Category Archives: Uncategorized

The televised interview of disgraced FTX cryptocurrency exchange wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried Wednesday was not as pathetic as your typical Clueless Joe Biden brain freeze or John Fetterman debate, but that doesn’t mean it was a favorable performance by SBF (as the failed financier is known by friends and foes alike).

Reading a summation of it all today on zerohedge.com, legal types noted numerous incriminating statements made by SBF and at least 12 times he apologized or admitted failure.

I watched this SBF circus live yesterday because I was shocked that a supposedly brilliant person would go on cable television to discuss his many failures running a financial concern, with all the likely attendant litigation yet to come, both civil and criminal.

It also interested me to see exactly now tough the questioning would be from the host, a long-time liberal apologist from CNBC. It is notable that among SBF’s many proclivities that have come to light since his exchange failed was his lavish political donations, almost all to Democrats.

Cynics are wondering aloud if that helped grease the regulatory wheels, despite the fact that one head of an established commodities exchange had testified before Congress against SBF’s exchange.

My take was that the Wednesday SBF interviewer spent too much time apologizing, begging the subject’s indulgence and generally looking to be extremely deferential considering the interview subject’s failures.

A Twitter poll showed 56.9 percent saying the interviewer had “soft-balled it,” while 43.1 percent believe he had “asked the tough questions.”

I wonder what interview that second group was watching, sort of like who are the 40 percent or so of the populace that think Clueless Joe is doing a good job?

SBF’s defense for his failures broke down to, allow me to paraphrase: I’m clueless and didn’t do my job, but I’m really sorry about all the money you people lost due to that.

There were times when the studio audience – SBF was on video from the Bahamas, which he claims he is free to leave, he just chooses not to do so, but there were people in the room with the host – laughed aloud at SBF’s responses, or the questions.

I had no dog in this fight, other than wanting to see right prevail in a general sense. I never got the attraction of cryptocurrency and, missed out on making millions of dollars as the runaway speculation peaked. I’ve also avoided losing any money as the token units have declined in value, been misappropriated by so-called custodians, or have been outright stolen by hackers.

There are many established investment professionals that foresee all cryptocurrencies returning to intrinsic value, that being zero.

Losers in the FTX operation of SBF appear just to have gotten a headstart.

The United States prevailed over Iran Tuesday in a World Cup soccer game dressed up as a morality play.

It is Iran that routinely labels the U.S. “The Great Satan” in foreign policy statements. It is Iran that gets a steady stream of criticism from the world and, of late, from internal demonstrations, regarding poor human rights policies.

Just in the leadup to this game, Iran was angered by a U.S. Soccer post that omitted the emblem of the Islamic Republic from that nation’s flag. And, during a press conference ahead of the game, members of Iranian state media badgered U.S. interview subjects about immigration, racism and inflation.

Lest Iran protest, let me clarify that the U.S. beat a team from the Islamic Republic of Iran, an official name that takes full advantage of poetic license in the use of the term republic. The Authoritarian Theocracy of Iran would be more accurate.

Against that backdrop, it was supremely ironic that the winning – and lone – goal for the U.S. was scored by CHRISTIAN Pulisic, taking down the ISLAMIC Republic of Iran, 1-0.

The U.S. moves on to the round of 16, there to face the Netherlands in a knockout game early Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Iranian team heads home. Considering the punishment back there, where a woman can be slain for not wearing a head covering in public, as happened just this past September (2022, not 1522), this might have been, literally, a do-or-die game for Iran’s players.

No doubt Iran will whine about the lack of a late call in the penalty box, alleging a foul and resulting penalty shot should have been whistled by the referee.

A tie would have advanced Iran in the tournament, so a potential goal there would have been enough to get the job done.

As with most sporting contests, the beauty – or lack thereof – regarding this game was in the eye of the beholder.

U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter was bubbly in his postgame interview and eagerly pointed out his team remains “undefeated.”

While factually correct, it also oversells the reality. The U.S. had scored one goal in two previous games, both ties. The first example was a come-from-ahead tie with Wales, which exited the tournament with a single point, from that tie.

The U.S. also gained a 0-0 tie vs. England, ranked No. 5 in the world, in what was a lethargic effort by both sides.

So, at 1-0-2, the United States is undefeated, but not overly impressive. Two goals in three games is modest. Blowing a 1-0 lead vs. Wales by playing extremely passively in the second half, was disappointing.

This win has been heralded for advancing the U.S. to the 16-team knockout round. As forward Tim Weah observed in a postgame interview, it’s more of “us against the world” because, as he elaborated, no one believes the U.S. can play good soccer.

When you are ranked No. 16 in the world, and advance to the final 16 of the World Cup, that falls more under the category of modest victory, not proof of greatness.

Advancing in knockout play, beginning by beating No. 8 Netherlands, would give something for Weah and Berhalter to crow about.

But all is not sweetness and light regarding Pulisic, the talented forward who hails from Hershey, Pa., Chocolate Town. He was injured while scoring the goal and subsequently crashing into the Iranian goalie. It was reported Pulisic went to a hospital after the game with an abdominal injury.

Considering Pulisic has scored one of the two total U.S. goals in this Cup, and assisted on the other, his presence would seem to be necessary for his team to have any chance against Netherlands.

The U.S. won this game in survival mode, playing what studio analyst and former U.S. men’s team player Alexi Lalas labeled as “shaky” at the end.

That won’t cut it vs. Netherlands. Also, it’s unlikely a single goal will be enough to prevail.

This World Cup experience is likely to end soon for the U.S. men, but, to paraphrase the classic closing line from the movie Casablanca, “We’ll always have Iran (not Paris).”

Men’s soccer is popular in the United States about every four years, when the World Cup transpires and Americans embrace this sport – known as football in the rest of the world – if the U.S. happens to have qualified, which is the case in 2022.

Watching the games transpire can be quite the experience for the folks who don’t live and die with this stuff. Witness my brother, on hand at my house for Thanksgiving and so compelled to take in a bit of a game involving Portugal with one of the world’s top players, Cristiano Ronaldo.

Having seen, for perhaps the 50^th time in this game, a player collapse as if shot and writhe on the ground in apparent agony, my brother was moved to observe in politically incorrect terms that the players were a bit soft.

Understand that the brother’s preference is women’s softball, where the players arguably are much tougher than your average men’s soccer practitioner, so his amazement was duly noted.

For the benefit of my brother and folks like him, in advance of the titanic Tuesday meeting of the United States and Iran, we offer a soccer primer.

First, some World Cup housekeeping. Thirty-two teams are divided into four-team groups and each team plays the other three in the group. Three points are awarded for a win, one for a tie and zero (nil) for a loss.

At the end of the round-robin group play, 16 teams (the top two from each group) advance to a knockout stage in which, blessedly, there are no more ties. A game ending regulation tied moves on to a pair of 15-minute overtime periods. If no one is ahead then, it moves to a shootout, goalie vs. one shooter at a time.

A tradition of soccer, above the kiddie level, is for players absorbing even the most minor physical contact to collapse to the turf and put on a display that would get them thrown out of any credible actors’ workshop for overacting, but is encouraged and even rewarded in soccer.

Sometimes this act gets the alleged causer of the pain issued a yellow card. Get, two and you’re gone from the game.

If the fouling player is judged to have been particularly egregious, a red card is shown. The player is gone and his team plays short-handed.

And, if the foul – yellow card or red – occurs in the 18-yard deep penalty box in front of the goal, then the aggrieved player’s team is awarded a penalty shot, a free chance at the goalie from 12 yards out.

Now you understand the motivation for all the ridiculous overacting. Awarding yellow cards for bad acting, or flopping, might help limit this.

An aside to this flopping is the tendency of goalies, after having made even the most routine save, to fling themselves to ground, looking like someone having completed back-to-back marathons, with a triathlon thrown in for good measure.

Their fatigue is understandable. On a particularly tough night, they might be called upon to make three, maybe four saves.

This is because goal scoring in the typical World Cup game is, shall we say, sparse.

The U.S. and England battled to a titanic 0-0 draw in group play, which was widely heralded as scintillating, gut-wrenching and otherwise riveting. If you watched the game – and I did in its entirety – it was more like two fighters trying to stay away from each other for the duration of their bout and hoping the judges would gift them a win.

Alas, in soccer, there are no judges.

Ties are rampant at the World Cup. Spain and Germany, winners of two of the past three World Cups, slogged to a 1-1 tie Sunday.

Urgency to win is not a soccer theme.

But come Tuesday, the U.S. needs to beat Iran to advance out of group play. Our guys have tied Wales and England to date, so a win would be their first. Two goals would be a watershed scoring moment.

This World Cup has been quite the political stage. German players covered their mouths for a group photo before playing Japan, a lament against the soccer sanctioning body cracking down on social justice warrior actions such as rainbow armbands to protest host Qatar’s stance on gay rights.

The Germans then lost to Japan, prompting more than one wag to suggest the players might have concentrated on the game instead of political statements.

English players took a knee before their game with the U.S., then had trouble getting up the rest of the game, putting on a pathetic display for a team that came into this event ranked fifth in the world.

Iran has come out asking the U.S. be banned from the World Cup for a social media posting by our U.S. Soccer Federation of Iran’s flag without the Islamic Republic emblem – this supposedly to support human rights protesters in Iran.

Despite all this, there are redeeming virtues to soccer games, most notably the fact that the 45-minute halves transpire without television ads or timeouts. Time lost to injuries, or faking, is tacked on to the end of each half by the referee in what is called stoppage time. Usually this is 4-6 minutes.

The games are played in a relatively short amount of time, especially when compared to Major League Baseball or college football.

Now, you are prepared to watch the U.S. either beat Iran Tuesday and move on to knockout play, or be sent home if the result is a tie or loss.

Enjoy the histrionics, on the field and off, and perhaps between the cracks some worthwhile soccer viewing will find its way into the tableau.

Granddaughter Noelle was quizzing my wife Ruby the other day about the proximity of Thanksgiving.

Told it was then two days away, Noelle said that meant she really needed to get started on her list of things for which she is thankful. I can’t wait to hear that list when we sit down at about noon on Thanksgiving for the first feeding of the day.

Along that line, I’ve cobbled up my thankful list, omitting the obvious one about not being a turkey on this day, having given your life in the interest of being the centerpiece of so many feasts.

I’m thankful that Anthony Fauci has taken his considerable ego out of the government bureaucracy, thereby sparing us the Mr. Science talks, even when the science was unproven and Fauci’s view was shifting (see masks, vaccines, etc.). If only he had exited a few years earlier, we’d all be better for it.

I’m also thankful that our family still can afford all the trimmings of a traditional Thanksgiving feast, which reports say has gone up 20 percent under the economic ministrations of Clueless Joe Biden. My wife did yeoman service turning up a turkey in the over-20-pound category, one of the shortages the Biden regime has produced.

I’m thankful that disgraced crypto currency exchange guy Sam Bankman-Fried is not a Republican. If that were the case, we would be subjected to nonstop hysterical wailing from LameStream media and it would take some of the joy out of the holiday. But, because Bankman-Fried is a mammoth contributor to Democratic election causes, his alleged problems keeping his hands off customer’s money is no big deal.

I say thanks nightly that California continues to count votes in the mid-term election for Congress. Just keep on counting as we enter the third week post-election and don’t be at all embarrassed that places like France, Brazil and Iraq can get the votes tabulated the evening of elections.

I’m thankful (and so, too, should be Clueless Joe) that Pennsylvanians saw fit to send unfit John Fetterman to the U.S. Senate, thereby relegating Biden to the second most unqualified politician in Washington, D.C.

I’m thankful that the word finally is out, on the record, about the flood of Filthydelphians to Johnstown, where they take advantage of public housing and some help boost our only growing industry, that being crime.

I’m thankful that Elon Musk posted those pictures of the closet at Twitter full of hashtag Stay Woke T-shirts. And you didn’t believe that Twitter was a full-on socialist operation.

I’m thankful I don’t need to go out Friday and buck the crazed crowds of shoppers – assuming they still exist – to take advantage of Black Friday sales.

I’m thankful that despite the over-the-top spending and customary voting games of the Democrats, they were unable to hold the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, a reality not changed by California’s slow-roll vote counting.

I’m thankful I don’t own stock shares in Tesla, Apple, Meta (Facebook) and Alphabet (Google), all of whom have had come to Jesus moments this year regarding outrageous valuations and runaway spending.

Most of all, I’m thankful for the health and happiness of my family, a fantastic anchor in otherwise troubled times.

As disgusting, abhorrent and sad as mass shootings are, equally so are the efforts by opportunists on the left and their lapdogs in the media to exploit these tragedies.

When do these spin monsters get called on the carpet for politicizing – falsely – such horrific events?

When do they pay the price by being fired, as was the outcome for one AP reporter so eager to incite World War III that he went with a false story about Russians (not Ukrainians) shooting missiles into Poland?

Begin with the shooting at the gay night club in Colorado. Blood still was wet on the floor when the usual suspects were in full song blaming MAGA types, right-wing extremists and any of the left’s political opponents for inciting the incident.

Within days, it has come to light that the alleged shooter is a member of the gay community, with a non-binary gender identity. This is according to documents filed in court by his lawyers.

And the response from all those hate mongers who shot from the lip in fingering Republicans for inspiring the shooting has been, at least in some cases, to question whether this is just a legal ploy to avoid charges of a hate crime.

This whole hate crime concept is ridiculous. If someone murders someone, can’t we just have them executed upon conviction, or at least jailed for life? Do we need to heap hate crime charges on the list which, presumably, do little other than to pander to the social justice warrior crowd?

To recap, we are lectured that never can we question someone’s self-proclaimed gender identity. Yet, here, when it serves to push back on one of the left’s failed agendas, questioning is fair game.

More recently, there has been a mass shooting at a Virginia Walmart, reportedly by a managerial type who then shot himself.

The typical social media response to such is to decry immediately violent white males for such acts. Just one problem in that narrative, this atrocity was not committed by a white male.

Images posted on zerohedge.com, apparently from store surveillance video, clearly show a non-white person, presumably a male although one is hesitant to speak out of turn regarding this.

In watching the noon news on our local NBC affiliate – amidst the usual overabundance of stories from nearby Blair and Centre counties – there was a national report on this shooting.

Maybe it was just coincidence. More likely it was by plan that there was no mention of the shooter’s race and no images were included that might allow the viewers to make their own call on it.

Had he been the stereotypical white male mass shooter, I’m thinking any available video of the shooting, page captures from his social media postings, or any publicly available pictures would have been part of the report.

Since this violent person doesn’t fit the favored narrative, the less mentioned about race the better.

Again, why must we endure such blatant political opportunism in the midst of such tragedies?

Elon Musk was a hero to tree-hugging, oil-hating leftists when he largely was just a guy with a massive ego garnering huge government subsidies to turn out a few electric vehicles a quarter and presiding over a company whose market cap valued those EV sales at about $50,000,000 a unit.

Musk did what any other right-thinking billionaire would do with his burgeoning riches, he looked around for diversification opportunities. Along that line of thought, as long as he stuck to launching rockets, providing satellite internet service, or drilling tunnels via the humorously named The Boring Company, Musk didn’t raise the hackles of his leftist legions.

It was only after Musk made a ridiculously high offer for social media underperformer Twitter, said he wanted to restore free speech there, and ended up buying the company despite his best efforts to back out, that Musk became public enemy No. 2, right behind Donald Trump.

Because the guy welcomes attention, even of the hatred variety, Musk couldn’t help but keep hitting the Twitter fanatics where they lived. Imagine, he required that the Twitter drones work or leave.

These same self-absorbed twits, many of whom had threatened to quit if Musk took over, suddenly were clinging to their cubicles and begging to stay. They just wanted to keep censoring conservatives. Was that too much to ask?

So, Musk upped the ante, requiring those who would stay to commit to working very, very hard for their money and, by the way, no more free lunches or working from home.

As if all that was not enough. Musk took a public Twitter vote on whether or not to re-instate Donald Trump to the site’s accepted poster community.

Imagine that, a public vote, without mail-in ballots, deadline extensions, late night vote dumps, or any of the similar chicanery that has become part and parcel of our national elections. Not surprisingly, Trump was voted back onto the digital island, not that he’s in any hurry to return.

Advertisers have bought into the Woke whining about Twitter now being a free-for-all (as opposed to a predictably monolithic voice of all things leftist) and so is not fit for an advertising dollar spend.

CBS News, in a grand gesture, that lasted what one source put at 40 hours, stopped posting on Twitter due to concerns, then relented.

The investment community wonders if Musk is going to lose a lot of his, and fellow investors’ money on this Twitter adventure. The stock price of Musk’s Tesla Company has been tanking as he sells shares to fund Twitter.

But Musk always seems to be able to grab a headline and, more often than not, pull investment chestnuts out of the fire in time to turn profits.

I wouldn’t bet on him regarding Twitter. I also would not bet against him.

Either way, Musk has shaken up the landscape of social media, the megaphone for morons, and that is worth every cent he has lost so far.

The World Cup of soccer opens play Sunday, but the virtue signalling by social justice warriors has been in full song for weeks, if not months.

The venue for this World Cup is Qatar, a tiny oil-rich state in the Middle East whose desert climate has required the event to be held, uncharacteristically, in late autumn/early winter instead of its traditional summer timing.

Qatar landed the World Cup, soccer’s world championship contested every four years, the old-fashioned way, by spending copious amounts of money. And some neophytes gasp in mock horror that sports can be bought.

The reworking of the calendar has allowed broadcaster Fox to hit us with ads featuring Santa Claus hearing from a young fan who would forego Christmas presents if only the U.S. Men could claim gold.

For the uninitiated, that would be about as likely as the Cleveland Browns winning the Super Bowl, or the Pirates winning another World Series championship. Santa better get busy making presents to give to that fictional kid.

Maybe he could give him a U.S. men’s jersey, one with a patch eschewing the traditional red, white and blue stripes in favor of a rainbow array, the better to stand in solidarity with all things gay.

Qatar, you see, is intolerant on gay rights.

I know what you’re thinking. If the U.S. men felt so strongly about this issue, why not just refuse to go and play there? It’s not like they would be sacrificing anything other than the right to display yet again how weak our men are on the world soccer stage, despite the spending of copious amounts of money and the spilling of countless gallons of ink to insist otherwise.

Yes, boycotting this Qatar World Cup would be making a serious statement. Instead, we get an example of virtue signalling while ignoring the problem, or more correctly not doing anything concrete about it.

The whiners in general are outraged, claiming this might be the most absurd sporting venue since Nazi Germany hosted the 1936 Olympics.

Qatar’s purported sins are mistreatment of non-native workers, corrupt obtaining of the World Cup, and killing the climate by pumping that vile oil from its sands.

You know, oil, the lubricant of the world’s economy that climate crazies have deemed to be a poison that cannot be used because maybe its burning and/or production harms the climate. Or maybe not.

All that could be tolerated, but now Qatar has gone and done it by banning beer sales in and around the stadiums for cultural reasons.

Just as oil fuels world economies, so it is that beer fuels sports, both in terms of fan consumption and advertising support.

Maybe our U.S. Men might want to substitute uniform patches bearing beer mugs for those rainbow examples.

That would be some virtue signalling most sports fans could support.

Congratulations to Philadelphia NBC television station WCAU for committing journalism regarding the influx of Filthydelphians to Johnstown.

Readers of this blog are aware that our once relatively crime-free Johnstown has devolved into an area of relatively high crime, often with a Filthydelphia component. These refugees from the eastern part of the state come here to partake of public housing and other handouts. Too often, they show up in crime reports.

We’ve wondered often in this space why so many people from Filthydelphia end up here.

As a lifelong resident of the area, having graduated from the now-inept Greater Johnstown School District, I can’t recall ever running into a transfer student from Filthydelphia.

Now it’s a common occurrence for Filthydelphians to show up, leave, return, leave, etc.

This, and the subsequent increase in crimes, has been as prominent as the botox work on Nancy Pelosi’s face for years, yet our local left-wing rag newspaper has ignored the phenomenon. The same is true for our local NBC affiliate, whose motto is Centre County Uber Alles.

Give partial credit to that television station for moving temporarily beyond all things Penn State and eating out of the WCAU garbage can by running that station’s investigative work Thursday. Presumably, the local rag will have some weak story in Friday’s editions about all this. Or not.

What the WCAU story revealed is Filthydelphians come here to get their feet in the public housing door – figuratively and literally – then leverage this into beating the long-term waiting lists for such in Filthydelphia.

Somehow, Johnstown is blessed (we use the term in the ironic sense) with more public housing units than a shrinking city of maybe 18,000 population should have. This is residue from when the population was more than 60,000.

Nature, or political transfer payment systems, abhor a vacuum. The rush to fill the vacuum of those housing openings has produced a veritable flood – arguably the most damaging long-term example of such for our so-called Flood City.

As with most government operations, our public housing has operated totally ignoring the reality of that declining population and, as government handout programs go, has become a beacon for others to come here, perhaps temporarily.

Too many, while here, have committed crimes. Just check the crime blotters.

I have wondered before and will again, why here? Do public housing officials in Filthydelphia steer people to Johnstown? Or, have astute exploiters of the handout culture found Johnstown on their own, but have spread the word far and wide to fellow Filthydelphians?

What will happen after this bit of exposure of it all from the WCAU story? Likely little or nothing.

But, it is nice to see how a professional news operation identifies and pursues a story, despite the possibility of irritating the poverty panderers on the political left.

Our local media operations should be ashamed that such a local story was broken from Philadelphia. But they won’t be.

Yesterday, with little ceremony, I removed the Trump-Pence yard sign that had been a fixture of my front lawn for more than two years.

It was intentional timing that it was done on the day Donald Trump announced yet another run at the presidency.

Understand, if Trump were running tomorrow against Clueless Joe Biden, I’d vote for him again. And again it would be losing effort. Not enough people agree with me; at least not enough to provide a cheat-proof result.

Although the thought may or may not have originated with Albert Einstein, it is true that the definition of insanity is repeating actions and expecting different results.

Allow me to confess up front that I didn’t think Trump could win the presidency in his first run. In assessing that surprising outcome, I told any who would listen that it should go down as the greatest triumph in election history in view of the fact that Trump had to prevail over his own party as well as the opposing Democrats.

I also predicted at the time that Trump could never win re-election. That sentiment was based on my presumption that Democrats had been caught with their pants down – figuratively for once instead of literally – and would employ extreme measures to prevent a repeat win for him.

With Democrats relying on their allies in the LameStream media never thinking to question ridiculous Russian collaboration stories, or other falsehoods both foreign and domestic that were used to assail Trump, he was damaged in the minds of the so-called independents who are said to decide elections in these split-nation times.

Shenanigans in vote tabulation and the rush to make fraud-prone absentee voting the norm, were just the cherries on top of the Democrats’ sundae of deceit.

Trump as a businessman should appreciate when a brand has been soiled and his has been.

The fact that Democrat politicians in the U.S. House have continued their harassment of Trump long after he left office speaks volumes about their hatred and intent. The Romans with their supposed salting of the Carthage soil after the Third Punic War had nothing on grudge-holding Democrats.

Trump also is the subject of several legal actions in various locales, not ideal stuff for a candidate.

Trump doesn’t help his cause, feeding his critics ample material with his penchant for rhetorical hyperbole.

The man has a considerable ego. Duly noted. Now, if you think people like Biden, Schumer and Pelosi aren’t egomaniacs, you need some education on the term. But they are shielded by the LameStream media, where Trump is pilloried for the same faults.

Trump did great things for the Republican Party, most notably making it a grassroots operation appealing to the working class and giving those people hope for a better future. But now, Trump’s considerable ego is getting in the way.

It is time for him to cede the spotlight to the likes of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who just might be able to win the next presidential election by that unstealable margin alluded to earlier as a requirement for a Republican to prevail.

Trump’s grade school level verbal attacks on DeSantis are a sad thing from a man who still could offer so much to the Republican cause.

Republicans need Trump to be more statesman than politician, realizing that for the good of the people he claims as his followers, and to further his ideals, his best place is cheering from the sidelines.

This just in: We have a winner from Tombstone, Arizona.

Voting tabulation has been completed and we can declare that Wyatt Earp has won the race for city marshal. In 1880. It’s not clear if Clanton family survivors will find this validation helpful considering their O.K. Corral results.

Survivors of the original Arizona election officials (all now dead) pushed back on critics, saying they had been severely undermanned and if you want quicker results – say in the same century or two — increase the manpower counting ballots.

There was no way to confirm allegations that some Democratic election officials from that Earp count somehow voted in 2022 mid-terms.

Is this Earp story absurd? Not really.

We’re nearly a week past election day – itself an outdated concept due to pre- and post-election voting that now is perfectly acceptable — and we still don’t know which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives for the next term.

Whether you be Republican or Democrat, you should be demanding action on cleaning up the electoral process, unless you like clouds of uncertainty. Remember, the shoe could be on the other foot in some future election and I’m not sure the peaceful leftists who control the Democratic party would be so accepting should late decision after late decision go against them.

This election already smells. We had the ballot printing problem in Republican strongholds in Phoenix on election day. We had the mysterious camera outage in Nevada in the post-election counting process.

Mostly, we’ve had Democrats winning an unlikely high percentage of the holdout races, making Republican House control an iffy proposition at the moment.

No less an august source than leftist CNN, in a story posted on realclearpolitics.com, is giving the Republicans the theoretical nod.

To quote that story: “It’s still most likely that Republicans will control the House with a narrow majority. Democrats need an improbably near-perfect run through remaining seats to stay in power.”

Take this from a guy who has done his share of gambling, I wouldn’t bet on a Republican House triumph with your money.

When you speak of the statistically improbable, recall the 2020 presidential election, which was improbable squared as Clueless Joe Biden magically got the right number of voters in late, late counts, wherever he needed them to carry swing states.

Once again, we are to believe that Biden defied electoral history. First, this candidate with all the charisma of a cabbage garnered the most votes in U.S. history – and needed almost all of them to prevail in 2020.

Now, with his approval rating severely negative, no matter the polling source, he again defies historical precedent by apparently gaining Senate seats in a 2022 mid-term election (the typical incumbent party loss in these things is 4 or more seats) and keeping a typical House loss of 20-40 seats to a deficit of a few seats– maybe even a few gains as those late election results trickle in from California et al.

Only in Florida, with strict election integrity controls and prompt tabulation, did the much-predicted Republican red wave materialize.

I’m thinking this is no mere coincidence.

In a story from The Epoch Times, posted on zerohedge.com, Pa. State representative Frank Ryan, a former Marine who ran election security for Iraq’s 2005 election, recalled that foreign election.

Please note, those results were available election night. Also note, despite our whining here about the need for hordes of people to vote through the mail, nearly 75 percent of the Iraqis showed up to vote in-person. There was NO mail-in voting due to concerns about electoral fraud.

Repeat: Mail-in voting raises concerns of electoral fraud. This is the case today in such enlightened countries as France, where there are paper ballots, voted only in-person, and no electronic voting machines to further increase the chances to cheat on the count.

The Iraqi turnout was achieved despite death threats to voters, both before and after. Remember, Iraqis had to dip their fingers in purple ink as they voted to prevent repeat voting. This also marked these citizens as voters for days afterward, which is significant considering death threats on voters from terrorists.

To recap, Iraqi voters were willing and able to vote on election day despite concerns that dwarf those of our pampered citizenry, their votes were counted by bi-partisan tabulators and the results was known on election night.

But we need to wait a week or more for results in the United States because one party has found it convenient to bastardize the whole voting process.

Until that is changed, until we don’t let mail-in votes from undocumented voters rain in early and late, until the voting rolls are purged of the dead and ineligible, until we have an election in which there are not mysterious surveillance camera outages, ballot problems, or stunning results that defy exit polling, be prepared for more elections that come with the stench of doubt attached.