Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

Once an afterthought, Columbus Day has elevated itself onto my list of favorite holidays, if only due to the blatant hypocrisy on display here.

The politically correct crowd, which exists to whine ad nauseam about their latest cause (whatever happened to Black Lives Matter?), has browbeaten some states and cities into re-christening this Indigenous Peoples Day.

Clueless Joe Biden got into the act last year, with a proclamation decrying federal policies of the past that had done mean things. White folk are a bad lot, you understand. But don’t Blame Joe because, as he recently claimed, he’s Puerto Rican.

Joe is one addled aged guy

But it’s still kind of, sort of, really Columbus Day, honoring a guy critics label as the author of genocide and other nasty acts.

Federal offices, many schools and other institutions whose worker bees are overwhelmingly leftist Democrats, were all too happy to take yet another day off work, even if it was due to that Columbus dude.

Understand that fidelity to hypocrisy is the pledge one must take and abide by to remain a Democrat in good standing.

Might as well take advantage of a legitimate holiday by any name, instead of calling in sick or just going through the motions when on the job these days, a reality much to the horror of traditional Democrats, some of which I chatted with at a car cruise Sunday night.

How do I know such worker malaise is going on in various non-private industry workplaces?

Ask me about my difficulty getting mail – specifically weekly ads desired by the woman of the house – delivered by our rotating cast of mail people.

A formal complaint lodged by me – online, of course, because no one answers the telephone – worked for exactly one week. The exasperated supervisory type with whom I spoke when he responded by telephone, lamented the inability to get motivated workers.

And I ask, how motivated must one be to match the address on an envelope or mailer with the address on a house?

Ask me about the glacier pace in dealing with Pennsylvania government regarding my deceased mother. They want responses from me immediately if not sooner.

Their responses must be aged like fine wine, or whine as it were.

Ask me about trying to call any agency, be it federal, state or local, and actually getting a warm body with a live voice instead of an electronic phone tree voice on the other end of the line.

The joke is there’s nothing wrong with government that more paid holidays — more days with workers away from their cubicles — could not cure.

In that spirit, I truly hope all the left-wing hypocrites enjoyed yet another day off work today, even if it did come with that Columbus taint.

Now that the Steelers have been edged out by the Buffalo Bills, 38-3 Sunday, it looks like a postseason presence is as much a pipe dream for the Steelers this year as it has been for the Pirates – year after year after year.

It remains for the Penguins to give fans of Pittsburgh pro sports franchises hopes to watch the home team play beyond the regular season – admittedly in the watered-down NHL variation in which a full one-half of the teams (16 of 32) make the Stanley Cup playoffs.

But beggars can’t be choosers and the pro sports scene in Pittsburgh these days is bleak, so being in the top 50 percent of anything is something.

Never mind that the network television announcers for the Steelers-Bills game seemed to be making a Hall of Fame case for rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett. Let’s wait for the Steelers to win a game or so under his leadership before we call Canton.

What ails the 1-4 Steelers is obvious – a talent deficit. Without oft-injured T.J. Watt, the defense is eunuch-like.

When Buffalo muffed the opening kickoff and was pinned deep in Bills territory, playing into a stiff breeze, the overmatched defense yielded a 98-yard touchdown pass.

But, despite all the praise for Pickett, the 3-point scoring total was the lowest for the Steelers since the 2019 opener against serial tormenter New England.

The 35-point differential made this the worst loss in the career of Mike Tomlin as Steelers coach.

The Steelers offensive line is mediocre. Once upon a time the Steelers could run the football. Not anymore.

And pass protection becomes a chore when the offense is one-dimensional.

Dare we say the coaching is at times uninspiring, too?

Although injuries and uneven play have combined to make some of the upcoming opponents seem not as daunting as they appeared to be just a few weeks back, it’s safe to say the Steelers are good picks to lose four or five of their next six games.

At least the Penguins open their regular season Thursday to provide some diversion.

Meanwhile, fans can amuse themselves by watching all the ex-Pirates performing in the Major League Baseball postseason.

Sunday night, San Diego’s starting pitcher in the decisive NL wild-card game was Joe Musgrove, who once toed the pitching rubber in a Pirates uniform. Power-hitting Padres designated hitter Josh Bell is another former Pirate.

The New York Mets had chubby Daniel Vogelbach, who played 72 games for the Pirates this season, as their DH. Outfielder Starling Marte is yet another former Pirate wearing a Mets uniform. Pitcher Trevor Williams is on the Mets roster, but not the postseason list.

Gerrit Cole, who has been tabbed to start game one of the ALDS for the New York Yankees, pitched for the Pirates from 2013 through 2017.

Charlie Morton, yet another ex-Pirates pitcher, went 9-6 for Atlanta’s Braves this season.

One Pittsburgh media guy counted 18 former Pirates on the rosters of this year’s MLB postseason teams and that seems right.

It’s a veritable all-star team of former Pirates, indicating that if the cheapskate ownership was willing to pay some of these guys to stick around, those postseason absences would be less frequent and shorter in duration.

Then again, if your aunt had testicles, she’d be your uncle.

Consider the choke, the inelegant — but descriptive — term for failing to produce under pressure.

Most often used to describe collapses in the sporting world, the choke also is a regular visitor to the real world, particularly in politics.

Let us begin with sports and the ongoing choke of monumental proportions as is being authored by the New York Mets.

These Mets managed to blow a 10 1/2-game lead over Atlanta and lose the NL East Division on a tiebreaker.

The Mets then slinked into the NL wild-card round, where they were blown out in Game 1 by San Diego and could see their dog of season end with a loss in Game 2 of this best-of-3 series today.

There is irony in this Mets collapse because the 1969 “Miracle Mets” saw Chicago’s Cubs lose a 9 1/2-game lead in mid-August. This time the choke was quite satisfying to the Mets and their partisans – the stuff of legends.

Many years later, the Mets won Game 6 of the 1986 World Series when Boston first baseman Bill Buckner choked and let a ball roll between his legs, allowing the winning run to score for the Mets.

The Mets then won Game 7 to complete their Series comeback and produce a world championship.

But the Mets do have something of a pedigree of being the chokers, having blown late-season division leads in both 2007 and 2008, becoming the first Major League Baseball operation ever to squander September leads of at least 3 ½ games in consecutive seasons.

At least when sports teams choke it doesn’t put the nation in peril. Not so when it is politicians having difficulty rising to the occasion.

Begin with Clueless Joe Biden grasping at straws to try to buy votes for Democrats in the upcoming mid-term elections.

Biden’s fist-bumping Saudi buddies are leading a cut in OPEC oil production, despite the Clueless One’s much ballyhooed promise that he’d reached a deal on the matter – for greater production, not a cut.

Biden’s response is to make noises about further draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by feeding oil into the markets to attempt to hold down oil prices by government intervention. Good luck with that.

Biden, who formerly was making the rounds taking credit for declining gasoline prices, now takes no credit for prices being once again on the rise.

Instead, he tries to deal with rogue state Venezuela, freeing convicted felons in order to get some Americans freed and, dare we suggest, more Venezuelan oil shipped here.

Yet Biden hectors American petroleum companies by denying them the ability to expand production and threatens refiners and gas station owners should they raise gasoline prices, despite rising oil costs. Biden seems to be unable to comprehend that private companies, unlike federal governments, can’t just expand the deficit to paper over operating losses.

Inability to function well under pressure, that’s Clueless Joe’s second most notable affliction.

Those looming mid-term elections have produced a shotgun approach to pandering to voters from Clueless Joe. Student loan forgiveness? You got it. Marijuana legalization? Stand by.

Hunter’s shady dealings? Nothing to see here.

Just vote the Big D, says The Big Guy.

Clueless Joe has a lot of company on the choking front from his Democratic comrades, particularly on the subject of porous borders and illegal immigrants.

All of a sudden, mayors in New York City and Washington, D.C., as well as high-profile twits such as AOC, and the elite at Martha’s Vineyard, find it impossible to deal with small numbers of those illegals being transported to their locales.

Imagine if they actually had to deal with thousands of illegals streaming across the border daily.

Now that the lack of border security is their problem, not someone else’s alone, they are long on hyperventilation and short on solutions.

They are gagging like so many present-day Bill Buckners.

Quick hits as I contemplate a Biden regime talking about awarding hurricane relief in Florida with racial bias, as in whites need not apply.

• Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was on Fox News this morning, again calling out the “Biden Crime Family.” It’s a recurring theme, with author Peter Schweizer putting out a book on the Bidens, “Profiles In Corruption.” And yet the Bidens never take this all to court, where there could be a full accounting of why such claims are wrong – or are on the money.

• I hung up my “Let’s Go Brandon” banner on the porch yesterday, strategically placed over a set of end windows so it can be read easily by people driving either direction on the street. I had toyed with the idea of displacing the American Flag, but opted for this placement for now.

• Hate to rain on the parade of all the supporters of Dr. Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race or Doug Mastriano’s campaign for Pennsylvania governor, but the unofficial indicator of yard signs indicates both races are lost to the Republicans. Understand this unofficial indicator presaged a Trump win in his first presidential run. Hope I’m wrong, but . . .

• During Gingrich’s Fox appearance he also held firm in expecting the Republicans to pick up 20-50 House seats and as many as seven Senate seats. The first seems plausible. The second is unlikely in the extreme.

• Gold and silver rallied big on Monday and Tuesday – giving back a chunk in premarket action Wednesday — but the precious metals are said to be sniffing out a change in policy from our Federal Reserve on the subject of interest rates and monetary policy. Already central banks in England, Japan and Australia, to name a few, have walked back their tough talk as economies and markets teeter. If our Fed blowhards blink, the inflation you’ve seen to date will be dwarfed by what’s to come.

• Gasoline prices have begun to tick upward again both nationally and in my area. I saw a 10-cent increase at one chain, so I quickly filled up the Kia at another, where the increase was yet to be posted. Oil is ramping upward in price and OPEC is re-asserting its control of pricing, despite the supposed promise Clueless Joe got from his fist bump with the Saudis.

• What a coincidence that three of the first four people arrested for looting in Florida following the hurricane were illegal immigrants.

• Our national debt is ticking toward $32 trillion, about $93,000 per person or $238,000 per taxpayer. This is the underlying cause of inflation that manipulating interest rates or money supply can’t cure. Clueless Joe rushing to buy votes with handouts only worsens the problem.

• Clueless Joe also supposedly told a left-wing toady that he will run for president again in 2024. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is floating trial balloons that she could run yet again. The only thing scarier than either intellectual lightweight running for president is that the combination of our moronic electorate and creative vote counters would mean either likely wins.

We’ve slipped into October, the heart of football season.

It’s entirely fitting that when sportswriter Grantland Rice composed his immortal lead about Notre Dame’s Four Hourseman backfield, its members were “outlined against a blue, gray October sky.”

October is the month when we’ve begun to separate pretenders from contenders. It’s the change of weather – at least here in the north – and a time to bundle up while taking stock of a season already under way for more than a month.

Begin with the pros. The Steelers lost again today, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Steelers partisans, known for their fine whines, will lament the late call that awarded the New York Jets a touchdown – correctly – despite an apparent fumble.

The truth is, the Jets did all they could to lose the game, especially by botching the end of the first half, costing themselves a field goal and handing the Steelers a field goal. And still the Steelers couldn’t get it done.

Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, winner of an Omar Epps look-alike contest, just might be on his way to his first losing season. The Steelers are 1-3 and have to end this month by facing Buffalo, Tampa Bay, Miami and Philadelphia.

Could 1-7 be in the cards?

Already this season the Steelers have proven they can’t beat New England, even with Tom Brady gone. They might soon show they can’t beat Brady playing for Tampa Bay, either.

They also can’t seem to win without the presence of oft-injured T.J. Watt on defense.

Things are looking bleak for the Steelers. But their woes pale in comparison to a pair of area high school football programs that can lay claim to being the most uncompetitive in their classes across the state.

Begin with Class AAAA Johnstown, 0-6 and having been outscored 280-26 over that stretch. That’s a minus-254 point differential.

I searched the Maxpreps web site and according to their statistics only East Stroudsburg North has a worse point deficit among Class AAAA schools, coming in at minus-274 (46 points scored and 320 allowed). But, somehow, East Stroudsburg has a reported 1-5 record.

Give the nod for futility to Johnstown.

Somerset is challenging for the least competitive program in Class AAA. The Golden Eagles are 0-6 and have been outscored 299-54, a minus-245 differential.

DuBois Collegiate Academy, 0-7, has been outscored 271-14, a minus-257.

Give DuBois the edge with one more loss and a greater points deficit. But Somerset is a worthy challenger.

If you are wondering how bad a Johnstown-Somerset game might be, you are in luck. The two teams are scheduled to play Oct. 14 at Somerset.

I think I might make the drive that night to see history. How often does one get to see two of the worst programs in the state on the same field?

I can only imagine what Grantland Rice would have to say about that one.

It is called voting with your feet and I fully intend to exercise that franchise in coming weeks. Farewell DISH Network.

I might go cable, streaming or just antenna TV, but I’m fed up with DISH and its constant drama.

Periodically, the satellite television provider, with whom I’ve been subscribed for maybe two decades, lies, overpromises and generally disappoints.

A common point of drama is that this channel or that is about to become unavailable. DISH attempts to paint the programming provider as the bad person and DISH as the good guys trying to keep my bill down by refusing requests for higher fees. Except that DISH bill increases all the time despite all this help from DISH.

The channel guide will have messages that so and so programming provider is about to withhold service and urges us to contact them to tell them we are upset. These people want paid, perhaps exorbitantly, for their programs. DISH says no.

But, do you honestly think DISH would continue to keep my TVs lit if I simply decided they are charging too much and refused to pay them?

I will give you a hint, two answers: No and Hell No.

Today, as a Welcome to October promotion, DISH stripped 20 Disney-affiliated channels from my service. No warning this time. Complain to Disney, they advise, because Disney wants too much money.

Understand we’re not just talking cartoon TV, but instead all ESPN channels, many conference sports channels, supposedly some local ABC stations, not to mention such outlets as National Geographic, various FX iterations, and others.

There was no forewarning, just an October surprise.

I didn’t try to contact Disney, but contacting DISH was an adventure.

Repeated calls to DISH were met with phone tree obfuscation and outright loss of my call.

I tried online chat, which first said closed until Monday, despite elsewhere on the page proudly proclaiming 7-days-a-week availability. Eventually, chat conceded it was open, but I was 904^th inline and would I care to wait? I did.

Meanwhile, I called the local cable company. But, as these things are these days, I got a guy in Virginia.

He was nice enough and emailed me some options.

I called my brother, an avid streamer, for advice on that path. He was not totally encouraging.

Eventually, after hours of waiting, the computer said I was sixth in line for chat, which was promptly marked down to 8^th in line.

At last I got a person – supposedly Michael – who offered me a $5 credit. This is a joke.

I lost 20 channels on a bill that I’m paid ahead to Oct. 20 on, so big deal. More galling, we constantly are told by DISH that ESPN and the like are high-cost channels.

Considering my bill pushes $140 a month, $5 is chicken(scratch) to lose 20 channels, many of them by DISH’s own reckoning being high-cost.

I conveyed my unhappiness with the $5, but Michael of chat said his limit was $5. I could, however, contact the Loyalty Team. He gave me a phone number and, when I asked for specifics, the assurance it was staffed currently, but also there would be a delay.

I called immediately and after an hour or so on hold, there was a click, I said hello, and the call had ended.

This, for the uninitiated, is what passes for customer service at DISH.

I might try again next week, during my call to cancel my service effective Oct. 20.

There are not a lot of great options, but sometimes it’s enough to feel better simply because you’ve stopped hitting yourself on the head with a hammer.

Perhaps the wife and I — plus grandkids — can go back, a la Abraham Lincoln, to reading books by the light of the fireplace.

Now if only I had a fireplace!

The executive branch of our federal government is a ship of fools, a fact reinforced almost on a daily basis.

Already this week there have been a pair of notable examples.

On Wednesday, while Clueless Joe Biden was taking a victory lap at a conference on food and nutrition, the Clueless one sought to acknowledge a Republican member of the House of Representatives for helping organize the event.

“Jackie are you here? Where’s Jackie?” Biden asked while scanning the crowd with his patented blank stare.

The Jackie in question, Jackie Walorski of Indiana, died in a car crash Aug. 3.

So, surely Biden could be forgiven for not knowing that.

Not exactly, considering within hours of Walorski’s death, a statement under the name of Clueless Joe and his co-president DR. JILL BIDEN!!!!!!!! was released mourning the late member of Congress.

Media people surprised by Biden’s confusion asked the current White House press mouthpiece about it and she seemed to indicate Biden hadn’t made a mistake, he was just noting he was going to see Walorski’s family in coming days.

No one said it’s easy trying to make the gaffe-master Biden seem lucid. Let’s hope Biden doesn’t ask the family why Jackie isn’t there when he meets them.

A day later, Kamala Harris, already noted by some as the dumbest person ever to hold the vice-president office, made a high-profile visit to Korea’s demilitarized zone.

There she gave a surprising speech in which she said, and we quote, “The United States shares a very important relationship, which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea.”

Some people think she just misspoke and meant to say South Korea. Others considered it somewhat Freudian. Most viewed it as more of the same from an administration long on goofs and short on coherency.

They are fools who produce foolish policy and statements. No need to expect better from them.

But Biden and Harris are not alone. The world is awash with morons in charge.

Central banks, both around the world and here at home, are doing their best to roil economies and investment markets with ham-handed policy.

Having spent years, even decades, keeping interest rates historically low and rates of money creation historically high, all in the pursuit of mirage prosperity, now they are trying to change course.

The historic metaphor used for the US. central bankers in such situations is taking away the punch bowl just when the party is getting going.

Things deteriorated so quickly in England that the central bank there had to halt its austerity moves and fire liquidity into the system as bond markets threw a tantrum and traditional fixtures such as pension funds threatened to collapse.

In Japan, that country’s central bank is working fervently to halt the decline of the Yen, with poor results.

Here in the U.S., our Federal Open Mouth committee sent some high-profile speakers out on the stump Thursday after the Bank of England pivot a day earlier had led to rallies in investment markets, including a 500-plus point run-up in the Dow Jones average.

The market predictably tanked under the Thursday reiteration of threats to keep interest rates higher longer and the Dow was down more than 400 points.

There are so many areas of life in which seemingly the people in charge are clueless. It’s a recipe for train wrecks, in many respects. Fasten your seatbelts.

The left hates the presumptive new prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni. Here’s why.

Imagine the audacity that in these Woke, politically correct to absurdity times, Meloni speaks of remaining true to God, country and family.

Meloni celebrates freedom and vows never to become a faceless, mindless serf subservient to the socialist elite who would strip us of all individual identity, the better to rule the resultant flock of neutered sheep.

Do yourself a favor. Do an Internet search for Meloni’s archived speech on the principles enumerated above.

Then understand that she is being painted as an extreme Nazi for her beliefs, simply because they are traditional and do not conform to the left’s philosophy.

Make no mistake, the leftist, one-world types are becoming nervous. The barometer of that is their increasingly harsh and unhinged attacks on all opponents.

The usually predictably leftist Sweden has moved right politically as that nation’s populace sees first-hand the negative effect of unfettered immigration and reluctance to enforce the laws.

Our resident socialists in this country should be concerned, too.

No less an authority than former White House shill DisinJenuous Psaki noted that if the Democrats run the mid-term elections as a referendum on Clueless Joe Biden they will lose.

Instead, the Democrats are throwing stuff at the wall, hoping something sticks. Faced with epidemic crime waves in Democrat-controlled cities and states, the Democrats are trying to sell the story that they are not in favor of de-funding police.

This flies in the face of reality, and the ridiculous assertion once would have been challenged by the media. But our current Lamestream media quietly purveys this pap, despite copious amounts of evidence that it was the Democrats who appealed to their hard-left base with the de-fund the police nonsense.

It similarly is inarguable that lenient socialist district attorneys have been put into office with a massive George Soros funding campaign and their mission has been to play catch-and-release with felons, turning these hard-core criminals back onto the streets almost immediately after arrest.

Here in Pennsylvania our oversized stooge Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, a fool who is not familiar with holding a job or wearing anything better than a hoodie and pair of sweatpants, is being outed for his policy of releasing felons from prison immediately if not sooner.

Unfortunately, our Republican candidate is the flawed Dr. Oz, something of a stooge himself, but of a different stripe.

Polls indicate John Fetterman (Fetidman?) will win the seat, taking his far-left thinking to Washington, D.C.

But hopes remain that there are enough legitimate Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives to produce a change in majority there.

What Pennsylvania needs is a Meloni-like candidate for Senate. What the Republicans in general need are more candidates for various offices – local, state or national – who are willing to speak freely about basic truths.

Instead, Republican candidates mostly are a group of apologists afraid to stand up to the withering criticism from leftist social media and Lamestream media.

Republicans in general need cajones transplants so that they might measure up – ironically – to an Italian woman politician.

Today, we’re borrowing from legendary radio broadcaster Gabriel Heatter and his famous sign on phrase “There’s good news tonight.”

There is a lot of good news, of various stripes, on this Sunday Sept. 25 evening.

In Italy, despite threats from European Union tyrants, exit polls indicate the Italian voters have ushered in a right-wing group of politicians who have vowed to move things in a conservative direction and away from the hard-left, socialistic policies that have turned Italy specifically and Europe at large into an economic and social mess.

I’m presuming there will be no overnight vote-counting shenanigans as occurred here in our banana republic in the last presidential election and the indicated results will hold in Italy.

Back home, Botox Queen Nancy Pelosi made a surprise visit Saturday night at the Global Citizen Music Festival, in theory a safe venue of leftist climate alarmists and generally leftist-leaning residents of New York City.

But, surprise, Pelosi was booed long and loud as she tried to take credit for climate legislation. No doubt she flew to New York on a private jet and rode a limo to the event. Carbon footprint, be damned, I’m Queen Nancy!

So, maybe the crowd was booing her hypocrisy, or maybe just Queen Nancy in general. Regardless, it warmed the cockles of my heart to see video of the ongoings.

The CEO of Pfizer, one of the big-pharma purveyors of those COVID vaccines that don’t live up to the hype, has come down with COVID for the second time in two months. He’s had FOUR doses of his company’s vaccine and also was treated with a Pfizer antiviral drug when he got COVID the first time.

Now that clueless Joe Biden has pronounced the end to the pandemic – to the horror of his handlers who quickly walked back that claim by their figurehead mouthpiece – isn’t it about time we stop frothing at the mouth over the need to take vaccines that don’t live up to promises and are increasingly being outed for negative side effects?

Hypocrisy in general is being outed worldwide.

Finland, which would not close its borders to refugees that were politically correct to accept, won’t be taking in any Russians fleeing that nation’s conscription of young men for military purposes.

Back home, hypocrites from Martha’s Vineyard to New York City, to Washington, D.C., think it’s just fine that Clueless Joe’s open borders are flooding immigrants into Texas, Florida and other states, not to mention making it easy for illegal drugs to flow unchecked throughout our nation.

But send a few immigrants to their towns or cities and the NIMBY (not in my back yard) screaming is deafening.

It is amusing to hear their strained attempts at justifying their conduct and passing the blame elsewhere.

Hope and Change Obama probably could have handled all 50-something migrants just by opening up the grounds to his $12 million estate in Martha’s Vineyard.

Funny, one-time Dial-An-Opinion Obama was mute on this point. It hit a little too close to home – literally and figuratively.

So it is with hypocrites.

Fall has arrived with plenty of things beyond leaves losing altitude.

Investment portfolios are falling hard as Jay Powell and his Federal Reserve friends seek to correct past mistakes by monkey-hammering the economy with higher interest rates while also shrinking liquidity in the bond markets by selling off the Fed portfolio, put at upwards of $9 trillion.

The impact of such things is negative and widespread. Expect to see declines continuing in the value of your IRA, 401(k) and other investments long after the last leaf has hit the ground.

Similarly, for most people their home is their single largest asset. The surge in housing prices, even in distressed areas such as Johnstown in recent years, has made homeowners smile. This produces the so-called wealth effect in which although there are no plans to sell the house, it is heartening to know that if that decision would be made then massive financial gains would be realized.

And this allows households the confidence to spend more money on other things, secure in the knowledge that even in a worst-case scenario, their home equity could bail them out.

But the combination of those inflated house prices and rising interest rates, which have pushed 30-year mortgages from the 3-percent range to above 6 percent, have priced many people out of the housing market.

Most measures of demand have fallen sharply and prices of houses only now are beginning to follow that trajectory. They have lots of catching up to do.

Even those who still might be able to afford a house aren’t that optimistic. Why buy now? Just wait and prices will be lower, and maybe even interest rates will decline if and when the Fed folks decide they’ve crippled the economy sufficiently to rein in the inflation they created themselves with their loose monetary policies.

The irony of this is the would-be home buyers are looking to become renters, putting pressure on costs in that segment of the housing market, which translates into keeping inflation measures elevated and so delaying the Fed’s willingness to lower interest rates again.

On a more intangible basis, trust is falling fast in government, the legal system, Lamestream news media, healthcare and our public education system.

Once the weather improves, make it a point to get out and enjoy the fall foliage. It will provide a welcome respite from the reality of falling objects and failing institutions.