Coyote's Clueless Question Period

It's been a rich week in this town. Too rich.

The last couple of days, parliament's opposition leader, Thomas Mulcair, patiently, methodically dismantled Prime Minister Stephen Harper's tin plated ass, kicked it around the (Centre) block and handed it back to him so dented that it's unlikely it'll ever fit right again, even after his political handlers rivet it back on.

Mulcair's cross-examination was a text book classic. No word was wasted.

The PM mimed dismissiveness and tried to channel his habitual imperial contempt for parliament. The best he could do was cling grimly to a pre-scripted talking point that disavowed all knowledge of anything guilty-looking. He also projected one of the sweatiest auras since Nixon in the 1960 US presidential debate.

Mulcair did a full hatchet job with scalpel cuts, and the PM knew it. A CBC poll showed just five percent of responses thought Harper was believable. Ninety-five percent didn't. No fence-sitters.

The exercise showed - again - the real limits under pressure of the ReformaTories' one-dimensional narrative scripting. Pierre Poilievre, for one, now knows all about that. Doubtful he'll take the lesson, though. I digress.

Down the hall, Senate leader and long time Tory footsoldier lickspittle Marjory LeBreton mounted a sideshow calculated to sate the mob by hitting what looked like the right notes.  While strenuously armwaving and fingerpointing away from the prime minister's office and by implication, a notoriously control-freakazoid PM. She tossed mud at journalists that won't buy her party's Kool-Aid, then kicked a few senators, notably Cons Duffy and Wallin, further under the bus.

In a sideshow to the sideshow, newly minted ReformaTory senator (and former Ottawa police chief) Vern White chose that moment to declare himself appalled in a boy scout kinda way, and spread the joy by pointing further digits at Liberal senator Pana Merchant and her husband, Tony, whose iffy-looking ownership of offshore accounts was leaked to media last month.

I don't even have time to get into a recent Federal Court judgement that illegal robocalls relied on the Conservative Party's vaunted CIMS database. His Honour, a stickler for evidence, didn't say outright that the Cons did it, but gently led one to ask who, exactly, would have keys to a top-secret thingy that's guarded like a central gold reposiTory - on account of they use it to win elections. One way or another.

See, I'm just a dumb coyote, but the aforementioned armwaving and fingerpointing, to my jaundiced yellow eye, might be calculated to misdirect one's gaze away from the man behind the curtain, ummm, all the smoke from all the smoking guns now billowing exuberantly out from beneath the locked door of the Prime Minister's Office.

It's the only thing on this accumulating trash heap that you should watch. Soon, somebody will have to crack it to clear their streaming eyes and lungs. Watch that door.  Because nameless people would like you to be looking somewhere else, at some (any!) other distraction, when it cracks. . .

So. Those increasingly loathed ads for 'Canada's' economic action plan...?

 The painful, unending ones that, increasingly, turn off Canadians?

 The ones that HarperCo™® is hoping you think of as political advertising for HarperCo™®? That urge us to share the HarperCo™® delusion, not particularly well supported empirically, that HarperCo™® is some kind of Great Economic Navigator?

 That PM HarperCo™® hisself has just said taxpayers need, and need to pay for, for four more years, 'cuz he has alleged that they create economic pride? That cost $100,000,000 clams -- and counting?

 Ummm.  Yeah, those ones.

 Coyote News has discovered that the reason that HarperCo™® is so stuck on running those damn ads into the ground - and possibly to the earth's core - no matter how much they piss off pretty much everybody else, is because they are Canada's  HarperCo™®'s Economic Action Plan. All of it.

 Thank you. We return you now to regular programming. You may notice an unusual number of  ads. Go figure.

Pierre Poilievre's root causes

Last night, our handsomely large and sensitive coyote ears were, ummm, pinned back on our fuzzy scalps, as the twittering classes became loud hooting classes exploding at federal MP Pierre Poilievre's latest brayed sophistry, on one of CBC's political panels:

"The Root Cause of Terror is Terrorists!!"

They were not kind.  But then, the boy-MP does not invite kindness these days, if he ever did.  Possessed of a (possibly voice coached) foghorn bellow, hyperconfident condescension, an over greased Brylcreem coif, blind trust in PMO talking points of highly dubious intellectual rigor, a penchant for blue suits far too expensively sharp for his actual status, and John Baird's insufferable hair for a political mentor, PP is a rising young ReformaTory's ReformaTory.

But his inability to think for himself on his feet - and probably reclining as well - is not the strong point that us coyotes imagine he fondly imagines it is.

Last week, when CBC's panel host Hannah Thibedeau drilled into him for repeated, dogged inanity in a discussion that had far exceeded the capacity of  his one-line script to cope, he smugly told her that she couldn't ask him that question.  Because it wasn't in his prepared talking points.  He looked to believe - proudly - that this was an unbeatable trump card.

This week, defending  in another CBC TV panel the PM's long-distance snipe at Justin Trudeau, that "now is not the time to commit sociology on terrorists"  Poilievre woofed up the circular reasoning in question.

I admit that labelling it "reasoning" is a disservice to the lingo as she is normally spoke.  And by the same token, us coyotes think that now is probably not a time to commit economics, either, since both it and sociology like to call themselves sciences, when they're more akin to reading horoscopes and crystal balls through a spreadsheet darkly.  Stephen Harper, trained-but-never-practicing-economist, please take note.  I commit a digression.  Oopsy.

Now, where was I?  Oh, ummm, yeah.

So.  By the callow MP's own(?) logic(?), it must now stand that the root cause of pinheadedness is pinheads. Draw your own conclusions from there, blogosphere.  Us coyotes have finished hacking our contractually obligated 350 words into this ESI thingy.  It's time for our coffee break. Is it too early to spike it?

Whack-A-Mole Season

Jeez. Did I just unaccountably wake up in Prague? Democratic tendencies seem to be bustin' out all over this spring!

Earlier this week, the Parliamentary librarian (and now stand-in budget officer) said, after an affirmative federal court ruling, that she'd keep dunning laggard departments for their financial data. The former parliamentary budget officer had requested those particulars before his term ended, and had finally gone all legal on departmental asses after they'd merrily thumbed their noses at him for months.

Since the PM doesn't seem to much like the questions the budget office asked, and seems to like even less the answers that it found, departmental types probably figured that those flying monkeys in short pants fluttering their batlike little wings behind the desks at the PMO HarperCo™® had their backs.

A little later, the House Speaker ruled that party whips and party leaders do not, in fact, hold final say over which members of parliament get to shoot their pet breezes in the house of commons. They can, in fact, ignore party whip's lists, and just bob up and down to catch the Speaker's eye until he calls on 'em to get windy about any number of Really Dumb Things. You know, like all of the real Westminster parliaments.

I can't imagine any of this pleases the famously, nay, notoriously tightly assed ummm, managed HarperCo™® Political Machine.

But given that machine's proclivity for stomping rogue speaking points, and pretty much all else of which it disapproves - so just about everything except faux-libertarianism, pointlessly badass Criminal Code amendments, and omnibus budget bills of staggering weight and purposely-vague complexity - I imagine that any ReformaTory MP who bobs up to catch the speaker's eye may also hafta consider hidden hazards associated with also catching their party whip's eye. Or, worse, the dead-fishy gaze of the PM hisself.

This could be good. I, myself, picture a giant game of Whack-A-Mole up there. And though I disagree with many of their Really Dumb Things, I kind of like the moles' chances for raising a more unseemly ruckus than has been seen for many a year. I expect party whips will be entertainingly frenetic as they try to squelch freelancers.

If security will deign to admit us as essential unaccompanied companion critters, us coyotes shall be in the visitors' gallery. Messily snarfing illicit snacks. Possibly for nourishment. Possibly the better to huck popcorn from the balcony when the whackin' action gets intense. . .

Being an aging quadruped of less than handy paw-eye coordination, I doubt I can peg it far enough to hit the PM on his metal forehead, but unreasonable hope springs eternal in a coyote's darkishly-multihued heart... it's what keeps us going. That, and spring. Maple syrup season, y'know. . .

Google Poem: Just because...

* Just because I'm cynical it doesn't mean I lead an unhappy, suicidal life
* Just because I'm cynical it doesn't mean I'm wrong
* Just because I'm cynical, it doesn't mean everything isn't crap
* Just because I'm cynical, it doesn't mean I'm wrong

[*]

Good Friday Mannequins

Happy Easter!

Meta consultation update!!!

I think that went well... or, well, meta.

The City is going to metaconsult!

Public Service Announcement from the City of Ottawa:

PSA: City aims to improve how it engages the public
 

The City of Ottawa is reaching out to residents this spring in order to improve how staff consults with individuals and groups on important issues.

Guidelines to improve how City staff engages the public are being drafted and the City needs to know:

• what you think.
• where you want to be reached.
• how you want to be consulted.

There will be four bilingual community consultation sessions held between March 25 and April 16. For those who cannot attend a consultation session but still want to contribute, a survey and ideas campaign will be available on ottawa.ca between March 25 and April 19, 2013.

All community consultation sessions run from 7 to 9 p.m.

• March 25
  City Hall
  Colonel By Room
  110 Laurier Avenue West
  Ottawa
• April 3
  Orleans Client Service Centre
  Room 340
  255 Centrum Boulevard
  Orleans
• April 10
  John G. Mlacak Community Centre
  Hall D
  2500 Campeau Drive
  Kanata
• April 16
  Walter Baker Sports Centre
  Food Court
  100 Malvern Drive
  Nepean

To register for one of these sessions, go to ottawa.ca, call 3-1-1 or visit any Client Service Centre.

For more information on public engagement at the City of Ottawa go to ottawa.ca.

Update: David Reevely says: This is actually a good idea. It’s absurdly easy to make fun of, but look, they suck at this and they’re trying to get better.

Dean Del Mastro: MP for Peterborough/Orange Sauce

How the mighty have fallen. If, by "mighty", we mean a guy who thought he was a Mastro of the Universe because he once was allowed to work himself into a regular thespian froth during parliamentary question period, reading angrily incoherent talking points scripted and handed to him by those clever partisan children who work in the Prime Minister's office.

Then, last year, Dean Del Mastro was launched heavily, nay, gracelessly into the news for something that looked a lot like hanky-panky with his election financing. (Standard disclaimer: not proven in a court of law, still under investigation, blah blah, blah.) The welcome upshot was, suddenly, lo, not a peep from the Mastro anymore.

As in all cases where a Harpo Tory has been observed with a webbed mitt not unadjacent to some cookie jar or other, everybody but the Mastro was out there skatin' into the corner with elbows, shoulders, knees, (and likely Don Cherry's mouth) flappin', while Dean was roped and gagged, schtum, down to the bench by imperial fiat. Or something much like it.

For practical purposes, this named him as a bad boy in all but name. If only the cut-from-a-very-similar-dark-blue-polyester Pierre Poilievre could, finally, be similarly gagged, it might be a personal coyote dream come true. I digress. Not sorry ay-tall!

Anyway, yesterday the old Mastro apparently decided he'd spent enough time banished to Coventry (look it up), and made his comeback move by trying to smear a Postmedia reporter who's been watching all sortsa election improprieties rather closely.

Then, maybe because old habits die hard when there's muddy backsplatter, he denied he'd ever done it and blamed it on the PM's office. After which, possibly due to a stern talking-to by someone who might be even more twitchy about deniability than himself, he issued a lame-o retraction in which he sorta took responsibility but still sorta denied a personal hand in the sorry episode, instead sorta trying to pin the actual wording back onto the PMO, much like a paper tail on a birthday-party ass donkey.

Yes, it's complicated. But the dumb-coyote short version is that Dean Del Mastro seems to waddle and quack a lot more like some unhappy variety of duck every time he tries to splorp back out of that suckin' black ooze at the bottom of Little Lake. . .

Seen slinking out of town last night

Mere days or so tardy of American Thanksgiving, all sortsa news types last night began averring that this country's F35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter procurement process was done like dinner. The carved remains were already being forked over unto destruction or home made turkey soup, whichever comes first.

The Harpoon Government's (©®, and especially ™. . .) designated spokesthingy denied it. Well, he would, wouldn't he? But since this government has repeatedly been revealed as rather more than, ummm, strenuously economical with the truth on this line item and sundry others, some long-time parliamentary reporters hooted (Tweeted, actually. I digress.) at him with something bordering on open derision, ummm, all due respect. . .

Let the spin begin. I'm anticipatin' that it'll be fittingly supersonic.

Meanwhile, last night, as dusk descended, a large, droopy-feathered shadow could be heard either gobbling or wailing something very much like, "But I don't understand! I'm Fifth Generation!" as it slunk (stealthily...) down the road out of town.

And somewhere in the deeper shadows off to the side of the turkey track, another large droopy feathered shadow - this one with an aqualine nose - could be heard quietly sniffling something very much like, "My heart's a little banged up too. But don't worry, li'l fella! I'm as loyal to you as to my neighbour's dog. . ."

A word from our janitor...

To whom it may concern in Baghdad (Yes. That Baghdad.);

Thank you for your interest, especially in times when blogging, and blog reading figures, appear to have fallen a long way from the glory days, and look like they ain't done diving yet...

As desultory sometime custodian of this, the entropic debris of the Elgin Street Irregulars blog, I trust that you found all that you sought.

You know, after your whimsical early-morning entry of the search term "huge tits lingerie" felicitously directed you to these pages.

You follow a long line of similarly (presumably) avid researchers bent upon revealing the wonders of "Kim Basinger's ass", "sexy Thanksgiving", "sexy Christmas", "sexy Easter", "sexy Ramadan", "sexy Hanukkah", "Hooters girls", "big honkin' titties", "tight butts in short shorts", "thong T-straps", "businesswomen wearing rubber gloves", and "Rob Anders dating", as well as various medications, some possibly not counterfeit, claiming to alleviate troubling male afflictions among those not too prone to stroke, myocardial ischemia, and/or infarction.

Upon reflection, they all amount to the same thing, really. And I swear that I have no idea how Google's algorithms tagged us as good to go for any of 'em.

Ummm, okay, maybe I do. The Irregulars have on occasion delved into some fairly outré topics. Especially that Woodsy. She's a firecracker sometimes. But not the only one.

However our most popular search item of all time remains "picture of a life-size maze".

Who knew? I know I'm amazed...