Doom and gloom

The American election is over.  What the hell happened??

Hindsight is often 20/20.  Here's my take on it.

Kamala came out of the gates to great fanfare.  Biden made it clear in the debate that he's in no condition to lead the U.S. for a second term.  If it were more clear that he wasn't running for re-election, perhaps the selection process could have been more concise.  Harris was basically coronated upon Biden's stepping down.  Now we're left wondering if Biden was right all along... could only he have defeated Trump?

Harris didn't have ample time to really mount an effective campaign.  Here's the ugly truth:  The very people Trump threatened all of his campaign to deport voted him into power.  Hispanic voters put him way over the top.  There was no shortage of black voters for him either.  I really hope that Muslim voters for Trump survive this, because they need to see what they've done to themselves.  And that's IF they get to stay.  And IF they survive the hate that's about to swarm their existences.

And here's my takeaway from the whole ugly situation - this election was all about estrogen vs testosterone.  On Kamala's side, you had the "swifties" (that's a small 'S' on purpose there), Beyonce fans, movie stars, and countless celebrities vouching for her.  On Trump's side, you had your Dr. Phils, Kid Rocks, Dana Whites and Joe Rogans.  The fact of the matter is this:  America is not ready for a female leader.  They should be, but they are not.  They are not evolved enough.  Neither is Canada, for that matter.

Rogan has a massive, massive audience, rife with machoism and alpha-male delusion.  Trump's campaign was a counter to Kamala's women-can-do-it-better appearance which very much upset the egos of the right.  She went on Fox and basically did the job, but she skipped Rogan, who fully endorsed Trump upon his interview with him.  Not being on Rogan may have been the tipping point.  She was fully capable of handling herself, so her decision not to appear on the podcast is a puzzling one, especially in retrospect.

Looking back, not giving Gavin Newsom, governor of one of the world's biggest economies (California), should have been given much more serious consideration.  Instead, he wasn't given any.  The fact that he's a man evidently would've given the Dems more of a chance.  One must wonder how different this outcome would have been had Newsom been in Harris' place.  The short-sightedness of Trump voters is staggering.  The dirt poor actually helped billionaires elect a faux-billionaire into power... again.  The entire rest of the free world sees what a threat he is to the world's democracy factions, steadily being whittled down by the far right.  

The ramifications of the results of this election are going to be felt for many, many years.  Ukraine will now be forced to surrender to Russia, who will then proceed to invade more European territories in its bid to re-establish the Soviet Union.  Trump will stand idly by while this happens.  Tariffs will be erected and crush taxpayers.  All the criminals responsible for the Jan. 6 debacle will be freed.  White supremacist groups will be empowered.  Jobs will be lost.  The poor will remain poor, and perhaps become more so.  Lumber trade in Canada will be choked by Trump's protectionism.  NATO will once again be bullied by him, and will return to its weak pre-Biden stature.  Under Biden, NATO was never stronger.  That will change.  By the way... Trump has said outwardly that he would not support a country that doesn't pay the full 2% of its GDP on the agreement.  Canada pays around 1.6%.  Also... after Alaska, Russia is right next door to us.  Literally.

The FDA is toast.

Reproductive freedom, at best, will be state by state in its acceptance.  Trump himself may cause abortion rights to be completely eliminated.  If your crazy uncle raped your 12 year old daughter, too bad for her.  Miscarriage?  You might get charged and even go to jail.  Gilead is upon us.  

The Dems gambled on reproductive freedom being the sole issue for voters, basically ignoring the male electorate.  That's what a lot of it comes down to.... Trump catered to the men, Harris to the women.  Somehow, he managed to convince more men than Harris did women.

Elon Musk will get carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants with the aerospace industry, including militarization, and also including colluding with Putin, which has already been happening anyway on a regular basis.  The U.S. will become Russia.  If Trump dies, J.D. Vance will take his place, which could be far worse.  Don't count this out from happening.  Trump is 78 and unhealthy.  Upon this happening, you may see Vice President Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Don't laugh or shrug.  There's a real chance of this coming true.

And what's the next January 6 going to entail?  Will the Dems peacefully hand over power?  They must.  Not to do so would undermine what the party is all about to begin with.  Biden appointed Merrick Garland to AG with confidence he would resolve the legal matters regarding the attempted coup in 2020.  Garland dragged his feet the entire way, only hiring special counsel Jack Smith near the homestretch of the election.  Smith didn't have ample time or resources to get the job done, as much as he wanted to get it done, and even with a real measure of urgency.  But the Supreme Court is already stacked in Trump's favor.  And the 6-3 republican ruled judges have Trump's back if worse comes to worse and he actually was looking like he had to resort to it.  I've said for years that Garland is in Trump's pocket.  I still think he is.

Trump is to be sentenced later this month for his 34 felonies.  He can pardon himself when he takes office.  He will get away with everything.  Everything.  Tell me, "pro-lifers", is it worth it?  Because abortion will not be wiped out.  Only legal abortion will.  Support for newborns is the ideal anti-abortion strategy.  Quell the fear of what's to come for expecting mothers.  Don't fucking threaten them with jail time.  And stop giving excuses to deadbeat dads.

So long to Obamacare.  Trump's "concepts of a plan" will take good care of you, I'm sure.

Brace for more heartless deportations and more kids in cages, being separated from their families, likely permanently.

Oh, and one more before I go.... the next pandemic, if it happens with the Orange Turd in power like last time, will be an even bigger shitbowl than Covid-19.  A potential Covid-20 may just be unrecoverable.  And Robert Kennedy Jr. will see to it.

We'll be watching that meth lab underneath us and watch what they're cooking. 

Because Pierre Poilievre, whose campaign is being run by actual Trumpers, is next here.

May the God you believe in help us all.

The God I worship is super-clearly not the same God pop culture wants us to believe.

I pray now for awakening.  For hope.  Not to sleep.... but to be WOKE.  Yes, I said it, and I mean it.  Either wake up, or deal with it.

Peace and love to everyone.  

And I so, so very much want to be wrong about just about everything here.

Observations: Off the Top of My Head

"Oppenheimer" is out in three weeks from the time I write this.  Really looking forward to it.  Might need a 'Stadium Buddy' piss bag, though, clocking in at over three hours long.  Still, it's gonna be worth it, especially in IMAX, which is Chris Nolan's specialty.  He actually had new film invented for the black and white version of IMAX to make this.  This will be... ahem... Explosive.

So.... "The Flash" movie bombed (no pun intended relating to the previous paragraph) in theatres in a pretty big and loud way.  I was counting on it being the blockbuster of the year, judging by all the hype.  Then I thought, there's likely a lot of people like me who are being choosey about the movies they go to because it's so friggin' expensive, right?  Plus, everything's out on streaming almost immediately afterwards, so if you're so-so on seeing a movie, wait a bit and it'll be on TV soon enough.  That's not good for the movie business at all.  And don't get me started on streaming... it's a bubble that's got to burst at some point, with there being way, way, WAY too many streamers on the market right now.  No one can afford all of them.  Although, Warner/Discovery, formerly HBO/Max (maybe they still are, they can't seem to make clear what they want to be called), quite possibly is going to sell a lot of their stuff to Netflix in the coming weeks.  This may signal co-operation with streaming outfits to share their product and make it more affordable to the masses.  Though I doubt it.  Big corporations rarely have the interests of affordability to the public in mind.

"Star Trek: Prodigy" has been canceled by Paramount.  To the surprise of countless Star Trek fans... of which I'm not one.  Not surprised, that is.  It's fine that you can make cartoons for just about anything these days, but don't expect everyone who watches live-action content to join the cartoon ride.  I don't know how "Lower Decks" stays on the air, either.  When "Picard" season 3 came out, and Trek fans watched it in droves - being the first Trek show to crack the streaming top 10 - to me, it said a lot.  The first Trek to crack the streaming top 10??  So "Discovery" must not have.  Or "Strange New Worlds".  The former fizzled out for me with season 4 (season 5 will be its last), and the jury's still out on the latter.  But familiarity should not be dismissed by Paramount, with Picard season 3 bringing back a lot of fan favorites and more concise storytelling.  My suspicion is that "Discovery" is on its last season because of ratings, though it hasn't been publicly said.  Honestly, it's a bit hard for me to believe in a show that's set around the 32nd century. 

Cutting the cord... something a lot of folks are doing lately; that is, getting rid of cable TV in favor of streaming and internet.  I have a problem with that, though, being that I like live stuff like the news.  I don't quite know what the best thing to do is just yet, especially considering options of a grand total of two cable companies in my area of the country.  I do like CBC Newsnet, but I won't watch CTV's new channel or the main network, because I simply don't like how they're treating people who work for them.  I like MSNBC a lot, namely Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow and a few others, but cripes, there has to be more going on in the world besides Trump and SCOTUS and Roe v Wade.  And CNN is just awful now.  I mean, they go and have Trump on their channel for a live town hall without rebuffing him on all his lies, get a big backlash about it, then Anderson Cooper comes on and says "people should get out of their silos" and listen to others??  Others like a wannabe dictator who failed at a coup of your country that you just gave free time to, to support a re-election bid?  Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?

Here in Canada, the Competition Bureau is finally getting off their asses and looking to diversify the grocery stores in the country, after Loblaws and Sobeys basically claimed ownership of everything, including corner stores.  But I feel it may be way too little, way too late.  But while they're at it, why not go after big telecom?  Bell and Rogers basically sucked up all the smaller tech and tel companies over the last number of decades without a peep from our governments, Liberal and Conservative alike, though the Liberals have their hands filthy dirty with basically giving millions upon millions to Loblaws for 'efficient fridges and freezers'.  And inflation is being driven right now by high food costs while giants like the aforementioned are raking in record profits.  Overall inflation is actually coming down -- so why are our food prices increasing?  Canada has one of the very best economies in the G7.  There is no excuse to let these grocery scalpers get away with ripping us off like this.

Ah, my beloved Boston Red Sox... they make it hard to be a fan these days.  Just this morning I read that owner John Henry is being accused of not giving a rat's ass about his team by paying all his attention to everything else.  If you don't want to support the team and its fans, sell it!  This year's team hearkens back to the dreadful '12 season when Valentine was coach.  And what a disaster that was.

Russia is quite a ball of wax these days.  The Wagner Group goes to Ukraine, gets their asses kicked, then goes back to Russia and kicks their own asses.  Pooty Poot feels threatened and gets help from the wannabe strongman in Belarus to get the Waggies out of Russia, only to get the Waggies' leader to be exiled to Belarus.  Buddy, stay away from tall buildings and open windows.  Better yet, park yourself by one.  And bring that bloodthirsty coward Putin with you on the way down.  The world is waiting to see what's going to happen to Russia in the coming weeks.  It's looking like Trump's golden parachute to Moscow isn't going to open anymore, doesn't it?

I've been reading this book in the last week or so, called "Them" by Whitley Strieber.  What an incredibly fascinating read.  I'm just about through it; the first part of the book talks about Strieber's experiences from his late 80's book "Communion" and the avalanche of letters he and his wife got from folks who had remarkably similar experiences with 'visitor abduction' and encounters.  He picked some prominent ones, and attempted to decipher what they mean, some of which he only realized after he thought about them for some years.  It's an incredibly descriptive, informative hypotheses on the stories that were brought to him that he brings much light and thought to that really makes you question the nature of everything around us, quite frankly.  His attempts to decode the nature of the visitations is quite remarkable.  And he doesn't just pull stuff out of his ass for facts... he has actual documented evidence, facts and files to supplement his findings.  I think it's something everyone could read and get something out of, and a lot of what he talks about could come into play in the coming years, for better and worse both.

Canada is on fire.  Not in a good, metaphorical way, either.  This reminds me of the rampant fires that happened in Australia not all that long ago.  This is not good.  Every spring when summer approaches, I get worried now, because every summer seems to be getting worse and worse, re: the effects climate change is having on our country.  New Brunswick, where I live, had some serious fire issues, but it was terrible in Nova Scotia, where numerous evacuations happened because of out of control blazes.  Now in Quebec, it's nuts.  They can't get a handle on the fires there at all, and countries from around the world have come to help.  The west is no better.  This is a record breaking year for forest fires in this country, and we're only halfway through the season.  I'm not optimistic about the future.

Anyway, one way to make the future better is to be kind, understanding and tolerant of each other.  As I try to be just this way, I hope you will too.

Take care, friends.

Let the good times roll

Here in my province of New Brunswick, Canada, there were recently two deaths of indigenous people at the hands of the police.  Black Lives Matter is to the U.S. what MMIW (Missing Murdered Indigenous Women) is to Canada, although to be sure, indigenous men are also on the shitty end of the police baton.  I'm pretty disgusted with how our governments (read: plural) have handled the whole mess that has existed at least as long as Canada has.  But wait.... there's more!

A Canadian federal election is surely coming soon enough, since right now we have a minority Liberal government heading up the country.  The carelessness of Justin Trudeau on how he handles certain matters is freakishly startling to me.  And I'm a liberal.  Note... liberal with a small 'l', not of the Liberal Party.  The Conservatives scare me a lot more than any Liberal government ever did, especially since they wiped the 'Progressive' out of their title.  That ought to make people think right there.  But the Liberals aren't a hell of a lot more progressive, either.  I remember the last federal election where JT's 'Sunny Ways' movement was inspiring people to get away from the backwards disaster that was the Harper regime, but now it all just looks like a facade.  Harper can be somewhat forgiven for a tanking federal deficit because of the stock market crash in the late '00s, but the oft-proclaimed 'genius economist' didn't see the crash coming when it was creeping right up his nose.  In the meantime, he put all of Canada's economic eggs in one basket with the tar sands (I refuse to say 'oil sands' because that shit's much dirtier), and we fell down the rabbit hole of painful recovery that cost us our accumulating EI funds and countless social programs that hurt everyone from the poor and middle class to our tearful veterans, not to mention Canada's reputation worldwide as a nation that actually cares.  Give JT props for raising Canada's reputation back up worldwide, but here at home, he's looking more and more like a bumbling fool who, unfortunately, is making the Cons look like they were right when they proclaimed he's 'just not ready' to be the nation's leader.  He isn't.  And he wasn't.  "WE" certainly see that now.

Whenever there's a crisis where he has to defend one of his big mistakes, he either gets 'mommy' Chrystia Freeland to fight his battles for him (who, in my mind, ought to actually be the country's PM), or he throws gargantuan amounts of dollars at it.  It's what he did for the MMIW issue, which yielded absolutely nothing.  The Phoenix payroll debacle, while not born on his watch, just got worse and worse, with the sounds of ka-ching ka-ching echoing in the foreground of finance minister Bill Morneau's disastrous remedying of its mounting issues.  Money to fight these kinds of issues is fine, if it's spent responsibly, and with intelligence, none of which seems to ever happen with this government. 

I'll give them props for a few things, like managing the COVID crisis and helping keep Canadians safe, especially in comparison to our next door neighbours.  But every damn time I see JT on television, he's dishing out more billions with no plan to recover.  The recent 'economic snapshot' was just a joke, looking to me like a brief moment in time before things get worse and they have to admit the numbers are going into freefall.  Let's make no mistake... recovery isn't going to be easy.  It isn't meant to be.  Anyone knows the more money you borrow, the longer it takes to pay it back.  Canada will not be out of its current debt in my lifetime, or yours, regardless of how old you are.  Let's just be real.

But if we're going to climb out of this seemingly endless well of deficit, the country needs to take bold and dramatic steps to make it happen.  If COVID has done anything positive, it's forced us to re-think the world's economic model in the age of the ticking time bomb that is climate change.  There is a sect out there that is addicted to oil, and like any addiction, there are going to be withdrawal symptoms, but getting off of it won't kill us.  Staying on it WILL.  But again, like any addiction, once we are off of it, we'll be so much healthier and our outlook so much more promising.  Any scientist will vouch for this, also.

America's Joe Biden's recent media address left me feeling a hell of a lot more hopeful for the future than anything I've heard from any world leader in ages.  He wants his nation to get off oil by the middle of next decade, and he acknowledges that it won't be easy, but the rewards are endless.  Millions upon millions of jobs can be created through renewable energies and innovation, eliminating the need for pollution-spitting, humanity-killing fossil fuels, concurrently giving our very planet a shot at a future with humans on it.  And let's face it; if humanity destroys itself with its greed and lust for power via fossil fuels, planet earth will breathe a sigh of relief for itself.  It will continue on prosperously without us.  So why not feed the earth instead of starving and torturing it? 

The Liberals touted themselves as champions of the environment for many years now, only to buckle to pressure from oil tycoons and petrol-rich provinces.  I sympathize with Alberta.  It's all they've ever known.  They've quite literally fed Canada for decades with the riches that come from its finite reserves of fossil fuels.  We owe them!  Let's face that.  They're literally lashing out at the rest of the country for being thankless for helping build Canada through its history, only to be virtually shit on for doing just that with the means by which they've been doing it.  The best thank-you we can give Alberta is to make them one of the country's top priorities in sustainability through renewables.  But the Liberals have all but ignored that idea.  The Greens, on the other hand, recognize what needs to be done, and have laid out a plan for that for years.  I realize there's next to no support for the Green Party in Alberta, but thankfully, the feelings aren't mutual. 

Even Jagmeet Singh and the NDP have been borrowing from the Greens' agenda by pledging to modernize Canada's energy sector.  Hell, even the Bloc has a smarter look at the future of energy and environmental concerns than the Conservatives do.  While I don't ever want to see some kind of 'Unite the Left' movement like the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform Party (if "reform" is actually what the "R" stands for) did with the right, I do hope that the balance of power sticks to liberal interests that look forward than the backward peering conservatives.  You can't drive a car somewhere by staring in the rear view mirror the whole time or you'll surely crash.  However, you also want someone experienced driving that car if the road ahead is a long, bumpy one.  Justin Trudeau can't even change a proverbial flat.  He needs Freeland to do it for him.  Regardless, we can only let the good times roll if the leader really knows how to drive.  And that's just what we need.  Time to shake it up for a brighter panorama of the future.

And for the love of the sweet Lord, talk to the friggin' Chinese leaders and get our guys back.  NOW.