Ken Salazar Wants to Drill, Baby, Drill Off Florida’s Shores

President-elect Obama’s choice of Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar to head the Department of the Interior was met with praise by those hoping to see another Latino in the cabinet, but is being met with concern by some environmentalists. “The Department of the Interior desperately needs a strong, forward-looking, reform-minded secretary…

RuPaul Is Your New Fauxbama

Sorry, Gerardo Puisseaux, but the Fuaxbama market continues to get more crowded. Famed drag queen RuPaul is the latest entrant, with an economical two-for-one Obama impersonation, tackling both Michelle and Barack and eerily nailing both. This pic is from Ru’s Christmas card, which doubles as an ad for an upcoming reality…

State Looking to Make Cuts in Medicaid

So the brain trust up in Tallahassee has found itself with a $2 billion hole in the budget (yeah, yeah, financial crisis; more like yeah, yeah overzealous tax cuts), and one of the areas they’re looking to make cuts in is Medicaid, which provides healthcare to the state’s poorest citizens,…

Democracy in Action

So on November 4, 281,899 Miami-Dade voters wanted Gwen Margolis as property appraiser, but that didn’t count because it was less than 50 percent of the 670,395 total ballots cast. So we had to have a runoff election, and only 96,870 voters showed up. Of those, only 39,669 voted for…

Will There Be Any Miamians in Obama’s Administration?

Not only did Barack Obama pass over Manny Diaz as secretary of HUD, but also he is widely expected to name Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion as head of his newly created Office of Urban Policy, another position Diaz was considered in the running for. But with the nasty habit…

They Delicately Fed Each Other Cake with Forks

The St. Pete Times’ Lucy Morgan was the only reporter invited to Charlie Crist’s fairy-tale wedding, and here she is on Sayfie Reveiw’s Power Play Internet teevee show talking about the ceremony. We get exciting new details such as the fact that Charlie did not end up with creamy white frosting on…

Fantasy 2010 Dem Lineup

The folks at Fla Politics, the site that proudly boasts it’s the only Florida blog on the Daily Kos blogroll, have come up with their dream Democratic candidates they’d like to see comically lose run for statewide office in 2010. We think if the state Democrats pull it together, they…

Obama Names Latino to Cabinet. Sit Down, Manny, It’s Not You

After weeks of throwing a cabinet seat at any former Clinton administration official with a heartbeat, Prez-to-be Obama today finally got around to appointing a Hispanic to his top circle of advisers.Riptide knows a lot of you have been lying awake at night, feverishly imagining the nightmare scenario that Miami might lose…

Get Excited! Tomorrow Is Election Day!

Tomorrow is the day we have been waiting for all year: the runoff election for the county property appraiser! Seriously, though, the Electoral College has made Obama’s victory official, and we still have not picked our property appraiser. See, this past November, Gwen Margolis got 72,000 votes more than the…

Charlie Crist Cements His Choice to Be Straight

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from listening to social conservative talking points over the past few years, it’s that sexual orientation is just a matter of choice. So let’s all celebrate our governor’s choice to be straight with his official commitment to Carole Rome.   Tragically, Bruce Jordan did not…

Obama Picks Some White Guy for HUD. What’s a Manny to Do?

Barack Obama continued his pattern of naming just about everyone from the Clinton administration to his cabinet, while simultaneously leaving Latinos out in the cold by picking Shaun Donovan as his secretary of housing and urban development. But hey, that was our Mayor Manny Diaz’s fantasy position! Obama, you tease,…

Mr. and Mrs. Crist, We Got You Some Wedding Gifts

Riptide started feeling really, really bad about all of these jokes we have been making about the wedding of Gov. Charlie Crist and Carole Rome. These are two actual people, with actual feelings for each other, who have decided to spend the rest of their lives together in holy matrimony…

And Now Some Dumb Words from Your State Political Parties

You know what is really, really hot right now? Governor corruption! Especially involving governors who are quite particular about their hair. So the Democratic Party of Florida decided to get in on this hot political meme by issuing a memo from spokesman Eric Jotkoff charging Charlie Crist with his own…

Charlie + Carol = Tru Luv 4Eva

The straight-people wedding of the century is this weekend, and our beloved Gov. Charlie Crist will marry this fancy New York socialite/whoopee cushion heiress, Carole Rome. Are the woman of Florida not good enough for you, Charlie? They have elected you. Has this woman ever elected you?The Tampa Tribune says “Crist’s…

What Blagojevich Teaches Us About Political Appointments

Welcome to biggest blatant political scandal in years starring Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich. Basically the dude tried to leverage his power to be able to select the successor to Obama’s Senate seat for money (note to wingnuts: There’s no evidence that the Obama camp is involved in this at…

Crist Appoints Loser Ex-Football Player To Board of Education

Florida’s education rankings continue to linger in the bottom half of the nation’s states, and who does Charlie Crist appoint to the State Board of Education? Oh, a former professional football player. ex-FSU Standount and Baltimore Ravens linebacker Peter Boulware ran for a Florida House seat as a Republican and…

Bob Graham Scares the Hell Out of Us on The Colbert Report

Former Florida Senator Bob Graham stopped by The Colbert Report last night, to talk about a report he put out as chair of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (The video is above, scroll forward to the 7:30 mark). Colbert is supposed to…

Sink May Put a Drain On GOP Senate Hopes, Yet

“Sink not running against Martinez,” technically this Politico.com headline from Monday is correct, as no one will be running against Mel Martinez, ever again. But their assertion that she wasn’t throwing her hat in the ring to become Florida’s junior Senator in 2010 may have been off the mark. Naked…

Mel Martinez Implies He Could Have Beat Obama in Florida

Here is Sen. Mel Martinez’s first interview after announcing he won’t seek reelection. It was conducted by Republican Lobbyist, and former Jeb advisor Justin Sayfie, for his internet computer website The Sayfie Review. The Herald’s Beth Reinhard has already noted just how great it is for newspapers that politicians are giving exclusive…