Great American bullshitters

You're looking at two of the greatest right there. Two Donalds. One white and one black. The white one has more in common with King than he has with any working class white trash.

The black one has more in common with Trump than he has with any random black kid from the hood.

Donald and Donald...

Only in America!

My favourite Don King anecdote goes like this; King was hustling some boxing promoter over something when the guy turned a little irate.

I can make a phone call and you'll be arrested within the hour, he says.

King rejoinders with; I can make a phone call and you'll be dead in fifteen minutes.

Apparently they were able to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement after that exchange.


Only in America!

Sticking it to the Ayatollahs

ACTIONS NOT WORDS screams the all caps headline on page O3 of today's Globe and Mail. It's the only story in the entire paper with an all caps headline, so it must be very important.

The gist of the piece is that Canada must do more to bring freedom and democracy to Iran, where a "freedom movement" erupted into widespread street demos in December. The caption under the picture informs us that "Iranian protesters chant slogans at a rally in Tehran, on Dec. 30."

That was my first chuckle. Those may well be Iranians chanting slogans, but they're carrying placards bearing the likeness of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Some doofus photo editor used a picture of a pro-government rally to illustrate an anti-government screed!

The authors of the piece should set off some alarms if you were expecting an honest opinion piece on the state of freedom and democracy in Iran. Nazanin Afshin-Jam Mackay, we are told, "is a long-time Iran human rights activist." She is also the wife of former Defence Minister Peter "Pinocchio" Mackay. If you follow her "activism" you'll be well aware it consists mostly of pining for the good old days of Iran's liberal democracy that prevailed from 1953 right up until the Ayatollahs came along and wrecked everything in 1979.

Her co-author is Shuvaloy Majumdar, whose last headline in a Canadian paper came after Trump announced the US embassy move to Jerusalem in December. Majumdar thought that a jolly good idea and argued that Canada should follow the American example, just to, you know, promote peace and human rights in the Middle East.

Majumdar turned up in Harper's inner circle after spending a few years in Afghanistan, spreading freedom and democratic goodness on behalf of the "International Republican Institute," one of the numerous US government "Non Government Organizations" charged with meddling in the politics of other countries. He was the mastermind behind Baird's decision to sever diplomatic relations with Tehran in 2012, a self-defeating exercise in idiocy unmatched in recent diplomatic history.

But it got Baird and Big Steve a pat on the back from Israel's PM Netanyahu, another long-time activist for human-rights in Iran. Funny how so many "human-rights activists" who are tireless advocates for the oppressed in Iran never have a word to say about the human rights of people who live under Israeli occupation. By all accounts, Jews in Iran enjoy far greater freedom and human rights than Palestinians in the West Bank.

Given the authorship, the opinions expressed are pretty much what you'd expect. Us good, them bad. We must therefore help freedom flourish in Iran the way it's flourishing in Iraq and Libya and Afghanistan and all the other beneficiaries of our meddling, and never forget that those Ayatollahs have rendered their country an isolated pariah state.

In fact, more countries have embassies in Iran than in Israel, so we should perhaps take more care in who we label a pariah state.

Ironically, the Mackay - Majumber rant shares page O3 with another opinion piece about the December demonstrations, this one penned by U of T luminaries Farhaan Ladhani, Peter Loewen, and Janice Gross Stein. They actually did some research to measure support for the protests by the Iranian public.

Their conclusion? "We found that support for the protests is thin. Only 27 per cent of respondents agreed that they supported them... "

Hmm... looks like the National Endowment for Democracy and the International Republican Institute and the Open Society folks have lots more work ahead of them before Iran is ripe for the plucking.

What's Al Sharpton thinking in this picture?

Multiple choice question; is it

A) This asshole thinks he can be president?

B) Get me outta here.

C) He's not such a bad guy after all.

D) He just donated a million bucks to my non-profit, so fuck off already...


Hard to know what the Reverend might have been thinking, but it makes for an interesting picture, doesn't it?

Dictatorship of the pussy-grabbers

Can I be the only one who suspects that the entire good vs evil schtick that's been going down in DC is, at root... just that?

Schtick?

Think about it. The last couple of years US politics has looked like it's scripted by the same geniuses who brought you reality TV and the WWF.

In the blue corner... give it up for the most experienced, the most competent, the most presidential candidate in history... HILLARY CLINTON!!!

And in the red corner, welcome the one and only, the most evil character we could dream up, the most racist, most nativist, most misogynistic DONALD J TRUMP!!!

Mostly bullshit, if you ask me.

Donny J. and the Clintons go way back. They've palled around since forever. Here's a shot of Trump and Bill Clinton after what looks like a way fun afternoon at the golf course.



Here they're posing with the caddies who carried their bags. Note the Playboy Bunny logo on the shirt of Trump's caddy. Goddamn, that Hugh Hefner did so much to empower women, didn't he? HH was one of the greatest feminists of the 20th century, no doubt about it.

And Bill's squee... I mean caddy, looks like she could be a Russian hooker in her other job, when she's not shlepping Bill's bag. Either that or one of Trump's ex-wives.

These folks are all in on the joke. They've got themselves roles in the greatest reality show ever.

US politics.

But remember, even though these actors will do well for themselves with these roles, the producers are gonna make the real killing!

For a 100% income tax

I knew that would get your attention.

A lot of folks forget, or never knew, thanks to the decrepitude of our education system, that back in the fifties, America had a marginal tax rate of over 90%.

America thrived.

Ya, the leadership of the day did a lot of stupid shit, especially on the foreign policy side, but at least from the perspective of a working class schmuck, America was great.

Whether you were local or up from the South or fresh off the boat, jobs were plentiful.

You'd buy a house and have a life, and you never gave a thought to the big picture, where crop after crop of newly minted MBAs were figuring out how to profit from your imminent disembowelment.

At this point, that's all water under the bridge... or bridge under the water.


Point is, this is where we're at.

As gratifying as it may be to see folks marching against Trump, what are they marching towards?

The Democratic Party?

God forbid.


In the interest of bringing wealth inequality back to earth, a graduated income tax should hit 100% eventually. Where you call that is always going to be somewhat arbitrary.

$100,000 a year? No, way too low.

$500,000 a year? A million? Ten million?

How much money do you need to live a decent life as a rich person?

Does it have to be a thousand times more than a poor person lives on?


No, it doesn't.

What my hundred mile diet looks like in winter

Truth be told, my hundred mile diet in the winter looks like smoked whitefish and pickled beets.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I've done a little research on the internet, and apparently both of my winter staples are really really good for me.

The whitefish comes from Howells. The pickled beets come from Sullivan's Butcher Shop, where their motto is "our meat can't be beat."

Hell, I wouldn't even try to beat their meat.

Nevertheless, I had to slip away today while the Farm Manager was otherwise occupied and grab me a Big Mac.

Oh ya!

To hell with a healthy diet; every now and then you just have to gorf down a Big Mac!


If nothing else, it helps you appreciate pickled beets and smoked whitefish.

The not-so-great Alaska earthquake

There was a "severe" earthquake off the Alaska coast this morning. Anywhere from a 7.9 to an 8.2, depending on where you read it and the time of day. That caused a tsunami alert all the way down the west coast of British Columbia, including some of my favourite haunts on Vancouver Island.

A few hours later, the tsunami alert was rescinded... the "tsunami" rolled into Tofino at a full 3 cm above the usual water levels.

Three centimetres?

Kinda reminds me of the tsunami alerts we've been getting non-stop since Dangerous Donald took over the White House a year ago. The sky was gonna fall. Top-drawer prognosticators were proclaiming the demise of The Republic.

The economy would collapse.

A year later, all that's happened is that the Dow Jones is at record heights and even the working class got a few crumbs from the Trump tax reform that was engineered to make the super-rich much richer.

After all, everybody knows that the only problem with the US economy is that rich people don't have enough money. They are the job creators after all, and how are they supposed to create jobs with both hands tied behind their backs by the draconian neo-Marxist taxation regimes favoured by the commies in the Obama cabinet?


Trump is making America great again!