Week ending October 11, 2026
Good grief. What a week. Elections are almost here. Are you ready to vote? If you're not registered in Florida, well, the great leaders of Florida say TOO BAD WE DIDN'T WANT YOU TO VOTE ANYWAY.
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington DC in February of 1968.
Table of Contents
Scary! Movies and TV Shows that Scare Me
Finite
Disappointment
Yes, I'm Unpacking More Ken Griffin
Chris Young
This week, I drove past the US Southern Command Center in Doral, Florida. Doral is a suburb of Miami, and I was reminded of the interesting tidbit in WLRN's reporting about why Carnegie Mellon University might prefer to expand to Miami.
According to Chris Young's reporting for WLRN,
Saif Ishoof, a Miami strategic adviser and founder of the tech consulting firm Lab22c, speaking with WLRN South Florida Roundup host Tim Padgett... pointed also to Florida's unique position as home to three combatant commands (U.S. Southern Command, Special Operations Command, and Central Command), plus Space Force assets.
Saif Ishoof is also trying to open a new South Florida campus, but his comments are worth exploring a little. For starters, US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) is reasonably close to a major university–Florida International University, a public university in Westchester about 5 miles from USSOUTHCOM. Notably, FIU is due south of USSOUTHCOM.
Wynwood, where the brand new Carnegie Mellon University Campus is going to be built in the space previously occupied by an FIU satellite campus, is 14 miles east of USSOUTHCOM. Traffic in this part of Miami is at its worst going east to west.
Basically, FIU is on the doorstep of USSOUTHCOM and Wynwood, really isn't.
Meanwhile, Ishoof name checked two other military installations, Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and Central Command (USCENTCOM) as being in proximity to the new Wynwood Carnegie Mellon University campus.
Both USSOCOM and USCENTCOM based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, are relatively close to Wynwood, Miami, Florida, compared to the Pentagon.
But their distance from Wynwood, Miami, Florida is almost identical (about 250 miles), ironically, to the distance between Carnegie Mellon University's main campus and the actual Pentagon.
Meanwhile, an operation like what Ken Griffin is proposing might actually make sense in Washington State, where the AI, computing and aerospace industries have been entrenched for decades, and in the case of the aerospace industry, more than a century while boasting 8 major US military facilities within a closer proximity to Seattle than Wynwood is to USSOCOM and USCENTCOM.
Also, if proximity to US command operations is important why Wynwood and not Doral, where USSOUTHCOM is based and where there is much more land available?
Or how about Tampa, home to the National Academy of Inventors and the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame, both housed at the University of South Florida, another public university, which is highly regarded by the Intellectual Property Owners Association, and, supposedly importantly, merely a few miles in proximity to USSOCOM and USCENTCOM?
After all, isn't this campus all about new technologies, ergo, new inventions?
The thing that really bothers me about all of this comes back to why I started this newsletter in the first place: the lack of even a shrug to objective media coverage.
Clearly, I'm not a huge fan of this proposed campus, largely due to what seem to me to be an astonishing number of unasked questions, much less unanswered questions. It is has been easy to find out for myself contradictions in Ken Griffin's proposed reasoning behind the Wynwood campus. It has also been easy to find potential shortcomings of the plan. Yet, I've yet to see any thing remotely critical of the project in the press.
Asking questions about the largest donation in the history of American education isn't showing a bias, it is making an effort at common sense, critical thinking and objective analysis.
Maybe my concerns about Griffin's plan will prove unfounded or simply, Griffin and Carnegie Mellon will do a great job of mitigating them. Maybe this will be great for the Miami area. That would be a good thing! If it turns out that it doesn't work out the way Griffin planned, will the community be blindsided when the major news media can't even ask basic questions about the project?
This is Double Jeopardy!
As Antonio Maria Delgado and Syra Ortiz Blanes report for the Miami Herald the Trump Administration is trying to strip citizenship from a number of American citizens including
A Miami businessman convicted of tax evasion, a Hialeah woman convicted of money laundering conspiracy and a West Palm Beach resident convicted in a tax fraud scheme could lose their citizenship as part of the efforts. So could a former North Miami mayor born in Haiti, a Cuban American convicted of Medicare fraud and a former U.S. ambassador imprisoned for spying for Cuba for decades.
Attorney General Todd Blanche described the latest announcement as “the largest denaturalization effort in modern history,” although the department did not define that comparison or provide historical figures to substantiate it.
While one can argue that these convicted criminals deserve to face consequences for their nefarious actions, one can likewise argue that they did face consequences for their actions and that adding to those consequences is a clear cut case of double jeopardy, which is explicitly prohibited by the US Constitution.
Per Wikipedia:
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..."[1] The four essential protections included are prohibitions against, for the same offense:
retrial after an acquittal;
retrial after a conviction;
retrial after certain mistrials; and
multiple punishment
And Now for Something Completely the Same
Alexandra Villarreal
Planning on retiring and collecting Social Security? The Trump Administration's purge of immigrants is likely going to slash your check by $2000 per year.
Florida
Gonna Florida
A New Presidential Retreat at a Florida Golf Course
This week the Miami Herald's Madeline Marr reported that Caddyshack star "[Michael] O’Keefe revealed in a recent interview with Page Six that the atmosphere was seriously wild, and cocaine so rampant that it was even factored into part of the film’s budget as a “miscellaneous item.”"
The golf course in the iconic 80s comedy was at the time of shooting called Rolling Hills Golf Course, today known as Grande Oakes Golf Club, about 20 miles from Miami and about 50 miles from Trump International Golf Club, West Palm Beach, where the President wants to build a new "Camp David" style presidential retreat.
Of course, Trump International Golf Course was the scene of an assassination attempt on the President, who was golfing there as a candidate in 2024 when a man who jumped the facility fence tried to take Trump's life.
Writing about the contrasts with Camp David, the presidential retreat President Trump wants to turn his golf course into, the BBC's Bernd Debusmann Jr, White House reporter, and Sareen Habeshian wrote about Camp David:
The secure facility is largely hidden from public view, with Marines guarding the perimeter and airspace above restricted. It is not marked on maps of the national park, even if its location is known to locals.
Press is only very rarely allowed on the grounds - meaning that photography of the wood and stone cabins and lodges that make up most of the facility are tightly controlled.
On a recent visit by the BBC, for example, reporters in the White House press pool were under strict instructions to avoid taking images in unauthorized areas or providing details on the camp's layout.
While photography at Camp David is tightly controlled the photography at Trump International was thrust into the news by President Trump. According to Brendan Rascius writing for The Independent, "President Donald Trump lashed out at The New York Times over a photo the newspaper published of his Florida golf resort, claiming the image had been “doctored” to make the property look “filthy.”
Nothing more Florida, home to the PGA Hall of Fame, than a controversy about a golf course. Unless, of course, its a story about an alligator on a golf course being pulled off course by a Florida Gator.
Scary
Movies and Shows that Scare Me Part 1
For "fun" I thought I'd do a list of movies that scare me as a nod to Halloween. I'll do this each week for the next three weeks and have a theme each week.
This week let's start with science fiction. Aside from the Handmaid's Tale (which is on my to watch list), what am I missing? This isn't meant to be definitive or anything, it's just this is the stuff that keeps me up at night much more so than any creature feature.
Only one movie or show on this list is kid appropriate (WALL-E) and several are not full stomach appropriate (they get messy).
Scary TV Shows
The Man in the High Castle
Log Line: In a dystopian America dominated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, a young woman discovers a mysterious film that may hold the key to toppling the totalitarian regimes.
I just started watching this show and it is probably why I was thinking about sharing something like this. I don't know how it ends but I do like it.
Andor
Log Line: In an era filled with danger, deception, and intrigue, Cassian Andor embarks on a path that is destined to turn him into a Rebel hero.
If anyone ever tells you, including yourself, that they don't like Star Wars have them watch this show. Admittedly, the first two episodes take a while to get going, but the tension ratchets up each episode until it is nearly unbearable at the end of the first season, which is some of the best television I've ever seen.
Most say the second season is even better.
Scary Movies
WALL-E
Log Line: In a future where humans have temporarily abandoned Earth, a trash-compacting robot falls in love with a flying droid and helps her on her quest to restore hope to mankind.
Possibly my favorite movie of all time. It's a cartoon for kids with a happy ending. How is it scary? It's too darn likely to be our future.
They Live
Log Line: They influence our decisions without us knowing it. They numb our senses without us feeling it. They control our lives without us realizing it. They live.
A great cult classic that almost proved that professional wrestlers can act. Still, the premise is fantastic and scary. And of course The Rock showed twenty years later that wrestlers can act. Sometimes.
Brazil
Logline: A bureaucrat in a dystopic society becomes an enemy of the state as he pursues the woman of his dreams.
Ridiculous, silly, bizarre and all too real. Brazil remains one of the best dystopian movies of all time.
They Cloned Tyrone
Logline: A series of eerie events thrusts an unlikely trio onto the trail of a nefarious government conspiracy in this pulpy mystery caper.
The name and the premise is pretty silly. The movie is almost silly–it has its moments–in the end its just too darn real to be considered silly. The acting (by an all star cast), screenplay and cinematography is superb.
V for Vendetta
Logline: A young woman living in a dystopian society meets a shadowy freedom fighter who is plotting to overthrow their tyrannical government.
Another all time favorite. Dark, spooky, supremely well acted including one actor whose face you never see, a movie that is both inspiring and terrifying.
District 9
Logline: In a future Earth in which aliens are isolated in a remote ghetto, a government agent finds himself banished there.
Clearly inspired by video games (the original pitch was apparently literally a Halo live action movie), this one has a deep and unsettling heart.
Infinite
Hope
I'm almost done annotating the transcripts of the 37 prayer vigils I attended outside of the Soft Sided Facility South, aka "Alligator Alcatraz." As I've been watching the final vigil, the week after the abomination closed, I've been reminded of the impact that ordinary people had one outcomes. While hundreds of men were transferred to other facilities in states that have even stricter habeas claims (the claim that you shouldn't held there and need to be released), some were released.
The man in the middle of the image desperately called one of the vigil organizers, a woman whose father, Justo (the man on the right), was in ICE detention for six months. That woman, Arianne Betancourt, connected him with a lawyer who filed a habeas claim and after three months of detention he was released.
In October of 2025 Arianne was a tour guide at Miami's Bayside Market.
By June of 2026 she was helping people detained in detention centers connect with lawyers who helped free them.
Lots and lots of reasons for hope there.
Bear
The History Hound Finds
Apparently, Rhodesia is having a moment
Read some of Agatha Christie's earlier works such as "The Man in the Brown Suit" and you'll encounter some moments where, if you're like me, you stop and go, wait a minute, is that a racist term?
The answer is, of course, yes, yes it is. A very racist term, indeed. And she just casually tosses it around like it is simply what the indigenous people there call themselves.
In that particular story the word is tossed around whenever speaking of the people with deep ancestral roots to, what at the time was, a British colony called Rhodesia favored by the aristocracy as a place of wealth extraction and white supremacist vacationing.
Settled by and organized by British citizens at the end of the 19th century the area was informally called Rhodesia.
Today, two independent countries, Zambia and Zimbabwe, exist in what was once that colony. Zambia gained independence in 1964 but what is now called Zimbabwe was formally organized into Rhodesia, an independent white supremacist state allied with Apartheid South Africa, triggering a 15 year civil war.
Only in 1979 did the white colonizers finally accept Black rule, allow free and fair elections and the resulting country of Zimbabwe was formed.
White supremacists haven't forgotten this.
Tim Murphy of Mother Jones has an outstanding piece on the moment Rhodesia is having in white supremacist circles in the United States and beyond.
Bear doesn't know who needs to hear this
But Kimberly Guilfoyle is Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-fiancee. She's also Gavin Newsom's ex-wife. Bear gets that she's still connected to the President and his family and her relationship with the Governor of California is acrimonious, but Bear doesn't understand why the media doesn't seem interested in her history as Gavin Newsom's wife. She seems to be a person with some serious character issues and Bear, a dog of impeccable taste and character assesment, questions anyone who associated with her.
Tim Murphy
Daniel W. Drezner
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