2013-09-29

Violence: Toronto Is Not Worse Than Montreal

Heard on the radio the other day Ethan Cox of Rabble.ca make a rather bizarre statement. He claimed Montreal is a safer city than Toronto and to defend his argument he pointed out that he had experienced walking in Toronto late at night and there were riot police everywhere as if it was a police state.

Well, he is from Rabble so.../shrugs shoulders.

In any event, the statistics  (the homicide rate is essentially the same between the two provinces even though Ontario has a much larger population. The violent crime rate, on the other hand, is higher in Quebec) don't back him up nor does it on an anecdotal level. I've visited Toronto many times over the years and walked its streets late at night feeling just as safe as I do in Montreal.

What about gangs?

Might I add for Mr. Cox Montreal is the hub of mafia activity in North America?

I guess it just make Montrealers feel better to say such things.







"Now, this debt ceiling -- I just want to remind people in case you haven't been keeping up -- raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy.  All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you've already racked up, Congress.  It's a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved." - See more at: http://cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/craig-bannister/obama-raising-debt-ceilingdoes-not-increase-our-debt-though-it-has-over#sthash.ZcyCte7p.dpuf

2013-09-28

Jihad T-Shirt Lands Kid In Trouble In France

  From the "Nice People" file:

"The front already had the words “I am a bomb” printed on it, but he understood that as an expression roughly equivalent to “I am a real looker.” As for the back, he said, he just wanted to put down his nephew’s name and date of birth.

“I did it on a lark,” he recalled, apologizing for any alarm he may have raised. “It wasn’t even meant as a joke.”

Possible but I'm gonna go on a limb here and say, right. Sure.

Shameless John McCain

Seriously.

"Sen. John McCain has hired Elizabeth O'Bagy, the Syria analyst in Washington who was fired for padding her credentials, according to The Cable. She begins work Monday as a legislative assistant in McCain's office.

"Elizabeth is a talented researcher, and I have been very impressed by her knowledge and analysis in multiple briefings over the last year," McCain told The Cable in a statement. "I look forward to her joining my office."

O'Bagy, who is 26, was fired after it was confirmed that she had padded her resume with a Ph.D. from Georgetown University. She also failed to disclose in for a pro-Syrian rebels op-ed in WSJ that she was part of a pro-Syrian rebel political group, the Syrian Emergency Task Force."


Seriously?

ISW:

The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O'Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University. ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O'Bagy's employment, effective immediately.  - See more at: http://www.understandingwar.org/press-media/staff-bios/elizabeth-obagy#sthash.xyOmhLJG.dpuf
The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O'Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University. ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O'Bagy's employment, effective immediately.  - See more at: http://www.understandingwar.org/press-media/staff-bios/elizabeth-obagy#sthash.xyOmhLJG.dpuf
The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O'Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University. ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O'Bagey's employment, immediately.

But good enough for an American politician?

Seriously.

***

"Let's see here. Fired for impersonating a scholar. Terminated for padding your resume. Laid off for sleeping with the cleaning lady - we won't fault you for that...she's hot! Oh, sez here you have a restraining order against several former colleagues. I got a feeling about you. You're hired!"

The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O'Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University. ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O'Bagy's employment, effective immediately.  - See more at: http://www.understandingwar.org/press-media/staff-bios/elizabeth-obagy#sthash.xyOmhLJG.dpuf
The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O'Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University. ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O'Bagy's employment, effective immediately.  - See more at: http://www.understandingwar.org/press-media/staff-bios/elizabeth-obagy#sthash.xyOmhLJG.dpuf

Antifungal Cream Cures HIV

Read here at Medical News Today.

"New research by an international team finds that Ciclopirox, an antifungal cream used all over the world, completely eradicates HIV - the virus that leads to AIDS - in cultured cells, and the virus does not return when the treatment stops."

2013-09-27

Needs More Permit: If St. Francis Were Alive They Would Ask Him For A Permit To Perform Good Acts

The amount of permits needed to run a live is probably an astounding figure.

Anyway, about this story. Look, we want big government so we can't complain when it intrudes. I don't know what people are smoking but we shouldn't be whining. You get the governance you deserve. Simple.

So don't be surprised about anything.

We've enabled and empowered busy bodies and we like it. The idea of people being free to be St. Francis of Assisi assisting and helping animals out of good will is a lost art. We destroy the natural impulse to do right by others and when they do we deem they've broken the law and destroy two lives. In this case, a person takes care of a lousy squirrel from birth and is forced to give it up because some bureaucrat said so? How does that help anyone? That squirrel will probably die on its own.

But hey - knock, knock - no permit. Do people recognize how retarded and regressive we've become? President Obama keeps saying "common sense" yet I don't see much evidence of it. Look at the kids being charged for playing with Airsoft guns!

And fuck you Canadians who think we're above this crap. We're worse. I was just cited for putting up a sign to advertise my daycare. Can't have that. No sir.

When I ask why, it's always blank stupid stares I get back from the over paid civil servant handing out the infractions.

Hello! The state is now in 'phase II' of self-destruction. Make enemies and criminals of free and law-abiding citizens.

Will people shift and rethink things you ask?

Nah.

New York is set to vote in a socialist - no, I mean literally a socialist - in power.

Kick back and watch that train wreck unfold. If you thought Bloomberg was a psycho, I'm betting Di Blasio will be equal to the task.

2013-09-26

Uruguay As Paradise

Uruguay as paradise.

Homer loved Uruguay.

Those Crazy Finns

"Yesterday when it was -11 degrees Celsius, ten-month old twins Anni and Aatu slept 3.5 hours outside, but this morning they just took a one-hour nap inside,” says mom Outi Rajanen, echoing study findings.

Special precautions should, however, be taken when putting infants to sleep outdoors, notes researcher Marjo Tourula. Babies need to be bundled warmly and should not be left out for extended periods.

According to Tourola, -5C is the optimal temperature for outside slumber. The study indicated that parents seem to know how to dress their babies adequately at this temperature.
The practice of parking sleeping babies outside became widespread nearly a century ago."

Far cry from the psycho helicopter parents we see, eh?

Walking in sub-zero temperatures is extremely therapeutic.

New York Proves Terrorists Have Won

NYPD saw through bike.

Man, I'm happy that guy had a hero door man save his bike. A 15 year-old Bianchi is something to worry over. Classic bike manufacturer.

Maybe It's The Bourbon But What The Hell

To all the bureaucrats that make lives difficult for no real reason - especially those with the power to ruin them.

Go fuck yourself.

For The Children

Americans are "free" my ass. Bureaucrats own their asses like they do up here.

I think I'm gonna start a 'For the children' segment.

Congress, Unions And Federal Employees Don't Want Obamacare For Them

Rand Paul wonders if Obamacare is so good, why then are politicians seeking an exemption?

Fair question Mr. President.

Please answer.

For the 80-85% who were happy with their plans. For the 66%-70% who oppose Obamacare. For the 12% who support it. For the 1, 5, 10 or 15% who probably don't give a shit.

For the children.

Petition Of The Day

Into saving lives?

Save Locky's Dad' offers you a chance to help out with by simply petitioning big pharma to grant medication for melanoma needed via compassionate use laws.


Qatar World Cup: Revoke It. Now

As if moving the tournament to the winter wasn't outrageous enough, people have died for this event?

FIFA (and I'm looking straight at you Blatter) and the European leaders who insidiously and arrogantly pushed for Qatar - through corruption - should wallow in shame.

Revoke the World Cup. It was a sham and a mistake from the onset.




Heroes! Chess As A Gateway To Violence

It's kinda ironic that chess board confiscations (no, you read right) can happen in an uber-liberal town like San Francisco. I just find it interesting is all.

I'm surprised they haven't gunned down any of these strategists. I can just picture SWAT busting up chess boards like little hoodlums.

Now underground chess clubs will spring up all over town at which point the government will pass an ordinance demanding they have permits to play.

Laugh. We're not that far from some moronic politician or bureaucrat from proposing something along those lines. I mean, you know, for the children.

****

Meanwhile, here in Montreal some municipalities have put pianos in parks. It's nice to listen to the piano when played properly.

I see trouble up ahead.

It's less enjoyable when a pain in the ass three year-old bangs on it - and we all know parents will allow that. That's when the complaints will come in unfortunately and we'll be hearing on the news how it had become too noisy for people wanting a quiet stroll in the park.

It's a matter of time someone will take offense to Schubert wondering why Chopin is not played more often in parks. Then that person will protest and ask the government for more Chopin.

I exaggerate of course but hey, how far fetched is it really? I mean. didn't we just see a woman in Manitoba ask the government regulate water temperatures for tea?

Right now, the general mindset is "the government will take care of things" and so I don't blame people for making 311 calls (that's my imaginary emergency government number) to help them out in civil matters.

Our instincts are less "we ought to" or "I ought to" and more "the government ought to." 

Bah.


Where's My Subsidy?

I think this will be a new installment and invite anyone (I really have to clean out those cobwebs) who feels they deserve a subsidy to mention it.

I'll start.

I like organic food. Where's my subsidy for that? Or at least a tax credit? I mean, the government should encourage healthy eating, amiright?

I also enjoy eating in fancy restaurants. It's unfair that someone (who has a living wage I deserve) can afford to and not me. It's just not fair. I propose a subsidy. Say, $100? Am I not entitled to a fancy piece of succulent filet mignon? I meant, people with EBT cards in the U.S. stock their carriages less with staples and more with luxury food items. I want the government to equalize things.

***

It's madness out there.

Thank God for people like Angela Merkel and her libertarianish stance on personal responsibility.

"You will never hear from the Christian Democratic Union party when you should eat meat and when you shouldn't," Merkel said to loud applause from her supporters and campaign workers in the Tempodrom theater.
"I grew up in a Christian house. We didn't eat meat on Fridays. I think every restaurant should have a vegetarian dish, but we are a party confident people can manage their own lives," the German prime minister added. "We are confident people will live a reasonable life and we don't want to deprive them of this opportunity."

Amen to that.

People - liberals mostly - will blink blindly and wonder what is so wrong with Michelle Obama's plan to have people eat better?

Nothing. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

The problem is she uses state coercion to compel people to eat the way she feels they should eat.

If she were just lending her name and advocating for better nutrition appealing to people to voluntarily do so, then all the power to her and I would even support her.

That she forced cafeterias to serve healthy options that go to waste, I cannot support.

It's simply not the place of the government. 

Impolite And Dangerous Drivers

Earlier this month I linked to a story in the news about Quebec drivers notorious for driving aggressively around school cross walks like maniacs caught on video.

My added thoughts were that I see that all the time bringing my kid to school. People are more concerned with rushing and not letting the other guy through or missing their turn rather than just sit calmly down. And this time it really is for the children.

Well, bringing my kid to school earlier I almost got hit by a car driven by a young girl who didn't pay attention.

Know what else? She gestured as if it was my fault!

But that quickly dissipated as the brigadier yelled and shouted at her and I offered a few choice words - though her window was up. I think she got the picture.

Idiot. It's completely inexcusable. She knows she's in a school zone. When a driver does enter one, they just have to anticipate slow downs. It's life. I get annoyed too (especially when my timing is so off I have to wait for 3 bus loads of kids to get off) but not to the point where I would jeopardize the life of a child. My aggravation stops at that. Sheesh.

Pedestrian right of way in a school zone in Quebec is a suggestion and a nuisance.

I swear. In all my time spent in Europe and multiple states and provinces, Quebec is far and away the most impolite automobile society when it comes to pedestrians and understanding common etiquette on the road.

In some parts of the city, notably small quiet towns (mostly those inhabited by English-speakers) it's better and more civil but still far from what I've observed in other places.




2013-09-25

The IRS Is A Criminal Enterprise

Now, follow me here. I don't want to sound all "crazy" especially in the age of NSA spying but lemme ask you a basic human nature question.

If you have a small savings account that you need for rainy days and the government comes in and steals that security without warning or reason, wouldn't you want to lash out?

People stealing from others is regardless if you carry a lousy government badge is still criminal activity and it's scary American tolerate this.

The ultimate irony is the people doing the stealing would not exist were it not for the productive class like this grocery store.

Again, I ask. What valuable function does the IRS or any government agency that destroys businesses and lives perform in a society?

Leftist drivel not welcome.




Boston Stays Celtic

Boston just as white (Irish) as ever.

Just like Montreal - only in a different language.

Of all the Italian Bostonians Mumbles Menino became Mayor to break the Irish lock on the mayoralty. 

Meh.

I guess it is kinda ironic (the apparent lack of diversity) given the uber-liberalism of moonbat Massaschusetts.

Needs more coercion!


Bend It Like Marx

"Yesterday, over at my Forbes blog, my colleague Chris Conover paid tribute to those three Harvard economists and their favored president, by employing the same arithmetic they did to calculate how much more Americans would spend on health care due to Obamacare. He took the $621 billion, divided by the U.S. population, and multiplied by four.

“Simplistic?” Chris asked. “Maybe, but so too was the President’s campaign promise. And this approach allows us to see just how badly that promise fell short of the mark. Between 2014 and 2022, the increase in national health spending (which the Medicare actuaries specifically attribute to the law) amounts to $7,450 per family of 4.” Chris put together a chart that compared Obama’s 2008 promise to the Obama administration’s 2013 projection:

As you might expect, certain corners of the Left were not happy. Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress put up a blog post claiming that Conover’s math was “totally wrong,” because a couple of pro-Obamacare economists told him so. Paul Van de Water, a progressive budget wonk, “described this calculation as one of the stupidest things he’s read in a long time.”

(Van de Water, for reasons unclear, did not offer his assessment of the intelligence of the president or his three Harvard advisers. I asked Judd Legum, the editor of ThinkProgress, if his site had ever run a comparable critique of Obama’s 2008 promise; he declined to answer.)
Van de Water told Igor that the cost of college education doesn’t increase if the federal government subsidizes college education; therefore, the cost of health care doesn’t increase if the federal government subsidizes health care."

Read here.

Breaking Bad British Style

British couple in jail because government didn't get its cut.

Yes, I have taken the opinion that government is the biggest criminal enterprise around.

Sue me.

Better yet. Throw me in prison.

Frightening Thought

"Matthew Yglesias is Slate's business and economics correspondent."

/hard face palm.

I've read his takes on economics and business. How a guy with no economics training or entrepreneurial background gets this gig is beyond me.  Does this fall under the progressive "fairness" doctrine 'cuz I gotta say it's unfair to the person who actually deserves the job but is stuck tearing our their eyebrows reading Yglesias's caca.

Slate pays this guy (known as Sadbeard) and expects to be taken seriously?

Read for yourself.

Personally, I think he's perhaps the most vacuous of writers stealing a pay check.

Jabba The Hut's Cousin

Me.

Leftists Being Weasels

It's one thing to respect another man's opinion and quite another to respect their arrogance.

Enter David Corn of Motherjones:

"Obama and his team have done a poor job of promoting his successes, which sometimes are nuanced and complicated."

Nice way to give your leader a way out, pal. Do you really think phrasing an argument in such a manner hides the actual vapidity?

I would think not.  Of course, I be wrong.

Pray tell, what is so god damned nuanced about the successes and work of President Barack Obama?

Can it be the promotion has failed because A) there are none and B) he's not the great thinking orator everyone paints him to be? Every time he got the chance to sell an agenda to persuade Americans he's fallen flat on his face. If there's no appeal to emotion, he's got little to work with.

But that's just me.

Progs think they're so fucking smart, so far ahead of the curve that the rest of us just don't get their "nuanced" view of the world.

Fuck off.





Obamacare Impacts Pockets

Obama keeps talking about needing to help the middle class. More poignantly, he claims the GOP stands in his way.

Actually, there's not much the Democrats can do if all this date coming in regarding how people and businesses are being impacted (mostly negatively) by Obamacare.  The Democrats will sink or swim with it.

No matter what, at the minimum Obamacare acts a tax as SCOTUS ruled in the ACA hearing.

And that tax and the increases in premiums and costs are going to negatively impact the middle class he claims to want to help. Now, if the majority of Americans feel being limited in FSA accounts is a good trade off for Obamacare so be it. However, not only have the consistently opposed it (85% claimed to be happy with their coverage, as high as 70% have opposed Obamacare), Congress is shamelessly looking to exempt themselves from it.

I don't know how any American of any political bent can accept this action.

Phrases I hate

"Public interest."

As in, it's in the pubic, I mean, public interest to ban this, censor that.

Define "public interest."

Scare quotes mine.

2013-09-24

MLS Attendance Continues To Grow

MLS continues to garner strong attendance figures. Its league averages are better - or at least on par with  than the NBA and NHL. However, in terms of revenues it has a way to go to still. I don't think anyone would seriously argue soccer has surpassed basketball in the USA.

Looks like the recipe has been found and soccer is finally latching on. I remember some jackass Montreal "sports" writer going off about how MLS was gonna fail - citing, if memory serves me right, the defunct NASL as proof it would fail. Of course the finance and dynamics between the two are different. In any event, he's a frivolous and vapid sorry excuse for a sports writer so fuck him).

Seattle's numbers are simply out of this world. Then again, Seattle was always a soccer
hot bed.

As for the three Canadian teams, I think the numbers are solid hovering around 19-20 000. Montreal's attendance is off from the year previous but still at capacity.

If this keeps up, it can mean more money and it can attract top flight players one day.

This is the current list of European players in MLS.

And international.


Canadian Military Going STFU

When a bureaucracy demands silence, we should all ask why and be wary.

Just another attack on freedom of speech in the day of the life of Canada.



France Loves Shooting Itself

Hollande and unions = economic disaster.

Notice the workers are fine with the situation. The government and unions aren't - two parasitical entities. 


2013-09-23

Poland Pries Private Pensions From Public

If people only grasped the fact that the government already raids pension funds to pay for shit.


There have been murmurs the U.S. may eventually do the same some day.

At this point, that's a likely scenario.

I couldn't find more sources regarding Poland's decision to do so.

Shit, the Rays just swept the Orioles.

I digress.

Quote Of The Day

In today's context, John Adams is just a dead, white extremist.

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

England Wants Its Guns Back

No shit.

Public beheadings and insane laws that protect the criminals will do that to an emasculated society.

World Wide Leader In Grammar ESPN Aint's

More ESPN grammar lessons:

"Former Sunderland winger Kevin Kilbane believes Paolo Di Canio was only ever brought in to give the club a short-term boost and said he had upset a significant number of his players during his time at the Stadium of Light."

Oof.

Detroit: When Citizens Strike

Let the parasites fight amongst themselves. Detroit will be better off.

Meanwhile, if Detroit is to recover, it will be up to the people. Not the so-called flunkies passing off as "leaders."

You go girl. We're watching. 

Armed with mowers, anarchy comes to Detroit.

Pay close attention: VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION IN ACTION.

No fucking asshole demanding this and that. Just people taking action to save their community - WITHOUT the state. 

Where's your permit! Your license! You can't do that!

The government will put a stop to it in...3-2-1....

For the children.





2013-09-22

New Look For T.C.

Time for an identity change.

An Armed Civilian Society Is A Safe And Protected One

Everything we were taught and led to believe about gun control is not backed by statistics as this study from Harvard tellingly reveals.

In a nutshell, the UK disarmed its citizens and crime went up. Americans armed themselves and murder rates and crime has been steadily declining. Yet, places like Illinois have strict gun control but Chicago has high murder rates. Newtown took placed in a state with highly restricted gun laws. Even more illogical and tenuous for gun control activists is using the recent shooting in Washington as a platform to push for more gun control.

A thinking mind would at least explore why this is so.

Then there's the whole mental illness angle. Nothing more grey and least understood about human nature you can't get yet they will have you believe more "background checks" is the answer.

It's laughable and makes a mockery of the complexities dealing with mental illness.

This is why I view gun control with skepticism. The prevailing arguments just don't add up to the reality.

Now listen to liberals on the subject.  

Incredible, eh?


Exit Sandman

Mariano Rivera's career is coming to a close. After this season, he's retiring.

I don't think it's controversial to proclaim he's the greatest closer of all-time.

With Rivera, teams had eight innings to beat the Yankees. They had to be ahead or else it was game over. He was that dominant. That cutter was unhittable for some strange reason. It's like physics had a complete different calculus with his signature pitch.

2013-09-21

Public Education In NYC Failing

The Village Voice's cover in April read "Bloomberg's bridge to nowhere."

In it was an article titled 'System Failure: The Collapse of Public Education.'


Let's Talk Canadian Health

My advice, my plea to Americans is in searching to improve health, the nationalized model is one they should not look to.

Come up with something else but do not put things in the hands of the government. It will not work out as intended.

The article linked below pretty much summarizes my one year working with Findprivateclinics.ca. In our daily sessions making sense of the Byzantium world of Canadian health, something new would startle us.

Talking to hospital administrators, doctors, nurses, medical tourism businesses, patients you name it, opened our eyes and seemed to confirm our suspicions about Canadian health. While we didn't think it was horrible, we didn't believe it was as great as painted either. Any visit to our hospitals will make sure it's not first class.

There were so many people contacting us begging for a service for an ailment we thought we were in Azerbaijan or something. It was pathetic to see this happening in a supposed first world country.

That's when we concluded Michael Moore can suck our collective dicks. That piece of shit wouldn't come close to our system if given the choice. And with his millions, trust me, he wouldn't. 

There are serious issues with Canadian health and we're only beginning to explore them. While we move back towards private services to help solve and alleviate major problems, the Americans are coming our way.

Reading the French language news the other day, I came across a story about a private clinic owner who was busted by an under cover journalist is being investigated for charging patients for finding them a family doctor. This is against the law. 

Here's the thing. Stories like this are red flags.

The government has made a mess of health here (4 000 people have died because of bacteria in our hospitals in Quebec! Where's the fucking outrage?! Do people understand the travesty of this FACT and reality? Quebec hospitals make me want to vomit) and so it's not surprising a form of black market health service exists. Most people do not have a family doctor and without a doctor you ain't getting specialized services.

Sounds like the government would rather people wallow in misery so as to protect some bull shit social welfare system (scheme). If people are willing to pay for the service that's deemed illegal by the government, then that means there's a demand for it. It further means the government is wrong.

Not sure what value added benefit we got as a society as a result of the story.

Here's the story. All I can say is we heard similar stories. Canada's system is not patient-centric, it's cost-centric. Not in a responsible fiscal way, just in a ration-like manner.

"Mountain-bike enthusiast Suzanne Aucoin had to fight more than her Stage IV colon cancer. Her doctor suggested Erbitux—a proven cancer drug that targets cancer cells exclusively, unlike conventional chemotherapies that more crudely kill all fast-growing cells in the body—and Aucoin went to a clinic to begin treatment. But if Erbitux offered hope, Aucoin’s insurance didn’t: she received one inscrutable form letter after another, rejecting her claim for reimbursement. Yet another example of the callous hand of managed care, depriving someone of needed medical help, right? Guess again. Erbitux is standard treatment, covered by insurance companies—in the United States. Aucoin lives in Ontario, Canada.

When Aucoin appealed to an official ombudsman, the Ontario government claimed that her treatment was unproven and that she had gone to an unaccredited clinic. But the FDA in the U.S. had approved Erbitux, and her clinic was a cancer center affiliated with a prominent Catholic hospital in Buffalo. This January, the ombudsman ruled in Aucoin’s favor, awarding her the cost of treatment. She represents a dramatic new trend in Canadian health-care advocacy: finding the treatment you need in another country, and then fighting Canadian bureaucrats (and often suing) to get them to pick up the tab.

But if Canadians are looking to the United States for the care they need, Americans, ironically, are increasingly looking north for a viable health-care model. There’s no question that American health care, a mixture of private insurance and public programs, is a mess. Over the last five years, health-insurance premiums have more than doubled, leaving firms like General Motors on the brink of bankruptcy. Expensive health care has also hit workers in the pocketbook: it’s one of the reasons that median family income fell between 2000 and 2005 (despite a rise in overall labor costs). Health spending has surged past 16 percent of GDP. The number of uninsured Americans has risen, and even the insured seem dissatisfied. So it’s not surprising that some Americans think that solving the nation’s health-care woes may require adopting a Canadian-style single-payer system, in which the government finances and provides the care. Canadians, the seductive single-payer tune goes, not only spend less on health care; their health outcomes are better, too—life expectancy is longer, infant mortality lower.

Thus, Paul Krugman in the New York Times: “Does this mean that the American way is wrong, and that we should switch to a Canadian-style single-payer system? Well, yes.” Politicians like Hillary Clinton are on board; Michael Moore’s new documentary Sicko celebrates the virtues of Canada’s socialized health care; the National Coalition on Health Care, which includes big businesses like AT&T, recently endorsed a scheme to centralize major health decisions to a government committee; and big unions are questioning the tenets of employer-sponsored health insurance. Some are tempted. Not me.

I was once a believer in socialized medicine. I don’t want to overstate my case: growing up in Canada, I didn’t spend much time contemplating the nuances of health economics. I wanted to get into medical school—my mind brimmed with statistics on MCAT scores and admissions rates, not health spending. But as a Canadian, I had soaked up three things from my environment: a love of ice hockey; an ability to convert Celsius into Fahrenheit in my head; and the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people. When HillaryCare shook Washington, I remember thinking that the Clintonistas were right.

My health-care prejudices crumbled not in the classroom but on the way to one. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute. Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care. I soon discovered that the problems went well beyond overcrowded ERs. Patients had to wait for practically any diagnostic test or procedure, such as the man with persistent pain from a hernia operation whom we referred to a pain clinic—with a three-year wait list; or the woman needing a sleep study to diagnose what seemed like sleep apnea, who faced a two-year delay; or the woman with breast cancer who needed to wait four months for radiation therapy, when the standard of care was four weeks.

I decided to write about what I saw. By day, I attended classes and visited patients; at night, I worked on a book. Unfortunately, statistics on Canadian health care’s weaknesses were hard to come by, and even finding people willing to criticize the system was difficult, such was the emotional support that it then enjoyed. One family friend, diagnosed with cancer, was told to wait for potentially lifesaving chemotherapy. I called to see if I could write about his plight. Worried about repercussions, he asked me to change his name. A bit later, he asked if I could change his sex in the story, and maybe his town. Finally, he asked if I could change the illness, too.

My book’s thesis was simple: to contain rising costs, government-run health-care systems invariably restrict the health-care supply. Thus, at a time when Canada’s population was aging and needed more care, not less, cost-crunching bureaucrats had reduced the size of medical school classes, shuttered hospitals, and capped physician fees, resulting in hundreds of thousands of patients waiting for needed treatment—patients who suffered and, in some cases, died from the delays. The only solution, I concluded, was to move away from government command-and-control structures and toward a more market-oriented system. To capture Canadian health care’s growing crisis, I called my book Code Blue, the term used when a patient’s heart stops and hospital staff must leap into action to save him. Though I had a hard time finding a Canadian publisher, the book eventually came out in 1999 from a small imprint; it struck a nerve, going through five printings.

Nor were the problems I identified unique to Canada—they characterized all government-run health-care systems. Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled—48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. A while back, I toured a public hospital in Washington, D.C., with Tim Evans, a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe. The hospital was dark and dingy, but Evans observed that it was cleaner than anything in his native England. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave—when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity—15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren’t available. And so on.
But single-payer systems—confronting dirty hospitals, long waiting lists, and substandard treatment—are starting to crack. Today my book wouldn’t seem so provocative to Canadians, whose views on public health care are much less rosy than they were even a few years ago. Canadian newspapers are now filled with stories of people frustrated by long delays for care:
   vow broken on cancer wait times: most hospitals across canada fail to meet ottawa’s four-week guideline for radiation
   patients wait as p.e.t. scans used in animal experiments
   back patients waiting years for treatment: study
   the doctor is . . . out
As if a taboo had lifted, government statistics on the health-care system’s problems are suddenly available. In fact, government researchers have provided the best data on the doctor shortage, noting, for example, that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12 percent of that province’s population) can’t find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who’d get a doctor’s appointment.

Dr. Jacques Chaoulli is at the center of this changing health-care scene. Standing at about five and a half feet and soft-spoken, he doesn’t seem imposing. But this accidental revolutionary has turned Canadian health care on its head. In the 1990s, recognizing the growing crisis of socialized care, Chaoulli organized a private Quebec practice—patients called him, he made house calls, and then he directly billed his patients. The local health board cried foul and began fining him. The legal status of private practice in Canada remained murky, but billing patients, rather than the government, was certainly illegal, and so was private insurance.

Chaoulli gave up his private practice but not the fight for private medicine. Trying to draw attention to Canada’s need for an alternative to government care, he began a hunger strike but quit after a month, famished but not famous. He wrote a couple of books on the topic, which sold dismally. He then came up with the idea of challenging the government in court. Because the lawyers whom he consulted dismissed the idea, he decided to make the legal case himself and enrolled in law school. He flunked out after a term. Undeterred, he found a sponsor for his legal fight (his father-in-law, who lives in Japan) and a patient to represent. Chaoulli went to court and lost. He appealed and lost again. 
He appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. And there—amazingly—he won.

Chaoulli was representing George Zeliotis, an elderly Montrealer forced to wait almost a year for a hip replacement. Zeliotis was in agony and taking high doses of opiates. Chaoulli maintained that the patient should have the right to pay for private health insurance and get treatment sooner. He based his argument on the Canadian equivalent of the Bill of Rights, as well as on the equivalent Quebec charter. The court hedged on the national question, but a majority agreed that Quebec’s charter did implicitly recognize such a right.

It’s hard to overstate the shock of the ruling. It caught the government completely off guard—officials had considered Chaoulli’s case so weak that they hadn’t bothered to prepare briefing notes for the prime minister in the event of his victory. The ruling wasn’t just shocking, moreover; it was potentially monumental, opening the way to more private medicine in Quebec. Though the prohibition against private insurance holds in the rest of the country for now, at least two people outside Quebec, armed with Chaoulli’s case as precedent, are taking their demand for private insurance to court.

Rick Baker helps people, and sometimes even saves lives. He describes a man who had a seizure and received a diagnosis of epilepsy. Dissatisfied with the opinion—he had no family history of epilepsy, but he did have constant headaches and nausea, which aren’t usually seen in the disorder—the man requested an MRI. The government told him that the wait would be four and a half months. So he went to Baker, who arranged to have the MRI done within 24 hours—and who, after the test discovered a brain tumor, arranged surgery within a few weeks.

Baker isn’t a neurosurgeon or even a doctor. He’s a medical broker, one member of a private sector that is rushing in to address the inadequacies of Canada’s government care. Canadians pay him to set up surgical procedures, diagnostic tests, and specialist consultations, privately and quickly. “I don’t have a medical background. I just have some common sense,” he explains. “I don’t need to be a doctor for what I do. I’m just expediting care.”

He tells me stories of other people whom his British Columbia–based company, Timely Medical Alternatives, has helped—people like the elderly woman who needed vascular surgery for a major artery in her abdomen and was promised prompt care by one of the most senior bureaucrats in the government, who never called back. “Her doctor told her she’s going to die,” Baker remembers. So Timely got her surgery in a couple of days, in Washington State. Then there was the eight-year-old badly in need of a procedure to help correct her deafness. After watching her surgery get bumped three times, her parents called Timely. She’s now back at school, her hearing partly restored. “The father said, ‘Mr. Baker, my wife and I are in agreement that your star shines the brightest in our heaven,’ ” Baker recalls. “I told that story to a government official. He shrugged. He couldn’t fucking care less.”

Not everyone has kind words for Baker. A woman from a union-sponsored health coalition, writing in a local paper, denounced him for “profiting from people’s misery.” When I bring up the comment, he snaps: “I’m profiting from relieving misery.” Some of the services that Baker brokers almost certainly contravene Canadian law, but governments are loath to stop him. “What I am doing could be construed as civil disobedience,” he says. “There comes a time when people need to lead the government.”



Should America Have Nationalized Health?

  1. Government-mandated procedures will likely reduce doctor flexibility and lead to poor patient care.
  2. Healthy people who take care of themselves will have to pay for the burden of those who smoke, are obese, etc.
  3. In an effort to cut costs, price & salary controls on drugs, medical equipment, and medical services are likely to be put in place, meaning there is less incentive to pursue medical-related research, development, and investment, nor pursue medical careers in general.
  4. A long, painful transition will have to take place involving lost insurance industry jobs, business closures, and new patient record creation.
  5. Loss of private practice options and possible reduced pay may dissuade many would-be doctors from pursuing the profession.
  1. Patients may be subjected to extremely long waits for treatment.
  2. Like social security, any government benefit eventually is taken as a "right" by the public, meaning that it's politically near impossible to remove or curtail it later on when costs get out of control.
Those are the "no's." I think the last two are indeed likely to happen if Canada and Britain are any indication. In fact, I'd argue the five previous too have taken place.

The "Yes" side here.

  1. We can eliminate wasteful inefficiencies such as duplicate paper work, claim approval, insurance submission, etc.
  2. We can develop a centralized national database which makes diagnosis and treatment easier for doctors.
  3. Medical professionals can concentrate on healing the patient rather than on insurance procedures, malpractice liability, etc.
  4. Free medical services would encourage patients to practice preventive medicine and inquire about problems early when treatment will be light; currently, patients often avoid physicals and other preventive measures because of the costs.
  5. People will have an easier time starting their own business or working part-time if health insurance is covered.
More details at BalancedPolitics.org.


Fall Of The West Reason 495996977: Oregon And The Parking Dilemma

Obamacare is sure to wreak unseen havoc on the U.S. economy (it's ok, business and their greedy profits will adjust) and so there are a lot of issues yet to be resolved.

Like. Let's see.

How about parking?

From the Cascade Policy Institute (link above):

"Oregon is scrambling to open its new federally mandated health insurance exchange, dubbed Cover Oregon, on time October 1st.  Since the commodity being marketed is health insurance, one can only imagine the number of things going wrong: price quotes, online application forms, privacy protection, etc.

But when Cover Oregon’s Chief Operating Officer went on a recent multi-state conference call with President Obama to discuss the problems various states were having with their exchanges, she didn’t mention any of those issues. She said the number one problem for her organization was parking.
When asked by the President to clarify, she said, “We have 150 employees at our Tualatin office, and only 96 parking spaces.” The President had to tell her that even the vast powers of the Oval Office did not extend to solving local parking shortages.

This was a classic Oregon moment. In a conversation about how the state will ration health care―an industry covering roughly one-seventh of the economy―we discover that management can’t even successfully ration parking for their own employees.
ObamaCare is already collapsing under its own weight. Things are likely to get much worse before they get better."

Remember folks, these are the people making decisions on your behalf.

She should come to Quebec.  Or go to Vermont. Or California. Or Massachusetts.  Or New York.

***

Always remember, an economy can function with a bureaucrat. A bureaucrat can't function without an economy of which private enterprise is the key ingredient.

Farm Aid: Give Me A Handout Or Starve; When Celebrities Come To Town

With Farm Aid set to go, here are a couple of points providing a different perspective on how (shallow) celebrities and their pet causes really are and Mencken's disdain for farmers.

Science and technology could force the inefficient farmer off the market. The romanticizing of farmers is a little like the image (and myth) of the noble savage before they were corrupted and killed by the white man.

Mencken:

Back in the 1920’s they agreed among themselves to cut down the cotton acreage in order to inflate the price–and instantly every party to the agreement began planting more cotton in order to profit by the abstinence of his neighbors. That abstinence being wholly imaginary, the price of cotton fell instead of going up –and then the entire pack of scoundrels began demanding assistance from the national treasury–in brief, began demanding that the rest of us indemnify them for the failure of their plot to blackmail us.

The same demand is made sempiternally by the wheat farmers of the Middle West. It is the theory of the zanies who perform at Washington that a grower of wheat devotes himself to that banal art in a philanthropic and patriotic spirit–that he plants and harvests his crop in order that the folks of the cities may not go without bread. It is the plain fact that he raises wheat because it takes less labor than any other crop–because it enables him, after working no more than sixty days a year, to loaf the rest of the twelve months. If wheat-raising could be taken out of the hands of such lazy fellahin and organized as the production of iron or cement is organized, the price might be reduced by two-thirds, and still leave a large profit for entrepreneurs. 

A little harsh if you ask me, since you know, farming is a neat thing to have so wishing them to fuck off may seem a tad shortsighted. However, I do understand the point and the spirit in which it was made. When they gamble or make a mistake or whatever, they should not come running to society to bail them out. 







The Problem With Quebec

Is that it's run by robotic bureaucrats. 

Likely armed with little versions of Marx's theories and other bags of anti-free enterprise cliches so prevalent on the fucking internet these days. They tolerate business, they don't believe it plays a vital role in society.

I saw a Chevy Volt on the road today decked with sponsorship stickers: ATM, STL, Hydro. You know, bastions of free-enterprise. And I sat there waiting for my wife to return with my Southwest chicken wrap meal thinking these people honestly believe they can foster and force innovation this way.

It's really remarkable when you think of it. All this "planning." 

Did you know that private pre-schoolers are no longer allowed to sell their business?

Nope.

You shut down or keep going.

This is how they "run" an economy. They command it.

Of course, because private means they don't fall under control of the government. In Quebec, L'il Bolshevikia, that's a bad thing. 

Who gets to make these decisions? I always look on in marvel whenever I see businessmen before bureaucrats on TV at various public hearings. In daycare for example, we have to go to explain to the bureaucrats that every decision they make can negatively impact thousands of people.

And for what? To build up a social-welfare appearance?

And you're gonna tell me we live in a "democracy?" It's socialism by other means.

***

Quick word on the upcoming Montreal elections.

In my view, vote for Cote or the young girl (I forget her name). Denis Coderre's party is filled with the same folks who ran the show previous. Coderre represents the establishment and that's the last thing Montreal needs.

But I have a feeling Montrealers will vote him in because that's the wrong thing to do.


2013-09-20

Parents Abandoning Parenting

I hope common sense and justice prevails here. Former NFLer Brian Holloway tried to do the right thing by not ruining the lives of the kids who trashed and destroyed his home only to find out the parents of the perpetrators (who posted their criminal act on social media) are more than willing to forfeit their duty to raise their kids right. Holloway, who played for the New England Patriots and represented them at the 1985 Super Bowl against the Chicago Bears, is being sued by the parents.

No, this is not a joke. The parents are but not the story.

The parents of these kids are sending the absolute wrong message.

They are failing as parents. Their fucking precious ones have been hard done by!

Epic. Fail.

Here's hoping Holloway howls at the moon and gives these parents (and their little precious trespassers) a whooping in court.


Boston Blog

I'm no trademark and patent expert but when I came across this in wikipedia it struck home at how stupid it can get:

In 2002, Boston Pizza commenced a lawsuit against Boston Market in the Federal Court of Canada over the trademark use of the word "Boston" in Canada. In its defence, Boston Market alleged that Boston Pizza's trademarks were invalid because it described a style of pizza from a specific area. The dispute continued after Boston Market ceased operations in Canada in 2004. The parties settled the dispute in 2008 under an agreement that Boston Market would not use the words "Boston" or "Boston Market" in Canada for five years for restaurants or any food or drink products (other than pre-packaged food products, but not including pizza and lasagna). Boston Market also agreed that it will not challenge Boston Pizza's use in Canada of any trademark that uses the words "Boston" or "Boston Pizza" (with certain exceptions).

So a company can "own" a name on Canadian soil that's not even Canadian?

Dumb.

Maybe there should be an option whereby we can take Boston Pizza's rights for being neither Bostonian or making what I think to be pizza. So there. Pft.

Boston belongs to no one or anything. No word should "belong" to any entity.  

Unrelated, should cities patent their names? Imagine if Rome or Athens filed suits across the continent against towns that use their names.






  
 

Earth 100 Million Years From Now

Can't tell what will happen to places like Montreal, Italy and Japan. Looks like they either get flooded or collide as the UK seems to with Europe while water rips and splits continents.

Nuclear Detonations Map

Interesting visual map showing where and how times nuclear nations tested their bombs.

What the heck is France doing detonating 210 times?

Bah.

No surprise that it boiled down to America and the Soviet Union since the bulk of it was during the Cold War.


Quote Of The Day

Nancy Pelosi - comedienne extraordinaire:

You know why it is,” she said. “You know why it is. He’s brilliant, … he thinks in a strategic way in how to get something done … and he’s completely eloquent. That’s a package that they don’t like.”
The former House Speaker also called him “practically apolitical” and “certainly nonpartisan.”


/drops oven mitts and muffins.




2013-09-19

A Show I Probably Won't Watch

Ben Johnson: An attempt at redemption.

25 years later we're still on this? Yeah, yeah I get all the "for 8 seconds a nation was united" crap but really, enough already.

Poor guy must have gone through hell and we're filled with enough arrogant shit to still think he owes us an apology? He was a steroid user. He got caught. Move on.

As if he's the only one.

Some guys, it seems, can get away with far worse and be forgiven yet others (Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson come to mind) are treated as if they committed a heinous crime worthy of banishment to one of Dante's circles in hell.

The Ben Johnson story was cool for about five years after 1988 and then it was over. If you still feel hurt by it you need a doctor.


Take Privacy Rights Serious

More anonymity sites - Tor.

Search Anonymously

With DuckDuckGo.


Joke Of The Day

"What's the DEAL with the Federal Reserve? They're not federal, and they have no reserves!" 

Saw this via Skeptical Eye on youtube.

Poor Nick. In perpetual identity crisis mode.

Being Frank With T.C.

Regulations inflate costs, kids.

This week's installment of Being Frank with T.C. was brought to you by the Koch brothers and Kit-Kat.

Fall Of The West Reason 588686877: Michael Jackson In; God Out

Read here.

When God is the enemy.

There seems to be a massive misunderstanding of what was meant by separation of church and state. At the moment, it seems there's an army of ignorant doofuses who probably can't tell difference from Locke or a lock "protecting" the sanctity of "objective" education.

God - concept or not - is an integral and inseperable FACT of our history in the West. You CAN'T weed the guy out of our textbooks. If you do, well, you will have little to teach. Be it a Renaissance painting, a piece of Baroque musical composition, a masterwork of philosophy - all these things began with God at the center of thought. Even the Founding Fathers believed the power of their pen flowed from the authority of God.

In this light, someone should explain, perhaps with stick people if need be, to the teacher that separation of Church and State doesn't mean a kid can't write about God.

Doing this discourages intellectual curiosity. What's so fucking hard to comprehend? I'm not in education and I understand the delicate need for kids to express themselves freely.

This obsession with self-imposed policy is getting ridiculous. 

This sort of paranoid hyper-secularism ruins kids in ways we can't imagine. I know when I was in school, if I was doing something I thought the teacher would like only to be mocked, that teacher lost me for the year. Then they wondered why I hated school. Fucking clowns.

What lesson has this child learned? That we live in an uber-sensitive world without much intellectual depth?

That Michael Jackson is an effen idol?

The direction of the West is on the wrong path methinks.

Charter: Giving Power To The Wrong People

Let's open with a xenophobic screed:

Hello, I think that if this law would take place, it would need to be 100% transparent. That being said, Religion stay home... When a police women can not do her job because she's a women... it's NOT our way of doing here in Quebec, In Canada. Same goes for Doctors, teachers... If the people that comes from other countries with their own religion and believe don't like it here in Quebec, they can just move back from where they come from.... If a Canadian teacher wants to go teach french in the Muslim countries, she would need to be and respect their culture.... If Men and young men are not allowed to look at women that go the a gym, where let them move elsewhere.... Come on... The base of this chart is good and fair... especially for the people's right and women as well... Again, if those who are not happy can leave like they came into our country. If they don't like it in Quebec, they can move in another province... And they should start by learning french and the Canadian and Quebec history as well.... They live in MY province... If I would go in another country, I would have to comply to their rules..... That's how it goes...

Now, you may say this line of thinking can't possibly be the rule here. Well, if the polls are any indication perhaps it is? 60% of Quebecers think the Charter is okay. 60%!

I'm not gonna get into the 'tit for tat' mentality that grips Quebec, or its complete ignorance about business (I get to speak to a lot of salespeople who work for international brands and to the person each says Quebec is the most difficult market - and not for positive reasons) or its tanking economy wallowing debt or any other social measure we fail miserably at - I've gone over it ad nauseum. 

I'm just gonna A) let this comment speak for itself and B) briefly discuss how the government empowers ignorance.

A government that employs laws that basically say "if we don't impose these coercive and punitive measures we will lose ourselves to les autres" is fear mongering. It is designed, under the guise of protection, to instill perpetual fear. Quebec nationalists haven't figured out that what they're protecting at all costs is an empty shell. They're setting a tone whereby no one will respect Quebec in the long-run. They demand respect without earning or giving it. That they 'exist' and believe this is their homeland is not an excuse to permit tyranny of the majority when it feels like it.

What is the purpose of protecting a dialect of the French language of it is not taught properly? I've had a friend, who after showing a Quebecois professor his poor grammar with a dictionary, was told "too bad, it's Quebec here." He was further told, "you Frenchmen have allowed too many anglicisms in your language." My friend is from Paris and stood in stunned silence.That's when he realized the depths of Quebec's anglophobia and its ignorance about the history of the language they're out to protect.

This is their idea of "protecting a culture." The problem is, the French language doesn't belong to them. There are far more important places with far more powerful interests who would take issue when it comes to the French linguistic heritage. 

In essence, laws like 101, 22, 78, 14, and now the Charter destroy the very essence of a society eventually. It brings it down to its tribal roots. It gives people like this person, the false sense of security in going into the streets and fighting her cause - metaphorically speaking. She's the one that goes around calling the OLF for nasty words like "on" and "off." It's her ilk, that take offense to being greeted in English. It's her type that mock English in public spaces and refuse to serve a customer in their language.

Why not? Her government sent her the cue to go ahead and do it.

Do we really want this?

It's not "anglo media" driven. We all have at least ONE incidence or confrontation with a 'parle moi en francais' or 'OLF' brown shirt.

I'll close with the final part of her comment:

They live in MY province... If I would go in another country, I would have to comply to their rules..... That's how it goes...

No, madame. It is NOT your province. I think the Natives would like to have a word with you. It belongs to the people - and that definition definitely doesn't end with the PQ. You're opinion carries no more weight than mine and in this instance needs to be eradicated from our midst. We need to fight it to the end.

I really could care less about other countries. We're the ones who should take the higher ground. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Quebec has some serious questions to ask themselves. That honest, intellectual discussion will not be initiated by nationalists or the PQ.

Sadly, in the latest polls the PQ are doing well.

Quebec. Welcome to the new Alabama.

2013-09-18

Quote Of The Day: The Progressive's Handbook

"Private property bad. Government property good.
Private schools bad. Government schools good.
Private guns bad. Government guns good.
Private monopoly bad. Government monopoly good."

AND...my addition:

Private coercion bad. Government coercion good.

How Obamacare Is Affecting Small Business

Those one million suddenly-large businesses employ 106,165,501 full and part time employees – rounded off, that’s a bit more than 100 million workers.  Until now, those employers had no responsibility for providing health insurance for their employees – for hundreds of thousands of those small businesses, the added cost of providing insurance would have made them financially unable to compete with larger businesses – another reason why the SBA was created, to help them compete in a much larger arena.  Now, they will all have to either provide insurance that they cannot afford, or pay an equally-unaffordable penalty, which the Supreme Court last year redefined as a tax.

Overall, according to the 2010 census, the entire United States (including businesses, churches, government agencies and other employers) employs just over 121 million workers.  Of these 121 million workers, many obviously work several part-time jobs to help keep up with inflation and to survive the still-ongoing economic hard-times which began in 2007. That part-time phenomenon, which is why formerly small businesses can employ 106 million workers, is growing, as companies scramble to downsize their full-time workforce to avoid the penalties, taxes or insurance requirements – none of which they can afford, despite the bill being called the Affordable care Act.

"In employing these 106 million full-and part-time workers, these once-small (but now large) businesses pay their workers an annual payrolls of $4,266,231,000,500 – that’s four-point-three trillion dollars in round numbers.

With the stroke of a Presidential pen in March of 2010, by the act of signing into law the bill of which Speaker Pelosi famously said that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” far more was changed than just the “Affordable Care Act.”  Courts and the Administration have yet to figure out a way of reconciling the SBA’s definition of “small” as being employers with from 500 to 1,500 employees, and a payroll of up to $21 million dollars annually."

 Read more here.

With one stroke of a pen the Democrat party has increased the stress level of an astounding amount of Americans. Is it worth it?

As for Obama, I doubt he cares what the unintended consequences are. Just my hunch.

Calling Out ESPN

That I have issues with ESPN's quality of writing is an understatement. For the 'world wide leader in sports' awash in cash it's inexcusable to subject readers with this:

"Chelsea suffered their first home defeat in the Champions League group stage for ten years as Basel caused a major upset..."

Jesus me. Who edits this stuff.

As if I wasn't already annoyed, then they came up with this piece of irritation:

Elsewhere in Group H, Celtic produced a rousing European display away to AC Milan but were beaten 2-0, thanks to a late own goal by Emilio Izaguirre and a further effort from Sulley Muntari.
The Hoops, who beat Barcelona in last season’s group stage, were resolute at the San Siro, but eventually came undone as the Rossoneri got a huge slice of luck when defender Cristian Zapata's drive in the 82nd minute appeared to be heading wide before it deflected off Celtic left-back Izaguirre and ended up behind Fraser Forster.

Ok, I admit I support AC Milan but can they get any less objective? This is a 'round up' report. I don't need damn editorializing. Blah, blah, BLAH!

Am I the only one who has grown tired of the 'little engine that could' angle with Celtic?

Rousing? They played well, solid performance indeed. They accounted well for themselves and even came within a cross bar of taking the lead, but what was so rousing about it? Yes, they played at the legendary San Siro but it's no easier to win in Scotland either. Celtic is in Champions League and as such are a quality side that demand and command respect. 

Like usual, the English/Scottish are hard done by (according to the press) despite 'spirited' play only to go down to a 'slice of luck' a phrase borrowed from the English announcer I reckon.

Get bent. Boo-hoo-hoo, always a bridesmaid never a bride. Yeah, it was an own goal, but that's life. Funny how Arsenal's 'slice of luck' wasn't mentioned after Aaron Ramsey gave them a 2-1 lead. Funny.

Last season Juventus absolutely obliterated Celtic over two-legs yet the narrative was set in a way that led people to believe Celtic were close to winning. The coach said as much which raised an eyebrow or two.

On all levels they were outclassed just like Bayern Munich showed its class and strength in dismissing Juve in impressive fashion in the quarter-finals.

It was the same with England against Italy at Euro 2012. Standing behind the ball letting your opponent come with much desire to advance or attack is not "proud" play. It's called hanging on before a superior opponent.

In any event, this was the case today. AC Milan did not play their 'A' lineup as they are battling injuries to key players yet still held an edge in possession, shots on goal, quality chances as well as total completed passes.

They made their luck.

If Celtic put in a rousing performance, Milan were resilient given it wasn't their best effort.

So fuck off ESPN staff writers.




Pour Un Quebec Inclusif

Sign the petition.

It's something worth putting name to. If you can't stand up against a wrong, what will you stand up for? Silence is deadly. That's all bad ideas pushed by misguided or bad people need.

This is something I can get behind. It's closer in-line with our Enlightenment heritage in the West.


Montreal A City-State?

Absolutely.

Montreal's sad decline can be traced back to the arcane policies of Quebec City and its obscene fear of 'les autres.'

It is indeed time for Montreal to break off. If Quebec can go, so can Montreal secede from Quebec. "Parce ce que nos valeur, on y crois' doesn't stop at the PQ values.

And Montreal clearly has a different take on things than the sowers of discord in the PQ.

Sure, there will be all sorts of legal wranglings and debates but the same arguments nationalists use against Canada (flimsy as they are at times) Montreal - perhaps with even more justification -  can employ against Quebec. Quebec seems to be under the impression (and they assume a lot of things they take for granted will pass on without a fight - like the Canada passport. If I'm the ROC I seek to revoke it)  that lands given to them by Canada and lands claimed by Natives won't be challenged.

Quebec has no future as long as the mentality of the PQ is allowed to prevail. Simple as that.

****

I had yet another enlightening conversation with a transplanted Parisian today. He marvels at the antiquated, nonsensical insularity of Quebec. He too feels it's about time to move on. The thing the French have noticed is that for all the squawking about "protecting their identity" they don't speak the language properly in their view. You want to create a unique Quebecois lexicon, by all means go ahead he argued. Just don't tell us or the Belgians or the North Africans or the Swiss it's "French" because it isn't. He explained to me Quebec is the only region in the Francophonie with an atrocious dialect and grammar. Instead of suppressing people's rights he further argued, how about Quebec gets serious about actually teaching proper French?

'What are they protecting exactly?' he asked.

****

An American friend of mine offered another anecdote. His daughter represents Quebec in basketball. She's likely to move on to a U.S. school and it may as well be since the family has little interest staying here. Quebec, when coached by a Francophone, was pretty much a non-entity. The two best players - both Americans of varied ethnic backgrounds - got little playing time as the "pure laines" were inserted in the lineup despite being obviously inferior players. An Argentinian took over and it took him all of one lousy practice to set the team straight. He started the two Yankee girls and Quebec started winning.

Moral of the story is people outside the tribe is good for a society. Or else how can you improve? This idiotic "c'est le Quebec icite va tent" has to be challenged and thrown on its sorry ass. It doesn't belong to them. It belongs to everyone.

****

What makes me laugh the most is the PQ actually, with a straight face, says they're inclusive and this piece of shit Charter is meant to unite us. It's having the exact opposite effect.

Maybe this is all by design. Who knows?


Quote Of The Day

Ok. This is a good one.

Remember Palin's 'I can see Russia from my house' comment (misquoted of course)?

I've heard a different spin on it.

"Obama can see Russia from his knees."

Hollande's Socialist Wet Dream Drying Up Like Provence Herbs

Two leaders - Obama and Hollande in France - with low approval ratings have teamed up on the Syria/Penske file.

Not surprised one bit by the performance - or lack thereof - of Hollande's France. 

France was the head Dallas Cowboy cheerleader in the bomb Syria campaign. Well, wanting the U.S. to bomb. France is good at advocating something from afar, sucking someone in to do the dirty work and when things go awry blame away.

It's a knack.

Essay Of The Day: Self-Interest Is Not Evil But Human


"The first problem is that the virtue of benevolence can attach itself, like a parasite, merely to the having of good intentions. The crimes of communist regimes often avoided censure by virtue of the supposed good intentions of those committing them. Again, people lacking integrity (in, for example, exploiting claims for expenses) commonly defend themselves by the claim that they had broken no rules. Further, the term “interest,” even in the moral context of “self-interest,” invokes politics, understood as an arena in which interests conflict with each other. Hence at its least sophisticated, one form of self-ascribed good intentions may be the mere fact of supporting welfarist political policies. Such a view, not uncommon in leftish parties, takes the illusion of costless good intentions to its limit.

And this leads us to a second defect of this version of the moral life: That altruism and benevolence, as the essence of goodness, cast into the shade such more elusive and subtle virtues as integrity and courage. One notable collapse of integrity consists in the happy belief that the costs of one’s policies will be borne by others, and particularly in politics, by the more heavily taxed rich. Just such a belief is a popular recourse in the more demagogic versions of current politics. Such a view corresponds precisely to the corruption that Greek philosophers diagnosed in democracy as a political system, understanding it as an instrument by which the poor might plunder the rich."


"Even the device of off-loading the costs of one’s public altruism on the taxable rich, however, is merely a political solution to the problem, and what politics gives, politics can also take away. The ideal solution to such a problem is—an ideal! The public altruism of welfare must be entrenched in the ideals of justice and of rights. A real solution to the conflict between self and others must transcend this distinction itself, for in a real community, cooperation transcends conflicts of interest between individuals. Such, I think, is the logic behind our admiration for “social justice,” however difficult we may find it to define. And it seems to me that in the concept of justice, in its contrast with self-interest, we have one clue to the destiny of our free society: That we shall never quite be free of the illusion that our psychological foundation in self-interest is the imperfection, the vice, that stands in the way of the social and human perfections that would create a better world."

Some people take the view that we in the West are fortunate to enjoy freedom, because it is a universal human aspiration that has been commonly frustrated in most societies. This is one of the more pernicious illusions we entertain about human kind. Most people have never lived in free societies, nor exhibited any desire or capacity for freedom. Totalitarian movements reveal even the danger that many who have enjoyed freedom can be happy to abandon it in the name of some passionate cause. The illusion that everyone wants to be free means only, perhaps, that people don’t much like being frustrated, but that is quite different from the self-discipline involved in an association of individualists managing their own lives. This illusion has been happily indulged by many commentators on the “Arab Spring” of recent times, in which the instability of authoritarian regimes might suggest a whiff of libertarian feeling. What most people seem to want, however, is to know exactly where they stand and to be secure in their understanding of their situation.

"Rules and processes are risky because they will produce unexpected and sometimes unwelcome outcomes, and it is this contrast which makes freedom constantly vulnerable to those who try to seduce us with dreams of perfection. My argument has been that even perfectly valid ways of explaining ourselves can easily slide into pejorative accounts of freedom. When that happens, it can seem obvious that governments should not merely regulate the economy (as they must as part of the rule of law in modern societies) but that they should also intervene to manage its outcomes by the use of subsidy redistribution and welfarism. These policies are suggested by the slide from a descriptive account of human psychology (the pursuit of self-interest) to a corrupt identification of the description with the vice of selfishness, ruthlessness, greed, and similar evils. The reality of pursuing self-interest in a free modern society is no doubt better described by invoking some such virtue as self-reliance, but that is the demand which a free society makes on everyone, and it is that demand which is often found burdensome by those who find security in a structure of welfare from which they may benefit"

"In politics, every policy has some advantages and also some disadvantages. But notable about the disadvantages of this range of welfarist reforms is that they have led most rich Western states into a condition of chronic bankruptcy. The crisis of the early twenty-first century is no doubt attributable to bankers and to other public actors, but unmistakably central to the problem is a level of both personal and public debt, which is unsustainable, and will get worse for more than demographic reasons. And when governments become indebted, they have virtually no solutions to the problem except to deceive their populations with inflation and other monetary forms of smoke and mirrors."

"It is not merely governments that act corruptly. It is also the democratic voter. As we have seen, the demos is also corrupted. A great deal of political sentimentalism floats on the illusion that rising public expenditure would not affect most of the population because the rich can be taxed more heavily. Much indignation is often expended about large firms that “avoid” taxation, as if taxation were a form of charity one should offer to governments, rather than known rates to be paid by specific and well-defined classes of taxpayer. The problem is in part that the rules of taxation have become so complicated that skilled professionals are needed to reveal what must be paid and what may be kept. Politicians however are keen to talk of the rich “paying their share” of taxation; it is a cry advanced under the popular rubric of “fairness.” It is only as it dawns upon voters that the costs of welfare cannot forever be loaded onto the rich without serious economic consequences that public opinion turns against welfare spending."

"It seems to me that our preoccupation with the defects of our civilization is a standing temptation, and a dangerous one, to have recourse to civil authority in order to deal with what we may be persuaded to understand as social imperfections. And that preoccupation with our imperfections is most commonly grounded in the corrupt sense of explaining freedom in terms of self-interest."

"To recap, such an assumption about the motivation of moderns invokes the moral criterion of justice or fairness as condemning many of the consequences of our economic life (in terms of the supposed distribution of benefits). Such a view in turn generates a succession of vulnerable classes of people each with claims on the state for redress. Welfare programs responding to this process have no determinate end in sight. There is no viable conception of a society without vulnerable classes demanding special treatment as victims of one or other kind of injustice or unfairness. We begin to conceive of modern societies as associations of incompetents and cripples, which is absurd. The human condition is not like that. We entertain many foolish ideas, and no doubt will continue to do so. But this is a piece of nonsense that we can no longer afford."