Canadian health care is good enough for average Canadian citizens, but the political elite demand something better; something that can only be found in the US:

Danny Williams, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, has broken his silence on his decision to undergo heart surgery in the U.S., and the controversy it caused.

Williams, who is recovering at his condo in Sarasota, Fla., said people shouldn’t take his decision to seek medical help outside the country as a reflection on health care in Newfoundland and Labrador. He said he has the “utmost confidence” in the province’s health-care system.

“It’s a bum rap … for someone to try to turn around and say, ‘You know, Williams doesn’t have confidence in his own health-care system because he had to leave the province.’ Well, I had to leave the province because it was recommended to me by my own doctors that for this particular type of surgery I should leave the province.”

So sorry you had to leave the province, Danny; and thanks for the vote of confidence in Canada’s health care system for everyone but you.

Update: Apparently the treatment Williams received is available in Canada.

Is apparently not a Photoshop creation:

From the National Post:

Since last fall, the federal Conservative government has been withdrawing taxpayer funding from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that use their grants to take sides against Israel in the Middle East conflict. Now comes word that last week, Ottawa told the United Nations it would no longer fund the world body’s Palestinian refugee agency. From now on, Canadian aid to Palestinians will be directed to specific projects. We will no longer give lump-sum aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA), since most of that money simply goes straight into the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) general treasury, where it might be used for humanitarian projects or might be used to arm and train terrorists.

This is a bold move for Ottawa, which is the first Western government to cut off funding for UNWRA.

Although UNWRA has long been a biased player in the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is seldom criticized for its incitement of anti-Israeli hatred and violence by Palestinians. It has funded textbooks that deny the right of Israel to exist and paid teachers who call on Palestinian children to push the Jewish state into the sea. It harbours radical Islamists and anti-Semites on its payroll and was even caught in 2004 using its own ambulances to ferry terrorists away from Israeli sites they had just attacked.

First KAIROS and now UNWRA. I await the keening howls of woe from Fred Hiltz and his groupies with considerable anticipation.

She turned up again protesting outside Dick Cheney’s house of all places.

LANGLEY, Virginia  —  A group led by anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has protested near the CIA’s headquarters and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s home in northern Virginia.

They were protesting the use of unmanned drone aircraft to attack al-Qaida and Taliban targets.

The group of about 70 people rallied alongside a highway near the CIA compound Saturday. About half then marched to Cheney’s nearby street and stayed for 20 minutes. Police kept them from going down his street.

Hasn’t anyone told her that Obama and Biden won the election in 2008?

Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy, having the temerity to stand too close to Code Pink, is accused of breaching the peace and threatened with arrest.

In Toronto, home of diversity, tolerance, gay pride and biased policing.

Egypt welcomes a dangerous anti-Western Imam who was deported from France:

PARIS — France on Thursday deported to Egypt a radical imam who for months had been inciting followers in Paris area mosques to rise up against the West, the government said.

Described as dangerous, Ali Ibrahim Al-Sudani was detained and sent back to Egypt under an emergency deportation order, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said in a statement.

But not even Egypt is prepared to put up with George Galloway:

George Galloway deported from Egypt.

George Galloway was deported from Cairo on Friday despite wanting to return to Gaza to help members of a humanitarian convoy who have reportedly been arrested, a spokeswoman for the convoy said.

Plain clothes police officers bundled the Respect MP on to a plane bound for London, said a spokeswoman for the Viva Palestina convoy.

This goes to show that even Egypt sets some limits on whom they will allow to enter their country; George Galloway wasn’t even allowed into Canada – not even if he were confined to Brantford.

From Fox:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the United States is attempting to thwart the return of mankind’s savior, according to reports from Al Arabiya, a television news station based in Dubai.

Ahmadinejad reportedly claims he has documented evidence that the U.S. is blocking the return of Mahdi, the Imam believed by Muslims to be the savior.

“We have documented proof that they believe that a descendant of the prophet of Islam will raise in these parts and he will dry the roots of all injustice in the world,” Ahmadinejad said during a speech on Monday, according to Al Arabiya.

“They have devised all these plans to prevent the coming of the Hidden Imam because they know that the Iranian nation is the one that will prepare the grounds for his coming and will be the supporters of his rule,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

The obvious question is, if the Hidden Imam is to accomplish the relatively ambitious task of removing all injustice from the world, how come he can’t manage to overcome the US’s supposed attempts to prevent his arrival?

According to the Guardian

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world’s peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country’s government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee’s tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I’ve broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks. The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world’s 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th.

Makes me feel proud to be Canadian.