Crap

Yes, this happened on Sunday and it's now Wednesday and why don't we just move along?

Because the odious little prick dabbling at being prime minister pulled a play out of the Rovian handbook of gutter politics and glued himself to "the troops". Or, more accurately, he told a group of Canadian naval sailors, to their faces, that all but Harper himself (and his loyal party supporters) were not to be trusted.

In short, we, you uniformed service personnel and us Harper Conservatives are as one. It may be me, Harper the Divine, being attacked in the House of Commons, but I will translate that to include you, standing there in your naval combat dress.

Let me just say this: living as we do, in a time when some in the political arena do not hesitate before throwing the most serious of allegations at our men and women in uniform, based on the most flimsy of evidence, remember that Canadians from coast to coast to coast are proud of you and stand behind you, and I am proud of you, and I stand beside you.

Said on the flight deck of HMCS Ville de Quebec. Coyne gives it the appropriate label and, as has already been said, when the Harperites lose their right-wing noise-rags, there's a shark out there which looks like it's been jumped.

What Harper (along with most of his sycophants) doesn't seem to fathom is that a majority of service personnel don't like politicians of any stripe. While the very nature of their chosen occupation may seem to mesh nicely with the dogma of Harper's party, the conservatism of service personnel rarely extends beyond the insular social structure to which they belong. They won't accept that world being penetrated by a pure political animal.

But let us come to Commodus, to whom it should have been very easy to hold the empire, for, being the son of Marcus, he had inherited it, and he had only to follow in the footsteps of his father to please his people and soldiers; but, being by nature cruel and brutal, he gave himself up to amusing the soldiers and corrupting them, so that he might indulge his rapacity upon the people; on the other hand, not maintaining his dignity, often descending to the theatre to compete with gladiators, and doing other vile things, little worthy of the imperial majesty, he fell into contempt with the soldiers, and being hated by one party and despised by the other, he was conspired against and killed.

Of course Harper likely sees himself as much more intelligent and capable than some 16th Century, Florentine political philosopher.