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.

Canadian Air Force's lone bomber moved to Europe for possible Syria action

The Canadian Air Force is moving it's only dedicated bomber, a seventy year old Lancaster, to an unspecified NATO air base in Europe, where it will join Canada's fleet of six 35 year old CF-18s and four 50 year old Sea King helicopters for an anticipated action in Syria.

Canada's arsenal of the air last saw combat in the vaunted Libyan campaign of 2011 in which it served as the pointy end of the spear that brought freedom and democracy to the people of Libya.

Anonymous insiders speculate that NATO will soon unleash a similar humanitarian bombing campaign to bring freedom and democracy to the people of Syria.