The Political Whore

What’s worse than dressing up like a Smurf in a bid to help break a world record? Trying and failing.

• The Clinton/Obama debate goes Hollywood.
• The wisdom of Bill Clinton: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”
• Who do the tech-heads favor for president? Turns out Bill Gates and Steve Jobs actually agree on something.
• Fund-raising update: Obama is a juggernaut.
• Scam alert: Beware people using the promise of proposed government rebate checks to trick you into giving up secret bank account information.
• Yes, there’s a Heath Ledger drug tape, and no, you won’t see it on Entertainment Tonight.
• Lost returns tonight. Here’s a little primer from our friends at Newsweek.
• Britney goes to the hospital. Again.

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OK, considering the source, gotta take this with a grain of salt, but I have heard similar buzz over the weekend:

McCain came out of his South Carolina victory 10 days earlier with a Florida lead, but Romney was pulling even until the endorsement for McCain by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. The word in Florida GOP circles was that Crist resented unofficial support for Romney by Crist’s intraparty rival, former Gov. Jeb Bush.

When viewed through the prism of the Crist-Bush rivalry, as well as the former gov facilitating Romney’s quick machine ramp-up here, Crist’s risky last-minute endorsement of McCain makes a whole lot more sense. The risk paid off.

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Here we go:

• Gov. Charlie is both lucky (the McCain endorsement, since he gave it so late and yet reaped so much from it, despite the fact that it really was Hispanics who gave the win to McCain) and smart (putting all his energy and good name behind the tax amendment).
• The tax amendment won in South Florida; stunning, really, given the Democratic nature of Broward, you would have thought that the union anti-amendment message would have found more fertile ground, but soaring property taxes down there carried the day.
• Rudi’s “strategy” didn’t fail him; Rudi’s personality failed him.
• Florida’s Republicans are lost and adrift as it relates to their presidential candidate; the clear trend was they went with the perceived frontrunner, regardless of the fact that their top choice was far more moderate than the party faithful can stand. Also, white evangelicals gave a plurality of their vote to Mitt Romney (gaining 31 percent of the white evangelicals, tied with evangelical darling Mike Huckabee). These voters secretly can’t stand Romney because of his Mormonism, but again, voted for him out of pragmatism and a hatred for McCain and a sense that Huckabee was out of the picture.
• Florida voters are willing to settle for pennies on the dollar when it comes to tax relief. Now, the vast majority will shut up and be happy; a few aggressive tax-cutters (like David McKalip’s referendum-seeking group and House Speaker Marco Rubio) will try for more cuts, but since Floridians are a cheap date, there won’t be any sentiment to really address the problems (tax inequities, local government budget inflexibility, a bad school funding formula and mechanism, an unfair sales tax system that exempts billions of dollars worth of sales for those who have political clout, etc.)
• Democratic voters weren’t buying the spin that their votes didn’t count and turned out almost as many voters as the Republicans did.
• A McCain nomination would rip the Republican Party apart. (And probably give Rush a heart attack)
• McCain might have momentum, but Mitt has endless personal wealth to throw at the race. So the GOP nomination is not a done deal.

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You make the call, given that some folks believed that Newschannel 8 anchor Gayle Guyardo was perhaps tipsy during her call of the 2008 Gasparilla Parade:

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Our turn.

• McCain and Romney battle to the finish.
• Goodnight Rudy.
• How goes the vote?
• Way to go Dems! Love your electoral strategy of screwing Florida’s voters.
• And how long is this whole primary season going to continue, anyway?
• Facing an uprising by its rank-and-file members, California’s teachers union holds off endorsing Hillary.
• Break out the party hats! Bush gave his final State of the Union address last night. Too bad it was so overshadowed by the race to replace him.
• The best political reporting anywhere: The Onion.

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A sampling of some of the incredible disconnect between what people say they believe in and the person (or issue) they choose to support:

• A Pasco County woman who says being against abortion is her No. 1 issue. So who is her man in the GOP primary? The one candidate who, as governor of Massachusetts, was pro-choice.
• The schoolteacher who says she is pro-choice. Who is her candidate in the Republican primary? The most ardent pro-lifer who has introduced legislation in Congress to overturn Roe v. Wade.

So, who voted, and (if you want to tell us) who did you vote for and why? And how did you vote on Amendment 1?

(I voted early, and as a registered NPA, I could only vote for the Amendment 1 question. Given my recent column on the matter, is it any surprise I voted against it?)

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This from the Business Wire:

 Sex Tape Starring AMERICAN IDOL® Finalist Jessica Sierra to Be Released January 30th As She Undergoes Rehab in California

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–While former AMERICAN IDOL® finalist Jessica Sierra completes her current rehab in nearby Pasadena, Vivid Entertainment, the world’s leading adult film studio, will release a steamy sex tape starring the troubled singer.

“Jessica Sierra Superstar” will go on sale January 30th in retail stores nationwide and online … .

“It’s an exceptionally explicit series of vignettes both solo and with Charles “C” Youngblood a man she met at a Hooters bar in Tampa. The tape also reveals much about the personality of Jessica and gives some insight that would be helpful for anyone curious as to how she has arrived at her current situation in life,” according to Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment.

With scenes captured in various locations around Tampa, the sex tape demonstrates that Sierra has talents never imagined by the national television audience that voted her as a finalist in the fourth season of AMERICAN IDOL®. She was eliminated on March 30, 2005 after she sang “On the Side of Angels” and since then has led a stormy life that has included run-ins with law enforcement.

Sierra is one of the bold-face names documented in VH1’s new reality series, “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew”, in which David Drew “Dr. Drew” Pinsky follows the detoxification and treatment process of show business personalities.

Sierra is currently at the Pasadena Recovery Center, which she entered after a Florida judge granted her a special 45-day travel permit. He had sentenced her to serve a year at an in-house drug treatment facility followed by three years of probation after a trial for disorderly intoxication, resisting arrest without violence and other charges stemming from her latest arrest for an incident that occurred outside a bar in Tampa last month.

That oughta keep the news cycle alive on Sierra, at least for a while. And in “various locations” in Tampa to boot,

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The state Board of Governors of the college system has taken one step in the right direction and another in a terrible direction. From Shannon CVS at the Times:

The board in charge of Florida’s 11 public universities chose the former Thursday, giving college leaders the green light to slash overall enrollment, lay off faculty and staff members, and take other money-cutting measures, all aimed at preserving the value of a four-year degree amid the state’s budget crisis.

The Board of Governors also voted to raise undergraduate, in-state tuition and fees by 8 percent next year, to $83.58 per credit hour, or $186 more per year for a full-time student.

It’s about time we raised tuition, as much as it pains me to say that (full disclosure: I am a graduate student at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg), but Florida’s been out of whack for decades in the amount of money that students pay vs. how much the state subsidizes. Now, with budget shortfalls and the tax crisis, the Board is taking a moderate action, given that it considered raising tuition 13 percent a year for the next five years before falling back to 8 percent.

But what troubles me is the other faculty cuts and enrollment caps that are accompanying the tuition increases, making it harder to get a higher education in Florida at a time when we could use more trained and intelligent young people for our work force. Again, in full disclosure, I’ve got a son who wouldn’t mind being admitted to a Florida public university in a year and a half. And I am a graduate of the University of Florida myself.

Already our public schools are mired at the bottom of national lists in terms of money spent per pupil. One board member worried that the same fate awaits our college system:

“We have to raise the tuition so that universities can go forward with their missions,” said board member Gus Stavros. “We have the worst faculty-student ratio in the nation, we’re 42nd for need-based aid. I’m embarrassed. I’ve never been involved in a mediocre system in my life until now. Let’s do it.”

We should be expanding access to our universities, not curtailing it. We should be providing better educations in our community colleges. Instead, we’re the cheapest because legislators want to keep Florida a cheap place to live. The Times pointed out that even the aggressive 13 percent tuition increase ” would have put Florida’s tuition and fees at about No. 37 among the 50 states, compared to being the least expensive now at $3,361 a year.”

It’s great to be less expensive, but you get what you pay for. If we’re cheap, we’re getting cheap educations. And now fewer and fewer kids will be able to get even that.

(photo: Ben Ostrowsky, some rights reserved)

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“I don’t see how the inherent dangers of space flight could hurt this business.”

• I’ll take my refund in $10s and $20s, please.
• Today’s campaign update from Yahoo News — and what’s Obama doing in that photo, anyway?
• Hey Republicans, you want a piece of this?
• The real reason the U.S. is going broke.
• You’ve just found the dead body of a movie star. Who do you call? 9-1-1? His family? If you picked Mary-Kate Olsen, congrats! You must be Heath Ledger’s masseuse.
• Step right up for a chance to be one of the first people killed in a horrible space tourism accident.
• The cutting edge of offensiveness: The Three Little Pigs.
• I know what you’re thinking: Thank God golf is back!

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Wow, Republicans gathering in tony Boca Raton, now there’s something you don’t see every day. Mizner Park’s nightspots, here they come. Now if only we can hear something about what these candidates would do to help us here in Florida (since, judging by how they talk about Iraq and immigration, they aren’t going to be doing much to help the nation at large). Others agree with the need for some FLA-oriented chat:

“With Jan. 29 just a few days away, I hope to hear about a lot of Florida issues,” said Chip LaMarca, Broward County Republican chairman.

What would they do about a national CAT fund to lower the cost of homeowners insurance? What would they do to help the Everglades restoration? How would they deal with education, since we suck in Florida at learnin’ our young’uns? Would they drill for oil off our coasts? What about ending the ridiculous four-decade-old embargo against Cuba?

I’m not holding my breath thinking we’ll hear most of those questions asked. After all, TV needs ratings, and NBC is moderating. Chances are even great that if you hear those questions asked, you won’t hear them answered, or at least satisfactorily.

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