the 941

About 1,700 Sarasotans filled Booker High School’s auditorium yesterday to hear Senator Joe Biden speak. The Democratic vice presidential nominee demonstrated that the campaign will be harshening their criticisms of John McCain and Sarah Palin for the final two months leading up to the election as he cited McCain’s campaign manager’s recent comment that this election is “not about the issues.” Keeping with Barack Obama’s pledge at the Democratic National Convention to not suggest John McCain takes his positions for political purposes, Biden said it’s not that McCain’s campaign doesn’t care, but that they “just don’t get it.”

Portraying McCain as out of touch with everyday Americans’ lives has recently become a central theme of the Obama campaign. In contrast, Biden spoke at length about his and Obama’s families, morals and working-class roots in an effort to challenge depictions of Obama as a arugula-eating, Harvard-attending elitist.

Asked by an audience member how the campaign will debate Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s aptness to be president amidst cries of sexism from the McCain campaign, Biden said, “The answer is one word: with respect. She is the governor of a state. I’m assuming as a governor of a state she is qualified. Our disagreements will be based on her views. We’ll make our differences known and that’s what we’ll debate.”

Other key themes of the night were women’s issues, health care, jobs and education.

Bradenton.com has 27 minutes of Q&A.

And a new poll has Obama up by one in Florida.

Bookmark to:

Obama’s recent pick made a town hall-style appearance at the school last night. Pictures courtesy of CL intern Kerem Ozkan. Look out for his commentary in an upcoming post.

Bookmark to:

It’s always important to do what you think is right. Unless you can predict that doing what you think is wrong will bring about an event that is more right than your initial wrong was wrong. And, uh, consult a psychologist beforehand. A team of psychologists, and a panel of ethical philosophers.

Let me start over.

I cringe whenever someone’s personal life is brought into the political arena. I don’t think Obama’s pastor, Clinton’s blow job, or George Bush’s history with alcoholism/cocaine should have anything to do with their electability. My feelings on the subject are expressed nicely by Noam Chomsky:

 ”If we had a free market of the kind economists discuss, in which informed consumers make rational choices, General Motors would post on television the characteristics of the cars they’re selling. They don’t do that. What they do is try to create illusions, using complicated graphics, a famous actress driving up to heaven, or something like that. The point is to delude and marginalize the public, so that uninformed consumers will make irrational choices. When you market candidates, it’s the same thing - keep away from the issues, that’s too dangerous because the public doesn’t agree with you on the issues. So what you have is character, trivialities, personal issues - somebody’s pastor says something, Clinton made a mistake when she talked about Bosnia.”

So part of me wants to spraypaint “Who cares?” over every headline about Bristol Palin’s extramarital pregnancy. That’s what I think is right. Sure, it exposes some hypocrisy when it comes to ultra-conservative issues, but we should hope Sarah Palin doesn’t have absolute control over her daughter. Besides, we’re not electing kings or gods, idols of perfection who will bring us into the next decade like Jason leading the Argonauts. We’re hiring people to do the things we asked of them on election day — servants, basically. If I run an Apple store and I hire someone to sell Apple computers, I don’t care if she uses a PC at home as long as she knows her stuff.

So I don’t think the pregnancy should matter. But, I do want McCain to lose, and I know that the (specious and irrelevant) appearance of hypocrisy could alienate conservative voters. So when I see those headlines, I feel that they’re wrong but I still want them to succeed in their missions. It’s like hiring brutal mercenaries to help you overthrow a brutal tyrant. Or stealing from the rich to help the poor. Or pulling out a terrorist’s fingernails. No wait, I’m actually against that. Goddamn, ethics are hard.

Bookmark to:

Vern Buchanan wasn’t in his downtown Sarasota office today, but Greenpeace activists symbolically picketed outside his office, directing their attention toward passing drivers.

Afterward, they left the republican congressman a banner made with 369 postcards from Sarasota County constituents demanding Buchanan’s support for clean energy. The previous day, they had presented a similar banner to his Bradenton office, with 369 messages from Manatee County residents.

Greenpeace global warming organizer Joe Smyth, pictured below with his hands clasped as he addresses the activists, said he’s collected thousands of similar postcards. He displays them in increments of 369 because that’s the number that decided Buchanan’s victory over democrat Christine Jennings in the 2006 election.

See below for a photo gallery. Read the rest of this entry »

Bookmark to:

Most of the races in this local primary pitted republican against republican, since democrats are a struggling species on the suncoast. In many of those races, the republican was running unopposed, so he or she won an early victory. Here’s a quick rundown of the results.

•  Tom Knight took the republican nomination for county sheriff. He made a pretty convincing case for himself in our interviews last month, though a survey of the police discussion boards shows that officers are skeptical of his outsider status (He comes from the Florida Highway Patrol.)

According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, “a flurry of glossy mailers and TV spots apparently gave voters a comfort level with [him].” Nothing like glossy mailers to bring that personal touch, I guess. He won almost triple the votes of runner-up David Gustafson. Knight will face pro-rehabilitation democrat Curt Lavarello in November.

• Both charter amendments were shot down.
• Assistant public defender Larry Eger beat out attorney Ron “end the revolving door system” Filipkowski. Eyebrows were raised, here at the CL office, over this slogan. Was he campaigning to be a good public defender, or a bad one? Eger will face Democrat Adam Tebrugge in the general election.
• Venice politician Nancy Detert won the Republican nomination for District 23 of the State Senate. She’ll go up against Democrat Morgan Bentley.
• State Rep. Ron Reagan, R-Bradenton, will face democrat Richard Jackson.
• Ken Roberson won the republican nomination for the District 71 State House seat.
• Democrat *gasp!* Darryl Rouson will move on to vie for the District 55 seat in the State House.
• Bill Furst won the race for county appraiser.
• Shannon Staub holds her seat in Sarasota County Commission District 3.
• Former Sarasota Mayor Carolyn Mason will face Democrat Jono Miller for the District 1 seat.
• Caroline Zucker retained her District 2 seat on the Sarasota County School Board.
• Bradenton attorney Gilbert Smith won a judge’s seat in the 12th Judicial Circuit.

Edit: Democrat Adam Tebrugge will be facing Larry Eger in the November. Any implication that the race was already decided was a slight on my part.

Bookmark to:

Tomorrow, Aug. 26, is the primary election for local candidates, which means it’s time to pick your party representatives for offices like hospital and school board members, county commissioner, local congressperson, and, if you’re a republican, county sheriff. There is only one democratic candidate for that office, and in Florida only voters registered as members of a particular party can vote for candidates in that party.

Voting locations are described here.

There are also two county charter amendments on the ballot. The first, given the punchy name, “Charter amendment providing for timetable for charter amendment referenda, judicial review, petition signature expiration,” was apparently written to obliterate any hope of comprehension by the ordinary voter, so we’ll do our best to translate it. This referendum, as we understand it, would make it harder for citizens to collect signatures and have an issue brought to a public vote in a timely fashion. We don’t support this amendment, and we figure that, unless you vote against it, the only people who will vote on it will be those who already understand it and intend to support it.

The second is more straightforward. It proposes that whenever a charter amendment is brought to the ballot, a financial impact statement for that amendment is first disseminated to the public. Doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent has also provided us with a handy sample ballot. Just fill in your precinct online and the computer will tell you who you can vote for.

Now get out there and be the decider.

Bookmark to:

CL Tampa colleague and old pal Wade Tatangelo was gracious enough to invite a friend and me over to his place on Friday evening. We’d been in town to check out Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, opening for Stone Temple Pilots at Ford Amphitheatre. I’ll spare you the late night bombshell that, honestly, wasn’t all that shocking: Read Wade’s Tampa Calling blog for details. What follows is my acronym-heavy account of the pre-AWOL STP experience wrought by BRMC ­– which, as I suspected (and wrote about in CL this week), made a few new fans Friday night.  Read the rest of this entry »

Bookmark to:

This roundup’s been idling in the blog machine for days, and we still can’t fix the formatting, so here goes the [Stop] route. Our apologies. [Stop]

A day to defeat the video game, a lifetime to live down the shame. [Stop] Big ups to web traffic! [Stop] Jessica Simpson to stump for beer. A light beer. Substance-less, in fact. Yep, that sounds about right. [Stop] Winehouse back to rehab-Blake redux. Again. Once more. [Stop] Dave Matthews’ sax player LeRoi Moore, dead at 46. RIP. [Stop] Hasbro’s Clue circa ‘08: The butler did it, in the bathroom at Koi, with the knife seen in those scandalous pics with Lindsay Lohan. And don’t forget the super powers. [Stop] Not content to live la vida loca with one bambino, Ricky Martin does dos at once. [Stop] Forbes reveals the hip hoppers living largest. (Guess which money-monikered rapper?) [Stop] The New York Post has no love for our Cous Cous. That’s okay, we have plenty. [Stop] Bleep, meet the new bleeping bleep. Really bleeping funny, you bleeper. 

Bookmark to:

“The bomb will not start a chain-reaction in the water converting it all to gas and letting all the ships on all the oceans drop down to the bottom. It will not blow out the bottom of the sea and let all the water run down the hole. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy, as one of my critics labeled me, exploding these bombs to satisfy my personal whim.”– William H.P. Blandy, a U.S. Navy Admiral who oversaw the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Island.

“Woe to you my Princess. When I come, I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are froward, you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn’t eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.”

– Sigmund Freud

“Four trillion dollars for baked beans? I didn’t know they had Whole Foods in Zimbabwe!”

–Lewis Black

Bookmark to:

Hurricane Fay was a resounding disappointment/relief , but it does give us occasion to answer some why-s about hurricanes.  

Why does every hurricane seem to form off the coast of Africa, travel west and then fly up the Gulf of Mexico? It starts with the Bermuda High, a big clockwise-turning wheel of high pressure (dense, cold air that has sunk low in the atmosphere). It’s known as an anticyclone because it rotates in the opposite direction of hurricanes (low-pressure systems.) The Bermuda High forms in the summer and usually remains stationary throughout hurricane season. The closer it forms to the U.S., the higher our risk. What the Bermuda High does is fling low-pressure systems (potential hurricanes) westward, along the African easterly jet, one of few North American wind streams that move east-west.

The storms’ northward motion over Cuba and the Keys can be attributed in part to the Coriolis force. I.e., an object moving across a rotating surface will appear, when viewed by another object (you or me) on that same surface, to bend in its path. Let this handy gif explain it better than my clumsy prose.In the northern (southern) hemisphere, the Coriolis force sends winds to the right (left) of their direction of motion. That means a storm moving to the west will veer north. 

This effect also explains the very existence of hurricanes. Winds are a function of a simple law of physics: fluids move from areas of high pressure, high density to regions of low pressure, low density, as they try to achieve equilibrium. When an area of low pressure forms in the Atlantic Ocean, the surrounding air wants to rush in and fill the space. All else being equal, the air should find equilibrium rather quickly and calm down.

But alas, the winds are sent off course before they can reach their destination. The culprit is, you guessed it, the Coriolis force. All the winds trying to find the storm’s center are sent off to the right. As this happens on all sides, the result is counterclockwise motion. In the southern hemisphere, where moving fluids veer left, the result is clockwise motion. So in a way, hurricanes are spinning, frustrated failures, spreading destruction until they burn out somewhere in Florida.  

Bookmark to: