Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

The ongoing debacle in Afghanistan is a bi-partisan issue, with plenty of blame to be distributed on both sides of the political isle.

Simply put, Democrats and Republicans are equally responsible for the wasted lives, wasted dollars, wasted time, spent, as Joe Biden succinctly put it today, to fight another country’s civil war.

Four U.S. presidents have spent 20 years presiding over the Afghanistan experience.

The lesson learned, one we should have learned long ago, is you don’t fight a war unless you are willing to do whatever it takes to win it unconditionally.

The concept of “limited war” began in Korea. All these years later, that country still is divided into North and South.

Vietnam was another limited war with pathetic outcomes considering the costs in lives and national treasure.

We started out OK in Iraq, but quickly lost our way there. Afghanistan has been Korea and Vietnam rolled up into one seemingly never-ending example of how not to accomplish a goal.

I’m often critical of Joe Biden, but he was clear and concise in this livestream today on the internet that the United States no longer should fight in wars the country’s residents aren’t willing to fight for themselves.

Let us return to a combination of isolationism and Monroe Doctrine. Unless the threats are in this hemisphere, we ignore them.

The situation in Afghanistan is the equivalent of the police officers’ no-win domestic disturbance call. You show up to protect one side and, before you know it, both sides are fighting you.

Afghans are giving the French a run for their “Retreat. We Give Up” crown, earned through military misadventures from Napoleon onward.

Our intelligence services come away looking ridiculous, too, with their time estimates of how long it would take Afghanistan to collapse once Americans no longer were doing the fighting. The promised months disintegrated to hours.

“We could not provide them with the will to fight,” a wistful Biden noted after recounting a list of training, support and payroll the U.S. had invested in a 300,000 man army that collapsed like a tent in a windstorm.

Biden said he won’t be adventurous militarily going forward. Hopefully he can recall saying that in the future, when the cries will go out – as they always do – to intervene in some God-forsaken patch of real estate elsewhere.

It’s time American leadership learns from the lessons of Korea, Vietnam and now Afghanistan. Go big, or stay home.

The left-wing radicals love to toss out any objective measure of a matter, which is why they’ve added the math-is-racist crusade to their progressive wish list.

Much better to argue feelings, emotions, all manner of other intangibles than to be pinned down and required to cite honest statistics. When a numerical measure of a situation is readily available, their default solution too often seems to be to make up some number.

Enter the Centers for Disease Control (And Prevention), our federal propaganda wing that might as well be re-christened Centers for Disseminating Crap (And Prevarication).

The CDC was caught with its hand in the metaphorical cookie jar this week, overstating COVID-19 numbers for Florida, that state being under hard federal attack for failing to bow to virus dictates.

CDC reported COVID-19 case numbers for Florida that had to be reduced by 50 percent (that’s one-half for you people who believe math is racist) after state officials cried foul. How was such an error made?

Good question.

Better question: Why do these errors always seem to be made in the direction that advances the Biden administration narrative?

Recall the guy who died in a motorcycle accident, but tested positive post-mortem for COVID-19 and so was lumped into that category to help bolster the case? That’s become a template.

Second better question: Will we see an avalanche of lamestream media corrections on the matter of this CDC distortion of the Florida numbers?

Don’t hold your breath.

To reiterate, if you don’t like the numbers, make up some that favor your position and hope no one calls you on them.

Because, after all, math is racist.

Clueless Joe Biden got off his script today and reinforced the argument of those who question the soundness of his mind.

Biden was looking to take a victory lap for his half-passed stimulus/infrastructure legislation (getting it through the Senate is only half the battle), but Clueless Joe was asked about his political pal Andrew Cuomo announcing that he will resign – in due time – as governor of New York.

Cuomo has mounting allegations of sexual misconduct against him, some of which have been investigated and substantiated. He also is being investigated for the way he handled the nursing homes in his state during the original COVID-19 crisis and whether death numbers were fudged.

That’s a lot of baggage being carried by a guy who Biden said today did, “a hell of a job” as governor.

Give credit to some of the media on hand who found this incredulous.

Biden was asked how he could say a man with the taint that Cuomo now has did a “hell of a job” as governor? The accusations against Cuomo are interwoven with him carrying out governor duties.

Biden’s handlers, led by the Ginger Mouthpiece, were quick to clarify that Biden was praising Cuomo only for infrastructure gains. But Biden himself threw in “access to voting” and a “whole range of things” in his “hell of a job” statement.

For all we know, Biden believes Cuomo handled the nursing home matter well, too, within that “whole range of things” blanket endorsement.

Clueless Joe sounds like those who were willing to look past the atrocities committed by former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and note that at least “he made the trains run on time.”

To borrow a pet phrase of Biden, Come on, man!

Imagine Biden at a press conference after Nazi war criminal Adolf Hitler committed suicide.

Breathless media questioner: Mr. Biden, how would you rate Hitler’s performance overall in Germany?

Biden: You mean aside from all the stuff he did to the Jews, the millions of innocent civilians whose deaths he had a hand in, the carnage he wrought in Europe? And leaving out any personal foibles?

Breathless media questioner: Yes.

Biden: Well, Hitler did have a hand in the birthing of the Volkswagen Beetle and who among our generation hasn’t owned or ridden in one of those great vehicles?

Ginger Mouthpiece: Of course the president was not endorsing any of Hitler’s atrocities. But I would remind you that, like Mussolini, President Biden is making sure the trains of COVID-carrying illegal immigrants are getting to their United States destinations on time.

Shhhhhhhhh. I’m listening for all the mea culpas, the abject apologies from media, politicians and moronic members of the general populace who were pushing Andrew Cuomo for sainthood.

Where’s lightweight brother “Fredo” Chris Cuomo, the CNN shill for his brother, now that Andrew has announced he will resign – finally – as governor of New York? Fredo is on vacation, a bit of convenient timing.

But what of the other Andrew Cuomo apologists who ignored his misguided COVID-19 nursing home policy, and gave similar short shrift to a lengthy list of females who had accused Andrew of creepy sexual harassment?

How about the cretins who broke tradition (read rules) and got him an Emmy for COVID-19 briefings that were mostly exercises in self-congratulation and blame shifting?

This tinpot dictator can’t even exit the stage without giving himself a 14-day curtain call. His resignation announcement was short on taking responsibility and long on blowing his own horn.

It wasn’t that long ago that a poll found that more than 50 percent of Hollywood types identified themselves as Cuomosexuals, a fawning tribute to a man with feet of clay.

There was talk of Cuomo hopping into the presidential fray in the next election cycle since it’s obvious current officeholder Joe Biden is unlikely even to remember who he is by then, not that this isn’t already a problem.

The only negative to this day is that there aren’t a lot of other prominent Democrats — or Republicans for that matter — with glaring shortcomings similar to Andrew Cuomo’s also being shoved out of the public spotlight.

No doubt Cuomo will land on his feed. Is that CNN on line 2? Maybe MSNBC? There will be other books to be written, corporate boards to be served upon. Maybe he will start up one of those questionable foundations to keep his name in the spotlight.

Bottom line, Andrew Cuomo’s shortcomings appear to go well beyond his admitted penchant for kissing and hugging, which he took great pains to document with an 86-page response to an investigation into his behavior. Only 26 of those pages were text. The rest were collages of Cuomo kissing and hugging men and women.

As some have noted, it’s an interesting defense to sexual harassment allegations for a person to say, in effect, that it’s just something that he does, a lot.

Now that Cuomo no longer will be burdened by those pesky governor duties, he’s free to devote full time to his favorite avocation.

Good luck with that, Andrew. Say hi to Fredo for us.

This just in, we’re all going to die – eventually.

Come to grips with this and life becomes less scary. Then you don’t become obsessed with prolonging your time spent on this spinning ball of chaos, at the expense of enjoying said time.

I’m not advocating diving out of airplanes sans parachute or jumping in front of buses. I also am not advocating sitting at home, cocooned in shrink wrap, wearing a face mask and inhaling vitamin supplements between jabs of the vaccine of the moment.

Somewhere in between is the sweet spot that few seem able to find.

The topic sprang to mind as I sat waiting for a NASCAR truck race at Watkins Glen to finish Saturday afternoon. It sits in a red-flag delay as I type due to lightning in the area.

The odds of any of the vehicles or crew members being struck by lightning should the race continue are infinitesimal. Similarly, odds are good no spectators will take a hit, presuming they do not stand in an open area holding a flagpole and wearing the metal spikes that help turn golfers into lightning rods.

But, in an abundance of caution, a phrase we hear a lot in these litigious and fear-mongering times, the vehicles sit waiting for Mother Nature to move on to other parts.

It wasn’t always this way, and I can speak from personal experience. Four or more decades back, a cousin and I used to make periodic pilgrimages to Watkins Glen to watch racing that sometimes involved a guy we both knew running in the Trans Am series.

On one of those occasions, we were watching a Formula 5000 race – think Indy-style open-wheel cars powered by domestic V-8 engines with a 305-cubic inch limit. These class cars ran from 1968 through 1982.

It began to rain – hard. There was thunder and lightning. The racers’ response was to pit for rain tires, the grooved examples that road racers use to run in the wet. The event continued.

Meanwhile, my cousin and I sat at the top of ALUMINUM !!! bleachers, maybe 50 rows high, situated on a hill, and watched the race.

If you are familiar at all with the Watkins Glen track, we were at the end of the uphill stretch that leads to the Esses, the back straight, and the bus stop (interloop) that slows cars ahead of the sweeping carousel turn.

Al Unser Sr. was leading the race and was clocked at 180 mph in the traps near the end of the back straight. This at a time when due to the rain and the rooster tails of spray shot into the air by the open wheels, you could only the see the front of the lead car and nothing of the trailing vehicles.

As for my cousin and I, we sat on the potential mass electric chair and thought little of personal danger. Only afterward did we give it any notice.

We might have died from a lightning strike, but we didn’t. I might die from COVID-19, but I like my odds there, too.

The hysteria of the pro-vaccine crowd and Orwellian governments only strengthens my resolve.

Their rush to censor anyone who would cite counter opinion smacks of desperation.

Just this past Friday Joe Rogan, speaking on his wildly popular Spotify podcast, mentioned getting feedback from doctors citing concerns that ineffective vaccines, such as the ones we are encouraged to take, can spawn super bugs.

Rogan mentioned a 2015 peer-reviewed study that raised the specter of this in general, not regarding COVID-19, which was a few years in our future.

And the cries are out to cancel Rogan and deny him his platform. He must be punished for being – in a word — correct.

You can’t be allowed to pass on correct information when it differs from the government approved narrative.

The nanny state purports to want to save us from ourselves with vaccines that don’t prevent infection or its spread, don’t kill the disease and now seem to be in need of a nonstop amount of boosters to maintain that ineffectiveness.

Had my cousin and I been at Watkins Glen today, NASCAR would have played the governmental role by saving us from ourselves. First, NASCAR halted the race with a red flag due to lightning, then it called it off 11 laps short of the scheduled distance.

Whether NASCAR was looking to protect the spectators, avoid lawsuits, just clear the decks for the upcoming race at the same track in the more popular Xfinity series, or vacate the cable channel for scheduled Major League Baseball, is open to debate.

What is not open to debate is you and I will die at some future time. Try ignoring the fear merchants along the way and living a little while you wait.

Times get curioser and curioser, producing a crying need for analysis.

Dry those tears, we have yet another edition of news and views.

NEWS: New York City has upped the ante for vaccination discrimination, closing gyms and restaurants to the unwashed, AKA unvaccinated. Expect other liberal citadels to follow and even get more draconian on the people unwilling to take the jab like good little sheep.

VIEWS: There is a mounting pushback movement regarding such governmental over-reaches. A favorite point that is being made more and more is the hypocrisy of requiring vaccination “papers” to go out and eat at a restaurant, while screaming that anyone suggesting voters should provide ID is a racist pig trying to discriminate against people. By the way, non-whites are disproportionately not vaccinated. Similar hypocrisy is opening the southern border and forbidding anyone even to ask an illegal alien about vaccinations.

NEWS: Bigwigs in the Democratic party, including figurehead president Joe Biden, are calling on tainted New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to resign as his alleged sexual misconduct continues to be documented. Cuomo, the one-time hero of the left for his ridiculous handling of the COVID-19 panic in the early days, won’t leave voluntarily.

VIEWS: Just one question: Is Andrew still getting unbiased guidance from little brother Fredo, I mean Chris, the CNN shill masquerading as a journalist?

NEWS: Tamyra Mensah-Stock is getting a lot of positive publicity, and deservedly so, for becoming the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal in wrestling for the United States, then enthusiastically praising her home country and literally wrapping herself in the U.S. Flag afterward.

VIEWS: This is an athlete a country can cheer for, unlike so many of the virtue-signaling political activists who have sought to use any success in these Games as a political platform. Fortunately, U.S. women’s hammer thrower Gwen Berry embarrassed herself in competition by finishing 11^th of 12 participants in her event, thereby denying her a medal win and chance to embarrass herself further with pathetic symbolic protests such as turning her back on the national anthem.

NEWS: Former president Barack Obama has gotten criticism of late, even from some of his lapdog media members, for a planned 60^th birthday party at a Martha’s Vineyard mansion that would have had upwards of 700 people including guests and staff, even as we are being told to avoid gatherings in yet another COVID-19 scare campaign. Also there has been pushback against Obama for a social media effort by one of his sycophants to raise money for a look-at-me presidential center to fawn over Obama.

VIEWS: I’m surprised (sarcasm) that Obama’s party is at a mansion on the east coast and not being hosted in the South Side of his beloved Chicago, where dodging stray gunfire might have livened up the occasion. The Obama folks have pared the invite list in a bit of virtue signaling to the critics, but haven’t given specifics on the new numbers. I think Obama should be able to invite thousands to his party, but I also think the little people such as me shouldn’t have to walk around with face diapers and listening to threats if we continue to opt not to take the jabs that still are unapproved by the FDA, have proven to be ineffective, and are possibly dangerous as measured by the ongoing protection of manufacturers from legal action in the event of adverse reactions suffered by those who get the vaccines.

Traditionally, the military and the Woke movement would be the strangest of mates; philosophical matter and anti-matter.

But these are not traditional times and so we have the Woke crowd invading the military and doing their best to neuter one of the last bastions of uncompromised strength in this nation.

This is the same Woke movement that has turned our government into an exercise in socialistic excess, our public schools and colleges into cesspools of intolerance and indoctrination, social media into Big Brother censorship, our news media into fawning propagandists and our election system into a banana republic joke.

Now, at a time when China poses a significant military threat and Russia, while not the all-encompassing bogeyman the liberals would have you believe it to be, still represents a military existential threat to the west, we have the Woke fanatics threatening to turn our military into bands of introspective apologists.

Alas, successful military does not have as its cornerstone touchy-feely navel gazing. Militaries exist to kill people and break things in the name of national defense, or conquest, depending on the prevailing philosophy of the leadership.

In a Woke world, American soldiers would take to the battlefield bragging about their sexual, racial and ideological diversity and seek dialogue to find common ground with the foes. After enemy soldiers got done laughing, those intolerant meanies would send our soldiers back home in body bags.

And we among the civilian population would need to start brushing up on Chinese or Russian.

Reports have been appearing in the media for months now of how the military, at the behest of the political administration and with some well-placed stooges that have been put in positions of influence in the various branches, has been riding the train to Woke-ville.

Traditional military types, dinosaurs who actually believe in God and country, are heading out the door so fast it looks like the inverse of our southern border after Biden issues another ridiculous invitation to come on in, no COVID-19 testing required.

Of course the military brass – the same ones pushing this Woke philosophy — deny the descent into Woke-ism even as the proponents are previewing maternity uniforms, and adding socialist and other deviant philosophical material to required reading and education.

But while denying the reality of the matter, these idiots are issuing statements such as: “There’s strength in diversity; that’s a scientifically proven fact.”

I’d like to see that science. Somehow this country was the key to success in World War I and World War II despite not having women or admitted gays, transsexuals or the gender confused, in the combat units. Our military wasn’t concerned first and foremost with making sure it had enough representation of each racial and ethnic group so it “Looked like America.”

Results mattered then, not appearances. These days it’s all about the superficial.

Again, show me the “science” that diversity as defined by Woke loyalists makes a military better. This statement sounds suspiciously like the pseudo-science being crammed down our throats regarding COVID-19 (just ignore the fact that the death rate is about one quarter of one percent) and climate change (neatly re-branded from “global warming” when temperatures failed to climb at a rate that followed those made up hockey stick charts).

It is disconcerting to read that the military is going politically correct. I reached out for some first-hand feedback and I’m sad to report hearing that the situation is dire, perhaps even worse than what you might have read.

Our government, and the special-interest groups it takes orders from, have us in a race to see whether we can lose our freedom and independence more quickly from governmental decrees or from the nation being taken down by a foreign power.

Either way, we lose.

It was a good 24 hours for those who find these Woke Olympic Games disgusting.

Include me in that group, which surprisingly includes dependable far-left mouthpiece Bill Maher. He unexpectedly spouted at length recently on his cable television show that the Olympics are not the place for this ridiculous Woke crap. Maher would like to cancel Cancel Culture.

Can this be a sign that this hypocritical and sanctimonious politically correct over-reach has peaked? We can only hope.

The Olympic Games, once a sporting showcase, now have become a repetitive exercise in virtue-signaling, political posturing and personal promotion with a bit of competition slipped into the cracks.

Our women’s soccer team has a troll-like waif with color-of-the-day hair who has perfected self-promotion to an art-form, reaping financial benefits along the way and never being called out for her hypocrisy.

Yes, there is no I in team. But there is a Me (letters four and two reversed). Too many of these Woke Olympics athletes are ME types.

But, as these opportunists sought to bastardize the platform of the Olympics to advance their politics and purse, a funny thing happened. They haven’t been winning.

The women’s soccer team fittingly lost to Canada by hanging yet another zero on the scoreboard.

Rejoice that the U.S. women’s soccer team has been kicked to the curb yet again and now the best these over-hyped political activists can hope for is a bronze medal. Not that long ago they were odds-on favorites to grab gold, literally and figuratively when you include talk about endorsements.

Those post-match tears likely were more over lost dollars than a lost contest.

When an athlete’s focus is on something other than the competition, bad things happen. Or good things happen if you get a chuckle from seeing such people getting their comeuppance.

Losing has become of a habit for U.S. women’s soccer players. They lost in court, too, with their suit alleging they are underpaid. The court found they actually make more than the U.S. men’s players when benefits are factored in. Plus, the women were offered the very same contract as the men and turned it down.

For them to lose in a court of law in these politically-correct, warped-justice times speaks to the weakness of their case. And now their weak on-field play isn’t exactly strengthening their appeal.

Shortly before the women lost to Canada in the Olympics, the U.S. men’s team took gold in the CONCACAF Gold Cup by stunning heavily favored Mexico.

Meanwhile a New Zealand transgender weightlifter – translation, a former guy now trying to beat the girls – bombed out of that Olympic competition and shall depart Tokyo without a medal, and the ability to leverage that as a social justice warrior.

To repeat a line from a former post on this matter: Just lose, baby!

Through a combination of bribes and coercion, the VacinNazis and MaskHoles are neatly ignoring the facts, the science, as they push for their holy grail of 100 percent submission to the needle and the wearing of face diapers.

Clueless Joe Biden continues to jabber about the jabs and assured all during a recent appearance that those who got the COVID-19 vaccine wouldn’t have to worry about ever being infected.

But a recent outbreak in one Massachusetts county revealed that a full 74 percent of the new cases were fully vaccinated and 80 percent of those hospitalized were vaccinated.

There are similar numbers elsewhere that contradict even the walked back talking points that, yes, vaccinated people can be infected, but their symptoms are less severe.

Doing their part to serve their governmental masters, social media outlets such as Twitter are busy censoring those who report the results of a Pfizer study in which that company’s vaccine had zero effect on mortality. There were 15 people in the study who received the vaccine and still died, while 14 who received the placebo (AKA a fake to fool them) died.

The overall death rate from COVID-19 has been reported consistently as a minuscule percentage. One recent article I read put it at one-quarter of one percent of the infected. Looking at the glass as almost completely full, that means 99.7 percent or so of people who are infected DID NOT DIE!

Yet the drumbeat has been increased for all to submit to the vaccines, jabs that even the purveyors concede do not work completely, might need periodic repeat booster shots and are dispensed with the manufacturers shielded from any liability for adverse reactions.

Tactics of paying people to submit to the vaccine pushers, or threatening them with exclusion from society if they refuse to be stuck, smacks of desperation on the part of the powers-that-be.

The sheeple among society, those who will do as they are told without questioning – a variation of the Germans who exterminated Jews because they were “just following orders” – have rushed to get their jabs and now walk around in a state of orgasmic self-congratulation.

But that group has gotten its fix. Others are not so willing to be blindly obedient.

And I am reminded of a scene I witnessed last week at the Bedford County Fair in which there was a booth set up in one building offering free jabs. The woman sat there idly with no takers.

Right next to her was a merchandise vendor, prominently displaying Trump flags and posters. That booth was very busy.

International news agency Reuters reports that on Saturday 200,000 or so protesters took to the streets in Paris and other French cities to protest so-called COVID passports, a requirement that people have proof of vaccination before accessing public venues.

Your papers, please.

Other nations, including Australia, are seeing widespread protests as independent thinkers question this usurpation of freedom and the ongoing general power grab by their governments.

One can only wonder how next these governments, so desperate to repress the citizenry, will up the ante in an attempt to use the so-called “crisis” of the COVID virus to crush freedom and turn this world into one complete dystopian, dysfunctional mess.

Be assured it will continue until enough people hit the streets to demand it all stop.

1. TV ratings are in the toilet. They were down about 33 percent for the opening ceremonies and have continued to be tepid for most broadcasts. Some apologists note streaming opportunities cut into TV ratings, but even counting those platforms, far fewer people are watching these Woke Olympics in the U.S., and we congratulate them for their good taste.
2. The ratings flop is all the more notable because network and cable competitors have gone out of their way to clear the decks for NBC’s coverage by scheduling re-runs and other stale programming. Even NASCAR and Indy Car are not having races. Only the Major League Baseball broadcasts go on and those are scant competition in view of that sport’s similarly poor TV ratings, exemplified by the recent All-Star Game broadcast that plumbed long-term lows for viewership.
3. U.S. female gymnast, Simone Biles, promoted as the GOAT of her sport (Greatest Of All Time) became a metaphorical goat of a different kind by choosing to sit out decisive competition due to what she described as mental issues. Support poured in on social media, including from former U.S. Women’s gymnast Kerri Strug. For those who may have forgotten, Strug broke an ankle on a vault, but performed a second vault with the injury to enable to the U.S. team to win gold in 1996. This year’s U.S. women, competing at the end without Biles, took silver
4. Another touching tale from the Olympics is the quick demise of “Japanese” tennis player Naomi Osaka. She was the face of these Olympics in Japan, even being chosen to light the ceremonial flaming cauldron. Not bad for a kid who grew up in Long Island, NY, and Florida. While born in Japan, Osaka has been in the United States since age 3. The daughter of a Japanese mother and Haitian father, Osaka once had dual citizenship with Japan and the U.S, but renounced the latter in recent years. She opted to retain Japanese citizenship and compete for Japan. I wonder if she was yet another non-citizen who voted for Biden? Cynics suggested lucrative marketing opportunities in Japan weighed in the decision to represent that country. And we wonder if representing Haiti was ever considered?

The exposure of these Olympic Games for what they truly are, that being an exercise in propaganda, exploitation and telling of tall tales, likely will continue until the closing ceremonies. Expect said ceremonies fittingly to be conducted before a virtually empty stadium and to be viewed by a similarly sparse TV audience.