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!