Spittin’ and grinnin’

Thankfully, the Toronto Blue Jays season has ended. Their 74 wins against 88 losses was their worst record since 2019 when they finished with 67 wins and 75 losses.

They were a miserable team to watch this season. Too many ups and many downs, all played with sad sack faces.

This is one unhappy ball team. Vladimir Guerrero Jr, and Alejandro Kirk were the only players who seemed happy to be out playing baseball.

There is talk of many off-season changes but they won’t be the ones that are really needed. A major cleanout is required. It should start with the front office and include manager John Schneider.

Players? Do we really need 35-year-ol George Springer and his six-year $150 million contract? His batting average this season was only 220 with a mere 56 runs batted in.

Or Bo Bichette who missed large chunks of playing time to calf injuries this season, then returned to play one game before going back on the injured list with a broken finger. 

There are plenty of healthy young prosects who could replace those two for a lot less money.

Another reason for being thankful the Jays’ season is done is that I’m relieved from having to watch the games on Sportsnet. The Sportsnet crew seems to enjoy filming the spitting more than the baseball.

Spitting is a disgusting aspect of professional baseball. And the bigger the gobs the camera crews can film, the happier they seem.

The players and coaches spit on the field, in the batting boxes and in the dugouts. The soles of their playing shoes must be awash with spit that is tracked into the dressing rooms.

We live in an age of pandemics and top medical experts predict increasingly frequent outbreaks. They warn that we humans must significantly change our behaviour to reduce the spread of diseases.

Spitting always has been a part of baseball. But reducing spitting and walking around in it will help send the message that we live in a changing world in which limiting the spread of disease is critical.

Hopefully next spring we will see a Jays team of young, healthy players who show us some great baseball. And less spitting film from the Sportsnet crews.

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                                Cream of kitten soup?

Lock up your pets! 

That’s the message from this year’s U.S. presidential election campaign.

“They’re eating the dogs . . . they’re eating the cats!” an excited Donald Trump shouted during the recent election debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris.

He was repeating the racist story being circulated by his MAGA followers that criminal immigrants are eating people’s pet cats, dogs and birds.

This is just one example of how the election campaign has been one of the least substantive in recent history. It has been one of personal attacks, silly falsehoods and conspiracy theories. None of the really serious issues have received much discussion.

And there are very serious issues, not the least of which is health care and the addiction crisis.

The National Centre for Drug Abuse Statistics reports that as of 2000, more than 37 million people age 12 and over actively used illicit substances. Since 2000, almost one million people in America have died of drug overdoses.

Other reports show that 2.7 million people are addicted to opioids and 28.3 million suffer from some form of alcohol disorder.

It’s all part of the steady decline of American society. Despite continuing economic growth, the median American family is less well off. Its financial rewards remain stagnant while the wealthy have grown wealthier.

U.S. gun violence has increased steadily.  To date this year there have been more than 12,000 murders with guns and 23,000 woundings.

A new report from Johns Hopkins Centre for Gun Violence Solutions says that gun deaths among children ages one to 17 have increased by 106 per cent since 2013. 

Last year there were 2,526 gun deaths among one-to-17-year-olds, which is roughly seven every day.

It goes beyond guns. Polls have showed a distinct decline in social life, including close friendships, intimate relationships, trust, labor participation and community involvement.  

There have been documented reports of a rise in mental illnesses, diseases of despair and poor health generally. The Centre for Disease Control reported in 2022 that U.S. life expectancy fell to 76.3 year, roughly what it was in 1996. 

The U.S. has a national crisis but evidently no Churchillian leader to tackle it. For Donald Trump and millions of his lunatic followers it’s all about immigrants flowing into the country to eat people’s cats.

Meanwhile I’m wondering if cream of kitten soup or barbecued puppy dog tails are served with curry?

The reason I wonder is that Laura Loomer, Trump’s racist campaign trail buddy, says that if Kamala Harris, who has some east Indian heritage, is elected president the White House will start smelling of curry.

Sounds like Ms. Loomer needs less refined sugar and more fruits and vegetables in her diet.

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                                 Canada’s leadership crisis

There are times when I am ashamed of being a Canadian. This is one of them.

I’ve been reading about Justin Trudeau and Governor-General Mary Simon appointing the obnoxious Charles Adler of Winnipeg to the Senate.

Adler is the broadcaster who has called indigenous people “uncivilized boneheads.” He also once referred to senators as whores. Now he is one, collecting tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars.

There have been calls for Trudeau and Simon to rescind Adler’s Senate appointment. Anyone who makes such racist comments about any other Canadian should not be allowed anywhere near the Senate, let alone appointed to it.

Mary Simon, the first indigenous person to serve as governor-general, should never have agreed to Trudeau’s request to appoint Adler. She should have refused, and backed up that refusal with an offer to resign, if necessary.

Senate appointments are officially made by the governor-general as requested by the prime minister.

Manitoba First Nations chiefs have called for Simon and Trudeau to rescind Adler’s appointment. One of Trudeau’s cabinet ministers has criticized Adler’s appointment.

“There are many eminently qualified Manitobans who are better suited to represent our province than Charles Adler,” Northern Affairs Minister Dan Vandal said in a statement. Vandal was a five-term Winnipeg city councillor and deputy mayor before being elected to Parliament in 2015.

This fiasco is yet another example of the lack of leadership in Canada. Trudeau is a wealthy elitist and one of the least qualified persons ever to serve as prime minister. The leaders of the principal opposition parties are no better.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre displays little beyond a scowling meanness. Jagmeet Singh, the New Democratic Party leader is focussed on keeping the Liberal minority government in power so his 24 elected MPs can continue collecting their $165,000-plus salary and long string of federal benefits.

Canada needs better, We need leadership that works for the people, not the political parties. We don’t have it because of ourselves, complacent voters who look after our individual interests while ignoring the overall interests of the country and its people.

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Auto thefts hit epidemic proportions this year. The Ontario government reports that a vehicle is stolen in the province every 14 minutes. 

The Insurance Bureau of Canada reports 105,000 vehicles stolen in Canada in 2022. Auto theft claims last year totalled $1.5 billion, more than $1 billion in Ontario alone.

The bureau says these thefts cost us all money. That may be true but it is only part of the story. Auto theft has become an important part of our economy

Look at it this way:

You need a new car so pick one out at a local dealership and pay for it through a bank loan. The salesman is happy, the dealership is happy and the bank is happy to get the loan business. Government is thrilled, of course, because it gets a nice payday by collecting the tax on tens of thousands of dollars.

So, you drive home and park your new vehicle in the driveway. One morning you find the vehicle gone. It was stolen during the night.

Not much point calling the police. There is little they can do and they are busy dealing with a lot of other crime – much of it violent.  

The thieves have taken the vehicle to a car theft gang which pays $500 to $1,500 for vehicles, puts it into a rented container and ships it to some place like Ghana.  

So, we have a lot of happy people here – the car dealer, the thieves, the freight container and shipping companies and governments, which have collected taxes along the way. And, whoever owns your car now in Ghana is thrilled to have a new car at a cheap price.

You are not happy because you have to deal with the insurance company, buy another vehicle and start thinking about how to prevent it from being stolen.

The insurance company pays most, but not all, of the cost of replacing the stolen vehicle and contents but recovers its money easily. It raises everyone’s premiums.

More than 100,000 other Canadians go through the same scenario every year. Politicians babble about what might or might not be done to stop the auto theft epidemic. 

Nobody really wants to get serious about stopping it because it is a big business with little violence.

This is not just about stolen autos. Auto theft is a blaring signal of a collapsing society in which we see economic systems breaking down, violence increasing and natural disasters tied to human-induced climate change killing, injuring or displacing thousands of people.

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 Ever since the assassination attempt on Donald Trump there has been much talk about his ears.

He had a pillow-sized bandage on this right ear after it supposedly was grazed by a bullet. I haven’t seen any photos of the ear with the bandage off and what scarring there might be.

I’m not, however, the least bit interested in Trump’s ears. I’m fascinated by his eyes. 

Medical observers have said that Trump’s eyeballs are unnaturally large. They say the largeness could be the result of disease, injury or what he sprays on his face to give it that weird orange glow.

Reading about his eye size got me thinking about ostriches, which have the largest eyes of any land animal. Eyeballs take up so much room in an ostrich head that there is little room for a brain. That’s probably why the ostrich is considered the dumbest animal on the planet.

The ostrich is so dim-witted that it stretches its body along the ground thinking it will make it look buried and therefore hidden from predators. Only blind predator would fall for that one!

I’ve been wondering whether Trump has the same problem as the ostrich. Big eyes leaving little room for a brain.

The dumb things he says and does seem to confirm that. Like saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America. And, that “millions and millions of people” are taking jobs away from Black people.

Or that Vice-President Kamala Harris is East Indian but turned herself Black to win votes.

Or, as the New York Times reported, he called his Secret Service director Dumbo.

He believes that some bloodlines produce people who are superior to others. He, of course, comes from a superior bloodline.

Many of Trump’s allies and aides have abandoned him, some calling him a moron or a dope. One of his professors in university reportedly called him “the dumbest . . .  student I ever had.”

Trump the weirdo is not the saddest part of this story. The saddest part is that American voters made him president and might do so again in November. 

Americans are unsophisticated voters. They vote for entertainers and will continue to elect bad actors like Trump. 

Maybe one day we’ll even see an ostrich as U.S. president.

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Smoke in our future

From Shaman’s Rock

By Jim Poling Sr.

This hot, relatively dry summer is making me nervous. I won’t be unhappy to see the start of autumn with its cooler temperatures, and hopefully, more rainfall.

Many of us live surrounded by trees, many of which are getting too dry for my liking. Snow and rain falls have been below normal for many months now while temperatures have been higher than normal.

Southern Ontario has received big storms but they have missed, or been much lighter, in some areas north of Barrie, where the real forests begin.

It’s great to have such a blue-sky summer, but the TV images from wildfires out west are unsettling. There were more than 400 wildfires burning in British Columbia and Alberta this week.

Also worrisome is the fact that these wildfires no longer are rare events. Last year wildfires burned a record 185,000 square kilometres (71,429 sq miles) of the country, an area the size of Syria.

Another worry is the fact that 163 of last year’s fires went underground and smouldered until spring, which fire services refer to as "overwintering" or "holdover" fires.

So far this year Ontario has not had any catastrophic forest fires. However, a trend to warmer, drier weather is a worry. 

Canadian Forest Service (CFS) researchers predict that eastern Canada will see a 200-300 percent increase in fire friendly dry, windy days 

“There is a lot more fire in the future, and we better get used to it,” CFS researcher Mike Flannigan has been reported as saying. 

Getting used to it means that all of us must be more aware of the dangers and do whatever we can as individuals to prevent fires. We need to think more about how we handle hot ashes from BBQs, how we dispose of cigarette butts and seriously follow rules about campfires.

Also, we all need to work at reducing our carbon footprints by changing our energy sources. Some things individuals can do are listed at:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/651b116ede324e5b7a7c7abd/t/65c12a04a3bd1f7d0c2439a8/1707158020193/ClimateResponsible_Checklist_v02.pdf.

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Star-spangled boozing

No word yet that country singer Ingrid Andress has actually checked into an alcohol treatment centre following her drunken performance at baseball’s annual Home Run Derby.

She said she would after rattling tens of thousands of eardrums with a wildly off-key drunken version of the U.S. national anthem. 

“I’m not gonna bullshit y’all, I was drunk last night,” she wrote on her social media accounts. “I’m checking myself into a facility today to get the help I need.”

Fans at the event were stunned; some saying the performance left their ears bleeding.

Much fuss about the revered anthem being blurted out with alcohol-stewed vocal chords. It’s not the first time, however, that the melody has been sent floating on waves of alcohol.

The Star-Spangled Banner music was first composed in the late 1700s and became the tune for a drinking song titled “To Anacreon in Heav’n.” Anacreon was a Greek poet known for his drinking songs and erotic poems. 

The song was the constitutional anthem of the Anacreontic Society, an elite London, England-based amateur music society. I’m assuming the singers were well oiled with alcohol when singing the club song because back then water was not safe to drink. Even children drank beer to avoid the bacteria, parasites and other bad stuff in the water.

Th tune later drifted across the Atlantic to become a popular American drinking song. Then in 1814, as the British-American war raged, someone noticed that after the bombardment of Baltimore “our flag was still there.” 

Words were put to the tune, and the sheet music was printed in the September 20, 1814 edition of the Baltimore Patriot. However, it wasn’t until 1931 that the song officially became the U.S. national anthem after Congress received a five-million signature petition saying the country should have a national anthem.

Other singers have struggled when singing the anthem. Christina Aguilera forgot the words at Super Bowl XLV. Michael Bolton wrote some words to the song on his hand so he wouldn’t forget them.

Music experts say the song originally was meant to be sung by a group. It’s a difficult solo because of the range of its notes, some of which are very high.

So, I guess you really can’t blame Ingrid Andress for climbing into her cups before picking up the mike.                     

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