A Senator and a CIA guy walked into a bar around noon last Tuesday for a quick bite and a drink or two. Jon had a Ruben and Mike had a BLT and they had a couple of beers.
Then they had a couple more beers and sat around and shot the shit for awhile.
After that they had a few more beers. They were brainstorming.
Midafternoon the barkeep brought over a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. That really helped the brainstorming. Beer. Scotch. Brainstorming.
Around 7:30 Jon says to Mike, well I should go but ya know, I fink we fuckin got us somethign here ya know...
And Mike says fuckin rigght we fukin do an ya know what ?
What sez Jon.
Ya know what?
What?
I think we fukin got us ya this is kgood I thidn we cna ya. We should call whathisfukinface agt the Post.
Ya, the Post. They'll publishish it fgor sure...
Jon and Mike made it safely home that night. Their story appeared in the Washington Post today.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Mexico Pres seizes last opportunity to give his people the finger
You can't say "Fuck You" to the electorate any louder than by granting your country's highest honour to... Jared Kushner?!
That's what outgoing President of Mexico Enrique Pena Nieto just did! After all, he's out the door this weekend - he's got nothing to lose.
So why not?
As for the "new" NAFTA, I guess time will tell if it's better than the old one. Better for whom would be the logical question. It was already pretty damned good for corporate types who used it as cover to ship thirty dollar an hour jobs out of the US and Canada into two dollar an hour factories in Mexico.
That's what outgoing President of Mexico Enrique Pena Nieto just did! After all, he's out the door this weekend - he's got nothing to lose.
So why not?
As for the "new" NAFTA, I guess time will tell if it's better than the old one. Better for whom would be the logical question. It was already pretty damned good for corporate types who used it as cover to ship thirty dollar an hour jobs out of the US and Canada into two dollar an hour factories in Mexico.
How to tell if you're a twat
If you go out in public looking like this...
...you're a twat!
There are conceivably some far fetched reasons why you might legitimately dress like this, like all your clothes were burned in a fire and this was the best you could do out of the Sally Ann donation hamper, or somebody stole all your clothes while you were at the gym and so you just stole somebody else's stuff, but if you paid $1100 for these at the Alexander McQueen boutique, you, my friend, are a twat!
The good news is that people who dress like this deliberately are less likely to be Trump voters. That's according to Christopher Wylie of Cambridge Analytica fame. According to Wylie, the fashion industry was crucial in the election of Donald Trump, whose voter base prefers Wrangler jeans because they (the voter? the jeans?) are mistrustful and less open.
I always suspected that Facebook-stole-the-election bullshit was, well, bullshit.
I'm sure of it now.
...you're a twat!
There are conceivably some far fetched reasons why you might legitimately dress like this, like all your clothes were burned in a fire and this was the best you could do out of the Sally Ann donation hamper, or somebody stole all your clothes while you were at the gym and so you just stole somebody else's stuff, but if you paid $1100 for these at the Alexander McQueen boutique, you, my friend, are a twat!
The good news is that people who dress like this deliberately are less likely to be Trump voters. That's according to Christopher Wylie of Cambridge Analytica fame. According to Wylie, the fashion industry was crucial in the election of Donald Trump, whose voter base prefers Wrangler jeans because they (the voter? the jeans?) are mistrustful and less open.
I always suspected that Facebook-stole-the-election bullshit was, well, bullshit.
I'm sure of it now.
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Bill & Hillary tour flops
Good! Maybe they'll take the hint... but I doubt it. If there's a dollar to be turned, the Clintons will be there to turn it.
Gotta think that whoever promoted this yawner in Toronto took a bath. They sold barely 3,000 tickets in the 19,000 seat Scotiabank Centre. Apparently tickets were slashed to a mere six bucks in a last ditch attempt to fill more seats, to no avail.
I recall reading about the event when it was first announced back in March, but as we got closer to curtain time there was no buzz whatsoever. Nor was there any buzz after the fact. This latest bout of Clinton money-grubbing wasn't part of the conversation around the water cooler or anywhere else.
But... if you're a diehard Clinton fan, take heart! You can motor up to Montreal tonight and catch them at the Bell Centre. For $5,000 bucks you too can partake of a meet and greet and have your picture taken with Bill and Hillary...
I'm guessing the lineup for that is gonna be really short.
Gotta think that whoever promoted this yawner in Toronto took a bath. They sold barely 3,000 tickets in the 19,000 seat Scotiabank Centre. Apparently tickets were slashed to a mere six bucks in a last ditch attempt to fill more seats, to no avail.
I recall reading about the event when it was first announced back in March, but as we got closer to curtain time there was no buzz whatsoever. Nor was there any buzz after the fact. This latest bout of Clinton money-grubbing wasn't part of the conversation around the water cooler or anywhere else.
But... if you're a diehard Clinton fan, take heart! You can motor up to Montreal tonight and catch them at the Bell Centre. For $5,000 bucks you too can partake of a meet and greet and have your picture taken with Bill and Hillary...
I'm guessing the lineup for that is gonna be really short.
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Greed uber alles
The idea that a major employer like General Motors is bound by some notion of "social contract" is as good as dead.
Greed is the ultimate value these days among the keeners coming out of MBA programs. Greed makes some people filthy rich. Greedy people can get rich enough to buy the people who make the rules. Then you've got a closed-loop self-devouring perpetual greed machine on the loose...
That can only end badly, as it is ending badly for those three thousand families in Oshawa. As it has for 16,000 Sears employees and their pensions.
A couple of greedbags were allowed to plunder CP Rail, destroying over five thousand jobs but walking away with billions for their efforts.
Meanwhile, our precious princeling billows progressive hot air into the heavens in such volumes that we'll never meet our emissions targets, while simultaneously buying us pipelines, because the greedbags who own our oil demand them.
And don't expect to get the whole story from your friendly corporate news media; the greedbags own those too.
Greed is the ultimate value these days among the keeners coming out of MBA programs. Greed makes some people filthy rich. Greedy people can get rich enough to buy the people who make the rules. Then you've got a closed-loop self-devouring perpetual greed machine on the loose...
That can only end badly, as it is ending badly for those three thousand families in Oshawa. As it has for 16,000 Sears employees and their pensions.
A couple of greedbags were allowed to plunder CP Rail, destroying over five thousand jobs but walking away with billions for their efforts.
Meanwhile, our precious princeling billows progressive hot air into the heavens in such volumes that we'll never meet our emissions targets, while simultaneously buying us pipelines, because the greedbags who own our oil demand them.
And don't expect to get the whole story from your friendly corporate news media; the greedbags own those too.
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Government subsidies are bad for poor people but good for big business
When you give money to poor people, it destroys their work ethic. When you give money to news corporations, it saves democracy. That's my takeaway from the recent announcement that the Trudeau government will begin offering assorted goodies to the hard-pressed newspaper industry.
You have to love Postmaster Paul's reaction; "Everybody in journalism should be doing a victory lap around their building right now." Sorry, Paul, I don't think Postmedia has any buildings anymore. They've all been sold off to appease the insatiable demand for interest payments on the part of the US hedgies who bought Canwest debt out of bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar, rebranded the smoking ruins as "Postmedia," and have managed to collect full value on that debt ever since.
Brilliant business strategy! The real estate had to go, the printing plants had to go, hundreds upon hundreds of journalists had to go, all in the name of finding "efficiencies" so that the unearned cash can keep flowing to the hedge fund vultures who are laughing all the way to the bank. Now the taxpayer gets to step up to the plate to help keep the whole charade afloat.
Elsewhere in the magical world of capitalism, the Globe and Mail informs me that there are now 122,455 "idle" oil and gas wells in western Canada, an increase of over fifty thousand since 2005. What happens to these wells? Well, what's going to happen to most of them is the tax-payers are going to be gifted the cost to clean them up.
The excellent Globe investigative report ( in its very own stand-alone eight-page section) details how the big "responsible" players in the oil patch fob off their played-out wells to fly-by-night entrepreneurs with high hopes but little money, who have nothing to lose by walking away from them in the event that their pie-in-the-sky plans don't work out.
Capitalism at its finest!
You have to love Postmaster Paul's reaction; "Everybody in journalism should be doing a victory lap around their building right now." Sorry, Paul, I don't think Postmedia has any buildings anymore. They've all been sold off to appease the insatiable demand for interest payments on the part of the US hedgies who bought Canwest debt out of bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar, rebranded the smoking ruins as "Postmedia," and have managed to collect full value on that debt ever since.
Brilliant business strategy! The real estate had to go, the printing plants had to go, hundreds upon hundreds of journalists had to go, all in the name of finding "efficiencies" so that the unearned cash can keep flowing to the hedge fund vultures who are laughing all the way to the bank. Now the taxpayer gets to step up to the plate to help keep the whole charade afloat.
Elsewhere in the magical world of capitalism, the Globe and Mail informs me that there are now 122,455 "idle" oil and gas wells in western Canada, an increase of over fifty thousand since 2005. What happens to these wells? Well, what's going to happen to most of them is the tax-payers are going to be gifted the cost to clean them up.
The excellent Globe investigative report ( in its very own stand-alone eight-page section) details how the big "responsible" players in the oil patch fob off their played-out wells to fly-by-night entrepreneurs with high hopes but little money, who have nothing to lose by walking away from them in the event that their pie-in-the-sky plans don't work out.
Capitalism at its finest!
Putin's plans for world domination suffer setback
The free world breathed a sigh of relief this week when Russian Alexander Prokopchuk was narrowly defeated in a vote to elect a new Interpol president. After a last minute deluge of behind the scenes arm-twisting, a candidate from the US satrapy of South Korea was elected instead.
The campaign against Prokopchuk was lead by erstwhile freedom fighters Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Bill Browder, two men who enriched themselves immensely back in the Yeltsin era by swindling the Russian people out of billions in state assets, and who have long-standing and impeccable ties to America's deep state.
So, the forces of freedom and democracy have prevailed again! Take that, Bad Vlad!
Elsewhere in the battle between Good and Evil, I see where a couple of radicals from the communist fringe of the Democratic Party are again floating the Stalinist idea of a "basic income" for poor people. That's where you give poor people free money for no good reason other than they're poor. As any patriotic American knows, such an idea turns on its head the very value system that made America great.
Critics of Harris and Booker's loony leftist plan correctly point out that such a socialist scheme would not only rob the national treasury, it would rob the recipients themselves of any incentive to take one of the millions of jobs readily available at the US official minimum wage of $7.25/hr.
That's just un-American!
The campaign against Prokopchuk was lead by erstwhile freedom fighters Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Bill Browder, two men who enriched themselves immensely back in the Yeltsin era by swindling the Russian people out of billions in state assets, and who have long-standing and impeccable ties to America's deep state.
So, the forces of freedom and democracy have prevailed again! Take that, Bad Vlad!
Elsewhere in the battle between Good and Evil, I see where a couple of radicals from the communist fringe of the Democratic Party are again floating the Stalinist idea of a "basic income" for poor people. That's where you give poor people free money for no good reason other than they're poor. As any patriotic American knows, such an idea turns on its head the very value system that made America great.
Critics of Harris and Booker's loony leftist plan correctly point out that such a socialist scheme would not only rob the national treasury, it would rob the recipients themselves of any incentive to take one of the millions of jobs readily available at the US official minimum wage of $7.25/hr.
That's just un-American!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)