Canadian Forces; Strong, Proud, and fucked over 24/7 by their political masters

Here at Falling Downs we're not newbies on the CF file.

We're always amazed at how the rank and file boys and girls get the short end while the brass live large on studies and reviews and overviews and reviews of the overviews etc.

I am in fact working my way through a couple of books penned by "disgruntled" former CF dudes. I've got Strogan's "Rude Awakening" and also the "Dirty Little Skirmish" by MacLeod and Leduc, and I will provide full book reviews once I'm through them.

But turn to page A12 of today's Globe and Mail and read up on Brad Elms' story.

Hey, I'm an out and out sissy pacifist, and I can't remember a CF engagement that I thought was worthwhile, but I have total respect for the working class guys and girls who go into the CF because they see it as a good career choice.

And it completely burns my ass to see how they are treated by that bureaucracy.

By the way, it was a hell of a thing just getting these books from the local Indigo. Apparently neither of these titles are "Heather's picks," and it took months from making the order to having them in hand.

Welcome to Brampton, centre of the universe

The multi-culti universe!

Me and the Farm Manager went to see a Juno-nominated singer last night, Alysha Brilla. She may proudly proclaim her KW home base, but she still admits her roots are in Brampton.

Brampton used to be a place you drove through on the way to Toronto.

It's where Russell Peters comes from, for God's sakes; the funniest Canadian comic ever!

Now it's a "place."

I think when Drake talks about the "west side of Toronto" he's getting pretty close to Brampton.

It's over for our Baghdad bumboys

Seems that America's grip on Iraq is quite quickly slipping out of US control. In fact, actual real live Iraqis seem to be grabbing the levers of power.

This cannot be allowed to stand.

Once one batch of towelheads realizes they can overthrow the yoke of Yankee domination, all kinds of others will be sure to follow.

Then what?

Koch Bros. prove yet again that just because you inherit great wealth doesn't mean you're smart

These must be trying times for Dave and Charlie.

It was not even a year and a half ago that the Koch boys proudly announced that they had set aside almost a billion USD to determine the outcome of the 2016 election. Check it out here at the New York Times.

How is that going for them?

Well, thanks to a loud-mouth NYC condo promoter, not that great.

Seems a lot of regular folks took umbrage with the idea that a couple of rich boys would brag about the fact that they intend to buy America's next election. That single story in the NYT probably did more to kick-start the campaigns of both Bernie and Donald than it did for any candidate associated with the Kochs.

Contrary to what Mittens told the public in the last campaign, corporations are NOT people too, and an overwhelming majority of ordinary people in America are disgusted with the thought that the political class is so out of touch that they can go around making such idiotic statements.

Or announcing that they've got a spare billion lying around to buy the next election.

So the Koch bros have been looking on in horror as the Manhattan Motormouth steamrollers over their bumboys. Within the past few days you've seen the erratic desperation from their team.

Cruz and Kasich combining forces to stop Trump?

We saw last night how that brain-wave worked out.

But not to worry. Ted Cruz just pulled the ultimate Hail Mary out of his ass; announcing Carly Fiorina as his running mate! After he pretty much lost even the longest of long shot chances at the GOP nomination!

Hey Dave and Charlie, listen up! I know you've got a well-paid army of "political consultants" designing strategy for you, but isn't it time to admit they're a bunch of retards and show them the door? I mean announcing Carly as a "running mate" at this point in the game is ludicrous. What are they running for? The Canadian border?

Anyway, the think tank here at Falling Downs can give you way better advice than what you been getting, and I'm willing to bet we'll save you a bundle too.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Corruption in American politics is so deeply embedded that we barely notice the ripples on the surface

It was a busy day. In between planning home renovations and napping, I had occasion to peruse a few of my favourite news sites.

I like the Guardian. Nice middle of the road perspective, generally speaking. One of the first stories to catch my eye was a missive by Kevin Watkins about corruption in Africa.

Kevin built his story around certain revelations revealed in the "Panama Papers." Seems a whole lot of those African despots are crooks out the ying-yang. Yup, same old same old. African leaders are crooks... no news there! Hey, even my hero Dan Gertler got a passing mention in the story!

Elsewhere in my day, I read a story that Junior forwarded, about HRC's collusion in the Honduras coup of 2009. Not only does Hillary compromise the entire USA intelligence apparatus with her private (as in wide open to every semi-competent intel service in the world) e-mail accounts, but then she posts in her e-mails all the back-stabbing anti-democratic shenanigans that America's Secretary of State is conniving in!

Heck, that's corruption and incompetence on a scale that would leave those African despots wide-eyed with wonderment!

But wait, we're not finished yet...

A little further on in the Guardian, I come across this American crime thriller. Seems a certain Guerrero Chapa has been the de facto leader of the Gulf Cartel since 2003. As I'm sure you appreciate, Cartel leaders have many enemies; the law (but maybe not so much), rival cartels, ambitious underlings, and so on. Ten years after becoming the de facto leader of the Gulf Cartel, our man Chapa gets rubbed out in true gangster fashion while shopping with his wife in Dallas Texas.

But here is the sentence, dropped incongruously many thousands of words into our story, that caught my eye;

Guerrero Chapa lived legally in the US and was an informant for American authorities.

Say what?

The leader of the Gulf Cartel lived legally in the US and was an informant? The leader of a Mexican drug cartel is allowed to live legally in the US and continue running his cartel in return for what? Information on rival cartels? Which would make the entire "War on Drugs" infrastructure complicit in the drug trade they have allegedly been doing battle with, would it not?

How far up the hierarchy do you figure that rot has spread?

No wonder that after forty years of a supposed "war on drugs" your kids can still buy dope at their school playground.

And we're not done yet. Those drug cartels are small fry compared to the big dogs like Lockheed Martin. Here's a story from Sputnik about how the military-industrial complex has been cleaning out the US treasury while lining its own offshore accounts to the tune of billions while fobbing off unworkable crap like the F-35.

And it's all done in the name of the flag and patriotism and defending our freedom, don't ya know! Hell, they'll be lucky if they get approval to fly those duds over a NASCAR invocation, nevermind taking on an actual enemy.

But we see none of that. We're too busy rooting out corruption in Africa!

Top rabbis claim Messiah will show up any day now

Cheryl Chumley said so at the WND website, so it must be true!

Yup, no less an authority than Moishe Sternbuch, top gun at the Rabbinical Court, figures that we are for sure in the last days. Hmm... so the Messiah is gonna drop by.

My hunch is that He's not going to be well pleased. In fact, He's going to be pissed off something fierce.

We've certainly made a hash of things, have we not?

Who can blame Him if he elects to put a match to His creation and start over?

Public outraged by Nenshee Madness

Get the fuck outta here!

Nenshi is by far the most sensible mayor in all of Canada!

Dicks v. cunts

Why is it that the epithet "dick" and its derivatives, ie dickface, dickhead, dickwad, etc., has less impact than the epithet "cunt?"

When it comes down to the world-wide plot by a few California billionaires to destroy the global taxi industry, the best that Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi can do is call them "dicks."

They're not dicks, they're cunts!

And while the dicks and cunts behind Uber are dicks and cunts, why do we find one of those epithets more wounding than the other?

Knenshee knackered

So some shitbag in Boston, who is obviously trying to supplement his Lyft/Uber paycheques with a little hush money on the side, has recorded Naheed Nenshi saying rude things about Uber.

What, the Uber management team are dicks?

This is news???

The Rolling Stones and geriatric empowerment

I say we're good to go...

I been watching this shit all night.

You can watch all the best concerts ever, just sitting in front of your screen!

Is this a brave and bold new world or what?

Duff walks!

No matter what your opinion of Mike Duffy, you had to feel for the guy when you watched the Harper gang hang him out to twist in the wind.

Today a judge in Ottawa completely tossed the case that's hung over Duffy's head for three years. Frankly, I hope Duffy launches legal action against the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper personally for the politically motivated ordeal that was foisted on him by a PMO that had not the slightest compunction about tossing the most loyal of loyalists over the side to make a few embarrassing headlines go away.

Congratulations, Mr. Duffy!

Progressives for Trump

The Farm Manager has been more than a little chagrined with this Trump thing. According to her, only an idiot or a delusional could root for Trump in this most fabulous race for the White House.

Not that she's for Hillary. No serious feminist could possibly be for Hillary.

In spite of what Madeleine Albright may think.

Hillary is the can-do candidate for the war machine. That's who "feminists" should be voting for?

I think not.

We're at a point in this campaign where it looks like Hillary is going to triumph over Bernie. I'm a little sad about that, because Bernie talked a lot of nice talk. Social democracy and all that shit.

So when Hill trumps Bernie, what's left for the so-called progressives?

Well, sorry to say, the only other candidate rattling the establishment cage other than Bern would be Donald Trump.

Now, Trump doesn't exactly talk a lot of social democracy. But if you look at his track record, he's got a pretty good set of bona fides marking him as a mainstream Manhattan liberal. Rich Manhattan liberals are famous for championing gay rights, abortion rights, Palestinian rights, civil rights of every stripe, left rights, etc and so on.

They are the quintessential liberals! Thats where Donald Trump comes from.

That's why every liberal in America should celebrate Mr. Trump's hijacking of the GOP!

And vote for Trump!

Is there hope for Germany?

A couple of years ago it was easy to find stories about Israelis emigrating to Germany.

Lately, not so much. Instead, global media have been inundated with stories about the Islamic hordes walking and swimming and boating and floating to that inestimable bastion of European values.

But here's a spot of good news at last; more and more of those Islamic refugees are heading home.

As in going back to where they came from.

And who can blame them.

Every time a suicide bomber explodes in Europe, who gets blamed?

The Islamic immigrants.

Every time a gang of jihadists shoots up a nightclub or a supermarket, who gets blamed?

The Islamic immigrants.

So who can blame them for packing their bags?

And look on the bright side, you folks returning to your bombed-out countries; sooner or later the levers of power here in the Nations of Virtue will find themselves in the hands of agnostics who don't consider bombing Muslim nations an existential imperative.

Hell, once that happens, your homelands could become habitable again!

Tense times in the Holy Land

It's been a torrid few days in the Holy Land. Joe Biden came out with the most explicit denunciation of Israel's policy of land theft that's ever come from a senior American official. Makes you shake your head in quiet contempt, does it not; if the Americans' were at all serious about putting the brakes on Israel's egregious land theft and colonizing they'd simply stop with the blank checks already.

Meanwhile, Bibi was busy announcing that Syria's Golan was now sovereign Israeli territory. Much as it hurts to say we told you so, this ain't news.

We told you so at least twice.

So here we are today, with thousands of Israelis in the streets protesting the prosecution of an IDF hero who flat out committed a war crime captured on video.

What has Israel become?... and where is it going?

Queer lives matter too

There's been a gratifying push-back against those states that have recently been mining the homophobia motherlode with those so-called "bathroom bills." Those bills particularily single out trans people by writing into law that it is illegal to use a bathroom that does not match your genitals.

You may have presented as female for twenty years, but if you couldn't afford the surgery and are still carrying that unfortunate appendage around, well, it's now a crime to pee in the ladies loo.

Seriously, who makes this shit up?

This kind of micro-management of people's toilet habits seems a little unseemly for a great country like the USA.

They're playing with this sort of legislation in a number of Bible-belt states, and it's good to see that the world has noticed. Bruce Springsteen for one has cancelled shows on account of it. Cyndi Lauper hasn't cancelled but promises to pass along all profits to LGBT rights causes. Cirque du Soleil has cancelled shows, as will many other mainstream entertainment acts.

But what I'd really like to see is the old wang-danger himself take a stand for queer inclusion.

Come on Ted, we know you must have jammed with a few fags in the course of your fifty year music career...

Speak up!

That's just bullshit!

I read a lot. That could be a condition. Or an affliction... even an addiction, maybe?

Sometimes I read stuff that just screams out "this is bullshit!"

Like, we're supposed to believe that our scientists can intercept and translate the neural signals from a Monarch butterfly's antenna.

Get outta here!

We shake our heads with quiet contempt

I see where the contemptuous folks at Marshalltown are all over Lockheed Martin's educational initiatives.

Well, I guess if the government no longer provides education, somebody has to...

It's enough to make me shake my head in quiet contempt.

Why Uber can break the law but you can't

The Casino of Capital has deemed Uber to have a value of at least thirty billion dollars, or forty or sixty or more, depending on what you read and when you read it.

Which means they have the wherewithal to take any municipal government anywhere in the world to the mat just by bleeding them to death with legal fees. Which is why Toronto is caving in without a fight.

Meanwhile, the entire cab industry can be written off just because the billionaire bullies behind Uber can force anybody who stands up to them into bankruptcy.

And this is applauded as "progress" in the business press?

Even the world's poorest countries have billionaire lists

Take Ethiopia for example.

A perpetual basket-case on the world stage, they at least managed to get Bob Geldof a knighthood.

But they have a billionaire list!

Here comes another wave of starving African baby pictures

Ethiopia is having yet another one of its drought crises. Yup, give money to this or that charity to support Ethiopia, and if you don't... well good luck sleeping at night because THOSE DEAD BABIES ARE ON YOUR CONSCIENCE!!!

Yes, Ethiopia needs tens of millions in food aid. Did you know that Ethiopia sold 500 millions in cut flowers to the world last year? Did you know that agricultural products are 80% of Ethiopia's exports to the world?

So how is it possible that a country that can export billions in ag products can't feed itself?

That's one of the miracles of globalization. Ethiopia has to export its agricultural products to earn hard cash. Those dollar a day folks doing subsistence farming in the hinterlands don't bring in hard cash! They may well feed their families, but they don't plump up the GDP stats with that subsistence farming bullshit. Ergo, force them off their land and let the international do-gooder community feed 'em!

Then Ethiopia can deploy modern farming methods and the latest GMO miracle crops to vastly increase crop yields for the export market on the land those subsistence farmers used to feed their families.

And why does Ethiopia need that hard cash? To import important stuff from the civilized world... like fighter jets and tanks and petrol and stuff like food, oddly enough... all those important commodities that Africans aren't capable of providing for themselves.

Luckily for the Ethiopians, America has a plan that will solve this food crisis in their country. I have in my hands the "Feed the Future Country Fact Sheet, The US Government's Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative," and boy do they have some great plans in store for those hapless Ethiopians!

Yup, all through these six pages of happy talk the reader is reminded again and again how modern farming methods will take Ethiopia's food exports to a whole new level! They've even managed to convince Dupont Pioneer to participate as a partner in bringing these modern methods to the dumbfucks in Ethiopia!

What great news! Nothing but blue skies ahead for the starving babies of Ethiopia!

Toronto Mayor John Tory bends over for Uber

But it's not His Worship who's gonna be taking it dry... it's the city's thousands of mostly immigrant cab drivers.

Latest news is that Tory is weaseling out of his responsibilities by sending his capitulation to Uber before city council.

The entire fake drama about "oh my goodness - we don't know how to deal with this new technology" is a pile of bullshit. Tory and his minions always knew how to deal with the alleged "new technology." The law is quite unambiguous; if you're delivering people from point A to point B for money, you need a taxi license.

Period.

"New technology" has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

If you are delivering people from point A to point B for money without the required taxi licence, your vehicle should be confiscated and you should go to jail.

These Uber drivers are breaking the law, and they get away with it because nobody at city hall has the balls to do anything about it.

After all, Uber is popular!

The same sordid deal is going down in Ottawa at this very moment. Once again, the folks charged with enforcing the laws are coming up short.

Suddenly law-breaking behaviour is acceptable because it's a "disruptive technology" and lots of people like it. And law-abiding hard working people who have played by the rules are hung out to dry.

How is this possible?

Attawapiskat, again

There can be no more searing an indictment of any generation in any culture, in any era, than when the next generation, our children, prefer killing themselves to making their way in the world we have brought them into. Yet that seems to be what is happening in Attawapiskat, the Northern Ontario Indian community that seems to lurch from crisis to crisis and headline to headline.

There's more than enough blame to go around, so there's no point even starting the blame game. Attawapiskat's state of perpetual crisis doesn't leave anyone looking like a hero. Sure, all the politicians in Ottawa and Toronto are saying all the right things. The various First Nations leaders are all saying the right things. Attawapiskat will make the headlines for a few days or a few weeks.

Extra counsellors and therapists will be air-dropped into the community. Things will calm down. The help from the South will go home. The headlines will fade away.

Till next time.

Depression is bullshit

So you're feeling sad?

Great! Sign up for one of those anti-depressants that the pharma-industrial-complex has designed just for you! Just ignore those disclaimers at the end of the commercial where they warn you about the side effects.

You know.. all that shit about feeling suicidal and wanting to harm others and all that stuff.

True fact; nine out of ten mass murderers are on prescription meds when they do their mass murders!

Before they went on their meds, they were just sad. After they went on their meds, they became psychopathic killers.

Now, if you've noticed, the media generally treat these tragedies as preventable. Billy-Bob would not have shot down those twelve people had it not been for lax gun laws. Therefore, we can prevent future tragedies by tightening up gun laws.

And I have to say there is some merit to this theory. I know for sure that a couple of my ex-wives might have gone headline worthy had they been able to procure a weapon. Thankfully, I live in Canada, where buying a gun to blow away your spouse requires months of testing and exam passing. Usually the heat of rage passes well before you're done the course.

But ex-wives aside, there seems to be a big hole in this "lax gun laws" theory.

Why is it that so many of these mass shooters happen to be on the very medications that we see featured on TV commercials every day, where we're warned that one of the side effects might be some primal urge to hurt others?

And then, when somebody on that medication goes nutso, we blame the tool, and not the medication?

Could it be possible that the pharma lobby has even more schlep than the gun lobby?

Here's my advice... not that you asked; life sucks. You're gonna feel sad a lot of the time. Get over yourself. All that sadness makes the bright spots that much brighter!

Death knell for the sausage era?

Here's more proof that it only takes one idiot to ruin things for everybody. Seems a single glutinous schwein at the annual Daimler shareholders' shindig in Berlin was trousering more than his share of the bratwurst at the free buffet, which led to an altercation with folks who feared they would be short-changed, and before you know it, the polizei are summoned to restore order.

Says Daimler Chair Manfred Bischoff, "either we need more sausages, or we need to get rid of them altogether."

Thanks a lot, Doofuss... there goes my plan to attend the Daimler AGM next year.

Marxists for Trump

I see where John McMurtry has a pointed harangue on view at Counterpunch called Why the establishment hates Trump. Seems to me he got a lot of his ideas reading this blog, but I suppose it's possible he came to his conclusions independently.

Back in the day, every university faculty had at least one or two token Marxists on staff, and John was one of the more high-profile Marxists at the University of Guelph. John wasn't the stereotypical dour commie though; he was known far and wide, at least in the local community, as the guy who put the party in The Party.

John used to have pool parties at his place for his fans and students. Apparently some of his guests were intent on toppling the bourgeois convention of wearing swimsuits at a pool party, which caused a bit of a kerfuffle with the neighbours. The ensuing legal case dragged through the courts for years.

What was extra-ironic was while this was happening, his brother Roy happened to be serving as Attorney General of Ontario!

John was a philosophy professor at U of G, and while I can't say I ever had the pleasure of being in one of his classes, I did have some interaction with him of sorts. Seems John and I shared a hashish supplier, and given his profile not only on campus but in the community, he was a bit of a star client. The dealer, who we'll just call "Doug," unexpectedly experienced what's known as an empty pipeline. All of a sudden Doug is at my door wondering if I might have a line on alternate sources.

As luck would have it, I did! For a few brief weeks I was the source of Professor McMurtry's hashish. Imagine that; supplying illegal drugs to the brother of the Attorney General!

Anyway, John must be getting on in years, but if this article is any indication, he's still got all his marbles rolling in the right direction.

Nice work, Professor!

Capitalism is choking itself to death

It's all about supply and demand.

That's something a capitalist would understand.

There's too much money in too few hands.

Too much supply and no demand.

Because the customer is broke.

Unemployed.

Out of the labour market.

He's got no job.

Nothing in his pocket.

Just like we predicted,

he's gonna be evicted.

He used to be the customer

but he's flat broke.


And that is why the phenomenon of "negative interest rates" has reared its misshapen head in the banker's world. Wouldn't it be way better if we went back to a place where the average worker could afford the average home?

The Panama Papers; the non-scandal ripe with possibilities

It seems to be big news to a lot of folks that there's many rich people who exploit the fine print of tax regulation to minimize their tax obligations. Nothing new about it at all. Why do you think KC Irving spent his twilight years in Bermuda?

In fact, the Irvings waged a lengthy battle with Canada's tax collectors re: the sale of supertanker loads of oil dropped off from all over the Middle East at their Canaport reception facility in New Brunswick. Those million barrel cargoes were sold to a Bermuda middle man between when they entered the Bay of Fundy and when they disgorged their load at Canaport. As it happened, any profit on that supertanker load of oil accrued to an Irving subsidiary in no-tax Bermuda instead of high-tax New Brunswick.

Which proves nothing more than that the Irvings were ahead of the curve. Nothing in these sensational Panama Papers is, on the face of it, illegal. The reason we have "tax havens" on this planet is, guess what, so rich people can avoid taxes!

Legally!

Hey, guess who writes the tax codes all over the world?... the lawyers and accountants who work for the rich folks!

This is a surprise???

But here's why this non-scandal is pregnant with possibilities. Maybe, just maybe, enough people will be pissed off about this story that they'll be motivated to make some changes.

Tax havens need to be put out of business.

History of cordwood roads in Ontario

Great story on view at CBC today about the discovery of a corduroy road underneath King Street in Waterloo. Corduroy roads came about when the pioneers built up swampy areas along a roadway by piling cordwood on them.

Cedar was the preferred corduroy road material because a) it was less valuable as firewood b) it didn't decay as quick in the swamp, and c) it was usually plentiful in the marshy areas.

I recall when my folks first moved to the RR 7 address fifty years ago, their property backed onto what had once been a toll road between Guelph and Elmira in the pioneer days. Back then you could still roughly follow it from Paylor's scrap yard on Silvercreek out past that Texaco station on Woodlawn run by the one-armed bandit, out through that block of farmland. It crossed the Marden Road just east of where the Marden Road - Elmira Road intersection is today.

Along the way that toll road traversed some low spots, and all the low spots had got the corduroy road makeover a hundred years before. That toll road was ten or twelve miles east of where they discovered the Waterloo corduroy road today.

Interesting stuff.

Steven Tyler is a mensch!

Is he ever!

What a story!

Canadian media blame Trudeau for Harper's Saudi arms deal

When the Canada-Saudi armoured car deal was first announced over two years ago, there wasn't a whole lot of squawking about Saudi Arabia's abhorrent human rights record in our media. Virtually all of the coverage focused on what a glorious win this was for our export sector.

So Harper gets voted out, POTHEAD gets voted in, and poof!.. the moral ambiguities saturating this deal suddenly rise to the surface!

I like to brag about the fact that the think tank here at Falling Downs was all over this story from the get-go. Ya, that's satire at that link. Nobody here really thought that the armoured war wagons were gonna be used to ferry the fairies home when the underground gay clubs closed. Nevertheless, the controversy missed Harper but has landed on Trudeau.

There's quite a crowd that thinks Trudeau needs to establish his human rights bona fides by cancelling this deal. It's an appealing argument; virtuous Canada will not trade with egregious human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia. Case closed.

It's not that simple.

First off, Canada has no right to finger-point at the alleged human rights abuses of other states so long as we haven't remedied the open wound that is our relationship with our native peoples. A cursory survey of incarceration rates, poverty rates, suicide rates, and so on puts the lie to the claim that we are a nation of virtue. We're not.

Secondly, why single out the Saudis? Our biggest trading partners are Mexico, China, and the USA. Any human rights issues in those countries? Will we continue to do business with them? Of course we will! And didn't the Harper government enter into a free trade agreement with Israel? Is anyone clamouring for Trudeau to abrogate that deal because of Israel's wanton disregard for the human rights of Palestinians?

Of course not!

So lets get off the high horse on this Saudi deal. Business is business. Where government had a chance to do something was when GM Defence was sold to General Dynamics in 2003. Canada could have blocked that sale. It was, in case you've forgotten, a Liberal government that let it go through. Getting sentimental about the 3000 Canadian jobs at stake today is more than a little disingenuous.

Islamic terrorist nuclear threat

Even casual consumers of mass media news product would have noticed some iteration of the above headline in their news over the past few days. That's because Obama was hosting a "Nuclear Summit" this week at which a gaggle of world leaders spent an undue amount of time wringing their hands over the prospects of Islamic State baddies getting their hands on crude "dirty bombs" or the material to build them. Among the handwringers at the table were the leaders of nuclear powers India, China, France, Britain, and of course the host nation.

Speaking of which, the host nation has embarked, under the leadership of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, on a trillion dollar update of America's nuclear arsenal. This should be more than a little disturbing. Given the sideways tilt that the ship of American democracy has taken recently, it is not inconceivable that America's nuclear arsenal could fall into the hands of a rogue nuclear arsehole in the foreseeable future.

But I digress. According to the headlines, what we should really be worried about is the Towelheads 'o Terror getting their mitts on some spent fuel rods from one of planet earth's many nuclear power stations and unleashing a dirty bomb in London or Paris or Washington.

Is such a thing a possibility? Of course it is, at some vague level of "possibility." What isn't? The possibilities are literally endless...

Should such a possibility be accorded front page news status?

No.

This is just the usual fear mongers peddling their latest dose of booga-booga, the better to stampede the public into going along with more intrusive surveillance of everybody all the time and more military spending.