If thinking that knowing things is good makes me a snob, then fine, I'm a snob

Evan McMorris-Santoro clearly has a strong stomach and the ability to keep a straight face no matter what. Watch as he wades through the river of willful ignorance that is a Rick Santorum - Americans For Prosperity - Tea Party rally. (warning - link contains weapons-grade stupid)
Apparently knowing stuff other than how to chew tobacco, scratch and vote for Rick Santorum is snobbish elitism of the worst sort. The amazing shit-ton of wrong chronicled in this short piece is so astounding its hard to know where to begin. According to the people quoted people who do manual labour are inferior, money is the only measure of success, colleges are totalitarian liberal fascist brainwashing factories, diversity is communism, and schooling is only for job training so no one should be encouraged to learn anything that doesn't directly apply to their job.
I'm honestly shocked that none of the people quoted in the story used the phrase "fancy-pants book learnin'"

“President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college,” Santorum said. “What a snob!” Santorum started by saying some people don’t need to go to college: “Not all folks are gifted the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands.” 

Yes and god forbid that someone who  has "incredible gifts with their hands" should get a chance to learn to appreciate literature, learn to think clearly and logically, find out the earth revolves around the sun, learn a language other than 'American' or gain an appreciation for anything other than beer, wrasslin' and "reality" TV (thought to be fair, I did learn a lot about beer in university). Extrapolating from what they are quoted as saying, I'm guessing most of them regret having learned to read and write, assuming they can read anything more complex than TV guide or a stop sign. These folks are not just wallowing in willful ignorance, they are insisting others be forced to as well. 

I know some of this is simply right-wing contrarianism and that the Tea Party people are against higher education simply because Obama advocates it, but still it is amazing to me that a political candidate, let alone an entire movement, would come out in favour of curtailing opportunities for people. I await the day when Obama goes on national television and tells the American people that it is a bad idea to hit themselves in the head with a ball peen hammer and that under no circumstances should any American stick their tongue in an electrical outlet. Because just know that a bunch of the same yahoos who attend CPAC and think Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are wise and wonderful are going to end up in the emergency ward.

I am not saying that higher education is necessary to be a happy and successful person, or that smart is the same as educated, but learning for its own sake is to be encouraged. It is always better to know more than to know less. For most of us, knowledge is power, but I guess for the Teabaggers, ignorance is bliss.

Tweet

If it's Friday, it must be time for Tom Waits

With a tip of the tattered fedora and a raising of the chipped juice tumbler full of cheap fortified wine to Driftglass


Tweet

Loyal retainer is loyal

So Michael Sona has done what he was hired for and fallen on his sword to deflect blame from his masters. If you honestly believe a 23-year-old communications assistant for a failed CPC candidate managed to organize, fund, co-ordinate and execute the entire "robocall" affair, please write to me. I am in contact with the widow of a former oil minister in Nigeria who needs some help getting  millions of dollars out of the country. All I will need is your bank account number and a signed power of attorney and she is willing to cut us in for millions of dollars. Just send me the information and I will take care of all the rest.
For the rest of you, shall we start a pool on how long it is before Sona is hired by the Manning Centre or the Fraser Institute or some other non-think tank -- or is he more likely to be hired as special assistant to the director of sitting around on our asses drawing paycheques to do nothing? My guess is he becomes special assistant associate director of the Blogging Tories.


Tweet

Word of the day

'Backpfeifengesicht' (Back-fie-fen-ge- zischt.)


1. German, literally "a face that cries out for a fist in it'

Example:

Of course, no mention of Tucker Carlson should be made without including this clip of the day Jon Stewart effectively ended his career as a pundit:




Update!

Required Canadian Content example:

 This is Matt Meier, president and CEO of Racknine, who has no idea how all those bogus illegal election calls got made to Liberal supporters telling them their polling stations had been changed

Tweet

If Jenny is right...

...then I must be one of these guys for real. Because I'm getting more than a little sick and tired of getting turned down for jobs I was overqualified for ten years ago and living month to month on a handshake deal to keep coming in until somebody tells me to stop. Seriously newspapers, I love you to death but what the hell have you done for me lately?



And yet...
What the hell else would I want to do?
Tweet

canadian content

More reading - this week a couple of Canuck classics

#11 Vinyl Cafe Diaries by Stuart McLean

One of the things that has surprised and delighted me in moving back to Canada is the discovery that society at large has discovered and embraced an old favourite of mine.
I can remember Stuart McLean when he was a roving reporter for CBC radio's Morningside program back in the late 80s and early 90s (it is official, I am old), and have been a fan of the Vinyl Cafe from its earliest days. When CBC started to make their programs available via the intertoobs, I was an avid listener. I was such a Peter Gzowski fan that two different people sent me tapes of the last Morningside show.
I think the Vinyl Cafe has a similar positive, upbeat outlook without being annoyingly chirpy or Pollyanna-ish, and following McLean's perambulations and the chronicles of Dave and Morley and the World's Smallest Record Store via podcast over the last several year provided a wonderful touchstone and a weekly dose of Canadiana whilst living in Tokyo. But having spent so long outside of Canada, I had no idea the show had become as popular as it has or that McLean had become such a national institution. Good for him.

This collection of stories from the radio program is pretty much what I expected and I had heard some of them when they were originally broadcast. A light, entertaining and sentimental read that will give the warm fuzzes we all need from time to time. McLean may not be big, but he is small.

#12 Three Cheers for Me, the Bandy Papers Vol. 1 by Donald Jack

While I'd often seen this series on the shelf when browsing at the library and had a sort of vague idea of the premise - the uproarious misadventures of Bartholomew Bandy, the son of an Ottawa valley clergyman who goes off to fight in World War One determined to steer clear of the temptations of liquor, women and bad language. Needless to say he fails in three of these four ambitions while giving superior officers fits and becoming a flying ace.
The first book, published in 1962, was a hit and spawned a nine-volume series, three  volumes of which won the Leacock humour prize. A wee bit dated in some ways, in the same way most things that are fifty year old might be expected to be. The first volume -I've not yet read any of the others, but I expect more of the same - reminds me very much of another favourite series of comedic historical novels - The Flashman Papers - which didn't come along for another three year. The difference being that Flashman is a rotten cad  and bully who succeeds in spite of his craven cowardice, whilst Bandy is not a coward or a cad, but simply prone to ridiculous mishaps - In his first trench raid as an infantry officer. Lt. Bandy leads his squad out into no man's land, accidentally gets drunk and then loses his bearings and stages a heroic raid on his own trenches, capturing his own regimental commander.
Like Flashman's creator George MacDonald Fraser, Jack has a very unsentimental view of the horrors of war, likely gained during his service in the RAF in the latter half of the Second World War, and doesn't dodge the realities of trench warfare or aerial combat.
In all, the first book is a good light read, well written and researched, and very very funny. I can't believe these books haven't been made into a CBC miniseries yet.

Addendum: Given the date, I would be remiss in not commenting on the anniversary of the death of one of my favourite writers and personal heroes. Thankfully RossK has done this for me already. Mahalo.


Tweet

some Valentine's Day advice

Tweet

Let me get this straight...

So, because a tiny, whiny, paranoid minority of Canadian fans of Michelle Bachman found the anonymous mandatory long-form census intrusive and coercive, the Conservatives' Industry Minister Tony "Gazebos R Us" Clement decided to scrap the whole thing against the advice of just about everyone.
And because a small, but very vocal bunch of paranoid gun nuts backed by the NRA ("keeping deadly weapons cheap and readily available for Americans for over a century") thought the long gun registry was intrusive and coercive, the Tories will scrap the whole thing and destroy the database against the wishes  of the majority of Canadians and police across the country.
But, according to Conservative Public Safety Minister Vic "Lock'em up and throw away the keys" Toews, anyone who objects to the government and police being able to access all your internet records and find out every website your computer has ever accessed, whether by annoying pop-up, virus, unauthorized third-party use or what have you, is clearly  siding with the child pornographers.

Our country is being run by a bunch of jackasses.



Tweet

the chamber of mature, sober second thought

Meet Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein:



It's speculation, but I think it is highly likely that Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein's report cards from primary school must have included the notations "Has problems sharing" and "Does not play well with others"

The so-called house of sober second thought witnessed the kind of contest normally associated with first-grade birthday parties, as a showdown erupted over seating arrangements this week.
The newly elected chair of the Senate banking committee, Conservative Irving Gerstein, didn't want the vice-chair, Liberal Celine Hervieux-Payette, sitting next to him.
When he asked her to step away from the head table, she refused.
So Gerstein, elected this week as chair, called a vote to kick Payette out of her chair.
With a Conservative majority on the committee, the motion passed Wednesday and the game of partisan musical chairs ended with Payette being forced to grab a seat farther away.

Click to read the whole thing to get a proper picture of  the kind of petty dickishness that prevails in Canada's ruling party.
Given the level of maturity demonstrated, I'm guessing Gerstein was worried he'd get Liberal/French/girl cooties if he sat next to Hervieux-Payette.
But the Conservatives have a majority, so I suppose we must respect their authority

Tweet

There is a reason Florida has its own tag on FARK

Ah Florida, land of orange blossoms, beaches, golf courses built on gator-filled swamps and the early bird buffet special. Home to Disneyland, retirement paradises and more crazy per capita than any other state in the union except maybe Utah. I'm not sure if it's too much time in the sun or all the prescription drugs all those retirees are flushing into the water table, but Florida seems to produce a lot of screwy stories.
Even given all that, it is hard to know just where to begin to describe the colossal amounts of fail, stupid, sexism and sheer wrongheadedness in this:

Sentence for domestic abuse: Jail or dinner and a date

A romantic night on the town with his wife rather than a night in jail was the sentence for a Florida man arrested after a marital fight over a birthday.
After careful questioning of Sonia Bray, Broward County bond court Judge John Hurley told the lawyer for her husband Joseph:
“He’s going to be out of jail by 3 o’clock today, he’s going to stop by somewhere and get some flowers and a card.”
By now, Joseph Bray and his counsel are grinning in a video broadcast by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper.
“He’ll pick up his wife, get dressed, take her to Red Lobster and then go bowling.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Bray.
The next day, Hurley ordered, the Brays were to sign up for marriage counselling.
The judge explained the leniency of his creative ruling after asking Sonia Bray repeatedly if she felt threatened by her husband or had been injured. Was money or alcohol the root of the problem?
“No,” the tearful woman told the court. It was just “a lack of communication between both of us.”
Hurley pried out of Sonia Bray that her husband had neglected to wish her happy birthday the day before, or even talk to her. They argued and he pushed her onto a couch, grabbed her throat and raised his fist, but never hit her, she said.
More careful questioning got her to admit she liked bowling and Red Lobster for a night out. Hurley threw in the flowers himself.
“Flowers, birthday card, Red Lobster, bowling,” Hurley ticked off for an abashed looking Joseph Bray. “You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

Needless to say, county court judges are elected in Florida, though at least they need to have a law degree and pass the Florida Bar exam. Sometimes democracy  is not the best system.
How long before this idiot is on TV as a replacement for Judge Judy? (Big surprise on the link: His favorite book is Atlas Shrugged). Whoops, he is on TV, of a sort.

My parents just got a place down there, so this is worrying.

Tweet

turning pages

#9 Why Me? by Donald E. Westlake
Is there anything as pleasurable as a midweek day off (especially a Monday?) - sleeping late, getting up to strong coffee, a toasted western, and a Dortmunder novel you haven't read yet when you have no other plans for the day? I doubt it. Read this in a single three hour sitting without so much as a restroom break. Nobody does humorous caper novels like Westlake. It is odd that none of these have seemed to translate into decent movies, though its been tried again and again. For those not in the know, John Dortmunder is a professional thief who lives and works in New York City. Aided as always by an eccentric  group of accomplices, Dortmunder is the master heist planner. He is also the unluckiest crook ever born. In this instalment, he inadvertently steals the world's largest and most famous ruby and the resultant political heat has the NYPD, FBI and CIA, a variety of terrorist groups and and foreign spooks and every crook in NYC looking for the stone and the guy who stole it. Needless to say, zany hijinks ensue.

#10 The Wild Things by Dave Eggers
There is more than than zany hijinks afoot in Dave Eggers novelization of his screenplay adapted from the classic picture book Where the Wild Things Are. As in most of Eggers work, there is raw emotion, existential angst and movement, always movement. I loved Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the combination of sorrow, whimsy and affection he brings to most of his writing make this a very affecting novel. Few writers understand and can portray the mind of a nine-year-old boy this well.

Tweet

Slobberpocalypse!

This blog has officially gone to the dogs


Tweet

Congratulation Al-Qaida

 The overarching goal of any terrorist or revolutionary guerrilla fighter beyond the immediate removal of a given target and the ensuing intimidation is to provoke an overreaction by the authorities, to make things worse not better in the short term, to push them to crack down on civil liberties until their repression breeds more support for the revolutionary or terrorist cause.
As the result of a single attack more than a decade ago, Western democracies now as a matter of course engage in the kind of behaviour we once claimed made the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany our enemy: Domestic spying and electronic eavesdropping, indefinite detention without trial or even warrant, militarization of the police, torture, show trials, pass laws, demonization of entire ethnic groups - you name it, we, as a society, have now gone there.
Clearly, Al-Qaida has won.

(hat tip to Dr. Dawg)

Tweet

Next from the CPC: senior citizens and ice floes, our new money-saving plan for Canada's elderly

I really don't think it is a stretch to say that only a conservative could come up with something this brazenly evil and stupid and then try to sell it as a way to save taxpayers' money. That it is a member of the Canadian senate proposing it just proves the point that conservatives don't do irony.

"Basically, every killer should (have) the right to his own rope in his cell. They can decide whether to live," Sen. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu told reporters Wednesday.
A victims' rights advocate and now a senator, Boisvenu also says the death penalty should be considered in certain cases when there's no hope of rehabilitation.
He says limited use of capital punishment could save money.

That is some weapons-grade dumb. Leaving aside the myriad practical problems entailed in giving prisoners ready access to a means of killing, the moral implications and contradictions here are stunning.
Given that Senator Boisvenu is paid $132,300 in taxpayers' dollars plus expenses and office budget and free travel for being a political testicle cosy and yes-man to the party leader  the staggering workload and burden of responsibility that senators take on, I'm frankly amazed he could take his mouth off the public teat long enough to comment.
I know we coddle convicts by giving them three trays of hospital/high school cafeteria food a day, a cot, a warm place to shit, basic medical care and unlimited opportunities to be gang raped, stabbed or beaten by younger stronger inmates and even guards, all while giving up any privacy and personal freedom and being locked away from the rest of the world. White collar thieves like Bruce Carson and Conrad Black aside, for most people a prison sentence of any length means a lifetime of marginal existence and poverty. Institutionalization is a difficult mindset to leave behind. Prison changes people and having done time makes finding a job of any kind a lot more difficult, never mind finding a good job. Ex-cons are about the last group it is still okay to discriminate against.  Most people in prison are there for good reasons, but the idea that we don't treat them badly enough is pretty popular on the right. Maybe in addition to encouraging them to commit suicide so there will be enough money for MP and Senate pensions, we could introduce mandatory daily electrical shocks delivered via heavy iron collars and tattoo the prisoners crimes on their foreheads as an added deterrent just to make sure we are being tough on crime.
At the same times, we make things so very, very hard for Senators. Did  you know that if  they miss two consecutive sessions of parliament that they could lose their seat? They need to show up roughly twice a year until they are 75 to keep collecting a salary. That is pretty arduous - just imagine if you had to sit next to Mike Duffy for a few hours twice a year for a paltry $2500 a week. Mind you, senators can't  just show up any day they want, the Senate only sits about 70 days a year. Sounds hellish, doesn't it?  Of course, on the plus side, when they retire or resign at whatever age, Senators get a nice fat pension, no matter what.  Admittedly, many of the members - who are all free to collect other salaries and pensions while serving in the Senate - work a little harder than just showing up a few times a year, but they are under no obligation to do so. If none of them showed up for work 364 days a year and simply raised a hand to vote through a list of the government's legislation annually, I doubt if anyone would notice the difference.
Prisons cost the taxpayer about $3 billion a year in 2005/2006, with most of that money being paid out in salaries to guards and other corrections staff, and costs for feeding and clothing inmates, money that also goes back into the economy. Prisoners often work at prison workshops, producing goods for the government like licence plates.
Including the costs of maintaining the facilities, paying staff and all other expenses, it cost an average of $259.05 per day to incarcerate a federal prisoner in 2004/2005, none of which is paid to the prisoner. That is what it costs to keep a criminal off the streets.
In addition to the cost of running the senate, paying senate staff, maintaining the facilities, paying senate pensions and senators travel and expenses, senators are paid $363.46 per day, or if we calculate on the basis of working days for a five day week/ 50 week year it comes to $529.20 per working day. If we assume a busy senate year in which they sit for 90 days, that would be $1,470 per day. All of which goes into the pockets of someone who is only required to show up to work twice a year to keep the gravy train running. That is what it costs to keep 105 political water carriers in the regal style to which they have become accustomed and to provide parliament with sober second thought.
If we are so keen on saving money, maybe we should give each senator a length of rope.

Addendum: Yes, I do realize that Senator Boisvenu's daughter was abducted, raped and murdered in 2007. Personal revenge is not a good basis for public policy.

Update: The answer to the question "Who watches SUN-TV News?"  - the missing information of course is how many messages did he get saying he was a bloodthirsty jackass?


Tweet

What we talk about when we talk about conservatives

Never mind all the guff about Ronald Reagan. Reagan was an amiable-seeming father figure who did what his wife and her astrologer and Exxon told him to do. He regularly fell asleep in Cabinet meetings and by the end of his term didn't know where he was half the time.
Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich pretty much invented the modern conservative movement by harnessing the power of Barry Goldwater's Birchers and bigots, funded by corporations eager to buy the kind of legislation (or lack of it) that would allow them free rein to empty America's pockets without having to give any of  it back.
You can learn all about this from just about any mainstream political history text, but I would recommend Rick Perlstein's Nixonland to anyone who really wants to learn how American politics got to be the witchbag of corruption, sleaze and demagoguery it is these days.
Also, the film Boogieman, which chronicles Lee Atwater's work appealing to Southern racists to make the GOP the party of the Confederate States of America.


And if this had been written about anyone else, it would leave welts on their back, but it will simply roll off of Newt's carapace while he tells his half-bright supporters about the big bad liberal New York Times and how they are out to stop him from saving America.


Tweet

Midweek reading

Just a couple of things for your midweek read that I happened across:

• If Rob Ford's opponents on council were "two steps to the left of Joseph Stalin" as he claims, they would long ago have had him icepicked to death in Mexico or sent to starve to death in Siberia.. At the very least, he would have been sent to a re-education camp by now.
• A Scary Thought: Do We Really Need "If You See Something, Say Something?" | The National Interest Blog

And speaking of reading:

#7 Requiem for an Assassin By Barry Eisler
Fast-paced fun with freelance assassin John Rain. For those not in the know, Barry Eisler is a former CIA agent turned  thriller writer, so his take on the espionage novel is a bit different. Great action scences, authentic spycraft, thought-provoking observations on how violence occurs and how the mind deals with it.

I read and reviewed this when it first came out, back when I used to get paid to read and review books ( I reviewed an earlier Eisler book in the John Rain series "Hard Rain" but forgot to save an electronic copy for my own use, though the review is quoted at his site). I've also communicated with Barry a few times via email and bulletin boards and only narrowly missed having a drink with him in Tokyo one time.
He also wrote the introduction for the only English language book of which I can claim partial authorship. He blogs a bit and sometimes writes for Huffpo and Firedoglake. For an former spook with a fixation on knives and martial arts, he's strikes me as a pretty nice guy. His books, however - and I mean this in the nicest way -  are like potato chips: it's difficult to stop at just one.

#8 Fault Line by Barry Eisler
A non-John Rain thriller that leans heavily on the liberal elite vs conservative warhawk cultural divide in American culture. Definitely worth reading and like Eisler's other work, a thinking man's thriller with plenty of emphasis on tradecraft and the technical side of espionage.

Music worth paying for!

From Tbogg we learn that Bob Dylan has donated the royalties/waived the rights to a whole bunch of his songs for a fundraising album of Dylan covers for Amnesty International.

Some samples:








Tweet

War criminal feels the wrath of American military justice!

That will teach him a lesson! And let the dire fate of  marine Staff Sgt. Frank G. Wuterich be an example to every other soldier on the battlefield that the rules of war and human decency must be obeyed.
Well, mostly.
Unless you get angry because one of your fellow soldiers is killed, then ordering your men to shoot the nearest women and children is kinda like a bunch of unpaid parking tickets or getting caught shoplifting. Assuming of course the women and children are brown not-Americans foolish enough to have been born in a country to which the United States takes a dislike.
Three whole months in the stockade and forfeiture of two thirds of his pay for those three months. Assuming the USMC commandant doesn't step in and reduce the penalty.
And certainly the United States military doesn't want such a wanton law breaker and killer within its ranks, well not as a Staff Sgt. anyways, so he's been busted down to Private for now.
Imagine for a moment that an Iraqi soldier was responsible for killing 24 Americans - say U.S. security contractors or soldier, not women and children - what do you think the consequences would be? Can you conceive of any possible scenario in which that man would not be killed? Either through legal means with a quick show trial and a hanging or by presidential order and special forces hit team?
Tweet

Smug, okay maybe a little, but I think it's justified

with a tip of the beaver hat to the esteemed Mr. Otter, who reads & comments but does not blog
Tweet

Trash talking us into war

I think most reasonable people, at least in hindsight, would agree that one of the things the Liberals' got right under Chretien and Martin was keeping Canada out of the gigantic deadly goat rodeo known as the Iraq War.
Remember how in the months that lead up to the invasion we were told again and again that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, that there was no question he was working on 'nookyalur' weapons, that Saddam Hussein was seen french kissing Osama Bin Laden under the bleachers during the homecoming game. This was all given as gospel truth by the White House, Pentagon, CIA and about 90% of the Western Media.
And yet, hundreds of billions of dollars and a million or so deaths later, we know it was all bullshit. They were wrong or lying or both.
Iraq was about as close to having nukes or a means to deliver them as say, Guatemala is and was about as much a military threat to its neighbours at that point as Belgium is to France, Germany and Britain.
Outside of a very few conservative true believers and George W. Bush's inner circle, no one, least of all the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, think the invasion of Iraq worked out well.
Remember too, that Stephen Harper very much wanted Canada to take part in the Iraq War.
Now that Harper has his majority, he cannot and will not be denied his opportunity to show the world that Canada is a major player on the world stage just as capable of killing lots of non-Western Nogoodniks and Nogoodnik women and terrorist children as any other NATO member and not just some namby-pambly peacekeeper. Truly, lives could be saved if someone would just give the man a ruler, tell him the centimetres are really inches and send him off to measure his little Cheney.
Even though the current U.S. president is likely to be reelected without having start a war with Iran, Harper, ever hopeful of a victory for his Republican fellow travellers, is already laying the groundwork to take Canada into the next war of choice.

  “I’ve raised the alarm as much as I can, but obviously I don’t advocate particular actions publicly. I work with our allies to see if we get consensus on actions,” he said.
Mr. Harper said he has no doubt that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. “There is absolutely no doubt they are lying,” Mr. Harper said, referring to statements by Iran that the nuclear program is for peaceful uses.
“The evidence is just growing overwhelming. This is not, as was the case of Iraq, merely the opinion of allies,” he said.
The development of nuclear weapons as one of the purposes of Iran’s nuclear program “is just beyond dispute at this point,” he said. “The only dispute is how far advanced it is and how far off it will be until they actually develop those weapons and develop the capability of delivering the weapons.” 

Given that Israeli and U.S. conservative hawks have been warnings Iran is just x-number of years/months/weeks/days/hours away from "getting the bomb" roughly every two weeks since the Shah was chased out of Tehran, I tend to take such certainty with a bushel or two of salt.
Given the number of sabres being rattled at it, Iran would be wise to follow North Korea's example and actually get hold of some nukes. Saddam Hussein didn't and look what happened to him.
Mind you, it isn't just that Harper want to get his war on for its own sake, he also thinks he sees a way to turn a dollar or three for his oil-patch pals:

Also during the interview, Mr. Harper linked the debate over the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas with concern over Iran’s threat to blockade the main shipping route for oil in the Middle East. “It’s pretty obvious what the right decision is … not just from an economic and environmental standpoint, but from an energy security standpoint,” Mr. Harper said. “When you look at the Iranians threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz, I think that just illustrates how critical it is that supply for the United States be North American,” Mr. Harper said.

The winning quote from the interview though, by far was this bit of classic right wing projection. The same comment could have come from any leader in the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, South America or Africa in discussing the United States and conservative Canada.

“In my judgment, these are people who have a particular, you know, fanatically religious worldview, and their statements imply to me no hesitation of using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes,” 

Tweet