Canadians talk sense

In spite of a belligerent, derisive, even hostile tone which many journalists are bringing to the Plans of Abraham reenactment story -- witness Macleans and Rex Murphy -- the so-called ordinary Canadians commenting on these stories are displaying much greater sense. Here are some of the comments from Macleans and the Globe to these columns:

Personally, I think it was a good move to cancel the re-enactment of the Battle on the Plains of Abraham. Ever since 1759 this little battle has been a sore point with every generation of French Canadians. Why would the rest of Canada want to flaunt “our” win in glowing colours and graphic productions?

It’s time to move on, to stop dressing up, brandishing muskets, pikes and tomahawks. There is much more to write about in our nation than the nostalgic foolishness to which you devote a page.

Were we to focus more energy on making more perfect the union of anglophone and francophone cultures that make, in large part, our wonderful nation, we might one day get over the silly desire to reenact, and learn to appreciate the good that came of the unfortunate need for a "contest" of this nature in the first place.

No doubt Mr. Murphy also sees nothing wrong with the Orange Order marching through Catholic neighbourhoods in Ulster each year, to taunt residents with the defeat of their forefathers at the Battle of the Boyne. As significant as the battle on the Plains of Abraham is, it was a defeat for the French and is regarded with personal ignominy by many Quebec residents.
Perhaps, Rex, we could persuade Stephen Harper to perform an annual re-enactment of the tearing up of the Atlantic Accords .....on Signal Hill, of course. I'm sure Danny's boys would welcome him with open arms.

Exactly! Canceling this reenactment was a positive step for today's Canada. And now McGinty won't allow it in Ontario, either -- good for him.
The organizers are apparently talking about moving the event to upstate New York, why I don't know. It makes even more questionable whether the goal of this whole exercise was ever to simply reenact history or to actually rub Quebec's nose in it.

Ahhh. Isn't this sweet?

We're still friends, Saskatchewan Premier says of Ottawa
Spike and Chester, together again.

He said "stimulus" heh heh heh

Paul Krugman explains:

the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

Just desserts

Four mounties were afraid of a stapler? The Mounties will have a hard time living this one down. They may win the battle in the Dziekanski inquiry, but they'll lose the war.

Shh! Don't tell the Republicans

Tonight, after Obama's great inspiring speech, Republican Bobby Jindall was babbling about the Republican health care plan.
As Chris Matthews said, Uhhh? Six years in power and the Republicans never once mentioned health care or did anything about it. For the last eight years, the Republicans did absolutely nothing about health care in America.
And it occurred to me to wonder -- what if they did?
For much of the 45 years since Tommy Douglas brought in medicare, Saskatchewan voters kept voting NDP. And for much of the 40 years since the Canadian Health Act enforced nation-wide medicare standards, Canadian voters kept voting Liberal.
Oh, sure, I know, there were lots of reasons that people voted for and against the NDP and the Liberals over the last four decades. But medicare was a core value of both parties, and the voters knew it. Basically, we knew medicare would continue to be safe as long as we kept the NDP in power provincially, and the Liberals in power federally.
Now, I've read that the Republicans don't want the Democrats to bring in universal medicare because they're afraid of how popular the Democrats would be as a result.
But I wonder if the Republicans will ever realize that, if they could only introduce or take credit for bringing Americans real honest-to-goodness universal medical care, they will have guaranteed themselves American voters for the next 40 years?

Please, God, send another bubble

I promise not to miss it this time.
During the tech bubble, when people were selling website wisps and visions for hundreds of thousands of dollars, my husband and I were saying to each other, "We don't understand this, there's no value there, how can this be worth any money?"
And we didn't make a penny.
And during the housing bubble, when people were selling condos for hundreds of thousands of dollars, my husband and I were saying to each other, "We don't understand this, there's no value there, how can this be worth any money?"
And we didn't make a penny.
Obviously, I guess, that's the clue -- when we don't get it, its going to be big!
So the next time we find ourselves saying "We don't understand this, there's no value there, how can this be worth any money?" -- time to plunge!

Great line of the day

Steve at Far and Wide warns us not to let Harper bask in Obama's glow:

Don't let the ass ride the donkey.

WATB

Ahenakew said:

"Thank God it's over. And I mean that. It has been awful."

Not compared to Dachau.

Hitting the reset button

If you are trying to follow the financial news but are totally confused about what is going on and why, just read Billmon:

The broad story is well known, even to the cable TV pinheads: Housing Bubble + Subprime Mortgage Lending + Derivatives = Armageddon.. . .
But even now I’m not sure if many people fully understand just how insanely reckless the carnival was, to the point where future historians will speak of "structured finance" in much the same the way we talk about the bubonic plague.
The carriers (fleas and rats) of this particular epidemic were the bright young Wall Street things who invented the concept of securitized lending . . .
So here we are: The banks are sitting on paper originally valued at 100 cents on the dollar (or even more) which is now worth 20 or 10 or 0 cents. If they sell the stuff at those prices, most of the capital they’ve put behind those assets will be erased, leaving them insolvent, technically and perhaps literally – as in, unable to cover their current liabilities. On the other hand, if they don’t sell their pieces of Big Shitpile, all their capital (including what Uncle Sam has already thrown into the till) will remain frozen in place, blocking them from doing any new lending. Without new lending, they can’t earn the profits they need to make good the losses they are sitting on. Zombies. Night of the Living Dead Banks.
The banks know this, investors know this, Geithner and Co. know this. And everybody knows that the others know. So the only way to get private investors (many of whom have already lost a few pounds of their own flesh to the bear) to bid on Big Shitpile is to make them offers they can’t refuse – and I’m not talking about leaving a horse’s head in their beds, although I suppose it could come to that.

The Sunday talk shows seem to agree that the only way out now is for the US government to take over the banks.
Just reset everything to zero and start again. Well, that ought to go over well with Glenn Beck's viewers.

Helpful advice about torture

"If the detainee dies you're doing it wrong."

What the Gitmo interrogators were told in 2002 about how to recognize that they had violated the Geneva conventions against torture.

"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!"