Another Einstein notices more testing results in more covid

I don't know who Jim Quinn is, but his article at Zerohedge calling out manipulation of covid data seems a winner. At 8 this morning it had over 40k looks. Took my morning walk and it was over 50k by the time I returned, and it's doubled since.

It's been obvious since the beginning of the pandemic that virtually all media have been hyping the fear factor. It's cases, cases, deaths, cases, cases, oh look, another more deadly variant! They'll tell you everything you need to know about case and death counts, but if you want to know test numbers, you're on your own.

That's not by accident.

And of course the vaccines are perfectly safe. Perfectly safe! There is no excuse other than selfishness and/or stupidity why anyone should be vaccine hesitant... 

Oopsie! Here's an embarrassing headline from page A4 of today's Globe and Mail; New data confirm Pfizer, Moderna vaccine link to risk of heart problem.

But it's only a tiny risk, so the vaccine is perfectly safe! Who could possibly be reluctant to get a perfectly safe vaccine that'll give you a few months of partial protection from a virus that over 99% of infected recover from? 

It's time for the pinheads at The Globe and Mail to update the windy axiom that graces the top of their editorial page.

The subject who is truly loyal to the chief magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures unless we say so.

Wobbling down memory lane again

My reunion with The Kid triggered some memories.

Back in the day, when my folks had the good fortune to build a house on the starting line of the Route 86 Dragway, we lived about three miles from the wee town of Maryhill. It was called Maryhill because it was founded by Catholic settlers and they built a church on the hill. 

Get it?

In addition to the Catholic church, Maryhill, population of perhaps 45 people at the time, boasted two pubs! This was back in the day when if you got caught with booze in your car, the cops took the booze and told you to smarten up.

So in addition to the townfolk and the local farmers, the two pubs enjoyed a goodly drive-home-shitfaced clientele from nearby Kitchener-Waterloo.

If I remember correctly, the main intersection of Maryhill had a Dodge dealership on the southeast corner, Vic's Commercial Tavern on the northeast corner, and Ralph's Tavern on the northwest corner.

From the time I got my driver's licence at age 16 I'd pop down the road to either Vic's or Ralph's. My fake ID worked equally well in both spots, but I gradually developed an affinity for Vic's, to the point of carving my name into one of the tables with a knife. 

Too bad they've changed the furniture since the '70's, because that table would be a real score now.

What triggered me was that The Kid is still friends with Vic's son. That's funny, because one night coming out of Vic's I tripped over a bicycle that a child had carelessly left in the parking lot. Vic and his family lived at the pub, and his kid had left his bike out.

I stomped all the spokes out of it... ya, I owe you a bicycle, dude.

Anyway, one day I was whiling away the afternoon in the company of a couple of bad-ass locals, Bill Baily and Kenny Andrews. We were sitting in the parking lot of Ralph's in my '64 Bonneville convertible with a forty pounder. I can't recall who brought the gun, but we were taking turns shooting crows out of the trees around Ralph's parking lot.

We ended up at Vic's, and I remember an acrimonious dispute about whether or not we should venture into the city and find a drinking establishment where one might find women.

Bill and Kenny apparently already had plenty of women, and refused to go along with my plan for the evening.

Well, fuck you, you assholes!

I was gonna find those women on my own, but in a parting gesture of "fuck you" I pulled up in front of Vic's. There was still some full ones in the case of beer we'd been chasing the hard stuff with, and I lobbed one through Vic's front window.

I was immensely pleased with myself as I headed down that back road to home.

Unbeknownst to me, there was a cop car sitting at the Dodge dealer across the street at the time. Also unbeknownst to me, the getaway car had a flat tire.

I wasn't a mile out of town when I saw the flashing red lights in the mirror.

I offered some good ones.

The reason the car was all over the road was because of the flat tire.

That might have had a chance, but I had a self-defeating follow-up.

Besides, I was trying to open a beer with the seat-belt buckle.

 Waterloo Region Jail, here I come!

A further meditation on where my dog sh!ts

I can't figure out what's wrong with Bruno. He's got a hundred acre yard to do his business, but he insists on dropping his substantial turds within twenty feet of the front stoop.

I've been trying to train him. I take him out to the scene of the crime, while the evidence is still steaming fresh, and politely explain, as I'm shovelling up his shit and walking it to the hay field, that he has many options. Look pal, I tell him, the entire hundred acres is your toilet. Be a good boy and move the action.

He wags his stump and proceeds to drop another one five feet from the porch. 

And the Farm Manager thinks this is the smartest dog we've ever had.

Speaking of steaming fresh shit, I'm trying to work through my Sunday Star, and haven't even made it through the first section. I won't get to the International New York Times till Wednesday or Thursday, at this rate.

One of the issues that slowed me up was a three-plus pager by Ed Tubb and Kenyon Wallace about our never-ending covid crisis. Check out this sub-head; "Science of airborne risk is not absolute."

Not absolute? I thought the science was settled?!

WTF?

Oh my God... suddenly I'm wondering what else the experts might have got wrong!

High on General Electric

Had occasion to hook up with "The Kid" recently.  

The Kid is my kid brother who came out and stayed with me for a spell in Alberta, back when Neil Young was exhorting everybody to go to Alberta.

So we did.

It mostly sucked.

The Kid came out to stay with me, because I had an apartment in Edmonton, and he just wanted to get out of the house.

I was cool with that. But I was a guy who had to work every day to pay the bills.  If The Kid was gonna hang with me, he'd have to get a job and pitch in.

The Kid's idea of getting a job meant signing up his name and my phone number at the Alberta Agricultural Labour Exchange. Then he sat back and waited for the phone to ring.

A few weeks later, the phone rang, and The Kid was off to a farm job out near Vegreville.

Not a week into the job, he's luxuriating in his farm-worker shack one morning, when the farm owner comes in to give instructions for the day.

The Kid lights a cigarette, and the farm-worker shack explodes.

He ends up in the Vegreville Hospital, along with his boss, who was blown clear across the pasture by the blast.

Long story short, we learned in short order that the farm owner was on the board of trustees for the hospital, and not only that, but he was a big-shot on the local political scene.

Even though the farmer's negligence caused the explosion, and the Vegreville Hospital got my brother addicted to opioids, a lawsuit in that neck of the woods wouldn't go anywhere.

But I digress. We enjoyed some fine times together back in the day, and we're both thrilled and delighted to still be on this earth. Today he was reminiscing about his days at General Electric.

I was a gas-cutter, and I'd often have hours between jobs, so I'd head up to the roof and get high and have a few beers.

Holy shit! I worked in the same joint ten years before he did, and on a slow night, you'd find yourself on top of what they called the "high bay." 

That was high enough off the ground on its own account, but climb up there for a toke and a few beers...

High on General Electric took on a whole new meaning.

The sunsets were spectacular! And the city skyline was just beautiful at night!

There's gotta be a lot more folks than us who got wasted on the roof of a GE plant somewhere.

We should start an alumni association!

Real estate insanity

I pass this six acre building lot when I run into town to pick up my Globe and Mail. For $682,000 you get a view of Colpoys Bay!

Just a couple of years ago that money would have bought you that view, and also a decent shack included, never mind "building lot."

Our best and brightest currently campaigning for the PM job are unanimously promising to fix the housing affordability crisis. 

That crisis, as anyone who passed Economics 101 knows, is the result of an imbalance between supply and demand. Giving tax breaks and incentives to first-time buyers gooses the demand side. How does that address the problem?

Meanwhile, we're aiming to admit at least 400,000 new Canadians every year going forward, while building 200,000 new housing units annually. That too puts more pressure on the demand side.

Why is no political leader addressing the supply side?

It's been a tradition in our society that the free market takes care of the housing supply, but you can't expect private enterprise to build housing for people who can't afford it. Larding up the development process with interminable levies and fees doesn't help, but those pay for a lot of city planners and environmental consultants, so they'll never go away.

Governments at all levels own lots of land and control the development process. Building four-storey walk-ups isn't rocket science. The Romans, Incas, and Pueblos were doing it thousands of years ago.

Hire a few kids out of Construction Technology programs, provide the land and the green light, and you'll be building 100,000 government-owned geared-to-income units per year in no time.

But, that would take political will.

Incompetent political leadership is destroying the Canadian Armed Forces

I felt sorry for Wayne Eyre today, the "acting" head of the CAF. 

The reason he's "acting" is because everybody above him has been sidelined by sexual harassment allegations. Yup, it's a horny bunch there in the Officer Corps, and if you're accused of an unsolicited crotch-grab during basic training in 1982, well, you can kiss your career and your reputation goodbye forty years of exemplary service later. The CAF doesn't want to be associated with filth like you.

Wonder what that does for morale?

We've got some screwed up priorities in this country. The whole point of "armed forces" is these are the folks you train to kill our enemies. You're training killers, but in Canada, those killers you train must always treat their fellow humans with utmost respect and sensitivity at all times, at least until you have to kill them.

 So mind the micro-aggressions, and please, no crotch grabbing.

General Eyre was trotted out today to take the fall for Canada's dismal performance in looking after our Afghan collaborators, because neither Justin or Sajjan have the balls to take ownership of their incompetence. 

Eyre went out of his way to blame the Taliban.

Eyre and every other officer in the CAF knows that's not true. Canadian operations in-country ended seven years ago. Trudeau and Sajjan have held the reins for the last five. The US announced a complete US-NATO withdrawal 18 months ago. We had more than enough time to do the right thing by the Afghans who risked their lives to ally with us. 

Blaming the Taliban for a debacle festering for five years under their watch is disingenuous, to say the least. 

The tenure track vs. the racetrack

I've said it before, but it bears repeating; tenure track positions at brand-name schools go to people who bring their own sponsors. 

That's pretty much how it works in NASCAR and Formula One car racing. Drivers work to build a brand, and by the time they get to the big show, they've built it, and the sponsorship money not only follows them, but blossoms! Unless you're a kid like Lance Stroll, whose billionaire dad sponsors his F-1 team.

Take Nikole Hanna-Jones for example. Not having a billionaire daddy, she set about building her own brand, and did she ever! After the glory of her Pulitzer Prize, she was considered for a tenure track professorship at UNC - Chapel Hill, in their journalism school.

Unfortunately, the billionaire whose name graces the J-school at UNC, didn't feel the magic, and dug in his heels. So Nikole cashed in on her brand, and headed to Howard with $20 million in sponsor money!

That's how you get tenure today, kids!

Why billionaires invest in journalism

In Brodie Fenlon's "deep dive" he mentioned that hundreds of professional journos at CBC were so devastated by the residential school story they reached out for help from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at the most prestigious J-school in America, Columbia (tuition approx $80K USD/year).

Ken Dart, benefactor of the Dart Center, was a partner in crime with Paul Singer in the multi-billion shakedown of Argentina's economy, and like Singer, has made billions from the suffering of some of the poorest people in the world. A man of deep convictions, although unfortunately not of the criminal variety, Dart renounced his US citizenship many years ago, because why should a billionaire pay taxes? Clearly an ethically challenged greedbag, he spreads a few crumbs around for reputation rehabilitation.

In a world wherein the vast majority live a precarious hand-to-mouth existence, the billionaire class should, in theory, be constantly on the alert for pitch-fork wielding mobs. Instead, they are venerated and celebrated, and their ownership of media and politics at least keeps the mob confused and disoriented. 

Billionaire David Thomson owns Reuters and The Globe and Mail. 

Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. 

Here's a Columbia Journalism Review story about the hundreds of millions Bill Gates spreads around the mediasphere. 

The University of North Carolina slapped Walter Hussman's name on their J-school for a mere $25 millions.

In "Plutocrats," Chrystia Freeland, former top banana at Reuters, writes, "Many members of the global super-elite have helped me to understand their world and some have become friends." The next sentence is a list of 16 names, starting with George Soros and Eric Schmidt. 

You don't imagine twenty years of kissing billionaire butt may have influenced the world-view of our deputy PM, do you?

The Poynter Institute and its fact-checking arm are endowed by multiple billionaires including Soros, the Kochs, and Pierre Omidyar, who also launched The Intercept with spare change found under the couch cushions. 

When news organizations and fact-checkers are funded by billionaires, how much scrutiny will the billionaires get?

Meanwhile, journo jobs have disappeared by the tens of thousands over the past twenty years, and those that are left don't have much of a future. Their aren't enough six-figure jobs in Canadian journalism to keep a modest Porsche shop in business.

In short, journalism is poverty-stricken while billionaires have too much money. It's a marriage made in heaven!

Deep State trumps Biden

It became glaringly obvious during the Trump regime that the office of the POTUS wasn't in charge of actual execution of US foreign policy.

Biden is pushing the draw-down in Afghanistan against the very same cabal of war profiteers and lobbyists who ensured that Trump was stymied on everything they didn't approve.

They were delighted when he gifted the Golan to Israel.

They applauded the assassination of Soliemani.

But God forbid the USA ever turn her back on Afghanistan!

Maybe Joe will prove that it's still the office of the POTUS that calls the shots.

Maybe not.

Canada admits citizens should have guns, because police can't protect them

What other conclusion could you possibly draw from this story?

What possible enemies would a Black kid in "north Halifax" possibly have that would require him (and while we don't talk about it, Black violence is all but exclusively male violence) to carry a handgun on his person?

The perp in this particular story was obviously protecting himself from other Black youths.

I'm not sure what they're talking about with that "north Halifax" shit. I've been hoping Irving gets busy with the sixty billion warship contract soon, because I'm not happy in retirement and would welcome a few years in the shipyard before I die.

So I've been scouting condos in north Halifax... and had no idea the neighbourhood was completely lawless.

Guess the shipyard fantasy just slipped under the waves.

Kamala hectors China while America bows to Taliban

This has to be another example of the Pentagon and the Washington elite assuming our adversaries will die laughing.

How else to explain it?

While the entire world is fixated on images of desperate Afghan collaborators dropping to their deaths from a US Air Force C-17, Kamala is in Singapore threatening China. 

Retardation has never before in history been so retarded.

CBC News explains why they're going down the toilet

We are 15 months into the cultural and social revolution sparked by the murder of George Floyd.

Here is CBC News Editor-in-chief Brodie Fenlon 'splainin' their relentless pursuit of irrelevance; How CBC is diving deeper when it comes to newsroom diversity. 

It appears Brodie still has a ways to go on his path to enlightenment, as that "Editor-in-CHIEF" business is highly problematic in some circles. 

Odd that a pot-addled bumpkin would catch that... maybe CBC should hire me as a Wokeness Coach!

Then again, white folks in positions of influence and privilege generally make fools of themselves when bemoaning "lack of diversity."

One of the startling facts revealed in Brodie's article is that 64% of Indigenous guests on CBC talk about being Indigenous. 

Of course they do! That's why the CBC has them on. It's called "pandering," Brodie. Look it up before you dive any deeper!

Speaking of pandering, one of the few manifestations of the "cultural and social revolution," other than know-nothing millennials vandalizing statues, is the CBC's "Being Black in Canada" feature. 

I had no idea there were so many lonely Black trans kids in small prairie towns. Imagine the scarce resources CBC invested in ferreting out that scoop.

On the other hand, in their zeal to impress their audience with their commitment to diversity, the CBC brainiacs sometimes neglect to mention race at all. 

Take, for example, this story about the leader of the Proud Boys white supremacist terror group, Enrique Tarrio, going to jail for burning a Black Lives Matter banner.

Not a hint in the story that Enrique Tarrio is a Black dude!

Doesn't suit the prevailing narrative

How did sleepy guy win the election when Donny J had all the popular support?

Check out this barometer of popular support; Trump boat parades.

That video is problematic.

First off, how do so many mouth-breathing neanderthal losers, the "deplorables," get to have boats like that?

My hunch is that if you're smart enough to get that boat, you're probably smart enough to see through the media bullshit tsunami that erupted just as Hillary lost in 2016.

Those parades tell me a lot of really smart and successful people actually voted for Trump.

What does that say about America?

The difference between Chinese billionaires and American billionaires

In China, the billionaires function at the pleasure of the state. If and when their interests are deemed incompatible with the interests of the state, bad shit happens. Check out this story from the Wall Street Journal; China hands death sentence to hedge-fund manager. 

In America, on the other hand, government functions at the pleasure of the billionaires. When is the last time you heard about a corrupt "asset manager" getting a death sentence in the USA?

The next time will be the first time. 

Who do you trust more, communists or billionaires?

The American way of forever war, circa 2021

The Nations of Virtue, led as always by the USA, have lost Afghanistan.

What happens now?

Right off the top, the most sycophantic of Uncle Sam's acolytes will join in calling for sanctions against the Taliban. Women and girls and human rights, and all that good stuff. 

The fact that the most vulnerable in Afghanistan, especially women and girls, will bear the brunt of sanctions is not a topic discussed in Western media.

The strategy of using sanctions to brutalise societies we can't defeat militarily has become standard operating procedure for the Nations of Virtue. Wreck a country, and when the locals push you out, clobber them with economic strangulation.

And if at all possible, keep arming and funding whatever rump opposition still opposes the victors. This is crucial for American interests, because when it comes to foreign policy, American interests are determined by the needs of the armaments industry and AIPAC.

Not a policy conducive to a bright future for America or anyone else, in my estimation.

 

Canada's shame

Here's a couple of stories from non-Canuck media that hint we may not be the punch-above-our-weight powerhouse we've been led to believe.

Apparently the leader of that indispensable ally we strive to suck up to the most, Mr. Biden, was too busy last week to answer Justin's phone calls. So instead, PM Fluffy called up Hillary Clinton for guidance. Perhaps not so bad - there's plenty of rumours out there that she's the one pulling Joe's strings anyway, so why not go straight to the top?

At least our military was finally able to get a plane-load of 188 collaborators out of Kabul. That's our first flight out. All our allies have managed multiple flights. The US has done at least seventeen before we did our first.

And what up with only 188 passengers on that C-17, when there's tens of thousands of Afghans desperate to get out? Check out this headline from Air Force Magazine; Kabul evacuation flight sets C-17 record with 823 aboard. 

Well, turns out there's only seat-belts for 188...

Ain't that so Canadian!

Could Biden be worse than Trump?

The American cable news networks have rallied round the banner of American Exceptionalism. MSNBC still fobs most of the blame for the Afghanistan surrender onto Trump, although they're not as keen on Sleepy Joe as they were a week ago.

CNN seems undecided. Their man Joe ain't quite the man they thought he was. They're about 50/50 in assigning blame.

Fox, the semi-official mouthpiece of all things Republican, now has all the proof they need that Biden's been a dementia-riddled husk all along.

But all of them agree that this gigantic sloppy turd the Talibs just left on their exceptionalist carpet has ruined the reputation of the Exceptional Nation everywhere and for all time.

Another boffo stock tip from the pot-addled hillbilly

A few weeks before the BRP (DOO on the TSX) IPO I offered my opinion that the company didn't have much of a future, and equated it with dog poo. 

Wrong again! Not as embarrassingly wrong as I was about Apple, but eight years later DOO is trading approx 400% above issue price. Wish I had more dogshit like that in my portfolio!

BRP has been a fascinating covid story. The stock collapsed at the onset of the pandemic, losing three quarters of its value in the first weeks of the lock-down, and closing below the issue price for the first time in years. That made sense at the time. Who cares about snowmobiles and PWCs in the midst of a deadly pandemic?

Another wrong call! Turns out more people than ever before cared, and BRP ran out of inventory in all categories.

Proving yet again it's not easy making accurate predictions, especially about the future!

Sleepy Joe reads his best speech ever

Especially liked "the buck stops here" bit. While not original, it's at least a faint acknowledgement that the President of the USA is responsible for something.

Not the actual loss of the twenty year war, though; that's on the Afghans themselves. After all we did for them, the feckless cowards just wouldn't stand up to the Taliban. Framed this way, Joe's point is valid; why should Americans fight and die for a country that won't stand up for itself?

This is where Americans miss the mark. The Afghan military understood that they were expected to fight and die, not for their country, but for a corrupt government imposed on them by an occupying power. Far from being feckless cowards, Afghans fought the occupying power for twenty years, and finally prevailed against a coalition of the mightiest Western militaries ever assembled.

Framed that way, the events of the past few days represent a great triumph for Afghanistan. The feckless cowards are the ones who cut and ran.

Bruno Report; plus sundry insights into country living

When we first got Bruno, I felt compelled to provide an update every couple weeks on how he's adapting to his new home. Once it was clear he was transitioning successfully, I didn't have much to write about anymore.

This remains our reality. The lazy mastiff has indeed made a very successful transition. He is extremely at ease in his new home. As I type these words, I can feel his snoring vibrate the floorboards in this 100 year old double-brick farmhouse after he's put himself to bed upstairs. 

And is he ever lazy.

He showed plenty of get-up-and-go last winter. I could do 5k walks with him, no problem. He'd dash through the snow and then flop on his back and slide down the hill.

Now that we've got summer weather, he flops on his back and just lies there.

The Farm Manager has prior experience with mastiffs. She told me you should never walk a mastiff farther than you can carry it home. She got that right!

We had occasion to visit the big city on the weekend for a family get-together. Since it takes us four hours to get there, the hosts took pity on us and let us spend the night. We had the opportunity to spend an evening on an urban stoop.

It was Saturday night. We were in a leafy suburb, but we had something we don't have here at Falling Downs - next door neighbours.

Here at the farm the nearest next door neighbour is a quarter mile away. In the city, they're five feet away. If they want to party to Kool & The Gang at 11:00 o'clock on a Saturday night, your options are limited. 

You can be the asshole who calls in a noise complaint.

Or you can make the best of the situation, and just enjoy your Saturday night.

Which we did, but I gotta say, it was great to get home!

The greatest humiliation in US history

The bolder fringes of the punditocracy are drawing parallels between Saigon 1975 and Kabul 2021. Change up the background a bit, and helicopters departing the embassy roof looks like Kabul is turning out just as bad as Saigon.

They're wrong.

It's way worse than that.

America's technology advantage 75 years ago was awesome enough, but nothing near what it was in Afghanistan. 

The Viet Cong had semi-peer benefactors, Russia and China.

The Talibs have basically one benefactor, from the "shit-hole" part of the map; Pakistan.

And yet, America has thrown in the towel. Conceded defeat.

Lost.

Besides... they got bigger fish to fry. The People's Liberation Army is just spoiling for a fight, and they are a super-dooper threat to the American way of life. So we gotta let bygones be bygones, and not live in the past. Afghanistan would have turned out hunky-dory if the dumb-ass Afghans had been smart enough to figure out their best interests.

The Chinese are smarter, and they will for sure shower us with rose-petals when we lead them to freedom and democracy. Human rights too.

**********

Western media are up a stump on these developments. Blaming Trump is becoming a bit of a shabby gambit. 

The Indispensable Nation and the City on a Hill are up the same stump. Blinken blamed the Afghan people today for "their loss of freedom."

Neither Biden or Blinken or anyone else in America's ruling class is capable of seeing this from Afghanistan's perspective. America's withdrawal and surrender is not a loss of freedom.

It is victory over a foreign invader.

Twenty-thousand Afghan refugees no longer have access to Canadian embassy abandoned in Kabul

Just two days ago I mocked our virtue-signalling goofball PM for announcing 20,000 more visa slots for Afghan collaborators. This generous gesture followed by a full seven years Canada's cutting and running, during which time our government was happy enough to do nothing for those we have abandoned, and comes as the murdering scumbags we once promised to obliterate are overrunning Kabul.

Two days later, Ottawa shutters the Kabul embassy. Canadian staff are being spirited out of country on US military helicopters. Local staff are being abandoned to the tender mercies of the Taliban.

Good luck to ya, fellas, and especially gals. We did all we could, but obviously you didn't try hard enough.

So with the embassy shut down, how are the candidates for those 20,000 "service-to-Canada" visas supposed to get their paperwork in order?

One can't blame them if they see Canadians as opportunistic and dishonourable cowards.

The number one opportunistic and dishonourable coward in this disgraceful PR stunt, designed to deflect attention from years of indifference to the plight of these people, happens to be running for re-election at the moment. 

Justin Trudeau.

Now that we have defeated the Taliban, let us rally our allies to take on the PLA!

Yessirree! The towel-heads 'o terror have been dealt the ultimate defeat; bring on the commies!

After trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives spent, the Nations of Virtue have left Afghanistan a thriving democracy. We must now pivot to Asia, where untold billions await the freedom and human rights that only America and her allies can bestow.

Surely the people of China deserve freedom and democracy at least as much as the people of Afghanistan. We must not, MUST NOT let them down.

America's role as leader of the free world demands nothing less of us.

As Taliban pour into Kabul, Ottawa expands Afghan resettlement program

Canada had already cut and run by the time PM Fluffy got to Ottawa, but he's had six years to do the right thing by the Afghan collaborators we used and abandoned. Putting the matter kindly, he and his government have done next to nothing during that time.

So now that convoys of US Humvees, now owned and operated by the Talibs, are a half hour drive from Kabul, the Liberal humanitarians in Ottawa are suddenly cluing in to the catastrophe. 

Now that it's too late, they're allowing another 20,000 Afghans into Canada!

That's what Justin's gang considers "showing tangible leadership."

The fascist noose tightens

I thought it right sporting of the folks at Apple to check every iPhone for child porn. After all, only somebody with something to hide would object to such a generous offer.

Problem is, once they can look at your pictures, they'll be copying and storing lots more than porn. Did you take some pictures of those impressive pot plants your kid has growing in the back yard? There just might be parties in the big world of law enforcement who would be happy to pay Apple for that kind of information. Apple could give them the whole package, right down to where you live and work and what you do for fun.

At the same time, we've got vaccine passports popping up all over the world. The preferred format being pushed everywhere is for these to be kept on your smart-phone, because everybody takes that with them everywhere all the time anyway, right? And if they don't, they'll want to start soon, because as everyone knows, it'll be so much more efficient and convenient, and only a selfish bastard would refuse to cooperate.

A lot of folks are with the program already. They bank on their phones, pay bills on their phones, pay for their order at the Timmies drive-thru on their phones, leaving a digital footprint with every step they take, and every step becomes "data" that Google or Apple or one of the other techno-fascist overlords can sell as they please.

Or use against you.

It's not hard to imagine that if you're pegged as a trouble-maker, somebody will come and visit you about those pot plants. 

More proof US doesn't require Putin's meddling to make themselves a laughing stock

I don't follow the world of "social media influencers," so perhaps I am mistaken, but I find it hard to believe that a single vaccine-hesitant American would be swayed by this foolishness.

But multitudes around the world will see this as more proof that the Indispensable Nation is well and truly past its best-before date.

German nurse administers fake vaccine; creates golden opportunity for actual science

By now you've probably seen some iteration of this story on your favourite news feed. A Red Cross nurse at a covid vaccination clinic stands accused of administering saline solution instead of an actual vaccine.

What this means to me is that nurse has created a great opportunity to do a real-time study of how her victims fare when compared to a similar cohort who got the real deal.

Hopefully the appropriate authorities will seize the moment.

But I'm not holding my breath. 

 

O'Toole tells Canadians it's not safe to travel to China to traffic methamphetamine

Years of anti-China propaganda in our national media have apparently created a constituency for the drivel currently being spewed by Conservative Party leader and wannabe big dog Erin O'Toole.

Erin is calling for a boycott of the upcoming winter Olympics. Yessiree, we in the Nations of Virtue will be watching the commies closely, because human rights and stuff, and they're using the Two Michaels and the meth trafficker as political pawns. But we're watching them, and we're standing with our allies, the whole world, or at least the US, UK, and Australia, because China plans to take over the whole world with their godless communist ideology. And if they ever make a move on Taiwan, we will stand with our allies and declare war on China. After we defeat China in Taiwan, we will liberate Hong Kong, and Tibet, and because we, the Nations of Virtue, will have by then gifted freedom to the Yellow multitudes, they will shower us with rose petals when we have our victory parade.

Or, we could stop talking moronic, stupid, hallucinatory shit, and figure out how to get along. That starts with sending Meng Wanzhou home, with profuse apologies and some serious financial compensation. That entire episode originated when the Trudeau government was desperately trying to toady up to Trump. 

Fourteen foot aluminum and a 9.9 Merc

That title is so iconic I'm surprised it's not a country song. 

Yet.

The fourteen foot aluminum with the 9.9 was a staple at fishing lodges all over the place back in the day. At least places that had fishing lodges.

You'd even see them on sixteen footers too, or on twelves. A 9.9 on a twelve was a hot-rod! You could seriously get the wind-in-the-hair thing going with that combo!

What was amazing about those old outboards is that they ran forever. If you live around an inland fishing lake today you can no doubt find a fifty year old 9.9 that still runs like new.

Unfortunately, for my purposes, a fourteen foot aluminum with a 9.9 Merc isn't going to cut it. I've been boat shopping for fifty years and haven't bought one yet, but I'm finally able to knock the 14' foot tin boat off the list.

You want a little more than a fourteen foot aluminum if you're boating on Georgian Bay. Saw a nice Regal the other day with twins and a porcelain toilet.

That's more my speed.

Why the pot-addled hillbilly trusts Pfizer

Not that I trust Pfizer. 

Oh, I "trust" them alright. I trust them to do what's best for Pfizer.

But here's the thing. I've read a fairly broad swath of vaccine propaganda, both on the pro and the con sides. On the one hand, you've got a bunch of folks jumping up and down telling you the vaccine is infinitely more deadly than the virus.

On the other hand, you've got your legacy media telling you these vaccines are perfectly safe. Given their track record, I don't put a lot of stock in legacy media.

At the end of the day, in spite of their ethically challenged history, I don't see how it could ever be in Pfizer's interest to kill off a whole bunch of their customers.

Much better to keep you up and about to sell you another booster shot every few months.

Greta's white privilege

Do you ever wonder how the social media icons of our day become social media icons?

Take Greta, for example. A Swedish teen, lacking in the social graces and allegedly smitten with ass burgers, is plucked from obscurity, and overnight becomes the go-to expert on climate change.

Or Malala, youngest Nobel laureate ever. 

And who remembers Little Bana, the Syrian wunderkind revealing to the world the predations of the evil dictator Assad on Twitter in a language she couldn't even speak!

I took a look at their Twitter feeds today. Greta leads the way with 5M followers. Malala is next with 1.9M. Little Bana has almost disappeared, reflecting the West's loss of interest in bringing democracy and human rights to that benighted land, with a mere few hundred thousand followers.

Doesn't look right to me. Say what you will about Bana and her stage-managing mother; at least they had to survive an actual war.

And say what you will about Malala and her stage-manager father; she got shot in the head by the Taliban before she got famous.

And Greta? Well, there's those ass burgers, and the stage-managing parents, and the joy-ride on the five million dollar sailboat... but what price has she paid?

Smells like white privilege to me.

Greta says we're screwed

Greta's been kinda quiet for the past year and a half or so. I guess when you're obsessed with a virus that could kill you tomorrow, you lose interest in the climate crisis that's gonna kill you in twenty or thirty years.

As a result, the climate crisis and Greta have been on the back burner, so to speak. The bad news is, that's about to change.

Greta piped up today on the occasion of the UN climate change panel releasing its latest report, which, sure enough, informs us that we're doomed.

Nothing new, then!

As an aside, I read a story on the weekend about how electricity-intensive the manufacture of solar panels is. China, by far the largest manufacturer of solar panels in the world, has to build new coal-fired power plants just to keep up!

 

Trans driver wins NASCAR race

Ya, I know! I shit myself too!

But it must be true, because I googled it, and Google informed me that trans driver Mike McDowell won a race in 2016.

And then they mention Bubba Wallace. I had no idea!

Check it out for yourself.

What's that?

They're trans-AM drivers????

Oh sheesh... is my face ever red.

Sorry guys.

The Jew who worked for the crazy Iranian

In my personal opinion, Hoonan (not his real name) wasn't "crazy" at all. He was just a guy doing what he had to do to support his family. Hoonan was Iranian, and he ran a fleet of semi-derelict food trucks, which he himself would cheerfully admit to anyone other than a City of Toronto food truck inspector were deathtraps.

The Jew who worked for him was my dear step-daughter. She wanted to explore the big city after high school, and paid her bills from the job she got in one of Hoonan'a trucks.

She was always a caring child, and when she embarked on her four-year journey to get a Sociology degree in "social justice and human equity" we weren't surprised. She kept her student loans to a minimum by keeping up her employment, on a part-time basis, with Hoonan.

What we weren't expecting, is that after graduation, with that York University Sociology degree in hand, she went full-time with Hoonan, because a semi-legit Iranian food truck operator paid better than anything she could get with that York degree.

A couple of years in the bowels of a 130 degree deathtrap, and my dear step-daughter got motivated to get some credentials that would get her out of the food truck.

She's a MSW working in a hospital now. She can pay off her student loans. She doesn't have to work in a death-trap food truck anymore.

But she's still pals with the crazy Iranian.

If your kids can't buy a house, they must have made some poor career choices

I was fooling with some of those "how much mortgage do I qualify for" apps that all the banks have on their websites.

As of now, with current interest rates, a couple making $150k/yr can, according to the banks, afford an $800k house.

How hard is it to make $150,000 a year between two people?

Around here, schoolteachers are crowding the $100k mark. Cops are generally over that point. Unionized construction trades are all in the fifty bucks an hour and up bracket, which means $100k plus per year. Nurses and social workers in hospitals are in that range too.

So if a cement finisher hooks up with a nurse, or a cop hooks up with a teacher, you're looking at $200k annual income. Those folks can afford million dollar homes!

If the teacher hooks up with a dude driving a dump truck for the local gravel baron, or the cop hooks up with a Timmies barrista, they'll still nail the $150 bar and get that $800,000 house.

So what's the problem with your kids?

Iran war; on deck and ready to go

Ya I know, this blog has been predicting imminent war on Iran for ten years, but bear with me. 

There has never been a more opportune time, and when US influence in the region is on the downtick and Iran's has become ever more assertive, it's now or never.

There's no stomach in the US public for more war, but Americans love Israel. That's where the impetus for anti-Iran hostilities has come from since 1979. All that our good friends in the only democracy in the Middle East have to do now is start the war and then the US street will be gung-ho for saving Israel from Iranian aggression.

Fox and CNN will overflow with bemedalled experts who will cry out as one, "we gotta bomb the infidels back to the stone age!"

America will erupt in cheers of USA! USA!

Iran has recently signed a variety of trade and cooperation agreements with other countries on Uncle Sam's shit list. The cooperation agreed to includes military support. I guess we'll see soon how serious Russia and China are about backing Iran.

But aside from that, the Einsteins in the Knesset are dangerously deluded. Even if Uncle Sam does come to the rescue, he won't get there before Hezbollah has launched thousands of missiles at every corner of Israel. We're talking about state-of-the-art here, not that stuff that flies over the Gaza fence.

And what will Uncle Sam save once Israel is bombed back to the stone age?

Breakthrough! Twitter now certified to prebunk fake news!

Here's some great news; Twitter partners with AP and Reuters to battle misinformation on its site. 

No more fake news on Twitter!

Hallelujah!

Finally, a news provider we can truly trust! 

Twitter.

And to think this development comes just a few days after the Reuters-owned Globe and Mail introduced us to the concept of "prebunking." That's where the truth-tellers decide in advance what's bunk and what's not, thereby protecting us from potentially fake news. Truly amazing!

Truth, at least on Twitter, will now be winnowed from bunk by the stalwarts at Associated Press and Reuters.

Hmm...

AP has been all aboard with virtually every disinfo campaign in the history of US journalism, from the Gulf of Tonkin to Saddam's nukes to the derring-do of those bold freedom-loving White Helmets in Syria.

Reuters was deep in thrall to the UK deep state since long before it fell into the hands of the 3rd Baron Thomson of Fleet, the Canadian billionaire with a hereditary peerage in the House of Lords.

Yup, we'll be getting the straight skinny from Twitter now.

Or maybe just a shitload of Anglo-American propaganda duly certified as "truth."

Chainsaws and conspiracy theories

You'd have to be some pathetic excuse of a shmuck to find solace in chainsaws, but I'm there.

I've hit the proverbial rock-bottom, as they say.

It was always clear to me that a Stihl was the superior tool, but now, long past the age of uncertainty, I'm not so sure anymore.

It's a conundrum, to be sure. It's paralyzed me for weeks, if not months...

But here's the good news! All that paralysis left me free to do some of those free-association mind exercises they teach you at mindfulness camp.

Think about where you'd like to be. Then, think about what's blocking your path.

I'd like to be in a place where I can pick up a newspaper or click on a news site and read news, instead of being force-fed the most dreadful goop imaginable. Just as an example, look how far down the toilet that once-esteemed title, The Globe and Mail, has gone.

In hindsight, I think the rot began when Thomson got his hands on it, and that was forty years ago. The rot intensified exponentially when Reuters joined the nest. One of the most influential media empires in the world was now in the hands of a dude who has a hereditary title in the British House of Lords.

That's why The Globe and Mail is compelled to constantly spew the most jingoistic drivel against any possible adversaries of the Anglo-American Empire.

Good theory, eh?

Poulan vs. Stihl revisited

Here's an update on my original Poulan vs. Stihl story from ten years ago.

At the time I was heating with wood, which necessitated spending some serious time in the woods to make sure we didn't freeze. If your saw is going through several tanks of gas per day, the Stihl is the machine for you.

If, however, you only fire up your chainsaw a few times a year, for a half hour at a time, maybe not.

One of the things that's frustrating about my Stihl is that it can be mighty finicky about starting up, especially if it doesn't see regular use. It's not just me. My neighbour has a $1,600 "professional grade" Stihl, and he spends just as much time cursing it as I do my $500 not-quite-professional-grade model.

Last year I spent $150 on a carb rebuild, thinking that would help. It didn't. 

Today I was briefly feeling motivated. My Stihl weed-eater hasn't run since last October, and with only a half hour or so of dinking around I had it purring like a kitten. Only issue is that button in the centre of the cutting head that's supposed to feed out more line doesn't seem to work. Then you have to pry the end off it and feed out more line by hand. A pain in the ass, but at least I got it running.

That success prompted me to take a crack at the saw. After an hour of cursing and at least three dozen pulls on the rope, I was perusing the Home Depot website to see if they have any good deals on chainsaws. That's when I remembered I still have the Poulan Pro Classic. It's been sitting in the corner of the woodshed for ten years, neglected and forgotten.

Cleaned it up a bit, poured in some fresh gas, and that puppy fired up on the third pull! And I'd forgotten how much quieter it is than the Stihl. You can do an afternoon of small trim jobs around the yard and not suffer major hearing loss.

I'm reluctant to say that makes the Poulan a better machine. At the same time, there's a lot to be said for chainsaws that start!

Mennonites at the beach

This is a 15' runabout packed with seven Mennonites having a hell of a good time! You can tell they're Mennonites because the gals are wearing hijabs bonnets. 

C'mon guys! What kind of tomfoolery is this! Did the Lord put you on this earth to have a hell of a good time? I think not. What would Menno say?

One of the fascinating things about Mennonite culture is that there's an awful lot of latitude available re what pleaseth the Lord, and near as I can tell, the whims of the local Bishop determines what'll get you into heaven. 

I spent my growing up years near Elmira, where's there's a plentiful Mennonite community. Depending on your Bishop, you might be allowed the following transportation, ranked from the most fundamentalist to the most liberal Bishop:

- if you're too lazy to walk, or your wife is too worn out to pull the plough, your're allowed a horse

- once of courting age (14) you may pull a wagon behind your horse

- more liberal fundamentalists may permit rubber tires on wagons

- some Bishops, especially in urban areas, may permit motor vehicles, but only in black, and any chrome  finishes must be painted over

- or just keep the chrome

- or, once we're at the extreme liberal end of the spectrum, just drive whatever you want!

And then there's this crew. Drive whatever you want and feel free to tow a boat behind it. The Lord told Noah to build a boat, after all, so towing one down the road shouldn't be a big deal. 

Great sight to see, and God bless you!

- 

Ontario recycles

Of course we do! We were relatively early on the blue-bin bandwagon, if I remember correctly. 

Locally, it's Waste Management Inc. that manages our waste. That subtle yet clever name was chosen by Wayne Huizenga, who built WMI into the biggest recycling company in the world, and it made him so rich he bought the Miami Dolphins, the Marlins, and the Panthers. 

They also collect garbage.

Here they collect the garbage every week, but the recycling only every other week. Today was recycling, so I set out a blue see-through bag, per legal requirements, full of clean glass jars and bottles. I also set out a bag of garbage in a regular green garbage bag.

Got everything out to the curb before seven, like the Township tells us. As fate would have it, I had no appointments, errands, or responsibilities of any kind today, and therefore idled the hours away on the stoop.

Just after noon the WMI truck pulls up. Dude jumps out, throws both bags into the same compactor compartment, and off he goes!

Ontario recycles!