Today Colombia, tomorrow Newfoundland

 Just the other day I was reading one of the Globe and Mail's top guns referring to Colombia as a "successful democracy."

That's the sort of air-head reportage we've come to expect from the Globe, sadly.

Seems the people of Colombia are somewhat out of sorts with their democracy. Not that our top-drawer journalists would notice, but the people of Newfoundland might. I'm guessing the run-of-the-mall folks in Newfoundland will take to their "big reset" about as well as their peers down south.

That's where we're all headed, in case you were wondering. These staggering hundreds of billions in deficits we have incurred fighting that deadly ole virus are gonna have to be paid back, don't ya know!

And that will require much belt-tightening (ie gutting social programs all over the place but going full steam ahead on our 60 billion dollar commitment to a new warship fleet so we can "stand with our allies" as they provoke nuclear war with Russia and China), raising taxes, and selling off what's left of the public domain.

That last part could be a game-changer for the Newfies. They've got tons of assets just doing nothing. Imagine if a savvy international investor, like Sheldon Adelson for example,was to buy Gros Morne Park. Newfoundland could become the Macau of the North Atlantic in no time!

I'm hoping the Newfies will follow the example of the Colombians.

Russiagate, Babygate, and media malfeasance

I see where Mafia Don has done a rather hasty climb-down from the "zero tolerance" nonsense on the illegal immigrant families.

Let's face it; the optics were beyond horrid. Suckling babes ripped from their mothers' breasts...

The horror!

Unlike most ugly shit that America does, this quickly became "an issue." And once something becomes "an issue" in American media, you know it's got legs. It rapidly becomes immune to anything resembling rational discourse.

Most people who go to jail don't get to take their kids with them, not in the USA and not anywhere else. Indeed, people who go to jail, as a matter of course, generally give up their children.

Hell, Trump could have taken a page out of the playbook of the most moral army in the world and just had the Border Patrol shoot the poor sods down before they even crossed the border.

Oddly enough, that revolting spectacle passed virtually without comment in American media.

But the big boys who decide what's news knew they had themselves a winner, a fresh new beatin' stick to bash Trump with. After all, the Russiagate business seems to have more or less run its course; it's the never-ending nothing-burger that even the most fervent Trump-haters have lost hope in.

After a year and a half plus of multiple investigations we can be pretty sure that some non-entities with possible links to certain possible Putin associates may have stolen the last US election by meeting with certain people with links to the Trump campaign, and before the delicate blossom of American democracy knew what hit it, had robbed Hillary of the White House with a few well-timed Facebook adverts...

Nah... Russiagate is well past its best-before date.

No, "the Resistance" needed a new angle, and for a couple of promising weeks it looked like Babygate might be it. Alas, Trumpenstein caught on, and that's all over now.

What next?

Here's a suggestion; I think if you take another look at the Trump Team's collusion with foreign powers, you might get a little more traction if you picked a different country, say Israel.

I hear Sheldon Adelson himself made a twenty million dollar tithe to the Trump campaign, and many other Trump associates, including members of the Trump family itself, were colluding with Israeli interests to throw the election to Trump!

They could call it Bibigate.

Now that would be something worth investigating!



Don't hold your breath.

Breaking! Mueller team to probe Israeli meddling in US elections!

Just kidding folks!

You already know that neither Mueller nor his team have the slightest interest in such an investigation.

I just thought I'd put that out there, complete with the bogus "breaking" header, to see if I could bust the ceiling of three page views that my posts have been getting since Google declared war on "fake news."

Ya, even pip-squeak sites like this one got buried in that land-slide. I feel for the folks who actually try to make a living off their blogs. Like Sarah Kendzior... oh wait a minute... no, sorry, Google hasn't been messing with her...

But back to Mueller and the question of meddling in America's "democracy."

Mueller's team has been investigating Russia's "meddling" for a year and a half now. What have they found?

Facebook adverts! Yup, some devious Ruskie operatives subverted US democracy by buying tens of thousands of dollars worth of Facebook advertisements!

Meanwhile, guys like Sheldon Adelson quite openly invest tens of millions in subverting America's democracy, but that is not probe-worthy.

Why not?

Because Israel and the USA have "shared values."

That's right! Gunning down an unarmed black man in America has the same value as gunning down an unarmed Palestinian in Gaza.


Shared values indeed!

Bell tolls for Bibi

Looks like the faint odour of corruption that has so frequently wafted about the career of the greatest leader since Moses is settling in once again. This time round it seems to have legs.

If you go by the story in the Globe and Mail, this is about rather trifling stuff; running a little interference for one of Sheldon Adelson's competitors in the newspaper wars, and enjoying fine wines and cigars provided by an admiring public.

But there's a much bigger corruption story lurking in the background. The submarine scandal promises to be about big money and big jail time if anything sticks to Netanyahu. That would truly end his political career once and for all.

Alas, while once I would have thought that a good thing, I'm not so sure anymore. Israeli politics
have moved so far to the right in recent years that Netanyahu may well be remembered as the last moderate Prime Minister.

And that does not bode well for the future of the country.

Times haven't changed, but Donald Trump sure has

I was looking for something else when I came across this post  from almost a year before the election.

Yup, a year before the election Trump was standing tall against Adelson and Netanyahu.

No wonder so many gullible rubes bought the bullshit!

What a difference an election victory makes.

Israel just announced 15,000 new builds for Jews only in East Jerusalem.

What do you imagine the guy who stood up to Sheldon and Bibi on the campaign trail will have to say about that, now that he's the President?

The Globe and Mail: from Canada's newspaper of record to America's conscience

I'm a newpaper guy from way back. Not that I ever played any part in the business; I just like to hold a paper in my hands as opposed to reading my news off a screen.

The glory days for me were back in my U of Goo days, when the library there had the budget to bring in newspapers from all over the world. Real newspapers where you actually turned the pages. For me, a meaningful morning means (triple alliteration... nice!) a newspaper, a coffee cup, and an ashtray. It's a beautiful thing!

And although the world has gone digital, I still drive into town on Saturday to fork over a ten dollar bill to The Korean in return for a few coins and a Saturday Globe and Mail.

If you can only afford to buy one newspaper per week, that's the one you want.

Or at least it used to be.

Lately, I'm having my doubts. I've ranted before about how the US election has pretty much trumped Canadian news in Canada's newspaper of record. Today I naively figured that, since the election is over, maybe things would be back to normal. After all, there must be some Canadian stories that Canada's national newspaper of record could be focused on.

Wrong.

The front page is all about Trump. The entire Focus section, eight pages of what I expect to be the meatiest writing in the paper is instead eight pages about Trump.

Hey folks, can you get the fuck over it already! I'm not giving up a ten spot so I can read wall to wall Trump paranoia on a Saturday morning! (BTW, the only Trump story remotely worth reading in today's paper is John Doyle's column.)

This is Canada for fucks sakes!

And a lot of the anti-Trump diatribe that they're filling my paper with four days after the election is just crap. Take for example this howler from Doug Saunder's feature story in Focus;

...(Trump's) biggest advertising expenditure was a two minute November ad in which he describes a global conspiracy of meddling Jews manipulating the economy - an ad that the Anti-defamation League has denounced as resembling anti-Semitic propaganda.

I've seen that ad and nowhere does it mention meddling Jews. I get why the ADL claimed that it "resembled" anti-Semitic propaganda. That's what the ADL does, sniff out potential anti-Semitism, real or imagined, at every turn. It's their job.

I don't know why it's Doug Saunder's job to report ADL's musings as proof of Trump's anti-Semitism. I'm pretty sure guys like Bob Mercer and Sheldon Adelson aren't going to be funding anti-Semitic TV ads, and in fact the ADL story got a sharp slap-down from the Republican Jewish Coalition.

The ADL was out of the blocks early Wednesday congratulating Trump on his victory.

Not so the opinion makers at the Globe and Mail. No, they're still pouty. After their unprecedented call for American voters to reject Trump, they can't seem to let it go.

They have made themselves America's conscience.

Meanwhile, as I'm sitting in the truck leafing through my paper in search of Canadian stories, the Farm Manager comes out of the store and announces that the Toronto Star has Bowie, Prince, and Leonard Cohen on its front page...

She said she would have bought the paper but she knew I already had the Globe and Mail.

Pity, that.

Drumpfobia splits the GOP

It's been a heady few days in the race for the White House. Chris Christie was the first high-profile establishment Republican to come out for Trump, but he's getting more and more company. Sorry Chris, that VP slot may no longer be the slam dunk it looked like at the time!

Herman Cain has clambered aboard the Trump bandwagon. That means that both black candidates from the last two election cycles are now Trump supporters. Pulls a bit of rug out from under that "Trump = racist" meme, doesn't it? That meme is of course the touchstone of the white liberal intelligentsia, the same folks who still think, this late in the game, that Hillary has any "liberal" cred whatsoever.

Rick Perry has signed up. He's a serious enough guy in traditional GOP circles. But he's got nothing on Darth Cheney, who, much to our surprise here at Falling Downs, has climbed aboard too.

Maybe it was the heart transplant?

And then there's Sheldon. Sheldon and Donald have at times been bitter rivals. I think in the course of their rivalry, Sheldon has perhaps prevailed in the net worth rankings. But he's gotta have nothing but respect for Trump for the way he has steam-rolled over the duds Sheldon was financing. The fact that Sheldon can admit his mistakes says a lot about the man... he's not a complete shitbag after all!

Meanwhile, back in Crawford, W has poutily declined to support the "presumptive" GOP nominee. Seems the entire Bush clan are having a group sulk because Trump made mincemeat out of Jeb without really trying. Jeb wasted what, $150 millions on his DOA campaign?

Holy Christ! It's not hard to see why the Bushes are bitter!

Paul Ryan still has wet dreams about being in the oval office himself someday, so he's hedging his bets. And when I say "in the oval office" I mean sitting behind the big desk. The reason he's hedging his bets is because there's a lot of GOP bigs coming out, if you can imagine such a thing, for Dem front-runner Hillary!

Most of the PNAC crowd is way inclined to get behind Hillary, and it's not hard to see why. Trump is a loose cannon. He's unpredictable. He could conceivably do all kinds of scary shit; get along with Putin, stop overthrowing governments we don't like, abrogate the trade deals that have disembowelled America's working class, and so on.

Hillary, on the other hand, is gonna continue the tried and true course of perpetual war and the never-ending sell-out of working Americans. Let's face it - that's a formula that works for a huge slice of the American oligarchy!

So we've got a Manhattan lib hi-jacking the GOP, and a Dem candidate far to the right of the GOP candidate...

Best race ever!...

End Times indeed!

Why Bloomie bailed...

So after Mikey set a lot of tongues a-wagging, he finally decides not to take the plunge after all

Why do you think that might be? After all, if ANYBODY had their finger on the political pulse of what's happening right now, it would have to be Michael Bloomberg, would it not?

But, unlike Trump, Mike's way too shy, or cheap, or maybe just too smart to drop his own dollars on a run for the White House, so he went to the MMBs. The Major Money Bags.

You know the crew...  Fat Sheldon, the Koch boys.

But they remembered that Mr. Bloomberg the potential candidate was also Bloomberg the news guy.

That was the end of that!

Consider the billionaire

We hear a lot about billionaires these days.

Billionaire Donald Trump is leading the polls in the US presidential race.

Billionaire Koch brothers have committed to spending a billion dollars on the 2016 campaign.

Billionaire Sheldon Adelson perpetually maintains a far right stable of politicians in both Israel and the US.

So what is a "billionaire" and why do they so consistently favour right wing politicians?

Although Obama has made some noises about raising the minimum wage, it remains at $7.25 an hour. The millions of Americans making that minimum wage earn about $15,000 a year if they have the good fortune of working full time.

When an American worker works full time for minimum wage, they won't make a million dollars even if they start at age 15 and work till they're 70.

A thousand of those workers, working full time from age 15 to age 70, will not add up to a billion dollars.

Here's a guy who made more money last year than a thousand of those workers will make in their entire lives, even if they start at 15 and keep the pedal to the metal till they're 70.







Yup, that would be hedgie Steve Cohen, who made 1.3 billions last year. Oddly enough, that was kind of an off year for him. Steve has had a run of rotten luck with SEC investigations and that kind of stuff.

And what does Steve do in order to merit more money in one year than a thousand drool-wipers and diaper changers working in old-age homes across America will earn in their lifetimes?

He and his peers are the new Rumpelstiltskins.

They spin straw into gold.

Sometimes they do it by taking over companies and parting them out. The manufacturing part goes to China. The union contracts go into Chapter 11. The pension plans go into their pockets.

It's a winning formula!

Sometimes they do it via brazen paper shuffling with derivatives so complicated that it takes a team of math doctorates to figure them out.

That's the Rumpelstiltskin economy.

Now to be fair, not all billionaires have been paper shufflers. Those Koch boys actually run a real conglomerate that does real stuff and employs quite a lot of real people. They  have committed themselves to spending a billion dollars to make sure a billionaire-friendly candidate makes it to the White House in 2016.

That's the equivalent of the lifetime earnings of a thousand low wage workers, pressed into service for one election.

You can call that a lot of things, but you cannot call it democracy.

Sheldon Adelson exposed as CIA stooge!

Hmm... I don't know if this story in the Guardian  has quite the right slant on things... maybe we should think about the CIA as Adelson stooges?


Sheldon "Midas" Adelson has indeed had a charmed business career. As everybody knows, getting to the top in the casino business takes some heavy duty chops, both legal and extra-legal. Staying there takes even more savvy!


Now, looking at Mr. Adelson, you wouldn't necessarily think this fat old Jew would be able to hold his own in the casino racket. After all, that's a business populated from top to bottom with the toughest of the toughs and Mafiosos of all stripes...


Wanna be a big shot in global gambling? Well, you're gonna have to negotiate your place with the Sicilian Mafia, the Japanese Mafia, the Chinese Mafia, the Israeli Mafia, the Russian Mafia, and any number of international drug cartel leaders and warlords clamoring for a spot at the table.


That is one tough assignment!


So you can see where having the CIA as your enforcers would be a big help in staying at the top of the gaming game.

John Baird embarks on "stuff-my-pockets" phase of career

After two decades as a high-profile political operator, John Baird has bid adieux to public service.

He's moving on. Last week we learned he had signed on as an "International Strategic Advisor" to Barrick Gold, a "job" that pays well into the six numbers for the chore of attending one or two meetings a year.

When I told Peter Munk 15 years ago that I was willing to be a strategic advisor for a mere $75k a year, he laughed me out of his office.

I even gave him a bit of free strategic advice; a free sample as it were. Put Pascua Lama on ice, I said. It's gonna be a black hole, a money pit.

Get the fuck outta here, he says to me.

Woulda saved him billions to heed my advice.

Back to Baird. Last week Barrick Gold. This week Canadian Pacific. Yup, Bullshittin' Baird is now a director of the new and improved CPR, which also pays well into the six numbers for a couple meetings a year.

He'll feel right at home there. After all, when you listen to Hunter Harrison's bullshit 'n bluster, it's almost like you're listening to a more senile version of Baird.

And you can't blame Baird for looking out for his pocket book. After twenty-plus years of public service, his parliamentary pension is a paltry $65,000 per. Mind you, he must have something coming from Ontario, where he spent some time learning his chops at the feet of Mean Mike Harris, but still, he's gonna have hardly enough to pay for a decent bachelor pad on Bank Street.

But lets not fret. We're up to three or four meetings a year in return for half a million in the bank, and by my math I figure he can still squeeze a couple dozen more directorships into his schedule. A directorship with one of Sheldon Adelson's operations is a no-brainer; a thank-you for the yeoman's work he did promoting Likud and slandering Iran.

Plus, while he's never going to be an A-lister on the public speakers circuit, you can see him making a tidy 25-50k per engagement, mainly due to his extravagantly high profile as Minister of Foreign Affairs, a profile largely earned by being the most inept FM in Canada's history.

Oddly enough, at Barrick he'll be joined by the ultimate carpet-bagger, the Newtster, who managed to coax his net worth from twenty-nine dollars when he entered public service, to multiple millions today.

In the great US political system you don't have to retire before lining your pockets!

Democracy no big deal for only democracy in Middle East

That's the word from Sheldon Adelson, aka "Bibi's wallet."

The casino magnate, known for buying elections both in Israel and the US, doesn't lose any sleep over the oft repeated canard, "Israel will remain the Jewish state but cease to be a democracy, or Israel will remain a democracy and cease to be the Jewish state."

According to Adelson, when God presented the blue-print for the Jewish state right there in the Bible, He didn't say a word about democracy!

Good enough, then! Let's stop pretending...

Guess that leaves Gaza as the only democracy in the Middle East.

Will the real Paul Kagame please stand down

President Paul Kagame's PR team scored a home run a week ago with Kagame's appearance at NYU with Elie Wiesel.

That's proof that Kagame has truly found his place among the angels even while he remains on this earth. The angels were introduced by none other than US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the man who lost a hundred million betting on Newt Gringrich to take the White House, and the Kagame-Wiesel love-in was moderated by Schmuley Boteach.

Look how Rabbi Boteach lards on the superlatives; Kagame is "the only man alive who can claim to have stopped a genocide," he is, with Wiesel, "one of the world's two leading voices on genocide."

Then there is the other Kagame, the blood-soaked despot guilty of a host of war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to The Daily Mail.

What's Wiesel doing sharing a stage with a guy like that?

Sheldon Adelson to save Cyprus?

Anytime, anywhere that talk comes round to legalizing casino gambling, you can bet that Sheldon Adelson will be ready with a plan to save your stumbling economy.

After all, look what the man has done for Las Vegas. And Macau.

The Spaniards have evidently fallen for his Spanish Salvation Strategy and plan to proceed with the pie-in-the-sky "Eurovegas," because as everyone knows, there's nothing like a mega-casino development to create secure and well-paying jobs and fund education and health-care.

At the end of the day casino gambling is a tax on stupidity. In order for a casino to run profitably over the long term, this tax requires not just stupid people, but a vast pool of stupid people with money.

That's where the casino model of economic development eventually hits the wall. There are a limited number of sheep to be fleeced, and even though it's a big number, it's nonetheless limited.

Adelson adds Toronto mayor Rob Ford to his stable of politicians

Wow, Mayor Ford is in the big leagues now!

What a thrill it must have been for Ford to welcome the billionaire carpet-bagger to his office this week. From right-wing windbag on city council to hosting the greatest financier of right-wing windbags in the world in barely over a year!

Sheldon Adelson was sniffing out the possibilities for a casino on Toronto's waterfront. For Adelson it's never just a business opportunity of course. Business is business, politics are politics, and Adelson is always on the look-out for ambitious power-hunger pols who understand the business of politics.

Already Adelson and five of his flunkies have registered as lobbyists with the City of Toronto, so expect the new casino to be an Adelson venture.

And expect great things from Rob Ford. He's joining such luminaries as Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Benyamin Netanyahu in Sheldon's stable of bought-and-paid-for politicians.

You're in great company now, Mr. Ford!

Gingrich campaign running on empty as Adelson flirts with Romney

It's pretty much over for Newt.

It wasn't that long ago that Sheldon Adelson stated that he was prepared to put another 100 million into the Gingrich campaign. Seems he's had a change of heart.

Newt pink-slipped at least a third of his campaign team today because he can't afford to pay them. Obviously Adelson refuses to throw good money after bad.

Meanwhile there are all kinds of reports floating around about chummy get-togethers between various Adelson reps and people in the Romney campaign.

Looks like Sheldon's next 100 million is going somewhere else.

Netanyahu still clamoring for US attack on Iran

Netanyahu doesn't get that the Bomb Iran train has left the station.

Not to bomb Iran, but to find smaller fish to fry. America is in no mood for another disaster in the Middle East.

Even without nukes Iran is a formidable enemy. Remember a couple of weeks ago when the blogosphere was awash with stories about how 200,000 missiles were aimed at Israel at any given moment?

These are real missiles, not the home made pipe rockets the Gaza wankers are firing off into the Negev every other day.

By the way, the real resistance in Gaza has plenty of real rockets, way more than ever before, thanks to NATO's "liberation" of Libya. They've been bringing more than Toyotas and concrete blocks through those tunnels.

So even after the military intelligence apparati on all sides conclude that an attack on Iran would be an unmitigated disaster, we still see politicians in Israel and America banging the war drums.

Especially those politicians financed by Sheldon Adelson.

Here's the Falling Downs plan to avert a new Middle East war. Put Sheldon under house arrest and confine him to his apartment in Tel Aviv.

As long as he's within range of those 200,000 missiles, the war talk from Likud and the Republican party in the US will magically disappear.

Adelson threatens to drop another $100 million on Newt's Super-PAC

This has got to have the Romney camp worried.

Romney has deep pockets. He's by far the richest man in the race. He can donate to his own PAC to his hearts' content.

But there's rich and then there's Sheldon Adelson Forbes Billionaire List kind of rich.

Mitt can't drop a hundred million just for fun. Sheldon can.

So what could Newt do with a hundred million in fresh cash in his PAC? Oh my goodness! The advertising agencies that craft the attack adds are going to be working 24/7 for months on end.

The researchers who dig up the dirt to fuel the attack adds are going to be working 24/7 for months on end.

That's already dozens of pretty regular folks wringing a lot of OT out of Sheldon's largesse. After all, lighting guy or cameraman at a production shop that's subcontracted by an ad agency to do political attack ads is probably an anti-war stoner in a same-sex marriage; he doesn't give a shit who wins the GOP nomination but he's thankful for the work.

Hell, maybe this is the new economic model for America. Forget manufacturing. Forget high tech. Maybe the American economy can be rebooted to feed off the election campaigns. We know its cyclical, just like the rest of the economy, but at least we can predict the cycles.

What's next for Gingrich?

I figure, go back to "not lobbying." After all, not lobbying has made him a wealthy man. Don't know how he does it. I don't lobby either and I'm constantly right next to flat broke.

If he'd done Sugar Daddy Adelson a little prouder maybe he could have found a sinecure in Sheldon's casino empire. As it stands, Adelson has already told the NYT that the next dollar he spends on Republican candidates will go to Romney, so that's not looking like a viable option.

David Frum has a plan for Gingrich. You remember Frum? Canadian kid. Dad was a Toronto dentist who figured out there was more money in strip malls than root canals and rode the late 20th century wave of real estate inflation to a tidy fortune.

David grew up surrounded by the rich and politically well-connected, and eventually parlayed his advantages into a speech-writing gig for W. It was he who coined the phrase Axis of Evil. (Just to toot my own horn here it was me who coined the phrase "other axis of evil" as a reference to the US/NATO hegemon, but as is obvious I owe Frum three quarters of the credit for that.)

Frum was so pleased with this turn of phrase that he couldn't stop taking public credit for it, which led the White House to send him packing.  Apparently W's handlers wanted the President and only the President to take credit for that clever bit of wordsmithing. He landed at the American Enterprise Institute as a "resident scholar".

That gig ended in acrimony in 2010, with suspicions that Frum may have the vocabulary of a conservative but the heart of a unreconstituted liberal. But back to Frum's career plans for Gingrich.

Frum says Newt should bow out of the race now, while he doesn't look quite like a complete loser yet, and then work behind the scenes to ensure an Obama victory. Then Newt would have an entire four year run of being able to shout "if only you'd voted for me" from every town hall lecturn in the land.

"I'm the real conservative; Romney was just a richer and whiter Obama!"

So there you have it; cut and run today, run again for 2016.

Canada Foreign Minister professes love for Israel 37 times in ten minute speech

You may remember John Baird as the unctuous cretin who allowed himself to be photographed writing a message on a bomb that Canadian jets would later drop on Libya.

Well he's so much more than that.

Baird is currently on a tour of the Holy Land with his personal spiritual guide, ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Mendelsohn, and everywhere he goes he is impressing his hosts with his slavish obsequiousness.

Cleverly exploiting the void left in Israel's "friends" section after the Americans elected a Muslim to the White House, Baird never misses an opportunity to remind all and sundry that Israel has no closer friend than Canada.

Speaking to Sheldon Adelson's pro-Likud newspaper Israel Hayom Baird astonished his hosts with his grasp of Israeli-Palestinian issues.

"We can certainly differentiate between the white hats and the black hats, and I certainly know who I support," Baird told Hayom's Shlomo Cesana.

Baird's over-the-top toadying has not gone unnoticed. It is now recognized throughout the land that Canada is a better friend of Israel than even the Israelis are.