Monday, March 8, 2010

Voting with Your Feet

Sarah Palin, giving a speech in Calgary, talked about what it was like growing up close to the Canadian border:
“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” she said. “And I think now, isn't that ironic?”
Ironic indeed.  And I can think of some other words also. Like clueless, perhaps?

Maybe Canadians should be cracking down on American visitors, who have been streaming across the border to take advantage of their country's excellent health care system, then running back to the US to stir up fear and anger at any attempts to rationalize our own system.  Maybe the Canadians ought to at least ask for an endorsement of their system before they fill prescriptions for hypocritical Americans. 

Sarah Palin's continued campaign against health care reform also reminds me of these protesters:


(photo from CMA)
Posted by Joe Markowitz at 10:57 PM
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7 comments:

  1. you forgot a few facts:

    1. Socialized healthcare started in the Yukon in 1972, Palin was speaking of stuff that happened when she was 5 in the 60s.
    2. The rest of the quote is a little different:

    "I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.”

    Who is clueless?
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  2. Well shame on me then for repeating stuff I read on the internet. And thanks to the Sarah Palin fact checking squad for getting the details of this story out there. But blame the Globe and Mail, which reported the story, if they did not get the context quite right. It's still at least ironic (ironic is what Palin admitted to), and maybe more than ironic, that Sarah Palin now finds herself defending the US healthcare system, and attacking Canada's system, when her family used to use Canadian hospitals.
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  3. Oh, the Globe and Mail knew perfectly well what she said... they simply decided to post only what would make her look badly.

    And if there was no socialized medicine in Canada back in the 60s there is no irony.
    ReplyDelete
  4. Then I'm back to being right that she is clueless, because Sarah is the one who said it is ironic.

    More likely, this is probably just a complete non-story, and not even worth talking about. I should probably delete the whole post, but I really like the protest sign picture. Hey, did you hear that John Roberts is resigning from the Supreme Court?
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  5. The Roberts story is a rumor.
    ReplyDelete
  6. Exactly my point (or maybe it was your point). Bloggers like us need to be careful about blowing non-stories out of proportion. The Roberts story was amazing because it started in a classroom where the professor was trying to make a point about spreading rumors, and it took less than half an hour before the false story spread all over the world.
    ReplyDelete
  7. I had not even heard of it until I read your comment.
    ReplyDelete

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