Stop, It Mr. Harper ... You're Killing Me!

So you're a Prime Minister in a resource-dependant, toruism-heavy country with massive natural beauty. Your people are vaguely concerned about the environment, in a well-intentioned but fuzzy way. Your main constituency, though, regards climate change as a "socialist plot."

You vilified your last opponents' green plans as "A tax on everything," and have generally shown the sort of enlightened outlook on the environment that the cat is showing to my furniture (Piss on it).

So what do you do when you realize that even your friends hated your budget, that your credibility is shot, your woefully inadequate leadership skills exposed, and that, actually, people dislike you intensely and just elected you to hold the spot until the Liberals could clean house?

What, in particular do you do as your numbers fade once again into the minority territory reserved for your ideological predecessors?

That's right: Go green. People like green.

Oh, and of course: Blame someone else.

Harper used to begin all bad news speeches and press announcements with "The previous Liberal government," and follow through with the blame game. He gave it up after about two years.

So now he has a new line:

"The previous Republican government ..."

That's right. Now that his ideological twin has gotten the boot, Harper's saying that he now feels free to enact environmental regulation that bad ol' George the Lesser was holding in check:

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.

Is anyone supposed to believe this load of manure? George W. Bush was the guy who, you recall, pushed for voluntary emissions limits. He called it a "cap and trade" scheme, but it meant that companies essentially could pollute pretty much at will, and reams of reports from the US Deaprtment of the Interior, EPA, and other agencies concur.

Harper's plan to fight pollution? A "cap-and-trade" system designed to allow all industries to pollute more, net, if the amount of pollution per item produced dropped.

Does Harper really think we're this stupid? I'm seriously insulted here. If I had more than one vote to cast for someone else, I'd do it.