It was pathetic irony that even as Joe Biden bumbled through his state of the union address Tuesday night Russians were bombarding Ukraine cities and oil prices were skyrocketing to $110 a barrel.

It’s been said before, but bears repeating: Biden is Jimmy Carter II — without the basic decency that Carter possessed.

Both have shown themselves to be weak Democrats overmatched by the challenges of the Oval Office.

Both relied on staffs long on posturing and ideology and short on results.

Both just happened to have Russians invading foreign countries on their watch, emboldened by the weak-kneed policies of both.

Both saw inflation soar, in part based on skyrocketing oil prices. Carter was mostly an unwitting bystander to it all. But Biden is aiding and abetting the oil dilemma by hamstringing U.S. production with a misguided cocktail of nixing pipelines and drilling, all to appease the far-left environmental crowd that thinks carbon fuels have no place in society.

Both Democratic presidents, separated by 40-plus years, made sure U.S. prestige was neutered by their incoherent policies.

Carter was fortunate. He left a smoking wreck of a country that his successor, Republican Ronald Reagan, was able to resurrect and thereby spare Carter the ignominy of having turned America into a third-world hovel.

Reagan had a secret weapon, and it was not his Star Wars missile defense plan. The man who made it work for Reagan was Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

It was Volcker, a Carter appointee re-appointed by Reagan, who rooted out inflation by allowing interest rates to skyrocket. A prime interest rate of 21.5 percent and a 10 percent unemployment rate were the strong medicine it took to choke off inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Current Fed chair Jerome Powell cannot, will not, be a Volcker repeat. First off, Powell doesn’t have the guts.

More important, Powell doesn’t have the basic economic strength and relatively low national debt that Volcker had to give him cover for the interest rate rises.

Democrats will blame inflation on the Russians, just like they do everything else wrong with this country.

But the truth is politicians of both parties have enabled a spending orgy that has this country in a position that would equate to bankruptcy for a private individual unable to create money out of thin air.

If this country is going to pull out of this nosedive, it’s going to be on Biden to man up and make some calls that are both tough and brilliant.

You say you aren’t confident he can do it. Neither am I.

I do know that releasing the equivalent of three days of oil usage from the strategic reserve is going to do squat.

Furthering political divides won’t help. Defunding police and enabling illegal immigrants won’t help.

In an all too familiar Biden moment, he concluded his speech with the cry “Go get him!”

Who or what he meant was unclear. What was clear is that Biden has maneuvered this nation into rough waters and he’s not the guy you want at the wheel to steer it to safety.

The local NBC affiliate continues to amuse with its newscasts.

Sunday night was just the latest example, a laughable moment I caught only at the behest of my wife, who was watching for the weather.

I keep telling her just jump on the computer and call up weather.com, or accuweather.com and get their take on things. They’re more accurate and don’t deal in weather porn. Our local people have predicted about 80 of the last three major snowstorms.

But the wife is a traditionalist, who for her efforts gets such bon mots as the local weather babe horrifying us a few weeks back with predictions of minus-25 degree temperatures. Not windchill, but actual temperatures, she stressed.

I wrote of this at the time, noting it would have been record cold and, not surprisingly, we came nowhere close.

Back to Sunday night: A fire had burned a house or houses in Johnstown and a report was given.

The anchor, who prides himself on being a hometown product according to his various internet presences, apparently never paid attention while driving through the Kernville section of Johnstown. I think I’m safe in presuming he never resided in that neighborhood.

Regardless, my wife watched the fire report and asked me if I’d ever heard of Dilbert Street in Johnstown.

Well, I told her, there is a Gilbert Street in Brownstown.

No, that couldn’t be it, she said, because the fire was in Johnstown and video seemed to show the elevated Rt. 56 expressway in the background.

Through the magic of satellite television, she was able to rewind so I could watch. Yes, the guy said Dilbert, as in the comic strip, which the local newspaper runs.

No, the fire wasn’t on Dilbert Street.

But where was it? I watched the report, walked to my desktop computer and did some quick research – something our journalist anchor didn’t have time to do, obviously.

You’d think a guy who had grown up here might have thought to himself, Dilbert Street, never heard of it.

I’m another homegrown guy, one who went the extra mile and determined it was Dibert Street.

No big deal, you might say.

I’d say you are wrong.

If you can’t trust media to get basic, indisputable facts correct, it’s a problem. It’s an even bigger problem if media members need to exercise judgment in weeding out the truth and presenting you with accurate information.

If they just repeat what they’re told or read on a teleprompter with their brain in neutral, it’s a problem.

If they have no sense of journalistic curiosity, if they don’t double-check facts, again it’s a problem.

This sort of laziness is part of the reason a Reuters Institute report in June of 2021 found that just 29 percent of the American public trusts the media, a low among 46 countries surveyed worldwide.

I found that statistic by doing a brief internet search, something our “Dilbert” anchor might try sometime.

Barack Obama was the master of sleight-of-hand branding, a tactic being borrowed from heavily by the folks attempting to make Johnstown New Afghanistan.

Recall Obama promised Hope and Change, and too many took those concepts as inherently positive. They weren’t and aren’t.

If people hope to lie, cheat or steal, it’s not a good thing.

If they hope to sow social divisiveness, it’s not a good thing. If they hope to convert our nation to communism or socialism, again, not good.

On an individual basis, should you go from a comfortable middle class lifestyle to the edge of poverty, that’s change, but not in a positive way.

Say you are seemingly healthy, but wake up tomorrow on your death bed. Change? Yes. Progress? Not really.

Obama didn’t invent the tactic of flowery labels. Politicians of both stripes tend to give proposed legislation grandiose, over-promising tags like Build Back Better. As long as you don’t look at the details, it sounds like something anyone could get behind.

And so it is that in our sleepy little Johnstown, some hypesters have gathered under the banner of Vision Together 2025.

A more accurate name might be Myopic Exclusion 2025.

The details keep changing with the goal unclear (myopia) and the gameplan has been to keep the public and even elected officials representing those people in the dark (exclusion).

In theory, Afghan refugees would be courted to resettle here and fill jobs not desired by the locals. The number of those Afghans keeps changing. Maybe 1. Maybe 1,000. Maybe more.

Of course, the Afghans would be settled in Johnstown proper, saving the surrounding suburbs from having to deal with any or all of the problems arising from the influx.

Already people taking public service jobs with the City of Johnstown have refused to move into the city and have gotten existing rules changed to allow that.

Presumably some of their reluctance has to do with the already troubled Greater Johnstown School District, which likely would not improve based on being tasked with trying to educate the latest immigrants.

There are problems both practical and philosophical with the concept of bringing in immigrants to take jobs, beginning with the stark reality that the Vision Together 2025 people don’t really have faith in what they’re proposing or they would be more welcome to the disinfectant of sunshine – public discussion of their plans.

Afghans don’t necessarily speak English, nor are they necessarily even literate in any of their country’s mishmash of languages.

They aren’t necessarily highly skilled. And, judging by how quickly the Afghan army quit when defense vs. the Taliban no longer was being handled by American armed forces, they aren’t necessarily willing to go to the wall for themselves.

But Vision tries to play the shame game by recalling this is an area once notable for its immigrants. It also was notable for immigrants who came here to blend in to the American dream, not to set up isolated enclaves with the hope of changing our communities to more closely reflect what had been left behind in the homeland.

There are vague promises that any Afghans settling here will be literate and skilled and therefore able to get and hold jobs. Details, as usual, are lacking.

There also have been, in keeping with a longstanding trend here, attempts to get the federal government to fund it all through the willing conduit of various local nonprofit, not-for-profit, or similarly described organizations that seem to exist mostly to keep an elite class well-compensated for being no more than middle men — or women — in redistributing tax money.

We wrote here in December that Johnstown has been downgraded from a once prosperous blue collar town to a place where crime and poverty are the growth industries.

Vision Together 25 would add Afghan immigration to that list of growth industries. And there is no guarantee their open-arms recruiting policy would be a positive for the town.

There was a time when I had great trust in our government, elections, the judiciary, and financial markets.

These days, not so much.

Events of the past 24 hours have cemented the realization that financial markets are anything but on the up and up.

Last night (Wednesday) before going to bed I checked the gold price. It was up more than $37 an ounce due to Russian efforts in Ukraine. Silver was up 46 cents an ounce. Both were big moves.

I got up late this morning and re-checked to see how much money I was making. Surprise! Not much, and eventually I’d be down for the day. Gold and silver had been hacked back to small gains and would be plunged into losing territory before the day ended

Gold had been up more than $70 an ounce overnight and silver had been up more than $1. But from about 6 a.m. onward, when the U.S. “marketeers” were hitting their computer terminals to begin the day’s massaging, gold and silver began to drop as the U.S. dollar began to rip upward.

That would be an American dollar that is the currency for a country which is the world’s biggest all-time debtor, whose economy is roiled by inflation (which reduces the purchasing power of —– dollars!) and a nation that is being led by a senile gent who has trouble forming coherent sentences yet is expected to lead us through a rough patch internationally with Russia, not to mention the dilemma he will face if and when his Chinese buddies opt to seize Taiwan.

Against that backdrop, of course the dollar would rally and traditional safe-haven assets such as gold and silver would go from huge gains to losses on the day. A cynic might suggest that behind-the-scene governmental operatives were at work, injecting money into the dollar via the foreign exchange currency markets and/or the various options exchanges.

But the miracles weren’t limited to the precious metals, which were shanked mid-rally as if they’d wandered into the wrong dark alley.

Stock indexes were tanking throughout much of the day as war worries led to concerns about profits and economic vitality.

The Dow Jones Industrial average was down as much as 800 points before rallying, inexplicably, to close up about 100 points. The NASDAQ, weighted heavily toward tech stocks, went from a couple of hundred points down to up more than 400 points.

What else would one expect on such a tumultuous day? The Plunge Protection Team’s fingerprints are all over this one, no matter how much the CNBC hypesters threw around words like “stunning” and tried to credit Biden’s afternoon press conference with rallying the markets.

There is no plausible explanation for what happened today, other than heavy market intervention.

Such interventions work, until they don’t. When they fail, they fail spectacularly.

Whether we are close to such a meltdown is difficult to determine considering each additional success these behind-the-scenes types manage to achieve.

But it’s virtually certain we’re closer to the end than to the beginning. Forewarned is forearmed.

Pass the duct tape that I might wrap my head before it explodes.

Common sense has been taken out behind the shed and shot. Truth is a relative term where once it was absolute. Science is propaganda. Open debate is allowed only if all agree with the left’s view of the topic.

And the result is a cornucopia of confusion.

ITEM: I ordered several books last week, an act occasioned by the death of satirist P.J. O’Rourke and then the need to hit the order dollar total for free shipping. The books were sent independently in two shipments, with tracking available, all the better to monitor the insanity. One shipment departed Halethorpe, Md., and stopped in Glendale Heights, Ill., a day later. For the geographically challenged, this means the books went from east of Johnstown to far west of Johnstown without bothering to stop to say hi. Then, within two days, the books had traveled to York, Pa., Harrisburg, Pa., and Warrendale, Pa. To get to York and Harrisburg, they moved from west to east and went past Johnstown yet again. To get to Warrendale, they went east to west and . . . passed Johnstown again. As of very early Monday morning, they were in Pittsburgh and have gone radio silent, at least as far as tracking updates. The other order is supposed to be on my doorstep by 9 p.m. tonight, having originated in Dallas, Tx., and traveled to – wait for it – Harrisburg, York, Warrendale, Pittsburgh and Johnstown. So, from far west of me, to far east of me, and back west of me, theoretically to come back east and reach my humble abode tonight.

ITEM: I find the travels of my books to be strange at best, absurd at worst. Then I read on Zerohedge.com of some lunatic proposing Fox’s Tucker Carlson be charged with treason for giving aid and comfort to an enemy, that being Russia. The author of the tweet, on social media (megaphone of morons) was not some uneducated, all-hat-and-no-cattle type as one might suspect. No, it’s someone named Laurence Tribe, who is a professor of law, and at Harvard, no less. When the full weight of backlash to his ridiculous first post hit the good professor, he backtracked with a half-baked apology, the kind that insinuates idiocy on the part of anyone who though that he’d gone off half-cocked. Both original tweet and followup have since been deleted, but live on though the modern miracle of screenshots. I wonder if Tribe was citing Hanoi Jane Fonda for treason when she visited North Vietnam while we actually were AT WAR with that nation in 1972 and she both praised her hosts and criticized the USA?

ITEM: My mother has been confined to a long-term care facility for more than two years, with the family having ongoing struggles to guarantee proper care for her. Of late, she has had mild coughs, observed by both my brother and me during visits. But, according to what we’ve been told, not a single staff member has witnessed same. Regardless, we requested some attention and were told she could have cough syrup, if she asked for it. My mother tells us she tells people she is coughing. We tell her that this, technically, is not asking for cough medicine. Yes, it’s ridiculous. Yes, her speaking of coughing would seem to be enough to prompt staff to ask if she wants cough medicine. After about a week of give and take, it seems my son, who has power of attorney for my mother (we figured he was the best bet to live the longest) finally has gotten though to the people in charge. If my mother says she’s been coughing, even though no staff has observed it firsthand, they supposedly now will ask if she wants cough medicine. Trust me, I’m telling you this exactly as it has happened.

But at least we have Joe Biden finding time between naps to put Russia’s Putin in his place and telling him hands off Ukraine. What? It didn’t work? OK. Never mind.

Let’s move to more pressing issues. Anyone seen my books hitchhiking on Route 22? How about Tucker Carlson in federal prison for treason? Maybe you can spare some cough syrup?

My cousin lumps attention seekers of all descriptions into the general heading of beat me, bore me, but never ignore me.

The crowd living under that tent grows with each passing day, particularly here in America, enabled by the liberals’ control of education, government and the LameStream media.

This is a nation populated by way too many people light on actual accomplishments, but very long on the desperate need to attract attention from their fellow travelers.

It’s not exactly a new phenomenon, only much more widespread these days. When I was a young man, boys tried to gain attention and “rebel” with long hair and strange attire such as whale bellbottom jeans, tie dye T-shirts and Nehru jackets.

That’s mild stuff compared to 2022 when we’re witnessing an explosion of narcissism aided and abetted by social media.

Somewhere along the line, the average person began to suffer under the delusion that the world needs to know that they are standing in line at the grocery store, sitting at home listening to music, or conducting any of the other menial operations that make up a typical day.

Social media, megaphone of morons, gives them a chance to share their ennui.

Add in the digital, look-at-me brag photos of kids, dogs, new clothes, the food one is about to consume, the scene out their car window, or – again – just about anything designed to elicit the random “cute,” “awesome,” “wow,” or other insipid responses designed to act as both acknowledgement and contribution to the discourse.

One poster seen just today asked for digital hugs due to having a bad day. Ahhhh. Too bad. Hang in there. Life’s a bitch and then you die.

Repeat, ours is a society of aspiring attention grabbers and a booming business to meet that demand is to be found in the previously mundane subject of gender.

I heard just two days back that there are officially 72 genders now. Where have I been?

I recall when it was just two and, incredibly, a look at a definition from the Oxford Languages dictionary online (and presumably up to date) reads as follows:

“Either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female.”

What are the other 70 genders? I don’t want to know.

What I do know is that before long there will be 172 as troubled people looking for a bit of exclusivity have to create more niche genders.

There are a lot of people who might be described as gender confused – several teen-aged versions live on my street.

The difference now is that there is an institutional effort to identify, even recruit, these confused types and to encourage them to use this condition to make a statement.

I have learned a lot about attention-seeking from raising a son, dealing almost daily with granddaughters, and working briefly in group home settings for intellectually disabled adults.

All seek attention and it is up to the authority figure to channel that behavior away from the absurd. This sentiment, once the norm, now is the exception.

When you create a market for aberrant behavior, you get more of it. That’s why we have so many gender-confused males doing their best to dominate women’s sports, why we have gender-confused males raping girls in the female bathrooms, why we have a general attitude of pandering to those behaving oddly, lest they feel discriminated against and seek redress in courts, those courts often being populated by judges somewhere to the left of Vladimir Lenin on the political spectrum.

The powers-that-be are feeding the addiction for attention and we’re all poorer for it.

It reminds me of the famous Sybil multiple-personality case that was all the rage in the 1970s. See if this sounds familiar. The attention-seeking woman concocted a series of alternate personalities in order to get more time with her psychiatrist.

The girl knew the psychiatrist was pushing the multiple-personality phenomenon, so the girl obliged. A book and at least one movie followed. Along the way, the girl tired of the game and wrote a letter to the psychiatrist, telling her she’d been faking all along.

But there was too much momentum, so the letter was considered to be a case of the girl, or one of her personalities, trying to avoid deeper therapy.

You can read about this on npr.org, in a posting dated Oct. 20, 2011. I repeat, NPR, not exactly a right-wing reactionary media outlet.

The gender genie is out of the bottle and will serve its attention-seeking advocates well, up to such time as the general public gets fed up, sort of like with COVID masks and mandates. Until then, prepare to be bombarded with the agenda and a lot of negative consequences.

While waiting for that promised Russian invasion of Ukraine (and waiting, and waiting), let’s amuse ourselves with a look at the news.

DATELINE LOUISVILLE: A former Black Lives Matter figure, gun control activist and candidate for this city’s metro council has been charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting at a mayoral candidate. The guy’s name is Quintez Brown.

Holy Hypocrisy, Batman. Never fear, though, because reports say BLM, bolstered by some of Hillary Clinton’s posse, are headed to bail out Brown with a $100,000 cashiers check. Guess we know where some of those unaccounted-for BLM donations went.

DATELINE SAN FRANCISCO: Outraged voters recalled three school board members whose draconian COVID measures grated on the masses. Specifically, the trio were more interested in renaming schools and “fixing” high achieving schools to bring them back to the pack than they were in reopening schools to students.

Marie Antoinette Pelosi even as I type no doubt is dealing with a case of the vapors by hanging out in front of her $25,000 freezer and inhaling a few gallons of that $15-a-pint ice cream her highness prefers to use to cope with things not going her way.

DATELINE WASHINGTON: Project Veritas strikes again. This time the purveyors of truth have a Food and Drug Administration executive on undercover video telling us how Biden and his gang will mandate annual COVID shots for toddlers on up through adults. Sure, the vaccine mandates don’t prevent infection, or hospitalization, but they do create a lot of demand for product.

My, won’t the drug companies be happy!

DATELINE FLORIDA: The state with the most freedom from COVID paranoia is reporting record tourism as folks from fascist-controlled states flock south for a chance to live mask-less again.

Among the hypocrites observed going mask-less and taking advantage of Florida’s freedom were Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, CNN shill Don Lemon, and California House hack Eric Swalwell.

DATELINE NEW YORK: A report in the New York Times says Chris Cuomo is alleged to have sexually assaulted a young female staffer when he worked at ABC news in 2011.

This might have played a part in CNN pulling the ripcord on Chris, whose ouster was at the time largely blamed on his aiding his older brother Andrew’s PR effort to combat – – sexual assault allegations. Oh, Fredo!

DATELINE USA: A Heartland Institute analysis reports that Clueless Joe Biden’s energy policy added about $1,000 to the expenses of the average American family in 2021, a fact clear to anyone who puts gasoline in a car, heats a home or pays an electric bill.

Who knew that canceling pipelines, restricting drilling for oil and natural gas and limiting lease opportunities, not to mention stiffening environmental regulations and looking to hike royalty payments would lead to higher prices? Answer – anyone with a functioning brain.

Ever since Justin Lumberpond bared the boob of Janet Nipplegate nearly two decades back, Super Bowl halftime shows have become must-see TV for the prurient crowd.

I’ve witnessed six of these halftime spectaculars in-person – a tribute to Caribbean music at Super Bowl XIII in Miami and Diana Ross in Super Bowl XXX in Phoenix were most memorable. But usually I think they are a bit long and overdone.

This means that when I’m watching on television, halftime is a good time to pause the video and do some eating, drinking or socializing.

So it was yesterday. Halftime arrived and I departed. Reviews vary widely among those who did take the time to watch the show. I happened to see some of these while making my daily foray onto the son’s social media account to check car ads.

There were debates about the quality, whether all the singing was live or Memorex, and where the show ranked in the pantheon of Super Bowl halftimes – either very high or very low.

What caught my attention was how it seems the NFL went way outside the box to put on an entertainment spectacular with a curious cast of characters.

First of all, there was some guy named Enema M, apparently a salesman for a laxative company.

Then there was the aquatic cosmetics rep Mary K. Bilgewater.

Perhaps in a carryover from the Puppy Bowl, Snoopy Hound also was on the halftime roster.

Add in 50-percent Sense, Dr. Dreedle and Can’tKick VeryFar and it supposedly was an all-star cast of something or other.

I’ll take the word of the cognoscenti and aficionados on that one.

The fact that people still are talking about, and debating the show indicates sponsor Pepsi got the exposure it desired.

No such thing as bad publicity, right?

The game itself wasn’t much to write home about. While the announcers breathlessly reminded us over and over again it was yet another competitive game, they failed to mention this was because each team played very poorly for stretches.

In the end, the Cincinnati Bungles were who they’ve been, not up to the challenge in big games. They allowed a Los Angeles Rams offense with a gimpy quarterback and one offensive weapon to march the ball down the field in the waning moments to score the winning touchdown – admittedly with copious help from the officials.

Those officials didn’t distinguish themselves in the game, missing an obvious facemask call that would have disallowed Cincinnati’s touchdown early in the second half.

Also, if you see a replay of late action, note that not one, but two Rams offensive tackles took a step back – false starts in the vernacular – on a play that resulted in a key defensive holding call against Cincinnati that gave the Rams a first down.

If the officials call the false start(s), there is no defensive holding because the play is whistled dead.

Sitting in my living room, I was screaming in amazement that such an obviously infraction at such a critical moment, could be missed completely.

Our genius announcers were too busy praising the game’s competitive score to notice the missed penalty and apparently no one else on the broadcast crew bothered to tell them it was worth noting.

I had to doublecheck to make sure it was NBC, not CNN, airing the game.

To sum up, the game was poorly played, poorly officiated and poorly broadcast. But, hey, at least they had a memorable halftime show.

Joe Biden, faced with the supposedly credible threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine and a very real stream of serious domestic problems, got out of Dodge and headed to Camp David for the weekend.

But we can presume that Biden did like most of America and had a Super Bowl party there.

Imagine peeking in the window on the proceedings.

Biden: USA! USA! USA!

Biden Lackey: Sir, this isn’t the Olympics. Both teams are from the USA, but you should root for the Los Angles Rams because they are based in the socialist outpost of California, which blindly supports all left-wing politicians. The opponents are from Cincinnati, a town in the flyover state of Ohio that often votes for heathen Republicans.

Biden: So, which one is Vlad Putin?

Biden Lackey: Again, sir, this isn’t the Olympics and, unlike hockey which is rife with Russians, we have no Russians in the NFL.

Biden: Come on, man! This reminds me of when I was a boy growing up in Scran-Barre — or was that Wilkes-ton? – taking guys who said bad things to girls out behind the gym and kicking their butts. By the way, I’m Joe Biden, and I’m running for U.S. Senate.

Biden Lackey: Sir, actually you are the president, although most of the people who voted for you are regretting it, at least privately. Why don’t you sit down on the couch and I’ll get you some snacks.

Biden: Good deal. Get some for Hunter, too. He’s been feeding off my leftovers for years, so no need to stop now.

Biden Lackey: Well, sir, I think Hunter has repaired to his room looking for his laptop computer.

Biden: Good. Good. What about my wife, old What’s Her Name?

Biden Lackey: You mean DOCTOR JILL BIDEN!!!!!!!!

Biden: Yeah, old Doc. Can she give me my meds so I can go nappy?

Biden Lackey: Sir, she’s not that kind of doctor. But she could give a pretty good speech on educational leadership, which is tasking subordinates to try to carry out your ridiculous initiatives.

Biden: Sounds like she’d make a pretty good president.

Biden Lackey: Actually, sir, some think she’s already running the show.

Biden: Ridiculous, you think a guy as sharp as I am needs help ruining this country? Why just the other day, as I was telling my invisible six-foot rabbit friend Cameltoe, we were going to demand Russians get their missiles out of Cuba.

Biden Lackey: Ironically, sir, it’s Putin’s demands to have U.S. missiles taken off his front porch that have created these tensions.

Biden: Well, enough of the business chit chat. My, that’s an impressive stadium where they’re playing the Super Bowl. It reminds me of some of the stuff I saw in China when I made trips there to, ahhh, accept some, you know what I mean to say but can’t find the words other than to say bring me another ice cream cone, pronto.

Biden Lackey: Right away, sir. By the way, do you have a bet on the Super Bowl?

Biden: Hey, I’m no sucker. As the great baseball philosopher Yogi Bear, I mean Yogi Berra, once said, predictions are tough, especially when you’re talking about the future. I only go for sure things like elections. Remember when I bragged about having the “most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics”?

Here Biden winked. Or maybe it was just another nervous twitch. And he was off to bed before the game’s kickoff.

Growing up in a town with a franchise in a brawling minor hockey league was great preparation for today’s social environment in which anyone whose opinion does not comport with yours is an obvious liar, charlatan and purveyor of misinformation, disinformation and general falsehoods.

Back in the day, we were too crazed by tribal loyalty to our Jets to see the hypocrisy. It took the passage of time and the making of the seminal movie “ Slap Shot,” about the Charlestown Chiefs, who were modeled after our Jets, to ram home the point.

That point was inconsistency.

The point was that a player low on hockey talent, but long on the ability to punch opponents into submission, was an ENFORCER if he skated in your team’s uniform. He was a noble protector and enabler of talented types trying to play the game.

A player of that description playing for the opposition was, of course a GOON. He was trying to terrorize your talented players into cowering on the ice and not displaying their talent.

The truth is, both were goons, or enforcers, but you can’t pick and choose. You can’t have it both ways, depending on your personal interest in an issue, person or activity.

But such partisan bluster is everywhere these days.

You can’t be Joe Biden, blaming Donald Trump for all COVID deaths during the past campaign and using that to paint him as not deserving to be president, then have more people die of COVID on your brief watch and just keep on licking ice cream cones and hope no one will notice.

You can’t be Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and issue decrees that are widely unpopular, wrongheaded and divisive, then go into hiding only to emerge to double down on your demands which polls show are wildly unpopular with the people you rule.

You can’t be a Black Lives Matter supporter and enabler and ignore the rash of accusations of financial hanky-panky within the socialist organization masquerading as a social justice warrior group.

You can’t be alarmist climatologists, sounding the Armageddon warning at every opportunity, then admit your models need 2000 times the capacity of current computers to be anywhere near accurate in the doom and gloom predictions.

You can’t be an official from the World Health Organization, which has served as a COVID propaganda operation for China and generally has passed more misinformation on the virus than any supposed denier, but single out over-the-hill rocker Neil Young for lavish praise due to Young demanding censorship of those who don’t spout the party COVID line.

You can’t praise Black Lives Matter and Antifa for merely expressing the angst of the people in their often violent protests that took over areas of weakly ruled cities, yet brand Canadian truckers as terrorists for peaceful protests of Trudeau that didn’t claim autonomy over parts of cities or otherwise flout the law in violent fashion.

You can’t be CNN and claim the high moral ground, preaching to us in the great unwashed, when you are the most busted name in news with a steady stream of scandals becoming public.

You can’t be Joe Biden, presiding over the highest inflation rate in 40 years and claim all is well and, by the way, real wages are climbing. The wages are falling, not climbing and all is not well, despite what Biden’s sycophants in the LameStream media might try to tell you.

You can’t call for the head of podcaster Joe Rogan for the alleged high crime of spreading misinformation until you’ve shut down the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and any other media outlet that spent years pushing the fake narrative of Russian collusion with Trump and interference to explain Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing loss to Trump two elections back.