Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

Gun-control zealots are taking a shotgun approach – pun intended – toward reaching their goal of disarming the citizenry.

Their plan is to use every high-profile incident as a pretense to fire random, multi-pellet rounds and hope that something registers.

If the shooter is white, as in Buffalo, it’s clearly racism running rampant among white males.

If the shooter is Hispanic, with hints of various fetishes, as in the Texas school shooting, it’s about saving the children.

If the shooter is black, as in Tulsa, and his primary target is a black doctor, the cry is the all-purpose taking guns out of the hands of the masses.

If the shooter is black and elderly, and manages to get off 23 shots while wounding just 10 (13 more were injured by inhaling smoke bombs or getting caught up in the panic rush to exit) as in New York’s subway shooting, the incident is pretty much shoved aside due to lack of agenda usefulness.

By way of comparison, you probably heard relatively little about the Memorial Day weekend in Chicago, in which nine people were killed and more than 50 were shot, according to a report from a Chicago NBC affiliate TV station. This was in a number of separate incidents, but still you’d think it wouldn’t be accepted as the unfortunate business as usual that it is.

One song being sung by the anti-gun choir of late is to raise age limits to purchase a gun, noting that 18-year-olds aren’t mature enough to handle the responsibility.

OK, then 18-year-olds certainly aren’t old enough to join the armed forces and handle various weaponry. It follows that age 18 certainly is not old enough to be drafted into the armed forces against one’s will should this again become necessary.

While we’re at it, let’s repeal the 26^th Amendment, which gave 18-year-olds the right to vote. Obviously they are not mentally equipped on the maturity front to make such vital decisions.

How about making 21 the mandatory driving age? And why allow 18-year-olds to enter into legally binding contracts?

Why allow “children” much younger than 18 to get abortions, sexual-gender reassignment counseling, or drug counseling without parents being informed?

On the topic of driving, online figures indicate 2,738 deaths of those between the ages of 13 and 19 in motor vehicle crashes in 2020. Obviously all those weren’t driving, but I think many if not most were.

Indisputable is the fact that younger drivers are more dangerous to themselves and to others. This same online article noted that the fatal crash rate per mile driven for those ages 16 to 19 is three times the rate for drivers 20 and over.

When’s the last time you heard outrage over teen driving deaths, or calls to raise the age limit to drive or buy cars?

Blaming guns is the simplistic solution, one easily made without giving the matter deep consideration and instead opting to go for cheap politicization. It’s the triumph of emotionalism over rational thought.

The collapse of parenting in this country (as in the case of the Tulsa shooter), the failure of our legal system to identify and incarcerate criminals (as in the case of numerous mass shootings) and the ineptitude of our mental health system, which tends to look the other way when tough decisions need to be made, all share responsibility.

How many times must we read of deranged mass shooters pontificating on social media about their plans before the fact? How many times must we read of them being reported to various authorities, with no action taken?

To repeat from an earlier post here, if you make it difficult or impossible for average law-abiding citizens to own guns, you guarantee that they will be unarmed if and when a criminal not following those laws uses a gun to attack or rob them.

Clueless Joe Biden is scheduled go on the air later tonight to bumble his way through an address on gun violence.

While you listen, remember this is the brain donor who once said a double-barrelled shotgun is all a homeowner needs for defense. The Clueless one said that antiquated weapon provided the opportunity for a warning shot and one defensive shot.

Good luck with that plan, Clueless Joe. Do your Secret Service agents carry double-barrelled shotguns? Just asking.

More recently, Joe went on a half-baked tirade against 9-millimeter guns claiming they are “high-caliber” and 9mm bullets “blow the lung out of the body.”

Those who know about guns, frequently question the stopping power of a 9mm. You want to talk “high-caliber” talk .45 acp, a gun designed for the military, with upgraded stopping power from the previously standard .38-caliber sidearm.

Then there are guns such as .44 magnums, made famous by the Clint Eastwood “Dirty Harry” movie. That gun and its round would blow a lung of the victim out of the body.

While a 9mm is not overly powerful, it is the most popular handgun for self-defense, so if you can outlaw 9mm weapons, you have effectively given criminals freedom to rape and pillage without having to fear being shot, albeit not having their “lung blown out of their body.”

Were Biden to get his way, we’d be reduced to owning BB guns — if he could get past the rantings of his handlers about us shooting our eyes out.

Johnstown’s Showcase for Commerce gave a true representation of the area tonight when the whole thing ground to a halt as the power went off at about 8 p.m. and remained off as I type this – thankfully not in an affected area – at 10-ish.

If those Afghan refugees had made it here as planned by the Lack of Vision 2025 behind-the-curtain elites, they’d have felt right at home.

My brother often would say, as he and my mother sat awaiting the return of power in Lorain Borough over the past 10 years or so, that he knew what it was like to live in Kabul or Baghdad (Iraq).

Tonight he’s living downtown, still in the dark.

There had been reports on the police scanner (my wife loves to listen) in recent days about manhole lids blowing off and smoke emanating from the uncapped holes in downtown Johnstown. Early reports are that this outage is an underground phenomenon.

Guess no one took those flying manhole lids seriously.

Yes, other localities in Pennsylvania, and other states such as California and Texas, have creaky electrical grids as the nation’s infrastructure continues to deteriorate.

But here in Johnstown we have an embarrassment of failures on the infrastructure front.

Our roads look like some of the main highways in Ukraine now that the Russians have bombed them into uselessness.

Definition of a Johnstown optimist: Someone who bothers to get a front-end alignment for their cars, which on our roads has the life expectancy of the mayfly.

Those very same roads, particularly within Johnstown’s city limits, are a treat in winter. The plan for snow removal is waiting for the stuff to melt and run into the rivers.

This makes parking, traveling the roads, and even trying to walk the sidewalks an adventure.

Point Stadium has been upgraded through the years, but somehow they forgot to deal with the lights, which could be counted on to fail for major events such as the AAABA Tournament. There are rumors the system was personally designed by Edison, whose autograph might be seen deep within the stadium’s bowels.

Now, at long last, supposedly the lights have been updated. We shall see.

The ongoing, seemingly never-ending example of Greater Johnstown’s infrastructure problems is the sewer work.

The sewer authority looked the other way for years if not decades, then got hit square between the eyes with a federal mandate to deal with overflows during rain storms that dumped untreated waste water into the Conemaugh River.

In the intervening years, homeowners in some municipalities have had to shell out thousands of dollars to make their systems airtight in the attempts to eliminate rainwater inflows.

Some, like Southmont Borough in which I reside, thought just upgrading laterals to near the foundation of each home would cut the mustard. We would pay higher rates, of course, to fund this, but now apparently we are not meeting standards so some of my neighbors are having to have their basements torn up and airtight piping installed, along with paying the higher rates!

Some lucky people now have sewer backups where before they had none, sort of like winning the Murphy’s Law lottery.

I like this area, and have lived here all my life, but you’d have to be blind not to see how things have gone downhill dramatically in the past decade or so.

And I haven’t even mentioned the violent crime, which may have gotten a boost without lighting in the downtown for these past several hours.

In the strictest sense, Memorial Day is a time to pause and reflect on those who have died in service to the country, although generations of school kids and young adults have been reduced to seeing it as an excuse to take a day away from their duties.

In a broader sense, Memorial Day also is a time to honor those who served and survived, and perhaps to think of metaphorical deaths such as the demise of common sense and fairness.

The last is a worldwide phenomenon as indicated by news of recent days.

Begin with the absurd scene from Paris of a man dressed as an old woman in a wheelchair, leaping from the conveyance and smearing a cake on the case which is there to protect the famed Mona Lisa painting from such idiocy.

The cross-dresser reportedly was a climate change protester, screaming incoherent messages about protecting the earth. Considering that the painting’s protective case is designed to stop bullets, the cake was a symbolic weapon, perhaps a geographical and historical attempt at referencing Marie Antoinette’s purported “let them eat cake” line.

That didn’t end so well for Marie Antoinette, as she lost her head – literally – afterward as a penalty for having lost her head figuratively in allegedly issuing the disdainful remark to the starving poor.

Another modern day Marie Antoinette, house speaker Nancy Pelosi, is a rich noble similarly out of touch with the common folk. Recall her showing off her $24,000 freezer and $13-a-pint designer ice cream during COVID lockdowns to illustrate how she was dealing with the inconvenience of it all.

It’s well to remember on this Memorial Day that Pelosi also went to a beauty salon maskless during the purported COVID crisis even as she demanded the public be compelled to wear face diapers.

This seems to be a Democratic woman thing. Recall Chicago Mayor “Lightweight” Lori Lightfoot being outed for a trip to the beauty salon even as members of the public were ordered to stay at home. Lightweight also ignored the mask and social distancing dictates, as revealed by photos posted by the hairdresser, a typical Facebook braggart.

Pelosi and her husband Paul, better known as Nancy’s Husband, also have an uncanny ability to profit in the stock market.

But Paul should have stuck to the overpriced ice cream to celebrate. He was arrested for DUI over the holiday weekend in California. Nancy’s office told the media she would not be commenting on this “private” matter.

Let them (the public) eat . . . ice cream, right, Nancy?

As far as we know Hillary Clinton didn’t make tone-deaf trips to hairdressers during COVID lockdowns, not that it would have helped her. Come to think of it, that didn’t stop Lightfoot or Pelosi, but we digress.

Hillary has been outed in court over taking to the social media megaphone for morons platform to push false information regarding Donald Trump and Russian connections.

We’re still waiting for Hillary’s lifetime ban for spreading disinformation.

Playing loose with the facts seems to run in the family. Recall Mr. Hillary’s assertion that he didn’t have sex with that woman. Which one? You pick.

Also of late, many faithful left-wing lapdog media outlets have been dragged to the reality that Russia is winning the fighting in Ukraine.

No less a source than the deified Ukrainian president Zelenskyy gave a dire assessment of the prospects for success regarding the fighting in the Donbas region.

Maybe Zelenskyy and the Pelosi couple can commiserate while eating some overpriced ice cream. The Mona Lisa guy can bring the cake.

Late last night, which turned into early this morning, I wrote and posted here that the people thinking more gun laws would solve problems with mass shootings, or shootings in general, were seriously naive and totally mistaken.

Among my points was that such onerous regulations largely only punish the law-abiding because criminals don’t obey laws.

No sooner had I checked zerohedge.com on my computer this morning than I had evidence to back up my assertions. Word came of a legal gun owner stopping a potential mass shooting.

This happened in Charleston, W.Va., Wednesday night. The reports tell us there was a graduation party at an apartment complex when a man was chided for speeding through the area.

Said man, reportedly a convicted felon, returned with a semi-automatic weapon. Police reports indicate he opened fire on party-goers, fortunately without hitting anyone.

Unlike in Texas, where law enforcement types holed up for a very long time to plan their moves to deal with that school shooter, in the West Virginia example a woman with a concealed carry permit shot and killed the would-be mass murderer.

A local TV report quoted a chief of detectives noting “Instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives.”

The dead man had given ample previous evidence of his criminal bent. As noted in various reports, he was a convicted felon, had outstanding warrants for receiving stolen goods and had 20 or so arrests for what were described as “local charges.” Yet he was free to wonder the streets.

As a felon, he was not allowed to possess firearms. But he did have one. So, an existing gun law didn’t work. Color me stunned. Or not.

Would the man have been deterred by additional laws? Seriously?

To repeat, the heroic woman who intervened had a weapon, but had it with her only because she had gone through the legal process to obtain the permit.

Without her, who knows how many people might have been killed in Charleston.

But, if the crazed anti-gun opportunists have their way, she may not have had a weapon or the right to carry it concealed.

Emotional, half-baked proposed solutions to problems – think COVID maskholes and CovIdiot lockdowns – have wide-ranging and often greater unintended consequences than the problems presented.

In our deteriorating, violent society of the moment, having a gun to deal with problems when the police are unable or unwilling to intervene, makes sense.

The West Virginia incident is just further proof of this — proof that won’t get wide play on the LameStream national media because it doesn’t fit their narrative of guns bad; criminals merely frustrated victims of the system.

Just as sad and predictable as mass shooting are, so are the obligatory rushes to politicize them, from the usual actors.

Most recently in Texas, 19 students and two teachers were killed by a gunman identified as Salvador Ramos who, fittingly was killed inside the school.

Former president Obama rushed to social media to weigh in. At least this time he didn’t remark that if he’d have had a son, he probably would have looked like Ramos.

But the cry is on to arbitrarily suspend the Second Amendment of the Constitution in the quest to avoid such mass killings of innocents in the future. Earth to the hysterical opportunists, banning guns won’t prevent such tragedies.

I know that math now is considered racist, but it does apply to life. And one BBC report quoted an estimate of 390 million guns in the hands of Americans. Even if you never sold another gun, there’s plenty to go around.

Moreover, this same story was eager to quote the number of gun deaths annually in the United States, citing the year 2020 as a record total of more than 45,000.

The article conceded, well down the page, that the majority of those gun deaths – 24,292 according to the CDC – were suicides.

That is the case most years and do you really think if guns were stripped from all hands, suicides would end? Pills, illegal drugs, knives, ropes, tall buildings or bridges, all are common alternative suicide methods.

Gun control advocates would do themselves a service by excluding the suicide numbers from their totals.

They also might want to weed out the numbers for single killings, sometimes legally justified and often not. And accidental shooting deaths shouldn’t really count as justification for gun legislation any more than drowning deaths should lead to banning swimming pools or bathtubs.

This leaves us with mass shootings as a small percentage of annual gun deaths.

Putting into force draconian gun laws would fail to stop mass killings for two reasons.

First off, criminals by definition don’t follow the laws. They would not be deterred by stricter gun regulations. California, with the strictest gun control laws in the country, had a mass shooting in Sacramento two months back that left six dead and 12 wounded.

Second, the knee-jerk response to cry for more gun legislation ignores any other factors such as mental illness, or eagerness to return criminals to the streets that might contribute to the problem.

In general, one is naive in the extreme to think that violent people might not carry out mass attacks with bombs, knives, or even airplanes as in the 9/11 terror attacks, even if somehow guns could be made unavailable.

Sick, crazed, anti-social types are the problem, not their weapons of choice.

What stricter gun laws would guarantee is that fewer honest citizens were able to purchase guns for protection, which they increasingly seem to need.

The law enforcement officials didn’t exactly distinguish themselves in their response to the Texas incident, delaying action before dealing with the shooter.

Reports indicate the gunman gained access via a door propped open – against the rules – by a teacher.

The school resource officer reportedly was not on-site at the time of the shooting.

In other instances, perpetrators had lengthy criminal records, or were reported to authorities prior to the assaults for dangerous behavior but ignored. Many have been able to post screeds on social media, which went unpunished, perhaps because the censors were too busy banning Trump.

Often these mass killers have documented mental issues, yet they are left to roam free among us.

Even when police do succeed in removing some of these threats from the general population, left-wing judicial activists eagerly return them to streets after mere months behind bars.

Making it tougher for honest, law-abiding citizens to purchase guns isn’t going to cure the long list of failings and raw statistics I’ve noted here.

Chicago, which is up to its armpits in gun laws, had 49 homicides in April. The fact that they didn’t happen in one incident means this doesn’t get as much attention. It does, however, make the point that adding layer upon layer of gun laws doesn’t solve the problem.

I’m thinking that monkeypox has the politically correct crowd at a loss when it comes to determining how to politicize and propagandize this alleged health crisis.

And the navel-gazers certainly need something to over-dramatize now that the population in general is tired of masking, vaxxing and all the other COVID blather.

On the face of it, monkeypox seems to be a logical successor to COVID. It’s worst effects have been reported to be primarily on the young, while COVID was largely an elderly phenomenon when it came to serious consequences.

You can almost hear the leftys, kneeling bedside (if they did pray) and saying something like “Thank you, infectious disease gods, for giving us something that we might use to scare the bejesus out of youngsters and their parents.”

Ah, but there’s a fly in the monkeypox ointment, that being often it is young gay men spreading the disease during sex, in part due to genital lesions or saliva exchange.

No less an authority than WHO (World Health Organization, not the rock band) invoked the homosexual men narrative, which was dutifully seconded by the BBC.

More specifically, two non-family oriented events have been identified as “super spreaders.” The first was a “pride” festival in the Canary Islands, the pride word not referring to a group of lions.

The second was a “fetish festival” in Antwerp, Belgium. We can only imagine what went on there.

Can’t wait for the public service announcements pushing vaccines, and masks, the latter to be worn somewhere on the body.

Does don’t ask, don’t tell apply to determining whether or not genitals are masked?

Also on the topic of masks, apparently chickens just won’t keep those life-saving face diapers on their little beaks, leading to an outbreak of avian flu.

You should worry if you happen to like eggs, or chicken products. There have been 37 million birds across 34 U.S. states identified as infected, with many being sacrificed to prevent the spread of the disease.

And you thought the COVID Nazis were tough!

This chicken genocide has resulted in a seven-year low in egg production in these United States. This leads to . . . cue the excuse making from Biden flunkies … higher prices. The reported price increase for eggs nationally in April was 23 percent.

With gasoline and diesel at all-time highs, with natural gas poised for a rapid ascent, with electric utilities across the nation hiking rates, and with food prices in general spiraling ever higher, the last thing we needed was a double whammy of monkeypox and avian flu.

I think I can speak for Biden and his delusional followers by stressing this all is due to that damn Putin and his Ukraine invasion! Or not.

I’m musing today, as the U.S. gasoline price hits another all-time high in national average (You did that, Joe!), about the decline in services rendered by organizations be they public or private.

Specifically, I’m down on the collective competence of Social Security and about any other governmental or quasi-governmental agency you’d like to name.

For those of you new to this blog, my mother died in early April. I mention this not as the plea for attention that marks such posts on Facebook and Twitter, but just as a matter of providing background.

My mother was collecting Social Security payments, as well as a severely reduced pension from Bethlehem Steel based on the working career of her second husband. Said Bethlehem Steel pension, owing to that company’s bankruptcy, had fallen under the auspices of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Useful aside to those of you looking ahead to collecting a pension, regardless of the economic health of your company: Don’t count on it. At least don’t count on ALL of it. Although that guaranty spelling of guarantee makes it sound all safe, secure and upper crust, you get just pennies on the promised dollars.

My mother and other Bethlehem pensioners found that out.

A variation of this warning to would-be retirees is me telling any who will listen that you are likely to get your promised Social Security benefit, regardless of the economic health of the government’s Ponzi-style retirement system.

The catch, and it is a significant one, is with runaway inflation upon us and likely to worsen through the years, that entire monthly Social Security payment might buy you a loaf of bread and maybe a quart of milk to help wash it down.

Back to Social Security. The manager of the funeral home that handled my mother’s arrangements made the usual notifications, notably to Social Security, which in turn is supposed to notify Medicare.

It was left to me do other things, such as getting in touch with the Pension Benefit Guaranty people.

They seemed to be on top of things to start. But imagine my surprise when last week, in the space of a few days, I received first a letter saying all needed documentation had been provided and that nothing else was needed from me.

Shortly thereafter came a request for copious amounts of additional documentation. Say what?

Since this documentation would be to make sure the paltry direct deposit would no longer be made to a checking account we had closed due to the death, they can eagerly await further documentation for the next 30 years or so.

Now, on to Social Security. I received an urgent letter from them lamenting that a direct deposit had been returned and I need to contact them to straighten out this mess.

I should have known these were not the sharpest tools in the drawer when I noted the letter was dated May 17, 2022, but the metered mail stamp had a May 11 date. So, they supposedly mailed this letter six days before they wrote it.

Theoretical physicists say time travel, while possible, would require incalculable amounts of energy. They aren’t taking into consideration what can be done by the combined wealth and waste of the federal government.

Beyond the curious timing, the letter provided a toll-free number to call and instructions to press a digit – in my case 1 – based on the claim number to get help. I called the number and got a request for a nine-digit mailbox number.

Being eight digits short, I defaulted to calling the regular Social Security number, which got me more than 30 minutes on hold waiting to talk to a representative.

That person turned out to be Mary, although I needed her to repeat that for clarification’s sake since her slurred voice sounded as though she’d at first said something like Mogambo.

Mary asked almost as much information about me (name, relationship, address, Social Security number) as she did about my mother.

She said there had been no notification of the death to Social Security, although the funeral director confirmed he had, indeed, done so, and I myself had called previously as a backup.

Mary spent a lot of time sighing and, presumably, struggling with the computer system before finally telling me, a bit triumphantly, that she’d entered the death into the system and we “should” be good now.

I’m thinking the “should” qualifier was by design, not a casual insertion.

Like me, you no doubt have seen incredible stories of deceased Social Security recipients receiving payments years or even decades after their deaths, said payments being eagerly used to pump up the economy by various surviving spouses and/or relatives.

These gaffes used to amaze me. But that no longer is the case based on my personal experience.

In the interim between the Pittsburgh Penguins’ early ouster from the NHL playoffs Sunday, and Pennsylvania’s primary election Tuesday, it occurs to me that sports fans and the voters in the electorate have a lot in common, much of it not flattering.

There is a component — a small one — of both the fan and voter bases made up of people who understand the respective situations, can articulate their positions, and can make arguments worth listening to, even if you don’t necessarily agree with them.

To repeat, that is the minority in both instances. More common are blowhards, doctrinaire idiots and largely confused types who think volume can make up for lack of substance.

And so the Penguins and many of their fans did not disappoint. To recap, the Penguins blew a 3-games-to-1 lead in the best of seven series with the New York Rangers. They consistently could not hold leads in games, including twice in the deciding Game 7.

But many a Penguins fan was heard to whine after the fact that Sidney Crosby missed some time in the series due to an injury. These fans thought it was a ridiculous cheap shot by the Ranger, even though no penalty was called at the time and the NHL, having looked at the hit afterward as they do in such situations, found it warranted no fine or suspension.

This does not appease the vocal, whining majority of Penguins fans, who also are lamenting the NHL’s helmet rule supposedly costing them the tying goal in the third period of Game 7 even though if you watch replays, all five Penguins players were in a position possibly to play defense on the score. They just didn’t choose to do so.

It reminds me of the genius a few years back sitting behind me and the wife at a Mannheim Steamroller Christmas concert. At the time Jordan Staal played for the Penguins and was coming back from an injury.

This fan behind me opined (repeatedly) in his outside calling voice that the Penguins would be better off not playing Staal because their trio of two-man defenseman pairings were better without him.

I resisted the urge to point out to the amateur analyst that Staal is a center, admittedly a good one defensively, but not a defenseman. I did note to my wife, who could care less, that this is typical of fandom. Often wrong, but never in doubt.

This is not a new phenomenon spawned by the internet, although that electronic soapbox has made the noise issued by the sporting illiterati louder. Back when I was a young man, there was a considerable slice of Steelers fandom that thought the team should take advantage of Terry Bradshaw’s scrambling prowess by making him a running back.

To recap, many fans thought a quarterback who would go on to win the Super Bowl four times, and made it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, should be shifted to running back, ostensibly to replace Franco Harris, a running back also headed to the Hall of Fame.

Voters are not much better. Believe it or not, there still is a considerable slice of the electorate that believes Joe Biden is doing a good job as president. Apparently these people don’t buy gasoline, don’t shop at stores with barren shelves, and don’t find themselves encountering or hearing about increased street violence, among other issues.

Dreamers think this dire political situation might change in the fall due to enlightened voter choices. I’m not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, both parties will be picking candidates for various offices in that fall general election.

I will vote in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary to select the Republican ticket.

What a choice I have. I say this with sarcasm.

Many of the lower-level offices have no competition.

The high-profile Senate race leaves me to pick between a carpet-bagging celebrity who’s not in Kansas anymore, but did get a stunning endorsement from Donald Trump.

Other choices are a former hedge fund rich guy and a conservative black woman with some extreme views unlikely to play in a general election.

I will not vote for the Man from Oz. I’m not sure about the other two. Maybe I can just abstain, as I did more recently when the man they are seeking to replace, retiring Pat Toomey, lost my confidence by becoming a political eunuch, afraid to be true to his proclaimed conservative philosophy.

When it comes to the governor race, Republicans are likely to pick Doug Mastriano and so am I. The Democrats will, fittingly, usher forward without competition a state attorney general who helped make sure Biden carried Pennsylvania.

To sum it up, if you bet on the wisdom either of sports fans or the electorate, you’re going to be disappointed.

I’m not particularly superstitious, so today’s Friday the 13^th date doesn’t cause me to curl up in the fetal position and suck my thumb, something popular these days with the pro-abortion crowd.

The good news if you do fear this date is today is the only Friday the 13^th for 2022, the next coming in January 2023.

By then, Clueless Joe Biden and his progressive acolytes should have gas prices at $7 a gallon or so, this nation’s economy in a recession if not a depression, and personal freedoms here at a low level last experienced by Germans when a guy named Hitler was running that country.

It’s not too early to worry on all those counts and more. That’s why I’m anything but sanguine today, but not due to the calendar date.

Glance at the headlines with an open mind and you will share my concern.

ITEM: A twin spin. OPEC missed its daily production target coming up 2.7 million barrels per day short of the number. And a billionaire owner of refineries forecasts diesel fuel may need to be rationed on the east coast of these United States this summer.

We may hit the $7 a gallon even before the next Friday the 13^th.

ITEM: Jerome Powell, chief button pusher for the Federal Reserve, is the guy you may recall assuring us month after month that inflation was “transitory.” It was going to pass quickly, which has since been proven all too wrong as we hit inflation levels last witnessed in this country in 1980. More recently, Powell has assured that despite Fed actions of raising interest rates and withdrawing liquidity from the system, the whole thing would produce a “soft landing” for the economy and, by extension, investment markets. Now Powell is out with comments taken to mean we should forget the promise of a soft landing.

I’m reminded of the axiom; Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me.

ITEM: A United Kingdom professor, an ivory tower type who pushed for draconian lockdowns to combat COVID-19, including the admittedly mild Omicron variation, now concedes he and his ilk were mistaken and the lockdowns created more problems than they supposedly avoided. This comes in the wake of a Johns Hopkins study earlier this year that found global lockdowns came up short in the cost-benefit analysis.

Reality intrudes, but after the metaphorical horse has left the barn.

ITEM: Still on the COVID-19 train of thought, a report estimates that Tony Fauci and National Institutes for Health cronies received an estimated $350 million in “royalty” payments from drug firms and other private firms between 2020 and 2020.

When the watchdogs are being fed by the people they’re supposed to be keeping an eye on, a rational man screams conflict of interest.

ITEM: Clueless Joe Biden and his clueless supporters among the electorate might want to try explaining why, in a time of drastically rising oil prices, their brainless leader would chose this precise moment to cancel lease sales in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, claiming lack of interest for the first and legal challenges for the second.

While driving in my alley the other day I noticed one of the Biden supporters on my block had their Biden campaign sign tucked away in their garage. I keep my Trump/Pence campaign sign in my yard as a lasting tribute to those of us who made the right decision in the last presidential election.

The NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs are underway, confirming that playoff hockey is the best pro sports has to offer, but NHL officiating is not.

This was typified by an incident during a Saturday afternoon game between Colorado and Nashville.

A goal was scored by Colorado, but Nashville challenged it with video review, alleging goalie interference.

Goalie interference is hockey’s version of football’s pass interference. No two officials seem to have the same definition.

Fans, who think they know the rules, are often astounded when the calls go precisely opposite of what they might have expected, prompting utterances not fit to be heard on Mother’s Day.

Often, too, the obligatory rules experts that decorate broadcasts these days can’t agree with the calls that are made.

There was a delicious side note to Saturday’s Colorado-Nashville example because TNT’s rules expert was retired NHL referee Don Koharski.

For those who are not hockey fans, Koharski was at the center of one of the most memorable coach-ref incidents in the history of the NHL.

It happened after Game Three of the Eastern Conference finals in 1988 between New Jersey and Boston, a 6-1 Bruins win.

Jersey coach Jim Schoenfeld didn’t like the way Koharski had called the game and confronted him afterward as they left the ice. According to various reports, Koharski caught his skate on the concrete corridor floor and stumbled, after which he accused Schoenfeld of shoving him.

A video of the incident (and how fitting that video would prove an apparent officiating error) seemed to back up Schoenfeld.

But while Koharski threatened Schoenfield that he would not coach another (game), Schoenfeld shot back one of the most memorable retorts in the annals of hockey: “You fell you fat pig. Have another doughnut.”

The NHL suspended Schoenfeld for at least one game without a hearing. New Jersey management got a court order to stay that and the regularly assigned officials refused to work Game Four, leaving that to a makeshift crew which included the manager of a New York skating rink.

New Jersey won what was considering a poorly officiated game, but Boston went on to win the series.

Schoenfeld eventually was suspended for Game 5, notably the reason given was “verbal abuse of an official” but not the alleged shove of Koharski.

Koharski, in his role as officiating guru on Saturday’s broadcast, was called upon to weigh in on a question of physical contact and Koharski was positive it would be ruled no goal due to a Colorado player contacting the Nashville goalie.

“I’d be shocked if they don’t (overturn the goal),” Koharski said.

Here’s the irony. This time Koharski was sure that a Nashville player had not shoved the Colorado player into the goalie, which would have negated any interference call.

But the league’s situation room saw it the other way, Later, a league statement read that contact by Nashville’s’ Mikael Granlund on Colorado’s Artturi Lehkonen had forced him into the goalie and therefore it was not goalie interference.

This time it was decided there had been a shove and Koharski had missed it, too.

Somewhere Schoenfeld must have been smiling, perhaps while eating a doughnut.