Opinions to go Online

This was going to be mostly about Venezuela, the Donroe Doctrine, Greenland, ICE and why I miss college football from back in the day. Another eclectic day at the scribe office.

But life intervenes. Stuff happens.

Spoiler alert. I am no longer “No-Vid.” I was blindsided and bed-ridden before Christmas and well into a crappy new year. I’ll spare you the details. No soiler alert needed.

It took me into a weird place of escapism and mortality intimations. It happens when there’s a lot more behind you than ahead. So COVID senior citizenry during the Trump era can feel like constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Anxiety and depression can be a given. Peter Finch’s “Mad as hell” rant in “Network” always looming.

There were days when I would close my eyes, and it looked like an ophthalmologist’s field test. Other times it felt like being locked in a Jackson Pollock gallery.

But the dreams were largely nostalgic, flashbacks to youthful inflection points. Two in particular:

^When the O’Neill family of Philadelphia moved from plebian Kensington to the Archie Bunker-row house ambiance of Mayfair, I was about 8 years old. All the neighborhood guys—prospective buddies—were 2 to 3 years older. Enough to look down on the new little kid on the block. But my dad and nearby uncle engaged me a lot in baseball and football, and I could hold my own with the older guys. My mom also helped in this regard. She called me in each weekday evening at 5:00—“Joseph, dinner’s ready.” It was actually code because that’s when Howdy Doody came on, and I didn’t want the older guys to know I was still watching it.

Then one day my mother broke the code. “Joseph, Howdy Doody’s on.” Game on. I got even better at touch football and stickball.

^When I was a sophomore at La Salle High School, I was on what was to become an undefeated, Hall of Fame football team and city champion. I was on the kickoff receiving team, so I would definitely be playing in the season-opener against Bishop Neuman in South Philly. My father, a city bus driver was as pumped as I was. Then he was told he had to fill in for a driver who had called in sick and would have to take over his route and miss my debut.

He did a work-around. He drove the route in the late morning until there were no more passengers. Then he got out and put up the “Charter” sign in front and headed straight to the football field in time for the opening kickoff. I returned it and broke my collarbone in the process. And dad was there. To cheer and then to console.

A final thought on this intense fortnight: epiphanies happen. Life shouldn’t be an assignment. It’s an experience. Live. Love. Laugh. Learn. And even leave a legacy. Otherwise, it’s an ironic ruse.

* Bumper sticker sign of the times: “Critical Thinking: The Other National Deficit.”

* “Dogs are God’s way of apologizing for your relatives.” Spot on.

* Here are some items that made an earlier Festivus grievance list: Gasparilla trespissing, abandoned scooters, elevator gas-passers, media hurricane melodramatics, phone trees, tech help from Bangladesh, LOUD restaurants and Progressive, Allstate and Aflack TV ads.

* “I think it’s going to be a rocky period, but I no longer think that Trump is going to pull an Orban and fundamentally consolidate authoritarian control of this country the way that it looked like he was going to do in March or April.” That was Ian Bassin, a founder of (legal and advocacy group) Protect Democracy, referencing right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

* Democratic strategist James Carville is more optimistic in the short term. He’s predicting that the 2026 midterm elections will be a “wipeout” for Republicans, with Democrats picking up 25 seats “at a minimum. In all likelihood, the Democrats will carry the Senate,” predicted Carville.

* Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly took down “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth at a Congressional oversight hearing. The former Naval combat pilot and NASA astronaut is also suing Hegseth and other senior military leaders over the Pentagon’s attempt to censure and punish him for telling troops not to follow illegal orders. He could become more of a national player during Trump’s second term.

* PAYNE-in-the-ASSessment of Science: Former state Republican Rep. Bobby Payne, a prominent climate change skeptic, has been appointed by Gov. Ron DisAstrous to the state utility board. So much for greenhouse gas concerns.

* 25%: Percentage by which the state budget has grown since 2019.

* Urban Meyer has been appointed by the governor to the board of trustees of New College of Florida. He owns a home in Sarasota.

BTW, New (Look) College is expanding its athletic footprint. And the newly (mascot) named “Mighty Banyan” even has a new beach volleyball team. Jocks are now called “Banyans.” Remaining old New Schoolers are now referred to as “Novos,” which is Latin for the “New” in New College.

* Fort Lauderdale is looking to plant up to 276,000 trees over the next 15 years. The city’s urban forestry plan calls them “critical infrastructure” for protecting air and water, beautifying property and fostering public health.

* Water Street update: A 4-acre vacant lot will be morphing into a 3,500-capacity performance venue—along with retail, dining and a hotel. “This project activates the western edge of the neighborhood…strengthening (Water Street) as a preeminent destination,” noted Strategic Property Partners CEO Josh Taube. Two takeaways: Less downtown vacant-lot acreage, increasingly more like Miami.

* The population of Greenland (57,000) is approximately that of Pinellas Park.

* Australia is outlawing social media for those less than 16.

* Best movie I’ve seen in a while: “Nuremberg,” the dramatization of the 1945-46 Nuremberg trials. Russell Crowe is superb as Hermann Goring. Legal, moral and political issues are well delineated and seamlessly integrated with just enough archival footage.

* “Marty Supreme:” No lack of holiday marketing via Oscar buzz. It features an unlikable lead character, manic optics and loudness, silliness masquerading as humor and ping-pong metaphors. BTW, “Oscar buzz” would be more appropriate for rumors of the imminent arrival of the Weinermobile.

* Recently saw an interesting, uplifting PBS bio-documentary on the occasion of Dick Van Dyke’s 100^th birthday. So glad it wasn’t an obit.

* Audiobook sales reached nearly 2.2 billion in the U.S. last year.

* Number one-ranked Indiana, the Big Ten champ and only undefeated team in the country, won college football’s national championship with a 27-21 win over Miami. A brief sense of normalcy returned to ever-morphing college football. Miami didn’t win its (ACC) conference and didn’t even play in its (Duke defeated Virginia) championship game. Last year’s national champion, Ohio State, didn’t win the Big Ten either.

* Over the last 18 seasons, the Rays have the third most wins (1,523) in MLB.

* Amid all the bizarre and frustrating subplots over the years, one thing still seems certain. The Tampa Bay Rays have to be in Tampa, the geographically-advantaged, logistical, business hub of the Tampa Bay market.

* Flag football (men’s and women’s) will debut at the 2028 Olympics.

* Trump deserves the ultimate Ignoble Prize. Well-earned.

* What would pacify Trump on Greenland? Would he compromise and settle for naming rights? Maybe it could use one.

* “The greatest doctors in the country looked at my brain and came up empty.”—Donald Trump. That’s actually the best way of putting it.

* “The imperial boomerang”: Applicable term for adventures abroad coming back to haunt the home front.

* $obering bottom line: According to a report by the General Accounting Office, the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol resulted in property damage totaling $2.7 billion. It still pales in comparison to the damage done to American democracy and global image.

* “Government cannot prevent some individuals from making errors of judgment. But government can prevent to a very great degree the fooling of sensible people through misstatements and through the withholding of information.” That was President Franklin D. Roosevelt. That was then.

“I don’t think (Trump) wakes up thinking of retribution. But when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”—White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

* Prompted by criticism, Trump belatedly recognized MLK Day. He was at Mar-a-Lago on Monday and then went to Miami for the national football championship game that night. MLK? Miami Likes Kings? BTW, MLK Day has been a federal holiday since 1983 when the bill was signed by–President Ronald Reagan.

* “We will rue the day when we put so much power into one man’s hands.” That was Iowa Republican Sen. L.J. Dickinson after the Senate passed Roosevelt’s CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) bill in early 1932. How ironically prescient.

* It’s obvious that American Pope Leo is more like the Cold War Polish Pope John Paul II than more recent papal predecessors. Leo is a counterweight to Trump’s America First MAGA maneuvers, lamenting Venezuela attacks and a military buildup in the Caribbean to the less-than-humane treatment of immigrants. JP II pushed back against the totalitarian Soviets and the Warsaw Pact.

Ironically, Pope Leo’s eldest brother, Louis Prevost, isn’t on his brother’s side. He’s a Trump devotee, one who has actually been hosted by Trump in the Oval Office as well as at Mar-a-Lago. Hardly a shock that Trump’s political impact on American families also includes the Prevosts.

* “The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.”—British philosopher R.G. Collingood.

* “Now is not the time for making new enemies.”—Voltaire, on his death bed, in response to a priest asking him to renounce Satan.

* “Colleagues, let me be clear: President Trump is a man of action, not endless talk like we see at the United Nations.”—Mike Walz, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., addressing the Security Council on how to handle Iran in its bloody crackdown on anti-regime demonstrators.

* “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force. … The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined. … Trying to reach a (Ukraine-Russia) peace agreement without including Europe in the discussions is not realistic. The war is in Europe.”—Pope Leo XIV.

* “Depending on the document or day of the week, Trumpism can sound like Nixonian realism, pre-World War II isolationism or just swaggering mercantile imperialism.”—Ross Douthat, NYT.

* “Mr. Trump … has made clear that the bipartisan post-Cold War consensus—by which the United States oversaw an economically integrated world order governed by common laws regulating property relations, trade and conflict—has outlived its usefulness. In its place, the White House offers a vision of the world carved up into garrisoned spheres of competing influence.”—Author and Yale history professor Greg Grandin.

* “If you’re focused on America and America First, you start with your own hemisphere.”—Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

* “The uplifting truth is that the solution to identity politics needn’t be one camp defeating the other, but instead achieving together a national escape velocity to more promising terrain.”—Vivek Ramaswamy, GOP presidential candidate in 2024, who is running for governor of Ohio this year.

* “This is Trump’s ship, and they have retired to their quarters hoping that their morally depraved captain has some kind of plan for the ankle-deep water sloshing around their feet other than letting them drown.”—David Faris, The Nation, in noting the meekness of Congressional Republicans as the president’s popularity tanks and a mid-term rebuke could loom.

* “The overarching economic issue animating public debate is affordability, and its most immediate focal point is the expiration of expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies.”—Jason Furman, former White House Council of Economic Advisers chairman from 2013-17.

* “When you and I were growing up, our parents didn’t use a drug; they used a belt and whipped our butt, you know, and told us to sit down.”—Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, at RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearing, talking about treatment for attention deficit disorder in children.

* “I think Florida may not be perceived as conservative as places like Alabama and Texas, but once Florida does things, they ripple.”—Legal Defense Fund attorney Antonio Ingram, on the Sunshine State’s impact in reshaping higher education.

* “I got to see my dreams come true. … I don’t know what I’m going to be doing tomorrow. Whatever comes, I’ll give it my best.”—Dolly Parton, on turning 80.

* “They couldn’t be warmer to us.”—Rays CEO Ken Babby, after meeting with Hal Steinbrenner, chairman and general partner of the Yankees, whose spring training and minor league facility is adjacent to the Hillsborough College site being targeted by the Rays in its new stadium-site search.

* “There is a meanness in this world, and we are defining our country in that meanness.”—Tampa City Council member Luis Viera.

 

More hand-bruise speculation. More embarrassing, high-profile nodding off. More ranting buffoonery. Another “aced” cognition test. We’ve seen this presidential pattern; we’ll see it again. And again.

But we haven’t, until now, actually seen the Trump cognition test. Some likely samples: Solve Hocus-Focus, count backwards from 5, name the day of the week, two SCOTUS justices, three NATO members and the main ingredients of a cheeseburger.

Atorvastatin, Azerbaijan, Acetaminaphen: Which one is a country? Algeria, Albania, Al Roker: Which one is not a country? Andrew Johnson, Lyndon Johnson, Magic Johnson: Which one was not a president? Cherokees, Mokawks, Redskins: Which one is not an indigenous tribe? Name two books, other than “Art of the Deal” and “Mein Kampf,” that you have read. What is Melania’s phone number?