"Plug and play interoperability"

Alison reports on the newest terminology for what used to be called "deep integration" and before that was called, I think, "customs union" with the United States.
I guess as Canadians begin to understand each term, and it starts to poll worse, they have to change it.

Shooting themselves in the foot

This is why I have come to believe the United States will never introduce government-paid medical care at the national level -- can you imagine how many rants would be heard about how awful it would be to "reward" all those "losers" -- ie, women having too many babies and young people getting addicted to drugs and men shooting each other up.
You know, poor people.
The same people who obviously caused the economic meltdown by buying houses.

Soon

As my husband put it, the calendar is on our side now.

Talking about "Canadian" names

One of the best things about Canada, I believe, is that we aren't a melting pot where people congeal together into some bland homogeneous "Canadian" soup. Rather, we continue to strive to be a multi-cultural country where we all can maintain our distinctiveness. Je me souviens applies to all of us.
Over at Dawg's Blawg they're having a fascinating discussion about what makes a name "Canadian". Sprinkled among some wingnut anti-immigrant rantings there are some great comments -- like this one from Cameron:

. . . here's my checklist:
Passed the criminal background check? Got a passport? Know not to put your tongue or damp hand on metal objects during the winter?
Canadian.

Brendan adds

Omar Khadr is a Canadian name, though not many seem to believe it.

So is Mahar Arar. And North of 49 shares a story:

For my kids' generation (in a big cosmopolitan city, anyway), a name is just a name. Some are a little trickier to pronounce (teacher Mrs Abousaffi told the kids to just call her "Mrs A", for example), and while the kids are always aware of and curious about the name's origins, it isn't an "other" thing, like a tribal label; it's a personal thing, like the colour of someone's hair. For these kids, Mohammed or Ali or Jamshyd or Puran are already as unremarkable as Tom, Dick or Harriet. . . . At the dealership where my Filipino friend works, there's only one "white" salesman, the rest are first-generation immigrants from various places that have nothing in common except that there's no hockey. Yet during the playoffs, when there are no customers anyway because they're all watching the Canucks on TV, all five of these guys are crowded around the one small TV in the sales manager's office, whooping like cowhands on payday.

Dawg quotes a comment from a friend of his

. . . my mother married a Roma, and her twin sister a Cree, my grandfather on my father's side was a Hassidic Russian Jew whose family fled Russia to escape the pogroms. He married a Romani woman, one of my younger cousins just married a Mohawk man, and another aMexican man, I married an Italian, a Jamaican, and than a Jamaican Chinese man, my other cousin married a Chinese man, my best friends are Metis, Jamaicans, Jews and Vietnamese. I sent my son out West to go live with the Metis and he spent the last week spent fishing and hunting with the Blackfoot and he now he doesn't want ever want to come to Toronto. My daughter's closest friends are Iranian, Vietnamese, Ghanian, and Russian in origin.

Dawg says "That sums up Canada for me in microcosm, and it's one of the reasons I love the place."
Yes, indeed.

Great planning, guys

So in 2001 the announced plan for the Afghanistan War was for NATO to help the United States knock the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan because it had harboured Al Quaeda and Bin Laden.
Fast forward to 2009.
Far too many of the scary terrorists turned out to be malnourished Afghans, Australian adventurers, and violent children. Not only have the Taliban taken back huge swaths of Afghanistan, it appears now they are taking over huge swaths of nuclear-armed Pakistan as well.
As Bill Murray said when Danny Aykroyd thought of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, "Great thinking, Ray!"

Why would anyone want to hear Bush?

They seem to expect 1,500 people will attend George Bush's speech in Calgary, but why they don't say -- I can't imagine why anyone in Calgary or anywhere else would care what Bush has to say anymore.

Sneaky

The Toronto Star reports that Harper -- the guy who presented himself to Canadians in October as Mr. Sweater, the Kitten Whisperer -- is trying to use the economic crisis to sneak some right-wing pandering into the budget bill.
He just can't stop himself, can he?

So let them chatter

They're pitching a fit in the US about whether Obama will reinstate the old "fairness doctrine". The Politico finger-wags:

[President Obama] stating [opposition to reinstatement] clearly would quickly silence a lot of conservative critics who assume the Democratic president is going to push to reinstate the defunct policy. Otherwise, the Fairness Doctrine chatter on the airwaves isn't likely to die down.

But what the Politico doesn't understand is this: They're going to chatter about something, so it actually doesn't matter whether Obama wants to reinstate this or not, as long as right-wing radio remains afraid that he might. And the more they emote and weep and wail about it, the more they are admitting to their listeners that they AREN"T actually fair.

The War Nerd on Gaza

The War Nerd finally writes about the January war in Gaza. And what he says isn't pretty. Here's the gist of it:

The lowdown on Gaza is simple: in the short run, Israel did a decent job of killing Hamas’s cadre. Gaza’s a small place, and it was pretty much shooting fish with headscarves in a sandy barrel. They blew up the place real good, made themselves feel better after getting roughed up by Hezbollah a couple years ago. OK, so you’re a Hell of a counterpuncher; so what?. . . what happens five years from now when all those dead Hamas guys’ little brothers are ready to graduate from the rebuilt Gaza I-Hate-the-Jews Academy.

He concludes that Israel is going destroy itself in the long run if it doesn't start making better decisions:

. . . what a lot of people don’t get about war is there comes a time when there ain’t no smart moves any more. . . . And Israel, in the long term…well, they’ve got those 200 nukes, and the US Congress…and that’s about all. They won’t get driven into the sea like Arafat used to screech, but they’ll get meaner and smaller until all the smart people, the ones who can, will get out, and what’s left will be another scrappy desert fort making deals with the locals. A lot of Crusader kingdoms went out that way, just one decision away from getting re-absorbed into the Muslim soup. If they’d made a deal with the Mongols, maybe we could’ve done something with this. But nooooooo, they were too snotty. Nope, doesn’t look good, and worse yet it’s going to be some ugly maintenance wars, where you have to blast a lot of schools and hospitals, and still don’t get anywhere. Like that scene in Fight Club where he bleeds all over the Mafia guy, till the wise guy screams he can use the basement. “Lou! Lou! You don’t know where I’ve been!”

Great comment of the day

In Marcy Wheeler's latest post about the developing investigation against the Bush administration torture memo lawyers, commenter "Scribe" writes:

I work as a lawyer. I’ve been one for about 20 years. Addington, Yoo, and the rest of those thugs with bar admissions have given me every reason to rage at, and every reason to hate, both them and their use of my profession. Liars, cheaters, thieves, deadbeats, busted marriages, cops and all the rest are the daily flow of lawyering. But the one group who deserve nothing but to be rooted out of the profession and their careers ended are those who use the law and their skill in it to destroy the law. The lawyer who steals from a client is bad enough. But he steals only money. The lawyer who uses the law to destroy the law steals not from a client, but from both everyone in the future - who will have to live under a system he perverted - and from those in the past who sacrificed their lives for the ideal of law. And he steals something more precious than money. He steals liberty from the future, and shits on the sacrifice of the past.

Oops

I just pulled a post from yesterday because it was based on a news story that was 18 months old -- can't remember now how exactly I found it, or why I thought it was actually new.
Don't you hate it when that happens?

Not outrageous

So Wolfe won and Montcalm lost and ever since we've been singing one of the most xenophobic songs ever written.
Now I like history. But I just can't work up any outrage over this -- it looks like we are not going to reenact some battle from 250 years ago because said reenactment would be needlessly provocative and insulting to many Canadians in Quebec. Good decision.

Wow

Just wow!

Great comment of the day

Scott Lemieux asks the world to Make It Stop about the total awfulness of A-Rod the Steroid Boy Wonder, and commenter McKingford makes this good point:

I always feel like I'm living in some Bizarro-alternate world reality when people get all faux-hysterical about steroids in baseball.
The NFL plays its Pro Bowl today. The NFL now routinely employs men who tip the scales at 350+. 20 years ago virtually nobody did. Yet we dreamily pretend that this phenomenon is entirely a product of grain feeding...
And just to be sure I'm not exaggerating the double standard, lets step back two years. The then-reigning Defensive Player of the Year, Shawn Merriman tested positive for steroids. He quietly served a four game suspension and resumed play, and was *again* a leading candidate (despite missing 1/4 of the season) for DPY. And nary a "tsk" was heard.
Like I said, I feel like the last sane man alive, as the world overturns every stone in an effort to root out steroids in baseball while the NFL drones away, and we all quietly pretend that it doesn't consume enough steroids to double the US annual beef production.

Uh, Mike . . .

PSA has a message for Senator Duffy:

. . . a senator in our parliamentary system has a duty to country, queen and constitution first and party affiliation second. We'll likely be stuck with Senator Duffy long after Steve Harper's political ship has run aground. It would be very nice if he figured out that he doesn't work for Harper, he works for us. The job of that house is to keep the short sighted, partisan twits from the commons from setting the whole damn place to ruin.

And Dave chimes in:

What Duffy demonstrated is what we could expect from elected senators: An endless stream of partisan diarrhea acting as the mouthpiece for their party leader because the only way they would get there is by being an active supporter of a particular party.
What Duffy hasn't gathered in is that the substantial shield he enjoys from his Senate seat protects him from the likes of Harper - not the Canadian public. The whole idea is that a senator rises above the partisan fray - not joins it.
. . . Duffy is no more qualified to engage in sober second judgment than he was to critically question the powerful as an advocate of the fourth estate.

Mike Duffy, proving the case against Senate reform since 2009!