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.

Lewis Grizzard and an honor long overdue

Last week, the late, great Lewis Grizzard was inducted into the Atlanta Press Club Hall of Fame. As mentioned in this space a few years back, if you don’t know who Lewis Grizzard is, you are functionally illiterate. His “home paper” and the South’s best newspaper, The Atlanta Journal Constitution re-published a few of his columns this past week and they may still be available on line. If not, you can read this great man’s writings in one of many books. Our personal favorite is I Haven’t Understood Anything Since 1962. The 19^th century had Mark Twain who had no peer as a humorist. The same can be said of the 20^th century and Lewis Grizzard.

Great Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. The comment from one wag on our Scientology-Times piece from last week: “Don’t you wish both of them would just go away”? Yeah, pretty much.

2. Agriculture Secretary and Florida’s number one pot booster Nikki Fried claims pot has 25 million uses which leads us to believe she has been overdoing it in pot’s number one use.

3. The 128,000 new jobs generated in October (most likely subject to an adjusted increase) isn’t good enough for the liberal spin doctors. Do they wish to go back eight or ten years when we were losing that many jobs a month?

4. In the recently concluded St. Pete city commission race, one successful candidate spent $80,000. Are you kidding?

5. Born 100 years ago this week, Groucho Marx’s sidekick and butt of his jokes – George Fenneman. Little known fact about the versatile radio-TV guy: his was the dulcet voice you heard every week on Dragnet with “The story you are about to hear is true, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent”

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Sports, the media and other stuff:

6. Lyric of the week: “I know a cat named Way-Out Willie” (credit to Johnny Otis). And Willie is way out after less than two seasons in Tallahassee.

7. The Mets picked the best of their field of managerial candidates in Carlos Beltran. But, frankly, the field was weak. Even though it’s in the city that never sleeps, a lot of top talent steers away from the dysfunctional Mets.

8. Great news that Dewayne Staats is a finalist for the Ford Frick Award at the Hall of Fame. The nomination should have come a long time ago for the longtime Rays announcer who also has been behind the mike for the Astros, Cubs and Yanks.

9. David whips Goliath – Tulsa, the smallest Division I school in the country, beats the largest school in the division UCF 34-31.

10. Our alma mater’s 17-7 loss to Temple last Thursday was ugly, but not nearly as ugly as those USF uniforms.

Your White House BFF

We recently polled our TBRR focus group (a gathering of old cranky people) on what American President they would to have liked as their BFF. Unsurprisingly, three of the five chose the “great communicator” Ronald Reagan, who to all three, seemed like a truly nice guy. The same was said of another pick by our group – Jimmy Carter. The other selection based on sameness of age and outlooks was Bush the younger - all good picks. Who would you like to have as your presidential BFF?

NEXT UP: Pinellas Past; NFL’s 5500 mile road trip; Running out of 813s

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