Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

This just in: We’re all going to die. The only uncertainty is the timing.

If you embrace this reality, you’ve gone a long way toward freeing yourself from the fear porn types who proliferate these days.

Don’t let them scare you into submission. The fear card is all they’ve really got going for them.

It’s especially true on the subjects of COVID and climate change, where over-the-top predictions of horrific events are made with abandon and seldom, if ever, are the alarmists held to account for the failure of their catastrophes to come to pass.

This is a version of the modus operandi of the local weather people, who routinely predict weather Armageddon and, when the dire predictions fail to ring true, they practice sleight of hand by turning the conversation to us being grateful to have dodged the big one.

Maybe there was no “big one” in reality, but only in the minds of the fear porn merchants.

So it is with COVID and “climate change” the replacement for “global warming” when the numbers failed to back up that claim.

Let us begin with COVID, where the lies have been with us from the beginning. Get the vaccine and you have no worries of getting the ailment, we were told.

This was downgraded to get the vaccine, plus boosters and you have no worries.

Then it became, well, the vaccine doesn’t actually prevent you from being infected. But your symptoms will be less severe.

By the way, the father-in-law of a guy whose investment letter I subscribe to died recently from COVID despite being vaccinated. Good thing nothing more severe happened to him because he was vaccinated!

And, along the way, we were assured there are no adverse side effects of any significant degree from the vaccines. To further this mistruth, as has been proved by internal Twitter releases, the government conspired with social media to de-platform any who dared to question the party line on vaccines and COVID.

Here’s a simple question that defines the situation: If there are no adverse effects, why do vaccine manufacturers continue to enjoy total protection from legal action? That is the only absolute immunity involving COVID vaccines. Think about it.

Yet, the scare merchants are out again in force, attempting to get the populace back in their houses, wearing masks and generally worrying about a disease whose death rate is infinitesimal.

Similar to COVID hype, climate change relies on dire warnings and little in the way of substantiation.

I’ve written before about how, during my high school years, climate alarmists were warning of an approaching ice age. Five decades later, we’re still waiting.

Admittedly, dealing with sub-zero temperatures and wind chills of minus-50 degrees or so a few weekends back seemed like a touch of ice age. But temperatures warming to the 50s and 60s within a week beat back that fear.

Just the past Sunday, formerly credible CBS news show 60 Minutes gave considerable air time to a guy pitching overpopulation as his reason for predicting apocalyptic events in the near future. This is the same guy who claimed the very same thing – in a 1968 book.

But now he’s serious!

Put him in the same category as the climate experts who predicted in 2004 that coastal European cities would be underwater by now and Great Britain would be plunged into a Siberian-like climate.

They’re just as wrong as Al Gore, who talked his carbon-credit-merchandising book by predicting ice-free Arctic ocean during summers from 2013 on. Still waiting on that one, too.

Last winter, one scientific survey showed Arctic ice levels just 3 percent below 30-year averages.

But don’t let the reality get in the way of spreading fear porn.

Expecting these people to change is asking too much. Free yourselves. Don’t buy the ridiculous scare porn they are selling.

The Steelers have kept their flickering playoff hopes alive for yet another week and I’m reminded of a recent conversation with a bartender at a Christmas party.

He’s a guy who grew up with me and my brother in the old neighborhood – got out as quickly as possible as most of us did – and he’s well aware of my time spent as a sportswriter.

This was a few weeks back and although the Steelers were extreme longshots to qualify for postseason play, the faithful retained hope. That hope has gotten greater with each additional win and each additional implosion by NFL “contenders.”

The bartender had volunteered the point, one based in part on the storied Super Bowl resume of the Steelers, that it means almost nothing just to make the playoffs unless you enter with the kind of team that can go all the way.

Trust me, that doesn’t describe this Pittsburgh team. The offense is pedestrian and relies on the defense to all but win the games.

That won’t cut it against the likes of Kansas City, Cincinnati, Buffalo, even the resurgent Los Angeles Chargers in the AFC.

And yet, should the Steelers beat Cleveland next weekend, and both Buffalo beats New England and the New York Jets knock off Miami, the Steelers are in the playoff field.

But, by making the playoffs, a team penalizes itself in the college draft and also in the next year’s schedule, in which better teams tend to play tougher schedules based on the previous season’s standings.

Let’s face it, the NFL has gone the way of the NHL in terms of trying to christen even more teams as “playoff” participants.

Create more divisions, ramp up the number of wild-card teams, and pretty soon being in the playoffs means little more than you aren’t in the bottom half of the league. The NFL almost is there, with 32 total teams and 14 making the playoffs.

The NHL already is at an even split with 16 of 32 teams making the Stanley Cup playoffs and 16 failing to do so.

Major League Baseball and the NBA have similar math to the NFL in terms of playoff fields in comparison to total teams.

As the playoff fields expand, such as with the NFL, it’s a virtual mathematical certainty that teams at or near .500 are going to make it. You tell me how impressive it is to go 9-8 in a 17-game schedule.

They might as well forego the Lombardi Trophy awarded for winning the Super Bowl and follow society in awarding participation trophies.

In the final analysis, the bartender had it right. If the Steelers make the playoffs, big deal. This still has been a modest season.

If they don’t make the playoffs, that’s probably the more fitting, and beneficial, outcome.

I was inspired by a bit of viewing from Saturday’s college football playoff game between Michigan and Texas Christian.

It was not a stellar play in the game, or amazing commentary by the announcers. Instead, it was a crowd shot showing a disgruntled Michigan fan – judging by his dark blue T-shirt with yellow lettering on it and the fact Michigan was losing big at the time.

What intrigued me was the message written on the shirt. Wait, what is it exactly? I had to stop and restart the broadcast several times before pausing at the correct time to read the thing.

Said the T-shirt: “Dahmer went to Ohio State.”

I checked and Dahmer, as in cannibal serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, was, indeed, once part of the Ohio State student body.

That this fan would wear such a T-shirt to a game in which Ohio State was not even involved, speaks to the animosity between Ohio State and Michigan, who share only the ability to pummel Penn State annually.

Michigan and Ohio State fans are kind of like Democrats and Republicans and it got me wondering about the political affiliation of Dahmer. Alas, it is not clear whether he was a Democrat, Republican or one of those noble fence-straddlers who label themselves Independents, but end up voting for a major party candidate – most often a Democrat.

While Dahmer’s leanings were unclear, a little internet searching found some political fodder to be found among noted serial killers.

Republicans might want to order up some T-shirts proclaiming “John Wayne Gacy Was A Democratic Precinct Captain.”

That would be Gacy, the gay Chicago serial killer said to have killed at least 33 people, mostly teenage males. There is a famous picture from the 1970s of Gacy and Jimmy Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, signed by Rosalynn with “best wishes” to Gacy.

Democrats could counter with a T-shirt reading “Ted Bundy Was A Republican Party Official.” It is Bundy who in the 1970s killed more than 30 people, mostly college girls, in Washington state.

And, while Bundy was an assistant to the chairman of the Washington state Republican party, there are no known photographs of him with any nationally prominent Republicans wishing him well.

Lest the Independents feel left out of all this, as is their wont, we could offer up T-shirts proclaiming “Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols Were Independents.”

It was McVeigh and Nichols, a pair of ex-U.S. soldiers, who pulled off the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 people.

According to no less a source than Britanica.com, neither McVeigh nor Nichols were “directly connected” with any major political group.

Sounds like Independents to me.

The absurdity that was 2022 is drawing to a close with fresh examples of even more ridiculous news.

We’re not talking about the over-abundance of college football bowl games, although that number does seem to be about 20 or 25 too high. How could we survive without more bowl games between a pair of 6-6 teams whose star players opt not to play lest they get hurt?

Inflation, it seems, is not solely a monetary phenomenon.

But there is much in the way of head-scratching events beyond sports.

The Las Vegas chapter of The Bail Project, a social justice warrior operation with the stated goal of bail reform, has closed.

Why? Because among that chapter’s many projects was getting a criminal back on the streets by posting bond for him after he’d been arrested for pandering and carrying a concealed weapon, then a day after being released, got nailed for burglary and theft.

The Bail Project posted $3,000 in bail to get this misunderstood individual back on the streets and, six days later, he shot a restaurant worker 11 times.

If you are shocked that a repeat criminal committed yet another criminal deed shortly after being returned to the street, you likely identify yourself as a liberal, or at least an “independent” and voted for Clueless Joe Biden at least once.

On an international note, the Chinese have walked back their zero COVID policy and have gone from welding shut doors to keep people inside houses and factories, to sending Chinese citizens traveling again around the world.

Italy, reportedly having seen about 50 percent of Chinese visitors showing up COVID-positive, has demanded testing before entry. Clueless Joe, at the risk of offending his ChiCom puppetmasters, has ordered similar testing here on incoming Chinese.

This 180-degree reversal by the Chinese government has raised questions about what exactly their game is, other than potentially spreading more Chinese virus around the world and looking to replicate 2020-21.

On the absurd U.S proxy war in Ukraine front, Belarus has checked in with reports of having had to shoot down an errant Ukraine missile that flew into its territory.

Recall a similar incident in Poland that first was chalked up to crazy Russians and out of control Vladimir, but later was conceded to have been – wait for it – an errant Ukraine missile.

It seems the Ukrainians are about as thoughtful as the citizens in Detroit and environs who go out on New Year’s Eve and shoot guns into the air, forgetting that those bullets eventually return to the ground. At least the U.S. government isn’t funding those bullet purchases, as it is funding so much of the Ukraine weaponry.

Finally, under the banner of Gay Pride, two items.

First, it has come to light that openly gay Transportation Secretary Pete Butt(whatever) was warned months ago about airline shortcomings, including at Southwest Airlines, well in advance of the past weekend’s massive failures. But Pete did nothing. Not his job. Oh right, it is his job.

Second, incoming Republican Congressman George Santos, also openly gay, simply made up large portions of his campaign biography and resume, and now feds are looking into his campaign financing.

Wave that rainbow flag.

Today’s submission is about investing, so if you have no interest in money or the world around which it revolves, move on to something you find more productive.

For those remaining, we will look at the shares of Tesla, which continued their rapid descent today, dropping $14.05 a share to a close of $109.10. They’re down another buck and change in aftermarket trading.

This one-time darling stock has dropped $700 billion, give or take, in market capitalization this year.

What happened to Tesla? Simply put, the narrative makers have changed their spin.

The argument that Elon Musk is distracted by his Twitter acquisition and so is dropping the ball with Tesla is just so much garbage.

What really has mattered is that Musk, like Donald Trump, has alienated the left-wing media, intelligence and government cabal by throwing their behind-the-scenes manipulations into the spotlight.

Musk has used his purchase of Twitter to expose government dealings and manipulation of the public using Twitter as an all-too-willing tool.

It is ironic that Musk, once a left-wing darling, has incurred the wrath of his former fellow travelers simply by speaking the truth. That, you see, is the one unpardonable sin among the socialists.

Back in the day, Musk was hailed as looking to save the environment by producing electric vehicles. It didn’t matter that he sold a relatively paltry number of vehicles, or only made money through the magic of selling carbon credits and having the government hand out tax credits to manufacturer and consumer alike regarding said vehicles.

The Tesla market capitalization exploded to beyond the combined market worth of all other major automobile manufacturers – still sits there despite the decline – and no one batted an eye.

Tesla was a technology company, not a lowly car manufacturer, they insisted.

There was the battery business.

Plus, Musk branched out into space exploration, tunnel drilling and hyperloops (sort of the like the transportation version of the Metaverse in that no one knows exactly what it is).

Funny, through all this the acolytes never seemed to fear Musk was stretching himself too thin. But now, with Twitter, and his unseemly willingness to share the inner workings of that government propaganda arm, Musk is viewed as distracted.

Musk’s defenders, a shrinking crew, point out that he is a genius and will make it all come out right in the end. But the name on Tesla’s company, Nikola Tesla, was a certifiable genius too, yet wound up nearly penniless at death.

The very same media/governmental publicity machine that once propped up Musk, now seeks to tear him down. Who knows how much dark market government selling of Tesla shares is taking place to grease the skids.

Musk could call off the dogs by recommitting to socialist causes and ceasing to talk about governmental manipulation of social media.

There is a common misperception that movers and shakers in private industry are conservative politically. Quite the contrary, as proved by the likes of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, George Soros and many others.

All of these men have made their billions and now seek the greater thrill of controlling the masses. You can only spend so much money. But being the power behind the throne, now that’s a worthwhile aspiration, no matter the cost.

Sticking it to the share price of Tesla stock because Elon Musk dared to defect to the right side is just part of the game.

As you sit inside trying to keep warm, it’s a good time to contemplate our creaky electrical grid and the additional wounds being inflicted upon it by crazed environmentalist bureaucratic virtue signalers.

If they get their wish, before long we’ll be huddling in the dark and recalling the bad old days of cheap power and personal freedom.

In my neck of the woods, the temperature is up about 25 degrees from two days back, but still sits in the mere teens.

Large parts of this nation are experiencing cold not seen at this point in the calendar for 40 years, or more.

Over the weekend, snow fell ahead of an NFL game between Green Bay and Miami. This would not have been notable except for the fact the game was played in Florida, not Wisconsin.

Another NFL game the past weekend began an hour late due to rolling blackouts in Tennessee. A friend of my brother’s confirmed to him she was shivering without power for an hour or so at a time.

And all the while environmentalist crazies are lobbying to shut down power plants and force us all into electric cars, the better to further their agenda.

When will the populace rise up and stop allowing environmental policy to be dictated by a young foreign girl with mental problems, or rich guys like John Kerry who spew carbon from their private jets and they wing around the world lecturing us about saving the environment?

Aided and abetted by Clueless Joe Biden, the move is on to set back our standard of living to the Stone Age. There is a war on against fossil fuels and farting cows, ostensibly to make things better for all.

But freezing, being unable to travel, paying sky high energy bills, is not better in my book.

A cornerstone of the so-called Green Movement is the electric car.

Consider the case of the guy in Virginia who chronicled on social media his unsuccessful efforts to re-charge his Tesla Model S on Christmas Eve. For more than 24 hours he tried at home, then at a so-called supercharger facility and got nowhere. He just gave up, abandoning the car and waiting for warmer weather.

His experience is not the exception. Cold weather reduces the range of electric vehicles severely.

Even when things are warmer, electric vehicles have serious drawbacks. Just ask the owners of those new Ford electric pickup trucks, who see the power gauge fall rapidly when the vehicles are asked to do truck-like things such as pull a trailer.

The climate alarmists have been flat-out wrong about global warming and they now gather under the banner of climate change. That way, anything that happens – cold, heat, rain, dry, windy, calm – means they are right.

By now, if we were to believe the inconveniently wrong documentary of Al Gore, coastal cities should be underwater. The world should be one smoldering cinder.

Back when I was in high school, scare-mongering media predicted another ice age. About 50 years or so later, still waiting. Maybe now?

Some explain the current cold as having to do with solar conditions, a so-called Maunder Minimum. This is being disputed by lapdog media and social media censors because it doesn’t fit the narrative.

Neither does the current cold snap, but don’t let reality intrude.

We’re being fed a bunch of bullspit by elites who never need to fear rolling blackouts as they hang out in their gated estates. That’s why the Obamas “need” 2,500 gallons of propane storage at their $11.8 million shack on Martha’s Vineyard.

Get wise people. Quit licking the boots of the elite unless you like getting kicked in the face – while you shiver in the darkness they induced.

Merry Christmas to all you who celebrated today. In a coincidental nod to the Orthodox Christians, we’re going to be celebrating our Christmas Jan. 7.

Allow me to explain.

In the alternating year universe in which I exist, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters are in Minnesota with in-laws celebrating both Christmas and the successful completion of the multi-day ordeal of a drive to get there.

In the past, while my mother still was alive, we likely would have had a small get-together here today. But, with her death in April, and my brother’s hermit status, not to mention dog-sitting duties by me and the wife for the travelers’ canines who, lucky for them, didn’t need to spend 30 hours or so in a car, it seemed OK just to forego any celebration today.

My big day was spent shoveling out my son’s driveway, clearing my vehicle of snow and, later, working on my sidewalks at home, ferrying my wife over to the son’s house to relieve me of dog-sitting, and generally celebrating my return home after a couple of days and nights away.

I prefer my bed, my television setup and my reclining chair, not to mention freedom from being hounded – figuratively and literally speaking – by a crazed Siberian Husky dog who thinks I should relinquish the only adult-sized chair in the room to him.

Because I was home alone this afternoon and beyond – no need to notify CYS, I’m of age – I watched some of the 24-hour loop on TNT of “A Christmas Story.” Then I took a break, cranked up the stereo and listened to all four of my Mannheim Steamroller Christmas CDs.

Even though my wife and I saw the Steamroller live a few years back – a Christmas gift from the son – she doesn’t seem to understand that the full experience of their intricate scores is best experienced at high volume.

With the house to myself, and neighbors presumably locked tightly in their homes with all windows and doors closed, I was free to pump up the volume.

Christmas dinner was a concoction of chili beans and chopped up hot dogs. “A Christmas Story” plays in the background (he just got his BB gun) as I add this blog post. Multi-tasking, don’t you know!

The weary travelers are scheduled to return near the end of this week — and the end of the year as it turns out. Instead of trying to cram New Year’s and Christmas into one weekend (with a child or two’s birthday party tossed into the mix) it was decided by those above my pay grade that Christmas would be shifted to Jan. 7.

That, ironically, usually marks the final day my wife keeps Christmas decorations on display. I tell her she could let the tree and all the other stuff up year-round, but she doesn’t.

Considering she now will be busy Jan. 7 cooking, baking and otherwise preparing the traditional feast, not to mention sharing in the distribution of presents, she won’t have time on that day to initiate teardown, and likely will be a bit too tired Jan. 8.

Two final notes on not celebrating Christmas on Christmas Day.

While working decades for a morning newspaper, I got used to being off the day before holidays. We of the night staff had to come in the evenings of holidays to put out the newspaper for the next day.

I’ve also covered sporting events on holidays such as Christmas or Thanksgiving, and my wife had a job for some time that required her sometimes to work holidays. We frequently had our celebrations on days other than the holidays.

But, the Orthodox thing fascinated me in school because there was a girl, Nicolette, and maybe others I didn’t notice, who got extra time off to celebrate the Jan. 7 Christmas. The fact she and others also got the time granted to those celebrating Christmas using the Gregorian, not Julian, calendar, struck me as a bit unfair.

My thinking then was that she should have been required to come in and sit in an empty classroom on Dec. 25, since it was just another day to her faith.

The Grinch would have concurred.

Good thing that now I’m long out of school, or the workforce for that matter. It might have been tough getting Jan. 7 off for Christmas.

Today, yet another installment – likely the last for the year – of Christmas carols updated for our times.

First: WE WISH YOU A MASKHOLE CHRISTMAS (Sung to the tune of We Wish You A Merry Christmas)

We wish you a maskhole Christmas

We wish you a maskhole Christmas

We wish you a maskhole Christmas and a terror-filled year

Though the great virus scare, was way overblown

We wish you a maskhole Christmas and a terror-filled year

Oh bring us more Fauci warnings

Oh bring us more Fauci warnings

Oh bring us more Fauci warnings

To turn up the fear

Though the great virus scare, was way overblown

We wish you a maskhole Christmas and a terror-filled year

They won’t stop until they get some

They won’t stop until they get some

They won’t stop until they get some

Surrender to fear

We wish you a maskhole Christmas and a terror-filled year

Second: LEFTIST TYPES ARE COMING TO TOWN (Sung to the tune of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town)

You better watch out

You better not rest

You better not pout

Just give it your best

Leftist creeps are coming to town

They’re making their lists

They’re checking them twice

They’re gonna make up who’s naughty or nice

Leftist creeps are coming to town

They spy when you are sleeping

And more when you’re awake

They take big notes on all your posts

So don’t post for goodness sake

Oh, you’d better watch out

You’d better get straight

Otherwise you’ll be branded with hate

Leftist creeps are coming to town

My brother wanted to know why I hadn’t written anything about Franco Harris, who died earlier this week. Good question.

Didn’t you like him? he inquired.

It’s not that, it’s just being ill and tending to watching granddaughters and shoveling snow, etc., gives one limited time.

But, considering how almost everyone else in the world who ever as much as stood close to Franco has chimed in on the Hall of Fame running back’s death, why not me, too? Here goes.

One of the accidents of life allowed me to do Steelers coverage in the midst of their Super Seventies. I was a young sports writer at the Johnstown newspaper on a staff of older guys who didn’t want to travel for road trips – or drive to Pittsburgh for that matter.

Me and the other young staff guy of the moment – at first Bud Shaw, later Bob Gretz – split coverage of the Steelers, Pitt and Penn State in football season, as well as the Pirates in baseball season.

Amidst the comings and goings of the other young staff members, I ended up covering Pitt in the Tangerine Bowl vs. North Carolina State, Penn State vs. Alabama in the Sugar Bowl for the national title, and the Steelers in Super Bowl XIII, all in about a four-week span of late 1978, early 1979.

The Steelers beat Dallas in that Super Bowl, played in the aging Orange Bowl in Miami. You might recall Harris exploding up the middle on a 22-yard touchdown run that put the Steelers in command.

It was vintage Harris, a big moment in a big game. The man was huge for a running back of the times, standing 6-2, 230 pounds, but possessing a great straight-line burst of speed.

Harris rushed for 354 yards in four Super Bowl appearances, a record that still stands. Among a constellation of stars on those Steelers Super Bowl teams of the 1970s, Harris was a prominent point of light.

The franchise began winning when he arrived, and stopped for a time when he left.

My most vivid Harris memories are centered on Latrobe’s St. Vincent College, the preseason training home of the Steelers back in the day.

Harris was a relatively quiet man, not at all like the quote machine that was Terry Bradshaw. One day at training camp I got the OK from Steelers PR guy Joe Gordon to descend a few floors at Bonaventure Hall and interview Franco. He knew I was coming, Gordon said.

When I got to his room – back then players shared sparse door rooms and a communal bathroom for the floor – Harris was not there. I was directed to that bathroom.

When I arrived, Franco was brushing his teeth. I offered to wait. No, he said, let’s do it.

I tried, but gave up when the combination of his soft voice and the working toothbrush made it impossible to distinguish was he was saying.

Not that many years later, 1984 to be exact, Franco was holding out for a pay increase and in one of those post-practice sessions with head coach Chuck Noll at St. Vincent, the topic was broached.

“Franco who?” said Noll, perfectly understandable Grinch-like commentary if one knew Noll and his unwillingness to express emotion.

But the words reverberated. Harris was cut and eventually signed with Seattle for a brief-uneventful season before retiring.

Harris had been in the news a lot recently with the planned commemoration of his Immaculate Reception– considered the most iconic play in NFL history — and Steelers plans to retire his No. 32 jersey this weekend.

It is fittingly ironic that the low-profile Harris, who was 72 years of age, will be there only in spirit for this final honor.

The song book is expanding with updated carols.

CAROL OF JEAN-PIERRE (Sung to the tune of It Came Upon A Midnight Clear)

Her name is Karine Jean-Pierre

Her job is to massage the facts

The White House line is what she spews

To all the media hacks

There was a time when they’d rebel

Against such spurious claims

But now they gladly consume the pap

Because it furthers their aims

And so the truth gets seldom told

Amidst a pack of lies

That Joe is sane and Jill is just

That’s how the bullspit flies

That in this post a liar now thrives

Speaks volumes about our times

Where once the goal was knowing truth

But now it’s partisan lies.