Debt ceiling Sunday

'Flat-busted broken, but at least the coffee-makers work'

-Brian Williams

Just watched the "NBC Nightly News." Brian Williams talking about "this ongoing train wreck in Washington," "this endless story," "this toxic debate." Now he's conducting a one-hour special (scheduled months ago) about a day on Capitol Hill, coincidentally right in the midst of the "train wreck." Thought I'd watch it vs. reruns on "60 Minutes." Even Joe Lieberman says, "This place is dysfunctional at this point." (Coming from him, that says a lot.)

Lieberman, McCain and Lindsey Graham are big pals, and when Brian Williams asked the assembled trio what was causing the gridlock, Graham volunteered an answer. He said that unless members of Congress are independently wealthy, they have to sign "these pledges." Of course these pledges may lead them to violate their oaths of office. (Grover Norquist comes to mind.)

Good show! Pretty scathing on Brian Williams's part.

Oh, and John Boehner smokes in his office. Harry Reid said that's why Boehner can't display good vintage artwork on his walls.

Saturday nite late

Lucas (and I) watching "Too cute! Kittens" on Animal Planet.

(If you didn't know, the bright white sunbursts are flares from the camera flash.)

Debt ceiling Saturday

'Nation Calls Washington Mad, And City Agrees'

Among the bar patrons at the Old Ebbitt Grill worried about stock portfolios, the tourists anxious about disability checks and the current and former policy makers stunned by Washington paralysis, the mood was described variously as one of doom, disgust and disbelief. Washington is talking of little else. . . .

“I’m fed up with it, just fed up with it,” she said, referring to the battle in Congress. “If their checks were cut like they said ours might be cut, I wonder how they would feel.” . . .

Personal - katz

I've moved the cat food around so Boozy has to eat more of his kidney-diet food. Used to have the regular dry food on the floor (where both cats could get to it). Tonight I moved it to the kitchen bar counter for Lucas's consumption only (Boozy is unable to jump up there.). It's been hours already and Lucas still can't figure it out. I've put him on the counter a half dozen times (at least) and he's still searching for the bowls in their old location (in this room). I trust he'll figure it out eventually. Weird that he's not interested in the food he's craving when it's been relocated (within easy reach) and put in front of his nose.

I didn't just spring this change on the cats tonight (i.e., Thursday). Several days ago I put a bowl of regular dry food up on the counter near Lucas's wet food (which of course he eats). Lucas wouldn't touch it, no matter how I arranged it. He'd go eat it at the old location, even after I'd stopped refilling that bowl to the point it was almost empty (and the food undoubtedly stale).

Boozy and Lucas on the (dirty) terrace

I'd also set up a bowl of the kidney-healthy dry food by Boozy's wet food. Boozy's not that crazy about it, however. (Subsequently I mixed in some of the old food.) 

Since Lucas came into the household three years ago (approx. 13 months old), I'd been serving the cats their wet food in different locations in the kitchen (Lucas's up on the counter), so Boozy wouldn't hog it. I'd put bowls of dry food down on the floor in the office, which (unlike the kitchen) has two entrances, so Boozy wouldn't be able to restrict Lucas's access. (Boozy hated Lucas at first, while  - as the people at the Humane Society had told me - Lucas "likes other cats." Lucas could never understand the hostile reception.) (I felt really bad for him.) (For the first week or so after Lucas got here, I kept the cats separated while I was at work.)

Boozy and Lucas in the office. Boozy likes to lie right at my feet. (I don't always like it.)

Debt ceiling Thursday

Looks like Mitch McConnell's plan will be the one. But see here ("Rep. Steny Hoyer Backs Obama Using 14th Amendment Option"). Meanwhile, "Debt Ceiling Crisis Has Americans Frustrated, 'Furious'".

(Me included.)

Miami Vice: 'a kind of gay Hogwarts with palm trees'

'The Catholic Church’s Secret Gay Cabal'

John C. Favalora is a sallow old man who looks like the corpse of Dom DeLuise. He likes attractive young men to sit on his lap and allegedly treats them to trips in the Florida Keys. He was, until recently, part owner of a company that makes "all natural" boner-inducing beverages. He's also the Archbishop Emeritus of Miami. . . .

 Read it all at Gawker here.

Personal

Was at gym tonight, then to store for a baguette to make a big, fat roast beef sandwich for lunch tomorrow. With mayo, Dijon mustard, a little horseradish, and salt & pepper. Looking forward to munching down on that.

Roasted the eye of the round (on sale!) last night.

Enjoyed my new "Restaurant: Impossible" episode tonight as I was preparing my sandwich during the commercials. Now watching "I Shouldn't Be Alive" The real-life tension is on par with the hyped-up tension in "Restaurant: Impossible." But I still prefer the latter since nobody ends up eating his dog. (People eating canned sausage gravy doesn't bother me so much.)

Follow-up

From an editorial in today's New York Times ("Washington’s Rogue Elephants"):

[W]hether you’re confronting a rogue elephant or a rogue nuclear state, the advice is the same: stop playing the game. Avoid the elephant or shoot it; politically isolate the rogue state or use military force to disarm it.

What does all this mean for the debt-ceiling debate? So far, President Obama and the Democrats have insisted on negotiations, assuming that the looming threat of debt default would force the Republicans to cave in on their strident demands and accept a compromise.

Instead, given the Republicans’ continued insistence on an unobtainable wish list of spending cuts and constitutional amendments, it’s fair to conclude that Mr. Obama is facing the political equivalent of an elephant in must — a player who simply won’t play the game.

In the 1983 movie “WarGames,” an errant military supercomputer has a final moment of lucidity in which it notes, “The only winning move is not to play.” The president is best advised to do the same: declare that the other side has foregone all pretense at rational legitimacy, and simply proceed to govern as best he can for the good of the country.

Debt ceiling Tuesday

Was watching Howard Fineman and Lawrence O'Donnell discussing the mess earlier tonight on O'Donnell's show. They agreed that when all is said and done, the debt ceiling will be passed, in a bill all of one sentence long with no strings attached (the way debt-ceiling bills normally get passed) and this whole game of chicken will have been for naught.

And TPM's Josh Marshall has this ("Cat To Emerge from Bag?").

There's an interesting possibility, even a likelihood, we may see unfold over the coming days. And if it happens, we might find out quickly whether there's a limit past which consensus opinion, the Wall Street/business interests who hold such a sway over national politics and even elements within the GOP will not indulge this mania.

I mentioned before that it's not clear whether John Boehner even has the votes for his own plan in the chamber he runs. In other words, will House Republicans even support Boehner's plan, the plan of their nominal leader, let alone anything that would pass the Senate or garner the president's signature?

At that point everyone should be able to see there aren't two sides here to tango, we're listening to the sound of one hand compromising.

The scenario being floated informally now by a lot of observers is that if and when we come to that point Republicans in the Senate, Wall Street and just a lot sane people in general who haven't come off the sidelines yet or haven't really been paying attention just say: Dude, you don't have a full deck, this is over.

O'Donnell also had Bill Maher on the show. When O'Donnell asked him whether he might be able to find some comedic value in a possible government default and the resulting economic meltdown, Maher said, "No, I've got money, too."

*   *   *

This is what Josh links to in the first link from his post above ("Hamilton's Dream," also by Josh):

As we move closer to intentionally jettisoning the full faith and credit of the United States and eyeing the pulse of the bond market, we shouldn't forget one salient fact. The centrality of debt holders in our constitutional order isn't a bug, it's a feature. Indeed, the national debt -- created through the federal assumption of state war debts -- was created to do precisely this: get the holders of bonds, necessarily wealthy and powerful people, to have a vested interest in the fixity and stability of the federal government. 

The adults in the room knew all this from the outset.

Updates from Daily Kos

"Boehner to America: give me what I want or you're all screwed" here.

"Obama asks Americans to send message to Congress, servers apparently crash" here. (Twitter post from Ezra Klein: "Congressional servers apparently crashing after prez's speech.")

Monday night - Obama speech

I wasn't going to watch the speech and had planned on catching the new Anthony Bourdain (in Naples) instead, but I've decided to watch it (but not John Boehner's follow-up speech). The markets are already going down as a result of this debt-ceiling mess, and my 401K is at stake (again). Not good. All because of a bunch of right-wing "nutters":

One of the most interesting interventions while I was away was from the UK's Liberal Democrat cabinet minister Vince Cable. He said the world's economy was being put in peril by "a few right-wing nutters" in the American Congress.

I've been watching Chris Matthews and Lawrence O'Donnell tonight (as usual). I think the President should just state flat-out that he's not going to let the country go down the tubes, that it would be a dereliction of his sworn duty as president, and that if Congress doesn't pass a debt-ceiling in a few days, he'll intervene and raise the debt ceiling himself, no strings attached. I've read up on this, and it sounds perfectly reasonable to me. (See here.) We can't keep kicking this can down the road [as even Obama said later in his speech].

Don't know how long the speech will last, but the Naples show will repeat at midnight (but also next week, I'm sure). I'll watch it one way or the other, even if I watch the last half at 9:30 and the first half at midnight. (I really look forward to watching these shows.)

* * *

Well, the speech was about 17 minutes long. He called for a "balanced approach" to the debt-ceiling legislation (i.e., including revenues and not just cuts) and asked that if we agreed with him, we were to let our members of Congress know. I surely will. He talked about the intransigence of the Tea Partiers (not by name) and how basically un-American it was (i.e., not to entertain compromise), and warned of the disaster that would ensue should the U.S. ever default on its financial obligations. And just kicking the can down the road could in itself bring on disaster, with all the uncertainty roiling the markets. See here ("John Boehner Debt Ceiling Plan May Still Trigger S&P Downgrade: Report").

Clearly, however, the market isn't enamored with going through the same political drama once more. As The New York Times' Nate Silver noted, the Dow Jones futures dropped sharply during the course of Obama's and Boehner's speech.

Back to Naples.

Debt ceiling blues

And just when my 401K was starting to get healthy again.

As one of the bond-rating agencies said the other day, just do away with the debt ceiling.

Thunderstorm tonight

I hadn't seen it rain in days. (We needed it.) Not a duck-drowner but decent. It started around 8:00 and is still sprinkling now. It was supposed to stop at 9:00. I drove to the store 20 minutes before. Needed umbrella going in but the storm had slacked off by the time I'd done my shopping. Lucas is a little wary of the thunder and lightning, but Boozy isn't fazed a bit.

Today I cleaned up the kitchen some and made a bottom-round roast and chicken salad (3 cups). The head of celery I had in the fridge was *past wilted*, so I bought fresh at the store tonight (celery sticks in a bag, since I'm tired of tossing out celery) to add to the salad to finish it off. Then as I was shaking a little paprika over the top, dead paprika-colored weevils started coming out. So I had to skim the top layer off the salad - what a waste. I'll never buy Hungarian paprika in a can again, or else I'll store it in the fridge with everything else the weevils get into (flour, pasta, breadcrumbs, etc.). Luckily I have the giant-capacity French-door fridge now (still half empty). (The exterminator here said the weevils come from the grocery store.) (See more about that here.)

Chicken salad came out great, though. Had half a sandwich on toast earlier tonight, before adding the celery. In addition to celery, I used minced red onion, dill relish, white pepper (weevils don't get into that), a little salt and Kraft mayonnaise, my favorite. I'll be eating it at work tomorrow on sourdough Melba toast.

Another weevil story: When I was in high school, my parents were having a dinner party and my mother was making Beef Burgundy, which back then was something new and chic. (Cooking with wine. Wow!) At one point I was watching Mom make it and I noticed, as she was shaking some dried herb or spice into the pot, tiny dead bugs were alighting in the pot. I wasn't about to tell Mom that her Beef Burgundy was ruined*, so that night she served Beef (and Bugs) Burgundy to her dinner party guests. (To her dying day, she never knew.) (The guests had loved Mom's dish, by the way.)

[Later] Watching a hoarding show now (for lack of anything better to watch). These are so predictable. It's an illness. (Glad I don't have it.)
_____________________
*by Western standards at least, since we generally don't (knowingly) eat bugs. Easterners might well appreciate the addition of this ingredient to Mom's Beef Burgundy. (The idea of eating bugs doesn't really bother me, so long as they're not poisonous, of course. And weevils apparently aren't.) (I think I've eaten roasted caterpillars and/or grasshoppers, and possibly chocolate-covered ants.)

Jamaican Gays Finally Get Some Good News

From The Advocate here.

After Fitz Bailey . . ., a senior police commander in Jamaica, accused gays of being the main perpetrators of lottery scams, the nation's top police officer said that was not true.
 
Commissioner Owen Ellington was not happy with Bailey's statement and expressed regret "for any concern, anxiety, and any appearance of unfair labeling which may have been construed." Ellington also said the Jamaican Constabulary Force does not single out individual groups in their policing procedures.
 
A public disavowal of homophobia is incredibly rare in Jamaica, which is believed to be the most antigay nation in the Caribbean, if not the world. Meanwhile, Bailey has refused to apologize or take back his accusation that gays scam Jamaica's lottery system.

[Emphasis added.]

[Click on photo to enlarge it]

Saturday night katz at my feetz

(I sit in front of the computer in the black chair with casters.)

Michele Bachmann Rose Swiftly Fighting Same-Sex Marriage

 Anita Bryant with a law degree. From The New York Times here.

In March 2004, with Massachusetts soon to allow gay couples to wed, Michele Bachmann delivered a dire warning to her fellow Minnesotans: The children of their state were at risk. 

“We will have immediate loss of civil liberties for five million Minnesotans,” Mrs. Bachmann, then a state senator, told a Christian television network as thousands gathered on the steps of the Capitol to rally for a same-sex marriage ban she proposed. “In our public schools, whether they want to or not, they’ll be forced to start teaching that same-sex marriage is equal, that it is normal and that children should try it.”

Now that she is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, Mrs. Bachmann, a Minnesota congresswoman, is talking more about federal spending than about gay rights. But her political rise has its roots in her dogged pursuit of an amendment to the State Constitution prohibiting same-sex marriage — “her banner issue,” said Scott Dibble, a Democratic state senator who is gay — and her mixing of politics with her evangelical faith. . . .

Medicare crooks find safe haven in Cuba

Disgraceful. (And these people are Republicans.) Miami Herald story here.

As Medicare crime spreads across South Florida, accused scammers are escaping in droves to Cuba and other Latin American countries to avoid prosecution — with more than 150 fugitives now wanted for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. healthcare program, according to the FBI and court records.

The tally of fugitives charged with healthcare fraud here has tripled since 2008, when The Miami Herald first reported on the phenomenon of Cuban immigrants joining the Medicare rackets and fleeing to evade trial in Miami. . . .

Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said he has heard from sources in Miami and Cuba allegations that the Castro government extorts Medicare bounty from criminals who are allowed to go back and forth between here and the island nation. But he said he knows of no evidence directly implicating the Castro regime in the fraud. . . .

The FBI says the 156 Medicare fraud fugitives from Miami-Dade and other parts of South Florida comprise the majority of fugitives charged with ripping off the program nationwide. . . .

'Carmageddon' day in LA

Check out the LA Times here for the latest on that. No problems so far.

I was reading in the Times that a Frank Lloyd Wright house (the Ennis House, in the Los Feliz area of LA) has been sold. Extensive and impressive photo gallery here.

Interesting Mayan-inspired architecture. (The original owners, Charles and Mabel Ennis, were enthusiasts of Mayan art and architecture.) Wright considered the house his favorite. The buyer, billionaire Democrat Ron Burkle, got it for $4.5 million but will have to spend millions more to restore it.

Wednesday night - personal

Was at gym after a nap. (Walked there and back, as I've been doing lately. Not so muggy tonight.) Now watching favorite Wednesday night shows of late: "Restaurant: Impossible" and "Rocco's Dinner Party." New episodes ("Rocco's" is a brand-new show).

"Restaurant: Impossible" is a little hard to watch at times, with its frequent moments of over-blown tension and drama over not getting the work done in the impossibly short time period and within the impossibly measly budget, but I enjoy it anyway, only because the results are always good. I actually like it better than "Rocco's," which has been coming on at the same time. (New season of "Restaurant: Impossible" began last week, so I watched "Rocco's" a little later in rerun.) Maybe it's because I have more empathy, or even sympathy, with the owners of failing businesses - as I myself owned a bar that failed. ("Rocco's" is set in Manhattan, not a place that invokes much empathy or sympathy in me, most especially since the Great Recession that was brought on by the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street.)

I had tried to turn a straight bar gay in kind of an iffy part of town, but the location was good vis-à-vis Interstate access, and overall it was well positioned geographically. (Lots of gay bars have been located in iffy areas.) Made a lot of mistakes, however. It had a full kitchen, e.g, which I didn't really utilize (but had an offer from someone to take it over and possibly have it make money, which I declined). And I should have let a gay square dance club use it for their functions, which would have brought in lots of regular business. (One of the club members even came to measure the floor space to determine whether it was adequate for square-dancing - and it was. But for some reason I declined.)

When some of the people in the neighborhood realized what I was up to, they weren't particularly happy. One day, someone even left a bucket of rotten fish outside the back door, which was normally kept open. The daytime bartender closed the door and called me up to come and deal with it. I almost threw up when I removed it to the dumpster.

I learned the lessons of how to run a successful business only after I'd lost it. I should have let it be what it was going to be to survive, rather than stick to the notions I had at the time. But would I try to do it again? I don't know.

Monday night

Watching Lawrence O'Donnell ("The Last Word") before a new Anthony Bourdain comes on at 9:00. Anthony will be in Cuba. Right now there's a repeat from 2006 of him in Miami, but I don't want to see chickens being sacrificed. There's also a new "Design Star" at 9:00 - the season premiere - but Bourdain trumps that. (I can always watch a re-run at midnight, but that's pushing bedtime.)

Enough O'Donnell. I'm back to Tony (the chicken segment is over). Tony really likes Miami, esp. South Beach. He said Club Deuce was one of his favorite places in the world. Been there and it's a dive, but that's what he likes, or used to like. He's gotten somewhat mellower since he's been married to the lady from Sardinia (?) and now has a daughter. For his daughter's sake, he's done away with a lot of the on-screen animal slaughter. (This has made his show easier to watch for me, too.)

*   *   *

Very disappointed in the Cuba show (which was also the season premiere). I would like to have seen more of Havana and a lot less baseball. We had to watch segments on the little league and the big league and even guys arguing ad infinitum in the town square over baseball. (Of course they're not permitted to argue about politics.) Tony's blog here is more interesting.  (He said during the show to go to the Travel Channel if we wanted to know what he "really" thought about Cuba.)

Say what you want about Castro–(we CAN, after all, Cubans not so much)–he managed, through design or neglect, to keep Havana beautiful.

Run down, crumbling, many buildings barely habitable–even the national baseball team has to play during the day because their stadium lights are broken and the country is too poor to fix them. Where things barely work, where time is arrested, where a failed ideology wheezes along on life support long after its inventors and sponsors abandoned it–at least, at least Havana is un-****ed by time. Where Moscow and St Petersburg brim with newly uglified buildings, malls, and the old cookie cutter concrete blocks leftover from the workers’ paradise, Havana looks like a shabbier but still gorgeous version of its older self. When it all changes, as it surely shall, I hope Havana’s waterfront, the malecon, the old hotels, the facades, the Nacional, the Tropicana, the cars–they remain–at least in appearance and design–the same. I’d hate to see fast food signs, the boutique hotels, bottle service, frat bars and canary yellow Lamborginis of the douche side of Miami. When everybody’s wired and connected and chatting freely, watching 500 channels of cable and voting their minds, I hope the mojitos don’t start coming in sno-cone form, the old neighborhoods dug up for golf courses or water parks.

It’s easy, I know, to over-romanticize the unspoiled. Especially when “unspoiled” means “poor”. But look. Look.

Whatever your politics, however you feel about Cuba–look at tonight’s show and admit, at least, that Havana is beautiful. It is the most beautiful city of Latin America or the Caribbean. Look at the Cuban people and admit that they are proud and big hearted and funny and kind–and strong as hell, having put up with every variety of bullshit over the years. On these things, I hope we can agree.

Saw a new "Intervention" afterwards that was a real tear-jerker. And unfortunately the person relapsed after treatment. (Happens a lot.) (She should never have gone back to Kalamazoo...)

Sunday night personal

Unwinding after a long day of doing almost nothing actually. I did cut my hair and go to the store and spent a lot of time reading on the Internet. Had email exchange with cousin the librarian in Tampa, whose work schedule is being radically impacted by the bad economy and state budget mess. A short while ago got an email from my old friend in Canada. We've been seriously out of touch. I'll have to call.

So next weekend is "Carmageddon" in Los Angeles. (See here and here.) They're closing down an approximately 10-mile stretch of Interstate 405, which is "the busiest and most congested freeway in the United States^[2][3]" according to Wikikpedia here.

They're widening the freeway and thus need to replace the Mulholland Drive bridge that traverses it up in the Santa Monica Mountains. The closure extends from the top red arrow (Ventura Freeway) to the bottom red arrow (Santa Monica Freeway). This is a major artery connecting the San Fernando Valley to the Los Angeles basin (and LAX), and passes through the tony neighborhoods of Brentwood and Bel Air. The only alternative for north-south passage through the area is Sepulveda Boulevard, which is no freeway (although it is "the longest street in the city and county of Los Angeles.^[1]").

As Los Angeles is so reliant on transport by automobile, this closure is a BFD. Motorists are being advised of the closure from as far away as the Oregon border. It was even reported tonight on the NBC Nightly News (and it doesn't happen till next weekend).

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

*   *   *

On a completely different note, see this fascinating film here from "60 Minutes" (a trek up San Francisco's Market Street in 1906, just before the calamitous earthquake).

Saturday night katz

Boozy and Lucas
(Boozy's been shedding a lot lately, another victim of the Muggy)

Saturday personal

Was up just before noon (had stayed up late last night, as usual). Needed to drive down to the vet's to get Boozy some special food for his kidney condition. Got two cases of canned, one each of Purina NF and Hill's k/d (totaling 48 cans), plus a 4 lb. bag of dry k/d which will fit inside an airtight Tupperware canister to stay fresher longer. All came to almost $100, but it'll last a while. (The vet closes at 2:00 on Saturdays, but I was there in plenty of time.) (It's only a couple of blocks from here.)

Then it was over to Starbucks for a coffee and an egg salad sandwich, which I brought back home to consume in air-conditioned comfort. Was at the computer for hours, and also went back to Starbucks to get a coffee refill. Later I made a hot open-faced roast beef sandwich for dinner, with Campbell's canned beef gravy. Pretty nasty but it did its job moistening up the excellent roast beef (eye of the round) I'd bought on sale last weekend. Had a giant sandwich, with lots of salt and pepper, and tossed any extra gravy away. (I often make my own gravy from the pan drippings but didn't do it last time. I ate the pan drippings instead with a spoon.)

After cleaning out the cat boxes, I cleaned myself up and headed up to Target, just north of E's restaurant. (His car was there, as expected.) (He called me last Sunday, by the way, and we had a nice chat. I'd called him on Saturday to tell him about Boozy's visit to the vet, but he couldn't talk.) Was looking for deodorant and "BOD man" spray. Got an Italian sausage hot dog instead and found the deodorant on sale at Navarro (where the Piccadilly Cafeteria used to be). (BOD spray not on sale.) Navarro advertises itself as a "discount pharmacy," but right when it opened, a few weeks ago, I priced two items I usually get at Publix and they were cheaper at Publix. Nor did they carry the Plus White toothpaste I get at Publix. But I was pleased with today's steep discounts. It's been so hot and muggy lately that I went back to the Old Spice High Endurance products. (Sorry, Speed Stick, but you let me down.) Bought two varieties at the sale price.

It would be quite a bit cheaper to buy the BOD spray in bulk on the website (free shipping with an order of $50 or more). The stuff cost $8.89 at Navarro but it's only $7.19 on the website (and their "list price" is $7.99). I'd never bought it before but E. used it. Following last night's deodorant failure after walking to and from the gym in the extremely high humidity, I thought it might come in handy.

"Muggy" is the word.  Right now, at 8:34 p.m., the temp according to The Weather Channel online is 82 F. but "feels like" 90. (The NBC local weather site says it's 84 and feels like 93 - that's quite a spread.)

Where Kate and William will be staying in Los Angeles

I did a lot of sleuthing this afternoon to find out exactly where Kate and William will be staying -- I wanted the precise address so I could definitively locate it on Google Earth. One of the photos on the Internet showed a close-up of the front door, with a legible street address. I knew from my sleuthing that the house was located right around the intersection of S. June Street and W. 6th Street, so I plugged in "450 S. June Street" and voila!

This is the home of the British Consul, located in the old Hancock Park neighborhood of LA. (Looks like any old Miami neighborhood.)  Lots of good photos of the house and grounds here.

 Above are homes along Alhambra Circle in Coral Gables, between Sevilla Ave. and Bird Rd. (backing up to the Biltmore Golf Course). (Note the distorted lamp post in the second photo.) When I was in high school - years ago - they were both occupied by dairy families. The homes still look the same now as they did back then. We lived not far away, on Country Club Prado. (Below is a house on Country Club Prado, known for its wide, pastoral parkway and live oaks.)

This shot from Google Earth shows Country Club Prado from the air, at its intersection with Coral Way, the main drag in Coral Gables. (My old family home is located somewhere in this shot, but of course I won't say where exactly.)

[Some photos enlarge when you click on them]

Bug mystery solved

Not long after I got home from work, Lucas alerted me to the presence of one of these scary-looking bugs, crouching against the hurricane-shutter track outside the sliding glass door to the terrace (then, thank goodness, closed). This wasn't the first time I'd seen one of these here (but I don't recall ever having seen one before I moved here). For the cats' safety, I've whisked the bugs off the terrace before. I was about to take a nap before walking down to the gym shortly before 9:00 and just hoped the bug would be gone by the time I woke up. Lucas napped on the pillow beside me.

When we woke up, we noted that the bug was still there -- and Lucas was aching to get at it. I wasn't about to let that happen. I immediately fetched a whisk broom and managed to keep Lucas at bay while I brushed the bug out of its resting place and off the edge of the terrace; it had refused to fly away on its own. Only then did I let Lucas out onto the terrace.

I had some time before I had to head off to the gym, so I did a Google image search on the bug: "black wasp with red tail". Sure enough, I found it here. It's a Polka Dot Wasp Moth (Syntomeida epilais) (#54). I then looked up Syntomeida epilais in the Wikipedia and found this.

So it's just a moth that looks like a vicious wasp, also known as the Oleander Moth. And wouldn't you know, there's an oleander tree growing just off the terrace. (The tree was planted several years ago and has grown to where it now brushes up against one corner of the terrace.)

They are dark metallic blue with a couple of white polka-dots dotting the wings and upper abdomen. The tip of the moth's abdomen is bright red; it looks like a very dangerous wasp, but in fact is a harmless moth.The caterpillars are orange or dark orange with long black hairs. The caterpillars look dangerous, but the setae do not inflict any harm.^[1][2]

[Emphasis added.]  Here's a link to an image gallery here.

These moths, I learned, are "day fliers," so I figure the bug was settling in for the night (which would also explain why it wouldn't fly).

I'll still keep whisking them off the terrace when I see them. Even though I now know they're harmless, I don't want Lucas mauling them for his amusement.

(How great is the Internet!)