Florida, since the advent of air conditioning, has been a pretty bearable place to be all year.
The exception is now; those dog days of mid-August when the unrelenting heat has the added flavor of later afternoon storms. It’s taht time of year when we also keep a weather eye on those tropical waves that begin off the western coast of Africa and gather strength they move over the warm waters in our general direction.
I don’t know if it’s at all attributable to the weather but we seem to act a little more strangely this time of year. Politicians, maybe having spent too much time in the sun, tend to blather even more.
Things are even antsy around the house. My wife the teacher is already back in the classroom, with the little urchins scheduled to come in next week. That’s nuts too, of course. Going to school in late August makes little sense, except that in Florida it’s still going to be summer well into October, and you have to go sometime.
Even columnists seem to go more awry than usual. Tomorrow’s epic is about a psychic doing business on the layaway plan. Hey, it’s Tuesday right in the middle of the dog days of August..
Reading today’s story about a possible case of swine flu at Bell Shoals Baptist Church, a piece of trivia good only for today. Bell Shoals, along the Alafia River, is the site that Jules Verne used to launch his rocket in “From the Earth to the Moon.’’
For the 23rd consecutive year and despite my coaching skills, the Lighthouse for the Blind beat my media all stars today, this time 1-0 at the New York Yankees Community Field.
Also as usual it was Lee Kimbrell of the Llighthouse who scored the only run of the game.
Beepball is a game where you have to hit a ball that beeps while you are blindfolded. In the unlikely event you hit the ball, you have to find a base, that is also beeping, before the other team finds the ball.
We looked pretty good for a team that actually seldom came close. Sharon taylor of WFLA radio actually hit theball but they got her out.
I’ve decided to change strategy for next year’s game and cut little slits in our blindfolds.
As promised, here is a chili recipe you can prepare in advance for when you are stuck home with the flu. This one is called “La Venganza del Alamo’’ It was a winner in the International Chili Society championships. Recipe makes enough for about 18 servings.
LA VENGANZA DEL ALAMO
ingredients:
11 tablespoons chili powder
one quarter cup. ground cumin
one quarter cup instant beef boullion
2 tablespoons parprika
2 tablesppons monosodium glutamate
1 tablespoon dried oregano
3 cans (12 ounces each ) beer
2 cups water
one half cup vegetable oil
2 pounds pork from thick butterfly cut pork chops, cut into half-inch cubes
2 pounds beef chuck,cut into half-inch cubes
6 pounds beef rump ground
4 large onions, finely chopped
10 cloves garlic minced
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon mole powder
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
1 tablespoon masa harina
salt to taste
Preparation:
In a large pot combine chili powder,cumin, beef boullion, paprika MSG, oregano, beer and water. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer.
In a large skillet heat oil, add one and a half pounds of mean and saute until brown. Drain off oil, transfer meat to simmering spices and continue until all meat is brown.
Saute onions and garlic in one tablespoon oil and add to mixture. Simmer two hours, adding water as needed.
Add sugar, coriander. mole, Tabasco and tomato sauce and simmer an additional 45 minutes.
Disolve masa harina in a little water until it is pasty and add to chili.Season to taste with sale
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Just back from the NFL Commissioner’s party at the Tampa Convention Center. I didn’t see the commissioner but the Frau and I entered it turned out there were two lines, depending on the color of your ticket. One line had the kind of people you would have expected to arrive in a horse and buggy. I’m guessing that was the “A’ list. We were in the other line.
I did see Councilman John Dingfelder, which was not exactly the same as Paris Hilton.
And we did see one movie star. OK star might be pushing it since neither one of us could remember his name or anything he had ever been in.
Anyhow the food was good and the music loud.
Downtown Tampa was mayhem. They had a hockey game over at the Ice Palace but it couldn’t have been as exciting as watching the traffic jam and confused drivers around town.
Super Bowl week is underway. It could be worse. Back in 1984 when we hosted our first Super Bowl we were so pumped up down here at the Type and Gripe factory we actually made a grid map out of the area around the stadium and assigned reporters to every grid space. I thought the business editor was going to quit when he learned he was covering one of the men’s rooms inside the stadium.
We never learn. I talked to one restaurant owner today who said business will be so slow on Sunday he might as well close down. Most of us who had visions of renting our homes out for thousands of dollars a day, discovered that just didn’t happen.
But at least the weather is good and this should give us something to talk about until Gasparilla the week after.
By late Tuesday evening as John McCain was conceding and hundreds of thousands of people were descending upon Chicago’s Grant Park to witness history-in-the-making as Barack Obama assumed the presidency of the Untied States, radio talk show bloviator Rush Limbaugh had to be feeling like a bigger self-made chump than Eliot Spitzer.
After all just a few short months ago Limbaugh had been predicting Obama would “lose big” in the upcoming presidential election because he would fail to attract traditional Democratic constituencies - blue-collar, working class voters. Sheesh, if this guy was any more wrong, he’d make Dick Cheney seem like Kreskin.
And indeed, since Tuesday night, Limbaugh has been inveighing against Obama, calling him a Chicago thug. Maybe, but if he is Barack Obama just might be the first Harvard educated thug in Chicago history.
What Limbaugh and his fellow radio henchmen refuse to acknowledge is that the Obama camoaign will likely be studied for years to come by political scientists and historians as perhaps one of the most flawless presidential campaigns in American history, with the possible fashion faux pas of Michelle Obama’s dress on election night.
What was she thinking? But that’s another story.
John McCain lost his race to Obama primarily because he was old, picked a crazy nut for a running mate and bounced around like a pin-ball from issue-to-issue, never finding his footing, or a coherent message to justify his election.
The Obama campaign from Day One, remained focused, even keeled, undistracted, on point and disciplined - in short presidential.
This was like Mr. Dithers taking on Steve McQueen.
And while McCain was whining about Bill Ayres, or vague references to “socialism,” and unruffled Barack Obama promoted a vision for the future.
Why did Barack Obama win? Because much like Ronald Reagan, 28 years ago, the Illinois senator offered a sense of idealism, optimism and the promise of a better day. John McCain talked about Joe the Plumber, who was busy hiring a public relations firm to promote him.
Despite all the lies, Obama prevailed against the chattering classes of right-wing radio.
He is not a Muslim. His is not a socialist. He was born in this country. He does not want to take your guns away. he does not ant to change the national anthem to “I Want To each The World To Sing.” He is a Christian.
And on his journey to the White House, Barack Obama, a former community organizer, organized tens of thousands of people to work for him, on the way to creating a sophisticated $700-million campaign, which utilized the latest in technology to raise money, mobilize supporters and promote his message.
And his critics claimed he had never managed anything?
The Obama campaign has transformed the American political landscape.
Rush Limbaugh will still have his audience of lemmingesq fellow travelers to carry for his gospel of shopworn rigjht-wing ideology.
If you want to tune in, Limbaugh will be easy to find. Just look in your rear-view mirror. Riding with John McCain, George Bush and Sarah Palin in a buckboard, falling further and further behind.
Some final campaign season scribblings.
Is it a state law, or something that Jimmy Buffet must appear somewhere in the Tampa area on the eve of every presidential election? Look, I like Mr. Parrothead as much as the next guy, but isn’t this shtik getting a bit old?
Can we please, please, please dispense with this piffle that former tampa Mayor Dick Greco is a Democrat? Okay, sure, fine, perhaps it might say “Democrat” on Greco’s voter registration card, but when you become an ubiquitous presence on the dais with every Republican candidate from Charlie Crist to John McCain and when the last time you voted for a Democrat, Thomas Jefferson was on the ticket, isn’t it sorta hard to maintain this mythology you still are loyal to the party of FDR, JFK and LBJ?
Oddly enough, Greco has probably done more stumping for McCain than Gov. Crist, who toward the end of this campaign cycle was playing more hard to get than a nun.
Perhaps no other politician in Florida history has been more adept at tacking with the prevailing electoral winds than Crist, who as it appeared the McCain campaign had attracted a major case of the cooties, began to ever so subtley distance himself from the Republican presidential nominee, perhaps as much as an expression of pay-back for not being named McCain’s running mate, as taking the first baby steps toward positioning himself for future White House considerations in 2012.
As well, Greco was more visible on the hustings than current Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who strangely played an extremely low-profile presence in the Brack Obama campaign during his frequent trips to the Tampa area.
There’s been a bit of musing as to how nasty this campaign as been and to be sure it has, but the 2008 presidential race still has a long way to go to match the vitriol of some past races, most notably the virulent contest between John Adams and Jefferson in 1800, in which both exchanged brutal accusation against each other. And they were supposed to have been once those closest of friends!
Prediction: If John McCain loses, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will drop off the radar faster than the Hidenburg. By the time the 2012 presidential cycle rolls around again, the GOP presidential battle will see another crowded field with the possible likes of Crist, Mitt Romney, South Dakota Sen. John Thune. Mike Huckabee and probably some names we’ve never heard of entering the race.
Betcha can’t wait, right?
For the first time in months people seem pumped up over this marathon campaign. It’s easy to suggest they are just glad it’s over and there will be no more TV commercials and sleazy pitches, but I think it’s more.
Maybe it’s because finally we are having our say, even if our options might not have been what we had wanted.
Even at our house where our youngest son gets to vote for the first time, listening to him ask questions and get excited is something special. You feel like that maybe things are going to be all right in the long run; that the process is going to continue.
I felt it down at te Elks Club where we vote. You could see it in the eyes of voters coming out the door with those stickers on their shirts, wonder if it is the first time in years they have bothered and now they too realize that there is something special in our election process. I’d be interested in hearing how it was for you out there.
Who knew that when President Bush suggested Americans should go shopping as a gesture of patriotism, Sarah Palin would take it to Imelda Marcos proportions of “Give me liberty or give me Donna Karan!”
Perhaps it is not too late for the John McCain campaign to change its slogan to “Saks Fifth Avenue First!”
Let’s see if we have this straight.
We’re in the midst of the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression. Americans are losing their jobs, their homes, their life savings. People are scrimping by. Things are tough. Things are bad.
And in the middle of a presidential campaign, Republican John McCain, who has been preaching fiscal restraint, fiduciary responsibility, obviously approved a party expense of $150,000 to gussy up his running mate? A simple question. Are you nuts, senator?
To date, since McCain had the mother of all brain infarctions and selected “Gilligan’s Island’s” Ginger as his running mate the GOP has pent $150,000 in party faithful contributions in a sort of “What Not To Wear From Hell” to make over Sarah Palin’s wardrobe.
It’s probably not unreasonable to assume that when Palin was picked, somebody somewhere in the McCain camp said: “My Gawd, not only did John choose the Gidget of the NRA to be his running mate, but she has all the fashion sense of Ma Kettle. Get thee to Givenchy immediately!”
Sheesh, this is starting to make John Edwards’ $400 haircut look like a Rayhawk.
According to financial records obtained by Politico.com, Republican funds have been expended to buy Palin $49,425 in clothing from Saks, and an additional $75,000 in rags from Neiman-Marcus. This was hardly a Hockey Mom Wal-Mart moment.
As well another $44,716 has been spent on Palin’s hair and make-up. Wait a minute! They spent $44,716 on the Alaskan governor’s hair and make-up - and that was they best they do?
Good grief, the fashionista Stasi Mr. Blackwell, who just checked out to that “Devil Wears Prada” in the sky has to be spinning in his grave, thinking, “Why couldn’t I have held out for just a few more days?”
At the same time, the GOP ponied up another $5,000 for First Dude Todd Palin’s duds and another $295 in infant clothes. What? The governor never had a baby shower for her new tot?
Even if you are a well-to-do Republican, it has to be pretty galling to know contributions to the party were spent, not to advance the McCain presidential campaign, but to enhance the running-mate’s closet.
And yet, after all the money has been spent on sending Palin to Vogue school, the candidate still comes off looking like a 44-year-old woman trying to come off as a 24-year-old woman.
Please, please, please get rid the Fonzi leather jackets. Please do something with that hair, which looks like it was inspired by Lily Munster.
And especially please, stop being such flaming hypocrites.
It is awfully hard to being running around the country claiming you are a Joe Six-Pack kind of candidate when you are dressed to the nines.
It is awfully hard to be insisting how well you relate to Joe the Plumber when you are Versace the Pol.
And it is awfully hard to preach self-reliance and rugged individualism when you are accepting $150,000 worth of free - stuff.
What is truly amazing is it seems no one in the myopic McCain campaign could see how bad this looks, especially in the middle of a presidential run when the looming issue is a financial crisis crippling millions of American families.
Or perhaps, in the end, sadly, it’s not so amazing after all.
It was probably not a good idea to offend the Beelzebub of Business Class, but the AirTran gate agent apparently was willing to tempt fate.
The flight was only minutes away from departing from its Tampa International Airport gate for its brief trip to Atlanta when two very wadded passengers were escorted back into the terminal by one of the airline’s gate agents.
It was a young couple, who had become plenty steamed when they discovered they had not been seated in the business class section of the plane.
Now to be sure sitting in business class has its advantages. Somewhat roomier seats and of course so-called “free drinks,” which have really been pre-paid for with a higher ticket price.
To the best of our eavesdropping ability - hey what else is there to do in an airport? - the Bombshell of the Balkans and I casually sidled over to listen in on the dispute.
The couple, in their early 20s, would obviously never be confused with J. Crew models. The young man was wearing a well-worn t-shirt with a large image of Lucifer on his back. The ensemble seemed to compliment the Satanic tattoo on his leg. His Bride/Girlfriend/Significant Satanic Consort looked she had just been exorcised.
You know, there’s nothing like the understated elegance one finds when traveling.
The Honeymooners from Hades had seats on the Atlanta flight back in the coach section. But obviously some clerical boo-boo or perhaps sinful glitch had occurred leaving them high and for their cross purposes, dry when it came to getting into business class. Ergo the hissy fit from - hell.
By now a gaggle of AirTran gate personnel had surrounded the couple gently trying to reason with them to calm down and board the flight. One might assume they had been offered a refund of sorts on their tickets. It wasn’t to be.
Eventually the couple agreed to take a later flight leaving for Atlanta two hours later - this time they would be accommodated in business class.
Now there’s a reason why people wind up in the throes of perdition and being dumber than a sack of pitchforks is certainly one of them.
The flight from Tampa to Atlanta lasts one hour. The rednecks form the infernal regions were now willing to wait for two hours for another flight simply to sit in marginally better seats. And they obviously thought this was a great deal.
To pass the time the Prince and Princess of Darkness announced they were going to set off to find the airport bar, suggesting that by the time their plane would leave they might well be in no condition to fly.
“I don’t think they’re going to get on the 11 o’clock flight,” one of the beleaguered AirTran gate agents sighed, who looked like he could used a stiff pop himself.
It was another morning of wading thorough the bad news as the economy continues to tank and the gnawing fear that nobody knows what to do about it permeated the Sunday paper.
But the story that got to me was back in one of the middle sections of the Trib. It talked about the global decline of the firefly, from southeast Asia to the southern forests of the United States.
It was last October when we were staying at one of those bed and breakfast homes in western North Carolina. It was their last weekend as they were about to close up until the following spring.
I sat out on the a rocker on the old deck that looked out over a rolling pasture where I watched the cows, as if by some silent signal, began to meander off to some unseen barn.
It was then that the first fire flies began to flash. At first there were only one or two but within minutes the entire lawn in front of me was alive as thousands of lights spread out down the hill.
In my mind I could remember summer nights as a boy in Tampa, chasing “lighting bugs’’ across the backyards of our neighborhood.
But that was a long time ago and for the generation growing up today in Tampa, one of those simple pleasures they will not know.
There’s probably a very good reason, despite John McCain’s posturing comments to the contrary, why all the network and cable news outlets continued to promote tonight’s presidential debate in Oxford, Mississippi using the names of both Democrat Barack Obama and the Republican nominee.
For despite McCain’s broad hints he wouldn’t show up to debate Obama, everyone knew the candidate was full of beans - or words to that effect.
And just why was everyone so sure McCain was simply playing hard to get?
Ask yourself two simple questions.
Please name a single political figure running for the presidency of the United States, who would willingly pass up the opportunity for 90 minutes of free national face time on NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC and FOX, not to mention numerous radio outlets.
Now, please name a single political figure running for the presidency of the United States, who would willingly allow their opponent to bask in 90 minutes of free national face time on NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC and FOX, not to mention numerous radio outlets.
And that is why McCain’s arrival in Oxford was about as much of a surprise as the late William Faulkner coming back to his old home town.
Just how much McCain’s “No, No Nanette” act will effect tonight’s debate is, well, debatable.
For while McCain was flitting around Washington for a better part of the week, pretending to have influence over the economic bailout talks, Obama was preparing for the debate.
There are cynics - yes, it’s true, one or two of them, perhaps - who might hint, but just a bit that all of this debate kerfuffle was part of a broader conspiracy by McCain to have tonight’s debate cancelled and then rescheduled for October 2 in place of the vice presidential debate between Obama’s running mate Joe Biden and McCain’s surreal veep pick Sarah Palin, who has proven to have all the political skills of a hubcap since she was thrust into the national spotliglight.
Unfortunately Obama, who proved to be something of of a pretty fair poker player during his years in the Illinois Legislature, called McCain’s bluff, refusing to call off their first debate.
Tonight, we’ll see who wins the next hand.
The Villages, a sprawling retirement community north of Orlando, is mobbed at the moment by an immense crowd who have come to see Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin.
With more than an hour to go before Palin is to appear paramedics are tending to a steady stream of heat exhaustion victims.
No one knows how many there have been but calls for emergency help are constant event staff members said.
Generally, post-mortem books on presidential campaigns are about as interesting as “How To Do Stand-Up Comedy,” by Vladimir Putin.
But when the dust settles on the 2008 run for the White House, don’t you suspect the behind scenes soap opera of the John McCain campaign could make for some compelling reading. Well, one can only hope.
Nominating conventions, by their very nature, are part pep rally, part re-education camp, part political high mass.
And with the Republicans meeting this week in Minnesota, the tone has also had a feel of “Elmer Gantry” meets “North To Alaska”?
Gracious there’s been more red meat chewed down to the bone here than Hannibal Lecter left unsupervised at Berns’ Steakhouse.
And, of course, there’s been no shortage of bloviating hypocritical foaming at the mouth.
You would have been forgiven Tuesday night if you had found your gin flying across the room in a massive spit-take as former Sen. Fred Thompson, whose own campaign for the presidency was often confused with “My Dinner With Andre,” weighed in with an attack on the Washington insiders who populate the Beltway cocktail party circuit.
After all, Thompson has been a frequent habitue of the very social crowd he was castigating. And from the looks of it, it appeared the senator had never met a buffet line he didn’t like.
But for pure cheekiness, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who blew through $40 million on the way to winning a one-delegate landslide, took Barack Obama to task for his association with the political machine of Chicago Mayor Richie Daley. No! Really! He did! Honest!
Ahem, a New York glad-hander, himself the patriarch of a massive electoral machinef, was shocked by another candidate’s relationship with a big city political machine? Isn’t this a bit like Hugh Hefner being offended by nudity?
And there was Mitt Romney decrying Big Brother government, after eight years of a Bush Administration, which has treated the Bill of Rights as if it had cooties.
Although it is merely a guess, but you have to expect the books coming out of the McCain campaign will reveal a backstage political drama rivaling “The Best Man.”
In a sense it is a testimony to what hustings pros the likes of Thompson, Giuliani, Romney and Mike Huckabee were to take their marching orders, salute for the good of the party and take to the podium to defend McCain’s patently ridiculous selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Surely nobody expected the mandarins of the GOP hierarchy to publicly admit - “Beats me, I have no idea what John was thinking.”
And so these folks and their followers did what any group of seasoned political operatives do when the leader of the ticket decides to shoot himself in the head - smile, praise the decision and blame the media for having the audacity to raise the notion that Palin has about as much business being a heartbeat away from the presidency as Elmer Fudd.
Is was a masterful performance of spin.
Why absolutely John McCain vetted Palin. Of course he knew about her flip-flop on the Bridge To Nowhere. Of course he was aware of the governor’s efforts to fire the state’s safety director because he wouldn’t fire her ex-brother-in-law. Of course he was fully informed Palin, when then a small town mayor tried to fire the city librarian when she refused to remove some books Palin didn’t like from the library. Sure, McCain knew taxes went up in Wasilla during Palin’s mayorship. And absolutely he knew about the unwed pregnancy of Palin’s 17-year-old daughter. Of course, he knew Palin didn’t have a passport until 2007 and had traveled abroad only once in her life.
Yep, yep, yep, no problem.
Can’t wait to read the book now, can’t you?
How else then to defend Palin’s presence on the ticket than to attack her critics as sexist pigs going after a wonderful working mother? Those meanies!
You may have noticed that in many of the interviews with Republican women such as McCain advsor Carli Fiorina and others, Palin was repeatedly described as a “working mother,” to drive home the politically correct message that any criticism of the governor is an anti-feminist assault on women toiling away in the workplace. Balderdash.
We all know working mothers are an intrinsic force in the economy, who successfully balance their jobs and their families. In all likelihood most of us need to look no further than our own spouses.
There are legions of “working mothers” in the private and public sectors who are fine, decent, able, competent executives and office holders.
More to the point, the “working mother” brouhaha is a phony, manufactured GOP convention issue to divert attention away from Palin’s gender neutral political shortcomings as a vice presidential candidate.
At the moment Sarah Palin has been a national public figure less than a week. She has given two speeches. She has held - zero - press conferences. And yet the hard-core right-wing Christian conservative base of the Republican Party is more ga-ga over this empty canvas than a bunch of 14-year-old girls at a Jonas Brothers concert.
This could be a heckuva book, don’t you think.
All we need is a final chapter.
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