The Political Whore

Happy Thanksgiving! Keeping it short today, gotta run off and make some buttered toast and popcorn …

• It’s a Madge and A-Rod Thanksgiving!!
• BayWalk in foreclosure.
• 27-year-old named chief speechwriter for Obama White House.
• Bush’s and Obama’s thoughts on Thanksgiving. (Bush has thoughts?!?)
• Macy’s Parade on two networks.
• Coleman extends his lead over Al Franken.
• C’mon, if a Bee Gee can’t smuggle a little doobich on the plane, who can?
• Lawyer tasered at Tamp Code Enforcement Board hearing.
• “Your corn is sweeter, your potatoes are starchier and your turkey is much, much bigger than the foods that sat on your grandparents’ Thanksgiving dinner table.” Thanks, science.
• Lawsuit about early primary date seeks class-action status.
• Elections officials sued for not offering ballot en espanol.
• Tampa Bay’s Sarah Palin defends herself.
• Al Jazeera’s citizen journalism experiment.
• Hillsborough civic leader Bob Bondi dies at 74.

Here’s my column from this week’s print edition of CL. Happy Thanksgiving to you all:

It’s time to give thanks.

Enough with the things we hate: the recession and mindless campaign commercials and cash-strapped schools and unceasing cries to blindly cut taxes and congressional sex scandals. (Actually, I’m very grateful for congressional sex scandals.)

As we prepare for the holiday season, I feel grateful.

I’m grateful to have a job in journalism in a year where hundreds of my friends, colleagues and former students across Florida have been laid off from their journalism positions.

I’m grateful to continue to have a platform to write about issues that matter, like our suburban sprawl and need for better transportation. A year ago, I wrote that we needed to “Fix it now,” citing 10 problems our community and state faces. We’re not much closer to solving them today.

I’m grateful for people like Mariella Smith, Kelly Cornelius, George Nieman, Dee Layne and countless other civic activists in Hillsborough County who stood up for protecting our wetlands and never let up on Republican blowhard politicians. I’m grateful for their moral courage, even as Hillsborough commissioners demeaned their own Moral Courage Award by naming it after a late partisan ideologue.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re kicking off Thanksgiving week in style with SNL’s “turkeys on the run” skit from over the weekend. Enjoy.

• What’s wrong with paying more in taxes?
• Student arrested for farting in school.
• It’s time to start listening to Christmas songs in your car again.
• Secession talk.
• Obama finally looks at adding a Latino to his Cabinet — now that he’s given away all the top jobs.
• The incredibly ballooning stimulus package.
• Citibank looks to be the next member of the bailout club.
• Gas prices continue their long overdue plunge.
• Sometimes it sucks to be an astronaut.
• How many blogs does the world need?
• Hypocrisy alert: NBC axed the staff of The Weather Channel’s Forecast Earth environmental program during the network’s self-proclaimed “Green Week.”
• Twilight sets box office records. Good thing the sequel is already in the works.
• After a rough start, the Bucs roll over the Lions.