If only I were a Facebook member, so I could issue an oh-woe-is-me post and bathe in the obligatory sympathy from the hoi polloi.

But, alas, I am not. I do, however, receive feedback from those who are addicted to social media and have been told that one anonymous poster – brave fellow or gal – proudly posted it won’t read my blog any longer. I’m betting if we had a dose ready in the old truth needle, this anonymous type could be injected and forced to admit a rush to read any response from me.

Here goes, anonymous one. Unlike the boycotters who have hit Bud Light where it counts – hammering the bottom line – critics of me have no similar means of attack because this blog has no bottom line.

Anyone who visits surely will have noted no ads, no registration, no fees. It costs me money to keep it up and running, not to mention the time spent to write the content.

I’m not going to go all altruistic regarding this. I do it mostly for me, because I like to write and be on the record when things go badly, as they must should we as a society continue on this absurd path.

Readers also will note no provision for reader comments on the blog, the better to avoid having to engage in fruitless debate with uninformed, anonymous gas bags.

Such “brave” types might want to read up on American history. A man with some guts, John Hancock, made sure to sign the Declaration of Independence in his typically large style, making his name synonymous with putting oneself out there and not being afraid to go public with a stance.

Tubs of goo who hide behind anonymity deserve scorn anywhere and everywhere.

I have heard of people creating multiple social media identities under false names and using them to praise the twisted thoughts put out under their actual social media identities. Think of this as a perverse echo chamber. Pathetic, too.

Early in my blog experience, I had some business cards printed because I would run into people who told me they missed reading my articles since I quit, either my real journalism jobs or my multi-year freelancing run at the Tribune-Democrat

Those cards included the following: “Warning Strong Opinions.”

I welcome any who are offended by those strong opinions to keep shuffling their figurative feet and move on. But first, be sure to whine a bit on social media, just to make your existence a bit less pathetic.

So much going on and so little time to comment, which means we are due for another installment of news and views.

News: Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson debuted his Twitter broadcast Tuesday and racked up 71.6 million views in less than 24 hours.

Views: I didn’t watch, but something called Taylor Lorenz (in this era we don’t want to chose the wrong sex or pronoun from a mere picture), predictably from the Washington Post, panned the broadcast as not even stacking up against the average streamer or YouTuber. And that speaks volumes about the lack of perspective from leftist LameStream media.

News: Johnstown was courting a high-tech firm from California, Bitwise, in early May and by the end of the month that same firm reportedly was well on its way to laying off 100 percent of its workforce.

Views: But we still can count on Greater Johnstown having a never-ending supply of new pizza and coffee shops, not to mention all those trails drawing massive tourist dollars into the area.

News: CNN head man Chris Licht has been fired after just 13 months on the job.

Views: It was evident Licht’s days were numbered at the Clinton News Network when he went public with the plan to balance the network’s Democrats-always-right, Republicans-always-wrong coverage. There is an abundance of tone-deaf leftist media types to replace Licht. Maybe Taylor Lorenz was auditioning already with its Tucker Carlson diatribe.

News: Clueless Joe Biden, taking a break from falling onstage or hitting his head on the helicopter doorway – both of which he did last week – has drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a 40-year low, continuing a 10-week run of extracting oil from the reserve in a political quest to attack oil market prices in pursuit of votes.

Views: This is the same Biden regime that announced in mid-May it would begin refilling the depleted SPR. Go to your calendar and note mid-May has come and gone and still the reserve is tapped weekly to bolster Biden’s already ridiculously low approval ratings.

News: Nearly one-third of Generation Z (ages 18-29) approves of government installed cameras in U.S. households to monitor for domestic violence and other illegal activity, according to a survey by the Cato Institute.

Views: The reality that 29 percent of these cretins are willing to give up constitutional freedoms for alleged feel-good purposes just reinforces my longheld observation that we’re doomed as long as public and private schools, as well as most colleges and universities, are minting fresh misguided Democratic voters.

News: Polling continues to confirm Biden is extremely unpopular among the electorate, that Democrats would prefer another candidate, and yet most will vote for him again because . . .

Views: . . . they are partisan zealots incapable of making an informed choice. See above News and Views installment about domestic surveillance.

News: True to the headline, there was nothing about my ‘Hood in this blog post.

Views: But I would suspect that narcissist Charlie Brown types spent an hour or so moving their lips while reading to make sure.

Climate crazies can’t seem to get their minds around facts.

Oh, they cite temperature studies in their zealotry, but ignore them when they don’t fit the narrative. They even have tacitly admitted their misguided stance by changing their cause from fighting “global warming” to combating “climate change.”

This way any change in climate, which is proven historically to have been a fluid thing even before man was releasing carbon into the atmosphere, can be cited as proving their case.

The climate zealots make dire predictions that never seem to come to pass, examples being all U.S. coastal areas were to be underwater by now, farmlands were to be nonproductive dust bowls, and polar ice was to have all but disappeared.

If any of this has happened, I’ve missed it. And I usually follow current events.

The typical climate alarmists are comfortable with killing, too. They believe there are way too many humans on our blue orb, but have stopped short of announcing definite plans to thin that herd.

This is not true for farm animals – pigs, cows and the like. The climate zealots are looking to score a daily double here, killing these animals to reduce their gaseous emissions, while also shortening the supply for those of us who still enjoy the taste of meat.

There is an unholy alliance between climate crazies and vegans.

Climate extremists also want to kill the internal combustion engine and, by extension, the fossil fuels industry.

It is here that their warped view of reality fails miserably. Nowhere is that more evident than in the case of electric vehicles.

But even before we discuss that, consider the ethanol now part of the gasoline you pump into your car, which also is billed as helping save the planet.

Never mind that a 2022 scientific study funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Wildlife Federation has gotten around to admitting that is a farce. Actually the 15 billion of gallons of corn-based ethanol, mixed annually into U.S. gasoline supplies by government mandate, is concluded to be adding to “climate change.”

This cannot deter the climate crazies. There is nothing wrong with this world, they believe, that banning gasoline burning engines in vehicles can’t right.

Here they are ignorant on so many fronts.

Begin with the nation’s creaky electrical grid, that certainly could not handle the entire population’s fleet charging daily, or even weekly. Already outbreaks of cold or warm weather bring pleas from providers to defer electric usage, lest the grid fail.

This also neatly ignores that electricity, despite the dream of genius inventor Nikola Tesla, is not readily harvested free of cost from the Earth or its atmosphere. Electricity must be generated, often using fossil fuels. Hopes of solar power and wind farms being acceptable replacements are mostly exercises in providing power that works only if heavily subsidized by the government, and with intermittent periods of low or zero production.

There also is the, to borrow the phrase of opportunists like Al Gore, “inconvenient truth” that the manufacture of electric vehicles is not climate friendly due to their outsized need for various common and rare minerals, which must be mined.

The Wall Street Journal addressed this recently in an article regarding the “nickel pickle,” explaining how nickel is much-needed in electric vehicles and mining nickel is decidedly environmentally unfriendly.

There are other realities regarding electric vehicles that are not discussed in polite company, including, but not limited to, the reality that charging stations continue to be hard to find, prices are uncompetitive with internal combustion rivals unless generous government tax credits are provided to EV purchasers, and manufacturers still mostly manage to lose money on each unit they sell to the public.

This is the reality of the situation, one readily ignored by zealots and their enablers both in government and the media.

Along the line of starve a cold, feed a fever, I’ve had a minor epiphany about the narcissistic drama queens of life and the best way to deal with them, that being to ignore them.

Let them rant, threaten and lament the fates to an audience of one. Out of sight, out of mind.

And that leaves more time to recognize the good in the community, like the ongoing Southmont Volunteer Fire Company Jubilee, billed as the 50^th such event. I’ve lived in the borough for about 37 of them and recall coming even before that.

The Southmont Jubilee, which too often in the past has been the equivalent of a week-long rain dance, has been blessed with great weather so far in 2023. Not only isn’t it raining, it doesn’t even threaten to do so. Magic.

I was discussing this Thursday night with a veteran member of the organizers and he seemed to recall a good week of weather a few years back. For the life of me, I can’t recall that.

My memories are more along the line of slogging through mud on the midway and the time they brought in some pretty odoriferous hay/straw that led to me throwing away the shoes I wore that night.

But we try to support the Jubilee annually because the firemen deserve it. Are there more selfless individuals than volunteer firemen? I can’t think of any.

They devote long hours to mandatory training, only to work for free to benefit the community. They constantly are forced into fund-raising roles, too, because, despite the fact that they provide a tangible benefit – just check what your homeowners insurance rates might be if there were no firemen handy – there are not enough allocations of funds or various grants to keep the whole thing going.

These jubilees are fading fast, too, because rising costs are limiting the net revenue. Fire departments are finding it easier to have a variety of other fund-raisers that don’t require the coordination, planning, cost, and volunteer manpower to man food booths and the like.

Oakland, the area of my early youth, long ago gave up the ghost on its fireman’s carnival. Ferndale, a traditional big event, has been toying with the idea of throwing in the towel in recent years.

But these affairs have a benefit beyond raising funds for a worthy cause. They provide the chance for community interaction, both for residents of the boroughs, and also the surrounding areas. I had some great conversations with friends at the event Thursday night.

My wife and I took two granddaughters and they enjoyed the parade, but requested next time I remember to bring ear protection for them to deal with blaring sirens.

Our fire company also has Santa ride through the neighborhoods before Christmas and if I’m around on that night, I try to slip them a donation by way of a check.

That reminds me, I’ve been late to submit a check for the fund-raising tickets I got not that long ago. But time remains and I’m not really counting on winning the money.

What I am counting on is these events continuing and people showing some generosity toward their local volunteer fire departments, who deserve all the support they can get, and more.

Time to write anew about uniformed emotion, overdone self-interest, and anonymous carping. Yep, we’re talking sports — a two-pronged observation on racing’s Memorial Day weekend and the coming back to Earth in May of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

First, the racing.

The Indianapolis 500 ended in dramatic fashion Sunday, traditional Memorial Day, with a last-lap pass after yet another red-flag stoppage due to an accident, that saw American Josef Newgarden edging out Swede Marcus Ericsson for the win.

Ericsson, the defending Indy champion, believed race officials should merely have run out the race under caution instead of stopping it to allow time for actual racing to the finish, not exactly an altruistic thought since Ericsson was leading at the time of the last red flag.

But Indy, which did a similar thing last year, throwing a late red flag to give the fans a green-flag finish, only repeated history. Last year, when Ericsson held the lead, that red flag was OK.

This year, when Newgarden was able to overcome Ericsson’s weaving and blocking to pass him, the Swede spewed sour grapes about it all being “unfair.”

So, last year, when Ericssson won, it was fair. This year, he didn’t win; unfair.

Not everyone agreed with that assessment.

Fellow driver Santino Ferrucci, who finished third driving for the team of legendary A.J. Foyt, the team’s best Indy finish since 1999, was quoted as having no problem with red-flagging Indy races late, and restarting them for a green-flag finish, either last year or this.

And Tony Kanaan, who won Indy in 2013, a race finished under the yellow flag, also was quoted as agreeing that finishing races under the green flag was the way to do it: “I think it was perfect.”

I did see at least one story which panned the finish, but didn’t bother to get anybody on the record. An unofficial canvass of social media indicated that finishing a race under green-flag racing conditions was popular, imagine that.

Rain scrambled NASCAR’s scheduling, sort of like many traditional celebrations in this area often are – but not this year – forcing the Coke 600 to be run Monday.

Along the way, Chase Elliott appeared to wreck intentionally fellow racer Denny Hamlin, prompting Hamlin to label it a “tantrum” in an interview after the event and call for a one-race suspension for Elliott.

There was no word whether Hamlin planned to park his team’s car transporter trailers in front of Elliott’s house to get even for the affront.

And fan video showed an incident earlier in the race involving Bubba Wallace and Aric Almirola, According to Almirola, Wallace, who was not reprimanded by NASCAR for giving the finger to someone during a live TV interview the past race, gave the finger to Almirola in Monday’s Coke 600,

During a red flag stoppage later in the race, Almirola approached Wallace in pit lane and, again according to Almirola, he shoved him because of the combination of the vulgar gesture and some “cussing” Wallace did during their pit-lane chat.

Now, about the Pirates, who inexplicably began the season 20-9 through April, but have gone just 6-18 in May. Their 14-4 loss to San Francisco Monday put the Pirates’ record at 26-27, the first time they’ve been under .500 since the third game of the season.

And I’m reminded of a fan discussion between a man and woman overheard at a bar-restaurant on opening day.

The man was talking the postseason for the Pirates and the woman, citing recent history, was questioning his sanity. This amused my wife, and I told her, as a guy who did this for a living for 35 years or so, the woman most likely was right.

When the Pirates were winning at a 69-percent rate through April and on pace to win 112 games for the season, I was questioning my sanity. Maybe my wife would have been, too. Fortunately she pays little attention to sports.

But the great thing about the 162-game baseball season is it eventually separates contenders from pretenders and this is far from a great Pirates team.

The franchise’s top win total ever was 110, which came in 1909, during a 152-game schedule, not the current 162 games. Those Pirates would go on to win the World Series.

The 1979 Pirates, also World Series winners, went 98-64 during the regular season. And the 1960 World Series winning Pirates were 95-59 in the regular season.

Pirates fan sites were replete Monday night with anonymous keyboard warriors giving up and walking the plank regarding the season.

“Nice while it lasted” wrote one.

But the Pirates are blessed to play in a weak NL Central Division and despite this swoon, are in second place, just two games behind the Milwaukee Brewers.

By way of comparison, all five teams in the AL East have better records than the Pirates and the Pirates would slot in fifth place in the AL West and fourth in the NL East and NL West.

There is hope for the Pirates based on their division. But expecting results like April to be repeated is extremely unrealistic.

Bark. Bark.

That’s my dog in the neighborhood “fight” sounding off on the matter. Down, boy. Down.

My son emailed me a screenshot of some Facebook commentary regarding a post I’d written Friday that focused on the battle between competing visions of personal rights occurring one street over on Dahlia.

The point of my blog post was, and continues to be, that only selfish individuals ignore laws and standards of common decency in pursuit of self-gratification or petty revenge, or maybe both.

Most of us outgrew this long ago, at least by the time we had moved out on our own. But some have not. And this is why communities must have zoning rules, because there always will be some who choose to mock convention and dare anyone to call them on it.

In an irony that is commonplace, some of the biggest lamenters over needing to be compelled to do the right thing have the most skeletons in the closet, at least as measured by a search of the Pennsylvania Unified Judicial System portal, a ready digital repository of misdeeds one can access by searching by name or case number.

Speaking of which, my name is readily attached to anything I write. Congrats to the social media types who use their names on their posts. Those who hide between silly made up names prompt legitimate inquiry as to why they feel the need to do so?

And now I think I will let the neighborhood fight dog out to defecate on someone else’s property, in the spirit of the times, and then go to bed.

Philosopher John Stuart Mill generally is credited with defining the so-called Harm Principle as “people should be free to act however they wish UNLESS (emphasis mine) their actions cause harm to somebody else.”

A more coarse definition is: Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.”

Either way, it’s an important distinction that one’s exercise of personal liberties and self-expression cannot come at a cost of causing harm to others. But how to judge harm? There’s the rub.

The modern day ethos is heavy on proclaiming rights and quite a bit lax on the matter of accepting responsibilities and limits. Too many perceive themselves as the center of the universe and so all else exists only to honor their whims.

This brings me to an update on my ‘Hood and a minor drama from another street playing out, naturally, on Facebook. There is a reason I refer satirically to social media as the megaphone for morons.

To be clear, I’m not saying everyone on social media is a moron, merely that it attracts the sort who, when I was young, would have their strange rants and opinions ignored by all who knew them. But, on social media, the audience is widened and such an individual can present one side of a discussion, paint themselves as victims, and get a ration of encouragement from the uninformed.

At this point we will engage in a prolonged exercise of what former Steelers coach Bill Cowher was fond of dismissing as the “What if? game,” his catch-all term for refusing ever to entertain a hypothetical question – unless it was a subject he was eager to address to make a point.

That doesn’t negate the value of What if? in terms of being an effective thought experiment.

What if a neighbor seems to have parked not one, not two, but three trailers on the street in front of your property, including one with a California license plate, and left them there unmoved for a lengthy period?

What if, as I’ve been told by an informed source, the police refuse to enforce the 72-hour limit ordinance on such parking because movement of a mere centimeter restarts the clock?

What if the same neighbor dragged a decrepit car, weeds hanging from the wheels, into position and parked it there?

What if the same neighbor had a handicapped parking space sign installed, yet seldom is a vehicle to be found parked there?

What if this neighbor has a Jeep, an apparent hard top for that vehicle, piles of tires, a quad, what might be barrels and all manner of other eyesores displayed prominently in the front yard?

What if this person goes on social media to claim he’s only pursuing happiness and his mean neighbors are infringing on his rights?

What if this person claims to be putting the house up for sale to leave the neighborhood, ignoring the reality that prospective purchasers might be as turned off by the scene as current neighbors are?

What if the social media post regarding the supposed property sale, one which I captured via screenshot lest common sense prevail and it be deleted, included the following: “Please take absolutely no offense to this but we would prefer to sell it to a family that doesn’t have white skin if at all possible . . . We will give a break to any felons, particularly Megan’s Law offenders and those with a violent criminal history?”

I have heard, and it’s been posted on social media – at least part of the story – that this stems from another neighbor needing access to their property through a so-called “paper alley,” one on the maps, but not improved.

As an outgrowth of that, there supposedly was court action and the takeover of the street by parking it up with vehicles who sit idly for weeks or months is retribution.

Supposedly people had taken care of the alley right of way through the years and somehow thought that meant de facto ownership.

Consider this: I own neither the sidewalk that runs in front of my house parallel to the street, nor the strip of grass that separates the sidewalk from the road. Still, I am required to shovel snow to keep the walk clear in the winter, mow the grass in other months, and generally maintain the sidewalk in a safe condition.

Despite all that effort on my part, I cannot block the sidewalk, bar you from using it, or erect some structure on it or on the grass strip. As a functioning member of society, I accept this.

An enlightened social media poster weighed in that just mowing grass in a “paper alley” does not give you ownership.

This attempted retribution for that reality having been enforced, seeking to be a thorn in the side of neighbors, then claiming victimhood when called on it, recalls the song “Charlie Brown” by The Coasters.

Charlie of the song played craps in the school gym, perhaps set fire to the auditorium, wrote on the walls, threw spitballs and the like, then had the temerity to ask plaintively “Why’s everybody always picking on me?”

You really have to ask?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for the Democratic nomination to be President and his outsider status speaks to the current deplorable state of his party.

His late uncle, John F. Kennedy, was the last great Democratic president who, if he were trying to run today, would be more at home with the Republicans. JFK would be shunned by Democrats for not appealing to enough of the fringe leftist elements who have taken control of the Democratic Party.

It was JFK who, in accepting his party’s nomination in July 1960, spoke of a “New Frontier . . . of unknown opportunities and perils.”

JFK in that acceptance speech called for sacrifice by the citizenry to meet these goals and challenges, a call he repeated many months later in his inaugural speech by issuing the challenge: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

These days, we have Clueless Joe and other Democratic figureheads trying to bribe voters with handouts. They ask simply how much it will take to secure your vote, the country be damned.

Somewhere between JFK and the present, we’ve become a nation fixated on equality of outcome instead of merely equality of opportunity. It simply goes against the laws of nature to expect everyone to achieve equally academically, financially, spiritually, even athletically. You provide the opportunity and then it’s up to the individual’s merits and work ethic to produce either success or failure.

But, in this era of we’re-all-winners, the reality has been obscured by psychobabble.

Every staff picture can’t “look like America,” despite the fact that we have inept political and educational leaders insisting this must be so even as they show themselves to be more interested in popping up for photo ops on every running trail, or cutting cakes to celebrate yet more ginned up “achievements.”

The Democrats have locked up the media, the education system and, increasingly, leftist billionaire supporters, not to mention weaponizing supposedly nonpartisan government operations such as the IRS, FBI, CIA and the Department of Justice in general to persecute political opponents.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attempted to inject reality into this bastardized world, challenging Clueless Joe for the party’s nomination and pledging to “end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism on our country.”

He promises protection of civil liberties, economic revitalization and governmental transparency. This is a Democrat for whom I could vote.

RFK Jr. also sounds a lot like former Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower who, in his farewell address, warned of the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.”

The Democratic spin machine already is hard at work, painting RFK Jr. as an anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown nut (even though this stance has been proved to be correct in the case of COVID responses).

RFK Jr. is anti-censorship and pro freedom of speech.

He’s an environmentalist, but not to the degree that humans should be eliminated to make this a more pristine world, as the child autistics currently leading the discussion seem to prefer.

RFK Jr. also wants to rein in deficit spending and get the United States closer to an even footing where international trade is concerned. And he doesn’t think the U.S. should sacrifice lives and national treasure trying to fight wars for everyone else.

Bottom line: RFK Jr. doesn’t have a snowball-in-hell chance of winning the nomination, just as his uncle JFK wouldn’t thrive in this era of the far-left Democratic Party. And that speaks volumes regarding our nation’s decline.

In March, we posited that Johnstown’s struggles made sense if you looked at them as the results of a plan by the elites to keep the area on its back, the better to maintain the handout money flowing here. Now, fresh off a chat yesterday with a like-minded individual, we expand the theory to the intentional hamstringing of the entire United States.

If you have any shred of traditional thinking remaining in your troubled cranium, you no doubt are confused by the abundance of actions nationally that defy rational explanation.

But it does all make sense if there is plan hatched among elites, new world order types, and discontented home-growns in general, which would include socialists, progressives and left-wingers of all stripes, to burn it all down and rebuild things their way.

This would provide a tidy explanation for the prevalent combination of backwards thinking, ineptitude and general disregard for the law that we encounter daily.

The contradictions within our judicial system are a gigantic tell. We are supposed to be, at our core, a nation of laws, with those laws applied equally no matter whom the accused might be. This is why those “justice” statues you see around judicial facilities have a blindfolded person holding the scales of justice.

But, in current practice, we see conservatives pilloried by the court system, persecuted and over-sentenced, while liberals are given free passes.

This is typified by the massive shoplifting being tolerated in California and other deep blue areas, while Jan. 6 protesters are thrown in jail, sometimes for nothing greater than being in Washington, D.C., on that date.

And, if your last name is Biden, the sky’s the limit.

We have governmental law enforcement and national security agencies spying on conservatives.

We have an Internal Revenue Service giving conservative organizations greater scrutiny.

We have gender confusion being preached to children in grade school.

We have monetary mismanagement by both the federal government and the Federal Reserve Board, which is charged foremost with maintaining stable prices and maximum employment.

But the Federal Reserve’s long-term infatuation with below-market interest rates created a massive economic distortion both here and around the world that resulted in so-called “free money” flowing into otherwise inefficient uses.

Now that interest rates have risen and money again has a cost to borrow, banks are failing and businesses in general are having trouble securing fresh capital.

Stock market averages have been kept levitating by outsized money inflows into a few huge stocks even as most stocks are down for the past year or more. This likely cannot last.

Debt, both private and governmental, is growing exponentially, to the point where eventually it will require virtually all new money just to service the existing debt.

The great COVID shutdown was a useful tool to get Americans out of the habits of going to school, going to work, or paying their bills.

The theater that is the debt limit crisis federally is yet another example in which common sense seems to have left the building.

And we’re supposed to believe that Artificial Intelligence will rescue us from ourselves. But this, too, is a product of leftist minds and will be programmed to further their leftist goals.

Throw in that our government is shipping money blindly into Ukraine to fund a proxy war with Russia, many of our governmental officials are in bed either metaphorically or physically with intelligence agents of Communist China, and our military is being turned into a Woke/Climate Hysteria Petri dish likely to be unable to fight and win the wars the hawks are looking to instigate and the picture simply defies logic – unless failure is the goal.

The only sense it all does make is if it is part of a larger plan to gut this once-great nation causing its death from self-inflicted wounds. And it may be too late to stop the bleeding.

The election results are in and presumably my precinct eventually got around to counting my ballot and those of others whose votes would not scan in timely fashion. Now, what have we learned?

Foremost in the election aftermath is the reaffirmation that the electorate continues to be satisfied with our sad state of affairs in Greater Johnstown and Cambria County in general, and so keeps putting in the same people, or other names operating under the puppetry of the usual area elites.

I voted for plenty of candidates who didn’t win, and a few that did. Mostly this did not surprise me.

As a youth in the area, I remember an executive of Bethlehem Steel, commenting on the company’s future plans for Johnstown, saying something to the effect “expect the worst and you never will be disappointed.”

That’s one reason why, when my dad called seeking my counsel about retiring early from Bethlehem Steel by taking a company buyout offer, I strongly urged him to take the money and run. He did, and got 10 years of retirement before his death, instead of the four years or so had he retired at normal retirement age.

His experience encouraged me to save and invest and, when the newspaper business, the steel industry of the 2000s, provided me a buyout offer in early 2009, I grabbed it eagerly at the ripe, old age of 53 ½ years. No regrets.

I have done various things since, including working for a short time at a group home, and doing seasonal work with health insurance as a licensed agent.

Also there was some freelance writing for the Tribune-Democrat, and now I spend my own money to keep the power on for this blog, just because I like to write and comment free of the restrictions of others.

It is a great opportunity to provide unsolicited advice to others and I would direct some of that to John DeBartola and Joseph Taranto, the guys I voted for in the Cambria County commissioner race.

Since you two have shown a willingness to bang your heads against the metaphorical wall of establishment resistance, keep doing it. Sometimes, the wall eventually breaks.

I recall a conversation on my porch with Jim Rigby, who was tiring of running and losing. But he kept trying, and eventually won.

DeBartola and Taranto will have a tougher time, because as noted in a previous blog post, they most likely will find themselves running as Republicans, but without Republican establishment support. The sad fact of American political life is, with the exception of Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, Republicans are mostly Democratic-lite products.

These RINO Republicans run in fear of alienating the so-called “swing” or “undecided” voters they perceive as vital to their election. I love it when, days ahead of any election, a large percentage of the population has yet to make up its mind. Really? It just smacks of a desperate ploy for attention.

Republican leadership tries to help shepherd “electable” (read: lacking in commitment to supposed Republican principles) candidates to the general election, hoping they win by not offending anybody.

Forget the swing types and appeal to the base. Be true to that base, energize it with enthusiasm, and you might surprise yourselves and others.

DeBartola and Taranto, should they decide they are running again for county office, need to get started earlier building a ground game.

Facebook is fine as far as it goes, but it won’t push you over the finish line in first place. Getting out and talking to people. Somehow raising money to advertise and place those annoying, but somehow effective yard signs, is a must.

Finding ways to obtain more media exposure – radio, television, print – without necessarily paying for it is vital, too. Trump was and is the master of this. CNN just gave him a huge bit of exposure with a televised Town Hall and he took over the show.

The DeBartola-Taranto message of transparency, accountability, economic effort beyond the silly tourism push, should and could be a winner, especially if the economy should head south even further before the next election.

But this pair of outsider candidates must understand that the electorate is quite lazy. Like the proverbial mule, you need to hit them over the head with a 2-by-4 (figuratively speaking, of course) just to get their attention.

If you can get them to hear your message, you just might win their votes.