The more we help Ukraine, the more they lose

Remember back in late February when Russia first invaded Ukraine? US gov't intelligence was so convinced the war would be over in a week, they offered Zelensky a helicopter ride to safety. Instead, those plucky Ukrainians kicked Russia's ass clear out of Kyiv. That was before Zelensky began his daily pleadings for weapons weapons weapons and money money money. Both the weapons and the money flowed. First a few hundred millions here and a few thousand Javelin anti-tank weapons there. But Ukraine needed more more more. The initial dribble of support soon became an out-of-control gusher. Hundreds of millions became billions became tens of billions. Javelins were superceded by howitzers and tanks. Crazy thing is, the more we help Ukraine, the worse the war is going for them. From Putin having his ass handed to him three months ago, to the fall of the entire east of Ukraine $50 billion later. Explain that!

Three mourning doves and a cowbird

I've mentioned my theory that the covid vaxx impaired my immune systemn. Why else would I suddenly come down with a gluten allergy mere months after my second dose of Pfizer? We're kinda on top of that, but just a few days ago another issue cropped up. All of a sudden everything tasted the same - and not tasty at all. Whether I drank a cup of coffee or a glass of water or a Boxer gluten-free beer, it all tasted like a bitter seltzer, or possibly a selter bitter. Either way, it's the first time I stretched a six-pack out over three days since I was about twelve years old, so in some sense that's a good thing. But it sure ain't much fun. Then along comes the swollen lips, tongue, throat, a heavy wracking cough, and Holy Jesus, I'll be seeing you soon. Happy to report things have calmed down somewhat. I'm not 100%, but it looks like I'm gonna finish off at least three beers tonight, so at least we're headed in the right direction. Still got a bit of a throat thing going, but at this point it doesn't feel it's gonna be terminal. Not that I'm reluctant to meet Jesus; but a little more time would allow me to buff up my application a bit. That's what I'm pondering on the stoop this evening. While I'm watching the birds at the feeders, it occurs to me that we only feed the birds in the summer. That's sorta fucked up, because in the summer is when there's lots of food and they should get their own. Otherwise we're just spoiling them and undermining their self-sufficiency. But it's way too cold to sit on the stoop hours on end in January. Been a lot of action this evening. A lot of starlings, but the mourning doves and the cowbirds hold their own against them. The redwing blackbird comes shreiking in once in awhile. That scares of starlings but not mouning doves or cowbirds. Blue Jays, like starling and outlaw bikers, tend to show up in gangs. The wee birds tend to the ground under the feeders when the bigger birds are fighting over the buffet. The visitor we've only seen once or twice is the orange tanager, a couple of them. At the moment all we got is three mourning doves and a cowbird.

Tucker Carlson poses major threat to Canadian democracy

That's according to CBC News. Apparently Carlson referred to PM Fluffy as a "Stalinist dictator." That's maybe a bit over the top, but let's face it, invoking the Emergency Powers Act, previously known as the War Measures Act, to enforce Ottawa parking by-laws is WAY over the top. It points to massive failures at all levels of government. Stupidity and incompetence have profoundly deep roots in Canadian political culture. Just ask Canadian civil employees still waiting for the government to fix their massively dysfunctional payroll system. Even better, ask those Afghans who mistakenly assumed a promise from the country they risked their lives for meant something. Perhaps our democracy is indeed such a delicate flower that a Fox News blowhard poses a threat to its very existence. If that's the case, our democracy is in way worse shape than I could have imagined. Then again, if you check out the authours of the actual report, it seems more likely the "report" on which this story is based is nothing more than a PR excercise by the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

Russia Warcrimes House

I was catching up on the news at Al Jazeera, and the top story was about how Zelensky addressed the opening plenum at the Davos confab. Well, of course he did! What doesn’t he address these days? He’s the most successful media pop-tart darling since Greta Thunberg! Then Al Jazeera goes to its local dude on the ground, who has a special guest to explain some shit to us dumbfucks. The expert is from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He explains the whole nine yards about Putin’s megalomania etc. and how he is losing this totally unprovoked war he started. Did a five minute Google on the International Institute for Strategic Studies and noticed former CIA director John Brennan is on the board of trustees. That pretty much tells you all you have to know! Then our intrepid journalist takes us to downtown Davos to point out that the vacant Russia House, where the Russian delegation normally stays, has been re-christened the Russia Warcrimes House. That’s a propaganda project funded by non other than Victor Pinchuk, a Jewish Ukrainian oligarch. (As an aside, how can Ukraine harbour fascists if they have Jewish oligarchs?) Victor’s big break came when he married the daughter of the Ukrainian President back before Joe Biden cleaned up corruption in that country. The nuptials were barely concluded before Pinchuk was the proud owner of Ukraine’s premier specialty steel concern. Some guys have all the luck! Oddly enough, in her book “Plutocrats,” author Chrystia Freeland names Pinchuk as number three on the list of plutocrats who have become her personal friends, right after George Soros and Google’s Eric Schmidt. And that was way before she became deputy PM of Canada in addition to Ambassador at Large for Ukraine. Even more oddly than that, his Wikipedia page informs me that in 2016 he wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal calling on Ukraine to make serious compromises to ensure peace with Russia. Now he’s funding Russia Warcrimes House. Who says Chrystia doesn’t have schlep!

Azov nazis have trained and inspired tens of thousands of white supremacists

Time magazine made that claim in January 2021. Far from being a conduit for Russian disinformation, Time is as American as apple pie. It has to be said that CBC and the Globe & Mail have denazified Ukraine a lot quicker than Putin with his “Special Military Operation!” This is especially rich given how hard these pillars of our free press worked to connect the truckers’ protest to white supremacy, on the strength of a single swastika scrawled on a flag in magic marker. Not a month later they’re urging Canada to stand with guys who have adorned their bodies with swastika tattoos, and stand with them we have, to the tune of almost $2 billions thus far! Meanwhile, the bamboozlement of the taxpayers in the “donor” nations proceeds at warp speed. The great Zelensky is in reality little more than a ventriloquist’s dummy sitting on Uncle Sam’s lap, but our media treat him as some kind of superhuman oracle. He should be focused on saving the lives of his people - that used to be considered a leader’s number one priority. Instead, he laps up the adulation and makes ever more fanciful demands for newer and bigger weapons, which the Americans and their NATO poodles are happy to oblige. Every day this war goes on, hundreds more Ukrainians become casualties. This does not prevent the CBC from persisting in the fantasy that a glorious Ukrainian victory is just around the next corner, or perhaps the one after that. Rosemary Barton had both Canada’s ambassador to the UN Bob Rae and former US ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker on her show today, and sure enough, they both talk like all Ukraine needs is a little time and a few tens of billions more in debt for the latest hardware from American arms manufacturers. Nonsense. If the first $50 billions didn’t turn the tide, the next $100 won’t make any difference either, other than to Lockheed’s and Raytheon’s bottom line. If the CBC was in the business of journalism, they’d have some hard questions instead of blithely spreading US/NATO propaganda. There are signs that the magnitude of the disaster engulfing Ukraine is beginning to overtake the narrative CBC has been pushing for three months. Here is Kim Iversen of The Hill taking “piss-poor journalism” to task for failing in what should be job one - to inform us what’s actually going on. I couldn’t agree more. We deserve more from CBC News… like news, instead of US/NATO propaganda.

May two-four

This is May two-four weekend. That's the weekend named after Queen Victoria's birthday. In my youth, we used to celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday by heading to the beaches of Lake Huron. Sauble Beach was a particularly popular destination. You'd round up a crew, at least one of whom had a car, and another had legit proof of age or a reasonable facsimile thereof, load up as many two-fours as the trunk would hold, and off you'd go for a weekend of drunken excess. If you couldn't remember anything between Friday night and Monday morning, that was considered a successful adventure. Back in the day, a lot of high-school students owned cars. If you had a part-time job you could afford one. If you could squeeze it onto your parents insurance policy, you could afford it even more. Things are different now. Not as many teen drivers on the roads. You can't afford a car on the strength of a part-time job, that's for sure. Then again, fewer impaired teen drivers on the highways can only be a good thing. Just buying a car is a prohibitive exercise. You're looking at a couple of thousand for a junker. Back in the pre-safety-check days, you'd go to the junkyard for your junker. Pick out the nicest thing you can find for fourty bucks. If you had to put a piece of cardboard on the floor to keep the slush from coming through the rust holes, no big deal. That changed when they brought in the safety checks. All of a sudden a cardboard floor didn't cut it any more. Nor did using a upended milk crate for a seat. Those milk crates were everywhere, remember? I must have known dozens of folks who kept their LP collections in milk crates they happened to find behind Safeway. But I digress. Even after the safety checks were introduced, you could do an end run for a time. There was a guy in Guelph who was happy to safety your new purchase, sight unseen,for a modest contribution to either his retirement fund or his liquor cabinet, or if you wanted priority service, both. Those days are long behind us. As are the days of youth flocking to the beaches of Lake Huron on two-four weekend. Now they just stay home and play kill-em-all video games in the comfort of their parents' house. At least nobody gets hurt.

Pfizer announces safe and effective Monkeypox vaccine

You gotta wonder when they’re gonna stop bullshitting us about Ukraine. For three months we’ve been hearing Ukraine is winning and just a few more billions in US weapons should put paid to Putin’s totally unprovoked war, in a glorious victory for Ukraine and her NATO backers, and a humiliating defeat for Putin. Never before in history has there been such a clear example of the eternal struggle between good and evil. Sure. And we’re the good guys, of course! Western media have from the beginning declared imminent victory. In the first week of the war, CBC and all the rest were full of stories about that stalled Russian military column north of Kyiv. The stalled column soon became the first great victory for Ukraine. The plucky Ukrainian resistance, mostly artists and writers who had never picked up a weapon before, had beaten back Russia’s attempt to seize the capital! And it’s been all downhill for Russia ever since. There was another lesson that might have been drawn from the “stalled” column. The fact that 50 miles worth of Russian armour parked in the open for over a week was not decimated spoke volumes. If the Ukrainians had anything to attack it with, they would have. That was the first week of the war, and Ukraine has been winning ever since, as the idiotic hyperbole about “Ukraine fighting for the very survival of democracy worldwide” continuously assures us. But a narrative shift is afoot. There’s been a couple of op-eds in the NYT in the past week suggesting we turn down the volume on the “Ukraine is winning” story. That’s gonna be a tough sell, after the NYT and virtually the entire Western mediaverse have been pumping the Ukraine saga nonstop. We’re gonna need something really scary to change the channel… How about MONKEYPOX!!!