Donald Trump is administering chemotherapy to a sick federal government and economy. It’s really that simple.

Virtually all of us know someone who has had chemotherapy to treat cancer. Some of the readers have had to deal with cancer and chemotherapy firsthand.

Either way, be chemotherapy observed or endured, most know that the process is a tough go. Cancer is being poisoned in pursuit of long-term health for the individual, but in most cases the host body can’t escape without terrible side effects including intense nausea and weakness.

I note this because already the Democrats are trying to gin up whining about Trump’s attempts to cure existing national ills, noting short-term side effects and ignoring long-term benefit.

They lie about air traffic controllers being laid off – they haven’t.

They note unfavorable economic statistics that reflect the time his predecessor was on the job, yet blame Trump for them.

Eggs, they scream, have gone up in price, as though Trump is out there killing hens due to avian flu, which I anticipate will soon rise to attempts to use it as an excuse to shut down the entire economy.

Forgive them, they are blindly partisan types who embrace all things anti-Trump. They side with illegal immigrants, criminals in general, transsexuals dominating women’s sports, DEI zealotry, left-wing bureaucrats looting the public treasury to fund radical outfits, and anti-American sentiment of all stripes, up to, and including, an ingrate showing up at the Oval Office dressed up like a soldier and spouting the talking points Democrats had fed into his egomaniacal mind shortly before the meetings.

Against that backdrop, it is not surprising that Democrats are pointing out that tariffs, the search for government efficiency, refusal to fund wars of indefinite length with unlimited taxpayer dollars, could produce short-term pain here.

In the short run, tariffs can raise prices. In the long run, as already evidenced by the promised $1.7 trillion or so in investment in production facilities based in the U.S. just since Trump took office six weeks back, they will bring production back to our shores and produce jobs – better paying jobs than the lowly crop-picking jobs Democrats tout for illegals.

Similarly, cutting government fat is going to put some government drones in the unemployment lines, where they will join private sector people unemployed because their firms existed mostly by riding the government gravy train.

With all the compassion Democrats such as Clueless Joe Biden offered to blue collar types their policies put out of work, perhaps these people should learn to code (computers).

Funny, back then the LameStream media saw nothing insensitive about that suggestion. If Trump borrowed that line, he’d be pilloried by the same partisans masquerading as journalists.

See how the Joe Biden incompetence, covered up for so long by these propagandists, now is being exploited in books and interviews for financial gain. These people are the worst hypocrites, making Putin look like a model citizen.

Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress tonight will be a chance for him to list accomplishments, and note challenges.

Leftist media will highlight the negative, the unfortunate side effects of Trump’s chemotherapy that is trying to save the nation.

Don’t be a fool and buy what they’re selling.

Allow me to express surprise that the Myopia 2025 people aren’t actively pursuing Ukrainian refugees, a variation on a past theme to cure all that ails Johnstown.

A ready supply could come just from the young men fleeing Ukraine in droves to avoid being conscripted into the military and sent to the front lines to be gound into hamburger by the Russians, all in the pursuit of furthering the legend that Zelenskyy is George Washington, Winston Churchill and Mahatma Ghandi all rolled into one very small package.

Add in Ukrainian civilians tired of having their houses blasted down around them as they dine on chicken Kiev, or who long for the days when the electricity stayed on, the flood of interested Ukrainians likely would make the displaced Afghans that Myopia 2025 once pursued seem like a trickle.

Or maybe Myopia 2025 already is working on recruiting Ukrainians without our knowledge. That is, after all, their preferred method – to operate in secret as unelected elites, hoping to slip their plans into reality before the public catches on to what they are doing behind those closed doors.

Maybe we might be lucky enough to land the main Ukrainian pipsqueak, Zelenskyy. He could just pack up his booster seats and shoe lifts and hop the latest government plane to John Murtha Airport, where he could expect to land to accolades from our lapdog Democrats.

Zekenskyy could dip into the pile of funds he is alleged to have amassed during this war and buy up a couple of those spec $100,000 houses Myopia 2025 proposes for downtown Johnstown.

God knows, the locals aren’t likely to buy them – unless given the kind of government handouts Zelenskyy favors.

Remember, according to the web site theworkersrights.com, Johnstown was No. 1 in Pennsylvania poverty in 2024.

We combined an unemployment rate just under 14 percent with a poverty rate just over 38 percent. Bonuses are that we have a decling population and the lowest median income in the state.

Myopia 2025 number crunchers see fewer people, miserably low income levels and high unemployment and conclude, as their type tends to do, that building houses will fix it all.

I’m sure building houses will help Myopia 2025’s favored contractors. Beyond that, I don’t see it.

If Zelenskyy decides to buy 10 or so of the houses to help out his fellow Ukrainian refugees, then it’s a big win for the contractors. It would be small change for Zelenskyy, pun intended.

For the Ukrainians? Maybe not so much of a win. If the general population there mirrors Zelenskyy’s penchant for whining that a free lunch is not a free dinner, they will be unhappy here.

Underground electrical grid problems downtown mean the power goes off there periodically, just like back home.

While the Russians have not yet felt emboldened enough to attack our downtown, Ukrainians will have to deal with our criminal violence and drug problems.

Our lack of local political transparency will, however, seem familiar to them.

I’d like to compare our unemployment rate and income levels with theirs but, surprise, such statistical information seems to be largely unavailable for Ukraine.

Even if we did have those numbers, I’d suspect they would be inflated, just like Zelenskyy’s supposed 5-foot, 7-inch height.

Here’s an idea: The next time Zelenskyy gets booted from the White House after coming off as a petulant child, have his plane fly over Johnstown to give him the sort of bird’s eye view that might lure him and his fellow Ukrainians here.

If Zelenskyy balks, or asks for a better deal as he has a habit of doing at the last minute, note we have a significant Russian Orthodox population he can persecute, just he has in Ukraine.

That should sweeten the deal enough to get his attention!

Ordinarily, we try to keep this family rated, but not today.

I’m borrowing a page from prominent Democrat politicians and operatives, who proudly gather in public to proclaim FUCx Trump, or FUCx Musk, and so I say FUCx Zelenskyy.

This arrogant shrimp had the gall to use the oval office Friday afternoon as a cheap soap box to vent his frustrations that many of his confidants had warned him – unsuccessfully, obviously — to check at the door.

Zelenskyy is proof that big things – his ego – can come in small packages – his stature.

And the rumors are flying as to why Zelenskyy, who showed up ostensibly to sign a rare earths mining deal with the United States as a prelude to repaying some of the $200 or so billion we’ve gifted his country, not to mention as a first step in ending the war with Russia, went off-script.

Even as Russia first invaded Ukraine years back, many in this nation, including some of my neighbors, rushed to show support with tiny Ukraine flags. I was withholding endorsement of Zelenskyy. I knew his was a nation with a significant Nazi presence, a land of religious persecution, and a boiling pot of corruption.

The Bidens were in that Ukraine morass up to their elbows.

Don’t take my word for the corruption angle, as Zelenskyy went on a rehabilitation tour on Fox News Friday night following his dustup with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance in the Oval Office, the subject came up of accounting for all the U.S. military aid that has gone to Ukraine.

All could be detailed, Zelenskyy insisted, and digitally, he added.

Funny, way back in January 2024, Ukraine’s defense minister revealed an audit had uncovered about $262 million in military corruption, just in the four months the guy had been on the job.

Multiply that by nine or so to account for three years of war aid, and it’s quite a lot of U.S. taxpayer dollars lost in the Ukrainian couch cushions.

Remember, too, that Zelenskyy is the guy who found time and money to do Vogue photo shoots, along with his wife, during the ongoing war that is killing a lot of his countrymen and devastating the country.

Ukraine can’t win this war with Russia, most knowledgeable observers recognize, and even this pipsqueak egomaniac admitted things would not go well without continuing U.S. support.

So, how does Zelenskyy go about guaranteeing such support? He shows up and insults Trump, Vance and America in general.

Trump and Vance delivered a severe verbal beating and ordered Zelenskyy out of the White House. I applaud them.

Democrats, whose cultist members make them the party of illegal immigrants, trans athletes and protecting criminals, rushed to the nearest microphone to blast Trump and Vance.

And a who’s who list of European elites were on social media, backing Zelenskyy.

Said one Fox panelist to those armchair warriors, great, now get out your checkbook and start showing your support with money.

Ah, there’s the rub. Europeans have been counting on our nation to bail out their socialist asses for more than 100 years. From two World Wars which, without our intervention, would have had the whole continent speaking German, to us beating back the former Soviet Union to win the Cold War for them, U.S. money has been the blood that keeps the European heart beating.

Trump has been pointing out to these deadbeats, both during his first term and again in recent weeks, it’s time for them to start paying their fair share of defense. It’s the same with our 51^st state, Canada.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was at the White House earlier this week admitting Trump was correct about this defense thing, and pledging to spend a few Pounds Sterling more. Actually, I’m not sure he actually gave an exact number.

To his everlasting credit, Starmer dodged a question of whether his armed forces could take on Russia, without U.S. help, and win. I’ll answer it for him. No freaking way!

So, European elitists, who are butt hurt after Vance called them out recently regarding their attacks on free speech and limited spending for their own defense, perhaps gave Zelenskyy the word that this would be a good time to attack Trump and embarrass him in front of the media.

These tone-deaf, arrogant types again misread the room. This would have worked against Clueless Joe, even though there were numerous media reports he had upbraided Zelenskyy privately on a phone call a few years back for a lack of gratitude.

The difference is Trump and Vance called out Zelenskyy on that lack of gratitude immediately and in public. The little dictator, and his friends in the European elite must have been stunned.

I know the Ukrainian ambassador became a viral figure as she held her head in apparent stunned dismay over what was transpiring.

This was a chance for the public to see what diplomats like to call euphemistically “a frank and open exchange.”

Zelenskyy had a chance to initiate a peace plan and he blew it by symbolically urinating on the carpet.

And, for all the Democrats now wagging their tongues, where have you people been? What’s your peace plan? I guess you were too busy propping up the cadaver of Clueless Joe and trying to gaslight the public that he was fit for office.

Remember, Zelenskyy made what seemed to be a political endorsement of Democrats in the past presidential campaign when he traveled to Pennsylvania – on a U.S. Air Force plane – to tour a munitions plant while on the arm of Democratic Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Zelenskyy also took shots at Vance in a magazine interview at around that time.

Vance mentioned this affront during the Oval Office give and take today.

Warmongering Neocon Republicans joined in the trashing of Trump for calling out Zelenskyy. But, notably, Lindsey Graham, a Republican who has been quite the Zelenskyy apologist, said he had warned his little protege specifically not to venture down tangents during the meeting, just talk the minerals deal. Now, Graham is talking about a Zelenskyy resignation for having torpedoed peace chances.

This just in, Lindsey, egomaniacs don’t take advice.

I like Trump’s warning to Zelenskyy, either you want peace or you’re on your own against the Russian bear, and good luck on that front.

If Zelenskyy is counting on all those European allies to come through with real help, he’s even more immature and naive than today’s petulant child act makes him seem.

Seeing assorted federal employees going postal (explanation later) about losing their seats on the gravy train has prompted recollections of my past — admittedly brief – experience working for Uncle Sam.

As a high school senior and into my freshman year of college, I worked at the Johnstown Post Office. It was something like 15 or 16 hours a week during school and much more during the Christmas rush and summer.

It was a sweet gig, paying more than $6 an hour, which was a lot in 1973, when the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. I recall people being amazed to learn after the fact that I made more in one year on that part-time, temporary job than I made my first year working full-time at the local Woke Gazette.

In 2010, having retired from journalism in March 2003, I picked up a few extra bucks working a couple of months for the U.S. Census Bureau.

Both the post office and census time gave me great insight into the federal employment.

The job at the post office was a bit eye-opening for a teenager. This was before the term “going postal” sprang into use, a reference to disgruntled employees, often of the post office, shooting up their workplaces and killing supervisors and employees.

That usage started after such incidents began springing up at post offices in 1986 or so.

Let’s just say if some breathless reporter had asked me if I was shocked such things could happen, I’d have told them no – hell no.

It was on Aug. 20, 1986, that disgruntled post office employee Patrick Sherrill shot and killed 14 employees and wounded six others at the Edmond, Okla., post office before shooting and killing himself.

Sherrill had claimed to be a Vietnam veteran. Records indicate that while he had been a member of the Marine Corps, he had served domestically. Still, there was an association between “going postal” events and Vietnam veterans down the line.

I worked with a lot of veterans who were full-time employees during my time at the Johnstown Post Office and they ran the gamut from seemingly completely normal to obviously disturbed.

There was a supervisor and veteran we’ll call Lover Boy, who was married, but not a fanatic about it. He routinely took up a post hanging over the mail-sorting rack of one particularly large-breasted, female, high school part-timer.

I don’t know what, if anything, transpired between them. I do know she got whatever daily job duty she desired.

Another fill-in supervisor, call him Thirsty, had a habit of disappearing for hours at one of the nearby Washington Street watering holes of the time.

This became a problem when registered mail would arrive and he was the only person able to sign for it.

To make it all the more surreal, the guy looked a lot like actor Lorne Greene, who played the head of the Cartwright clan in the long-running Bonanza television series that was nearing the end of its run back then.

Probably the most memorable character of my post office time, call him Sgt. Bad Intent, was, in retrospect, exactly the type of guy who might have shown up armed one night and shot up the place.

Sgt. Bad Intent laughed a lot, but in a maniacal way. As strange as it sounds, back then bicycle wheels used to be shipped with only an address tag tied to a spoke. They were labeled to handle with care and use caution. Sgt. Bad Intent, when we were loading these wheels into semi-trailers out back, would read the label and wing them the length of the trailers, probably 40 feet.

“Let’s put them up front where they’ll get a good ride,” he would say, laughing at his own little joke.

The census time, while not as dramatic, was educational in its own way. I learned about bad management, government inefficiency, bending of rules, and trying to skew things to a desired outcome.

We were encouraged to go out of our way to help the cause of area political representation by counting any human being with signs of life, even if they might be living as squatters in condemned buildings.

We had some ex-military types in our crew, including one memorable guy with a full-time job in government who also was doing census work, theoretically on the side. He told a lot of stories, including being greeted on his stops by women with open blouses and similar such sexual overtures.

Alas, I was greeted by no semi-naked women, only irritated types disputing my authority to ask them questions, and one particularly disturbed individual who followed me around Kernville for a time, calling me names (sneaky fox?) and suggesting I was part of some conspiracy to oppress him.

This continued until I noted that if he didn’t desist I was going to kick his ass right there on the street.

By the way, we weren’t allowed to carry guns for our protection, even if we were duly licensed to do so.

Although I never did work full-time for the government, I did spend a lot of time working for private employers and always I tried to follow the commands of my bosses. As I used to tell co-workers, if you’re accepting the check, your task is to do what you are told unless it is illegal, unethical or immoral.

When I first started at the Johnstown Woke Gazette, the newsroom was not unionized and I saw more than one person get the old, resign-or-be-fired ultimatum.

When I moved on to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, I signed a paper acknowledging I was an “at will employee” and could be fired at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all.

Being secure in my ability to do my job, I signed it and, guess what, I was not fired, but instead took an early buyout offer 15-plus years down the line when I no longer enjoyed working there.

Current federal employees, please take note.

So many happenings and so little time, which means we need an installment of news and views.

NEWS: CNN’s “Fake” Jake Tapper has a book about the media coverup of the failing mental state of Clueless Joe Biden.

VIEWS: Give Tapper the lead balls award for this. It was Tapper, in a video to be played over and over again, who derided Lara Trump for questioning Biden’s mental acuity during his time as president, saying she was mocking a stutter and lacked standing to make judgments about cognitive ability. Yo, Jake, anyone such as me who has had relatives dealing with dementia, recognizes the symptoms. Jesus, did Biden stutter up the plane steps, stutter off his bike, stutter when tripping on stages, or needing guides to show him the way off them, stutter when freezing mid-sentence or stutter forgetting names of individuals or countries they represented? Did Biden stutter during the debate that prompted Democrats to dump him as the candidate for re-election? Now, in an apparent effort to make a few bucks and rehab a reputation for unbiased reporting that the guy never really had, this book is the answer?

NEWS: President Trump is getting heat for proposing a $5 million gold card for would-be immigrants to speed up their process of coming to the United States and perhaps eventually becoming citizens.

VIEWS: I guess the critics think it is better to let in gang members and assorted criminals, put them up, at taxpayer expense, in first-class hotels, give them cell phones and pre-loaded debit cards for incidental expenses. This just in, almost by definition, the odds are people with a spare $5 million are more likely to be productive members of society than your average gang members. Also, unlike Clueless Joe’s refugee army, these people would be vetted before being accepted.

NEWS: Attorney General Pam Bondi has said to expect release of Jeffrey Epstein files, perhaps including passenger lists for plane trips to his isle of debauchery, as soon as Thursday.

VIEWS: A lot of leftists choked on their coffee when they heard that. I would suspect there will be Republicans on the lists, too, but I’m betting that more prominent Democrats show up on the manifests, not that merely being on the passenger list indicates felonious behavior. Regardless, it is not a good look.

NEWS: The usual media naysayers are outraged that Elon Musk was at the meeting Wednesday of the Trump cabinet.

VIEWS: Funny, I don’t recall them being outraged that unelected DR. JILL BIDEN !!!!!!! attended and spoke at a rare Clueless Joe cabinet meeting, or that feckless son Hunter spent a lot of time with daddy (perhaps changing his Depends) at White House staff meetings.

NEWS: Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick is a voice of raging optimism as shown by his Fox News interview with Bret Bair during which he expressed real hope about balancing the federal budget and paying down the national debt of $37 trillion or so.

VIEW: Too predictably, even for Fox, a panel was brought on later to discuss what Lutnick said and it was two-thirds dismissive, Taking the lead on negativity was Brit Hume who should know better, and some harpy from USA Today. But Charles Payne of Fox Business provided some balance, imploring the negative nellies at least to give Lutnick and, by extension, Trump, a chance to get the job done instead of saying it is impossible.

NEWS: Musk, speaking to the media at the cabinet meeting, noted that reining in spending and preventing that national debt from mushrooming further is the only chance this country has to avoid bankruptcy and a huge decline in living standards.

VIEWS: It’s hard to argue with Musk when our interest payments on the national debt, at about $1 trillion a year, now exceed the defense budget

Consider the curious case of Rachel “Mad Cow” Maddow, MSNBC’s often-wrong, never-in-doubt leftist mouthpiece.

You may recall Maddow pitching – hard – the Trump Russian collusion case night after night years back. When the whole hoax fell apart, Maddow moved on to another attack plan, failing to acknowledge she just might have been wrong.

More recently, Maddow was screaming conflict of interest due to a government plan to buy Tesla vehicles, a plan put in place by Clueless Joe’s regime as these incompetents headed to the exits. Some suggest it was a plant designed to make Trump look bad when it eventually came to the attention of the public. Or maybe, as others suggest, it was just more Biden regime ineptitude.

You make the call.

It is clear that, in the wake of Trump’s re-election, attrition is hitting the leftist LameStream media hard, as talking head after talking head moves on, either voluntarily or with a swift kick in the backside.

They all seem to think they will take their screeds to podcasts and live happily ever after. They might succeed, as long as they are willing to tamp down their lifestyles because podcasting in general is not as lucrative as milking a broadcaster with national reach for an exhorbitant salary.

This self-cleansing likely is rooted in the management finally tiring of being wrong and, more importantly, losing viewership and revenue because of it.

Hell, even Washington Post publisher Jeff Bezos has up and told the editorial page to knock off all the batshit crazy leftist stuff and instead concentrate on personal liberties and free markets. This, predictably, has sent assorted horrified leftists rushing out the door. Mission accomplished, as George W. Bush might have concluded with a banner as a prop.

MSNBC has been among the leftist organizations cleaning house. And there is Maddow, eager to come down on the wrong side of yet another issue.

Maddow is a person critics indicate bears a striking resemblance to Mark Cuban (which is unfair to Cuban). I think more of Ruth Buzzi’s Gladys Ormphby character from the old Laugh-In TV series, the spinster with the dowdy wardrobe and hairnet, always eager to use her massive purse as a weapon on those who offended her.

Ormphby was but an on-air character born in Buzzi’s mind. I’m beginning to think this strident, far-left, caring-for-the-downtrodden Maddow as seen on MSNBC, similarly is for show only.

I mean, Maddow is lamenting the dispatching of former colleague Joy (Less) Reid, whose mission in life in the past seemed to have been to post homophobic slurs on her social media, then deny it was her, blame hackers, and finally claim amnesia, but apologizing just in case she had written it all.

Reid quickly moved on to repeating ad nauseam on her MSNBC show that Trump and his supporters are Nazis, racists and general idiots. No apologies from her on that front, just a trip to the unemployment line.

Because she was a one-note singer, Joy (Less) had a viewing audience that would fit in a telephone booth (if we still had them) or an outhouse (same thing) or a subcompact car (there, something you can visualize).

Reid got the ax and Maddow cried crocodile tears. Maddow painted their bosses as racists, a fitting homage to the playbook of Joy (Less).

Perhaps it was only coincidence that word since has come out that much of Maddow’s staff is being cut, too.

Some have suggested that Maddow, who reportedly makes $25 million a year for, up until recently, doing one whole show a week (she has a future as a federal government bureaucrat) might take a pay cut and have the money redistributed in the interest of saving staff, or even Joy (Less).

Maddow’s silence on that front has been deafening.

Compassion ends at the purse. And even though Maddow needs an Ormphby-sized purse to stash all her loot, she’s not willing to share any to help some coworkers.

Keep on keeping it real, Maddow.

Add to the list of things sure to enrage a leftist, besides confusing their pronouns, asking if they are eligible to vote, or maybe if they’re in the country legally, is to email the bureaucratic drones among their number requesting a list of what they did last week on the job.

Oh, the indignity.

I recall as a child one of the teachers’ go-to requests early in a new school year was to get the students writing by having them outline what they did on their summer vacations. For someone who grew up in a household such as mine, a family for whom going for a Sunday drive, maybe visiting relatives, was quite the outing, I had limited source material.

Somehow, though, I answered the call and wrote something each year. I did well on those essays, even went on and got a job for three-plus decades writing for my keep.

It seems too many of our work-from-home, do-as-little-as-possible bureaucrats must have had it too easy on those summer essays, having raw material like going to the beach, to Disney World, to foreign lands.

Faced with a simple request to outline what they did last week, they freeze. Oh, you skeptics, who say they did nothing.

Baloney. I just read where hundreds of NSA employees (the spy folks) were on transgender chat sites talking about turning penises into vaginas surgically and celebrating it all.

I’m sure thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats were doing similar productive things on the taxpayers’ dimes, just last week.

We’ll excuse the USAid people, who saw their slush fund closed down. We know what they were doing, packing personal items in cardboard boxes and scribbling snarky messages on them. There is no group more shrewish than do-nothing slackers deprived of their spot on the gravy train and left to wonder if there is another organization as idiotic as the federal government that will pay them to spend other peoples’ money on their political causes.

Beyond the USAid types, we want more NSA-type tomfoolery. Don’t be shy, people. Details make the stories.

Judging by the ongoing string of reports regarding left-wing news hacks losing their jobs, this whole DOGE concept apparently is being co-opted by media organizations.

From Abilio “Jim” Acosta, to Joy (less) Reid, to Lester Holt, to Norah O’Donnell, or even MSNBC demanding her highness Rachel “Mad Cow” Maddow stop acting like a bureaucrat and start doing more than one show a week, it seems too many prominent leftists were asked to tell the bosses what they did in recent weeks, and it wasn’t nearly enough.

Or maybe it was too much, things such as calling half the country racists, Nazis, Russian agents and just, plain stupid for not kissing the hem of the radical left.

Although I never in my work life had to tell my bosses what I did the past week – presumably they saw enough of my bylines in the publications I worked for that they knew – I could have provided them a list.

Even now, despite being retired, if the wife emails me tomorrow asking what productive things I did last week, I can provide her an answer. It would be an eclectic list, including shoveling snow (multiple days), helping mind the grandkids, running the family investments, doing odds and ends about the house and writing entries for this blog.

There’s more, but I won’t bore you.

I bumped into a former co-worker over the weekend at the Pete Vizza memorial service. She was a Trump supporter before it was fashionable, and has been to numerous Trump rallies, along with the recent inauguration.

I asked her if she was tired of winning yet. She wasn’t and neither am I.

Reading the ongoing whining about Trump and his team taking on the deep state, cutting off its lifeblood of taxpayer funding, makes every day like another Christmas.

A recent poll indicates I’m not alone, with majorities in the 80- and 70-percent ranges approving of Trump closing the border and pruning government, among other things.

This email request to outline the past work week has been the gift that keeps on giving, providing daily amusement as Democrats find yet another losing cause to die for.

Have at it, you donkeys.

The biggest concern on my plate ahead of tonight’s USA-Canada championship game in the 4 Nations Face-Off is whether or not I’ll be able to watch the game.

I’m sitting her at the mercy of DISH, and the inability of its satellite signals to penetrate through much worse than sunny skies. I couldn’t watch the Finland-Sweden game Saturday due to my signal evaporating, touching off a phone conversation stretching more than hour with uncooperative DISH people who don’t understand that their signal guarantee specifically mentions receiving account credit for weather outages.

My backup for DISH crapping out again tonight would be trying to watch the game online. That, too, is less than a certainty because my Breezeline internet provider already has greeted me with outages earlier today.

I know, I know, I’m supposed to be on pins and needles worried whether the U.S. can win it all. I’d settle for being able to watch the game.

Spoiler alert, I expect Canada to win.

I’m as patriotic as the next guy, maybe even a little moreso. I’m not saying the U.S. can’t win, or even won’t win. I just understand that if the guys in red, white and blue triumph, it would be a momumental surprise.

As legendary sportswriter Damon Runyon is said to have quipped, “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.”

First off, it’s hard to consistently beat an opposing team when the talent levels are close. The U.S. already has beaten Canada 3-1 in the round-robin portion of this tournament. As long as the games are played by humans, emotions intrude and it’s natural for the winner to have a touch less urgency the next time, while the losers are driven to atone.

It seems to me the U.S. has more depth, but Canada has more top-end offensive talent.

This is altered by the U.S. entering this game tonight in Boston toting a lot of injury baggage.

Begin with three top-echelon forwards – Auston Matthews, Matthew Tkachuk and Brady Tkachuk – who are less than 100 percent. Matthews and Matthew Tkachuk sat out the last game vs. Sweden with injuries, and Brady left it early after wiping out into the goal upright. Even if all play tonight as expected, will they be anywhere near 100 percent?

Some think Matthews has been hurt all tournament. His defense has been dogged, but this gifted goal scorer has yet to put one in the net.

Take Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Sidney Crosby away from Canada and you might notice a dropoff.

The injury news continues for the U.S., who will be without defenseman Charlie McAvoy. Supposedly McAvoy got hurt in the opener vs. Finland, but still played vs. Canada. The Canadians will recall this because McAvoy delivered huge hits on Crosby and McDavid (twice) that had an effect on the outcome.

It was Crosby, perhaps a bit tentative after his run-in with McAvoy, who coughed up the puck for the game-winning U.S. goal. McDavid scored early, but was not a huge factor after the hits he absorbed.

Not seeing McAvoy in uniform will bring joy to Canada’s team.

The U.S. also has arguably its best defenseman, Quinn Hughes, missing the entire tournament due to injury.

Meanwhile, the Canadians were missing star defenseman Cale Makar for the first meeting with the U.S. He’s back and is a weapon.

That the game is being played in Boston, a supposed home-ice advantage, is mostly a non-factor in my view. How much did playing in Montreal and having the insecure Canadian fans boo our national anthem before the game help Canada? The hosts did lose, right, after going on top 1-0, which further hyped the crowd.

Vocal home crowds can raise the emotions of the visitors, too, spurring them to great heights if only to shove it back in the faces of the spit droolers.

This game is being pitched as much more than a hockey contest due to Canada’s hurt feelings over President Trump calling them out regarding unfair trade practices, noting how they depend on us for national defense and Trump kidding girl-boy prime minister Justin Trudeau that he’s just the soon-to-be-ousted governor of our soon-to-be-51^st state.

Canadians are overly invested in their hockey identity and should they somehow blow this game, it will be a national day of mourning.

If the U.S. somehow can prevail, it will 1980 Miracle on Ice, the sequel.

I just hope I get to watch it all unfold.

Fast-moving news events have raised a flood of questions, with less than a trickle of answers in response.

Here are some of the questions I’ve love to have answered, sooner rather than later.

Why, all these days after the Delta plane in Toronto did an upside-down runway slide, do we not know the name of the pilot? (There has been a lot of online speculation, including putting forth the name of a 26-year-old female only recently upgraded from flying tiny prop planes, as well as one listing the name and photo of a male TV aviation expert and, most amusing, another with the name and image of a prominent male porn star).

What is up with the cretins who rushed to blame the Toronto crash on President Trump, despite it happening in Canada?

Do Democrats realize how silly they look opposing cutting government waste, fraud and abuse?

Are Johnstown’s Myopia 2025 people serious about building houses on all the vacant lots in the city and selling them for $100,000 each?

Do these people realize average citizens need to do real jobs to earn their money and don’t have access to all the governmental handouts these behind-the-scenes elitists are used to raking in to fund the various nonprofits, charities, foundations and not-for-profits from which they draw their lavish salaries?

Do they really think people looking to purchase a house for $100,000 are eager to buy within the city limits, not Richland, Westmont, Southmont, Upper Yoder, etc.?

How many Myopia 2025 types live within the city limits?

Is ungrateful pipsqueak Zelenskyy crazy for deciding to attack Trump publicly as Trump tries to end the war that is destroying Zelenskyy’s country?

Should Mexican cartels be nervous that they’ve been designated as terrorist organizations, basically taking the gloves off regarding how they can be attacked?

In view of cartels running her country, shouldn’t Mexico la presidente Claudia Sheinbaum be more concerned with that than the renaming of the Gulf of America?

Can Democrats give the Elon-Musk-was-not-elected rants a rest considering the judges they rush to in attempts to stop DOGE were appointed, not elected?

Do Democrats take an oath “I will support illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens, trans males over females in women’s sports, gays over straights, any minority over whites, thieves over auditors, Muslims over Christians, Jews or members of any other religion, criminals over law-abiding types, climate crazies over rational folks, and misinformed left-wing media types over the truth?”

Are you upset to learn that Biden’s Energy Department funneled a $2 million grant to boondoggle electric truck company Nikola in 2021, despite the company’s founder being under federal investigation for shareholder deceit at the time, and now Nikola has filed for bankruptcy Wednesday morning?

Do you think they’re going to find all the gold on-hand at Fort Knox when DOGE gets around to opening the vaults?

Having spent two hours this morning shoveling the predicted 1-3 inches of snow – we got about six in Southmont — I’m not feeling kindly toward the weather geeks.

Their ridiculous, unending, inaccuracy seems to be across the board, like maybe they’re all reading from the same hymnal, just as Lame-Stream Media sing in unison, Russia, Russia, Russia, or Constitutional Crisis, Constitutional Crisis, Constitutional Crisis at any given time.

Why this is so with weather I can’t understand. These local TV stations all proudly proclaim the presence of their staff metereologist, plus assorted similary credentialed minions. They have super gigabillion watt radar, cameras and weather stations scattered throughout their viewing area, and access to a seemingly endless amount of weather services and online weather tools.

You’d think they could spit out some different, and accurate forecasts. But, no, they are a low-accuracy echo chamber where it seems to be better to be wrong in lockstep than to take the risk of being right alone.

Forgive me for noting they seemed to do better when they looked out the window and just went with their observations.

If you live where I live, they’ve absolutely blown the past three or four winter storms, but with a twist of constantly underestimating snow fall and/or how cold it would get.

In the past, they pushed weather porn, predicting virtual Armageddon on each occasion of an approaching storm and, when these dire predictions almost never proved accurate, they would come on the air with some version of “Whew, we dodged a big one.”

Terrified viewers, who had rushed to stores in prior days to buy out supplies of milk, bread and toilet paper, never seemed to hold a grudge with the weather people. Instead, they were grateful that they had not come face-to-face with disaster, forgetting that the only indication of said impending disaster was the over-active imaginations of the weather people.

Long ago, I swore off the local weather people and their changing cast of characters. In the case of the NBC affiliate headquartered nearby that thinks it’s in Centre County, weather guy turnover in the past in some cases has had to do with legal problems.

But even the formerly trustworthy sources such as AccuWeather.com or Weather.com, have failed miserably this winter.

They have become so predictably bad that I make allowances. Today that meant setting my alarm for two hours earlier than I might have needed to shovel away an inch of snow and clean a car. The way I looked at it, if they finally got one right, I could shovel, come in and relax with a cup of tea, then send the various household members off on their appointed rounds.

As I hefted my first shovelful of snow this morning, I was extremely grateful for that extra time.

Upon returning from one errand, we commiserated with a neighbor out shoveling snow for the umpteenth time in recent days. She noted, without prompting, that she’s tired of these 1-3 inch predictions that always undershoot.

Join the crowd.

We parted with shared envy — that professionals could be so consistently wrong and still maintain their jobs.

Can we get DOGE to look into weather types?