Good morning everybody, and welcome to the last full day of summer. Well, last official day.
This is my 13th summer living in Florida. In the early part of the aughts, the presence of fall usually was felt by mid-October or so. As climate change continue to heat the planet, however, I find the humidity not really abating until November these days. Whatever. It's still my favorite time of the year, as college and pro football season kicks in, the baseball playoffs are approaching, the "quality" Hollywood films are released, some of the biggest books, fiction and non-fiction alike, are published, and for those of who are into it, the network television season commences.
One television series that will continue thru November is the presidential election. The campaign was in that was in full intensity in the Tampa Bay area yesterday. Barack Obama was holding court in South Tampa at a private fundraiser, while Mitt Romney was talking to the faithful in Sarasota, as CL's Michael Newberger reports.
By the way, how the hell can it be that Barack Obama outspend Mitt Romney by a 2-1 margin last month?
I get that Mittens didn't get his hands on his general election money until the end of the month (when he officially became the GOP nominee), but that still is a shocking figure.
Meanwhile there was a somewhat depressing discussion at the Tampa City Council meeting yesterday about what to do with the surveillance cameras that the city purchased for the RNC. Mayor Bob Buckhorn ultimately has the final say-so, so he opted not to send any high ranking emissary from his staff to communicate exactly what he wants yesterday, severely rankling council members.
And on Wednesday night, Christian conservative activist Terry Kemple, trying to get elected to the Hillsborough County School Board on a platform that includes banning the Muslim group CAIR from Hillsborough classrooms, was confronted with a young activist who accused him of bigotry.
This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2012.