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Recent events have me turning introspective regarding my consumption of traditional television programming. I find, as increasingly has become the case in many areas, my age group can be characterized as dinosaurs on the matter.

This is nothing new, across the board. At 69 years of age, I’ve seen oh so many changes in the audio world. Just the other day I was explaining to two granddaughters that the falsetto chipmunk songs were the result of playing 33 rpm records at 45 rpm.

Albums, the big vinyl discs played on turntables, used the 33 rpm speed. Smaller discs, with one song on each side, used 45 rpm. Many an hour was wasted in my childhood playing records at the wrong speed.

And then there were people who actually played the records backward looking for hidden messages. I did not indulge in this.

Over the course of my life, I’ve had to change my listening library storage method from vinyl, to 8-track tapes, to cassette tapes to CDs.

No, I’ve not moved on beyond CDs because, at this point, I’m tired of paying for the same music over and over and over again. Trust me, you will become tired, too, eventually.

Let us move to television. A recent story from statista.com, posted on zerohedge.com, notes that young people watch precious little traditional television (broadcast or cable). A full 50 percent of those 18-24 say they watch zero traditional TV.

This is the same sort of bad demographic news I noted decades back as being a death knell for newspapers.

Younger people watch podcasts and various other nontraditional entertainment such as streaming services. Repeat, the younger they are, the less they watch traditional broadcasts or cable outlets.

Meanwhile, oldsters such as me, defined as those aged 65 and above, watch about 10 times as much TV as the young people.

But, increasingly, that’s becoming an ordeal. For example, I subscribe to satellite television – DISH – because Johnstown area cable TV is so overpriced.

One of the tradeoffs is where once satellite dishes were huge, maybe 16 feet in diameter, now they are small, at maybe 3 feet. Size does matter when it comes to signal acquisition.

That means signals are lost in periods of heavy weather (thunderstorms, snowstorms, even very high wind with thick clouds) and one gets the dreaded blue box of total signal loss.

Because they are overly bold. DISH managerial types have come up with a signal guarantee. Lose your signal and call them for an account credit.

I don’t usually do this. But the past Friday (perhaps you remember big snow in the Johnstown area) I was five hours into an outage when I called. Using my special loyalty phone number, my wait was short and eventually I was told I’d be receiving a credit. The signal returned after about 9 total hours of being AWOL.

Saturday was spent watching copious amounts of sports. Shortly after 11 p.m. I was killing time awaiting the late night Formula 1 race from Las Vegas by checking in on the UCLA-USC football game. This was on the area NBC outlet that thinks it’s located in State College.

Imagine my surprise when they went to a commercial – United Airlines, I believe – and the screen froze on a guy in the ad grinning like he’d just won the lottery.

When I went to bed four hours or so later, after Max Verstappen had secured yet another World Driver’s Championship, grinning guy still was frozen on Channel 6. I emailed a cousin who awakens much earlier than me, and appreciates these Channel 6 funnies, to alert him

Said cousin would go on to email me periodic updates, noting the channel still frozen on laughing boy.

His last missive noted that as of 11:15 a.m. Sunday, still smiling.

I checked at 12:12 p.m. and, voila, regular programming was running, Predictably, it was an infomercial.

What amused me by all this is the problem with a frozen Channel 6 signal seems to have created little in the way of a fuss. Where once such an occurrence would have had neighbors in the streets comparing notes about the malady, there was nothing of the sort as far as I could tell.

Even worse, as noted by my cousin who partakes of social media, the station’s Facebook page had zero comments early in the morning.

Could it be no one missed them? Was this the electronic equivalent of the philosophical chestnut asking if a tree fell in the woods and no one was around to hear it, did it make a noise?

In this case, I guess not.

The common element to investing, sports and life in general is human emotion. Simply put, the emotional pendulum in each example spends precious little time at the point of equilibrium.

More often, that pendulum is to the right or left, which represents periods of excessive pessimism or optimism.

Witness events of recent days.

Begin with sports. In the span of a few days, the Steelers and their partisans went from extreme highs to extreme lows, having beaten Baltimore, then somehow losing to lowly Cleveland.

We’d addressed the subject of the Steelers earlier this week, noting they were on the rise with an asterisk, that asterisk having to do with inconsistent offense. While the Steelers attack eventually did find the end zone on a snowy night in Cleveland, it was relatively late in the game.

Steelers coach Mike Tomlin displayed yet more curious clock management. The Steelers defense almost bailed out the offense with two late takeaways. But it added up to unexpected defeat.

What does it all mean? Not as much as some would think. The Steelers still are a 93 percent pick to make the NFL playoffs according to metrics from the New York Times – even after the Cleveland loss.

What was reinforced by this setback in Cleveland is the take expressed here previously, that while the Steelers will make the playoffs, they are not likely to thrive there.

Emotions have been hitting extremes elsewhere.

The annoying hosts of The View have plunged from outrageous Kamala optimism to crushing, Donald Trump-induced pessimism. Along the way, the panelists’ screeds against Trump’s cabinet nominations have prompted the adults in the room – ABC’s legal team – to force misnamed Sunny (looking like her dog had just died) to read disclaimer announcements several times on-air noting that the people the crew had defamed were not really guilty of the charges.

Can legal action from a certain bakery, or yet another public mea culpa, be far behind?

Meanwhile, leftist cable outlets were orgasmic that Matt Gaetz had withdrawn his name from consideration to be attorney general.

Trump was quick to sub in former Florida AG Pam Bondi, an impressive person as judged by her record and some TV appearances that I’ve witnessed. A bit of sanity was introduced to the MSNBC celebration by a panelist who informed his crew they should “fear” Bondi since she’s “competent” and “actually knows how to do this job.”

Simply put: Perhaps the leftists were spiking the football prematurely celebrating the Gaetz withdrawal.

Here in Pennsylvania, systemic over-reach hit a peak in Bucks County when an elected official proudly proclaimed she would be ignoring election law. Leftists celebrated.

Then the Pennsylvania Supreme Court weighed in – again – and pointed out these petty dictators cannot ignore the rules. The chastised egomaniac was forced to get off her emotional high and admit to reality.

Soon after Robert Casey got the memo that illegal votes were not being considered in the recount, he belatedly conceded the Senate race to David McCormick.

The left had hopes of 2020 redux, when demands to count “all the votes” didn’t specify that the votes be legally cast examples. They were optimistic briefly, then plunged back into despair.

Finally, imagine the emotional swings of a prosecutor in the office of far-left New York district attorney Alvin Bragg. Presuming all such types in that office to be far left, we can only speculate about her joy at how her office has dragged Trump through a sham trial.

Perhaps she had joked that criminals roam the streets freely while the man about to resume the presidency had been persecuted in their bailiwick.

Emotions would have been different after that prosecutor reportedly was robbed and subjected to a “lewd act” by an import from Venezuela, one left to prey on the New York City innocent despite SEVEN!!!!! arrests since arriving in this sanctuary city a few months back.

Ah, but this time the alleged attacker is being held without bail. It couldn’t only be due to him having allegedly attacked a member of the politically protected class, could it?

And I wonder about the mixed emotions leftists must be feeling since this time one of the questionable immigrants they defend to the death has dared to attack one of them.

To these people I say, that’s life.

One of the grifts that keeps on grifting arising from COVID-19 hysteria is working from home. But the bloom is coming off that rose.

Take note, you 1.3 million federal workers who, according to CNN, are approved to “telework” – translation: avoid the office.

The same petty bureaucratic dictators who brought you six-feet social distancing (just because) and masks (same reason), who shut down the nation with the aim of hamstringing Donald Trump’s re-election prospects in 2020 by tanking the economy and opening the Pandora’s box of massive mail-in voting (these met desired aims) and shut down schools (never mind the consequences), along the way shamed employers into allowing employees to work from home to stem a pandemic not a whole lot more dangerous than a common cold or the flu.

It was the greatest ever real-world example of The Emperor’s New Clothes. The scam was perpetuated because of government lining up with all-powerful social media to crush anyone who had the intestinal fortitude to note the emperor was, in fact, naked.

This was the cornerstone outcome that set the inept Biden-Harris regime on its path to massive over-reach. The tone-deaf duo, and their elite puppetmasters, presumed that if the American populace was gullible enough to hand over constitutional rights for this COVID panic, they’d bow and scrape also on matters ranging from wide-open borders, illegal immigrants enhancing Democrat voter roles, transgender indoctrination and a general agenda somewhere to the left of Chairman Mao on the political scale.

I confess to having despaired that the genie was out of the bottle, the toothpaste was out of the tube, whatever metaphor you want to use to describe a situation that has reached critical mass and therefore was/is unstoppable.

Today, I’m happy to admit that I have come to believe that I was wrong. The left went too far and Donald Trump was just the man to cobble together a populist coalition intent on taking back control of the nation.

We won the election and we’re going to win the fight to drag the United States back into a state of reality.

This feeling was fortified at a luncheon arranged Wednesday to touch base with former co-workers. In all, eight of us (my son joined the lunch) convened at Main Moon Restaurant, discussing the state of our former (for some current) employer, The Johnstown Woke Gazette, and the national mood in general.

The topic turned to working from home. After I had left the local Woke Gazette, to work for Tribune-Review Publishing, I came to cover Penn State sports and often worked from home two days a week during football season.

It was very easy for my bosses to know I was not leaning on the oars despite being out of their immediate eyesight. All they had to do was look at the stories I composed. In the strange world of writing for newspapers, that output might not just include the items that ran the next day, but also weekend stuff for Saturday and Sunday editions, which often are put together in advance.

I actually worked longer hours from home – at least during football season – because the demands were such that it was necessary.

The Washington Post recently angered even more of its whiny, leftist staff by telling them that going forward they would be expected to show up at the office for work shifts. This after the paper refused to endorse Kamala Chameleon, producing the expected level of outraged whining.

The Post ownership did give the staff the option of resigning if they found the office demand too strenuous. Ironically, the Post edict comes hard on the heels of similar action from Amazon, which is owned by the same guy.

Working from home has failed for the same reason Communism fails wherever tried. That would be human nature. Some people work just fine without supervision and peer pressure, or the prospect of being rewarded for working harder than the rest of the staff. An unfortunately high percentage does not.

There also is something to be said for being around co-workers in that ideas can be kicked around, trends can be discussed, sources and methods can be shared.

Working in virtual isolation at home doesn’t provide this sort of interaction. It does, however, present the distractions of life.

I presume state workers get the same ability to not show up at the office as federal workers, and that could help explain why dealing with the state bureaucracy has become such an ordeal.

It certainly is true with the federal government. Try getting in touch with someone at the IRS, for example.

Trump’s Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, warms the cockles of my heart. I’m tired of hearing stories of $200 hammers or $70,000 conference tables bought on the taxpayer dime and just laughed off in the vein of what-can-you-do-about-it?

Here’s what you can do about it, lop off some heads. Musk very famously fired about 80 percent of Twitter staff when he bought that social media outlet and re-instated free speech. Cue the screaming and dire predictions. But it seems there was a lot of dead wood acting as censors, because Twitter continues to thrive – with about one-fifth the staff.

I suspect the government could be leaned down similarly, without any negative results.

Merely demanding workers return to work could prune the staff without the need to fire people. These entitled types likely would quit rather than having to resume giving an honest effort each and every work shift.

This is much the same as reports making the rounds that some illegal immigrants, shocked into reality by promises to deport them, are heading for the nation’s exits on their own.

We don’t care how it gets done – whether trimming government waste or sending illegals packing – just that it gets done.

As an aside, some of us lingered in the parking lot after lunch Wednesday, talking and inadvertently blocking two people looking to back out of their parking space.

All three of us – retired Woke Gazette employees, not present ones – were wearing MAGA hats and I had on a bright red Detroit Red Wings jersey one might have mistaken for something MAGA.

The man and woman in the car, apparently Chinese, rolled down the passenger side window as they backed out, smiled and told us, “Thank you for making America great again!”

We voted for Trump, expecting him to make good on campaign promises and do exactly that. I’m encouraged that he looks to be hitting the ground running.

It was late October when last we took a look at the state of the Steelers, as well as the then-unbeaten football teams at Penn State and Pitt.

Much has happened in the interim, including Donald Trump being picked as president No. 47 and the political left losing its collective mind as a result. In a curious melding of politics and pop culture, Trump dances have come into fashion in the football world to celebrate successes.

The progress of the three football teams cited earlier has been a mixed bag, sometimes meriting Trump dances and sometimes not so much.

The Steelers are on the rise, but with an asterisk. They came out of their bye week to beat good Washington and Baltimore teams back-to-back, albeit by a combined victory margin of just three points.

The Sunday win over the Ravens, an 18-16 affair, was aided and abetted by ridiculously poor play by the losers, beginning with quarterback Lamar Jackson, who now is 1-4 in his career vs. the Steelers. Jackson’s reputation for coming up small in big games is deserved judging by that Steelers record, along with Jackson’s career 2-4 playoff tally.

The Steelers won vs. the Ravens on the strength of six field goals and now sit atop the AFC North at 8-2 facing two games vs. the pathetic Cleveland Browns sandwiched around a game with the stumbling Cincinnati Bengals.

The record likely will be 11-2 three weeks hence and the thoughts of Steelers fans will turn to the Super Bowl. I’m thinking 9-1 Kansas City, which lost Sunday for the first time this season, might have something to say about that despite an offense short on weapons. Buffalo (9-2), the conqueror of Kansas City, also is looking strong.

Others meriting consideration to make the big game from the American Conference are the Los Angeles Chargers (7-3) and Ravens (7-4).

In the mid-1970s, the Steelers won a couple of Super Bowls based on a dominant defense and a so-so offense. This defense is not as good as that 70s version. The 1974 unit allowed an average of 13.5 points in each of 14 regular-season games and had another gear for the playoffs, dropping that average to 11 points allowed in each of three games.

This season’s Steelers defense yields 16.2 points a game.

The 2024 Steelers offense is arguably a bit better than its 1974 counterpart. But the league is different and I can’t see the Steelers as a Super Bowl team with their current level of play on offense.

Penn State was 7-0 and ranked No. 3 in the AP Top 25 when we checked in on them. The Nittany Lions now are 9-1 and ranked No. 4.

Penn State is about what we expected, having lost yet again to Ohio State, then rebounding to hammer so-so Washington and pathetic 1-9 Purdue. The Nittany Lions almost assuredly will coast into the 12-team national championship playoff field.

The Nittany Lions then would host a playoff game, in the days just before Christmas. Some bracket projections have Penn State hosting SEC, warm-weather teams such as Ole Miss or Georgia.

Considering Tennessee wide receivers were whining about their heated bench not working Saturday, with the temperature 55 degrees at Georgia, I’m thinking a brutally cold day up north would be an edge for Penn State vs. a southern team.

Whether it would be enough to overcome the James Franklin, can’t-win-a-big-game factor is open to debate. Even if it is, the Penn State ride likely would end in the next round.

Last, we have Pitt, 7-0 and ranked No. 18 when previously discussed here.

Since then, the Panthers have reeled off three straight defeats and disappeared from the rankings. This is not particularly surprising since that 7-0 record had more than the expected number of great escapes when the Panthers trailed, yet somehow found a way to win.

These days, Pitt finds ways to lose. Saturday’s home setback vs. Clemson, played before the customary scene of garishly yellow empty seats, was a stellar example.

In the first half, the Pitt defense managed to jump offside not one, not two, but three consecutive snaps.

Hard to believe, but things got worse in the second half. During an offensive series from the Clemson two-yard line, Pitt got hit with an illegal formation call, following a Pitt timeout! Then there was a delay of game call, followed by an illegal procedure call against the Panthers, who went from threatening to score a touchdown to having to salvage a field goal.

It was horrendous and that’s not just my assessment. Greg McElroy, the analyst on the broadcast, was horrified by it all. “It cannot get any worse than what I’ve just seen the last few plays, “ he said. “Unbelievable. Inexcusable. Can’t happen.”

But it did.

Amazingly, Pitt was up 20-17 late, but surrendered a game-winning 50-yard touchdown run by the Clemson quarterback to lose yet again.

This Pitt slide was entirely predictable.

Let’s see how our Steelers and Penn State assessments play out down the line.

Quick, hand me the duct tape lest my head explode. Another leftist is torturing both language and reality.

In this case, we speak of New York governor Kathy Hochul, who just this past September had a former top aide of hers arrested for acting as a Chinese secret agent here.

We pause at this point to ask, what is it with so many on the left and their improper business/sexual relationships with Chinese communists? From Big Guy Clueless Joe Biden, to failed VP pick Tim Walz, to Eric Swalwell, to Dianne Feinstein, and on and on. Do an internet search with each name and Chinese scandal if you want details.

The point is we all ought to be screaming China, China, China, to trash the leftists in politics, just as they scream Russia, Russia, Russia regarding Donald Trump. The difference is, these leftist Chinese associations and allegiances are documented and proven. They are not some Shillary political operative’s wet dream fantasy, as was the case with Trump and Russia.

But wee Adam Schiff was out yet again on the weekend propaganda shows flogging the Russia hoax.

This pales with a bit of ridiculous logic from Hochul, who noted a planned $9 get-into-Manhattan commuter fee was actually saving commuters 40 percent because it was not the originally planned $15.

So, I punch you in the face with my fist and you should be grateful it wasn’t a hammer used to hit you? And that neatly summarizes the warped world of leftists.

But there is daily evidence of this as Trump’s picks for cabinet and other posts in his administration are flayed by leftists as unqualified and inappropriate.

Where were these righteous voices when Clueless Joe was stocking his administration with gender confused individuals, incompetents, or often a combination of both attributes?

A post on zerohedge.com was a summation of this. Remember, Clueless Joe gave us former guy now a gal Rachel Levine in Health and Human services and cross-dressing and accused luggage stealer Sam Brinton in nuclear energy as nods to LGBTQXXXXXXXX interests.

Add to that cast, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who had no transportation background, but was a smalltown mayor and is gay, so that ticked a box or two. Pete’s absence anytime he was needed to do his job during this regime speaks to his quality.

Jared Bernstein, chair of the council of economic advisors, is not an economist, but he does have degrees in music and sociology.

Xavier Becerra, head of Health and Human services, is no more a doctor than Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for the post. Becerra is a lawyer and ex-California attorney general, yet you heard not a peep from people when this appointment was made. He is, after all, Latino

The list is long. Jennifer Granholm, energy secretary, no energy background, but was a leftist Michigan governor. And she is a woman — so far.

Gina Raimondo, commerce secretary, another lawyer and politician. Also another woman, so far. She’s most notable for saying in September — on MSNBC of course — that voters should “extinguish” Trump. Previously, while being interviewed at the Democratic National Convention, she said a report of job numbers being revised downward by more than 800,000 was a Trump lie. When the questioner showed some guts and noted it was a statistic from the Department of Labor, Raimondo played the Sgt. Schultz “I hear nothing. I see nothing. I know nothing” defense by now claiming she was not familiar with the statistic.

Alejandro Mayorkas, homeland security, is yet another lawyer and political activist who rose through the ranks leveraging one appointment after another until he reached a level where his lack of proficiency was shown to the world. This was via our wide-open southern border which Mayorkas insisted – repeatedly– was secure and closed.

You wouldn’t trust Mayorkas to watch your car in a bad neighborhood, let alone protect our nation.

And you can’t trust LameStream media and leftist operatives any further than you could throw Whoopi Goldberg and her ample butt.

Keep this summation of Biden picks in mind the next time you hear about Trump’s all-time worst nominations.

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More Donald Trump cabinet nominations have been announced, producing typical hysteria among Democrats and their lapdog pals in the LameStream media.

You might have heard that Trump wants Pete Hegseth for his Secretary of Defense, and the usual suspects went crazy that Trump had put up a Fox News host to hold this vital role.

Typical of the ridiculous hyperbole, and omission of pertinent information, was that spewed by stereotypical whiner panelist of The View, Whoopi Goldberg.

Remember Whoopi for her recent absurd assertion that she understands problems of the working class and she works only because she needs the money. This from a Hollywood type estimated to have a net worth of $36 million.

I guess Whoopi spends like the Kamala Chameleon campaign, which turned $1 billion in contributions into a $20 million deficit by the time the election was held. Or could Whoopi be exaggerating her need to work?

Regarding Hegseth, the seldom-amusing Whoopi tried to make hay of Hegseth being on a “weekend” show, insinuating he was not even good enough to be a first-teamer for Fox.

What Whoopi and her fellow leftist sycophants don’t bother to tell you is that Hegseth is a decorated combat veteran, having been awarded not one, but two Bronze Stars.

Unlike Tampon Tim Walz, Hegseth did face enemy fire. The Bronze Star requires having been involved with “military operations against an armed enemy.”

Also omitted from the Hegseth story is that he’s a graduate of Princeton and Harvard. He’s been a veterans’ advocate for many years.

I would much rather have Hegseth in this Secretary of Defense role than some of the political animals who have held the post recently.

Even as the Hegseth nomination was drawing fire in a metaphorical sense, Trump further poked the hornets’ nest by proposing Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

Allow me to repeat what you already likely have heard, that being Gaetz was investigated for sex trafficking a minor girl.

This would be by the Federal Department of Justice, the same fine folks who have persecuted Trump even before he was elected the first time. And, to no one’s surprise, after two years spent investigating Gaetz ZERO charges were filed.

Gaetz still has an ethics investigation open in the House, which could be a moot point since he has resigned his office.

Regardless, the Gaetz allegations will be trotted out to impugn his legitimacy to head the department that once conducted one of those familiar political witch hunts against him.

Curiously, Democrats are not similarly offended by sex scandals in their party, from Bill Clinton and Monica,, to the more recent U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell being removed from the intelligence committee due to reports of a dalliance with an alleged Chinese spy in his campaign.

Proposing Gaetz as attorney general is a prototypical in-your-face move by Trump. Whether Gaetz can be approved for the post is but one aspect of the matter. It is more important that his nomination is the first move of a political chess game.

First, some are speculating that Gaetz could be put into office by an appointment while the Senate is in recess. According to a Newsweek article, Barack Obama made 32 recess appointments, George W. Bush made 171 and Clinton, 132.

Second, some have suggested that if Gaetz is not confirmed for attorney general, Florida governor Ron DeSantis could appoint Gaetz to the Senate seat vacated by Marco Rubio, who is likely to be our next Secretary of State.

It’s your move, leftists.

Politics and cannibalism are unlikely bedfellows, yet the association has been with us for months. And it continued today as Republicans picked Donald Trump-hating John Thune as the new Senate majority leader.

Flash back to April of this year, when Clueless Joe Biden, still the Democrat president and candidate to run against Trump, told people at two Pennsylvania stops about his uncle Ambrose “Bosie” Finnegan supposedly being eaten by cannibals in Papaua New Guinea during World War II.

Outrage ensued after this due to the bumbling president providing more evidence that he wasn’t firing on all cylinders mentally.

There were basic factual errors, along with the usual Biden hyperbole. Bosie had joined the military the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, not the day after the allied D-Day invasion of Europe, as Biden said.

Bosie was riding in the plane, not piloting it as Biden implied.

Remains were not found, which is how Biden made the leap to Bosie having been eaten. By that logic, we must presume Amelia Earhart ended up on some native chafing dish, too.

Democrats were mortified that Biden had glitched publicly yet again. It was another example of why they’d kept him hidden during the 2020 campaign. Yes, even then, Democrats knew Joe was not all there.

Notable, however, is the fact they were not sufficiently taken aback by the 2020 reality, or continuing evidence such as this cannibal flap, to do anything about the situation. It was not until Clueless Joe melted down in a debate with Trump and all hope seemed lost for the pending election that action was taken.

It was then that the Democrats ate their own, by throwing Biden into the cooking pot and installing Kamala Chameleon as the candidate. I’ll bet her throat now is sore from nervous laughter, watching over her shoulder for the Democrats looking to put her on the dinner menu, too,

Political cannibalism is a bipartisan issue.

Trump is filling his administration with many Republican bright lights who currently are serving in the Senate or House. Yes, they are in states where a Republican will be picked to replace them, temporarily. But special elections will be held and the Republican majorities in the Senate and House are not such that they can withstand massive depletion.

Fortunately, word has come that Trump plans to stop cannibalizing the ranks of Congress for administration posts.

The latest case of cannibalism is establishment Republicans, the Republicans In Name Only (RINO) types who cannot stand that Trump is the face of the party and the only reason this ridiculous band of petty tyrants still can win national elections.

Without Trump, Republicans are toast when it comes to winning the presidency. Their revenge is to vote in Thune, whose history of Trump hatred is a matter of public record.

These RINOs are eating their own leader (Trump) in a show that the D.C. Swamp of which they are a part, intends to fight for its survival.

It stinks to high heaven that the Senate Republicans held a secret ballot on this, first dumping Trump loyalist Rick Scott from the leadership election, then going with Thune in the final head-to-head contest.

Moves like this will allow the dysfunctional Republican party to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Expect Thune to do his best to throw sand in the gears of the Trump machine, which won the presidency, House and Senate. That’s a Republican mandate, if a person could expect the party to act in good faith.

If Thune is as bad as anticipated, just two words for him: Liz Cheney. That RINO Trump hater got her butt booted out of her House seat – losing by 30 percentage points or so in a PRIMARY election.

This reduced Liz to making the scene promoting Kamala Chameleon, and coming up a loser again. I wonder which Democrat Thune will be supporting in 2028?

Thune would do well to note that karma is a female dog, and revenge is a dish best served cold.

It has been a week since Americans went to the polls to repudiate the Woke Democratic Party, coastal elites, socialists and Soros-backed district attorneys, among others.

The voting trend was clear, yet still we await final results as some states and precincts seem to be counting ballots for as much as 10 minutes a day before breaking to go out and protest what they are finding.

All of this has come in the wake of a multi-year campaign in which the main Democrats’ talking point was Donald Trump was Hitler and his supporters were Nazis/fascists.

I’m moved by it all to compile a news and views blog post, Hitler/Nazi/fascist edition.

NEWS: Clueless Joe Biden has invited Trump over for lunch Wednesday to discuss the transition.

VIEWS: I’m not sure I’d be inviting Hitler over to share a meal. On a side note, Trump will be there, but his wife Melania (Eva Braun, presumably) told the Bidens to shove it regarding the invite, labeling the would-be hosts as “disgusting” according to one report.

NEWS: The Kamala Chameleon campaign is credited with collecting $1 billion or so in campaign contributions and still somehow sitting $20 million in debt at this date. A list of expenses reported to the Federal Election Commission included $1 million to Oprah Winfrey’s production company, Harpo.

VIEWS: Video shot by a TMZ reporter is circulating in which Oprah says she was paid “nothing. Ever” to endorse Kamala. Followers of linguistic gymnastics note she did not deny her company was paid, presumably to host that so-called Detroit townhall meeting. You would have thought billionaire Oprah needed another million like Hitler needed another bullet in the brain. And, considering the election opponent was Hitler, shouldn’t Oprah have done her “sista” a solid by doing the gig for free? Side note: Oprah never should go out in public without her customarily heavy makeup job.

NEWS: When Kamala Chameleon eventually got around to making a concession speech, she assured the crowd, and presumably the nation and world, “It’s going to be okay.”

VIEWS: To recap, if you bought into Democrat talking points, control of the United States has been won by an alleged Hitler and his gang of Nazis and fascists. But, there are no worries according to Kamala Chameleon? Could it be the people pushing this narrative didn’t even believe it themselves?

NEWS: A prominent theme of the election buildup was that many celebrities – including one, ironically named America – would be rushing out of the United States if Trump won.

VIEWS: It would seem “Hitler” anticipated this and closed the border to trap them here. How else to explain no movement on this front? But, no, Trump only wants to close the border to incoming illegals. Celebrities are free to leave, and not let the border gate hit them on the butt on their way out. On a related note, leftist media types had whined for months about being rounded up and put in concentration camps, ironically their prescription for Trump and his supporters had the Democrats prevailed. Consider this yet more hysteria not based in fact. Hitler’s propagandists would be so proud.

NEWS: Stock markets have been on a sharply upward trajectory since Trump won.

VIEWS: I presumed the German stock market didn’t celebrate Hitler coming to power. To confirm this, I searched for “Did German stock market soar when Hitler came to power?” Google’s AI overview response was “No, the German stock market did not soar when Hitler came to power.” In summation, to believe Trump is Hitler, you must also believe that investors, be they professionals or amateurs, are asleep at the switch on this matter and willing to lose big due to their ignorance.

NEWS: The very same Democrats who in the past have accused skeptical Republicans of being election deniers, now are denying election results.

VIEWS: One would think any election deniers in the Hitler years would have had the lifespan of an adult mayfly – about one or two days. Yet, here we sit a week after voting has closed and Democrats are sending in the lawyers to contest Dave McCormick’s apparent Senate win in Pennsylvania, which had been called for the Republican McCormick by Associated Press on Nov. 7. No one is reported to have died due to this election denying. And the apparent House control by Republicans also remains unofficial. No less a source than decisiondeskhq,com called the House for Republicans days back. But others have been slow-walking making final declarations, despite Republicans leading in most races with votes still to be counted and Democrats needing a miracle to prevail. These self-righteous deniers scream that all votes must be counted first. This did not stop LameStream media from calling California for Kamala Harris early. In a story posted on NPR.org at 10:38 p.m. eastern time on election night, AP was cited as having called the state for Kamala. The same story noted that polls closed at 11 p.m. Eastern in California, about 22 minutes AFTER the story had been posted.

NEWS: Far left cable news network viewer ratings are plummeting, with MSNBC down 23 percent post-election and CNN down 40 percent.

VIEWS: Viewers are voting with their feet. Having been sold a bill of goods for years, they are dropping out, or moving to more reliable purveyors of information. It seems these biased cable news outlets have borrowed a page from Hitler and committed suicide.

There’s a fine line between being Nostradamus or Nostradumbaxx. Sometimes, with a little help from our friends, we are on the right side of history.

I say this because, sometime back, I parroted here the thinking of a cousin that Kamala Harris was destined to be our first woman president, with her also being non-white (either black or Indian) thrown in as the topping on the cake.

This cousin theorized Kamala might win the election vs. Donald Trump after having been tossed into the fray when Democrats ran a coup on the sitting president who also was the party’s nominee for a second term, Clueless Joe Biden.

Failing that – and God knows Kamala Chameleon messed up royally in the election undertaking despite having a $1 billion war chest – cynical Democrats just might have Joe step aside and let her be president until Trump takes over in late January.

She’d be president 47, or maybe just 46 ½. When I was a young man, there was a game show, Queen for a day. Kamala would be a winner on Prez for a few weeks.

Already, the suggestion is being floated as a trial balloon on the left-wing cable news sites. Predictably, these propagandists love it. I got an email today from my cousin, in case I’d missed the story. I had not.

Alas, it still might not happen. First off, Joe still gets back pains from the dagger Kamala, Nancy Pelosi and the Obama clan shoved into his spine to get him off the ticket. His rapid-fire endorsement of Kamala after that coup, some argue, was more an attempt to lock those interlopers into having to go with her as a candidate likely to lose than it was an atta girl for Kamala.

Biden’s various verbal “gaffes” and other strange acts during her campaign suggest Clueless Joe was less than a white dude for Kamala.

Once again, Joe might opt to be slow to go.

Plus, I doubt there is time to 25^th Amendment his aging butt and get Kamala seated in the Oval Office before the Trump administration barges in the door and starts measuring for new drapes.

Joe making a move along the lines of what the lads of the movie “Animal House” tabbed a “stupid and futile gesture” to give Kamala a ride on the merry-go-round seems unlikely.

Admittedly, it again might not be Joe’s choice. But this time I expect DR. JILL BIDEN!!!!!!! to be even more intractable as her days as a modern day Marie Antoinette draw to a close. They’ll need the jaws of life to force her through the White House door even a minute early.

This all fails to take into consideration how cheesy and unseemly such a tawdry gesture of seating Kamala would be.

Are Democrats willing to be so transparent on the matter of cheapening what otherwise would be an outcome of historic dimension? Never mind, we all know they would.

Today is Veterans Day, once a time of celebration and acknowledgement of the great contributions to our nation and our freedoms made by those who served in our military.

These days, not so much. It’s more viewed as just another day off work or school.

A quick trip to my front porch this morning showed four houses on the block flying American Flags. All four of us fly them virtually every day. Not a single household had felt moved to share in the day’s celebration by joining us.

Growing up, my family had been big on respecting Veterans Day. My late father fought in the Korean War and had a multi-decade run in both the National Guard and Naval Reserve. I still remember my joy when he came back from one of those summer camp deployments with army fatigues uniforms for me and my brother. We were probably nine and five years old at the time.

Pictures of three uncles on my mother’s side of the family, all in their World War II uniforms, were on walls of my one grandmother’s house every day of every year.

I had cousins who fought in Vietnam.

My son has a close friend who has made the U.S. Army his career. I have had several friends who did the same.

And what of me? I reached 18 years of age in 1973 just as we were slinking out of Vietnam. I had registered for the draft, but it was almost over by then. For all of you who think history began when you were born and never bother to learn otherwise, the draft was a process in which the government would demand some join the military and contribute for a period of years.

It’s all volunteer now.

Back then, I got classified into some sort of holding category, denoted with an H on my draft card. If they needed to do more drafting, they’d let me know, Otherwise, continue with our life.

I joked that the H meant in case of war, I’d be held as a hostage.

There are no pictures of me in military uniform, except maybe as a kid in those aforementioned gift fatigues from my dad, and one I can remember when I wore an actual uniform top of my dad’s.

You will not hear me telling false tales of carrying weapons of war in combat, as Tampon Tim claimed to have done.

I never served, but I have great respect for those who did serve honorably and without false valor claims. I wish I had more company on that front.