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I’m musing today, as the U.S. gasoline price hits another all-time high in national average (You did that, Joe!), about the decline in services rendered by organizations be they public or private.

Specifically, I’m down on the collective competence of Social Security and about any other governmental or quasi-governmental agency you’d like to name.

For those of you new to this blog, my mother died in early April. I mention this not as the plea for attention that marks such posts on Facebook and Twitter, but just as a matter of providing background.

My mother was collecting Social Security payments, as well as a severely reduced pension from Bethlehem Steel based on the working career of her second husband. Said Bethlehem Steel pension, owing to that company’s bankruptcy, had fallen under the auspices of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Useful aside to those of you looking ahead to collecting a pension, regardless of the economic health of your company: Don’t count on it. At least don’t count on ALL of it. Although that guaranty spelling of guarantee makes it sound all safe, secure and upper crust, you get just pennies on the promised dollars.

My mother and other Bethlehem pensioners found that out.

A variation of this warning to would-be retirees is me telling any who will listen that you are likely to get your promised Social Security benefit, regardless of the economic health of the government’s Ponzi-style retirement system.

The catch, and it is a significant one, is with runaway inflation upon us and likely to worsen through the years, that entire monthly Social Security payment might buy you a loaf of bread and maybe a quart of milk to help wash it down.

Back to Social Security. The manager of the funeral home that handled my mother’s arrangements made the usual notifications, notably to Social Security, which in turn is supposed to notify Medicare.

It was left to me do other things, such as getting in touch with the Pension Benefit Guaranty people.

They seemed to be on top of things to start. But imagine my surprise when last week, in the space of a few days, I received first a letter saying all needed documentation had been provided and that nothing else was needed from me.

Shortly thereafter came a request for copious amounts of additional documentation. Say what?

Since this documentation would be to make sure the paltry direct deposit would no longer be made to a checking account we had closed due to the death, they can eagerly await further documentation for the next 30 years or so.

Now, on to Social Security. I received an urgent letter from them lamenting that a direct deposit had been returned and I need to contact them to straighten out this mess.

I should have known these were not the sharpest tools in the drawer when I noted the letter was dated May 17, 2022, but the metered mail stamp had a May 11 date. So, they supposedly mailed this letter six days before they wrote it.

Theoretical physicists say time travel, while possible, would require incalculable amounts of energy. They aren’t taking into consideration what can be done by the combined wealth and waste of the federal government.

Beyond the curious timing, the letter provided a toll-free number to call and instructions to press a digit – in my case 1 – based on the claim number to get help. I called the number and got a request for a nine-digit mailbox number.

Being eight digits short, I defaulted to calling the regular Social Security number, which got me more than 30 minutes on hold waiting to talk to a representative.

That person turned out to be Mary, although I needed her to repeat that for clarification’s sake since her slurred voice sounded as though she’d at first said something like Mogambo.

Mary asked almost as much information about me (name, relationship, address, Social Security number) as she did about my mother.

She said there had been no notification of the death to Social Security, although the funeral director confirmed he had, indeed, done so, and I myself had called previously as a backup.

Mary spent a lot of time sighing and, presumably, struggling with the computer system before finally telling me, a bit triumphantly, that she’d entered the death into the system and we “should” be good now.

I’m thinking the “should” qualifier was by design, not a casual insertion.

Like me, you no doubt have seen incredible stories of deceased Social Security recipients receiving payments years or even decades after their deaths, said payments being eagerly used to pump up the economy by various surviving spouses and/or relatives.

These gaffes used to amaze me. But that no longer is the case based on my personal experience.

In the interim between the Pittsburgh Penguins’ early ouster from the NHL playoffs Sunday, and Pennsylvania’s primary election Tuesday, it occurs to me that sports fans and the voters in the electorate have a lot in common, much of it not flattering.

There is a component — a small one — of both the fan and voter bases made up of people who understand the respective situations, can articulate their positions, and can make arguments worth listening to, even if you don’t necessarily agree with them.

To repeat, that is the minority in both instances. More common are blowhards, doctrinaire idiots and largely confused types who think volume can make up for lack of substance.

And so the Penguins and many of their fans did not disappoint. To recap, the Penguins blew a 3-games-to-1 lead in the best of seven series with the New York Rangers. They consistently could not hold leads in games, including twice in the deciding Game 7.

But many a Penguins fan was heard to whine after the fact that Sidney Crosby missed some time in the series due to an injury. These fans thought it was a ridiculous cheap shot by the Ranger, even though no penalty was called at the time and the NHL, having looked at the hit afterward as they do in such situations, found it warranted no fine or suspension.

This does not appease the vocal, whining majority of Penguins fans, who also are lamenting the NHL’s helmet rule supposedly costing them the tying goal in the third period of Game 7 even though if you watch replays, all five Penguins players were in a position possibly to play defense on the score. They just didn’t choose to do so.

It reminds me of the genius a few years back sitting behind me and the wife at a Mannheim Steamroller Christmas concert. At the time Jordan Staal played for the Penguins and was coming back from an injury.

This fan behind me opined (repeatedly) in his outside calling voice that the Penguins would be better off not playing Staal because their trio of two-man defenseman pairings were better without him.

I resisted the urge to point out to the amateur analyst that Staal is a center, admittedly a good one defensively, but not a defenseman. I did note to my wife, who could care less, that this is typical of fandom. Often wrong, but never in doubt.

This is not a new phenomenon spawned by the internet, although that electronic soapbox has made the noise issued by the sporting illiterati louder. Back when I was a young man, there was a considerable slice of Steelers fandom that thought the team should take advantage of Terry Bradshaw’s scrambling prowess by making him a running back.

To recap, many fans thought a quarterback who would go on to win the Super Bowl four times, and made it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, should be shifted to running back, ostensibly to replace Franco Harris, a running back also headed to the Hall of Fame.

Voters are not much better. Believe it or not, there still is a considerable slice of the electorate that believes Joe Biden is doing a good job as president. Apparently these people don’t buy gasoline, don’t shop at stores with barren shelves, and don’t find themselves encountering or hearing about increased street violence, among other issues.

Dreamers think this dire political situation might change in the fall due to enlightened voter choices. I’m not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, both parties will be picking candidates for various offices in that fall general election.

I will vote in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary to select the Republican ticket.

What a choice I have. I say this with sarcasm.

Many of the lower-level offices have no competition.

The high-profile Senate race leaves me to pick between a carpet-bagging celebrity who’s not in Kansas anymore, but did get a stunning endorsement from Donald Trump.

Other choices are a former hedge fund rich guy and a conservative black woman with some extreme views unlikely to play in a general election.

I will not vote for the Man from Oz. I’m not sure about the other two. Maybe I can just abstain, as I did more recently when the man they are seeking to replace, retiring Pat Toomey, lost my confidence by becoming a political eunuch, afraid to be true to his proclaimed conservative philosophy.

When it comes to the governor race, Republicans are likely to pick Doug Mastriano and so am I. The Democrats will, fittingly, usher forward without competition a state attorney general who helped make sure Biden carried Pennsylvania.

To sum it up, if you bet on the wisdom either of sports fans or the electorate, you’re going to be disappointed.

I’m not particularly superstitious, so today’s Friday the 13^th date doesn’t cause me to curl up in the fetal position and suck my thumb, something popular these days with the pro-abortion crowd.

The good news if you do fear this date is today is the only Friday the 13^th for 2022, the next coming in January 2023.

By then, Clueless Joe Biden and his progressive acolytes should have gas prices at $7 a gallon or so, this nation’s economy in a recession if not a depression, and personal freedoms here at a low level last experienced by Germans when a guy named Hitler was running that country.

It’s not too early to worry on all those counts and more. That’s why I’m anything but sanguine today, but not due to the calendar date.

Glance at the headlines with an open mind and you will share my concern.

ITEM: A twin spin. OPEC missed its daily production target coming up 2.7 million barrels per day short of the number. And a billionaire owner of refineries forecasts diesel fuel may need to be rationed on the east coast of these United States this summer.

We may hit the $7 a gallon even before the next Friday the 13^th.

ITEM: Jerome Powell, chief button pusher for the Federal Reserve, is the guy you may recall assuring us month after month that inflation was “transitory.” It was going to pass quickly, which has since been proven all too wrong as we hit inflation levels last witnessed in this country in 1980. More recently, Powell has assured that despite Fed actions of raising interest rates and withdrawing liquidity from the system, the whole thing would produce a “soft landing” for the economy and, by extension, investment markets. Now Powell is out with comments taken to mean we should forget the promise of a soft landing.

I’m reminded of the axiom; Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me.

ITEM: A United Kingdom professor, an ivory tower type who pushed for draconian lockdowns to combat COVID-19, including the admittedly mild Omicron variation, now concedes he and his ilk were mistaken and the lockdowns created more problems than they supposedly avoided. This comes in the wake of a Johns Hopkins study earlier this year that found global lockdowns came up short in the cost-benefit analysis.

Reality intrudes, but after the metaphorical horse has left the barn.

ITEM: Still on the COVID-19 train of thought, a report estimates that Tony Fauci and National Institutes for Health cronies received an estimated $350 million in “royalty” payments from drug firms and other private firms between 2020 and 2020.

When the watchdogs are being fed by the people they’re supposed to be keeping an eye on, a rational man screams conflict of interest.

ITEM: Clueless Joe Biden and his clueless supporters among the electorate might want to try explaining why, in a time of drastically rising oil prices, their brainless leader would chose this precise moment to cancel lease sales in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, claiming lack of interest for the first and legal challenges for the second.

While driving in my alley the other day I noticed one of the Biden supporters on my block had their Biden campaign sign tucked away in their garage. I keep my Trump/Pence campaign sign in my yard as a lasting tribute to those of us who made the right decision in the last presidential election.

The NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs are underway, confirming that playoff hockey is the best pro sports has to offer, but NHL officiating is not.

This was typified by an incident during a Saturday afternoon game between Colorado and Nashville.

A goal was scored by Colorado, but Nashville challenged it with video review, alleging goalie interference.

Goalie interference is hockey’s version of football’s pass interference. No two officials seem to have the same definition.

Fans, who think they know the rules, are often astounded when the calls go precisely opposite of what they might have expected, prompting utterances not fit to be heard on Mother’s Day.

Often, too, the obligatory rules experts that decorate broadcasts these days can’t agree with the calls that are made.

There was a delicious side note to Saturday’s Colorado-Nashville example because TNT’s rules expert was retired NHL referee Don Koharski.

For those who are not hockey fans, Koharski was at the center of one of the most memorable coach-ref incidents in the history of the NHL.

It happened after Game Three of the Eastern Conference finals in 1988 between New Jersey and Boston, a 6-1 Bruins win.

Jersey coach Jim Schoenfeld didn’t like the way Koharski had called the game and confronted him afterward as they left the ice. According to various reports, Koharski caught his skate on the concrete corridor floor and stumbled, after which he accused Schoenfeld of shoving him.

A video of the incident (and how fitting that video would prove an apparent officiating error) seemed to back up Schoenfeld.

But while Koharski threatened Schoenfield that he would not coach another (game), Schoenfeld shot back one of the most memorable retorts in the annals of hockey: “You fell you fat pig. Have another doughnut.”

The NHL suspended Schoenfeld for at least one game without a hearing. New Jersey management got a court order to stay that and the regularly assigned officials refused to work Game Four, leaving that to a makeshift crew which included the manager of a New York skating rink.

New Jersey won what was considering a poorly officiated game, but Boston went on to win the series.

Schoenfeld eventually was suspended for Game 5, notably the reason given was “verbal abuse of an official” but not the alleged shove of Koharski.

Koharski, in his role as officiating guru on Saturday’s broadcast, was called upon to weigh in on a question of physical contact and Koharski was positive it would be ruled no goal due to a Colorado player contacting the Nashville goalie.

“I’d be shocked if they don’t (overturn the goal),” Koharski said.

Here’s the irony. This time Koharski was sure that a Nashville player had not shoved the Colorado player into the goalie, which would have negated any interference call.

But the league’s situation room saw it the other way, Later, a league statement read that contact by Nashville’s’ Mikael Granlund on Colorado’s Artturi Lehkonen had forced him into the goalie and therefore it was not goalie interference.

This time it was decided there had been a shove and Koharski had missed it, too.

Somewhere Schoenfeld must have been smiling, perhaps while eating a doughnut.

Johnstown would do well to heed a cautionary tale from Sweden regarding massive immigration.

Over the Easter weekend, gangs of migrants rioted and pillaged throughout Sweden, leaving 100 or so policemen wounded.

Now, leftist prime minister Magdalena Andersson, someone who would fit right in with Johnstown’s Myopic Vision 2025 elitist roster, is being forced to concede the reality vs. the rhetoric.

The Swedish welcome wagon for immigrants has attracted a large percentage of violent types not looking to assimilate, but rather to carve out caliphates with the eventual goal of taking over the entire country.

“Our society was too weak, while money for the police and services (was) too little,” said Andersson in assessing the failure of her immigration program.

Are you listening, Johnstown? No doubt Andersson and her ilk assured the populace that immigrants would be vetted. They would arrive possessing job skills and ability to speak the language.

Presumably, Swedes were assured this diversity would only strengthen the nation.

Again, this should sound familiar to Johnstowners, already suffering a crime wave spearheaded by refugees from domestic outposts such as Philadelphia.

Do we, like Sweden, have insufficient money for police and services to deal with a proposed inflow of immigrants from Afghanistan, Ukraine, or any other countries hemorrhaging people due to poor living conditions?

Yes.

Is the Greater Johnstown School District a chronic under-performer with well-publicized issues of student violence and academic shortfalls?

Yes.

Can we presume any immigrant influx here would be completely positive?

You’ve got to be kidding.

A family down the street, residing metaphorically in the state of Denial, has added one of the local yard signs welcoming all in multiple languages. Yes, they are Biden voters.

I suspect the sign’s reliance on various foreign tongues is an intentional choice. But it unintentionally identifies the problem.

Inability to speak the native tongue is a cornerstone for economic and social failure.

Those who would push unchecked immigration both here and nationwide, cynically invoke our nation’s immigration history. What they fail to note is those immigrants back in the day were not allowed to arrive without regulation.

The immigration law passed in 1917 required literacy for immigrants, had quotas for various nationalities, increased taxes immigrants had to pay, allowed officials wide discretion over who to admit to the country, and totally barred most Asian immigrants.

Despite what you might read at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, our past immigration was conducted with many checks on the inflow.

But current left-wing opportunists are propagandizing and rewriting that history, as is their wont when reality intrudes on their “visions.”

This is true with other issues, such as socialism. No matter that true economic socialism has never worked anywhere on this planet, those who would take us down the socialism path insist this time will be different.

It cannot be different until you change basic human nature which demonstrates that, given the choice, there is widespread willingness to live off the labors of others.

Similarly, immigration both here and in other countries proves over and over again that allowing mass inflows of populations not looking to assimilate but rather to run roughshod and seize control, doesn’t work.

Sweden is but one potent example.

The massive immigration has turned a country formerly known for its safety to a country ranked second in Europe only to Croatia in terms of per capita gun crime.

Tellingly, there have been reports of Ukrainian refugees opting not to go to Sweden due to its unsafe situation.

These refugees don’t want to flee one war zone simply to move into another, albeit one born of unchecked immigration rather than military invasion.

Oh, the irony, which I’m sure our Johnstown Myopic Vision 2025 elites would not see.

Throw open your windows and the air is rife with anguished cries from aggrieved leftists.

Social media, traditional media, they also are host to an abundance of vacuous laments from the lunatic left.

It wasn’t bad enough that some free-speech advocate billionaire was buying Twitter, ostensibly about to turn that left-wing propaganda platform into the even-handed populist commentary source it was supposed to be.

Sure, that development had prominent socialists among Twitter management reportedly breaking down in tears at meetings and an abundance of their fellow travelers, both inside the company and out, similarly reduced to incoherent shouting and threat making.

But wait, there’s more. Comes a leak from Supreme Court that indicates Roe v. Wade, the cornerstone of legal justification for killing unborn children, which had been written into federal law, just might be overturned.

There was a riot last night in Los Angeles in which windows were smashed by mask-wearing opportunists, some of them carrying communist flags. They were there, we were told by various media, to protest for abortions. What that has to do with communism or socialism, I’m not sure.

It’s predictable that such professional agitators, eager to take to the streets for any left-wing theater, would appear on cue and cause property damage.

Where are the cries for Democrats to renounce such conduct and disassociate themselves from such street hoodlums? You haven’t heard any, have you?

That’s textbook Liberal Hypocrisy 101. Conservatives must be held to a high standard and ordered to denounce groups who stretch the bounds of decent conduct. Liberals can embrace any outlaw organization that leans left and it’s just the case of them exercising the right to protest as guaranteed by the Constitution.

Sadly, but equally predictable, is the appearance on social media — megaphone for morons — of vacuous commentary on the abortion matter.

One such moron was observed on Facebook referring to “this abortion ban” and hoping supporters of it would choke and bleeping die tonight.

A wordsmith, she wasn’t. Not too bright in other areas, either.

Dear Moron Betty (her initials are MB), an overturning of Roe v. Wade would not ban abortion. That decision would be left to each state. You can bet deep blue socialist states such as California, New York and my own Pennsylvania will keep the butcher shops open, the last example having its outgoing toolbag governor rushing to the microphone to proclaim that killing babies will be allowed in Pennsylvania as long as he has anything to say about it.

How noble of him.

Sanitize linguistically the practice of abortion all you want by calling it Pro Choice, it still amounts to being pro taking a life.

The same hysterical types who scream that the government should keep its hands off their bodies, most often have no problem with mandated vaccines (at last glance, injected into bodies) being necessary to facilitate travel, going out in public or keeping one’s job. And what about the masks worn on heads attached to bodies, to enable free passage?

Another bromide cites rape and incest to justify abortion. According to a 2019 story in USA Today, a left-leaning publication, about 1 percent of abortions annually are for reasons of rape or incest. That leaves what I am confident is a great chunk of the remaining 99 percent of abortions mostly to be explained by morning-after regrets following promiscuity.

According to a story from NPR, another leftist mouthpiece, citing a 2017 study, approximately 1 in 4 women in the United States will have an abortion at some point in their lives.

All or mostly due to rape and incest? I doubt it.

Alas, people, we live not in a democracy, but an idiocracy. Convenience and expediency are the touchstones. Coaches of sports teams often quote the cliché “There is no I in team” to which present-day Americans would respond, “But there is a me and it’s all about me, baby.”

Dated concepts such as right and wrong, once easily identified, have been blurred and parsed to the point of being useless.

Politicians play to this widespread idiocy for a simple reason – it’s a winner. They buy votes with stimulus checks and all manner of ridiculous social programs that benefit mostly the providers and not the supposed needy.

They dredge up and dramatize “issues” designed to be raw meat fed to their cultist followers.

So, while it does my heart good to hear the whining from the lefty navel-gazers, I doubt any long-term benefit will be seen.

Somehow, in some way, Twitter’s work force will keep the outlet leaning hard left.

Somehow, in some way, Democrats will maintain power in mid-term elections.

Somehow, in some way, abortions will remain legal and readily available in these United States.

We have too many entrenched leftists in government, school systems, institutions of higher education and various media, for real progress to be made.

We have too many gutless conservatives, willing to cut and run anytime a stand on principle becomes a touch too controversial, for real progress to be achieved.

But it is amusing against the backdrop of that reality, to see the brain-dead and morally bankrupt agonize so publicly about these short-term gains by the right.

Once upon a time, when I worked for the Johnstown newspaper, a left-wing summer intern felt the need to lecture the newsroom staff on racial relations.

We couldn’t understand the anguish of the black man is what he told us.

My response was that I wasn’t sure that this whitebread Westmont resident fully understood it, either. I’d gone to public school with young black men. I’m sure he had not.

I offered after the night shift ended to run him up to the Prospect section, then an area with a high crime rate, and drop him in the parking lot of what was then called the Frontier Club, a meeting place for doers of misdeeds.

Think of the Dexter Lake Club scene in the movie Animal House and you get the picture of what this big talker and small doer would have encountered

Said youth declined my offer, which meant he lived to impregnate a night reporter and unceremoniously dump her.

I guess he didn’t understand the anguish of the unwed mother.

That was an early introduction for me to the hypocrisy of the left. The lessons continue.

More recently, elites from outside of Johnstown are taking it upon themselves to remake the city by attempting to attract refugees who don’t necessarily speak English, may not possess marketable job skills, and largely would exist as the reason for all the local non-profits and foundations to solicit more federal funds to service this influx and in so doing feed their bloated, overpaid management.

A city and surrounding suburbs operating at a high level might be able to absorb such an inflow of refugees without major difficulty. But these refugees would be plopped down within the city limits, with the children attending a school district already notable for massive student underperformance. The economic health of the area remains on life support, so any jobs likely would not be great ones.

Did we mention the ballooning rate of serious crime?

The Hornerstown section of Johnstown hit the news over the past weekend when a man, woman and dog were found shot to death in their home. They’d been dead for days, according to reports.

The fact that no one seems to have heard the shooting, or felt it particularly noteworthy even if they did, speaks volumes.

Unlike the elites who would tell Johnstown residents what is good for them, or TV news types who mistake Dibert Street for “Dilbert Street,” I can actually say that I lived in Hornerstown for a time, attending the former Meadowvale Elementary School. Then it was two old buildings, since replaced by one building which at present is the district’s middle school.

My credentials from earlier life include lengthy residency at various locations in Walnut Grove, which became quite the garden spot when the Solomon Homes were constructed.

True, I also spent a lot of my younger years in the Oakland section, just beyond the city limits, but still in the Greater Johnstown School District.

Just to add to my firsthand knowledge of troubled neighborhoods, my first house was bought on Daniel Street, across from the Oakhurst Homes, another frequent scene of crime ranging from shootings on down.

Eventually, I voted with my feet to move to Southmont and get my son into a better school district.

It didn’t really bother me to live near the Oakhurst Homes, although a cousin and medal-winning veteran of the Vietnam War who I once had down for a poker game, told he that he’d never be back due to the neighborhood.

There were occasional problems, like two hit-and-runs on our cars, one in front of the house, with the perpetrator escaping, and the other in the rear, with the drunken driver unable to escape due to damage to his car.

I grabbed him, pulled him into my dining room, threw him on the floor and called the police. My wife, awakened from her sleep by the commotion, trudged down the steps and offered the guy a cup of coffee!

But I was never shot, or even shot at in Oakhurst or elsewhere. The house was never burglarized. I did, however, have a battery stolen from my Jeep CJ7.

This was in the early 1980s, so I am confident the area has worsened, just like Moxham, Old Westmont and various other formerly solid neighborhoods.

My street in Southmont has taken on shaky qualities of late, too.

Evidence pours in almost daily that the city and its suburbs are on the decline. There’s no need for the elites who hide in their exclusive suburban homes, or even chose residency in other counties, to try to accelerate that decline while enriching themselves with their myopic vision projects.

Today is May Day, a time for socialist rallies and communist celebrations.

This should not be confused with the international distress code word “mayday,” or maybe it should.

There is much distress about the land, an ever-widening rift between political right and left fueled by the left’s outright campaign to ignore facts and suppress dissent.

Liberals, socialists, progressives, whatever term you want to use, do not allow their arguments to be limited by truth. To the contrary, they are actively seeking to quash those who would speak the truth.

Admittedly, there are some on the right who play fast and loose with facts, but they tend to be called out legally as in the case of Alex Jones and his denial of the Sandy Hook school massacre. Why is this not the case when those doing the distortions are on the political left?

This Elon Musk bid for Twitter has exposed a lot of cockroaches. Begin with the company’s admission that for three years it overstated daily users.

Such errors are important because they are measures that affect the stock price, and advertising rates.

As a companion to this mea culpa from Twitter, there are the anecdotal cases showing conservatives’ numbers of followers mushrooming and totals of followers of liberals on the social media platform tanking.

Cynics have suggested that this indicates Twitter trying to get ahead of Musk’s prying eyes by freeing up conservative posters from censorship and shadow banning, while bringing liberal follower numbers back toward reality.

Twitter’s censorship czar is rumored to be about to lose her $17-million-a-year job which paid her for such successes as knocking down the New York Post for running the Hunter Biden laptop story, since conceded to be 100 percent true by traditional left-wing house organs such as the Washington Post and New York Times.

Said Twitter censor also banned any discussion of COVID being an escapee from a Wuhan lab, a supposition that not only won’t die, but gains strength as time passes.

Emboldened by actions of Twitter and Facebook, who line up squarely on the left and censor the right, the average leftist citizenry thinks it, too, can deny outright proven facts.

Consider the example recently encountered by me. During maybe a half-hour conversation, a guy who otherwise might be considered rational, refused to concede that Trump rallies outdrew Biden rallies.

His response to the matter of Hunter Biden and his alleged dirty dealings, was to maintain the entire Trump family was guilty of miscellaneous sins.

He cited former attorney general William Barr as protecting President Trump. If Barr refusing to look into election questions and giving Robert Mueller a free hand in his special investigator role looking for Russian collusion that found basically nothing on Trump is protection, who needs enemies?

The legal harassment of Trump and his family continues. But a Manhattan grand jury charged with looking into allegations of property price manipulation for purposes of securing financing or avoiding taxes reportedly is going to disband with NO CHARGES to be filed vs. Trump.

I guess the Biden justice department is protecting Trump, too, which would be a case of the strangest bedfellows.

Or maybe when it comes to producing evidence, the left has only the usual distortions of reality to offer and, thankfully, some individuals still decide such legal matters on facts not fantasy.

This leftist with whom I spoke eventually retreated to accusing me of thinking Trump was flawless. I responded as I have many times, that Trump is a flawed human being, with an overinflated ego and a mouth that moves often without the benefit of the brain being in gear.

That having been said, the Democrats ran two of the weakest candidates in history vs. Trump and so it was a no-brainer to vote for Trump.

The reality that he won even once is a monumental triumph, although these same leftists who argue an election could not be or was not stolen in 2020, maintain exactly the opposite was the case in 2016 when they lost.

To win, Trump not only had to beat the Democrats, he also had to vanquish his own gutless Republican party establishment.

Allow me to repeat, most Republican leadership is gutless in the extreme. But the grassroots segment of the party is strong and unbowed.

It’s time to become more strident and forget the “compassionate conservative” crap of George W. Bush and others.

If you think you can convince the raving leftists using facts, you are sadly mistaken. If you are counting on people like Bill Barr or current special counsel John Durham, charged with looking into Russiagate, to hold liberals’ feet to the legal fire, you are similarly mistaken.

If you think pandering to leftists will make them like and respect you, you are as delusional as they are.

Individuals need to demand truth and accountability regarding everything from social media and LameStream news, to local governments and school systems.

Until such time, the leftists will keep on winning and the country will continue swirling around the metaphorical toilet bowl.

Having never posted on Twitter or Facebook, I cobbled up this blog as my own private venting space. Commence the venting.

The wife sent me to the local hardware store today to pick up bird seed. She’d been there Sunday, but they were out. The woman said come back Tuesday when more would have arrived.

Do I need a raincheck? the wife asked.

No, said the employee. The price would be honored.

So, as I waited in line, with my two 20-pound sacks of bird seed propped against the counter, the gentleman ahead of me was having a similar discussion about — bird seed and pricing. This woman said the sale had ended. Instead of $19 plus tax for two bags, it now would come out to about $27 or $28 (tax included?)

He ponied up the extra money. I took my two bags back to the display and despite the offer from an older woman worker to put them back in place, I slung them up on the stack and left.

I try to patronize this local business, but they make it tough. Do an online product search and the item shows up as being on their shelves. Drive on over to the store and the items customarily are not in stock. Ask someone there and they say never to bother doing online search because it is extremely inaccurate.

Then why have it at all? Better yet, why not improve it so it is accurate and helpful?

I urged the wife to call the store and voice her complaint about the bird seed. She of course will not do so. So I rant here about wasting my time. I just might call when I get done venting.

On this very same excursion, I attempted to cash a cashier’s check from an area bank. I was trying to cash this at my bank branch and had, in fact, just cashed a personal check on my account in this very same visit.

But when I tried to leave with the money from the cashier’s check, I was told they would put a hold on my checking account for that amount, in excess of $4,000.

Otherwise, I could deposit it to my checking account and withdraw it tomorrow.

I was astounded. A cashiers check traditionally (and still is according to my internet search) considered much more safe due to such checks being guaranteed by the underwriting bank, not by the individual’s funds.

So, why this extra step? I was told I could show up bright and early tomorrow and pull the entire amount from my account.

“Cashier’s checks are the most common kind of fraud” replied the teller, sounding like every boilerplate-reading telephone representative with whom you’ve ever tried to address an inquiry.

And so I rant.

Ah, but there is a happy ending. I went to a local sub shop, where milk is, inexplicably, considerably lower in price than at the regional supermarket chain outlet less than half a mile away. The grandkids drink A LOT of milk.

The cashier was friendly. Another customer – a woman – who was entering held the door for me to exit.

If only this sub shop sold bird seed, or offered checking accounts.

Elon Musk is buying Twitter after all and the leftists who considered it their own virtue signalling platform are very predictably exhibiting Petulant Borderline Personality Disorder. It’s a thing, look it up.

For those too lazy to do their own research, PBPD is, according to americanaddictioncenters.org, a condition whose sufferers fluctuate between outbursts of explosive anger and feelings of being unworthy or unloved. They have a STRONG NEED TO MANIPULATE OTHERS (my emphasis added), and they become very possessive, which results in extreme dissatisfaction in their relationships. This leads to issues with substance abuse and other potentially damaging issues.

Curiously, Jeff Bezos is among those exhibiting symptoms. But he’s a clever sufferer. Bezos, Mr. Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, asked an open question whether Musk acquiring Twitter might give the Chinese undue “leverage” due to their dealings with Musk.

Apparently blowback was intense about Bezos and his hypocrisy, considering the fact that Amazon sells so many Chinese products and has blocked all but five-star reviews of a book by the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and on, and on, and on.

So Bezos quickly added that he would answer his own question and say no, Musk was not likely to be leveraged by the Chinese.

Here Bezos has borrowed from the sleazy tabloid playbook. Ask a ridiculous question on the front page such as “Does hamburger cause cancer?” or “Is John Doe a child molester” with the answer to be found on D 10 or some such page buried in the edition.

Turn to page D 10 and the answer found there is no. But how many people bother to check? And if they do, how many people then immediately discount the initial question instead of leaving it to simmer in the dark recesses of their memories, only to be dredged up down the line as fact because they read it somewhere, sometime?

Maybe Bezos is feeling “leveraged” because Musk has surpassed him as the world’s richest person.

Maybe Twitter twits are feeling leveraged because for so long they had taken for granted they could rant with absolute freedom in that space as long as they were mouthing the far-left progressive platform.

And, should any right-thinking individuals have tried to inject facts and balance into the discussion, they would have been shut down by the radical Twitter censors, sort of like Amazon canceled anything but the most flattering reviews of Xi’s book.

Dare we dream that Musk will inject some balance into the Twitter equation?