
* * *
[W]hat the Republican campaign managers and their media surrogates are doing is something much more dangerous than trying to win an election. Elementary discursive analysis reveals the not-to-subtle cues to direct action embedded in the Republican campaign rhetoric. Put bluntly: by demonizing Barack Obama, it is a subliminal invitation to murder.

The same day Buchanan was penning that last word, someone in Pensacola was spray-painting the same word on the 17th street bridge. While it is highly doubtful the spray-painter reads what anyone else has to say, it's clear that the lizard brains are getting the message: be afraid, hate, and do something about it.

McCain and Palin have thrown away their moral compass. They claim to put "America first" even as they attempt to redefine America by dividing it into 'real' and 'the other' America.

As U.S. News & World Report editor John Farrell says, "There are a lot of reasons to vote Democratic in this election. The smug Republican lie that you're not a 'real American' if you do is one of the best."

Panhandle Prejudice

Yesterday we had a brief conversation inside a small retail shop with a 60's-something customer in grime-stained painter's pants. He was missing several teeth:

Him: Palin's got more experience than Obama.
Us: Have you read Obama's autobiography?
Him: Don't gotta read nothing.
Us: Did you know he graduated from Columbia University with a major in international relations?
Him: Palin's right next to Russia. Anyway, I meant administrative experience.
Us: Did you know he was president of the Harvard Law Review, supervising nearly a hundred lawyers-to-be in the world, every one of them convinced he's the smartest guy on the planet?
Man: He ain't never had a real job.
Us: Are you aware he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago? He also --
Him: [turning to leave] Anyway, he's the wrong damn color.

Dept. of Amplification

It seems John McCain is planning a "Joe the Plumber" tour of Florida with Charlie Crist. So far, though, no actual plumber. Maybe they'd like "Him" to tag along.

Joe the Plumber in Pensacola

We'd guess the Obama rally in Pensacola yesterday is considered by campaign officials an unqualified success. Official turn-out was estimated at 6,500, the Civic Center crowd was told nearly an hour before Michelle Obama appeared on stage. Troy Moon reports it was closer to 7,000.

Our estimate is 7,500. You should believe us. We had the best view for estimating the crowd because we were seated on the aisle high above everybody else in the nosebleed section.

That's what you get -- a cold, dirty cement step to sit on -- when you arrive at an Obama rally on time. As Rebecca Ross reports in the PNJ today, everyone else got there at the crack of dawn.

By 8 a.m., cars lined nearby Alcaniz and Wright streets, and attendees formed long lines that snaked around the Civic Center parking lot.

We made the same mistake -- arriving on time -- the last time a Harry Potter book was released at the stroke of midnight. Then, as now, we were hauling along a couple of wide-eyed, pint-sized tykes. If this keeps up, those unfortunate kids are going to grow up seeing nothing of the adult world but the backsides of strangers standing in line ahead of them.

There was one advantage to our sky-high seats. We got to meet the real Joe the Plumber. At least, that's how he introduced himself when we mentioned how much we admired his Piggly Wiggly T-shirt.

"I'm the real Joe the Plumber," he said, "except I'm really an electrician. But I'm the real deal. I already own my own business. It's called Argo Electric.

"I have an electrician's license. I have a business license. I pay my taxes. I did my time as an apprentice. I work mostly in the Gulf Beach highway area, ten or twelve hours a day, six days a week. But I don't make no $250 thousand a year. That's a joke. Real Joe the Plumbers like me are tired of going broke. That's why I'm here."

His real name, he told us, is Charles Mathews and he lives in Milton.

"There aren't so many of us [Obama supporters] in Milton," he said with a grin, "but more than you'd think. A lot of people there are really hurting."

Michelle Obama at the Pensacola Civic Center Tuesday Morning

Michell Obama will be in Pensacola Tuesday, as we mentioned late yesterday. The details were announced late this morning:

Who: Michelle Obama*
What: Campaign rally
Where: Pensacola Civic Center
When: Tuesday, October 21
Time: Doors open at 10:30 am. Speech at 11:00 11:45 am

Free! No tickets required!
(added: For security reasons, do not bring bags and limit personal items. No signs or banners permitted.)

RSVP not required, but it would be "strongly" appreciated. Please call (850) 433-5070 or check in here.

* Michelle Obama biography here. Summary below:

• Attended Chicago public schools
• Princeton University (B.A. 1985)
• Harvard Law School (J.D. 1988)
  
• Associate, law firm of Sidley & Austin
• Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development, City of Chicago
• Executive Director, Chicago chapter of Public Allies
• Married Barack Obama in 1992
  
• Mother of two girls -- Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7
  
• Associate Dean of Student Services, University of Chicago
  
• Vice president of Community and External Affairs, University of Chicago Medical Center
• Never been mayor of Wasilla, Alaska
  

Michelle Obama to Visit Pensacola

Michelle Obama will be visiting Pensacola this Tuesday, October 21, the News Journal is reporting. Time and place details have not yet been announced.

It would make news whenever the wife of a presidential candidate comes to this relatively remote part of the country. But with so few days left in the campaign, it signals that even the Florida panhandle is in play this year for the Obama-Biden ticket.

The Northwest Daily News out of Ft. Walton Beach says " the event will be free and open to the public, according to the Obama campaign. Tickets are not required, but people who plan to attend are encouraged to RSVP at Fl.barackobama.com.

Safety Warning!

All Pensacola News Journal reporters assigned to cover the Palin-fest at the Civic Center today should wear riot helmets and bullet-proof vests. When it comes to media reps, the right-wing is spinning out of control.

Dept. of Further Amplification

Obama Hatred at McCain Rallies: "Terrorist!" Kill Him"
"Crowds Lash Out at Media and Obama"

Hope vs. Hate
"McCain/Palin have reached a point where they have to decide whether whipping right-wing activists into a frenzy, based solely on lies, is the responsible way to seek national office."

Palin to Pensacola

"I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down."

H.L. Mencken, Last Words (1926)

GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is headed for reliably Republican Pensacola today. Odd choice, unless the ticket is in deep trouble here, too.

The Palin-plays-Gidget act is scheduled to premier at 2 pm in the Civic Center. Local Republicans are enthused, of course. Some measure of their thinking is evident from the words of a typical panhandle resident as quoted in the Ft. Walton Beach Daily News:

Miriama Devine, a 27-year-old Crestview mother of three, brought her year old daughter Meilana with her to pick up Palin tickets. Devine said she can relate to Palin, a mother of five, on a personal level.

"I'm intrigued by her," Devine said. "Just the fact she's like this every day. She's a woman, she has kids, she can hold a job and run a household. She can do it all. She definitely makes me interested in knowing she could run our country."

Right. Hold a job and run a household, just like the other 146,00,000 Americans. Every one of them, of course, qualified to be a heartbeat away from the president. Because we can "relate" to them.

Has there ever been a lower entrance requirement for the White House?

As Matt Taibbi wrote in what has become an instant classic in the Menkenesque mode of political coverage:

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.
* * *
The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters

And a lot of them will be cheering Palin on in Pensacola today.

Heard Around Town - Financial Panic Edition

Pensacola area people are talking. Here are some of the remarks we've overheard this week.

(Middle-aged wife to husband, while standing in line at the grocery store ): "Be sure to get lots of cash for the weekend. They always close banks on Friday."

(Shop owner): "Business dropped off a cliff in April. I would sell but I'm not sure there are any buyers out there."

(Woman friend, discussing the bailout bill): "To hell with that. They ought to make everyone who voted for Bush pay for it."

(Young lawyer acquaintance, on the phone): "I registered for a seminar in bankruptcy. It looks like that's where the business will be."

(Stranger at gas pump): "My grandmother went through the Depression. I wish I'd listened to her more closely."

(Escambia County process server): "It's terrible out there. So many people!"

(Woman): "It's going to be the Depression all over again. Bank failures, locusts, no potatoes."

Pensacola Motto

In the persistent wake of the disturbing Pensacola "Quality of Life" survey, today Reginald Dogan rushes to the city's defense with a great slogan:

At least it's not Detroit.

Pensacola Quality of Life

That distressing "quality of life" survey we mentioned the other day gets the Full Monty in Sunday's Pensacola News Journal. There's even a lengthy pdf file you can download that summarizes the survey results, including the apparent wording of the questions themselves.

Reporter Rebekah Allen asks on the front page, "Is Paradise Lost?" She goes through a few shallow circles of hell in search of an answer, quizzing politicians, retired military men, and bartenders, among others. No teachers, though.

The editorial board, sounding a little like a candidate for president, proclaims "It's Time for A Change." Then it offers a somewhat weird laundry list of suggestions that ranges from the sublime (city-county consolidation and mandatory recycling) to the mundane ("move the sand and gravel off the port") to the downright harsh (retirees "need to be a percentage of our makeup, not a majority.") No suggestions for improving public education, however.

Carlton Proctor takes up the cudgels to argue for a "franchise fee" to fund the Chamber of Commerce in its economic development efforts. He doesn't mention the schools, either.

Even Mark O'Brien got in on today's act, peering backwards into his own private hell to reminisce about the hostile reaction he received from a certain city pooh-bah thirty years ago when a much younger O'Brien suggested in print that putting a sewer plant in the middle of downtown wasn't a very good idea. "Guess what?" Mark asks rhetorically. The pooh-bah is still "a mover and shaker."

Of course, Mark doesn't mention that particular idiot by name. That would be too un-Pensacola. But you can be sure it wasn't a teacher.

The odd thing in all of this hoopla-la, if you get our drift, is that more than two thirds of all respondents to the survey found the quality of Pensacola public schools is "poor." Fifty-seven percent expect the quality of schools to deteriorate over the next five years. Fully one-half of those surveyed say it's likely they'll move away in the next five years because of "poor educational opportunities" for themselves or their children. Yet, no one at the newspaper seems to think that's important enough to address with suggested solutions.

Education is the cornerstone of success, as some school, somewhere, proclaims as the theme of its graduation ceremony every year. It's a cliche, but it's true. Without good schools no city in the world -- certainly none that we know of -- has successfully attracted job-creating industries, large numbers of young adults, or the kind of leaders Quint Studer, the News Journal, the Chamber of Commerce, and others who are wringing their hands over the "quality of life" survey say they want.

Pensacola public schools are for the most part miserable institutions. If the city movers and shakers really want change, that's the place to start.

Obama Opens NW Florida Office

The Northwest Florida campaign office of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was opened officially in Pensacola yesterday afternoon. As many as 1,000 locals stopped by over the two and a half hour opening ceremonies.

Some inspected the spacious two-story headquarters at 321 DeVilliers Street. Others grazed the sidewalk tables to collect campaign buttons and posters. Still others met with Obama campaign officials to volunteer for the local voter registration drive.

Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) addressed an enthusiastic crowd of about 400 who crowded into the windowless hall of a nearby jazz club, which was turned meeting room for the occasion.
As Louis Cooper reports in the PNJ, Rep. Lewis is a civil rights icon who was "an architect of the historic 1963 March on Washington and a veteran of the 'Bloody Sunday' clashes in Selma, Ala. in 1965."

Lewis spoke primarily about the importance of registering voters before the coming election and working hard for Barack Obama over the next 59 days.

Pensacola: A Nice Place to Visit, but....

"I can't think of an instance where I've seen lower numbers. What it paints is a community that is anxious, concerned and dissatisfied."

-- Larry Harris, Mason-Dixon pollster

Reporter Rebekah Allen of the News Journal today summarizes a recent privately commissioned Mason-Dixon "quality of life" poll about Pensacola that, frankly, makes the area look terrible.

Most Escambia and Pensacola residents say they're not only unhappy with their quality of life and the local economy, they also lack confidence that government leaders are suited to make improvements... .

Fifty-four percent of Escambia respondents said the county is "on the wrong track," and just two in 10 of those polled believed that either the county or the city is headed in the right direction.

Thirty-one percent of respondents said they are likely to move from the area within the next five years. And when asked about the economic future of Escambia County, just 30 percent said it would get better.

"I can't think of an instance where I've seen lower numbers," said Mason-Dixon pollster Larry Harris. "What it paints is a community that is anxious, concerned and dissatisfied."

Allen doesn't delve into the actual questions asked, though, so it's hard to tell if the poll was loaded in any way toward Maritime Park supporter Quint Studer, who "paid for the poll to jump-start a nonprofit group that hopes to push the community forward."

Rick Outzen, publisher of the Independent News, has a bit more. There, we learn that the last question asked was more loaded than the groom at a Budweiser bachelor's party. The exact wording was:

"Without leadership and a clear, shared vision there is little chance for coordinated, successful efforts to attract economic opportunity, jobs and to improve the overall quality of life."

We're told 91% agreed with that statement and 8% disagreed. As for the missing one percent, either they were lost in the rounding up or they were complete rounders themselves.

Even though the poll may have been a little biased, we'd have to agree with where the 800 people polled placed the blame. Speaking personally, we've lived in small towns and large all over the nation. Without a doubt, Pensacola is cursed with some of the most atrocious political office holders, phlegmatic business leaders, and self-absorbed, penurious people of wealth we've ever encountered.

We don't know him personally, but Quint Studer doesn't strike us as being in that same mold. From what we can tell, he's one of the few who does good for the community while doing well. More power to him. Let's hope his poll, biased or not, wakes up some of the many dead-heads around here.

Condign Consequence

Pensacola News Journal, July 12:

"A man accidentally shot himself in the leg Friday evening in the Wal-Mart on Pensacola Boulevard south of West Nine Mile Road, authorities said. * * * The man, whose identity was not available Friday evening, had a concealed-weapon permit, and the weapon accidentally discharged, a Sheriff's Office dispatch supervisor said."

Feel safer, now, Walmart shoppers?

Pensacola's Community Values

"Residents of Pensacola are more likely to search for sexual terms than some more wholesome ones."

-- New York Times, June 24, 2008

This is rich. It seems there will be a trial next week in nearby Milton. According to the New York Times:

Clinton Raymond McCowen... is facing charges that he created and distributed obscene material through a Web site based in Florida. The charges include racketeering and prostitution, but ... the prosecution’s case fundamentally relies on proving that the material on the site is obscene.

Why does this seemingly run-of-the-mine case make the pages of the Times?

Because defense lawyer Lawrence Walters is planning to introduce evidence of the actual Internet search words used by folk in the Pensacola area, which are aggregated by Google Trends, to show the high level of "interest in the material within the jurisdiction of the First Circuit Court for Santa Rosa County, where the trial is taking place."

Since the law says what is "obscene" is, itself, determined by "local community values" the defense attorney "plans to... try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought." Pensacola area residents, he argues --

are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.” ... [I]nterest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics — and ... by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm.
***
“Time and time again you’ll have jurors sitting on a jury panel who will condemn material that they routinely consume in private,” said Mr. Walters, the defense lawyer. Using the Internet data, “we can show how people really think and feel and act in their own homes, which, parenthetically, is where this material was intended to be viewed,” he added.

Very creative. Except for one thing. There's another "community value" that trumps however randy may be the interests of Pensacola residents. And it isn't likely to be exposed by any gizmo Google can invent.

We're betting there isn't a jury person in Milton who will admit to ever having had a sexual thought enter his head. Worse, they'll never admit to suspecting their friends, neighbors, and fellow church-goers of such a shameful thing, either.

How else explain all the Baptist preachers around here who get arrested for pederasty, rape, and similar sexual offenses? Hypocrisy reigns supreme in this buckle of the bible belt.

State's Attorney Russ Edgar knows this. That's why he told the Times, "How many times you do something doesn’t necessarily speak to standards and values.”

Addendum: In a funny misprint, the Times article on-line this morning became momentarily confused over just who it is whose conduct must meet acceptable community standards. Click on the screen-shot below.

Pensacola Slap-Shot

Reggie Dunlop: You mean you could sell us, but you won't?
Anita McCambridge: I could probably sell you, but I can't.

--Slap Shot (1977)

It looks like Pensacola professional hockey is no more. If you want to know why, ask one of the 675 season ticket holders.

Pensacola really isn't a professional sports town. Not hockey, not football, not basketball. It isn't even much of a baseball town, as any number of failed efforts over the last century can attest.

But the city poo-bahs keep trying. The thing is, these days you need four essentials for a long-lasting sports franchise: (1) A local government politically secure enough that it's willing to build a palatial team stadium at taxpayer expense; (2) A handful of fabulously rich people able and willing to spend tens, if not hundreds, of millions for a single toy; (3) A lucrative television market; and (4) a large fan base.

Scratch that. Three essentials. You probably don't even need a fan base as long as you've got the first three. Pensacola doesn't.

But we have our charms, the beach foremost among them, although there are plenty of semi-rich and wannabe-rich folk trying to crap that up with hideous over-development.

There's a lesson here somewhere. Maybe it's that we should take stock, and more fully appreciate, what we are instead of aspiring to something we can never be. Somehow, this puts us in mind of a song:

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don't know what you’ve got
‘Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot