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.

Thinning the herd of donkeys

The 2020 Presidential race is over a year away but the field is narrowing quite rapidly. It’s coming down to Biden, Sanders and Warren with first term senator Kamala Harris as a fourth ranked outsider. We can’t see her party, left-leaning as it’s become, putting her at the top of the ticket. Sanders had his shot in 2016 and came up short which leaves Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren. If the Demos want to win in 2020, they will choose Biden. While old, he is not that much older than Donald Trump and his age should not be a factor – at least any more than Trump’s age. But the party will have to choose a running mate very carefully and it most certainly will have to be a centralist like Biden to win in 2020. The Democrats best play is to run Biden knowing full well he will be too old to serve in 2024 even if elected and focus on finding a more palatable choice for 2024.

Great Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. Consult the dictionary under chutzpah and you will no doubt see the picture of former St. Pete Housing director Tony Love. The guy who was justifiably canned has offered not to sue his former employer if they offer him some job that doesn’t exist with his former benefit package.  

2. Number of the week: $50 million. This is the amount the state stands to lose for hiring an unqualified company to handle the processing of its tolls. There were cheaper, more qualified companies than Conduent that somehow lost out in the bidding process. That is simply bewildering.

3. Wow! The first words out of our mouth last Friday when we walked outside to a 73-degree morning. While we’ll still have some warm afternoons, WTVT’s Paul Dellegatto says our summer pattern of really hot days and afternoon showers is just about over.

4. She was a superb journalist and one of the classiest women (or men) in her profession. Cokie Roberts passed away last week at age 75.

5. You’ve lived in Clearwater a long time if you remember when the land now occupied by Clearwater Mall and the Seville condominium complex was a peacock farm.

Sports, media and other stuff:

6. It took just two weeks for the NFL season to be turned topsy-turvy with injuries to two of the league’s elite quarterbacks – Drew Brees and Ben Roethlisberger. The Saints were a popular pick to reach the Super Bowl and the Steelers given at least a chance to make the playoffs.

7. After polishing off South Carolina State, the USF Bulls have a couple more cupcakes in the next few weeks, and then Charlie Strong’s boys have a pretty daunting trail the rest of the football season.

8. Factoid: With two weeks left in the baseball season, major league batters are on a pace to strike out more times than they record a hit for the first time in baseball history. We’ll examine this more at season’s end.

9. Speaking of the season’s end, we’re just a week away from “Black Monday” when several MLB managers “get a copy of the home game”. The biggest shuffle could be in the NL East where the Braves’ Brian Snitker occupies the only truly safe chair.

10. We were originally not even close to being a fan of baseball’s wild card. But it sure makes this week interesting for a number of teams – including our local nine.

Numbers 28 and 29

As the season winds down, we double up on a couple numbers worn by outstanding players. Number 28 is a fairly easy call with honors going to Bert Blyleven, a Hall of Famer who notched 287 wins and over 3700 strikeouts in his Hall of Fame career. There are those who say he owned the best curve ball in the modern era. Number 29 is a bit tougher. Only 29 (coincidently) major league players own a better career batting average than Rod Carew’s .328. On the other hand, no major leaguer has matched John Smoltz’ 200 wins and 150 saves. Like some other numbers - a razor thin call that goes to Rod Carew.

UP NEXT: Reigning in insurance companies; Playoffs; 80, 86, 89 and 92

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