Yodeler

Nobody brainwashed anybody! When my neighbor, Mr. Jones's, fortunes started changing I didn't want to admit it at first and was angry .... but once I realized that his pulling away from me was an undeniable fact (a Rolls-Royce in his driveway etc.) my insane jealousy & hatred stopped. The same insane jealousy & hatred is now felt by most Canadians that are becoming more and more suspicious of the fact that Americans are richer and richer than us with each passing year. The sooner we realize that this is not just suspicion but certainity, the sooner our jealousy & hatred of Americans will stop!! How do I know this? La Rochefoucald told me so! He said: "Jealousy feeds upon suspicion, and it turns into fury or it ends as soon as we pass from suspicion to certainity."

The average net wage in the east bloc country where I resided was around 1500 a month. A half a litre of premium beer in a nice bar set you back 1.20 Cigarettes ... 1.60 A good meal (schnitzel, goulash, chicken paprika etc.) in a nice bar or restaurant ... 8.50 Rent ... 200 And, since there were no sizable differences between men's wallets girls judged you strictly by your wit & good looks. I had a GREAT time there!

Mighty China IS a superpower, and they are not afraid to use their nukes on the United States. They said so ... just a few months ago. Like Bruce Garvey says, there IS going to be a military confrontation between the U.S. and China. And if China wins this confrontation, and ONLY if China wins this confrontation ... will your bullshit above, Yaro, make any sense.

Bruce Garvey read my mind when he wrote: "Any way you slice it, you don't have to be Henry Kissinger to figure out that the next economic and military superpower confrontation will be between the U.S. and China. There is one nightmare scenario that has haunted anyone with a semblance of wit since 9/11 -- the prospect of the U.S. slamming the border shut over some security breach. In an instant, there goes the Canadian economy. To think that this could happen over $5-billion worth of duties owed to profitable, if not booming, forestry companies is unthinkable. And for Martin to blithely fantasize about replacing our common North American heritage with some strategic soul mate partnership with China is the height of irresponsibility." http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpos...2e-6bacb66b937a

What does that have to do with striking teachers?

Which of these "truths" impressed & aroused you the most? What aroused ME the most were the lies about the Americans' mistreatment of blacks & Jews in the sixties. "That's not fair" I thought. And the lies about the HUGE disparities between the rich and the poor. "That's not fair" I thought. But by the midst of my rebelious teens I knew perfectly well that those were just Communist LIES LIES THE VICIOUS LIES!

I've heard many stories of people who, told by Medicare that within a short time they will be knocking on St. Peter's door, go running to the US doctors for help ..... and get it. Then they go knocking on Medicare's door to get the money they spent in the US .... and get it. Never heard of any Americans running to Canada for salvation. Have you?

I checked my 2005 drug prescriptions, and I'll be damned if they're not all generics. The whole lot of them ... and a pretty big lot it is. Now if I only find a quack in the US who will rubber stamp my quack's prescriptions, I'll save myself a bundle.

I wouldn't call it propaganda any more than I would call what was told to you about us "propaganda". Some of it was true, some of it wasn't. On both sides. Now we are friends and that's all that counts. Dosvidania tovarisch!

Oops! ... that's Pawlenty

If you're surprised that not many posters voted it may be because you eliminated all tobacco users. How many votes did you get, anyway?

From what I've heard, generic drugs are actually cheaper in the USA. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I've heard right, it seems. http://www.usembassycanada.gov/content/tex...cription_111803 "For example, we looked particularly closely at the price retailers pay (per milligram) for the active ingredients that go into seven top generic drugs used to treat chronic conditions. These are drugs widely used in the U.S. that have all lost patent protection in the last ten years. [Alprazolam, clonazepam, enalapril, fluoxetine, lisinopril, metformin, and metoprolol]. In only one case was the Canadian generic cheaper than in the US. In another case, the generic version was not yet available in Canada, and for 4 of the remaining 5 drugs, the US generic was half the price, if not cheaper, than the Canadian generic. In other countries, the overpayments for generic drugs appear to be even worse: in Italy, for example, a recent study revealed that generic drugs cost almost twice as much as those in the U.S. Furthermore, when looking at unbranded generics specifically, this study revealed that prices range from a third higher in France and Canada to almost double in both Italy and Germany."

If you put a value on who's in charge, Alberta's Premier, Ralph Klein, beats B.C.'s hands down. As the matter of fact, Ralph is the best of all, better than even your Tim Pannelty, IMO. If you put a value on how good health care is, Ralph's Province is making great strides towards grabbing the first spot which now belongs to Quebec. The ex-Mayor of Vancouver calls his city a "rain forrest" for a good reason, so if you like sunshine as Johnny Ray does ... don't go there. Between the life prolonging sunshine and the life prolonging health care Albertans enjoy .... I'd choose Calgary in a New York minute. But then ... I'd choose New York over Calgary even faster.

From what I've heard, generic drugs are actually cheaper in the USA. Also from what I've heard, Medicare encourages it's doctors to prescribe the cheaper drugs, whenever possible. That would be the generic ones, no?

I feel I should again clarify. Brian's routine CT scan showed two small lesions and Medicare went to work, spending hundreds of thousands of the taxpayers' money to make sure he's clear of cancer. I'm not eligible for a routine CT scan, as Brian is, so I shell out $700 to have my tobacco infested lungs scanned . Not only do I get no follow up whatsoever, I even have to AGAIN pull out my OWN cash out of my OWN pocket when it is time to see if my lesions have grown to pumpkin size tumors. To top it off, the present government bastards won't even let me declare these expenses on my f'ing tax return. AND YOU ALL THINK THAT THAT'S JUST FINE, HUH ???

In the Hawaiian ocean's close to human body temperature, I stub my toes and scrape my belly on those pesky corals everywhere. Yet in the freezing waters of Vancouver Island they are nowhere to be seen. So don't tell ME they don't have a preference.

Not measurably. Whenever I put my foot in either of the Canadian oceans it's still too damn cold. I can't wait for the time when tourists will be coming to Canada as they do to Hawaii, to have fun in the sun and the ocean that is barely a few degrees cooler than the outside air and where dunking in it is pure pleasure. If Hawaiian's aren't worried, why are you?

I feel I should clarify. My CT scan found a couple of 4 mm leisions on my lung, and I was told (and given a written assesment) stating that the possibility of malignancy is minute and that perhaps another test in about a year's time could be a good idea, just to make sure. (Just to make sure that there is no tumor the size of a tennis ball by this time is my guess). At about the same time, Brian Mulroney and Tammy Faye Baker were also diagnosed with the same thing that I was. We all know what lengths the doctors went to with Brian to make sure he was clean. Tammy Faye Baker's single leison was half the size of mine yet they put her through the same tests that they put Brian through ... hers turned out to be bad news. The moral of the story? Don't assume that flashing a hundred dollar bill around is enough! Make sure that you tell them who you are! And make it sound good. Or else these Canadian private clinics will go into "avoid the future costs to Medicare" mode and send you down the river (sink or swim sort of thing). Next time I'll have to remember to tell them who I am, as Brian and Tammy Faye undoubtedly did.

Rubbish. Canadians don't want an American style health care system because it doesn't work, not because it is American. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The American health care system is too rich for us. We can't afford to give patients an MRI or CT scan or PET scan as Americans can when the the odds of positive results are long. That's why I proposed to Medicare that they open up sort of gambling clinics. In these clinics patients who are denied a test because the odds of a positive result are long would then have the option of laying down the money for that test, and should it turn out positive ... they would win. Not at the true odds of a positive outcome, but say ... half that. This type of gambling clinic couldn't lose, Medicare would be rolling in money, and we'd all be tested. I know I would. From head to toe! As it is now, Medicare pays zilch, and the Liberals wouldn't even let me claim it on my tax return, even though I DID test positive! There ought to be a law!

There are 10 times as many liquor stores in Calgary today as there were before privatization. Didn't any of these 1,866 government slugs qualify to work in any of them? Oh well .... somebody did.

If the system you describe above is strictly "right-wing", how come that it was the norm not only in Canadian and U.S. schools back in the 60s, but also in all of the Iron Curtain countries?

But surely Alberta's "goo" doesn't fetch as much as Saudi's "sweet"! Does it?

Why don't you make a "living will"? Chicken? You're not alone. When Oregon state relaxed their euthanasia rules, they were expecting hordes of people to do just that, but nobody did.

Not those who believe in the "afterlife", that's for sure!

What do you mean?