Our wonderful Torontonian friend Kathy Shaidle points us to Michael Moore’s attempt to influence Monday’s elections in Canada (Moore is quite kerfluffled that a lot of Canadians are sick of the Liberal Party’s anti-American elite, and that the polls say Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper is likely to be the next prime minister):


“Far be it from me, as an American, to suggest what you should do. You already have too many Americans telling you what to do. Well, actually, you’ve got just one American who keeps telling you to roll over and fetch and sit. I hope you don’t feel this appeal of mine is too intrusive but I just couldn’t sit by, as your friend, and say nothing. Yes, I agree, the Liberals have some ‘splainin’ to do. And yes, one party in power for more than a decade gets a little… long. But you have a parliamentary system (I’ll bet you didn’t know that — see, that’s why you need Americans telling you things!). There are ways at the polls to have your voices heard other than throwing the baby out with the bath water.


“These are no ordinary times, and as you go to the polls on Monday, you do so while a man running the nation to the south of you is hoping you can lend him a hand by picking Stephen Harper because he’s a man who shares his world view. Do you want to help George Bush by turning Canada into his latest conquest? Is that how you want millions of us down here to see you from now on? The next notch in the cowboy belt? C’mon, where’s your Canadian pride? I mean, if you’re going to reduce Canada to a cheap download of Bush & Co., then at least don’t surrender so easily. Can’t you wait until he threatens to bomb Regina? Make him work for it, for Pete’s sake.”


Hey Michael, remember what happened the last time foreign liberals tried to influence an election? You know, back in 2004 when the U.K. Guardian told its subcribers to write letters to the residents of Clark County, Ohio, urging them to vote for John Kerry:


“More than 14,000 of the paper’s generally left-leaning readers have sent impassioned pleas. Many Americans – evidently disconcerted by their unsolicited British pen pals – have written back, in language not fit for a family newspaper.”


And they also voted solidly for George W. Bush. Ten loonies and a case of Blue says the Canadians aren’t fools, either.