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.

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.

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.