Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry? How retarded would their children be?

I’m guessing not nearly as retarded as this CBC story. Katy seems a nice enough gal in her own right, although she’s gullible enough to lend her name to various Clinton campaigns over the years. That’s probably due more to the stupidity of her management team than her own stupidity. What I find amusing about the story is that the CBC quotes half a dozen communication consultants, PR experts, and reputation managers to parse out the meaning of this tryst. Oddy enough, no actual political consultants are consulted. Hell, I can explain Justin-Perry without consulting any consultants at all. At 40, Katy is goin’ over the hill in a Coup d’Ville, to paraphrase America’s greatest poet. At 53, Fluffy is too old to use it, too young to lose it, and the clock waits so patiently on their forthcoming duet. That’s the kind of power couple the CBC can sink its teeth into!

Sixteen years in, US still winning war in Afghanistan

I was in the car today when I heard CBC News quote General John Nicholson Jr. claiming that the situation in Afghanistan was showing "incremental improvement."

He can't possibly believe this bullshit, can he?

This comes as the evil-doers light up a truck bomb at the gates of the so-called "Green Zone," inflicting casualties that eclipse the Manchester terror attack by a factor of four or five or more.

No word yet on when Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber and Katy Perry are planning a benefit concert to demonstrate their solidarity with the people of Kabul.

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!

Putin puts finishing touches on Trump take-over with Tillerson nomination

If you've been following the latest fallout from the December 8 fiasco in the mainstream media, you'll already know that it was Putin who facilitated the Trump victory.

Yup, Putin's minions manipulated the election with a series of exquisitely timed leaks designed to cast Hillary in a negative light.

It worked.

And no, Hillary didn't lose because tens of millions of Americans are fed up with the status quo; she lost because of Putin's perfidy, plain and simple. Apparently it doesn't matter how many photo-ops you stage with pop-cult sweethearts like Katy Perry and LeBron James, Putin's got the mojo to push all that pop-culture trash into the ditch. Hell, even the promise of a blow-job from Madonna wasn't enough to entice voters!

To be fair, there are corners of the mainstream where the dominant MSM narrative isn't getting a lot of traction. Here's Doug Henwood at that bastion of (neo)liberalism The Guardian claiming it was Hillary, not Putin, who won the election for Trump.

And here's a wildly untoward opinion piece from Tom Basile at Forbes claiming that the "real" fake news is found in mainstream media. (Like Forbes?)

Wow!

But in spite of those outliers, it's hard not to notice that there's been a big push to paint Trump as Putin's stooge.

Enter Rex Tillerson. Rex has spent his entire working life on the bridge of the good ship Exxon-Mobil. There's not a president or prime minister anywhere in the developed, developing, under-developed, or un-developing world who doesn't return his phone calls. Promptly.

Isn't that the kind of guy you'd want as Secretary of State?

And although this point is rarely made, Tillerson heads a company that actually has it's own State Department. Not nearly as well populated as that other State Department that operates out of DC, but arguably populated by folks with a much higher level of competence. After all, how many Exxon-Mobil execs needlessly lost their lives in Libya?

So even though the man has zero "political experience," he has tons of successful political experience.

As the regular reader well knows, the think tank here at Falling Downs has been more than a little sceptical about the president-elect's road to the White House. But the more he builds a management team with folks who have serious real-world experience instead of nominating slimy political insiders, the more we think the man deserves a chance.

But we're still a long way from 20.1.17.

Where's an American Sniper when you need one?

I'm watching Katy Perry flying around the Super Bowl half-time show on a spark-shittin' hang-glider, and all I can think is, where the hell is a sniper when you need one?

You gotta admit, though, that nobody does schlock like America does schlock!

Schlock, spectacle...  spectacular schlock!

Can't touch this, Putin!

Don't even bother tryin'...