Marco Rubio's autobiography soars on Amazon to 21. Unauthorized bio? It's No. 3,213

Love him or hate him, chances are you're reading this blog because it says "Marco Rubio." The Florida senator is a major source of political fascination, at least according to all the media interviews he has done and our web traffic.

Considering the wall-to-wall media coverage he has received with his new book, An American Son, it's probably no surprise that it shot up from 79 on Amazon's Top 100 to the clinch the 21 spot today (it's No. 2 in political memoirs).

Yesterday's won't-they-or-will-they-vet-Rubio story concerning Mitt Romney's campaign knocked the Republican presidential candidate off message for a day, but it gave Rubio even more attention. And more is coming. Though he canceled his "Daily Show" appearance last night, he's scheduled to tape next week.

With such star- and firepower, the Washington Post's Manuel Roig-Franzia can't compete with his unauthorized bio The Rise of Marco Rubio. It has been out a little longer than Rubio's autobiography, but has yet to crack Amazon's Top 100. Or the Top 3,000 for that matter. It's 3,213 right now

Fidel Castro, the totalitarian Haiku master

Is Fidel Castro laughing himself silly as he watches readers of his recent Haiku-like commentaries try to make sense of them? Is he sending serious but thinly veiled messages? Or is he just slipping mentally?

In cryptic paragraphs of never more than 65 words, the former Cuban president has written about yoga poses, edible plants, a criticism of Cuba by a Chinese leader who died 15 years ago and a former leader of communist East Germany who died even further back.

Castro’s pronouncements have sparked quizzical looks, jokes about his mental state as he approaches his 86th birthday on Aug. 13 and convoluted efforts by supporters to explain his odd words.

“I respect all religions, though I don’t believe in them. Human beings, from the dumbest to the wisest, search for an explanation for their existence. Science constantly searches for the laws that guide the universe. At this time, it is in an expansion started about 13,700 million years ago,” he wrote in a short missive published Tuesday by government websites.

“Yogis can do things with the human body that escape our imagination. They are there, before our eyes, on images that arrive instantly from enormous distances through Pasage a lo Desconocido,” he noted in a 35-word post earlier Tuesday.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/20/2857858/fidel-castro-leaves-people-guessing.html#storylink=twt#storylink=cpy

More here

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/20/2857858/fidel-castro-leaves-people-guessing.html#storylink=twt#storylink=cpy

EDR report says Florida's real unemployment drop is closer to .3 percent

Gov. Rick Scott was asked today why the lastest Quinnipiac poll numbers keep showing his public approval rating dropping below 40 percent. He didn't answer but pivoted to the unemployment numbers, which he touts as dropping faster than the national average.

“The number that I look at every month is our unemployment rate and as you know we’re bucking a national trend,''Scott told reporters today. "We’ve come down 2.5 percent in the last several months. The federal number is down .8 or .9 percent…The month of May, the federal numbers got worse and our got better."

A new analysis of Florida's Economic Trends, by the legislature's offices of Economic and Demographic Research, reveals that the governor's take on things may be technically accurate but practically very misleading. In a slide titled "Labor Force Reduction Accounts for Most of the Rate Drop,'' the state's top economists note that "75 percent of the drop in the unemployment rate is due to people dropping out of the labor force."

Put in true perspective, the fact that the unemployment rate dropped from 9.9 percent in December 2011 to 8.7 percent in April 2012 may be a change of 1.2 percent but the state's economists say there is something important to add: "If the participation rate had held steady since 12/11, the unemployment rate would have been 9.6 percent." That's more like a .3 percent decline.

Scott reaches out to president of Republic of China

Gov. Rick Scott sent an e-mail Tuesday to the Republic of China's president to praise him for meeting with Florida's top professors and scientists at an upcoming conference in Taipei.

The delegation, led by Ed Moore, president of The Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida, will meet with President Ma Ying-jeou at the Fourth Annual Taiwan-Florida Higher Education conference.

Scott also told the president he looks forward to continued expansion of economic and cultural ties between Taiwan and Florida.

FDLE clears governor of wrongdoing in missing transition emails

After a 10-month investigation, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has cleared the governor's office of any wrongdoing in the disappearance of transition emails from the public record.

The Herald/Times first discovered in August 2011 that many of the emails had been erased from a server run by the communications company that worked for the governor's transition team during the two-month period between the time the governor was elected and took office. Scott then asked the agency that reports to the governor and Cabinet to investigate and then was forced to launch a massive retrieval effort to recover many of the documents.

At the time, former CFO Alex Sink, who lost to Scott in the 2010 race for governor, criticized the decision to use FDLE instead of an independent investigator. FDLE chief Gerald Bailey reports to Scott and the Florida Cabinet, all of whom are Republicans.

The governor's office said Wednesday that it recovered "more than 4.5 gigabytes of electronic data representing more than 33,000 pages of transition emails and documents" and turned them over to FDLE. 

The episode also contributed to a distrust of the governor's transition team and top staff among the public and media in Florida and led to what the governor's office described as "a massive number of public records requests for Scott Transition Team documents."

In response to the reaction, the governor directed FDLE "to use electronic forensic search methods to recover lost emails and further required every member of the transition team, including volunteers, to turn over all documents related to transition business,'' the governor's statement said.

The governor's office said that because of its efforts to cast "the widest possible net and using cutting-edge technology," it believes it has produced more gubernatorial transition documents than any other governor in Florida history. It has posted the collection of transition documents in searchable format on the Sunburst web site.

To prevent future newcomers to the office from making the same mistake, the Legislature passed a law this year spelling out that transition documents are considered a public record and must be preserved under Florida public records laws.

Here's the press release:

Gov. Rick Scott: Florida in no rush to implement 'Obamacare' even if Supreme Court upholds it

Gov. Rick Scott expressed confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court, expected to rule anyday, will side with Florida and 25 other states in their challenge to federal health care reform. Calling the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a “disaster for patients,” Scott also made it clear that Florida wouldn’t hustle to implement the law's provisions even if the High Court upholds the law.

“I’m very optimistic that either the Supreme Court will declare it unconstitutional or it will get repealed prior to the time that we have to implement the law,” Scott said today.

The governor talked about health care reform and the ramifications of a Supreme Court ruling during a conference call sponsored by State Policy Network (a free market think tank), Franklin Center for Government Policy and Public Integrity (a right-of-center media training organization), and Americans for Tax Reform (advocacy organization founded by Grover Norquist).

Scott said that even if the Supreme Court sides with the federal government, he would remain hopeful that Mitt Romney is elected president and overturns provisions of the Affordable Care Act or Congress acts to repeal it. In the meantime, Florida will continue to resist implementation until it is clear “Obamacare” is “the law of the land,” he said.

GOP hopefuls, minus one, who want to oust Wasserman Schultz will debate

A group of Republicans competing for the chance to take on U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Weston) will debate on June 28.

The debate will be held at 7 p.m. at the Old Davie School House, 6650 Griffin Road. It is sponsored by the Broward Republican Executive Committee and moderated by the Sun-Sentinel's politics reporter Anthony Man.

According to BREC, candidates Ozzie deFaria, Joe Kaufman, Gineen Bresso and Juan Eliel Garcia have confirmed. Karen Harrington won't be there because she had already scheduled a fundraiser for that night, said a campaign spokesman, Anthony Bustamante.

Bustamante said that BREC didn't give Harrington's campaign enough notice.

"We literally got notice like a week and a half ago," Bustamante said. "We already had prior engagements that evening. We have already been at two other forums -- it's not like we haven't participated in getting Karen's message out."

The Republicans face an uphill battle against DNC chair Wasserman Schultz who has raised more than $2 million.They are competing in Congressional District 23 which includes parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

Both deFaria and Harrington have gotten the "On the Radar" nod from the National Republican Congressional Committee. Both have also earned some big endorsements: deFaria has been endorsed by U.S. Sen. John McCain and Harrington has been endorsed by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota).

The debate is open to the public. The candidates agreed on the format which includes GOP clubs submitting some questions in advance.

 

Dave Weldon says he'll gain from LeMieux's exit from Senate race

Former U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon says his last-minute Senate campaign will benefit from George LeMieux bowing out of the U.S. Senate race.

"I think it's going to really set up a classical match between a more moderate establishment candidate versus a grassroots conservative candidate," the Brevard County doctor told the Times/Herald.

The final straw for LeMieux was probably front-runner Connie Mack's endorsement from Freedom Works and a $1 million donation from casino boss Sheldon Adelson to a pro-Mack super PAC this week, he said. 

"George might have seen that as insurmountable," he said.

Weldon's challenge remains his unfamiliarity with voters -- and grassroots activists. He offered to fill in for LeMieux at an upcoming dinner of Clay County Republicans, he said, but even the county chairwoman didn't know who he was.

He wouldn't offer specifics, but he said donations are picking up today with news of LeMieux's exit. He said his team is in talks with Herman Cain, who endorsed LeMieux.

"I've got a whole bunch of offers that just came in through the last few hours," he said.

 

Scott makes it clear: he's backed off mandatory E-Verify requirement for business

Maybe it was the work day the governor spent last month in a citrus grove, but the governor has left no doubt that he has backed off his election promise to require private employers in Florida to use the federal E-verify system to determine their employees’ immigration status. 

He said Wednesday that he now supports only a "national E-verify program because I don’t want to put Florida businesses at a competitive disadvantage.”

This is a nuanced but significant shift from the promise he made when he campaigned, repeatedly promising “to require all Florida employers to use the free E-verify system to ensure that their workers are legal.”

It was a position that sent organizations like the Florida Farm Bureau, the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Growers and other agriculture-affiliated institutions flocking to the governor’s primary opponent, Bill McCollum, and even prompting many farmers to support Democrat Alex Sink in the general election. Both McCollum and Sink, both more experienced at the identifying the minefields of Florida politics, opposed a state requirement that private employers must verify immigration status through the federal database -- although agreed it should apply to state workers.

Broward loses their chance to have a hometown Senator

George LeMieux dropping out of the U.S. Senate race is a blow for some GOP activists in his home county of Broward.

LeMieux was the Broward GOP’s hopes of a big name to hail from their county. Until recently, the most prominent local Republican to earn national fame from Broward was the brash-talking U.S. Rep. Allen West who won in his second attempt at Congress in 2010. But due to redistricting, the Broward GOP lost West to Palm Beach County where West recently moved to and is running for re-election.

Broward Republicans are likely to keep their claim on one countywide office holder: Sheriff Al Lamberti has a strong shot at re-election in November. Lamberti won his first race in 2008 despite the large Democratic turnout for President Barack Obama.

Assuming the frontrunner Connie Mack wins the Republican Senate primary, Broward GOP activists will clearly favor him against the incumbent, Democrat Bill Nelson. But the question is whether those activists who have been chummy with LeMieux for years will join forces to help Mack pick up more votes in Broward.

“One thing about the Broward Republicans -- we always unite behind the nominee,” said Broward GOP chairman Richard DeNapoli. “I think that’s what’s going to happen.”

DeNapoli added that Mack has a tie to Broward: he launched his political career in a state house district that included part of eastern Broward.

Broward is an overwhelmingly Democratic County but it has more than 250,000 registered Republicans who can make the difference in statewide races.