Posted by Mitch Perry on Aug. 18, 2009, at 4:21 pm
By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.
Despite the censure vote on Governor Charlie Crist last week that evenly divided Palm Beach County Republicans (it failed to pass as the group deadlocked at 65 votes apiece), the head of the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee says his membership is united.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 12, 2009, at 2:03 pm
There is new video (a CNN feed from 10 Connects) from last week’s shoving and shouting match at the door to a town hall on health care reform featuring Congresswoman Kathy Castor in Ybor City. (h/t to Pushing Rope)
Posted by Tom Bortnyk on Aug. 12, 2009, at 10:10 am
By Tom Bortnyk PoHo correspondent
“Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American” -Nancy Pelosi
Madam Speaker, I could not agree more. Freedom of speech is one of our most cherished rights as American citizens. So, too, is the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government without fear of punishment or reprisal. These rights are the foundation for Western Civilization as we know it.
Why then, Madam Speaker, do these rights only apply to citizens who share your ideological views? It seems to be the very definition of irony and a text book example of hypocrisy. The political Left in the US has been working diligently to silence opposition, not only with the current health care debate, but in numerous instances in the past.
Posted by Tom Bortnyk on Aug. 10, 2009, at 6:44 am
By Tom Bortnyk PoHo correspondent
There is no doubt that Sarah Palin has every intention in the world of running for higher office. You could see it in her twinkling eye as she made the announcement that she was stepping down as governor of Alaska.
Will she host her own talk show? Will she get a book deal? Speculation has run rampant, but the consensus among the political news commentators seems to be that she is gearing up for a run for president in 2012.
Oddly enough, this news is exciting for many Republicans. To quite a large sect of the conservative base, Palin is a rock star. She is the answer to their prayers, and the savior of the Party.
Such an analysis is misguided, at best. More accurately, it could be described as delusional.
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. 24, 2009, at 6:38 am
From St. Pete’s best known anti-tax neurosurgeon, Dr. David McKalip, comes this e-mail apology this morning for the Barack Obama-as-Witch Doctor e-mail I chronicled late yesterday afternoon:
I have had a very hard day. When you stand up and fight effectively for freedom and to protect the rights of patients from control by the government and insurance companies – you develop powerful enemies. They have used the opportunity of a lapse in judgment to try to discredit me since they can’t discredit my arguments. I am proud of my accomplishments in this fight. I am more proud of the hundreds of thousands of Americans I have come to know who feel as I do and are willing to stand up for freedom. The next few days will be difficult, and I ask for your support.
DR. DAVID MCKALIP SENDS APOLOGY DIRECTLY TO PRESIDENT OBAMA
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 23, 2009, at 3:27 pm
FRIDAY AM UPDATE:He’s apologized. And he then resigned as president-elect of the Pinellas Medical Association.
Talking Points Memo is breaking the story that well known local brain surgeon and anti-tax crusader David McKalip forwarded this photoshopped illustration of President Barack Obama to a Tea Party e-mail group:
TPMuckraker calls it the latest example of online anti-Obama racism on behalf of conservatives. And McKalip told TPMuckraker:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 23, 2009, at 8:34 am
A few weeks ago I announced to my wife that I would not be watching The Today Show in the mornings any more. I just got fed up with its growing tabloid style and insistence on flogging non-stories to death. Like this week’s “exclusive” multi-day interview with Susan Boyle. Or the dude trying to get his kid back from Brazil who is interviewed at least twice a week. Or the latest family with a loved one attacked by a critter/rescued from a certain death/dying from a disease/etc.
But this morning, I broke my rule and paid the price for it. Meredith, Matt, Al and the rest of the formerly great NBC morning news show led the broadcast with this top story: Barack Obama had ruined his newser on health care last night by criticizing the wrongful arrest of prominent Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates Jr. last week.
ABC’s Good Morning America apparently did the same thing.
St. Petersburg Times media critic Eric Deggans noticed, too, writing this AM:
…[W]hy did the Today show — by far TV’s most-watched morning show — spend its first segment this morning discussing what the president said about the arrest of a black scholar in Cambridge, Mass.?
Here is how the “journalists” left at NBC played the president’s desperate attempt to pull out his health care victory on the website this AM:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 23, 2009, at 8:01 am
Stuart Mellish Thinks the Republicans should get out of the way and let Obama fix this Country. You had your 8 years and you screwed it up. STEP ASIDE!
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 22, 2009, at 5:30 am
Thanks to a little internal housecleaning at Creative Loafing (I mean that literally, not in the figurative sense of firing folks), a copy of “President Obama’s 500 Promises Deck” showed up on my desk this week. The card deck — not quite a game — is a partnership between the St. Petersburg Times‘ Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact and U.S. Game Systems Inc.
The Deck features 500 campaign promises that Barack Obama made during his campaign and that PolitiFact is tracking after the president said, “I want you to hold me accountable.”
It has been on the market for several months, but it’s not tearing up the sales registers of America.
“I think it had a little bit of a problem finding its niche,” said Lynn Araujo, communications director for US Games Systems.
The cards don’t have a partisan slant; they merely recite one of the many campaign promises that candidate Obama made and invite card owners to go to PolitiFact’s online site to see an update on what progress President Obama has made on each pledge. They look like this:
But while that is pretty nonpartisan, apparently would-be buyers don’t see it that way.
Census figures released Monday show that of the 579,000 new voters who participated in Florida last year, nearly all were either Hispanic or black. Turnout among young voters increased from 39 percent in 2004 to 49 percent last year.
Young Hispanics and blacks helped boost the state’s voter rolls by 10 percent and lowered the average age among voters by one full year, to 50, according to a Palm Beach Post analysis.
Meanwhile, turnout among white voters remained stagnant last year while some of the state’s oldest voters stayed home: Turnout among voters 75 and older dropped from 72 percent in 2004 to 69 percent in 2008.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 20, 2009, at 10:49 am
My guest co-host for this week’s HoCast is Seth Nelson, a Tampa lawyer who is running for the Tampa City Council in 2011 (for Linda Saul-Sena’s citywide seat; she is term-limited).
He is a former law clerk on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, so we look at how Sonia Sotomayor did in explaining her statement about policy being made at the appellate court level. Plus, we discuss Walter Cronkite’s death and how it shows what is wrong with today’s news media and ask ourselves whether Barack Obama’s health care reform effort is in trouble.
And between all those headlines, Seth talks about why he’s running for the Council and what his top priorities are.
While many US bishops would wish it wasn’t so, President Barack Obama and Pope Benedict are eager to dialogue and engage each other on the world stage. 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.”
The promise of reforming health care has been a singular focus of President Barack Obama — well, along with dealing with the banking crises, the foreclosure crises, and getting the economy recharged.
But now that crunch time is approaching, the various voices that comprise the debate in Washington are speaking up, and some groups previously considered as potential allies, (such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) are now speaking critically of the legislation being discussed right now.
Posted by David Warner on Jun. 19, 2009, at 4:24 pm
Republican pundit David Brooks’ article in today’s New York Times discusses the latest events in Iran, as turmoil from their recent fraudulent election has spilled into the streets of Tehran. In his comments, Brooks observes that “on the big issue, the administration has it exactly right.”
This agreement — which is far from the position voiced by most Republicans — gives added support to Peter Meinke’s “Dear David” letter in this week’s Poet’s Notebook. Meinke’s basic claim is that long-time, and famous, Republican Brooks is slowly morphing into a Democrat, and it’s time that he made the actual leap — not in a self-serving Senator Arlen Specter sort of way, but because Brooks’ views coincide more and more with Barack Obama’s.
The Obama Justice Department has reached out to major gay rights organizations and scheduled a private meeting for next week with the groups, in an apparent effort to smooth over tensions in the wake of the controversy over the administration’s defense in court of the Defense of Marriage Act.
Tracy Russo, a spokesperson for Justice, confirmed the meeting to me, after I posted … that top gay rights lawyers were miffed that administration lawyers had rebuffed their requests to meet and discuss ongoing litigation involving DOMA.
At the meeting — which hasn’t been announced and is expected to include leading gay rights groups like GLAD and Lambda Legal — both sides are expected to hash out how to proceed with pending DOMA cases.
You can’t mix oil and water, and you sure can’t mix politics and religion. It’s not because one is more noble than the other. It’s because their goals are at odds with each other.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 8, 2009, at 2:18 pm
Major has-been Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin gets another round with a national audience tonight, appearing on Sean Hannity’s unquestioning show to say “I told you so” about Barack Obama. She’s flogging the right-wing bullshit about how we are creeping toward socialism. (See the Political Whore post debunking that.)
From the interview, leaked (conveniently) to Drudge Report:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 4, 2009, at 1:30 pm
The Atlantic has a great column by Conor Clarke that should be required reading for every numnut who is going around spouting off that President Barack Obama has turned this nation into a socialist satellite. Yes, we can argue the wisdom of the GM bailout/semi-nationalization (and it appears, at least at this point, to be a bad deal for us taxpayers) but we are farrrrr from a socialist nation as a result, as Clark points out in his column and in this amazing graphic:
Do me and The Atlantic a favor and read the entire column and pass it along via e-mail to your goofy friends/relatives who bombard you with BS email about how we are becoming socialists.
President Obama must’ve been in the mood for breaking new ground in Presidential appointments this week. First, he chooses a Latina, Sonia Sotomayor, for the Supreme Court, and then taps another Hispanic as his ambassador to the Vatican.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 28, 2009, at 10:44 am
“Answer me this question, because I am very much interested in trying to replace Obama. Okay?”
That is how U.S. Sen. Roland Burris opens the door to the idea of being appointed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich to the Senate seat left open by the election of Barack Obama. This comes during a taped conversation with Robert Blagojevich, the former gov’s brother and fundraising muscle. Robert Blagojevich, as you may recall from our coverage, is a University of Tampa graduate, and gave the commencement address there a few years back.
But then Burris goes on to say that since it is known that he wanted the appointment, that he couldn’t be raising money for Blago without it being seen as an attempt to buy the seat. Burris said, “Rob, I’m in a dilemma right now trying to help the governor. I’m now trying to figure out what the hell the best thing to do. I know I could give him a check, myself.”
Which he never did.
So, should Roland Burris be removed from the Senate on the basis of this conversation?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 27, 2009, at 6:25 am
The first shot in the confirmation battle over Sonia Sotomayor is out there, a video appearance by the judge at Duke University in which, ABC News reported, she said that the district appeals court is where “policy is made.”
If that is true, that would make her an “activist” judge, a label that is radioactive and would create a real problem for Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court.
So what did she say, exactly? And what did she mean?
The left-leaning Media Matters defends her and says her words were taken out of context, that ABC (and others) erred in their characterizations. That spin is being echoed by Democrats on this morning’s news shows. It goes like this:
In fact, Sotomayor was responding to a student who asked the panel to contrast the experiences of a district court clerkship and a circuit court clerkship. Sotomayor’s remarks from the Duke panel discussion … :
SOTOMAYOR: The saw is that if you’re going into academia, you’re going to teach, or as Judge Lucero just said, public interest law, all of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people with court of appeals experience, because it is — court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know — and I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don’t make law, I know. OK, I know. I’m not promoting it, and I’m not advocating it, I’m — you know. OK. Having said that, the court of appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating — its interpretation, its application. And Judge Lucero is right. I often explain to people, when you’re on the district court, you’re looking to do justice in the individual case. So you are looking much more to the facts of the case than you are to the application of the law because the application of the law is non-precedential, so the facts control. On the court of appeals, you are looking to how the law is developing, so that it will then be applied to a broad class of cases. And so you’re always thinking about the ramifications of this ruling on the next step in the development of the law. You can make a choice and say, “I don’t care about the next step,” and sometimes we do. Or sometimes we say, “We’ll worry about that when we get to it” — look at what the Supreme Court just did. But the point is that that’s the differences — the practical differences in the two experiences are the district court is controlled chaos and not so controlled most of the time.
Watch the video clip after the jump, and you make the call:
Actually, I could’ve titled this post “Are Republicans afraid of homosexuals?” But I’m going to pick on the conservatives for now. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 26, 2009, at 10:19 am
Here’s a quick look at how the media — professional and otherwise — are treating this morning’s announcement of District Court of Appeal Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the first Latina to be nominated to the highest court in the land.
[UPDATE: after the jump, I've added the Libertarian Party's blistering assessment of Sotomayor as an activist judge.]
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 26, 2009, at 6:46 am
I was on Rob Lorei’s Florida This Week last Friday and was asked to lead off discussion of Florida’s chances of getting high-speed rail. I was taken by surprise, because I had studied Barack Obama’s stimulus plan extensively, especially its engineering aspects, for a freelance piece I did for the UF Engineering College alumni magazine and didn’t remember any money being set aside for high-speed rail in Florida.
It turns out that even Obama himself mentioned Florida as a possible recipient in a recent speech. But I’m guessing that it’s more of a hope than a reality, and a South Florida Sun-Sentinel story lays out the problems with Florida being competitive for some of $8 billion set aside in stimulus dollars for a Miami-Orlando-Tampa high-speed train:
UPDATE 8:46 a.m.: Barack Obama will announce later this morning his selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Federal Appeals Court as his nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, The New York Times reports. If confirmed by the Senate she will be the third woman on the court and the first Hispanic justice.
The MSM will undoubtedly cast Obama’s first Supreme Court choice in terms of liberal vs. conservative. While the consequences of Barack Obama’s decision will have political overtones, the real debate centers around how the document in question (the U.S. Constitution) should be interpreted.
In the one camp, there’s Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.
In the other, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and John Paul Stevens are firmly situated.
And Obama could announce the next member of the high court as early as today.
Ed.’s note: Peter Schweitzer is marketing and public relations professional who has worked in politics and the law. This is his first guest blog for The Political Whore.
By all accounts, President Obama’s recent controversial Notre Dame commencement address was a hit. He was cool, eloquent, and not the least bit intimidated by the U.S. bishops who had all but called for his head on a platter the weeks prior to the address. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 22, 2009, at 9:49 am
With a h/t to Tampa Bay political consultant Gregory Wilson, here’s a contrarian view on scoring yesterday’s pseudo-debate on terror, Gitmo and national security. I agree with Congressional Quarterly’s assessment of Barack Obama on conventional political terms. It is a truism: When you’re ’splaining, you’re losing. And I believe Obama made no headway with the crazy left who wants to shutter Guantanamo immediately and just cut loose the terrorists or bring them on down to circuit court for good ol’ U.S. justice system trials.
But Obama won the day, make no mistake about it. He was historic, clear in his ethics, determined in his purpose that we can win against terror without becoming terrorists ourselves. He may have lost in terms of short-term public opinion but he wins the longer war. And that is what CQ, in its traditional wisdom, fails to grasp.
Having said that, reading the full CQ article makes ya think…
Iran’s missile launch on Wednesday is not making President Barack Obama’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East any easier. This demonstration, however, could be seen as more of a reason for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to embrace the two-state solution.
Netanyahu has made it clear that he sees Iran as a threat. On Tuesday, after meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he said:
“[Iran] is a great danger to all of us, to Israel specifically and to the moderate Arab regime, and to America. Especially if this regime were to arm itself or arm terrorists with nuclear weapons, the consequences could be unimaginable.”
Here’s video of the Israeli leader in Washington, after the jump.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 21, 2009, at 6:08 am
Anybody needing a distillation of the differences between the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama on the “War on Terror” need look no further than today’s competing speeches by Dick Cheney and Obama on the subject.
President Barack Obama will attempt to regain control of a boiling debate over anti-terrorism policy with a major speech on Thursday — an address that comes on the same day that former Vice President Dick Cheney will be weighing in with his own speech on the same theme.
The dueling speeches amount to the most direct engagement so far between Obama and his conservative critics in the volatile argument over what tactics are justified in detaining and interrogating suspected enemy combatants.
The national security debate — egged on by frequent charges from Cheney that Obama is leaving the country more vulnerable to attack — is the only subject on which many Republicans believe they have been able to gain traction against a popular president and the Democratic majority that now dominate Washington.
It ought to be hilariou-scary to see Cheney defend torture and keeping Gitmo open. The key to today’s semi-debate is not whether Cheney, wildly unpopular even in his own party, wins the hearts and minds of the U.S. citizenry but whether the president can score points on the left and in the middle with his “walk a thin line” approach.
By Mitch Perry
