650...I Still Love Sarah Palin

And if it were twenty years ago...

Still, Governor, try to make sense. At least some of the time. In an Associated Press story Sarah Palin, you may remember her, she ran for Vice President back in the day, says that President Obama's plan to overhaul healthcare is evil.

Evil?

Like Charles Manson evil?

Oy vey.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate posted her thoughts Friday on Facebook.

Governor Palin says in the America she knows, people won't have to "stand in front of Obama's 'death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of healthcare."

You forgot to compare President Obama to Chancellor Hitler.

WFDS

423...Enough Money For War, Not For Heath Care

Republicans stateside are balking at health care reform and the big impediment is that the costs of sweeping reform of the system range from US$1-trillion to US$1.6-trillion over the next decade.

War, a much more expensive war, is apparently good value to the Grand Old Party; health care for their own citizens, not so much.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmmmmm.

WFDS

392...Note To Stephen Harper Re War

Stop already.

18 gazillion dollars.

On Afghanistan.

Stop already.

Spend the money here, on us.

Ottawa Citizen has a story online today about how "...[there are] more people needing in-home help and not enough nurses...who are willing to make house calls, the region's $120-million home-care program is being stretched to the limit." The article "Crisis On The Doorstep" explains how this home nursing program keeps sick people at home, seniors well and more importantly from a purely fiscal point of view, is less onerous on the health care system keeping people like Paulette Dizin, a cancer patient, out of the hospital.

Mr. Harper, stop the war, use the 18 gazillion to make your country a better place to live.

Ca va?

WFDS

228...Do They Get The New York Times In Heaven?

If they do, The Greatest Canadian [at least according the CBC], Tommy Douglas, must be smiling.

First thing that popped out of my copy of the New York Times [only N I N E dollars, plus tax, at Boushey's, Elgin Street, Ottawa---by the way that is more than a cooked chicken---N I N E] was the lead that President Obama's is going to step up his role in pushing for health care reform. He had previously said that he would leave the contentious issue, and why universal health care is contentious is beyond me, to Congress. Instead President Obama will give speeches and conduct town-hall style meetings to push his preferred policies, including government-run insurance coverage. Nice step, four or five or six decades too late but, better late than never.

By the way, N I N E dollars. No comics. Quite the racket, eh?

WFDS

172...Reusable Bags Are Killers

Plastic industry says.

In an unextensive study reported on http://www.newsmax.com/ Thursday, a study that was theoretically totally independent but paid for by the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, two dozen reusable bags were analyzed.

The labs found that 64 percent of the reusable bags harboured some level of bacteria. Yeast or mold was found in 40 percent of the bags, and some bags even had detectable levels of fecal intestinal bacteria. Sounds serious.

“The main risk is food poisoning,” said Dr. Richard Summerbell, research director at Toronto’s Sporometrics, a division of Fly By Night Industries, who were commissioned to evaluate the findings of the study. “But other significant risks include skin infections such as bacterial boils, allergic reactions, triggering of asthma attacks, and ear infections.”

We are all going to die.

168...Bernie Sanders, Junior Senator From Vermont

Watching him on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher and Bernie The Red makes a couple of great points about the USA and their f'd up economy.

Point one is that they, the USA, are the only major country in the world without a national health care system and that has contributed to the demise of General Motors. According to the only sitting Senator who is neither a Republican or a Democrat, General Motors spends more money on healthcare for retired workers than they do on steel. That doesn't happen in Japan, Korea, etcetera, etcetera.

Point two from Bernie The Red is that the top 1 per cent of American wage earners make more than the bottom 50 per cent combined. President Obama has just raised the tax rate for the uber rich from 36 to 39 per cent; fifty years ago under President Eisenhower, in the greatest period of United States economic history, the top rate was 90 per cent. In fact the top marginal tax rate was 91 per cent until 1963. The alleged trickle down economy doesn't work because they, the ones at the top, don't trickle down. As Bill Maher says, they buy antique commodes. But, if the government has the money, they are more likely to trickle it done.

Food and fact for thought.

WFDS

140...Send In The Clowns/Only In Quebec

Beautiful story from the Globe and Mail Thursday last. In a place where the unthinkable happens on a regular basis the geniuses who run La Belle are signing a four-year, $293,000 agreement on Monday with Dr Clown, a provincial non-profit organization that sends clowns to visit residents in nursing homes.

As for important stuff, such as ordering staff in cotton head centres to feed, clean and care for the golden agers, that will have to wait.

WFDS