Grand Mal

Nope. The first time around I had decided to sit it out but the Conservative attack ads pissed me off so I went out and voted Liberal. Second time around SNC Lavalin had happened and Morneau and that trip to India so I sat out the second time around. You can't blame me. Especially since my riding is solidly NDP. I'm an old-school liberal. Capital L Liberal, too. The last federal politician I liked was Jean Chretien. edit- I'd get behind Jody Wilson-Rayboult if she could be a Liberal leadership candidate.

What a stupid post.

Third-grade arts student? My formal education ended at grade 12, unless you count apprenticeship. 'Course, it was a Canadian high school education, so there's that.

Oh, anecdotes? Okay. There's Americans here where I live. Two who came as draft evaders, a couple in their mid fifties and an older woman who writes and publishes in Britain, of all things. The couple are, were, real estate agents. Now he fancies himself a farmer and her MS has her pretty much confined to a wheel-chair. She went back to her family last summer, the marriage fallenv apart, but came back here after a few weeks. She lives in a small ground-floor hotel room and wheels herslf to the cafe for her meals. The draft dodgers are both retired, one was a surveyor, the other a commercial fisherman. The other woman travels a lot and writes about it. She's a good conversation and the only one whose company I can take for more than an hour at a time.

Sorry, you didn't provide anything. Certainly not anything "well known and routinely acknowledged". Well, maybe well known and routinely acknowledged in the US, where everything is defined by It's relationship to the US, but in fact most Canadians don't pay any attention to the difference between us and Americans. We just take it as a given, especially since the difference is reinforced by everyone else around the world. There's no risk of confusing the two, no need to emphasize the difference. Want a bit of fun? Next time you go outside of America -uh, you are American, right? Next time you go to another country, see if you can pull off impersonating a Canadian. Just for shits and giggles. If you do pull it off, see how your reception is different from when you were recieved as an American. My money says you couldn't be taken as Canadian, but I bet I could be taken for American. Which says Americans are defined as not Canadian.

Wrong. Canadians don't define Canadians. We don't insist on a Canadian identity, we don't use the word "assimilate" about immigrants. Yeah, we insist on the difference between us and Americans the same way we insist on the difference between us and Brits or French or everyone else. What you're doing is what Americans are known for, making everything somehow about it's relationship to the US.

I vote Liberal if I vote at all. I won't be voting in a federal election while Justin Trudeau is the leader of the Liberal Party. I don't like the GDP for the federal government and better a sister in a whore-house than a brother in the Conservative Party. I'll wait until the Liberals come back from the far left magical mystery tour Justin has taken them on.

National pride makes Canadians a little uncomfortable. We hesitate to express pride in something we had no part in, like being born Canadian. Americans jump all over any chance to be proud of what previous generations accomplished, like high school kids swelling with pride at the three consecutive championship banners from 5 years ago hanging from the gymnasium ceiling. One thing every American should bear in mind- it doesn't matter if they're 4 years old or 44, America was a better country the day they were born than it is today. Americans are squandering their inheritance. Their grandparents wouldn't recognize what they've done with their country. "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." -Oscar Wilde-

I love how Americans brag about being the biggest, meanest dog on the block and then melt down into childlike tantrums whenever they think they're not getting the love they need and deserve. Criticize anything about the USA in the presence of Americans and watch the group self-pity party kick into gear. Anywhere you go in the world, if there's Americans there they demand that they get an extra share of empathy and soothing, salving cuddles. It's the cause of more eye-rolling and face-palming than a roomful of spoiled brats.

In every crisis there's a handful of people that just can't be counted on, that cross their arms and refuse to be inconvenienced. "I don't want to and you can't make me!" Like the jerks who get caught building campfires during fire ban season they either deny the need or think it doesn't apply to people as smart as they are. Like the buffoon in the White House they consider everyone who chips in and does their part to be losers and suckers. Anyone who refuses to take part in the safety measures should be handcuffed for a few hours to the bedside of someone dying badly with a tube snaked down their windpipe and a machine pumping air into them.

Vote fraud is built into the American system. It takes three Texans or Californians to equal one vote in Wyoming. Just wondering though, if you can't agree on how to have an election, how do you know you're a democracy?

Usually about 25 per week. A couple dozen a day now, 5 days a week. https://nationalpost.com/news/world/new-york-city-hires-laborers-to-bury-dead-in-hart-island-potters-field-amid-coronavirus-surge-2

That's America for you. Other places put aside differences in times of crisis and pull together but Americans double-down on the partisan vitroil.

Because they spend like drunken sailors. After 8 or 9 years of surplus budgets under Chretien, Harper put us back into the red. And I'm pretending this particular Liberal government isn't happening, so don't spoil it for me.

Oh, too bad . Guess I'll go hang myself in the barn. Canada, by any standards, is one of the best places in the world to live. So much so that a case could be made that anyone who doesn't like living here probably wouldn't like living anywhere. That said, better a sister in a whore-house than a brother in the Conservative Party.