3 Weird Things About the U.S. This Pro-American Canadian Doesn’t Get
America: You know I love you, right? But we have to talk...
August 27, 2012 - 7:00 am
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There’s a “THANK YOU PRESIDENT BUSH” mug on my desk with an American flag sticking out of it.
The most popular newspaper column I ever wrote was called “I’m An American Trapped in a Canadian’s Body.”
I know all the words to “The Star Spangled Banner” — although a lifetime of Hockey Night in Canada probably helped.
All that to say:
There are a few things this (rare) pro-American Canadian still doesn’t understand about your wonderful country.
I’m not pretending to ask these questions either, like this shameful and embarrassing federal government employee, whose CBC TV show is paid for by my extorted tax dollars. Note that while ostensibly mocking Americans, all he does is accidentally highlight how patient and polite you guys really are:
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Our beer is better (as I recall.)
How long ago were you last here? Labatt and Molson are watery crap next to the American craft beers that have taken off in the last ten years or so (alas, availability will vary by region, and some states’ offerings are better than others).
Molson and Labatts aren’t Canadian anymore.
But we do have Mill St. Brewery, Upper Canada and Amsterdam as well as many other craft beers.
I’m just sorry we don’t have the stubbies anymore. Sometimes I buy Red Stripe (Jamaican) and pretend it’s the 80s again.
Gee, this epic feat in the annals of show business is revealed to us, and you guys are talking about beer? It is quite clear to me that none of you swabs had the patience to get through the commercials so as to savor an incredible TV production.
This pioneering icon of television news as humor, or humor as news, brought an entire Canadian audience of applauders around the US. How did he do it? Oh you want proof? Even though the audience did not appear much in the scenes, you can clearly hear them laughing hysterically over comedic lines from the interviewer like, “I love America.”
Speaking as a Canadian, I join most of my brethren in leaving Molson and Labatt to (a) tourists and (b) students (who don’t know any better and just go for what’s cheap).
The usual workhorse beers are Rickard’s Red and Keith’s Pale, with a smattering of Sleeman’s Honey Brown.
Anytime I hear Labatt, all I can think of is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p61xDwHcI4k
And anytime I hear about Canada, all I can think about is their national emergency maple syrup reserve. Yes, it’s real.
Canadian Beer? All the Canadians I know drink Corona and all the Yuengling I can carry.
Yes, a lot of other non-US citizens are amazed at our politeness and our (often) positive outlook. A German co-worker related a story about Wal-Mart opening a store in Germany and needing to train greeters to actually greet people and ask to assist, not just stand around and ignore customers (as is the apparent norm in parts of Germany).
He also likes how teachers here (well, most anyway) are positive about teaching and will relate positive stories about children to their parents. Apparently the norm is to tell parents all the negative stuff about their children during conferences, etc.
Oh and yeah, Canadian mass produced beer is better than US mass produced beer (mainly due to the US reliance on rice, corn and other fermentables rather than barley), but US craft breweries are more numerous and more adventurous than their Canadian counterparts IMHO.
MANNERS: The contrasts are stark and clear. Enter an American or Canadian branch of any large international chain store or eating establishment: Malwart, Home Despot, High’s, Burger Bum, you name it. One assumes that all of the stores in a chain are working from the same operating manuals.
American outlets ALWAYS in my opinion have the Canucks beaten hands down. Not only is the Canadian merchandise down specced, but the training cannot obscure the differences in culture. A similar contract is visible on anyway highway trip from the south and southwest US to the north east. The cultural differences — should I say surliness — is palpable north of that Mason Dixon line.
Perhaps its the weather. The grinding down of the body and spirit from fighting the elements.
I’ve always thought if we stopped subsidizing corn (thereby curtailing the use of high fructose corn syrup), we’d see obesity rates go down tremendously.
It’s not just corn. It’s the carbs at the base of the food pyramid.
I’m not gonna tell you to eat NO carbs, but our own government is basically talking us into overdosing on them.
Sugar in any NON Natural state is harmeful and is one cause of Fat Americans but Quantity is the #1 reason- ever see people eat at the buffett? Or anywhere for that fact – they Shovel the food in- a good friend of mine Angel & went for Mex food in Houston & she was complaining of being fat-so after the meal which was huge I had left HALF the plate behind as i stopped when i was FULL & Angel had one 1/2 a piece of rice left- I told her Your fat because you eat too much – WHICH she concended was true
UP to the 1950′s most in US filled their bellies with veggies LOTS of veggies, then Beef took over – people aer gorging on Proten and the body cannot take that much proten- so put the burger down and fill up a the salad bar first then try the beef you wont eat as much
There is absolutely no scientific truth to the claim that increased protein consumption leads to obesity. In fact, numerous well-known diets are based on peer-reviewed studies that indicate one can eat all the beef/bacon/cheese possible and never gain weight as long as the fat molecules in the protein can’t bind with a carbohydrate molecule. Fat molecules will pass through the body unabsorbed without companion carb molecules.
Obesity in the US is largely based on one primary source: ridiculous levels of carbohydrate consumption that originates in processed sugars.
When the left took over the DOE, they started taking out recess and physical education. Our children sit around all day and stare at their computers, phones, TV’s etc. and do NOTHING physical. It’s not about what we eat- I had a terrible diet as a kid in the 60′s, but we were constantly in motion and burning off our calories. The left complains about obesity, but they are the primary cause!
I fully expected to see: “You are the ONLY counry in the world that questions whether it is morally acceptable to secure your own borders.”
Europe has the same open borders disease. Just look at Greece and the media party hate for Golden Dawn that isn’t a nazi party, just sick of migrant freeloaders swamping Greece.
No politician in Europe (which is not a country btw) would dare to speak about immigration the way the US Democrats do, not even in the British Labour Party which is as multiculturalist and PC as they come.
You might be right that Golden Dawn is not what it is said to be (though I doubt it) but the fact remains that Golden Dawn is socialist in economics; and the Greeks have always been strongly anti-immigration, witness how Albanians used to prefer a dangerous sea crossing to Italy in rickety ships to a stroll across the border.
I know ‘Europe’ isn’t a country. But the EUSSR thinks it should be, that’s all that matters.
http://islamversuseurope.blogspot.ca/2012/08/greece-leftists-boast-of-arson-attacks.html
just thought you should check this story out
Duh! violence from the “far-left”. Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?
Look at the fight here in Israel to secure our borders against “infiltrators” (as illegals are called in Hebrew). All of Africa seems to want to come here. Strange – they need to go through Egypt, and they don’t want to stay among their fellow Moslems! (Maybe because they’d shoot them.) Yes, we are working on a border fence in the south.
It’s funny, because when I was on vacation in Canada a few months ago I nearly became addicted to butter tarts. Just the cheap ones you get in truck stops with the sweet filling and the imitation pecan topping.
Mae Wests are pretty darn good, too, but not up there with butter tarts.
And poutine…
I’m shocked you guys aren’t up there with us concerning obesity. But it might be what you like. Pork chop pancakes sounds gross to me.
BTW, Tim Horton’s coffee is infinitely better than any fast food coffee here Stateside.
“BTW, Tim Horton’s coffee is infinitely better than any fast food coffee here Stateside.”
You’ve obviously never been to Louisiana.
TARTS: There is no secret to BUTTER TARTS. Take a PECAN PIE, add sauce and raisins. OR, take the nuts out of the pie. Send them back to the USA. Add sauce, raisins.
HEALTH CARE: After eating butter tarts and coffee at TIM HORTON’S, go shovel snow off your driveway. HAVE HEART ATTACK, DIE. Therefore, TIM HORTON’S is the best thing to happen to the cost of government health care in Canada.
1. Tim Horton’s is in border states and the mid west. MI, western NY, KY, OH. Its coming, man. Do you realize that the Canadian Mint issued a TWO DOLLAR COIN, the TOONIE, also known as the TIMMY, to make things easy there? Gets you a coffee and a donut. Run scared, McDonald’s. Run scared, Dunkin.
2. Can anyone SOUTH of the Mason Dixon line tell me (1) who was TIM HORTON and what he did that makes him famous?
Kim Campbell wasn’t elected. She succeeded Brian Mulroney in a party run-off, and a few months later ‘lead’ the PC’s to a devastating finish (in every negative sense).
There really aught to be an asterisk by her name.
Ah, yes “obesity rates”. Does anyone understand where that comes from? The CDC does a survey of, I believe 20,000 households (it may be households representing 20,000 people). They oversample blacks and hispanics. Mexican womend tend to be short and chunky, BTW. One person fills out the height and weight of everyone in the household, which is then plugged into a standrd BMI calculator. The results are fed into a magical government computer program which then declares the height and weight of the other 310 million people.
Now, if the roster of the Montreal Canadiens responded to this survey, all but 4 of the players would be solidly in the “overweight” category, with the 4 only few pounds or an inch less in height away from “overweight”. More than a third of the players would be within 15 or so pounds of “obese”. The Canadiens, of course, are considered one of the “smaller” teams in the NHL.
“Obesity”, like “poverty”, as used in US statistics, is not a scientific term. Mention of it in the media is always accompanied by a photo of an actual obese person, as most people understand the word-very fat. So, when people hear about “obesity rates” of 30%, they get an image in their mind that 30% of the people look like the person in the photo above. But that is not what it means at all. Alex Ovechkin, who I have seen listed as 6′ 2″ 230 lbs, is not borderline obese. Yet if he responded to this CDC survey and listed his height and weight as 6’2″ 234 lbs, that would be classified as “obese”.
You are right about the BMI measurements here in the US. I recently went to the doctor’s office and was told that I am officially obese. I know I am a little over weight but not obese. The nurse told me that almost no one meets the definition of the BMI chart. She told me that it is strictly a math equation that does not consider build or body structure. According to the chart I need to weigh the same as I weighed when I was 20 years old because there is no adjustment for age. Another area where the US looks bad is on infant mortality ratings. We are the only nation that considers death of a fetus or death during delivery as infant death. No wonder we look so bad.
Mostly our infant mortality is from prematurity indirectly caused by advanced treatments for infertility, which have the unintended result of creating multiple gestations (twins, triplets, etc). These babies are nearly always born early, and they may have other problems, as well. Thus, they have a higher death rate than a term, singleton baby.
We also have a penchant for trying to save fetuses with medical problems, instead of aborting them or letting them die. Again, this makes our stats look worse, as inevitably some will die later despite the best medical care in the world.
As with the situation you cite, none of this is ever brought up when comparing international infant mortality statistics. As with the “obesity epidemic” we are victims of our own success.
Yes, a death after about 24 weeks gestation (depending on the state) is considered by law to be a neonatal death and is reportable as such.
I believe you will find (I cannot recall where I read this) that 40% of infant mortality in the US occurs in the first 24 hours after birth. In OECD countries, these cases are considered stillborn, and are not included in infant mortality statistics.
There have been other manipulations in the codes used in the US to make our numbers appear higher. One is “maternal death”. Prior to 1998 (I believe) “maternal death” was defined as death directly related to birth of an infant within, I believe, 6 months of the birth. (I may be wrong on the timeframe). The change made to the definition was to include death from any cause within 6 months of giving birth. This is why you will see an increase in that statistic starting in 1998. I believe it was deemed to difficult to determine, after the fact, whether the death was caused by giving birth, so they just declared any cause of death of the mother within 6 months to be “maternal death”.
Even “homicde rates” have an apples to oranges quality to them. European countries include only “intentional and premeditated” deaths. In the US, murder and nonnegligent homicide does not need to be either intentional or premeditated. This is why Germany, for example, has a noticeably higher number of homicides that are excluded from the official rate than those included.
Unless it’s ripped from its mother’s womb on purpose, of course.
Then it’s a “choice”.
Well, of course we know that liars figure, especially if there’s benefit in it; there’s perks to be had from being fat. When I couldn’t walk without crutches, it was the rare day I could find a handicap parking space because they’re all taken by the fat people. Qualifying as disabled under the ADA because you’re fat effectively relieves you of actually having to do your job while still getting paid for it. Whatever the definition, I know obesity when I see it and I see one Helluva lot of it. When I was a kid there were only a couple of fat kids in my whole school, now practically every school aged kid is overweight and out of shape unless they’re actively involved in competitive sports, and even a lot of jocks are fat.
As someone who has been “morbidly” obese (284 pounds at graduation from school 1963) to “nildly obese” (211 pounds 2012) for over sixty years, I think BMI is ridiculous.
The man who developed it in the Nineteenth Century said it should be applied only to populations, not individuals.
Even then, lots of “fudging.” The US average overweight-and up is usually quoted as about 30 percent, while Japan’s is often quoted as under 10 percent. Main reason why so far apart? the W.H.O, released figures some years back on what counries’ BMIs SHOULD be. The governments promptly overrode their own figures with those from WHO. In the US, this added 30 million people to “overweight or worse” – 10 percent of us – overnight. In Japan, the same would have been true – except the doctors there objected strenuously enough that the government went back to using Japanese figures.
Strangely, we in ISrael are suppsoed to have highobesity rate, althoguh you would never know it from looking around in the streets or the owrkplace, where everyone seems rail-thin.
Oversampled or not, those obese blacks and Hispanics are still part of your population, ie, will need all that expensive diabetes etc related health care; still need to be cared for rather than contributing…
True, It doesnt matter that I am a size 6, by the BMI chart I am technically overweight. My 6’2 240lb Marine is technically overweight. He has to get his body fat measurements done to pass his physical fitness tests. Never has a single problem when they measure his actual body as opposed to his weight. In his case, muscle definitely weighs more than fat!
Landru- Funny ever time i return from overseas i see in Houston air port an epidemic of FAT – like the CDC issued a warning and all the Fat people are leaving – you are not too observent i have been to 48 states and 18 countries and i can tell you the US if FAT FAT FAT
“And here’s our first female P.M., whose election was a matter of no gender-related controversy whatsoever.”
Kim Campbell became Canada’s PM by virtue of having won the Conservative Party’s leadership convention after PM Mulroney resigned. In the actual election she was trounced and the Conservatives were almost annihilated, being reduced to just two seats. Bottom line: there was no gender related controversy in her election because she was never elected.
If you read enough of Kathy Shaidle’s writings you will find out three things: one: that while she embraces America, she is not all that pleased with Americans, especially those from the south and those from flyover country; two: in fact, Shaidle she really doesn’t like anyone but she will be pleased to temporarily pal around with those who are the enemy of her enemy; three: she is very confident of her opinions to the point of being smug (although God only knows why).
Of course, readers of PJ Media know that while Shaidle is as cute as a button, they should, when reading her efforts, always obey Reagan’s dictum: Trust but verify.
“Kim Campbell became Canada’s PM by virtue of having won the Conservative Party’s leadership convention after PM Mulroney resigned. In the actual election she was trounced and the Conservatives were almost annihilated, being reduced to just two seats. Bottom line: there was no gender related controversy in her election because she was never elected.”
I’m Canadian and you’re ALMOST right in what you said about Kim Campbell. She DID become Prime Minister by being chosen leader of the Progressive Conservative Party after Brian Mulroney resigned late in his second term. The Progressive Conservative Party was indeed trounced in the next election and was reduced to two seats in Parliament.
However, Kim Campbell WAS elected leader of the Party at a leadership convention so the Party members present DID elect her democractically from among various other candidates. She then immediately took office as Prime Minister, only to be defeated in the election which followed a few months later. She had also been elected to Parliament by the people in her riding (equivalent to a Congressional district) in order to sit in Parliament in the first place.
As Americans may or may not know, the Prime Minister and cabinet are (typically; there are sometimes exceptions) all elected Members of Parliament, each elected from a riding somewhere in Canada. The Prime Minister, unlike the President of the United States, is not elected by the whole nation just by their own riding. This leads to interesting situations like a Prime Minister who is defeated in his own riding still being Prime Minister. Or someone being chosen Prime Minister by their party but not having a seat in Parliament initially. (In those cases, another member of the same party resigns and let’s the Prime Minister run in the resulting by-election so that they can get into Parliament. The member who resigned for the Prime Minister typically gets some kind of generous patronage appointment.)
You have cotton? in that weather?
And lawns? Despite Trudeaupianism?
Really?
How about re-phrasing? B/c what I got out of that was that we’d have better race relations by not having black people or mexican people in America. or poor agricultural workers. could be wrong. I hope so.
That’s exactly what I’m saying, ari. Without different races there are no “race relations” — good or bad — to have.
It’s obvious to any thinking person that had the US not imported millions of Africans (and now Mexicans) to do the jobs “Americans won’t do”, then America wouldn’t be suffering with the after effects today, in terms of crime, resentment, bitterness, stereotyping, welfare. The list is endless.
WE didnt import Mexicans. There have always been a lot of them in America, long story but goes back to the pre 50 United States. The rest came of their own free will. WE didnt go down into Mexico with slave raiding parties and round them up & bring them to the US. I would venture a guess that most Americans do their own lawn work. I know I do & always have. Most of the lawn companies down here in GA that I see do not employ many hispanic looking people. There are white and black and even some asian. The “jobs Americans wont do” is a media myth repeated over and over when anyone talks about immigration, illegal immigration or enforcement.
As a dual American-Canadian citizen who has lived and worked in five different cities of Ontario as well as in New York, New Jersey and California – and I have no particular ax to grind since I’m European born to begin with – I can tell you in a general sense that Canadians are lazier than Americans and far less enterprising, probably because they have always looked toward government as a father figure to be told when what is allowed or not. In some ways, that has actually led to positive results; in many other ways it has affected the country and its people in negative ways. At the moment, Canada is in a much healthier condition and one doesn’t see the desperation evident in many American cities. The average Canadian in the East tends to be much more left-leaning than the average American but in Canada’s west, they seem to be more realistic about life and politics. As far as relative quality of domestic beers, only a dolt would give this consideration.
“jobs Americans won’t do” is not a myth, but it may be out of context. One of the considerations to take is that American citizens are legally compelled to report all of their income to the Feds and pay taxes on it; that means that for the same $20/hr cash I pay to have my lawn done is actually *less* for an American than for a non-citizen. That off-duty fireman who does the neighbor’s yard charges almost double than the Mexican (I think he’s Mexican) who does mine, $75 to $40, for the exact same quality work, because of taxes the fireman has to pay on that income. I paid roughly 30% of my small business revenue on sales&use tax as well as income tax; thats total revenue, not profits. This mark-up for American citizen job/work is a good reason as to why Americans won’t (can’t) do it just on economical reasons. What risk of penalty is there for non-citizens to not report income? Citizens have greater risk of penalty when not declaring income.
(But we are doing it: breaking the law by not declaring some or all of the supplemental income outside of our normal ‘day jobs’; I personally know citizen painters, a/c repair techs, and electricians who are doing more and more off-book work because there is a demand for tax-free work and they’re taking that legal risk to supply it. Its just that the immigrant community has a more established network of word-of-mouth to better capitalize on this need. I won’t go into a abolish-the-income-tax rant at this time, but that would create a huge supply of Americans that could do “jobs Americans won’t do”.)
I’m actually kind of lost on how to reply to this. You’re talking about my cousins’ wives, and my cousins’ children. I’m trying to match our family’s nicer Thanksgivings against “they ought not be here.”
Since people can manage to find any sort of difference, I don’t think it’s a black/hispanic thing. English people seem to detest “gingers”- redheads. English people sneer at, as far as I can tell, Irish, highland Scottish, low-earning, short,from the peasants who were there before 1066, English. The Welsh aren’t so popular, either, as far as I can see. To anyone outside of that set of islands, they’re all family-linen- on- the- sunny lawn white.
The French- there’s southern and northern. They disliked each other enough to throw a few crusades against each other. They’re all cheese-eating surrender monkeys to the rest of the world. And the entire kingdom of Charlemagne has been keeping military tailors busy for a millenia, all against each other.
The Mexicans and Spanish were here first. We took it, fair and square- bought it, conquered it, forged documents for it, re-wrote land grants. All the elements of a respectably shady land grab. We even threw revolutions for it. They threw out their own Spanish bums, and the French is on it’s what, 89th republic? So we don’t have some weird refugee camp agony going on. We even bought land from the Russians, and renamed it Alaska. There are orthodox saints from Alaska. They have a better case to say ” let in a few settlers….”
And blacks? We bought them. cash money. Between the Civil War and Pres Wilson they were opening businesses, moving into mixed neighborhoods, and marrying out enough that “passing” was a real concern for decades. They were Americanising, boiling into that undifferentiated mutt of Americana, same as everybody else. Conservative ones- which is 1/3 of them- still do.
They had “paper-bag” societies at the turn of the century, in some cities. You had to be lighter than a paper bag to get in. If you look at the people around O- they could be members. Rev Wright, Valerie Jarrett, the O-man himself. Dutch Morial, the former mayor of New Orleans had light skin and blue eyes. He enterred LSU law school as “white” and graduated as “black.”
There’s a whole nomenclature of shades of skin, and discussions about grandparents, enough to make a eugenicist proud. Redbone, high yellow, quadroon, octoroon.
Who we didn’t pay for? Irish. Italians. Eastern Europeans. North Africans. Middle Easterners. Chinese.
In at least New Orleans, Irish are the bottom of the barrel. There’s a mass grave they found, near a canal. Some yankee historian started pratting on about the depradations of slavery, until they did DNA analysis. It was a mass grave of Irishmen, done in by cholera, building a canal near a swamp. When the historian couldn’t believe it, a southern historian pointed out that you had to pay $300 for a black male slave- that’s real money. An Irishman showed up for free, and worked for pennies a day. Who would you rather risk getting cholera? The Irish channel is still a seedy, violent part of town.
Should we get all up in arms over redheads? South Park does.
this is not saying that there are not messed up, burned over cities and districts. it’s more to do with messed up policies, than race, though. you can turn white people into ghetto-trash, and england seems to be set upon proving this point, even now.
“It’s obvious to any thinking person that had the US not imported millions of Africans (and now Mexicans) to do the jobs “Americans won’t do”, then America wouldn’t be suffering with the after effects today, in terms of crime, resentment, bitterness, stereotyping, welfare. The list is endless.”
Funny. I would think that any truly “thinking person” would understand that those “after effects” as you so eloquently put it are the responsibility of those who perpetrate them, not gifts from the past.
John Holdren, the current “science czar” at the White House has never repudiated his work with Paul Ehrlich. He wrote a textbook speculating about putting a sterilant in waters in the south and appalachian south that would only affect humans, not livestock. This was the era when even Republicans were funding spaying of reservation Indians and Puerto Ricans.
There are, even now, books about how alien and backwards Southerners are, compared to progressive New Yorkers.
Roissy, in his quite repellent way, does have a point. The upper-class liberal clerisy loathes poor, white, working class Americans.
George Washington’s valet- a black slave- was his best friend.
Do you think we’d aim for blacks and hispanics without hitting white people?
Black Americans were marching to prosperity as fast as anybody else, before the progressives got excited.
California- they keep their Mexicans spanish. Texas- they get turned into Texans. It’s a policy choice, not a bloodline thing.
At the turn of last century, you’d've been ranting about Irish, Jews and Mormons. Mormon youths had sky-high delinquency rates. Jewish gangsters built parts of Las Vegas. Drunken Irish bums and slutty Irish roundheels are still a fixture of northern literature. “The Fighting Irish” anyone? Would you trade one Kennedy clan, with its drunken, slutty corrupt pols for one Ronald Reagan- half- Irish-which is to say all- American- his dad was a drunken Irishman? Would you keep Ben Stein, if you had to trade him for a Bugsy Siegel?
Part of that ‘no established religion’ thing was to keep Episcopal grandees from hunting baptist preachers – which they noted in their diary- ” from horseback,like foxes.” And to keep Puritans from hanging Quakers.
If you’re going to give in to contempt, it helps to find your way around the finer points of it all. Black, white and brown is too coarse a sieve.
Canadians are more American than Americans. Just consult your inner self.
I went to a beach in Canada once – Holy Crap are Canadians flabby! It was like a few hundred bloated pasty white walruses had washed up on a rocky shore.
On a recent holiday of mine, I spent a lot of time just noticing people, ie, fellow Canadians. And yep, almost everyone was overweight. Not huge (as in the above photo). But overweight. Unhealthy.
But, when tourist time comes, and Americans wander through town, boy are there HUGE people. Beyond unhealthy. Pitiful.
Yes, bigger, more powerful people than you puny Canadians. That’s us. Guilty as charged.
More like Americans vary between fit and massively fat – with few in between.
The Canadians seemed to be uniformly 30 to 40lbs overweight and completely lacking in muscle tone.
I’m a lifelong Canadian and when I was a kid, we normally had three sizes for shirts: small, medium and large, usually abbreviated S, M, and L. If you went to buy a souvenir T-Shirt for example, you’d normally have the choice of S, M, and L. But when I went to the US, I found two extra sizes: XL (Extra Large) and XXL (Extra Extra Large). I think the Americans got a head start on us in getting to the larger sizes. But it seems to me that I’ve seen XL and XXL in our own stores in recent years so I think we’re probably getting as big as our American “cousins” now….
I went to a beach in Canada once – holy crap! There were rocks and seaweed everywhere! And, by the way, although I live a long, long way from Wisconsin I must say that Leinenkugel has gotta be the best little brewery in America.
If you were in certain parts of Canada they probably were walruses, vieux soldat.
“We take politics way less seriously.”
Well, of course. Nobody takes Canadian politics seriously. That would be like getting worked up about the politics of Liechtenstein. What’s the point?
To a Lichtensteinian, perhaps a great deal. Have you asked one?
“And here’s our first female P.M., whose election was a matter of no gender-related controversy whatsoever.”
Kim Campbell became Canada’s PM by virtue of having won the Conservative Party’s leadership convention after PM Mulroney resigned. In the actual election she was trounced and the Conservatives were almost annihilated..”
The point being it was neither her femaleness nor the pic that got her killed in the election. Frankly speaking, she was the stalking horse that got the job that no other PC grandee wanted after Mulroney left. The conservatives would have nominated Jesus for Leader with a side order of Allah and Buddha and gotten creamed into the fine paste that they did during that election.
Ok, the dream team above might have gotten 5 rather than 2 seats if they had eschewed the election campaign and just spent the money directly bribing people to vote for them in 5 ridings. Like that would have helped.
that election was a media party success. Canadians completely brainwashed into giving Canada to Cretin and the Lieberals.
Thank humans for the internet. Had there been a thriving internet in 1993, the slaughter would not have happened. JMO
That election was a foregone conclusion.
Mulroney’s CF18 decision killed the party in the West.
He’d lost the Quebec part of his electoral coalition to Lucien Bouchard’s Bloc.
And Kim Campbell was a tone deaf hack who famously said that elections were not the time to debate the issues.
As well, when she was the justice minister, she sat on Milgaard’s file for years before he was finally exonerated of the murder for which he was framed.
The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada needed to be destroyed and rebuilt anew.
Things are much better now that we have a real Conservative Party.
“Ok, the dream team above might have gotten 5 rather than 2 seats if they had eschewed the election campaign and just spent the money directly bribing people to vote for them in 5 ridings. Like that would have helped.”
Well, it worked for the provincial Liberals in Oakville/Mississauga.
“The solution for Canada — and the US — is a system that lets those who can afford it to go to private clinics, thereby relieving the burden placed on the public system (which would remain in place, albeit drastically reformed.)”
It is?
Why?
Why should everyone have to support a massive public system for people who would still need to use it whether they are SOL or just plain poor?
A system to provide support for pandemics perhaps, but for specialized medicine in addition to general practice? You provide absolutely no reason for that.
“The culprit is the “American Rule,” whereby “each side in a civil legal case pays its own court costs regardless of outcome. This was different from the English [and therefore, Canadian] system,” which is “loser pays.””
So we completely embrace the opposite, where whoever has the deeper pockets can delay the process long enough to bankrupt the opposition into giving up, and then they get stuck with the full costs of the case?
Oh yes, that’s so much fairer.
Perhaps when you have a system that doesn’t have any downside you can discuss how much ours sucks. Also, make sure you don’t have a system where one side can get public funding for their lawsuit which will be determined by the same group that will decide the lawsuit before you express confusion over our system.
“And let’s face it: our decision to pick our own cotton and mow our own lawns has paid off big time in terms of race relations, crime stats and economics.”
Which of course is why Quebec doesn’t continue to have a simmering separatist movement, the Red River and Northwest Rebellions never happened, you didn’t have to create the massively subsidized province of Nunavut, you don’t have jokes about “Newfies” . . . well, you get the picture.
“I’m starting to wonder if the U.S. will surrender to belligerent Islam as long as they’re promised free appetizers during happy hour.”
As opposed to Canada which threatens to surrender for dog-walking privileges?
Oh right, this was about us being fatter than you, not about your history of poor race and culture relations.
Here’s the thing:
We have this thing we call “personal freedom”. I know it might be confusing north of the border where you exist at the pleasure of the Queen, or perhaps just the Liberal Party – that confuses us you know – but part of that includes getting to choose how much we eat or don’t eat. It may not always have the best results, but it works for us.
“
On race relations, dont forget that the railroads in their Western Provinces didnt just grow from the ground. Hence Cantonese street gangs and why any Red Dawn (before the switch to NK baddies) is likely to come from south from Canada and not necessarily across the Pacific or up from Mexico.
Yep, just wrote about that here:
http://takimag.com/article/old_macdonald_had_a_problem_kathy_shaidle#axzz24qALaHhs
Sam, you are a condescending jerk. We have a pretty good idea about “personal freedom”, thanks for nothing. And “your history of poor race and culture relations” in Canada comment is unworthy even of you.
The term “great power autism” was coined (no one is quite sure by who) to describe the stunning inability, or simple lack of interest, of Americans about learning anything from anyone elsewhere on the planet. Sam, you’re Exhibit A.
Brian, be honest. The only reason you know stuff about American society and politics is because you watch American movies and TV and listen to their music. How much do you really know about the politics of our close neighbour and trading partner Mexico? (Besides the overhyped crime stuff from the border towns) Can you without websearching name their political parties or any ministers of state? The primary issues in their last elections?
As Canadians we have to pay attention to what the crazy Americans are doing because our economy is handcuffed to theirs, but they don’t have to pay attention to us. Except for oil. Obama screwed up that deal.
Funny, I don’t recall nattering on about 3 things I don’t understand about Canuckleheadia even though I’m pro-moosemobile.
Oh wait, that’s right, I didn’t.
Therefore when someone comes ambling along all “confused” about the U.S., I have one of those “personal freedoms”, that clearly do baffle you, to get snide right back, or, as we like to say, “don’t start none, won’t be none.”
However, since my remarks clearly struck a nerve with you, it seems that rather than spending time worrying about any great power autism I may or may not have, perhaps you should spend some time working on that non-power myopia, where you presume your irrelevancy perfectly suits you to criticize your clear superiors while wallowing in blissful ignorance of your own, much more severe, flaws.
Ah yes, personal freedom.
Have you been to a US airport lately?
Can you smoke anywhere in NYC?
Have you tried to operate a lemonade stand?
What you DO have in abundance are cliches like that one, but all I see is evidence that your “personal freedom” has been declining for decades, while the market for sentimental “Live Free or Die” t-shirts and other reassuring kitsch has been booming.
It would be more accurate to say that Americans have millions of Chinese made t-shirts with slogans ABOUT “personal freedom” — but actual freedom? Maybe in Texas or Alaska.
I think you misunderstand Canadian tort completely. And you are awfully defensive about the US system, which — can you really deny this — has made your country LESS free thanks to overarching fears of being sued for sneezing the wrong way.
Those rebellions were a long time ago. Quebeckers are an expensive pain and most of us wish they would separate, but one assassination, one kidnapping and 100 blown up mail boxes forty years ago is nothing compared to the stats that show that 8% of your population (black) commits almost half the violent crime, to the tune of thousands of murders, rapes and robberies.
Stats show that Canadian and American murder are remarkable similar — until you factor in, no, not guns, but race:
http://www.colbycosh.com/old/november02.html#iaag
Sad but true. Alas, we’ve let in a lot of Jamaicans and Somalis since those numbers were crunched. With predictable results.
You seem confused Kathy.
I have never denied the U.S. has racial, ethnic, and cultural issues.
I have also not declared myself baffled as to why Canada has them while the U.S. has similar problems.
Clearly you are aware of the Candian problems though. Why then are the American ones so beyond your comprehension? Do you perceive us as so great that we should be able to dismiss any such difficulties at the drop of a hat? Are you saying the problem is that we are not as great as you think we should be given the examples of Canada?
Well, such things happen, though let’s be clear that is was not Canada that decided who picked your cotton but Great Britain. If you want to claim credit for their decisions you can also claim credit for the expulsion of the Acadians.
And I see you are quick to leap to considering things on a purely racial level. That may be an acceptable Canadian trait, but it is something we are really trying to get away from in the U.S.
“And I see you are quick to leap to considering things on a purely racial level. That may be an acceptable Canadian trait, but it is something we are really trying to get away from in the U.S.”
We might be trying to get away from it but when the statistics show that more than half the homicides in the United States are committed by the 12% of the population that is of African ancestry, it suggests that something is amiss.
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_03.html
The fact that most of the victims are also of African ancestry suggests that there is some reason that this high rate of homicide is allowed to continue. The fact that most of the homicides occur in cities that have been completely dominated by Democrats for several generations now gives a hint as to what that reason might be.
IOW “you can’t say that.”
She can and she did, and it’s true. We just don’t talk about it. Heck, we try to pretend it isn’t so, to the extent of pushing quotas for arrests and school discipline.
I’d denounce myself, except that attitude is also part of the problem. Sometimes the truth hurts. That doesn’t make it false and not talking about it ensures it will never be improved.
Jeez, have we become so insecure that we can’t accept friendly criticism from a foreigner? Americans ARE too fat. Many of us are far too willing to exchange our freedoms for security. If we’re so perfect, why is Obama in the White House?
Kathy, you nailed it.
Touche! Touche, Kathy!
Hey, Kathy the Annoying, economic refugees like you and the other thousands of Canadians that cross over the border every year are free to return to your superior country whenever you want, so like, feel free, eh
(See item #20 with respect to density).
RE: PERSONAL FREEDOM.
Fifty per cent of Canada’s population resides in three isolated large urban centers with high (and planned that way) density of population: Toronto, Vancouver & Montreal. That density necessarily leads to certain ideas of social control and is inculcated in the educational system into self-regulatory behavior.
Fifty per cent of America’s population lives in micro urban centers of under 500,000 persons. Planning regulation came much later to American urbanism (except in the east and west coast metrolopolis areas) than it did in Canada. There are still many small communities in the USA that have little or no centrally planned land control laws.
For someone growing up that means the freedom to play football in one’s own garden (my 1950′s lot in a city in the SE USA is 1 acre; my 1950′s lot in a Ontario Golden Triangle university town is 1/8th of an acre). When new, these houses were price equivalent. Freedom to experiment — music, tinkering, you name it. You simply can’t do that in a high rise condominium.
Look at the differences between North American kids in general, and kids who grow up in places like Singapore or Hong Kong.
America has an intestate system that makes freedom of movement easy for anyone with the price of an intercity bus ticket. Canada has effectively NO inter provincial road system that would permit me to drive from Toronto to Vancouver all the way on a four lane divided highway. Unless I want to go via Detroit & Chicago and St. Paul of course.
Clearly, a lot of this stuff isn’t “working for you” as any time spent at the rest of this website will reveal. I see lots of anxiety about the present and the future of your country..
And finally, if you find the difference between the once-all powerful Liberal Party (which, I guess you missed this, barely exist anymore since the last 2 elections) and the Queen, then congratulations:
You live up to the unfortunate stereotype we have up here, of the ugly American who knows nothing about the customs and history of any other nation.
Why the ad hom when you just used your bully pulpit to sucker punch those of us who live here and provide YOU your livelihood.
We know we have problems here, but coming from such a smug source – which you wouldn’t have near the leisure to sneer at us without out our umbrella of protection – is a bit galling and puts to test even our “patience.”
Wow.. talk about smug. It’s galling to think that you believe our nation and our freedom only exists because of the protection of the “big brother” to the south. What an arrogant statement.
No one asked for your protection; it’s not warranted or required. Unlike you, we get along with most people and don’t require an armed presence to “make friends”.
I’ll take you at your word that you neither want nor need our “protection” — probably because you don’t have anything that the rest of the world cares enough about to take it away from you.
But if I was a smug, complacent, self-satisfied Canuck, it would cause me a frisson or two of concern if I didn’t have enough planes or boats to get donated emergency aid supplies to whatever stricken part of the planet is currently have an earthquake, tsunami or rioting dictator – and had to ask good old America for a hitch-hike ride in the back of the bus because you *know* America is always there firstest with the bestest. If you don’t even have the gear to be helpful, how the hell do you ever expect to protect yourself if and when some of the really really bad guys come after you?
Oh, right — they have to come through us to get to you, so from your point of view, there’s nothing to worry about.
Actually the Canucks are worried about protecting their territorial waters with large amounts of oil underneath them (and the Northern sea route for shipping). Funnily enough they are worried about the Americans perhaps even moreso than the Russians in this regard. Wankers.
It would be pretty interesting to move Canada and nestle it up against the MENA territories. Would wipe that smug foolish sneer right off MonkeyLeaders face.
Or perhaps the Canadians would just go full embrace of dhimmitude to be loved by their new neighbors and “respected” by others.
I am particularly annoyed by this “dirty hands” based accusation that we deserve to be hated, which is particularly loved by the Scandanavians with regards to the US and Americans. It is easy to sit on the sidelines and snipe at the players on the field, with smug self satisfaction. However from time to time all are forced onto the field eventually.
As an American loving Canadian, here’s what I don’t get about America:
Why you spend blood and treasure to keep the world safe, and then tolerate smug sneers from those you save and protect
Why you act (mostly) morally in an immoral word.
Why, in foreign relations you reward your enemies and punish your friends.
Why you tolerate political correctness, and ‘affirmative’ action.
Part of your greatness was the expectation that american values were those that promoted fairness, and equal treatment under the law. I’m a bit of a distant observer, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
Exactly! Amen & thank you for saying what I was thinking!
that was to Lolly
Clearly, as lolly notes, you are quick to jump to the ad hominem rather than deal with the issues I raised.
Is that because I struck a little, or indeed a lot, too close, to the mark?
It seems so.
As for the difference between the Liberal Party and the Queen (well, Kings really), based on the amount of control each had in their turn the comparison is more apt than you wish to admit. That Canada is still in the process of dismantling the worst excesses of the Liberal Party, and indeed went through a great deal of angst of its own the past decade or so, suggests that the cultural arrogance is instead yours, yet again refusing to acknowledge the own massive flaws in your own government while leaping to assail similar flaws in the American government.
Congratulations!
You perfectly fit the stereotype we have here of the hockey playing, beer befuddled, SCTV Canadian, who thinks the U.S. is just a provider of tourists and place to get real healthcare, while having no clue about the complexities of our government and people.
If you’d like to come down off your high moose someday and make an effort to really learn about the U.S. rather than sneering at us because we haven’t learned how to do things the “proper” Canadian way, you might actually come to understand the benefits of our system, and why we tolerate the different flaws.
Sam, don’t get too carried away, defending a system just because it was “invented here”.
“So we completely embrace the opposite, where whoever has the deeper pockets can delay the process long enough to bankrupt the opposition into giving up, and then they get stuck with the full costs of the case?
Oh yes, that’s so much fairer.”
The same can happen under the “American Rule”, except now the “giver-upper” (the one with shallow pockets) not only has to pay his own court costs but whatever additional penalties the court assigns. Apparently you have never heard of “frivolous lawsuits”, such as suing the seller for spilling his hot coffee on yourself. We need tort reform in the US. There is a reason we have more lawyers per capita than anywhere else in the world. Many lawyers become rich chasing ambulances. Enough is enough. If a system is bad, fix it. Don’t mock the critic.
Actually the US also has “waiting times”, but these are to see primary care physicians. There is a “shortage” of primary care physicians and a “surplus” of specialists. Canada on the other hand has the opposite. US health care costs are about 18% of GNP, those of Canada about 12%. So we end up paying half again as much as Canadians do for health care. That is, if you can afford it in the first place, which tens of millions of Americans can’t do. We could actually reduce our health care costs by a considerable amount by repealing prescription laws which would definitely “thin out” primary care physician’s waiting rooms. Of course they wouldn’t make as much money then, so anything like this won’t happen because the benefits of repeal would benefit consumers and “hurt” the primary care physicians in turn. And the US medical industry spends $1,000,000 a year per Congress person on very well paid lobbyists seeing that things remain the way that they are…
Thank you for saying that. I’m tired of fellow Canadians and their smug anti-Americanism, particularly on the fat issue. Beer, well I gave up on Canadian beer when I went to Europe in the 70′s. Yeah, we’re your smaller cousins north of the 49th, but I’d rather be your neighbour (with a u) than with any other bunch in this world. Too bad we need a passport now to visit. Cheers.
I don’t think it’s so rare to be a pro-American Canadian. It might seem that way in Ontario, where the civic religion was born among the loyalist losers in the first American civil war, and buttressed by the ensuing war of 1812. And yes, Ontario loyalist culture did spread west to some degree. And of course there is the media party/university bias that makes us look anti-American. But at the end of the day, we are Americans in the general sense and many ordinary people appreciate it.
Did you know that up until the 1960s America had a larger welfare state than Canada and now appears to be “ahead” there again.
Kim Campbell was recently camaigining to change the lyrics of O’Canada (True Patriot love in all Thy Son’s Command) to something “gender neutral”. She’s too much of a self-elected elitist not to play victim politics when it gives her a chance to get back in the news.
Isn’t interesting that the French version of the Canadian National Anthem is extra Christian?
Ô Canada!
Terre de nos aïeux,
Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux!
Car ton bras sait porter l’épée,
Il sait porter la croix!
Ton histoire est une épopée
Des plus brillants exploits.
Et ta valeur, de foi trempée,
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.
Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.
O Canada!
Land of our forefathers,
Thy brow is wreathed with a glorious garland of flowers.
As is thy arm ready to wield the sword,
So also is it ready to carry the cross.
Thy history is an epic
Of the most brilliant exploits.
Thy valour steeped in faith
Will protect our homes and our rights
Will protect our homes and our rights
I used to know a fellow who wore a T-shirt with a Canadian flag and the words “These colors don’t run” as an ironic statement.
I have often thought that the Canadian national anthem ought to take inspiration from “Le Marsaillaise” and include lines about fertilizing the fields with the impure blood of your enemies. Maybe a historical reference to invading Yankees being driven out leaving the ground littered with their lifeless bodies. And throw in a chorus about building a pile of heads if any threaten mighty Canada.
Well, the French is the original version of O’Canada, written at a time when French Canadians were seriously religious. What’s interesting is now that they see themselves relatively childless and disappearing in the multicultural swamps, they cling to mere symbols of Christianity as a way of insisting on their identity – must have a crucifix in the National Assembly – so that the Muslims know whose country this is.
We couldn’t have the original Anglo national anthem – The Maple Leaf Forever – because it is frankly British:
In days of yore, from Britain’s shore,
Wolfe, the dauntless hero, came
And planted firm Britannia’s flag
On Canada’s fair domain.
Here may it wave, our boast our pride
And, joined in love together,
The thistle, shamrock, rose entwine
The Maple Leaf forever!
So we did the usual Canadian thing and went with the French anthem to make them feel more at home in the country. However there have been many English versions of the lyrics of O’Canada over the years and I don’t think any of them are great.
Doesn’t the Dutch anthem still pledge loyalty to the king of Spain?
Personally, I liked the Israeli anthem much better before (before the State!) they cut it down to one sentence and changed “to return to the land of our fathers” to “to be a free people in our land”. The latter was NOT “the hope of two thousand years”.
Kathy, stop apoligizing, there are far sicker leftists in the “home of the free, land of the corn=gasoline not food” than you can imagine. Tell it like it is, if they don’t stop whininig they will become CDN liberals, the most spat upon and yet loved weiners in the new U.N. view of the the world.
Here in Israel, where we ended up with mostly socialised medicine, the waitign times for specialists don’t seem long to me at all. I think the reason rthe system works here is that you can go outside it, and that isn’t all thatexpensive. Wouldn’t work here. Besides, like the rest of the owrld, the US is our safety valve. Go to any weekday synagogue service in the US and see the people collecting money for operations.
I understand American medical tests are getting cheaper.
I mean, the Israeli system would not work in the US, but it is better than the Canadian/British concepts Obama is leading towards.
Dear Miss Shaidle:
3. American medical care’s core problems are third-party payment and unbounded litigiousness. Granted that these can and should be dealt with; to this point we haven’t done so. The dynamic they institute, though easily comprehended, is not so easily countervailed.
2. “Loser pays” is a good start, but it’s not the whole enchilada. Most suits never see the inside of a courtroom, which makes it difficult to impose the costs incurred on one’s opponent. After all, if the suit is settled before it goes to trial, who “won?” Atop that, there must be penalties for “lawfare” and for filing lawsuits specifically to delay a lawful undertaking. At this time, there are no such — and in a nation with over 1,000,000 lawyers, all of whom are desperate for work and clients, the incentives militate toward filing lots of lawsuits even when the prospects of any one of them are dim.
(Want some lawyers? We’ll gladly send you a few.)
1. Yeah, we’re overweight. Yeah, we’re more overweight than a couple of decades ago. But given the trends in food and fuel prices, that might be coming to an end. Anyway, we have a written constitution, a traditional British system of measurements, more guns (and fewer Muslims) than Canada, our politicians’ scandals make for good television, and we’re not boring. And unless you plan to take a personal hand in the matter, kindly leave our sex lives out of this!
Hmph!
As a dual citizen living in Canada your comment on having fewer Muslims in America finds me sitting up to ask, why do I stay here? But is that a fact or not? And if so, I’ll still postpone my return until the Muslim POTUS departs. Your comment on the sex aspect, however, is proper and practical.
Kathy: Permit me to offer some observations as a former southern Ontarian (25+ years) in Toronto and an unnamed university town in the Golden Triangle & now an American voter for the first time in the deep south.
Housing in Ontario: I did MANY “no-money-down” deals in my time as a Toronto Real Estate Board member. They just weren’t called that–nudge nudge. You have to know what to do. Provincial Planning Acts effectively ration land use and increase density in the name of environmentalism leading to some of the least affordable housing in the world…worse than London, Uk or NYC for example. See: http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf Some places in the USA have that mentality. I deliberate chose one that does not.
Health care: Sure, insurance costs can be high if you’re in a small group…BUT…at least care is available. Systemic rationing has yet to take hold here, as I was explaining to my cardiologist last week. Sure, my Canadian friends lambasted me for leaving after I availed myself of “free” Canadian health care in the 1990′s (for which I’ve paid many times over in tax). As you rightly point out, that system doesn’t exist any more. When I walked into my US dentist and specialist I saw equipment and a level of service that I never knew existed after 50 years on first the British NHS (National Health Service) and then (Ontario Health Insurance Plan). There are reasons why service providers in American border cities run full page ads in Canadian daily newspapers! FYI: Our COBRA (health insurance when my wife was unemployed) for a family of four was roughly what I paid in Ontario as a single person for supplemental coverage to cover all the items left out of the OHIP. Many years it was cheaper to self insure, which is what I would do here if I had cash assets in excess of US$1,000,000.
Car insurance: My wife and I pay exactly 20% of what we would have been paying in Toronto….in a big American urban center comparable to any suburb in Vancouver, Edmonton or Toronto.
The American system is all about the “pursuit of happiness”. No one ever told me that I had that right when I was still a subject of HRH The Queen. The pursuit of happiness boils down to the availability of choice in every sphere of life.
Freedom of speech. Well, we know that concept does not exist in the Dominion of Canada. “nuff said, eh?”
If one likes someone else–a so-called expert–to decide things for them, then Canada is the place to be. Or anywhere in Europe and the UK.
If one is a grown up, an adult, then one enjoys the ability to make good or bad choices in the USA, for example, eating habits. Frankly, I got tired of being patronized by uncivil servants in Canada and paying through the nose for the privilege.
So I defected. My biggest mistake in life was not opting out much sooner. Or accepting a job as one of those self serving uncivil servants when it was offered to me.
Take off, hoser.
http://sctv.org/characters/mckenzie/bobanddoug_screencap.jpg
Junior, you sound like a senior loser.
Ms. Shaidle: While I agree with most of your points, as a loyal American imbiber I have to call you out on one.
“Our beer is better…”
Nope. Read ‘em and weep:
http://beeradvocate.com/lists/popular
Per the gold standard in beer reviewers (Beer Advocate), currently 15 of the top 20 beers on planet Earth (including the #1 placeholder) are made in the USA.
http://www.shiner.com/
#1 — You’re fat. (Sorry.)
We also have a lot more African Americans and Hispanics than you do.
And way-better scenery!
mzk1 wrote:
Strangely, we in ISrael are suppsoed to have highobesity rate, althoguh you would never know it from looking around in the streets or the owrkplace, where everyone seems rail-thin.
What? Where in Israel are you living? Obesity is a growing problem, especially among women and young women and girls at that. Sure we don’t compare to America, but you know, that ain’t saying much.
To those in denial on America’s obesity, yeah I’m sure the figures and stats are played with – nevertheless you are still fat and getting fatter.
Kathy well said, you could add a few more things. Like the American political circus, which is simply farcical.
On the litigation, I hate that about America, it’s like a great weight of parasitism – unfortunately in Israel we are getting like that too.
Jewish lawyers, who’d thunk it?
One of the reasons we have high levels of litigiousness is our diversity and the rise of the New Left Identity Politics. All of our public interactions are being scrutinized by legal frameworks designed to benefit/protect minorities, criminals, and women.
This would not be necessary in a homogenous society, where values and social norms are less divergent, and informal social pressure can enforce social norms without being seen as bigoted, racist, etc.
But alas…Ive read the Orwellian slogans. Diversity is Strength (not divisive and debilitating).
Hope you enjoyed whinging about the US and Americans.
Our litigious society is definitely causing major negative consequences for us.
Our weight problem is largely a result of demographics (but also our prosperity)….with a side of subsidizing sloth via the Welfare state.
Yes we need reform of our health system, and going back to the litigious society, tort reform is one of the big issues.
I prefer it when Canadians are quiet and make appreciative noises for the security umbrella that we provide for them to operate under, free of charge.
Maybe a Canadian here can explain why Latino population isn’t split more evenly between Canada and the United States (like Asians, in terms of percentage of population). There’s apparently only 300-400 thousand Latinos in Canada. In the US, around 50 million.
I mean, that’s BIG piece of land with less than 40 million people living there. Maybe Latinos are turned off by the gas prices there? Snooty Frenchman? The hospitals require IDs there? The snow?
Easy answer. NO land border to walk across. The Spanish speaking community in Canada tends to come from lands in central and south America where the politics of their native land allowed these new Canadians to enter on a refugee status and stay permanently: usually political asylum, like the Chileans and Argentinians who entered in the 1980′s. Or they were simply–in US lingo–legal immigrants who had skills and the background to qualify to come in as immigrants, known in Canadian law as “Landed Immigrants”.
Interesting comments. Canada is less a country than an imitator. I do not understand if patriotism is now strictly an American attribute since the rest of the world associates a strong love of country as at best indiosyncratic or at worse facists, racist, etc. like the UKIP. Canada just strikes me as a place today that thinks the can bargain their way to great country status as they sell out to the highest bidder like the Chinese or sell out to the more aggressive Muslims who will quickly come to intimidate their way to political power while bringing the rest of the “go along to get along” “eh” type canadians with them as they naievely believe this is all benign. You will lose your country too. So the bottom line is thank GOD for the USA since it gives the Canadians a place to flee to when the shit hits the fan.
Why is this being re-run? It’s a week old. And frankly, wasn’t that great to begin with.
Been happening quite frequently as of late here on PJM. You might have noticed over the last few months that output has declined tremendously. I am hoping that it is not a harbinger of decline as it’s been a good ride so far.
Unibroue in Quebec produces Belgian-style ales that are as good as any in the world.
Any beer list that has St. Bernardus Abt 12 at #40 is suspect.
Well too much to watch before work, but this is funny. If you watched leno and his interviews you would know that the US is sorely lacking in knowledge about it’s neighbor to the north.
Harper was great! Too funny!
Any real Canadian, even one living in the US, would recognize that the author is not a Canadian. ‘favor’? ‘labor’? First clues, but, there are many more inaccuracies and mistruths and misstatements in this ramble – all to make a point about what? And why?
You’re Canadian? That explains a lot.
Not bad questions, actually: I’ll try to answer them in good faith, and with the understanding that I might not know ALL of the reasons:
1. Health care: There were a truckload of things pre-Obamacare that needed reforming, badly. Unfortunately, the leftists sat on these real grievances like a hawk: they eternally stood ready to steer ANY call for any reform at all into a move for fully socialized medicine. Many major insurers and health-care providers benefited from the system’s flaws, and were quick to lobby against even good reforms under the cover of avoiding an American NHS. The people who both wanted to fix the system AND didn’t want to put socialized medicine in its place have always been outnumbered, outfunded, and overmatched w/r/t passion. Even though I detest Obamacare, so many vested interests stayed so comfortable for so long while abuses and flaws piled up, that something like it became almost bound to happen.
2. There’s an uncommonly huge overlap between people who profit from the American tort system and people who go into American politics. Of course, maybe this is true of Canada as well. If so, I honestly don’t know why our tort system is worse: maybe the lawyer/politician overlap is more easily exploited in a federal system than in a parliamentary one, or politicians can be more effectively lobbied … I’m just not sure.
3. In my few visits to Canada, it certainly didn’t look as if the locals ate any healthier food than we did–quite the contrary in some places. Maybe it’s because the U.S. has large swathes of territory where for much of the year, it’s too hot to go outside for long–much less exercise in the heat. What’s more, many of those hot-weather regions were largely developed after the advent of the automobile and AC, and (thanks mostly to big-government social planning and local/state corruption) it’s virtually impossible to walk or bicycle anywhere for any real-world purpose, regardless of temperature. So if you live in the Sun Belt, exercise usually doesn’t just *happen* in the course of an ordinary day, and the climate makes it uniquely unrewarding to engage in. So that could be affecting the statistics, I suppose.
Tort reform will never happen while congress is populated by near 100% lawyers. The system was originally designed to be a part-time job peopled by folks from every walk of life. People who would know how the country actually works from an everyman perspective. Making congress a “career” was our first and most damaging mistake.
As for people getting fat I think it has to be the food. People don’t exercise particulary less than they did 20 years ago can’t explain the massive increase in our collective girth. However, as a culture we don’t cook anymore. We consume alot of quick processed foods that are killing us.
I am also an American trapped in the body of a Canadian. American history is dramatic, exciting, unique and is full of the best and worst of humanity. America came in with a bang. The U.S. Constitution is a work of pure genius and Divine inspiration. Contrast that to the incredibly boring events surrounding the birth of Canada. Let’s face if fellow Canadians, Canada is D.U.L.L. We mock Americans for their effusive patriotism, but personally I love all the flags and pride displayed in the homes, shops, streets and parks in Anytown, U.S.A. Canadians sleep-walk through life, Americans live it to the fullest. Loud and proud. G-d bless them.
As a dual citizen living in Canada, I treated this column as I treat most Canadian media by distancing myself as soon as it becomes too eclectic (read jumbled and disorganized) I skim a bit of the G&M, Read the NY Times, L.A. Times and Washington Post and watch CBS & NBC News. I just LOVE Rick Mercer, though. His programs take me back to my youth – 1940s radio. Some years ago another Canadian did street interviews in America asking Canada’s favorite question: “What do you think of Canadians?” One good soul provided an answer that covers it all and forever: “Canadians? Nice folks. Not very bright but NICE!”
As to the cost of MRI’s, they are covered by insurance and most Americans aren’t paying out of pocket for medical costs.
So our system isn’t “extreme” in the opposite direction and I most certainly prefer it to the Canadian health care system.
I envy Canada having Stephen Harper as their PM in contrast with our president.
Simple. Through various vote purchasing schemes disguised as Government Programs, over half the country doesn’t work.
Health Care used to be an incentive/reward for landing and keeping a good job or suffering through a bad job while looking for a better one. That’s just unfair to lazy people.
Litigation is part of our state sponsored lottery system. Six figure payouts beat sweating for a paycheck any day.
We’re fat? Diet and Exercise? Sounds like work to me.
I can’t remember the last time Americans ever criticized Canadians. But you come here and have at us. Why?
I laughed so hard when I read the line about Chretien choking a protester. I did not like Chretien or his ideology and I especially did not like his method of divisive and polarizing politics. But choking a protester? That was just plain awesome!
As an American physician, I must comment on the health care issue. The author is quite correct that the primary cost driver in the USA is the ubiquitous threat of litigation. People who have never been sued have no idea how horrible an experience it can be. It makes a universal IRS audit look like fun by comparison.
For this reason, physicians, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, etc. are in a constant state of hypervigilence (which doesn’t work, by the way), in an attempt to stave off lawsuits. This is INCREDIBLY expensive.
If medical lawsuits were OUTLAWED, which is the ONLY way they can truly be reduced to zero, health care in America would be just as good if not better and MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE. Costs would plummet overnight, as would health insurance premiums.
Perry pushed through tort reform in Texas. Come on down!
As someone who works in the NHS,i have been told here over and over that the US has the greatest health system that you all love.
If that’s the case, why does so many Americans want to sue their doctors?
Certainly, much of US medicine is testing for low probability outcomes. I agree with you.
But what mechanism do you suggest to insure against rare, genuine negligence on the part of physicians?
Twice in the last fifty years I sought the advice of a medical malpractice lawyer in a “single payer” foreign jurisdiction where the government (the single payer) is also the medical insurer of last resort. In both cases I was told I would win on the facts but the judge would probably penalize me for the defense’s legal expenses and award me only a nominal judgment.
IN the first case, that physician lost his license five years later for malpractice in another matter. Under the “Privacy Laws” in that jurisdiction I was not able to get the reason from the licensing authority until many years later when I met a client in my business who worked for them, owed me a favor and who looked up the old records for me and told me the information on the quiet.
So much for a system in which outcomes are not considered public information and the professional cliques protect even the incompetents.
HA HA HA! Speaking as a patriotic America loving Englishman I whole heartedly agree with you Kathy. (Still chuckling on the fat joke)
HA HA HA! England is ranked as the most obese country in Western Europe, you hypocrite, and I’ve been there and can see why! At least most of us don’t have the sickly white pallor of corpses or nauseating brown, half-rotten teeth – I guess you limeys’ wonderful health care doesn’t cover dentistry, huh?
In this Canada versus America one thing has to be noted and that is that only Canada has Terrance and Phillip.
Wow. just Wow.
This really bugs me. Progressives broke black families, not southern racists. if you’re bitching about black people, bitch about Wilson, the Democratic Party in general, and whomever built Cabrini- Green.
We paid cash money for black people. They were valuable to us. The slave auction houses, with the rings for holding them for display are a sort of ellis island for black Americans. In any wealthy southern family, there is at least one black branch on the family tree. In Maryland, there are black families with blue as blood as any other DAR- qualified family. They still send their sons into the military. They still become brilliant officers with shining careers.
You’re trying to talk smack about Americans. Americans who come from families that have been here since before the Revolution.
If you want to talk smack, why not talk smack about the immigrants we let in 100 years ago? And their trashy children? Margaret Sanger was a slutty drunken Irish girl. She was the daughter of the town drunk. 50 million babies in, I’m thinking maybe the British were right. She targeted blacks, and southerners. Charming girl. You’d think she’d be polite to her hosts, and not try to kill their children, but you’d be wrong. Blacks were here before her.
Ted Kennedy kicked the doors open for immigrants. Maybe we don’t need grandmas immigrating just in time to collect Social Security. Maybe the Kopechne’s would like to have kept their daughter alive.
Bernard Nathanson brought his family’s clinical depression over, to legalize abortion. And then, he got Americanized- he got caught in a religious free-speech demonstration, and noticed that the people were happy and loving. He became American- optimistic, hard-working, hopeful.
Maybe America works best when it strips an immigrant of his/her family from back-when over there, and turns them into wonder-bread eating, television watching, (functional) public school suburbanites? I was happy growing up in a white-bread suburb. It sucked raw eggs to move to New Orleans, and then start having to keep track where everyone came from, and who’s up and who’s down. I mean, seriously, between light-skinned blacks, dark-skinned blacks in catholic schools, military white kids in public schools, uptown drug addicts, downtown alcoholics, french quarter degenerates, business district predators, backroom deals with politicians done in public at crappy cafeterias, guys with -nic last names talking smack about guys with -shian last names, and the arabs sorted between druze and catholic…..something’s gotta give.
money is green, and everyone can earn that color. god thinks we are all sinners, and gives grace. the constitution says we are all citizens with inalienable rights. empires have all sorts of shades. nations break before empires. empires last longer. we’ll work it out.
and no, I don’t hate Irish people. It’s the best ridiculous example I could think of.
Kathy,
You may never get to read this but Carlos Brown was the grandson of a Spanish cigar manufacturer of Cuban Cigars in Tampa Florida in the early 1900′s, name of Salvatore Rodriguez. His daughter Rita, my great aunt’s sister, married Col. Brown, a soldier on McKinley’s staff, just after McKinley got assassinated which probably led Col. Brown to lose or resign his post.
Carlos was born to Rita and Col. Brown in 1915 and went to school in England with my Uncle and then took an engineering job for an elevator company in Berlin about 1935 when my father, all of 13, met him and got a tour of Berlin.
Sometime after Carlos rode his motor bike from Berlin down to the Italian Riviera in 1939 for a summer vacation, or maybe he was nervous about the war clouds gathering). When Hitler rolled into Poland, Carlos rode his bike (I have pictures of it with him aboard) from Italy up to France to drive Red Cross ambulances for the French during the phony war and up to the time of the Blitzkreig in the West. After being awarded the Croix d’ Guerre for his civilian efforts, he escaped the Nazi invasion, who he hated, by riding his bike over the Pyrenees through Spain to Portugal. There he took a tramp steamer back to the U.S.
He washed out of the American Air Corps but then signed up for the Royal Canadian Air Corps who shipped him back to Britain where he eventually became a Captain flying AVRO Lancaster Bombers for the RAF though still in the RCAF. He only had to fly 25 missions but after their first 25 he and his crew of 7, British, Canadian and Australian with an American commander, signed up with the 97th Squadron flying out of Bourne for another 25. On their 26th mission, 16 planes took off from Bourne on Wed. Nov. 25 the day before our American Thanksgiving in 1943. They bombed Frankfurt and 15 planes came back. Carlos and his crew did not come back having been shot down on Thanksgiving 1943, Nov. 26. All of them died.
They were shot down over Birnau outside Frankfurt by a night fighter von Bonin with 39 kills under his belt by the end of the War. (His brother had even more, over 80, I believe but was shot down by the Russians two weeks after Carlos died, though Carlos’s von Bonin survived to the end of the war).
In May 1945 Aunt Elena, Rita’s sister, wrote to my father in Germany, who was with the American 12th Armored Division down in Bavaria to go look for Carlos and bring him home. He hitchiked up to Birnau after VE day and found three allied bodies but no Carlos.
I bring this up because in 2010 a German student found Carlos’s plane, an AVRO Lancaster, the only plane shot down in Birnau during the war, out in the woods or what was left of it. There were human remains where the cockpit had been. Now the Canadian Government asked for DNA samples from my cousin, Rita’s grandaughter, to see if any of the remains were of Carlos. We are still awaiting the results.
This is a true story. There was some hubbub on the internet by some military folk wondering how an American flying for the Canadians won the Croix de Guerre. Needless to say, most theories were wrong.
So God Bless America. And God Bless Canada. Do not say there are no Americans that did not die for Canada. My cousin Captain Carlos Brown (1915-1943) now hopefully found at last, was one.
In closing, Carlos’s last words to my father in New York as he left for the war in his Canadian Air Corps uniform were: “Phil, just bury me where I fall.”
Not to belabour a point there Kathy but: “And here’s our first female P.M., whose election was a matter of no gender-related controversy whatsoever.” In addition to Fred2 let me add
Kim Campbell was not elected as Prime Minister, she became the ‘de facto’ Prime Minister by winning the Progressive Conservative leadership. The following election saw the near destruction of the PC’s and the rise of the true Conservative alternative of the Reform Party, hmmm……
Canadian political structure allows for this travesty of democracy where a few hundred party delegates chose the highest office in Canada instead of putting it to a vote in a General election. The complete destruction of the PC party was the citizen’s response to such hubris.
In American politics this would mean that if George Bush had stepped down as President and Mitt Romney had won the nomination as Republican Candidate he would have automatically become President.
Thankfully in America you actually have a process that puts an elected Vice President in charge instead.
Some argue that it’s not the porkchops, but the heavy carbs and relative avoidance of fats and protein of the “food pyramid” which the US government pushed as a healthy diet for years which contributed substantially to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease here.
Yes, restaurant portions (with some notable Asian exceptions) here are also massive. I recall when you could get an eight ounce soft drink or coffee. Man, I’m getting old.
One reason Canada has less debt and higher disposable income is that, like the EU, they pay almost nothing for their military. They are part of NATO, and benefit from the huge military expenditures of the USA. I would probably move there were it not for the fact that it is so cold there much of the year. Many of my ancestors were Acadians and I will be eternally grateful that the British evicted them and they resettled in South Louisiana.
About the Health care. America has the best health care in the world. It is also the most expensive. Notice I didn’t say ‘health care system’. Not an accident.
People who say America has bad beer need to get beyond the Bud. Budweiser comes straight from the Clydesdale. Try Shiner Bock, Anchor Steam or my favorite; Steel Reserve.
As for the lawyers, yes but you don’t go far enough. Every graduating class at law school needs to hold a drawing. Whoever draws the black ball gets hung, right then, right there. Loser pays might work in the rest of the world but American Lawyers would find a loophole.
You are totally correct about the fat thingie. But you haven’t considered everything.
panem et circenses! With more weapons then citizens and enough ammo to shoot every human on this planet behind BOTH ears ( a double Quadiffi ) The government has a vested interest in keeping the citizens FAT, dumb and happy. That horse has long left the barn. If the gobbermint tried to collect all the firearms in circulation, they would get them one bullet at a time.
Deer Hunting season opens soon Mid November, October for the children. In Wisconsin 800,000 hunters will be stalking Bambi. Pennsylvania puts up about 700,000. That is 1,5 million armed men. It would be the 4th largest army in the world. By far the drunkest. Throw in the other 48 states and you have a body of armed men larger then all the worlds COMBINED armies.
So fat dumb and happy is a government sponsored program.
Two more safe shower days left at Penn State.