Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

To put a twist on a popular scene from the movie When Harry Met Sally, I DON’T want what the leftist Democrat politicians, their sycophantic stooges in LameStream media, and the libtard members of the population are having.

If you missed the movie, Sally (as played by Meg Ryan) demonstrates to Harry (Billy Crystal) how easy it for women to fake orgasms, at a table in a crowded deli, no less. Amidst much panting, screaming, and pounding of the table, Sally makes her point. An older woman at another table tells the waiter she’ll have what Sally was having.

It was amusing. Once. In a movie. But what passes for the Democrat Party these days moves from fake orgasm to fake orgasm repeatedly in the attempt to gin up hatred for President Trump among the populace. It’s not funny, more like sickening.

Their breathless histrionics, their pearl-clutching, their affected vapors almost always have zero basis in fact. They latch onto some word, some meaningless act, and devolve into hysteria.

Trump uses harsh language to get the attention of Iran leadership, noting either they come to the peace table or he can blow up bridges, power plants and other infrastructure to end, effectively, their “civilization.”

Oh, how these hyperbolic types latched onto that, claiming it meant Trump planed to kill 90 million Iranians, give or take.

Hey, morons, the word “civilization” is defined as referring to “human social and cultural development and organization” according to an online definition found using the Bing search engine.

Take away the electricity, the ability to get around using bridges, the political leadership and you have pushed that “civilization” back, as Trump noted to the Stone Ages. You don’t need to kill all the people to neuter a civilization.

Repeat, you haven’t killed all the people, merely removed their systems of a civilization.

Yet these vapid types say Trump would commit a war crime by bombing infrastructure. Somehow, they didn’t feel that was the case in 1999 when Bubba Clinton was blowing up Serbian power plants, bridges, oil facilities and water supplies to win a war.

These leftists also took a pass on decrying the actions of Barack Hussein Obama when he blew up ISIS oil infrastructure in Syria and Iraq and bragged out it.

Ah, but neither was Trump. Instead, they were leftists and everyone knows there is a double standard on such things.

It’s sickening to watch these opportunistic Democrats go overboard emotionally in their desperate attempt to take attention away from their coddling of criminals and illegal immigrants (often the same thing), rampant fraud in Democrat social programs, increasing evidence of voter fraud in past elections, and a general lurch toward socialism that the elders of the party seem unwilling or unable to staunch.

You want to talk about war crimes, you hyperventilating baboons, how about the Iran regime chanting for most of five decades death to America and death to Israel?

Our population is estimated at about 340 million, likely with another 20 or 30 million illegals that Clueless Joe and his fellow porous-border Democrats allowed into the country, and are trying to prevent ICE from deporting because, hey, they vote Democrat.

Israel’s population is a reported 9.5 million. So, if Iran got its wish of death to the United States and Israel, that’s 350 million or so dead – legal citizenry.

Do Democrats and their propagandists in the news call Iran leadership war criminals? Of course not. It doesn’t fit their agenda.

Everything’s an existential crisis to these fools, except when it really is.

And I’m left to wonder how these gutless, hyperbolic types would react if they actually faced existential danger, perhaps one of their illegal immigrant criminals aiming a handgun right between their eyes from close range.

I’m thinking they might get religion in that case, albeit likely too late.

Iran remains defiant, refusing a ceasefire offer, and I am reminded of Japan, just before the end of World War II.

No, Trump isn’t going to order an atomic bomb be dropped on Tehran. At least, I don’t think he will. But, I do expect him to follow through on promises to destroy Iran’s infrastructure, likely killing citizens in the process if Iran doesn’t meet his deadline to re-open the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic.

Back when schools in this country taught history, we learned of things such as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

There were few bleeding hearts among the populace when I was in elementary school, or junior high, but since then I have seen the usual suspects berate the United States for using its superior weaponry to force Japan to drop the belligerent posturing and accept the reality of defeat.

These critics don’t buy the assertion of President Harry S. Truman that using the bomb actually saved lives on both sides, including those of American soldiers who would have been lost had the United States been forced to invade mainland Japan and conquer it.

They also chose to ignore the warnings — many of them – sent by the Americans to the Japanese. President Truman, a Democrat sounding a lot like President Trump of current days, told the Japanese in what has come to be known as the Potsdam Declaration to surrender unconditionally or face “prompt and utter destruction.” This was July 1945.

Emperor Hirohito, like current Iranian leadership, didn’t take the threat seriously. He did after atomic bombs obliterated two of his cities in August 1945.

The United States warnings did not stop with the Potsdam Declaration. Leaflets were reported to have been dropped on numerous Japan cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, before the blasts, warning residents to evacuate cities that were facing destruction.

Quibblers note the leaflets didn’t specify Hiroshima or Nagasaki and didn’t include other details. This reminds me of the current microphone jockeys who delight in asking Trump to share battle plan specifics with them, in advance. This idiocy amuses Trump. I’m not sure Truman was ever asked such insipid questions. If he had been, I suspect his response might have been strident.

The leaflets dropped in Japan also suggested citizens rise up to oust war-mongering leadership.

Suddenly, 2026 sounds a lot like 1945.

And, as an ironic side note, both Presidents’ last names begin T-R-U-M. Interesting.

It was with intent that I avoided Sunday cable news shows this morning, not wishing to put an early damper on my Easter.

This way, I got to avoid the anticipated gaggle of leftist stooges from Congress, or the LameStream media, and assorted RINOs showing up on my TV and screaming how President Trump had violated his no-boots-on-the-ground promise regarding Iran by sending in special forces to rescue a downed airman.

Would these vacuous types be capable of such political opportunism? Have you been paying attention through the 30-plus days of this “endless” war, how they seemingly root for our failure? There’s your answer.

Ironically, my escapism into the world of Leave It To Beaver reruns brought me the tail end of an episode in which Beaver and Wally got a horse from a carnival and father Ward ended up paying a farmer to keep it, since the town of Mayfield didn’t allow horses to in the Cleaver’s neighborhood. The boys previously had sold the horse to a guy from a glue factory, but realized their error and canceled the transaction.

The irony came in the following episode regarding Ward’s service in World War II, when he had been in the Seabees (Construction Battalion). Beaver went looking in Ward’s army footlocker for guns and grenades, but instead found a T-square and surveyor’s transit.

This was tough stuff for the kid, who had been bragging in school about his war hero father.

While Ward and his wife June were discussing the matter in general terms, since they did not yet know the details, Ward was planning to ignore it and told June “never trouble trouble ’til trouble troubles you.”

This works for father figures in traditional sitcoms. It doesn’t work (despite many tries by Clueless Joe and Barack Hussein) when you are president of these United States.

Presidents need to be decisive. Trump is just that.

Reportedly, it was Trump who gave the initial OK to put boots on the ground for the rescue mission, as he since has made clear on social media and at least one interview.

The situation was uncertain when I went to bed last night, including stories of intense firefights with Iran forces, some Iran citizens helping hide/locate the guy and others looking to cash in a bounty from the disintegrating Iran government for his capture.

An account of the rescue of this weapons officer from a downed fighter plane (the pilot had been rescued previously) told of the injured airman hiking up a 7,000-foot peak, perhaps having the CIA being involved in aiding him with ground assets, and, finally a commando team being inserted to facilitate his rescue.

Even that was complicated when two transport planes “got stuck” in sand at a remote Iran base and three replacements had to fly in to remove the personnel. The “stuck” planes were destroyed on the ground, lest Iran grab them and benefit from examining them.

Trump noted – correctly – that it was net another brilliant effort by our military, with zero U.S. casualties.

It’s an uplifting story on this most special Christian holiday, no matter how leftists might try to propagandize it.

Inspiration is where you find it. Example: The inspiration for this blog post on names came while watching the Minnesota Twins play baseball the other day.

On that Twins roster was outfielder James Outman. Out Man, an ironic name for a player of a game which is delineated in outs made. If you are the out man, making outs whenever and wherever, well, that’s not a good thing, at least when you are batting.

It’s sort of like former Pirates pitcher Bob Walk. Pitchers strive mightily not to dispense walks, the so-called free passes that so often come back to bite. Yet, here was a successful pitcher named Walk.

Some names fit the player and his or her circumstance. Foremost among these is Johnstown’s own Steve Smear, former star defensive lineman at Penn State and in the Canadian Football League. A football defender named Smear, that’s a natural.

With all due respect to Gertrude Stein (A rose is a rose is a rose) and William Shakespeare (A rose by any other name would smell as sweet), sometimes a name does make a difference, either by being the antithesis of the individual’s circumstance, or by affirming it. Either way, it provides amusement.

Sometimes, we just take these oddities for granted. I recall when a sports writer from the Philadelphia area joined the staff at what has become the Johnstown Woke Gazette and he was amused by how many families locally we had named Boring or Dull.

I’d never really thought about it, but he had a point.

And now, let us proceed with a list of my favorite name oddities.

Imagine a placekicker named Blew It(t). Pitt had one, Chris Blewitt, from 2013 through 2016. Belying his name, Chris ended his college career second on Pitt’s all-time list for field goals made,.

Sometimes names conspire to provide the amusement. I recall the time in the mid-1960s when the Pirates were playing the Philadelphia Phillies and the bottom of the Phillies batting order, much to the joy of Pirates announcer Bob Prince, was first baseman (Bill) WHITE, shortstop (Bobby) WINE and pitcher (John) BOOZER.

A female swimmer, who won Olympic gold, fittingly was and is named Misty Hyman.

The Pirates had an outfielder for a few seasons in the late 1930s named Johnny Dickshot. As if that weren’t bad enough, his self-appointed nickname was “Ugly.”

Outfielder Milton Bradley played in the Major Leagues for more than a decade beginning in 2000, but was more notable for his off-field legal problems and on-field gaffes, the latter including the time he threw a live ball into the stands thinking he’d recorded the third out of the inning. Blame the parents, perhaps, for sticking him with the name of the famous game company. Perhaps if they’d gone with Hasbro, or Mattel it would have worked out better?

Fair Hooker was a poor wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns in the early 1970s, recording just 129 catches in five seasons.

General Booty (General Axel Booty, actually), whose name sounds like a 101 level class in Gender Studies, is a vagabond of a quarterback. He is reported to have attended four high schools (two each in California and Texas), one junior college and two colleges (including Oklahoma for two seasons). Current whereabouts are unknown.

Last, because it’s nearly lunch time, we have Coy Bacon, the pass-rushing defensive end Steelers fans might recall from his multiple seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals in the late 1970s. His given name was Lander McCoy Bacon, shortened to Coy.

Bacon survived a drug-related shooting in 1986 that left him critically injured and became a born-again Christian. If he had a sense of humor, considering his last name, he’d have become a Muslim.

Submitted for your approval today, an issue of News and Views.

NEWS: The Artemis mission is set to blast off on April Fool’s Day for a trip around the moon.

VIEWS: The crew includes a black man and a white woman, which NASA previously had trumpeted as a DEI initiative, writing in a statement the commitment to land “the first woman and first person of color on the moon.” This is not a moon landing mission, but the arrival of President Trump and his aversion to DEI as governmental policy, has seen NASA scrub the DEI language. These crew members seem to have credentials. I hope that is the case.

NEWS: Major League Baseball has gone to automated ball-strike (ABS) challenges and early in the season the New York Yankees are 10-of-11 on challenges overall, including going 5-for-5 Monday night.

VIEWS: You’d need to be blind to think umpires were not missing a lot of ball-strike calls through the years. The arrogant umpires each had “their” strike zone, never mind what the rule book says. The strike zone also had differed from National League to American League, at least in the eyes of the umpires. I just wish Eric Gregg was still with us and calling a strike zone so wide the 400-pound umpire could have slept in it. During Game 5 of the 1997 National League Championship Series, Gregg helped Florida pitcher Livan Hernandez to a career-high 15 strikeouts with a strike zone Atlanta’s Chipper Jones labeled “ a travesty.” If ABS had been around back then, Atlanta might have gone 60-for-60 on challenges – and won the game!

NEWS: Duke blew a 19-point lead to UConn and lost an NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament game Saturday that is being hailed as one of the greatest chokes in tournament history.

VIEWS: I called it during the game. I was watching the broadcast with a friend and when Duke came out sloppy and lethargic to start the second half, I told him Duke was going to blow the game. I didn’t necessarily see the ultimate choke details, when Duke had the ball and the lead with 10 seconds to play, threw away the ball and allowed a three-pointer for the win. But, I did anticipate the final result. Through 35-years as a sports writer, and a lifetime spent viewing this stuff, I have come to learn more games are lost through inept play, than won due to superior play. And, you can’t take the human element out of the equation. Teams ahead tend to get overconfident and lose momentum, frequently being unable to recapture said momentum. My pick to win it all on my bracket was and is Arizona. I think I will stick with the Wildcats.

NEWS: An amalgamation of deranged leftists – celebrities, communists, socialists, Democrats and the mentally impaired – ginned up another of those No Kings protests Saturday, aided by about $3 billion in seed money from the usual suspects who preferred to lurk in the shadows and make the metaphorical bullets for others to fire.

VIEWS: The highlight for me was seeing Robert De Niro doing an unintentional Clueless Joe Biden impression by looking repeatedly at notes while stumbling and bumbling through a statement as cameras rolled. He had to stop at least once and start over. Pathetic. Fox’s Jesse Watters sent Johnny to interact with No Kings protesters in New York City and found the usual assortment of people long on emotion and short on facts. Interestingly, European nations that actually have kings, modified their pre-printed signs to “No Dictators,” or “No Tyrants.”

NEWS: The Chicago Bulls waived guard Jaden Ivey Monday for conduct detrimental to the team.

VIEWS: What was that conduct? Glad you asked. Ivey posted videos on social media disagreeing with the NBA’s Gay Pride promotion, his sentiment rooted in his religious beliefs. A story on ESPN, quoting unnamed sources, of course, described Ivey as too “preachy” around the locker room. Imagine if Ivey were Muslim, not Christian, would he have been waived for expressing similar thoughts? Doubtful.

Beware the man who can’t throw a baseball.

This epiphany struck me while I watched Sunday morning as Fox Business News gave a promo for an upcoming segment on an American manufacturer of baseball gloves.

Outdoors, we had weather guy Adam Klotz and news guy Griff Jenkins looking like they were shooting basketballs, heaving the baseball with their palms and an upward thrust of the arm. Predictably, Jenkins whiffed on a catch.

Someone must have given the guys some quick lessons during one of those interminable commercial breaks because when we returned to them, throwing the baseball on an outdoor concrete surface, they almost looked like they knew what they were doing, successfully completing a series of throws with better arm action, and catching said throws.

Growing up, every guy in our neighborhood engaged in pickup baseball games. Most of us played Little League baseball as well. There was a huge skill gap, but even the worst sad sack exhibited proper form throwing the baseball.

This once common proficiency frequently is a no-show these days, a metaphor illustrating the real-world gap between the elites who lecture us and the hoi polloi who actually know how to do things.

I think of all the smug, self-appointed types laid blare by the ceremonial act of throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game.

But, let us begin with a success story. George W. Bush used to bleat about Islam being the religion of peace, but he did have some redeeming values, including knowing how to throw a baseball.

About a month after the 911 attacks, Bush went to the mound before a World Series game at Yankee Stadium and, despite wearing a bulletproof vest under his jacket, fired a strike. The crowd cheered and chanted USA.

Others, including comedian Jerry Seinfeld have looked good on such first-pitch moments.

Then there are the likes of Barack Hussein Obama, who took the mound prior to the 2009 All-Star Game, to a mixture of cheers and boos. Predictably a left-hander, Obama lobbed a ball that came up well short of home plate. Give him a pass, what with that Kenya background and all that.

Hussein Obama looked like a Major Leaguer compared to rapper Curtis 50 Cent Jackson, a left-hander who tossed a first-pitch attempt before a Mets game about 30 feet to the left of the plate, prompting the team’s announcers to observe that obviously he never had to choose between being a rapper, or playing for the Mets.

Michael Jordan, near the top of most lists of the greatest basketball players of all time, should have tried shooting a basketball for his first-pitch attempt before a Cubs game. Instead, Jordan used a baseball and lobbed it over the head of where a right-handed hitter would have been standing, nearly hitting the wall behind home plate.

Arguably, the all-time worst such first pitch attempt was authored by petty dictator Dr. Anthony Fauci, who kept you away from friends and family during COVID, helped shut down the economy, and generally pontificated from on high about measures such as wearing masks that were proved to have virtually no effectiveness, sort of like those rushed vaccines.

The puny Fauci strode toward the mound, windmilling his right arm once before a Nationals opener in 2020. He first went near the pitching rubber and then advanced a few steps before uncorking a throw that will live in infamy.

It’s charitable to call it a pitch. The ball veered hard left out of Fauci’s hand, quickly lost altitude and plunked the infield grass short of the first-base line, maybe 15 feet up the line from home plate.

Yes, Fauci was wearing a mask. No, it wasn’t over his eyes.

It turns out Fauci was about as good at throwing a baseball as he was dealing with COVID. I’ve come to realize this sort of linkage is not altogether irrelevant.

I took a day to attempt to digest the Pirates opening day debacle vs. the New York Mets. It didn’t help.

What a curious thing that Thursday afternoon game was, along with the personal trappings of my experience attempting to watch it.

When a friend advised me the night before that it was going to be on NBC, it was a bonus since I get my TV service from DISH and they refuse to pay the ridiculous rights fee of SportsNet Pittsburgh and its predecessor AT&T Sports, or something like that. This means I get precious few Pirates games – only those that are national broadcasts and, let’s face it, the Pirates haven’t exactly been marquee material for a decade or so.

The guy who had given me the heads-up Wednesday night, called at game time Thursday to see if I was watching. Well, I was trying. But, another aspect of DISH satellite TV is signal loss. Heavy snow, heavy rain, severe winds, you name it, all play havoc with the signal, leading to pixelization so as to make viewing impossible, usually followed shortly by the dreaded blue complete signal loss box.

When I flipped to Channel 6 Thursday, with the sun shining and birds singing, the picture was a series of colored lines. Perhaps some butterflies in the Amazon were flapping their wings too hard.

I put the broadcast on pause and went to the front porch to talk to the guy because my wife had some friends over to chat.

He asked during the course of our conversation if I wanted to know what was happening. I did not. But, I could tell from his tone it was bizarre.

Eventually, I came back inside (the signal can only be paused for an hour) and fast-forwarded through some bad signal time. There was a brief moment of clarity, when I saw the Pirates jump up 2-0 on a Brandon Lowe homer in the top of the first, then the picture again became a collage of colored lines, before devolving into a black screen.

While attempting to fast-forward some more, my controller unilaterally decided to change channels, thereby eliminating all that paused video.

I changed back to NBC and the signal was clear. What was not clear was how the Pirates could be losing, 5-2.

Say what? Paul Skenes pitching, has at least a 2-0 lead before he takes the mound, and an inning later, the Pirates are trailing 5-2. Unbelievable.

Though the magic of these times, I was able to find a video of the entire bottom of the first inning on YouTube.

Skenes was unrecognizable with poor control. He still might have gotten out of it all virtually unscathed had former shortstop Oneil Cruz not looked like, well, a shortstop playing center field.

First, Cruz looked like every bad Little League outfielder you’ve ever seen when he came in on a ball hit at him and allowed it to go over his head for a bases-clearing “triple.”

Next up, another fly to center, this time misplayed by Cruz, who lost it in the sun. Where were his sunglasses? Good question.

It was so good that today, again on YouTube, I found a postgame interview with Pirates manager Don Kelly being asked about that.

Kelly assured he had a word with Cruz. Yet, I definitely recall later in that same game, played on a sunny afternoon in the Big Apple, Cruz was playing the field sans sunglasses.

And, yes, Cruz had looked bad at the plate, too. But, he sure ran hard on that one groundout, Kelly noted.

This opening day loss was theater of the absurd. Imagine before the game someone had told you Skenes would take the mound with a 2-0 lead, the Pirates would hit three home runs and score seven runs overall.

You’d have bet the house on the Pirates, right? And you’d be homeless today in the wake of an 11-7 Mets win.

At this point, we are obliged to note it was just one of 162 games. The season is a marathon, not a sprint. Every team loses 60 and every team wins 60, it’s what you do in the other 42 games that makes the difference.

Consider those points conceded.

But, this was just too familiar when it comes to the Pirates. Again, we had a player apparently ignoring the manager.

We had poor defensive play. We had an inexplicable pitching performance. We saw a team prepared to find a way to lose, as Pirates teams so often do.

The Pirates didn’t exactly have a monopoly on strange plays in this game. On the Cruz gaffe that cleared the bases, the second runner to cross home plate for the Mets slid, even as the third runner close on his heels, crossed standing up. His proximity to the previous runner was due to the uncertainty of whether Cruz actually was going to misplay the ball entirely.

That much is understood. But, customarily the on-deck batter signals his team’s baserunners whether to slide or stay up on close plays at home. If the second runner didn’t get the word, but the third did, it raises some serious questions about Mets communication.

This strange event was lost in the win, just as any offensive positives for the Pirates were obscured by the defensive lapses and pitching failures.

It’s really disappointing because some national media types actually are picking the Pirates to be one of the season’s surprise teams and contend for postseason play.

Forgive my doubts. I’ve seen this movie too many times.

How can you tell the difference between Iranian leadership and our domestic Democrats? I’m not sure how to answer that one.

I guess one might note that not all our Democrats wear towels on their heads – yet. But, beyond that, it struck me this morning how similar the rhetoric and actions are among Iran’s zealots and our similarly crazed Democrats.

At the base of it is a willingness, even an eagerness, to flat-out lie.

Iran insists it is winning this military engagement with the United States, despite ample evidence to the contrary. And the Democrats and their lapdog propagandists in the LameStream media are right there to agree with them about this “endless” war, which just passed three weeks in length.

Democrat Patron Saint Barack Hussein Obama once chided the Republicans that elections have consequences, meaning that when you lose in them, you can’t expect to get your way.

This does not seem to apply to Democrats, who lost the Senate, House of Representatives and the presidency, yet still insist on getting their way like so many petulant children.

Begin with the ongoing vilification of ICE. Democrats hate ICE because it threatens their political power strategy. I have almost completed an incredible book on the subject titled “The Invisible Coup.”

In this book, author Peter Schweizer lays out in painstaking detail how, beginning with Bubba Clinton, Democrat presidents have looked to weaken immigration laws and procedures, thinking the grateful illegals that flooded into this country as a result would vote in eternity (albeit often illegally) for Democrats.

Clueless Joe Biden took this strategy to a ridiculous extreme and now President Trump and ICE are trying to clean up the mess.

Just as Democrats were looking to defund police in order to enable radicals and criminals (often the same people), now it has turned to hamstringing ICE to keep the flow of illegal immigrants and presumably Democrat voters flowing.

By the way, governments, from Mexico and its reconquista effort to infiltrate and take over operations in California, Texas, etc., to China looking to establish spy networks, to drug types from various jurisdictions looking to expand their operations here, all have welcomed the Democrat strategy for how it aids their nefarious causes.

Since killing ICE hasn’t worked, Democrats have turned their defund attack on airport TSA workers, not to mention various others such as members of the Coast Guard and assorted operations that fall under the homeland security umbrella.

Always a problem solver, Trump has sent ICE agents to airports to help buoy the TSA force, which is shrinking due to calloffs over not getting paid, or outright resignations.

Lying Democrats, such as Da Nang Dick and Hakeem The Nightmare, curiously used exactly the same word “brutalizing,” as in ICE types would be brutalizing airport travelers, in their screeds. This indicates that these fools can’t even think on their own and read from carefully prepared talking points.

Hakeem even anticipated ICE agents killing passengers. If that has happened, I’ve missed the breathless reporting from leftist media stooges. Instead, I’ve seen videos of ICE agents passing out bottles of water to people standing in huge lines to be cleared to board planes.

Democrats scream that ICE agents aren’t trained for this security screening, ignoring that ICE will not actually be screening and instead is doing guard duty on doors and the the like to free up TSA agents to do their work.

Oh, how the Democrats scream about two protester deaths — seemingly deserved — at the hands of ICE. They are silent on the dozens of people killed recently by illegal immigrants, crazed trans types or aggrieved Muslims.

When President Trump said Iran had reached out and talks were underway to end the conflict, Democrats and LameStream media called him a liar. Projection in its classic sense. Some of those propaganda outlets have been forced to admit their lies. Prominent Democrats have not.

As those talks have progressed, the Iranians have borrowed a page from the Democrat playbook, that being to profess to be willing to make a deal, then backing out and issuing last-minute demands. It’s called moving the goal posts and Democrats have elevated this to an art form, led by Crying Chuck Schumer, a pathetic sort desperately trying to cling to power even as an increasingly large element of his leftist party can’t stomach a Jew in a position of such power, minority leader of the Senate.

Amidst all this, Trump has realized the only way to save this country from corruption and appropriation by foreign interests, is the aptly named SAVE America Act.

Absurd Schumer says no one wants voter ID. A Gallup poll released today has 84 percent of Americans disagreeing. They favor voter ID and 83 percent think proof of citizenship should be required to vote for the first time. Democrat voters even approve of this, at a rate of 67 and 66 percent, respectively.

Don’t tell Chuckie, who refuses to let the facts get in the way of a good harangue.

Schumer and his ilk are no better than latter-day Baghdad Bobs. We can only hope they experience similar falls.

Readers will recall I’m a bit of a stickler for customer service.

In recent days, I’ve experienced the very good and the very bad of it all on that front.

First, the good. My wife had a new prescription and the good folks at the Goucher Street Giant Eagle pharmacy texted her when it was filled. It was going to be $600 or so. She was upstairs at the time, but I heard the scream from my living room perch.

My wife balked at the price. I was willing to pay because it was necessary, because some things (such as one’s health) you don’t cheap out on, and, frankly, because $600 is a mere fraction of what I gave back in the past week’s precious metals collapse.

I’m no high roller, but even after the carnage of last week, I can afford to dole out $600 on short notice without a panic attack.

But, my wife was adamant about not getting the prescription due to cost. She did some research and dispatched me to look into some things on the computer.

Bottom line, it seemed Good Rx could knock a couple of hundred bucks off that. She had some text response from somewhere else that might help.

I checked on the drug company site, called their toll-free number and waded through the phone tree before getting the message, sorry, no one is on-duty so try again some other time.

My wife and I are on Medicare and we each have prescription drug plans. But, based on our history of low-tier, generic drug usage, and because plans that cover everything without huge deductibles cost a king’s ransom monthly, I went with the lower plans.

Now, she had a need for a Tier 3 drug. But, I’m still not sure a better plan would have proved cost effective considering those monstrous premiums.

I resolved to head to Giant Eagle early Sunday and check out the options, pulling out the old credit card and forking over $600 if required.

I apologized upfront to the first young woman to wait on me, explaining I had a complicated case. She was pleasant and, when she hit a roadblock, called over an older woman.

Eventually, I was told to give them 15 or 20 minutes and come back.

This I did and when I rolled up to the counter, the younger woman waved the prescription package at me and the other woman walked over to explain there was a manufacturer card attached I could activate and save money on a refill down the line.

Great, I told her. Now, how much for this prescription fill?

Nothing, was her reply. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Even though I did get a health insurance license after retiring from writing for newspapers, and tend to know more about this than the average guy, the opaque world of prescription drugs remains largely a mystery.

If these women had told me sorry, it’s $600, I’d have paid without thinking they had let me down.

But, they both went the extra mile and found some sort of solution. That, my friends, is customer service.

On the other hand was my experience at the Burger King drive-through in Westwood.

Said Burger King has been tough in terms of customer service in the past, but of late has done much better. In particular, there have been previous times when they would not accept multiple coupons on the same visit. But, that has changed and when I noted it to a woman a few months back, she was astonished that anyone ever had given me crap over such a thing.

Even so, I make it a point to announce each time even now when I plan on using coupons for different parts of the order. And this time, the female voice on the other end of the communication gave me a large sigh of disgust when I said I had two coupons. It was so loud and long-lasting, I felt moved to comment.

“Is there a problem?” I asked. “Can you handle this, or do I need to talk to someone else?”

No, she replied, she would handle it. I gave the order and thanked her. No response.

I moved up a window and the visual of the person spoke volumes, what with the ring in the nose and other trappings of the counterculture. I paid, again thanked her (it?) and again no reply.

It must have been my lucky day because the stop at the next window to collect the food produced the same offended worker. Again, I thanked that worker and again it ignored me.

Without doing the exact math, I’d say the two coupons saved me less than $20 and it bothered the Burger King worker to no end that I’d made her push a few more buttons.

Meanwhile, the two Giant Eagle pharmacy workers had saved me $600 and did it with smiles and pleasant conversation.

Vive la difference.

It is a staple of lazy electronic journalism, when gasoline prices are high, to rush to gas stations around holidays and shove a microphone into the face of people refueling their vehicles.

All too often, these people are women, driving alone in an SUV the size of a semi-truck, and that cost $70,000 or more to purchase. Almost across the board, they whine about higher gas prices. These whiners aren’t really going to be bankrupt if they are forced to go into their pockets for an extra $50, but oh, do they complain.

Forget baseball. Whining and victimhood have become our national pastimes. Now there’s a World Classic we wouldn’t lose, like we keep doing in baseball.

I’ve written in the past debunking the griping about gasoline prices and holiday travel using the math of the average length of drive for these holiday visits, the average MPG of the vehicles and median income. Simply put, it’s not that much of an economic hardship for most people.

These days, opportunists in the oil market are pricing in a doomsday scenario due to the air attacks on Iran. They have ratcheted up the price of oil and, by extension gasoline, to reflect that.

And the leftist media can always find someone screaming like a cat with its tail caught in the screen door regarding rising gasoline prices.

Are these people righteous? Mostly no.

Consider, the average driver in these United States puts about 13,662 miles on his or her vehicles each year according to 2025 data from the Federal Highway Administration. That’s a tick under 263 miles a week.

The average miles per gallon figures, again domestically, are 24.4 MPG for cars and 17.8 for light trucks, vans, SUVs.

To make the math easy, let’s say the average personal-use vehicle gets 20 MPG. Divide that into the average weekly mileage and you get just over 13 gallons of gasoline used to cover that distance.

Now, again to make the math easy, say gasoline prices have increased $1 a gallon. That’s an extra $13 a week, $52 a month and, should this thing endure for an entire year, $676.

That worst-case scenario is not a bill that comes due up front, but is paid $13 a week.

Cut out a couple of overpriced coffees per week and you’ve made up for that extra $13.

If you are living so close to the bone that an extra $13 a week in expense cripples your budget, you have been and presumably are doing a lot of things wrong.

I wish this Iran adventure were costing me just $13 a week. But, it’s thrown a wrench into the precious metals markets and mining stocks. There were days last week when I lost many multiples of $13 a minute while the markets were open.

Not complaining, mind you, just sharing facts. I’m still for President Trump’s actions regarding Iran, even if it is negatively impacting my net worth in extreme ways.

I’m looking at the long view on this – short-term pain for long-term gain. I just wish I had more company in that school of thought.