Thursday, June 12, 2008

John McCain to speak in Canada: WTF

John McCain to speak in Canada per Yahoo Canada news
This is very disturbing to Northworthy, a Canadian by birth, adopted very quickly into the home of landed immigrant who refused to give up her US citizenship, paying annually her US taxes, when she could have taken the easy way out: become Canadian.

In such a household, one gets some rather unique views, including what a President should or not do, to be "Presidential."

The candidates were always closely scrutinized, the conventions watched, and the absentee ballot cast.

Mr. McCain has made a very poor decision to come to Canada to campaign, that is what my mother would have said.

Worse, she would have been outraged, in a way one cannot express in a public blog.

She would also question "Canucks" for having acquiesced to such an event, the first time in Canada's history.

The banter would have been intolerable for a patriotic Canadian type, and you know who would have been in what room, stuck there, if this occurred during my youth.

The question of my country being a country would have been asked, and answer fast with "you don't have a country when you allow foreign leaders to make campaign speeches to electoral eunuchs."

So that raises the question: what is McCain up to? Is he trying to win us over for what?

The "Amero," the rumoured common currency zone between Canada, the US and Mexico, and in essence Euro-fy Canada?

To that, one wonders about the French Canadien position that barely few Canadians understand: to me this will be the final straw to break the camels back if we Euro-fy (recall France did not vote in favour of the European Union's Constitution, with the Dutch, and one other nation; the UK called off their vote on the matter as a result).

In another sense, when one looks at Canada, and the US, why would Canadians want to join with a nation that is reviled internationally at the political level for its militaristic stance on "protecting Americans" from threats that have recently been deceptions than real.

Further Canada has a healthy trade balance, our budget is in order, our government is pared to the bone, we have no enemies in the world (though that has changed very recently), we have a great health care system in practice that could be a lot better if the political Conservatives had chosen instead of paying down debt, making payments into our major health care needs due to Canada's demographics: we need much more research money i.e. university, facilities for people, and 'educational' money for getting staff for these facillities. Health was totally absent in the recent budget as part I guess of the continuing downloading of government services but with abundant catches, and unnecessary bureaucrasy for Health Canada to retain some power, that more often than not is not exercised to halt private clinics for example.

And presently, the only educational incentives are available to the well off, not the working family, middle class, who cannot spare much money (as the results show from tax expenditure analysis). A doctor's education is likely near $400,000 today, with the doctor stuck with what a $70,000 student loan: great incentive for smart middle class kids or smart recent immigrants who in the main have to go through some "fallow" working conditions in residency v. supporting their families.

So Canada has its problems but certainly fewer than the US, who appear to be on everyone's bulleye for trouble making, despite the folksy political fronts for its actual militarism, some would classify as imperialistic: why do the oil fields of Iraq become a National Security Issue for the US?

This indicates a hegemony and it is not like the Chinese, Indians, Russians, and the Muslim world are not watching this and knowing it first hand by experience. Russian bombers are back in the air now, on nuclear patrol, while the US Air Force Command has been replaced by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for lax handling and procedures with respect to nuclear weapons, part of the former military "triad" of defense. When an element of your "triad" is confused, well, what kind of danger does that put the world in?

When we add to the nexus Israel threatening to take out the Iranian "Revolutionary Council's" nuclear program, it is not surprising due to geo-politics that the price of oil is what it is.

To me its laughable to blame it on financial speculators (Liberal Dan McTague who reads the closing spot market price and then applies a math function to that price to "magically" predict the price of gas tomorrow, yet blames the financial speculators: how about the forward purchasers Dan, like the oil companies themselves?) when the risk premium is immense, that the area known as the Middle East, an area with approx 30% of proven reserves, is between Tel Aviv and Tehran.

Today we read the inevitable: the Saudi's are worried that "we" will dump oil as a source of energy with the price this high, and they will be stuck with oil in the middle of a dessert they cannot sell. Anyone starting to cry for them?

The latter is not a problem from a Canadian's point of view as if all the oil was extracted that could be extracted from this planet, we indeed would be a snowball shortly, in our lifetimes if you are less than 50 years old.

Snowball?

Yes, that is when the planet's ice cap grows to counter balance the CO2 emissions as the impacts on ocean current's cause further damage to the climate and crops that feed billions of people, and we are left as a planet with a small barely liveable area near the equator, if we are lucky.

So as crazy as this sounds, I hope oil goes to $200 a barrel or $300 a barrel so that we, particularly in North American can get on with the shifts to energy independence that President Jimmy Carter outlined in the late 70's, that the Reagan Administration threw out.

[Factoid: Germany is the leading nation is generating electrical power from wind in the world: 22,000 Megawatts. I ask why Canada could not have done more on those lines than strip land of its soil, waste clean water and tons of energy, to create oil out of tar sand, so the US can drive big cars, that only the rich in the near future will be able to afford]

So yes, US citizen John McCain, come on up to Canada. I think we want to listen very carefully on what your plan is against the Snowball we face if we don't get cracking on a carbon emissions trading system like ... yesterday!

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