Via Fallows (you know — the actual reporter over at Atlantic.com) comes this momentary antidote to the grim despair that is driving me towards that last bottle of Old Overshoes tucked into the hole in the sheetrock behind the commode.
watch?v=LCD5gzG511c&feature=player_embedded
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The key thing to note here: this is a bit of Taiwanese comedy, which, as Fallows notes, makes its equal opportunity US/China snark yet more geopolitically fascinating.
And pandas!
With that, back to contemplating whether or not it’s possible for the New England states to reconsider that secession question and talk a little union with Canada…
Cermet
Sounds really good to me here in Maryland.
Morbo
I was watching NMA videos before they had subtitles. Fuck… am I a hipster now? Oh wait, no, I have to hate on them for going mainstream, and that’s not going to happen because these videos are still awesome.
beltane
If we get President Rand Paul in 2012, is it too much to hope that VT could be adopted by Quebec. We are cute and willing to learn French.
morzer
@beltane:
Willing to work for maple syrup and snow shoes?
Maude
@beltane:
Shove over, NJ will be there before you.
We are entitled because we have Christie.
He’s a Rand preview.
Nous parlons Francais.
jl
Don’t let those pics of you and Timothy Pickering get around.
matoko_chan
Canada has healthcare and they love Obama.
im down.
et aussi, moi je parle tres bien le francais.
Jim Manzi has moved to France to get healthcare.
Canada is much closer.
Calouste
@beltane:
The state name is already French, so that’s a good start.
beltane
@Calouste: About 40% of the population is of French Canadian descent so they won’t even know the difference.
Comrade Dread
Of course, President Palin will likely invade Canada, so it’ll only be a temporary reprieve.
MobiusKlein
California is joining Mexico – otherwise CA, CA is too confusing.
Edit – and insulting!
JGabriel
Tom Levenson @ Top:
New York can come too, right? We’re part of New England, right?
I mean, c’mon, you can’t have New England without Block Island and Shelter Island and Montauk.
Right?
.
Stav
Funny thing is that theme of the original may be correct but for the exact opposite reason the propagandists propose. If 20-50 years from China has surpassed the US it will be because they spent big on themselves during the great economic morass of the early 21st Century.
Their current stimulus package is 10X greater than the U.S. even though they were stimulating a much smaller economy. When future generations choose to site their businesses where will they go? To a country with a 1950’s era infrastructure and electric grid. Or to place built for life in the 21st Century?
Great capitalists know that you invest in lean times. Too bad the U.S. has forgotten that lesson.
Roger Moore
@Stav:
The US has forgotten most of what makes capitalism work. Instead, we have a bunch of looters who have focused on converting shareholder value into executive bonuses.
Francis
If Arabs living west of the Jordan can contemplate a non-contiguous state called Palestine, coastal Americans can do the same. We’ll take California, Oregon, Washington (the state of Pacifica), New England down to the Maryland border (New New England), and Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois [coastal to the Great Lakes] (the State of Midwestia) and form a new republic. [Ohio can hold a referendum on which way it wants to go.]
We can even call it Republica.
Mnemosyne
@Stav:
Sometimes I wonder if the system we have right now can even be called capitalism except in the most theoretical sense.
dopey-o
i look forward to serving our new panda overlords.
Yutsano
@Francis: I’ll go. With the economic power just the West Coast has, we could do quite nicely on our own. Or else Washington solves the Oregon Treaty dispute once and for all and reunites Point Roberts with the country finally in a grand Canadian union.