All right, perhaps it isn't really the "best news ever". Getting a full-time permanent union job would probably the best news ever for your correspondant. But this is certainly the most hilarious news of the week:
Despite the title, it's an article about the F-35 fighter jets. The same F-35 fighter jets that The Harper Government rammed up the budget's wrong end dry. The same F-35 fighter jets that won't function in the Arctic because the satellites that support their systems will be out of touch. Or something. The same F-35 fighter jets that are already late and over budget and were never gonna have any practical applications to begin with.
Now why is this article so funny? In case you're not gonna read it, it's because it's not just the Canadian public that wants nothing to do with them. Apparently, neither does the US Navy. Because the US Navy doesn't want to waste that kind of money on an airplane either, and because it doesn't meet their needs either. Which leads your correspondant to wonder, does anyone actually think this project is the solution to his needs? Wait a minute... Who needs a ridiculously expensive war machine anyway? Barack Obama, with his Nobel Peace Prize? I mean, if you'd said George W. Bush, I could see why George W. Bush would waste his country's dwindling credit-worthiness on this kind of useless gadget. It's not like he ever got a Nobel Peace Prize. (And not like Stephen Harper will ever get one either, unlike Liberal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson.)
I guess the less-funny part of the news is that Canada is still buying them. Better news would be that we got rid of that contract and put the money in, say, health care. But that will have to wait until the NDP forms the next government. By which time the F-35s probably won't be delivered yet, so there's hope yet.
- Trucks, not limos, The Economist, 28 June 2012
Despite the title, it's an article about the F-35 fighter jets. The same F-35 fighter jets that The Harper Government rammed up the budget's wrong end dry. The same F-35 fighter jets that won't function in the Arctic because the satellites that support their systems will be out of touch. Or something. The same F-35 fighter jets that are already late and over budget and were never gonna have any practical applications to begin with.
Now why is this article so funny? In case you're not gonna read it, it's because it's not just the Canadian public that wants nothing to do with them. Apparently, neither does the US Navy. Because the US Navy doesn't want to waste that kind of money on an airplane either, and because it doesn't meet their needs either. Which leads your correspondant to wonder, does anyone actually think this project is the solution to his needs? Wait a minute... Who needs a ridiculously expensive war machine anyway? Barack Obama, with his Nobel Peace Prize? I mean, if you'd said George W. Bush, I could see why George W. Bush would waste his country's dwindling credit-worthiness on this kind of useless gadget. It's not like he ever got a Nobel Peace Prize. (And not like Stephen Harper will ever get one either, unlike Liberal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson.)
I guess the less-funny part of the news is that Canada is still buying them. Better news would be that we got rid of that contract and put the money in, say, health care. But that will have to wait until the NDP forms the next government. By which time the F-35s probably won't be delivered yet, so there's hope yet.
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