Established in 2014, Tampa Bay Rants and Raves is a weekly airing of local and national politics, sports and Tampa Bay memories from a politically incorrect viewpoint.

First thing on our mind:

Somehow, we managed to make it all the way through K-12 (and college) without needing a cell phone in the classroom.

Leading off: Your gay tax dollars in action

June is Gay Pride Month and there are over three dozen, mostly tax dollar funded, events planned in the Tampa Bay area. We can abide that, but we draw the line at U.S. tax dollars being spent on Gay Pride initiatives in foreign countries. In the last three years, the U.S. has spent approximately $1.3 billion (yes with a B) per year on global LGBT events. That’s $4 billion and there are just way too many underfunded projects for the truly needy in our nation to allow for such questionable spending globally. Perhaps, it’s time to drop a dime on our congressional members and ask that they stop this and other reckless spending overseas.

Tampa Bay, politics and notes:

Related from the Belleair Road sign guy: Heterosexual Pride.

Idle thought: Why does our government have to spend close to a trillion dollars on charging stations for EVs? Thinking back, how much did it have to spend to build gas stations? The answer is none, because private enterprise saw a demand.

Not the greatest optics: while Atlanta residents and businesses were struggling through a major water outage, their mayor, Andre Dickens, was attending an $1800 a plate fundraiser in Memphis.

Number of the week: 50 – the number of organizations who plan to protest during August’s Democratic Convention. It should be a fun week.

More and more pundits are saying Biden stooge Alvin Bragg is the man who will push the presumable GOP nominee over the top in November.

U.S. employment figures are up for the month of May – until you really dig into the numbers.

Talk about back to the future, it is now possible in some circumstances, to assume someone’s home loan. That’s something we did just shy of fifty years ago. There’s a company named Roam that finds such mortgages.

Summer travel note from the 5:05 Newsletter: Did you ever notice that security at every level of the airport is insane, until you get to the baggage claim. Then it’s like, take whatever bag you want.

One hundred years ago this week (June 12), George H.W. Bush, the 41^st President of the United States, is born in Milton, Mass.

Sports, media and other notes:

Parnelli Jones was a man for all seasons – winning the Indy 500, four Winston Cup races, the Baja 1000 twice and a Trans Am championship. The oldest surviving Indy 500 winner died last week at age 90.

The effects of last year’s writer’s strikes are lingering with feature film production still down 24 percent. Worse, the public is adapting to fewer films and TV shows and there is a threat of more behind scenes strikes this summer.

Did you ever think you would see the day when Coke and Pepsi were not the number 1-2 sodas in the country? Make way for Dr. Pepper.

Should we be optimistic? Going into this weekend, the Rays are at .500 despite playing the weakest schedule in baseball over the first 60 games of the season.

As you are warned at the top, this is a politically incorrect blog. And the inclusion of Josh Gibson into official major league records supplanting Babe Ruth (OPS) and Ty Cobb (BA) is ridiculous. Gibson was a good player who, through no fault of his own, never faced Grover Alexander, Lefty Grove, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Cy Young or a couple dozen other Hall of Famer pitchers from that era. Cobb and/or Ruth did.

You’ve lived in Florida a long time if you remember the A through E tickets at Walt Disney World.

One last thing…Birmingham-Southern

This has to be the greatest college baseball story of the year, if not decade. The Birmingham-Southern Panthers were in the final round of the Division III World Series. Nothing unusual there, but the fact they lasted longer in the tournament than their college which closed forever on May 31 is. The Panthers were knocked out of the tournament the next day. That they lasted so long despite nine of their players suffering from food poisoning is incredible. The whole story is worthy of a movie or at least a Chip Hilton novel.

NEXT UP: What says Tampa Bay? Patriotic sign on; Minimalism

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