The Triumph of Stupid

Jul 05, 2025 As all but the most pitiful imbecile could have predicted, now that Boy Carnage has bought wholesale into Trump’s 5% protection racket, we are getting the full court press from the thought leaders at CBC and the Globe on how we might pay for all these goodies. The goodies in question being 88 F-35s at $100million a pop; 12 submarines at, conservatively, 4 billion $ per hull, and 15 surface combatants. The last batch of warships ended up costing a billion per hull, and that was thirty+ years ago. Not to mention further gazillions for tanks and troop carriers and drones. All told, we’re looking at at least $500 billions in “defence” spending over the next ten years. Already some of the sharper pundits are mooting “increased taxes and spending cuts,” as in spending on the usual frills-we-gotta-cut; education, health care, and housing. Why? So we can face down the threat from Russia! Frankly, it’s a little late for that. Since February of ‘22 Russia has methodically eliminated the best weapons systems in the US-NATO arsenal. They have proven technical superiority in hypersonics, drones, and air defence. American commentators outside of the “mainstream” routinely posit that US/Western missile tech is decades behind Russia. That’s what happens when you spend ten years fine-tuning your pronoun protocols while the Rooskies are fine-tuning their hypersonics. And that’s just Russia’s advantage at the high-tech end. Artillery shells are pretty much as old as gunpowder, but the US/NATO/ glorious defenders of freedom and democracy can’t figure out how to build them. Apparently there’s a new production line in Texas that’s gonna pump out 30,000 155 shells per month when they work the bugs out of the system. Meanwhile, Russia worked the bugs out of their arty production during the WWII and has no trouble producing 300,000 per month. In a pinch, they can also import from their allies, of which, contrary to the bullshit our msm has been serving up, they actually have quite a few. This idea that we must gird our loins for war with Russia seems criminally stupid to me. They already whupped NATO in Ukraine. Let’s admit that and move on! After all, if you look at a map, or even better, a globe, geography parks us smack-dab between Russia and the USA. That’s a fact that screams out for Canadian neutrality.

The longer Putin is "bogged down," the more NATO and EU solidarity will crumble

Think that one through.

They've been telling us for two weeks Russia is bogged down, looking for an off-ramp, etc.

Maybe.

On the other hand, the longer the bog-down, the greater the refugee crisis. Poland is already crying enough. Three million in three weeks. What if Putin is bogged down for months?

Perhaps this thought has crossed the minds of Russia's military planners. Perhaps they see no great reason to un-bog until such time as their stated objectives have been achieved, those being demilitarization and denazification.

The demilitarization seems more or less complete. I don't know how they'll measure "denazification." That's one of those stretchy concepts that let's you declare victory whenever you decide.

The fact that escape corridors out of Mariupol are now functioning tells me the Russians are making progress in that department. That's the home base of the fascist Azov Battalion, the most highly motivated fighters in Ukraine. They literally will fight to the death. They will also execute civilians seeking to escape.

After three weeks of the fiercest fighting of the war, are we to assume the Azovs have pushed the Russians back? Maybe.

But I think a reasonable person should also consider the possibility the reverse has happened.

It was interesting which NATO leaders met with Zelensky today. It obviously wasn't a delegation from the serious end of the spectrum. The longer NATO showcases its impotence, the more its credibility wafts away.

They were there as part of a lobbying mission for more NATO support for the war, particularly "closing the skies." The F-35 is the most expensive weapons program in US history, and is foisted on NATO partners across the board. While armchair war fanboys are eagerly awaiting its combat debut, maybe people who know something have good reason to avoid such a confrontation.

As more and more of America's "partners" realize this war could soon move from their back yard to their living-rooms, and the American Empire is powerless to help them, perhaps they will reconsider their allegiance to their naked emperor. 

F-35 to be combat tested in skies over Ukraine

That should be fun!

My hunch is the USAF and their NATO allies will be reverting to their tried and tested F-16s about twenty minutes into the dance.

And the dance is coming, at least if the usual US military experts and their war-mongering political shills get any traction for this absurd idea that America (and her allies) should impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

That would require asking the Russians to leave, as they are the ones controlling that airspace now.

Here's another hunch. Putin's gonna say nyet to that.

Then what?

HOLY ESCALATION, BATMAN!!!

Good news Canada! We can work with...

...John Bolton!

Yup, Trump might be a lost cause, but John Bolton is a stand-up guy Canada can work with! That's according to Michael Byers in yesterday's Globe and Mail.

And why not? He's smart, organized, tenacious, ambitious, and has been relentlessly advocating for war on Iran ever since the Mullahs threw over the Shah's liberal democracy back in '79.

That's our kinda guy!

Elsewhere in the countdown to Trumpageddon, I see where The Guardian's bed-wetter-at-large Simon Tisdall has figured out that Trump is in Putin's pocket, and is bent on "undermining the post-Salisbury western consensus."

What?

That's a thing?... there's a post-Salisbury consensus?

I think the general consensus outside the big-media echo-chamber is that the entire Skripal charade was stage managed by British spook agencies in a lame attempt to throw shade on Putin's party at the World Cup, but whatever. As for the imminent demise of NATO, Uncle Sam's me-too club, that can't come soon enough for anyone pining for a more peaceful world.

And look on the bright side; it'll get those allies off the hook from buying all that over-priced American military hardware that's constantly being foisted on them in the name of "interoperability."

Like the F-35 that so many of the me-too imbeciles have signed up for.

Hard to see a downside. I guess the sparkly new $1.5 billion NATO HQ will be sitting vacant, but maybe Brussels can convert it to housing for some of those migrants who have been fleeing the NATO success stories in Libya and Afghanistan in their millions.

Finally, it looks like Trump's plan to make coal great again isn't going that great. Apparently there's a coal-fired generating plant closing every fifteen days on average since Putin put Trump in the Oval Office.

This too is a good thing!


Just goes to show you should judge politicians by their results, not by their rhetoric.

How Trump can keep the baying populist mobs at bay, in three easy steps

It's beyond obvious by now that Donald's election campaign is hugely at odds with the clique of billionaires and former generals he is surrounding himself with as he builds his management team. Here's how he could quiet the disquiet that's growing around his perceived bait-and-switch tactics.

1. Toss the plebes their dream of a $15/hr minimum wage. At first blush you'd think guys like Puzder aren't gonna think too much of that, but even he can be convinced. After all, that's a lot more disposable income for the sort of folks who like to dispose of their income at Carl's Jr. and similar venues. Just jack your prices to cover the costs. It's a no-brainer!

2. No matter what you call it, (and obviously you'll have to call it something else) give the masses some version of universal health care. That's gonna piss off the big dogs in the private health care business, but most Americans are OK with the idea that their health challenges shouldn't be somebody else's profit opportunity.

3. Go ape on infrastructure renewal. This can create as many jobs as you need to create. Trump can easily siphon hundreds of billions out of the obscenely bloated military budget and use those billions to create millions of jobs rebuilding America. Yup, time to pull the plug on the F-35 and use the money to revamp the I-35 and all those other Interstate highways that have fallen into decrepitude.

Should be a sure thing!

Why America's "Deep State" cannot allow a Trump win

It's all about Putin.

Trump is on the record more than once claiming he wants to "get along" with the evil dictator.

Consider the ramifications.

If America were to get along with Putin, that would put paid to the Russia-USA rivalry.

Good-bye Carlyle Group shareholder value, and many others as well.

What's going to happen to the fabulous Lockheed-Martin F-35 boondoggle when people realize it's a boondoggle?

If America didn't have to spend trillions on imaginary military solutions to imaginary problems, America might be able to afford health care and housing for her veterans.

Any candidate who calls out this great boondoggle will of course be roundly vilified by the establishment that stands to lose everything if the American people sniff out this scam that's been funded by their tax dollars since forever.

That's why Trump can't be allowed to win in November.

And if he does, he'll meet an unfortunate plane crash or a random shooter before January.

If raining bombs and bullets on the Towelheads 'o Terror isn't working, why do we keep doing it?

Long story short, we keep doing it because it's a highly profitable gambit for all the usual suspects in our military-industrial-thinktanker complex. Yup, all those drone builders and bomb builders and the F-35 builders and professional thinktank bullshitters and the private contractors who profit from our "war on terror" have a vested interest in keeping that war going in perpetuity.

If we ever won that war, they'd be screwed.

So in this most exceptional of democracies, where corporations are people too, my friend, there's a lot of Manhattan penthouses and ocean-front beach houses dependant on keeping hate and war and weapon sales thriving to the max!

And so far, the US political apparatus has been more than happy to keep the gravy train a-chuggin'.

Corruption in American politics is so deeply embedded that we barely notice the ripples on the surface

It was a busy day. In between planning home renovations and napping, I had occasion to peruse a few of my favourite news sites.

I like the Guardian. Nice middle of the road perspective, generally speaking. One of the first stories to catch my eye was a missive by Kevin Watkins about corruption in Africa.

Kevin built his story around certain revelations revealed in the "Panama Papers." Seems a whole lot of those African despots are crooks out the ying-yang. Yup, same old same old. African leaders are crooks... no news there! Hey, even my hero Dan Gertler got a passing mention in the story!

Elsewhere in my day, I read a story that Junior forwarded, about HRC's collusion in the Honduras coup of 2009. Not only does Hillary compromise the entire USA intelligence apparatus with her private (as in wide open to every semi-competent intel service in the world) e-mail accounts, but then she posts in her e-mails all the back-stabbing anti-democratic shenanigans that America's Secretary of State is conniving in!

Heck, that's corruption and incompetence on a scale that would leave those African despots wide-eyed with wonderment!

But wait, we're not finished yet...

A little further on in the Guardian, I come across this American crime thriller. Seems a certain Guerrero Chapa has been the de facto leader of the Gulf Cartel since 2003. As I'm sure you appreciate, Cartel leaders have many enemies; the law (but maybe not so much), rival cartels, ambitious underlings, and so on. Ten years after becoming the de facto leader of the Gulf Cartel, our man Chapa gets rubbed out in true gangster fashion while shopping with his wife in Dallas Texas.

But here is the sentence, dropped incongruously many thousands of words into our story, that caught my eye;

Guerrero Chapa lived legally in the US and was an informant for American authorities.

Say what?

The leader of the Gulf Cartel lived legally in the US and was an informant? The leader of a Mexican drug cartel is allowed to live legally in the US and continue running his cartel in return for what? Information on rival cartels? Which would make the entire "War on Drugs" infrastructure complicit in the drug trade they have allegedly been doing battle with, would it not?

How far up the hierarchy do you figure that rot has spread?

No wonder that after forty years of a supposed "war on drugs" your kids can still buy dope at their school playground.

And we're not done yet. Those drug cartels are small fry compared to the big dogs like Lockheed Martin. Here's a story from Sputnik about how the military-industrial complex has been cleaning out the US treasury while lining its own offshore accounts to the tune of billions while fobbing off unworkable crap like the F-35.

And it's all done in the name of the flag and patriotism and defending our freedom, don't ya know! Hell, they'll be lucky if they get approval to fly those duds over a NASCAR invocation, nevermind taking on an actual enemy.

But we see none of that. We're too busy rooting out corruption in Africa!

Triumph of the weasels

There's an interesting story at the Irish Times today about how the corporate weasels behind the Pfizer-Allergan deal can make this deal pay by robbing the US treasury of millions more in tax revenue.

Hundreds of millions. Maybe even billions!

But that's just the tip of the ice-berg when it comes to tax evasion by US corporations. There's hundreds of billions in US corporate profits sloshing around in off-shore tax havens.

As a card-carrying pinko, I suppose I should be distraught about that.

If I thought that tax money denied the state was destined for meaningful stuff like education and health care and housing, I'd be pissed... but it's not. Instead, it's earmarked for more war and more money-hemoraging shit-shows like the F-35 program.

Gotta say that for the time being at least, I'm with the weasels on this one.

Hummingbirds and circumstances

The F-35 has been the most expensive military procurement program in American history. The US taxpayer has sunk close to a trillion tax dollars into this pig that can barely fly. Latest reports have it being skunked by 30 year old F-16s in a mock dogfight.

That's progress!

Me and the Farm manager spent a few hours on the front stoop today. We were very much enjoying the peace and quiet, even as we were discussing what might happen if circumstances change.

We've got a hummingbird feeder hanging in front of the kitchen window. We were watching them all afternoon. We can see them from the stoop.

They can do aeronautical manoeuvres that no F-35 test pilot can even dream of.

Life is pretty damned good when you're sitting on the front stoop. Around here you might have a car or a truck or a motorcycle go by every twenty minutes or so. The cows wander up to the barnyard from their pastures at least once a day.

And there's always the hounds.

But if circumstances change, then what?

Then, instead of sitting on the stoop here in the north woods, watching the cows and the hounds and the hummingbirds, we'll be sitting on a balcony looking down on Yonge Street.

Not sure how I feel about that.

Canadian commander of NATO war on Libya now chief of Lockheed Martin Canada

Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard got his hero medal and then scurried off to the private sector, where he is today ensconced as the commander of the Canadian branch of Lockheed Martin.

His most important... no, his only duty, is to make sure Canada signs on for the F-35. Great thinking on the part of Lockheed Martin; who can say "no" to a war hero?

Bouchard has some insights into the War on Libya.

He's disappointed in the lack of progress.

Well, Libya may be going up in flames, but at least Mr. Bouchard has done OK for himself.

Salad days for the warmongers

It's thumbs up and high fives all round as the big boys celebrate the state of weapon sales and current events.

Seldom has cynical warmongering achieved the momentum that we are witnessing today.

Commentators galore are castigating the Obama regime for "not doing enough" to help out the moderate Syrian rebels... to the point where Obama recently promised 500 millions in military aid to those imaginary "moderates".

That's another way of saying we're going to spend another half billion on weapons purchased from our most favoured domestic weapon suppliers, and turn them over to imaginary moderates, who will promptly turn them over to the very Jihadists we are supposedly fighting.

And that terrible awful Jihadi gang that we trained and financed and that then became the Islamic State, well, they're so evil now that we have to send the pretend government of Iraq, who we have also trained and financed, 4000 Hellfire missiles, which is of course a lovely cash injection for the Lockheed Martin war-profiteers, who are currently hemmoraging red ink over their signature war toy, the F-35.

Obviously, arming all sides in a conflagration we stirred up to begin with is a bonanza for arms suppliers. That's what happens when your foreign policy is dictated by Big Oil and the armaments industry.

Then we've got the Ukrainian mess. Luckily, that's turned into a shooting war, which can only help our beleaguered arms industry.

And let's not forget the most cynical warmongers of all, our Likud friends in Israel. Turns out the Netanyahu government knew all along that those three teen settlers were dead. They mounted that "bring back our boys" campaign knowing full well that those boys weren't coming back. But it was a great gambit for whipping up hate and fear, and by God, that can only be good for selling guns and bullets.

These are indeed the best of times for those who profit from the worst of times.

Canada will continue to condemn all religiously motivated attacks

That's a quote from Andrew Bennett, the littlest dog at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Maternal Health, Mineral Extraction, Mining Affairs, Human Development, and Foreign Aid. Usually it's just the Big Dog, John Baird, who gets to append his name to the stink-bombs flying out of Foreign Affairs HQ.

Bennett, who was allegedly Dean or Rector or Principal or Provost or President of some private Christian College with an enrollment of four or five, (as in four or five, not forty or fifty or four or five hundreds, or, heaven help us, thousands!) was hand-picked by Big Steve to guide the newly-created "Religious Freedom" portfolio through the treacherous shoals of participatory democracy.

The Big Dog keeps him on such a short leash we've hardly had a chance to get to know him!

Maybe he too bristles at the thought of yet another undiplomatic stink-bomb, especially if he has to attach his name to it.

But that's what we do best here in the Confederation of Condemnation.

Screw the veterans, slash defence spending, commit unknown and unknowable billions to the pig that can't fly, but talk the biggest toughest game on the world stage.

By the way, if you scrutinize that title real close, ("critical thinking", I think it's called...) you'll realize that what the Canuck Condemnation Crew is really saying is, "thumbs up for attacking those ______________________________  (fill in the blank), and we appreciate all attacks on pinkos, liberals, leftists, marxists, leninists, stalinists, socialists, environmentalists, and, especially, Islamists, just so long as your attacks are not "religiously motivated".

F-35 fiasco continues

The news yesterday that the entire 51 aircraft fleet of F-35 "proto-types" has once again been grounded doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who has been following this debacle.

The "F" in F-35 stands for "fiasco". The aircraft is too heavy, too complicated, too limited in range, and technologically obsolete. Owing to advances in detection technology it is no longer a "stealth" aircraft.

It is also far too expensive, both for the US and the program partners in NATO. Not only that, but it's redundant in the kind of asymmetrical wars of choice that America has been choosing in the post-Cold War era.

But according to some of its fans the F-35 program is too big to cancel. Indeed, the Joint Strike Fighter gravy train now rolls through no less than 45 US states and employs over 133,000 Americans.

If that's what makes it too big to pull the plug on, the bean-counters and policy-analysts should be sent home for a rethink. Since those 133,000 are essentially on the public payroll anyway, they could be put to work doing something useful that would benefit society for generations. 

Like rebuilding bridges and sewers, building affordable housing, cleaning up blighted urban neighborhoods; useful stuff that would improve the quality of life for all Americans.

The Canadian way; busywork for bureaucrats

There's one thing that Canadians do really well. In fact, we're pretty much world leaders.

We study stuff.

Feasibility studies. Environmental reviews. Impact assessments. Canadians have more words for "studying stuff" than Eskimos have words for snow.

Since at least the 1970's various government ministries have studied the possibilities of widening Highway 7  between Guelph and Kitchener. Engineers have graduated, spent their working lives studying the road widening possibilities of this ten mile stretch of two-lane black top, and retired. In fact, there are engineering consultants studying the project today who can proudly state that their grand-daddy studied that highway.

Soon there'll be guys who can proudly state that they're the forth generation of their family studying the possibility of widening that road.

There will have been ten times more spent on fifty years of studies than it would have cost to hire a paving crew and add two lanes around the time they first started the studies.

There's a guy at U of T doing his Ph.D studying the studies.

When the bad news about the F-35 hit the fan this week, Canada immediately took very Canadian measures to correct the problem. They assembled a team of bureaucrats to study what went wrong. In Canada there's no problem that another level of bureaucracy can't fix, but of course they have to study it first.

Bloomberg reported yesterday that the Canadian government will review the sale of store leases from the American owners of Zellers to the American Target chain on the grounds that ownership of department store leases might impact Canada's cultural heritage or national identity.

That's right! One American corporation selling shopping plaza leases to another American corporation is a threat to Canada's national identity?

That's something we have to study. I'm pretty sure that a year from now, when at least a dozen six-figure policy analysts have had a go at it and numerous reports have been written, the conclusion will be that the transfer of leaseholds between American companies operating in Canada will have no significant impact on our cultural heritage or national identity.

But you can't be too sure.

Canada hedging bets on F-35 purchase

Canada's commitment to the F-35 program is looking less and less commited as time goes by.

This week Junior Minister of Defense Julian Fantino went out of his way to point out to critics that the contract to buy the fighter plane that doesn't fly isn't actually signed yet. You only talk like that if you're leaving an exit open.

Could be all political smoke and mirrors of course. The Harper gang is revealing the latest budget tomorrow. It's widely expected to be a slash-and-burn nightmare. Expect cuts to everything except prisons and the defense budget.

In that climate it's hard to justify the F-35 deal. The cost keeps going up as the performance benchmarks keep coming down. Most of the "allies" in the joint strike fighter project have already abandoned the plane or seriously cut back on their commitments.

Ironically, it's the allies who Harper and MacKay claim are the reason for our purchase. We need the plane to be able to fight alongside out allies.

Fight who?

That's a separate but obviously related topic. NATO membership is a major point of pride among a certain species of Canadian military types who fancy themselves big players on the world stage.

If one of our NATO allies like Turkey or Albania get themselves into a shooting war, the rest of NATO is obliged to help them out.

Canadians should look at a map, read up on Turkey and Albania, and then decide if it's time to scrap not only the F-35 contract but the NATO alliance as well.

Canada gets cold feet on F-35 file

Until today the purchase of at least 65 of Lockheed's new war planes that don't work was a done deal in Canada.

Nevermind that a host of allies and even some branches of the US military wouldn't touch the F-35 with a ten foot stick.

It's too complicated.

It's too expensive.

And it doesn't work!

Today Julian Fantino stood up in the House of Commons and used all kinds of weasel-speak to signal that we're on board, but not really.

I have to hand it to Fantino. He's been a target here for his over-the-top law-and-order campaigns. His campaign to stamp out homosexuality in London has forever put him on the negative side of the ledger among liberals and libertarians.

His street-racing initiative was even stupider. Wonder if any gay street racers got caught up in that? Heaven help them!

Anyway, he's got a partial redemption from the Falling Downs shit-list for disavowing the F-35.

Panetta admits budget cuts threaten F-35 roll-out, but Canada still gung-ho

Leon Panetta admitted today that the proposed $488 billion in US defence cuts might mean major delays or a complete walk-away from the most advanced and expensive warplane of all time, the F-35 strike fighter.

The main problem with the F-35 is that it doesn't work. Its development is years behind schedule and hundreds of billions of dollars over budget.

Sometimes progress isn't.

This has not deterred the Canadian buyers. They've committed to about 65 of the non-functioning aircraft, at a cost estimated between 30 to 60 billion. That's about 400 to 900 million dollars per plane.

Meanwhile, Turkey just signed a deal to buy a bunch of Russian Yak 130 fighters for 15 million apiece. They're slower, prettier, and more versatile than the F-35, but they have one major advantage; they work.

For the price of one American F-35 that doesn't work, we'd have 20 Russian jets that do. For the price of 65 F-35's, we'd have well over a thousand fighter jets!

Think about it, Mr. Harper. 65 planes that don't work or an air force of over a thousand fighter jets.

Canada could be a world power again!

Canada commits billions to crap fighter jet that doesn't work

Just a couple of months ago Defense Minister Peter MacKay and Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta stood on a podium an assured the world that all was well with the F-35 strike fighter program, of which Canada has committed to at least 65.

While writing about the Heritage Foundation being influenced by their benefactors, in this case the developer of the F-35, the four co-authors of The Heritage Foundation then and now had this to say about the greatest fighter plane ever built:

 15 years ago the inevitable failure of the F-35 as a viable combat aircraft was already clear, though not as crushingly obvious as it is to today. In 2012, with the airplane just 20 per cent through its entirely inadequate flight test plan (over 80 per cent of the airplane’s performance characteristics will remain untested in any planned flight test), we already know we are facing across-the-board failures to meet original specifications. Moreover, if the F-35 lived up to 100 percent of its depressingly modest design specifications, it would still be a complete failure in combat utility: a bomber of shorter range, lower payload and far higher vulnerability than the Vietnam War’s appallingly flammable, underperforming F-105 Lead Sled; an air-to-air fighter so unmaneuverable and sluggish in acceleration that any ancient MiG-21 will tear it to shreds; and a close support fighter that is a menace to our troops on any battlefield, unable to hit camouflaged tactical targets and incapable of distinguishing friendly soldiers from enemies.

Any way we can get out of this deal?