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.

Media finally waking up to problem in the panhandle

You could have knocked us over with a feather a couple weeks ago when we saw a front page story on the year-long agony folks in Panama City, Mexico Beach and environs have been enduring for over a year. Way, way too often, our front pages and newscasts are full of Biden’s kid, Trump’s rants and the usual “if it bleeds, it leads” trash. Our media has completely lost focus on issues like a community that struggles for a year while the pinheads in Washington on both sides of the aisle work on their sound bites for that news cycle and our Governor sits on his hands. It’s disgusting.

Great Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. Related to our lead piece, boy do we miss Walter and Chet and David.

2. Our law enforcement agencies have instructed their deputies to look the other way on drivers using pot in all but the most egregious cases. Makes you feel safer on the road, right?

3. Number of the week – one dozen. The number of stores a very occasional mall shopper found shuttered at Countryside Mall. Second number of the week – one – the number of Christmas presents your humble blogger has purchased for his saintly wife in a brick and mortar store – all the rest were purchased on line. Hey, I’m an early shopper.

4. Apparently there is an app that will tell you if your local McDonalds is currently serving the McRib sandwich. There is news we all need.

5. Lyric of the Week: Do you dig the swinging dance with top recording stars - from the ads for Clearwater’s great Star Spectaculars in the 1960s at the Municipal Auditorium.

Sports, media and other stuff:

6. As we try to fill the void left by the 5:05 Newsletter as an equal opportunity offender, we offer this: Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Halloween, we guess they don’t appreciate random people coming up to their doors.

7. Let’s chalk off Jameis Winston’s five interceptions in London to jet lag. He had just five picks in his first five games.

8. Joe Maddon’s move to the LA Angels didn’t move the odds maker’s needles. They are 50-1 shot to make the World Series next year, 25-1 to make the playoffs.

9. Earlier, we celebrated the fact that half of the MLB playoff teams were in the lower half of major league payrolls. But when we got down to the final four, it was numbers 3, 6, 7 and 8 playing for the world championship. Money still talks.

10. The Brewers, Cubs – and the Braves have to be scratching their heads after watching the hapless Cardinals asking themselves “these guys beat us”?

For the first time since 1933!

1933 – Prohibition had just been repealed, FDR, not Teddy Roosevelt like the idiot play by play guy on TBS said, was in the White House. The Washington Senators had three future Hall of Famers on their roster and won the American League by seven games over the Yanks. Alas, the Nationals, as they were also known, lost the World Series to the New York Giants four games to one. The Washington Hall of Famers were outfielders Goose Goslin and Heinie Manush plus shortstop Joe Cronin who would also serve as a manager, general manager and president of the American League. There are probably three Hall of Famers on the 2019 version of the Nationals in Rendon, Scherzer and Strasburg. And there was another guy on the 1933 team – arguably their best pitcher in the postseason - pitching to a sub one ERA over three games. This native Texan would eventually settle in Clearwater and have a stadium named after him –Jack Russell.

NEXT UP: MLB 2019 Recap; Bobby’s Mash; S&H Stamps and no Sundays

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