Category: Uncategorized

• Politicians can be like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.
• No more “UFOs.” Because we finally know what they are? No. Because they’re now called unidentified aerial phenomena—or “UAPs.”
• Pronouns of choice? Can be socially and grammatically awkward. How about one for all? She-her-he-him: “SHIM”
• There’s socialism, and then there’s “socialism.” Just like there’s Denmark and there’s Cuba.
• Sign for a smoke shop targeting evangelicals: “Jesus, Maryjane and Joseph Welcome You.”
• T-shirt for the corpulent: “I Beat Anorexia.”
• Palindrome update: “Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog.”

• Ron DiSaster says that if elected president, he would consider Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a position in his Administration—likely with the FDA or the CDC. In further campaign hustle, he is also reportedly considering Steve Bannon for Secretary of State, Jeanine Pirro for Attorney General, Sarah Palin for CIA Director, Alex Jones for Homeland Security Director and Marjorie Taylor Greene for Ambassador to the UN.
• The governor has pledged to sign a nationwide Concealed Carry Bill. Some things you can’t conceal.
• DiSaster rejected some $377 million in federal money for energy efficiency and electrification. To do otherwise, would be an acknowledgment of helpful Biden Administration priorities.
• More book-banning demands from “Moms Against Puberty.”
• “Let kids be kids, especially if hey want to be props.”—A certain disingenuous governor.
• “If you’re a professor in like, you know, Marxist studies, that’s not a loss for Florida.” That was Gov. DiSaster on, like, you know, reports of high faculty turnover at New College.
• Walt Disney World’s governing district—now controlled by the governor’s minions—has abolished diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Could it get worse as we close in on the GOP’s 2024 nominee? Maybe a MAGA Kingdom?
• “I don’t think (the state’s outsized reputation) is helpful for our economic development. Why would you come to a state where the governor and the Legislature preach and pass laws that are inherently spiteful.”—Former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn.
• “Florida has real challenges right now. Inflation is sky high, especially in South Florida, Farmers Insurance just withdrew from the state in the middle of hurricane season, and malaria is breaking out all over. It’s time for Ron DeSanctimonious to come home and deal with the problems he was elected to solve.”—Jason Miller, senior advisor to the Trump campaign.
• “Californification”: An increasingly familiar DiSaster trope in his back-and-forth with California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
• It used to be a dark-humor joke: “This is the suicide hotline; please hold.” Now it’s more like bleak reality. Florida’s 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline calls go unanswered approximately 20 percent of the time.
• Latinos accounted for 12 percent of Florida’s registered voters in 2008. In 2020, according to the Pew Research Center, it was 17 percent.
• Black and Latino voters are five times more likely to register to vote through third-party groups, according to Daniel A. Smith, chairman of UF’s political science department.
• Who knew there was an upside to slavery—such as skills learned while enslaved? Not all apprenticeship programs are the same.
• The faltering DiSaster campaign laid off about 40 percent of its staff last month—or 38 team members.
• It’s never a good sign when a presidential campaign—two months after its official announcement—hits the “reset” button. Rapidly descending poll numbers is usually the motivator. “Streamlining operations” is another DiSaster euphemism along with the ostensible plan to “embrace being the underdog.” Next strategic pitch: “I’m not indicted. Vote for me.”
• “Of course (Trump) lost. … Joe Biden’s president.” Gov. DiSaster punching back.
• Part of being a high-profile, political candidate are cartoon caricatures. Some are worse than others, including a dead-on Alfred E. Newman DuhSantis look.

 

• A new Canadian airline, Lynx Air, will be flying into TIA this fall and offering nonstop flights to Toronto and Montreal. Makes sense as Canadians are the largest source of international visitation, home ownership and foreign direct investment in Tampa Bay.
• Approximately 300 cruises are expected to sail through Tampa this year.
• Tampa received a nice shout-out from the Wall Street Journal for its new, ever-evolving urbanism.  In short, “live, work, play, stay” is seen as a magnet for “millennials and Gen Zers.”
• Tampa Bay’s state representatives—of BOTH parties—signed on in opposition to any new off-shore drilling leases. Yes, there’s still some bipartisan hope.

“Ultimately, I’d like to move bicycles off the Riverwalk.” That was Mayor Jane Castor. We get it. Bicyclists don’t always observe the posted 5 mph speed limit as well as the yield-to-pedestrians signage.

• Since 2003, about 1,700 journalists have been killed in the line of duty around the world.
• Maybe it’s part of being an alien in pop culture, but what’s particularly annoying are loud, action-packed movie trailers of films (too often based on comic book sequels) that you would never, ever want to see. Another sign: referencing “Barbie’s” boyfriend as Klaus.
• No wonder it’s being called “Barbenheimer,” a blend of instant-Oscar-buzz “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” Hollywood and move theater chains have been awaiting, if not praying for, some much-needed, non-streaming box office hype and a major financial boost. Maybe it’s an anomaly, but a most welcome one.
• Striking writers and studios are finally meeting over the strike that began three months ago. One possible result: The movie version.
• Wikipedia ranks among the world’s 10 most visited websites. Its contributors, who make about 345 edits per minute on the site, are not paid.

• Tampa Bay now has four members of MLB’s Hall of Fame as Fred McGriff has joined Wade Boggs, Tony La Russa and Al Lopez.
• Why are there published point spreads for NFL pre-season games?

• ”To stay out of prison.” The motivation for Trump running again, according to presidential candidate and former Texas GOP Congressman Will Hurd.
• Rudy Giuliani has acknowledged that he made false claims about Georgia election workers committing fraud during the 2020 election. But he’s also arguing that such statements were protected by the First Amendment. Have to wonder what the Founders would say about an Amendment that protects seditious lying.
• “Trump has spent over $60 million on two things: falsely attacking DeSantis and paying his own legal fees, not a cent on defeating Biden.”—Andrew Romeo, DeSantis campaign communications director.
• Trump has warned that if Jack Smith jailed him, it would be “very dangerous.” His followers, declared Trump, have “much more passion than they had in 2020.” And that’s scary; we know how Trump can incite his deplorables, and that what’s past is prologue.
• “If the law is supreme, if no man is above the law, then we have a constitutional republic. And if any man can be above the law, then we don’t.”—Historian Jon Meacham.
• Former VP and Trump acolyte Mike Pence acknowledges that he was asked to do more than “pause” the vote count. More like “overturn the election.”
• It’s more than possible that with all the indictments at play, Trump will become a convicted felon. Ironically, in most states he wouldn’t even be allowed to vote.
• Best Trump outcome: Convicted, sentenced and traded for Alexei Navalny and the WSJ’s Evan Gershkovich.

• “Unless Ukraine prevails, there is no (NATO) membership to be discussed at all.”—Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
• “Vladimir Putin is possibly a psychopath and gives every sign of going out like Al Pacino in ‘Scarface.’”—Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal.
• “The broad mass of a nation … will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.”—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.
• “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the people you need to concentrate on.”—Former Democratic Party Leader Robert Strauss.
• “Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”—President Ronald Reagan.
• “The only job that Donald Trump could get in this country is president of the United States.”—Tom Nichols, The Bulwark.
• “He’s trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame.”—Jack Schlossberg, grandson of JFK, on the presidential aspirations of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
• “The Sunshine State is now “the nation’s inflation capital.”—Florida Democratic Party Chairperson Nikki Fried.
• “It’s true we bring doctrines to children. But what is the bad of our indoctrination?—Conservative radio host and columnist Dennis Prager, the co-founder of PragerU, which has been approved for the production of videos in civics and government for K-12 students in Florida.
• “She’s (Susan Lopez) an unelected political puppet who occupies that office illegally, and her pretending to uphold the law is a threat to public safety, freedom and democracy.”—Former Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, who was removed from office by Gov. Ron DiSaster.
• “The challenge now is to take something great and find a way to make it better.”—TIA consultant Pete Ricondo, on the vision for the airport’s master plan for growth over the next 20 years.
• “I said I was hopeful that there was going to be real progress in ’23, and I remain hopeful.”—MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, on Rays’ stadium talks.

It’s become an all-too-familiar query: How did we get here? “Here” being a country rife with heated, hyper-partisan, political division.

The U.S. is a country that has struggled with the original sin of slavery. The U.S. is a country that has tried to balance ideals and hypocritical imperfections. The U.S. is a country riven by a Civil War and presidential assassinations. The U.S. is a country that now encourages the cherry-picking of the Constitution to allow citizen assault weapons and is enamored of bumper sticker ideology about “freedom,” “liberty” and raw, racial nationalism.

But no, we don’t have to go back to 1619 for the roots of fractious reality as we now know it. We could just go back to the time of Father Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh and Madison Square Garden Nazi rallies. Or the Red Scares of the McCarthy era. Or the reign of Dixiecrats, and George Wallace playing the “states’ rights” card. Or SCOTUS tumult. Or Richard Nixon’s less-than-silent “majority.”

“These … right-wing extremists … have been getting away with dirty tactics in American politics

for too long a time.” That wasn’t Nancy Pelosi, but Democratic Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern 50 years ago.

“The state of the union is not good.” That wasn’t Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but President Gerald Ford back in the same day.

So, yes, we’ve seen it coming. And then it all accelerated when Sen. John McCain chose Sarah Palin, to be a heartbeat away from his possible presidency. He green-lighted an alarmingly unqualified right-wingnut who was also an embarrassing insult to women. The presidential-ticket bar wasn’t just low, it was subterranean.

That same year, of course, saw the election of America’s first president of color, Barack Obama. Only it didn’t signal “post racial America.” It rallied a pent-up, racist backlash. In short, all those white Americans who didn’t like their lives and used to find solace and scapegoats in looking down on certain others, were now faced with a president who was one of those “others.” Odious game on: From Tea Partiers to Proud Boys to a cult-figure president who sounded like he was buying a biker-bar round at last call to a Capitol insurrection. Then add ubiquitous, often misinformed media—from social to Fox. And Trump now leads GOP presidential polls—by a lot.

That’s where we are.

* “Democracy will win—if we fight for it.”–Former President Barack Obama.

* Populist Bidenomics pitch: Joe Biden underscored his reputation as an uber pro-labor president by making a Philadelphia union rally the first major political event of his re-election campaign. It enabled him to spotlight the climate, tax and health care package signed into law last year in the context of union endorsement in a key battleground state.

* Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List and NARAL-Pro Choice America have all extended early endorsements of President Biden and VP Kamala Harris. No surprise, but a pragmatic reminder that abortion—and last year’s blindsiding Dobbs v. Jackson ruling—should play a major partisan, base-energizing role in the 2024 election.

* Bollywood at the White House: Penn Masala was part of the WH welcoming ceremony for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Penn Masala is the premier South Asian a cappella group. But, no, it wasn’t quite Doo Wop.

* Secretary of State Antony Blinken notably met with Chinese officials—including President Xi Jinping—to lessen the possibility of a major conflict. Lots of nuanced phrasing. The next day President Biden referred to Xi as a “dictator.” Oops. So much for diplomatic etiquette.

* Given Gavin Newsom’s high national profile, the Dems’ thin bench and his well-chronicled, partisan rivalry with Ron DeSantis, it looks like the California governor is looking at a possible presidential run. He is term-limited after 2026.

Timing, we are again reminded, is everything. Just two years ago Newsom was facing recall. A few years before that, he was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle, former Fox News host and former campaign advisor to Trump who’s now engaged to Donald Trump Jr. Newsom and the rest of us will be hearing about that again.

Deep-sea tourism will never be the same—nor should it. Skydiving never looked so prudent—or inexpensive.