I’m supposed to be a on a break this week doing the every two week summer blog thing but I felt that since last week’s blog was so heavy on the whole Canada is great thing and dumping on Wexit that I needed to win back some points with some of my more anti-Ottawa readers by providing a more light-hearted and fun summer time read.

And for the record, just so no one is confused, I do actually believe that Alberta and the West is under-represented federally and has many, legitimate grievances and is quite often taken for granted and ignored at the expense of other provinces and constituencies. I just think that the better answer to that is to work the existing system to fix the problem rather than fight to make ourselves smaller and less relevant – politically and economically – on the world stage.

But that’s just me. Now for the short blog.

10 or so random things that may or may not be interesting but have otherwise caught my attention in the last few weeks that I am going to bore you with before I take yet another week off.

• The Great European Air Conditioning War. That’s right. Smack dab in the middle of an epic heat wave, we have to be subjected to yet another culture war about, of all things, air conditioning. Apparently, air conditioning is some right wing plot because air conditioners make the air inside cool and expel hot air onto the unwashed and oppressed proletariat, Or something like that. Far better I guess to use a heat pump, that… does the same thing, but without a compressor. Hmm. Look, I get it. Most of Europe isn’t air-conditioned, at least not how we would call something air-conditioned. And most of Europe is also a socialist paradise (if we are to believe Fox News), so most if Europe should be against air conditioning as a capitalist incursion into the Marxist dream of… I don’t know, a comfortable sleep. At least the discussion hasn’t made it to Canada or we’d have to be commenting about colonialism and our government overlords.

• Speaking of which, another stupid thing we had to endure this week (and last) is the libertarian backlash to The Jackbooted Government Thugs in the Atlantic Provinces and their dumb idea to try and prevent stupid people from doing stupid things by imposing fines for anyone caught hiking, lighting fires or being otherwise dangerous in their tinder-dry provincial forests. The reaction was so visceral that you would have thought COVID vaccine mandates had returned or truckers who never crossed the border were told that if they wanted to cross the border the US demanded they be vaccinated. With a tsunami reaction that stopped just short of a convoy to the Cape Breton Highlands, this almost surpassed the AC war in its absurdity. Please people. Perspective. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are predominately forest covered provinces that haven’t seen a lick of rain in ages. They are also bone-dry. The spectre of some city-dwelling libertarian nut job incensed that he isn’t allowed to do something that he has never actually been inclined to do but he might dammit has been, in a perfect descriptor: Hysterical!

• The status of Shedeur Sanders of the Cleveland Browns. No, not the guy who hilariously fell off the dock into the lake during some ridiculous new helmet reveal. No, I am talking about the much-hyped and over-discussed Cleveland Browns wannabe QB prospect, who was drafted in the fifth round after a precipitous drop and is both the son of Neon Deion Sanders (his coach) and the only player to have his number retired at the University of Colorado after amassing a losing recond. Why am I following this? Well because it’s the NFL Baby! And the regular season is a mere 20 Sleeps away. So the hyper-ventilating hype machine is in full gear and I am now fully convinced that Shedeur Sanders, after a mere 45 snaps in his first pre-season NFL game where he was an emergency injury starter, is not only the draft steal of 2025, but maybe of all time and almost certainly a first-ballot lock for the Hall of Fame!!!!! Right??? These things are never wrong, right???? Football can’t come soon enough. Except maybe for poor Shedeur, who isn’t going to play in week 2 pre-season and, let’s face it, is one of four QBs for the Cleveland Browns on the depth chart. Cleveland. Where QBs go to die. Cleveland which hasn’t had a Bonafide QB stud since Bernie Kosar in the 1990s. Vontae Mack he is not.

• My crazy stock portfolio which as of now is composed of meme stocks and recommendations from some guy on Twitter named Jeff. I kid you not. Jeff pops up regularly on my feed and makes recommendations. Free ones. And, contrary to 99.9% of the meme stock recommenders on X, Jeff also happens to be a real person. And based on results, Jeff also appears to be a pretty smart guy. I don’t buy everything he suggests but the three purchases I elected make have each averaged a 50% return. Well done, Jeff. And well done me for utilizing the Fundamental Analysis tools I learned while doing my Chartered Financial Analyst designation to throw all caution to the wind and buying based on feels. But isn’t that what today’s market is all about? Fundamentals be damned, caution to the wind and chase the tail of the trend that you missed because you were in the bathroom when a particular security started being hyped? A stock market that trades up based on the hype that traded up the day before? Look, I’m not crazy – this has been a fun ride and way less stressful than energy investing but I am feeling more and more that it is time to cull the herd, take the wins and move on. I remember the dot-com bubble. But then again, Jerome Powell may be on the outs and rates in the US will drop to 1% so I don’t want to miss that runaway train… For the record, I am not crazy, these stocks are derivative plays on the AI and automation hype. One is a bricks and mortar business that does the wiring and installation at AI data centres, another is an online insurance platform and a third is an app aggregator that is swimming in EBITDA. DM me if interested in the names, they are pretty cool companies. Not investment advice.

• The mosquito population in Calgary. It’s big. Rivals Winnipeg and Regina. I suppose this is what happens when it rains for most of July. And into August. This is the wettest summer I can remember. The magpies are doing the backstroke in my above ground pool as we speak and the other night it was raining so hard I got trapped in my garage after putting the recycling out in the alley. That’s it. That’s all I have. I hate mosquitoes. They interfere with cocktail and peanut time in the back yard. IYKYK

• My favourite Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Mark Carney is ragging the puck too much on mega projects and is losing the West even more, allowing separatist sentiment to burn like a Nova Scotia brush fire – he should be fined $25,000. Let me be more specific. It’s one thing to talk a good game. They came out of the gates hard, with a promise to fast-track projects and run roughshod over approval processes and first nations objections. After Doug Ford drank the Kool Aid and introduced a provincial equivalent of a “get out of the way we’re building shit act”, the Feds slowed down as the summer went on. Lots of talk about lists of projects, which doesn’t exist yet, and facilitating pipeline and increased exports, for which there are no proponents, but little action and absolutely no public or back-room movement on the major irritants/roadblocks – the tanker ban, the emissions cap and the EV mandate. Without that, Danielle Smith and the Wexit gang are empowered to whip up anti-Ottawa to their hearts content because the Feds are, to all indications, doing nothing. I see the energy minister this week has started a modest pump-up of the LNG tires, saying there may be a business case after all. Too little too late? Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s see what September brings, but note to Mr. Carney, you have already lost six months, you may be shoring up support in Ontario and Quebec, but the economy is paying the price for your dithering. Bold Action Required. Get to work.

• Speaking of politics, Pierre Poilievre may actually have a seat by the time next week. This is good. The rudder and leaderless opposition has become a major annoyance with their endless negative sniping based on complaining about yesterday’s news. Not that Poilievre is going to gripe about much different stuff but at least it will be one, unified voice. If the events unfolding south of the border is any indication, the lack of a unified opposition featuring an actual “leader” is critical to the continued function of a democracy. The irony of Pierre’s seat of course can’t be overlooked. He is basically running for a seat in a riding that is at once one of the safest federal Conservative seats in the country and also one of the hotbeds of the Wexit/Alberta Separation movement. And running to be the leader of the Federal Opposition. And he is a staunch federalist. And we are going to end up with an opposition leader representing a riding in Alberta who was born in Alberta and a Prime Minister who was raised in Alberta both in their roles at a time when the separatist sentiment in the province has never been higher. If these guys can’t figure out how to at least dampen that flame, they deserve the place in the history books that will be waiting for them. Not an endorsement of anything – just realpolitik.

• The non-zero chance that during the Friday summit Trump will have ceded Alaska the Vlad “the impaler” Putin and Russia. Also a non-zero chance that Trump won’t actually realize that is what he has done. Never mind. I stand corrected. It now appears that Trump is headed to Alaska with a series of economic incentives for Putin that include allowing Russia access to vast oil and gas reserves in the Bering Strait and Chutki Sea because we all know that Russia is short on oil and gas. How is this even a sane idea? Putin DOES NOT CARE about economic incentives. He is an expansionist dictator who wants to rebuild the USSR geographically, who needs to be hemmed in, not bribed with other people’s resources. I jokingly said on X that maybe Trump should offer Putin Canada in exchange for a cease-fire, but that doesn’t even feel like a joke anymore.

• Jeans. We are fighting a culture war over jeans and it won’t go away. Or is it genes? Or Genes? I don’t know, but like all of this stuff, it is excruciating. Some marketing dude comes up with a punny take to exploit new celebrity spokeswoman Sydney Sweeney’s obvious “traits” and the media and political class lose their collective minds over an ad campaign that, to be honest, registered with me for precisely the amount of time the ad ran, then it was over. Personally, if we are going fight over jeans, it should be whether Gene Hackman or Gene Wilder was the better actor, or Gene Krupa or Gene Simmons was a more influential musician or if Gene Kelly was a better old-time performer than Gene Autry or of Gene Mauch was better ball player than Gene Tenace or whether Gene Rayburn ever got an STD from all the women he kissed on Match Game or of Gene Siskel was a better movie reviewer than Roger Ebert or… well you get the point… and not whether a 26-year old actress is a closet white nationalist fascist racist because she looks good in tight pants. For the record I am partial to Jean Genie – loves chimney stacks, screams, bawls – poor little greenie.

• Air Canada flight attendants are off the job and flights are being cancelled all across the Air Canada network. Like all strikes at what constitutes an essential service even if it is no longer government owned, this one will not be solved without federal government intervention. Get on with it people. If we have to suffer through the airline oligopoly in Canada, at least make sure everyone is flying. Is there a worse time to have an entire national airline shut down than during Canada’s summer of tourism love?

• Bonus: Natural gas is hot again.

• Bonus bonus. I have been playing with Grok Imagine. It’s freaky weird what you can do with video and a few choice prompts. AI is going to ruin a lot of stuff. And people. Stay out of the rabbit hole.

Well, that’s it. All I’ve got the energy for today. Have a great weekend and I will return the Friday before Labour Day with my NFL preview. Or last part of the year things to look forward to. Like more tariffs.

Merp