Category Archives: Uncategorized

I got my first up-close-and-personal glimpse of Medicare fraud Monday, prompting an at times troubling effort to report same.

Perhaps this was my penance for having enjoyed an otherwise glorious day, beginning with eating a snoball (coconut, marshmallow, chocolate cake, cream filling treat) breakfast with granddaughter No. 3 and progressing through mowing the lawn (for the last time!) at my late mother’s house, then taking a 30-plus mile ride in the Mustang convertible (top-down).

Returning home from the drive, I discovered that the wife had brought in a pile of mail, including three Medicare claims summaries (NOT A BILL, NOT A BILL, NOT A BILL).

Two were legitimate, for actual medical treatment for me and my wife. The third was not.

The scam requested payment from Medicare for not one, but two urinary catheter insertions, allegedly performed at some facility in Alexandria, Kentucky.

Having had zero urinary catheter insertions in quite some time, and not having been to Kentucky for maybe 20 years, I was pretty sure this was a bogus billing.

Each was a $1,990 charge by the provider, winnowed down to Medicare paying $1,458.24 for each and me possibly being on the hook for $372 times two.

I would not actually have needed to have paid anything had this been legitimate since I have a Plan G supplemental policy and already had hit my Part B Medicare deductible.

But it raises the hackles on my neck that my name might be used in a scam to defraud not only Medicare, but my Highmark Medigap insurance provider.

The call to Medicare was the easy part, which I had not expected. The first man handled things quickly and as soon as I mentioned a catheter and this particular provider, he confirmed fraud, not some honest mistake in billing.

I had to hold to talk to another person to complete the report. This was a bit more cumbersome, including a wait on hold and a woman who seemed a bit overwhelmed by it all. But the report was made and it was time to get in touch with Highmark.

Funny thing about fraud reporting phone numbers, they tend to answer almost any time you call, as opposed to general customer service numbers.

To my surprise, the first number I called for Highmark answered, but put me in limbo, without any kind of verbal clues as to progress of things. After five minutes, I hung up and dialed a second number.

This call was answered in a relatively short time, but by someone whose attitude suggested she was confused and just plain doing me a favor.

Allow me to interpose that I am more well-versed than most on health insurance, having obtained a state license for same following retirement from newspapers, and also having used that license to work seasonally servicing both Medicare and Affordable Care Act plans.

I know the subject and I know how to treat people on the phone. The Highmark experience (she kept interjecting Gateway into the conversation) was not a prime example of phone demeanor.

She was abrasive, rude, and committed the classic sin of chastising the caller for interrupting her.

I was answering her question, but she felt I was talking over her. Allow me to assure you, people providing telephone support are taught NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER talk over the customer or accuse them of this offense.

I felt the need to tell this person that she was making it an unpleasant experience and since I’d clearly told her umpteen times I was a Highmark customer, quit asking me for a Gateway ID. I told her if I had the wrong number, please tell me.

No, she said, I had the right number. Apparently I just had the wrong person, as in someone having a bad day and eager to be a super spreader.

I was trying to save Highmark money, so you might think the response would have been higher on the gratitude scale.

Alas, I had to satisfy myself with having done the right thing. When we finally got our work together completed, I took my case number and instructions on what to do if no one had contacted me by Nov. 6, and returned to watching the Phillies-Diamondbacks NLCS Game 6.

It occurred to me that just maybe my last customer service contact was a Phillies fan, one doubly miffed at not being able to watch the game and also perhaps knowing that her Phillies were trailing late.

In view of recent events, Penn State should be announcing revised lyrics for the chorus to its traditional “Nittany Lion” song.

Here is the update: Hail to the Lion, his fans are blue,

Can’t beat the Buckeyes, and Wolverines, too.

Winning the Big Ten, is only a dream,

And all this makes the fans just truly want to scream!

Penn State played Ohio State yet again Saturday, with both teams highly regarded; at least going into the game they were highly regarded. Penn State lost again. If you are keeping score at home, that’s seven consecutive losses to the Buckeyes.

To be fair, once upon a time, coach James Franklin had a Penn State team beat Ohio State, making him 1-9 overall vs. the Columbus bullies.

This setback sank Franklin’s record to 2-12 on the road vs. Top 25 teams

Franklin’s Penn State teams do slightly better vs. Michigan at 3-6. But that’s nothing to brag about, either, when you want to portray your program as among the nation’s elite.

If I’m an Ohio State or Michigan fan, I’m setting up a GoFundMe account designed to keep Franklin coaching Penn State in perpetuity.

Yes, Franklin has already been gifted with a contract that grants him a king’s ransom annually for failing to do more than elevate Penn State’s football program into the head of the also-ran category in the Big Ten.

I guess when a school has had its reputation besmirched by a sexual misconduct scandal in the not-so-distant past, that’s good enough.

But, for fans who would desire a return to the days of competing for conference titles and even a national championship, it’s a bit short of the mark.

This was a game Penn State might have been expected to win, a sentiment expressed in this space recently. For once, the Ohio State offense was not being directed by a quarterback a few months away from advancing to running an NFL team.

This Buckeyes offense had a questionable line, and limited depth both at running back and wide receiver.

Ohio State has a typically competent defense, but it was going to need it based on its offensive unit.

Admittedly, Penn State’s unbeaten record prior to the game had been run up largely on a schedule populated by teams on par with Sisters of the Poor, or School for the Blind.

But Penn State had won the games. The defense had looked strong. The offense had looked capable of keeping up with a troubled Ohio State offense in terms of production.

No doubt, some Penn State fans will cry foul over a defensive holding call that wiped out a fumble return for a touchdown Saturday. It was a legitimate call, followed closely by yet another grab on an Ohio State receiver that was missed by the game officials.

Penn State’s defensive gameplan seemed to be to mug the Ohio State wide receivers and count on the zebras to ignore some calls. The defense might have done a bit better on Marvin Harrison, Jr., who dropped a few and was roughed up at times, but still managed 11 grabs for 162 yards and a touchdown.

On one play, a combo wheel route, Penn State completely lost track of Harrison.

Inexplicable? You bet. Similarly inexplicable is Franklin’s reputation as a top coach in view of his ability repeatedly to come up small in big games.

The talking heads on the TV postgame shows were roasting the Penn State gameplan for being short on imagination. Execution was lamentable, too, as evidenced by converting just 1 of 16 third-down plays into a first down.

There is a benefit to all this failure in big games. Judging by his already lofty salary, there would not be enough money in the world to pay Franklin were he able actually to beat Ohio State or Michigan. And so the Penn State bean counters no doubt are grateful for yet another egg laid on the day of a big game.

Hail to the Lion, his fans are blue.

It’s a 20 questions day. In our version, we aren’t asking questions trying to narrow the possibilities in order to identify a person, place or thing, but rather just to stimulate thought.

1. Did you notice how quick the usual media suspects were to jump all over Israel for allegedly blowing up the Gaza Strip hospital?

2. Did you then notice how slow these usual suspects were to correct that kneejerk reporting when evidence showed it was a misguided terrorist missile the inflicted the damage?

3. Is it just me, or is Zelenskyy looking a tad desperate trying to insinuate himself and Ukraine into the Israeli situation, the better to keep the tap open for U.S. funding?

4. If the U.S. consumer is as strong as the questionable governmental reporting shows, why are credit card balances and delinquent payments on debt obligations of all sort rising so quickly?

5. Have you noticed subtle panic, as evidenced by rising gold and silver prices and increasing interest rates on U.S. governmental debt?

6. Can Penn State finally beat Ohio State in a meaningful college football game Saturday?

7. If Penn State somehow gets it done against the Buckeyes, can you really expect a daily double of sorts with a win later in the season against Michigan, another conference rival that has had the number of the Nittany Lions?

8. Will the pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied The Capitol Wednesday be charged with insurrection, or is that charge only applied to conservative American protesters?

9. Would you be surprised to hear that a New York State lawmaker, a Democrat of course, wants background checks for prospective purchasers of — 3D printers?

10. Why do Major League umpires, including the supposed cream of the crop working the postseason, consider the strike zone as defined in the rulebook as merely a suggestion, subject to their whims and alterations?

11. Why doesn’t Chris Christie realize he’s a Democrat?

12. Even though it looks like Houston is clawing its way back in the ALCS with Texas, does anyone give Arizona a chance of doing something similar against Philadelphia in the NLCS?

13. Is it just me, or do there seem to be zero great teams in the NFL this year, just a small contingent of good teams and a lot of suspect challengers?

14. If, as reported, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is looking to ban menthol flavored cigarettes, can banning menthol cough drops be far behind?

15. What about Vicks VapoRub?

16. Why can’t Hillary Clinton just fade quietly into the background?

17. Would you believe the Biden-Harris campaign created an account on Trump’s Truth Social media platform and quickly had more followers (24,000) than the Trump campaign (21,000) has on the site?

18. Would you agree that statistic is largely insignificant since Trump’s personal account on Truth Social has something like 6.44 million followers?

19. Are you surprised to learn that the 10 most dangerous towns of 25,000 population or higher in the U.S., as compiled on separate and differing lists by MoneyGeek and Neighborhood Scout, all have Democratic mayors?

20. Is it wrong to suggest that, in view of the pathetic performance of Congress, due to failings of both major political parties, having no Speaker of the House and a consequent inability to get things done might be better for all of us?

It was Friday night at the Boulevard Grill, the first step of the two-day, 50^th anniversary reunion of the Johnstown High School Class of 1973, and a former classmate felt moved to make this observation: “I thought I’d see more canes.”

That is the crux of the 50^th reunion, in which some classmates you haven’t seen in a full 50 years have gone from young and vibrant, to old and considerably less vibrant. I will say that a small contingent have covered the intervening 5 decades with little in the way of physical decline. They look, even act, much like they did way back then.

Others, such as me, have gained another person in weight, and could be recognized by others only after a quick glance at the name tag and high school yearbook photo affixed to my chest.

I had not attended one of these class reunions, held every five years, for a couple of decades. Life and job duties had intruded.

The commitment to attend this year’s example was made two summers back, when one of the small group of dedicated classmates who labor to make these things happen, hit me up at a festival for a promise to bring myself and a friend of mine and fellow classmate to this 50^th anniversary shindig.

I told him then I would do my best and I ended up making it, along with my wife. The friend did not, having been rendered immobile by a stroke in the intervening months. I tried to convince his wife to urge him to come anyway, but the answer was a firm no.

On a brighter note, gold is the official gift for 50^th wedding anniversaries and I found it somehow a fitting omen that on Friday, in a potential nod to our golden reunion, gold soared $60 or so an ounce.

That this reunion opened on a Friday the 13^th didn’t impact the event adversely, either.

I scoured the Internet and found precious little analysis on the subject of high school reunions. But I had discussed the topic with many former classmates during this particular event.

It long has occurred to me that the early reunions are of the most interest. The five-year is a get-together after most who intended on going the college route, would have graduated. This was a chance to check up on their career progress; the same for those who bypassed college.

When the 10-year reunion rolls around, there have been plenty of marriages, children, even some broken marriages. This is a chance to compare notes with middle age looming.

The 15th-year reunions are more of this, with the notable sidelight that we are getting together having been out of the school system longer than we’d been in it (factoring in kindergarten, but not too many failing years).

In smaller school districts, kids are largely together in the same buildings their entire careers. Not so in the Greater Johnstown School District of our experience. There were scads of elementary schools and three junior highs for a time.

Some of our classmates knew each other for only two school years at the high school. But that didn’t dull their enthusiasm for the reunion.

Part of that Internet research produced the sort of conflicting analysis for which the digital repository is notable. Reunions either are, or are not, holding their popularity. They are, or aren’t, more popular with women.

But some seemed to agree that there is a cycle, with the early reunions being popular, as are the latter ones, such as the 50^th.

Let us face it, to borrow a line favored by the late Penn State coach Joe Paterno, When you reach a certain age, even buying green bananas is an act of faith, that faith being you still will be around to eat them when they ripen.

With the thought in the back of many heads that there might be few such reunion opportunities as these in the future, the ballroom of the Holiday Inn was packed Saturday for the more formal part of the celebration.

Many stories were told, pictures taken, and promises made not to be out of touch for as long moving forward.

Our class also will be looking to fold into the all-year school reunions becoming popular around these parts, as a way to bridge the five-year gaps.

These same dedicated types from our class still, however, plan to have a 55^th reunion, maybe even a 60^th.

I’m rooting for them and, by extension, for me.

As I told several people Saturday, I had high expectations for this event, and they were exceeded. I hope I’m around for the 55^th.

(This is a short piece I wrote for the program of the Johnstown High School Class of 1973’s 50-year reunion, held the past Friday and Saturday)

The mountain of our alma mater lyrics still casts its shadow, and the stream continues to meander by. But the majestic Johnstown High School building that spawned the Class of 1973 long ago had a losing date with the wrecking ball.

And yet, class members gather once again for a reunion, this our 50^th. Memories are made of sterner stuff than wrecking balls.

An abundance of analysis has been written about the reasons for the enduring recollections of one’s high school years, both pleasant and painful. Psychologists posit that our tendency to recall most vividly memories from ages 10 to 30 is due to a combination of genetic hardwiring of our brains and the social bubble of the high school years.

We were a transitional class for JHS, beginning the experiment to bring about half the 10^th graders to the high school, while leaving the other half at their respective junior high schools until Grade 11.

We also had many would-be members of our 1973 graduating class opt for Johnstown Vo-Tech instead.

All these years later, most of the schools we attended, from elementary onward, either no longer exist, or have been repurposed for other uses.

We can’t go back and visit our old schools, sit in the classrooms, gyms or auditoriums. Physical touchstones of our Greater Johnstown School District experience are gone, but oh, the memories..

Over the years since graduation, I’ve had more than one former teacher or school administrator tell me ours was the last great class of JHS. Is it self-serving to believe that? Yes. Is it true? Arguably so.

Ours was a class more than 500 strong. The class produced an abundance of academic achievers who would go on to successful lives. The scholastic quiz team made it to the semifinals of that competition, then taped during the week and televised Saturday nights on WJAC-TV.

Our athletic program was strong across the board, headlined by the boys basketball team that went undefeated in the regular season, won the War Memorial Tournament and the District 6-A championship – the last ironically at the expense of a Vo-Tech team starting five Johnstown players. For a time, the JHS team was ranked No. 1 in the state.

The JHS band was award-winning. Our theatrical people put on high-quality productions such as “The Skin Of Our Teeth” and “Fiddler On The Roof.”

To name individual names here is to make this recollection read like a phone book, and risk unfair omissions. Suffice it to say, our class was blessed with an overabundance of talent, on various fronts.

That’s not to say all was Camelot. We learned hard lessons of life when some classmates fell by the wayside, when the basketball team was eliminated short of a state title, when hopes and dreams in general could not all be achieved.

Our high school years occurred against a backdrop of economic decline in Johnstown, a result being that so many of us had to leave the area to pursue careers.

But many remained, and some of those who moved away will be back for a day or two, to relive high school and celebrate the ties that still bind five decades later.

To paraphrase the closing line from the movie “Stand By Me,” “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was (in high school). Jesus, does anyone?”

Perhaps you have noticed the leftist navel-gazers trying to steer conversation about Hamas terrorists into a debate on whether or not Israeli babies were decapitated.

It’s a quintessential example of the rhetorical essence of navel-gazing — obsessing over details at the expense of the big picture.

This sort of thinking explains why snowflakes on college campuses curl up in the fetal position sucking their thumbs should someone use the wrong pronoun, but they don’t give a whit about the real issues of the world.

Stolen elections. Porous borders. Crippling federal debt. Out of control crime. Outright fabrications designed to inflame racial tensions. Suspect politicians. All of these pale in comparison to the micro aggression of failure to observe preferred pronoun protocol.

The journalist who first reported the infant decapitations stood by her words Wednesday. Just yesterday, Bumbling Biden said in the public comments that there had been decapitations of babies and it was disgusting. These comments were walked back by his staff as soon as Biden had stumbled off for yet another nap.

But, in the final analysis, does it really matter? The babies were killed, by heathens hiding under the false flag of religious fervor. If the babies are dead, with heads still intact, they still are victims of abject slaughter.

Skeptics cry for photographic evidence. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not up to viewing shots of decapitated babies. I do believe the reporting of decapitations. This is, after all, a favored technique of Middle Eastern terrorists. Perhaps you recall the videotape terrorists provided when they beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.

There are many other examples since then that could be cited.

But I don’t need for there to have been decapitations to be disgusted and hopeful that the Israeli forces can wreak vengeance to Nth degree on those responsible for this attack on civilians. We can agree people died, I hope.

If that quest for vengeance leads to Iran, which most observers, other than our Iran-loving leadership, feel is a given, then so be it.

As written here yesterday, this Hamas attack is a litmus test for civility and humanity. The heartless, morally bankrupt types who back Hamas have identified themselves as being on the wrong side of the matter. The rest of us have the moral high ground.

It truly is, as White House mouthpiece Gay Paree noted earlier this week, that simple. There is no middle ground. You either see this for the wanton breach of common decency that it was, or you condemn yourself to having your opinions on critical issues never again being taken seriously.

The widespread and idiotic lack of understanding regarding the principle of free speech is on display in the wake of the Hamas terrorist operation in Israel.

There has been a rush among the usual leftist suspects, from Black Lives Matter to no fewer than 31 student organizations at Harvard, to back the terrorists and blame Israel. It’s akin to blaming a shooting victim for getting in the way of the bullet.

The Black Lives Matter stance is predictable from an organization that is largely discredited after some people took the time to see what they were doing with all the money being raised to fight racism. Hint: It wasn’t going to fighting racism, but instead to make sure the BLM hierarchy lived like royalty in houses few of us could afford.

You might expect better from the ostensibly well-off, privileged students at Harvard. And this would indicate that you’ve been ignoring what has been going on at elite campuses, and some not-so-elite campuses, in terms of hard-left teachings and suppression of conservative thought. Freedom of speech on college campuses only applies if you are somewhere to the left of Chairman Mao on the political spectrum.

So it is with social media, which has taken it upon itself to protect the sheep from such heresy as suggesting COVID vaccinations were not all they were purported to be, or that Hunter Biden’s laptop was, indeed, Hunter Biden’s laptop, not some Russian disinformation.

But these same self-righteous censors at Facebook and its ilk have no problem providing a platform for Hamas supporters in the wake of the attack on Israel, terrorism that included beheading babies, raping and killing women, and even shooting dogs just for sport.

On a Middle East Eye page on Facebook, reports of Israel committing “genocide” on Palestinians go unchallenged. We are ordered to empathize with Palestinians suffering at the hands of Israeli “Nazis.”

Palestinians are suffering, even being killed and this is bad. Yet one poster proudly proclaims Muslims welcome death for the cause.

Which is it? Can’t have it both ways.

We have a similar problem in our neighborhood, under the guise of freedom of speech, with an individual who mistakes the First Amendment protections for carte blanche to be a cancer on society.

It is humorous that some are wanting Harvard to provide a list of names for the students belonging to these 31 organizations supporting Hamas vs. Israel, that they might know them and, perhaps, avoid offering them well-paying jobs.

This already has happened to one twit, the head of another university’s school of law bar association, who rushed to email fellow students regarding support of Hamas and to hammer Israel, calling the terrorism committed against Israelis “necessary.”

The Chicago law firm that had offered this transgender it a job, has withdrawn the offer.

Let the whining begin.

Here is what too many free-speech crazies miss. There are limits on what you can say, to whom you can say it, and when you can say it.

Moreover, while you have general freedom of speech, you do not have freedom from consequences of what you say.

The leftists love it when some right-wing type gets pilloried for an insensitive public remark, perhaps losing the current job and hopes of future employment. But when the roles are reversed, they scream like children with wet diapers.

Hypocrite and liberal are synonymous.

There is in this country, in this world, an attempt to blur the lines between right and wrong, or, even worse, to reverse the roles.

If you can view evidence of what was done in Israel by terrorists and choose to make a public spectacle of yourself advocating for the terrorists, you are a sick, demented person.

You have lost your moral compass. You are a waste of air. It is that simple and, eventually, it’s going to come down on a worldwide basis to a battle for supremacy between those on the right side of history, and those who would pander to evil.

Answer Man returned from a hike with the wife and grandkids Sunday afternoon to discover that the Steelers had lived up to his faith in them by winning vs. Baltimore.

To quote from a post of last week, ahead of the game, “I would not be surprised to see a competitive game, and even a surprise Steelers win . . . “

How does Answer Man do this? Easy. In sports, investments, elections and pop culture, it is wise to lean against the prevailing sentiment.

After the Steelers were humbled in week one by still-unbeaten San Francisco, there was despair across the Black and Gold Kingdom. Answer Man suggested then that it was too early to give up on the season, based on a marshmallow soft remaining schedule and the Steelers penchant for hanging tough. Nine or ten wins seemed to be within reach. They still are.

Things seemed to be looking up for a few weeks, until another blowout loss the previous weekend, this to the Houston Texans, currently 2-3.

Again, faithful Steelers fans were looking for high objects from which to jump. They wanted to take offensive coordinator Matt Canada with them.

There was a touching scene from an early part of the game Sunday that I did watch, with the network cutting away to commercial, but first showing a fan clad in Steelers garb shouting at the camera and, presumably, Canada or quarterback Kenny Pickett, what lip readers would recognize as “You suck!”

Perhaps both do. But, what Steelers fans seem to miss is that the entire NFL has a lot of teams that suck on various levels. Even the mighty unbeaten Philadelphia Eagles have been extended numerous times.

Kansas City already has one loss and easily could have suffered another in that Taylor Swift special on a recent Monday.

The Buffalo Bills? Not too impressive and already suffering from many key injuries. The list goes on, in both conferences. How ’bout them Cowboys! There are maybe three teams in the NFL hierarchy – San Francisco, Philadelphia and Kansas City – and a lot of members of the hoi polloi.

Specifically, as mentioned here many times, Baltimore is not a particularly good team, depleted as the Ravens are by injuries and hamstrung by a quarterback who has a tendency to come up small in big moments. Witness his play just this past Sunday.

Even when they win, the Ravens’ style tends to keep the losers close, where they are one big play away from threatening to win.

The Steelers obviously are a troubled team. They have been outscored by 31 points over five games, the same points deficit as the last place Cincinnati Bengals. Don’t bother to book Super Bowl trips, but the Steelers could slip into the playoffs as either a wild-card team, or the winner of a weak AFC North Division.

Now a quick dip into the mailbag, the one filled with questions Answer Man would ask himself.

Q: Did Major League Baseball make a mistake expanding the playoffs further and thereby cheapening the meaning of the longest regular season, by far, in sports? Sign me, Abner Doubleday from Dummer, New Hampshire.

A: Yo, Abner, yes, yes and yes. As of this writing (early afternoon Monday) all three teams that won 100 or more games this season trail in their ongoing series. The Baltimore Orioles (101-61 in the regular season) are down 2-0 (losing twice at home!) to the Texas Rangers (90-72). Atlanta (104-58) is down 1-0 to Philadelphia (90-72) and the LA Dodgers (100-62) are down 1-0 to Arizona (84-78). If you’re going to play a 162-game regular season, don’t crowd the playoff field with second-chance teams. A solution would be to cancel the regular season and just have every team make the playoffs. Pirates fans would rejoice.

Q: Now that Notre Dame has gotten on with its annual rite of proving it no longer deserves the lofty rankings it is gifted as a once-elite college program, how do you rate the college scene? Sign me, Knute Saban from Rockne, Texas.

A: Well, Knute, after seeing what Louisville did to Notre Dame Saturday, you’ve got to wonder if Ohio State coach Ryan Day is still so proud of his team’s narrow escape vs. the Fighting Irish a week earlier.

My take on college football: A wise man would expect the SEC once again to crown a national champion. The top Pac-12 teams continue to be questionable, as evidenced by USC needing multiple overtimes to subdue a subpar Arizona team. The Big Ten will be represented in the playoffs, but fail to close the deal, as usual. The ACC top dogs don’t have what it takes to dominate the college football kennel. As for the Big 12, Oklahoma benefitted from Texas choking yet again. But, come playoff time, there’s a reason the Sooners are known as Choke-la-homa.

Q: Can Penn State win the Big Ten this year? Sign me, Jo P. Turno, from Brooklyn, New York.

A: So, Jo, the simple answer is things don’t look good for Penn State prevailing. After an official bye last weekend, and the upcoming bye equivalent of playing UMass, Penn State must prove itself by beating Ohio State (Oct. 21) and Michigan (Nov. 11), either of which has proven elusive to say the least for the current coach. Throw in that the week before that Michigan game Penn State will need to avoid overlooking a game vs. Maryland. A betting man goes against Penn State to win the conference.

When word reached me yesterday of the atrocities in Israel, I’d just finished watching Texas blow another big college football game, this with Oklahoma.

The fact that my regular programming had not been interrupted by breathless reporting on the Israel terrorism, as the networks love to do with any update on the persecution of Donald Trump, speaks volumes about where media sentiments sit on such things.

This appeared to be an act committed by their beloved Hamas terrorists, so nothing to see here. Just aggrieved people venting. I think of the classic CNN live shot labeled “mostly peaceful protests” in these United States against a background of burning vehicles and buildings

Shortly after reading the Israel news online, I responded to an email from a cousin on another matter. In that reply, I wondered rhetorically how many leftists in Israel pushing peace and compassion for terrorists would have found themselves harmed by this.

It’s a growing trend here, leftists of all stripes being killed by the sort of criminals they love to put back into public circulation. From the woman tech executive murdered in Baltimore, allegedly by a convicted sex offender also being sought on other felony charges even before this murder, to the “citizen journalist” in Philadelphia alleged to have been shot and killed by some societal outlier he was “helping,” it all should be getting a little too real for the soft-on-crime crowd.

There used to be quip, during a previous heyday of street violence in New York City, that a conservative was a liberal who had been mugged on the subway. These days, the survivors of expended liberals insist the victims of these crimes would not want their deaths to be used as motivation to crack down on street crime.

It’s easy for the survivors to say this. The people they claim to speak for no longer have a voice.

An update today regarding Israel suggested the attack got started when terrorists, using motorized hang gliders, drifted over and landed amidst a bunch of attendees at a “rave,” a concert being held near the Gaza border pushing peace.

Unfortunately, some of these ravers, including what is reported to be some Americans, got a first-hand look at the actions of the cold-blooded murders they support.

No doubt those who would presume to speak for the dead in this will assure us it all would not have changed their minds regarding pandering to criminals and terrorists.

I call BS on that.

What should interest us, aside from the brutal assault on other humans by those to whom life is cheap, is that it could happen here.

Clueless Joe Biden’s open-border policies, and the hasty dispersion of illegals throughout the U.S., leaves us vulnerable to terrorism.

While the FBI plans to harass so-called “MAGA extremists” ahead of the 2024 elections, the agency no doubt is asleep at the switch when it comes to identifying the terrorists entering this country amid the invasion of illegals.

When these terrorists act – and it will happen – there will be rush to deny culpability from Biden and his regime. Our intelligence agencies –the ultimate oxymoron – will ask plaintively, How could we have been expected to know? We were too busy busting grannies who once flew a Trump flag in their front yard.

There have been governmental pledges to support Israel, which ring hollow considering how much money and weaponry already have been expended to prop up Zelenskyy’s scandalized Ukraine regime.

Let us hope that Israel goes scorched earth on the terrorists, killing any and all with a connection to Hamas.

If that should extend to sanctioning some within our borders, well, stuff happens. The borders have been declared wide-open, so why should that not extend to some Mossad operatives?

It is Friday, a good time to stop and reflect on the week that was in sports.

The Steelers began the week laying an egg vs. the Houston Texans and getting quarterback Kenny Pickett injured in the process. Next up are the Baltimore Ravens, AFC North Division leaders and hated rivals.

Pickett insists he will play in this game. But Matt Canada still will be the Steelers’ offensive coordinator, at least at the point of this writing.

The notoriously bipolar Steelers fans are in a lather, about where they were after the season opener, a blowout loss to San Francisco, when we counseled them to hang in there for a bit. The Steelers winning two of their next three games followed.

Now, with most conceding another loss Sunday, it’s time to consider the Ravens have injury problems, are led by a mistake-prone quarterback and tend to play close, low-scoring games with the Steelers.

I would not be stunned to see a competitive game, and even a surprise Steelers win vs. Baltimore. Recall, I told you the Steelers are the sporting world’s Rasputins. You need to beat them, poison them, drown them, shoot them and maybe hang them before they go away.

On the other end of the spectrum are the Pirates, who more often just go quietly into the night. But it is Pirates management that this week boasted about yet another losing season, and having closed the gap on playoff teams.

If you believe this, you also believe the check is in the mail and someone will respect you in the morning.

But, let’s say the Pirates somehow slip into the 2024 MLB playoffs as a wild-card team or weak division winner.

Based on what happened this year, that won’t mean much.

The wild-card round of baseball’s playoffs were a tale of uncompetitive, boring baseball.

All four of the best-of-3 series were won 2-0. The winning teams in game ones of the respective series outscored the losers, 17-5. In game twos it was worse, 21-4.

Your 2023 playoff field included the Miami Marlins. No team in the history of MLB playoffs had entered the postseason with a worse negative run differential – having surrendered more runs than the team scored. And Miami was done in two games. Yay!

What about Pitt football? It speaks volumes that the former starting quarterback, who was upset at fans booing his ineptitude, has switched positions — to tight end!

On the lighter side, the Swimming World Cup, currently being held in Berlin, created a third category, Open, to deal with trans men dominating women. So, they have men’s, women’s, and open competition.

The number of entries in the Open class? ZERO!

This tells you much about the motives of transgender former men in sports. Along that line, how come we do not see transgender former women wanting to go out and compete with men?

Exactly.