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donald trump

Lake Ontario

OK, don, you’ve officially jumped the shark. You’re so clueless about world history and how international bodies of water are named. You wasted your sharpie ink on an executive order that means absolutely nothing, except maybe to your press secretary, who doesn’t want to work for your any more after you left her on your decoy plane so the Iranians could shoot it down, while you flew off into the sunset on the old, unworthy (in your opinion), Air Force One.

I see even your lackeys at Google haven’t followed your orders yet, like they did with your fantasy about the “Gulf of America”, which is properly named the Gulf of Mexico.

Lake Ontario

Lake Ontario.

You’re a clown character. Always have been, always will be. You’re laughable.

I support Mark Carney

The United States has moved the goalposts and imposed back-breaking tariffs on Canada. And Mark Carney has responded as only Canada can really do.

And I, as a Canadian, can only really support him.

As I’ve said before, I’m still glad I voted for him. Under any other leadership, we’d have become the 51st State by now, and god knows I don’t want American police patrolling our streets.

We need to wash our hands of America. Sure, we share a relatively small part of this continent with them, and it makes sense to trade with them because they’re “right there” and we can drive across the border, but land borders in the 21st century are meaningless, especially in light of the fact that donald trump claims to have a “special relationship” with Kim Jong Un and other “strong man” dictators. And Americans think that is just OK because they don’t see where it leads. Maybe I’m an old thinker, but clearly trump is suffering from the same malady as his ideas are from the 1930s.

Carney has the country in mind as he leads this country, not party politics, and that’s why he still has my support.

Looks like you’re in a quagmire, don

I woke up this morning (17 August 2026, in my time zone, actually yesterday by the time I post this now) to find that the five-year-old running the “free” world was having a tantrum and had decided to warn Oman that he was going to “bomb the shit out of them” if they interfered in his talks with Iran.

Yeah, that’s diplomacy in the trump world in the 21st century: tough talking and from the hip.

Do I not believe he’ll do it? No, this has nothing to do with my belief or not. It’s just ridiculous that us plebs should even have to give more than a moment’s attention to the ravings of a child with no war experience and no understanding of history. But here we are; we do have to.

Did he forget that Oman is, (a) not Iran (I know their names share 50% of their letters) and (b) an ally?

We’re approaching the end of what is so far your six-month adventure in Iran, and it’s clear you are clueless. I’m not here in support of Iran, but I’m in favour of not doing anything stupid. And guess what? You’ve proved your stupidity by, as you’ve so cleverly pointed out, doing something no American president before you was stupid enough to do, without an understanding of what could go wrong and with no exit plan. You’ll be here after your midterms and you may still be here after your presidency ends, after hundreds of claims that the Iranians “desperately” want a deal. And you’ll be like Carter, except you’ll be a Republican president handing over power to a Democrat, given how stupid your political system is, just after Iran kicks your sorry ass.

And in Iran, you and your great army haven’t changed the Iranian regime. Yes, you’ve killed a lot of them, but the regime — the organisation that runs the country, the IRGC — still exists and still has a stranglehold on the 92 million inhabitants of the country. I judge you and your armed forces to have completely and utterly failed in that regard.

It seems that, right now, you are flailing and in crisis mode. All the promises you made to your base are crumbling around you, inflation is creeping up again as is to be expected when you look to war and tariffs to support your failing policies, and you’re a nightmare for America. If ever there was an example of someone who should be removed from the presidency before their term ends, you’re it. But that won’t happen as long as all the yes-men in the Republican Party, with whom you surround yourself, keep nodding in agreement with everything you do.

You and they are a disgrace to your country.

Sad to hear Infantino’s plan for FIFA has sunk

You know, I’ve had nothing to do with FIFA … ever, in my whole life. Even when I played football in my teens, FIFA never even entered my consciousness.

But it sure has the last month.

Actually, I should stop for a moment and recall all the late-night black-and-white television I used to watch when I was a kid in Africa in the 1970s. I don’t know why, but the one channel we had back then (the government Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation), that normally shut down at about 22:30 or 23:00, would carry on during the World Cup (I’m guessing) and play football games. I remember nothing from that time, just that I was mesmerised by football games. I have no idea how many hours I watched, but it really couldn’t have been many, because my parents wouldn’t have allowed it and my own body probably wouldn’t have allowed it either. And I only really remember it happening once, but it was so long ago that memory is probably unreliable.

Fast forward to 2026, and FIFA comes in and rapes our city, closing down businesses, closing down roads (and demanding police escorts accorded only to heads of states), disrupting community goings on, just so that they can host a few football matches. Of course, I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I refused to participate with all of the other lemmings, did not pay the exorbitant prices to get into any games, and didn’t even attend any free events, because I just refused to be sucked into all of the hype and inadvertently contribute to it. The only sideline advertiser I remember is a company with which I already do business, much to my chagrin.

But I became very aware of how greedy and controlling FIFA is. The president of FIFA is a bum-buddy of donald trump, having just given him a lump of gold in the most rigged ceremony in the history of man, because trump had not received the Nobel Peace Prize because he hadn’t deserved it … and he made known to anyone who would listen how unhappy he was about it. I mean, even your average self-aware five-year-old could tell how cringy that was, but even trump doesn’t have the mentality of a five-year-old. And so we all just rolled our eyes and silently agreed that it was what needed to be done to keep the noisome (in any sense of the word) child quiet. Except it wasn’t, because the noisome child became upset at a red card, and we all know how that went.

So I’m here today to editorialise very strongly in favour of the failure of Gianni Infantino’s fever dream to make his commercial greed even wider. Let’s just raise the ticket prices of World Cup tickets by ten times; we know that the great unwashed of the world will support us because what choice do they have? A competing FIFA?

We all know there is no competition, which is how all monopolists start.

Late-night comedians are useful

You know, I have to admit that watching late-night comedians out of the States is actually pretty useful. I realise that every bit of “news” out of them is exaggerated somehow for effect, but I’m assuming they don’t make shit up. I mean, out of a staid, neutral news reader, the same “news” would be troubling to me, especially when presented as fact, but when it’s presented as, “Can you believe this shit?”, well, it somehow becomes more believable. When you’ve got someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. making the news cutting programmes like the inspection of lettuce, and the US has a resulting epidemic of explosive diarrhoea, well, it’s news, and it just makes you shake your head at how fucked the country is. I thank god every day I don’t live under their government, or lack thereof, and I’m sorry for the people that do.

In addition to the comedians, whose job it is to entertain, there are the talk shows. OK, it’s their job to entertain as well, but when they present the same, “Can you believe this shit?” as well, well, it just confirms what you saw on Jimmy Kimmel (for example) the night before! So the next day you’re not finding out that, oh, everything you watched on the comedy shows was all made-up bullshit, you’re finding out that, yes, it was all actually true!

Gratuitous bullshit

Sorry, but news that donald trump is supporting the Argies and their puerile “Malvinas” flag incident is beyond the Pale. That would be like the English team unfurling a banner in support of Iran. The problem (one of many) that trump has is that he doesn’t know history, even stuff that happened when he was alive. So if Javier Milei, who is trump’s buddy, decided to repeat the stupidity of Galtieri, there is no doubt that trump would be on the side of Argentina against the United Kingdom.

What a sad world we live in.

Trump does something good for a change

Wow, I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I suppose when even the worst person you know in the modern world does something good, ya gotta recognise them for it. Of course, with trump this could change in five minutes when another lonely thought materialises in his grey matter, so check back tomorrow.

But today trump said that he would allow the Ukrainians to build their own Patriot Missiles. I don’t know how this would work, given Russia can rain fire and fury on any square centimetre of Ukraine, but I would imagine that Ukraine will build their missiles in a third country. And I believe they will start quicker than anyone realises, and they will churn them out 24/7, faster than even Rayethon churns them out from the safety of American soil. That’s not a criticism of Rayethon, just a recognition of the fact that when your country is in an existential crisis, it’s amazing what you can do.

So I don’t know how many weeks or months it will take for Ukraine to start churning out “made in Ukraine” missiles, but the day they do, Russia better watch their back (and their front) because there will be no excuse for Ukraine any more. They will be able to slice through Russia’s clear manpower advantage in ways that will make the Russians afraid to step into the meat machine that they have created.

Canada buys European subs

I’m delighted to see that Carney has chosen to buy European-made subs. They’re not a panacea for all ills, but they are a panacea for all things American. I hope he makes the choice to buy Swedish Gripen fighter jets as well instead of the American F-35s. Everything I’ve read about the F-35s is that they’re a great piece of kit, but getting into bed with the Americans in a bad long-term move as we’ve found out.

Americans aren’t bad people, they’re just poorly led

I’ve also read (speaking of things trump can’t do) that we should be nicer to Americans. Why? I don’t think we should attack them today — one doesn’t have to attack a new neighbour — but they’re not being nice to us, so why should we be nice to them? The majority of their population voted for him, and that says a lot. So let America have a hissy fit for four years, and then see where they are when they’re done with trump in 2029. If their new leader in 2029 comes to their senses and starts being nice to us again, then we’re 90% of the way to being there to pick up where we left off. But we won’t make the same mistake we made in the past, where we thought we were inseparable friends. Nope, been there, done that, not doing it again.

Adults behaving badly

What the hell has become of the world?!

On one continent we have the adult child of a monarch in a snit because daddy (or daddy’s people) won’t let him stay at the family home while he is in town because, apparently, their AirBnB is fully booked and he missed a deadline to accept an offer to stay … or something like that.

On another continent we have a man-baby who doesn’t understand the rules of football (soccer in his country) and the purpose of red cards, who has to have another man-baby fly across the world with example cards to show to him, and presumably explain their use to him.

These are examples in the dictionary under the entry, “making a mountain out of a molehill”, with the addition that, “We’re man-babies who know nothing about living in the real world and so it’s totally OK for us to pretend that we’re playing with our toys no matter how much play money we have to pay to get our way”, except that in the real world it’s not play money.

In another country on the second continent we have a fifth man-baby who has nothing good to say about anything, whose biggest contribution to the debate about a pipeline between Alberta and British Columbia is that, “It’s not along the route that I wanted.” As you read this sentence, please use the most childish, whiny voice voice you can muster.

All those man-babies are, respectively, Prince Harry, King Charles, donald trump, Gianni Infantino, and Pierre Poilievre. This is what has become of Planet Earth in the 21st century. God help us all.

What’s the latest on whether or not the Strait of Hormuz is open?

Well, as of today, 20 June 2026 (on the North American west coast), the only reason I am looking at the news today is to find out. As of now, Iran says it’s closed, while the US, as usual, is lying and claiming it’s open. I don’t know in what plane of existence the US (and trump) operates, because if I was operating an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, I would steer clear of the Strait of Hormuz.

I’ll just have a quiet word in the ear of donald trump now, if you’ll excuse us. Donald, Israel operates in the real world, where most of their neighbours — that’s the people living next to them — deny that they should exist. That’s pretty serious. That’s like us, the rest of the world, insisting that you (the United States) shouldn’t exist as a country because you’re just a colony of England. Now, to the north of them is a country called Lebanon. You might have heard of it. It contains a city (Beiruit) that was the original “riviera of the Mediterranean” before you re-invented such a thing with AI (that’s all you’ve done) in the Gaza Strip. Imagine, if you had enemies, armed with rockets, across the Potomac in Virginia, and they kept insisting on firing them at you. I don’t think you’d put up with it for long. That’s the situation in which Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself. The untenable position that Israel’s enemies hold that the country shouldn’t exist isn’t going to go away with some magical “memorandum of understanding” between you and Iran, and Netanyahu knows that, and it’s why he insists that Israel holds the right to retaliate against Hezbollah when they launch rockets from Lebanon.

So that’s one of many reasons why none of your predecessors have done what you’ve done, as you so often like to boast. They didn’t want to open the Pandora’s box that you have opened. But you’ve opened it, and so here we are.

And yes, you haven’t handed Iran a plane load of cash, as Obama allegedly did, but you’ve done better, by handing them $300 billion of development money — supposedly not from the American taxpayer — and ended sanctions on them. What more could a murderous regime in Iran (that hasn’t been changed) wish for? You’ve tested Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz and they (and you) have found that they can indeed close it, and we’re right back to where we were on 27 February (the day before you launched this war, in case you forget), except that we’re now at Iran’s mercy and your real enemies, Russia and China, can attack you at any moment because you’re arsenals are empty. So what have you accomplished in the last almost four months? As I just said, you’ve emptied your arsenal; that’s not even something putin or Xi could have accomplished! And you’ve changed absolutely nothing in the Strait of Hormuz except accumulating ongoing deaths in countries surrounding the Persian Gulf and the ever increasing price of oil.

So no, the Strait of Hormuz is closed to traffic, hundred or thousands of people have died, and the Iranians still have a choke hold on 20% of the world’s oil and the population of Iran, among other things. What, exactly, have the US and Israel accomplished by launching this war on Iran?! Fuck all.

It’s Crow, Mr. Trump, Not Lobster

Thomas L. Friedman wrote an editorial piece in the New York Times (It’s Crow, Mr. Trump, Not Lobster) that reads like the piece I wrote on 10 May, which calls into question trump’s ability to think ahead.

I recommend you read it.