Mark Twain is credited with coining the phrase “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

For his part, Twain cited one other guy for the authorship, although people who make it their life’s work to inquire into such things say Twain was wrong on that count. The phrase, in various wordings, is attributable to several different people.

What is not so tough to pinpoint is Twain’s intent to observe that often statistics can be used to misrepresent the situation.

For example, beware when percentages are invoked. You no doubt have witnessed an oft-used claim in advertising that a company is “the fastest growing in the nation.”

If said company had two customers and added a third, it would be growing at a 50-percent rate. Meanwhile, a company with 10 million customers could add 4 million and be “growing” at a slower rate of 40 percent.

The tiny, three-customer company can be said to be growing faster, but is that really significant?

Statistics of other sorts can be similarly tortured to provide propagandized messages.

But why bother? These days, it’s become standard operating procedure to forget massaging statistics and instead merely fudge them entirely.

Just today Joe Biden rushed out to get another COVID-19 shot and took the occasion to throw math back a few centuries.

In this example, Clueless Joe was asked what percentage of the population needed to submit to the jab before we could get “back to normal.”

Biden put that figure at 97 or 98 percent, neatly ignoring THE SCIENCE.

That SCIENCE has some experts saying the COVID-19 virus is now an ingrained part of the human experience that we will need to deal with forever and a day.

Others, including notable flip-flopper Anthony Fauci, opined in May of this year that if 70 percent of the adult population had one shot (notably shots come in pairs and now are said to require boosters) we should be immune from surges of virus cases by July 4. That deadline was nearly three months back. How’s that prediction holding up?

And what of real-world experience? It just happens that Norway, with a relatively modest 67-percent vaccination rate among its populace, has lifted all restrictions and returned to normal way of life.

Whose statistics do you believe, Clueless Joe’s, Flip-Flop Fauci’s or Norway’s?

Speaking of statistics, two members of the Federal Reserve Board, the people who have their hands on the economic thermostat by controlling interest rates, have resigned after their prolific stock trading success had been outed publicly. That trading was addressed in this space last week.

One member cited health issues for his resignation. Another admitted the spotlight being shone on him and others was a distraction. Apologies were absent.

Could these guys have done as well statistically without their inside information? Again, you make the call.

And, finally, an online petition to the government calling for more handout money is nearing 3 million signatures. All these people want is $2,000 a month per adult and $1,000 a month per child indefinitely.

What amazes me is that it’s taken this long to approach 3 million when the promise is free money.

Obviously, a federal government on the brink of a shutdown due to debt doesn’t have enough money to pay those ridiculous handouts without taxing the populace into oblivion – not just the rich but anyone stupid enough to go to work on a regular basis and earn taxable income.

This is the ultimate in lies, damned lies and statistics. Explain to me how, if everyone decided to stay home and suck at the public teat, this nation could be sustained.

I’m waiting.

It is a wistful experience to attend our area car shows or cruise nights and note how much they resemble AARP meetings.

Almost by definition, most of the cars are old, with just a sprinkling of recent model year muscle such as Corvettes or Dodge Hemis, Mustangs or Camaros. But the drivers tend toward the antique classification, too.

This is not just a local phenomenon. I watch those national car auctions on television, or via computer livestream, every chance I get.

And often the shots of the buyers are jarring. There’s something incongruous about an elderly gent plopped atop a mobility scooter, bidding fervently for an early 1970’s hemi-powered unit from Mopar, or even one of Dodge’s more recent horsepower monsters that go by Hellcat or Demon.

One thinks to oneself it’s like the dog that chases a car. What’s he going to do with it when he catches it?

I’m thinking in the case of the old guy buying the Hemi there won’t be a scooter rack hung on the back of that fire-breathing rocketship, but instead the muscle car will be put in a plastic climate control bubble within one of those spectacular car-holding edifices known as Garage Mahals.

‘Tis an investment, don’t you know, with the added benefit of providing a chance to recall past glories.

The differing car climate of today was evident in the wake of watching the movie “Ford v Ferrari,” which I’d preserved on the DVR during one of those free movie previews on my satellite TV service, but never got around to viewing.

As a youthful fan of cars in the mid-1960s and an avowed Ford guy, particularly the Mustang, I recall the joy I felt when the Ford GT-40s (so named because they stood a mere 40inches tall at the roof line) stuck it to Ferrari at Le Mans, finishing 1-2-3 in 1966 and then winning the 24-hour race there the next three years, too.

This was chronicled by the movie, with the usual Hollywood massaging of the storyline.

Ford also was doing well in other forms of motorsport in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, ranging from drag racing to NASCAR. And in 1968 Ford Cosworth V8 engines began a run of 155 Formula One victories over the next 12 years.

Those Fix Or Repair Daily, or Found On Road Dead taunts could be answered with First On Race Day.

Benefiting from a heavy dose of Carroll Shelby spice, the Shelby Mustangs began to dominate SCCA road racing. Shelby’s Cobra sports cars, also Ford powered, were big winners, too, on road courses and the dragstrip.

Eventually, Mustangs ruled the TransAm Series, which became serious factory racing as U.S. auto manufacturers tried to apply the win-on-Sunday, sell-on-Monday mantra to their pony car offerings.

Hell, if you turned on the AM radio in your car in the 1960s or 1970s you were likely to hear musical odes to vehicular transportation. Songs were sung about Hot Rod Lincolns, Little Deuce Coupes, GTOs, Cobras, Mustangs (Sally) and Chevy 409’s.

I’ve yet to hear a tune about the magic of a Tesla, or SUV of any manufacture. Vehicles these days fall more into the appliance category than lifestyle statement.

This means that the car culture, like so many traditional aspects of our heritage, is dying a slow death.

As the elderly hobby car owners such as me die off, so will the interest in the cars that we recall fondly, treat reverently if we own one or two, or more, and smile in appreciation of any time we see one pass on the street.

Every day seems to be Fight Club Day at my old alma mater, Greater Johnstown High School, a notable development in itself.

But it all rises to another, Marie Antoinette level when, on the very same day that two students were taken away by police for allegedly possessing a knife, and videos streamed across social media of a substantial brawl at good, old GJHS, the official school district Facebook page posted a picture of an office celebration.

The district superintendent finally had obtained her doctorate and people posed around a cake to celebrate the occasion.

There was no knife evident in the posted photo with which to cut the cake. I guess they could borrow one from a student.

This school district has many social media trolls; often correct in their criticism. One notably claimed to have emailed the superintendent some of the fight videos, requesting she take a break from eating cake to act to quell the violence in her schools.

If social media posts are to be believed, the large brawls happen more days than not at this high school. This particular melee couldn’t be swept under the rug because of police involvement and both the local television station newspaper decided to report on it.

Perhaps there will be follow-up reports in coming days, with the superintendent either explaining these are isolated incidents and it’s all been blown out of proportion, or that steps are being taken that make the administration confident the problem soon will be under control.

Either way, I wouldn’t bet on it.

The situation at Johnstown High School is a microcosm of how far this nation has fallen in the past few decades.

Greater Johnstown High School wasn’t out of control when I attended way back when, but that wasn’t due to having a student body full of choir boys and sweet, innocent girls.

I once got into a fight in gym class – a dispute that broke out in a free-for-all activity known as four-court volleyball. Not that much further down the line, my fight partner was killed by the police while trying to escape in a river channel after having robbed a nearby auto dealer.

My brother and I had friends who were both fellow students and, eventually, murderers. We knew and mixed with dealers in stolen merchandise and/or illegal drugs.

We were familiar with many thieves, liars and general miscreants that we lumped into the category of “neighborhood hoods.” Most of them attended school with us.

Yet fights at the school were rare. I can’t recall witnessing a single massive brawl.

It was simple how order was kept. Administration demanded and received respect and obedience to the rules. If the rules were violated, often physical pain was inflicted on the offending student.

Those who could not, or would not get the message, found themselves receiving instruction elsewhere, perhaps in rooms complete with barred entrances and windows.

Such harsh measures worked. That’s why the progressive morons who have taken over our public schools have stripped away means with which out-of-control students can be reined into compliance.

It serves the purposes of liberals, progressives, socialists, anti-Americans, whatever you want to label them, to neuter the public schools and thereby produce an increasingly stupid, unproductive populace dependent on the leftists in government to provide them handouts.

In turn, this underclass is a reliable voting base. Mix in confused, otherwise intelligent people who buy into the liberal cult while attending college, and you have a recipe for election victories.

If that fails, manipulate the count.

Soon, the left won’t even have to cheat to win elections, their voter ranks having been swelled with each successive graduation class populated by functional illiterates.

Until you cure this leftist cancer that has invaded our government and public-sector groups at all levels, from the Oval Office to the local school board meeting room, there is no way to deal with our declining educational system and downward spiraling society overall.

Warning, I’m writing about economics and investing, which for too many means their eyes glaze over, or the page is closed quickly and the search is on for lighter fare.

For the few who will make it through this tome, congratulations, it’s an important topic even if few find it worth the time and effort to follow.

Major United States stocks indexes were down big Monday as worries continue that a huge Chinese property development company, Evergrande, is in danger of defaulting on its debt.

Why should you care? Glad you asked.

First, it’s naive to think that what happens in China doesn’t affect us here in the U.S. From viruses that the Chinese might have cooked up in weapons labs or could currently be creating, to shipping gridlock in China that has hamstrung the worldwide supply chains and created notable price inflation, to this potential debt market meltdown in China, we’re in this together.

Donald Trump wanted to change that. But Joe Biden has spent his presidency puckering up and asking the Chinese leadership to drop the pants of their Mao suits so he can smooch their behinds. That’s looking like yet another questionable Biden call, making the Afghanistan debacle a mild senior moment by comparison.

In a bit of delicious irony, the Chinese government is threatening to let Evergrande fail, if that is the wish of the investment markets. The Chi-Coms are sounding more free-market than us.

As an aside, got to love the name, Evergrande. It’s the sort of overkill we’re used to witnessing when the neighborhood Chinese takeout joint is called something like A-1 Yankee Doodle Dandy Super Panda Wok.

Evergrande, it just sounds so great, so impeccable, so bulletproof. It is none of those, and probably doesn’t even have a good buffet.

What Evergrande does have is interest payments coming due this week on about $300 billion or so of debt. That’s a lot of won tons! It doesn’t look like Evergrande has the scratch to meet those obligations.

And that has led many analysts to use to the D word, as in default. What that does to global credit markets is being debated, but most don’t expect it to be shrugged off.

U.S. humorist Will Rogers, speaking of this nation’s bank failures during the Great Depression, is credited with saying of putting money in banks that he was more interested in return of his money, than the return (promised interest rate) on that money.

Because central banks have kept interest rates suppressed, there has been a reach for yield on debt and that has led companies to lower their standards in the pursuit of return on their investment capital.

Economies and markets are inter-linked and when operators such as central banks attempt to influence them with artificially low interest rates, there are ripple effects and often unintended consequences.

In 2008-09, when overreaching U.S. investment corporations, emboldened by interest rate suppression by central banks, pumped up the mortgage market, many organizations quickly went belly-up as the figurative house of cards imploded.

At first our nation’s central bankers were willing to let markets work and purge the offenders, sending them into bankruptcy oblivion. But then they blinked and bailed out the remaining big banks.

Fast forward more than a decade and central banks around the world have inflated a debt bubble of historic dimension by dramatically increasing money supplies in their countries, and keeping interest rates at historic lows – even negative interest rates in some countries, which means you are guaranteed to lose money buying a bond.

This exercise in economic voodoo cannot work forever. Perhaps the time is upon us for the piper to be paid.

Debt markets function only if there is confidence that borrowers will pay interest income to the lenders, not to mention eventually paying back the principal.

When confidence fails, the demand for institutions to get their money out of the hands of questionable borrowers becomes a frenzy and markets lock up. It happened briefly in 2008-09.

Think of the bank run scene from the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life,” but on a global scale.

In 2008-09 it took worldwide cooperation by central banks, led by the U.S., to avoid a complete meltdown of investing markets. Remember “Too Big To Fail?” If idiots blew billions of dollars, they had to be bailed out to protect the system.

Meanwhile, smaller fry were left to die for lack of oxygen in the form of monetary liquidity.

This Evergrande-induced example could be a repeat, or worse, of what we saw in 2008-09.

The usual suspects on cable news financial channels were out yesterday telling nervous investors to buy the dip. That has worked in the past for those with deep pockets and steel stomachs.

But, if this is the big one, it won’t work this time.

Watching this unfold over the rest of the week sure will beat viewing anything offered up in the sporting world, or by the ongoing theater of the absurd that is our nation’s political scene.

Ignore this potentially watershed moment in the debt markets at your own peril.

After two multi-day birthday celebrations in the family, and also noting my 41st wedding anniversary in the past week and a half, it’s time to play catch-up on events with an installment of news and views.

NEWS: Score another one for Donald Trump, who in advance had painted the Saturday Justice for J6 rally as a setup. Of a reported four arrests at the sparsely attended event, one was an undercover law enforcement person dressed in Antifa attire.

VIEWS: Marie Antoinette Pelosi and her other “INSURRECTION” fetishists in Congress are going to have to try harder to gin up another incident to cry about for nine months while ignoring doing the work of the nation.

NEWS: CARFAX reports the short supply of used cars, which has caused prices for pre-owned transportation to skyrocket, may be about to get an infusion of 200,000 or more fresh units.

VIEWS: The bad news, according to CARFAX, is those mostly will be flood-damaged cars from recent tropical storms, being dumped on the unsuspecting.

NEWS: We continue to learn that members of the Federal Reserve Board, who control interest rate policy in this nation, have made big profits investing in stocks whose share prices they have boosted with their prolonged easy money policy. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell just happened to hold about $1.5 million in municipal bonds of the sort the Fed stepped in to support the prices of by buying them during the March 2020 COVID crisis.

VIEWS: Just remember, the investing community is an elite private club, and the general population doesn’t qualify for membership.

NEWS: Our military finally has admitted that a drone strike on a supposed ISIS-K target shortly after the Kabul Airport bombing in fact killed a humanitarian aid worker and nine other civilians, including seven children.

VIEWS: You may recall reading here my suspicion that the rapid-fire drone retaliation attacks, bragged about by Clueless Joe Biden, happened too quickly to be legitimate considering how our “intelligence” community and military were unable to thwart the airport bombing despite their claims to have had ample forewarning. It just didn’t smell right that they could go from inept to surgically accurate in hours.

NEWS: A lawyer who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign has been indicted for the felony of lying to the FBI about a RussiaGate story he was spreading. He joins a former FBI lawyer who entered a guilty plea to lying to the FISA court to further surveillance on Carter Page in promoting, once again, the since-discredited RussiaGate hysteria.

VIEWS: Even the simpleton Biden voters should have a hard time ignoring the truth that RussiaGate was just as much a sham as the 2020 election results. But, like the puppet they worship, Biden voters will continue to deny the facts.

NEWS: It has come to light that the designer of AOC’s Met Gala gown/political statement, a white frock with “Tax the Rich” scrawled on it, looking like a child had gotten into mommy’s (daddy’s?) lipstick, is herself a tax deadbeat, having been slapped with 15 tax warrants since 2015.

VIEWS: More liberal hypocrisy. I’m shocked, just shocked!

NEWS: An FDA advisory panel voted 16-2 against giving vaccine booster shots to all adults, citing safety concerns. The panel did agree by an 18-0 vote that elderly and those with health conditions that increase their COVID risk, could get the boosters.

VIEWS: Flip-flopping Fauci rushed to the microphones of weekend news shows to ignore the current science considered by the panel members on the 16-2 vote and anticipate new science would change their minds. So, now scientists have been reduced to being lumped in with vote count manipulators, expected to bring in supposed one-sided last-minute results that favor the agenda of the elitists. Can we demand a recount?

I have not received a COVID-19 vaccine and have no plans to do so. This means, according to the Confused Joe Biden regime and its breathless media sycophants that:

I’m a dangerous domestic terrorist.

I should be relegated to the equivalent of a modern day leper colony for the safety of others.

Me, and others like me, should be publicly shamed and penalized both economically and in terms of various freedoms being denied, all in the pursuit of sheep-like conformity to the whims of a guy who on any given day is only a 50-50 bet to remember his name. We’re talking Biden, but FlipFlop Fauci merits a mention, too.

Biden said it best in his tortured logic when he indicated vaccine mandates were necessary to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. And I thought the vaccine protected those who opted for the jab from those who did not. Guess I was wrong.

The more the Biden Reich pushes on this and other ridiculous initiatives, the more the enlightened will dig in their heels.

I can hear the protests already. But, the science . . .

Yes, let’s talk about the science.

Let’s talk about a survey of COVID hospitalizations which was conducted by the Harvard Medical Center, Tufts Medical Center and the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.

Today The Atlantic reported on that survey, which found that about one-half of those hospitalized with COVID-19 had either mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. So why were they in the hospital?

Good question. In some cases, they had some other ailment and were routinely tested for COVID, thus showing up in the COVID numbers. This is akin to the tale from Florida early in the COVID hysteria when a man was killed in a motorcycle accident, but his corpse tested positive for COVID, so his was listed, at least until officials were called out on it, as a COVID death.

I’d call that highly misleading.

As for those with COVID in the survey who showed up in the hospital with mild symptoms, well, that just proves hypochondriacs will use any available ailment to feed their need for medical attention.

Bottom line: COVID numbers of all type tend to be hyperinflated. Hospitals make more money dealing with COVID sufferers, which is quite the incentive to “find” COVID in a patient, even if said patient in there for a double lung and heart transplant.

Those in government, who want the populace locked down permanently, need the scary numbers to invigorate the sheep to keep bleating about the unvaccinated. It’s hard to gin up excitement if you have to admit the death rate from COVID is about one-fourth of one percent for all but the most high-risk people.

VacinNazis and CovIdiots are many and they are treated with kid gloves by the media and social media, allowed to brazenly make the most unsubstantiated claims to support their cult-like frenzy.

But there are those who dare to speak the unspeakable, to point out there should be some degree of personal choice regarding vaccines.

If you want to get on board with endless vaccines and booster shots to the degree that you will become a human pin cushion, go for it.

On the other hand, if I and others like me question the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines, we should be free to take our chances by just saying no. And, to repeat, if the vaccines really worked, you pin cushions should have nothing to fear from us who opt not be be tattooed with vaccines.

Of all people, pop culture icon Nikki Minaj posted on social media that she was not vaccinated, would not get vaccinated to attend a Met Gala in New York City, and needed to study the vaccines more before accepting one.

She was immediately battered by her fellow social media users – therefore reinforcing my take that social media is the megaphone of the morons.

Meanwhile, at that same Met Gala, Congressional twit AOC showed up with a dress reading “Tax the rich.” This was particularly moronic considering the tickets to the Gala cost $35,000 each. I’m thinking there were not a lot of poor folk in attendance, except maybe serving the drinks, which AOC still should be doing.

The kabuki theater among Democrats is absurdly obvious, at least to anyone with a functioning brain that isn’t blinded with partisan emotion.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t dine and party with the rich and make a show of wearing a messageboard dress condemning them.

Similarly, you can’t mandate masks and business closures, then go about maskless and, in the case of Marie Antoinette Pelosi, open a closed beauty shop so you can get a quick touchup.

Memo to Pelosi, Biden and other narcissist Democrats who have had so many facelifts that what formerly were their kneecaps now reside on their foreheads: You’re not fooling all the people. But keep trying to convert the rest of us because it makes for good blog fodder.

When last I wrote for this space it was me using the occasion of my 66^th birthday to give unsolicited testimony on the benefits of saving money and buying one’s freedom.

All these many days later, my birthday celebrations have only just ended roughly 24 hours ago. Our family suffers from the affliction we shall call celebration inflation.

I first noticed this on a wide scale among others when Thanksgiving, formerly a Thursday off annually for working folk, swelled into an entire week away from work.

The reward of that expanded Thanksgiving is not as great in these COVID times, when so many have either opted to stop working entirely and exist on government handouts, or have milked the working-from-home angle until the cow screamed in agony, either of which makes most days a holiday.

But, there was a time when people were expected to show up at work on a daily basis, get a few weeks of vacation a year and, if they were lucky, several paid holidays.

Interestingly, I worked 20 years at the local newspaper, where Thanksgiving was a holiday only for the day shift. The night people, those who actually put out a morning newspaper, worked Thanksgiving and were compensated with an extra day they could take whenever – called a floating holiday.

Memories of those days make me laugh when I hear disgruntled employees at the long-term care facility where my mother resides griping in the hallway, using what elementary school teachers used to label one’s outside calling voice, to lament perhaps having to work nights or weekends instead of steady daylight due to staffing shortages.

It was with envy that I, a guy who worked for an employer that saw Thanksgiving as just another work day – for the night crew – back in the day, saw others swelling Thanksgiving into a week off work.

The math went something like this: Being off Thanksgiving was a given (pun intended). But you had to have the day off before the holiday to travel. And, since you’re already off Wednesday and Thursday, adding Friday as an off day gets you to the weekend. Said weekend is two more days off because no one works weekends!

But wait, there’s more. It’s ridiculous to expect workers back on the job Monday, without a travel day to get back from wherever they had spent the previous five days. Plus, Tuesday should be yet another off day to give a person a chance to recover from the travel day and gear up for the dreaded return to work.

Add ’em up. Thanksgiving expanded into a seven-day stretch of off days, unless you work in a sweatshop. Or a newspaper. Or hospital. Or store. Or long-term car facility. Are a policeman, or fireman, or taxi driver, or waiter. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Returning to the matter of birthdays in our family: None of us has, or had, jobs that allowed us to stretch Thanksgiving break to the breaking (I did it again) point.

Birthdays are our Thanksgiving-like exercise in expansion. We still worked, or those of us who currently work, without taking a week off to mark birthdays. But even so, sometimes the parties span multiple days.

Formerly, a child-custody demand meant we treated birthday parties like Noah’s animals – we needed two of each. Even with that element gone, we still tend to have multiple birthday celebrations per person.

Sometimes it’s just the kids and the celebrant. Sometimes it’s the celebrant, kids and other adults. Sometimes it’s just the celebrant and significant other. Sometimes it’s a big party — themed productions with lots of kids and adults milling around a rented facility

Regardless of the details, any members of this family having just one birthday celebration would tend to feel slighted, just like those people who don’t get a week off around Thanksgiving or, horrors, have to work the actual holiday.

But now my week of basking in birthday adoration is over and I can get back to my routine.

Wait. Oh, that’s right, granddaughter number 2 is about to begin her birthday celebration week.

Let the revelry begin.

I turned 66 years of age Sept. 8, which means were I still working, I’d have two more months on the job before I could retire with full Social Security benefits.

But I beat the system, having retired from my full-time, year-round career in journalism in March 2009, at the ripe old age of 53 years and six months.

My secret was treating my working career as indentured servitude, saving money to buy my freedom. I didn’t buy a house I could barely afford, or drive new cars every two years. I didn’t vacation in Vail in the winter and the Bahamas in the summer.

But our family also didn’t live like paupers and my son attended a semi-expensive private liberal arts college. We’ve been to Disney World and the seashore. We just didn’t light cigars with $20 bills.

My wife also worked when our son was young and, later, when he was in college. This allowed me to buy my freedom early. I try to encourage others to follow the model, but few are willing to do so. They have been conditioned to borrow, borrow, borrow and worry about tomorrow down the line.

Too many also buy into the propaganda being dispensed by so-called experts that you need millions of dollars to retire early, or else face destitution before you die. Those accepting that are prepared to die on the job.

There also is the matter of the garbage being spewed by the Social Security Administration, pointing out how much larger your monthly payments will be if you work until full retirement, or even beyond to age 70.

I took my reduced Social Security benefits at age 62, along with my pensions, for several reasons. Begin with the fact that the purchasing power of our dollars declines with time and that rate of decline is about to speed up as it does when inflation is high. And our inflation rate is climbing.

There also is the basic math that by retiring four years and two months earlier than full retirement age, and assuming I live a normal life expectancy of 78 years and change, I have collected monthly benefits for an additional 48 months over someone who retired on time.

Even Social Security admits that this is a long-term wash – you make approximately the same in benefit payments either way, assuming an average life expectancy. But, and it’s a big but, how many people are as healthy and vital at 66-plus years, or 70, as they were at 62? Not many that I know.

In my case, and perhaps yours if you bothered to look at it, your pensions likely are underfunded. I receive annual notices reminding me of the pathetic standing of my pensions. Forget the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which people think will save their pensions.

Local residents will know that was ineffective when Bethlehem Steel reneged on its pension promises. The secret is to be a pensioner of a public pension plan for governmental employees, or teachers, or postal employees.

In those cases, the federal government will ride to the rescue, creating money and raising taxes.

Private pensions are unlikely to get such bailouts.

And what of Social Security? Recent reports indicate full benefits will only be paid through 2033 if some action is not taken either to increase funding, or decrease payments to beneficiaries.

Once again, if you wait, you take your chances.

You might get less. Or, even if you do get what you expect, inflation might mean that you need the entire monthly payment to buy a loaf of bread and some meat to put between the slices.

My birthday present to you is advice to start saving money – the old pay-yourself-first philosophy. Cutting out a $5 cup of coffee a day or a pack of cancer sticks, AKA cigarettes, can make a big difference over time.

Your reward could be some extra leisure years in your old age. The decision is yours, but the earlier you start, the bigger the reward.

Take it from someone who spent 35-plus years working in newspaper editorial departments, once upon a time, the news media could be counted on to report news accurately.

Yes, occasional mistakes were made, but almost always they were unintentional and once identified, the errors received unqualified corrections.

Over the years, as more products of our leftist public schools and colleges have filtered into journalism, a lot of warped-minded social justice warriors have viewed this as their chance to massage the news to reflect their views.

At first, they tried to just slant things a bit so that the organizations for which they worked could retain plausible deniability. Their stories were long on message and short on facts, but always there was just enough truth in their reporting that the public didn’t scream in outrage.

Emboldened by their successes, these journalists in name only have progressed steadily to our current point, that being where outright lies, distortions and propaganda are spouted freely.

Donald Trump rightly recognized the ridiculous state of journalism and correctly branded the usual suspects as fake news.

If and when these leftist reporters are forced to make corrections to their erroneous reports, what should be straightforward matters of setting the record straight instead become exercises in tortured logic claiming victim-hood for the purveyors of falsehoods because of all the meanies who called them out on their lies.

Consider the ongoing parody that is Rolling Stone, reporting that some doctor in Oklahoma had lamented hospital emergency rooms overflowing with patients who have taken ivermectin, ostensibly to treat COVID-19 infections.

The story has many flaws, including one exposed by the hospital that noted said doctor hasn’t worked there for two months and the hospital has treated exactly ZERO ivermectin overdoses.

Rolling Stone, which should stick to covering musicians overdosing on more conventional drugs, won’t admit the story is bogus with an outright correction or retraction, but instead provided an “update” to its false information by posting the hospital’s statement.

Ivermectin, which is both a horse de-wormer and an anti-parasitic drug prescribed for humans, must be debunked because it might be viewed as an alternative to never-ending COVID vaccines.

Speaking of that, you likely won’t hear from any of the VacciNazis in mass media that boxer Oscar De La Hoya has had his comeback stalled. The boxer posted on social media that he has been hospitalized with a COVID infection “despite being fully vaccinated.”

Similarly, the VacciNazis aren’t eager to spread the science from Israel, where last month it was reported that 60 percent of people hospitalized with COVID infections are, wait for it, “fully vaccinated.”

The you-must-be vaccinated-repeatedly train has its media sycophants eager to spread the propaganda but ignore the facts.

The media is like so many hand maidens for the leftists.

When families lamented Joe Biden repeatedly checking his watch as bodies of American service members killed in the Kabul Airport bombing were brought home, at first some media sources branded the families as liars.

A typically pencil-necked geek fact checker at USA Today said Biden did not check his watch during the actual ceremony, but “only after.”

Then, when video proof emerged that Biden did repeatedly check his watch (time for his diaper change?) it was lumped into the too-insignificant-to-report category.

The fact checker wasn’t happy that he was being criticized for getting it wrong. Give the man a dictionary because he clearly can’t tell the difference between facts and what his political leanings lead him to wish were the facts.

Only a few weeks back, the self-appointed fact-checking site Snopes was exposed for running stories stolen from other news organizations without the proper attribution.

Time for some serious fact-checking of fact checkers.

And, finally, when the “news” was reported quickly after the Kabul Airport debacle that two ISIS-K “planners” had been killed in a drone strike, we noted on this site that the story lacked credibility.

First, it was conveniently quick, in an attempt to spin the news cycle away from Biden’s and the military commanders’ botching of the Afghanistan withdrawal operation.

These are the same military and intelligence people who said repeatedly they expected an attack on the airport, but somehow were unable to stop it from being successful. Yet, within hours, they had visited revenge on what supposedly were ISIS-K higher level operatives.

The names of those victims continue to be unavailable all these many days later, suggesting maybe the drone blew up a couple of camels and their handlers in a tent, not anyone high up in the ISIS-K command chain.

None of the typical video of the actual missile strike has been released, either, just some generic shots of an exploded vehicle.

Meanwhile, another drone strike in Kabul is reported to have killed six children, 10 civilians overall, but is being defended by the military as targeting ISIS-K.

Where are all the fact checkers on this one?

Forgive me for venting on this Labor Day holiday weekend as I labor to understand our sad, curious state of society.

It is as if the rules of common courtesy have been suspended. It is the same with traditional standards of worth ethic, responsibility, independence.

All are on metaphorical life support.

Can they be saved? Likely not.

The lamestream media, as too often is the case, can’t seem to see the forest for the trees, coming out consistently on the wrong side of issues.

Consider their nonstop bleating about the possible end of the eviction moratorium for tenants who opted to stop paying their rent or mortgages using the COVID-19 excuse.

This episode is a quintessential example of how bad governmental policy encourages bad public behavior. Good luck trying to get that horse back in the barn.

Basically, both recent federal administrations have been handing out money under the catch-all title of “stimulus.” Those checks were supposed to replace lost wages and be used for things such as rent, mortgage payments, food, utilities.

Instead, an uncomfortably large number of people saw it as the ability to upgrade their televisions or cell phones, go on vacations, buy new cars, gamble, buy more drugs, whatever. In a total bastardization of the intent, the freedom from needing to make rent or mortgage payments was taken as another injection of spending money to be used (wasted) on discretionary purchases.

Like our federal government, that refuses to concede it is, for all intents and purposes bankrupt – we’re speaking financially here although morally bankrupt also would apply – the populace expects the good times to keep on rolling via more and more government handouts.

This will end eventually. It must. And it will end badly.

Meanwhile, there is a considerable lobbying effort afoot to increase these handouts so that those on the dole can live even better at the expense of the shrinking percentage of the population that despite incentives being offered to do otherwise, for some reason continues to go to work and pay taxes.

It is laughable against this context to recall the words of former president John F. Kennedy (A DEMOCRAT!!!!!) who told the nation during his inaugural address, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

Kennedy, still considered a Democratic icon by some, wouldn’t be able to make it out of the primaries were he running now due to not offering enough handouts.

And that speaks volumes about the perilous state of our nation.