How unspeakably stupid can one human being possibly be?

And by now, you should know exactly who I'm talking about -- America's Dumbest Wanker™ who, against all odds, just got stupider than ever. I refer to his gleeful crowing over here, where he so joyously skewers Canada for being such pathetic losers compared to the U.S. in terms of reducing air pollution.

Here's the short excerpt that has Jinx stroking himself through his bathrobe in front of the kids:

Between 1995 and 2002, Canada cut its air pollution by 1.8 per cent while the United States achieved a cut of 45 per cent, says the report by Environmental Defence and the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

Freeze! Don't read any further. Without even trying to hunt down the evidence, let's examine this claim on its face. How many of you find it believable that, in a seven-year span, the United States managed -- by apparently hitching up its pants, putting its nose to the grindstone, its shoulder to the wheel -- to reduce its air pollution by almost half. Show of hands now, how many believe this actually happened? (OK, I see one hand, but it belongs to one of the world's stupidest human beings so I'm not going to count it.)

All right, then, now that we've esatablished the proper level of initial skepticism, without further ado, let's dig into this and see what we find. First, it's interesting that the link provided by Weasel Boy isn't to the official report, but to an online Yahoo news piece. OK, fine, let's follow the trail where it leads, where we first notice the eye-opening snippet:

[Canadian] Environment Minister Stephane Dion said the large difference reflects a downturn in the U.S. industrial sector as opposed to Canada's growth, especially in oil and gas.

Well, there's the first bit of edification. Apparently, part of that reduction might, I say just might be due to a tanking U.S. economy, which makes it a wee bit harder to give those Americans credit. It's kind of like bragging about how you're doing your part for air quality by leaving your car at home all week and riding your bike to work, when in fact your car's transmission self-destructed so it's not like you really had a choice anyway, but you're still going to try to weasel the credit for it. Naughty, naughty. But that doesn't begin to expose what's really going on here.

Further down, we have an even more puzzling excerpt, quoting one of the report's authors:

"In many ways George Bush's America is doing a much better job cleaning up its pollution than our own country," Rick Smith of Environmental Defence told a news conference.

What the f...? "George Bush's America"? What kind of objective, non-partisan government official would use that terminology, rather than just "the United States"? That's easy -- someone who's a Republican hack and toady, which now tells you that what you're dealing with is pure GOP spin. Not convinced? How about combining that snippet with the earlier one:

Between 1995 and 2002, Canada cut its air pollution by 1.8 per cent while the United States achieved a cut of 45 per cent, says the report by Environmental Defence and the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

Um ... between 1995 and 2002? Pop quiz -- who was the president for most of the time between 1995 and 2002? Hint: it wasn't George Bush, which now firmly establishes that we're dealing with nothing but a covert Republican operative and hack (who, I should point out, I will have no ethical dilemmas exposing).

Now, before we go any further, think about this -- how stupid do you have to be to have read just the bits we've highlighted so far and take this claim seriously? Really, what mind-numbing level of complete dumbfuckitude is required to have read this swill, believed it and blogged about it? But we aren't even close to being finished with this, because this is where the investigation merely starts.

(It's unlikely I'll finish this in a single post, so I'll push on a bit further, then return to this in a day or two, having done the kind of methodical, objective examination of the facts that Weasel Boy is too goddamned ignorant to even contemplate.)

So, given that this claim is so obviously rubbish, where is it coming from? Apparently, from a couple different groups:

Between 1995 and 2002, Canada cut its air pollution by 1.8 per cent while the United States achieved a cut of 45 per cent, says the report by Environmental Defence and the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

And who would these folks be? Ah, but that would spoil the surprise. Let's let this simmer and come back to it in a while, to truly show how much of a unspeakable wanker our own Weasel Boy really is.

Stay tuned.

CAVEAT: I actually haven't researched further than what I've written thus far, so it's entirely possible that I'm totally off-base and will have to eat massive amounts of crow. However, I'm simply counting on the assumption that, if WB writes it, it's bullshit. So far, that's a perfectly respectable working philosophy.