The difference between Canada and the United States

So we were watching the "fall finale" of Almost Human tonight.
 Now, I like this new show. But I realized part-way through this episode that even though it is filmed in Vancouver, it is totally "American" at its core.
The gee whiz its-the-future part of tonight's show was about how a corporation has invented a perfect artificial heart that works beautifully for people who need heart transplants.
But the basis of the plot was about how people were forced to buy the new hearts as recycled black-market transplants (from dead people!) because their health insurance was too crappy to pay for a real transplant.  The admin assistant in the corporate department that denied their insurance was the dastardly villain who had set up the black-market heart scheme.
And nobody thinks anything of it!
Nowhere in the episode does a single person complain or criticize or even question why people who need these beautiful new hearts are being sentenced to death due to inadequate insurance.
For a Canadian, this doesn't make any sense at all.

Peter O'Toole

Peter O'Toole has died.  He should have won the oscar for Lawrence of Arabia, except for his competition -- in retrospect, how could the Oscar for 1962 not have gone to Gregory Peck for To Kill a Mockingbird.  At least Lawrence of Arabia won best picture.  Here's one of the best scenes:

"

Great line of the day

Andrew Sullivan writes about The Pope And The American Right and provides the best summary I have read lately about what has gone wrong with capitalism, American-style:

... the way in which market capitalism has become a good in itself on the American right is, well, perniciously wrong. As soon as a system ceases to be a means to a human good, and becomes an end in itself, it has become a false idol. Perhaps the apotheosis of that idol worship was the belief – brandished on the degenerate right in the past decade or two – that markets are self-regulating. Of course they’re not, as Adam Smith would have been the first to inform you. Another assumption embedded on the American right is that more wealth is always a good thing. The Church must say no. This is a lie. Wealth is a neutral thing above a certain basic level of non-drudgery. Above that, it can be an absolutely evil, deceptive thing, distorting human souls, warping their dignity, vulgarizing their character. An American right that worships at the altar of both free markets and material wealth, and that takes these two idols as their primary goods, is not just non-Catholic. It is anathema to Catholicism and to the Gospels.

This is, I think, what Occupy Wall Street was also trying to say, though not so clearly and so well.

Quid quo pro

Even the Star Phoenix finds the timing of the Canada Post announcement more than a little suspicious:

The Conservatives, after all, are leaving Ottawa with their ears still burning from the daily interrogation over the involvement of the Prime Minister's Office in the Senate scandal, and the humiliating and inept defence put up by their champion, Paul Calandra, parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister.
In spite of the Conservatives' repeated efforts to change the channel, nothing seemed to stick. Having the armslength Canada Post using its busiest season to announce a massive cut in service at least takes the heat off the government during the holidays when Canadians gather, and MPs don't have to field questions in Parliament.

Maybe they worked out a deal -- if Canada Post succeeds in distracting Canadians and parliament from the Senate scandal, then Treasury Board will let everybody keep their pensions.  Win-win.

I love flash mobs

▶ The USAF Band Holiday Flash Mob at the National Air and Space Museum 2013 - YouTube: ""

'via Blog this'

Solidarity forever

My reaction to the news that Conrad Black says he might endorse Rob Ford for mayor is:

It takes one to know one.

Honestly, Toronto, haven't you reached your gag reflex with both of them?

The creature that would not die!

The Senate expenses scandal is the Energizer bunny -- it keeps going and going.  Its Parliament Hill rock 'n roll -- it will never die.  Its a Canadian T-Bird -- we'll have fun, fun, fun until, well, until whenever.  And for the Harper Cons, its the Creature from the Black Lagoon -- it just won't go away!
Today, we find out that the Senate's pledge to give RCMP e-mails widens paper trail in expenses probe and that Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen apparently lied to the RCMP last June
Its all basically meaningless in the larger scheme of things, of course, but its very meaninglessness seems to be the reason why this story just won't quit.
When we've got a scandalous news story that isn't about anything that affects our daily lives -- like the economy, health care, or real estate -- then its just so much fun for the reporters to cover and for the people to read about, that nothing will stop it.

Happy Thanksgiving, America

You know what I'm not looking forward to?

It's about ten weeks until the Olympics begin.
And in that time, there will be ten thousand stories about how poorly prepared Russia is to host these games.
To be followed on Day 2 by the assembled world press expressing pleased and gratified surprise at how beautifully everything is going.
In other words, the usual Olympic narrative.

Riders win!

Roughriders top Ticats to win 101st Grey Cup at home

The Sgt Schultz defense

We're supposed to believe that not only did Harper know nothing about Wright's $90,000 cheque to Duffy, he also knew nothing about the previous plan to get the Conservative Party to pay Duffy's expenses and he knew nothing about the phone call to the auditors to try to stop the Duffy audit.


So what WAS Harper paying such attention to in February and March, 2013, that he didn't bother to ask anyone about the Duffy situation?  Well, the NHL lockout ended in January, the Brier was in March, and in April Justin Trudeau was elected Liberal leader.

I feel like Charlie Brown's football

Every time I start to think that maybe the Harper Cons aren't so bad, I find out that actually, they're worse.
When disaster strikes somewhere in the world, like now with the recent Philippines storm, our government routinely now announces it will match Canadian donations.  Pretty generous, I've thought.
Remarkably generous.
But now I find out that even though I am giving my donation to a charitable group, the Harper Cons are maybe not:

The Conservative government has severed long-standing ties with many of Canada’s largest and oldest aid organizations over the past few years, and instead focused its efforts on mining companies and other private sector actors.

Mining companies?
Yes it turns out to be true -- see here and here.
As usual, I'm the last to know.
Sigh.

Just shut up

Production costs?  Oh, give me a break.
Big City Lib suggests a secret statement and Montreal Simon says The Ford Nation is Dead !!!!  Mound of Sound suspects that Ottawa has sent the message now.
Yes, I think its pretty obvious what happened.
While initially welcoming the distraction from the Senate expenses scandal, the Harper Cons watched in horror as the Rob Ford story blew up into an international clusterf*ck that will tarnish Harper's own righteous image and endanger his crucial Toronto seats.
So sometime Sunday afternoon or Monday, somebody made an uncomfortable phone call to Sun News and told them to find some excuse to get the Ford family circus off the air.

Now there's something you don't see everyday

I hate to link to the Toronto Sun, but here's the cartoon which Warren Kinsella tweets is the best editorial cartoon of the year:

Rider Pride

Roughriders rout Stampeders; heading home to play in Grey Cup