God Bless America

This week’s dining suggestion (see back story – Jan. 1 RANTS): for breakfast or lunch, try Benedicts on Belcher Road just north of N.E. Coachman Rd. As the name suggests, there are several varieties of Eggs Benedict, multiple quiches and omelets that the plates barely hold. There’s also a location on Bayshore Blvd. in Dunedin.

Some birthday wishes for our union at age 241

First, a couple wishes were already granted by the Supreme Court in the past week – a provisional okay to President Trump’s travel restrictions and the high court recognizing that churches should not be excluded from a statewide safety program simply because they are churches. And heading forward, we hope sometime this year, Donald Trump finally gets it and starts acting like a President. We hope we find some sort of solution to the scariest man since Adolf Hitler – the nut job in North Korea. We also hope our state gets a more effective U.S. Senator than the one we’ve been saddled with for the past 16 years. We hope the leaders in Congress start working for the good of our country rather than the good of their political careers and party. We hope sometime, somehow Pinellas gets a strong representative like David Jolly back in Washington. And the ice cream to go with the cake on this 241^st birthday would be for our country to finally get a sensible medical system. Despite this and more, our great nation – she’s still the best.

Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. The U.S. lost three presidents and gained one on July 4. Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826 – the 50^th anniversary of the birth of our nation. James Monroe died five years later in 1831. Forty-five years after that, Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. Some thoughts from each of these Presidents below.

2. From John Adams: Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

3. From Jefferson: Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

4. From James Monroe: The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.

5. From Coolidge: No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.

The diamond, the media and other stuff:

6. Despite the departure of cable superstar Bill O’Reilly, Fox News Channel is still dominating prime time among cable news channels. The performance of FNC has a lot to do with conservative viewers having nowhere else to go.

7. With the addition of the Las Vegas franchise, the NHL now has 31 teams, one more than major league baseball. Why?

8. Does anybody want to win a baseball championship? At this writing as we head for the All Star break, only three teams had win streaks of two or more games – the last place team in each NL division - Phils, Reds (two each) and Giants (three).

9. Realize we are old-fashioned to a fault but major league pitchers wearing single digit numbers like the Rays’ Blake Snell and the Jays’ Marcus Stroman harks back to Little League and is kind of bush.

10. You’ve lived in Clearwater a long time if you enjoyed a Big Boy at the Frisch’s Restaurant on Gulf to Bay Blvd. The last Frisch’s Big Boys left Florida in the early 1990s.

The Presidents Club – a must read for the political junkie

It sometimes takes us awhile to get around to a good book. Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy’s The Presidents Club hit the bookshelves five years ago, but it is a timeless work. Dealing with how ex-presidents have interacted with the current POTUS – and each other, the authors create a masterpiece of inside baseball involving the Oval Office and those who have occupied it. Some Presidents have tended to be better ex-Presidents than Presidents like Nixon and Carter although both tended to go rogue on occasion when handed a foreign assignment by the sitting President. The unique relationship between Bush 41 and Clinton is heartwarming – likewise that of Hoover and Truman. If you’ve not enjoyed this book, put it on your list of things to do for the second half of the year.

SNEAK PEEK AT NEXT WEEK –THE SHAKEUP AT THE CLEARWATER MARINA