It's tits-up for Micron

Li'l Napoleon keeps plumbing new depths in the history of French presidential polling. When you listen to him, he seems to believe massive street protests are proof he's on the right track! From the looks of things, more and more folks obviously believe he is! In fact, the French masses are so impressed by their li'l emperor's sagacity they have set multiple cities alight in celebration!

CBC's coverage has been careful to stress that the massive street protests are entirely the result of  disgruntled high school students, belatedly joined by a few yellow vest types. While manifestly false, there's a reason for that framing. Canadian students are far too polite  docile to ever push back against the governments who have systematically underfunded education for the past fifty years, and besides, we never had yellow vests.

The reason a million Frenchmen and women are in the streets is because Li'l Nap has made it abundantly clear, over and over again, that in the democracy he presides over, he calls the shots, and the voter's don't. Oddly enough, that's the exact message the German people are getting from Blackrock Schmertz and the Brits from the latest hapless dork who finds himself in 10 Downing. What these key NATO allies, the very like-minded democracies Mark Carney wants to hitch our wagon to, have in common is they've all announced massive social spending cuts in order to prepare their people for war with Russia by 2030. That's why France is in flames today, and unless there's  a change in course soon, the conflagration can only spread.

Which brings us to back to CBC. Canada has yet to impose the draconian social spending cuts seen among our European allies, but the writing is on the wall. Thus far Carney's orgy of military spending is only in the planning stage, and we can hope the government follows through with the time-honored Canadian tradition of giving ourselves a pat on the back for a job well done and leave it at that.

I'm not a fan of Brodie Fenlon's gang of wokies,  but they want to blame teenagers for the mayhem in France for a reason. Otherwise they might have to face the fact that voters don't call the shots in Canada either. Mark Carney at this moment has the highest numbers in the history of Canadian polling. He has announced a trillion dollars in military spending that no voters have been consulted on. If only half  those projects proceed we'll see those massive social spending cuts as surely as night follows day.

Another shady conman fools Canadian pols and CBC journalists

There's a happy happy story on view at CBC today about a brand-spankin'-new AI data centre coming to Cape Breton! Yessiree Bob, that's $10 billions of investment that'll put Cape Breton on the map, and not just any old map,  but the map of bustling high-tech hubs!

This turn-around in Nova Scotia's long history of economic decline is thanks to the visionary American-Australian venture capital veteran Trent Vichie. Vichie originally made headlines with a plan to become a major clean-hydrogen player, a venture that will pay off as soon as the next tranche of government funding arrives. Not to mention Viche's  not one, not  two, but FOUR wind farms snuggled tight between the clean hydrogen complex and the $10 B AI campus! None of this stuff  is anywhere near shovel-ready but all of it has been repeatedly announced to great fanfare.

Not a venture capitalist to rest on his laurels, the industry veteran's Everwind Fuels is behind this $10B project. Not only that, but he has revealed that one of the two biggest names in AI, Anthropic, will take a twenty year lease when the project is completed several years hence.

Virtually everything in the CBC story is uncritical paraphrasing, if not straight-up plagiarizing of various Vichie-related press releases. Anyone even peripherally acquainted with what's going on in AI today would put zero stock in any claim that Anthropic will be in any position to lease anything by then, if it survives at all. Check this out.

This is an all-too-common example of so-called journalists thinking their job is done once they've regurgitated a corporate press release. How does Taryn Grant get this story when she clearly knows nothing about her topic, and worse, apparently has no interest in knowing anything about it.

Like Eliot Pence, Trent Vichie is a visionary so far ahead of his time that it takes a steady stream of government grants to keep these bullshitters afloat. As with Eliot, legitimate biz press like Forbes and Bloomberg missed their spectacular achievements over the years. A simple google of Vichies name pulls up shit like this. Looks like his "chief of staff" at Everwind also washed his car and did the lawn. I ask you, should that not raise some questions among the politicians and CBC journalists fawning over this clown?

Return of Gerrie the Geriatric Ranter

I once had a Substack by that title; "The Geriatric Ranter." Had high hopes for it, but a few years in it was somewhat underperforming my expectations, and I pulled the plug. 

Meanwhile, the numbers on the original blog went nuts. Even today, when I've posted nothing yet, 6k+ views. And what's kinda screwy is at least half the stuff I'm writing sounds like it coulda come straight from Gerrie.

So I'm sort of thinking maybe I should bring back the Ranter. On Substack. Because the algos gate-keeping at Google's Blogger insist I'm still violating their imaginary "standards." Therefore I could never monetize on Blogger, but could on Substack.

On the other hand, I like bragging up the fact I write not for filthy lucre, but because it's in me and it's gotta come out... oh Lord, let that boy boogie woogie!

Anyway, Gerrie woulda had some fun with the adventure I had today. I'd meant to stop for gas after me and Big-Lips Bruno the mastiff were done our laps at the dog park, and I'd actually meant to do it yesterday but wtf, I'm old, I forget shit. So I 100% knew it was 100% essential to fill up today.

And then I got a call from my dear sister inviting me for lunch in Wiarton! She is the most wonderful sibling I could ever wish for, deeply cares for me, is driving all the way up from the city, and of course I said yes, and since I'm at the stage of mental impairment when I can't actually keep two thoughts in my head at the same time, I totally forgot that fill-up.

We had a lovely lunch, and I was swimming in good vibes on my way home to Falling Downs. Or at least I was till the "low fuel" warning light came on... Oh shit! Wiarton doesn't have a gas station anymore... I'm 30 km from the nearest gas station and according to the flashing warning light I got 12 km range left in the tank. 

So I obviously go from happy vibes to  max stress in about half a second... and by the time I got to my driveway I had 4 km left, and for a guy still learning his limits around congestive heart failure and COPD, all I can say is thank-you Jesus for not calling me home today!

With 4km in the tank I obviously wasn't driving the 20km into town to pick up the Farm Manager from her day job. Luckily I was able to get through and give her the heads-up, although there was a moment of miscommunication when I had to clarify it was essential the jerry can I was asking her to bring home be full.

But all's well that ends well, and that's pretty much all I ask of life these days; happy endings!

Getting back to the Geriatric Ranter, maybe it's time for Gerrie to fire up a fresh Substack.

Beware of visionaries lobbying for taxpayer funding

There was a heart-warming story in the Globe & Mail this morning that hit all the right notes. A Canada-Ukraine joint venture has been formed to build autonomous vehicles, in Canada! The Ukraine partner has already delivered 5000 to the army, and would like to expand while moving production out of range of Putin's missiles.

The Canadian side, meanwhile, is a recently launched start-up, Dominion Dynamics, led by visionary leader Eliot Pence, an expert in AI, robotics, and the architect of Anduril Industries growth from obscure start-up to industry giant in the 2018-2022 period. We're obviously lucky to have Eliot on our team! Alas, the only thing missing for this joint venture to save democracy and crush evil, and make Canada a world leader (here we go again!) in autonomous vehicles with fully integrated AI, is a juicy government contract for oh, maybe a few hundred thousand units.

When something sounds too good to be true, we used to say it doesn't pass the smell test. My first stop was to read up on Pence's time at Anduril, because it's a story I'm somewhat acquainted with, and I'd never seen that name associated with it. Well, imagine my surprise when Google couldn't find a single reference to the dude in any American business news from 2018 to 2022. Maybe Google's AI missed something... or maybe he did all that great stuff under a pseudonym?

A true renaissance man, Eliot also runs a VC shop called Tofino Capital, which invests in small cap frontier start-ups in Nigeria and other over-looked markets. Check it out! Back to the sniff test... Lord, he stinketh! 

And how about the Ukrainian partner?  With 5000 of their machines already in service on the front lines, I couldn't find anything on YouTube showing them in combat. I did however find a story at Kyiv Post from yesterday almost identical to the Globe's - except it was about Tencore entering a contract with a German partner to build autonomous vehicles there, and unlike the dimwitted Carney who is dithering, Mertz wasted no time guaranteeing open-ended funding for as long as it takes! 

Hmm... I have a hunch the Kyiv Bentley dealership will be at the very top o' the heap at the European Bentley Dealers Association annual awards gala for the foreseeable future!

Bye the way, the Ottawa Business Journal today named Pence Ottawa's newsmaker of the year.

It's a small world...

Forgive me for not tooting my horn re the blog passing 6 million views,  but one fact I always found non-toot-worthy was that as views went ballistic, comments absolutely stalled. If you peruse the last few years of the Falling Downs archive, you will find comments from only two (2) readers.

That's part of a long-term trend to quiet criticism. Go to the View from Falling Downs home page and you'll notice there are no join or follow options.

One is Ken. Ken is from Port Moody BC,  and he originally made contact to tell me what a fucking retard I was for promoting Donald Trump. Anyway, we got over that and Ken has been there forever, and I'm convinced the only reason I still get messages from Ken is because he's been there since before the algos were unleashed and blocked messages.

The other notable exception is Timmie. Unlike Ken, I've actually met  him. Tim seems to post stuff in spite of a ban on my blog by the folks who own the platform. The only connect between me and Tim is we're both acquainted with the local farm boy who became a Nobel laureate. That's what got us together for a face-to-face over a pint or two.

As it happens, Tim's day job consists of liaising with NATO military contractors around the world, and I strongly suspect his internet may be a little more robust than what the rest of us have access to. That's why he can post comments on my blog and you can't.

Be that as it may, the other discovery we made over a burger and a beer is that his sister-in-law was once besties with one of my ex-wives. He hates her guts and I'm still kinda fond of her! Be that as it may, I'd love to have more of Tim's NATO contacts reading this blog!

An open letter to Steve Liebig

 Dear Steve,

It was brought to my attention, by persons who will remain un-named, that I willfully mocked your political career in a recent post.

Steve, nothing could be further from the truth. I apologize unreservedly if that "Lie Big" post caused you discomfort.  Anyone remotely acquainted with my work is well aware I traffic heavily in political satire, and it is in that context my comments should be considered. 

And in that context, "ya couldna sucked too bad" is a ringing endorsement!

Go Steve!

Vote "LIE BIG" on October 26

They're having local elections shortly, and the roadsides around Eden Mills were festooned with "Vote for me" signs from the many candidates hoping to grab the bottom rung of the democracy ladder. I'm negotiating a twisty roadway en route to our b&b, and while I'm not able to admire the signage, I couldn't help notice  the "Lie Big" message.

Eden Mills is best known today for the annual Eden Mills Writers Festival, but 150 years ago it was a thriving mill town on the banks of the Eramosa River. By the time the Ontario Agricultural College in nearby Guelph became a university, the water-power era was long over, and Eden Mills was just another struggling hamlet down on its luck.

One thing the struggling hamlet enjoyed in abundance was stone cottages. As you can imagine, when the local cow college was made a uni, building an English department was a top priority. After all, without that claim to Shakespearean sophistication, the U of G was just a cow college! 

By the 1970s you had a thriving English department 15 minutes away, peopled by folks who imagined those stone cottages were just like the stone cottages their literary heroes in Victorian England lived in, and that struggling hamlet has gradually morphed into a chi-chi destination for yuppies with substantial renovation budgets.

It was the U of G crowd who started up the Eden Mills Writers Festival. Due to flukes of circumstance, I ended up on first-name terms with quite a few of them. In hindsight I suppose I might label them "cultural entrepreneurs." It was pretty much the same crew that launched the Guelph Jazz Festival.

In some ways socializing with English profs was an eye-opener. I was accustomed to boozing it up with welders and truck-drivers, but I gotta say nothing prepped me for the level of alcohol abuse among the English department crowd.  To this day I recall a wobble home as the sun was coming up. I'd been at a bash in the apartment of a grad student who was dating a married prof fifty years older. For the last two hours Bowie's Rock & Roll Suicide had been on repeat at max volume. It was ringing in my ears for the entire wobble home, six blocks away. I had more nights to lacerate my brain with that bunch than I ever had with welders and truckers.

Our b&b is a departure from what Eden Mills has become. The woman who runs it has roots in the town that go back six generations. The home she rents out is the home she's lived in her entire life, the home she raised two children in. When she rents her home out she relocates herself to a cabin a little further back on her 16 acres. She's a fascinating character in her own right. She just got home after touring her one-woman play, "She won't come in from the fields," across Canada.

She's like everybody else, getting on in years, and both her children are now living in BC. Six generations rooted on the banks of the Eramosa River are drawing to an end. But in the meanwhile, life goes on. There's municipal elections coming up in a couple of weeks. Once the car stopped and I had a chance to scan a Lie Big sign standing still, I found out Steve Liebig is running for re-election in ward 3. Re-election! He's already on the bottom rung and is just hoping to stay there. Good luck Steve! If you were already elected once, and can still raise funds to have signs printed, you couldna sucked too bad!

Check out this interview with ambassador Chas Freeman accusing Israel of propaganda!

Ya, I know Israeli propaganda isn't exactly a scoop, but with the last post it looked to me like the Blogger platform has, for whatever reason, been attempting to restore proper paragraph formatting. Just so you know, as a writer, I'm absolutely obsessive about para formatting. Here's why you haven't seen any here for about six years or so.

Just as covid was coming in, and I was debating retirement, and my left eyeball blew its retina, one night Doublewide (our cat) took a stroll across my keyboard, and every post has been run-on paras ever since. Needless to say, given my state of tech retardation, I had no idea how to investigate the innards of my laptop to restore proper paragraphs. 

As I was casting about for some expertise re how to fix this dilemma, and I'd coaxed Doublewide across my keyboard many times, to no avail, in hope she could retrace her steps and undo the damage, a crazy thing happened. The numbers on the blog took off.  It was down to sub-100 views per day before Doublewide danced across the keyboard, but, and at some level this is a bit of a disappointment, proper paragraphs lost out to run-on paragraphs, big-time.

So this post is an experiment. Nothing new here. But there are three clear paragraph breaks, and just to take it to the next level, let's see if they'll allow a link; Amb. Chas Freeman: Israel is Commiting Suicide

Mafia Don is done! Finished! Kaput!... or maybe not...

Regular readers will know I've become increasingly convinced there ain't no possible way Donny J is gonna survive midterms. Oh, he'll certainly "survive," since as he's pointed out more than once, he's not on the ballot. All I can say to that is good luck with the last half of your term after you lose both congress and the senate. It's hard to see anything other than two years of a zombie admin 100% focused on avoiding impeachment.

But maybe I've got it all wrong. I was  down city-way today for thanksgiving and had occasion to chat at  length with some very well-read youngsters who posit as definite possibility something I've dismissed as far-fetched... and their scenario goes something like this; over the next three weeks the admin turns up the dial on ICE violence in Dem cities. They'll ramp up the outrage factor to whatever it takes to ignite massive public push-back, and then they'll declare martial law and cancel the midterms. What's really ominous is none of these kids have ever heard of Chris Hedges!

If I'd heard that conversation a year ago I would have dismissed it, but a year on I gotta admit that we're at a place with this admin that it is literally true that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!

About Mafia Don's diesel deal with Bad Vlad

After four years of threatening death and destruction against allies who might dare breach his arbitrary sanctions on Russian oil, Donny J done shredded his own sanctions and announced he'd contracted to swap a few million tons of Russian diesel for a few billions of USD.

Not hard to see where that came from. We're three weeks from mid-terms, and Team Trump is starting to panic. The war he promised to end in 24 hours is now chewing the legs off the global economy. If that's not bad enough, the new war his pal, the Greatest Leader Since Moses, conned him into, promises to destroy what's left of American credibility in the Middle East - in fact, that's pretty much a done deal at this point.

All of which leaves the NATO vassals up the proverbial stump. Since it was Trump's bullying that coerced them into ramping up their military spending, they assumed Uncle Sam would reward them by leading the charge to dislodge the evil dictator in the Kremlin. Instead, Trump announces a multi-billion $$ deal for Putin's diesel!

I've seen some analyses by industry insiders who estimate these purchases might, in a best case scenario, keep US diesel prices tamped down till the midterms. Unfortunately for Mafia Don, he's got 101 crises cooking beyond the price of diesel, so even if this latest brazen display of market manipulation  were briefly effective, he is doomed. Trump's next two years will be 100% devoted to fighting impeachment, so fighting for or against anything else is a non-starter. 

Donny J has had a spectacular run, but it's winding down...

Befuddled elderly gentleman can't find lawyer's office to sign will

I had a moment this afternoon when the thought crossed my mind that maybe I'm a little further along the Alzheimer Highway than I realized. One of the great joys of aging is planning for your death. When you're younger you figure why would you give a shit - you're dead! That's been my attitude most of my life, but the closer you get to your inevitable meet-n'-greet with the Grim Reaper, the more I've thought, oh, what the heck, maybe I should avoid leaving a big headache that will aggravate the heirs for years to come, or even longer. So a few months ago, based on queries to locals I know and trust, I made an appointment with a local lawyer whom I'd never met before, and we hashed out a draft last will and testament. A few weeks go by, and I get an email advising me it's ready for review and signing. Great! Much as I resent the entire process, I'm looking forward to getting it out of the way. The signing ceremony was scheduled for 1 pm today. So I pull into the parking lot a good 15 minutes early. I'm pumped! I'm ready to go! I'm finally doing some really important adult stuff that's a little overdue, and I'm feeling good! The parking lot wasn't quite the way I remembered it, but I'd only ever been there once, and didn't pay much attention. Then I went to the back entrance, and that's changed too. Last time, I was welcomed there, and today I'm greeted by a sign asking me to use the front door. Well, that seems a little odd... I go around to the front, and I notice there's no mention of any lawyerly enterprises on the sign at the street... WTF? Am I in the right place? I go into the memory files...two or at most three old red brick office buildings past a low-slung modern building on the corner. The modern building is right on the corner where it should be, but... so I go into the second place past it. The sign mentions a wellness spa and a tattoo parlour, and I realized instantly those were one and the same. There were at least four employees, and as far as I could tell, one client, but clearly this was an up-market tat joint. Everybody had enough piercings none of them coulda gone anywhere near a metal detector, and there was ink as far as the eye could see, and presumably where it couldn't too. I've had a little ink for fifty years and have always had an eye for top-shelf artists, and what I saw was first class. So, I apologize for interupting, and explain that my lawyer's office used to be in that building and would they know where it went, because I have an appointment blah blah blah... All four stop what they're doing and consult amongst one another. These are the sweetest, kindest people in the world, but they all agree there's never been any lawyers in their building. They enquire as to the name of the firm. I can't remember, and a panic attack is starting to move in as I realize I may have been duped by some shady fly-by-night operation... do I at least remember the name of the lawyer? Yes I do! Jennifer! I guess that wasn't quite enough for them to work with, and they seemed genuinely sad they couldn't help this obviously confused wretch who had wandered into their day. I get out and look up and down the street. I definitely remember the low-slung building, and there's no corners like that further west, so I shuffle eastward. By now I'm sweating profusely and just below panic threshold, when I get to the next light. As I push the crosswalk button I realize... there's a low-slung building on the corner opposite... is it possible? Could it be? By the time they let me in the back door at precisely 1 pm I was begining to recover, but I gotta say it gave me a wee fright for fifteen minutes. The old "steel trap" ain't what it used to be...

American pop culture has mocked God for 50 years; God has finally turned His back on America

When I look at the wars that the Nations of Virtue, ie the freedom & democracy loving full-patch members of Western Civ, are at this very moment pursuing, I can't help but wonder what an actual "Just God" might conclude. I can't imagine that the "Just God," be He from the Christian, the Judaic, or the Muslim tradition, could ever, in any way, endorse the mass murder of women and children. Yet our Western Civ refuses to utter the taboo word, GENOCIDE. Let's not lose sight of the fact that Israel is a charter member of the Nations of Virtue club, the "Golden Billion" who get to lord it over the seven billion lesser beings who, truth be told, are getting a little tired of the charade. We are at the cusp of serious shit. All the idiot talk I hear from Washington suggests they still imagine they're winning the war they lost months ago. You have to spend a little time on Fox News every day just to get a sense of what Mafia Don watches, and Holy Mother of God, the Towelheads o' Terror are the absolutely worst evil that has ever been seen in history! Nobody who writes that crap ever explains how or why their evil is any more evil than the evils of Western Civ, but that's the mentality that keeps our warmongering going full-tilt into ultimate disaster. It was former CIA director Mike Pompeo who bragged up the fact Uncle Sam lies and cheats and steals. (As an aside, the fat warmonger is now a skinny warmonger... Ozempic???) Anyway, the point I'm trying to get to, is that if there is such a thing as a "Just God," there's no possible way that Just God could be on the side of Western Civ.

White Supremacy on the march across Canada

Hard on the heels of the nazi takeover of Millarville Alberta last summer, CBC today exposed a white supremacist group in Ontario that is plotting to overthrow the government, deport all non-whites, and set up a thousand year master race with themselves in charge. This was revealed in a confidential report to CBC from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, the same government funded "NGO" that tipped the CBC to the Millarville scoop. The "Dominion Society," near as I can make out, is a couple dozen middle-age, generally fat guys who like to get together now and then to piss and moan about politics, as is the norm in societies everywhere. I'm guessing they came up with the club idea because it sounded way better when you told your wife you're off to a policy conference, as opposed to you're off to a piss-up with your pals! The leader of this dangerous gang of white supremacist revolutionaries is one Daniel Tyrie, who was obviously thrilled to get his first-ever interview request from CBC, and didn't disappoint! He's clearly hoping for many more. I have a hunch most of his drinking buddies... or "foot soldiers" if you will, may skip future policy meetings. Anyway, the old "far-right threat" to our freedom and democracy continues to be a reliable excuse for our leadership elites to impose ever more fascistic limits on our freedoms and human rights.

What's wrong with this headline?

"Ottawa plans Crown corporation to break defence procurement logjam." Apparently the multiple bureaucracies responsible for spending taxpayer dollars on bombs and bullets and F-35s and German submarines are completely incompetent when it comes to spending money. They can't spend it fast enough due to bureaucratic bottlenecks in the spending pipeline. Fortunately for peace, justice, freedom, democracy, and all the other good stuff Canadian taxpayers relentlessly fight for, the Carney government has announced the creation of a new crown corporation to supervise the spending of tax monies. That's right! We're getting a fresh new level of bureaucracy to whip all those other levels into shape! Not the way I'd handle bureaucratic gridlock, but what the hey, let's give Carney a chance...

For what it's worth

Spent an hour or so last week having a face-to-face with a family friend who's been in the real estate biz forever. I'd requested the sit-down because I'd been thinking about some concerns my mother had brought up, like wouldn't it be a great idea to sell Falling Downs and move to Guelph to be closer to family. Ya, I know my folks have been in the biz forever too, but this gal comes from the other side. Which in no way rules out the possibility she could be in cahoots with my dear Mom! Anyway, due to my various old-fucker-about-to-croak medical issues I've been diagnosed with, there seems to be pressure building that I should slow down, scale back, simplify my life, and move into a wheelchair-accessable abode. I'm quite OK with most of that. What's not to like about slowing down and scaling back? Count me in! But inevitabley, these conversations turn to the what it's worth question, and I gotta say these real estate folks really toss around some impressive numbers. Apparently the joint has gone up 250% in the twenty years since I bought it! I'm a millionaire! Great! I can cash in and trade my hundred acres of peace, quiet, tranquility, and good neighbours for a condo in town! Oh ya baby, I'll get right on that! Or maybe not; not just yet, anyway. And while it's true enough that such a move would provide the second bathroom we lack here at Falling Downs, that hardly seems an adequate incentive to move into town. For what it's worth, I'm content to pee off the porch while gazing at the stars, with the coyote choir providing the sound-track, for as long as I can get to the stoop without a wheelchair ramp!

Did the golden age of rock & roll ever produce any superstars who were NOT drug addicts?

None come to mind. Ted Nugent maybe? But he was only a superstar for maybe a year and a half around the time of the Cat Scratch Fever tour. For the past fifty years his only paying gigs have been at GOP events. The serious superstars, Clapton, Beck, Page, Bowie, Prince, SRV, Steve Earle, MJ, Joe Strummer, Joe Perry, Keith... and you could pretty much work your way through the music industry "A" list and well into the B,C, and D lists and never find a somebody not tainted with the addiction curse. Don't get me wrong. I don't think there's anything new under the sun about musically inclined folks wanting to get high. Then again, I'm living proof that getting high will not in and of itself kickstart your music career. I can only hope Liebe Mutti never sees this post, but maybe that's because I was never sufficiently addicted! I never really got beyond pot and beer, whereas successful musicians in the golden age started with heroin and took it from there. Maybe that's why most of them are dead and I'm not!

Pot-addled hillbilly goes global

Back in March I noted in a post that the View from Falling Downs had passed 3 million views, and it had taken 15 years to get there. Six months later, it's racked up another 3 million. Not bad numbers for a blog with three followers and a warning for readers with every post! Somebody suggested maybe that's why people read it. If it's worth censoring, maybe it's worth reading! Anyway, pretty sure half a million views per month ain't anywhere near Lambo country, and besides, I'd have to get onside with those community standards to monetize, which prospect holds no appeal for me. The pot-addled hillbilly has definitely gone global though. Check out the top ten audiences over these six months, ranked in order: USA, Brazil, Singapore, France, Bangladesh, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and "other." That last category makes up over half (1.64 million, to be precise). The pot-addled hillbilly is everywhere!

France in flames as Micron determined to go out in blaze o' glory

Spent some time watching live video feeds from various French cities this afternoon. The headlines proclaiming the unrest is just "student riots" are highly misleading. Sure, there were scenes of riot police clubbing kids who looked barely in their teens, but big picture, you had a wide swathe of unions and civil society orgs and fringe political outfits and just about every other constituency in France not part of Little Napoleon's 14% approval rating. The reporting at CBC avoided any mention of the real reasons for the unrest; severe cutbacks to social spending in favour of a vastly increased military budget and the promise of perpetual financial propping-up of rump Ukraine. There's a reason for that. The top nabobs at our official propaganda network are all too well aware that's exactly the course we're on; France, Germany, and numerous other NATO-EU states will no doubt see street riots before we do. There is no question we're looking at the same fate. The Carney regime has embarked on a clear program of crippling social spending by committing at least a trillion dollars to military spending over the next fifty years. PM Carney's got polling approval numbers never before seen in Canada. African dictators are in awe! He has a solid plan. We'll pay down our debt by selling our critical infrastructure to US hedge funds! Most of those African dudes did that long ago, but no worries... elbows up! But back to France. I can't see how Li'l Napoleon is gonna get the toothpaste back in the tube at this point. How long are the cops gonna attack retired firefighters protesting their shrinking pensions before they realize they should be pounding out the politicians instead!

Cost of Quebec City - Windsor high-speed rail corridor has already doubled, years before construction can even begin

The original estimates, cooked up by the Liberal Party in 2024, clocked in at 60 billion CAD. The revised estimate, released today by the Parliamentary Budget Office, doubles that number! And remember, it's the earliest of early days, and opposition to this project hasn't begun to coalesce. Frankly, like most of Carney's pipe(line) dreams, they make for splashy announcements, but most of this stuff will never see the light of day. They do, however, serve to reinforce the illusion that all these fab projects somehow represent our stand against The Ugliest American of all time. You know, the guy who demanded we more than triple our "defence" spending from 1.4% of GDP to 5%! Yup, that's the guy we're defying with a trillion in deficit spending for military and another T for infrastructure. PM Carney has put our country on the same path to war our NATO allies are speeding down. Germany, France, and UK have all announced spending cuts to social programs to facilitate massive boosts to military spending. These NATO allies are people our useless legacy media claim Carney wants to forge an anti-Trump alliance with. Ya, I don't know how retarded you'd have to be to swallow that shit. An anti-Trump alliance with a bunch of impotent clowns known to refer to Mafia Don as "Daddy?"

No way can Carney get anywhere near his infrastructure dreams without destroying Indigenous rights

As we all know, PM Carney has been hitting us hard with infrastructure announcements one after another. Could be 50 billions for a port on Monday, 30 billions for a pipeline here or there on Tuesday, a new multi-billion investment announced every day of the week... so far so good! Nothing wrong with making announcents! In fact, if it wasn't for endless announcements, it's hard to see our ruling class get much of anything accomplished, so at least Mark is giving me hope. After weeks of boffo front-page announcements, Carney saved the best for last. At the weekend he announces the cherry-on-top! In order to help his wish list achieve reality, he will impose a 12 month limit on the approval and permitting process for everything on his wish list! Had to do a double-take and then another one. Oh... Mark, Mark, Mark... I guess when you've spent your entire life serving the Epstein class, you might be a little out of touch. Farmers in Ontario are already raising hell over the super-duper $60 billion high-speed-rail line to Windsor. There are thousands of scientists and engineers whose entire livelihoods are based on ensuring development conforms to our environmental, safety, and human rights standards. Quite aside from that professional community, tree-huggers of all stripes will be up in arms over the abrogation of a regulatory regime they've been fighting for for generations. And PM Carney seems blissfully ignorant of the evolution of Indigenous rights in the modern era. Our First Nations enjoy de facto veto power over anything across, over, under or nearby their treaty lands or any lands that remain in dispute. Here's the reality, Mr Prime Minister. That pretty much puts the kybosh on most of your wish list for the next fifty years.

Listening to Mark Carney you'd almost think LNG Canada is a Canadian company

Which it is not, but this foreign entity gets many hundreds of millions in taxpayer money sent its way. And Mark sounded right next to euphoric when he was enthusing about what a great day this is for Canada, that this foreign company is doubling its capacity to ship Canadian resources out of the country. Frankly, this strikes me as the complete opposite of the "firming up our sovereignty" claptrap the national propaganda network has been pushing. Don't they have journalists anymore? I mean old-school sorts who used to ask questions, unlike the current generation of journos, with post-grad degrees from Carleton or the rebranded Ryerson, whose career prospects are limited to passing along press releases from all the companies and government agencies and NGOs they should be asking hard questions of. Anyway, Carney's polling numbers are the highest in Canadian polling history, so I guess the general public is all aboard for selling off our infrastructure and our resources to foreign investors. What I can't figure out is how anybody with an IQ of any kind would see that as strengthening our sovereignty? At the end of the day, the complete lack of critical thinking skills so obvious in the content of today's media platforms has to be laid at the feet of the journalism schools.

Me and Stu

I met Stu in what I think was my second year teaching. He was, if I recall, in my grade ten welding class, which consisted mostly of farm boys, juvenile delinquents, and a single female student who happened to be rebuilding an antique tractor, by far the most ambitious project anybody had going on that year. We're up Bruce County way, which is perhaps the Appalachia of Ontario. Our high school was built in the mid-fifties - and had a rifle range built into its lower level! Pretty sure they're not building them like that anymore! Maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea though... far as I'm aware, there's never been a school shooting in a school with a rifle range. Perhaps it has a similar deterent effect as Archie Bunker's brilliant idea to end airline hijackings by handing every passenger a handgun as they're boarding. But back to Stu. He was an affable, fun-loving lad, who was looking for an easy credit. Kids like that can easily become management problems if you don't stay ahead of them. My rule of thumb; if you show up 50% of the time, do at least 50% of the work, and don't piss me off too often, you've got a solid 50% on your report card. Your credit is in the bag! Stu liked that deal so much he actually went above and beyond; near perfect attendance, and while never a font of raw ambition, actually got enough stuff done and ended the year as a solid B student. One thing that puzzled me about Stu was why everybody called him Stu, when on my paperwork he was only and always "Roger." One day I asked him. Oh, Roger is my name. It is? So why are we calling you Stu? Stu laughs, "it's short for Stupid. Everybody's been calling me that since kindergarden!" Well, that presented a conundrum. Poor Roger has suffered a lifetime of bullying, and here I am using that abusive nick-name just like his tormentors. Should I start calling him Roger? Should I make a rule that henceforth we'll all call him Roger? Nah... the kid I knew was lazy, smart, and anything but tormented, so I concluded we'd all leave well enough alone. Fast foward a few years. I've moved schools and haven't seen Stu since. One day I'm driving through town and stop for lunch and a pint at Rob's Sports Bar, and if I don't run into my former student! He graduated and has been living down Windsor way. He had family down there, and one of his uncles helped him get into the hiring hall of the painter's union, where he was earning more than his former teacher. But it wasn't all fun and games and big paycheques. Back in 2000 there was an industrial accident at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit. A painting crew working underneath the bridge suffered a scaffold failure. Three of them fell 90 metres into the Detroit River, where they were quickly scooped up by the US Coast Guard. Five were left dangling from the bridge in their safety harnesses. According to the Globe & Mail's reporting, two of those were pulled up promptly, while the other three were left dangling "somewhat longer." Stu was one of those. According to him, somewhat longer stetched to at least six hours. Holy moly! That coulda been bad! Stu is lucky to be alive! I offer him some commiseration. "Geez man, that musta been real scary... I woulda shit my pants hanging from that bridge for six hours!" Nah... "that fucking harness was so tight I couldna shit my pants if I'd wanted to."

Upper class wanker Jacob Rees-Mogg declares British youth should die for Ukraine

Yup. Sign up and die to save freedom and democracy! This privileged jerk-off is totally 100% serious when he says we absolutely gotta save Western Civ by crushing our authoritarian adversaries. You can bet your bottom shekel this warmongering turd will never volunteer himself or any family members for this sacred mission to save freedom and democracy! We're so far beyond satire, parody, or any possible path whatsoever to making sense of the insanity being pushed on us. I've seen enough videos of how they recruit fresh troops in Ukraine to know that's not what freedom and democracy should look like! Our legacy media, the CBC and the Globe, have pushed a completely bullshit narrative since the collapse of USSR. NATO had to expand after promising not to and then had to expand again and again, because, well, freedom and democracy! And here we are! Today we're promising hundreds of billions in spending for bombs and bullets so we can preserve freedom and democracy in Ukraine? It's a bad wind a-blowin' and I hope we snap out of our stupor before it's too late.

NATO, not Russia, bears ultimate responsibility for the destruction of Ukraine

Mind you, we in Western Civ are treated to endless treatises in our legacy media about how, after winning for four years plus, Ukraine is now winning more decisively than ever before! All the NATO top dogs and all the EU top dogs are in unanimous agreement on that point! Since none of them are even remotely interested in putting their own troops on the front lines, they're prepared to fight Putin's evil empire right down to the very last Ukrainian. Unfortunately for the people of Ukraine, the tall tales the MI6 toffs are spinning bear no resemblance whatsoever to realities on the ground. On the ground, what's left of the Ukrainian military is being obliterated every day. Where's all that kit the allies were to provide, whatever it takes for as long as it takes? No NATO member state, no EU member state leader, has failed to repeat that mantra. "Whatever it takes for as long as it takes." Within a week of the fullscale unprovoked Russian invasion, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators were working on a ceasefire in Belarus. Three weeks in, negotiations had moved to Istanbul, and the two sides had initialed a peace agreement. That's when Boris showed up, and reminded our puppets in Kyiv who's really in charge, and it's been "whatever it takes for as long as it takes" ever since. Here's a post from the archives a few years back, and quite literally, nothing has changed. We're still being regaled with utter horseshit about a few more months and a few more billions and Putin will throw in the towel. Utter insanity! ******************** Tuesday, January 17, 2023 Guess what? Ukraine needs more weapons! Does anyone see a pattern yet? Ukraine has been winning since March, or perhaps even February, thanks to the support of her NATO allies, who have generously donated billions of dollars in weapons to the cause. A few weeks go by, and ya, they're really putting the run to the Rooskies, but the final glorious victory demands a few more months and a few more billions worth of arms. We've been treated to a non-stop loop of this tape every few weeks since this started. When do Western news consumers wake up and smell the coffee? Those billions in weaponry aren't being donated. You, the taxpayers in the "donating" nations, are paying for them. They mostly come from the same US arms manufacturers who fund the think-tanks who dreamt up this brilliant plan to bleed Russia and thereby prolong America's "full spectrum dominance" of life on earth. Don't look now, but things are not going to plan. The current debate around main battle tanks is a good illustration. Ukraine won't get anywhere near the number of tanks it's asked for, but they'll get just enough to prolong the war a few more weeks, and then we'll be back at "Ukraine just needs a few more billions and a few more months." Meanwhile, Ukraine is being systematically destroyed. But who cares? It's happy days for Raytheon and General Dynamics and the rest of America's war profiteers!

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, Lieber Onkel!

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...