You Sir, Have No Peer

I guess the only question that matters, can Harper get away with it? In terms of sheer gall, Harper's dizzying spin on the climate change file is almost without precedent. You're reading it, but you can't actually believe he's saying it, and you wonder how it's possible anybody could swallow it. Steve:

Obama's climate policy a positive change, Harper says

Barack Obama's presidency is ushering in a new era of North American co-operation against climate change after George W. Bush's inaction held back Canada's ability to tackle greenhouse-gas emissions, Stephen Harper says.

...the Prime Minister insisted that Canada's climate-change policy has been hamstrung by the inaction of its largest trading partner.

“In Canada, we've been wrestling for the last decade or so with our desire to try to have a regime, a regulatory regime, that would diminish our own carbon emissions. But we've been trying to do so in an integrated economy when the United States has not been willing to do so,” Mr. Harper said in an interview to be broadcast in two parts yesterday and today.

“I think quite frankly the fact that we have a President and an administration that wants to see some kind of regulation on this is an encouragement.”

If you were to ask any international delegation in the world, which country they would consider Bush's best ally within the climate change debate, Canada's name would come up every time, almost immediately. Canada has been such a "laggard" we've actually achieved the unfathomable, collecting more dinosaur awards in Bali than brother Bush. We're the country of "inspirational" targets, we're the one's who have changed the time lines, the baselines, talked of "intensity", that's "made in Canada".

The fact this character has the audacity to snuggle up to Obama, as though he's waited in the wings, finally, finally a dance partner, represents a new threshold in pure, unmitigated bullshit. You sir, have no peer. Stephen Harper actually believes he can move from Bush's sidekick saboteur to Obama's policy twin and nobody will notice. This nonsense is a test, it's a fundamental point, because if Harper is allowed to expouse this line, along with his surrogates (Prentice today, just simply amazed at how close the two countries really are on global warming), then it's true- you can do and say anything, repetition becomes reality. What Harper is saying, the whole argument, it's simply offensive, these clowns should be blushing when they utter the words.