Christmas:

The most important memories of Christmas come from our childhood. The fact I was born into the poverty of the Great Depression made little difference.

We still had Santa Claus, but there was no guarantee of mountains of toys. Those really were days when we tried to be good on the chance that we might actually get something nice on Christmas morning.

And it happened. There were no toy trains or neat pedal cars we saw in the mail order catalogues. We were delighted to find such rare treats as oranges, apples, mixed nuts and maybe even a book, a set of color pencils or a paint box.

Our Prairie farm homes had no hydro nor running water. They were lighted with coal oil lamps. Illumination was the equivalent of a 7-watt electric night light. Yet, we managed to play cards and even read comic magazines at night.

The subdued light was an advantage on a bright moonlit night in December. We could look out through a window and see large white snowshoe hares feeding on left-over cabbage stems in the garden. Great snowy owls watched them from the tops of nearby fence posts, but made no move to try to add them to their diet. The hares were too large, but small barnyard cats, who also hunted at night, had to watch out.

Sleigh bells were especially significant in the winter when the roads were impassable to wheeled traffic and the farmers were obliged to harness their horses. The sleigh bells in my father's horse barn were actually part of a special harness. They were hollow spheres cast in bronze in several notes with loose marble clappers inside. They rang musically with every step when the horses were in a trotting mode.

Stepping outdoors on a quiet, frosty moonlit night was a memorable experience when one could hear the rhythmic snowy crunch of the horses' hooves over the distance. We knew someone was coming when they were still more than a mile away.

The jingle of sleigh bells was an auditory treat that I can still hear when I think of Christmas all these years later.

And those are the things that reel through my mind at the sound of the carols and the more memorable music of Christmas.

Best of all, it was still possible to enjoy such songs as White Christmas without provoking a politically correct reaction from anyone.

The China Trip:

So Justin Trudeau was going to lecture the Chinese on Human Rights, Canadian Style, right after wheeling and dealing on Free Trade.

Wow!! 

Let's see now. What can we teach this society of 1.5 Billion who are currently in the process of evolving away from the chaos of the Chairman Mao era and apparently doing so successfully?

The Chinese appear to be trying to ease their way out of a cumbersome communist system while we Canadians are blindly descending into one by allowing left-wingers and immature academics to lead us away from our personal freedoms to think and act for ourselves. It will not be long before we will be unable to do that without being dragged through those human rights tribunals and law courts.  

Nor, as far as we can tell from here, is China busily paving the way for blurring distinctions between the sexes by allowing aggressive special interest mafias to bully weak-kneed politicians into endorsing their every demand.

Xi Jinping did not exactly seem impressed with our PM. Nor did he seem anxious to wheel and deal on free trade. Could be they sensed Trudeau was on the rebound from not too favourable negotiations on free trade with the Americans and was looking to gain some political leverage elsewhere.

The whole expedition must have been a crushing disappointment to our political tour group which arrived all primed for epic media photo opportunities ready to dazzle the more gullible members of our domestic electorate.

Best Lesson:

Long ago and far away, I taught school for about 10 years. They were typical country schools in isolated farm areas of Saskatchewan with any number of grades present.

My best score was 42 students in 10 grades. Lots of fun if you were able to accept the situation for what it was and try to make the best of it.

It was the summer of '54 and close to the apex of the era of climate change which began in the bone-dry '30s and evolved through about 25 progressively wetter years. By the mid '50s, established lakes filled their basins to overflow and new lakes formed where cow pastures had been only a couple of years earlier.

A spring of rapid snow melt, torrential water flow, too small culverts and flooded roadways evolved into a wet but sunny summer with squadrons of mosquitoes hatching in every puddle. Nature tackled the mosquito swarms with armies of hungry dragonflies that came in every color and size the genetics of the species would allow.

The largest were brilliant green and yellow with two-tone fuselages and clear wings. The mid-sized ones were mostly blue with black trim and the smallest and nimblest were  dressed in shades of rust, crimson and scarlet. Some actually sported neat racing stripes along both sides.

They were a delight to watch--almost like airborne jewelry. And if you listened carefully, you could hear the dry rustle of their wings as they maneuvered to trap mosquitoes.

It was lunch time. Instead of eating in the hot confines of the school cottage, I took my sandwich outside, sat on the grass in the shade around the corner and started eating.

Upward of a dozen children grabbed their lunch boxes and trotted over to join me. The topic of discussion that erupted was about the swarms of dragonflies flitting around everywhere.

"Howcum so many?" was the question one little girl asked, so I went through the spiel of mosquitoes vs dragonflies which I figured was a natural for an effective science lesson.

"You mean they actually catch the mosquitoes and eat them?"

I nodded.

"Yecch! How?"

"As you can see, the dragonflies are very good flyers. That's because they each have two paralell sets of wings," I explained. "The people who study insects say the front wings stir the air and the back wings use the currents to propel them forward, back, up or down. It's all done automatically. That's how they evolved"

The kids were tuned in. I had their full attention. I continued. 

"They can also stand still in the air just like helicopters. They trap the bugs with their legs formed into a basket and bite their heads off," I ventured, thinking that there was no way they could disprove that.

"Then they just chew them up and swallow."

There was a long moment of silence with some of the smaller ones hesitating with their chewing, but only for a thoughtful moment. Clearly, the idea of eating mosquitoes had little appeal.

"So what do they do with the wings?" the little girl asked.

"I guess they just spit them out," I guessed.

As I said this, a little red dragonfly landed on my extended index finger and a dozen pairs of eyes immediately focused in. It was especially significant because it was noticeably munching on a mosquito.

As we all stared, mesmerized, the dragonfly ingested the pulped-up mosquito, and we thought we saw the wings fluttering down onto the end of my fingernail and sliding off with the air currents.

Having thus finished its lunch, the dragonfly lifted straight off and the astounded kids all exhaled and started to speak at the same time. 

After that dragonfly came to lunch with us, I could have told this group that the earth was flat and they probably would have had no trouble believing me.

Back to McCarthyism??

I don't get it.

What exactly would be wrong for Trump and Putin to find common ground on tackling world problems?

The last time I looked, neither the Russians nor the Americans were going around the world recklessly killing civilians, sawing off heads or bombing places of worship.

Neither Russia nor America has threatened to use their nuclear arsenals to incinerate trouble spots around the planet.

Why is the Washington and New York Media focused on jumping on the tiniest moves either Trump or Putin might have made that can be tweaked to look like agreements or (gasp!) cooperation? 

Are we back to the era of McCarthyism?

Trump not Invited:

Apparently, Donald Trump is being snubbed by the gathering of activists and political hacks with agendas on climate change scheduled for Gay Paree.

And all because he did not blindly jump in and follow the crowd of political activist lemmings over the edge of the airy-fairy theory that human activity can do more damage to the planet than hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanoes. How dare he?

We can only hope this insensitive rejection does not impact too powerfully on his delicate sense of self-esteem.

Shades of Chevalier!

Having Julie Payette as Canada's new Governor General is not without entertainment value.

GG Julie sounds a lot like an intonation 20th-Century francophone crooner Maurice Chevalier might have popularized on a Hollywood set featuring Audrey Hepburn as GiGi.

I like it.

GG Payette:

Julie Payette might have strayed a little from what Canada's new Governor General should have been expected to say during her opening address, but there were no mistakes in how she said it.

While touching on hot topics such as climate change and scientific viewpoints, she maneuvered carefully between her subject matter without actually committing to any specific views that might have been interpreted as controversial.

If she worded the script herself, it was well done. We should expect no less from a Canadian with many creditable achievements. 

Quebec's Hijab vote:

The Quebec administration's vote to disallow face coverings where identification is required is without question the right thing to do. Anything else would have been foolish and irresponsible.

Ontario's gutless politicians, led by Kathleen Wynn, immediately jumped in and used the occasion to suck up to minority groups in the hope that they will ignore the administration's fiscal fiascos and vote for them anyway.

Those silly hijabs are cultural and religious baggage people should have left behind in the communities they escaped from in coming to Canada. Persistence in their right to use them here is the same as walking around with a middle finger extended to everyone they meet.

These people, including male family members who require their women to dress like that, should be exported on a slow boat back to where women go trick-or-treating the year 'round.

It's nice to see that there are some clear-thinking politicians left in Canada who are not afraid to exercise logic where it is needed even if it is politically incorrect and non-inclusive.

The Quebec administration has done that. If they are going to drain any political swamps in La Belle Provence, that's a good start.

Easy Sainthood:

Previous to his untimely demise, Gord Downie's music was not a factor in my life. I stopped paying attention to popular music about 40 years ago. Persistent media hype at the 6 pm news brought him to my attention and dismissal all in one shot. 

A solid 15 minutes of breathless tribute is a good indicator that there really was no significant news other than this media elevation to sainthood.

Justin Trudeau's tearful performance before the cameras brought to mind the fact he is, first and foremost, a drama coach. A+ for that performance, Justin. You did good.

The Canadian flag being lowered to half mast was a bit much. To my mind, it demonstrates the degree to which we Canadians are starved for real heroism.

We seem ripe for some major catastrophe to snap our social consciousness back into a more realistic perspective.

Climate Change:

The global warming/climate change cheerleaders have taken to calling all those who do not subscribe to their nonsense deniers.

Here's the truth: There is no denial of climate change, only of humanity's ability to change it.

We can change ourselves to adapt to climate change, but the politicians who try to scam us into believing that they can do something about it are lying through their teeth, hoping we will believe them.

All that panic about carbon trading and emissions is just political scams used to levy more taxes, increase bureaucracies and garner more votes from a semi-conscious electorate.

They have the right to treat the electorate like a bunch of idiots. We elected them, didn't we?

Monsters:

What's the point of a Hallowe'en without monsters?

When we sort out all of the monsters that have shambled through our imaginations from early childhood, we have to conclude that the scariest were actually human.

Well, sort of....

Among the scariest were Vlad the Impaler, Attila the Hun, Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao. Each was credited with the deaths of millions of people.

Probably the most monstrous of the lot was Josef Stalin, who died back in '53 and, instead of being pickled like a cuke and preserved under glass like Lenin, was plugged into the Kremlin wall along with some other lesser political notables.

Stalin was recently resurrected in the media at the death of his grandson, Evgeni Dzugashvili. 80-year-old Evgeni died last December. His obit said he spent his lifetime trying to repair his grandpa's severely fractured reputation.

We don't know exactly how Evgeni defended his grandpa's image, but it could not have been easy. Trying to make grandpa Josef's image into something less monstrous than the historic account must have taken some doing.

Compared to him, Ivan the Terrible (Ivan Grozny) was a real Boy Scout. While Ivan killed members of his own family as well as anyone within easy reach, Josef is widely viewed as a monster who killed more Russians than Hitler's invading Nazis.

Evgeni's defense of his grandpa's image might have flashed back to when Josef was a teenager; not very tall, not very athletic, with a left arm that didn't easily co-operate when he tried to use it. While not exactly patched together by a Dr. Frankenstein, Josef was said to be quite bright, an avid reader and a good student. 

His questionable physical equipment prompted his parents to send him to clerical school. They probably figured he could do with only one useful hand what needed to be done as a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church. 

But young Josef got into some shady company at the academy--the kind that hatches on almost any college campus today--where the energetic young heroes decide they have the answers to all of mankind's problems even before they learn how to pick up their dirty sox off the floor and put them in the wash.

This gang of radicals saw Karl Marx as their spiritual guide. Their leaders were Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Soon Josef found himself in the eye of the Communist hurricane, doing records and secretarial duties for this bunch of anarchists. 

Josef was quick enough to realize he was at the control center of what was happening, with access to information not easily available to the rest of the mob. Quite correctly, he saw this as an advantage.

When the Tsar's family was taken to distant Ekaterinburg and murdered, it should be a fair guess that was the occasion that gave Josef Dzugashvili a scary new perspective. It is possible that he looked with some concern at the squad of killers who calmly walked into a basement room and shot to pieces the Tsar, Tsarina, four young daughters and one little haemophiliac tsarevitch, then disposed of the corpses in secret locations. 

Who could blame him if, at that point, he secretly thought to himself, "Is this the kind of murderous scum I'm going to have to identify with from now on?"

It would be surprising if that was not the turning point in young Josef's revolutionary career. So, when Lenin, the man who most likely ordered the Tsar's family execution died, he was ready. He had a plan in place to get Leon Trotsky out of the way and take charge of this dangerous gang of knuckle-dragging primates all by himself, if only for his own safety.

Trotsky's sudden exit in Mexico with an ice pick hammered into his skull was reported on radio one bright August morning in 1940. This left Josef in charge with no challenge to his leadership.

It should be a fair guess that the mass murder of the Tsar's family was the turning point that made mild little Josef Dzugashvili into Josef Stalin, the man of steel.

It is uncertain if this string of events was ever the scenario Evgeni arrived at in his grandpa's defense, but it's a fair guess it might have been, because it is logical. 

That ought to be a valid attempt to explain at least one monster lurking in the dark shadows under humanity's collective bedstead this Hallowe'en night.

Note: The Word Tsar in reference to the rulers of Russia is probably incorrect. A more correct translation from the Cyrillic script should probably be Tse-zar, which is closer to Kaiser or Caesar, the Latin term it was borrowed from.

The Oil Pipeline:

Pinching off the Trans-Canada oil pipeline proposal makes sense only if you believe that all surface and air transit will go electrical before such a pipeline can be paid off.

Of course, that's the same kind of thinking Dalton McGinty and Kathleen Wynne were guilty of when they bombed power stations and signed lucrative deals to erect those costly and inefficient windmills in Ontario.

It's futuristic, typically-Liberal thinking that takes the economy into the wrong future.

Once again, by ignoring the need to create employment that includes Western Canada and reduces the need to buy oil from the gulf states, the members of the Trudeau administration demonstrate new levels of incompetence.

Too busy feathering their own nests while seeking new ways to tax the working folk.

Jagmeet Singh:

Jagmeet Singh is obviously a new type of political party leader in Canada.

His carefully-groomed Sikh attire provokes a question that needs to be asked. 

Does he want us to view him as a Canadian, or simply as a Sikh living in Canada? Which is more important to him?

It may be that this is a question many members of the electorate will be asking themselves before they mark their ballot.

Paris Accord:

While politicians around the world posture and pose at saving the earth from global warming, climate change and all kinds of natural disasters, Nature is putting on a show entirely unscripted by bureaucrats and special interest groups.

A parade of hurricanes of unprecedented ferocity in the Caribbean, destructive typhoons in the Pacific, earthquakes along the Anatolian plate and San Andreas fault, a volume of rainfall that hasn't been seen since Noah, and volcanoes beginning to growl ominously in the Indonesian Archipelago and the Italian boot threatens to put some reality back into perspective. 

As the climate of Planet Earth flexes its muscles, there is nothing but stony silence from the politicians from 192 (Wow!) countries who converged in Paris to eradicate human-generated climate change.

No Al Gore posturing heroically in the Gulf of Mexico like Moses at the edge of the Red Sea directing God to send Hurricane Irma slouching off meekly into the North Atlantic before she could inflict any damage.

No Justin Trudeau invoking the combined might of his sexually-balanced cabinet to divert an unseasonal Ontario heat wave closer to western Canada where air conditioners gave way to humming furnaces much too early in the season.

If anyone from the 192 (!!!) countries that are alleged to have signed the Paris Accord tried to invoke that document to change any of these natural events, it went unrecorded in the media.

I guess it's back to the drawing board.....

Quebec's Hijab:

Politicians in Quebec are currently agonizing over how to ban the Hijab and still get elected.

It's a silly issue. What they should be concerned with is how to return to Canadian citizens their individual rights as outlined in the fundamental Freedoms in Part 1 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which states:

(b)freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communications...

Okay. So where's the freedom of thought, belief and opinion for the individual who decides not to deal with someone wearing a disguise on occasions other than Hallowe'en?

It ought to be easy to predict success for the party that promises to return our individual freedoms to think for ourselves instead of letting the thought police and rights tribunals do our thinking for us.

As for the people who want to wear a hijab, they, too, should have the freedom to do so. With no thought police and automatic access to those ridiculous rights tribunals, chances are good they will soon learn their freedom to do as they please may be sharply limited by others also with the freedom to do as they please.

That is how our freedoms used to work before the Pierre Elliott Trudeau administration monkeyed around with them back in 1982.

Freedoms which have to be dragged through the law courts each time we try to use them are not free at all.

Still another example of Human Rights gone wrong.

Rights gone wrong:

A high school kid drowns while on a canoe trip with classmates. Turns out he couldn't swim.

Subsequent inquiry turns up info that all the kids participating in the excursion were required to pass a swim test. He didn't, nor did half the participants.

Question: since it was a requirement, why were the non-swimmers allowed to participate? Is this part of the brave new no child left behind initiative that puts delicate feelings ahead of performance while taking teachers off the hook re: failure?

Or: Were the teachers keeping a wary eyeball out for Big Brother Human Rights and privileges tribunals?

Or, since the boy was black, maybe they were concerned rejecting the kid could prove troublesome with the Black Lives Matter mob peering over their shoulder?

Our social consciousness often doesn't know where it's going until something like this happens. Only then are we prompted to go back and re-think some of the dumb social norms we allow to develop.

Prohibition Un-dead:

Pot is not detectable at the roadside. 

Alcohol is.

So naturally, the Liberals in Ottawa are going to make pot legal next spring while lowering the intoxication limits on alcohol from .08 down to .05.

Boy, that makes a lot of sense, eh?

Obamacare??

Replacing the previous administration's medical care system is not as easy as the Trumpsters first thought.

It's probably because any such system is easily targeted by opportunists.

Here's a little anecdote my mother once related re: Medicare, the birthplace of politically-administered health care.

Medicare was first enacted in Saskatchewan back in '47 when CCF premier Tommy Douglas initiated it because he saw as inhumane the idea of sick people with no cash deposit expiring on the hospital steps.

One day, about 30 years later, one of my mother's elderly neighbors invited her over for lunch. The frail little old lady said she could eat at home only to the middle of each month. That was as long as her old age pension lasted, because her unemployable middle-aged bachelor son needed the money to support his alcoholic addiction.

So what did she do? She pretended she was sick and got herself checked into the local hospital where they fed her, provided a bed and care for the remainder of the month until her next pension check arrived.

Apparently, the hospital administration found this acceptable because they could maintain a more desirable quota of occupied beds. The doctors, as part of the system, went along with that.

This was in a small western town where everybody knew everybody. The potential for such abuse in a metropolitan area infested with opportunists of every stripe is staggering.

Republican lawmakers have every right to see universal Health Care as a field fertile with landmines. This is very likely a problem Donald Trump never had to think about in his private life.

He's thinking about it now.

Royal Pain:

We've been paying so much attention to the strange goings-on re: media south of the border, we've missed what our own esteemed purveyors of dire events here in Canada have been up to lately.

The picture is not inspiring. Just when Prince Charles and Camilla were invited to do the tour during Canada's 150th, some genius editor in the electronic media decides to release material on Princess Diana dating back to when William and Harry were cute little guys basking in mommy's attentions.

Isn't that a little like picking on slow -healing scabs? Actually, a lot like that.

Some sphincter in the media has it in for not only Charles and Camilla, but is insensitive to William and Harry's memories of their mother at the same time.

It's not their fault they were born into goldfish-bowl existence where they have to smile on cue, wave, attend events they can't possibly care about, while pretending that everything's their concern and just dandy.

The media release on that occasion was a stupid thing to do. It was insensitive to people who have no choice being who they are.

Whoever is responsible should be invited to look for a job that requires no critical judgement.

Hey, Stephen:

Latest disaster scenario attributed to top cosmologist Stephen Hawking is to the effect that Donald Trump's moves to take America off the environmental disaster train known as the Paris Accord will result in a complete planetary meltdown. 

It's a global disaster in the making, according to the media, and will create on our planet the hell-like conditions thought to exist on Venus.

Now the environmental alarmists are using Hawking's concerns with planet Earth's health to further discredit the US president's questions re the prevailing political environmental propaganda.

Someone should warn Prof. Hawking that talking to journalists with a leftward list in their political postures is risky. A few weeks ago they had him issue dire warnings of malicious ETs lurking out there in the cosmos, ready to pounce.

Scientific concerns and media hype are a poor mix. They can make perfectly logical concerns look silly.

Hey, Donald:

All of us who think you have the right stuff to set America back on track are waiting for you to begin by ignoring all those grade school mentalities in the Washington and New York media and entertainment world and continue doing what needs to be done.

When it comes to mud-slinging, you can't win. That's their trade, not yours. They're better at it than you are, so ignore them and walk away.

Engaging in insults and counter-insults only validates their actions, and diminishes those of the President of the United States.

The Enemy Within:

Recent events in the US prove that the Americans really don't need to fear immature dictators like Kim Jong-Un or the belligerents in the Persian Gulf as much as the media types in their own capital.

The recent attempts to kill politicians on ball fields were easy to predict. The Washington media was suggesting it all along. This manufactured news was being copied to social media by editors bereft of rational thought.

Articles unrelated to current news events copied to social media discussed the killings of American presidents in the past and were followed up by some genius with a piece on presidents who were able to avoid being shot. 

If that wasn't meant to inspire some messed up goof with a gun to take a shot at the newly-elected president, then we're misreading the intent.

It got to the point where it becomes easy to write off as seditious nonsense things written by someone from the Washington or New York media.

Nor are the cartoons any better. Most political artists are good at conveying political commentary through art. That's their job. Some excel in the art part, others in illustrating a point without type. Some are good at both. The one at the Washington Post shows neither skill.

The cartoons we've seen appear to be drawn with malice, clearly meant to insult and ridicule. No sign of brilliance nor even competence.

Keep that up long enough, and these "journalists" will load the potential for another American civil war, this time between the politically correct lefties and the part of the electorate described as "Deplorables" by Hillary Clinton.

It isn't Trump who will be viewed as the laughing stock in the outside world. It's the malicious lefty media that didn't have the smarts to quit while ahead.

Trump's Tour:

Donald Trump's tour of Europe has had the desired effect. It has stirred up enough controversy among continental politicians to show that it is not going to be business as usual.

Complacent politicians in Europe and the United Nations are now obliged to stop and re-think where they have been heading over years on cruise control.

It took an outsider to jolt the smug, elite chattering classes into a new awareness. They now need to re-think an elaborate fiction. It is now time to re-examine the notion that significant human-generated environmental degradation has resulted in global warming, and can be corrected only by massive investment into green energy.

This comes in the form of costly and inefficient windmills and solar panels, and somehow ignores hydro, the greenest of all green energies. 

It is becoming increasingly evident that global warming is a fictitious issue that has been nurtured by politicians like Al Gore and is designed to give them something they can bargain votes and taxes on easily and possibly offer potential for lucrative investments for political insiders and well-heeled friends.

Look at how much green electricity is costing the Ontario taxpayers. There is no better example anywhere of how this global warming propaganda can be abused by politicians.

The environmental movement as it now stands does nothing for the environment. Zero. It has probably done wonders for the investment portfolios for people like Al Gore, David Suzuki, Kathleen Wynn and Dalton McGuilty.

To Trump, the idea that decisions at the United Nations or the European huddle can result in increased costs for American taxpayers is not a very good one. And he's right. It should be looked into. Even the most narrowly-focused lefties should be able to grasp that one.

Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do. Hopefully, it will not take too long before ordinary people begin to see the merits of what needs to be done.

There are many swamps that need to be drained before the human species is once again allowed to evolve toward a productive future. Trump has served notice that neither the United Nations nor the European political huddle has all the answers.

Let's hope it doesn't take too long for this to become obvious to everyone.

Comey's Dismissal:

James Comey's firing by Trump was long overdue if the FBI Director dragged out longer than necessary the investigation into alleged conspiracies between Russian spooks and the Trump camp.

It may be that it was Trump's fault. At the first speculation of behind-the-scenes activity with Russki operatives by the lefty media bent on his destruction, Trump should have asked Comey, "Do we have evidence of such activity? Yes, or no?"

"If yes, let's have the details so we can clear the air with these hyperventilating hyenas."

"If no, then let us make that clear and move on."

"Maybe is not an option."

If Comey was determined to allow the speculation to fester on unresolved, only then should he have been removed from his post.

Is that what actually happened?

We know how the whole thing started. It was initiated when Putin was quoted before the election as saying that he can see no problem being able to work with a guy like Trump. That is all the lefty media needed to begin assembling their lynching mob for Trump.

If Comey stood by idly to allow all that biased media speculation, it is easy for us to assume that he had private plans not exactly in Trump's favour. That, more than anything else, is probably what got his ass booted out the door.

It is possible we'll never know the exact details of how that event evolved, but amid all that speculation, the above scenario is probably close to accurate.

Militant Herds:

Why are Canadians protesting against the US administration's initiative to drain the scientific/political swamp?

What's a guy who looks suspiciously like The Science Guy, doing leading the protest from, of all places, Montreal, allegedly a Canadian City?

How strange is that? Until now, only the  feminist militias did things like that. Just a few years ago, such actions would have been considered a provocation that warranted a military response.

It becomes quite clear that such protests, headlined as HUGE in the lefty US media, are in reality not so significant. What they are is someone with a bullhorn and severe hormonal imbalance leading a herd of lemmings with loads of time on their hands and nothing better to do.

It's a safe bet that the majority of them would be unable to tell you if you asked them why they are there.

Why Canadians should be participating in a US event is another mystery. Can it be that young Trudeau's day-to-day activity is so inconsequential that they have to look out beyond our borders for really interesting leadership problems?

Our Defense Minister

While Harjit Sajjan, Canada's Defense Minister, did not actually win any wars single-handed, he is probably more qualified to fill his cabinet post than most ministers with the current Ottawa administration.

He is receiving more attention than is good for him these days due to things he said while on a visit to his ancestral homeland.

Predictably, media and opposition members are calling for his head.

At this stage in our social consciousness, suitability for government posts must give way to inclusivity, especially if that inclusivity has a good chance to translate into more votes at the polls.

Inclusivity in Canadian politics means sucking up to ethnic minorities, militant special interest mafias, kissing babies, legalizing intoxicants for people who have never paid taxes or utilities and who still believe in magic and a free lunch. Isn't that nice?

As a matter of fact, Sajjan, a military Colonel who survived one tour of duty with the Canadian forces in Bosnia and three tours in Afghanistan, is probably the lone minister who actually qualifies because of experience.

That makes him far more qualified for his post with this government than young Trudeau whose qualifications as Prime Minister still remain mysterious to many Canadians.

Garbled Science:

The left-wing rabble were out in force with their bullhorns in Montreal and Washington Saturday protesting Donald Trump's scrutiny of the junk science behind global warming and climate change.

Bellowing loudly, their megaphoned cheer leaders' message was, How could that dastardly Trump possibly disregard the importance of science?

That's a deliberate misdirection aimed at children and the woefully underinformed. It's not about science at all. It is clearly about scientists and politicians--scientists who have been corrupted by politics and politicians with agendas in charge of issuing lucrative research grants.

Now that it is possible to view weather systems, glaciers and polar ice from space, some scientists take the opportunity to launch all kinds of scary theories. These include weather, climate, ozone holes, ice shelves, polar bears and almost anything else that will get them quick media attention. 

Clearly, technological evolution makes it easy for people so inclined to promote cynical climate-based political agendas for reasons we can only guess at. Maybe Al Gore can tell us more.

It is easy to speculate that access to generous scientific research grants has probably been made selectively available to scientists whose morals can be bent by politicians with schemes to easily extract more tax money from the electorate.

Look what the Green Energy propaganda did to Ontario. 

Science has become corrupted by politics.

The bottom line is that the current US administration is not declaring war on science, only on corrupt scientific/political relationships.

For the moment, let us just view this as an important part of Trump's Draining the Swamp initiative.

MOAB:

The US weapons specialists described their Mother Of All Bombs dropped on a terrorist infestation site Thursday as the biggest such non-nuclear weapon ever used in battle.

Not quite. Actually, it is 1000 lb lighter than the GRAND SLAM developed by British demolition specialist Barnes Wallis in the course of WWII. Wallis calculated that's how much explosive power was needed to crumble the heavily reinforced Nazi submarine pens along the coast in occupied France and in Hamburg.

It worked, too. The Grand Slam, delivered by British Lancaster Bombers, punched enough holes in those submarine pens to prevent the successful launch of Germany's state-of-the-art Type XXI submarine. This U-boat was so advanced that the first nuclear subs deployed by the allies a couple of decades later incorporated many of its features.

The Grand Slam was an evolution of Barnes Wallis's Tallboy bomb that preceded it, but was found to be inadequate for the really destructive blast needed to demolish the heavily reinforced concrete.

Wallis was perhaps better known for the bouncing bombs used by the Dambusters to  take out the Ruhr's extensive hydro complex powering Hitler's weapons industry deep within Germany.

And there's a Canadian connection here, too. Cmdr Jean Luc Fauquier took over the Dambusters squadron from Guy Gibson, its young leader, when he retired for medical reasons. Fauquier led the squadron on the heavy bomber sorties that followed, directing the drops from his speedy and agile Mosqito Pathfinder.

Smart Bomb technology was not yet a factor, so the Allies used Pathfinders in fast little Mosquito aircraft to get down low over the drop zone, locate the target and drop colored flares to mark the spot for the heavy bombers to zero in on. The modern MOAB is equipped with parachute, tail vanes with movable slats to correct descent to the target. No Pathfinder required.

Fauquier was a Canadian bush pilot before he joined the RCAF at the start of the war. He was a fellow Mississaugan, living on Broadmoor Ave at the time I interviewed him in '67.

One of his favorite targets was Hamburg, the site of some of those submarine pens. He said he had an awkward moment when, on a business trip in the years following the war, a German customer asked him if he'd ever been to Hamburg.

Another favorite target was Peenemunde where Werner Von Braun was building long-range V2 rockets for Hitler.

At the time of the interview, Fauquier was in the concrete business. He said he probably supplied more concrete in the Toronto area over the post war years than his Lancaster squadrons had demolished in Germany.

Note: Fauquier earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, The Distinguished Service Order and bars for both awards, all well deserved for his contribution to a successful end to the war.

Heavy cost of BS::

In Ontario, we are now paying ridiculous hydro rates as a result of about 40 years of media-hyped propaganda re: Human-Generated Environmental Degradation.

It is the Green Energy part of Save the Planet sloganeering that stampeded political minds like those of Dalton McGuilty and Kathleen Wynn into mortgaging the futures of all Ontarians whose lives are geared to the use of electricity. 

These avant-garde Liberal thinkers took electricity, a moderately-priced modern day necessity, and converted it into an expensive luxury not everyone can afford.

We know who supported the hyped up environmental propaganda and made sure it was presented as a steady diet to a gullible Canadian public. It was easy for people who watched CBC to mistake David Suzuki's apocalyptic environmental hype for serious scientific fact.

And there's no escaping it. Schools and universities are still teaching it. Incredibly, there are many people out there, including our Prime Minister, who actually think they can do something about climate change.

Climate will change when planetary dynamics trigger it. All we can do is try to adapt the best we can when it happens. It shouldn't be too difficult. Our ancestors did that with varying degrees of success for millions of years and there were few PhDs and Rhodes Scholars among them.

And, while young Trudeau can posture all he likes for the immature masses, all the politicians who signed the Paris Accord can, in reality, do exactly zip about it.

Among world leaders, the only one who appears to be aware of this and willing to ignore the hype is Donald Trump. Nor is there much evidence of China, Russia and India panicking over it.

M-103:

We don't know for sure if Iqra Khalid's Motion M-103 singling out Islamophobia as a political no-no is an attempt at selective free speech control or just a political fog meant to divert our attention from an unpalatable Liberal budget.

They were probably hoping that by the time we stopped arguing about that hot potato, an inflationary budget could be sneaked past us unnoticed. It's an old political trick.

Justin Trudeau has made a big deal of being a feminist and loading 50% of his cabinet with women. It is quite clear that experience, intellectual qualifications, administrative capability and overall suitability all take a back seat to sex. That comes first.

Evaluating Iqra Khalid by Justin Trudeau's own measuring stick, most men would probably rate her at least an A+. Not many women in his cabinet are so well qualified.

Trump Troubles::

Isn't there someone near Donald Trump who can rap his knuckles every time he reaches for that cell phone? Is it possible to delete his Twitter account? Surely there's a secure land line for him to use in the Oval Office.

Trouble with Trump is that he is not a politician. Neither does he think like one. He appears utterly incapable of smooth double-speak or telling lies convincingly.

Fortunately, these are the very qualities that make him so essential to the people who voted for him.

Chrystia Freeland:

The war of words between the Liberal spin doctors and the Russian undercover types re: Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau's Foreign Affairs minister, needs some clarification.

Apparently Russki spooks have issued a missive to the effect that her grandfather was editor of a Nazi publication back in the Ukraine during WWII. No surprise there. Lots of people did things like that.

Josef Stalin's administration of the Ukraine during the '30s was so draconian that the Nazis were welcomed by many as liberators and really nice guys when, a decade later, they rolled their panzers through the Ukraine.

When Joe needed food to prove to the outside world how efficiently his communist system was working, he sent his apparatchiks on a trick-or-treat expedition throughout the Ukraine, stripping it of anything edible. This resulted in the Holodomor (famine) that killed millions, according to reliable sources.

Following the war, many of the Ukrainians who had found it expedient to work for the Nazis because it was necessary to survive during the occupation, looked for exit visas to other countries. They had to avoid being identified as Nazi collaborators.

Among them were butchers, bakers and candlestick makers and maybe even a few editors. They were quietly absorbed into the Ukrainian communities in the western world. To Canadians, they were just DPs--Displaced Persons who needed a new life. It was the least we could do.

The ones who settled in my home town evolved into good Canadian citizens, a credit to their communities. Unlike some of the more recent immigrants from the Gulf states, who also got elected to Justin Trudeau's Liberal government, they did not bring their political and religious baggage with them.

This may or may not shed some light on our Foreign Affairs Minister's saga.

Vladimir Putin:

The lefty US media finds fault with the way Vladimir Putin and the Russians followed the recent US elections with unprecedented interest. 

No mystery there. The possibility of at last having a US leadership open to a logical degree of situational awareness might be viewed as a welcome change by the members of the Russian government.

Many of the scribes in the US Media Party busily working to hammer an uncomfortable wedge between the US and the Russian administrations are too young to remember what it was like to live under the constant stress of a cold war. Their reckless heroism comes straight from ignorance.

Vladimir Putin is described as a tough guy tolerating little nonsense. If he's managed to suppress the Islamic lunatic fringe, drain the swamp and keep the militant special interest mafias from corrupting spineless politicians within his borders, he rates an A++.

Apparently, he's done all that and his 90% approval rating at home reflects it.

It ought to be correct to interpret the election of Donald trump in the US as a fervent hope by the electorate that the same thing might be achieved in their back yard.

The politically correct media campaign is not limited to the US. An article appearing in MacLean's Magazine in Toronto warns the gullible that Putin is aiming to invade Canada. 

I don't think I'm going to lose much sleep over that one. 

Draining the Swamp.

The media is busy dissecting President Trump's speech to Congress, but there is little evidence they caught on to what was really important. None of the items seen so far referred to the president's plan to "Drain the Swamp".

It may be that I'm assigning too much importance to this plan, but I don't think so. Draining the swamp as Trump put it, means rooting out the behind-the-scenes deals and corruption that has festered in Washington over the years, out of sight of the voting public.

Trump emphasized in his address the need to gut the rampant lobbyist culture and make a further continuation of such practices illegal.

To my mind, this means getting rid of all those sweetheart deals between the people who contract military and commercial supply and the people who handle the money. 

Trump sees something amiss in a new military jet costing a couple of billion dollars. He sees someone cutting himself into a deal somewhere between the buyer and the seller.

Such practices would be familiar to concert goers in Toronto who cannot purchase a ticket to see their favorite entertainers because there are none available at the ticket office. They have all been swept up beforehand by someone who will add a substantial amount to their cost before reselling them to the suckers.

There is no value in such a deal either to the performers or the performance place. The inflated profit goes to the guy in the middle who contributed nothing, but managed to cut himself into the deal with the help of an accomplice at the ticket office.

That part of the president's address was important and Americans should hope he succeeds among politicians whose help he will need to make it happen. Not knowing if some of those politicians helped themselves first will make that risky and interesting. 

The harder they lobbied against Trump, the more likely they have something personal to hide from the people who elected them.

Tackling this form of corruption was an important part of Trump's address, but apparently, few in the media saw it that way. Almost no evidence of that in the articles I was able to access.

No doubt it's a good example of what the lefty media is doing--accenting the negatives while ignoring the positives. At least they are correct in evaluating Draining the Swamp as a good positive for them to ignore.

Bleak Future?

We should all hope those news items hinting on the war with ISIS being as good as won are not true.

If that war ends, what are we going to do without all those beheadings and killings in the news?

Our media will then have no choice but to increase its coverage of Gay Pride parades, Black Lives Matter events, terminally p'd off Women's marches on Washington and subversive Russian plans to enlist Trump's support in their evil international schemes.

How many more minutely-detailed incidents of virulent Islamophobia and anti-Semitism can we stomach?

How many new ways will the media be obliged to present aboriginal activists, costumed head-to-toe in animal hides and feathers, beating their drums and stomping in rhythm in front of the parliament buildings in Ottawa?

The only segment of society which, as usual, will be under-represented in the media, will be all those dull and uninteresting taxpayers who are too busy doing something useful to waste time protesting.

And that's a real problem. What kind of garbage are we going to be subjected to in the news on those days when there are no more terrorists around blowing up anything that moves?