Category: Politics

Politics

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Fact checking… Investors’ Business Daily has heard of it.

In a spectacular outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease the right-wing newspaper Investors’ Business Daily avers that “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.” Without realizing of course that Hawking IS in fact British and that the NHS didn’t just leave him on a mountaintop to be pecked clean by the crows, something which any American health insurance company would no doubt have done decades ago. This, I’m afraid, is typical of the level of debate in the United States about health care reform.

Note: I’m quite sure that the original article will be removed as soon as it starts getting a lot of traffic, so if you can’t find the quote I highlighted have a look at the article as it originally appeared (local cache).

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You can’t spell “prorogue” without “rogue”, can you?

It’s official! Rather than holding his head up high Prime Minister Stephen Harper took the coward’s way out of next Monday’s planned non-confidence vote in the House of Commons by suspending Parliament until the new year (known as “prorogation”). Congrats Stephen, you’ve saved your own worthless hide for a few weeks by declaring a stop to the works of our elected representatives right smack in the middle of the worst economic crisis in decades, and with no budget passed. Way to toss Canada under the bus to protect yourself, big guy.

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What do you mean, “becoming”?

CBC’s Search Engine asks, “Is Canada Becoming a Digital Ghetto?“. Canadians reply, “hasn’t it always been one?”

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The Paulson Trillion-Dollar Bonanza: What’s Not to Like, Part I — How We Got There

In case you’ve been asleep in a cave with your hands over your eyes and cotton in your ears for the past few weeks, the American economy has been in a world of hurt recently. US Treasury Henry Paulson has put forward a far-reaching plan to deal with this crisis. As it turns out there are indeed a lot of things not to like about it, but in order to see what’s wrong with it we need to take a look at how the American economy got itself into this mess in the first place. This will tell us what’s wrong with the economy and whether the bailout plan will address that.

Continue reading “The Paulson Trillion-Dollar Bonanza: What’s Not to Like, Part I — How We Got There”

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It sure is a good thing that Canadians are getting shot at every day to defend Afghans’ ‘freedoms’.

You’d think that with all the international troops there the people of Afghanistan could be considered free, unlike when they were living under the Taleban. It doesn’t really work out that way though — just ask Sayad Parwez Kambaksh, a journalism student who’s been condemned to death for printing and distributing a paper off the internet which supposedly violated the tenets of Islam. It’s hard for me to think that Canadians are getting sent to the ‘stan to defend a regime which, as it turns out, doesn’t seem all that different from the brutal and savage old Taleban regime.