I remember him casually swearing about something to do with the leadership race, I liked that.

His response to Harper’s direct implication that people who question some aspects of the military are not proud of the entire military was a good one:

Rae told reporters that the issue is not about questioning the conduct of Canadian troops, but instead probing the actions of the Tories.

Rae said to argue that some political parties are stronger supporters of the Canadian military than others is “reprehensible” and to suggest that raising questions over the Afghan detainee issue is “somewhat unpatriotic, is frankly beyond the pale.”

Harper’s attempt to deflect the issue over the handling of detainees by resorting to the “If you question the military you don’t respect the troops” argument is a play from the Republican playbook, but of course it’s stupid to be taking plays from teams that play in a different league with different rules. Just because Democrats live in perpetual fear of being labeled “liberals,” that’s not a four-letter word up here.

The Toronto Star article starts with this: “Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a partisan shot at his opposition critics…”

Now that’s liberal bias you can be proud of.

The article is titled “Harper takes shot at opposition over torture allegations,” not “Harper claims opponents disrespectful of military.”

This is terrible (via Paul Wells):

The people of Switzerland, whose country contains four minarets, vote in a referendum to ban the construction of any more. Apparently the women’s vote had much to do with it.

From the article regarding women supporting the ban:

A right-wing campaign to outlaw minarets on mosques in a referendum being held in Switzerland today has received an unlikely boost from radical feminists arguing that the tower-like structures are “male power symbols” and reminders of Islam’s oppression of women.

Also this gem:

“If we give them a minaret, they’ll have us all wearing burqas,” said Julia Werner, a local housewife. “Before you know it, we’ll have sharia law and women being stoned to death in our streets. We won’t be Swiss any more.”

Oh god. The Swiss. We’re doomed.

Why were all the vehicles in Mad Max gas guzzlers? Is the idea that before the world more or less ended there wasn’t a single gas sipping car available? Still, once everything went to crap, wouldn’t have somebody have figured out a way to run on biodiesel, like Doc with the flux capacitor? Or was the whole situation unique to Australia and the rest of the world was still doing ok?

In any case, prepare for it. Practice your screams. You’ll want to make sure to have a good “Help I’m being ravaged by racists” scream and a good “Why can’t I bring myself to end it, fuck it I’ll just scream into the godless sky” scream.

I don’t know if this is a typo when Digby says, regarding U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, that “He is one of the only people I can see who wouldn’t divide the Republicans and could possibly bring in right leaning Independents. (They love the commanding CE0/General types.)”

In case it’s not showing up in whatever font I’m using here, that’s a zero at the end of “CE0.”

It may be important that anger legitimately directed towards certain banking CE0’s doesn’t feed a generally indiscriminate populist outrage at business leaders in general (surely, somewhere, there are some decent business people), but for certain executives the designation feels pretty appropriate.

Maurice Vellacott appears to be a generally horrible person.

New to the list is this:

Vellacott, who was not available for further comment Monday, said in the release “a growing body of research reveals significant health problems caused by abortion,” including breast cancer, cervical injury, uterine perforations, hemorrhaging and infections. The release does not include statistics from research studies.

Of course this isn’t the kind of thing people just forget about, at least not for a few days.

In the question period, the issue was raised (here is the actual audio, the full session is available here):

Yesterday the minister responsible for status of women refused denounce the unacceptable statements made by a conservative MP who implied that abortions contributed to the development of breast cancer. Besides being wrong medically, this assertion is meant to make women feel guilty. We would expect that the minister would defend women and the right to abortion with vigour, rather than saying things worthy of Sarah Palin.

That was Nicole Demers, of the Bloc.

This was the response, from Helena Guergis, Minister of State (Status of Women):

…this member is actually fully aware that there are elected members of this house who have said very similar things at different times. Members in this house represent their constituencies and they are free to have any opinion that they choose to. It does not mean it represents the government. Please let me highlight one of our most recent achievements to protect women across this country…

(In case you’re wondering, the recent achievement (there was only one) was that the citizenship guide now informs immigrants that female genital mutilation is not tolerated here.)

I feel the shared frustration of humanity past present and future a I explain this: a fact is not something you can disagree with. When the study says one thing, you can’t just say the opposite.

Shit on science, shit on women, it must be easy when you’re so full of it.

On the bright side, what I enjoy about all of this is the use of Sarah Palin as a bookend on the acceptable limits of political ridiculousness.

Maybe not in the States where Obama is Hitler and Palin is not immediately written off by everybody, but so far as the rest of the world is concerned it looks like in the area of political discourse Palin is the real Hitler replacement so far as Godwin’s law is concerned.

I have a feeling it wasn’t the message Rogers meant to send when it announced it was laying off 900 people.

I first heard about this on the radio, where a Rogers spokeswoman was explaining the cuts. I can’t find the same quote online, but I know there was something said along the lines of part of the reason being that this will improve customer service. I’m guessing that was a mis-remembering of prepared remarks, because it’s one thing not to need somebody anymore, it’s another thing to say that their leaving will improve things.

“The goal was to streamline the organization, remove the number of layers and enable quick and faster decision making” is the right kind of quote to be delivering. Making a public statement on the radio that the people being let go were, simply by being employed, making things worse, that kind of thing is frowned on.

It’s the same kind of thing you see when a new movie sets some sort of sales record. It’s irresponsible to say things like “Ottawa is past the halfway mark to the biggest deficit in the country’s history…”

In nominal terms, assuming the general trend is to have some level of deficit, every year is likely to have the largest deficit ever.

It’s probably true that most astro-wealthy people mostly just want to hold onto their money.

Some of the decent rich people out there should put some of that charitable goodness towards establishing independent media organizations, and not necessarily limited to any one specific country.

Just saw this at Econbrowser discussing a ‘blogonomics’ panel held by the Bank of Canada, which is a pretty cool non-bank-like thing to be doing.

Apparently Stephen Gordon was there as well, so we’ll see what he has to say about it… Even when it comes to a small blogger panel held by the Bank of Canada they could only find one Canadian blogger worth inviting.

Three sighs for Canadian public economic discourse.

Menzie Chinn’s best observation is this: “Blogs were followed most closely by younger economists, while the more senior economists had, shall I say, little patience for following economics blogs.”

I’ve found old people to be generally enamoured with their own ability to do impressive technological things like owning an ipod or unpackaging a portable GPS, but at the same time anti-blogging. I guess because young people shouldn’t be speaking without being spoken to.

The table in this post is originally from Joshua Brown at The Reformed Broker, and it’s some pretty impressive work. Even if I didn’t have a job I don’t think I’d be this effective with my time.

Awesome.

Speaking of lists where the US looks like a 3rd world country, I always enjoy the “Countries and territories that retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes” list:

Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Botswana, Chad, China, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad And Tobago, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States Of America, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zimbabwe

I think a half-decent way to govern a country would be to simply institute a policy of “Don’t be on any list that includes North Korea unless it’s ‘Countries that are not landlocked.’”

To be fair, pretty much all US executions occur in the South (Ohio is the only one carrying the torch in the North–yes, with god, all things are possible), and of those pretty much most of them occur in Texas.

We understand. We’re just slightly more peaceful about it.

Regarding the earlier post’s aside at the end about the US having a much larger poor uneducated component that they can rely on for reproduction, the US is now accepting HIV-positive immigrants.

According to a CDC report (via Felix Salmon),

There are a dozen countries that deny entry if a person has HIV. These countries are: Armenia, Brunei, Iraq, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sudan, and the United States.

This proposed rule will remove the United States from the list of countries that continue to have entry restrictions for HIV-infected individuals.

It’s always interesting how the US, which of course dominates any chart involving earnings or defense spending, finds itself frequently ranked next to generally second world countries on lists like this.

I guess it’s because the US isn’t really a first world country, it’s a first world country with a third world baby inside it.

Speaking of which, back to Palin’s suggestion of our keeping the faith that we can give back healthcare to the private sector, um, why do we live longer than you and spend way less on healthcare?

I hope she becomes president. Then all the smart people can come here. Of course then we’ll be obliterated, but at least we can die smirking.

David Frum is a horrible, horrible person. This is the kind of stuff maybe you think about, and then think “Wow, I guess I’m racist, I’d better remember to keep that inside,” not the kind of stuff you put in a national newspaper.

Years of reading The Onion have conditioned me to assume articles like this are a joke, but I have a feeling that’s not the case here.

Anyhow, read the article if you want to see how to come off as a complete douchebag.

I guess it’s possible that immigrants aren’t needed as much in the US as they are here, since they have enough uneducated poor people to keep things growing.

and, on that note, welcome to our politics and you can go fuck yourself you robotic moron.

Article at Think Progress, Sarah Palin speaking about faith and its relation to the private sector taking over health care (wtf?) via Matt Yglesias.

I can’t help but perpetuate it, but incredibly stupid lists shouldn’t be news items.

If a million people voted to create this list, that would be one thing. But arbitrarily having a bunch of reactionary assholes compile a list as a testament to their inability to like anything that looks interesting, that’s not news. Especially not when they can’t even be bothered to attach any decent photos.

Why was this picked up in the Star?

I like the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. It makes sure you don’t look at the museum and catch yourself thinking it should be turned into a Club Monaco. A bit of “what the fuck” is good for a generally plain city.

Immigrants and children and deer, oh my!

I guess tasering isn’t an especially new thing, but it certainly seems to have caught on.

This is a choice quote from the wikipedia article on tasers:

The American Civil Liberties Union alleges that, since 1999, at least 148 people have died in the United States and Canada after being shocked with Tasers by police officers.[28] Police departments counter that while Tasers were used to subdue these individuals, their in-custody deaths were un-related to their encounter, and could have likely been caused by more traditional police impact weapons (like batons).

Oh, well, nevermind then.

I like ending child poverty.

I like taxing rich people.

I like Ed Broadbent.

And I don’t really mind the idea of taxing rich people to end child poverty, but it’s probably not the best solution.

The report referenced actually makes several recommendations, and they’re all sensible.

First I don’t really like the idea of a straight tax at some arbitrary cutoff. People making $249,000 can afford something too.

Second, simply giving an extra couple thousand dollars to families in poverty isn’t going to make poverty go away. “Here’s an extra couple thousand dollars so you can worry slightly less about working 80 hours a week at minimum wage” doesn’t sound like great policy in isolation. Surely money could be better spent on daycare, professional training, extra help for single-parent families, etc. And minimum wage could use a boost while we’re at it. Elementary school teachers should probably be made to accept more ECE help. Anyhow, it’s all in here and it’s a pretty good read.

I’m not trying to say Broadbent is wrong, I’m just pointing out that he chose to focus his word allotment on one particular recommendation of many.

And for what it’s worth, in Unicef’s Child Poverty Report Canada doesn’t look too bad, in the middle of the pack overall. Notably, of the categories measured, it’s primarily the subjective ones involving children’s own views of their situation where Canada performs exceedingly poorly. I’m not sure what to make of that right now.

source: http://www.campaign2000.ca/reportCards/national/2009EnglishC2000NationalReportCard.pdf

I admittedly don’t know much about federal infrastructure planning, but the ideas here for a Canadian autobahn strike me as patently absurd. The full report (which reads more like a high school project by an ambitious 16-year old attempting to take $60 billion from the government) is here.

The United States has the longest motorway system in the world, at approximately 88,000 kilometres. . . The European Union (EU-15) and Japan also have extensive motorway systems, which connect virtually all major urban areas. Moreover, some developing nations have extensive motorway systems.

China’s motorway system is already the second longest in the world, at more than 60,000 kilometres as of the end of 2008. . . India began its system later but is in the process of developing a national network, major parts of which are already in operation. Mexico and Brazil also have extensive motorway systems.

Therefore, Canada should have such a system. Or so the argument seems to go.

“But mom, but mom! Billy’s parents gave him a vast highway network connecting every city with a population of over 50,000 people!”

“Oh yeah? Well did Billy’s parents give him one of the lowest population densities in the world?”

“I hate you!”

I’m sure many parts of the Canadian highway system (as with every other highway system) could use some repairs and upgrades, but making this argument in the context of how good other countries have it is off-base and stupid.

It’s pointed out that “For many trips between Canadian metropolitan areas, it takes less time to travel through the United States on its motorways than on the Canadian roads (such as between Winnipeg or Calgary and Toronto).” First off, so what? Second, let’s look at that Winnipeg to Toronto trip. You can go through Canada, through Manitoba and Ontario. Or you can go through the US, through North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and then Ontario.

Let’s see.

The US route takes you through a total population (at the state level–which, as I understand it, is the level at which people now pay for these things) of 54 million people at a population density of 25 per square kilometer. If you want to cut out North Dakota and Indiana (brief parts of the trip) fine, you have 47 million people at a density of 25 per square kilometer. The Canadian route (24 hours instead of 22, according to Google) takes you through 14 million people at a density of 8 per square kilometer.

Obviously that’s a quick way of looking at it, but there’s going to be no way to sift those numbers without coming up with way fewer people living anywhere near highways over any considerable distance within Canada.

The full report notes that “The heavy summer traffic in the northern Great Lakes and eastern British Columbia limit substantial tourist growth from the U.S. market.” Colour me sceptical, but I don’t know that “I don’t feel like fighting the traffic” is why there aren’t more people summering in Thunder Bay.

EDIT: I forgot this piece of wisdom: “The Canadian Autobahn should have a national logo…”

Of course it should. Every good grade nine high school geography assignment has at lease one graded component involving how good you are at colouring.

On the way home today I was thinking about how it’s important not to go overboard with highlighting people-in-the-spotlight’s off-the-cuff comments, since anybody, given enough time, will say something they shouldn’t have.

This one though from Gerald Keddy, a Conservative MP in Nova Scotia, is really pretty great:

If anyone ever stops Nova Scotia farmers from hiring migrant labourers to harvest their crops, they would destroy a lot of businesses because unemployed Nova Scotians don’t want those jobs, says Gerald Keddy, the Conservative MP for South Shore-St. Margarets.

“Nova Scotians won’t do it — all those no-good bastards sitting on the sidewalk in Halifax that can’t get work,” Mr. Keddy said Monday.

I can’t stop laughing.

It turns out Will Ferrel is the most overpaid actor by a measure of profit to salary:

Ferrell took first place largely due to the flop of his summer 2009 movie “Land of the Lost”, which Forbes said cost an estimated $100 million to make but earned just $65 million at box offices worldwide for movie studio Universal Pictures.

The movie followed a disappointing $43 million box office for Ferrell’s 2008 outing “Semi-Pro”, and $128 million for “Step Brothers”.

Also,

Eddie Murphy commanded a high salary after the success of family comedies like “The Nutty Professor”. But his most recent films “Meet Dave” and “Imagine That” were box office duds, taking Murphy to fourth place for earning an average $4.43 for each dollar he was paid, Forbes.com said.

The thing is, of course those were all terrible movies. If they’d used someone else, the movies would have made nothing at all.

This point, too, was in the National Post op-ed (emphasis added):

Some may say the PBO is non-partisan and independent, unlike other government organizations that have their own political incentives. But public choice economics tells us that we shouldn’t expect Page’s PBO to behave any differently than any other government-financed organization. In fact, observers have accused the PBO of being politically active, contrary to its mandate.

Of course “observers have accused” isn’t much better than “some people are saying” or the even worse “some might say.”

It’s one of those alarms that means the person saying it is probably arguing from the gut and some sort of an asshole.

Apparently that’s what the PBO needs, and I say give it to ‘em.

Kevin Page has said he needs a million dollars more each year, taking the PBO budget from $1.8 million to $2.8 million, which seems to make a little more sense.

A blog isn’t a bad idea either. I guess they’re a quarter of the way there with an rss feed. A blog is definitely an excellent way to give a sort of plain language executive summary of PBO findings.

As Kevin Milligan points out in the previous link a key aspect of the legitimacy of such an office is past performance. Ezra Klein says about the CBO: “Their estimates have been at the center of every legislative battle since the late-70s, and they’ve managed to preserve their credibility and reputation. That’s no mean feat.” Getting rid of the PBO three years into its existence probably isn’t giving it a fair shot, and would hopefully be a political problem as well.

Kevin (Milligan) also picks out the the following quote from the National Post op-ed that started it all:

In addition to the multitude of private organizations supplying economic forecasts and fiscal projections, others still go to great lengths to scrutinize the accuracy of government budget numbers and assess its fiscal policies and programs. These include think tank institutions (including our own), lobbyist groups, and professional and academic economists. In a sense, the government already has multiple “watchdogs” keeping it honest and disciplined.

Kevin wonders where they are. Certainly they exist for major items. Any time a budget is released you’ll hear some in-depth private sector analysis. But the PBO can be used for more mundane items that a private company might have little incentive to create. Yes, the government could pay them, but then they would get to choose who they use to produce the report, which probably (i.e. definitely) creates perverse incentives.

But even if they do exist, they’re less likely to be accurate. (I know I recently read a post somewhere making this exact point, with recent examples, but I can’t find it now and it’s killing me.) People working in the private sector have a large incentive to hew to the average. That way when they’re way off, they can say “Hey, don’t look at me, everybody was way off, nobody could have predicted this.”

Hmmm, here’s something. Not what I was looking for, but something I’m happy to have found. Also, looks like I’m not the only one questioning the 1:10. Hopefully Shock Minus Control picks up a bit, I like what I saw while finding the above post.