Shortages in this land of plenty

Bloomberg reports today that Canada's rail lines (CN and CP) are having difficulty moving the excellent wheat and canola crops Canada's farms are producing this year.

The rail lines are saying the bottleneck is a lack of cars. One wonders if it mightn't be a lack of motive power with the dramatic increase in rail crude petroleum shipments.

Why?

This is the question of the Republican stonewall on lifting the loan limit:    why-war-on-poor-people?

I don't think Canadians who live in a colder climate can understand why Republicans are acting so stingy. Here if you don't have food and shelter during the winter half of the year you die. Simple as that.  For this reason alone we take the provision of social services pretty seriously.

The wierdest part of this is that the policies Republicans espouse essentially benefit ONLY the top 0.1 %. They make a mockery of the founding notions of the USA.

Sad, very Sad.

OK - So It's an addiction

Saw this title on Y Combinator today: 'Sitting is the new smoking'.

Here is the article.

Sitting is how I have spent much of my adult life and not much has changed since I retired.  I'm not complaining of most of the symptoms mentioned but I certainly recognize that I have a problem.

However the reference to smoking  is indicative of the addictive qualities of this little box that I 'm staring at just now.  It took me about ten years to quite smoking.  I wouldn't be surprised if it took that long to give this up.

It is said that Prem Watsa  is a big fan of Warren Buffett and follows his approach in building Fairfax Financial. Buffet is renowned for making large company purchases at a healthly discount to intrinsic value.

One of his major precepts is never buying a company in a businesses he didn't understand which included most if not all the tech sector.

Thinking about Mr.Watsa's most recent purchase. I wonder if he shouldn't have heeded his mentor's advice.