Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

It was a common feature during my younger years to have women abused by their spouses blaming themselves for it all.

In real life, and often in television shows borrowing from real life, the stereotypical scene showed a crying woman, perhaps with a black eye or bruises, explaining to police they shouldn’t take her abusive husband off to jail because she’d done something to make him mad, provoked the attack, and so she was to blame.

Yes, it was ridiculous. So were ads with doctors promoting smoking, lawn dart toys for kids and similar absurdities. In retrospect, it all is hard to understand. At the time, it was everyday life.

Fast-forward to the present and the LameStream media has incorporated victim shaming as a main aspect of its news coverage.

Consider the weekend bombing strikes against Iran. Rational people – patriots — celebrated the derailing of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The dust barely had settled – literally – when I read one hysterical report that now Russia and China and perhaps North Korea were rushing to give nuclear warheads to Iran. This point of view, that Israel and the United State had gone and done it, angering Iran, and so deserve whatever they get, was being pushed by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. There was no shortage of outlets willing to run with the story.

These are the usual suspects that proclaim wildly whenever Donald Trump or some other western source eliminates a terrorist chief, that it won’t play well with the so-called Arab Street and thus provoke more terrorism.

That this flies in the face of experience doesn’t slow their roll. It’s all about fearmongering.

There are some atypical news outlets today proclaiming that Medvedev’s threats are merely so much blather, for reasons both technical and practical. Kudos to them.

Other outlets, though, point the finger at Trump for kicking a hornet’s nest. Anything that happens now, anywhere and for any reason, blame Trump.

Democrats are screaming “unconstitutional,” “impeachment,” “threat to democracy” as you would expect from their intellectually bankrupt ranks.

Gavin Newsom took a break from pumping gel into his hair to wonder aloud about threats to California that might arise from Trump’s decisiveness.

Gavin and LA Mayor Karen “Rhymes With Ass” Bass have been exhibiting crossed wires in their craniums for some time. Bass, like Nero, watched from afar as Los Angeles burned. Then, she and Newsom blamed law enforcment, particulary ICE, for riots protesting law enforcement.

People in the country illegally, being supported by protesters doing physical harm to people and damage to property, is to be excused because meanie Trump, to borrow from the vernacular of the abused wife, made them mad by enforcing the law.

Don’t expect the left, be it in government or media, to change tactics on their own and adopt sanity. It’s up to you to dismiss out of hand the utter garbage they spew — change the channel or vote for the opposition.

That’s the only reality they seem to understand.

Talk about a bizarre world, the latest example being reaction to President Trump giving the go-ahead for what early reports indicate was a successful bombing mission on Iran nuclear facilities Saturday night.

Splinter factions of MAGA reportedly took to social media to lament it all, even as Democrat Senator John Fetterman said Trump did the right thing. Maybe the disaffected MAGA minority can run and find a judge to order the planes back. Oh, wait, too late.

Once again, Trump has our enemies living my favorite acronym, FAFO (Fxxx(ool) Around, Find Out).

I learned leading up to the most recent presidential election that watching Real America’s Voice was the best option for conservative news coverage. While outlets such as FoxNews give their A teams weekends off, and copious nights off during the week, the top people at Real America’s Voice work weekends when their spidey senses tell them there is news to cover.

That is why, when I saw Steve Bannon was broadcasting Saturday evening, I tuned in and watched it all unfold.

The Trump administration provided a master class in misdirection. Yes, he came back to the White House earlier than expected Saturday, but gave no audience to the media and the White House media spokespeople declared an early lid, as in go home, nothing more tonight.

As an aside, the Marine One helicopter landed easily on the White House lawn, despite speculation I’d read from some Trump critics that his newly installed, towering flag poles, made that sketchy if not entirely impossible.

This sort of snarky commentary is why Trump has been known to note that if he walked on water tomorrow, critics would lead with the headline: Trump Can’t Swim.

Many of the talking heads on Real America’s Voice and elsewhere continued to debate the wisdom of potentially bombing the nuclear facilities after the media lid was declared, and even as the mission already was covertly underway.

Around 8 p.m., Trump took to his Truth Social to report the raid, declare it a success, and push for peace.

Pity all the media morons who had another TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) broadside ready if his self-declared two-week window to come to a decision on the bombing expired without action.

Trump should make video shots of the bombed-out areas as famous as his mugshot. TACO, indeed.

Iran’s leadership is nothing if not consistent – in being maniacally misguided, that is. Even with the country imploding around him, the ayatollah was refusing to negotiate, refusing to surrender and refusing to embrace reality.

Expect Iran to strike back, in typically gutless fashion with terror attacks. Expect Trump to punish them further if and when they do that.

Also expect a chorus of fears to be expressed that we’re locking ourselves into a forever war. We are not. Trump has no intent on doing that and I trust him. I expect his address scheduled for 10 p.m. tonight to stress this was our military contribution to the cause, other than helping shoot down Iran missiles raining down on Israel.

The strike on the nuclear facilities was necessary, arguably overdue, and something Israel could not handle on its own. Give the Israelis high marks for preparing the battlefield, taking away anti-aircraft protection so that our B2 bombers could fly with impunity and deliver their mammoth munitions load.

We’re not trying to conquer and hold Iran. We’re not looking to nation build, as fools from both political parties have tried in the past.

Instead, we punished a country run by a cadre of religious zealots whose favorite pastime is chanting Death to the United States, after saying the same about Israel.

On that note, some fool guest on one LameStream media outlet was noting the past week that even because we hear this sort of stuff from Iran, it doesn’t mean Iran hates us or Israel. Such is the delusion of the political left.

Allow me to repeat, this bombing had to be done, to erase years of previous administrations being asleep at the switch. I expect the world to experience long-term benefit from it, albeit recognizing that there could be some interim blowback from Iran-funded terrorists.

Trump did the right thing, and I’m not just saying that as a guy who bought precious metals and an oil stock this week anticipating this very event.

Back in the day, when I wrote for my daily bread, I created the Answer Man column format, in which I not only answered questions, I asked them of myself.

Cutting out the middle man uncomplicated things.

In those days, I’d come up with names for the questioners and hometowns, all intended to further the theme. Today, we dispense with those details and just have questions and answers, denoted by Q and A, respectively. Call me lazy.

Q: What do Canada and Iran have in common today?

A: No, not that each would have better prospects as our 51^st state. The correct answer is an NHL francise based in either country once again failed to win the Stanley Cup. To be fair, Iran has no NHL franchises. But Canada doesn’t have that excuse, hosting teams in Montreal, Toronto. Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. That’s seven by my count, yet, Oh, Canada!, the last Canada-based team to win the Cup was Montreal in 1993. Just going by the math, a Canada-based team should win about every fourth year. And, yes, I know an abundance of NHL players are Canadian, but the captain of the repeat champion Florida Panthers is a Finn, their most high-profile player is an American and their super goalie is Russian. Now, all those butt-hurt Canada hockey fans can take a break from booing our National Anthem before games and stress chug some maple syrup.

Q: Have you seen any pictures from Huma Abedin’s wedding with Mini-Me Soros?

A: I have and many thoughts spring to mind. Abedin looks positively anorexic. If she and Letitia James jumped on a scale together and you divided the total by two, you’d have a pair of individuals of fairly normal weight. I mean, James looks like she could inhale Abdein without needing to burp. Beyond the starvation look, Abedin and the new hubby looked classic Living Dead. Mini-Me’s oversized glasses and ashen skin tone made him appear to be an albino Urkel. Nice to see Huma was able to snag a leftist billionaire after all that unfortunate stuff with first husband, the appropriately named, Anthony Weiner.

Q: What is your definition of America First?

A: Whatever President Trump wants it to be. I have no problems possibly giving Israel a hand delivering a bunker buster bomb to the Stanley Cup-less Iranians. And, for those hyperventilating about our nation once again being sucked into a multi-year Middle East war, relax and calm yourselves by viewing wedding photos of Abedin and Soros.

Q: What are your thoughts on attention seekers Alex Padilla and Whoopi Goldberg?

A: They’d be a match made in delusional hyperbole Heaven. Padilla thinks one can storm the speaker at a press conference and not expect retribution. I didn’t know he was a U.S. Senator, and apparently neither did the security people. But that is beside the point. I attended a lot of press conferences in my working days and never expected to be able to act that way without consequences. As for Whoopi and all the others equating life in these United States with everyday existence in Iran, please buy a one-way ticket and self-deport there. Just be careful with the bumper-to-bumper traffic streaming out of Tehran.

Someone should hand Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell a copy of the play “Waiting for Godot,” something to occupy his time as Powell continues his vigil of inflation anticipation, using that as an excuse for not reducing short-term interest rates. Spoiler alert, Jerome, Godot never arrives.

This is not to say that inflation never again will dog this nation. We’re just one free-spending Democrat president and Democrat-controlled House away from that. What I am saying is that the supposedly apolitical Powell is a bundle of apparent political conflict.

Allow me to remind you that last September, with President Trump coming on strong to retake the presidency, Powell rushed to cut interest rates 50 basis points (one-half a percentage rate, say from 5 percent to 4.5) ahead of the November election. This came despite many analysts predicting he would do no such thing because he might appear political that close to an election.

People, Powell couldn’t seem any more political if his next step were to drop his pants and show you the D tattooed onto his skinny butt.

Skeptics sensed Powell was trying to breathe life into the stumbling campaign of Cackling Kamala. We’re reminded of the quip from former Pirates general manager Syd Thrift, who once volunteered of his mission, “It ain’t easy resurrecting the dead.”

It is further significant politically that Powell watched inflation numbers rise through the roof under Clueless Joe Biden, but was unwilling to raise interest rates to fight that.

This is why Trump calls him “Too Late” Powell.

Inflation for August 2024, the latest data Powell would have had when the September 2024 rate cut was made, was running at 2.5 percent. It’s a touch lower now, but Powell and his gang are standing fast and not reducing rates.

I almost gagged when Powell noted several times in his opening remarks Wednesday that he was doing this for us, the citizens of this great land. Gee, thanks, Jerome. Please, stop helping us.

It was interesting that the early questions in the press conference were all about tariffs, with one pointing out the widely feared upward impact on inflation from tariffs had yet to materialize. Another media type followed with a similar inquiry.

Powell tap-danced like Fred Astaire.

Ah, said Powell, but the threat of tariff-induced inflation is there. Funny, this is the same guy who says time and time again that he doesn’t want to anticipate and stresses he can only rely on the data. Well, that data shows inflation slowing and consumer activity and the job market stagnant to slightly declining.

Yet interest rates remain unchanged.

A cynic might think Powell is trying to tank the economy and, by extension, Trump’s agenda. Trump is, after all, a very vocal and public critic of Powell. Can’t wait to read Trump’s social media posts today regarding Powell and the Fed.

Danielle DiMartino Booth, a panelist on Fox Business News yesterday, part of a group convened to assess this latest Fed move – or lack thereof – came down hard on the Fed. She described Powell as “mean-spirited,” which brought a gasp from one of the typical Fed worshippers also on the panel.

Booth is correct. Powell is letting his partisanship interfere with his job, a common theme in the bureaucracy. And, despite his protestations about looking out for you, Powell is, in effect, sticking it to you by keeping your borrowing costs high while you pay his salary.

You should be so thankful.

We often hear people expressing fears of a civil war in this country. That ship has sailed. We already are in a civil war. Just look around.

Consider the past weekend, when Donald Trump angered the hate-America crowd by having the audacity to hold a parade in Washington, D.C., celebrating the 250^th birthday anniversary of our U.S. Army.

Many of my family have served in that Army and while they almost all no longer are with us, I’m sure they would have approved – unlike the select group of unhappy military veterans dredged up by left wing media to quote for a story about veterans feeling uncomfortable with the parade.

In advance of the event, the Army parade had been likened to a display of force one might see put on in Russia, or North Korea, or China. Instead, if you took the time to actually watch the festivities, it was a history lesson, timely since such history no longer seems be taught in schools.

Military bands, soldiers and equipment from various eras paraded with the announcer recounting snippets of information on each. I learned a lot and I’m sure I’m not alone.

It was a happy mood on the ground as far as I could tell from the televised coverage. But, don’t take my word for it. Fox replayed a clip Monday night of a triumvirate of dour-faced MSNBC types – including the disinJENuous one — admitting their anticipation of a dystopian, authoritarian event had been wrong. Imagine, if these leftist propagandists felt moved to concede their error, just how wrong they had been.

Meanwhile, in stark contrast to patriotism and normality, this was the weekend that oligarch leftists hiding behind the scenes funded No Kings protests around the country, neatly coinciding with ongoing riots in Los Angeles, where mayor Karen “Rhymes With Ass” Bass daily sides with the rioters against law enforcement.

I’ve read estimates that the military parade cost $25 to $45 million. I’ve read the No Kings funders in the shadows threw maybe $65 million into that supposed grassroots protest effort.

AstroTurfing the streets costs big.

It costs a lot of money to print all those signs, hand out expensive face shields and, in many cases, pay professional agitators to appear and gin up the brain-dead masses. Hell, they even advertised publicly for these rent-a-goons, such is their arrogance.

A neighbor told my wife she had the unfortunate experience of going to downtown Johnstown for another event the past weekend, unaware this was a minor outpost of No Kings tomfoolerly. She found the yelling, threatening and generally uncivil behavior so unsettling she had to retreat to a nearby food outlet, then come home early.

I can only imagine why people think it’s a good idea to encourage loose cannons to congregate, which is why I steered clear. Seeing footage of these protests around the nation makes one marvel that we have so many elderly hippies, pimply faced and pencil-necked youth short on common sense, and general malcontents ranging about in search of a place to vent their frustration at themselves for being wastes of oxygen.

These people will not change their minds and will not go away. This is the mission of their miserable existences. It’s all they’ve got.

Sure, you have a job, a family, religion, friends, purpose. They have ….. this.

The current Civil War has yet to progress to armies of uniformed combatants battling it out, and maybe it never will. But, it will get worse from here, with the traditional types moved to combat rising lawlessness being fostered by leftist politicians and judges.

Americans can be tolerant up to a point, then they tire of tolerance and resort to pragmatic solutions.

Stay tuned for that next step in this Civil War.

Before we go, I will concede that this nation does have more than its share of royalty. Ever hear of the Los Angeles (NHL) or Sacramento (NBA) Kings? Maybe you’ve spent money at Burger King or, in the interest of DEI, Dairy Queen?

I’m suspecting an outbreak of triskaidekaphobia – the irrational fear of 13 – today in Iran.

Friday the 13^th arrived with an onslaught of Israeli air attacks on Iran, designed to kill leadership and destroy uranium weapons facilities.

Early reports are that it all worked, spectacularly.

Late last night our time, early Friday 13^th in Iran, I watched coverage on cable news and cheered the pre-emptive strike designed to end Iran’s nuclear weaponry ambitions. Predictably, the usual suspects in the deranged Democrat fringe and their mouthpieces in LameStream media were not pleased and rushed to denounce Israel.

You’d expect nothing less from the people who support blindly criminals, illegal immigrants, Marxists, anarchists and generally anyone intent on ending western civilization.

This caused me to ponder what it might sound like if LameStream media and radical politicians decided to support Israel, applying the same metrics they use in covering up for scofflaws,

From a typical CNN host, Jake Tapped-out: Israel launched a mostly peaceful air attack on Iran, an act of righteous indignation over repeated attacks, both literal and figurative, Iran and its proxies have made on Israel for maybe the past 40 years. Israel was provoked and Trump, I mean, the ayatollah, forced the hand of the Israelis.

Typical Democrat politician guest on CNN: Iran is claiming violence, but I know violence when I see it. No one was killed. What? Some top Iranians were killed? Well, not that many. So, Israelis huddled in bomb shelters were having a little fun watching broadcasts of cars, missile launchers and uraniun enriching facilities burn. I repeat, it was all non-violent.

CNN host: But you must be upset that the Tel Aviv gay rights celebration scheduled for today has been canceled.

Hack politician: I think Israel canceled it out of an abundance of caution over what hateful things MAGA supporters might shout at the celebration. That, and the threat of Iranian missiles, and even debris from those intercepted, raining down on the rainbow warriors might not be desirable.

CNN host: Back to the mostly peaceful air raids, it certainly is justifiable when you are dealing with a modern version of Hitler and the Third Reich Nazis.

Hack politician: No doubt. They must be eradicated so the world is safe for normal people. By the way, did I mention I’m selling a book about the cognitive decline of Clueless Joe Biden while in office and just blowing the lid off the coverup by the White House. It’s available . . .

CNN host: I hate to cut you off, but I co-write all the after-the-fact scandal books. Plus, we have to go to breaking news. Taylor Swift and boy toy Travis Kelce attended Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight and the network broadcasts managed to slip in some game footage amidst gratuitious shots of the happy couple mugging for the cameras they obviously knew were monitoring their every move.

Hack politician: You know, Swift supported Kamala. I’m sure the dude did, too. Otherwise, he was going to be immortalized in another of those insipid breakup songs.

CNN host: Now, we go to national security correspondent Coyote Blitzed. Coyote?

Coyote: Yes, I just got off a call from Voldo . . . however you spell/pronounce it, Zelenskyy, who pleaded that we not forget his peoples’ struggles amidst this blatant Israeli attention ploy. He told me he fears the United States will ship all its spare munitions to Israel, leaving his rapidly diminishing army at the mercy of the Russian bear. He also said something unflattering about Jews I will not repeat here.

CNN host: Well, Ukraine does have a substantial Neo-Nazi population, so this should be expected. We have word that jubilant Israelis have taken to the streets. Let’s get a live report from there.

CNN field reporter: Yes, I’m here among thousands of mostly peaceful demonstrators, desirous of gaining the historic territory they feel they are owed. They are chanting “From the sea to the rivers,” which I take to mean they want control of land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

CNN host: Sounds fair to me. Yes, it would mean seizing portions of Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, but what’s fair is fair.

Hack politician: Remember, my book is available . . .

CNN host: Concerns have been expressed that Iran did not receive due legal process. Thoughts?

Hack politician: I hate to admit this, but Trump told them 60 days and this is day 61. Who do they think they are, illegal immigrants? Maybe we should write “Due process” on one of the bombs.

CNN host: That sounds like a reasonable compromise.

Hack politician: About that book . . .

CNN host: Sorry, our time is up. Back to coverage of Swift and the dude at the hockey game.

Seeing the media and politicians blatantly mangle our language to produce their spin regarding the Los Angeles riots – yes, they are riots and perhaps an insurrection, not mostly peaceful protests – takes me back to my younger years.

We used to have garbage men. It was not a derogatory term. Think of it as more like calling a spade a spade.

But, the feelings-above-all-else people decided those who spent their days handling what others have tossed needed an emotional pick-me-up. And they deduced that handling feces, rotten food and various disgusting fluids would be easier for those involved if we called those workers sanitation engineers.

It just sounds so professional and educated. No raise, you understand, just an atta boy. I’m not sure it worked, but those in charge of massaging the language could indulge in orgies of self-congratulation over the good they had done and that’s all that really mattered to them.

I cannot state with absolute certainty whether garbage men morphing into sanitation engineers was the first rebranding, but it seems to me that about the same time janitors became custodians.

Housekeepers at institutions such as hospitals became environmental aides. And so it went.

Fast-forward to today and the linguistic gymnasts have perfected their craft as the ultimate leftist political tool.

Illegal immigrants are merely undocumented. It sounds like all these scofflaws forgot to do is sign some form, or submit some minor fee. Just some more bureaucratic red tape.

It obscures that all have entered this country illegally. Every single welfare-sucking one of them. Many of them did so toting an arrest record from foreign lands, one that too many have added to here.

They are criminals in the traditional definition: one who has commited a crime.

You can attempt to sanitize that reality by calling them undocumented, and fool the brain-dead portion of the nation. But, an increasing percentage of the population sees through the charade.

That doesn’t keep the political left and LameStream media from continuing the practice. They are drunk with power from their success at using COVID-19 to induce draconian hysteria. They made up the six-foot rule, told us masks were the solution and, eventually, got the susceptible portion of the population rushing like lemmings to fight over vaccines that overpromised and under-delivered in terms of protection.

We now are finding out it was mostly lies. The six-foot distancing was something cobbled up, with no scientific proof of its effectiveness.

They might have gone for six miles, but even the tinpot dictators realized their assumed power has some limits.

These days, crackpot media and politicians insist, despite the wealth of visual evidence, there is no violence being perpetrated at the LA insurrection or at similarly themed riots throughout leftist cities.

No less a genius than Maxine Waters noted no violence, because no one is being killed.

Again, let us consult the Oxford dictionary, which defines violence as physical force intended to HURT, DAMAGE OR KILL SOMEONE OR SOMETHING.

You burn a car, and certainly we’ve seen burning cars, that is violence. You deface buildings, yep, that’s violence. You pelt police or ICE personnel with rocks, water bottles and fireworks, that’s violence.

Apparently there is not much going on under the artificial hair of Maxine Waters.

You can’t prevent these vapid politicians and fake media types from continuing to delve into this playbook. You can refuse to accept it, tune them out and, more importantly, vote them out.

That’s the real deterrent to the propaganda they are spewing.

It all seems too familiar. Socialist California has a crisis it can’t handle, hapless politicians play the blame game, and leftist media tortures the language as it spreads the ridiculous narrative.

In the past, it’s been a porous border, raging fires, homelessness, that were problems California couldn’t, or wouldn’t handle. At the moment, it’s ginned-up street protests against ICE agents enforcing the law regarding illegal immigrants.

Los Angeles mayor Karen (rhymes with ass) Bass wasn’t sipping cocktails in Africa when this crisis sprang up, as she had been with the mismanaged wildfires that burned much of her city. No, she was out criticizing ICE and President Trump for overreach.

That overreach would be sending in ICE to arrest and deport illegals when sanctuary operations such as Los Angeles and California won’t do their job enforcing laws.

This is how it works in this country. Go back and research the Civil War sometime. The battle of state vs. federal rights is long-running. Spoiler alert, the feds won the Civil War vs. breakaway states.

Governor Gavin Newsom, “Newscum” as Trump calls him, has lived up (down?) to that nickname by blaming Trump for sending in the National Guard to tamp down a domestic uprising that Newsom and company want to blame on Trump and ICE trying to enforce the law.

As any good leftist would do, Newsom has run to what he hopes will be a sympathetic leftist judge to sue over the presence of the National Guard.

This is a common theme for the Democrats. You can’t win an election, so you seek out sympathetic judges to throw sand in the gears of the administration that did get the votes as it tries to exercise that mandate.

Regarding the National Guard, Trump tried to call out the National Guard in advance of the Jan. 6 incident in Washington, D.C., got rebuffed by the Democrats at several levels, then was pilloried for – wait for it – not calling out the National Guard.

Why, oh why, do Democrats always come down on the side of criminals, illegal immigrants and men pretending to be women? It’s a sickness, and people who think this can or will be cured probably were driving hundreds of miles to get those ridiculous COVID-19 vaccines a few years back.

There is no cure for what ails the Democrats in charge and many who cultishly follow them. Period. Full stop.

One LA media type said the riots are “just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn.”

I wonder how this brain donor would feel if it was his car burning?

And, predictable purveyor of misinformation, CNN, was out again with “this has been very peaceful” rhetoric.

The reporterette said people just don’t think ICE belongs in LA. Millions of illegals certainly don’t belong there, reporter babe.

Again, we had a national election in which Trump made border security and law and order, main planks of his platform. If you didn’t know this as a voter, well, you shouldn’t have voted. Trump won.

Polls consistently show that Trump’s stance mirrors the sentiment of the majority of the population.

Yet, we have Democrats consistently pandering to the minority. These Democrats see nothing wrong with shoplifting, robbing, raping, pillaging, entering the country illegally and generally engaging in genderbender behavior.

Every time I fear the Democrats will prevail in midterm elections, retake control of the House or Senate, and render Trump a political enunch, I think of events of such as these ongoing LA riots.

You don’t need to take the words of Republican candidates that Democrats are totally off-course. Just look at the evidence.

If, seeing all this, Democrats can take control of Congress, it will merely reinforce that this country is doomed and blew its best, last chance, to change that trajectory.

Psst, today is the anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Pass it on, because it’s being virtually ignored.

I mean, this is Pride Month, after all. Why waste a single day of that self-centered, politically correct celebration to honor American soldiers who helped liberate Europe, again?

I violated my rule, in the pursuit of research, and checked out today’s edition of the Johnstown Woke Gazette that a neighbor friend of my wife’s had dropped off at our house. The local Woke Gazette, a thin sheet costing $2 daily at the newsstand and pandering to all causes left, managed to get in one story reference to D-Day and a cartoon regarding the historic event, both on its editorial page.

Meanwhile, stories that ran elsewhere, on mandating insurance coverage for contraceptives and the launch of the Nintendo Switch II, occupied more combined column inches.

And so goes the pursuit of ignoring, minimizing and/or retelling history.

This sort of history used to be taught in school, but no longer. Somehow, the liberals in charge have deemed it insignificant to recall events such as D-Day, while they push DEI, trans rights and the other sorts of political indoctrination that has replaced education, as early as elementary school.

School children no longer are taught that on this day in 1944, the largest-ever armada of ships, troops and airplanes was sent to assault the fortified seashore of France, the first strike in liberating Europe from the German occupiers.

Those Nazis – real Nazis, not the pretend ones leftists see in any conservative citizen – were, to borrow a phrase from President Trump, bad hombres.

It used to be that the atrocities Nazis committed against Jews were used to epitomize their amazing brutality. But, these days, with anti-semitism being widely practiced and accepted on American college campuses and at various other locales, such things are not as astounding.

The good news is these days we don’t need to sent troops to Europe to combat anti-semitism. We can do it right here on our own soil, sadly.

But, back to D-Day. It used to be outlets such as the History Channel would run day-long marathons of D-Day programming. Other channels, such as Turner Classic Movies, would run World War II cinema.

This afternoon, History Channel is airing episodes of “Secrets Declassified,” which run into episodes later of “The UnXplained.”

TCM was running “Brigadoon,” to be followed by “Father of the Bride.”

NatGeo did have some World War II programming, and channel 130 on my DISH package was running a series of World War II movies.

But the downgrade in coverage and acknowledgment is amazing.

Ceremonies were held in the Normandy area of France today to commemorate the event. Back home, it’s pretty much just another day. Perhaps if it were declared a national holiday and people could skip work for a day they’d notice. Probably not.

The whole subject of D-Day is timely because, yet again, Europe is looking to write checks that its military can’t cash.

It is conveniently forgotten that the West had a role in provoking this Russian invasion of Ukraine by continuing to make overtures of expanding NATO to include Ukraine and placing missiles there.

Recruiting a country that is on a nation’s doorstep to be a member of a rival military group is provocation. Recall that when Russia stationed missiles in Cuba in the early 1960s. President John F. Kennedy thought it was worth risking nuclear war to get those missiles out, and he backed down the Russians.

Still, Ukraine must be aided, at all costs, against its Russian invaders argue Europeans and American Neocons. Ignore, please, that Ukraine is led by a pipsqueak man of questionable ability and ethics.

And, while the people in charge of Great Britain, France and Germany (yes, the Germans are against the aggressors in this case) it is understood if not said aloud that it is the U.S. military being counted on to do the heavy lifting.

It’s one thing to provoke the Russian Bear with drone strikes. It’s quite another to put boots on the ground and try to push into Russian territory.

If things went bad for the Russians on that front and we did make inroads, please understand Russians possess enough nuclear weaponry to incinerate this Earth many times over. Perhaps loud Greta should be mouthing off about this instead of doing photo opps on a Hamas sailing vessel.

Come to think of it, can you imagine the progeny if Elon impregnated Greta?

The current state of uncertainty in Europe is exactly the sort of perilous time when we need to rely on President Donald J. Trump to say no to our European “allies” so eager to spill American blood and spend American treasure.

It’s time to tell them if they’re big enough to get themselves into these scraps, they should be big enough to get themselves out.

Along that line, it’s time for the U.S. to say goodbye to NATO.

USAfacts.org estimates the U.S. has contributed almost $22 trillion to NATO over the past 75 years, more than half of our current national debt of slightly more than $36 trillion.

That would produce the kind of budgetary savings I could get behind.

Near the end of a call to my brother Thursday afternoon, one I had initiated to update him on having discovered where Fox tried to hide its Bob’s Burgers animation show, formerly a staple of Sunday nights but now ensconced at 8 p.m. Thursdays, he wanted to know what I thought about Elon Musk and President Trump trading shots.

I told him then that I was trying to process it all. I’m writing this at 12:30 a.m. Friday morning and I’m still confused.

Note that I didn’t say surprised. Trump and Musk both are mercurial sorts. A public blowup was all but inevitable.

I’ve often said I couldn’t work for either, but I can and have voted for Trump, three times.

And that is the critical issue.

As a bit of background, I never bought into the deification of Musk when the political left made him out to be a hero saving the planet by selling electric cars, albeit cars heavily subsidized by tax credits. Musk also was involved with solar panels, another product whose appeal was goosed by government tax credit handouts.

I always viewed Musk as a mix of P.T. Barnum and Nikola Tesla – the melding of a promoter and a genius inventor. Because Tesla was the father of our modern electrical grid, his name was a natural for a company producing electric cars that Musk has come to control. It is fitting, also, that Tesla was, shall we say, a bit of an odd sort.

Among Tesla’s obsessive compulsive quirks were absurd amounts of handwashing, wearing gloves to avoid contact with others when shaking hands and demanding all his food be boiled before he ate it. He was fascinated with the number 3, walking around a building three times before entering, requiring 18 napkins to fold before eating, 18 towels each morning at a hotel and the hotel room number had to be divisible by three.

Tesla also hated pearls, and would not to speak to women wearing them.

Perhaps because of this, Tesla never had any children. By way of contrast, Musk seems to be set on singlehandedly putting together a small group to settle Mars, with some published reports crediting him with fathering “at least” 14 children.

Many, including a self-proclaimed Musk biographer, cite Musk’s autism, depression, and self-admitted use of the drug ketamine to help cope with these problems, as well as pain and stress, as explanations for rash behavior.

A recent New York Times story detailed Musk and his drug use.

A troubled individual losing control of himself would help explain this burst of wild social media posts, beginning with blowing up Trump’s so-called big, beautiful bill (BBB), to noting he would outlive Trump, to calling for Trump’s impeachment, and implying Trump is a pedophile on the so-called Epstein list.

Trump, being who he is, has fired back. But, in this wild exchange, Trump uncharacteristically is the one showing restraint.

Early reads on the public spat, one cited by my brother, is that it was just an act, designed perhaps to take the public heat off Musk and allow him once again to sell lots of EVs to far-left tree huggers.

Others postulated this was some devious Trump plan to force more spending cuts into the BBB.

I’m thinking the pedolphile accusation and impeachment posts indicate this is no act.

Calling on my brief experience working at a group home, I can tell you that Musk exhibits the erratic behavior characteristics of the residents I used to encounter. You haven’t lived until a crazed female tries to part your hair with a heavy metallic fire extinguisher, just because.

Musk might have been strung out on something he takes, or just enduring a naturally psychotic moment or two.

It’s been an expensive blowup for Musk, who saw his fortune reduced by an estimated $34 billion and the Tesla market cap shaved by a reported $153 billion as shares tanked almost 15 percent in wild trading Thursday.

In the past, when Tesla shares have suffered such meltdowns, there have been times I bought a few shares hoping for a pop. The stock does have a huge fan boy following.

I think I’ve made a few bucks net on these punts, and I contemplated buying some today. But I held off because getting into a contest with President Trump is not a good move when your companies have a lot of government contracts.

And the stock price continued to drop after I considered buying, then passed on it.

By late Thursday night, Musk seemed to be extending an olive branch or two on social media posts. But, by mid-Friday, Musk might repurpose the olive branches to resume beating on Trump.

Rest assured, Trump will fight back. This could be a battle Elon can’t win.