I so-wanted to take a pic of what I saw this morning at the entrance to Rickenbacker causeway in Miami FL. I didn't want to get arrested or beaten for videotaping it though.
A Miami PD police cruiser and a Miami PD motorman (Harley-mounted cop) collided in the intersection. The bike was on its side, the car had a big front fender ding, there was confectioner's sugar, donuts, and coffee all-over the roadway!
No one was lying on the ground, there were a couple of jackboot patrolmen standing together, and I couldn't see any broken limbs dangling, so I didn't bother to stop and offer assistance. Miami Fire/Rescue was not yet on scene.
Guess someone cut the corner too-close, drifted wide, or grounded-out their floorboards rounding the corner. It was the exit for I-95 southbound to go onto Key Biscayne, where Cuban banker Bebe Reboso used to house President (at the time) RM Nixon. They even had a heliport on Bebe's land, which was torn-up awhile ago because it was done w/no permits, and allegedly belonged to the US gov't. (done w/federal funds, declared 'surplus,' and removed as-such to avoid maintaining it and at the request of neighbors who didn't want a helicopter using it anymore since the POTUS need was no-longer). In the Watergate trial, it came to light that the national dairymen's association had made a donation of $400,000 cash to the Republican Party through Bebe Reboso's bank on Key Biscayne, and that money was distributed by Nixon's staff to the Cuban 'plumbers' who actually performed the Watergate break-in. The Cubans caught included members of the Bay of Pigs aborted 'invasion' of Cuba which failed when the USA refused to provide aerial support for the amphibious assault which came-ashore at the Bay of Pigs. If you like history, search more under 'Brigade 2506'.
While the mercenaries which were training both stateside and in Central America, one of them died, his assigned i.d. no. was #2506, hence, the name of the invasion veterans organization for those who were not shot by Castro's military after being captured. Interestingly, the exile Cuban brigade began numbering their participants from #2500 to delude any Castro spies in the USA as-to the actual strength of the organization.
http://cuban-exile.com/menu2/22506.html
As the people who were involved in this are now in their 60's and beyond, once they are gone, their legacy will be the historical accounts they passed-down.
The boss of the construction co. for whom I worked before becoming a firefighter-paramedic in the mid-1970's had an Everglades hunting camp, and on it was a rustic cabin. One day in the early 1960's they arrived for a weekend of hunting and found it shot to smithereens, the Cubans who trained close-by had used it for target practice, and the federal gov't. paid the construction co. GC far-more than the little cabin was worth to mollify him over the damage, and as 'hush-$.'
If you like history, and especially history of the 20th century/Cold War, there are many links from this site's home page which i.d. the players and government members from the legislative and executive branches and of-course, input from the judicial branch, at local, state, and national levels, both in-support and 'otherwise' concerning the Cuban expatriates and their struggles to return to their homeland. Governor George Smathers and U.S. House of Representatives member Claude Pepper [also a US Senator for FL] were two of the behind-the scenes supporters who channeled assistance to the expatriates' efforts. Pepper was the oldest-serving member of the House of Representatives when he died, a powerful man sympathetic to those who wanted to fight Cuban Communism, though he himself was once referred to by U.S. Representative and successful challenging candidate for the US Senate George Smathers as "Red Pepper," this being around the time of Senator Joe McCarthy's HUAC hearings. Smathers defeated Senator Pepper to replace him in the U.S. Senate. Pepper would work as the Harvard Law School-trained attorney he was until he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives later in the decade.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0908.html
Senator Smathers is frequently championed as a master of political doublespeak to rival anything coming from Karl Rove or James Carville.
Here is a link which explains what Sen. Smathers {then Rep. Smathers} is reputed to have said in a successful attempt to paint his opponent as a corrupt person who violates the commonly-held mores of decency, normalcy and freedom from perversion.
http://www.afn.org/~afn62971/pepper.html Find the quote under the first heading, "Claude Pepper's Life and Death." It is regularly mentioned in political science courses as an example of 'spin.'
Anyone who grew-up in the 1960's well-recalls the Cuban Missle Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, and President Kennedy's assasination, happening in that order, from 1961-3. In school we remember being told to exit from our desks, to sit or squat on the floor, and to cover the backs of our necks and, "do
not look at the bright flash of light!" Another ditty was, "stop, squat, and cover!" If you were listening to the radio, at certain times of the day, you would hear, "This normally-scheduled broadcast is interrupted for a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System," after which a single pitch tone would be heard for approx 10 seconds, and as it ended, "This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast System, we now resume our regularly-scheduled programming. Had this been an actual emergency tune to CONELRAD for further instructions." On your radial dial or bar dial of your AM radio were two tiny triangles, those were the tuning frequencies to-which you would tune your radio (assuming the electromagnetic pulse had not destroyed the circuits) so you could hear instructions from government 'after the bombs fell.'
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/conelrad.htm
Here is a site w/a goldmine of info on surviving a bomb drop, including actual CONELRAD radio alerts which were used. If you are a Boomer or older, this will probably stir-up some long-supressed memories.
http://www.conelrad.com/atomicsecrets/secrets.php?secrets=03
Here is a fascinating CIA declassified document (in 1997) cataloguing the Cuban freedom organizations, printed in 1962 (
http://cuban-exile.com/doc_351-375/doc0370.html)
Yeah, I know this drifted away from the 'stopped by the law' thread, if anyone is offended by the content, ask the moderator to move it to its own thread and you have my apologies.
unk:
