Category Archives: Uncategorized

Seeing the media and politicians blatantly mangle our language to produce their spin regarding the Los Angeles riots – yes, they are riots and perhaps an insurrection, not mostly peaceful protests – takes me back to my younger years.

We used to have garbage men. It was not a derogatory term. Think of it as more like calling a spade a spade.

But, the feelings-above-all-else people decided those who spent their days handling what others have tossed needed an emotional pick-me-up. And they deduced that handling feces, rotten food and various disgusting fluids would be easier for those involved if we called those workers sanitation engineers.

It just sounds so professional and educated. No raise, you understand, just an atta boy. I’m not sure it worked, but those in charge of massaging the language could indulge in orgies of self-congratulation over the good they had done and that’s all that really mattered to them.

I cannot state with absolute certainty whether garbage men morphing into sanitation engineers was the first rebranding, but it seems to me that about the same time janitors became custodians.

Housekeepers at institutions such as hospitals became environmental aides. And so it went.

Fast-forward to today and the linguistic gymnasts have perfected their craft as the ultimate leftist political tool.

Illegal immigrants are merely undocumented. It sounds like all these scofflaws forgot to do is sign some form, or submit some minor fee. Just some more bureaucratic red tape.

It obscures that all have entered this country illegally. Every single welfare-sucking one of them. Many of them did so toting an arrest record from foreign lands, one that too many have added to here.

They are criminals in the traditional definition: one who has commited a crime.

You can attempt to sanitize that reality by calling them undocumented, and fool the brain-dead portion of the nation. But, an increasing percentage of the population sees through the charade.

That doesn’t keep the political left and LameStream media from continuing the practice. They are drunk with power from their success at using COVID-19 to induce draconian hysteria. They made up the six-foot rule, told us masks were the solution and, eventually, got the susceptible portion of the population rushing like lemmings to fight over vaccines that overpromised and under-delivered in terms of protection.

We now are finding out it was mostly lies. The six-foot distancing was something cobbled up, with no scientific proof of its effectiveness.

They might have gone for six miles, but even the tinpot dictators realized their assumed power has some limits.

These days, crackpot media and politicians insist, despite the wealth of visual evidence, there is no violence being perpetrated at the LA insurrection or at similarly themed riots throughout leftist cities.

No less a genius than Maxine Waters noted no violence, because no one is being killed.

Again, let us consult the Oxford dictionary, which defines violence as physical force intended to HURT, DAMAGE OR KILL SOMEONE OR SOMETHING.

You burn a car, and certainly we’ve seen burning cars, that is violence. You deface buildings, yep, that’s violence. You pelt police or ICE personnel with rocks, water bottles and fireworks, that’s violence.

Apparently there is not much going on under the artificial hair of Maxine Waters.

You can’t prevent these vapid politicians and fake media types from continuing to delve into this playbook. You can refuse to accept it, tune them out and, more importantly, vote them out.

That’s the real deterrent to the propaganda they are spewing.

It all seems too familiar. Socialist California has a crisis it can’t handle, hapless politicians play the blame game, and leftist media tortures the language as it spreads the ridiculous narrative.

In the past, it’s been a porous border, raging fires, homelessness, that were problems California couldn’t, or wouldn’t handle. At the moment, it’s ginned-up street protests against ICE agents enforcing the law regarding illegal immigrants.

Los Angeles mayor Karen (rhymes with ass) Bass wasn’t sipping cocktails in Africa when this crisis sprang up, as she had been with the mismanaged wildfires that burned much of her city. No, she was out criticizing ICE and President Trump for overreach.

That overreach would be sending in ICE to arrest and deport illegals when sanctuary operations such as Los Angeles and California won’t do their job enforcing laws.

This is how it works in this country. Go back and research the Civil War sometime. The battle of state vs. federal rights is long-running. Spoiler alert, the feds won the Civil War vs. breakaway states.

Governor Gavin Newsom, “Newscum” as Trump calls him, has lived up (down?) to that nickname by blaming Trump for sending in the National Guard to tamp down a domestic uprising that Newsom and company want to blame on Trump and ICE trying to enforce the law.

As any good leftist would do, Newsom has run to what he hopes will be a sympathetic leftist judge to sue over the presence of the National Guard.

This is a common theme for the Democrats. You can’t win an election, so you seek out sympathetic judges to throw sand in the gears of the administration that did get the votes as it tries to exercise that mandate.

Regarding the National Guard, Trump tried to call out the National Guard in advance of the Jan. 6 incident in Washington, D.C., got rebuffed by the Democrats at several levels, then was pilloried for – wait for it – not calling out the National Guard.

Why, oh why, do Democrats always come down on the side of criminals, illegal immigrants and men pretending to be women? It’s a sickness, and people who think this can or will be cured probably were driving hundreds of miles to get those ridiculous COVID-19 vaccines a few years back.

There is no cure for what ails the Democrats in charge and many who cultishly follow them. Period. Full stop.

One LA media type said the riots are “just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn.”

I wonder how this brain donor would feel if it was his car burning?

And, predictable purveyor of misinformation, CNN, was out again with “this has been very peaceful” rhetoric.

The reporterette said people just don’t think ICE belongs in LA. Millions of illegals certainly don’t belong there, reporter babe.

Again, we had a national election in which Trump made border security and law and order, main planks of his platform. If you didn’t know this as a voter, well, you shouldn’t have voted. Trump won.

Polls consistently show that Trump’s stance mirrors the sentiment of the majority of the population.

Yet, we have Democrats consistently pandering to the minority. These Democrats see nothing wrong with shoplifting, robbing, raping, pillaging, entering the country illegally and generally engaging in genderbender behavior.

Every time I fear the Democrats will prevail in midterm elections, retake control of the House or Senate, and render Trump a political enunch, I think of events of such as these ongoing LA riots.

You don’t need to take the words of Republican candidates that Democrats are totally off-course. Just look at the evidence.

If, seeing all this, Democrats can take control of Congress, it will merely reinforce that this country is doomed and blew its best, last chance, to change that trajectory.

Psst, today is the anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Pass it on, because it’s being virtually ignored.

I mean, this is Pride Month, after all. Why waste a single day of that self-centered, politically correct celebration to honor American soldiers who helped liberate Europe, again?

I violated my rule, in the pursuit of research, and checked out today’s edition of the Johnstown Woke Gazette that a neighbor friend of my wife’s had dropped off at our house. The local Woke Gazette, a thin sheet costing $2 daily at the newsstand and pandering to all causes left, managed to get in one story reference to D-Day and a cartoon regarding the historic event, both on its editorial page.

Meanwhile, stories that ran elsewhere, on mandating insurance coverage for contraceptives and the launch of the Nintendo Switch II, occupied more combined column inches.

And so goes the pursuit of ignoring, minimizing and/or retelling history.

This sort of history used to be taught in school, but no longer. Somehow, the liberals in charge have deemed it insignificant to recall events such as D-Day, while they push DEI, trans rights and the other sorts of political indoctrination that has replaced education, as early as elementary school.

School children no longer are taught that on this day in 1944, the largest-ever armada of ships, troops and airplanes was sent to assault the fortified seashore of France, the first strike in liberating Europe from the German occupiers.

Those Nazis – real Nazis, not the pretend ones leftists see in any conservative citizen – were, to borrow a phrase from President Trump, bad hombres.

It used to be that the atrocities Nazis committed against Jews were used to epitomize their amazing brutality. But, these days, with anti-semitism being widely practiced and accepted on American college campuses and at various other locales, such things are not as astounding.

The good news is these days we don’t need to sent troops to Europe to combat anti-semitism. We can do it right here on our own soil, sadly.

But, back to D-Day. It used to be outlets such as the History Channel would run day-long marathons of D-Day programming. Other channels, such as Turner Classic Movies, would run World War II cinema.

This afternoon, History Channel is airing episodes of “Secrets Declassified,” which run into episodes later of “The UnXplained.”

TCM was running “Brigadoon,” to be followed by “Father of the Bride.”

NatGeo did have some World War II programming, and channel 130 on my DISH package was running a series of World War II movies.

But the downgrade in coverage and acknowledgment is amazing.

Ceremonies were held in the Normandy area of France today to commemorate the event. Back home, it’s pretty much just another day. Perhaps if it were declared a national holiday and people could skip work for a day they’d notice. Probably not.

The whole subject of D-Day is timely because, yet again, Europe is looking to write checks that its military can’t cash.

It is conveniently forgotten that the West had a role in provoking this Russian invasion of Ukraine by continuing to make overtures of expanding NATO to include Ukraine and placing missiles there.

Recruiting a country that is on a nation’s doorstep to be a member of a rival military group is provocation. Recall that when Russia stationed missiles in Cuba in the early 1960s. President John F. Kennedy thought it was worth risking nuclear war to get those missiles out, and he backed down the Russians.

Still, Ukraine must be aided, at all costs, against its Russian invaders argue Europeans and American Neocons. Ignore, please, that Ukraine is led by a pipsqueak man of questionable ability and ethics.

And, while the people in charge of Great Britain, France and Germany (yes, the Germans are against the aggressors in this case) it is understood if not said aloud that it is the U.S. military being counted on to do the heavy lifting.

It’s one thing to provoke the Russian Bear with drone strikes. It’s quite another to put boots on the ground and try to push into Russian territory.

If things went bad for the Russians on that front and we did make inroads, please understand Russians possess enough nuclear weaponry to incinerate this Earth many times over. Perhaps loud Greta should be mouthing off about this instead of doing photo opps on a Hamas sailing vessel.

Come to think of it, can you imagine the progeny if Elon impregnated Greta?

The current state of uncertainty in Europe is exactly the sort of perilous time when we need to rely on President Donald J. Trump to say no to our European “allies” so eager to spill American blood and spend American treasure.

It’s time to tell them if they’re big enough to get themselves into these scraps, they should be big enough to get themselves out.

Along that line, it’s time for the U.S. to say goodbye to NATO.

USAfacts.org estimates the U.S. has contributed almost $22 trillion to NATO over the past 75 years, more than half of our current national debt of slightly more than $36 trillion.

That would produce the kind of budgetary savings I could get behind.

Near the end of a call to my brother Thursday afternoon, one I had initiated to update him on having discovered where Fox tried to hide its Bob’s Burgers animation show, formerly a staple of Sunday nights but now ensconced at 8 p.m. Thursdays, he wanted to know what I thought about Elon Musk and President Trump trading shots.

I told him then that I was trying to process it all. I’m writing this at 12:30 a.m. Friday morning and I’m still confused.

Note that I didn’t say surprised. Trump and Musk both are mercurial sorts. A public blowup was all but inevitable.

I’ve often said I couldn’t work for either, but I can and have voted for Trump, three times.

And that is the critical issue.

As a bit of background, I never bought into the deification of Musk when the political left made him out to be a hero saving the planet by selling electric cars, albeit cars heavily subsidized by tax credits. Musk also was involved with solar panels, another product whose appeal was goosed by government tax credit handouts.

I always viewed Musk as a mix of P.T. Barnum and Nikola Tesla – the melding of a promoter and a genius inventor. Because Tesla was the father of our modern electrical grid, his name was a natural for a company producing electric cars that Musk has come to control. It is fitting, also, that Tesla was, shall we say, a bit of an odd sort.

Among Tesla’s obsessive compulsive quirks were absurd amounts of handwashing, wearing gloves to avoid contact with others when shaking hands and demanding all his food be boiled before he ate it. He was fascinated with the number 3, walking around a building three times before entering, requiring 18 napkins to fold before eating, 18 towels each morning at a hotel and the hotel room number had to be divisible by three.

Tesla also hated pearls, and would not to speak to women wearing them.

Perhaps because of this, Tesla never had any children. By way of contrast, Musk seems to be set on singlehandedly putting together a small group to settle Mars, with some published reports crediting him with fathering “at least” 14 children.

Many, including a self-proclaimed Musk biographer, cite Musk’s autism, depression, and self-admitted use of the drug ketamine to help cope with these problems, as well as pain and stress, as explanations for rash behavior.

A recent New York Times story detailed Musk and his drug use.

A troubled individual losing control of himself would help explain this burst of wild social media posts, beginning with blowing up Trump’s so-called big, beautiful bill (BBB), to noting he would outlive Trump, to calling for Trump’s impeachment, and implying Trump is a pedophile on the so-called Epstein list.

Trump, being who he is, has fired back. But, in this wild exchange, Trump uncharacteristically is the one showing restraint.

Early reads on the public spat, one cited by my brother, is that it was just an act, designed perhaps to take the public heat off Musk and allow him once again to sell lots of EVs to far-left tree huggers.

Others postulated this was some devious Trump plan to force more spending cuts into the BBB.

I’m thinking the pedolphile accusation and impeachment posts indicate this is no act.

Calling on my brief experience working at a group home, I can tell you that Musk exhibits the erratic behavior characteristics of the residents I used to encounter. You haven’t lived until a crazed female tries to part your hair with a heavy metallic fire extinguisher, just because.

Musk might have been strung out on something he takes, or just enduring a naturally psychotic moment or two.

It’s been an expensive blowup for Musk, who saw his fortune reduced by an estimated $34 billion and the Tesla market cap shaved by a reported $153 billion as shares tanked almost 15 percent in wild trading Thursday.

In the past, when Tesla shares have suffered such meltdowns, there have been times I bought a few shares hoping for a pop. The stock does have a huge fan boy following.

I think I’ve made a few bucks net on these punts, and I contemplated buying some today. But I held off because getting into a contest with President Trump is not a good move when your companies have a lot of government contracts.

And the stock price continued to drop after I considered buying, then passed on it.

By late Thursday night, Musk seemed to be extending an olive branch or two on social media posts. But, by mid-Friday, Musk might repurpose the olive branches to resume beating on Trump.

Rest assured, Trump will fight back. This could be a battle Elon can’t win.

It is early Monday morning. The sun is shining, birds are singing, and there is a threat of nuclear war in the air. Time for a flood of stream of consciousness.

Ukraine and Russia were scheduled for peace talks today in Turkey. As a lead-in, Ukraine, with NATO help, launched a massive drone attack on Russia that reportedly disabled a large number of bomber planes. Gold, serving its traditional role as crisis barometer, is up about $70 an ounce. I’m thinking this drone attack will not aid the pursuit of peace.

I see trans guys continuing to beat up on girls in sporting events and I’m reminded of a British nursery rhyme, Georgie Porgie. The title character kissed the girls and made them cry, but “When the boys came out to play, Georgie Porgie ran away.” Considering the month, trans athletes must be so proud.

The globalists of Europe are shivering today, with Donald Trump-backed populist Karol Nawrocki winning the presidency of Poland. It was a close race and – stop me if you’ve heard this before – Nawrocki’s liberal opponent was supposed to be the winner as early results were announced.

Egg prices are down 62 percent since Trump’s inaguration day, which probably explains why that specific topic has been dropped by LameStream media. But, the usual faces, such as Margaret Brennan of CBS News, have shifted to another line of attack. She was grilling Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over the weekend about what she believes is inevitable inflation due to tariffs and he reminded her we’ve just had a very favorable inflation report, standing in stark contrast to inflation scare predictions from Brennan in previous months. Let’s just wait to see what actually happens, Bessent told Brennan. Imagine that.

Pirates owner Bob “Good for” Nutting, must thank his lucky stars for this season’s Colorado Rockies. Even as Nutting’s Pirates continue the franchise’s stumble along the road to oblivion with yet another losing record, the Rockies are the national story, displaying ineptitude of an historic nature. Those Rockies, in the midst of their fourth eight-game losing streak of the season, have a 9-50 record, the worst for a Major League Baseball team through 59 games in the so-called modern era, dating to 1901.

Clueless Joe Biden is back in all his delusional glory. Recall, he’s the guy who wanted to take Trump behind a gym and “beat the hell out of” him if they were both in high school. They would have been the oldest in their class, older even than the illegal immigrants in their 20s and even 30s masquerading as high school students these days. Since then, Biden has maintained he’d beat Trump in a round of golf – doubtful. Now, Biden is out claiming he again could “beat the hell out of” someone, in this case authors such as CNN’s Jake Tapper who claimed Biden wasn’t all there mentally, or physically when he served as president.

I’m not sure Biden is wrong about being able to kick the hypocritical butt of Tapper. And I’d pay to see the fight.

Mike Lindell of MyPillow fame has mentioned bringing a pillow to his election-denier trial to refute claims by a member or the opposing legal team that his pillows are lumpy. I sleep on a MyPillow and they most assuredly are not lumpy. But, I’m not sure that will help Lindell in this defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems.

As yet another gay pride month dawns, allow me to suggest Johnstown declare June to be real estate pride month in the area.

We’ve touched on this topic recently, but evidence of the astounding decoupling between the area real estate market and that of the nation writ large continues to come to light and begs for an update. In an astonishing departure from the norm, we’re actually doing better than many.

We seem to be a buy, update, and flip area when it comes to houses. We’re not talking about the ridiculous plans to pave over Central Park and remove the centerpiece fountain, an initiative moving ahead despite public unhappiness because there is federal grant money to be spent (wasted?) and Johnstown is deep blue when it comes to sucking the public teat without accountability or concern for utility of those spent funds.

I’ve heard of no plans to sell Central Park, yet. But, national real estate news paints Johnstown as an outlier, to the upside.

Just last week, we saw that pending home sales nationally were at a 30-month low. Pending sales are those for which an offer has been accepted, but details such as financing are not yet complete.

Using the handy realtor.com resource, we find homes selling at what we’d describe as a brisk pace. And at seriously higher prices.

Consider a listing in the 15905 zip code. It’s along Sherwood Drive, which sounds like somewhere Robin Hood might want to live.

This three-bedroom, two-bath ranch style home is “impeccably updated” according to the listing. One would hope so, in the view of the asking price of $205,000, up from the last listed sales price of $22,400 in September 2023.

This despite the house being in the Greater Johnstown School District, not exactly a selling point for anyone with children. Then again, early tellings of Robin Hood mentioned no children, despite dalliances with Maid Marian.

This one still is on the market. Many others are not.

Four of the first eight homes under the new listing category on realtor.com already are tagged as pending. One has a sales price up $74,500 since the last sale in 2022. Another was up $62,900 from a 2022 sales price.

A third was a relatively paltry $38,900 higher than a 2019 sales price, but it was a considerable percentage move considering this is a lower priced home.

And the fourth pending listing is new construction, with no prior sales baseline. I’ll be watching for it to show up again a few years hence, probably marked up $70,000 or so.

Let’s return to the national picture. According to a post last night on zerohedge.com, nearby Pittsburgh is the second most affordable housing market in these United States, trailing only Detroit, the Michigan city that reportedly has more than 22 percent of its houses sitting vacant.

This zerohedge story cites WalletHub as the source and says the calculations it made factor in cost per square foot, median income, real estate tax rates and median sales prices.

No town under 100,000 in population was considered, so Johnstown was not even close to being evaluated.

Just as well because, considering recent real estate transactions, Johnstown would not have made the top 20, and probably not the top 200.

My unsolicited advice to would-be sellers here, act quickly before this admittedly sustained bit of outperformance by a Johnstown market ends abruptly, as it must.

Growing up, if I asked my old man a question, he’d tell me to look it up myself, the theory being one learns more by putting some effort into the quest for answers.

But the old man is gone and I’ve become a lazy, old man. So, allow me to share some questions on my mind, not that I’m pursuing answers or anything like that.

Now that Caitlin Clark is sidelined with injury, does the WNBA season get put on hold until she returns?

Did you read that ticket prices for upcoming games of her overhyped Indiana Fever team are trading at prices 71 percent less expensive than they were before her injury?

Talk about shooting down conventional wisdom, even as President Trump goes hard on illegal immigration and with a presumed emphasis on Hispanic offenders, would you believe that a poll by Insider Advantage shows Trump’s job approval rating is near 60 percent – AMONG HISPANICS?

Would you agree that we need some more Hispanic lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, considering so many white male RINOS (Republicans In Name Only) are intent on voting against Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill”?

Are you buying the explanation that French president Emmanuel Macron’s wife hitting him in the face as plane doors opened was just playful interplay between a man and his wife, who is 24 years older than he is and, a former teacher of his?

Did you hear that a lip reader, as quoted by the New York Post, says the wife told Macron as she refused his arm, “Stay away, you loser”?

Did she not have wooden ruler with her to use on his knuckles?

Does anyone else recall gymnastics star Mary Lou Retton wanting a red Corvette after taking gold at the 1984 Olympics and being presented one?

And does anyone remember being a bit surprised to learn back then that Retton already had a Porsche?

Could it be that’s the same Porsche Retton was driving earlier this month when she was stopped for erratic driving and issued a DUI charge?

Should Pirates fans take solace from the reality that their team, currently 20-36 and last in the NL Central, is not nearly as putrid as the Colorado Rockies, now 9-46 and on an historic pace in terms of MLB futility?

Anyone else wondering when James Comey again will walk on the beach and just happen upon messages left for him using seashells?

One-third of the Memorial Day Triple Crown of auto racing is being lopped from the general viewing menu (86ed as James Comey might read on a beach, spelled out in seashells) unless you are a member of Amazon Prime Video.

Once upon a time, I’d be upset. Now, not so much. Carry on without me. I still will watch the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500, maybe not even the latter. More on this later.

This removal of today’s NASCAR race from the typical public airwaves is a return to the experience of my childhood.

Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, NASCAR coverage – even the big races like the Daytona 500, or this Memorial Day race that used to be known as the World 600 to upstage the Indianapolis 500 – were mostly snippets aired a week later on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. We’d see a few laps, a car or two wrecking, and the checkered flag waving.

Even the Indianapolis 500 was not readily available on live TV during my youth. There were years one could go to the War Memorial Arena, or a local movie theater and buy a ticket to watch a closed-circuit TV showing. Cheapskates such as me would listen on the radio, with announcers set up in each of the four corners, calling the race.

From 1971 through 1985, ABC would televise the race on a tape-delay basis, cutting it down to three hours of show that ran the night of the race in prime time. Interestingly, the announcers seemed particularly prescient in anticipating developments during the race. It turned out, they were recording their audio after the race had ended, helping them look like so many Nostradamus types.

Live, flag-to-flag TV coverage of Indy began in 1986 and continues to this day. For how much longer? Good question.

Early this morning, the Monaco Grand Prix will be televised live, kicking off what generally is considered the greatest single day in auto racing. Of late, Monaco has tended to be a follow-the-leader exercise due to narrow city streets and few passing opportunities. Two mandatory pit stops have been introduced this year in an attempt to stir the pot.

Still, it’s entertaining visually and I watch out of habit.

That one still is available without upcharge to people such as me, who already pay more than $150 a month for a satellite TV package and aren’t interested in spending $20, $15 or $10 more a month to watch a few events.

The Indy 500 also will be available without additional charge. I’ve gone to the Indianapolis 500 twice and it is quite the spectacle. This year, with all the cheating scandal around the Penske cars, and the prospect of an uninteresting race, I might opt to go for a spirited ride in my Corvette instead of watching.

My big surprise came as I was scanning the TV listings to confirm a channel for NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600. I found none.

I guess I should have been paying attention to those amateurish TV spots with Dale Earnhardt Jr., cackling like Kamala about NASCAR and Prime.

You need to be member of Amazon Prime to stream this race. This is sort of the final nail in the coffin for me.

My interest already has waned as NASCAR has gone WOKE, favorite driver Kyle Busch has found himself uncompetitive for reasons of a poor race team and his apparently declining skills, and the broadcasts have degenerated into attempts to hype close finishes that often seem managed by convenient caution flags.

Were the Coca-Cola 600 readily available for viewing tonight, I might have tuned in for a few laps here or there. Since it isn’t, no problem. There’s plenty of other channels, an abundance of computer offerings, and things to do in the real world.

It also might give me some time for quiet contemplation of what this holiday is supposed to be all about, honoring our military members, past and present. Certainly, my family can boast of many of those, who served in World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

That sounds like a plan; say some thanks for those who have served to protect us. Feel free to join me, if you don’t happen to be a member of Amazon Prime Video.

To all hateful Democrats and squishy Republicans, take your Trump approval ratings propaganda and shove it where the index finger of Joe Biden’s doctor should have been inserted to check for prostate problems.

The Trump I see is exactly the man I voted for as president – three times.

The latest iteration of candidate Trump had promised to close the border, and he has.

Trump promised to put tariffs on unfair trade partners, and he has.

Trump promised to get rid of illegals, and he is trying to do so, despite staunch resistance from tinpot dictator federal judges.

Trump also is in the process of trying to follow through on promises to keep taxes low; eliminate taxes on tips and Social Security.

Trump is trying to negotiate peace treaties for other countries. He’s bringing industrial production and jobs back to the U.S. He’s continuing our energy independence.

In short, Trump is doing, or in the process of attempting to do, pretty much everything he said he would to Make America Great Again.

Yet, the whiners are unhappy. A common refrain of their chorus of complaint is that Trump is too harsh.

Trump’s brusque way of handling situations never really bothered me and still does not.

I applauded his Oval Office work with Zelenskyy and, more recently, the delusional South African president.

Would I do everything the exact same way Trump does? No. Would I do everything the same way my wife does? Again, no. But we’ve been married for pushing 45 years.

As is the case with me and the wife, Trump and I agree on the big things, the pivotal basics that matter. Details are not dealbreakers.

There’s also something in my background that prevents me from being horrified any time Trump tells someone – to their face, I might add – that they are morons or something similar.

You see, I grew up with a father who would say anything to anyone at anytime. I recall a teenage cousin showing up pregnant and, during a family meet at a grandmother’s place, crying over her lot.

Said my father to her: The more you cry, the less you’ll urinate, only he didn’t say urinate.

If I failed to deliver a requested tool in prompt fashion while helping my father with a car or the house, I would be chastized as worthless as tits on a boar. In the interest of full disclosure, as a very young child I thought he was saying “board” not “boar” ‘and was confused.

Either way, I got the message that he was displeased.

In my adult years, working decades as a sportswriter, I spent a lot of time around team locker rooms, hearing, and sometimes being the target of, some harsh language from players or coaches.

One had a choice in these situations. You could either collapse in a puddle of goo, or you could give it back.

Those who know me likely would call me a confrontational sort, whether it’s getting in the face of miscreants on my street, or standing up to misogynistic bullies.

When I see Trump meeting critics head-on, I identify with him. There are a lot of Americans like me, those tired of seeing our so-called leaders on worldwide apology tours, or kissing the ring of leftist extremists at home.

President Nixon once spoke of a silent majority, the regular types who didn’t take to the streets for Anti-American protests (perhaps because they had jobs to go to), didn’t join the counterculture (see first parenthetical thought) and generally didn’t participate in polls and other measures of public opinion.

It was Nixon’s premise, borne out by his re-election, that this was the majority of the populace, no matter the attempts of LameStream media to portray the protesters as being the prevailing sentiment.

Trump’s “Silent Majority” is MAGA, a huge number of traditional Americans who have grown tired of sitting by quietly while the fringe types dictate the future.

As the leader of the movement, Trump is dramatic and unapologetic. Could this help explain his effectiveness?

Stop trying to finetune Trump and get behind the major goals he’s attempting to achieve, before all hope is lost.

A continuing anomaly of the Greater Johnstown area is to be found in the real estate market, with prices levitating upward despite what should be limiting economic factors.

Understand that for various reaons I have been paying close attention to local housing prices for maybe the past 15 years — mostly via realtor.com. Back when I began monitoring this, housing prices in our area were abnormally low, even considering a backdrop of declining population and below-median income figures.

Back then, the point was made to various acquaintances living in higher-cost markets that they could sell and rebuy a similar property here, banking a considerable capital gain in the process.

I recall a time maybe 10 years back when nearly 300 homes were for sale in the 15905 zip code alone. A quick check of realtor.com shows 56 homes currently listed as available in 15905.

And one of those, a ranch-style example in the Westwood section, is typical. It sold for $39,401 in April 1997, for $50,000 in April 2025, and now has a pending buyer at a price of $129,900.

We will presume someone bought a home that was down on its luck and rehabilitated it, with the description confirming that presumption.

Regardless, this house has some of what used to be large red flags that hampered sales, including being in the Greater Johnstown School District. Also, there is only a partial basement – many of these Westwood homes have none. And there is no garage.

If you have no children, not a lot of stuff one might store in the basement, and no car you want to protect from the elements, this is a suitable purchase, albeit at a relatively high price.

But even houses in troubled Moxham (15902) seem to be riding the appreciation curve.

There is a current listing on realtor.com for a multi-family home in Moxham selling for $70,000, a $10,000 reduction from its previous asking price.

This property last sold in April 2023 for $50,000.

You might suspect this is another example of a flipper purchasing low, fixing up the place, and selling high. But, no, the description describes this house as needing to be rehabbed, with heat only working in one unit.

Despite this, the asking price is up 40 percent in two years, and was up 60 percent on the initial ask.

Inflation has been more like a total of 10 percent in that two-year stretch. Meanwhile, interest rates nationally have risen to near 7 percent for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages and I presume that is similar for Johnstown. This increases monthy mortgage costs and prices some would-be buyers out of the market.

Median income figures for the City of Johnstown continue to be in the basement compared with other Pennsylvania municipalities. Even if you broaden your parameters to include Johnstown’s suburbs, median income for Greater Johnstown is only about 75 percent of national figures, according to censusreporter.org.

And we continue to lose population, which should indicate a lower demand for houses.

Also, our aged population means more and more houses should be coming on the market due to death or relocation to easier to care for apartments, or assisted living facilities.

This should equate to supply exceeding demand and, according to Economics 101, lower prices.

If you want to credit demand to house flippers, it still begs the question of who is the ultimate buyer? With a below-median average income, a tepid job market, and declining population, to what do we owe the steady demand at the margin?

I cannot explain it. This prompts me to quote the late economist Herbert Stein (father of Ben Stein, the lawyer, comedian, commentator, actor who played the teacher in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day off). Herbert is credited with observing “If a thing can’t go on forever, it will eventually stop.”

I’m thinking the Greater Johnstown real estate market can’t sustain this rate of ascent, and so is getting ever closer to a decline.

But what do I know?