Um. Canada has better health care because Canada has better health outcomes. Not because it treats rich people better than everyone else.

Well it’s apparently official. Parliament’s been prorogued until March 3, 2010. Two months (and a bit) without governing.

Throughout the day there was no shortage of good reactions to the possibility of prorogation and a few of the potential effects.

Given the notably scarce conservative reaction, it struck me that this whole prorogation thing was just an idea being floated, to see the response, to see how it would play politically. Would it hurt among supporters would be the main question, since the non-supporters aren’t likely to be brought over anyhow. It seems the answer to that would be negative, given the assbackwards conclusion-first reasoning of some of the popular party dullards.

And here we are.

Does this happen elsewhere? Is this a surprisingly common thing in parliamentary democracies? I’m asking seriously, because I don’t know. But what I do know is that wherever it happens, it’s completely fucking ridiculous and seems the kind of thing we should be taking to the Ottawa streets over, though of course those of us who feel that way are also (as I’m sure the Conservatives figured) the people who have a general sense that being governed by nobody at all might be better than being governed by Harper.

Well, mark your calendars, enjoy the Olympics, and remember on March 3rd that Harper has to stop ignoring parliament, stop making us look ridiculous on climate change, and create 265,000 jobs. And that he’s just had a two month vacation and is a douchebag.

This whole underwearman thing is driving me nuts, the reaction to it.

Dibgy quotes Chris Matthews:

You know what when we get on an airplane, we give up all kinds of checks we don’t do by just walking down the street. I think we give up a certain amount of rights just getting on an airplane and I think you’ve got to recognize that your safety is tied up with everyone else on that plane’s safety and anybody else that gets hit on that plane. You don’t own the right to be on that plane because you’re getting on an airplane so you do have to yield some civil rights…

You know, people can do horrible shit in places other than planes.

You know, on a Greyhound bus, someone decapitated someone else and started eating his brain. Maybe before getting on a bus you should have to give up all kinds of rights.

A 737 will have about 150 people on it. In terms of the human toll (the economic toll/disruption would be different), bombing three coach buses (at 50 people apiece) would be about equivalent to bombing one plane. Yet it’s definitely more than three times as easy. Yet it doesn’t happen very often. Because people, generally, aren’t completely fucking insane. People are generally stupid, assholes, and schmucks, but it’s a big step to go from yelling at your kids and their baseball coaches to blowing up tens or hundreds of people.

What about buildings? Maybe before entering a building you should have to give up all kinds of rights. You could blow up a building really easily. In an average apartment building, you could run from top to bottom through the stairwells, dropping a bomb on each floor, without anyone saying anything. Yet it never happens. Because people, generally, aren’t completely fucking insane.

The list goes on.

It’s important to have security. And with good security, sometimes shit will still get blown up. And every time someone dies in such an incident it will be tragic. But it’s important not to lose our shit about it, especially when instead of blowing something up someone just sets his junk on fire.

So of course she is and always has been and so theoretically will always be a complete moron who by any rights should be an embarrassment to anyone who knows her:

MARVEL AT THE ‘ARROGANCE’ AND ‘NAIVETE’…. CNN is telling me that Sarah Palin said something on Twitter.

…the former half-term governor believes it’s “arrogant and naive” to think human activity is responsible for climate change, which she describes as “man overpowering nature.”

I’m not sure what that phrase means, exactly. It’s winter, which makes it cold in my office. I’ve turned on the heat, so I’m comfortable. Have I “overpowered nature,” or is it possible that people can take steps that alter natural conditions?

Palin added that the climate has been changing “for ions” — one assumes she means “eons,” and wasn’t actually referring to electrically charged atoms — and will continue to change, regardless of the 90 million tons of carbon emissions we put into the air every day. We have a “responsibility,” Palin added, to “responsibly develop resources for humankind, not pollute and destroy,” but humans are incapable of “altering natural change.”

What CNN did not tell me is that Palin said the exact opposite just last year, repeatedly arguing that human activity contributes to global warming, right around the time she endorsed caps on carbon emissions, which she now rejects.

I suppose the moral of the story, then, is that Sarah Palin believes Sarah Palin is “arrogant and naive.”

Since the right is so cavalier with equating things to Hitler and the Holocaust, how about this: Going Rogue should concern us as much as Mein Kempf should have. Even if we assume the ideas in it are wrongheaded, we have a responsibility to know, to not repeat the mistakes, to make sure she never has a chance to derail the world.

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 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.

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.