The insanity continues.

There are reports governors in Washington and Oregon either have, or stand ready to activate the National Guard to help quell potential election violence.

The usual suspects in politics and the lapdog media have run with this to insinuate that it’s due to fear of right-wing types acting out should Donald Trump lose.

This neatly ignores that Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, in the past have been havens for radical leftist takeovers, be it by Antifa or Black Lives Matter.

It also somehow fails to note that recent ballot box arsons in both states reportedly have had “Free Palestine” and “Free Gaza” messages left behind. You might argue this is merely a false flag attempt to pin it on leftists. I suspect these arsons truly are the work of some fringe leftist.

Regardless, we already know absolutely it is the leftists who in the past have seized parts of cities in these states, with no-go zones, damage to public buildings, and generally unsocial/criminal behavior.

Yes, bring out the National Guard, just as Trump tried to do in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 many years back. Just make sure you have them looking for the correct people.

On another front, a supposedly solid pollster from Iowa was out over the weekend as part of a flood of pro-Kamala results that came out of the blue (pun intended) and flew in the face of the recent polling of many other outlets.

I lost my respect for the credibility of this Iowa pollster when she appeared with Mark Halperin and fumbled to explain how she got her results. Presented with a graphic of a critical social media post that referred to cross tabs from HER POLL, the woman needed Halperin to clarify what the D and R stood for in the tabs.

That would be D for Democrat and R for Republican, he told her, which would seem to be rudimentary knowledge any competent pollster would know without needing help.

‘Oh, I see,” said the woman, before launching into an explanation of why she would have to look into the criticism before commenting further.

Remember this sort of thing as the LameStream media endeavors mightily to confuse election matters in coming days.

Tomorrow is election day and I’m going to miss all the ads. Just kidding.

Election advertising is almost always, in a word, ridiculous. Outright falsehoods and distortions rule.

Neither side is totally innocent in this matter, but it is the Democrats who tend to produce propaganda messages with the tiniest link to reality.

Maybe you’ve heard Donald Trump is going to take away Social Security and Medicare? It’s been a Democratic attack ad on Republican candidates since I was a kid.

You might wonder how this can be effective when it never happens. In this case, Trump actually had the job of president for four years and didn’t harm either retirement program. Yet, this time, he’s going to do it. And some blue-haired women and doddering old men will vote for Kamala Chameleon out of fear their benefits are at stake.

This is along the line of the constant drumbeat by speakers and in ads that Trump is Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin all rolled into one, and therefore a threat to democracy.

Again, he has had the job, people, and we still have a democracy or more correctly, a representative republic.

There is a difference. In a democracy, everything is simply a decision by the majority. And, if the majority decides all left-handed people like me should be shot, well, we’re all goners.

In a representative republic, the people elect politicians to represent them, but there is a constitution that acts as a check on absurd over-reaches simply because a philosophy or position has majority support.

You don’t want to live in a pure democracy.

Those democracy ads and talking points are exposed in their absurdity by elections. When you take the time to look at it, the Democrats are anti-democracy.

It is Democrats who weaponized the legal and justice systems to try to jail Trump and keep him from running. They tried to subvert the will of the people the last time he was president with never-ending impeachment and other procedural ploys.

They wanted his name kept off ballots in many states and even now, on the eve of the elections, radicals such as Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin are making noises about refusing to certify a potential Trump victory.

Doesn’t sound like preserving democracy to me.

Also on the topic of chipping away at democracy, it is Democrats who go to court to lobby for non-citizens to vote.

It is Democrats who want rules modified at the last minute to include votes from people too moronic to follow simple instructions such as deadlines to submit mail-in votes, signing these ballots or enclosing the ballots in a separate envelope.

No less a far-left source than National Public Radio, which uses taxpayer funding to pump out liberal pap, admits there are, as claimed, more voters on rolls than the eligible population would indicate there should be.

In a story posted Nov. 3, 2024, on npr.org, this reality is explained away by blaming Americans’ freedom to move from one state to another and so the same person can appear on voter lists of multiple states.

This could be part of the problem, but it doesn’t explain documented cases of dead people voting (mostly for Democrats), non-citizens voting (notably this year a Chinese student in Michigan) or the same name being used on multiple ballots (apparently one of the many problems cropping up yet again in Pennsylvania, among other places.)

This NPR propaganda piece critiques Elon Musk for posting recently that Michigan has more voters than eligible citizens.

This is true, the story concedes, but more than a million of those illegal voters are “on their way to being deleted.”

What does that mean? Do they stop off to be deleted after voting? Will they be deleted next year? Next decade?

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, had people who self-identified as non-citizens struck from the voter rolls in his state. And he had to go to the Supreme Court to beat back Democrat challenges to this no-brainer policy.

But the Democrats are protecting democracy? Right.

We have ads featuring aging women and their adult daughters clamoring for unfettered abortion rights. Maybe the daughters should contemplate their fate had mommy gone the abortion route, say, six months into the pregnancy.

The repeal of Roe. vs. Wade did not end abortions, but merely put the decision in the hands of the states, in keeping with the 10^th Amendment of the Constitution. Try reading it sometimes, all you purported defenders of democracy.

Also, don’t let facts get in the way of a good attack ad designed to appeal, as Mark Cuban might say, to weak and dumb women.

In a story that was posted in August of 2023 on NBCnews.com, seven states had ballot measures regarding abortion between when Roe vs. Wade was overturned in June 2022 and that story’s timing. All seven were won by pro-abortionists.

Equally disturbing are recent ads in which Kamala Chameleon’s people note Trump is a rich guy, supported by ultimate rich guy Elon Musk. The people (actors?) in these ads all seem to wear plaid shirts or jackets and some manner of working man ballcap, and they don’t like rich people.

This means they must not like Kamala Chameleon or most of her financial backers, guys like Bill Gates and the Soros clan, who are willing to donate millions, but don’t want to come out in the open about it.

Again, Trump has a track record and it’s not for punishing the middle class with higher taxes and inflation. That’s the Kamala Chameleon plan, the inescapable outcome of flushing away trillions of tax dollars trying to convince people that intermittent electrical power from solar and wind is acceptable, that electric vehicles are mandatory, gas cooking stoves are a climate threat and we just have to shut down the domestic energy industry for the good of the planet.

Clueless Joe Biden and Kamala Chameleon have a record on this, if you’re willing to look past the vapid ads.

Open borders, rampant crime, they also are the Biden-Harris legacy, regardless of what their ads might assert.

It is traditional around elections to encourage everyone to vote, particularly the hapless undecideds, who somehow have gotten to this point unable to discern a clear choice.

I go opposite this. If you haven’t made up your mind yet, stay home and spare us your inanity.

If you can’t take the time to research the positions and policies of candidates, but rely instead on paid propaganda and sound bites, don’t vote.

If you are crazed by hatred of Trump, the American standards he represents, and his “garbage” supporters, by all means, stay home.

Reality has intruded on the Penn State and Pitt football seasons. We can only hope for such a clear and decisive outcome on election day.

It strikes me on this Sunday morning, as I seek to utilize the extra hour that is the bonus of Daylight Savings Time being put in the closet, that there are similarities between the upcoming election and college football.

Begin with polls. Oh, the polls – often wrong but never in doubt.

There was a flood of new election polling over the weekend, often contradictory. Fans of each particular candidate predictably question the accuracy of polls not favoring their choice. It is similar with college football.

And polls, both in politics and college football, often are proved to have been overly optimistic in some cases; overly pessimistic in others. The good news is results will out, at least in football with the games played in public, as opposed to sometimes shady voting and counting done in secret during elections.

I wrote this past week of Penn State and Pitt each being unbeaten and ranked in the AP Top 25 based on that, but there were doubts about the pedigree of their results.

Penn State was 7-0 and ranked No. 3 before falling to once-beaten nemesis Ohio State, ranked No. 4. The Nittany Lions weren’t playing Kent State, Bowling Green or even over-rated USC this time. Despite being handed a 10-0 lead, Penn State managed to lose, 20-13, before a record home crowd that was, shall we say, not impressed.

No great escape. No miracle comeback. Only a post-Halloween haunting by a long-time, Michael Myers-like tormentor. Ohio State just beats Penn State in football. Period. As inevitable as today’s sunrise.

With the outcome yet again assured for the Buckeyes, some of those Penn State fans looked like Shillary supporters after they got the 2016 election results.

In some ways, the final score was misleading. Penn State was gifted its only touchdown on a badly thrown out pattern pass that was intercepted and returned for a touchdown early. Also, Ohio State’s quarterback later fumbled the ball through his offensive end zone from the two-yard line. Penn State got possession of the ball on a touchback instead of Ohio State likely scoring a touchdown.

This 14-point swing counterbalances Penn State whining about being stopped twice inside the five-yard line without scoring any points.

Pitt also had begun play at 7-0 Saturday, albeit ranked much lower at No. 18, and left at 7-1 after having absorbed a 48-25 thumping at the hands of No. 20 SMU. It was not as close as the final indicated, with SMU having led 31-3 at halftime.

Pitt had been behind often in previous games – sometimes big – and pulled out wins. Not this time.

Both Penn State and Pitt were unbeaten largely as products of less-than-challenging schedules. Yes, they both are in conferences and on that front are hostage to the schedules given them by those conference.

But either might have done a better job scheduling legitimate nonconference foes.

Penn State and Pitt should take note that once-beaten Boise State got that loss early in the season, losing on a game-ending field goal by Oregon. That Oregon team was No. 7 nationally at the time and now resides in the No. 1 spot.

Forget that oft-heard tripe about schedules being made well in advance and thereby giving teams a pass on lack of challenging opponents. They just couldn’t have known!

Oregon has been among the nation’s elite for a long time and was when it came together with Boise State as a scheduled opponent. But Kent State, appearing on the nonconference slates of Penn State and Pitt in this and many other years, never is to be mistaken for an elite program.

There are other common elements between elections and college football, including cult-like supporters totally incapable of rational thought, candidates and coaches ducking tough questions (Penn State’s coach James Franklin was Kamala-esque two weeks back in running away from media on the topic of former players charged with rape), and a lot of big money being thrown at candidates and programs behind the scenes.

As alluded to earlier in this post, the saving grace in college football is things tend to be settled in public. We get to see, on the field, how accurate those polls were.

That’s especially true in this year’s expanded national championship playoff field. With 12 teams getting a shot, it is going to be hard to argue that a worthy team was excluded. That often could not be said in the past, either when bowls and polls decided national champions, or playoff fields (picked by polls) were remarkably small.

Former football player, professional wrestler and current Fox political pundit Tyrus (George Murdoch) has been saying for weeks that tight political polls are incorrect and the election will not be close. He expects Donald Trump to win handily.

It would be best for this country if, despite all behind-the-scenes machinations, there was such a clear election winner, either way.

Don’t bet on it, just like you shouldn’t bet on Penn State or Pitt winning the national championship

Cheer up, Penn State football fans, despite yet another loss to Ohio State it could be worse. You could be Kamala Chameleon backers, too.

Sure, once again your team came up small in a big game. We recognize that latest failure in song.

To be sung to the tune of the chorus of “The Nittany Lion.” This is dedicated to you, Dan!

Hail to the Franklin

His teams are screwed

Your team would be screwed

If Franklin coached it too.

Can’t win the big games

Lost one again

He’s got the talent

But his coaching is inane.

How much we pay him

To fail and fail

We’d just be better off

With someone else to hail

Let’s send him packing

Tarred ‘n feathered too

Make it a package deal

With Franklin’s gameplans too.

And here’s a bonus, to be sung to the tune of Neil Diamond standard and Penn State crowd favorite “Sweet Caroline.”

Was in the fall

Penn State had blown another

Lost a big game as all went wrong

It’s nothing new

Since we’ve been coached by Franklin

Sometimes we’re sad he came along

Fans!

Booing fans!

They’re so loud!

Oh just listen to them boo!

Can’t hold the line (oh, oh, oh)

Our O and D are beaten blue

They are inclined (oh, oh, oh)

To let the enemies run through

Schedule was weak

Had taken luck to win some

Guess it was time our luck ran out

Playing the weak

As well as soft and infirm

Didn’t prepare us to win on

Fans!

Booing fans!

They’re so loud!

Oh just listen to them boo!

Can’t hold the line (oh, oh, oh)

Our O and D are beaten blue

They are inclined (oh, oh, oh)

To let the enemies run through

Liz Cheney is outraged about the possibility of being shot in the face, and not because she’s going hunting with daddy Dick.

You remember Dick, the guy who accidentally shot a fellow hunter in the face with a shotgun while quail hunting in February 2006. It was not until this faux pas was reported in the media that Cheney and his people came out to report and attempt to explain the whole thing.

Leftists had a field day at the time and they were righteous on this one. Such carelessness with firearms is reprehensible and reflects poorly on all lawful gun owners.

The shooting victim was reported to have been released from the hospital a week or so later – after suffering a heart attack in part due to being shot – and subsequently fawned over Cheney. The victim said at a press conference that he and his family were “deeply sorry for everything” Cheney and his family had to endure in the wake of the shooting.

So, the victim was sorry about being shot in the face by Cheney and that this had inconvenienced the then-sitting Vice President.

As to Dick Cheney being sorry, apparently not so much. Reports online indicate the victim was asked if Cheney had apologized and he didn’t answer the question. This likely indicates we got an answer with the non-answer.

Fact-forward to 2024 and Cheney, plus daughter Liz, are Kamala Chameleon converts. This is a longstanding trend in the Republican Party, which remains butt hurt by the Donald Trump takeover of the party. Elites like the Cheneys and Bush clan resent populists like Trump, not to mention his success.

Unlike Cheney and too many Republicans, Trump refuses to see never-ending wars as being in the best interest of the United States. Trump parts ways with many Democrats on this issue, too.

Liz Cheney paid the price for her blind hate toward Trump by being ousted in the 2022 Republican primary. Repeat, Liz, an incumbent member of the U.S. House from Wyoming, got beat by 30 percentage points or so in her party’s primary.

The party members of her state showed her what they thought of her anti-Trump actions, including her vote for his impeachment.

Liz vowed revenge and the years since have seen her working feverishly to hamstring Trump, most lately by campaigning with the empty pants suit known as Cackling Kamala. We can only hope the Cheney effect helps Kamala to a 30-point loss.

Cheney and her ilk rail that Trump is Hitler, that his followers are Nazis, etc., etc., etc.

Trump has fired back – rhetorically. He asked the very same question I would ask of war hawks like Cheney, and including petty little guys like Zelenskyy. That question is, how tough would they be if they were in the front lines with people shooting at them?

I don’t think they’d be very tough at all, but maybe I’m wrong. Let’s send them to the front with a rifle in their hands and find out for certain.

And so, Trump wondered how Liz would feel if there were rifles trained on her face, prepared to shoot back. This, notably, from a guy recently shot in the head who had risen to his feet afterward and encouraged that Butler crowd to “Fight, fight, fight.

Liz rushed to social media to whine about Trump being a mean would-be dictator with his comments about her.

It was ironic since Liz now aligns with the party that helped incentivize at least two assassination attempts on Trump. Even after those, Clueless Joe Biden’s commerce secretary was out in late September saying Trump should be “extinguished for good.”

I can’t be sure of this, not having taken the time to search her social media history, but I doubt Liz Cheney was quick to lament that choice of words.

An Associated Press report on Trump’s Liz Cheney remarks was predictably sure to brand him as “using increasingly threatening rhetoric against his adversaries and talked of enemies from within undermining the country.”

The report goes on to use this to justify those calling Trump a fascist and, presumably, forgiving things like trying to assassinate him.

Compared to armed leftists either shooting Trump – literally – or attempting to do so, saying Liz Cheney might be a little more restrained if she faced the danger herself instead of just being quick to send the military into harm’s way, seems pretty minor to me.

Bottom line: Relax, Liz. You’re safe as long as you don’t go hunting with daddy.

Congratulations, Democrats, you pledge your allegiance to the party that lies to you, and to the public in general, expecting you to lap up the fabrications — no matter how ridiculous — without question.

Their hubris over telling lies and succeeding because of it is somewhat understandable. It has been working for them for so long.

It still works with the hardcore leftists and a lot of the supposedly less radical of the flock, because too many Democrats seem to have checked their critical reasoning ability at the door. But the public in general is catching on to the nonstop torrent of lies, distortions and propaganda and is no longer buying them.

With any luck, the liars will be repudiated in the coming election.

Recent days have produced a watershed of ridiculous attempts to mislead from Democrats.

As October ended, the White House has been caught altering transcripts of a Zoom call on which Clueless Joe Biden called Donald Trump’s supporters garbage.

First, they tried to argue the idiots who witnessed a video of the call, heard this and were outraged, had ignored a phantom apostrophe that made it all okay. When that misdirection attempt failed, the White House just altered the transcript.

That would have worked in the past. Not in this internet age. It’s out there forever, or at least until the Democrats initiate World War III and all electronic devices are fried by nuclear electromagnetic pulses.

Clueless Joe shared this absurd characterization of Trump loyalists even as Kamala Chameleon was making her closing argument that she would be a uniter, despite calling Trump a fascist, his supporters Nazis and having her surrogates say anyone not voting for her is either a racist, a misogynist, an idiot, or maybe a combination of all three.

And the Chameleon’s campaign is out with a new TV ad encouraging women to lie to husbands or anyone else who might be interested, and vote for Kamala on the sly.

The party of the big lie is closing its presidential campaign by proposing women lie about their vote. Fitting.

Someone should have let motormouth Mark Cuban in on the latest ad campaign. That might have prevented him from going on the air and looking like a total moron by observing that all women anywhere around Trump are neither strong, nor intelligent.

How long before Cuban or his apologists say he was misunderstood and a key apostrophe would have made it all clear?

Why do they even bother? It’s like a child caught in a lie who keeps digging deeper with even more fabrications.

Yet they keep at it. Tampon Tim shows up wearing camouflage hats or hunting gear, then can’t load his shotgun. He plays a video football game on a livestream with AOC, then credits her with running a mean pick six play.

Pick six is the term for an interception returned for a touchdown. It is not a designed play on offense and just a happy accident on defense. You’d think a guy billed as “Coach Walz” would know that.

Or maybe Tampon Tim is as fake as one of Kamala Chameleon’s accents or policy positions.

You also might think it telling that Tampon Tim’s hunt and video football both produced zeros in terms of birds felled or points scored.

And then there’s would-be first dude Dougie, Kamala Chameleon’s hubby, who is held up as the epitome of modern masculinity. Presumably that means neutered and willing to stand in his wife’s shadow with a brainless smile, but not because he shagged a nanny or is accused of slapping a date that he thought was flirting with a parking valet.

Again, lies by the left have become old hat. Trump was being spied upon by U.S. intelligence, despite protestations by the left and the lapdog media that he was crazy in saying this. Hunter’s laptop was, indeed, Hunter’s laptop, not Russian disinformation. The Trump-Russia collusion was a big lie. Lies were used to facilitate the spying on Trump and his organization.

COVID vaccines were effective and safe, sure. Clueless Joe was/is not senile, Kamala Chameleon had nothing to do with the coup that removed Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, but she did work at McDonald’s.

Hell, I remember way back in the leadup to the 2000 election when my mother was buying into the left’s propaganda that Republican George W. Bush was going to cut Social Security and Medicare.

I assured her it was a lie. But, I promised her that if I was wrong and it ever happened, I would make up whatever she lost out of my pocket. She voted for Bush, who had two terms in office and Trump has had one. My mother died a few years back, without her Social Security or Medicare ever having been cut by mean Republicans.

Yet the Democrats are out again with charges Trump will cut Social Security and Medicare. And there probably are some confused souls buying their lies.

As with other liars, Democrats find the more they lie, the easier it is to keep telling lies. And they find a need to tell even more lies because they have distanced themselves so far from the truth and reality, there’s no turning back.

This is an election that is our chance to call BS on the crap we’ve been fed and force the liars to pay a penalty for all their misdeeds. Their clock is ticking, I hope.

I’m garbage. I know because Clueless Joe Biden said so.

The fact that some sentient Democrats got to Joe soon thereafter and told him to back down on this, which he immediately did being the subservient puppet that he is, doesn’t change that Joe said it, and more to the point, meant it.

Don ‘t buy into the fallacious argument that Biden was talking about one Trump supporter.

That absurd defense reminds me of a time, while covering the Pirates in the 1970s, that poor-fielding shortstop Frank Taveras had made another error. As he left the field at inning’s end, to a chorus of booes from the fans, Frank gave them the one-fingered salute.

Taveras had a weak, Biden-like defense after the game. He said he had been directing his finger at a single fan in the upper deck.

Back to Biden’s latest over-the-top rhetoric, I’m garbage because I support Donald Trump. I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and am going to vote for him yet again next week. In these hyperbolic political times, that is enough to brand me and the millions like me as garbage.

It’s OK, because as a Trump supporter, you get used to ridiculous descriptions of Trump and, by extension, you.

Shillary called us all deplorables and recently doubled down trying to hawk yet another book as she continues to whine about the populace that decided she was not up to being president just because her last name is Clinton.

Barack Obama, an elitist to the core, mocked people like me for clinging “to guns or religion.” Last time I checked, either of those rights to cling were enumerated in the Constitution, although leftists are in hyperdrive to change that.

More recently, LameStream media and prominent Democrats, including Kamala Chameleon and Tampon Tim, throw Hitler and Nazi around anytime they mention Trump – or his supporters.

They really beat this false fallacy into the ground when Trump had a huge rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden. Hitler once had a rally at a Madision Square Garden – NOT THIS BUILDING, BY THE WAY – and that was enough.

The leftists were foaming at the mouth, neglecting to mention several Democratic National Conventions, including Bill Clinton’s 1992 example – THAT WAS HELD IN THIS BUILDING!

No matter. Trump is bad and his supporters are bad. Call them deplorables, sad sacks clinging to guns or religion, fascists, Nazis, Hitlers, it’s all really just the same.

Coastal elites live in their deep blue echo chambers and can’t understand anyone who doesn’t kiss their rings simply because they demand it.

These elites see Trump as an existential threat to their way of life – shepherding the sheep into wars, cultural breakdown and eventual national bankruptcy.

They cannot keep up in the arena of policy and so they result to denigrating the opposition.

Trump saves his namecalling for his political opponents, not their followers (unless you include the LameStream media that should be neutral, but is anything but). That is an important distinction.

For all the efforts to display Trump as a revenge-seeking bully, it is the leftists in politics and the media who are projecting their own inadequacies by making those charges.

If Clueless Joe thinks I’m garbage just for supporting Trump, allow him yet another delusion. Under that criteria, I’m proud to be garbage.

The Penn State and Pitt football teams are unbeaten. The Steelers lead their division.

The cups runneth over for area football fans. But, we feel compelled to wonder, should we describe the condition by borrowing from Shakespeare and his play “Much Ado About Nothing” or is a Steve Allen song reference more accurate as in “This Could Be The Start Of Something Big.”

The next week or so should bring us election clarity. We may need to wait a bit longer for the final word on the football fortunes of the aforementioned teams.

Let us start with the Steelers. At season’s beginning, a metric that considers the past season’s results with current season expectations as established by bettors, had the Steelers with one of the toughest schedules in the NFL. I begged to differ then, and still do to an extent.

What is clear is the Steelers better enjoy their bye this coming weekend, because their soft schedule life is about to get a lot tougher in the second half of the season.

The combined record of the eight victims of the 6-2 Steelers to date is 27-35. The combined record of the remaining foes is 36-32. And that apparent strength is crimped by two games remaining each with Cleveland (2-6) and Cincinnati (3-5).

Unbeaten Kansas City (7-0) is a remaining challenge, as will be two games with Baltimore (5-3) and one each with Washington (6-2) and Philadelphia (5-2).

The good news for the Steelers is they could lose all five remaining games vs. winning teams still on their schedule, then just take care of business against Cleveland Cincinnati, and finish with 10 wins and a likely playoff spot.

That was my feeling after Monday night and it was reinforced when I read a projection posted today on ESPN.com that gives the Steelers an 87 percent chance to make the playoffs, but just 39 percent to win the AFC North Division that they currently lead.

This pretty much mirrors my take on the Steelers – good enough in the regular season, but not the stuff of Super Bowl championships.

Next, let us look at Penn State, 7-0 and ranked No. 3 in the latest AP Top 25 poll. That the Nittany Lions are ranked behind once-beaten Georgia speaks volumes about their soft schedule.

Sure, Penn State beat Kent State easily, 56-0. But Kent State is 0-8, generally considered one of the worst, if not the worst, team in Division I football. The week before losing to Penn State, Kent lost by a 71-0 score at Tennessee, and it could have been worse. Tennessee led 37-0 after one quarter and 65-0 at the half!

But it goes beyond Kent. West Virginia, the opening opponent, is 4-4 and bad enough that it fired its defensive coordinator today, in-season! Penn State struggled with 4-4 Mid-American team Bowling Green and needed a huge comeback to knock off 4-4 USC, a performance one Penn State fan-boy site thought might indicate a “turning point” for coach James Franklin, perhaps indicating he’s ready to start winning big games.

Franklin apologized for being child-like last week in walking away from reporters’ questions twice regarding two players since pruned from the roster who are facing felony rape charges for a July incident the past summer.

Franklin is unapologetic for his record of 3-17 vs. Top 10 opposition, primarily Michigan and Ohio State.

Even Penn State’s best win this season, 21-7 over Illinois, currently No. 24, is weak sauce. The Illini were even with Penn State at the half, 7-7. By way of contrast, the Illini are coming off absorbing a 38-9 pounding at the hands of No. 1 Oregon last week that was 35-3 at the half.

The good news for Franklin and Penn State is that in a rapidly expanding Big Ten, the schedule gods have removed Michigan from the schedule and did not sub in Oregon.

If Penn State can beat No. 4 Ohio State Saturday, or even if the Lions lose for the eighth straight time to the Buckeyes, they can cruise into the 12-team national championship playoffs by beating a closing schedule of Washington (4-4), Purdue (1-6), Minnesota (5-3) and Maryland (4-4).

Penn State quarterback Drew Allar is reported to be a game-time decision as to whether his left knee injury is sufficiently improved to allow him to play vs. Ohio State.

This 6-1 Ohio State team is a lot like Penn State in that it is inconsistent and finds itself frequently playing down to the level of the competition, witness last week’s near upset loss to Nebraska, a team that had been waxed by a 56-7 score in its previous game vs. Indiana.

This Penn State-Ohio State game has a lot of uncertainty around it. But even yet another Franklin loss to a quality opponent shouldn’t keep Penn State out of the playoffs.

Lastly, there is surprising Pitt, 7-0 for the first time since 1982 and ranked No. 18 nationally this week.

The Panthers have been escape artists in several wins and have seen their offensive yardage drop almost 200 yards a game since leaving the soft preseason schedule – yes, Kent State was on it – to playing in the ACC, in an admittedly down year.

Pitt plays at No. 20 SMU (7-1) Saturday and Panthers quarterback Eli Holstein, may or may not be dealing with an injury.

Clemson ( No. 11) is the only remaining ranked team on the Pitt schedule beyond SMU.

In these geographically challenged times in college sports, SMU now is an ACC team, and is 4-0 in conference play. Pitt is 3-0. Clemson leads at 5-0 and No. 5 Miami, which does not appear on Pitt’s schedule, is 4-0.

By the end of the day on Nov. 16, when Pitt will have played SMU and Clemson, we should have a much clearer view of the Panthers’ place in the national picture.

My advice: Don’t pencil them into your 12-team national championship playoff bracket.

There has been some unexpected synergy between the Trump campaign and sports in recent days.

Item: During a rally at Penn State last week, Trump called to the podium the school’s perennial national championship wrestling team and several wrestlers were wearing red Make America Great Again hats. The one wrestler who spoke, mentioned the need to win Pennsylvania and said “Make America Great Again. Go vote.” I’m presuming he’s not in the dudes for Kamala camp.

Item: A Texas Tech kicker scored a touchdown Saturday on a fake field goal and in celebration afterward pulled up his jersey to reveal a T-shirt underneath with the message “Trump 24 MAGA.” Again, not likely a Harris supporter.

Item: One of those insipid, postgame, on-field interviews following Sunday night’s San Francisco-Dallas NFL contest was interrupted by 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa who pointed to the Make America Great Again hat he was wearing, before exiting. No Kamala male voter there, I presume.

I see Bosa has been flayed by social media keyboard warriors, who no doubt think Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the National Anthem was quite fine. The Texas Tech kicker and, presumably the PSU wrestlers, faced similar blowback on social media –megaphone for morons.

Whatever the reason for the public displays, good for these guys who have demonstrated their political allegiance. We’ve had more than our share of athletes whose sentiments lie with the left who have been free to pontificate ad nauseam.

I don’t profess to be sure what all this means. I’m thinking it just might indicate that a large percentage of athletes who before would have been intimidated by the screeching left and kept their political views quiet, no longer feel compelled to shut up.

Are they optimistic that Trump will win the election and the suffocating censorship of the Biden-Harris regime will be stopped? Maybe.

Or maybe they don’t care and are tired of living their lives afraid to offend the radical and vocal leftists who seek to control all public discourse.

Whatever the reason, good for these guys who have demonstrated their political allegiance. We’ve had more than our share of athletes whose sentiments lie with the left who have been free to pontificate ad nauseam.

And we’ve had championship teams refuse offers of White House visits when the “wrong” party, AKA Republicans, held the presidency.

God knows, leftist entertainment celebrities are free to mouth off on politics with impunity, in contrast to conservatives facing career cancellation if they follow suit.

I’ve long lamented the hypocrisy of our times, which seeks to empower leftists to influence the public, while putting severe limitations on conservatives.

It’s true in LameStream media, social media, government bureaucracy, our military, schools, courts and many businesses.

If this is the first trickle of evidence that the tide is turning, we all should be grateful.

In an homage to the fictional sports writer Dickie Dunn from the “Slap Shot” movie, filmed right here in Johnstown, I’m trying “to capture the spirit of the thing” by pushing the calendar and combining seasons.

An election looms and we’re already seeing Christmas themed movies on cable television channels, plus ads pushing just what to buy friends and loved ones to celebrate. Why not combine the two special days in song?

To do this, we fall back on our fondness for updating the words to popular holiday song standards. Today’s example is to be sung to the tune of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

The Democrats were counting votes

In their dishonest way

To alter tabs to get their wish

On this election day

They wanted to distort results

And lead the flock astray

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

Buy this crap.

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

From Hillary to Obama

They wink and give the nod

To tip the scales hard to the left

Ignore the one true God

They think voters are all but fools

And won’t catch on this time

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

Buy this crap

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap.

The Democrats they count and count

It takes them many days

To hamstring Trump, lift up his foes

To leave us in a haze

We must insist on a fair count

And not ignore their crime

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

Buy this crap

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

So vote early and frequently

Just as the Dems plan to

We must beat them at their own game

To hold back the bad blue

It’s up to you to end their ride

And put them on the run

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap

Buy this crap

Oh, why do they think we’ll buy this crap.

Merry election and Christmas, everyone.