Too many dots connect in Clinton case

To review: FBI director James Comey takes Hillary Clinton to the woodshed over her email practices while Secretary of State. Fresh off a private meeting with Bill Clinton, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, no doubt hoping for a few more years in the post, says the Justice Department will not pursue anything further against Ms. Clinton. On the same day as the FBI’s findings were revealed to the rest of us, President Obama chooses to make his first campaign appearance with the apparent Democratic nominee. Do you think he’s making that appearance if he doesn’t know what the findings against Clinton are going to be? No one is that stupid. Three day old fish smells better than the above chain of events.

Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. Could Donald Trump have picked a more vanilla candidate than Gov. Mike Pence? Exactly what does he bring to the GOP ticket? It is said that Trump wanted someone with both executive and legislative experience. A better choice stood one state to the east of Indiana but we’ve blown that horn before.

2. Within a week, the FBI announces it has concluded its investigations of Hillary Clinton - and D.B. Cooper - so many punchlines, so little space.

3. Ultra-liberal Supreme Justice Ruth Ginsberg recently alluded to moving to New Zealand if Donald Trump were elected. Let’s say you set up GoFundMe account for her move – what would it take to raise the necessary funds – about a minute and a half?

4. The city of Lakeland is looking at valet parking in its downtown. One of the questions being posed to visitors to downtown is “How much would you be willing to pay for such a service?” Frankly, a lot of people exposed to valet parking would be willing to pay more not to resort to valet parking.

5. You’ve lived in Clearwater a long time if you remember when the city was a two-bank town – First National Bank at Cleveland and Osceola and Bank of Clearwater at Cleveland and Garden Avenue. Now you can find more banks than that on some corners.

The diamond, the media and other stuff:

6. Breaking news: Albany cancels its fall basketball game against Duke over North Carolina’s common sense gender appropriate restroom law. There is no telling how far this will set the Duke basketball program back.

7. Baseball fans will want to remember the name Josh Bell. Pirates fans (and Cub fans who witnessed his major league debut) already know him. This Pirate first baseman of the future looks like an emerging superstar.

8. As mentioned in the May 29 RANTS, Bartolo Colon is the only remaining member of the Montreal Expos still in major league ball. The oldest surviving member of the Expos is 88-year-old ace reliever Elroy Face who made his mark with three saves in the 1960 World Series with the Pirates and over a two-year span in 1958-59 won 22 straight games.

9. A few weeks ago (RANTS – June 19) we noted the once very hot Gap Stores were facing hard times. According to the Wall Street Journal, another American fashion icon in trouble is Ralph Lauren – so much so that its namesake founder and CEO has turned over the reins to an outsider who hopefully can turn the high end line around.

10. A guy named Craig Pittman has authored a book entitled Oh, Florida! How the America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country. Apparently Mr. Pittman was absent from American History class on the days they discussed the admissions of Colorado and California into the union.

Some takeaways from the All-Star game

It’s pretty gimmicky to have the American League as the home team in the National League park. Rotate the leagues evenly when choosing sites rather than playing blackmail with cities that refuse to cave and replace 15-year-old parks with new ones/// We respectively disagree with naming the MLB batting titles after Rod Carew and Tony Gwynn. Both Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner won more titles and frankly there were dozens of better overall hitters – Williams, Mays and Musial come to mind/// While Hall of Fame announcer Dick Enberg had a part in pre-game stuff, it would have been great to have him in the booth with Buck and Smoltz in his hometown/// It’s good to have the casual baseball fan get a look at smaller market superstars like Salvador Perez, Jose Fernandez and Jose Altuve – got to be one and maybe as many as three future Hall of Famers in that group///Lastly, stop us if you’re heard this before, determining the home field advantage in the World Series based on this game is ridiculous - more on that in a future blog.

SNEAK PEEK AT NEXT WEEK – LOUSY CABLE SERVICE; CAN’T SAY WE WEREN’T WARNED