Sometimes, things happen for a reason...

From the Antisocial Media Dept...

Mitch McConnell, meanwhile...

...channels his inner spirit animal for the American Fourth of July break, to beguile and charm fellow Republican senators into supporting his greatest-hits version of the the Trump Wealthcare Bill...

Apparently I'm back.

Coyote sightings on the rise in 2017, says CBC.

...it's so good to be remembered and appreciated...

Ordinary people

Kellie Leitch's Bold New Statement: Chapter 11

Oh, America. . .

...what the hell did you just do...?

Trump's Lessons Learned -- October 2016

Update, October 21, 2016: Ackshully, scratch that thought. He has learned zip. And is unlikely to improve upon that scholastic record. . .

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...

On the Heartburn Campaign Trail...

Day four of former Prime Ministerial Chief of Staff Nigel Wright's testimony at the Senator Mike Duffy Trial:

...and yes, that is Comic Sans in the caption. He deserves it.

Ashley Madison: doing everything but the numbers, apparently

So, a few days back, it came to light that a public-spirited group of extortionists had hacked a website catering to marital infidelity with a brand name much like, ummm, Mashley Addleson. They kindly offered not to release the names of everybody signed up to the site in exchange for a whack of cash.

The web, predictably, went Twitteristic.

In a similarly public-spirited vein, I gather that Mashley Addleson has since contacted individual users with offers to do a "full delete" that would vacuum out all trace of an account. For smaller, individual whacks of cash.

Terrific philanthropists, all of 'em...

And as ummm, investigative journalists everywhere started delving deeper into this event, it also arose that the site was claiming some 200,000 subscribers in Ottawa, or one in five residents. According to one Brit rag possessed of ethics nearly as dubious as Mashley's, that figure would make this sleepy burg the world's "love rat capital".

After pondering on that for longer than I shoulda, I looked up 2011 Statistics Canada census figures for the Ottawa Census Metropolitan Area.

So I obviously have waaay too much time on my paws, but this whole story really does beg the question: why the hell hasn't anybody in the media bothered to do this? ** It was like, 20 minutes' work, even allowing for the fact that paws and keyboards do not play well together. Easy story! Just, maybe, not a sexy story. Since a CMA isn't just the city whose name it takes -- a CMA extends beyond city boundaries proper -- I figured that the cachement area would roughly cover people in surrounding small towns who might craftily list their residence as "Ottawa". Because that's just the kind of convenient little cover story that the thinking cheater might figure would reduce their chances of being identified and outed in a smaller place.

Say, "Russell Township" or "Ashton Station" or something. Small towns bein' what they are, everybody in one likely has thoughts about which of the neighbours might be foolin' around, but no sense in giving 'em outright confirmation, right?

Now, as an ancient coyote whose eyes are now nearly as fuzzy as his ass, I am certainly open to the possibility that I'm misreading a government statistical agency table. I am therefore open to correction. *

Since the current government screwed over the reliability of the official census some time back, the government statistical agency is also open to correction. But I digress. Where the hell was I? Oh, yeah. So, anyway, what I think I'm seeing is a total of 411,110 people who are married/common-law in this CMA.

Which means that according Mashley Addleson, on average close to 1 in every 2 married persons in Ottawa CMA is steppin' out. Doin' the dirty. Bonkin' outta wedlock. Which seems, you know, a touch... flagrant. If not downright delicto.

Of course, there are other takes on the situation. When I confided my doubts to the Independent Observer (remember him...? We still talk.) he, being of a practical frame of mind, just waved his hand and said, "Should we trust the statistics of a company that encourages cheating...?"

Oh yeah. Right. Nevermind...

*... So it turns out, inevitably, that after that pretty little sketch of Census Metropolitan Areas, someone with a far more obsessive eye for detail than I has pointed out that I did not in fact use CMA figures, or link to them. The numbers are for Ottawa, the city proper.

But it also transpires, happily, that the fragrant flagrance of that one-in-two ratio holds. So there's that.

Figures. Us coyotes are not built for trapping errors. In my defence I will say that we are exquisitely tuned to catch small rodents, partridges, grouse and your cat. On the fly! But owls? Don't get me started on owls. Them things is fiends...

** Although, to the eventual satirical credit of the Last Week Tonight research team, John Oliver finally did...

More like doggerel. . .

News Item: Supreme Court of Canada strikes down minimum sentencing law as unconstitutional.

Just like the last half-dozen other pieces of badly-thought-out and hastily-rammed-through HarperCo centrepiece legislation that have shown up before it.

Now, I'm just a dumb ol' semi-mythical coyote. So obviously not nearly as smart as the guy who runs roughshod over the country 'n all. But I think there might be a pattern developing here...

Jason Kenney: Maybe a brain transplant would help...?

"O, Harper Can-a-Duh,

VainGloreee-us and Free-eeee *

Our Bombs are Smart,

Much Smarter than Me-eeee..."

* Actual freedom may vary, depending on definition and pending legislation.

Pay equity. . . ?

It has come to our notice that today is International Women's Day.

It also occurs that, what with this being the day we must prostrate ourselves before myriad electronic devices in frogmarched obeisance to the ridiculous concept of Daylight Saving Time, International Women's Day this year is only 23 hours long.

That these devices hold in common only a wildly divergent buncha crappy user interfaces that are not claw or paw-friendly, I might splenetically add, is merely my trademark digression. Hah. Got that dealt with...

Anyway. Since most of the women ESIs seem to have been otherwise indisposed for some months... OK, OK, some years... I guess it remains to us decidedly male-ish semimythical coyotes to furrow our furry brows and ponder whether this irony is, perhaps, some kinda cosmic editorial comment on the long standing and continuing lack of parity between women's wages and men's, or maybe a slam on the way women generally get short-changed when they have to pay more for their shirts, haircuts, dry cleaning and dog knows what-all else...

Just sayin'...

Breaking (pelvis) news...

It has come to our attention that while the Short Guy was obsessing about certain junior priests in New Brunswick -- and oh, how the mighty have fallen, although I think he's lost weight so maybe rehab helped somewhat -- our Chief Magistrate here in Ottawa was out getting wrecked during a driving lesson on a snowtercycle. In Osgoode, no less.

Sounds like he's out for the next four to six weeks, which as we all know, is an eternity in the dog-eat-dog world of municipal politics. Given the nature of the injury, he's probably in a certain amount of pain also, which is never a good thing.

Now, us coyotes generally disapprove of snowtercycles, especially in Osgoode. Guys out there, under the highly mistaken impression that we may have formed some sorta unsavoury intent toward their pet cats, chase us and try to mow us down with 'em. (Which when ya think about it, is pretty unsavoury in its own right. Unlike delicious, delicous cats. Ummmm. Perhaps I digress a digression too far...?)

Errr, anyway. Despite our distaste for the vehicle of his misfortune, we of the Irregulars who still keep a paw in this blog ancienne wish Mayor Watson a speedy recovery.

We even have suggestions about how he might quicken his return to public life. Although, given the deep cold which has for some weeks settled over the city and made life a trial for those uncharmed by record-length skating on the Rideau Canal, we hope his accident did not leave him any kind of post-traumatic aversion to vehicles equipped with snowmobile tracks... dogspeed on your journey to wellness, sir!

Julian Fantino - Minister of Veterans Affronts

Due to recent events. . .

Paul Calandra...

...The Prime Minister's Speshul Parliamentary Secretary for disrespect of Parliament, the Canadian public, common courtesy and logic...

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...