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This was a tough week for the flaming liberals who would use the U.S. Constitution as little more than a door mat upon which to wipe their metaphorical feet.

Whether by dint of politically motivated activist judges operating at lower levels, or through over-reaching state and local governments – always in liberal enclaves it must be noted – the Constitution was seen as a general guideline, open to wide interpretation in favor of denying those rights to political opponents.

But the Supreme Court knocked down a New York law that required proof of special need in order to receive a concealed carry permit for a gun.

Justice Clarence Thomas correctly noted that no other Constitutional guarantees put the onus of proving need for things (such as free speech or equal opportunity) on those looking to exercise those rights.

Alarmists began screaming immediately about a tone-deaf Supreme Court in view of mass shootings taking place recently. Headlines, such as one in the local rag, blared incorrectly “Supreme Court expands gun rights.”

No, the Supreme Court beat back attempts to infringe on rights. It is a substantial difference.

But word play is important, which is why pro-abortion types prefer being labeled pro-choice. More on that later.

Back to protecting the Second Amendment, the appeal to blind emotion on the part of those who would disarm law-abiding citizenry neatly ignores that already existing gun laws are being violated in these mass shootings, either by people illegally possessing the weapons, or having them on property where such things are explicitly prohibited.

It also ignores the plain truth that people using guns to commit crimes are not likely to be stopped just because they would need to break laws to acquire their weapons, either by deceit in the purchase process, by stealing said weapons, or by purchasing them illegally on the black market.

Yeah, the gun-control advocates argue, but making it more difficult will help. No, it won’t.

If the leftists need more proof that more laws don’t mean the problem goes away, consider burgeoning drug use even as various “wars on drugs” have been fought and lost judging by the results.

Many of these same whining liberals professing to be worried about the children when it comes to guns, see no problem with criminals fading in among the illegal immigrant surge at our southern border and gaining entry to this country, presumably to continue to be criminals.

I wonder how many children – or adults for that matter – they might harm? I suspect the number is much higher than those affected by mass shootings, yet this problem is ignored.

Almost on cue came news from Norway Saturday of a mass shooting leaving two dead and 20 wounded.

Initial reports say the suspected gunman is a 42-year-old of Iranian descent with “a long history of violence and threats.”

Said man was not concerned that his automatic weapon was illegal. Imagine that.

Also this week, as had been widely anticipated, the Supreme Court invalidated the Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion.

Despite the screaming headlines you might have read that the Court struck down legal abortion, it merely is a matter of the Court reminding the audience that it is a decision to be made by individual states not the federal government.

To repeat, those states wishing to allow pre-birth infanticide to continue are free to do so. Those state legislatures with a conscience are free to clamp down on abortions. It’s that simple, now.

Yet liberal alarmists have taken the decision to mean abortions are outlawed, and soon to follow will be such things as inter-racial marriages, gay marriages or birth control.

One dependable liberal media mouthpiece called the decision tyranny of the minority. It is not clear how he defines minority, but at last check majority or minority of public opinion is not a firm basis for legal decisions.

For example, at one time the majority of people in this country found slavery acceptable. I’d argue that majority was wrong, but our law-professor liberal mouthpiece apparently would have considered anti-slavery action tyranny of the minority.

Before either Pro-Second Amendment or Pro-Life people celebrate this week’s decisions, understand that the opposition will not be daunted by Supreme Court actions.

Already Congress and Joe Biden (the president who needs a written cheat sheet in hand to instruct him how to enter a room, sit down, and begin to talk – you can look it up!) have agreed on additional gun legislation.

The key aspect is so-called “Red Flag” laws, which free anyone who holds a grudge against a gun owner to declare them dangerous and thus allow authorities to confiscate the guns until that person proves they are not a danger.

The person making the allegations against the gun owner seems to have no burden of proof on him or her.

And pro-abortion types will lobby mightily to overturn the Supreme Court. Democrats will cynically use this as a rallying point in mid-term elections, hoping the people will ignore raging inflation, economic malaise and porous borders to vote in Democrats who have gone on record that they would pack the Supreme Court with additional liberal justices so that they might get their way with future decisions.

If you think the week’s Supreme Court decisions have ended the assault on the Constitution, you are sadly mistaken.

So much of what is happening in the world makes little sense, which could be the key to the explanation for it all.

Indulge in a thought experiment. What if the elites were not trying to solve problems, but instead were intentionally screwing up the political, societal, economic and investing systems?

What if they were sowing discord among the masses and encouraging fragmentation based on race and other superficial aspects?

What if they welcomed a global food crisis for the societal breakdown it could produce?

What if they were gleeful over the collapse of education systems here and abroad, keeping the masses dumb and malleable?

What if they were encouraging armed strife?

What if they were doing all they could to make the desperate citizenry throw up their hands and accept any proposed solution, as long as the pain would stop?

Global elites have been talking about a great reset for a long time, going public in June 2020 at the World Economic Forum. They looked to seize on the COVID “crisis” to get people to accept radical changes they would not ordinarily even consider.

Since then, these elites have been furthering their agenda; this shadowy cabal of un-elected would-be dictators and their corporate elite wingmen has been working feverishly to stir the propaganda pot.

The so-called Great Reset is a confused mix of socialism, environmental green policies on steroids, and general left-wing navel gazing seeking to cede control of the world to a confused triumvirate of multi-national corporations (what could go wrong there?), governments and “civil society organizations.” The last is an ill-defined creation supposedly meaning a group of people distinct from business or government concerns.

What is that? Exactly.

The role of the people in determining their leadership seems minimal if not totally non-existent.

How these elites propose to get there is by tearing down the existing socioeconomic framework.

Dump the world into a universal economic recession, if not a depression, then offer a plan to get things back on track which theoretically will be embraced without question by desperate people.

Punish citizens with rising prices, shortages of goods, energy shortfalls and poor health care.

Stoke wars with saber-rattling adventurism and and promote crime in the streets by refusing to jail criminals and by cutting back on police.

Make people fear the present and question the future.

Highlight differences between people and get them to go tribal, separating into groups that use as a litmus test for friend or foe things such as race, sexual orientation, or politics.

Hammer traditional values and religion into the ground.

Should they accomplish all that, then the world is the elites’ oyster — as long as they can convince the often gullible masses to buy into their reset and the promise of better things.

If and when that happens, there will be no going back. The world will become one dystopian torture chamber for anyone believing in individualism, success through achievement, and private property rights.

It stops only if people refuse to be treated as lab animals in an experiment that would embarrass even the Nazis of World War II.

People need to wake up to their unwitting participation in this game and push their own great reset button before it’s too late.

Horrors, it looks like my youngest granddaughter is a Democrat!

At least she sure is acting like a Democrat.

Let me count the ways. Immature. Self-centered. Unrealistic.

These characteristics tend to produce in her an across-the-board inability to accept reality.

This manifests itself in several ways.

As relayed by my son just the other day, while on a return trip from Hershey, granddaughter ‘Nessa wanted to eat, right now. It mattered not that there was nothing but fields or mountains on either side of the road.

To repeat. She was hungry and wanted to eat immediately if not sooner.

Having it pointed out to her that there were absolutely no restaurants handy – notably even by her 4-year-old sister (a Republican?) – didn’t deter the youngest granddaughter from demanding instant gratification.

Think of all the screaming Democrats who right now have lengthy want lists that include having their student loans forgiven, all guns removed from the hands of law-abiding citizens, and also want more government handout checks to cover the effects of rampant inflation on things ranging from gasoline to food to housing.

On the last, the reality that there is no ability for the government to fund such things, at least not without turning the current inflation into runaway hyperinflation, does not intrude on their rants.

In a similar vein, our Democrat-in-training granddaughter has problems accepting good advice from wise elders.

Example: Last week it was strongly urged that she visit the restroom with grandma before leaving a restaurant. No. No. No and no.

Not five minutes after leaving this restaurant, which had what I’m sure were fine accommodations for such things, the little Democrat decided she had to go. Right now. Again, immediately if not sooner.

And once again, the slightly older granddaughter assured us that when the younger sister says “right now” she means in the next 30 seconds or so. Fortunately there was a deserted road nearby.

This little Democrat is consistent if nothing else on her demand for immediate gratification.

She wants television shows – right now – that aren’t currently airing.

She wants the doll or toy her sister currently is playing with – right now.

Sharing? That’s for you Republicans.

Tell her to clean up the mess she has just made and it’s a fool’s errand. Again, that’s for Republicans to worry about.

Democrats count on the government to make goods and services magically appear for them. This little Democrat still believes in fairies. But she will learn.

Some would argue that since this little leftist is a mere 3-years-old we are experiencing the terrible twos becoming the trying threes, with frustrating fours on the doorstep.

But aging didn’t cure the other Democrats, did it? You think Clueless Joe Biden has become more enlightened with age?

Still, I’m hoping that by the time our granddaughter is 18, and able to vote for Democrats, assuming we still have elections, some of these childish behaviors will have fallen by the wayside.

If not, well, she will find many kindred spirits in the Democratic Party.

The following is the sort of look-at-me bragfest often found on Facebook, Twitter, or other outposts of social media. I apologize in advance for stooping.

It’s Father’s Day and as often happens in our family, it turned into a weekend celebration.

Saturday was devoted to my wife throwing a cookout because my son and his family were headed out of town today. My brother the hermit made an appearance. Gifts were exchanged. Weather was great. A good time was had by all.

Today, the wife and I broke out the 2004 Mustang GT and cruised up to a huge car show in Windber held to celebrate coal miners – how politically incorrect – an event that had been wiped out the past two years due to COVID-19 overkill restrictions.

The weather continued to be ideal, sunny and not too warm. The car turnout was huge. I saw several old acquaintances and chatted with many strangers, including one who admired my hat.

Said hat, a red one purchased at the height of anti-Trump hysteria, says simply “Relax Idiots It’s Just A Hat.”

Back then it was great sport for the leftists to harass wearers of Trump hats and attempt to knock then off or steal them. My hat has gone unmolested.

I feel certain this was a largely Trump-friendly audience for this event, which was held on very same main street of Windber that used to host nightly cruising such as that immortalized in the film “American Graffiti.”

These days cruising has gone the day of $1-a-gallon gasoline, at least in these parts. But there are car shows, which as I have observed here before, are becoming more like AARP rallies. One former neighborhood guy that I ran into lamented how cars of our youth used to be cheap, are priced outrageously high now, but will be heading back to cheap as the current “motorhead” generation dies off and is replaced by kids who think modifying a car means adding a killer sound system.

For now, the car shows are strong and provide a window to view the true America. When the PA announcer asked for a pause of activity while our National Anthem was played, the crowd stopped and stood as one, doffed hats and remained silent.

My kind of people; the sort who would be looked upon with disdain by the crazed socialists holed up in their big cities and consequently blue states.

Leaving the car show early, we ate at a Chinese buffet that unbeknownst to us had transferred ownership. The prices were up slightly, but the food was improved, so it was a wash.

During the meal, some staff brought my wife a gift necklace, explaining that although it was Father’s Day, having a happy wife makes a happy life.

Can’t argue with that. Besides, my wife paid the check!

Soon it’s off to my son’s to dog-sit for the next few days.

Despite all the hardships visited upon us by Clueless Joe Biden and the socialist takeovers of education, media and government, it’s still possible to enjoy oneself.

As observed by 16^th century poet George Herbert, perhaps anticipating the misery inflicted by Pelosi, Schumer and their ilk, “Living well is the best revenge.”

It drives the oppressors crazy.

Democrats have gone into full Helen Reddy mode.

Allow me to explain.

Reddy was a modestly talented singer in the 1970s. Australian-born, a U.S. citizen by choice, Reddy was a raging Democrat with all the inconsistent messaging that political affiliation entails.

She won a Grammy in 1973 for “I Am Woman,” often cited as the women’s liberation anthem of the time. “I am woman, hear me roar” etc., etc., etc.

Reddy, got another Grammy nomination in 1976 for “Ain’t No Way To Treat A Lady” with moaning lyrics like “No way to treat your baby, your woman, your friend.”

Notably, this one didn’t win. Perhaps the left-wing voters that make up such award organizations were confused how the all-powerful roaring woman went to simpering about being mistreated, and ostensibly owned by someone (a man?) considering all the “your” modifiers.

Present-day Democrats are similarly flexible with their core principles.

Nancy Pelosi, 82-year-old Speaker of the House, who still won’t comment on her husband’s DUI arrest, recently blamed current inflation on COVID-19 and the war in IRAQ!

Holy Joe Biden. Pelosi staff, AKA cleanup crew, massaged the transcript to war in UKRAINE because that’s obviously what she meant. Or maybe she meant all the costs incurred in the winter campout at Valley Forge during the American Revolution, back when she was a young debutante, is the seed of our current inflation.

On the subject of Ukraine and war with Russia, Papa Joe Biden, who is similarly detail-challenged, confusing Iran and Iraq and Iran and Ukraine in recent months, apparently was sentient enough to hear his people being overly optimistic about that Ukraine conflict.

Specifically, according to a report on NBC, which usually can be counted on to prop up Biden, the Big Guy told his gang the talk of winning would create unrealistic expectations.

Translation: Not that long ago Joe was talking victory, but now Ukraine is obviously getting its butt kicked – not unexpected by the way – and no amount of propaganda can change that.

Lest you think Biden is back on track mentally, he quickly stepped back into his confusion cabinet and emerged with a plan to send citizens rebate cards to offset rising gasoline prices and, hopefully, bribe them into voting Democrat in mid-term elections this fall.

The main problem – not even touching on the fact that government money giveaways to citizens helped fuel our current inflation – is that a shortage of computer chips means the cards can’t be produced in sufficient numbers, even if Congress went along with the hare-brained plan to cure inflation with more inflation.

Barack “Hope and Change” Obama is coming off as quite the hypocrite. This climate change alarmist and green energy carnival barker, apparently thinks the evils of fossil fuels only apply when you peons want to benefit from them.

Obama is in the process of trying to have three propane gas tanks installed, with a capacity of, wait for it, 2,500 gallons, at his $12 million Martha’s Vineyard property.

Apparently the Big O wants to make sure he’s equipped to deal with energy breakdowns, not that we have to fear them or anything like that with The Big Guy in charge.

Finally, Democrats in general are trying desperately to divert the public’s attention from our current inflation and economic problems. They are beating to death the Jan. 6 protest, notable largely for an unarmed woman being killed by a terrified House police officer, who shot her through a window beside a barricaded door.

You will hear “insurrection” used by Democrats –except those fomenting insurrection usually bring firearms to the party. The Jan. 6 protesters did not, at least not as far as anyone has been able to document.

Also, you may have noted that lapdog mainstream media have been slavishly running the Democratic committee Jan. 6 hearings (political lynching attempt), while also relying heavily on programming dealing with Watergate, a Republican political embarrassment that occurred not one, not two, not three, not four, but five decades back.

Meanwhile, these same Democrats and their mouthpieces can’t seem to work up the energy to cover the much more recent attempted coup attempt on Donald Trump by the FBI and various intelligence assets, the role in that by the Hillary Clinton campaign, and a subsequent election that slipped Joe Biden into office based on low probability outcomes and apparent outright fraud in various Democratic precincts.

If someone would dig up the corpse of Helen Reddy, it would have an ear-to-ear grin. She’s dead, but her Democratic philosophy of expedience isn’t.

A short time ago, in a land not that far away, there was senile fellow who ran for president promising to be accountable for his decisions.

Apparently he has forgotten that pledge, along with his other periodic cognitive lapses as to what office he was running for, the names of people he’s speaking to, what states his political opponents represent, or such difficult things as what the day or date it is.

This man, at the behest of his Green Energy masters, has done all he can to single-handedly hamstring domestic energy production, which had this nation energy independent on the watch of his hated predecessor in the Oval Office.

Can’t have that, you know. Might make Greta T. scream.

Pipelines? Not on my watch. Drilling on federal land? Nope. Exploration on those lands? Only if you can get past years of ridiculous bureaucratic delays.

The result is now gasoline prices are at all-time highs, with natural gas and electric prices rocketing higher and Mr. I Will Take The Blame is blaming oil companies, Vladimir Putin and even you morons among the general populace who still drive cars with internal combustion engines.

The Take Blame Guy is making a trip to Saudi Arabia, the nation he was going to turn into a pariah state, to beg the robed ones to pump more oil in an attempt to bail out his failing regime.

Big oil companies responded to Take Blame Guy that if he just reversed some of his wrongheaded political moves, we could bail out ourselves.

But the blameless one replied that if only Putin hadn’t invaded Ukraine, or that dummy Zelenskyy had taken our warnings seriously, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

No matter that oil prices and inflation were on the rise long before the first Russian tank breached the Ukrainian border.

Let Mr. Take Blame Guy do all the political whining he wants, demanding oil companies refine at a quicker rate. They can’t do it, even if their lives depended on it.

The last major oil refinery built in the United States came online in 1977. That’s a tribute to Take Blame Guy’s Greenies through the years, making it virtually impossible to get approvals to build.

Take Blame Guy now has his political bedfellows pushing electric cars. One such genius noted rising gasoline prices were no problem since this clueless one drove a battery powered Tesla.

Of course electric car batteries must be recharged often. The electric doesn’t just magically appear at the end of the plug, but must be generated and distributed. That requires fuel of some sort, often fossil fuel.

Perhaps you’ve read of electrical grid problems due to heat in Illinois, Texas, California, and other outposts. Now imagine if we all were driving electric cars which could not be recharged due to a failing grid.

You wonder who Take Blame Guy would finger for that problem. Let’s hope he’s not in office long enough to spew some half-baked blame-shifting on that topic.

Today the Federal Reserve made it official by tacking 75 basis points (three-quarters of a percentage point) onto interest rates with the desire of slowing the economy and, by proxy, inflation.

It was expected. What was unexpected was the comical analysis by the CNBC Fed watcher. He’s one of the reason cynics call the financial network CNBS.

This shill, who probably needs the makeup crew to wipe the shoe polish off his mouth – picked up by licking the boots of Fed chairman Jerome Powell and his predecessors – was called out by more than one of the panelists on the Fast Money show at 5 p.m.

All of these are people who actually run money in the real world and so get their work judged not subjectively, but objectively – by results. One offered that stock markets might prefer big interest rate increases and a sharp, swift recession, in order to get past the inevitable and be able to look ahead to recovery.

Many other investment professionals also see it that way and think the Fed’s laborious raising of rates hoping to produce the so-called “soft landing” for the economy only drags out the problems.

Think of the quick, deep recession as the investing equivalent of yanking off a bandage quickly instead of puttering around with many small tugs.

One technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of decline in the nation’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product). We already have had a decline in the past quarter and reports show the current quarter on a knife’s edge between small growth or small decline.

Yet the CNBC hack said he’s one of the tiny number of observers still thinking the Fed can manage that soft landing; beating down inflation without the economy suffering a recession.

This shows, if nothing else, he has the weakest grasp of probabilities.

But his incredulous response to the matter of preferring a quick bout of recession vs. a grinding example, was stunning even as the panelists lined up to argue with him.

The facial expressions and bobbing of his bald head made it clear the Fed expert could not, or would not, accept real-world input.

This is a microcosm of our country. People like Powell, and this sycophant, make their livings talking the theoretical and never being held to account for the accuracy of their pronouncements, sort of like your local purveyor of TV weather forecasts.

A basic method of inflation fighting is to affect the real interest rate. If one can borrow money at 3 percent, and the inflation rate is 9 percent, that’s a negative-six percent real interest rate.

Translation: You are charged 3 percent interest on the borrowed money, but pay it back with money that is 9 percent less valuable, netting the borrower a risk-free 6 percent return.

Obviously, this encourages borrowing.

But when interest rates are higher than inflation, borrowing dries up due to the built-in loss.

Paul Volcker, the Fed chairman the last time the U.S. saw inflation at or above the current 8.6 percent, had to overshoot with interest rates just to get the attention of the markets and the populace.

While inflation then peaked at about 15 percent, the prime interest rate exceeded 21 percent. Contrast that to the current situation of an 8.6 inflation rate (which would be higher using 1980 measurements, by the way) and the prime rate newly raised to 4.75 percent.

If Powell truly thinks he can crimp inflation, he’s going to have to pull off multiple 75-basis point raises, or even higher examples.

To think that the Fed has the political stomach for this in view of the economic turmoil it would cause is a stretch. Even more of a stretch is thinking the Fed can continue to raise interest rates and the economy somehow will avoid a recession.

Yet that is the take of the Fed expert on CNBS.

While it is true that when someone writes of macroeconomics most people stop reading, I’m thinking this might be a good time to change that.

I’m going to write. You decide whether or not to read.

Many wonder why they should care about the economy and investing markets.

Well . . . if you have a job that might be jeopardized by a weak economy, you should care.

If you are collecting Social Security and/or a pension, or plan to do so, you should care.

If you have an IRA or 401k retirement account, you should care.

If you own whole life insurance with cash value, you should care.

If you like to be able to travel the country without an armed escort, you should care.

There are many other reasons, but that’s enough for now.

People whose job it is to notice such things are seeing warning signs everywhere that the world’s economic system, including our own United States example, is showing signs of distress that could lead to collapse.

Never happen, you say? It almost did in 2008. And the bloated money supply, overall debt both public and private, and leverage in investments is much greater now than it was in 2008.

The Dow Jones Industrial index was down 1,000 or so points at its worst today and closed off 876 and change. The tech-heavy NASDAQ lost even more on a percentage basis.

But what really has investment pros worried is the wild gyrations in the bond markets. Customarily these markets move at a glacier-like pace. There is plenty of time to identify a trend and either get on board or get out of the way.

Understand that the monetary value of global debt markets dwarfs the stock market capitalizations. Bonds are supposed to be the safe money, the bedrock of stability in tough times.

But that changes when inflation is clipping along at 8.6 percent for May on a year-over-year basis, and our panicky Federal Reserve floats a trial balloon in the Wall Street Journal that, where last meeting 75-basis-point interest rate increases were taken off the table by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, now they are back on the table.

This spelled chaos in the bond market Monday, with the unlikely result that 2-year, 5-year, 10-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds all closed with yields in the low 3-percent range. Even worse, the 2-year yield was slightly higher than that of the 10-year or 30-year.

Such instances of inversion of the interest rate curve, where traditionally long rates are higher than shorter term rates to account for inflation risk, virtually always mean an economic recession looms or already is upon us.

This comes as 30-year fixed mortgage rates climbed over 6 percent, where in January of this year they were just over 3 percent.

This sort of thing craters the housing market, never a good thing.

But the Federal Reserve Board, a group of unelected people who run the nation’s money supply – check the bills in your wallet, they’re Federal Reserve notes – has amassed a $9 trillion balance sheet in buying bonds and mortgage backed securities in recent years to boost the economy and keep interest rates low.

By way of comparison, the 2022 U.S. federal budget is about $6 trillion.

Should those purchased bonds or mortgage backed securities ever need to be marked to market at greatly reduced values, as would be possible in the case of a surge in interest rates, the Fed would be bust.

What happens then is a question no one can answer.

This nation faced even higher inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s and then-Fed chairman Paul Volcker helped rein it in, but only by increasing the Fed Funds rate (the interest rates at which banks can borrow from the Fed) to 20 percent in June 1981.

This cooled borrowing demand, put the economy into recession and cured the problem – with plenty of economic pain.

But even if our Fed goes 75 basis points at its Wednesday meeting announcement that would put the Federal Funds rate at just 1.75 percent.

Powell would need a total of 10 raises of 75 basis points just to get that Fed interest rate on level with the current admitted inflation rate (many believe the government is understating that inflation number).

Before that happens, the U.S. economy and by extension that of the world, will be in shambles.

As strange as it might sound, you could find yourself in the not-too-distant future longing for the good, old days of $5-a-gallon gasoline.

If you’re counting on the Fed’s Jerome Powell, or Clueless Joe Biden and his regime to get us through this crisis, you’re whistling past the graveyard.

My wife has become a player in the neighborhood pastime of Parking Grab. Even better, she’s merged the game with elements of Survivor as far as building alliances.

By way of background, I live on a residential street notable for the primal need of some residents to take up multiple on-street parking spots, whether they require them or not.

No matter that they have garages that have gone years without hosting a car. No matter that they have driveways and/or pulloff areas that get light use.

They measure their self-esteem by dominating on-street parking, particularly in front of their house or the houses of others close by. A few weeks back my wife returned from shopping and, lacking a spot to park in front of our house, parked in front of a neighbor’s house.

This brought a swift verbal rebuke from the neighbor’s wife. My wife now has joined my son in getting grief from these people for the unforgivable sin of parking on a public street. So far they haven’t had the temerity to yell at me, which probably is a good thing.

I called the local gendarmes on the matter and the officer assured me we had as much right to park on this public street as any other drivers do, as long as we were not blocking a driveway or other such things. We were not.

These neighbors are not the only offenders. We have others on our block who have joined the party.

There also seems to be a particularly ardent contest underway on the next block, with one proponent upping the ante by getting a handicapped parking sign installed. The handicapped parking tag seems to be passed around from vehicle to vehicle and, as an added bonus, the users are playing the Parking Grab variation of controlling extra spots with careful positioning of each vehicle.

To do this, the “handicapped” vehicle uses the handicapped parking sign as a bisecting point and parks with the front of the vehicle ahead of the sign and close enough to the next driveway up the street that only something like a 106-inch total length Smart Car — less than the wheelbase of my Kia Sorento — might park between the vehicle and the driveway.

Their aggrieved neighbors from across the street – we’ve heard past calls on the police scanner – retaliated with a handicapped parking tag of their own in the family vehicle and camped on the spot for a time, positioning the SUV to grab the extra half-space up front.

But she must have had to go somewhere, so now one of the many “handicapped” vehicles of that area has replaced her, leaving the half space open in front and having a confederate parked half a space or so distant in the rear. This way they control 2 1/2 to 3 spots.

How ingenious of them.

There is a similar tactic being employed in front of my house by several neighbors and their visitors or paramours, parking between a driveway and another parked car with about half a car length in front and in back.

As my wife prepared to leave today for grocery shopping, I told her to expect to have the parking spots taken by the time she got back.

But I found out later that the wife had a plan. She enlisted a neighbor to put a vehicle in the taking-multiple-spots position to await the return of my wife.

Meanwhile, I took one of my Mustangs out for a cruise – blissfully it is parked in a nearby rented garage and parking grabbers haven’t been brazen enough to force the lock and park in the garage when I’m out.

When I got back, I was bemused to see the SUV taking up multiple spaces, but didn’t realize it all had been preplanned.

I mowed our grass and shortly thereafter my wife pulled up and the neighbor placeholder moved the car to make room for my wife to park – with her notably leaving a space for someone else, too. This happened just as a visitor to a neighbor swooped in hoping to grab the whole multi-car spot – needing it due to lacking the ability to parallel park.

We unloaded the car and I laughed out loud when my wife filled me in on her pre-planning. I congratulated her for joining the fray and adding to it with alliance building.

I eagerly await any response from the neighbors, who just hate it when others play their silly game better than they do.

You may have noticed of late that headlines scream about someone throwing someone else under the bus.

It’s a colorful metaphor which means avoiding blame by identifying someone else as the culprit and distancing oneself from said person, a common albeit reprehensible act that has come to be labeled as throwing someone under the bus.

People who trace the history of such things see a link to a 1960s philosophical thought experiment in which people debate throwing an innocent fat man from a trolley and under the wheels to stop its runaway travel and save remaining lives.

Today’s throwing people under the bus is more a political exercise as the weak, often cognitively dysfunctional leadership looks to avoid responsibility for unpleasant developments.

In a curious turn of late, sometimes the person thrown under said bus emerges with enough strength to return the favor.

Consider the ongoing inflation we are experiencing, 8.6 percent in May which is the highest since 1981. The monthly numbers were announced Friday. The whispers among the investing community had been to expect a lower number.

Peak inflation was their working hypothesis, although that’s not necessarily a good thing. Say inflation had checked in at 7 percent, that would have been much lower than the previous month, which could have been identified as a “peak.”

But should you be comfortable with 7-percent inflation, which cuts in half your purchasing power every 10 years?

You are not supposed to consider such things of course. You would have been told inflation had peaked and you should have been all warm and fuzzy, just the like the morons were when Obama prattled on about hope and change.

I can hope bad things happen to you and if they do, say you go from being healthy to sick, then both hope and change have come to pass, but neither is very desirable from your perspective.

But back to our metaphorical bus. The creatures of the Biden regime got the word days early on the inflation report and began leaking to expect bad news.

This was happening even as in the previous week Biden and his Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen took turns throwing each other under the bus.

Yellen, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose low interest rates and buying of government debt also contributed to inflation, finally got around to admitting publicly that she got it wrong in predicting no inflation threat from such programs, as well as those $2,000-a-head stimulus bribes (payments).

But in excerpts from an advance copy of a Yellen book due out this fall, Yellen threw Clueless Joe under the Greyhound by saying she’d argued to have his $1.9 trillion stimulus plan cut by a third.

Meanwhile, Biden emerged from a meeting with current Fed Chair Jerome Powell and squarely put the blame for inflation on the Fed, which was running down the inflation tracks under Yellen, too,

This is a slight wrinkle for Clueless Biden, who most often blames Russia’s Putin for inflation and anything else going bad in these United States.

That whole Putin premise is ridiculous. Even economic neophytes knew that the Federal Reserve, with decades of keeping interest rates historically low, while at the same time allowing record growth in the money supply, were setting the stage for big price inflation.

All it needed was a spark to set afire all that tinder. That spark was the over-reaction to COVID-19, which simultaneously hampered supply lines, crimped manufacturing, then artificially goosed demand with the stimulus handouts.

Biden is giving Putin a break from duty under the bus. He even took a swipe at the formerly deified Ukrainian leader Zelenskyy, criticizing the golden boy for failing to heed warnings of a Russian invasion.

“There was no doubt,” said the clueless one at a fund-raising event. “And Zelenskyy didn’t want to hear it.”

Don’t worry about Zelenskyy, those tire marks acquired under the bus will rub off quickly.

If only we could anticipate such a quick end to inflation, no matter whom one wants to throw under the bus in blame for it.