Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

Of all the affronts Christians must endure as they celebrate Christmas – and there are many – the latest is being vomited by the dolts who conflate ICE actions against illegal immigrants with the story of Mary and Joseph.

These functional illiterates cite religious training from their formative years, apparently superficial and lacking context, to wonder aloud if Joseph and Mary would have been put in zip-tie handcuffs and shipped back home had they been traveling to the United States circa 2025.

One such blathering type, the police chief of Minneapolis, ironically a city rife with immigrant Somali frauds of various stripe, felt moved to pontificate on the matter, citing Mary and Joseph being “forced to stay in a barn!”

I will note for this fellow, who seems to be both uniformed and uninformed, that Mary and Joseph were Jewish. That means were they to fast-forward to current day, they might expect to be slaughtered at a music concert in Israel, or at a beach celebrating a religious holiday in Australia. Why? Because they were Jews.

They would be subject to online hate speech, violent treatment from Free Palestine types with towels wrapped on their heads, or generally chastised and loathed for allegedly being the money behind the scenes in almost all countries. Again, because they were Jews.

Now, if Mary and Joseph had concealed their religion, and were just plain illegals, they could head to any of our self-proclaimed sanctuary cities, where they would be put up in first-class hotels (even as homeless veterans and other legal citizens starve and freeze on the streets outside), given cell phones, preloaded debit cards, and offered advice on how to beat the system and stay here, maybe even registered to vote as Democrats.

Mary, of course, would have free healthcare on the taxpayer dime and Jesus would be a U.S. citizen by virtue of being born here.

What the fools fail to note is a basic fact, that being Mary and Joseph were headed to Bethlehem due to a decree by the ruling Romans. They were not sneaking in; the presence had been demanded.

Here’s where the leftist, “pay-your-fair-share-of-taxes-unless-it-affects-me” types should identify. Joseph was required to register for taxation in Bethlehem and Mary went along, but not because she and her unborn son would provide useful deductions or soon qualify for $1,000 in Trump Saving Account seed money.

If Trump had demanded immigrants flood into this country to register to pay taxes, your analogy would be accurate. Otherwise, shut your pie holes.

And what if it had been widely known thousands of years ago that Mary would give birth to a savior and the religion he inspired?

That would have invited persecution worldwide, too, especially in Muslim countries where the only good Christian is a dead one.

If these would-be Biblical scholars want a more apt comparison to our efforts to repulse illegals, they might look into ancient invasions by Assyrians and Babylonians.

Spoiler alert, neither turned out well for Israel.

Today, with Christmas near, we offer assorted quick hits – from the category of gifts that keep on giving.

ITEM: Fulton County Georgia has admitted that approximately 315,000 uncertified ballots from the early voting operation were illegally accepted for counting in the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump allegedly lost Georgia by under 12,000 votes. And, those of you with good memories might recall a story in December 2023 about 20,713 “ballots” that didn’t exist on voting machines, also in Georgia. But that 2020 election was fair and just. Right. And this is just one state. Similar shenanigans were going on in Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc., etc., etc.

ITEM: Democrats have been pushing for release of Epstein files and photos and, like the dog chasing the car, now that they’ve gotten what they were pursuing, it’s a big disappointment. Instead of these file dumps incriminating President Trump, as even that left-wing PR organ The New York Times has conceded (they provide no evidence of Trump participating in Epstein’s trafficking and abuse of minors), they raise other questions. What the photos do show is a lot of presence around Epstein by Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, among others in the Democrat orbit. But the leftists see nothing wrong with this.

ITEM : The College Football Playoffs for the big guys are underway and already ChokeLahoma has underperformed in typical fashion. This time the school also known as Oklahoma, blew a 17-0 lead – at home – in a loss to Alabama. For those of you keeping track at home, Oklahoma now is 0-5 in these playoff appearances since 2015, mostly embarrassing blowouts. This doesn’t even include the 2004 season, when Southern California eased past ChokeLahoma 55-19 in the Orange Bowl to win the Bowl Championship Series national title. Attention bettors: Going against Oklahoma in a national championship playoff is a lock.

ITEM: Note to the Notre Dame whiners, who lamented that the Fighting Irish deserved to be in the playoffs more than Miami or Alabama. As mentioned above, Alabama went on the road and beat ChokeLahoma in the opening round Friday night. And, Saturday afternoon, Miami won at Texas A&M. That’s Texas A&M, which beat Notre Dame, at Notre Dame this season. And that’s Miami, which beat Notre Dame at Miami earlier this year, and now has beaten the other team that beat Notre Dame this season. Put that in your leprechaun pipe and smoke it.

ITEM: Reports of coaches and athletes fixing games in the pursuit of ill-gotten gambling gains are coming at us in rapid-fire fashion, and with them, increasing speculation that the rash of ridiculously bad plays, coaching calls or officiating decisions are something other than just human error. I find myself watching games in which I have no rooting interesting and wondering aloud about such things I see that just don’t pass the smell test. An NBC poll indicates I am not alone. A full 70 percent believe the rise of gambling damages the integrity of the games and could lead to games being fixed.

ITEM: Rogue leftist Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan has been convicted of a felony for obstructing federal agents trying to arrest an illegal immigrant outside her courtroom. But, before you celebrate, understand she and her attorney will appeal the conviction and if past is prologue, she will skate just like other leftist scofflaws. Dugan doing significant prison time is as unlikely as ChokeLahoma winning a playoff football game.

Does anyone else find it ironic in the extreme that Rob Reiner, who burst on the scene as “Meathead’ in the 1970s left-wing sitcom “All in the Family” ALLEGEDLY was offed by his own son?

Reiner’s wife also was killed, ALLEGEDLY by the son. Talk about keeping it all in the family.

Further irony, the progressive blowhard Reiner reportedly had his throat cut. We’re talking First Amendment violations.

And that meanie, President Donald Trump, posted on social media he wasn’t exactly broken up by Reiner’s death.

This sent the left wing extremists into fits of outrage, the sort of outrage they didn’t express when beauty-challenged Kathy Griffin posted that picture years back with a bloody severed Trump head.

That Trump would take to social media to express his opinion is fitting, because Reiner haunted social media, trying for parts of two terms to get rid of Trump with unhinged diatribes.

It didn’t end there.

It is Reiner who reportedly helped fund efforts of former intelligence types to take down Trump. When it became clear that Russia, Russia, Russia was fake news, Reiner began to be roasted by Trump supporters on social media.

And what did this democracy-loving, free-speech-kind of guy do? Glad you asked. He posted a measured social media comeback : “Until Trump goes to prison, I will no longer be posting on Twitter. I’ve had it with the insults and putdowns. Fuck all of you MAGA assholes.”

Thank God the Reiner progeny was identified and arrested quickly as the ALLEGED killer. Failing that, we’d be treated to breathless speculating by LameStream media about the typical “white,” “right-wing” perpetrator.

Just like the alleged Brown University killer. Oh, wait, that allegedly was a Portuguese guy, reportedly living here legally but not a citizen of the U.S.

OK, but Charlie Kirk’s killer was a right-wing nut job? No, he was a sexually confused leftist.

Trump’s attempted assassins? Ditto and ditto.

Yeah, but the D.C. pipe bomber suspect, the man who supposedly confessed, he’s white and right-wing. No, despite what CNN’s Jake Tapper said on air about him being white, shortly before airing a picture of the dude, he was and presumably still is, black. Also, it’s unlikely he is right wing.

What about all those mass shooters CNN identified as white even as they ran images that the criminals were not white and, presumably, not right wing?

What about George Zimmerman, he of the Trayvon Martin furor, who LameStream media, desperate to mislead, labeled as a “white Hispanic?”

I find all of this more outrageous than Trump failing to eulogize a man who hated him and tried to ruin him with misinformation.

And for all of you decrying Trump’s social media post on religious grounds, understand that Reiner was a self-described atheist.

‘Nuff said.

It is important to remember when it comes to investments, or sporting prognostications, one is never wrong, but merely sometimes early, or late.

Along that line, I’ve been promoting silver and gold as investments for probably 30 years. At long last, all-time highs are being hit. I was early, yes, but making money eventually still is nice.

When it comes to sporting picks, a few weeks back I liked Pitt at home vs. Miami in a college game. Among the thoughts was Miami was coming north for a cold-weather game late in the season and might not play well.

For a quarter and change, the pick looked good. Then Pitt imploded, or Miami exploded. Regardless, the weather was not as cold as expected, and there was no rain/snow, which helped Miami’s cause.

But, I’m back again, preaching a similar story.

I like the Steelers tonight, giving three points to visiting Miami.

How might this be different than taking Pitt over Miami in a college game a few weeks back?

First, we’re talking night game instead of afternoon, and a temperature expected to be 20 to 30 degrees colder.

I can only imagine what those Dolphins thought, sitting around frigid Pittsburgh yesterday and today, anticipating a huge game in the freezer.

The Steelers play in the stadium formerly known as Heinz Field. At best it has a questionable grass playing surface and very tricky winds.

On this night, the frigid temperatures figure to legislate heavily against a warm-weather team being able to perform well.

Yes, the Steelers have their litany of problems, accentuated by T.J. Watt’s lung woes.

Still, motivation should be sitting on the Steelers bench. The home team needs the win to stay ahead of Baltimore atop the weak AFC North division and thereby slip into the playoffs. Unlike the Kansas City Swifts, the Dolphins still have a playoff pulse, but it is a faint one. They need to win all their remaining games, and get some help. That’s an unlikely parlay.

This is a night when a marginal team such as Miami might be looking for a soft place to recline, admittedly against a similarly marginal team, but one playing at home and with realistic playoff hopes.

Having been proven horribly wrong on that Pitt-Miami college pick, and also whiffing on taking the Steelers over Buffalo the same weekend, I’m bloodied but unbowed.

The Steelers win tonight – I think.

There are reports out that General Motors is working on an updated two-stroke engine, news that tickled my fancy when I read it.

My challenge now is to tickle your fancy, and make the story interesting. This is something my eight-year granddaughter failed at intentionally during a visit earlier today when she offered to tell me a story: “Once upon a time. The end.”

This was her joke on me. But, as much as the two-stroke return might seem to be a joke, too, the story seems to have some legitimacy.

I will ignore the reality that the story I read had a blatant factual error in the first paragraph, that gaffe being the claim that a two-stroke “is a type of engine not seen in cars (outside of the old Soviet Union) since before JFK was elected president.”

Not exactly. Swedish auto maker Saab (located beyond the former Soviet Union) sold cars with two-stroke engines as late as 1967. History buffs here might recall John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960 and assassinated in 1963, both before 1967.

Regardless, it is interesting to read of a two-stroke revival, which according to the story would provide cheap internal combustion ability to recharge electric vehicles’ batteries on the move.

Two-strokes these days mostly are the province of off-road motorcycles and chainsaws, favored for their simplicity of design and their high ratio of power to cubic-inch displacement.

Two-stroke engines have no valves to allow fuel into the cylinder or exhaust gasses to leave. That is accomplished by holes (ports) in the cylinder walls.

This means a two-stroke engine produces power every other stroke of the piston, while a four-stroke engine has intake, compression, combustion and exhaust strokes, with only the combustion stroke producing power.

The difference is notable. In my wild and crazy youth, I owned a 1970 Kawasaki 500 with a two-stroke, three-cylinder side-by-side-by-side engine.

Out of the box, these were low 13-second machines in the quarter mile. But the previous owner, unbenown to me, had ported this bike for drag racing and it easily was a 12-second bike.

The torque at high rpm was incredible. It took off like a rocket at 6000 rpm and beyond. I recall the days as a freshman at UPJ when between classes I’d ride with friends who had motorcycles, including a 750 cc Honda. I’d leave them in the dust on Schoolhouse Road in seconds.

But there was a compromise. My Kawasaki, perhaps owing to the porting, fouled spark plugs at an incredible rate. I actually carried extra plugs and got to be quite good at popping the gas tank up and changing that middle cylinder’s plug.

I traded in the Kawasaki when I bought a new 1974 Yamaha 500, a much more sedate four-stroke example. Sure, it was a lot slower, but it also was a lot more reliable.

Part of the two-stroke experience is oil is mixed with the gasoline, which makes it almost impossible for them to meet emissions standards. My Kawasaki had a separate oil tank and injection pump for that purpose.

But, early two-stroke Saabs required the driver to add oil at each gasoline fill-up. This provided some amusement for a distant relative of mine during the gas thefts that accompanied gasoline shortages in the 1970s.

While many took to slapping on locking gas caps in an era before that was common, this guy welcomed would-be gasoline thieves, who would be getting more than they bargained for by siphoning out his gasoline-oil mixture.

Ah, memories.

We will close this story now with an observation. I find it amusing in an ironic way that the two-stroke engine, relegated to the automotive sidelines due to its dirty exhaust, might prove to be saviors of electric cars, at least for GM.

Many years back, when I did some freelance work for the local Woke Gazette at the behest of then editor and now publisher and chief cook and bottle washer for several publications in the chain, there was an abundance of what I call vanity columnists appearing in the paper.

Still are, apparently.

Being the consummate professional, I insisted on being paid. Many who contributed columns to the Woke Gazette then, and perhaps still do so, act out of the need to be recognized, albeit by a rapidly declining circulation.

They work for free just to get the ego boost of seeing their mugs in the paper, in a positive light.

I recall one such person, Sister Moonbeam I nicknamed her, who was always lamenting the plight of the illegal aliens. In a telling incident of timing, the editor-now-publisher, a guy who leans hard left, questioned some numbers in a column I had submitted.

Perhaps it was because he did not agree with the column’s premise. Regardless, I gave him several sources of my numbers and got an “oh” or something similar.

But, me being me and all that, and since he had brought up the topic, I asked if he ever questioned Sister Moonbeam’s assertions in her scribblings? In a concurrent effort from her, she had claimed illegals contribute some huge number in taxes and Social Security contributions and get no benefits. I can’t recall the exact amount, but it was monstrous, as in a lot of billions of dollars, maybe hundreds of billions.

Several questions sprang to mind, including how does one document such stuff when by definition the illegals are undocumented? Was it just a guess? Did the great keeper of the journalistic flame at the Woke Gazette ask where she got her numbers?

I’m sure he did not, because he liked her slant. Alas, Sister Moonbeam perhaps tired of working for free and no longer appears in Woke Gazette print, at least not as far as I can tell.

Perhaps she transitioned to a male and ginned up a new name.

One might speculate her writing style could identify her/him if she still was torturing a keyboard, but, alas, most of these vanity columnists write the same, which is to say not very well.

I thought of Sister Moonbeam today while surfing the internet and seeing many updates on just how much we are wasting on illegals and even those legal immigrants who get that certification from blue states and cities, regardless of any of what might be considered disqualifying attributes.

Begin with Minnesota, AKA New Somalia, or is it North Somalia?

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, as reported on Breitbart.com, about 80 percent of Somali households in Minnesota are on one form or other of the public dole. By way of comparison about 21 percent of native born Americans in that state are dependent on public welfare of some sort or another.

If there are children in the house, about 89 percent of Somali households are on some manner of welfare.

Remember how the Myopia 2025 people assured us that any Afghan refugees they slipped into town would be contributors. That sort of flies in the face of immigrant history in this century.

Yes, once upon a time immigrants would come to America legally and were expected to be able to prove self-sufficiency, or least have some sponsor willing to take on that responsibility.

Those immigrants also tended to be overwhelmingly a better fit culturally for this nation and were expected to assimilate, the so-called melting pot, rather than cluster in enclaves and seek to take control politically.

On another front, a story on zerohedge.com today reported more than 9,500 commercial truck drivers have had their licenses pulled because they cannot speak English. I’m sure all are not illegals, but many probably are.

Vetting processes are ridiculous. Our own great state of Pennsylvania, which seems to require a pint of blood, DNA samples, a first-born child, written pleas and massive documentation from lifelong residents seeking Real ID cards, is reported to hand them out like Halloween candy to immigrants, legal or not.

An audit found about 25 percent of the foreigners given CDLs by California should not have gotten them.

Sister Moonbeam would be so proud.

Before we leave, zerohedge.com had a story from CBS News today about how alleged fraudsters in Minnesota – yes, many Somalis – ripped off hundreds of millions of dollars in tax dollars intended to feed children and instead used it for luxury cars, trips, and money sent back to the homeland.

Again, where are you Sister Moonbeam when we need you to explain away all this?

I should have bought a lottery ticket last night. Clearly, it was my lucky day as I was able to take delivery of a set of towels from Walmart’s “curbside” delivery with minimal effort.

Recall I had written yesterday of my ordeal in trying to accomplish this previously. I’d followed guidelines and stopped by after 6 p.m., actually 6:37-ish and 7:07-ish and both times found the many pickup spots filled and got verbal confirmation from a worker that even if I could find a spot, I was looking at an hour wait, maybe more.

Also, as mentioned here previously, the granddaughters had their winter concert last night and I decided I’d try Walmart again after that, making my arrival time in Richland well past 6, but considerably before the advertised 10 p.m. cutoff time for such service.

The wife came along, with a stop along the way in her manic search for caramel chips for baking purposes. Can’t find them locally, it turns out.

When I reached Walmart, there were many open pickup parking spots, so I chose one (24 as I recall). The wife ran in to look for the chips – unsuccessfully – and I dialed the number on the sign.

The cheery, female-sounding person who answered (I was thrilled to get a person quickly considering my previous failures with Walmart’s Richland phone system) was eager to help. She took my name and said someone would be right out.

This call was made at 8:32 p.m. I settled in to listen to an investment podcast on my cell phone while I waited, but shortly I was aware of motion behind me and to my left.

It was a woman with the towels. The ordeal of the towels had ended.

Walmart communications put the exchange time at 8:37 and I will accept that because I was so stunned that the whole thing had taken mere minutes, I didn’t bother to note the time myself.

What have I learned from this?

First, make sure when ordering that Walmart doesn’t default you to “curbside” pickup.

If you don’t notice such beforehand, cancel the order and re-enter it to get home delivery.

If you want to brave the “curbside” operation, go much later than the recommended 6 p.m. to avoid dinner rush. I’m presuming my 8:30 time would work in most cases. Walmart also advises avoiding noon, but I’m not sure by how much. Would 1 p.m., work, or 2, or 3, or 4? I’m not interested enough to find out.

To borrow from Shakespeare, we will conclude all’s well that ends well. But I’m going to lean on the anonymous advice, learn from every experience, if only not to repeat it.

Walmart once prided itself on customer service. Blue-vested workers constantly approached and offered to help. These days, not so much.

I’ve been told operations like that still exist, at Ebensburg, Somerset, and other outposts. At the Richland monument to retail, not so much.

In the past I’ve had the unpleasant repeat experience of seeing empty shelves where cat litter should be. This was explained away as people buy a lot of it and I’d need to get there right after they unloaded the truck to get some of the precious stuff.

My first response was, since they seemed to be selling all they got, perhaps they should order more.

Second, I needed to know when the truck arrived, so I could plan my life around acquiring cat litter. Alas, that information was not available to the public. The cat died before Walmart got the cat litter supply chain sorted.

On another front, my wife and I try to patronize checkouts manned by humans, in an attempt to protect their jobs. One particularly surly checkout female was told point-blank by my wife she was trying to keep her employed. Responded the ungrateful tart, I wish they would fire me.

When that’s the attitude you bring to work, and project onto the customers, well, you should be fired.

The worker bees at Walmart now seemed to be concentrated on filling orders for pickup or delivery. The people who actually opt to shop in-person are treated as just so many roadblocks as they scurry about.

I’ve taken to ordering Walmart goods online and getting them delivered to my home, not by the local blue vests or independent contractors, but by traditional services such as FedEx, UPS, the postal service.

Monday, I ordered many things and, inexplicably, one of them was tabbed for store “curbside” pickup, a misnomer since there are zero curbs. In my case, also no parking space, or pickup, so far.

I tried to call the Richland Walmart, multiple times, and have yet to have the call answered. You painfully go through the phone tree, are transferred ostensibly to someone, and the phone rings a long time before a recorded message tells you tough luck, try again sometime. I got this same response for all options I tried, including just trying to get a store operator.

Remember what I said about customer service? Apparently non-existent.

The item in question, a pack of towels, was in-stock at the store, an increasingly rare phenomenon these days. But, I’ve ordered in-stock items in the past and it didn’t default to store pickup.

Regardless, instead of exploring the vagaries of an apparent change in the ordering process, I just submitted the order.

I was told the “curbside” order would be ready at some odd time, like 2:43 p.m. It was ready early, I found out in a later email, which meant exactly nothing.

Allow me to explain. I called a cousin to get the details about this pickup process. He told me to pack a lunch, one waits a LONG time for the goods to be wheeled out to the cars, which are parked in the rows of designated spaces.

Helpful hints in the email suggested better times to arrive to speed the process. I decided after 6 p.m. was best for me, and presumably them.

I arrived after 6, maybe 6:15, to find all the allotted spots filled with idling vehicles and some other vehicles circling like vultures waiting for an opening.

I drove to Tractor Supply to kill half an hour and returned to find no change. This prompted me to pull into a spot in an adjacent row so that I might talk to one of the workers delivering crates to a van.

I asked if going in myself would speed the process. He emphasized it would not. I then asked what sort of wait I was facing if I somehow was lucky enough to find a spot to pull into. I began with 45 minutes, an hour?

Responded the worker, at least that and probably longer.

I did the right thing and left. Supposedly one has four days to collect “curbside” orders.

Ironically, some of the items I ordered for traditional delivery will be on my front porch before I am able to retrieve my “curbside” item.

The emails, for what they are worth, indicate this service is available until 10 p.m. I guess I will go up again tonight, very late in their window, and hope all the other people have been serviced by them.

If not, I really don’t have a life, so I can take up residency in the parking lot in the off chance someone might be willing and able to bring a pack of towels to my car.

Pray for me.

There is a lot of ground to cover today. The solution is News And Views, a combined sports and real world edition. We will start with sports.

NEWS: The Kansas City Swifts lost again Sunday, falling to 6-7 late in the season and supposedly having only a 14.2 percent chance of making the NFL playoffs for the 11^th consecutive season.

VIEWS: They are flying the flags at half-mast around NFL headquarters at the prospect of no months-long postseason hero worship of the Swifts and the obligatory TV shots of the reason the franchise changed its nickname, that eternal adolescent songstress cheering for her guy on the Swifts roster. Can the NFL intervene and save the Swifts? Stay tuned.

NEWS: Notre Dame didn’t make the national championship playoff field, so the Fighting Irish are taking their football and staying home regarding a bowl appearance.

VIEWS: Much like the K.C. Swifts, Notre Dame seems to get the nod anytime the decision is close, and often when it isn’t close at all. Hell, in my youth, Michigan State and Notre Dame, both unbeaten, played to a 10-10 tie late in the 1966 season and, wait for it, Notre Dame ended up as the national champion according to the major polls because . . . Notre Dame. There were no playoffs back then. Fast-forward to 2025 and Notre Dame won’t lower itself to be in a conference for football, but aligns its other teams with the ACC. Now, Notre Dame is irked because the ACC went public noting that full-time ACC member Miami deserved the playoff nod over Notre Dame because Miami beat Notre Dame in a head-to-head match, had more wins vs. Top 25 opposition, and has a similar strength of schedule. The head-to-head always spoke loudest to me. It’s the preferred tiebreaker across sports when there is a two-way tie for something. The fact that Notre Dame is so petulant about not getting the favored status to which it is accustomed, speaks volumes.

NEWS: The Steelers rose from the dead and beat the Baltimore Ravens to take the lead of the AFC North, admittedly at a modest 7-6.

VIEWS: I only watched a bit of the game, but I read the Steelers got the benefit of the doubt on several close plays. I ask, where was this assistance when the Steelers and I needed it against Buffalo?

NEWS: A Minnesota state senator is claiming he has proof Congress member Ilhan Omar married her brother to keep him in the United States, among other alleged misdoings by Omar.

VIEWS: You mean to tell me you’re alleging a Somali in Minnesota committed fraud? Unbelievable.

NEWS: A Somali in Maine is being accused of Medicaid fraud, with the misbegotten funds being sent to the homeland for military use.

VIEWS: I often wondered what attracted Somali immigrants from their home country, a virtual desert, to northern climes such as Minnesota and Maine, with brutal cold and snow. Could lax left-wing leadership and freedom to pillage be the reason?

NEWS: President Trump has posted that Ukraine’s Zelenskyy has yet to read the latest peace proposal.

VIEWS: Perhaps the tiny guy is too busy looking at travel brochures for Minnesota and Maine.

NEWS: The Muslin Brotherhood, which Trump would like designated as a terrorist group, has proclaimed publicly its expectation to have 50 members of U.S. Congress within six years and use that to control this once-great nation.

VIEWS: George W. Bush can stick his “Islam, the religion of peace” tripe where the sun doesn’t shine.

NEWS: Clueless Joe Biden, whose handlers inexplicably keep sticking in front of microphones at public events, was at it again last week, proclaiming this nation is “Amerigotit.”

VIEWS: Can you really expect better from the guy who couldn’t find his way off stages, referred to Kamala Harris as “vice-president Trump,” told a South Carolina audience during his presidential campaign he was running for senator, and called Zelenskyy Putin at a NATO summit?

The world lost a loving, entertaining character today. I speak of Smokey, the feral cat who adopted us a year or two back and resided part-time on our front porch, gladly accepting food and attention, not necessarily in that order.

I was awakened today with bad news from my wife. Smokey apparently had been hit by a car, which she discovered while walking the dog we recently inherited and seeing a man bent over Smokey in a nearby driveway.

At first she thought Smokey, an unusually friendly sort for a feral feline, was getting some “loving” from a random stranger. But, no, the man had come upon him and determined Smokey’s hindquarters were paralyzed, likely after being run down by a vehicle.

My wife and the guy were taking Smokey to the vet, where the verdict was there was no coming back from his injuries and so the difficult call was made to euthanize him.

I had come downstairs before they left to say a possible goodbye to Smokey. Later, my wife told me a poignant tale of Smokey, upon hearing her voice this morning after being injured, turning his head and trying to crawl her way.

We both cried it out.

Tears are welling up as I write this.

Smokey represented a lot that is good, and bad, about this world.

He was a feline Blanche DuBois from the play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” always depending on the kindness of strangers.

I first became aware of Smokey years back while on a walk and seeing Smokey, as I would learn he had been nicknamed, shadowing a neighbor Ed from up the street, who was walking his dog.

Smokey stayed 30 or so feet behind, but Ed told me Smokey was a constant companion on their walks. Ed had named him Smokey, due to his gray fur. Who knows if he ever had another name, before being kicked to the curb by persons unknown.

When Ed moved from the neighborhood, Smokey started hanging around our house. The granddaughters loved him. My wife began feeding him.

Last winter, my wife bought Smokey an insulated house, which he used for a time, until a neighbor put out an electric heating pad for him. Vintage Smokey.

Smokey was an opportunist and in him that was an endearing quality. Mostly, Smokey was always eager for some attention if you happened to sit on the porch steps.

Yet, even with his need for affection, there was always a skittish manner to him. He hated to feel cornered or startled, and would dash off wildly, even if one of us familiar people approached too quickly.

Smokey also had habit of coming from wherever he was to say goodbye to those grandddaughters when they left after a visit.

I lived in fear that Smokey’s demise would come under the wheels of car during one his blind dashes, and perhaps it did.

It makes me angry that there are so many Smokey types, animals deemed unwanted and put out into the world alone by their insensitive owners.

It also angers me that these irresponsible types count on others such as my wife to pick up the ball for them.

As I told my wife, in the typical verbiage used to comfort her – and me – at times such as these, she had made his life better in recent years and for that he is/was as grateful as a feral cat could be.

We will miss Smokey. You would, too, if you’d ever encountered him.