Opinions to go Online

 

* The reported selling price for the Rays: $1.7 billion. According to Forbes, the New York Yankees’ franchise is worth $8.2 billion. That sort of disparity is a way of life in Major League Baseball. That’s why a salary cap—not unlike all other major professional sports—is necessary. It means everybody has to play by the same rules. If the Rays, for example, make a bad deal and overpay for an underperforming or oft-injured player, it can hurt big time. For the Yankees—and several other big-market franchises—it’s the cost of doing business. Buy another player.

* “‘Tampering’ is such a nice term for stealing our players.”–Miami of Ohio football coach Chuck Martin.

* The Lightning will enter the upcoming 2025-26 season on a 417-game home sellout streak.

* Another $ign of the times: USF’s next athletic director will have a different title: “CEO of Athletics.” Another reminder of the pay-to-play, monitized era of what used to be amateur athletics.

 

* “You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.”–George Bernard Shaw.

* “The first step in calculating which way to go is to find out where you are.”–Margaret Thatcher.

* “In America and in Israel when a strong right-wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will. They won’t win in either place.”–Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

* “Courts must have the power to order everyone (including the executive) to follow the law—full stop.”–SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

* “We have privatized morality so that there are no longer shared values.”–David Brooks, NYT.

* “We have made no decisions about September.”–Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, on whether the Fed will cut its short-term interest rate at its next meeting.

* “Trump is not deterred by reality. He just says what he wants to say.”–John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser.

* “There is simply no reward for reaching across the aisle.”–Former Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake.

* “Corporations operate under a sword of Damocles in every interaction with the White House.”–University of Minnesota Law Professor Alan Z. Rozenshtein.

* “This is an opportunity to create the nation’s first true transcontinental railroad.”–TD Cowan stock analyst Jason Seidl, on merger talks between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern.

* “We have a lot of work to do with the counties. We have a lot of work to do with the cities. But what I can tell you is that I’m not going away.”–Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia, who also oversees Florida DOGE.

* “We will continue to ensure that the material in Florida schools focuses on enhancing academic achievement, not gender ideology.”–Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas.

* “I’m a big believer (that) until things happen, they don’t happen.”–Rays owner Stuart Sternberg.

When it comes to parents’ rights over school curricula and their children’s best interests regarding “appropriate” books, it would help if parents did their homework without ideological motivation that turns their kids into political MAGA props. Having children doesn’t mean having good judgment. It doesn’t mean doing what’s best for your kids or society. Even the righteous can be wrong.

This didn’t matter much to a Supreme Court that recently ruled that parents have a right to opt their schoolchildren out of classes and lessons that offend their beliefs. Speaking for the 6-3 minority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor put it in context by warning that there will be “chaos for this nation’s public schools.”

But maybe we’re getting inured to chaos.

* Trump, despite campaign criticism of American involvement in foreign wars, has failed to avoid dragging the U.S. into another Muddled East conflict. It’s an opportunity for Dems to rally around something that most Americans would agree on, other than anti-autocratic rhetoric that sounds partisan.

* “I know a lot about the Democratic Party, right? I can’t tell you who their leader is. I can’t tell you that I see anybody on the horizon.” That was Donald Trump. But that take, alas, is not limited to him.

* Big, beautiful campaign help? “We can all rally around this. And we can all run on this single issue all the way to 2026…We’re going to pick up more than 40 House seats, I can tell you.” That was veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, on the mid-term impact of the partisan passage of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

* Among those not agreeing with Elon Musk’s interest in starting a third party: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “When you do another party, especially if you’re running on some of the issues that he talks about, you know, that would end up, if he funds Senate and House candidates in competitive races, that would likely end up meaning the Democrats would win all the competitive Senate and House races.” Party on, GOPsters.

* Top two, most blatantly obvious oxymorons: “Civil War” and “Trump Library.”

* The opposite of guilty is: not-guilty–not innocent. The former is a legal term; the latter, a moral one. For example, had Diddy Combs not been convicted of anything, he would be flat-out, not-guilty—but hardly innocent.

* The recent Independence birthday of the U.S. is pause for more reflection than celebration. It’s what happens when a country goes from “Enlightened America” to “Frightened America.”

* “If you bring up my past, you should know that Jesus dropped the charges.”

* The only difference between cult leaders Donald Trump and the Rev. Jim Jones is that Trump would have charged for the Kool-Aid.

* Sign of the times: “I Like My ICE Crushed.”

* Trump wants to be included on Mount RushnoMore. If he is, who’s next? Andrew Johnson?

* The annual cost for the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration camp: $450 million. That, of course, doesn’t include ecosystem threats. The gubernatorial rationale: “There needs to be more ability to intake, process and then deport,” explained Gov. Ron DisAstrous. “This answers that.”

And the Florida GOP is doing its part. It’s now advertising, no surprise, merchandise branded by the facility’s name. “Grab our merch to support tough-on-crime borders!” These include ($30) “Alligator Alcatraz” T-Shirts, ($27) hats and ($15) beer koozies. Jeers—and one day may “Alligator Alcatraz” be filled by those who built it.

BTW, what could be next after “Alligator Alcatraz”? Serpent Sing Sing?

* That was then: Early on, Gov. DisAstrous credibly positioned himself as a champion of the Everglades. Concern over a fragile ecosystem, however, became less a priority than self-serving deportation politics.

* But there is some good news. The governor signed a bill to ban oil-drilling along the Apalachicola River. “It really shows that there’s power when folks come together,” pointed out Gil Damon, director of the non-profit Downriver Project.

* The Execution State: Florida leads the country with eight executions. So far, a total of 26 men have been put to death this year in the U.S.

* “Connecting to Tampa means extending the system to the next biggest population center in Florida not presently served and will bring approximately 75% of the state’s population into proximity to a Brightline station.”–Ashley Blasewitz, Brightline spokeswoman, on Brightline Florida’s announced plans to extend its high-speed service from Orlando International Airport to Tampa. Such long overdue high-speed rail scenarios, of course, wouldn’t still be in the news had it not been for Rick Scott.

* According to Hillel International, the University of Florida has the largest number of Jewish undergraduate students in the country.

* Whenever MacDill-based CentCom is back in the news, it’s usually not good. It likely means a Middle East conflict involving the U.S. under CentCom’s strategic direction.

* The Tampa/St. Pete area ranked 11^th as a TV market and 17^th in population in 2023. That’s a big part of the reason why MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has often stated that MLB is committed to keeping a team in the Tampa Bay market. The top relocation markets are Orlando, Jacksonville, Nashville and Charlotte.

* EpsteinGate? Trump’s self-serving, predatory MO has been well documented over the years: An unethical, Russia-linked, immoral grifter, pathologically given to narcissism, lying and embarrassing buffoonery. The easily manipulated, MAGA base has dismissed the manifestly obvious as witchhunts and fake news targeting their celebrity cult leader. Epstein files? Just another day at the orifice. Only this one includes the clumsy mismanagement of AG Pam Blondi; too bad she wasn’t named provost of Trump University.

* The Big Bullsh*t Bill: In what other context would cutting Medicaid and food stamps while adding trillions to the deficit be described as “beautiful.”

* Iran: America has 40,000 (endangered) troops in the Israel-Iran conflict region, as Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump possibly know.

* Deep-State, Big Government update: The Deportation Industrial Complex.

* Conflicts of Interests update: “This has been the strongest year in the remarkable history of the Trump Organization.”–Eric Trump. Real estate and crypto ventures matter mightily when the Trump brand has a worldwide White House identity.

* Warped Wahoo nostalgia: Trump misses the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins.

* “Trump is the Republican Party. That is settled.” Tressie McMillan Cotton, NYT. Also settled: This is not the Party of Lincoln.

* “Truthful hyperbole”: What Trump believes in, according to “The Art of the Deal.”

* Trump said he didn’t know his use of “shylock” in a recent speech could be considered anti-semitic. And chances are, he still thinks dining at Mar-a-Lago with a Holocaust-denying, white nationalist wasn’t a bad idea. Wonder what Jared thinks?

* Big Beautiful Small Talk: Trump recently praised Joseph Boakai, the president of Liberia, for speaking English “so beautifully.” Not part of Trump prep: Knowing that the official language of Liberia is English.

* “Secretary of War”: How Trump sometimes references Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

* “(It’s) the greatest form of hypocrisy in American politics. When people see independent thinking on the other side, they cheer. But when those very same people see independent thinking coming from their side, they scorn, ostracize and even censure them.” That was North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who voted against Trump’s “one big beautiful bill,” and then announced that he would not run for re-election. Too bad he isn’t trying to stay in the Senate and use next year’s high-profile, re-election campaign, even if a likely non-winner, to underscore that Trump’s bill—as well as his authoritarian modus operandi—are incompatible with American democracy.

* “Overpromise, underdeliver, change the subject…(Mr. Trump) does not evolve.”–Matthew Walther, editor of The Lamp, a Catholic literary journal.

* “He has an actually quite decent ability to mix cognitive decline with narcissism. I mean that’s a two-fer.”–Mary Trump, the president’s niece.

* Israeli reality: A recent Gallup Poll survey showed that just 46% of Americans expressed support for Israel. That’s a reaction to an authoritarian leader and overkill in Gaza. Too bad that the world—not just Americans—can’t support innocent Palestinian civilians while condemning Hamas for starting a war in a cruelly gross fashion and then hiding behind non-combatant shields. Israel is better than Benjamin Netanyahu—just as America is better than Donald Trump.

* At one time, Terry Moran was a candidate to succeed the late Peter Jennings as ABC news anchor. Now he’s been fired—after 28 years. It’s what happens when you make an inappropriate, however understandable and ironically accurate, post on X that labeled Trump and Stephen Miller, his odious deputy chief of staff for policy, as “world class haters.” The latter, he added, operates more on “bile” than “brains.” Moran, who now refers to himself as an “independent journalist,” is currently posting on Substack.

* Two years ago, Fox News lost a hefty defamation suit to the Dominion Voting System. This year it’s California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s suing Fox for defamation. One obvious takeaway: It inevitably comes with an unfair and unbalanced business model. In short, it’s the rationale that you aren’t pushing the envelope on partisan politics and better ratings if you’re always reporting accurately and commenting fairly.

* TBT’s “News & Brews”: Whatever it takes, including “meet and greets” with readers, to try and stay relevant and connected to a transitional reader base. The Times also has launched a weekly newsletter, Florida In Focus.

* “We are analog creatures in a digital world.”–On Being podcast host Krista Tippett.

* “Paramount may have closed this case, but it opened the door to the idea that the government should be the media’s editor in chief.”–Bob Corn-Revere, of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, on the agreement to pay President Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over the editing of an interview on “60 Minutes.”

* “You do not get rewarded for telling the hard truths about America in a profit-seeking environment.”–The late Bill Moyers.