By Lynn Davidson | September 21, 2007 | 11:45 AM EDT

Canadian news magazine Maclean's photoshopped George Bush into the familiar black beret, mustache and pseudo-military garb that defined the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. This photo illustration accompanied a September 20 cover story that claimed Bush is the new Saddam because he's “reaching out the the late dictator's henchmen.”

In "How Bush Became the New Saddam," writer Patrick Graham described a decaying civilization that is doomed to fail in this rambling, disjointed article. He traveled around Iraq separately from the US military and even criticized journalists embedded with them because they “learn mostly about Americans...and end up sounding like a visiting columnist for the New York Times“ (my emphasis throughout). Ah yes, Canadians wouldn't want to echo that notoriously pro-military, pro-war and pro-American voice of the NY Times.

By Scott Whitlock | September 14, 2007 | 1:40 PM EDT

On Friday’s "Good Morning America," token conservative reporter John Stossel told portly filmmaker Michael Moore, "Forgive me. More of us look like you" and that obesity explains why Canadians live longer than Americans, not universal health care. Stossel appeared on the morning show to promote his program debunking the myth of "free," government-run health care. His "20/20" special, which will air September 14 on ABC, includes a quarrel with the left-wing director.

Stossel’s appearance on GMA, and his conservative take, also strongly contrasts with the morning show’s own coverage of government controlled health care. In June, Moore appeared on the program to promote "Sicko," his movie bashing the United States system of private care. Back then, GMA co-host Chris Cuomo mildly questioned the filmmaker’s trip to Cuba to lavish praise on the communist country’s health system. After the director noisily objected to this offense, Cuomo backed down, saying, "Look, I like the stunt."

By Scott Whitlock | August 22, 2007 | 5:45 PM EDT

On Wednesday’s "Good Morning America," anchor Chris Cuomo completely glossed over the health care implications of a Canadian mother giving birth to quadruplets in America and not her home country. According to Cuomo, Karen Jepp and her husband, the new parents of identical quadruplets, had to be flown 300 miles from Calgary to Montana on August 16, because "every neo-natal unit in their country was too crowded to handle four preemie births."

Apparently, it didn’t occur to Mr. Cuomo to wonder why all the hospitals in Canada, a nation with universal health care, were full. During a subsequent interview with Jepp and her husband J.P., the co-host continued with this unquestioning explanation. He elaborated, "...Towards the very end, it gets even more complicated....You know, they're not ready for them at the hospital. Your doctors have to make calls. You have to fly 300 miles to have [the children]." Considering that back in June, "Good Morning America" co-anchor Diane Sawyer announced "a commitment to take a hard look at the health insurance industry," it seems odd that unusual circumstances, which forced a very pregnant mother to fly to another country and give birth, would be of such little interest to Mr. Cuomo.

By Warner Todd Huston | August 9, 2007 | 5:43 AM EDT

At the Democrat Party presidential debates last Tuesday, Barack Obama revealed that he didn't know that our Canadian neighbors to the north had a prime minister instead of a president leading them. Yet the MSM has practically ignored this obvious gaffe, with few of them making much of the incident. This is a far cry from how Bush was so virulently attacked for having no foreign policy "gravitas" during the 2000 campaign. But for a Democrat in 2007 it's pass time. Nothing to see here, folks, keep moving.

In response to a trade question during the debate, Obama said he'd "immediately call the president of Mexico (and) the president of Canada" to discuss the issue. Of course, Canada has no "president," and this gaffe further shows Barack's unfamiliarity with foreign nations proving his unsuitability to lead our country during an era where foreign policy will be of prime importance.

But even as Bush repeatedly got nailed, Barack is given a pass.

By Ken Shepherd | July 23, 2007 | 5:32 PM EDT

Something tells me Karen Ogden doesn't have a future in health care reporting in any large mainstream media publication or network. In the July 23 edition of her paper, the Great Falls Tribune editor took a sobering look at painkiller addictions and the black market for the narcotics on American Indian reservations in Montana. "Free" socialized medicine and the long wait times for surgery were partly to blame, she found. :

A perfect storm of factors is feeding the pill problem: grinding poverty coupled with handsome prices for contraband pills (a methadone tablet sells for up to $20 on the Blackfeet Reservation), a long history of addiction in American Indian communities and the fact there is no charge for patient visits or prescriptions at IHS clinics.

Some allege that crushing workloads for IHS doctors and political pressure on physicians from tribal officials and relatives — a function of life in close-knit reservation communities — also are to blame.

Another culprit, they say, is a budget crisis within the IHS that is forcing patients nationwide to wait months and often years for hip replacements, knee repairs and other badly needed surgeries.

By Lynn Davidson | June 2, 2007 | 1:52 PM EDT

Update at bottom:

Ireland on-line photo of Elton John and David Furnish

By Lynn Davidson | May 21, 2007 | 5:03 PM EDT

AP photo from english.chosun.com-- Moore at press conference

Canadians are mad as heck, and this time, they’re not going to take it. Michael Moore went too far to be ignored, which meant that a Canuck really gave him “what for” in the form of a polite but pointed recap of a heated press conference on Saturday for the premiere of “Sicko,” Moore’s one-sided US health-care hit job, which debuted at Cannes Film Festival .

 May 20, Toronto Star entertainment reporter Peter Howell wrote in the ideologically left of center paper that the Canadian journalists who saw “Sicko” were less than happy with his “playing fast and loose with the facts” and churning out a one-sided Pollyanna treatment of Canadian health care, presenting a system without problems. After being chastised by some of the most polite people on Earth, he fired back and leveled a truly terrible offense at them by stating their system is barely a step above America's. Quelle horreur!

Read what one of the few articles critical of Moore and his accuracy had to say about the movie's obvious problems with Moore’s film (bold emphasis mine throughout):

By Tim Graham | January 19, 2007 | 1:31 PM EST

Some times, real surprises arrive in your e-mail, such as: Newsweek's International Edition welcomed the New Year with an article titled "Iraq's Economy Is Booming." Nobody noticed this "mother of all surprises" in America, since the article wasn't placed in front of domestic customers (it is online). Why not? Liberal, Bush-hating politics, perhaps?

By Matthew Sheffield | September 14, 2006 | 8:56 PM EDT

While ABC came under assault from the left in this country for even thinking to air something critical of the Clinton administration's role in the leadup to 9/11, Canada's leading broadcast network was doing the very opposite: airing a "documentary" exploring the idea that the Bush White House was behind the attacks that killed thousands of Americans (often called MIHOP in leftie circles):

On the eve of the 9/11 remembrance ceremonies, the leftist, anti-Bush Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada’s national public broadcaster, aired an outrageous and disgraceful documentary on a Sunday news program regarding half-baked 9/11 conspiracy theories that only served to insult the memories of those who perished that tragic day.

Titled 9/11: Truth, Lies and Conspiracy, the only fascinating thing about the CBC show was its complete absurdity and the fact that it actually made it to air.On the conspiracy side, it featured a young, budding “film-maker” whose online documentary portrays the destruction of the World Trade Center towers as the result of a bomb in the basement, demolition explosives planted beforehand throughout the buildings, and the airliner crash, which, it claims, was not enough in itself to topple the towers. According to this masterpiece of misleading fiction, the Pentagon was also hit by a missile, not by an airplane; and the passengers of United 93 didn’t crash into a Pennsylvania field, but disembarked at an airport.

By Matthew Sheffield | September 9, 2006 | 2:40 PM EDT

As badly as the American press leans leftward, the Canadian press is actually worse in its bias against things conservative. That's ironic since Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, is actually a conservative which has caused a good amount of friction with intolerant liberals up north.

Facing an entire press corps as impartial as Keith Olbermann, Harper has had no choice but to play tough with reporters who despise him, snubbing their little award ceremonies, and denouncing their desire to pontificate at news conferences. "They don't ask questions at my press conferences," he said in May.

The Grits' (Liberal) press arm retaliated, launching a boycott of his news conferences. Being reporters, though, their staying power was rather limited (h/t Small Dead Animals):

With a whimper it was over.

As of today, The Parliamentary Press Gallery has called off its five-month-old boycott of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's news conferences.

Officially, its only a temporary suspension of the boycott to let Harper think about the error of his ways and to reach a new protocol for holding press conferences. But the PPG members know the jig's up.

By Warner Todd Huston | July 26, 2006 | 8:04 PM EDT
According to Major General Lewis MacKenzie, Canadian Army, retired, one of the Canadian soldiers killed by Israeli bombs in Lebanon had written emails home complaining that Hizbullah terrorists were using his UN post as a shield, expecting that Israel wouldn't target them if they were close to the UN post.

IMRA.org has posted the following citation from a broadcast on July 26th on the CBC Radio, Toronto.

Canadian killed from UN force complained his position shielding Hizbullah
By Greg Sheffield | July 6, 2006 | 12:01 PM EDT
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been waging a one-man battle against Canada's newspapers, knowing that regardless of what he tells them during press conferences, they'll spin his words into their own liberal prism and diminish any of his efforts to make a case.

Guy Giorno was the chief of staff when conservative Michael Harris was Ontario premier (Harris resigned in 2002). He has engaged in his own fight with the Toronto Star, and won.

Reports Western Standard: