Southen neighbour Steve Benen reports that conservatives in his country are happy that the health care system in our country has problems. It validates their criticisms of their recently passed health care bill, they believe.

Benen notes, “the new health care law in the United States creates a system that isn’t similar to the Canadian system at all, so condemning the Affordable Care Act by pointing to Canadian budget problems doesn’t make sense.”

Yes. But even if it is similar, it’s still better than no system at all.

Yes. But even the underlying premise that something that needs work is something that shouldn’t exist, is completely stupid. When brakes go in a car, you get new brakes, you don’t say “Ha! Told you cars were a bad idea!” Because you’d sound like an idiot. Because you would, in fact, be an idiot. Conservatives are idiots.

He’s going to create 250,000 jobs. Vote for me instead and I’ll create ONE MILLION JOBS!

While we’re just picking numbers out of hats.

I’m thinking at least half of Rossi’s jobs have to be imaginary. That is, they’ll exist in his mind, but nobody will be doing them.

First off, I’m not sure where 9.6% comes from, but that’s fine. That may be the number for the actual city of Toronto. But then there aren’t 250,000 people looking for work in actual Toronto.

The article notes that “Rossi did not explain the formula he used . . . to come up with the 250,000 figure.”

OPTION ONE
Take population of Toronto (somewhere a bit over 2,500,000), multiply by apparent unemployment rate (9.6%), round up, equals 250,000. Which is patently ridiculous (a. it’s impossible to create a job for every single unemployed person, b. there aren’t actually 250,000 unemployed people in Toronto because at any given time about a third of the population (kids, retired people, the hopeless) aren’t looking for jobs). Therefore, Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

Unless… OPTION TWO
Forget about just Toronto. Consider the Toronto CMA. This includes Ajax, Aurora, Bradford West Gwillimbury, Brampton, Caledon, East Gwillimbury, Georgina, Halton Hills, King, Markham, Milton, Mississauga, Mono, New Tecumseth, Newmarket, Oakville, Orangeville, Pickering, Richmond Hill, Toronto, Uxbridge, Vaughan, Whitchurch-Stouffville. (NB: Most of these places are not voting for the mayor of Toronto.) Here there are a shade over 300,000 people looking for work. Create a job for 80% of them, equals 250,000. Of course, this would reduce the unemployment rate to about 2%. Which is economically impossible. Therefore, Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

Unless… OPTION THREE
What he’s really thinking is that his policies will create jobs throughout all of Ontario. In this case there are say, generously, 650,000 people looking for work. Figure you can make jobs for about 40% of them, equals 250,000. Of course, this would reduce the provincial unemployment rate to 5.5%. Which would be well below where it’s ever been before. Therefore, Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

CONCLUSION
Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

No matter what they say, MPs have to sound ridiculous when trying to defend their unwillingness to be held accountable.

So let’s call that “baseline stupid.” Anything other than “Sure, here are the records” is going to be at least baseline stupid. And then there’s the next level:

“She is an employee of the house,” Liberal MP Scott Andrews said. “We appoint her. So why would she audit the people who appoint her?”

Oh god.

Case in point.

Apparently today he was trashing Mother’s Day. Right before reading out a Mother’s Day ad.

Either he doesn’t have any clue what he’s doing, in which case he’s completely insane and should be transferred to a tollbooth or the back of a KFC (along with everybody who takes seriously the words that leave his face), or he does know exactly what he’s doing, in which case he’s hilarious (and everybody who takes seriously the words that leave his face should be transferred to a tollbooth or the back of a KFC). I try so hard to think it’s option 2.

It was somewhat obvious that the right wing would suggest the oil spill was a left wing ploy. If left=right in all but ideology, we should start seeing high profile left wingers suggesting the possibility that the right wing planted this bomb, for whatever reason, to make elites realize they should hate immigrants and love the military or something. We know they know the East Coast needs some straightening out.

It not just a Canadian thing.

The thing is, it’s the people most likely to be prejudiced who are also the most likely to be unquestioningly misinformed about general events.

You have to resign. You have to say “Sorry, I was drunk when I wrote that, I’m not actually a horrible person, I apologize to anyone I’ve hurt, I have had stresses in my life and will spend some time trying to recalibrate with my family. I am retarded. Oh shit, I shouldn’t have used that word, I’d better go.” shed tear

Dan Gardner writes, “The essential problem advocates of the bilingualism-on-the-bench bill have is that the court functions just fine. It is internationally admired. It is respected at home. If the presence of unilingual Anglophones is a practical problem — not merely a symbolic one — it doesn’t show in the court’s decisions. And in the end, the decisions are all that matters.”

I’m not making a point here about whether Supreme Court judges should be bilingual or not. I’m just saying the above statement is patently ridiculous. If we banned [insert ethnic group here] from [insert profession here], that particular [insert occupation here] wouldn’t suffer at all. But it would still be racist. It would still be wrong.

What is this, grade four? Who writes this stuff is one thing, but who publishes this crap? What the fuck?

“Who mistook this crap for genius?”

Isn’t this how we all learned to do it in grade six?

Apparently Bush’s memoir is due out later this year.

Assuming approximately 1/4 lies, 1/4 half truths, 1/4 hard to say, and 1/4 truths, at least some of those recollections (i.e. about half of that last ingredient) may do unfortunate things, like reminding rich white people that 9/11 actually happened under Bush’s tenure.

Although I suck at updating this turd of a blog, I feel like it’s important that within 24 hours of our neighbour’s passing “historic” legislation I acknowledge that here, even though this forum is currently less public than if I were to shout out my window into a hobo lot.

I hope Obama is well-protected these next couple days. It’s hard to underestimate the number of nutcases running around. (Whenever one of these crazy people really does something completely insane, I will (do) blame the media. In part.)

I think (hope) that comment (the first two sentences) is less a statement of serious concern, and more a meta-statement on how concerning the concern over the concern of fearful morons is.

It reads:

Own the Podium dream over: Canadian official

Really?

We need an official statement?

I assumed it was a goal rather than an expectation. That these people seem to have seriously thought otherwise is strange, and seems to only hurt them, because it means they’re both ridiculous and failures. As opposed to the Olympians, who have performed admirably both in their events and in the face of countless reporters asking them “How disappointed are you?” or of each other “How disappointed should we be?” With the athletes, not very. With yourselves, very.

Morons.

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.

Somebody tried to blow up a plane with a device sewn into his underwear. (Is he being called “The Underwear Bomber” yet? Because I like the ambiguous meaning there.)

The response from the TSA and DHS is this:

Passengers flying from international locations to U.S. destinations may notice additional security measures in place. These measures are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same thing everywhere. Due to the busy holiday travel season, both domestic and international travelers should allot extra time for check-in.

Apparently these measures will apply “indefinitely to all U.S.-bound flights,” and include being limited to just one carry-on bag which will be searched by hand (not sure if that still means carry-on plus purse), extra questioning, a physical pat-down at the departure gate, and “during the final hour of flight customers must remain seated, will not be allowed to access carry-on baggage, or have personal belongings or other items on their laps.”

Somebody’s itchy trigger finger just fired the wrong reaction. It seems none of these measures would have prevented the underwear bomber.

I joked a couple days ago re the pope being attacked that people had better stop wearing red sweatshirts. I guess they couldn’t add underwear to the list, so instead everybody just has to piss themselves on flights from Toronto to New York. That should make for some calm passengers.

Well, goodbye tourism.

I said it once and I’ll say it again (slightly modified): The security of the public rests mainly on the general decency of people.

In the history of airplane terrorism (which is not a new phenomenon) would “no taking a shit in the last hour” have saved a single life?

I didn’t know we were still going through the “Seasons Greetings” vs “Merry Christmas” debate in Canada.

Seriously, this was probably a week ago, I just remembered it after my previous post.

I had a dream that I was watching the news (or maybe it was listening to the radio old-timey style), and there was a report saying that since Sarah Palin has been with her advisers memorizing facts for seven hours every day, public views of her have improved across the political spectrum.

I guess it was more of a nightmare.

After that I bought Going Rogue. When people with public access and a degree of respect are horrible, horrible people, we have a responsibility to forewarn ourselves about what’s going on inside of their mis-wired minds.

As a Jew, I wish it weren’t Lieberman ruining everything. At least not in such a smug way.

Chris Rock has a bit about watching for skin colour in crime reports: “Everybody waits for the film to see what colour the guy was that did the crime?… Black people are like ‘Please don’t let it be a black guy, ok?’”

When there’s some jackass spewing shit everywhere, I have to think “Please don’t let it be a Jew, ok?” Lieberman, Morris, Pipes, Goldfarb, Wolfowitz, the list goes on I’m sure.

I don’t have Joseph Heller’s Good as Gold with me (it’s in storage, i.e. at my parents’ house), but how Gold feels towards Kissinger, that’s how any aware Jew of this generation will feel towards Lieberman. He’s the worst kind of human being.

UPDATE: I have to add Bill Kristol to the list. What a jackass moron.

The States are dealing with trying to just get some sort of health care more or less, so good for them.

But for the first world (and soon for the States, hopefully), the main issue is going to be technology, and its increasing ability to solve the long tail of medical problems, at great cost.

Charles Wright, via Marc Lee:

There is a crying need for massive, eye-catching, sustained public education programs to disseminate accurate and balanced information based on evidence, rather than on the marketing biases of big pharma. This communications initiative should be designed and presented by advertising professionals who can match the medical industry’s techniques, but with the close collaboration of independent experts who understand the evidence. Don’t ask your doctor if you need [the latest miracle drug being pushed on television]; ask your doctor to explain why you really need each of your prescriptions and what the side effects are. The same approach would help the public to understand the sound reasons for not insuring every new technology and drug that comes along

Even assuming it will be more cost-important for the government to prevent the exploitation of its citizens than it will be profit-important for big pharma to exploit them, all those informed opinions are for sure out the window as soon as someone knows anyone with some disease that can be cured by some uninsured technology or drug. People have a tendency to think “if it’s out there, and I need it, I should have access to it,” when it comes to healthcare, no matter how many informative commercials they for some reason pay attention to.

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.