Walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Perhaps the most revealing thing about the recent episode involving Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and his misplaced outrage over drunk driving is how it shows that he is -- how shall I put this delicately? -- a moron:

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day says he wishes Canadians were as outraged over impaired driving deaths as they are over the death of a Polish immigrant shot with a Taser by police.

Now, what exactly is Day suggesting here? Curiously, he's suggesting that he can't understand how anyone could be upset over the murder of Robert Dziekanski while simultaneously still be concerned about deaths caused by drunk drivers. In short, it's apparently beyond Day that there are people who are indeed capable of holding more than one thought at the same time. But Day isn't alone here.

Someone else who clearly has trouble with intellectual multi-tasking is Defence Minister Peter Mackay:

Canadian troops are under orders to turn over juvenile soldiers captured in Afghanistan to local authorities, despite reports of torture and allegations the former warden of the main prison in Kandahar had raped minors, the opposition said yesterday...

Mr. MacKay went on to launch a stinging attack against the Opposition for focusing on the rights of detainees while Canadian soldiers - including two more over the weekend - are being killed.

As with Day, it's purely bewildering to MacKay that anyone could be devastated by the loss of Canadian lives while still being concerned about the proper and humane treatment of juvenile detainees. But no one should be surprised by any of this since, if history is any judge, most conservatives really aren't equipped to juggle more than one thought at the same time.

Just watch any example of question period in the House of Commons, during which the opposition will demand to know about, say, issue "A", while the Conservative response is to forcefully explain everything there is to know about, say, "B", for the simple reason that they they're in "B" mode and asking them to switch gears and ponder "A" for any length of time is, sadly, giving them far too much credit.

And there is, of course, my all-time favourite example: Blogging Tory "Neo Conservative," whose response to every single, brutal intellectual smackdown is -- you guessed it -- "Yeah, but CC once told this lady to fuck off!"

It is a sight, isn't it -- an entire demographic that can process but a single thought at a time, and whose replacement of one issue by another is almost always accompanied by an embarrassing and painful grinding of mental gears as one scenario is slowly shifted out of the way to make room for another. Or, in some cases, simply not shifted at all.

And I think you all know who we're talking about here.

P.S. If you haven't figured it out yet, this is why any discussion of Conservative financial corruption gets the inevitable response of, "But the Liberals!". It's because Canada's wingnuts are aware (correctly, I might add) that the Liberals were hideously corrupt with respect to Adscam. But, sadly, once those wingnuts are holding the thought that "Liberals are corrupt," it is clearly beyond them to entertain the notion that others might be corrupt as well.

And this ugly trend just continues with things like global warming. Hey, it was unusually cold somewhere; therefore, global warming is a fraud. What's that, you say? It's possible that both of those things could be true? No way!

In any event, you can see the problem here, which is why it's almost always a bad idea to try to engage a wingnut in intellectual debate, as that typically involves working with multiple thoughts at a time. And when it comes to Canada's wankers, well, the results generally aren't pretty.

But you knew that already.