Dubya came to Canada!

Ya think?

President Bush traveled to Canada this week. Canadians are not, we are told, happy with the President because of the whole Iraq thing.

Memo to Canada: Americans don't much care what you think because we know that Canada's biggest asset is sharing a billion mile border with us.

Think I'm making this up? According to the CIA's World Factbook, "Roughly 90% of the population lives within 160 kilometers of the US border."

If Canada were located in Africa instead of North America, it would be a country of 32 million white people in loin cloths barely surviving by eating wildebeest they had illegally cross-checked with hockey sticks.

Nearly 87% of everything Canada exports, it exports to the US of A which works out to about a billion dollars per working day. How about if we close the border to Canadian imports every, say, Tuesday. For a year.

Canada's principal export has been comedians who come to the US because one of the many things Canadians lack is a sense of humor. And Mad Cow Disease. They export that. And a dreadful baseball team which is moving to Washington, DC.

Canada's principal import from the US has been draft dodgers. If we're lucky, frustrated Kerry voters will produce the next great wave of immigrants into places like Saskatoon.

OK, that's not true, but this is: "[A] long-term concern is the flow south to the US of professionals lured by higher pay, lower taxes, and the immense high-tech infrastructure."

Here's a good idea: Canada sends us its physicists and mathematicians (and maybe a shortstop who can hit a Major League slider), we send Canada … Michael Moore.

A Canadian commentator on NPR earlier this week said Canadians were waiting to see what olive branch the President would be bringing. Canadians have so little contact with reality they believed President Bush was coming up there to apologize.

For what? Oh, maybe for allowing Canadians to quake and cower under the defense umbrella of the big, bad United States. The total expenditures for defense of the whole country of Canada in 2003 was about $9.8 Billion. The US number? About $400 Billion.

You're welcome.

In the run-up to the President's visit there were concerns that there might be violence among Canadians in protest. Yeah. Right. What's the first place you think of when you hear the word "protesters?" Kee-rekt: Canada.

Here's what the Toronto Globe & Mail said about the protests: "[They] were mostly peaceful, save for a small group that threw paint and burned a tire."

A TIRE! A, one, single, lone, solo, solitary. Oh, and they threw paint. Probably water-based. Canadians are nothing, if not tidy.

What's the national flower of Canada, the Pansy?

For his part, President Bush was typically gracious and funny. At one point he said, "I, frankly, felt like the reception we received on the way in from the airport was very warm and hospitable, and I want to thank the Canadian people who came out to wave - with all five fingers."

It was not immediately clear if the Canadians got it.



Source

whine, whine, whine







That should suffice today's quota......

Well, Bush visited Tarana, and our Provincial flower is the trillium, sort of a metaphor for the trinity. He was on holy land, and should have known better.

From Bartcop...

Haven't been to the site for a bit, but better late than never:



...not "the Iraq Thing"...the faulty intel. (read: lies of "reliable intelligence"), the PNAC's mission statement, (in the West) the crippling effect his administration has had on one single isolated BSE case, his reintegration of a church and state relationship, his embrace of pseudo-compassionate conservatism, and his inability to speak coherently when the reins of his handlers have extended beyoned their reach.
...because of the Iraq thing oversimplifies the attitude Canadians have for Bush, as well as the opiniions held of the man on the international stage---but what the hell, Americans are Americans and to hell with the rest of the world. Right?
See below...



...or maybe our biggest asset is that we don't have a large population of the world wishing that our country was obliterated from existence?
....a billion miles, c'mon? I think it's much smaller than that. In fact, I know it's much smaller than that.



This hardly supports your previous statements. Claiming that 90% our population lives close to the border for "protection" or "American affiliation" is about as relevant as any argument regarding the vast majority of Americans living in coastal regions.
It's not politically motivated--it's about climate--spend a month in any Canadian city north of the 58th parallel.



You really need to explain this because as of this point, your knowledge of Canada (or lack thereof) has come into question.



How about we nix any opportunities for American multinationals to exploit our natural resources (oil, lumber, water, marine life etc.)
...oh yeah...right, you have military superiority and can have at will.
My bad.



....ouch. You hit all our soft spots.



It's called free trade--and we're happy to have anyone here who protests the actions of their government.




How about adding all the facts, not just a Michael-Moorian sample:
"....The 1989 US-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (which includes Mexico) touched off a dramatic increase in trade and economic integration with the US. As a result of the close cross-border relationship, the economic sluggishness in the United States in 2001-02 had a negative impact on the Canadian economy." LINK--Scroll to Economy



You can have all the baseball players you want--that's America's lazy-ass, couch-muncher sport. Not ours.



...no, Canadians value the working relationship with your nation, and would hope that the respect is reciprocated. We don't have to agree with whatever pet project the Bushies have, but we would hope that your tyrant...I mean, President, would agree.
We are not you lap dog, and being punished with pseudo-economic sanctions and denied Presidential Prime-Ministerial visits is elementary behavior at best.



And that is the "measure of a man"?
You did state above that Canada's population was a meagre 30 million and change, so you have to see the relativity involved in such a comparison...right?
....besides, why would we spend so much on defense...we are not hated (or in American terms, envied) by the majority of the developed and undeveloped world. Right?



.....uhhh, thanks?



Or just people with independent minds who have a real freedom to protest...but many Americans also protested Dubya's first Presidency, many Americans protest at the G-8 summits, and many Americans have
protested American foreign policies over the past several decades or so....But go ahead and label us as though the US is immune....



...point being?



The American national flower, the

....Internationaly recognized at least.




...your assessment?

....trust me, we all got it, so did Bush.
For once.