The washpost had an article about how Herndon voted last night to start training cops in the town to kick some immigrant ass, federal style. This should assuage some of the bitter feelings coming from the anti-immigrant crowd. It can't be too long before that day labor place is either history or heavily changed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092700328.html

I doubt this will change anything in Herndon or Northern Virginia. I will say this, though. I think if a government, local, county, state, whatever, is given the authority to determine zoning laws, they should be held legally responsible for enforcing those zoning laws. Specifically, if people are treating a Single Family Home-zoned property like an apartment complex, the city or county should be legally compelled to force the occupants to comply with the zoning. I can't run an auto-body garage out of my house or a restaurant out of my house, why should people be allowed to have multiple persons paying multiple rents in their home like it is an apartment complex?

Isn't that what the whole immigration issue is about?

Businesses don't want to pay a decent wage, consumers don't want expensive products,

Government will tell you Americans don't want the jobs, but the bottom line is cheap labor.

"The phrase "cheap labor" is a myth, a farce, and a lie.

There is no such thing as "cheap labor."

Take, for example, an illegal Mexican who sneaks in here with his wife and five children and takes a job for five or six dollars an hour.

At that wage with six dependents he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year (if he files income tax) he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200 free.

He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent.

He qualifies for food stamps.

He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care.

His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school.

He requires bi-lingual teachers and books.

He qualifies for relief from high energy bills.

If he or his family members are, or become, aged, blind, or disabled they qualify for Social Security Insurance and once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare.

All of this is at that taxpayers expense.

He doesn't have to worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.

He demands that the taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins, and printed material.

He cannot be fired, harassed, or sued.

He and his family receive the equivalent of $20 to $30 an hour in benefits.

Working Americans are lucky to have $5 or $6 an hour left after paying their bills and his.

Working Americans also pay for increased crime, graffiti, and trash cleanup.



The moral of this story: Work hard and pay your taxes because 12 million illegal aliens are counting on you

RESton Peace Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The washpost had an article about how Herndon
> voted last night to start training cops in the
> town to kick some immigrant ass, federal style.

i just want to clarify that they will be kicking illegal immigrant (or illegal alien) ass. we have no beef with legal immigrants. however, i take issue to anyone who refuses to at least partially assimilate into society. i personally am not a racist but i cant say the same for everyone on this board.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

Wake Up Fairfax MF-er and finally smell the coffee!! Your completely right, but our extremely left wing socialist governments of Arlington and Fairfax are reluctant to do anything. They make an excuse to say the are all family. My father had one next door to him in Arlington ( 20 people, rat holes, etc) and it took two years and all the surrounding neighbors to get them out. I have one in my Chantilly neighborhood. The exuse is, they say they are family.

GET RID OF SOCIALIST GERRY CONNOLLY!!

Wake Up Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The exuse is, they are family

let the genetic testing begin!


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2006 11:54AM by Gravis.

How can I wake up and smell the coffee when I am supposedly right?

Anyway, I think both Republicans and Democrats should be ashamed of how they have handled this issue. The Republicans want to allow businesses to exploit these folks for cheap labor while not having to pay payroll taxes, pay workers comp, follow OSHA, pay healthcare, etc. The Democrats apparently think that all these folks' kids will one day vote Democrat (while there is absolutely no evidence that that will happen since Hispanic Americans tend to split pretty much down the middle on parties they vote for).

While this charade continues in Washington,hospitals are closing, schools are dropping science and math teachers to hire ESOL teachers, police forces are facing new and violent gangs, the meth trade with Mexico is booming and there's always a chance Osama's buddies will just drive a Hummer full of nukes across the Arizona desert.

NM

We have an open border that allows Mexicans to walk right in the country. That's the problem!

ok everyone of pedro's comments are the exact same BS that so called Native Americans have been screaming about for 150 years. yes thats right the millions Irish immigrants were an unwashed horde that was to bring the whole system down. But hey we celebrate them every March 17th. the US has prospered pretty darn well since the 1800's. You cannot Wash the American Slate Clean and white of illegal immigrants by building fences. They have to be assimilated the way all immigrants have been for the last 200 years. Social services will be just fine.
You Racist bastards cannot keep the WASPY nature of the US lily white. Its a Phallacy

Ferfux - I think you mean fallacy. I'm not sure what a phallacy would be, but it sounds sexual. lol

ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> yes thats right
> the millions Irish immigrants were an unwashed
> horde that was to bring the whole system down. But
> hey we celebrate them every March 17th.

the Irish also had a famine which forced them to leave. the Irish also immigrated legally. what is the excuse for illegal aliens from Mexico and other Latino countries? one more thing, the Irish didnt abuse the social system in order to make everyone else pay for them to stay.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2006 03:20PM by Gravis.

Jester Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We have an open border that allows Mexicans to
> walk right in the country. That's the problem!


Agreed

ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ok everyone of pedro's comments are the exact same
> BS that so called Native Americans have been
> screaming about for 150 years. yes thats right
> the millions Irish immigrants were an unwashed
> horde that was to bring the whole system down. But
> hey we celebrate them every March 17th. the US has
> prospered pretty darn well since the 1800's. You
> cannot Wash the American Slate Clean and white of
> illegal immigrants by building fences. They have
> to be assimilated the way all immigrants have been
> for the last 200 years. Social services will be
> just fine.
> You Racist bastards cannot keep the WASPY nature
> of the US lily white. Its a Phallacy

The difference is that the Irish actually assimilated into American culture......



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2006 04:03PM by The Economist.

the Irish also were derided, ridiculed and tormented upon landing in this country. They faced discrimination the likes of which is on display now on FX underground. If there were social services then the Irish, italion, eastern european etc etc WOULD have taken advantage. and yes I was making a double entendre with the word Phallacy. Americans running the red white and blue up their cocks and waving it forever free ( of illegal immigrants)

Screw it. you guys cant take a joke

are you 12 years old

ferfux,
   legality and willingness to assimilate are the issues, jackass. i have no problem with immigrants of any race or country that come to the US legally and become a part of the American culture.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2006 07:02PM by Gravis.

Legality is the thin venier of law that everyone's racism is being hidden behind. Gnome Boy! Gravis, take off your pointy hat, gnome boy and spin on it.

ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Legality is the thin venier of law that everyone's
> racism is being hidden behind.

i assure you that nothing i say is intended to be racist in any way. perhaps it is you who shield illegal aliens by pulling the race card every time you have nothing of fact to say.


> Gnome Boy! Gravis,
> take off your pointy hat, gnome boy and spin on
> it.

oh yes, insults, that's really helping your argument.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2006 07:16PM by Gravis.

Oh, so we come to the heart of the matter! Gravis has been trafficking in illegal immigrants of GNOMES! AH-HA! he has been prostituting gnomes, slanging that Gnome ASS in fairfax county! His comments are designed to misdirect all serious interest in his own illicit gnome trafficking activities!

so many fans... and all for me!   \o/


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

Tranqillo, people!

http://americancomedynetwork.com/FLASH/MexTourism.htm

[americancomedynetwork.com]

That's a good one, thanks for posting that.

ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ok everyone of pedro's comments are the exact same
> BS that so called Native Americans have been
> screaming about for 150 years. yes thats right
> the millions Irish immigrants were an unwashed
> horde that was to bring the whole system down. But
> hey we celebrate them every March 17th. the US has
> prospered pretty darn well since the 1800's. You
> cannot Wash the American Slate Clean and white of
> illegal immigrants by building fences. They have
> to be assimilated the way all immigrants have been
> for the last 200 years. Social services will be
> just fine.


Personally, I don't want our country to go back to the slums and tenements that were prevalent in this country in the late 1800s and early 1900s. THAT is what happened when you had untenable immigration - legal or not. As for Social Services - THERE WERE NO SOCIAL SERVICES back then. I personally don't want to lose our Social Services because they are over-burdened. Finally, I haven't heard many people on this board say they don't like brown people or black people. It isn't about race. This is about ILLEGAL immigration. I think most people here are more angry at our leaders than the actual illegal immigrants, anyway. Why should home owners, hospitals or the illegal immigrants themselves pay the price for our leadership's utter failures on this issue?

I think most people here are more angry at our leaders ...

After the War on Drugs, the War on Illegal Immigration, and the War on Terror are all finished up, then I think we should declare a War on political incompetence.

Or maybe we should do that now?

we need a war on the two-party system...

we need a war on the two-party system...

The revolution might be televised, check your local listings

;/

except call everyone on this board what you really represent. If you believe your B-ll S--t, why don't you and your racist ilk take them into your house, have them live next door to you, pay the enormous costs to house, feed, attempt to educate, etc.

No you want me to pay for this cr-p and live in your guarded community AND CALL ME NAMES BECAUSE I SPEAK THE TRUTH! I too want affordable housing, right next door to Ted Kennedy and have you pay for it out of your check book.

YOU TRULY REPRESENT THE POS YOU ARE!!!

you can swear on this board, no reason to put dashes. This isn't FARK.

I'm getting really tired of people throwing the word "racist" around because the majority of illegal immigrants in question happen to be Hispanic. It's easier to call someone a racist than to address the problem and figure out solutions. That's why our political leaders have failed so miserably. They would rather call their opponents racist than lead.

ok, because certain people on this board are sitting in Air conditioned rooms, prattling on about illegal immigrants and having to support them with "their tax dollars" through social services. If you cannot lift even this small finger to help people less privaliged than you who had through sheer determination leave their own crime, drug lord infested countries. Countries that are littered with corrupt politicians and make thousands of miles to VIRGINIA to earn enough money to support themselves and their families. If you sons of privilage cant realize that through sheer geographical good fortune YOU were handed through citizenship in the US, a public education and employment oppurtunities not afforded to people of other countries. You cant give SOME charity to people less fortunate than yourslelves because they belong to some "other" country across an imaginary border that protects your own Privaliged lives then fine. Go on sitting on comfy chairs, in AC'ed rooms getting Hemoroids from earning a living sittng on your fat asses.

230 years ago, the people of this country had a revolution to change the things they didn't like. They didn't pack up and leave and suck at the teat of some other, better country, they made the one they were in better. The actions of those men centuries ago are why we can sit here and bitch about people taking the easy way out by draining our system instead of making changes to their own shithole. My grandparents immigrated legally, learned the language, assimilated, got jobs, paid taxes, and were able to send my parents to college. They did this quietly within the system instead of demanding the system be changed to revolve around them. If it worked for them, is it too much to ask that this current wave of "immigrants" do the same?

Mad max. 50 years before that 230 years ago your forefathers FLED from their oppressive countries! thats right they put their tails between their legs and RAN across the Atlantic AWAY. They were the LoOOSERS who couldnt hack it in the countries of their births. We are AMericans. Our forefathers were Mutts and scum who couldnt hack it and RAN like snivelling dogs to AMERICA. They couldnt change the "SYSTEM" in ye old Countre of origin. YOU sir are then sitting pretty on top of all that hard work. The illegal immigrants of today are like YOUR forefathers of yesteryear.

In 1726? They were British subjects colonizing the new world.

ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ok, because certain people on this board are
> sitting in Air conditioned rooms, prattling on
> about illegal immigrants and having to support
> them with "their tax dollars" through social
> services. If you cannot lift even this small
> finger to help people less privaliged than you who
> had through sheer determination leave their own
> crime, drug lord infested countries. Countries
> that are littered with corrupt politicians and
> make thousands of miles to VIRGINIA to earn enough
> money to support themselves and their families.
> If you sons of privilage cant realize that through
> sheer geographical good fortune YOU were handed
> through citizenship in the US, a public education
> and employment oppurtunities not afforded to
> people of other countries. You cant give SOME
> charity to people less fortunate than yourslelves
> because they belong to some "other" country across
> an imaginary border that protects your own
> Privaliged lives then fine. Go on sitting on comfy
> chairs, in AC'ed rooms getting Hemoroids from
> earning a living sittng on your fat asses.


First of all, fuckhead, I came from a poor family and had to work shit jobs for years. I have a comfy chair now because I fucking earned it.

You know what else I did when I was poor? PAID MY BILLS! I never went to the doctor expecting Medicaid to pay for it. I never leased an expensive truck while collecting food stamps! I never dogged taxes! I never broke the law!

So, you asshat, I think your argument is utter bullshit. I'm sorry these people have crappy lives and come from crappy countries, but letting them come here illegally isn't going to fix those crappy countries. If anything, it will make it worse because the people with the determination to come here are also the ones who could have the determination to fix their countries.

Go boo-hoo your fucking river somewhere else, you clueless bleeding heart fuckwad!

fairfax M-fhead.

Clearly you are a saint. A hard working go-getter who deserves cannonization as well as being stuck in a cannon and shot into the sea. I have worked low paying jobs and have met many people working under the counter. They dont go scratching at hospitals demanding arrogently for their bills to be paid. They want a basic human right that is fair medical treatment. They dont need you berating them. You are missing the point in that you were born here, had ample oppurtunities to thrive here and god bless the american way are gonna die here just as ignorantly as you lived here. Why dont you turn off the Don and mike show and go outside and get a clue.

Why should they get free healthcare while taxpaying citizens of this country do not have that luxury?

Right, WHy should anyone have good health for FREE> God forbid someone doesnt PAY to be nice and healthy and live a long productive life without paying out the NOSE for health care.

The problem is our political leaders. They have no balls andare afraid of not being reelected, so they don't do anything. What do they care, their salary gets paid. As I said somewhere else, we are turning out like Rome all over again. and BTW after rome was gone, we had the dark ages for years until England came along. The dark ages after america's gone...Nuclear war. My advice: get all the imformed people together from this board and build a bomb shelter.

get all the imformed people together from this board and build a bomb shelter

Damn straight...
Attachments:

http://www.ki4u.com/guide.htm


How to survive a nuclear blast. Dude covers all the bases.

ferfux-

So paying your bills makes you a Saint? That tells me everything I need to know about your character, or lack thereof. How long have you been on the gravy train, hombre?

I pay my way by way of employment since I was knee high to a w2. Im pointing out the hypocrisy of someone who has it GOOD ie the "haves" telling the "have nots" they should be doing as well as the "haves"

Relax folks, the immigration problem will solve itself.

When the USA is as big a shithole as Mexico....they'll quit coming. Shouldn't be long now...

They figure that once the USA is totally under their control, it'll heaven on earth.

(This, of course, ignores the inconvenient fact that none of the countries which currently ARE totally under their control are anything near heaven on earth, but are instead dysfunctional shitholes).

But I forgot, they think it's the evil gringo that is the cause of all their problems.

ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Right, WHy should anyone have good health for
> FREE> God forbid someone doesnt PAY to be nice and
> healthy and live a long productive life without
> paying out the NOSE for health care.

funny you say that because you dont have to pay out the nose for health care if you have a job with health coverage... which im sure requires you to be here legally. furthermore, America was NOT built on charity.

---

KeepOnTruckin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The problem is our political leaders. They have no
> balls andare afraid of not being reelected, so
> they don't do anything.

this is dead on. the psyche of politicians has nothing to do with being a leader or doing what the people want, it's all about the attention. they are attention whores. if they dont do anything too bad, they get good attention and when running for office they get LOTS of attention. i hate them all.


> Nuclear war. My advice: get
> all the imformed people together from this board
> and build a bomb shelter.

actually, nuclear fallout is played up sooooo much that it seems that one bomb would take out the eastern coast. if there is a serious radiation threat to our area, i will steal someone's motorcycle and leave as we all know people in cars here, are fucking retards if it's so much as overcast. im sure panic will leave plenty of soccer mom idiots doing donuts in an intersection screaming and hitting people until their car as dead. in this case they will run out of the car screaming and run right in front of a moving car, get hit and break a leg. when the driver gets out to see if she is ok, she will scream about what an idiot he is and that they could have killed her and her baby, he says "what baby?" the soccer mom idiot will realize that she left the baby in the back of her now burning SUV. she will then scream at him to save her baby and he inevitably runs to save it, other people will notice, get out of their cars to help and now all the cars in the entire state wont be able to move because of a handful of these stupid ass bitches.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I pay my way by way of employment since I was knee
> high to a w2. Im pointing out the hypocrisy of
> someone who has it GOOD ie the "haves" telling the
> "have nots" they should be doing as well as the
> "haves"


That's not what I am saying at all.

I am saying that people who are breaking our laws should not be rewarded by being allowed to exploit loopholes in our Social Services, such as free Medicaid and free school lunches, while some dude making $40K a year has to pay for those same services AND subsidize the illegals exploiting the system all because he happens to be an American citizen. This applies to any American citizen, be they white, black, Hispanic, Asian, whatever. It isn't fair and it could be stopped if our pussy-ass leaders had the balls to enforce the fucking laws that are already on the books. They won't though,because mis-informed tools like yourself scream "racist" instead of actually coming up with solutions to the problem.

you sir are the misinformed tool. Illigal immigrants cant and wont go for help through social services because they then would be exposed as illegals and deported!

I never said american was built on Charity Gravis I said uncharitbale people beleive that the poor are the cause of all social ills because they are lower on the social structure. ITs classic blaming the victim for their own ills.

The politicians in Herndon are doing Exactly what the herndon people want. They are blocking the building of a day labor center. How are they corrupt pussies if they are doing exactly what their constituents want them to do?

SOrry Didnt realize FXNDGRND was a young republican stronghold cesspool.
Good night and Good Fuck off

YOU POS; WAKE YOU NAZI!

http://www.theamericanresistance.com/issues/anchor_babies.html

ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> you sir are the misinformed tool. Illigal
> immigrants cant and wont go for help through
> social services because they then would be exposed
> as illegals and deported!


OMG! You really don't know shit, do you? Emergency Medicaid is a government program SPECIFICALLY FOR illegal immigrants, you idiot! And read the post about Anchor Babies. Once an illegal has a baby, the family starts getting food stamps and other assistance.

>
> I never said american was built on Charity
> Gravis I said uncharitbale people beleive that the
> poor are the cause of all social ills because they
> are lower on the social structure. ITs classic
> blaming the victim for their own ills.

Once again,no one is blaming the poor for their own ills. They are blaming ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS for being here...ILLEGALLY! And then EXPLOITING THE SYSTEM!


> The politicians in Herndon are doing Exactly
> what the herndon people want. They are blocking
> the building of a day labor center. How are they
> corrupt pussies if they are doing exactly what
> their constituents want them to do?

More misinformation. The Day Labor Center was built and exists. The City Council Members who voted for the Day Labor Center were voted off the Council.

> SOrry Didnt realize FXNDGRND was a young
> republican stronghold cesspool.
> Good night and Good Fuck off

I'm a Democrat. Sorry to surprise you.

Fairfax MF-er Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm a Democrat.

Terrorist-lover!!!!!

FAIRFAX M'FER


MEDICAID
Eligibility
Medicaid is a joint federal-state program that provides health insurance coverage to low-income children, seniors and people with disabilities.
This has most recently occurred with the passage of the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) of 2005 (Pub.L. No. 109-171) which significantly changed rules governing the treatment The DRA now requires that anyone seeking Medicaid must produce documents to prove that they are a United States citizen or resident alien.
anyone seeking Medicaid must produce documents to prove that they are a United States citizen or resident alien.

Your sorry exscuse for a post had ALL the fax WRONG. Be you democrat or republican. You should be a libertarian and do whats right. THe founding Fathers KNEW that there was if not a legal obligation then there was a MORAL obligation to help those less fortunate than themselves.

SO stop Fucking Fairfax and Go FUCK yourself

FerFux, you worthless piece of shit.

FACT: 41 PERCENT OF EVERYONE IN THE STATE OF VIRGINIA ON MEDICADE (WELFARE) IS AN HISPANIC CHILD. Information came from the Examiner Newspaper last year from the State of Virginia.

I WISH WE WOULD TAKE YOUR ADVICE, "You should be a libertarian and do whats RIGHT"

If we did, all these programs would go away. Would you as a "fACIST SOLCIALIST" use your money to pay for criminals? I doubt it!

Hey, Ferfux..It's EMERGENCY Medicaid...

"If you cannot get regular Medicaid because you are not a qualified immigrant, you may still be able to get Emergency Medicaid. You can be undocumented and get Emergency Medicaid."

In many states, all you have to do is prove that you live in the state to qualify. Just show up in an ER. And, if you don't qualify, too bad. The hospital STILL has to treat you (it's the law), even if it never sees a dime. That's why hospitals in Arizona are going out of business. Hospitals can't turn people away.

ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I never said american was built on Charity
> Gravis I said uncharitbale people beleive that the
> poor are the cause of all social ills because they
> are lower on the social structure. ITs classic
> blaming the victim for their own ills.

the only charity i truly believe in is money for researching a worthy cause. however, i do not believe in just giving money away, it's the equivalent of a manager throwing money at the problem... and we saw how well that worked for the large FBI database program that never worked and was scrapped. i do however believe in helping people help themselves. all the social service programs are intended to help people temporarily so that they can pull themselves out of the gutter, not live in the gutter.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

One other point is if you all are worried about tax money going towards social programs consider this. During the CLinton administration and congress being run by republicans in the 90's we had just a record surplus.Now im sure illegal immigrants were just as big an issue then as now. However under Bush we have a record Deficit. The Iraq war is By FAR a bigger drain on tax payers dollars than immigrants illegal or otherwise and social services. If we help illegal immigrants to become american citizens, most of whom are HARD working then our hard working gain is some other countries LOSS. better for the economy than invading another country and having Halliburton supply our army exsclusivley which then lines Dick cheney's pockets. You tax payers should be more concerned with BUSH's war in IRaq as a waste of taxpayer money than social services or illegal immigrants. I'd rather have people wanting to come to AMerica become hard working citizens and contribute to the greatness thatis the US of A rather than them seeing a useless war in Iraq wanting to come to America as terrorists and try to TEAR DOWN the civilation that we have all built up. Founding fathers tenants was "All men are created equal" This country is not an exsclusive country club to build a wall around and have bouncers toss out the undesirables. They want to come and be naturalized LET THEM. Nuff said im done.

"Now im sure illegal immigrants were just as big an issue then as now."

Wrong. There has been a huge influx in the past five years as the Bush Administration cut back on workplace enforcement and INS to focus on terrorism. The problem was nothing in the 90s like it is today.

As for the Iraq war, I think most Americans now see it as a huge waste of money with little in return for U.S. security. Just because Iraq is a cluster-fuck doesn't mean the government shouldn't do something about illegal immigration.

Now Manassas wants to get it's Police training to enforce immigration laws. Seems they liked Herndon's ideas.

http://www.nbc4.com/news/9964451/detail.html

Manass Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Now Manassas wants to get it's Police training to
> enforce immigration laws. Seems they liked
> Herndon's ideas.
>
> http://www.nbc4.com/news/9964451/detail.html

That's what scares me! If only a few jurisdictions decide to enforce immigration laws, all that will do is chase the Joses across the line into a jurisdiction that doesn't enforce.

Fairfax County has already said it will NOT enforce. You think we got a lot flop houses and over-run 7-11s now? You ain't seen shit!

I'm moving to Manassas or Herndon....soon to be wetback-free zones!

WashingToneLocian,
   EXACTLY! thanks for posting that.


duh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fairfax County has already said it will NOT
> enforce. You think we got a lot flop houses and
> over-run

time to vote some jackasses out of office. :)


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2006 03:40PM by Gravis.

Gravis you are a bigger Jack Ass than the Asses you want to Jack out of office. you are fixated on this illegal immigrant thang. Perhaps you think some illegal is gonna fixate on your lily white ass and rape you with his chimichonga and give you a dirty Sanchez. Cept you will enjoy it so much it would change names to the Greazy Gravis!
Mexican americuuunz dont like to get up early, so they do it sloooowleeee.

Nah, one nuke won't take out the whole East coast, but lets say one goes off in DC. We all better run to Annandale High School.

KeepOnTruckin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Nah, one nuke won't take out the whole East coast,
> but lets say one goes off in DC. We all better run
> to Annandale High School.

why? what's at annandale high school?


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

The earlier Fairfax County schools have "fallout shelters" under them.

i was under the impression that annandale high school burned down in "recent" years and has since been rebuilt. i assure you that no money was put into rebuilding the fallout shelter. besides, "fallout shelter" is just another name for "a cement box to be filled with people who are going to die from radiation." it would seem that "fallout shelter" was much catchier of a name.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Annandale_High_School#Add_to_WikiProject_Schools


Does any othere schools besides AHs have a concrete box to put radiation victims in?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/03/2006 09:36PM by KeepOnTruckin.

Herndon Intermediate had the shelters when I was playing little league as a kid, but that school was renovated so I don't know if they are still there.

KeepOnTruckin,
   elevated radiation levels = evacuate.


"the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

there is NO law prohibiting illegal immigrants with bogus Social Security numbers from paying into the system, something they and their employers do to the tune of more than $7 billion per year in payroll taxes.

That's money the illegal immigrants will never see again, and it has for years helped to keep the entitlement program afloat. So Social Security lives off ill-gotten goods -- the stolen taxes of millions of people, and the assumption that they'll never be claimed.

How odd that the closed-border, closed-mind crowd isn't nearly as troubled by this part of the equation.

and on the other end of the spectrum, a Herndon man is arrested for hiring day labourers. Seems Herndon is citing people quite a bit. BUT he is challenging citation in court per the washingtonpost.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/17/AR2007011702012.html

Fairfax MF-er wrote "there's always a chance Osama's buddies will just drive a Hummer full of nukes across the Arizona desert."

Just as "eliminating the estate tax will help farmers" was used to further an agenda, building a wall between US and Mexico will not, as they claim, stop terrorists coming into the US.

If a terrorist wanted to come into this country, they would do so by plane or through the Canadian border - NOT Mexico.

As a matter of fact, the guy who wanted to kaboom LAX dec 31, 1999, did not attempt to enter the US from Mexico, but from Canada. Several other would be terrorists have been apprehended crossing from Canada. I have not heard of one terrorist entering the US from Mexico. Again, It is highly likely that they would come from Canada.

Build the wall up north, because

- Largest unprotected border in the world.
- An extremely high percentage of canadians live within 100 miles of the US border.
- Canada is Socialist!
- They allow gay marriage to a degree
- As Bill O'reilly pointed out, they refused to help us in the war on terror.
- They are a nation on the verge of their own civil war.
- They are Protectionist! In order to preserve "Canadian Culture", by law 90% of all tv shows must be written by, produced by, and acted with Canadians. And who knows exactly "what is Canadian Culture"? I can only think of Bob and Doug Mckenzie.

An enlightening book, Cold Terror, Should be on the mandatory reading list for all US citizens.

COLD TERROR: HOW CANADA NURTURES AND EXPORTS TERRORISM AROUND THE WORLD

This critically acclaimed book exposes how Canada became home to many of the world's deadliest terrorist organizations. Canada's lax laws and lack of vigilance have put its neighbors and the world community at risk. Award-winning journalist Stewart Bell draws on classified intelligence documents, front-line accounts, exclusive interviews with senior counterterrorism officials and the victims of terrorist attacks, and terrorists themselves, to provide incontestable evidence that Canada is an important base activity for terrorist groups.

Acclaim for Cold Terror:

"Canadians will be madder than hell after they read Stewart Bell's shocking account of how the Canadian government has allowed Sikh, Tamil and Islamic terrorists to come into our home and turn it into a safe house for international terror... Stewart Bell's clarion call for action needs to be heeded before the ticking Canadian terrorist time bomb blows up closer to home."
— The Globe and Mail

"Stewart Bell makes clear... that Canada's political leadership has a history of ineptitude, naivete, and outright irresponsibility with regard to international terrorism that stretches back to the 1980's. [He] has done an enormous service."
— Christian Science Monitor

"A devastating indictment of Canada's failure to deal seriously with terrorists on our soil."
— Martin Collacott, Canada's former ambassador to Syria and Lebanon, High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and Counter-Terrorism Coordinator

"Cold Terror will shock the conscience of a nation...This book is not just an exposé it is and urgent call to action."
— David Frum, author of The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush

And who knows exactly "what is Canadian Culture"? I can only think of Bob and Doug Mckenzie.

You're forgetting about the Canadian show "The Trailer Park Boys", one of the funniest damn shows in the past decade.

TheMeeper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And who knows exactly "what is Canadian Culture"?
> I can only think of Bob and Doug Mckenzie.
>
> You're forgetting about the Canadian show "The
> Trailer Park Boys", one of the funniest damn shows
> in the past decade.


What is funny that Degrassi TNG, generally goes out of their way to hide their Canadianism. No cash is ever really seen, license plates are generic looking or hidden,very rarely does it snow, etc. They do have to abide by the 90% rule and throw in some aboot's, every now and then, or someone will say "mom and dad went to Calgery for the weekend".

And Degrassi has a flag pole, but hardly ever a flag, or a distinguishable one.

Canadians are cool!

Oh - and the thwarted terrorist attacks in Toronto. The weapons came from the US. It works both ways.

Disclaimer: This comment was created by a Canadian

Genevieve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Canadians are cool!
> --- The weather is cool, as in cold!
> Oh - and the thwarted terrorist attacks in
> Toronto. The weapons came from the US. It works
> both ways.
- Read the book Cold Terror!
>
> Disclaimer: This comment was created by a Canadian
- which side are you on, boy? The upcoming Canadian Civil War will involve France, breaking apart from the EU to support Quebec, and the UK taking the other side.

I fear for that day, and with the US contingency plans to immediately seal off the border and prevent travel, I will not travel there because I do not want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Also, what is with those whacky Canadians. It is against the law to fly the Canadian flag from an apartment balcony on Canada Day, die to the fact that it might upset Canadians who dislike Canada.

I will not even get into the argument with you about if Canada is so great, why are you here?

I'm here because I've always been here. I'm a US citizen as well.

And I'm not a boy. There are many names that work for either sex, but Genevieve just isn't one of them.

I think you just need to calm down and stop being so paranoid. Enjoy life. Bad stuff is going to happen whether you lock yourself in a bomb shelter or not.

Genevieve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm here because I've always been here. I'm a US
> citizen as well.
>
> And I'm not a boy. There are many names that work
> for either sex, but Genevieve just isn't one of
> them.
>
> I think you just need to calm down and stop being
> so paranoid. Enjoy life. Bad stuff is going to
> happen whether you lock yourself in a bomb shelter
> or not.


Being aware of the Great Canadian Threat is not being paranoid. Maybe we could start another thread to solely discuss Canadian politics? We could call it poutine and blu light...

No, I don't think we need to start a thread on Candian politics. Now a thread on poutine would be cool, but I think we already did that.

Being aware of the Great Canadian Threat is not being paranoid.

Hahaha, that's the most paranoid thing I've read here in awhile, including Firrat's 9/11 post.

"Great Canadian Threat", lol. The terrorists have beaten you quite handily.

Divided and conquered.

Radiopphile invoked Bill Oreilly in his argument, immediatley invalidating it.

If canada refused to help us, how do you explain all those canadian soldiers that died fighting for our side? Mercenaries?

ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> there is NO law prohibiting illegal immigrants
> with bogus Social Security numbers from paying
> into the system, something they and their
> employers do to the tune of more than $7 billion
> per year in payroll taxes.


Not to mention the SSN's they steal in identity theft cases? I'm sure the victims are glad the money is being put back into the system....UFB

Has anyone mentioned the hispanic gangs? How many of them are hard working people just trying to make a better life for themselves? I suppose we should coddle them as well, since it's our responsibilty.

Usually I just read, and rarely post, but I had to post on this!

I think that everybody needs to pause for a moment and consider how our vastly more civilized European brothers and sisters handle situations like illegal immigration, and how we react to similar situations in the United States.

"The Ceuta border fence is a separation barrier between Morocco and the Autonomous City of Ceuta, in Spain. Constructed by Spain, its stated purpose is to stop illegal immigration and smuggling.

Construction of the €30-million (US$40 million) razor wire barrier was financed by the European Union. It consists of parallel 3-metre (10-foot) fences topped with barbed wire, with regular watchposts and a road running between them to accommodate police patrols. Underground cables connect spotlights, noise and movement sensors, and video cameras to a central control booth."

"The Melilla border fence is a separation barrier between Morocco and the Spanish city of Melilla. Constructed by Spain, its stated purpose is to stop illegal immigration and smuggling.

The razor wire barrier cost Spain €33 million (US$44 million) to construct. It consists of 11 km (7 miles) of parallel 3 m (10 ft) high fences topped with barbed wire, with regular watchposts and a road running between them to accommodate police patrols. Underground cables connect spotlights, noise and movement sensors, and video cameras to a central control booth. Its height is currently being doubled to 6 m.

In October 2005, over 700 SubSaharan migrants camping on nearby Mount Gurugú tried to enter Spanish territory from the Moroccan border. Many of them were shot... Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières have accused the Moroccan government of dumping over 500 refugees in the Sahara Desert without food or water supplies."

Food for thought. Think something like that would fly in the U.S.?

Cited from Wikipedia. I only changed the US$ figures to reflect exchange rates.

I second Reston's Bill O'Reilly rule. Supreme retard points for both that and mistaking Genevieve as a boy's name. Radiophile, you are a fucking idiot. Am I the only one that noticed that O'Reilly used to be hardcore about the border enforcement until Bush was pro-amnesty and anti-border? Haven't heard much from him lately on it. FAIR AND BALANCED!!!

Yes, I quoted Bill Reilly... He did say " Canada refused to support us in the war on terror". Actually, Canada DID support us in Afghanistan, just not Iraq. Believe it or not, Canada had doubts about WMDs, Saddam's ties to terrorists, and the threat Iraq posed to North America.

Those multicultural mealymouthed, molson drinking zamboni driving, Gordon Lightfoot loving people.

{Tongue firmly planted in cheek}

Genevieve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No, I don't think we need to start a thread on
> Candian politics. Now a thread on poutine would
> be cool, but I think we already did that.


poutine is basically fries with cheese and gravy. Bleh gross. my sister who lives in canada foists that stuff on me when I visit.

Wake up Ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ferfux Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > there is NO law prohibiting illegal immigrants
> > with bogus Social Security numbers from paying
> > into the system, something they and their
> > employers do to the tune of more than $7
> billion
> > per year in payroll taxes.
>
>
> Not to mention the SSN's they steal in identity
> theft cases? I'm sure the victims are glad the
> money is being put back into the system....UFB
>
> Has anyone mentioned the hispanic gangs? How many
> of them are hard working people just trying to
> make a better life for themselves? I suppose we
> should coddle them as well, since it's our
> responsibilty.
>
> Usually I just read, and rarely post, but I had to
> post on this!



I didnt say this was the solution to the problem I said this is an interesting and Ironic Wrinkle in the ongoing Immigration debate. ASS!

ferfux Wrote:

> How odd that the closed-border, closed-mind crowd
> isn't nearly as troubled by this part of the
> equation.

That's already been taken care of, google the following:

mexico totalization agreement

while you're at it, google this too:

north american union

BUILD THE WALL UP NORTH!!!!!!!!!!!

Welcome to Canada
From the March 21, 2005 issue: The Great White Waste of Time.
by Matt Labash
03/21/2005, Volume 010, Issue 25

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.
--Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer

Vancouver, British Columbia
WHENEVER I THINK OF CANADA . . . strike that. I'm an American, therefore I tend not to think of Canada. On the rare occasion when I have considered the country that Fleet Streeters call "The Great White Waste of Time," I've regarded it, as most Americans do, as North America's attic, a mildewy recess that adds little value to the house, but serves as an excellent dead space for stashing Nazi war criminals, drawing-room socialists, and hockey goons.

Henry David Thoreau nicely summed up Americans' indifference toward our country's little buddy when he wrote, "I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada. . . . What I got by going to Canada was a cold." For the most part, Canadians occupy little disk space on our collective hard drive. Not for nothing did MTV have a game show that made contestants identify washed-up celebrities under the category "Dead or Canadian?"

If we have bothered forming opinions at all about Canadians, they've tended toward easy-pickings: that they are a docile, Zamboni-driving people who subsist on seal casserole and Molson. Their hobbies include wearing flannel, obsessing over American hegemony, exporting deadly Mad Cow disease and even deadlier Gordon Lightfoot and Nickelback albums. You can tell a lot about a nation's mediocrity index by learning that they invented synchronized swimming. Even more, by the fact that they're proud of it.

But

ever since George W. Bush's reelection, news accounts have been rolling in that disillusioned Americans are running for the border in protest. This prompts the thought that it may be time to stop treating Our Canadian Problem with such cavalier disregard. In fact, largely as a result of Bush and his foreign policy, what was once a polite rivalry has become a poisoned well of hurt feelings and recriminations.

These days, Canadian publications are chockablock with surveys showing that Canadians see themselves as something akin to a superior race. The prime ministers of what was once a reliable ally that ponied up in times of war have treated us like traffic-light squeegee-men when we've stopped at their corner, asking for assistance with our latest military adventure. They have spurned our missile-defense shield out of spite, even knowing it would save their Canadian bacon. Their legislators have publicly called us "bastards" and stomped on our president in effigy. Their citizens have booed our children at peewee hockey games.

Being bloodthirsty Americans, we have naturally fired a few warning volleys in lieu of slapping them with a restraining order. A few years ago, my friend Jonah Goldberg from National Review wrote a piece elegantly titled "Bomb Canada," encouraging us to smack Soviet Canuckistan, as Pat Buchanan calls it, "out of its shame-spiral" since "that's what big brothers do." Canadians responded as Canadians always will when faced with overt aggression. They wrote inordinate numbers of letters of concern, exercising what Canadian writer Douglas Coupland calls their "almost universal editorial-page need to make disapproving clucks."
Equal outrage was caused when Conan O'Brien showed up to help boost tourism after the SARS crisis. Along for the ride came a Conan staple, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, who in dog-on-the-street interviews relentlessly mocked French Canadians. When one pudgy Quebecer admitted he was a separatist, Triumph suggested he might want to "separate himself from doughnuts for a while."

Canadians seethed--though polls show they pride themselves on being much funnier than Americans (don't ask me why, when they're responsible for Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, and Alan Thicke). One MP from the socialist New Democratic party called the show "vile and vicious," and said it was tantamount to hatemongering. Historians believe this to be the first time a member of parliament has so categorically denounced a hand puppet.

WITH THE REELECTION OF BUSH, however, this poor man's Cold War may be swinging Canada's way. Trend-spotters on both sides of the 49th Parallel have taken note of "the Bush refugee," the American progressive who has decided to flee to Canada after growing heartsick at the soul-crushing death knell of liberalism that pundits declared after the president's two-point victory.

A cottage industry was born. Anti-American/pro-Canadian blogs proliferated, as blogs unfortunately do. Websites like canadianalternative.com are open for business, trying to entice emotionally vulnerable Americans to turn their backs on family, friends, and country with boasts that Canada has signed the Kyoto protocol, legalized gay marriage in six provinces, and seen its Senate recommend legalizing marijuana. Vancouver immigration lawyer Rudi Kischer took a whole team, complete with realtors

and money-managers, to recruit in American cities, helping potential defectors overcome immigration concerns, such as how to pass Canada's elitist skilled-worker test for entry (Give us your affluent, your overeducated, your Unitarian masses yearning for socialized medicine).

Dejected Americans, most of whom already live in progressive enclaves, began sounding off to reporters, vowing to check out of the Red-American wasteland before true misfortune befell them. In footage of a Kischer seminar in San Francisco that I obtained from a Canadian documentary film crew (working title of the piece: "Escaping America"), one attendee who looked like a lost Gabor sister but with more plastic surgery said, "I really can't stand George Bush. I can't stand this culture, which is very selfish, aggressive, and mean, violent I think." After going to Canada for just a half an hour from Buffalo, she concluded, "It was like a completely different country. . . . The people seemed more internationally aware, not so isolated and unilateral. There was less evidence of commercialism and corporations. People were friendly."

IT SOUNDED LIKE such an idyllic Rainbowland that I had to see it for myself. So I flew to Vancouver in late January to get a closer look and to meet up with several already-arrived and soon-to-be American expatriates. Taking a day or so to get acclimated, I threw myself into this unspoiled Eden by going to the multinational Virgin megastore to purchase some Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen CDs (buy Canadian!). I also looked for Canada's greatest (only?) contribution to world cuisine, Tim Hortons donuts, which is owned by the American fast-food behemoth Wendy's.

With nothing but a Lonely Planet map and a thirst for knowledge, I sought out Vancouver's landmarks--the Gastown clock, which lets out steam and whistle-toots every 15 minutes, Brandi's Exotic Nightclub, where Ben Affleck fraternizes with strippers when in town, and the Amsterdam Café, where potheads openly smoke the potent BC bud, taunting tobacco users, who are confined to a glass cage like common criminals. (The tokers snack on "jones soda" and "chronic candy" and other foodstuffs so cutely named it could make even the most maniacal libertarian cheer for mandatory minimums.)

To see Canadian progressivism in action, though, I trekked down to the East Side, Vancouver's Compton, where the storefront Supervised Injection Site caters to junkies on the government teat. With the surrounding streets hosting an open-air drug market, the Site was conceived as a way to rid the neighborhood of discarded drug paraphernalia and promote "safe" drug-taking practices. In typical Canadian fashion, it's a long way around the barn to get rid of litter.

If the Site has in fact encouraged addicts to do their drugs off the streets, they still buy them right outside. To reach the place, I have to pass through a herd of about 100 junkies over a four-block radius. They offer to sell me all manner of substances my company won't let me expense. When I make it inside the Site, along with several itchy, twitchy customers in search of free cookers and needles and a clean booth to shoot themselves silly, an attendant tells me that unless I'm there to take drugs, I can't stay without a media relations escort. "What we do here is important, so we try to keep a low profile," he says, perhaps oblivious to the hypodermic needle that's embossed on the door.

The staffers aren't rude, however, and retrieve for me a helpful government brochure called "The Safer Fix" that has made me something of an expert on the proper way to tie off. Though it's a bit mind-blowing to a law-and-order American, this is actually pretty small beer, compared with a new Canadian government-funded study called the North American Opiate Medication Initiative. While the Supervised Injection Site is strictly a bring-your-own-smack affair, the new experiment will study the effects of giving half of the drug-addicted research subjects heroin, while the other half get methadone. As a female attendant describes it to me, we agree that it must really suck for the methadoners. But for the other side? "Dude!" she says, stating the obvious, "free drugs for a year!"

RUDI KISCHER, the immigration lawyer who went trolling for clients south of the border, has probably done more than any single person besides George Bush to induce Americans to become former Americans. At the top of a high-rise building overlooking Coal Harbor, where seaplanes land in steady succession, Kischer invites me into his office. He is tall, with the bland good looks of a soap-opera extra. By way of an ice-breaker, I tell him I flunked the skilled-worker test, and so became a journalist. He says not to worry. Up until a few years ago, lawyers were completely banned from immigrating, the first fact I've heard that recommends his country.

While numbers are hard to come by, it is generally thought that some thousands of Americans are poised to change countries, making them the largest influx Canada has seen since our draft dodgers came this way during Vietnam--much less since Brit-loving Loyalists were shown the door to what was then New France by American revolutionaries. Whether or not this is true, Kischer has plenty of horror stories from interested clients: concerned parents who are moving so their children won't be drafted into Bush's war machine, the rich guy who lives on a yacht and would rather pay exorbitant Canadian taxes than bear the shame of flashing his imperialist American passport when sailing into foreign ports.

I tell Kischer it's a bit much to swallow that so many Americans are being persecuted for disagreeing with the president, since we live in what most regard as a fly-your-freak-flag country. Take me. I wasn't keen on the war in Iraq, and I work in the belly of the neocon beast that gets partial credit for hatching it, yet I've never felt a lick of persecution for offering dissent. Kischer studied briefly at Duke (former basketball great Danny Ferry was in his poli-sci class, he says excitedly), so when I ask him if he ever felt oppressed in America, he laughs as if I've asked a ridiculous question. Of course not, he says, "but it depends on personality types, too. I'm a lawyer, so I've had worse things said to me by better people, right?"

When in America, he blended seamlessly, he says, with everyone else who shops at the same khaki-shorts store. People didn't really suspect he was Canadian, since Canada's not on the radar. "I read one article about Canada in four months," he adds. "It said the socialists are about to take over the government. From the American viewpoint, maybe they already have." Kischer voices a typical concern. Canadians are traditionally so insecure about the lack of attention we pay them that their government has even paid American universities $300,000 to study them. One of the foremost Canadian Studies programs in the country is at Duke. A professor in the program has said, "We're the most important university to make a serious effort to study Canada. That's like being the best hockey team in Zimbabwe."

MY FIRST INTERVIEW with an American comes not in Canada, but in Bellingham, Washington, about 90 minutes from Vancouver. I drive south and clear the Peace Arch border faster than I could a McDonald's drive-thru line (note to Homeland Security), and meet up with Christopher Key in his middle-class rambler with a for-sale sign in the yard. Key is still a patriot, but he hopes to soon be an expatriate. He's descended from "Star Spangled Banner"-writer Francis Scott Key, who he admits "wasn't much of a poet."

He has become a minor celebrity of sorts, profiled by everyone from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to the New York Times (whose reporter flies in the day after me). The silver-haired Key looks like a Chamber of Commerce burgher. He likes to point out he's not some stereotypical longhair, having just left his editor's gig at a failing business magazine. He's had several other career incarnations too: everything from art gallery owner to charter-boat skipper.

But Key's weirdest job was in the military, when he served in Vietnam. "They called it 'press liaison,' I think, but I was a news censor," he says. As a wet-behind-the-ears 19-year-old, he was supposed to tell media bigshots like Ed Bradley what they could and could not cover. They all ignored him. "My take," he says, "is that while I had an odious job, I managed to do it very poorly."

Key caught shrapnel on one mission, and later was ambushed in the central highlands. While running to his truck, he felt a stitch in his side. The wound took out a good bit of his right kidney, and served as his ticket home.

Though Key wasn't bullish on the war when he was drafted, he never thought of fleeing to Canada to beat it. He comes from a long military line, and running isn't what his family does. But since Bush was elected in 2000, he says he's watched the country go into a tailspin, becoming less tolerant, more mean-spirited, more judgmental. In the past, Key waited out Nixon and Reagan. "I voted for Dukakis," he says. "I'm used to losing." But the war in Iraq pushed him closer to the edge, and at about 3 a.m. the day after the election, he made his decision to eject. "All the voices of moderation--Colin Powell--were going to be replaced by yes-people like Condoleezza Rice. It's going to get worse."

He says that when satellite trucks first started showing up in his driveway, the neighbors were atwitter. He loves his neighbors, a healthy mix of Republicans and Democrats. They regularly get together for barbecues, and come see him perform in community theater. As a Universal Life Church minister--he secured his ordination certificate off the Internet for 25 bucks--he's performed their weddings and funerals. But they couldn't talk him into staying, even though his adult daughter lives next door with her family, and her former twin sister, now her twin brother, lives in Seattle. How could he stay in a place that would frown on his performing the wedding of his own daughter/son?

"Come again?" I ask.

"This gets confusing," he apologizes. His second daughter, Bonnie, it seems, "who became my son, was a lesbian before he went transgender," making him heterosexual. The twins are actually scheduled to go on Oprah to discuss this. I think I understand, but ask for a flow chart to make sure. "Listen, it won't help. It looks like an explosion in a spaghetti factory," he says. "I can't keep up--how the hell can you?"

While Key puts a premium on Canadian tolerance, he's spent long enough in the country to understand it's not Canaan. A part-time blogger, he's even written pieces with titles like "The Canadian Identity Crisis," in which he tweaks his future compatriots for being America-fixated ninnies, and for coasting on their reputation for politeness. While Canadians don't exhibit road rage, he says, they are carpool-lane cheaters and worse: "Victoria dumps its untreated sewage into the waters off Vancouver Island. How impolite can you get?"

Still, Key is leaving his homeland, and he's sick of hearing from talk-show types who say good riddance on the one hand and he should stay and fight on the other. "Shouldn't you?" I ask, picking up the latter sentiment. After all, he gets along beautifully even with his Republican neighbors, and nobody except a few journalists has questioned his patriotism. So how bad, really, is the alleged cauldron of intolerance known as America? Isn't he boxing with Sean Hannity's shadow, responding not to the America he actually knows, but to the polarized version of it that lives in his cable box?

Besides, I suggest in a windy disquisition (I've had wine with lunch) after hearing at length how he once marched for civil rights and against Vietnam, even if this ugly America is as pervasive as he says, isn't it our duty as Americans to get in on the debate, to jump into the sandbox and hit somebody on the head with a shovel while no one's looking? It's what made our country great. Our forefathers may have quit their home countries once upon a time, but they came here to build a better one.

He isn't buying. "I'm f--ing tired," he says, "and I don't need to rebuild the country. There's a perfectly good one 30 miles away."

JUST HOW PERFECTLY GOOD a country Canada is, is a matter of dispute. The expats I eventually meet buy into Canadian self-mythologizing without so much as giving the tires a kick. Yet even some Canadians gag on the constant stream of virtue-proclaiming advertorials that are, for lack of a better word, a crock. This is self-evident in the pathological Canadian claims of modesty and politeness.

Will Ferguson is a cockeyed nationalist and brilliant satirist, who calls his country "a nation of associate professors." In his book Why I Hate Canadians, he writes that his countrymen even boast about their Great Canadian Inferiority Complex. While it's difficult to go five minutes without hearing how collectively nice Canadians are, Ferguson says, "what we fail to realize is that self-conscious niceness is not niceness at all; it is a form of smugness. Is there anything more insufferable than someone saying, 'Gosh, I sure am a sweet person, don'tcha think?'"

This strain of nails-on-the-blackboard nationalism is most evident in the recent bestseller Fire and Ice, an Americans-are-from-Mars, Canadians-are-from-Venus study of the two countries' values by Canadian sociologist Michael Adams. Based on three head-to-head values surveys done over a decade, it shows Americans coming up short on matters from militarism to materialism. This is hardly news. But Adams pushes his luck, giving conventional wisdom a twirl by advancing that it is the Americans who are actually the slavish followers of an established order, while Canadians are rugged individualists and autonomous free thinkers.

Give Adams points for cheek. His is, after all, a country that didn't bother to draft its own constitution until 1982, that kept "God Save the Queen" as its national anthem until 1980, and that still enshrines its former master's monarch as its head of state. Her Canadian title is "Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories Queen (breath), Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith." Maybe they should change their national anthem again, to Britney Spears's "I'm A Slave 4 U."

After suffering through Adams's book, I decided two can practice snake-oil sociology. So I spent three days on Nexis kicking up every comparison-survey and statistic I could find on American/Canadian values. I became so gripped with the subject I could have been mistaken for a Canadian.

This unscientific research quickly confirmed that Canadians are bizarrely obsessed with us, binge-eating out of our cultural trough, then pretending it tastes bad. Plainly the two things Canada needs most are a mirror and a good psychiatrist.

Though they don't know who they are, they know they're not us (roughly 9 out of 10 comparison surveys are done by Canadians), so they bang that drum until their hands bleed. Still, it seems there is almost nothing Canadian that isn't informed in some way by America. When the late Canadian radio host Peter Gzowski had a competition to come up with a phrase comparable to "American as apple pie," the winner was "As Canadian as possible, under the circumstances." In 1996, when Canadians were asked to name both the greatest living and the all-time greatest Canadian, 76 percent said "no one comes to mind." Another survey showed them to believe that the most famous Canadian was Pamela Anderson, star of America's Baywatch. When Canadians were asked to name their favorite song, they settled on one by a good Canadian band, The Guess Who. The song: "American Woman."

Several years ago, Molson beer aired a commercial featuring Joe Canadian, a regular beer-drinking Joe who went on a rant aboot what Canadians are and aren't (not fur traders or dog sledders; they pronounce it "about," not "aboot"). He became a media darling and a national mascot. Then the actor who played Joe moved to Hollywood to find work. When he returned, tail tucked between legs, even he admitted, "I think, yeah, it is a little sad that Canadians draw their identity not so much from 'I am Canadian' as 'I am not American.'"

While Canadians pride themselves on knowing more about us than we do about them (undoubtedly true), the problem--captured in a survey done for Canada Day in 2000--is that even historically challenged Americans know more about ourselves than Canadians do about themselves. In parallel 10-question quizzes on everything from our first president/prime minister to the words of our respective national anthems, 63 percent of Americans scored five or more right answers. Only 39 percent of Canadians did. One Canadian television critic expressed disbelief, writing, "Average Americans appear to be in worse shape--judging by the evidence on TV, anyway." She would know, since at the time of her comment, 92 percent of the comedies and 85 percent of the dramas on Canadian television were made elsewhere, mainly in America.

Where Canada fails is no big secret. Most of us know that its universal health care is a great thing, if you don't mind waiting, say, nine months for an MRI on your spinal cord injury. We all know Canadians are overregulated, to the point that Canadian rocker Bryan Adams was denied "Canadian content status" for cowriting an album with a British producer, limiting the play his songs could receive on the radio (a policy that's supposed to encourage Canadian talent, but that in Adams's words "encourage mediocrity. People don't have to compete in the real world. . . . F--ing absurd").

We all know the Canadian military has become a shadow of itself. Things have gotten so dire that a Queen's University study (titled "Canada Without Armed Forces?") predicted the imminent extinction of the air force. This unpreparedness has become such a joke that Ferguson says their military ranks just above Tonga's, which consists of nothing more than "a tape-recorded message yelling 'I surrender!' in thirty-two languages."

What many don't consider is how much Canada has oversold itself in the areas where it purportedly does succeed. While it's true that the government has been much friendlier than ours to gay marriage, only 39 percent of Canadians decidedly support it. While Canada is supposedly more environment-friendly, it has been cited for producing more waste per person than any other country. While Canada is supposedly safer, a 1996 study showed its banks had the highest stick-up rate of any industrialized nation (one in every six was robbed). And while a great deal is made of Americans' passion for firearms, the Edmonton Sun, citing Statistics Canada, reported that Canada has a higher crime rate than we do.

Canadians are supposedly less greedy than Americans, yet they lead the world in telemarketing fraud, and most of their victims are Americans. Are they more generous? Not by a long shot. The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute publishes a Generosity Index, which shows that more Americans give to charity, and give more when they do.

Is the Canadian "mosaic" more successful than the American "melting pot," a distinction they constantly make? You be the judge. Imagine every decade or so America's Spanish-speaking southwesterners holding a referendum over whether to secede. It's happened twice since 1980 among the Francophones of Quebec, and some say it's going to happen again. While America has figurative language police on its college campuses, Quebec has literal ones--"tongue troopers," the locals call them--who ruthlessly enforce absurd language laws requiring, for example, that restaurant trash cans feature the word "push" on their lids in French instead of English.

Apart from the Anglo/Franco teeter-totter that Canada can't ever seem to get off, are Canadians less racist, as many of them claim? Well, like America, they saw both slavery and segregation. If Canadians today are less racist, someone ought to tell their aboriginal peoples, who've spent centuries getting their land annexed and being generally mistreated (as of 2000 in Nova Scotia, there was still a law on the books offering hunters a bounty for Indian scalps).

Recent polling shows 35 percent of Canada's "visible minorities" (such as blacks and Asians) have experienced discrimination in the last five years. Another poll showed 54 percent of Canadians believe anti-Semitism is a serious problem in Canadian society today. It certainly was yesterday. Around World War II, a few Jews did manage to squeak in--despite the policy summed up by Canada's director of immigration as "None is too many." Will Ferguson points out that more Nazi war criminals are thought to have found sanctuary in Canada than refugees fleeing the Holocaust.

But even when Canada succeeds, it carries the whiff of failure. For nearly a decade, the country sat atop the United Nations quality-of-life index, a fact that Canadian schoolchildren could parrot in their sleep. When Canada dropped to eighth, just behind the United States, its collective psyche took a beating. The next year, Canada shot past us again, but not back to the top. The headline in Ontario's Windsor Star tells you all you need to know about Canadian triumphalism: "Cheers to us, we're No. 4."

IN A SENSE, Canada is the perfect place for American quitters, as it evidences self-loathing masquerading as self-congratulation. This I learn over dinner in Vancouver. A delightful realtor named Elizabeth McQueen has enticed me with a promise any American boy likes to hear--that we'd be dining with "two very attractive lesbians." She didn't lie. One of them could make a killing as a Courteney Cox celebrity impersonator. Besides, they're psychotherapists from San Francisco. They ask me to change their names to Cocoa and Satchi since their patients don't yet know they're leaving America.

They've come to Vancouver to look for real estate, having gotten married on an earlier trip to Canada. They were politically active back home. They wrote letters to the editor for every cause: "Save the whales, save the trees, save the lesbians," says Cocoa. They hate the war and the Patriot Act and the results of the gay-marriage resolutions. They hate the conservative agenda and fundamentalist crackers and all the other usual suspects. They hate it that Karl Rove, in Cocoa's words, helped to elect "an alcoholic butthead who can't put two sentences together, cocaine addict, married to a frigid drunk-driver-murderer-Martha-Stewart wannabe."

But beneath all her gracious sentiments is something else: a loss of faith. When describing how she feels traveling abroad, Cocoa sounds like the old joke about how Canadians apologize when you step on their shoes: "I felt ashamed as I was going everywhere with my American passport. It was just like 'I'm so sorry.' . . . After the last election, I kind of lost faith in what we Americans are doing in our country."

Even many Canadians recognize that theirs is a faithless country compared with America. Not just in terms of religious belief--though they are much less fervent. As National Post columnist Andrew Coyne recently wrote in a piece chiding his countrymen for regarding American patriotism as cheap sentiment, "You see, in Canada we gave up believing years ago: in religion, in ideals, in much of anything, really. Secure as we were under the American defense umbrella, we were infantilized; having no need to defend ourselves, we could not understand why anyone else would have more. Or perhaps it was this: having renounced even the wish to defend ourselves, having absorbed the notion that the country could be destroyed at any moment by a vote of half the population of one province [Quebec], what was left to believe?"

THERE ARE SOME AMERICAN EXPATS, however, who are of more robust stock. I journey out to a hippie-leftover, New Agey enclave on British Columbia's far western shore, Quadra Island, where I actually smell spliffy smoke on the ferry ride over. At the island's edge lies the Heriot Bay Inn, owned by American Lorraine Wright. She bought it last year after moving north a while ago, partly for business opportunities, partly because of the political climate back home.

On this island, natural beauty surrounds us. Nick, her boat captain (she also owns a whale and grizzly-watching adventure tours business) takes me out through choppy coastal sounds to deliver explosives to a remote construction site, since he doubles as a water-taxi in the off-season. We look for sea lions and seals, which the locals call "rock sausages." They often serve as finger-food for transient killer whales.

One night in Wright's wood-paneled, maritime-themed bar, I meet her cast of regulars. There's the bar curmudgeon Bruce, who shakes hands with one that has lost a finger to a circular saw. He seems to like being on my tab, but spends most of the night whispering anti-Americanisms in my ear. There's oyster farmer Brian, whose border collie lolls between the tables. He offers to call up a Vietnam draft-dodger friend who might make a good interview, though the friend's not home, just as he wasn't when his country called.

Lorraine, who has a large personality and a barbed wit, blows in like a northerly in an orange Arc'teryx jacket. We tuck into a discreet corner where the barmaid keeps finding us with a steady supply of my whiskeys (bourbon, not Canadian--drink American!) and her cosmopolitans. For the next four hours, I and this former surfer girl from California, born to a Republican family before she became a bleeding heart, go at it like two drunks in a bar fight, which come to think of it, we half resemble.

She calls herself a "compassionate capitalist" and clowns on my old Clinton-bashing pieces, which she's pulled off the Internet. I try my level best to make her feel like Benedict Arnold, who lost the fight when we invaded Quebec during the Revolution, before he slunk off to England. Instant friends, with similar sensibilities, we throw flurries of rabbit and kidney punches. But just when I think my roundhouse is going to drop her like a sack of potatoes--after I posit that real Americans, whatever their political persuasion, are fighters, not runners--Wright clocks me with this:

"America is built on people leaving places. We're a country of people who've left. Constitutionally, the pursuit of happiness is something we not only honor, but something we legally protect. This ain't Russia. I don't have to stay. This ain't Cuba. I can leave.

"In fact, find me one American who would make me stay and fight. They'd say no, go, do what's right for you. I found happiness here. I'll be in BC the rest of my life. I pray to God that I don't die somewhere else, that I'm not vacationing somewhere when I die, because that would bum me out. . . .

"Pursue your happiness. We were the first country to do it. And we live for that, the fact that people have personal rights. Go where you want. Do what you want. The fact that I chose Canada is almost a bigger embodiment of the American dream. . . . I still love America."

"So you're saying being unpatriotic is an act of patriotism?" I counter, though my heart is no longer in it.

"I've had too many cocktails for that one," Wright says.

I settle the tab, and the next morning I'm off, promising that someday I'll come back to visit with my family. By then, with any luck, she'll have had a chance to explain America to her new countrymen.

Matt Labash is senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

Post a link next time, dude

I'm too stupid to do that. Why do you think I post the paranoid drivel I post?

I'm too stupid to do that. Why do you think I post the paranoid drivel I post?

Just copy and paste the link. Paranoia is not an excuse.

radiophile Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm too stupid to do that. Why do you think I
> post the paranoid drivel I post?


More bullshit lies from an unregistered user.

-----------------------------------------------

"...your suffering will be legendary even in Hell!"