A weekly look at the Tampa Bay area and national politics from a conservative viewpoint – plus a helping of sports and lifestyle items. Warning: not everything printed here should be taken at face value.

At last, help for Florida’s panhandle

The 2019 hurricane season began last week and finally, our Congress is getting around to providing aid to Florida’s panhandle to deal with last year’s hurricane devastation. That, in and of itself, is unconscionable. Even more incredulous is that two Florida representatives voted against the aid package. Representatives Greg Steube and Francis Rooney cast no votes in a landslide decision to provide the aid. What is even more curiuos is that the congressmen are from Saraosta and affluent Naples – two areas no strangers to storm damage. And just as inexcusable is Governor Ron DeSantis sitting on his hands on the issue for the half a year he’s been in office. All three men need to be held accountable in the next election cycle.

Great Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. Quiet week on the local political front with a lot of politicians off on cruises or relaxing in the North Carolina mountains where they can’t do anything dumb enough to make our blog.

2. Extremely nice gesture by the major franchisee of McDonald’s in the bay area to take out ads congratulating all their 2019 high school grads.

3. An Island Estates institution, Les Partners is closing its doors after a three and a half decade run.

4. Idle thought: how many more years will it be before there is no newspaper on your front porch in the morning? Our guess is less than a decade.

5. You’ve lived In the bay area (or anywhere else) for a long time if you remember using a flash cube in taking your pictures.

Sports, the media and other stuff:

6. What a great run by James Holzhauer on Jeopardy which ended last Monday. He ran off 32 straight victories winning just shy of $2.5 million. As crushing as the loss was for Holzhauer, it’s a bigger loss for Jeopardy which had historic ratings during Holzhuaer’s run.

7. The long awaited signings of premium pitchers Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel have taken place with the pitchers going to the Cubs and Braves   respectively. Does either signing guarantee a pennant? Hardly. Most players who have skipped spring training due to qualifying offer issues have struggled mightily once they hit the diamond.

8. A side note to the above free agent note. Apparently, the Rays were a close second in the bidding for Craig Kimbrel according to rumor guru Ken Rosenthal. They offered $39 million as opposed to the Cub’s winning bid of $43 million. Interesting.

9. An inevitable comparison from last week’s Dodgers-Phils series. The opposing right fielders were Bryce Harper, salary $30 million hitting .248 and Clay Bellinger, salary $600,000, hitting a mere 131 points higher.

10.. Hockey traditionalists are all excited about one of the NHL’s “original six” being in the NHL finals for the first time in four years, although it has been a quarter century or more since either the Canadiens, Maple Leafs or Rangers have won the cup.

Numbers 13 and 14 in MLB history

This week we roll around to the numbers 13 and 14 (see back story TBRR 3/10/19) in the best of MLB to wear the number series. Some asterisks come into play on these two numbers. Two outstanding players get eliminated. #13 ARod for doping and #14 Rose for the unpardonable sin of betting on games in which he was involved. The field is still pretty strong – at 13 you have a best left handed reliever in history in Billy Wagner and one of the two greatest defensive shortstops in the game - Omar Vizquel. It’s a tough call. But Wagner was a dominant reliever until the day he retired and he gets the call. At 14, we have great ones like Ken Boyer, Jim Bunning and Jim Rice, but then you also have “Mr. Cub” – a great player on so many lousy teams, but that never diminished the positive attitude (Let’s play two!) of Erne Banks – a treasure if there ever was one.

UP NEXT: Summer songs; Bath Club; local control vs. uniformity

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