Hillary Clinton to join Ukraine's Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland for fireside chat at LibTardFest '23

As you may know, Chrystia serves as both Canada's and Ukraine's deputy prime minister simultaneously. Such a cross-cultural symbiosis has not been seen since Sheldon Adelson was bankrolling both Newt Gingrich and Benjamin Netanyahu's presidential runs back in 2012, in two different countries. As it turned out, Bibi came through, but the bet on Newt turned into $100 million down the shitter. Even Adelson couldn't win 'em all! But back to the matter at hand. Fluffy's Liberal Party is so totally bereft of fresh ideas they've contracted none other than progressive icon Hillary to address their annual convention. Don't know what they're paying for the privilege, but Hillary used to get half a million for a 45 minute speech at Goldman-Sachs. What the fuck? When is the last time Hillary had a fresh idea? When she turned her back on Barry Goldwater and became a Dem? In my opinion, if your last fresh idea came to you in the 1960's, your best-before date is probably decades ago. But that's the best the Liberal Party can do. Shame!

Bill & Hillary tour flops

Good! Maybe they'll take the hint... but I doubt it. If there's a dollar to be turned, the Clintons will be there to turn it.

Gotta think that whoever promoted this yawner in Toronto took a bath. They sold barely 3,000 tickets in the 19,000 seat Scotiabank Centre. Apparently tickets were slashed to a mere six bucks in a last ditch attempt to fill more seats, to no avail.

I recall reading about the event when it was first announced back in March, but as we got closer to curtain time there was no buzz whatsoever. Nor was there any buzz after the fact. This latest bout of Clinton money-grubbing wasn't part of the conversation around the water cooler or anywhere else.

But... if you're a diehard Clinton fan, take heart! You can motor up to Montreal tonight and catch them at the Bell Centre. For $5,000 bucks you too can partake of a meet and greet and have your picture taken with Bill and Hillary...


I'm guessing the lineup for that is gonna be really short.

The bogus hysterics over America's "migrant crisis"

Stripped of all superfluous hyperbole about human rights, sovereignty, and America's image on the world stage, there is one and only one reason that the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of history can't manage her borders.

They don't want to.

"Undocumented migrants" have the lowest rank in that "reserve army of the poor" old Karl Marx was scribbling about 150 years ago. As such, they provide a valuable service to the elite capitalist class who have been managing the affairs of The Republic since the time of the founding fathers.

They are absolutely essential in ensuring that real-life working Americans never get too uppity. After all, the lads at Paramount Landscaping in Bergen County won't be getting too boisterous in their demands for a living wage as long as their boss can assure them that there's plenty of hard-working Guatemalans around just waiting for a chance to do their $12/hr jobs for $6/hr.

Landscapers and roofing contractors and farmers and others who employ this lowest rank of the working class are hardly the "capitalist elite" of course. But trickle-up immiseration works way better than trickle-down prosperity. Downward mobility has trumped upward mobility in America since long before Donald Trump.

Just look around you.

The fact that an ersatz billionaire reality TV star promised to build a wall at the Mexican border speaks only to the calibre of his image-management team... as in he really cares about American workers and that wall is gonna make America great again!

Of course it is!


You don't imagine for two seconds that Donny J is interested in ensuring that all the grounds-keepers at his various properties actually take home a living wage, do you?

And if you thought Hillary cared more, you're an even bigger idiot.


Happy 4th of July, neighbours!

Sarah Kendzior; disingenuous, misguided, or just plain stupid?

I like Sarah Kendzior. Back when she was a freshly minted Dr. Phil who found herself squeezed off the tenure track, she used to write about that. The writing was heartfelt and convincing because she knew what she was talking about.

She has yet to find that track, but she may no longer care. Check out the brand she's built. This woman is going places! She's one 60 Minutes profile away from becoming a serious public intellectual!
 
But when I consider that, and when I read of the various accolades she has won over recent years (Foreign Policy named her one of the 100 people you should follow on Twitter to make sense of global events - as if Twitter is required to make sense of global events...), I have to marvel at the fact that the bar has been set so astoundingly low.

Take her latest effort as "op-ed columnist for the Globe and Mail" for example; Gutting net neutrality is a death knell for the resistance.

Ah yes, "the resistance!"

That one word conjures all sorts of imagery of heroic anti-Nazi derring-do in occupied Europe during the '40s. The French resistance. The Dutch resistance...

The Greeks and Poles resisted too. In every case we saw courageous citizens, infinitely out-manned and out-gunned, standing against the Nazi behemoth.

Although she is fully aware that's the image you'll carry in your mind's eye when you read the word "resistance," that's not the resistance Kendzior is talking about. No, she's talking about the resistance to Trump's election victory. This is not a resistance led by courageous partisans hiding out in the woods and risking their lives for a cause.

It is a resistance led by Hillary Clinton and a Democratic Party elite that a year ago lost an election in spite of having more Wall Street money behind it than any previous campaign in US electoral history.

It's not the resistance of the oppressed.

It is the resistance of an entitled ruling class clique who are pouting because another, perhaps slightly less entitled ruling class clique, grabbed the steering wheel out of their hands.                    

I can see why they'd be pissed.

At the same time, the claim that the Dem Party establishment or any of the mainstream media platforms Kendzior regularly appears on are even remotely threatened is beyond hokum.

Seriously?

Some players in the internet ecosystem want to squash net neutrality so they can make more money, not because they want to silence the Globe and Mail and the US news sites the Globe reflexively parots, the Washington Post and the NYT.

Pretty sure they're not interested in silencing Kendzior either.

As you know, all those platforms are vehemently anti-Trump.

What's being silenced are media platforms that question the narrative of Kendzior, Dem Party elites, and the "resistance," sites like RT and Sputnik and Michael Chossudovsky's Global Research.

So relax, Sarah... so long as you continue to faithfully toe the official DNC line, you've nothing to worry about!

American Revolution 2.0; Roger Goodell as Che Guevara

Roger Goodell is reputed to have trousered a cool 150 millions plus thus far into his tenure as NFL comish. He's in the late stages of negotiating a new contract. Maybe that explains why he's suddenly woke, and big time!

Yup, all those millionaire NFL guys are a force for good in their communities, as are their billionaire owners. They, and not Trump, speak for grass-roots America.

Grass-roots Americans, led by Hillary, Michael Moore, and now Goodell, are sick to death of that fake president Putin gifted America. They just can't take it anymore!

Americans.

What the hell is wrong with those people? They can't afford universal health care but they can afford a trillion dollar military budget?

They have a homeless population in the millions which they can't afford to make right, but they can afford to build tax-payer subsidized stadiums for the billionaire owners of their NFL teams?

They can pick and choose the next leader of Brazil or Honduras or Ukraine, but when some Russian teenagers post anti-American propaganda on Facebook, Putin is undermining their democracy?

America is the most hyper-militarized state in the history of history, but some fat Korean kid in charge of a nuclear weapons program that is approximately where America's nuke program was in 1943 is an existential threat?

Grow up, America!

When America's severely dysfunctional democracy threw up Donald Trump as its president, I figured that's exactly the cartoon caricature of a president that modern day America deserves.

Between Moore and Goodell and Hillary, they've got the "resistance" they deserve too.

Good luck, America!

Singalong with Johnny Rotten

Spent the afternoon going down memory lane with the Sex Pistols when I should have been pushing the lawn mower around the yard. Shit happens, I guess... the lawn will still be there tomorrow.

I happened upon that video because it was attached to an email from my dear son Jake. Of all the Juniors, he's the one I worry about the most, mainly because he seems to have inherited his dear Daddy's appetite for excess.

Jake is a brilliant musician, but like most brilliant musicians, he's scratching out a living in the restaurant business. At least he's learning the craft in a top end place.

He's also the kid who "borrowed" my original pressing of the original Sex Pistols album.

The 2008 Sex Pistols reunion concert at Brixton Academy was remarkable for a number of reasons, the main one being that Mr. Rotten and crew are still alive, and still rotten. Without Sid, of course; may he rest in peace.

I especially liked where he called out his audience for being England's working class. All creeds, all races, but singularly working class.

Class solidarity forever!

Where is this happening in American music? Bruce campaigning for Hillsy? Get the fuck outta here!

The Sex Pistols were originally part of the reaction to the Thatcherite destruction of the working class. Great to see that Johnny Rotten is still rocking and Maggie has gone to her reward.

As for Jake, he seems to be doing OK. Tells me he's catching up with some of the music he's missed in the past; Gregorian chant, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Islamic Sufi music.

Don't know how he missed out on the Gregorian chant. I had at least six inches worth in my CD rack. Remember those?

Anyway, it's funny how he managed to "borrow" all my really good stuff but overlooked the Gregorian chant.

But I still worry, as parents do.

I recall busting into the storage locker of a prominent drug dealer with my dear pal Johnny H. Said dealer is long dead so I guess it's OK to tell the tale. Nothing in there except a couple of sheets of blotter acid. We tried a couple of tabs and nothing much happened. So we ate the entire sheets. Took weeks before I could make a sentence again.

That kind of stupidity could kill you today. There is stuff out there that we could not have imagined in my youth. One bad party night with fentanyl and it's all over.

Stay safe, dear son.

What? Trump has an "agenda?"

Who knew?

I don't think Trump had any agenda whatsoever. After he was goaded into the primaries by his old pal Hillsy, his only agenda was to beat those establishment fuckers. That's Donald. He's an alpha male who wants to win whatever race he's in.

We all applauded when he prevailed over those establishment fuckers. But neither Donald or anyone else on the planet expected he would actually win the election. No plan, no platform, no nothing.

Then the inconceivable happened.

While we're all still in a state of shock, I'm sure Donald was more shocked than anyone.

He didn't really want the job. He was confident that his long-time pal Hillary would triumph, and he would be able to go back to his regular life of egregious self-promotion and the occasional real estate development project, and of course squiring around the nubile young women who show up for his various beauty pageants.

Unfortunately for everyone, he won.


I have a lot of respect for Naomi Klein. Her Shock Doctrine book is pretty much on the money as far as I'm concerned. You see that strategy playing out everywhere you look, from school boards closing your local school to national governments suddenly changing direction and declaring long-time ally Qatar a sponsor of terrorism.

Hit hard, hit fast, and impose your "solution" to whatever crisis is at hand before folks have a chance to regain their equilibrium.

That's why I'm more than a little leery of Naomi's screed on view at The Intercept today.

That's Glenn Greenwald's baby. The Intercept has taken a bit of flak for outing leaker Reality Winner this past week.

As a leaker of note himself, Greenwald is undoubtedly keen to distance himself from the Winner scandal. What better way to get your eye off the ball than to push out a boffo Naomi Klein story?

So Trump has an agenda and Greenwald is in the clear.

We're spared questioning Greenwald about his agenda, about who pays his bills, and who he's really working for.

Come on Naomi, you're better than that.

Life lessons from The Korean

When I drove into town today to pick up my Saturday Globe, I found The Korean's wife and mother-in-law out in the parking lot putting up a tent.

I made a lame joke about it being shitty weather for camping. They laughed.

The Korean is a bit of a joker himself. He scans the bar-code on my paper and announces "five hundred and twenty-five dollar please!"

Ha ha... not enough good news in the world for that price, I tell him.

He settles for $5.25.

Have to say the paper was on the thin side today.

Big feature in the Focus section on condo flippers messing up the Toronto real estate market. That might be mildly interesting if you don't already have multiple friends and relatives milking that for all it's worth. You view them with a mix of envy and contempt; envy because at some level you wish you'd jumped into the game when the jumping was good.

Contempt because they're one of the reasons your children will never own property in Toronto.

But their children will.

Interesting, but nothing like the tour de force Cathal Kelly had on view a couple of weeks ago.

"Too drunk to fuck" indeed!

There's a couple of stories that cast well-deserved aspersions on Justin's captaincy of the ship of state. On page B-1 unpaid intern Rachelle Younglai has a story about shrinking paycheques for the working and middle classes.

On page A-4 Bill Curry has a story about how Justin's infrastructure initiatives are being massaged by the very people who will "ultimately own and manage infrastructure assets."

Public money, private profits; that's hardly a news story.

One thing I'd like to see more of in the Globe is coverage of the Supreme Court case that Rocco Galati has been pursuing for years now on behalf of COMER, the Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform. Follow that story and you soon realize there's no reason whatsoever for our infrastructure assets to end up in the pockets of Black Rock or the multitude of like-minded hedgies and finance sharpies.

But that's not a story the Globe is keen to spread around.

Elsewhere, Liz Renzetti uses her A-2 slot to let us know she's still pouty about Hillary's very bad and awfully terrible day six months ago. Apparently it wasn't just Russian interference in America's democratic process that sunk Hillary, although the Ruskies do get several shout-outs in her column.

No, it was even worse than that, if such a thing can be imagined.

There was a "pink elephant" in the room.

That would be sexism, for those too stunned to figure it out.

Well... sure.

Maybe.

I'd hazard a guess that the pink elephants were bigger when Golda became PM in the sixties or Maggie became PM in the seventies, but maybe Liz isn't old enough to remember those days.

Hillary lost because she and her army of consultants and advisers were outworked and outsmarted at every turn by a condo salesman from Manhattan.

Best story by far in today's paper was the profile of Toronto restauranteur Jen Agg. A far more palatable role model for young women than Hillary, if you ask me.

She's kicking the shit out of pink elephants every day, and may God bless her for it.

Anyway, I've come to accept that The Korean isn't responsible for what's in the newspaper he sells me.

His wife and mother-in-law were putting up that tent to protect the plants that all the Korean variety stores have on offer this time of year.

The weather channel is suggesting we'll get snow tonight.

So the flowers are camping tonight, I offer.

Yes! We must be prepared, he says.

Sound advice from The Korean.

Be prepared.

Happy Easter!

Sorry Mom, I didn't make it to church this year. Didn't make it to synagogue for Passover either, if that's any consolation. My God-fearing agnosticism is multi-confessional.

I did however find time to go out to the garage and tinker with the Ninja. She's purring like a kitten and waiting for her spring ride, just as soon as the weather clears up a little.

The big news this Easter weekend was the Tax March. That's the latest spasm of the anti-Trump movement, die-hard Hillary fans who have yet to concede last November's election.

Come on folks - even Fareed Zakaria acknowledges that those 59 Tomahawks have rendered Donny J Presidential!

Yup, he's got blood on his hands. That's what America looks for in a leader.

What caught my eye in the news coverage of the Tax March was the logos of Dem Party astro-turf outfits all over the place.



If you think that tax march was some kind of grass roots thing that just happened, think again. Go to taxmarch.org and check out their partners page. Holy cow, that page could keep a Soros-is-the-antiChrist conspiracy theorist busy for months!

What baffles me is that all these groups are invariably described as "leftist," yet they've all been co-opted by the Democratic Party. I'm a long-term observer of US politics, and I'd have to say I didn't notice much of a leftward tilt under eight years of Obama... nor under eight years of Clinton, for that matter.

Mind you, I'm a long-time small "c" commie and what I understand by the word "leftist" may mean something else. I suppose you could be relatively leftist as long as you only compare yourself to those to the right of you on the political spectrum, but has there been anything to the right of the Democratic Party in the last twenty years? At a minimum the label should imply the prioritisation of the interests of working people over the interests of capital.

Maybe this watering down of labels and their meanings is all part of the long term bamboozlement of the working class in America. Kind of like how "red states" means Republican states. In the rest of the world the colour red is unambiguously associated with the political left. Only in America has that been successfully turned upside down.

With the Ninja shaking off the winter hibernation the only vehicle in the fleet still giving trouble is the little Ford 4x4. A friend was telling me the other day that could be stale gasoline. After all, it's been parked in a snow-drift all winter.

Possibly, but the Mustang 50 was parked one snow-drift over and took only a half hour on the battery charger to come alive. The Ninja wasn't fired up once all last year, so the gas in the tank is two years old and I've got it running.

Can't be stale gas.

I think that almost universal ignorance of what is "left" is what allowed Donny J to waltz away with Hillary's election. That MAGA schtick worked wonders for a class of marginalized Americans who wanted so desperately to believe that the ersatz billionaire was going to set things right for them. Little did they realize...

But here's the good news. Trump tapped into massive voter disaffection with the political establishment. So did Bernie. Both men eventually sold their supporters down the river. Those people are still there, and there's no reason to think most of them, both the Sander's supporters and people who voted for Trump, are going to be anything other than pissed off when the 2020 White House contest gets serious.

With the right candidate, maybe then Americans will get the change they can believe in.

I picked up that Ninja for cheap just a few weeks before my 60th birthday. I was in denial. That old chestnut about how inside every sixty year old there's a sixteen year old wondering what the fuck happened is truer than true.

So I bought a motorcycle. Next sunny day I'll take her for a blast around the block, which happens to be a ten mile loop with a lot of long straightaways. Spring ain't truly sprung till you get that first rush of 90mph wind through what's left of your hair...

Happy Easter!

How Hillary could have won

The NYT International Weekly had a front page story yesterday about how Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the President of Liberia. Liberia is an impoverished African nation of some four million, where 80% of the population lives in poverty, and the rest, including many members of Johnson Sirleaf's extended family, work for the government.

Here's writer Helene Johnson;  Now, as American women grapple with the whys of Hillary Clinton's loss in November's election, the story of how Liberia's women upended centuries of male rule is newly relevant.

That in itself is a dubious proposition. Did Margaret Thatcher's stint as PM of the UK upend centuries of male rule there?

Like most African heads of state, Johnson Sirleaf is a member of the elite Bintu tribe. Collectively they've been to the elite universities of the West and spent quality time networking their careers forward through the corridors of the most prestigious Western financial institutions. In Sirleaf's case, she's been to Harvard, Citibank and the World Bank. It's a pedigree that opens doors among the Western elites.

Couple that with the fact the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy has been meddling in Liberia's politics since the 1980's, and you'd think her election victory would have been a slam dunk.

But it wasn't. It took all that plus dirty tricks galore;

...the women had their own tricks. "You want beer? Just give me your voter ID card and I will buy you beer." A group of women stationed at a bar near a major intersection lured young men in a time honored fashion.

Hmm... what do you suppose that means? Maybe the Clinton campaign was on the right track when they had Madonna offering free blowjobs, but even there they messed up. Madonna is almost sixty years old. If the Dems had had the foresight to offer blowjobs by Katy Perry AND free beer, Hillary would be in the White House today!

What's left?

Back in the day, it was a pretty straight-forward thing distinguishing right from left on the political spectrum. The right was where you found your reactionaries and warmongers. The left was the "progressive" side of the spectrum. The left was pro-labour, pro-women's rights, pro-choice, anti-racist, anti-war, and if not out and out anti-capitalist, at least acknowledged that the titans of industry and the big banks needed to be kept on a short regulatory leash.

Those were the days when the top union boss at the UE, which represented the workers at the General Electric plant where I cut my welding teeth, was an out-and-out self-confessed commie. Not a "liberal," not a "social democrat," not even a "socialist," but a full-bore communist. Yup, that was CS Jackson. And, may I add, he was a mightily effective union leader to boot.

Today, distinguishing left from right is a much more nebulous undertaking. As I tour the blogosphere, I encounter a gusher of references to "rabid leftists," "left-wing extremists," and "die-hard socialists." At first blush one is inclined to be impressed at the robust health of the left in American politics today!

Then you realize that all these references are to the Democratic party and its acolytes...

Bummer, man!

Sad to say, the Democratic party today is at least as reactionary and warmongering as their Republican counterparts, if not more so. And at least as pro-capitalist. Hillary Clinton, the "left" candidate, just spent 1.2 billion dollars, provided mainly by the big banks and the war profiteers, in the most expensive election campaign in US history, only to be defeated by a reality TV personality who spent a small fraction of that and got virtually nothing from the big banks and the warmongers.

What the fuck goes on here?

Back in the day, we could rely on the media to explain things, and if we didn't like the explanations provided by so-called mainstream media, there existed a thriving alternative media happy to fill in the blanks. Today the mainstream media is totally in the pocket of the "deep state" and the alternative media hysterically informs us that Obama has a communist agenda.

CS Jackson must be spinning in his grave...

But at least what's left of the UE had the good sense to endorse the Sanders campaign.

Alas, we know how that ended.

What's left?

Not much... but there is hope! Bernie's short-lived run as a socialist proved that there's a hunger in America for real change. Bernie's unfortunate capitulation to the corrupt Dem party machine put an end to that.

But the hunger remains.

Guardian unearths vast anti-Clinton conspiracy again

You remember the Guardian, one-time bastion of all that was good about the fourth estate?

Well, they've come a long way. As in a long way down the toilet. Dispassionate dispenser of objective truths?

Forget about it.

Take a gander at this Guardian scoop; Who is Palmer Luckey, and why is he funding pro-Trump trolls?

Palmer Luckey is the kid who founded Oculus, which he sold to Zuckerberg for 14 trillion dollars when he was only eleven years old. Or something.

According to the Guardian, Luckey has been using his vast fortune to fund anti-Hillary trolls on Reddit... because, I guess, that could be a game changer???

The Guardian has made a name for itself by laying waste to all the conventions of what was once considered proper journalism with its anti-Trump vendetta over the past year. Little do they realize that anti-Clinton trolls don't need funding.

Their motivation is the fact that they truly believe Hillary would be so much worse!

A double dose of Drumpfobia in today's Globe and Mail

Rolled into Wiarton this morning to fork over five bucks to The Korean for my Saturday Globe. Ya, I know, I can get the whole damn thing online, but I'm one of those old-school guys who just prefers to turn pages, even at that extortionate rate. Hell, I remember having the Globe and Mail delivered to my door every morning for twenty-five cents per.

Times have changed, and not for the better.

As luck would have it, the line-up at Timmies was way shorter than you'd expect in tourist season, so I ducked in for a medium with milk.

The folks who run this franchise made what is to me an incomprehensible decision recently; they spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on putting a second order board in the drive-thru. There's still only one drive-thru window, but now two cars can place their orders at the same time. Overall, this doesn't improve service or speed up your trip through the drive-thru, but it does provide the illusion that the line-up is shorter than it actually is.

It also makes a trip through the drive-thru far more stressful than it used to be. I don't care what kind of a peace-loving pacifist fairy you might be, you'll be pissed off when that car that pulled in after you makes it to the window before you. Frankly, I'd give up Tim Hortons altogether, but I'm addicted to whatever it is they put in their coffee. (Rumours were rife not long ago that the magic ingredient is nicotine, but corporate HQ denies this.)

Stopped at the Wiarton International Airport on the way home. They were having their second annual cars, planes and motorcycles show. Unfortunately, the cars, planes and motorcycles were far fewer in number than what I was promised in the promo piece the Farm Manager read me out of the local paper yesterday. Three hundred cars? It was more like three dozen.

Must have been the weather... or maybe I just showed up too early.

But at least I got to go home and tuck into my Saturday Globe earlier than I'd expected.

The most jarring thing about today's paper was that I read Southey's column just before I read the style section. Southey's dad was my economics prof in one of my past lives, and he used to bring little Tabatha to campus from time to time, so I feel a certain affinity.

Little Tabatha became a writer for the Globe, and apparently she's currently on a tour of Madagascar. Her reporting from Madagascar is bleak in the extreme. That's why the promos for $700 sandals in the "Style" section left me feeling somewhat discombobulated. Seven hundred bucks for a pair of sandals? Really? Most people who live in Madagascar do so on less than that. For a year.

I must say I really appreciate that automotive writer Pete Chenney has got his car column into the style section. Today he had a fine article about the hardtop version of the Shelby Cobra. Well worth a look. His column is generally the most interesting thing in Globe Style.

But let's get on to the Drumpfobia, shall we!

Today's Globe and Mail Trump-bashing is left to the husband and wife team of Elizabeth Renzetti (page two of the main news section) and Doug Saunders ( page seven in the Focus section).

Liz has a nice piece on view about how a couple of grannies are gonna put the boots to grandpa Donald Trump. It's kind of pleasant in a vapid way if you're a Clinton fan, which I'm not. But at the end of the day, I'd say if American politics comes down to Grannies bashing Grandpas, maybe America is really a gerontocracy, and not the plutocracy or oligarchy that so many sentient observers claim.

HRC getting the endorsement of Elizabeth Warren does do wonders for Clinton of course. It's almost as important as Trump getting the endorsement of establishment GOP guys like Newt or Chris Christie. Hillary is so far to the right of Trump that most of the PNAC crowd has no compunction whatsoever about supporting her, which tells you everything you need to know about Hillary. Getting the nod from one of the few genuine "progressives" in the Dem camp means the world to her campaign.

So Renzetti's story about the grannies getting together to take out the evil grandpa has at least some element of human interest.

Husband Doug's column, on the other hand, is just plain silly. Yup, time to erect a "cordon sanitaire" around the buffoon. After all, that's how they've been side-lining the radical right in Europe...

Really?

Perhaps Saunders' analysis had some legitimacy a couple of years ago. But the so-called anti-immigrant radical right has been radically on the up-tick since the refugee trickle became a flood. And whether that influx is a trickle or a flood depends entirely on the whims of Sultan Erdogan, our erstwhile anti-democratic NATO ally, who alone has his hands on the refugee taps. Europe has been busy trying to buy him off, but the wily Erdogan knows when he's got his adversaries over a barrel... and does he ever!

Yup, it's a mess, and it's gonna get way messier, especially if HRC's greedy grasping hands ever seize the levers of power. Which is not to say that things would be better with Trump at the helm. Trump is an unknown quantity. He might be better; he might not. At least with Trump there is a glimmer of possibility that America might change the disastrous course it's been on. With Hillary it will be full steam ahead.

So even though there were only a few dozen cars on view when I got to the Wiarton International Airport, a couple of them were very nice. There was a very pretty 1970 Cyclone GT. Unfortunately it had the 351 two barrel. That's not gonna stir up a lot of wind, nevermind a cyclone. The Mustang 50 I drove to the airport would probably have ten lengths on it over the quarter mile.

There was also a lovely '68 Impala SS with a 396 and four speed. I'm a sucker for the full size Chevy's from that era. Drove a '67 Impala SS for awhile, with the 327 and a powerglide. Also had a '67 Belair wagon for a few years, with a 283 and the powerglide. Paid two hundred for it, drove it for a couple of years, and sold it for two hundred.

That's cheap driving!

Latest poll shows Trump thumping Hillary in November

The think tank here at Falling Downs called it three months ago.

Three months later the mainstream is beginning to acknowledge the possibility.

In between we've been treated to a lot of highly improbable speculation that either Cruz or Kasich could prevail over Hillary, but Trump couldn't. That line of reasoning was obvious hokum from the beginning. The tortured logic that led to such a fanciful conclusion was just wishful thinking on the part of a mainstream media that has long been little more than the propaganda arm for the Wall Street - Pentagon nexus that holds the levers of power in both parties, aka "the establishment."

What the msm is only grudgingly beginning to acknowledge is that the establishment has alienated a wide swath of American voters across the political spectrum. The more the media sense the impending overthrow of that establishment, the more they pile on the bullshit. For instance, it's impossible to go anywhere in the mainstream news universe without reading multiple accounts of "Putin's aggression" and how critical it is that America and her NATO allies do more to stare him down.

That's another way of saying we need to hand over tens or hundreds of billions more to the very same military-industrial cartels that have been working their miracles on American foreign policy for the last twenty years. One reason for the surge in support for anti-establishment candidates is that Joe Public finally sees this bullshit as the brazen fear-mongering that it is. Seriously, the US outspends Russia ten to one on military spending by we're still supposed to fear Russia every time a Beltway "defence expert" waves Putin at us?

Get outta here!

Unfortunately, there is no candidate on either side who is more closely identified with that big-money, big-military establishment than HRC. No, she hasn't been a serious alternative for Bernie's supporters and isn't about to become one going forward.

Trump, on the other hand, could be. Take for example his much ridiculed "Foreign Policy Speech" the other day. It was much ridiculed mostly by the same "experts" and their media cheer-leaders who have led America into one disastrous war after another... does their track record suggest that Americans should be heeding their advice?

I'm thinking it's their track record of stupid, bloody, illegal, fabulously expensive (but tremendously enriching for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin) wars that have made the anti-establishment candidates so appealing in the first place.

So Trump wants to go "isolationist?" The US could close hundreds of foreign military bases and still have far more than the rest of the world combined. I don't see the harm in that. Trump is also the first candidate for a major party to tell the truth about what the "free trade" agreements that have been in fashion for the last thirty years have really done to America's working class. That's another powerful reason that more American voters than ever before believe it's time for a serious change.

Those dubious relationships with "allies" wherein the costs are paid by one side and the benefits accrue to the other have long passed their stale-dates too. Sure, let Trump make some symbolic gesture like moving the embassy to Jerusalem, but why should wealthy and powerful nuclear-weapons-equipped Israel get one more penny from the US tax-payer?

These are of course all non-starters for "the establishment." They need the status quo. They need the current policies to keep the enemies to justify the massive arms spending to keep the profits rolling in.

Hillary Clinton is the candidate of and for the status quo.

The silent majority of Americans are fed-up with that establishment.

That's why Trump will bury her in November.

Progressives for Trump

The Farm Manager has been more than a little chagrined with this Trump thing. According to her, only an idiot or a delusional could root for Trump in this most fabulous race for the White House.

Not that she's for Hillary. No serious feminist could possibly be for Hillary.

In spite of what Madeleine Albright may think.

Hillary is the can-do candidate for the war machine. That's who "feminists" should be voting for?

I think not.

We're at a point in this campaign where it looks like Hillary is going to triumph over Bernie. I'm a little sad about that, because Bernie talked a lot of nice talk. Social democracy and all that shit.

So when Hill trumps Bernie, what's left for the so-called progressives?

Well, sorry to say, the only other candidate rattling the establishment cage other than Bern would be Donald Trump.

Now, Trump doesn't exactly talk a lot of social democracy. But if you look at his track record, he's got a pretty good set of bona fides marking him as a mainstream Manhattan liberal. Rich Manhattan liberals are famous for championing gay rights, abortion rights, Palestinian rights, civil rights of every stripe, left rights, etc and so on.

They are the quintessential liberals! Thats where Donald Trump comes from.

That's why every liberal in America should celebrate Mr. Trump's hijacking of the GOP!

And vote for Trump!

At least some of the plutocrats realize the jig is up

The system is broken, and at least some of the .001 percenters are sensing which way the winds are blowing.

Right now, the folks sharpening their pitchforks are gathering around either Sanders or Trump.

Either way, it's gonna be a bad ending for the plutocrats.

Hanauer gets it exactly right. He may be a billionaire but he's worried about making it to his private jet in time to avoid the pitchforks coming his way.

The "establishment" in the Beltway is on the cusp of being overthrown. The pissed-off masses are coalescing around Bernie and Donald.

Bernie is burnt toast because the Dem Machine that he's hoping to commandeer is obviously in the hands of Hillary.

The GOP Machine, on the other hand, is being commandeered by a New York liberal who has thus far succeeded in outwitting the very machine that he has hijacked... If I'm not mistaken the Newtster gave Trump his seal of approval today.

Is this a crazy world or what!?

That's why every progressive should get behind Trump.

Louis CK latest liberal moron to boost Trump ratings

I see where alleged comic and marginal celebrity Louis CK has come out against the Hitlerite Trump campaign.

If I'm not mistaken, LCK is something of a Hillary acolyte.

Unlike Trump, Hillary has an actual track record in politics, and it ain't pretty.

Hillary is Hitler without the mustache. Or at least without much of the mustache.

Marginal celeb Louis CK doesn't get that his Trump diss fuels a few hundred thousand more votes for Trump.

Dude, shut the fuck up already!

Putin's aggression claims another sovereign state

Yes, this time he has attacked Syria.

You remember Syria, don't you? Three years ago the US, along with Britain and France and all those little thriving democracies in the Gulf, had declared that they recognize the Syrian National Coalition as the only legitimate representatives of the Syrian people.

The SNC was a great Hillary Clinton success story, comprised of Syrians who had spent the last 25 years in London or Paris or Washington.

Where are they now?

Still in London or Paris or Washington, I suppose. Hillary's Syrian revolution was stillborn.

In the interim, the evil Assad has invented barrel bombs, which, believe it or not, are exponentially more deadly than American Hellfire missiles or Paveway smart bombs. He has been dropping those barrel bombs on his own people, and all the Hellfire missiles and Paveway smart bombs at America's disposal have been unsuccessful in dissuading him from dropping more barrel bombs on his own people.

Installing democracy in Damascus has proven a much tougher assignment than anyone could have imagined.

Enter Bad Vlad.

The mainstream media in the Nations of Virtue are agog this evening at the cynical disregard for international law and human rights exhibited by Putin, as he joins the fight against the very terrorists that America and her allies have supposedly been raining Paveways and Hellfires upon for the past year.

WHAT DOES HE THINK HE'S DOING???

The Nations of Virtue were so close to defeating Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, and then Putin comes along and bombs the wretched fuckers?

What is that man thinking?

Haiti expert admits pot-addled hillbilly had Haiti right all along!

The CBC has a Haiti story on view that pretty much verifies everything I've been saying for years, here and here for example.

Marylynn Steckley, a Canadian researcher, concludes after living in-country for six years that our "help" is destroying the country.

Duh!

And the pot-addled blogger didn't even have to spend six years there to figure out the obvious!

So Bill and Hillary and their Hollywood A-list cheerleaders have brought 5,000 sweatshop jobs to Haiti.

Wow!

5000 lucky Haitians are now working poor instead of unemployed poor!

As Canadians we've been more than complicit in damning the people of Haiti to their never-ending nightmare. We proudly assisted in forcing the democratically elected leader of the country from office. Twice.

That's somehow justified by some vague appeal to a racist truism that assumes us white folks know what's best for everybody else.

(Of course we do! The darkies went and elected the obviously insane Aristide into power... we had to save them from themselves by installing a safe stooge like Michel Martelly.)

Haiti is living proof that we don't.

Not that more proof was needed...

Syrians take to streets in show of support for al Qaeda

The mis-handling of the Syrian "spring" has to be one of the greatest US foreign policy debacles of our times. Or is it?

It's been clear that American policy has been to lead from behind the scenes as proxies Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia took the lead in importing and arming the anti-Assad forces. And it's been clear to most of the world for well over a year that the "foreign fighters" who have been converging on Syria have what might delicately be termed "al Qaeda affiliations."

Recently there have been indications that Washington too is aware of this. First the charade of re-jigging the "Syrian National Council" into the "Syrian National Coalition" to make it more "representative". When the Syrians duly jumped through Hillary's hoops on that count, the US suddenly realized that the single most effective fighting force in Syria was in fact the Jabhat al-Nusra, aka al Qaeda, and promptly added them to their official list of terror groups.

This is all in the context of explaining why the US cannot directly arm the  "rebels", and the people of Syria took to the streets to make known their displeasure.

In terms of a Syrian spring, a Syrian liberalization, a democratic Syria, etc, none of this makes any sense.

Can American foreign policy really be that inept and self-defeating?

But what if this entire Syria exercise is just preparing the ground for an invasion of Iran? Suddenly a Syria in ruins is not such a bad thing. Plenty of good excuses to drop tens of thousands of American and/or NATO troops in to restore order/ deliver humanitarian aid / secure the weapons of mass destruction / etc etc.

And those tens of thousands of Sunni fundamentalist fighters on the ground in Syria? I'm guessing that America will permit herself just enough of an accommodation with "al Qaeda" to hand those lads maps to Tehran.

Suddenly it all makes sense!