Psychiatrist wanted

Check this out.

A quarter million a year for 37 and a half hours per week? Is that one sweet gig or what? That sure leaves a ton of time left over to see private clients in your government-provided office at whatever the rate is these days...

Let's see... if you're paying $120/hr to get your car fixed, I'm guessing the hourly for the mental therapy is at least twice that.

So Buddy who takes this job with the Grey-Bruce Health Centre is gonna pocket a quarter million for her 37.5 hours per week job, and then pocket another quarter million a year giving counsel to her private clients.

No wonder we still see Mercedes SUVs on our morning commutes here in Owen Sound.

Greedy grade four teachers threaten to bankrupt economy

What the hell is wrong with people who think nothing of spending $120/hour to get their car serviced, but begrudge the elementary school teachers their $45 per hour?

The sly bastards at the C.D. Howe institute know they can usually count on some free publicity when they slip Margaret Wente one of their anti-union screeds, and sure enough, there she is today on page F9 of my Globe and Mail, broom red-lined, ranting about our overpaid grade four teachers.

Margaret makes much of the fact that in 2002, at the dawn of the Liberal era, Ontario spent $7,201 per student on education; now it's a whopping $11,451!... yup, clear proof that the teachers unions have been colluding with the Liberal government to screw the tax-payer!

Get a grip, Margaret! This ain't 2002! In 2002 the minimum wage was $6.85; now it's $11.25... the minimum wage has gone up more than our education spending! In 2002 the average house in Toronto was under $300 thousands; today it's a million!

It's not 2002 anymore, folks!

Is $94,000 per year "a lot" of money? Sure, if you're making less. Not so much, if you're making more. According to the latest "sunshine list," well over half of the Toronto Police department is earning into the six numbers. I'd like to think that, as a society, we value the contribution of the grade four teacher as much as we value the contribution of the friendly neighbourhood policeman or policewoman.

A journeyman welder with the (private sector) Boilermakers Union has an all-in hourly rate of over $60, which translates into $120 thousand per year before overtime. Speaking of which, when that unionized welder works a Saturday, it's at double time. When that unionized teacher supervises a weekend volleyball tournament, it's for free.

Then we get the usual bromides about the fast-changing world, where, just because the private sector has managed to off-shore Canada's manufacturing base and create a precariat where there was once a viable middle class, EVERYBODY should live at or below the poverty line with no job security!

Of course we should! After all, according to Wente, precarious employment engenders innovation and creativity! How else will we compete against all those countries we've been rushing into "free trade" deals with?

The fact that some people earn more than others doesn't necessarily mean they're overpaid. Maybe we should worry about raising the standard of living for those on the lower rungs of our economy instead of stirring up spite and envy at those doing alright.

CNN shovelling doo-doo for Waco Police

CNN has a scoop on view today!

CNN has obtained "thousands of pages of documents... as well as surveillance video," and, wonder of wonders, not a wisp of a fact in those thousands of pages contradicts the official story promulgated by Sgt. Patrick Swanton back in May!

Hmm... kinda makes you wonder where those thousands of pages may have come from, eh?

Obviously those gullible CNN "reporters" haven't been following the Twin Peaks story at the Aging Rebel.

Canada's back-channel support for ISIS

No serious person can deny the links between the Saudi regime and its Wahhabi driven seedlings, al Qaeda and ISIS.

Nevertheless, the Harper gang was loathe to raise their voice in protest against our "Saudi friends." After all, those friends were responsible for the biggest manufacturing export "win" in the history of Canadian manufacturing.

This was one of the great achievements of Harper's Decade of Darkness.

Justin Trudeau has weighed in on the Raif Badawi file. Maybe that signals a sea-change in Canada's modus operandi. Maybe we'll no longer shut-up about human rights abuses just to secure those big wins for our foreign-owned export sector.

While Justin is championing Badawi, he might want to have a look at the case of Ali-Mohammad al-Nimr. Ali Mo pretty much done what Badawi done; used the internet to cast aspersions on the Saudi royal family. But unlike Badawi, Ali Mo lacks an overseas support network.

So Ali Mo didn't get sentenced to 1000 lashes; he got sentenced to a head-chopping... and get this; after they lop his noggin, he's due for a crucifixion!

Yup, if that sounds like a scene straight outta the ISIS playbook, it's because it is. Now you know where ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State/Daesh got their playbook...

Saudi Arabia!

So while we're busy as can be supposedly fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria with our fleet of '70's era jet-fighters, we're selling Saudi Arabia thousands of state-of-the-art armoured vehicles, the better to propagate their vision of human rights with.

The trouble with kids today

Kids today have many troubles, but the main trouble is that a good lot of 'em are not the lazy drug-addled apathetic shits that we were at that age.

In my era, the adage of the day was "fire one up, and let the day go up in smoke."

Now it's "fire one up, and let's get to work."

Huh?

Just got off the phone after discussing for an hour or so the travails of another father my age. Seems we both had daughters who just had to take that high-school trip to Europe.

That's a popular accoutrement to a high-school education these days. The kids get a tour of The Continent, cradle of Western Civilization and all that shit, and the teachers get a free trip.

Why not?

So both our kids go to Europe, and of course they both want to stay there.

I was able to reason with Junior, but alas, Buddy lost that battle. His kid moved back to the old country.

And here's where it gets at once dodgy and hopeful. Buddy's daughter happened to take a fancy to a French kid who was apprenticing to be a baker. And not just any kind of baker, but a hippy-dippy back-to-the-18th-century-recipes kind of baker.

In France.

Ya.

I know!

Get the fuck outta here, right!?

Well, here's why this is a hopeful story.

Those kids, of their own volition, are managing to figure out ways to get around the immigration regulations that their elders enshrined in the law. After all, on the face of it, some random Canadian hottie couldn't just take a shine to a French chef and mosey off to France...

But they're doing it!

And good on them!

At the same time, they got nothing on those folks walking, WALKING!!!, from Sudan and Eritrea and Niger and Nigeria and Syria and Afghanistan and on and on...

WALKING TO EUROPE!

Here's the point; kids today are not ready to settle for the fucked up world we left them.


And that's a good thing.

A good news story out of Libya at last!

Yup, there's a brand new Libyan airline taking to the skies!... well, maybe... sort of.

Veteran aviation journo Martin Rivers has this happy story on view; Out of the ashes, a new Libyan airline takes flight.

Seems that the erstwhile start-up promoter Edgardo Badiali has managed to rent at least one airplane long enough to have it painted in Libyanwing colours.



Pretty, isn't it?

And what a boon for a country so hard on the ropes after its generous liberation by the Nations of Virtue!

Alas, the further you get into Rivers' story, the more caveats you trip over. Seems that at least for the moment, the fleet, such as it is, is grounded somewhere in Tunisia.

Then there is the matter of CEO Edgardo Badiali's track record. Yes, he actually has quite an extensive track record, having been instrumental in launching at least half a dozen start-ups in what was once euphemistically referred to as the "third world." As to how many of those start-ups are in the air today... well, you can do your own research.

But here's a clue; generally, it's only Mr. Badiali who walks away from the wreckage.

Behind the scenes arm-twisting suspected as Canada Post backs away from community mailboxes

Joint-blazin' Justin is showing his totalitarian tendencies early. A mere week after the election he's succeeded in extinguishing one of the most popular public health programs in the land.

Canadian's were overjoyed when Canada Post boss Deepak Chopra announced the end of home mail delivery a year and a half ago. Like many of my countrymen, I had been lobbying Deepak for years to do away with this nostalgic backward-looking tradition. For gosh's sakes, what with pizza delivery, booze delivery, and Amazon's everything else delivery, getting the bills out of the friggin' community mailbox is pretty much the only reason to leave the house!

We're in for a long four or five years folks, if this is the way the Pothead starts... pandering to the postal workers union and depriving us seniors of the opportunity to get a little exercise.

Prominent economist embraces socialism

I see where Todd Hirsch can find nothing better to write about than poverty. Good grief! Is the guy turning into a flaming pinko or what?

Just listen to some of his wacko assertions; individuals are more than just contributors to national output... human beings are more than economic agents... it's not right to regard people only as resources for employers to utilize... prosperous economies are often those with lower rates of income disparity...  jeez, what are we reading here, the Globe and Mail or the Communist Manifesto?

Why Justin Trudeau is no longer a wanker

Six months ago, after numerous focus group sessions, voter surveys, independent electorate analyses and so forth, the think tank here at Falling Downs concluded that Justin Trudeau was a wanker.

He's a wanker no longer.

Why not? Well, in the first place, he's now the PM, having jettisoned the Harper gang into the dustbin of history... (by the way, does anyone else think the dustbin of history must be getting more overcrowded than a refugee camp in Lebanon?)

Secondly, he's said so-long to Canada's participation in the war on ISIL in Iraq and Syria; not that our contribution ever amounted to much.

Not to worry; seems the Russians are more than willing to take up the slack left by our departure.

Thirdly, he's pulling the plug on the F-35 boondoggle. That's something the Harperites could never have done, because there's way too many of them counting on Lockheed-Martin for lucrative sinecures after they get retired... which happened two days ago.

So, even if we're only 48 hours into the new regime, there's lots of reasons for high hopes...

Which reminds me...

Merkel says "nein danke" to Netanyahu's rewriting of holocaust history

Any reasonable observer acquainted with the history of Netanyahu, let alone the history of the holocaust, will immediately recognize the farcical attempt to pin the Final Solution on the Palestinians for what it is; pathetic hate-mongering against Israel's Arab population.

The German government's response is essentially "don't blame the Palestinians; we take full responsibility."

By taking that responsibility, the Germans have inadvertently made another point; relationships between peoples can, no matter how dysfunctional and hateful, be mended within a couple of generations. Seventy years ago it was official policy in Germany to exterminate the Jews. Today young Jewish Israelis are emigrating to Germany in droves.

Obviously things have changed.

They can change between Arabs and Jews in Israel too.

HITLER FRAMED!!! Netanyahu reveals Final Solution was Palestinian idea

In a development that has reverberated throughout the academy and beyond, the greatest leader since Moses revealed today that the Holocaust wasn't Hitler's idea after all.

Nope, Hitler got the idea from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem back in '41. Till then, Hitler was bent on the humane resettlement of Germany's Jewish population, according to Netanyahu.

You don't think he's making up this story just to further denigrate the Palestinians, do you?

Four years after NATO destroyed Libya, the ensuing humanitarian tragedy remains Gaddafi's fault

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the murder of former Libyan leader Muamar Gaddafi, facilitated by the core NATO nations plus a gaggle of opportunists and me-too states, and spearheaded by France.

Eccentricities aside, the Libyan people made great strides on virtually every quality of life indicator while the mad dog was at the helm. After "liberation," Libya is a failed state.

France is marking the occasion by lamenting Libya's failed state status in this story at the state-owned news purveyor, France 24; Four years on, Gaddafi's legacy plagues chaotic Libya.

Definitely informative. We learn that "Libya is the biggest slice of Terra Nullius in the world."

We learn that Gaddafi was "quixotic."

Not only that, he was also a "mad dog."

Yup, all of Libya's problems today are due to Gaddafi!

Nowhere in the story is the NATO intervention so much as mentioned in passing! An eight month military intervention by the most powerful war machine on earth, an intervention that totally destroyed Libya, had nothing to do with destroying Libya!

Liberal majority government looms in Canadian election

Yup, the think tank here at Falling Downs is gonna call it early.

The pot-head is on the cusp of forming a majority government.

Seven reasons to dump Harper

1. Contrary to what those folks think who get all their news from the PM's youtube channel, Canada's stature on the world stage has been greatly diminished in the Big Steve era. Here's a small example. Glorious victories in Afghanistan and Libya notwithstanding, we're no longer a peace-keeping nation, we talk big but carry a ping-pong paddle, and behind the boastful headlines there's been a steady erosion of Canada's military.

2. Contrary to what the Harper gang would have us believe, there is no evidence whatsoever that randomly signing "Free Trade Deals" with all and sundry helps average Canadians. Signing on to TPP while not allowing the public to see it tells us there's plenty to hide.

3. The First Nations Financial Transparency Act, refusing to hold an inquiry into the missing and murdered native women, and failing to reform education funding for native Canadians are just three ways that the Harper government perpetuated the marginalization of Canada's First Nations. That's all part of the divide-and-conquer strategy that deliberately pits sub-groups of Canadians against one another. That's not nation-building.

4. After running perpetual deficits year after year, Harper pulls a "balanced budget" out of his hat just in time to run as a responsible steward of the economy in the election campaign. That's nothing more than opportunism and hypocrisy.

5. Bill C-24 makes my citizenship and that of most other immigrants, and that of our children and grandchildren, a plaything of political operatives that can be withdrawn arbitrarily and without recourse to appeal. More politics of fear and division.

6. Bill C-51 is an odious bit of fear-mongering that wouldn't have prevented the only terror attack Canada has ever had, Air India. Canadians with drug addictions and/or mental illness who kill others in the name of a religion they know nothing about aren't terrorists; they're Canadians with mental illness, but the divide and conquer strategy demands we fear them rather than help them.

7. Back in the day when the so-called old stockers had chased the natives onto the reservations, Canada had some shameful moments with respect to immigration of Chinese, Sikhs, and Jews, among others. We'd somewhat atoned for that with our generous welcome for refugees from Hungary, Ukraine, and Viet Nam during their hour of need. Under the Harperites, our response to the current refugee crisis has been nothing less than shameful.

It's time to end the politics of suspicion, polarization, and fear-mongering.

Heckled in the lecture hall

What up with the snow this weekend? Snow in the middle of October? Who knew?

Mind you, go two kilometers up the road to Wolsley, and there's no snow.

Anyway, I was, for no particular reason, reminiscing about my illustrious academic career. As regular readers (thanks Bob, Janet, and Abdul) will know, the pot-addled hillbilly, tiring of his societal role as a high-school drop-out, with all its stereotypes and misconceptions, did in fact attend several institutions of higher learning.

Be warned!

The school from which I allegedly graduated, after not always cordial partings with certain other schools that shall remain nameless, was the University of Guelph, colloquially and more popularly known as U GOO, GOO U, and manifold further iterations on that theme.

Did I tell you about the time I got my car stuck on the stairs while exiting the Bullring?

That snow has got to be one of God's jokes. We're certainly susceptible to snow jokes, eh? With all that global climate change hysteria and all?

So the Big Dog is sitting up there in the sky, and he figures, I'm gonna fuck with these arrogant assholes a bit...

University of Guelph.

"Nuthin' there but steers 'n queers" I remember a guidance counsellor telling me...

Guidance counsellors... what the fuck was wrong with those people?

Why has nobody launched a class action yet?

But I digress...

So I'm in one of those fourth year classes. They were way cool because you had a mix of undergrads and graduate students. You had a relatively high level of faux intellectualism going on. In fact, some of that intellectualism may even have been authentic!

Then again, maybe not.

I'm sitting in the back row of the lecture hall. We are being treated to a discourse on something I can't remember. At the end the discourser opened the floor to questions, as they say.

Although I don't remember my question, I remember my preamble.

"I only have one question..."

At that moment, someone behind me, and I don't know how that happened because throughout my academic career I favoured the very last row in the lecture hall, shouts out, "but it has 27 parts..."

Harper gives tip of the cap to Ford brothers at Kiss of Death rally

I couldn't possibly make this shit up.

Yup, there's the "tough on crime" PM Big Steve sucking up to crack-head Rob and renowned drug-pusher Doug.

What can I say?

Three weeks in, Kessel is scoring the good press he never got in Toronto

Check this out.

Yup, that one story at TSN has more accolades for Phil than the Toronto media were willing to give him in the course of six years.

At some level you have to feel for the guy. He was resented from the get-go for that original trade, and I have to admit that I'm among the majority who saw that as a huge mistake. But it was Burkies mistake, not Kessel's, so why are we punishing Phil?

After all, the dorkshit who actually made the mistake came out golden!

Strategic voting

The election smurfs have been busy as can be festooning the landscape with red and orange election signs. The blue ones we just take for granted; after all, Larry Miller is the home-boy who has actually, personally, using nothing but his bare hands and his necktie, pulled calves out of the arse end of a cow.

That's something the electorate takes seriously in these parts. Look at Bill Murdoch's career if you don't believe me.

But change is in the wind...

There are concession roads I travel these days where the red and orange signs outnumber the blue. But, given our massively dysfunctional first-past-the-post electoral system, does that mean we can unseat Big Steve?

Yes, but only if the orange guy makes a conscious decision to direct his acolytes to Kimberly Love.

Otherwise, even though the vast majority of local voters voted for someone else, Larry's off to Ottawa again.

How to solve the terror stabbings

I see where there's a wave of terror sweeping over the Holy Land, terror promulgated by a young generation of Israeli Arabs who see no future for themselves in what is ostensibly their country.

The greatest leader since Moses is of course milking the latest crisis for maximum personal advantage. After all, the people love nothing more than a strong leader in anxious times, and times seem to be perpetually anxious in the Promised Land.

So here's how you end the terror reign of the knife; give those Israeli Arabs the same weapons that are routinely made available to Israeli Jews. An Israeli is an Israeli after all; unless you're advocating for some sort of apartheid state or something...

I guarantee that the knives will be out of the headlines overnight.

Nenshi hits a homer

You and I weren't the only ones scratching our heads when Naheed Nenshi became mayor of Calgary, Big Steve's adopted home town. That truly was a WTF moment, was it not? A brown guy gets elected Big Dog in the city of big dreams, big trucks, and big bar tabs?

Nenshi's got an essay on view in the national newspaper of record this morning, and it's a beauty.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/divided-canada-stands-to-lose-what-makes-it-great/article26848363/

getthefuckouttahere!

So I wake up and look out the window. Everything is white...

It can't be!...

Snow?

SNOW!!

What the...?

Who knew?

Winter preparedness checklist:

• season's worth of wood in the woodshed?  Nope.
• snow-blower gassed up and ready to go?  Nope.
• big snow-blower attached to the tractor?  Nope.
• summer vehicles winterized and ready for storage?  Nope.
• snow tires on the daily driver?  Nope.
• furnace inspected and oil tank topped up?  Nope.

...ready as we've ever been... bring it on!

The war on bikers

Those who follow these matters will be well aware that "bikers" have morphed into yet another target in the "war" that the forces of righteousness have been waging, first on drugs, and then on terror. By now it is plainly evident that these various wars have all melded into one.

That's why nobody in the mainstream media so much as raised an eyebrow last May, when in the days after the Waco Biker Ambush, we were inundated with reports of Bandito associates looting military warehouses for... oh, what was it?... machine guns?... rocket launchers?... tanks?... attack helicopters?

These stories were 100% fabricated bullshit, but they got a lot of attention.

More recently, the war on bikers has been going off the rails somewhat. The Waco cluster-fuck sprouts ten more loose ends every time the local Keystone Cops try to cover up the last loose end. Waco is a story that has been all but ignored by your mainstream media.

Of 177 persons arrested, 9 killed, and 18 wounded, it now looks like a small handful of those 177 may be charged with somethng/anything, most of the 9 killed and 18 wounded were killed and wounded by law enforcement, and the City of Waco will be bankrupt long before all the unlawful arrest, conspiracy, and murder charges against the WPD have been settled. Best coverage by far of the theatre of the absurd that Waco has become can be found at The Aging Rebel.

Meanwhile, you're far more likely to read shit like this. The Daily Beast is widely considered "alt media." It ain't. They reprocess mainstream bullshit but the grammar, syntax, and vocab aspire to a hipster factor that the NYT does not aspire to. But it's the same bullshit.

As the various wars on pretend enemies drag on, you can see cracks in the foundation. Just recently, over in Quebec, the courts threw out the last cases stemming from a major anti-Hells Angels operation back in 2009. The province spent tens of millions of tax-payer dollars building a case against the club, which culminated in 156 arrests. A few low-level guys copped to some low-level charges early on, and everything else has been tossed.

When the truth finally comes out about Waco, these big undercover operations against motorcycle clubs will hopefully be discredited once and for all.

I want to leave off on a sad but hopeful note. The local 1%er guys around here have been the Saddle Tramps since forever, and the local biker boss has been Dudley McMillan just as long.

The Saddle Tramps were all about the usual biker club stuff. Mostly it's a bunch of working dudes who love to ride and fiddle with their machines and maybe tie one on now and then. Ya, once in awhile you'll read something disturbing in the news, but you read disturbing shit about lawyers and cops and journalists too. You can't judge the barrel by the inevitable bad apple.

Dudley passed to his reward this week. Judging by the tributes on his condolences page, this "outlaw biker" was a much loved and highly respected member of his community.

RIP, Mr. McMillan.

Academic freedom still not dead in Canada

At least for those fortunate academics who are actually tenured, which is a fraction that gets a little smaller every year. Canada is still a few years behind the US in filling virtually all teaching posts with "adjuncts" or "sessionals," and God knows that "academic freedom" is a total non-starter for that crowd.

But for the lucky few on the grav.. oops, I mean the tenure track, the corpse of academic freedom rose zombie-like from the grave this week. John Montalbano, chair of the Board of Governors at UBC, fell on his sword for his perceived breech of the secret code of academic freedom.

Good!

This should give that .5% of the population who give a shit some cause for hope. Montalbano, who formerly made a living as a TV pitchman for the Chrysler Cordoba (remember those genuine Corinthian leather seats?), got to be the chair of the board of governors at UBC for the same reason anybody gets to that spot at any Canadian university; political connections and the old-boy network.

If you've followed the story at all, UBC, one of Canada's premier institutions of higher learning, has been going through a spot of turmoil. It's most recent president, one Arvind Gupta, quit after just one year into a five year contract. That's not necessarily a big deal in my book; hell, I've quit jobs midway through the first day!

Anyway, some lowly plebe in the (tenured, fortunately for her) ranks had the gall to suggest that Gupta was pushed out because he was less than welcomed by the aforementioned old boys club with political connections. In short order Professor Jennifer Berdahl was visited not only by a couple of Vice-Presidents of this or the other thing, but by Chair of the Board of Governors, Mr. Montalbano himself!

Seems many well-paid noses were askew at her insinuation that Mr. Gupta was squeezed out of his job due to his outsider status. He was deemed not a made member of Canada's post-secondary illuminati.

On the face of it, I initially assumed there had to be less to the story than met the eye. After all, brownish folks with third-world names have held top-drawer posts at other big schools, like York and Western and Waterloo.

But maybe those schools just stuck that brownish person in that post to fly the flag of diversity in full public view, while behind the scenes, it was still the old boys calling the shots...

Who knows?

Public Security Minister Erdan eases gun restrictions for Israeli Jews

That's not quite what this Haaretz headline is telling us, but everybody who is within knife-thrust distance of their common sense knows Gilad Erdan is not talking about Israeli Arabs.

Yup, we gotta ease up on gun restrictions for Israeli Jews (but certainly not for those Israeli Arabs) 'cause goodness knows, those knife-wielding kafirs are coming for the Jews, not the Arabs.

Even though they're all nominally "Israeli."

Some are more nominal than others.

Every (Jewish) Israeli deserves to have a gun to defend themselves from (Arab) Israeli stone-throwers and knife-wavers.

The Arab citizens of Israel, not so much.

Having an honest discussion about why those degenerates might be throwing stones or waving knives is of course off the table...


...and so the long journey into darkness continues...

Is this the end of the world or just the 7th inning?

Let's go Blue Jays!

And how do they smuggle beer cans into the upper decks in Toronto?

Obviously, if they can smuggle in beer cans, they could be smuggling in beer-can bombs...

Definitely a security concern for MLB, FBI, DHS, CSIS, and all the rest of them...

Harper fans flames of fear in desperate attempt to scare voters

Are you scared yet?

No?

What's the matter with you?

You don't believe Big Steve when he tells you Canada is in the cross-hairs of ISIS?

Or that those would-be immigrants are all would-be could-be potential terrorists?

Or that Trudeau's going to be opening a marijuana dispensary in the cafeteria of every school in the land?

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU???

All that naked fear-mongering and you're not scared yet?

Well, your lack of fear has sent Big Steve and his number one scary-stuff consultant, Lynton Crosby, aka "the lizard of Oz," back to the drawing board.

And they've come up with this;

Yup, when you vote for the poofy pot-head, you're voting for BROTHELS IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD!

Thanks a lot!

And if that isn't scary enough, at the other end of your street, the Liberals are gonna open up an ILLEGAL DRUG INJECTION SITE!

Keep Canada safe!

Keep your neighbourhood safe!

Vote Big Steve on October 19!

A year on, official MH17 report adds nothing to the speculation of the first 12 hours

In July of 2014, all major media in the West were speculating that MH17 was brought down by a Russian missile. More than a year later, we have the so-called "official report" into the incident, and guess what?

Every "conclusion" remains speculative.

Since both sides in the Eastern Ukraine conflict use Russian missiles, inveighing that a Russian missile took down MH17 tells us absolutely nothing.

But what the report does tell us is this; that were the highest echelons of the US/NATO intelligence apparatus in possession of any scintilla of evidence whatsoever that Russian forces were behind this tragedy, such a fact would be trumpeted all over the headlines of every media platform in the West.

In fact, if such evidence existed it would have been trumpeted all over those news platforms a year ago.

The only thing this report proves is that NATO has no such evidence.

Israeli Jew stabs fellow Jew in failed revenge attack

Here's a sure sign that Mr. Netanyahu's perpetual policy of ramping up the tension may have been more successful than even he intended; a Jewish Israeli mistakes a fellow Jew for an Arab and attacks him in a revenge attack.

Hysteria has taken hold...

And what to make of Netanyahu's latest promises to "get tough on terror?"

When you're already pursuing a policy of using live ammunition on teen stone-throwers, what could "getting tough" possibly look like?

Latest polls show Grey-Bruce could toss Harper minion in election

With six days to go before the vote, the latest polls show the Liberal Party only one point behind the Harper Gang.

That's close enough that the cynics and the woebegone and the pot-heads might find it worth their while to get off the couch on the 19th...

As in, hey, wake up, we might actually pull this off!

A couple of months ago I would have considered that an impossibility.

Larry's always been golden in this rural riding, where your street cred depends largely on how many times you've pulled a calf out of her mommy's hind end with nothing but your bare hands and a neck-tie.

The times they are a changing...

Vote Kimberly Love on October 19!

In major journalistic faux pas, Washington Post accidentally leaves Putin off "hate" list

So where's Putin, I asked myself whilst reading the official list of stuff normal people are supposed to hate.

Brussel sprouts?

No way!

Liver?

Preposterous!

Brussel sprouts and liver (with a generous side of mashed potatoes and lots of fried onions) are darned near as American as apple pie!

Yet these symbols of Americana are on the hate list, but Putin is not?

In yet another clear sign that things are going down the toilet since Bezos bought the venerable WaPo, the other day I saw where Krauthammer all but endorsed Trump!

What next?!

Harper strategically avoids Rob Ford photo-ops at Etobicoke campaign event

Have a gander at the pics of this morning's event; not a single photo-journalist managed to get Big Steve and rec-room Rob in the same frame.

Oh for the good old days;

Facts fit to ignore

Haaretz has a pithy piece on view about yet another routine violation of Syrian sovereignty by the IDF. Note especially the thundering denouncement of  "any attempt to undermine the sovereignty of the State of Israel..."

Occupied Golan is now officially recognized, at least by Israel, as part of sovereign Israel, whereas it remains legally a part of Syria. Recognizing Golan as part of sovereign Israel is a topic that will assume a fresh urgency with the recent discovery of oil and gas, another factoid not mentioned in the story.

Ah, but what is a little border dispute while the crazed kafirs are running amok in Jerusalem?

Aunt Carole's brussel sprouts are a much anticipated staple at family gatherings

See?!


 

So I don't know what those elitists at the Washington Post are on about. They don't like liver either... get a life, food snobs!

Pro sports; the hoax we love

I was one of millions who watched the Blue Jays pull their collective chestnuts out of the fire tonight.

Like, what was going on there? Is Gibbons playing serious head-games, or is he just making shit up? Warming up Price and then not using him?

See what I mean? The Jays avoid elimination, thereby guaranteeing at least one more sold-out stadium, and we act like it matters?

This is a special time of the year for sports fans. You've got your NFL, CFL, NHL, NBA all getting started or well underway, while MLB is just peaking. NASCAR is on the home stretch, as is F1 and the PGA. Every single one of those acronyms represents an outfit that's in the business of profiting from our deification of professional athletes.

Seems that faux pas by Harold Reynolds is almost getting more attention than the Jay's win. Reynolds made an offhand remark in the course of the broadcast that "Canadian's don't play a lot of baseball" or something. Ironically, it was just yesterday that I was revelling in my baseball played.

So how is it that this game I played in the school-yard fifty years ago can fill stadiums and make us feel it matters who wins?

Let's go Blue Jays; let's play ball!

Have to admit the magic of baseball pretty much eluded me from the get go.

Ya, back in my Elora Public School days we used to rush out to the playground at recess and play something called "scrub."

A little later in life I was the pitcher for my slo-pitch team in Saint John New Brunswick. We were sponsored by the brewery up the road. Man, did I ever pitch extra slow just for them!

I remember that shit like it happened yesterday!

We have a happy summer of beer and baseball... well, slo-pitch.

We get in the playoffs!

Holy shit! That means we'll probably get more beer from our sponsor!

And at this point you'll actually get a few friends and family members, so on a typical game-day it looks like there's at least a couple dozen folks in the stands.

And suddenly the guy who has been throwing the ball all year just fucking chokes!

Ya, that was me.

How you can fuck up pitching in a slo-pitch game is something I cannot understand to this day.

But I did it!

So it can happen to anybody...

When my Kawasaki tips over

I'm lying in the grass behind the woodshed. My Ninja 500 is lying on top of me.

It's a very pleasant autumn day; blue skies, the horizon festooned with leafs of many changing colours and all that shit...

But I'm flat out on the ground and there's a fucking motorcycle on top of me.

I thought I'd give that Ninja 500 a good wring-out before putting her away for the winter.

Obviously the Ninja had other ideas...

I am so glad I don't own a 1000 pound Harley!

The mysterious minders of the world wide web

Turkey (the country) should be big in the news today.

Turkey (the bird) IS big news today, at least here in Canada.

But it seems really tough to get solid news out of Turkey (the country) today.

What would account for the dearth of Turkish news on this most newsworthy day in Turkey?

After all, has there not been a terrorist attack in the heart of the capital of NATO's only Islamic member?

And should that not be double plus newsworthy?

Dump Harper? There's an app for that...

My personal inclination about October 19 is to just not vote.

That's what I usually do at election time,

It just encourages the bastards, as a certain right-wing friend has been saying all along.

But I think we have a chance to make a difference.

I like Larry Miller. I ran into him just the other day at the liquor store in Wiarton. We exchanged pleasantries.

At the end of the day, though, Larry is nothing more than Big Steves's minion in these parts.

So while there may not be an actual app yet, I'm sure some geeks are working on it. There is already a movement afoot to get an anybody but Larry thing going.

And while I'm inclined to vote for Ms. May, were I inclined to vote, this new idea of combining votes to rid the nation of the Harper scourge makes a lot of sense,

Sorry Larry...

And if there's not an app for that yet, there'll be one soon.

Who told you Turkey was heading down the terror toilet?

Things aren't going that great for the wily Erdogan these days.

The dumbfucks at the think-tank here at Falling Downs certainly saw this coming.

Turkey is a NATO member that is on its way to becoming a failed state. That's mainly because the wily Erdogan has paid way too much heed to the counsel of his NATO betters.

"Just give it a little push, and the Assad regime will collapse," they told him.

The wily but not all that smart Erdogan took his NATO betters at their word. He stabbed his former regional bestie in the back. He kept stabbing...

But, the think tankers here at Falling Downs do not necessarily deem the current state of affairs the complete disaster it appears to be.

The Masters of the Universe have been holding Fethulla Gulen in their back pocket for years...

And not for nothing.

Insurers to cough up almost half a billion to clean up Fast Eddie Burkhardt's Lac Magentic mess

You remember Fast Eddie.

He's the rail-road aficionado who should have stuck to running a HO scale model rail-road in his basement.

But no, he insisted on running an under-capitalized rail-road in the real world.

Along the way he was heartily applauded by the Ayn Rand set for pioneering the practice of having only one employee run a mile-long train...

Because if you had two guys in that locomotive, they'd just be distracting one another...

How stupid is that train of thought?

Anyway, that was all fine and dandy till one of his one operator trains blew up the town of Lac Magentic.


Half a billion dollars later, Fast Eddy's antics aren't funny any more.

Police State suffers setback in War on Bikers

As you may recall if you've been paying attention, the War on Bikers is a close cousin of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

In fact, you may be forgiven for assuming all those wars have seamlessly melded into one war.

Here's a rare spot of good news for the MC community; five Hells Angels have walked on murder and conspiracy charges, due to a Quebec judge getting totally pissed off that matters have been dragging on since 2009. The same judge threw out lesser charges against another 31 bikers four years ago. All the charges came out of a major anti-biker investigation that culminated in 156 arrests back in 2009.

For the folks ensnared in the Waco farce, this is a good-news bad-news story. The good news is that some semblance of justice may eventually prevail. The bad news is that these guys had this shit hanging over their heads for six years.

So if you're aghast that the worthies in McLennan County have managed to drag their feet for six months, they can obviously drag things out a lot longer.

Big Steve poops pants in paroxysm of rage as Zunera Ishaq becomes a Canadian

The think tank here at Falling Downs believes Zunera Ishaq is already a model Canadian - one who will fight for her rights!

One who will not be cowed by a bullying Prime Minister who used the full weight of the state to trample those rights. And how Canadian of her to head to Timmies for a double-double right after the ceremony!

From one immigrant to another, a warm welcome to Canada, Ms. Ishaq!

Urban Outfitters offers employees opportunity to work for free!

Hey, you don't get a chance to do that everyday!

Well, actually lots of folks do. The publishing industry and the advertising biz are chock full of unpaid interns. Then there's the 70% of university faculty known as "adjunct professors" who are working for something right next to free.

So I guess Urban Outfitters isn't exactly tilling virgin soil here.

But, I suspect it's gonna work out swell for them. Lots of employees will be keen to show their commitment to the organization. After all, who can be against "team building?"

Only somebody just begging to be "outsourced," that's who...

This is more or less the other bookend for those folks who proclaim that raising the minimum wage would hurt poor people.

Be a team-builder; work for free!

Those black folks on the plantations weren't slaves; they were team-builders!

Putin attacks Iran

Turn off the news for an hour, and whoopsie, you missed another bout of Putin's aggression!

Sure, those missiles were meant for Syria...

But we all know, don't we, after being told and told and told again about Putin's plans for world domination by our mainstream news providers, that nothing Putin says is ever true.

Whereas every pronouncement from the White House or the Pentagon or the 101 bag-licking beltway think-tanks is the bona-fide gospel truth!

So what's Putin really up to here?

Obviously, with his recent invasion of Syria and last year's conquest of Ukraine already feathers in his cap, he's going after Iran next!

What I don't understand is why this would concern the Nations of Virtue? After all, we've been fantasizing about dropping missiles on Iran for decades!

So, even if those Russian missiles landing in Iran were nothing more than an accident, it's an accident that should be roundly applauded by the West.

Even if those stray missiles managed to miss any wedding parties out there in the Iranian boonies.

General Hillier is right!

Wasn't that long ago that I couldn't imagine agreeing with Hillier on anything.

In fact, we've been a little harsh on Hillier in the past.

Real harsh.

But times change. People change... some people learn from their mistakes.

I'm beginning to believe General Hillier could very well be one of them.

Here he is today tying the refugee crisis to ISIS. He claims ISIS must be "decapitated."

America and her so-called coalition have been playing footsie with ISIS for more than a year with their bombing campaign. Far from decapitating them, they seem to be more interested in ensuring that ISIS gets the weapons they're constantly dropping for those imaginary "moderate" rebels.

You'd almost think that they were, in spite of the rhetoric, actually supporting ISIS in the interests of regime change in Syria.

That would explain the howls of indignation that have arisen in the past week as Putin decided to help the US coalition with their battle against terrorism.

Harvard debate team gets beat up by convicts

And I'm not talking about what you're thinking about... no, those Harvard dweebs didn't get beat up in an alley off Quincy Street; they got beat in a debate!

There's a story that should shake up some stereotypes!

On the other hand, there's more to this story than meets the eye...

First off, I'm guessing the cons had way more time available for practice.

Secondly, this upset is due to what many refer to as America's "prison crisis."

What crisis?

Sure, America may lead the world in the rate of incarcerating (mostly black) twenty year olds who sold a quarter ounce of weed to a narc, but without that massive talent pool, this story would never have been possible!

While have-not states like Kentucky are burning their grow-ops, have-more states like Washington and Colorado are taxing them

This photo-essay at Bloomberg is ironic on several levels.

First off, it's got great thought-provoking photos like this one;



Yup, that's a law-enforcement official dousing a pile 'o pot with gasoline, the better to set it aflame.

Dude! If you wanna burn weed, stick it in a pipe or something!

What a waste!

So here's some food for thought. Have you ever thought that the reason some states (like, just to arbitrarily pick a couple of high-performance states out of the air at random; Colorado and Washington) habitually show up at the high end of the quality-of-life indices, and other states (again, completely random; Kentucky and West Virginia) habitually show up at the bottom, might have something to do with the average IQ of the denizens of those states?

Now I don't mean to offend my relations in Kentucky, but they got a lot of somewhat dopey folks among them, which I think might be at least partially the result of a) cousins marrying cousins, and b) marrying at age 15.

Meanwhile, over in your have-more states of Colorado and Washington, instead of spending money fighting the weed 'o wisdom, they're MAKING money taxing it! Oddly enough, these states also vastly out-perform the have-nots in educational achievement etc.

Coincidence?

I think not...

This is what Darwin was talking about.

Pot-addled hillbilly beats ABC/CBS/CNN to the Toyotas of Terror by six months!

Last April the think tankers here at Falling Downs wondered how the Towellers 'o Terror were getting all those Toyota trucks that are a staple of their propaganda videos.

This week ABC News asked the same question, followed quickly by CBS and CNN. That's right, the professional journalists just took an extra six months to vet the story, I guess.

After 14 years, America's longest war getting longer

And they still haven't won!

Nor will they by making it longer.

US Army boss in Afghanistan, General John Campbell, announced today that "we need a new Afghanistan plan."

No shit.

Here's a plan, General Campbell; fold the tents and go home. Fourteen years is more than long enough!

Remind us what this war was about... sorry, after fourteen years, the memory gets foggy.

Bringing them democracy? Fail.

Liberating the women? Fail.

Letting the kids fly kites? Fail.

Letting girls go to school? Fail.

Crushing terror? General Campbell said today there's more terrorists in the place than fourteen years ago.

Epic fail.

Securing the terrain for oil and gas pipelines? After fourteen years of failure, the stuff isn't worth enough to warrant getting it out of the ground and building pipelines, and if you had to, you could pipe it out of North Dakota, where the US Army hardly if ever has to machine-gun the locals to maintain order.

With all respect, Mr. General, America doesn't need a new plan.

America needs to go home.

Canada takes anti-Roma racial profiling to Budapest

The CBC has a telling story on view today about the lengths the Harper gang is going to keep Roma out of the country.

Do a little research and it won't take you long to discover that Roma people pretty much get the dirty end of the stick in many European "Nations of Virtue." Hungary is one of the least hospitable countries on the continent for the Roma. Indeed, before Harper and company got tough on crime and brownish people, Roma were often successful in petitioning Canada for refugee status.

Guess those days are over!

Seems the Canadian Border Services Agency has a team in Budapest to screen Roma who are lined up at the airport for flights to Canada. They can have every relevant travel document in perfect order but be denied their trip simply on some CBSA flunky's suspicion that they could be Roma.

If they were doing this in Canada it would be considered a disgrace. It would violate the Charter of Rights. This policy would be facing multiple court challenges in short order.

So why are we doing it in Hungary?

I guess "Canadian values" don't travel well.

Britain First?

There's long been an element in Britain that feels uncomfortable around brown faces or Polish accents. Now that the globalization of Britain is well and truly past the point of no return, these folks are shit-haemorrhaging all over the place at the Polish accents coming out of brown faces!

They want to roll back the clock...

Back to bangers and mash.

Back to warm beer.

Back to an era when Polish accents were heard in Poland and brown faces lived in the colonies.

Back to an era when the sun never set on the Empire!

... it's a little late to worry about all that.

At last! A good news story about the IDF!

Seems like way too much IDF news of late has been bad, worse, or worse than bad...

Hardly a day goes by without headlines announcing that yet another unarmed Palestinian child has been murdered by a member of the Israeli Defence Forces.

But at last we have a good-news story!

Yes, the team of investigative reporters at Haaretz has discovered that demand for the sperm of Israeli combat soldiers has been on the up-tick!

Prof. Orna Sasson-Levy, head of the sociology department at Bar-Ilan University and a researcher of military and gender issues, believes that “the combat soldier embodies a set of qualities that are perceived as befitting Israeli men: physical strength; determination; courage; dedication; commitment; discipline; and mental health. He’s not just tall or successful, but encompasses many qualities combined. It’s hyper-masculinity.”

Indeed!

Hyper-masculinity is just the ticket if you're hoping to breed the next generation of uber-mensch who won't flinch at the prospect of shooting an unarmed teen in the back.

Towel-heads of terror threaten very fabric of Canadian society

Yup, that's Big Steve's story, and he's gonna double down on it. Never mind that his vendetta against that niqab-clad woman has now suffered three straight losses at the Federal Court of Appeal.

But that's not going to slow down the Harper train for long. Nosirree, Big Steve is promising real Canadians, the old stock, that his party will change the law within 100 days of being re-elected, making the paranoid niqab ban immune from both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.

Oddly enough, this comes out on the same day as Harper is boasting about entangling Canada in yet another "free trade" agreement.

Now, coming from the shop floor as I do, I verily believe that these free-trade agreements have done infinitely more damage to the fabric of Canadian society than some woman in a niqab ever will.

Back in the day, new immigrants got a bumpy ride. That was true of every group of newcomers who ever washed up on these shores. Once your old-stockers had decimated the native population, the land was wide open for settlement, and the huddled masses from your overseas shitholes took the bait right quick.

You got here and you fought for a grip on the bottom rung...

That was true for the Scots and Brits looking for new pastures after the enclosures. That was true for the Irish fleeing the potato famine. That was true for the Jews fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe. That was true for my folks after the WW 2. That was true for Jamaicans and Sikhs and folks of every creed and colour.

But none of them had to face a government so determined to exclude them that even after the Federal Court of Appeal rules against them three times in a row, that government promises to change the law of the land to keep them out.

It's not immigrants or refugees threatening the fabric of Canadian society...

It's Stephen Harper.

What's so great about signing "free trade" deals all over the place?

I'm from the generation that saw first-hand the manifold blessings of the original Canada-US Free-Trade Agreement back in '87. The ink was hardly dry on that master-work when it was superseded by NAFTA, and the deluge of Canadian jobs heading for Mexico began in earnest.

Now we've got the usual suspects singing hosannas over the grand-daddy of all free trade deals, the biggest free trade deal the country has ever reached.

And this is allegedly a good thing.

Bear in mind that the TPP has its genesis in the US conniving to carve out a Pacific trading bloc that would exclude its number one economic rival, China.

Bear in mind also, that while the TPP signatories may indeed account for 40% of global trade, China and India by themselves account for another 40%, and neither are part of the TPP.

What we're really doing is throwing all our eggs into one basket, and joining a trading bloc dominated by an empire in decline.

How smart is that?

Sorry Nimrod; pot-addled hillbilly beats RT to the story by three years

RT, known in some circles as Putin's propaganda network, has a timely feature on the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on view at the moment.

Seems that Rami Abdulrahmen is still running his one-man show out of his apartment in Coventry. Never before in the history of media has a one-man show garnered so much mainstream attention. Rami has been the go-to guy for info on the Syrian civil war ever since it started.

That a one-man operation should get such a massive following among the mainstream press is a curiosity indeed. In fact, it may even be more of a curiosity now than it was over three years ago, when the think tank here at Falling Downs brought you the exact same story!

Meet the shit-bags from hell; Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor

These guys are the face of democracy as it's unfolding in the 21st century.

Yup, it's a brave new world, and these guys are on top of it!

They pull in millions of dollars for their winning strategies in election campaigns all around the globe. They've been hired on to manage the democratic process in over 50 countries.

They've been hired on by Big Steve to win the vote on October 19.

Their speciality is sowing the seeds of mistrust, envy, race hate, and rancour.

They're really good at it.

They win elections.

The mere fact that the Harper gang finds it necessary to bring aboard shitbags like this should tell you something.

Has Harper's campaign taken an explicitly racist turn since Lynton Crosby came aboard?

In the three weeks since the Conservatives brought in Lynton Crosby, the tone of the election campaign has noticeably changed.

No longer is the focus on the economy, jobs, and such. Suddenly we're deeply immersed in the politics of race-baiting and fear-mongering. Lynton Crosby specializes in picking away at the scabs of fear, envy, and intolerance.

It's a winning formula; Harper's polling numbers have been trending upward since Crosby's arrival.

Where is Harper's hotline for native women?

Big Steve's been busy devising strategies that appeal to the racist instincts of his base, such as the proposed hotline that old stockers can use if they suspect their immigrant neighbours are engaging in barbaric cultural practices.

Here he is explaining what he means by that, according to the Vancouver Sun;

“We want to make sure these things are brought out of the shadows and the rights of women to their physical safety is protected in this country,” he said.

Yup, Mr. Harper really cares about protecting the physical safety of women, at least for immigrant women. On the other hand, those oldest of old stock Canadian women, the natives, are on their own. They can go "missing" in their thousands and Harper couldn't care less.

This kind of flagrant hypocrisy makes no sense whatsoever, unless of course you filter it through the lens of the racist instincts of the aforementioned base.

Sadly, then it makes perfect sense.

A weekend of wild sex

Why do guys have to talk so much shit about their sex lives?

A couple days ago I was having lunch with an old pal, a guy I've known since we were high school drop-outs who found ourselves on the factory floor at one of the big plants they used to have in Guelph back in the pre-NAFTA era. I wouldn't say we're tight, but our paths cross from time to time and we'll get together for lunch and a few pints.

So Buddy's plant shut down a few years ago and he's buttering his bread with a gig here and a gig there; he's actually living Todd Hirsch's gig economy!

After the job disappeared to Mexico, it didn't take long for his marriage to fall apart. Yup, sad to say, a lot of gals find a regular pay-cheque is a real turn-on in a partner.

No pay-cheque? No partner!

So the marriage falls apart, there's an acrimonious divorce, and Buddy's world, in the space of a year or so, shrivelled from a house overlooking the Humber River and a cottage up north to an apartment somewhere out in the boonies.

But he is full of hope! Thinks he's going to have a date with a hottie he met on the Ashley Madison website!

Tells me he's gonna have a weekend of wild sex!

Ya, right...

At our age you're maybe gonna have fifteen minutes of wild sex, and after that, well, lets just hope you brought a book along to read or something... a wild weekend has lots of time left after those first fifteen minutes.

I don't even have the heart to tell him those hotties at Ashley Madison are all fake...

Harper gang promises big bucks for anti-towelhead tip line

If you've got Muslim neighbours and you know they're up to no good, Big Steve's got some great pre-election news for you!

If you do your duty as a patriotic Canadian and re-elect the Harper gang on October 19, Big Steve is going to provide funding for a dedicated snitch line under the "Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Practices Act."

If you weren't paying attention you may not even have noticed when that one slipped through parliament, but slip through it did.

See, even when you're not paying attention, Big Steve's got your back!

So if your Islamic neighbours on the 19th floor are slaughtering a baby goat for one of their barbaric festivals, who you gonna call?

BIG STEVE'S ZERO TOLERANCE ANTI-MUSLIM SNITCH LINE.

But this is a limited time offer. Make sure you vote Conservative on October 19.

Israel busts domestic ISIS terror plot

This story is remarkable for at least two reasons.

First, let's look at what is unremarkable. The gist of the tale is that Israeli Arabs, ie citizens of the Jewish State who are not Jews and therefore are not real Israelis, have been conspiring to introduce ISIS type terror into the Holy Land.

No surprises there. The Likudniks have been working overtime for at least twenty years to disenfranchise Israeli Arabs. After all, how can a non-Jew be a full citizen of the Jewish State?

That's what is unremarkable.

The two salient points that are remarkable are these;

1. This story comes out on the very day that Netanyahu makes his annual presentation at the UNGA. He put on quite a show this year. Perhaps not up to the precedent-setting bomb-cartoon episode, but nevertheless quite impressive. I'm sure those dramatic pauses had a great impact in the Marshal Islands and Canada. But that's not why it's remarkable; everything Netanyahu ever says is considered "remarkable" by the government of Canada. No, it's remarkable because it comes out on the very day that Netanyahu claims his "Arab Peace Partners" are all aboard with his anti-Iran agenda. Those would be the very "Arab Peace Partners" who have been sponsoring ISIS all along. That's remarkable.
2. The second remarkable fact about that story of Shin Bet busting an Israeli-Arab terror cell is that the word "Iran" does not make even one passing appearance anywhere in the story. Not once. That is REALLY remarkable.

I suspect there's a serious rift between the intelligence apparatchiks and Netanyahu's speech-writers. The speech-writers are reaching out to Netanyahu's base; American senators and congressional representatives.

The speech-writers wrote almost exclusively about Iran, as you heard in Netanyahu's address to the UN General Assembly.

Unlike the speech-writers, the intelligence folks are obliged to engage with the real world.