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For fucks sake, Canada, what the hell is going on up there? I mean, we looked up to you as the good North American country, a place of refuge for conscientious objectors and socialized medicine, and now, what with the crack-smoking, the attacks on free media, the high school dropout as the Minister of Education, and wholesale selling of the country’s natural resources to oil and mining interests, it’s like you’ve chosen Silvio Berlusconi, or a Palin as your leader.
Toronto is no Wasllia It is the fifth-biggest municipality in North America and Canada’s biggest and most influential city.  It seems that the day of reckoning is coming for the mayor of that fair city. Rob Ford, the type of chimeric conservative populist who could wring electoral reward out of gaffes and controversies, has been beloved in that Chris Christie way –  of the barbaric, loud, aggressive style. Ford’s run as a politician on the international stage has always been absurdist – his insistence that women who contract HIV must be sleeping with bisexual men, and the infamous  2006 Maple Leafs Game, where Ford  launched into a drunken tirade at a young couple. Ford initially denied ever being at the game, but eventually apologized. Then there is his inability to perform a 5-step drop without falling over like a comedy-relief in a slapstick movie, Rob Ford always seemed a little too good (or bad) to be true.

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So, Obamacare continues its relentless march across America’s computer screens like jack-booted Nazis marching across Europe’s vulnerable underbelly. Under Obamacare – the worst thing since the Holocaust and 9/11 made love and gave birth to the BENGHAZI and IRS scandal twins – everybody is losing all their insurance and has to buy new insurance that costs a million times more and it is bad. When did Obama know that a lot of Americans have really shitty insurance with enormous deductibles and very little coverage that only pretends to be “insurance,” but is really cheap? Why did he say that we could keep our terrible shitty insurance, when we can’t keep it now, because insurance companies are being forced to stop their bait and switch games??

I did a little a digging and found out the exact criteria for why insurance would not be compliant under the ACA:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJOAaBhrWRQ

“It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.”
― P.D. James, A Taste for Death

Autumn is on its way out, folks, not for the season but, for good.

I am in Pennsylvania, in pursuit of the ephemeral “peak color,” the brilliant jewel-toned crimsons, vermilion and topaz and flaming reds that provide a scenic backdrop for the fleeting period between suffocating summers and miserable, sloppy winters. I find something particularly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves, the vapor of one’s breath, air so bracing and clear and crisp you could snap it with your fingers, the mellow sun and  clarity of the stars, the rustle of crispy leaves blowing down the street by gusty winds, the smell of wood smoke, the whole riot of the senses in those giddy weeks leading up to Halloween.

It’s October 28, and the air is definitely not crispy. It’s warm and soggy, and the leaves are green and sallow. “What the hell? I asked my mom as we drove down a road well known for its Autumnal brilliance. “It’s like freaking April!” We went home and did some research and did. not. like. what. we. found. The New England Climate Coalition predicted back in 2008 that if temperatures continue to climb unabated:

“the fall foliage for which the region is famous will disappear as birch, maple, and spruce species migrate north or die out altogether.”

So, that’s that. We just can’t have nice things.

The chemicals that create yellow, gold, and orange colors lie dormant within tree leaves all year long. In the spring and summer, the green color— chlorophyll ,you will recall from 7th grade biology — overwhelms them. Then in autumn, the greens fade in response to shortening days and the underlying colors become visible to the naked eye. Under most conditions, those yellows and pale oranges will emerge in the autumn no matter what. The chemical that produces red leaves – anthocyanin – is different. That color must be produced each year by a precise combination of sugar, temperature, and light. Maple trees are the ones that turn a brilliant, violent, eye-popping red. The sugar levels in maples is already dropping, a phenomenon that has already taken its toll on the Maples, producing more muted reds. Since cold tends to promote the red color,  warmer temperatures during autumn will  impact the level of development.

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This entire story is going to be included in the next Al Qaeda recruiting video.

Here is Utah Boy Scout leader Glenn Taylor, as he infamously filmed his superhuman ability to shove over an ancient, 2,000-pound sandstone with his bare hands at Utah’s Goblin Valley State Park, successfully knocking it to the ground so that it couldn’t kill a hypothetical little kid someday.

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I really have started to believe that Fox News is satire. It’s going to be revealed at some point that this has all been a big hoax put on by The Onion. Answering the first question, Palin speaks for almost two minutes in a single continuous, run on sentence using such disparate talking points she expressed nothing more than a red meat word salad. She should have quit halfway through. She gives the same damn answer to any question she’s asked — “He wants to fundamentally transform America, Benghazi, death panels, emboldening America’s enemies” that she can do it completely wasted. In a cave somewhere near the Pakistan/ Afghanistan border, a new tactic for destroying America is being evaluated: anonymously funding the Tea Party. This stupid interview reminds me of $arah’s breathless, rambling, word frittata speeches when was quitting her job and that time she was standing in front of the turkeys being slaughtered right before Thanksgiving. She talks really fast in this one, though, because dumb ideas appear smarter if they’re coming at you really fast. It’s called the Dopeler Effect.