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.

Leading off: Interest rates crippling business

They span the alphabet from Apple to Verizon – companies that are pulling back in many areas because of suffocating interest rates. The pain is being felt in terms of reduced hiring, lower dividend rates to investors and the delay of purchasing needed equipment and technology. The cause is the ridiculous 22 percent increase in interest costs to US businesses in the first quarter of this year and the projections of second quarter costs aren’t very rosy as well. The Biden administration’s inability to control inflation except through enormous interest hikes will continue to trickle down to the consumer as business does what it has to do – that is reduce debt at the cost of lower employment and higher prices.

Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

And the hits just keep on coming – in addition to the dreary news above, retailers are predicting a drop in apparel and footwear sales in the next several quarters, which will depress holiday sales.

Just after our deadline for last week, we saw this headline in a left wing publication “What’s next for those who owe on student loans?” Ah, how about paying them?

Supreme Court poll: Americans are nearly split in support of the free speech ruling, with 43% agreeing that businesses should not be forced to provide services that conflict with their faith, while a close 42% disapprove of the decision. We suspect faith is the key word here.

Cocaine found in the White House over the 4^th of July weekend. No word as to whether Hunter was visiting.

We must humbly tip our cap to the marketing geniuses at Ben and Jerry’s and Bud Light (once the world’s most popular beer, now no longer in top ten).

Our friend TL asks that when Biden gets all the electric cars he wants on the roads, what will happen to our nation’s critical gas tax collections.

Related: There is more and more pushback across the nation against the Biden policy of trying to shove EVs down our throats with one EV company going under.

International/sports news from the 5:05 Newsletter: Russian cancelled coup to be made up as part of a doubleheader later this summer.

This week in 1960 (July 11) Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is published.

Sports, media and other stuff:

The matchup of the year – the Rays and the Braves and Tampa Bay fans can’t see the first game (a sellout) unless they shell out for Apple TV. Only one of the three games features Dwayne Staats. Baseball’s greed continues to magnify.

A dust up occurred last week between Britney Spears and the security team for the NBA’s #1 draft choice, Victor Wembanyama. It occurred in a casino - probably not the best place for either of them to be.

Another sign of a university going in the wrong direction: USF is closing its public golf course after over fifty years of existence. But the millions keep flowing to its one-win football team.

Number of the week: 1000 – that’s the number of different batters Zack Greinke has struck out in his major league career. He joins four other pretty fair country pitchers in Nolan Ryan, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens who have equaled that amount.

Factoid: Antarctica is the only continent where you cannot find at least one of the 260 species of owls in the world.

…and another thing: Farewell to a friend

As middle school friends, we rotated “home games” of the 1960 World Series with lunch prepared by our Mom when our Pirates were the home team while his Mom prepared lunch on the days his Yanks hosted. Many still say it was the greatest World Series ever. In high school, he edited the Clearlight newspaper and we were his sports editor. After high school, Mike Pride pursued the printed word, while we opted for the spoken word. He went on to be the city editor of the Clearwater Sun and later the award winning editor of the Concord (NH) Monitor as well as a jurist for the Pulitzer Prizes. The two of us saw each other infrequently over the years – his Dad’s funeral, a few spring training baseball games, but we closely followed Mike’s work. We were unaware of his passing until a week ago and had even published an article based on one of his columns in our April 23 blog – ironically a day before his passing. A dear friend who we will miss.

NEXT UP: Hello Buzz & Neil; Disneyland; Customer service?

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