Category: Uncategorized

* The Bucs own this one. Due diligence is still overdue on Antonio Brown. He’s a big-time talent with a well-chronicled problematic past. There are reasons why other teams have parted ways with him. But he was vetted by Tom Brady and was a major contributor to last year’s Super Bowl championship.

So, where do you draw the line? Temper tantrums, assault charges. Stuff happens, even to elite wideouts. But how about a counterfeit vaccination card? That’s a premeditated deception that puts others at potential risk. It’s lying to your franchise, teammates and coaches. We know that head coach Bruce Arians, a three-time cancer survivor, is “pissed.” So, presumably, is the NFL, which suspended Brown (and teammate, safety Mike Edwards) for three games.

Will the Bucs bring either one back for another playoff run? Right now, they’re not saying, which probably says volumes.

* Perspective: This time last year the Super Bowl-champions-to-be Bucs were 7-5; this year they’re 9-3.

* In 1997 Steve Spurrier was paid $2 million a year by the University of Florida. Game on.

* “A talent-acquisition business.”–How new UF football coach Billy Napier described college coaching.

* “If you equate it to college education, it’s insane. If you equate it to business, it makes sense.”–Jackie Sherrill, retired Texas A&M football coach and athletic director, on the soaring salaries for college football coaches.

* Hispoor Jacksonville start notwithstanding, Urban Meyer says he’s staying put, for now, in the National Football League. Steve Spurrier (Washington), Lou Holtz (New York Jets) and Nick Saban (Miami) faced the same dilemma—and then pivoted back to the college ranks after disappointing NFL experiences.

* Another bowl game could still be added to this season’s lineup. That would make it 42. Remember when a bowl invite symbolized a reward for an especially good season? Now not even a winning record is a requirement. No wonder they have names like the Cheez-It Bowl.

* Yo, Philly. No surprise that late in the Lightning’s 7-1 rout of the Flyers in Philadelphia, the crowd was voicing its disapproval. “What’s left of the crowd is booing,” pointed out Bolt’s play-by-play announcer Dave Randorf. Flyers’ management also voiced its disapproval by firing head coach Alain Vigneault shortly thereafter.

* “It’s going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won. We don’t have an option. We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct.” That was Steve Bannon in a recent podcast urging his listeners to seize control of local election administration.

* “Michigan needs a new legislature. The cowards there now are too spineless to investigate election fraud.”–Donald Trump, still at it—with 2022 and 2024 in mind.

* Is there a former Trump insider without a book deal?

* Trump has denied that he tested positive for clarity and candor before his first presidential debate with Joe Biden.

* Word is former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had been “cooperating” with the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. The contemptible Meadows would have avoided being held in contempt. So much for that scenario.

* “They’ll have committees.” That was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy promising that outrageous, far-right caricatures Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Az.), who were censured by House Democrats, will return to committee work (potentially “better ones”) if the GOP takes back the House next year. Another reminder of what’s at stake in the mid-terms.

* “Always see the world through the eyes of others.”–German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her farewell speech.

* “A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.”–Rosalynn Carter.

* “History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex-presidents: Carter, Ford and Nixon—See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil.”–The late Sen. Bob Dole.

* “A man who has never gone to school may steal a freight car, but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.”–Theodore Roosevelt.

* “The (political fund-raising system) we have turns public servants into panhandlers.”–Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald.

* “The rule of thumb is that culture-war issues help Republicans with voters and help Democrats with donors.”–Jonah Goldberg, The Dispatch.

* “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.”–Historian Richard Hofstadter.

* “In his desperate fight to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election, Trump looked for and found the soft spots in our electoral system. His supporters are fighting to make them more vulnerable.”–Jamelle Bouie, New York Times.

* “Gas prices normally rise like a rocket and fall like a feather, so it could take a couple of weeks before prices at the pump fully reflect the downturn in the futures market.”–AAA spokesperson Mark Jenkins.

* “I hear people say all the time, ‘Well, you make a lot of money.’ Yeah, but I create a lot of value.”–Alabama head football coach Nick Saban whose annual earnings now top eight figures.

* “We see Tampa as a growth market, and one of those cities that more and more people are talking about.”–Randall Cook, co-founder and CEO of Roost, a Philadelphia hotel company making its Florida debut with a new extended-stay boutique hotel on Water Street. Roost Tampa will open in March.

It wasn’t enough for Kyle Rittenhouse to be exonerated for shooting and killing two people. He then spiked the stand-your-groundless-rationale football on the Tucker Carlson Show and then a Mar-a-Lago meet-up with, yes, Donald Trump. Nobody’s shocked that, according to Trump, Rittenhouse is a “big fan.” And nobody is shocked that the usual suspects would use Rittenhouse as a pathetic political prop and pawn. A 2024 GOP presidential endorsement from Rittenhouse surely awaits.

Nor is anyone surprised that Trump called him a “really good young man.” It’s an extension of his equivocating comments on white supremacists in Charlottesville. Then he did a Donald double down: “He should not have had to suffer through a trial like that. … That was prosecutorial misconduct.”

In short, the guy who crossed state lines with an assault weapon and helped provoke violence that caused two deaths and was acquitted was made to “suffer.” That’s an insufferable take on vigilante manslaughter. But that’s the way it Mar-a-Lagos in Trump’s perverted parallel universe. But, no, there won’t be a Trump-Rittenhouse ticket.

* “This (omicron)variant is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic.”–President Joe Biden.

* The Department of Labor will officially raise the hourly minimum wage to $15 an hour for employees on federal contracts beginning Jan. 22. It follows through on President Joe Biden’s executive order in April.

* Presidential precedent. “As the president heads into his second year, a lot of the magic is gone and the politics of optimism has fallen on hard times.” No, that wasn’t some dismissive Foxster inveighing against President Joe Biden. That was New York Times journalist—and now a PBS producer—Hedrick Smith assessing the first (recession-impacted) year of President Ronald Reagan.

* Hopefully, Congress has returned from the Thanksgiving week off to accomplish something we can be thankful for. How about raising the debt ceiling and avoiding a default, averting a government shutdown, passing a serious social safety net bill and maybe even getting rid of the filibuster and doing something about voting rights.

* It’s expected that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 72, will run for another term in 2024. Meanwhile, her role now, it seems, is moving President Joe Biden farther left.

* “It’s clear that Biden could be doing a better job at the border. It is not enough of a priority.”–Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, who lives there—and has announced his candidacy for Texas governor.

* As we’ve seen,President Biden’s numbers have been tanking into the 40s since Afghanistan. Economic growth is up, unemployment is down, but pandemic- and supply-chain-impacted inflation is notably much higher than we’ve been used to. And, no, this is not the FDR electorate.

But, for context, some other prominent world leaders have been dealing with serious popularity declines as well. To wit: Canada’s Justin Trudeau: 41 percent approval; France’s Emmanuel Macron: 40 percent; and Britain’s Boris Johnson, 32 percent.

* “The most heavily mutated version of the virus we have seen.”–University of Warwick (UK) virologist Lawrence Young on the omicron variant.

* The U.S. is restricting travel from South Africa and seven other countries in that region. In this case, restrictions mean no travel to or from the designated countries except for returning U.S. citizens and permanent residents who test negative.

* “I do not accept the idea that we have to choose between America and the world.”–U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who has defended offering COVID booster shots to fully vaccinated Americans while also continuing efforts to vaccinate the rest of the world.

* “(The unvaccinated) are the virus’ best friends because they give it a big pool of welcoming hosts.”–Eugene Robinson, Washington Post.

* Booster shots: Appointments available at local Publix, CVS and Walgreens.

* Approximately 32.5 million travelers visited Florida for July through September. This exceeds—by 0.3 percent—the visitor count over the same period in pre-pandemic 2019.

* “Self-reflection is always good. But this is like asking a student to grade their own final paper. … We’re waiting for an independent review.”–Paul Ortiz, president of the University of Florida’s United Faculty of Florida Chapter, on UF’s Task Force investigating the university’s policies on conflicts of interest and outside activities.

* “Politicians want you to cover your face as a way for them to cover their asses. That’s just the truth.” That’s also just another base-pleasing, scripted applause line from Ron DeSantis.

* He’s back on TV. Jon Stewart is the executive producer and host of “The Problem with Jon Stewart” now streaming on Apple TV+. It’s not a reboot of “The Daily Show.” Stewart hosts a panel of experts to discuss societal problems and solutions. One issue per hourly segment. And, yes, political satire is still a component.

* As for those recent (Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes) Fox-pundit departures (over Tucker Carlson’s Jan. 6 conspiracy riffs), what the hell took so long? They had been there for a dozen years. At least Shepard Smith bailed out in 2019.

* Bookstore reality: Roughly half of all paperback and hard back purchases in the U.S. are made on Amazon.

* We all know, of course, what “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” are. But how about “Brown Friday?” That’s the designation of the day after Thanksgiving by plumbers. Let’s leave it at that.

* “Rises on rumors. Falls on facts.” Still an applicable truism for stock market dynamics.

* “A one-armed economist.” What President Harry Truman whimsically wished for as a way of addressing economists’ penchant for saying: “But on the other hand.”

* “Now comes good sailing.”–What Henry David Thoreau whispered to his sister on his deathbed.

* “They.” For now, it seems the most acceptable neutral pronoun for trans-sexual individuals. However, “they” is a distractingly ungrammatical malaprop. How about “shim,” a grammar-conforming blend of she and him?

* Nice touch by the Lightning to salute former play-by-play broadcaster Rick Peckam with the “Rick Peckam Broadcast Booths” at Amalie Arena. He was recently honored at the Hockey Hall of Fame for outstanding contributions as a broadcaster. Two quick thoughts. First, Peckam was a first-class professional, who called a great game. Second, I remember a conversation we had when I asked him how he could call everything in a game that was frenetically-paced, with personnel changes every minute and a puck that wasn’t always visible. His answer: “I don’t.” Duh. Peckam excelled at giving viewers the “big picture.” Hockey has to be the hardest sport for a broadcaster.

* I miss the UF-FSU game of old. An in-state rivalry where national implications were a given. No longer. Last Saturday’s version was sloppy and annoying. An on-side kick in the final seconds that ended in a (FSU) kicker whiff seemed symbolically appropriate. And no help from the booth, with ESPN’s Robert Griffin III (remember “RG3”?) conflating intensity and enthusiasm with histrionics, lack of discipline, boorish demeanor and punk attitudes.

* The NHL and its players have until Jan. 10 to make the final call about participation in the Beijing Winter Olympics. That impacts a lot of Bolts’ players.

* Priorities: the NHL still doesn’t play games on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas, something the NFL, NBA and NCAA can’t claim.

*The 13th-ranked USF women’s basketball team defeated defending NCAA champ Stanford.

* “The Matildas”: the Australian nickname for its women’s soccer team.