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.