TampaBLAB

So I voted in the 2008 primaries yesterday.

 

But since I'm an independent voter, I had very little to do.

First of all, why are the voices of the voters being silenced because of what Florida politicians did?  We had no say in the Florida primaries being moved up to the week before Super Tuesday.  Punish the politicians, not the people.

Secondly, Florida is a closed primary state.  Since I am an independent, I couldn't vote for the presidential race, unlike what other states do.  If I could vote, I would have voted Democrat, and voted for Barack Obama.

Personally, I think it's a time our country moved in another direction.  Clinton got impeached, Bush should have, but never got impeached.  Both sold out the middle class.  Both thought that they were above the rules.  Hillary, by visiting Florida last night, thought she was above the rules.  She signed a pledge not to campaign in Florida, so she campaigns in Florida.  I guess is all depends on what the meaning of the word is is, right Hillary?

Of course, the landscape of the 2008 race is changing by the moment.  At this writing, John Edwards is now OUT of the race, making it Obama and Clinton left in the nomination hunt.  Personally, I think this helps out Obama.  We'll see what happens as time goes on.

On the night of the Florida Primary I hope you have the courage to watch this video..I hope Romney or McCain understand that little has changed since this speech by Reagan...Survival is always a concern for free people everywhere....Does this speech remind you of Hillary?...When the people are ready, the leader appears....

I was proud to wear my "I voted"sticker on my shirt today. I went to the polls and voted for Romney and no on the tax cut that Florida Governor Charlie Crist has been pushing. Speaking of Charlie Crist I saw him and John McCain standing on a sidewalk in downtown Tampa while I was waiting at a red light. They were being interviewed by the local media. I was only about 25 feet from them...and of course...NO CAMERA!

I love McCain but if the Clinton's are running they WILL exploit his age. The Clinton's are mean as shit and will use any tactic to advance their own ambitions. Romney is smart, tough on National defense, and a smart business man who has made Millions and knows the difference between the Bond Market and the NASDAQ...

Get out and vote folks. Even the cab man votes.

You can see the time of this post. This is  my laptop from the front seat of the cab. Took the photo and uploaded in a minute...Now that is cool. All from the cab.

Brian Kelly has made the odd decision to buyout the last year of his $3.2 million contract and test the free agency waters. Considering Kelly is 32 and has missed 20 games over the past two years because of injury I doubt he will get the big payday he hopes for. Kelly's best chance is to go for a multi-year contract with a decent signing bonus.

While this appears to be the perfect chance to resign Kelly at a lower price, Kelly's squabbles with Bruce Allen. Last offseason Kelly skipped voluntary workouts because Allen refused to negotiate a new deal. Seeing as how this came right after Allen negotiated a new deal with Ronde Barber you can see how Kelly would be miffed.

For next season the Bucs should be in good shape with Phillip Buchanon starting in Kelly's place, which worked pretty well for the Bucs last season. Although the Bucs should consider drafting a corner to eventually replace Barber, and in that vein Buc'Em has a list of the corners in the draft.

This is Gar and Jennifer of the BRIGADOON Krewe getting ready to get on their float at the Gasparilla parade. Note the #497 on the back of my taxi. Wow. What a day.

This was one of the smoothest days a cab driver could have. One of things you hope for as a taxi driver is that you will have a volume of business and that you will not have "no-show." All of that happened today.

Thanks party people you were great.

Gar called me on my cell after he emailed me when he came across my blog. How cool is that! I am now making some money off this thing.

The other Krewe person was a lady who was a founder of the "Hillsborough" Krewe. She like me and gave me a very special Gargoyle pin which is only given to Krewe members who have served for at least ten years. Now I am a honorary member with tenure..Great.

I did get by AT&T today to get the wireless I am now using. I have had a few bugs like getting kicked off after only being on for a few minutes. Maybe the reception is bad from my house...I really don't know.

Anyway this is just a "test" post for my new hands off Internet connection.

Seeing as how this is a Bucs blog, I am required by the Buccaneer Blogging Code to mention that Mike Alstott has officially retired. Hurrah, Mike Alstott is/was awesome and the Bucs will never be the same without him. He is man, a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn.

With Alstott's retirement there is naturally talk about a) the A-Train's chances of getting into the Hall of Fame and, b) retiring #40. I don't believe there is any chance for the former to happen unless the sports writers/voters really have a hard-on for Alstott. And the latter is unlikely as it would set a precedent that would require the Bucs to retire Derrick Brooks', Warren Sapp's and Ronde Barber's numbers as well. Retiring four numbers from one team is a bit much and I can't think of any other teams which have won only one Super Bowl who have done so. If the Bucs are going to retire any numbers from that Super Bowl team they should limit the retired numbers to two: 99 and 55.

Alstott's retirement brings up a much more relevant question, why don't the Bucs have some way to honor their players of the past? This is the Ring of Honor idea which has been bandied about for the past few years. Conventional wisdom is that the Glazers have shied away from a "Ring of Honor" because they are ashamed of the past. A much more likely explanation is that with the exception of a few players there are not a lot of Buccaneers worth honoring, the players which come to mind would be James Wilder, Lee Roy Selmon, Ricky Bell, Hardy Nickerson, Doug Williams. But now with the retirements of Alstott and Warren Sapp, and with Derrick Brooks and John Lynch getting closer to that point the Bucs may finally have enough players to begin honoring them somehow.

In Defense of Jeff Garcia

Garcia's nomination to the Pro Bowl has come under fire in some quarters but ignoring total numbers Garcia put up some impressive stats. Garcia finished with the 3rd best QB rating in the NFC, and also had an impressive yards per completion average. Garcia had 11.6 yards per completion compared to 11.7 for Favre, 11.3 for Hasselbeck and 10.0 for Brees. Total yards and touchdowns can be somewhat misleading as teams which are behind more often (i.e. the Saints) will throw more often and have more passing yards. And as Warrick Dunn can attest to during his time in Tampa Bay touchdowns are not the best measurement of a player's value to a team.

Carly is a very pretty Gasparilla Pirate. In the spirit of Saturdays major party event, I thought this image from a recent photo shoot was appropriate. This party is one of the largest outdoor drunk and disorderly party in the world. I am sure that Mardi-Gra and Carnival are bigger but we like our event. Cab drivers really l like it. It is one of the busiest days of the years for us. Don't drink and drive.

In a little bit of self promotion, note the TBT* beads around the models neck. Reps from TBT* one time came by United Cab in Tampa for a promotion. It was the last time anyone brought food by for the drivers and they had all kind of giveaways and I took the strand of beads.

Carly not only showed me her boobs for the beads, she told me she wanted them. So I no longer have them but what the heck. 

I have always had this idea that if TBT* wants to run a real British style tabloid. You know the kind that sensationalizes sex scandals and all that stuff, they need to have a page 3 girl. I will even take the images for free because I can get girls from the agencies who would pose with a bikini top on and I guarantee it will DOUBLE the circulation of TBT* overnight.

Plus. In all the images the girls will have on the beads. How about that for advertising!

NOTE: If you live in Tampa or you are visiting Tampa for this party please do not drink and drive. I know it is hard to find a cab but you might get lucky. Walk if you have to. A cab fare is cheaper than a DUI.....

Remember....it is all about the beads!

This week marked the 35th anniversary of a dramatic fight in the annals of boxing.  Joe Frazier seemed like an indestructable champ, but then along came a guy named George Foreman.  Six knockdowns and a round and a half later, it was Foreman who captured the heavyweight crown in dramatic fashion.

The late Howard Cosell makes one of the most dramatic calls of his career on this fight from Kingston, Jamaica.

Florida allows voters to march into select centralized polling places days before the scheduled election and cast their votes. Today, because I won’t be able to vote on the scheduled date next Tuesday, I did just that.

I haven’t spent a lot of time writing about the primary this year, in part because until a couple of days ago, I still wasn’t sure who I’d want to vote for. Like past cycles, I began with a process of elimination.

First rule of thumb: Stop Voting For Evil. I will not vote for the “lesser evil” just because. If I cast my vote, it is a show of affirmative support. So, who have I ruled out as a contender for my vote? (Note: I’m registered as a Republican, and Florida has closed primaries, so I’ll only be discussing the GOP candidates here.)

I won’t vote for anyone who espouses an isolationist foreign policy. That eliminates Ron Paul, who effectively advocates that we disengage from the world and retreat to our own shores. I won’t today rehash why this is unrealistic, except to say that the United States by its very nature in entangled in world affairs and cannot reasonably disentangle itself. This is a global society, and we are a global player. Refusing to acknowledge this is not a sign of a reasonable candidate.

I won’t vote for someone if I don’t believe their current positions are sincere. That eliminates Romney. Running for president in 2008, he has tried to hold himself out as a social conservative, despite a decades-long record as a moderate on most issues that conservatives care about. His conversion may be genuine, but there’s no way to tell. And even though I don’t fall neatly into the conservative box, I won’t vote for a man who appears to have changed his stripes solely to suit the political landscape.

I won’t vote for fiscal populists, dropping Huckabee from the list. Huckabee is the worst of both worlds, issue-wise: he’s a nanny-stater on social conservative issues, and a tax-and-spend liberal on fiscal issues. I can’t think of a single issue on which I agree with Huckabee.

Who’s that leave? Ironically, the same two I was thinking about four years ago - Rudy and John.

What’s to like about these guys? Both are strong on national defense and practice fiscally responsible policies, and neither is known for taking a hard line on social issues that, to me, ought to be outside the purview of the federal government. Surely, neither one is perfect - McCain sees big holes in the First Amendment, Rudy takes a dim view of the Second - but as Ronald Reagan once said of his days as California’s governor, “If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later.”

So after all this time, for me it has still come down to the Mayor and the Senator. I think I’d be equally happy with either administration - at least, pissed off only 10-20% of the time - but in order to pick one over the other, I now need to look at the tiebreaker: Electability.

Which of these two men is best poised to carry the Republican banner, and beat whichever liberal the Democrats put up this fall? Judging by the primaries, it’s pretty obvious that one candidate is better equipped to run for President than the other.

Rudy made a tactical decision to win the nomination by winning major primary states in which he was running strong - Florida being the first. His entire campaign strategy is built around him taking Florida, and winning it so convincingly that he’d easily mop the rest of those delegates. The only problem with that strategy is that it’s too brittle - lose Florida and it’s over. But there was a way to make it work: pour time, money, and energy into Florida, and convert those resources into votes.

So where has Rudy been? Now that the voting is already taking place he’s running some so-so TV ads, and he’s been making appearances in the state recently. But he completely failed to make waves here while the opponents - and apparently, all the media - were distracted elsewhere. Now, recent polls show him riding as low as third place, in a state he needs to win in a walk.

John McCain, on the other hand, has run for President before. He’s learned through bitter experience how to defend his campaign against the kind of political knife-fighting that derailed him in South Carolina in 2000 - and what he would likely face in the general against the Clintons. He’s managed to take a campaign that many considered dead a few months ago due to his position on certain immigration proposals and come back as a front runner if not the front-runner as the primaries approach their peak.

In short, John McCain can win the general election, and is more likely to win than any of the other choices the GOP could make. So, once again, I have voted for John McCain and encourage all prospective Florida voters to do the same.

I see Kathy has gone high tech. Last year her vans had magnetic signs on them, now, she has painted vehicles. Kathy represents what is wrong with the transportation industry in Tampa. Let me explain.

I picked up this couple this morning at around 4 am. They wanted me to meet them in an office parking lot. Yes! They were driving to the office to park their car so they could pay me ten bucks to take them to the airport. They were late for the "time-call" as these people usually are. Only professional drives can estimate driving time, not amateurs.

My gripe is that is an awful lot of work to go thru just to screw a cab drive out of a good fair. What Kathy does is just as bad.

She picks people up in south county, runs them around to pick up other people which delays their arrival and basically charges them the same rate that we do for "curb to curb" service. The smucks never know they are being ripped off and the cab commissioner allows all of this to happen.

HCPTC makes a pretense that the only thing they are concerned about is CUSTOMER SERVICE AND CONVENIENCE. If that were true they would never allow this bull shit to continue.

OH, OBAMA....keep pressing Hillary...her and her cum-stained husband are only about tactics...not  what is right for this country. What is right for this country is we don't go down the road of divisiveness that the Clinton's gave us. The REAGAN YEARS were GREAT YEARS. Don't let the Clinton's tell you otherwise.

The rumor of the day, courtesy of the premier rumor mongers in the NFL, is that Cadillac's career may be over. I put zero stock in this rumor, mostly because the PFT crotch puppets have admitted that they have zero journalistic integrity. This is a website which blatantly manufactures stories to generate traffic to their website.

That being written it is very likely we will not see Cadillac for the first part of next season. The knee injury Cadillac suffered (torn patellar tendon) is much more serious than an ACL tear. Before the 2006 season Browns center LeCharles Bentley suffered the same injury (although he also had to deal with serious staph infection) and Bentley has not played since.

It will be interesting to see if the Bucs consider drafting a runningback in this draft. While the Bucs look to be in good shape with Graham as the very-down guy and Michael Bennett potentially being the big-play guy, there is a good deal of back depth in this year's draft.

The big news out of 1 Buc Place (can we still call it that?) is that Gruden and Bruce Allen have been signed to 3 year deals. Which would be impressive if contracts actually meant anything in the NFL. If the Glazers (who are the 2nd richest owners in the NFL) really wanted to fire Gruden next season I doubt a three year contract is holding them back. Contracts in the NFL are about as meaningless as primaries in New Hampshire and Iowa SHOULD be.

That being written, Gruden and Company certainly deserved to have their contracts extended past next season. Gruden inherited an aging team, won a Super Bowl in the team's last window of opportunity to do so, and has been forced to rebuild without four high draft picks. For all the criticism thrown at him Gruden has been remarkably successful for the amount of talent he has had.

If there is a fair complaint to be throw at Gruden it is that he is a very poor talent evaluator when it comes to draft picks. He is average at best. And since Allen's real skill is negotiating contracts and cap management it might be a good idea for the Bucs to pick up a better talent evaluator to put in the front office.

ALSTOTT TO RETIRE

This isn't really much of news either, if Alstott didn't retire this season there was a good chance his head would simply fall off. The long time fan favorite should have retired a long time, in 2003 he had a vertebrae removed from his neck, replaced with bone from a cadaver and had the entire thing fused with titanium. Alstott was the NFL version of Frankenstein.

This has always been one of the things I felt uncomfortable about with the NFL, players sacrificing their long-term health for short term gratitude. We like to talk about how tough these guys are but when you see 55 year old players walking around with canes you can understand why Tiki Barber and Barry Sanders wanted to get out early.

Finally Gruden announced he has a "mystery candidate" to fill an assistant coaching slot. Currently the Bucs are looking for runningbacks and quarterbacks coaches so unless they announce Mike Alstott is the new quarterbacks coach I'm not sure which hire would "shock" me.

I have been off the Internet for days because AOL Customer Service said my modem was bad. They were wrong. First of all their customer service division is in something like Bombay India. No offense to those guys, but I could not understand the guy I was talking to. It sounded like the cab radio were I work. That really pisses me off. Send the jobs over seas to offer a inferior product.

I took my laptop to Best Buy. The Geek Squad took a look at it and said my modem was fine. Somehow I had instructed it to use Broadband and not dial up. I do like to fiddle with the functions and I must of screwed it up. The Geek Squad recommended high speed wireless then I could now do remote blogging from my cab. Now how cool is that. The cab man live!!!

By the end of the week I should be up and running with AT&T wireless and goodbye Bombay...Yeah!

At the risk of 2 weeks of man-love from sports writers such as Peter King I was prepared to root for the Packers in the Super Bowl. Just about anything was better than the prospect of a New York-Boston Super Bowl featuring Tom Brady and Eli Manning. Both groups of fans are among sports most unbearable and leave me rooting against otherwise compelling teams. Boston's teams were so much better when they were the lovable losers, like the protagonist in a John Hughes movie. Now, despite having some of pro-sports best teams, Boston fans still have a massive inferiority complex.

As for the Giants, if anyone deserved to inherit the Dan Marino Mantle from Peyton Manning (best quarterback to not win the Super Bowl) it is Eli. Eli could have been the quarterback for San Diego yesterday, an incredibly talented team of players that if not for a gimpy quarterback and having their best player injured would have beat New England. The Chargers are going down as one of those great what if? teams. Considering how poorly Phillip Rivers plays what would have happened if the Chargers has drafted Eli instead? Or what would have happened if the Chargers had kept Drew Brees and drafted Larry Fitzgerald (who was drafted 3rd overall) with the #1 overall pick. If not for a few foolish mistakes by the Chargers management we could be talking about San Diego as the greatest team ever. Yet, I digress.

I never thought I would see the day where I would consider skipping the Super Bowl, but yet here we are. We saw this matchup 3 weeks ago, so we already have a rough idea of how the game will play out. And the best part about the Super Bowl, the commercials, will be replayed roughly 50 million times over the year.

BACK TO THE BUCS...

In some good news Monte Kiffin has apparently resigned w/ the Bucs for roughly $2 M. This after Rick Stroud of the St Pete Times "reported" both sides were no where close to a deal after the Bucs supposedly tried to low ball Kiffin. I will refrain from commenting further as BucStats has already done so, except to say all these rumors of Monte leaving town were just that...rumors.

Speaking of rumors the Bucs are being considered as one of four teams to potentially play a regular season game in London next year. I've not been a big fan of the NFL going overseas mostly because I don't believe there is the same potential market for the sport globally as there has been for basketball and baseball. If the NFL makes the mistake of tabbing the Bucs to play in London I will go into this in more detail but the NFL is not a sport you simply export especially when you are competing against futbol.

Bobby Fischer has passed away. As a lifelong chess player I find this sad. Much has been said about his eccentric life. I cannot speak to that issue. I only know chess.

Fischer even by today standards he was the best player ever. He had a mind like a computer and an iron will to win. He once said that the best part of a chess game was the look on your opponents face the moment he realized he was going to lose.

An analysis of Fishers games on today's chess engine software shows no errors! No modern player is of that level. I believe that Fischer could of beaten Deep Blue or Garry Kasparov if he had played them. He basically used only three openings...The Ruy Lopez with the White pieces and The Sicilian Defense and the Kings Indian with the black pieces. Those three opening are still rated as the most likely to produce a win even with todays modern computers. Fischer did not need a computer to know this. He was just that smart.

Modern chess has been an attempt to move away from the Classical Openings that challenge the center of the board and more to the Hypermodern openings which only influence the center of the board and delay confrontation until the middle game. Fischer would of thought that was chicken. He went on the attack and often had a quick kill.

It is too bad that Fischer himself robbed the world of knowing how he would of done against todays players by leaving the game so soon.

The Draft isn't until March and the Bucs don't pick until the 20th hole but yet here I am devoting my third straight post to the damn thing. The Draft is like Vegas, everyone goes in thinking they're going to win but you know the House is going to win. The odds are stacked against you, but everyone still get excited about it.

Scouts Inc and current ESPN Product Todd McShay (check your contract Todd, the WWL now owns your soul) has released his mock draft which has our Bucs drafting OT Sam Baker out of USC. While this isn't the only mock I've seen with the Bucs drafting Baker it does strike me as odd for the following reasons...

1) The Bucs already have two left tackles, Luke Petitgout and Donald Penn
2) The Bucs have bigger needs, notably receiver and undertackle

I'm not completely ruling out Gruden and Company drafting an offensive tackle with the first pick, based on the last two drafts it's obvious Gruden has a hard on for offensive lineman. But drafting an offensive tackle makes little sense after spending as much as the Bucs did on Petitgout unless Gruden has serious doubts about both Petitgout's ability to return next season and Penn's ability to start at left tackle. Even is the former is a likely possibility the latter is highly unlikely. While Penn is not about to make it to any Pro Bowls he was reliable at left tackle.

Which leads us right back to drafting a receiver. McShay has four receivers drafted around the Bucs pick, and most draft talk at this point has six possible receivers being drafted in the first round. The receiver crop this year appears to shake out much like it did in 2004. That was the year we saw 6 receivers drafted in the first round, including Michael Clayton. This year's potential 1st rounders include

DeSean Jackson - Cal

Malcolm Kelly - Okla

Limas Sweed - Texas

Mario Manningham - Mich

Early Doucet - LSU

James Hardy - Indiana

I've already stated my support for Manningham (the solid if somewhat overwhelming choice) but I'm starting to come around to Sweed. He was widely considered the top receiver before the season started and if not for a wrist injury could have gone in the top ten. He's one of those guys who you get the feeling that looking back in ten years could have been the steal of the draft.

Anyway, like I mentioned at the beginning, we're a long ways away from the Draft so I'm sure I will waste a few more words on the subject between now and April.

So every week I go to the big Wal-Mart Supercenter over here off of US 19 and Park Blvd. here in Pinellas Park.

And every week is the same spectacle.  And, lucky for this blog, it has gotten on my nerves enough for me to blog about it.

The Wal-Mart has a large amount of parking space, but the spots in the front and center of the store are fought over tooth and nail.  When someone gets out, someone else, without fail, will wait a minute or two for that person to complete his or her exit.  

To me, it's just plain idiotic.  In the time they spend waiting for spots to open, they could find a spot, provided they weren't too good to park on the side or in the back.

So if feel this way at your local Wally World, here's some ideas for a little mischief:

One: if, when you put your goods into your car, someone pulls up and demands your spot, tell them your waiting for someone.  If that doesn't work, mention someone else, and then someone else, and so on, and so on.  That will usually get them moving along.

Two: if someone asks how long you're going to be, respond thusly:
"About 30 seconds after you park, bub!"

Three: If someone stops to pull into your spot as you are pulling out, pull back in!  Then, if the person gives you any guff, you could always say.
"Oh, darn!  I forget to get a pack of condoms!"

Now, the condoms could be any item you desire...it just makes a nice touch since you are telling the person who wanted your spot to go f**k themselves.

Have fun!

Yes, I did predict Hillary Clinton would be the next president...

But I'm not happy about it.

I should say..Ticket Trap!

At the corner of Macdill and Azelle they are doing road construction. They have been fooling around with this for months and it doesn't look any different. Almost every day they are repositioning signs and barricades and I never really see anyone doing anything out there.

I was pulling out onto Azelle from the parking lot of the Sunoco Gas Station. I looked to the left and pulled around the no left sign which you cannot see when you are looking to the left.

As I approached Kennedy, I saw way behind me blue lights. This cop was hauling ass to catch up with me. I pulled into the Bank Of America parking lot. This cop said I had turned left. Keep in mine this was Saturday morning at 7:03 in the morning when nobody was around. Well excuse me if I did not see the sign that they threw up over night and which has not been there for the last 18 years!!!

He wrote me a $170 ticket. I guess I can add that to the other one I got before Christmas.

Please be careful folks. Tampa has a very high crime rate. Crime enforcement could resolve a lot of that. However, the police would rather shake down guys like me who are trying to earn a living. They should be after bad guys right? If any police officer wants to get into the back seat of my cab, I will drive them around Tampa and show them where all the "Drug Holes" are at. Why not go harass them Tampa Cops? You wont because you are afraid.

Everyday I risk my life taking crack heads down to these very dangerous places because the police will not do anything about it. We have had drivers robbed and shot and they still wont take care of the crime areas. No they just want to shake my ass down.

I am going to start photographing these places that put our life in jeopardy and emailing the photos to your chief and the newspapers and try to find out why you won't do some real enforcement.

Our business is down. There is no doubt about it. I used to think it was just something unique to the cab industry in Florida. Wrong.

There are many factors. We no longer have a monopoly thanks to the former Cab Commissioner Greg Cox. There are multiple car and van service companies chipping away at what little is out there. The STS business is gone; the cruise ship business is gone; the hotels downtown are gone. The price of gas and our lease are up. This is not good. Oh, and they now want to let another company into Tampa that is going to put on another 130 cabs!

I would like to believe that none of this would mean anything if we had a thriving economy. We don't. the business people I talk to in cab all say they are down. They are just not looking at homelessness like I am. When you work 12 hours a day and still can't pay your bills, you are pretty much screwed.

Thanks everyone involved in this cluster fuck. Especially Greg Cox you worthless piece of shit.

The picture above is the cheapest I can find gas in Tampa. When I started it was $1.18 a gallon. Thanks oil companies for screwing me.