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The word of the day is shrinkflation, which has nothing to with a burgeoning supply of psychiatrists and everything to do with confirming your paranoia that prices are rising for many things you buy despite protestations to the contrary from those in charge of the economy.

Economist Pippa Malmgren generally is credited with coining the term shrinkflation more than a decade ago when she noticed packaging sleights of hand designed to disguise higher prices.

In general, shrinkflation is keeping costs virtually the same, but for less product. Often said product is disguised to look equivalent in packaging size to those from the recent past, but the units actually are smaller and contain less of the goods you purchased.

Half-gallons of ice cream used to be the standard in my area. Now the cartons tend to be one-third of a gallon or less.

I recall a few years back plumbing the depths of an apparently customary sized jar of peanut butter (making a sandwich for a granddaughter) only to find the bottom was domed upward, to make less room for peanut butter in what to a cursory glance would be a jar that could hold more.

This week it was reported that Costco is masking a price increase for paper towels by dropping the sheet count for a roll from 160 to 140. The price remained the same, but for less product. And, no, there were not claims of increased absorption.

The towel effectiveness is the same, there just are 20 fewer per roll.

But shrinkflation doesn’t work for everything. An eight-foot 2-by-4 or 4-by-8 sheet of plywood cannot be shrunk without throwing crimps into building plans. So lumber, unable to disguise price increases, is up 67 percent already for 2021 and 340 percent from a year ago.

That, my friends, is serious price inflation.

Food costs are up, too, as are energy expenses. Of course your federal government excludes rising prices for food and energy from inflation tabulations because they are “volatile.”

So, we are supposed to accept reports that the United States inflation rate for the 12 months ended in March 2021 is a mere 2.6 percent. That people can actually claim such figures with straight faces is astonishing.

One canary in the coal mines calling out such distortions is the traditional precious metal gold, once the basis of the world’s money systems. A more recent canary is cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The powers that be hate both of them because when their prices are skyrocketing, it implicitly means inflation is afoot and each dollar is worth that much less in terms of purchasing power, no matter what inflation numbers are reported.

You may have noticed economic bureaucrats and private citizen elites talking down Bitcoin and gold with great fervor recently.

Janet Yellen, whose name sounds like a statement (Janet yellin’) is our current Secretary of the Treasury and former Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Earlier this week, a day after gold and silver had skyrocketed and Bitcoin had interrupted its latest swoon with positive movement, Yellen acknowledged inflation in public comments.

Actually, Yellen said interest rates might need to rise to deal with an “overheat” in the economy, with is economic geekspeak for inflation pumping up prices and demand as people rush to buy now what could cost more tomorrow. The only accepted method to slow down the advance is to increase interest rates and thereby make money more expensive and demand lower.

The Federal Reserve, through many regimes, has been complicit in building the basis for rampant inflation by artificially limiting interest rates to historically low levels while also increasing the money supply geometrically.

Gold, silver and Bitcoin tanked on cue shortly after Yellen hinted at higher rates, but so, too, did the traditional stock markets. So yellin’ Yellen was quick to disavow her earlier remarks. Just kidding. No inflation. No rate hikes.

Make no mistake, success as measured by rising returns in the stock and bond markets is necessary for the government to maintain the illusion of prosperity. If either, or both, of these markets fail, this financial house of cards tumbles to the ground.

This sort of smoke and mirrors exercise works until it doesn’t. Then things can get out of hand rapidly and our current economic gurus are short on solutions other than ramping up the money supply, the one tool in their tool box and the reason we are in this tenuous position.

You can prepare any way you want, but you might want to pay heed to what the ultra rich are doing. Sam Zell, legendary billionaire real estate investor, was out with an interview May 4 revealing that he’s bought gold to protect his wealth against what he anticipates will be raging inflation at levels last seen in this nation in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

I got my first mortgage in 1979, at 10.75 percent and felt fortunate. Inflation was running at 13.5 percent in 1980. Only the willingness of then-Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker to allow interest rates to increase rapidly, with the federal reserve interest rate peaking at 20 percent in June 1981, put the inflation genie back in the bottle.

Our current fed funds rate is .25 percent, that’s one-quarter of a percent, or 1/80th of the peak 1981 rate.

Today’s Federal Reserve Board won’t be willing to imitate Volcker to rein in inflation, but the markets may raise interest rates for it.

Meanwhile, get used to paying more, for virtually everything. Just don’t expect the government to admit there is any price inflation.

Word that Bill and Melinda Gates are divorcing proves anew that while money can buy control of computers, politics, vaccines and vast amounts of farmland, it can’t necessarily buy happiness.

At least we presume Bill and Melinda aren’t happy with each other – seriously not happy. If this were a minor disagreement, they’re wealthy enough to preserve a marriage without having to bother seeing each other on any kind of regular basis.

They could rule over separate fiefdoms. Melinda could retain the modest 66,000 square-foot Washington state testament to excess, planning her rebound relationships in the trampoline room.

Bill could play the role of gentleman farmer on some of the couple’s 242,000 acres of farmland, a total that makes them the largest private owners of such property in these United States.

Come to think of it, maybe this was the root of the domestic discord. Perhaps Bill had planned to sell the Washington shack and take up residence on a farm, sort of like Oliver Douglas in the old sitcom Green Acres.

Recall that the Oliver character’s wife, Lisa Douglas, preferred the city life, but bowed to Oliver’s wishes due to the marriage as told by the song’s theme song. “(Oliver) You are my wife. (Lisa) Goodbye city life. (Both) Green Acres we are there.”

In these enlightened times, women don’t follow the lead of their husbands, even if there are $130.5 billion reasons – the Forbes Magazine estimate of the collective Gates fortune.

This is a far cry from the old euphemism for divorce – splitting the blankets. Bill and Melinda will split the billions and billions and billions.

And the New York Times wondered in print what effect this would have on promised, but not yet made, donations to the Gates Foundation.

The couple’s (soon to be ex-couple’s) divorce statement that was posted to Twitter (where else?) alluded in vague terms to working on the relationship and concluding they no longer could grow together in the next phase of their lives.

Bill is 65 and Melinda is 56, so that next phase has geriatric written all over it.

But give the Gates duo credit for not inserting the traditional request for privacy in the statement – at least not in the reporting I’ve read.

When you rush to microphones almost at every opportunity to promote your agenda and lecture the inferiors among the populace, you can’t very well plead to be ignored when the topic turns to something you’d rather not share.

Even for all of Bill’s bought-and-paid-for goodwill from his eponymous foundation, Gates skeptics are many.

New Republic, in an April 12, 2021, posting that features artwork of a horned and bespectacled Gates, ran the headline: “How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines.” The sub headline read: “Through his hallowed foundation, the world’s de facto public health czar has been a stalwart defender of monopoly medicine.”

Having scanned the story, it isn’t exactly an ode to the selflessness of Gates. Maybe Melinda read it and decided to get off the train now that the hero worship of the spouse was breaking down a tad.

Regardless, I’m sure Bill and Melinda will live out their respective dotage without ever having to fear they can’t afford prescriptions, food, or the latest Microsoft operating system update.

Maybe Bill can pal around with Jeff Bezos, a fellow mega-billionaire who also is at liberty after a divorce a few years back. Can a remake of The Odd Couple be on the horizon?

Scenes witnessed in recent days have re-enforced to me that ours is an economic world turned upside down as evidenced by what we’ll call the ratty car indicator.

Growing up in the 1960s, a stretch of time when I went from age 5 to 15, poor folk drove ratty cars – my family included. We shouldn’t have been poor – my dad worked steadily – but he always managed to spend more than he made, and on wasteful items.

And so it was common to see us motoring down the highway in some decrepit Ford Falcon, its bodywork heavily patched with aluminum panels that had been pop-riveted to whatever steel had not yet succumbed to rust.

Sometimes the old man had a truck, too, but they also were low-buck heaps held together with whatever was on hand, like wire coat hangers. Although zip ties were invented in 1958, they had yet to hit the public marketplace in as large numbers as the present.

If we’d have found ourselves lined up to get free food, a common occurrence these days in the USA but not an option for us back then, we’d have looked the part in whatever crumbling vehicle we drove to the distribution point.

But a few days back I saw yet again a line of vehicles at a food handout and there was nary a ratty ride among them. Instead, there mostly were high end, late model SUVs, pickup trucks, and other vehicles looking pristine and upscale.

This very point was addressed in a national story I saw recently, in which several people interviewed pointed out that lest onlookers judge them due to their rides, the truth was that a main reason they needed the free food was they had spent so much on their cars. To me, that sort of makes my point in Catch-22 fashion.

Completing my weekend, I went to a car show and a cruise at separate sites Sunday. At both of those there was an ample supply of cars gleaming like they were just out of the showroom, even though they might be 20, 30, 40 years old or older.

There were ratty cars, too, but mostly they were ratty by design.

A trend among hot rodders is to keep the rust, use mismatched, worn-out looking parts, and call it a rat rod.

Classic cars also have a branch that embraces what is called patina; what we’d have called faded, bad paint and rust. This often is preserved under a clear-coat layer of paint. If there is not enough natural patina, some can be added via rust-like paint, or even plastic wraps for the entire car designed to mimic natural patina.

These latter-day ratty vehicles can be expensive, somewhat ironic considering the look used to be the calling card of the people too short on funds to have a nice car. Now people pay extra for that look, sort of like the current trend to buy clothes with rips and tears already in them, at a higher cost of course.

It’s not just events from recent days that make the point of economic bastardization as measured by the ratty vehicle indicator. A Section 8 apartment complex near my home has the odd ratty car amidst a sea of late model vehicles in good to excellent condition, at least cosmetically. With the government paying the rent, that leaves more to spend on the car.

But is this right? Should people not working be driving better vehicles than many working people?

The point is moot for now. As long as the governmental agencies can keep doling out benefits, this can continue. But if and when it ends badly, as many economists have predicted, due to the federal government running out of borrowing runway, the system collapses dramatically.

You will recognize this when ratty cars become prevalent on the roads, and not merely as styling statements.

When you hear social justice warriors claiming math is racist, understand that they want to demean the science of counting in order to make it easier to cover up the incredible disconnect between hard numbers and alleged outcomes.

EXAMPLE: Nielsen on Thursday released TV ratings for Joe Biden’s first speech to Congress Wednesday night. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who didn’t bother to watch. According to Nielsen, Biden drew 26.9 million viewers.

CONTEXT: That total of 26.9 million is down 43.6 percent from the 47.7 million viewers who tuned in for Donald’s Trump first address to Congress as president. Trump’s lowest viewership for such a speech was 37.2 million in 2020 and he drew more than 45 million viewers each in 2018 and 2019.

WHAT IT MEANS: Biden is nowhere near as exciting or popular enough to have put up the record vote totals he is alleged to have drawn in the most recent presidential election. His rallies drew flies. His other appearances could have been contained in the average men’s room at a public facility.

And yet we are supposed to believe that Biden pulled in just under 81.3 million votes, easily eclipsing the previous record of 69.5 million for Obama in 2008. Trump, in a supposed losing 2020 effort, drew an admitted 74.2 million votes, also easily bettering Obama’s top total.

Biden won under 17 percent of the counties in the United States, a record low for a winning presidential candidate in this country.

I’m surprised no one got to Nielsen to fudge these television ratings upward, to make for better optics. Or maybe I’m not surprised because Biden’s in office now and it doesn’t matter that he’s obviously not very compelling and his vote totals continue to smell like month-old roadkill in July.

There will be no serious reporting of the pathetically small ratings numbers by lamestream media; no wondering aloud how this sort of recurring under-performance statistically could have produced a Biden election victory.

Instead they will tell you just to keep repeating to yourself: Math is racist.

An unlikely voice has spoken out against the woke mob mentality overtaking this country – James Carville.

The self-indulgent among the younger crowd, those whose frame of reference extends only to their memories from childhood and forward, might not recognize Carville’s name.

But perhaps they have heard of former president Bill Clinton, the man Carville got elected, twice. Carville once was the guru of the Democratic party.

He was a particularly unattractive man physically, once described as looking like the love child resulting from the sex scene in the movie “Deliverance,” a disturbing image on many levels.

Regardless, Carville knows politics and he skews hard left ideologically. Yet even Carville is concerned about his party and it’s full-on embrace of the radical religion of wokeism.

Think of wokeism as the modern equivalent of the Salem witch trials. The woke gang is a crazed, self-righteous minority that, under the guise of pursuing equality, operates as judge, jury and executioner.

It is a definitive example of mob mentality, where even those within the crowd who disagree to some extent are afraid to speak up lest they turn the mob’s attention on them. Those on the outside are even more timid to challenge the mob agenda.

That was Carville’s message in a recent interview with Vox, an ironic venue considering Vox is Latin for voice, but all voices on Vox seem to speak with a left-leaning accent.

That Carville would use this digital soap box to call out a movement that Vox denizens likely would agree with, at least to some degree, is telling.

Said Carville: “Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It’s hard to talk to anybody today – and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party – who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out loud.”

The fear is one of retribution, albeit most often not physical violence. The threat from the cancel culture is ostracism both online and in professional life. It can put a former insider on the outside looking in; a formerly successful business person in the welfare line.

Even major corporations are quick these days to toe the woke line in commenting for public consumption lest they become victims of campaigns to turn their bottom lines red. The thinking seems to be, go ahead and speak out against the majority because those milquetoast types lack either the guts or the motivation – or both – to fight back.

This doesn’t mean violence is not a weapon, too, of the woke crowd. “Mostly peaceful” demonstrations that turn violent and destructive are the hammer that gives implied threat to the more pedestrian campaigns to discredit and shame on social media or in the lamestream news outlets.

So, cowed by fear, what likely is a majority – even among Democrats – that does not endorse full-blown socialism and blatant racism for the avowed purpose of reversing past racism – sits silent while the mob has the floor.

This is not a new concept. Then-president Richard Nixon referred to the “Silent Majority” in a televised address in 1969, calling on them to support him against protests of the time both racial and against the Vietnam War, as well as to back him as an opponent to the overall rise of the so-called counterculture.

Donald Trump tapped into that silent majority sentiment, won one term as president and arguably was re-elected if the voting fraud could have been factored out of the equation.

Already Trump, admittedly not a young man, is making overtures of running again in 2024. If he is still around, and hale and hearty at that time, and if wokeism continues to gain speed flying in the face of the majority of this country’s citizens, it’s going to take exponentially greater voter misconduct to beat back Trump in 2024 than it did in 2020.

Carville realizes that and he’s trying to get his party’s attention.

Joe Biden, who has abdicated a large piece of his presidential duties to Kamala Harris, finally got around to addressing Congress and, by extension, the American people, tonight.

I chose not to watch, due to the likelihood that Biden would be promising the moon in the way of governmental handouts while also playing the blame game by calling out Republicans, police, Wall Street, whites in general and white men in particular – all the usual suspects in Democratic harangues.

Instead of enduring this pap, my time was spent creating an internet snapshot of America, doing some quick browsing and capturing the temperature of the propaganda dispensers.

Make no mistake, this is not an exercise in satire. These are real headlines I saw, no matter how absurd they sound.

It began with my browser starting page offering up promos for some stories I might find worthwhile.

From smithsonianmag.com, I got “The Unmistakable Black Roots of Sesame Street.” They weren’t talking about a bad dye job at the local beauty parlor.

This item was the second pick on the first line of capsules and photos. Taking the sixth spot, on line two, from marieclaire.com was “The Unbearable Whiteness of Ballet.”

Of 21 promo items on the page, not a single one appeared to have input from what generally would be described as a traditional or conservative viewpoint.

I guess this should be understandable since I watched some CNBC investment television this afternoon trying to monitor the Federal Reserve news, and saw at least three times an ad for some sort of new drug for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Wall Street and capitalism’s cable channel is eager to virtue signal.

Said ad was an ode to woke-ism, showing a couple of men repeatedly, including sitting at the end of a pier lovingly stroking each other’s hands. Along the way there were two black guys twirling drumsticks and the ad concluded with a black guy wearing a stethoscope, presumably a doctor or male nurse, giving the whole thing minority legitimacy.

But back to the internet and our peek at how manipulators are attempting to program your thought process.

I stopped by CNN.com tonight and found, predictably, a Bidenfest orgy to the greatness of the guy finally getting in front of a microphone for more than a few minutes. “Jobs, jobs, jobs” screamed a huge headline, and it wasn’t a reference to the late Apple computer guru, first name Steve.

Over at MSNBC more hero worship was on display. “America is on the move again.” Why, yes, people are moving out of deep blue states such as California and New York in record numbers, seeking lower taxes and better living conditions elsewhere in red states such as Texas and Florida. But this headline did not refer to that.

Last stop, Foxnews.com, which has gone left. “Blue-Collar Blueprint” was the major headline, although a side item promo quoted pollster Frank Luntz: “I don’t remember a time in my lifetime when people are more divided than they are right now.”

Earlier today on zerohedge.com, a site I highly recommend for anyone wanting a daily digest of the news and stories the lamestream media will bury, there was an item both sad and illustrative. In a 5:40 p.m. post the headline read: “Biden Administration To Ban Menthol Cigarettes . . . Because They’re ‘Racist’ ?”

Repeat, this is not satire. Both the Washington Post and New York Times had headlines about the planned move. Supposedly blacks disproportionately smoke menthol cigarettes, so the cigarettes are purported to be a racist ploy by manufacturers.

Nanny-staters like Joe Biden are going to push for legislation to protect those who could protect themselves simply by choosing not to smoke or not to purchase menthol cigarettes.

Side note: One of my brother’s friends (he was white) in our old neighborhood grew up smoking Kools (menthol cigarettes) and drinking R.C. Cola. It wasn’t diet cola, either. But when he died at an early age we’re pretty sure it was the Kools that did it to him, not the soda.

In view of the fact that manufacturers since 1966 have been required to warn people that cigarettes in general can kill them and people still smoke, a lot, I’m thinking banning menthol cigarettes will shift smokers to other brands and/or create quite a black market (no pun intended) for anyone willing to buy up menthol cigarettes now and sell them later at massive markups.

This menthol ban should be about as effective as the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign, which is to say not very much so.

And there you have it, the final entry in a not-so-pretty snapshot of the pathetic state of this country, no matter how much happiness malarkey Biden dispensed tonight.

Beware, the COVID-19 vaccine push is about to go into overdrive.

I’ve noticed the trend for some time, but it was rammed home by a doctor’s visit last week. The occasion was the routine 6-month checkup that in this era of the Affordable Care Act passes for interaction with a family doctor.

After my blood work had been reviewed (all is well) my weight and blood pressure noted (acceptable but not great on both counts) and various pleasantries had been exchanged, I was asked if I’d gotten the vaccine, or planned to do so.

It was slipped into the conversation so casually, the way spies looking for information in the old thriller TV shows or movies did it. Make it seem almost an afterthought; nothing that important.

My response was no and no. And thus began a bit of verbal fencing. My position is and has been, I’m willing to take my chances with a death rate of about 1 percent for people such as me vs. embracing the vast unknown risks of vaccines not subjected to customary periods of study to discern possible side effects.

The fact that the vaccine manufacturers got blanket immunity from lawsuits during this hurried rollout does not inspire confidence.

The arguments about whether the vaccines are, in fact, gene manipulation also is a concern.

Reports of violent reactions to the shots are troubling. Also worrisome is anecdotal evidence. A young and healthy friend of my son found the vaccine worse than the disease – he’s had experience with both.

It is disingenuous when people say the adverse reactions are a very small percentage. Also tiny is the percentage of deaths from COVID-19, but that hasn’t hampered the terror campaign.

The vaccine pushers use combinations of guilt, virtue signaling and general what-can-it-hurt? arguments to make their case.

It was easy for them early in the going. The most gullible and easily panicked sheep rushed to get the jabs. They signed up on waiting lists. I know of at least one frantic individual who drove hundreds of miles each time for her jabs. More correctly, her daughter did the driving.

Neighbors are astonished that neither my wife nor I raced to the telephone or computer to get on the lists.

Apparently these days you don’t need to wait. On the contrary, vaccines sit unused. Mass vaccination centers have closed down for lack of demand. Reports are that generally the 50 percent or so of the population that wanted vaccinated has taken the shots. The other 50 percent isn’t interested at this time.

The usual suspects – fear merchants, most of whom are credentialed with M.D. titles – are appearing regularly on television to promote vaccines and your duty to get them. Not surprisingly, the M.D. experts who will not preach fear don’t seem to get the same air time, at least not with sycophantic nods of approval from the show hosts.

My doctor and I got into a side discussion on abortion. I noted how the eliminators of unborn children cloak their task in terms such as pro choice rather than pro abortion. Just sounds so much more harmless and right, doesn’t it?

Well, on the matter of vaccines, I’m pro choice. I don’t want one, so you can have mine. It is my body, to borrow another line from the infanticide crowd.

I don’t understand the concern among the self-righteous people who have taken the needle. If the vaccine works, you’re safe and it’s me taking the risk by not getting it. If the vaccine doesn’t work, why bother to get it at all?

What about the SCIENCE? is oft-heard from the pro-vaccine folks. What about it? Increasingly, studies, such as a recent one by MIT, show social distancing and reduced capacities do little to prevent spread of the virus and those measures were rammed down our throats as SCIENCE.

The study authors would, however, like to keep you from going to gyms, or church, where your heavy breathing, or singing and talking, might more readily spread the disease.

Of course there is no mention in reports on the study that urge avoiding social justice warrior protests and riots to prevent spread of the virus. Can’t infringe on the right to rape and pillage.

Talk of so-called virus passports or immunity passports to allow vaccinated people to move freely about, and restrict movement of the non-vaccinated, keeps being downplayed by the powers that be. But, rest assured, if enough people don’t willingly take the needle, these measures, or similarly draconian ones, will be implemented to coerce compliance.

And then the battle truly begins.

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen, or non-specific gender term of your choice, this is Woke Double Jeopardy.

Just a quick reminder, check all common sense, rational thought, and proven data at the studio door. Here the subject matter is all about agendas, virtue signaling and outright falsehoods.

I’m your host, Al Bino, and my co-host is Sue Dointellectual. The contestants continue to be Blyn Defanddum, Gull A. Bull and Missy Enformed.

Bino: We left off with Blyn controlling the board. Go ahead, Blyn.

Blyn: Let me have Bitter Irony for $400.

Bino: The answer is, residents of Western Pennsylvania awoke on this Earth Day, April 22, 2021, to find a couple of inches of snow on their lawns.

(Chime sounds) Bino: Take it, Gull.

Gull: What is global warming?

Bino: No, sorry. Anyone else?

(Chime sounds again) Bino: You’re up, Missy.

Missy: What is climate change?

Bino: Correctomundo, Missy. Gull, you apparently forgot that global warming has been re-branded climate change, the better to include any outcome that is not exactly average (meaning just about everything on every day that is weather-related) as undeniable proof that man is making this planet uninhabitable. Make another selection, Missy.

Missy: I’m liking Unfathomable Utterances for $400.

Bino: The answer is, “Teenagers have been having fights including fights involving knives for eons. We do not need police to address these situations by showing up to the scene & using a weapon against one of the teenagers.”

(Chime sounds)

Bino: You’re up, Blyn.

Blyn: What did a genius activist post on Twitter in a weak attempt to say a policeman was wrong to stop a knife attack by shooting the girl wielding the weapon?

Bino: Amazingly, that is the correct answer. I may be giving away my age by telling you this, but I recall a time when a policeman would have been commended for saving the life of the potential victim of that attempted knifing. You’re still up, Blyn, make another pick.

Blyn: I’ll stay in the same category, Unfathomable Utterances for $600.

Bino: The answer is, “Defund the police.”

(Chime sounds)

Bino: Take it, Gull.

Gull: What is the virtue-signalling rallying cry of hoods, as well as professional athletes, politicians and celebrities who can and do pay for private security to protect their golden butts?

Bino: Very good, Gull. Well, we’re already out of time again – sorry for stealing your line, Sue – so we are going to Final Woke Jeopardy.

The category is Racism in America. The answer is, according to the official Black Lives Matter Twitter account, of the past two presidents, this one has been more guilty of terrorizing black neighborhoods by sending in military equipment.

(Furious scribbling by all three contestants)

Bino: OK, pens down. We’ll start with Gull, in last place with $300.

Gull wrote: Who is Donald Trump?

Bino: No. And your bet? $300, giving you zero. Next let’s see what Missy and Blyn, who are tied at $500, came up with. Missy?

Missy wrote: Who is Donald Trump?

Bino: Again, no. Your bet? $500. So you’re at zero, too. Well, let’s see what Blyn has.

Blyn wrote: Who is Donald Trump?

Bino: Wrong again. Your bet? Also all-in for $500, so you finish with zero, too. The correct answer is Joe Biden. We also would have accepted Sleepy Joe, Creepy Joe, Kamala Harris’ Placeholder, or Basement Guy. It looks like we have three zeroes for contestants, a fitting outcome.

Join us again next time for more Woke Jeopardy.

I’m thinking America’s long-running knowledge show is overdue for a makeover to reflect the times and it might look something like this: Welcome ladies and gentlemen, or non-specific gender term of your choice, this is Woke Jeopardy.

Check all common sense, rational thought, and proven data at the studio door. Here the subject matter is all about agendas, virtue signaling and outright falsehoods.

I’m your host, Al Bino, and my co-host is Sue Dointellectual. Let’s meet the contestants.

He’s an activist and protester for anything that rolls down the left lane of the political agenda, a currently unemployed philosophy major living in his parents’ basement, say hello to Blyn Defanddum.

Our second contestant, who still believes in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the promise of socialism, a government worker from parts unknown, here’s Gull A. Bull.

Rounding out the contestants is a community organizer whose motto is “Often wrong, but never in doubt,” meet Missy Enformed.

OK, Blyn, start us off,

Blyn: Let’s try Different Strokes for Different Folks for $100.

Bino: The answer is, a Minnesota police officer has been convicted of various murder and manslaughter charges for the death of a black man whom he was subduing with a knee to the neck, but as that trial unfolded, it was announced that the U.S. Capitol police officer who shot and killed unarmed protester Ashley Babbitt, a white woman and 14-year Air Force veteran, will face no charges.

(Chime sounds) Bino: Go ahead, Gull.

Gull: What is justice?

Bino: Correct. We also would have accepted what is proof of absurdity in the legal system circa 2021? You have control of the board, Gull.

Gull: I’ll take Uncommon Valor for $100.

Bino: The answer is, Idriss Deby.

(Chime sounds) Bino: Take it, Missy.

Missy: Who was the 68-year-old president of Chad who died this week of wounds suffered while he was commanding a military unit in the field against rebels seeking to oust his government?

Bino: Correct. We also would have accepted who is someone who did more than talk tough, the easy path preferred by Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi? Go ahead, Missy, pick again.

Missy: Give me Math Is Racist for $100.

Bino: The answer is, 47 percent and 48 percent.

Painfully long period of dead air and finally a buzzer.

Bino: Well, that was a tough one. The correct question is, what is the percentage of respondents to a Pew Research poll who believe coronavirus to be a very big problem (47 percent) vs. those who believe illegal immigration is a very big problem (48 percent)? And this despite massive efforts by government and media to convince the citizenry otherwise. You get to pick again, Missy.

Missy: OK, let’s take a shot – sorry about that – a stab – let me start again – a crack — ummm, ahh, I’ll try Who’s Zooming Who? for $100.

Bino: The answer is “She’s a loving girl.”

(Chime sounds) Bino: Go ahead, Blyn.

Blyn: What is what a mother says of her 15-year-old daughter after that daughter is shot by police while seeming to attack other civilians with a knife?

Bino: Correct . . .

Dointellectual: . . . Sorry to break in here, Al, but our time is up for now.

Bino: Thanks, Sue. Please come back for the next round, Double Woke Jeopardy, where the amounts are doubled and the game will continue to amaze you.

Sure the country is headed to hell in a hand basket, but at least Democrats can be counted on for comic relief along the way.

As a side note, often the laughter stems from absurd threats and name-calling uttered by people who profess to be in the process of trying to unify this nation and the world.

Just last week Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi addressed yet again the overblown topic of protesters invading the U.S. Capitol.

Pelosi called herself a street fighter, noted she’s pretty tough, and said of the protesters that if they’d met up with her, “They would have had a battle on their hands.”

It is not clear what geriatric Nancy would have done. Maybe she would have hit them on the head with small samples of her favored elitist ice cream, at $11.75 a pint, which equates to $94 a gallon? Sure that ammo would add up, but Pelosi could just have put it on her government expense account.

Or maybe Pelosi would have hurled 55-gallon drums of Botox at the protesters, strangled them with one of ever-present scarfs (the better to hide sagging neck skin) or even thrown a torn up copy of the State of the Union Address in their faces hoping to subdue them with paper cuts.

More likely Pelosi was just happy to have had her security people escort her out of the building and allow her to hurl empty threats and boasts after the fact.

Pelosi seems to be learning at the feet of Joe Biden, although following the lead of a man whose grip on reality is tenuous at best doesn’t seem to be the best strategy.

You might recall Biden, on multiple occasions, saying that when he was a young man, which would be about 100 years ago, he’d have taken Donald Trump out behind the gym and thumped him physically.

That’s brave talk from a guy last seen losing a battle with the steps to Air Force One, suffering a couple of knockdowns in the scuffle. If that had been a sanctioned bout, the referee would have had to have stopped the fight and raised the arm of the steps – metaphorically, of course.

Biden has moved on to calling Russia’s Vladimir Putin a “killer.” Responded Putin: “He who said it, did it.”

And your mother wears Army boots, or some such juvenile retort popular during my childhood.

At the risk of being branded a Russian bot, sympathizer, stooge and propagandist, if Biden actually ever would take a poke at Putin, I’m picking Putin in a first-round knockout.

Now Biden is proposing a summit meeting with Putin. Should that occur, I’m hoping Sleepy Joe’s handlers keep a tight leash on him, lest he lapse mentally and attempt to get physical with Putin.

If that happens, I just pray the cameras would be rolling, to record for posterity Biden wishing he was back tangling with the Air Force One boarding stairs.

No summation of laughable Democrats could be complete without a nod to House member Maxine Waters, of whom a CBSnews.com headline asked in a Feb. 24, 2010, posting, “Is Maxine Waters Really As Dumb As She Seems?”

Waters was back in the spotlight the past week, telling another House member, Jim Jordan, “shut your mouth” during hearings on COVID-19. She then rushed to the friendly confines of CNN to brag “Jim Jordan is a bully and I shut him down.”

Perhaps she can get Biden to take Jordan behind the gym and seal the deal physically. Or not.