No, I'm NOT Paranoid

I wondered why Canadians are so anti-American. At times I even wondered if I was overreacting or taking it too personally. Not anymore. This past Saturday, The National Post ran two stories about how anti-American Canadians are. One on the front page, was written by Diane Francis, a respected journalist. She talked about the increase of blatant anti-American sentiment and why Canadians like to define themselves by it.

I never knew that when the United States fought for independence from England 20% of the people in the original 13 colonies left for Canada because they were against independence. Thanks to Ms. Francis, I'm aware of that now. It doesn't help me feel better, but it does explain a few things. Many of the original Canadians were Americans!

A second article in the same paper (inside in the first section) also talked about the anti-American attitudes that Canadians are now so proud to display. No longer pretending to be friends of Americans, they seem to want to make it clear that they hate us.

I was particularly saddened to read that I wasn't the only one here to have a Canadian tell me that September 11, 2001 was our own fault - Diane Francis experienced it too. Do I feel better? No. But I feel vindicated. My anti-Canadian feelings are justified. Maybe they're self defense.

Money Down the Drain

At first I thought it was a coincidence that I feel great when I'm back home in the U.S.A. and feel rotten when I'm in Canada. Then I realized it's really happening. Being somewhere you hate can make you sick. So many things bother me here that I don't sleep well, so when I say I'm sick and tired of Canada, you can believe it.

I know I haven't posted in quite some time, but I haven't stopped hating it here and things haven't changed much with the new guy. Paul Martin is just as dirty as Chretien and is carrying over the scandals and problems. Relations with the U.S. aren't any better and seem to be getting even more petty if that's possible.

Have you heard that Canada projected a $1.9 BILLION surplus but it turned out to be about $9 BILLION instead? Is the money going to health care to cut down the outrageous and sometimes deadly waits? To cover the things they DELISTED recently, such as PSA tests? Eye exams? Audiologists? Or maybe to the education system which is suffering and sadly lacking? Nope. They can't do that. They have to use a surplus to pay down the debt. Paying down the debt may not be the worst idea. I will concede that debt is a bad thing. But to have that much of a surplus and not use it to better the lives of the taxpayers they've obviously overtaxed seems obscene. A $1.9 billion surplus seems quite substantial on its own, but doesn't $9 billion tell us something?

Why are Canadians not crying out in protest? Why do they still vote for the party who refuses to lower taxes? The party who refuses to be accountable? Because Canadians would rather be walked on and taken advantage of before they would do anything that resembles the American way. Living in fear and resentment and most of all jealousy of the United States is the Canadian way.

Who's The Moron?

Do you watch "West Wing"? If so, you know who the character Toby is - the communications director of the White House. Well, the Canadian equivalent - the communications director to Prime Minister Jean Chretien - called the President of the United States a moron. Her name is Francoise Ducros and though she offered her resignation for her extreme faux pas, he has refused it. The opposition as well as some of his own party demanded her resignation, but true to form, Chretien defended her. He defends everyone on his team who gets caught doing the wrong thing. That's classic Chretien.

He, himself, is an embarassment to Canada. To call him a moron would be a compliment. That would imply mere stupidity and mask the cagey, manipulative, power crazy despot that he is.

Whether you like the President or not, it's inappropriate for a high ranking member of a government to make a comment like that in public. But then why should today in Canada be any different from any other day?

You may notice that the name for this URL is SMARTALIC. It's not a misspelling or a typo -- it means Smart A(merican) L(iving) I(n) C(anada). Years ago, I wouldn't have presumed to say I'm smart. But living in Canada has made me much more outspoken. I have to be -- I'm defending my country almost daily.

Most Americans probably don't realize that Canada is very anti-American. The government led by their dictator Jean Chretien is openly anti-American. Chretien was even caught on camera saying nasty things about Bill Clinton, with whom he claimed to be friends. He was already attacking President Bush before the elections. Since His Highness Chretien (who's worth a blog on his own) has been in power, relations with the U.S. have deteriorated to the point where at best we're frosty neighbors. No longer can these two countries claim great friendship. Chretien himself said that what happened on September 11 was because of "greed and arrogance." With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Why am I living here, you may wonder? Many years ago I fell in love with a wonderful guy and he happened to be Canadian. We ended up living here, though I admit that when that decision was made, I didn't realize what I was giving up. It's true when they say sometimes you don't know what you had until you've lost it. I've kept my citizenship and wear it like a badge of honor and I've resisted pressure from complete strangers to become a Canadian citizen. They HAVE to be kidding. Sure, I'll give up my position in the major leagues to go down to pee wee ball. I can't even give this country minor league status. Some years ago, the Wall Street Journal labelled Canada a Third World country and things haven't gotten better.

Things weren't always this bad. Once upon a time, Jean Chretien disappeared from the political scene. What people didn't know was that he was plotting behind the scenes to defeat the liberal candidate, Paul Martin. Being a down in the dirt scrapper, he succeeded. He openly threatens parliament into voting for whatever he wants done and cares about nothing other than his legacy. Unfortunately, he forgot that he's here to serve the people and not to assure his paragraph in history books. He's power crazy and just won't let go despite pressure and popular opinion. His government is incredibly corrupt with calls for minister or MP resignations regularly. He always backs them because to scrutinize their wrongdoings would mean scrutinizing his own. They behave like thugs, plain and simple.

The pressure has been on him to resign for quite some time, but we're not going to get rid of him until they carry him out kicking and screaming. The sad thing is that there's no good candidate to replace him. There's no viable opposition outside the Liberal party and the front running contender in the party, Paul Martin, is really no better than Chretien. I stopped hoping to like the former finance minister when he openly had lunch at a fund raiser that's known to fund terrorist activity some time ago. When these people are called on these things, they either flat out deny doing it or if they get nailed anyway, they deny knowing what they were doing. They're really big on not knowing of anyone linked to terrorism here. "There's no Canadian connection," Chretien insisted, even when they traced a cell to the Toronto area. In his mind there's probably no GST (goods and services tax) either. After all, it was a main portion of his campaign platform to repeal it. But wait, it's still here!

Many Canadians make assumptions about Americans without knowing what they're talking about. Their general perception of us is that we're gun toting, war mongering, greedy, arrogant bullies. They use words like jingoistic to describe us. It's our fault they can't muster up pride in their country and everything wrong with Canada is our fault too. Right.

So here you have an idea of what my blogs are going to be about. Stay tuned - there'll be lots more.