quote:It’s so like you guys to pesonally attack me for raising good questions.

Well, they’re questions. But anybody would ask those questions. It’s just that you seem to already know all the answers, whose fault the misery is. I say there’ll be time later to sort out the blame and make improvements. But I think YOU are the type who believes everything he is told – that there is always a government answer to every problem, that the poor have no individual responsibility to maintain civility because they are poor. Rape, hot big screens, during a natural disaster? It’s all the fault of corporate America, eh? Come on.

quote:And, as I predicted, you are urging me to leave the country. That is the typical response used by right-wing nationalists such as yourselves in order to silence dissent, and deny the fact that there are massive problems in what we claim is a perfect utopia.

I didn’t urge you to. But the hyperbole you use to discuss this country would certainly call into question your decision to remain here. Why aren’t you and all those who see this as such a pathetic place making tracks for Mexico, or somewhere higher on the scale? It’s just a logical question to someone who finds his homeland so miserable. And who said it’s a perfect Utopia? I bitch about problems in this country all the time. It’s not the perfect place. It wouldn’t be my first choice, actually. But it isn’t anywhere near what you say it is. But with you far-left leaners here, I end up defending its essential integrity, integrity which is evidenced by the masses of people making legal and illegal tracks here every day. Seems you have some essential disagreement with the immigrants who often give up so much to come here. That’s fine, but please acknowledge that your perspective is simply your perspective and that the rest of us are not automaton-simpletons just because we disagree with your view of America.

And we inquire about your reticence to leave in order to silence you??? Ha. One glance at the length of your posts shows this would be a futile effort.

quote:you adamantly stick to a belief system based on nothing else but your own theories: drawn partly from the propaganda fed to us by the administration and the industrial-war complex that brought it to power in 2000 and 2004, and partly on your own nationalist and culturally biased worldviews.

I guess my whole belief system should change because I’ve interacted with the likes of you on this board?? Yeah. I voted Gore in 2000 by the way.

quote:And why, Russ, is self-criticism unacceptable in America? Why do many Americans always respond with a nasty attitude towards self-critique? How are problems and shortcomings supposed to be addressed if we deny their existence? As I said, we think we’re the perfect society, but far from it, we’re not…

It’d be tough to reply to all of this rambling nonsense – have you already drunk more than I tonight? I’ll try. On one end of the scale, there are some Americans who find no fault with their country. On the other end, there are those who find it fashionable to find only fault and who banter incessantly about it, with immense hyperbole. In between is a spectrum of reasoned discussion, where problems are discussed without slandering the nation, without tossing the baby out with the bath. Unfortunately, those on either end tend to think that EVERYONE ELSE can be lumped together as either nationalist nuts or pure Reds – hence your comments on me and Mod. I can pretty much guarantee you that Mod doesn’t remotely resemble the truly ignorant hardline conservatives you would like to associate with the two of us. If this thread is any indication, you have clearly joined one of those end-of-spectrum camps. You simply aren’t going to impress anyone to the right of you by calling this a corrupt, evil nation of simpletons (except for those in your camp, of course.)

Now, I plan to enjoy my 3-day weekend in this imperfect but benevolent country which showers many blessings and opportunities and freedoms upon its people (an opinion I’ve gained in part by living in Germany and by spending enough time in Mexico collectively to justify a residence permit.)

I guess I can only wish you a "less than miserable" weekend, since there are so many problems in your glass-half-empty vision of the country. Too bad all those immigrants who have come here don’t share your misery and aren’t going home – you could hitch a ride out of here with one of them.

Pass the popcorn, dudes!!!!

yawn

quote:Surprise! A Canadian thinks his Canada is a better nation. But let an American say the same about about his nation and he’s accused of being brainswashed, fascist, bigotted, ignorant of the world, etc etc.

What, don’t know about our social programs, content society and INCREASED freedom?

You can’t even download mp3s, possess marijuana, abort freely and frequently or marry the same gender.

I know I am being way to general but that isn’t the point, so spare the semantic arguments.

That is generally true, that we have increased freedom, do you want some specific studies before you agree to the obvious?

Brainwashed and ignorant, yes I do think so.

quote:That’s rather vague, could you please provide some specific examples?

Well, generally, we don’t have quite so many problems. We prefer to sit back and do what we want, not dictate to others. This ties into what I have already outlined above. We don’t tell others who they can and cannot marry, what they can do with their bodies, etc… that is freedom.

Our biggest shame is the aboriginal problem, which is also a problem where you live.

quote:
What, don’t know about our social programs, content society and INCREASED freedom?

You can’t even download mp3s, possess marijuana, abort freely and frequently or marry the same gender.

You can download mp3s legally here, so long as you have paid the musician you are downloading them from, otherwise its considered theft under the law, and understandably so. Of course that doesn’t stop many people here from downloading illegally anyhow. Abortion? Are you telling me you don’t know that abortion is legal in all 50 states? You really don’t know much about your southern neighbor do you? Marry the same gender? Hmmm…I can’t marry my sister or marry 3 women either but I don’t feel any less free because of it. Gay marriage is a "freedom" most Americans will gladly forego. Smoking marijuana…I think it should be legal, but to be honest I could care less if it isn’t, I have better things to worry about. Interesting that all the freedoms you cherish of the saddam and gamorrah variety.

There’s one form of freedom I am grateful for that you Canadians know nothing of, and that’s the freedom to take home more of hard earned money without the government taxing the shit out of it as much as yours(or the EU) does. You can keep your marijuana and gay marriage, I’d prefer to have more of my hard-earned paycheck to save, invest or spend as I please.

quote:
Well, generally, we don’t have quite so many problems. We prefer to sit back and do what we want, not dictate to others.

Just like you’re dictating to me why your society is better.

Actually, income has been stagnant now for a while. We are supposed to get all this cash from the tax breaks but all I’ve seen is government after government (local and state especially) shutting down crucial needs like having to shut down mental wards and let people go. The week after Oregon had to cut some medical assistance, people couldn’t afford their meds and they died in droves. Staying on topic, even FEMA and others like the VA have been cut. The Poverty Rate also increased…AGAIN…to 12.9% of the population. That increase is those people who were once unemployed btu then passed the magical time marker that took them off the rolls despite not having a job.

Seriously, our fiscal situation is FUCKED.

That is for us bottom feeders.

That’s a problem but it’s worked out well for the credit industry.

We’re all miniature Jamaica’s.

quote:Marry the same gender? Hmmm…I can’t marry my sister or marry 3 women either but I don’t feel any less free because of it. Gay marriage is a "freedom" most Americans will gladly forego. Smoking marijuana…I think it should be legal, but to be honest I could care less if it isn’t, I have better things to worry about. Interesting that all the freedoms you cherish of the saddam and gamorrah variety.

Freedom includes not only the things you want to do, but even the things you don’t want to do, I don’t want to marry a guy either, but the topic was about me having the freedom to do it. We could discuss this over some rum in Havana should you want to but………well ya know.

quote:
Freedom includes not only the things you want to do, but even the things you don’t want to do, I don’t want to marry a guy either, but the topic was about me having the freedom to do it. We could discuss this over some rum in Havana should you want to but………well ya know.

Countries pick and choose their own freedoms. Americans cherish to right to own a firearm for protection, perhaps Canadians don’t. You may think who cares about the right to have guns, but that’s what we think about your right to same sex marriages.

Here’s a question though, if Canada is such more free and better nation, then why do ten times as many Canadians immigrate here as Americans immigrate there? I’m not saying one nation is any better than other, I don’t even care to debate that question, just asking why the lopsided immigration patterns between the US and Canada.

Michael Brown, head of FEMA, was fired from his last job with the International Arabian Horse Association for incompetence. Then his college roommate got him as job at FEMA/DHS. Then his friend went to ‘help’ in Iraq and Bush appointed this unqualified idiot.

check it out at http://www.talkingpo…

quote:Here’s a question though, if Canada is such more free and better nation, then why do ten times as many Canadians immigrate here as Americans immigrate there? I’m not saying one nation is any better than other, I don’t even care to debate that question, just asking why the lopsided immigration patterns between the US and Canada.

That is a very good point, I myself would like to live in the states, but only for a few years and only in a select number of cities (New York, Boston, Chicago or San Franciso). I would not choose to raise my family there. I wonder what the stats are regarding Canadians going to France, Germany, Australia etc are vs the amount of Americans going there (taking into account proportion of the population). Maybe not all can be attributed simply to "america is a better country because more people come than leave" as it can be to American’s reluctance to travel, to move elsewhere if only for the experience. Yes more Canadians go to the U.S. than vice versa, but I bet more Canadians also go to France than Americans (proportion wise). One can look at statistics various ways I suppose.

I’ll take a page out of Modulis’ playbook and say sources please.

Are you suprised people take citizenship or permanent status for tax purposes or to put an end to beauracracy?

That has nothing to do with my freedom question, more with finances and hassle.

I could go on about the other points, but I said I wasn’t getting bogged down with semantics like you’ve tried.

I think this tradgey puts to bed that there is a first world, a G8, rich countries.

If one thing you must ask yourself after all this is, why did my govt spend $200 billion on a bogus threat a world away when back at home the money would have better served tackling real issues.

I don’t believe the world can go on much longer like this, how many major disasters will it take before the american conplacency bubble finally bursts ??

I read in disbelief that Modulis and Russ continually take (and hardened) the right wing stance on this as a america goes flushing down the shitter.

Things come along and make you revaluate, I can’t be accused of being the ignorant one as I’ve been saying this since I first logged on here, didn’t take a big loss like this, but if folk likie R & M don;t take heed then the USA is a lost cause.

take stock… pandering to corporate america and jewish self interest groups has left the deep south in deep doo-doo, it’s bankrrupting your country!

Yeah, I just wanted double-up on what sickboy and that other fella had to say about freedom. It’s just unfortunate how the majority of Americans (no statistics required, please) look at the big picture and believe in hopes that this new freedom of their will open up a better future. Good luck with Project Ground Zero. No one cares. Ha, I’m just kidding – but I’m just saying it’s worth mentioning that terrorists are encrusted in their topsy-turvy philosophy about sacrificing their lives to become a martyr or something in the after live: you crazy Iraqis, etc.. My point being that Canada will always be a safer nation than our neighbours to the south, despite it’s slightly-weaker economical system.

quote:
Yeah, I just wanted double-up on what sickboy and that other fella had to say about freedom. It’s just unfortunate how the majority of Americans (no statistics required, please) look at the big picture and believe in hopes that this new freedom of their will open up a better future. Good luck with Project Ground Zero. No one cares. Ha, I’m just kidding – but I’m just saying it’s worth mentioning that terrorists are encrusted in their topsy-turvy philosophy about sacrificing their lives to become a martyr or something in the after live: you crazy Iraqis, etc.. My point being that Canada will always be a safer nation than our neighbours to the south, despite it’s slightly-weaker economical system.

You guys are pretty much protected from any harm just by being our neighbors. Like being the little brother of the toughest guy on the block.

quote:
September 4, 2005
Falluja Floods the Superdome
By FRANK RICH
AS the levees cracked open and ushered hell into New Orleans on Tuesday, President Bush once again chose to fly away from Washington, not toward it, while disaster struck. We can all enumerate the many differences between a natural catastrophe and a terrorist attack. But character doesn’t change: it is immutable, and it is destiny.

As always, the president’s first priority, the one that sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2.

After dispatching Katrina with a few sentences of sanctimonious boilerplate ("our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens&quot, he turned to his more important task. The war in Iraq is World War II. George W. Bush is F.D.R. And anyone who refuses to stay his course is soft on terrorism and guilty of a pre-9/11 "mind-set of isolation and retreat." Yet even as Mr. Bush promised "victory" (a word used nine times in this speech on Tuesday), he was standing at the totemic scene of his failure. It was along this same San Diego coastline that he declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln more than two years ago. For this return engagement, The Washington Post reported, the president’s stage managers made sure he was positioned so that another hulking aircraft carrier nearby would stay off-camera, lest anyone be reminded of that premature end of "major combat operations."

This administration would like us to forget a lot, starting with the simple fact that next Sunday is the fourth anniversary of the day we were attacked by Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Even before Katrina took command of the news, Sept. 11, 2005, was destined to be a half-forgotten occasion, distorted and sullied by a grotesquely inappropriate Pentagon-sponsored country music jamboree on the Mall. But hard as it is to reflect upon so much sorrow at once, we cannot allow ourselves to forget the real history surrounding 9/11; it is the Rosetta stone for what is happening now. If we are to pull ourselves out of the disasters of Katrina and Iraq alike, we must live in the real world, not the fantasyland of the administration’s faith-based propaganda. Everything connects.

Though history is supposed to occur first as tragedy, then as farce, even at this early stage we can see that tragedy is being repeated once more as tragedy. From the president’s administration’s inattention to threats before 9/11 to his disappearing act on the day itself to the reckless blundering in the ill-planned war of choice that was 9/11’s bastard offspring, Katrina is déjà vu with a vengeance.

The president’s declaration that "I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" has instantly achieved the notoriety of Condoleezza Rice’s "I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." The administration’s complete obliviousness to the possibilities for energy failures, food and water deprivation, and civil disorder in a major city under siege needs only the Donald Rumsfeld punch line of "Stuff happens" for a coup de grâce. How about shared sacrifice, so that this time we might get the job done right? After Mr. Bush’s visit on "Good Morning America" on Thursday, Diane Sawyer reported on a postinterview conversation in which he said, "There won’t have to be tax increases."

But on a second go-round, even the right isn’t so easily fooled by this drill (with the reliable exception of Peggy Noonan, who found much reassurance in Mr. Bush’s initial autopilot statement about the hurricane, with its laundry list of tarps and blankets). This time the fecklessness and deceit were all too familiar. They couldn’t be obliterated by a bullhorn or by the inspiring initial post-9/11 national unity that bolstered the president until he betrayed it. This time the heartlessness beneath the surface of his actions was more pronounced.

You could almost see Mr. Bush’s political base starting to crumble at its very epicenter, Fox News, by Thursday night. Even there it was impossible to ignore that the administration was no more successful at securing New Orleans than it had been at pacifying Falluja.

A visibly exasperated Shepard Smith, covering the story on the ground in Louisiana, went further still, tossing hand grenades of harsh reality into Bill O’Reilly’s usually spin-shellacked "No Spin Zone." Among other hard facts, Mr. Smith noted "that the haves of this city, the movers and shakers of this city, evacuated the city either immediately before or immediately after the storm." What he didn’t have to say, since it was visible to the entire world, was that it was the poor who were left behind to drown.

In that sense, the inequality of the suffering has not only exposed the sham of the relentless photo-ops with black schoolchildren whom the president trots out at campaign time to sell his "compassionate conservatism"; it has also positioned Katrina before a rapt late-summer audience as a replay of the sinking of the Titanic. New Orleans’s first-class passengers made it safely into lifeboats; for those in steerage, it was a horrifying spectacle of every man, woman and child for himself.

THE captain in this case, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was so oblivious to those on the lower decks that on Thursday he applauded the federal response to the still rampaging nightmare as "really exceptional." He told NPR that he had "not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don’t have food and water" – even though every television viewer in the country had been hearing of those 25,000 stranded refugees for at least a day. This Titanic syndrome, too, precisely echoes the post-9/11 wartime history of an administration that has rewarded the haves at home with economic goodies while leaving the have-nots to fight in Iraq without proper support in manpower or armor. Surely it’s only a matter of time before Mr. Chertoff and the equally at sea FEMA director, Michael Brown (who also was among the last to hear about the convention center), are each awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in line with past architects of lethal administration calamity like George Tenet and Paul Bremer.

On Thursday morning, the president told Diane Sawyer that he hoped &quoteople don’t play politics during this period of time." Presumably that means that the photos of him wistfully surveying the Katrina damage from Air Force One won’t be sold to campaign donors as the equivalent 9/11 photos were. Maybe he’ll even call off the right-wing attack machine so it won’t Swift-boat the Katrina survivors who emerge to ask tough questions as it has Cindy Sheehan and those New Jersey widows who had the gall to demand a formal 9/11 inquiry.

But a president who flew from Crawford to Washington in a heartbeat to intervene in the medical case of a single patient, Terri Schiavo, has no business lecturing anyone about playing politics with tragedy. Eventually we’re going to have to examine the administration’s behavior before, during and after this storm as closely as its history before, during and after 9/11. We’re going to have to ask if troops and matériel of all kinds could have arrived faster without the drain of national resources into a quagmire. We’re going to have to ask why it took almost two days of people being without food, shelter and water for Mr. Bush to get back to Washington.

Most of all, we’re going to have to face the reality that with this disaster, the administration has again increased our vulnerability to the terrorists we were supposed to be fighting after 9/11. As Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, pointed out to The Washington Post last week in talking about the fallout from the war in Iraq, there have been twice as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq in the three years after 9/11 than in the three years before. Now, thanks to Mr. Bush’s variously incompetent, diffident and hubristic mismanagement of the attack by Katrina, he has sent the entire world a simple and unambiguous message: whatever the explanation, the United States is unable to fight its current war and protect homeland security at the same time.

The answers to what went wrong in Washington and on the Gulf Coast will come later, and, if the history of 9/11 is any guide, all too slowly, after the administration and its apologists erect every possible barrier to keep us from learning the truth. But as Americans dig out from Katrina and slouch toward another anniversary of Al Qaeda’s strike, we have to acknowledge the full extent and urgency of our crisis. The world is more perilous than ever, and for now, to paraphrase Mr. Rumsfeld, we have no choice but to fight the war with the president we have.

Some people should be making some good bucks posting ginormous posts like the one above this.

quote: You guys are pretty much protected from any harm just by being our neighbors. Like being the little brother of the toughest guy on the block.

Yeah but he still picks on us and takes our lunch money from time to time.

Canada is more like the quiet person, sort of uncool who isn’t hated by anyone because they mind their shit and keep that shits in order.

quote:

quote: You guys are pretty much protected from any harm just by being our neighbors. Like being the little brother of the toughest guy on the block.

Yeah but he still picks on us and takes our lunch money from time to time.

Canada is more like the quiet person, sort of uncool who isn’t hated by anyone because they mind their shit and keep that shits in order.

My name is Canada, then.

N.O. Times Picayune calls for the firing of every FEMA officer.

http://www.cnn.com/2…

For a good run down of the White House trying to worm their way out of their negligence go to www.talkingpointsmem…

(Dominus, if you’re on about copyright…yeah I know. I’m supposed to excerpt)