Gathering speeches last week for Vital Speeches of the Day's sister publication Vital Speeches International, I ran across—oh my God, am I really about to say this?—an attempt—hee hee—by Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper—hoo hoo—to talk trash to the U.S. and other countries, about how they handled the economic down turn up in the Great White North.

In Sept. 17 speech to the Canadian-American Business Council and Canadian Association of New York, Harper crowed, Canadian style:

Now, ladies and gentlemen, let me just conclude by observing that historically we Canadians have been known as a polite, quiet and self-effacing people, but in my view, as you may have noticed, this is no time for Canadians to hide our light under a bushel. A few months ago, The Economist magazine carried a headline calling Canada, quote, "A country that got things right." We have all suffered from the global economic recession, but Canada's management of its economy and its financial system is a success story of which we can be justifiably proud, and on which we can build. In other words, Canada got it right.

Is that all you got, Harper? You apologize in advance, you gently prepare us for a bodacious rhetorical smack-down, you qualify the whole thing by saying it's only "in my view," and then you quote The Economist as saying, "Canada got it right?"

Gangsta!