When I found out that the Canadian government actually CHARGES its people for what should be free economic data, it kind of irked me. A way around it is to go to international organizations that compile the data anyway such as the OECD, IMF and the now bankrupt World Bank.
Didn’t know what precisely SDA readers would want, but since you all clamor about the wonderfulness of your health care system, I thought these charts might be relevant.


If there are any requests for any other type of data, please let me know.

The numbers from yesterday’s Strategic Counsel poll, which show the Conservatives sitting at 41 percent nationally and 46 percent in Ontario, must be a bit of a shock to Ignatieff’s team, but perhaps the most significant numbers are those showing a rather stunning level of change in the level of women’s support for the Liberals. The Liberals have historically held a significant advantage in that regard, but the poll shows women’s preferences practically reversed from April: 36 percent of women polled now prefer the Conservatives, compared to only 28 percent for the Liberals.
What could account for this stunning turn? Ignatieff doesn’t exactly come across as a redneck wife beater. The problem can’t attributed to his undeniably vampire-like physiognomy either, inasmuch as vampires are hugely popular these days in popular romance entertainment. So why are female voters storming out, proverbially speaking, and calling a cab? Is it his dainty hand gestures? Is it the way he seems to be in a perpetual state of outrage without him ever giving a genuine reason for it? Is it perhaps the dry rustling sound emanating from his head each time he arches one of his thatchy brows?
In the interests of exploring the possible reasons for the rather stunning turn among women, I invite our female readers to give their own personal take.
Male readers may speculate wildly.

Nick Packwood covers the debate–such as it is–outside of the committee. (Well worth the read in full, but for those of you in a hurry, start at 7:15.)

7.57: State censorship should apply to the “racist fringe of the internet.” Funny, the only people I can thing of who post to racist fringe internet sites are all employed by the Canadian federal government.

…

8.03: Moon observes some of the “most vocal and outspoken critics” of the HRCs have engaged in a “smear” campaign. Worse yet, these smears have been reproduced by the mainstream media (this despite well-known, rigorous editorial processes of the MSM). Falsehoods! Spread by right-wing bloggers! The man is turning red in the face. Is that spittle? I stand to get a better view. I think that was spittle. Specific right-wing blogs and specific falsehoods strangely unelaborated upon. Smearer, smear thyself.

…

Grant Huscroft points out the intervention of (presumably right-wing) blogs has been “amazingly effective” in bringing the HRCs into public debate, saying “a bit of hyperbole was necessary for that to happen.” Though in a poorly worded aside says “who cares” if the Crown impinges on free speech of fringe internet Nazis. So much for Spectre of Voltaire. This. Is. Canada.

President Obama has come under attack for his “method” when trying to get the Olympic games for Chicago. Among points being made, is that Barack delivered a speech laced with hubris, and that the Chicago committee itself, recently taken over by Obama mentor, Valerie Jarrett, approached the process with ham-fisted arrogance . Be what it may, it’s not the Obama approach to the IOC that disturbs me.
I’m very concerned, nay stunned, at the colossal lack of judgement shown by not only Barack Obama, but by his advisory team, in sending the president to Copenhagen in the first place.
When I first found out that Obama was going to give a pitch directly to the IOC, I was bewildered. How could an advisory team allow such a risky move? How could Obama himself, not see that he was sticking his neck into a meat grinder that had no guarantees and very little in the way of reward?
… keep reading.
More Stuff:
The Beta Male POTUS
By the Seat of his Pants
It’s All About Money; Not Country

There is, after all, a real war on:

Priorities

Two related posts here and here. Not that the government is much better.

***
… a little downcast are we, Robbie?

Former consumer protection commissioner Mark A. Shiffrin, and Avi Silberschatz, a computer science professor at Yale, suggest in an op-ed at the NYT that the way to solve the problem of distracted drivers texting and using cellphones is not by outlawing the practice — “too many drivers value convenience more than safety and would assume they wouldn’t get caught” – but by using an elegant technological solution:

“When a cellphone is used in a moving car, its signal must be handed off from one cell tower to the next along the route. This process tells the service provider that the phone is in motion. Cellphone towers could be engineered to not transmit while a phone is traveling. After a phone had stopped moving for a certain amount of time — three minutes, maybe — it would be able to transmit again.”

But what about non-drivers, say, carpoolers in the back seat trying to coordinate their morning meetings? They’ve got that covered, too:

“It is…easy to imagine technology that would only allow passengers to use their phones – by tethering them to devices, placed on the passenger side of the car, that would override the system.” (emph. mine)

Next problem: cell-phone users who might disable their phones by walking too fast. Electro-shock pedometers, anyone?

A Monstrous Bureaucracy hungry for power:

No single government agency has grown so big and so fast as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and no single agency threatens constitutionally guaranteed property rights and nationwide economic growth than the EPA.
It is the Blob that ate America.
Signed into law by Richard M. Nixon in 1970, the EPA has so consistently twisted the truth about the environment that its announcements must be dissected like a cadaver to find any verifiable facts.
This agency of the government is so brazen that it is currently trying to bully Congress, the seat of government, into passing the horrid Cap-and-Trade bill so that it might then regulate stationary sources that emit more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases per year.

… somebody please, pass the EPA one last wafer-thin dinner mint.
cross posted @ Cjunk

First results just in: Tiger by KO early in round one.

A man has been sent to hospital with serious injuries after being attacked by a tiger at the Calgary Zoo early Monday morning, officials said.

Zoo staff says two men snuck into the zoo around 1 a.m. local time, unnoticed, and decided to visit the tiger enclosure….

It’s not about who wins, it’s about who shows up.

As I was scrolling down yesterday through a large collection of photos of the 9-12 Tea Party in Washington, I was struck by how very unlike a typical anti-Bush/anti-capitalism protest it was. It was a lot larger, for one thing, but what really stood out was that the protesters looked like regular folks who’d been picked at random from a cross section of mostly over-thirty Americans. Some of the placards mocked Obama (“Obama Rx Kool-Aid,” “Gangster”) but most were either of the “don’t tread on me” variety (“Enough!”) or about patriotism, liberty, and the Founding Fathers. Despite the huge crowd, there was no window-smashing, and nothing resembling a riot.
It’s not a coincidence that these peaceful protesters are the first in recent memory to be openly characterized by high-ranking Democrats and their pro-Obama media partners as a dangerous, dumb mob. MSNBC’s Keith Olberman – having apparently slept through the protests of the Bush years when comparisons of George Bush to Hitler were as predictable as the movement of a second hand on a clock – said, accompanied by the onscreen graphic “Political Terrorism,”

“When Hamas does it, or Hezbollah does it, it is called terrorism. Why should Republican lawmakers and the astroturf groups organizing on behalf of the health-care industry be viewed any differently, especially now that far too many tea-party protesters are comparing president Obama and health care reform to Hitler?”

Two weeks ago House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, responding to a leading question about the overall “tone” of the debate, suggested that all this anti Obama-agenda talk is dangerous, and that those who engage in such rhetoric will collectively have to shoulder the blame for any future acts of violence that might be committed. As you watch the video pay special attention to how she *deliberately* chokes up, and in so doing perfects the art of using maudlin hypocrisy for political advantage:

“I think we all have to take responsibility for our actions and our words. We are a free country, and this balance between freedom and safety is one that we have to carefully balance. I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw this myself in the late seventies in San Francisco, this kind of rhetoric was very frightening, and it gave, it created a climate in which violence took place, but I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made, to understanding that some of the people that the, ears that it are falling on, are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume. But again, our county is great because people can say what they think and they believe, but I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement they may cause.”

I don’t recall Nancy Pelosi or any Democrat choking up and giving a lecture about the necessity of taking responsibility for “incitement” when a documentary-style film about the assassination of George Bush (which, incidentally, won the International Critics prize at the Toronto International Film Festival) was released three years ago. When Bush effigies were being hung from nooses, and burned and pelted with rocks (and later, shoes), and as agitated people screamed themselves hoarse, there was never a suggestion, let alone a lecture, from either the media or the Democrats about how such protesters needed to “take responsibility for any incitement they might cause.”
Oh well. When anti-capitalist/anti-Bush protesters were expressing their views, it was just pure, sweet, gentle, fun for the whole family, and all for a good cause. It’s an entirely different and more ominous spectre, obviously, when the policies of a crypto-communist are being opposed by peaceful, utterly non-radical, middle-American taxpayers.
Be sure to watch the hypocritical Pelosi in action.