2018, that is.
The Farm Manager and our one kid who couldn't come up with a better plan for New Years Eve are watching a doc about the life of Polish artist and all-round wack job Stanislaw Szukalski.
I'm on the internet, boat shopping.
Almost bought one this year. A '92 Doral with under 500 hours on the Merc big block. I was pumped till I figured out it was gonna run five hundred bucks to fill the gas tank. No matter how good the deal appears to be, that's not something I can justify when I've got kids paying off student loans.
Maybe 2019 will be the year of the boat.
Around the home hearth it was a good year. Aside from our dear Lucy, everyone came through with good health. In fact, the fourteen year old dog and the twenty year old cat are perkier than they were a year ago. Amazing what they're doing in vet medicine!
And thanks to an Arab immigrant and our lovely public health care system, I can see like I've never seen before!
Hope it was a good year for you too.
The outside world is a little fucked, though. Mainstream media throughout the Western World has become a 24/7 Trump reality show. If they hate the guy as much as they claim to, why do they keep on with the free publicity? As near as I can tell, this president has one accomplishment to his credit. He gave America's one percenters a nice tax break.
Here in Canada we're celebrating the legalization of the weed 'o wisdom... and what a shit-show that's been. PM Fluffy managed to hand the entire industry to the Bay Street greedbags instead of the folks who have been successfully cultivating the stuff forever. Nice job, Justin!
How sadly ironic that guys like former Toronto police boss Bill Blair have jumped into the business, when guys he put behind bars are still... behind bars, and in some cases will be for years to come.
It's a fucked up world...
Anyway, my reminiscences were interrupted by a call from my old pal Kipling. Like me, he's at once pleased and befuddled by the fact that guys like us are still here, guys once voted as most likely to die before 30 in the high school yearbook. He's spending the New Years Eve working on his VW van out in his shop. It's a mere ninety thousand clicks shy of turning three million kilometres on the odometer. You need to spend a lot of time in your shop to make that happen.
We're gonna have breakfast at the Teviotdale Truck Stop next year. Like on Wednesday.
Continuity is good...
Monday, December 31, 2018
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Errors, omissions, and bullshit
I'm not sure the bean-counters at the Globe and Mail are getting full value for whatever they pay Mark MacKinnon to traipse around the world digging up his "scoops." Take today's boffo epic, "Searching for Boris," wherein "a curious tip about Trump Tower sends Mark MacKinnon travelling across the globe" to get the low-down on international man of mystery Boris Birshtein.
I've read the entire four page feature several times and there's little of consequence in the story that you can't find on the internet in a matter of minutes, so why does this take months of international sleuthing on Mackinnon's part?
That was his modus operandi a couple of years ago with his scoop about the the graffiti artists who sparked the Syrian civil war. Mark claimed to have spent years tracking down a story that was readily available on the internet the whole time.
Anyway, about half way through today's effort it becomes clear that what we're after is the elusive Trump-Russia link. Maybe Birshtein is the missing link that Mueller's been looking for for the past two years?
As everybody supposedly knows, Trump was forced to cosy up to dodgy Russian financiers because he couldn't find conventional financing for the Trump Tower in Toronto. The only problem with this theory is that Trump hasn't built any Trump Towers in years, and he therefore does not require financing. He just gets paid for the use of the Trump name, which apparently some people are or were willing to pay millions for.
Go figure!
What the Russian emigres behind the Trump Tower in Toronto didn't realize is that the Trump brand was never going to fly in Canada.
Here's a year old story from the Toronto Star spelling out how Trump made millions on the Toronto tower even as it went bankrupt. Incidentally, the Star had numerous stories about mystery man Birshtein as long as fifteen years ago!
Post Soviet Russia was a veritable gold-rush for opportunists of all stripes attracted by the smell of easy money. Birshtein was one of them. So was Bill Browder. Both of them had connections to organized crime networks in Russia and Israel, as well as the intelligence services of various countries.
Elsewhere in the Globe we've got the obligatory good-news story about how the White Helmets we brought to Canada are faring. Ironically enough, there was a hearing about those folks at the UN this month, but you won't hear about it in Canada's newspaper of record. They'll stick to the official narrative; Israel, Canada, and a few other Nations of Virtue heroically saved these heroes from the clutches of the evil Assad.
Anything else is Putinist propaganda.
I've read the entire four page feature several times and there's little of consequence in the story that you can't find on the internet in a matter of minutes, so why does this take months of international sleuthing on Mackinnon's part?
That was his modus operandi a couple of years ago with his scoop about the the graffiti artists who sparked the Syrian civil war. Mark claimed to have spent years tracking down a story that was readily available on the internet the whole time.
Anyway, about half way through today's effort it becomes clear that what we're after is the elusive Trump-Russia link. Maybe Birshtein is the missing link that Mueller's been looking for for the past two years?
As everybody supposedly knows, Trump was forced to cosy up to dodgy Russian financiers because he couldn't find conventional financing for the Trump Tower in Toronto. The only problem with this theory is that Trump hasn't built any Trump Towers in years, and he therefore does not require financing. He just gets paid for the use of the Trump name, which apparently some people are or were willing to pay millions for.
Go figure!
What the Russian emigres behind the Trump Tower in Toronto didn't realize is that the Trump brand was never going to fly in Canada.
Here's a year old story from the Toronto Star spelling out how Trump made millions on the Toronto tower even as it went bankrupt. Incidentally, the Star had numerous stories about mystery man Birshtein as long as fifteen years ago!
Post Soviet Russia was a veritable gold-rush for opportunists of all stripes attracted by the smell of easy money. Birshtein was one of them. So was Bill Browder. Both of them had connections to organized crime networks in Russia and Israel, as well as the intelligence services of various countries.
Elsewhere in the Globe we've got the obligatory good-news story about how the White Helmets we brought to Canada are faring. Ironically enough, there was a hearing about those folks at the UN this month, but you won't hear about it in Canada's newspaper of record. They'll stick to the official narrative; Israel, Canada, and a few other Nations of Virtue heroically saved these heroes from the clutches of the evil Assad.
Anything else is Putinist propaganda.
Friday, December 28, 2018
The inexorable slide into decrepitude
As 2018 hobbles towards its ignominious end, it's once again time for a stock-taking of sorts.
The Farm Manager thinks Wiarton might make a nice retirement venue. I was absently driving around the place this morning. There's lots of folks out walking those poofy little dogs that retired people get themselves for company. They've probably got family somewhere, but you know how it goes these days; the younger generations are way too busy clawing their way forward in this cutthroat world to make time for their elders. Besides, it's a long drive to Wiarton no matter where you are.
They could fly in, I suppose. The "Wiarton International Airport" is an actual thing, after all. An international airport with exactly zero scheduled flights arriving and departing on any given day. So they'd have to charter a plane, and unfortunately none of the next generation of my acquaintance have thus far clawed themselves forward sufficiently for such an undertaking.
Retirement. I'm not sure it's for me. I try to picture what a day in the life of me (retired) might look like.
Six a.m. - Wake up. Take morning meds. Take poofy dog for walk. Pick up Globe and Mail at Korean Extortionist's place on way home.
Seven-thirty to tenish - Read Globe and Mail.
Ten till noon - Compose and post pithy rejoinders to whatever twattery I found most objectionable in the Globe. There's almost always something.
Afternoon - The empty hours are upon me. Too soon to visit the liquor store. Too early for a toke, at least if you're harbouring any illusions about doing something useful before nightfall. How many useful things need doing in Wiarton is an open question. There's already a guy wandering around town collecting empties out of recycling bins. There's probably not enough empties to make that worthwhile for both of us. Besides, is that actually "retirement?"
Evening - time to get comfortably numb and reflect on the day. What did I accomplish? I walked the dog and wrote a blog.
Nah!... don't think I'm ready.
The Farm Manager thinks Wiarton might make a nice retirement venue. I was absently driving around the place this morning. There's lots of folks out walking those poofy little dogs that retired people get themselves for company. They've probably got family somewhere, but you know how it goes these days; the younger generations are way too busy clawing their way forward in this cutthroat world to make time for their elders. Besides, it's a long drive to Wiarton no matter where you are.
They could fly in, I suppose. The "Wiarton International Airport" is an actual thing, after all. An international airport with exactly zero scheduled flights arriving and departing on any given day. So they'd have to charter a plane, and unfortunately none of the next generation of my acquaintance have thus far clawed themselves forward sufficiently for such an undertaking.
Retirement. I'm not sure it's for me. I try to picture what a day in the life of me (retired) might look like.
Six a.m. - Wake up. Take morning meds. Take poofy dog for walk. Pick up Globe and Mail at Korean Extortionist's place on way home.
Seven-thirty to tenish - Read Globe and Mail.
Ten till noon - Compose and post pithy rejoinders to whatever twattery I found most objectionable in the Globe. There's almost always something.
Afternoon - The empty hours are upon me. Too soon to visit the liquor store. Too early for a toke, at least if you're harbouring any illusions about doing something useful before nightfall. How many useful things need doing in Wiarton is an open question. There's already a guy wandering around town collecting empties out of recycling bins. There's probably not enough empties to make that worthwhile for both of us. Besides, is that actually "retirement?"
Evening - time to get comfortably numb and reflect on the day. What did I accomplish? I walked the dog and wrote a blog.
Nah!... don't think I'm ready.
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
Welcome to Canada: bring your own tent
I notice that in his Yuletide address PM Trudeau gives himself a pat on the back for "putting the first ever National Housing Strategy into action."
Not so fast, Fluffy! What do you mean by "action?" So far the only thing that's been put into action in the year+ since this alleged strategy was introduced is this spiffy website called A place to call home.
Dude, a website is not a roof!
There's some interesting stuff in there though. That "Canada Housing Benefit" will subsidize your rent by up to $200 bucks a month! Unfortunately, you have to have a roof before you can get the subsidy. How does that help the homeless?
The other tricky thing is it doesn't kick in till well after the next election. As such it's one of those vote-buying shenanigans not unlike the previous Ontario government's $15 min wage; the only way to get the goodies is to vote the incumbent in again.
Another red flag should be the discrepancy between the headlines ballyhooing the $40B price tag for this program and what the government is actually committing. You have to read the fine print to find out that's not actual program money. That's "joint investment" money, over ten years.
Joint means Fed money, the dollars Trudeau presumably has some control over, plus provincial, plus municipal, plus non-profit, plus private sector. In other words, this is a joint venture by five parties. Trudeau speaks for one of them. To my way of thinking, until the other 4/5ths of the partnership make some solid financial commitments, there is in effect no actual National Housing Strategy.
So let's call it what it is, Mr Trudeau. It's not a National Housing Strategy; it's a "talking about a National Housing Strategy" strategy.
There's a difference.
Not so fast, Fluffy! What do you mean by "action?" So far the only thing that's been put into action in the year+ since this alleged strategy was introduced is this spiffy website called A place to call home.
Dude, a website is not a roof!
There's some interesting stuff in there though. That "Canada Housing Benefit" will subsidize your rent by up to $200 bucks a month! Unfortunately, you have to have a roof before you can get the subsidy. How does that help the homeless?
The other tricky thing is it doesn't kick in till well after the next election. As such it's one of those vote-buying shenanigans not unlike the previous Ontario government's $15 min wage; the only way to get the goodies is to vote the incumbent in again.
Another red flag should be the discrepancy between the headlines ballyhooing the $40B price tag for this program and what the government is actually committing. You have to read the fine print to find out that's not actual program money. That's "joint investment" money, over ten years.
Joint means Fed money, the dollars Trudeau presumably has some control over, plus provincial, plus municipal, plus non-profit, plus private sector. In other words, this is a joint venture by five parties. Trudeau speaks for one of them. To my way of thinking, until the other 4/5ths of the partnership make some solid financial commitments, there is in effect no actual National Housing Strategy.
So let's call it what it is, Mr Trudeau. It's not a National Housing Strategy; it's a "talking about a National Housing Strategy" strategy.
There's a difference.
A Christmas Miracle
I've got a second cousin, Achim, and we've been tight since we were in diapers. Way more brothers than second cousins.
We used to work in the same place. We loved fast cars. We got married around the same time. We got drunk together, high together, and our lives fell apart around the same time. I had a nasty divorce.
His was way worse. Financially, it ruined him. But worse than that, as the divorce ran its course he became increasingly estranged from the two children he loved dearly.
The divorce is long in the rear-view by now, but he hasn't talked to his kids in 15 years.
A couple of days before Christmas, he talked to them for an hour on the phone.
That's what I call a Christmas Miracle.
We used to work in the same place. We loved fast cars. We got married around the same time. We got drunk together, high together, and our lives fell apart around the same time. I had a nasty divorce.
His was way worse. Financially, it ruined him. But worse than that, as the divorce ran its course he became increasingly estranged from the two children he loved dearly.
The divorce is long in the rear-view by now, but he hasn't talked to his kids in 15 years.
A couple of days before Christmas, he talked to them for an hour on the phone.
That's what I call a Christmas Miracle.
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Jesus possibly a crappy carpenter
I was sitting around with a couple of youngsters from the Jewish side of the family, and I don't even remember how we got on the topic, other than it's that time of year etc.
We all acknowledge that Jesus was a carpenter, and I wondered aloud why there is no biblical record of what kind of carpenter he was.
Was he a framing guy or a finish carpenter? Was his work any good? Did the contractors book him well ahead and dangle bonuses in front of him?
According to the biblical record, the answers to those questions are who knows? who knows? and who knows?
Well, take a moment to think about it.
We tossed this back and forth for a good half hour and the consensus we arrived at was, if he was a half decent carpenter, he would have been way too busy to ever be a prophet.
We all acknowledge that Jesus was a carpenter, and I wondered aloud why there is no biblical record of what kind of carpenter he was.
Was he a framing guy or a finish carpenter? Was his work any good? Did the contractors book him well ahead and dangle bonuses in front of him?
According to the biblical record, the answers to those questions are who knows? who knows? and who knows?
Well, take a moment to think about it.
We tossed this back and forth for a good half hour and the consensus we arrived at was, if he was a half decent carpenter, he would have been way too busy to ever be a prophet.
Friday, December 21, 2018
Trump is toast
The only thing that can save Trump's ass in the immediate future is if the folks driving the Dump Trump agenda have serious second thoughts about what happens next.
President Pence?
I think not.
The story picking up steam is that Mad Dog Mattis is leaving the cabinet because he's at odds with the US withdrawal from Syria. This supposedly shocking development is something Trump has promised since the campaign. How can it possibly be a shock?
But our mainstream media are already trotting out the experts who see the next betrayal coming... leaving Afghanistan!
Eighteen years and a trillion dollars for what, exactly?
The propaganda engines of our free press are already revving with speculation that Trump is doing Putin's bidding here. No doubt Mueller will get to the bottom of things any day now...
And then what?
President Pence?
I think not.
The story picking up steam is that Mad Dog Mattis is leaving the cabinet because he's at odds with the US withdrawal from Syria. This supposedly shocking development is something Trump has promised since the campaign. How can it possibly be a shock?
But our mainstream media are already trotting out the experts who see the next betrayal coming... leaving Afghanistan!
Eighteen years and a trillion dollars for what, exactly?
The propaganda engines of our free press are already revving with speculation that Trump is doing Putin's bidding here. No doubt Mueller will get to the bottom of things any day now...
And then what?
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
That garage probably has twenty dump runs in it
Me and the Farm Manager were weighing the pros and cons of getting a new (or at least newer) vehicle. For the moment the old Subaru is starting up every day and getting us where we need to go, but it's at that stage of its life where it's probably not wise to pour a whole lot of fresh cash into it.
We just had a $1,600 brake job, and the brakes are still spongy.
The power steering is iffy.
The clutch is dodgy.
It's a 2003 or thereabout.
The fact that it's our daily driver tells you something about the state of the rest of the fleet.
The Escape was something I only bought because I got a deal on it. It served well as a wood gathering vehicle between the house and the woodlot for a couple of years, but it's overdue for car heaven. I was gonna have the guy come and pick it up for scrap last summer, when I realized there were wasp nests in various rusty body panels. Buddy would have got stung to death trying to cinch that to the deck of his truck.
The Pontiac Torment has various issues, and it too has come to the point when you can't justify the next repair. Ditto the F-150.
So we were kinda debating around the issue of should we get a truck or is a SUV ok, when the FM says, "we really need a truck because that garage probably has twenty dump runs in it."
Whoa!
What's in the garage?
A near-mint Mustang 5.0 covered in birdshit.
A Kawi Ninja 500 also covered in birdshit.
A beauty oak table top put together for me by Rodney at McGregor's Fine Furniture twenty years ago, which I never got around to building a base for because we have way too many tables already. Oddly enough, there's not a speck of birdshit on it.
An old drum kit, a couple of snowblowers that could readily be rendered operable again, a couple of generators, various chainsaws etc... sorry, I'd be hard pressed to come up with ONE dump run, never-mind twenty.
So maybe a truck isn't a good idea...
We just had a $1,600 brake job, and the brakes are still spongy.
The power steering is iffy.
The clutch is dodgy.
It's a 2003 or thereabout.
The fact that it's our daily driver tells you something about the state of the rest of the fleet.
The Escape was something I only bought because I got a deal on it. It served well as a wood gathering vehicle between the house and the woodlot for a couple of years, but it's overdue for car heaven. I was gonna have the guy come and pick it up for scrap last summer, when I realized there were wasp nests in various rusty body panels. Buddy would have got stung to death trying to cinch that to the deck of his truck.
The Pontiac Torment has various issues, and it too has come to the point when you can't justify the next repair. Ditto the F-150.
So we were kinda debating around the issue of should we get a truck or is a SUV ok, when the FM says, "we really need a truck because that garage probably has twenty dump runs in it."
Whoa!
What's in the garage?
A near-mint Mustang 5.0 covered in birdshit.
A Kawi Ninja 500 also covered in birdshit.
A beauty oak table top put together for me by Rodney at McGregor's Fine Furniture twenty years ago, which I never got around to building a base for because we have way too many tables already. Oddly enough, there's not a speck of birdshit on it.
An old drum kit, a couple of snowblowers that could readily be rendered operable again, a couple of generators, various chainsaws etc... sorry, I'd be hard pressed to come up with ONE dump run, never-mind twenty.
So maybe a truck isn't a good idea...
Monday, December 17, 2018
Canadians tangled in web of hypocrisy
Latest twist in the General Dynamics "Canadian" $15B armoured vehicle sale to the KSA is that we're trying to get out of it.
There's a couple of salient features about Canada's ruling class that you should take note of as this fake drama unfolds.
Trudeau's gradual seeing of the light, that this deal has stunk to the heavens all along, is purely a response to the bad PR the story is generating. Trudeau wants to win an election next year. He has to balance the negative PR of dis-employing 2,000 General Dynamics workers in London, with the possibly even more negative PR of following through on the deal. Either way, his image is drowning in negativity just as he's coming up for re-election.
Desperate measures are surely called for.
Let's take a look at what was, at the time, ballyhooed as our biggest export "win" in history! The Harper Gang were pee-your-pants euphoric over what they'd achieved!
Canada didn't actually sell Saudi Arabia anything. This is a commercial deal between the US defence contractor General Dynamics and the government of Saudi Arabia. All Canada did was approve the deal, as it was expected to do, because the particular plant where those vehicles are assembled happens to be a GD branch plant in Canada.
Any attempt to abrogate the deal now will be horrendously expensive, and not just in the billions of dollars.
We have the rule of law in this country, as PM Fluffy has been reminding every TV camera in sight ever since the Huawei debacle hit the headlines. We can't go meddling around in stuff for purely political reasons...
Oops!
Let's not forget that the decision to render Canada a branch plant economy was taken by Canada's political class, who saw their personal interests more closely aligned with those of their betters in Washington than with working people in Canada. We've been paying the price for that since the days of the Avro Arrow.
Poor Fluffy is doubly flumoxed because this drama is unfolding against a backdrop of severe instability in the KSA. It's a power struggle between the old guard and the "reformer" MBS. Washington's deep state are with the old guard. Better the devil you know...
Whereas Trump is backing, at least so far, this young whippersnapper who is a little "off the leash," as they say, not unlike Trump himself.
There's no happy ending possible here.
I wouldn't want to be Justin.
There's a couple of salient features about Canada's ruling class that you should take note of as this fake drama unfolds.
Trudeau's gradual seeing of the light, that this deal has stunk to the heavens all along, is purely a response to the bad PR the story is generating. Trudeau wants to win an election next year. He has to balance the negative PR of dis-employing 2,000 General Dynamics workers in London, with the possibly even more negative PR of following through on the deal. Either way, his image is drowning in negativity just as he's coming up for re-election.
Desperate measures are surely called for.
Let's take a look at what was, at the time, ballyhooed as our biggest export "win" in history! The Harper Gang were pee-your-pants euphoric over what they'd achieved!
Canada didn't actually sell Saudi Arabia anything. This is a commercial deal between the US defence contractor General Dynamics and the government of Saudi Arabia. All Canada did was approve the deal, as it was expected to do, because the particular plant where those vehicles are assembled happens to be a GD branch plant in Canada.
Any attempt to abrogate the deal now will be horrendously expensive, and not just in the billions of dollars.
We have the rule of law in this country, as PM Fluffy has been reminding every TV camera in sight ever since the Huawei debacle hit the headlines. We can't go meddling around in stuff for purely political reasons...
Oops!
Let's not forget that the decision to render Canada a branch plant economy was taken by Canada's political class, who saw their personal interests more closely aligned with those of their betters in Washington than with working people in Canada. We've been paying the price for that since the days of the Avro Arrow.
Poor Fluffy is doubly flumoxed because this drama is unfolding against a backdrop of severe instability in the KSA. It's a power struggle between the old guard and the "reformer" MBS. Washington's deep state are with the old guard. Better the devil you know...
Whereas Trump is backing, at least so far, this young whippersnapper who is a little "off the leash," as they say, not unlike Trump himself.
There's no happy ending possible here.
I wouldn't want to be Justin.
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Fake news before Donald Trump
Remember Saddam's weapons of mass destruction?
Of course you do. And when the mass media in our vaunted democracies climb aboard a patently false and deliberately promoted narrative, bad shit happens. The fact that the bad shit mostly happens somewhere else just helps us downplay the consequences.
Simon Houpt has an interview with former Guardian ed in chief Alan Rusbridger in yesterday's Globe. The article oozes gravitas. We've got one journalist interviewing another, and both are convinced that it is primarily their profession that stands between the light of civilization and the darkness lurking just out of view... that darkness in which democracy shall surely perish.
In the hysteria leading up to the Iraq war the Guardian was just as guilty as everyone else in the newsbiz big leagues of pushing the war agenda being promoted by London and Washington. To Rusbridger's credit, they were one of the first major brands to climb down from that, apologizing as early as 2004 for having mislead their readership.
Houpt interviewed Rusbridger for this article on November 29. Two days prior, Rusbridger's former paper had a notable scoop on view, and quite a salacious one at that. According to the Guardian, disgraced former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret meetings with Julian Assange right there in the Ecuadorian embassy in early 2016!
And what a scoop that would be! The disgraced Trump underling and the evil Assange huddling up together, plotting god knows what!?
If there were the slightest chance that this story had anything to it other than wishful thinking, we would have heard a lot more about it, but it's kind of drifted away, hasn't it? The Ecuadorian embassy is probably the most heavily surveilled piece of real estate on earth. There would be evidence galore.
Alas, the story seems to be nothing more or less than fake news.
If the people in charge of our reputable news outlets are seriously concerned that Donald Trump is undermining their credibility with his constant cries of "fake news," their first order of business should be to make sure they're not promulgating fake news.
Of course you do. And when the mass media in our vaunted democracies climb aboard a patently false and deliberately promoted narrative, bad shit happens. The fact that the bad shit mostly happens somewhere else just helps us downplay the consequences.
Simon Houpt has an interview with former Guardian ed in chief Alan Rusbridger in yesterday's Globe. The article oozes gravitas. We've got one journalist interviewing another, and both are convinced that it is primarily their profession that stands between the light of civilization and the darkness lurking just out of view... that darkness in which democracy shall surely perish.
In the hysteria leading up to the Iraq war the Guardian was just as guilty as everyone else in the newsbiz big leagues of pushing the war agenda being promoted by London and Washington. To Rusbridger's credit, they were one of the first major brands to climb down from that, apologizing as early as 2004 for having mislead their readership.
Houpt interviewed Rusbridger for this article on November 29. Two days prior, Rusbridger's former paper had a notable scoop on view, and quite a salacious one at that. According to the Guardian, disgraced former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret meetings with Julian Assange right there in the Ecuadorian embassy in early 2016!
And what a scoop that would be! The disgraced Trump underling and the evil Assange huddling up together, plotting god knows what!?
If there were the slightest chance that this story had anything to it other than wishful thinking, we would have heard a lot more about it, but it's kind of drifted away, hasn't it? The Ecuadorian embassy is probably the most heavily surveilled piece of real estate on earth. There would be evidence galore.
Alas, the story seems to be nothing more or less than fake news.
If the people in charge of our reputable news outlets are seriously concerned that Donald Trump is undermining their credibility with his constant cries of "fake news," their first order of business should be to make sure they're not promulgating fake news.
Saturday, December 15, 2018
Hey four-eyes!...
I used to hear that a lot after I got glasses in the eighth grade.
Hey four-eyes! That was always the prelude to the inevitable bullying that followed. It followed me for a couple of years into high school, and then it mysteriously stopped.
That wasn't really a mystery. I'd got two feet taller and put on seventy-five pounds. I distinctly remember meeting one of my tormentors in the street when I was about seventeen or so.
Hey, Buddy, it's me! Four-eyes! Thwack thwack, thump thump, and Buddy the bully was flat on his ass right there on Suffolk Street.
And all of a sudden I was the bully.
World stage bullying isn't that much different than high school bullying when you think about it. There's a bully on the world stage and we all know his name. But we pretend it's not bullying.
The bully on the world stage has a special gang of sycophants now known, ironically enough from my point of view, as "the Five Eyes."
Canada is pleased to be part of this gang.
We the Fab Five will be first to proclaim the virtues of the Bully's bullying.
If Boss Bully proclaims an elected president in Ukraine unfit for office, we're 100% with the bully.
If Boss Bully proclaims that Assad is unfit to breathe air on this planet, we're 100% behind him.
If Boss Bully sanctions Iran or China or Russia for the crime of being uppity, we're 100% in the camp of the bully.
The Boss Bully has decreed that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, contra international law and innumerable UN resolutions.
And the me-too minions in Boss Bully's gang are starting to fall in line.
It's just a matter of time before we fall in line.
Hey four-eyes! That was always the prelude to the inevitable bullying that followed. It followed me for a couple of years into high school, and then it mysteriously stopped.
That wasn't really a mystery. I'd got two feet taller and put on seventy-five pounds. I distinctly remember meeting one of my tormentors in the street when I was about seventeen or so.
Hey, Buddy, it's me! Four-eyes! Thwack thwack, thump thump, and Buddy the bully was flat on his ass right there on Suffolk Street.
And all of a sudden I was the bully.
World stage bullying isn't that much different than high school bullying when you think about it. There's a bully on the world stage and we all know his name. But we pretend it's not bullying.
The bully on the world stage has a special gang of sycophants now known, ironically enough from my point of view, as "the Five Eyes."
Canada is pleased to be part of this gang.
We the Fab Five will be first to proclaim the virtues of the Bully's bullying.
If Boss Bully proclaims an elected president in Ukraine unfit for office, we're 100% with the bully.
If Boss Bully proclaims that Assad is unfit to breathe air on this planet, we're 100% behind him.
If Boss Bully sanctions Iran or China or Russia for the crime of being uppity, we're 100% in the camp of the bully.
The Boss Bully has decreed that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, contra international law and innumerable UN resolutions.
And the me-too minions in Boss Bully's gang are starting to fall in line.
It's just a matter of time before we fall in line.
Pot-addled hillbilly blogger kicked off Twitter
I'll admit up front that I don't get Twitter.
Other than the fact that Justin Bieber, the Kardashians, and Donald Trump are big deals there, I really don't understand the point of it. I think at the max my twitter account had ten or twelve "followers."
A few years ago I started a Twitter account, @Bolshevikbruce. Every now and then I'd use it to send a blog post to twits (tweeters?) who have been tweeting about whatever topic that blog post was about. Generally speaking that didn't get much in the way of results, but from time to time it did give the page view numbers a goodly squirt in an upward direction.
Thought I'd do that today with my brilliant take-down of the Globe and Mail's ass-kissing (and that would be Uncle Sam's ass) approach to the Huawei stinkfest.
Alas, Bolshevikbruce has been suspended from Twitter!
Other than the fact that Justin Bieber, the Kardashians, and Donald Trump are big deals there, I really don't understand the point of it. I think at the max my twitter account had ten or twelve "followers."
A few years ago I started a Twitter account, @Bolshevikbruce. Every now and then I'd use it to send a blog post to twits (tweeters?) who have been tweeting about whatever topic that blog post was about. Generally speaking that didn't get much in the way of results, but from time to time it did give the page view numbers a goodly squirt in an upward direction.
Thought I'd do that today with my brilliant take-down of the Globe and Mail's ass-kissing (and that would be Uncle Sam's ass) approach to the Huawei stinkfest.
Alas, Bolshevikbruce has been suspended from Twitter!
Jeffrey Sachs reads this blog!
Well, I have no actual proof of that; it just seems mighty suspicious that the esteemed Professor is out there parroting the talking points that the think tank here at Falling Downs has elaborated on.
It seems obvious to us, it seems obvious to Professor Sachs, it seems obvious to thinking people far and wide that the Freeland-Trudeau combine is playing waterboy for Team Trump while simultaneously virtue-signalling their staunch anti-Trumpism.
But the obvious seems to elude the editorial committee at Canada's national newspaper of record.
No less an observer of the human condition than the Orange Ogre himself had PM Fluffy pegged six months ago.
Dishonest and weak.
It seems obvious to us, it seems obvious to Professor Sachs, it seems obvious to thinking people far and wide that the Freeland-Trudeau combine is playing waterboy for Team Trump while simultaneously virtue-signalling their staunch anti-Trumpism.
But the obvious seems to elude the editorial committee at Canada's national newspaper of record.
No less an observer of the human condition than the Orange Ogre himself had PM Fluffy pegged six months ago.
Dishonest and weak.
The Globe and Mail as propaganda organ
The Globe and Mail brain trust deserve a smidgen of credit for their smidgenly attempt to inject a little balance into their coverage of the Huawei affair; a single opinion piece by Michael Byers in which he correctly concludes that this imbroglio was entirely avoidable, and is primarily the result of the staggering ineptitude of the Trudeau-Freeland team.
Reportorial balance dispensed with, we are elsewhere in today's paper treated to:
Reportorial balance dispensed with, we are elsewhere in today's paper treated to:
- a half page news story on A3 informing us that the US vows to fight for the Canadians detained in China in the wake of the Meng Wanzhou arrest
- two thirds of page O2 given to long-time China critic and cheerleader for American exceptionalism Brahma Chellaney, who implores us to stand firm against Chinese bullying
- the lead editorial slagging China and celebrating our close relationship with the US
- seven of eight letters to the editor on the topic being stridently anti-Chinese.
Yes, China is a bully, whereas the US, in the words of Mike Pompeo, tirelessly lobbies for "...every citizen unlawfully detained around the world..."
That's a head-spinning bit of sophistry, that is. Every citizen of the world unless they happen to be unlawfully detained in Gitmo, or in prisons in al-Sisi's Egypt, in Israel, in Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, or even in Incarceration Nation itself.
Yes, aside from all those and many more, the US remains the shining city on a hill, tirelessly advocating for the downtrodden and oppressed, at least in that handful of countries reluctant to take direction from Washington.
As Canada's national newspaper of record, I'd like to see the Globe and Mail go a little further in promoting an independent foreign policy for Canada, and rein in the glaringly obvious toadying to American interests.
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Another sterling day for democracy!
Democracy is alive and well in the USA!
Did you see the eye-gouging hair-pulling showdown between billionaire-puppets Trump, Schumer, and Pelosi? Boo-ya!...
What a farce!
Meanwhile, north of the 49th, we may not be that democratic, but by golly, are we ever sticklers for the rule of law! After a three-day bail hearing Meng Wanzhou get's sprung on $10,000,000 bail! Any number of seasoned US war criminals (Kissinger, Clinton, Bush) can waltz in and out of here with no worries, but hot damn, if'n yer Daddy's company done broke some US sanctions on Iran, we suddenly become hogtied by this thing called the "rule of law."
Yup, that's Canuckistan... we're not fancy, but we have the rule of law.
Ask black folks in Toronto about our rule of law... you know, those Canadians twenty times more likely to be shot by a cop than the white ones.
Now that's gotta be an epic PR fail for the self-righteous politically correct twats in Ottawa!
Did you see the eye-gouging hair-pulling showdown between billionaire-puppets Trump, Schumer, and Pelosi? Boo-ya!...
What a farce!
Meanwhile, north of the 49th, we may not be that democratic, but by golly, are we ever sticklers for the rule of law! After a three-day bail hearing Meng Wanzhou get's sprung on $10,000,000 bail! Any number of seasoned US war criminals (Kissinger, Clinton, Bush) can waltz in and out of here with no worries, but hot damn, if'n yer Daddy's company done broke some US sanctions on Iran, we suddenly become hogtied by this thing called the "rule of law."
Yup, that's Canuckistan... we're not fancy, but we have the rule of law.
Ask black folks in Toronto about our rule of law... you know, those Canadians twenty times more likely to be shot by a cop than the white ones.
Now that's gotta be an epic PR fail for the self-righteous politically correct twats in Ottawa!
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Give me a break...
My dear son-in-law Charlie broke his humeris in a skiing accident the other day. Humeris? I think that's commonly known as your "funny bone" or something.
That's not the kinda break I'm talking about. I think Charlie's gonna pull through, and that his gig at that start-up will not be impacted by this minor setback.
Hope not.
Kipling rings me up today to complain that I haven't had a word to say about the demise of George HW.
Give me a break dude! I'm trying to cope with eye surgery and such... oh, that's the other thing he was on about. He's contemplating the same operation and wanted the low-down.
Well, when they put that drill into your eyeball to break up that fucked up lens that Mama Nature gave you...
All I hear on the other end is STOPSTOPSTOP!!!!
Apparently people don't like to be told what their eye surgery is gonna look like.
Ya, you can actually see the tools entering your eyeball...
And you can feel that tiny little drill spinning around in there...
But enough of that.
Lets's focus on George HW for a moment or two.
The reason I haven't said a word about the passing of Papa Bush is because I like to keep to the old saw that if you got nothing good to say, keep yer fuckin' trap shut.
So I have. Till now.
George HW Bush was a blood-soaked war criminal who should have spent his golden years in a cell at the ICC.
Panama? How many innocent people were slaughtered without mercy when Bush decided his CIA stooge Noriega had outlived his usefulness?
His son W may have got the US into the Afghan war, but it was Daddy who got the ball rolling with the original Gulf war to restore democracy in... Kuwait?
Google "Highway of Death" and see what comes up. Machine-gunning the enemy from airplanes in their tens of thousands after they've surrendered is a war crime no matter how you look at it. That's the legacy of HW Bush.
It's a complete embarrassment to see Toronto Star stalwarts Robin Sears and Jaime Watt gushing over the dear departed in their Star opinion pieces today.
Give me a break...
That's not the kinda break I'm talking about. I think Charlie's gonna pull through, and that his gig at that start-up will not be impacted by this minor setback.
Hope not.
Kipling rings me up today to complain that I haven't had a word to say about the demise of George HW.
Give me a break dude! I'm trying to cope with eye surgery and such... oh, that's the other thing he was on about. He's contemplating the same operation and wanted the low-down.
Well, when they put that drill into your eyeball to break up that fucked up lens that Mama Nature gave you...
All I hear on the other end is STOPSTOPSTOP!!!!
Apparently people don't like to be told what their eye surgery is gonna look like.
Ya, you can actually see the tools entering your eyeball...
And you can feel that tiny little drill spinning around in there...
But enough of that.
Lets's focus on George HW for a moment or two.
The reason I haven't said a word about the passing of Papa Bush is because I like to keep to the old saw that if you got nothing good to say, keep yer fuckin' trap shut.
So I have. Till now.
George HW Bush was a blood-soaked war criminal who should have spent his golden years in a cell at the ICC.
Panama? How many innocent people were slaughtered without mercy when Bush decided his CIA stooge Noriega had outlived his usefulness?
His son W may have got the US into the Afghan war, but it was Daddy who got the ball rolling with the original Gulf war to restore democracy in... Kuwait?
Google "Highway of Death" and see what comes up. Machine-gunning the enemy from airplanes in their tens of thousands after they've surrendered is a war crime no matter how you look at it. That's the legacy of HW Bush.
It's a complete embarrassment to see Toronto Star stalwarts Robin Sears and Jaime Watt gushing over the dear departed in their Star opinion pieces today.
Give me a break...
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Trudeau more dangerous than Trump - professor
Professor Hamid Dabashi doesn't hold back in this take-down of PM Fluffy. Trudeau's pseudo-progressive fakery is possibly more damaging than the buffoonery of Trump, he says. You'd almost think he's been reading this blog!
Every other day another apology... but what changes? What gets done?
Precious little, that's what.
Trudeau is the perfect pol for the modern era. All optics, no substance. What with our Feminist Foreign Policy, our newfound commitment to Native Rights and Oil Pipelines, and our obsequious toadying to Uncle Sam, we are one Nation from Sea to Sunny Sea, labouring under an utterly massive case of cognitive dissonance.
Called out on the arrest of the Huawei CFO by Canadian officials, Trudeau responds with a load of hokum on how this nation has an independent judiciary, blahblahblah, and oh yes, he did happen to know about it three days before it happened, but what the heck, just because it's independent doesn't mean it ain't leaky!...
This is the response of the leader of a supposedly independent country which just made an arrest on behalf of the US, because a Chinese company isn't obeying America's orders that they refrain from doing business with Iran.
How is it America's business to dictate to China who they do business with?
As an aside, Trudeau is lying when he says no decision has been made about whether Huawei will be part of Canada's next generation internet.
The decision HAS been made, and no, Huawei will NOT be a part of it. That decision about Canada's future was made in Washington, not Ottawa.
Every other day another apology... but what changes? What gets done?
Precious little, that's what.
Trudeau is the perfect pol for the modern era. All optics, no substance. What with our Feminist Foreign Policy, our newfound commitment to Native Rights and Oil Pipelines, and our obsequious toadying to Uncle Sam, we are one Nation from Sea to Sunny Sea, labouring under an utterly massive case of cognitive dissonance.
Called out on the arrest of the Huawei CFO by Canadian officials, Trudeau responds with a load of hokum on how this nation has an independent judiciary, blahblahblah, and oh yes, he did happen to know about it three days before it happened, but what the heck, just because it's independent doesn't mean it ain't leaky!...
This is the response of the leader of a supposedly independent country which just made an arrest on behalf of the US, because a Chinese company isn't obeying America's orders that they refrain from doing business with Iran.
How is it America's business to dictate to China who they do business with?
As an aside, Trudeau is lying when he says no decision has been made about whether Huawei will be part of Canada's next generation internet.
The decision HAS been made, and no, Huawei will NOT be a part of it. That decision about Canada's future was made in Washington, not Ottawa.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
If Trump picks fights with Iran or China we need to stay out of it
Here's a prime example of Canadian "sovereignty" in action.
Trump has been screwing big-time with the economies of Iran and China. Iran and China are well-known bad guys on the planet, and as everyone knows, Uncle Sam is the good sheriff.
And plucky Canada, punching above our weight as always, although we're never quite sure what we're punching at, we're happy as pie to play faithful Deputy Dawg to Sheriff Trump.
Any quarrel between Trumplandia and Iran and China doesn't need to concern us.
Especially in this day and age, it might be wise if we would chart our own course.
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Are the Koch brothers looting Alberta's tar sands?
I'm speculating here, but bear with me.
As is well known, the Koch brothers are amongst the biggest players in Alberta's bitumen patch.
As is also well known, the Koch brothers operate refineries in the US, where we want that bitumen to go, because it is apparently impossible for us to figure out how to refine the stuff ourselves.
So, about that price differential in the US vs. Canadian oil price. I was reading just the other day this discount is costing the Canadian economy 80-100 million dollars per day.
Per DAY!
Hmm... if we're losing, who do you suppose might be winning?
Where can you find a decent investigative reporter when you need one?
As is well known, the Koch brothers are amongst the biggest players in Alberta's bitumen patch.
As is also well known, the Koch brothers operate refineries in the US, where we want that bitumen to go, because it is apparently impossible for us to figure out how to refine the stuff ourselves.
So, about that price differential in the US vs. Canadian oil price. I was reading just the other day this discount is costing the Canadian economy 80-100 million dollars per day.
Per DAY!
Hmm... if we're losing, who do you suppose might be winning?
Where can you find a decent investigative reporter when you need one?
Israeli police press for corruption charges against... OH MY GOD LOOK AT THOSE HEZBOLLAH ATTACK TUNNELS!!!
The greatest leader since Moses has done it again! Within hours of the revelation that police want Netanyahu charged with corruption, bribery, and fraud in relation to "Case 4000" (the other 3,999 corruption cases being held in abeyance for the moment), the IDF miraculously discovers a network of Hezbollah attack tunnels snaking under the northern border!
What are the odds?!
We know the drill, don't we?
Israel faces multiple existential threats.
Israel needs a seasoned strong-man at the top in these dangerous times. Not some untested youngster. Not some Russian nutter who makes Washington nervous...
No, a seasoned veteran who has triumphed over the foe again and again and again, not to mention he speaks proper American English and doesn't frighten people when he's on Fox and CNN.
Only one man has that CV... the Greatest Leader since Moses!
What are the odds?!
We know the drill, don't we?
Israel faces multiple existential threats.
Israel needs a seasoned strong-man at the top in these dangerous times. Not some untested youngster. Not some Russian nutter who makes Washington nervous...
No, a seasoned veteran who has triumphed over the foe again and again and again, not to mention he speaks proper American English and doesn't frighten people when he's on Fox and CNN.
Only one man has that CV... the Greatest Leader since Moses!
Saturday, December 1, 2018
Google knows me better than I do
I was doing a memory lane thing in the company of Jimmy Page and Slash and a bunch of the old stalwarts, and I needed a break from all that heavy metal virtuosity, so I asked YouTube for a nice mellow cello thing.
I got it. Something from the Brahms catalogue. When it was over, before I'd even made a decision about what's next, Google was loading a Glenn Gould piece for me.
And it was the perfect choice!
How did they know?
And what's really fucked up is that when Glenn was done, they teed up the Bach Harpsichord Concerto no. 1 in D minor without me even asking for it!
Ya, that was nice, but I'm feeling better now, and ready for a little rock and roll.
Gonna while away what's left of the evening with Sister Rosie.
'night.
I got it. Something from the Brahms catalogue. When it was over, before I'd even made a decision about what's next, Google was loading a Glenn Gould piece for me.
And it was the perfect choice!
How did they know?
And what's really fucked up is that when Glenn was done, they teed up the Bach Harpsichord Concerto no. 1 in D minor without me even asking for it!
Ya, that was nice, but I'm feeling better now, and ready for a little rock and roll.
Gonna while away what's left of the evening with Sister Rosie.
'night.
Led Zeppelin at the Kennedy Center
Time.
Time was, I knew Led Zeppelin was for me when my dear daddy told me he wouldn't have that music under his roof.
Dad could be a bit stiff in his ways at times. Like the time he dumped out the bar I kept in my bedroom closet. Had all the essentials in there. A bottle of bourbon, a bottle of scotch, and a bottle of top shelf Canadian rye.
Dumped it all out, apparently unaware that the liquor store would be happy enough to replenish my supply, even if I had to relocate my bar.
Which I did.
Wonder what Dad would say if he saw Led Zeppelin at the Kennedy Center?
But there is a larger question here, and it has nothing to do with my dear father...
When the anti-establishment rebels of yesterday are feted at the Kennedy Center, the center of the establishment universe, are they still anti-establishment?
Or is this just more evidence that I'm getting too old?
Time was, I knew Led Zeppelin was for me when my dear daddy told me he wouldn't have that music under his roof.
Dad could be a bit stiff in his ways at times. Like the time he dumped out the bar I kept in my bedroom closet. Had all the essentials in there. A bottle of bourbon, a bottle of scotch, and a bottle of top shelf Canadian rye.
Dumped it all out, apparently unaware that the liquor store would be happy enough to replenish my supply, even if I had to relocate my bar.
Which I did.
Wonder what Dad would say if he saw Led Zeppelin at the Kennedy Center?
But there is a larger question here, and it has nothing to do with my dear father...
When the anti-establishment rebels of yesterday are feted at the Kennedy Center, the center of the establishment universe, are they still anti-establishment?
Or is this just more evidence that I'm getting too old?
Royal Canadian Air Farce sends bomber fleet to Ukraine to repel Putin
http://theviewfromfallingdowns.blogspot.com/2014/03/canadian-air-force-sends-strategic.html
There'll always be an England, even after Brexit
The "Iron Lady" was the spearhead of the neoliberal revolution that overtook the Nations of Virtue from the 1980s on. She was Ronald Reagan's muse.
Fuck the workers. There is no God but Mammon.
Let the working classes drink themselves to death if they must; there is a brave new world in front of us. It is ours for the taking...
One of life's little ironies is that Maggie Thatcher has been rotting in the grave for some years now, while Arthur Scargill remains out and about.
Hey Scargill, how about you come back to the political stage?! You've got way more political capital than you realize!
You gotta love that Brixton Academy Pistols show.
All races, all creeds...
Now more than ever workers everywhere need to just say NO to the politicians who want to rule by turning us against one another.
Fuck the workers. There is no God but Mammon.
Let the working classes drink themselves to death if they must; there is a brave new world in front of us. It is ours for the taking...
One of life's little ironies is that Maggie Thatcher has been rotting in the grave for some years now, while Arthur Scargill remains out and about.
Hey Scargill, how about you come back to the political stage?! You've got way more political capital than you realize!
You gotta love that Brixton Academy Pistols show.
All races, all creeds...
Now more than ever workers everywhere need to just say NO to the politicians who want to rule by turning us against one another.
Dreams sometimes do come true
I can't tell you how many times I've walked in to Howell's for a piece of smoked whitefish only to be told they just sold out.
Dammit!
I've always told myself, don't worry, someday YOU will get the last piece of smoked whitefish...
Well, today was the day!
I'd been up to Lion's Head to see their Santa Claus parade, and, almost as an afterthought, I popped into Howell's on the way home. There in the glass display case were three pieces of smoked whitefish.
I took them all!
True, that was a little more fish than I had in mind, but no matter. I'm the guy who got the last smoked whitefish out of Howell's this week!
Life is not too bad after all!
Dammit!
I've always told myself, don't worry, someday YOU will get the last piece of smoked whitefish...
Well, today was the day!
I'd been up to Lion's Head to see their Santa Claus parade, and, almost as an afterthought, I popped into Howell's on the way home. There in the glass display case were three pieces of smoked whitefish.
I took them all!
True, that was a little more fish than I had in mind, but no matter. I'm the guy who got the last smoked whitefish out of Howell's this week!
Life is not too bad after all!
Putin against the world
Our corporate media had a good week of it moaning about Putin's latest aggression against the hapless Ukrainians, so anything I read in Doug Saunders me-too column in the Globe today I'd already read several times. I guess Doug is down to one weekend column due to his employer finding efficiencies. Don't sweat it, Doug, the new Amazon warehouse in Vaughn will be hiring soon!
You'll be fine.
Anyway, taking a break from sowing generic chaos and instability around the world, Putin has once again gone out of his way to pay special attention to the immediate threat on Russia's doorstep, Poroshenko's model democracy next door. That's because he's afraid that the Russian people will sooner or later realize that life is so much better there, and they too will demand a Nuland/Payette democratic transfer of power to someone more amenable to taking direction from Washington than the habitually recalcitrant Putin.
Then life will be good!
This line of reasoning, and it is certainly not original to Doug Saunders, as his contemporaries in other major media outlets have been beating this drum all week and Doug had to wait for his weekend slot, contains an inherent contradiction that the apologists for American exceptionalism tend to avoid addressing, which is this; if Putin is indeed "weak and isolated," as we are continuously led to believe, then how does he manage to sow all that global chaos and instability? And not only that, he manages to sow world-wide mayhem with a war chest not 10% of the USA military budget!
Clearly, the man is a genius!
Either that, or our mainstream pundits are full of shit.
The crux of Saunders' imaginary thesis is that Putin is at his most dangerous when cornered, as he is now. How do we know we've got Putin cornered? His approval rating is down to 60%.
Let's apply that logic to the cornered career criminals in the Nations of Virtue. Macron and Merkel are under 30%. The greatest leader since Moses is in the high 30s. Trump is in the low 40s. Our own PM Fluffy is barely over 50%.
But Putin is on the brink because he's only got a 60% approval rating?
You'll be fine.
Anyway, taking a break from sowing generic chaos and instability around the world, Putin has once again gone out of his way to pay special attention to the immediate threat on Russia's doorstep, Poroshenko's model democracy next door. That's because he's afraid that the Russian people will sooner or later realize that life is so much better there, and they too will demand a Nuland/Payette democratic transfer of power to someone more amenable to taking direction from Washington than the habitually recalcitrant Putin.
Then life will be good!
This line of reasoning, and it is certainly not original to Doug Saunders, as his contemporaries in other major media outlets have been beating this drum all week and Doug had to wait for his weekend slot, contains an inherent contradiction that the apologists for American exceptionalism tend to avoid addressing, which is this; if Putin is indeed "weak and isolated," as we are continuously led to believe, then how does he manage to sow all that global chaos and instability? And not only that, he manages to sow world-wide mayhem with a war chest not 10% of the USA military budget!
Clearly, the man is a genius!
Either that, or our mainstream pundits are full of shit.
The crux of Saunders' imaginary thesis is that Putin is at his most dangerous when cornered, as he is now. How do we know we've got Putin cornered? His approval rating is down to 60%.
Let's apply that logic to the cornered career criminals in the Nations of Virtue. Macron and Merkel are under 30%. The greatest leader since Moses is in the high 30s. Trump is in the low 40s. Our own PM Fluffy is barely over 50%.
But Putin is on the brink because he's only got a 60% approval rating?
Thursday, November 29, 2018
A Senator and a CIA guy walk into a bar
A Senator and a CIA guy walked into a bar around noon last Tuesday for a quick bite and a drink or two. Jon had a Ruben and Mike had a BLT and they had a couple of beers.
Then they had a couple more beers and sat around and shot the shit for awhile.
After that they had a few more beers. They were brainstorming.
Midafternoon the barkeep brought over a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. That really helped the brainstorming. Beer. Scotch. Brainstorming.
Around 7:30 Jon says to Mike, well I should go but ya know, I fink we fuckin got us somethign here ya know...
And Mike says fuckin rigght we fukin do an ya know what ?
What sez Jon.
Ya know what?
What?
I think we fukin got us ya this is kgood I thidn we cna ya. We should call whathisfukinface agt the Post.
Ya, the Post. They'll publishish it fgor sure...
Jon and Mike made it safely home that night. Their story appeared in the Washington Post today.
Then they had a couple more beers and sat around and shot the shit for awhile.
After that they had a few more beers. They were brainstorming.
Midafternoon the barkeep brought over a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. That really helped the brainstorming. Beer. Scotch. Brainstorming.
Around 7:30 Jon says to Mike, well I should go but ya know, I fink we fuckin got us somethign here ya know...
And Mike says fuckin rigght we fukin do an ya know what ?
What sez Jon.
Ya know what?
What?
I think we fukin got us ya this is kgood I thidn we cna ya. We should call whathisfukinface agt the Post.
Ya, the Post. They'll publishish it fgor sure...
Jon and Mike made it safely home that night. Their story appeared in the Washington Post today.
Mexico Pres seizes last opportunity to give his people the finger
You can't say "Fuck You" to the electorate any louder than by granting your country's highest honour to... Jared Kushner?!
That's what outgoing President of Mexico Enrique Pena Nieto just did! After all, he's out the door this weekend - he's got nothing to lose.
So why not?
As for the "new" NAFTA, I guess time will tell if it's better than the old one. Better for whom would be the logical question. It was already pretty damned good for corporate types who used it as cover to ship thirty dollar an hour jobs out of the US and Canada into two dollar an hour factories in Mexico.
That's what outgoing President of Mexico Enrique Pena Nieto just did! After all, he's out the door this weekend - he's got nothing to lose.
So why not?
As for the "new" NAFTA, I guess time will tell if it's better than the old one. Better for whom would be the logical question. It was already pretty damned good for corporate types who used it as cover to ship thirty dollar an hour jobs out of the US and Canada into two dollar an hour factories in Mexico.
How to tell if you're a twat
If you go out in public looking like this...
...you're a twat!
There are conceivably some far fetched reasons why you might legitimately dress like this, like all your clothes were burned in a fire and this was the best you could do out of the Sally Ann donation hamper, or somebody stole all your clothes while you were at the gym and so you just stole somebody else's stuff, but if you paid $1100 for these at the Alexander McQueen boutique, you, my friend, are a twat!
The good news is that people who dress like this deliberately are less likely to be Trump voters. That's according to Christopher Wylie of Cambridge Analytica fame. According to Wylie, the fashion industry was crucial in the election of Donald Trump, whose voter base prefers Wrangler jeans because they (the voter? the jeans?) are mistrustful and less open.
I always suspected that Facebook-stole-the-election bullshit was, well, bullshit.
I'm sure of it now.
...you're a twat!
There are conceivably some far fetched reasons why you might legitimately dress like this, like all your clothes were burned in a fire and this was the best you could do out of the Sally Ann donation hamper, or somebody stole all your clothes while you were at the gym and so you just stole somebody else's stuff, but if you paid $1100 for these at the Alexander McQueen boutique, you, my friend, are a twat!
The good news is that people who dress like this deliberately are less likely to be Trump voters. That's according to Christopher Wylie of Cambridge Analytica fame. According to Wylie, the fashion industry was crucial in the election of Donald Trump, whose voter base prefers Wrangler jeans because they (the voter? the jeans?) are mistrustful and less open.
I always suspected that Facebook-stole-the-election bullshit was, well, bullshit.
I'm sure of it now.
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Bill & Hillary tour flops
Good! Maybe they'll take the hint... but I doubt it. If there's a dollar to be turned, the Clintons will be there to turn it.
Gotta think that whoever promoted this yawner in Toronto took a bath. They sold barely 3,000 tickets in the 19,000 seat Scotiabank Centre. Apparently tickets were slashed to a mere six bucks in a last ditch attempt to fill more seats, to no avail.
I recall reading about the event when it was first announced back in March, but as we got closer to curtain time there was no buzz whatsoever. Nor was there any buzz after the fact. This latest bout of Clinton money-grubbing wasn't part of the conversation around the water cooler or anywhere else.
But... if you're a diehard Clinton fan, take heart! You can motor up to Montreal tonight and catch them at the Bell Centre. For $5,000 bucks you too can partake of a meet and greet and have your picture taken with Bill and Hillary...
I'm guessing the lineup for that is gonna be really short.
Gotta think that whoever promoted this yawner in Toronto took a bath. They sold barely 3,000 tickets in the 19,000 seat Scotiabank Centre. Apparently tickets were slashed to a mere six bucks in a last ditch attempt to fill more seats, to no avail.
I recall reading about the event when it was first announced back in March, but as we got closer to curtain time there was no buzz whatsoever. Nor was there any buzz after the fact. This latest bout of Clinton money-grubbing wasn't part of the conversation around the water cooler or anywhere else.
But... if you're a diehard Clinton fan, take heart! You can motor up to Montreal tonight and catch them at the Bell Centre. For $5,000 bucks you too can partake of a meet and greet and have your picture taken with Bill and Hillary...
I'm guessing the lineup for that is gonna be really short.
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Greed uber alles
The idea that a major employer like General Motors is bound by some notion of "social contract" is as good as dead.
Greed is the ultimate value these days among the keeners coming out of MBA programs. Greed makes some people filthy rich. Greedy people can get rich enough to buy the people who make the rules. Then you've got a closed-loop self-devouring perpetual greed machine on the loose...
That can only end badly, as it is ending badly for those three thousand families in Oshawa. As it has for 16,000 Sears employees and their pensions.
A couple of greedbags were allowed to plunder CP Rail, destroying over five thousand jobs but walking away with billions for their efforts.
Meanwhile, our precious princeling billows progressive hot air into the heavens in such volumes that we'll never meet our emissions targets, while simultaneously buying us pipelines, because the greedbags who own our oil demand them.
And don't expect to get the whole story from your friendly corporate news media; the greedbags own those too.
Greed is the ultimate value these days among the keeners coming out of MBA programs. Greed makes some people filthy rich. Greedy people can get rich enough to buy the people who make the rules. Then you've got a closed-loop self-devouring perpetual greed machine on the loose...
That can only end badly, as it is ending badly for those three thousand families in Oshawa. As it has for 16,000 Sears employees and their pensions.
A couple of greedbags were allowed to plunder CP Rail, destroying over five thousand jobs but walking away with billions for their efforts.
Meanwhile, our precious princeling billows progressive hot air into the heavens in such volumes that we'll never meet our emissions targets, while simultaneously buying us pipelines, because the greedbags who own our oil demand them.
And don't expect to get the whole story from your friendly corporate news media; the greedbags own those too.
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Government subsidies are bad for poor people but good for big business
When you give money to poor people, it destroys their work ethic. When you give money to news corporations, it saves democracy. That's my takeaway from the recent announcement that the Trudeau government will begin offering assorted goodies to the hard-pressed newspaper industry.
You have to love Postmaster Paul's reaction; "Everybody in journalism should be doing a victory lap around their building right now." Sorry, Paul, I don't think Postmedia has any buildings anymore. They've all been sold off to appease the insatiable demand for interest payments on the part of the US hedgies who bought Canwest debt out of bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar, rebranded the smoking ruins as "Postmedia," and have managed to collect full value on that debt ever since.
Brilliant business strategy! The real estate had to go, the printing plants had to go, hundreds upon hundreds of journalists had to go, all in the name of finding "efficiencies" so that the unearned cash can keep flowing to the hedge fund vultures who are laughing all the way to the bank. Now the taxpayer gets to step up to the plate to help keep the whole charade afloat.
Elsewhere in the magical world of capitalism, the Globe and Mail informs me that there are now 122,455 "idle" oil and gas wells in western Canada, an increase of over fifty thousand since 2005. What happens to these wells? Well, what's going to happen to most of them is the tax-payers are going to be gifted the cost to clean them up.
The excellent Globe investigative report ( in its very own stand-alone eight-page section) details how the big "responsible" players in the oil patch fob off their played-out wells to fly-by-night entrepreneurs with high hopes but little money, who have nothing to lose by walking away from them in the event that their pie-in-the-sky plans don't work out.
Capitalism at its finest!
You have to love Postmaster Paul's reaction; "Everybody in journalism should be doing a victory lap around their building right now." Sorry, Paul, I don't think Postmedia has any buildings anymore. They've all been sold off to appease the insatiable demand for interest payments on the part of the US hedgies who bought Canwest debt out of bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar, rebranded the smoking ruins as "Postmedia," and have managed to collect full value on that debt ever since.
Brilliant business strategy! The real estate had to go, the printing plants had to go, hundreds upon hundreds of journalists had to go, all in the name of finding "efficiencies" so that the unearned cash can keep flowing to the hedge fund vultures who are laughing all the way to the bank. Now the taxpayer gets to step up to the plate to help keep the whole charade afloat.
Elsewhere in the magical world of capitalism, the Globe and Mail informs me that there are now 122,455 "idle" oil and gas wells in western Canada, an increase of over fifty thousand since 2005. What happens to these wells? Well, what's going to happen to most of them is the tax-payers are going to be gifted the cost to clean them up.
The excellent Globe investigative report ( in its very own stand-alone eight-page section) details how the big "responsible" players in the oil patch fob off their played-out wells to fly-by-night entrepreneurs with high hopes but little money, who have nothing to lose by walking away from them in the event that their pie-in-the-sky plans don't work out.
Capitalism at its finest!
Putin's plans for world domination suffer setback
The free world breathed a sigh of relief this week when Russian Alexander Prokopchuk was narrowly defeated in a vote to elect a new Interpol president. After a last minute deluge of behind the scenes arm-twisting, a candidate from the US satrapy of South Korea was elected instead.
The campaign against Prokopchuk was lead by erstwhile freedom fighters Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Bill Browder, two men who enriched themselves immensely back in the Yeltsin era by swindling the Russian people out of billions in state assets, and who have long-standing and impeccable ties to America's deep state.
So, the forces of freedom and democracy have prevailed again! Take that, Bad Vlad!
Elsewhere in the battle between Good and Evil, I see where a couple of radicals from the communist fringe of the Democratic Party are again floating the Stalinist idea of a "basic income" for poor people. That's where you give poor people free money for no good reason other than they're poor. As any patriotic American knows, such an idea turns on its head the very value system that made America great.
Critics of Harris and Booker's loony leftist plan correctly point out that such a socialist scheme would not only rob the national treasury, it would rob the recipients themselves of any incentive to take one of the millions of jobs readily available at the US official minimum wage of $7.25/hr.
That's just un-American!
The campaign against Prokopchuk was lead by erstwhile freedom fighters Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Bill Browder, two men who enriched themselves immensely back in the Yeltsin era by swindling the Russian people out of billions in state assets, and who have long-standing and impeccable ties to America's deep state.
So, the forces of freedom and democracy have prevailed again! Take that, Bad Vlad!
Elsewhere in the battle between Good and Evil, I see where a couple of radicals from the communist fringe of the Democratic Party are again floating the Stalinist idea of a "basic income" for poor people. That's where you give poor people free money for no good reason other than they're poor. As any patriotic American knows, such an idea turns on its head the very value system that made America great.
Critics of Harris and Booker's loony leftist plan correctly point out that such a socialist scheme would not only rob the national treasury, it would rob the recipients themselves of any incentive to take one of the millions of jobs readily available at the US official minimum wage of $7.25/hr.
That's just un-American!
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Highway 86 revisited
I was at a get-together on the weekend, the 95th birthday celebration for the matriarch of the extended family, my dear Tante Hilde.
One of my cousins in attendance, a chap my age who got a shout-out in a post I wrote six years ago, reminded me of what's happened to that cohort of folks who used to care about fast cars.
We can't afford that hobby anymore.
Johnny was the guy with the Super Bee. Getting a 4,000 pound car up to 120 mph in the quarter mile takes a fair bit of disposable income. Factory guys like us used to have disposable income back in the day, before our jobs went to Mexico and China.
You can still buy a Super Bee today. Under $15,000 or so you're just getting junk. From 15 to 30 you might get a driver. From forty upwards you can probably find something that's been restored at some point and might last you a few years if you baby it. A clean '69 six-pack Super Bee or anything with a hemi is going to run into six numbers.
Or you can go to your local Subaru dealer and drive away with a car that will blow the doors off that hemi in a drag race. It'll also turn better, stop sooner, go three or four times as far on a gallon of gas, and it has a warranty.
The era of the big thumping V8 is gone, and it ain't coming back.
One of my cousins in attendance, a chap my age who got a shout-out in a post I wrote six years ago, reminded me of what's happened to that cohort of folks who used to care about fast cars.
We can't afford that hobby anymore.
Johnny was the guy with the Super Bee. Getting a 4,000 pound car up to 120 mph in the quarter mile takes a fair bit of disposable income. Factory guys like us used to have disposable income back in the day, before our jobs went to Mexico and China.
You can still buy a Super Bee today. Under $15,000 or so you're just getting junk. From 15 to 30 you might get a driver. From forty upwards you can probably find something that's been restored at some point and might last you a few years if you baby it. A clean '69 six-pack Super Bee or anything with a hemi is going to run into six numbers.
Or you can go to your local Subaru dealer and drive away with a car that will blow the doors off that hemi in a drag race. It'll also turn better, stop sooner, go three or four times as far on a gallon of gas, and it has a warranty.
The era of the big thumping V8 is gone, and it ain't coming back.
Democracy dies in darkness
That howler was adopted as a slogan by the Washington Post about a year and a half ago, just months after they released the manifestly fake ProporNot list of 200 fake news sites.
I must admit I don't understand how any thinking person can read that slogan without arching an eyebrow or two. The Washington Post has long been regarded as the unofficial mouthpiece for the CIA, and that was long before it was purchased by the world's richest man, whose connections to the CIA are a matter of public record, at least some of them.
Note how they've painted themselves as champions of press freedom since the untimely demise of their occasional contributor Jamal Kashoggi. That's every bit as hilarious as Erdogan claiming that mantle. Kashoggi was a reliable pro-Kingdom stooge for his entire journalism career, until the palace coup that brought in MBS. Suddenly the Kashoggi clan were on the wrong side of KSA history, and Jamal decided to self-exile himself to DC, there to do whatever he could to further the cause of his side in the internecine struggle for the rulership of the Kingdom.
That's why he's dead now. The irony of his having become a posthumous symbol of journalistic freedom seems to be lost on the public at large. One gets the impression that the vast majority of those shocked and appalled at the Kashoggi murder are folks who can't wait for Assange and Snowden to face "justice" in the American judicial system.
The fact that the WaPo is promoting Jamal as a martyr for "press freedom" tells you that the CIA is, at least for the moment, throwing their weight behind the old guard in the Kingdom.
Having said that, it's good to see that at least some US media outlets get the bigger picture. Unfortunately, those outlets are hemoraging money and won't last much longer...
Sooner or later the CIA will buy them too.
I must admit I don't understand how any thinking person can read that slogan without arching an eyebrow or two. The Washington Post has long been regarded as the unofficial mouthpiece for the CIA, and that was long before it was purchased by the world's richest man, whose connections to the CIA are a matter of public record, at least some of them.
Note how they've painted themselves as champions of press freedom since the untimely demise of their occasional contributor Jamal Kashoggi. That's every bit as hilarious as Erdogan claiming that mantle. Kashoggi was a reliable pro-Kingdom stooge for his entire journalism career, until the palace coup that brought in MBS. Suddenly the Kashoggi clan were on the wrong side of KSA history, and Jamal decided to self-exile himself to DC, there to do whatever he could to further the cause of his side in the internecine struggle for the rulership of the Kingdom.
That's why he's dead now. The irony of his having become a posthumous symbol of journalistic freedom seems to be lost on the public at large. One gets the impression that the vast majority of those shocked and appalled at the Kashoggi murder are folks who can't wait for Assange and Snowden to face "justice" in the American judicial system.
The fact that the WaPo is promoting Jamal as a martyr for "press freedom" tells you that the CIA is, at least for the moment, throwing their weight behind the old guard in the Kingdom.
Having said that, it's good to see that at least some US media outlets get the bigger picture. Unfortunately, those outlets are hemoraging money and won't last much longer...
Sooner or later the CIA will buy them too.
Monday, November 19, 2018
Ramping up the hokum at Global Affairs Canada
Never imagined I'd say this, but I miss Bullshittin' Baird.
Those were simpler days, and Big John always wore his heart on his sleeve. When John was "deeply concerned" you always got a sense that, at some level, he probably was.
With the Trudeau crowd, you're pretty sure they're only "deeply concerned" if the object of their concern has passed muster with the usual partisan focus groups.
With the Harper Gang, the hypocrisy was hit and miss.
With the Sunny Daze Gang, the hypocrisy is systemic.
Take a gander at the Global Affairs website. The last three news items are about gender equality in Ethiopia, Canada's leadership in global gender equity, and Canada's leadership role in calling out the horrific human rights situation in Iran.
You know Iran; the only Middle East country outside of Israel where Jews are constitutionally protected, and a country where women have never NOT had the right to drive cars. Ya, that country. We're really upset about their human rights...
Yup, no way we'd ever sell those guys military hardware, because that would just be wrong, and besides, our besties in Likud wouldn't like it. We'll call out human rights in Iran, but we'll spout nonsense non-stop about Israel's right to defend itself while the human rights of Palestinians are trampled underfoot.
And while the KSA is setting liberal hearts a-flutter by allowing some women to drive, we'll not get too bothered about their overall track record on human rights, because, after all, they buy military stuff from US branch plants in Canada that employ Canadian workers.
And how lovely that we're gung-ho for gender equality in Ethiopia and beyond.
By the way, women in Canada are still a good distance away from achieving gender equality, but that's no reason not to champion ideals globally that we've not yet achieved here at home.
How about we address the beam in our own eye before we lecture the rest of the planet about the mote in theirs.
Those were simpler days, and Big John always wore his heart on his sleeve. When John was "deeply concerned" you always got a sense that, at some level, he probably was.
With the Trudeau crowd, you're pretty sure they're only "deeply concerned" if the object of their concern has passed muster with the usual partisan focus groups.
With the Harper Gang, the hypocrisy was hit and miss.
With the Sunny Daze Gang, the hypocrisy is systemic.
Take a gander at the Global Affairs website. The last three news items are about gender equality in Ethiopia, Canada's leadership in global gender equity, and Canada's leadership role in calling out the horrific human rights situation in Iran.
You know Iran; the only Middle East country outside of Israel where Jews are constitutionally protected, and a country where women have never NOT had the right to drive cars. Ya, that country. We're really upset about their human rights...
Yup, no way we'd ever sell those guys military hardware, because that would just be wrong, and besides, our besties in Likud wouldn't like it. We'll call out human rights in Iran, but we'll spout nonsense non-stop about Israel's right to defend itself while the human rights of Palestinians are trampled underfoot.
And while the KSA is setting liberal hearts a-flutter by allowing some women to drive, we'll not get too bothered about their overall track record on human rights, because, after all, they buy military stuff from US branch plants in Canada that employ Canadian workers.
And how lovely that we're gung-ho for gender equality in Ethiopia and beyond.
By the way, women in Canada are still a good distance away from achieving gender equality, but that's no reason not to champion ideals globally that we've not yet achieved here at home.
How about we address the beam in our own eye before we lecture the rest of the planet about the mote in theirs.
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Seeing things
The Arab guy did my other eye yesterday, and holy cow, can I ever see!
There's been a crack in the plaster of our bedroom ceiling for years. Never really paid any attention; I could barely see it...
Now it looks like the entire ceiling's on the verge of collapse!
And can I ever see where a coat of paint is required... EVERYWHERE!!!
Noticed the garden hose when I pulled in the drive today, and suddenly realized I haven't shut off the water to the outside tap.
Oh no! We've been in winter for a week already!
Last time I forgot to turn off the water the pipe split, and we had a little waterfall coursing down the basement wall, a mere couple of inches away from the electrical panel. Just got around to fixing that this summer.
Hope I got it in time; otherwise I guess I can fix it again in the spring. Point is, I wouldn't have thought about it had I not noticed the garden hose, and till now I've never noticed it, ever.
I can rattle off the 20/20 line on the eye chart with either eye, a first in my lifetime. The downside is I need reading glasses to read. And also for other stuff like seeing what screwdriver I need to remove the handle from the outdoor tap.
And trimming my nails...
And shaving.
And packing my vaporizer...
And... well, anything that you'd normally move closer to your eye to get a better look at.
I'm also learning about reading glasses. First pair were Foster Grants from the Rexall. Thirty bucks.
Then I found a pair of Foster Grants at the Looney Tooney for five bucks.
Today I went to Dollarama and got a pair of no names for $1.25. I thought 1.25 was the strength, till I got to the checkout and found out that was the price.
Holy moly, I've been buying glasses for fifty years, and I don't remember a pair coming in under $400 in years!
There's obviously one hell of a mark-up on this stuff!
There's been a crack in the plaster of our bedroom ceiling for years. Never really paid any attention; I could barely see it...
Now it looks like the entire ceiling's on the verge of collapse!
And can I ever see where a coat of paint is required... EVERYWHERE!!!
Noticed the garden hose when I pulled in the drive today, and suddenly realized I haven't shut off the water to the outside tap.
Oh no! We've been in winter for a week already!
Last time I forgot to turn off the water the pipe split, and we had a little waterfall coursing down the basement wall, a mere couple of inches away from the electrical panel. Just got around to fixing that this summer.
Hope I got it in time; otherwise I guess I can fix it again in the spring. Point is, I wouldn't have thought about it had I not noticed the garden hose, and till now I've never noticed it, ever.
I can rattle off the 20/20 line on the eye chart with either eye, a first in my lifetime. The downside is I need reading glasses to read. And also for other stuff like seeing what screwdriver I need to remove the handle from the outdoor tap.
And trimming my nails...
And shaving.
And packing my vaporizer...
And... well, anything that you'd normally move closer to your eye to get a better look at.
I'm also learning about reading glasses. First pair were Foster Grants from the Rexall. Thirty bucks.
Then I found a pair of Foster Grants at the Looney Tooney for five bucks.
Today I went to Dollarama and got a pair of no names for $1.25. I thought 1.25 was the strength, till I got to the checkout and found out that was the price.
Holy moly, I've been buying glasses for fifty years, and I don't remember a pair coming in under $400 in years!
There's obviously one hell of a mark-up on this stuff!
New report reveals Canada is number one in the world!
There we go punching above our weight again!
Yup, a new report from Climate Transparency reveals that we produce more greenhouse gases per person than any country in the G20!
Well done, Canada!
And if "Sunny Daze" Trudeau has his way, sooner or later, by hook or by crook, we'll get one of those pipelines built that'll uncork the market potential of all that bitumen out in Alberta...
Ain't nobody gonna catch us then!
Yup, a new report from Climate Transparency reveals that we produce more greenhouse gases per person than any country in the G20!
Well done, Canada!
And if "Sunny Daze" Trudeau has his way, sooner or later, by hook or by crook, we'll get one of those pipelines built that'll uncork the market potential of all that bitumen out in Alberta...
Ain't nobody gonna catch us then!
Monday, November 12, 2018
Vote no, Calgary
The Olympics are a scam.
The people of Calgary were already scammed once. You really want to do that again?
The Olympics are a total corporate greed fest. Lot's of corporate brands will get lots of screen time. People who are already rich will get richer. Contractors will pad their estimates. A few star athletes will turn their podium moment into millions.
And when the party's over, guess who gets stuck with the tab?
No thanks!
The people of Calgary were already scammed once. You really want to do that again?
The Olympics are a total corporate greed fest. Lot's of corporate brands will get lots of screen time. People who are already rich will get richer. Contractors will pad their estimates. A few star athletes will turn their podium moment into millions.
And when the party's over, guess who gets stuck with the tab?
No thanks!
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Canada to lead Nations of Virtue in seizing assets of despots and dictators
Perennial do-gooder Lloyd Axworthy has come up with a great idea; lets help ourselves to the frozen bank accounts of dictators and despots and use the money to address the global refugee crisis! Lloyd figures we should be able to raise ten to twenty billion a year from the bad guys on our shit list.
Whose bank accounts we seize is of course a question of politics rather than morality. You'll notice that it tends to be leaders Washington doesn't like who have their assets seized. Maduro and Putin are despots, but MBS and Erdogan get a pass.
As for the refugees themselves, what are they fleeing? In the great European refugee crisis of 2015-16, 75% of the arrivals came from only three countries; Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. What do those countries have in common? They've all been targeted for regime change by those same Nations of Virtue now wringing their hands over the refugee crisis, Canada included. How ironic to read such nonsense on the very day that we're remembering those 158 Canadians who gave their lives in the noble mission to bring freedom and democracy to Afghanistan.
This is not a fact that the Axworthys of the world address or even acknowledge. So long as disinterested experts like Ahmed Chalabi or Bill Browder can be trotted out to spin scary stories, that's good enough for Lloyd.
Here's an alternative funding source for staunching the refugee crisis; a modest tax on international weapons sales. Since eight out of ten of the top weapons purveyors are in the Nations of Virtue club, reaching a consensus on such a tax would be a snap!
Refugee crisis solved!
Even better, although "thought leaders" like Axworthy can't seem to get their heads around the concept, we in the virtuous West could end most refugee crises simply by minding our own business and giving up the idea that it's our right to meddle in other countries.
Whose bank accounts we seize is of course a question of politics rather than morality. You'll notice that it tends to be leaders Washington doesn't like who have their assets seized. Maduro and Putin are despots, but MBS and Erdogan get a pass.
As for the refugees themselves, what are they fleeing? In the great European refugee crisis of 2015-16, 75% of the arrivals came from only three countries; Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. What do those countries have in common? They've all been targeted for regime change by those same Nations of Virtue now wringing their hands over the refugee crisis, Canada included. How ironic to read such nonsense on the very day that we're remembering those 158 Canadians who gave their lives in the noble mission to bring freedom and democracy to Afghanistan.
This is not a fact that the Axworthys of the world address or even acknowledge. So long as disinterested experts like Ahmed Chalabi or Bill Browder can be trotted out to spin scary stories, that's good enough for Lloyd.
Here's an alternative funding source for staunching the refugee crisis; a modest tax on international weapons sales. Since eight out of ten of the top weapons purveyors are in the Nations of Virtue club, reaching a consensus on such a tax would be a snap!
Refugee crisis solved!
Even better, although "thought leaders" like Axworthy can't seem to get their heads around the concept, we in the virtuous West could end most refugee crises simply by minding our own business and giving up the idea that it's our right to meddle in other countries.
MBS gets mojo back
If Crown Prince MBS was chastened by the global stink over the Kashoggi affair, there's scant evidence of it in our major media. Just this morning, on page A10 of Canada's most liberal newspaper, there's a glowing puff-piece on the reformist Prince, "A Kingdom learns to laugh."
What? Barely five weeks since the gruesome demise of Jamal, and we're yukking it up with the Great Reformer, without so much as a nod to the Kashoggi affair? My first instinct was that such an oversight can only be the result of the Crown Prince's "Buckets 'o Baksheesh" tour back in the spring. After all, that visit included a sit-down with the editorial board of the LA Times, where The Star found this story.
Alas, there's a less nefarious explanation. Seems the interns charged with putting together the Sunday paper just changed the headline and did a little editing of this LA Times story from September, when Jamal yet walked among us.
Which speaks volumes about the level of geopolitical acuity at One Yonge Street.
What? Barely five weeks since the gruesome demise of Jamal, and we're yukking it up with the Great Reformer, without so much as a nod to the Kashoggi affair? My first instinct was that such an oversight can only be the result of the Crown Prince's "Buckets 'o Baksheesh" tour back in the spring. After all, that visit included a sit-down with the editorial board of the LA Times, where The Star found this story.
Alas, there's a less nefarious explanation. Seems the interns charged with putting together the Sunday paper just changed the headline and did a little editing of this LA Times story from September, when Jamal yet walked among us.
Which speaks volumes about the level of geopolitical acuity at One Yonge Street.
Warmongers gather to celebrate failure of Great War to end all wars
Just what is that hand-holding thing Trump and Macron like to do when they get together?
I think the Trumpenstein gets a bad rap sometimes... doesn't look too homophobic in that shot.
And doesn't our "Sunny Daze" Trudeau looked chuffed to be seated in the front row, next to the greatest leader since Moses and his boss Sara?
I'm surprised there's not a conspiracy theory yet about Sara and Brigitte Macron having been separated at birth...
Maybe if I have time this afternoon I'll cook one up.
So while we're remembering the millions who made the ultimate sacrifice in the Great War, including 60,000 Canadians, let's not forget that war was Greatly Profitable for the captains of industry and titans of finance on all sides.
I think the Trumpenstein gets a bad rap sometimes... doesn't look too homophobic in that shot.
And doesn't our "Sunny Daze" Trudeau looked chuffed to be seated in the front row, next to the greatest leader since Moses and his boss Sara?
I'm surprised there's not a conspiracy theory yet about Sara and Brigitte Macron having been separated at birth...
Maybe if I have time this afternoon I'll cook one up.
So while we're remembering the millions who made the ultimate sacrifice in the Great War, including 60,000 Canadians, let's not forget that war was Greatly Profitable for the captains of industry and titans of finance on all sides.
Friday, November 9, 2018
Climate change and motorsports
That's got an oxy-moronic tone to it, eh?
How does a quarter million people driving to Indianapolis help fight climate change? It doesn't, obviously. There's probably not that many these days, because motorsport has been dying a slow death anyway.
They're bulldozing grandstands at NASCAR tracks so the stands look full on TV.
I love the old hot-rod days and I'll miss them.
But they're fading out.
The other day I came across one of those Poker Run shows. There's forty feet of fibreglass with three, four, or, God help us, five Merc 400s hanging off the back.
And that's just one boat. There's well over a hundred on this run...
Why?
How does a quarter million people driving to Indianapolis help fight climate change? It doesn't, obviously. There's probably not that many these days, because motorsport has been dying a slow death anyway.
They're bulldozing grandstands at NASCAR tracks so the stands look full on TV.
I love the old hot-rod days and I'll miss them.
But they're fading out.
The other day I came across one of those Poker Run shows. There's forty feet of fibreglass with three, four, or, God help us, five Merc 400s hanging off the back.
And that's just one boat. There's well over a hundred on this run...
Why?
Thursday, November 8, 2018
Save the planet; bring back fur
I'm sitting at the kitchen table with the Farm Manager. Our kitchen table used to be the table where the cashier at Gorbet's filled out the sales receipts.
Gorbet's was the number one fur emporium in Owen Sound back when furs were cool.
Furrier was a traditional old-world Jewish trade, and near as I can tell the first Gorbet reached the new world just after the WWI, when things were somewhat topsy-turvy in the old world.
Long story short, after building up a chain of fur stores over the better part of a century, the Gorbet clan came up against something nobody even imagined.
Animal rights.
The Gorbet Furs empire was in short order whittled down to the value of the real estate the stores sat on.
The fur business was dead.
It was over.
Instead, we've got the consumer going nuts for fake fur and synthetic fabrics. Where do you suppose that stuff comes from? And where do you suppose it goes?
Back in the fur coat era, you'd have your fur remodelled every few years, just to keep up with the style trends. You could keep the same fur coat looking trendy for fifty years or more.
The FM's father, Norm, would pick up your coat and put it in cold storage for the summer.
A fur coat pretty much lasted a lifetime.
Now, everybody needs a new winter coat every year. The old one goes to the landfill. Those synthetics will take thousands of years to break down, in the meantime giving off innumerable toxic substances as they deteriorate.
Ecologically speaking, how is this an improvement over fur?
Just one more example of how progress isn't everything it's cracked up to be.
Gorbet's was the number one fur emporium in Owen Sound back when furs were cool.
Furrier was a traditional old-world Jewish trade, and near as I can tell the first Gorbet reached the new world just after the WWI, when things were somewhat topsy-turvy in the old world.
Long story short, after building up a chain of fur stores over the better part of a century, the Gorbet clan came up against something nobody even imagined.
Animal rights.
The Gorbet Furs empire was in short order whittled down to the value of the real estate the stores sat on.
The fur business was dead.
It was over.
Instead, we've got the consumer going nuts for fake fur and synthetic fabrics. Where do you suppose that stuff comes from? And where do you suppose it goes?
Back in the fur coat era, you'd have your fur remodelled every few years, just to keep up with the style trends. You could keep the same fur coat looking trendy for fifty years or more.
The FM's father, Norm, would pick up your coat and put it in cold storage for the summer.
A fur coat pretty much lasted a lifetime.
Now, everybody needs a new winter coat every year. The old one goes to the landfill. Those synthetics will take thousands of years to break down, in the meantime giving off innumerable toxic substances as they deteriorate.
Ecologically speaking, how is this an improvement over fur?
Just one more example of how progress isn't everything it's cracked up to be.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
A moving story
When my dear daughter went off to university, the move was pretty much all mine.
When she moved out of res and into a house in town after her first year, dad's back and dad's truck bore the brunt.
When she switched schools and moved again after her second year, I was there. As was my truck, needless to say, but I only had to make one trip, for the big stuff.
There were a couple more moves between apartments while she finished her studies that hardly involved me at all.
She's recently moved again, into her very first house. She bought it with her fiancee. He's got a Ph.D in chemistry and a finer truck than mine. The move was done 100% without me.
That's how you know you succeeded in your parenting; your child can navigate the world without your help.
So why do I feel sad?
When she moved out of res and into a house in town after her first year, dad's back and dad's truck bore the brunt.
When she switched schools and moved again after her second year, I was there. As was my truck, needless to say, but I only had to make one trip, for the big stuff.
There were a couple more moves between apartments while she finished her studies that hardly involved me at all.
She's recently moved again, into her very first house. She bought it with her fiancee. He's got a Ph.D in chemistry and a finer truck than mine. The move was done 100% without me.
That's how you know you succeeded in your parenting; your child can navigate the world without your help.
So why do I feel sad?
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Must have been a slow news week
Nothing much in the weekend papers. Former G-G Adrienne Clarkson got a bit of self-serving twaddle into the Globe and Mail explaining why we should be grateful that she's still sucking hard on the government teat almost fourteen years after giving up that sinecure.
Elsewhere in the Globe we learn that the US will "temporarily allow" eight countries to continue buying Iranian oil after the new US sanctions kick in tomorrow. The wanton twattery of a bunch of American exceptionalists presuming to dictate to the world who can and who cannot buy Iranian oil passes without comment, naturally.
Things are pretty thin in the Sunday Star as well. Drake claims he was racially profiled at a Vancouver casino. Really? My hunch is that casinos are more interested in credit score profiling than racial profiling, and you'd think he'd be golden in that department, but whatever.
The NYT International Weekly (included at no extra cost with your Sunday Star, because actually paying Canadian writers for original copy is prohibitively expensive) makes the case for Colorado Governor Hickenlooper, a made energy industry bumboy from the get-go, taking a run at the White House in 2020. Seriously? I write more insightful shit than that.
Both Kristof and Stephens have op-eds that don't mention Donny J, to my considerable surprise. Maybe Sarah Kendzior is onto something...
Picked up a Toronto Sun just to see what the semi-literate folks are reading these days. With Remembrance Day around the corner, we've naturally got the predictable jingoistic claptrap about how the bold Canucks punched above their weight in the WW I.
What a concept, that WW I. The royal families of Europe had some differences. They're all related anyway, so you'd think they could sort things out with a family picnic or something, but no. Millions of working class schmucks on all sides had to make the ultimate sacrifice. We remember their sacrifice every November 11. Their naivete and gullibility, along with the craven cynicism of those who sacrificed them, we prefer to forget.
Further in we get a few accolades for Doug Ford's war on the poor with his Making Ontario Open for Business Act. But even that isn't enough for guest columnist Peter Gossman, who is pleased to inform us that he's planning to open his next factory in the US instead of Canada.
I'm sure Trump will appreciate your help in making America great again with the few dozen minimum wage jobs you might create there, Pete!
Gossman also informs us, via a quote from another PostMedia title, that "...oil, gas, and coal remain the fuels of the future."
Huh?... oh ya, we're reading the Toronto Sun...
Pres of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce Rocco Rossi gets a guest column too, although it's largely incoherent. Since it's in the Sun maybe the readers won't notice. His members are experiencing both a labour shortage and a skills shortage, so the Ford government's war on the working poor is going to create a lot of jobs...
Or something.
The Sun still has their Sunshine Girl, but she's near the back of the paper now. Used to be on page two or three if I remember correctly. That was a great gig for the photographer back in the day, at least till he got charged with attempted rape or something. I think he went to jail for a spell. Today's Sunshine Girl, Lavender, "is a Sagittarius who is all about Sunday, smiles, and sunshine."
Good to know!
Elsewhere in the Globe we learn that the US will "temporarily allow" eight countries to continue buying Iranian oil after the new US sanctions kick in tomorrow. The wanton twattery of a bunch of American exceptionalists presuming to dictate to the world who can and who cannot buy Iranian oil passes without comment, naturally.
Things are pretty thin in the Sunday Star as well. Drake claims he was racially profiled at a Vancouver casino. Really? My hunch is that casinos are more interested in credit score profiling than racial profiling, and you'd think he'd be golden in that department, but whatever.
The NYT International Weekly (included at no extra cost with your Sunday Star, because actually paying Canadian writers for original copy is prohibitively expensive) makes the case for Colorado Governor Hickenlooper, a made energy industry bumboy from the get-go, taking a run at the White House in 2020. Seriously? I write more insightful shit than that.
Both Kristof and Stephens have op-eds that don't mention Donny J, to my considerable surprise. Maybe Sarah Kendzior is onto something...
Picked up a Toronto Sun just to see what the semi-literate folks are reading these days. With Remembrance Day around the corner, we've naturally got the predictable jingoistic claptrap about how the bold Canucks punched above their weight in the WW I.
What a concept, that WW I. The royal families of Europe had some differences. They're all related anyway, so you'd think they could sort things out with a family picnic or something, but no. Millions of working class schmucks on all sides had to make the ultimate sacrifice. We remember their sacrifice every November 11. Their naivete and gullibility, along with the craven cynicism of those who sacrificed them, we prefer to forget.
Further in we get a few accolades for Doug Ford's war on the poor with his Making Ontario Open for Business Act. But even that isn't enough for guest columnist Peter Gossman, who is pleased to inform us that he's planning to open his next factory in the US instead of Canada.
I'm sure Trump will appreciate your help in making America great again with the few dozen minimum wage jobs you might create there, Pete!
Gossman also informs us, via a quote from another PostMedia title, that "...oil, gas, and coal remain the fuels of the future."
Huh?... oh ya, we're reading the Toronto Sun...
Pres of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce Rocco Rossi gets a guest column too, although it's largely incoherent. Since it's in the Sun maybe the readers won't notice. His members are experiencing both a labour shortage and a skills shortage, so the Ford government's war on the working poor is going to create a lot of jobs...
Or something.
The Sun still has their Sunshine Girl, but she's near the back of the paper now. Used to be on page two or three if I remember correctly. That was a great gig for the photographer back in the day, at least till he got charged with attempted rape or something. I think he went to jail for a spell. Today's Sunshine Girl, Lavender, "is a Sagittarius who is all about Sunday, smiles, and sunshine."
Good to know!
Another globalisation success story
Africans have always been exploited for cheap labour. Back in the bad old days of the slave trade, you had to bring the Africans to the work. In the modern era, in the "knowledge economy," you can bring the work to the Africans!
You must admit the optics are way better; no chains, no slave auctions or slaveships. It's all good... just check out this story at BBC.
Rumour has it the brain trust behind Samasource was originally going to call their company Sambosource, but that didn't fly with the focus groups they ran it by. Thank God for focus groups! That would have been a PR nightmare...
Sambosource.
What a brilliant business plan... set up an outsourcing company that lets companies like Google and Microsoft outsource their work to IT professionals in Kenya who work for nine dollars... A DAY!!! We're talking about serious efficiencies here, folks! You can bet there'll be a few folks over here getting richer on the backs of the nine-dollars-a-day folks over there.
Just imagine the bags 'o boodle Google and Microsoft can add to their offshored hundreds of billions stashed in offshore tax havens by paying nine bucks a day for work they used to do in America! As everyone knows, US workers have long been way too precious, pampered, and lazy to even consider working for such a wage, whereas Kenyans couldn't be happier with these crumbs from the Big Tech banquet table.
And look how progressive Sambosource is; they even provide lactating rooms for their female staff! That's what happens when the upper echelons of an American company are predominantly female; they bring progressive workplace policies right into the heart of the Dark Continent!... for nine dollars a day.
That truly is a heart-warming globalisation success story!
You must admit the optics are way better; no chains, no slave auctions or slaveships. It's all good... just check out this story at BBC.
Rumour has it the brain trust behind Samasource was originally going to call their company Sambosource, but that didn't fly with the focus groups they ran it by. Thank God for focus groups! That would have been a PR nightmare...
Sambosource.
What a brilliant business plan... set up an outsourcing company that lets companies like Google and Microsoft outsource their work to IT professionals in Kenya who work for nine dollars... A DAY!!! We're talking about serious efficiencies here, folks! You can bet there'll be a few folks over here getting richer on the backs of the nine-dollars-a-day folks over there.
Just imagine the bags 'o boodle Google and Microsoft can add to their offshored hundreds of billions stashed in offshore tax havens by paying nine bucks a day for work they used to do in America! As everyone knows, US workers have long been way too precious, pampered, and lazy to even consider working for such a wage, whereas Kenyans couldn't be happier with these crumbs from the Big Tech banquet table.
And look how progressive Sambosource is; they even provide lactating rooms for their female staff! That's what happens when the upper echelons of an American company are predominantly female; they bring progressive workplace policies right into the heart of the Dark Continent!... for nine dollars a day.
That truly is a heart-warming globalisation success story!
Friday, November 2, 2018
Cognitive dissonance and our "ironclad" support for Israel
The Freeland-Trudeau team like to go out of their way to pose as Trump-defying humanists, stalwarts of the international anti-Trump resistance. That's a pose meant primarily for the domestic audience, where pretend resistance scores a lot of political points among great swathes of the populace.
In the real world, we're 100% in with the Israel-KSA-USA axis of virtue. How else to explain our dithering over our biggest arms sale ever? How else to explain Chrystia's grovelling performance in Jerusalem last week?
The IDF turkey shoot at the Gaza fence continues week in and week out, with nary a peep from our dynamic duo of "feminist foreign policy," save for that one ill-advised slip of the tongue on Trudeau's part back in May, when he accidentally misspoke about the need for an impartial inquiry into the IDF's multiple murders of unarmed Palestinians. That brief outburst of sanity went missing immediately.
Maybe Kushner made a phone call.
No, we're proud to offer our "unwavering and ironclad support" for the Trump-loving Likudniks who are systematically destroying Israel and turning it into a loathsome apartheid pariah.
In the real world, we're 100% in with the Israel-KSA-USA axis of virtue. How else to explain our dithering over our biggest arms sale ever? How else to explain Chrystia's grovelling performance in Jerusalem last week?
The IDF turkey shoot at the Gaza fence continues week in and week out, with nary a peep from our dynamic duo of "feminist foreign policy," save for that one ill-advised slip of the tongue on Trudeau's part back in May, when he accidentally misspoke about the need for an impartial inquiry into the IDF's multiple murders of unarmed Palestinians. That brief outburst of sanity went missing immediately.
Maybe Kushner made a phone call.
No, we're proud to offer our "unwavering and ironclad support" for the Trump-loving Likudniks who are systematically destroying Israel and turning it into a loathsome apartheid pariah.
Thursday, November 1, 2018
New proletariat rising
That's quite an interesting thing going on at Google. These are limited walkouts around some pretty specific issues, but it's a start.
If this goes well it could catch on elsewhere in the economy. It could open a lot of minds as to what else might be possible. We're watching the evolution of millennial resistance to traditional power structures. These are smart people...
Who knows? Maybe they'll come up with some other ideas, like challenging their employers disgusting tax avoidance strategies.
Maybe the six-number nerd crowd at Amazon will demand that their boss, the world's richest person, pay the warehouse grunts a living wage!
Or perhaps the educated millennials at Nike will stand up for Asian sweatshop workers...
Anything could happen!
If this goes well it could catch on elsewhere in the economy. It could open a lot of minds as to what else might be possible. We're watching the evolution of millennial resistance to traditional power structures. These are smart people...
Who knows? Maybe they'll come up with some other ideas, like challenging their employers disgusting tax avoidance strategies.
Maybe the six-number nerd crowd at Amazon will demand that their boss, the world's richest person, pay the warehouse grunts a living wage!
Or perhaps the educated millennials at Nike will stand up for Asian sweatshop workers...
Anything could happen!
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Greyhound
Back in the all-things-are-possible days of my youth, I must have done the cross-Canada trip a dozen times or more.
Sometimes I drove. Me and Paul Newman did a Guelph to Calgary run in the dead of winter in a Mercury Grand Marquis in just under 28 hours once. That remains a personal best for that particular route. The achievement is doubly noteworthy because the wipers on that old boat didn't work, and it was snowing constantly, so you had to maintain a good turn of speed to keep the snow off the windshield.
Other times I thumbed.
When I was flush, which was not very often, I might take a plane.
From time to time I'd find myself on a Greyhound bus. That was the modality of last resort, and taking the bus usually didn't cross your mind till about the third day of trying to hitch a ride out of some shithole northern town where the locals were more inclined to give you the finger rather than give you a lift.
One thing you figured out pretty quick was that the Greyhound was a great place to get to know your First Nations brothers and sisters. There was a general aversion to socializing with your Indian co-passengers, but I found that if they saw you as a hard-luck kinda person they could be quite congenial.
Greyhound has officially washed its hands of the hard-luck folks who have to take the bus. As much as the general public may not give a shit, those buses were a lifeline for a lot of First Nations communities.
This is a great opportunity for some of those First Nations millionaires to step up to the plate. Any sovereign nation has a vested interest in the transport needs of its citizens. If the "market" can't meet those needs, and if the settler government in Ottawa won't meet those needs, maybe its time for First Nations to provide the solution to this problem.
That's what a sovereign nation would do.
Sometimes I drove. Me and Paul Newman did a Guelph to Calgary run in the dead of winter in a Mercury Grand Marquis in just under 28 hours once. That remains a personal best for that particular route. The achievement is doubly noteworthy because the wipers on that old boat didn't work, and it was snowing constantly, so you had to maintain a good turn of speed to keep the snow off the windshield.
Other times I thumbed.
When I was flush, which was not very often, I might take a plane.
From time to time I'd find myself on a Greyhound bus. That was the modality of last resort, and taking the bus usually didn't cross your mind till about the third day of trying to hitch a ride out of some shithole northern town where the locals were more inclined to give you the finger rather than give you a lift.
One thing you figured out pretty quick was that the Greyhound was a great place to get to know your First Nations brothers and sisters. There was a general aversion to socializing with your Indian co-passengers, but I found that if they saw you as a hard-luck kinda person they could be quite congenial.
Greyhound has officially washed its hands of the hard-luck folks who have to take the bus. As much as the general public may not give a shit, those buses were a lifeline for a lot of First Nations communities.
This is a great opportunity for some of those First Nations millionaires to step up to the plate. Any sovereign nation has a vested interest in the transport needs of its citizens. If the "market" can't meet those needs, and if the settler government in Ottawa won't meet those needs, maybe its time for First Nations to provide the solution to this problem.
That's what a sovereign nation would do.
Friday, October 26, 2018
Donny J is pop culture's Frankenstein
Think about it.
In the original Frankenstein fable a bunch of really smart folks create this being who subsequently turned on them.
Fast forward to President Trump...
I rest my case.
In the original Frankenstein fable a bunch of really smart folks create this being who subsequently turned on them.
Fast forward to President Trump...
I rest my case.
Storm the embassy!
This Khashoggi stuff is just over the top, isn't it?
We should just storm the Saudi embassy to express our displeasure!
As an aside, I can't figure out why that name is now pronounced with a soft "g" by all the news readers. Maybe it's because the powers that be behind the scenes would prefer we not confuse him with his hard "g" cousin Adnan.
This crisis foregrounds the pivotal role media plays in letting us know who we need to be pissed off at.
Obviously, we need to storm the Saudi embassy.
But those towellers aren't the only ones sticking a finger in the eye of our virtuous institutions here in the Nations of Virtue.
Putin.
Need I say more?
Of course not. Everybody knows it's Putin and his industrial-scale troll farms that subverted America's democratic process and got Trump into the White House!
Let's storm the Russian Embassy!
And while we're storming embassies, let's not forget Israel.
Those IDF snipers honing their skills by kneecapping Gaza children from two thousand metres away surely deserve the wrath of our political correctitude...
STORM THE ISRAELI EMBASSY!!!
Looks like us progressives have a lot of storming to do...
Or you could just spark up a fattie and put this on.
We should just storm the Saudi embassy to express our displeasure!
As an aside, I can't figure out why that name is now pronounced with a soft "g" by all the news readers. Maybe it's because the powers that be behind the scenes would prefer we not confuse him with his hard "g" cousin Adnan.
This crisis foregrounds the pivotal role media plays in letting us know who we need to be pissed off at.
Obviously, we need to storm the Saudi embassy.
But those towellers aren't the only ones sticking a finger in the eye of our virtuous institutions here in the Nations of Virtue.
Putin.
Need I say more?
Of course not. Everybody knows it's Putin and his industrial-scale troll farms that subverted America's democratic process and got Trump into the White House!
Let's storm the Russian Embassy!
And while we're storming embassies, let's not forget Israel.
Those IDF snipers honing their skills by kneecapping Gaza children from two thousand metres away surely deserve the wrath of our political correctitude...
STORM THE ISRAELI EMBASSY!!!
Looks like us progressives have a lot of storming to do...
Or you could just spark up a fattie and put this on.
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
How things work
I was rooting around on the Googlator today and accidentally discovered that Strombo got himself a honorary doctorate degree from the U of Calgary way back in '07!
Strombo? An honorary degree? Get the f@ck outta here! Strombo's got a pretty thin resume today, and it must have been even thinner eleven years ago. An honorary degree?...
Then again, maybe he was tight with some Very Influential Person types. That might explain it.
Speaking of VIP types, I see where former hash dealer and current preem Dougie Ford held a presser at Leland Industries to unveil his "Ontario is Open for Business so Screw the Working Poor Act." That's where he officially undid the only worthwhile stuff the Liberals ever did in their interminable reign of error.
Not that there's anything wrong with hash dealers - used to peddle a few of the brown bricks myself from time to time, but unlike Doug, it never occurred to me that this qualified me to be Premier of Ontario.
From what I can glean on the internet, Leland is one of those operations who's business model is predicated on the availability of a labour pool willing to work for poverty wages. They pay their folks $14 something an hour in a city where the average house sells for well over a million bucks. Those are the kind of job creators Dougie is stepping up to the plate for.
That Globe piece references a couple of other job creators. Surati Sweet Mart is another outfit that talks up an entrepreneurial storm while paying starvation wages. Then there's Pete Gossmann, a perennial favourite in anti-worker stories, who claims that the brazenly communistic Wynne labour reforms cost his company thirty thousand bucks because all forty of his employees took their two paid sick days in the first three months of the year, most of them around the Super Bowl, because that's what conniving lazy-ass working people do when you give them a chance.
But let's back up and do a little math here. Forty workers each take two paid sick days. That's 80 sick days at a cost of 30k. That suggests Gossmann's workers are making $375 a day, or close to fifty bucks an hour!
The fact of the matter is Gossmann's Plasticap has got a handful of trades guys making a half decent wage, although nobody's anywhere near fifty bucks an hour, and the vast majority of his forty workers are just a hop and a skip above min wage. For this Gossman is regularly trotted out as an expert on the economics of running a business.
Things are not always what they seem.
Strombo's honorary doctorate may have had more to do with his "network" than with his achievements. A guy on the periphery of my (very modest) social circle surprised me one day by announcing that he had to cut out early from our beer-drinking session because he had to go to a party in Toronto. His sister was getting an honorary doctorate from York University! As near as I can tell, her "journalism" has attracted more lawsuits than journalism awards.
But that's OK. She's cultivated some Very Influential People along the way...
That's how things work.
Strombo? An honorary degree? Get the f@ck outta here! Strombo's got a pretty thin resume today, and it must have been even thinner eleven years ago. An honorary degree?...
Then again, maybe he was tight with some Very Influential Person types. That might explain it.
Speaking of VIP types, I see where former hash dealer and current preem Dougie Ford held a presser at Leland Industries to unveil his "Ontario is Open for Business so Screw the Working Poor Act." That's where he officially undid the only worthwhile stuff the Liberals ever did in their interminable reign of error.
Not that there's anything wrong with hash dealers - used to peddle a few of the brown bricks myself from time to time, but unlike Doug, it never occurred to me that this qualified me to be Premier of Ontario.
From what I can glean on the internet, Leland is one of those operations who's business model is predicated on the availability of a labour pool willing to work for poverty wages. They pay their folks $14 something an hour in a city where the average house sells for well over a million bucks. Those are the kind of job creators Dougie is stepping up to the plate for.
That Globe piece references a couple of other job creators. Surati Sweet Mart is another outfit that talks up an entrepreneurial storm while paying starvation wages. Then there's Pete Gossmann, a perennial favourite in anti-worker stories, who claims that the brazenly communistic Wynne labour reforms cost his company thirty thousand bucks because all forty of his employees took their two paid sick days in the first three months of the year, most of them around the Super Bowl, because that's what conniving lazy-ass working people do when you give them a chance.
But let's back up and do a little math here. Forty workers each take two paid sick days. That's 80 sick days at a cost of 30k. That suggests Gossmann's workers are making $375 a day, or close to fifty bucks an hour!
The fact of the matter is Gossmann's Plasticap has got a handful of trades guys making a half decent wage, although nobody's anywhere near fifty bucks an hour, and the vast majority of his forty workers are just a hop and a skip above min wage. For this Gossman is regularly trotted out as an expert on the economics of running a business.
Things are not always what they seem.
Strombo's honorary doctorate may have had more to do with his "network" than with his achievements. A guy on the periphery of my (very modest) social circle surprised me one day by announcing that he had to cut out early from our beer-drinking session because he had to go to a party in Toronto. His sister was getting an honorary doctorate from York University! As near as I can tell, her "journalism" has attracted more lawsuits than journalism awards.
But that's OK. She's cultivated some Very Influential People along the way...
That's how things work.
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Buy this fully detached 3br 2bath home two hours from Toronto for under $100,000
Two hours and seventeen minutes from King and Bay, according to Google Maps.
Since you're gonna save at least a million compared to buying the same house in Toronto, why not invest some of those savings in a new 911 Carrera 4S? You'll cut your commute down to about half an hour, and you'll be the talk of Teeswater!
Guaranteed!
Since you're gonna save at least a million compared to buying the same house in Toronto, why not invest some of those savings in a new 911 Carrera 4S? You'll cut your commute down to about half an hour, and you'll be the talk of Teeswater!
Guaranteed!
Saturday, October 20, 2018
The future's looking bleaker every day
It's amazing what the Globe and Mail can find room for when they don't give half the opinion section over to that self-aggrandising American harpy, Sarah Kendzior. Today's Sarah-free paper featured thoughtful and timely opinion pieces by a couple of Canadians instead.
Iconic Canadian architect Jack Diamond offers a scathing critique of Toronto's descent into dystopian uninhabitability. We're not there yet, but that's our general direction. He's clearly talking to the two mayoral candidates and the current preem, but it's a good read for anyone interested in the future of what could still be a great liveable city.
Just a few pages away you can find an advert for two-bedroom plus den condos starting at a mere $710,000... oh, wait a minute; this two-bed plus den measures out at 764 square feet!
WTF? How do you get two bedrooms and a den out of 764 feet? Well, the "den" is 5' by 6'4" for starters. Back in the day, when Toronto's first wave of highrises were going up at ten bucks a foot, 764 would have been considered a roomy one bedroom apartment. Fifty years later it's a two-bedroom + den condo that clocks in at a whisker under a thousand bucks a foot.
We're clearly trending in the wrong direction!
Elsewhere in the Opinion section, Canadian academic Marcel O'Gorman offers up a timely analysis of our tech enslavement. We even get a shout-out to the great Canadian obfuscator Marshall McLuhan! Marcel seems to be a little wary of our brave new tech-obsessed world, and who can blame him? You can fill your two-bedroom plus den 764 foot condo with all the tech gadgets you want; it ain't gonna get any bigger.
Those two articles alone were worth the price of admission (still $6.30 at the Korean extortionist).
Iconic Canadian architect Jack Diamond offers a scathing critique of Toronto's descent into dystopian uninhabitability. We're not there yet, but that's our general direction. He's clearly talking to the two mayoral candidates and the current preem, but it's a good read for anyone interested in the future of what could still be a great liveable city.
Just a few pages away you can find an advert for two-bedroom plus den condos starting at a mere $710,000... oh, wait a minute; this two-bed plus den measures out at 764 square feet!
WTF? How do you get two bedrooms and a den out of 764 feet? Well, the "den" is 5' by 6'4" for starters. Back in the day, when Toronto's first wave of highrises were going up at ten bucks a foot, 764 would have been considered a roomy one bedroom apartment. Fifty years later it's a two-bedroom + den condo that clocks in at a whisker under a thousand bucks a foot.
We're clearly trending in the wrong direction!
Elsewhere in the Opinion section, Canadian academic Marcel O'Gorman offers up a timely analysis of our tech enslavement. We even get a shout-out to the great Canadian obfuscator Marshall McLuhan! Marcel seems to be a little wary of our brave new tech-obsessed world, and who can blame him? You can fill your two-bedroom plus den 764 foot condo with all the tech gadgets you want; it ain't gonna get any bigger.
Those two articles alone were worth the price of admission (still $6.30 at the Korean extortionist).
More accolades for Chystia Freeland
If you heard Chrystia Freeland's interview on the CBC this morning, you may have cringed just a little when you heard her boasting about her buddy "Bob" Lighthizer coming to her Toronto home for dinner. Clearly, Freeland is quite impressed with herself, and is pleased to consider Bob a personal friend.
Others are not quite as impressed.
"She's way out of her league," quoth Zekelman Industries boss Barry Zekelman in a CBC story the other day.
And today we've got Konrad Yakabuski's assessment in the Globe and Mail; "We were out-negotiated, almost humiliatingly so."
I'm guessing neither Yakabuski or Zekelman will be getting dinner invites to Chrystia's house anytime soon.
Others are not quite as impressed.
"She's way out of her league," quoth Zekelman Industries boss Barry Zekelman in a CBC story the other day.
And today we've got Konrad Yakabuski's assessment in the Globe and Mail; "We were out-negotiated, almost humiliatingly so."
I'm guessing neither Yakabuski or Zekelman will be getting dinner invites to Chrystia's house anytime soon.
Jeffrey Sachs goes full commie
The good Professor has an op-ed in the Globe today, which for the first eleven paragraphs I took to be a sly and subtle piece of PR fluff for the Donkey Party.
But then Sachs rips off the mask and reveals his true agenda; class warfare!
America's almost 160 year long civil war, he tells us, "will not end until working-class Americans of all regions, races and ethnicities join forces to demand higher taxes and greater accountability of the rich corporate elite."
While that's not quite the same as the proletariat seizing the means of production, it's way out there, and seems at odds with the first eleven paragraphs. After all, the Democratic Party of Clinton and Pelosi is every bit as much the plaything of the "rich corporate elite" as is the GOP.
Which is why that working-class solidarity will never ever happen within either of the establishment parties in America.
But then Sachs rips off the mask and reveals his true agenda; class warfare!
America's almost 160 year long civil war, he tells us, "will not end until working-class Americans of all regions, races and ethnicities join forces to demand higher taxes and greater accountability of the rich corporate elite."
While that's not quite the same as the proletariat seizing the means of production, it's way out there, and seems at odds with the first eleven paragraphs. After all, the Democratic Party of Clinton and Pelosi is every bit as much the plaything of the "rich corporate elite" as is the GOP.
Which is why that working-class solidarity will never ever happen within either of the establishment parties in America.
Thursday, October 18, 2018
Keeping an eye on the Arabs
This Khashoggi drama sure raises a few interesting questions.
Since when does Erdogan, or Trump for that matter, give a shit about the welfare of journos?
Since about the time Khashoggi walked into that Saudi embassy, as far as I can tell.
The Khashoggi name is quite prominent in Saudi circles. My understanding is they're a clan accustomed to being close to power, and found themselves out of the ruling circle only with the ascent of MBS. That explains why they've developed a sudden interest in a free press.
America's interest in human rights is equally recent. Dave Lindorff has a story on view at Counterpunch today contrasting the US reaction to the Khashoggi murder to their reaction to the murder of Furkan Dogan by the IDF.
While I was flat on my back and hoping for the best the other day, it occurred to me that the profession of eye-doctor seems to be particularly prestigious in the Arab world. I remember reading, just as the German refugee crisis was building up a good head of steam, an interview with the daughter of Albert Speer, who had happily acquiesced to putting up a couple of Syrian refugees in her Berlin home.
They were ophthalmologists. And they were also great house guests, according to Frau Speer, the message being "hey, open your hearts and your homes, fellow Squareheads! Nothing to fear from these Syrians we've been bombing to ratshit!"
And isn't the evil Assad an ophthalmologist too?... do you see a pattern here? Maybe everybody in Syria aims for an eye-doctor career. The top grads get to bunk with Frau Speer or come to Canada to do eye surgery on the likes of me.
The guys who don't make the grade get to gouge out eyeballs in Syria's secret torture prisons, like the one Canada sent Maher Arar to for the kind of proper interrogation we can't do ourselves.
For obvious reasons.
Since when does Erdogan, or Trump for that matter, give a shit about the welfare of journos?
Since about the time Khashoggi walked into that Saudi embassy, as far as I can tell.
The Khashoggi name is quite prominent in Saudi circles. My understanding is they're a clan accustomed to being close to power, and found themselves out of the ruling circle only with the ascent of MBS. That explains why they've developed a sudden interest in a free press.
America's interest in human rights is equally recent. Dave Lindorff has a story on view at Counterpunch today contrasting the US reaction to the Khashoggi murder to their reaction to the murder of Furkan Dogan by the IDF.
While I was flat on my back and hoping for the best the other day, it occurred to me that the profession of eye-doctor seems to be particularly prestigious in the Arab world. I remember reading, just as the German refugee crisis was building up a good head of steam, an interview with the daughter of Albert Speer, who had happily acquiesced to putting up a couple of Syrian refugees in her Berlin home.
They were ophthalmologists. And they were also great house guests, according to Frau Speer, the message being "hey, open your hearts and your homes, fellow Squareheads! Nothing to fear from these Syrians we've been bombing to ratshit!"
And isn't the evil Assad an ophthalmologist too?... do you see a pattern here? Maybe everybody in Syria aims for an eye-doctor career. The top grads get to bunk with Frau Speer or come to Canada to do eye surgery on the likes of me.
The guys who don't make the grade get to gouge out eyeballs in Syria's secret torture prisons, like the one Canada sent Maher Arar to for the kind of proper interrogation we can't do ourselves.
For obvious reasons.
Monday, October 15, 2018
I'm flat on my back and a Muslim immigrant is sticking pointy objects in my eye
Yup, and God bless him!
Had the long anticipated cataract surgery today. It's amazing what they can do these days. In and out in under three hours. And when you're lying there, flat on your back, and you can feel and even see the tools the surgeon has stuck into your eyeball, you don't care if he's a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew.
You just hope whatever God he believes in will bless him with steady hands.
Had the long anticipated cataract surgery today. It's amazing what they can do these days. In and out in under three hours. And when you're lying there, flat on your back, and you can feel and even see the tools the surgeon has stuck into your eyeball, you don't care if he's a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew.
You just hope whatever God he believes in will bless him with steady hands.
Saturday, October 13, 2018
You know you're a hillbilly when...
The last time my dear step-daughter Hanna was here, she cooked up some spaghetti, and was of course obliged to toss a piece at the wall to see if it was ready.
Hanna being Hanna, she left it there.
Me being me, it took about a month for me to notice. But then I couldn't bring myself to take it off the wall. Instead, I stuck a couple of googly eyes over it from the dollar store.
After all, Hanna works in a food truck called the "Moustache." That's run by an Iranian guy, and my Jewish step-daughter is his key employee. The other side of the story is that his most valued employee sports a four year honours degree in "Social Equity and Human Rights" from York University. The best you can do with that degree is work in a food truck, apparently.
These are tough times for kids with useless university degrees and big student loans. Hanna's doubling down on education by going back for a MSW. At least when she's done she'll be able to get a job. Pity she didn't think ahead when she signed up for that social justice and human equity jazz.
My dear son Jake, on the other hand, doesn't have to worry about student loan payments. When he was fifteen he was on a mission to read everything Eric Blair ever wrote. Unfortunately, he was never on any mission to attend classes at the GCVI, and therefore student loans for post-secondary were never an issue.
Instead, being a brilliant but as yet undiscovered musician, he was forced to do what every other undiscovered musician does in our society; get a job at a restaurant. In three years he's gone from dish-washer to being the guy who fixes your calamari!
But at least he doesn't have student loans!
Friday, October 12, 2018
Empathy for the luckless
I was still in my teens when I found myself on a Greyhound making its final approach into the Kenora bus station. Local folks were standing up at that point, knowing we were ready for touchdown, and I heard a guy say, as he was gazing out the window... "there's a lotta dogs out tonight."
I took that as a generic reference to the folks visibly impaired when you looked out the window. I got off the bus, and facing a two hour layover, found time to buy a loaf of bread and a sixpack nearby. Sat down by the railroad tracks for my own personal picnic.
This old geezer wobbles up and sits down. I offer him a piece of my loaf and 1/6 of my sixpack to wash it down.
He tended towards the taciturn, but once we got to a couple more hunks of that loaf and 2/6 of my sixpack, he let out that he was from the White Dog Nation.
I had one of those learning moments that you sometimes hear about but seldom experience firsthand.
Dogs... White Dog Nation... everything suddenly fell into place!
The "dogs" were the down and out from the local res. I've never forgotten what I learned that day at the Kenora International Bus Stop.
Of course you don't have to be First Nations to be luckless, although there can be no doubt that it helps.
A lot.
I used to tour up to Grand Valley now and then to meet up with the local game warden, who managed a huge wilderness area nearby. We'd get together over pitchers of beer and a basket of wings at the local. One night there's a local at the next table recounting the following horror story;
"...so I was commin' home from a visit with my lawyer, who's gonna do my impaired charge, and I was like two driveways away from my place, and a fuckin' deer runs out in fronta me. I know you gotta report this, so I leave my car there, walk ten minutes home, and call the cops. Then I have a beer.
So I have a couple beer and the cops finally show up, and I tell them about the deer. Yup, my car's still out there. I didn't want to disturb any evidence, so I walked home and called you guys...
Well, long story short, they fucking charge me with impaired driving again!
I didn't even have the heart to tell my lawyer..."
Now THAT's luckless!
Game Warden guy, on the other hand, was having quite a run of good luck going at the time. I remember being at his place when he pulls out a big green garbage bag stuffed full.
Stuffed full of weed!
"Hey, is this shit any good?"
It was decent enough. How do you get a gig like that? The taxpayer funds your digs, you're encouraged to own guns, and you can grow fifty pounds of weed on the wilderness reserve without anybody even noticing?
How do you get a gig like that? Fleming College might be the place for you.
But a run of luck only lasts so long. If you've been enjoying a run of good luck, brace yourself; it's about to turn.
If, on the other hand, you've been in the shithouse of karma for the past twenty years, cheer up!
That's about to turn too!
I took that as a generic reference to the folks visibly impaired when you looked out the window. I got off the bus, and facing a two hour layover, found time to buy a loaf of bread and a sixpack nearby. Sat down by the railroad tracks for my own personal picnic.
This old geezer wobbles up and sits down. I offer him a piece of my loaf and 1/6 of my sixpack to wash it down.
He tended towards the taciturn, but once we got to a couple more hunks of that loaf and 2/6 of my sixpack, he let out that he was from the White Dog Nation.
I had one of those learning moments that you sometimes hear about but seldom experience firsthand.
Dogs... White Dog Nation... everything suddenly fell into place!
The "dogs" were the down and out from the local res. I've never forgotten what I learned that day at the Kenora International Bus Stop.
Of course you don't have to be First Nations to be luckless, although there can be no doubt that it helps.
A lot.
I used to tour up to Grand Valley now and then to meet up with the local game warden, who managed a huge wilderness area nearby. We'd get together over pitchers of beer and a basket of wings at the local. One night there's a local at the next table recounting the following horror story;
"...so I was commin' home from a visit with my lawyer, who's gonna do my impaired charge, and I was like two driveways away from my place, and a fuckin' deer runs out in fronta me. I know you gotta report this, so I leave my car there, walk ten minutes home, and call the cops. Then I have a beer.
So I have a couple beer and the cops finally show up, and I tell them about the deer. Yup, my car's still out there. I didn't want to disturb any evidence, so I walked home and called you guys...
Well, long story short, they fucking charge me with impaired driving again!
I didn't even have the heart to tell my lawyer..."
Now THAT's luckless!
Game Warden guy, on the other hand, was having quite a run of good luck going at the time. I remember being at his place when he pulls out a big green garbage bag stuffed full.
Stuffed full of weed!
"Hey, is this shit any good?"
It was decent enough. How do you get a gig like that? The taxpayer funds your digs, you're encouraged to own guns, and you can grow fifty pounds of weed on the wilderness reserve without anybody even noticing?
How do you get a gig like that? Fleming College might be the place for you.
But a run of luck only lasts so long. If you've been enjoying a run of good luck, brace yourself; it's about to turn.
If, on the other hand, you've been in the shithouse of karma for the past twenty years, cheer up!
That's about to turn too!
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