The Junior Electorate:

It's no accident that Justin Trudeau was elected almost 50 years after his father, Pierre Elliott. Both were elected by the element in Canada's electorate that had not yet reached a fair level of maturity.

Fifty years ago was the time when the great mass of Baby Boomers first became eligible to vote. Five years ago is when the new section of immature voters, who viewed society mostly through the virtual reality of their cell phones, became eligible to elect leaders only they could identify with.

The Baby Boomers came in on a tide of hippiedom, substance abuse, social chaos and youthful energy. They saw nothing wrong in voting for a man who, unlike nearly everyone else in his generation, managed to avoid going to fight for his country during the war.

The generation that elected another Trudeau half a century later neither knew this nor cared. Nor did they care about the cost of such every-day necessities as shelter, food, taxes, utilities, and everything else their parents provided for them, no questions asked. Reality was not a required part of the picture.

They were offered a leader who saw nothing wrong with a return to hippiedom's psychedelics and was part of their picture.

Now, we have one of Trudeau's Liberal elections officials speculating on dropping the voter age down a couple more years, thus dumbing down the electorate still further.

Voters who cannot see problems with the direction where this is heading are definitely part of the problem.

BooHoo:

Our left-leaning media is taking the opportunity to make a big deal of the fact Doug Ford was Booed at the Raptors rally Monday.

Not to worry. Those weren't the people who gave the provincial Tories a resounding victory last election.

Ford was booed by a collection of armchair athletes, the chronically unemployed, and goof-offs whose work ethic was not sufficient to ignore the media hype and tend to their jobs that day.

Stamp rip-off:

Surely the web message to the effect that the government might be increasing postage stamp prices is a bad joke.

Might be?? Postage stamp costs have quietly been doubled in the last couple of years. The Liberal administration on Parliament Hill in Ottawa is not shy when it comes to ripping off Canadians who prefer not to use electronic mail.

Of course, this affects the seniors segment of Canadians geared to doing their correspondence as they always have.

The postage stamps business is probably the best example of how good the Ottawa bureaucracy is at managing an operation. Stamps, which used to be a nickel, reduced to two cents during the Christmas card season, are now more than a dollar each.

Apparently, young Trudeau thinks ripping off the seniors is relatively safe. They are too unorganized to complain. There's no Seniors Lib or Seniors Against Everything militia in Canada's steadily growing senior segment. At least not yet, thank God. 

We can only hope the old folks will take the opportunity to show what they think in October..

Media Feeding Frenzy:

While the electronic media is going absolutely berzerk over the antics of seven-foot millionaires with the ability to put a ball through a hoop, I tend to tune in on the flashbacks of the 75th anniversary of The Normandy landing.

There's a good reason. I was 13 years old when the war ended and by then had 5 years of conditioning keeping up with people like generals Montgomery Vs. Rommel (The Desert Fox); General Heinz Guderian Vs. Marshal Zhukov; Churchill Vs. Hitler; Gen. Chiang kai Shek Vs. Gen. Hideki Tojo; and finally, dictators Hitler Vs Stalin.

It should be quite clear why people who grew up in my generation would tend to find sports events of marginal interest.

Like....what do you do for an encore?

Putin Snubbed:

Vladimir Putin was reported to be not exactly overjoyed at not being invited to the West's commemorative WWII bash on the Normandy Beaches this week. He is said to have hinted that this invasion of Hitler's Festung Europa was not that important an event anyhow.

He was right, of course. Hitler's invasion of the Soviets cost the Soviet Union over 25 million lives. By the time of the landing on the Normandy beaches, the Soviets had already beaten the Nazis back at Stalingrad and Prokorovka.

Of course, timing of the Normandy landing took place at a leisurely pace for a very good reason, which Putin must surely have figured out for himself. Churchill and Roosevelt had probably conspired to allow the two countries that had ganged up on Poland back in '39 to tear at each other's throats as long as possible before they stepped in to establish their own presence in Europe.

Still, the Soviets were allied with the West by the time of the Normandy landing and it would have been a plus for diplomacy to have the Russians join in the commemorative events this week.

Or maybe not. 

The Right Answer:

Mayor John Tory and his abbreviated council in Toronto are not holding their breath waiting to see how Justin Trudeau's carbon tax will bring world climate change to a screeching halt. They are doing something positive about it right now.

Toronto has launched a whole fleet of electric transit buses. 

This is good news. 

This is how the problem of atmospheric pollution is going to be reduced without ham-stringing Canada's industry and knee-capping every working taxpayer in the country.

Good show, guys..

The Pain::

Bringing public health budgets under control in a province following 15 years of pork barrel administration catering to big unions would seem like an impossible task.

This is especially so in a culture that has been conditioned to think that their health is not their personal responsibility, but that of the government. 

That's the problem Ontario health Minister Christine Elliott is faced with. She needs all the help she can get from the mature and responsible element in the electorate.

That very likely describes the people who elected the Ford government.