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

An important Clearwater election

Clearwater voters go to the polls next week to elect two city council members. Incumbent David Allbritton is head and shoulders above his opponents in his bid for re-election. In the race to replace term-limited Hoyt Hamilton, voters have two qualified candidates to choose from in Lina Teixeira and longtime resident Jonathon Wade. The remainder of the field is a group of fringe candidates or one trick ponies with a narrow agenda. Mayor Frank Hibbard and the incumbent Allbritton already have enough of that to deal with without adding more.

Great Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

Related note to our lead article: when mailing our return a few weeks back, it just seemed odd not to address it to Deborah Clark – the exceptional, now retired Supervisor of Elections.

Quote of the Week: Tonight, I would like to hear President Biden’s plan to reverse course and fix the mess he has made.” – US Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami on the State of the Union address. We suspect he was disappointed.

Political news from the 5:05 Newsletter: Politicians are already preparing for the crucial 2022 mid-term elections. Due to the last census, a number of states will lose seats in the House of Representatives because of a nationwide population shift toward what demographers categorize as “regions with Waffle Houses.”

Oh the irony! One major metro newspaper has a headline “Jan. 6 panel lays out potential criminal charges against Trump.” Meanwhile a war criminal is running loose and our Congress is doing little or nothing.

Other than a puff piece on Disney’s new hotel, we have to rank last Saturday’s (2/26) front page of the local newspaper as the most depressing in a great, great while in terms of the state of our local area, the nation and the world.

Related item: the ONLY good thing about the events in Europe is they are shoving a bunch of politically correct junk to the back pages or off the island completely.

But then there was this: “Vice President Kamala Harris was slammed by critics Thursday over a poorly timed tweet calling for Congress to pass the Equality Act amid the breakout of war and a possible nuclear disaster in Europe.”

Pinellas weekend gas price: $3.79 a gallon – thanks, Joe.

And lastly in this section, we’re being asked what we can do to help the Ukrainians. Our answer is a dozen A-10 Warthogs that would have reduced that Russian column of tanks to a several mile long garbage heap.

60 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, THE FIRST K-MART OPENED. THERE ARE NOW LESS THAN THREE DOZEN K-MARTS LEFT. COINCIDENTLY, TWO LONGER SURVIVING STORES OPENED THE SAME YEAR – TARGET AND WALMART.

Lighter stuff:

Another year, another birthday. How old? Let’s just say we’ve passed the “best if used by” date.

In anticipation of a birthday party, we review the five most popular ice cream flavors in America (1) Vanilla (2) Chocolate – a close second (3) Cookies and Cream (4) Mint Chocolate Chip and (5) Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. We would have to add a couple of Publix specialty flavors Apple Pie Ala Mode and their seasonal Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream. But our household’s absolute favorite is Blue Bell’s Great Divide – a luscious combination of their great chocolate and vanilla flavors.

TV producer Chris Licht to take over CNN - a very interesting choice and he comes in with a mandate to return CNN to a news channel rather than a left wing mouthpiece. Time will tell.

Price of the Week: $3924 – the cheapest ticket for last weekend’s Duke-North Carolina game – Coach K’s final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium. That is the most expensive “entry level” ticket in sports history. More on that next week.

Quote of the week from a frustrated baseball fan: “Fans ultimately don’t care who’s at fault. They’ll just find something else to do with their time.”

Number of the week: 5-2 with college football spring practice barely complete, the Vegas odds of Alabama recapturing the college football championship.

Bucs to play “home game” in Germany; what, not the Ukraine?

Word on the street is Troy Aikman is leaving FOX for ESPN. Now if FOX could just dump Joe Buck, the network’s prime game every week might be palatable.

Tampa Bay Rants & Raves turns eight

Eight years and slightly less than 400,000 words ago, a plague was cast upon otherwise intelligent folks who read this drivel on a weekly basis. We tip our cap to our original six readers. If you see numbers over a thousand now and then, rest assured they were tabulated by Dominion Voting. We thank our “kitchen cabinet” known as our Focus Group for their input. In our eight-year journey, we have attempted to discover why guys wear their baseball caps backwards; why a Hillsborough County resident thought we needed her to represent Pinellas in Congress; why it was necessary for the Redskins and Indians to change names they had for the better part of a century; why Lent and the Girl Scout Cookie Sale usually come at the same time of year and other deep mysteries. So, we forge ahead, hoping Biden won’t give away all our money in the next three years and that the 5:05 News Letter would publish more often and the St. Pete Times less.

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