Smug CBC journos still think Trump is the problem

Trump is not the problem.

He's probably not the solution, either.

He's a symptom.

Here's CBC stalwart Terry Milewski marvelling that our new PM has managed to keep his cool while vile Trump has been bad-mouthing both NAFTA and NATO.

Sorry. As much as I want to like Trudeau and want to dislike the Manhattan condo pitch-man, I don't see the issue here. It's high time somebody bad-mouthed both NAFTA and NATO.

Too bad that bad-mouthing has never come from anyone in the Canadian political or media firmament.

In Canada, the political elite and their media sycophants don't need to tell you that NAFTA has been nothing but good for you, because they've spent 25 years telling you that already, so they assume you know.

And questioning NATO is of course far beyond the pale, because after all, NATO is our last line of defence against Putin's aggression. Everybody in Canada knows this, because every Canadian media platform has been telling us forever.

Sorry. I'm one of the heretics who thinks that when you stack up "Putin's aggression" against US/NATO aggression over the past quarter century or so, it's more than obvious who has been the aggressor.

How refreshing that a US presidential candidate would want to visit that reality.

Big Steve takes big words, small stick to NATO summit

That's a headline on view at the CBC at this moment.

Oh-oh!... I detect even bigger cuts to the CBC budget coming down the pipe!

The CBC is normally quite indulgent of the sophmoric rantings of Messrs Harper and Baird, treating their various declarations on Putin, Ukraine, Israel, etc. as though they had a basis in reality.

But good for Terry Milewski for having the courage to call out our top clowns for their non-stop idiot-talk.

Canada's shipbuilding program billions over budget - before building any ships!

I'm waiting for the politicians to blame the wage demands of the folks in coveralls for these cost overruns, even though it appears there's been precious little building of ships in the much bally-hooed shipbuilding program.

In his article Mr. Milewski approvingly notes the decision by the Royal Navy to outsource construction of new navy vessels to South Korea. That's a stunning come-down for an empire that once ruled the seven seas, isn't it? Thanks to Mrs. Thatcher's policy of de-industrialization, the UK can no longer build her own battleships.

Then again, why would you want to, when South Korean industry can build them so much cheaper? If you think that's due to Daewoo and Samsung paying third world wages, you'd be wrong. According to this article from Shippingwatch shipyard workers in South Korea have achieved virtual wage parity with American and British workers.

The efficiency advantage for the Koreans obviously comes from somewhere else, and that can only be the management side. It is abundantly clear that the Canadian "procurement process" is wildly top-heavy with planners, analysts, and consultants of all stripes busily creating busy-work for one another.

Not much has changed from the Saint John Shipbuilding days. All our work was supposedly coordinated by "planners" whose job it was to ensure that work progressed seamlessly. What a hoot that was!

You could spend most of a shift trying to hunt down the "planner" responsible for your daily debacle, and then try to explain why it was impossible to install this or that part because one end attached to a module already in the drydock while the other attached to one still in the mod shop. By and large these folks were university educated but didn't know anything about either ships or metal fabrication. It was a non-stop clusterfuck, and productivity would have shot through the roof had Mr. Irving found it within himself to fire the lot of them.

I strongly suspect that many of them have now found employment doing "planning" for Canada's latest shipbuilding program.