Category: Florida

Ybor City Scenes

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Chef cooks in the window of La Creperia Cafe
on 7th Avenue, Ybor City, Sunday, Aug. 26, 2012

TAMPA, Florida
Our accommodations for Convention Week are in the historic Ybor City neighborhood, walking distance from 7th Avenue, the major nightlife scene in Tampa. When I woke up this morning about 7:30 a.m., I decided to go get breakfast and eventually found La Creperia Cafe, which is a lot less la-dee-da than the name might suggest. A breakfast crepe and coffee was $11, with 77 cents tax and I tipped $3.25 for a $15 tab. (Hit the freaking tip jar!)

After breakfast, I took a stroll down 7th Avenue, which is sort like the French Quarter in New Orleans, in that it’s jumping all night and pretty quiet in the morning. All the local merchants are rolling out the welcome mat for the Republican National Convention.

A gay-themed welcome poster hangs in the window of an art gallery. As in other similar neighborhoods, a significant gay presence is part of the whole “gentrifying” yuppie vibe in Ybor City.

The Gonzalez Martinez Cigar Factor is also home to the famed Columbia Restaurant. Ybor City is historically known as the “Cigar Capital of the World,” and shops still feature hand-rolled cigars — quite literally, you can watch while they roll a cigar just for you.

A sign in the window of Gaspar’s Grotto advertises their award-winning Cuban sandwiches. Ali Akbar, his assistant Devon Wills and I went out for a midnight dinner Saturday night and I had the Cuban sandwich, which they serve with plantain chips. Gaspar’s Grotto calls itself a “Notorious Pirate Bar,” but the Saturday night crowd included more lesbians than pirates. NTTAWWT.

 





 

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Unpopular Former Republican Governor Endorses Unpopular Democrat President

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TAMPA, Florida
Charlie Crist, who lost the 2010 Senate campaign to Marco Rubio, publishes his endorsement on the editorial page of today’s Tampa Bay Times:

As America prepares to pick our president for the next four years — and as Florida prepares once again to play a decisive role — I’m confident that President Barack Obama is the right leader for our state and the nation.

“Corrupt” wouldn’t fit in the headline, but it’s not like we’ve forgotten all the shenanigans alleged against former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist by his former handpicked state party chairman, who has since been indicted on federal corruption charges. More importantly, however, Crist represents no constituency other than himself.

In the 2010 Senate election, Crist ran as a sore-loser independent after it became obvious Rubio would win the GOP nomination. Exit polls showed that not only did Rubio overwhelmingly win the Republican vote (87% to 12% for Crist), but Rubio also won among independent voters (51% to 38%). Charlie is an “independent” who doesn’t appeal to independents, and actually got most of his votes from Democrats.

UPDATE: Da Tech Guy was reminded of another sore loser, Dede Scozzafava, while Glenn Reynolds was reminded that, in September 2009, Charlie Crist was predicting that Obama would be a one-term president.

Democrats: Allen West Is Willie Horton!

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Remember when I said that Obama super-PAC ad had scraped all the way through the bottom of the barrel? Now Democrats are running an ad that shows Rep. Allen West beating up white women and stealing their money:

More at The Lonely Conservative and Legal Insurrection. What strikes me about this ad is how it is coordinated with President Obama’s message: It is no longer enough to say that Republicans advocate “tax cuts for the rich.” Now the Democrats actually accuse the GOP of wishing to raise taxes on the middle class. The Democrats’ blatant indifference to truth is frightening, as is the evidence that their lies are actually working.

Has it really come to this? Are the Democrats — who have spent the past four years telling us that every possible criticism of Obama is some kind of racist “dog whistle” — going to get away with portraying war hero Allen West as a violent thief?

Go give Allen West some money to fight back against the lies.

‘Real’ Conservatives Of The Sunshine State, Crist Edition

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by Smitty

Former Florida Governor and Anderson Cooper wannabee Charlie Crist was on The Shark Tank’s radar:

Crist recently gave a ‘full-throated’ endorsement of Senator Bill Nelson over Connie Mack, and Speaker Weatherford offered his take on Crist’s “evolution”-

I guess it’s his coming out party, so to speak, so he is coming out and letting people know where he really stands philosophically-I don’t think it surprised a lot of us- he governed as a Democrat.

Seeing Crist gaily tread the Arlen Specter Trail just goes to show: you can lead a man to Chick-Fil-A, but you can’t do much about his Dairy Queen cravings.

Question the Timing (and Sample): Poll Shows Obama Leading in Swing States

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You will remember that Democrats were panicking last month at the realization that Mitt Romney and the GOP outraised the DNC/Obama team in June, and that Obama’s unsustainable “burn rate” — pouring on a 2-to-1 ad blitz — had failed to move independent voters.

Everything the Dems had done was being sabotaged by Obama’s tone-deaf “you didn’t build that” gaffe, and so the mainstream media (eager to do their part to help undo Obama’s self-inflicted damage) decided to recycle their IRS mantra and turn everything Romney said during his foreign trip into a scandalous “controversy.”

Nevertheless, the needle didn’t really budge: It’s still basically neck-and-neck in the RCP national average. So what does the MSM do next? Come out with a poll showing (or at least claiming to show) that Obama is leading, with more than 50% support, in two key swing states — Ohio and Florida — plus Pennsylvania, which isn’t exactly a swing state (no Republican presidential candidate has carried it since 1988) but where Romney hopes to be competitive.

Can you say “f–ked-up sample,” boys and girls? The so called “internals” on the Quinnipiac/CBS/NY Times Florida poll show a partisan breakdown in the “weighted sample” of Democrat 36%, Republican 27%, Independent 32%. This is Florida, a state with a Republican governor, Republican control of both houses of the state legislature, and a House delegation that is 19 Republicans and 6 Democrats.

Despite such obvious facts, we are supposed to believe that Democrats enjoy a NINE POINT ADVANTAGE among “likely voters” in Florida?

NINE F–KING POINTS?

Less than six weeks ago, a Quinnipiac poll of Florida had a “weighted sample” of Democrat 31%, Republican 28%, Independent 35%. We are supposed to believe that, since late June, there has been 6-point net swing of partisan ID from D+3 to D+9  among likely voters in a state where, I repeat, the GOP dominates elected offices.

I’ll be back to expand and update this just as soon as I can get my blood pressure down below the apoplectic stroke level.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey managed to avoid an apoplectic stroke this morning, which is encouraging. How can I describe this bizarre imbalance in the partisan ID of the “weighted sample”? How to put this improbable distortion in layman’s terms, as it were?

Let’s put it this way: According to a recent Quinnipiac survey, my penis is 15 inches long, with a 4-inch margin of error.

 


Florida: The Creepy State

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Shaped like a flaccid penis, this geographical appendage has apparently become the receptable of all perverse weirdness on the East Coast.

Exhibit A — The Creepy Puppeteer:

A Florida puppeteer known for community involvement was arrested and charged with conspiring to kidnap a child and possession of child pornography, according to a criminal complaint filed in a federal court in Tampa court on Friday.
A day earlier, federal and local agents arrested Ronald William Brown, 57, after uncovering graphic Internet chats in which he talked about abducting, murdering and cannibalizing children, referring specifically to his interest in a boy attending his church, the complaint says.
In a search of Brown’s computer investigators came across pornographic images of children, including some of boys in bondage and others in which the subject appears to be dead, according to the 29-page complaint.
Brown, who lived alone in the Whispering Pines mobile home park in Largo, had ties to many organizations in the Tampa Bay area, including the Gulf Coast Church, the Pinellas County School District, the Christian Television Network, the city of Largo, and Gulf Coast Jewish Family & Community Services, the Tampa Bay Times reported. All said Brown had been hired or volunteered as a performer, instructor or mentor, according to the report.

Exhibit B — The Creepy Cop:

A South Florida police captain has been arrested on charges that he forced a  15-year-old girl to disrobe so he could check whether she was having sex.
Broward County prosecutors say 46-year-old Miramar police Capt. Juan De Los  Rios is facing two counts of lewd and lascivious conduct by an adult against a  minor. Each count carries a potential 15-year prison sentence.
Authorities say De Los Rios encountered the girl and a 19-year-old man in the  back seat of a car. The two told him they were just talking and not having sex.  But prosecutors say De Los Rios told the girl to take off her clothes so he  could make sure.

Are these extreme examples? Perhaps, but about what you’d expect from a place that put creepy Jim Greer in charge of the state GOP.