While watching some NFL games Sunday to pass the time as I recover from illness, it struck me something was missing from the show.

No, I’m not talking offense on a level one might expect from professional teams. That’s nothing new. As analyst Troy Aikman observed during a recent broadcast, there are a lot of bad offenses in the NFL.

And certainly there was no absence of exaggerated celebration and self-congratulation over making a tackle (albeit 10 yards downfield) catching a pass (as if that were something special) or generally achieving minor success (even when the celebrating player’s team was getting creamed on the scoreboard).

But the Sunday prime time game between the Washington Commanders and the New York Giants transpired with neither team seeming to have social justice warrior slogans festooned on the white pads at the bottom rear of the helmets.

Washington’s players appeared merely to have “Washington” in that prime spot. New York’s helmets seemed to have blank white space.

How I missed the lecturing and virtue signalling of the NFL-approved decals.

To remind, those approved messages are: End Racism, Stop Hate, It Takes All of Us, Black Lives Matter, Inspire Change, Choose Love and Say Their Stories.

The field seemed to have the obligatory End Racism and It Takes All of Us stenciling, but the message-less helmets left a void.

Frequently during the broadcast it was noted that Washington running back Brian Robinson Jr. is playing mere months after having been shot in the knee a couple of times by a pair of D.C. area teenagers who were trying to rob him.

I’m thinking those gentle teens weren’t and won’t likely ever be moved to better behavior by some helmet stickers.

This raises the question of to whom these stickers are supposed to appeal, to mollify or even to prompt modification of bad behavior.

They are the 21^st century version of Just Say No To Drugs, which we all know was something less than effective. But it sounded good and made for some orgies of self-congratulation among the elites akin to what NFL players unleash these days after making a first down.

These ridiculous helmet decals and field messages fall squarely under the category of don’t just stand there, do something. It doesn’t matter what is done, only that something is done that is demonstrative if not effective and can be pointed to with undeserved pride.

The wag in me awaits the day when a clever, politically incorrect equipment man with an X-Acto knife puts out some twisted helmet decal messaging.

Mixing and matching from approved text could produce such twists as End Black Lives Matter (now that the discredited organization has bought up enough prime real estate). How about Choose Hate, or Love Hate?

Inspire Love? Hate Change?

Hate Takes All of Us? Hate Love?

Love Their Stories?

Yes, such is absurd, but would it be any more absurd and insipid than the actual NFL-approved social justice messaging? I think not.

Two more modern adjustments to yuletide standards.

First: DECK THE DEMS (Sung to the tune of Deck the Halls)

Deck the halls with Hunter’s scrotum

Ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha

You will find it ‘neath his totem

Ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha

Dems and all they soon be findin’

Ha ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha.

Truth revealed by laptop Biden

Ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha

Hunter is a curious creature

Ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha

Mostly he is just a leacher

Ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha

But ‘fore long he will discover

Ha ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha

A last name’s not a foolproof cover

Ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha

Second: JOY TO THE FOOL (Sung to the tune of Joy to the World)

Sam Bankman-Fried is quite the fool

At least that’s what he claims

This is his whole defense, to many an offense

It is all hard to buy

It is all hard to buy

It is, it is, so hard to buy

Then there’s his hair, ’tis quite the mess

His bookkeeping’s no less

The look of both, is sad and quite bad

His story it doth stink

His story it doth stink

His story, his story, yes it doth stink

Now is the word, Sam’s coming home

To seek a better cell

Let all the aggrieved, spit in his eye

This man deserves the worst

This man deserves the worst

This man, this man, deserves the worst.

Today, a twin spin of traditional Christmas carols updated for our times.

First: JINGLE CASH (Sung to the tune of Jingle Bells)

Blowing all your dough

In a leftist sort of way

O’er the budget we go

Laughing all the way

Critics make great points

That we’re buying votes

We don’t care just what they say

‘Cause we can print the notes, OHHHHHHH

Jingle cash, jingle cash

Jingle cash holds sway

The more we spend the more you vote

And most will come our way, hey!

Jingle cash, jingle cash

Jingle every day

We don’t care the nation’s broke

Or your future’s gone astray, hey!

Second: GOOD KING ELON MUSK (Sung to the tune of Good King Wenceslas)

Good King Elon Musk brought out

All the truth ’bout Twitter

How the censors did connive

To bury foes ‘neath litter

Did their best to lie and hide

All the truth ’twas posted

While the left was free to lie

But the right got ro-as-ted

Elon Musk, oh he did make

Twitter bums quite frantic

Posting truth just as he did

‘Bout their lying antics

It’s costing Musk a lot of cash

With the share price tanking

All his critics call him rash

But ’tis Musk we’re tha-nk-ing.

Cryptocurrency bad boy Sam Bankman-Fried might want to read up on Jeffrey Epstein, now that SBF is in jail.

Bankman-Fried, who’s been making the media rounds painting himself as something of a clueless sort who didn’t intend, or abet, the theft of investors’ capital in his failed cryptocurrency exchange and affiliated hedge fund, ran out of rope this week. That’s just figuratively speaking about the rope.

Why should Bankman-Fried know about Epstein? Simple. Epstein was in prison for alleged sex trafficking involving minors and, so the story goes, a lot of big names were nervous about what his trial might reveal not only about Epstein, but about them.

It all came to a quick end when Epstein’s second suicide attempt in jail was successful. He used bedsheets, not a rope, to hang himself. That was Aug. 10, 2019, and the sighs of relief from Epstein’s fellow partyers on his pleasure island produced gale force winds.

How convenient, cynics thought, that this man who might have brought down so many, silenced himself. Either Epstein was, or wasn’t on suicide watch, according to conflicting reports. If he was, the guards apparently took it too literally and watched him commit suicide. Or not.

Of note, Epstein’s confidant and eventually co-defendant, Ghislaine Maxwell, reported threats on her by jail personnel in New York before she was transferred to the low security Florida prison where she is to serve her 20-year term for sex crimes involving minors.

Notably, Maxwell has stressed she is not suicidal, just in case anything happens to here while in prison.

In a curious intersection, Bankman-Fried reportedly has hired one of the lawyers who represented Maxwell.

The same skeptics who questioned Epstein’s reported suicide, observed that it was curious timing that Bankman-Fried would be nabbed just on the eve of him testifying before Congress and perhaps spilling some dirt on all the famous people he associated with while constructing his alleged fraud scheme.

Now he’s on ice, figuratively not literally.

Perhaps fearing he might commit “suicide,” Bankman-Fried is not agreeing to extradition from The Bahamas, where he was arrested on many charges of securities fraud. Bankman-Fried was denied bail as a flight risk.

Translation: Let’s keep him where we can reach him quickly, just in case he needs a hand tying the bedsheets and all that.

Were I Bankman-Fried, I’d be sleeping with one eye open and writing “I will not commit suicide” hundreds of times on the cell walls.

Here’s a novel idea to help investors get back some of the $6 billion they were said to have lost to Bankman-Fried. Allow them to take out short-term life insurance policies on SBF, valid until his scheduled Feb. 8 trial date.

They just have to be sure those policies are not invalidated by “suicide.”

Soccer’s World Cup has winnowed its field to the final four teams, with a display of world class political football along the way.

Argentina and Croatia meet in one semifinal game Tuesday. France and Morocco play their semifinal Wednesday.

You might have read an earlier post here about the histrionics regarding this World Cup, held in Qatar with its policy of not being gay friendly, among other sins.

As suggested then, and reiterated here, if people have a problem with any of this and feel it is an intolerable situation, do the right thing and refuse to play. Don’t show up wearing arm bands or T-shirts and think you are striking a blow for the oppressed while not sacrificing anything yourself.

More on this later.

Meanwhile, the English side took its pregame kneeling ceremony into the World Cup, ostensibly as a protest against racism. How this has any effect on racism, beyond the typical gobbledygook about raising awareness, is not clear.

What is clear is that the celebrated English team blew it against France. With France leading 1-0, a penalty kick was awarded and converted that got the English level.

France took a 2-1 lead and yet another penalty kick was given. Harry Kane, the notable English footballer who had converted the first try, kicked this second try into the low stratosphere instead of on goal.

If only he’d have taken the kick while kneeling, maybe it wouldn’t have gone so high over the net.

Historically – in warfare, not soccer – England tends to get the better of France. From the Plains of Abraham and the Battle of Quebec in 1759, to Waterloo in 1815, France lost the big ones and basically stopped trying against England.

The French also managed to fare badly in a couple of World Wars, and only survived due to the kindness of England and the United States.

It was only by teaming up with the United States in our Revolutionary War that the French were able to best the Brits.

France’s opponent, Morocco, becomes the first African team to advance this far in the World Cup.

In a historical repetition, they did it by besting Spain and then Portugal in knockout play, two countries from the Iberian Peninsula once overrun by Moors in 711 and ruled for about 800 years give or take.

Now, with each Moroccan win, riots ensue in European cities by emboldened Muslims. One social media influencer has proposed a bet with France President Emmanuel Macron to rescind that nation’s law against face coverings in public and “cease all that Islamophobia” should Morocco prevail.

And if Morocco should lose? No mention of that.

That’s the crux of being a social justice warrior, all potential gain and no downside – no personal skin in the game.

This brings us to the death of soccer reporter Grant Wahl. Wahl made news when he tried to cover a game wearing a rainbow T-shirt in support of gay rights and got detained by the Qatar authorities.

Wahl had been all over social media after that noting that he was working too hard, not getting enough sleep, and predictably had come down with bronchitis or something similar.

It turned tragic when Wahl collapsed while covering the Argentina-Netherlands game and, despite treatment, died

His gay brother, proclaiming himself to have been the reason for the rainbow T-shirt, rushed to social media to proclaim Grant Wahl had been murdered. The posting since has been taken private, but it was duly noted and recorded by people.

No word on whether the brother has been banned from social media for spreading unsubstantiated disinformation.

Historians would recall that the Moorish incursion of Europe ended when they tried to enter France and were repulsed by Charles Martel. Dare the French dream of history repeating on the soccer pitch?

I’m not sure what historical/political baggage the Croatians and Argentinians will carry into their game. But I’m sure some social media keyboard warriors will let us know after the fact.

Can’t we all just get along?

Not likely.

Scenes from Christmas-time:

Private guards armed with shotguns and semi-automatic rifles have been hired to patrol some Philadelphia gasoline stations as a response to out-of-control crime in Filthydelphia.

And, despite what the leftist media propagandists would have you believe, 93 percent of the respondents to an online survey on one city television station’s site approved of the armed guards.

It’s sort of like so many surveys have showed, contrary to the narrative, that the people who actually live in crime-infested neighborhoods don’t want the police de-funded.

Meanwhile, Clueless Joe Biden is too busy to be concerned with our out-of-control border with Mexico. He said so. Joe was devoting all his time to swapping an international criminal for Brittney Griner because she ticks all the boxes of the leftist Democratic electorate. Those would be she’s a flag-hating, black, lesbian, female.

Against this backdrop, I’m moved to initiate my annual offering of traditional Christmas carols updated for our times.

Today’s installment: Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer As Rambo

Rudolph the A-R owner, had a very potent gun,

And if the bad guys see it, they know that it’s time to run.

All of the leftist reindeer, used to give poor Rudolph grief,

They never dreamed his A-R, might someday save them from a thief.

Then one crime-ridden Christmas Eve, Santa came to say,

Rudolph with your gun so right, won’t you guard my sleigh tonight?

Then all the hoods they feared him, and they shouted ‘midst their flee,

Rudolph the A-R owner, you cause us great misery.

We went Christmas shopping today. You know, the passe tradition of leaving one’s house, mixing with fellow citizens, and purchasing presents for the holiday season.

The combination of COVID overkill and digital ease – how much less effort is required to click a mouse button to make a purchase – have wounded but not outright killed the traditional way of shopping.

I’m here to tell you there are benefits to the old way.

Begin with running into acquaintances and catching up, as the wife did on one stop.

Add in the ability to touch and feel the merchandise – impossible digitally.

Plus, and this is a big one, you just might run into a surprisingly good deal.

The wife and I did exactly that on several occasions.

At Walmart, the clearance section had one desirable toy, an LOL playhouse, but it was not marked with a price. Then came Newton, a friendly worker sort who was only too glad to price check it for us. When that number came back about 50 percent lower than the same item elsewhere, it quickly found its way into the shopping cart.

Let me interject at this point that the plastic snow sliders that used to be almost everywhere, have been hard to find of late. Or, when you do happen on them, they are ridiculously overpriced as if they were formed of precious metals, not a hydrocarbon product.

Perhaps kids don’t want to risk going outside and chilling their extremities by sled riding, so they sit in front of a computer monitor, playing a sled-riding game.

Yeah, that’s progress.

Because we have granddaughters ages 5 and nearly 4, and because they have been hooked by Disney vehicles including the Frozen franchise, the wife and I were cheered to find Frozen saucer sleds on the discount rack.

Again, no price. Again, enter Newton, to proclaim a good deal. And Newton made sure I got his name so I might be able to reference his pricing act should the cashier not ring up the correct amount.

This is another bonus of shopping in-person, meeting cheerful and helpful people.

On yet another stop, there was a 15-percent across-the-board discount promised on toys, which made for some more compelling purchases. Also, while roaming around this facility I came across some interesting merchandise.

It appealed to me and just might appeal to the kids. It was a microscope and telescope packaged together, again for a seemingly ridiculously low price and under the label of National Geographic.

As a kid who grew up consuming the soft porn offered in school libraries by National Geographic magazine and its pictures of topless native women around the world, I respect the National Geographic brand.

But I wanted to contemplate this, so we went to dinner, eating free on a gift card from the son and his family honoring a recent anniversary.

NOTE: You don’t ease into a restaurant between shopping stops when you’re sitting at home mouse manipulating.

While we ate, the wife did some quick cell phone searching on the telescope-microscope offering. And, as I had thought, this discount store was just about giving it away.

We finished eating, stopped again at that store, and purchased this educational toy the kids might find appealing.

Yes, I’ve done some Christmas shopping earlier on the Internet. I’m neither a technophobe, nor a Luddite.

But I do like to keep traditions alive, and we did that today.

The game 20 questions was one of my favorites as a youth growing up in an era before video games, 250-channel satellite television packages, cell phones and all manner of personal music listening devices.

Simply put, more often than not we had to entertain ourselves, and maybe sharpen our minds in the process. Playing 20 questions honed deductive reasoning skills as well as encouraging creativity in trying to stump the questioners with difficult subject picks.

To recap the game, a person decides on something animal, vegetable or mineral – we went by person, place or thing – and the other players have 20 questions to root out the answer. They must be yes or no questions. They must be answered honestly.

Today I’m offering a variation, in which I ask 20 questions of readers designed to encourage thought, not find one answer.

1. Is any knowledgeable sports fan surprised today that the U.S. men are on the outside looking in at the World Cup, having exited in the round of 16?
2. Why would anyone be stunned that the LameStream media is burying the release of Twitter documentation that there was a conscious effort there to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story?
3. Why is it OK for White House propaganda mouthpiece Karine Jean-Pierre to flat-out lie to the media, such as falsely saying Clueless Joe Biden has visited the border with Mexico while president?
4. Anyone else notice that the familiar unholy alliance of left-wing politicians and LameStream media are going on full attack mode regarding one-time leftist darling Elon Musk simply because he is sharing facts?
5. Considering the NFL is a professional league, why are there so many mediocre and just plain bad teams in it?
6. Who prepares the list Clueless Joe Biden refers to so often during press conference regarding the people he is allowed to call upon to ask questions?
7. In view of the scenes of worker abuse at plants in China, why aren’t more questioning Apple’s cushy relationship with the ChiComs?
8. How much military aid to Ukraine is enough considering the U.S. already has sent about $20 billion under the Biden regime, or about one-third of the annual Russian defense budget in 2021?
9. When will we start to demand accountability and fully audit all that cash thrown into Ukraine, a country that even Clueless Joe Biden once identified as extremely corrupt?
10. Will the politicized findings of the Jan. 6 committee be buried like the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop?
11. Are you better off today than you were when Clueless Joe Biden first was guided into the Oval Office?
12. Don’t you just want to puke when pretty boy Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau praises China protesters after having done all he could – legally and extra-legally – to squelch any sort of protest by Canadian citizens against his reign of control?
13. Should we be surprised by yet another study finding that masks, even the heralded N95 variety, do little to suppress the spread of COVID?
14. Dare we dream that Anthony Fauci will be called to account for all the COVID mistruths he perpetrated in his self-declared role of Mr. Science?
15. Will the shift of the Democratic Party to the left stop at replicating here the Mao regime in China, or move past it?
16. Isn’t it totally predictable that Antifa would be outraged by a Florida rally to protest sexualization of children?
17. Has anyone else noted how often photos emerge of Bill Clinton with disgraced types such as Jeffrey Epstein and Sam Bankman-Fried?
18. Whatever happened to Epstein, Vince Foster, Seth Rich and Ron Brown?
19. Would you underwrite a life insurance policy on Bankman-Fried?
20. Do you believe in Santa Claus, that Elvis remains alive and that the Federal Reserve can engineer a soft economic landing despite raising interest rates at a record pace?

Today’s topic is ORC and it’s costing you money even if you know not what it is.

It sounds like Ork, the mythical planet home of Mork from the Mork And Mindy television series starring comic Robin Williams, but there is nothing funny about ORC.

ORC also might sound like the noise your dog makes when upchucking table scraps and it is about as revolting.

ORC is shorthand for Organized Retail Crime, a phenomenon catalyzed by defund-the-police, don’t prosecute-criminals types who dominate the political left.

In California, where thieves can steal merchandise without fear of legal action as long as they keep the total under $950, surprise, there is much organized retail crime.

In Portland, Oregon, where Black Lives Matter types were allowed to burn public buildings while being free to wall off parts of the city for their compounds, stores are closing because they cannot sell enough merchandise to offset the loss from thefts.

Even national retailer Target has come forward with statistical evidence of the crime spree, noting in a recent quarterly report that it has lost approximately $400 million in the past year to shoplifting. Tellingly, that’s up 50 percent from the previous year and the majority of it is being characterized as organized retail crime.

Repeat, retail theft up 50 percent in a year at Target.

No wonder a report on this posted to zerohedge.com spoke of the thin veneer of civility being stripped from society.

Chicago, “benefiting” from easy-on-criminals legislation in Illinois, is experiencing more than 100 car thefts a day, up from an average of 35 or so in the first half of the year. Shootings also continue at a great rate.

It’s as clear as the blank stare on Clueless Joe’s face that coddling criminals emboldens them and makes life less safe for the rest of us.

And yet the moronic electorate continues to vote for Democrats as long as they promise stimulus handouts and relief from having to live up to debt obligations, fully support killing babies, legalize weed, pump oil from the strategic petroleum reserve trying to suppress gasoline prices, and continue to praise aberrant sexual behavior.

You, dear reader, pay for all this. Speaking specifically about ORC, you pay more for each and every item you buy in order for the stores to offset all the free merchandise stolen with a wink and a nod of approval from soft-on-crime Democrats.

As long as Democrats keep getting elected to positions of power, these trends will continue and, more to the point, will accelerate to even worse levels.

The televised interview of disgraced FTX cryptocurrency exchange wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried Wednesday was not as pathetic as your typical Clueless Joe Biden brain freeze or John Fetterman debate, but that doesn’t mean it was a favorable performance by SBF (as the failed financier is known by friends and foes alike).

Reading a summation of it all today on zerohedge.com, legal types noted numerous incriminating statements made by SBF and at least 12 times he apologized or admitted failure.

I watched this SBF circus live yesterday because I was shocked that a supposedly brilliant person would go on cable television to discuss his many failures running a financial concern, with all the likely attendant litigation yet to come, both civil and criminal.

It also interested me to see exactly now tough the questioning would be from the host, a long-time liberal apologist from CNBC. It is notable that among SBF’s many proclivities that have come to light since his exchange failed was his lavish political donations, almost all to Democrats.

Cynics are wondering aloud if that helped grease the regulatory wheels, despite the fact that one head of an established commodities exchange had testified before Congress against SBF’s exchange.

My take was that the Wednesday SBF interviewer spent too much time apologizing, begging the subject’s indulgence and generally looking to be extremely deferential considering the interview subject’s failures.

A Twitter poll showed 56.9 percent saying the interviewer had “soft-balled it,” while 43.1 percent believe he had “asked the tough questions.”

I wonder what interview that second group was watching, sort of like who are the 40 percent or so of the populace that think Clueless Joe is doing a good job?

SBF’s defense for his failures broke down to, allow me to paraphrase: I’m clueless and didn’t do my job, but I’m really sorry about all the money you people lost due to that.

There were times when the studio audience – SBF was on video from the Bahamas, which he claims he is free to leave, he just chooses not to do so, but there were people in the room with the host – laughed aloud at SBF’s responses, or the questions.

I had no dog in this fight, other than wanting to see right prevail in a general sense. I never got the attraction of cryptocurrency and, missed out on making millions of dollars as the runaway speculation peaked. I’ve also avoided losing any money as the token units have declined in value, been misappropriated by so-called custodians, or have been outright stolen by hackers.

There are many established investment professionals that foresee all cryptocurrencies returning to intrinsic value, that being zero.

Losers in the FTX operation of SBF appear just to have gotten a headstart.