If you ever have wondered why there are so many popup ads encountered while surfing the internet, it’s for a simple reason: They work.

Consider my example from today, when such an ad introduced me to some items I desperately needed, but I just didn’t realize it until that magic moment in the ether.

The day already had been productive, with a couple of quick stock trades designed to take advantage of downward pressure on precious metals and mining stocks. Buy low and sell high actually works, if you can buy when things look bleak and sell into euphoria.

Also, the two granddaughters got picked up early for doctor’s appointments, so it was time to catch up on the world’s absurdity with a quick browse of zerohedge.com.

While reading one article, perhaps on the cancel culture’s condemnation of Dr. Seuss as a racist, or maybe it was Andrew Cuomo’s nonapology apology for manhandling women, up popped an ad for a hat. I chuckled out loud.

Said hat is red and looks like those MAGA hats that Trump supporters wear and by so doing seem to trigger morons on the left.

This hat addressed that very issue, reading across its front “Relax Idiots-It’s Just A Hat.”

Had to have one. Make that two, just in case one gets old and tattered through use.

So I created my account on rightwinggear.com and started shopping.

Not only did I need two of the red hats, I discovered I needed a couple of Second Amendment hats. In this case the hat is black with a white numeral 2 and a pair of conjoined AR-style weapons making an A on the other side of the hat, their magazine wells creating the crossbar of the A.

But wait, there’s more. Spend at least $60 and the shipping’s free. Time to keep looking.

There was a come-on for a mystery hat for the paltry price of $7. You buy the hat and get a surprise when it arrives. I’m thinking the surprise won’t be that it’s a Black Lives Matter or Antifa hat.

Sure, put me down for one surprise hat.

Well, that bumped the total, but we’re still short of $60. Everything on the site seems to be on sale.

Wait, look at that black 2020 election T-shirt with a map of the nation on its front. The counties that voted for Donald Trump are colored red and described in the key as the United States of America.

The Biden outposts, colored blue, are correctly labeled Democraticstan.

Won’t that go well with my new hats?

More good news; I’m now over the magic $60 threshold. Free shipping isn’t a government stimulus check, but it’s close.

Enter the credit card information. Confirm all important details. Hit enter and get the confirmation email.

All that’s left is for the delivery people to drop the package at the doorstep.

Now, let’s surf the web some more and find out what else I need, but didn’t know it.

February has melted into March. Different month; same old stuff from the powers that be.

Hypocrisy continues to abound.

Democrats, and liberals of all stripes decry walls for the purpose of protecting our southern border and keeping out illegal immigrants. But have you seen pictures lately of the U.S. Capitol building? It is ringed with Pelosi’s wall, designed to keep out legal citizens who are unhappy with the state of politics.

Speaking of illegal immigrants, critics pilloried President Trump for “Kids in cages” neatly forgetting it was Barack Obama who built the cages. Now Joe Biden has opened a migrant facility for children, housing them in what look like shipping containers with bars on the windows. Kids in cages, anyone?

In Berkeley, Calif., the head of the teachers’ union, who has been very vocal about how unsafe it is for students and teachers to resume in-person instruction, was videotaped dropping off his daughter for in-person preschool. Of course he’s outraged that his hypocrisy was publicized. So predictable.

Members of the Democrats’ so-called “squad,” the catchall term for radical progressives long on rhetoric and short on intellectual depth, are throwing a hissy fit over the fact that the Senate parliamentarian noted – correctly – that including a $15 minimum wage in a reconciliation bill violated Senate rules. After bending, changing or just flat-out ignoring rules in the last national election, Democrats can be forgiven for being shocked and outraged to find rules being enforced.

When Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was mishandling his state’s COVID-19 response, including demanding infected elderly be allowed into nursing homes, with predictable results, his shortcomings were ignored and he even won an award for his press conferences. But now that Cuomo is being accused of being too hands-on with females he encounters, calls are out to have his head on a pike.

Joe Biden, who spent his presidential campaign hiding from the public and the press, continues that tactic in office, including producing no State of the Union Address. And the lamestream media, which was so quick to assault President Trump on matters real or imagined, sees nothing here worth mentioning.

God knows New Orleans and Seattle have little to be proud of when it comes to their crime/riot problems. Yet somehow New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Seattle counterpart Jenny Durkan have prioritized the case of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, getting into a social media battle over whether or not Wilson should be enticed to come play for the New Orleans Saints.

Also on the topic of mixing politics and athletics, soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic riled LeBron James when he was quoted saying the basketball star should stick to his sport and stop being a social justice warrior. James, who embraces semi-blasphemous nicknames for himself such as “King James” and “The Chosen One,” predictably noted that his ego would not permit him to stop using his athletic celebrity to promote his political agenda.

Left-wing rioters continue to terrorize Portland, unhappy now with Joe Biden’s lack of action on their list of demands. You will see little coverage of this in the national media, and that thankfully spares us the discord of video of flaming vehicles and buildings with the “largely peaceful protests” script at the bottom of the screen.

And now yet another sign Armageddon is near. Megyn Kelly, the largely irrelevant former Fox and NBC eye candy, appeared on the typically left-leaning Bill Maher’s “Real Time” and drew applause from the studio audience when she and the host agreed leftist-run schools are going too far with their indoctrination of young children into their radical social causes.

Prepare to be shocked. Too much money, or water, can be hazardous to your health and that of society in general.

While money and water seemingly are two unrelated subjects, consider the strange terminology interplay between the two.

Having money to spend is called being liquid or having liquidity. Sounds a lot like water.

Spending that money is said to create cash flow in the economy. Ditto.

A company or individual that has a reliable way of making money is said to have a cash stream. Ditto again.

Channels to distribute either money or water are referred to as conduits. More of same.

Those whose debts greatly exceed assets are said to be under water, or drowning in debt. That was the last example.

To restate our starting point, too much water and too much money are potential problems

As incredible as it would seem, with water being the basis of all life as we know it, a person actually can die from drinking too much and suffering water poisoning.

The brain malfunctions when electrolytes are tipped outside of normal levels of balance due to having too much water in the body. Death can follow.

Central banks around the world seem intent on finding out if they can poison the global economy by injecting too much liquidity – excess money supply created by their concerted quantitative easing in the hope of propping up things.

Already this excess liquidity has interfered with the brain function of the economy and markets.

How else to explain the radical upward price movements of Bitcoin above an intrinsic value most learned economists put at zero?

Similarly, can we really justify stock markets near all-time highs in the United States while the economy is on life support?

A company such as Tesla, darling of the green crowd, can have its share price soar to the stratosphere despite making money not by selling electric cars, but due to the carbon credits it gets for doing so and can peddle to companies not as favorably viewed through the green prism.

Oil demand supposedly is declining rapidly with people not working or traveling as much and general economies being slowed, yet oil prices are moving upward at a rapid pace.

In my Pennsylvania county, an area whose demographics of aging population and very modest household income would suggest limited vitality in the real estate market, houses are going up for sale and just as quickly being grabbed off the market by eager buyers.

Wild government overspending in forms such as stimulus payments, guaranteed basic income, an increasing percentage of the population nationally depending for the government for all or a large portion of its income, or any of the other examples of federal government largesse, is not the recipe for long-term economic health.

Financial liquidity, as with water, flows rapidly to where it is least resisted, creating price distortions when the flow is money, or floods when the flow is water.

Either way, the aftermath is not pretty.

Investment bubbles (another water analogy, sorry) burst, leaving rich and poor alike soaked.

Some day, perhaps not too far in the future, we’re going to see that.

Excess monetary liquidity has blinded the markets to what is or isn’t a fair price. It already is beginning to produce price inflation, a process that gathers speed slowly, like a rocket launch, but quickly gains momentum.

From author Ray Bradbury writing in his book The Illustrated Man (“Too much of anything isn’t good for anyone”) to Psychology Today magazine in February 2013 (“Too much of anything is bad for you”) to Mahatma Buddha (“Everything which in your life you have in excess than you actually require is poison . . .”), negative consequences of excesses in even things perceived to be positive long have been noted.

So it is with water, and governments’ bloated money supplies.

There is a plague spreading throughout the populace that wearing any number of masks cannot slow down. We speak of the pandemic of general insanity.

It affects rich and poor alike, black and white, men and women, old and young, Republican and Democrat.

Admittedly, it seems to be worse among those on the political left, but they have no monopoly on the malady.

While the world is tying itself in knots to combat a virus that is largely an inconvenience unless you are in a tiny subset of the population that either is elderly, has overwhelming numbers of preconditions, or a little of both, we in the United States seem unable to recognize the outbreak of brain cramps sweeping the nation.

Labored thinking runs rampant with nary a word about reining in that pandemic.

Just today we read that carjackings are up 135 percent in Chicago, so one Illinois lawmaker – yes, a Democrat – proposes banning video games such as “Grand Theft Auto.”

He might want to revisit how strict gun control laws in Chicago and Illinois haven’t put much of a dent in the Chicago shooting rate.

Meanwhile, the proposed governmental actions to help those adversely affected financially by COVID-19 – and the government’s heavy-handed shutdowns of businesses – as usual are being exposed as pork dispensing in the guise of addressing a worthy cause.

The $1.9 trillion plan that passed the U.S. House of Representatives is estimated by The Wall Street Journal to have only $825 billion directed to COVID relief and more than $1 trillion designed as handouts to favorite wards of the liberals, including $270 million to the National Endowment of the Arts and the Humanities and $200 million to the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

How those help John Q. Public pay his mortgage, or Sally Q. Public buy groceries is unclear.

Workers are OK, however, if they are federal bureaucrats, because the bill proposes $570 million in family leave to pay those who opt to stay home from their jobs to care for children not in school due to the virus.

Those of you in the private sector, tough luck.

Common sense, already on life support, continues to absorb blows from the cognitively impaired.

This lack of ability to prioritize is astounding. Most would agree our nation is in a tough spot economically and socially, yet the San Francisco school board’s priority is to rename 44 schools to appease social justice warrior snowflakes.

In a stunning re-visiting of reality, that plan has been put on hold due to an admittedly half-baked process used to identify those schools that needed new names to stop them from honoring such flawed dudes as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

When someone added Malcolm X to the list of those whose name should be removed from an academy there due to his early career as a pimp, meaning he had subjugated women, X was proposed to be given a pass due to redeeming actions later in life.

But Washington once owned slaves, so there’s no coming back for him, never mind all of that Father Of Our Country claptrap.

In a similar move, members of the black student union at the University of Washington, in the state of Washington (you can’t make up this stuff), are demanding a statue of George Washington be removed from campus because it “perpetuates white supremacy and preserves its historical imposition.”

But why settle for removing a statue? Let’s just ban math because Bill and Melinda Gates are funneling some of their considerable fortune into bankrolling a group of activists who believe math is racist.

Please note the nomenclature. When you’re a liberal seeking major change as a triumph of style over substance, you’re an activist. When you’re a conservative attempting to get election fraud addressed, you’re just part of an unruly mob.

Over the years I have come across some who read the satirical web site The Onion and take it literally. Make no mistake, none of the above is sarcastic exaggeration designed to amuse, but rather a sad, small sampling of what’s going on out there among the navel-gazers.

I was a bit stunned earlier this evening, watching a rerun of the old Maverick television series, to find it rated TV-14 due to AC (adult content), MV (mild violence) and OC (outdated cultural depiction).

The DVR was paused to drink in this idiocy. The last warning really should be OCD, for obvious reasons of abbreviation and the ironic commentary on the state of mind of those who drum up these labels.

But, to borrow from the late radio broadcaster Gabriel “There’s good news tonight” Heatter, a number of Democrats from the U.S. House have written to President Joe Biden asking him to relinquish sole authority to use nuclear weapons.

Of course they should have sent the letter to DR. JILL BIDEN!!!!!!!!!, the Edgar Bergen to her husband’s Charlie McCarthy, if they expect action.

Yet, it’s the thought that counts — when there is some rational thought given to a matter, a rare occurrence these days.

If you are bored today, tune into coverage of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s congressional testimony and keep track of how many times Powell mentions inflation.

Make it a drinking game just to keep your attention, downing one every time the I-word is used.

Powell and his ilk are walking a tightrope on the matter. He and his predecessors have shoved a torrent of liquidity into our nation’s money supply, but haven’t gotten the desired results because too many of you are keeping your spigot of personal spending set on trickle.

No doubt this in part owes to job insecurity, with so many currently — or about to be — unemployed due to heavy-handed intervention in the name of virus policy that has gutted private business.

Also, when reported inflation rates are relatively low, there is no urgency felt by consumers to spend now lest they be paying more tomorrow for what they could have bought today. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put the 12-month consumer price inflation rate at 1.4 percent for the past 12 months in its most recent report.

This doesn’t mean this is an accurate reflection of price inflation. If you have bought just about anything in recent weeks and months, you know costs are rising.

But the government’s method of tracking inflation, detailed previously in this space, allows the numbers to be fudged by substituting items in the basket (such as using chicken when beef prices rise) and hedonic adjustments, a sort of statistical voodoo in which inflation is artificially reduced by theoretical gains in productivity.

How does it benefit the government to under-report inflation? Let us count the ways.

It reduces cost of living adjustments paid to the burgeoning ranks of those on Social Security.

It keeps interest rates on the ever-expanding national debt lower than they might otherwise be and so reduces borrowing costs.

It puts a lid on employees being able to cite the inflation rate to demand wage increases from the companies whose ownership and management fund too many of our politicians. Those politicians are aware of how they can curry favor with executives who love to keep wages low, at least for the working class, by keeping reported inflation understated.

How fiddling with the models to keep inflation artificially low hurts is that it keeps Powell and his friends from meeting their target of 2-plus percent for an annual number, and encouraging you to spend all the money they have created.

But you never hear high-ranking government officials questioning the validity of the reported inflation rates.

Contrast that with Powell, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (who used to have Powell’s job) both going public within the past week doubting the accuracy of the official unemployment number, put at 6.3 percent by the government’s torturers of statistics.

Powell and Yellen say 10 percent is closer to the truth. Even that probably is too low.

They question unemployment figures because both need that number to be as high as possible to justify their continuing to increase the money supply on a parabolic curve basis.

While private individuals haven’t been spending money, governments at every level have, or would like to do so.

From stimulus handouts, to talk of Universal Basic Income (more handouts but without a time limit) to talk in some quarters, such as Baltimore, of paying hoods a monthly stipend not to kill others, to proposed student loan bailouts, governments are always willing to spend your tax dollars and then some.

Excess money supply also has flowed into investment markets and alternative investments such as Bitcoin, catapulting them to record levels. Housing has rebounded on the back of excess liquidity and artificially low interest rates.

But, increasingly, knowledgeable people are noting the monetary and financial excesses and predicting gloom.

Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio sees bubbles in many investments.

Michael Burry, another investment guru whose prescient call that housing was a bubble in the mid-2000s was immortalized in the book and movie “The Big Short,” sees Weimar-style hyperinflation as a possibility in the U.S.

Post World War I Germany just printed unbacked money to pay off war reparations, crashed its currency and economy, gave rise to Adolf Hitler and eventually got us into World War II. That was the so-called Weimar Hyperinflation.

None of this could be described as desirable.

Yet Powell and Yellen and their friends are all to eager to take the risk of a historic repeat. They want to stoke the inflationary fires, believing that they can dial it back once things really begin to overheat.

They are supremely confident, although judging from their track records, there is no reason for that.

I’m not as confident, which is why I’m in investments to protect my purchasing power from inflation because, God knows, my Social Security won’t come close to keeping up with living expenses if and when inflation hits double digits or above.

I could be wrong. Powell and Yellen could keep the house of cards from collapsing, could continue to juggle the balls without fail, or any other metaphor you’d prefer.

But I’d rather side with the likes of Dalio and Burry, who have spent their adult lives battling and winning in the real world, not mostly navigating the halls of academia and government as have Powell and Yellen.

There is just so much news these days and so little time to digest it. Here’s a dose of written Pepto Bismol to help break it all down quickly and ease the digestive process.

The News: Joe Biden, appearing on a CNN town hall earlier this week replete with incomprehensible bon mots from him, at one point recounted waking up every day in the White House and inquiring of his wife, DR. JILL BIDEN!!!!!!! “Where the hell are we?”

The Views: This is further evidence that not much has changed with Biden, unfortunately. Imagine the rest of us waking up and wondering, how the hell did he (they) end up in the White House?

The News: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is under fire for he and/or his staff allegedly hiding information about COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes in his state. The FBI, taking a break from persecuting conservatives, reportedly is looking into the matter.

The Views: If you’re thinking that Cuomo might be asked to return his Emmy, received for his great COVID-19 television briefings, guess again.

The News: Texas appears to be the worst example of southern states freezing as dramatic cold weather has crippled power grids, in part because windmills are frozen and solar panels aren’t functioning as expected.

The Views: Texans are leading the way in discovering how the United States is headed to the dark ages – pun intended – if the Green New Deal twerps get their way. Alternative power sources work great, as long as the demand is low and the weather never deviates from the norm. Comforting.

The News: California and Florida have taken polar opposite approaches to dealing with COVID-19. California treats citizens like criminals, with arbitrary lockdowns for the masses, but special treatment of the elites. Florida, meanwhile, is open for business. And the results are: Florida is doing marginally better – adjusted for population — in terms of virus deaths and infections.

The Views: Biden COVID advisor Andy Slavitt, during an appearance on left-wing cable news, stumbled, no doubt partly in surprise that friends would bring this up, and partly because the facts don’t support the dictatorial approach preferred by Biden and friends. Slavitt characterized the curious case of Florida doing better than California as “a little bit beyond our explanation.” A little bit? You think?

The News: Dr. Tony Fauci, AKA The Mask Nazi, does more flip flops than an Olympic gymnast. Of late the good doctor has opined that wearing masks is necessary even after receiving the COVID vaccine and in the recent past he has said wearing two more more masks is better than just one. This from a guy who used to say masks did no good.

The View: Unfortunately, Fauci would like you to wear the second mask (face diaper) over your eyes, so as to render you unable to read reports of his inconsistent utterances. Tell it to Florida, Dr. Fauci.

The News: In the era of defunding police, murder rates have skyrocketed in the United States, and predictably the leaders both in total numbers and percentage increases, are cities under Democratic control.

The Views: But fear not because Los Angeles, sixth among U.S. cities in terms of 2020 homicides, has a school district that is defunding school police and will replace the cops with “climate coaches.” That should put a brake on the murder rates.

The News: Conservative icon and radio legend Rush Limbaugh has died of cancer.

The Views: Social media was clogged with compassionate leftists rushing to post their celebration of Limbaugh’s death. Should conservatives cheer the death of a prominent liberal, they would be excoriated – rightly so – for their insensitivity. When leftists do this it’s perfectly acceptable and if you take offense to it, well, you’re just fighting their push for unity because you’re a bitter deplorable clinging to guns and religion.

And you probably don’t wear two masks, either!

Today we introduce the Come On, Man! as both an award and measure of hypocrisy.

We owe this Swiss army knife of lexicon to Joe Biden, who uses it ad nauseam as a catchall phrase, but most frequently when one of his many inconsistencies are challenged and Biden’s cross-firing synapses find comfort and temporary clarity in the familiar retort.

Search the internet and you will find Biden saying this maybe a billion times. When it becomes part of the next stimulus package, each U.S. resident, legal or illegal, will receive 2,000 Come On, Man! credits to be used to help get them through virus-related rough patches.

Think of the Come On, Man! as a verbal currency, a bitcoin of sorts, sharing that digital currency’s lack of intrinsic worth, yet possibly being valued greatly either by those on whom the Come On, Man! honor is bestowed, or by those who recognize it as marking the recipient for derision.

The movie world has Oscars, purportedly named because an executive secretary once remarked that the gold statue looked like her Uncle Oscar, and there are Tonys, live theater awards named for former theatrical influencer Antoinette Perry.

I guess we could call our awards Joeys, but I’m sticking with Come On, Man! The physical award will be a photo of a glassy-eyed Biden, staring blankly into the camera lens while shrugging his shoulders and showing his arms spread outward with palms upturned.

Allow me to anticipate the outrage that the gender-specific “Man” is used. Just quoting Biden. Perhaps his current wife, DR. JILL BIDEN!!!!!!!! , can get him to update his pet phrase to Come On, Man, Woman, or Gender Identity of Choice!

Without further delay, the envelopes, please.

Come On, Man!: To any involved with keeping Bruce Springsteen’s New Jersey arrest for alleged driving while intoxicated in mid-November quiet until after we could be “treated” to his unity advertisement during the past Super Bowl in which he drives aimlessly in Kansas during the winter in a Jeep with no top. Art imitating life?

Come On, Man!: To the Democrats who felt the need to make up evidence, doctor quotes, attribute quotes to those who denied them, and generally turn Impeachment II, the sequel, into as big a farce as Impeachment I. Have they no shame? Why no, they do not.

Come On, Man!: Also to impeachment Democrats, who were very eager to call witnesses, until Republicans said they would happily call 300 or more Democratic witnesses to testify under oath on matters such as what they knew and when they knew it regarding the Capitol violence. The collective U-turn by the left tells you all you need to know about their dirty hands in this matter.

Come On, Man! To all the naive among the left who think the woke mob types never will come for them. Get a dose of reality injected into your fevered brains from the experience of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he of the sainted surname of traditional Democratic politics, who was booted from Instagram, purportedly for “posting misinformation” that did not wholeheartedly embrace virus vaccinations as the Holy Grail.

Come On, Man!: To all, including Joe Biden, who profess to want unity while sowing discontent. It is a doublespeak corruption of the term when it is used by hypocrites. And thus it joins examples such as diversity, empowerment, inclusiveness and justice on the ash heap of words whose meaning has been altered permanently so that they might be used as political dog whistles.

Come On, Man!: To Mitch McConnell, for his political fence straddling that makes him look like the quintessential symbol of the Republican party’s ongoing failure and the reason why a theoretical third political party headed by Donald Trump would outdraw the Republicans nationwide. Mitch can share the award with other Republicans of his ilk, people like Mitt Romney, Pat Toomey, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Ben Sasse, always too eager to align with the opposition. Only one of these brave warriors actually will have to go before voters in the next election cycle to explain their vote.

Come On, Man!: To be shared by Biden and the aptly named T.J. Ducklo, Biden’s short-lived Deputy Press Secretary. Biden has famously said how he would unceremoniously fire anyone committing offenses such as Ducklo’s. Ducklo threatened a reporter working on a story about Ducklo’s romantic relationship with another reporter covering the Biden campaign. Was Ducklo fired? Silly you for thinking so. He was at first suspended one week without pay. But, when public outcry became rampant, even from Biden’s left-wing media sycophants, Ducklo still was not fired. Instead, he offered a resignation, that was accepted. Where was Joe in all of this? Good question.

Come On, Man! Indeed!!!!

Super Bowl LV television ratings seemed to be taking a cue from our most recent election, with results slow to be reported.

Customarily, as with elections, they release the Super Bowl ratings the day after the event. But this time the metrics from Nielsen were still being “processed and verified” Monday. The last time this sort of ratings delay happened was – never.

The more cynical no doubt had visions of truckloads of viewers being unpacked and counted in the middle of the night. Biden. Biden. Biden. Biden. Biden. Biden.

When the numbers were shared Tuesday, the results were tepid. Overall viewership, on television and streaming platforms, was off 8 percent from the last year. The 96.4 million viewers was the lowest total since 2007.

The most curious rationalization heard for this was the virus pandemic. That obviously affected the stadium crowd, which was limited to 24,835 due to COVID-19 protocols, making this the smallest Super Bowl attendance ever.

But that relatively paltry crowd was vocal, demonstrated both during the game, and beforehand when a video of Joe Biden and wife, DR. JILL BIDEN, who did most of the talking, showed on the stadium message board and was roundly booed.

Don’t these people know he’s the most popular president ever as measured by alleged votes received.

The drop in Super Bowl media viewership likely had a lot to do with the NFL’s decision to turn into a corporate monolithic social justice warrior, bombarding the fans with virtue signaling and identity politics.

The NBA, which went fullcourt on such things last year – hoops pun intended – has backed off this season in the interest of trying to win back fans.

Perhaps the NFL will have a rethink. Preaching to your fans/customers that if they don’t buy your political posturing they are mostly worthless human beings is not a formula for success.

From a personal perspective, I didn’t watch a single NFL game this season until the respective conference championship games and only did that to follow my wagers on both and to adjust them with in-game betting as necessary.

The Super Bowl was on our television largely because we had re-instituted our annual Super Bowl party after a two-year hiatus. Masks were optional. Wagering was rife.

The game almost was optional viewing. We paid passing attention, but not as much as we concentrated on the food, drink, and conversation, not to mention a couple of hyperactive granddaughters vying for eyeballs for the first half.

In the past, the commercials had commanded attention, too. But after the pregame emphasis on virtue signaling, it was evident commercials would follow suit, and largely they did. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore

The halftime show rambled on in the background as more food was consumed. Someone glanced at the TV screen and asked regarding the confusing images “what is this crap?” or words to that effect. As the host, in charge of the remote, I muted the TV and put the broadcast on pause, only to come back later and fast-forward past what I have read elsewhere was more political pap disguised as entertainment.

Another rationalization for the low ratings was the blowout nature of the game. I found the game very entertaining and the blowout nature even moreso, knowing that another Tom Brady title was going to send the navel-gazing leftists into their customary meltdown mode.

This also since has been confirmed. The most compelling examples on Twitter lamented a white quarterback winning the Super Bowl during black history month.

That Brady is one selfish, inconsiderate man.

One commercial we did notice, since researched by me because I didn’t catch all of it, was a two-minute Jeep ad featuring Bruce Springsteen.

The main character was a very aged guy who looked like an AARP Springsteen. Only after a closeup revealed his ear ring was the consensus reached that it was, indeed, Springsteen, and he hadn’t aged particularly well.

As the propaganda droned on, without any apparent purpose, at least one party-goer asked “Is this a Jeep commercial?”

Sort of. It was a commercial paid for in the name of Jeep, but mostly it was a social justice warrior plea for unity, which these days means lockstep agreement with any ridiculous scheme the leftists propose lest one be labeled a deplorable, domestic terrorist, idiot, racist, misogynist, or just a general cult member in need of re-education.

Speaking of ridiculous behavior and the need for re-education, Springsteen drove around between snow covered fields in an old Jeep — with the roof off – in the depth of winter.

When it was announced ahead of the game that firms such as Pepsi and Budweiser, long-time Super Bowl staples, would not be running ads in this broadcast, I ventured that maybe this indicated they didn’t want to bow to peer pressure and feel compelled to run politically correct ads at the cost of $5.6 million for 30 seconds.

I think I likely am correct in that assessment.

Pepsi was among the soft drinks on our refreshment menu, but sorry Bud, it was Coors Light in the beer cooler. Maybe next time.

The political ad – I mean Jeep ad – ended with an outline of the 48 states between Canada and Mexico (Hawaii and Alaska don’t matter?) with the message “To the ReUnited States of America.”

Fittingly, there was a large, red, five-pointed star interposed between the words ReUnited and States. That image was particularly striking to us who remember it as the heraldic symbol of the Russian Communist Party. All that was missing was the hammer and sickle

The message I got from the Jeep ad is never again would I buy one of their products. That was virtually 100 percent true even beforehand given that Jeep now is a Fiat Chrysler brand, with all the attendant lack of reliability. But this pandering ad clinched it.

I had bought a new 1979 CJ-7, when Jeep was owned by American Motors.

Those days are but a fleeting memory and this Jeep ode to political correctness in advertising form just reinforces the reality of how far our nation has slipped.

The Statue of Liberty is now like the elderly woman in those much-imitated ads plaintively lamenting: “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up.”

Tom Brady came though again with his seventh Super Bowl triumph and, as a side bonus, sent the leftists into meltdown.

It was written in this space recently how Brady drives to distraction the liberals, socialists, social justice warriors and various other inhabitants of the far left end of the political spectrum. He’s successful, unrepentant for that, and has been willing in the past to exhibit publicly conservative leanings.

Oh, and he’s a white male who doesn’t wear Che Guevara T-shirts or quote from Mao’s “Little Red Book,” which these days makes the guy a target of opportunity.

The Armour Meathead columnist for USA Today, who has made it a cottage industry to disparage Brady for his acquaintanceship with Donald Trump, was forced in the aftermath of this latest Brady championship to acknowledge the guy had picked apart favored Kansas City, with apparent ease.

To appease her woke audience, Armour Meathead used a separate example of her verbal vomit to take shots at the NFL for not having enough coaches “of color.” That was her postgame social justice warrior meme of a column.

She apparently is the digital equivalent of the TV series “Have Gun-Will Travel,” only her motto is have laptop-will pontificate.

This is a good thing for her because the leftists are out to ban both guns and travel, which would leave a modern day Paladin unemployed and unable to enjoy the finer points of his existence in a San Francisco luxury hotel.

Armour Meathead is not alone in her crusade to diminish any success a white male from the political right might enjoy.

According to zerohedge.com, Twitter was aflame Sunday not with odes to the continuing greatness of Tom Brady, but rather attacks on him for being seen not wearing a mask as he entered the stadium.

One post relayed on zerohedge remarked how all Brady’s friends “seem to be white.”

Now there is a crime for you in 2021, being white, successful and having white friends.

Quick, get Nancy Pelosi on this. We need legislation to abolish such travesty.

But of course ignore that Saturday night in Washington, D.C., Pelosi’s home away from her $25,000 fridge stocked with overpriced ice cream home in San Francisco, Black Lives Matters crew members were marching through the city in a “Fxxx the police” rally replete with harassment of innocent bystanders and threats of “if we don’t get it, burn it down.”

I’m thinking “it” is not more coaches of color in the NFL.

Police on hand for this march mostly just watched. Probably they were on the lookout for some disgruntled Trump supporters to arrest for domestic terrorism.

These right-wing Trump fans ought to petition the lamestream media for the same treatment as the BLM crowd, that being to be labeled just a group of largely peaceful demonstrators whose threats and actual attacks on private and public property are conveniently lumped into the category of giving voice to the oppressed.

If you think our most recent presidential election was anything less than an outright oppression of Trump voters, you haven’t looked very closely at the facts.

This brings me back to Brady. If and when he is finished adding to his collection of Super Bowl rings, it strikes me that Brady would make a great candidate for high political office.

Unlike most of our political leaders, left and right, Brady has been forced to rise or fall on his own merits, competing in a meritocracy where deeds, not promises, are the currency of success.

How refreshing it would be to have such leadership on the political front.

And how amusing it would be to see the leftists drown in puddles of their tears should Brady be successful in politics, too.

Here’s hoping that Tom Brady, currently passing the football for Tampa Bay, wins another Super Bowl on Sunday because of how it will play with some sportswriter hacks who have attempted to turn this past week into yet another political hit job on conservatives.

Instead of writing of Brady’s pursuit of a seventh Super Bowl win, or his 10^th appearance in the big game, or the fact that at age 43 he is rewriting standards for longevity, some, such as USA Today keyboard torturer Nancy Armour, have turned their coverage into yet more attempts at left-wing retribution toward anyone associated in any way with former president Donald Trump.

Brady reeks of white privilege, according to the Armour Meathead, because he isn’t into discussing politics – specifically Donald Trump – as she and some others would command in the lead-up to this game.

So Armour skewered Brady in her column, then got more than a little bit of blowback on Twitter, calling her out for everything from lack of writing skill, to lack of football insight, to an overabundance of confused column ideas.

It would be unfair to question Armour’s competence to write sports simply based on her sex. But it is similarly unfair to suggest that all the women who show up in sports media, particularly on television, are there based entirely on their insight.

From personal experience, I worked at a newspaper that decided the sports department needed a female writer and so hired one. Early in the running, she wrote in a season preview that a football team would use the “Eye Formation” on offense.

Of course she should have written “I formation,” a description owing to the quarterback, fullback and halfback lined up behind center in a straight line that resembles the letter I.

But she didn’t know any better, so she wrote “eye.” You might guess that her insights into the nuances of sports were similarly lacking. This was understandable since her background was selling office equipment.

However, she was an attractive woman, which was not lost on the guy who hired her as a freelancer after I’d told her to check with him about changing careers. He noted her physical appearance in thanking me for sending her his way.

It’s not a coincidence that few, if any, female TV sports reporters are unattractive. After all, how tough is it to ask each coach before the game for the keys to victory? Might as well have some eye candy asking the questions.

And at halftime the stock question, requiring little in-depth knowledge, is to inquire of the coach behind on the scoreboard what his team will need to do better in the second half to change that? The coach who is ahead must be asked what his team will need to do to keep the lead?

Seldom will you hear a football coach asked, for example, about his cornerback getting beaten like a drum in man coverage and will he need to rotate a safety over the top to help, thereby clearing the middle of the field for opposing receivers?

At this point I likely will be accused of misogyny, the SAT-approved word to describe any man charged with hatred, prejudice and contempt toward women.

My wife of 40 years and counting, my three granddaughters, my 84-year-old mother, all would be mildly surprised to learn that I hate them all for their sex.

It’s not that Nancy Armour is a woman that makes her writing distasteful. It’s just that she’s a one-tune leftist who apparently hates Brady, white men in general, and this nation as evidenced by her periodic screeds.

Armour has written about the need to stop playing our national anthem at sporting events. In another column she labeled critics of black NFL quarterback Cam Newton as racists.

Armour didn’t seem interested in Newton’s political preferences.

What about Armour’s political leanings? Maybe that should be her next column, in the interest of full disclosure. Or is she utilizing white woman’s privilege?

And if Armour’s readership thought this past week’s column sounded familiar, it should have. Back in January 2017, in advance of another Super Bowl, Armour was dogging Brady again in a column with the lead paragraph “Tom Brady no longer gets a pass on his friendship with Donald Trump.”

Get some new material, Nancy,

Armour is just another facet in the multi-pronged spear that is Brady hatred. Our locals hate him for beating their beloved Steelers with such regularity when he was with New England.

Others hate him because they believe he’s a cheater who mandates underinflated footballs to enhance his performance. These people don’t follow the science – conducted by professors at places such as MIT and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University — that indicated cold, wet weather conditions could have accounted for inflation variances in the New England-Indianapolis game in question.

Swept aside was the fact that 3 of 4 footballs checked that were used by Indianapolis were judged underinflated, too, after having been outside in miserable weather for a half of the game.

The haters also neglect to mention that once the footballs were pumped up to specs for the second half, the Patriots outscored the Colts by an even bigger margin.

The NFL suspended Brady for four games, which falls under the category of not allowing the facts to interfere with a good harangue.

I don’t expect Brady to win Sunday, and it would cost me a few bucks if he does since I’ve put my money on Kansas City.

But I never thought Brady could do what he has this season, moving to a new franchise and directing them to the Super Bowl even as his former New England organization wallowed in obscurity without him.

Here’s hoping you get it done again, Tom Brady, and extend a well-deserved middle finger to the Nancy Armours of this world.