Bolshevik Bob and the Grace of God

I think it was Bolshevik Bruce, if I'm not mistaken...

But "Bob"  rhymes with "God" so I'm happy enough to leave it there.

Let me tell you about Bolshevik Bruce. Or Bob.

That was gonna be my "twitter handle".

Only after I was informed that "Falling Downs" was taken.

Ya, while I've never done anything totally crass like "monetize" this blog, it does cross my mind from time to time to do a little more to promote it. Tried to set up a Facebook account for Falling Downs once. The process just got way too complicated. That in itself should tell you something. There's not a nine year old in North America who is intimidated by the process of setting up a Facebook account, but it's way too much for me.

That was pretty much the experience I had with "Twitter."

Last time I had a "handle" was when me and Terry ran cross country in the middle of winter delivering his Harley to Calgary. Figured we'd do well with a CB radio in the 77 Impala, the one with the 350 4bbl motor that was standard issue in the Corvette.

An Impala with a Corvette motor, in other words.

So we hook up this CB system, and I swear, the only time we used it between Guelph and Calgary was when we were looking for a liquor store in Brandon Manitoba.

Which, thank God, we found!

And while I am happy to report that said Impala could well bury the speedometer even while towing a trailer with a Harley in it, the point of that CB has always escaped me.

Just like 30 years later the point of that "Twitter handle" escapes me again.

Anyway, I was somewhat at loose ends when I found out that "Falling Downs" was a Twitter handle already taken. How the fuck does that happen? Must have been that opportunistic shit who was tweeting all my blog posts when they hit BEFORE ITS NEWS.

So I'm a bit put on the spot, and wracking my brain I come up with... Bolshevik... Bruce? After all, that's the county I live in...

But I have to admit that "Bolshevik Bob" has a better ring to it.

But for the grace of God I'd be calling Calgary "home" today...

And that 1400 square foot side-split I almost bought in Rundle for $78,000  is now worth half a million...

But for the grace of God...

Morrissey draws parallels between Holocaust, pedophelia, and meat consumption

While there's a large segment of the Israeli population that is buoyed by having foreign entertainers defy the BDS initiative to perform in Israel, sometimes they must wish those entertainers would just shut up.

The English pop-singer Morrissey's latest ruminations comparing Auschwitz to a meat-processing plant are a case in point. There are some superficial parallels of course; Hitler's victims and that steak you're putting on the barbie tonight both took a cattle train to their demise.

I suppose the main flaw in his analogy is that cattle aren't people and people aren't cattle.

Beyond that, invoking the Holocaust to promote a vegan agenda strikes me as shamefully trite.

After all, wasn't Hitler a vegan?

Israel to help Arab neighbors fight terrorism

No, I'm not making that up; here's Pres. Peres quoted in the JPost yesterday;

He said he was certain, however, that if Israel and the Palestinians could resolve their conflict, Israel could be of help to the Palestinians and by extension to the rest of the Arab world in dealing with the problem of terrorism.

It may be uncouth to spell it out, but the man is well into his 91st year, and perhaps not all the marbles are rolling in the same direction anymore.

He was speaking on the occasion of a shadow-state visit by self-anointed US shadow Secretary of State Senator John McCain. As the second most popular American politician in Israel, McCain has assigned himself the task of following John Kerry around on his so-called peace initiative to make sure Kerry doesn't push Netanyahu into giving too much away.

And if that's not funny enough, Netanyahu reaffirmed the obvious in claiming yet again, in case anyone missed the previous ten thousand declarations of same, that Palestinian incitement is the main roadblock to peace. It's a vicious cycle; incitement - another couple hundred settler homes - more incitement - another few hundred settler homes, and so on for forty years now.

Obviously only a moron would expect this cycle to be unwound so long as there is no cessation of Palestinian incitement.

Alas, the Senator from Arizona, perhaps also showing a few signs of marble-management issues, was soon distracted by events in Iraq, claiming in the same brief presser that he was "even more troubled by al-Qaeda's reconquest of Falluja." 

He sees the American withdrawal from Iraq as having been a grave error. The very idea that democracy was going to flourish in an Arab land without US boots on the ground was wishful thinking of the highest order, as any Republican could see at the time.

Fortunately, once Kerry has this Abbas-Netanyahu framework agreement wrapped up, the IDF can start helping the Palestinians and other Arab neigbors fight terrorists. I'm guessing they'll start with Hamas and Hezbollah...

And then on to Falluja!

Syria Intervention: running yet another possible casus belli up the pole...

...to see if enough people salute.

Make no mistake; the purpose of stories like this is to gauge public opinion re: direct US intervention. Those plucky Syrian freedom fighters that we organized are now taking on not only the evil Assad, but the even eviler al-Qaeda types who have stolen their revolution.

How can we possibly stand by? We have a moral obligation to intervene!

Get ready for the full court 24/7 propaganda blitz. We simply CANNOT turn our backs now on these courageous Syrian freedom fighters from London and Paris who are now fighting for their lives against the evil Syrian al-Qaeda freedom fighters from Libya and Saudi Arabia and Chechnya.

There's a wide range of folks who have a keen interest in stirring things up in Syria. When another US war means many more years of black ink on the bottom line, you can be sure there's going to be a propaganda campaign to make the sale.

Coming soon to a FOXABCBSNBCNN news outlet near you.

Don't say I didn't warn ya.

Hezbollah sneaks Scud missiles into Lebanon

Here's a Scud:



Yup, those wily Shiites have been sneaking those puppies into south Lebanon by the dozens, at least according to the newshounds at Saudi run Al Arabiya.

I guess a convoy of Scuds crossing from Syria into Lebanon would be pretty hard to find... and once they're squirreled away in the south Lebanon hills there's no way the daily IAF over-flights would ever see them... to say nothing of drones or spy satellites.

This story is such egregious bullshit that even those who might want to believe it have their feelings hurt by the publishers' obvious contempt for their intelligence.

Global warming is gonna freeze us to death!

According to the text-books, the plot of land I'm sitting on right now was under mile-deep glaciers 10,000 years ago. Then those glaciers melted. Must have been some "global warming" involved, but it wasn't called that.

No, global warming wasn't discovered till the dying decades of the 20th century - and it's been getting colder ever since!

Call it global warming if you want, but it feels more like cooling to me. The weather events we've seen in this winter that's just begun should give us pause. The recent ice storm in Toronto saw some folks without electricity for well over a week.

That was one ice storm. What if there were two, back to back? Or three?

Much of North America and Western Europe have had record cold snaps over the past few weeks. What would happen if the temperature got just a bit colder and the "snaps" lasted just a little longer?

A couple of ice storms back to back followed by a month at -40 would cripple our electricity infrastructure. The "warming centers" would freeze up. The gas stations we rely on to fetch fuel for our generators would be closed, as would the refineries that make the fuel for our generators, as would the roads from your house to the gas station to the refinery.

The grocers would be empty even before they were frozen shut. Getting to a hospital would be impossible in the first place and redundant in the second. They'll run out of fuel for their generators too.

We'll be freezing to death by the tens of thousands...

Turkish authorities bust other Turkish authorities who threatened to bust Turkish arms shipment to Syrian "rebels"

Oh, it's a convoluted tale alright!

Apparently in Turkey, just because the local cops get a tip about illegal "arms" shipments doesn't mean they should move in. 'Cause when they do, other cops could move in on them! And then some even more senior members of mysterious security apparati will pull badges that trump everybody!

Notice that nobody along the entire line of security agencies jostling for position here ever bothered to pull back the tarps on that trailer to see exactly what kind of "arms" are leaving Turkey for Syria these days...

Now that coulda been a story!