Category: Uncategorized

* For those of us who were hoping for a modicum of patriotism, if not a democratic epiphany, from Facebook chief executive Mark *uckerberg, so much for that long-shot scenario. Facebook has now officially announced that it will not change its basic rules for political advertising in advance of the 2020 election. Unlike Google and Twitter, it’s status quo for Facebook, and it’s status quo for anybody worried about unchecked “facts.”

Next Facebook announcement: the post 2020 election “apology,” not unlike post-2016 when it disingenuously apologized for allowing its platform to be overrun with hyperpartisan misinformation, some of it Russian.

* Comedy writer Buck Henry died recently. He was 89. That doesn’t resonate demographically with everyone in 2020, but I still can’t thank him enough. He was pre-eminent in the scripting of “The Graduate,” which remains my all-time favorite movie. There’s a reason why that over generations and small screens, it still works. Scripting is an art, no less than acting and directing. And if you can entertainingly nuance satire and societal commentary, you are missed–more than ever–right now.

* When it comes to marketing a business, names matter–from 1-800-ASK-GARY to Dirty Taco to College Hunks Hauling Junk. Some do it more effectively and creatively than others. Especially those that favor word play. My favorite-names list for local businesses hasn’t changed. The Sod Father, Edifice Wrecks, Plant Parenthood–in that order. A possible new (restaurant) addition: Counter Culture.

But sometimes there’s the concern of image undermining–as in a perception that maybe the owners are being too cute and don’t take their business as seriously as they should. Connotation matters. To wit: “Ditcher, Quick & Hyde,” (divorce attorneys), “Florist Gump,” “Bread Zeppelin,” “Pita Pan, “Wok This Way” and “Sew What?” Mercifully, I called a halt here.

BTW, back in the day when the NHL was expanding in 1967, the new franchise in Philadelphia, the Flyers, debuted. It was the solid, alliterative product of a name-the-team campaign orchestrated by the team and local media. What was runner-up? The Philadelphia Ice Picks. True.

* “This is their perfect new home.” That, alas, was Orlando Magic co-founder Pat Williams extolling the virtues of the Orlando market as the future–non-split-season–home of the Tampa Bay Rays. More than Montreal, Charlotte, Nashville, or Las Vegas, Orlando makes the most sense. From geographic symmetry to tourist hordes to corporate Disney and Universal to mass transit to burgeoning TV market. “We would not be taking away Tampa’s baseball team at all,” quipped Williams. “We’d just be moving them a little to the east.”

Message to Rays’ owner Stu Sternberg: “Sell it or just move it down I-4. We want the Rays here.” Message to the Tampa Bay market: “Be concerned. Be very concerned.”

* In hockey, basketball and baseball, teams don’t go undefeated. They play too many games. But in football, it’s still possible. In fact, the two college teams that played for the national championship, LSU and Clemson, were both 14-0. And the team, North Dakota State, that won the NCAA 1-AA championship went 16-0. So it seems a bit of an anomaly that in the NFL’s final four, one of the teams that is but a game away from the Super Bowl is Tennessee. The Titans are 9-7. In a league of parity and other variables, a 7-loss team could be in SB LIV. Still seems weird.

* “Mr. Trump’s foreign policy requires an unreliable regime in Tehran to behave reasonably in order to save Mr. Trump from himself. This is the tragic failure of his abandonment of diplomacy.”–Former Secretary of State John Kerry.

* “Things sometimes get worse before they get better.”–Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker.

* “(We) got less detailed information than President Trump shared with Laura Ingraham. We were told repeatedly that there was reliable intelligence of an imminent threat. That’s it.”–Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., on what Senators were told had prompted the drone hit at Baghdad Airport on Iran’s Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

* “What is obvious for us, and what we can say with certainty, is that no missile hit the plane.”–Ali Abedzadeh, head of Iran’s national aviation department, on reports that it was an Iranian missile that had brought down a Ukrainian jetliner and killed all 176 on board.

* “I wish I was dead. I accept all responsibility for this incident.”–Ali Abedzadeh, the following day, after admitting that an Iranian missile did, indeed, bring down the Ukrainian jetliner.

* “Today’s action will further restrict the Cuban regime’s ability to obtain revenue, which it uses to finance its ongoing repression of the Cuban people and its unconscionable support for dictator Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.”–Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in announcing that the Trump administration is banning charter flights to Cuban cities outside Havana.

* “Every senator now faces a choice: to be loyal to the president or the Constitution.”–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

* “Big government at its absolute worst.”–How President Donald Trump characterized the half-century old National Environmental Policy Act that he’s pushing to roll back.

* “If you want to clean up your carbon footprint, nuclear will be part of your resources and it is carbon-free with zero emissions.”–Lakeland Electric general manager Joel Ivy.

* “With water quality in crisis in some parts of Florida and water shortages in others, protecting rural land from development should be a top state priority. Yet the three toll road corridors (linking North Florida with Collier County) cut through some of Florida’s best remaining lands and valuable water resources.”–Victoria Tschinkel, former secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation.

* “I think everyone wants someone convicted of a felony to rejoin society. The right to vote is fundamental to being a productive citizen.”–Hillsborough County Clerk of Court Pat Frank.

* “I don’t get the sense that Tampa and St. Pete are kissing cousins. … More like hissing cousins.”–Orlando Magic co-founder Pat Williams, who leads the campaign to bring a major league baseball team to Orlando.

* “I am willing to look outside of this building because I care about the children in this district.”–Hillsborough County School Board member Stacy Hahn, on the superintendent search that is targeting candidates from outside the district.

It’s worth repeating that an ironically ominous political scenario would be Trump supporters having to say: “Yeah, he was my guy. Damn right. He hated what I hate, grabbed what I grab and sounded like my drinking buddies. I was with him every step of the way right up until …” Fill in the foreboding blank. We may have reached that menacing point.

It happens when you assassinate an iconic official, however heinous, of another country in a de facto declaration of war. Gen. Qassim Suleimani was no Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, stateless terrorists. The Baghdad Airport assassination of this general, the second-most important person in Iran, is an act of war. As a result, the U.S. also created a rally-around martyr that is unifying a country–one that had been unraveling domestically–against America.

Now we face the fraught reality of the Muddled East with its ballistics and bluster, an impulsive imposter as U.S. president and a necessarily go-it-alone strategy sans allies that returns us to terror alert. And now we are sending 4,500 more Army troops into harm’s way into Iranian–and Iranian-proxy–cross hairs.

The impetus was President Donald Trump unconscionably withdrawing the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal. Yes, it was imperfect; but it was perfectly counterproductive to opt out unilaterally. Trump never liked it principally because his predecessor, Barack Obama, signed on. But so did Iran, England, France, Germany, the European Union–as well as China and Russia. The 2015 deal also had the approval of the United Nations Security Council, NATO and the International Atomic Energy Agency. But Trump wanted the U.S. out; hell, he had campaigned on it along with getting out of the Climate Control accord. Can’t disappoint the base, even if it makes the U.S. and the rest of the world worse off. What ramifications of recklessness?         

For those speculating that part of the Trump strategy was a diversion from impeachment and to look like a tough guy, well, Iran does diversions and tough-guy theatrics as well. They had been enduring sanction-induced turmoil and bloodshed in their streets with plenty of animus directed at their own. Now this. Game-changer. Iran rallies around a “martyr” against the “infidel” and “God is great; America is evil” chants are back as daily optics. Thanks again, Mr. President, and, oh yeah, Iran has now exited the nuclear deal and the Parliament of Iraq, where so much American blood has been spilled, has officially told the U.S. to get the hell out.

Retaliation and escalation, including cyber attacks, are givens; as are impulsive, chaotic responses, including American threats to target Iranian cultural sites. Collateral damage, likely asymmetrical, is coming. But American lives will be lost. Again.

One other thing. Go back to America’s Vietnam experience. We were the French Indo-China and domino-defending aggressor napalming another country. Over time, many Americans expressed outrage. But supposing, say, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had been assassinated by the Vietcong. No, it’s not a precise analogy to Suleimani, but could have been, however perverse, rally on.

* “It Can’t Happen Here.” “1984.” “The Manchurian Candidate.” “Night of Camp David.” “Seven Days in May.” The list keeps growing. Will we add  “Dr. Strangelove”?

* Don’t look for  Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Acolyte,  to be any less sycophantic toward Trump despite the White House’s lack of Congressional consultation over matters of war. But let’s not forget that not long ago he sponsored legislation that would have mandated that the president obtain explicit congressional approval before going to war with Iran. That was Gaetz then. Fealty to the Oval Orifice matters above all.

* “Gangster-like.” How North Korean leader Kim Jong Un characterized U.S. pressure on his country’s nuclear capabilities. Imagine how he would have referenced it if he and Donald Trump didn’t have a world-stage bromance going on.

* Donald Trump, who wouldn’t know a communion plate from a collection plate, returned to his new home state for a bible-fondling love-in with duped and deluded evangelicals in South Florida. How unsurprising that he began his remarks by celebrating an assassination. It went over well. Nothing surprises when the fawning, hypocritical King Jesus International Ministry is officially launching and celebrating the oxymoronic “Evangelicals for Trump.”

* Rudy Giuliani would be perfectly cast by Goethe. A respected prosecutor. “America’s Mayor” after 911. Now he’s Trump’s miscalculating, all-purpose lotion boy. From Fox to Ukraine. Speaking of Trump, he’s not a Faustian sort. Have to have a soul to begin with.

* No, there are no defensible upsides to what the U.S. has escalated by taking out Iranian Gen. Qassim Suleimani. But it’s likely that former Vice President Joe Biden benefits politically.  He has first-hand foreign policy chops and no learning curve. He would be the polar opposite of an uninformed, impulsive narcissist trying to look like a tough guy when he’s not trying to look like a guy who hates stupid wars. However flawed and gaffe-prone, Biden’s been an international player and knows the game. Yes, there will be that congressional vote regarding Iraq, but the WMD lies had everything to do with it–as Hillary Clinton and most other non neo-con members of Congress can attest. When the foremost priority is removing an existential threat–before pivoting to domestic priorities–Biden benefits.

* Julian Castro is officially out as a Democratic presidential candidate and has officially endorsed Elizabeth Warren. But his proposal for a “Marshal Plan” for Central America should still be very much in play. Moreover, he’s still in the mix for a place on the ticket–just as he was in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was the nominee.

* “The answer is, I would, but I can’t think of one right now.”–Joe Biden, in answer to a stump question asking if he would consider choosing a Republican as a running mate.

* “We cannot afford the degree of recklessness and political immaturity among some who conclude that unless my candidate wins, I’m taking my ball and going home. That is what delivered Donald Trump the first time.”–Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., a member of the House Democratic leadership.

* “Yang Gang.” What Andrew Yang’s online following is known as. BTW, Yang, nationally unknown barely a year ago, raised more than $16 million last quarter, more than Biden had raised in the previous (third) quarter. Never know anymore with debate optics, a protean electorate and nanosecond news cycles. But at least they’re not known as the Yang Bangers.

Are demographics destiny? GOPsters in Florida should hope not. In 2018, Sunshine State registered Democrats were 48 percent white; Florida Republicans were 83 percent white.

* Another sign of the times: The Tampa Bay Times recently included a note to readers about making tax-deductable donations to the paper to support investigative journalism. We get it. These are challenging times and investigative journalism, never more necessary, is imperiled. But it would be prudent if the Times would also promise to invest donations in copy editors, proof readers and seasoned news judgment.

* Spoiler alert: If you’re planning on checking out Amazon’s “One Child Nation” documentary, be prepared for more than interviews and rationalizations about that beyond-shameless Chinese family-planning policy. More graphic than sonograms: That’s when we stopped watching.

* Japan made news recently for executing its first foreigner–a Chinese man convicted of murder–in 10 years. It was also a reminder that Japan and the U.S. are the only two countries in the Group of Seven advanced nations that retain the death penalty.

* Say what? Russia’s Vladimir Putin, hardly an avatar of geopolitical veracity, also has a revisionist shtick. He recently claimed that Poland bears blame for the outbreak of World War II. “Fake news?” Not, presumably, if it emanates from on high. No wonder he gets along well with his American counterpart.         

* If Boeing wants to do everything it conceivably can to make sure that the international market for its 737 Max is convinced of its safety, here’s a suggestion. Make sure there’s a serious Boeing corporate presence, starting with new CEO Dennis Mullenburg, on board for high-profile test flights and a number of early prominent commercial flights, starting with Ethiopian Airlines and Indonesia’s Lion Air. Boeing has to be totally on board as it repairs relationships with regulators, airlines and, most importantly, passengers.    

The Lightning has been turning it around after a surprisingly slow start. How surprising? Neither forward Nikita Kucherov nor goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, the reigning MVP and Vezina Trophy winners, respectively, were selected for this month’s All Star game in St. Louis.