JULY 1st IS MEMORIAL DAY IN NEWFOUNDLAND

It was all over in fifteen minutes.

When Canadians celebrate Canada Day tomorrow, they’ll be commemorating the birth of a nation, cobbled together in a process known as Confederation, a coming-together of former British colonies to form one, single, and united nation that would grow into what it is today one of the pre-eminent countries of the world. It all started officially on July 1, 1867.

Newfoundland was a British colony as well, but didn’t elect to join the others to become part of the new Dominion of Canada. They didn’t join the rest of us until 1949, becoming a fully functioning province of that dominion.

It’s Canada Day in Newfoundland as well on July 1, but it’s not known as that. In fact, the day is known as Memorial Day, and instead of a day of celebration, it’s a day commemorating the greatest tragedy ever to befall the province known as “The Rock.” A tragedy that took place on July 1, 1916, at a place called Beaumont-Hamel.

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June 30, 2025

GERMANY AWAKENS

There’s almost nobody left alive today who would remember this from a first-person perspective.

For over eighty years, European security has been guaranteed by the United States. The continent that had given birth to two world wars, and plenty of others before that, has seen a peace that is virtually unrivalled by any other time in its history. And as I mentioned, that’s primarily the dividend of having the Americans as a strategic ally.

The enemy is Russia, once known as the Soviet Union, or even the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) as they were once formerly known. From 1945 until 1991, the Russians were the existential threat, poised as they were to roll right over Western Europe, but held in check by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) which had the United States as its most powerful member. During this time, known as the Cold War, the two sides stared each other down over the barricades erected by the Russians, not to keep us out, but to keep their occupied populations in.

Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed upon itself, the victim of its many unsolvable problems, primarily involving Russian incompetence and a general backwardness. From that point, with Russia a mere rump of its former self, Western Europe, and in fact Eastern Europe as well (formerly members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact) began to experience e a peace dividend, where money no longer had to be spent in untold billions to manufacture and procure arms with which to defend their sovereignty against the big bad Russian bear. The bear was off licking its wounds, and Europe thrived as a result of it.

But the Russians never go away. Never.

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June 1, 2025

A CEASEFIRE WITH RUSSIA?

That Donald Trump desperately wants to win the Nobel Prize for Peace shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. I’m surprised he hasn’t awarded himself the presidential Medal of Freedom but there’s still time for that, right along with pardoning himself in perpetuity, you know, just in case there’s any discussion that he might have done anything illegal somewhere along the way.

This clown wants the peace prize so badly that he has no care for how many people will have to die for him to achieve it, or for him to be given it, upon his own personal demand, lest he threaten to invade Norway, the home of the award.

He will sell anyone out to get it. If Melania were to be the last remaining obstacle, I wouldn’t like her chances for longevity in the White House.

After ambushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office with the help of VP Vance and that odious boyfriend-reporter of Marjorie Taylor Greene, it appeared that Ukraine was in a bit of a rough spot. Kicked out of the white House unceremoniously, and told that he was being “disrespectful,” Zelenskyy headed for the airport and found himself surrounded by supportive NATO members the very next day, with our own prime minister Justin Trudeau in attendance and among them. In fact, Trudeau went to Ukraine himself in a demonstration of solidarity which was somewhat ironic, as Trudeau, and the country he led, have been significantly disrespected by Trump and Vance themselves recently.

It seems that, for the Americans, disrespect is a relative thing.

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March 15, 2025

RUSSIA’S GAMBLE

In most ways, Russia is a difficult nation to understand, as Russians are a difficult people to understand.

At the same time, they can stand astride the apex of the world in the fields of arts, music, sports, even culture, yet be the most despicable collection of louts on the planet.

They know nothing but strength, yet have struggled to attain it and keep it. They are a geo-political dichotomy, almost as if they can represent the very best, and the very worst of what man-kind can offer.

Plus, they’re just flat-out weird, in a neanderthal type of way.

They are the world’s most paranoid people, and that’s saying a lot. But they are, and they feel that everyone hates them, one of the few things they can manage to be right about.

If they had a choice between authoritarian government and democracy and freedom, they’d take the authoritarian approach every time, since they don’t have any historical clue as to what the other two things even mean, much less what to do with them.

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March 10, 2025

RUSSIAN FLEET NEEDS A NEW HOME

I sometimes can’t wrap my head around how breathtakingly stupid the Russians are. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m more than thankful for it, but still, how can a nation that produces so much of the world’s best when it comes to the arts, literature, athletics, and sometimes science, be so knock-down drag em’ out stupid? Other than cheating.

Usually I make a disclaimer right about now, saying I’m confining my remarks to political Russia, and not to the Russian people. But saints alive on Christmas Eve, I’m saying flat-out that the whole wagon load of them are face-in-the-back-of-the-head stupid.

It’s what saves us from them.

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December 24, 2024

PUTIN ADDS NEW THREATS TO AN ALREADY LENGTHY LIST

Good morning everyone, good to see you. Hope today is the treasure and blessing that all days ought to be for all people. I wish you the very best.

I’d like to build today’s opinion piece around this carefully considered, deliberately crafted statement that I feel eases me into today’s topic.

Vladimir Putin, aka Russia’s Potato Head dictator, is a world class, five-star, blue-chip, blue-ribbon, card-carrying asshole. He’s also a BFB, delicately extended to mean “Big F**king Baby.” I searched the internet to come up with a Russian phrase that would capture the same sentiment and could only come up with Vladimir Putin, so there you go. It’s built right into their language.

So if I die of polonium poisoning, or if I’m found thrown to death out of a window of my home, or if I blow up in a plane explosion, you can bet it was the Russians. For the record, I live in a bungalow and rarely fly, so some small degree of comfort there.

President Joe Biden has finally given Ukraine permission to allow long-range American missiles to be used against targets inside Russia itself. Before they could only be used to blow up things on Ukrainian soil. But now the gloves are off, and Vlady’s pissed, again.

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November 19, 2024