Established in 2014 and published every Sunday, Tampa Bay Rants and Raves is a weekly airing of local and national news, politics, sports and historical notes from a politically incorrect viewpoint.

First thing on our mind:

Good riddance to January with its wildfires and plane crashes.

Leading off: We disagree

Tampa Bay Rants and Raves has been from day one a conservative blog. But conservative, liberal or whatever, there is no rule you must agree with your fellow disciples all the time. And we find ourselves strongly disagreeing with most conservatives on the issues surrounding the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. So many conservatives refuse to separate the unspeakable murder of Thompson and the inconceivable harm that insurance and pharmacy giants inflict on the American public. As for Luigi Mangione, lock him up and throw away the key. But a more civilized, but prompt day of reckoning has to come for big insurance and big pharma.

Tampa Bay, politics and notes:

Related to our lead article, United Healthcare leads all medical insurance companies by far with a 32% percent claim denial rate. So maybe you might want to shop around? We did a few years ago and haven’t looked back.

Thank you to President Trump and Vice President Vance for your support at the annual Pro-Life activities last week. It gives us faith in our nation.

President Trump fires twelve inspectors general. Their job description was to “root out abuse and illegality in federal agencies.” So, it’s a pretty good bet they weren’t doing their job.

Home Shopping Network, another company slow to adapt to the changing of various platforms, will leave St. Pete and relocate in their corporate headquarters in Pennsylvania.

Costco continues their upstream swim continuing DEI polices while other large corporations such as Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and John Deere drop their DEI appendages.

By a show of hands, who of you would drive a little out of your way to avoid either I-275 or I-4?

This should have gone in our New Year’s predictions, but with the economy improving, we should see more pet adoptions this year ending senseless euthanasia at overcrowded animal facilities.

Related: after a long reconstruction project, the Clearwater SPCA on SR 590 has reopened.

Publix shuts down their Missouri and Lakeview store, a former Albertsons, and will take it to the ground and rebuild.

Idle Question: So when is Pinellas County going to get a Shake Shack?

Related idle thought: why is it that new owners so often louse up good, profitable restaurants?

Born 100 years ago this week (Feb. 8) in Newton, Mass. was two-time Academy Award winner, Jack Lemmon. He won Oscars for 1955’s Mister Roberts and 1973’s Save the Tiger.

Sports, media and other notes:

Apparently, our friends at the 5:05 Newsletter shared the same issues as us during our education: I stopped understanding math when the alphabet decided to get involved.

Philadelphia goes wild, scoring 55 points on the way to the Super Bowl while Buffalo suffers another heartbreaking defeat. You can’t blame them if it seemed at times there were 18 red jerseys on the other side of the ball.

This is “truck week” for major league baseball teams as several semis are loaded with equipment and headed for Clearwater and other spring training sites in anticipation of pitchers and catchers reporting next week.

Orlando has upped their interest in perhaps enticing the Rays to move to mid-state. Every study done shows an MLB team in Orlando would far exceed the numbers the Rays draw in St. Pete.

Factoid: When your humble blogger arrived in sunny Florida almost 70 years ago, we were the 16^th largest state in the union with a population of 3.4 million. Today we’re 3rd largest at 21.5 million.

Last, but not least, we wish a happy 80^th birthday to our long time pastor at Light of Christ Catholic Church, Fr. Jacob Monteleone. A special Mass was held in his honor Sunday. Father Jake is a very young 80.

One last thing: Mount Rushmore I

Inspired by our all-time favorite sports columnist, the recently retired Mark Bradley, we will be featuring various Mount Rushmores the first edition of each month this year. Some of these will come from our clouded mind and a significant number from our esteemed Focus Group. Since Mark Bradley was the inspiration for this endeavor, we naturally lead off with our four all time sports columnists. For you younger readers bear with us, as some of our Mount Rushmore selections go back aways. There is the afore mentioned Mr. Bradley of the AJC; the dean of Tampa Bay sports columnists The Tribune’s Tom McEwen; one of Mark Bradley’s former colleagues, David O’Brien now of The Athletic; finally the late syndicated columnist and LA Times writer, the extremely humorous Jim Murray. Those are the four with an honorable mention to Ken Rosenthal, who has become more of a hybrid (writer – TV commentator). Next month our Focus Group takes charge with their Mount Rushmore of 20^th century women.

UP NEXT: Press 1 for English; Limiting repeat amendments.

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