Liam

I'm not debating your point about good fences making good neighbors, but there is no 700 mile fence being built as you said. The GOP, in order to appeal to certain voters, voted for a 700 mile fence between the US and Mexico, but they didn't commit the funds to build it. The fence "exists" in the law books, but the reality is, no money = no fence. It does not exist in the material world. The fence was all an election year ruse to convince western voters that the GOP was doing something to stop the flow of illegals from Mexico. There are fences along some parts of the border, but this 700 mile expansion doesn't exist. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...OdOs0o&refer=us

I would hardly characterize the friendship between Chavez and Ahmenijad as the world's lining up against US imperialism. Chavez and Ahmenijad are politicians who can fan the flames of their own supporters by rallying against the evil Yankee. Chavez realizes the grandfather of Latin Socialism, Fidel, will soon be joining Lenin in some bleak, nihilistic void, and wants to set himself up as the go-to guy in terms of Latin America's poor. Ahmenijad's popularity is on the decline in Iran and he wants to shore up his political support. Ask the average Venezuelan or Iranian what they think of the US and you'd probably get a mixed response trending toward positive. American movies, TV, innovations, economic successes, medical research, etc. are huge plusses. US military activity and lack of diplomacy, Guantanamo, etc. are huge minuses. The thing is, most of the minuses can be directly attributed to the Bush administration. Once Bush is gone and the US strikes out on a slightly different trajectory, I wager that US popularity will certainly not go down. For what it's worth, I think if you polled all the nations asking "would you rather be an ally of the US' or an ally of Iran/Venezuela's?" you'd find out pretty quickly that the US is far more popular, globally, than you're portraying. Without any scientific studies to back it up, I'd be willing to wager the results would be somewhere in the vicinity of 10:1 in favor of the US over Iran/Venezuela.

People have such funny views of the future, either it is utopian (with people elegantly gliding to distant places in their hover-vehicles, clean, no poverty, etc.) or dystopic (Bladerunner, 1984). I see nothing in our history to make me think it will fall into either extreme. I think the future will be much like today with people debating politics and ethics, focusing on their kids' education, worrying about the environment and, all the while, scientific discoveries will gradually push new technologies. While I see some environmental messes in our future and also the need to ration Earth's limited resources, I also think that quality of life for the vast majority of people in the world will not change.

Hill-a-ry! Hill-a-ry! (just kidding)

... you're being so literal. Fine, there has never been a game where the final three minutes took sixty minutes, I admit that was what I considered a fairly obvious exaggeration on my part. However, by your own admission, football is a game where four 15 minute quarters plus a twenty minute half time run in excess of three hours. Nearly two thirds of the time it takes for a game to run its course is spent without any game play. Some people may find that exciting. I find it dull and tedious when attending an NFL game.

Apparently, the US Congress does not agree with you from page 5 inthis topic thread... Plus, your disagreement would mean that you would be okay with the USA shooting up a Canadian city to get at supposed terrorists, with no warning, and you would not think it was an act of terror. Where did Congress call it terrorism? They are unhappy with the confrontation of Iranians, and warned against incursions across the border, but they did not say a cross-border incursion happened. Would I be OK with the US military (but feel free to blame all the USA, thank you very much) shooting up a Canadian city? Get real. Out of what pathetically stretched corner of your imagination did that come from? No, I would not support an armed incursion into Canada unless it was done with Canadian permission and with Canadian law enforcement's participation. But even if the US military did cross the border into Canada, would it be terrorism? No. It would be an illegal military action. Not all military actions are terrorism.

My opinion is that if you disagree with feminism, you are a mysogynist. Note: I said feminism, not feminists. ("Feminism" = the movement that stresses womens' equality and the drive to open society to equal opportunity in treatment, jobs, education, etc.) If someone disagrees with the equality of women, I would consider that person a mysogynist. It's an entirely different thing to disagree with certain feminists or even with the tactics of the feminist movement or radical statements made by certain people. Criticising those are completely fair game, in my opinion.

I'm not a fan of Bush's nor of the Iraq war, but I don't see how the circumstances in the original post can be deemed terrorism. What nonsense.

No. I suspect finding balance or finiding equality or even pointing out the errors of a particular thought (feminism) was not your intent. I suspect your intent at posting those quotes was to cast all feminism in a bad light.

I have a tough time recalling anyone who claimed feminism was all roses, but I take umbrage with anyone claiming it did no good. I also have a problem when someone only publishes the most extreme and worst side of a particular philosophy or belief system when there is a lot of good to balance out the few points of bad. As someone else said, it would be just as easy to find a myriad of quotes spoken by men of faith. Would it be fair to cast all of the faithful as evil or mean based on the words of a few whackos? Would it be fair to ignore all the good that religion has done? No. I don't think many of us would want to live in a pre-feminist world. I am a single dad with two little girls. Thanks to feminism, my girls will grow up with professional and personal doors open to them that were closed to their grandmothers. We all know that's true. Just because there were a small handful of verbal molotov-cocktail throwers in the feminist midst does not make feminism itself evil or hateful anymore than taking quotes from Pat Robertson makes Christianity evil.

I love people who start posts with *I don't mean to* or *Not to be rude, but*.... As if somehow that phrase at the start gives them license to be rude or rain on somebody's parade. You clearly don't understand football or like it. We get that. "Crumbling on the ground"? wtf does that mean Your not even consistent in your criticism. Complaining about the time between plays and then talking about baseball being better to watch live? Baseball takes far more time between plays then football. It is a much slower-paced sport. Look, you're entitled to your opinion. I'm entitled to mine. It's my opinion that football is not at all interesting to see live. It's better on TV. Baseball is a much more interesting game to experience live in a good ball park. It's much more boring on TV, in my opinion. But that's just my opinion. Feel free to disagree, feel free to tell me I'm off my rocker, but your condescension is not needed. I understand football very well, thank you. About the timing and pacing of the game, baseball is nine innings. Football is the only sport where the last three minutes last a full hour. Dull. Oh, and if I were to be half as humorless as you, and take every post as seriously as you've taken my own expression of my own opinion, I'd point out that the proper spelling is "you're [not even consistent with your criticism]," not "your". But then, I have a sense of humor and would never be so petty. Lighten up, Francis.

Because, AW, don't you see? It's a case of inverse elitism -- Republican voters are the true guardians of all that is good and American and people who live in Blue America or who would vote for any Clinton is to be looked down on, demeaned, their patriotism is to be insulted, they have no values, heck, they are barely entitled to live under the system Republicans guard for "real Americans".

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but IMO football is the worst sport to watch live. Sorry, but without the TV graphics and color commentary, the sport simply sucks... hut hut hike, everyone crumbles on the ground followed by five minutes of repositioning and injured players... Baseball, believe it or not, is much more interesting to see live. Soccer is the best with hockey a very very close second (both live and on TV, for both sports).

I've rented and owned. Ownership is far superior< IMO. For one thing, you can do anything you want to your space (painting, wallpaper, hanging swings in your living room if that's your thing). Aside from that, I have never felt the same pride in or sense of connection to any rental than I have felt in my home -- even when I lived on the best block in Boston, immediately adjacent to the Ritz Carlton. The home I own is far more humble, but it's *mine* and I love it. An added benefit, here in the US anyhow, is that interest on your mortgage is tax deductible and you pay zero in taxes on the sale of your primary residence up to a certain value. Add the appreciation in value and having a major asset once the bills are paid, and it's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned. Don't let others tell you that you should own X by age Y.

Rational people agree that it would be a weird thing to say, but that doesn't mean that some of the most heard voices aren't weird. Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 partly on gay people, so why not blame the gradual slouching towards Gamorrah on us, too?

Perhaps when gay people do have all the same rights, the gay pride parades will stop and homophobes can once again safely walk the streets each June without overt signs of the gays?

I believe AW's point was that it is Aussies' responsibility to oust Howard and Britons' responsibility to oust Blair, since both leaders brought their nations to war along with Bush. If you hold individual Americans partly responsible for the continued presence of Bush and his political/military actions, then you must also hold individual Brits and Aussies responsible for Howard's and Blair's continued presence and participation in the war (and lying to get their respective nations into the war). Yet, a certain global consensus is that individual Brits and Aussies are not responsible, only Americans are responsible for their national leadership. Where are the Sydney and Melbourne marches to oust Howard? Are Londoners organizing mass civil disobedience to get rid of Blair? No. So why is their inaction more excusable than an American's? Why is an individual American tourist in Quebec more of a global political pariah than a nearly identical Aussie tourist in Quebec?

The "surge" number I've been hearing, 20,000, is not enough to come even remotely close to a preferable outcome. What Bush hopes to do is get a few weeks' worth of good press about Iraq for domestic political purposes hoping he can then rally his base to face the Dem Congress, but in Iraq it'll be the same old quagmire only with 20,000 more men at risk.

The "surge" should have been when it was useful, that is, immediately after Saddam fled Baghdad. They should have had 150,000 soldiers sitting in Kuwait awaiting redeployment to secure the ammo depots, stop the looting, preserve the infrastructure and keep order. This move is entirely political, is destined for failure and should be rejected

The US a representational democracy, as are a number of nations around the world. By your logic, shouldn't we, then, hold to some degree responsible (among others and for other things): - the average French citizen who did very little to force his government's hand at settling the strife in Cote d'Ivoire, or maybe even for allowing genocide in places like Kosovo; - the average Brit for not having done more to stop its government during the brutal Northern Ireland crisis; for war crimes committed in Basra (under British watch) in the current war; for the 17th and 18th century slave trade; the condition of India; apartheid in South Africa; the treatment of aborigines in Australia; the firebombing of cities during WW2; cripes, even for the bloody Elgin Marbles (and the wholesale raping and pillaging of poorer nations); - Canadians for all the forced religious conversions, broken families and mistreatments of native Candians? (I refuse to use "First Nations" because it reduces a people to a faceless institution or makes them sound like a savings and loan.) I'll second AW's point that you have no idea the degree to which plenty of individual Americans have acted to stop Bush programs, elect Democrats, push for impeachment. Perhaps if some of the people who are horrified at the thought of having a layover at O'Hare while on your way to Mexico actually got to know individual Americans, you'd see that many of us voted against him, most of us disagree with him and almost all of us are decent people who don't deserve the overwhelmingly negative stereotypes. It would simply be unfair for you to blame a Brit for his government's acts or to react to all Brits like you would a venereal disease simply because (by your estimation), individual Brits aren't doing enough to force Tony Blair out of Parliament. Nor, do I suspect, would you ever. Funny, though, that the same courtesy isn't extended to Americans by some of you.

But don't you see? It still is about patches and pins, even though the debate has shifted to "my country was more brave than yours sixty five years ago even though I wasn't even born back then". The debate you're now watching is just the real world extension of the pins/patches topic: the notion that individual Americans are to blame for the decisions of Roosevelt or Reagan or Clinton or Bush, whereas non-Americans (it just happens to be Canadians in this forum) are blameless global citizens who are happy in their unity against the US and want to be disassociated from the poison America(ns) represent(s).

Never claimed greater knowledge of Canadian war time history, but the points you raised (about Canada's earlier entry to the war [compared the the US's] and Canada's contributions in the Euro theatre) do not require an understanding of Canadian war time history. All they take is knowledge of WW2. Of course Canada was in earlier. As part of the British Empire, they joined the war in 1939. Of course Canadians fought and died on the continent, but they only did so in significant numbers alongside their British, American and French allies after June, 1944. (Battles in North Africa and Asia are different stories; you specifically limited the praise heaped on Canadians to their contributions in Europe.) "Overseas". Cripes, pick nits much? I may have casually misspoken, but you still haven't addressed my questioning of your initial claim: that a Candian could wear a pin as a talisman against thieving Mexicans. My point was that Americans and Canadians in Mexico would be carrying upon them the same currency, the Mexican peso, making the exchange rate between Canada/Mexico and US/Mexico is irrelevant. Perhaps Canadians just don't want to be seen as yanquis while in Mexico?

1. Thanks for the condescension. But I suppose being Canadian, only you have access to unbiased history books. I didn't realize that being American automatically made me less educated or knowlegable than you, but I'll try to keep that in mind. If I forget, just remind me I am dumber because of where I was born. Thanks. 2. So if Mexican thieves are not robbing US or Canadian tourists overseas... they are robbing them on Yonge Street? Maybe on Michigan Ave, then?

1. Did Canadians do more than others? I thought most of the allies fought pretty equally to establish and secure a free, democratic Europe. 2. I don't buy this. People don't carry around their native currency when overseas. A Canadian tourist and an American tourist hitting the silver markets in Mexico are each going to carry what they need (a few thousand in Mexican pesos) and leave the rest of their valuables at their hotel.

True -- you did not say that and my response was a reaction to what I misread. Sorry about that. Regarding France-bashing, most of the Anglo world bashes France without provocation and Iraq gave late night comedians a lot of material. I didn't personally witness any France bashing around the time of the war. But if I did see someone being deliberately rude to a French visitor, I would think it was wrong and (based on the heat of the moment) would probably step in.