Trudeau to Trump; come and get some, you fat dotard!

Whenever Bad Vlad pulls off one of his shirtless publicity stunts we're treated to endless speculation about how he's projecting a macho image to strike fear into whatever little neighbouring country he's planning to annex next.

So what do you think Justin's trying to tell Donny J with this shirtless publicity stunt?

"Hey Trump, don't mess with us, we won't be pushed around, you fat dotard!..."

That's pretty much the tone of this story at Maclean's, a magazine so patriotic they use a maple leaf for an apostrophe. Yup, Canadians are "embracing a volatile anti-Trump movement" in droves!

'Cause if Trump's gonna keep trash-talking us, we're gonna... we're gonna... we're gonna do what, exactly?

Not take our kids to Disney World?

Boycott American NHL teams?

Stop sending their refineries our Alberta bitumen?

Better wake up, Mr. Trump, we're not kidding around!

By the way, Justin's daily jogs must cost Canadian taxpayers a fortune. I counted half a dozen black SUVs in the security detail following him. Add in the salaries of all the people in them, plus the cost of the helicopter no doubt shadowing this little parade, and we're talking some mighty expensive exercise here!

Now if this jog was just about exercise, I figure Justin could throw on a shirt and some dark glasses and he'd could jog all day long with no security whatsoever and no one would be the wiser.

Alas, what would be the point of that?

Pot-addled hillbilly beats serious journalists at Macleans to story by almost a year

Compare these headlines.

The sinking of the Canadian Navy.  That's from Macleans in August 2015.

Royal Canadian Navy sinking fast. That's from the perpetually inebriated think-tank here at Falling Downs, in October of 2014.

You'd almost think Scott Gilmore reads this blog, wouldn't you?

Well, maybe not... anybody who gives a shit was probably aware that our navy was sinking long before either of those stories. Gilmore and I obviously both give a shit, perhaps not for the same reasons, but still...

I ran into the Macleans story because I was looking for stuff around Canadian military procurement. Those 18 Boeing Super Hornets that are supposed to "temporarily" tide over our pathetic excuse for an air force are in the news again.

Eighteen airplanes for 6.3 billions. That works out to 350 millions per by my math. To do what? Stop Putin's aggression?

Thanks for the laugh! Hey, just strike Putin off your Christmas card mailing list if you're pissed at Putin. It'll have about the same impact on Putin's imaginary aggression as those eighteen warplanes... but look at the savings!

But seriously; we've been replacing our CF-18s for ten or fifteen years. We've been replacing our aging (and let's face it, we're way beyond "aging" here) Sea King helicopters for twice as long. The Harper gang was getting boffo press on our new fleet of warships for ten solid years without ever building a ship.

It's the Canadian way, eh? Talk tough and show up for the photo-ops.

Then, do nothing.

Wait for next photo-op and repeat.

And it's been going on long enough that we can safely say it's a bipartisan thing.

Semi-literate Bruce County bumpkin beats professional journalists to the story by months

Here's a headline from Maclean's that caught my eye; Donald Trump and Bill Clinton once posed together, America learns.

Indeed!

Most sentient Americans would already know that Trump and the Clintons have been pals since the embryonic stage of Bill's political career, but unpaid intern Aaron Hutchins at Maclean's perhaps did not. He simply cribbed his story from NBC or Politico or one of the other US sources that have been pushing this non-story for the last couple of days.

Here's the Falling Downs take on the Trump - Clinton relationship from a couple months ago, complete with a picture of the Trumps and the Clintons engaged in a hair-pulling, eye-gouging death match. Maybe they're not teaching the new journos about Google Images down there at Ryerson University J-school.

Politico's version also caught my eye; New photos show Bill Clinton yukking it up with Donald Trump...

Yukking it up? Sounds familiar... oh ya, I used the expression "Donald Trump yucking it up with Al Sharpton..." a couple of months ago about this picture.





Hey, maybe in a couple of months Aaron and his crew at Maclean's will discover that one too! I can already see the headline; Anti-racism crusader Reverend Al Sharpton and Donald Trump once posed together, Americans learn.

Yukking it up.

The vile anti-Muslim hate-mongering of the Harper gang

Glen McGregor at the Ottawa Citizen has exposed a brazenly cynical tweet by Defence Minister Jason Kenney wherein he commemorates International Women's Day by thanking the Canadian Forces for joining the fight against ISIS. No need to thank them Mr. Kenney. You're the Defence Minister; they're just following your orders!

So Mr. Kenney is really just thanking himself.

What's revealing about McGregor's story is that Kenney used several fraudulent photo-props that are alleged evidence of the heinous nature of the wannabe Caliphate. He tweeted pictures of Shia religious festivals during which some women participants are decked out in mock chains. In his tweet, the Shiite worshippers have become Sunni terrorists!

Guess we can't expect our leaders to be particularly discerning about who's who in the world 'o towel-heads... they're all terror suspects after all.

The anti-Islam hysteria of the Harper gang has become so obvious that even Harper-friendly mainstream media are commenting on it.

Here's a sample from the Globe and Mail.

And here's Martin Patriquin at the Harper-loving Macleans Magazine with a story called Stephen Harper and the niqab gambit, calling out Harper for his rampant fear-mongering.

Big Steve doesn't seem worried. True, the Globe and Macleans may be ideological fellow-travellers, but they're the kind of allies who can also be found giving sociology serious consideration from time to time, if not outright "doing" sociology.

They're a long way from the base that he's hoping to scare into voting for him in the upcoming election.