Sarah Palin used to travel to Canada for icky, awful government health care
Former governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was in Canada speaking to a bunch of Canadians when she admitted to the crowd of listeners that as a child, she used to partake of the awful icky socialized Canadian medical system. From The Globe and Mail:
PALIN: We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn’t that ironic?
No, that’s not ironic. It’s hypocritical.
Sarah Palin has long railed against health care reform saying that if we reform health care in this country, it will lead to socialized medicine. Like they enjoy in Canada.
Does America now love hockey?
If you watched Canada beat the United States in overtime Sunday night in the Olympics, you were not alone. Far from it. From Puck The Media:
The 27.6 million viewers for Sunday’s gold medal game was 10.5 million more (up 61 percent) from the Canada-USA gold medal game from the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics (17.1 million viewers). The 15.2/30 rating for yesterday’s game was four-and-a-half rating points higher than the 10.7/24 for the 2002 gold medal game and was the highest-rated hockey game of any kind since the USA vs. Finland 1980 gold medal game (23.2/61). The “Miracle on Ice” semifinal game between the USA and Russia had a household rating of a 23.9/37.
27.6 million viewers for a hockey game? I guess it didn’t hurt that it was actually a good, exciting game. Much like how some people watch NASCAR in the hopes that they will see a crash, it’s possible that some people tuned in Sunday in the hopes that Sidney Crosby would punch someone in testicles.
Does this mean Americans are now in love with hockey and will now watch the NHL? My guess is that Gary Bettman sure hopes so.
United States men’s hockey team picked a bad time to lose it’s first game
The United States men’s hockey team lost in overtime today to Canada 3-2. It was a demoralizing win. It’s bad enough to lose to Canada, it’s even worse when it’s none other than testicle puncher Sidney Crosby scoring the winning goal.
I really don’t care much for Sidney Crosby.
At least NBC showed the game on the main NBC channel in full high-definition glorious splender. Not that it makes up for showing all those prior hockey games on MSNBC and CNBC, non-HD channels.
The U.S. team might have only won the silver medal, but they have nothing to be ashamed of. After all, they beat Canada 5-3 only a week ago. U.S. Goaltender Ryan Miller, who normally plays for the NHL Buffalo Sabres, played fantastically the entirely Olympics.
Daytona 500 marred by giant pot hole
(AP Photo/Russell Williams)
From Fanhouse:
NASCAR’s biggest race of the year was halted for two and a half hours for two lengthy repairs to the track surface — a super gaffe in the sanctioning body’s self-proclaimed Super Bowl.
NASCAR initially stopped the race on lap 123 and spent an hour and 42 minutes trying to repair a nine-inch hole located smack in the lower groove racing line. But because of recent heavy rains and unusually cold temperatures, workers had trouble finding the right material to seal the track, and it took longer than usual to seal.
Less than 40 laps later, drivers started noticing the surface breaking up again.
The pot hole was blamed on recent heavy rains and “unusually cold temperatures”. If only science could tell us why we are being plagued with such unusual weather problems lately. The Winter Olympics is going on right now in Vancouver, Canada and the unusual warm weather and rain is destroying the snow flown in for the event.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that the weather is somehow changing.
Canada just cannot get it up
After sitting through nearly nine hours of the opening ceremony for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, viewers were rewarded with an entertaining technical gaff. Instead of just lighting a cauldron with the magical Olympic flame, the Canadians chose to close out the opening ceremony with Canada’s four most famous athletes, Steve Nash, Wayne Gretzky, Catriona Le May Doan, and Rick Hanson, coming out to the stadium floor, each with their own special Olympic torch. The idea was that four giant phallic symbols would then spring out of the stadium floor, forming some type of special giant Olympic cauldron to house the magical Olympic flame.
The problem was that only three of the four phallic symbols sprang to life. The fourth stayed where it was.
Oops.
I love watching live TV when something goes wrong, especially when it involves a technical blunder. The look on Gretzky’s and Nash’s face was priceless.
Enhanced security measures only make flying more troublesome
In the wake of the Nigerian Muslim terrorist that tried to blow up a Northwest airliner as it was preparing to land in Detroit, authorities have introduced a whole host of added security procedures that don’t make flying any safer from the threat of terrorism, but they do make flying on a commercial plane even more of a pain in the ass.
This morning, travelers flying from Canada to the United States were subjected to a second layer of security including a pat down of every traveler and a 100% luggage search by hand. The added security measures added an extra three hours to the already lengthy security processing time.
The fun doesn’t stop at the plane’s door. Passengers over the weekend were told to remain in their seats for the final hour of their flight. They were also told they could not use any electronic devices, even iPods, or even their own personal headphones. They were also told that they could not access their carry-on luggage or have anything in their laps. They were also told to keep their hands in plain sight until the plane landed.
Need to use to the restroom within an hour of landing? Too bad.
The TSA is also for some unknown reason requiring JetBlue to suspend showing TV on flights. Not just for the final hour, but for the entire flight. No TV, no movies, no XM radio.
This is a huge personal loss to me. JetBlue is the only airline I use simply because of the ability to watch Law & Order marathons while I travel back and forth to California.
None of these added procedures would have posed so much as a speed-bump to Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab. He had the explosives stuffed in a condom stuffed in his underwear. Would a pat-down search have detected the explosives? Unless whoever was doing the search was willing to stick their hand down his pants, I’m guessing it wouldn’t.
Not allowing Abdul Farouk Abdul Mutallab to listen to an iPod wouldn’t have done anything to make things safer.
More information emerges about the border crossing beating of the Canadian science fiction writer
The Times Herald has an article posted that sheds more light on the story concerning Peter Watts, the Canadian science fiction writer that was supposedly pepper-sprayed, beaten, and charged with assaulting a federal agent as he was driving back into Canada from Michigan. The article states that the incident happened when Watts was trying to enter the U.S. from Canada, not when he was going back home to Canada as it was stated on Boing Boing.
From the Times Herald article:
Port Huron police Capt. Jim Jones would not provide the Times Herald with a copy of a police report about the incident Friday. He did read the police report to a reporter.
Jones said Watts was crossing into Michigan from Point Edward when he was selected at random for a secondary Customs inspection. Watts exited his vehicle “angrily” and border officers began checking the black sport utility vehicle he was driving, Jones said.
Border officers ordered Watts back into the vehicle, and when he refused, officers attempted to handcuff him, Jones said. At that point, Watts began to resist and pull away from the officers “and became aggressive toward officers,” Jones said. Jones said a border officer used pepper spray to subdue Watts. Jones said Watts “choked” an officer during the struggle.
This makes a bit more sense I guess. I originally didn’t understand why U.S. border agents would want to search a Canadian’s car as he or she was returning to Canada. That’s usually not the way it works.
I generally don’t care too much for cops. With that said, I’m not stupid enough to not do what they say when I’m pulled over. I don’t mouth off and I don’t ignore what they tell me to do. When they tell me to stay in the vehicle, I stay in the vehicle. When they tell me to get out of the vehicle, I get out of the vehicle. My goal when dealing with a member of law enforcement is to make my time spent in their presence be as short as humanly possible. The longer you spend with a member of law enforcement, the greater the chance something bad will happen to you.
Canadian science fiction writer charged with assaulting a federal officer at the border
Science fiction writer Peter Watts was arrested this past Tuesday for assaulting a federal border agent as he was making his way from the United States to his home country of Canada. Evidently his vehicle was chosen by U.S. border agents for a random inspection as he was leaving the United States and things pretty much went down hill from there.
Peter Watts writes on his blog:
If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.
Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.
In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.
But that is not this universe.
Stay tuned.
People online have already started donating money to his PayPal account so that he can mount a vigorous legal defense. If that is something you like to do, then by all means, send him some money.
I have to admit that when I read this story, my BS detector went off. Normally when traveling to and from Canada, it’s the agents of the incoming country that search vehicles. Since he was attempting to drive into Canada, I would think it would be the Canadian border agents that would be interesting is seeing what Watts was bringing into Canada.
I’m not sure U.S. Border agents are interested in hassling Canadians trying to return to Canada.
Additionally, when the police or agents want to search a vehicle, they normally want you to get out of the vehicle. Watts says he was told to get back in the vehicle.
There’s also the point about not being allowed access to a lawyer, even though he says he was arraigned and charged with assaulting a federal officer. How does someone get arraigned without legal representation?
I tried searching the World Wide Internet Web for a news article about this incident, but I came up with nothing.
I’m sure more information about this incident will come out.
John Shadegg is a fear mongering coward
Arizona Representative Republican John Shadegg stood on the House floor speaking out against trying those that participated in the September 11 terror attacks in a New York civilian courtroom and posed a rhetorical question to New York City mayor for life, billionaire Michael Bloomberg how he’d feel if his daughter was kidnapped by terrorists.
Classy.
Doesn’t Shadegg have a staff that he can run ideas past before he opens his mouth and says something really stupid? What a stupid thing to say. I’m sure Bloomberg would hate to have his daughter kidnapped. Who wouldn’t? That doesn’t mean he should curl up in a ball under his desk.
I don’t understand fear mongers like Shadegg. What does he think, that we shouldn’t try terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? I assume that he’s in favor of military tribunals. I guess then only members of the military and their families would face possible repercussions from the terrorists.
Does Shadegg not care about military families?
When did it become OK for Americans to act like cowards? It’s a trick question because it’s not OK. When you react to terrorism with fear and trepidation, you are responding just the way they want you to respond.
My advice to John Shadegg is that if he cannot get past his fears, maybe he ought to move to Canada. That’s what cowards did during the Vietnam conflict, they went to Canada.
Ian Halperin on The Opie and Anthony Show
Link: 
Canadian investigative journalist Ian Halperin appeared on The Opie and Anthony Show today on Sirius XM to discuss his new unauthorized biography on Michael Jackson, Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson. The interview quickly turns into an out of control shouting match between Halperin and Opie, Anthony, and regular show contributor comedian Jimmy Norton.
Mostly Ian Halperin and Jimmy Norton shouted back and forth, not allowing each other to get their point across. A written transcript of the show would just be a series of broken sentences and quite confusing to read.
Not that it wasn’t confusing to listen to at times.
The true gem of the interview was when Halperin asked if anyone in the studio knew what the capital of Canada was. I was surprised that nobody knew the answer. I thought it was funny because I once had a similar experience in Australia. At a bar in Darwin, a drunk man who claimed to be a citizen of Yugoslavia challenged me to identify his nation’s capital. I didn’t know the answer. I still don’t know the answer, but the joke’s on him because Yugoslavia isn’t even a country anymore.
Jimmy Norton also made a comment about filmmaker Michael Moore being from Canada. At least I think he did. It’s begins right around the 35 minute mark. With all the shouting going on, it was kind of hard to really tell. That point is, he’s not. Michael Moore is from Michigan. I thought everyone knew that. I guess not.
I thought Ian Halperin came off sounding like a real douche, but then again, he wrote an biography on Michael Jackson, detailing the late pop star’s addiction to prescription drugs and closet homosexuality.
Writing a book like that would require him to be a douche.
Former health insurance official comes clean on universal healthcare
Wendell Potter used to be the vice president of public relations at Cigna, one of the country’s leading health insurance companies. While in charge of PR for Cigna, he wrote many of the talking points used by the anti-universal healthcare crowd. He no longer works for Cigna and has since changed his mind on the topic of universal healthcare. Imagine that. From the Bill Moyers Journal program on PBS:
BILL MOYERS: Was [Michael Moore's SICKO] true? Did you think it contained a great truth?
WENDELL POTTER: Absolutely did.
BILL MOYERS: What was it?
WENDELL POTTER: That we shouldn’t fear government involvement in our health care system. That there is an appropriate role for government, and it’s been proven in the countries that were in that movie.
You know, we have more people who are uninsured in this country than the entire population of Canada. And that if you include the people who are underinsured, more people than in the United Kingdom. We have huge numbers of people who are also just a lay-off away from joining the ranks of the uninsured, or being purged by their insurance company, and winding up there.
And another thing is that the advocates of reform or the opponents of reform are those who are saying that we need to be careful about what we do here, because we don’t want the government to take away your choice of a health plan. It’s more likely that your employer and your insurer is going to switch you from a plan that you’re in now to one that you don’t want. You might be in the plan you like now.
But chances are, pretty soon, you’re going to be enrolled in one of these high deductible plans in which you’re going to find that much more of the cost is being shifted to you than you ever imagined…
WENDELL POTTER: And [Wall Street thinks] that this company has not done a good job of managing medical expenses. It has not denied enough claims. It has not kicked enough people off the rolls. And that’s what– that is what happens, what these companies do, to make sure that they satisfy Wall Street’s expectations with the medical loss ratio.
It has always seemed asinine to me to have a national healthcare system where a person’s access to basic medical care is directly tied one’s employment status. If you get laid-off from your job because of no fault of your own, you lose access to basic medical care.
With the national unemployment rate reaching the highest levels in decades, the problem is becoming even worse.
I think universal healthcare will happen eventually in this country. It’s just a matter of time. Hopefuly it will be sooner rather than later.
I didn’t know that was a derogatory term
Lady Di’s number two son has stepped in it again. A British newspaper has published a video on their website that shows Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, used offensive terms to refer to people from Pakistan and Arab people. The video was shot in 2006 while Prince Harry and his fellow soldiers were waiting in an airport departure lounge to travel to Cyprus. From MSNBC:
The newspaper said in a statement that in the video, Harry referred to one colleague as “our little paki friend” — using a derogatory term for people of Pakistani origin.
I honestly didn’t even know this was a derogatory term. I thought it was as harmless as calling someone from Britain a “Brit” or someone form Australia an “Aussie”. People from Canada are often called “Canucks”. Is that derogatory too?
Later in the video, Prince Harry makes a joke about another one of his fellow soldiers looking like a “raghead” because of the piece of fabric he had draped over his head.
The Detroit Lions need to be relegated to the CFL
The Detroit Lions lost again today making their record (so far) for the season 0-15. If they lose next week, they will be the first team to go without a win for the season since the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. At least the 1976 Bucs were a new expansion team. The Lions are one of the NFL’s oldest teams.
The Lions are just an awful team. They have been an awful team for a very long time and they will continue being an awful team for years to come.
Unfortunately there is nothing really that can be done to encourage the Lions to get better. Every year they get one of the highest draft picks and they continuously waste in on wide receivers.
Because of the magic of NFL revenue sharing, William Clay Ford, the owner of the Detroit Lions, makes as much money as any other NFL owner. All NFL teams share TV revenue. All NFL teams share stadium revenue. All NFL teams also share merchandising revenue. That means if you were to go into Finish Line or Champs and buy a Steelers jersey the Lions get the same percentage of the profits as the Steelers.
The only thing that can be done at this point is to kick the team out of the NFL. Let them try to join the Canadian Football League (CFL), but honestly, I don’t think they are good enough even for that. It would actually be an easy transition since part of the Detroit metro area is in Windsor, Ontario. They would have to change their name though because the CFL already has a team named the Lions.
In the English Premiere League (EPL), at the end of every season the three worst teams in the league are relegated down to the lower league, the Coca-Cola League while the three best teams in the Coca-Cola League are promoted up to the EPL. They do this to ensure a team like the Lions doesn’t just get to hang around and dilute the quality of play in the league.
Sarah Palin gets pranked by Canadian radio show
Sarah Palin thought she is speaking to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Instead, she was speaking to a radio DJ from Montreal, Canada. I guess now we know why the McCain campaign wont let her field questions from the press. This woman is an idiot.
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