Judge William Jung-Douchebag of the Day

In 2017, Tampa passed an ordinance that prohibited conversion therapy for children under 18. As they always do, Liberty Counsel and their perpetual “client,” Las Vegas-based Robert Vazzo (not even a resident of Florida), and a David Pickup of Dallas (not licensed in Florida) filed a lawsuit to get the ordinance overturned. However, Republican Trump-appointee William Jung had to bend himself into a Gordian Knot of legal reasoning to give them that win.

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Immigrant Child Detention Protest

Tuesday morning I received a Move-on email announcing a protest against the Child Detention Centers at the local office of U.S. Representative Kathy Castor. I decided to attend. News stories estimated the crowd at a few dozen, I’d put it a little higher, but it was not a huge crowd. It seemed somewhat hastily called, so that may account for it.

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Politicians and Pride

This past Saturday I went with some friends to the annual Tampa Bay Pride parade over in Ybor City. The parade was led off by a couple of Grand Masters of course, but then came all the candidates (Tampa is having municipal election runoffs) and local office holders. They kept coming and coming, and finally when the first actual float came by I looked at my watch, and it had taken nearly 25 minutes for all the pols to get by.

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Deviled Pig – A Restaurant Review

The Deviled Pig opened within the past few months at 3307 S Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33629. I was getting good comments on a neighborhood message, and over 4.5 stars on Yelp. It does turn out it didn’t rate quite that high once Yelp realized that there were a sizeable number of recently created accounts that one review giving the location 5 stars (guess who that restaurant was). However, once that was cleaned out, it still had decent reviews, so we decided to try it last night (Friday) early.

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Entitled Tampans And Tampa Airport

I don’t know if some people just don’t think, or feel entitled in some extreme sort of royalty-like way. I recently came across a Facebook Group for people who are complaining about the sound of airplanes landing at Tampa International Airport, despite having bought homes they knew to be right under the primary approach path. Go figure.

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Letter to Publix CEO Re Adam Putnam

Florida headquartered Publix Super Markets, has contributed nearly $670k to Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Putnam ($250K of the recently), now the Commissioner of Agriculture. The Tampa Bay Times has recently published an article calling this to the attention of everyone, and Publix’s has been in damage control ever since, issuing the typical PR-written, Lawyer-approved bullshit form letter. I’ve written my own letter in response to the form letter I’ve seen posted all over social media. Let’s see if Publix gets the message.

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A HART Failure

A recent experience caused me to gain some insight into the process the local transit authority, HART (Hillsborough County, FL) for those with medical requirements needing their door-to-door services. It is, as it turns out, way more complex than it should be, and likely makes flat impractical from some people who need the service on a shorter-term basis to be able to use it.

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