Happy Canada Day...

...may yours be filled with giant beavers swimming in vast ponds of maple syrup.

Hmmm. Meant that to read like the most Canadian thing ever, not some kind of obscure double entendre.

But there ya go.

Ordinary people

Dousing the lights on a lost decade

So HarperCo finally ends. Not with a bang, but with a concession speech full of rivet-gunned, recycled campaign boilerplate, all emotion carefully hollowed out of it.

Oh. And a flat little resignation letter to the titular brass of his party, released as an afterthought he saw unfit to mention to his few die-hards in Calgary, Monday night.

It was a microcosm of the parliamentary ummm, style, of the most divisive prime minister in Canadian history -- riding a rail of pre-scripted partisan bullshit talking points that admitted to no ill and willfully hid the main fact. So, as ever, contemptuous of most of his party and of the Canadian public.

Certain apologists tried to spin it as a classy move. It was not. It was an expedient way for him to avoid facing objective fact, unpleasantness and discomfit in public. He always had a hapless designated flunky answer for all bad stuff that happened on his watch in parliament, so he wouldn't have to.

It's been a long decade. The man broke a lot of stuff for the sake of breaking it, and because he could. He was uninterested in what he was breaking, or why it might be important. He tried to break more, but the courts stopped the most unconstitutional of it.

He never had much of a vision for the country once he got in, except to cater to The Base, also an ornery and smallminded bunch. They called themselves conservatives, but really, they weren't like any conservatives who came before. If they were conservatives at all, rather than some random posse who ganked a once-respected brand to sell snake oil.

A lot of reasonably intelligent pundits and media types, and the Canadian public, took an unconscionably long time to figure that out. I'm just glad that when they did, most of 'em knew what to do.

In common with almost all of the quasi-populist right-wing political movements out of southern and central Alberta -- the United Farmers, Social Credit, the Western Canada Concept, Reform, Wild Rose, ad infinitum, Harper greased himself into power on a toxic sludge of regional grudges. Unfortunately for for the rest of the country, he slid in further than anybody else ever had. As unfortunately, many of the grudges were rooted in willful ignorance and outright lunacy.

Most unfortunate of all, Harper, like Ted Byfield, that lunatic old King Lear of western alienation, wasn't actually born in the west at all. We semimythical coyotes are not sure what infinitely weird vapours lace the heady air of The Land Of Our People, but they seem to affect the johnny-come-lately immigrants -- who haven't been immunized since birth against their mania -- most grievously of all. I have seen a lotta crazy goin' down in the old stomping grounds in my six-thousand-odd years, but none more than among the newly-converted.

Just so ya understand why I was so appalled when Harper got his first minority ten years back. I know those guys. I know just how batshit insane they are...

Now, it is reported, the ex-PM and his wife will build a retirement bunker on property in the foothills near Cochrane, just west of Calgary. Good riddance. I hope they keep to themselves.

But since I am not without my fair share of imaginative schadenfreude, it tickles me to know he's where I can keep a baleful, glow-red-in-the-dark eye on him. And to imagine that he bought prime river-valley real estate. Say, on the mountain runoff flood plain that his own stubborn unwillingness to concede the fact of global warming has opened up to more of what used to be wallopin' 100-year floods. Now once a decade... until the Rockies lose their historic snow pack, anyway.

Not that I hold any kinda grudge.

An End to Fear, Loathing, And All That...?

What a hell of an election campaign. Bearing down hard on the "hell".

Despite the fact that we semimythical coyotes watched our 6,000th birthday skitter away on the slipstream in the rearview awhile back, and thus have an, ummm, elastic take on time and reality, we're glad the rotten neverending thing is near barbecued. And if common wisdom says HarperCo counts on voter disengagement to haywire together an ill-earned plurality in parliament, most of the late signs look good for the rest of us.

But there's no denying that I'll feel more secure if we can slog ghrough Monday without those last poll figures upending, or rampant yet strangely untraceable dirty tricks arising, or in the aftermath, some evilly twisted, desperate attempt at a constitution- and/or convention-flouting end-run occurs. You know, to hang onto the keys to the PMO far longer than is seemly or legal, because Canada was supposed to be locked in as a Conservative satrap, and losing now would obviously mean The End Times.

Oh. And it'd be nice to see notarized witness statements attesting that a wood tent peg has been hammered through whatever passes for a certain rat-bastard heart. Without those, we who do not share whatever passes for Conservative "values" these days are gonna need a vintage red convertible trunkload of booze and random hallucinogenics -- including the ether -- to claw our way through the next four years. Because it has transpired that the soon-to-be-ex PM has an even more startlingly irresponsible take on, ummm, reality than I...

That I even consider any the above might come to pass disturbs me profoundly. Well, except for the private polling firm screwup scenario. Enough thinly-veiled partisan upstarts now exploit that loophole in the telecommunications legislation that the Coyotephone's call display started smokin' from overuse weeks ago. The pollsters can be wrong any way they like, as long as it doesn't get the Cons another majority. Then they can go back to the ring of hell (heh...) reserved especially for all telemarketers and phone solicitors.

I digress. It's an old habit. Cut me a little slack! At the moment, the sweet smell of blessed change seems to be starting to dispel the black, sulfurous reek of flopsweat, desperation and despair billowing from the Tory war room's smokestacks. And since I've become well-practiced during most of the last decade, I'm pretty sure I can hold my doggy nose long enough to suck in purer air sometime real soon.

Now, for crissakes: Dunno if all those big black flittering nightmares swirling round the Peace Tower are flying monkeys or just big freakin' bats -- but help me whack 'em away before I hafta scream...

Beer pong at the big debate...

Harper congratulates self on economic skillz -- crowd goes wild

The secret Stephen Harper, revealed

Sigh. Back to kitty blogging...

'Tis the season for politico Christmas cards... *

* Original image: Emperor Haute Couture from the fertile mind of Kingston artist Margaret Sutherland.

** Shooped accessorization from the fertilized mind of coyote.

Julian Fantino - Minister of Veterans Affronts

Desperate to leverage the First World War centenary...

...into a political poll bump as a world of Senate unpleasantness and assorted ideological policy failures threatened to come home to roost in his personal office chair, Steverino ordered his fibreglas helmet maker, ummm, hairstylist, to get him rockin' The Full Robert Borden for the big commemoration ceremony.

Then someone told him that Sir Robert had been prime minister at the head of a Union government during the war, and he felt like a very, very foolish Little Trained Economist...

Pamela, (stone)Wallen: not the main event

Mr. Speaker: This is kind of sad, actually. Sometime in the distant past, before Pamela Wallen chose to parlay down a (good, ackshully) journalism gig into that of a public entertainer (Who Wants to be a Millionaire, c'mon down...!) and thence to a public shill and hat-passer for the current Capo, ummm, prime minister, she was one of the more trusted figures in the country.

By now, although us coyotes who sit independently haven't been tracking the polls, we imagine that her public credibility is, technically, pretty much shot. So much that we with a taste for the, ummm, visual arts, have finally ourselves descended into the photomanipulative mud pit with Wadena's former fave daughter.

But, Mr. Speaker, I want to be crystal clear on one point. The record will show that I have been absolutelyveryperfectly clear all along: it is only a set of unfortunate anatomical coincidences -- and that famous hair -- that led us to the mashup you see beside you in this post. We tried all weekend -- dog knows we tried -- to make Stephen J. Harper look more Nixonian. Problem was, after hours of twitchy, obsessive and mean-spirited micromanaging on the old computing device, he still only looked like a generic crook. So, really, no net gain.

It may have had something to do with the copious butter left on our paws from all the popcorn we scarfed during last week's guffaw-inducing nightly newscasts. Us coyotes are technoklutzes to start with. Slippery paws and dreadful popcorn hangovers do not improve this lamentable failing. But I think the PM's visual is more a case of, "if you've seen one moral grey-to-black area, you've seen 'em all."

So while the unfortunate Ms. Wallen will likely hang tough in the senate this week, that august, ummm, independent body will likely hoof her, on the strong urging of the main perp.

Because some anonymous kingpin -- let's call this mysterious miscreant, for the sake of convenience and pejorative labelling, "Skeevy Steevy" -- is the one who appointed the Three Senateers in the first place. By all means, give his discarded proxies the attention, and if warranted, the heat they may deserve. Something less like a lynch mob of pitchfork and torch waving PMO sock puppets, and more like due process would be appropriate.

But,Mr. Speaker, the body politic must keep the ol' probative blowtorch squarely upon the ass of that guy trying his best to keep lurking in his own moral shadows -- the calculatedly bland Skeevy Steevy.

Us coyotes think that no matter how many senators, chiefs of staff and and parliamentary secretaries get creamed by the bus, the source of the rot is the guy who appointed them. The guy whose uber-partisan approach led to a whole whack of nudges and winks around public expense account billings in aid of collecting change for his political machine. The guy whose former parliamentary secretary stands accused of trying to buy an election. The guy whose party was found guilty of robocalls and declared it a great victory. The obsessive micromanager who would have us believe that he has completely firewalled himself from a scheme to buy off a senator's silence in the name of "plausible deniability".

Mr. Speaker, here's the skinny on Skeevy Steevy: if you create the culture; if you hire all of the perps you now slag, if you needed to create mechanisms for plausible deniability so that you can tell Parliament and the country's citizens with a nearly straight face that you were in the dark about something that has your greasy proxy pawprints all over it, if you try to blow it all off at a party convention with smirking bluster, you're culpable.

You're Nixon, laffin' boy.

Duffy vs. Harper: hidden evidence, bare knuckles. . .

Wow. No matter how you look at it, it was a tough week for the old popcorn maker here at Casa Coyote. Prudent semimythical quadrupeds have laid in industrial quantities of kernels and butter for the inevitable long, drawn shakeout.

All I got right now is that it totally depends on which lying sack of, ummm, spin, you care to disbelieve marginally less at a given moment. And whether you can untangle the double negatives in that last sentence. Because it definitely refers to two negatives. . .

No science, no evidence, no truth, no democracy...

You might think that semimythical coyotes, living as we do in this weird little undocumented fold of the time/cyberspace continuum, would be death on science and empirical evidence. I mean to say, if you want to get all facty 'n literal 'n stuff, our very existence might be open to debate. It might.

And if it were, we might be forced to cease pawing these tiresome screeds into this bloggy space. We might.

Fortunately for you, cowpoke, we're actually capable of reconciling our semimythical cosmology with facts. Which seems to place us a doglegged step or two ahead of the heavy thinkers in the nation's current government.

Most governments, one would think, are big enough and broadly-based enough to have:

• enough confidence in their basic tenets;
• enough actual, ummm, intelligence;
• and failing either of those, certainly enough spin machinery;

that they would find torquing any, ummm, inconvenient actual facts to fit lame-o doctrine, after they hit the public arena, to be adequately efficient.

The current one, though, shows an unhealthy will to strangle any science project raising legitimate questions as to the basis of its cherished (if half-assed) party orthodoxies, right off at the roots. They prefer to spike them suckers with serious weedkiller before they see daylight. So much so, that 12-year-olds who enter science fairs may soon wish to check over their shoulders before they pick a topic. I digress.

I'm pretty sure that this is not a good thing for democratic discourse. We coyotes have always considered that the marketplace of ideas should be open to all comers. Only after they go on display there do we gnaw over the unworthy ones with our trademark snarky-puppy wit. I digress. Very probably not for the first time...

Apparently we coyotes are not the only ones disturbed by this. Today at lunch, a genetics conference became a springboard for a rather large march and demonstration by lab-coated geeks science types, featuring a butterfly-net-waving marshal, scythe-packing grim reaper, muted New Orleans snaxophone, and a black coffin symbolizing the death of public science. You know, the stuff that helps an informed citizenry make up its collective mind of the important issues facing the nation.

I applaud the effort, and the strong visuals, but I'm not sure they're enough. By now, the Stephen Harper Information Torquing machine has insulated its creators with such a thick-walled bubble that they figure the empirical reality where the rest of us live is strictly for suckers. They stand ready to ladle out plenty more delicious Kool-Aid to suck on... and we need public science to tell us when the stuff is laced.

What passes for straight-faced, these days. . .

Yesterday, Foreign Affairs minister John Baird declared the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development done and stuck a fork in it, saying something along the lines of "it's time to put the past behind us and move on into the future." Deep, that. But not, I'm thinkin', nearly as deep as the fork thrust. I digress.

Baird claimed fiscal responsibility among other justifications, and opined that the formerly-respected NGO's functions would be better rolled up into his department. Possibly, he meant "just rolled up".

There was, sure as hell, dysfunction. The argument that killing the group was the kindest thing to do is at least plausible. The last couple of years were the exact opposite of pretty. Rights and Democracy was under attack by ideologues, and its board of directors was hallmarked by vicious infighting, including one meeting in 2010 that appears to have led, hours later, to the heart attack and subsequent death of the president at the time.

But examining that dysfunction, it's hard not to think that the Cons themselves caused rather a lot of it. Although begun by another Con PM, Brian Mulroney, Rights and Democracy was non-partisan in pursuit of its international goals and was respected for this, worldwide. It held this in common with a good many late, lamented, Canadian international efforts that the current government has seen fit in its, ummm, wisdom, to spike.

Most seem to fall afoul of the Harper Government's malign indifference to any international negotiations not involving either blowing crap up good in faraway places, or resources ripped unceremoniously out of the ground with scanty oversight, and sold quick. Disliking what they saw there, the Cons attempted to stack the board with partisans that would turn Rights and Democracy into something they could truly love. Which may or may not have had anything to do with actually promoting global rights and democracy.

The cons screwed it up. Then, yesterday, scrammed it for being screwed up, with what these days passes for straight-faced sanctimony in that increasingly dysfunctional house on the hill.

Hey. I wonder if they think they've screwed up Parliament enough, yet...?

Harper: starting to wear that robocall thing...?

In all of the old and new media characterizations of the prime minister, Stephen Harper - including, but not restricted to, suggestions that he is a hyperpartisan, ethically-agnostic, neo-conservative, humourless, neo-controlfreakazoid, scheming, democratically-challenged, micromanaging, vindictive, teflon-milkshake-chugging, fiber-glass-haired robot, there was never much indication that it was the robot part that might take him out.

It has so far merely been the stuff of This Hour Has 22 Minutes satire.

But if I read aright the minor tsunami of e-ink rushing onto the shores of the rapidly-developing robocall scandal, he might actually be wearin' this one. It seems so obvious now, with even a short weekend's worth of retrospect. All the best reference works - yallerback science fiction paperbacks, graphic novels, comix, movies and futuristic role-playing games - often recommend fighting fire with fire.

Or in this case, ill-intentioned robots with ill-intentioned robots.

Although us semimythical coyotes hail from an ancient, far more animistic age, we try to stay on top of breaking trends. But we confess our ancient fuzzy-assed selves to be as flummoxed as anybody to find that the dumbest, scummiest, least-loved robot in modern life - demon dialer, robocaller,what you will - appears to have become, inadvertantly, the unlikeliest of unlikely heroes of the piece, rattling the relentless grey course of the uber-robot currently in charge of the country. He's probably telling the truth when he says he didn't know anything about it, but the weight of past evidence certainly suggest he actively fostered a,ummm, certain atmosphere and mindset among his partisan minions.

Irony abounds.

One can only imagine the mindset of the untold legions of spin doctors and strategists who've burrowed into the pickled oak wainscotting up at the PMO and PCO like a King-Hell carpenter ant infestation. They followed the standard playbook, fer cripes' sake, admitting no guilt but making the required ritual sacrifice. In this case, a low-level, hyper-enthusiastic little tory shit somehow fell under the party's increasingly bloody bus for unspecified, but highly-implied reasons. It should've satisfied the party base, and, really who cared about anybody else? They're all liberals and/or child pronographers anyway.

But the howls of the torch-bearing rabble under the ramparts got louder instead. Many who in the past could be relied upon to defend such behaviour have taken offence and started yowling themselves. It all appears to be too endemic, organized and well-bankrolled to be the work of one half-smart, if misguided, kid.

Seems you can pull a lot of fast ones in pursuit of partisan goals these days. Ignoring the traditions and laws of parliament has lately been seen as "welcome decisiveness" among a certain goal-oriented crowd, as if it was a good thing. But suddenly, it's seeming that if you appear to have really screwed with the bases of democracy enough times... well, then. Pattern recognition kicks in. Things Change.

We coyotes seen lotsa changes in our time. We're keepin' our yellow eyes on this one with more than our usual interest...

Probably only coincidence

Inquiring coyotes can't help noticing how carefully all the government news releases, media stories and pundits have been pussyfooting around the suspicious confluence of today's two great television events: the fact that August 31, 2011 is the, ummm, drop-dead date stamped upon not only the Great Digitul Switchover, but CTV News anchor Lloyd Robertson's retirement from the 'lectronical firmament.

Both huge! Both televisiony! Has nobody but me connected the two? Even though they hover blatantly in front of us like giant hi-def bats, everybody is carefully pretending they aren't in the room.

(In related news, coyotes are mourning the loss of analog rabbit ears. Digital ones are practically inedible. I digress. Ahem.)

Anyway, it's probably nothing for torch-carrying global villagers across the nation to worry about. However. An ever more parchment-complexioned Lloyd has been calling late night TV bingo for so unnaturally long that even people that don't believe in the undead, openly call him "Count Floyd" to his face now.

So those of us attuned to the semimythical realms, while not feeling certain about this one (Call it a theory. Like economics. I digress again.) suspect pretty strongly that vampires, whom everyone knows cannot be seen in mirrors, may also be incapable of manifesting themselves on digital TV. So, perfect time to retire.

Ummm. Probably only coincidence. But I'm just sayin'...

So, love...?

The Elgin Street Irregulars once had a thing or six to say about the psychology of relationships. It was a forte. We semimythical coyotes haven't gone there in quite awhile. Lately we've preferred a surreal playground of our own making.

But hey. It's the black depths of January and even my splendiferous new Coyotie Blankie is a few R-values short of adequate. As Winnipeggers say whenever the frost is this bitter: "Cold enough to freeze the balls off the Golden Boy." Ottawa, at this moment, is probably freezing the balls off the Famous Five...

I digress. How inappropriate. Probably brain-freeze.

Anyway, this weekend, with Valentine's Day on the horizon, and likely an election also, the PM, in an intimate heart-to-heart with about 600 hand-picked clapping seals party faithful, told the country that no one loves it more than his government. Well, except, maybe, him.

He loves the country so much, in fact, he can't bear to think of it going out with anyone else. He loves it so much, he wants a parliamentary majority so he can change it completely, to suit himself. I imagine that he believes with every fibre of his fibreglass hair that Canada would love him right back if only it would do exactly what he says.

Canada, can we talk? Now is a good time for you to checklist, honestly, how many of the warning signs of an emotionally abusive relationship the guy has displayed in the last five years. I'm just sayin'...

"Smartest guy in the room"

We coyotes understand that reviewers of Stately Glob columnist Lawrence Martin's new book about Stephen Harper have latched onto the PM's venom toward small and large-L liberals as noteworthy.

It is, not because it's anything new, but because it helps begin to explain the current malaise in this country's political landscape. The fact that Conservatives' main rebuttal so far is to label Mr. Martin a "large-L liberal sympathizer", like that alone should fully explain and dismiss his findings, just underlines it.

The PM, portrayed by his fan(s?) as the "smartest guy in the room" is indeed a great one for convoluted trickiness. Yet uncompromising tactics ranging from within the pale to, ummm, less so, all aimed at, quote, "killing the Liberal brand", have done little but shoot up his feet, and the rest of the place. That's a problem, not just for his political fellows who lust after that elusive parliamentary majority, but for the country.

Us coyotes have seen plenty of smartest guys in the room screw up royally through lack of wisdom. I could get all semimythically pedantic here about the ginormous abyss separating "smart" and "wise", but just gimme that one for argument's sake. I'm busy making a point, here.

Which is that any political guy who's so heavily invested in the tenet that all other political stripes in a democracy are the work of the Antichrist, to be seared from the face of the earth with brimstone, is no friend of the nation. Kicking that warm, fuzzy little dream out to its (il)logical extreme, while no doubt heady to some party hacks, has little to do with democracy. Or the reasonable checks and balances on power that help sustain it. For the democratic experiment to remain on the level, conservative yin needs liberal yang. Or vice versa. We coyotes are hazy on eastern religious concepts. We come from someplace else.

The parliamentary democracy that has evolved over the better part of a thousand years works best when players are flexible. That means taking the time to understand other viewpoints, respect for those outside your policy hothouse, and seeing the good of the nation - and all the diverse people and viewpoints it comprises - as the big-picture goal.

We coyotes like to keep our yellow eyes fixed on the big picture. Ya kinda hafta, watching six millenniums' worth of evolving human shenanigans. It's that, or rump of skunk and madness.

One of that grande vista's truisms is that any one national leader seldom bears in huge ways on citizens' personal lives, unless he/she is truly, determinedly awful. Oh. And true awfulness can be attained by chasing partisan goals to the exclusion of everything else, including actual, considered governance. Considered governance which, one might think, would be the point of being a prime minister.

I'm just sayin'...

Court strikes down prostitution law...

...Tories react predictably

Original story here.
Zoom's cogent analysis here.