Summer's over

I've been sitting out on the stoop all afternoon (without laptop, I'll have you know) listening to the tractor action across the marsh. They've got some hayfields on the hillside over there, and from the sounds of things, they're blowing silage into wagons. Buddy has a fleet of John Deere tractors, ranging from the 1930s to the state-of-the art stuff he's not allowed to repair without permission from Deere HQ in Moline. That 1930's era Deere was, if I'm not mistaken, the first John Deere model with rubber tires all round. Buddy's grampa bought it new. It only comes out a couple of times per year now, either for blowing silage or spreading manure. Pretty sure they're still claiming depreciation on that puppy ninety years after it left the dealer's showroom! The reason grampa's heirs are beef farmers today is because he left them hundreds of acres of hayfields and pasturelands mortgage free. Enjoy your range-fed steaks while you can, because once this generation of beef farmers goes to the big ranch in the sky, your steaks will come from cattlebeasts tethered to a 24/7 feed trough inside a factory farm their entire lives. There was a time I would have considered that as animal abuse, but I've reconsidered. When you watch folks at an all-you-can-eat joint, they're basically doing the same thing. Do they feel abused? No, they'll happily pay for the privilege again next all-you-can-eat day. As I've mentioned, there's a local lad recently put up a $6 million "finishing barn" that houses 600 head. He inherited a long-time beef operation when his dear daddy passed a few years ago. He had the collateral to secure millions in financing. He'll look like a genius till interest rates go up. Then his lenders will seize the farm that's been in his family since pioneer days, and he'll be driving a snowplow to keep his kids in groceries. Spent some time with my brother "the kid" over the weekend. To say the kid has had an interesting life is to understate matters in the extreme. He's a collector too, although of guitars rather than tractors. He spent a few years of his extravagantly misspent youth as the guitar tech for several up-and-coming Canadian rock bands that, unfortunately, never really went anywhere. He's got as many Fenders and Gibsons as my neighbour has John Deeres. So here we sit on Labour Day 2026, awaiting the end of the world. Ya, maybe nuclear apocalypse really is just around the corner, but maybe somebody can put together a blues-rock jam while we're waiting. I'll bring my harp.

What's wrong with kids these days?

If you spend any time at all on news you know it's universal doom 'n damnation all round for the lot of us. If global warming doesn't do us in, the coming ice age surely will. Or the next pandemic. Or the next vaccine, bio-engineered to make you doubt your sanity. Or Putin's war on Freedom and Democracy. Or Trump's next brain fart. Or the Iranian nuke. Or the Ayatollas'never-ending campaign to obstruct God's Will in the Middle East... it goes on and on! And that's just the big picture. Zoom in on the micro level and things get worse, if such a thing can even be imagined. Housing is unaffordable, decent jobs for grads are scarce, post-secondary ed's 6-number toll in debt peonage for a degree makes no financial sense whatsoever,and if you miraculously survive all that, AI's gonna wreck your career anyway, so why even bother... it's a hopeless world. And I see stories constantly about how young folks are making the only sensible choice possible by choosing NOT to bring children into this hellscape. That's why I don't understand what's wrong with kids these days, kids I had a hand in rearing. I would have thought they'd know better, but I had to ferry the Farm Manager down City way today to chill out with her new grandson! Yup, no matter the futility of bringing new lives into this doomed world, my dear stepdaughter gifted us one anyway. And if that's not bad enough, my daughter just announced she's bringing a second into this godforsaken world. Well, for my money, these gals should be applauded, saluted, and celebrated. They are well educated, and their children will be too. There's absolutely no reason to withhold our support. Their children will be our last bulwark of defence against the rabble you saw racing Jetskiis around the pool at the Lincoln Memorial in the first 15 minutes of the famous Michael Moore doc, "Idiocracy." Anyway, ain't much wrong with these kids that I can see.

What I hear from the stoop at night; crickets, cows, and coyotes

This is what happens when I shut the laptop and just experience the moment for a moment... I notice all sorts of things I never notice with it open. Like the crickets, and I think I detect perhaps a soprano line coming from the cicadas. And the frogs still have the rythym section going on with their steady bass beat. Nothing like a million frogs croaking in unison to keep things moving! Not sure what's got the cows revved up tonight. It's deep into calving season for the guys who graze their beef herd at Falling Downs. They were telling me the other day there's been a black bear in the neighbourhood, so maybe that's got them nervous. They've been having trouble with their electric fences because the bear just walks through them instead of stepping over them. Then the fence grounds out, and the calves, most of whom would normally be deterred, make a beeline for the apple trees on the other side! Generally, bears are seen and not heard. We saw an adult black bear ambling through a hayfield a few years ago. Then he got into a pasture with maybe a dozen cow-calf pairs. What ensued was absolutely amazing to witness. Four or five of the mamma cows went to greet Mr. Bear and the rest gathered up the calves and formed a defensive zone around them. The bear decided in short order that veal would not be on the menu for him, at least on that day. Then there's the guys you seldom see but hear almost every night, the coyote choir. They really know how to whoop it up! My understanding is they're celebrating a kill. Of course they celebrate... the family will be feasting large tonight! What I find vaguely disconcerting is my neighbours a quarter mile to the north hear them to their south, and I hear them to my north, which suggests there's a substanial coyote population in that quarter mile. Yet, I walk through the woods and the fields often, and aside from scat on the gravel sideroad, you never see any sign of them. The neighbour figures they shit on roads because they don't like the feel of grass on their ass, but I'm guessing that's more local farmer lore than official scientific fact. It's amazing how my appreciation for life's infinite daily taken-for-granted blessings only come into focus when I put the laptop away. But then, after an hour of mindfullness, I gotta flip that baby open and write a post about it...

Will Canada or Greenland become the 51st state?

My money's on Greenland achieving statehood before Canada. Greenland is a protectorate of Denmark, which has zero capacity to actually protect it in the event Mr Trump makes a move. I heard the Danish PM in a presser today talking about her nation's resilience and resistance. While, militarily speaking, her country is a non-entity, it remains a NATO member - the most powerful military alliance in history. But that was then. Nobody anywhere, other than in media boardrooms in NATO countries, still imagines NATO anything other than a paper tiger. Russia has not only succeeded in demilitarizing Ukraine, it has largely demilitarized NATO to boot! Hope the poor gal doesn't hold her breath waiting for an Article 5 miracle. On the other hand, Canadian PM Carney seems to keep the volume down vis-a-vis pushing back against the Bully. That's a strategy bound to pay off... we'll NEVER be the 51st state... we'll be the 52nd.

Cold weather made Canada unique

In yet another lame attempt to fan the embers of Canadian patriotism, the Globe trots out Stephen Marche to speculate on the hows and whys of the alleged resurgence of nationalist fervor in this fair land. Seems we've been uniquely conditioned by Mother Nature to defy Uncle Sam due to our cold weather. That somehow made us stubborn... which is apparently a great asset in these turbulent times. Not sure I follow Stephen's logic. When 90% of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the USA, it can't be that much colder. In fact, at least a dozen cities in northern states have colder winters than Canada's biggest city. It therefore stands to reason we can't be that much more stubborn. According to Marche, Canada's defiance is an inspiration around the democratic world. Carney is moving Canada closer to Europe, where the key E-3 allies are all keen for war with Russia. Yup, that would be a wise tie-in! As for Canada's alleged galvanizing of others to stand against Trump, that's not something I've ever read in the foreign press. Seems mostly a fantasy entertained by "journalists" at CBC and the Globe & Mail. What I wish they would do is more actual journalism. That might reveal we're not quite as anti-Trump as we pretend. How many stories have you read about the $4 billions in contracts with US defence contractors Carney has approved just in the past few months? Couple of billion for General Dynamics and a couple billion more for Lockheed Martin, but it's OK 'cause they hate Trump as much as Canada does!

We Canadians are desperate to be seen as "World Leaders"

Let me illustrate my case via a few quotes from a CBC story about an allegedly Canadian company scooping up a couple hundred millions more in tax-payer cash. Here's Evan Solomon, Minister of Wishful Thinking; "This is absolutely a great day for Canada, for Xanadu, and for science around the world. It shows what Canada can do best. We build!" We do? The only thing Xanadu is actually building is an HQ and manufacturing facility in a former Campbells Soup plant in Toronto that required nearly a billion $$ in taxpayer money. Evan's got more; "We are not just going to make a bet on solving the biggest problems in the world, and being the best in the world... We're going to do it big, fearlessly!" Oh ya! We build! Fearlessly! Evan goes on to bloviate about Canadian leadership and how we are securing our sovereignty. And here's some happy news; it's not just Canadian taxpayers shovelling money into Xanadu's coffers, it's the US Department of War and the US Air Force Reseach Laboratory. That almost seems a contradiction of our alleged pivot away from Uncle Sam. Not sure how that can be a positive for our sovereignty. What the CBC story never actually spells out is this supposed Canadian success story is already under American control. Australian founder Christian Weedbrook took his Xanadu public a few months ago. He kept a 15% share to himself and a couple of Canadian venture cap funds rolled their slice over at the IPO, but as of today, when our tax-payer-funded propaganda network is braying about this "Canadian" success story, a dozen US based investment funds own the rest. That's who we're subsidizing with our tax dollars!

The slow lane

I live in two worlds. One is the world I see on my computer screen. It's hard to take your eyes off that world, because we live in very interesting times. As a life-long cheerleader for the demise of The Empire, I recognize the import of this moment. Regardless of what you hear on Fox News, The Empire is in dissaray. We are witnessing the dissolution of Empire in record time. It typically takes decades or even centuries for a sclerotic failing Empire to collapse. Donny J seems determined to "git-r-dun" in one term! The other world is the one I see from the stoop. It's a different world, a world I'm trying to spend more time in. That's a challenge because wi-fi is excellent on the stoop. Willpower! Ya, as if! But I'm happy to report I spent a good four or five hours out there today sans laptop! In an entire afternoon out in the fresh air I saw a dozen cars, two dozen pickups, and a couple tractors go by. Plus, some logging trucks. There's a guy down the way harvesting his woodlot. Gets me wondering if my 20 acres of woodlot might yield a new Kubota with heated cab and snowblower. But I digress. Things aren't looking all that great for Western Civ in general, and as far as I can see, there is essentially zero leadership in the "Free World." The Eurotwats want to be ready for war with Russia by 2030, because... I don't know... freedom and democracy I suppose. Anyway, as Carney scours the world for new trading partners, none of the computer-screen drama impacts my daily routine, and it's hard to imagine it ever will. Mind you I am within the 160km danger zone the experts have designated around Bruce Nuclear. If Putin hits that puppy I just gotta hope there's nor-westers blowing that day instead of sou-westerlies. Anyway, life goes on, and I pretty much stick to the slow lane, at least if I can't just walk there. At this point, "life goes on" is in itself a declaration of victory! I know I've been whining about health challenges, but SHUT UP ALREADY!!! So long as one can eat and shit... don't worry... be happy!

Doo-doo rising; what's next for the deranged occupant of the Offal Orifice

OMG did you see what autocomplete just did? I swear I wrote "Oval Office," and look how it came out?! Maybe the AI apps that are always looking over your shoulder these days are smarter than I thought! Anyway, it's getting all-too-obvious that Donny J is well down the Alzheimer Highway. In fact, I'm pretty sure he was in that convoy of black SUVs that passed me at very high speed not too long ago. Lake America? I mean... the level of imbecility on display here is off the charts! It's obviously playing on his mind double-plus big-time that the Towelheads 'o Terror have embarrassed the greatest military the world has ever seen! I'm surprised there isn't more alarm afoot re the obvious cognitive impairment of the leader of the Free World. Given all the headwinds bearing down on the flailing and failing American Empire at this moment, the Commander-in-Chief finds the time for a juvenile PR stunt to rename Lake Ontario!? It's hard to see happy endings emerging from the disaster Trump and Bibi triggered with their war. Sometimes Karma just gotta run her course.

Elbows up and fingers crossed; how Carney might sort of maybe teach Trump a bit of a lesson... maybe

Yup, Ottawa be talkin' some serious shit. Not to mention Ontario Big Boss Doug Ford, who has challenged Donny J himself to an arm rassle! Oh, it's a never-ending shit-show, is it not? We have of course had innumerable reminders that Canada's fate hangs in the balance... The sheer idiocy of virtually anything that comes out of our Defence Dept defies belief, but you'll never see CBC ask any serious questions, such as what's the logic behind commissioning a multi-billion $$$ fleet of warships that will be destined for Davey Jones' locker upon meeting the first Chinese drone swarm. All we ever hear is how we gotta spend a shitload of money to "stand with our allies." Isn't it well past time to take a good hard look at what our allies are all about? We still cling to the fiction that we're the "good guys." Our big allies are all-in for Greater Israel. They're all-in for war with Russia. Soon, according to the NATO cheerleaders. Meanwhile, no matter where you look, you'll see public services are drastically underfunded, and that's before our myriad fresh spending commitments kick in. We are way down the wrong road, the road to certain disaster. War with Russia and China? That's stupid enough on the face of it, but even sillier is the conceit that we, "The West," "The Nations of Virtue," will somehow prevail. Best wishes to elbows up and fingers crossed, but I think we're doomed.

A history of cannabis consumption

Let me start with a couple of caveats off the top. In the first place, I know nothing about the history of cannabis consumption other than what I read in High Times, so I know archeologists have found cannabis residue on hookas buried with Egyptian royalty 5,000 years ago, but who knows? What I actually know about the history of cannabas didn't kick in till the 1970s. And that brings up my second caveat; my experience of cannabis takes flight (good one, eh?!) from a kinda lame baseline; the 5% THC weed we were smoking in the seventies. To be honest, I stuck with the low-octane stuff for the next fifty years, mainly because that's what I grew in my weed patch. At some point maybe 5 or 10 years ago... or probably closer to twenty now that I do the math, I moved to smoking my weed out of a vape instead of twisting 'em up. In hindsight, that was the thin edge of the wedge that's gonna launch you down the slippery slope. The PAX vapes I settled on after a little experimentation ran 200 bucks and in every case lasted within a few weeks more or less of two years, right around the time the warranty expired. Finally I spring an extra hundred for the PAX 3 model because it has the life-time warranty. It lasts an extra year, and of course to cash in on the warranty, you would have had to do proof-of-purchase paperwork when you bought it. Ya right! Anyway, the PAX vapes still required loading loose bud into a tiny space with my fat fingers and shaky hands. That wasn't getting any easier, and then a few years ago I had a wee close call while germinating my spring crop. Long story mercifully short, there was an incident involving the gas fireplace and (hitherto unknown to me) flammable seed trays, after which I concluded, fuck this; growing 70s-style weed isn't worth burning your house down. That's aound the time I began experimenting with the pre-filled vapes that come with cannabis oil instead of bud. In texture, taste, and viscosity it strikes me as the modern version of honey oil. Remember that shit? That was $500 for a 5g vial back when you could buy a bag of weed for twenty bucks! Which brings me to my current situation. A year and a half ago I got the CHF diagnosis, ie your heart is fucked. Just a couple weeks ago I got the complimentary COPD diagnosis, ie your lungs are fucked too. So you can see where they've totally triggered maximum paranoia in a schmuck who is predisposed to it to begin with! I'll sit on the stoop sucking on the honey oil vape for an hour, hoping to cope, and then be alarmed by the fact I'm having trouble standing up! OMG, it's my heart! OMG, it's my lungs! Ya, maybe...

Doug Ford challenges Trump to sumo cage match on White House lawn

The Ontario preem really got his dander up over Mafia Don's latest tarrif tricks. He was pretty much in hold-my-coat-while-I-kick-his-ass mode. The trouble with Doug is he's too much like Donald; quick to take umbrage and even quicker to fire back with ill-considered nonsense, in Doug's case, how we're gonna ratchet up the pain dial on the Americans and wait Trump out. Here's the problem. At the present moment the American Empire is being grieviously humiliated by the fact it is on the losing side of both the wars it largely instigated. The odds of either of those disasters being salvaged grow more remote by the day. Trump is absolutely desperate to beat the shit out of somebody, and if Russia and Iran are out of reach, Canada may do in a pinch. Maybe not what he pictured in the history books, but better than nothing. Probably a few keeners already floating thesis proposals re "how under President Donald J Trump's heroic and divinely inspired leadership we were able to ensure that Canada would never develop a nuclear weapon." Don't laugh... stranger things have happened; according to all 18 US intel agencies, Iran wasn't developing one either, and look what happened to them! Anyway, I would advise Doug to turn down down the volume on his bombast. As a country, Canada is all soft underbelly with no hard shell in sight. It's time we stopped pretending otherwise.

Canada celebrates 14 years of tough new sanctions on Iran with tough new sanctions on Iran

You'd almost think that at some point the relevant experts might detect a degree of futility in our strategy, but apparently we're not there yet. Check out this post from 2012.********** Tuesday, January 31, 2012 What's so tough about Canada's tough new sanctions on Iran? We've already seen the standard fare: blocking bank accounts in Canada held by bigwigs in the Revolutionary Guards. Number of Canadian bank accounts ever held by bigwigs in the Revolutionary Guards? Zero. So the sanctions announced by Foreign Minister John Baird today are going to hit the towellers where it hurts. The new sanctions will include the following: Total ban on oil exports to Iran. While it's true that nobody actually wants Canada's dirty oil, at least we know the Iranians aren't going to get their grubby nuclear-weapon-seeking hands on it. Total ban on maple syrup. That'll teach the towel-heads. No more of the good stuff on your morning pancakes. You'll have to settle for that Aunt Jemima faux syrup that our less committed American neighbors still make available. Complete ban on pork exports to Iran. Good luck finding a BLT or a pulled pork sandwich in Tehran after this. Ban on export of Celine Dionne CD's. What are you going to play at your weddings now, People of the Towel? Total ban on Canadian nuclear technology. That's a grey area. We gave all our Canadian nuclear technology away to India and Pakistan to enable their nuclear weapons programs. If the Iranians can't get it from us they can always get it from them. Leaf's season tickets will no longer be sold to known members of the Revolutionary Guards. I think when they have a chance to mull that over the Iranians will see we're not kidding around. We are the Canadians. We punch above our weight all the time and we mean business. We don't cut and run, unless it becomes politically expedient for us to do so. So shape up, you Iranians. You don't want to risk an even tougher round of sanctions from the biggest hypocrites in the world. ********** So here we are a decade and a half down the road, across a half dozen foreign ministers from both parties, and we've doubled-down on a failed strategy even since Israel and the US launched their criminal war. If Carney was a little more a thinking man instead of banker to the oligarchy he might want to take a fresh look at this. In fact, now that the deranged occupant of the White House has turned on us, Canada needs new friends to avoid isolation - just like Iran does! Maybe we can work something out with the Ayatollahs!

Carney has Trump by the balls -threatens to cut 4 million bbls per day oil exports

Oh ya! Canada rules! Elbows up up and away! We gonna teach Trump a lesson! Taking 4 million barrels per day off the market will totally show Mafia Don we have serious cards to play... wait a minute... all that Canadian oil actually belongs to foreign entities and not to Carneys Canada... oh well, my mistake I guess... there goes our strategy for winning the tariff war. Sorry.

Jason Arday proves my point; you can bullshit education or sociology, but you can't bullshit welding

Far as I know, Jason never spent any time on the floor of a welding shop. He was cut out for bigger things, obviously. That's a shame, because there's a profound lesson in engaging with the authentic, with the shit you can't bullshit. In a fab shop, if the trailer hitch you welded onto the back of a five-ton truck falls off, you're not gonna talk your way outta that with some post-modernist baffle-gab about absence being the highest form of presence! No, you'll a) be unemployed, and b) depending on how many died when the trailer detached from the truck and took out a school bus, be facing a lengthy prison term. Pity the poor sods who were denied the opportunity to engage with what's real. Whether you're prepping a meal or baking a pie or building a house or installing a trailer hitch, IT MATTERS! I spent 25 years in the classroom and took at least two dozen soc courses for my undergrad, and while both soc and ed are prime fields where bullshit can take you a long way, Sociology of Education is a bullshitter's Nirvana! It's a double dose of unaccountability! I mean, you can interrogate intersectionality till the cows come home, and if you get it all wrong nobody will ever notice!

What happens to journalism when narrative detaches from reality?

I watched a great podcast today that addressed that Q in some detail. Retired US military guy Danny Davis had retired Brit spook and diplomat Alastair Crooke on, and they spent an hour dissing the Empire that once provided their paycheques. They covered in some detail the Trump regime's ongoing campaign to pursue policies completely divorced from on-the-ground realities. The American Empire is bleeding out in the Middle East and it is bleeding out in Ukraine, and there's no strategy in sight that promises anything other than more bleeding. Yes, for Russia and Iran, but ultimately, for America too. Our legacy media still push the absurd notion that a Ukrainian victory is just around the corner. I can't imagine what corner that might be. There was a time just weeks into this war when a peace deal was just around the corner, but then Boris showed up with "NATO is 100% behind you with whatever it takes for as long as it takes." Ukraine has been taking the dirty end ever since and there's been no sign NATO ever had either the guns or the balls to fight, although they are planning some new factories that might begin to address NATO deficiencies in... oh ten or twenty years or so? Yet legacy media platforms keep pushing for more war. That's an embarrassment to the profession of jounalism. Just today Doug Saunders informed me that Zelly may in fact be the reincarnation of Winston Churchill, but, like Winston, he's a really shitty leader on the domestic side. Sure, so that's the guy to follow if you're keen for more war? How is that still attached to reality? Doug asserts that Zelly's election in 2019 was the "permanent end to far-right politics in Ukraine." Huh? Within two weeks of Zelly's win the far-right had overturned his election platform 100% and consolidated their grip on power. I'm sure Dopey Doug understands this as well as I do, but his paycheque depends on hewing to the approved narrative long after it's completely detached from reality. At the end of the war, hopefully there will be some accountability for the hordes of Western politicians who kept pushing for more war. NATO reparations for Ukraine after our war-mongering destroyed their country is the least we owe Ukraine.

Time for every pol who promised "whatever it takes for as long as it takes" to get their cowardly lying butts to Kyiv and witness their folly

The last great erruption of breatheless PR bullshit from the NATO crowd happened during the Ankara summit. From the Baltics to the Iberian penninsula, every foreign minister and every head of state had the same message: UKRAINE HAS TURNED THE TIDE!!! That was six weeks ago. For several days our legacy media ran multiple news stories and op-eds celebrating the miracle... and then Ukraine dropped out of the news cycle again. Beginning the day before the NATO summit, and continuuing till today, Russia has carried out the most sustained missile and drone attacks of the war, completely under the radar of Western media! Thousands of missiles and tens of thousands of drones have absolute freedom in the skies. Ukraine could sure use some air defence, but NATO's cupboard is bare. Whatever it takes, unless we don't have it, I guess! Too bad we didn't spell that out a little sooner, before we goaded the hapless Zelly into a war Ukraine was expected to lose by the very "allies" provoking and promoting it. This would be the perfect time for all those empty suits who spent the last five years making empty promises to Ukraine to man up and personally stand with Ukraine, not metaphorically; I mean shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainians who haven't left the bomb shelters for a month. At the very least, you owe them an apology. In the long run, they should get reparations from the NATO cowards who foisted this war on them.

Small-town mainstreet vignette

Dateline Walkerton; up-market sedan pulls into parking space on main drag. Well-dressed up-market female person disembarks driver's door and opens back door to reveal rather roly-poly boy-child who appears to be playing a game on his device. She waits. She waits some more. She is a very patient mom. She stands on the sidewalk with the back door open while the future video game world champion tries to beat the ending boss. Eventually he must have reached some sort of conclusion, because after a good five minutes of mom standing on the sidewalk, he gathered up his gear, and a set of headphones hitherto not a factor, and exited the car. He couldn't have been older than seven or eight. Whatever happened to parents acting like parents?

A country drive

Had occassion to take a tour the other day down Walkerton way. Don't see those roads much anymore. For a couple years around the turn of the century I saw them every day, because me and my old pal Jimmy used to carpool from Walkerton to our teaching jobs in Owen Sound. County roads and Townlines and Concession roads all the way through an hour's worth of rolling hills and pastoral vistas. If you absolutely must have a job that requires commuting, a commute that calms your nerves and soothes your senses is the one you want. I was on my way to lunch with another old friend, a guy who makes his living ferrying ultra-lethal military-related goodies back and forth across the border. That obviously requires the absolutely highest levels of security clearances. I've known this dude since we were teens, and how he got that is a complete mystery to me. Suffice it to say if he makes a habit of lunching with the pot-addled anti-semitic hillbilly communist, he might not get the next one! Back in the day there was a lot of local excitement about a new furniture plant going in at Chesley, roughly the half-way point in that commute. Durham Furniture, a high-quality manufacturer that's been around since the 1800s, was investing $38 millions in a brand-new state-of-the-art factory. Many of our students were hired. Within two years they went tits-up. I've heard China's entry into the WTO destroyed our fine-furniture industry, but that could just be Yellow Peril propaganda for all I know. Unfortunately Jimmy didn't last all that long after our commuting days. He succumbed to cancer just a few years later. Oddly enough, his younger brother died of the same cancer just a few years after that. Both of them had apprenticed into the machine trades. A few years later there was a class action launched against 3M and Dupont on behalf of all the millwrights, machinists, tool & die guys and mechanics who died young because they'd spent years absorbing toxic chemicals through their skin as part of their jobs. Don't know if they ever got any compensation. So I spend a two hour+ lunch with Buddy, and holy moly, does this guy have some insights into the trucking biz. He's been around it for over 50 years and has seen the changes. The main change is the composition of the workforce. Used to be mostly whites and a few blacks in Canada, and closer to a black-white-Latino mix once you crossed the border. In fact, JB Hunt, a major American trucking concern, had its HQ just around the corner from the Arkansas State Penetentiary and was famous for providing employment opportunities to ex-cons who had paid their debt to society. Now it's 90% guys with turbans on both sides of the border! But that's not always a bad thing. Carrying guns and ammo across the border requires literally binders worth of paperwork. It involves an absolutely incognito truck stripped, for obvious reasons, of all comm tech, and scanned for tracking devices every time it's loaded. The company that employs Buddy tried to dump him back when he balked at the covid shot. Turns out it really helps to know your way around those binders if you hope to get through customs in a timely manner. He gradually got most of his job back as the clamour over covid died down. He claims it's routine to be waiting with a dozen or two dozen drivers in the US Customs holding area to clear their paperwork, and being the only white guy in the room. For some obscure reason, it's apparently quicker for a white guy to get through US Customs than for a brown dude with a turban. After lunch I mosied up what is generally known as the Elora Road, which terminates in Southampton, just west of Saugeen Indian Reservation #29. Gotta drop into my favorite pot shop and reload! I've only ever bought anything at a gov pot shop once, and across the board your gonna save probably 75% by shopping at the rez. Over the years, quite a few kids from Saugeen First Nation came through my classroom. In my 25 years of watching the education system circle the drain, one of the very few bright spots is we're now seeing Indigenous boys in high school much more. It was rare in 1995. By the time I retired, it was normal, and they were often among my best students. And let me point out that had far more to do with culture change in their community than with anything the ed system did. So, I got home with a full belly and four fresh vapes, 2 indica and 2 hybrid. My final observation has to do with this region's fast-fading reputation as Ontario's cattle country. There are actually more cattle than ever, but you don't see nearly as many. That's because what you see a lot more of is feedlots. A guy up the road put one in a year ago. Six million bucks for a 600 head barn where they stand in front of a giant automated feed trough and do nothing but eat and shit 24/7 until they hit the abattoir. I drive by the place twice a day and have never seen a cow. I guess that's farming today. I'm pleased to rent my pastures to a old-school father-son team who believe in cattle roaming the meadows, eating grass, and providing me cow-views from every window! That's worth a lot in my world. Sadly, they and their herd are endangered species.

Celebrating the Idiot Savant, from Jimi Hendrix to Jason Arday

Turns out that some idiot savants are more savants than idiots. Take Hendrix. I mean, he may have been a druggie goofball who held his guitar upside down, but to this day knowledgable commentators peg him as one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time. Then there's the Idiot Savants who prove themselves idiots. In spite of a massive PR campaign intended to hide the obvious; that from the beginning of his meteoric rise Dr Arday proved himself on the idiot side of the ledger. I can assure you there are no knowledgable commentators anywhere who imagine... that Jason is the Jimi Hendrix of... sociology? Which in no way absolves the powers that be from responsibility for the Arday debacle. And it is abundantly clear that it's Cambridge admin pushing DEI policies that put this guy in peril to begin with.

Johnny Hirtle and the 500hp Super Bee

Johnny, may he rest in peace, bought a 1969 Dodge Super Bee at Weiland Motors in Kitchener. They were strictly used cars then, and it was a few years before they got the Ford franchise, so the Bee had a few miles on it already. She was a box-stock stripper with column shift Torqueflite, bench seats, and the 335hp 383. Didn't take long to grenade that motor, given the extravagant smoke shows that erupted all over town. Johnny had a conundrum; rebuild that motor or swap in something new. He found a '68 Road Runner for sale that had been heavily modified for drag racing, hence the 500hp. The problem was that motors built for drag racing are designed to absolutely peak out at a quarter mile, whereas a stock Bee geared for the street is just getting warmed up at the quarter mile mark. In addition to even more spectacular smoke shows, we now got stories about "burying the speedometer." Given that the Super Bee speedo goes to 150mph, I found that rather alarming. Fortunately, the lifespan of that race motor was even shorter than that of the original, which probably extended the lifespans for a few of us, including Joachim himself. Johnny/Joachim took a decidedly mellow turn after that. Couple of years later, he was tooling around in an Econoline van. By then a ride with Johnny was still an adventure, because you never knew if it was gonna be three hours or three days, but at least you were reasonably confident you'd eventually arrive alive!

American Empire awaits final curtain

Just watched a ten minute segment on Fox where General Keane was 'splainin' to Larry Kudlow how, in spite of appearances to the contrary, the USA is in fact in full control of Hormuz. For ten minutes they danced around the very obvious fly in the ointment, to wit, the fact that four months into a four day war, the mightiest military the world has ever seen has proven incapable of achieving any of the goals it proclaimed when they started this war. In normal parlance, that's known as "losing." But not at Fox News. No, the extended pause in US attacks is 100% due to Donald's humanitarian bent. He just wants to make sure he gave the terrorist thugs every last chance before he unleashes hell etc. The truly sad (and might I add dangerous) fact is more Americans get their news from Fox than anywhere else, and I can't imagine they're likely to change the chanel to CNN or Al Jazeera for a second opinion. What will it take before reality sets in?... I figure $12/gallon diesel should do it!

Winter's coming and I got nothing but fear and loathing

And that's a radical departure from my usual winter announcement, which typically comes late November or early December, to the effect that, by golly, looks like winter's back... who knew? Yup, the advent of winter reliably takes me by surprise every year. But here's why things have changed. Last winter was an unexpectedly stiff one, as in way cold and way too much snow. Turned out I was completely unprepared, and it was only the kind intervention of my neighbours John Deere and Massey Ferguson, together with their snowblowers, that got me through. Never again! So I've been keeping an eye out for reliable and affordable snow-clearing tech. I saw a nearly new Suzuki quad with a blade for a whisker under 10k. At least that would give me a 4-wheeler when I'm not clearing snow, but it's not what you need when you get an overnight dump of four feet or more, which is known to happen in these parts. So I've been thinking maybe it makes some sense to have the old Ford 4000 diesel refurbished. It's a 53hp unit from about 50 or 60 years ago, and I have a snowblower for it. But I haven't had a diesel since my VW died, what, 15 years ago? I therefore know nothing about diesels and besides, between my shaky hands and fat fingers I struggle to pick up a wrench, let alone turn one. So this job gotta be farmed out, but whereto? As fate would have it, a few of the kids who went through my shop class went on to become all sorts of trades, including diesel mechanics. I happened to run into one of them at a funeral last week. He works at an iron ore mine on Baffin Island, which is somewhere nearby Santa's place. The company flies him up and back for a three-week rotation, and when he's home he wants to spend time with his three teen boys, not with my derelict tractor. Fortunately, he was able to provide the name of a classmate, who had just left a prominent farm equipment dealership and opened his own biz. Perfect! He'll be looking for work! A few days later I drop by the kids place. The kid is now a middle aged man with a family. There's a float dropping off a hydraulic Skyjack unit as I pull up. There's two or three tractors lining either side of the drive to his shop, and there's a massive high-hoe in the middle of all this stretching out its arms to the sky! Ya... I'm pretty sure Jeff ain't looking for work! Anyway, I'm happy the kids are kicking ass. They seem to have survived my tutelage just fine! But winters coming...

Up a stump with Donald Trump

Remember when USA-Israel unleashed a surprise attack on Iran last year, in the midst of alleged peace talks, which utterly obliterated Iran's nuclear program and military? Remember when USA-Israel unleashed another surprise attack this past February, again against the background of more fake peace talks, murdering the Supreme Leader and much of his extended family, and once again totally obliterating Iran's military? Remember when Mafia Don told the world that he personally would appoint the next Supreme Leader? Well, all of that and oh-so-much-more is already down ye olde memory hole. In fact, USA-Israel has since February obliterated the entirety of Iran's military-industrial complex several more times, to the point they have exhausted their ammo and are now awaiting Iranian retaliation. How such a thing is even conceivable after their non-stop obliteration over many months should raise a few questions, the paramount one being just how brazenly over-the-top the Trump regime's nonstop cavalcade of bullshit would have to get before the American people realize it's time to change the channel.

CBC wants you to know 51st state status a tempting option

Just check out their home page right now. Top headline... Oh my God millions of jobs and trillions of dollars will be gone if our fabulous free trade agreement collapses... what to do what to do... well by golly wouldn't it be great to short-circuit all that nasty trade war shit and just be friends? Frankly, by accepting Trumps offer of statehood, we're just making official what's been de-facto reality at least since John Diefenbaker axed the Avro Arrow. We're looking at a most impressive record of Canadian politicians currying favour in DC while pretending not to. Elbows up and all that silly shit! Obviously the unspoken message that screams out is we gotta save trillions of jobs and millions of... oh, whatever! Just a few stories later we read that over 29,000 Canadians have petitioned our government to kick out the US ambassador. I can certainly think of reasons to do that, but defying the deranged occupant of the White House's threats to annex Canada wouldn't be one of them. Contrasting "threats to annex" to the kidnapping or murder of a head of state makes us look a wee bit unserious. It's hard to get revved up about petty side-shows when we're 100% silent on America's role in the Gaza genocide and we support the unprovoked and illegal war on Iran.

Pot-addled pinko blogger beats Toby Lutke to the nitty-gritty by 12 years!

Yup, it's a true fact, that. Well, except it wasn't actually me who beat the Shopify guy to the insight that poor people are superfluous in a proper democracy, it was California hedgie billionaire Tom Perkins. Being a recovered socialist, I immediately posted the following to the web, where perhaps several dozen people may have noticed.********************** neumann's blog Saturday, February 15, 2014 Three cheers for Tom Perkins! Tom Perkins attracted more than a little ridicule a couple weeks ago with his assertion that the super-rich like him are being persecuted in contemporary America just like Jews were persecuted in Nazi Germany. Hold on a minute. Maybe Tom is the canary in the proverbial coalmine. Maybe some of us are just too blind with envy to see what is really happening. Already we see the super-rich being barred from the boards of directors of major corporations. None of the big banks will any longer be publicly associated with billionaires. They are increasingly shunned even by the very media they own! Rumours abound of private jets ferrying planeloads of billionaires to secret camps deep in the woods. We are told these camps are for "economic summits." Of course they are... just like the Jews of Europe were attending "economic summits" at Belsen and Auschwitz. And what of the future for our beleaguered billionaires? Will enough survive these dark days to achieve, someday, a homeland of their own? Luckily, Tom has an idea that may nip this tide of anti-oligarchism in the bud. The fatal flaw in democracy has always been that a lot of lazy stupid people have this so-called "right to vote." This manifestly unfair feature of US democracy has lead us straight to the current crisis of billionaire-bashing. If Tom's net worth is the equivalent of the combined net worth of 150 million poor Americans, why should they get 150 million votes while he gets one? Tom's plan is brilliant in its simplicity. Every dollar paid in tax would entitle the payer to one vote. That way Tom will no longer be punished for working a million times harder than a million lazy stupid poor people. This plan would also increase government revenue by incentivising many billionaires to pay taxes for the first time! So enough with the ridicule already. Let's give Tom's plans a chance! **************** Don't know what to say... either Toby was scrolling through my blog again and found something he liked, or (probably more likely) he happened to be sharing quality time with Tom at Davos or Aspen recently!

Gonzo hypocrisy; zero journalism

The crap that's showing up on CBC of late is beyond fake news, beyond ridiculous, and beyond even a caricature of actual "news." Here's what I believe lies at the root of the problem. As an occupation, the journalism profession has been shrinking for decades. Since the 1980s something like three-quarters of all mainstream journo jobs have disappeared, the kind of jobs with real salaries, benefits, and career paths. While the jobs disappeared, university journalism programs kept pumping out fresh grads - into a zero jobs economy. That's where the government decided taxing Google and Meta would raise the money required to provide at least temp employment to all these budding journalists. And here we are. A news environment dominated entirely by press releases from activist groups, think tanks, corporations, and govt spokepersons. Where's the "journalism?" Whatever happened to "afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted?" Whatever happened to "speaking truth to power?" I'll tell you what happened. When you come out of Carleton or TMU or any of the others with that shiny new degree, or, God forbid, even a Masters and $100k in student loans, what are you gonna do in that bullshit fake job? Speak truth to power? No way! You'll do everything you can to get a pat on the head and get noticed by power, because the only possible hope you have of ever paying down your student loans and having a life is if you get into a rare paying slot at the Globe or the CBC, and "truth to power" ain't gonna take you very far up that road!

Celebrating small victories

There's a story on view at CBC today; " Na-Me-Res opens its doors to a new complex for unhoused men." I guess that's a good-news bad-news story. The good news is they're getting twenty dudes off the street and into proper housing. The bad news is this program is run by an Indigenous charity and is understandably focused on getting their people off the street. What we need to do is replicate this program x1000 and extend it across the country. The one thing I noticed is the program demands 100% abstinence from its former-addict residents. I'm surprised there hasn't been a civil-rights challenge on that. The way things have evolved over recent years makes public inebreation a basic human right. And if your public intoxication, regardless of cause, causes you to defecate in the flowerbeds in front of City Hall, well, everybody gotta shit, so fuck off with your judgementalism! Anyway, while the story headlines a small victory, it mentions in passing that Toronto is decades behind in its affordable housing goals. Now that we've gotta spend gazillions on fighter jets and warships and submarines, we'll be centuries behind!

Large white supremacist meeting shakes residents of Alberta town

That CBC headline caught my eye this morning. The CBC investigative journalism crew really has its finger on the pulse of what's going on in small-town Alberta. Remember a couple of years ago when they had a sudden surge of personal essays on what it's like to be the only Black trans teen in a small prairie town? Well, aside from empathy, there's not much those teens demand of us. Today's expose is an entirely different kettle of fish. We might feel sorry for that loney kid, but we need to be absolutely outraged about these white supremacists who terrorized a small town! The locals were stunned and shellshocked! Except if you actually read the story, they weren't. In fact, apparently nobody in town was even aware this army of 60+ white supremacists had visited until several weeks after the fact, when CBC brought it to their attention. Only then did the alleged "shellshock" set in. According to Grokepedia, the population of that Alberta hamlet is 58. You'd think they'd notice 60+ nazis in their midst, especially when they were waving banners from the overpass over the highway. The cbc quotes the owner of the general store as saying he had no idea. That's where you buy beer in Millarville... we're supposed to believe over five dozen middle-aged racist white goobers, mostly CAF vets, came to town for a week and didn't buy any beer??? We're in get-the-fuck-outta-here territory with that one! Anyway, I see two plausible explanations for this story. Is it possible those small-town Alberta bumpkins are secret fascist symps? The other possibility is that the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, the NGO 100% funded by our federal government, and whose "research" underpins this CBC story, is desperate to have its funding renewed, and is hoping to scare up some scary headlines.

If Chrystia Freeland is out of politics, why is she making speeches in Taiwan promising we'll protect them from Chinese aggression?

I have two observations about Chrystia's moronic interference in Taiwan-China affairs, and I have to say the only thing stupider than her actual speech is the Globe's coverage thereof. If one were completely ignorant of the last 100 years of China's history with the West, you'd think Chrystia was taking a bold stand for freedom and democracy and all that great stuff, just like when she was schlepping the hapless dumbshit Juan Guaido around the world. What she's really doing is working hard to further the Trump regime's mission to destroy the Trudeau-Nixon era's rapprochement with communist China. That is in itself an unfortunate lapse in good judgement. How is it up to the boss of one of the world's most lavishly funded foundations to pronounce on Taiwan-China relations? But here's where it gets really stupid. I mean, she's telling Taiwan to pick a fight with China, and we, meaning the collective West, will be standing shoulder to shoulder with them, yessiree, with whatever it takes for as long as it takes?... How is that working out for Ukraine?

Former Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine Army admits Russia has defeated NATO

Well, there's an oopsie! That's the exact opposite from the message the NATO vassals were singing in unison at the NATO summit in Ankara recently. "Ukraine has turned the tide!" Anybody who put any stock in that piffle needs to look up General Valerii Zaluznhy's address to the assembled Western ambassadors. Zaluznhy is the guy who oversaw the first half of Ukraine's war before being promoted to the post of ambassador to the UK. I think it's safe to assume the General knows whereof he speaks, unlike the myriad "experts" who have been shovelling blatant NATO propagada our way non-stop since at least 1991. Recall that at the dissolution of the Soviet Union Ukraine was by a good margin the most prosperous province. By the time of the Maidan coup, it's GDP per person had shrivelled to a third of Russias. Zaluznhy knows intimately the entire trajectory of post-Soviet Ukraine. Unlike our FM Anita Anand, who declared last week that "Ukraine has turned the tide," the former C in C of the Ukraine Army claims ain't no tide been turned, nor will there be. Not only has Russia destroyed Ukraine's military, its economy, and its industrial infrastructure, it has effectively demilitarized NATO to boot! But don't take my word for it.

Men of a certain age

Now that I'm solidly ensconced in God's waiting room, just waiting for my number to come up, I've developed a keen eye for the tell-tale signs that moment could be drawing nigh. For instance, maybe a month ago or so I had a mishap coming in the front door. My right foot didn't quite negotiate that first step, causing, in no particular order, broken glass, a deep gash on my arm, and a question mark in my mind about how it's possible to miss a step you've successfully negotiated multiple times per day for the last 20 years. I initially put it down to the fact it was late evening and I'd had a coupla pints and a toke... but that's just a regular day, so it didn't add up. Then, just a week or so later, it happened again! Except this time at 7 am. No beer. No tokes. Just a coffee and a cigarette out on the stoop. Once again, righty didn't quite attain the first step, causing a face-plant, a broken cup, and two rolls of paper towels to mop up the coffee. Obviously, I was having an issue with my right foot being reluctant to follow instructions from my brain. So, for the first time since I was maybe two, I've been thinking about every step I take, especially the steps that require lifting righty. That understandably gets you noticing others practicing "deliberative walking," if I may call it that. All my life I've been the kinda guy who chooses to wait in the car while the Farm Manager goes shopping, and all my life that was a pleasant respite when one could watch pretty women coming in and out of the store. Now I'm watching men of a certain age. And holy sh!t, damned near everybody's obviously deeply engaged in making sure that next step lands where it needs to. Praise the Lord! I'm not the only one!

When it comes to posh sinecures, absolutely nothing compares to House Marm at Rhodes House

Think about it. If you're a president or prime minister in a liberal democracy, your salary won't amount to more than a few hundred thou. Not only that, but you will be disparaged every day of your life as a lying shitbag. Who needs the aggravation? Ask Mark Carney how much he enjoys playing capo dei capi. On the other hand, as near as I can gather, School Marm at Rhodes House pays around 2 mil per annum. Plus a full staff including chefs, sommeliers, drivers and generic flunkies, not to mention residence in Cecil Rhodes' mansion itself! When's the last time you saw a Rhodes person taking any questions whatsoever from hostile media? Never! And lo and behold, that's where our former deputy PM finds herself today, at what's gotta be the tippy-tip-top of the greasy pole of cushy sinecures that await our Epstein class political operatives.

Fresh new Epstein scandal discovered in Michigan

Ho-hum... another posh private school for the children of folks who think for $80k their kids will escape the depravities of the public ed system, only to have them buggered and abused by Epstein & Company. Here's a quote from Jeffrey Epstein that's worth a momentary ponder:"Many members of the global super-elite have helped me to understand their world and some have become friends." Well, did they ever! And now, thanks to some intrepid investigative journalism at the New York Times by reporter Graham Bowley, even more Epstein Evil has come to light. Here's what got me sniffing the air for the wiff of conspiracy theories. While the above quote could very plausibly be an Epstein original, it actually comes from Chrystia Freeland. Yes, Epstein and Freeland both mixed freely among the global elite, Chrystia as a self-confessed small-time anti-Russia spy and A-list journo (top gun at Reuters), and Jeffrey as the most prolific pedophile and sex trafficker in known history. Oh, and by the way, by far the most consequential spy for Israel since Jonathan Pollard. Jeffrey's and Chrystia's paths must have crossed many times while they inhabited the same milleu. In fact, he variously swindled, promoted, partnered with,mentored,advised, sued, or defrauded many of the name's dropped by Freeland in her bountifully footnoted memoir of that time in her life, yet no reference to Epstein? Maybe after he gets to the bottom of this Michigan outrage, that NYT reporter can look into this. After all, Graham Bowley remains married to Ms. Freeland... maybe they can collaborate! I see a Pulittzer Prize ahead!

How Canada stands up to Donald Trump

This is a reprint of a story first published six years ago. Back then our leader was the one-time high-school drama teacher, the haircut that walks like a man. Today our leader is one-time elite global banker, the urbane technocrat who wowed the world with his defiant Davos speech. The six-year-old piece is fresh as this mornings's news headlines for one reason; our approach to Trump has not changed one iota. Lots of feisty op-eds and political grandstanding, but behind the curtain, strictly business as usual. Its hard to keep your elbows up when your pants are around your ankles.******** neumann's blog Sunday, October 4, 2020 How Canada stands up to Trump Canadians generally and Canadian media in particular have an ingrained antipathy toward Donny J. We are, after all, a sophisticated, educated, and morally superior nation, and Trump is...well, just so darned yucky and gross. Today, Jaime Watt's column in the Sunday Star is titled "Trump is running against democracy." Who can even imagine such a thing! Trump is so yucky and gross he is running against the very democratic ideals that make civilization possible. Star columnist Vinay Menon, meanwhile, advises his (presumably Canadian) readership to "seek out the remarkable healing power of Biden," although evidence that Biden has "healed" much of anything in almost a half century in politics is threadbare at best. While these A-list Canadian pundits are polishing our smug and sanctimonious superiority complex, the Royal Canadian Navy was, for the fourth time in four months, sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait. While Canada is blessed with an abundance of coastlines, none of them are anywhere near China, so it's not as if we're over there "defending our interests." No, what we're doing is "standing with our allies" in a signal to the commies that we're a vital part of the coalition of "liberal democracies" ever anxious to keep the Yellow Peril in check. The leader of the "liberal democracies," also known variously as "the free world," the Nations of Virtue, or simply Uncle Sam's Club, is of course America's Donald J Trump. One could question just how sound America's claim is on either liberalism or democracy, but aside from the ubiquitous Trump bashing, these questions don't come up. It's as if our pundits believe that America was that "shining city on a hill,"right up until January 20, 2017, when the light of freedom was suddenly snuffed. If we all wish hard enough, perhaps it may flicker back to life after November 3rd, when we can once again huddle under Uncle Sam's skirts without embarrassment. In the meantime, our allies UK and US, sail through the Taiwan Strait on a regular basis, and it is imperative that we "stand with our allies," the same "liberal democracies" currently busying themselves with destroying Julian Assange in revenge for exposing their war crimes. Here's the problem; talk is cheap. It costs nothing to write anti-Trump op-eds. On the other hand, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per day to sail a Halifax-class RCN frigate through the Taiwan Strait. And our frigate fleet is getting long in the tooth. We need to upgrade the fleet if we are to continue standing with our allies. To that end, Canada is forging ahead with plans to build 15 state-of-the-art frigates at a cost of 45 billions. The lead contractor is US military supplier Lockheed Martin. For all our Trump-bashing and anti-American posturing, it is clear that, virtue-signalling aside, Canada's ruling elite remains as desperate as ever to ingratiate themselves with the Big Dog, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. They remain American Empire Loyalists to the core.

Mothers and beer

Back when I was a teen living under my mother's roof, she had concerns about my beer consumption. In the first place, as a pious Christian woman, the fact her underage teen son could get his hands on the devil's brew pointed to the overal disintegration of society. Not only that, but once her boy had tasted beer, cigarettes and gambling and loose women couldn't be far behind. Well, I generally missed out on the loose women, to my chagrin, and gambling is one vice that I never heard calling my name, but she wasn't wrong about the smokes. And the crazy thing is, now that Mutti is in her nineties and I'm in my seventies, she's more worried than ever about my beer consumption! Obviously, I stayed ahead of the devil's brew long enough to have a career and raise a family, but by God, have things ever gone off the rails since I retired. I suddenly come down with a gluten allergy. Yup, bread and beer are suddenly verboten! Try telling that to a guy who has lived his whole life on bread and beer! I have to say, for all my adult life, I'm sure I never met a sandwich I didn't like. That got Mom overly interested in my diet, so when the next turd dropped into my retirement punch bowl, ie the alleged "congestive heart failure" business, she was primed to unleash a generous dose of motherly love. Long story short, now that I'm an invalid, or if not quite yet, soon, wouldn't it be smart, before you're completely incapacitated, to sell your place way up there and move closer to your family? I don't know Mom... In the first place, once I'm completely incapacitated, I can't imagine it's gonna be you changing my adult diaper. Secondly, it's getting easier to find gluten-free bread and beer. Just today I had a lovely Reuben on gluten-free Pumpernickel from the Boone bakery, and I've been washing it down with a four-pak of Ancestral brand organic quinoa beer, which comes from a brewery not 100 km up the road in Barrie. Anyway, liebe Mutti, the world is becoming a better place,at least for the gluten-free! Looks like I'm gonna try to make a go of it here, at least for the time being. (And in case anyone thinks I'm abandoning my 90-something Mom, know that of her five children, none of the others live more than ten minutes away.)

Canadian Museum of Human Rights still wallowing in petty political squabbles

In the quarter+ century since Izzy Asper first proposed a Museum of Human Rights for Winnipeg, I've often poo-pooed the idea. Seems kinda smug and pretentious. Relegating human rights to a museum doesn't bode well for human rights, in my view. As I predicted, planning for the project was soon mired in endless squabbling between various interest groups over who deserved more floor space. The rancour continues to this day. While the planning team was able to mollify, at least somewhat, the Ukrainian and Jewish lobbies, they left many others disgruntled. One of the groups that felt excluded were Arab-Canadians. They were finally thrown the bone of a temporary exhibit commemorating their expulsion from their homes on the creation of Israel. This has riled up Canada's Jewish lobby. Today, CBC informed us that Gail Asper, Izzy's daughter and Chair of the Asper Foundation, was resigning, because the Nabka exhibit would not have been to her father's liking, and since her family had once put in $20 millions in seed money CBC obviously figures she has a point. Here's a few things CBC doesn't mention. While Izzy Asper's fortune may have provided the first 20 mil, the federal government spends more than that every year just to keep the lights on in the joint. Another thing CBC neglects to mention is that serious museums world-wide are managed by professional curatorial staff, not by the children of wealthy donors. Not that these visionary donors have been able to see their vision through. Izzy Asper was riding high in those days. He was on Forbes Billionaire List!... but not for long. Izzy's master stroke was to pay Conrad Black $3+ billions for his portfolio of money-shredding media properties!(probably the last time in his career Conrad walked away from a deal with the satisfation that he'd totally pantsed the guys on the other side of the table). In 2002 Asper sponsored a cross-Canada speaking tour for The Greatest Leader Since Moses. He was and his children remain outspoken promoters of Netayahu's Greater Israel project, which ultimately demands the expulsion of the remaining non-Jewish population of Palestine. Alas, Izzy's golden age as a billionaire media mogul was short-lived. By the time Canwest's 4.5 billion market cap was down to twenty bucks (and I'm talking market cap here, not share price) Izzy's vanity project had long transformed into a goverment project, with somewhere in the range half a billion in taxpayer funds to date. In one of my early posts on this farce, I positted that Winnipeg, which was at the time the child povery capital of Canada, would at least now have a venue to which Winnipeggers could take their hungry children and show them they don't have it too bad after all.

Not all genocides are equal

Back in April of 2022, our government passed a resolution declaring Russia's full-scale and totally unprovoked invasion of Ukraine a "genocide." And what a genocide it's been. Five years on, multiple Ukrainian news outlets reported,early in June, that child deaths in the war had passed 700. The nation was in mourning. While even one child death is of course one too many, let's try to get some perspective here. More than four years after Ottawa declares a genocide in Ukraine, child deaths pass seven hundred? Israel blew through that threshold within the first two weeks of their war on Gaza. The child deaths are in the tens of thousands, yet our political establishment dare not utter the word "genocide?" What are they afraid of?

Reality preps rude surprise for Trump regime

Pretty much the entire planet sees by now that the Emperor be buck-naked. The towelhead scum, to paraphrase the leader of the liberal-democratic world, have done stole the Strait of Hormuz, and won't hand it back, even though we've totally destroyed their entire military infastructure many times over. So, what to do when you've won a historic victory, the likes of which the world has never seen, and the fuckers you just decimated for the nth time are still blithely firing missiles through your imaginary air defenses every day? That's a conundrum the world truly has never seen before, especially the Western World. Sure, it took us twenty years and trillions of dollars to lose to the Talibs, but this is an entirely more spectacular scale of humiliation for the American Empire. If America's flailing military efforts are not embarrassing enough, the duct-tape, baling-wire, and bullshit that keeps the bankrupt US economy afloat are becoming hard to ignore. Thanks to a few brave souls like Gary Marcus and Ed Zitron, the massive hoax that is the "AI boom" is coming unglued, and there goes at least a trillion USD worth of haircuts to the biggest names in global finance. What's that gonna do to Donny's 'hottest economy in the world,' where fully 40% of the heat was being generated by a massive hoax? While I generally try to avoid any engagement whatsoever with AI, it's hard to avoid. I asked Google today if the ChatGPT-Huggingface story was a hoax. The first thing that comes up is of course Google's AI summary. The first line of the AI summary reads "The ChatGPT story was not a complete hoax," how reassuring! At the end of the summary, there is the ever-so-helpful reminder that AI makes mistakes, in other words, it's prone to making stuff up and it's best to check its results... more reassurance! Between the military fiasco on one hand and the economy swirling round and round in the big white telephone, Donald J Trump is cementing his place in the history books!

Doo-doo just keep gettin' deeper... and deeper and de..

After a quiet day at home, spent mostly on the stoop, watching the turkey vultures soar, I opened my laptop and checked out the latest news. OH! MY! GOD!!! No matter where you look, it's nothing but bad news all over every channel! A little war here, a little genocide there, and that's enough to stoke fear galore. And that's exactly what our thought-leaders intend. Spread the fear thick enough and long enough and eventually you'll have people clamouring for warships and submarines and fighter jets! No point investing in health-care, education, or housing when our entire way of life is under threat.

Holy chrystal ball! This blog predicted 2021 Nobel Prize winner by name in 2017

I was rooting through what folks have looked at on this blog with three (3) followers, according to my dashboard. We're slowly and steadily on our way to 6 million views. I happened across a post from 2017 that predicted David Card would snag a Nobel in the fullness of time, and sure enough, he did! While I'm cetainly happy for Dave, I'm also a little miffed. Dave made his rep as a lefty economist with "Myth and Measurement," which he co-wrote with Al Krueger when they were both at Princeton. That initially got way more rasberries than accolades, but Dave's rep as a "lefty" persists to this day. That's why I encouraged him to use his high profile in the way certain other high profile academics, like Jeffrey Sachs, for example, have done. Dave's reply was that sort of thing is best left for retirement. Well, around the time he's getting his retirement paperwork in order, he suddenly becomes a Nobel Laureate! Berkley will for sure provide him an office, desk, and support staff for the rest of his life, even if he lives to 120. He is inundated with invitations to guest-lecture at the most prestigious universities in the world, invitations that inevitably include luxury accomodations and generous honorariums. I can't imagine the farm boy from Wellington County starting to rock the boat now. Here's the post from 2017. ******* neumann's blog Friday, June 30, 2017 Props to an old pal Me and Dave hooked up at Ponsonby PS in grade four. We were inseparable buddies till about grade seven or eight, after which our high school careers took us in different directions. I'm thinking about Dave because there's a story in today's Globe, penned by major league practitioners of the dismal science, that heavily references my old pal. Seems Dave was the first Dismal Scientist to stick his neck out for the proposition that increasing the minimum wage did not necessarily mean that jobs would be lost. He more or less got his head chopped off for that. Twenty years later everything old is new again. Raising the minimum wage is not a job-killer after all! Dave will no doubt have a Nobel with his name attached in a few years. Good on you, buddy!

Can the beautiful game survive Trumpian douchebaggery?

I'll be perfectly blunt. Personally, I don't get the allure of "the beautiful game." My late father and all three of my brothers can converse knowledgeably about who's who and what's what in the British Premier League and all the top Liga across Europa.They can spend an afternoon watching a 0-0 draw and act like they witnessed a great sporting event! As far as I'm concerned, normal fans in any other sport feel ripped off by a 0-0 tie. Nevertheless, FIFA is in charge of the biggest televised sporting event in the world. Bigger than the World Series. Bigger than the Indy 500. Bigger than the Super Bowl! That's why I'm shocked that FIFA boss Johnny Infantino's impeccably-coiffed head has been permanently wedged between Mafia Don's butt-cheeks ever since he presented him with the "FIFA Peace Prize." First one ever! I mean lots of people have won Nobel Peace Prizes... ho hum... But Donny J won the FIRST EVER FIFA PEACE PRIZE!!! The world has never seen anything like it! I don't get it. In the big picture, Infantino is a big deal and Trump is... well, not doing all that great. Then again, that name rings a bell... Infantino. Wasn't there a New Jersey Mafia boss by that name back when Donny was building casinos in the Garden State? Anyway, Spain won and the Argies didn't. The country that denied America its airspace for its criminal attack on Iran defeated the most obnoxious cheerleader for Israeli apartheid and its US-supported genocide. Let's try to enjoy that, at least for one day.

Sec War Pistol-Pete Hegseth introduces 'High Tea' tradition to US Army

What a great idea! If you saw that raggedy-ass "military parade" the US Army put on recently, you'll agree a little discipline and decorum in the ranks would go a long way. Those American war-fighters looked like they spent basic training at Dunkin' Donuts. We may have to Americanize the time-honoured Brit tradtion of crumpets and tea... how does Red Bull and donuts sound? In any event, Greasy Pete is obviously on the right track. American warfighters are known across Washington as the best, nay even better than best in the entire world. In fact, as Sec War reminds us daily, the world has never seen anything like it! Once the new and improved 'high tea' US Army takes Iran, Pete Hegseth will be venerated as the visionary leader he is, a veritable Sun Tzu for our time! Onward Christian soldiers!

Mark Carney proves he was just joking around with that whacky Davos speech

What a jokester this guy is! What a kidder! He had the entire world agog at his affrontery, his bold defiance of Empire! Yup, we're all sick and tired of a world where the Big Dogs do whatever they want, regardless of the norms they impose on the rest of the world! Mere weeks after that anti-Empire shot heard 'round the world captivated the media, the US Empire, together with its trusty vassal Israel, launched an unprovoked war against Iran. According to the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, that's the crime of crimes where war crimes are concerned. There is no question that this illegal invasion of Iran is the most egregious example conceivable of a Big Dog shitting all over international law to impose its will on weaker nations. So what has been the response of the hero who delivered that sharp rebuke of US impunity at Davos? Why, every public utterance on the matter has been in full support of US and Israeli war crimes! What a phoney!

CBC will have us dining on pie in the sky till we die

Back in the pre-digital era, a crazy power-mad empress in France once advised her subjects, starving due to a bread shortage, to eat cake instead. That's a quote that has ever after served as a marker of elite detachment from reality. CBC today offers some hope for this world. Just after a spot of bad news about some youthful gangbangers shooting up the Toronto Salsa Festival, they sprung a good news story about how we are destined to get yucky stinky diesel engines off our highways. Yup, Canada is a world leader, or at least maybe not too far behind the actual leaders, in the race to replace diesel with anything but diesel. According to the CBC, once the world comes to its senses, Canada will possibly maybe be a world leader in providing clean and ridiculously virtuous hydrogen to replace diesel! That's a beautiful story, but try this little experiment. Next time you're out on a road trip, and you pass a truck stop, cruise through the acres of trucks parked and count the number of hydrogen-powered trucks. I'm guessing you won't need more than the fingers of one hand to keep track, if that. Meanwhile, the same CBC home page barely mentions that USA and Iran are "exchanging shots." Oh ya! Not only that, but the Towelheads 'o Terror have closed the Straight of Hormuz! Again! And while CBC is not keen to trouble you with the details, this time round we're on the cusp of global shortages of everthing from fertilizer to helium to sulfer to diesel. As Canada's official propaganda network, it's their job to keep us entertained, distracted, and ignorant. Once all those diesel trucks are permanently stranded at Irving and Husky truck stops all along the Trans Canada Highway, no doubt they'll hector the truckers about why they didn't switch to hydrogen sooner!

Canada's submarine fleet was a joke in 2013 - it's only been getting funnier ever since

I was busy mocking our laughable "fleet" all those years ago. If you recall, somehow some very gullible experts decided to buy four obsolete British subs which were otherwise destined for a beach in India. Here you go:***** Saturday, August 31, 2013 Entire Canadian Navy in dry-dock after mishap at sea Both ships of the Royal Canadian Navy were being towed to port yesterday after running into each other. Navy Lt. Raul Pendergast says initial reports suggest that both Captains may have been texting while driving. If that is confirmed it would be a violation of Navy rules of conduct. The RCN only permits the use of smart phones while its ships are at anchor or in dry-dock. One of the most sought after assignments in the Canadian Navy is with the submarine fleet because all four submarines have been dry-docked for the past 14 years. While at one time that fact made the sub fleet something to guarantee death by boredom, the advent of the iPad and smart phone has made it highly desirable. Swabbies assigned to the Halifax dry-dock where the Canadian sub fleet undergoes a perpetual "refit" report that a typical day consists of eight hours sleep and sixteen hours spent surfing the internet. ***** Thirteen years on, it's noteworthy that today gaming skills are considered a bonus in fresh recruits!

Canada's first Hindu cabinet minister is a know-nothing windbag

I happened onto a EuroNews interview with our Foreign Minister Anita Anand this morning. With all the heavy hitters in attendance at the NATO pow-wow in Ankara, somebody had to draw the short straw. Anita made all the right noises. Ukraine has turned the tide, Russia is on the brink of collapse, Ukrainian victory is in the bag, and our fleet of new submarines serves notice to Russia and China that we're serious about protecting our Arctic sovereignty. That's the script, and she's sticking to it. Let's start with a few facts. We have allegedly contracted for a fleet of 12 German-built diesel-electric submarines at an estimated $2 billions per unit. The first four are to be delivered by 2034, six years hence. At the moment, China is building six new diesel-electrics per year. Assuming they don't scale up going forward, that means by the time Canada takes delivery of the last of those German-built vessels around 2040, China will have added at least 80 new subs to its fleet. Do we really think parking half a dozen German submarines at either end of what we call "the Northwest Passage" will keep China out? Our Arctic sovereignty is doomed if we think we'll prevail in a submarine war. That's without even considering Russia's Arctic footprint. Russia has more soldiers on permanent bases above the Arctic Circle than Canada has residents there. Over half of the global pop north of the Arctc circle is Russian. They have by far the world's largest icebreaker fleet. They're serious about their Arctic sovereignty. Canada talks a big game. The reality is Canada's Arctic is defended by our "Rangers," who just had their WWII era Lee-Enfield rifles upgraded to, I shit you not, "state of the art bolt-action carbines with a ten shot magazine!" Then there is the unspoken subtext that German technology is so vastly superior that it's worth paying a premium for. We know from Chinese export deals that were made public that they sell their diesel-electrics in the $300 -400 million range. In other words, we could buy four subs from China for the price of one from Germany. Chinese tech generally, in terms of cars, electronics, and weapons systems are at least the equal to German industry, and are often clearly superior. Why would their submarines be any different? At the end of the day, apparently, it all boils down to "values." Anita stressed that the democratic nations of NATO have them and the bad guys don't. Hmm... let's ponder that for a moment. By far the most crucial enabler of the ongoing genocide in Gaza is NATO boss Uncle Sam. The second is Germany. Alrighty then, values it is!

Carney announces only 9 countries support the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, 7 of which are bankrupt

Reuters reported today that PM Mark Carney announced the list of countries who have pledged support for this new lender of last resort, to be based in Canada. Ominously, other than Canada, most of the support for this boondogle comes from countries already technically bankrupt. Here's the list: Albania, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Turkei, and Ukraine. Take Belgium and Luxembourg out of the mix, and all the support for this so-called "bank" comes from economic basket cases. Not hard to see why any country with a serious economy is giving this stinker a wide berth. There are sound reasons why no commercial bank on planet earth will touch these losers with a ten-mile pole! But here comes the favorite Banker of the Globalist elites riding to the rescue with a made-to-order "public-private-partnership" that will backstop Big Bank loans to them! That's why the Big Bank Bosses all agree this is a Great Idea. In Canada, our legacy media seem to be promoting this as a great idea. The new HQ for this new bank will be based in Canada after all, and will allegedly create 3500 well-paying jobs. Ya, and insofar as that ever comes close to being true, every one of those 3500 paycheques will come from the pockets of the Canadian taxpayer.

RIP Johnny Hirtle

They say somewhere inside anybody celebrating their 70th birthday, there's a 17 year old wondering what the hell happened. You gotta admit that it's really hard to deny your age when it starts with the number seven. As it happened, it was just a few months after my 70th I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and it was just a few months before his 70th that Johnny was diagnosed with lung cancer. Almost seems like our meters are running down about the same rate. Which should not come as a surprise. We are, after all, descended from the same hardy Prussian gene pool. Technically, we were second cousins, his family emmigrating from the same Bavarian village a year or two after mine (if your wondering how Prussians ended up in Bavaria you've got some reading to do). For the first year or two we all shared the same roof, first on Derry Street, and then on Neeve Street in the Ward. The Derry place was a rental, and new immigrants had to do what they do to this day; stall the landlord at the front door while spiriting a dozen non-existent guests out the back door whenever he stops by for a look! In due course the Hirtles found themselves out of the Ward and in a new house in the northern 'burbs. My family became the country bumpkins, or at least that's what I thought, whereas my cousins were sophisticated urbanites! When we all hit driving age it was only natural I'd be hanging out in town more. In the first few years I spent many winter hours playing pick-up hockey at the rink behind the local school. It was nothing for Johnny to spend eight or twelve or even more hours every day with his skates on in those years. Of course, playing hockey on an outdoor rink past midnight wasn't the only urban temptation city life offered. Wasn't long before Johnny and his peer group were eagerly experimenting with the cornucopia of new recreational drugs that were flooding the market. In fact, Johnny and Tim McIvor were my tour guides on my first-ever LSD trip! You cannot imagine a more loving pair of shepherds helping a neophyte through an entire night of utterly bonkers hallucinations. Ya right... anyway, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger... As we outgrew the worst excesses of our youth, Johnny and I married aound the same age, bought houses around the same time, started families around the same time, and suffered marital collapse around the same time. By that time life had taken us in radically different directions. Johnny stuck with GE-Westinghouse-ABB till the bitter end, and the end truly was bitter. On the other hand, I had the dumb luck to transfer to a teaching career. I figured it would be awhile before they could move teaching jobs to Mexico, whereas most of our industrial base was already gone. Ironically, I recently read an article about the difficulties facing America's re-shoring of heavy transformer production, because the dumbfucks have realized Mexico and China cannot be relied on. One of the critical bottlenecks is the absence of skilled core-winders. Imagine that! An entire craft tossed in the trash as redundant, and then back in high demand when it's too late! That was a workforce that had been under threat for so long I think many convinced themselves it would never happen. Just months before the shit hit the fan I recall Johnny telling me he'd switched to steady day shift so he could spend more time with Kellan and Kari. He was planning his life around the job right untill the day his employer destroyed his livelihood. I know it's pointless to go over the might-have-beens once somebody's gone, but my late father, who spent way too much time haunting any arena where his sons might be playing, to the point where he was an unofficial hockey scout, often saw John play, and opined regularly that Johnny could have gone places. Indeed, Johnny played in a Guelph beer league packed with guys who had played Jr. A or professionally, so who knows? Till well into his 50's Johnny was more than holding his own against ex-Jr A guys half his age. That all ended with a detached retina, and at least I can admit he beat me to that milestone by about ten years! I'd only seen John intermittently in recent years, usually on the rare occassion when he attended a family get together. I was shocked when I was forwarded an email from his sister Reg last September announcing John could be in hospice in a matter of days. The last time I saw Johnny was a few days after I got that email. I arrived unannouned and rang the buzzer a half dozen times, to no avail. I go knock on his patio door. "Hey Dieter! Great to see you! Come on in!" For a guy who was hospice bound, he was remarkably cheerful. He was busy changing the bandages on his legs. He was looking forward... to the Blue Jays game that night, to the Raptors season, to the Leafs, to tomorrow's cross-word puzzle in the Globe, because he'd already done that day's... I left him that afternoon convinced a guy with so much to look forward to had a few years left, for sure. Sorry I was wrong. Happy trails to ya, Johnny! I'm hoping someday we'll get together again with a 500 horsepower SuperBee and a straight stretch of road. Love you, bro!

How CBC fuels the residential school denialism they pretend to fight

A headline at the CBC's Front Burner program this morning asks the rhetorical question;"What's fueling residential school denialism?" The story leads off with a photo of the Kamloops Residential School. The caption under the photo repeats the same brazen lie CBC first broadcast to the world in May of 2021; "The remains of 215 children were discovered buried near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School." That's the sort of slovenly reportage that gets skeptics asking why taxpayers are subsidizing this nonsense to the tune of $1.4 billion per year. The original whopper had an element of plausibiliy about it, but more than five years on, surely everone in Canada knows exactly zero remains of any children have been found. Recycling old lies won't win the anti-denialist activists many allies.

Putin doomed, public support collapses, regime change imminent

That was the gist of a story I ran across at the Ukraine Today website this morning. Like most Ukrainian news outlets, they are kept alive only by the generosity of taxpayers in the West who have fully embraced Zelly's pivotal role in saving Western Civ from the predations of Bad Vlad. Unfortunately, all of them exhibit a marked tendency to slant things a certain way.Imagine my disappointment when I realized that the only evidence presented for a "catastrophic collapse" was in Putin's polling numbers. Yup, it's a disaster alright; Putin's approval rating has catastrophically collapsed... from 74%... all the way down to 69%. Wow! Vlad might as well pack his bags! Meanwhile, the EU's got the three dorkshits, Stormer, Schmertz, and Micron, spearheading what's left of the "whatever it takes for as long as it takes" crowd. Every one of these champions of democracy is labouring with approval ratings in the teens! Starmer's already been deposed and the other two won't survive their next elections. Every one of them will be replaced by politicians who put their own country's interests before those of Ukraine and NATO. So it looks to me like the odds against Ukraine surviving until their Western sponsors have rebuilt their indusrial capacity to begin fulfilling the empty promises they've been making these past four+ years are getting slimmer by the day. That's why we're being absolutely inundated with bullshit stories about how "the tide has turned" and "Putin is on the back foot." We've been seeing plenty of this crap in Canadian media. Today CBC informs us that "some Russians are turning against Putin." Then the sub-head; " 'Not only are they not winning, but the war is coming closer', says Pulitzer-prize winner Anne Applebaum." That's fairly typical. What they're studiously avoiding is any reference to what's actually happening on the ground, which is that for the past two weeks the Russian army has over-run the last of the "fortress cities" that were holding out in Donbas. We mocked Putin when he demanded Ukraine hand over the last Donbas real estate. What? He can't take it from us, so he expects us to give it away! OK then... now he's taken it. Are you happy? The CBC of course neglects to mention that Anne Applebaum is a one-trick pony who has literally built her entire career on Putin-bashing. Nor did they mention her husband, the rabid Russophobe Sikorsky, Polands former Defence Minister, who famously held up a sign reading "Thank-you USA" in the Polish parliament the day after the Nordstream pipeline mysteriously blew up. The only other "expert" CBC quotes in their story is a guy named Michael Kimmage, a historian at the Catholic University of America. I'd never heard of it, but they are in fact a real school, rated 169th in university rankings. While I'm not familiar with Professor Kimmage, he appears to be another academic who's built his entire career around Bad Vlad. Of course, just because I've never heard of the guy or his school doesn't mean he isn't a font of profound insights into the Ukraine war. Maybe. On the other hand, guys like Jeffrey Sachs (Harvard, ranked number 1) and John Mearsheimer (U of Chicago, ranked no. 6) argue convincingly that Ukraine doesn't have a hope in hell. That opinion guarantees you'll never see them on mainstream media again. Finally, let me point out yet again what a fool-hardy trajectory my country, Canada, is on. Since assuming office a little over a year ago, Carney has either confirmed or approved new military purchases that will add at least 500 billions to our deficit, because every penny comes from money we must borrow. This spending spree is justified because it is, according to Carney, essential to meeting our NATO commitments, preserving our freedom, etc. Sounds good, but it's mostly bullshit. We're spending this money because Donald Trump told us to, and we wouldn't want to upset him, elbows up or not. What is the real deal? A hard-nosed assessment would conclude that most of these purchases are for obsolete technology. With the possible exception of ice-breakers, everything else is being replaced by drones. We're making a multigenerational financial commitment to obsolete junk. The F-35 is a prime example. We're absolutely desperate to replace our 40 year old fleet of CF-18s. The availability of these antiques for missions ("ready rate") has sunk to an unacceptable 40%. Thank God we got those brand-spankin'-new F-35s on their way to save us from Putin. Paying $40,000/hr operating costs, as opposed to the Swedish Gripen at $12,000/hr, is a small price to pay to preserve our way of life. Except for one thing... according to USAF, the ready rate for F-35s is... 25%!

A solitary buzzard's been circling overhead for days...

Seems to be keeping an eye on me. Normally, you don't see these guys flying solo. Where there's one, the rest of the gang is never too far away. Here's my theory. The crew spotted me long ago while out on their daily hunting trips. No, they're not "hunting" in the conventional sense, they're just hunting for roadkill or a reasonable facsimile. That's how I came to their attention. I'm obviously not roadkill, but I'm only 150 feet off the road, and I'm sure they've noticed me inert in my lawnchair on the stoop often enough they may have thought I was ready for dinner! I figure this solo scout's job is to keep an eye on me and, when I finally do expire, to sound the dinner bell for the rest of the gang. Then they'll be eating like kings for at least a week!

Keeping your elbows up while your pants are down

Mark Carney has garnered much favorable PR since he embarked on his mission to push back against Trump's bullying. "Elbows up" and all that good stuff. Then back in January, he hit the proverbial home run with his speech at Davos. PM Carney made headlines around the world with his claim that "powerful nations" defied international law whenever it suited them, and that middle powers need to work together to prevent the world collapsing into a dystopia where might makes right. Fast forward a few months. Most of the middle powers Carney has been consulting are even more beholden to Trump than he is. These are people who refer to Trump as "Daddy," for fucks sakes! So when the USA together with Israel launched a war on Iran, a war completely in violation of any concievable aspect of international law, all the so-called middle powers raised their voices in praise of this war crime! I think we can forget about any of these losers ever standing up to Uncle Sam. If you saw them at the G7 you got a sense of their subservience. Trump strolled into their meeting an hour late, and the first words out of his mouth were; "I'm the boss." And, contrary to what the current PR campaign wants you to think, Mark Carney and the entirety of the NATO/EU leadership are 100% hunky dory with that.

Moments that restore faith in humanity

I was coming back from town this morning, and just as I'm rounding the last curve before my driveway, a woman jumps out on the road in front of me. She's parked her Audi sedan on the other side of the road with the four-way flashers on, and she's blocking traffic on this side, wildly gesticulating with what appears to be a golf club in one hand, maybe a 3-iron by the looks of it. I was obviously going to stop anyway, but as I pulled over I realized what she was so excited about. This well-dressed, well-turned-out gal who tools around with a set of golf clubs in the trunk of her high-end foreign car, was shepherding a mamma snapper across the street. It's that time of the year when the snapping turtles come out of the marsh to lay their eggs. There must be something in their DNA that makes them have to cross at least one road before they can lay their eggs, because helping them across the street is pretty much a local past-time. I pulled into my drive and walked back out with my snow shovel, still leaning against the stoop even though snow's been gone for two months. I tell the woman this shovel has ferried many a snapper across the road. Between the 3-iron and the snow shovel we got mamma snapper safely to the other side. I find it a beautiful thing that random strangers passing by will make an effort! Snapping turtles are awesome. They can live well over a century, and the females are still laying eggs where they've layed them the last fifty or sixty years. A mamma will drop a dozen or more eggs and bury them. Generally, the 'coons have dug them up and eaten them by morning. But, if you're dropping a dozen eggs a year for 75 years, a few will always get through. They successfully keep the species alive. I told her my neighbour, an ex-army guy, just picks them up and carries them over. I won't try that for the same reason I'm not an ex-army guy; fear! Those snapping turtles are a vicious piece of work. There's reasons they survived pre-history when nothing else did. They'll survive the coming Nuclear Winter too.

Trump declares "peace in our time" for 39th time in three months

Donny J is working on the premise that if you repeat utter bullshit often enough, eventually it becomes reality. Or at least seems realistic enough to much of his fan base that they go along with it. I can see how that happens. I just spent ten minutes watching Larry Kudlow interview Gen. Jack Keane at Fox. Aside from being a retired General and the boss of the Institute for the Promotion of War, Keane is always keen, in every appearance on screen, which is multiple times per day, to remind the Fox audience that Trump's tenure as Commander-in-Chief has cemented America's status as World Hegemon. The reality of things of course points entirely in the opposite direction. In the first year-and-a-bit of Donny's second term, the wheels are falling off the Empire's bandwagon everywhere you look. No matter the extravagant lengths the narrative managers go to divert our attention, it's hard to come to any other conclusion than non-nuke Iran has fought two nuke powers to a stalemate. I predicted months ago that America didn't have the resources to crush Iran, and that once US power in the 'hood was throttled, Israel as we know it is doomed. That's not a bad thing. The Israel that every Christian kid who ever went to Sunday School was taught to revere, has long since morphed into a racist apartheid state committing mass murder on an industrial scale. The end of the US empire that facilitates and fully pays for Israel's atrocities can only be welcomed by the entire Middle East.

For a quarter billion $ I'd kiss Carney's ass too

There was a remarkabley obsequious oped in the Globe today penned by a trio of young "entrepreneurs" who are pee-your-pants ecstatic about Carney's so-called AI strategy. The title of their article gives the game away; "This is our time: Canada's national AI strategy is an incredible step forward." Yup, not only is Canada a latent energy superpower and a latent quantum computing superpower, we are also an AI powerhouse, and indeed, a potential AI superpower. We invented that shit after all! All we have to do is capitalize on our imaginary advantages, and these clowns assert that Canada is destined to become one the the top three AI powers alongside China and USA, thanks to Carney's inspired vision and decisive actions. Really? How does the editorial staff at the Globe, assuming they still have any, let such utter tosh go out under their brand? Here's just one wee issue; Canada produces approx 18,000 STEM postgrads a year. China graduates about 750,000. Oh, and they're not dumbing down their curriculumn so lazy kids can feel better about themselves. But somehow we're gona rule the world of AI? Get the fuck outta here! The young entrepreneurs in question did mention in passing that their AI startup scored almost a quarter billion in government funding in fiscal year 2025. Hmm...

Miracles of the marsh

It's four in the morning and I was just out on the stoop for a breath of fresh air. I heard what sounded like an airplane overhead. It occurred to me to check it out on Flightradar24 when I got back inside. But before I got around to that, it struck me that the airplane noises kind of went on and on and on... the only way that could happen is if something was flying around in circles, which is not out of the question. We're a mere 30 miles or so (as the Blackhawk flies)from the Meaford tank range, so it's not unusual to see stuff in the air that doesn't show up on Flightradar24. As I was pondering all that I realized what I was actually hearing was the frog chorus in the marsh across the road. False alarm, folks... stand down!

How close is the cliff?

You know what I'm talking about. The cliff we're gonna be going over any day now. I've been predicting it since I fired up this blog 15 years ago. Sooner or later I'm gonna be proven right! In fact, at the present moment, there's a global energy cliff we're speeding towards in unseemly haste, and our legacy media has thus far managed to ignore it. We remain more concerned about climate change causing sea-level changes by the turn of the next century than we are about the havoc the Hormuz blockade will cause on the global food supply infrastructure in the next six months. Judging by what a lot of your expert pundits are saying, we could be heading for catastrophic global food shortages. Millions could starve to death... The good news for Canada is very few are expected to starve to death here. Shredded though it may be, our safety net does remain capable of preventing outright starvation! No, they'll be starving in all the usual starvation hot-spots which, aside from Haiti, are all in Africa, for some reason. Colonialism?... nah, not possible. Anyway, it's all smug and well-fed war-mongers pushing the more-war agenda here. When their war-mongering chickens flock home to roost we'll be treated to endless denunciations of Putin's perfidy in egging Iran on. America's humiliation is all Putin's fault.

Baglickers, gulpers, and my pal Randy

Let me stress off the top that my pal Randy was neither. Instead, we were both welders from Ontario who found ourselves working on the frigate program that kept the Irving shipyard in Saint John busy for the better part of twenty years. After getting the contract, Irving had to go on a massive hiring spree. Once they'd scooped up every unemployed shipyard worker and welder in the Maritimes, they started recruiting in Ontario. That's how me and Randy both ended up in New Brunswick. Randy was an interesting character. Unlike me, he had actual shipyard experience under his belt. In fact, he did his apprenticeship at the Collingwood shipyard, building the last thing of consequence that yard ever launched, the Chi-Cheemaun ferry that to this day delivers tourists from Tobermorey to Manitoulin Island. With his shipbuilding experience Randy was an obvious hire for Irving, whereas I was just a guy who could study a blueprint and make stuff look like the picture. Anyway, we soon learned some nuances about how the locals saw the guys from Ontario, and there were dozens of us; "baglickers from Upper Canada." I shit you not! Working class Maritimers talked like that. Once you got to know the nuances you realized "baglicker" was loosely applied to anyone who did anything to please our bosses. Sooner or later, if youre gonna keep your job, you're obviously gonna please the boss, so eventually everyone was to a greater or lesser extent a "baglicker." What you didn't want to be labelled as was a "gulper." Generously speaking, that was the kind of employee who, when shit upon, said "thanks" and asked for more. Neither Randy or I fit that profile, but I gotta say Randy came with a big dose of over-confidence that got him in hot water from time to time. When Randy was doing his apprenticeship his father was the manager of that yard. Randy himself told me his family had expected much more from him. In high school he was a track & field star, an A+ student, and an all-round man-about-town. And, from his own telling, a completely arrogant and spoiled young man. Collingwood is but a short hop from Wasaga Beach, where every spring your outlaw biker types like to make a pilgrimage. So one fine sunny spring day Randy finds himself in a bar in Wasaga, and there's several pretty gals at the bar, and they're all wearing T-shirts proclaiming "property of Hells Angels MC." Now, if it was me, I'd nod politely and move on. Not Randy. He fancied himself a "ladies man," and set about charming those gals in spite of the fact a half-dozen full-patch Angels were sitting at a table on the other side of the room. Long story short, when Randy emerged from his coma a couple weeks later, he left behind twenty or thirty IQ points. What he carried with him, however, was his over-weening arrogance. I should mention that my time at Irvings yard totalled a little under two years. Those two years can be neatly cut in half. After the first year, my wife absconded with our children back to Ontario. In that first year I had never set foot in a Saint John bar. In the second year, I got kicked out of every bar in Saint John, and Randy was my trusty sidekick in every one of those adventures. But getting back to Randy's arrogance; we were on the same crew of about a dozen or so, and we all sat together for breaks. One of the young guys was a black belt in some sort of eastern martial combat stuff. This kid was early 20s, if that, whereas Randy had a good 15 years on him. Nevertheless, Randy was convinced he could lay a whuppin' on the young whipper-snapper. They had a couple of jousts right there, which were indecisive. It was decided they would square off after work one day. So they did. After our shift, around midnight, two dozen guys head down the railway tracks that lead from the yard into town. I gotta say I'm feeling like a bit of a dorkshit just being there. I mean... two adults having a rassle on the train tracks at midnight? What the fuck am I doing here? Anyway, as any betting man would have wagered, the kid won and the old guy lost. It wasn't long after that I reluctantly left that shipyard job so I could be closer to my children. That eventually led to teacher's college and, in the fullness of time, the pension that now pays my bills. As for Randy, his dad was by then the boss of the yard in Welland. Randy always promised me he'd get me a job there. Never heard from him again, but hey dude, if you're still out there, I salute you, Randy!