Since the Tampa Bay #Buccaneers are in the Super Bowl, & since I’m coincidentally reading the 1678 “The Buccaneers of America” by Alex Exquemelin, here’s the amazing short story of a gutsy crazy unfortunate badass named Bartholomew Portugues

1/6
2) Portugues, with 30 men & a small ship w/just 4 small cannon, defeated a Spanish ship, w/70 men & 20 bigger guns, that was laden with cocoa beans & 70k Pieces of Eight

But the buccaneers couldn’t get home to Jamaica, ran into more Spanish ships & were defeated off Cuba
3) Portugues was taken to Campeche, Mexico to be hanged

But he escaped the ship in port by

✅stabbing a guard

✅jumping overboard w/earthen jars for floaties (he couldn’t swim!)

✅trekking the jungle by himself for 120 miles

✅living off the land & evading capture ...
4) Unable to ford a river, at one point, Portugues made a raft of driftwood, floated across and found ... fellow pirates.

Portugues then successfully persuaded them to sail back to Campeche & attack & steal the ship that had held him prisoner.

They succeeded. Crazy
5) Portugues “by a 2nd turn of fortune was become rich & powerful” w/the new ship, but he shipwrecked south of Cuba, escaped in a canoe to Jamaica “where it was not long ere he went on new adventures, but was never fortunate after.”

Lol. The end.
6) Trigger warning: Tampa’s a city of fake pirate history

It wasn’t a home for buccaneers

The pirate Gasparilla, namesake of a big city festival, is probably a myth —but pirates would’ve certainly endorsed a bacchanal in their honor, especially one built on a grift

Go Bucs!

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More from @MarcACaputo

9 Feb
As Trump's 2nd impeachment trial starts, his legal team notably abandoned its Feb. 2 defense — that the former president of the United States is dumb

Otherwise, Trump's team would've admitted he asked GA's Secretary of State to commit election fraud

Tweet 1/10 Image
2/10 Background: Trump was secretly recorded asking GA's SOS in Jan. to "find 11,780 votes...find 11,000-plus votes." He kept raising the false claim there were 100s of thousands of fraudulently cast absentee ballots

The problem with the task: it's impossible

Here's why...
3/10
When absentee ballots are received @ a county election office, they're in envelopes voters are supposed to sign. If signatures check out, BALLOTS ARE SEPARATED FOREVER FROM THE ENVELOPES

Thenceforth, it's impossible to "find" the ballot related to the envelope
Read 10 tweets
8 Feb
Bucs!
Bucs!!
Bucs!!!
Read 5 tweets
7 Feb
Florida gonna Florida (note: these are not directly connected)
Here’s the WaPo story

wapo.st/2N2lbUj
Raw Story

bit.ly/3cRnEMm
Read 5 tweets
7 Jan
The facts

✅Trump supporters gathered in DC, many of them very mad
✅they attended a Trump speech & he bemoaned the election as stolen (it wasn’t) & told them to “walk down to the Capitol” for the Electoral College vote
✅they did
✅pro-Trump vandals then stormed the Capitol
2) guess we’ll make this a thread

These are not Antifa, BLM, liberals or Democrats. These are Trump supporters

👇
These are not Antifa, BLM, liberals or Democrats. These are Trump supporters

👇

Read 17 tweets
5 Jan
1 of 4

There are four ingredients that would make for a Democratic win in Georgia today, as we outlined in Politico Playbook

First up: strong Black voter turnout, where the overall share of the African-American vote is 30% or more

politi.co/2MrDNwC
2: There are signs that Trump voters in Georgia were underperforming in in the northern part of the state —hence Trump’s rally in Dalton— and among white voters without a college degree.

politi.co/2MrDNwC
3: In the Nov. elections, Biden won 11,779 more Georgia votes than Trump, but Sen. Perdue won 88k more votes than Ossoff.

There were ticket-splitters, esp. white suburbanites. Can the Dems win some of these folks in the runoffs? Will they stay home?

politi.co/2MrDNwC
Read 4 tweets
3 Jan
RIP: Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Peacemakers, famous for “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” which became the anthem for Liverpool Football Club, the singing of which is in the background of 1 of my favorite Pink Floyd songs, “Fearless”

Here’s the original 1/2
2/2 Here’s Fearless, for those who love the Floyd

Read 4 tweets

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