You have no appetite for the truth but to satiate you curiosity -
The US has subsidized Canada for years and years
to the tune of $78B in 2008
And the Canadian form of socialism is on the verge of collapse.
Wait for it!
Along with Canadian trade deficit. The US can no longer subsidize Canada. The deficit with US is now only $20B in 2009. How is hope and change working for you?
So… one bad year for the Canadian economy and suddenly it’s doomed to failure, eh?
It is telling that focusonz marks comments on her stupidity as irrelevant. They are very relevant. In college she struggled through a bunch of low ranked schools. It is clear that she has not kept up with world events, and from reading accounts of the campaign, she wasn’t very interested in learning even when she was running for Veep. She lies. As far as I can tell, she isn’t getting any smarter. It is vital for the president to integrate information and draw conclusions better than anyone. Obama can do it, Clinton did it, even Nixon did it very well. Bush I did also. Intelligence is not directly correlated with party, but these days it is kind of looking like it, as Republicans drive out anyone with a brain.
Well, don’t get all puffed up about it. If we weren’t selling our vast natural resources to you, we’d be selling them to someone else. You buying stuff from us doesn’t make us your subsidy, it makes you our customer.
I’m personally grateful that the military, geographical and economic situation is such that the two nations can live in peace, though this isn’t due solely to American generosity but rather the evolution of enlightened self-interest, nuclear weapons technology and nice big oceans that isolate us from all the damage inflicted in various European and Asian wars.
Pretty good, actually. I have stats that put the deficit with the Americans in 2009 at 35B (the currencies are currently at or near par, so I feel okay with using the to represent both dollars). The numbers overall are down quite a bit from 2008, but I figure that’s the current economic climate. Since our banks are in very good shape (no failures since 1985, and even those weren’t all that bad - not nearly as bad as the S&L thing), I expect we’ll recover quite handily and quickly.
Frankly, I’m quite fond of my American cousins, and I have no doubt that I might have more in common, culturally and politically, with residents of Vermont and New York than I do with residents of Calgary. Unfortunately, your country lets religion (and lip-service appeasement to the religious) dictate policy far too often (that is to say, more than zero times). Marginalizing these elements is your best bet. Then you can be more like us, and don’t be afraid - in addition to health care, abortion rights and gay marriage, we have a genuine fondness for capitalism.
And krullers. Don’t forget the krullers.
I’m not a kruller fan, though I am about to tear into a bag of maple leaf cookies.
Of course, on closer examination, these are “Maple Cream Cookies” and they were “Processed in Canada”. They’re still shaped like leaves, though. Close enough.
Oh, once again Gyrate can’t think beyond a juxtaposition of letters.
Obama is a marxist!!!
Gyrate fabricates the history of the doper planet with each post abandoning all semblance of reality.
Do you people pay attention to anything other than your own ego and relish in your own elitism?
It must give you pause to learn, your major customer which is also in deficit on trade, is broke. So money for your costly socialism will no longer be forth coming. As goes the USA so goes Canada.
And if Obama follows through Canada will receive less benifits from the NAFTA.
And of course Obama’s marxism extends across the border to restrict Canada’s income from energy production.
Watch out Canada. Obama’s ideology does not recognize borders.
Sarah Palin on the other hand negotiated a pipeline crossing as I recall, good business for both countries.
How do you know so much about focusonz?!
I agree with this.
If Sarah Palin was elected president? The republic would survive, but you might wish it hadn’t.
Seriously, the institutions are strong. The institutions of Congress, the courts, & the Presidency are strong, that is. The conventions of civil liberties, environmental conservation, human rights, a belief in science over self-delusion, & the pursuit of truth & justice–all those are less strong. The state would harden around Sarah & keep her base’s biases protected above the interests of the country.
I do not know whether this was intended as a joke, but I have had posters who treated your interpretation as real.
Please note that the “she” in the first sentence differs from the “she” and “her” in the rest of the paragraph, which are references to Palin.
Poor writing and sloppy syntax, but not an attack on focusnz.
[ /Modding ]
That said, focusonz and everyone else: Dial it back more than a notch.
There are several posts that walk right up to the line prohibiting personal attacks and there is way more hostility than this topic can support.
Everyone back off.
[ /Moderating ]
And that’s a “b”, as in “back off”. Sorry, Tom, but you can’t be too careful with this bunch of pervs.
I’m confident you’ll recover. Palin’s election (and the regressive attitude of the electorate that implies) in 2012 or 2016 would slow you down, though.
Well, there’s a trade-off, as it were. We might take a short-term hit as you get your act together, but I can afford to take a longer view because, again, my nation’s banks are stable and our currency fairly strong. I’m looking forward to large-scale Alberta oil exploration to be a major tax and revenue stream and if you’re not buying enough of it, the Chinese surely will.
I have some apprehensions about more and more manufacturing jobs going to Asia, and we have the same aging-population problem as you, but I’m overall well on the optimistic side.
Obama’s marxism is manifesting how, exactly? And affecting our energy production how, exactly? Sure, over the last year your country was buying less from us than usual, but that’s not specifically Obama’s fault. By all indications, it’s the result of an economic collapse that was underway before he took office.
If by your standards, Obama is some kind of ultra-lefty, then by those same standards (assume these standards are consistent in any shape or form), Canada is already super-mega-ultra-lefty. Franky, if Obama was in charge of Canada, we could end up swinging to the right on a number of issues.
I’m more concerned that you’ll fuck yourselves up and drag us down with you, than that some kind of imperialist will get elected and cast covetous eyes north (those guys already exist - they’re called CEOs). Palin has “fuckup” written all over her, and I really really really wanted to like her, but her whole “I don’t understand what those smart guys are talking about and proud of it!” bit wore thin rather quickly.
It seems to me that anyone that wants Palin as the President is because…
They -
1 - Don’t give a damn, Palin is Republican and so must be good. They must support the Republican (not that they are conservative anymore).
2 - Want a Christian Theocracy and Palin is their best bet.
3 - Wants a puppet that can be controlled from within. Another Bush II.
4 - Think that the movie Legally Blond is a documentary, and by gosh if a blonde can do it a brunette can too.
This is the opinion of a middle of the road middle age middle income man that has heard too much of the craziness from tea partiers and letters to the editor and FOX news. As I became older (I’m 49) I became more centered. Right now I see the Republican party and so called conservatives so out of touch with facts that ANY one can get, I am moving more left out of principal and to disassociate myself from idiots.
Wrong again Voyager! I marked your comments regarding her intelligence as irrelevant to the OP.
The whole point of the Op was to take a voyage but you are stuck high and dry and the tide has gone out, unable to accept the possibility that the American people will in their wisdom decide that the trip you are on is not for them.
Hey boy, One don’t have to be smart to have an opinion and vote and one does not have to have an education to be right.
There you go. I would need lots of drugs.
This should be the motto of the 21st century Republican Party.
Too long.