Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

Only here can you read a tortured linkage between Greater Johnstown’s weekend boom (acoustical, not economic, of course) and the NFL standing firm on its intent to send the Steelers to play a football game in the Paris war zone this coming weekend.

It was Saturday night, shortly after 9 p.m., when a loud explosion shook the front of my house (note that fact for later) in Southmont Borough and startled the wife and our small dog, Virgil, both of whom already having repaired to the bedroom for the night.

I was watching sports on the tube when I heard – and felt – the boom.

A few years back, before my ‘hood had devolved into a cacophony of fireworks set off randomly by ADHD types, hour-long drumming sessions, over-amped stereos, illegal and noisy vehicles of all kinds being run up and down the street, rogue car alarms, and packs of dogs whose owners seem oblivious to the constant barks of their canines, there would have been a rush to the door to gather information on the boom.

These days, my butt remained planted in the sectional’s recliner. Only later, when making a trip to the bathroom, did I check to compare notes with the wife — and Virgil.

In the interim, fire sirens had been heard, along with what seemed to be such emergency vehicles rushing past on Goucher Street.

Social media message sites, including the Neighbors one the wife frequents, apparently already were ablaze with speculation. Had a house exploded on Tioga Street? Had the smattering of No Kings protesters from earlier gone violent? Were “students” looking to trash the area, like Paris?

Predictably, officials had nothing to offer, even going so far as to deny there had been an explosion of any kind. This too often is the fallback position of our establishment. Don’t believe your lying eyes, or in this case, ears. It’s the same stuff being spewed regarding UFOs, USOs, UAPs, not to mention nefarious operations by the FBI, CIA, NSA, USAID, NGOs and other governmental alphabet soup operations.

I had relegated the boom to the great unsolved mysteries of life file. Yesterday, while on a walk, a neighbor woman referred to the boom and speculated a report might show up on our local television newscast.

Said I: “Only if they heard it in State College or Centre County.”

Imagine my surprise Sunday night when the local television station’s web site had someone in authority actually admitting to a boom after an initial blanket denial. Of course, our local regional gendarmes could not be reached for comment.

But, in a Monday morning update, the site referred to Tannerite, an explosive compound shooters favor for added kicks and giggles because it is set off when hit by a high-speed firearms round.

In the interest of fairness, perhaps the local Woke Gazette had something, too. I cannot say for sure since the Woke Gazette’s web site is locked behind a paywall and I don’t have an open line of credit to float a loan to cover the cost of purchasing a single copy at any retail outlet.

I’m still laboring to grasp why the concussion was felt on the front of my house, away from the directions initially cited for the boom. And, along that line, I’m not totally buying the Tannerite tale, just as I didn’t accept so many “swamp gas” explanations that Project Blue Book had for UFOs witnessed by the populace.

Also Monday morning, the NFL has decreed the scheduled game between the Steelers and New Orleans Saints will be played in riot-torn Paris, as planned.

I presume the tone-deaf NFL will pack a 747 with those insipid helmet stickers – Choose Love, Inspire Change, Stop Hate, End Racism – to be passed out to rioting “students” and thus solve France’s immigrant-inspired meltdown.

Also, it is regrettable that Joey Porter Sr. no longer is associated with the Steelers. This would be the kind of trip the former star linebacker might have enjoyed, considering his many reported brushes with the law through the years and the various stories of the times he was a pain in the rump while attending his son’s high school football games.

Speaking of pains in the rump, various reports recall the time Porter Sr. was shot in his ample backside in late August 2003 outside a Denver bar. He missed two games that season due to the shooting.

I suspect Porter The Elder would have found a way to insinuate himself into the Paris riot scene as a real-life Forrest Gump.

Pitt and Penn State provided an island of the expected amidst the sea of unexpected in college football Saturday. This was not a good thing.

Pitt played yet another uneven game, managing to blow a 12-0 lead in a 27-21 loss to Boston College. Make no mistake, this is a mediocre BC team, despite the 3-3 record. Those other wins were vs. sad sack Rutgers and Maine, the same Maine team that also got blown out by Elon this season and has losses to Merrimack, Sacred Heart and Bryant.

This is the pedigree of the Boston College team that sent Pitt to its second consecutive loss since Panthers coach Pat (Me On The Back) Narduzzi (No Doozy) went on a post-game tirade about his team deserving to be ranked after getting a gift win at Virginia Tech.

Well, Pitt was ranked, for a week, all the time it took to lose to North Carolina the following weekend, and now this.

No Doozy was more subdued after this BC loss, beginning his post game comments with “obviously, um (clears his throat) not a great outing . . . “

You think? Pitt absorbed 13 penalties for 133 yards, five of them for 63 yards on a single Boston College possession. I don’t want to hear about starting quarterback Mason Heintschel being out for the season with a knee injury.

Hey, Pat, that 1976 Pitt national championship team that was honored the previous weekend, it beat Miami (not Ohio) 36-19 on Oct. 16, 1976, with third-string quarterback Tommy Yewcic, he of Conemaugh Valley High School, at the helm due to injuries to Robert Haygood and Matt Cavanaugh.

Yes, that team had Tony Dorsett running the ball. Still, this week’s pick in your quarterback lottery had a 12-0 lead and helped give it away with two interceptions.

Also, admittedly, in 1976 that was not a vintage Miami powerhouse team, ending the season just 3-8. It is notable, however, that in 1976 Miami lost by only a 17-9 margin to No. 5 Nebraska, 21-7 to Penn State, and beat Boston College, 13-6.

Only one team (Notre Dame with 40) put up more points vs. Miami in 1976 than did the Panthers, playing with a third-string quarterback.

By the way, the Pitt coach back then, Johnny Majors, didn’t need to scream about poll exclusion, having opened the season by pounding Notre Dame (not Miami, OHIO, as Pitt did this season), ending the regular season by beating Penn State, then humbling No. 5 Georgia, 27-3 in the Sugar Bowl.

But No Doozy and the guys get a chance to play the real Miami, The U, Saturday. Good luck, gang.

Meanwhile, Penn State, AKA Iowa State’s Central Pa. branch campus, was losing, as usual, at Michigan. But this 21-18 setback was not the usual Penn State big flop in the Big House.

First, Michigan is an unimpressive 4-2, having beaten Western Michigan, 13-12, in early September only by virtue of officiating ineptitude.

Those Wolverines likely would not have beaten Penn State, had they not benched sophomore quarterback Bryce Underwood, reportedly making $3 million this season in NIL (name, image and likeness) money.

For the second half, Michigan used Tommy Carr (grandson of legendary former coach Lloyd Carr) and erased a 3-0 halftime deficit. Carr is a reported bargain at $400,000 or so NIL.

It helped that Penn State’s Iowa State-exile quarterback, Rocco Becht (reportedly making more than $1 million in NIL), threw two interceptions and fumbled once in that second half.

Ah, $1 million doesn’t buy what it used to.

But, PSU coach Matt “Soupy” Campbell, another Iowa State expatriate, will stick with Becht, if only because they both are cornfield buddies. By the way, Penn State is 3-4 and Iowa State is 3-3 this season.

Campbell missed a chance to guarantee Penn State won’t see that losing streak reach five games this coming Saturday. His team can’t lose in a bye week, can it?

Imagine my surprise when the 58-year-old Gunsmoke rerun I was viewing the other lazy (remember that adjective) afternoon seemed to have been written in the present.

This caused me to experience the same sort of epiphany that came with my first reading of Ayn Rand’s crowning achievement novel “Atlas Shrugged,” which was written in 1957 but correctly anticipated our current curse of people feeling no need to earn their standard of living and instead counting on government handouts.

I guess former president Harry S. Truman was correct when he observed “The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.”

Allow me to explain. The Gunsmoke episode, O’Quillian, was named for a central figure in the tale, a rabble-rousing Irishman who arrives in Dodge City and almost immediately begins to stoke dissension.

O’Quillian labels the banks as unfair for demanding loans be repaid and charging interest on the loaned funds.

He tells the girls working at Miss Kitty’s Long Branch Saloon that they are underpaid compared to such workers in the saloons of other towns.

All this from a guy who has ample time on his hands due to his lack of gainful employment. These days, we’d call O’Quillian a community organizer, professional protester or social media influencer.

Hell, in 2026 O”Quillian could be mayor of New York City based on promises of free stuff. Admittedly, O’Quillian would first have needed to renounce his Irish Catholic roots and pledge allegiance to Mecca.

There is a particularly memorable scene in this Gunsmoke episode when Marshall Matt Dillon goes looking for O’Quillian after having been made aware of his sowing of discontent.

Dillon happens upon O’Quillian in a stable, where he is sharing his philosophy with the town drunk, Louie.

O’Quillian tells Louie they both are dreamers and if a dreamer asks someone for food, they should be given it without questioning or reproach.

Dillon interrupts the socialist hour of two lazy types and asks O’Quillian if he has a job currently, or ever has.

Shoots back O’Quillian, sounding totally current, “Why should I work? I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Here, O’Quillian mirrors the arguments of Rand’s “looters” in “Atlas Shrugged” in his unrepentant philosophy that the producers of the world should be perfectly content to carry the lazy layabouts through life, just because the lazy types have zero ambition or work ethic.

O’Quillian gets shot late in the episode when he shows uncharacteristic backbone (fortified by courage from a bottle), but he survives, sort of like Christa Pike

In O’Quillian’s thinking, the same sort of nonsense being pitched to voters by Democrats as the mid-term elections near, there is nothing wrong with relying on the kindness of strangers.

What has changed since Rand wrote her book in 1957, or this Gunsmoke episode aired in 1968, is how entrenched this fantasy has become in the Democrat Party and its mindless minions.

Socialism doesn’t work – never has – but it does have great appeal to the lazy and those lacking in historical knowledge.

Rand knew this. The Gunsmoke writers knew it. But, such knowledge has become a rare commodity in 2026.

Let us give a nod to the hypocritical vermin who lead and populate the Democrat Party.

Their creed is simple: We do it, all is well. You do it and it’s a threat to democracy, weaponization of the justice system and general dirty pool.

The latest example is the search by Federal agents of the residence of Somali Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, which has given Democrats a case of pearl-clutching vapors. In an homage — accidental or intentional – to the late comedian Redd Foxx and his “I’m coming, Elizabeth” routine, Democrats are alternately hyperventilating and issuing overly dramatic howling over the search.

The usual Democrat suspects (idiots) have hurled the expected charges of political retribution. Funny, they celebrated the 2022 raid on Donald Trump’s Florida residence as wholly justified and proving no one is above the law.

No white, conservative male is above the law, that is.

To appreciate fully that Omar, from her diaper-clad head to her designer-shoe wearing feet, is a protected class, understand that a guy who spritzed her with a mix of water and apple cider vinegar in January of this year recently was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison and then three years of supervised release afterward.

Meanwhile, some of Omar’s Minnesota Somali-linked constituents have been arrested, one for planning a terror attack on the Mall of America and the other for charges related to a shooting at a homecoming high school football game, reportedly by rival Somali gangs.

I’m betting neither alleged felon will do as much prison time as the vinegar spray guy has drawn.

But now, back to the current Omar flap, in which the Feds are looking for evidence of wrongdoing including falsification of a birth date, ineligibility to hold office or vote, perhaps marrying a brother, and possibly some ill-gotten monetary gains.

AP, supposedly a neutral news source, but those on the right know better, referred to the Omar search as a “startling escalation” of the criminal investigation.

When Clueless Joe Biden’s people raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence searching – unsuccessfully– for classified information (they should have looked in Joe’s garage!) AP characterized it all as “a key event in a series of legal actions against Trump.”

Not “startling,” or any other hyperbolic rhetoric. Just doing business.

Yeah, right.

How do these charlatans sleep at night?

They agonize over an illegal immigrant getting his cheek grazed while fighting his arrest, but they go online to regret any of the would-be Trump assassins were not better shooters.

They fervently endorse the infanticide that is abortion, but lament a murderess whose lethal injection was mishandled, or whine that a murderer of 13 people in 2009 at Fort Hood — Nidal Hassan, yes, a Muslim – is set to die by firing squad.

These people have no moral compass, and they are on the verge of taking over Congress in the fast-approaching mid-term elections.

Now that’s a terrifying thought. I’m coming, Elizabeth.

It’s been a strange couple of days, leaving me with a lot of questions for which I don’t necessarily expect answers. Still, I offer said questions for the purpose of prompting thought.

Isn’t it about time for President Trump to send a team to pry Mini Me dictator Zelenskyy out of his booster seat, slap his tiny cheeks (either end) several times and tell him if he doesn’t lay off the diesel refinery strikes in Russia, no more weapons, or intelligence sharing, or general foreign aid for him or Ukraine?

How about we set up a cage match between Zelenskyy and Putin, winner take all?

Do you think murderess Christa Pike’s botched lethal injection was what she had in mind when she requested an all-female team?

Why is the Lamestream media giving jug-eared Texas Democrat Senate candidate and Alfred E. Neuman look-alike James Talarico a pass on going into hiding for a couple of weeks just as the campaign had entered its homestretch?

Is Talarico borrowing Clueless Joe Biden’s bunker strategy, hoping out of sight is out of mind, but still somehow electable if enough behind-the-scene vote-counting levers are pulled?

Do you think Pitt football fans are screaming that if only coach Pat (No Doozy, No Dozy) Narduzzi had gone for a few more fourth downs it might have worked out vs. North Carolina, instead of the Panthers absorbing a 21-17 loss?

Anyone else find it ironic that such a collective egg would be laid on a day when Pitt honored its 1976 national championship team, and remembered Pitt great Mike Ditka, who just passed away?

Can you believe that No Doozy has moved seamlessly from whining about not being ranked, to speculating his team is headed to the ACC championship game?

Is it likely Penn State fans, having watched yet another home loss, this to Southern Cal, are thinking if only first-year head coach Matt Campbell had brought more Iowa State transfers with him things would be looking much better?

Do those fans screaming We Are, Penn State, realize that now means We are . . . sharing last place in the Big Ten?

Should Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent get a gold star for the letter he sent to Senator Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren wishing her a “Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day”?

Is anyone else taking notice of how many violent crimes are being committed by illegal immigrant thugs, or domestic habitual lawbreakers who have been arrested multiple times and repeatedly sent back into the streets to commit more mayhem?

Is it mere coincidence that such consistent malpractice happens almost exclusively in deep blue areas?

With this in mind, how can any rational type vote for the far-left Democrat candidates running for Congress or governor positions?

Should we be surprised that the Omani, would-be kamikaze pilot on FlyDubai was “inspired” by 9/11 and was looking to perform such a terror attack on Israel?

Do you sleep well at night knowing France and England, enduring domestic strife with heavy immigrant influence, both have nuclear weapons?

How long before Trump has to do something to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of radical Muslims in those European countries?

Please accept my apologies for having neglected the blog during a run of genuinely outstanding weather.

You can deduct a little from my pay. Oh, right, I receive no pay for this. I did, however, get the $90 Trump Medicare bonus deposited to my checking account earlier this week, as did my wife, so we’ll call it even.

Back to the glorious weather, this is the sort of sunny, dry stuff we usually get in September, but mostly were forced to do without this past month. I’d like to say I’ve been using the time in the sun to exercise my hobby cars and generally have fun. In truth, while I’ve done a little of that, I’ve also been washing, waxing and cleaning the interior of several other vehicles, along with mowing my grass and attending to life’s other details.

Regardless, I have been watching world events and am prompted to issue this latest News and Views installment.

NEWS: “Students” in France, now Belgium, and likely soon other European countries, have taken to the streets to stage the sort of violent, fiery protests CNN would call “mostly peaceful.”

VIEWS: I am reminded of my youth, when “students” rioted on U.S. college campuses, or “students” appeared daily outside the U. S. embassy in Tehran to provide background for television reports, then disbursed back to their mud huts. The latest “students” many of whom seem to be Middle Eastern (dare we say, Muslim?) imports based on attire and skin color, likely are not “students” in the traditional sense. Even if some of them are “students” they apparently skipped their classes on proper behavior in a civilized society.

NEWS: The Pirates organization and some fans have been celebrating finishing the 2026 season with a winning record, barely, of 82-80.

VIEWS: I would refer them to MLB’s ongoing postseason, where both Milwaukee and Tampa Bay have advanced to their respective league championship series, and Chicago and Cleveland play on to decide the final AL title series berth. Milwaukee, which won the most games in either league this season, is listed as the smallest market in the majors, at a touch under 1.7 million people. The Brewers had the 19^th highest payroll, at about $143.5 million. Tampa Bay is the fifth smallest market at 2.4 million, had the 25^th payroll at $98.3 million, yet won the most games in the American League. Cleveland ranks 19^th in market size and dead last in payroll, yet remains alive in the postseason. The Pirates, with the fourth smallest market (2.4 million people) and the 23^rd payroll ($107.6 million), are postseason spectators yet again. And, for those saying after the Pirates missed the postseason for the 11^th consecutive year that turnarounds take time, consider the White Sox lost more than 100 games in each of the past three seasons, yet turned it around in 2026. The Pirates are running out of excuses.

NEWS: Judy Shelton has been hired as a counselor to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

VIEWS: Perhaps you have been reading that our country has a massive debt problem, $40 trillion and counting, owing to a complete lack of fiscal discipline and deficit spending. You probably have not heard that speculation about one way to address our borrowing problems would be to put gold back into the dollar equation, something President Richard Nixon stopped in August 1971 when he ended dollar convertibility into gold. The U.S. is reported to be sitting on a stockpile of gold said to be 8,100 tons or so, mostly at Fort Knox. That is on the books at $42.22 an ounce. Gold trades late Friday morning, as I write this, at a spot price of $4,188.10 an ounce, about a thousand times above the price it is carried at on the country’s ledger. Shelton, a prominent economist who was considered for the Federal Reserve Chairman role that went to Kevin Warsh, is a so-called “gold bug”. In the past, she has called for the Treasury to sell gold-backed bonds, a backdoor method of instituting financial discipline and getting gold backing again for the dollar. Hmmmmm.

Friday night viewing of the Pitt and Penn State games truly was a Twilight Zone experience.

Pitt survived, 35-33, against Virginia Tech and Penn State got trounced, 34-13, by Northwestern. But, oh, the details of each game had to be seen to be believed.

Some random thoughts:

Regarding the controversial late field-goal miss by Virginia Tech, the highly touted kicker didn’t make it. The official standing directly beneath the left upright had the best view and got it correct. The best video I’ve seen, taken from behind the kicker and to his right, shows it clearly. Why so many people saw it differently has a scientific explanation, the parallax effect, which details why something appears to shift position against a background when viewing angles change. For a simple experiment, hold your thumb out against a background. View it with one eye closed, then switch eyes and the thumb appears to have moved. Substitute a football for your thumb and the goalpost for the background and you understand the reason for the field-goal debate.

The on-field, post-game rant by Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi had to be seen to be believed. His team had just surrendered 499 yards of total offense, failed miserably in terms of producing consistent offense, and needed four turnovers and that late field-goal miss to survive. Yet, Narduzzi was unhinged, challenging poll voters to “wake their ass up” and put Pitt in the Top 25. That will happen this week. Staying there becomes the challenge.

We picked Pitt to win this one, but didn’t feel good about it when Virginia Tech jumped to a 14-0 lead. In the end, former Penn State coach Big Game James Franklin appears to have taken his formula for losing showdown contests with him when he was exiled from Penn State and caught on at Tech.

Among the most oft-used sporting cliches is “it’s a shame someone had to lose this game.” In the case of this Pitt-Virginia Tech outing, it’s a shame one of these teams had to win. Pitt receivers dropped passes like the ball was radioactive, the Panthers offensive line spent much of the night struggling to pass protect or run block, and the Pitt defense offered slight resistance more often than not. Virginia Tech countered with gratuitous penalties, inability to hold on to the football, and a lot of premature celebration, including by the coach. For a time, Pitt’s star performer was its punter, which is not a good thing.

At the risk of sounding punny, Penn State hierarchy has to be stewing over first-year coach Matt Campbell after that humiliating loss to Northwestern Friday night in which the winners punished the Nittany Lions defense physically, rolling up 413 rushing yards and averaging 7.5 yards a crack. Considering Campbell’s salary, reportedly $70.5 million guaranteed over eight years, Penn State has bought itself one expensive can of soup.

Campbell panned his players in his postgame interview session, noting they had lacked attitude, toughness and effort in the game. Campbell did add a gratuitous mention that he put a lot of that on himself. No kidding. As Johnstown native and long-time Penn State assistant coach Tom Bradley was fond of saying, when you point the finger at someone else, the thumb points back a you.

I thought Penn State, which had risen as high as No. 13 in national rankings based on wins over hapless Marshall, Temple and Buffalo, would rally with a strong effort on the heels of that home meltdown loss to Wisconsin. Boy, was I wrong. The Nittany types awoke Saturday morning to find themselves alone at the bottom of the Big Ten.

Despite the current stench of a 3-2 record and a two-game losing streak vs. Big Ten Conference foes, the schedule fairies have gifted Penn State with many likely wins on their remaining slate. After playing USC this weekend at Beaver Stadium, a California team that tends not to travel well to the East, and playing on the road vs. a pedestrian Michigan team the following week (just watch the game clock closely there), Penn State faces a weak-sister schedule of Purdue, Washington, Minnesota, Rutgers and Maryland to finish the regular season. Note the absence of Ohio State, Iowa, Oregon. It’s not over for Penn State, it just feels that way to the fans.

Imagine my surprise Thursday night when, having watched Atlanta’s Braves eliminate Philadelphia’s Phillies from MLB’s postseason, I saw online that the Steelers were in process of losing in Cleveland.

I didn’t watch that Steelers game, couldn’t even if I’d wanted to due to it being a Prime exclusive. Remember, we remarked here previously about being unwilling to pay up for various streaming services to watch sporting events.

So, on a night the Phillies shuffled into postseason oblivion, providing pain to the Filthydelphian contingent that has migrated to Johnstown in search of public housing deals or fertile crime fields, we also no doubt had the local Steelers fans kicking dogs and pounding furniture over the latest lapse of their team, a 27-24 loss to the hated Browns.

I read – and later saw replays showing – that not only did the Steelers get their black and gold butts kicked, they also displayed public domestic discord fit for the late, lamented Jerry Springer’s shows.

They didn’t get to the staple surprise paternity test results of Springer and Maury Povich, but they came close enough for television purposes.

Ancient mariner quarterback Aaron Rodgers traded on-air F-bombs with head coach Mike McCarthy, and defensive stalwart T.J. Watt was seen grabbing a sideline headphone and cussing out those on the other end, presumably Steelers defensive assistants upstairs.

To say this is not exactly the Steelers way is to understate.

I confess to having had this trip to Cleveland, and the return match with the Browns, in the win column for the Steelers. And I won’t backtrack completely on my sentiment that the cheesey Steelers schedule should produce wins in coming weeks.

But, that increasingly depends on getting things solved internally and, at this point, that’s not a slam-dunk probability.

Now, we pivot to college football. With the Steelers already having played during the week, Pitt and Penn State join in rushing the calendar tonight. Didn’t football used to be a weekend phenomenon?

And, no, Pitt isn’t playing Penn State. That once-great rivalry has gone the way of $1-a-gallon gasoline.

Instead, Pat Narduzzi’s unbeaten, untied and unranked Panthers are looking in the mirror at Big Game James Franklin’s similarly rankings-challenged, unbeaten Virginia Tech. Tech is a 2.5-point favorite as I type this.

This is what passes for a mammoth football contest in the ACC, two 4-0 teams that don’t have a marquee win between them.

I would suspect the winner cracks the Top 25 national scene. We plan to watch this one, considering it’s available for viewing without the streaming surcharge.

Ordinarily, Penn State fans might be checking in on Big Game James tonight. But their attention almost certainly will be focused on their team’s game at Northwestern, admittedly starting 30 minutes later.

Penn State is favored by 2.5 points, despite last week’s embarrassing loss to Wisconsin at home.

First-year coach Matt Campbell has 24 players on the Penn State roster that he brought with him from Iowa State. Simply put, they’ve lost to the only legitimate foe they’ve faced in their new digs, sort of like the old days at Iowa State.

Another loss tonight and the fickle Penn State fans will be ordering moving vans so that Campbell and his transfer posse can return to the cornfields.

I can’t end this without making predictions. I think both Pitt and Penn State will prevail. Then again, I picked the Steelers over Cleveland, too.

First off, allow me to thank NBC for hiding two of the Major League Baseball playoff series on their streaming service (Peacock) or NBC Sports Network, which apparently is yet another streaming platform.

DISH is among the flood of providers who no longer include NBC Sports Network. And, my philosophy is pluck Peacock and other such streamers designed to pry even more dollars from the wallets of consumers.

The absence of broadcasts of the Astros-White Sox and Cubs-Padres series just gives me more time to appreciate the break in the weather, and to write a blog post.

Stay tuned for News And Views – no special streaming subscription required.

NEWS: A co-pilot and passengers subdued a crazed pilot who stabbed the co-pilot and presumably intended to crash the plane with more than 100 Israeli passengers aboard.

VIEWS: It has been reported that the pilot gone mad is from Oman and while he has yet to be identified as a Muslim, the odds are in favor of that with Oman’s population being about 96 percent Muslim. Is George W. Bush still insisting Islam is the religion of peace? Those weren’t Christians hijacking planes on 9/11. And to Israelis, think twice in the future before booking a flight on FlyDubai airlines.

NEWS: China’s Xi Jinping is back home after his U.S. visit and pundits are debating what was the result of his meeting with President Trump.

VIEWS: Hey, guys, we got two Giant Pandas! Anything else is just gravy. I remember the time the wife and I, with our son and his love interest of the time, visited the Washington Zoo (no, not Congress) and were amused by the Giant Pandas. Mommy panda was given a treat of apples frozen in apple juice. Baby panda wanted some, but mommy kept him at bay with a rear paw while she ate from the metal bowl held in her front paws. And daddy Panda was isolated in another nearby habitat, presumably because he couldn’t be trusted with the kid. In view of Lindsay Clancy and copycats, maybe mommy should have been kept away, too.

NEWS: The United States signed an agreement with Greenland and Denmark giving the U.S. the okay for more military bases, control of the airspace, and generally blocked China and Russia from setting up camp in this strategically significant land.

VIEWS: Remember the panicans insisting Trump was going to invade Iceland? Well, now that he has gotten what America wanted without any hostilities, these same mental-deficients are pooh-poohing the deal. It must be pathetic to live a life in which politics kicks your brain out of gear.

NEWS: President Trump soon will embark on a 32-day mission to campaign for Republicans in the hope of maintaining majorities in the House and Senate after mid-term elections.

VIEWS: As Trump often has said, he isn’t literally on the ballot, but he is figuratively if there is any hope to keep the nation moving away from the Clueless Joe Biden malaise. I’m hopeful, but worried. As the headline read in a post from americanthinker.com, “American Voters Are So Ignorant, It’s Almost Funny.” Key word, Almost. Pathetic and sad are more apt adjectives. Trump rammed through tax cuts that gave consumers tax refunds much larger than their increased gasoline costs. His policy of no tax on tips or overtime, surely produced savings that have exceeded rising gasoline costs. Meanwhile, he’s secured the borders, introduced policies that have decreased prices on many staples (recall the furor over egg prices?), cut drug costs, cut down crime, evened up our international trade, severely hamstrung Iran’s terrorist hopes and dreams (including nuclear) and generally caused an investment boom in our nation. Socialists, whose philosophy has failed anywhere it has been tried, are vowing to take Congress, impeach Trump, pack the Supreme Court, push for statehood and leftist Senators for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., and generally set back the entire nation. And American voters seem to be willing to buy into that absurdity because they are feeling butt-hurt that it costs them more to gas-up their absurdly oversized SUVs. I feel like booking a flight on FlyDubai.

There was some good, some bad and some ugly for fans of area sports teams the past weekend.

Start with the good, the Steelers beating Cincinnati – again — their fifth victory in the past seven meetings in the series. There is a reason why the Bengals are more correctly known as the Bungles.

Witness Sunday’s game-ending fumble by quarterback Joe Burrow.

In theory, this was the first legitimate test the Steelers faced this season. Cincinnati did come in at 2-0. I know, the Steelers also lost in week two to New England, which supposedly is a good team. Yet the Patriots are 1-2 and just got toasted, 35-6, by Jacksonville. So, let’s reserve judgment on New England of 2026.

Steelers fans awoke Monday to find their beloved team in a four-way tie for first (or last) in the AFC North with Cincinnati, Baltimore and Cleveland, each at 2-1.

We’ve mentioned here before that the Steelers don’t exactly have a testing schedule. And, in coming weeks they will face Cleveland twice, Indianapolis, Tampa Bay and New Orleans.

Do you really think Cleveland is a legitimate 2-1 team? Indianapolis is 1-2, as is New Orleans, and Tampa is 0-3 with an injured starting quarterback.

The Steelers easily could run off five more wins before getting into the meat of their schedule with games vs. Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Jacksonville and Baltimore. A contest against 0-3 Houston is thrown in as a breather in that run of anticipated challenging games.

Give the Pirates a smidgen of a good review for winning their regular-season finale to finish with the most modest of winning records for a 162-game season, that being 82-80. If the Pirates were better fundamentally, and if their ace Paul Skenes had produced another dominant season, they’d have made the wild-card round of the postseason.

Alas, IF, is a huge two-letter word.

In the bad category is Pitt football, more specifically the schedule.

Pitt won huge Saturday, by a 59-0 score. But, a big but, it was a win over Bucknell. ‘Nuf said.

There is a reason Pitt is 4-0, but does not show up in the Top 25 rankings of either the AP, or college football coaches.

Asked about this last week, Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi said he “could care less” about such things. Pitt is playing the scorned team card. But, in truth, the Panthers have done nothing (yet) to prove they are a Top 25 team, with wins vs. UCF, Syracuse, Bucknell and Miami – no, not that Miami, but instead Miami, Ohio.

The ugly was Penn State, blowing a 17-0 lead, at home, in a 24-20 loss to unranked Wisconsin. Even the win was not enough to elevate Wisconsin into the rankings due to its other two wins being against Western Illinois and Eastern Michigan, and the loss coming in 41-13 blowout fashion to Notre Dame.

But, the loss was enough to get Penn State dropped from the AP Top 25. The Nittany Lions had been ranked No. 13 there previously. Penn State did hang on in the coaches rankings, at No. 22, down from No. 14.

Beating up on Marshall, Temple and Buffalo (the university, not the Bills) apparently does not prepare a team for finishing off a game vs. a Big Ten foe.

In view of that schedule, you could say Penn State was Nittany Lyin’ about its national standing.