Great line of the day

Jane Hampsher has lost her mind and Ezra Klein calls her on it while also providing a rationale for the American health care reform bill:

. . . Hamsher's list implies that the bill is failing relative to a world in which we don't kill the bill.
But in that world, there's still no drug re-importation. Still 50 million uninsured. Still rampant cost growth. In the world where we pass the bill, most everything gets somewhat better, if not good enough. More people have insurance. The insurance industry ditches its worst practices. Fewer families go medically bankrupt. More people catch diseases early, when they can be cured, rather than late, when they become fatal. People who would otherwise have died live. The medical system begins the process of updating itself for the 21st Century, and responding to the cost pressures it's placing on the rest of the country.
The world in which we kill the bill is a world in which everything just continues to get worse, and politicians are scared away from the issue for decades. A world in which we pass the bill is a world in which things get better, and politicians remember that they can pass big pieces of legislation that take on, or begin taking on, big problems.

Death Star anniversary

This is a little grim but has its moments. "If we don't rebuild, the Jedi's win"

Nobody tells MacKay nuthin'

Dawg alerts us to this horrible story about a prisoner being kept in a intolerably hot cell, and once again poor Peter MacKay just didn't know anything about it:

Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s office said the Global National report was the first they had heard of the incident and they’ve asked the defence department for more information.

Isn't it just too bad that nobody associated with the Canadian military in Afghanistan thinks to tell the Minister about this stuff?
Or so we hear.
Could I suggest something? Perhaps the Canadian government could write up some sort of document -- call it a "policy" or a "directive" or something like that -- which lists all of the offices which are to be told about bad things that happen in Afghanistan. And perhaps the office of the Defense Minister could be on that list?
Just a suggestion...

Advice for Tiger

ESPN reporter Bill Simmons passes on the list of things Tiger Woods should do according to PR advisor Dan Klores:

1. If you can’t tell your wife the truth from the get-go, recognize immediately that you shouldn’t marry again, and that the grass isn’t always greener from the other side.
2. Hit the links, start giving huge bucks to African-American charities, show up at church, double your dose of Viagra and use it for your wife, understand “it’s never going to be the same,” see a shrink two to three times per week minimum, do Larry King, then a few weeks later do Leno.
3. Demand your money back from The Enquirer, and demand your money back from any of the girlfriends.
4. Ignore every so-called “crisis communication” expert who sought a headline by claiming you didn’t get out in front of the story, because they have obviously never been caught cheating on their wives.
5. Attend the NBA All-Star Weekend’s slam dunk contest.
6. Tell the world that Sarah Palin is an idiot so at least 52.9 percent of Americans will agree with you.

I thought the last one showed flair.

Goodbye to the Doctor

Well, losing the doctor may be a brilliant negotiating triumph but we saw Halladay pitch in the game we went to in Toronto last summer, and he was a joy to watch and I'm sorry to see him go.

What I learned

Reading the latest comments to my Olympics post, I guess I can admit that I have learned something from this post.
If all politics are local, then some are very local indeed. I had no idea there was such a depth of anti-Olympic feeling in Vancouver, and I think many people in the rest of Canada would also be surprised. Here I was thinking that Vancouver as a whole was proud to be chosen to host such an event, and that the people who lived there were lucky to be involved in the Olympic events.
Instead, I am wondering whether there has ever been another Olympics where such a number of people in the host city are so vehemently opposed, and their opposition is so heartfelt and entrenched, that they can find nothing good to say about it.
Sort of the way I felt about George Bush coming to speak in Saskatoon.

Octopus's garden

Scientists find octopus that carries, assembles coconuts for shelter. Ringo was right:

I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden in the shade
He'd let us in, knows where we've been
In his octopus' garden in the shade

A Canadian story

There is something quintessentially Canadian about this:

A Regina bylaw is being misused by police as a tool to curb street begging and should be repealed, city administrators are recommending.. . . the Tag Day Bylaw was originally intended to regulate fundraising by charitable organizations.
"The bylaw was not intended to regulate the solicitation of funds for personal gain," the report noted. Police in Regina, however, have been applying the law to discourage street begging.

The line forms to the right, babe!

So today the CRTC joins the Wheat Board, Atomic Energy of Canada, Elections Canada, the Canada Food Inspection Agency, the RCMP Complaints Commission, the Military Police Complaints Commission, and the Marquee Tourism Events Program as another federal agency which is apparently being run by ignoramuses who aren't doing their jobs very well.
Isn't it wonderful that we have the Prime Minister and his Conservative cabinet ministers to overturn the decisions made by all these know-nothings?
But unlike many of these other agencies, the telcom decision is worth millions of dollars. So by next week I expect the goodies will start to flow -- every company that was ever turned down by a Canadian bureaucrat will start lobbying for a do-over, while every company which has been following the rules will be lobbying even harder to maintain the status quo.
And a good time will be had by all!

Get with the program

This is a beautiful moment


This is not:

The anti-Olympics industry in Vancouver is getting tiresome and old.
It's perfectly possible to object to sexist decisions against women ski-jumpers, and its quite legitimate to demand that Vancouver's homeless are treated with humanity during the games, and its absolutely appropriate to make sure nobody is stealing the money.
But after two decades of stagnation, Vancouver is going to be showcased as a world city by these Olympics, and Canadians should take pride in that.

Great line of the day

Josh Marshall asks Hard Questions:

Who to believe on climate change mystery: scientists or conservative pundits? Any thoughts?

Rescue

Muhei waited below, his arms outstretched. Liza turned to him, shaking with joy as she was passed to her owner.
Muhei whispered into her ear as he stepped over broken bricks, then put Liza down. Her tail never stopped wagging as Muhei rubbed her neck and ears as she lapped water from a muddy puddle.

One good news story from Baghdad today.

Obama's theme song

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you.

Be careful what you wish for

Hoist on his own petard!
So Conservative blogger Stephen Taylor tried to put down the Liberals by posting this graph showing how many so called "fossil of the day awards" the Chretien/Martin Liberals "won" for blocking progress at the United Nations Climate Change negotations:



In reply, Steve V gives us this graph showing how the Harper Conservatives managed to surpass both the Saudis and the US to lead the world in fossil awards at the last round of climate talks at Bali:



So I guess we can conclude that the Liberal "achievement" over five years doesn't compare to what Harper managed in just 10 days!
Seems like we're on pace at Copenhagen, too, tying with the Saudis for third place on day one. Go, team, go!

Legacy

I think this is sad:

"[The long gun registry] was the centrepiece of their legacy, the biggest thing we did over the last 20 years," said Sylvie Haviernick, who lost her sister, Maud, to Marc Lépine's killing spree. "We can't in all decency let it go."

So apparently we've given up on achieving a society where men don't resent women for entering "male" professions like engineering. And we're not focusing on improving our capacity to identify and treat psychotics before they explode. Can it be true that all we have done in two decades for the Montreal massacre victims is spend millions of dollars to make it more bureaucratic for hunters to own rifles?
Seems to me that the only real accomplishment of the long gun registry has been to make it almost impossible for Liberals to get elected west of the Lakehead.
That's not the memorial these women deserved.