Canada, Ukraine and New Yorkistan...

 "This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half..." -- George Orwell, "Animal Farm"

Health Update: Well, it would seem the Overlord has been diagnosed with a pretty hefty case of hypertension. So, it's a regime of blood pressure pills and light exercise for me for the foreseeable future, to be followed by a tune-up visit to the pshrinks, because this has re-ignited my anxiety disorder.

At least the pills they hand out are the good stuff (I'm looking forward to the Xanax. I haven't had any for 12 years).

Imagine my surprise at being counselled that all of my recent efforts to see to my health -- eliminating the soda and excess sugar in my diet, quitting smoking, eating better-balanced meals, getting more (strenuous) exercise -- may have been "all too much at once", and that a more-measured program of health maintenance would have been a better option.

You do everything doctors have been telling you for a century to do, and somehow, it's a bad thing, Especially if you do them all at the same time.

No wonder they can't make up their minds about the fucking Bat Pox!

I would like to take this opportunity to implore everyone who reads this to begin a regime of regular blood pressure checks and, as much as is humanly possible, get to your doctor for the occasional physical. High blood pressure is "a silent killer", as they say, and leads to strokes, heart attacks, kidney failures, and much more.

And it is something that can be fixed and controlled relatively easily. If not inexpensively.

Don't walk into your doctor's office with a BP of 277-over-138, like I did.

It does not bode well for continued survival.

Do the right thing and get yourself checked. Fix your issues however you can. One day, this reign of terror that is the combination of a Chinese bio-weapon and a political class that is both evil and stupid will pass, and you'll have every reason to live life to it's fullest extent, again.

Monitor your blood pressure and stop watching television. Take walks. Breathe in some fresh air. Find some productive way to deal with the stress we're all feeling right now.

Thanks to everyone who has dropped a note or message of encouragement and well-wishes. It is greatly appreciated.

Now, on to some important stuff.

Oh Canada!

Land of Maple Syrup, Hockey, Rush, Terrance and Philip and the smokin' hawt Shania Twain, you have finally seen the error of your ways!

In trying to be "cool" and "Progressive" and distancing yourselves from your American neighbors with a phony-ass regime of "Nice", you have saddled yourself with a petty tyrant in blackface who is not smart enough to realize that he isn't smart enough to realize he isn't smart.

That dialectic extends all the way through all levels of Canadian government, so that in a country with like 11 people in it, most living 25 miles across the frozen tundra from their nearest neighbor, so that people much like Mr. Trudeau -- who haven't had any ideas whatsoever since Marx and who were incapable of learning the lessons from his failures -- can fuck you over ten ways to Sunday because an Eskimo might catch the sniffles and die.

Like that would be a fucking tragedy, or something?

And not to be arrogant, because in my country the leadership is not only just as stupid as yours is, they're evil, to boot, it's aboot about time you all got off your candy asses and did something about it. 

God fucking bless Canadian truckers! Right at the time when Balls of Steel were needed, none were to be found here, but you guys have proven they still exist...somewhere.

You're winning the fight, Canada, even with that sub-section of committed "liberal" douchebags all huddled in Ontario, and those asinine phony Frogs in Quebec, but beware: this is exactly the moment when the Powerless With Power start to get mean, vicious and nasty.

You've seen it already: the taking of fuel from freezing truckers, the threats to children, the feeble wail for the police or military to "do something", but do not back down. You have them on the ropes. The proof came when Justin Castro fled Ottawa and CBC called you Russian operatives. There's fear in the air; there's blood in the water.

Finish them off.

You've led the way Canada, now it's the American's turn.

On Ukraine:

I have made the case many times here before that one of the reasons why U.S. foreign policy of the last 100 years or so has been so incredibly fucked up is because the people who make that policy have no historical sense.

The only history they are taught -- or probably care about -- is the revisionist sort, in which some leftist academic relates his or her version of what should have happened instead of what actually did.

Usually because the reality of what actually occurred tends to make the leftists look like Satan lashing out after a losing battle with hemorrhoids.

I'll be brief: the history of the Russian Empire (in all of it's permutations) has had two underlying and recurring themes.

The first is a fear of invasion, especially from the West. Vikings, Byzantines, Germans, Austrians, French, Turks, Swedes, Japanese, a Western Anti-Communist coalition, any number of Mongoloid horse tribes, have all at one time or another attempted to conquer the Russian heartland, usually with disastrous results for both sides. The tales of the Russian Winter destroying every would-be Hitler or Napoleon are too numerous to recount and too well-known to go over here, so let's concentrate on the effect these things have had on the Russians.

Which is to say that every conqueror who sets it's eyes on Russia usually ends up killing millions of Russians (and that's Russia's job, dammit!) and destroying the country in the process. This is what happens when your borders are insecure and mostly-indefensible. The western approaches to Russia are flat steppe, so too the southern borders, with few natural barriers to deter or slow an invader.

So, if you're the Russians and have had this historical paranoia of invasion and destruction of your homeland, you look at the continued expansion of NATO eastwards and, naturally, come to the conclusion that your enemies are creeping up to your front door. A threatened Russian invasion of Ukraine (and the taking of portions of the Crimea a few years back) is not solely a matter of an evil Putin wanting to rebuild the Soviet Union -- it's a legitimate matter of security, in their minds.

This was the point of the Warsaw Pact, after all: it was intended to be a shield that protected Russia from Western invasion. Russia has already seen former Pact members like Poland and the Baltic States join NATO, and is watching the Swedes and Finns get progressively close to the alliance, as well as the Japanese and South Koreans getting cozier with the U.S. (because China).

They feel threatened.

And insisting there is no threat to the Russians from NATO or any other U.S. alliance is little more than soothing words that have little meaning to these people.

As an American, I, too, wonder why NATO is still in existence, given the end of the Cold War and the formation of the European Union. The only answer I can come up with that makes sense is that NATO is the primary export market for American defense contractors.

Who are selling weapons to countries with legitimate gripes against the Russians.

The second fact of Russian history is the continued need for "A Window on the World'.

Russian seaports are mainly ice-locked during winter in the Northern climes. In the South, Russian access to international trade routes are blocked by the Dardenelles at the entrance to the Black Sea, which have been under the ownership of many others many times. In the east, the long border with an often-hostile China and Japan has traditionally been a sticking point. A nation with the material wealth of Russia should, by all measures, be an economic powerhouse. That it isn't is largely a measure of how difficult it is for Russian trade and commerce to extend beyond it's own borders for lack of ice-free ports and access to overland trade routes.

Even before Communism wrecked the country.

A little-known fact, in this regard, concerns Iran. Back in the Second World War, when getting Lend-lease aid to Russia was difficult, the Allies -- primarily the British and Russians -- invaded and occupied Iran, sending the Shah into exile in South Africa. The reason was because of a railway line that ran from the port of Basra into Southern Russia. It was a safer route for supplies to take than open sea voyages in oceans festooned with German U-Boats.

When the war ended, however, the Russians refused to leave, until threatened with military action (the U.S. having a nuclear monopoly in 1946). They left behind Communist cadres that would become part of the major problems in Iranian politics for decades after. That "CIA coup" in 1953 that liberals all claim is responsible for bad relations between the U.S. and Iran was a response to a fraudulent election that brought Russian-trained-and-backed Communists to power.

It merely put the Shah back on his throne, restoring the pre-war status quo.

And it was Iranians who did it; not Americans, CIA aid, notwithstanding. But that's how lefties rewrite history: if the left loses, it must be because someone stole something from them. The idea that Iranian patriots who didn't wish to live under a communist regime foisted upon them by a former occupier could possibly want something else is conveniently dismissed as "propaganda"/

The same historical need for an outlet to the wider world drove the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, too.

The Russians are always looking outwards, because like most people on this planet, they'd like to engage in trade, make some money, enjoy things they don't have at home, and feel as if they are a part of the community of nations, too.

My belief is that there will be no Russian invasion of Ukraine -- the threat of such is just that, a threat. The real goal is to keep NATO -- and it's wonderful American-made weapons -- away from Russia, at whom they are pointed. Ukraine (and Belarus) cannot be allowed to join NATO

This has apparently gone unnoticed by the people in charge.

But what really strikes me as peculiar about this entire thing is that while the Biden Administration makes noises about the security of the Ukraine's borders, our own leak illegal immigrants like a sieve, and for a variety of reasons favorable to the left, this is perfectly fine.

Like I've said, the people who run this country are stupid and evil.

Notes from New Yorkistan:

"Sanity has returned!", they told us.

"Democrats take heed!", they all parroted in unison.

One of the best indications you may be dealing with a leftist lunatic (sorry, that's redundant) -- I mean, if the crossed eyes, the useless stream of polysyllabic dribble and the sandals didn't give it away -- is probably their obsession with food.

Particularly with what everyone else is eating.

St. George of Orwell, patron saint of being fucking direct, put it nicely when he said of the left that it tends to draw to it "every fruit-juice drinker in England" (The Road to Wigan Pier), along with "Nature Quacks". The modern-day equivalent -- The Food Nazi -- is a pernicious pest that annoys more people for less good affect than COVID, Jock Itch and an Obama, combined.

And so we come to the already-sad tale of Eric Adams, the newly-installed wanna-be Idi Amin of Sodom-on-Hudson.

(Or, as I like to say, "DeBlasio! Now available in Chocolate!")

Adams was supposed to represent something of a return to normalcy (amazing how the left all keep repeating that phrase) after what seems the forever reign of dumbfuck that was Warren Wilhelm, Jr., but it's not turning out that way. In fact, it seems that despite all the hot air about Adams being "a different kind of democrat", he is, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same kind of democrat, only fucking dumber.

I didn't think that was possible, but in this day and age of the impossible suddenly becoming too fucking real, it was not only possible, but well within the wheelhouse of a complete retard to accomplish. Without breaking a sweat.

I could list all of the dumbass accomplished in record time, but it isn't necessary. You would have guessed the first 100 items without my help, and the next 500 would be somewhere in the realm of "well, that figures", so I'll limit myself to a single instance of asshole.

The Mayor has declared that every Friday will be "Healthy Eating Day" in New York City schools.

That would be the same schools where they serve year-old baloney on crackers.

Those would be the same schools that put Kraft singles with ketchup on recycled cardboard and call it "pizza".

The same schools who scream loudly about the "epidemic" of "morbid obesity" in children, and then cancel gym classes so there will be more time and money to teach kindergarteners about transexuals and the finer points of anal sex.

So, it has been decreed: the New York City School system will be feeding "plant-based meals" to school children, whether they want them or not.

Why?

Because the Mayor is one of them thar fruit juice drinkers and Nature Quacks.

And then it turns out, on second thought, he does eat fish.

Pretty soon he might be eating crow. If he had any fucking shame.

I'll just let you watch it.