Maybe we should just feed our kids thimerosal in their cereal, and skip the shots.
Thimerosal is a neurotoxin. Neurotoxin + developing brain............ hmmmmm...........

deimos3428 wrote:(Sorry for being nasty folks, but small minds really bother me...especially when they're repeatedly advocating attacking my nation.  Something needed to be said.)

No need to apologize D.  I thought he was joking at first.  Guess not.  

bbarsh wrote:Eventually, america will lead the way in energy solutions. But it will be on our terms and in our time frame. And that just pissess people off.

No we won't.  Our way of life won't allow it.  Arrogance and laziness will destroy us just as it helped destroy countless other "empires" during the course of human history.

deimos3428 wrote:That's the third time you've spouted this trolling, offensive crap in this thread alone.  Fortunately for your own ignorant ass your countrymen don't agree, so be sure to thank them for not starting a third war you can't possibly finish.  Any more impotent frustration you'd like to spew, or are you ready to stop dumping your credibility and move on?  

(Sorry for being nasty folks, but small minds really bother me...especially when they're repeatedly advocating attacking my nation.  Something needed to be said.)

Whoa, whoa, whoa....you guys don't WANT us to take you over????  DON'T YOU WATCH SOUTH PARK???  We'd kick your ass in a straight up war!!!!!!  

Tell you what, keep sending us your comedians and we'll stay put....

Mike B.

I could care less if it causes autism or not. It's a neurotoxin. Or is that just a lie perpetrated by political parties to gain power? Maybe it's NOT toxic, and they just want people to believe that so they can push non-neurotoxin technology.

bbarsh wrote:You want to go live in a shack with no running water, power, tv, playstation II, etc, move to freaking china.

Actually many people in China today have all those things...

deimos3428 wrote:That's the third time you've spouted this trolling, offensive crap in this thread alone.  Fortunately for your own ignorant ass your countrymen don't agree, so be sure to thank them for not starting a third war you can't possibly finish.  Any more impotent frustration you'd like to spew, or are you ready to stop dumping your credibility and move on?  

(Sorry for being nasty folks, but small minds really bother me...especially when they're repeatedly advocating attacking my nation.  Something needed to be said.)

Deimos since when did you ever have a problem being a nasty simple-minded cretin?

As for taking over Canada, I don't think it is going to come up. Your global warming fears are on par with y2k. But honestly, if the USA gets to the point where we need Canada, the USA will take it over. Consider that two large and important office buildings get destroyed and two countries are destroyed in exchange.

But what really pisses you off is that if you are right, and there is such an easter bunny as global warming, destroying the USAs economy and industry is simply pissing into a bonfire. China, Russia, and India are industrializing, and the rest of the non-european world will soon follow.

So distract the discussion about the USA taking over Canada or the merits of wiki, but the real discussion is that destroying the USAs economy is the end in itself because in the very short term we aren't going to be the biggest consumers or producers of your climate destroying emissions that are sapping your bodily essence.

Face it, its the fluride in the water thats causing all your problems.

Kingofpain89 wrote:
No we won't.  Our way of life won't allow it.  Arrogance and laziness will destroy us just as it helped destroy countless other "empires" during the course of human history.

O lord. The USA as empire? Robber barons and yankee traders certainly, but you have absolutely no clue as to what an 'empire' is like. Stalin was running an empire, Mao was running an empire, the USA is like a gibbering mouther with bi-polar disorder.

JasonZavoda wrote:but you have absolutely no clue as to what an 'empire' is like.

And thus the reason I used the little quotation marks around the word empire.

Seriously man, disembark the crazy train already.

JasonZavoda wrote:Deimos since when did you ever have a problem being a nasty simple-minded cretin?

Since always.  I'm a reasonably nice guy most of the time but I admit I don't have much of a tolerance for the ignorant.  As for being simple-minded, I was just trying to empathize.

As for taking over Canada, I don't think it is going to come up. Your global warming fears are on par with y2k.

Yeah, because it's not like that ever happened.  Everything just worked flawlessly without anybody putting in countless hours of work testing any of the critical systems on the planet at all.  There's another hoax planned for 2038, make sure you don't fall for that one either.

if the USA gets to the point where we need Canada, the USA will take it over. Consider that two large and important office buildings get destroyed and two countries are destroyed in exchange.

No, you truly won't, so I hope you have a "Plan B".

You're speculating the USA could take Canada over in the first place.  We're not really interested in parting with it, see.  So you'd have to take it by force -- meaning you're attacking Canada completely unprovoked.  You definitely have a much larger military, but that alone is not sufficient to win a war.  Here are just a few reasons why that won't happen:

1.  Geography.

You'll need to occupy and hold Canada, not just take it over, and your track record on that isn't so good.  Take another look at Iraq/Afganistan and then realize Canada has about the same population as Iraq but ten times the area of both Afganistan and Iraq combined, and it also borders the lower 48.  (It's not much, but we do have a military, which means you'd need to reserve at some of yours for homeland defense.)  It's not an easy or safe place to occupy at all, and unlike a desert it is riddled with rivers, lakes, and rough terrain.  Not to mention we're helping you out quite a bit with Afganistan right now, and we'd probably stop if you were attacking us.

2.  Friends.

Consider that Canada is a very popular nation, world-wide.  People overseas really like us.  We sew Canadian flags on our backpacks when we travel to Europe, specifically so they don't think we're American.  We've got a lot of allies:

* Canada is part of the Commonwealth, so when you mess with us -- you mess with Australia, Britain, New Zealand, South Africa (and a ton of tiny islands).  France and Germany also have strong ties to Canada and would undoubtedly side with us.  There might well be quite a few more nations that would balk at America's grab for resources, but those are locks.

* We're a nation of immigrant cultures.  Every citizen or would-be citizen waiting to sponsor his family and bring them here would have them pressure their home country to stop America from committing such an atrocity to their new home.  

* Then there are the "big guns", with real militaries: Russia, India, and China.  They don't really care about Canada, but they certainly don't want the USA to have more of access to the Arctic, or more world-wide influence, especially gained via conquest.  It's also not in their backyard, so they are more than happy to roll all over North America stopping you and/or taking Canada for their own.  One of the reasons America has historically defended Canada is because it acts as "buffer zone" from these powers.

*  The oil-producing Arab nations don't really want America to have all that Canadian oil, either.  It would really cut into their profits if Canadian oil went from "relatively expensive" to "free".  Probably not a good idea to upset your other oil suppliers at the same time you're fighting for control of your #1 oil supplier.  (Canada is also the leading producer of uranium, and they don't want you using that either.)

3.  Home.

Canada is your largest trading partner and your largest supplier of oil.  You really don't want to piss that off.  But more importantly, you really don't want to piss off 30 million peaceful neighbours.  Angry neighbours can make your life miserable.

As your neighbours, we know an awful lot about you and have had unprecedented access to your country.  We live, work, and play amongst you...in relative invisibility.  About 9% of the American population is Canadian-American, and you can bet most of them would resist such an unjust war.  That's one helluva sleeper cell, if it should come to that.  That sounds harsh, but remember -- America is the aggressor in this situation.

Consider that every major war that America has participated in during the last century has one thing in common:  they all took place conveniently overseas, far from American soil.  Nobody brought the spectre of war to America's doorstep, or into it's streets.  This war would be fought in your backyard, and in your home.

4.  History.

About a hundred years ago, another country thought they could thrash their neighbours and take away their land with impunity.  In the end there were millions of casulties on both sides, and the aggressive nation found itself greatly diminished in size and strength.  (It actually tried it twice, thirty years apart, with the same result each time.)  So attacking Canada would be very unwise, and possibly spell the end of America as a superpower.   History really does tend to repeat itself.

As Badmike said, if you theoretically lined our two armies at each other and yelled "go", you'd destroy ours quite handily.  But a real act of aggression on America's part would not go so smoothly at all, and might very well be the last straw as far as the world is concerned.

5.  Not Asshats

Americans simply are not asshats on the whole, and wouldn't attack another country without provocation.  Such a blindingly stupid move might even lead to civil war.  

The rest of this essay is rather moot in light of that point.  Whether or not American society is arrogant or lazy as a nation as KoP suggsets, I don't know.  Probably no more than any other place.