Farmer Diaries

Not really important that Trump lied to Trudeau, in fact, world leaders do it all the time.  Although this may be a first that a politician lied to another one and then went to his supporter, in front of cameras, and bragged that he lied, that he had no idea as to the state of the Canada/USA trade balance, and in the end didn't really give a sh$t! That's new!  I would guess that any world leader now will wonder what's the point of having a head-to-head with Trump.  He's likely to lie about everything and it has no impact on policy. It's not so much that Trump should "go home" rather he should "stay home" because it is evident now that what comes out of his "pie hole" is inconsequential for other nations...not only does he make stuff up, he doesn't care what it means -- why then engage the man!

Living away from Canada you encounter different health care systems; in Canada that provides virtually all its health care on a no-fee basis -- the user pay nothing; the system of allocation of the services is scarcity.  Long wait in the emergency room, for noncritical care, but when it comes to critical care, Canada is second to none with outcome.  Moreover, Canadians don't fear that their family will go broke caring for them. Currently, I am in Mexico, and a friend recently took a bad fall -- nothing life-threatening, but still.  this all happened Sunday evening (imagine the wait at Montreal's emergency room), we arrived at the local hospital (there was a bad cut on a leg) and my friend was immediately rolled into a treatment room -- she didn't wait 5 minutes (in fact she was already in the treatment room when I came back from parking the car. Within 90 minutes she departed the hospital with 8 suture on her leg, and orthopedist had examined her o...

Last night was a disaster for the GOP, taking Pennsylvania's 18th district that was for the past 20 years a solid Republican stronghold (+20) became democratic.  Yes, the margin was razor thin, but the point is that the GOP, even with Trumps' poor rating should have won this seat.  This is a seat where the GOP usually wins with a 20% margin.  There are more than 100 seats in Congress that are more at risk than PA-18. However, it is still hard to draw conclusions; the fact is that Lamb (the Democrat) won by less than 1% -- however, PA-18 is a largely electronic ballot district, so recount is out of the question, except for absentee and military ballots, and these account for less than the difference between the two candidates (a few hundred). What is interesting here is that Lamb got 80% of the number of votes than his "no chance" predecessor, what is key is that his opponent Rick Saccone got only 53% of the number of votes that his predecessor got (who ...

I've got 10 posts in process, but not enough time/interest to get them finished.  To my readers: Sorry