It has all the culture of Atlanta, fewer people in the metropolitan area, less traffic and the music industry.

Many Nashvillians claim that Nashville is Atlanta before it got too big.

It has the same natural beauty of Atlanta with rolling hills etc...

If it does then it can compel us to purchase anything for the good of society.

However I find the whole mechanisms of reform troubling as you do.  If the Obama administration wanted to take over health care then they should have done so.  Universal care with the freedom for Americans to purchase extra care through a private and separate system.  See England.

IOW, tell us something we don't know and just do your phucking job!

1. Rice was talking about Iraq, and implying that Saddam possessed nuclear capabilities - something that she knew to be false at the time. Obama is talking about North Korea which has publicly demonstrated their nuclear weapons capability.

B. "But we're under no illusions. We know that nuclear material -- enough for many weapons -- is still being stored without adequate protection," is what he actually said, not what you quoted. This differs from what Rice said because, well, it has the virtue of being true.

Honestly, Edger, while I don't believe for one nanosecond all the claptrap about our country being the "shining city on the hill" and the "last best hope for mankind," we're not ALWAYS the bad guys, you know. Far from it.

Yes, I freely admit that we often only come about the right thing after we exhaust all other possibilities. But you appear to take an unseemly delight in the concept that Americans are perpetually bad actors who are almost wholly incapable of doing good. The fact that you direct your sniper fire at American politicians from your safe haven in Vancouver, B.C. tends to render it all the more annoying to me.

I may not be the brightest guy in the world, but I think that I'm a pretty astute historian. I also happen to live in the only state in the country that was a sovereign nation fully recognized by the greater world community, and whose independence was fully extinguished by the United States in August 1898 against the expressed will of its own citizens.

Therefore, I'm under no illusions about the terrible things my country has done in the past, and the malevolence that we're capable of projecting when led by people whose interests are less than altruistic.

Further, most of us here are fully aware of the detrimental influence and corrosive effect that the U.S. military-industrial complex has had on American policy-making. There are a lot of us who work tirelessly to confront it, and who are actively committed to bring about better policy. We don't need Canadians to constantly remind us how awful we can be.

You really want to make a difference? Why don't you start thinking globally but acting locally, as in north of the border where you live. There's plenty of work you can do to highlight the Harper government's synergetic energy policy, and to change the way things work in Ottawa so that Canadian corporate interests don't always align so neatly with U.S. corporate interests.

(You know, we wouldn't have to be so worried about that damned Keystone pipeline down here, if Canada wasn't so willing to dig up its own oil shale up there in Alberta in the first place, in order to sell it to us. It's not like we have a gun to Canadians' heads and are taking it from them against their will.)

I know our proximity to one another means that American policy often impacts Canadians, for better or worse. But your often relentless barrage of (sometimes very nasty) criticism about U.S. politics and politicians from north of the border is really starting to rub me the wrong way. It's not unlike how I feel when I listen to Catholic bishops lecture us about sexual morality and contraception and family planning. In both cases, when one is not directly involved in the game, one shouldn't presume to dictate the rules to those of us who are.

Just sayin'. When Canada is so perfect, then I'm more than willing to listen to your advice. Until then ...