Today’s bit of legerdemain will be to connect the seemingly odd couple of Myopia 2025 and the late, great Beano Cook in one blog post.

Nothing up my sleeves (actually I’m wearing a short-sleeve shirt) and using just the ten digits with which God gifted me, I will endeavor to employ the wisdom of the latter named personage to give perspective regarding the formerly listed organization’s current plans.

Pay attention and let’s go.

It has been reported that Myopia 2025’s ambitious plan to restock Johnstown’s abundance of vacant lots with 21 houses, to be built and then sold at cost to would-be residents of our once-fair, now economically downtrodden and crime-ridden city, is off and running.

Reports from the local NBC affiliate, on which the noon crew looks like aspirants for an Addams Family remake, are that while not a nail has yet been pounded, the first house has been bought by a local business, to be given to a local veteran.

Here’s where Beano Cook enters the picture. I had the great pleasure to spend many an hour chatting with Beano in various press lounges ahead of Pittsburgh sporting events. Beano seldom stayed for the entire game; sometimes even leaving before the games began.

His thing was a chance to be the raconteur amidst an audience of sports-minded types.

And Beano never disappointed, with a string of one-liners reminiscent of Henny “Take my wife, please” Youngman.

It was on my way to such a meeting ahead of a Penguins game that I listened to a sports talk show on which Beano was a guest. I almost piled up the car on the Parkway East when Beano, asked for a good, but under-rated writer on the Pittsburgh sports scene, gave my name,

Later, I thanked Beano profusely for the kind words and gave him some investment advice in appreciation. Buy silver, I told him. Beano demured, saying he was too old and couldn’t take risks. Silver was $5 an ounce at the time in the spot market. It brushed $50 an ounce in 2011, the year before Beano died.

I loved to rib Beano about it and he always took it good-naturedly.

For some reason, Beano didn’t particularly like baseball, and this is why I think of him in connection with Myopia 2025. When our Americans taken hostage in Iran finally were released in 1981, they were awarded lifetime passes to Major League baseball games. Beano famously quipped, “Haven’t they suffered enough?”

So, Myopia 2025 has found a benefactor to provide a house for a veteran. Said house reportedly will be in Kernville, not exactly a garden spot, situated on a flood plain and, you might have heard, we do have floods throughout history.

When I mentioned this all to someone today, they speculated maybe the Myopia 2025 people and the business figure a veteran can protect himself, or herself.

Still, when I see the national TV ads for ex-military or first responders being given houses by charities, they always seem to be on scenic mountaintops, or in picturesque neighborhoods.

Myopia 2025 has promised 21 such houses for Johnstown, so maybe they’ll do a better job on location down the line. As they say in blackjack (21), hit me again.

Events unfold in staccato fashion and time is short, which prompts another installment of news and views.

NEWS: Tampon Tim Walz, in his never-ending quest to shore up his masculinity, was on the Gavin Newsom podcast earlier this week bragging he could kick the butts of most of his critics in the MAGA movement.

VIEWS: Prompted by this, one of those MAGA types offered Tampon Tim the chance to back it up with a fight for charity. That offended MAGA guy was Guttfeld show regular George “Tyrus” Murdoch, listed at 6-foot-7, 375 pounds, and with professional wrestling in his background. I know, I know, pro wrestling is scripted, but I’d still put my money on Tyrus vs. Tampon Tim. Hell, even though I’d much older and fatter than Tampon Tim, having seen him lose a wrestling match with a shotgun while trying to load it during the ill-fated campaign of him and Cackling Kamala (even then they were desperate to dress Tampon Tim in blaze orange and insist he was a man’s man), I’d like my chances vs. this real-life Elmer Fudd.

NEWS: Greenpeace has lost a lawsuit in North Dakota that will cost the group $667 million according to an article in the Washington Post.

VIEWS: See if this sounds familiar: Greenpeace funded protesters and is judged to have defamed the company building the pipeline in question in Greenpeace’s mission to hold up energy progress. Funny, when leftists rush to sympathetic courts to get their way, they are heroically following the rules. Now that a far-left group is staring into the financial abyss due to a legal loss, it is an outrageous over-reach by the courts.

NEWS: Senate minority leader crying Chuck Schumer is trying to fend off those who would have his job in the wake of him allowing a Republican continuing resolution proposal to pass the Senate.

VIEWS: Somewhere, Clueless Joe Biden is laughing as DR. JILL BIDEN !!!! explains the irony to old Scranton Joe. It was Schumer whose fingerprints, along with those of other prominent Democrats, were on the knife plunged into the back of Biden after his debate meltdown vs. Donald Trump confirmed Biden had little chance in the election. Now those figurative knives are out for Schumer. Payback is a female dog.

NEWS: London’s Heathrow Airport was closed Friday morning when a nearby electrical substation suffered a fire and backup generators failed.

VIEWS: How long before Democrats rush to the microphones to blame Trump, just as they did when that crew landed a jet upside-down on a Toronto, CANADA, runway? Another possibility, leftist political leadership in England will blame the Russians. Maybe they can team up with American socialists and blame both Trump and the Russians. And the lapdogs in the LameStream media will run with it.

NEWS: Hunter Biden has received a ruling from a California judge that allows him to drop a lawsuit alleging his laptop (yes, that laptop) was hacked. Hunter is saying he lacks funds to pay his lawyers.

VIEWS: Funny how the money spigot was turned off mere months after Daddy Joe “The Big Guy” Biden no longer held a prominent place in the executive branch. Where once there was no shortage of advisory jobs even though Hunter had no apparent relevant skills, not to mention an endless supply of purchasers of his elementary school art, or his book, now Hunter is flailing around in the real world and failing there. The only thing worse would be if his Secret Service protection was pulled. What? That happened, too? ’tis quite a state of affairs for the man Clueless Joe once described as “the smartest guy I know.” This suggests Joe needs to get out more and meet people. But Hunter need only hang on for a year or two to get his share of Joe’s estate, presuming, of course, that DR. JILL BIDEN !!!! hasn’t auto-penned him out of the will.

If you blinked, you missed it. We speak of the stay in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament of the St. Francis men.

Playing in the first game, of the first night, of the so-called First Four, St. Francis fell by a 70-68 score to Alabama State Tuesday. And the overwhelming sentiment is opportunity lost.

St. Francis led by as many as nine points in this game. I was texting with a former sports editor of mine from when we both worked at the Woke Gazette and noted to him at halftime that St. Francis had a lot going for it.

While Alabama State’s first-half offense seemed to be the initial player to cross mid-court with the ball firing up (mostly unsuccessful) 3-point field goal attempts, St. Francis ran a halfcourt offense and repeatedly got open looks off two-man, pick-and-roll action.

Unfortunately, in the second half Alabama State rediscovered the joys of playing in the paint, and also upped the tempo defensively to force St. Francis errors.

Even with that, this was a game St. Francis easily could have won, if players had hit uncontested layups; if they had been able to handle the ball, including two horrendous gaffes just before Alabama State hit the winner.

Speaking of that winning basket, it was a layup following a length-of-the-court pass that saw the ball slapped around like a pinata before landing in the hands of Amarr Knox, who didn’t miss his layup attempt with a second remaining.

And so, St. Francis was denied its first NCAA Tournament win. I’d argue this is a bit of semantics, though.

Back in 1991, the previous St. Francis appearance in this tournament, the Red Flash won the Northeast Conference title, but also had to win what was referred to as a “play-in” game with Fordham to make the NCAA field.

The NCAA Tournament changed in 2010 to including four of these play-in games as official parts of the bracket.

In my mind, that 1991 team won a First Four game, they just didn’t call it such. But, technically, this contest with Alabama State was a tournament game, while that 1991 contest was not.

And so St. Francis kept another NCAA statistic perfect. The Red Flash were the 19^th team to make the field despite a losing record, and those teams are a collective 0-19.

It’s not that I would have expected St. Francis to give Auburn much of a battle in the next round, just as I anticipate Alabama State will go quietly. It would have been nice, however, had St. Francis gotten an official NCAA Tournament win over Alabama State when it was there for the taking.

As for the rest of the NCAA Tournament, the best team I saw in the conference tournaments was Florida, so the Gators are my pick to win it all.

The odds are an SEC team will prevail. Doesn’t that conference make up half or so of the field?

I’m not fond of the Big Ten contingent and the ACC, beyond Duke, is suspect, no matter that North Carolina pounded San Diego State in another First Four game. I’m similarly not sold on Big East or Big 12 teams.

Here’s hoping it won’t take St. Francis another three decades-plus to get back for another crack at the elusive first NCAA Tournament win.

Watching the Senate vote last week, first to close debate, then to accept a continuing resolution on government spending, reminded me of a similar local story of virtue signaling and hypocrisy.

The so-called cloture vote was 62-38, notably with Democrat minority leader Chuck Schumer leading a group of 10 members of his party who joined Republicans in voting yes to advance the measure to a final vote.

Then, with the Senate needing only a simple majority to pass the legislation, Schumer flipped to a no, which he undoubtedly will trumpet down the line as having opposed the measure. In the final vote, the one that mattered, only one Democrat voted for the resolution.

Another notable flip-flopper – yes on cloture, no on the measure – was our shorts-and-hoodie guy from Pennsylvania.

The final vote for approval was 54-46, a lot of slippage from that 62-38 number, but still enough to get the job done.

An amusing aspect of the cloture vote was seeing some very famous faces lingering around the counting desk, seemingly waiting to be sure there were enough yes votes to close debate.

Once that success was apparent, they rushed to give a thumbs-down gesture, thereby being able to have it both ways. They knew passing the measure was politically expedient to avoid having Democrats painted as the shutdown party, but they wanted to strut around and proclaim they had voted against it.

That bit of hypocrisy reminds me of a story from back in the day at a local television station. The people were about to vote on a contract offer and the thinking was it would pass.

But, one on-air type asked to address the membership and gave what I was told was an impassioned speech to them to reject the offer and send a message to management that their proposal was an insult.

Soon after his performance, the membership voted.

As one union officer was tallying the votes, the guy who had so vociferiously urged the members to vote no was hanging around the table, sort of like those Senators.

Here’s a rough recounting of the conversation.

Turn it down guy: “How’s the vote going?”

Vote counter: “Hey, you really got to them. I thought the contract was going to be approved, but now it looks like we’re turning it down.”

Turn it down guy: “What??????”

Vote counter: “You convinced them the offer is crap and they should turn it down. Way to go!”

Turn it down guy: “But, I just said that. I didn’t really mean it. We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to vote again.”

As the story goes, Turn it down guy, unlike Schumer, was forced to make an ass of himself publicly and tell the membership he hadn’t meant all the things he’d just told them. He urged them to approve the contract. He’d just go stand in front of a mirror fixing his hair while they voted again.

There was another vote and the contract was approved.

It was hard not to think of that story any time down the line when I saw Turn it down guy delivering the news.

It has become evident why Democrats feel such an affinity for Ukraine’s Zelenskyy; both share a fondness for over-the-top rhetoric and underwhelming abilities to back up all the tough talk.

As President Trump so succinctly pointed out to Zelenskyy during the pipsqueak’s Oval Office tirade, you need to have cards to play poker and Zelenskyy had no cards. The reported apology from Zelenskyy, and the Ukraine presence in peace negotiations since then, prove Trump correct.

Fast-forward to the current budget battle and Crying Chuck Schumer is playing the role of Zelenskyy while representing his neutered political party.

If you have not been paying attention, our federal government is about to run out of money once again, forcing a shutdown. It happens all too often, with Democrats clutching their pearls and trying to scare people that their Social Security payments won’t be made (they always have been) and various other outright lies designed to panic the populace.

Democrats, with the help of their lapdogs in the LameStream media, in the past always have seemed able to blame shutdown on the Republicans. But not this time.

This time, House speaker Mike Johnson shepherded a Republican proposal though his half of Congress, despite possessing a thin majority and an abundance of RINOs trying to stand in the way just to get some time in the spotlight.

The proposal went to the Senate, where the arcane rules on such matters require 60 votes to close debate before voting on the proposal. Republicans would need some Democrat votes to close debate and minority leader Chuck Schumer, notable for being a loudmouth father of a fat movie actress, vowed the votes would not be there.

Schumer sounded tough, just like Zelenskyy before his European backers told him they couldn’t protect his tiny butt without the United States military onboard.

This meant Schumer offered no apology – even called Republicans “bastards” in one of those made for leftist cable news moments Democrats seem to prefer these days – then said he’d vote for the spending measure.

Reports of screaming matches heard through the walls at a closed-door Democrat Senate session were shared widely yesterday, in advance of Schumer’s “bastard” appearance.

Since that time, Democrats in the House have whined and accused with predictable fervor leavened with little common sense.

Schumer is, at heart, a politician, a demagogue. He knows this shutdown would be thrown squarely in the lap of his increasingly dysfunctional party. Not a good look for a leftist organization already rating low in most polling.

There is no guarantee that, even with Schumer’s snappy aboutface, enough Democrats will vote to pass this spending proposal. We expect to know later today.

Republicans should be hoping Democrats do not approve the measure. When “non-essential” government employees are laid off and all still functions, it would provide objective proof of the DOGE contention that the government is wildly overstaffed.

And, if someone felt inconvenienced because some facility was not open for business, Republicans could point the finger at the Democrats.

It is a win-win situation for Republicans, and yet further evidence that the Democrats have become a group of raging fools whose rhetoric is, to borrow from “Macbeth,” tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

St. Francis is headed to the men’s NCAA basketball tournament, and the memories come flooding back.

I worked for the local Woke Gazette back in 1991, the only previous time St. Francis had made it to college basketball’s March Big Dance, and got to cover that team.

What a ride it was.

The St. Francis coach then was Jim Baron, in his fourth year at the school, having come from Notre Dame where he was an assistant. Baron was an earthy guy, not exactly a quote machine, but you could get an honest answer from him and he understood the necessity of being accesible and constantly selling the program.

Baron had arrived at Loretto, something of a coaching graveyard, with big goals – and he accomplished them. Baron knew if he could win at St. Francis, it would open doors for him. He was right. That success, at a relative backwater school, helped Baron land the head coaching job at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure, in 1992.

It’s taken St. Francis more than three decades to get back to the NCAA Tournament.

I will confess to knowing next to nothing about this season’s St. Francis team, although I did watch part of a regular-season game in which they played Maryland surprisingly close for a time. Seeing the championship game was on TV Tuesday night, I switched over during commercial breaks of Watters’ World on Fox News.

Every time I tuned in, both teams were missing shots and turning over the ball. Host Central Connecticut, which brought a 14-game win streak to the game, was a 10.5-point favorite, so I presumed the hosts eventually would take the win.

But, I got to watch the final minute of the game and saw St. Francis pull out the 46-43 win in what Red Flash coach Rob Krimmel told the postgame interviewers was a rock fight that set back offensive basketball.

While this NCAA bid would seem to be unexpected considering St. Francis is 16-17, expectations were high in 1991.

That 1991 team made home games in the Stokes Building social and athletic events. Altoona product Mike Iuzzolino, a transfer from Penn State, was a long-range marksman and heady floor general who averaged 24.1 points and four assists in his senior season.

The other main man on that team was 6-5 senior forward Joe Anderson, averaging 21.3 points and 6.3 rebounds. Anderson was a lean, mean, penetrating machine.

That St. Francis team went 21-7 in the regular season and won the Northeast Conference tournament with wins over St. Francis (N.Y.) and Fairleigh Dickinson.

Even though I covered a lot of St. Francis games that season, I missed the FDU title game due to a prior commitment to play in the Pittsburgh Class Championships chess tournament in Pittsburgh (I won my class!).

Baron, in his typical Brooklyn style, chided me afterward about my absence. As I told him at the time, we both won, so no big deal.

But even that NEC title was not enough to earn an NCAA Tournament berth. The Red Flash had to beat Fordham in a play-in game in Loretto to get that bid.

That game, I covered.

St. Francis won and then it was on to Salt Lake City, Utah, to face highly regarded Arizona, in the nightcap, an 11:30 p.m. or so start east coast time, which is bad news when you work for an AM newspaper.

The first game was between BYU and Virginia, a 61-48 BYU win. The center for BYU was 7-foot-6 Shawn Bradley, who set a then-NCAA tournament, single-game record with 10 blocked shots.

The 6-10 center for Virginia looked like a guard trying to defend Bradley,

There was quite a show between games. Arizona had a forward named Chris Mills, who had been part of a recruiting scandal involving an air freight envelope with $1,000 inside and adressed to his father that came open at an airport.

Kentucky ended up on probation and Mills ended up at Arizona. Because of this story, opposing fans took to waving money at Mills and, before the game with St. Francis, Baron’s brother – who looked a lot like Jim – was in the stands waving some bills.

I recall someone asking me – incredulously — if that was the St. Francis coach.

Baron knew his team was overmatched due to Arizona’s overwhelming size and talent, so he packed in his defense. This made a star out of Arizona guard Matt Othick, who averaged 10.5 points a game during the season, but on this night was left wide-open and hit for a team high 25 points, including nailing five of seven three-point tries.

Arizona led 43-29 at the half and the game was not as close as the 93-80 final, despite Anderson’s 29 points and 20 from Iuzzolino.

It wasn’t exactly time to hang black crepe paper, though, because, let’s face it, the St. Francis teams of the NCAA world aren’t really expected to beat the Arizonas.

At the time, I thought it was nice that a lot of good people at St. Francis, like tireless sports information director Kevin Southard, got to enjoy some time in the spotlight.

Just getting to that stage was a success story, an accomplishment this 2024-25 team now can share.

When last we posted here, we provided a list of rhetorical questions, designed to promote thought, not seek answers from the readership.

Today, we’re back with more.

Did anyone else hear CNBC’s Steve Lies-Man shortly after 1 p.m. today describing President Trump’s economic policies as “insane,” and “absolutely insane”?

Does the fact that Lies-Man prefaced this by saying “I’m going to do this at risk of my job” suggest he could or should be fired?

Do you recall it being opined here March 4 that Trump’s cures for the economy will be a form of chemotherapy, or did you read more recently when treasury secretary Scott Bessent used the detox metaphor to describe how there would be short-term pain for long-term benefit?

If so, why are you surprised that the stock market here is throwing a tantrum at a leaning down of government bureaucracy?

Do you think rudderless Canada, which just installed a Prime Minister who is both a Central Banker by trade and a member of his country’s Liberal Party, and never has held an elective office, is going to get along with Trump?

Are you surprised to read reports that a top AOC aide has decided to self-deport to Colombia rather than attempt to avoid ICE and continue a 23-year illegal stay in this nation?

When can we expect Texas loose cannon Jasmine Crock Of It to proclaim the guy did nothing illegal, just as she bloviated recently that being in the United States illegally is not a crime?

Would you be surprised to learn that Ms. Crock Of It is a lawyer by trade, is expected to help write legislation in the House of Representatives, yet does not recognize a crime when she sees it?

Did anyone else find it amusing when MSNBC host Michael Steele, who has made a career of botching things including being the former Republican National Committee chairman, seemed to indicate he is the intellectual superior of Elon Musk?

Do you recall similarly delusional AOC also demeaning Musk, calling him “one of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met or seen or witnessed”?

Have the hosts of The View ever met a meal they didn’t like?

Democrats aren’t using any swear words I haven’t heard thousands of times in a career spent around athletes, and I have been known to swear myself, even noting with pride a recent study suggesting such language provides pain relief, but still, don’t the Democrats sound like kids experimenting with a new word they’ve learned to provoke reactions, sort of like the leftist dingbat legislator who giddly took to the microphone to say she’d like to fuc@ Trump?

Have those suggesting that taking law-breaking protestors into custody is the worst thing that could happen to such activists ever heard of Kent State?

Today, we offer rhetorical questions, asked not necessarily to elicit responses, but merely to stimulate thought.

Should Republicans be a little more restrained regarding their promises and thereby lower the bar for meeting expectations?

Why have Democrats become the party of men with pony tails and women with shaved heads or facial hair?

Is it enough that lawbreakers and obstructionists within government lose their jobs, or should they spend some time behind bars, too?

Why should we give Zelenskyy another cent in foreign aid?

Does January’s mammoth $131.4 billion trade deficit, which included lots of gold being repatriated to the United States, indicate a rush to replenish Fort Knox gold ahead of anticipated audits?

Are you really worried that DOGE has access to your Social Security numbers or tax information, considering it was Democrats who presided over massive IRS and Social Security breaches by hackers in the recent past?

Similarly, are you really terrified that your Social Security payments are going to be suspended, either due to layoffs or outright budget cutting?

Do you not recall Democrats have been warning – incorrectly – of such benefit cuts by Republicans since I was a young man?

Does anyone else find it absurd when European leaders talk tough, then offer about $1.98 in loans to Ukraine and insist that they need the U.S. backing up all their military threats toward Russia?

Did anyone else get a chuckle when Donald Trump poked at UK Prime Minsiter Keir Starmer, trying to get him on the record that those proud British troops could handle Russia by themselves and making the guy extremely uncomfortable before Starmer just ducked the question entirely?

Would you be surprised to hear that the powerful Canadian armed forces to which Trudeau refers numbers all of 63 fighter jets, at the lower end of the allotment of each U.S. aircraft carrier, of which we have 11, never mind our ground-based fighter jets?

Could someone please ask the maple syrup boy about this the next time he spouts off regarding dealing with the United States militarily?

Can Trump and his subordinates please stop changing the tariff plan daily, the better to avoid losing the public confidence?

Has anyone else seen the ad of female Democrat members of Congress “Choose Your Fighter” in which seven of these hop around supposedly simulating fighting, but looking more like a dog straining to deposit a load on a front lawn?

Can we all refrain in the future from helping the Democrats by pointing out how ridiculous they continue to make themselves look?

Rank-and-file Democrats must be so proud of how those who represent them in Washington, D.C., comported themselves during Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night.

The behavior of those Democrat leaders was a microcosm of why the party lost so resoundingly the past election and should do even worse in mid-terms come 2026 if there is a God.

This is a freak show of a party, seemingly totally opposed to traditional American values and always eager to align with illegal immigrants, criminals or assorted fringe groups.

Pick an issue on which the nation has a vast majority on one side, and Democrat leadership will rush to the minority position, defending it to the death despite the absurdity of it all.

The Democratic women lawmakers looked like fools wearing their pink outfits, ostensibly in support of women, with the timing so close to Democrats in the Senate all voting against legislation to protect women from transgender men dominating their sports.

My God, to look at them was to require the stifling of a gag reflect. I swear I saw a woman who looked to be about one hundred years old sporting purple hair. Purple hair, I say.

Many of the Democrats wielded paddle signs blasting Trump or Elon Musk; their look was more like elderly bidders at an art auction.

The lowlight came early, when Al Green, looking every bit the stereotypical pimp from one of those Blaxploitation movies from the 1970s, wielded his gold-handled black cane and yelled uncontrollably at Trump before being escorted from the chamber.

If reports of Green’s explanation are accurate, he’s the sort of election denier Democrats profess to hate. Green got his knickers in a knot because Trump claimed an election mandate from his victory in November.

Trump, picking up on the hatred in the Democrat crowd, got in his shots, even calling out Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren when she cheered wildly, apparently in support of the Ukraine-Russia war never ending.

The only part of Trump’s speech that got the Democrats on their feet and cheering is when he recounted how much money we’d blown defending Ukraine. At least they are consistent in wanting to waste taxpayer money on causes such as this, or even the laundry list of Woke ideas Trump went through in explaining how much government waste can be eliminated.

But while the Democrats cheered wildly for sending hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine, they could not have their butts pried from their chairs, or have their hands forced into clapping to honor guests such as families who had lost loved ones to illegal immigrant criminals.

The hard-hearted Democrats couldn’t even relent to applaud a teenage survivor of brain cancer who was made an honorary member of the Secret Service.

These Democrats are heartless, clueless and ridiculous.

The next time you hear these jerks talk about compassion, spit in their faces.

Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress tonight, with Democrats plotting their infantile resistance.

Nancy Pelosi, whose position as symbolic leader of the party is stretched as thin as the skin on her aging, face-lifted forehead, again stands to be ignored by her supposed flock. Nancy wants Democrats, unlike her speech-ripping tirade from a past State of the Union address, to be quiet and not call attention to themselves.

Yeah, right, The party of narcissists can’t ignore the chance to get some air time. As once noted, the most dangerous spot in Washington, D.C., is between Chuck Schumer and the microphone.

We hear talk of eggs and or egg cartons being brought as props to protest high egg prices, noisemakers to disrupt Trump, boycotts, or showing up with ridiculous signs. It is not clear whether there are plans to dress in symbolic colors.

Black would be appropriate for the party that preaches doom and gloom.

Also, there have been stories of Democrats with plans to bring bureaucrats as guests to highlight what a meanie Trump has been in pruning bloated government payrolls.

Some Republicans have guests of their own, like a couple of IRS whistleblowers who got Hunter Biden’s tax violations before the public.

I suspect, however, Democrat guests will be more interesting, Let’s imagine a conversation with one.

INTERVIEWER: Are you here to protest Donald Trump?

DEMOCRAT GUEST: Of course. FUC@ him!

INTERVIEWER: What specifically do you not like about Trump?

DEMOCRAT GUEST: He’s a NAZI, a Fascist, a racist. And Elon Musk wasn’t elected, either. I finally met an African American I didn’t like. How dare they ask me what I did last week? As a man who identifies as a woman, I was barely able to get off my couch – I was working from home, of course – due to menstrual cramps.

INTERVIEWER: If I heard you correctly, you did virtually nothing last week, but still got paid?

DEMOCRAT GUEST: What are you, transphobic? I was available if one of my DEI-loving bosses had contacted me and actually asked me to do something productive. But, I didn’t hear from anyone in a position of authority over me, so I understandably thought they had no work for me. Just say I was on call.

INTERVIEWER: But those cramps have eased up enough for you to attend tonight’s event.

DEMOCRAT GUEST: Listen, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to keep my job. So, I just changed my shift to night, which means I’m here on the taxpayer dime. Plus, George Soros is offering bonuses to all of us on the left who show up tonight, so I’m double-dipping. I’ve got my eye on a feathered rainbow boa I’m going to buy once I get out of here.