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Bush’s Union Restated, Parklife’s Expenses Pro-rated, and Did You Know Ryan Gosling Is Canadian?
George W. Bush made his State of the Union address last night. Among his policy initiatives introduced in the speech were a request to Americans to reduce their gasoline consumption by twenty percent in ten years (while simultaneously claiming American needed to increase domestic gasoline production), and a proposal to tax employer-based health plans to pay for HSAs (which don’t actually solve the problems facing American healthcare). An annotated and rather niftily clickable rebuttal of the SOTU speech can be found here. However, they cannot rebut the fact that George Bush’s chosen example of the ideal American immigrant is NBA star Dikembe Mutombo. Apparently the plaque on the Statue of Liberty is being changed to read “Give us your tall, your agile, those capable of dunking and rebounding with equal facility.”
The city is $422 million behind on paying for the maintenance of its park system. This is especially relevant considering one of David Miller’s campaign planks was to spend $17 million on new parks. Boy, that decade of provincial downloading of costs just gets better with every passing day!
As the Maher Arar no-fly-list clusterfuck continues to make Americans look stupid, Canada contemplates a no-fly-list program of its own. Because there’s nothing quite like taking bad policy from the Americans and copying it for our own use. It’s the political equivalent of illegally downloading “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency warns us that some types of Green Bean Cake contain a sesame filling not declared on the label. So, if eating sesame would kill you – you should probably check out the details there! If you’re fine with eating sesame, on the other hand, go nuts on the Green Bean Cake. It’s greenalicious.
A labour group representing nearly 200,000 workers begins to lobby Queen’s Park for an increase in the minimum age to $10 an hour. That’ll be nice, if and when it ever happens, which won’t be for years and years!
And finally, now that the Oscar nominations have been announced, the annual painful procession of “hey! This one’s a Canadian!” stories have begun. Remember, he’s London, Ontario’s Ryan Gosling!
Image via Maclean’s.