It has been more than 24 hours since trump was sworn in as president of the USA, and he has still not ended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
First promise broken, a million more promises to break. What a joke.
hypocrisy
I think Pete Hegseth reads my blog
It’s almost as if Pete Hegseth read my post “America and communism” in November and decided to prove I’m right. Seriously. Is there any other way to explain how he claimed, as reported by CNN on 12 December 2025 (when I initially started to write this piece), that “policies allowing gay people to serve openly in the US military [are] part of a ‘Marxist’ agenda to prioritize social justice over combat readiness.” I mean … wow!
Look, I couldn’t give a flying fandango (from a professional point of view) who someone decides to have sex with, as long as they show up for their job and do it well. And, as I admitted in the “America and communism” post, I’m not intimately familiar with all of the writings of Karl Marx — on whose writings Marxism is based, in case that’s not obvious — but I have access to things called “search engines”. So I searched for “marxism homosexuality” and I was led to a number of articles. (You will be too, if you follow that link.) One of them was a “Washington Post” article entitled “Communist states have sometimes been havens for LGBTQ rights” where the author (Samuel Huneke) states:
Sexuality was not a preoccupation of communism’s earliest theorists. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who penned “The Communist Manifesto” in 1848, had little to say on the topic. What they did was contemptuous.
I suppose it’s possible that Marxist thinkers since Marx and Engels have modified Marxist thought since the mid-1800s, so I shouldn’t be too hard on Mr. Hegseth, but what evidence do I have that Hegseth even knows who Karl Marx is, never mind that he knows anything about Marxist thought?! None, that’s how much.
And further opportunity to evaluate Hegseth’s thought process, and the thought process of trump and his transition team, comes in the CNN article:
In a comment to CNN, a Trump transition spokesperson declined to say what specific policies Hegseth might pursue as secretary of defense, including whether he would reinstate “don’t ask, don’t tell” or implement changes to current standards.
Of course not. It’s not as if taking over the leadership of the US Department of Defence requires much forethought and planning. That’s for amateurs.
Like President Trump, Pete wants to see the U.S. military focus on being the world’s strongest fighting force – not on cultural and social issues. Bottom line: If you can meet the standards, you can serve,” the spokesperson said. “But given the threats we face, our priorities shouldn’t be lowering standards and wasting taxpayer money to meet arbitrary social quotas – our priorities should be readiness and lethality.
Right, one’s readiness should be compromised by changing everything the previous administration changed to change the previous administration’s changes. Wha…?
The policy [the ban on transgender individuals serving openly in the military] was reversed under Trump, with then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis implementing a 2018 policy barring those diagnosed with gender dysphoria from serving, except in limited cases. President Joe Biden repealed the Trump-era ban in 2021.
Again, it’s time for musical policies. The music is playing, now everybody switch policies!
Speaking on “the Ben Shapiro Show” in June, Hegseth criticized a military ad campaign featuring a soldier with two lesbian mothers, calling it emblematic of a larger shift toward individualism in military culture.
Yes, we don’t want to encourage individualism in American culture, it just doesn’t exist out in the wild. Hey, I do get that individualism within the military is not necessarily desirable — unless, of course, it’s some individual carrying out some heroic act like storming a machine gun nest — but I suspect that the “military ad campaign featuring a soldier with two lesbian mothers” was for recruiting purposes, not purely military purposes. Coincidentally, recently I was looking up something about pedantry and I came across this definition or explanation:
Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry … To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery. –George Polya, mathematician (13 Dec 1887-1985).
Further, from Hegseth:
It was stuff like, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ which was their immediate target, right? Right out the gate, we need to change that and – say what you want about what about that, people are passionate on that issue. But it was most centrally, uh, demonstrated with women in combat this idea that there’ll be gender neutrality and selection.
Again, there’s a new sheriff in town, and this sheriff will be targeting “woke”. Anyone with their eyes open and tuned into the world will be shot. We don’t need that shit.
Idiots.
Karl Marx (John Jabez Edwin Mayall, PD) and Pete Hegseth (cropped, [Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0])
Christy Clark pulls the plug
In a previous post I stated that Justin Trudeau had finally seen the writing on the wall and decided it was time he scurried away. It only took him a decade, although I suppose to be truthful it was really only the last year of that decade when he tried to cling to power. (I know anti-vaxxers will disagree with my timeline, but they’re idiots.)
So I suppose I should be charitable to Christy Clark for following the example of one of her successors in the BC Liberal Party (now BC United), Kevin Falcon (who folded under pressure) and give her credit for taking only a few months to come to the conclusion that her running for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada was a non-starter. Thank the gods. I wasn’t looking forward to taking on her supposed upcoming leadership race.
However, to reiterate points I’ve already made, anyone so stupid as to think that she could pull the wool over Canadian’s eyes to make them believe that she was a Liberal and not a Conservative does not deserve to be trusted with the leadership of this (or any other) country. She is, to say it again, a bullshit artist, and she only pulled the plug once her claims not to have joined the Conservative Party were found to have been false. Oops, “I misspoke. Sh*t happens. Lesson learned 🤦♀️ …”.
Yes, 🤦♀️ indeed! Your “sticking with the status quo” — i.e., misleading voters — is definitely a losing strategy! Thankfully you won’t be leading Canadians down that path!
Finally! The CBC calls out Christy Clark
On the CBC National last night (10 January 2025), the CBC finally called out Clark on her claim to being a “registered [federal] Liberal” and not (“never”) a Conservative. The Conservative Party apparently provided a screenshot (not shown by the CBC) from their system showing that Clark misspoke … to put it extremely politely and generously. She posted something on her Twitter/X feed trying to take back her remarks/comments in some recent (previous) interview with respect to running for leader of the federal Liberal Party. (Video in link below.) Unfortunately, as I’ve commented before, Elon Musk is trying to make X unusable and so I cannot see her recent posts on her X feed (but it was shown on the screen by the CBC), but it was full of bullshit and Clark trying to cover up her l**s — a word I believe I can’t use without risk of a lawsuit. But I believe I can safely use the phrase “bullshit artist” to describe her. (Actually, thanks to the written article on the CBC website, I now have the link to and the text from her post below.)
Well, I misspoke.
Sh*t happens.
Lesson learned 🤦♀️ …I have always been clear that I supported Jean Charest to stop Pierre Poilievre. Not backing away from that. He’s the most divisive politician we’ve seen in years and I felt it was my duty as a Cdn [sic] to stop him in his tracks. I’m thinking carefully about running because he still needs to be stopped. But if we want to do that, our party has to accept change.
Sticking with the status quo is a losing strategy.
My god, if a seasoned politician has to excuse her stupidity and economy with the truth with the vulgar phrase, “shit happens” (and claims she suddenly learned a lesson that is taught in Politics 101 and Honesty 101), then she is quite clearly unqualified to be prime minister of the country. It’s not that I think that politicians can’t be “vulgar” (remember the “[Pierre] Trudeau salute” and “fuddle duddle”?), but she’s covering up her so-called economy with the truth by claiming “shit happens” for fuck’s sake! (Oops, sorry, I was vulgar.) This is a person who can simply not be counted on for anything even remotely approximating truthfulness and trustworthiness!
Listen, Canadians, and especially federal Liberal Party members: Christy Clark is *NOT* a Liberal! She’s a conservative in thought and practice! Sure, she’s saying all sorts of nasty things about Pierre Poilievre the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, but saying that she is against someone or something doesn’t automatically imply that she is for someone or something, specifically the Liberal Party of Canada!
And don’t even get me started on her bastardising the French language, which she was clearly reading off of a teleprompter, and probably didn’t even understand because she got it off Google Translate. I’m not a big fan of the fact that Canadian prime ministers have to speak French, but if someone is going to claim that they speak it then they do actually need to speak it, understand it and converse in it, at least to some extent! Reading (and badly pronouncing) a script does not make you suddenly bilingual!
But seriously, I started my tirades against Clark (with respect to the Liberal leadership) only last month, but it’s beyond preposterous that anyone can seriously consider her a contender. She hasn’t even actually entered the race, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to take her herself seriously! She’s falling apart before she even positions herself at the starting line. I can’t seriously consider the possibility that she will even embarrass herself to have a go.
Christy Clark Twitter/X post: “Sh*it happens.”
The hilarity (not!) of donald trump’s childish remarks
One thing I have noted for years is the habit of many people on the right to make every argument personal and to resort to name calling. This is particularly illustrated by the juvenile known as donald trump, whose name I refuse to spell with initial capital letters because he doesn’t deserve even that much grammatical respect.
His latest tact of referring to the country of Canada as the “great state of Canada” — as Americans are wont to do when referring to their states grandiloquently — was mildly amusing the first time if only because we ourselves often refer to ourselves as the 51st state, but with the second and subsequent repetitions it just became moronic. Hey don, you might have got a chuckle the first time (and the second time when you placed a Swiss mountain in Canada), but we’re all yawning now.
But with respect to calling people names, your moronic reaction to the resignation of Canada’s finance minister is beyond the pale. First of all, I realise that you have absolutely zero respect for any woman other than for her purpose of having a pussy to grab, but characterising her (and even having an opinion on her domestic actions) as “totally toxic” because she did an excellent job of representing her country (not sub-national state) of Canada in trade negotiations with your country just rings of your being a well-documented poor loser. Non-Americans are often told by you and your acolytes to STFU and keep our opinions of America and American politics to ourselves, so I suggest you take your own advice.
The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau. Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. She will not be missed!!!
Fuck you, you piece of shit. I can guarantee that this citizen of Canada is very happy that we are not governed by the likes of idiots like you.
OMG, the Canadian government is in a completely PREDICTABLE shambolic shambles!
Justin Trudeau
In 2015, Justin Trudeau blithely and mockingly informed us that it was 2015. Among other things — the most noticeable and consequential to me and to Canadians in general — he put on his pink “I’m a feminist” T-shirt and promised that the election he had just won would be the last first-part-the-post (FPTP) election.
Within about six months he had conjured up some lame excuses for why he was completely and incontrovertibly going back on the completely fake promise that he would change the electoral system. Next!
As for the world’s biggest feminist label he assumed without the consent of any actual feminist on the planet — except, perhaps and laughably, his now ex-wife — he has long exposed the truth, that he is anything but. This was clear in the way in which he cast Jody Wilson-Raybould aside like yesterday’s trash, and now, how he has done exactly the same with the last female cabinet minister of any consequence, Chrystia Freeland (see below).
But I’ve been mulling this blog post over in my mind for weeks. The crux of it is that, with reference to Trudeau’s going back on his promise to replace the FPTP electoral system, he has an electoral system in which his defeat is pretty much guaranteed. Guaranteed! The rats are abandoning ship, and those that are too stupid to jump are rearranging the deck chairs! Trudeau could (and should!) have resigned the leadership of the Liberal Party a year or months ago to allow a successor the ability to have a chance to maintain a reasonable Liberal presence in the House of Commons, instead of being left with the same two seats with which the Progressive Conservative Party were left after the 1993 election.
In her letter of resignation, Freeland referred to “costly political gimmicks”. This has to be, possibly among other things, the “GST holiday” that came into effect on 14 December. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) referred to it as a “gong show”, and it is. It has forced businesses to invest an inordinate amount of time and energy — during the busiest time of the year — in reconfiguring their point-of-sales systems to zero the tax rate on the limited number of goods on which the tax has been removed. It’s a joke! It shows a complete ignorance of the part of Trudeau and his government of how business works. It’s a sad, sad situation in which Canada finds itself.
The plans I had for this post were pushed up and significantly truncated as I thought I had more time. I find it bizarre that the Government of Canada finds itself in almost the exact same situation today as the governments of Syria, Germany, and South Korea! We’re a joke!
Here’s Chrystia Freeland’s resignation letter:
Chrystia Freeland. (Brian Ferraro/NPR)
Dear Prime Minister,
It has been the honour of my life to serve in government, working for Canada and Canadians. We have accomplished a lot together.
On Friday, you told me you no longer want me to serve as your Finance Minister and offered me another position in the cabinet.
Upon reflection, I have concluded that the only honest and viable path is for me to resign from the cabinet.
To be effective, a Minister must speak on behalf of the Prime Minister and with his full confidence. In making your decision, you made clear that I no longer credibly enjoy that confidence and possess the authority that comes with it.
For the past number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada.
Our country today faces a grave challenge. The incoming administration in the United States is pursuing a policy of aggressive economic nationalism, including a threat of 25 per cent tariffs.
We need to take that threat extremely seriously. That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war. That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment.
That means pushing back against ‘America First’ economic nationalism with a determined effort to fight for capital and investment and the jobs they bring. That means working in good faith and humility with the premiers of the provinces and territories of our great and diverse country, and building a true Team Canada response.
I know Canadians would recognize and respect such an approach. They know when we are working for them, and they equally know when we are focused on ourselves. Inevitably, our time in government will come to an end. But how we deal with the threat our country currently faces will define us for a generation, and perhaps longer. Canada will win if we are strong, smart, and united.
It is this conviction which has driven my strenuous efforts this fall to manage our spending in ways that will give us the flexibility we will need to meet the serious challenges presented by the United States.
I will always be grateful for the chance to have served in government and I will always be proud of our government’s work for Canada and Canadians.
I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues as a Liberal Member of Parliament, and I am committed to running again for my seat in Toronto in the next federal election.
With gratitude,
The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, P.C., M.P.
Cosmopolitan should follow Tropicana
(True to my form, I drafted this post months ago [October 2024] but life got hectic and I never posted it!)
I see in the news that the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas was blown up a couple of days ago. (9 October.) I only give a damn about Vegas in the sense that it was the location of the absolute worst holiday I have ever been on (and I almost never use superlatives), and it wasn’t because I got drunk and married some random woman there!
It was because of a hotel that wasn’t put to the torch that week: The Cosmopolitan. If they ever blow up The Cosmopolitan, I’ll be there to watch and cheer and piss on the ruins!
Breakdown of the Rule of Law in the United States of America
Tattered American flag
What we’re seeing down in the good ol’ U.S. of A., with Joe Biden pardoning his son, is a classic example of unintended consequences and the down side of the reason that all of trump’s supporters love him: his inability to think before he opens his big yap. Many people seem to consider it somehow endearing that a politician can talk just as freely and openly as a drunkard down at the pub, but anyone with a brain knows that just about anything they say “after a few” down at the pub cannot and should not be counted on in the morning.
And yet, trump can barrack out the word “tariff” and all of his acolytes cheer as if they even know what the word means, never mind how tariffs would affect their grocery bills, making the inflation they blame on Biden (but which is worldwide) look like child’s play.
This is what I see as having happened in this case:
- 2020: trump pardons (among other people) the convicted felon (Charles Kushner), pardon my redundancy, who is the father-in-law of his daughter, Ivanka, as well as a bunch of his other supporters who have broken the law to support him.
- 2021: trump sets his private army of ne’er-do-wells on the US Congress in attempts to hijack the counting of votes of the Electoral College and (seemingly) have his Vice President (Mike Pence) and Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) assassinated. They fail.
- 2024: The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) rules that the President of the United States (POTUS) is immune from prosecution, which means the action to try and convict trump of treason in the case of the January 6th self-coup attempt essentially comes to a grinding halt. (How an attempt at a coup can be considered an “official act” is beyond the understanding of my miniscule intellect.)
- 2024: trump is elected President of the United States, again, to the dismay of over 50% of the population of the United States.
- 2024: trump nominates Kash Patel — who has made far-ranging promises that echo trump’s promises of revenge and retribution, completely contrary to the ethos of the Rule of Law — for the post of Director of the FBI. Oh, and he also nominates said convicted felon, Charles Kushner, to the post of Ambassador to France.
- 2024: Biden sees what is coming down the pike and, despite previous assurances that he would not pardon Hunter Biden, decides to do so because it has become clear to him that there’s no way Hunter will be treated according to the Rule of Law under which Joe previously promised not to pardon him. So what we have here is one President flouting the Rule of Law (even if pardons are, technically, legal) to combat the entirely predictable flouting of the Rule of Law of an incoming president.
- 2024: Predictably, trump and his cry-baby supporters cry foul.
And, of course, as about a million other people have noted, now that a convicted felon has been allowed to run for and win the office of President of the United States, why should there be fetters on the activities and freedoms of other felons? Why incarcerate them? Why prevent them from holding certain jobs, like ambassadorships? Why prevent them from voting? And why conform to various other laws and norms and follow the Rule of Law?!
As I said to someone recently, the maxim that “crime doesn’t pay” is sure taking a hit these days, especially from the “royalty” that are running the United States!
Hard to take the Aussie Pie Guy (or Resourcecode Media Inc.) seriously
In Vancouver there is a company called Aussie Pie Guy. I have to admit, I like their pies. I haven’t tried them all, but the Trifecta Pie is pretty darn tasty. I recommend them.
But their website makes me want to chunder.
Take a look at the screenshot below. How many spelling mistakes and other errors can you find in the four sentences? By my count there are five!:
- “favorite” –> favourite
- “savory” –> savoury (x2)
- “flavor” –> flavour
- “aussie” –> Aussie (it’s a proper noun)
They claim to produce “Australian-themed … pies” in Canada, both of which are Commonwealth countries that (for the most part) use British English, not American English! At least the punctuation and grammar are passable. And I’ll give them the capitalisation error; I suppose it looks better from a marketing perspective if the lone word doesn’t clash or cause confusion with the name of their company.
But this website is apparently made by a company that bills themselves with the slogan, “Multi Language Website Design, Development and Translation“! Uh, yeah, sure! I speak French, passably, but I don’t claim that I’m bilingual and market myself as such to paying customers! But if you know my definition of the word “marketing“, you’ll understand.
Aussie Pie Guy website screenshot, 2024-11-16
London Drugs have lost all credibility … and my business
It is ironic, and coincidental, that my last post — six months ago — was about London Drugs, and now it is again!
Anyone who lives in this area knows London Drugs. They’ve been around for decades, almost a century actually. They were a great place to get all sorts of stuff except your meat and vegetables, but especially electronics, foreign (especially British) chocolate bars and candies and (in the old days) get your film developed and photographs printed. But like I said in my last post, NO MORE! I considered my issue with their sub-par passport photos to be a one-off, niche problem that could easily be avoided, and I still planned to (and did) patronise them for other goods. Until yesterday.
Until 2019 I had my drug prescriptions with London Drugs, since they were almost right next door to me, but in that year I moved and there wasn’t a London Drugs near me so I transferred my prescriptions to a nearby Shoppers Drug Mart. Then I moved again, and the situation with the proximity of LD and Shoppers was the same.
Then this year it turned out that Shoppers and Loblaws were mistreating their pharmacists and over-billing the Ontario government. I’m not a big fan of dishonesty, theft and slavery, so I decided that I’d move back to London Drugs, despite the extra drive. Yesterday I went to LD to do just that, and fill a new prescription. After several minutes of the LD employee typing out my biography on her computer, she then informed me that my prescription would be ready in an hour and a half! Excuse me?! Did you say an hour and a half?! At Shoppers I generally have to wait ten minutes, if that, and in that time I usually wander around the store and pick up a chocolate bar or two, so their making me wait for just a few minutes is actually good (ironically) for their business! I don’t expect instant service, but come on, ten minutes isn’t a big deal but ninety minutes is!
So I told this LD employee all of that, and she claimed that the pharmacist was busy and that the best they could do was an hour. So I took back my prescription and said I would return to Shoppers and get it filled there. Which I did, only to have Shoppers — the same Shoppers I’ve been using for the last year and which previously filled prescriptions in ten minutes — tell me it would take half an hour! By this time, of course, I’m done fighting The System for the day, so I said, “Whatever. I’ll probably be back tomorrow, or next week.” I then left.
So I’m still unhappy with SDM, but I’ll look into other alternatives for my next prescription. (I think there’s a Pharmasave in the area.) But now I’m done with London Drugs completely. I even gave away an LD gift card I had until a few minutes ago. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t like to make two trips to accomplish one activity, especially when I’m burning fuel to do so! If all their fucking surveys and consumer focus groups don’t tell them that, then they deserve to go out of business!
This is the problem with reading/watching/listening to the news. If I didn’t, I’d have never known about the Shoppers/Loblaws dishonesty and I’d still be dealing with them.
Here’s more information about the way Loblaws/Shoppers are treating pharmacists and scamming taxpayers, from Wikipedia as of today:
In 2024, Shoppers Drug Mart was criticized for enacting sales quotas on pharmacists for MedsCheck, a government sponsored program in Ontario. MedsCheck reimburses healthcare providers for medication reviews, allowing for a maximum billing of $75 per patient, which led to the profitability of enacting sales targets. CBC News reported that approximately 1.4 million dollars was billed to the province for a week in February 2024. A class action lawsuit was filed against the company in regards to these quotas.
And here’s a full list of Loblaws’ stores — just in case, you know, you thought you should stop doing business with less honest companies — also from Wikipedia:
-
- Dominion Stores
- Extra Foods
- Fortinos
- Freshmart
- Maxi
- No Frills
- No Name
- President’s Choice
- President’s Choice Financial
- Provigo
- Real Atlantic Superstore
- Real Canadian Liquorstore
- Real Canadian Superstore
- Shoppers Drug Mart / Pharmaprix
- SuperValu
- T&T Supermarket
- Valu-mart
- Your Independent Grocer
- Zehrs Markets
And here’s information about a May 2024 boycott of Loblaws, and other Loblaw controversies, including taking millions of dollars from the federal government … while, of course, not lowering prices but continuing to pad executive salaries!