We’ve got a bit of a problem, and that is that we’re growing old.  Not that growing old is a problem, it’s usually a pretty good sign that you’ve maybe lived a good life and have been blessed with good health.  Where the problem arises is when we grow old at the same time.

Canada, like many other developed countries, is experiencing the challenges posed by an aging population. Some of the key problems associated with this demographic shift are difficult to ignore.  Obviously, when a huge chunk of your population leaves the workforce through retirement, then there’s going to be an impact on things like employment, pension plans, insurance policies, health care costs, you name it.  Having an aging population, with fewer people paying taxes to maintain social security services and more people drawing upon these same services as they age, creates what may turn out to be an untenable situation for any government of a liberal-democracy.

First, an aging population has an economic Impact  It leads to a shrinking workforce and a smaller proportion of people contributing to the economy through taxation and productivity. This can result in a reduced capacity to support social programs, healthcare systems, and pension funds.

With respect to health care costs, older adults tend to have more healthcare needs and chronic conditions, which can place a strain on the healthcare system. As the proportion of elderly individuals increases, healthcare costs are likely to rise significantly, and that potentially leads to shortages in funding and resources.

Continue reading “CANADA’S AGING POPULATION POSES CHALLENGES MOVING FORWARD” →

When I first heard the news, I was so proud and so touched that I cried for a bit.  Not because I was personally involved, or had anyone close to me involved, but because it represented for me a profound justice, eighty years after the fact yes, but still a recognition of the bravery one young man showed on a most profound date in history.  Perhaps long overdue, but nevertheless, no less sweet.

On January 19, 2020, the United States Navy announced the name they would give to their brand new Gerald-Ford class nuclear powered aircraft carrier, CVN-81.  Henceforth, the ship would be known as the USS DORIS MILLER in honour of Dorie Miller, a Cook-Second-Class on the battleship USS West Virginia during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

How does a cook get an aircraft carrier named after him?  And yes, Doris is a he, since the midwife that assisted at his birth thought he was going to be a girl rather than the future heavyweight boxing champion on the West Virginia.

The story goes like this.

Continue reading “CVN-81 NAMED FOR SAILOR DORIS MILLER” →

I’ve said this before, but gosh, it seems I have no choice but to say it again.

Elon Musk is a child.  A petulant, spoiled, snot-nosed child.  I don’t know if money did that to him, a privileged background, a top-shelf engineering brilliance, or whatever, but the fact remains that the man is a world-class dick of adolescent proportions.

The latest proof of this is his threat to sue independent researchers who found, through their impartial studies, that Twitter, or X as it’s now called, is extremely tolerant of hate speech directed at a number of targets, but primarily anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ.

Musk, the self-proclaimed champion of freedom of speech, will have none of it, and has threatened to sue the Center For Countering Digital Hate for, as he claims, attempting to drive advertisers away from X, once known as Twitter before Musk bought the place and and started swinging his wrecking ball.

It should be noted that, in fairness, advertisers were fleeing Twitter at break-neck speed already, and even before the report from the CCDH, so I’m not sure why the invective directed towards this non-profit, but then again, Musk answers email requests for comment with a poop emoji, so there you go.

The defender of speech can’t stand the criticism.  It’s his achilles heel, really, and he goes absolutely sideways when anyone has the temerity to question his decisions, comments, or dubious business practices.  Although he’s probably not capable of feeling stupid, he still rankles anytime someone points out how much money he’s losing on the whole Twitter thing, money he began losing the moment he bought the joint for about $20 billion more than it was worth in the first place.  So maybe he’s a little sensitive about that, and all the other ridicule that’s come his way ever since, what with the paid subscriptions, the validation check marks, the reinstatement of abhorrent personalities to the platform, the employee-bashing and firings, and the generally haphazard ad-hoc approach to the business.

So sensitive, in fact, that Elon can’t even play by his own rules.  He’s not the defender of free speech, he’s the defender of free hate speech.

Some people have theorized that Musk is so clever that he’s doing all this to endear himself to followers of one Donald J. Trump.  And so, why would he do that?

It seems Tesla sales have really gone gangbusters in the liberal/elite demographic, but that market has tapped-out until government subsidies make electric vehicles more affordable to the dwindling middle class.  So, as the theory goes, maybe he’s taking aim at a new demographic, hard-right Republican conspiracy theorists with money, the people who I guess Mike from My Pillows was hoping to attract to his pillows.

If true, it doesn’t make him any better, but actually makes him morally worse, if such is even possible.  He is worthy of being a villain in a Mike Myers comedy.

I’ve never been on Twitter, and have no plans for X.  I can’t afford a Tesla, and have no plans to be a space tourist.  My internet is fine, so I don’t need StarLink.  And I hope Ukraine prevails over Russia, unlike Elon himself.  So he and I breathe different air.

I may have less money, but I have better air.

Okay, so yesterday I was a little harsh with respect to the Cuban-American population of south Florida, suggesting they swim back to the island if they didn’t like my idea of rapprochement between Cuba and the United States.

I have to be fair enough to understand what it might be like to be a refugee from your homeland, denied permission to ever go back, and to be estranged from family and friends left behind when you made the decision to make what was likely a somewhat dangerous journey to get to the United States.  So I shouldn’t be surprised at all to find that many Cuban expatriates loathe the Cuban government and view it as the author of all that misfortune.

Yesterday I left much of the blame for poor relations at the feet of the United States, sometimes prodded along by the Cuban diaspora.  But I have to assign commensurate blame at the feet of the Cuban government as well.

Continue reading “CUBAN EXPATS HAVE LEGITIMATE CONCERNS. IT’S TIME TO OVERCOME THEM.” →

How is it that, as we sit in 2023, relations between Cuba and the United States are really no better than they were back in the late 1950’s, a product of both the cold war and the power of American capitalism?

An island nation of some 11 million people, a scant ninety miles from Florida’s shores, classified as an “enemy” nation not by decree, but through the actions taken against it.

Fulgencio Batista, the dictator and murderer of some 20,000 Cubans after his 1952 coup versus Fidel Castro, a lawyer and revolutionary who stood against Batista’s tyranny.  And who does the United States support?  As counter-intuitive as it may appear on the surface, count on the Americans to put money before principles, even as they wave the flags of liberty and freedom.  To them, Batista meant stability, which meant that American financial interests, including, and most notably, the mob, could continue to operate their huge money-making operations on the island, considered as it was at the time as an American playground for tourism, gambling, and vice.  It was, in a way, the Las Vegas of the southeast.

When Castro’s revolution came out of the hills and toppled the Batista regime, the Americans were outraged.  Not because Castro was any worse than Batista in the human rights department, but because he went about nationalizing American interests.  The American money interests lost their collective minds, and sought any number of ways to get things back to the way they were.  Assassination of Castro was one plan, the invasion of the island another.  Both plans failed.

Continue reading “TIME TO BRING CUBA BACK IN FROM THE COLD” →

He’s well spoken, obviously intelligent, relatively quick on his feet, possesses an impressive education, a professional, he’s passionate and current.

And I don’t think I like him.

Jordan Peterson first came to my attention a few years back when a friend of mine texted me and asked me what I thought of him.  I told the friend I didn’t think about him at all, owing to the fact that I’d never heard of the guy up until that point.  So my buddy emailed me a bunch of links, several of which were YouTube videos, and asked me if I could take a look and offer an opinion.  To me, it seemed that there was something about this Peterson guy who resonated with my friend, but that he might have been uneasy with the resonance and wanted to run it past me for an opinion before he bought any Peterson t-shirts, coffee mugs, or any other merch.

I went about the business of looking into Jordan Peterson, methodically going through the materials and supplementing those with other materials from different sources.

There were elements to the man that impressed me.  His arguments were well presented, although to be honest, there was something about them that verged on disagreeable, at least to me.  The more I dug in, the louder the blips on my personal radar.

Continue reading “JORDAN PETERSON IN THE NEWS: AGAIN” →

Conservative senator Michael MacDonald claims he was drinking the evening he verbally accosted a number of Ottawa residents for complaining about the trucker protest/occupation of Ottawa back in 2022.

If that’s the case, maybe MacDonald should either stop drinking when microphones are around or drink something a little less likely to cause him to embarrass himself and his province on the national stage.

The senator from Nova Scotia, appointed by Stephen Harper in 2009, decided to join in with protesters, disrupters, and occupiers during the so-called “Freedom Convoy” fiasco.  At one point, he came upon some Ottawa citizens who were negatively impacted by the intimidation, noise, horn-honking, and general poor behaviour exhibited by more than a few of the participants.

MacDonald held nothing back.

“It’s everybody’s fucking city, this is the capital of the country. It’s not your goddamned city just because you have a six-figure salary and you work 20 hours a week. You haven’t worked a full week in two years. It’s sickening.”

Nine of his Senate colleagues submitted a complaint about his behaviour, but, while he’s apologized to the Senate citing the drinking excuse, he’s done everything he can to obstruct the Senate ethics watchdog as it investigates the occurrence more fully.

Continue reading “SENATOR INVESTIGATED FOR “TRASH” COMMENTS TO OTTAWA RESIDENTS DURING TRUCKER OCCUPATION” →

Country artist Jason Aldean is in hot water due to a recent release entitled Try That in a Small Town.

Numerous celebrities, including musicians, are jumping on Aldean for a track and video that they say promotes violence, vigilantism, racism, and gun use.

First, although I’m not a big country fan, even I can appreciate the song as a piece of music, and in my opinion, a rather good one.  I think it’s a good song.  That said, I can see the merit in some of the criticism, but I honestly don’t think the artist is guilty of some of the stuff that he’s being blamed for.  And that’s a lot coming from me, because Aldean is a big-time conservative and Trump supporter, always welcome at Mar-A-Lago to kiss the ring of the king.

But this is about a song, not the man’s politics.

Continue reading “JASON ALDEAN IN HOT WATER OVER RECENT SONG” →

For the longest time it’s appeared to me that there’s a desperate need for reform of the nation’s national police force, the RCMP, or Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or simply, the Mounties.

There are far too many systemic problems within the ranks of this organization, problems that permeate into the realm of organizational actions that impact the service rendered to the public.  Harassment, sexual and other, professional incompetence, the diminishment of women, of Natives, and generally the optic they give of being Canada’s version of the “keystone cops” of old Hollywood fame.

For those of us in Ontario, the only time you’re going to see a Mountie is on Parliament Hill or at ceremonies swearing in new Canadians or honouring Canada’s war dead.  But for Canadians in eight provinces and three territories, the RCMP is much more visible, tasked as they are with provincial and territorial policing as well as community policing.  As such, the Mounties are, by far, the largest police force in Canada.

Continue reading “THE REPURPOSING OF A NATIONAL ICON” →

Tommy Tubervbille, the Republican senator from Alabama, is in the news, and the fact that he is at all is particularly troubling.

In most democracies, idiosyncratic personalities like Tuberville could be easily and safely ignored.  He would be relegated to the fringe minority, the object of polite ridicule in public, and harsher ridicule in private.

But in the United States, home to the most arcane system of government ever invented,  guys like Tuberville can do real damage, simply because the wise folks in Alabama elected him as their representative in the United States Senate.  And so here he is, in his fifteen minutes of shame, holding up promotions within the United States military until that organization changes its policy with respect to abortion.  For the record, the U.S. military supports reproductive rights of its members, but Tommy doesn’t think that’s right, so he’s going to hold the world’s largest and most powerful military hostage.

The absurdity of this is that he can do it at all.

Continue reading “REPUBLICAN SENATOR BLOCKS MILITARY PROMOTIONS IN STAND-OFF OVER ABORTION” →