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For those who would decry the alleged lack of modern day miracles, let us reconsider the tale of the Biblical strongman Samson, who it is written used the jawbone of an ass to slay 1,000 Philistines.

The modern day equivalent is how a variety of asses, with their jawbones still attached to the host creatures, can slay the truth, investors, the economy, justice and world peace while wielding said jawbones to spread asinine information around Johnstown, not to mention Pennsylvania, the United States and the world.

The body count for all these offenses would be measured in millions if not billions, not a mere 1,000. Now, that is miraculous.

Begin with our Johnstown area, a business backwater that hasn’t been roaring economically since the steel mills and coal mines were rendered virtually insignificant by environmental concerns and cheaper producers elsewhere.

Area jawbones, including those of Myopia 2025 members and their surrogates, have a two-pronged answer – tourism and immigrants.

No, the immigrants are not the tourists. There was a recent media attempt to paint the immigrant argument in a positive light by noting successful immigrants here in the health field.

Now, anyone who has gone to Johnstown’s major hospital in the past several decades likely has dealt with immigrant health professionals. It’s as evident as the nose on the face of a pre-rhinoplasty patient that Johnstown long has been dipping into the immigrant pool to fill health-care needs.

The hope of the jawboners is that you will read of these relatively few examples and make the mistake of extrapolating from this that all immigrants to the area will be productive professionals.

It’s a statistical trick on par with things such as average income. Take one millionaire and nine other individuals making $0 per year and the average income for these 10 people is $100,000 a year. Technically correct, but is it a representative number?

Myopia 2025 types just want to get the immigrants here – and presumably living in their Section 8 or other public housing units – and worry about jawboning about positive impact later, sort of like the ongoing Philadelphia invasion.

How many Philly types now living here are doctors or nurses? Just asking.

As far as tourism being our economic salvation in Johnstown, understand that tourism jobs tend to be low-paying, seasonal and/or part-time.

Don’t take my word for it. Perhaps you’ve heard that tourism is a huge industry in Florida, which, according to a 2019 study by Florida State University, has an $86 billion annual impact in the state and supports 1.5 million jobs.

Said study, admittedly a few years old but still relevant, flags tourism (nationally not just in Florida) as the absolute worst paying labor sector.

Around our state, there is an ongoing effort to kill Marcellus Shale as an economic engine, while funneling ever greater amounts of taxpayer money into Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. No doubt they are pitching tourism as a viable job creator, too.

On a national level, daily, it seems, one Federal Reserve jawboner or another is out with scare stories of ever higher interest rates, hammering investors in stocks, bonds and commodities. Talk about equal opportunity.

Recent leaks have revealed that our national intelligence types are spying on friends and foes alike, to the detriment of harmony and peaceful coexistence. Again, talk about equal opportunity.

They now wag their jawbones to note how harmful that this reality has become public, not to apologize for it. How instructive.

Gaslighting, the proven psychological ploy of sowing confusion and self-doubt, is being practiced locally, nationally and internationally. From Johnstown immigration and tourism, to throwing money at a corrupt Ukrainian regime, facts can’t be allowed to get in the way of a good psy-op.

It takes only modest effort to see through the manipulation of the truth. The next step is to use your jawbones to fight back against the asses.

The NHL Stanley Cup playoffs start today, lacking your Pittsburgh Penguins after a 16-year run of appearances, and thoughts turn to the future.

If you were paying close attention, the Penguins have been leaking oil in terms of being a contender for several years. Yes, they had been able to keep that playoff appearance streak intact, but they also had lost in the first round of the postseason the past four years.

Those three Stanley Cup wins, in 2009, 2016 and 2017, are fleeting memories. In some ways, it is better that the Penguins whiffed on the playoffs entirely this season, if only to bring into focus this is a roster in need of a shakeup if there is to be another Cup run anytime soon.

There are some glaring parallels to the Steelers, who have missed the playoffs three of the past five seasons and haven’t won a playoff game since the 2016 campaign.

Further back in Steelers history, those great rosters of the 1970s were kept intact too long in the search for one for the thumb, as in Super Bowl rings.

Only after the roster was completely reshaped and some rough seasons had transpired, did the Steelers ever return to Super Bowls.

This Penguins team was shockingly streaky, alternating stretches of good hockey with runs of putrid play. It is somehow appropriate that the playoff absence was all but locked in when the Penguins suffered an explicable loss to a struggling, bad Chicago team, a home game for the Penguins that was played with all the chips on the table.

The season-ending loss to another bad team, Columbus, was a mere exclamation point.

The Penguins are top-heavy, with the stars producing and precious few others sharing the load. Defensively, the Penguins are sloppy. Teams legitimately contending for the Stanley Cup have lots of quality depth and consistent defense.

Although the front office members have been scapegoated and fired, there is no simple solution for the Penguins. For a model of how long it can take, Penguins fans can look at the Detroit Red Wings. The Red Wings were a playoff rival of the Penguins when they played in back-to-back Cup Finals in 2008 and 2009, with Detroit winning the first and the Penguins, the second.

Those Red Wings teams were late in a run of 25 consecutive playoff appearances during which time they won the Cup four times.

Their playoff run ended with an appearance following the 2015-16 season and the Red Wings now have missed the playoff six consecutive seasons.

The Detroit franchise flirted with wild-card contention for a time this season, but lost some key games and management was a seller at trade deadline time, realizing the team wasn’t really that close.

Penguins fans would do well to contemplate the possibility that this playoff miss might be more than a one-season stay in purgatory.

There is news of social breakdown from around the United States and the world, so why should my ‘Hood be any different? Quick answer, it isn’t.

Let’s start with bad doings elsewhere. Today I read that hippy-dippy Whole Foods is closing its flagship San Francisco store due to street crime and drug issues making it unsafe for workers. Repeat after me: Defund the police!

This is in San Francisco, which has had several prominent types attacked or murdered in recent months, including the hammer attack on Mr. Nancy Pelosi last October.

Other stores are fleeing Woke cities, and their defund-the-police policies, a trend amplified by those cities decriminalizing things such as shoplifting and drug use, which tend to affect negatively stores trying to turn a profit there.

Move across the country to Baltimore, where chaos reigned in the city’s showplace Inner Harbor area with shooting and fighting over the weekend. The mayor will institute a curfew. Sure, that will fix things.

Miami Beach was a war zone during spring break

Los Angeles finally got around to ending the COVID “crisis” and replaced it by declaring a homeless crisis.

In France, workers are in the streets protesting increased age to collect pensions even as their leader Macron is too busy kissing up to the Chinese to notice.

Back in the USA, news comes that our soiled FBI still is looking to paint with a criminal brush anyone on the political right, sentencing them to watchlists for using words such as “based,” “Chad,” or “Stacy.” These conservatives ought to just begin stealing up to $1,000 a shopping trip in California because that’s no problem.

Don’t you feel safer now?

My ‘Hood had been relatively quiet until a couple of weeks back when guys in windbreakers and, eventually, the police showed up on the street.

The wife’s phone rang then and since, seeking details because she is an oft-time listener of the police scanner. Alas, not this time.

In intervening days, speculation and rumors flew. Confirmation of sorts came via social media. While doing my routine searching for cars I came across a 47-minute video posted by some people who dedicate their lives to trying to ferret out underage sex talk, or worse, on the internet and, to use their words “hold accountable” those adults participating. They were the guys in the windbreakers

My front porch, brightly illuminated as it is nightly, can be seen in the background of the video as they shot their video from an upstreet angle. According to the video, these people had 75 pages or so of interaction via computer between this middle-aged guy, married and father of two, and a supposed girl who identified herself as being 15 years of age despite a profile listing her as 18.

It was painful to watch the video, especially when the guy’s wife came home.

Was there a crime here? Sounds like it.

Not that it matters, but this is the home of a government employee and high-profile supporter of Democrats. The yard and/or house, for months if not years, sported Biden and Fetterman campaign signs along with Black Lives Matter and various rainbow gender commentary.

All seem to be gone now

Since this happened, I’ve heard of an incident on the street alleging that a visitor had, while parking, backed into someone’s car repeatedly. This act supposedly was witnessed by someone in the family of the car owner, but denied by people in the parking car and by a third-party witness.

Discussion ensued.

These are the highlights (lowlights?) although the usual symphony of loud vehicle exhausts, loud home and vehicle stereos and barking dogs has been a consistent backdrop.

This is the sort of thing I had hoped to escape by moving to this small borough.

I have experience with Johnstown neighborhoods, both seemingly idyllic and noticeably checkered. My early years were spent in Oakland. Since then I’d lived in Walnut Grove, Hornerstown and Oakhurst before landing in Southmont.

Hopefully, things will calm down to the sort of neighborhood we had when I first moved here 30-plus years back. But, given societal trends, I’m not optimistic.

You could have knocked me over with a sledgehammer when I read that the Cambria County Republican Party had ended a years-long practice of not endorsing primary candidates and chose to pick two candidates not named John DeBartola or Joseph Taranto to push for county commissioner.

Seriously. This was as stunning as the sun rising each morning and setting each evening, the ongoing veils of secrecy that cloak the behind-the-scenes dealings of Johnstown power brokers, as well as the certainty of death and taxes.

I jest, of course. Going against populists is nothing new for the Republican establishment.

Recall how hard they worked to make sure Donald Trump did not secure the nomination for president in 2016. And, when he did, the party didn’t go full-on to support him. He wasn’t “electable” they said.

Trump won despite that. I stand by my statement at the time that nonpartisan historians will record it as the greatest triumph in American politics because Trump not only had to beat the opposition Democrats to prevail, he also had to overcome his own party, the Republicans.

I also stand by my assessment, made shortly after the Trump win, that he would not win again. The Democrats got caught with their pants down – figuratively this time – presuming Hillary’s coronation was a done deal. They didn’t pull out all their “vote enhancement” tricks and Hillary suffered a defeat she still will not accept.

Of course that’s fine because Hillary is a leftist Democrat and the likes of her and serial Georgia loser Stacey Abrams can deny the legitimacy of elections until they grow hoarse – sadly they never seem to lose their screechy voices – and there are no repercussions for their denials.

But give Democrats credit, they didn’t repeat their Hillary error and were able to drag comatose Clueless Joe Biden over the finish line to alleged victory. They did this by using tried and true devices like scanning cases full of ballots after observers had been sent home, harvesting ballots from the citizenry (some dead and some illegal aliens) and generally making sure their governmental agents at the state level kept all their machinations supposedly within the bounds of legality.

We are to believe that Biden, with all the charisma and cognitive function of a cucumber, garnered the most votes in U.S. history.

Yeah, sure.

The Republican Party also gave us Dr. Oz as a Senate candidate, who managed to lose to another vegetable, this one named John Fetterman.

It was Biden redux. Fetterman’s claim to fame was being mayor of a community as crime-ridden and economically downtrodden as Johnstown. He ascended to the role of Lieutenant Governor, where he did a good job of looking homeless in shorts and a hooded sweatshirt.

With a wife who is a former illegal immigrant, Fetterman was a leftist’s wet dream candidate.

Just to add to it all, he suffered a stroke during the campaign and went into a Biden-like bunker. When he emerged, he gave a ridiculous performance in the only debate, contradicting his past statements on such things as fracking and generally looking like he was lost.

If the Republicans had put up a legitimate candidate instead of carpetbagging Dr. Oz, it should have been a win.

Instead, Fetterman “won” the election and since then has been checked into the hospital for issues both physical and mental.

Way to go, Republican Party.

We can’t have people like DeBartola and Taranto, a couple of rabble-rousers who expose dirty dealing, refuse to kiss the butts of the elites and generally exhibit a strong ethical compass, running for county commissioner with the Republican blessing. Not electable, eh?

If there is any electoral justice, DeBartola and Taranto will pull a Trump, defying the preferences of their party and win not only in the primary, but also the general election.

We can dream, can’t we?

There is a perhaps apocryphal story about a visitor to New York City admiring the yachts of the all the brokers and bankers and naively inquiring, “Where are all the customers’ yachts?”

A variation of this is the gambler in Las Vegas taking in the splendor and being reminded that the casinos weren’t built on allowing gamblers to win.

Always in life you are playing against a “house” so to speak. Sometimes it’s readily admitted and often it is not.

In Johnstown, the “house” is all the governmental and quasi-governmental agencies who trample on the right to know of the citizenry.

Nationally, it’s entrenched left wing bureaucrats, judges and various members of misnamed “justice” departments who make it their life’s work to persecute conservatives

In investing, you are up against a “house” of people who have access to better information than you, get better deals than you due to the size of their accounts, and the odd example of outright fraud, witness recent cryptocurrency problems.

The inspiration for today’s post was a segment on CNBC’s Fast Money show, noting (in more like Slow Money fashion) recent price action in gold and silver.

In case you’ve not been keeping tabs, gold as I write this trades at $2,020 an ounce on the spot market, within spitting distance of an all-time high after rising sharply in recent weeks.

Silver trades at $24.90 an ounce, also up big in terms of percentages in recent weeks, but still under one-half of its all-time high price.

The host, supposedly a brilliant sort who too often comes off as a ditz, was playing the ditz role on this topic. Unfortunately, there are regular panel members who mirror her.

An example from today: Two distaff members of the four-person panel were asked to opine on gold in view of this run to higher prices. Both are money managers. Both displayed a facial expression as if they’d just stepped in some dog residue deposited on the sidewalk.

Ooooh! All right, they didn’t say ooooh. They did point out that they like investments with cash flow, and they never understood gold. Yet one said she owns bitcoin. No cash flow there. Not even a there, there.

As one noted commodity analyst used to say, he likes things that hurt if you drop them on your foot, like a bar of gold. A bitcoin is just a few electrons in the ether. They use a coin-like object with a B and lines through it as in a dollar sign to represent Bitcoin, but there is no physical bitcoin, only a computer entry.

A third panel member, a tool who doesn’t like anything except his loser picks, believes gold has gone too far, too fast and should be avoided.

And then there was the fourth panelist, Guy Adami (the only original panelist left). He’s been pushing gold as an investment to counteract governmental economic idiocy for some time.

Adami still likes gold at this elevated price, and its poor cousin, silver.

Thank God for the guest analyst in this segment, Carter Worth, a genius in the use of price charts to divine trend, what is called technical analysis.

Worth came on and classified the investing world into three types of people, those who never would own gold, those who always own lots of gold, and those who sometimes partake to catch rallies.

The thing about Worth is, unlike most liberals, progressives and general climate loonies, Worth brings evidence to back up his assertions. My favorite from this visit was him illustrating via charts that since 1996, a long time in the world of investing, gold has equaled the return of investing in the S&P 500 stocks. That’s including re-investing stock dividends – take that, cash flow wench!

Said wench then was called upon to comment and she tried to be cute, indicating this would make the gold bugs sad because they’d only met stock returns.

But Worth came back that he’d think people who spend their lives analyzing stocks and pitching them to clients of their firms, might be sad that they couldn’t beat simply buying gold.

It was also noted during this show that central banks around the world are buying gold to hedge their moronic policies that have created entrenched inflation and economic malaise. They aren’t concerned about cash flow, but more about having money that isn’t dependent on the promise of others, such as a bank to cover your deposits.

Here’s why most investment gurus – the house – don’t push gold. It’s one decision. Buy it and watch the price appreciate long-term.

Much better to generate commissions buying, selling, re-buying, re-selling stocks, or by selling subscriptions to newsletters pitching stocks.

And when you compare gold to the return of a stock index, that neatly ignores that the stocks in those indexes change. When a company goes bankrupt, it is replaced by another for index purposes. But, if you’d bought that bankrupt stock, you don’t get the replacement for free.

The bottom line to all this is we live in troubled times, both socially and economically. Having gold and silver in your possession will help get you through those times.

But remember the third precious metal – lead – in order to protect your gold and silver.

There is no better microcosm of American society than Facebook marketplace, which includes a select group of good people and a lot of not-so-good types.

Careful readers will recall I do not have a Facebook account, so what gives? Answer: I use my son’s account to search for, and attempt to buy cars on Facebook marketplace. This identity contradiction is communicated to all sellers.

I’m not dealing, flipping, or otherwise trying to make money with this pursuit. I simply acquire vehicles for personal use, to date that being a pair of Mustangs as hobby cars and my wife’s daily driver. I also located an SUV that my son ended up buying on marketplace. If he hadn’t wanted it, I’d have bought it.

This used to be the sort of thing one could do on Craigslist, although that site now has been overrun with scammers and morons. Facebook marketplace is headed in that direction, unfortunately.

The Facebook marketplace experience reminds me of the old saw about fairy tale princesses seeking princes – you’ve got to kiss a lot of toads.

The best deals on cars go quickly, so if you don’t make it a habit to scan the offerings many times a day and message these sellers quickly to get in line, so to speak, you are hardpressed to score a deal.

A case in point was my first purchase, a 2005 Mustang convertible. I’d done a scan or two on a Sunday and had moved on to watching some Fox animation television. My son called to note a recent post, just after my last search.

I immediately logged in, contacted the woman and got in line ahead of what she and her husband estimated to be 50 or more respondents.

Arrangements were made to check out the car, which was advertised at a very low 48,000 miles. When I arrived I was told that mileage figure had been a mistake. Oh, oh. But, wait, it was lower, 41,800. After a test drive, I gave a down payment and ended up purchasing the car.

Just yesterday the convertible was freed from its winter hibernation and taken for several rides, including one with two granddaughters along.

As an editorial aside, convertibles are the next best thing to riding motorcycles, which I used to do, but with considerably less risk.

The people I dealt with, in the Richland area, regarding this car were excellent.

The guy I bought my 2004 Mustang GT from in Monroeville was a bit more difficult, but only because of his schedule. He, too, was a good guy.

And my wife’s car, a 2004 Pontiac Grand Prix GT scored with 14,000 miles was another pleasant experience, this with a woman living near Raystown Lake.

Of late, my tastes have turned to acquiring a C4 Corvette, a generation of the plastic fantastic sports car that ran from 1984 through 1996.

Two recent experiences summarize the frustration. One Corvette, ostensibly posted by a woman, had no inspection sticker. But she insisted none was needed to make it legal for the road due to it having classic registration.

Whether this was a scam, a dense seller, or both, is unclear. What is clear is only antique registrations do not require annual safety inspection. After several attempts to clarify this with the woman, whose typical response was something like “I’ve posted more pictures,” I gave up.

The car also has had its status yoyo back and forth between sold and available, another warning flag.

Moving on, I tried to set up a meeting with a guy selling a Corvette with a listing in Cranberry Township, north of Pittsburgh.

It was like dealing with the CIA. Responses were vague and brief. Trying to get a phone number (I provided mine several times) an address, or a time for a proposed Sunday meeting, went unanswered.

When I finally gave up and told the guy as much, the messaging went downhill quickly. He was busy, he said, a familiar lament for him and others. So, why list a car for sale if you can’t give the process any attention?

And this guy, so busy that a simple message could not be written, now had ample time to respond almost immediately to my messages because I’d hit a nerve.

He was losing the message battle, so he told me to Fu (space) xx (I substituted x’s for his letters) off. You get the message. I noted his quick descent in tone and he was gone. Perhaps he has blocked me (my son). I can only wish.

Be warned, this is the sort of stuff one finds on Facebook marketplace. Variations are the person posting an ad with something along the line that they are “in no hurry to sell, but just seeing what’s out there.” or people who know the value of their item (usually they really don’t) and won’t accept a penny less.

There are posts and pictures that don’t agree (listing the car as one model year when the images clearly are another year), or listings claiming perfect condition, then listing seven or eight items that need addressed.

My search continues for a C4 Corvette, but I’m thinking I will need to content myself with enjoying my Mustangs this summer, if only to avoid the source of frustration that the Facebook marketplace has become.

Donald Trump reportedly has been indicted by a grand jury convened to explore absurd overreach by a George Soros puppet district attorney in Manhattan, and outrage is being expressed by the political right.

Duly noted, but it shouldn’t be surprising. This is merely more of the same.

There is an ongoing, curious contradiction among far left types, who want to allow shoplifters to run rampant in California (as long as they keep their take under $950 per trip it’s no big deal), yet want to throw conservatives into prison for jaywalking.

The left wants to defund police, but spare no expense manipulating the legal system to persecute conservatives.

The left sees no problem with the FBI fabricating evidence, altering interview reports and generally acting like the stereotypical secret police of tyrannical regimes, but demands it cannot be questioned for overstepping both the letter and spirit of laws because they are “protecting Democracy.”

If this is Democracy, give me Putin.

Meanwhile, nary a Biden needs fear a date with justice for their many alleged wrongdoings.

I’m not sure I buy the over-the-top proclamations that this political prosecution of Trump guarantees his nomination and strengthens his candidacy to return as president.

What I do buy is it dramatically deepens the existing political chasm in this country, heading us yet further down the path to what the economic types who debate hard vs. soft landings would call a hard split.

The City of Johnstown and our County of Cambria are ongoing evidence that long-term leftist control does not produce affluence or fairness.

Our nation is similarly rotten to the core with entrenched leftists in bureaucracy, “justice” departments and other aspects of the federal government, no matter what political party occupies the Oval Office or holds the majority in the branches of Congress.

The oft-noted weaponization of our intelligence agencies, law enforcement, courts and regulatory operations for political gain, is evidence the ship of equality long since has sailed.

Trump’s reported indictment is but the latest example.

I have read opinions by legal experts, including nonpartisan ones, who see the Trump “crime” as deeply troubling, a modern day example of the quote attributed to former Joseph Stalin head of secret police: “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”

It’s pretty easy to charge and convict people when the statutes can be manipulated, evidence can be fabricated and politically motivated juries and judges can be counted upon to come up with the correct verdicts.

But is this healthy for a nation? I would argue it is not and eventually this once-great nation will realize that.

Schools across the area and around the state were locked down today due to false reports of active shooters, a disgusting followup to the school shooting earlier this week in Nashville.

If this sort of thing surprises you, it’s most likely because you are not paying close enough attention.

As a society, we have given free passes to members of protected groups, to slackers, to children in general, to ineffective parents, to governments of all levels.

Accountability, and meaningful punishment for bad actors, for incompetent stewards, for people simply unable or unwilling to conform to societal norms, is nowhere to be found. Instead, there are rewards, often monetary as bestowed by governments intent on robbing the bedrock members of society to have more to give to the strange agents.

Instead of calling for meaningful action, we have psycho-babble designed to cloud the issue and deflect blame.

Consider the outright morons posting on various social media platforms who are upset about the pronouns being used to describe the Nashville school shooter, and making dire predictions about retaliatory violence against transsexuals. The shooter, born a woman and identifying as man, is alleged to have killed six people at the school, three adults and three children.

Mercifully, the Nashville police, instead of cowering outside as happened in a Texas school shooting, tracked down the gender-confused individual and dispatched it, with appropriate malice and followthrough.

Repeat: Six innocents killed and social media morons are upset by pronouns used to describe the shooter, or seek to justify the violence based on perceived violence against transsexuals before or after this incident.

I knew something was unusual about this shooting when, in the immediacy of the moment, there was not a flood of “another angry white man” commentary.

Shooting from the lip is a social media sickness. Why wait for the facts when posting emotional garbage is so easy?

Predictably, the usual suspects have seized on this tragedy to lobby for the banning of guns. I submit that if a few teachers in that school had been armed, there could have been zero loss of life. I’ve read reports that the shooter considered other sites, but thought them to be too well-protected and so opted for the soft target of a school.

Do we ban gasoline, flammable objects such as homes, barns and vehicles, or the ability to purchase same when an arsonist is about?

Do we ban cars because teenagers might drive them and they are statistically the most likely demographic to have an accident and/or die while driving?

Do we have breathless reports after every teen auto fatality that the car was LEGALLY PURCHASED as happens with gun incidents?

Can we ask some hard questions of the parents of this Nashville shooter, 28 years old and still living at home and possessing guns despite being treated for emotional problems?

Permissive parenting, a legal system intent on providing scofflaws — be they adults or juveniles — countless chances despite their criminal records, school systems turning out functional illiterates long on experience avoiding learning and long on manipulating the system for special accommodations, all contribute to the mess that is society circa 2023.

From the history repeats category, this is nothing new. More than six centuries back (that’s more than 600 years for all who now attend or recently graduated a public school) as Constantinopile was in the process of falling to Ottomans, the elites of Constantinopile were consumed by the debate over the gender of angels.

If this sounds too much like the navel-gazing that dominates this nation, you are correct.

Things will continue to worsen until such time as accountability and punishment are once again accepted, spoken of, and practiced in polite company.

Long before that might happen, it is most likely we will endure more school shootings, more bastardizations of the truth in the name of carving out advantages for protected groups, more playing fast and loose with the facts of a given situation in order to further ridiculous political and social agendas.

Our society is failing. The evidence is pervasive.

You say jails are too full? I’ll pay more taxes so that more can be built.

You say people with mental illness cannot be treated differently than the sane? I say, fine, let all the mental health professionals who proclaim a disturbed individual is no threat to society, be held accountable for any and all crimes said individuals commit.

You say I’m overly harsh? I say six dead people at a school because some mentally ill, gender-confused individual had a grudge is even more harsh.

For the misguided counting on artificial intelligence to save us from ourselves, think again.

Stories are widely circulating about one AI chatbot concluding that uttering a racial slur aloud, even if it would prevent a nuclear holocaust, cannot be done because racial slurs are totally unacceptable. Millions, if not billions dead is OK, though.

Remember, AI is but the product of Woke programmers, inflicting their biases on the computer’s function.

Buckle up, people, This insanity not only will continue, it will almost assuredly worsen, until the rational people finally decide they have had enough and fight back.

Were I a political spin doctor, I’d proudly report today that my CBS Sports NCAA men’s basketball tournament bracket has improved nearly 400,000 places since last I wrote about it here.

It would be true, but, alas, not terribly significant. That improvement brought me from 684,657 in the rankings to 285,460.

A quick recap is in order.

While I anticipated only Alabama of the four No. 1 regional seeds making it to the Final Four, even that proved to be overly optimistic as Alabama crashed and burned in a loss to San Diego State. There are zero No. 1 seeds alive in the Elite Eight, an historic failure of the teams, the seeding, or both.

Many are celebrating the ouster of Alabama due to the program having players associated with a recent deadly shooting. Charges have been filed against one player.

San Diego State has been a massive bracket thorn to me. I had the Aztecs losing in the first round after having backed their underperforming selves in previous years’ brackets, only to be disappointed. Now that I’ve given up on them, they decided they can play in March!

I have exactly zero picks alive from my South Region portion of the NCAA bracket, which has been winnowed to San Diego State and Creighton meeting Sunday for one Final Four berth.

I am similarly batting zero in the East region, having picked Duke and Marquette only to have Florida Atlantic and Kansas State advance to a regional final that tips in just over an hour.

My West region picks were better. I had Gonzaga getting this far, projected to meet Arkansas. But UConn ousted Arkansas last round, a close miss for me.

Best of my selections was the Midwest, where I correctly picked Texas and Miami to square off in the regional final. I also had correctly identified their previous round opponents, with Texas beating Xavier and Miami beating Houston.

But I have only Gonzaga and Texas advancing from here, with Gonzaga tabbed to best Texas and advance to the final game, winning there, too.

My lack of faith in the Big Ten and Pac-12 has proved to be correct. Their over-abundance of tournament entries all have been eliminated.

The Southeastern Conference, another of the so-called power conferences, also is experiencing an Elite Eight blackout.

Meanwhile, of the eight teams still alive entering play Saturday night, Creighton and UConn are representing the Big East; Texas and Kansas State (Big 12); Miami (Atlantic Coast); Florida Atlantic (Conference USA), Gonzaga (West Coast) and San Diego State (Mountain West).

Maybe next year the tournament committee can look in the mirror, give less respect to underperforming big name conferences and show more love to the conferences that don’t get all the headlines, just tournament results.

Call this A Tale of Two Johnstowns, subtitled The Good, The Bad And The Ugly of this area.

First, the good – just one small example. The wife wanted to try a Friday seafood buffet at the Dugout Cafe in Woodvale and we did. It was excellent.

A father and two daughters were doing most of the work. Food was great. Price was very reasonable. We went early and that was a good thing because it was getting crowded by the time we left. This helps explain the inquiry, which surprised us when we entered, asking if we had reservations.

As far as I know, without doing a lot of research, this business operates without needing the input of lots of public cash to keep it open. I doubt there were any secret meetings, or behind-the-scenes political contributions, or grants to out-of-town consulting firms to try to revitalize the Maple Avenue corridor on which the business sits.

I’m thinking Dugout Cafe does not fall into the burgeoning nonprofit/not-for-profit category so dominant in the area, a segment which always seems able to pay huge salaries to administrators first, last and always.

Admittedly, there is a relatively new CamTran Taj Mahal that has been built near Dugout Cafe with taxpayers funds, which may benefit Dugout Cafe, but I am comfortable doubting that was a consideration.

It is safe to presume there are other positive stories in the area – I’m aware of many – but the bad and ugly is so pervasive it is disgusting.

Kudos to John DeBartola and Joseph Taranto of the Revitalize Johnstown Facebook page, who continue to fight to pull back the curtain on all the secrecy that pervades in what should be public dealings.

The pair had an entertaining video covering a lot of this posted on YouTube recently, with a link to it on the Revitalize Johnstown Facebook page.

Meetings that should be public, but aren’t, is a common theme. So is the supposed opportunity to speak at meetings that actually are held in public, but that opportunity is truncated inexplicably.

DeBartola showed a sheaf of paperwork regarding one such legal action in which he is involved.

DeBartola and Taranto are running for the office of Cambria County Commissioner. They are running on transparency, accountability, and using political office to benefit constituents, not themselves.

They are on-point regarding our misguidedly overwhelming emphasis on tourism, and spending millions of dollars toward that end, while ignoring real community problems that might be better addressed with those funds.

It was mentioned in the video that so much of the money seems to get stuck in downtown projects, and trails, with modest benefits, while blighted areas such as Walnut Grove, Oakhurst, Moxham and the like are virtually ignored.

It’s a safe supposition that this is repeated throughout the county.

DeBartola and Taranto (or maybe Taranto and DeBartola since it was pointed out in the video Taranto is listed earlier on the ballot) are offering a new approach.

I’m not sure they can deliver because, like Donald Trump as president, they will be fighting against entrenched bureaucracy that prefers our inefficient, secretive, politically incestuous ways.

Unless something changes dramatically between now and the election, I will vote for DeBartola and Taranto. And I would encourage others at least to consider the possibility that, in view of the all-too-evident decline of the area, it’s time for the different approach that they promise to provide.