Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 19, 2009, at 10:52 am
I was out of the office (and to some degree, out of touch with the important breaking news of the day) for the past two days, so the whole flapdoodle over First Lady Michelle Obama wearing (gasp!) shorts on her family vacation to the Grand Canyon got right by me.
But this morning, I got gobsmacked by the “news” when I broke my prohibition against watching The Today Show and saw not only a produced package report on it but an interview about it with the author of an upcoming book on Mrs. Obama.
So I’m damned if I write about this nothingness (because by doing so I am just perpetuating the media echo chamber on this particular non-news item) but if I sit by and let this phenomenon continue to go unchallenged I look either a) out of touch or b) like I condone such piffle.
So let’s be clear: Blame the Internet, blame the increasingly content-hungry online news media who will write about anything as long as it gets pageviews and resonates and gets Reddit’ed or Digg’ed or whatever’ed. But mostly, blame ourselves, the consumers of this mental junk food, because if we weren’t eating it, they wouldn’t be feeding it to us.
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.
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.)
Posted by Ben Luongo on Aug. 12, 2009, at 10:28 am
By Ben Luongo PoHo contributor
Our debate on health care reform has been a disappointing state of affairs. Stories of town hall meetings turning violent and reports of organizations planting disruptors are hardly proud examples of a successful democratic process. It speaks volumes of how political a society we have come to be.
Click after the jump to watch what has been happening in Florida.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 11, 2009, at 8:14 am
Somebody’s cranky…
(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?)
Posted by Mitch Perry on Aug. 10, 2009, at 6:38 am
By Mitch Perry PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio
Thursday night’s Town Hall Rally on health care with Congresswoman Kathy Castor in Ybor City has been dissected throughout the country thanks to YouTube.
The atmosphere both inside and outside of the Children’s Board was as intense and, at times, incendiary as the days after the presidential election in Florida in 2000. (I’ll never forget Day 3 of the 36-day recount in West Palm Beach, when I saw Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler sprint for safety into a trailer from incensed Republicans after finishing a live interview with then CNN anchor Greta Van Susteren).
Although the failure of both houses of Congress to vote on health care legislation before the August break was initially viewed as a loss of momentum for President Barack Obama, the fact is that the American public does need to sit and discuss what is in this once-in-a-generation legislation.
Unfortunately though, through the first week of the Congressional recess, the Town Hall format ain’t the place where that’s happening (and probably won’t , as more members of Congress can use footage of Tampa, St. Louis and Detroit to blow off further encounters).
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 7, 2009, at 11:32 am
UPDATE at 1 pm: Martinez will hold a 3pm newser and then Crist is expected to name former Secretary of State Jim Smith as the an interim replacement before the summer recess ends. Leading candidates so far include former Secretary of State Jim Smith, former Tampa Mayor and FLA Gov. Bob Martinez, former US Sen. Connie Mack and former Speaker Allen Bense.
After months and months of flat-out denying he would quit his Senate post before his term was up (ever since he announced he wouldn’t seek re-election in 2010), Mel Martinez today made a liar out of himself and announced he will step down now.
That leaves the appointment in Gov. Charlie Crist’s hands. Now, before everyone in the Democratic Party grassroots starts freaking out (too late, judging by my Facebook and Twitter account traffic), yes, Charlie can appoint himself but, no, he won’t. It would be political suicide to do that.
In 2005, CL’s then- Sarasota reporter Allyson Gonzalez gave Martinez a freshman report card. He didn’t do too well:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 7, 2009, at 6:35 am
The summer recess of Congress has sent politicians back home into their districts and straight into the guerilla theater that has overcome reasonable discussion about how to reform the nation’s broken health care system.
Witness: Hundreds of angry conservatives and anti-Obamacare people (a few violent) turned up at a town hall organized by state Rep. Betty Reed in Ybor City last night with one mission in mind — some with one mission in mind: disrupt the forum and get headlines.
They succeeded.
Driven by right-wing media nutz such as Rush Limbaugh (who mentioned Kathy Castor’ appearance at the forum during his Thursday radio show, bemoaning that she would be surrounded by “union goons”), the state and local GOP and Glenn Beck’s 9-12 movement, the anti-Obama crowd banged on windows and doors in an attempt to get into the overcrowded Children’s Board meeting room.
Scott Farrell of The Farrell Files on 10 Connects and Joe Bardi of Creative Loafing’s Film & TV section were on board again this morning to tape the weekly HoCast, in which we examined the week’s top political stories, made sense out of them and played funny-sounding audio clips.
Here was our tentative show rundown as written before taping; we added the Tampa health care reform “near riot” to the top of the issues list and had some audio from the unpleasantness:
1. BIll Clinton (and Al Gore??) set free the journo-hostages from North Korea. The price? An unsmiling photo-op with an equally unsmiling and flaccid Kim Jong-Il plus some “face” for the North Koreans. Worth it or not? What happens next time a nation takes poeple hostage and we don’t send Slick Willy or a different ex-president to rescue them? Can you imagine the hilarity that would have ensued if we’d sent former President George W. Bush?!? And how long will Hillary stand for Bill upstaging her?
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.
Keith Meinhold is one of many decorated veterans who can no longer serve his country … because he’s gay.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 31, 2009, at 6:54 am
Scott Farrell of The Farrell Files on 10 Connects and Joe Bardi of Creative Loafing’s Film & TV section join me later this morning to tape the weekly HoCast. What do you think about this week’s top political news? Have something to say on the show topics below? How about your nominee for Political Whore of the Week? Post a comment or tweet it to @poho and we’ll try to read it during the podcast.
Download or listen to a streaming version of the podcast, after the jump:
Posted by Tom Bortnyk on Jul. 29, 2009, at 7:36 am
By Tom Bortnyk PoHo correspondent
The notorious Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara spent his entire life fighting the evils of capitalism and murdered anyone who did not agree with his socialist agenda. Yet here we are today, in 21st century America, where any hipster can walk into a Target super-store and buy a Che T-shirt and a “Yes We Can” poster. Apparently the college students wearing the shirts missed the chapter on irony in English 101; they must have been attending a “hope & change” rally. Politics, it seems, has become just as much of a battle of commercialism as PC vs. Mac or Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi.
There is no doubt that this is a distinctly 21st century phenomenon. Mass media and explosion of the internet into every household has only fueled America’s consumer culture, to the point where even our political candidates must be marketed and sold. If Billy Mays were still around, and the Sham-Wow guy didn’t beat up a hooker, odds are good we’d see them recruited for campaign ads in 2012.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 24, 2009, at 8:59 am
Mrs. Former Fort Myers Beach Town Manager
This week’s HoCast marks a revamp of my format. While I will continue to do long-form interviews with political figures as podcasts, the PoHo brand will feature a fairly regular cast and a quick, funny format that looks at the top political and media issues, the Quotable soundbite and the Political Whore of the Week.
1. The shameful Today Show coverage of the Obama health care newser
2. The firing of the town manager of Fort Myers Beach for marrying a porn actress (shown above)
3. The Barack Obama-as-Witch Doctor e-mail flap
4. ESPN’s multi-problems with censorship (the Ben Rothlisberger story)
5. Mary Mulhern uses tax dollars to go to Cuba
This week’s PoHo Award nominees are:
New York stripper Christy Yamanaka, who was involved in the Judge Thomas Stringer scandal. He pleaded guilty this week to one count of mortgage fraud in connection with a house the two bought in Hawaii.
And, via txt message from an anonymous politician, this nomination:
“The Jersey 44, that’s lookin’ like a real political gangbang! Even by Jersey’s standards.”
Listen to the HoCast after the jump to find out who won:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 23, 2009, at 10:00 am
I’m retooling the Political Whore Podcast (or the HoCast, we we lovingly call it ’round these parts). I’ve added two regular guests, broadcaster/lawyer/former political candidate Scott Farrell of The Farrell Files on 10 Connects and Joe Bardi, our associate editor whose political views shaped our hilarious Short List online for years.
We want to hear from you as we look at the hottest topics, sexiest political scandals and goofiest politicians each week. We’ll also name a Political Whore of the Week, somebody in national, state or local politics or government who best exemplifies that they are only in it for the money — or the stupidity.
We’re taping our weekly installments on Fridays at 10 am, so you can get us your ideas, questions or Whore nominations via Twitter (@poho) before then, or live during the podcast taping from 10-10:30 am. We’ll do our best to get the best of the tweets on the HoCast.
A group comprising mostly Republicans, along with some influential Democrats, had tried to attach the gun amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, a must-pass piece of legislation. But the provision got only 58 votes, two short of the 6o votes needed for passage under Senate rules.
Two Republicans, Senators Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and George V. Voinovich of Ohio, joined with 37 Democrats to reject the amendment, which was bitterly opposed by a number of big-city mayors, including Michael R. Bloomberg of New York. “Lives have been saved with the defeat of this amendment,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, a leading opponent of the amendment, said in a statement. “The passage of this amendment would have done more to threaten the safety of New Yorkers than anything since the repeal of the assault weapons ban.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 20, 2009, at 1:29 pm
It’s Gov. X, of course!
At least, that is what the Rush & Molloy gossip column in the New York Daily News is calling him. The paper on Sunday reveals that a prostitute hired by former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer now says he was not her only gubernatorial fuck buddy. There was (as they say) another, an out-of-state date for the “high-priced escort:”
[Annie, the prostitute's pseudonym] contends that, in the spring of 2006, [madam Kirstin] Davis’ agency booked her for an out-of-state date with a man identified as “Michael.”
“He picked me up in an Italian sports car,” says Annie. “He was in his 30s, handsome enough to be an actor, an impeccable dresser. I wouldn’t think he’d have a problem getting girls.
“We went to a restaurant where the governor was dining at another table with two or three other men. Michael said the governor was a client of his. He introduced me to him. I thought it was odd that he’d introduce someone he’d hired, but the governor was very gracious. It was a brief meeting. Later, Michael and I went to an apartment our agency kept. We had sex.
“A couple of days later, Michael booked another appointment. He was supposed to come to the same apartment. I buzzed him in. When I opened the door, it wasn’t Michael. It was the governor. He was smiling. I knew what was happening. I was okay with it.
“He was a very standard client. He didn’t take the full hour. There was no exchange of money. Michael handled the payment.
Gov. X’s press ops have denied the allegation, but you know it must be true, because Annie’s madam Kristin Davis vouched for the story, and this is Kristin’s picture from the Daily News:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 18, 2009, at 6:30 am
I’m starting a new Saturday feature to wrap up news and blog posts you might have missed during your busy week. Here’s a look at the Week in Review:
New book blasts sportswriters for ‘hysteria’ regarding steroids – Mitch Perry. The WMNF anchor writes about a new book that lays the blame for steroid-mania at the foot of writers who aren’t aggressive. “The writers, the supposed experts, watched over the last 20-30 years as steroids became a very, very common substance. And they didn’t see it.”
POTUS and the Pope — Peter Schweitzer. Our contributors asks: if the US bishops are sideways with Barack Obama over his abortion stance, why is the pope so warmly receiving him?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 17, 2009, at 12:50 pm
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has a web-only ad out hitting Sarah Palin and Charlie Crist, among other Republicans, for “quitting” on their jobs.
By George Niemann PoHo contributor and R-LAND and UCAN activist
On Wednesday, Hillsborough’s Moral Courage Award became respectable again. The County Commission voted 7-0 to remove Ralph Hughes from the award’s name. It also agreed to not to assign any honorary name to this award, going forward.
I attended this week’s commission meeting to throw my 2 cents in when I saw that Commissioner Rose Ferlita had put the Moral Courage Award discussion on the agenda.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 14, 2009, at 11:50 am
The Big Irony for Tuesday was watching the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, one Jefferson B. Sessions III of Alabama, grill US Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor over her statements about the judiciary and race. (He ascended to the top GOP slot on the committee when Arlen Specter switched parties.) Sessions cited what he termed a history of statements that show she would not apply the rule of law but instead use her life experiences and racial politics to make decisions on the high court.
Sessions himself was the target of a similar grilling in 1986, when he was a nominee to the federal district court, according to this account in the conservative Black Political Thought/Hinterland Gazette:
Twenty-three years ago he was engaged in the fight of his life. He was appointed a U.S. attorney in Alabama in 1981 and was nominated to become a U.S. District judge by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. J. Gerald Hebert, a career Justice Department lawyer, testified that Sessions had once called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” He said that they “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” He sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as “un-American” when “they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions” in foreign policy. He is said to have made remarks that he thought the Ku Klux Klan wasn’t so bad until he found out that some of them smoked marijuana. He said these comments were made in jest. Right.
Sessions faced a heated round of questioning from Sen. Edward Kennedy, who called him “a throwback to a shameful era,” and our current Vice President, Joe Biden. How ironic. The committee held four hearings during one of which Sessions pleaded that “I am not a racist.” Hebert also testified that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a “disgrace to his race” for litigating voting rights cases. His nomination failed in committee on a 10 to 8 vote, with Specter joining the nominee’s original patron, Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) in dooming the nomination. In 1994, Sessions won a state attorney general’s race, and then won election to the Senate in 1996 after Heflin retired.
Talk about somebody who (it would seem) would be prejudiced against a process or person, having gone through what must have been a painful rejection by Democrats decades ago.
The Washington Post has a full transcript of the Sessions-Sotomayor interrogation.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 14, 2009, at 8:22 am
The first two minutes are a little melodramatic and unnecessary, but this is a must-watch video to see the way that the Right tried to demonize Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, a reminder of the political demagoguery being exercised by the leading media faces of the Republican Party.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 13, 2009, at 1:54 pm
Rumproast.com put together this compilation of all of soon-to-be-ex Gov. Sarah Palin’s sighs, heavy breathing and other respiratory gasps during her crazy-sounding resignation newser. None are repeated and they are in their original order:
President Obama today unveiled Dr. Regina Benjamin today as his choice for Surgeon General.
A rural Alabama family physician, Benjamin made some headlines rebuilding her nonprofit Gulf Coast medical clinic in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Obama said during the news conference announcing the pick, “For all the tremendous obstacles that she has overcome, Regina Benjamin also represents what’s best about health care in America, doctors and nurses who give and care and sacrifice for the sake of their patients.”
Benjamin calls the job a physician’s dream. “I cannot change my family’s past,” she said. “I can be a voice in the movement to improve our nation’s health care and our nation’s health. I want to be sure that no one falls through the cracks as we improve our health care system.”
Posted by Chris Ingram on Jul. 9, 2009, at 10:00 am
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Georgia
By Chris Ingram PoHo contributor
An Open Letter to Sen. Saxby Chambliss:
Dear Senator:
We have known each other for many years, and I have always admired your conservative values and principles.
However, due to your recent endorsement of Charlie Crist in the open Florida U.S. Senate seat, which is a contested race among more than one Republican (including Marco Rubio), I now doubt your sincerity for honest and fair elections, not to mention good leadership and responsible government.
While perhaps you may have been too preoccupied finding ways to get yourself re-elected and weren’t paying attention when Charlie Crist fully embraced President Obama’s reckless and fiscally unsound “stimulus” plan, Floridians were watching. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by David Warner on Jul. 7, 2009, at 11:50 am
If you have not yet found the time to catch all of Sarah Palin’s now-legendary press conference, the helpful folks at HuffPo have provided an abridged version which captures all of her rhetorical flourishes (and dead-fish references) in just a minute and a half.
Posted by David Warner on Jul. 2, 2009, at 5:26 pm
In a case that suggests the potentially dangerous consequences of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, a gay sailor was found murdered on his base, Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California, early Tuesday morning. He had recently complained to family members that he was being harassed.
The sailor, August Provost, kept his private life quiet for the most part, but trusted that his friends knew, according to an interview with his partner in the San Diego Union-Tribune. His family had encouraged him to report the harassment to a supervisor. It’s not clear whether he did, or whether he even could have; admitting that he’d been harassed could have led to admission that he was gay, which is grounds for dismissal from the Navy. In an online article for San Diego’s Gay and Lesbian Times, the chair of the San Diego Human Relations Commission, openly gay City Commissioner Nicole Murray-Ramirez (pictured right), refers to sources on the base that say the harassment was in fact gay-related and that Provost had been facing a possible discharge based on his sexual orientation.
Murray-Ramirez says there was a long delay between the murder and public release of information, noting that U.S. Congressman Bob Filner was on the base Tuesday and was not informed of the murder. The Human Relations Commission is calling for an investigation into whether this was a hate crime. Meanwhile, a “person of interest” is being held in custody. Read the full text of the Union-Tribune story after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by David Warner on Jul. 2, 2009, at 3:54 pm
Florida, of course!
But not Disney World — he’s been living in Fantasyland for too long already. No, the Palm Beach Post reports that he will be joining his wife tomorrow, no doubt with tail between legs, at her family’s place in a gated community called Loblolly Bay in Hobe Sound.
And you were dreading your family’s July 4th get-together. Who needs fireworks?
You may not have even known it was happening, but “Rapprochement With Cuba: Good For Tampa Bay, Good For Florida, Good For America,” a conference sponsored by the Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy Foundation and held Saturday at the Italian Club in Ybor City, was, by its very existence, a milestone in repairing the tattered relationship between Tampa and Cuba.
About 150 guests, panelists, professors and local politicians filled the grand, neo-classical Italian Club, once the social, cultural and political epicenter of Tampa’s Italian community. Whether the speeches, panel discussions, and networking sessions will really accomplish much toward ending the 50-year-old U.S. embargo, no one is really sure. However, to get a sense of where the Cuba barometer is pointing, you could start with the venue itself.
In 1955, a young, verbose Fidel Castro arrived in Ybor City. This was no accident, no anomaly. In fact, it made perfect sense. Castro, in a bid to gain popular support for his uprising against CIA-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, he followed — literally — in the footsteps of an earlier young, charismatic Cuban revolutionary, Jose Marti. Read the rest of this entry »
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the declared winner of the Iranian election last week, has told Obama to stop interfering with Iran’s affairs. According to Ahmadinejad:
We don’t expect much from British government and other European governments whose records and background are known for everybody and have no dignity but I wonder why Mr. Obama who has come with the slogan of change has fallen into the trap and taken the same route that Bush took and experienced its consequences.
After the jump is a video of Ahmadinejad asking Obama to stop “interfering” and express “regret.”
Posted by Dan Sullivan on Jun. 25, 2009, at 11:00 am
The most dangerous predator on the Appalachian Trail: The Argentinian cougar
By Dan Sullivan PoHo contributor
I love a good political scandal. There’s just something about the revelation that those we elect to office are regular human beings – susceptible to all the same temptations and lapses in judgment as the rest of us.
It’s not so much fun to read about Republicans breaking their word and compromising their good morals. Especially rising stars such as South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
Hooray for Florida’s very own Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen! On Wednesday, along with a bipartisan coalition of 100 House members led by Rep. Barney Frank, she introduced a revised (read: trans inclusive) version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). When passed, ENDA will extend existing Federal protections against employment discrimination to also protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
A version of ENDA that did not include protections for transgender people passed the house in 2007 but died in the Senate. In a recent interview with the Washington Blade, Frank was cautiously hopeful about the bill’s prospects in 2009: “Things have gotten better. The transgender community is lobbying hard. I just need to remind people that when we have trouble doing something in New York, Maryland and Massachusetts, it doesn’t get easier when you have South Carolina, Utah and Nebraska.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 24, 2009, at 2:13 pm
Love this story. Just love this story.
Soon-to-be-former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford first came up missing, then his staff explained that he was hiking alone on the Appalachian Trail, then earlier today came word she was cruising off the coast of Argentina. Now, the truth.
Yes, it’s another woman.
From CNN:
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday, amid speculation over his whereabouts for the last several days, that he has been engaged in an extramarital affair with an Argentinian woman.
“I’ve been unfaithful to my wife,” Sanford told a news conference in Columbia, the state capital. “I developed a relationship with what started as a dear, dear friend from Argentina.”
His voice choking at times, Sanford apologized to his wife and four sons, his staff and supporters, and said he would resign immediately as head of the Republican Governors Association. The affair was discovered five months ago, Sanford said.
Watch the video of his admission from a live news conference after the jump:
President Obama today unveiled Dr. Regina Benjamin today as his choice for Surgeon General.
