Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

John Fetterman has emerged as the voice of reason in the Democrat Party. Imagine that.

And, predictably, the left is attacking Fetterman for his outrageous thoughts such as it’s time to stop calling Donald Trump and his supporters Nazis or Fascists. Fetterman says instead it just might be time to rethink that strategy, unpopular as it is beyond left-wing echo chambers, and remember Trump was shot, but not killed, and Charlie Kirk was shot and killed.

Should you, or Fetterman really be surprised that his words have triggered (no pun intended) the screeching hypocrites who define the Democrats?

John F. Kennedy, once the patron saint of Democrats, would not be welcome these days in his party. He’d be labeled as a right-winger and, of course, a Nazi and Fascist.

How we got to this sick stage is an accumulation of hate and vitriol on the left being met with weakness on the right.

I think of George W. Bush and his compassionate conservative crap. Always willing to bow and scrape, Bush emboldened the left.

Typical was how the radicals coerced Bush into, upon any reference to Islam in the wake of 9-11, adding “the religion of peace.”

Tell that to the 9-11 victims, George.

A succession of high-profile Democrats watched and learned. If even in the immediate aftermath of thousands of Americans being killed in terror attacks on our soil, a Republican president could be cowed into political correctness, there were no limits to what could be said or done.

When Trump came along to give the Republicans a backbone again, the Bush clan was fighting him all the way, butt hurt that their anointed one, Jeb, was swept aside by Trump.

I blame George W. Bush for Shrillary Clinton being able to label Trump supporters deplorables without blowback, and for Barack Hussein Obama being able to dismiss those who did not support his rampant leftism as bitter types clinging to guns and religion.

Old Hussein Obama went further, likening street thugs to the son he never had and too often, it seemed, wading into issues in kneejerk fashion to inflame racial hatred.

Fast-forward to today and Cackling Kamala is out flogging her new book, which according to reported excerpts, blames everyone but her for the pathetic, $ 1 billion-plus alleged campaign she ran that was more like buying celebrity endorsements and failing to connect with the masses.

Hussein Obama weighed in with racial animus during that failed campaign, too. Basically, Hussein told the “brothers” they had not been backing the sister with enough passion, painting black men with the broad brush of racism and misogny.

Hussein was surprised when black men didn’t pull a George W. Bush and grovel, but instead seemed to vote for Trump in historic numbers.

Most recently, Democrats have been trying to portray themselves as victims because mouthpiece Jimmy Kimmel got yanked from the ABC late-night lineup.

Perspective? These raging leftists have none. They rail about alleged infringement on Kimmel’s First Amendment rights, neatly ignoring that he flat-out lied that the accused Kirk assassin was MAGA. Kimmel then refused requests from the public and, more to the point, his bosses, to correct the matter.

Kimmel being shelved is a business decision. His plummeting ratings and backlash from ABC affiliates who decided they no longer would run his leftist rants, forced the hand of ABC’s Disney parent company.

Yet, these Kimmel free speech advocates have no problem with Kirk being shot at a public event, for exercising his First Amendment rights. If these people weren’t so dense, so blinded by their partisanship, they might see how silly they look.

Or, if we had a truly fair LameStream media, the leftists might find themselves being educated as to their hypocrisy on the public airwaves.

Instead, we had an MSNBC bimbette describe Kimmel as “speaking the truth to power.” What truth was that? A guy having a homosexual relationship with another male on his way to becoming a female while dressing up in furry costumes, someone who preached hate for Trump, Kirk and any who supported them, that’s a MAGA supporter?

Look up “truth” in the dictionary, bimbette.

A disturbingly high percentage of Democrats suffer from TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome. They have bought into the propaganda being spread by their party and LameStream media. They are the deplorables and, more to the point, irredeemables.

They are lost. It’s time for those on the right to face it. No civil dialogue is going to bring them back to reality.

Trump understands what George W. Bush did not. No amount of bowing and scraping will satisfy these lunatics on the left. Instead, weakness only gives them the approval to escalate.

We’ve already had both attempted and successful assassinations on high-profile Republicans. What is next for America?

Those of us on the political right, what used to be the vast majority in this country, a loose grouping of races, religions and (two) genders sharing traditional values and common sense, now sit around and marvel about those on the left, who seemingly have lost touch with any and all of that.

Democrats mostly, these leftist zealots find themselves championing violence, crime, illegal immigration, men beating up on women in women’s sports, general sexual ambiguity and any anti-religious, anti-social, anti-family, anti-humanity cause of the moment.

Of late, we have the glaring examples like Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night ABC talk host now on indefinite suspension after ABC affiliates rebelled against running any more of his left-wing rants and, probably more significantly, the FCC was going to look into Kimmel’s lastest blatant lies, those being that Charlie Kirk’s assassin was a MAGA type.

In reality, the man arrested as the killer is a deranged leftist hooked up with a trans lover/roomate. MAGA, indeed.

And this brings us to ABC (same network, of course) reporter Matt Gutman, whose reporting on the alleged assassin’s court hearing was stunk up with Gutman’s observations of how touching the love story was.

That Gutman seemed to include quotes that were not in the texts read aloud in court is just the icing on the cake of leftist propaganda.

Unlike Kimmel, Gutman apparently needs the job, and so rushed to social media to apologize. It was the typical non-apology. He’s sorry we in the viewing public, likely slobbering MAGA types, were too stupid to understand his noble commentary on the matter. So, if we were offended, he’s sorry we’re idiots.

Some have said Kimmel and Gutman are products of living in figurative bubbles, in which they only associate with similarly ideologically blind types. They wouldn’t understand the difference between good and evil if evil swatted them in the face while kicking them in their – presumably small – gonads.

It got me wondering what Kimmel and Gutman might have said if they encountered each other in an ABC lunch room.

KIMMEL: “Good bit on the Kirk killer. I wish you’ve have called me, I had the best title for it. Two males, one transitioning to female, roommates, lovers. I’m thinking “Romeo and Julius. If we wanted to turn it into a porno flick, the roommate has the perfect name, Lance Twiggs!”

GUTMAN: “Man, I should have called you. Damn. Too late now. Those meanies in upper management have urged me to apologize. What a drag (I don’t mean cross-dressing types). But they promised me if I just did a public mea culpa they would keep me on to continue furthering our agenda.”

KIMMEL: “Yeah, they want me to apologize, too. I’m not going to do it. I don’t care about the mountain of evidence to the contrary, I was right, the kid was and is MAGA. Being Kimmel means you never have to say you’re sorry. No sir, no apologies, just cry a lot and bore the viewers with yet more political screeds. Well, I guess not for awhile now, but, I’ll be back.”

GUTMAN: “Let’s face it, you can afford to make a stand, you’ve been milking the ABC cow for a lot of money through the years. I’m even more of an untalented nobody than you, so I need the bucks. Plus, this name of mine makes it tough. Older people think I’m that fat guy from The Maltese Falcon (Casper Gutman) and young people think I’m that Fox creep (Greg Gutfeld).”

KIMMEL: “Yeah, I’m pretty lucky. Kimmel is a non-descript last name, with no really famous people or characters using it. Come to think of it, Kimmel is the perfect last name for me.”

GUTMAN: “I’m just glad I bended the knee, kissed the hem of the robe, you know, folded like a tent in a hurricane to save my job. I’ve got so many great ideas. Jeffrey Dahmer, sure he was a serial killer who practiced cannibalism and necrophilia, but you could argue he was a model for the Atkins diet and other no-carb regimens. Plus, I understand he was kind to animals. Touching, don’t you think?”

KIMMEL: “I like it. Maybe do some research and find out Hitler wrote nice letters to his mother, or Stalin worked in soup kitchens during his spare time. Even if you don’t discover redeeming qualities in those psychopaths, just make it up like I did about the shooter being MAGA.”

GUTMAN: “That’s gold, man. Maybe I should do a deep dive into Donald Trump, noting neither he, nor his followers are Nazis, Fascists or crazed types in general, but just patriots who want the country to prosper?

KIMMEL: “Get away from me, you MAGA creep. I hope you die!”

Federal Reserve day was funny Wednesday, in its typical absurdly pathetic way.

Our money masters decided to reduce their desired short-term interest rate by 25 basis points, which is one quarter of a percentage point.

Beforehand, the usual suspects were on CNBC politicizing the whole thing. Afterward, more of the same.

One vapid sort was crowing after the fact how would-be replacements for current Fed president Jerome Powell showed the institution was apolitical and bigger than would-be interference from presidents by not dissenting on the cut, as in voting it was not large enough in view of roiled labor markets and incessant downward revisions of employment.

Oh, yes, the Fed is apolitical, like when it cut twice as much – 50 basis points or one-half percent – last September, just ahead of a presidential election and when so many Fed “experts” ruled that out as being too political and too close to said election; that it would be appearing to be, if not outright screaming, support for Cackling Kamala.

Fortunately, justice prevailed and the Fed was not able to push the Cackling One across the finish line in first place. Fed types then resorted to trying to hamstring Donald Trump, ignoring signs rate cuts were in order, refusing to provide them, and with its members going out of their way to crimp verbally Trump progress with their public utterances.

Add in that a DEI Fed member since has been charged with mis-stating – multiple times – what her primary residence is in order to gain favorable mortgage treatment. Just clerical error, her apologists proclaim. So, someone who can’t decide where she lives and can’t understand mortgage forms should have a hand in making monetary policy for this once-great nation?

Yeah, sure.

Part of the circus on Fed announcement day is the press conference with Powell, in which he often directly contradicts himself, but always can expect to be given verbal bouquets by his sycophants in the media.

Include in that list CNBC’s Steve LiesMan, as short on intellectual honesty as he is on hair.

I can’t recall – and couldn’t find anything on the internet — indicating him talking about a political Fed when that half-point cut was unleashed last year, just before an election. He does, however, go out of his way frequently to make snide comments about Trump and his team.

And then there was the Bloomberg reporterette at the Powell presser, who used “ums” and “you knows” about a thousand times trying to ask Powell her question.

She sounded like a grown-up (chronologically, not mentally) Valley Girl. Gag me with a spoon!

I’m not sure what she was asking. I couldn’t get past her bastardization of the language.

Alas, the Fed display was just an example of the pathetically poor media we now have on a national basis.

Earlier today, my wife was watching coverage of Trump’s visit to England, including a military display on the grounds of Windsor Castle, which included an impressive jet fighter flyover.

One high-profile Fox type noted that no doubt Prime Minister Keir Starmer was watching from his nearby country manor, thinking about how he could get Trump to drop tariffs on steel aluminum.

Too bad she apparently hadn’t been paying attention to the coverage, because moments before she spoke cameras had shown Starmer, larger than life, seated on the lawn watching the events.

My wife thought I was being too critical when I noted this. I countered that since the wife was watching it, she should consider if a media member could not get such a thing correct, regarding a event she was covering, maybe she should not trust her on other reports.

A few minutes later, Martha MacCallum did note for the record that Starmer was in attendance, just as an aside.

At least MacCallum was paying attention. If more of us paid attention. Fed circus day would have to close its tent and go back to reporting the news, not attempting to massage and influence it.

What a great thing that would be.

Were the subject not so tragic, it would be laughable to watch LameStream media types try to convey accurately details involving high-profile shootings.

Some functional gun illiterates, like the since-fired MSNBC political guy, will rush to impugn conversatives following shootings with misguided analysis such as his kneejerk speculation that Charlie Kirk might have been shot by a supporter firing a gun in celebration.

Memo to this fool should he ever again be in a position to preach to the public, the safest handlers of guns are conservatives. They do not, for example, attempt to pull street-level shootings and spray the second, third and fourth floors of nearby buildings.

I would suspect the MSNBC guy was canned as a sacrifice on the altar of public relations, and not because management really disagreed with anything he said. But, it’s a start.

We immediately heard the convenient “assault weapon” cries regarding the Kirk shooting before any details were available. Democrats were quick to rush to try to leverage the Kirk death into yet more gun control..

To borrow from one of Cackling Kamala’s favorite lines, these Gun Nazis are unburdened by the truth.

Fact: Kirk was shot with a .30-06 rifle, something millions own and would not be covered by assault weapons bans as proposed because it is bolt action, not semi-automatic, and does not have what is randomly labeled as a high-capacity magazine, defined as more than 10 rounds.

Fact: The experts were marvelling at the shooter’s prowess, as if he were some accomplished marksman. They fail to comprehend these Pennsylvania woods are full of deer hunters who could have made that shot.

Fact: The sainted 1994 assault weapons ban, at the time grandfathered in existing weapons and large magazines. This leads us toward the fatal flaw of such legislation. The gun toothpaste already is out of the tube in the U.S. and bans accomplish little to nothing. Plenty of people could have legally kept “assault weapons.” More to the point, because criminals by definition don’t obey the laws, such weapons would have been wielded with impunity by thugs, ban or no ban.

Fact: Just today (Monday) I saw an opportunistic piece about the Kirk shooting calling into question the state of Utah’s “most permissive in the country” gun legislation. Horrors, the article seemed to state, the Utah folks can openly carry weapons, even on selected public college campuses. Except . . the Kirk shooter was not carrying openly but, judging from videos since released, had the broken-down weapon jammed into his pants. I would argue that had a legally carrying gun owner seen him — the so-called good guy with a gun – Kirk might still be alive today. You will never hear that argument from LameStream media.

But, but, but, the hyperventilating gun-control types suggest we need to get rid of guns to make us all safer. This, while many high-profile types employ private security, wielding guns, to protect their hypocritical butts. I’m fairly certain a gun ban would not lead to widespread security unemployment.

If we did ban guns, would crime and public murders/assassinations disappear? In a word, no.

Did you notice the careeer criminal killing the Ukrainian woman? He stabbed her.

Knives, plus the proverbial blunt object, or hands, are weapons of opportunity for killers.

And, as far as mass killings, do you recall fertilizer and nitromethane racing fuel additive being used in part to build a truck bomb that blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 169 and injuring 685? That happened in April 1995, about seven months after the assault weapons ban was signed into law.

Fast-forward to Sept. 11, 2001, with the 10-year assault weapons ban still in place, and 2,977 perished in terror attacks using commercial airliners.

Finally, some of the highest-profile assassinations in history, were achieved without the use of “assault weapons.” Bolt-action rifles struck down President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a cheap .22-caliber revolver used to slay Robert F. Kennedy.

John Lennon (.38-caliber revolver), Kennedy assassin (alleged) Lee Harvey Oswald (.38-caliber revolver),, etc., etc. etc.

Of late, we have witnessed a series of incidents here and abroad in which drivers ran autos or trucks into crowds to kill and maim.

Where are the cries to ban knives, airliners, automobiles and trucks?

There seems to be a transgender aspect to recent high-profile shootings here. Again, no cries to ban transgenderism?

Call it selective outrage. Ignore these LameStream types and their social media keyboard acolytes, for you know their agenda demands bias and precludes fair analysis.

This is an open appeal to operators on both sides of the political aisle: Do not blindly support the actions of any and all just because they are members of your political tribe.

I’m a Donald Trump supporter, but that doesn’t mean I endorse all that some of my Trump brethren do. In fact, I know personally a number of Trump fans with whom I would not share a dinner.

I bumped into a group of such undesirable Trump backers this morning, while walking home from dropping off my Mustang GT to have an intermittent miss diagnosed by my mechanic.

How do I know they supported Trump? They proudly told me so. More on that later.

I took the scenic route for my walk, past the home ballfield of our Little League Softball champions from West Suburban.

As I walked up the former road between ballfields, I saw a group of adult men with dogs running loose. This, despite signs advising no pets (remember this for later) and the state’s leash law for dogs in public areas.

I was trying to listen to an investment podcast on my cell phone when two of the lab-type dogs, one black and other yellow, rushed over to greet me.

They were not aggressive or intimidating because that is not the Lab demeanor. They did, however, bump into me in clumsy Lab fashion and were annoying, as were the half-hearted verbal attempts from the guys to call them off.

Because I am who I am, I took the opportunity to tell the group that there are leash laws and they really should have better control of their animals.

This annoyed them, which didn’t surprise me. Few things are more predictable these days than a wrongdoer being offended when their infractions are pointed out to them.

One particularly mouthy guy, perhaps emboldened by having me outnumbered 4-1, not including the loose dogs, told me to just keep moving. And it was on.

I asked if he owned the land, which obviously he didn’t. His clever rejoinder was “Do you?” It was offered with the self-satisifed smirk of a moron, or a 3rd-grader.

No, I don’t own the land and that’s the point, In public venues, dogs must be under control. That’s not just my opinion, it’s the law.

Ironically, the mouthy one noted while there are signs stating no pets, he didn’t see any leash signs.

I then asked him if he considered his dog a human or a pet. In these days of identifying as other things, perhaps the dog identified as human.

I stopped to unlock my phone and take his picture – and that of his dog — thanking him – the presumed human, not the dog. Said human and his buddies uttered some unintelligble things.

“Still standing here?’ he asked.

Apparently, yes.

I was branded as a first-timer in the vicinity. This was interesting since I’ve lived in the area for about 40 years and have walked in that vicinity for most of that time. But the guy was just throwing stuff against the wall seeing what might stick.

Again, I was told to move on and he reached out and touched my right forearm. I told him to get his hands off me and he did.

I was told I was a glaring example of what was wrong with this country, what Trump was trying to fix.

I noted that I’d voted for Trump three times. He doubted that. I asked him if he cared to wager on the matter. By virtue of this blog and interaction with those in my family and circle of friends, I can prove my political leanings.

Now, he reversed course and said he didn’t care. But he must care, he brought up the subject of politics.

Alas, he was not a taker on the bet. Instead, he and his group of pals tossed assorted verbal barbs as I walked away, including that I obviously hated dogs.

“Just irresponsible dog owners,” I told them.

I bumped into another neighbor out for a walk while we still were within eyesight of the group of brave scofflaws and I told him I hoped they were not friends of his. Apparently, they were not.

This lack of responsibility among dog owners is a common theme. The humans are supposed to be the brains of the outfit, but often are not.

Just yesterday, a woman neighbor was lamenting to my wife the owners of large dogs on our street and nearby streets, who let them roam loose, terrorizing small dogs such as hers.

Although I have owned dogs most of my life, I currently have none, so I literally and figuratively had no dog in that fight. But she is correct. Dog ownership comes with responsibility.

So does political partisanship. Whether you support Trump or Democrats, don’t mirror the actions of the idiot Trump supporters I encountered today. Think for yourself and be both brave and intellectually honest enough to point out misdeeds, even by those with whom you side politically.

Charlie Kirk has been assassinated, yet another step toward what I see as inevitable civil war in this country.

This time it will not be north vs. south, or east vs. west, it will be fought between those attempting to preserve the ideals upon which this nation was founded, and those who would tear it all down into mindless anarchy.

It truly will be neighbor vs. neighbor and it will be ugly.

Kirk was shot while doing one of his campus tour stops, in which the conservative activist engaged adversaries in dialogue. It was ironic that he was shot even as some antagonist was on the microphone trying to gotcha Kirk on the number of American trans mass shooters over the past 10 years.

“Too many,’ Kirk answered, to cheers from the crowd.

Then the questioner pivoted to how many mass shooters in the U.S. over the past 10 years.

Kirk sought a clarification of whether this was including, or not including gang violence and was shot and killed seconds later.

I didn’t bother to check right away, but I was confident hateful leftists on social media and propagandized cable “news” networks would be ecstatic that such a powerful conservative voice had been silenced. His death took some time to be confirmed, but reading quick accounts of a neck wound and spurting blood, I was pretty confident that was the case.

And I was correct, both on that snap diagnosis and on anticipating the despicable public commentary that followed from the left, judging from reporting on responses.

Some MSNBC dimbulb suggested a crazed Kirk supporter, unaware of how to handle a firearm, had shot in celebration and killed Kirk. Obviously he was projecting memories of the video that showed Tim Walz seeming to have sex with a shotgun while trying – unsuccessfully – to load it.

The talking head went on to imply that Kirk deserved to be shot dead because of his language.

Again, what inept projection from a leftist. MSNBC apologized. Big deal. I would expect this total ass to keep his job.

And what of harsh language? Remember, Shrillary called Trump supporters deplorables.

The Great Obammy labeled those on the right bitter types clinging to guns and religion – both of which are rights enumerated in our Constitution, by the way.

More recently, libtards have characterized Trump and his supporters as Nazis and claimed they are noble types fighting Trump and company – by any means necessary – to save democracy.

Just today, after the House observed a moment of silence for Kirk, it was suggested a verbal prayer might be in order. Unnamed Democrats were reported to have begun cheering in unison, “no.”

How are these leftist Democrats saving democracy, you might ask?

Within the past seven days, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine likened a Trump nominee’s assertion that rights come from God, not governments, to something one would hear in the Iran theocracy.

Kaine either is ignorant or disingenuous, because that is a cornerstone of this nation’s Declaration of Independence. It reads, in part, that citizens “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Democrats’ loose association with the truth allows them to label conservative protests as insurrections, while labeling violent leftist demonstrations as “mostly peaceful.”

Democrats profess to want to protect the Constitution, yet abhor free speech for any but their toadies and sycophants in LameStream media. They also want to disarm the populace, guaranteeing only criminals and the government would possess guns.

Democrats consider any who question election results as deniers, except when they question those results.

And so it goes.

The mood I’m sensing among the right today is a combination of sadness over the Kirk assassination and an anger it has happened once again.

Count two attempts on the life of Donald Trump (that we know of) and continue back through the years and you will find most of the violence has been perpetrated against the right, by deranged leftists or sexually confused types.

Yes, I know Democrat Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s house was fire-bombed this past April. There were attempts to paint the guy as a deranged Trump supporter, but, according to no less a source than the Pennsylvania State Police, the man hated Shapiro, who is Jewish, because of “perceived injustices toward the people of Palestine.”

As for the Minnesota state legislators shot the past June, the egregiously left-leaning Wikipedia summation of the incident paints the alleged shooter as a Trump supporter, despite conflicting records. What is known by the records is that Waltz had appointed the shooter to an advisory board for a four-year term in 2019. Presumably it was not to teach Walz how to load a shotgun.

The usual suspects high in the Democrat party, including Obama, have rushed to twitter with insincere commentary regarding Kirk’s shooting. Obama, began his post “We don’t yet know what motivated the person. . .”

Do you think indoctrinating lunatics and their close cousins that all Republicans are Nazis and an existential threat to the nation might just trigger such a thing, Barry? Do you think it was disaffected conservative who pulled the trigger?

To quote Clueless Joe Biden, come on, man!

Despite recent erroneous reports that the killer of Kirk had been apprehended, we don’t yet know who or what it was.

If and when they do make an arrest, I’m thinking it will be some pimply-faced loser with a manifesto of hate, inspired by the left.

These leftist lunatics who keep hoping to foment civil war might take a moment to reflect. I envision them as the dog that chases the car and, when it catches it, wonders what next?

A more timely description for the 2025 era is FAFO.

If and when civil war breaks out, my money’s on the right, both morally and politically.

If American humorist Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) had lived another 115 years or so, he could have added math is racist to the verbal statistical takedown so often credited to him, but that Twain himself preferred to credit to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.

Since Twain’s library card of life expired in 1910, and examples of Disraeli making the assertion seem to be nonexistent, we are left with what endures as Twain’s pithy assessment: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

Perhaps I’m thinking numbers today because it’s my birthday and, as I noted to granddaughter No. 2 this morning, I’m 10 times as old as she is.

Or maybe it’s the onslaught of questionable government statistics.

Add in the propensity of those with an agenda to torture the numbers attempting to bolster their case, and life is a battle to establish the validity of the statistics with which we are inundated on a daily basis.

Later this week, the government will be releasing inflation numbers, which may or may not be accurate, but will lead to kneejerk reactions in the investing markets. Never mind that the numbers almost assuredly will be adjusted up or down in coming months, for the moment they are the gospel and millions if not billions of dollars will change hands based on what almost assuredly is erroneous data.

Dies, damned lies and statistics, indeed.

What happens when those statistics are manipulated intentionally to send a false message? I’m thinking here of fudged D.C. Police crime numbers.

Sometimes, statistics do indicate a trend.

Consider a report from a German news source that a full 55 percent of new police recruits in Berlin are not proficient in – jawohl – German!

Germany, like most European countries, welcomed immigrants with open socialist arms, and now finds those immigrants refusing to accept the host culture and instead attempting to take over the country.

Berlin police unable to communicate in German seems to be progress toward that goal.

England, the land of fish and chips, where immigrant rape gangs are tolerated, but pithy free speech posts on social media prompt arrest, is yet another example of immigration gone wild.

In a December 2024 report by the BBC, whose leftist slant wouldn’t seem to impact this statistic, it was relayed that Muhammad had displaced Noah as the top name pick for baby boys in England and Wales during 2023. Perhaps England has an overadundance of prolific Muslim immigrants?

But you don’t need a passport to witness firsthand immigrants invading and refusing to assimilate. Consider Springfield, Ohio, with its Haitian problem, or Dearborn Heights, Mich., where the police department let the cat out of the Muslim bag by unveiling patches with Arabic writing.

Whoops, that wasn’t for public release, said the embarrassed mayor. But it was going to be slipped in, hopefully without notice? Should we feel better about that?

We read varying estimates of the numbers of illegal immigrants currently prowling America, numbers ranging from a few million up to 30 million. While the respective sides quibble about the exact total, let us agree it is too many and while President Trump is unlikely to successfully boot 30 million scofflaw immigrants during his term, any number he does forcefully relocate is a good start.

While we’re generating heat regarding numbers, let us close by addressing FIRE, the acronym for Financial Independence Retire Early.

I was an unwitting member of that movement, cramming large amounts of my pay into a 401(k) after I was done putting my son through college.

I wanted out and considered myself an indentured servant, saving money to buy my freedom.

Those retirement savings, and a pitifully small buyout offer from Tribune-Review Publishing, allowed me to retire at age 53 ½.

Not believing math to be racist, I crunched the numbers and gave the wife about a 99-percent guarantee we could be fine financially should I retire early. Pushing 17 years later, it still looks good.

The subject is pertinent because recently one of those personal finance know-it-alls, Suze Orman, wrote a person would need $5 million to retire early and probably more like $10 million.

A little research indicates Orman loves to sing from this hymnal, sort of like the way Al Gore thrusts his corpulent body in front of a microphone periodically to predict incorrectly and without fear of negative consequence the end of Arctic ice, or the submerging of New York City by rising oceans.

I saw at least one article from 2019 with Orman attacking FIRE types and noting the familiar $5 million figure to retire early.

Maybe if one aspired to be just like Orman, and live on a private island, then one needs the $5 million.

I’m here to tell you I retired with less than $5 million – less than $1 million, too – and we’re not sitting around my house in the dark eating cans of beans and scanning media sources for the next food giveaway.

When it comes to Orman, Gore, and government sources spewing statistics, remember Twain’s take. Or was it Disraeli’s?

The NFL season is upon us and I might watch a game or two throughout. But, I’m not going to be a fanatic about it.

Where once my job would have required me to follow the league slavishly, now I’m free to pick and choose and, most important, just say no when the league’s sickening virtue signalling and uneven product induces nausea.

Seriously, can we just end the cloying field messages and helmet stickers?

The season opens tonight with a made-for-TV rivalry game between the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles and the self-proclaimed America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys.

These are the Cowboys, who haven’t won a Super Bowl since the 1995 season, when current broadcaster Troy Aikman was quarterback and they prevailed in Super Bowl XXX over your Steelers.

I covered that game in Arizona, never dreaming it was the curtain call for Cowboys success.

These days, the Cowboys pay quarterback Dak Prescott an average of $60 million a season to fail in the clutch and miss a lot of games due to injury.

The NFL folks and their broadcasting proxy will have to turn the hype machines on full to make tonight’s game interesting. But, if football fans are inclined to watch, the majority of the viewing public can find it on NBC.

There is a Friday game coming between Kansas City and San Diego, which I couldn’t watch even if I wanted to do so because it’s been bid out to YouTube. I could, however, watch a delayed broadcast beginning at midnight on the NFL Network.

I think I will pass, for a variety of reasons, including not wanting to be subjected to countless shots of Taylor Swift in some private box rooting on Mr. Taylor Swift, who plays tight end for the Chiefs.

The way the pop-culture crowd has glommed onto the power couple provides a fitting metaphor for the increasingly vacuous state of the populace.

But, you’re here to get my thoughts on the prospects of the Steelers, right?

I fall into the crowd that expects the team to slip into the playoffs, and quickly exit.

This relative success will come despite the presence of Aaron Rodgers at quarterback, scheduled to make about $14 million to slip out of his nursing home on weekends and, before lining up, find someone on the sideline to hold his walker.

I don’t expect Rodgers to make it through the entire season without missing lots of time due to injury and/or lack of production. Simply put, he’s a warm body the Steelers are hoping will make a few plays, avoid major gaffes and just hand the ball off to running backs while the Steelers defense is expected to keep the opposition in check.

The greatest thing the Steelers have going for them is yet another soft schedule.

Perhaps you have read on ESPN and other outlets that the Steelers have the 10^th toughest schedule in the NFL. This is based on simplistic mathematical extrapolation using last year’s records for this year’s opponents.

That is the sort of rear-view mirror analysis that gives us those wildly incorrect national jobs numbers that need to be revised severely after the fact.

More telling is the schedule work of the people at sharpfootballanalysis.com. Simply put, they follow the money, as in the expectations of bettors for teams’ 2025 wins and losses.

Based on that, the Steelers’ schedule is 24^th in terms of strength out of 32 teams.

Just look at the facts. The Steelers open with the New York Jets, an annual clown show that can be expected to continue this season. And it just happens to be Rodgers’ latest former team, What a coincidence!

Next up is a Seattle team that went 10-7 last year, but figures to slip this season due to personnel changes.

Then come the New England Patriots (another shell of a franchise) and the Minnesota Vikings. The Vikings exemplify why this Steelers schedule is soft and cheesey.

Yes, the Vikings went 14-3 in the 2024 regular season. But, the mirage was exposed in the final week of the regular season and a first-round loss in the playoffs, by a combined margin of 58-18.

If you think Minnesota will win 14 games this season, you are as delusional as Democrat politicians supporting illegals, criminals, transgenders in women’s sports, violent protesters, drug runners and the welfare bum class.

The Steelers easily could be 4-0 ahead of their bye week and, coming out of that face perennial sad sack Cleveland. Dare we dream, 5-0?

With that kind of a headstart on the season, it would take a total collapse to keep the Steelers from the playoffs.

But, once there the competition gets stiffer and the Steelers will exit quickly.

The ongoing legal passion play regarding housing confusion on the part of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook has me thinking about the word cook and variations thereof.

When one fudges a company’s accounting numbers, the act is said to be cooking the books. Lisa Cook is being accused of cooking her personal books, allegedly claiming as many as three primary residences, supposedly in the effort to secure lower mortgage interest rates.

Her defenders range from denying anything nefarious took place, to saying it happened before she was a DEI pick to be a Fed governor and so does not matter (I was tempted be punny and say count instead of matter), to saying it was just a bit of confusion since she was buying so many houses at the time

I read that 593 left-wing economists have signed a public letter defending Cook. And I am reminded of the 51 intelligence types who swore publicly that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. They were very, very wrong.

To borrow the tagline from wrestler-turned-movie-star Dwayne Johnson, I think I can smell what The Rock is cooking.

As Cook’s supporters throw stuff against the wall to see what sticks, they have tossed in the race card. Can’t pass on that since Cook is black. Can misogyny be far behind? She is a woman, too, or at least presents as one.

I’m not sure what Cook’s preferred pronouns are.

The race baiters neatly ignore three names – Robert Kaplan, Eric Rosengren and Richard Clarida – white men all who in recent years resigned under fire from positions with the Federal Reserve over questions of financial impropriety.

They were not convicted of any misdeeds, but stepped away for the good of the institution.

Cook is not similarly inclined.

We are left to speculate if too many Cook(e)s spoil the broth.

Recall if you will, Janet Cooke, the former Washington Post reporterette.

If you think journalistic malpractice is a new phenomenon, understand that way back in 1980, Janet Cooke became the poster girl for not letting the facts get in the way of promoting an agenda.

Cooke, the product of a civil rights activist father and school teacher mother, rose quickly in the ranks, partly on talent and partly on being a black woman.

In 1980, she wrote a story for the Washington Post “Jimmy’s World” about a black 8-year-old heroin addict, the sweet spot of her twin focuses of race and poverty

It was compelling, heart-wrenching stuff and earned a Cooke a Pulitzer prize.

Alas, Cooke just made it up and, after some people started poking around, she admitted as much. Goodbye Pulitzer. Hello unemployment. But there are reports that Cooke eventually landed on her feet – wait for it – by teaching journalism at the university level.

That explains a lot about what passes for journalism these days.

Had Cooke simply waited until 2025, she could have kept the Pulitzer. That’s what the Washington Post and New York Times have done regarding the Pulitzers they won for journalistic malpractice in covering the supposed Russian collusion with Donald Trump’s 2016 election.

Their narrative has been debunked. Yet the Pullitzers remain in their hands.

Perhaps these two usual suspects of left-wing media bias can grab another Pulitzer by writing prolifically to help Lisa Cook clear up her apparent confusion over where she lives.

Watching the smorgasbord of college football over the Labor Day weekend was an in-your-face reminder that the days of playing for pride and old State U are long gone.

Every game, it seemed, had the announcers reciting the extensive travel logs of the various players. Old Schlom, the center for Team A, played a year at Alabama, was at Texas Christian for three years, and now has been plugged into the offensive line at Team A since it graduated (ran out of eligibility for) its entire OL.

Quarterbacks, running backs, defensive or offensive linemen, wide receivers, linebackers, defensive backs, you name it, all had a lengthy lists of schools to which they previously had matriculated, and I bet it wasn’t due to a search for the better math department.

The transfer portal beams players from one program to another, like a college football Star Trek transporter. It’s the free-agent market for colleges, where teams with holes can poach productive players from lower-profile programs to fill immediate needs.

The selling point is perhaps playing for a national championship, and did we mention lots of money?

You might recall legendary Alabama coach Nick Saban got out of the college game a few years back, citing, among other things, the runaway influence of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) money, which makes it OK to pay college players millions of dollars while they still, incredibly, are considered amateur athletes.

The topic of NIL has become a public spitting contest between the coaches at Oklahoma State and Oregon in advance of their week 2 matchup Saturday in Oregon.

In case you’ve been in a coma in recent years, the Oregon program is funded to the max by NIKE gazillionaire Phil Knight. He frequently used to pal around with Joe Paterno, in the pre-NIL days.

Oklahoma State coach Jeff Gundy, speaking of Oregon, griped that college football has become a spending arms race, saying his team had spent about $7 million (in NIL, presumably) over the past three years while Oregon he said has spent $40 million just last year.

While Gundy exaggerates, he’s not completely off-base. Meanwhile, his Oregon counterpart, Dan Lanning, said his program is just going with the current flow in college football and spending to win.

It makes you long for the old days, when a lesser program might get lucky with a recruit and expect to keep him his entire college career. Now, that program would need to recruit the player over and over again, with wads of cash in each hand.

Just as in (other) pro sports, sometimes spending money doesn’t guarantee college football successs. But failing to spend money guarantees failure.

In the titanic main attraction last weekend, Texas, ranked No. 1 in the AP poll and also, according to 247sports.com, the top 2025 NIL program with $22.2 million in NIL money distributed to its roster, lost to No. 3 AP and No. 2 NIL Ohio State ($20.2 million).

If only Texas had spent a few more million bucks!

While college football has become a disgusting exercise in transfers and millionaire players, it’s refreshing to see that some things hold constant.

In an example of note, while other Top 10 teams chose to meet on the playing field (think Texas-Ohio State, LSU-Clemson and Notre Dame-Miami), Penn State was content with business as usual regarding its schedule, playing Sisters of the Poor, with School for the Blind, and Over Our Heads U upcoming.

Specifically, the PSU opener was against overmatched Nevada. Be still my heart as Florida International is next up, to be followed by Villanova.

Then Penn State has an off week to get ready for finally playing a legitimate opponent in Oregon.

With perennial tormenter Michigan again missing from the PSU schedule, this Oregon game, along with the traditional game (defeat) against Ohio State should be the only challenges. Just split those two games, or even lose both, and Penn State will have a cakewalk into the expanded college football playoffs. What is it now, 80 teams?

Some are saying Penn State is a strong pick to win the national championship this year. Legislating against that prospect is the continuing presence of James “Can’t Win The Big Game” Franklin as the coach, and Penn State, again according to 247sports.com, ranking only 11^th in NIL payroll at $13.7 million.

I can’t wait to see if Franklin cries NIL poor in advance of that Oregon game – or after losing to the Ducks.