The Mound of Sound

A Sign of the Times – Water and Arsenic

There’s your problem. 52 years worth of subsidence in California’s San Joaquin Valley. And there’s been another four decades of subsidence since this image. Now the water-strapped Central Valley has…

George Will: "This Sad, Embarrassing Wreck of a Man"

George Will takes his journalistic skinning knife to Donald Trump. It ain’t pretty. What, precisely, did President Trump say about the diametrically opposed statements by U.S. intelligence agencies (and the…

Well, It’s a Start.

Adios, Canada. It may not sound like much but when you can move 31,285 sq. kms. of rocks and Christmas trees the width of a pencil in a matter of…

Mueller Seeks Immunity for Manafort Witnesses

Special prosecutor Robert Mueller has asked the judge who will preside over the fraud trial of Paul Manafort to grant immunity to five witnesses who may be called to testify…

Those Summertime Blues

Canada, like America (only a bit different), is heating up. Summer days are getting hotter. Summer nights are getting hotter still. Demands on power grids for air conditioning are soaring.…

Pot-Kettle Alert. The US is Taking Canada to the World Trade Organization.

They slapped tariffs on Canadian exports. Canada responded with countervailing tariffs on American exports. What? The nerve! So now the Americans are planning to haul Canada before the World Trade…

How German News Covered Trump’s NATO Visit

And who says the Germans have no sense of humour?

In My Dreams

Meanwhile in "New Normal" Weather News

I hear you eastern folks are roasting today. Apparently roads are buckling from the heat. Probably getting used to it, eh? There was a time these heatwaves would have been…

Oh, Well, This is Awkward. Trump’s Apathy to "Unfair Trade" with Russia.

At the recent NATO summit, the Mango Mussolini tore into German chancellor, Angela Merkel, over her country’s approval of a direct-from-Russia natural gas pipeline. But what about the United States?…

Lock Them Up. Lock Them Up. Lock Them Up.

Imagine Tony Blair and George w. Bush languishing the years away behind bars for their ginned-up war on Iraq. Imagine future “tough guy” leaders weighing whether to pound little countries…

What Do Trump’s Base and Trudeau’s Base Have in Common?

Not much, I hope, but there is this – both seem willing to either swallow their leader’s nonsense or look the other way. With Trump the examples are almost limitless.…

What More Can Trump Do for Putin? How About Absolution?

Nothing Vlad Putin has done will deter Donald Trump from his one-on-one chin wag with his fellow despot in Finland on Monday. Nothing, not even Robert Mueller’s forensic evidence showing…

Truth Decay

Have we reached the point where truth becomes a belief-based construct liberated from the bounds of knowledge, fact and evidence? Have we entered the era of Truth Decay? Is this…

It’s a Fair Question, One Our Government Should Be Answering.

Fifty plus dead in Quebec. As many, perhaps more in Ontario (but who’s counting?). And, around the world, no one knows for sure, not yet. It’s a scorcher. Record high…

World Bank President Weighs In on Future of Work

Morneau and Trudeau may be fine with consigning young Canadians to a future of “job churn” and a precarious, paycheque to paycheque, existence but that’s because they’re not willing to…

Some Day Even You May Rise Up Against Your Government.

Imagine an army of outraged workers thrown out of work, their jobs taken over not by foreign labour but by automation – robots. Unemployed from a surprisingly broad spectrum of…

Firing a Shot Across the Blowhard’s Bow

EU president, Jean Claude Junker, delivered a one-liner to Donald Trump in advance of this week’s NATO summit. “Dear America, appreciate your allies. After all, you don’t have that many.”…

The Most Obnoxious Nation on Earth

I caught a portion of a Trump performance at a recent rally that was unusually disturbing. Trump was regaling his followers with his version of the ubermensch pitch: “We have…