Today, after entering my nearest Starbucks and they refused to sell today's Sunday Gainesville Sun newspaper to me at the clearly-stated price of $2, insisting on ripping me off for $3 instead...after which I most diplomatically replied that they could "keep" it, I'm sitting in the same place...possibly for the last time, here with my overpriced iced coffee, which the McDonalds down the road makes tastier and much more cheaply. No, trying to rip off customers at 50% above stated retail price for something that they didn't even produce may well be the final straw between me and this company that should be nominated for Most Overrated Business of the Universe. It takes a certain mixture of smug arrogance and outright gall to pull that kind of stunt with their loyal customers, whom Starbucks obviously takes for granted...
Well, now that I've got that little peeve out of my system, on to another one. It saddens me that a potential centrist presidential candidate like Starbuck's former CEO Howard Schultz, who appeals to me as generally responsible and ideologically a centrist, feels that neither of the two major political parties that run our political system in this country offers a place for him, his views, and his candidacy. Actually, though, I feel that Schultz might be more welcomed by the Democrats than he imagines, at least by Democratic voters...I certainly would be more receptive to his ideas for America's future. But he's stated that if he runs, it will be as an independent, and as such will more likely syphon away votes from a Democratic nominee than from Trump in the November 2020 presidential election. Sure, by running as an independent candidate Schultz will be able to escape the grueling party primary campaigning that has already begun so early, a year and a half before the election. But were he to run as a Democrat, he would exert a more moderating pull on that party's discussions of the ongoing issues...now it seems the candidates are tripping over each other trying to see how radically leftist they can sound. I could vote for Howard Schultz as a Democrat...even as a Republican...but never as an independent. Like it or not, on the presidential election level we have a two-party system: it's binary, stupid!
Unless I and all of the sports pundits I've heard are somehow tragically mistaken, it looks as if the 2018-19 University of Florida men's basketball team will manage to make the 68-school field of the NCAA major college tournament, the brackets for which will be revealed in a few hours. After a very tough out-of-conference schedule and a very competitive Southeastern Conference regular season, the Gators were 17-14 entering the conference tournament. They made the semifinal round, winning two games before bowing to Auburn in a 65-62 defeat marred by a controversial officiating "non-call" blunder when the Florida player at the end, while taking a three-point shot to tie the score and send the game into overtime, was clearly fouled as three Auburn players converged on him...reminds me of that "non-call" at the end of the Rams-Saints NFL playoff game a few weeks ago...
The upshot of all this is that I want Starbucks to repent of their arrogance, Schultz to wise up and run as a Democrat, and for the Gators to go all the way to the championship...fat chance of any of that happening, though....
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Later...Starbucks got back to me about the newspaper, stating that marking up the price wasn't their company's policy and wanting to make amends...I accept...still, it's kind of humiliating to be confronted in public at the counter like that and they deserve some rebuke for their arrogance...
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