Not Partisan

One of my recurring themes here on the blog is that one of the problems with right wingers these days is that they have no ability to distinguish between things that are partisan in nature and things that aren't. See here or here for a couple of examples.

Just in case there are any right wingers out there who want to change this habit, here's a tip for the future. When a serious economic crisis threatens the country*, that is not the time for partisan games.


* On the off chance someone wants to try and argue we're not facing a serious economic crisis, save it. The prices of our main exports are plunging, our major trading partners are in recession and facing worse, some of the largest employers in the country are on the verge of bankruptcy, with many more of the country's biggest most stable companies needing to raise funds at distress prices and trading at levels that suggest very high risk, our housing markets are falling fast, government budgets are coming under increasing strain, and we're only getting started. Just because the coyote hasn't looked down yet doesn't mean we haven't run off the cliff.

P.S. What's wrong with Andrew Coyne these days? For someone who supports proportional representation he seems awfully bent out of shape at the idea of having a government that actually represents a majority of the votes cast for once.

And he's making all sorts of crazy arguments of the sort you'd normally associate with loony national post types (such as Colby Cosh who actually sees a day of trading in which the TSX dropped less than U.S. markets (comparing like sector to sector, e.g. financials were down 9% in Canada, 17% in the U.S.) and thinks that this proves that 'Money has cast a vote' against the coalition. People who have yet to realize that the TSX is heavily weighted in commodities and that on a day when commodities do poorly, the overall TSX index will do poorly, really shouldn't be commenting on the stock market, but that's what I get for reading the national post where the only qualification required is ideology not actual knowledge.

How Embarrassing

I see that Andrew Coyne's blog is back up and running, but he has been reduced by technical problems to running a lowly blogger blog. The shame!

Like 97.5%* of all right-wing Bloggers, he seems to be caught up in some sort of war-of-words with Warren Kinsella. I'm not really sure what about since when I see anyone mention Kinsella I stop reading since it's bound to be boring. If this is some sort of grand scheme by Warren to get all these folks so focussed on him that they forget about all the other stuff on their agenda it seems to be working to perfection.

At any rate, when he's not battling Kinsella or going on at length about bicycle helmets, Andrew is one of the best bloggers/political writers around, so it's good to see him back.


----
*this was an exaggeration.

The Hazards of Tobogganing and Social Security 'Reform'

I've never written for a newspaper so I don't really know, but I'm thinking one of the biggest advantages of blogging vs. the world of print is being able to write your own headlines. Of course, there may be a reason those two jobs are often separated.

Anyway, a friend mentioned the other day that there was an article in the (Vancouver) North Shore News on the dangers of tobogganing (prompted by a local boy who got a concussion) and that the article was recommending laws to make helmets mandatory while sliding. There is no word yet on whether this was just a big left-wing plot to get Andrew Coyne so upset that he stops writing altogether.¹

Meanwhile, I'm starting to think that this whole plan to mess up the U.S. economy, I mean reform Social Security, may be just a ploy to get Paul Krugman so upset that he pulls a Coyne² - or at the very least stops writing about all the other Bush disasters in the making. If you want a great example of Krugman demolishing the plan for Social Security 'reform', see this link (courtesy of another friend) to an interview with him in Rolling Stone.

¹ Andrew Coyne had an excellent Blog which came 4th in voting for best Conservative blog despite the fact that he hasn't posted to it for months - mysteriously disappearing from his blog right after a series of impassioned pleas to stop the madness of mandatory cycling helmet laws.

² OK technically Coyne only stopped blogging, he kept writing his column, and since Krugman doesn't have a Blog, just a column, it's not a perfect analogy, but nobody likes a nitpicker.

UPDATE: Courtesy of my North Van friend, here is the link to the toboggan story in the North Shore news. As my friends says, whatever happened to bailing out before you hit something? (or went over an embankment with rocks below) - were we wimps in our generation?