You can't always tell the winners from the losers when they're just kids

The topic of highschool destreaming is hot once again. The colleagues I left behind in the math department (good luck, suckers!) are coming to terms with that right now, as the province rolls out a new math curriculum designed to coincide with destreaming. That's where the students who actually get math were separated from the ones who didn't, and for the most part, didn't give a shit.

It has been evident for some time that certain ethnic/racial groups are over-represented in the stream of those who don't give a shit. This has repercussions down the road, because when you take the slow stream, most professional schools, be it engineering, business, law, or whatever, don't admit you.

So, you're stuck with a sociology degree from a second tier school, or, if you're lucky, you turned to something you were interested in and learned a useful trade or something. (btw, all the construction trades in Toronto are paying over $100k/ yr; how you making out with that soc degree?)

The social justice entrepreneurs have figured out that the only way to eliminate this glaring example of systemic racism is to teach the kids who like math in the same room with the kids who don't give a shit. 

And while that initiative is bound for certain failure, I do believe you can't really peg a kid when they're 12 or 13. I always figured my job as a teacher was to help the kids evolve, blossom, develop... not peg them!

In my 25 years I always taught the slow stream. Quite often the kids who didn't give a shit were extremely bright. They just weren't turned on by anything the school board was offering. I remember a goofy kid who took my welding class three or four times. Nice guy. Never finished a course. Never got a credit and couldn't care less. Had a keen interest in special effects and was trying to get a DJ career going. When he actually showed up and built out a project, I could see he had something going, but overall, I figured the folks who make the streaming call likely had him in the right place.

A few years later, I run into the guy. Hey, good to see ya, how you been?

He was just back from Europe, where he was travelling with the latest Madonna tour. With no highschool diploma, but a knack for tinkering with things, he got in with a special effects shop in Toronto. When they were hired for the Madonna tour, he was in on the ride.

As humanity lurches towards Armeggedon, this is what's trending at Fox News

Madonna uses $600 mask on her butt to keep the skin soft.

Well, good to know, I suppose...

I always thought of her as a bit of a hard-ass!

But no, she really cares about keeping her buttocks soft and supple.

Who knew?

Furthermore, who cares?

Apparently enough people to make this story "trend."

God bless America!

How Hillary could have won

The NYT International Weekly had a front page story yesterday about how Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the President of Liberia. Liberia is an impoverished African nation of some four million, where 80% of the population lives in poverty, and the rest, including many members of Johnson Sirleaf's extended family, work for the government.

Here's writer Helene Johnson;  Now, as American women grapple with the whys of Hillary Clinton's loss in November's election, the story of how Liberia's women upended centuries of male rule is newly relevant.

That in itself is a dubious proposition. Did Margaret Thatcher's stint as PM of the UK upend centuries of male rule there?

Like most African heads of state, Johnson Sirleaf is a member of the elite Bintu tribe. Collectively they've been to the elite universities of the West and spent quality time networking their careers forward through the corridors of the most prestigious Western financial institutions. In Sirleaf's case, she's been to Harvard, Citibank and the World Bank. It's a pedigree that opens doors among the Western elites.

Couple that with the fact the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy has been meddling in Liberia's politics since the 1980's, and you'd think her election victory would have been a slam dunk.

But it wasn't. It took all that plus dirty tricks galore;

...the women had their own tricks. "You want beer? Just give me your voter ID card and I will buy you beer." A group of women stationed at a bar near a major intersection lured young men in a time honored fashion.

Hmm... what do you suppose that means? Maybe the Clinton campaign was on the right track when they had Madonna offering free blowjobs, but even there they messed up. Madonna is almost sixty years old. If the Dems had had the foresight to offer blowjobs by Katy Perry AND free beer, Hillary would be in the White House today!

Putin puts finishing touches on Trump take-over with Tillerson nomination

If you've been following the latest fallout from the December 8 fiasco in the mainstream media, you'll already know that it was Putin who facilitated the Trump victory.

Yup, Putin's minions manipulated the election with a series of exquisitely timed leaks designed to cast Hillary in a negative light.

It worked.

And no, Hillary didn't lose because tens of millions of Americans are fed up with the status quo; she lost because of Putin's perfidy, plain and simple. Apparently it doesn't matter how many photo-ops you stage with pop-cult sweethearts like Katy Perry and LeBron James, Putin's got the mojo to push all that pop-culture trash into the ditch. Hell, even the promise of a blow-job from Madonna wasn't enough to entice voters!

To be fair, there are corners of the mainstream where the dominant MSM narrative isn't getting a lot of traction. Here's Doug Henwood at that bastion of (neo)liberalism The Guardian claiming it was Hillary, not Putin, who won the election for Trump.

And here's a wildly untoward opinion piece from Tom Basile at Forbes claiming that the "real" fake news is found in mainstream media. (Like Forbes?)

Wow!

But in spite of those outliers, it's hard not to notice that there's been a big push to paint Trump as Putin's stooge.

Enter Rex Tillerson. Rex has spent his entire working life on the bridge of the good ship Exxon-Mobil. There's not a president or prime minister anywhere in the developed, developing, under-developed, or un-developing world who doesn't return his phone calls. Promptly.

Isn't that the kind of guy you'd want as Secretary of State?

And although this point is rarely made, Tillerson heads a company that actually has it's own State Department. Not nearly as well populated as that other State Department that operates out of DC, but arguably populated by folks with a much higher level of competence. After all, how many Exxon-Mobil execs needlessly lost their lives in Libya?

So even though the man has zero "political experience," he has tons of successful political experience.

As the regular reader well knows, the think tank here at Falling Downs has been more than a little sceptical about the president-elect's road to the White House. But the more he builds a management team with folks who have serious real-world experience instead of nominating slimy political insiders, the more we think the man deserves a chance.

But we're still a long way from 20.1.17.

Putin killed my puppy

The Putin haters are having a field day with the Litvinenko inquiry in London.

No one in London is safe from the Kremlin...

Indeed! Thousands of high-living Russian expats can't go to the grocery without constantly looking over their shoulders, because Putin's evil minions are EVERYWHERE!

In this particular case it's Yuri Felshtinsky sounding the alarm. Felshtinsky once wrote a book claiming Putin was a pedophile, thereby upping the ante on those mining the anti-Putin genre with tales of Putin's 40 billions or 400 billions squirreled away in secret Swiss bank accounts.

Or maybe it was 4 trillions...

It's a perennial favorite in the West, the anti-Putin trope.

Putin's perfidy...

Putin's aggression...

Those so-called punk-rockers Pussy Riot have milked the anti-Putin meme so skillfully they even got to share a stage with Madonna for a precious few moments!

Alas, all the hysteria doesn't seem to be making much of an impression in Russia. According to this recent story in the Washington Post, Putin's approval ratings are close to 90% among the folks he was elected by.

No wonder Cameron et al want us to hate him!

CROP CIRCLES REVEAL MADONNA IS THE MESSIAH!!!

Oh, wait a minute... it's fuckin' February... there's four feet of snow in the fields!

THERE ARE NO CROP CIRCLES!

But what did I just see?... I think I just saw Madonna ascending to heaven...

I'm watching the Grammys, and I just burned a stick of Kipling's famous Puslinch Red-Hair... I'm confused...

Was that not Madonna?..

...ascending to heaven?

WTF, I'm pulling on my Wellys, strapping on the snow-shoes, and checking out the fields for those crop circles again...

I'll get back to ya...

Pussy Riot unveil latest hit; "Yeltsin Lives"

I'm a bit confused here; I thought Maria and Nadya had been kicked out of the band.

Apparently not. Maria and Nadya managed to make worldwide headlines for the brand today after their release for shoplifting from a Sochi police station.

But the stamp of approval from uber-rebel Madonna seems to have soothed a lot of savage breasts. The gals were mobbed by their hysterical fan base - western journalists - upon their release.

Nowhere in recent history has style trumped substance in such a convincing fashion.

What do the Rioteers actually stand for? Well, we can't be too sure... sex with dead chickens? Hatred of the church? Wanton self-promotion?

At least we know what they are against.

Putin.

That's good enough for the hordes of western journos.

Madonna inducts Pussy Rioteers Maria and Nadya into US "A" list just as the real Pussy Riot collective disowns them

Maria and Nadya were bursting with bourgeois pride last night as they briefly shared the stage with Madonna.

Unfortunately that was enough for the rest of the "collective" to disown them. Those Pussy Rioteers on stage with Madonna last night are no longer a part of Pussy Riot.

Probably just as well from a PR point of view. Now that the gals are part of the US mainstream they will want to put a little distance between themselves and some of their old stunts. By and large the American public looks askance at folks who make political statements by jamming frozen capons up their vaginas in the frozen food aisle of the local supermarket.

That group sex in the museum gig wouldn't get you a whole lot of sympathy over here either.