The Christmas Concert:

Drama, including song, was a required component of teaching in the country schools of the 20th Century. Each student's dramatic potential was put on display during the annual Christmas Concert.

It was all very exciting for the children. Some of the plays were quite entertaining and the carolling quite pleasant to hear. We all looked to be picked for starring roles. Having attended a recent showing of Gone With the Wind, the potential to become a future Clark Gable or a Vivian Leigh was easy for each of us to imagine.

Every country school house had a collection of 2X12-inch planks to be assembled for the stage and the correct number of sawhorses to hold them up high enough for the audience to view. Drapery was mostly bedsheets hung on wires strung wall-to-wall. They were contributed by local ladies. The audience consisted mostly of the children's families.

Santa arrived with a suitable degree of hoopla and ringing of bells at the conclusion of each concert. He carried a bag full of goodies and another with a toy or book, supplied by the school board, for each child. 

Santa was instructed to ask each child, "..and have you been a good boy/girl this year?" before handing over the loot.

Now, fast-forward a few years to when, having struck out as a threat to Clark Gable in the drama field, I began teaching school. The responsibility for producing something on Dec. 21 or thereabouts for the school district families to view and be entertained was now mine. This was a big deal for someone just out of Normal School, but I enjoyed it and did not too badly.

Round about my third year of teaching, the school board decided to stage the concert in the local meeting hall, which happened to be more central to the school district than the school itself. The hall belonged to a local church, but by then the members of the various congregations were no longer fighting, so it was okay.

The concert progressed swimmingly right through to the end. At this point I learned that the role of Santa Claus was going to be undertaken by the school board chairman, a shortish, stoutish, likeable guy who, as was his style, first got properly primed for the occasion.

They dressed him in the red suit, fur trim and all, and pulled the rubber Santa mask, then the height of make-up technology, over his head, taking care to align the rather smallish eye holes and mouth with somewhat limited success. Cast complete with whiskers and pointy hat, the mask muffled his merry Ho! Ho! Hos. Gripping the school bell in one hand, the gunny sack of goodies slung over his shoulder, he lurched forward. 

But not very far. He missed the end of the stage and went crashing to the floor with bells and boxes flying all over the place.

Huffing and puffing, he was helped to nearly vertical again by an over-size elf and a couple of trustees. They located the bell and re-aimed him at the stage full of kids, who were by now clumped into a tight, quivering mass as far back and out of reach as they could go without tumbling off the other end of the stage.

The vision of Santa, advancing somewhat unsteadily toward them, a-huffing and a- puffing mightily, was less than reassuring.  The collapse of Santa's head every time he huffed and ballooning to alarming size as he puffed was probably not quite what they expected. 

But they were not about to bolt for the exits. Their anticipation of what was in those bags kept them rooted to the spot. Only the beginners jumped off and ran to their mothers. 

They were coaxed back on stage in time to be asked, "And were you a good boy/girl this year?" and be handed a paper bag full of fruit, nuts and candy. The equally jolly elf was still able to read names on tags. He handed out brightly wrapped presents from the other sack.

When the two sacks were emptied and the school board people succeeded in guiding the pair off stage and safely out the back door, performers and audience bundled up and went home. It was time to relax and move on.

It was all over for the year. Clutching my bag of goodies, I got in my '50 Pontiac bustle-back sedan and drove home for the holidays.

Paris Discord?

Thousands of rioting Parisians now tend to view swiftly rising carbon taxes as a greater threat than Global Warming and Climate Change.

So, is it time to re-name the much ballyhooed Paris Accord the Paris Discord?

It hasn't deteriorated to that stage in Canada yet, but Justin Trudeau seems determined for it to happen here.

"Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!!"

Fear mongering:

Is climate change for real?

Of course. As far as we know, there is no natural mechanism for this planet's climate to remain exactly the same all the time. Variations are normal. They have been recorded in detail over the last couple of thousand years, but no one panicked over it before the age of cell phones and hyper-communication.

Is the human infestation of planet Earth to blame for it? That's a perfectly ridiculous supposition. Only science sponsored by the propaganda arm of the United Nations or tax-hungry politicians would support this.

We pave over thousands of square miles of city scape, destroying natural runoff and soil absorption and scream climate change when a normal weather system dumps normal quantities of rain on it, causing flash floods that are hyped to apocalyptic proportions by the sensation-mongering media.

When we look at what's happening in the streets of Paris and other European capitals right now, it is possible for us to marvel at how smart the US electorate was to have elected leaders unlikely to be herded like sheep.

Hopefully, that is why they elected Donald Trump, who did not subscribe to the Paris Accord like the alleged 190-or-so "leaders" according to the media. 

Or maybe they were just lucky. Only time will tell.

Gas Price:

Canadians who still believe that the carbon taxes are no big deal are invited to have a look at our gas prices here in Ontario. 

Today I did a fill-up at $1.05 per litre. That hasn't happened here since before the McGinty Liberals took charge 15 years ago. Gas prices were pushing $1.40 before our electorate here reduced Kathleen Wynn's Cap-and-Trade majority to non-party status a few months ago.

We should also pay attention to what is happening in Europe this week. They are fighting in the streets of Paris with Riot police trying to push back angry motorists no longer as concerned with climate change as with increasingly unaffordable gas prices. 

That is a direct result of the carbon taxes that have been adopted by the progressives across the pond who have bought the UN-sponsored propaganda to the effect that they are guilty of causing global warming and climate change.

Since Justin Trudeau appears to pay no attention to what is happening, let us hope that the electorate is more aware.

GM's Commitment?

So GM is shutting down its factories in Oshawa, ON with the view of converting to a new future of private transportation.

Let's hope that future has not been determined by media hype and coffee-counter science, the forces most likely responsible for the global warming and climate change theories.

GM spokespeople talk of self-driving vehicles and electric cars. That probably needs a bit of revised thinking.

Electric vehicles will need a phased-in infrastructure to equip homes with suitable voltages. So the key word here is phased-in. No crash conversion.

Self-driving vehicles will also need to be phased in, because most people will feel a self-driving vehicle is just not worth the bother. Why not just take public transit?

I'm an old fossil from a past generation. Modern vehicles are already a let down for me. No longer is it possible to match one's driving skills with a clutch and a neat, nicely-synchronized manual four-on-the-floor to play coherent highway tunes on a responsive vehicle.

It is to be hoped that the decision makers at GM, Ford and the other auto manufacturers take the time to factor in the influence of media hype and publicity-hungry science before making any solid commitments.

There is also the question of electronic efficiency. Naturally, all the electronic people promote their stuff as gospel, but how good is it actually? There is always the thought that much of it only adds new layers of complexity to problems that would have been better left to human evolution instead of being committed to technology.

Who Needs Industry?

Robin hood robbed the rich and gave to the poor, according to popular British mythology.
Justin Trudeau appears to be planning to do the same. He plans to extract money from industry and use it to buy votes.

How clever. First he taxes industry on the theory that they are damaging the planet. Next, he uses the money to bribe voters on the pretense that he is replacing the added costs we must pay while buying everything from gasoline and groceries, to running shoes. 

Absolutely everything we buy will cost more because of inflated costs industry will have to pay Ottawa on the pretense that this will somehow reduce a pair of paper tigers--global warming and climate change. 

Political Scam:

The carbon-killing scheme constructed by our prime Minister and his sexually-balanced cabinet easily qualifies as a not very funny joke.

Here's how I understand it: 

1) Ottawa taxes all heavy industry in Canada, each according to it's alleged carbon footprint;

2)Heavy industry, including farming, transit, transport and oil, mining, etc., raises the cost of its products in order to stay in business.

3)When we go out to buy things, we pay sharply higher prices for ordinary everyday items, including groceries, to compensate for the political levies on industry.

4)Canada Revenue Agency comes to the rescue, compensating us for increased costs and, by the way, buying votes.

5)This money-go-Around is supposed to improve our carbon footprint, reduce Global Warming and prevent the climate from changing.

Does anyone else see this as a poorly considered scam that might have been cooked up as an exercise in a fourth-grade classroom?

The Ottawa politicians obviously view the electorate as incapable of thinking things all the way through to a logical conclusion.

They're probably right. Look who we elected.

United Nations:

Is it time to re-think the United Nations idea? It's a concept that has lasted far longer than its predecessor, The League of Nations.

It was the horrors of World War I that spawned the League. That lasted about 20 years before the island Nation of Japan gave it the middle finger, making its decisions inconsequential. 

Suddenly, the world was ready for another slugfest. Japan's Tojo, Italy's Mussolini and Germany's Hitler were poised to change the world each to their own specifications. 

The United Nations was spawned at the end of World War II when the horror of massive human exterminations was still a raw wound in people's minds. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

And it was. The time was ripe for a lasting peace. No more killings. No more scanning the daily casualty lists to see if some father, brother or neighbor fighting at the front was still alive.

That worked more or less for over 70 years, but it appears time to review what is happening once again. Is the UN still performing a useful function in a world that has changed so much since 1945?

It is uncertain if we've reached that point now, but we do have to look at the evidence. Urban crime spinning out of control, young people joining the jihadis overseas, going to fight over fuzzily-defined third-world causes. 

There is a dispersed war going on in otherwise civilized societies as people go about killing each other almost casually on a daily basis. With what's going on, it won't be long before we won't need a war to improve our perspective.

Fractured into countless gangs each promoting special causes, our (otherwise) civilized societies appear to have lost their ability to recognize what's right, what's wrong and the concept of innocence until proven guilty. That concept has been replaced by ill-conceived human rights legislation that's cleverly designed to lead straight to litigation.

Displaying very limited success in promoting international peace, the UN is now engaged in promoting causes through the media. These appear to be designed to relieve successful societies of personal wealth in support of third-world causes. Third world beneficiaries appear to have grown used to such charity and show signs of feeling entitled to it. 

The UN's recent announcement to the effect that we are the final generation before world collapse due to climate change is fear-mongering at its worst. Clearly, it is designed to stampede taxpayers in successful societies to accept limitless taxation chasing carbon dioxide, a vital component of our atmosphere. 

The UN has taken to promoting loosely-defined theoretical disasters such as global warming and climate change. Global warming was too easy to disprove, so it morphed into climate change, an on-going natural planetary function that is probably totally unresponsive to human activity.

US President Trump appears to be aware of the intent of this kind of propaganda. Ditto the Chinese. Nor does India seem to be a terribly enthusiastic participant.

Among the developed nations, the most compliant with the UN's propaganda machine appears to be Justin Trudeau's Canada. Our leader does not hesitate to commit us to contribute, albeit unwillingly, increasing slices of our personal revenue. 

That's not charity. That's extortion.

So, does the UN still serve the purpose it was intended for away back when the idea that war was hell was still fresh in our minds? 

Maybe not, but who is going to tell them? Who has the guts and the political clout to do it? Is it going to be Donald Trump? Xi Jinping? Vladimir Putin? Angela Merkel? Or some other leader from the developed nations who's grown tired of playing Santa Claus with the money of all those who get up and go to work in the morning?

Maybe our own great leader??  

Naah. To him, the UN is hallowed ground.

Year of the Witch:

Throughout our mostly rural history, witches have been credited with such foul deeds as causing cows to stop lactating, hens to stop laying, vegetable gardens to wilt and crops to fail. 

And, most important of all, they were credited with undoing other people's mistakes, such as extramarital pregnancies. 

Our modern witches have added time travel. These are attempts to go back in time to re-do some of their personal childhood blunders at the expense of their male playmates. The destruction of grown men's reputations seems not to bother them at all. 

Not just any men's reputations. So far, it's been men of wealth and/or prominence. They now have the skills and the means to employ our media, both news and social, to destroy their victims without the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

And all this without wands, broomsticks and cast iron cauldrons. It's the new magic made easy with the help of media hype and liberal social attitudes.

The year 2018 has a good chance to go down in history as The Year of the Witch.

Carbon Ripoffs:

Financial whiz-kids in the liberal media are now warning Ontarians how much money the Ford administration is going to lose in not going along with the carbon tax.

They compare Kathleen Wynne's projected carbon tax to what Justin Trudeau decreed and warn Ontarians how much they are going to lose because of Doug Ford's stubborn refusal to go along with it.

Since neither Liberal assault plan on carbon dioxide has a chance to have any effect on the environment in any significant way, let's just forget about carbon taxes and leave the money in the taxpayers' pockets.

Less money for Ontario's politicians to spend, more money in the pockets of Ontarians. Only the Liberal media can put a negative spin on that.

Ford is for reducing the size of governments, not increasing them while picking the pockets of working people to pay for it. 

Let's not try to make it look as though he's the idiot.

Avoiding Reality:

Come October 17, Canadians bent on avoiding reality will be able to add still another tool to their equipment, courtesy of Justin Trudeau. 

Smoking weed and munching on hash brownies will no longer be viewed as substance abuse. Stoners will be able to join young Trudeau in viewing the world through a reality-altering smokescreen.

Climate Question:

That Paris Accord thing appears to be a political construct based on media hype and alarmist theory. Canadian politicians ought to view it with great suspicion, especially since our good trading neighbors to the south remain unconvinced.

Sticking to our half-hearted political commitments on the accord just to earn brownie points with all those drones at the UN would seem less than brilliant if Canadian industry is to remain compatible with US industry. 

There is strong evidence that Donald Trump is unimpressed with that accord. He appears not about ready to hamstring the US market with its implementation. Going along with those commitments in Canada would handicap us with a load of ridiculous emissions taxes based on climate change propaganda.

And it's not just big industry that will be made to pay up. It will hit every living Canadian right in the wallet as the supply sector is forced to adjust prices to cover costs of absolutely everything we need to buy.

The Americans are lucky they have Donald Trump to speak for them. Who, other than Doug Ford, is going to speak for Canadians? 

Childish Games:

NAFTA is being negotiated like a childish game played by the Canadian delegation.

Surely Christia Freeland's unnecessarily opinionated commentary and Justin Trudeau's brave posturing are not conducive to reaching some kind of a working agreement with the Trump team.

Is Trudeau sneaky enough to think that Trump's alleged lack of popularity with the Canadian electorate can guarantee him a few more votes at election time?

Reduced Static:

When all the ballots re: Toronto City Council are counted later this fall, there will be 22 fewer chances of getting severely garbled results on any discussion when they reconvene.

Just think: 22 fewer chances of the topic under discussion being hijacked and derailed by someone probably for no better reason than to posture for constituents.

Programming Children:

Friday's news clip on CTV showing school children protesting government tinkering with their sex curriculum is really scary.

It shows, better than anything else, what the teachers are capable of doing with our children's minds even before they are biologically equipped to think about sex.

Media Bias:

Toronto media burdened with a leftward list to their political postures are trying to award Oscars to the judicial panel that absolved Premier Doug Ford from a perceived massive foul-up in decimating Toronto city council.

What actually happened, was that the tribunal saved the judicial profession in Ontario from their own foul-up, interfering in a democratic procedure that would have done very well without their attentions.

Hollywood North:

The one thing our left-leaning politicians are good at is using the newsmedia to promote their causes.

Make no mistake. That grade-school display in the Ontario legislature on Wednesday had little chance of qualifying as an intellectual pursuit. It was meant solely to make Doug Ford look like a schoolyard bully.

Unfortunately, we have come to expect nothing more substantial than that from the Andrea Horwath gang. 

No Mystery:

There is no mystery as to what the federal Conservatives need to do in order to decimate the blundering Trudeau administration in the coming election. It has already been done in Ontario.

Doug Ford had no time to play political games. He just zeroed in on what needed to be done and the Ontario electorate went for it in a big way.

Ford took his big win and, instead of pussyfooting around a politically correct and all-inclusive minefield created by people who have been led to believe that human rights came only through the law courts, he picked his ministers carefully and turned them loose to do what needed to be done.

The Canadian electorate, given an honest approach, should react very much the way the Ontario electorate reacted.

More Meddling:

The president of the Philippines thinks young Trudeau is unfit to manage his post.

Rodrigo Duterte has found it necessary to firmly relieve the Philippines of an infestation of Islamic terror and drug pushers. He probably sees Trudeau, who courted urban stoners to get elected here, as a political drug lord unfit to govern.

The picture appears to have snapped into focus for Duterte when Trudeau interfered with the $225,000,000 sale of Canadian helicopters to the Philippines because they might be used militarily.

The deal is in danger of being scuttled because the Philippines president's concept of human rights fails to live up to young Trudeau's lofty and unrealistic standards.

Maxime Bernier:

Max Bernier sees the prime minister's attempts to buy votes by sucking up to fringe minority groups as a good way to turn Canada into a Balkanized territory. 

Few politicians would chance being as truthful in today's political climate.

Challenging Democracy:

Of all the professionals one should expect to have a working knowledge of democracy, those charged with educating our future generations should be the most clued in, right?

Shouldn't Andrea Horwath and Sam Hammond have better things to do than lead all those sheep trying to prevent a duly elected government from fairly representing the majorities who elected them?

Do they see sexual indoctrination of small children as more important than Reading, Writing and Arithmetic?

All those parents of elementary school kids in Ontario who viewed this sorry spectacle on the front lawn at Queen's Park absolutely should be worried about what their children are learning from this bunch. 

Or, even more important, when they look at the standardized test scores, what they are not learning.

Massive Blunders:

As expected, the Liberal media is running around breathlessly, trying to reduce the impact of a new set of diplomatic blunders created by Ottawa.

Trying to preach Trudeau-style human rights in the Saudi Kingdom is not heroic. It's just plain stupid.

It seems our foreign minister took time off her busy schedule trying to save NAFTA to try save the backsides of opinionated activists telling the Saudis how to behave right in their own country.

Not everyone sees human rights as Trudeau sees them. It is naive for Canadians to think they have some kind of a corner on human rights.

If PC leader Andrew Scheer wants a good election plank at the next political bout, it might be a good idea for him to consider human rights. He might promise right up front that Canadian taxpayers will no longer be made to pay for the activities of a swarm of activists knocking on doors to sell their version of human rights abroad.

Anybody so ideologically steeped that they must be out there harassing others about the way they see human relations on this planet should be told right up front that they are on their own. There is no life line reaching back to Ottawa to get them out of trouble when they get grabbed and de-activated by someone resentful of their meddling.

This is what these so-called activists are--meddlers--in places where they are unwelcome.

Everybody has rights. And that includes the Saudis.

Saudi Response:

Not every one sees human rights the way our prime minister sees them. Not everyone will sit idly by as human rights activists from Canada lecture them on their behaviour.

Not the Saudis, anyhow. Their reaction to a message from some activist in the Liberal government in Ottawa to the effect that the Saudis should stop jailing feminist activists was swift and decisive.

The Saudis took this as foreign interference in their internal affairs.

And that is exactly what it was. What rights do political hacks in Ottawa have to tell the Saudis--or anyone else--how to run their internal affairs? 

You'd think the Ottawa human rights squads would have learned something from the way the Chinese reacted to their views on a recent visit to China.

The Chinese politely ignored them, but the Saudis were not so polite. They withdrew their ambassador to Canada, gave the Canadian ambassador 24 hours to get out, and cut off all future deals.

Further, they withdrew more than ten thousand scholarship students (plus their families) from Canadian Schools. 

Further, they cut off all relations with this country. 

Our weak-kneed politicians have allowed activist gangs in Canada to make it increasingly more difficult to exercise personal judgement without running afoul of the law.  Yet, we feel free to tell others how to manage their affairs.

I'm with the Saudis on this one. Their kind of activism is what the world needs a lot more of right now. And that includes Canada.

Andrea Horwath:

The Ontario PC Party's rapid-fire mowing down of the previous administration's ill-conceived initiatives is an opportunity for the official opposition to go on the attack.

Since Kathleen Wynn has been reduced to non-party status by the electorate, there remains only her doppelganger, Andrea Horwath, to set things right. 

While she had little to complain about with the Liberals in charge, Horwath finds little  she can agree with in the Doug Ford administration. 

And that's pretty much as it ought to be. No surprises there.

Council Decimated:

Doug Ford's initiative to make City Council in Toronto more efficient has generated all sort of prophecies of impending doom.

From whom? City councillors, of course. Twenty or more of these will have to go out and get real jobs.

Ford's experience with this council tells him that it has become a debating society that never gets things done because discussing issues endlessly is more important.

He's got that right. Nothing important in the rise of civilization has ever been credited to councils and committees. All evolutionary ideas originated in individual minds unimpeded by endless debate.

It wasn't a committee that discovered insulin. It was Doctors Banting and Best. The ballet Swan Lake originated in one mind--Tchaikovski's. As far as we know, no committees helped Leonardo da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa.

The steam engine was developed in a succession of solitary minds, including Watt, Trevethick, Stevenson, Newcomen, etc., each working on their own, without a committee in sight.

Our guess that Ford knows when to stop talking and start doing was accurate. And very refreshing to see in a modern politician.

Trudeau's new Cabinet:

Is Trudeau's cabinet seat re-shuffle still sexually balanced?

There is still a ministry for the protection of the environment. Wow! That's a tall order. Imagine taking control of hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

And too late for Ontario, where perfectly functional steam generating hydro stations were bombed out of existence by the McGinty government so they could be replaced by perfectly unreliable windmills.

Also noted is a ministry for Women's issues and no ministry for Men's issues. Are there no men seeking political solutions for personal problems?

Feed-back on this one should be interesting.

Maryam Monsef:

Maryam Monsef arrived in Canada in 1996 from either Iran or Afghanistan--exactly which, has yet to be determined to everyone's satisfaction--and now serves as Trudeau's minister of women's issues.

Boy, we can't get much more inclusive than that, can we? 

Now, Monsef appears to be engaged in a verbal free-for-all with the Conservative minister-designate for women's issues. It's over reproductive rights--that's abortion in plain language--and Monsef seems fully in favor of women's rights to choose life or death for their babies.

Apparently, this fits in well with the feminist agenda, according to Monsef, who says it benefits all of Canadian society. 

Exactly how abortions, hiring quotas and wage averaging might benefit market economics has yet to be explained, but members of militant special interest groups seem unperturbed by reality. 

It's not Christianity that's failing western civilization. It's the degree to which weak-kneed politicians allow special interest gangs to set our policies.

So... how soon is Trudeau going to go trolling for more liberal votes by installing a ministry for Men's issues?

Sex Ed:

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has jumped in with corrections on the McGinty/Wynne foul-ups just as he promised, tackling the Hydro mafia and the Sex Education mob right from the top.

Right on cue, our left-leaning media scurried about gathering quotes exclusively from people who favored childhood sex indoctrination right from kindergarten on. The idea, it appears, was for parents to accept without question what the sexually indeterminate activists have been pushing over recent years.

Not even one parent of actual children in that age group was quoted on electronic media. It was all about adjusting attitudes to make sexual deviance more acceptable, starting with little children.

Some of the quotes from opposition NDP spokespeople were to the effect that Ford's  move would suck sex education right back into the last century.

Has the way we reproduce changed recently? The heavy hitters among the Liberals and the NDP seem to think so. The proponents of the new sexual attitudes have done their best to bully weak-kneed politicians, both municipal and provincial, into accepting that. They, in turn, tried to sneak the sexual revisionism right past the parents into a rosy new  future.

Doug Ford found that in the real world, most parents were not comfortable with what was being promoted. To his credit, he was quick to act upon those concerns. 

Good for him. And good for us.

Ford's Cabinet:

Apparently, Doug Ford considers every cabinet member he appointed an unhyphenated Canadian.

No member in the new Conservative cabinet in Ontario is there because of sex, sexual inclinations, inclusivity, skin color, hiring quotas or belief. It would appear that they are all there because they are the best available re: education, experience, track record and whatever potential each portfolio requires. 

In today's social consciousness, this is a radical concept. Not at all the norm.

As expected, the liberal media was quick to run around gathering selective quotes from the public to the effect that women and minorities are under-represented. 

In their view, actual ability to do the job was less important.

Climate Change:

Apparently Climate Change was one of the items on Justin Trudeau's  G-7 agenda.

It wouldn't hurt for people to understand and accept that climate change is an ongoing planetary process, just as it has been for the life of this planet.

It also wouldn't hurt for us to understand that we human beings are not to blame for it. It will happen regardless of what we do or not do.

We ought to also understand that initiatives like the Paris Accord and the G-7 sessions on climate change are strictly political posturing for reasons only some political types can understand. 

The logic behind it escapes me, but maybe Al Gore can tell us more.

A Mature View:

Does a study on women's equality and another on climate change have any room at a G7 international conference?

Trudeau seems to think so.

U.S. president Donald Trump, on the other hand, is reported to have made it a point to arrive late for one session and leave early when the other came up.

It would seem that Trump thought there were more important things to discuss at a conference of leaders of the most important economies on the planet. 

He's right. For him, political posturing was less important than actually getting things done.

Politics Made Easy:

In any election, there are only two political choices.

Some of us vote for an economy that will improve our chances for a productive lifestyle.

This means an economic plan that will encourage potential investors to take a chance. New investment should result in more and better jobs for people looking for work.

But not everyone is looking for work. Some voters look for politicians who promise the most freebies. 

Politicians offering the most freebies are hoping to offer what they can extract from the pockets of those people who get up and go to work in the morning.

Voting for such politicians is like handing them free access to your credit cards and saying, "Go ahead. I'm sure you can spend my money better than I can."

Such people are unlikely to vote for Doug Ford.

Political Foul-ups:

The Millennials in Ontario wouldn't remember what some previous administrations did to this province, but a quick lesson could be had simply by Googling Eleanor Clitheroe, the financial whiz kid who ran Hydro One.

Ontario's working folk are still paying for all those $25,000 per month retirement funds and golden parachutes.

If I remember correctly, it was the Ernie Eves administration that was elected to exorcise this gang who ran Hydro One like Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

Apart from Clitheroe picking up an armload of legal credits from various schools around the province, apparently what qualified her to run Hydro One was her experience with the Bob Rae NDP administration back in '91.

Cat Fight:

Now that the teacup readers are predicting a bigger slice of the political pie for the NDP in Ontario, Kathleen Wynne has switched her attacks from Doug Ford to Andrea Horwath.

The latest cat fight between these two political prodigies now appears to be which party has the most women candidates. Apparently, both view more women as a winning strategy.

Neither appears to view those dastardly male candidates as having any real potential. 

What a strange election this one's shaping up to be.                      

Equal wages:

Wynne's attempt to secure equal wages for equal work is not a new idea.

Politicians are in no position to judge whose work is equal to who else's. Only the people actually working at the scene--the employers--can do that.

Any attempt to legislate equal wqages will get muddled results like they got in the Soviet Union before it was dissolved in the 1990s.

Why it fails was described in an excellent article in the Sun a few weeks ago. It discussed a professor's attempt to demonstrate to his class why the communist principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" results in ultimate failure.

The prof set out to show why averaged-out wages will not work by averaging out something the students understood: their grade scores. The low achievers among them saw it as relief from the need to study. The high achievers were not so sure.

The article described how the class reacted to the results of the first test. The happiest were those who put in the least effort but were still awarded a passing grade. The brightest were less happy with their reduced marks.

The next test was more of the same, only the average score was now lower because the top students were beginning to lose their enthusiasm. 

And so it went with lower scores each time, descending to average class failure as the bottom feeders continued to coast while the achievers refused to continue their struggle while being dragged down by the slackers. 

The equal pay for equal work theory failed to work for Joseph Stalin and it will fail to work for any other politician bent on buying votes from people looking for a free ride.

This is the bait Kathleen Wynne is dangling before the noses of people simple enough to still think there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Actually, there is, but it lasts only until they run out of people willing to pay for it; in this case, the working taxpayers. 

Deadly Vehicles:

Any day now we should expect to see a gang of raucous protesters marching on Ottawa and Washington, noisily protesting the production and sale of those evil vans and trucks.

The mowing down of ten pedestrians and the mutilation of another dozen on Yonge St in Toronto should do it. This foul deed by one homicidal jerk should be enough incentive for some perpetually p'd-off agitators to gather a gang of professional whiners to protest the sale and use of such dangerous vehicles.

It's not as though this were an isolated incident. Remember Nice? Paris? Israel? London? 

No doubt those people who insist on buying and using these deadly weapons of mass destruction will be labelled The Van Lobby by this special interest group. 

Wynne's Trump Card:

Kathleen Wynne's bombshell comparing Doug Ford to Donald Trump is something less than terrifying.

It's also something less than a diplomatic thing to say for the premier of a province that deals heavily with our American neighbors.

It is, however, a perfect example of why people, distrustful of politicians like Wynne, are seeking alternatives.

Donald Trump is only one example of a trend showing voters smartening up around the planet. That might be attributed to our electronic revolution which makes information that doesn't depend on advertising more easily available to more people.

What kind of information? That's still a work in progress, but Wynne's intemperate attacks are beginning to make Doug Ford look very good.

It might be a good idea for Ford to just sit back and relax and let Wynne and Horwath do all the electioneering he needs for him.

Odie:

Odie is our little black Abyssinian with a white bow tie under his chin.

He's Cat #2 at our house. 13-year old Garfield, Bianca's cat, is Cat #1. Both are spoiled rotten, mostly because we allow them extra slack due to the fact they are persecuted.

We live in Oakville, probably the only town in the world where cats are held captive. They're not allowed outdoors to control the town's rodents because they might be a danger to songbirds. When given the choice, our councillors here are strictly for the birds.

Never mind that the Egyptian Pharaohs valued their cats enough to mummify them and take them into the next world with them when they expired.

Never mind that following the San Francisco earthquake when the rodents threatened to take over the ruins, cats went as high as US $200 each. That's in 1906 dollars. The town councillors in Oakville took the time off from their busy schedules to appease the rodents among us.

Anyhow, back to Odie. A true Abyssinian, he's impossible to contain. Most of the neighbors appreciate him because he cleans up the rodents around the neighborhood. When he's tired of playing with them, he bites their heads off and leaves the little corpses on the back lawn. I use the long-handled picker-uppers from Dollarama to pick them up and put them in the garbage.

That ice storm made outside excursions uncomfortable for him and Garf and we finally had to put him in the garage. We checked at half-hour intervals to see if he was ready to come back in. This went on until bedtime with no sign of Odie. Finally, Eleanor got him in around 10pm.

"He's in!" she hollered, and I continued surfing the Web. Some time later, there was a clunk somewhere and I assumed it was one of our neighbors fidgeting outside with a snow shovel.

Then there were more clunks and it dawned on me that the sounds came from the bathroom. Sure enough, there was Odie in the contoured tub playing ping-pong with a mouse.

It was about the third or fourth time he did that this season. Very sneakily, he'd bring a mouse in with him from the garage and take it straight upstairs into the big tub where he would play with it to his heart's content until someone put a paper coffee cup over it and carried it outside. 

People who think cats are not too bright should give their heads a shake. It takes some imagination for a cat to figure out that the slick sides of a tub are about the only thing in a household to be impossible for a mouse to climb. Those little suckers could go straight up the sides of a brick wall outside when a cat's chasing them.

Anyhow, I scooped the mouse and took that paper coffee cup outside. It was cold and the poor mouse was all curled up shivering in the bottom and I felt sorry for him, so I put the cup down horizontally near a big pile of leaves that the wind had swirled into a heap outside the front door. 

I checked the next morning and there was no sign of either the mouse or the cup following a cold and windy night.

The Trump Card:

After a year of Donald Trump, most Americans should be able to see how much he was needed.

It's not about how much voters admire Donald Trump.

It's about how much America needs a course correction only someone outside the existing political loop is likely to deliver.

Children's Crusade:

You have to wonder what the most mouthy agitators at the head of all those kids goofing off from classes probably said to whoever was appointed to listen to them when they reached Washington.

Was it "Mr. President, how are you going to prevent the criminally homicidal rejects amongst us from finding a gun the moment they're severely p'd off over something and blowing away as many of us as they can?" 

That's a question that no American adult can answer with any degree of certainty, not even Donald Trump.

Did each kid think of him/her/itself as a thumbs up for gun control?

Did they think of their numbers as having gone viral? Is that how the effectiveness of any protest is measured these days?

Wynne Economics 101:

Just in case she has failed to cover some part of the Ontario electorate while buying votes, Wynne, that brilliant economist, is now promising every woman wages equal to what those dreaded males beside her are making.

This is another artificial spin on market economics like the one that put the late Soviet Union out of business back in 1990.

When I did a tour of the Soviet Union in the mid-80s the working folk there liked to describe their work environment as "They pretend they are paying us and we pretend we are working".

That's the kind of thinking that sets in when people with a good work ethic realize that the slackers among them are making the same wage with no effort at all.

Wynn is unwilling to allow the market to decide which employee is worth what. She alone will dictate the terms after introducing sexual distinctions.

Trump's Silence:

The Brits' expulsion of a bunch of Russian diplomats following the assassination attempt of a double agent has failed to prompt Trump to immediately join the international community in condemning Russia.

Naturally, everybody, especially the left-wing US media, is whining that Trump should have been quick to join in.

Really? How come suddenly Trump's participation in this international pile-on is so important?

Since his election to the US presidency, the Brits have been reported to be debating whether or not they should allow this brash new president into their precious country or anywhere near their queen. Their left-leaning media was reported to have painted Trump as downright unworthy of British acceptance and recognition.

So why should they be surprised at Trump's seeming reluctance to immediately jump in and endorse their theory that the Russians are responsible?

If I were in Donald Trump's boots, I'd do exactly what he's doing before jumping into the fray, at least until there is solid proof that the Russkis are to blame.

Ford's win:

Doug Ford should make a good premier for Ontario.

Unlike the majority of today's political types, he appears to know when it's time to stop talking and start doing.

That is one of the characteristics of a successful businessman, and that's what he is.

We shouldn't expect to see any dumb business moves like buying votes while recklessly setting artificial values on wages.

Vulnerable Farms:

At the time I grew up on a farm, there was a farmyard on practically every quarter-section of land. As time went on, farms grew larger as the economics of scale kicked in. The farm implements grew accordingly.

Today, there is one farm and one farmyard where there used to be a dozen or more. That one big farm now contains buildings for the farm families and animals, plus well over a million dollars worth of machinery. That includes giant tractors with tilling machines to match, large harvesting equipment, trucks, loaders, graders, grain bins, and all-terrain vehicles. 

There is machinery to do everything that needs to be done--all on a giant scale.

So what we have there is a small island of value perched in the midst of a large tract of land mostly well isolated from any municipal source of administration such as fire protection, law enforcement or any other services paid for by taxation.

Too often, this presents an irresistible temptation to the kind of people who would benefit from anything they can steal or gain simply be walking in and taking it. By the time the farmer can get any response from the RCMP or the local police force, the freeloaders are long gone.

Some administrations, like those in Australia, where sheep and cattle ranches are vast, have decided to cope with this problem by making it legal for ranchers and farmers to shoot thieves and trespassers where unavoidable without the risk of being charged and dragged endlessly through the law courts.

But not in Canada. Here, our Prime Minister and his ministry of justice have indicated that they intend to make it easier for drunks, thieves and trespassers to pillage farms by reducing the chances of successful legal retribution for the farmers.

Like his father before him, young Trudeau obviously does not appreciate the importance of farming to Canada's economy. 

Hey, Justin, that is where they grow things you eat, you know, like food. That's where your local supermarket gets the stuff they load into their shelves. That is where the stuff they make doughnuts from at the doughnut shops comes from.

It's not just a rural Canada problem. Eventually it may even have an effect on urban electorates, including Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. When the time comes that the coffee drinkers can no longer buy doughnuts, they may reconsider how they mark their ballots.