Blurbex

From the two school systems:

Hillsborough Schools Closed Tuesday

Tampa, Fla. – (August 18, 2008) – Due to the threat of Tropical Storm Fay and the need to open shelters, Hillsborough County Public Schools will be closed on Tuesday, Aug. 19. The School Board meeting scheduled for Tuesday has also been canceled.

The latest information available shows that the Tropical Storm is expected to bring heavy rains and strong winds to the Tampa Bay area on Tuesday.
School officials will be in constant contact with Emergency Operations Center officials monitoring the path and intensity of the storm.  A decision will be made tomorrow (Tuesday) regarding the possibility of reopening schools on Wednesday, and we will use all our communications tools and rely on local media to help get out the word.

and:

Schools, Offices Closed Due to Tropical Storm Fay

All Pinellas County public schools and district offices will be closed Tuesday, Aug. 19, due to Tropical Storm Fay. Julie M. Janssen, Ed.D., interim superintendent, made the decision Monday afternoon based on information from the Pinellas County Emergency Operations Center.

All planned activities at schools today (Monday, Aug. 18) will go on as scheduled, including back-to-school activities for parents.

Parents are urged to stay tuned for communication updates that will be available on the district website, www.pcsb.org; the district’s recorded emergency phone line, (727) 588-6424; Pinellas County Schools’ television, WDPS-TV14 (which may be found on Bright House Networks Ch. 614, Knology Ch. 14 and Verizon Ch. 46), and in media reports. There also will be Connect-ED phone messages from the district to parents with the latest information.
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This is the latest hurricane prep info from the city of Tampa:

City of Tampa Action & Information

•    City of Tampa offices will be closed tomorrow, Tuesday, August 19, 2008.  This includes Parks & Recreation facilities and programs as well as the after school program.

•    Solid waste collection services including yard waste and recycling will be postponed for Tuesday, August 19.  Residents with regular Tuesday collection will be serviced on their next regularly scheduled collection day, Friday, August 22.  Tuesday recycling and yard waste collection services will be postponed until the next regularly scheduled collection on Tuesday, August 26.  All scheduled commercial collections will be delayed one day.

•    Sandbags: Residents may continue to pick up sandbags until 8 p.m. this evening.  Residents may pick up sandbags at the Himes Sports Complex, 4500 South Himes Avenue; Jackson Heights Playground, 3310 East Lake Avenue; and the solid waste facility at 4010 West Spruce Street.  Tampa residents interested in receiving sandbags must show identification verifying residence within the city limits. Valid driver’s license, utility bill or electric bill will serve as appropriate identification.

•    The Parks and Recreation Department has cancelled the Davis Islands Park Improvement Fund meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, August 19. At this time a new meeting date has not been scheduled.

City emergency management officials are continuing to monitor the path of Tropical Storm Fay.  Residents are encouraged to stay tuned to local media organizations for storm updates.

Residents with questions regarding Tropical Storm Fay are encouraged to call the Hillsborough County Emergency Operations Center at (813) 272-6900.

First, it was Bernie Mac, dead of pneumonia.

Then, Isaac Hayes, dead of treadmilling.

Who will complete the trilogy of dead African American celebs? I asked my colleagues:

“Morgan Freeman was supposed to be the first one, but somehow escaped the grim reaper in his car crash.”

“Samuel L. Jackson, he was working on a project with Hayes and Mac.”

But the best answer:

“Robert Downey Jr.“

Remember last month when the crack investigative news team at CL debunked the myth of cell phones being able to pop popcorn? For those who missed it, here’s the vid again:

Now, CNN finally gets to the bottom of this viral marketing hoax, including an interview with the CEO behind it all. Their video is here.

“And words, you know the seven don’t you? Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits, huh? Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war. Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits, wow.”

(Crossposted from The Political Whore)

No, he doesn’t refuse to wear a flag lapel pin because he hates America. No, he isn’t Muslim. No, he didn’t say if the political winds change he will stand with Muslim terrorists.

Chasing and debunking the flat-out lies that have been hurled at Barack Obama is a full-time job for some folks, and yet I still get several smearing e-mails a week, some from my own distant relatives. There is no doubt the Obama e-mail myth phenomenon is part viral, part political strategy, yet many of them are passed along by well-meaning people who are mostly duped by out-of-context or completely fabricated information.

Maybe that’s why I found a recent e-mail from West Tampa civic activist (and admittedly hardcore Democrat) Jason Busto so refreshing. Busto was responding to a friend who had forwarded another of those Obama e-mails when Busto wrote (I edited only to capitalize some formal nouns or for grammar):

Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 10:29
Subject: RE: Obama

Yes indeed. Obama, the first Democrat to run in three elections that motivates and inspires Democrats, Independents and Republicans, and the first person who is likely to win the presidency in 4 presidencies by more than a 1-2% margin, is in fact a closeted racist, self-hating, pro-Islamist, America destroyer who has honestly done nothing worthwhile in his entire 46 years of living.

I thank the writer of the original mail for shining the light, as i was almost duped by his razzle dazzle.

Specifically on the subject matter cited, I suppose we can wait for another mixed race candidate to run, one who hasn’t bothered to honestly share his or her personal life discovery through books that he himself wrote, from which now sentences from them have been taken out of context and made to reflect a hidden agenda which is not his. This is a standard propaganda tactic, one which Ann Coulter made a fortune doing, one that was used to undermine a much weaker personality candidate named John Kerry.

Emails, commercials, the paid political pundits and scare campaigns will now begin in full earnest. they will do everything to keep the bush administration political patronage and machinery in power. If you are interested in helping them, then by all means, please do take note of the nonsense below.

However, if you do want to end the war, repair our national infrastructure and economy, get America working again, and just right the wrongs of the past 8 years, I urge you to abstain from these fear-fests. They are intellectually unworthy “of our great country”. Please listen to what is really being said and consider the motives behind the words. are the speakers of such ideas really thinking about what is best for America, or you and me for that matter?

Please do not forward these messages until you have vetted them. rumors and fears will spread like fire, and America needs Americans to take it back.

http://www.factcheck.org/

Lets throw fear out with the Bush administration. We have let our nation be controlled by their fearful manipulating for too long.

Nobody is perfect. We all have warts, but Obama is going to be a great president.

yours,

jb

(Crossposted from The Political Whore.) 

Hate to make today a Bob Norman pimpathon, but this piece he wrote about how the media handled the tomato-salmonella scare is just too good not to share:

First you must understand that the tomato story was perfect for newspapers. Think about it — nothing like deadly tomatoes on a dull news day. Tomatoes are everywhere! In our homes, restaurants, spaghetti sauce, salads … everywhere. The odds that any Sentinel readers would be affected by the salmonella scare was about the same as one of them getting stuck in a pool drain or killed by a candle (both old Help Team bugaboos). Since April, one person has died nationally with 167 reported ill. And Florida tomatoes weren’t affected at all.

But don’t let the facts get in the way of a sensational lede story. On Tuesday, the Sun-Sentinel put the story on the front page with a large bold headline headline: “HOLD THE TOMATOES.”

The article wasn’t about how Browardites were coming down ill. There were, of course, no illnesses here since the tomatoes were fine. The local hook was that some restaurants had pulled tomotoes from their menus even though they were believed to be safe (the entire headline, including the smaller print: “Many Fast-Food Restaurants Say: HOLD THE TOMATOES”).

The article itself was basically a primer on different types of tomatoes and the finer points of the salmonella you weren’t going to get in Florida.

Fine. Okay. The Sentinel, however, wasn’t finished with this juicy story. They put the Help Team on the job and the next day came out with this lead front-page headline: “Florida’s tomatoes declared OK to eat.”

Forget that Florida’s tomatoes were never declared not OK to eat in the first place. Just pass the pizza pie. The article rehashed the previous day’s information and, admirably, contained a bit of self-referential criticism on the absurdity of the piece appearing in the newspaper at all….

So, how did the Tampa Bay dailies do?

The Tampa Tribune went much the same route as the rest of the dailies, playing up the voluntary ban by some large corporations before declaring tomatoes safe the next day. June 9’s blog “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” (never mind that salmonella isn’t exactly a brutally deadly thing, although one death was linked to the tainted tomatoes) and June 10’s “Tainted Tomato Varieties Pulled From Supermarkets” vs.  June 11’s “FDA Clears Bay Area Tomatoes; Harvesting Stopped in South Florida”  and “Florida Tomatoes Rejected Over Scare.”

At the Times,  the paper led with a pretty balanced and non-tabloidy FAQ on the story that pointed out the voluntary nature of the ban and that no Florida cases had been reported. The story was very low-key and non-inflammatory. (It appears from the Times’ website that an earlier headline online about tomato-borne salmonella sickening dozens “nationwide” was replaced with a more precise headline that didn’t lead you to believe that every state was affected.) The paper even did a good story two days later on what the scare cost Florida growers: $500 million.

(photo by Manjith Kainickara)

(Crossposted from The Political Whore.) 

… and fails to pay his taxes, only in this case, it is employment taxes and not property taxes.

Congressman Vern Buchanan owes the IRS some big cash, according to the Sarasota daily and our CL blog, The 941, down there:

As reported in today’s Herald-Tribune, our local congressman, Republican Vern Buchanan, is again in hot water with the IRS.

This time, Vern has failed to pay more than $550,000 in federal employment taxes.

Buchanan’s seat has been targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red to Blue program as it supports a candidate it calls “the incumbent,” Democrat Christine Jennings who arguably was robbed in the 2006 elections when the ballot design caused 18,000 undervotes in Sarasota County.

(Crossposted from The Political Whore.) 

From Daily Pulp:

What New Times reported last week is now official: The Herald is cutting 17 percent of its workforce, or 250 positions, which is actually 2 percent more than we expected.

“These next few weeks will be some of the most difficult and emotional we have faced,” Editor Anders Gyllenhaal wrote to staff in an email this morning. “We will do our best to work through these changes at the same time as we try to keep our focus on our work.”

Some will be laid off, other will be offered buyouts. Buyouts were in fact extended this morning to numerous reporters, according to sources, which Gyllenhaal wrote will “first be made on a voluntary basis and then an involuntary basis.”

It is part of a 10 percent across-the-board staff cuts at McClatchey Newspapers, as the AP is reporting this morning:

McClatchy Co. said Monday it will cut 10 percent of its work force in a move to save $70 million a year as the newspaper publisher continues to struggle to attract advertising dollars.

McClatchy, which publishes The Kansas City Star and The Miami Herald, will trim about 1,400 employees. The staff reductions are part of a plan to reduce overall expenses by $95 million to $100 million over the next four quarters.

“The effects of the current national economic downturn — particularly in real estate, auto and employment advertising — make it essential that we move faster now to realign our workforce and make our operations more efficient,” said McClatchy Chief Executive Gary Pruitt, in a statement.

McClatchy said in April that it swung to a loss in the first quarter as a weakening economy and competition from online rivals led to a 15 percent plunge in advertising revenues at its newspapers.

In related bad news, some staffers at the Tampa Tribune expect the hammer to drop this week as involuntary layoffs follow a voluntary buyout that saw a handful of newsers leave last Friday. One source told me late last week: “The end is near.”

(Crossposted from The Political Whore.) 

For those who (like me) were distracted by the whole Father’s Day thing and forgot to set their DVR to tape PoHo on Brendan McLaughlin’s Sunday public affairs news show, here’s a link (unable to embed the video so far) to me and Renee Dabbs of The Victory Group on Segment 3 of this week’s show.

Crossposted from The Political Whore. 

Tampa Bay’s hometown hero, Hulk Hogan, is scheduled for an appearance on Larry King Live on CNN tonight.

Hogan is going through a rough patch: his marriage is crumbling, his son is sitting in the Hotel Graybar for a few months after nearly killing his friend in a car accident and his daughter is pissed off cuz Daddy is dating her former BFF.

The Hulkster’s even gotta put up with low-rent paparazzi chasing him around Wal-Mart with his Brooke-lookalike gal pal. (Video on TMZ.)

Of course, this type of dysfunctional Hulkamania is nothing new to Creative Loafing readers. In 2006, we told you the story of how Hulk (aka Terry Bollea to those who knew him growing up a South-of-Gandy kinda guy in Tampa in the 1970s) pushed to get an innocent man arrested after he believed the guy ripped off his dear old mother, who lived in a lower middle class home even as the Hulkster enjoyed his Belleair mansion. From “Body Slammed:”

The shaming of William Guevara began early on a summer morning. At 7:30 a.m., July 9, 2004, Guevara and his wife Judy were awakened by banging on their front door. Judy went to the door in her robe to find officers from the Tampa Police Department waiting to arrest her husband.

MUGGED: The police mug shot of William Guevara taken the day of his arrest. “They didn’t even let me comb his hair,” his wife said.

Officers gave Guevara little time to dress before handcuffing him behind his back. “They didn’t even let me comb his hair,” Judy says.

Two years later, Guevara still suffers from the arrest. As he tries to tell his story, he slumps forward, his voice breaking, barely able to utter a word. Tears fall from his eyes onto his guayabera shirt. His wife must speak for him.

Guevara is a small man, 60 years old, neatly dressed, with white hair and a moustache immaculately cared for. He doesn’t look like a criminal. But on that July morning, he was treated like a criminal.

His accuser? Pro wrestling icon Hulk Hogan. In the star’s eyes, William Guevara — who had cared for years for Hogan’s elderly father and mother — was a thief. Police charged Guevara with third-degree grand theft, exploitation of an elderly person and fraudulent use of a credit card.

It was all a mistake.

The story went on to detail how Guevara was a caretaker for Hulk’s aging parents and how Hulk rarely visited them and left them dependent on Guevara for assistance, the caretaker insisted. Guevara would have settled for an apology from Hulk for his wrongful arrest, but he never got one.

Read the full account here, along with dozens of hilarious pro-Hulk comments.

From our YouShoot page submissions, this shot from the Florida National Cemetery near Bushnell, about an hour north of Tampa:

Photo by juxtapose^esopatxuj/some rights reserved

 

Just back from St. Petersburg City Council gathering where the first-place Tampa Bay Rays moved their proposal for a $450 million waterfront ballpark another step forward. This time it was a financing plan on how they and taxpayers will come up with that cash.

The news: The Rays aren’t looking at using tax-increment funds generated by growth in the downtown area as was previously widely discussed. They are, however, looking to continue to get tourist taxes and other city dollars now devoted to paying off the Trop. The plan calls for using $70 million that the Rays expect from the sale of the Trop to a private redeveloper

Here’s quick breakdown on the financing:

• $150 million from the Rays (presumably in the form of rental payments over 30 years)
•  $70 million from the sale of the Trop to retire that stadium’s $13 million a year debt, which currently runs through 2016
• $100 million from tourist taxes (which presumably would require county leaders extending it beyond its current sunset in 2016).
• $55 million from parking fees generated at the new ballpark.

That last figure seems the shakiest; the Rays want the city to lease it thousands of city-owned parking spaces downtown on favorable terms so the team can resell them to fans.

Download the Rays Financing Plan Handout

Cruise on over to fixitnowtampabay.com to help us with our upcoming green issue:

Creative Loafing is gearing up for its upcoming Green Issue by assembling a list of “100 Ways to Go Green Right Now.” Got a surefire suggestion? A hint for saving energy, saving trees, saving the planet? Post your idea as a comment below, and we’ll include it in our Green Issue Apr. 16.

Dawn Wells, the actress made famous on Gilligan’s Island in the 1960s and who until January owned a home in Redington Shores, this week pleaded guilty to a reckless driving charge in Idaho. From the AP account:

She was sentenced Feb. 29 to five days in jail, fined $410.50 and placed on probation after pleading guilty to one count of reckless driving.

Under a plea agreement, three misdemeanor counts — driving under the influence, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance — were dropped.

On Oct. 18, Teton County sheriff’s Deputy Joseph Gutierrez arrested Wells as she was driving home from a surprise birthday party that was held for her. According to the sheriff’s office report, Gutierrez pulled Wells over after noticing her swerve and repeatedly speed up and slow down. When Gutierrez asked about a marijuana smell, Wells said she’d just given a ride to three hitchhikers and had dropped them off when they began smoking something. Gutierrez found half-smoked joints and two small cases used to store marijuana.

Ahh, the time-honored “hippie hitchhikers” defense. She might have wanted to ask the court to face the truth: if all you were known for was a ’60s sitcom that linked you to a goofball like Bob Denver forever and made you the endless butt of ” who was sleeping with whom on the island” conjectures, you would deserve to blaze up every now and then.

From our alt-brethren at The Weekly Dig:

Day Three – ‘We’ve been drinking since we got here …’
dispatches from one pathetic presidential primary
by Chris Faraone

I promised to bring you in the back rooms and bar booths where locals, staffers, volunteers and journalists dance the pre-primary tango. We’ve been drinking since we got here, but on Saturday we hit the strip with pens drawn. While most reporters crowded in and outside of the debates at St. Anselm’s, my crew split up to cover the jamborees that campaigns host around Manchester.

I arrived at Murphy’s Tavern minutes before the Ron Paul wagon pulled in. Unlike in Boston, where bars were reluctant to change the channel from ESPN to C-SPAN when the Democratic National Convention was in town, even Manchester’s greasiest moron holes blast politics during primary week. At Murphy’s, only one screen was left on football, presumably for the drunk, loud Neanderthal who was committed to screaming over the debate.

At first, the only dissent around the room came from a peanut gallery of Huckabee supporters in the back. It was standard arbitrary cheer; like when insecure baseball fans broadcast their preference for the visiting team. The Paul people were equally obnoxious, but considering that they had the home team advantage, and that their candidate was the only Republican on stage who speaks truth – not hollow consultant scripted tag lines – they had a right to party. Their tendency to roar every time Paul got face time reminded me of when my entire family went to see my cousin’s two-second cameo in Married to the Mob.



The only Republican candidate who the Paul supporters outright booed was Romney; one guy suggested that Mitt could free America from its foreign oil habit by simply shaving his head. The group seemed to respect John McCain and, for the most part, lacked the aggressive prep school arrogance that you generally find at grand old gatherings. That’s no surprise, since Paul is more of a cheap suit Libertarian than a Brooks Brothers Republican.

I left Murphy’s near the end of the Republican debate to find a liberal bar. Ignorant as most conservatives are, lefties have them beat on closed-mindedness. As I predicted, the gather.com herd at Milly’s Tavern had no interest in the Republican debate, even though a lot of them were allegedly there to write about it. The entire scene at this party was abhorrent; in addition to how the kiddies talked through the Republicans and shushed the room for Barack and Hillary, organizers had roped off a corner for about a couple dozen bloggers to set up. Since my next dispatch will feature a heavy tirade on blog culture, I’ll hold back for now. But if anyone can explain why I have to share space, air and wi-fi signals with every post-collegiate dip with a shiny MacBook Pro and trite opinions, please enlighten me in the comment section below.

I’m sorry — did you want me to tell you about the actual debate? On the Democratic side, my only notable opinion is that Barack Obama sucks every time he gets knocked off his stump. He’s a gifted speaker, but he can’t smack the curve balls. I would have something to say about Bill Richardson and John Edwards’ performances, but since they’re unpopular amongst the college weblog crowd, I was unable to hear anything they said over all the chitchat that went down when they were talking. Well, I do have one thing: I think that Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich have the same hair stylist. Either that or their mothers still lick their hands and glue their bangs down with spit before they leave their houses every day.

Sunday morning called for a bowel rupturing brunch. This shouldn’t have been a problem at 11 am; most visitors were out campaigning at events, and the few yuppies back in downtown Manchester were all in line at Dunkin Donuts playing with their Blackberries. But due to the local service industry’s drastic unpreparedness, I had to walk out of three fast fooderies after not being served for several minutes.

I would have been angry about my hapless calorie hunt had it not ended with a blessing. Just when I was about to get angry, some guy with a bullhorn announced that in minutes Kucinich would be appearing at a nearby restaurant with Hollywood heavyweight Viggo Mortensen. I heart Dennis, but I was enthralled to see Viggo, who is kind of an inside joke between me and my girlfriend; not because we think he’s a bad actor or anything like that, but because of the Vanity Fair cover on which he looked like a gay porn star, and because his name is Viggo.

As it turns out, Viggo is the Goddamn man; pretty boy is the most eloquent and enlightened star endorser out here pitching. He knows issues, and he’s right: this country really is in too much trouble to not have a real leader with compassionate convictions. Too bad we never will. Since Ron Paul had been able to sneak so much progressive rhetoric into his debate appearance, and Kucinich had been excluded from the Democratic crossfire, I asked the congressman if he’d ever considered running as a Republican. He gave me an answer so strong and so passionate that for the first time I understood how he roped that stunning wife of his. The man has heart, and next to thick cocks, that’s probably the number one turn-on for most women.

The semi-homeless guy with the five-foot dreadlock at the Kucinich press conference didn’t make it to Romney’s event at Elm Street Middle School in Nashua. It’s a good thing, too, because they would have stopped him at the door. This event — billed as “Ask Mitt Anything” — was a pristine production. Mitt rode in on a cocaine white unicorn cradling a small child. Other than a red hot blonde MySpace slut with hoop earrings, everyone on stage looked like they just jumped off a page in J Crew’s winter catalogue.

I can understand why rich, simple-minded yuppies and other assorted selfish jerkoffs gravitate to Romney. He says all the optimistic economic babble, family junk and racist anti-immigration fluff they love, which is especially easy when everybody’s lobbing questions at you. Sure, you could ask Mitt anything, but only if it’s written on a cue card that gets handed to you at the rally. To the lady who got up and gave a spiel about how her and her kid have diabetes: if that’s not true I hope your husband takes your youngest daughter’s virginity with a baseball bat.

Sorry for the aggression. I should be happy that I got into the event wearing my dingy old wax coat. Not everyone was so lucky; due to a costume ban, some global warming protestors in snowman suits were denied access, as was a girl who drove from Haverhill to hold her sign. After covering Romney for three years in Massachusetts, I can attest to the metaphorical value of their non-admittance. If Mitt pulls this off, they won’t be the only ones left outside.

From our alt-brethren at The Weekly Dig:

Day Two – Pissing in America’s Stream of Consciousness
dispatches from one pathetic presidential primary
by Chris Faraone

I’ve been a Dennis Kucinich fan since 2003, when I was abducted by aliens who coerced me to accept a leading role in his last hapless presidential bid. In addition to the intergalactic intervention, I was also persuaded by the fact that he’s the best candidate for me. I truly respect Kucinich’s courage – always have and always will – but in this past year I’ve both admired and resented his perpetual lunge at the White House. Not because I’m one of those hack pundits who think every race should begin and end with a few top media-propped candidates, but because while I know that he’s on point – and perhaps the only one in either party who is genuinely interested in engineering social equality – I’m constantly embarrassed by his campaign.

The five minutes that I spent in Kucinich’s Manchester office gave me flashbacks of the 2004 campaign I helped run in New York City. I haven’t seen such a swarm of apathetic credit-seeking students, bleeding heart fools and barely post-pubescent Sondheim fanatics since liberal arts school. All week I’ve been griping about how a maniac fringe Republican like Ron Paul can generate so much more steam than his benevolent equivalent across the aisle, and I think I’m closing in on an answer. Instead of focusing on pragmatic people who might agree with his ideas if they paid attention, Kucinich hangs in smoothie bars and vegan delis. The highest-ranking member of his staff who was on the premises couldn’t tell me one place where the man was speaking today.

Having had enough with self-destructive loser staff types, I went back to covering the dirty rotten scoundrels who have a shot at placing in this kumite.

I’m beginning to think that Hillary Clinton’s declining popularity has to do with the aggressive presence of armed guards and police dogs at her campaign events. To cover ground, the Clintons have embarked on separate speaking tours this weekend. I went to peep Bubba at a high school up north in Dow, where I was greeted by a Reservoir Dogs-esque cop and K-9 team in the bathroom. And while it would have been mightily ironic to get busted holding weed at a Bill Clinton event, I felt relieved to have left my crops back at the car.

This was probably one of the smallest crowds that Bill Clinton has ever romanced; it was less than half the turnout that Mike Huckabee – that other former Arkansas governor – turned out in a nearby gymnasium just one day earlier. Sure, Bill Clinton didn’t have Chuck Norris in tow, but that’s just because there aren’t enough mops in New Hampshire to soak up the roaring female cum rapids that would surely flow if Chuck and Bill were in the same room at one time.

Bill was on time in a way that no other presidential candidate or celebrity has ever been on time before; Maya Angelou was wrong — he wasn’t really the first black president, which is good news for Obama. After being introduced by a local politician who said something about change, change and change – political panhandling, if you ask me – he gave the first amazing speech that I’ve seen so far this week.

I have to admit — Bill still chokes me up every damn time. He can even make this “change” shit sound convincing. Always the diplomat, he even managed to praise governors Huckabee and Romney before diving into pharmaceutical corruption and slashing Bush for appointing cronies instead of competent officials. It would have been cliché rhetoric out of any other politico’s jaw, but Bill marinates my soul. For a moment, he nearly convinced me that his wife is a committed public servant instead of a megalomaniacal carpetbagger.

And like that – we’re off to the Manchester pub scene.

It’s The Boys on the Bus, 2007 — the boys being a team from Boston’s notorious alt-weekly, The Weekly Dig. Living in the state of Romney, they’ve had lots of time to build up antipathy toward him, but they don’t like any of the other candidates much either. That’s what makes their dispatches from the NH primary, which they’re circulating to alt-weeklies around the country, so entertainingly blunt.

And besides, where else but the Dig — for better or worse — are you going to read descriptions like this: “Sure, Bill Clinton didn’t have Chuck Norris in tow, but that’s just because there aren’t enough mops in New Hampshire to soak up the roaring female cum rapids that would surely flow if Chuck and Bill were in the same room at one time.”

Today, we bring you their first installments to get us caught up from their travels over the weekend. We’ll post their remaining stories as we get them. (Cross-posted at The Political Whore.)

— David Warner, editor

Day One — The Case for Not Voting in November
Dispatches from one pathetic presidential primary
by Chris Faraone, Mark Grueter and Dan McCarthy

While you were sleeping like a dead baby at 4 a.m. last Friday morning, three of us crammed into a rental car and hurtled up I-93. We brought laptops, long johns, stimulants and skepticism — all the necessary tools for documenting New Hampshire’s notorious first-in-the-nation presidential primary and the carnival that surrounds it. Initially, we came for the same reason that we cover local politics: because by delivering antipartisan commentary with some stank on it, we believe that even intellectually retarded hipsters and college kids who wonder why a Middle Eastern country named itself after a drinking game might be interested in the policies and people who govern them. But after four days of chowing bullshit and baloney, we decided that you’re all better off not voting. If you’re a status quo robot who wants press release-inspired rub about flip-flops, hollow promises and poll results, then please consult your daily newspaper. For the rest of you lazy fucks who need new excuses for not exercising your democratic duty, this is the only set of stories that you need to read all year.

A Barack Obama rally Sunday in Milford, N.H. (courtesy of lindsayg5218/flickr.com)

CL staff writer Alex Pickett writes for our issue next week about a split in the Bartlett Park civic group. Here’s a preview:

On a bright Saturday morning, eight residents of St. Petersburg’s Bartlett Park neighborhood gather in the renovated home of Julie Richey and Stewart Nicol. The former vice president of the neighborhood association, Scott Swift, is here. So are Lindsay Myers, editor of the Bartlett Park Newsletter, and John and Rosemary Kitchen, both elected officers in the association. The Kitchens are black, and longtime residents; the others are white, and moved to Bartlett Park in the last three years.

Over crumbly coffeecake, the group shares the successes, failures and frustrations of local activism. But then they get down to business: They are meeting today to plot a defection.

For the last year, these residents have labored to improve Bartlett Park. They helped to form a Crime Watch group, started a newsletter, sponsored litter clean-ups and enforced codes regulations in this oft-forgotten part of St. Pete just south of downtown.

But trying to improve the neighborhood, as Brian Wyllie puts it, is “like pushing a lead ball.”

Wyllie and the others say the more they work toward making Bartlett Park a safer, cleaner, more hospitable place to live, the harder some in the association push back.

“To those of us that are new, [revitalizing the neighborhood] is still a very slow process,” Swift says. “We do a project every three to four months. Everyone else in the city does one every two weeks.”

So this group of eight — and two other relatively new residents who couldn’t make the meeting — have formed their own organization: the Buena Vista Neighborhood Association, which will focus on the area between Fourth and Martin Luther King streets and 13th and 18th avenues, approximately half of Bartlett Park.

“We’re going to continue to do positive things for the neighborhood,” Swift says. “But the association has served as an obstacle.”

(more…)

crossposted from PoHo: 

No, they’re not in the same event. Just passing along two things for your calendars:

The good public-minded folks at the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club are bringing political skit group Capitol Steps to town. The info:

People from Washington who actually mean to be funny!
Capitol Steps
Political Satire at its Finest
presented by Suncoast Tiger Bay Club
Monday, December 3, 7:40 PM
Mahaffey Theater at Progress Energy Center for Performing Arts
400 First ST S, St. Petersburg
Tickets $25, $30 and $35
Charge by phone 727-898-2100, buy online at www.ticketmaster.com, or available at the Box Office
For more info: www.tigerbay.org

Here’s the group’s take on Larry Craig and his foot-tappin’ ways.

Over at the UU Church in Clearwater, Equality Florida is co-sponsoring a remembrance for transgendered victims of violence that will include Tampa Bay’s most famous transgendered former city manager, Susan Stanton. Info as follows:

9th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance

Join us in the Chapel of the
Unity Church of Clearwater, 2465 Nursery Road, Clearwater
Monday, November 19th at 7PM

On Monday, November 19th, the Tampa Bay Transgender community, along with family, friends and allies, will gather at the unity Church of Clearwater to remember and honor victims of anti-transgender violence.

Please join us as we gather together to:

1. Remember those killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice;
2. Express commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every person;
3. Encourage the public to say “NO” to discrimination and prejudice; and
4. Practice acceptance and understanding towards all people.

Ms. Susan Stanton will be the keynote speaker and we will hear from a wide variety of local faith leaders, including Equality Florida’s close allies, Leddy Hammock and Abhi Janamanchi.

Over the last decade, more than one person per month has died due to transgender-based hate or prejudice. The Transgender Day of Remembrance is an opportunity to stand along side our transgender brothers and sisters in vigil, memorializing those who’ve died by anti-transgender violence.

For more information, please contact:
Rev. Abhi Janamanchi: 727-667-3398 and abhijp@gmail.com,
Rev. Leddy Hammock: 727-742-9925 and leddy@unityofclearwater.org