What if there's no "happy ending?"

One thing we generally take for granted here in the Nations of Virtue, is that the story always culminates in a “happy ending.” At least a happy ending for us. No matter how many towelheads die, as long as we killed more of them than they of us, it’s a happy ending! Unfortunately, reality is kicking the shit out of our ‘happy ending’ fantasies. No matter how hard establishment twats like Timothy Snyder try to paint the Ukrainian pig with lipstick, the fact remains that, almost three years in, NATO is losing its proxy war on Russia, Too bad half a million Ukrainians had to die to prove NATO’s ineptitude and incompetence. To say nothing of another million or so crippled either physically or mentally in this disastrous war we pushed Ukraine into. And then there’s the Holy Land front in America’s desperate attempt to keep top spot in the world order. The perennial favorite of American largesse, the only democracy in the middle east, isn’t winning in Gaza, isn’t winning in the West Bank, and isn’t winning in Lebanon. How much “not winning” do you acknowledge before you admit you’re losing? It gets harder by the day to imagine a happy ending...

Have you heard Trump is the new Hitler?

I’ll bet you have, and I’ll further bet you’ll hear it plenty more in this last week, as America’s Democracy Theatre approaches its denouement. At least till ‘28, but don’t worry, the campaigning for the next election will begin before all the votes are counted for this one. Democracy is not only a sacred trust and a gift from God; it is a cash cow, a viable industry in its own right. Just think of how many people would be out of work if we didn’t have a 10 billion dollar election every four years! If Trump wins and cancels all future elections, whatever will those hordes of election consultants do? Well, here is the beauty of Trump’s plan, and I’m sure Hitler would approve. While he’s cancelling all future elections, Trump will simultaneously deport millions of illegal alien agricultural workers. All those freshly unemployed social science grads who used to make the wheels of democracy go round, will now be picking your fruits and vegetables! Nevermind Hitler; this page is straight outta Mao’s Little Red Book, the page where he sent the intelligentsia to the hinterlands to… pick fruits and vegetables! And also to learn some humility. Truth be told, those who survived their re-education were stronger for it, proving again the old adage; “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” So rest easy, all you hand-wringing, pearl-clutching American yuppie liberals; if Trump don’t kill ya, you’ll come out stronger! Stay strong!

Stop blaming Israel for the genocide in Gaza

The Israel of Netanyahu today can be likened to a mad dog terrorizing its neighborhood. As any responsible dog owner can tell you, dogs are not inherently vicious. They are made to be vicious by the actions of their irresponsible masters. It should surprise no one that reports of antisemitism worldwide have spiked in the year since Israel launched its rampage. What baffles me is the absence of a corresponding spike in anti-Americanism. America is, after all, the master of this mad dog terrorizing the Middle East. It provisions the bombs and the bullets, the money and the political cover that enable the ongoing genocide. America could, if it so chose, put its attack-dog back on the leash. Instead, we have watched for over a year as they play a pathetic charade of pretending to work, tirelessly, “night and day,” to secure an ever-elusive ceasefire. Everybody from UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield to Kamala to Blinken to Genocide Joe himself have assured us over and over again how their hearts break over all those dead babies in Gaza. Bullshit! It’s time for people of goodwill to stop yelling at the dog and take the matter up with its owner.

You can't bullshit welding

Like you can a lot of professions. I spent 25 years as an "educator." Bullshit can take you a long way in that arena! Not so with welding. That trailer hitch you welded to the frame of somebodies pick-up is either gonna stay put or cause a bad headline in the local paper. With that in mind, let's take a trip down memory lane. From the archives: Hermeneutics of the welding shop We finally got Bubby into a home.Just temporarily though. She's recovering from a broken wrist on account of her last fall.That's just one of the shit-sucking side-dramas of getting older. You fall. You break stuff.You're in a home.So a couple years ago my old pal Tom had a tree fall and break the roof of his cabin on an island in the middle of a lake out in the Muskokas. Tom and I go way back to when he was an up-and-coming young academic and I was accidentally parked in a fourth year sociology course at the U of G.In fact, we go back even further than that.When I was an up and coming welder-fitter at Kearney National in Guelph, I'd often see Tom handing out commie propaganda at the plant gates. That was common around Guelph in the middle '70s. After all, the Communist Party of Canada got its start in a barn off the Silvercreek Road just behind the General Electric plant.One thing I profoundly respect about the Bubbinator is that all her clan, at least the ones who managed to dodge the death camps in the WW II, came away dyed-in-the-wool commies. Then they washed up on these shores and became entrepreneurs.Capitalists.It's a crazy fucked-up thing, but when you talk to elderly Jews you'll find a lot of heart-felt respect for socialist ideals, no matter how rich their families got playing the entrepreneurship game in the New World.The reason so many got into the entrepreneur game was because that was the most viable path open to them, especially if you arrived here from Russia or Poland without the benefit of a serious education. Interestingly enough, most of your Jewish entrepreneurs who made it big in the New World came from Eastern Europe where they were denied education opportunities.By contrast, up till the Nazi era, German Jews were, as a class, the most educated Jews and the most educated Germans in all of Europe.But I digress.Tom was in a bit of a flap about fixing the roof of his shack out there on his island in the middle of the Muskokas. He was ready to call in a contractor.Here's something you might want to know about contractors in the Muskokas.First of all, they assume anyone who has property in the Muskokas is filthy rich, and they therefore price their work accordingly.My pal Tom is a humble university professor, rather "poor" by Muskoka standards. He is not seen as a lucrative target to the local contractor community.But he still needs the roof of his cabin fixed. The tree that fell on it fractured a couple of the roof trusses. It wasn't hard to see what the local contractors would recommend; peel off the roof, replace the trusses, replace the roof... you'd get out of that for maybe twenty grand, probably closer to fifty.I got up there and eye-balled the situation. Looked to me like we could jack up the roof, and then through-bolt a couple of pieces of angle iron on the fractured trusses. That would be a "temporary" fix, but "temporary" might mean twenty years.We headed into town to fetch some angle iron.I spent my working years, or at least a goodly percentage of them, working in welding shops large and small, from Saint John Shipbuilding on the east coast to Harjim Machinery Works on Vancouver Island. One thing I know is that you can't bullshit welding. Nor can you bullshit a roof repair on an island in the Muskokas.That roof's gonna stay up or it's gonna fall down.No amount of bullshit will keep it up if the fundamentals of physics say it's gotta fall...Kearney National was a good place to fine-tune my chops. I still remember to this day the lads I learned from and worked with.Dudley. Magician with the pipe bending machine.Cheech Contini. Me and him did some serious boozing in the back shop on the afternoon shift. He taught me how to cover my tracks.Manny in shipping...So me and Tom end up at this little fab shop in Gravenhurst, looking for a few lengths of 1/4 x 3 angle iron with the holes knocked in just so. It's a fab shop that looks just like every other small-town welding joint; everybody who works there looks like they're outlaw bikers waiting for their probation to end.We just wandered in the back door and helped ourselves to the chop-saw and the iron-worker. Buddy at the front desk when we checked out enquired sarcastically whether my flip-flops had steel toes. Ministry of Labour rules or some such horse-shit.I told him ya for sure...Tom got the roof of his cabin fixed for a couple hundred bucks instead of fifty thousand. Last I heard, that roof is still keeping the warm in and the weather out.

Joy leaking out of Harris-Walz campaign fast

That didn’t take long! Seems like just a few weeks ago, when the DNC Star Chamber of billionaire donors anointed Kamala as “the chosen one,” she and Timmy were off on a tear. The mainstream media had a collective orgasm. The Trumpists were fascist weirdos, and were gonna be buried under a landslide Democratic Party triumph powered by Black Joy and unicorn farts. Well, that was then… Now we’ve seen, on that same mainstream media, several weeks worth of both Kamala and her chosen VP exposing themselves as shallow and vacuous. Perhaps there’s a redundancy there; can one be shallow without being vacuous? Or vacuous without being shallow? For instance, if you’re going to invite reporters along on a fake hunting trip, and your media pals expose you as a phony dorkshit who doesn’t even know how to reload his shotgun, does that make you vacuous, shallow, or just fucking stupid? I don’t know, but if you put the problem to a venn diagram, I suspect there’d be a whole lotta overlap amongst all three categories. And how about Kamala! I’ve watched one friendly interview after another, from Oprah three weeks ago to Anderson Cooper last night, and she’s managed to fuck up every single one of them! These are softball interviews with friendlies who want her to win! Kamala truly is the empty vessel those billionaire donors hoped for, but holy shit, not even they could have realized how empty that vessel is. The woman is a moron. Meanwhile, Trump stages a PR stunt at a shut down McDonalds, featuring fake customers, and manages to make it look like the most authentic moment in the entire election campaign. Which it probably was! And that’s the crazy thing in these end days of Empire. The entire world is fully aware of America and her acolytes’ ineptitude, our hypocrisy, our Machiavellian double and triple-dealing. But in our minds, we remain the Nations of Virtue, here to spread US-style freedom and democracy and human rights to the other 4/5ths of the planet, whether they want it or not.

Peace Prize winner demands more war

Of course she does! The Peace Prize winner is none other than Anne Applebaum, professional Putin critic and wife of Poland’s rabidly Russophobic foreign minister. The peace prize she won came from the German Booksellers Association, not the Nobel committee, so I think this story is maybe a bit of an oversell. Nevertheless, it’s interesting that you can gather a group of German elites who applaud the concept of war with Russia. These are the same people who can’t figure out why the “far right” is on the rise. Every anti-war party in Europe is automatically branded “far right.” That way the elites and their subservient media can dismiss them out of hand. They overlook the underlying reality that war fever among the voters of Europe was never acute and is fading fast. Obviously, that can only lead to more “far right” election victories. That’s why the same German elite who applaud the warmongering Applebaum are keen to outlaw the AfD. After all, you can’t have all those far-right Putin-appeasing voters hi-jacking democracy.

America is losing the war

Back in December, I wrote "Ukraine and Gaza are two fronts in the same war." That's the war to cement America's thousand year Reich for another 925 years. The war to preserve American hegemoney. The war for the American Empire. It is increasingly clear that America is losing on both fronts. On the Ukraine front, you've got sad-sack Zelly plugging his completely unhinged "Victory Plan." All that's required to achieve victory is immediate entre into NATO, and NATO boots on the ground! That is beyond delusional. On the other front, after a year of raining thousands of tons of American high exposives on Gaza, the Gaza rocketeers can still shoot back. IDF reservists are dying every day in a futile ground war. Not content to be losing in Gaza, Netanyahu has embarked on a ground invasion of Lebanon. That's gained virtually zero ground and caused multiple IDF casualties every day. Today Hezbollah hit the PMs house in Ceasarea with a drone. That doesn't happen when you're winning. Both Netanyahu and Zellensky are proxies for the American Empire. What lesson is the rest of world taking from this unfolding debacle?

Israel has lost the war

When Netanyahu and Gallant announced their plans to genocide the Palestinian people at a press conference on 9 October of last year, I figured that was 90% rah-rah rhetoric, and we’d see a few days, or maybe a week or two, of heavy-handed retaliation. The terrorists would get a sharp slap, a few thousands of Palestinians would die, and then we’d be back to the status quo. Not in my wildest imaginings could I have imagined that, one year on, Hamas is still able to shoot rockets out of their devastated enclave. Not in my wildest imaginings could I have imagined that, one year on, IDF reservists would be dying daily in a doomed ground invasion of Gaza. Not in my wildest imaginings would I have imagined that while failing in Gaza, The Greatest Leader Since Moses would take on Hezbollah as well. Today Hezbollah delivered a drone to the PMs house in Caesarea. What’s that tell you about Israel’s technological advantage over it’s enemies? Wouldn’t you expect that Bibi’s place would be protected by the best-of-the-best air defence in the world? I’m sure it is. The terrorists just demonstrated, again, that they can defeat the best AD in the world. Bibi immediately goes on TV and professes outrage that Hezbollah would dare try assassinate him. They obviously weren’t - they were just sending a message - that they could if they wanted to. They just figure the time isn’t right. Let Netanyahu dig the country into an even deeper hole for a few more months, and by then a majority of Israelis will cheer the assassination of Netanyahu. That could be the beginning of peace in the Middle East.

Breakfast in Killarney

We took a Thanksgiving break and toured up to Killarney for the weekend. Last time I was there was about 25 years ago, when I took my kids camping at the nearby Killarney Provincial Park. It’s fair to say Killarney is a bit off the beaten path. It’s a good 75 kilometers off the main highway between Toronto and Sudbury. In fact, from Toronto, it’s actually further away than Sudbury itself. But if you want to spend some time in a quiet, out-of-the-way coastal community, it’s well worth it. Mind you, it’s probably not all that quiet during peak tourist season. I don’t recall the Killarney Mountain Lodge being there 25 years ago. That looks like a first-class joint. You can dock your yacht at one of their many berths, or have your float plane hauled out of the water onto a convenient concrete pad, right handy to their water-front $1,400/night Douglas fir cabins. Alas, they don’t take dogs, and we don’t go anywhere without Big-lips Bruno, so we ended up at the Sportsman’s Inn a ten minute walk away. I suspect most tourists without yachts or float planes find themselves at the Sportsman’s. We got into town late Saturday afternoon, and immediately met Phil and Brett. That’s because they stood chatting in the middle of the street in front of the Killarney General Store. When our car approached, they didn’t stop chatting, nor did they move out of the way. I stop and roll down the window. They keep chatting. Finally one of them turns to my open window. “Are you lost?” I immediately thought maybe they’re doing an anti-tourist protest, like they have in Naples and Barcelona these days. “Not lost, just wondering why you guys are standing in the middle of the road. Are you collecting money or something? Is there a toll?” Turns out there was no protest and no toll. Just two guys standing in the middle of the road having a chat. Phil grew up in Killarney but now lives in Manitoba. Came home for the weekend to visit his childhood pal Brett, who has lived in Killarney all his life. Killarney was established early in the 19th century by a guy who had his fur-trading post nearby burn down. We’re way back in pre-Confederation history here, when trading posts were a thing. It was strictly a water-access community for the first 140 years of its life. There was no road to Killarney until the 1960s. But there were people. There was a school. The teacher was dropped off in September and lived in a cabin next to the school. If the students needed education beyond grade eight, they took the same boat that brought in the teacher back to Owen Sound, where they spent the entire school year. There was also a commercial fishing industry in the latter half of the 19th century, which was decimated along with all great lakes fisheries when the sea lamprey showed up in the early 20th century. Today the main industry is tourism. There’s not enough locals to staff the resorts, so they’re brimming with young people from a variety of countries who come as temp workers. Gives the place a bit of a cosmopolitan flavour. On Sunday morning we had a fabulous breakfast at the Gateway Bakery & Restaurant. Right on the water, with window views of the multiple marinas that line the shore. After breakfast I’m sitting outside in the sun with Bruno, while the Farm Manager is picking out a Killarney souvenir hoodie in the gift shop, when who do I see heading my way? It’s Steve, who I vaguely know from the Owen Sound dog park. Turns out he’s got a place in Killarney. Why would you have a place in Killarney when you live in Owen Sound? There’s no shortage of water or waterfront, after all. Steve invited us to his place for the afternoon. Bruno and Rosie had only ever met at the dog park, and both were mystified and delighted by this unexpected rendezvous in Killarney. Steve and his wife Brenda have been coming to Killarney since the 1960s, first got a place there in the ‘80s, and have been making the nine hour round trip ever since. I asked him, what’s the draw? “It’s got community like no place else. You can’t open your toolbox in the driveway without somebody stopping to ask if they can help.” Steve’s got a 24 foot Sea Ray. Does he do any fishing? “No. I get so much free fish from the locals there’s no point.” That’s quite something, considering fishing is what originally brought him up here. That’s Killarney. Come for the fishing. Stay for the community.

Where to shit when you're homeless

There's a lot of focus on the shitting habits of homeless folks these days. Check out here and here. That's about San Francisco. There's some really good reasons why the homeless are homeless in San Fran. Sure, mental illness and addiction take their toll, but what about that winner-take-all hyper-capitalist culture that causes so much of the stress that causes the addiction and the mental illness in the first place? So here's a thought. Instead of shitting in the streets, why don't the homeless pitch their tents and void their bowels on the lawns of the tech millionaires and billionaires? Same goes in other parts of the country. Anybody homeless in the Northeast should head for Connecticut, and the miles of verdant lawns surrounding the estates of all those top-drawer hedgies domiciled there. If you're homeless a little further south on the eastern seaboard, setting up camp and a field toilet at a Trump golf resort would be a great idea! Not only would taking a crap on a fairway at Bedminster be far more aesthetically rewarding than taking a dump in the street, shitting in THEIR back yard would allow the plutocrats to become better acquainted with the fruits of their labour.

Uncle Sam's got Fluffy by the balls

Justin Trudeau is a lame duck PM. Trailing the charmless weasel Pierre Poilievre by 20 points in the latest polls. Facing down an uprising among his own caucus. Why doesn’t he just go away? While Justin didn’t inherit his dear daddy’s charisma, brains, or political savvy, he did get a generous dollop of the famous Trudeau arrogance. That’s what keeps him from making the smart decision, both for himself and the country. In late 2023, in response to a steady stream of leaks out of CSIS about election interference by China (remember those Chinese police stations in major Canadian cities!), he struck the Foreign Interference Commission to get to the bottom of things, or at least make it look like he cared. Meanwhile, our esteemed ally the USA, has developed a major hate for India, the world’s most populous democracy. Why? Because when Uncle Sam told the Free World to sanction Russia to death in February 2022, India’s PM Modi blew him off. Modi needs to be taught a lesson. So right in the middle of those foreign interference hearings, which were going nowhere fast, our US allies leaked some nasty intel to CSIS about how Modi’s agents were deep into harassing and murdering Canadians! The “Canadians” they were harassing and murdering were the militant Sikh separatists who murdered PM Indira Ghandi and blew up that Air India flight back in 1985. India understandably labels them terrorists. Overnight, the inquiry into Chinese election interference became all about India! In the big picture, Sikhs are less than two percent of India’s population, so not a serious threat to Modi. But in Canada they represent a good chunk of our ethnic vote, enough that our politicians find it worthwhile to pander to them. Canada is home to the largest Sikh population outside India. There are ten times as many Sikhs in Canada than the US. The DC brain-trust figured they can use Canada to antagonize India… and here we are! Canada has for years been routinely cast as a NATO free rider for not meeting our military spending obligations. Desperate to curry favour in Washington, Justin saw turning on India as his least bad option. Hell of a jam to be in, but totally predictable when you refuse to pursue an independent foreign policy and instead commit to vassalage to Washington.

Facts prove USA is smartest country in the world!

As we all know, the very pinnacle of academic achievement is the Ph. D., or the “Doctor Phil” as it is known in the UK. Bearing in mind the maxim of the famous Prussian war theorist Carl von Clausewitz that war is just the continuation of politics by other means, I got to thinking, it’s not necessarily the side with the most guns and bombs that will win, unless they also have the most brain-power. After doing a little google research, I am pleased to report that the good-guys in the coming war, America and her NATO allies, have way more brain-power than the current axis of evil. On the list of Ph. Ds graduated by country, USA is first, with five NATO allies ranking in the top ten. Russia comes in at 14th, and Putin’s partners in the Axis of Evil don’t even make the list! That looks like a slam-dunk to me! A no-brainer! Suck on that, Putin! But hold the victory parade. After all, we in the civilized world have a lot of highly educated folks who’s education may not bring much to the game once politics continues by other means. Maybe we should use a different metric… how about global distribution of STEM degrees, on the off-chance that science, technology, engineering, and math might be more relevant than a PhD in sociology or political science. Whoa! Check out that chart! China may lag in producing social scientists discovering new genders, but holy heck, China alone has almost four times as many STEM grads as the USA! Toss Russia and Iran into the mix and the Axis of Evil has a five-fold advantage over the Nations of Virtue! Maybe we should think twice about rushing into a war with them.

Artificial Intelligence is dumber than you are

Why not try a hands-free search and use your voice to chat with our AI bot! That’s a prompt that’s been coming up as I’m logging into my laptop. I have yet to have that chat, as I have zero desire to converse with an AI chatbot. I do dozens of searches every day, and dumb non-AI platforms are perfectly adequate for my needs. Besides, I’d feel like a complete dorkshit sitting here talking to my computer. If you have to have a conversation, that’s what people are for, not chatbots. Then there’s the matter of the extravagant energy consumption of Artificial Intelligence applications. A simple question, such as “how did Canada vote at the UN today?” can use 30 times the energy as your standard non-AI search. And the non-AI search will be more reliable because it’s not smart enough to make stuff up. If you think 30 times next to nothing is still nothing, you’d be wrong. All the big players are trying to find long term deals for cheap electricity. Alberta is offering cheap energy and tax breaks specifically to lure the industry to that province. This is a massive increase on the demand side, at the same time as we’re hoping to transition to electric vehicles. We have nowhere near the generating capacity or the grid to make either one of those dreams into reality, let alone both at the same time! In my view, reducing carbon emissions is a greater good than talking to chatbots.

A hundred pictures of Jesus and a stash of gay porn

A hundred pictures of Jesus and a stash of gay porn; Grampa's secrets revealed. Grampa Bernie was a big deal at the Knights of Columbus. He was such a devoted catholic he must have had at least a hundred pictures of Jesus hanging from every wall in every room of that downtown two-storey red brick he and his wife had bought new back in the... thirties? Forties? The dude's been dead for 30 years, so where-ever he reads this blog I'm sure he's having a good laugh.We're loading up my truck with basement detritus when one of the cousins comes out with a stack of magazines. "I didn't know they had naked wrestling in the Olympics."I took a look.Whoa! They might call it wrestling, honey, but that ain't the Olympics...I've never been much of a porn consumer, gay or otherwise, but I'm guessing nude wrestling magazines from the 40's and 50's would attract a decent dollar in the collector market. Way more than the old Time and Life magazines.Crazy how you can walk through the remnants of an up-standing citizen's life when they're gone and discover that they were way more than you thought. Bernie was indeed a respected and upstanding citizen. He was also a gay porn aficionado. And somebody in that house had a very healthy appetite for pills and booze...But enough about that.Bernie comes alive in that nursing home. In fact, it took mere weeks to find a new love! That revelation was initially received with good humour by the extended family. "Oh how lovely that he has some companionship in his twilight years" and all that sort of thing.Then he bought the bitch a thousand dollar fur coat!..WELL HOLY THUNDERIN' JEEZUS IF THAT WASN'T THE END OF THE WORLD!!!She was obviously a tramp and a gold-digger and by God if this was gonna be the way he carries on there would not be a red cent left over for anybody when the old coot kicked the bucket!Unfortunately the last months of Grampa Bernie's life were consumed with frantic family desperately running interference between him and the gold-digger.He dropped dead half way through a Leafs game on CBC one Saturday night.As many of us wish we could when the Leafs are playing on Saturday night.I suppose you could say his dreams came true!In spite of the machinations of his heirs, the new gal got to keep the coat.

The solidarity among living things

The main thing I saw today was many thousands of sandhill cranes heading south. They came by in batches of several dozen at a time. The hummingbirds have departed as of a week or two ago. We’ve still got the buzzards hanging around, at least some of them. They’re like the geese; some migrate and some don’t. I suspect that as the climate continues to warm up, the population of migratory birds will diminish. After all, why fly two or four or six thousand miles each way if you don’t have to? Here’s another thing I saw - a fly crawling into my Mott’s Caesar. Then again, I’m not sure if I actually “saw” it, or just thought I saw it. Once you’ve had a couple Caesars and a toke, it’s hard to tell. I did a visual inspection and then took a cautious sip, and concluded there was in fact no fly in my drink. So imagine my surprise when, a half hour later, a thoroughly Caesar-soaked fly crawled out of the can! I helped it along a little; after all, it’s a living thing and, insofar as possible, it’s my duty as a fellow living thing to do what I can to facilitate its living longer. Last I saw, it was test-buzzing its wings in preparation to fly again. Solidarity of living things!

Mysteries of the "deep state"

As you know, the folks who run America’s democracy theatre have a big event coming up in a few weeks; the election. You know the main characters; in the red corner, the Black Hat, Donald J Trump. And in the blue corner, the White Hat, Kamala. Due to the limited intelligence of the average American voter, the script-writers like to keep things simple enough that your typical WWE enthusiast can follow the action. Polls tell us the race is too close to call. In order to shake things up, the brain trust running the White Hat’s campaign sent her out on a media blitz recently. I’ve seen the Opra interview, the 60 Minutes interview, and her appearances on Colbert and The View. Sending Kamala out to meet the people has been, in my opinion, a tragic mistake. The woman has exposed herself as a complete airhead. “So what will be your policy priorities, Kamala?” “Well… before I address that, I just want to say how much I love the American people. I grew up in a middle class home, and you know, ambition and work ethic! I love the American people because we have dreams… we have aspirations… we work hard… we have dreams…” Other than that, and badmouthing Trump, she ain’t got nuthin! Meanwhile, what’s the Black Hat up to? As we know, Trump is a bad guy who can’t wait to end democracy in America. What do you expect from a Putin fanboy? And he’s ready to stab Ukraine in the back! Who can even imagine such an outrage? Ukraine, the plucky little country fighting Putin so democracy can survive, not just in Ukraine, but all over the world! And Trump wants to pull the plug on our support for this bravest of all democratic nations! And let’s not forget that Trump’s number one backer is the odious Elon Musk, the world’s richest man! The man who bought liberal, freedom-loving Twitter, and turned it into a hate-spewing fascist propaganda organ! There you have the broad outlines of the narrative, the plot, so to speak, for the Big Show. Now let me step back for a moment and play theatre critic. Aside from being the world’s richest man, and an enthusiastic promoter of far-right conspiracy theories, who is Elon Musk? Why, he’s the beneficiary of $hundreds of billions in financial support from the US government for his various deep-state-adjacent enterprises. Like Space-X. If you suspect NASA was privatized and Elon ended up with it, you wouldn’t be wrong. Which brings me to the Atlantic Council. That’s the “intellectual” think-tank arm of NATO. It is funded by the US government and a gaggle of defence contractors. It is 100% committed to the doctrine of American exceptionalism and is a “deep state” creature through and through. Every year, on the occasion of the UNGA shindig in NYC, the Atlantic Council celebrates a few world leaders for their service to Empire by bestowing upon them the “Global Citizen Award.” This year, one of the recipients of the Global Citizen Award was PM of Italy, Georgia Meloni. If you recall, when she was elected, the mainstream media couldn’t give you enough scare stories about how she was the reincarnation of Mussolini! Pro-Putin and anti-American! Fortunately, on winning the election, she came to her senses and soon embraced the urgency of standing with Ukraine for as long as it takes. And who presented her the award? None other than that anti-establishment rebel, Elon Musk! Yup, the same guy bankrolling Donald Trump, the anti-establishment once-and-future swamp-drainer! Wow! Well, clearly this two-horse race could go either way. Luckily for freedom, democracy, and human rights, these two diametrically opposed candidates can agree on one crucial thing; they both 100% support Israel, no matter what.

US-NATO betrayal of Ukraine will bring serious blowback

Zelensky has unveiled his secret "Victory Plan." Here it is folks… drum roll please! Lot’s more billions and lots more weapons and also a few hundred thousand volunteers, ‘cause he’s pretty much out of Ukrainians. We’ve been hearing this tune for two and a half years. Victory is always just beyond reach. With a few more months and a few more billions, victory is assured! Rinse & repeat. Unfortunately for Zelly, his pleas to his handlers in DC will fall on deaf ears. The entire Washington establishment has written off the Ukraine gambit now that the Holy Land is in play. They won’t come right out and say so, but everybody sees what’s going on. Zelly has joined the ranks of those the esteemed war criminal Henry Kissinger was talking about when he candidly opined that being America’s enemy was dangerous, but being America’s friend was deadly. Noriega. Saddam. Kaddafi. Shame about those half million dead Ukrainians and their destroyed country. But we gave you two and a half years and you blew it. We got bigger fish to fry, and Iran is a big fish! I have a hunch there’ll be blowback over the betrayal of Ukraine.

Indian Summer

Not sure if “Indian summer” is a phrase you’re still allowed in the age of Woke. Regardless, we had the perfect Indian summer Saturday in these parts today. Sunshine all day and T-shirt and shorts temperatures. First weekend in October means it’s Pumpkinfest in Port Elgin. That’s only a hop and a skip from Falling Downs, plus we get to stop off at Tuggies on the Rez for cheap gas and cheap smokes. The Pumpkinfest is allegedly about the giant vegetables that arrive at what was originally the Port Elgin fall fair. Fall fairs are a big deal in rural Ontario. Every two-bit hick-town has one. Even former two-bit hick-towns that have long since become suburbs of Toronto still have them. I’m looking at you, Orangeville and Shelburne. But I digress. We don’t go to Port Elgin for the two-ton pumpkins. We go for the car show. It comes two or three weeks after the Concours at Cobble Beach. That one is ten minutes down the road, and we’ve been a few times. Fifty bucks to get in the gate. A lot of world-class stuff that arrived in hundred thousand dollar trailers with quarter million tow vehicles. Who doesn’t want to spend fifty bucks to see an actual original Bugatti? The Pumpkinfest car show, on the other hand, is all stuff the owners drove there. The town blocks off a few blocks of the downtown for a day. You won’t see any Bugattis, but you’ve got the entire catalogue of North American iron, plus a good sampling of European stuff. And it’s absolutely free! So we wander around downtown Port Elgin for an hour and a half, with Bruno in tow. You can’t imagine how many people want to stop and tell you how beautiful this runt Italian mastiff is. It’s non stop. When Bruno had his fill of strangers wanting to touch him, we motored down the Lake Huron shore to Kincardine, for lunch at the Erie Belle, where they promote themselves as the “House of Fish & Chips.” I was a fan long before the gluten thing reared its ugly head, and I am happy to report the Erie Belle has gluten-free fish & chips that will rival anything you ever had. We’re on the patio with Bruno catching the shade under the table, when a gaggle of millennials comes in and settles into the far end of the patio. There’s eight of them, and they’re engaged in a quite lively conversation. This has no bearing on us whatsoever. We’re at least forty feet away. But about ten minutes in, the Farm Manager remarks that none of them appear to have their phones out. What? How is such a thing even conceivable? I was seated with my back to them, but as we were leaving I went over to check them out. I thought at least a few might have their phones flat on the table in front of them, but no! Who can imagine such a thing?! Eight millennials gathered round a table on a restaurant patio, and not a phone in sight? There is hope for humanity!

The American Empire circles the drain... make America great again!

America is the exceptional nation. The indispensable nation. The country destined to lead the world, as both Kamala and Donald will tell you. Not that they’re telling you. You probably don’t give a shit if America “leads the world,” as long as you’ve got a job that pays your bills and gives you a half-decent life. No, they’re not talking to you. They’re talking to their billionaire donors. Those are the people who matter, and it matters to them that America remains the Big Dog. A lot of the things that matter to you - affordable housing, health care, education and groceries, simply aren’t a problem for the rich. But it matters to them that their wealth remains secure. That’s why America’s cred has always hinged, at the end of the day, on the US military. When push comes to shove, the Empire is the Empire because it can muscle any and all rivals out of the way. While that’s been a dubious proposition since at least the fall of Saigon, recent events make that proposition ever more dubious. The fall of Kabul was Saigon 2.0 - just with different Asians falling to their deaths. We’re well on our way to the final curtain for the Empire. In 2014 America engineered the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Ukraine, paving the way for a regime of ultra-nationalist Russophobes eager to curry favour in Washington by antagonizing Russia. And curry favour they did! We goaded Zelensky into a hot war with Russia with the promise of NATO membership and the solid guarantee that we would provide whatever it takes for as long as it takes to crush Putin. Meanwhile, America has given Israel a blank cheque to bully any and all possible rivals since at least the Six Day War. The Israelis are even more in thrall to their exceptionalism than the Americans, as frightening as that may be to contemplate. The decades of indulgence have brought us to the current abyss. Between the hundreds of billions in cash and weapons, and the ever-ready veto at the UN, the ruling clique in Israel is convinced it is above all laws and completely unaccountable, not even to its enablers in Washington. Furthermore, they have now painted themselves into a corner and assume Uncle Sam is coming to the rescue. From the bipartisan noises coming from DC, it looks like America will stand with Israel with whatever it takes, for as long as it takes. The good news is this. Once the American Empire has collapsed, it will be possible to make America great again for ordinary Americans who couldn’t care less about leading the world, but just want a job that provides a decent life.

America's democracy theatre; the show must go on!

I watched the first half hour of the Walz-Vance debate before succumbing to terminal ennui. I thought both VPs have more going on than their respective presidents, but who cares? What does it matter? The first topic was, given the events of the day, America’s loyalty to Israel. Both candidates promised unquestioned fealty. More “whatever it takes for as long as it takes.” Where have we heard that before? And how’s that going? The CBS moderators and both candidates celebrated the joint USA/IDF defeat of the dastardly Iranian missile attack. In fact, that was the only story you heard on mainstream media. Meanwhile, the internet was abuzz with video of Iranian missiles exploding on Israeli air bases. I said at least ten years ago Iron Dome was bullshit. There is no “missile shield.” The next topic was the devastating hurricane in the southeast. The VPs went back and forth on that one. They bickered about climate change and greenhouse gasses and fracking. Nobody mentioned the bipartisan neglect of infrastructure over the last half century. Of course they didn’t! That would cost money to fix! Money we need to support our many wars. Do you want the next billion in deficit spending to build public housing, or to finance Israel’s wars? The bipartisan consensus is a no-brainer. That’s why there’s a housing crisis in America, but Israel has unlimited 2,000 lb. ‘bunker-busters’ to preserve peace and democracy in the Middle East. Great to see the VP debate unify a divided country! We have bipartisan agreement that the interests of the genocidal psychopaths steering the ship of state in Israel take priority over the interests of the American people! Democracy rocks!

Doug Ford and the politics of wishful thinking

There’s a half-page advert on p. 3 of Saturday’s Globe. The picture shows a clearly delighted Ontario dad plugging in his EV while his young son watches in awe. The text reads; Powering economic growth through clean, affordable nuclear energy. Ontario’s new small modular reactors are creating jobs and will contribute billions to the economy, while providing clean and affordable energy. It’s all happening here. Paid for by the Government of Ontario. This is a project at Darlington that’s been featured in numerous advertisements and press releases for several years now, so I was curious how close that father and son might actually be to plugging into that clean and affordable energy. Turns out not that close. Here’s some good news from a few months ago; First phase of site preparation completed. That only took two years. We’re now heading into the “main” phase of site preparation, which will include excavation and “shoring walls.” In other words, the only jobs created thus far have gone to a handful of heavy equipment operators and the copywriters at Doug’s ad agency! According to Doug’s spin doctors, this revolutionary project will make Ontario a world leader in small modular reactors. Maybe it will, but according to Wikipedia, Russia and China are the only countries that have successfully built SMRs. To my way of thinking, that makes them the world leaders. Here’s a Bloomberg interview with Professor of nuclear engineering Kirk Atkinson at Ontario Tech University. I daresay the interviewer sounds a tad skeptical. In the event everything pans out, we may eventually have a SMR that could power 300,000 homes - or one Google data centre! Given the history of nuclear construction cost over-runs and missed deadlines, the awestruck kid in that ad will be plugging in his own EV by the time that happens. And have you heard about the 70km tunnel under the 401?...