Multi-culti crowd exchanges fisticuffs in multi-culti capital of Canada - over parking space

I've only been to Costco once or twice in my life, and as a "guest," not as a member. Like what the hell is that, some sort of cult of consumerism?

Anyway, you'd think all those cult members would share some basic values, beyond knowing how to fill a shopping cart with crap they don't need, at the best price. But apparently those shared values don't extend to passing up the very last parking slot in a thousand acre parking lot.

At some level I think this is also a good case in support of gun control. If any of those folks had been packing when the red descended on them, somebody'd be dead!

Then again, knowing the other guy probably has a Glock in the glovebox might incline one to shut-up and just look for another parking space.

My career in (dis) organized crime

Back in the day, everybody I knew was a dope dealer. Yup, they'd score an ounce of weed for eighty bucks, sell off three quarter ounce baggies to friends and acquaintances, and come away with enough profit to pick up a case of beer. Plus keep back a quarter for their own smoking pleasure.

That's how it worked, and generally speaking, it worked pretty well.

More than once I tried to take things to the next level. It always ended badly.

The logic is logical enough; if you can turn an ounce of weed into a case of beer plus a free quarter ounce... hell, what might happen if you actually bought a pound?

Or ten pounds?

Here's what happens.

First of all, you find ten pounds doesn't come wrapped in individual one ounce baggies, or quarter ounce baggies for that matter.

Somebody gotta do that work.

So you scrounge up a bunch of hired help from amongst your pothead pals, and pay them an hourly rate to divvy up that ten pounds of weed into quarter ounce parcels.

Hmm... what could go wrong?

Not only does one day of work, paid hourly, turn into three weeks, but by the time it's over you've got five pounds of weed on offer, not ten.

And since none of your pothead buddies ever had cash to pay up front, you were always fronting them the goods and collecting later.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

And if not, then what?

Break their legs?

Kidnap their dogs?

Strike them from your Christmas card list?

See the problem here?

And that's why I was a complete failure in setting up my own drugs cartel.

The Trump/Putin kiss

Here's the story at BBC.

Here's the image that BBC finds worthy of featuring:



So why is this newsworthy?

All I'm seeing is a juvenile pastiche of homophobia/Trump-bashing/Putin-bashing.

Frankly, I'm hoping that those two men can get along once Trump is POTUS.

And hey, should they become lovers, so much the better! They'll each be that much less likely to incinerate the other's extended family in a nuclear Armageddon!

Junior's impeccable lawnmower logic

Had a lunch date with Junior last week, when I was down in the City attending to some medical issues. Yup, the old "temple" is collapsing in on itself faster than this pile of red bricks we call "Falling Downs."

Anyway, I was explaining the lawnmower woes to him, and I must say he provided some refreshing insights. As the regular reader will know, I have a long-standing aversion to riding mowers. One reason I have defied Dr. E.J. Crispin's dire prediction of forty years ago (to wit; you'll be dead soon) is because I'm pretty religious about getting regular exercise.

For sure! I'll walk five miles to meet my drug dealer instead of taking the car, if you know what I mean. It's that namby-pamby soft life-style that kills off the aging addicts, not the actual addiction. So I've always seen the push mower as an integral part of the exercise regimen, at least till this week.

So after hearing my compelling yarn about how and why my dandelions came to be three feet high, he says "Dad, you gotta get over yourself; get a fucking riding mower already."

Truth be told, I'd already been guiltily eyeballing the riding mowers. Home Depot has a sweet little John Deere number on offer for two grand. My inner Calvanist immediately says "OK asshole, spend two grand to avoid exercise; you'll die soon and you're going to hell."

I generally give my inner Calvanist short shrift, but this observation has been haunting me. Therefore Junior's logic struck me as quite liberating. He says, "Dad, if you get a ride-on, you can think of it as sitting down and having a beer."

Hmm... he's right! The lawn will be done in half the time, and it won't be time spent pushing around a walk-behind in the hot sun, and that wee Deere does in fact have a cup holder; I'll just be sitting down having a beer!... while steering a little John Deere!

Thanks pal!

Dear Lord, may these be the last Olympic Games. Ever. Amen.

Have you noticed the tsunami of bad press around all things Brazilian recently? From government corruption to gang rapes to the Zika virus, things are just going from bad to worse. Just in time for the Olympics.

Olympic Games have become a complete boondoggle. They're vanity projects for the political types who champion them. They're a windfall for the contractors who build the facilities. They're a showcase that allow a few international brands to bask in a vastly subsidized spotlight for a couple of weeks.

While it's true that the Games will permit a few genetically engineered freaks to convert their gold medals into membership in the realm of the beautiful people, it seems to me that they are otherwise devoid of meaningful impact on humanity at large. In fact the opposite is true. The host city typically displaces tens of thousands of ordinary people to build their "world class" facilities. Those are the people who for the most part couldn't afford to attend any events even if they were so inclined, but they'll be expected pay off the deficit for decades after the party is over.

I remember sitting in the (unfinished) Olympic stadium in Montreal in '76 for the gold medal soccer game. All I could think about was what a fantasmagorical waste of money the stadium was. It eventually blew through its original cost estimates ten times over and took thirty years to pay off. For that kind of money you could build a multi-use sports complex in every city, town, village, hamlet, and Indian reservation in the land.

Now THAT might have had some benefits!

Hopefully the bad press will build to a crescendo this summer, and the entire Olympic Games scam will be so thoroughly discredited that we'll never have to endure this fraudulent spectacle again.

Ambassador Kevin Vickers, action hero

You can't deny that Kevin Vickers is a man of action. In fact, he has proven himself to have a pair when pandemonium breaks out around him.

But I find his latest adventure a little less than convincing. Hey dude, the guy you collared wasn't waving a weapon or anything; why not let the security detail deal with him... and you're not the security detail; you're the Canadian ambassador!

And what the protester was protesting was Brit imperialism in Ireland. There's a very legit argument to be made that the ceremony the protester was protesting was a celebration of that imperialism.

Of course it was!

Is that what we want to be celebrating?

Anyway, the government of Israel likes him, for the most specious reasons, but let's not quibble over that now.

But please remember, Kevin, you're the ambassador now... not the security guard.

Bank of Montreal leads way in upping dividend while slashing payroll!

They obviously have some sharp capitalistic minds in the corner offices down there at BMHQ.

Yup, they're upping the dividend... while simultaneously slashing nearly two thousand lazy-ass malingerers off the payroll.

Hey, if you can slash all those folks off the payroll without anyone noticing, either the company has been very poorly run, or the management team has totally given up and are in "loot and pillage" mode. Nobody actually believes they missed those two thousand dog-fuckers on their last 15 efficiency crackdowns, do they?

So which is it?

They're cutting staff to save money. While they raise the dividend...

You don't figure they're just trying to pump a little air into the share price till all those head office types cash out their stock options, do you?

How about those Raptors!?

Man, I was so sure they were gonna let it slip away there in the fourth period...

But they didn't!

That Congolese dude is a joy to watch and a wonderful addition to the team.

Bismark I think his name is.

Why a Congolese family would want to name their child after a German dictator is something I just don't get.

Austria; the canary in democracy's coal mine?

Nice mix of metaphors and shit on view there, eh?

We've been hearing way too much about how the Nations of Virtue are swinging to some imagined "far right." We are told that far right demagoguery has eclipsed rational discourse in nations as diverse as Hungary and the USA, France and Poland...

But in Austria today, the supposed right wing extremist was unexpectedly trumped by the former leader of the Green Party.

Maybe that shift to the right that the MSM have been warning us about was just a feint, and the people are moving massively to the left?

I mean, why wouldn't we?

If we'd just stop with random wars and the F-35 and rebuilding Afghanistan and all that shit, just imagine what America might look like if government policy were to reflect the public interest.

Axl Rose; harbinger of the Apocalypse

Axl did some cool shit back in the day and then he became a ROCK STAR.

Way larger than life.

The world at large tired of that quite quickly, but it kept Axl himself mesmerized for decades.

But is he ever back!

There are multiple levels of irony at play when we witness rock and roll icons rocking their knee braces.

So Axl fronting for the most formulaicly successful rock band of all time should come as no surprise.

But what does it all mean?

Think about it...

...and the longer you think about it, the more likely you are to suspect that what we're seeing in these end times is a bunch of anxious suits worried about the expiry dates on their meal tickets.

I mean, are there any sound reasons whatsoever for even having another AC/DC tour?

Let's face it, AC/DC is AC/DC. They've never aspired to anything else. They are really good at what they do. Old age has knocked a couple of key members out of this tour.

Enter Axl.

Maybe he's still into the rock star thing. Maybe he needs the money.

Maybe.

Or maybe we're witnessing the collapse of that pop culture scaffolding that's been propping up our faith in capitalism for the last hundred years.

Corporate media celebrate Taliban kill

You can't go anywhere in the mainstream news today without seeing gloating references to the drone kill of the supposed Top Towellhead of Taliban Terror.

It's all bullshit.

Even if they got the guy they think they got, there'll be plenty of leadership candidates waiting in the wings.

It's a fact proven again and again that cutting off the head of a terror group or a drug cartel or a whatever, does nothing more than allow younger and more aggressive underlings to rise to the surface.

That's why America is more overrun with drugs today than it was when Richard Nixon unleashed the war on drugs over forty years ago.

The world was a safer place when Saddam was in charge of Iraq and Ghadaffi was in charge of Libya...

But we fixed all that, didn't we?

Why are all those noxious neocon turds aligning behind Hillary?

The mainstream "liberal" Toronto Star saw fit to run an opinion piece by neocon turd supremo Robert Kagan the other day, the gist of which was that America is flirting with fascism.

Yup, it's that Trump thing.

Trump is the Pied Piper of populism - the American Hitler. Yessiree, America today is just like Germany in the thirties.

There are of course innumerable reasons why America today is nothing whatsoever like Germany in the thirties.

Today, America remains the world's only super-power.

In the thirties, Germany was just digging itself out of failed-state status.

Alas, those parallels are not the ones that Kagan et al would like us to focus on. Whereas Germany was digging itself out of failed-state status in the thirties, America in 2016 is digging itself deeper in.

You see the signs of it everywhere.

The decaying infrastructure.

The student loan crisis.

The failed health care system.

The ninety million working-age Americans not "participating" in the workforce, because if we counted them as unemployed the unemployment rate would be at crisis levels.

America is fucked.

But if you've noticed, it's been salad days for big pharma, the weapons purveyors, and the prison-industrial complex, among others.

That would be the crowd Robert Kagan shills for.

Yes, business has never been better for that tiny elite who have been profiting from America's decline!

That's why Donald J. Trump is such a threat to the status quo.

Trump might, and "might" is the key word here, just upset the apple cart. What a disaster it would be for the Kagan crowd if Trump actually did make peace with Putin. What, no more reason to outspend Russia on bombs and bullets by a factor of ten to one?

That would absolutely cripple the bombs and bullets complex and the dozens of Washington think tanks they fund, wouldn't it?

That said, I fear that the more mainstream advisers Trump takes on, the more likely it is that he will be co-opted by the prevailing DC geist.  Nevertheless, there remains a sliver of a chance that Trump "might" overturn the status quo.

After all, he's said "you're fired" before, and maybe those are the words a lot of those establishment advisers could be hearing right after Cleveland.

Which is why those noxious neocon turds are stampeding to the safety of Hillary Clinton.

About the impending Trump presidency

Some folks incorrectly see me as a Trump advocate, and I am therefore asked quite often how I think a Trump presidency might play out.

Donald Trump is not the kinda guy who is ever going to have his life scripted 24/7.  The think tank here at Falling Downs figures Trump is gonna delegate the business of the nation to the usual bureaucrats, and then he's gonna be playing a lot of presidential golf.

I'm hoping to get in a round or two myself!

If your underpants zone is perpetually damp, you're probably ready for adult diapers

Ya, hate to be the one to break it to you, but that's where you're heading.

Me too.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Hell, we've lived through the smug glances of those Shopper's Drug Mart check-out clerks since we bought our first tube of K-gel, haven't we?

And the condoms.

And the 'roid ointments.

So what's the big deal with the adult diapers?

fear, loathing, aging...

The Farm Manager bought a dog brush today that cost more than what we paid for the dog.

That's a bit of a fucked up thing in my world.

When I read stuff like that, I'd be tempted to assume the writer is kidding around.

I'm not.

No matter how I look at it, there is nothing fun/cool about getting old...

But we're all heading down that road, are we not?

US war on Taliban totally over after drone strike kills leader!

For some reason that's a story that's getting lots of ink.

In spite of the fact that it's complete bullshit. How many times before has the US eliminated top Taliban leaders? Seems the US forces of righteousness have been rubbing out those Taliban leaders for what, ten or fifteen years by now?

But, just like the Energizer Bunny, those Taliban leaders keep on coming. Knock out one with a drone strike, and there's two more right there to take his place.

Far be it from me to suggest the US strategy is not working, but who can ignore the fact that the US strategy is not working?

Apparently the US high command has no problem whatsoever ignoring the fact that their strategy is not working. They just keep doing the same and doing the same and then doing the same again, and then feigning complete surprise when their strategy is not working!

Hey fellas!... it's not working and it's never worked! The towellers are just sick of having you in their countries!

Go home already!

Let them figure out their own shit!

Lawnmower fear and loathing at Sears

So me and the Farm Manager have been on the lawn-mower hunt of late. Yup, the unit I bought at Sears not more than three or four years ago has done gone for a shit.

Craftsman. Used to be a good name. Something that would last, if not a lifetime, at least a long while.

Three or four years?... get outta here!

So we do the circle tour; Canadian Tire, Home Hardware, Home Depot... there's a reasonably good deal on John Deere riding mowers at Home Depot.

I'm a little ambivalent about the riding mowers. In my world, or at least the place I've thought of as my world, a riding mower signifies that you're a fat old guy who is afraid of actually pushing a push mower around the yard because it's an all-too-obvious invitation for a heart attack.

This is of course a self-defeating proposition. You think you're a fat old guy at risk of a heart attack, so you avoid exercise? Hello!

So I've always taken a certain amount of pride in being the fat old guy who pushes the push mower around his half acre of lawn. God damn it, I'd rather die getting the exercise than avoiding it!

I've got some reservations about even stopping off at Sears, because even if that three or four years was actually five or six, it's not nearly enough, but we stopped in anyways. They had a sale on the push mowers, and by God if that didn't rekindle my determination to push a push-mower for as long as I can before I decamp to the ride-on camp.

I was ready to forgive and forget the piece of shit they sold me last time round.

First thing the Farm Manager says when we meet the salesperson is "we've had a lawnmower breakdown and the dandelions are a foot high."

So we scope out the selection on sale and, after a good half hour consultation with the sales team, settle on the model that's $100 off, has the big back wheels, and the premium Briggs and Stratton motor with 7.5 foot-pounds of torque.

Oh, we sold the last one yesterday...

No problem, I'll take the floor model.

Oh, we can't sell you the floor model; somebody could come along and want to see its features.

So when can you get me the mower you just sold me?

The sales team has a huddle and figure there might be a shipment on the truck that's coming in next Thursday, but they're gonna check on the computer just to make sure.

They disappear for fifteen minutes, and come back with the news that it'll take a week to ten days to get me the lawnmower they just sold me.

Huh?

Sorry, but by then the dandelions in the yard will be two feet high...

You can't sell me the floor model because somebody might want to see it... and what do you think will happen when you explain to them that they'll have to wait a week to ten days to get one?

They'll most likely do what I did; get their lawnmower somewhere else.

Deep fried dandelions

Ya, there is such a thing. Google it.

In my spare time, of which I have an ample supply, I been casting about for something an old retired guy could do that might be at least marginally useful and perhaps make a few dollars.

I've had all kinds of thoughts on the topic.

Bootlegging.

Been awhile since I sat down and hoisted a few with my old pal Don Gregory, but his family used to be one of the prime bootlegging clans in one of the maritime provinces. I won't tell you which one, because hey, maybe they're still at it, and I wouldn't want to spoil the fun.

Here's one thought I had; you know how thirty seconds after closing time there's always folks who rip into the beer store/liquor store parking lot and get all overwrought when they find out they were thirty seconds late? Well, that's a prime customer base that is vastly under-served.

Now, imagine you had your pick-up parked in the corner of that parking lot, with the back piled high with cases of Coors and so on. Those folks who pull in thirty seconds late would far rather pay two times the official price than go home empty handed, don't you think?

Got a couple more angles on the bootlegger theme. Been checking out these home distillery kits you can get on the internet. For a few hundred dollars you can get a rig that'll convert a five pound bag of potatoes into a gallon of vodka.

In 24 hours.

A gallon of vodka translates into 128 fluid ounces. A one ounce shot runs you four or five bucks, most places. That's the key; you can't just turn your gallon a day over to some shady barkeep for twenty or thirty dollars. You gotta get the retail customer who's gonna fork over the five dollars an ounce.

So you open up a little greasy spoon in the low-rent thirsty side of town, and you give the clientèle really good value for the dollar, like a two ounce shot in your Bloody Caesar for five bucks. Suddenly that gallon of vodka is worth what, $300 or so? And like I said, that kit will brew you a gallon a day outta five pounds of potatoes.

Problem with these plans is they are, technically speaking, illegal, although if you're a older white dude who owns a suit you'd probably avoid real time. All I'd have to do is get a suit and tie and I'd be OK. Nevertheless, I've been considering some options that don't run afoul of the law.

The landscaping business. Like roofing, anybody with a pick-up can go into landscaping with an investment of a few hundred dollars. Wanna be a roofer? Buy a ladder and put a sign on the side of your truck. Wanna be a landscaper? Hell, you don't even need the ladder!

And here's my special angle. Since they've been cutting back on support programs and "sheltered workshops" for your folks with "challenges," there's a lot of folks around who get a monthly disability cheque but basically have nothing to do. Hire them for the landscaping crew!

Like, how much brain-power does it require to work a rake or a lawnmower or a Whipper-Snipper? This is a win-win and win again. Your challenged folks will have something to do with their day, plus they won't even notice you forgot to pay their wages!

The only fly in that ointment is the quality of the tools out there today. Time was, you could get a hand-me-down lawnmower for nothing from a relative, put in a new spark-plug, sharpen the blade, and be good to go for another ten years.

Those days are gone. Everything is made to break these days. Back in olden times, some guy would invent something, build it, sell it, and take pride in the fact that it would last a lifetime. He staked his name on building quality shit.

Now all the brands are owned by weenies who don't know shit about how anything works but they got a MBA from Wharton and their hedge fund just bought the company that other guy spent a life-time building up. Before you can say "executive bonus," the manufacturing has been outsourced to China, the pension plan has been looted, the brand has been larded up with debt, and that life-time lawnmower is lucky to last two years.

That's because today, the important thing is no longer how long the tool lasts; it's how much free cash flow it sends up the value chain to some shit-bag chilling out on his Connecticut estate or on his yacht in Palm Beach or Monaco.

Or Montenegro if Peter Munk has his way.

That casts a serious pall over my landscaping plans. Even if you can get the labour for free, it ain't gonna work if you have to replace your equipment every year or two.

So I'm kinda leaning towards borrowing a page out of the playbook of my old pal Amanda Rabinovitch down there in Germantown. She's got her Bite-me Bagels brand franchised across sixteen states and three provinces by now, and she's just bought an estate in Connecticut.

Obviously I'm not gonna cut her grass with another bagel brand, but I detect a huge yawning gap in the market for deep fried dandelions...

Oh ya!

Dieter's Deep Fried Dandelions, here we come!

Lambos and Porsches and so much more

I'm not sure who these "519DRIVE" folks are, but judging from the number of views this video has, they seem to spend more time driving their cars than they do watching videos of themselves driving their cars.

Which I suppose is as it should be if you've got a Lamborghini or a Porsche.

One year after the fact CNN suggests there might be something a little fishy in the official story of the Waco biker ambush

I'm proud of the fact that the think tank here at Falling Downs had it pegged by the very next day.

One thing we got wrong; turns out there's plenty of video showing what actually happened, and most of it thoroughly discredits what Sgt. Swanton was telling the world that Sunday afternoon last May. The vast majority of those 150 plus bikers currently under indictment were running for their lives when the gunfire erupted.

They are guilty of absolutely nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet, they've had the boot of the state on their necks for a year now. It's destroyed careers, destroyed families, and shows no sign of letting up.

This is a story that every American who cares about their civil liberties, who cares about freedom, and who cares about police power running amok should be on top of.

How about those Raptors!

Nice work, gentlemen!

One of the most suspenseful things about watching the Raps is that you're never sure which team is going to show up. The guys who choke when the going gets tough, or the guys who take things to the next level and make all those sports-writing cliches ring true.

This afternoon the Raptors broke with Toronto sporting traditions and decided to show up and play.

Bring on Cleveland!

Announcing the million dollar Falling Downs Hedgie of the Year Award

That's right folks, the think tank here at Falling Downs will hand out a ONE MILLION DOLLAR PRIZE to the hedge fund manager who you believe has contributed the most to civil society in the past year!

Who will be the hedgie of the year?

Vote early and vote often for your fave hedge fund manager!

Will it be Bill Ackman? The guy who looted the CPR?

Paul Singer? The guy who looted Argentina?

The erstwhile Canadian, the guy who looted Robert Schad's company, but who's name escapes me due to my early onset Alzheimers?

Vote early and vote often! This is an unprecedented prize in the anus of business awards! Never before has a million dollar prize been bestowed on the billionaires who have been destroying the economy!

Just send your nomination, along with the entry fee of one million dollars (US dollars, if you don't mind) c/o this blog.

We promise to send everyone who supplies a nomination a free Falling Downs coffee mug!

Pretzel Crisps and the collapse of Western Civilization

Those thin and crunchy pretzel crackers are actually making lots of lawyers lots of money these days.

Oh ya!

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Bad Vlad himself is behind this assault on the American tradition of pretzels.

And pretzel crackers of course.

This controversy is not to be confused with the well known Cracker pretzel crisis.

That's where your trailer trash Crackers are too busy with their meth labs to bother cooking up wholesome meals for their young 'uns, and therefore feed them a steady diet of pretzel crackers.

Ya, I know it sounds messed up, but poor white folks are like that. They'll feed their kids pretzel crackers till they tip the scales at "morbidly obese," and then they expect society to pay for their mistakes...

That's goddamn communism if you ask me!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the tracks, the colored folks are bringing their young 'uns up on watermelons and collard greens, and by Jeezus if that ain't a diet that's come to dominate the NBA and the NFL!

So if you're bothered when the arseholes down there in Alabama are making a big stinkaroo about a T-shirt with a black dude eating a watermelon, just send them a copy of this blog-post.

Snowblower in the morning, lawnmower in the afternoon

Yup, this climate change shit is one hell of a thing.

Had a snow storm here at Falling Downs this morning. On the 14th of May. I know!

Get the fuck outta here!

I don't know what to make of the entire "climate change" imbroglio. Ya sure, fossil fuels are fucking up the planet. But how serious is anybody about getting off fossil fuels? Have you noticed that the number one polluter on the planet, the US military, gets an automatic pass on any anti-pollution legislation? We can't let carbon emissions jeopardize national security after all...

So me and my pick-up truck are gonna get carbon taxed up the ying-yang, while the US Navy and it's twelve or nine or whatever the latest number is of "carrier groups" get a free pass? One carrier group puts more shit in the air every ten seconds than my truck will in its lifetime, but I'm the problem?

Get the fuck outta here!

Why capitalism is great

Because it allows us to fantasize about owning boats like this.

That's the attraction, isn't it?

Otherwise, you'd have to spend all your time worrying about housing and education and health care and shit...

And you'd spend a lot of time canoeing.

I like canoeing. Done good slices of the Grand River, the Saugeen River, and a lot of the little lakes around here...

But nothing compares to pulling back the throttles on a pair of supercharged 502's.

Where's Putin?

Every reasonable person knows why it took over a year for the "Panama Papers" to hit the headlines. Sure, those thousands of Soros minions on the  "investigative team" were getting all their ducks in a row..., but what they were mostly doing was looking for evidence of Putin's perfidy.

Yes, in eleven million documents there just HAD to be evidence of Bad Vlad's malfeasance somewhere... and even though they couldn't find any in a year of searching, have you noticed that practically any headline about the Panama Papers is accompanied by a photo of Putin?

That's what's known in the annals of counter-intel as "the mark of Soros."

Speaking of Soros, where's he at in the land 'o tax evasion?

Wrapping fish with the Panama Papers

The story thus far;

In March of 2015 a computer hacker, burdened by the scourge of income inequality in the world, makes forty years of confidential legal documents from a Panamanian law firm available to the hitherto unheralded fighters for social justice at Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung. Quickly realizing they are out of their depth, the folks at SZ immediately share their horde of documents with the more experienced anti-corruption crusaders at the Guardian, Washington Post, and Le Monde. Before you know it, the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism is on the case, and they, along with experts from over 100 media outlets in 80 countries are analyzing these eleven million documents. Thousands of investigators and experts analyze for over a year, and the story eventually pops in April of 2016.

Hmm...  Why the SZ in the first instance? And why take it next to the WP, owned by one of the most prolific tax evader/avoiders in the world, Jeff Bezos? And is Le Monde not also in the hands of a pair of chappies who have on occasion run afoul of the law? And have not the crusaders at ICIJ as well as their mothership, the Center for Public Integrity, been called out on their lack of exactly that, time after time?

That year of "analysing;"...

Were the experts analysing?

Or were they scrubbing.?

Just looking for links to their enemies, or all of the above?....

The questioning has only begun,

But already the story smells more than a little fishy.

Beyond parody; Axl and AC/DC

Did you get that bit about Axl "standing in?"

What are they talking about? He's not standing, he's sitting!

I suppose it could be argued that all the big rock acts are somewhere on the continuum between parody and self parody these days.

That said, you have to admit that, vocals wise, AR pretty much nails it. Other than that, half of AC/DC plus 1/5 of GNR comes out at something less than a full house.

But apparently the show was well received. So if you always wanted to see GNR and/or AC/DC, here's your chance at a twofer.

And who's to say it's not the "real" thing?

What is "real," after all?

Happy Mother's Day!

Seeing my dear Mum these days involves at least five hours of driving for a round trip. That's a lot of driving for a 45 minute visit.

It's well worth it though. After all these years I still love Mum, as much as ever. Or Mutti as we knew her back in the day.

She's had some health issues these past couple of years, and I was happy to hear that she's getting ahead of that stuff! She looks and sounds great!

Then she updated me on my brother's medical situation. He blew an intestine recently and was kind of in the grey zone for a bit - we didn't know if he was going to heaven or staying here a while longer. Looks like he's made up his mind to stick around, and he's making the best of it.

Rock on, brother!

Then she gave me the update on one of the relatives back in the old country. An uncle of mine.

Great guy. I've met him maybe half a dozen times. Very congenial.

So my Mum is telling me this story, about how Onkel is perhaps heading down the Alzheimer Highway, but meanwhile, his companion of 25 years, who happens to be at least 20 years his junior, (there's a mystery quadratic equation in there somewhere folks... tell me what it is and I'll send you a Falling Downs coffee Mug) has been suffering a non-stop array of ailments... she needs a kidney... and she has some kind of cancer... and, quite unrelated to the cancer, she's going in for brain surgery next month...

ENOUGH ALREADY!!!

By then it was time to go.

My mother is enjoying relatively good health and has her wits about her. That's my present on Mother's Day.

Happy Mother's Day, Mutti!

PS Anybody who writes in about that mystery quadratic equation, don't forget to include $45 for shipping and handling for your free Falling Downs coffee mug.

Thanks.

Bean salad and pickled beets

Hey, it's not a bad diet once you get used to the toilet bowl running red.

Ya, that's a real fuck-up with the pickled beets. I'm definitely not the first person to show up at ER having a panic attack about their red bowel movements.

Red?

Oh my God, I'm bleeding from the lower intestine!...

What kind of cancer is it?


Oh, sorry... you had pickled beets for lunch again, didn't you.

Ya, I'm on a pickled beets and bean salad diet. I like bean salad and I love pickled beets, even though they cause you to shit red.

I'm thinking of firing up a new blog, "Dieter's blog." There would be a shit-load of folks just looking for diet tips who would mistakenly click on to it. In no time it would have way more traffic than this "save the world from the plutocrats" bullshit that I've got going on now.

Pickled beets and bean salad...

Sounds like a winning formula to me!

Drumpfobia splits the GOP

It's been a heady few days in the race for the White House. Chris Christie was the first high-profile establishment Republican to come out for Trump, but he's getting more and more company. Sorry Chris, that VP slot may no longer be the slam dunk it looked like at the time!

Herman Cain has clambered aboard the Trump bandwagon. That means that both black candidates from the last two election cycles are now Trump supporters. Pulls a bit of rug out from under that "Trump = racist" meme, doesn't it? That meme is of course the touchstone of the white liberal intelligentsia, the same folks who still think, this late in the game, that Hillary has any "liberal" cred whatsoever.

Rick Perry has signed up. He's a serious enough guy in traditional GOP circles. But he's got nothing on Darth Cheney, who, much to our surprise here at Falling Downs, has climbed aboard too.

Maybe it was the heart transplant?

And then there's Sheldon. Sheldon and Donald have at times been bitter rivals. I think in the course of their rivalry, Sheldon has perhaps prevailed in the net worth rankings. But he's gotta have nothing but respect for Trump for the way he has steam-rolled over the duds Sheldon was financing. The fact that Sheldon can admit his mistakes says a lot about the man... he's not a complete shitbag after all!

Meanwhile, back in Crawford, W has poutily declined to support the "presumptive" GOP nominee. Seems the entire Bush clan are having a group sulk because Trump made mincemeat out of Jeb without really trying. Jeb wasted what, $150 millions on his DOA campaign?

Holy Christ! It's not hard to see why the Bushes are bitter!

Paul Ryan still has wet dreams about being in the oval office himself someday, so he's hedging his bets. And when I say "in the oval office" I mean sitting behind the big desk. The reason he's hedging his bets is because there's a lot of GOP bigs coming out, if you can imagine such a thing, for Dem front-runner Hillary!

Most of the PNAC crowd is way inclined to get behind Hillary, and it's not hard to see why. Trump is a loose cannon. He's unpredictable. He could conceivably do all kinds of scary shit; get along with Putin, stop overthrowing governments we don't like, abrogate the trade deals that have disembowelled America's working class, and so on.

Hillary, on the other hand, is gonna continue the tried and true course of perpetual war and the never-ending sell-out of working Americans. Let's face it - that's a formula that works for a huge slice of the American oligarchy!

So we've got a Manhattan lib hi-jacking the GOP, and a Dem candidate far to the right of the GOP candidate...

Best race ever!...

End Times indeed!

Please join me in wishing Juniour a very happy 26th birthday

He's got his shit more together at 26 than I had mine at 46.

He's gonna be OK.

And he's still stitching together some great tunes!

Love ya, buddy!

Happy happy,

dad

Trump and Israel

While Donald Trump may not be a New York City Jew himself, that's certainly the milieu he hails from. In New York City, and especially Manhattan, there's not a lot of light that separates the gentiles from the Jews. I'd have liked to add "and from the Mohamedans,"  but at the moment there's not much of a Mohamedan presence in those fancy co-ops around Central Park, and in Trump Towers and all of the towers of Donald Trump's imitators.

Historically, those Manhattan Jews have always had leftish proclivities. Historically, they've always supported,  if with nothing else but money and rhetoric, the State of Israel.

But we've come to a singular station where the gulf between leftish proclivities and the modern State of Israel is so vast that in the future it becomes less and less likely that progressives of any denomination will align themselves with Israel.

Enter Trump.

He's been saying some soothing things lately...

Sure, Jerusalem is and always will be the capital of Israel. I'll put the embassy there.

Go ahead, put up as many settlements as you want...

And here comes the "by the way."

By the way, we're trying to trim back our expenses and our commitments to allies who are really expensive but don't actually bring any benefits to the relationship.

So good luck with those new settlements but the USA is outta here, and so is our four billion a year welfare cheque

Likudnik Israel 2016 = Nazi Germany 1936?

It is of course much more than eighty years of linear time that separates Nazi Germany in '36 from Likud Israel today.

The Nazis were largely outside the club of nations. The Likudniks are cradled in the arms of the world's only superpower.

IDF big Yair Golan hit the motherlode of outrage the other day when he implied parallels between Germany in the thirties and Israel today.

General Golan joins a long list of former IDF/Mossad/Shin Bet luminaries who have stepped out to voice their heart-felt belief that the current administration is leading Israel down the road to ruin.

They're right. Maybe they're worth listening to...

When will Israel wake up?

The Berlusconi of Quebec announces his retirement from politics

Sorry we never even got to know you, PKP.

I don't know if PKP would ever have got round to doing any important things, but there is no doubt he was on the cusp of interesting things.

Actually, it was interesting enough that he got himself elected as top dog in the PQ, the Quebec separatist party. That was interesting on multiple fronts. PKP's history of anti-labour activism throughout his vast media empire, while nabbing the PQ leadership, the most pro-labour party in Quebec, was just one example.

But it was a stunning example. We really and truly believed PKP was following in the footsteps of Berlusconi.

Apparently not.

Latest poll shows Trump thumping Hillary in November

The think tank here at Falling Downs called it three months ago.

Three months later the mainstream is beginning to acknowledge the possibility.

In between we've been treated to a lot of highly improbable speculation that either Cruz or Kasich could prevail over Hillary, but Trump couldn't. That line of reasoning was obvious hokum from the beginning. The tortured logic that led to such a fanciful conclusion was just wishful thinking on the part of a mainstream media that has long been little more than the propaganda arm for the Wall Street - Pentagon nexus that holds the levers of power in both parties, aka "the establishment."

What the msm is only grudgingly beginning to acknowledge is that the establishment has alienated a wide swath of American voters across the political spectrum. The more the media sense the impending overthrow of that establishment, the more they pile on the bullshit. For instance, it's impossible to go anywhere in the mainstream news universe without reading multiple accounts of "Putin's aggression" and how critical it is that America and her NATO allies do more to stare him down.

That's another way of saying we need to hand over tens or hundreds of billions more to the very same military-industrial cartels that have been working their miracles on American foreign policy for the last twenty years. One reason for the surge in support for anti-establishment candidates is that Joe Public finally sees this bullshit as the brazen fear-mongering that it is. Seriously, the US outspends Russia ten to one on military spending by we're still supposed to fear Russia every time a Beltway "defence expert" waves Putin at us?

Get outta here!

Unfortunately, there is no candidate on either side who is more closely identified with that big-money, big-military establishment than HRC. No, she hasn't been a serious alternative for Bernie's supporters and isn't about to become one going forward.

Trump, on the other hand, could be. Take for example his much ridiculed "Foreign Policy Speech" the other day. It was much ridiculed mostly by the same "experts" and their media cheer-leaders who have led America into one disastrous war after another... does their track record suggest that Americans should be heeding their advice?

I'm thinking it's their track record of stupid, bloody, illegal, fabulously expensive (but tremendously enriching for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin) wars that have made the anti-establishment candidates so appealing in the first place.

So Trump wants to go "isolationist?" The US could close hundreds of foreign military bases and still have far more than the rest of the world combined. I don't see the harm in that. Trump is also the first candidate for a major party to tell the truth about what the "free trade" agreements that have been in fashion for the last thirty years have really done to America's working class. That's another powerful reason that more American voters than ever before believe it's time for a serious change.

Those dubious relationships with "allies" wherein the costs are paid by one side and the benefits accrue to the other have long passed their stale-dates too. Sure, let Trump make some symbolic gesture like moving the embassy to Jerusalem, but why should wealthy and powerful nuclear-weapons-equipped Israel get one more penny from the US tax-payer?

These are of course all non-starters for "the establishment." They need the status quo. They need the current policies to keep the enemies to justify the massive arms spending to keep the profits rolling in.

Hillary Clinton is the candidate of and for the status quo.

The silent majority of Americans are fed-up with that establishment.

That's why Trump will bury her in November.