Category: Uncategorized

• Say this for President Joe Biden and the tragic mess that has been the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan: He did the right thing. But he did it poorly. Some national security heads–such as NSA Jake Sullivan–should roll. And you don’t have to be a Trumpster or a disaffected Dem to agree.
• The Taliban and ISIS, however odious, are adversaries, not allies. The Taliban reflects political Islam, wants foreign aid and recognition and yearns to govern, even if in a non-secular, medieval manner. The remnants of ISIS are depraved jihadists. So why did the Taliban expedite the release of all those ISIS prisoners when they stormed Kabul? Because this is Afghanistan, a failed, corrupt, narco state, and this is what you get when overthrowing a government. It’s never seamless. If the Taliban were sagely sincere about their seemingly moderate statements—because they don’t want isolation from the international community—they would work, in effect–on or off the record–with the U.S. to eliminate ISIS and save lives. And then take the credit as America ingloriously exits.
• Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 83, is the senior member of the Court’s (three-member) liberal wing. It would not be an understatement to say that he is the subject of speculation and concern about his ongoing tenure on the Court. The untimely death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a reminder of the implications when the justice and the incumbent president are ideological opposites and Mitch McConnell is still lurking. Breyer hasn’t committed himself to stepping down while Joe Biden is president—only to thinking about it. “I don’t think I’m going to stay there till I die—hope not,” said the still-equivocating Breyer. Take one for team democracy, Judge.
• Democrats are encouraged by data showing increasing urban diversity in Southern states. It has potential (but well shy of a guarantee) to complicate GOP efforts to keep statehouses red.
• Heads up, Joe Biden. “Saturday Night Live” will soon return and the president will be in their parody crosshairs. It won’t be pretty. There’s already too much material.

• “If we can get through this winter … I hope we can get some good control in the spring of 2022.”—Dr. Anthony Fauci, who noted it will be impossible to get a grip on the pandemic until vaccination rates dramatically increase.
• More than 90 million eligible Americans are still unvaccinated.
• According to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. is now averaging about 140,000 new cases and 1,000 deaths per day.
• According to Delta Air Lines, the average hospital stay for the virus costs of its employees is $40,000. Not coincidentally, Delta, which is self-insured, will charge employees on the company health plan $200 a month if they don’t get vaccinated.
• Starting Sept. 7, Goldman Sachs will require anyone who enters the bank’s U.S. offices—including clients—to be fully vaccinated.
• Beginning Oct. 1, immigrants seeking green cards must show proof of vaccination.
• 75 percent of active-duty members of the Navy are fully vaccinated. That’s the highest of the main four branches of the U.S. military.
• According to the Biden Administration, half of U.S. adolescents ages 12-17 have received at least one COVID vaccine. The inoculation rate among teens is growing faster than any other age group.
• Mississippi: 37 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 13 percent of Americans worked from home at some point in July—in contrast to a pandemic peak of 35 percent in May 2020.
• “I think it’s important that we reduce the number of visitors coming here to the islands.”—That was Hawaii Gov. David Ige, who pleaded with tourists not to visit the islands through at least the end of October.
• The week of Aug. 20-27 saw Florida report 1,727 COVID deaths, the highest number of COVID fatalities reported in a single week since the beginning of the pandemic.
• As of last Friday, Florida was recording an average of 242 virus deaths a day—or almost as many as California and Texas combined.
• “The delta variant is exceptional at finding vulnerable populations.”—Dr. Jason L. Salemi, a USF epidemiologist.
• The Diocese of St. Petersburg is now—at least temporarily—requiring students, staff and campus visitors to wear masks.

• Mayor Jane Castor is requiring all 4,700 city workers to be fully vaccinated by the end of September. No, she didn’t run it by RegeneRon DeSantis.
• The purposely unvaccinated are among us and a self-evident societal threat during a pandemic. That the problem includes a good chunk of the workforce, some 2,900 employees, that is overseen by Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, is discouraging—and unconscionable. “Too many people who work here are not getting it and show up to work here every day exposing others to infection,” said Gualtieri. He acknowledged about 27 percent of his workforce had been vaccinated–through Aug. 10–at the agency on-site clinic, well below the 63 percent vaccination rate for the county as a whole.

Too bad Gualtieri did not flat-out mandate vaccines or masks for his agency. He cited individual rights. “You have a right to control your own health but you also have an obligation to not be selfish and help keep other from getting COVID from you,” he added. It’s beyond defensible that individual “rights” in a collective scourge would be countenanced among those entrusted with carrying out public safety.

• Tampa Police Officer Delvin White, who was fired in March for using the n-word, has been reinstated. Good. Bad that it ever happened in the first place to this popular black high school resource officer who served as a mentor for students. His nonsensical (an appropriate n-word) firing was a blatant overreaction that totally ignored context and connotation.
• Tampa topped Forbes’ list of Emerging Tech Cities. (The rest of the top 5: Miami, New York, Austin and San Francisco.) Forbes notes that there are now more than 50 software and IT companies in Tampa, and the city accounts for more than 25 percent of Florida’s tech jobs. Forbes also underscored the impact of the Water Street Tampa development that is geared toward tech.
• For its Lincoln Day fundraiser, the Hillsborough County Republican Party called on Marjorie Taylor Greene to speak. What a ghastly get. Wonder what the back-up plan was. David Duke? Ted Nugent? Matt Gaetz? Steve Bannon? No, this is not the GOPster party of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, previous Lincoln Day speakers. BTW, how hypocritical that Trump-fealty GOPsters should even celebrate “‘Lincoln’ Day.” That’s now a sacrilege, unless some locals are nostalgic for American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell. Then it’s another abomination.
• Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren is generating some interest from those who would like to see him run statewide—for attorney general.
• The St. Petersburg mayoral primary voter turnout: 28.5 percent.

• Somehow Gov. RegeneRON DeSantis is finding enough time away from the office—in a state ravaged by the delta variant—to hit the out-of-state road for fundraising. From Pennsylvania to Texas to Southern California. The bottom line: It’s how an uber ambitious MAGA politician cultivates a national donor network—even as a circuit court judge rules he had no legal authority to ban mask mandates in schools. But personal “liberty” over collective responsibility plays well with the usual fundraising crowds.
• The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate moved from 11.5 percent in July 2020 to 5.1 percent for July 2021.
• Walt Disney World is requiring employees—union as well as non-union and salaried workers to be fully vaccinated to keep their jobs. As if unionization should have anything to do with immunization and public health during a pandemic.
• A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that DeSantis’ approval rating was 47 percent.

• Given the prominence and ubiquity of 24-7 online and cable news, it’s a challenge for daily newspapers to literally stay in business and come up with high-profile news copy of local interest. It’s why we periodically see front-page, above-the fold, news-judgment calls such as the Tampa Bay Times’ recent “Breaking Barriers” feature about local female spear-fishers. Inspiring? A “sport” that involves shooting spears into fish? Wrestling never seemed so legitimately newsworthy.
• “It is enraging to watch a parade of dunderheads preen on cable—anchors and generals and chatterers—the same people whose cheerleading ensnared us in 20 years of quicksand in Iraq and Afghanistan.”—Maureen Dowd, New York Times.
• Optics-R-Us: Do we really need hurricane-covering reporters outside holding on to lampposts and their hats to underscore that this is, indeed, a big storm? Aren’t the cones of apocalypse and strewn spaghetti models melodramatic enough?

• “Civil War”: Isn’t that an oxymoron?
• Tough call: Although this is Florida, why bother rolling up your car windows and putting on the air conditioning, when you can otherwise share your, uh, music with other motorists and pedestrians?

• Among those likely disappointed that the Baltimore Orioles’ losing streak ended at 19: hard-core Philadelphia Phillies fans. The Phillies own the modern MLB record for consecutive losses: 23, set in 1961.
• Speaking of the bottom-feeding O’s, it’s been noted—in the context of being a really bad team–that their payroll is threadbare. The opening-day number, according to Baseball Prospectus, was $57 million—or 27^th in MLB—ranking ahead of only Miami, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. BTW, Tampa Bay was at $67 million on opening day, but as we know, the Rays still find a way to win among those with payrolls as big as $200 million.

• “When President Trump was president, you didn’t see crisis after crisis. You just didn’t see it.”—This is former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, as seen through her Fox News revisionist lens.
• Monetizing chaos and tragedy: Military contractor Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, is offering charter flights out of Afghanistan at $6,000 per seat. Prince is the brother of former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Too bad Jeff Bezos couldn’t just write a check.
• If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.”—So spoke the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court. The action ends protections for some 3.5 million people in the U.S. facing evictions in the next two months. Another reminder how much presidential SCOTUS appointments—and who controls the Senate–matter.
• Legacy update: Trump, even as a twice-impeached former president, manages, as we know, to stay prominent in the news cycle. But it’s not just “Stop the Steal” and “Vote for Herschel” rallies. We’ve now seen seven Capitol Police officers sue Trump for encouraging and supporting acts of violence that resulted in the Jan. 3 Capitol siege.

• “We will not be deterred by terrorists. We will not let them stop our (evacuation) mission. … America will not be intimidated.”—President Joe Biden.
• “You shouldn’t lose a bidding war on your home to speculators. It’s time for things to change.”—Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has promised to introduce a two-year ban on foreign home buyers to address housing affordability. The Canadian housing market has soared during the pandemic.
• “What is going on now is both entirely predictable, but entirely preventable.”—Dr. Anthony Fauci.
• “For ISIS, social media was a recruitment tool. For the Taliban, social media is primarily about winning over their domestic audience—and not alienating their international one. …The Taliban will continue to target one particular audience: global elites. They attend conferences, visit capitals, publish op-eds and hold news conferences.”—Richard Stengel, former Time magazine editor, who served as President Barack Obama’s under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs.
• “Let me be crystal clear about this: There is no deadline on our work to help any remaining American citizens who decide they want to leave, to do so. That effort will continue … past Aug. 31.”—Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.
• “Twenty years was not enough to complete a journey from the seventh-century rule of the Taliban and a 30-year civil war to a stable government. We—and they—needed more time.”—Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
• “History offers vanishingly few examples of wars that were actually worth a damn, and this is particularly true of nearly every U.S. military intervention since 1945.”—Natalie Shure, New Republic.
• “If there’s a graceful, orderly way to abandon involvement in a brutal, unresolved civil war on the other side of the world, please cite historical precedents. I can’t find them.”—Eugene Robinson, Washington Post.
• “We hope Afghanistan does not become an epicenter for terrorism again. …What matters is how the U.S. repositions itself in the Asia Pacific, engages the broader region and continues the fight against terrorism.”—Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
• “It is far easier to capture territory as an insurgency than it is to govern it.”—Ashley Jackson, author of “Negotiating Survival: Civilian-Insurgent Relations in Afghanistan.”
• “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”—Voltaire.
• “It is our time to unleash the power of New York’s women. And make sure that any barriers to success and opportunity are eradicated, once and for all.”—Kathleen C. Hochul, the first woman to become governor of New York.
• “The demographics have clearly changed against us. We need to be working on voter registration to pull people into the Republican Party.”—Art Wood, chairman of the Hillsborough County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day fundraiser.

“I was actually quite shocked at how close the Red Tide is. It’s actually sitting right off of our coast right now.”—Pinellas County Public Works Director Kelli Hammer.     

It’s too bad that Tallahassee—as in the governor, the legislature and the State Board of Education—doesn’t prioritize common sense, common-good and self-determination when it comes to reining in COVID and its malignant delta variant. Some things really should be immune to self-serving politics, blatantly partisan priorities and legal crucibles. In sounding like another Ron DeSantis lackey, Board Chairman Tom Grady said that Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran should “take all steps to enforce” a state rule that says school districts must give parents the ability to SOLELY decide whether their children should wear masks.

This, of course, is in the context of younger people now being infected at higher rates than before. In-school learning sans masks is collectively and unconscionably risky. The back-and-forth between Tallahassee and local districts is, alas, mirroring the increasingly confrontational relationship between DeSantis and the Biden Administration.

Here’s a bottom line we should adhere to: None of us should feel free to disingenuously and ignorantly redefine and misappropriate personal “freedom,” so that it imposes unnecessary public health dangers to others. That’s not “freedom” or “liberty”; it’s calculated, in-your-face, bumper-sticker idiocy.