Shorter

Mark Steyn is in despair about American health insurance reform, because the American people will be paying so much for health care in the future they will turn all wimpy and they won't want to start wars and overspend on their military anymore.
Shorter version

We're all Frenched now!

I imagine we'll be seeing a lot of this stuff over the next few days.

Yes, they can

Well, they did it.
I didn't think the Democrats in Congress would actually do it, and it was a lot closer than I thought it should be, but they passed health insurance reform tonight.
I just hope the progressives learned something when they saw how close that vote actually was. Without the pander to the anti-abortion crowd, it wouldn't have passed.
And in spite of all the negativity on the progressive blogs about how inadequate this reform was, they missed the point -- exactly what this bill did was never that important, as Canada has discovered -- its just going to be argued about and changed over and over anyway. The important thing was the acceptance of two basic concepts: that the government has the right to tell insurance companies and health care providers what to do, and that everybody must be covered by health insurance including the poor (ie, black) people.
This whole experience will toughen the Democrats immeasurably -- they have been called names and screamed at by idiots, and survived -- there's nothing like shared experience in the trenches to make people realise they must either hang together or they will hang separately.

Huskies are the champions

Huskies advance to the final

U of S Huskies defeat Carlton and will go to the CIS final. Yay, dogs!

Huskies make the Final Four

U of S Huskies win quarter final and on to the semis tomorrow vs. Carleton. Go Huskies!

Gold

Due to this darn flu and a few complications, I haven't been able to follow the paralympics the way I did the Olympics, but here are some photos.
Lauren Woolstencroft wins Canadian gold:


Canada's Greg Westlake celebrates after scoring against Sweden:


Irek Zaripov of Russia celebrates after winning gold during the Men's 2.4km Pursuit Sitting Biathlon:

What is the matter in Quebec?

The Quebec Immigration minister tells Muslim women:

If you want to integrate into Quebec society, here are our values.

Mean-spirited, petty, divisive, cruel, anti-women -- yeah, I'm sure people can hardly wait to move to Quebec these days to share values like those.

Great line of the day

Steve V notes that four out of five Albertans hated Harper's idea about changing the words of the national anthem:

Nice one chess master. Renaming Calgary International Airport to 'Trudeau Rocked' International would have garnered more popular support.

It is to laugh

What a ridiculous way to write a school curriculum.
And if you asked these Americans which country was the most advanced in the world, they would say "ours". Because that is what their teachers have been told to teach them.

Flu

Sorry for the lack of posts -- I've had a horrible flu since Wednesday and finally starting to feel human again tonight, sort of anyway.
More soon.

Good news

One more reason to hope that health care reform in the States is approved.

Other shoe

Last week Atrios made this perceptive observation

I'm really not sure how we got from we don't torture, to that torture stuff we do isn't torture, to anyone who opposes torture hates America. Apparently that's where we are.

I have no doubt that a similar pushback on Canada's Afghanistan outrage will be coming as soon as the Cons can move the dialog from defense to offense. I think we're already seeing the beginning of it when Harper implies that continued questions from the Liberals and NDP on what the Cons knew about prisoner toture is acutally an attack on the public service.

Anonymous sources

Glennzilla has a great post about anonymity in journalism and why it is bad journalism. Here's the paragraph which should be framed and posted on every newsroom's wall:

In very limited circumstances, anonymity is valuable and justified (e.g., when someone is risking something substantial to expose concealed wrongdoing of serious public interest). But promiscuous, unjustified anonymity -- which pervades the establishment press -- is the linchpin of most bad, credibility-destroying reporting. It enables government officials and others to lie to the public with impunity or manipulate them with propaganda, using eager reporters as both their megaphone and shield. It is the weapon of choice for reporters eager to serve as loyal message-carriers and royal court gossip columnists. It preserves and bolsters the culture of secrecy that dominates Washington -- exactly the opposite of what a real journalist, by definition, would seek to accomplish . . . . In sum, petty or otherwise unjustified uses of anonymity is the hallmark of the power-worshiping, dishonest, unreliable reporter . . . . As Izzy Stone put it about the Vietnam War: "The process of brain-washing the public starts with off-the-record briefings for newspapermen. . . ."

Asteroid-denial

So now those scientist guys think an asteroid killed the dinosaurs.
But what do they know anyway?
'Cause some guy sent some other guy an email or something, so of course that proves Gary Larson is right after all:

Another great week for the Cons

First they are embarrased into dropping the national anthem pander
And we find out they have now formented an international scandal over their ham-fisted decision-making at the Rights & Democracy. (A story Dawg has been doing a brilliant job in covering, by the way.)
Finally we find out that Finance Minister Flaherty spent $9,000 on a government jet -- one way -- so he can go to London, Ontario for a photo op in Tim Hortons to tell Canadians we have to tighten our belts.
And his office piously tells reporters that of course Flaherty is taking an $800 commercial flight back to Ottawa -- while apparently the jet flies back, for another $9,000, empty.
Gee, Jim, please don't try to save us any more money, we can't afford it.