The difference between porch and stoop

I spend a lot of time on the stoop, watching the world go by. Sometimes I write about it. Sometimes, when I’m writing about it, I call the stoop the “porch.” So what’s the difference between porch and stoop? I’ve not consulted Google on the matter, so I could well be wrong, because as we all know, Google is the final arbiter in questions of what is fact and what is not. In my view, there’s no difference whatsoever, other than this. If you’re sitting on the porch, you live in town. If you’re sitting on the stoop, you’re in the country. I’m in the country. We’ve been having way too much rain lately, but unless there’s a robust wind blowing out of the south south-west, I avoid most of it on the stoop. One of the distractions when I’m focused on frogs and buzzards is the traffic on the road between the stoop and the marsh. Not that there’s a lot of it by city standards. A busy Sunday afternoon might see a few dozen cars go by. There’s people driving by where you can hear their car stereo from a mile down the road. I just think, how deafening must that be in the car? Then again, I remember a time when a loud stereo was considered really cool. In fact, when I was department manager for automotive at the K-Mart in the Stone Road Mall, big-ass car stereos were a big seller. That was just around the time the supposed “muscle car craze” of the late sixties morphed into the van craze of the early seventies. Suddenly a 426 hemi was last decade’s news, and a six-cylinder Econoline van was the happening thing. You had to admit the van had some advantages. Trying the oinky-boinky in a Dart GTS with bucket seats, console, and floor shifter wasn’t exactly an erotic experience, and the back seat wasn’t much of an improvement if boinker or boinkee were more than four feet tall. That’s the era when car stereos hit the big time. I recall a hitchhiking trip from Washington to Minnesota back in the van era. Somewhere in North Dakota a couple of long-hairs gave me a lift. They had the 24” woofers blasting Jerry and company full volume. They eventually pulled over to focus on the hash pipe and a lively discussion about whether sound waves could be harnessed to propel a vehicle. Fast forward fifty years, I’m sitting on the stoop here at Falling Downs, and I can hear the thumping bass of an approaching Land Rover that comes by about the same time every day. I figure these are the same bougie twats who muddied the waters on the porch/stoop debate by introducing the backyard “deck.” That was always just a thing that let you set down your drink on a hard surface instead of on the lawn. I’m sitting on the stoop.

"Journalist of the Year" exposed as warmongering dimwit

By happy coincidence, yesterday’s Globe & Mail brought not only the news of Doug Saunders’ prestigious honour, but a fresh op-ed by the Journalist of the Year himself! “NATO’s spending targets are out of touch.” Finally! A long-awaited rebuke to those many American Empire Loyalists given multiple column-inches daily to shame Team Trudeau over our woefully inadequate expenditures on US military kit. Our allies are fast losing faith in us. We are no longer a serious player on the world stage. We must be more like Australia and commit tens of billions to a nuclear-powered submarine fleet to augment the tens of billions earmarked for surface combatants and the hundred or so billions destined for Lockheed Martin’s F-35. Those obsessions are reflected daily in the hysteria over Canada’s failure to meet NATO’s 2% of GDP spending target. Then I read his column. What a buzzkill. Sadly, Doug doesn’t dwell on the obvious - that a country that can’t afford to provide adequate health care and housing for its own citizens has no business pissing away such vast sums in return for a pat on the back from Uncle Sam. No, Doug is writing from a much deeper level of profundity. He has discovered that the very nature of war in the 21st century has changed. “Military spending is now primarily a matter of buying arms and munitions to supply other countries engaged in wars we will not join, rather than building up domestic forces for our own defence.” Got it? We don’t have to spend those hundreds of billions equipping the Canadian Armed Forces, because we face no threats and won’t join in any wars regardless. Instead, we need to spend the money so we can send the weapons to Ukraine and Israel, countries that are fighting very expensive wars on behalf of our shared values. Shared values? In Ukraine, Canada connived in the overthrow of a democratically elected government in 2014, and then participated gleefully in the US campaign of goading the newly-installed nationalist government towards conflict with Russia. In Israel, the values displayed in the slaughter of 14,000 children in six months speak for themselves. Enough with the “shared democratic values” horseshit. Our values, and our spending, must prioritize the needs of Canada’s citizens, not the fantasies of Empire propagandists writing in the pages of the Globe and Mail.

The Israel we knew is gone forever

Like most every kid who came up in a Christian home in the middle decades of the last century, I was raised to have a profound respect for the Jewish people and their long overdue homeland. With the creation of the state of Israel, a land without people for a people without land, biblical prophecies were coming true all over the place! The Six Day War cemented our bond. The hand of God alone permitted the Chosen People to prevail when their massed enemies unleashed a sneak attack on them! In ‘73 we doubled down. Back in the day, Israel was a destination for many idealistic young people who wanted to demonstrate solidarity by spending some time on a kibbutz. Today the idealistic young people prefer to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinians. What changed? One thing that changed is that my generation outgrew the Sunday School propaganda we had marinated in throughout our childhoods. We learned that the land without people actually had people after all. We learned those people had been displaced. The realization slowly dawned on us they remained displaced decades after the fact. The resistance of the displaced people against their displacers began to get serious attention by the late ‘60s. The “terrorism” of the PLO led, in the fullness of time, to the negotiation of the fabled “two-state solution.” The Oslo Accords were to be the first step on the way to that solution. In 1994 PM Yitzak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the Oslo Accords. The following year, Rabin was murdered by a right-wing Jewish religious nutter. The two-state solution died with Yitzak Rabin. The people who killed him now steer the ship of state. There will be no peace. There will be no two-state solution. As progressive Israelis abandon ship, as they have been doing for years and will do with increasing urgency going forward, the land we once idealized will become the preserve of Jewish supremacists determined to cleanse the land of the “Children of Darkness.” Yes, they talk like that. And the greatest democracy in history, the ultimate redoubt of human rights, the City on a Hill shining freedom’s light into the darkness of creeping authoritarianism, the United States of America, with the most powerful military in the history of history, backs up Israel’s genocide in Gaza 100%.

The blessings of moving to Amish country

I wrote about the sub $200k residential listing in Teeswater the other day. A roof and a yard and so affordable almost anybody can buy it. What affordability crisis? What I neglected to mention was the many strategic benefits of moving to Mennonite country. The southern reaches of Grey and Bruce counties, most of Huron and a good part of Perth counties, plus most of Waterloo Region, have multiple old-order Amish and Mennonite communities. In trying times, these are the best neighbours you could ever wish for. When the day comes that one of our tyrannical authoritarian adversaries unleashes a cyber-attack that collapses the power grid, where do you want to be? In a 22nd floor condo in downtown Toronto? Or down the road from a guy who’s never been attached to the grid, whose children sell farm-fresh eggs, fresh-baked pies, vegetables, and farm-made summer sausage at the end of their lane (no Sunday sales, thank you very much)? I stopped in at one of those places, just outside Teeswater, because they had summer sausage on offer. The twelve year old kid asks me if I want a full one or a half. Gimme the big one, I said. The kid disappears in the back room and comes out with something that resembles a fence-post. We did some quick renegotiating. I settled for half of a quarter of the fence-post. My old pal Jim Lippert, may he rest in peace, used to be a auto-shop teacher at the same institution of learning where I was a welding teacher. We used to car-pool from Walkerton to the high school in Owen Sound. He lived in the country and had a side-gig raising chickens, that dropped enough eggs that he supplied several local restaurants. When the laying hens wore out, he’d swap them to an Amish family for a stack of fresh-baked pies. We’d drop off three dozen hens on the way to work, and pick up half-a-dozen pies on the way home. By then every one of those hens was cooked, dressed, and pickled. Like most old-order families, these folks also ran a home business in addition to farming their 100 acre spread. In this case, a sawmill. Lippert was close enough to these folks that he felt comfortable taking me around back to see the operation for myself. In one of my past lives I used to do maintenance welding at sawmills on Vancouver Island, so I know from sawmills. I’d never in my life seen anything like I saw in Zook’s back yard. The biggest draught horse you’ve ever seen in your life is walking around in circles all day, attached to a giant wheel that in turn drives innumerable shafts and pulleys, which in turn drive, among many other things, a saw blade that would be at home in any industrial West Coast sawmill. Zook’s workforce seems to be mostly barefoot teenage boys in straw hats. Zook’s operation ain’t gonna miss a beat when the grid goes down. I rest my case.

Affordable housing

Don’t you love those real estate ads that start with “ideal for investors and first-time buyers?” They’re admitting right off the tee that they’re pitting first-time buyers against somebody looking to expand their “portfolio.” Of course they are. They’re paid by the home-owner to get maximum price for their property. Whether it goes to a family starting out or some guy buying the 17th income property for their portfolio isn’t their concern. My dear father, who was in the business for about a hundred years, liked to say; “if somebody bought it, it was obviously affordable.” Hard to dispute that. And there’s a lot more affordable real estate out there than people realize. Problem is, there’s a huge cohort who have convinced themselves they need to be in the GTA. Alrighty then! You can settle for $2000/month for a basement studio, or look a little further afield for affordable housing. I keep an eye on the market around here, and there’s a habitable place on offer right now in Teeswater for under $200k. Definitely a starter, but a roof and 66x132 of real estate. That’s a mere two hour commute to the GTA! Invest a sliver of your accommodation savings in a Tesla twin-motor, and you can probably cut that commute time in half! And here’s a current listing in Owen Sound, two hours out of the GTA. A 19th century townhouse that would be a million in downtown Guelph and at least two million near downtown Toronto. In downtown Owen Sound, a short walk from the waterfront and the farmer’s market, you’re under 300k. Back in the day, people used to go to where the jobs were. That’s how my clan got to Canada, and that’s why we have Newfies clear across the land. Today, there seems to be an expectation that everyone is entitled to a cozy life wherever they please. Who’s going to break the news to the Gen Zs and the millennials that things don’t work that way?

Woke CBC snubs wheelchair athlete

I was curious how things went down at the Boston Marathon. Not that I’m a runner, but I know at least a dozen people who have at one time or another made it a bucket list thing to run the Boston Marathon. By and large I’m not crazy about those people; they mostly come off as snobbish and condescending towards non-runners. Anyway, it’s always interesting to see if maybe a Canadian made a good showing. I scan the men’s results. No Canucks in the top ten. I scan the women’s results. No Canucks in the top ten. I scan the wheelchair results. Holy heck, we got us a Canadian on the leaderboard! Josh Cassidy! A 39 year old wheelchair athlete who has competed for Canada in so many elite events I’ll just refer you to his Wikipedia page. This is a dude who won the wheelchair at the 2012 Boston Marathon! And the 2010 London Marathon! At 39 years old, he finishes in the top ten! That’s a story! So here’s the main page CBC story on the Boston Marathon. The top two Canadians in the women’s category used to run on back roads around Thunder Bay! They arrived at the finish line 15 minutes after the winner. Ok, but so what? Why is this the CBC’s Boston Marathon story? Doesn’t the 8th place in the wheelchair cat trump being 15 minutes behind in the women’s category? I am truly confused by CBC’s diversity policies. Granted, there apparently weren’t any trans or non-binary folks to write about, and all concerned are, unfortunately, white, but focusing on two able young women at the expense of a 39 year old dude in a wheelchair strikes me as both ableism and ageism. Explain yourself, Brody!

Mass graves discovered at Gaza hospital after retreat of "most moral army in the world"

Most moral army in the world? That pungent flower of PR supremacy is wilting fast. Most of us who follow these things are so relieved the face-off between Iran and Israel has been tamped down, at least for now, that we’ve almost forgotten Gaza. But the genocide continues. The death toll has passed 34,000. Gazans, especially the youngest and most vulnerable, are starving to death - if they live long enough. And let’s not be deluded about why they are starving. The food that would prevent their starvation rots in tractor-trailers that sit at the gates of Gaza, while Israel slow-walks aid via 1001 petty obstructions. Al Jazeera is the only major news source available in the West that reports out of Gaza without Israeli censorship. That’s why you can’t hope to be reliably informed if you limit yourself to BBC/CBC/CNN/MSNBC/Fox. The “mighty Wurlitzer” of American Empire propaganda ensures we see only the side of the story that is convenient to the Empire. The story we were treated to today was that Israel’s retaliation against Iran demonstrated Israel’s strategic dominance. The Iranians were cowed into standing down, and global nuclear war was averted. Whew! Here’s a more plausible scenario. While we were told the first Iranian direct attack on Israel in history was an abject failure, the reality seems to be somewhat different. We were told 99% of incoming was taken down by a combination of Israel and its allies. We now know some missiles got through the various defences and hit at least three strategic military targets. That was a wake-up call for at least some of the senior IDF guys who don’t pull their strategies out of 3,000 year old religious texts. That’s why Israel’s response was, in the words of Itmar Ben Givr, Minister of National Security and far-right religious nutter, “lame.” It’s comforting that their are some sane folks left at the top of the IDF. Whether they can prevent the Greatest Leader since Moses taking the country into the abyss remains to be seen.

Why we can't build sh#t

For well over two years, Canadian officials, from the PM to various senior ministers to the top guns in the Canadian Armed Forces, have been blowing smoke up Zelensky’s arse about standing with Ukraine for as long as it takes with whatever it takes. The pathetic reality is, aside from words of encouragement, we ain’t got nothin’ in quantities that will make a difference, and we can’t produce anything because we’ve spent the past fifty years destroying our own industrial capacity. Compare that to what we used to be capable of. During the WWII, Canada built over 4,000 naval vessels in five years, with a population of roughly a quarter of what we have now. Contrast that to our current shipbuilding prowess. In 2008 the federal government announced a plan to replace the Halifax-class frigates built in the ‘80s and ‘90’s. It’s now 2024 - WWII could have been fought three times over in that span! How many of the new ships have been built? Why, none, of course! And don’t get your hopes up about seeing any until at least the mid 2030s, more likely the 2040s - if we’re lucky. So what went wrong? There’s a fascinating essay on view at The Atlantic right now, exploring the demise of Boeing. The iconic American company has gone from the pinnacle of the global aviation industry to a laughing stock whose products have become know for dropping random parts from 30,000 feet, or worse. Jerry Useem pins the blame on how finance capital has gradually subsumed the economy. Old-school industrialists like Walter Chrysler, Henry Ford, and Bill Boeing eventually were supplanted by a managerial class that put quarterly profits above any and all other considerations. That was part of a broader shift in societal attitudes. In the ‘50s the US had a top marginal tax rate on high earners of 90%. Seems outrageous by today’s standards, but there were jobs aplenty, people who worked in factories could afford to buy houses and cars, and rich people were still rich, although not by the obscene standards that prevail today. Manufacturers took pride in building stuff that worked well and lasted. In those days the guy who designed a washing machine that lasted twenty years was celebrated. Today the ethos is; only an idiot would build such a thing when you can push a new one on the consumer every five years. The old-timey “social contract” was jettisoned along the way. Employers were responsible only to their share-holders and had no obligations whatsoever to the communities they operated in. “Free trade” ramped up the disintegration. Why pay a worker in Guelph twenty bucks an hour when a peon in Guadalajara will do the job for twenty bucks a week? Along the way the working classes were bamboozled into believing our “dirty industrial jobs” would be replaced by some “new economy” that would “lift all boats,” as the experts assured us. We’re still waiting. War on unions became a fashionable thing. Thatcher took on the mine-workers. Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Peter Pocklington destroyed the union at Gainers. In every case the destroyers were celebrated in the pages of our leading media organs. Fuck the workers - they’ll drink themselves to death soon enough! Fast-forward to the here-and-now. Zelensky’s standing at the door with his begging bowl. The war we goaded him into has, at horrific costs in human lives, demonstrated the bankruptcy of our new and improved economic model. The Russians alone have greater industrial capacity than the combined West. The $90 billions congress just approved isn’t going to Ukraine; it’s going to the US military-industrial complex, there to be pissed away on $6k artillery shells the Russians produce for $600, and their North Korea allies for even less. That, in brief, is how we got here. The lesson is this; countries that deindustrialize would be wise to avoid industrial-scale warfare.

How to tell when we hit Peak Woke

You’ve probably seen this story. Dude in Ontario comes to the realization that he’s actually not a dude, but not a woman either. He’s non-binary! That’s not the first time somebody couldn’t make up their mind, but here’s why this story made the news. Ontario’s public health plan, OHIP, covers transition surgery. Whether your looking for a vaginoplasty or an addadictomy, OHIP’s (ie the taxpayer) got you covered. Sounds plenty accommodating to me, but get this; Dude wanted the vaginoplasty, but also wanted to keep his penis, just in case! OHIP balked. This was a bridge too far, even for the wokees at OHIP. OHIP does not fund “experimental” procedures. Hence the court action. I thought this story so out there I didn’t comment on it the time. It just begs for ridicule. The jokes are so obvious… double dipping… having your cake etc… having it both ways… No, best just to ignore it. Meanwhile, Dude is off in Texas having his dreams come true. Apparently OHIP will pay the tab after all. Human rights! Today I’m having lunch with a guy who survived prostate cancer. “My doctor at Sunnybrook, a top-shelf surgeon, wanted to try an innovative procedure. OHIP ruled it “experimental. I’m not a wealthy man, and I had to pay $23,000 out of my retirement funds because OHIP refused!” You can see why he’d be pissed off! If society is not yet at “peak woke,” you just gotta pray we’re getting really close.

Why I'd rather watch the birdfeeder than the budget speech

I used to care, but things have changed. Mostly what’s changed is once you’ve heard a certain number of these, like a half-century’s worth, you begin to discern a pattern; nothing ever turns out! And it’s never the fault of anyone in Ottawa! This year’s budget was focused big time on housing. In 2015, the year Team Fluffy was first elected, there was a best seller out on the Canadian housing crisis. It was a real and visible thing in 2015. The Liberals spent the next eight years turbo-charging the crisis with the most counterproductive policies imaginable. Idiocies abound. Conestoga College over a few years went from having a few hundred foreign students to 30,000. The temporary foreign worker program expanded from it’s origins of bringing in cheap labour for Canadian farmers, to bringing in cheap labour to staff Tim Hortons franchises. And for years, Team Trudeau maintained a pathway to paradise open at Roxham Road for the convenience of anyone from anywhere with the initiative to make it that far. All these people have to live somewhere! Until about six months ago, making that observation got you branded a racist xenophobe. When the political consultants and pollsters suddenly realized three-quarters of voters now met that definition, the Liberal Party took notice. Hence the sudden compassion for the millions of Canadians priced out of the housing market, largely by government policy! I whole-heartedly applaud any initiative to build affordable housing, but if the last fifty budget speeches are anything to go by, don’t get your hopes up.

Trading the 24/7 infotainment circus for the simple pleasure of watching buzzards cavort in the skies

I've been working on a gradual withdrawal from screen addiction. I haven't watched Al Jazeera for 48 hours straight, until tonight, so obviously I'm making some progress. Guess I would have made more if I'd refrained from clicking on it tonight, but, baby steps! Not that there wasn't plenty of juicy news over the weekend. You could have gone to Al Jazeera for the latest dead-babies-in-Gaza update, and of course they'd be all over the Iran strike on Israel. On US sites you were more likely to encounter speculation about what might transpire when Trump shows up at the first of his pending 91 criminal trials in New York on Monday. Over the past few days I've had more stoop time than screen time. The turkey buzzards, or vultures if you will, are either roosting in the barn or somewhere close by, because every day you can see at least a dozen playing in the skies overhead. A soaring sailing gliding buzzard is poetry in motion. Stoop time is infinitely more rewarding than screen time.

Why Canada urgently needs to break away from US dominance and chart its own course

Have you noticed the uptick in msm hysteria about Canada's deficit in military spending? To hear the top knobs at CBC and The Globe and Mail tell the tale, Canada has become the laughing stock of NATO, the Western Alliance, the Nations of Virtue, etc etc und so weiter, due to our failure to meet the diktat that 2% of GDP be spent on "defense." And in our half-assed way, we have tried to pacify the criticisms by promising untold billions in future spending on US war kit, from F-35s to submarines to long-range missiles. It's time to back away from the America-uber-alles agenda. The wars in Ukraine and Israel are showing the entire world the limits of American power. American power can't save Ukraine from Putin and it can't stop the Israeli genocide in Gaza. America has been a bully for a long time, and its bluff is finally being called by a coalition of "adversaries" who have been fine-tuning their hypersonic missile technologies while the US military was focused on fine-tuning their pronoun protocols. In short, the American empire we slavishly support is in serious, obvious, and, absent an abrupt change of course, terminal decline, while the rest of the world is finally coming together to say 'NO THANKS.' We can continue to "stand with our allies" by mortgaging our grandchildrens' future for fighter jets and nuclear submarines, or we can invest in housing, education, and health care instead. It's not about values. The "values" of the Western bloc permit the torment of Julian Assange even as we profess to value free speech. Our values permit the Gaza genocide even as we proclaim our defence of human rights. As Canadians, let us collectively say no the siren call of "standing with our allies," and instead, say yes to building more public housing, and providing health care and clean water to communities in need. We have a choice. Commit billions to "standing with our allies," ie the American Empire. Or spend those billions meeting the needs of Canadians.

Canada needs to urgently reassess its geopolitical priorities

Have you noticed the uptick in msm hysteria about Canada's deficit in military spending? To hear the top knobs at CBC and The Globe and Mail tell the tale, Canada has become the laughing stock of NATO, the Western Alliance, the Nations of Virtue, etc etc und so weiter, due to our failure to meet the diktat that 2% of GDP be spent on "defense." And in our half-assed way, we have tried to pacify the criticisms by promising untold billions in future spending on US war kit, from F-35s to submarines to long-range missiles. It's time to back away from the America-uber-alles agenda. The wars in Ukraine and Israel are showing the entire world the limits of American power. American power can't save Ukraine from Putin and it can't stop the Israeli genocide in Gaza. America has been a bully for a long time, and its bluff is finally being called by a coaltion of "adversaries" who have been fine-tuning their hypersonic missile technologies while the US military was focused on fine-tuning their pronoun protocols. In short, the American empire we slavishly support is in serious, obvious, and, absent an abrupt change of course, terminal decline, while the rest of the world is finally coming together to say 'NO THANKS.' We can continue to "stand with our allies" by mortgaging our grandchildrens' future for fighter jets and nuclear submarines, or we can invest in housing, education, and health care instead. It's not about values. The "values" of the Western bloc permit the torment of Julian Assange even as we profess to value free speech. Our values permit the Gaza genocide even as we proclaim our defence of human rights. As Canadians, let us collectively say no the siren call of "standing with our allies," and instead, say yes to building more public housing, and providing health care and clean water to communities in need. We have a choice. Commit billions to "standing with our allies," ie the American Empire. Or spend those billions meeting the need of Canadians.

Canadian election interference inquiry exposes Trudeau's Communist sympathies

The present inquiry, which is well into its third month, is turning out to be one heck of a nothingburger. So far, what we know for sure is that China may have tried something. They may not have; we don’t know for sure, but… The tempest was triggered when disgruntled CSIS types leaked some internal documents to friends in the media. These showed that CSIS had strong confidence that China may have attempted to influence elections, and Justin Trudeau wasn’t showing sufficient enthusiasm for their hypothesis. After much hectoring from media pundits, the government announced an official inquiry, and here we are. Inquiry promoters no doubt saw an opportunity to use these undertakings as a platform to denigrate our adversaries. You know; those totalitarian states that want to subvert our democracy. To put it politely, much of what has been revealed has been thin gruel. MP Michael Chong was targeted in an intimidation campaign orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party because of his outspoken criticism of the Uyghur “genocide.” He was especially vulnerable because he still had family in Hong Kong. Turns out Chong didn’t know anything about the intimidation campaign till he read about it in the Globe and Mail. His family in Hong Kong didn’t have an inkling till they heard about it from him. In other words, if there was such a campaign, it was an epic fail! Then again, the CSIS level of confidence re China “may” have done something tells me they’re equally confident they may not have. As for that Uyghur genocide, the Uyghurs are one of the lobby groups that got official standing at the Inquiry. Like every other lobby group with standing, they have been funded generously by US and its allies over decades. This includes the Falun Gong, that ersatz Buddhist cult that hates homos and feminists but hates commies even more. That’s good enough for the Nations of Virtue! As long as you hate the commies most, you’re golden in our books! And the worst of it is they’ve given the PM they hate a golden opportunity to look like a responsible leader by pushing back against this imbecility.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland just made Canada's housing crisis worse

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is more than the two roles we most often associate with; being Fluffy's brain, and being a Ukrainian Freedom Fighter. She's also our Finance Minister! Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland today announced measures that would enable more first-time buyers to get into the housing market. Hmm… so demand will go up. And how are we doing on the supply side? Not so great... How's that for astute fiscal management! This measure, intended to alleviate the housing affordability crisis, can’t possibly do anything other than make it worse. Mind you, it’s bound to be a very modest increase in demand. Raising the RRSP limit on what you can withdraw for a down payment from $35k to $60k will impact an infinitesimal number of people. How many twenty of even thirty-somethings have $60k in RRSPS? Likewise, raising the limit on the housing savings account to $8k per year only helps people who can save that much in these hyper-expensive times. This is a PR exercise designed to create the illusion that Team Trudeau is “doing something” about the housing crisis. They are. They’re exacerbating it. What they should be doing is what government used to do from the fifties right into the nineties - build affordable rental housing. Governments own lots of land and control the approval process. There are no excuses.

How much honest reporting is too much?

I’m happy to report my Al Jazeera screen time has been whittled down to a half hour per day. I couldn’t take it anymore. Six months into the Gaza war, Israel’s invasion has claimed the lives of 14,000 children, and Al Jazeera has shown me every dead child at least twice. Talk about overkill! Al Jazeera is one of the very few networks that has had reporters on the ground in Gaza, working independently of IDF oversight, and that makes it a valuable source of information on what’s really going on. They must have some quid-pro-quo worked out with the Americans. You can be pro-Hamas and anti-Israel, so long as you are a reliable ally of the US Empire when covering Russia, China, and Iran. Al Jazeera adheres to the deal slavishly. Putin’s genocide in Ukraine. Israel’s genocide in Gaza. There must be some cognitive dissonance around the fact that the evil Putin, the Butcher of Bucha, has only managed to kill 600 Ukrainian children in two years of full-scale, unprovoked, illegal, brutal, genocidal war. For at least the first full year of the Ukraine war it was just about the only thing you saw at Al Jazeera. Gaza is all you see since October 7. The first has maybe 500,000 -600,000 casualties. The second, perhaps 125,000. There are ongoing wars in Africa that have casualties in the millions. We rarely hear much about them, not on Al Jazeera or anywhere else. In any event, I can’t do anything about any of those wars, other than voice my opposition on whatever platform is available to me. That’s why I’m scaling back my screen time. I feel much better after a walk in the woods and a few hours on the stoop watching the birds and listening to the frog choir singing all day long in the marsh across the way.

How to fix Canada's military recruitment crisis: temporary foreign workers!

Sooner or later the nabobs in Ottawa will have to face reality re their issues with CAF recruitment. As the drumbeat for more war ramps up, we Canadians are inundated every day with scary stories about how we really really have to spend many billions more on US military kit or else risk the distain of our allies. Spending money is easy. Getting new recruits to sign on, not so much. I could propose some suggestions for why this might be the case. Since Fluffy’s band of wokelings swept into power in 2015, there’s been a vendetta against senior CAF leadership. One after another, top guys who have devoted to the CAF their entire careers have seen their careers destroyed because of an inappropriate ass-grab during basic training 40 years ago. To be sure, I’m not for inappropriate ass-grabs. There’s no place for that anywhere. Any hint of sexual impropriety needs to be dealt with promptly and publicly. Dealing with it decades later doesn’t have any deterrence impact other than deterring potential officer candidates from pursuing a career with an organization that is all to happy to hang them out to dry if the winds of wokery demand it. In dealing with their recruitment crisis, the wokelings have decreed that the CAF dress code will now permit gender-confused recruits to pick their uniforms from either the male or female catalogue. That sounds great from a diversity and inclusion perspective, but seriously, how many gender-confused people are going to enlist in the CAF in the first place? I haven’t done any scientific research on the matter, but I’m guessing the number is very close to zero. So, regrettably, Canada has no options other than what we do to fill the jobs in all the other fields where Canadians don’t want to do the work. Fruit-picking in Ontario orchards. Harvesting vegetables in BC’s delta farmlands. Pouring coffee at Tim Hortons drive-throughs clear across the land… the list goes on and on and on. Obviously, it’s time to add “defending Canada” to the list of things Canadians don’t want to do.

Fear and loathing on the Porsche Canada website

Every Saturday morning the Farm Manager and I foray into town to breakfast at the European Bakery. We come out with a "Bruno box" of breakfast leftovers. I always feel a bit guilty because I know there's folks in town who wished they had the breakfast Bruno gets. We take the Bruno box out to the parking lot and let the big boy out of the car. What my dog just ate would keep a ravine dweller fed for three days. But what am I supposed to do? Leave the Bruno box at the edge of the ravine? But anyway, I don't want to make this into a political rant. Back to the story; while Bruno is chowing down, I notice there's a dog in the vehicle parked next to us. Looks like a Scottie, and he's sitting very well behaved on the console. Here's where it gets fucky. Behind him, there's a cat roaming back and forth across the back seat. A CAT!! How often do you see a cat free-ranging in a car? Like, NEVER?! Then I notice, holy shit, all the windows are shut tight. Who in their right mind leaves pets in a car with all the windows rolled up? Next thing I notice is I'm parked beside a Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid. I get it! You can keep the windows cranked shut but your magical EV still circulates fresh air to your pets! Wow! And here we've been keeping the windows cracked open when we leave Big-lips Bruno in the car. The Porsche will also keep the air cool, with the windows shut, even on the hot summer days. So I figure I should get me one of those. I go to the Porsche Canada website. Hmm... the base model starts at $112,000. All the utility of my Toyota without the stigma of affordable price! Plus, you can leave your pets in the car with the windows rolled up!

Spring has sprung at Falling Downs - the buzzards are back

Today I noticed buzzards overhead as I was out on my walk. About eight or so. We'd seen some last weekend when we were in Omemee (hometown of Neil Young, as I learned), but that's a little south of here. Towards evening we had a few hanging around the barn, where they've roosted in years past. I also, for the first time this year, hear frogs singing when I step out on the stoop for a breath of fresh air. And the hootin' and tootin' of the Sandhill Cranes has been going on for a few weeks now. The wee birds are coming back too. Some of them overwintered near our birdfeeders. That's not a good strategy because we are not reliable hosts in the winter... which is retarded when you think about it. Why would you fill your feeders religiously in summer, when there's plenty to eat, and neglect them in the winter? Because it's too friggin' cold to sit on the stoop watching the birds in winter, that's why!

NATO must send troops to Ukraine, or face catastrophic defeat

Here’s a stunning revelation from old-school American Empire Uber Alles warhawk Edward Luttwak. This is a dude who used to get his opinion bits into the NYT and the WSJ whenever he wanted. The fact you’re now reading him on UK alt news websites tells us he’s pissed off some powerful people. That totally boosts his credibility in my estimation. Enough with my two cents. Here’s Luttwak’s essay; It's time to put NATO troops in Ukraine. That sure would put Canada up a stump, eh? We can’t even hit recruitment numbers when we’re clearing snow and fighting forest fires. Who’s gonna sign up to get vaporized by a 2000lb Russian glide bomb for… Ukraine? These past few years have seen a great remake of the CAF. Instead of the old-timey shit like following orders and stuff, the Forces have been remade into a safe space where you are welcome to explore and develop your unique personality. The new approach has yet to goose recruitment, so Canada will once again be humiliated in front of our NATO allies. Well, better to be humiliated in front of our allies than be vaporized…

If NATO has kept the peace in Europe for 75 years, why is there war in Ukraine?

The title of Murray Brewster’s CBC story yesterday was confusing; NATO at 75: Is Canada losing its grip on the world's greatest military alliance? In what sense was NATO ever in Canada’s grip? Is this just another example of state media feeding the delusion that we’re a really big deal on the world stage? Here’s another head-scratcher from CBC, this one a quote from Chrystia Freeland; US 'unable to step up' on Ukraine aid, leaving Canada to fill the gap. Yup, who needs the Americans when Canada’s got your back? What rubbish! Any reasonable assessment about who’s who in NATO would conclude that it’s Uncle Sam who has NATO in his grip, and the other 31 members merely follow instructions issued from Washington. As for gap-filling, there’s substantially more of that coming from countries other than Canada while congress demonstrates the dysfunctional nature of the World’s Leading Democracy. The CBC interview with Freeland that CBC aired this morning reminded me yet again what an accomplished bullshitter the woman is. She takes the tone of a school marm getting pissy with a not-too-bright grade 2 class because she’s having to explain something for the third time. Mostly what she was explaining was there wouldn’t be any actual answers to the questions she was being asked. For most of the past two years we’ve been hearing over and over that Ukraine will prevail. Just a few more months and a few more billions. That’s now become a few years and a few more hundreds of billions. As we celebrate NATO’s 75 years of “keeping the peace in Europe,” the harsh reality is that NATO gravely miscalculated by expanding relentlessly eastward. Russia has been warning for at least 15 years that would lead to war, but we dismissed their concerns and kept pushing. And now we’re in the soup, so to speak. The “sanctions from hell” that were to reduce the ruble to rubble have hurt Europe much more than Russia, which is producing armaments far faster than what the combined industrial capacity of NATO is capable of. But since “we can’t allow Putin to win,” we have no option but to stay the course… another ten years and a few trillions, and victory will be ours!

Canada: the little country that can't

The rank incompetence of our leadership class is a terrifying wonder to behold. Apparently we want to be a global leader in EV technology. To that end, we’ve promised tens of billions in subsidies to various foreign companies to manufacture EV batteries in Canada. And yes, we do in fact have substantial critical mineral resources to build those batteries - in the ground! A lot of those mineral reserves are in the “Ring of Fire” zone in northern Ontario. An outfit called Noront Mining first proposed to develop the area in 2003. Step one is the construction of a road. Twenty-one years later there is no road. Recall that this is a country that was able build a coast to coast cross-country railway in about ten years… but that was a century and a half ago! That’s “progress” for you! And nobody’s more progressive than Team Trudeau. But don’t blame the Liberals. Ineptitude within our ruling elite is a bipartisan affair. Don’t get me started on the train wreck that is the Canadian Armed Forces. Forget about manufacturing our military needs here in Canada. The political leadership can’t even figure out how to buy equipment, never mind building it. That was evident in the Big Steve era, but it’s exponentially worse under PM Fluffy. I suspect a big part of the reason is because, since 2015, the politicians in charge have made Job 1 “changing the culture” of the CAF rather than ensuring we have a competent and well-equipped military. I could go on and on; the made-in Ottawa housing crisis, the years-long debacle of a non-functional federal payroll computer system, the $54 million Arrivecan ap that was budgeted at $80 thousand, the doctor shortage, nursing shortage, teacher shortage… Strategic ineptitude by our technocrats in Ottawa is over the moon! That why the funniest thing I read in my Globe all week was a Thursday op-ed by Canadian political heavyweights Allan Rock and Lloyd Axworthy; “Canada can help establish an international protective force in Gaza.” Here’s the money quote; “Even if we cannot contribute Canadian personnel (which we cannot), we can provide valuable help with planning, logistics, communications, and equipment.” Hilarious!

Is Trudeau finally getting something right on the housing file?

There’s been a flurry of Fluffy announcements of late about our housing crisis. The last one I heard was $15 billions to subsidize the mortgages of 30,000 rental apartment units over the next ten years. In 2015, Canadian author Hilliard MacBeth published a book called “When the Bubble Bursts; Surviving the Canadian Real Estate Crash.” A few months later Justin Trudeau became PM. The real estate market follows the laws of supply and demand. When more people want housing, there is upward pressure on price, whether you’re renting or buying. As Hilliard argues in his book, supply and demand were out of sync well before 2015. When PM Fluffy came in, he opened the floodgates for foreign students and foreign workers. In 2015, the average house price in Canada was about $400k. Today it’s over $700k. In 2015, the population of Canada was 35 million and change. We just passed 41 million. Along the way, the building industry has been plodding away at roughly 200,000 starts per year. Do the math. When you build 1.8 million units while increasing the population by 6 million, you’re completely destroying the demand/supply equation. That’s why the crash MacBeth predicted nine years ago has not happened yet. In conclusion, the Liberal’s goosing the supply side with incentives, while also restricting demand by reining in student and temp worker numbers, is clearly a step in the right direction. But we have a long, long way to go.