Curley Cues Index

Author: Dennis

  •  It’s Time to Stop Gladiator Hockey

                Well the playoffs are over, and Lord Stanley’s mug once again lies south of the border. Let’s give credit to the Florida Panthers who once again displayed the levels of tenacity, courage, and viciousness needed to triumph in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Now comes the critical off-season when NHL General Managers and their bosses sit…

  • How Much Pride is Too Much?

             We had an interesting discussion the other day on the patio at the golf course. Our golf group is an older bunch of guys, ranging from the early 60’s to mid 80’s in age, so we might be just a tad set in our ways. We were arguably conditioned by the prevailing mores of the…

  • My Pet Peeve

    Since I started writing these articles, I have addressed a number of items that I thought might generate some serious pushback. I’ve risked antagonizing people of faith by suggesting that we should have a secular society and that we should eliminate the tax advantages provided to religious communities of all types, Christianity included. Churches, I…

  • Voting for Progress – and Vice Versa

           In the aftermath of the Federal election, there was much discussion of voting patterns, and how the NDP and the Bloc both lost seats as a result of the divisive nature of the campaigns. There was a general consensus that a lot of people voted “against” Poilievre, or “against a 4th Liberal term” as opposed to…

  • The Productivity Puzzle

           Ottawa, we have a problem A few weeks ago I saw a story about Canada’s woeful and declining productivity. I manfully resisted the Boomer temptation to blame it on the millennials, and resolved to try to discover what lies behind this phenomenon. I got distracted for a bit by the elections and the orange idiot…

  • Promises and Pie-/crusts

             I was watching CBC some days ago and saw a story in which a “fact checker” was looking into allegations that Pierre Poilievre, who has been critical about Mr. Carney’s actions on behalf of Brookfield, is actually invested in Brookfield Corporation himself. (He is, although indirectly). The query, of course was in response to Poilievre’s…

  • Getting Skinny

                World news is just depressing. It’s time for some lighter fare. This one is pretty much all about my favourite subject – myself. Feel free to ignore it if you wish.              December 2023 was a miserable month for me. I caught a terrible cold. Tested negative for Covid, which was a damn shame, because when…

  • The Long Slow Betrayal of Ukraine

    I want to take my eyes off the train wreck that is the current US Administration under Donald Trump, and review the history that has led to the current situation in Ukraine. I anticipate that Trump might well deliver a fatal stab in the Ukrainian back. Before that happens, let’s take a look at how…

  • Hedging Your Bets – the Smart Way

    Recently my wife asked me “what do we do to protect ourselves against what Trump is doing to the economy? What do you think is going to happen”? The answer of course was “I don’t know”. The people in charge of this country don’t seem to know, so why would I pretend to have a…

  • Democracy A L’Orange

     Donald Trump IS the news cycle these days. There are so many outrageous things happening that you cannot possibly react to them all. And this is exactly what that narcissistic orange pinhead wants. In 2017, Axios reported that “Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each Presidential day as an episode…

  • What’s so Bad About Annexation?

    (Thanks to Ben, who helped create this cartoon. But the responsibility for the copyright infringement is mine) Donald Trump wants to make us part of the United States, and I know that is causing a great deal of anxiety for some people. Relax, people! It isn’t going to happen! And even if it does, it’s…

  • Insanity Trumps Climate Science

    Donald Trump started off his second term as US president on January 20th in his normal bombastic, moronic, self-aggrandizing, and narcissistic way. I was going to use the word style, but decided not to because we should never associate the word style with the Donald. I substituted manner, but decided that he didn’t have manners…

  • Energy, AI, Climate Change, and Crime

    I know. You looked at that title and said “Well! It will be interesting to see how he ties all that together.” I’m sorry to disappoint. It didn’t really tie together very well. It’s turned out to be something more of a rambling chain-of-thought exercise. It all started when my friend Malcolm approached me in…

  • Policy vs Personality

    (cartoon courtesy of Sue Dewar in the Toronto Sun) In my last article I suggested that voters would be influenced by the three P’s of politics – Personality, Performance, and Policy. I then digressed from discussing Jagmeet Singh as a personality, and a potential prime minister and wandered into a somewhat truncated discussion of NDP…

  • That Sick Sikh Singh

    Oh dear, I fear this might be a very Trudeau-like epistle – full of apologies. The first one is the apology for that disrespectful title, but it struck me funny and I just had to stick with it. The second apology is for any racist tone you might detect in the article. I honestly try…

  • Ten Years of Political Debris

    (Caricatures by Niall O’Loughlin)   I wrote in my last essay, in which I ranted about the lies, disinformation, and nastiness of the populist Pierre, that I was reluctant to enter into the world of commentary about partisan politics. However, having done it once, it seems to me that it would be only fair for me…

  • My Unbroken Canada

    (Cartoon by Graeme MacKay in The Hamilton Spectator) I find it hard to watch Canadian television these days because at some point the program Pierre Poilievre shows up, telling us that “Canada is broken”. I don’t think we really need an election right now, but honestly, I might welcome one if only because it will…

  • Gas Price Gouging

                I drive a “luxury” vehicle. It’s a second-hand, 13-year old Lexus IS 350 with an annoying scratch in the paint on the trunk. It only has about 160K on the odometer, and since I rarely drive more than 15000km/year, it’s likely to do me for a long, long time. However, it takes premium gas, and…

  • Getting Trucking on the Right Track

    In early August, I drove down to Cape Breton and then to my birthplace, beautiful PEI. It was a really good drive. I was really pleased with how well the traffic flowed, generally. I went through some construction zones, it being construction season (the only other season in Canada being dead of winter), but even…

  • Judicial Integrity in Canada

    Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator Judicial integrity in Canada is still a thing. South of the border, it’s appears to be just a myth, or a sad memory. I want to do a review of the US situation, with an update covering some of the US courts’ more recent and inexplicable decisions.…