Well, I'm glad to hear about Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, my 11-year old daughter has been doing that daily for three years and is now a blue belt. I'm hoping she's brown by the time she's a teenager, and will keep it up until black, as up here in Canada firearms are unfortunately not an option.

That is correct, and there are actually language police that will measure the size of the letters.

try and paint the Great Depression along Rep/Dem lines, because much like the recent bailouts the government interventions were started under a Republican and then expanded by a Democrat.

Hoover's economic pre-1929 plan was based on government interference in the labor market, and was called prosperity insurance by the press and had the backing of the American Federation of Labour. Hoover was very interventionist, and much like Bush-Obama, the problem is not which party is doing the intervention, it is the intervention itself.

Or perhaps I am not reading these words, from Hoover's Dec 3, 1929, message to Congress, with sufficient nuance to find the laissez-faire message?

"I have instituted . . . systematic . . ....

spending from the federal budget:

We were going to increase spending by $500 million on program x, but are instead only going to increase it by $300 million. See, we saved $200 million!

who does Cal have in mind when he talks about 'tub-thumping, angry conservatives' who have characterized Republican politics? Of course his media buddies automatically characterize any Republican that way, but they appear to have neither brains nor free will.

For the past 30 years I would say that it is much more accurate to state that Republican politics has been characterized by conservative-thumping.

isn't the biggest one going the one through the one between politicians and lawyers?

Given the quasi-legal nature of most regulatory bodies, how much of those passing through Connor's revolving door from industry to regulator are not in the legal profession? Also, doesn't the door work in another direction, i.e. union and pro-union groups to the regulator? After all, how many Obama apparatchiks came from big labour vs. big business?

gubmint-run health-care tolerates competition just about as much as the U.S. public school system does vouchers, which is to say not at all. No private alternative is allowed, because then this would lead to a two-tiered system, where those evil rich folks could have access to quicker/better health care. Even though they'd still be subsidizing the public system through their tax dollars. Which is why so many folks cross the border and pay to have procedures done in the States or other countries.

For example, my dad has had to wear a catheter all summer (and summer in Canada is a short season) because he has to wait over two months for his prostate surgery. It's a relatively simple procedure, and were he in the States this...

starts foaming at the mouth because this happened under a Conservative government, remember this is Canada we're talking about. There isn't any more conservative in the Conservative party than there is in Lindsey Graham or Olympia Snowe, although they would be to the right of Pelosi and Reid.

What was the reaction of the benevolent government-run health-care system?

'As news of these developments spread, patients and their surviving families demanded to know why they were not informed when the error was first identified. But it wasn't until CBC News and other national media ran stories in May 2007, revealing the disturbingly high rate of errors, that the Conservative government of Danny Williams finally called a commission of inquiry to get at the truth.

Soon after beginning their work, lawyers for the inquiry discovered external audits of the pathology laboratory that had done the initial testing. These audits revealed a troubling lack of standards, training and quality control, the inquiry has been told....

impact public health care can have on breast cancer screening, look at the recent example that occurred north of the border, in Newfoundland, Canada.

There is a hormone receptor test that is done when diagnosed with breast cancer, that helps to determine the best treatment option. It turns out that for many years this test was improperly administered, resulting in a number of possibly preventable deaths.

'officials at Eastern Health made the unprecedented decision to retest more than a thousand breast cancer patients who were diagnosed ER/PR-negative between 1997 and 2005.

Of the 1,013 breast cancer patients retested, 383 — more than a third — were found to be falsely ER/PR-negative. That meant 383 patients were...