Today on The Current

[james_davis_nicoll]

Diane Francis argues that it would be best for Canada to abandon our health care system, to adopt a native relations system even more brutal than the one we have, and embrace a sky-rocketing Gini Coefficient while inextricably tying ourselves to an unstable nation forever flirting with government shut-down and default.

On balance, I am against this. Their crazification factor outnumbers Canada more than two to one.

She also advocates policies known have contributed to gendercide in China.

Comments

[mishalak]

Due to my temporary computer problems I cannot actually see the commentary. However, the crazy factor in the us is not terribly high as they only win by a margin of 2.4 percent when they have a flag waving war going on and not much more in off election years.

IF there were a serious move by Canada and America towards closer political ties I think it would shift the long term balance in the United States in the non-crazy direction. For one thing it might mean some meaningful electoral reforms that would prevent the particular brand of crazy from being as effective through gerrymandering.

I think it could also be good for Canada in getting a direct vote in the policies of the nation who's policies have the greatest impact on Canada.

But it would have to be a long term project at both sides coming together rather than just Canada just joining the us or something.

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

Well, if the goal is to reduce the population, reducing the total number of all those pesky wombs will make the regulation of the aforementioned pesky wombs easier to enforce.


Did I say wombs? I meant women, because I totally wouldn't reduce a woman to a mere reproductive unit for sons, no sir, not me.

[sean9090.livejournal.com]

Nope

[david wilford (from livejournal.com)]

Evidently the concept of national sovereignty is lost on Francis. That's why the War of 1812 still matters, because you don't buy and sell nations.

[xinef.livejournal.com]

Well put.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

That's a take on 1812 I haven't seen before.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Watch the series "Canada: A People's History." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27YTTx4mU28 has at least some of it). It's extremely eye-opening for those of us south of the border.

[andrew barton (from livejournal.com)]

No way in hell.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

It does seem like buying trouble where you don't have to.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

She seems nice.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I was quite relieved to find she was not the Diane Francis I used to know.

[connactic.livejournal.com]

We also managed to export at least one brand of our nutjobs:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/02/sovereign-citizen-movement-worrying-officials-as-30000-claim-they-freed-themselves-from-canadas-laws/

What next? Confederate flags on pickup trucks?

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

I live just down the road a piece from James toward Detroit, and I see Confederate flags around often enough for me to notice. I'm torn between wondering why people around here do it, and actually not wanting to know.

Also, you know what? I think any of these punditoids and pols who want to turn Canada into US 2: Canadian Boogaloo should just emigrate. I'm sure, being the privileged sorts for whom eliminating Medicare et al wouldn't bother them, they'd be able to sail right through on some sort of waiver visa for the very rich or other...

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

The Confederate flag doesn't have the same historical connections as in the US so it's seen as just generic "rebel" imagery. It's similar to the thing you see in East Asia where there's this minor fetish for Nazi imagery: it's because the uniforms look cool and they don't have the same sort of visceral reaction because of the more direct historical connection to them as do those of us from North America and Europe.

When I idly pointed out to one guy (an Inuk, as it happens) that he was flying the flag representing slave-owning assholes on his ATV, he was taken aback because he hadn't actually thought about it. It came off immediately.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

According to a report on NPR yesterday, the movie GONE WITH THE WIND is really big in, of all places, North Korea, because the people of NK are very sympathetic to Confederate narrative of Yankee oppression.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

As it happens, Diane Francis did emigrate: she was born in Chicago. Kind of like Margaret Wente, who now that I think about it comes from the same general region.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Did she study under Milton Friedman?

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I saw a Confederate flag sticker (the "battle flag") on a New Brunswick - licensed car the other day . . .

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

A few months ago I saw a Confederate flag on a lawn in rural Ohio, and said "Oh, come on" so hard I almost drove off the road.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

There's a guy who likes to drive around Haverhill, Massachusetts with a Confederate battle flag and a US flag flapping behind opposite sides of the cab of his pickup truck.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Anybody who looks at us and says "Yeah, I gotta get me some of that is so far gone you need to get an exorcist in because they are plainly a corpse being animated by a demonic possessor of some sort.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

But..but...the US outnumbers us 10:1. If what we have is so great, why didn't they all move here? Clearly, theirs is better because there are more of them.

Mind, if population size is the answer, we should all be emigrating to China. Clearly they have managed the correct blend of fascism...er, communism...and capitalism. [/tongueincheek]

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

I have no idea why Canadians look south and don't recoil in horror. We're ugly, and we're that particular kind of ugly that knows it and revels in it.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Robin Williams did a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" last week and had some flattering things to say about Canada to a Canadian fan; the line that stuck with me was, "You're like a really nice apartment on top of a meth lab."

-- Steve will say he thinks that's a bit of an overstatement.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Overstatement?

Some may argue that one. From both sides of the border.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Oh. Wow.

[flails about inarticulately]

[resonant.livejournal.com]

It's very puzzling - I have many friends in the US, and they are all very nice people. I don't see how so many odd things can be widespread and common, considering how almost everyone I've met is so kind and considerate.

[eagle]

Answer one: third largest country in the world by population, which provides a lot of room for subgroups of self-sustaining oddity (and worse).

Answer two: the United States is full of cultural narratives and bits of cultural mythology that are at worst harmlessly eccentric on the personal level but which scale into "awful" when applied across the whole country. Libertarianism is an excellent example. It makes very little practical difference whether an individual person you know is a libertarian provided that they're not full-blown objectivists who apply those principles to every social interaction (which is exceptionally rare, even among libertarians). But application of the philosophy at scale quickly becomes toxic.

Basically, the US is full of ideas that don't scale to 320 million people and nonetheless have been scaled that way. Other countries sometimes do better because they lack those principles but, honestly, also sometimes do better because, despite having their own oddities, they've never had to scale those oddities to 320 million people and had them break down in the same way.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The US political apparatus has still not completely recovered from the legacy of the slave system and resentments left over from the US Civil War. Some of the bad effects are constitutionally locked in, giving some of the worst people in the world effective veto power over everything, regardless of national majority sentiment.

[noelmaurer.typepad.com (from livejournal.com)]

Yeah. What he said. If the readers are really interested. Which I strangely suspect they are not ...

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Here's an illuminating article, mapping the districts whose representatives are driving the move for the shutdown and looming default:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/09/meadows-boehner-defund-obamacare-suicide-caucus-geography.html?currentPage=all&mobify=0

These eighty members represent just eighteen per cent of the House and just a third of the two hundred and thirty-three House Republicans. They were elected with fourteen and a half million of the hundred and eighteen million votes cast in House elections last November, or twelve per cent of the total. In all, they represent fifty-eight million constituents. That may sound like a lot, but it’s just eighteen per cent of the population.

Most of the members of the suicide caucus have districts very similar to Meadows’s. While the most salient demographic fact about America is that it is becoming more diverse, Republican districts actually became less diverse in 2012. According to figures compiled by The Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman, a leading expert on House demographics who provided me with most of the raw data I’ve used here, the average House Republican district became two percentage points more white in 2012.

The current mechanics of Congress are such that this 18% of the country are able to manipulate the House Republicans as a whole, and, on that basis, shut down the entire government and threaten default. Basically, the Crazification Factor has been endowed with veto power.

[ice-hesitant.livejournal.com]

"How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him."
- Pauline Kael

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

"I have no idea why Canadians look south and don't recoil in horror. We're ugly, and we're that particular kind of ugly that knows it and revels in it."

Actually, we do. We're just too polite to do it where you can see us.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

I've been off LJ so long I briefly looked for a Like button.

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

"why didn't they all move here?"

Because it's too cold!

Couldn't you just invade us and make us South Canada?

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

As I recall from the Frantics, the Canadian Armed Forces are equipped with mud, which might be no match for actual weapons.

We will have to continue with our scheme to infiltrate your entertainment and gaming industries and bring you to a state of faux Canadian-ness. *

*Memo: If I ever write a story or book based on this idea, I'm claiming the title "Faux Canada" right now.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Dusting off some Twitter archives:

@Achilles1108 That's key to our World Domination plan; invade when US is overwhelmed with angioplasty patients. #Unstoppable

— aka Steve (@Anton_P_Nym) June 1, 2013

@Achilles1108 Our tanks have air conditioning. (Seriously, they do; had to install it for Afghanistan.)

— aka Steve (@Anton_P_Nym) June 1, 2013

-- Steve has fun with these themes on occasion.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

We were asked to annex a Caribbean island. For reasons that seem opaque to me, we refused.

Possibly they feared that the number of people rushing to move to the warm part of Canada would sink the island.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Issues with adding another province? Issues with adding lots of dark-skinned poor people?

[dexfarkin.livejournal.com]

Annexing Turks and Caicos Islands goes back to WWI. It kept popping up in the 80s and 90s as a pet project of a Conservative MP. There are close relations, and Canada has been sending law enforcement resources down to help with crime on the island.

The main issue is that the perceived benefits don't outweigh the costs, although there's been continuing studies on it over the years.

[noelmaurer.typepad.com (from livejournal.com)]

Yes. Exactly.

Canadians have an overinflated sense of their historical racial tolerance. Heck, some of them have an overinflated sense of their current racial tolerance.

Of course, Americans do too. It's yet another similarity between us.

[noelmaurer.typepad.com (from livejournal.com)]

The full story is here:

http://noelmaurer.typepad.com/aab/2011/08/disgraceful-canadian-initiative.html

It isn't the Turks and Caicos. That was talked about, but never really got serious. Unlike the Bahamas, which would have happened had their not been a disgraceful racial panic in Canada.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I have to take serious exception to this. You really wanted to use there and not their.

[noelmaurer.typepad.com (from livejournal.com)]

Uh ... yes?

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Well, it has been nearly 200 years since the White House had its last touch-up...

-- Steve couldn't let this discussion go by without the obligatory "Canadian mentions the burning of Washington" comment.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think the White House got a major make-over in the late 1940s and early 1950s when it was found to be largely structurally unsound.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Except I think there was a controversial addition made to the White House that turned out to be pretty much the only part not falling down.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Was that the reno that installed a swimming pool? (Which is now tiled over; I think it's the press gallery now.)

-- Steve remembers seeing the pool (or a set like it) in "Seven Days in May".

[bedii.livejournal.com]

Truman ordered a thorough survey during a dinner at the White House when he saw one of the rooms sway. They found out the East Room was held up by goodwill and a couple dozen of extremely rusty nails. During the renovation he ordered that a porch that had been on the original plans but not built be added: the Republicans went nuts and kept pushing the line that Truman wanted it to play the piano on, which is why when the renovation was finished he only visited it once or twice.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

54-40 or...oh hell, just annex us already. I welcome our Vancouverian overlords.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

It's worth noting that "Diane Francis" and "Diana Francis" difrancis are rather different people.

[(Anonymous)]

Diane Francis was the origin of the "we didn't go into Iraq because Chretien's son's father-in-law owns 6.6% of Total SA" story. Mark Steyn picked it up, but she was the origin.

And in so doing she revealed either a total inability to read simple documents, or a willingness to lie. It took me 15 minutes to prove her wrong via internet search. Maybe I should take up investigative journalism.


William Hyde

[(Anonymous)]

in so doing she revealed either a total inability to read simple documents, or a willingness to lie

The second. She's demonstrated it in the past.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

The problem with the "Let's join the US!" idea is that it assumes a large majority of American politicians would support the idea, which I find questionable. Certainly some percentage would decide it was a bad idea because Canada is too left wing, and others would likely join them when they looked at Canada and decided it was too left wing. It also seems likely that whoever was in government at the time union might occur would worry about the effect of millions of new voters. Especially since some significant fraction of said voters might be pissed off at annexation, and vote in unpredictable ways as a result. Then there'd be things like state governors not wanting even more competition for federal money, ant the pesky problem of Puerto Rican statehood.

[sanskritabelt.livejournal.com]

Also Texas would no longer be even the second-biggest state.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

But there'd be more federal money to compete for. And what does Puerto Rico have to do with it?

Annexing rich white territories that want to join the US is a longstanding tradition. I think "oh god they're to the left of Democrats" would be the only real obstacle. Well, also arguing about whether the provinces came in as states, or whether Canada was one whole state.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Well, if Canada won't annex Maine, they're asking for it.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

There are American politicians who would oppose it because they are unaware that Canada is not already a state.

[noelmaurer.typepad.com (from livejournal.com)]

Oh, hell, no. I have read a Nixon Administration memo on this very point. B.C. and Alberta, that's it.

But since I am pugnacious, I will point out that if Canada joined the U.S., Canadian policy preferences would be adopted nationally within two electoral cycles; possibly one.

And then Canadians would enjoy economies of scale, which seems to be why Canada consistently lags the U.S. in terms of real median income. A bigger and happier Canada! What's not to like?

Other than the fact that we, sadly, won't have you for precisely the reason pointed out in the second paragraph above.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

The first link is particularly appropriate today.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Diane Francis one of the big fans of Mulroney and NAFTA?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

It would not surprise me to have that as a the result of a memory-refresher history lesson.

[david wilford (from livejournal.com)]

One thing to consider is that if Canada became part of the U.S., there would no longer be hockey, er, Canadian hockey. That could be a deal-breaker right there.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, their chances of making the World Cup look brighter.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I don't GET people.

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

No, it's not time, you're not ripe yet.

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

>> Their crazification factor outnumbers Canada more than two to one.

James' dry understatement form of wit continues to amuse us.

>> the US is full of ideas that don't scale to 320 million people and nonetheless have been scaled that way.

And, to complement this, there is a selection of ideas that WOULD scale that high and would improve things, which are being resisted here with various forms of viciousness by loud non-majorities.

--Dave