... persuaded Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, to table the act until January
Why does American English use the verb table in this way? Yes, I know, different dialects of English are equally valid, but I'm just curious about how it makes sense to use to table to mean to set aside and not consider?
When I say "he will table the bill tomorrow", meaning "he will submit the bill for active consideration, tomorrow", I picture a metaphorical table that everyone is sitting around while discussing things. When an American English speaker says "he will table the bill tomorrow", meaning "he will remove the bill from consideration, tomorrow", what do they picture? Is a metaphorical table in a dusty corner of a basement being pictured?
You make a good point. I was thinking that if the US government was using the old (perfectly good) rules, where it is not illegal to be fighting against the US in a war and if the government alleges someone is doing something "unlawful" then it prosecutes them in court instead of creating a special "unlawful combatant" status that it can label anyone with by fiat and detain them without habeas corpus or a real trial, then I have enough faith in a mostly impartial US justice system to expect that non-uniformed Iraqi insurgents would not be found guilty of espionage simply for picking up a gun to repel invaders and not having a uniform. If this policy (i.e. normal rules) were (re)instituted, then I expect the government wouldn't even bother trying to prosecute most detainees, and would treat most as POWs. I do think that any detainees who could be proven to have specifically targetted civilians with car bombs or executed captives, for examples, should legitimately be found guilty of war crimes.
And, for the record, I think it's very, very wrong to house these guys at Gitmo. This "new kind of enemy stuff" is pure bullshit. Enemy combatants, who disguise themselves as civilians, are spies. Spies are supposed to be *executed*, not detained. I was thinking about this a few days ago; I agree with you. Generally, captured enemy combatants, whether part of a state's military, an irregular militia, etc should be detained and treated in accordance with the Geneva conventions as prisoners of war. However, if the US government claims that some of them were "unlawful combatants" or disguised as civilians then they should be brought to a civilian trial*. If they are convicted of spying, which fighting while disguised as civilians usually qualifies as, then, sure, execute them.
This would result in the worst detainees at Guantanamo being, with appropriate evidence, convicted and held accountable, instead of being detained indefinitely as US expense. I think it would also result in many detainees, if the US government has no evidence of them doing anything other than fighting openly as part of a militia or tribal force against the United States, being held as regular prisoners of war.
* - In modern time, I believe that the US has tried accused spies in civilian courts, unless, of course, they were US military members accused of spying.
Honestly, is any "XXXXX caught modifying wikipedia" article really newsworthy nowadays? It's not the fact that Wikipedia was edited that makes this story newsworthy. I agree that stories saying "an article about X was edited by an editor with an IP address belonging to X", which we have seen a lot of recently, are not really interesting.
But this story is newsworthy because, allegedly, a US military officer, as part of his paid duties, was removing information from Wikipedia, and other websites, that put the detention camp at Guantanamo in a bad light or that (apparently) gave more information than the U.S. military wanted. That sort of thing would be just as newsworthy if a US military officer, as part of his duties, impersonated a civilian journalist to write newspaper columns.
So what happens if people on the inside are the only ones who know the real truth about a certain subject? Wikipedia is not the place for original research; they have a policy against it. If you're the only one with firsthand knowledge of an event, or if you have made a new discovery, or even if you have some new well-argued analysis, then the thing to do is to publish it elsewhere (newspaper, book, website, press release) and, if they think it's worthwhile, others will add this information to an article on wikipedia and cite you.
How about a ballot like this, marked with a pencil? And after you mark it, you fold it and present it to a poll worker, who looks at the folded ballot and verifies there is only one, valid ballot and initials it, then hands it back to you and you put it in a simple cardboard ballot box.
The votes are counted at each polling place by the poll workers, and representatives of each candidate can observe, and it is open to public observation.
Is this just too simple?
The federal goverment can pass the law (because criminal law is a federal matter) but it is up to the provincial attorney-generals to enforce it (because policing and maintaining law and order is a provincial matter). Not to long ago, while the Liberals formed the federal government and wanted the "long gun" registry funded and enforced, the governments of a few provinces said "fine, but we're not going to devote any resources to it, or prosecute anyone for failing to register their rifles."
This is why I am very glad that Canada has laws regulating how much a person or group can donate to a politician. It's pretty low, on the order of about $1000 that a person can donate to any one candidate and about $1000 to any political party, and banning any donations from corporations and unions to any candidate or party. There is also public financing, each political party receiving a fixed amount of money per vote attained in the last election.
The reason why BBH's comment makes me glad about Canada's laws on this subject is that although Canada might have as many idiot politicians as the U.S., but at least there's not nearly as many idiot politicians in the pockets of big corporations or other monied interests.
Ah, OK. Based on your description of travelling there, I'm sure that you meant just "London". London, Ontario is a good-size city (by Canadian standards), and is about 2 hours northeast of Detroit (about halfway between Detroit and Toronto).
You definitely didn't go anywhere in Quebec from Detroit in a few hours. Driving from Detroit to the Quebec provincial border is about the equivalent (in time and distance) to driving from Detroit to St. Louis, Missouri.:-)
Indictable Offence: An offence which can only be tried on an indictment after a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is a prima facie case to answer or by a grand jury. In trials for indictable offences, the accused normally has the right to a jury trial. Referred to as "felonies" in the U.S.A.
Summary Conviction Offence: An offence which can be tried without an indictment. In practice, this often means a trial without a jury, jury trials being reserved for indictable offences. Summary offences are often "petty crimes" or crimes that are not considered very severe such as most driving offences.
In this context the word "dominion" means "nation".
More specifically, in this context the word "dominion" means "kingdom". Although, by necessity, the British North America Act of 1867 which created the Canadian federation and formed (and still forms) the main written chunk of our constitution was passed by the British Parliment, the text of that Act was conceived and written almost entirely by Canadians.
The one main exception to this: as written by the Canadian Fathers of Confederation, the Act referred to "One Kingdom under the Name of Canada", because that's a concise and accurate description of what Canada was and is. The term "Dominion" was substituted as an obscure synonym for "Kingdom", at the insistence of the British government, so as not to provoke a certain republic to Canada's south that had a large army and had just finished with a messy civil war.
Let's see - once you pass 500 readers per blog, you have to get registered?
No! Read the comments here by the countless people who've actually read the relevant portions of the bill.
If a lobbying group is paying you to blog to tell people to write their congressmen about issue X, then you need to register as lobbyist. In other words, if a lobbying group is basically "laundering" their influence indirectly through you to the politicians, by giving money to you and having you tell your readers to exert pressure on legislators, instead of the lobbying group directly exerting pressure/influence on legislators using the money directly, then yes, you are a lobbyist.
I think a newspaper columnist would need to register as a lobbyist, if they were being paid by some group to write a column telling their readers to contact their congressmen about some political issue. As I understand it, that would be the circumstance under which a blogger would need to be a registered lobbyist. A blogger just talking about political issues, with greater than 500 readers, would not need to register.
This is not at all a "move worthy of MythBusters" as the submitter stated. Mythbusters is entertaining and generally informative television, and this Danish study sounds solid, but the methodologies are totally different, for the obvious reason that sifting through hundreds of thousands of medical records accumulated over many years and applying complex statistical models to them does not make for compelling television.
the CBC is far worse. It's basically anti-America TV
Mr A. C. is right! Canadians are a bunch of socialists, with their medicine and gun control! Me and A.C. know this, because Bill O'Reilly told us so, and he's from the only truly objective, balanced news channel, Fox News.
O'Reilly pointed out that because of their socialist ways, Canada is teetering at the brink of bankruptcy. O'Reilly even said he might declare a boycott of Canada, which would ruin their economy, just like his French boycott did to France.
Sorry - I accidentally posted this as an A.C. above.
Even more significant, in my opinion, is that the judge in this case said the reason why he wouldn't give a court order for the ISPs to release names is that he didn't consider this copyright infringement.
Specifically, he said:
"No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings. They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer users via a P2P service."
To me, this sounds like he's saying that standard P2P file sharing is not copyright infringement. It sounds like as long don't actively upload the file to someone else, or personally authorize them to download it from you, then its OK.
Quebec has lots of hydro power, sure, but it wreaks havoc with northern ecosystems.
Whoa! I was never arguing that we must all switch to hydroelectric power and drive only pure electric cars. I was merely responding to the original poster in this thread, who claimed that all electric power comes from fossil fuels.
Liberal is not a dirty word.
Come to Quebec, and you'll change your mind.
As a Canadian, I am well aware that "Liberal" can be a dirty name! But I hope you agree with me that "liberal" is not a dirty word, as it is almost always used in the States.
He might be making a strawman, but he's not outright lying as you are.
I'd like to briefly defend myself: I wasn't lying. I honestly have never heard any environmental complaints about wind-generated power. So yes, I was unknowingly ignorant about these claims, but I didn't try to deceive anyone.
I'm sick and tired of people thinking all these 'green' energy solutions are a cure-all.
I agree with you. I'd like to make it clear that my post above, I was trying to acknowledge that there are negative environmental impacts from most potential sources of power. At the same time, I was arguing against the poster's claim that thus all power sources are equally bad in the eyes of those whacky environmentalists, and thus we should just use whatever. He was trying to paint the issue in black-in-white, where you either thought we should stick with fossil fuels, or else you were a dirty environmentalist. I was tring to show a reasonable moderate position of being in favour of a gradual switch to other sources of power.
He may have some very liberal ideas on some issues, but I wouldn't classify Maher as a liberal - he also has some true conservative ideas. He's a self-described libertarian. Just hating George W. Bush's doesn't make you a liberal, although it can get you kicked off the radio airwaves.
First of all, you're making a strawman of environmentalists -- I've never heard anyone seriously complain that a slow-moving wind turbine might decapitate a passing bald eagle.
Besides, even if environmentalists are all a bunch of extreme crazies, as you imply, and it really would be best to ignore them completely, then that doesn't mean we should purposely go out of our way to do the opposite of everything they say!
I'm not saying that fossil-fuels are evil and we should all stop using them, cold turkey, as of tomorrow. And I'm sure most environmentalists don't either. What about the perfectly reasonable position of:
1. Recognizing that fossil fuels cause air pollution.
2. Recognizing that there exist other possible sources of electricity that cause no or much less air pollution.
3. Concluding that as these other sources become more cost-efficient and practical, using more of these other sources and less fossil fuels is a Good Thing.
As for your implicit claim that even though fossil fuels cause air pollution, dams affect salmon breeding habits, so therefore both are equally evil, or so those zany environmentalists claim -- call me crazy, but I take the pragmatic view that, yes, hurting the poor salmon is sad, but not nearly as bad as air pollution which:
1. Contributes to the greenhouse effect, affecting most all terestrial life on Earth (including me!)
2. Causes smog, which could affect me!
3. Causes acid rain, which has wiped out virtually all life in some lakes, affecting those poor salmon of yours!!!
So, as you can see, even if you're not a looney environmentalist, there are plenty of good selfish (i.e. dirty neoconservatist) reasons to take the entirely radical jump of a gradual switch from fossil fuels to other sources of power.
Electric cars still require electricity which is produced by fossil fuel burning power plants.
Firstly, the company mentioned in the article description is called Hydro Quebec for a reason - much of the electric power they produce is hydroelectric.
Secondly, a car that burns fossil fuels directly will always have to burn fossil fuels, but a car that runs on electricity, even if it currently pollutes indirectly via fossil fuel burning power plants, will immediately be able to take advantage of more environmentally-friendly produced electricity as soon as it becomes available.
Hopefully the public is starting to wise up and we can build new nuclear plants again, and also wind is starting to be used in North America. And here are some nice geeky pics of the wind turbine in Toronto being constructed and some views from the top.
No matter what Jon Katz and Michael Moore would like you to believe, your chance of getting brutally killed in or around an American school is far lower today...
I think you have large misconception about Moore. In Bowling For Columbine he looks at the issues of youth/school violence and gun violence in general. He doesn't come to a conclusion about the cause of this, but he does conclude that:
a) It isn't caused by the prevalence of guns; and
b) It isn't caused by violent movies, games, or "evil" music.
However, he does suggest that if anything, the over-reporting and sensationalism of violence by the media in the U.S. (which is the very thing you accused Moore of doing), actually contributes to such violence by causing people to be overly fearful.
MYTH: Americans would have trouble getting in to see a doctor.
FACT: Canadians, who live in a single-payer system, see their primary care physicians more often than Americans do now. There are more doctors per capita in Canada than there are in the United States. Yet the cost of physician services in Canada is one-third less than it is in the United States. About half the cost savings in Canada comes not from offering less care but by reducing insurance overhead and paperwork. The rest of the savings comes from allocating money to pay for expensive equipment so there is less excess capacity and duplication. Ninety-six percent of Canadians prefer their health-care system to the U.S. model.
MYTH: Patients wouldn't be able to choose their own physician.
FACT: According to experts, a single-payer plan would give patients more choice than they currently have in most cases. The United States is the only developed country heading in the direction of less choice. Other countries are building more choice into their systems.
MYTH: The United States has the best health care in the world.
FACT: The United States has higher infant mortality, higher surgical mortality and lower life expectancy than Canada. The United States has a much lower rate of access to primary care doctors than Canada. Canada has the same acute care bed-to-population ratio as the United States. Patient satisfaction, quality of care and outcome of care in Canada equal or exceed that in the United States, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office. For this lower quality, Americans pay 40 percent per capita more than Canadians do on health care.
MYTH: There would be waiting lists for surgeries and high-tech procedures, which is why Canadians come to the United States to get health services.
FACT: The United States has waiting lists for specialty care, too. Canadians rarely come to the United States for health care. Less than 1 percent of Canada's health budget goes to paying for care Canadians get in the United States. Canada's waiting-list problem stems largely from underfunding, which is being corrected now. Waiting times would likely be no longer in the United States than they are now, because we would still spend much more than other countries do on health care and still have many more specialists and capacity.
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... persuaded Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, to table the act until JanuaryWhy does American English use the verb table in this way? Yes, I know, different dialects of English are equally valid, but I'm just curious about how it makes sense to use to table to mean to set aside and not consider?
When I say "he will table the bill tomorrow", meaning "he will submit the bill for active consideration, tomorrow", I picture a metaphorical table that everyone is sitting around while discussing things. When an American English speaker says "he will table the bill tomorrow", meaning "he will remove the bill from consideration, tomorrow", what do they picture? Is a metaphorical table in a dusty corner of a basement being pictured?
You make a good point. I was thinking that if the US government was using the old (perfectly good) rules, where it is not illegal to be fighting against the US in a war and if the government alleges someone is doing something "unlawful" then it prosecutes them in court instead of creating a special "unlawful combatant" status that it can label anyone with by fiat and detain them without habeas corpus or a real trial, then I have enough faith in a mostly impartial US justice system to expect that non-uniformed Iraqi insurgents would not be found guilty of espionage simply for picking up a gun to repel invaders and not having a uniform. If this policy (i.e. normal rules) were (re)instituted, then I expect the government wouldn't even bother trying to prosecute most detainees, and would treat most as POWs. I do think that any detainees who could be proven to have specifically targetted civilians with car bombs or executed captives, for examples, should legitimately be found guilty of war crimes.
This would result in the worst detainees at Guantanamo being, with appropriate evidence, convicted and held accountable, instead of being detained indefinitely as US expense. I think it would also result in many detainees, if the US government has no evidence of them doing anything other than fighting openly as part of a militia or tribal force against the United States, being held as regular prisoners of war.
* - In modern time, I believe that the US has tried accused spies in civilian courts, unless, of course, they were US military members accused of spying.
But this story is newsworthy because, allegedly, a US military officer, as part of his paid duties, was removing information from Wikipedia, and other websites, that put the detention camp at Guantanamo in a bad light or that (apparently) gave more information than the U.S. military wanted. That sort of thing would be just as newsworthy if a US military officer, as part of his duties, impersonated a civilian journalist to write newspaper columns.
How about a ballot like this, marked with a pencil? And after you mark it, you fold it and present it to a poll worker, who looks at the folded ballot and verifies there is only one, valid ballot and initials it, then hands it back to you and you put it in a simple cardboard ballot box. The votes are counted at each polling place by the poll workers, and representatives of each candidate can observe, and it is open to public observation. Is this just too simple?
You can send letters to senators and MPs for free (no stamps required) if you address your letters to them at the federal Parliament in Ottawa.
That is what I was thinking when I read this.
The federal goverment can pass the law (because criminal law is a federal matter) but it is up to the provincial attorney-generals to enforce it (because policing and maintaining law and order is a provincial matter). Not to long ago, while the Liberals formed the federal government and wanted the "long gun" registry funded and enforced, the governments of a few provinces said "fine, but we're not going to devote any resources to it, or prosecute anyone for failing to register their rifles."
The reason why BBH's comment makes me glad about Canada's laws on this subject is that although Canada might have as many idiot politicians as the U.S., but at least there's not nearly as many idiot politicians in the pockets of big corporations or other monied interests.
Ah, OK. Based on your description of travelling there, I'm sure that you meant just "London". London, Ontario is a good-size city (by Canadian standards), and is about 2 hours northeast of Detroit (about halfway between Detroit and Toronto).
You definitely didn't go anywhere in Quebec from Detroit in a few hours. Driving from Detroit to the Quebec provincial border is about the equivalent (in time and distance) to driving from Detroit to St. Louis, Missouri. :-)
Where is New London, Ontario? I'm from southwestern Ontario and I've never heard of it, nor can I find it on the online map sites I checked.
Indictable Offence: An offence which can only be tried on an indictment after a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is a prima facie case to answer or by a grand jury. In trials for indictable offences, the accused normally has the right to a jury trial. Referred to as "felonies" in the U.S.A.
Summary Conviction Offence: An offence which can be tried without an indictment. In practice, this often means a trial without a jury, jury trials being reserved for indictable offences. Summary offences are often "petty crimes" or crimes that are not considered very severe such as most driving offences.
In this context the word "dominion" means "nation".
More specifically, in this context the word "dominion" means "kingdom". Although, by necessity, the British North America Act of 1867 which created the Canadian federation and formed (and still forms) the main written chunk of our constitution was passed by the British Parliment, the text of that Act was conceived and written almost entirely by Canadians.
The one main exception to this: as written by the Canadian Fathers of Confederation, the Act referred to "One Kingdom under the Name of Canada", because that's a concise and accurate description of what Canada was and is. The term "Dominion" was substituted as an obscure synonym for "Kingdom", at the insistence of the British government, so as not to provoke a certain republic to Canada's south that had a large army and had just finished with a messy civil war.
No! Read the comments here by the countless people who've actually read the relevant portions of the bill.
If a lobbying group is paying you to blog to tell people to write their congressmen about issue X, then you need to register as lobbyist. In other words, if a lobbying group is basically "laundering" their influence indirectly through you to the politicians, by giving money to you and having you tell your readers to exert pressure on legislators, instead of the lobbying group directly exerting pressure/influence on legislators using the money directly, then yes, you are a lobbyist.
I think a newspaper columnist would need to register as a lobbyist, if they were being paid by some group to write a column telling their readers to contact their congressmen about some political issue. As I understand it, that would be the circumstance under which a blogger would need to be a registered lobbyist. A blogger just talking about political issues, with greater than 500 readers, would not need to register.
This is not at all a "move worthy of MythBusters" as the submitter stated. Mythbusters is entertaining and generally informative television, and this Danish study sounds solid, but the methodologies are totally different, for the obvious reason that sifting through hundreds of thousands of medical records accumulated over many years and applying complex statistical models to them does not make for compelling television.
Mr A. C. is right! Canadians are a bunch of socialists, with their medicine and gun control! Me and A.C. know this, because Bill O'Reilly told us so, and he's from the only truly objective, balanced news channel, Fox News.
O'Reilly pointed out that because of their socialist ways, Canada is teetering at the brink of bankruptcy. O'Reilly even said he might declare a boycott of Canada, which would ruin their economy, just like his French boycott did to France.
Sorry - I accidentally posted this as an A.C. above.
Specifically, he said:
To me, this sounds like he's saying that standard P2P file sharing is not copyright infringement. It sounds like as long don't actively upload the file to someone else, or personally authorize them to download it from you, then its OK.
Whoa! I was never arguing that we must all switch to hydroelectric power and drive only pure electric cars. I was merely responding to the original poster in this thread, who claimed that all electric power comes from fossil fuels.
As a Canadian, I am well aware that "Liberal" can be a dirty name! But I hope you agree with me that "liberal" is not a dirty word, as it is almost always used in the States.
I'd like to briefly defend myself: I wasn't lying. I honestly have never heard any environmental complaints about wind-generated power. So yes, I was unknowingly ignorant about these claims, but I didn't try to deceive anyone.
He may have some very liberal ideas on some issues, but I wouldn't classify Maher as a liberal - he also has some true conservative ideas. He's a self-described libertarian. Just hating George W. Bush's doesn't make you a liberal, although it can get you kicked off the radio airwaves.
First of all, you're making a strawman of environmentalists -- I've never heard anyone seriously complain that a slow-moving wind turbine might decapitate a passing bald eagle.
Besides, even if environmentalists are all a bunch of extreme crazies, as you imply, and it really would be best to ignore them completely, then that doesn't mean we should purposely go out of our way to do the opposite of everything they say!
I'm not saying that fossil-fuels are evil and we should all stop using them, cold turkey, as of tomorrow. And I'm sure most environmentalists don't either. What about the perfectly reasonable position of:
1. Recognizing that fossil fuels cause air pollution.
2. Recognizing that there exist other possible sources of electricity that cause no or much less air pollution.
3. Concluding that as these other sources become more cost-efficient and practical, using more of these other sources and less fossil fuels is a Good Thing.
As for your implicit claim that even though fossil fuels cause air pollution, dams affect salmon breeding habits, so therefore both are equally evil, or so those zany environmentalists claim -- call me crazy, but I take the pragmatic view that, yes, hurting the poor salmon is sad, but not nearly as bad as air pollution which:
1. Contributes to the greenhouse effect, affecting most all terestrial life on Earth (including me!) 2. Causes smog, which could affect me! 3. Causes acid rain, which has wiped out virtually all life in some lakes, affecting those poor salmon of yours!!!
So, as you can see, even if you're not a looney environmentalist, there are plenty of good selfish (i.e. dirty neoconservatist) reasons to take the entirely radical jump of a gradual switch from fossil fuels to other sources of power.
Firstly, the company mentioned in the article description is called Hydro Quebec for a reason - much of the electric power they produce is hydroelectric.
Secondly, a car that burns fossil fuels directly will always have to burn fossil fuels, but a car that runs on electricity, even if it currently pollutes indirectly via fossil fuel burning power plants, will immediately be able to take advantage of more environmentally-friendly produced electricity as soon as it becomes available.
Hopefully the public is starting to wise up and we can build new nuclear plants again, and also wind is starting to be used in North America. And here are some nice geeky pics of the wind turbine in Toronto being constructed and some views from the top.
I think you have large misconception about Moore. In Bowling For Columbine he looks at the issues of youth/school violence and gun violence in general. He doesn't come to a conclusion about the cause of this, but he does conclude that:
a) It isn't caused by the prevalence of guns; and
b) It isn't caused by violent movies, games, or "evil" music.
However, he does suggest that if anything, the over-reporting and sensationalism of violence by the media in the U.S. (which is the very thing you accused Moore of doing), actually contributes to such violence by causing people to be overly fearful.
From Alice in Universal Health Care Land:
MYTH: Americans would have trouble getting in to see a doctor. FACT: Canadians, who live in a single-payer system, see their primary care physicians more often than Americans do now. There are more doctors per capita in Canada than there are in the United States. Yet the cost of physician services in Canada is one-third less than it is in the United States. About half the cost savings in Canada comes not from offering less care but by reducing insurance overhead and paperwork. The rest of the savings comes from allocating money to pay for expensive equipment so there is less excess capacity and duplication. Ninety-six percent of Canadians prefer their health-care system to the U.S. model.
MYTH: Patients wouldn't be able to choose their own physician. FACT: According to experts, a single-payer plan would give patients more choice than they currently have in most cases. The United States is the only developed country heading in the direction of less choice. Other countries are building more choice into their systems.
MYTH: The United States has the best health care in the world. FACT: The United States has higher infant mortality, higher surgical mortality and lower life expectancy than Canada. The United States has a much lower rate of access to primary care doctors than Canada. Canada has the same acute care bed-to-population ratio as the United States. Patient satisfaction, quality of care and outcome of care in Canada equal or exceed that in the United States, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office. For this lower quality, Americans pay 40 percent per capita more than Canadians do on health care.
MYTH: There would be waiting lists for surgeries and high-tech procedures, which is why Canadians come to the United States to get health services. FACT: The United States has waiting lists for specialty care, too. Canadians rarely come to the United States for health care. Less than 1 percent of Canada's health budget goes to paying for care Canadians get in the United States. Canada's waiting-list problem stems largely from underfunding, which is being corrected now. Waiting times would likely be no longer in the United States than they are now, because we would still spend much more than other countries do on health care and still have many more specialists and capacity.