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.

When will America get back to work?

Headline: the snowflakes at Apple are threatening to quit if they have to return to the office soon. The tech giant is asking employees to spend one day a week in the office starting this week. That would increase to two days by the beginning of May and three by May 23. The sad thing is the threat by employees carries some weight in this crazy employment environment. We have an acquaintance that operates a very successful operation as a large vendor to Home Depot and Kroger among others. They offer insurance and a 401K from day one, a handsome retention bonus after ninety days and they can’t get enough help posing a genuine threat to their business. And we’ve mentioned before the panhandlers at intersections where at least one of the corners is begging for help. Like our friend we mentioned, this is posing a hazard to America as a whole and will continue to do so until the “brain trust” in the White House stops making it all too easy not to work.

Great Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

Good for Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s action in shipping undocumented aliens to the heart of the problem, Washington D.C. Perhaps when the illegal migrants see what D.C. is like, their home country won’t seem so bad.

Tax Day is Tuesday, April 18. That’s because of Emancipation Day, in some states the 18^th is Patriot Day and your taxes aren’t due until the 19^th. If we can keep adding bogus holidays, we might be able to push Tax Day to the 4^th of July – that would be the 5^th of course.

White House spin doctor Jan Psaki to join MSNBC – there’s a marriage made in heaven, or as a Great American put it, “In other words, she is leaving the Biden Administration to work for the Biden Administration.”

Supreme Court viewpoint: Guess it could have been worse.

Our community suffered another loss last week with the passing of attorney, civic leader and former Mr. Clearwater, Jerry Figurski. Jerry, who served as President of UPARC and was active in numerous other civic efforts, was 77.

THIS WEEK IN 1961 (4/17): THE ILL-FATED BAY OF PIGS INVASION BEGINS.

Lighter stuff:

Living an amazing 102 years and known for his numerous character roles in such shows as Hawaii Five-Oh, The Untouchables and the movie Yentl, Nehemiah Persoff later pursued painting. The versatile actor died last week.

The passing of Nehemiah Persoff reminds us of another Hollywood passing we missed late last year when Nick Georgiade died at age 88. Portraying agent Rico Rossi, he was truly the last of the Untouchables, surviving all his fellow regular cast members including the show’s star, Robert Stack.

95 percent or more of Americans could care less about Will Smith and his troubles - unless, of course, we’re talking about the Braves’ star reliever or the Dodgers’ stellar catcher.

A note on how fouled up this baseball season is: on consecutive nights, Padres’ manager Bob Melvin had to pull pitchers after six and seven innings respectively even though both had no-hitters working – a result of a shortened spring training due to mutual greed. And then there was Clayton Kershaw.

Idle thought: we all gripe about the traffic this time of year in Florida. But when you have days we’ve had recently, who can blame half of America for wanting to be in Clearwater, FL?

The answer: Keebler. The question: who makes Publix’ store brand cookies?

Seen on a T-Shirt: If you ever see me jogging, please kill whatever is chasing me.

The 5:05 Newsletter reports: The FBI announced that an analysis of Hunter Biden’s laptop revealed that his top Google searches were: What does a board of directors do; what is Obama’s last name; how do you tell if a family member has dementia; and laptop repair shops near me.

Ode to Country Joe

Well, baseball season is underway and while it may seem to be piling on, we have one last Joe West story. Joe holds the record for major league games umpired and lapped the field in number of missed calls. This story involves Hall of Famer Andre Dawson. In 1991, Andre was called out looking at a third strike by West and then ejected for arguing the call. He was fined $500 by the league and paid it with a check with the memo line filled with “Donation for the blind” - true story and just another reason to love Awesome Dawson.

UP NEXT: First Auto Tag; Man Made Objects; Cracker Jill?

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Happy Easter!