Hurricane season is now upon us. June 1 marked the beginning of what experts predict will be an active storm season, with an estimated 15 named hurricanes on the horizon and at least one major storm in store for the Eastern United States. We at the Department of Darts and Laurels take hurricane season and hurricanes seriously, and we advise you to do the same. We strongly recommend that you stock up on those hurricane-survival essentials. You know, flashlights, bottled water, canned goods, transistor radios and, of course, drink mixers 'cause what's a hurricane (the storm) without a hurricane (the drink)?
As we hunker down in our state-of-the-art underground bunker - 30 miles above President Bernie Machen's bunker - we wish you and yours a safe hurricane season. In the meantime, we present you this week's edition of …
Darts & Laurels
First off, we fire a that's-not-the-audacity-of-hope-that's-just-plain-audacity DART to Sen. Hillary Clinton for her refusal to accept the reality that she will not be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008.
Clinton's less-than-gracious concession speech on Tuesday was conspicuously lacking one key element: the concession part. After Sen. Barack Obama clinched the nomination by securing the requisite number of delegates, Clinton addressed supporters in New York in what many believed would be a magnanimous concession speech. Instead, Clinton - who was introduced by campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe as "the next president of the United States of America" - proceeded to tout her popular vote "lead" (subject to which votes she decides to count and which to discard) and vigorously assert that she would be the strongest candidate for the general election against Sen. John McCain. The junior senator from New York asked her supporters to send their thoughts about what she should do next to her Web site, as the Clintonistas assembled chanted "Denver! Denver!" - the site of this year's Democratic convention.
Clinton's failure to quickly and gracefully exit the race endangers the Democratic Party's chances to unify in advance of what will certainly be yet another razor-thin close election this fall. The contest is over. Clinton has lost. It's time for the healing and unifying to begin. Otherwise we could very well be facing four more years of ruinous Bush policies in the form of the "Bomb, Bomb Iran" candidate.
Next, we fling a last-we-checked-this-was-still-(barely)-a-free-country DART to the Union Street Farmers' Market for its attempts to discriminate against the homeless denizens of Gainesville with its exclusionary signage. Representatives of the farmers' market posted a sign that declared certain area picnic tables were for "paying customers only," thus serving to forbid homeless persons from taking a seat. Thanks to homeless advocates, the marketers capitulated Tuesday, agreeing to take the sign down. Nonetheless, the fact that the least fortunate members of our community continue to be the subject of such scorn and discrimination is a most troubling occurrence.
While it's true that we have no shortage of epithets for our "leaders" in Tallahassee when they fail to address the serious problems facing our state, we'd like to think we also give credit where it's due. It's in this spirit that we give a nice-to-see-you-doing-something-other-than-working-on-your-tan-or-lobbying-for-the-vice-presidency LAUREL to Gov. Charlie Crist for signing into law a textbook bill that seeks to make our required reading a little more affordable and a now-that's-what-we-call-a-rebate LAUREL to Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink for making sure that Floridians are appraised of the state's unclaimed property fund.
Crist signed a bill that requires colleges and universities to post course textbooks online with their ISBN no later than a month before classes start. The idea is to provide students with more time to find the best deal on their textbooks. And Sink presented a local resident with a check for almost $160,000 from the state's unclaimed property fund as part of an effort to gain publicity for the fund, which has an estimated $1.5 billion in unclaimed assets.
