After getting some help from our French and Spanish friends. (As well as soon Slovak, German and Polish hopefully), VLWC will be going multilingual soon to support multiple languages and blogs from all over the world.

If you know any friends who have a French language or Spanish language blog, please let them know and get them to join ahead of time so the languages (when they are implemented) have a good supply of native-language blogs.

…..1337hax0r…..

Stroumboulopoulos has it dead on correct. Politicians should not be blaming the media for when they ask hard questions. It is their job to cut through the crap these politicians spit out on a daily basis and get the real facts out to the voters. I especially enjoy how he proves that the media is no more biased against Harper than Martin. Harper needs to stop whining and stop trying to be George W. Bush and start to actually do his job and answer truthfully the questions the public wants to know the answers to. Or at least stop blaming the media everytime he does something stupid.

…..1337hax0r…..

h/t to pleasure pure madmen know for the link to the clip (through VLWC).

The Galloping Beaver has it dead right. Hooper is feeding the public pure, unadultrated horseshit with his latest statements.

I concur fully with the Galloping Beaver. Either Hooper has lost his mind entirely, or he is lying through his teeth for some ulterior motive.
…..1337hax0r…..

Apparently Canadians are doing far better than Americans with regards to health and healthcare.

From the article: (Emphasis mine)

Canadians are healthier and have better access to health care than U.S. residents. And, according to a new study, Canadians obtain better care for half of what Americans spend on their medical system.

The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, was conducted by Harvard Medical School researchers. They also found that:

• Canadians were seven per cent more likely to have a regular doctor
• Canadians were 19 per cent less likely than Americans to have their health needs go unmet.
• Americans were more than twice as likely to forgo needed medicines because of cost.

Discrepancies in health care become even wider when taking into account income, age, sex, race and immigrant status. In those kind of detailed comparisons, Canadians were 33 per cent more likely to have a regular doctor and 27 per cent less likely to have an unmet health need.

Meanwhile, Americans had higher rates of nearly every serious chronic disease, including obesity, diabetes and chronic lung disease, even though U.S. residents were less likely to be smokers.

“We pay almost twice what Canada does for care, more than $6,000 for every American, yet Canadians are healthier, and live two to three years longer,” said Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor at Harvard and study co-author.

…In the latest study, the researchers suggest the biggest barrier to health care in the United States is cost.

I do accept that waittimes are long on things like MRIs and such, however our system is incredibly good. Especially in Alberta, even though Albertans seem to complain the most about the system. Medicare in Canada is efficient, effective, and according to this study even cheaper than the American system. All we need to do with regards to MRIs and such is invest more money into buying MRIs and such.

…..1337hax0r…..

h/t to Le Revue Gauche for the story. (through VLWC)

VLWC now allows for people to have multiple citizenship flags for a few American/Canadian’s on the list who requested it. If you want to have your flag changed to reflect dual-citizenship, just let me know.

…..1337hax0r…..

Back in Canada, Jasper to be exact. More info to come when I stop having such an awesome time.

…..1337hax0r…..

After travelling up the coast of the States for the last 4 days and spending the previous ones with my fiance in Santa Fe. I am almost back in Canada, just have to cross the border tomorrow morning hopefully.

Then, it’s off to Vancouver, Jasper and back home to Edmonton.

Feeling rough as heck tonight, though. Have not added anything to VLWC due to the fact I have been in transit for so long. As well, I have been feeling very irritated and discouraged by a ton of Canadian politics that have been happening recently that nothing big is being noted of it.

So, long story short. I am tired, irritated, and stuck in America. I cannot wait to get back to my home country and chill in Jasper for a day or two.

…..1337hax0r…..

After reading it over and watching it and pondering it and trying to work out the numbers myself. I have decided the sad thing about this budget is that it is a genuinely bad budget in the long-term and it is a genuinely bad budget for low-income Canadians. However, the budget is so obfuscated and such that it takes a huge amount of effort to discover that. So, if an election were held on this budget, the Cons would have a very strong argument against the NDP and Libs and Bloc that they were willing to spend lots and lots of money and make lots and lots of tax cuts, and the other parties wouldn’t let them.

From that, sadly, a lot of people would agree that they want more money and such (The GST cut is the best publicity stunt in history, everyone _hates_ the GST). So, the Cons would win a clean majority, and we’d have 5 years of social conservative rule.

While I have less problems with this budget than most dippers and left-wingers, this budget is obviously an “election” budget. It is designed specifically to look good on paper and in the short term, get good press, and make the Cons look sparkly clean, so they can run and get a majority in the next parliament. If you talk to any Con, or watch any interview with a Con it is obvious that the only thing on their mind is getting a majority and keeping it; Not governing Canada responsibly now, but rather making it so they can ensure their social conservative bills which do not have a snowballs chance in hell of passing now, will be easily passed in a Con majority.

On the somewhat plus side. Short of really dangerous things in the budget like a much smaller buffer than the Liberals did to avoid accidentally falling into deficit and all. This budget does have a lot of needed funding going to certain sectors that I was hoping would get funded; the military, for one. Hopefully it will go towards Canadian industry though, rather than just pumping money into foreign shipyards and airplace construction facilities. Too bad everything else in this budget is so short sighted; Budget for investment in Research and Development, a highly vital part of keeping our economy on the cutting edge, is hugely slashed. The investment in post-secondary education for students has been severely reduced. And the list goes on. Even sadder is the fact that the Cons are obviously betting on the fact that the ordinary Canadian will not realize that until they have elected a Conservative majority. They are hoping that most people these days do not think that far into the future when looking at government spending and such.

Oh well, the Bloc support this budget so this government won’t fall for at least another few months it looks like. Unless they do something astonishingly stupid, and are not able to cover it up with their new accountability act’s provision to allow for higher secrecy of the PMO.

edit: While I am at it, this is actually my biggest issue overall with the budget in that we may end up doing the American Conservative thing and go into deficit with this budget. Which is really silly and sick when you think that Conservatives are supposed to be the financially responsible ones.

…..1337hax0r…..

This is probably one of the funnier electronic adbustings I have heard of in a while. Choice quote from the story:

Asked about his time with Harper at the National Citizens Coalition, Nicholls said: “I worked with Stephen Harper for five years and never once did he in that time eat a baby.”

Hmm… Yeah, but that was a long time ago.

…..1337hax0r…..

The Canadian dollar is almost at 90cents. The highest it has been in over 28 years. To make things more exciting, the Globe and mail has the following line printed:

He advised investors to use any strength in the U.S. dollar as an opportunity to sell the currency.

So, I am thinking we may see currency parity soon. Assuming our economy remains strong and the Conservatives don’t make a mess of things.

…..1337hax0r…..