Luxembourg’s national debt is about 38 times its annual GDP and people have the highest standard of living in the world. The U.S. debt is less than annual GDP and people have a more middling income. Compared with Luxembourg, Ireland, and most of Europe and the Third World, the American debt problem is nonexistent.

The asking price on this 2-bedroom flat in San Francisco is $2,000 more than Canadian investors just paid for the 80,000-seat Silverdome in Detroit, the former home of the Lions and the Pistons. Built in 1975 for $55.7 million, it sold for just $583,000, including over 125 acres of surrounding property.

Mr. Keillor cuts to the marrow of the issue:

“Any legislative body in which 41 senators from rural states that together represent 10 percent of the population can filibuster you to death is going to be flat-footed, on the verge of paralysis, no matter what. Anytime 10 percent of the people can stop 90 percent, it’s like driving a bus with a brake pedal for each passenger. That’s why Congress has a public approval rating of 25 percent.

Health care is much too complicated for Congress.”

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Weirdos:

A good story from Sandro Contenta at GlobalPost.com:

“Laughs aside, the American tendency to treat policy debates as life and death struggles over ‘the American way of life’ reminds many Canadians, rightly or wrongly, of how lucky they are to be living north of the border. It’s hard not to feel civically more evolved when, in some U.S. states, people can legally show up at presidential speeches sporting handguns or assault rifles.

U.S. culture wars, in other words, often reinforce Canada’s national identity.”

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Everybody’s doing it.

Interesting Washington Post article on the largest cash crop on the continent:

“Mexico produced 35 million pounds of marijuana last year, according to government estimates. On a hidden hilltop field in Mexico’s Sinaloa state, reachable by donkey, a pound of pot might earn a farmer $25. The wholesale price for the same pound in Phoenix is $550, and so the Mexican cartels could be selling $20 billion worth of marijuana in the U.S. market each year.”

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