Tampa Bay Raves and Rants is a weekly airing of national and local politics, sports, lifestyles and nostalgia items from a very politically incorrect viewpoint. As always, beware - much of what is printed here should not be taken literally.

Message to Joe, talk is cheap

Mr. Biden, talk is cheap. It seems that cyber sources within Russia want to keep messing with American business interests. It’s probably time for you to acquire a spine and firmly tell Mr. Putin to crack down on these miscreants while reminding him we can make his life a lot more miserable that he can make ours – and to illustrate that point the very next time one of our major American companies is the subject of such an attack. Again, talk is cheap.

Great Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

Oh, then there’s this quote from Joltin’ Joe: “I think we’ve made progress in reestablishing American credibility among our closest friends.” Again, so many punch lines, so little space.

Despite nice answers like “The timing wasn’t right” and “I want to stay with my current community,” you have to know the reason fully three of five Clearwater City Manager finalists dropped out of contention is they realized what a negative impact the Church of Scientology has on our city.

Roses to the St. Pete City Council for wading through a bunch of pro-abortion garbage and approving a small business grant for the STEPP Pregnancy Center in the southern part of the city. And thorns to Council Member Darden Rice for trying to broad brush the well-respected center based on an experience at another facility as an irresponsible 18-year-old.

We know Charlie Crist wants to be governor (again), but he’d be doing this area a huge favor by staying on as District 13 U.S. Rep. – when you look at some of the wingnuts who want to fill his seat.

Reality Winner (now there’s a special name), recently released from prison for stealing federal government documents, claims she is not the leftist activist as portrayed by some of her critics. I mean, everybody who is a down the middle person she claims to be, threatens to burn down the White House.

We know the 5:05 Newsletter is in hiatus, but they are missing a bunch of great stuff out there!

Sports, media and other stuff:

Answer: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon. The question – what five states do not have a sales tax? But all except Alaska have an income tax.

Speaking of taxes, this recent gem from the marquee of the Grossman Law Firm on Court Street: Teach your kids taxes, eat 30% of their ice cream.

With MLB All-Star game just a few weeks away, a thought from one of the TBR&R focus group members, “It occurred to me that the MLB All Star game selection has a long history of vote early and vote often. I guess that explains a lot.”

Another baseball note: it was 57 years ago on Father’s Day that the Phillies’ Jim Bunning, a father of seven, threw a perfect game against the New York Mets. Bunning is also the only man to be a member of the U.S. Senate and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

You’ve lived in Clearwater a long time if you remember controversial Clearwater City Commissioner Fred Thomas repurposing the old East Avenue railroad station into a hot dog stand. Our favorite menu item was his American (rather than French) Fries.

Songs that make you turn up the radio

You’re driving down the road and suddenly a song comes on the radio that makes you reach for the volume control – and perhaps sing along if no one’s looking! We posed this question to our TBR&R focus group and these are the trios of treasured tunes they came up with. One first respondent had a definite 50s flavor, listing the Diamond’s definitive doo-wop song Little Darlin’ along with Danny and the Juniors’ At the Hop and an Elton John 70s hit Philadelphia Freedom. Another Elton tune scored with one of our elders – Crocodile Rock; his other picks were the Beach Boy’s California Girls and a song recorded by a bunch of USF students in the late sixties - Mercy’s Love (Can Make You Happy). And what would a favorite songs list be without an Elvis song? One of our group chose Can’t Help Falling in Love along with the Platters’ The Great Pretender and folk singer Arlo Guthrie’s The City of New Orleans. Billy Joel’s An Innocent Man made another of our focus group’s list along with the James Bond tune Goldfinger and a beautiful instrumental Maria Elena by Brazilians Los Indios Tabajaras. The Beatles’ Let it Be headlines another of our group’s list along with Billy Joel’s And So it Goes and folk-rock group The Avett Brothers’ Smithsonian. Our focus group member from the northern climes lists another Beach Boy song Good Vibrations, Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody as his top three. That’s quite a list of songs, although several of our elite group had trouble limiting their picks to just three – understandable.

NEXT WEEK: Super groups; Changing times; Joe and the IRS

Happy Father’s Day!

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