Spinning wingnuts

It’s always a bummer to discover that a sparkly golden idol is made of crude and common brass (or in this case, tinfoil), but wingnuts are spinning themselves stupid over the Palin/Yukon health care story.

They quickly went into astonished damage control mode and claimed that it was a non-story because the Yukon didn’t have “socialized medicine” at the time Palin’s family was availing themselves of it — a claim that is demonstrably false.   Hospital insurance with federal cost sharing (aka “government-subsidized health insurance”) came into effect in the Yukon in 1960:

…and Yukon’s own health insurance with federal cost-sharing in 1972:

Palin’s family likely paid out of pocket for these services, and no grifting was involved — a pretty routine scenario back in the day.  But so what?

The fact remains that  health care in the Yukon in the 1960s was still far closer to being “socialized medicine” than anything the Obama Administration has floated in its health care reform proposals.  Yet in spite of her personal experience with a system far more socialized than “Obamacare”, Palin’s spun US health care reform to mean socialist Baby-Trigg-and-Granny-killing-Death Panels.

It’s the hypocrisy and the dishonesty, stupid.

Palinocrisy

The Sarah Palin Rolling Roadshow was in Calgary on Saturday night:

Sarah Palin drew a straight line from Alaska to Alberta as she told a sold-out, largely adoring crowd in Calgary that the province gets her message of less government, lower taxes and development of natural resources.

“Largely” might be an overstatement, since…

About half of the 1,200 people in attendance gave Palin a standing ovation.

But so what?  Maybe the other half of the audience was too drunk to stand up.

I was more interested in the revealing little whoopsie in her speech that was pointed out by CC yesterday:

The vocal opponent of health care reform in the U.S. steered largely clear of the topic except to reveal a tidbit about her life growing up not far from Whitehorse.

“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” she said. “And I think now, isn’t that ironic.”

Really!  “Ironic”? I guess “irony” is the new “hypocrisy”.

But this brainless chicanery is no surprise.  What I’d like to know is how did Palin’s family manage to do this?   What kind of fake-ID flim-flam did these snowbilly con-artists cook up to scam health care in the Yukon?  I only ask because:

The Yukon Health Care Insurance Plan is restricted to those who are permanent citizens of the Yukon Territory.

And:

Yukon residents are eligible for the territorially-funded health coverage. To be eligible you must:

• Be a Canadian citizen or have immigration status
• Make your permanent home in Yukon and
• Be physically present in Yukon and not absent for more than six months, without a waiver from Insured Health Services.

The grifting instinct runs strong.  So, we want our money back, eh?

WWPD?

(via pharyngula)

This is getting repetitive

Yet another child sex abuse scandal has burst out of the Catholic church, this time in Das Vaterland of Pope Siegheil, no less:

Authorities have raided a monastery in southern Germany as part of a probe into allegations that priests sexually abused children there, prosecutors said.

Eight former students at the Ettal Abbey boarding school have reported that they were abused in 1954 and in the 1970s and ’80s, the abbey has said in a statement. The head of the monastery and the school headmaster stepped down last week.  [...]

Nearly every day since the end of January, people have come forward to report cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Germany. News reports put the number of cases at about 150.

150… and it sounds like the investigation just got rolling.  Surprised?  Right.

The shock value has long since gone out of these sordid tales of abuse and degradation at the hands of predatory priests who skulk the darkened hallways with even darker plans for their young charges  — by now it’s widely assumed to be standard operating procedure.

I wonder how bad it has to get.  Seriously:  if what’s going on in the Catholic church was business as usual in my neighbourhood, I’d move.  And furthermore, what is it about the Catholic church that attracts so many of these creeps?  I know of no other religious organization that is so teeming with child molesters and their apologists.

American Taliban Watch

No, seriously:

Police in the US state of New Jersey have ordered a family to cover up their snow sculpture of the famous nude Venus de Milo after a neighbour complained.

Eliza Gonzalez sculpted the snow-woman with her son and daughter on her front lawn in Rahway following a snowstorm.

Many people praised their creation, but a police officer told them a neighbour had found it too risque, she said.

When given the option of covering the sculpture up or knocking it down, she dressed it in a bikini top and sarong.

“We didn’t want to have any problem with the police so we covered it up,” Ms Gonzalez told the AFP news agency.

But she now thinks the snowy Venus looks “more objectified and sexualised” than it did before the authorities intervened.

Ya think?

This neighbour who complained about the sculpture — to the cops, no less — you have to wonder, what’s their story?  Well, it would be irresponsible not to speculate.  Maybe it was someone who went looking for her husband to tell him it was time for church and found him staring out at the snow sculpture with drool running down his chin, panting and grunting like a wild boar in heat.  I’m sure the complaint will change everything: from now on, he’ll stare at the sculpture from a room with a locking door.

(from whyevolutionistrue, via CC)

Dan Savage is right

How is it that our Minister of Pubic Safety, the vile Vic Toews, has managed to hover under the radar for so long?

Certainly Canadians have a live-and-let-live attitude when it comes to our politicians’ private lives, even when they suddenly explode in a chaotic mess of mistresses, illicit babies and acrimonious divorce proceedings.  But when the politician at the heart of the mayhem is Canada’s unofficial, self-appointed “minister of family values”, a sanctimonious suckfish who for awhile made a pretty good living ginning up brainless hysteria by claiming that some marriages were a threat to the entire institution — all while shitting on his own wedding vows — he might deserve a little extra attention.

Via News of the Restless, we learn that USian columnist Dan Savage is not impressed that Canadians have allowed a bigoted hypocrite of Toews’ brain-damaged magnitude to slither out of sight and out of mind without so much as the Santorumization of his name in recognition of his outstanding batshittery.   In his latest column (which happily is syndicated, ie. everywhere), Savage re-tells the tale of Toews and advises us to snap out of our collective stupor and at least give Toews the gift of the ongoing mockery he so richly deserves by Santorumizing his name.  “Toews” (pronounced “Taves”) may not be as much fun to work with as Santorum, but we can do this, yes we can!  Right off the top of my head, toews sounds like some kind of hideous skin eruption, maybe bleeding pustules caused by having sex with blow-up dolls.

Get creative!  Bina is taking suggestions at her place.

Carlin on the 10 commandments

Too funny.

Sigh.  I really miss George.

(Scooped from counter-coulter in the comments at RT’s)

Son sets on O Canada?

Are they serious?  This is goofiness of the highest order:

The phrase “In all thy sons command” has some women calling for a gender-neutral version, Industry Minister Tony Clement says, citing an email from a constituent.

What women?  Not this one.  If there was some massive campaign underway to make the national anthem more “gender-neutral”, I wasn’t aware of it, and wouldn’t have supported it if I had been.

This is nothing but a distraction — penny-ante bullshit that serves no purpose other than to offend Canadians and fill their hearts with loathing for all things feminist.   CPC stenographers are already hard at it, blaming their favourite whipping girls for this little outrage, when the whipping girls are for the most part just as surprised by it as anyone else.

Or maybe it’s the car keys jangled to get the dog’s attention away from the steak on the budget BBQ in advance of serving it up today.  Either way it’s brainless and puerile posturing, and I want no part of it other than to mock it.

UPDATE (Friday): That didn’t take long, eh?

He’s a lumberjack and he’s okay

Our Minister of Homophobia’s Wiki page:

No wonder he’s so warped bitter and twisted, having to cope with dashed dreams of lumberjackery.

(via pmoharper on twitter) (original tweet by seanmhair)

Bathing hedgehogs

With dog supervising:

GLBTs — a footnote in Jason Kenney’s revised Citizenship Guide

Bigotry over easy with a side of creepy:  it’s what’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner at Jason Kenney’s House of Hate.

By now everyone knows how Kenney, the Immigration Minister, purposely had references to GLBT rights removed from a Citizenship Guide:

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney blocked any reference to gay rights in a new study guide for immigrants applying for Canadian citizenship, The Canadian Press has learned.  [...]

But Mr. Kenney, who fought same-sex marriage when it was debated in Parliament, ordered those key sections removed when his office sent its comments to the department last June.

I’d expect nothing less from this greasy little pig.  But what really got me was his squirming when someone first caught the play and called him on it:

The publication does include a picture of Olympic gold medal swimmer Mark Tewksbury, however, with a caption saying he is a “prominent activist for gay and lesbian Canadians.”  [...]

When the new guide was released Nov. 12, Mr. Kenney brushed off a reporter’s question about why it lacked any reference to same-sex marriage.

“We can’t mention every legal decision, every policy of the government of Canada,” he said.

“We try to be inclusive and include a summary. I can tell you that if you were to read the old book, you wouldn’t even know that there are gay and lesbian Canadians.” He then noted the caption under Mr. Tewksbury’s photo.

Oh, well then.  Anything more would be “Special Rights”, am I right?  (Or just special?)

Damn you Sidney Crosby

All! your! fault!:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives would coast to an easy victory — but not necessarily a majority — if a federal election were held today, according to a new poll done exclusively for Canwest News Service and Global National.  [...]

The long political break imposed by Harper when he prorogued Parliament in December appears not to have harmed his party’s standing as MPs return to Ottawa for the beginning of a new session Wednesday. With 37 per cent support, the Tories are up three percentage points compared to a month ago.

Gold medal hockey games and pwning the odium notwithstanding, this should come as no surprise.  What’s nominally more surprising is that after 4 years the opposition remains so stunningly lame that voters would still rather opt for the devil they know than the devil who isn’t doing much to attract their votes other than shrieeeeeek about Harpoonie the THEOCONAZIDOG!!!

Clearly not a winning formula.  Maybe it’s what the opposition is, not what Harper is,  or isn’t, or might be, that’s really important to voters in the nut-cutting hour.  Ya think?

UPDATE: Just to be clear, the key phrase here is “the opposition” — as in Opposition MPs and candidates.   Hope this helps.

The jersey is in the mail

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs will make good on his end of a bet on gold medal Olympic hockey and feverish, hockey-crazed Canadians will have the pleasure of seeing him resplendent in a Team Canada jersey at a White House press conference sometime in the near future… but not just yet:

No hockey wear today for White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Not yet.

The Canadians who won their Olympic bet — their team beat the United States yesterday for the men’s hockey gold medal -- are shipping Gibbs a Team Canada jersey to wear at a future briefing, probably this week.

“Trust me,” Gibbs said, “the Canadians have kept in very close contact for this.”

And which one will it be?  The red or the white?  I’ll be watching this important developing story.

UPDATE (Tuesday):  Gibbs apparently has 2 weeks to make good:

Gibbs had better hurry: he has two weeks to wear the jersey, which he has to keep on for at least the first 15 minutes of a daily briefing in front of the cameras.

and yes, we are watching.

Apparently our neighbors to the North are watching closely.

You betcha.  (Now where’s that two-four of Molson’s Obama owes Harpie?)

Bwahaa!

TBogg…

Olympic Closing Ceremonies

…summarized in one picture:

We are all acidheads now.  Woooooooo.

(via john cole on twitter and whoops, also on balloon-juice)