Bill, you are just confirming my point. There is little difference between being a Canadian "landed immigrant" and a citizen, just as there is very little practical difference between being a US citizen and having a green card. The difference is primarly a legal category. I'm sure that a man marrying a Canadian woman, provided it is a genuine marriage, will become a Canadian citizen. My main point referred to the difference in treatment between refugees in Canada and the US. In Canada, a refugee is given money, an apartment and free language training. In the US, a refugee is thrown into jail. In Canada, a permanent resident who is not yet a citizen has the same health care as a Canadian citizen. In the US, even citizens have no right to health care.

In general, the US is cursed by being a superpower and by being run by an oligarchy that is profit-mad and out of control. This distorts all discourse in this country. In Canada, the media is talking about daycare benefits; here it is about which country should be bombed next.

I am probably in a good position to discuss these matters as a dual Canadian/US citizen who has lived many years in both countries. And, for David Sugerman, I am not as thin-skinned as you may think - I'm a New Yorker too, and you don't last a New York minute here with a thin skin.

My sermon for today is this

David, when he gets pissed

Turns away from the facts

And goes on the attack

(His bombast is easily dismissed)

Technically, you are correct, Bill. In fact, once accepted as a landed immigrant (like the green card), a person can work and travel freely in Canada. Not only that, but you have full health care as a landed immigrant even before you become a citizen. I will repeat that for the sake of American citizens who lack health care - prospective Canadian immigrants have full health care befifits even before becoming citizens. Because Canadians think it would be uncivilized to welcome people to their country and not give them health care. That is the difference between Canada and the US.

"sane, progressive, tolerant, peaceful, humane" - who could worked up enough to root for that?

You mean you would rather root for an insane PNAC policy of world domination, an intolerant govenment that sends innocent people to secret CIA camps to be tortured, a government that practices continuous warfare to keep up the profits of the military-industrial complex and an inhumane society that enriches the pharmaceautical and health insurance companies while letting people die for lack of health care? I think sane, progressive, tolerant, peaceful, humane and compassionate sounds pretty good right about now.

Canada has a distinct identiy: It is the sane, progressive, tolerant, peaceful and humane country that the US could have been and should aspire to.

Is it any wonder that people all over the world hate Americans when so many have these arrogant attitudes? I ony wish that the US was the 11th province of Canada. We would then have universal health care, good universites with $5,000 per year tuition, paid maternity/paternity leave, sane drug laws, a strong union movement, a more efficient parliamentary government where the head of the largest party can actually get legislation passed without fear of a presidential veto (such as universal health care), and a government that is not perpetually at war to enrich a oligarchical elite. A rich country in which people have to worry about losing their house if their children get sick, while health insurance executives are paid million dollar bonuses to deny claims cannot claim to be a civilized country.

"if there were something, wouldn't Ted Kennedy have have brought it to light?"

Everyone wants to go on living, don't they?

This is an interesting article about a pivotal event in US and world history. When is Salon going to write about the much more recent conspiracy of 9/11? Is the 9'/11 truth movement to be marginalized, even by so-called liberal media outlets?

I love wacky consiracy theorists. They live in a fantasy world. They believe in crazy things, like Oswald acted alone and some Arabs with box cutters did 9/11. They make my day.

Thank you for pointing out the link between the conspiracy that killed JFK and 9/11. It is the same group of neo-fascist oligarchs.

"Plane enthusiasts were the ones who tracked and recorded the Bush Administration's ferrying of men to secret prisons to be tortured. Many took photos. Because of their work, no government, especially "ours", could deny the existance of these criminal, secret, flights."

That would explain the crackdown on plane spotters. Who knew?

In the 1970's, my brother and his friend would go to Toronto International Airport to look at planes. Not only would they get onto the tarmac, they actually got into the flight deck of an airliner. Times were so innocent then. People were more than cattle. Let's go back!

Thanks, Patrick, and thanks Sam Chui. At sixteen you were going to airports and writing down plane registration numbers? I thought I was geeky for listening to Mozart at that age. (I still do, but it's ok after 50) Loved the pictures. Some of them are worth 10,000 words. I now know where to go on the internet to fritter away even more time.

"However, there is also a huge, albeit nearly invisible, sect that has healthy attitudes toward guns and treats them with the appropriate level of respect."

A hammer is a tool for driving nails, a saw for cutting wood, and a gun is a tool for killing people. Wanting to kill people is insane. Wanting to own a tool for killing people is insane. To believe that you need a gun for protection is to already acquiece in the failure of American civilization and to descend into a Hobbsian world. I choose not to live that way. The only healthy attitude toward guns is to despise them.