Poor Canada, So Close to P. T. Barnum

Just got back from the hospital, where I went for a tuneup, including two operations. A good time was had by all. A friend of mine says that the hospital is manned by doctors and nurses from a 70s psychiatric hospital in Montreal, similar, apparently, to the kind the Soviets used to house dissidents. Perhaps. Though almost all of the nurses looked as if they were in their 20s and 30s instead of their 50s and 60s. Maybe that was part of the treatment, some kind of hallucinogen cleverly disguised as an anti-biotic.

Anyway, before I was rushed in for my emergency - and perhaps psychiatric - tuneup, I was going to write about Harper and the Conservatives. Unfortunately, the U.S. health care debate was going on at the time, pitting the Forces of Good against the Forces of Evil. It was as if Harper was juggling one ball with less than total success in the centre ring of a three ring circus when Miss America suddenly arrived in one of the side rings dressed in a red, white and blue bikini and juggling 50 fireworks in the process of exploding, 14 live grenades, one sub machine gun in the process of firing and a partridge in a pear tree, all flawlessly and with a smile full of her own teeth.

Speaking of the Forces of Good and Evil, did you know that a recent Harris Poll found that 24% of Republicans believe that Obama is or might be the Anti-Christ? Now I ask you, how can Harper and the Conservatives - or anyone else, for that matter - compete with that? I suppose it's possible that 24% of Liberals believe that Harper is or might be the Anti-Christ - and maybe Environics should do a poll just to make sure - but, somehow, I doubt it.

Which, incidentally, brings me to my latest, and so far the best, solution to the U.S. debt crisis. America can spend another trillion or save another trillion on health care if it wants, it can withdraw its forces from the rest of the world, or not, it doesn't really matter, since it has the payment of all its debts within its grasp. To wit, there is no other country on this good earth that provides the entertainment value of the United States. It just needs to start charging for it.