WATCH: Canada for President! (NSFW)


Less Iowa, more Ottawa: Courtesy of the Canada Party.Less Iowa, more Ottawa: Photo courtesy of the Canada Party

Have you hit your Iowa caucus threshold? Still waiting for your presidential prince to come? Our neighbors in the north have a humble suggestion: Elect Canada in 2012. A couple of comedic Canucks calling themselves the Canada Party announced their country’s candidacy for White House in an online video Tuesday (watch it below). “We’ve seen your candidates,” the party spokesman says, “and frankly, they scare the shit out of us. So we’re volunteering our country to lead your country.”

They make a pretty compelling case, starting with a list of the commonwealth nation’s capstone achievements: Human rights, employment rate, gun control, lumberjack fashion, Bigfoot sightings, human kindness, barley production. “That’s just what our hippies have accomplished,” the narrator says. “Wait till you see our redneck cred.” No, seriously: “Our prime minister is a muppet version of George Bush, our oil sands are so dirty it makes Texas look like a Greenpeace retreat, and we have the same problem you do with illiterate foreigners invading our southern borders to steal our jobs.”

So far, the Canada Party appears to be operating on a shoestring budget; its web presence is limited to a sparse Facebook page and Twitter account—a function, no doubt, of their country’s more stringent campaign finance laws. But assuming they’ve got a longform birth certificate on hand (who are we kidding? They’ve probably been here longer than your ancestors!), this could be the start of something big. Let’s just hope that if they’re elected, they won’t screw with the rules of American football.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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