Opinions to go Online

* If curling can be a Winter Olympics event, why not shuffleboard at the Summer Games?

* The NFL has, as we’ve been seeing, ongoing issues over the hiring of minority head coaches. But the league could still make positive minority history. Black media mogul Byron Allen is making a bid to buy the Denver Broncos. Reportedly he was approached by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in 2019 about buying the team.

* Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium, home to Super Bowl LXI, is one of the most expensive sports arenas ever built: more than $5 billion.

* Among scenarios potentially impacting a 2024 Trump run: the 14^th Amendment. It has a heretofore unpublicized but timely clause that bans public officials from serving in any future federal, state or military office if they have engaged in, say, “insurrection or rebellion.”

* Apparently some of the White House documents that Donald Trump improperly took to Mar-a-Lago were marked “classified.” National Archives & Records Administration officials have asked the Justice Department to check it out. For the record, official paperwork belongs to the nation—not to a president or ex-president. This isn’t the Trump Organization. The Presidential Records Act should still matter. Let’s find out.

* Trump can flush evidentiary documents, but, alas, we still can’t flush his presidency.

* “Nixon had the plumbers. Trump’s the one who needed them.”–Maureen Dowd, NYT.

* “People who have nothing to hide don’t … destroy evidence to keep it from being publicly archived as required under federal law.” That was presidential candidate Trump in 2016—in his criticism of Hillary Clinton over her handling of emails. Timing and hypocrisy are everything.

* “It will take years to clean the stain Trump has smeared on a party he never cared much about in the first place. And the Republican ‘leaders’ have no one to blame but themselves.”–Jonah Goldberg, The Dispatch.

* Can there be ‘Trumpism’ without Trump?It’s not a rhetorical question, even for an increasingly “deplorable” base. But the answer is NO—not unlike a cult without a cult leader.

* “The truth is, there’s more at stake than our party or political fortunes. … If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections—we’ll lose our country.”–Mike Pence, trying to save faith—and face.

* According to a YouGov. December poll, 71 percent of all Republicans believe that President Joe Biden was not elected legitimately.

* “For the united front Never Trump, there’s no greater heroine than Liz Cheney, and no clearer embodiment of Republican cowardice than Susan Collins, the Maine moderate who even now won’t say definitively that she’ll oppose if he’s the 2024 nominee.”–Ross Douthat, NYT.

* “Gazpacho police”: Who Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Stormtrooper, said was being unleashed by Nancy Pelosi on lawmakers. Gazpacho, Gestapo, whatever.

* “Canadians have the right to protest … and to make their voices heard. (But not) the right to blockade our economy, or our democracy, or our fellow citizens’ daily lives.”–Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on the “Freedom Convoy” of truckers that has obstructed and halted traffic on the Ambassador Bridge, which spans the Detroit River and links Ontario and Detroit. It began as a protest against U.S. and Canadian rules that require cross-border truckers to be fully vaccinated.

* “(Give police) the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, to be protectors.”–President Joe Biden.

* “I hope the truckers do come to America, and I hope they clog up cities.”–Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

* “Support for and opposition to public health measures often span the political spectrum. … The idea of not wearing a seat belt as a political statement, a common occurrence in the 1980s, now seems absurd.”–Erica Westly, Washington Post.

* “Civility is a symbol of the behaviors that must be revived if we’re going to make American democracy work again.”–Nicholas Goldberg, Los Angeles Times.

* “Today, more laws, caucuses, rallies and hard-right movements use the language of ‘freedom’ as a cudgel to erode democratic governance and civil rights; these laws expand the creep of authoritarianism.”–Elizabeth Anker, the author of “Ugly Freedoms.”

* “It’s very clear to me that the people fighting against Critical Race Theory have no idea what it is.”–UCF Sociology Professor Jonathan Cox.

* “We (are supposed to) forget that George Washington was a slave owner, or that Thomas Jefferson had mulatto children … and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring.”–W.E.B. Du Bois.

* “If we want to save American education, the first step should be obvious. Let teachers teach.”–Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald.

* “The most powerful advantage of money is the ability to think of things besides money. That’s what money does. It frees your mind for living.”–Tara Westover, author of the memoir “Educated.”

* “We would rather people not be in the military than place other service members at risk.”–Amy Powell, an attorney for the Department of Justice, in underscoring the government’s position that service members must take the vaccine or face discipline. She is part of a case playing out in a Tampa federal courtroom over military officers refusing the vaccine for religious reasons.

* “The notion that your teaching can consist entirely of objective facts that are themselves subject to debate makes no sense to professional historians.”–FSU associate history professor Will Hanley, a member of the American Historical Association.

* “We think Tampa is a major-league market, and we want to find a solution that makes the club economically viable in that market. … We do have a sense of urgency with respect to the Tampa situation.”–MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred.

* “The real worry right now is you don’t want to be buying near the peak of the (real estate) market. But that’s where I think you’re at in Tampa.”–FAU real estate economist Ken Johnson.

* “We simply can’t arrest our way out of the problem. That doesn’t work. But you can also be assured that we will be holding the most violent offenders accountable for their actions.”–Mary O’Connor, Tampa’s new police chief.

* “This is the good stuff, guys. This is the one you fight over.”–Bill Cronin, president and CEO of the Pasco Economic Development Council, on announced plans by Amazon to build a $150 million, 500,00-square-foot distribution facility that will provide 500 new jobs.

* For obvious reasons, NATO is in the news. It is combating an imperious, authoritarian punk in Vladimir Putin who signals a “willingness to talk” by first pouring Russian combat troops and weapons on the Ukrainian border. What’s ironic is that not all NATO leaders find Putin’s bellicose manner repugnant, let alone antithetical to democratic values. Autocratic Exhibits A and B: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

* The U.S. took out ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi Qurayshi. By so doing, the U.S. also took a big international step in combating the post-Afghanistan impression that America’s global power was weakening. NATO noticed.

* America’s employers added 467.000 jobs in January, a number that was surprising in the context of an omicron wave and underscored the economy’s resilience.

* “Biden should use his informal powers aggressively. … As president of the United States, Biden is a mega-celebrity who controls the biggest, most prestigious microphone in the world.”–Perry Bacon, Washington Post.

* Call it irrational exuberance. Also call it another unforced error. For a while, at least to a number of activist Democrats, having attorney Michael Avenatti taking on Donald Trump by representing Stormy Daniels seemed like a welcome, appropriately pragmatic, bare-knuckle, political response. Only problem, if you bring in a sleazy punk to combat the nastiness on the other side, you will pay a price. You can be tarred by the association and appeals to our better angels can be devilishly compromised.

Avenatti has been convicted of cheating porn actress Daniels out of some $300,000 she was supposed to get for writing an expose of a Trump tryst. Previously, he was convicted of trying to extort up to $25 million from Nike.

In short, Dems don’t need devious, self-serving, hard-ball hucksters on their side of the cause, even if they’re going after Trump and his low-life cult followers. BTW, Avenatti acted as his own attorney in the Daniels’ case, which means he had a fool for a client. Prior to that, he had some well-intentioned fools applauding his high-profile, snarky, cable news antagonism of Trump.

* State of the Union speech: March 1.

* According to a Johns Hopkins University tracker, the U.S. has now surpassed 900,000 COVID deaths since the pandemic began.

* 76 percent: Total U.S. population that is at least partially vaccinated.

* The flu: It’s back—with its normal pre-pandemic pattern. Health officials attribute it to an increasingly lax approach to COVID control measures.

*Starting in early spring, the (64 million) people on Medicare will be able to get free COVID rapid tests from designated pharmacies.

* According to the CDC, wearing N95 and KN95 masks cuts the odds of infection by 83 percent. Wearing a cloth mask appears to lower the odds by 56 percent.

* The Florida positivity rate: 18 percent. It was 23.5 percent the previous week.

* Tampa Bay weekly hospitalizations: 2,789, a 10 percent decrease from the week before.

* “The sooner, the better.”–Hillsborough County school superintendent Addison Davis, in asking a district advisory committee to consider supporting a special property tax for schools. Davis proposed asking voters for a tax of $1 for every $1,000 of real estate value. The proposed tax would bring in an estimated $125 million a year to address spending deficits that have climbed to nearly $100 million. And, no, no one is expecting the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to write a check.

* “I’m not sure anyone would argue that an airport is the highest priority and best use of that land unless you own a Piper Cub.”—Former St. Petersburg City Council member Karl Nurse, on St. Pete’s Albert Whitted Airport. Nurse is also a former airport task force member.

* Democratic Congresswoman Val Demings, the former Orlando police chief who is running for a U.S. Senate seat, has outraised incumbent Marco Rubio by $2 million in quarter 4. It’s the third consecutive quarter that Demings has outraised Rubio.

* Some news cycles are worse than others. Ask CNN. Ask Jeff Zucker and Chris Cuomo.

* For the first time in its (18-year) history, Facebook has lost daily users—about 500,000 over the last three months of 2021. But 1.93 billion users are still logging in each day.

* “Those behind this activity have a China nexus.” The assessment of Mandiant, a cyber security firm examining the recent hack on News Corp., whose publications and businesses include the New York Post and Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones.

* “(America is) pushing Ukraine to join NATO.” For the record, no it’s not. Also for the record, that was *ucker Carlson.

* “Fox & Friends,” according to network staffers, used to be known as “Roger’s daybook,” for its adherence to the favorite story lines of former Fox Chairman Roger Ailes.

* “It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.”–Joseph Goebbels.

* “A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”–Joseph Goebbels.

* “Arguments must be crude, clear and forcible and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect.”–Joseph Goebbels.

* “Joey was spot on.”–A likely response from Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.

* A silencer can be affixed to a gun, so how about leaf blowers, weed whackers, dust busters and high-speed blenders?

* Why are they called “hemorrhoids” and not “asteroids”?

* Arguably the most prominently misspelled word in the midst of a pandemic: Canceled. Cancel that other one.