Do it!

The NHL Stanley Cup playoffs start to tonight and as a Pittsburgher I'm glad it gives me a chance to enjoy sports without the words "Pirates", "baseball", "sexual assault", "semen", "2-4 game suspension", or "Rapistberger" tainting my enjoyment. Will the Penguins repeat? I hope so, but I'm willing to settle for them taking a large chunk of local media coverage away from our QB's legal and sexual misadventures. Alleged.

So the playoffs kick off tonight on FSN locally and Versus nationally. As if we needed to be reminded, Canada does this playoff hockey coverage thing waaaay waaaaay better than we do. It's a shame we can't get the CBC or TSN down here. To reinforce their superior coverage I'm posting my two favorite pre-game intro montages from last season's cup run. The first is from Game 7 in the Washington series and the second is from game 6 in the Detroit series. Hopefully we'll get another chance to knock both those teams out again on the way to cup #4 and sending the old barn out in style.

Pens in 3.

Compare/Contrast

Via Matthew Yglesias comes these first two little nuggets.

The founding principles of the Conservative Party of Canada, who just so happen to rule America's Hat:

A belief that all Canadians should have reasonable access to quality health care regardless of their ability to pay;

The policy agenda of the the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, who is soon going to rule in Brittania:

Over three years ago David Cameron spelled out his priorities in three letters – NHS. Since then, we have consistently fought to protect the values the NHS stands for and have campaigned to defend the NHS from Labour’s cuts and reorganisations.

As the party of the NHS, we will never change the idea at the heart of our NHS – that healthcare in this country is free at the point of use and available to everyone based on need, not ability to pay.

And from the Republican Party's House Minority John Boehner comes the GOP's governing principles:

With the stroke of a pen, President Obama has signed away another share of Americans' freedom. We will take it back.

The US got hosed when God was doling out conservatives to all the countries.

Chart of the day

After Canada beat the US in the Men's Hockey Gold Medal game, I bet you, like myself, had one question running through your head: I wonder what the water consumption and toilet use rates were in Canada during the game? Finally, thanks to Edmonton water utility EPCOR, we have a specific chart of when locals were dropping the kids off at the pool and making onesies in relation to the ups, downs, and, if you're an American, more downs of the hockey game that we ended up not caring about after we lost.


Truly these are the bowel movements of a nation in the thrall of hockey-mania. On the other hand we Americans just hold it until we piss ourselves after we pass out, in the streets on the way home, or we just go into the bottle we just emptied while onlookers chastise us for our lack of decorum. Who's to say which method is better.

So congrats on your gold, you can now go back to using the toilet at regular intervals like normal people. You know, after the moose herd finishes thundering through your front lawn and the mounties deliver your shipment of curling stones and syrup or whatever the hell it is your entire nation of Alaska touchers does up there.

(h/t Jables)

Broken in Brief: US wasn’t interested in that hockey gold medal anyway

AMERICA—After a heartbreaking 3-2 overtime loss to Canada in the Men’s Ice Hockey Gold Medal game at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and despite ratings figures that show nearly one third of all available American television households tuned into the afternoon game, the United States is insisting that it wasn’t really all that interested in winning another gold medal anyway.

“Yeah, we weren’t really paying much attention,” said US Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun after an unexplained three day disappearance, his red eyes welling up and his nose dripping. “I mean after all, we set an Olympic record with 37 medals, so it’s not like one more gold would have made any difference or anything. It’s not like going to another country, dominating them in their own sport and stealing all the glory is something that we, as Americans, like to do anyway.”

Indeed, much of the US Sporting and Olympic committee, as well as the American public and political establishment, were in total agreement.

“Frankly I want to thank our athletes for graciously allowing Canada to win the medal that was most important to them,” observed US President Barack Obama. “This gracious gesture of goodwill should help us out immensely in future trade negotiations.”

“We all know that this country is beyond merely grabbing for sporting glory on the biggest stage possible just because it makes us feel superior and crushes the morale of a close ally. We’re bigger than all-encompassing sports superiority and I hope Canada enjoys the medal for hockey. It's not like giant Olympic hockey wins are part of this country's illustrious sporting history, anyway.” he concluded, trailing off, muttering something about “Eruzione” and “the dirty Commies.”

In addition to noting how much it totally didn’t care, America provisionally announced that it didn’t care about any sports it wasn’t overwhelmingly expected to win and that it reserved the right to not care about the 2010 World Cup. Noting that it would conditionally watch some of the opening round games before deciding whether or not it cared, reserving the right to completely not care if at any point the United States did not win.

“Who cares anyway,” the bitter superpower was heard to grumble. “American teams are still the world champions in the NBA, MLB, NFL, NHL, and MLS.”

Picture of the day

The Big Picture Blog closes it's look at the 2010 Vancouver Games. It was a spirited two weeks of luge death, event and pageantry malfunctions, puff pieces, pillorying NBC for it's coverage, Bob Costas' patented smugness, beloved Pittsburgh athletes betraying America in the name of Canada, and some athletes competing or something.

Up next is the 2012 London Summer Games followed by the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. Apparently Sochi is a Russian city of 300,000 near the Black Sea on the Georgian border. I doubt that it is a real city or even an actual place, because I sure as hell haven't heard of it. I do recall hearing something about a London though.

As always, click to embiggen.

Broken In Brief: Canadian Heard to Say "Fuck"

MOOSE KNUCKLE, SASKATCHEWAN--Canadians across the nation recoiled in abject disgust as word spread that local resident Frank Morrison, 51, was observed screaming "Fuck" during last night's Men's Olympic Hockey game against the US team.

While the first Canadian Olympic hockey loss to the US since the 1960 games in Squaw Valley left the host country deflated, most post-game attention was focused on Morrison's obscenity, believed to be the first dropping of an F-bomb in anger since Quebec's last secession attempt in 1997.

"I've always been so proud to be a Canadian," said Marie Lockland, a Canadian. "I just hope the rest of the world doesn't assume all of us are such nasty pottymouths."

In a hastily written statement, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the incident, calling it "The most vulgar and disgusting Canadian action in decades." Harper assured fellow Canadians, and indeed the world at-large, that disciplinary legal action would be "both swift and, unlike Mr. Morrison, appropriate."

The Canadian legal system is loath to punish anyone beyond giving them "a stern talking to," as is prescribed in their constitution. However, with the world's focus trained on their country for the Olympic games, more punitive measures are under consideration.

These range from adding 20 hours of community service to the 100 hours a month that Morrison, as a Canadian, already does; washing his mouth out with maple syrup; two stern talking-tos; and a blanket ban on attending live curling events for a period not to exceed one week.

Sources close to the Prime Minister suggested the situation would be addressed immediately following Tuesday's qualifying game against Germany.

Broken in Brief: No one hurt at tragic Torino bobsled course collapse

TORINO—Tragedy was averted today as there have seemingly been no injuries or casualties resulting from a calamitous early morning collapse of the Cesana Pariol bobsled venue, which hosted all of the ice track racing events during the 2006 Torino Winter Olympic Games.

“At this point, we are assuming that it collapsed early this morning,” announced the head of the Italian International Olympic Committee, Giancarlo Giuseppi, during an afternoon press conference.

“To be honest, it could have collapsed at any point in the last four years. We just found out today. I was watching the Vancouver Games, saw some of their ice track, and said to myself, ‘Didn’t we used to have one of those?’ Then I went to the location I vaguely remember building a bobsled course at, only to find it had collapsed. “

“Let me be clear: Our preliminary assessment that there were no casualties at the track is still subject to International Olympic Committee verification. There might have been a few hobos or drifters crushed in the debris, as well as any feral animals that had taken to using the structure as a breeding ground. We won’t know until later. All I can say is that no athletes, judges, bobsledders, builders, bystanders, or spectators were involved in the collapse. No one that would have been there for any bobsledding-related purpose.”

When asked how an Olympic venue came to be so disused that it would collapse, Giuseppi took note to stress that it was a 7,130 seat bobsled venue, that cost $50 million Euros, was built only for bobsledding, and was built for use in Italy.

“There was no use for that thing the second after the Olympics ended,” he added.

When it was asked if Vancouver, which copied some of the Italian designs in construction of its bobsled venue, had any structural problems to worry about, Giuseppi laughed. “It’ll last throughout the end of next week. After that, who cares?”

When it was noted that Vancouver had hopes of using it after the games, the Italian perplexingly asked, “Of what use is a multi-million dollar bobsled course after an Olympics?” before snorting out a terse “Good luck with all that.”

Ratchet it back a few notches, PETA

Olympic time. The time for the heights of athletic competition to be scaled and for sporting excellence broadcast nationwide. Oh, and bizarre animal rights protests. Because.... are skis made out of whale bone or something?

Ahh PETA. You have such a good message: treat animals better. But you always ruin it with your cheap, exploitative stunts, the mind shattering insanity of some of the comparisons and arguments you make, and the general insanity of your campaigns and fervent followers.

Thankfully this go around, they have neglected to strip women down naked to parade around in public or make any comparisons to concentration camps or the holocaust. SO we must congratulate them for possibly learning. Still though, they aren't exactly winning friends with salad. First up is their new Olympic pin:

Because... did they replace the silver medal with 40 pounds of free seal meat? Oh, seal clubbing. Yeah, kind of terrible. Still, not sure that's under the purview on the Vancouver Olympic Committee. But again, well done. No Hitler references and the objectification of women was kept down to a bare minimum. I'd say this rates as a passable campaign. You're learni... what's that?

American figure skater Johnny Weir will stay in the Olympic Village because he's concerned about "very serious threats" from anti-fur activists.
...
At last month's U.S. Nationals, Weir earned the scorn of anti-fur protesters when he wore a white tuft of fox fur on his shoulder. He was defiant in the face of the criticism at first but later relented.

Oh no you don't PETA. No one goes after America's figure skating pride. The only man willing to look at Elton John and decide that his manner of dress is too restrained. The man wore a swan leotard for Christ's sake. A SWAN! He can do whatever he wants. I swear to God PETA, if you deny this country Johnny Weir dressing like a fox or a neon peacock, or Lady Gaga, or a mirror ball when he goes out to nail quadruple lutzes, all the while making Scott Hamilton swoon, there will be hell to pay. You hear me? Hell to pay.

A swan. He's the only guy in male figure skating who gets male figure skating. I will not have that sullied by a vindictive PETA anti-fur campaign. Stick to weirdly violent pins.

God bless our stupid system of government

You have to love the logic that comes out of our elected betters in Washington, sometimes. While some Democrats took time out at the beginning of the health care debate to mention what they'd really prefer is single payer health care, they know it's a pip dream. For most other Senators the reaction to single payer was NOFUCKINGNOSOCIALISMSTALINCOMMUNISMNOOOO!

Hell, even people like Joe Lieberman and others were deeply opposed to a public option because they thought it was a trojan horse for single payer. But now when you see one of the proposed amendments that has popular support, you find out that our senators fucking love single payer... just in a way that's completely backwards, overly complex, and makes little logical sense. To wit:

Senate leadership has pledged to allow a vote on re-importing prescription drugs from Canada as an amendment to the health care reform bill...
...
On top of the billions it would save consumers, the re-importation measure introduced by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) would save the federal government $19 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Dorgan's amendment would also bust the deal the White House cut with Big Pharma, which has vowed to kill the re-importation provision in "hand to hand combat."
...
When it does come time to vote on re-importation, however, the White House-PhRMA deal may be a bigger obstacle than Republicans. Dorgan's amendment is also championed by health care linchpin Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who pledged last weekend to work to garner other GOP votes. Republican Sens. Charles Grassley (Iowa), John McCain (Ariz.) and David Vitter (La.) are cosponsoring a bill that would do the same thing.

Yes, not only are Democrats largely supportive of re-importing drugs from the socialist single payer health care wonderland of Canada, so are several Republicans. You follow? SIngle payer is something that would mean the death of freedom here in the US, buuuuuut if Canada wants to have it that's fine and oh, by the way, can we completely piggyback off it in order to lower our crippling medical costs?

You know why Canada has lower drug prices? Because they, like every other country in the world that has lower drug prices than us, negotiate directly with drug companies on prices. So of course we'd want to take the long, convoluted path of letting them do the work and then importing their drugs instead of, say, passing a bill that allows our government to directly negotiate our drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. I mean sure, our country is much larger and with much more people and we'd be able to use our leverage to garner much lower prices than Canada, but doing so would be socialism. No, it's makes better sense to import our drugs from socialists.

Don't you love the logic of the Senate? Now do you understand why nothing good ever happens there? Good, now go pass this amendment, Senators.

Video of the day

H2oil animated sequences from Dale Hayward on Vimeo.

What with our eminent Copenhagen related disappointment on the horizon, today we bring you an environment themed animated sequence about America's biggest oil supplier: Alberta, Canada. And you thought it was the Muslims! Edmonton's hockey team isn't called the Oilers for kicks.

More specifically this video is about the Athabasca oil sands and all the glorious side effects of oil that you tend to forget about when you're just thinking about oil and the burning of it. The video is from the documentary H2Oil, which is about oil, water usage, NAFTA, politics, trade, and human costs surrounding what is going to be one of the biggest industrial projects...ever. And you probably never heard of it.

Fairness! Now w/ Balance.

It's time for another installment of "Shep Smith's pesky conscience virulently asserts itself as his brain tries to come to grips with the news practices his network is engaging in." It happens, from time to time. On the bright side, it's starting to happen so much that he'll stop being surprised soon and just come to accept it.



Yes Shep, your instincts were right. Not only isn't it even a fair comparison, the amount of Canadians that use US health care, because theirs is supposedly so terrible, is almost completely negligible. A tip without an iceberg. That's alright Shep, take another swig of the brown fix-it juice. Booze will make it all better, it'll kill your "working for Fox News" related pain.

Broken In Brief: Hockey commentator not sure audience fully understood the breadth and depth of his Kandinsky reference

MANITOBA—With the game nearly two full days behind him, radio color analyst Gordie Wilson is only now realizing that many of the listeners of his Hockey Night in Manitoba radio broadcast might not have fully appreciated or even understood his numerous references to abstract artists, baroque pianists, and German existentialist thinkers during Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals Tuesday night.

Among the many examples cited include one call where Wilson said Pittsburgh winger Max Talbot’s first period goal possessed “the abstract beauty and intentional disjunction of The Blue Rider.” Later, Wilson described the positional work and skating of the Detroit Red Wings in their own zone as resembling, “the point and linework synthesis that, after a brief stay in stylistic purgatory, came to represent the Bauhaus School.” Opinion on his commentary has been mixed.

“I’m getting a lot of thumbs up from art majors and grad students,” observed Wilson, while reading a book on the architectural designs of Rem Koolhaas in preparation for game four. “But the suits upstairs don’t seem to be happy. They’d prefer I’d talk more along the line of ‘biscuit in the basket’, ‘wicked slapper’, and sprinkle my observations with references to sandpaper, grit, and waffle boards. Or just yell 'goal' like a Mexican soccer announcer. I don’t know, maybe I’m talking over the heads of the audience. I just assumed most hockey fans had fine arts and/or philosophy degrees.”

Wilson has decided to scale back his observations a bit, keeping his references solely to the Romantic Period of classical music, early jazz works, Picasso’s blue period, and Kafka’s more widely known works. He hopes that though this he will be able to make the game of hockey more accessible to a wider base of fans.

Health Care gauntlet thrown down

President Obama, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, PhRMA, AdvaMed, America's Health Insurance Plans, the SEIU, the Greater New York Hospital Association, and the California Hospital Association are all going to come together to announce a comprehensive plan to save this country $2 trillion dollars over the next decade. That plan: To somehow make doctors pay back all the money we gave the bankers. But if that plan can't pass, they have a backup: to lower costs through greater care coordination, lower administrative costs, and the bundling of payments among health care providers and recipients. This in turn will grease the skids for a public health care plan that will be the dawning of the Fourth Reich and the end of commerce as we know it. My daily Michelle Bachmann e-mail alerts swear this is true.

So the plan has some big language, fancy plannin', large numbers, and a group of heavy hitters. Seems serious. I'm also certain it's a good plan and a necessary step. How do I know this? Because there's a concerted effort to sink it by the huge assholes who brought us the swift boat attacks and the "Harry and Lousie" ads.

The television ads that began airing last week feature horror stories from Canada and the United Kingdom: Patients who allegedly suffered long waits for surgeries, couldn't get the drugs they needed, or had to come to the United States for treatment.
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Scott, a multimillionaire investor and controversial former hospital chief executive, has become an unlikely and prominent leader of the opposition to health-care reform plans that Congress is expected to take up later this year. While disorganized Republicans and major health-care companies wait for President Obama and Democratic leaders to reveal the details of their plan before criticizing it, Scott is using $5 million of his own money and up to $15 million more from supporters to try to build resistance to any government-run program.

The campaign is being coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the group that masterminded the "Swift boat" attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, and is inspired by the "Harry and Louise" ads that helped torpedo health-care reform during the Clinton administration.

Seriously, Republicans are waiting until they know something before they criticize it? Good one. So on one side we have a hilariously named group (Conservatives for Patient's Rights) backed by the Swift Boaters saying do nothing, we don't have a plan. On the other side we have the Obama Administration, a bunch of health care heavy hitters all saying it's time to do something and here's our idea. An idea which made a jubilant Paul Krugman pump his fists and proclaim it "the best policy news I've heard in a long time." Sounds like we should do nothing. I mean after all, someone somewhere in Canada (or the UK, I forget) once had a bad experience one time. Our system is flawless and everyone loves it, we should not poison it with this socialism. The Swift Boaters said so.

Class photo

The G20 group photo, otherwise known as the last photo of the world leadership that existed before global chaos devolved society into feudal city-states.

As and extra bonus try and spot which world leader isn't in the photo. It'll probably be easy since, as an American, we are all acutely aware of who the leaders of other countries are. Here's a hint: it's the leader from our closest ally and largest trading partner. No, not China. Whiter. Not the UK. But it is a fellow opressee of those limey colonialists. That's right, Canada's PM Stephen Harper is missing!

Some say he missed the photo because he was getting briefed on G20 business, while UK papers took the high road and said he missed the photo because he was in the bathroom. They retook the photo later and Barry was kind enough to give Harper shit about missing the photo. Only problem was this time Silvio Berlusconi was missing. No one is sure where he went, in fact he's probably dead. The G20 summit will move on without him.

Though it does really give one hope about the leadership of the world. They're tasked with fixing a global financial crisis and they can't even organize a group photo at the event they're all attending.

The Candian t-shirt economy boom

President Barry is making his first foreign visit today! Of course it's not to a real foreign country, it's to Canada. But still, he needs to get in that practice for when he visits somewhere really bizarre and foreign, like rural Alabama. Still, Barry brings with him the star power to attract all the bigwigs of Canadian politics none of us know the names of and an economic boom the likes of which novelty t-shirt manufacturers have never seen.

"They want to bask in the same glory," said Nelson Wiseman, an associate professor at the University of Toronto. "Nobody would have gone to Ottawa to try to get a glimpse of Bush except to demonstrate against him."

Obama goes to Canada on Thursday for his first foreign visit as president. It will be short, about six hours long. He is not staying for dinner.

But he will meet with Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper for a working lunch and a joint news conference. He will also meet briefly with Liberal opposition leader Michael Ignatieff at the airport before he leaves.
...
Jessica Franklanv, an employee of Bang-on T-shirts, said they've sold hundreds of Obama T-shirts.

"People are really excited that he's coming up here so soon after the election," Franklanv said. "I think everybody would like the chance to see him."

This must be such a boost to the Canadian economy, I mean Bush was a tremendous boon to the 'giant marionette holding a war criminal placard' industry, but Obama is really going to move some product. It is nice to know that the entirety of Canadian/US policy can be discussed over sandwiches at a table during a six hour visit that will comprise mostly of getting off and on to a planes, driving to and from the Canadian Parliament, and standing for photos.

First on the agenda: more photo ops with Barry, second: stop rubbing our noses in the superiority of your health care, third: keep your goddamn mooses on your side of the border, fourth: keep the syrup coming cause Barry likes his pancakes soggy, fifth: we're sorry about moving hockey teams to Arizona and Florida, does Winnipeg want one back? Then it's just a matter of getting up from the table, meeting a liberal guy the airport, and then never having to remember about Canada or devote any time to Canadian foreign policy matters for another couple years. Canada's good like that. No worries.

Canadian attack politics

Above is a report on Canadian attack sites for their upcoming elections. You'll note that one site run by the conservatives, had a puffin fly by and poop on the liberal leader Dion's shoulder. This apparently provoked cries of outrage in the Canadian media and had Canadian PM Stephen Harper apologizing for the "tasteless and inappropriate" web ad.

A bird shitting on someone doesn't even meet the minimum standard for tastelessness and offensiveness that all political ads must have to get on TV down here. Try connecting each other to child molesters and escaped murderers then call us back. Get on your game Canada, we're leaving you in the dust. You'd never win an election against the USA. You'd be the Democrats of North America.