I apologize Jim. I haven't read any constructive criticism yet.



>Why thank you, Tracy. I'll consider myself soundly told off.
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>I already told you that most of the rest of the world has great concern about the US economy (thus by extension many other issues) because of its impact on the rest of the world.
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>That you get so upset when people offer constructive criticism is both unfortunate and unexpected. But life is full of surprises.
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>>Storefront Supervised Injection Sites catering to junkies
>>Rudi Kischer took a whole team, complete with realtors and money-managers, to recruit in American cities, helping potential defectors overcome immigration concerns
>>carpool-lane cheaters
>>Victoria dumps its untreated sewage into the waters off Vancouver Island
>>Didn't bother to draft its own constitution until 1982
>>When Canadians were asked to name their favorite song, they settled on one by a good Canadian band, The Guess Who. The song: "American Woman."
>>An identity not so much from 'I am Canadian' as 'I am not American.'"
>>Canadians pride themselves on knowing more about us than we do about them (undoubtedly true), the problem--captured in a survey done for Canada Day in 2000--is that even historically challenged Americans know more about ourselves than Canadians do about themselves.
>>We all know Canadians are overregulated, to the point that Canadian rocker Bryan Adams was denied "Canadian content status" for cowriting an album with a British producer, limiting the play his songs could receive on the radio (a policy that's supposed to encourage Canadian talent, but that in Adams's words "encourage[s] mediocrity. People don't have to compete in the real world. . .
>>We all know the Canadian military has become a shadow of itself. Things have gotten so dire that a Queen's University study (titled "Canada Without Armed Forces?") predicted the imminent extinction of the air force. This unpreparedness has become such a joke that Ferguson says their military ranks just above Tonga's, which consists of nothing more than "a tape-recorded message yelling 'I surrender!' in thirty-two languages."
>>While it's true that the government has been much friendlier than ours to gay marriage, only 39 percent of Canadians decidedly support it. While Canada is supposedly more environment-friendly, it has been cited for producing more waste per person than any other country. While Canada is supposedly safer, a 1996 study showed its banks had the highest stick-up rate of any industrialized nation (one in every six was robbed). And while a great deal is made of Americans' passion for firearms, the Edmonton Sun, citing Statistics Canada, reported that Canada has a higher crime rate than we do.
>>Canadians are supposedly less greedy than Americans, yet they lead the world in telemarketing fraud, and most of their victims are Americans. Are they more generous? Not by a long shot. The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute publishes a Generosity Index, which shows that more Americans give to charity, and give more when they do.
>>If Canadians today are less racist, someone ought to tell their aboriginal peoples, who've spent centuries getting their land annexed and being generally mistreated (as of 2000 in Nova Scotia, there was still a law on the books offering hunters a bounty for Indian scalps).
>>Recent polling shows 35 percent of Canada's "visible minorities" (such as blacks and Asians) have experienced discrimination in the last five years. Another poll showed 54 percent of Canadians believe anti-Semitism is a serious problem in Canadian society today
>>many Canadians recognize that theirs is a faithless country compared with America. Not just in terms of religious belief--though they are much less fervent. As National Post columnist Andrew Coyne recently wrote in a piece chiding his countrymen for regarding American patriotism as cheap sentiment, "You see, in Canada we gave up believing years ago: in religion, in ideals, in much of anything, really. Secure as we were under the American defense umbrella, we were infantilized; having no need to defend ourselves, we could not understand why anyone else would have more. Or perhaps it was this: having renounced even the wish to defend ourselves, having absorbed the notion that the country could be destroyed at any moment by a vote of half the population of one province [Quebec], what was left to believe?"
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>>http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/349tpijp.asp?pg=1
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>>What I find most interesting is that there are problems in every country. Yet, unlike the rest of the world, Americans don't sit around everyday complaining and obsessing about any other country as others do with America. Get a life! Get your own life for Pete's sake and stop obsessing about ours.
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>>If you are unhappy with America's role in the world and how our elections work, try increasing Canada's role in the world and focus on your own system and life within your borders.
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>>If you just can't stop yourself from obsessing about America, move here, become a citizen, and start lobbying to change it.
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>>>>If you are referring to the Bill of Rights, I agree. It is being whittled away by Bush. However, we are not there yet. Your statement is an over-generalization Jim.
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>>>>>All the other bits have long ago disappeared from you system.
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>>>No, I am talking about lobbyist making the laws
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>>>I am talking about the amount of cash it takes to run for office, especially at the Federal level.
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>>>I am talking about two partis having things so lockd up in their favour that there will never be a 3rd or 4th party. Sure, you can say you have Libertarians and some others, but they are locked out of the real 'system'.
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>>>I am talking about how the lengths of campaigns (primaries, presidential) only really serve to allow more people more opportunities to solidify their holds on candidates.
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>>>The country is *really* run by the rich, for the rich and since the (alleged) death of Communism THE PEOPLE aren't even given an iota of consideration.