This in from our campaign correspondent...

The secret Stephen Harper, revealed

The Nigel Wright Stuff

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...

Item: PM orders MPs to flog child care bribe

Mike Duffy on the taxpayers' dime

Some of us were knocking idly around the echoing expanses of the mothballed ESI product development labs over the weekend, raking out the mountain of junk mail under the slot by the door and checking to see if the little red blinky lights on the smoke alarms were still being irritating enough, when the Research Director alerted us that we were in in midst of what may only be called a serendipitous convergence of seemingly-disparate events.

First, Week Three of the Senator Mike Duffy Trial of the Decade (TM) was cannonballing toward us like a watermelon on a waterslide. And now the Royal Canadian Mint is urging people to enter its keen-o Design a Coin for Canada's 150th Anniversary contest online. The web page of which loads aggravatingly slowly, just so you know before you click on that link. Clicked already? Oops. Sorry! I digress. Where were we? Oh yeah:

"I'm kind of surprised nobody has entered a Mike Duffy on the Taxpayers' Dime design yet," said the Research Director, staring pointedly at us through his safety reading glasses.

We'd already started doodling something to celebrate Nickelback's decade of artistic integrity and photo ops in which their lead singer and the current PM shamelessly try to use each other for publicity purposes. But hey. We know a better idea when we hear it. And the Research Director has lasers. We picked out some different-coloured crayons and got to work.

So here you go, Royal Canadian Mint. It's a honey. You're welcome. And, uh, Canada? All we ask is that when it comes time, you remember which trained economic snake-oil marketer it was who put Senator Duffy on your public dime and told him to have at it, especially in the small matter of billing ya for purely partisan events, in the first place. . .

Harper to Con-Vention: "Hey, come into the Kool-Aid Jacuzzi...!"

This weekend, ReformaTory faithful will finally gather in the cold light of post-Hallowe'en Calgary to convene triumphantly eat humble pie and consider their party's dubious future.

They might wonder, with cause, if the floods of biblical proportion (heh) that scrammed the original convention back in May were a dark portent. They might wonder, with cause, whether their god-like leader is actually a tin idol trying to smudge out a long series of sizable fibs with the kind of linguistic technicalities that allow him to think to his own self that he's still telling something resembling the truth. They might wonder, with cause, why, the tighter the PM squeezes down on message control the more crap squirts out between his fingers. They might wonder, with cause, why the hell the wheels are grinding off of their deadly bus. They might wonder, with cause, whether the foundation of their strong stable Conservative majority, ummm, moral certitudes, is become purest runny Jello.

They might. Some of the more prominent rats in and around the old blue machine are blinking nervously in the harsh glare of unaccustomed daylight. But they have not quite yet broken into full disorderly retreat. I digress. Slightly.

So it seems more likely that most of The Base may grudgingly accept their leaders' slightly sweaty and trembling invitation to ignore that distracting senate scandal (among myriad others...) and take a flying leap long, warm bubbly soak in the party's patented Kool-Aid Jacuzzi. And feel free to drink a little of it. Actually a lot.

It may help those base delegates to ignore the even baser clouds of flying monkeys in short pants PMO kids. who will be frantically trying to winch together both their crumpled leader's mojo and the tattered curtain that they would really, really like to be shrouding the unpleasantness of Duffster*uck.

It might work. . . because, you know, those amoral, lying lefties ain't fit to run the country.

On the other hand, they might just be left with a bad aftertaste, and the nagging suspicion that 'somebody' very senior in the Prime Minister's Office has been peeing copiously into the hot tub, all along. . .

They might.

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. . .

In the blood.

Repeating a Harper Majority Government (™,®,but especially ©...) mantra that already glitters with either the polish of hard wear or that sparkly Twilight vampire crap, the federal anti-labour minister has ordered Air Canada's flight attendants' union straight to a procedurally-sketchy Industrial Relations Board arbitration tomorrow. Do Not Strike. Do Not Pass Go. Definitely Do Not Collect $200.

She opines (again) that these people must not be allowed to hurt the economy. Probably better than when she opined that "cancer is sexy," huh?

"These people" took a 15 per cent pay cut back in the day when Air Canada was hurting, and are still starting out at a monthly wage that barely covers a so-so one-bedroom apartment in downtown Ottawa, never mind the food and utilities. Forget cable. Even basic.

But, hey! If you could afford that hookup, the new retrosoap Pan Am's success would prove that the job's glamour still totally makes up for the poverty, obscene shifts, and antediluvian management. Right?

Apparently it's okay for these people to hurt, as long as "the economy", usually limned as some kind of shadowy, all-powerful, yet strangely fragile third person, does not. This quasi-person must be protected with the kind of dumb, short-term union-shafting tactics that, down the line, inevitably will lead to bunch of (here's an economic term, for, ummm, trained economists...) pent-up demand. From labour.

It has apparently not yet dawned on too many Harper Majority Government (™,®,but especially ©...) types that the economy is made up of individuals. Like, say, flight attendants. And that if you pull this shit enough, they'll eventually get pissed enough to come back at ya.

About the first time Lisa Raitt started dropping legislative howitzer rounds on any union that even smelled like it might be thinking about a strike, she began to tell interviewers that she grew up in an old-school union family in Nova Scotia, that her affinity with labour was "in the blood".

Was it really only this past June that she could still pull that one straight-faced? At the time, the great grey Glob said she was "an awkward foil for critics portraying the Conservative government as an enemy of Canada’s labour movement."

To establish that article's background (and to launch my now-trademark digression, a full nine paragraphs late in my books...) one must note that its top photo is of Ms. Raitt, sportin' what looks, to my jaundiced yellow eye, suspiciously like a blue sweater, and, ummm, cuddling an expedient kitten.

In retrospect, that should have been the only tell that we really needed, to give context to her poker-faced claims to blue-collar cred...

A vexing vortex

This test, passed to me by The Sage Scribe, is very brief with only one question. But it's a very important one, especially considering the news of the past month. By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally.

The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision. Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous. Please read slowly and give due consideration to each line.

THE SITUATION:

You are in Ottawa. There is chaos all around you caused by a huge mid-December storm with severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical proportions. You are a photo-journalist working for a major Canadian newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless. You're trying to shoot career-making photos.

There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing into the water of the Ottawa River. Nature is unleashing all of its destructive fury.

THE TEST:

Suddenly, you see four men in the water. They are fighting for their lives, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer ... Somehow, the men look familiar ...

You suddenly realize who they are ... It's Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe!

You notice that the raging waters are about to take them under forever. You have two options: You can save lives or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, documenting the death of the country's most powerful men at possibly one of Canada's most important historical moments!

THE QUESTION:

Here's the question, and please give an honest answer ...

Would you select high contrast colour film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?