Shorter

Shorter John Cole

I have a problem with you people!

Great line of the day

The Jurist summarizes the dynamic about the Sask Party's Finance minister Gantefoer sticking its toe into the HST water and then rapidly pulling back:

. . . there's good news in the fact that the Sask Party wants to let big business do the actual work in selling the HST. After all, the Wall government tried the same strategy when it came to nuclear power, and was forced to back down once it realized that it's people rather than dollars who ultimately get their say at the polls.

Emphasis mine.
I heard Brad Wall talk about the Harmonized Sales Tax once on John Gormley Live -- or, rather, I heard John Gormley wax enthusiastic about how great it would be if the Sask Party would think about introducing the HST and Wall saying flatly, over and over, nope, the Sask Party isn't interested, won't discuss it, no no no. Wall knows -as Gantefoer has now discovered -- that even the merest hint of an inclination to even think about the HST would immediately blow up into a big bad news story for the Sask Party.

Obama and politics

Jonathan Bernstein analyzes Obama's recent speeches and draws some conclusions:

What Obama is saying here is that politics, rightly understood, is the very core of what makes this nation a nation. Not individualism, not religiosity, and certainly not ethnicity or the land itself, but politics. . . . We, in the United States, do not accept history, or live through history -- we have the capacity, Obama (and Biden) say, to make history, through collective action, whether it is in the Revolution, the Constitution, the Civil War, the civil rights revolution, or now, in tackling the challenges that face us in the 21st century. America, therefore, is self-created, and continues to be self-creating, by political action.

Two years ago, I felt that the difference between the three democratic frontrunners could be summed up like this: John Edwards wanted to reform the economy, Hillary Clinton wanted to reform society, and Barak Obama wanted to reform politics. I am still not sure whether people who voted for Obama necessarily understood or supported what he wanted to do -- I'm not sure if changing US politics is actually possible, either -- but Obama took his election as a mandate and I believe he is doing it. He sincerely believes that Americans can do anything they want to do -- "Yes, we can" is the essence of his being. In the end, if he CAN reform American politics, then society and the economy will follow.
The Teabaggers who are so opposed to him call him names like fascist and communist because they don't know WHAT to call him, but in some visceral way they recognize what many progressives so far have not -- that Obama actually is aiming to change the way politics is being practiced in America, creating a significant, non-partisan, forward-looking change in how American democracy functions. This is terribly threatening to some on both the right and the left, who are too comfortable with the existing system.

Just because you have a PhD doesn't mean you're not a jerk

I am opposed to the war in Afghanistan but it is mean-spirited and self-aggrandizing to express that opinion on the backs of orphaned children.

Explaining the priests

Andrew Sullivan writes a perceptive piece about the Catholic church pedophilia scandals and the perception within the priesthood that sexually abusing children was a a sin not a crime.

imagine you are a young gay Catholic teen coming into his sexuality and utterly convinced that it's vile and evil. . .
If this is the 1950s and 1960s, it's into the Church you go. You think it will cure you. In fact, it only makes you sicker . . .
They have never had a sexual or intimate relationship with any other human being. Sex for them is an abstraction, a sin, not an interaction with an equal. . .
They barely see these children as young and vulnerable human beings, incapable of true consent. Because they have never had a real sexual relationship, have never had to deal with the core issue of human equality and dignity in sex, they don't see the children as victims. Like the tortured gay man, Michael Jackson, they see them as friends. . .
In this self-protective environment, these priests do not even see the children as fellow humans. They remain like those solitary abstract images in their heads. So they cannot fully grasp the enormity of the crime they are committing and see it merely as another part of the vortex of their sexual sin.

Sullivan thinks the Pope is going to have to resign.

Great line of the day

A Commenter at Rumproast describes Sarah Palin's latest stunt to "target" Democrats:

Every time the country sees Barack Obama, he is gracious, earnest, measured in his words, passionate without being antagonistic, and almost supernaturally cognizant of the expectations of his office and his obligations to the people of the United states.
Every time they see Sarah Palin, she is making some kind of half-assed, hyperbolic, self-serving, reactionary pre-emptive strike on one or another topic of enormous complexity which her handlers have obligingly distilled into jaw-dropping, comic book moronisms that she can regurgitate on tape before her beehive unravels.
She is the embodiment of World Wrestling Politics—a loudmouth idiot with a folding chair, managed by banal, sleazy characters wearing sunglasses and swami hats. With stunts like this, she is practically demanding that America take her as seriously as a monster-truck rally and file her in the same part of the Public Brain that holds our fake restaurant receipts and snapshots of the Iron Sheik.

Emphasis mine.

Message to Iggy and Steve

I know the Liberals want to pummel the Cons whenever possible, and vice-versa. But decisions affecting people's lives are not bargaining chips or got-ya votes or nhyaaa-nhyaa catcalls in the House.
If you are going to stand up for women's rights, then do so with meaningful and heartfelt actions, not trivial and cynical manouevers.
That is all.

Oops

What is pricelessly funny about the 13 attorneys general suing over health care reform is that the point they are suing about is the one thing that the health insurance companies actually want, the requirement that everyone be insured.
Without such a requirement, people would just buy their insurance on their way to the hospital. And the health insurance companies wouldn't be permited to deny them coverage based on preexisting conditions, nor to cap their coverage. Result -- without the individual mandate, the health insurance companies would all be going bankrupt.
Would the Democrats care? Not one bit. Medicare would have to be expanded to cover people whose insurance companies had gone belly up, and fairly soon the result would be single-payer.
So if there is one part of the health care bill that the insurance companies do NOT want to see struck down, it is the mandate.
None of the insurance companies are going to support an effort to declare the individual mandate unconstitutional, and I would imagine those Attorneys-General are going to be getting a fairly direct memo on this pretty quick. And judges too.

Annie, shut up

In the nicest possible way, the University of Ottawa tells Ann Coulter to watch her mouth. Oh, snap.

Still crazy

Taylor Marsh is still flipping out.
Sorry, but if women's right to chose to have an abortion had to get thrown under the bus so that 35 million Americans could get health care, then so be it. It's simply not the end of the world -- abortions will still be available, even though at a cost. But there is no way that the Democrats could have approved health insurance reform without Stupack and his six votes, however dumb and wrong-headed he is.
And Hillary, bless her heart, would have been even quicker than Obama to make this kind of deal.

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!