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.

Canada on high alert as Russia about to attack

What else can it mean when you read a headline like this?

Writer Scott Gilmore tells it like the opinion-makers at the Washington Post and the NYT want you to believe it is. All those "Putin hacked the US election" fables can be passed along as proven facts by the likes of Gilmore. Western democracies and their "rules-based international system" tremble before Putin's machinations. Putin is utterly desperate. The Ukrainian army has fought the Russians to a draw in eastern Ukraine. That's why, humbled by the Ukrainian military, Putin has turned to cyber war instead.

Gilmore isn't the only writer hyperventilating over Putin's perfidy in Canadian media this week. Check out this hysterical rant by Terry Glavin at Postmedia. Yup, Putin done tried to smear Canadian FM Chrystia Freeland by claiming her Grampa was a Nazi collaborator!

Oddly enough, that's a fact neither writer attempts to deny.