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:
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 »
Campaign finance reports are coming in for federal, state, and local offices. Reports are filed quarterly, covering the period three months prior – money raised from April 1 through June 30 of this year. With the election still more than a year away, campaign finance numbers show the relative strength of the candidates. In the race for the United States Senate, Republican Marco Rubio could be in trouble.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Dan Sullivan
PoHo Contributor
I confess: I’ve been having an affair with Sarah Palin. That’s why she’s stepping down as governor of Alaska.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not the kind of affair that ends a political career. Unlike certain other political affairs of late (Read: Mark Sanford, John Ensign) this affair is not one of the scandalous variety. Quite the contrary. My affair with Alaska’s sweetheart could be just the thing that propels her into the White House in 2012.
See, it isn’t just me who’s having an affair with Sexy Sarah. She’s the darling of many conservative Americans. She stole our hearts from the moment she first stepped onto the national stage back in August as John McCain’s running mate. And now, she’s dissolving her marriage to Alaska to become better acquainted with us — her secret lover — the rest of America.
For me, the affair has lasted long after I met her backstage at a campaign rally shortly before the ‘08 election (see photo above). Of course, I’m not naïve enough to fail to recognize that much of Sarah Palin’s popularity has to do with the fact that she’s an 11 on the hotness scale. If she were an old, fat, white guy, I doubt anyone would care. Read the rest of this entry »
His candidacy has been called “quixotic” as he flies into the face of a Republican challenger who likely will be Charlie Crist, but Kendrick Meek is strongly confident in his ability to force Floridians to examine the real record of their favorite, white-haired governor.
Meek is a rising star in the Democratic Party, finding himself with a seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee after just four terms in office. Helps to have a progressive voting record and agenda. It probably also doesn’t hurt when your mom served on the House Appropriations Committee with (now Speaker) Nancy Pelosi, as Congresswoman Carrie Meek did.
He’s largely untested (he won his seat in Congress unopposed after his mother retired so close to the qualifying deadline that nobody could mount a real challenge to her son) but he’s shown great energy and won a good deal of the hearts and minds in the Florida Democratic Party, so much so that a few major challengers have stepped aside rather than force an expensive primary race with him.
Meek was in Tampa today and stopped by the Creative Loafing offices. We talked about how to pay for health care reform, whether the stimulus is working, his role in forcing smaller class sizes in public schools and his famous 2000 showdown with then-Gov. Jeb Bush over the dismantling of affirmative action in the state, which resulted in a 26-hour sit-in at the lobby of the Governor’s Office after Bush refused to meet with him and another lawmaker.
He also had this to say when I asked him why he is so confident he can beat Crist: Read the rest of this entry »
By Manny Leto
PoHo contributor and editor, Cigar City Magazine
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 »
Bob Smith, right (and we mean far right) back in Congress, back in the day.
By Dan Sullivan
PoHo contributor
Just when you thought the race to replace outgoing Sen. Mel Martinez couldn’t get any more complicated, a man named Bob Smith threw another wrench into the system last week.
Upon hearing about Smith’s entrance into the race, my immediate reaction was, “Who the heck is this Bob Smith? And what does he think he’s doing poking his nose into one of the most pivotal political battles within the Republican Party for the 2010 election season?”
By Dan Sullivan
PoHo contributor
Dear Attorney General Bill McCollum,
There’s no easy way to tell you this, so I think I’ll just go ahead and say it: I think we should see other people. Don’t get me wrong, you’re a great guy and all, but I’m just not so sure I can handle a serious relationship with you for governor. It’s not you, it’s me. Well, actually, it’s just you.
Florida’s right-wing attorney general, Bill McCollum, is set to confirm his gubernatorial bid this morning, a genuinely scary thought since he could be a fluke election away from being our next governor.
Here’s my column from the upcoming print Creative Loafing issue about how McCollum should be freaking you out by now:
The Republicans have gone back to their old ways when it comes to trying to regain power: rig the election process rather than appeal to the majority of voters.
This time it is a Senate bill (SB 956) that is the target of just about every voting rights and civil rights group in the state. The bill would make it harder for older voters to cast ballots (by outlawing two alternate forms of ID they often use to register and vote), make it harder to gather petition signatures for candidates and referenda, force people who move within 29 days of Election Day to cast provisional ballots and install other vote-blocking reforms in the name of voting security.
From the Times:
Gov. Charlie Crist on Monday strongly hinted that he would veto a proposed rewrite of Florida’s election laws as a broad array of grass-roots groups launched an all-out assault on the legislation.
“What is it we’re trying to cure?” Crist asked in a Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau interview. “The more opportunity you give people to vote, the better it is for democracy. So that aspect of it concerns me.”
“It always seems to me that when there may be legislation that attempts to sort of make it harder for people to do something — the people we work for — generally that’s not good,” Crist said. “I don’t look on that in a favorable light and that is true of this particular part of this legislation.” Asked if he would veto it, Crist said: “I don’t like to use the V word … but I’m not fond of that provision. It concerns me.”
It might as well be official that Gov. Charlie Crist is in the 2010 US Senate race to replace outgoing Mel Martinez. A prime contender who ran strong in some polls just on name recognition alone, Congressman Connie Mack today revealed he will not run.
Tallahassee.com reprints a letter Mack sent to Crist today:
As you contemplate this decision, I want to let you know that I have decided not seek election to the U.S. Senate in 2010, and that I will instead seek re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives.
I also want you to know that, as you contemplate your own political future, I will be your strongest supporter and champion — regardless of whether you seek re-election or election to the Senate.
The people of Florida are lucky to have you as a public servant, and I’m fortunate to have you as my friend. No matter the decision you make, we will all be fortunate to have you standing up for Florida in the years to come.
The last two months have been rather gloomy times for term-limited St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker. First, it was the news that Alex Sink would not run for the U.S Senate, thereby keeping the CFO position to herself. Then it was Bill McCollum passing on a senate bid to stay on as Attorney General. All the while, every city council member since Connie Kone served popped-in to City Hall to measure the drapes in your office.
For Hizzoner, it’s like what any bartender will tell you at closing time, ‘You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.’ Fortunately for Baker, Charlie Crist may be ready to throw him an after-party. Read the rest of this entry »
So, just why did MSNBC commentator Christ Matthews whisper “oh god” into a hot mic just as La. Gov. Bobby Jindal pranced out of a side room to deliver his rebuttal speech on behalf of the Republicans last night? Did he know just how poorly Jindal was going to perform? How far Jindal would fall short of expectations? How nonsensical his analogy about Hurricane Katrina was? Is Matthews able to see into the future?? If so, Chris, who is going to win the NCAA football championship this season?
Answer: Matthews tells Politico that he gasped because he was “taken aback” by the absurdity of the entrance. “I was taken aback by that peculiar stagecraft, the walking from somewhere in the back of this narrow hall, this winding staircase looming there, the odd anti-bellum look of the scene. Was this some mimicking of a president walking along the state floor to the East Room?”
The Republican Party’s anti-Obama stimulus gambit appears not to be paying off. A poll by AP/GfK shows the public widely is siding with Obama and Democrats in Congress on the economic recovery plan — and panning the GOP.
Obama’s approval rating on the economy is 68 percent. The Democrats in Congress get a 49 percent approval, while Congressional Republicans score only 33 percent approval.
Bipartisanship in our future? Not if the House Republican leaders have their way, as they are furiously working to ensure another party-line vote when the compromise stimulus bill shows back up for a final vote. The prospect, however, doesn’t look good, as 10-15 House Republicans seem ready to support the economic recovery act. Politico adds it up:
ZERO SUM GAME: House Republicans are trying to give Dems another goose egg in terms of GOP support on the final stimulus package. As Politico’s Patrick O’Connor reports: “There’s a lot of safety in zero. That, at least, is the message Republican leaders are taking to their wavering rank-and-file. House Republican made headlines – and won some much-need unity – when they denied President Barack Obama a single GOP vote on the House version of his economic recovery plan late last month. Few expect the same results when the House takes up the final version of a $789 billion package Friday; Republican members and aides were braced Thursday night for 10 to 15 defections.”
UPDATE: House minority leaders got their way, and not a single Republican in the lower chamber voted for the Obama Stimulus Plan.
Today’s side skirmish in the economic stimulus package debate is between the large and monied public employees’ union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and 21 targeted Republicans in the House of Representatives. AFSCME and Americans United for Change, a larger pro-labor group that it is part of, today dropped television and regional radio commercials in those lawmakers’ districts.
Here’s the TV vid:
Eric Cantor, the rising star of the far right in Congress, had his own brand of comeback, with his aide telling Politico that an old, redubbed AFSCME commercial would serve as Cantor’s official response. (View it after the jump, plus an update with AFSCME demanding an apology.)
From the Miami Herald:
When the Republican governor helps the Democratic president sell his economic stimulus plan tomorrow in Fort Myers, Charlie Crist will put himself at odds with all of the state’s representatives on Capitol Hill. Every House Republican voted against the plan, and Sen. Mel Martinez is also expected to vote no.
Consider Crist’s support in the context of the statement issued Friday by U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, a Republican who represents the Fort Myers area.
“While he is here, we hope the President will take the time to listen to the people’s views on why the Democrats’ stimulus plan won’t stimulate the economy, and why we need pro-growth solutions that will create jobs and jumpstart our economy,” Mack said. “The people of Southwest Florida, and indeed the nation, want to see a plan that will get our economy moving, not a plan that is chock-full of spending for pork and special interests.”
Read the full story here.
An aside: It is especially hilarious to hear Mack call for more unfettered growth, since he represents one of the worst cases of overbuilding and speculation without proper growth management down in Lehigh Acres. The New York Times wrote of the place: “In Lehigh Acres, homes are selling at 80 percent off their peak prices. Only two years after there were more jobs than people to work them, fast-food restaurants are laying people off or closing. Crime is up, school enrollment is down, and one in four residents received food stamps in December, nearly a fourfold increase since 2006.”
But Mack depends on those landowners and developers for his campaign cash, and since he’s mulling a U.S. Senate run, he wants to push his “conservative” credentials against the president’s stimulus plan. Since when did being a conservative equate to being a land-rush huckster?
The two hottest searches on Google today are for Americans for Prosperity and No Stimulus Petition, which links you to the anti-Obama stimulus package movement and an online petition. Evidence enough that Barack Obama faces an uphill battle for the hearts and minds, as his White House has allowed the anti-stimulus package forces to define the legislation and the terms of battle. Classic framing theory, and surprising to see just how rookie the Obama Administration handled it.
One reason is likely that he won’t/can’t stand up publicly to the self-destructive House Democrats. Sure, less than 1 percent of the House bill was really pork. But it was pork that was indefensible, and at a total tab of more than 800 billion, it was pork that individually ran into the tens of millions of dollars.
Out in Real America, that kind of cash is still big money and can’t be p’shawed away so easily. For the past week, my email inbox has been stuffed with pointed, funny and (mostly) successful anti-stimulus propaganda: The Libertarian Party, “America’s third largest party tonight urged Senate Republicans and Democrats to scrap plans their joint plans for a $780 billion package of wealth transfers and expanded government spending;” the National Black Republicans, “The fierce urgency of pork;” and the new House Republican plan website that “details the smarter, simpler stimulus plan proposed by House Republicans that will create twice the jobs at half the price “
(Take a look at this cool WaPo graphic on where the money would be spent if you need help visualizing where it is all going.)
So as Obama preps for his Fort Myers dog-and-pony on Tuesday and a prime-time news conference tonight to try to take back the high ground in his first major legislative battle, here are 10 Talking Points for what he must say and commit to do:
By Jim Johnson
PoHo contributor
There will be another Republican hole in the United States Senate. Read the rest of this entry »
I have nothing against the children of the working poor. And I actually wouldn’t mind if tobacco taxes were raised on my beloved cigars. But I do mind raising taxes on smokes — both ciggies and stogies — to pay for 
something not directly related to the social costs of those vices, such as lung cancer research, related health care or smoking prevention programs.
That is what is ready to happen in Congress. With a solidly Dem government, Nancy Pelosi et al. are using the opportunity to take up again the SCHIP bill, which President Bush vetoed last year. Here’s TBO.com on the legislation:
The bill uses tobacco taxes, including an extra 61 cents a pack on cigarettes, to expand an existing program providing health insurance for children of the working poor. It’s one of the most divisive issues Congress has considered recently.
The Democratic majority passed it in 2008 but couldn’t muster the votes to override former President George W. Bush’s veto.
This year, President Barack Obama says he’ll sign the bill. The House passed it Jan. 14, and it’s expected to come up for a Senate vote this week.
It turns out that the 2009 budget cuts engineered by Tallahassee Republicans makes liars out of those same legislators’ words from the 2008 session. In an excellent piece of hold-their-feet-to-the-fire reporting, the Miami Herald’s Marc Caputo writes:
Lawmakers slashed $1.2 billion in spending Wednesday, reduced nearly every state program’s budget — and began breaking their own past promises.
In a May 2 news release headlined ”House Republicans Keep their Promise to Floridians,” legislative leaders boasted that the 2008-09 budget didn’t spend savings on day-to-day operations, gave more money to the Florida Highway Patrol and the Agency for Persons with Disabilities and didn’t reduce Childrens Medical Services, Healthy Start or the state crime lab.
But Wednesday’s newly trimmed budget reverses most of those commitments. It spends up to $1.6 billion in savings money, takes back the new FHP and APD money, and cuts the crime lab and services for kids.
The GOP’s answer comes from Rep. Dean Cannon: Nobody can expect us to keep the same commitments made before we knew the depth of the recession.
Speaker Ray Sansom and Rep. Dean Cannon during the budget-cutting special section. (photo by Meredith Hill/House of Representatives)
Here’s Nos. 6 & 7 on our way to the No. 1 political video of 2008, which will be revealed on New Year’s Eve. Past installments ran daily starting on Friday in this blog.
6. The Daily Show: Karl Rove on sexism in politics
5. I’m voting Republican
Ray Sansom is the incoming speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, a gig that pays $42,000 a 
year, and yesterday it was learned he just got another new job: the Northwest Florida State College hired him as vice president of development and planning. That paycheck? $110,000 annually.
He got that job, in addition to being speaker, cuz (as the Palm Beach Post reported)
Sansom helped push through a bill to give the school its state college desgination this year, according to the Northwest Florida Daily Herald. He attended the school when it was known as Okaloosa-Walton Junior College.
Today we learn that Sansom, a Republican from Destin (near where the GOP legislators are having a posh getaway this week) did even more for his alma mater:
House Speaker Ray Sansom got $200,000 into the current fiscal year budget to help Northwest Florida State College, his new employer, build a “leadership institute.”
In an interview today, Sansom confirmed his involvement in the appropriation, which caused a behind-the-scenes stir with the Rubio administration since it was not discovered until late in the process.
Of course, that had noooooooothing to do with his getting the gig:
But Sansom said his involvement ended there. “None of that has anything to do with me or how I’m paid,” he told The Buzz.
As if there weren’t enough reasons already to hate reality television shows, let’s consider the case of Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Shot to (what passes today for) stardom on Survivor: Australian Outback in 2001, she obviously was thrust into the public realm long before the important parts of her 
brain had a chance to fully develop (she does, nonetheless, have a degree from Boston College).
It was a short hop, skip and a jump from there to fame as one of the four yentas on The View, the sacrificial winger for Joy Behar, Rosie O’Donnell and others to use as a human punching bag. It was sort of cute and harmless entertainment.
But on Sunday, Hasselbeck took her shilling for the right-wing of the Republican Party to the next level, showing up in Tampa to introduce Sarah Palin to a crowd of like-minded wingbots:
Clearly cuing up the next phase of her evolution, errr God-directed intelligent design, Hasselbeck is riding the flag pin thing to the next level — it’s all linked in to sexism! — as shown in this transcript from her View co-host Barbara Walters’ radio show on Sirius satellite, a chat that included NY Post gossipeuse Cindy Adams:
This vlog from our favorite differently sympathetic, erotic-photographing Tampa cab driver:
Planning to vote Republican? Watch this video and then share your ideas for our nation in the comments section.
Colbert buries O’Reilly.
(Photo of Obama at UNC by Runder.)
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.
For the multimedia-inclined, I appeared on Studio 10 this morning to discuss the debate last night, and here’s the link (they usually post the video later in the afternoon).
Overall, however, here’s some conclusions:
Following the debate, CNN learned that retired brigadier general Keith Kerr served on Clinton’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender steering committee.
CNN Senior Vice President and Executive Producer of the debate, David Bohrman, says, “We regret this incident. CNN would not have used the General’s question had we known that he was connected to any presidential candidate.”
Prior to the debate, CNN had verified his military background and that he had not contributed any money to any presidential candidate.
Following the debate, Kerr told CNN that he’s done no work for the Clinton campaign. He says he is a member of the Log Cabin Republicans and was representing no one other than himself.
So in that sense, CNN was a loser.
After years of suffering through (and I’m being charitable here) misguided leadership, the Pinellas County Democrats may finally have their shit together. Witness Pinellas DEC Chairwoman Toni Molinaro’s well-aimed missile late yesterday that demanded local Republicans return contributions given by former GOP candidate Angelo Cappelli, who is facing charges in a banking scheme.
Molinaro wrote:
The $2,240 given to the Pinellas Republican Party by disgraced former candidate Angello Cappelli should be donated to charity, said local Democratic Party chair Toni Molinaro. She asks the Republicans, and its chairman Tony DiMatteo, to return the money.
Cappelli, a former wealth and investment adviser, is charged with first-degree grand theft and perjury.
Police say the one-time bank trust officer and failed State House District 52 candidate admitted stealing more than $100,000 from a client, keeping money intended for charity to pay off his own credit card bills and homeowner’s insurance.
Public records show that Cappelli gave the Pinellas County Republican Executive Committee $1,000 on Jan. 26, 2006, $240 on Aug. 26, 2006 and an additional $1,000 on Feb. 2 of this year. Those contributions are reported on the Pinellas Supervisor of Elections website.
The St. Petersburg client from whom Cappelli is accused stealing died in February. The client’s will intended the money go to a local charity.
“The Republican Party should give the $2,240.00 it received from Cappelli to the Pinellas County Community Foundation since that is the charity that Cappelli tried to steal more than $100,000 from,” said Molinaro. “If we are going to rid our community of political corruption, the place to start is to return ill gotten gains.”
Unfortunately for the citizens of Pinellas County, we have a series of scandals with which to deal,” said Molinaro. “Pinellas Democrats intend to make political corruption one of the issues in the 2008 elections.” The Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney’s office and a Grand Jury are looking into a questionable county land purchase involving Republican Property Appraiser Jim Smith and whether he received favorable treatment at the direction of Republican County Commission chairman Ronnie Duncan.
Leaving aside the issue of Cappelli being innocent until proven guilty (he’s reportedly confessed), Molinaro is not only morally right on target but strategically firing on all cylinders. The Pinellas GOP (like the national GOP) has a cleanliness problem that it needs to deal with. Ongoing arrests and scandals such as the Rep. Bob Allen solicitation for prostitution bust are only keeping that public perception alive.
Just at the end of last week’s meeting on wetlands in Hillsborough County, as many in the audience had left and the cameras were just about to blink off, commissioners Rose Ferlita and Ken Hagan got into over a remark that Ferlita made in the Times critical of some of her colleagues skipping out on a meeting to attend the funeral of a well-connected developer. I didn’t get my hands on the closed-captioning script until the weekend, so here’s the [edited for clarity] exchange between the two:
Hagan: I received a few minutes ago an e-mail on the funeral arrangements for Sergeant Ronald Harrison [who was slain last week by a racist gunman], and the funeral is scheduled for 1:00 on Tuesday, and I think we should consider rescheduling our land-use meeting that day. I don’t know the board’s position on this. Judging by Commissioner Ferlita’s comments in yesterday’s paper regarding rescheduling our Wednesday meeting, I know she feels it’s bad government and inconsiderate and we should just send a designee or a card. I think sending a card or designee —
Ferlita: Mr. Hagan, you are absolutely out of order in terms of the questions of what I said. That is very, very unfair.
Hagan: — I certainly think it’s not good enough for Tuesday, and so I think we should make every effort to attend Sergeant Harrison’s funeral. And it’s the least we can do to show respect for this man.
Ferlita: Mr. Hagan, your comments directed to me were absolutely inappropriate. The difference between the majority of this board going to an individual funeral of somebody you have attachment to as opposed to deciding to have government continue while you paid your respects through a [designee] is hardly the same ….
Sir, nobody is stronger here than me for public safety. I was chairman down the street [of Tampa City Council’s public safety committee] of that for a long time, and to say that in the same breath — yeah, keep your smirk — to say that in the same breath that you talk about the death of a deputy sheriff who died in the line of duty for us, you are absolutely hitting below the belt, Mr. Hagan.
That is not fair to me, to them and to the gentleman who died.
Chairman Jim Norman: Folks, folks, folks.
Ferlita: That is very, very rude.
[applause]
Hagan: I just want to state that I’m reading directly from the papers yesterday that we should — other ways to express sympathy such as sending a designee from the board or a card, and I’m simply stating — I simply want to say that’s inappropriate, and the board should go, all of us.
Ferlita: … For Mr. Hagan to continue quoting me when it comes down to the service that this gentleman gave us, Mr. Hagan, I have no respect for your comments. You better correct what you’re thinking because you’re way out of line.
The Hagan-Ferlita intraGOP tiff follows another public fight between two other GOP County Commissioners, Brian Blair and Al Higginbotham, in which Blair attacked Higginbotham’s spending habits after Higginbotham suggested that commissioners might consider freezing their salaries in light of budget cutbacks that are costing public and private workers their jobs.
