So President Obama is coming to Florida.

I wish he wouldn’t.

Look, I’ve lost jobs over my writings about Obama when he was running for president. I’ve supported the guy from the git-go. But now, I just want him to go. I mean, go — as in not come to Florida on a two-day mini-break in August in the first place.

I don’t want him to come because it’s just insultingly clear that he’s only coming because so many people bitched and moaned about him going up to Maine, etc. Read more »

If walks were presents, then Boomerang must have a birthday everyday — because he always gets at least one walk a day, and today — on his real birthday, he’s already had two walks and it’s only a bit past noon. Read more »

Host: Sarasota County Democratic Party
Date: Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Time: 4:30pm - 5:30pm
Location: Corner of Bahia Vista and Rte 41, Sarasota

Join this rally to sign-wave for real health care reform during rush hour at one of the most visible locations in Sarasota. Parking available in the Midtown Plaza by Starbucks.

Jiminy Cricket. I was moved to tears by Obama’s speech. He nailed it. I’m proud to call him my president. I believe in health care reform. I support it. People close to me — people with families, young children, serious medical problems — are going without insurance because of cost. I’m considering letting my own health insurance go because I simply can’t afford the rising costs. It was affordable five years ago — but no more.

I’m so glad, so grateful, that he is America’s President.

Tim Sukits, staff writer at Creative Loafing, sent some good info on the health care issue …. I’m a strong proponent of health care reform — in a way that insures that all citizens have access to good, regular, and affordable health care, so I thought I’d share Tim’s message with my reality readers as well. Your comments — pro or con — are welcome at this post! Read more »

In his decision to block the release of photographs showing U.S. troops abusing prisoners, President Obama not only flouts the separation between the executive and the judicial branches, he neatly ignores the moral compass of which he has spoken so highly in the past. Read more »

(This piece appeared in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune on April 27, 2009.)

In 2004, when I returned to my hometown roots of Sarasota, real estate was the hot, hot, hot “topic du jour.” And, while not exactly big league, Sarasota had certainly become big bucks in the years I’d been living in Boston.

Familiar landmarks — like the Simple Sam’s market that used to be a standard stop on the way to Siesta Key — had disappeared, and countless small, knock-the-sand-off-your-feet-style Florida homes had been leveled in a buy-and-bulldoze frenzy. And everywhere I went that first year back, the art of conversation was lost to loud talk of deals in the making, dollars for the taking, and which side of the Trail you lived on. Read more »

Hmmmmm … Absolut Yum! I went tonight to see and listen to Gwen Ifill speak at Hyatt Sarasota to a Sarasota audience about race and politics and the Obama campaign and the future of black candidates in American politics. Read more »

Speaking of newspapers, the demise thereof, and this writer’s potential contribution to said demise, here’s a column I wrote a year back — in response to a reader’s complaint about my use of the term — send the children out of the room for this one, folks — “bed-ability” in my column called Reality in the Age of Chick-ness.
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One reader’s trash …

I recently learned that American children might actually be reading newspapers in this country. In fact, they may be reading this very paper, perhaps this very column, this very minute. Read more »

Dear Editors

Back in the day, you’d buy the Sunday Sarasota Herald-Tribune and be assured of curling up for an hour of juicy reading, drinking one or two cups of coffee while fending off the cats who felt it was their duty to hold the paper down on the floor by sprawling languidly across it, flicking their tails with measured insouciance as you tried vainly to get to the next page.

But now, you can read the H-T faster than you can flip its pages practically, because it seems to be in a frantic free-for-all of diminishing returns on all fronts, and the major loss is to and of the reader. What papers like the H-T are missing is that people will — still — willingly pay for that experience of getting ink all over their hands and fighting the fold. But they want substance for their trouble. Read more »