Category: Uncategorized

• Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Phase 3 of reopening includes lifting restrictions on businesses’ capacities and operations—and no more fines and penalties for mask-ordinance violations. What could go wrong with depending on self-discipline, common cause and common public-health sense in our bars and restaurants? Is it laissez-unfaire? Whether it’s COVID management, former felons’ voting rights or anti-protestor legislation, DeSantis keeps doubling down on his whoring out for Trump approval and agendas.
• “Flori-duh” update: Hillsborough deputies show up at an apartment where guys are watching Lightning hockey. A neighbor had overheard “Shoot, Shoot” yelled loudly. It meant a puck, not a bullet.

• Pandemic Cup: Thanks, Bolts, we needed that. Stanley needed another Tampa Bay tan, and our community needed the opportunity to revel with a cause beyond bar reopenings. Yes, the Lightning, encased in its two-month Toronto-Edmonton bubble, won the iconic Stanley Cup with its Game 6, 2-0 shutout of the Dallas Stars on Monday. There’s no more iconic trophy, one that was first presented in the 1890s, in the sports world. It also resonates internationally—from North America to Scandinavia, Europe and Russia.

After last season’s colossal disappointment, the Bolts got bigger, tougher and better. Redemption, at last, will no longer be a theme going forward. Nothing needs exorcising.

For now it’s well-timed, community celebration after that two-month Canadian gauntlet, and nobody embodies the ultimate hockey achievement and feel-good fan frenzy quite like Lightning captain Steven Stamkos, who has long been the competitive face and classy identity of the Bolts. A Lee Roy Selmon on skates. That’s why it was appropriate for Commissioner Gary Bettman to literally present the Stanley Cup to him. And how appropriate that the injured Stamkos, who played less than three minutes total throughout the playoffs, used his precious time to score a key goal on his only shot, one that further energized and galvanized the Bolts to go on and win game three. It was no mere cameo. It was an adrenaline boost for a team on a mission. And now mission accomplished: a Stanley Cup for a franchise that was overdue—and a COVID diversion for a community that needed to test positive for unbridled joy and pride.

• “Our hope is going to be to fill this stadium with fans. But the smart thing to do is to prepare just in case.”—Jonathan Barker, head of live events and production for the NFL, on fan scenarios for Super Bowl 55 at Raymond James Stadium.
• This year’s pandemic-impacted NCAA basketball season will still begin with the annual Maui Invitational—Nov.30-Dec. 2—but it will be played in bubble-prepared Asheville, N.C.—not Hawaii.
• The Rays won the American League East for the third time. It’s a very big deal—even if the celebration involved Silly String being sprayed instead of champagne. But confetti canons are still cool.
• “Phandemic.” How especially loyal sports fans describe their new-normal gatherings to root on their favorite team.

• “We are moving in a very dangerous direction. Our world cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe in a Great Fracture—each with its own trade and financial rules and internet and artificial intelligence capacities. (Such a divide) risks inevitably turning into a geostrategic and military divide. We must avoid this at all costs.”—UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on the growing discord between the U.S. and China.
• “Today as part of our continuing fight against communist oppression, I am announcing that the Treasury Department will prohibit U.S. travelers from staying at properties owned by the Cuban government.”—President Donald Trump, during a speech to honor Bay of Pigs veterans at the White House.
• “White supremacist extremists, from a lethality standpoint over the last two years … are certainly the most persistent and lethal threat when we talk about domestic violent extremists.”—Chad Wolf, acting head of the Department of Homeland Security.
• “I propose that Congress … form a supremely high-level bipartisan and nonpartisan commission to oversee the election. If we fail to take every conceivable effort to ensure the integrity of our election, the winners will not be Donald Trump or Joe Biden, Republicans or Democrats. The only winners will be Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Ali Khamenei.”—Dan Coats, former director of national intelligence from 2017 to 2019.
• “She has won the admiration of women across the country and indeed all across the world.”—Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s SCOTUS nominee, on the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
• “There are really no precedents in our country. This is a president who has threatened to jail his political opponents. Now he is suggesting he would not respect the results of an election. These are serious warning signs.”—Chris Edelson, professor of government at American University.
• “Nothing says democracy like a president who’s a squatter.”—Comedian Bill Maher.
• “We want to make sure that the election is honest, and I’m not sure that it can be.”—Donald Trump.
• “If Republicans lose, we will accept the result.”—South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
• “Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power; without that, there is Belarus.”—Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney.
• “Justice Ginsburg’s death is going to be a wake-up call when (Floridians) hear that their health care weighs in the (election) balance.”—Florida Congresswoman Kathy Castor.
• “We are betting on the recovery of Ybor. We’re betting on the recovery of Florida, of the rest of the country.”—Pablo Molinari, general manager of the recently opened Hotel Haya in Ybor City.
• “Not only are we planning for Gasparilla, we’re still planning to make it fun too.”—EventFest founder and president Darrell Stefany.

 “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

• Here they come, those quadrennial presidential debates that galvanize the media and entice the public with the promise of political performance art. The first one is but days away with Chris Wallace, the “Fox News Sunday” anchor, serving as the sole moderator.

A few thoughts on the process. No, we’re not returning to the rudimentary Kennedy-Nixon debates hosted by Howard K. Smith, but we can still cherry pick from that historic time. We now have a Commission on Presidential Debates making the important calls. No more than one moderator is a good start. We don’t need a team, for whom network branding is a given. Ideally, however, C-SPAN or PBS should be first among equals. Someone with journalistic bona fides and a commanding enough presence to stay in charge—including via fact check–is mandatory. And hold debates sans live audiences, who are primed to cheer and jeer gotcha lines. Let’s not encourage—and reward—inevitable performance art.

Substantive global and national issues must be debated—not reduced to cliches, punch lines and put downs. Forums of this magnitude can’t be reality TV, even if the incumbent is still an apprentice. No, we can’t do anything about who’s debating, but we can still do something to make it obvious who isn’t qualified for the most important job in the world.

• Debate advice for Biden: Call the incumbent “Donald” not Mr. President. It matters to a narcissist. Then go on the offensive and call him out–and be ready for the fire hose of lies from an opponent who just wings it because debate prep is just for suckers. Bring the fact-check extinguisher—and hope the moderator has access to real-time fact-checking.
• “We have done a phenomenal job with respect to COVID-19… If we didn’t do our job, it would be three and a half, two and a half, maybe three million people (dead).” That was the misleader-in-chief riffing on his self-serving, parallel universe.
• Unless you are the Palestinians, the deal the U.S. cut with some Gulf Arab countries is a qualified success. It results from Iran-driven geopolitics, a number of years in the making, and billion-dollar military hardware deals. But West Bank annexation is still unsettled and still festering, a two-state scenario still stillborn and an historic peace accord no less illusive–as the Palestinians well know.   
• “Fill that seat!” The latest Trump-rally chant.
• “Talk to a firefighter if you think that climate change isn’t real. It seems like this administration are the last vestiges of the Flat Earth Society of this generation.” That was Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti—responding to President Trump’s clueless, climate-dismissing take on devastating, West Coast wildfires. The ones that killed dozens, forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, burned millions of acres and wiped out communities. The ones that Trump attributes to poor forest management.
• It’s downright frightening—and unconscionable–that a number of doctors are increasingly worried that a lot of Americans just won’t trust a vaccine promoted as a possible October surprise by the president, one who has extolled the pandemic value of Clorox.
• Trump got a grilling at an ABC/George Stephanopoulos-hosted town hall. The Bob Woodward-esque begged question (again): Why deal with those who are better informed and won’t accept your ongoing misinformation and generalizations—and, as a result, can put you in an embarrassing position? Because Trump is narcissistically Trump, and nobody can talk him out of anything that he wants to do, especially if it involves a microphone and a national forum. 
• “To him, a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks. He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.”—No that wasn’t some disgruntled, former Trump administration staffer. That was Dan Coats, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, who knows how critically important and sacrosanct truth is to national security.
• During his (under oath) testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee, FBI Director Chris Wray confirmed that Russia has been “very active” in trying to influence the November election by sowing divisiveness and trying to “denigrate” the candidacy of Joe Biden. Another reminder that Putin prefers Trump as the U.S. president. Still beyond disturbing as to why that would be.
• Candor, whatever its context, has never been more welcome. Exhibit A: Michael Cohen’s response on why Republicans have continued to support Trump. “Because we’re stupid,” he admitted. “You know, we’re a bunch of sycophants. He’s very much like a cult leader.” Maybe we should have seen it coming. Charles Manson, Jim Jones, Donald Trump.
• In the zero-sum, polarizing time of Trump–he’s a nativist cult leader or an existential threat–how is anyone an “undecided” voter?
• There’s self-serving political exaggeration and then there’s the Trump-enabled new hyperbolic normal. Most recent example from someone other than Trump: AG William Barr and his characterization of the COVID lockdown. “The greatest intrusion on civil liberties (in U.S. history) other than slavery.” But, yes, slavery was worse.
• Trump as we know, called the Big Ten commissioner, Kevin Warren, about playing football this fall. Interestingly, he didn’t contact the Pac-12. Hardly coincidental that the Big 10, where the culture of football is deep-rooted and rabid, includes a number of swing states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, most notably. The West Coast is notably politically blue—and at lethal odds with Trump over climate change and federal response to police-brutality protests. 
• Ivanka Trump and Pam Bondi met up with invited local GOPsters at the Columbia Restaurant for what was called a “fireside chat.” It could also be called an Ybor City desecration.  

#AloneTogether

• “I think we are probably looking at late second quarter, third quarter 2021.”—CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, on when most of the American public will have access to a coronavirus vaccine.
• The U.S. has 4 percent of the world’s population and 20 percent of its COVID deaths.
• Of the American children and teens who have died, 45 percent were Hispanic, 29 percent were black and 4 percent were American Indian.
• Until the border re-opens, it’s clearly going to have a less-than-positive impact on tourism from Canada.”—Stacy Ritter, CEO of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau. An estimated 3.5 million Canadians visited Florida in 2017, with spending estimated at $6.5 billion.
• As of last weekend, 2,292 people in Florida were hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19. In the Tampa Bay area, there were 429 such hospitalizations.
• “Grave mistake.” That’s how Mayor Jane Castor characterized the lifting of any local maskorders.

“Yes, we can.”

• Bottom line for Dems. You don’t follow the history-making presidency of an African-American with a white nationalist autocrat. And you don’t follow a progressive Supreme Court icon with another “originalist” Federalist Society suck-up. The former can be reversed, although not without collateral damage. The latter, however, could impact the court—and America’s take on women’s rights, voting rights, health care, immigration, a controversial presidential election and more—for a generation.  
• However this shakes out, we’ll be seeing vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris playing a notable role in her capacity as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
• The Biden campaign has seen a quick surge in donations in the aftermath of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and myriad vigils around the country. It includes ActBlue, an online fundraising hub, which raised $30 million in 12 hours. The efforts could further gin up young voters, especially women. And it could more than offset re-energized evangelical Christians, who still don’t consider hypocrisy a sin.
• Biden’s press conference on COVID: He had just spoken with a roundtable of scientists and had done his homework. He sounded knowledgeable, candid and caring—enough that it will hopefully resonate with accountability, competence and empathy manifestly juxtaposed to Trump’s duplicitous pandemic mismanagement that continues to unnecessarily cost America lives.
• Biden and awkward gaffes: a given.Trump and self-serving lies: a given. False equivalence, anyone?
• “It’s all about Biden from here on out. …The Trump carnival rolls on, but it’s merely a sideshow now.”—Matt Bai, Washington Post.
• Some bottom lines never change. To wit: Edmund Burke’s brutally spot-on, all-too-prescient assessment that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Obviously, it still applies. The upside for America: Good men still outnumber their evil counterparts. But that has to be reflected in the November vote.

It’s a supreme loss. With the unfortunate, truly untimely passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the U.S. now has one less “better angel,” a precious legal/ethical/moral force in an America in desperate need of serious societal lodestars. An America still revisited by gender and racial inequities. An America grappling with a white-makes-right autocracy.  

Out of respect for Ginsburg’s principles and her legacy, how appropriate it would be to not make her replacement nothing more than partisan political business as usual. How fitting it would be to honor her deathbed “fervent wish” that she “not be replaced until a new president is installed.” The election is mere weeks away. That’s a lot closer than Barack Obama was when he nominated Merritt Garland to replace Antonin Scalia in March of 2016. We all know how that Mitch McConnell-directed scenario ended. Typically, it takes about 70 days from nomination to confirmation. It took 89 days to vet Brent Kavanaugh.

How unshockingly dishonorable it would be for McConnell & Co. to ignore that self-serving precedent now that the president and senate are controlled by the same party. “When you have the Senate, when you have the votes, you can sort of do what you want,” underscored Trump, sounding like the SCOTUS version of his “Access Hollywood” tape.  

Too bad we can’t count on following the advice of the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election,” stated Graham in 2018. Alas, the senator who called Trump “unfit for office” has already made his Faustian deal that gets him golfing with this unfit president.

Well, then, there’s always the recommendation of Sen. Marco Rubio as seen through his 2016 political lens. “I don’t think we should be moving forward with a nominee in the last year of this president’s term. I would say that even if it was a Republican president.” Even, presumably, if that were a “con man” charlatan as president. Gracias para nada.

Unfortunately, this is the hypocritical scenario—with all the usual sycophantic suspects coming to the aid of their subservient party and narcissistic cult leader. Country first? Let the people decide via the upcoming election? How naïve. What kind of democracy is that? With the exception of those usual suspects, we all deserve so much better. But thank you for your service, RBG. History will be a lot kinder.

• Gasparilla and social distancing: Isn’t that an oxymoron? Will there be virtual rites of pissage?
• The Lightning Foundation has donated to Bay Area nonprofits during the team’s playoff run. It’s now reached $1 million. Go, Bolts.

Facebook and Google get nearly two-thirds of all digital ad revenue. It goes a long way in determining why they alone are worth $1.5 trillion.  

• I saw a reference to Las Vegas having defeated Carolina in week one of NFL play. I’m not a hard-core NFL fan, but Las Vegas? Oh, yeah, that’s where Jon Gruden’s relocated Oakland Raiders now call home.
• The Big Ten will be back for fall football, starting in late October. It’s motivated, we’re told, by more information and evolving protocols. Not mentioned: What it means to the bottom line to salvage the 2020 $eason.
• First things first: That was an embarrassing 52-0 loss last Saturday suffered by USF against Notre Dame. Let’s reframe it. Iconic Notre Dame and upstart USF have played twice. Each has won once. Leave it at that. Unless you’re still pining for Skip Holtz.
• The pandemic-skewed AP Top 25 ranking includes Marshall and Army, but not Ohio State and Penn State.
• “Los Rojos.” Alternate home jersey for the Cincinnati Reds.