For logistical purposes, CL has been consolidating its multiple blog platforms into one, and now it is The Political Whore’s turn to hang out the “We’re Moving” sign. It makes sense: we can’t use a common search engine among more than one blog right now. And we have to cross-post Green Community posts to both sites, to use just one example of content that fits into both blogs.

This will be the last post in this old blog site (Friday, August 21, 2009). Future PoHo posts will appear in our Daily Loaf blog, which also includes Green Community, arts, entertainment, sports, sex & love, film, TV and other pop culture posts.

You can read PoHo news pretty much the same way you read PoHo now, if you just want news & politics and not the rest of the Daily Loaf fare. Just change your bookmark from http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/politicalwhore/

to

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/category/politics/

And the RSS feed changes from http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/politicalwhore/feed

to

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/category/politics/feed

See you over at the Daily Loaf.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was questioned earlier this week about her views and how they compare/contrast with President Clinton’s views during a visit to the Congo. (The student meant to say President “Obama.” Right.)

Many pundits and bloggers poked fun at her response.

Women the world over are constantly asked about their husband’s point of view, opinion, and judgment. Even when it shouldn’t matter.

If I had a dime every time someone asked what my husband thought of my writing, pictures, ass…

When was the last time a man held a press conference and someone asked what the little lady thought? A man is rarely made to believe he needs his wife’s blessing when it comes to performance at work.

Could Clinton have answered the question better? With humor and a bit of serenity? Absolutely. She should expect such misogynistic and idiotic questions, especially in a place where women are treated so poorly. An answer at the ready, said with a sly wink, could have really hit home – internationally.

She had every right to be frustrated and angry with the suggestion that her views should mirror her husband’s. Bill Clinton is *not* Secretary of State, goddamn it.

She just should have ranted in private.

But I don’t blame her.

Not one bit.

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who bore with us through our tech issues today for the live stream. We finally got it done.

The video stream of the taping is after the jump:

Live TV : Ustream

Scott Farrell of The Farrell Files on 10 Connects and CL Editor David Warner join me this morning to tape our weekly HoCast.

Here is our tentative issue lineup, including discussion of Tampa’s electric shuttle car controversy. Have something you want us to discuss or a nominee for Political Whore of the Week? Leave it in comments and we’ll read it during the podcast:

1. The Public Transportation Commission’s decision to pull the plug on free electric shuttles in downtown Tampa

2. Health care and Town Halls: is the nuttiness getting too much? Sarah Palin makes up crap about death panels and the Senate reacts. One crazy brought a gun to the NH Town Hall with Obama. Obama’s popularity continues to slide. Clips as follows:

Dingell calls town hall mobs like KKK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfoGCYFRQlM&feature=ytn%3Amptnews

Obama compares health care concerns to FedEx and UPS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTi-WdOu2s

Audio from the man who brought a gun to the presidential town hall and the discourse he has with Chris Matthews.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1DBIHocbXk

3. Dick Cheney believes that George W Bush “went soft” on him, according to Washington Post. Cheney is prepping a tell-all book
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/12/AR2009081203306.html

4. Scientology’s ads hit the airwaves here, and the St Pete Times accepts their web banner ads.

5. And is it too easy to do Hillary losing it in the congo?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTi-WdOu2s

Plus Political Whore of the Week nominees
1-time winner Brian Blair officially announces for Florida Legislature
Major Garrett of Fox News, for his naked partisanship during the daily WH newser and a question on why people are getting White House emails http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLQT0X1aSoI
The Moonbats who are selling a $18.49 DVD (with free bumpersticker!) called “A Question of Eligibility” that details the Birther movement and claims

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor
Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.

When he speaks about the impact of captivity on the mammals, he doesn’t sound like a showboater, and what might seem like New Age-y talk about dolphin intelligence is pointed up with footage that left me haunted, too. That smile, says O’Barry, is nature’s greatest deception. Dolphins smile even when they’re crying on the inside.

Living in Florida, I am used to certain theme-and-water-park douchebaggery.

Comes with the heat, bugs, and old people driving 30-mph down the highway.

But there is something vastly disturbing about certain aquariums and water parks. And not only in Florida.

(Read the rest and see the film’s trailer after the jump)

Most of the places where you are allowed to swim, pet, and kiss dolphins are getting these self-aware and beautiful creatures from the seas of Japan. Trainers from all over the world flock to a little town called Taiji where about 13 fisherman use loud noises to frighten hundreds of dolphins every year and force them into a tiny cove.

Once there, trainers pick only the cutest, sweetest animals to fill our resorts, parks, and petting ponds.

The ones who don’t make the cut are slaughtered and the meat (poisoned with mercury) is fed to an unsuspecting public. The ones who do make it out become lethargic, depressed, and sometimes kill themselves.

See, your paradise is a fucking nightmare to them. This *dophin petting* thing is a cold and cruel business.

Which is so not hot. And neither are the pictures of you in a bathing suit rubbing up against them.

You don’t look like an animal lover. You look like an ass.

The Cove is coming to The Tampa Theatre this weekend. It’s an important film because it documents the way these precious animals are tortured and killed.

The filmmakers were recently on Fresh Air and I dare you to listen without feeling sick to your stomach.

WARNING: TANGENT TIME – The activist featured in the film, former Flipper trainer Ric O’Barry, says that people who compare the lagoon to a slaughterhouse are wrong. He says that animals in a slaughterhouse aren’t tortured before they’re killed. And that’s why this is worse.

He just wants us to swallow that shit so he can swallow that burger he’s eating.

But I agree with him on everything else. I hope The Cove encourages people to bypass cruelty disguised as entertainment. Family fun shouldn’t be so bloody awful.

Stop loving dolphins so much and instead help set them free. Your love, after all, is killing them.

So, what is Facebook Lite?

Depends on who you ask. Tech Crunch reports that it looks much like Twitter or FriendFeed:

Okay, while it seems that most of the users who are getting this message now are not seeing much different, earlier this week, it looks like a very select few may have gotten a sneak peak at Facebook Lite. According to their tweets on it, it appears to be a more Twitter-like. One user notes that it, “looks like a simplified version of twitter with comments enabled. On 2nd thought, it looks like simplified FriendFeed.”

That is of course very interesting since Facebook just bought FriendFeed for around $50 million yesterday.

Tech Crunch features this screen capture of Facebook Lite.

The Washington Post, however, says it ain’t Twitter-esque or FriendFeed-like:

But in reality, Facebook Lite has nothing to do with Twitter or FriendFeed ? at least, not right now. Instead, it was designed to be used in parts of the world where broadband speeds vary and can be expensive, we’re being told by Facebook. Given that the initial testing of it has taken place in India over the past several days, this makes sense.

Think about how slow Facebook is to load at times on some broadband connections here in the U.S., and just imagine what that much be like on connections that are several times slower. And then also consider that all of Facebook’s datacenters are here in the U.S. So for the data to get around the world, it creates an even longer natural load time. So Facebook is stripping the site back and allowing Facebook Lite to be a site where new users can quickly write on friend’s walls, send messages and build their social network. The basics.

As we said, it’s testing in India right now, but the plan is for Facebook Lite to hit places like Russia and China as well, we’re hearing.

Back when it started, TBO.com was a pioneering website, easy to navigate with lots of good info fed into it from a robust Tampa Tribune and WFLA-TV newsroom.

Today, 15 years after its birth, TBO.com is the growth engine on Parker Street for Media General, but it is a shadow of itself content-wise. It also uses video poorly (given all its access to video from owning the top-rated local TV station) and has an absolutely incomprehensible and unnavigable blog structure.

That hasn’t stopped its owners from celebrating, as this official statement crows:

August 11, 2009 –  Today, TBO.com celebrates 15 years of serving the Tampa Bay community online.   August 11, 1994 marked the first date of online publishing for TBO.com, making The Tampa Tribune one of the first newspapers in the nation with a dedicated news Web site.

… Today, TBO.com serves more than 3 million unique visitors each month with well over 20 million page views every month.  TBO.com recently introduced new interactive elements to its site including VIPIR Interactive Radar from Storm Team 8 allowing users to zoom down to street level and view storms just above their neighborhoods.   TBOsnap.com launched as the new user video submission tool, allowing Tampa Bay residents to record news and report it straight from their video cell phones via e-mail to myshots@tbosnap.com.  Also as a leader in mobile Web technology, m.tbo.com recently released news and weather videos on the iphone platform and is receiving record views from TBO mobile iphone users.

“The biggest change in 15 years has been the growth of digital news – first on the Web, and now on mobile and social networks. We’re proud of the team that’s dedicated to the success of this 24 hour news service and that continues to work every day to make us Tampa’s No.1 source for breaking news,” says TBO.com’s Content Director, Loren Omoto.

(It turned out that the question was wrongly translated, but wow, is our Secretary of State a little fed up with Bill getting the lion’s share of headlines?)

From Kansascity.com comes the tale you just knew would happen — an injured anti-Obama Town Hall protester is taking up collections to pay for his medical care because he lost his job and has no insurance:

Backers of Kenneth Gladney, 38, of St. Louis, gathered Saturday at the offices of the Service Employees International Union for an event organized by the pro-limited government Tea Party coalition.

The group claims union members attacked the politically conservative Gladney at the event two days earlier. But members of the union, which supports the president’s health care plan, say Gladney initiated the fight.

The melee, which ended in six arrests, was one of several at town hall meetings around the country as Democratic lawmakers returning home faced resistance to proposals to reform the nation’s costly health care system. U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, a Missouri Democrat, organized the event in Mehlville.

Gladney’s attorney, David Brown, received cheers from the crowd of about 200 people when he read a statement written by his client.

“A few nights ago there was an assault on my liberty, and on yours, too.” Brown read. “This should never happen in this country.”

Brown told the crowd that Gladney is accepting donations toward his medical expenses. Gladney told reporters he was laid off recently and has no health insurance.

You can watch video of the attorney speaking for Gladney at the rally after the jump:

While he couldn’t speak the day after the altercation, he could speak earlier, when Fox News came a’ callin’.

Another TV news personality has been urged not to have children. The twist is that this time it is a male anchor, not a woman.

For those not enamored of following Florida media insider baseball, you can bail out now. But for the rest of us media whores, there is a wonderful story that has been playing out for a week or so in Miami, where the ABC affiliate WPLG has fired one of its anchors who now claims it is because he is (gasp!) gay.

Charles Perez has fought back, with a sexual orientation discrimination complaint (which he claims triggered the firing) and a blog post in the Daily Beast in which he details his claims that station management was afraid of his increasing gay profile and urged him not to have children with his male partner. (The station, in written statements, denies Perez’s allegations.)

Perez writes:

Bottom line, I believe they sold me out as soon as my being gay became too widely known. It made them uncomfortable and made me, in their eyes, less advertiser-friendly. They’d demoted me two weeks earlier from main weekday anchor to weekend anchor. It was a move I quickly recognized was leading to the door, and I wasn’t prepared to watch my career circle down the drain.

My ex-employer will never admit this, but if the past decades have taught us anything, it is to be much more subtle about our prejudices. Getting rid of “the black guy” or “the woman” or “the gay guy” or “the Jew”—not to mention many other select groups—has given way to “we really should go in a different direction.” Or “we’ve really got to consider what’s the least objectionable choice.”

And he continues:

One of my colleagues, a higher-up at the station, told me: “The weekends will be better for you, anyway, Charles. You and Keith [my partner] want to have kids. It’s a lot less high-profile there.”

It was a suggestion that never would have been made to one of my straight colleagues, male or female. The only thing I could take from it was that my profile as a gay man, especially if I were to have kids and, God forbid, get married, would render me less promotable and less advertiser-friendly.

In fact, over the previous five months, I’d been told, “Don’t get married, Charles. We don’t need that.” I’d also been told not to have children. In essence: “You’re the main anchor and you’re gay, but let’s not push it.”

To me, having the family I want is not pushing it. Living with love, commitment, and dignity is not pushing it.