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

First thing on our mind:

Mark your calendar, the projected re-open of Clearwater’s favorite Italian restaurant is Saturday, March 1.

Leading off: Painting condos with a broad brush

Watching all the hurrying and scurrying in Tallahassee makes us wonder, do our legislators even know what’s going on? Knee jerk laws passed a couple years ago in response to the Surfside tragedy of 2022 have some good points and many bad, unintended consequences. Mostly, condominiums that have maintained adequate reserves over the years have been penalized for the sins of others. The result is a drastic loss of value even in the well-funded condos by evaluators who don’t have the full picture. Their credo seems to be “it’s a condo, so there must be problems.” The task for our legislature is to separate the wheat from the chaff so that responsible condo associations stand apart from bad actors like the overseers of the ill-fated condo in Surfside.

Tampa Bay, politics and notes:

Mitch McConnell, at age 83, says he will step away from the Senate after this term. Hopefully some of the other fossils on Capitol Hill will join him.

In what we suppose was a light-hearted proposal by Denmark to buy California, the offer was quickly withdrawn before tens of millions of Americans could shout “Sold!”

Democratic harpies keep screaming “keep your hands off our money.” It’s not their money and Trump, Musk and company are doing their best to keep them from continuing to squander we the taxpayer’s money.

Related: Our friend TL reports that Elon Musk and his crew have discovered millions of people in the Social Security database between 100 and 159 years of age.

USF prexy (always wanted to use that word in a sentence) Rhea Law plans to retire this year. Part of her legacy will be the school’s on campus football stadium. Time will tell if that’s money well spent.

Kentucky Fried Chicken announces it’s moving its headquarters to Texas. In a related note, Texas Instruments announces a move to Idaho.

Biz/Travel note: Sarasota gets more connections thanks to Allegiant. The new connections include Albany and Corning/Elmira, NY along with Omaha and Roanoke.

Idle question: how many times a year do you get a “You’re Pre-Approved” mailing from a credit card you’ve held for five years or more?

Related idle thought, proving we need to find more to do, of 15 pieces of mail this past week, 10 found the trashcan.

Personal finance should be a required course for a degree from any four year institution. Florida’s high school graduation class of 2027 and beyond will be required to take a personal finance course to graduate.

Number of the week: 13. That’s the number of female governors in our nation right now – the most ever.

On its way at last, the 1000-foot liner, The S.S. United States is on its way to Florida’s panhandle where it will become an gigantic artificial reef off the coast with a land-side museum commemorating its history. As we “go to press,” it is in the Atlantic on a straight line east of Atlanta.

This week in 1906 (Feb. 25) the author of the American classic play and movie, Harvey, Mary Coyle Chase is born.

Sports, media and other notes:

Real estate news from the 5:05 Newsletter: Officials at NASA showed President Trump a survey photo survey of the moon this week. Upon seeing the photo Trump immediately pressed “add to cart.”

Good for President Trump for banning AP “journalists” from a recent Air Force One flight. AP has gone from a respected news organization to a left wing joke.

As you watch a spring training game this year, you’ll note hitters/pitchers/catchers appeals on a ball or strike using electronic technology. It’s limited to two a game on both sides and only those three players can call for an appeal. It will not yet be used in the regular season.

Now that the Super Bowl is behind us, how about looking at disposing of football’s chain gang? In this era of lasers and high technology, it makes way too much sense.

Factoid: the first product to ever appear on the cover of Time was Coca Cola, back in 1950.

Biggest at the box office 25 years ago was the crime-comedy The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry.

One last thing: Confronting the Presidents

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s new bestseller Confronting the Presidents is an entertaining and easy read chronicling our forty-some Presidents. Of necessity, the profiles are brief given the 400-page length of the book. Each of our chief executives gets a subjective review which you may or may not agree with. At book’s end, our two most recent Presidents get a review by both the conservative O’Reilly and liberal Dugard. As expected, Biden is relegated to the bottom five all time by O’Reilly while Trump gets the same treatment by Dugard. As with all their books, well researched, you just wish it was at least double the length.

UP NEXT: Great women; EVs; MLB-ESPN split

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