You have to hand it to whoever runs Sarah Palin’s operation. They know that she is putty in the hands of spoof comedians. It’s like a feeding frenzy for Colbert wannabes; just ask an innocently worded question and let her mouth run. Just like the McCain campaign, her current handlers clearly recognize the wisdom of putting a NFL-style offensive line between her and cameras that might record any statement not written out in advance. Phonetically.
Comedian Mary Walsh of the comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, a sort of Canadian Daily Show, stormed a recent Palin book-signing in Columbus, Ohio, and said to the former Alaska governor: “I just wanted to ask you if you have any words of encouragement for Canadian conservatives who have worked so hard to try to diminish the kind of socialized medicine we have up there.”
The question was tongue-in-cheek: Walsh’s character, Marg Delahunty, may be a conservative, but the CBC’s comedy show is decidedly not.
Walsh was pushed out of the Borders outlet as Palin tried to answer the question, but later, in the parking lot outside, Palin told Walsh that she should “keep the faith because common sense conservatism can be plugged in there in Canada too. In fact, Canada needs to reform its health care system and let the private sector take over some of what the government has absorbed.”
Poor guys.
RedKitten
I heart Mary Walsh. She has absolutely no shame whatsoever, and has been known to ambush our own Prime Minister while wearing a Xena costume, in the guise of Marg Delahunty, Warrior Princess.
What the government has absorbed? What the flying fuck does that even mean?
Short Bus Bully
I can haz dual Canadian citizenship?
You know, in case I ever get sick I’d rather avoid the third world ponzi schemes the Repubs call “health care” around here.
licensed to kill time
I saw the title of this post in the sidebar and before I clicked on it I knew it was about Palin. I notice she is now inserting “common sense conservatism” into every sentence these days. I said this yesterday in response to:
And there it is, folks – the meme is codified.
Yutsano
@RedKitten: Dear Sarah barely even knows American history, you can’t expect her to pay attention to Canadian history, even if it’s only next door to her dear Alaska. I’ve said all along we’re never going to get anywhere on health care until we get our own Tommy Douglas. Unfortunately we don’t have one in sight yet. And no Kucinich doesn’t count.
numbskull
It sure would be nice if proponents of healthcare insurance reform (I’m looking at you, Barry), would clearly and directly address all the BS about waiting times suffered under the Canadian/British/French/German/Xenophobic-Flavor-Of-The-Day systems. And then do it over and over again. At every opportunity.
I say this because of all the normal, decent, relatively-conservative relatives floating around me right now who are ab-so-lutely convinced that Canadian/British/etc. versions of Grandma Eunice regularly die waiting for procedures.
No, really.
And these people are nowhere near as wingnutty as the people I have to work with. Why are they so misinformed? Because the Rethuglicans are effective at hammering home a message while the Democrats can’t seem to explain the simplest aspects of ANYTHING they want to do.
I mean really, how hard is it to simply say the same thing over and over? Wait times are not a problem in most other systems. Wait times under the current US system are worse. Wait times should go down with reform. The US system is more expensive. The US system will be cheaper with reform.
Over and over and over.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
America is da bomb. If I can hold out for a couple more years I can get Medicare and maybe survive financially into retirement. Maybe.
And once that happens, fuck everybody else, I will have to work against healthcare reform to make sure I Got My Gummint Healthcare, Sorry To Hear About Yours, Kiss My Ass.
This is a great, great country. The competitive juices between health consumer classes are what keep people like me alive. Just knowing that I will be royally fucking over a bunch of younger people by waking up every day is enough for me to live to 120.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha. America, love it or go live in Canada.
MattF
Considering that the last ‘smart’ Republican President was Richard Nixon, I’m not unsympathetic to the notion that ‘conservative’, ‘intelligent’, and ‘politically powerful’ is an extraordinarily dangerous combination. Not to mention ‘Dick’ Cheney. So… my advice to Sarah is: ‘Stay stupid’. Please.
Just Some Fuckhead
@licensed to kill time:
Shorter Palin: Stop me before I kill again.
Just Some Fuckhead
@AngusTheGodOfMeat: lmfao
Yutsano
@Just Some Fuckhead: If she starts channeling Chris Berman I’m camping on TattooSydney’s couch. Just sayin’.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Just Some Fuckhead:
backatcha.
corwin
So now she sees herself as Thomas Paine?
beltane
I realize today is not Canadian Thanksgiving, but reading this story makes me realize how much the Canadians have to be thankful for.
licensed to kill time
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Palin holds a gun to her own head:
“Drop it! or this RNC gets it in the head!”
BR
I’ve reached a point where I think we need to call the senate and tell them if we can’t make the public option open to everyone (via the Wyden free choice amendment) then we shouldn’t have one. Because I want us to eventually have a Canadian-style system here, and the public option will get a bad name if it is limited only to the currently uninsured who are most likely the most expensive, thereby killing the public option.
I’m calling my senators on Monday and telling them public option for everyone or public option for no one.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@BR:
Great idea, then the terrorists win.
valdivia
@corwin:
except Paine was all about secularism. The common sense part is the only thing she and Beck are stealing from him.
MacsenMifune
She like a respected Dan Quayle, and we all know how well he turned out.
JK
@Yutsano:
Chris Berman’s IQ is about 80 points higher than Sarah Mooseburger.
God Bless Mary Walsh and fuck Bible Spice Palin.
licensed to kill time
Here’s Beck on Palin:
Barefoot and pregnant, that’s how he likes ’em.
I also suggest we call him “Hoot” Beck from now on.
licensed to kill time
Well, you know the drill…last para, etc…
ppcli
@Yutsano:
Yep. Tommy Douglas’ two gifts to us all. Universal health care and Jack Bauer. Good thing Canada got first pick.
ppcli
@ppcli:
Good thing for Canada, I mean.
fraught
Just giving her enough rope is the only way to deal with her. She will be hoist on her own … whatever every time. She’s so busy now that she can’t read a book or any kind of position paper and her syntactical patterns are forever hardwired just as the Bush’s were only they were forced to take Yale history classes and you know Sarah took electives like “Communications for Dummies.” Transcribing her words exactly will do her in because she is incapable of making sense. And she’s funniest when she’s being most serious.
ppcli
@licensed to kill time:
Or even Hoot (-Smally) Beck.
Yutsano
@ppcli: Well let’s be fair here: the Sutherlands aren’t bad actors per se, it’s just the younger chose a pretty tacky role for a Canadian whose rather proud of his heritage. You still got the better part of the deal though, Canadian health care saved a good friend of mine from cancer.
JK
Tim,
Maybe this is the best strategy to defeat Palin. Just keep punking her to death and a majority of Republicans will eventually be forced to accept the fact that Palin is simply too dumb to be President.
Yutsano
@fraught: My friend (the East German defector proud Communist) and I had a saying about good ol’ Bible Spice: Keep Her Talking. With every stupid statement out of her mouth we watched Grandpa’s numbers drop further and further. I think it would be an interesting thought experiment if we could imagine how the election would have gone if the economy hadn’t decided to nosedive when it did. We argued about it, I still say Obama would have won but it would have been much closer but he says Grandpa would have beat him. After you get done shuddering at the mere thought it’s a fascinating intellectual exercise.
YellowJournalism
I never really cared for “This Hour…:”, but now I just may watch again because I really want to see the footage of the Palin ambush.
Today, as my family and friends in the States celebrates Thankgiving, I would like to mention how thankful I am for the Canadian health care system. Our new little one has been having some medical troubles that are being monitored by his pediatrician and now a specialist, one that we didn’t have to wait for (got in with him in less than a week). We are between insurance companies for our supplemental insurance, so we’re having to pay for medications (still not as expensive), but I have no idea how we would have afforded this under similar circumstances in the US.
Palin and her anti-health care ilk can suck it.
Spiny Norman
@8:
That reminds me of Rick Polito’s unsurpassed review of The Wizard of Oz.
Mark
I would like to point out that the Canadian system is not as generously-funded for those over-65 as Medicare is. That keeps costs down, allows everyone access to the system, and has no impact on life expectancy overall.
American Medicare recipients, on the other hand, are used to getting pretty generous benefits, which is only possible because so many people – including their children and grandchildren – get nothing. To a Canadian, this seems like a very American attitude.
To quote the 2 Live Crew: “I got mine, ho – see ya!”
jeffreyw
@Yutsano: per yr request earlier:
dinner is served
knew these bigger plates were gonna pay off
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Yutsano: What made Douglas so special(besides starting the current health care system in Canada, obviously)? Was he an inspiring Wellstone type?
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@corwin: Except that Paine was the DFH of his day. Read Agrarian Justice.
Yutsano
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: Rather than make a potential fool of myself I’ll just link to his Wiki page and go from there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Douglas
gnomedad
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Or, perhaps: I’m tired of this US gig. Think I’ll quit and try Canada.
Yutsano
@jeffreyw: Yum yum and yum. I am now soooo glad I’m out of here in an hour. Oh did Buddy perk up when everyone started eating?
Sirkowski
Canadians are very defensive about their healthcare system.
Palin should think twice before crossing the border.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mark:
Which is pretty rich considering all those rich old conservative GOP legislators whining about how we’re leaving a huge debt to our grandchildren to pay off. Yeah, f__kers, we’re already paying for your sorry asses to take cushy paychecks and do nothing.
/bitter gen-xer
RedKitten
Not necessarily. We know that it has flaws and is far from perfect. What DOES piss us off, however, is when right-wing Americans make up lies out of whole cloth in order to try to make our system look a hell of a lot worse than it is. That bullshit myth about wait times has contributed to you guys keeping your crappy status quo, so it’s more than a little frustrating.
jeffreyw
@Yutsano: He seems a little better, it appears he found some deer entrails last night, season was last weekend. They are no doubt a bit ripe by now.
Yutsano
@jeffreyw: So having him eat them and suffer a tummy ache vs having him roll in them and stink up the house right before a big dinner. I think option A is acceptable given the circumstances. Oh and fuck the hunter for cleaning in the woods.
call_me_ishmael
Kiefer Sutherland is actually Tommy Douglas’s grandson, which demonstrates some kind of strange synchronicity between 24 and Cdn healthcare.
Or maybe it just means that Saskatchewan is a little bit like West Virginia and everyone there is related.
Paul MacDonald
Mary Walsh is awesome. She is an equal opportunity offender, as she does this sort of thing to Canadian politicians of all stripes.
All of them know who she is, so they play along. The only one who really had a problem, if I recall correctly, was former Liberal PM Jean Chretien during AdScam.
Palin is a moron.
Mark S.
I would like to see poll numbers on how many Canadians want to adopt the American health care system.
Little Dreamer
@JK:
In what universe is that likely to happen? I’ll move there. It ain’t happening here. They like her dumb, the dumber the better, they would never know the difference.
erinsiobhan
Weirdly, there is almost an element of truth to Palin’s comments. A significant portion of the Canadian healthcare system is already privatised – optometry, dental care, prescription drugs, some diagnostic testing. And there is an ongoing (but fairly subdued) debate on how much more of the system should be privatised.
maus
Her demographic doesn’t get the joke, neither does any other brand of conservative. It’s just preaching to the choir here.
I mean really, they don’t even understand the canadian/UK systems other than what they’re told by Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, etc.
maus
A majority of Republicans can’t even be forced to accept that BUSH is too dumb to be President.
RedKitten
@Mark S.:
Exactly. If our system (and France’s, and Britain’s, etc. etc.) systems are so incredibly horrible, then how come those countries haven’t been working towards adopting an American-style system, pray tell?
Fern
@erinsiobhan:
True in a sense, but these things weren’t privatized – they were never (to my knowledge) covered under medicare.
Fern
@Fern:
Should qualify that – definitely not covered ever in my province, but I don’t know about other provinces.
Yutsano
@Fern: There are provincial differences but there is at least a national standard of care. Private insurers mostly fill in gaps, it’s not dependent on private insurance entirely.
HyperIon
@Paul MacDonald: Mary Walsh is awesome.
Yes. If she were still on “This Hour…”, it would be funnier.
I am thankful I moved to the PacNW where CBC is included in my limited cable package. I have become a hockey fan.
JohnMcF
It might be worth noting that Tommy Douglas brought health care to Saskatchewan only, one of the smallest provinces (by population) and it was a hard-fought battle – the province’s doctors went on strike, insurance companies spent huge amounts fighting it and so on.
Then the federal government offered something like fifty cents on the dollar if other provinces wanted to start their own health care plans. So, we don’t really have “national health care,” in Canada we have ten provincial plans.
bago
Oddly, DC is a big hockey town.
ppcli
@erinsiobhan:
The word “privatised” suggests that they were handled by the government and then were sold or otherwise handed off to private interests. I can only draw from my own experience in Ontario – maybe other provinces are different – but I’m pretty sure that none of the things you’ve listed were ever covered the Ontario provincial plan OHIP.
Notorious P.A.T.
@licensed to kill time:
Did Beck say that in a squeaky cartoon character voice while making faces and pouring pretend gasoline on someone?
Notorious P.A.T.
The right-wingers like to say that Canadians are flooding across the border to take advantage of our wonderful health care system. My mom was a nurse her entire working life here in Michigan, and I’ve lived here my whole life. There are NO Canadians coming over for our health care “system”.
pcbedamned
@Mark S.:
Just find out the population of Alberta and that will tell you (they are Canada’s Texas).
@ppcli:
And thanks to McSquinty, we are losing more health benefits from OHIP every year (Thanx alot Torana).
@YellowJournalism:
If you are in Ontario, check out the Trillium program for your meds. It is for working families and is based on income. Not sure if other provinces have a similar program or not.
Finally, Happy Turkey Day to all our southern neighbours!!!
Splitting Image
@Mark S.:
Without looking at any polls, I would guess 27%.
erinsiobhan
Most of my experience has been in Quebec. The biggest thing to become privatised over the last 10-15 years is diagnostic work. If you have private insurance, you can get an MRI, x-rays or an ultrasound very quickly. I’ve taken the private option a couple of times for non-critical tests that would require a wait of 3-4 weeks if I stayed in the public system.
At one time, eye exams were covered in Quebec and that was later restricted to only kids and seniors. Some dental surgeries (but not basic dental care) are covered for everyone and a lot of dental work is still covered for kids under 10.
I don’t think prescription drugs were ever widely covered in Canada. Quebec has a public plan for prescription drug insurance which is mandatory if you don’t have private insurance.
There are definitely regional variations in Canada because the systems are run by the provinces.
toujoursdan
The funny thing is that most of the Canadian system is ALREADY private (e.g., doctors operating as professional corporations, for-profit imaging labs, privately run clinics, etc.) In Québec you are as likely to be referred to a private operation as a public one. It depends on where you are and what your condition is.
The only difference is these private operations send their bills to the provincial government rather than a bloated insurance company bureaucracy where 30-40% goes towards administration, overhead, marketing, etc. and they’re incentivized to refuse care.
mcc
It might be worth noting that Tommy Douglas brought health care to Saskatchewan only, one of the smallest provinces (by population) and it was a hard-fought battle
I am a little curious whether this model can be applied in the United States– I.E. bring single payer to some particular state, then use that state as a model to spread elsewhere. California’s legislature has been trying to pass a single-payer bill for the last few sessions and has been stopped only by Schwarzenegger. It seems increasingly unlikely there will be a Republican governor a year and a half from now, so there doesn’t seem to be anything obviously halting California from immediately switching to single payer then (though of course, I’m not sure how a single payer bill would possibly be funded after it’s passed, since the Republican minority gets an effective veto on budgetary matters and it’s not clear there would be any way around that even with a Democratic governor).
chris
Canada has had it’s own Conservative Common Sense Revolution in Ontario. It sucked. Big time.
les
@Little Dreamer:
Word. Her appeal is affirmative rejection of knowledge and expertise, and the idiots love it.
Chuck Butcher
@Yutsano:
Unless you propose ruining the animal and wasting it, the guts must come out as immediately as possible. Ordinariily scavengers will clean that up quite quickly. You have to get the body temperature out of the meat very quickly and if there is any internal leakage that must be cleaned and cooled quickly.
Sorry, this ain’t your plastic wrapped grocery store meat and that is treated the same way at slaughter. It never hurts to understand your food…at least somewhat. The path from living animal to your table involves lots of opportunities to screw up. don’t take them.
Citizen_X
YES, B’Y!
Everybody ought to go to the rawstory link to see the interview, er, attempted interview.
Who knew ya had ta come down to da loading dock to ask a question in da land a’ da free an’ da home a’ da brave?
Marge rocks!
Faux News
The Palin 2012 campaign theme:
“Faster Pussycat, KILL! KILL!”
(hat tip to Russ Meyer)
Yutsano
@Chuck Butcher: I never recall my family gutting a deer immediately. Back at the truck yes, and we never had an issue with spoilage (breaking the gall bladder is another story, did that with a grouse once, oops) though I do see your point. It’s funny whenever someone asks me if I know how an animal is killed trying to make me vegetarian, I say yes then offer to show them.
Chuck Butcher
@Yutsano:
As I said, as immediately as possible. I’ve had a buck down for at least an hour before I could find it and I was at 7K ft and two miles in from my truck. The temps were in the 80s during the daylight and I didn’t need any extra weight for that carry and I needed that dude cooled right then. I wait until I get to camp to skin, but that will happen as close to the kill time as that. I have brought them back into town to skin, but I was day hunting and within an hour of town. I’m nearly fanatical about care of a kill, but then I’ve always had excellent meat.
It is pointless to try to bury gut sacks, they’ll be dug up in hours time and it just delays ravens and crows and etc from getting to them, making them stinkier. It is also poor practice to have a dog loose in the woods during hunting season, it is always a bad practice if it is big enough and speedy enough to run a deer.
I’m not very fond of having game hung in camp, either. Cougars, bears, and coyotes are drawn to that. It was a much bigger deal when I camped in a tent, not so much nowadays.
Lesley
Here’s a direct link to the video
http://rjproduct.ca/pivot/entry.php?id=721
Mary Walsh is a national treasure.
Orin T.
@Yutsano: Well, after all it is Russia not Canada that she can see from here house.
Paul MacDonald
@chris:
That came right after Bob Rae and his fluke win that killed Ontario. The look on his face when he won and realized he had to keep those promises was priceless. Free shit for everyone! That Rae still has a career is ridiculous.
Ontario has some of the worst politicians in Canada. That’s saying quite a bit, when you consider the idiocy in the other 9 provinces.
colin r
Re: “wannabe” — I feel the need to point out that Mary Walsh has been doing this since before Craig Kilborn was host of The Daily Show.
See also Rick Mercer’s “Jean Poutine” question to candidate George W Bush in 2000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Hour_Has_22_Minutes
JohnMcF
“That came right after Bob Rae and his fluke win that killed Ontario. The look on his face when he won and realized he had to keep those promises was priceless. Free shit for everyone! That Rae still has a career is ridiculous.”
Oh, I remember that election night. Rae’s “victory” speech was pretty much his concession speech and a quick mumbled, “Thank you, we’ll try hard” tackd on at the end.
Of course, all of the North American economy fell into a recession when the NDP came to power in Ontario, so whoever had won that election would have had the same problems.
The most depressing thing to come out of it was the Harris Conservatives, but we should have seen it coming when the people of Ontario said that instead of everyone taking a 2% cut in pay they’d rather some other people lost their jobs entirely.
That was certainly an easy sentiment for Harris to capitalize on. And it looks like we’re heading back there.
The truth is, if Tommy Douglas hadn’t pushed through so much reform in Saskatchewan it never would have happened in the rest of the country (well, maybe the PQ would have done it in Quebec) and we’d have the exact same insurance-company run system here.
Interrobang
Don’t ever, ever, ever try to blame Harris on Rae. Harris was his own super special brand of evil, and if he hadn’t got elected after Rae, he would have gotten elected instead of Rae. 99% of what’s wrong with Ontario right now is directly traceable to Mike Fucking Harris and his neocon crap. If I tried to tell you about everything I know of that Harris did to fuck up the province, and/or that totally fucked up my life or the life of someone I know (including one death), this comment would be about 90 000 words long.
I don’t like Bob Rae, but I also don’t completely blame him for what happened during his tenure, either (see JohnMcF’s comment about the economy swirling down the porcelain chute just after his election).
I’m not as impressed with McGuinty as I was hoping to be; he seems only slightly to the left of Harris, but at least — baruch haShem — he’s not Harris. Who deserves to be exiled to some small-town northerly shithole where everything is expensive, then made to live in a shitty slum apartment on $325 for rent and $195/month for everything else, with no car and a wardrobe of ill-fitting Wal-Mart rejects, and made to work some shitty slave labour job for a bus pass, just like he did to me and the rest of the stripe-and-triangle-wearing Harrisfare recipients back in ’98 or so, incidentally. Fuck him. I hope — and I say this as someone who nearly lost a friend this way — he dies in a fire.