We like you, we really like you!

[Scooter]

Sympathetic Canadians Have a Message for Americans: You Guys Are Great

By LIAM STACK OCT. 17, 2016

The presidential campaign has exposed deep divides in American society and left many in every political party anxious about the future. During this time of political tension, our neighbors to the north have one thing to say: America is just great.

Some Canadians watching as American politics have hit rock bottom in recent weeks decided that the United States needed a cross-border pep talk. Thus was born a social media campaign called “Tell America It’s Great,” complete with a hashtag, a Twitter account and a series of YouTube videos.

It was the brainchild of the Garden Collective, a creative agency based in Toronto, and in the videos, a diverse and polite group of Canadians earnestly recite all the things they like about the United States.

“Sometimes friends just need to look out for each other,” Shari Walczak, a founder of the agency, said on Sunday.

“Hey, guys!” says one cheerful man in the campaign’s main video, which was filmed on webcams and smartphones. “We’re just up here in Canada talking about how great you guys are down there, and we thought we’d just send you a little bit of a love note.”

[oldr_n_wsr]

We love you too man.

[Sue U]

If you really liked us, you'd take back Ted Cruz and let us have Justin Trudeau.

[Crackpot]

That would be a sign of insanity. But they could give Don Cherry shock treatment until he pronounces Detroit properly.

[RayThom]

[oldr_n_wsr]

Dudley Do-Right?

[Guinevere]

If you really liked us, you'd take back Ted Cruz and let us have Justin Trudeau.

Even for just a couple of nights a week would be fine.....

[Sue U]

[Scooter]

I think you'd have to take that up with Sophie, I'm not sure that she's up for sharing.

[Sue U]

Just as an aside:

WorldViews
The unbelievable popularity of Canada’s Justin Trudeau

By Alan Freeman October 18


Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau celebrates after tapping a keg at the opening ceremony for Oktoberfest in Kitchener, Ontario, on Oct. 7. (Hannah Yoon/Canadian Press via AP)

OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau just keeps on moving. On one day, he’s at a Montreal arena with the visiting Chinese premier dropping a ceremonial puck. Both are wearing Canadiens hockey sweaters. On another, he’s thousands of miles away in British Columbia greeting the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at the start of a royal visit. Then he’s in southern Ontario popping the keg at a local Oktoberfest.

A year after he led the Liberal Party to a surprise election victory, the 44-year-old Trudeau is still crisscrossing the country as if he were in the middle of a campaign, turning up everywhere, giving speeches, posing for selfies, spreading his charm. It’s a formula that’s clearly working.

A poll by Ipsos Public Affairs for Global News made public Tuesday shows that 64 percent of Canadians approve of his government’s performance. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, it’s a remarkable 78 percent. According to the poll, 58 percent of Canadians say that Trudeau has met or exceeded their expectations.

At a time when Western governments are facing an increasingly divided and fractious electorate and leaders are hanging on for dear life, Trudeau is in an enviable position.

Nik Nanos, chairman of the polling firm Nanos Research, has come up with numbers similar to those found by Ipsos. Repeated predictions that Trudeau’s honeymoon with the electorate is ending appear to have been proven wrong.

“Nothing has occurred in the last 12 months that has negatively affected his personal brand and his popularity,” Nanos said in an interview.


Justin Trudeau leaves a polling station with wife, Sophie, and their children after casting his vote in October 2015. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

The Liberal government made a raft of promises in the 2015 election, moving ahead quickly on a middle-class tax cut and expansion of the government-backed Canada Pension Plan, welcoming 25,000 Syrian refugees and appointing an inquiry commission to look into missing and murdered indigenous women. It has also promised to legalize marijuana and reform the electoral system.

But, above all, Nanos says, Trudeau is a sharp stylistic change from his immediate predecessor, the dour and cerebral Stephen Harper, who clearly hated retail politics. “Trudeau’s idea of being prime minister is to be out there listening to Canadians and engaging Canadians. For Stephen Harper, being prime minister meant showing up at the office, reading his files and making decisions,” he said.

What distinguishes Canada’s Liberals from parties in the United States, Britain and Germany, Nanos said, is their rejection of wedge politics on issues such as immigration. “They’re not practicing divisive politics as they govern,” he said.

Trudeau’s search for consensus-style politics is made easier because Canada has less sharp social and economic divisions compared with the United States.

Miles Corak, an economist at the University of Ottawa who studies social mobility in the United States and Canada, says the differences between the two countries are especially sharp at the bottom and top of the income ladder.

“To be in the lower fifth [of the population] in the U.S. means a much lower level of income than in Canada,” he said in an interview. And at the top, “the cutoff to be in the top 1 percent in Canada is around $200,000, while in the U.S., it’s at least double that.”

Corak, who taught at Harvard as a visiting professor last year, said the average social mobility in Canada ends up being twice as great as in the United States, partly because of significant variability in the quality of American public education. “Rags to riches is actually greater in Canada,” he said. And though Canadians and Americans share similar values and personal goals for success in life, Canadians are more likely to believe that government helps rather than hinders their quest for that success.

Also helping Trudeau politically is disarray in the rival Conservative and New Democratic parties, both of which are still in the quest for permanent leaders. As many as a dozen candidates are vying for the Conservative leadership, to be decided in May, with no obvious front-runner yet.

Although Canada’s economy is slow and tough decisions on divisive issues such as climate change and energy pipelines are on the horizon, Trudeau’s honeymoon shows no signs of ending.

WaPo.

Scooter, BeerSponge, is he really all that?

[Scooter]

There have been some missteps, but considering his government inherited an economy in free fall from cratering oil prices (not helped by having a huge part of the oil industry shut down by the Fort McMurray fire), most things have gone pretty well. The opposition, having declared that so many initiatives would be impossible to achieve (Canada Pension Plan reform, Syrian refugee resettlement) have been consigned to sniping around the edges when the government was able to deliver.

The opposition did its best to attempt to portray him as a dilettante from before he became party leader, right through the election campaign and beyond. They did not count on how well he understood the job beginning from the time spent learning about it at his father's knee.

BeerSponge will have a completely different opinion because, you know, Alberta.

[oldr_n_wsr]

BeerSponge will have a completely different opinion because, you know, Alberta.

You really shouldn't bring his wife into this.

[Crackpot]

If this was anyone but Canada I would think you're being patronizing.

[liberty]

http://www.thecanadaguide.com/anti-americanism

Anti-Americanism in Canada

A good way to become a best-selling author in Canada is to write a book that centres around some theme of Canadian weakness in the face of U.S. aggression.
Canada and the United States are quite possibly the two most similar countries in the world. Their residents speak the same language, eat the same foods, watch the same TV shows, live in similar-looking cities, labour in the same industries and share the same basic values of work, family and friendship. But familiarity can also breed contempt and insecurity, and Canadians spend a lot of time trying to come up with reasons why they are not like Americans. Or, just as often, why Americans are worse.
Disliking, judging, teasing and even hating America sadly forms a central part of the Canadian identity, and is a bias that tends to run through most aspects of Canadian society and culture. For various reasons, the default position of a vast many Canadians is that America, Americans and American things are generally bad, and need to be opposed. These feelings are not always logical and consistent, and can certainly be hypocritical in practice, but they do exist, and understanding their important role in all aspects of Canadian culture is necessary to understand what makes Canadians Canadian.
Anti-Americanism in Canadian Politics : http://www.thecanadaguide.com/anti-americanism

[Scooter]

You tried posting that once before. It was debunked at the time because you could barely read a sentence that didn't contain at least one factual error. But you forgot that and chose to demonstrate your idiocy by posting it again. Well done.

[Crackpot]

It's all part of a evil plan to polite us to death.

[Lord Jim]

Disliking, judging, teasing and even hating America sadly forms a central part of the Canadian identity

The available evidence would suggest otherwise:

Majority of Canadians Have a Positive View of the U.S.

By a healthy margin, people in Canada have a positive view of the U.S. Roughly seven-in-ten Canadians (68%) view their neighbor favorably, while 26% hold an unfavorable opinion.



Over time, sentiments toward the U.S. among Canadians have held fairly steady, although favorability dipped after the start of the Iraq War in 2003 and hit a low of 55% in 2007. However, even from 2003 through 2008, an era of low international opinion of the U.S., most Canadians held a favorable view of their southern neighbor.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/10/06/can ... ationship/

You'll forgive me if I go with scientific polling data compiled by a respected polling organization over "JJ's Complete Guide"....

[Scooter]

[rubato]

Those Canadians, they're just so darned nice.

Well I've got some thank-you notes to write.

yrs,
rubato

[liberty]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4bc_1321983417

CHILDRENS Hockey Team Attacked By Mob In Canada.

This item updates item 'Leafs Player Kicked In The Head '

When they're not clubbing baby seals, raping underage thai children or slaughtering whales the Canadians love to terrorize small American children that come to play hockey.

Canadians hurl abuse at U.S. hockey peewees

By INGRID PERITZ
MONTREAL -- A peewee hockey tournament in Montreal became a trip into
hostile territory for a busload of Americans who say they encountered
such fierce anti-Americanism that they will think twice before
returning.

During a four-day visit, boys travelling with their Massachusetts
hockey team witnessed the burning of the Stars and Stripes and the
booing of the U.S. national anthem. When travelling in their bus
emblazoned with a red-white-and-blue "Coach USA" logo, they saw people
on the street who extended their middle fingers or made other angry
gestures.

On the ice, the Canadian players told their visiting counterparts that "the U.S. sucks" and dispensed other anti-American insults,

Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4bc_1321 ... IkJrSeC.99