Category Archives: Uncategorized

Funeral home viewings are cauldrons of conflicting emotions, with sadness at the parting from this world by the guest of honor mixing with warm remembrances and shared stories.

So it was Friday afternoon at the first viewing session for Paul Litwalk, onetime teacher and basketball coach at Johnstown High School, who also was prominent in the community.

Former coaches, players, media members and a host of friends and acquaintances milled about, each paying respect to the former coach in his or her own way. Often was heard that, while it was nice to see people again, it was unfortunate it had to come under such circumstances.

Paul was remembered for his many endearing qualities. However, when the talk turned to the current state of sports, of the world in general, the sentiment was generally negative.

To be my age – 68 and counting toward 69 – is to understand that observations of things in the present being less than rosy tend to be dismissed as the ravings of someone stuck in a self-reinforcing nostalgia loop.

‘Tis true at times, I guess. At other times, it is unpleasant reality.

I can only imagine ancient Romans gathering for a fellow citizen’s funeral late in that great empire’s run and observing things on the decline, only to be branded as nostalgic fools.

Granted, they would have been told, those barbarians up north are advancing. Our currency is virtually worthless. Our once-feared military is a shell of its former self. Political corruption is rife. But we still have bread and circuses!

Sort of sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Clueless Joe says anyone thinking things are less than great is confused – this from a guy who has a master’s in confusion.

Oh, and our current invasion in the U.S. mostly is coming from the south, at the behest of the current regime. Other than that, lots of similarities are evident to me.

As for those ancient Romans, no doubt many dismissed their observations as the misguided fruit of naysayers and predictors of doom. History tells a different story.

In a more recent example from sports, those of us fortunate enough to cover the Pittsburgh Steelers during their dominance of the 1970s recognized at the end of the decade that we had witnessed an era the franchise, or any other, was not likely to duplicate.

It can be argued that New England achieved similar status and Kansas City is attempting to do so currently. But those 1970s Steelers won four Super Bowls in six seasons and had arguably their best team denied a shot when injuries stripped the starting backfield from the lineup in 1976.

They were a different animal. Period.

Like the Steelers, our country has moments of greatness, but can’t quite make it back to the glory days.

Deaths of individuals are metaphorical reminders that empires also come with expiration dates. Noting a decline of same into that date does not make one a nostalgic nincompoop.

Leave it to hockey to provide a life lesson regarding the difference between the gutless, such as Woke, leftist “student” protesters supporting Hamas or other flavor-of-the-week causes, and those who are truly courageous.

The dichotomy was captured postgame by Boston Bruins coach Jim Montgomery to describe his star player David Pastrnak duking it out with Florida’s Matthew Tkachuk late in the teams’ Wednesday Stanley Cup Playoff game.

Pastrnak is a scorer, not a fighter. Tkachuk is both. Yet, with game’s outcome already assured by the lopsided score in Florida’s favor, Pastrnak and Tkachuk punctuated some on-ice combat among teammates by seeming to challenge each other from the bench.

Pastrnak (non-hockey fans might recognize him from once omnipresent ads he did for Dunkin’ Donuts) even appeared to give Montgomery advance notice he was headed onto the ice to fight Tkachuk.

As soon as the two players hit the ice on their next shifts, gloves and sticks were dropped and a battle ensued in which both gave as well as they got.

“There’s so many guys out there pushing after the whistle when the linesmen are there,” said Montgomery, referring to a trend of some hockey players to be emboldened knowing officials are on-hand to prevent them from getting their heads handed to them in an actual fight. “Pasta and Tkachuk, they just went out there and fought.”

Florida coach Paul Maurice similarly endorsed the concept of star players standing up for themselves, even taking an indirect shot at the Woke types among us.

“I think it was awesome,” Maurice said of the fight. “Sorry (to) whoever’s offended by that concept. I thought it was awesome.”

It was ironic that this high-profile hockey fight transpired mere hours after I’d read of pro-Hamas protesters at George Washington University chanting to have school administrators taken to the guillotine for not being supportive enough of terrorists.

No doubt these brave sorts in the crowd were masked up, the better to hide their identities. This has become a common theme among the left, the continuing gift of COVID-19 hysteria that made mask wearing accepted.

But, in Ohio, the state attorney general has notified those in charge of the state’s public, four-year universities that wearing masks at protests violates a longstanding law, ironically put in place to deal with Ku Klux Klan rallies. Violating the law is a felony.

The terrorist supporters just hate it when they can’t hide their identities. They hate it when they must face consequences, such as would-be employers deciding the extreme political views make the individuals less than attractive.

They hate it when they can’t demand free food, water and various other accommodations to make their protesting a bit more cushy.

If, as polls increasingly indicate, this nation is headed for yet another Civil War, I’m thinking the right will have more than its share of Pastrnaks and Tkachuks, willing to stand up for themselves and their beliefs.

And that’s bad news for the left.

A lesson on the circle of life was delivered Tuesday morning.

Even as I talked with callers alerting me to the passing of Paul Litwalk, my wife and granddaughter number three were outside helping a neighbor who had a deer deliver two fawns in her fenced yard. The doe was able to hop the fence when the woman came outside to do some work, but the little ones needed some assistance in escaping.

I was struck that the older a person becomes, the greater the impression such comings and goings make. I am reminded of attending a Joe Paterno press conference on a day Paterno had gotten word that yet another man he once had coached with, had passed away.

Paterno noted to the media that the problem with being as old as Paterno was simple; it meant that almost all one’s friends and family had died.

Litwalk was not family, but he was a friend. I’ve known him since I was a teenager at Johnstown High School, when he was the relatively young basketball coach.

He probably long had forgotten it, but I remember once, during a study hall of mine that he monitored as a teacher, I was lecturing Litwalk about staying in a zone defense against State College High School and its star shooting guard, Mike Fergus.

Litwalk was patient with the brash teenager, but put me in my place by noting A) Fergus eventually cooled off. B) Litwalk’s team won the game. C) Litwalk didn’t have the players to play man-to-man defense and asking them to do what they could not would have been a great mistake.

My senior year, 1972-73, Litwalk’s team was arguably the greatest in school history. Led by senior Don Maser, who would go on to play at Duquesne, and 6-9 junior Pat Cummings, who had a lengthy NBA career, the Trojans went unbeaten through the regular season.

That included winning the prestigious War Memorial Invitational Basketball Tournament by beating St. John’s of Washington, D.C., and eastern Pennsylvania power Chester.

The Trojans won the District 6 title by pummeling Johnstown Vo-Tech before 4,000-plus fans at the War Memorial Arena. That Vo-Tech team’s five starters all were Johnstown kids, meaning this district championship would have been an intra-squad game a few years earlier, before Vo-Tech opened.

Johnstown was ranked No.1 in the state for a time, but the run to an anticipated state title ended with a shocking loss to Sharon, before an even larger War Memorial crowd.

Litwalk endured many heartbreaks in intervening seasons as an Altoona program often got the best of Johnstown in District 6 play. Altoona’s rosters included players such as Doug West, Danny Fortson, Mike Iuzzolino and Johnny Moore, all of whom went on to NBA careers. There also was an abundance of eventual Division I college players such as Lou Schmitt and Ricky Tunstall.

Late in his career, Litwalk began to win more District 6 titles, including one that left a memorable impression on me.

I was a sportswriter in town at the time and stopped at the elementary gym Johnstown played at in those days to get some information for a preview of yet another District 6 championship game vs. Altoona.

There was a freak March snowstorm and the team’s leading rebounder and second leading scorer hadn’t showed up. Litwalk gathered the team to tell them that the absent player wouldn’t be starting. As Litwalk continued to talk, he kept ratcheting it up.

The player was not going to play. They had made it to practice. He could have, too. But they were going to go to the game and win it — without him.

They did. And the next year, when that player was a senior, Johnstown won the district title again. He had an outstanding game and rode the team bus back to Johnstown cradling the championship trophy.

Litwalk loved to tell that story. It spoke volumes about a coach who held his players responsible, even if it might affect the chances to win in the moment.

I’ll miss him.

On this Sunday, the traditional day of rest, I find myself musing over some compelling questions, and attempting to answer them.

Here goes.

Q: Why did Clueless Joe spend Friday afternoon handing out medals like free cheese to fellow Democrats Al Gore, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Bloomberg and Jim Clyburn?

A: Even the Clueless One was not sure, as evidenced by him referring to the medals as “Presidential Freedom” and “Presidential Freedom of Medal.” Actually, it’s called the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Joe.

Gore might have been honored for disputing his 2000 presidential election loss (election denying is OK if one is a Democrat) and for getting rich and fat on climate change merchandising. Kerry also had his presidential election loss denied and since then has acted in various governmental roles by flitting about the globe in private jets lecturing the common folk to walk instead of drive cars, all in the pursuit of a more stable climate.

Pelosi deserved recognition for ripping up a copy of a Donald Trump State of the Union speech on live television and later hiding in her locked office after allegedly making sure the National Guard was not on Capitol Hill to deal with Jan. 6 protesters.

As for Bloomberg, he promoted freedom by banning “sugary drinks” over 16 ounces from being sold in New York City while he was mayor there, and also has donated millions of dollars to Biden’s campaign funding.

Finally, Rep. Clyburn can be counted on for outrageous thoughts and actions, from calling a sitting president, Donald Trump, “Mussolini” to claiming voting fraud in Ohio and refusing to vote for the certification of George W. Bush’s re-election.

In Orwellian ways, all promoted “freedom.”

Q: Is it possible the leftists who have taken over the Democratic Party are intentionally attempting to bankrupt the country?

A: I have asked a similar question about Johnstown, with our ruling elites and special interest groups seemingly intent on pandering to the lowest common denominator to keep Johnstown poor and, as a side benefit, making sure the in-crowd politically benefits financially.

On the national front, the throwing open of our borders to people destined for welfare, artificially raising minimum wages to lessen demand for unskilled workers and indirectly impoverishing them, promoting protests for suspect causes like Hamas terrorists or BLM, institutionalizing discrimination against Whites and Asians, promoting class warfare even though most of the very richest are leftists, all make little sense unless viewed through the Cloward-Piven lens.

Wikipedia tells us that Cloward and Piven were a couple of leftist activists at Columbia University who in 1966 outlined a strategy to use “militant anti-poverty groups” to overwhelm the welfare system and so force imposition of a guaranteed minimum income and other measures in which the Feds did a better job of thieving money from achievers to reward underachievers. It’s taken longer than Cloward and Piven would have liked, but we’re heading there at a rapidly increasing pace.

Q: Why is it OK for Feds to tamper with evidence in Donald Trump’s classified documents court case?

A: You can’t ask this with a straight face considering all the Feds have done to Trump, from spying on his campaign, to ginning up a false Russian collusion accusation, to lying to FISA courts to get wiretap clearance, to sending petty political operatives masquerading as District Attorneys in deep blue jurisdictions to pursue him with bizarre, politically motivated claims such as fraud when no harm was claimed by the supposedly defrauded banks.

The classified document case — the same sort that a special prosecutor looking into Clueless Joe mishandling classified information felt merited no charges because Clueless was, well, Clueless – has been rigged by Special Counsel Jack Smith. His team admitted Friday to having tampered with items in storage boxes and having misrepresented previously to the court that it had not been done.

So, the boxes with the alleged classified information are not intact and the chain of evidence has been broken, which ordinarily is a major problem for prosecutors. But this is Trump, so legal rules do not apply to his prosecutors.

Submitted for your approval, some quick hits on this May Day while waiting for the Federal Reserve interest rate reveal this afternoon and and trying to work up energy to wash some of my cars:

Does anyone else wonder what percentage of the rioting college students taking over college campuses are actually paying their own tuition and aren’t there by virtue of government handouts (from the tax dollars of we who produce and pay taxes)?

Along that line, are these the cretins who, if they do have student loans, will have that indebtedness forgiven at the expense of we taxpayers as a vote buying attempt from Clueless Joe?

Speaking of taxes, I found this telling summation on X, the former Twitter

If you earn it, they tax it.

If you spend it, they tax it.

If you save it, they tax it.

If you invest in it, they tax it.

If you build it, they tax it.

If you sell it, they tax it.

If you live in it, they tax it.

If you drive it, they tax it.

If you eat it, they tax it,

If you give it away, they tax it.

When you die, they tax it.

Then they waste it.

Several times when I called up my AOL email yesterday I was greeted by a huge, obviously retouched photo of The Clueless One and spouse, offering me a chance to enter to win a trip to Rehoboth Beach to visit with them (and have a scavenger hunt for classified documents in their garage?). If first prize is one visit, is second prize two visits and third, three visits? Being forced to visit Joe and Jill multiple times would be just punishment for anyone simple enough to enter and make what I suspect was the obligatory monetary donation

Allow me to confess here to being mercenary and willing to make a few bucks on the stocks of companies and concepts I do not endorse. Example, when META (Facebook) got clobbered last week as Zuckerboy emphasized more AI spending, I bought a few shares in the aftermarket session and sold them the next day for a few bucks more on the obligatory recovery. Understand, META is one of the chosen stocks that cannot be allowed to fail lest it be revealed that the economic emperor has no clothes.

Also, MSOS is an exchange traded fund holding marijuana stocks. I expect Clueless Joe to continue his push to fully legalize marijuana use in a blatant ploy to appeal to the clueless student crowd. Due to this, I have traded MSOS, doubling my small position recently by buying more on a price decline. News broke yesterday regarding the path to legalization and my small position in MSOS bumped up sharply, so I rushed to the computer and sold in the aftermarket.

Three cheers for the college students at the University of North Carolina, who raised an American Flag after protesters had removed it in favor of some ode to Hamas terrorists. Hearing these students raising the Flag against a backdrop of U-S-A chants and singing our National Anthem was a bright moment amidst a sea of gutless neglect from most college administrations. No doubt these patriot students will find themselves in the courts alongside Donald Trump, being charged with hate crimes.

This week has been the Hilltop area’s combination The Price Is Right game show and Halloween for the foraging crowd. Think of it as American Pickers meets Mad Max.

We speak of annual spring cleanup, in this instance that of Westmont Borough.

I was reminded of the phenomenon Monday while picking up granddaughter No. 2 from her school bus and using the occasion to exercise the convertible Mustang.

Turning onto Parkview Drive off Menoher to kill some time, I was greeted by a pack of cleanup aficionados in action.

One, a thirty-something female (a sexual presumption on my part based on attire, etc., but I apologize if I offended someone whose pronouns are scrambled) was parked on the wrong side of Parkview, facing traffic and attempting to force some sort of apparatus into the yawning rear hatch of her SUV.

It was the epitome of the expression trying to cram 10 pounds of stuff into a five-pound bag. It didn’t help that this apparently was not her first visit of the day to a cleanup pile judging by the copious amounts of treasure already in the rear of the vehicle, said items resisting this would-be addition the way Johnstowners should be resisting sneaky efforts to inundate us with various unvetted immigrants.

Even as the woman sought to land her prize, two pickup trucks were working the other side of the street, and generally blocking any chance of traffic passing.

My hand was reaching for the horn button when one truck feinted to its right in a daring move to gain position on a pile, and that allowed an opening that I was able to race through.

Later, while sitting in the driveway of my son’s house awaiting the school bus, some of the very same trucks passed me, multiple times, eyeballing the piles of discarded stuff from his neighbors.

If only I’d have been paying attention I would have known this annual ritual was upon us. For up to a week I’ve seen trucks, some pulling trailers, slowly prowling streets and alleys of the Hilltop.

Just as the proverbial early bird gets the worm, so it is that cleanup veterans know some residents are early to put out their castoff items and it doesn’t hurt to be first in line at the pile.

It all brings back memories of the first cleanup I can remember, as a teen living in Johnstown. Truly one man’s trash could be another’s treasure.

Some scavenged very thoroughly and with great attention to detail and responsibility, putting the stuff back in neat piles. Others ripped through the castoff items, throwing them left and right and not bothering to clean up after themselves – until I noted I had their license plate written down and would be reporting them to the proper authorities for misbehavior.

I also have taken notice of a phenomenon similar to this cleanup that happens around Halloween, that being an abundance of folks from other areas being attracted to the Hilltop area – and presumably Richland – by tales of better candy being handed out. It’s a latter-day spinoff of Spanish conquistadors seeking mythical cities of gold.

I have been told by someone who has participated in spring cleanup picking that the selections are, indeed, better here in certain suburbs.

Our Southmont cleanup is scheduled for late May. But pickers at my place stand to be disappointed. When I throw out something, it is almost always a legitimate candidate for the dump, not something I merely tired of owning.

My presumption is that the various municipalities welcome the cleanup picker crowd, because they lessen the amount of stuff that actually has to be transported to landfills by the legitimate sanitation workers.

It is a symbiotic relationship like that of farmers in India, who live without fear alongside wild lions because the farmers have trained the lions to be alert for farmers making noise when deer are raiding their fields. These farmers, in effect, ring the dinner bell for lions looking to inject a bit of venison into their diets.

The lions, in turn, follow an unwritten code of not helping themselves to the occasional farmer. As long as the cleanup pickers follow rules of good citizenship, and maybe are aware streets are primarily for vehicles going from Point A to Point B, we all can live in harmony.

The longest-lasting Johnstown TV station used to make a habit of pledging its allegiance to far-away Centre County with teases such as this: Nuclear war breaks out in the Middle East, black plague identified in Cambria County, and fire burns Johnstown to the ground. But the big story tonight is the Centre County Grange Fair has opened.

It was both ridiculous and incisive as to their emphasis. Highlighting the absurdly pedestrian over the truly noteworthy fit their corporate geographic directive, silly as that might have been and still be. I will borrow their format to discuss current events.

Joe Biden’s approval rating sits at an all-time low for U.S. presidents at this point in their term, Philadelphia Republic First bank has been taken over by the Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation lest it fail, and a Boeing 767 jet departing New York City lost its emergency slide in mid-flight. But the big story is UCLA is mandating classes on “fat positivity” and requiring this be displayed toward the overly rotund among us.

Video of an unidentified aerial object near New York City’s LaGuardia Airport has been posted on social media with zero official feedback, a penthouse atop a 66-story tower on a Florida key is being offered at $100 million, and Europe’s declining birth rate among the natives makes the prospect of being overrun by migrants all the more real. But the big story is owning a flamethrower is legal across the U.S. except in Maryland. In California a permit is required.

In Baltimore a disgruntled athletic director let go for misuse of school funds has been arrested for using AI in an attempt to frame the principal for making a racist rant, a report notes that public schools having been turned into college-prep only factories instead of also emphasizing trades is a mistake, and California’s new $20 minimum hourly wage for fast-food workers is backfiring in terms of workers being laid off or having their hours reduced. But the big story is U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, no longer missing in action, advised Iranians to examine the effectiveness of their weapons systems and their planning in the aftermath of a less-then-successful missile and drone attack on Israel.

Mainstream media attempting to prop up Clueless Joe are misreporting that crime is falling in the United States, Donald Trump challenges the Clueless One to a debate on the steps of the courthouse in which Trump once again is being persecuted for a non-crime, and even more ships have been attacked in the Red Sea with one suffering damage. But the big story is that the Pittsburgh Pirates, after an unrealistically strong start to the season, on Friday once again slipped into their customary spot at under .500.

George Soros and his various sources have been outed for funding so-called “fellows” to agitate and whip up frenzy among the pro-Hamas demonstrators (perhaps Soros is providing the same small green tents used by the protestors?), Japan’s Yen is in freefall with dire implications for the world economy, and the Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a mid-April incident at New York’s JFK Airport in which a Swiss Air plane narrowly missed colliding with not one, not two, not three, but four other planes that had been cleared to use the same runway. But the big story is Clueless Joe’s regime has abandoned plans to ban menthol cigarettes because the cigarettes are disproportionately popular with black smokers and Joe is becoming disproportionately unpopular among that once secure demographic.

While I paid attention to granddaughters who were sleeping over Thursday night, then watched the greatest show in sports — the Stanley Cup Playoffs — the NFL began yet another draft.

Once, I would have been riveted to the proceedings, partly due to my job and partly due to rabid interest. These days, the draft is an afterthought for me.

So much ink is spilled in anticipation of the annual talent infusion and so much is wrong. That extends to the teams, who spend untold amounts of money analyzing prospective players and miss about as often as they hit.

Instead of overdosing in speculation, I find it best just to wait until the regular season and see which teams helped themselves and which teams missed the boat.

If you think the NFL draft is an exact science, you haven’t been paying attention.

No position is scrutinized more closely than quarterback. Yet Tom Brady, arguably the greatest pro quarterback of all time, lasted into the sixth round, the 199^th player taken overall in the 2000 draft. Brady was the seventh quarterback drafted that year.

You tell me if that was a mistake.

More recently, Mark Purdy quarterbacked the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl last season despite being the last pick of the 2022 draft. That distinction brings with it the tag Mr. Irrelevant.

You think some other teams might wish they had Purdy? He’s no Brady, but he’s done better than many players taken ahead of him in the draft.

The Steelers had a Mr. Irrelevant success story in Tyrone McGriff, the last player taken – 333^rd overall – in the 1980 draft.

McGriff, an offensive guard, started 10 games as a rookie and played with the Steelers for three seasons before moving to the 1983 USFL champion Michigan Panthers.

Again, no Brady, but surely deserving of a higher draft slot.

Here’s one more draft note from personal experience. In 1985 the Steelers drafted Wisconsin defensive end Darryl Sims, the so-called “Sack Man,” in the first round looking to beef up the pass rush.

In the second round, the Steelers tabbed hulking Nebraska offensive tackle Mark Behning, nicknamed Fort Behning. Yes, the actual Fort Benning was spelled differently and its name since has been changed in an ode to Wokeism because Benning was a Confederate general.

Regardless, Behning the football player was huge and thought to be impregnable when it came to protecting quarterbacks, hence the nickname.

Throughout early training camp, Sims and Behning often squared off in live contact sessions, with one of the pair getting the best of the other on any given snap.

Media types thought the Steelers had landed two keepers.

Then the games began and neither draft pick was particularly good. Both were gone in a few seasons.

Sims is perhaps most famous for missing time due to infected fingernails, and saying his favorite color was plaid.

Before we leave, the Steelers drafted Washington offensive lineman Troy Fautanu in the first round this time. For their sake, let’s pray he’s neither Sims nor Behning.

Late night television host Jay Leno’s shows used to have a recurring feature called JayWalking in which he went out to public settings and asked common people what should be basic questions. Much too often they failed miserably with answers such as the largest country in South America is Africa.

Or the Panama Canal is in the United States, named for the guy named Panama who built it.

I vividly recall one episode from a college commencement service in which the recent degree recipients produced such bon mots as the supposed astronomy major who thought the Sun revolved around the Earth.

The show audience chortled throughout, secure in the knowledge that these imbeciles were exceptions and not the best and brightest among us.

I admit to laughing then and I shouldn’t have, because these functional illiterates represented an unfortunate trend and now are everywhere – arguably the majority.

Allow me to recount some examples.

While watching the Boston-Toronto Stanley Cup Playoff hockey game Wednesday night, I was struck that neither the play-by-play guy nor the stereotypical former player providing insight from the between the benches was proficient in basic math.

Said the the ex-player, noting that it was a physical game with the teams having 48 and 41 hits, respectively, at that point in the game, “The next hit will put them at “100 for the game.”

Because I’m wired the way I am, I immediately yelled to no one in particular that he was wrong. I rewound the broadcast to check myself. Yep. The next hit would be a combined 90, not 100.

It got worse. Shortly thereafter, a graphic appeared on the screen, recounting total hits for each of the previous two games, along with the current contest’s total.

The play-by-play guy chimed in that the teams had combined for 200 hits in less than three complete games.

The total actually was much closer to 300 – 288 or so as I recall. Technically he wasn’t wrong, just understating.

It reminded me of a former editor who said writers always should strive to avoid mistakes, big or small, in their reports lest they come off as idiots writing for the Village Weekly by those tuned in enough to recognize the errors.

Back then, credibility was important to us.

These days, being uninformed or just plain wrong is no problem and in extreme examples is viewed as some sort of badge of honor.

On zerohedge.com this morning I was treated to a video of some sheep-like Hamas supporters at a protest. Said “student” protest was at New York University (NYU).

One protester, a ring in her nose and hair hanging annoying over her right eye, said she came to support Palestine and didn’t actually know what NYU had done that they were protesting. She professed to be from Columbia (presumably the university not Colombia the country) and just came down to protest because word had gotten out.

She then asked her companion, resplendent in this outdoor setting wearing a COVID-style black mask, what they were protesting specifically regarding NYU.

Admitting to terminal cluelessness on the subject, the masked one said, “I wish I was more educated.”

Chimed in nose ring person: “I’m not, either.”

And therein lies the problem. Packs of people are eager to get out and protest without any knowledge of underlying issues. Too often these protests escalate into violence from similarly uninformed types.

I’m reminded of advice given freely by my late paternal grandfather, who told us to make sure the brain was in gear before putting the mouth in motion.

The Feds are coming for Papa Sheetz.

It’s not because our favorite convenience store chain screwed up Clueless Joe’s order when he stopped at a Pittsburgh area Sheetz outlet last week. But, judging from the way this regime weaponizes the justice and intelligence operations to pursue political foes, it would not surprise.

No, this federal witch-hunt is because Sheetz chooses not to hire criminals. Specifically, two members of the protected class – with criminal records presumably – screamed discrimination when they weren’t hired on to the Sheetz empire.

Blacks, mixed race individuals, and assorted Native Americans were excluded at rates of 13 percent and above due to criminal records according to the Feds. Whites with criminal records supposedly were weeded out at a rate of just under 8 percent of applicants.

Understand, Sheetz is not accused of going out of its way to exclude non-whites as employees. But the Feds are involved because the Sheetz methodology is seen as disproportionately ruling out non-whites even if the intent is not racial discrimination.

I know what you’re thinking, avoiding hiring people with criminal backgrounds doesn’t seem to be that bad a policy. If a disproportionately high percentage of non-white applicants have criminal records, perhaps that speaks to a societal problem.

Social Justice warriors would claim non-whites are arrested more often by prejudiced cops, prosecuted more strenuously by a biased legal system and generally given an unfair experience in life.

Or, maybe the enablers would concede that the crime rate is greater among non-whites, but decry socio-economic conditions that make these minorities desperate due to lack of opportunity and therefore driven to commit crimes.

Another factor, one you won’t hear mentioned in polite company, is how the family structure in the non-white community is in tatters due to an abundance of hit-and-run fathers, irresponsible mothers and, consequently, people who are not the parents raising children. Think aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc.

Regardless, the persecution of Sheetz for not hiring criminals is a ridiculous governmental over-reach straight out of Ayn Rand’s classic “Atlas Shrugged,” in which clueless governmental types instituted the Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog rule to eliminate competition and thereby penalized efficient businesses to keep the inefficient businesses operating.

It’s a lengthy read, but worth your time to experience firsthand how this book, released in 1957, so accurately predicts the absurdly dystopian status we have reached with governments doing their best to handcuff private industry and generally strip away individual rights and freedoms.

Rand even had ridiculous show trials in her book, along the lines of Donald Trump being persecuted for a “fraud” in which no one was harmed, or a hush money payoff (think Bill Clinton paying Paula Jones $850,000 to drop a sexual harassment lawsuit) in which the apparent problem is that Trump considered the payoff a business expense.

Sheetz officials reportedly have been trying to work with the feds FOR EIGHT YEARS to come up with an equitable solution to the matter of not hiring criminals.

If they’ve been watching Trump’s situation, they should know better than to expect a fair shake from the feds.

Expect the Sheetz chain eventually to bow to the unlimited resources to harass that is our federal government, kiss the ring, and admit to having been selfishly blind to the impact on the minority community of not hiring those with criminal records.

The situation was summed up nicely in a post from Elon Musk, himself once a fair-haired child among the Woke crowd who has become a persona non grata with the leftists and the federal government they control due to Musk becoming a proponent of free speech.

Before his – or your – free speech is cut off entirely, Musk got off this bon mot: “You know The Joker is running things when the law-abiding are being prosecuted by the government for not hiring criminals!”