Memo to Macleans: Let's not encourage the naive with university degrees to strive to be minions. It's not cool.

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Macleans has an incredibly naive piece about sacrificial lamb Gerald Butts, who was forced to resign because no one in the Liberal Party knows what the fuck they are doing.

The first piece of nincompoopity comes here:

Until the Globe and Mail’s Bob Fife broke this story, Trudeau looked like he was headed for a fairly easy re-election campaign. With the NDP going nowhere, and Andrew Scheer distracted by Maxime Bernier, things looked pretty good for Trudeau. That is much less certain today, after the resignation of Butts, for two reasons.

Uh, no.

That is not correct. Doug Ford’s majority in left-leaning Ontario is showing an ideological shift. This election was no shoo-in for the last year. We had, for the first time in our history, multiple nations start to target us, and when your nation is a mosaic, those winds blow harder and make a greater impact. The discontent was simmering. The only difference now is that the Middle Class now have a legitimate excuse to use as to why they can not vote for a luxury brand name. Canada has been getting its ass wiped in this global game of Go for a very long time.

But it is this passage that reveals a serious case of childlike innocence:

Secondly, the departure of Butts means that Trudeau will not have him by his side, for the first time in his career.

Opponents and critics liked to mock the relationship, calling Gerald Prime Minister Butts, and suggesting he was the marionette pulling the strings of the empty-headed puppet in the big job. Whatever the truth of their relationship, it has worked pretty well. When they started on this project, Trudeau was the third party critic for amateur sport. He now has a worldwide brand. Everybody knows Butts was a key part of that process, the result of many years of planning and plot hatching. Now he is gone, and he will leave a huge hole.

Are you serious?

Are you really that naive?

Justin Trudeau could have worn a rodeo clown outfit as he advocated public displays of flatulence, and be elected prime minister with no trouble. Canada is a nation run by nepotism, not backroom “operative” drudges. That’s a bullshit story. That’s the bait to lure people into doing the dirty work.

Butts reminds me a lot of Roger Ailes — the Fox News Network’s manservant general who everyone thought was irreplaceable, got replaced, and the FNC runs just fine without him. Butts is a manservant to Trudeau the way Don Hewitt was a manservant to 60 Minutes, and he was easily replaced and the vehicle is still on the air.

People with university degrees have to be bamboozled into doing the dirty work for princes — they are lured, primed, groomed, and broken in as they are talked into running on a hamster wheel until they are thrown under a bus. It is not just university “friends”; many women also get hornswoggled into marrying someone with a name and then doing all the heavy lifting as their “investment” has affairs, and gets to feel cunning when the truth is that all you need is a name with some recognition and people will give you things.

Usually Canada flies under the radar and we can have a collective delusion: a folie en masse, if you will. We vote for little princes and princesses, they recruit their well-educated servants who connive as they run around in circles, getting excited that people know they serve someone whose mommy and daddy opened doors, and then no matter how inept they are or badly they screw up, people will make excuses so they don’t have to put any effort or admit flaw, and we can all pretend we are functional. Yay!

We are like the small town everyone ignores. We can fuck up all we want, no one is going to ask the hard questions.

That was the script and had we not gotten the attention of Donald Trump, Trudeau would have sailed to victory for another two terms.

But the little pantywaist got cocky and tweaked the nose of someone who is a maverick and plays be a different set of rules, and then all bets were off. It was a game of dominos: one tile fell, knocking the others ones, and exposing just what kind of doofuses run this little popsicle stand.

That’s all that happened.

Had Canada not have a PM who made a fool out of himself that many times, no one would have cared about SNC-Lavalin, either.

Oh well, you know how it is. What can you do?

The trouble is the other two candidates are just as clueless. We have no Silver Fox option.

Trudeau represented two things the Zero-Risk Middle Class dig: a luxury brand surname that is a “safe” choice, and the average demeanour and intelligence that doesn’t intimidate and gives people the contradictory hope that maybe one day their kids or grandkids would have what it takes to be a PM, too.

In the US, the person who looks like they would be the most fun at a cocktail party gets to be president.

In Canada, we have different rules. We used to go for the silver foxes, but here came a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to live out a fantasy.

That is turning to be a nightmare.

SNC-Lavalin was the right scandal that came at the perfect time, the way the PM came at the perfect time.

Butts is just collateral damage, and kicking him to the curb isn’t going to change a thing.

It’s the same old game of making people think they are the brightest star in the sky guiding the world to greatness because they are destined to be the secret ones in power in on the joke, when it is just a game of combat with the disposable getting torn to shreds as the joke’s on them…

Fake radio experts? You don't say!

Advertorials are not news. They are advertising made to look like news.

And people still fall for it hook, line, and sinker.

Memo to radio listeners: do not invest your money based on a radio program. The “experts” pay to be there, and they are shilling their services. That the last bunch of grifters used fake names shows you just how outlets do not care.

Not doubling checking the company or the people is on you.

I am serious. Do not invest your money in a sham. Anyone who falls for an advertorial in 2019 has no excuse.

Bullshit sham “committees” looking at “fake news” are gunning at social media — but that they are ignoring legacy media’s role just shows you how rigged and worthless those committees happen to be…

Gerald Butts out: A tabloid headline for the low-class spectacle.

Man, oh man, the first sacrificial lamb has been taken to slaughter.

Gerald Butts is no longer on anyone’s “power list.”

At certain universities, the whole point is not to get educated so much as to find your posse to drag you along through life.

It is the place where minions meet their masters.

You spend your life making people look smart and competent as you do all of the heavy lifting, and then, when the load gets too big, you get kicked to the curb.

I trust there will be some lovely parting gifts for Mr. Butts for being a contestant on Russian Roulette — Ottawa Edition.

Don’t hit yourself on the way out…

Why is there a linear divide in 2019?

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I remember when Mortal Kombat first came out. A friend had it, was pumped, and wanted me to play it because I had been into video games, was very good at it when I was, and at the time, females weren’t being equated with being into the hobby (odd because I knew lots of girls my age who were actively playing it).

I didn’t like the gore. I thought it was overkill. I was really starting to appreciate the Bushido Code at the time, and thought the game was a spit in the face to it. You defeated an opponent; ripping out his head isn’t victory: it’s a serial killer’s MO.

I expressed my displeasure and got called names for my lack of enthusiasm.

I know the 11th edition is coming up. I have been exposed to the tenth version, and to me, it is a ridiculous premise: a character dies with wounds on one side of his face and the characters look sad.

Uh, excuse me? Don’t you people chop up opponents who are allegedly your pals as a course of habit? Including the dead guy?

And if given a chance, parents and children are chopping and tearing each other up and posing for selfies of the carnage.

Seriously?

Voguing after you commit indignity to a human body?

Stomping someone to the ground isn’t brave.

Some video games really taught generations how to function by rote: find a target, develop an antagonistic relationship with them, and then fight them, and then stomp them into the ground.

It explains Twitter. It is Mortal Kombat with words.

I don’t think video games induce violence, but I do believe that reinforce antagonistic dynamics that restrict ideas of cooperation as they reinforce intense and reactionary behaviours.

When I was a kid, I made my own computer games. They were crude, but always involved cooperation among players that involved thinking up very ribald and gross ideas and then turning it into a story where no one knows what the other person wrote until the end. I don’t think a single story did not have someone included some sort of scene involving various bowel movements. Kids are stupid, but always find laughs somewhere.

The stories were immature and obnoxious, but were great for laughs.

I did play Impossible Mission, and it did scare the shit right out of me when the little pixel guy screamed as he fell to his doom. My mom always knew I was playing that game by my facial expression of doom.

I managed to beat the game even though I never had actual game play instructions. You didn’t fight anyone: you dodged robots as you gathered clues to stop the evil scientist from taking over the world, muah ha ha and all that jazz.

I lost interest for games fairly early, though I did like the early online Escape the Room games where people from around the world would play it when it was release and cooperate with each other to solve it.

That I liked very much.

I always wondered why we don’t foster cooperation without creating pecking orders. Mutually beneficial outcomes while respecting others is the optimal solution, and yet people are always scheming how they can do a jig after destroying everyone else around them.

With Arc I, I am going to start questioning our base societal assumptions. I will be asking why we cannot let facts speak for themselves.

It’s a simple base, but one with more promise than the partisan guff we have conditioned ourselves to put up with for no good reason at all…

Coming soon...

Arc I of Chaser.

Writing it is taking a little longer than expected and reading through one piece of muck is maddeningly slow, but it is almost there.

At least I finally got to do Cavewoman Graffiti again…

Cavewoman Graffiti: How do politicians swear?

Do you know your profanity Shibboleths?

Cavewoman Graffiti: Welcome to Ottawa...

Cavewoman always shares her honest impulses, especially to those who don’t want it!

Memo to the Globe and Mail: "What happened to our ‘feminist’ Prime Minister?" We never had one.

Silly, silly questions.

The Globe and Mail has a column that seriously asks this question as a headline:

What happened to our ‘feminist’ Prime Minister?

SIllies, we never had one.

This is what privileged boys say to the gullible girlies to get what they want.

They will whisper all sorts of a sweet nothings in your ear, and then, once they get the goodies, behave the way they really do as they openly disrespect you and blame you for being naive. The second a certain cabinet minister stepped out of his line, she was kicked to the curb and brandished as being “difficult.”

But if you were real feminists yourselves, you would have seen the glaring warning signs a hundred miles away.

Even in the article, the blaring warning sign was there, and the columnist still doesn’t see the significance of the statement I underlined:

In September 2017 I was in the audience at the Women in the World Summit in Toronto, and listened to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talk about his feminist bona fides. Well, first we had to watch a video – many clips set to a pumping rock score – on that subject.

…Then he made a very interesting point about how it was relatively easy to recruit women into politics, compared with keeping them there, which he called “a challenge around retention.” Women would be elected, he said, and after a couple of years wonder if this business was really for them, “because of the nastiness, because of the negativity.”

What? Are the womenfolk so weak and feeble they can’t take the heat and we need a man person to make it all nice and comfy for us? We needed Justy to give us all pats on the head and lollipops and balloons?

And you didn’t call him out right then and there? That’s as misogynistic as it gets.

Y’all are so hopelessly oblivious and naive, it’s too funny…

Toronto Star nincompoopity continues. Children, grow up.

I am still laughing at this stupid article from the knuckle-draggers of the Toronto Star:

Why experts say Canada should follow Australia’s lead on China in wake of Huawei crisis

Yay, experts. They are never wrong, so you can’t question this bullshit. I like this attempt at shutting down debate:

Canada should not be afraid to follow Australia’s lead in standing up to Beijing in policy and practice, say experts who have analyzed foreign relations for decades.

Ottawa has long prioritized economic gain over national security, worrying over the state of its relationship with the global heavyweight rather than voicing and defending its interests, say analysts.

They have analyzed things for decades, so you can’t question the big gaping holes in this article.

Nice try, but there are so many things wrong with this bullshit story that I could write a book on it.

For starters, Canada is not Australia. We cannot just blindly follow someone else’s playbook and expect the same results. If a single “expert” is making that decree, take away their credentials. They are morons.

Australia has its own problems right now, and they stem from their unpopular policies at home and abroad. Canada doesn’t need more luggage.

And the worst of this article is its Middle Class mindset that it is all about tweaking the nose of other nations to “slap back” at them — and that everything will work out in the end.

You don’t know that, and neither do your experts.

For example, you do not know what dirt China has on the Canadian government or its players. You don’t know what China owns here or what the contracts say are penalties. Australia may be in a better position than Canada and can afford to do what they do.

And you do not know what’s actually going on between Australia and China — you do not know what backroom concessions the Aussies had to give in order to save face publicly. That is not something “experts” would know. That is something insiders would, however.

You keep quoting the arm’s lengths people, who cannot tell you anything that is useful — just the façade of it.

Canada has to solve its own problems actively and originally, not crib from other regimes. That requires being creative and not stealing playbooks from other countries and appealing to authority.

If governing were that easy, then we wouldn’t be having the big problems we are having now…

The Internet as Disruptor, Part One: Princes, Princesses, and their failure to compute the battlefield.

I always said that politicians should be drafted, not elected. If you want to be a politician, you shouldn’t be one. The ideal politician is one who is weeping as they are being dragged kicking and screaming to the highest level of office because they are too smart to run in the first place.

And it would shut up the Troll Scroll and the armchair bullshitters because they picked that person in the first place. It would be on them.

It would force people to be informed. There would be no passively marking an X on the ballot and expecting some They to give them goodies. Decide what is the most pressing issue, hold a referendum, and the sky is the limit of which citizens can be leader for a fixed term, but once they are in, what they say goes. No sass, no lip. Referenda for other issues, but the directional issues are entirely up to the one conscripted for the job, and once that job is done, they are honourably discharged and the next kicker and screamer is dragged up that hill.

When people ask me why I don’t get excited over politics, I point out we have a rigged system that favours the same kind of people. It is a never-ending rerun.

And in Canada, the people who run are bolstered by nepotism. We just recycle the names.

And there is a chasm between the roles of nepotistic politicians that few even see, let alone be able to make the leap.

Maclean’s has an interesting take on the Jody Wilson-Raybould-Justin Trudeau slapfest that is very instructive.

The problem is both see themselves as a prince and princess, when the second they won the election, their roles radically changed.

When you win an election, you are on a chessboard. You are no longer a prince or princess. You may be a queen to your roots, but when you enter cabinet, you check your tiara at the door because you serve a bigger purpose.

Both forgot to check their tiara at the door.

Trudeau was elected prime minister, and he ascended from prince to king. That position is carved in stone, and that means you have to think like a king in battle. Not Buckingham Palace tourist attraction kind of king, but a king who has to think in terms of strategy and get the job done without making the Middle Class jittery because they are of a Zero Risk Mindset.

But Wilson-Raybould wasn’t in the queen position on the chess board. That was reserved for Chrystia Freeland, and at least she comprehends it as she follows order dutifully on behest of the king, never rocking the boat as she clumsily struts beside him giving him goo-goo eye stares. Her tenure is crap, but she knows she is on a chess board and moves as such.

Raybould was a knight on this board, not a princess. There are no princesses on a chess board. She was to fight on the king’s orders without hesitation. A knight doesn’t pick and choose her battles, merely her weapons and her strategy.

In that, she was woefully miscast, given the parameters. She had no clue she was on a chess board until she was demoted to mere pawn.

And then she snapped out her slumber and turned on the king with a series of very strategic moves the king never saw coming and was spectacularly blindsided, proving she is a highly proficient chess player when unleashed. He picked his chess pieces based on virtue-signalling and optics, and then did nothing to ready the board to battle a specific target because the cabinet was very Justin-centric and all about making him look good like a tourist attraction prince charming.

Because he had no idea he was on a chess board. He had no idea who his chess pieces were, what their reality interpretations were before being elected, and how to re-align those perceptions to fall into place.

If he were a capable strategist, he could have easily kept Wison-Raybould in her position, but used a vastly different strategy. She was no problem before the clash. She is obviously capable. The fault lies with the king who didn’t know his place, and hence, misaligned the board.

Part of the reason is that luxury brand names don’t make good leaders. They are always protected and shielded. Very few are thrown into a gladiator’s arena and made to fight for real. It’s a pity Wilson-Raybould’s talents were misused in cabinet. She can fight politically, and should have had Freeland’s post instead, and should have. USMCA would have been a better deal if we had someone not afraid to outmanoeuvre a world leader.

But the climate has changed where these kinds of gaffes are more common. Once upon a time, you would never had a regime this oblivious, and certainly not this soon. Canada thrives when it flies under the radar, but with the Internet giving the world free attention, when you have a prince used to getting all of it, he can get competitive and start focussing on too many selfies, not realizing how patently worthless they are as political currency.

The Internet has too many distractions, and is a warehouse of endless and worthless complaints. It has devalued criticism to the point of becoming mere noise, and devalued accolades to the point of creating ennui.

Princes are used to getting attention, and will even run for highest political office to get it. The problem is, if not properly groomed, they still keep thinking they are princes. It is just a paper crown, and an illusion.

And the Internet is the incubator of infinite illusions that turn into traps for people to fall into. Most do not have lofty positions where it actually matters.

But once you step on a chess board, you have to watch every step — and king’s must make as few as possible if they don’t wish to be checkmated, and the current king is two steps away from it…

No one is more expendable than a person in power.

Those paper crowns come with a string attached to the bottom of a bus.

Power and control are hypothetical constructs — illusions. People higher up the food chain are more expendable than the ones below.

Jody Wilson-Raybould tried to exert some control, and lost her place, and then got slagged by the PM who should be very careful of the example he is making. He still has his minions melodramatically trying to deflect criticism by crying witch hunt, but the ship has holes and it is slowly sinking.

Power? What is power? Maclean’s had a list in 2014 about powerful people in Canada — and some on that list are no longer powerful, such as Kathleen Wynne or Stephen Harper.

And Kathleen Wynne’s power was not only taken away — but many of the policies she pushed through were thrown under the bus right along with her.

The illusion of power tempts the wrong kind of people who think it is all about lording over people with impunity, and then destroying them into oblivion should they stand their ground.

And then, they are shown that they are expendable just like the rest.

World leaders are expendable. So are billionaires. Both more so than average citizens because both are dependent on average citizens for their very survival.

Five ethics inquiries? Trudeau’s regime has been sent to the principal’s office a lot. Two wins, two losses. He is starting to look like a schoolyard bully.

The US President marketed himself as the bad boy maverick, and his base expects no less. Trudeau did not, and that is a problem for him. He cannot live up to his own book of rules, and his miscalculations are giving his detractors an Alinskian advantage.

And worst of all, he is throwing allies under the bus — John McCallum and now Jody Wilson-Raybould. He is getting a little too close to the bus, and should be careful before he ends up having done to him what he is doing to others in his own inner circle…

Okay, class, name twelve things Justin Trudeau did wrong: How not to handle a scandal.

This latest nightmare for the Prime Minister is still news in another work week. This should have been fluffed off by now.

The big tactical errors coming from the Jive Turkey are amateur errors. Do not say that a demoted minister is in agreement with you because she is still in cabinet because you have just given her a prime opportunity to upstage you by resigning. Don’t be a nerd.

And the long non-denial denials. Good gracious, if there was nothing amiss, you would have said it right away.

And now your Big Meany press conference trying to paint a wronged minister as a duplicitous villain. If the PM didn’t look guilty before, this last hot mess pretty much blares the opposite.

He is acting like a jilted boyfriend who pretends to be nice about it, until people find out why it happened, and then he gets nasty. How dare she?

She dared, all right, and not everyone is buying the excuses from the PM. She put up and shut up long enough. The trolls at the Toronto Star keep wondering why she didn’t resign or speak out, but it is not a stretch to say that you will endure a lot when you are the groundbreaker until you see the ground you are breaking is filled with toxic waste and you have to cut your losses and leave.

Like Jeff Bezos, the Prime Minister’s own narcissistic insistence of trying to control everything in the optics department is backfiring on him. This scandal has legs because he keeps walking it in circles. In the public eye you have various phases: the breakout honeymoon phase, the positive press phase, and then when you screw up, the give him the benefit of the doubt phase.

When you go one step more, you are entering negative territory. Mark Zuckerberg found this out the hard way. The script doesn’t deviate. The more goodwill you send, the faster you accelerate into negative territory. You will never go back to the honeymoon phase, and you cannot manipulate 7.4 billion people.

But arrogance compels former media darlings into trying to punish the naysayers. It doesn’t work. It is like kicking the car that you drove into a bad neighbourhood. Asshole, you drove it there yourself. Hitting the car won’t make it turn around.

You can take so many hits before you run out of goodwill.

Goodwill is a precious resource and gift. You may have been conniving enough to take it from people, but once it is not appreciated, you are in serious trouble. You can always make a comeback, but that requires contrition, making serious concessions, admitting wrongdoing, and understanding the nature of the dynamic has changed.

Trudeau is stepping in so many piles of horse dung it truly is shocking. The sins keep piling up, and he has taken responsibility for none of them.

October should be a very interesting month, indeed…

Microsoft's Backdoor Big Brother Censorship Scheme: Newsguard as Meta-Propaganda.

Microsoft wants to get into the propaganda game.

Newsguard is meta-propaganda. That is the only apt term to describe it. What “approves” is based on non-empirical methods; so it is pure garbage.

And now they want to filter the news for you.

I don’t need Big Brother nannying me. It is far better to be media-savvy and see that none of the players left or right have a clue, than let a corporation meddle in your knowledge-base.

It won’t work, of course, because it has the same lockstep ideology as Facebook, and we can see how well they did playing the same propagandist’s game…

A bad deal for content providers? Now news outlets are feeling what their journalists felt all along from them.

Apple wants half the profits from subscriptions and media outlets are howling.

Bwah ha ha!

It is perfectly all right to give your content providers a bad deal. When databases first came out, writers didn’t see a single cent if their work was purchased via a database. You don’t get paid by the number of hits or reprints. It is a flat fee.

And now Apple is doing to media outlets what they did to their content providers.

The middle man is fuming, but shed no tears. Content providers also get the shaft, and this is now spreading higher up the food chain.

Look at Vice Media: this is a property that got Canadian funding, and yet has its overlord worth a pretty penny that he gambles away.

No one ever thinks to take a closer look at what’s going on there.

The structure is corrupt. That’s why nothing is working. Apple won’t save journalism, and Netflix is not a viable platform. Rot upon rot, and all we have to show for it is whining…

First Julie Payette, now Jody Wilson-Raybould: Slag the Female as a political tool.

When Julie Payette was slagged in the pages of the National Post, you knew that she was behaving according to what her overlord thought she should, and then employed journalists to chasten her.

She was difficult! She is in for herself! Really, she is just not a nice person, and poor us for having to put up with the likes of her.

And we see the same playbook used for Jody Wilson-Raybould.

The Canadian Press was employed this time to do the public shaming:

Several Liberals approached Friday said they were confident the story came from Wilson-Raybould herself.

“She’s always sort of been in it for herself,” said one insider who didn’t want to be identified. “It’s never been about the government or the cabinet. Everything is very Jody-centric.”

Not a team player. Not a good girl.

Here she is, just an average schmuck, who got a visit from the political fairy godmother, and gave her a posh cabinet post, and then, she let it all go to her head and gave Prince Charming sass and lip, and she just ruined the Sunny Ways Narrative! How dare she?

Yeah, imagine that. A woman with her own convictions and stands by them.

I thought the hatchet job on Payette was calculated. I have the same thoughts on Wilson-Raybould.

Mind you, I do think there is some misunderstanding of the political process going on: people think a cabinet minister has autonomy: sure, just so long as you do whatever the reigning PM dictates you do. You get marching orders along with your paper crown or plastic tiara, and you march.

It is the reason I don’t get giddy over politics. It has always been about optics. Those optics are there to placate the Middle Class who think fairytales are reality and they can ignore how they are being played because some They is looking after them.

Now that the curtain has been lifted, it is making people very uncomfortable, and the more the PM tries to spin this, the worse it becomes. I seriously doubt this will be the only scandal to smack the Grits before October…

Memo to Macleans: It's not journalism if you tell people when it is too late.

How worthless is Canadian broadcast news?

Every motherfucking newscast on every single motherfucking channel started with the Oh, wow! It is snowing! non-story.

Yeah, asshole, no shit. I can look out the window or go outside and I figure it all by myself. That’s not news.

That the federal Grits have been caught with their pants down didn’t really register at all. There is no excuse for it.

But then comes a long and rambling piece in Macleans that is very instructive to the mindset of Canadian journalism.

It finally gets around to talking about this piece of legislation that has already passed June 21, 2018.

It made no headlines, and now that SNC-Lavalin is in the hot seat, now everything thinks about it.

This should have been news long before it was made into law: as in, who lobbied for it, for starters.

But no one was really paying attention at the time because everyone was too busy tweaking Trump’s nose to see the bigger picture.

They were too busy defending the Prime Minister and helping him along with the optics instead of ignoring the optics and looking at what is actually happening.

Now, the damage is done. Stop telling bedtime stories to the Middle Class because that’s why they think everything will work out in the end by some They who will save the day.

And that’s why we have predatory laws and an entire provincial economies dependent on corrupt companies — and people howling when things implode.

You cannot bank on a House of Cards.

Now, things are out of hand.

But Canadian journalists are too busy giving free publicity to feel-good slacktivism.

Who the hell cares besides their parents? That is a cheap and easy no-brainer. (And memo to CBC: That’s not “news for kids”: this is press releases geared at children to help Corporate America sucker in the next generation of empty-heads. Shame on you for being so willfully deceptive).

Canada has serious problems all simmering and waiting to explode on cue. That’s more than obvious now, but there is one thing in the Maclean’s piece that is true:

No, this country doesn’t innovate. It willfully ignores innovators hoping not to rock the boat because everything is so rotten, one innovation can be compared the rest and then it all hits the fan.

Journalism cribs and steals, and then wonders why it implodes.

Stop picking political sides, for starters. They are all the same. Stop pretending being on the Left is more enlightened. The hell it is. People don’t believe in God they way they used to, and now the predators took a new mask to wear.

Radical centrism is the method of seeing the rot on the left and right, above and below, and it is way past time to stop pretending and playing along with those who cannot function unless they do harm to others as they take the spoils all to themselves…

Washington Post discovers asset-squeezer strategy. Regular readers here must be laughing themselves silly.

The Washington Post has a huge conflict-of-interest in this whole Jeff Bezos dick pic escapade, but let’s take a look at this laughable article they spewed:

Yes, children, this is something I have been talking about for a long time because this practice has been going on in journalism for a very long time.

I saw when I was a journalist covering the newspaper industry in the late 1990s, early Aughts.

Hedge Funds are doing it now, but this is nothing new. Hollinger did the same thing: buy up newspapers, squeeze the assets as jobs were slashed, but not professional asset-squeezers are doing it.

Why?

Because that is the only way you can make a newspaper profitable. You buy a newspaper. You let go of the staff who aren’t pulling in new sources of revenue. You sell the printing presses. You contract out the printing. You sell the real estate because developers are hungering from prime location. You squeeze the assets until there is nothing more to squeeze at your threshold level.

If there are B-list pickings, sell to another asset-squeezer. If not, you close down the property.

These are professional vultures, and vultures do not bother with living properties. They look for dead ones.

The Post isn’t very hip to the world, my friends, because it’s been mused here for ages…

This website was referenced by Rolling Stone...

Sheesh, of things, Tony Clement’s dick pic scandal.

Send in the clowns…

Jody Wilson-Raybould resigns from Cabinet. The Wild Ride continues.

She excuses herself from Cabinet, lawyers up with a top gun, and that is a very interesting turn.

The Ethics Commissioner is started to nose in this affair just before, and while the Prime Minister tries to back away from the stench, either way, his leadership is shoddy: you either were a leader a screwed up, or you lied and pretended you were a leader. Can’t have it both ways.

Is the treatment of Wilson-Raybould racist and sexist? Yes, it is, but politics is an ugly beast that will lure you will promises that it is neither. Sooner or later, that reality has to click in.

The decay of this regime has picked up speed and reminds me of Brian Mulroney’s final lap as PM. It is shocking how much sooner these little eruptions have been having for the Grits…

Here we go again...

More job losses in journalism courtesy of GateHouse Media, but you have to love this fantasy-spin:

Local newspaper giant GateHouse Media has quietly been laying off reporters and photographers across its publications, according to reports, journalists' testimony online, and sources close to the layoffs.

Quietly? All you ever do is scream and announce every job loss you have. There is no “quietly.” It is as if democracy has imploded every time a journalist loses a job in a dead profession.

GateHouse doesn’t need to put a press release out and have touching tributes as they are handing out redundancy papers. You aren’t all that. You can write a thousand articles about this and it will not change reality.

Deal with it…