CNN discovers Sleepy Joe's a liar

When I saw the headline I had to double-check to make sure I wasn't on Fox.

"Biden makes at least four false statistical claims at town hall."

But that is indeed a CNN story, by no less a fact-checker than little Danny Dale, late of the Toronto Star, and now becoming a veritable institution; Official White House Fib-Tracker. With this story CNN is signalling they're going neutral on Sleepy Joe. 

By my estimation, that's just the first step in the big push for Kamala, the Chosen One. And won't there be universal jubilation when Kamala breaks through the glass ceiling and the women of colour ceiling, and the Asian-American female ceiling and the Black woman ceiling all at the same time!

When you check out this excerpt from the town hall that CNN put on YouTube, you know Joe's tenure in the big house is gonna be measured in weeks, not years. I mean, you gotta feel bad for the guy. He's just not keeping it on the rails anymore.

All hail Kamala!

Enough about NAFTA

The folks at the Toronto Star are mighty pleased with themselves today. Seems their official Trump fib-tracker, Daniel Dale, has been in DC long enough now to have cultivated a source, apparently at Bloomberg, and after a year and a half, he's finally found himself a scoop!

More than a scoop... a BOMBSHELL!

You certainly don't find those in the Star everyday!

The Bloomberg source told Dale that in off-the-record remarks Trump had told them that he's not about to make any compromises with the Canadian side.

So the talks are over for now, the "deadline" not met.


The reason there was a deadline is because the Americans are keen to push this "new" NAFTA through before the newly elected, more leftish, less corrupt president Obrador takes office in December. Nieto is seen as an easy mark in Washington, whereas Obrador might actually stand up for the interests of Mexicans.

No real danger of Canadian team Trudeau-Freeland standing up for Canadian workers. Or Canadian dairy farmers, for that matter. Selling-out has been the modus operandi of both Canadian ruling parties since at least the Avro Arrow era, so that's nothing new. Canada has never really had an authentic industrial policy, settling instead for a branch-plant economic model.

NAFTA was the most noxious bone jammed up the keister of Canada's working class during my life-time. It devastated the industrial heartland of southern Ontario. Just one example; Magna, the Canadian auto-parts giant, built their first Mexican facility in the early nineties. Today they have 32 plants there and employ 28,000 Mexicans. Where are the Canadians who have benefited from this? In the corporate offices and on the shareholder list, that's where.

That reality has nonetheless never stood in the way of Canada's elite opinion makers crowing about the glories of NAFTA. This should not come as a surprise. After all, these are the same people who believe that working at an Amazon warehouse for $30,000 a year is a "good solid middle-class job."

Unfortunately, when our craven toadies at the top have ensured our branch-plant status for generations, they don't hold much of a hand in these renegotiations. As much as we enjoy mocking Trump, he's evidently smart enough to have figured this out.

So Justin and Chrystia, while trying to do their best to make their inevitable capitulation look like a good deal for Canada, have been derailed by Daniel Dale's bombshell.


Does anybody at the Star really believe that we're going to get a better deal next week or next month?

A drive to Tobermory in winter

I've been making a slow rebound from that nasty flu that's been going round, and the Farm Manager's been keen to get out of the house, so this morning she says, hey why don't we take a tour up the Peninsula.

I'm as sick of my company as she is, so I said, why not?

And away we went! First stop Wiarton, to ransom my Globe and Mail from the Korean extortionist. We were hardly out the drive when the CBC news comes on. Top story; Donny J admits to making shit up in his meeting with Justin a few months ago.

How is this the top story? How is Donald Trump pulling a whopper out of his ass even newsworthy? According to the Toronto Star's official Trump Fib Tracker Daniel Dale, Trump is up to 1,314 whoppers as of today. Trump lying is the top story? Surely there are more newsworthy goings on in the world.

Got our Globe, grabbed a pie at New Orleans, and up the Highway 6 we went. Turned off at Colpoys Bay road and headed for Lion's Head.

A hundred years ago the north shore of Colpoys Bay was totally built up all the way from Wiarton. This area was home to a major fishery at the time. In fact, fish from here went all over the world in those pre-globalization days. Entire trainloads of frozen fish departed Wiarton multiple times per week, in an era when you froze fish by storing ice from the bay year round.

Then another unintended consequence of global trade, the sea lamprey, decimated the fishery. Wiarton has yet to recover.

But it's hanging on. It's the last chance to pick up a Globe and Mail before you head up the Bruce. And while there's a couple of liquor stores further north, the Wiarton Foodland is an essential pitstop if your diet gets fancier than hotdogs and KD.

Went through Lion's Head, circled back to Highway 6 because I wasn't keen on trying the Forty Hills Road in winter, and ended up in Dyer Bay. That's a quaint enough cottage community just past the middle of nowhere. Still, a half decent waterfront shack is gonna run you half a million or more.

From there we made our way to Tobermory. I popped into the local grocery and came out with a bag of plums from Chile. $1.99/lb. Under five bucks for a bottle of Aquafina (tap) water and a bag of plums in the dead of winter.

Is this free trade thing  great or what!?

In the Globe there's an opinion piece by Jeff Rubin called "Has global trade liberalization left Canadians behind?" Rubin used to be the top economist at CIBC. He's saying today what I've been saying since the middle eighties... "left behind" is way too kind... left for dead is more like it.

But then, it's one thing to figure this out in 2018 as a big-time economist. Maybe somebody will pay attention.

When I was saying the same thing in 1988 I was a shop-floor workee... what the fuck would those guys know? Anyway, the horses are so long out the barn its beyond ludicrous to think you're gonna corral them now.

Stayed on the no. 6 all the way back. The FM remarked on what a boring drive it was, and she wasn't even driving. She's right though. I've done this drive a hundred times and the only time it's interesting is if you're the last car off the ferry in Tobermory but the first car to reach Wiarton.


That's how accidents happen, she says.

Meet Doug Ford, next preem of Ontario

This will no doubt have the media bed-wetters in a tizzy. After all, Doug is the slightly more stable brother of former crack-head TO mayor Rob Ford, and surely you remember how relentlessly our "free press" hounded him to death.

In fact, Toronto Star intern Dan Dale did such a bang-up job on the Ford file that the Star dispatched him to Washington, complete with an actual paycheque and expense account, to become the official Donald Trump Fib Tracker.

Why a money-losing Canadian news platform would consider that a useful deployment of their dwindling resources is a question you'd have to ask them.

But back to Ford. Rob was relentlessly portrayed as a racist and misogynist bigot across the spectrum of our mainstream media.

That was mostly fake news.

Take a gander at this video of Rob Ford's funeral.

WTF?

I see brown people galore paying their respects to the racist. And women too!


Frankly, I didn't believe Doug could pull this off, but the Conservative leadership race was such a shit-show that anything was possible.

And here we are. Doug was the only candidate who had a chance at unseating Wynne. She could have easily whupped those females candidates, but Doug Ford is a new game.

Doug Ford will be the next premier of Ontario.


And that's not a happy thing.