The Problem with Canadian Healthcare

As an American living in Canada, I can personally attest to long wait times for doctors and diagonstics that dont exist in the US. Recently, my father had a terrible back problem and had to wait for 3 months in excruciating pain for an MRI and it took me 2 weeks of waiting to see my physician. So ya, the right wing propaganda machine is right... sort of.

The problem with the Canadian health care system is a problem that is almost unique to Canada in the industrialized world: a severe shortage of doctors. Although its a little dated, a National Post article from January 2008 puts it best

It's clear we have a problem. The country has approximately 15,000 too few doctors, a figure roughly double the total number of students in all years of study at our 17 medical schools combined. At a doctor-patient ratio of just 2.3 per 1,000 population, we are 24th on the list of 28 industrialized countries. Approximately 1.5 million Canadians cannot find a family physician as a result.

The reason for this shortage stems from an educational system that cannot keep up with the increasing demand for doctors. Now unless the current health care plans include serious overhauls of the American post-secondary education system, (a system which despite problems with cost, truly is the best in the world) I doubt any health care reform, even a Canadian style single payer, will result in Canadian style waiting lists

Between Me and My Doctor

Quick Post...
Everyone on the right seems to be particularly critical about 'the government coming between you and your doctor'. The assumption that is being made here is that there currently is no one between you and your doctor, and if the government were to step in things would be worse. However, this currently is not the case, as there is an insurance company acting as the middle man. Creating a public option would allow people to choose who they want to stand between them and their doctor, a profit driven corporation, or an agency of a democratically elected government.

When a Yellow Dog is Better than a Red Elephant

We have all become very familiar with the blue dog Democrats. The origin of their name comes from a play on the term 'yellow dog' Democrat(referring the extremely liberal Democrats choking yellow dogs blue). The phrase yellow dog Democrat originated in the 1900 Kentucky gubernatorial race during an internal democratic party uprising. Theodore Hallam, a prominent party member was speaking against the Democrats candidate when he was asked by a member of the crowd how he could be speaking against a Democratic candidate when at the state convention he had said that if the party had nominated a yaller dog, he would have voted for it.

He responded saying "I admit that I said then what I now repeat, namely, that when the Democratic party of Kentucky, in convention assembled, sees fit in its wisdom to nominate a yaller dog for the governorship of this great state, I will support him — but lower than that ye shall not drag me!" (Exit Laughing, by I.S. Cobb)

The yaller, or yellow dog Democrats represent the wing of the democratic party who for better or worse, will vote for a Democratic candidate no matter what. However, what concerns me, for want of a better term, are yellow dog republicans.

For a frighteningly large percentage of the population, politics is similar to spectator sports. Just like the way that the faithful have their team and stick to it, many people on both sides of the aisle will vote for any candidate as long as he has a D or R next to his/her name.

However, the anti-intellectual movement within the GOP has resulted in a congress where many of the GOP's elected representatives seem to be as far from the paragons of our society as possible. Representatives such has Congresswoman Bachman have the temperament of a rabid animal.

Four years ago, members of congress were committing egregious pork barreling. While this may have been awful for the nation, at least they were trying to serve their districts in earnest (or at least to get re-elected). Now the GOP has hardened into a defensive shell removing itself from the legislative process. Republican members of congress are playing solely to win the game of politics, without any thought to actual governance (even more than usual).

Which brings me back to the yellow dog. How long will the Republican base take to wake up and nominate to represent them a fine upstanding yellow dog?

new blog

hi all...

so i did say i was going to update more often, however the reason that I have not been is that I have been working on setting up an ACTUAL blog... not one of these blogspot ones.

The blog is called two guys off the street. It is the misadventures of me and my buddy zac as we attempt to start our own online empire.

The blog can be found at www.tgots.com

I hope you come and check it out

am yisrael chai

I have been finding myself getting into a lot of fights with my jewish friends recently over the current conflict in Gaza. One of my dearest friends went as far as to say that I was abandoning israel. I can honestly say that no words have stung me so deeply (outside those involved in affairs of the heart) since I was teased as a child. I do not think she was that out of line, being that I can easily imagine how what I said could have been taken out of context.

My main issue is this: I hate those stupid qassam rocket counter applications on facebook. I see it as a trivialization of a humanitarian disaster. Over a thousand people have been killed in Gaza, many of them innocent civilians. Personally I don't give a damn about the militants that have been killed, in fact while I hate to see people die as a general rule, these guys probably deserve it. Counting the qassams is effectively trying to say that the suffering being inflicted upon us is equivalent to the people in gaza, that we are victims to. We are not the victims here, and saying that we are is an insult to everyone's intelligence. Israel is a military superpower that can kick anyone's ass 5 times over. The Palestinian people are the victims here. However, the Palestinians being the victims does not make Israel the antagonist. That is a role that clearly goes to hamas, an organization that has absolutely no care for the welfare of the people they supposedly defend, and in fact uses them as human shields so that a) the israel wont attack, and b) when they do the civilian death toll is nauseatingly high.

My objection with Israel than is not that they are acting as the bad guys, but it is that they are not acting as the smart guys. While I understand that a military action is necessary, an offensive of this magnitude is overboard. At the end of the day, I do not see how this military action will further the goals of peace. Israel's overpowering military has effectively dumbed the nation down on both a strategic and tactical level. When engaging in a military operation, it is important for the actor to set out an objective with a known path for accomplishing it. The strategy of bombing an area till they stop shooting at us is about as clumsy as one can get. I understand that there is a need for the occassional missile strike to take out a rocket site as it is fired, but israel is going far beyond that. What ever happened to the era of heroic raids by commandos infiltrating in burkas taking out a top militant target in the dead of night and the 007 style assassinations of terrorist leaders that made Mosad one of the most feared intelligence organizations on the planet? Bringing back these types of operations would result in far fewer civilian casualties. This would be of significant importance for reducing future recruitment efforts by terrorist groups, improve international perceptions of israel, and most importantly would be saving innocent lives. Isnt that what the good guys are supposed to do?

an aged cliche

They say with age comes wisdom, well while I am getting age (no laughing from the people older than me... and while 24 aint a grandpa it means i aint a kid anymore) I seem to be lacking in gaining wisdom. However, aside from a decrepit (I jest) body, I seem to be shifting in my priorities in life. Nothing grand or anything, but I have been feeling an overwhelming urge to create. I am not sure what creates this drive, it could be a subconscious understanding of my own mortality (which I consciously deny) or as equally likely , it could be a desire to see what can come from my mind. Regardless of what it actually is, I can safely say that my artistic biological clock is ticking. I have tried to use my crappy writing (this) or crappy poetry (which you will NEVER see) as an outlet for this, however it seems that that has not quite been enough. So tomorrow I am going out to waste $250 to buy a used Sony A100 SLR which thankfully interfaces quite nicely with my dad's old Minolta Autofocus lenses and will tr my hand at amatur photography.

Peace corps ++

Hi all,

As I attempt to continue my commitment to my digital writing rag, i struggle to find things to write about because im guessing most people would be bored to tears by me writing about my thesis (and if you arent you should come and finish it for me). Anyways, I just booked my peace corps interview for next week, and I am a little nervous about it. I will have to do an update about how it goes when it happens. I am guessing that this is the first mention I have made of me joining the peace corps so i should probably back up and start from the beginning.

At some point last year, I had the fortune to become both dissillusioned in my future as a phycisist and insired by the ongoing primaries. The former resulted from the realization of two things; one being that if i continued down the road I was on, I would live a fairly stable and content life, something that bored me to tears, and second and possibly more important, that at the end of thge day, I am just not good at physics. Now some out there might argue that I have no faith in myself and that I cant be that bad if I made it out of Reed's program, but I respond to them, there are some people who are awesome at street basketball who have no shot at the NBA. I am one of those (but with physics, I really suck something fierce at basketball). The latter of the above mentioned catagory had more to do with the general tone of the election as opposed to my all around effection for President Elect Barack Obama. Hearing Senators John McCain (whom i still admire), Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama (thats a lot of capitilization) talk about service to the nation really struck a chord in me, and inspired me to go out and join the corps. Anyways, school was really busy, and I was retty involved with the election, so I was tied up for quite a few months. Anyhow, in October I picked up the pace. I will give a more detailed piece on my motivations in the near future. But anywhoo that is that

Let us move on

I admit it, I dropped off the face of the planet. There are two reasons for this, one bad and one less bad:
1. I am convinced no one actually reads this so it doesnt reaaally matter if I update this or not
2. I have been swamped with thesis, schoolwork, TAing, and moving
That said, I apologize to all of my imaginary readers and I am now going to try my best to remain diligent. In the event that anyone out there does look at this on occassion, please leave me a comment once in a while, it really would make my day.

Anyhow, with the election over, it seems somewhat foolish for me to continue to write about politics, but I would like to talk a little bit about my trip to Nevada waaaay after the fact. However, instead of doing one big update, I am going to give a few stories (but not all at once) over the next few days to get me back into the blogging mood.

Our trip started with us leaving vancouver redonculously early in the morning, having been given a ride to the airport by my wonderful mother. The moment we set down we were put on active duty right away registering people at the University of (Northern?) Las Vegas [UNLV] campus. It just so happens that that day was a giant hoobaskank concert put together by some branch of the democratic party (it turns out there are like a gagillian different branches, the DNC, the campaign for change, the Nevada democratic party, the young democrats (or something like that) and so on). The most interesting event of note was that the event was quickly invaded by ACORN registrars who were overly agressive in their voter registration efforts. For example, when I told them that I was out of state and could not in Nevada, they told me that I could change my registration to Nevada, even though that would be highly illegal. I was later told by Roger, the youth boss of the nevada campaign for change to be very skeptical of ACORN registrars (this was 2 weeks before the ACORN scandal broke out).

After the event, we went to watch the Palin/Biden debate at a hookah bar/schwarma place. For the most part people where pretty damn flabergasted to hear the media say that the debate was a 'draw' considering that biden layed down some intellectual whoop ass. After that the girls went to the guest cabin we were staying in, while I went to work on data entry and making voter reg (registration) packages for the next day.

ok i suck

ok i havent done the nevada post yet, so sue me

here is something to tide me over

Boom De Yada

I promise ill do the Nevada thing next... but heres one more little present (I cant get this out of my head and i hope i curse you all with it as well)

An Apology for Our Insensitivity

So I am back from Nevada and the trip was amazing. I will give a massive update on the weekend as i procrastinate thesis work. Until then, let me tide you over with a Quest (Reed college newspaper) written by your truly (and an anonymous contributor) back in '06. This piece originates from a small scandle that was centered around me and the others at the Cool Ass Shirt Kollective after my vision of creating 'Gay Zombies Love Man Meat' shirts was realized. While there was a direct response to the criticisms made by Oren Elrad the president of CASK, I thought that the attacks on the shirt had a valid point, and below is my apology.

We at the Cool Ass Shirt Kollective [CASK] would like to extend a formal apology for any offense that our most recent shirt might have caused you. Upon further consideration, the slogan written upon said shirt, "Gay Zombies Love Man-Meat," was indeed insensitive and did not adequately consider the complex issues that surround depictions of this group in our modern world. Future shirts will be suitably altered to reflect our error, but for now we would like to use the rest of the space provided to convey to you all that the CASK understands the unique challenges that you, the Zombies, face today.

While most people can go through their lives confident that they will be treated fairly and as equals in academia and in the workplace, Zombies cannot. And though none of the members of CASK can count themselves amongst the ranks of the walking dead, we understand how difficult it must be to be a Zombie in day to day life. Though none of us have ever had to face down the indignity of being repeatedly shot by a 12-gauge double-barreled Remington shotgun with a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger, (Available exclusively from S-Mart for 109.95: Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart) while trying to enter the grocery store, you can rest assured that whenever someone unloads buckshot into you, your bullet holes will wound our spirits just as they do your decaying flesh. Sure, we can all take for granted that we can nod our heads in agreement without worry of one of our eyes falling out, but nonetheless we understand your dilemma and will always be there to lend an eyepatch or pair of sunglasses, whichever better matches the mangled rags you're wearing. And we'd be fools to think that the dietary restrictions some of Jewish or Vegan members abide by could even hold a candle to the difficulties of finding a steady supply of tender human flesh. And perhaps more trivially, we can understand how frustrating it must be to shop for a deodorant that adequately masks the overpowering stench of death. We suggest "Ocean Surf," or for the ladies amongst you, "Lilac Breeze," although we remind you that your unique aroma is as God, your thesis advisor, or whatever Voodoo curse or genetically engineered plague made you and that you should bear it with pride.

It is all too easy to focus on the struggles Zombies face while ignoring the lessons that we can learn from them. When we first penned "Gay Zombies Love Man-Meat," we intended it as an Unlife-affirming reminder of one of the passions of the Zombie community. It is clear from the furor that has resulted that this slogan, though certainly true, failed to convey the flexibility and open-mindedness of the shambling dead. Most people will go through life shackled with the ability to love only one type of meat, cruelly prevented by their instincts and cultural traditions from exploring the pleasures that the other type might provide. Zombies, on the other hand, have broken free of the bonds of gender and have embraced a pan-cannibalistic world view that treats ALL humans as equally savory. And so while it is true that "Gay Zombies Love Man-Meat," to ignore their love of Woman-Meat does a great disservice to their enlightened culture of equality. Perhaps a better shirt would have borne the slogan "All Zombies Love All Meat," but alas, hindsight is always 20-20.

When asked about the shirt, recently made thesis zombie, Michael Salk responded, tersely, “Braaaaaaains [sic]” showing obvious offence at the lack of intellectual credit attributed to those of the `differently living', and the living-centric, over-rationalized discourse of hegemonic phallogo-materialism.

We at CASK dream of future where such misunderstandings never happen and humans and Zombies can live in peaceful coexistence. And though our present society has yet to cast away its prejudices like the medieval relics that they are, you can always count on us to think of you not as unholy, disgusting monsters but rather as unholy, disgusting friends. So the next time you're swarming out of a small town graveyard or being shipped to Iraq so we can get out before the midterm elections, think of us at CASK and know that we're on your side. True, as you lamented, "PC" may be dead at Reed. We can only hope that our words will pave the way to a Reed College where death is seen as just another way of living.

Ive got a crush on Sarah Silverman

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Regent Rigmarole

For those of you who dont know, UBC has several theological schools attached to it. These include Corpus Christy, Vancouver School of Theology, and Regent College. Regent has an extremely large American student population, so was the site of our most recent voter registration drive. Now a school of theology might not seem to be the best Obama recruiting ground, and if this were in the United States, that might even be true. However the theologians here for the most part have a very progressive outlook, and as I was surprised to find out, don't vote on their faith. This came as a slight disappointment, as I spent a few hours last night reading up on Obama's view on faith, as well as the details of Palin's anachronistic interpretation of Paul, and McCain's overly simplistic view of Christianity. We got our foot in the door from one of our members, James (as shown with his beautiful and patriotic daughter), who was working the election booth for the Regent first year representatives next to us. This was my seventh day tabling for the Obama campaign, and I can say without a doubt that this was by far the busiest I have seen it. In a period of about one hour, we had over 25 people register. In total we registered 32 people, almost all of them either leaning towards Obama, or (far more often) extremely excited to vote for him. For most of the time, it was so busy that we actually had to expand to nearby tables, which I claimed in the typical way recognized by international law; by placing an American flag on them. There was one unfortunate moment, when someone came who was quite irate that we had an Obama banner across our table. Apparently he was under the impression that voter registration had to be completely non partisan. However, by that point the table was so crowded that people couldn't actually see it anyhow, so I saw no harm in taking it down.

Ending on the typical happy note that I like to, I now get to introduce to you all the first two UBC Obamanauts, two wonderful women that will be accompanying me to Las Vegas next week to help campaign for Obama, Bridget (left), and Julia (right). I figure I should let them do it in their own words, so without further delay here they are;

Hi, my name is Julia Hoffman, I am 19 years old, and a second year at UBC. I plan to be a geography major, in the new environmental sustainability BA program (a mixture of environmental and humanistic/political geography). I'm from Santa Fe, NM. One of my main concerns is global warming and the environment. Considering the United States emits about 25 percent of the world greenhouse gases, despite being only 5 percent of the world population, things really need to change, and fast. Aside from agreeing with just about everything that Barack Obama stands for, I'm particularly passionate about his policies to reduce our dependency on foreign oil and other Co2(+)-emitting energy sources that cause air pollution and global warming. Studying and living in Canada, I feel isolated from the hustle and bustle going on this election season. I believe that this is a crucial election which could define the way in which the United States is viewed by the rest of the world as well as the course of action in the environment, and I want to help in any way that I can. I recently heard (and don't quote me on this) that those who are only now registering to vote plan to vote for Obama. If that's the case then I plan to register as many people as I possibly can in the short time that I'll be campaigning.

Hi, my name is Bridget Ehrman-Solberg and I am a 19 year old second year student at UBC interested in studying International Relations. I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and continued to live there until the end of high school. Having grown up throughout the Clinton years, I felt and saw the transition into the Bush administration. I am thoroughly fed up with how our country has negatively changed internationally and in our own economy. Barack Obama sends a message of positive change that I believe will allow our country to meet its full potential both at home and on an international level. I am excited to say that this will be the first election that I will cast a vote, not only because I know have a voice that can be heard but because of who I get to vote for.

Clubs Day #1

Today was the beginning of Club Days at UBC, and I have to admit, I have been having a nice big mental countdown for it. The Yanks Anonymous (and unofficially UBC for Change) table was placed in the ballroom. We have been put in the 'political room' with a bunch of really cool neighbors. Right next to us is the Radical Beer Faction, which remind me of a wonderful hybrid of Reed College's quasi communist organization the Reed Kommunal Shit Kollective, and the nationalistic Beer Nation. Across from us (kind of) was the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights group. I will be the first to admit that i do not agree with this group on many (any) things. I find that a large part of their message ignores many of the facts of the Israel/Palestine conflict. These disagreements aside, I would like to commend one of their members, my friend Omar Badi-us Zaman who is one of those rare people who is able to honestly listen to what another person is saying, even if he disagrees, a skill that I often wish I was stronger in. Next to them was the Spartacus student group, to UBC socialist/communist group aka a bunch of raging loonies. These are a group of people who among other things, support Iran's 'right' to nuclear weapons, criticize the Dhali Lama as an imperialist tool, and believe amnesty international is part of some international capitalist conspiracy. I realized while having a conversation with one of them how hard it is to have a discussion when you have absolutely no common ground to begin with. Also nearby were my friends at the Israel Awareness table. It takes a lot of guts for them to do what they do on a Canadian campus, I should know, I have spent the past two years of clubs days sitting there having to deal with the people who have issues with the state of Israel. It was nice to see Paul Curran, Freeman Poritz, and Corey Lerman kickin some tail in debates in many a forum.


The Yanks Anonymous table was pretty fun, as always there was a lot of enthusiasm for Barak Obama. Billy made some awesome new shirts that are going for 20 bucks (they are American apparel and really cool) and you should buy one NOW. I did get to have a wonderful conversation with two women from Washington about why they should vote for Obama. I found that they really didnt respond well to talking about how crazy Palin was, but instead liked they liked how I talked about the inspiration that the Obama campaign has given me, and that his administration will fail without us willing to make contributions to society.

Barack Obama released an amazing video today, and I encourage you all to watch it

Saturday after the fact

I continued my work with newly inspired vigor on Saturday at English Bay to where I was registering voters. I worked with Paul who I had met on Thursday and Amy who is not American, but a big fan of Barack Obama. The day was nowhere near as busy as Thursday, we only registered 15 people, but I got to demo my new fundraising gimmick: Change for Change. We raised about 100 dollars for the trip to Nevada which considering how slow it was, was quite a bit.

The day was quite different from Thursday at UBC. Thursday at UBC was a constantly busy, with a lot of traffic and tons of and tons of Americans needing to register. Saturday on the other hand had relatively low traffic, but spending a sunny day on the beach was anything but a waste. We had a lot of people register, many were first time voters, a lot of whom did not even know they could vote. A shout out to my buddy Tito, whose father turns out (i did not know this) to be from Georgia. The downside was I got to see for the first time a real ugly side to Canadians. I was completely taken back by how some people reacted. When asked "Excuse me, are you by chance an American citizen?" I received more "I hate Americans" than "Why yes, I am". I am not sure why there is so much hatred towards the American people in Vancouver, but I found it quite saddening.

Finaly, on a happy note, Tina is back on SNL with what will probably go down as one of the greatest skits of all time

Nevada begins

Its always nice when you can announce something amazing that you are going to do on your blog, however it appears that I have been scooped on my own story. Last thursday I met Paul Z., a really cool fellow Obama supporter. We were tabling together most of the day for the Democrats Abroad at UBC and we registered almost 100 people to vote for November, it was an amazing experience. He told me how he was going to spend the next two months in Colorado campaigning for Barack Obama and I was inspired. While I wish I could go on a two month adventure like Paul, I decided that day to do my part to help change America. During the day, it came to me to try and organize a trip for American students in British Columbia, many who I am sure feel as guilty as I do for not being able to help much with the campaign, to travel to the swing state of Nevada to volunteer with the Obama campaign.

The state of Nevada has a voter registration deadline of October 6th, meaning the days leading up to that deadline will be extremly frantic. The Obama campaign is in desperate need of volunteers for that time to get out and help rock the vote. My goal is to bring atleast 10 students from UBC, Simon Fraser, and UVic to Las Vegas from October 2nd to October 7th to help with the final push. The logistics are daunting. In the next 17 days, I have to find as many students as I can who can commit to coming, as well as raise as much money as I can to help subsidize the trip. The cost looks like it will be around $350 per person, but I would like to make it under $100, and free to those who need it. I will be posting periodic updates to how this quest is going, and I will need all the luck I can get

Barbara Walters Throws Down

Today on what is typically an 'easy' interview with the ladies of the view, John McCain got blindsided by Barbara Walters, one of the best interviewers in the game. She pressed him on Sarah Palin asking him how exactly she would change washington, being that it wouldnt be the economy or housing. When he responded by saying the democrats, the republicans, and even the independents, Barbara asked "How? What will she do? What is she going to reform specifically, senator?". He answered by talking about how she cut earmarks to her state, and sold off the airplane on EBay during which, Walters interrupted saying "She sold the airplane at a loss".

I guess what this means is we wont be seeing Palin on the view any time soon

Palin joke

Q: Whats the difference between Sarah Palin and a pitbull?
A: A pitbull only needs to be euthinized if they bite someone

I love this man

All Kinds of Awesome