Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

If Luigi Mangione, alleged killer of the United Healthcare executive in New York City, was a member of one of those stereotypical crime families, his nickname would have been “Brows.”

Those gangsters all seem to have nicknames, right? And Mangione absolutely would have had to have been called “Brows,” a reference to his prominent, bushy eyebrows.

Mangione looks like the love child of Joan Crawford and Groucho Marx, so prominent are his eyebrows. They are like a couple of solid black woolly bear caterpillars pasted to his forehead. I’ve seen plenty of moustaches (some on women) with less thickness.

And while we’re on the topic, why did none of Mangione’s family members or close associates recognize those distinctive eyebrows and rush to the proper authorities to identify him?

It causes one to wonder why it took a customer at an Altoona McDonald’s to make the identification and have someone contact police.

I’m also wondering about a report from my brother, seen on YouTube, that Mangione supposedly passed through Johnstown on a bus on his way to Altoona, where eventually he was captured. This seems to fly in the face of Greyhound bus schedules and I can find no confirmation of it.

But, it would not surprise me if it somehow, inexplicably, were true. Johnstown has a habit of making its way into national stories.

Ironically, a cousin and I were discussing this sort of thing just two days back. I noted it was a near-miss this time with the supposed assassin being captured in Altoona. When I worked at the local newspaper – it wasn’t the Woke Gazette then – it was a running joke in the newsroom how many national or international events had Johnstown area connections.

Here are just a few prominent examples. The iconic Iowa Jima flag-raising photo has immortalized Sgt. Michael Strank, a former resident of nearby Franklin Borough.

Sgt. Regis Ragan, one of the hostages seized at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, in late 1979 and held until early 1981, was a Johnstown native.

It seemed that any time there was a natural disaster, revolution or some other news event, there was someone with a Johnstown connection involved.

Just this past election, Cambria County, of which Johnstown is the largest town, was an embarrassment for being unable to accept and count votes for a time and was mentioned repeatedly in national election reporting due to the failure.

Johnstown has been tied to infamous acts. White supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin committed two of his murders in Johnstown, gunning down Arthur Smothers and Kathleen Mikula near Point Stadium on June 15, 1980.

Franklin never was arrested for those murders, but he confessed to them after he was apprehended for other crimes.

Back in the days when I traveled the country covering sports, particularly the Steelers, I often ran into Johnstown natives. One time, during a cab ride in San Diego with other sports writers, chitchat with the driver turned to hometowns.

I told him I was from a small town he probably never had heard of, Johnstown. Turns out, so was he.

It was my theory at the time, and remains so, that if all the people born here had stayed around, we’d have a population approaching that of New York City.

Instead, we’re an outpost with declining population, where the growth industries are crime and begging money from the government to fund nonprofits, not-for-profits, charities, foundations and other operations with only a passing acquaintance with free enterprise.

And yet, we seem able to find ways to have our area connected with major events. All this is notable, if nothing else.

Rain has been pelting down on Johnstown all day, but still it is a sunny day, metaphorically. Let me explain.

First, there is word out of New York City that Daniel Penny has been found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, this after the judge and prosecution had punted on a more serious charge Friday.

Make no mistake, Penny still faced legal jeopardy with the remaining charge, which reportedly could carry up to four years in prison. Fortunately, the jury invoked common sense. The jury members concluded – reasonably – that a man such as Neely with a background of mental problems who on this day was said also to be high on drugs, who had threatened passengers with death, and was quite the career criminal, set the stage for his death.

Penny was merely trying to help out those in the subway car who could not help themselves, invoking his military training to do so.

Predictably, there will be a civil suit from the Neely clan, trying to extract money from Penny in a proceeding with a lower burden of proof.

And the usual suspects will protest blindly, playing the race card.

To borrow a tactic of protesters: Daniel Penny. Say his name. Not Guilty.

This Penny verdict is just another indictment of the legal lunatic asylum of Manhattan prosecution, which you might recall has taken it upon itself to persecute Donald Trump, too.

Also on the death and destruction front with a New York City angle, there are reports that a man has been taken into custody in an Altoona McDonald’s who just might be the man who gunned down health care executive Brian Thompson on a New York City street last week.

Just as leftists ignored reality to go after Penny, so it is that many on the far left took to social media seemingly defending the murder of Thompson because his company, United Healthcare, supposedly denied too many claims.

That such thinking is commonplace on the left speaks to the massive job Trump faces in attempting to make good on his campaign promises.

Another ray of sunshine today comes in the form of news that CNN and Jake Tapper have lost ground in a defamation suit currently playing out in the courts.

Basically, CNN was forced to retract a story accusing a U.S. Navy veteran and his company of being part of a black market operation overcharging Afghans to get out of that failing country.

The judge has given the man suing CNN the right to punitive damages, among other rulings in his favor.

CNN had promoted the story widely, but ran one of the typically low-profile corrections. I’ve spoken of this sort of thing previously, where newspapers smear people with banner headlines on the front page, often for multiple days running, then slip in a correction at the bottom of page 2, consisting of a few paragraphs and a tiny headline.

That’s supposed to make it all okay, but it doesn’t. And this CNN case seems to be recognizing that reality.

One more ray of sunshine before we go, this a personal one. I was checking the open of precious metals trading at 6 p.m. local time Sunday night and the wide swings caught my attention. Gold and silver opened up strongly, soon fell back considerably, and spent much of the night on that see-saw.

I awoke this morning to news that China not only has its central bank buying gold again, the government also is stimulating its economy through fiscal policy.

My investment accounts responded appropriately.

Let the sun shine!

Think of the College Football Playoff selection committee as Clueless Joe Biden — eventually doing the right thing, if only after having been dragged there kicking and screaming.

In the case of the football playoffs, that means SMU is in and Alabama is out after what the chairman was quoted as saying was “quite a debate.”

It shouldn’t have been. SMU is 11-2 and lost a nailbiter to Clemson in the ACC title game. Alabama is 9-3, with two losses to 6-6 teams (Vanderbilt and Oklahoma) and that Oklahoma loss being of recent vintage, by a particularly one-sided score.

Clearly, Alabama has the superior football history, with multiple national titles. But this year, SMU deserves the nod. It should have been clearcut, but apparently was not.

Still, there was a possible bit of petty revenge regarding the actual game assignments, sort of like Clueless Joe rushing to endorse Kamala Chameleon to stick it in the face of the people who forced him out.

The committee equivalent is seeding SMU ahead of Clemson, the team it just lost to, and thereby sending the Mustangs from suburban Dallas to the great, white north for a late December game at Penn State.

SMU at Texas would have more sense for reasons of geography and rivalry.

Alas, getting SMU means PSU coach James Franklin, the college football equivalent of Biden, is saddled with a game that can’t help his reputation for losing the big games.

Penn State is the higher seed and will be favored by the gambling types, which means Franklin is expected to win. If Penn State wins, so what? Franklin and the Lions should do so as the higher seed playing at home. But if Penn State loses . . .

We shall await this game almost as much as Christmas. At least SMU got in and that’s the important takeaway.

College football’s two-day Bacchanalia of conference football championship games is over and despite imbibing heavily in the festivities, I’m not too hung-over to offer some thoughts on what we have learned from the Saturday offerings.

James Franklin did it again, coaching his Penn State team to yet another loss against a highly ranked opponent, in this case falling to Oregon. 45-37, in the Big Ten championship game.

Franklin apologists will note that his Nittany Lions are 11-2 and still will advance to the college football national championship playoffs. I will note that Penn State already has suffered its annual loss to Ohio State, likely avoided losing to Michigan only because the Wolverines were not on the schedule, and very easily could have lost to Minnesota (a 26-25 win) and Southern Cal (a 33-30 comeback win). This team is a few plays away from being 9-4.

All that having been said, Penn State will host a playoff game and, according to a late projection from USA Today, might end up having ACC champion Clemson, a last-second, 34-31 winner over SMU, coming north days before Christmas. Considering that Clemson has a decimated running back corps, and would be a team from warmer climes forced to play in unfavorable weather, this is a good matchup for Penn State. Early forecasts for that time period in State College call for temperatures in the 30s and that sounds about right for that time of year. The wild card is whether there will be snow, or maybe freezing rain and ice. And the question becomes, can the weather give Penn State enough of an edge to offset the Franklin coaching curse?

But, regardless of what happens next, at least Franklin has the joy he got from having his team throw for a touchdown on the final play of what became a 44-7 win over Maryland in the regular-season finale.

Beyond Penn State, the question of the moment, one we raised yesterday in this space, is how the all-seeing and all-knowing selection committee will interpret the conference playoff results. The ABC announcers for the SMU-Clemson game were very vocal afterward that 11-2 SMU should not be sent packing from the 12-team field in favor of 9-3 Alabama, which didn’t need to play this week, having failed to qualify for the SEC title game. I agree that SMU should be in the 12-team field and Alabama should be out, but that’s not what I’m expecting to hear later today. Hope I’m wrong.

Georgia-Texas for the SEC title was an epic battle, won 22-19 in dramatic fashion in overtime by Georgia. But all the SEC loyalists who pan the ACC in making the case for Alabama, would do well to note that in just the previous game, the SEC champion Bulldogs needed a miraculous fourth-quarter recovery and eight overtimes to edge Georgia Tech, 44-42. That would be a 7-5 Tech team from the ACC that was not good enough to qualify for that conference’s championship game.

And that Georgia team now has beaten Texas twice this season. Texas has played a soft schedule. Consider that Texas led the SEC standings at 7-1. Eight other teams finished 5-3 or better. Texas lost to Georgia (6-2) in the regular season as already mentioned and beat Texas A&M (5-3). But Texas did not play any of the other six teams with winning SEC records. Thank you, Mr. Schedulemaker.

Arizona State, despite playing short-handed at wide receiver, sure looked impressive in a 45-19 beatdown of Iowa State in the Big 12 championship. The good news is this likely will get the Sun Devils a first-round bye and they won’t get sentenced to a game in some far north outpost where they would be at a considerable disadvantage.

And, finally, I can only hope the powers-that-be are done expanding the playoff field. Despite the griping we will hear this year from those who don’t make it, 12 is enough. As one analyst noted Saturday, all the whiners had to do was win another game and they would be in the field. Well said!

The first installment of the two-day feast of major college football conference championship games is in the books as of late Friday night. The highly anticipated Saturday portion remains.

Already we’ve seen Jacksonville State thump Western Kentucky for the Conference USA title, Army pound Tulane for the American Athletic championship, and Boise State throttle UNLV for the Mountain West title.

Having watched significant portions of both the Army and Boise State wins, several thoughts occur to me:

• Army quarterback Bryson Daily, with four rushing touchdowns in the game and 29 for the year, is a throwback to what we used to think of as the typical college football player. It’s his physical, no-nonsense playing style and love of the game for its own sake, along with the notable fact he gets zero name, image, likeness (NIL) revenue. That’s because Army players cannot take the NIL financial handouts that are further sullying already shady recruiting and making college players millionaires even before their pro football careers begin.

• Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty deserves to win the Heisman Trophy because he’s the most dominant player who also plays on a team that’s going to the national championship playoffs and would be nowhere close to accomplishing that without him. It doesn’t even bother me that Jeanty is reported to make $1.4 million in NIL money because, by all accounts, he is just as great a person as he is a football player.

• Former West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez might appreciate the irony that he has won a conference championship with a 9-4 Alabama-based team, but won’t be making the national championship playoff field.

And now, some thoughts on the Saturday games as well as the national championship playoff field in general.

After the Boise State game, FOX analysts made their picks to win the national championship. The two fan boys on the panel picked the schools where they played, Alabama and Notre Dame. The two serious pickers, former USC quarterback Matt Leinart and former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, both took Oregon.

Bottom line, there are no great teams this year, so any team could win. Yes, Oregon is unbeaten, but has had close calls along the way which suggest a certain measure of vulnerability.

The expansion of the playoff field to 12 teams in this year of relative parity was timely.

Despite the lofty seed, at least until the Big Ten title outcome is decided, Penn State still would not be among my picks to win the national title. To do so would mean James “Can’t Win The Big Game” Franklin would need to go against his form, multiple times.

But I think Penn State could beat Oregon for the Big Ten championship because even blind squirrels sometimes find the acorn.

Texas and Georgia in the SEC title game figures to be an interesting contest, a rematch of a regular-season game won by Georgia. Despite that win, this Georgia team is nowhere near the caliber of its recent national championship squads, lacking consistency and firepower on offense and big play people on defense.

One of the flaws of the national championship bracket as currently seeded, Georgia and Texas could end up meeting yet again in the second round of that playoff. Also, Oregon could need to play Penn State and Ohio State yet again in its half of the bracket.

You would not be totally insane to ponder Alabama making the 12-team championship field, losing in the first round, then being reinstated to the field despite such a loss based on a superior strength of schedule. After all, that is the rationale for stashing Alabama in the field in the first place.

Speaking of that strong schedule, the Crimson Tide’s 9-3 record includes a 40-35 loss to Vanderbilt in early October and a 24-3 loss to Oklahoma Nov. 23. Both Oklahoma and Vanderbilt finished at 6-6. But they were strong .500 records!

If I were a fan of another SEC school, South Carolina for example, I might wonder why my 9-3 Gamecocks, winners of six straight games, a team that crushed Oklahoma, 35-6, in mid-October and lost 27-25 at Alabama the week before that, isn’t getting more playoff consideration.

Oh, South Carolina is not the TV ratings draw that Alabama is. Now I understand.

With players earning NIL millions, why should we expect the movers and shakers of the sport not to bow and scrape to the almighty dollar god too?

Watch these people eagerly demote SMU if somehow Clemson pulls the upset in the ACC title game, or cast aside the winner of the Iowa State-Arizona State Big 12 championship due to double secret probation for not delivering big TV numbers.

Rodriguez might want to remind the committee that his championship team is Jacksonville, ALABAMA, State. Don’t laugh.

Response to the assassination of insurance executive Brian Thompson has produced the usual schizoid response from the left.

A man is gunned down on a New York City street early Wednesday morning, apparently in premeditated fashion with said man as the sole target, and the typical leftists rush to social media to out themselves as delusional maniacs endorsing it all.

Oh, they don’t have the guts to put themselves on the line and actually commit such crimes. Instead, they celebrate those who do, lament the ineptitude of those who try and fail (as in multiple would-be Donald Trump assassins) and attempt to encourage others to attempt similar acts by bombarding the simple-minded with a neverending stream of hyperbolic invective.

These keyboard warrior lowlifes face no punishment, at least not yet.

Consider a defrocked Washington Post “reporter” who both seemed to be endorsing this killing and promoting the prospect of others with her diatribes on social media, the megaphone for morons.

Thompson had been CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a behemoth health insurance company whose stock trades at $582.25 a share as I write this Thursday, down $28.54 on the day. Even so, UNH, the stock ticker symbol, traded at $206 a share in March 2020 and a lowly $6 a share in March 2000.

One analyst who appears on CNBC’s “Fast Money” show characterizes this as a “God-like” stock chart.

As an aside, I have made a few bucks – I stress a few – trading small amounts of UNH stock, buying on sharp declines.

When I was in the market for health insurance, after retiring but before qualifying for Medicare, I contacted United Healthcare in the pursuit of the best deal. Remember, I also had acquired a health insurance license, so I was a bit more aware of products than the average person.

When my calls to United Healthcare produced a stew of bad attitude and information from DEI-sounding types, I went elsewhere. That’s what others should do.

But, judging by the performance of the stock price, they do not. Just remember, such stock performance is not produced on the generosity of the insurer in paying any and all claims.

And that is where supposed motive enters the assassination speculation, The killer is said to have left some spent shell casings on the ground, hand-lettered using some manner of marker with the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose.” These supposedly are legal shorthand for how attorneys seeking more money from insurers contend the insurers seek to deny paying claims.

In the immediate aftermath of this killing, many were quick to describe it as a professional hit. But more measured types noted it was not likely the work of a professional. They reasoned a lack of sunglasses indicated an unfamiliarity with avoiding facial recognition software.

This killer is reported to have used a 9mm handgun with a silencer. And people jumped on the silencer aspect as indicating professionalism. But just as there are an abundance of stolen/illegal weapons on our streets, so it is that nonprofessional bad people also can get silencers through other than legal channels.

Also, professionals using a handgun are said to favor a .22. Yes, this is best used at very close range, as in barrel touching just behind the ear. But that small-caliber bullet also tends to bounce around inside the cranium and deform, doing great damage to the tissue and itself, thereby making ballistic identification tough.

Leaving spent shells and rounds at the scene as a message also doesn’t speak to a professional, except perhaps a professional trying to appear unprofessional.

And the fact the guy’s unobscured face has shown up on various surveillance cameras also speaks to a lack of professionalism.

Reports in recent hours suggest police might be closing in on the identity of the shooter. Hopefully he is arrested and does not commit suicide before the entire story is revealed.

That’s assuming Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg doesn’t free the man without bail just because that’s what they seem to do with violent types in New York City.

I’m just back from a walk, taken in an attempt to digest our crazed world — from pardons, to rampant hypocrisy, to the prelude of World War III.

Along the way, I indulged in nostalgia regarding deer hunters out and about today in pursuit of the animals who have a nasty habit of crashing into our cars. It happened twice to me years back, in a six-week span.

I’m fairly certain one accident resulted in a deer fatality. The other, which happened along Route 22 between New Alexandria and Blairsville weeks earlier, had been a case of a Clueless Joe-like deer walking into the side of my car. I’d slowed probably to five miles an hour, having seen him coming, and he bumped into me and slid along the side of the car, pruning my driver side mirror in the process.

Said deer walked away seemingly none the worse for the experience, living perhaps to pardon his bad seed son down the line.

As a young man, I had ventured into the woods pursuing deer – unsuccessfully – with a firearm. I gave it up when other activities of life took precedence.

But, for those of us who attended the Greater Johnstown School District in the increasingly distant past, opening day of antlered deer season was the holy grail, the chance to skip school with parental approval.

We have written before here about holiday creep, which has turned Thanksgiving into a week off work or school, maybe longer. Similar expansion has seen other holiday celebrations swell to elongated weekends and the like.

Pennsylvania game officials, capturing the spirit of the thing, moved the opening of this particular deer season (trust me, there are too many other specialized deer seasons in the state to enumerate them all here) to Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Now, nimrods burdened by traditional jobs or school calendars and therefore are expected to be back in harness the Monday following Thanksgiving, can hunt the first day without shunning those obligations.

The state also identifies three Sundays that hunting is allowed and one of those was yesterday.

Bottom line, those who are off work or school today, are free to return to the woods if they failed to bag the elusive white tail Saturday or Sunday.

Ah, but what they missed from the old experience. We didn’t get the Monday off school following Thanksgiving. Period. End of discussion.

The former Johnstown High School was a sprawling structure, four full floors and a large fifth-floor multipurpose room know as the Audion.

The main office was Room 211. The attendance office, Room 422, was two floors up and at the rear of the building, overlooking the elevated highway. That was where one went to get a slip to return to class after having been absent.

On the Tuesday following the opening of deer season, the line from that office stretched well down the main corridor toward Napoleon Street.

The air was festive and although technically teachers didn’t have to allow students to make up work from an unexcused absence day, generally those of us who skipped school to go hunting were not penalized.

In retrospect, we were just a bunch of minor league Hunter Bidens, ahead of our time.

Good thing all the Clueless Joe Biden apologists have moved on to other futile causes, because Joe once again has showed his lack of character and this latest proof of same would be a tough defend.

These liars have assured us for years that all the stumbles, bumbles, brain freezes, getting lost on stage and assorted mis-statements from Clueless Joe in no way indicated he was not fit for the job as president.

Sharp as a tack, Runs rings around the rest of us. Smartest guy in the room. And, toward the end, there was the ridiculous assertion that Clueless Joe deserved a place on Mount Rushmore.

I want some of the stuff these people were taking.

All of this didn’t stop the Democrats from running a coup on the clueless one when it became all too evident to the general public with that pathetic debate stinkfest that he was out to lunch mentally. Amazingly, they subbed in equally mentally challenged Kamala Chameleon, who didn’t even have Joe’s excuse of extreme age to explain her inability to communicate coherently.

Clueless Joe now has proven he’s totally unable to speak and understand English considering that this time he’s pardoned his bad boy son, Hunter, despite vowing over and over again that he would not do so. So did Biden’s mouthpiece Karine Gay Paree, among other Biden sycophants.

And, in the written statement of the pardon, Biden had the gall to stress his commitment to the truth. Clueless Joe insisted it was all the fault of the mean justice department picking on Hunter to get Joe.

That would be Joe’s justice department, the one he put on the persecution path regarding Donald Trump. You explain Joe’s tortured logic on this one. I cannot.

Republicans have got to be holding their aching ribs from laughing at this pile of verbal garbage from the Democrats.

This pardon should be hung around Clueless Joe’s neck, and around the necks of his many supporters and enablers, as a lasting reminder how this tribe will urinate on your head and try to convince you it’s raining. Such is their utter arrogance.

Oh, how they tried to give Hunter a pass. All those “intelligence” types vowed Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation.

Then Clueless Joe’s justice department tried to give Hunter a walk on all other charges if he just admitted to spitting on the sidewalk, or some other ridiculously innocuous charge.

When that gift plea bargain deal was pulled, when Hunter was exposed for the FELON that he is, and very possibly might again become, Clueless Joe stewed and planned the big pardon, even while denying the suggestion.

Oh, how Clueless Joe vowed no pardon for Hunter. Now we’re asked to believe Joe had to do it because life is so unfair.

Talk about life being unfair, how about the child Hunter sired, then denied fathership of, until the courts forced him to do so?

How about Clueless Joe denying the child as a grandchild?

How about Hunter getting all those jobs without appropriate qualifications just because he was a Biden and kicking some back to the “Big Guy?”

Clueless Joe’s legacy already was a mess. This Hunter pardon on the way out the door is the cherry on the top of a garbage sundae.

Way to go, Joe, feckless to the end.

I can only hope that Donald Trump hops on this political opportunity and pardons all the political prisoners, say, from the Jan. 6 protest.

I’d love to hear the hypocritical Democrats whining about that, while defending to the death Hunter’s pardon.

Again, congrats Clueless Joe. You continue to amaze with your ability to limbo even lower with each passing day.

It’s the eve of turkey day, with the promise of joyous family get-togethers to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday.

Traditionally, the only downer on this day of thanks is the customarily tepid slate of football on the menu. That is true in spades this time.

But, in 2024, it also is just a few weeks after a presidential election, and the losers are feeling, shall we say, butt hurt.

They are the ones who cannot accept the outcome, taking to social media to shave their heads, promise to deny sexual favors, and run off to some far land, all in sad, futile protest. Be gone, I say to them, on topics of hair, sex and residency.

This is but a small percentage of the far left population, admittedly. Most of them just plan on avoiding on this holiday friends and family who voted MAGA, or, even worse, they will show up at family gatherings to dispense their typical harangues that are long on emotion and short on fact.

My first topic of thanks on this occasion is that the small knot of family who will share our feast numbers exactly zero crazed leftists who voted for Kamala Chameleon. By the way, did you also think she looked a tad off in her recently released video? Has anyone checked the liquor cabinet recently?

There will be no one at my dinner table putting canned goods in socks and wielding them like weapons, as one online video proposes as a way for leftists to show their disdain for Trump and all things MAGA.

I’m a bit sad on that front, because I’d love to give such a person the chance to pay the physical price for such absurdity. But, I digress.

In the past, when I wrote for money, I often would offer up a Thanksgiving column in which I took the liberty of sharing my list of things for which I would give thanks, along with suggesting to others items for which they should be grateful.

Let’s start the 2024 example.

I’m thankful for a loving family and the ability to pay for the meal, despite the 30-percent inflation over four years visited upon us by Clueless Joe and Kamala Chameleon.

I’m thankful for the generally good health of the family and friends.

I’m thankful a guy named Trump is headed back to the White House, and that an increasing amount of the population seems to be getting it in that Woke is comatose living, that DEI is DIE, that borders should not be open gates, that committing crime should have consequences and that traditional values upon which this nation was built are not figurative pinatas to be smacked at every occasion.

On a lighter note, I’m thankful I’m not Prince Harry, who’s thrown his royal family under the bus for an attention seeker who now will show him the underside of public transportation with a “professional separation.”

I’m thankful I don’t live in Minnesota, where Tampon Tim has been banished to ruin the lives of those there.

I’m thankful I no longer wager on sports because it would be hard to resist putting a few bucks on the 8-3 Steelers as three-point underdogs vs. the 4-7 Cincinnati Bengals, even if the game is being played on the Bengals’ home field.

I’m thankful I’m not Robert De Niro, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen, Rachel Maddow look alike Mark Cuban, or any number of leftists who went all-in for Kamala Chameleon, berating Trump and his supporters along the way, and now have to look at themselves in the mirror. And, as far as we know, they didn’t come away with a spare $2 million for the exercise as Oprah did.

I’m thankful I never went hunting with Tampon Tim or Dick Cheney and never will.

Now for suggestions to others.

Hunter Biden should be thankful Big Guy Joe is likely to grant him a pardon on the way out the door. Admittedly, if Clueless Joe is successful in touching off World War III, a pardon would be the last of Hunter’s concerns.

Alec Baldwin, while he’s in Italy describing Americans as clueless and uninformed, should be thankful his act of being clueless and uninformed on a movie set (he didn’t know the gun was loaded!) was enough to get him out from under an involuntary manslaughter charge, for now. That dismissal is being appealed.

Hosts of The View should be thankful the ABC lawyers are keeping tabs on them and requiring them to read on-air an ever-increasing list of disclaimers and clarifications to avoid legal redress for their absurd claims.

A lot of prominent Democrats should be grateful that Jeffrey Epstein “committed suicide” five years ago, ironically while under suicide watch. Alas, Diddy lives, and Trump is coming into power, which just might mean some embarrassing revelations will be forthcoming.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Now I understand those television commercials in which dolts, often young, are stunned to be informed of the number of subscriptions they have that they are paying for, but are not using.

Today, I discovered I’m a variation of such a dolt, admittedly an elderly one.

As recounted here a few days back in a screed about television, I use DISH for my television signal and had recently called to receive a $40 credit due my signal being unavailable for what turned out to be nine hours, plus or minus.

The DISH telephone agent I contacted then had indicated I would see the credit on my bill in about a day or two. I checked online numerous times since and saw nothing evident and so I called again today to check, this being four days after the fact.

Again, I used my loyalty phone number and again, the wait was minimal. This time, a bubbly sounding female who identified herself as Jo Hanna in Texas (we’re guessing at name spelling, but there was a definite pause between Jo and Hanna) walked me through the web side to some unlabeled, virtually hidden click points that produced a PDF copy of my billing.

She then pointed me to the small paragraphs on the extreme right side of page 2. I discovered, with her guidance, that I was at the end of my 24-month service period, entered into two years back to save some money.

Since I am on automatic billing and automatic pay as it is billed to my credit card, which in turn is automatically paid from my checking account, I receive no hard copy of my bills. And, I confess, I don’t read them word-for-word monthly online to pick up on any looming surprises.

In this case, my billing will be going up about $30 or $40 a month. This is how I missed the $40 credit. It’s been applied to my increased charge, which is delineated nowhere on the billing.

I was pleasant with Jo Hanna, but noted one would think DISH might send out an email reminder to those of us being billed electronically that the rate was changing. Jo Hanna remained bright and bubbly, but didn’t really buy this.

In a case of happy coincidence, Jo Hanna was not only technical support (neither she, nor I was sure why I’d gotten tech support), but also cross-trained in account services. Unfortunately for me, there are no inducements these days in which you lock in a commitment period of a couple of years and are rewarded with a lower rate for your loyalty.

I can, she happily reminded me, get the free upgrade to the Hopper satellite receiver, which in the past I have been told is free for the upgrade but costs more per month than my current dinosaur model. Jo Hanna assured me this is not true – the increased monthly fee.

Regardless, my television status stands at a crossroads. I watch a lot of television, as mentioned in the previous post. So do my wife and my two granddaughters, who are around quite a bit.

Our local cable television provider – which I use for internet access – should have a logo of masked individuals, such is their pricing policy. Also, customer service tends to be, shall we say, lacking. That’s why I’ve been with DISH for about 17 or 18 years.

I have come to this unfortunate juncture just as DISH is in turmoil. How it can struggle financially astounds me, but it seems to be true. As of the end of 2023, the DISH subscriber base was 6.47 million, down almost 1.75 million over the previous two years.

It’s been a long-term decline. DISH stock was about $80 a share in November 2014 and was $5.73 when the stock ceased trading.

That event occurred on Dec. 29, 2023, when DISH was delisted as a stock after having merged with EchoStar.

In recent weeks, there was a proposal from rival DirecTV to acquire DISH and Sling TV from Echo Star.

The price offered was $1, ironically the symbolic amount of the bet between two millionaires that was at the heart of the plot in the movie “Trading Places.” Also, DirecTV proposed to take over approximately $9.8 billion in DISH debt, an amount about $1.6 billion less than the total amount outstanding.

DISH debt holders balked at absorbing the $1.6 billion haircut and so, as of Friday Nov. 22, the deal reportedly won’t happen.

In the past, I have checked in on DirecTV and its offers paled in comparison to those offed by DISH. Maybe that is why DISH failed/is failing. Perhaps I will check in again with DirecTV, or hold my nose and call the cable people to find out if some sort of bundling of internet and television might save me money. Or maybe the TV just does dark?

Help!