Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

I’m garbage. I know because Clueless Joe Biden said so.

The fact that some sentient Democrats got to Joe soon thereafter and told him to back down on this, which he immediately did being the subservient puppet that he is, doesn’t change that Joe said it, and more to the point, meant it.

Don ‘t buy into the fallacious argument that Biden was talking about one Trump supporter.

That absurd defense reminds me of a time, while covering the Pirates in the 1970s, that poor-fielding shortstop Frank Taveras had made another error. As he left the field at inning’s end, to a chorus of booes from the fans, Frank gave them the one-fingered salute.

Taveras had a weak, Biden-like defense after the game. He said he had been directing his finger at a single fan in the upper deck.

Back to Biden’s latest over-the-top rhetoric, I’m garbage because I support Donald Trump. I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and am going to vote for him yet again next week. In these hyperbolic political times, that is enough to brand me and the millions like me as garbage.

It’s OK, because as a Trump supporter, you get used to ridiculous descriptions of Trump and, by extension, you.

Shillary called us all deplorables and recently doubled down trying to hawk yet another book as she continues to whine about the populace that decided she was not up to being president just because her last name is Clinton.

Barack Obama, an elitist to the core, mocked people like me for clinging “to guns or religion.” Last time I checked, either of those rights to cling were enumerated in the Constitution, although leftists are in hyperdrive to change that.

More recently, LameStream media and prominent Democrats, including Kamala Chameleon and Tampon Tim, throw Hitler and Nazi around anytime they mention Trump – or his supporters.

They really beat this false fallacy into the ground when Trump had a huge rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden. Hitler once had a rally at a Madision Square Garden – NOT THIS BUILDING, BY THE WAY – and that was enough.

The leftists were foaming at the mouth, neglecting to mention several Democratic National Conventions, including Bill Clinton’s 1992 example – THAT WAS HELD IN THIS BUILDING!

No matter. Trump is bad and his supporters are bad. Call them deplorables, sad sacks clinging to guns or religion, fascists, Nazis, Hitlers, it’s all really just the same.

Coastal elites live in their deep blue echo chambers and can’t understand anyone who doesn’t kiss their rings simply because they demand it.

These elites see Trump as an existential threat to their way of life – shepherding the sheep into wars, cultural breakdown and eventual national bankruptcy.

They cannot keep up in the arena of policy and so they result to denigrating the opposition.

Trump saves his namecalling for his political opponents, not their followers (unless you include the LameStream media that should be neutral, but is anything but). That is an important distinction.

For all the efforts to display Trump as a revenge-seeking bully, it is the leftists in politics and the media who are projecting their own inadequacies by making those charges.

If Clueless Joe thinks I’m garbage just for supporting Trump, allow him yet another delusion. Under that criteria, I’m proud to be garbage.

The Penn State and Pitt football teams are unbeaten. The Steelers lead their division.

The cups runneth over for area football fans. But, we feel compelled to wonder, should we describe the condition by borrowing from Shakespeare and his play “Much Ado About Nothing” or is a Steve Allen song reference more accurate as in “This Could Be The Start Of Something Big.”

The next week or so should bring us election clarity. We may need to wait a bit longer for the final word on the football fortunes of the aforementioned teams.

Let us start with the Steelers. At season’s beginning, a metric that considers the past season’s results with current season expectations as established by bettors, had the Steelers with one of the toughest schedules in the NFL. I begged to differ then, and still do to an extent.

What is clear is the Steelers better enjoy their bye this coming weekend, because their soft schedule life is about to get a lot tougher in the second half of the season.

The combined record of the eight victims of the 6-2 Steelers to date is 27-35. The combined record of the remaining foes is 36-32. And that apparent strength is crimped by two games remaining each with Cleveland (2-6) and Cincinnati (3-5).

Unbeaten Kansas City (7-0) is a remaining challenge, as will be two games with Baltimore (5-3) and one each with Washington (6-2) and Philadelphia (5-2).

The good news for the Steelers is they could lose all five remaining games vs. winning teams still on their schedule, then just take care of business against Cleveland Cincinnati, and finish with 10 wins and a likely playoff spot.

That was my feeling after Monday night and it was reinforced when I read a projection posted today on ESPN.com that gives the Steelers an 87 percent chance to make the playoffs, but just 39 percent to win the AFC North Division that they currently lead.

This pretty much mirrors my take on the Steelers – good enough in the regular season, but not the stuff of Super Bowl championships.

Next, let us look at Penn State, 7-0 and ranked No. 3 in the latest AP Top 25 poll. That the Nittany Lions are ranked behind once-beaten Georgia speaks volumes about their soft schedule.

Sure, Penn State beat Kent State easily, 56-0. But Kent State is 0-8, generally considered one of the worst, if not the worst, team in Division I football. The week before losing to Penn State, Kent lost by a 71-0 score at Tennessee, and it could have been worse. Tennessee led 37-0 after one quarter and 65-0 at the half!

But it goes beyond Kent. West Virginia, the opening opponent, is 4-4 and bad enough that it fired its defensive coordinator today, in-season! Penn State struggled with 4-4 Mid-American team Bowling Green and needed a huge comeback to knock off 4-4 USC, a performance one Penn State fan-boy site thought might indicate a “turning point” for coach James Franklin, perhaps indicating he’s ready to start winning big games.

Franklin apologized for being child-like last week in walking away from reporters’ questions twice regarding two players since pruned from the roster who are facing felony rape charges for a July incident the past summer.

Franklin is unapologetic for his record of 3-17 vs. Top 10 opposition, primarily Michigan and Ohio State.

Even Penn State’s best win this season, 21-7 over Illinois, currently No. 24, is weak sauce. The Illini were even with Penn State at the half, 7-7. By way of contrast, the Illini are coming off absorbing a 38-9 pounding at the hands of No. 1 Oregon last week that was 35-3 at the half.

The good news for Franklin and Penn State is that in a rapidly expanding Big Ten, the schedule gods have removed Michigan from the schedule and did not sub in Oregon.

If Penn State can beat No. 4 Ohio State Saturday, or even if the Lions lose for the eighth straight time to the Buckeyes, they can cruise into the 12-team national championship playoffs by beating a closing schedule of Washington (4-4), Purdue (1-6), Minnesota (5-3) and Maryland (4-4).

Penn State quarterback Drew Allar is reported to be a game-time decision as to whether his left knee injury is sufficiently improved to allow him to play vs. Ohio State.

This 6-1 Ohio State team is a lot like Penn State in that it is inconsistent and finds itself frequently playing down to the level of the competition, witness last week’s near upset loss to Nebraska, a team that had been waxed by a 56-7 score in its previous game vs. Indiana.

This Penn State-Ohio State game has a lot of uncertainty around it. But even yet another Franklin loss to a quality opponent shouldn’t keep Penn State out of the playoffs.

Lastly, there is surprising Pitt, 7-0 for the first time since 1982 and ranked No. 18 nationally this week.

The Panthers have been escape artists in several wins and have seen their offensive yardage drop almost 200 yards a game since leaving the soft preseason schedule – yes, Kent State was on it – to playing in the ACC, in an admittedly down year.

Pitt plays at No. 20 SMU (7-1) Saturday and Panthers quarterback Eli Holstein, may or may not be dealing with an injury.

Clemson ( No. 11) is the only remaining ranked team on the Pitt schedule beyond SMU.

In these geographically challenged times in college sports, SMU now is an ACC team, and is 4-0 in conference play. Pitt is 3-0. Clemson leads at 5-0 and No. 5 Miami, which does not appear on Pitt’s schedule, is 4-0.

By the end of the day on Nov. 16, when Pitt will have played SMU and Clemson, we should have a much clearer view of the Panthers’ place in the national picture.

My advice: Don’t pencil them into your 12-team national championship playoff bracket.

There has been some unexpected synergy between the Trump campaign and sports in recent days.

Item: During a rally at Penn State last week, Trump called to the podium the school’s perennial national championship wrestling team and several wrestlers were wearing red Make America Great Again hats. The one wrestler who spoke, mentioned the need to win Pennsylvania and said “Make America Great Again. Go vote.” I’m presuming he’s not in the dudes for Kamala camp.

Item: A Texas Tech kicker scored a touchdown Saturday on a fake field goal and in celebration afterward pulled up his jersey to reveal a T-shirt underneath with the message “Trump 24 MAGA.” Again, not likely a Harris supporter.

Item: One of those insipid, postgame, on-field interviews following Sunday night’s San Francisco-Dallas NFL contest was interrupted by 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa who pointed to the Make America Great Again hat he was wearing, before exiting. No Kamala male voter there, I presume.

I see Bosa has been flayed by social media keyboard warriors, who no doubt think Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the National Anthem was quite fine. The Texas Tech kicker and, presumably the PSU wrestlers, faced similar blowback on social media –megaphone for morons.

Whatever the reason for the public displays, good for these guys who have demonstrated their political allegiance. We’ve had more than our share of athletes whose sentiments lie with the left who have been free to pontificate ad nauseam.

I don’t profess to be sure what all this means. I’m thinking it just might indicate that a large percentage of athletes who before would have been intimidated by the screeching left and kept their political views quiet, no longer feel compelled to shut up.

Are they optimistic that Trump will win the election and the suffocating censorship of the Biden-Harris regime will be stopped? Maybe.

Or maybe they don’t care and are tired of living their lives afraid to offend the radical and vocal leftists who seek to control all public discourse.

Whatever the reason, good for these guys who have demonstrated their political allegiance. We’ve had more than our share of athletes whose sentiments lie with the left who have been free to pontificate ad nauseam.

And we’ve had championship teams refuse offers of White House visits when the “wrong” party, AKA Republicans, held the presidency.

God knows, leftist entertainment celebrities are free to mouth off on politics with impunity, in contrast to conservatives facing career cancellation if they follow suit.

I’ve long lamented the hypocrisy of our times, which seeks to empower leftists to influence the public, while putting severe limitations on conservatives.

It’s true in LameStream media, social media, government bureaucracy, our military, schools, courts and many businesses.

If this is the first trickle of evidence that the tide is turning, we all should be grateful.

In an homage to the fictional sports writer Dickie Dunn from the “Slap Shot” movie, filmed right here in Johnstown, I’m trying “to capture the spirit of the thing” by pushing the calendar and combining seasons.

An election looms and we’re already seeing Christmas themed movies on cable television channels, plus ads pushing just what to buy friends and loved ones to celebrate. Why not combine the two special days in song?

To do this, we fall back on our fondness for updating the words to popular holiday song standards. Today’s example is to be sung to the tune of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

The Democrats were counting votes

In their dishonest way

To alter tabs to get their wish

On this election day

They wanted to distort results

And lead the flock astray

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

Buy this crap.

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

From Hillary to Obama

They wink and give the nod

To tip the scales hard to the left

Ignore the one true God

They think voters are all but fools

And won’t catch on this time

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

Buy this crap

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap.

The Democrats they count and count

It takes them many days

To hamstring Trump, lift up his foes

To leave us in a haze

We must insist on a fair count

And not ignore their crime

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

Buy this crap

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

So vote early and frequently

Just as the Dems plan to

We must beat them at their own game

To hold back the bad blue

It’s up to you to end their ride

And put them on the run

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

Buy this crap

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap.

Merry election and Christmas, everyone.

Today’s laugh came from finding out that social media platforms are alive with posts claiming that Kamala Harris groped various men 20, 30, or more years back.

This is the hilarious satirical reaction to yet another left-wing “news” site pitching an allegation that Donald Trump groped a young girl decades back – 1993 “late winter or early spring.”

Just to spice it up, the lovely lass is said to have been on a walk with the late pervert Jeffrey Epstein when they visited Trump and the alleged groping occurred. We can’t ask Epstein for confirmation since he conveniently committed suicide while on suicide watch in prison and, some suspect, kept a long list of Democratic clients of his sex services from being named in a trial.

Why now with the Trump groping charge? Why, indeed? Perhaps because we are within two weeks of an election with Trump a candidate on the rise, so this is the sort of salacious drivel that drives Internet clicks and notice for the beat me, bore me, but never ignore me crowd.

It also is supposed to sway voters’ opinions, but, thankfully, early indications are the American electorate is becoming a bit weary of such transparent attempts.

No doubt it is mere coincidence that the woman had gone from model to Democratic activist in the intervening years.

She has come forward out of a sense of duty, understand. And the LameStream media runs with the story as absolute gospel. Meanwhile, Kamala Chameleon’s nanny-skewering hubby has been accused of slapping around another woman in his past. But that story implicates someone associated with a prominent Democrat, so we hear crickets from LameStream media.

Fortunately, in this era of social media, there is a way for the public to point out the ridiculous nature of this latest Trump allegation, and that is to parody it with hashtag KamalaGropedMe.

One such poster wrote, that in an effort to be unburdened by what has been, he had to confess to Kamala groping him at McDonald’s.

Another wrote of Kamala cackling like a hyena during the groping and seeing her cackling in similar fashion in virtually every public appearance these days makes him relive the trauma over and over.

And so it goes, as the groping allegations, seasoned with tidbits from various Kamala word salads, foibles, and questionable claims about her background (she grew up middle class, don’t you know?) are spot on in satirizing the latest ridiculous accusation.

This is the spice added to the Dems’ closing argument stew that Trump is Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin reincarnate. Why, even former Trump chief of staff Gen. John Kelly says Trump saw some good in Hitler and opined that he wished he had some of Hitler’s generals.

On that general front, I’m with Trump. Give me the likes of Rommel instead of that tub of goo Milley and his compadres, who are full-on Woke and feel climate change is our greatest military challenge. Did the dear Milley and crew ever hear all the Russia, Russia, Russia chanting? Are China and Iran afterthoughts?

It is notable that Gen. Kelly became a fierce Trump critic only after being fired. I’m thinking that if I learned I was working for Hitler, I’d have quit, maybe even tried to take him out instead of waiting years to come clean with my shocking knowledge, again, all-too-conveniently close to an election.

Kelly deserves nothing but scorn.

The news that many other Trump ex-employees have signed a letter backing Kelly brings to mind all those intelligence types who swore in ads that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. According to no less a source than Hunter, that is 100 percent false. But it worked guys. Clueless Joe Biden won. You must be so proud.

Maybe this open letter won’t be as effective

It does seem that the endless hyperbolic charges in the media are not having the desired impact on Trump; might even be helping him.

Polls paint an increasingly unfavorable picture of the Cackling Kamala campaign. Unnamed Democratic sources already are pointing fingers.

Usually reliable allies such as CNN bashed Kamala hard after her miserable performance on their town hall telecast earlier this week.

Now comes word that the Washington Post, at the behest of owner Jeff Bezos, won’t be making a presidential endorsement. The leftist staff was predictably upset.

After all, the supposedly neutral Washington Post last endorsed a Republican for president in 1952 — Eisenhower.

The paper took a break after that, resumed endorsements in 1976 with Jimmy Carter, and have been going for Democrats ever since.

Yes, the Post even endorsed Mondale over Reagan, one of our country’s all-time great presidents.

Some usually reliable labor unions also are passing on endorsing Kamala.

I doubt these Hitler, or serial groper allegations are going to change that. And they shouldn’t change the voting outcome, either.

A neighbor suffered the ultimate indignity last week – receiving a political mailing that came with a message that there was postage due!

Said neighbor, a friend of my wife, is at the stage of life in which confusion is the default response to any unexpected stimuli, and so she reached out to my wife for counsel about how to handle this and what it meant. After some details emerged, I told my wife I’d received the exact same mailing the previous day, but fortunately with sufficient postage attached.

My advice was to tell the lettercarrier this was not desirable mail and to encourage that person to try to get the postage due from the sender. The woman did this and the matter was dropped as far as she was concerned.

This mailing came in a white business-sized envelope – mine with my name handwritten on the outside, the better to trick the receiver into thinking it was perhaps something personal. It was not the maddening array of post-cards-on-steroids campaign mailers which assault my mailbox daily (two today, a slow day) that at least are transparent in their purpose.

Inside was a single page, obviously a copy of some original, that was a message on behalf of Afghan Amy, calling for integrity from incumbent opponent Frank Burns. Ironically, speaking of integrity and disclosure, there was no return address on the envelope, the better to help disguise who had sent it.

Inside was a sheet of paper professing to be from Jim Hargreaves (James F. Hargreaves at the end) with a purported copy of a letter to the editor previously run in the Daily Bugle exonerating Afghan Amy of any input in the sale of Conemaugh Hospital et al to Duke LifePoint. The message is that Hargreaves, trumpeted to be a former Conemaugh Health System board chairman, was giving Afghan Amy a pass on the hospital sale that has gone so badly for the community in terms of a decline in timely, effective health care.

The sheet called, expectedly, for a vote for integrity and Afghan Amy.

No mention was made of Afghan Amy’s association with Myopia 2025 and the attempt to work in secret to bring Afghan refugees to Johnstown, to fill the jobs locals won’t take, or some such blather.

When Burns was among elected officials who brought this bit of elitist, behind-the-scenes, dealing into the public arena, the effort was abandoned.

As for the hospital sale, Afghan Amy was the paid spokesman for the hospital who is on the record insisting it would be no problem and any surprises likely would be positive.

We’ve said before in this space there are two possibilities here and neither is a good look for Afghan Amy.

First, it could be that she truly believed what she was saying, which speaks of gullibility and brings into question her ability to represent the area well in the state house.

Also, it could be she knew better, but didn’t say so. I’m hoping that possibility cannot be true.

My other hope is for a decisive election result, and not to receive any postage-due political mail ahead of that.

The plan had been to enjoy another day of our ongoing Indian Summer and take a break from election thoughts and feeling the need to blog on the subject.

I almost made it. There was the drive in the Mustang convertible to enjoy fall foliage, running errands, watching the old net worth meter swell as gold and silver continued their upward spikes, visiting with the granddaughters and getting in a short walk.

Then I made the mistake of turning on the TV, and checking the Internet, only to find yet another barrage of ridiculous hypocrisy from the political left.

This was neatly summarized by a brief interview with Mike Rogers, a Republican running for a vacant Senate seat for Michigan. He pointed out how his Democratic opponent had voted for electric vehicle mandates in the U.S. House, only to then run an ad saying she was not in favor of banning traditional internal combustion engine vehicles.

This Kamala-Chameleon-like tap dance comes at a time when traditional automakers, based in Michigan, are bleeding red ink from unsuccessful, politically forced, forays into the EV market. Layoffs have been announced.

If you want to push the EV agenda, fine. But then admit it to the world and, more importantly, to your would-be constituents whose lives are affected by your Green New Deal views.

Here are some short takes on other Democratic hypocrisy I saw, all today.

Leftist Democrats are whining that Donald Trump’s McDonald’s visit was “staged” yet have no problem that Kamala Chameleon did an alleged town hall in which the town hall audience had no ability to ask questions. Those had been “predetermined” said the shill host to a person wanting to get a question in to the Chameleon.

Also, my son happened to be in the Moon Township area in August when patrons were thrown out of a Primanti Brothers restaurant so Kamala Chamelon, Tampon Tim, and vans full of faux customers could be substituted for a staged campaign stop. Staged. Staged. Staged. Yet no media outrage. Hmmmm.

The British Labour Party is importing workers to help Kamala Chameleon in swing states such as Pennsylvania and another fringe British group is aligning with the Chameleon campaign to “kill Twitter,” owned by prominent billionaire Trump supporter Elon Musk, by harassing Twitter’s advertising base. Where are the hysterical screams about foreign interference in our election?

The latest absurd leftist talking point is that Trump is tired and running out of steam. This regarding a guy who does multiple campaign events daily and has for the past 51 days. Meanwhile, Kamala Chameleon took Tuesday off from appearing at campaign events, limiting her activity to recycling her tired non-answers to pertinent questions for two sitdown interviews.

Leftists in media also seem to have gotten the same memo to brand Trump the unholy trinity of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, all rolled into one. We must vote against Trump to preserve our delicate democracy, the one Democrats have been trying to subvert by running a coup to get rid of elected nominee and sitting president Joe Biden, by weaponizing justice and intelligence agencies to harass Trump and even putting out the kind of thinly veiled death suggestions that have motivated at least two would-be Trump assassins. The only sad note is that one of these moronic leftist attempted killers still draws breath.

The left hyperventilates that if Trump wins he will use the military to round up his enemies. First, he was president for four years, you morons, and did no such thing. More to the point, the crazy talk denigrating political foes and pondering punishment comes from the likes of Barack and his clinging to guns and religion crack, Shrillary and her “deplorables” which she now says was not strong enough, and Kamala Chameleon telling some Christians yelling the name of Jesus Christ at a Chameleon political event that they were at the wrong rally. It is the left that speaks of re-education camps for Trump supporters, who are labeled as brain-dead cultists, racists and misogynists.

Along that line, Clueless Joe, who likely will pardon his convicted felon son Hunter before being led from the Oval Office, wants to lock up Trump. That’s rich, as in ironic.

Kamala Chameleon insists she never saw any evidence of Biden’s faltering mental decline, the stuff that prompted her party to shove him off the ticket, and insists she would do nothing differently in terms of policy. She then turns around and says she’s not Biden and will do things differently. Huh?

If Trump, running mate JD Vance, or any of the Trump surrogates, including Musk, utter a syllable the leftists don’t agree with, they are pilloried for days if not weeks. Meanwhile, Bubba Clinton says Laken Riley likely still would be alive if our border was run correctly, and Obama lectures the “brothas” that they have to vote for Kamala Chameleon because she’s black and a woman – “sista” as Spike (a good name for a dog) Lee whined, without a whisper from these leftists.

There is a sickness upon the land, afflicting almost half the population, and there is no simple vaccine. The left is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Yet, they still hold the levers that control the government, the media, the schools and the bureaucracy.

It’s time to pry their hands from those levers and it all starts with an election in just under two weeks.

There is an argument to be made that Donald Trump and Republicans would be better off losing this upcoming election, largely because the nation is poised on the brink of what likely will be economic and financial collapse.

You don’t have to be Nostradamus to predict this sort of thing. In fact, I’ve made similar predictions in the past.

In 2000, it was clear George W. Bush was inheriting a NASDAQ tech bubble that had burst in March of that year and would lead to tough sledding for the nation. Little did we know that the seeds already had been sowed for the 911 terror attacks that would come months after Bush finally had been certified as the winner.

It was rough going for the United States, but we bounced back, in part because the nation was not in nearly as bad fiscal shape back then. The 2000 national debt was listed at $6 trillion. Fast-forward to 2024 and it’s an admitted $36 trillion, but some argue it actually is in the $200-plus trillion range if the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare are included.

By the end of Bush’s second term, we were mired in the so-called Great Financial Crisis of 2007-08 and Barack Obama was swept into office.

As bad as they were, that 2000 tech bust, and the housing/real estate bust that inspired the 2007-08 financial collapse, were mere preludes to what we now face.

You probably are not aware, but gold, a canary in the coal mine of economic and financial distress, hit an all-time high above $2,700 an ounce Friday on the spot market. It’s little brother in the precious metals area, silver, was up more than $2 an ounce just Friday alone, to the $33.75 or so an ounce mark. This is well below the all-time highs of $50 give or take in 1980 and 2011, but it’s trending strongly.

You might hear the term BRICS being tossed around. This is a economic bloc named for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but others have joined. They are trying to get out from under the yoke of the U.S. dollar, which sees this nation shutting out some nations from world trade and also arbitrarily seizing their assets.

There is talk that this coming week’s BRICS confab will produce a gold-backed currency to compete with the dollar. I think this is premature and expect to see gold and silver sell off this week. But, long term, both precious metals should have great upside.

The high-flying stock market might continue its surge for a time, too, but it is on borrowed time, as it was in 2000 and 2007-08.

We got out of those previous collapses. But, to stress again our debt situation, this nation and the world were in much stronger financial shape back then.

China is having economic distress, with the tried-and-true measure of government stimulus being tried to pull that nation out of its spiral. Germany’s economy is struggling, Japan is having a crisis with its currency, the Yen.

And on. And on. And on.

Things are on the bleak side and easily could fall apart quickly.

And that means the candidate and party that win this election could come up big-time losers in the long run.

I posted on laughable government statistics earlier today, went for the daily walk and returned to find yet another effort to skew statistics, this a 10-16-24 posting by CBS News.

The tale alluded to Donald Trump and Kamala Chameleon Harris sparring over crime numbers and, predictably, gave the nod on accuracy to the Chameleon.

The story prefers FBI figures, but neatly ignores that the FBI has come clean that their reported drop in violent crime in recent years has been revised to an increase. I guess all the Hate Trump types at CBS were too busy with that crusade, or editing Chameleon interviews, to notice that FBI stealth update.

There is another aspect to all of this that I didn’t get into in the previous blog post, but will here: Crime statistics mostly are based on reports to police and arrests, and an awful lot of crime is not showing up in these metrics.

Think of all the shoplifters in California who are careful to stay under $950 in total goods stolen on each encounter, which is the cutoff below which the authorities basically ignore the crime.

Think of all the illegal immigrants allowed into this country on ridiculous exemptions and go on to commit crimes that largely go unreported and unsolved. Again, the numbers fail to capture accurately the level of crime.

Think of thousands of people rioting and burning property, harming innocents, and generally taking over portions of major cities. But few if any get charged, so there is no crime committed, right? Give me a break!

Such bastardization of reality leads to the likes of the infamous CNN banner about mostly peaceful protests against a backdrop of flaming cars and buildings.

This sort of media sleight of hand helps explain why a record low of 31 percent of the U.S. population surveyed in Gallup polling trusts the LameStream media to be accurate.

Trust figures for the federal government and its bogus statistics, are higher, but still well below 50 percent.

Keep on mis-stating, massaging, and outright lying about the numbers and those trust numbers will continue to plumb record lows.

The public increasingly is catching on to the propaganda. Welcome to reality, people.

Government statistics, like “60 Minutes” interviews and ABC presidential debates, tend to be inaccurate, slanted and subject to ex post facto revisions.

And yet they are consumed without hesitation by the gullible and used freely to make decisions from the political to the economic.

Why this is so – an ongoing triumph of hope over experience — remains a question for our times.

The government bureaucracy is particularly bad in being willing to massage those statistics to back up the prevailing narrative as espoused by the political left.

Recall all those job gains designed to make the Clueless Joe-Kamala Chameleon economy look stronger and then about 850,000 jobs got revised away?

More recently, FBI violent crime statistics were revised upward in a large fashion. You might remember from the debate that Donald Trump noted rising violent crime and was fact-checked by the moderators in their typically one-sided fashion. They cited FBI crime numbers.

The Trump campaign was quick to point out the Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey saw a 37 percent rise in violent crime since Kamala Harris arrived in 2020 as vice president.

Now our unbiased FBI, the same organization that gave Shillary Clinton a pass on mishandling classified information, used lies to get wiretap authorization on Trump, and had agents actively exchanging get-Trump texts, has come clean on crime numbers.

That widely reported and cited 2.1 percent DECREASE in violent crime in 2022, now is a 4.5 percent INCREASE!

Not surprisingly, we didn’t receive official mea culpas from the FBI. That suspect organization just slipped in the changes and hoped no one would notice.

Whoops.

Today was a big day for government data releases.

Retail sales were strong, a plus .5 percent month over month, with the help of a “seasonal adjustment.” Without that adjustment, it’s down 7.5 percent month over month. That is the largest seasonal adjustment in history.

I’m sure the leftist bean counters in the bureaucracy didn’t goose the seasonal adjustment with an election less than a month in our future and so this would be their last report until after the voting. I mean, they can always do one of those magical downward revisions after Americans have made their choice for president and various other offices.

In another government data release, U.S. manufacturing numbers for September came in down .4 percent vs. an anticipated .1 percent decline. They couldn’t even seasonally adjust this away. But just ignore it, please, and vote Kamala Chameleon and Tampon Tim.

Democrats and their surrogates consistently say the economy is strong and those who disagree are either mistaken or flat-out fibbing.

They point to record highs in investment markets as proof. But stock markets are not the economy. Stock prices can be and have been inflated with rash fiscal spending.

Eventually, those stock prices can be expected to come in sharply if and when the sugar high of enormous governmental spending ends.

Crime is up – even the FBI now agrees.

Prices are up. When you hear about declines in inflation, remember that’s just the rate of increase slowing. Prices remain 30 or 40 percent higher than they were when Biden-Harris took office. Also, a 3 percent increase on a 130 percent base (current prices compared to pre-Biden) is equivalent to a 3.9-percent increase on the pre-Biden costs.

All these blatant errors and manipulations in government statistics give pause as we approach an election, with vote counting being the most impactful government statistic of all.