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.

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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.“

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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.

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“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)

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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.) 

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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.) 

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… 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.) 

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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.) 

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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. 

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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.

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