Anita Anand declares Canada's leadership of new "middle-powers bloc" at UNGA speech

I'd love to give you a link to her speech, but because I remain a bad boy who violates community standards, you'll have to look it up for yourself. It's certainly worth a look, because my brief critique will but scratch the surface of delusional fantasies fully embraced by the American Empire Loyalists who call the shots in Canada. We have, in spades, the Canadian fantasy that we are "leading" the world in something... anything! If it can't be peacekeeping or quantum computing, maybe it can be artificial intelligence or green hydrogen, or global resistance to Mafia Don. One way or another we're inspiring like-minded allies who share our values to join us as we stand up to the big powers and defend the little guys. I've written often about this magic potion, "Canadian Values." Our Canadian values come up multiple times in Anand's speech. She's a rich and powerful brown person who is 100% hunky-dory with this bastion of diversity and champion of human rights, as a matter of policy under her party, poaching trained nurses and doctors from poverty-stricken African countries. Then there's the Canadian value of kowtowing to every genocidal Israeli outrage with some version of "Israel has a right to defend itself." Anita confirmed our Canadian commitment to the fantasy Two-State Solution. As the one or two percent of Canadians who give a shit have known for decades, that's long over. It took us sixty years to publicly declare our support for a two-state solution, and by now, when 800,000 genocidal religious fanatics are running wild in a murderous rampage which you'll never in a million years denounce, let alone do anything about, we declare our support for an independent Palestinian state? Sorry Anita, I don't see this imaginary middle-powers bloc under Canadian leadership as anything other than empty PR.

A happy 90th and a wish for many more for my dear Onkel Horst

Here's the deal on my Onkel Horst. Since the passing of my dear daddy he's the Grand Old Man of the clan. I did six hours of driving today to be at his party. I do that because he holds a special place in my heart. He's the only adult in my childhood who never ever not-even-once told me a Bible story! But here's an even more crucial consideration. To the best of my recollection, Onkel Horst has never had a gym membership, never engaged in manual labour if it could be avoided, never ever met a bratwurst or a schnitzel he didn't fall in love with, and has never in the past 75 years been seen in any photograph without a pint in his hand! Yet Horst Bruno Neumann is the guy who's still standing while the guys going to private clinics and pricey gyms are long gone to their rewards. That's worth celebrating! And on his 90th he's at least as sharp as me and walks better, and regaled us with tales of all the NHL players he'd known. Given his aversion to manual labour he naturally drifted into sales, and ended up spending a few years at a veterinary supply wholesaler. Turns out a lot of your NHL stars back in the day had farms, horse farms, cattle farms, and so forth, and were a staple of his employer's client list. From Gordie Howe to Bobby Hull to Bobby Orr the lazy square-head ended up on first name terms with a bunch of those guys. Lieber Onkel even left me a couple of hints re his robust good health. Don't over-do it with the vegetables, and remember to take time every day to put your feet up and have a pint. Will do!

Dreck rules

I was rooting through the archives this evening and happened across this gem from five years ago. ******************** Saturday, January 2, 2021 The triumph of dreck If you look up some archival street photography of American life in the 50's and 60's, you find a curious thing. At the beginning of the 50's, folks still had a "Sunday best" view of themselves. If somebody was taking pictures for posterity, you'd want to be remembered, for posterity, in your Sunday best. By the end of the sixties, that was over, collateral damage in the triumph of dreck. There was no "Sunday best" anymore because Sunday wasn't there anymore. We never appreciated how much we lost when we lost Sunday. From a day of peace and grace to a day of jest and madness and business as usual. Why force shops to close on Sunday? Because the min wage retail workers don't deserve weekend time with family? But that's a mere symptom of our descent into the pit of dreck. Dreck demands that the lowest common denominator prevail everywhere at all times, and especially on the screens you're addicted to 24/7. Dreck addiction is what propels "entertainers" with no apparent attributes other than a top-shelf management team to the very pinnacle of pop culture success. Dreck has triumphed. DRECK RULES! Once you're acclimatised to dreckwelt, everything kinda makes sense, don't it?

Here's another fun fact about aging nobody ever mentioned

Yup, the fun never ends once you start cashing in on those senior's discounts. To be sure, there are benefits... saving 10% on geezer needs every Thursday at Shoppers Drug Mart is a perfect example. They kick in the senior's discount at age 55, so I've even got the Farm Manager shopping there. On the other hand, the older you get, the harder it is to live in denial. Quite aside from all sorts of nasty shit sneaking up on you after a lifetime of imagining you'll be eighteen forever, for which Alice Cooper should finally take at least a slight smidgeon of responsibility, you inevitably succumb to the old-age markers that plague even those insufferable moralizers and virtue-signalers who never smoked or drank or snorted anything, but were equally shocked when they weren't waking up with a stiffy every morning! Ya, shit happens, and the shit don't ever really get much happier. Another symptom nobody ever mentioned is I'm making way more drool now than ever before. In fact, a certified dental hygenist mentioned that just last week. Not that I needed a professional opinion. This morning I was doing a few laps at the dog park with Bruno. A dog park regular pulls in with his absolutely gorgeous black-and-tan mastif. His girl has cropped ears and a full tail. My boy has a cropped tail and full flopply ears. In true mastif fashion, they completely ignore one another, as well as every other dog and human other than their masters. I'm stopping to give that pretty girl a rub, and, wouldn't you know it, I slobber all over her. Well, at least it didn't happen at the counter in the post office or the check-out at the liquor store! Her dad, a seasoned mastif owner, took it in stride, as well he should - I'd guess he's got a good ten years on me. As I'm apologizing to the dog he says, don't worry about it, she'll drool back on you soon enough. Then we did a lap comparing notes on how much mastif drool had damaged our dog transporters. Oh ya, these dogs just wreck your car! He kinda had a point. My ten year old Toyota has congealed Bruno slobber caked on the outside of the back doors, and the back seat is pretty much rotted out. On the other hand, his new 600 horsepower Audi R8 didn't show any sign at all of mastif slobber on the back doors, so probably he was just humouring me. And that's a happy thing. Ya, it's bullshit, but it's kind, life-affirming bullshit! As I'm barreling down the home stretch of life's all-too-short highway, that's the kind I'm looking for. That's why I'm 100% against a single further taxpayer penny going to the CBC!

Another mindfulness moment from the stoop

As regular readers will be aware, I've been trying to make a bit of a course correction re my news-junkie habit. To that end, I've been working hard at tamping down laptop hours and ramping up stoop time. I would say I've been having some success over the past little while, but now that the UNGA is on... ay yai yai... that's getting really really tough! I took a break from my ruminations on the stoop yesterday to watch the Leader of the Free World wax wise on the world stage for an hour and 47 minutes, and realized immediately that wasn't helping my mental health. So back to the stoop! A week ago there were two hummingbirds fighting over end-of-season dregs at the bottom of the feeder. One would come in from one of the pines around the yard and before it got it's beak in the feeder the second would zoom in and bunt it out of the way. Then they'd reverse roles and do it all over again. This literally went on all day. That was the 15th. Next morning I mixed a fresh batch of feeder food for them, so they wouldn't have to fight over it. I haven't seen a hummingbird since. Obviously the order came through from Hummingbird Central Command that it's time to head for Costa Rica, so I guess I can put the feeder away. Mind you, that would stress out some of the other living creatures who frequent the hummingbird feeder, mainly wasps and ants. Not hard to understand how wasps get there - they fly in just like the hummingbirds do. The ants are a different story. The feeder hangs from a shepherds hook a good four feet off the ground . First, the ants have to smell that stuff when it's roughly ten thousand body-lengths away. That's like me being able to smell what somebody's cooking for dinner twenty miles away. If that isn't awesome enough, at least some of them always manage to actually find their way into the feeder! Water doesn't leak out but ants can get in? Not all of them; there's heavy two-way traffic all the way up and down that shepherds hook, and I must say I woulda been way better off watching that for an hour and 47 minutes. It's that time of year. The Canada geese are doing their practice flights. Those typically start in late August in these parts, and generally involve heavy-metal-decibel-level honking, and flight formations that look like pretty much every letter of the alphabet except the "V" they're aiming for. But by now they're flying by in exquisite V-shaped silence. It's a beautiful thing to see. This evening, as the sun was fading, a lone straggler was passing by honking plaintively. Must have been napping while the rest of the crew flapped off. Every other wingbeat was accompanied by a plaintive honk. I felt sad for it. Then, as its sad honks were growing fainter, I suddenly heard response honks coming from the marsh across the way. The very tone of Lone Straggler's voice changed. I could hear the joy! That Canada goose had found her people!

Bill Ackman strikes again

Just in case you don't remember, Bill is the US billionaire hedgie who swept into Canada to take control of the Canadian Pacific Railway. A few years later he swept out after trousering (tip of the cap to Conrad Black, because before I found "trousering" in one of his screeds I would have said "pocketing") multiple billions as a reward for making the iconic Canadian railroad lean and efficient. He accomplished that by making trains longer and running them faster with fewer crew. During his tenure they sold off 5,000 locomotives and 10,000 units of rolling stock and made at least 10,000 workers redundant. His gutting of CP Rail was universally applauded across mainstream Canadian media. Aside from being a billionaire greedbag, Ackman is also a staunch Zionist. When I say "staunch" I'm talking about the absolutely worst excesses of Jewish Supremacy imaginable. He's been a major funder of anti-Muslim hate groups for decades. His latest stunt was to use his massive wealth to pressure KPMG, one of Western Civ's top accounting firms, to fire a long-time employee because she'd been set up in a anti-semitism sting. It's worth looking up that woman's you-tube video. Apparently enough people have done exactly that, and concluded what I concluded when I was writing about CP Rail years ago; that Bill Ackman is utterly lacking any priciples or integrity whatsoever, and that other than his own bank balance and the ultimate triumph of Israel over America, and eventually the world, he lives an utterly care-free life! And while we all deserve carefree lives, if I were Bill, I'd have some concerns... he's pissed off way more people than Brian Thompson ever did!

Did Grok write Trump's UN speech?

It's hard to believe, but even a world-class liar like Donny J couldn't possibly spew an hour and 47 minutes of incoherent slop by making it all up himself. In an hour 47 he made, by my count, a total of two statements that were in at least some vague proximity to what most folks might consider actual facts. The first is he killed Soleimani. The second, made at least 3 dozen times, is "the world has never seen anything like it." While that's certainly true enough, I don't think his audience at the UN General Assembly heard it the way he intends. The entire world is in awe of America's military brilliance? That's one of many dozens of AI halucinations throughout the speech, and what's left is a laundry list of Israeli talking points. And that bit about we gotta stop calling AI "artificial" because it damages the self-esteem of your AI agent or some such idiocy. Henceforth it shall be known as Super Intelligence, because I'm a super-high IQ stable genius and I said so. Alrighty dude... you're right about one thing... the world truly has never seen anything like it.

Carney is transforming Canada into a Globalist Banksters' Paradise

Think about it. Right out of the blocks Carney committed Canada to hundreds of billions in military spending, based entirely on the whims of the very same Donald J Trump we allegedly have our elbows up against. That most of this military kit will be sourced from US companies isn't something Canadian media wants to discuss. The bleak track records of US military tech in theatre has demonstrated to the world that what we're committing to buying is extravagantly overpriced and vastly inferior to what the "adversaries" have on offer. But nevermind all that! Carney is ramping up war prep because we must prepare for war with Russia. According to all the top European leaders, like France Prez Micron, we gotta be ready to take on Putin before 2030. Carney made time for Micron today. Carney enjoys approval ratings in the 70% range, the highest approval ratings in Canadian history! Micron's approval ratings are around 14% and are headed for the single digits before the next election. So what possible motivation might there be for Mark Carney to ballyhoo alliances with obvious dead-enders like the President of France? Cue the usual horseshit about shared values blah blah blah. Yup, we certainly share values! Both France and Canada are 100% aboard for the genocidal apartheid state's right to defend itself via the mass murder of women and children. What the vast purchase of US military kit reveals is that the Carney regime has throttled social spending for at least the next fifty years. All those social support networks across Canada that have been starved of proper funding for decades will be cut loose altogether. Between US fighter jets and German submarines we simply can't afford extravagant perks like universal health care and public education. That's why globalist greedbags flocked to Carney's Canadian Investment Summit last week.

What's Mark Carney really up to ?

Canada's official government propaganda organ, the CBC, has been bemoaning the fact that the Liberal PM has stolen the lunch and tommorrow's lunch money from hapless doofuss Pierre Poilievre. Wasn't hard to see that coming. If you recall, as recently as the autumn '23 Liberal Party policy convention the Libs under PM Fluffy brought in Hillary Clinton for a pep talk! Even though, politically, she was a serial loser, she still commanded some of the stiffest speaker fees on the Western Civ pundit circuit. That was the context when PP briefly captivated the public. Well, fast forward to now. Fluffy be gone and there's a new sheriff in town. Unlike PM Fluffy and the career politician Poilievre, It's inconcievable Hillary will snag any paid gigs in any Lib party confab going forward! The new sheriff has destroyed Poilievre's PC party by stealing its ideas and its lunch money. Why would any corporate bigshot give to the PCs when Carney's already doing a bang-up job carrying the ball for them? And if that isn't enough bullshit and fakery, let's not lose sight of the fact our Carney regime is all in for tightening the screws on Putin and tightening our bonds with the Baltic micro-states. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia combined don't have the population of the GTA, and it's been shrinking every year for decades, but for reasons never explained to Canadians, we gotta defend them from Putin? According to my read of the Carney regime, the answer to Trump's dictats, no matter how ludicrous, is inevitably "YES SIR!" Our media work hard to portray our subservience as something else, and it seems a large swathe of the public still want to believe Canada is somehow in the vanguard of saving freedom and democracy.

Why Donald Trump is afraid to use nuclear weapons

There's a lot of speculation floating around that America's prospects in the wars it is losing are so grim that Trump is contemplating the use of America's nuclear arsenal, the second most potent nuclear arsenal in the world after Russia's. There's your first clue that Mafia Don ain't going anywhere near nukes. When you're number two in the world 'o nukes it means you're dead, and if there's one thing Donald J Trump values above all else it's Donald J Trump! So ixnay on nuclear war, but that kinda leaves us at a loss. "At a loss" rather obscures the scale of losses that lie ahead. The IRGC that Trump has annihilated time and again are well on their way to pushing the most fearsome military in history out of the Gulf forever. That of course means the end of the apartheid genocidal state that's been keeping the region aflame since 1948. So there you have it; the survival of the human race may boil down to Donny J chickening out on nuclear war because he's afraid to die! All things considered, I'd call that a decent outcome!

The tyranny of geography dictates that Canada remains closer to USA than to the EU for the foreseeable future

While it's certainly entertaining, in a morbid sort of way, to see Empress of Europa Ursula and PM Carney flail about looking for reasons to cinch up their so-called relationship, let's not lose sight of the fact that this flailing is 100% due to the abdication of their overseers in DC from their traditional Big Boss role. Both the Canadian and the EU elites are entirely at a loss now that the preemminence of their master has been cast into doubt by the undeniable reality that the most powerful military the world has ever seen is having its ass shredded and handed back to it by the Towelheads 'o Terror in Iran and those primitives in that gas-station with nukes who happen to have not only the world's biggest atom-bomb arsenal, but at least a twenty-year lead in the missile technology to deliver it! Why it makes any sense whatsoever to suck up to the EU is beyond my comprehension, but our mainstream media is all-aboard for closer ties. They generally avoid mentioning that our prospective besties are hyper-horny for a hot war with Putin. They also avoid any discussion of the EU exercising veto power over all foreign policy decisions in member states. A 'democratic' institution it certainly is not! Not only that, but a close reading of debate in the E3 reveals that all the EU Big Dogs are desperate to bring USA into their forthcoming war. That's because they already know without American muscle they're just a bunch of big-talking dorkshits. What they haven't figured out yet is that American muscle ain't what it used to be. The adversaries are on their 3rd or 4th generation of hypersonic missiles, whereas the US is eagerly anticipating their first successful prototype. That's because for the last fifty years the brightest minds in America have been discovering new genders, while the brightest minds in Iran, China, and Russia, have been discovering new ways to make missiles fly faster. I think their state-of-the-art Avangard is well over mach 20! But don't worry... once we figure it out our superior intelligence and industrial capacity and all-round Yankee derring-do will close that missile tech gap in no time and leave those freedom-hating ragheads and commies in our dust!

Canada to strengthen sovereignty by selling infrastructure to US hedge funds

Ever since Mafia Don started tossing around those hurtful jokes about us being nothing more than the 51st state, Canadians have been seriously pissed off. We're determined to push back - elbows up! Yup, we gonna teach Trump a lesson! To that end, our PM has convened a conclave of the 100 biggest money managers in the world in Toronto, the "Canada Investment Summit." Ponder that for a moment. Mark Carney spent his entire life pre-politics keeping the world safe for billionaires, either from the exec suites at Goldman Sachs or Brookfield or as central banker, first in Canada, then in England. He'd be strictly first-names-only with the world's top money managers. I'd like to know how many of them are American. 75%? 90%? I'd like some clarification on that, because remember, we're supposedley doing this to assert our sovereignty and diversfy away from USA. And PM Carney isn't shy about tossing around some mighty juicy carrots to entice the money managers. How about 100% mega-deduction for capital investments in Year One! Oh ya baby! That'll teach Trump! And we're opening up our ports and airports to foreign investment to strengthen our sovereignty! What's really puzzling is how this is being presented in our media, especially our government propaganda outfit. I would like to think that actual journalism would at least ask a few questions... like how many of the world's top money managers are members of Mafia Don's Mar-a-Lago Club?

THE SINGULARITY IS UPON US !!! Latest desperate PR gambit claims AI already so potent it could exterminate human race!

Ya, of course it "could," means nothing at all, and comes at a time when it's clear there's zero sign on the horizon of any return on investment for the trillions sunk into fantasies over the past few years, and thwart China, which in the eyes of many knowledgeable observers is decisively winning the AI race. This fantasy-fueled bubble desperately needs more trillions to keep the charade viable, and just in the knick of time, American AI visionary Scam Altman declares THE SINGULARITY IS UPON US! Sure enough, not a month later we're being treated to stories galore about alleged whistleblowers in a panic over the most recent spectacular advances in American AI that threaten the future of humanity! Ya right... the only future it threatens is that of folks dumb enough to believe such obvious rubbish. What we're witnessing is a massive PR stunt designed to convince us this consistently over-hyped technology is so great that altruists like Altman are giving us the heads-up before it's too late! Of course, we Canukistanis can take solace in the fact Mr Carney has promised every adult FREE AI training, to ensure we conform to the ad-agency cliche; "get aboard, or get left behind." As with all free programs, it will be horrendously expensive and create far more problems than it solves. I detect the hand of our AI wunderkind Evan (Mr 10%) Solomon behind this imbecility.

A wedding in wine country

Took a trip into the heart of Niagara's wine region over the weekend to attend the wedding of a niece. Weddings are big business in wine country. Every other vineyard has some sort of wedding-themed venue available for rent; ours was one of six weddings held on the same estate that day. My hunch is there's way more money in weddings than wine. For many folks the region is obviously a wedding destination, in spite of what I would have thought a fatal flaw; that in order to successfully grow grapes, you need to keep birds and other wildlife away. As soon as we parked we were greeted by what sounded like shotgun blasts. Must be duck season in these parts, I figured. But no, that's random fake explosions designed to scare the birds away. This continued throughout the ceremony. The officiant joked this was not in fact a shotgun wedding. I'm guessing that joke came up at every one of those six weddings. It works though. No birds or other wildlife were seen during our hour and a half stay on the property. The thousands of acres of vineyards must play havoc with migratory birds that once passed through. As a society, we've prioritized the manufacture of mediocre wines over the welfare of our wildlife and natural environment. After the ceremony things moved to a reception in the nearby town of Jordan. This is the third wedding in a row wherein a woman from the Neumann clan is marrying an Italian, and I gotta say those people know how to do it up right! The problem I encountered was filling up on the appetizers and then wondering what to do with the fine-looking strip-loin that showed up in front of me. No way was I gonna leave that on my plate when Bruno the Italian mastiff is starving at home, but I didn't want to look too obvious smuggling it out. I was ready to wrap it in a cloth napkin when I discovered a doggie poo-bag in my pocket. Perfect! On the downside, my $400 waterfront room at the Ramada couldn't do better than lukewarm in the hot water dept. That's a lotta cash to me, but apparently that's the low end in the area, and if you want a hot shower you'll have to move up-market. Also, being somewhat of a digital retard, I had to call the lone front desk employee at 1 am because I couldn't figure out how that fancy tap and go door card worked. The uber ride from the party to the hotel provided fifteen minutes of fascinating chit-chat with a middle-aged Albanian dude who'd arrived in Canada via Germany in 2011. His German language fluency is way ahead of mine! He was bellyaching about how Canada used to be a great place. His first job was trucker in Vancouver. He used to make enough to not only send money home, but save money himself, such that when he moved to the area to be closer to family, he was able to buy a modest house in St Catherines. Today, he's not sure how much longer he can keep it. Trucking jobs clear across Canada mostly go to Sikh drivers today, because Sikh owned companies are handily winning contracts all over the place by undercutting all competition. Immigrants are wrecking that business, according to this immigrant! Meanwhile, his uber income keeps shrinking as the billionaire owners put the squeeze on their 98% immigrant workforce. A few years ago his Uber job paid his bills. Lyft used to pay better, he said, but not anymore. An utterly enjoyable weekend by any measure... chock-full of a really impressive generation of youngsters I'm proud to support, but the absolute highlight had to be the beaming grin on my 91 year old mother's face as she's bustin' a move on the dance floor! As we were well on our way home, I realized I'd forgot Bruno's strip-loin in the fridge back in the room. Bet the cleaning staff were wondering why anybody would put a bag of dogshit in the fridge. Hopefully some min wage cleaner realized nobody ever would, and found a fine-looking strip-loin without so much as a bite out of it.

Donald does Dallas

Among the many unprecedented, to say nothing of unpresidential, anomalies in this presidency is the ability of the Commander in Chief to spew utter fantasies as though they were fact, yet continue to find audiences willing to applaud obvious bullshit made up on the spot by one of the greatest bullshit artists of all time. Nevermind Art of the Deal, Donny J has mastered the art of the unreal! That's why I was momentarily cheered by multiple news stories re: Trump's humiliation about empty seats during his speech last night. I thought hey, maybe folks are catching on. I decided to catch his speech tonight just to see those empty seats for myself. From what I could see, the arena was packed. Packed with folks who wildly applauded every innanity that fell from his lips. The usual completely-detached-from-reality rantings about the-world-has-never-seen-anything-like-it epic destruction of Iran over and over again. While they're applauding, Brent and WTI both breached the $100/bbl mark, yet still they can't stop clapping their hands together. How to explain the contrast with last night? Here's my theory. Dallas is deep Bible-belt territory. There's 8 million+ population in the greater Dallas- Fort Worth area. There's at least a million who would describe themselves as Christian Zionists. When that community heard that the Hillary-led communist DNC-controlled lying media was trying to humiliate Israel's bumboy in the Oval Office, they activated their telephone trees and voila; you've got that twenty thousand seat arena packed to the rafters in no time!

Carney goes full retard; signs 100 yr defence pact with Zelensky

Before Zelly's most recent begging-bowl visit, we're already pushing the $30B mark in support for Ukraine. The CBC story announcing this 100 year pact claims there's at least another $B been offered just since Zelly's plane touched down last night. I don't understand how signing this kind of pact with a scandalously corrupt regime that has suspended democracy itself is in Canada's interest. The CBC story, and shame on Murray Brewster for allowing his name on it, is nothing but uncritical paraphrasing of government talking points. One would like to think we get more than that for our annual subsidy to CBC. Just as a for instance, Carney says the war is turning, and that therefore this is the right time to sign this 100 year pact. Two points; 1) if the tide has turned without us tying ourselves to this crooked regime for 100 yrs, why sign it now, and 2) all the evidence on the ground shows Ukraine is being destroyed by Russian artillery, glide bombs, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones, so Ukraine's alleged drone advantage is strictly PR. If CBC were doing journalism, these obvious questions, among many others, would come up.

Canada finally gets noticed in foreign press

That's manna from heaven for the American Empire Loyalists who occuppy the heights of elite opinion in Canada. They hate Donald Trump but love America. The last time we got any international ink was after Carney's Davos speech, which our media were eager to frame as "standing up to Trump" when it was nothing of the sort. There aren't many days I don't run across some claim that Canada is galvanizing the world's anti-Trump resistance, which for some reason is entirely invisible to the rest of the world. Today I happened across this headline from CNBC: "Iran takes aim at Canada for support of US actions in Strait of Hormuz." This American network devotes an entire story to Iranian officials commenting on Canada. The Iranians can't figure out how Canada continues to support the totally illegal US-Israel kinetic war on Iran when it has been so shabbily treated in Trump's tariff war on Canada. Funny how this question never comes up in Canadian media. Well, let me 'splain this for the Towelheads 'o Terror. Vassalage is an ugly thing. Iran has paid a heavy price over decades to resist it. Canada, on the other hand, has absolutely no history or identity outside of being vassals. We've always been a colony, and we're happy to be one. We're already entertaining discussions about joining the EU just in case our era of being an American satrapy comes to an end. At least taking instruction from Brussels would be preferable to going through the hassle of making our own foreign policy after 200 years of taking orders from London or Washington.

About Mark Carney's foolish, unnecessary, and ill-fated power struggle with Donald Trump

I don't understand what PM Carney imagines he might achieve by ramping up a pissing match with Mafia Don. Carney's actions seem particularly bizzare in light of the fact all he had to do was keep his head down and his mouth shut till the mid-terms, and rest easy knowing Trump will be a castrated shadow of his former big bad bully self after November. Instead, he's exposing our relatively inconsequential economy to the prospect of massive retaliation. Donald Trump could certainly use an easy win these days, because most of the world sees the US Empire failing both of the wars it instigated. As a Canadian I'm offended by the video message Carney's office released today. He's giving us the heads up that we should expect hardship and tough times for the forseeable future. Why? Apparently our sovereignty is at stake. We absolutely MUST face down the Orange Ogre or we'll be the 51st state for sure! I have no idea where this "sovereignty" hoax comes from. Every critical industry in Canada, without exception, is controlled by foreign interests, and that includes the oil and gas in the ground, the Canadian steel industry, auto industry, shipbuilding, you name it, and that's been the case since long before Donald was anywhere near the White House. This anti-Trump theatre Carney is putting on is detached from reality. The reality is that we've essentially been a branch-plant economy for the last hundred years, so the idea we now need to endure tough times to assert our independence is beyond rich.

Jiggin' cod and jackin' moose; why Newfoundland will always survive

I'm an English-as-second-language guy to begin with, so it took time to appreciate the nuances of the language. But in the seventy years since I got off the boat, I've lived on the East Coast, the West Coast, and a few spots in between, and I gotta say nothing comes close to the story-telling culture of the Maritimes. I would have to put the Newfs at the top of the heap. I spent two years in the Irving Shipyard in Saint John, working cheek-by-jowl with guys from all over the maritimes. My first few months at the yard were spent outfitting the engine bay on the HMCS Vancouver. As an aside, the Vancouver was referred to as "the love boat" after a couple of British electricians were allegedly caught in a pants-off moment. Anyway, I'm down there with about a dozen other guys, most of whom are Newfoundlanders. We're about six or seven flights of stairs below deck, so we can hear management approaching a long time before they arrive. That is conducive to a very relaxed work environment. I remember writing a letter to my parents from that engine room, and the first line was "from where I'm writing this I can see at least six people sleeping." But when we weren't napping, we did somehow get the ships done, and they're out on the seven seas to this day enforcing freedom of navigation in the strait of Taiwan or somesuch horseshit which has no conceivable link to Canada's national security. Anyway, the Newfs are a garrulous lot. When they weren't napping in that engine room they NEVER stopped talking! The stories I heard! There was a kid from Grand Falls who was my apprentice for a spell who shared the story of the mysterious German who'd settled there after the war. When the old square-head kicked the bucket, Buddy and his pals looted the joint before the morgue crew arrived, and discovered a treasure-trove of Nazi memorabilia! Of course they did! It wouldn't amount to much of a yarn if it was just ya we thought about it but decided against it. And you know for sure that Newfoundlanders will always come down on the side of basic human decency. Then there was other Buddy with the tale of his pal, let's call him Other other Buddy, phoning up to share the good news that he'd liberated several cases of tinned corned beef from a rail siding nearby. I didn't know they ever had trains in Newfoundland, but apparently that part of the story could be true. So Buddy heads over to other Buddy's place, or we might be at Other Other Buddy's place at this point in the story. But back to the original Buddy who's sharing this story in the engine room of the HMCS Vancouver. Other Buddy goes over to (let's keep the Buddy thing simple) his buddy's place, and the first line off is lips is "that's not corned beef, that's fucking dogfood!" But that's not the punchline. Other Buddy comes back with "keep your voice down man, if the kids hear that they won't eat it!" And that just exploded the entire engine room crew into a massive laughing fit. Truth be told, Newfoundlanders have always had their own culture, since long before they joined Canada, and in spite of everything that has transpired since. The reason there's Newfs everywhere from Ontario's industrial heartland to Alberta's oil patch is because these folks routinely uproot their lives to make sure their children eat well. And in a worst-case scenario, there's still the cod and the moose.

The enshitification of everything

The weather, for example. Time was, it was kinda predictable. Now, with untold scientific advances that allow us to declare it's all about climate change, it seems we can't predict much of anything. How much of a heads up did the folks in Cape Breton get for the 1000 years storm that just blew through? The weather also seems more unpredictable on a personal level. Seems to me it used to be the norm that when it's summer you would get out of bed and dress accordingly. Now I find myself changing three times a day. It gets too hot by noon, so you change into shorts, and a few hours later the temp has dropped ten degrees and you change again. It was in the course of the most recent change, back into my Levis, that I made the observation that all the Levis I owned had holes in the knees except the two pair I'd bought in the past year. How is such a thing even possible? There was a time when you could literally get through life with two pairs of pants; your work Levis and your Sunday best Levis, and both would last ten years before the knees blew out. The enshitification of the iconic Levi Strauss brand is but a symptom of a long sad decline that America and her satrapys are trapped in. Somewhere along the way One Nation Under God became a nation that worshipped only one God, the God of Mammon. Greed was good now! The dumbfucks in industry who built stuff to last were seriously deluded. Why in hell would any sane management team allow the manufacture of a washing machine that would last twenty years? I know it's hard to believe, but there was a time not that long ago that building quality products was considered a fundamental American value. Well, has that ever gone out the window! Once we embraced worship of the golden calf it was never again the guy who designed quality who made it to the corner office. It was the guy who designed the washing machine that broke down within months of the three year warranty expiry. The suckers are now having to buy five washing machines in those twenty years instead of one! That's the guy we want to lead the company!

New houses vs. 100 year-old houses

As I was coming in from the stoop an hour ago, it crossed my mind, however briefly, that the kitchen floor might be due for a re-do soon. The hundred-year-old maple floor is starting to show its age. That's not a surprise. Hardwood floors might show some wear and tear after 100 years, but here's what's truly messed up. It's almost impossible to find a new build today that has real hardwood floors. Instead, you are offered a range of options from "engineered hardwood," to, if such an abomination can even be imagined, "luxury vinyl plank flooring." The modern ed system has so destroyed critical thinking skills that the general public today is convinced engineered hardwood must be vastly superior to non-engineered old-school hardwood. Little do they realize those high-end "engineered hardwood" floors in their million-dollar Mcmansions are gonna need swapped out in ten years max, if you got the high-end "engineered" hardwood, or even sooner if you got the standard contractor grade. On the other hand, if you happen to have the real deal old-school hardwood floors that were put down well over 100 years ago in old farmhouses, and you figure it's time to freshen them up, you can rent a sander at Home Depot and between that and a couple gallons of Varathane you're good for another hundred years!

Summer's over

I've been sitting out on the stoop all afternoon (without laptop, I'll have you know) listening to the tractor action across the marsh. They've got some hayfields on the hillside over there, and from the sounds of things, they're blowing silage into wagons. Buddy has a fleet of John Deere tractors, ranging from the 1930s to the state-of-the art stuff he's not allowed to repair without permission from Deere HQ in Moline. That 1930's era Deere was, if I'm not mistaken, the first John Deere model with rubber tires all round. Buddy's grampa bought it new. It only comes out a couple of times per year now, either for blowing silage or spreading manure. Pretty sure they're still claiming depreciation on that puppy ninety years after it left the dealer's showroom! The reason grampa's heirs are beef farmers today is because he left them hundreds of acres of hayfields and pasturelands mortgage free. Enjoy your range-fed steaks while you can, because once this generation of beef farmers goes to the big ranch in the sky, your steaks will come from cattlebeasts tethered to a 24/7 feed trough inside a factory farm their entire lives. There was a time I would have considered that as animal abuse, but I've reconsidered. When you watch folks at an all-you-can-eat joint, they're basically doing the same thing. Do they feel abused? No, they'll happily pay for the privilege again next all-you-can-eat day. As I've mentioned, there's a local lad recently put up a $6 million "finishing barn" that houses 600 head. He inherited a long-time beef operation when his dear daddy passed a few years ago. He had the collateral to secure millions in financing. He'll look like a genius till interest rates go up. Then his lenders will seize the farm that's been in his family since pioneer days, and he'll be driving a snowplow to keep his kids in groceries. Spent some time with my brother "the kid" over the weekend. To say the kid has had an interesting life is to understate matters in the extreme. He's a collector too, although of guitars rather than tractors. He spent a few years of his extravagantly misspent youth as the guitar tech for several up-and-coming Canadian rock bands that, unfortunately, never really went anywhere. He's got as many Fenders and Gibsons as my neighbour has John Deeres. So here we sit on Labour Day 2026, awaiting the end of the world. Ya, maybe nuclear apocalypse really is just around the corner, but maybe somebody can put together a blues-rock jam while we're waiting. I'll bring my harp.

What's wrong with kids these days?

If you spend any time at all on news you know it's universal doom 'n damnation all round for the lot of us. If global warming doesn't do us in, the coming ice age surely will. Or the next pandemic. Or the next vaccine, bio-engineered to make you doubt your sanity. Or Putin's war on Freedom and Democracy. Or Trump's next brain fart. Or the Iranian nuke. Or the Ayatollas'never-ending campaign to obstruct God's Will in the Middle East... it goes on and on! And that's just the big picture. Zoom in on the micro level and things get worse, if such a thing can even be imagined. Housing is unaffordable, decent jobs for grads are scarce, post-secondary ed's 6-number toll in debt peonage for a degree makes no financial sense whatsoever,and if you miraculously survive all that, AI's gonna wreck your career anyway, so why even bother... it's a hopeless world. And I see stories constantly about how young folks are making the only sensible choice possible by choosing NOT to bring children into this hellscape. That's why I don't understand what's wrong with kids these days, kids I had a hand in rearing. I would have thought they'd know better, but I had to ferry the Farm Manager down City way today to chill out with her new grandson! Yup, no matter the futility of bringing new lives into this doomed world, my dear stepdaughter gifted us one anyway. And if that's not bad enough, my daughter just announced she's bringing a second into this godforsaken world. Well, for my money, these gals should be applauded, saluted, and celebrated. They are well educated, and their children will be too. There's absolutely no reason to withhold our support. Their children will be our last bulwark of defence against the rabble you saw racing Jetskiis around the pool at the Lincoln Memorial in the first 15 minutes of the famous Michael Moore doc, "Idiocracy." Anyway, ain't much wrong with these kids that I can see.

What I hear from the stoop at night; crickets, cows, and coyotes

This is what happens when I shut the laptop and just experience the moment for a moment... I notice all sorts of things I never notice with it open. Like the crickets, and I think I detect perhaps a soprano line coming from the cicadas. And the frogs still have the rythym section going on with their steady bass beat. Nothing like a million frogs croaking in unison to keep things moving! Not sure what's got the cows revved up tonight. It's deep into calving season for the guys who graze their beef herd at Falling Downs. They were telling me the other day there's been a black bear in the neighbourhood, so maybe that's got them nervous. They've been having trouble with their electric fences because the bear just walks through them instead of stepping over them. Then the fence grounds out, and the calves, most of whom would normally be deterred, make a beeline for the apple trees on the other side! Generally, bears are seen and not heard. We saw an adult black bear ambling through a hayfield a few years ago. Then he got into a pasture with maybe a dozen cow-calf pairs. What ensued was absolutely amazing to witness. Four or five of the mamma cows went to greet Mr. Bear and the rest gathered up the calves and formed a defensive zone around them. The bear decided in short order that veal would not be on the menu for him, at least on that day. Then there's the guys you seldom see but hear almost every night, the coyote choir. They really know how to whoop it up! My understanding is they're celebrating a kill. Of course they celebrate... the family will be feasting large tonight! What I find vaguely disconcerting is my neighbours a quarter mile to the north hear them to their south, and I hear them to my north, which suggests there's a substanial coyote population in that quarter mile. Yet, I walk through the woods and the fields often, and aside from scat on the gravel sideroad, you never see any sign of them. The neighbour figures they shit on roads because they don't like the feel of grass on their ass, but I'm guessing that's more local farmer lore than official scientific fact. It's amazing how my appreciation for life's infinite daily taken-for-granted blessings only come into focus when I put the laptop away. But then, after a few hours of mindfullness, I gotta flip that baby open and write a post about it...

Will Canada or Greenland become the 51st state?

My money's on Greenland achieving statehood before Canada. Greenland is a protectorate of Denmark, which has zero capacity to actually protect it in the event Mr Trump makes a move. I heard the Danish PM in a presser today talking about her nation's resilience and resistance. While, militarily speaking, her country is a non-entity, it remains a NATO member - the most powerful military alliance in history. But that was then. Nobody anywhere, other than in media boardrooms in NATO countries, still imagines NATO anything other than a paper tiger. Russia has not only succeeded in demilitarizing Ukraine, it has largely demilitarized NATO to boot! Hope the poor gal doesn't hold her breath waiting for an Article 5 miracle. On the other hand, Canadian PM Carney seems to keep the volume down vis-a-vis pushing back against the Bully. That's a strategy bound to pay off... we'll NEVER be the 51st state... we'll be the 52nd.

Cold weather made Canada unique

In yet another lame attempt to fan the embers of Canadian patriotism, the Globe trots out Stephen Marche to speculate on the hows and whys of the alleged resurgence of nationalist fervor in this fair land. Seems we've been uniquely conditioned by Mother Nature to defy Uncle Sam due to our cold weather. That somehow made us stubborn... which is apparently a great asset in these turbulent times. Not sure I follow Stephen's logic. When 90% of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the USA, it can't be that much colder. In fact, at least a dozen cities in northern states have colder winters than Canada's biggest city. It therefore stands to reason we can't be that much more stubborn. According to Marche, Canada's defiance is an inspiration around the democratic world. Carney is moving Canada closer to Europe, where the key E-3 allies are all keen for war with Russia. Yup, that would be a wise tie-in! As for Canada's alleged galvanizing of others to stand against Trump, that's not something I've ever read in the foreign press. Seems mostly a fantasy entertained by "journalists" at CBC and the Globe & Mail. What I wish they would do is more actual journalism. That might reveal we're not quite as anti-Trump as we pretend. How many stories have you read about the $4 billions in contracts with US defence contractors Carney has approved just in the past few months? Couple of billion for General Dynamics and a couple billion more for Lockheed Martin, but it's OK 'cause they hate Trump as much as Canada does!

We Canadians are desperate to be seen as "World Leaders"

Let me illustrate my case via a few quotes from a CBC story about an allegedly Canadian company scooping up a couple hundred millions more in tax-payer cash. Here's Evan Solomon, Minister of Wishful Thinking; "This is absolutely a great day for Canada, for Xanadu, and for science around the world. It shows what Canada can do best. We build!" We do? The only thing Xanadu is actually building is an HQ and manufacturing facility in a former Campbells Soup plant in Toronto that required nearly a billion $$ in taxpayer money. Evan's got more; "We are not just going to make a bet on solving the biggest problems in the world, and being the best in the world... We're going to do it big, fearlessly!" Oh ya! We build! Fearlessly! Evan goes on to bloviate about Canadian leadership and how we are securing our sovereignty. And here's some happy news; it's not just Canadian taxpayers shovelling money into Xanadu's coffers, it's the US Department of War and the US Air Force Reseach Laboratory. That almost seems a contradiction of our alleged pivot away from Uncle Sam. Not sure how that can be a positive for our sovereignty. What the CBC story never actually spells out is this supposed Canadian success story is already under American control. Australian founder Christian Weedbrook took his Xanadu public a few months ago. He kept a 15% share to himself and a couple of Canadian venture cap funds rolled their slice over at the IPO, but as of today, when our tax-payer-funded propaganda network is braying about this "Canadian" success story, a dozen US based investment funds own the rest. That's who we're subsidizing with our tax dollars!

The slow lane

I live in two worlds. One is the world I see on my computer screen. It's hard to take your eyes off that world, because we live in very interesting times. As a life-long cheerleader for the demise of The Empire, I recognize the import of this moment. Regardless of what you hear on Fox News, The Empire is in dissaray. We are witnessing the dissolution of Empire in record time. It typically takes decades or even centuries for a sclerotic failing Empire to collapse. Donny J seems determined to "git-r-dun" in one term! The other world is the one I see from the stoop. It's a different world, a world I'm trying to spend more time in. That's a challenge because wi-fi is excellent on the stoop. Willpower! Ya, as if! But I'm happy to report I spent a good four or five hours out there today sans laptop! In an entire afternoon out in the fresh air I saw a dozen cars, two dozen pickups, and a couple tractors go by. Plus, some logging trucks. There's a guy down the way harvesting his woodlot. Gets me wondering if my 20 acres of woodlot might yield a new Kubota with heated cab and snowblower. But I digress. Things aren't looking all that great for Western Civ in general, and as far as I can see, there is essentially zero leadership in the "Free World." The Eurotwats want to be ready for war with Russia by 2030, because... I don't know... freedom and democracy I suppose. Anyway, as Carney scours the world for new trading partners, none of the computer-screen drama impacts my daily routine, and it's hard to imagine it ever will. Mind you I am within the 160km danger zone the experts have designated around Bruce Nuclear. If Putin hits that puppy I just gotta hope there's nor-westers blowing that day instead of sou-westerlies. Anyway, life goes on, and I pretty much stick to the slow lane, at least if I can't just walk there. At this point, "life goes on" is in itself a declaration of victory! I know I've been whining about health challenges, but SHUT UP ALREADY!!! So long as one can eat and shit... don't worry... be happy!

Doo-doo rising; what's next for the deranged occupant of the Offal Orifice

OMG did you see what autocomplete just did? I swear I wrote "Oval Office," and look how it came out?! Maybe the AI apps that are always looking over your shoulder these days are smarter than I thought! Anyway, it's getting all-too-obvious that Donny J is well down the Alzheimer Highway. In fact, I'm pretty sure he was in that convoy of black SUVs that passed me at very high speed not too long ago. Lake America? I mean... the level of imbecility on display here is off the charts! It's obviously playing on his mind double-plus big-time that the Towelheads 'o Terror have embarrassed the greatest military the world has ever seen! I'm surprised there isn't more alarm afoot re the obvious cognitive impairment of the leader of the Free World. Given all the headwinds bearing down on the flailing and failing American Empire at this moment, the Commander-in-Chief finds the time for a juvenile PR stunt to rename Lake Ontario!? It's hard to see happy endings emerging from the disaster Trump and Bibi triggered with their war. Sometimes Karma just gotta run her course.

Elbows up and fingers crossed; how Carney might sort of maybe teach Trump a bit of a lesson... maybe

Yup, Ottawa be talkin' some serious shit. Not to mention Ontario Big Boss Doug Ford, who has challenged Donny J himself to an arm rassle! Oh, it's a never-ending shit-show, is it not? We have of course had innumerable reminders that Canada's fate hangs in the balance... The sheer idiocy of virtually anything that comes out of our Defence Dept defies belief, but you'll never see CBC ask any serious questions, such as what's the logic behind commissioning a multi-billion $$$ fleet of warships that will be destined for Davey Jones' locker upon meeting the first Chinese drone swarm. All we ever hear is how we gotta spend a shitload of money to "stand with our allies." Isn't it well past time to take a good hard look at what our allies are all about? We still cling to the fiction that we're the "good guys." Our big allies are all-in for Greater Israel. They're all-in for war with Russia. Soon, according to the NATO cheerleaders. Meanwhile, no matter where you look, you'll see public services are drastically underfunded, and that's before our myriad fresh spending commitments kick in. We are way down the wrong road, the road to certain disaster. War with Russia and China? That's stupid enough on the face of it, but even sillier is the conceit that we, "The West," "The Nations of Virtue," will somehow prevail. Best wishes to elbows up and fingers crossed, but I think we're doomed.

A history of cannabis consumption

Let me start with a couple of caveats off the top. In the first place, I know nothing about the history of cannabis consumption other than what I read in High Times, so I know archeologists have found cannabis residue on hookas buried with Egyptian royalty 5,000 years ago, but who knows? What I actually know about the history of cannabas didn't kick in till the 1970s. And that brings up my second caveat; my experience of cannabis takes flight (good one, eh?!) from a kinda lame baseline; the 5% THC weed we were smoking in the seventies. To be honest, I stuck with the low-octane stuff for the next fifty years, mainly because that's what I grew in my weed patch. At some point maybe 5 or 10 years ago... or probably closer to twenty now that I do the math, I moved to smoking my weed out of a vape instead of twisting 'em up. In hindsight, that was the thin edge of the wedge that's gonna launch you down the slippery slope. The PAX vapes I settled on after a little experimentation ran 200 bucks and in every case lasted within a few weeks more or less of two years, right around the time the warranty expired. Finally I spring an extra hundred for the PAX 3 model because it has the life-time warranty. It lasts an extra year, and of course to cash in on the warranty, you would have had to do proof-of-purchase paperwork when you bought it. Ya right! Anyway, the PAX vapes still required loading loose bud into a tiny space with my fat fingers and shaky hands. That wasn't getting any easier, and then a few years ago I had a wee close call while germinating my spring crop. Long story mercifully short, there was an incident involving the gas fireplace and (hitherto unknown to me) flammable seed trays, after which I concluded, fuck this; growing 70s-style weed isn't worth burning your house down. That's aound the time I began experimenting with the pre-filled vapes that come with cannabis oil instead of bud. In texture, taste, and viscosity it strikes me as the modern version of honey oil. Remember that shit? That was $500 for a 5g vial back when you could buy a bag of weed for twenty bucks! Which brings me to my current situation. A year and a half ago I got the CHF diagnosis, ie your heart is fucked. Just a couple weeks ago I got the complimentary COPD diagnosis, ie your lungs are fucked too. So you can see where they've totally triggered maximum paranoia in a schmuck who is predisposed to it to begin with! I'll sit on the stoop sucking on the honey oil vape for an hour, hoping to cope, and then be alarmed by the fact I'm having trouble standing up! OMG, it's my heart! OMG, it's my lungs! Ya, maybe...

Doug Ford challenges Trump to sumo cage match on White House lawn

The Ontario preem really got his dander up over Mafia Don's latest tarrif tricks. He was pretty much in hold-my-coat-while-I-kick-his-ass mode. The trouble with Doug is he's too much like Donald; quick to take umbrage and even quicker to fire back with ill-considered nonsense, in Doug's case, how we're gonna ratchet up the pain dial on the Americans and wait Trump out. Here's the problem. At the present moment the American Empire is being grieviously humiliated by the fact it is on the losing side of both the wars it largely instigated. The odds of either of those disasters being salvaged grow more remote by the day. Trump is absolutely desperate to beat the shit out of somebody, and if Russia and Iran are out of reach, Canada may do in a pinch. Maybe not what he pictured in the history books, but better than nothing. Probably a few keeners already floating thesis proposals re "how under President Donald J Trump's heroic and divinely inspired leadership we were able to ensure that Canada would never develop a nuclear weapon." Don't laugh... stranger things have happened; according to all 18 US intel agencies, Iran wasn't developing one either, and look what happened to them! Anyway, I would advise Doug to turn down down the volume on his bombast. As a country, Canada is all soft underbelly with no hard shell in sight. It's time we stopped pretending otherwise.

Canada celebrates 14 years of tough new sanctions on Iran with tough new sanctions on Iran

You'd almost think that at some point the relevant experts might detect a degree of futility in our strategy, but apparently we're not there yet. Check out this post from 2012.********** Tuesday, January 31, 2012 What's so tough about Canada's tough new sanctions on Iran? We've already seen the standard fare: blocking bank accounts in Canada held by bigwigs in the Revolutionary Guards. Number of Canadian bank accounts ever held by bigwigs in the Revolutionary Guards? Zero. So the sanctions announced by Foreign Minister John Baird today are going to hit the towellers where it hurts. The new sanctions will include the following: Total ban on oil exports to Iran. While it's true that nobody actually wants Canada's dirty oil, at least we know the Iranians aren't going to get their grubby nuclear-weapon-seeking hands on it. Total ban on maple syrup. That'll teach the towel-heads. No more of the good stuff on your morning pancakes. You'll have to settle for that Aunt Jemima faux syrup that our less committed American neighbors still make available. Complete ban on pork exports to Iran. Good luck finding a BLT or a pulled pork sandwich in Tehran after this. Ban on export of Celine Dionne CD's. What are you going to play at your weddings now, People of the Towel? Total ban on Canadian nuclear technology. That's a grey area. We gave all our Canadian nuclear technology away to India and Pakistan to enable their nuclear weapons programs. If the Iranians can't get it from us they can always get it from them. Leaf's season tickets will no longer be sold to known members of the Revolutionary Guards. I think when they have a chance to mull that over the Iranians will see we're not kidding around. We are the Canadians. We punch above our weight all the time and we mean business. We don't cut and run, unless it becomes politically expedient for us to do so. So shape up, you Iranians. You don't want to risk an even tougher round of sanctions from the biggest hypocrites in the world. ********** So here we are a decade and a half down the road, across a half dozen foreign ministers from both parties, and we've doubled-down on a failed strategy even since Israel and the US launched their criminal war. If Carney was a little more a thinking man instead of banker to the oligarchy he might want to take a fresh look at this. In fact, now that the deranged occupant of the White House has turned on us, Canada needs new friends to avoid isolation - just like Iran does! Maybe we can work something out with the Ayatollahs!

Carney has Trump by the balls -threatens to cut 4 million bbls per day oil exports

Oh ya! Canada rules! Elbows up up and away! We gonna teach Trump a lesson! Taking 4 million barrels per day off the market will totally show Mafia Don we have serious cards to play... wait a minute... all that Canadian oil actually belongs to foreign entities and not to Carneys Canada... oh well, my mistake I guess... there goes our strategy for winning the tariff war. Sorry.

Jason Arday proves my point; you can bullshit education or sociology, but you can't bullshit welding

Far as I know, Jason never spent any time on the floor of a welding shop. He was cut out for bigger things, obviously. That's a shame, because there's a profound lesson in engaging with the authentic, with the shit you can't bullshit. In a fab shop, if the trailer hitch you welded onto the back of a five-ton truck falls off, you're not gonna talk your way outta that with some post-modernist baffle-gab about absence being the highest form of presence! No, you'll a) be unemployed, and b) depending on how many died when the trailer detached from the truck and took out a school bus, be facing a lengthy prison term. Pity the poor sods who were denied the opportunity to engage with what's real. Whether you're prepping a meal or baking a pie or building a house or installing a trailer hitch, IT MATTERS! I spent 25 years in the classroom and took at least two dozen soc courses for my undergrad, and while both soc and ed are prime fields where bullshit can take you a long way, Sociology of Education is a bullshitter's Nirvana! It's a double dose of unaccountability! I mean, you can interrogate intersectionality till the cows come home, and if you get it all wrong nobody will ever notice!

What happens to journalism when narrative detaches from reality?

I watched a great podcast today that addressed that Q in some detail. Retired US military guy Danny Davis had retired Brit spook and diplomat Alastair Crooke on, and they spent an hour dissing the Empire that once provided their paycheques. They covered in some detail the Trump regime's ongoing campaign to pursue policies completely divorced from on-the-ground realities. The American Empire is bleeding out in the Middle East and it is bleeding out in Ukraine, and there's no strategy in sight that promises anything other than more bleeding. Yes, for Russia and Iran, but ultimately, for America too. Our legacy media still push the absurd notion that a Ukrainian victory is just around the corner. I can't imagine what corner that might be. There was a time just weeks into this war when a peace deal was just around the corner, but then Boris showed up with "NATO is 100% behind you with whatever it takes for as long as it takes." Ukraine has been taking the dirty end ever since and there's been no sign NATO ever had either the guns or the balls to fight, although they are planning some new factories that might begin to address NATO deficiencies in... oh ten or twenty years or so? Yet legacy media platforms keep pushing for more war. That's an embarrassment to the profession of jounalism. Just today Doug Saunders informed me that Zelly may in fact be the reincarnation of Winston Churchill, but, like Winston, he's a really shitty leader on the domestic side. Sure, so that's the guy to follow if you're keen for more war? How is that still attached to reality? Doug asserts that Zelly's election in 2019 was the "permanent end to far-right politics in Ukraine." Huh? Within two weeks of Zelly's win the far-right had overturned his election platform 100% and consolidated their grip on power. I'm sure Dopey Doug understands this as well as I do, but his paycheque depends on hewing to the approved narrative long after it's completely detached from reality. At the end of the war, hopefully there will be some accountability for the hordes of Western politicians who kept pushing for more war. NATO reparations for Ukraine after our war-mongering destroyed their country is the least we owe Ukraine.

Time for every pol who promised "whatever it takes for as long as it takes" to get their cowardly lying butts to Kyiv and witness their folly

The last great erruption of breatheless PR bullshit from the NATO crowd happened during the Ankara summit. From the Baltics to the Iberian penninsula, every foreign minister and every head of state had the same message: UKRAINE HAS TURNED THE TIDE!!! That was six weeks ago. For several days our legacy media ran multiple news stories and op-eds celebrating the miracle... and then Ukraine dropped out of the news cycle again. Beginning the day before the NATO summit, and continuuing till today, Russia has carried out the most sustained missile and drone attacks of the war, completely under the radar of Western media! Thousands of missiles and tens of thousands of drones have absolute freedom in the skies. Ukraine could sure use some air defence, but NATO's cupboard is bare. Whatever it takes, unless we don't have it, I guess! Too bad we didn't spell that out a little sooner, before we goaded the hapless Zelly into a war Ukraine was expected to lose by the very "allies" provoking and promoting it. This would be the perfect time for all those empty suits who spent the last five years making empty promises to Ukraine to man up and personally stand with Ukraine, not metaphorically; I mean shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainians who haven't left the bomb shelters for a month. At the very least, you owe them an apology. In the long run, they should get reparations from the NATO cowards who foisted this war on them.

Small-town mainstreet vignette

Dateline Walkerton; up-market sedan pulls into parking space on main drag. Well-dressed up-market female person disembarks driver's door and opens back door to reveal rather roly-poly boy-child who appears to be playing a game on his device. She waits. She waits some more. She is a very patient mom. She stands on the sidewalk with the back door open while the future video game world champion tries to beat the ending boss. Eventually he must have reached some sort of conclusion, because after a good five minutes of mom standing on the sidewalk, he gathered up his gear, and a set of headphones hitherto not a factor, and exited the car. He couldn't have been older than seven or eight. Whatever happened to parents acting like parents?

A country drive

Had occassion to take a tour the other day down Walkerton way. Don't see those roads much anymore. For a couple years around the turn of the century I saw them every day, because me and my old pal Jimmy used to carpool from Walkerton to our teaching jobs in Owen Sound. County roads and Townlines and Concession roads all the way through an hour's worth of rolling hills and pastoral vistas. If you absolutely must have a job that requires commuting, a commute that calms your nerves and soothes your senses is the one you want. I was on my way to lunch with another old friend, a guy who makes his living ferrying ultra-lethal military-related goodies back and forth across the border. That obviously requires the absolutely highest levels of security clearances. I've known this dude since we were teens, and how he got that is a complete mystery to me. Suffice it to say if he makes a habit of lunching with the pot-addled anti-semitic hillbilly communist, he might not get the next one! Back in the day there was a lot of local excitement about a new furniture plant going in at Chesley, roughly the half-way point in that commute. Durham Furniture, a high-quality manufacturer that's been around since the 1800s, was investing $38 millions in a brand-new state-of-the-art factory. Many of our students were hired. Within two years they went tits-up. I've heard China's entry into the WTO destroyed our fine-furniture industry, but that could just be Yellow Peril propaganda for all I know. Unfortunately Jimmy didn't last all that long after our commuting days. He succumbed to cancer just a few years later. Oddly enough, his younger brother died of the same cancer just a few years after that. Both of them had apprenticed into the machine trades. A few years later there was a class action launched against 3M and Dupont on behalf of all the millwrights, machinists, tool & die guys and mechanics who died young because they'd spent years absorbing toxic chemicals through their skin as part of their jobs. Don't know if they ever got any compensation. So I spend a two hour+ lunch with Buddy, and holy moly, does this guy have some insights into the trucking biz. He's been around it for over 50 years and has seen the changes. The main change is the composition of the workforce. Used to be mostly whites and a few blacks in Canada, and closer to a black-white-Latino mix once you crossed the border. In fact, JB Hunt, a major American trucking concern, had its HQ just around the corner from the Arkansas State Penetentiary and was famous for providing employment opportunities to ex-cons who had paid their debt to society. Now it's 90% guys with turbans on both sides of the border! But that's not always a bad thing. Carrying guns and ammo across the border requires literally binders worth of paperwork. It involves an absolutely incognito truck stripped, for obvious reasons, of all comm tech, and scanned for tracking devices every time it's loaded. The company that employs Buddy tried to dump him back when he balked at the covid shot. Turns out it really helps to know your way around those binders if you hope to get through customs in a timely manner. He gradually got most of his job back as the clamour over covid died down. He claims it's routine to be waiting with a dozen or two dozen drivers in the US Customs holding area to clear their paperwork, and being the only white guy in the room. For some obscure reason, it's apparently quicker for a white guy to get through US Customs than for a brown dude with a turban. After lunch I mosied up what is generally known as the Elora Road, which terminates in Southampton, just west of Saugeen Indian Reservation #29. Gotta drop into my favorite pot shop and reload! I've only ever bought anything at a gov pot shop once, and across the board your gonna save probably 75% by shopping at the rez. Over the years, quite a few kids from Saugeen First Nation came through my classroom. In my 25 years of watching the education system circle the drain, one of the very few bright spots is we're now seeing Indigenous boys in high school much more. It was rare in 1995. By the time I retired, it was normal, and they were often among my best students. And let me point out that had far more to do with culture change in their community than with anything the ed system did. So, I got home with a full belly and four fresh vapes, 2 indica and 2 hybrid. My final observation has to do with this region's fast-fading reputation as Ontario's cattle country. There are actually more cattle than ever, but you don't see nearly as many. That's because what you see a lot more of is feedlots. A guy up the road put one in a year ago. Six million bucks for a 600 head barn where they stand in front of a giant automated feed trough and do nothing but eat and shit 24/7 until they hit the abattoir. I drive by the place twice a day and have never seen a cow. I guess that's farming today. I'm pleased to rent my pastures to a old-school father-son team who believe in cattle roaming the meadows, eating grass, and providing me cow-views from every window! That's worth a lot in my world. Sadly, they and their herd are endangered species.

Celebrating the Idiot Savant, from Jimi Hendrix to Jason Arday

Turns out that some idiot savants are more savants than idiots. Take Hendrix. I mean, he may have been a druggie goofball who held his guitar upside down, but to this day knowledgable commentators peg him as one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time. Then there's the Idiot Savants who prove themselves idiots. In spite of a massive PR campaign intended to hide the obvious; that from the beginning of his meteoric rise Dr Arday proved himself on the idiot side of the ledger. I can assure you there are no knowledgable commentators anywhere who imagine... that Jason is the Jimi Hendrix of... sociology? Which in no way absolves the powers that be from responsibility for the Arday debacle. And it is abundantly clear that it's Cambridge admin pushing DEI policies that put this guy in peril to begin with.

Johnny Hirtle and the 500hp Super Bee

Johnny, may he rest in peace, bought a 1969 Dodge Super Bee at Weiland Motors in Kitchener. They were strictly used cars then, and it was a few years before they got the Ford franchise, so the Bee had a few miles on it already. She was a box-stock stripper with column shift Torqueflite, bench seats, and the 335hp 383. Didn't take long to grenade that motor, given the extravagant smoke shows that erupted all over town. Johnny had a conundrum; rebuild that motor or swap in something new. He found a '68 Road Runner for sale that had been heavily modified for drag racing, hence the 500hp. The problem was that motors built for drag racing are designed to absolutely peak out at a quarter mile, whereas a stock Bee geared for the street is just getting warmed up at the quarter mile mark. In addition to even more spectacular smoke shows, we now got stories about "burying the speedometer." Given that the Super Bee speedo goes to 150mph, I found that rather alarming. Fortunately, the lifespan of that race motor was even shorter than that of the original, which probably extended the lifespans for a few of us, including Joachim himself. Johnny/Joachim took a decidedly mellow turn after that. Couple of years later, he was tooling around in an Econoline van. By then a ride with Johnny was still an adventure, because you never knew if it was gonna be three hours or three days, but at least you were reasonably confident you'd eventually arrive alive!

American Empire awaits final curtain

Just watched a ten minute segment on Fox where General Keane was 'splainin' to Larry Kudlow how, in spite of appearances to the contrary, the USA is in fact in full control of Hormuz. For ten minutes they danced around the very obvious fly in the ointment, to wit, the fact that four months into a four day war, the mightiest military the world has ever seen has proven incapable of achieving any of the goals it proclaimed when they started this war. In normal parlance, that's known as "losing." But not at Fox News. No, the extended pause in US attacks is 100% due to Donald's humanitarian bent. He just wants to make sure he gave the terrorist thugs every last chance before he unleashes hell etc. The truly sad (and might I add dangerous) fact is more Americans get their news from Fox than anywhere else, and I can't imagine they're likely to change the chanel to CNN or Al Jazeera for a second opinion. What will it take before reality sets in?... I figure $12/gallon diesel should do it!

Winter's coming and I got nothing but fear and loathing

And that's a radical departure from my usual winter announcement, which typically comes late November or early December, to the effect that, by golly, looks like winter's back... who knew? Yup, the advent of winter reliably takes me by surprise every year. But here's why things have changed. Last winter was an unexpectedly stiff one, as in way cold and way too much snow. Turned out I was completely unprepared, and it was only the kind intervention of my neighbours John Deere and Massey Ferguson, together with their snowblowers, that got me through. Never again! So I've been keeping an eye out for reliable and affordable snow-clearing tech. I saw a nearly new Suzuki quad with a blade for a whisker under 10k. At least that would give me a 4-wheeler when I'm not clearing snow, but it's not what you need when you get an overnight dump of four feet or more, which is known to happen in these parts. So I've been thinking maybe it makes some sense to have the old Ford 4000 diesel refurbished. It's a 53hp unit from about 50 or 60 years ago, and I have a snowblower for it. But I haven't had a diesel since my VW died, what, 15 years ago? I therefore know nothing about diesels and besides, between my shaky hands and fat fingers I struggle to pick up a wrench, let alone turn one. So this job gotta be farmed out, but whereto? As fate would have it, a few of the kids who went through my shop class went on to become all sorts of trades, including diesel mechanics. I happened to run into one of them at a funeral last week. He works at an iron ore mine on Baffin Island, which is somewhere nearby Santa's place. The company flies him up and back for a three-week rotation, and when he's home he wants to spend time with his three teen boys, not with my derelict tractor. Fortunately, he was able to provide the name of a classmate, who had just left a prominent farm equipment dealership and opened his own biz. Perfect! He'll be looking for work! A few days later I drop by the kids place. The kid is now a middle aged man with a family. There's a float dropping off a hydraulic Skyjack unit as I pull up. There's two or three tractors lining either side of the drive to his shop, and there's a massive high-hoe in the middle of all this stretching out its arms to the sky! Ya... I'm pretty sure Jeff ain't looking for work! Anyway, I'm happy the kids are kicking ass. They seem to have survived my tutelage just fine! But winters coming...

Up a stump with Donald Trump

Remember when USA-Israel unleashed a surprise attack on Iran last year, in the midst of alleged peace talks, which utterly obliterated Iran's nuclear program and military? Remember when USA-Israel unleashed another surprise attack this past February, again against the background of more fake peace talks, murdering the Supreme Leader and much of his extended family, and once again totally obliterating Iran's military? Remember when Mafia Don told the world that he personally would appoint the next Supreme Leader? Well, all of that and oh-so-much-more is already down ye olde memory hole. In fact, USA-Israel has since February obliterated the entirety of Iran's military-industrial complex several more times, to the point they have exhausted their ammo and are now awaiting Iranian retaliation. How such a thing is even conceivable after their non-stop obliteration over many months should raise a few questions, the paramount one being just how brazenly over-the-top the Trump regime's nonstop cavalcade of bullshit would have to get before the American people realize it's time to change the channel.

CBC wants you to know 51st state status a tempting option

Just check out their home page right now. Top headline... Oh my God millions of jobs and trillions of dollars will be gone if our fabulous free trade agreement collapses... what to do what to do... well by golly wouldn't it be great to short-circuit all that nasty trade war shit and just be friends? Frankly, by accepting Trumps offer of statehood, we're just making official what's been de-facto reality at least since John Diefenbaker axed the Avro Arrow. We're looking at a most impressive record of Canadian politicians currying favour in DC while pretending not to. Elbows up and all that silly shit! Obviously the unspoken message that screams out is we gotta save trillions of jobs and millions of... oh, whatever! Just a few stories later we read that over 29,000 Canadians have petitioned our government to kick out the US ambassador. I can certainly think of reasons to do that, but defying the deranged occupant of the White House's threats to annex Canada wouldn't be one of them. Contrasting "threats to annex" to the kidnapping or murder of a head of state makes us look a wee bit unserious. It's hard to get revved up about petty side-shows when we're 100% silent on America's role in the Gaza genocide and we support the unprovoked and illegal war on Iran.

Pot-addled pinko blogger beats Toby Lutke to the nitty-gritty by 12 years!

Yup, it's a true fact, that. Well, except it wasn't actually me who beat the Shopify guy to the insight that poor people are superfluous in a proper democracy, it was California hedgie billionaire Tom Perkins. Being a recovered socialist, I immediately posted the following to the web, where perhaps several dozen people may have noticed.********************** neumann's blog Saturday, February 15, 2014 Three cheers for Tom Perkins! Tom Perkins attracted more than a little ridicule a couple weeks ago with his assertion that the super-rich like him are being persecuted in contemporary America just like Jews were persecuted in Nazi Germany. Hold on a minute. Maybe Tom is the canary in the proverbial coalmine. Maybe some of us are just too blind with envy to see what is really happening. Already we see the super-rich being barred from the boards of directors of major corporations. None of the big banks will any longer be publicly associated with billionaires. They are increasingly shunned even by the very media they own! Rumours abound of private jets ferrying planeloads of billionaires to secret camps deep in the woods. We are told these camps are for "economic summits." Of course they are... just like the Jews of Europe were attending "economic summits" at Belsen and Auschwitz. And what of the future for our beleaguered billionaires? Will enough survive these dark days to achieve, someday, a homeland of their own? Luckily, Tom has an idea that may nip this tide of anti-oligarchism in the bud. The fatal flaw in democracy has always been that a lot of lazy stupid people have this so-called "right to vote." This manifestly unfair feature of US democracy has lead us straight to the current crisis of billionaire-bashing. If Tom's net worth is the equivalent of the combined net worth of 150 million poor Americans, why should they get 150 million votes while he gets one? Tom's plan is brilliant in its simplicity. Every dollar paid in tax would entitle the payer to one vote. That way Tom will no longer be punished for working a million times harder than a million lazy stupid poor people. This plan would also increase government revenue by incentivising many billionaires to pay taxes for the first time! So enough with the ridicule already. Let's give Tom's plans a chance! **************** Don't know what to say... either Toby was scrolling through my blog again and found something he liked, or (probably more likely) he happened to be sharing quality time with Tom at Davos or Aspen recently!

Gonzo hypocrisy; zero journalism

The crap that's showing up on CBC of late is beyond fake news, beyond ridiculous, and beyond even a caricature of actual "news." Here's what I believe lies at the root of the problem. As an occupation, the journalism profession has been shrinking for decades. Since the 1980s something like three-quarters of all mainstream journo jobs have disappeared, the kind of jobs with real salaries, benefits, and career paths. While the jobs disappeared, university journalism programs kept pumping out fresh grads - into a zero jobs economy. That's where the government decided taxing Google and Meta would raise the money required to provide at least temp employment to all these budding journalists. And here we are. A news environment dominated entirely by press releases from activist groups, think tanks, corporations, and govt spokepersons. Where's the "journalism?" Whatever happened to "afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted?" Whatever happened to "speaking truth to power?" I'll tell you what happened. When you come out of Carleton or TMU or any of the others with that shiny new degree, or, God forbid, even a Masters and $100k in student loans, what are you gonna do in that bullshit fake job? Speak truth to power? No way! You'll do everything you can to get a pat on the head and get noticed by power, because the only possible hope you have of ever paying down your student loans and having a life is if you get into a rare paying slot at the Globe or the CBC, and "truth to power" ain't gonna take you very far up that road!

Celebrating small victories

There's a story on view at CBC today; " Na-Me-Res opens its doors to a new complex for unhoused men." I guess that's a good-news bad-news story. The good news is they're getting twenty dudes off the street and into proper housing. The bad news is this program is run by an Indigenous charity and is understandably focused on getting their people off the street. What we need to do is replicate this program x1000 and extend it across the country. The one thing I noticed is the program demands 100% abstinence from its former-addict residents. I'm surprised there hasn't been a civil-rights challenge on that. The way things have evolved over recent years makes public inebreation a basic human right. And if your public intoxication, regardless of cause, causes you to defecate in the flowerbeds in front of City Hall, well, everybody gotta shit, so fuck off with your judgementalism! Anyway, while the story headlines a small victory, it mentions in passing that Toronto is decades behind in its affordable housing goals. Now that we've gotta spend gazillions on fighter jets and warships and submarines, we'll be centuries behind!

Large white supremacist meeting shakes residents of Alberta town

That CBC headline caught my eye this morning. The CBC investigative journalism crew really has its finger on the pulse of what's going on in small-town Alberta. Remember a couple of years ago when they had a sudden surge of personal essays on what it's like to be the only Black trans teen in a small prairie town? Well, aside from empathy, there's not much those teens demand of us. Today's expose is an entirely different kettle of fish. We might feel sorry for that loney kid, but we need to be absolutely outraged about these white supremacists who terrorized a small town! The locals were stunned and shellshocked! Except if you actually read the story, they weren't. In fact, apparently nobody in town was even aware this army of 60+ white supremacists had visited until several weeks after the fact, when CBC brought it to their attention. Only then did the alleged "shellshock" set in. According to Grokepedia, the population of that Alberta hamlet is 58. You'd think they'd notice 60+ nazis in their midst, especially when they were waving banners from the overpass over the highway. The cbc quotes the owner of the general store as saying he had no idea. That's where you buy beer in Millarville... we're supposed to believe over five dozen middle-aged racist white goobers, mostly CAF vets, came to town for a week and didn't buy any beer??? We're in get-the-fuck-outta-here territory with that one! Anyway, I see two plausible explanations for this story. Is it possible those small-town Alberta bumpkins are secret fascist symps? The other possibility is that the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, the NGO 100% funded by our federal government, and whose "research" underpins this CBC story, is desperate to have its funding renewed, and is hoping to scare up some scary headlines.

If Chrystia Freeland is out of politics, why is she making speeches in Taiwan promising we'll protect them from Chinese aggression?

I have two observations about Chrystia's moronic interference in Taiwan-China affairs, and I have to say the only thing stupider than her actual speech is the Globe's coverage thereof. If one were completely ignorant of the last 100 years of China's history with the West, you'd think Chrystia was taking a bold stand for freedom and democracy and all that great stuff, just like when she was schlepping the hapless dumbshit Juan Guaido around the world. What she's really doing is working hard to further the Trump regime's mission to destroy the Trudeau-Nixon era's rapprochement with communist China. That is in itself an unfortunate lapse in good judgement. How is it up to the boss of one of the world's most lavishly funded foundations to pronounce on Taiwan-China relations? But here's where it gets really stupid. I mean, she's telling Taiwan to pick a fight with China, and we, meaning the collective West, will be standing shoulder to shoulder with them, yessiree, with whatever it takes for as long as it takes?... How is that working out for Ukraine?

Former Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine Army admits Russia has defeated NATO

Well, there's an oopsie! That's the exact opposite from the message the NATO vassals were singing in unison at the NATO summit in Ankara recently. "Ukraine has turned the tide!" Anybody who put any stock in that piffle needs to look up General Valerii Zaluznhy's address to the assembled Western ambassadors. Zaluznhy is the guy who oversaw the first half of Ukraine's war before being promoted to the post of ambassador to the UK. I think it's safe to assume the General knows whereof he speaks, unlike the myriad "experts" who have been shovelling blatant NATO propagada our way non-stop since at least 1991. Recall that at the dissolution of the Soviet Union Ukraine was by a good margin the most prosperous province. By the time of the Maidan coup, it's GDP per person had shrivelled to a third of Russias. Zaluznhy knows intimately the entire trajectory of post-Soviet Ukraine. Unlike our FM Anita Anand, who declared last week that "Ukraine has turned the tide," the former C in C of the Ukraine Army claims ain't no tide been turned, nor will there be. Not only has Russia destroyed Ukraine's military, its economy, and its industrial infrastructure, it has effectively demilitarized NATO to boot! But don't take my word for it.

Men of a certain age

Now that I'm solidly ensconced in God's waiting room, just waiting for my number to come up, I've developed a keen eye for the tell-tale signs that moment could be drawing nigh. For instance, maybe a month ago or so I had a mishap coming in the front door. My right foot didn't quite negotiate that first step, causing, in no particular order, broken glass, a deep gash on my arm, and a question mark in my mind about how it's possible to miss a step you've successfully negotiated multiple times per day for the last 20 years. I initially put it down to the fact it was late evening and I'd had a coupla pints and a toke... but that's just a regular day, so it didn't add up. Then, just a week or so later, it happened again! Except this time at 7 am. No beer. No tokes. Just a coffee and a cigarette out on the stoop. Once again, righty didn't quite attain the first step, causing a face-plant, a broken cup, and two rolls of paper towels to mop up the coffee. Obviously, I was having an issue with my right foot being reluctant to follow instructions from my brain. So, for the first time since I was maybe two, I've been thinking about every step I take, especially the steps that require lifting righty. That understandably gets you noticing others practicing "deliberative walking," if I may call it that. All my life I've been the kinda guy who chooses to wait in the car while the Farm Manager goes shopping, and all my life that was a pleasant respite when one could watch pretty women coming in and out of the store. Now I'm watching men of a certain age. And holy sh!t, damned near everybody's obviously deeply engaged in making sure that next step lands where it needs to. Praise the Lord! I'm not the only one!

When it comes to posh sinecures, absolutely nothing compares to House Marm at Rhodes House

Think about it. If you're a president or prime minister in a liberal democracy, your salary won't amount to more than a few hundred thou. Not only that, but you will be disparaged every day of your life as a lying shitbag. Who needs the aggravation? Ask Mark Carney how much he enjoys playing capo dei capi. On the other hand, as near as I can gather, School Marm at Rhodes House pays around 2 mil per annum. Plus a full staff including chefs, sommeliers, drivers and generic flunkies, not to mention residence in Cecil Rhodes' mansion itself! When's the last time you saw a Rhodes person taking any questions whatsoever from hostile media? Never! And lo and behold, that's where our former deputy PM finds herself today, at what's gotta be the tippy-tip-top of the greasy pole of cushy sinecures that await our Epstein class political operatives.

Fresh new Epstein scandal discovered in Michigan

Ho-hum... another posh private school for the children of folks who think for $80k their kids will escape the depravities of the public ed system, only to have them buggered and abused by Epstein & Company. Here's a quote from Jeffrey Epstein that's worth a momentary ponder:"Many members of the global super-elite have helped me to understand their world and some have become friends." Well, did they ever! And now, thanks to some intrepid investigative journalism at the New York Times by reporter Graham Bowley, even more Epstein Evil has come to light. Here's what got me sniffing the air for the wiff of conspiracy theories. While the above quote could very plausibly be an Epstein original, it actually comes from Chrystia Freeland. Yes, Epstein and Freeland both mixed freely among the global elite, Chrystia as a self-confessed small-time anti-Russia spy and A-list journo (top gun at Reuters), and Jeffrey as the most prolific pedophile and sex trafficker in known history. Oh, and by the way, by far the most consequential spy for Israel since Jonathan Pollard. Jeffrey's and Chrystia's paths must have crossed many times while they inhabited the same milleu. In fact, he variously swindled, promoted, partnered with,mentored,advised, sued, or defrauded many of the name's dropped by Freeland in her bountifully footnoted memoir of that time in her life, yet no reference to Epstein? Maybe after he gets to the bottom of this Michigan outrage, that NYT reporter can look into this. After all, Graham Bowley remains married to Ms. Freeland... maybe they can collaborate! I see a Pulittzer Prize ahead!

How Canada stands up to Donald Trump

This is a reprint of a story first published six years ago. Back then our leader was the one-time high-school drama teacher, the haircut that walks like a man. Today our leader is one-time elite global banker, the urbane technocrat who wowed the world with his defiant Davos speech. The six-year-old piece is fresh as this mornings's news headlines for one reason; our approach to Trump has not changed one iota. Lots of feisty op-eds and political grandstanding, but behind the curtain, strictly business as usual. Its hard to keep your elbows up when your pants are around your ankles.******** neumann's blog Sunday, October 4, 2020 How Canada stands up to Trump Canadians generally and Canadian media in particular have an ingrained antipathy toward Donny J. We are, after all, a sophisticated, educated, and morally superior nation, and Trump is...well, just so darned yucky and gross. Today, Jaime Watt's column in the Sunday Star is titled "Trump is running against democracy." Who can even imagine such a thing! Trump is so yucky and gross he is running against the very democratic ideals that make civilization possible. Star columnist Vinay Menon, meanwhile, advises his (presumably Canadian) readership to "seek out the remarkable healing power of Biden," although evidence that Biden has "healed" much of anything in almost a half century in politics is threadbare at best. While these A-list Canadian pundits are polishing our smug and sanctimonious superiority complex, the Royal Canadian Navy was, for the fourth time in four months, sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait. While Canada is blessed with an abundance of coastlines, none of them are anywhere near China, so it's not as if we're over there "defending our interests." No, what we're doing is "standing with our allies" in a signal to the commies that we're a vital part of the coalition of "liberal democracies" ever anxious to keep the Yellow Peril in check. The leader of the "liberal democracies," also known variously as "the free world," the Nations of Virtue, or simply Uncle Sam's Club, is of course America's Donald J Trump. One could question just how sound America's claim is on either liberalism or democracy, but aside from the ubiquitous Trump bashing, these questions don't come up. It's as if our pundits believe that America was that "shining city on a hill,"right up until January 20, 2017, when the light of freedom was suddenly snuffed. If we all wish hard enough, perhaps it may flicker back to life after November 3rd, when we can once again huddle under Uncle Sam's skirts without embarrassment. In the meantime, our allies UK and US, sail through the Taiwan Strait on a regular basis, and it is imperative that we "stand with our allies," the same "liberal democracies" currently busying themselves with destroying Julian Assange in revenge for exposing their war crimes. Here's the problem; talk is cheap. It costs nothing to write anti-Trump op-eds. On the other hand, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per day to sail a Halifax-class RCN frigate through the Taiwan Strait. And our frigate fleet is getting long in the tooth. We need to upgrade the fleet if we are to continue standing with our allies. To that end, Canada is forging ahead with plans to build 15 state-of-the-art frigates at a cost of 45 billions. The lead contractor is US military supplier Lockheed Martin. For all our Trump-bashing and anti-American posturing, it is clear that, virtue-signalling aside, Canada's ruling elite remains as desperate as ever to ingratiate themselves with the Big Dog, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. They remain American Empire Loyalists to the core.

Mothers and beer

Back when I was a teen living under my mother's roof, she had concerns about my beer consumption. In the first place, as a pious Christian woman, the fact her underage teen son could get his hands on the devil's brew pointed to the overal disintegration of society. Not only that, but once her boy had tasted beer, cigarettes and gambling and loose women couldn't be far behind. Well, I generally missed out on the loose women, to my chagrin, and gambling is one vice that I never heard calling my name, but she wasn't wrong about the smokes. And the crazy thing is, now that Mutti is in her nineties and I'm in my seventies, she's more worried than ever about my beer consumption! Obviously, I stayed ahead of the devil's brew long enough to have a career and raise a family, but by God, have things ever gone off the rails since I retired. I suddenly come down with a gluten allergy. Yup, bread and beer are suddenly verboten! Try telling that to a guy who has lived his whole life on bread and beer! I have to say, for all my adult life, I'm sure I never met a sandwich I didn't like. That got Mom overly interested in my diet, so when the next turd dropped into my retirement punch bowl, ie the alleged "congestive heart failure" business, she was primed to unleash a generous dose of motherly love. Long story short, now that I'm an invalid, or if not quite yet, soon, wouldn't it be smart, before you're completely incapacitated, to sell your place way up there and move closer to your family? I don't know Mom... In the first place, once I'm completely incapacitated, I can't imagine it's gonna be you changing my adult diaper. Secondly, it's getting easier to find gluten-free bread and beer. Just today I had a lovely Reuben on gluten-free Pumpernickel from the Boone bakery, and I've been washing it down with a four-pak of Ancestral brand organic quinoa beer, which comes from a brewery not 100 km up the road in Barrie. Anyway, liebe Mutti, the world is becoming a better place,at least for the gluten-free! Looks like I'm gonna try to make a go of it here, at least for the time being. (And in case anyone thinks I'm abandoning my 90-something Mom, know that of her five children, none of the others live more than ten minutes away.)

Canadian Museum of Human Rights still wallowing in petty political squabbles

In the quarter+ century since Izzy Asper first proposed a Museum of Human Rights for Winnipeg, I've often poo-pooed the idea. Seems kinda smug and pretentious. Relegating human rights to a museum doesn't bode well for human rights, in my view. As I predicted, planning for the project was soon mired in endless squabbling between various interest groups over who deserved more floor space. The rancour continues to this day. While the planning team was able to mollify, at least somewhat, the Ukrainian and Jewish lobbies, they left many others disgruntled. One of the groups that felt excluded were Arab-Canadians. They were finally thrown the bone of a temporary exhibit commemorating their expulsion from their homes on the creation of Israel. This has riled up Canada's Jewish lobby. Today, CBC informed us that Gail Asper, Izzy's daughter and Chair of the Asper Foundation, was resigning, because the Nabka exhibit would not have been to her father's liking, and since her family had once put in $20 millions in seed money CBC obviously figures she has a point. Here's a few things CBC doesn't mention. While Izzy Asper's fortune may have provided the first 20 mil, the federal government spends more than that every year just to keep the lights on in the joint. Another thing CBC neglects to mention is that serious museums world-wide are managed by professional curatorial staff, not by the children of wealthy donors. Not that these visionary donors have been able to see their vision through. Izzy Asper was riding high in those days. He was on Forbes Billionaire List!... but not for long. Izzy's master stroke was to pay Conrad Black $3+ billions for his portfolio of money-shredding media properties!(probably the last time in his career Conrad walked away from a deal with the satisfation that he'd totally pantsed the guys on the other side of the table). In 2002 Asper sponsored a cross-Canada speaking tour for The Greatest Leader Since Moses. He was and his children remain outspoken promoters of Netayahu's Greater Israel project, which ultimately demands the expulsion of the remaining non-Jewish population of Palestine. Alas, Izzy's golden age as a billionaire media mogul was short-lived. By the time Canwest's 4.5 billion market cap was down to twenty bucks (and I'm talking market cap here, not share price) Izzy's vanity project had long transformed into a goverment project, with somewhere in the range half a billion in taxpayer funds to date. In one of my early posts on this farce, I positted that Winnipeg, which was at the time the child povery capital of Canada, would at least now have a venue to which Winnipeggers could take their hungry children and show them they don't have it too bad after all.