Enemies list? Really?

To ancient tricksterish quadrupeds, HarperCo's notional Cone of Silence over the workings of his eponymously branded government looks more and more like the cone of shame. The one worn by bad dogs that thought they were big dogs.

So news that HarperCo's 'new-look' cabinet appointments came complete with PMO-approved (Or, ummm, maybe disapproved... semimythical coyotes are famously unclear on etymological niceties.) enemies lists in the ol' ministerial briefing books are no shock at this stage.

Neither is the predictably hurried "no comment", from the PMO kids, who try to keep their semi-anonymous, fully-rabid partisan sockpuppetry out of the public eye in lieu of, you know, reassuringly bland, focus-grouped media lines like Strong Stable Conservative Majority and The Economy.

Except. This government's reeling ethos lately looks about as stable as that of an untreated paranoid schizophrenic. And that  little cult mag, The Economist, internationally respected and not-so-left-wing, has been serially, seriously critical of HarperCo's alleged economic chops. And a little understanding, nay respect, for those who happen to breathe the air outside one's own ideological iron lung is supposed to typify a working democracy.

Some few pundits are suddenly recalling that Richard Nixon, another famously paranoid conservative who hated daylight on his government and tried to black it out, also had an Enemies List. Hey, it's what pundits are for.  Come to that, Nixon also tried to ignore and/or lose inconvenient evidence that spiked his reassuringly bland media line. Those who follow history can draw every lesson they need to know from a quip that decades first turned cliché, then adage:  "It's not really about the crime, it's about the coverup."

Still holds, I think. But being fans of investigative science (heh...), we coyotes await avidly any new evidence of daylight's effects on sweaty five o'clock shadows.