This just in from the Canadian premier who came to the US to have heart surgery.

An unapologetic Danny Williams says he was aware his trip to the United States for heart surgery earlier this month would spark outcry, but he concluded his personal health trumped any public fallout over the controversial decision.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, Williams said he went to Miami to have a "minimally invasive" surgery for an ailment first detected nearly a year ago, based on the advice of his doctors.

"This was my heart, my choice and my health," Williams said late Monday from his condominium in Sarasota, Fla.

"I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics."

OK, so Canada’s socialist health care system was unable to provide the level of care he wanted. So he came the USA to have the “best possible health care.” But WAIT, the hypocrisy gets even THICKER!!!

Williams said his decision to go to the U.S. did not reflect any lack of faith in his own province’s health care system.

"I have the utmost confidence in our own health care system in Newfoundland and Labrador, but we are just over half a million people," he said.

"We do whatever we can to provide the best possible health care that we can in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Canadian health care system has a great reputation, but this is a very specialized piece of surgery that had to be done and I went to somebody who’s doing this three or four times a day, five, six days a week."

So while he has the utmost confidence in Canada’s shitty system, he didn’t want to be seen as jumping the line or one of Canadian health care’s famous “wait lists” so he paid out of his own pocket to come to America to get the “best possible health care.”

Williams also said he paid for the treatment, but added he would seek any refunds he would be eligible for in Canada.

"If I’m entitled to any reimbursement from any Canadian health care system or any provincial health care system, then obviously I will apply for that as anybody else would," he said.

Great, so Canada has a two-tiered health system: one tier for everybody who can afford to come to America to pay for it themselves (the American system), and one for those who can’t (the Canadian system). And this is the kind of subpar, ineffective system is what Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and EVERY SINGLE OTHER DEMOCRAT IN CONGRESS wants to implement here? No thanks. American health care may be expensive, but apparently it’s pretty damn good. As long as I’m paying ofr it anyway, I’ll take good over shitty any day.

If you’re a politician or a member of the favored aristocracy, you’ll still be able to get the health care you need. If you’re a regular person, take a number, Jack, they’ll get to you eventually.

Some thoughts on Joe Stack from Global Guerillas:

Here are some quick notes on Joe Stack’s violence and the acts of others (there have been many recently).  I tend to view people like Joe Stack as canaries in the coal mine — people on the margins, mentally and situationally, that fatally explode at the early onset of severe societal and economic pressure.  Here’s what’s driving them:

    * Extreme frustration/hopelessness.  A great many people have seen little to no success in the US commercial sector despite a considerable effort, for decades.  For workers below the median wage this current environment is a depression — from the duration to the rate of the un/underemployment.  Any status gain they might have achieved before this occurred is now gone.
    * Few mitigating influences.  Most of the community and familial structures that historically buffered people in the US against economic failure have been ravaged.  Even functional families are now atomized. 
    * Rage and a loss of government legitimacy.  Time worn beliefs that have underpinned the American experiment, such as the idea of a level playing field, the correlation between hard work and success, and the underlying basic fairness of our system have been savaged by the government response to the financial crisis.  Frankly, the perception of many is that Wall Street’s pros are guilty of criminal fraud and even traitorous behavior (they damaged the security and future of the US for personal benefit).  Worse, they not only avoided punishment, they were rewarded for it.

Will we see more of this violence?  Most assuredly.  Further, as this economic failure matures, damaging ever greater numbers of people, we may see less violence against people and more economic violence (disruption) in an attempt to extract from society as great a cost as they possibly can.  A couple of hundred people, using the super-empowerment afforded by network disruption, could easily cause countless billions in economic damage.  A thousand people? 

If you need a yardstick by which to measure your effectiveness as a parent, a fair place to start would be to ask yourself if your kids go hungry on snow days.

TAKOMA PARK, Md. — As back-to-back snowstorms shuttered schools for the week across the mid-Atlantic states, parents fretted about lost learning time, administrators scheduled makeup days and teachers posted assignments online.

But Marla Caplon worried about a more fundamental problem: How would students eat?

The two snowstorms that pummeled the region, leaving more than 3 feet of snow in some areas, deprived tens of thousands of children from Virginia to Pennsylvania of the free or reduced-price school lunch that may be their only nutritious meal of the day.

Presumably, they’re figuring out the best way to fuck us next.

THE world’s top central bankers began arriving in Australia yesterday as renewed fears about the strength of the global economic recovery gripped world share markets.

Representatives from 24 central banks and monetary authorities including the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank landed in Sydney to meet tomorrow at a secret location, the Herald Sun reports.

Organised by the Bank for International Settlements last year, the two-day talks are shrouded in secrecy with high-level security believed to have been invoked by law enforcement agencies.

Bigger, prettier version here.