Daily Loaf

Happy day after Thanksgiving to all of you out there.  Perhaps you’re reading this blog post on the laptop computer that some people have apparently waited days in line for.  I always thought it was somewhat garish to go to the stores at 5 a.m. on “Black Friday” in the 80’s and 90’s when my mom used to do that – but those were far more innocent days when it came to the ever enduring zeal to buy stuff.

After reading all the stories already about people in line shopping this morning, I have to beg the question: I thought we were in the worst recession since the great depression? Oh, never mind.

I’m not sure we’ll get a recording in on the report today (we’re dependent on the kindness of co-workers), but here some stories that caught our attention today.

Global warming skeptics are loving the email controversy that broke last week on some reports being manipulated;

That D.C. socialite couple that crashed the White House state dinner the other night caused me to ponder why the Detroit Lions continue to play (and get slaughtered) on Thanksgiving Day;

And there’s a benefit concert happening this weekend at Skipper’s whose proceeds will go benefit those affected by Hurricane Ida in El Salvador;

Happy Thanksgiving to all you loyal readers out there.

Today on the menu we have the criticism from the political left (and from one of our closest foreign allies) about President Obama’s decision to send a reported 30,000 or so troops to Afghanistan;

Over at the Villages retirement center, some Sarah Palin supporters camped out Monday night to see their heroine yesterday sign copies of her new book, Going Rogue.  But in terms of numbers, it paled in comparison to when Glenn Beck appeared  there last weekend.

And political satirist Bill Maher will be coming to Tampa next week.  We have a  featured article on the comedian in the current CL.

We’ll be back here on Friday.

The waiting is the hardest part, Tom Petty sang  exactly 30 years ago.  And that’s what critics of President Obama’s strategy on Afghanistan have been complaining about.  Well, no more.  The President goes before the country next week to talk about his plans;

You knew it was coming:  Charlie Crist slowly begins to take the gloves off in his contest with Marco Rubio for the U.S. Senate;

And days after Glenn Beck rhapsodizes about doing it the Chinese way with 100 year plan, Lou Dobbs says he wants to be President.

Download the report here.

As the battle for health care reform continues, discussions on where we are with the legislation after Saturday night’s vote to continue debate in the Senate was fodder on all of the talk shows yesterday.  On ABC, South Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz got into a dispute with Tennessee’s Marsha Blackwell on the politics of breast cancer;

With Florida and over two dozen other states reporting on Friday that unemployment continues to rise, the emphasis on the economy will only continue to increase.  Also, despite criticism about the stimulus package, independent economists say it’s saving the country;.

And if you didn’t hear, Glenn Beck was in Tampa on Saturday.  More on his visit at Borders here

Download the report here.

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Tomorrow night at 8 p.m. comes round two in the great Saturday night votes on health care reform.  Unlike Nancy Pelosi’s effort, even if Harry Reid wins tomorrow, it still ain’t over.

Florida’s Department of Community Affairs Secretary is sounding mighty upset about the controversial growth management bill S.B. 360 that passed the legislature and was signed by Governor Crist earlier this year.

And the Tampa City Council comes up big in voting solidly to give protections to transgender individuals in their human rights ordinance yesterday.  And we have an update on this story here.

Download the report here.

Some Florida Democrats are blasting state Republicans over their failure to pass legislation this year that would given the state $444 million in stimulus funds for unemployment insurance.  The issue’s relevant again after the tax that businesses will pay for the trust fund is sky-rocketing;

We have a health care bill in the Senate! It’s over 2,000 pages, and will cost only(!) $848 billion.  Best of luck to  you  Harry Reid in shepherding that through;

And the Tampa Bay area has a new online magazine . Learn more here.

Yesterday Governor Charlie Crist called for a special session to be held soon – with action to be conducted to impress upon Washington about the state’s sincerity in wanting high-speed rail.  One problem:  Lakeland State Senator Paula Dockery.  She’s been a force for two years now in holding up a plan for rail in Central Florida because of liability concerns with CSX – and she’s still not satisfied;

The editor of a New Jersey Jewish newspaper spoke last night at an event sponsored by the Tampa Jewish Federation.  The topic: The Jewish columnists with the New York Times, and how they shape Jewish public opinion.

And the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, will announce later this week a new wiki for the homeless in Hillsborough County.  Read more here.

We will hopefully have the podcast up soon for your listening enjoyment.

We all know how bad the American economy continues to be.  Now new statistics from the Agriculture Department confirm that hunger is at a 14 year high;

Three Hillsborough County based state legislators spoke to the Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Committee last night.  Find out what they had to say;

And Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck will be in Tampa in January.

Also, CL News contributor Kelly Cornelius gives her take on what went down yesterday as a Hillsborough County task force recommended the preservation of Cone Ranch, a hot topic for months in the County.

Download the report here.

Big news in CL’s world.  Former St. Pete Times Publisher Marty Petty has been hired as the CEO of Creative Loafing.

Florida CFO and Democratic candidate for Governor Alex Sink has been criticized by some analysts for being too cautious.   So last night she made news by announcing she’s against Florida’s ban on gay adoptions.
President Obama’s decision to prosecute alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed brought out Rudy Guiliani and other Republicans yesterday on some of the Sunday morning  talk shows yesterday.

And just for fun, we look back yesterday at the day of televised pro football action, including the instant classic in Indianapolis between the Colts and the New England Patriots.

Download the report here.

For your Friday the 13th editions, two people prominently mentioned as possible 2012 GOP Presidential candidates will be visiting Florida in the next few weeks. Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty tonight, and Sarah Palin later this month.

Some say Charlie Crist could be considered Presidential material (now that he’s married).  But will he even make it to the Senate?  The Tampa Tribune says the Governor is coming off looking weak recently.

And Harry Reid is contemplating taxing wealthy seniors on Medicare to help pay for more low-and-middle income people on the health care issue- but Tampa area Congresswoman Kathy Castor and the AARP says the just passed bill in the House will be extremely beneficial for Florida seniors.

Download
the report here.

• A coalition of progressive groups will hold a news conference in support of Tampa Congresswoman Kathy Castor, as the Democrat continues to say she won’t support a final health care reform bill if restrictions on abortion rights are in it.

•  A new report on the economic conditions of the various states of the union lists the Sunshine State as having a bleak future.

• And in the wake of the Tampa City Council’s unanimous vote last week to add gender identity and protections to its human rights ordinance,  the local religious right is none too pleased.

Download the report here.

Earlier this week a group of House Democrats who supported the health care reform bill over the weekend contacted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that they will not vote for a final bill that contains language restricting a woman’s right to choose further than current law.  CL has been informed that among the signatories was Tampa’s Kathy Castor;

Today is Veterans Day, and as activities take place across the country and the Bay area, questions persist about who knew what and when about alleged Fort Hood killer Major Nidal Malik Hasan;

And Pinellas County School Board member Nina Hayden is running for the state senate in a district that encompasses both Hillsborough and Pinellas.  She made just her second campaign appearance on the Hillsborough side last night.

Download the report here.

In today’s report:

• There has been much written about Florida’s legislative leaders in 2010 (Dean Cannon and Mike Haridopolus) being advocates of offshore drilling, and how a repeal of the 1990 ban in Florida is only a matter of time.

Perhaps, but those officials aren’t completely in control right now.  Jeff Atwater is in control of the Florida Senate, and he is in no rush to bring up the issue anytime soon.

• Although Paula Dockery filed paperwork last week declaring her candidacy for governor, the Lakeland Republican makes it official in Lakeland this afternoon.

• And health care. Yes, the House passed a bill over the weekend, but there are a number of critics who favor reform who say the bill does virtually nothing to contain costs.

Download the report here.

Although the U.S. Military is cautioning about making judgments about Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the American-born Muslim suspected of killing 13 and wounding 29 others at Ford Hood last week, Joe Lieberman calls the shooting a ‘terrorist act.“

Two Florida Democrats were among the 39 who voted against the health care bill in the House Saturday night.  So was Ohio’s Dennis Kucinich.

And on Bay News 9 yesterday, Governor Charlie Crist tried to walk back his denial of supporting the stimulus bill by talking about why he supported it.  Really.

Download the report here.

As speculation continues on what led to Thursday’s crazed shooting spree by Nidal Hassan at Fort Hood yesterday, the Secretary of Veteran Affairs, General Eric Shinseki, is scheduled to speak today on the USF Tampa campus.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her underlings will be working furiously today to try to gather the 218 votes she needs to pass a health care reform bill that includes a public option tomorrow.

And the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce intends to honor Mayor Rick Baker tomorrow for all of the successes  that the Chamber believes have occurred under the Baker administration.  But there are activists who say the whole story needs to be told, and they plan on protesting the event tomorrow night.

We may not have an audio podcast up today.  But we’ll be back for certain on Monday a.m.

With more time to digest the results of Tuesday’s elections nationally, the question remains: what does it all mean?

The Tampa City Council today will vote on adding gender identity to their human rights ordinance, and in Hillsborough County, the campaign for a one-cent sales tax referendum slowly begins.

Download the report here.

After spending a record $225,000, Bill Foster has captured the Mayoral race in St. Petersburg.

Nationally, Democrats and Republicans are spinning furiously about what if anything yesterday’s elections in New York, New Jersey and Virginia mean on a national basis.

And Hillsborough County Commissioners sit down to finally get serious about a possible referendum on transportation that could go before the voters in a year.

Download the report here

There will be no runoff election in Afghanistan this weekend (I know, we were all looking forward to the revote between Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah).  Karzai’s in, but what, if anything, will this mean for the U.S. interests?  Reportedly President Obama will meet at least two more times with his advisers on the strategy going forward.

As those discussions continue, the  young State Department official whose resignation was made public is getting  lots of face time.  Matthew Hoh appeared this morning on The Today Show, and yesterday on CNN

St. Pete Times/Miami Herald/Bay News 9 released a series of polls over the weekend, and it’s policy more than policy-makers that is most provocative in those results.

And on Sunday talk, Fox News gave Rush Limbaugh a platform for the first half of their one-hour program yesterday.  Too bad nothing interesting came out of it, other than the odious comment that President Obama’s appearance at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware last week was nothing more than a publicity stunt, according to Rush.

Most interesting was Joe Lieberman on CBS, saying he’d rather have nothing happen with health care reform than to allow for a government-run public option.

Download the report here.

The House Democrats dropped a bomb on D.C. yesterday – 1900 pages of health reform legislation that Republicans hate and even some progressive Democrats aren’t pleased with.  Meanwhile, activists will target local politicos Gus Bilirakis and Bill Nelson today.

Sports talk show host Dan Sileo has been sidelined by his Clear Channel bosses for his comments on the Bucs losing hundreds of millions of dollars because they got ripped off by Bernie Madoff.  But what about the ‘responsible’ news organizations that breathlessly reported his comments?

Former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth is helping out Florida Power & Light’s ‘damaged’ reputation because of their request for a 30% rate hike increase.  Say what?

Also, Pinellas County Congressman Bill Young is in the news today – and not in a good way.  You can read the story, but we’ll refrain from adding anything else just yet.  We’ve put in a call to the Congressman’s D.C. office for comment that he’s being investigated by the House Ethics Committee.

Podcast to follow.

There was a civilized, at times dare we say entertaining debate last night in Tallahassee on the proposal to repeal Florida’s ban on offshore drilling.

Tampa officials are studying the possibility of bringing red light cameras to certain intersections in the city.  Hillsborough County officials already agreed on doing so, with the first cameras going up tomorrow.  A state law mandating cameras could take precedence over both jurisdictions, but lawsuits will surely follow suit.

And the possibility of Hillsborough County using an old strip mall to house the homeless ain’t going to happen.

Audio podcast to follow this afternoon – we promise.

Florida Chief Financial Officer and leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for Governor, Alex Sink, has been very reluctant to comment on a government run health care option.  Not any longer.

Meanwhile, two members of the Florida Congressional delegation are making news - including GOP Brooksville’s Ginny Brown-Waite calling on President Obama to ask for permission to accept his Nobel Peace Prize.

And new national polls asking Americans their thoughts on President Obama and Congress reveal some interesting results.

Download the report here.

President Obama continues his stay in the sunshine state this morning, with a major speech on modernizing our electricity power grid at 12:25 this afternoon in Arcadia.

Kathleen Ford was asked yesterday to comment on her “HNIC” remark at Gibbs High School in St. Pete yesterday.

And Marco Rubio blasts Charlie Crist again, this time on MSNBC, a day after a Forbes columnist calls Crist the worst Governor in the country.

Download the report here.

Over the weekend you may have read about Hillsborough County activist George Niemann’s ethics complaint against County Administrator Pat Bean’s self imposed pay raise now being investigated by the State Ethics Commission.

But I bet most people don’t know how the process works.  CL Contributor Niemann explains it all to you.  And it’s not pretty.

Polk County Congressman Adam Putnam is running for state wide office next year.  In case you forgot, he’s getting himself in the news today with his op-ed against excessive federal spending.  We haven’t heard that from Republican much lately, have we?

14 Americans were killed in Afghanistan today.  That makes Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold’s comments that he thinks the U.S. should pull out of Afghanistan all the more relevant.

And some Senate Democrats envision a public option in the health care bill being negotiated in Congress.

Download the report here.

There’s another local story today about former Tampa Mayor Dick Greco flirting with another run to lead the city.  My take.

Florida Senator George LeMieux’s past associations are creative waves, especially when it comes to the politics of offshore drilling.

And Fox News’ Karl Rove says that Barack Obama won’t announce he’s raising troop levels in Afghanistan until after next month’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia.

Download the report here.

It happens every two years, but rumors again are circulating that Bill Young won’t run for re-election in 2010. His spokesman strongly denies that rumor.

Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin Beckner isn’t playing around on the whole Pat Bean giving herself a raise controversy.  He said yesterday that  he’s called the FDLE to check it out.

And Orlando Democrat Alan Grayson isn’t moderating his mantra that the GOP’s intransigence on health care is literally killing people.

Download the report here.

This reporter was at the latest Bill Foster/Kathleen Ford debate last night in St. Petersburg.  Not a whole lot of news being made, with the exception that Foster now says he supports domestic partnership benefits.

Very interesting new poll numbers are out in Florida’s Senate and Gubernatorial races this morning.  The big news here is that even though Marco Rubio is still down by double digits to Charlie Crist in their race for U.S. Senate, Rubio has made up 14% from a similar poll conducted two months ago.

Download the Report here.

Perhaps feeling massive guilt, Commisioners Kevin White and Al Higgenbotham plan to unveil a new plan on finding housing for the homeless at today’s Hillsborough County Commission Board Meeting.

Interestingly enough, Commissioner White, who has been under fire after he was found guilty of sexually harassing his aide back in August, has had a number of supporters come out for him at this morning’s meeting.

Support for a government run public health care option is rising in the U.S.  As activists prepare to protest in front of Senator Bill Nelson’s office today, perhaps the new numbers will inspire him and others to get more behind the idea?

One prominent Florida Democrat has no opinion about a public option,

and,  with just two weeks to go before election day in St. Petersburg, former police chief Goliath Davis weighs in on the recent controversial comments on race made by mayoral candidate Kathleen Ford.

Also in national news, the Obama Administration announced yesterday what they said they were going to do when they came into office – that is, stop prosecuting sanctioned marijuana suppliers or the patients who purchase medicinal pot.

Download the report

Attorney General Eric Holder had said his Justice Department would no longer go after those dispensaries when he took office, but his office did actually continue to do so for awhile.

And in the story I quote from, there’s this little caveat:

And while the policy memo describes a change in priorities away from prosecuting medical marijuana cases, it does not rule out the possibility that the federal government could still prosecute someone whose activities are allowed under state law.

Also, President Obama may be in Tampa next Tuesday.  We’ll report once we have the details.

And, swine flu shots will begin being administered in Hillsborough County schools today.  The School Board issue a press release this morning with results from a survey of parents on whether they will have their kid get inoculated.

The results? 55% said yes, 24% said no, and 21 percent were undecided.  Over 25,000 people responded.

The St. Petersburg Mayor’s race just got a whole lot more interesting.

The Obama Administration is not dropping its jihad against Fox News.

And some in the media are spreading the narrative that Barack Obama simply isn’t tough enough – but Obama’s radio address on Saturday threatening to revoke the health care industry’s anti trust exemption is a pretty serious threat.

Download the report here.

After last night’s brawl following the controversial St. Petersburg City Council vote on vacating the sidewalk of BayWalk, St. Pete for Peace says they’ll demonstrate tonight.

The Public Service Commission today rules on whether to impose a $200 million front end hit to ratepayers in the state.

And the Wall Street Journal blasts the National Football League for rejecting Rush Limbaugh.

Also in the news, as Congressional Republicans continue to criticize President Obama for ‘dithering’ in his deliberations regarding a new strategy and troop levels in Afghanistan, now comes word that there’s a good chance that there will be a run-off in the disputed presidential election there.

That report comes as the deaths of 4 Americans in Afghanistan are announced today.

Oh, and Florida’s unemployment rate is now at 11%.

Download the report here.

Several stories in the news today – such as yesterday’s Mayoral Debate in St. Pete

St. Pete’s City Council again brings up BayWalk

And  there’s a protest at Bill Nelson’s office today on health care – also President Obama is  not popular in parts of New Orleans and San Francisco, which he visits today.

Download the report here.

In today’s podcast:

• Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin Beckner wants to clear the record on his Kevin White motion from last week, which did not support Rose Ferlita’s call to sue White to try to recoup some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars the County owes due to White’s transgressions.

• CFO Alex Sink on ex-felons’ civil rights: She wants to take some of them back

• Limbaugh wants the St. Louis Rams: TBO commenters just want to bash Al Sharpton

• You’ll never believe who’s against the tent city in Hillsborough

Download the report here.

Also:

Last night Bill Foster and Kathleen Ford battled it out on a debate televised live by BayNews9.  I’ll talk about this more tomorrow, as the two will be engaging in another debate on Wednesday afternoon.

And last, but certainly not least, the Senate Finance Committee will take their vote today on the health care bill coming out of the Max Baucus led group.  This comes the day after the industry group, AHIP – America’s Health Insurance Plans, released a 26 page analysis conducted by PricewaterhouseCooopers, which said that premiums would cost more under the Finance Committee legislation than under the current system.

The White House and Democrats are outraged, but in fact, as several political commentators have been saying, this almost insures that the much vaunted public option will end making it into the final legislation.  Why not?  If the Baucus bill won’t bring down costs (which , along with trying to insure more people, has been the driving goal of the Obama administration during this whole debate), then the public option is really needed, supporters can now argue.

The Florida Democratic Party hosted its annual state conference over the weekend at a Disney resort in Lake Buena Vista.  This reporter was there for some of the events, including a debate between Dan Gelber and Dave Aronberg, the aspiring candidates to be the Party’s nominee for Attorney General next year.  I’ll be writing a separate post on that later today.

Saturday, the conference was filled with speeches from some of the party’s leaders, including the woman that so many Dems have their hopes on for next year to be the next governor, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink.  In her address Saturday night, she lit into her possible GOP opponent next year, Bill McCollum, saying, “”A career politician like Bill McCollum only talks about jobs and growth, but a leader like me creates jobs and growth. McCollum pretends to have all the answers, a leader asks the right questions.  He puts on a performance. A leader demands performance. He measures results by the polls he takes, I measure results by the progress we make.”

Download the report here.

That’s quite possibly the strongest rhetoric employed so far by the CFO in her campaign against the current Attorney General, but if you can’t get the grass roots of your party faithful up and cheering at your state party’s convention, when can you?

I didn’t arrive at the Conference until around noon on Saturday, which meant I missed appearances by Senator Bill Nelson and Congressman Alan Grayson, who has, pardon the cliche, become a rock star with Florida Democrats after having said Republicans want sick people to “die quickly” two weeks ago.

On Saturday, he said the GOP should be called “The Selfish Party,” and the 2,000 or so delegates in the hall ate it up.

Saturday morning Senator Bill Nelson addressed the crowd, and there were many in the audience who got up when he spoke, calling out “health care now! “  In the Senate Finance Committee, of which he is a member, Nelson did vote on an amendment sponsored by New York Senator Charles Schumer, and on Saturday he told the delegates and others in attendance that “I have heard you loud and clear” on the issue.  Nelson’s Committee votes on their bill tomorrow.

As a Quinnipiac Poll released last month revealed, Florida Democrats are solidly behind a government-sponsored public health care option in any bill that ultimately comes out of the Congress this year, so it’s perhaps no surprise Nelson is getting with the program.

Yet the Democrats’ potential standard-bearer, gubernatorial candidate Sink, still has not expressed her opinion on the matter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stunning.

That had to be the overwhelming feeling among Americans as they awoke to the news early this morning that Barack Obama is this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.  It came in at 5 a.m. East Coast time this morning, and I literally jumped up and off my bed hearing the NPR announcer say at 5:04, “Repeating our top story, Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to enjoy the honor, but the first to win it during his first term in office (and in his first 8 months, to boot).  Woodrow Wilson was awarded the prize in 1919 after helping to establish the League of Nations, and Teddy Roosevelt took it in 1906.

But as the Washington Post reports:

In contrast, Obama is struggling over whether to expand the war in Afghanistan, preparing to withdraw from Iraq, and searching for ways to build momentum to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and assemble an international effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

Already the conservative media establishment is mocking the prize and our president.  But doesn’t that contradict what they were saying a week ago, when many people were almost as equally surprised that the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago as the potential host of the 2016 Summer Games?

Former President Jimmy Carter, the 2002 Nobel Prize winner, called the award to Obama a”bold statement of international support for his vision and commitment.”

Download the report here.

Closer to home, the St. Petersburg City Council, or at least one member of it, was apparently stung by the criticism thrown their way by the St. Pete Times and other figures for their vote last week not to allow BayWalk to be given the public sidewalk that is the entryway to the struggling shopping complex.

Councilmember Herb Polson supported a motion to bring the issue back.

Read the rest of this entry »

The latest Senate health bill will cost $829 billion over the next decade AND slightly reduce the federal budget deficit.

That’s according to the official scorekeepers of such things, the Congressional Budget Office.  It said the legislation coming out of Max Baucus’ Finance Committee would also cover 94% of nonelderly legal U.S. citizens, up from about 83% right now — and it would cut the deficit by $81 billion over the next decade.

What does this mean? Theoretically, it should give cover to moderate Democrats, who are freaking out that the legislation would increase the deficit.

And who knows, maybe there might be a stray Republican in the Senate  who could join the lonely Olympia Snowe — not that anybody should take her vote for granted.

Mind you, the Baucus bill does NOT contain a government run public option. , which Many House Democrats, including Tampa’s Kathy Castor, have been on the record saying they would not vote for the bill unless it includes the public option.

Download the report here.

Another ignominious statistic for Florida.  We rank 50th among the states  and D.C. in its percentage of its children covered by health insurance, according to a new report.

It comes from the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based nonprofit foundation focused on improving health care access.

Most disturbingly, the report finds that most states showed an improvement in the percentage of children covered by health insurance — but not in Florida,where coverage of kids fell by 2 percent since 2005.

The killer paragraph in the story in today’s Palm Beach Post is this:

Eighteen percent of children in Florida lacked health insurance, compared to only 3.2 percent in Massachusetts, where health insurance has been mandatory for the past three years. The national median was 8.6 percent.

Meanwhile, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program this morning, where he talked a lot about deteriorating relations between the political parties in Washington.

He did take a couple of slaps at Barack Obama, saying he thinks that the President has an opportunity to find common ground with his opponents, but “doesn’t seem like he’s ready to take on that challenge. I think there would be huge support for him to move away from the orthodoxy of his party on some positions, and move to a third way.”

Yet later on in the conversation, Bush gave props to the Prez and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, saying he was “encouraged and excited ” that Obama has taken on the teachers’ unions and demanded accountability, saying he and Duncan are deserving of high praise on that front.

On health care reform, the former governor wasn’t nearly so magnanimous, calling the proposals in Congress ‘missed opportunities.”

Speaking of MSNBC and health care reform: One of that cable network’s stars, and a hero amongst much of the left wing in the U.S., Keith Olbermann went over the top last night with an hour-long “Special Comment” special devoted to him talking about the health care debate.

I only saw a few moments of it, but this review in Salon.Com seems to capture its essence, calling it “Olbermann’s Wasted Moment.”

Last but not least, the Hillsborough County Commission deadlocked yesterday on a proposal to sue Kevin White to recoup some of their financial losses due to his conviction on sexual harassment charges.

But as I noted in my blog posting on this yesterday, an interesting little event occurred at the end of the vote on Commissioner White’s financial situation yesterday.

That is a new ordinance that the County Commission will need to approve on issues like sexual harassment, which is a major reason why a federal judge ruled that the County was liable in the White lawsuit.

Commissioner Kevin Beckner asked Attorney Renee Lee to see if protections could be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

Lee responded that that could be added.  But then Commissioner Jim Norman objected, saying he was disturbed by that exchange, calling it a ‘back door attempt’ to change the language in the County’s Human Rights Ordinance.  Norman said he’d call for full-blown hearings if that were to be the case.

In a brief interview late yesterday, Commissioner Beckner told CL that he thought Norman overreacted to his suggestion.  This story isn’t over.

In the wake of last week’s vote by the St. Petersburg City Council not to vacate the sidewalk that leads into the BayWalk retail complex, a vote that BayWalk owners had demanded before they would consider investing more money in the struggling mall, the activist group St. Pete for Peace says they will not protest on the sidewalk for at least the next year.

On the organization’s website, the group writes:

The recent Baywalk/sidewalk proposal was an attack on free speech and would have set a dangerous precedent for our city and our country.  In last week’s city council vote, everyone’s First Amendment rights were maintained and our right to demonstrate was upheld.  This is what we were striving for all along.

If the city and/or Baywalk’s owners again try to ban protesters from the public sidewalk in front of Baywalk, we will re-assess our position and again struggle to maintain people’s rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

This clearly puts the onus back on the owners, C.W. Capital, to put their money where their mouth is (okay, lame expression).  For months, they and their supporters in St. Pete have said that, despite the withering economy, they would only reinvest and could only re-market the complex by insuring that protestors could not disturb customers.  St. Pete for Peace has called their bluff.

Download the report here.

We knew that the Kevin White case was going to be brought up again today by Hillsborough County Commissioners at their bi-weekly meeting.

But we didn’t know that Commissioner Rose Ferlita would be announcing that she plans to ask her fellow commissioners to sue White to get back some of the taxpayer funds that are associated with his sexual discrimination lawsuit.

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