Oh, America. . .

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

This in from our campaign correspondent...

The secret Stephen Harper, revealed

The Unbearable Lie-ness of Being Stephen J. Harper

Let me start by digressing: a new low, even for me. My Uncle Donny was a flake, even by coyote standards. Hell, prairie chickens thought he was clueless, which you'd know to be pure insult if you'd ever seen one of their Mensa meetings.

Anyway, Uncle Donny used to obsess about climbing those skeletal old paddle blade windmills you once saw on most prairie farms. The kind that pumped water into cattle watering tanks and such, on any number of home quarters. He figured if he could get up high enough, being able to see further than anything else would be an advantage.

Dogs ain't really climbers. With supercanine effort, he could scrabble about a third of the way up the tower. Then his fear of heights would kick in, his brain would go "tilt", he'd have a vertigo attack and fall off. Usually on his head.

"There goes Don Coyote, tilting off windmills again," the prairie chickens would say.

Here (finally, you might say...) is the point: sometimes, despite Uncle Donny's kinda-concussed example, I too feel the urge to tilt off windmills. It's a coyote thing.  And careful readers of this space know I've tilted at The Right Honorable Prime Minister Stephen Joseph Harper since his first minority government.

We'd like to welcome a recent crapload of national pundits and columnists to this soiree. Because, hey, better late than never. Us semimythical coyotes have been well-placed to see plenty of cases of prairie populism. We expect to see more. They're all characterized by true believers, chugging deep from a heady brew of opportunism, mendacity and batshit-crazy. And us coyotes are of the considered opinion that of the lowdown, lyin' rattlesnakes that have led these movements, the PM is right, ummm, down there.

Now he, and this week's human furniture up at the PMO, wish us to think that a highly controlling PM was about the only person in the PMO who was not party to the strangely large and desperate scheme to pay off Senator-in-Disgrace Mike Duffy to, maybe, shut up and put up.

Since Duffy loudly and serially did not, everything about the PM's story has, ummm, evolved. Except for that one item about him having nothing to do with it. Kinda odd, for a guy obsessed with talking point discipline. And an unholy titanic sales job is going into making us buy this talking point above all others. I expect the calculation is, that the waxed, buffed, yet still-strangely-unattractive face of the Harper Government must cling to plausible deniability, no matter how implausible, for the party to survive.

For a man with Mr. Harper's record of high moral rectitude and avowed strong views on openness, transparency, accountability and responsibility in government, I'm sure such disappointing evidence of all this unethical lying and chicanery among his hand-picked political and administrative types would be so unbearable that he would quit politics in disgust. Except, ummm, oh, wait...!

At some point, I wonder if any of the cast (surely of thousands by now...) that have been forcibly frog-marched off the Plank, or the large stock of pliant, fresh noobs lining up for their turn,  might begin to think that the party would actually fare better without the guy who's doing the shoving.

Yeah, he brought 'em to the promised land. But they're now well past that particular hallelujah.  Are they not at least beginning to wonder if anybody will be left to be the party except him?  I mean, after he knifes 'em all in the back to save his face, his implausible deniability, and remaining shreds of his reputation?

From where I sit, about a third of the way up this old windmill, the guy looks willing to kill the party he leads, to keep keep his illusions of self-respect. Kinda like another lyin' rattlesnake oil purveyor who, a couple of decades back, totally trashed an earlier mark of Tories. Whom Mr. Harper, if memory serves, froze out when he started to smell like tainted goods. Yet again.

Against type, them true believers might want to take notes and learn.  In case.

Just sayin'...

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?

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. . .

Clement: "Ignore anyone who says I have porked!"

Tony C. Repeatedly busted for inane utterances in defense of a whole string of dodgy, ideology-driven government doofinesses, and porking on the public dime. Again, today, from the looks of it. Yet still fighting a valiant rearguard action against anything resembling reality. Ya gotta admire his sheer, pigheaded tenacity. It's as if he's trying to hypnotize an entire country into not seeing what's as plain as the nose on your face...

BREAKING NEWS: Conrad Black Appointed Head of Statistics Canada

Long census form records to be stored in his car trunk, never to be seen by anyone, anywhere, ever...

Like Zoom says!

Y'know, I've been watching the whole Census Long Form thing and thinkin' that the Prime Minister must be denser than a black hole to have decided to scrap it. Exactly what kind of hole that makes him is a subject for a whole 'nother post. I dogress.

Anyway, I'd lined up my arguments and was about to launch 'em into the near blogosphere when I happened upon Zoom's latest post over at Knitnut. You tell 'em, Zoom! Our personal styles might differ a little teensy bit, but in the particulars we agree. 100 per cent, as statisticians would say. If they weren't hobbled by idiotic governments...

That cell phone law

I held out some hope last fall when Ontario enacted a law banning drivers from using handheld cell phones.

Huh. Didn't make a damn bit of difference. Drivers still yak - and endanger lives - openly.

The observant among you may note the statute exempts police. I'm left to ponder why, since the law came in, every cop who drives past suddenly has a handset glued to their ear. How much back-channel chatter do they need? And why? I digress.

I've filed tonsa anecdotal evidence in my doggy rounds through Ottawa's mean streets. I hafta say, it proves to me that cell phone addicts make the streets meaner. Drivers, walkers, it doesn't matter - I've been mowed down by both, and my once-fine bushy tail is a stomped shadow of its former self.

People on phones do not see their surroundings when they look inward to channel the other end of the line. I have not figured out the mechanism by which drivers think they should continue to (ab)use phones when research suggests strongly that they're so gosh darn bad at it, but the conviction seems universal. Salient signs are a thousand-yard stare and a deep obliviosity to surroundings. So much obliviosity that pedestrian offenders' glazed eyes do not even flicker as they lurch against other sidewalk citizens.

I suspect the only reason everybody thinks they can drive and talk on a cell at the same time is because the very act makes them so heedless that they never register the carnage in their wakes. Recently, f'rinstance, some nit in a high-buck Teutonic conveyance was so other-focussed that he nearly splattered me across a red-lit crosswalk. The shock on his face after he screeched to a hasty halt was compounded when I planted my muddy paws on his window sill, stuck my pointy snout in, and conversationally suggested he turn off his fucking phone so as to forestall another near-murder at the next traffic signal.

Sadly, he was not so shocked that he couldn't whine back a shaky riposte. Along the lines of, "Oh yeah? Fuck you, too!" But we both knew it was the lamest of bids to save his red-lit face...

Death, taxes and, oh yeah, annoying phone calls

You might think Canada's tax collectors would be a sharp bunch. Competent, educated, shrewd, with sharpened pencils at the ready. And the latest electronic tools at their disposal to flag overdue accounts, zero in on debtors and efficiently scoop up cash that's rightly owed to Canadians.

You would also be wrong.

At least, if my recent experience is anything close to typical.

Here is a verbatim transcript, with only minor identity-protecting edits, of a message left on my home answering machine:

"Hi Indochinese Obstetrician, this is Peso Cohlecta from the Canada Revenue Agency. I'm calling in regard to your old numbered corporation X87X97PD. Currently there's a lot of overdue GST returns. And I think we've been having ongoing conversations -- or you have -- with different people at the organization. I just want to get this account cleared up in terms of file-up-to-date and closed. Would you please give me a call and I can help you with that in any way I can. Currently with the notional assessment that's been done, we think you owe $7,500, which is no doubt wrong, but it's the debt that currently stands until this gets corrected, so please call me."

Things I told Mr. Cohlecta upon calling him back:
1. I have never had, nor been involved in, a numbered corporation of any kind.
2. I have not had ongoing conversations with people at the Canada Revenue Agency, just one previous conversation six months ago with him, Mr. Cohlecta.
3. In this previous conversation, I told him my name is Independent Observer, not Indochinese Obstetrician, and that I had absolutely no clue what he was talking about.

Mr. Cohlecta then said, "Oh, we must be looking for a different Indochinese Obstetrician."

"OK," I replied, "what does that have to do with me?"

"Well, your names are very similar."

"Actually, no, they are not even close."

"Are you calling me back from a 905 area code number?"

"No, it's a 613 number. I live in Ottawa."

"Oh," said Mr. Cohlecta, "that's the problem. I'm going to scratch your phone number from the database."

"I'm still totally confused," I asked. "How could this happen?"

"Well, when we are seeking a debtor, sometimes we cast a wide net and go after people with names that might match."

"This is the second call I've received from you. How do I know there won't be more? Could you kindly send me something in writing to assure me this was a mistake?"

"Well, your number has been scratched from the database. You have my personal assurance I won't call you again. And I'm going to be here for years."

We are all doomed.

Propping up Palin or Meeting Innocence

They all batted their eyes at me at some point during the Hallowe’en party, and they all acted brainless bubbly like the real Alaskan Queen.

The Erratic Genius claims that, “The props is what makes a costume.”

Well, the first Sarah that I met had focused on the real Sarah’s curves, and placed two pairs of shoulder pads in her bra to give herself a more rounded look. She also wore a much envied homemade vote button. (see picture above)

The second Sarah carried a shot-gun all evening and pointing it at people while sing songing, “Drill baby, drill!”

The third Sarah proudly clutched a portfolio filled with home and garden type magazines and was escorted by her own Joe the Plumber.

But here is the point of this post - two people at the party had never heard of Sarah Palin!

“Innocents!”, I blurted out envious of their purity.

Gym Teachers Named Diane from Nunavut Need Apply

Some people look to the election as an important milestone for Canadians to take stock of their democracy and possibly set a new course for the future. For others it’s a time to possibly apply for a new job. In fact, in the last election 1,356 citizens applied for the job of Member of Parliament. And why not? It pays $155K a year, and if you can get re-elected two more times, you get a pretty healthy pension. And getting re-elected may not be as hard as you think – about 85% chances, if you look at the recent past. That’s why 278 incumbent members re-applied for the job. You’ve got until Monday at 2 p.m. to throw your hat into the race.

But how can one possibly win, you ask? Here is some advice to help you:

Run for the Conservatives in Alberta

With the last election, the Conservatives booted out the last-standing Liberal in Alberta (“Landslide” Annie McLellan) and took all 28 seats in the province. She lost, even though she got over 38% of the vote in her Edmonton riding. Your big challenge in getting on the Conservative ticket in Alberta is winning over your riding association.

Run in a small riding where only a few people vote

The average winning MP had to get about 23,000 votes in order to be invited to sit in Ottawa. That said, if you were lucky enough to run in a small riding, like Nunavut's Nancy Karatek-Lindell, all you needed was 3,673 votes to get the job. Hell, that’s hardly more votes than one needs to win student council president. And you get to represent a territory almost four times larger than France.

Have the right job to start with

Many people think being a lawyer is your ticket to political life. Of the 86 lawyers that ran in the last election only 21 got elected. That’s almost 25%, which isn’t too shabby, but not a sure thing. Other jobs with better election odds one might consider as a prelude to public office include:

Occupation / Odds of Winning / Examples

Car Dealership owner / 100% / Dave Van Kesteren
Gym teacher / 100% / John-Yves Laforest
Chiropractor / 50% / Jim Lunney, Ruby Dhalla
Clergyman/ 50% / Bill Blaikie
Cook / 50% / Catherine Bell

Name Brand

I remember once hearing John Diefenbaker speak to reporters in the late 1970’s about governance in Canada. At one point he sarcastically said that “you can’t let any Joe run the country.” Of course, Joe Clark was the sitting PM at the time, making the statement all the funnier, but if a guy named Barack thinks he can win the Presidency, then surely names don’t make a difference in politics? Here’s our take on the results for a few common names:

First name / Number of Candidates / Number of winning candidates (%)

Dave or David / 53 / 9 (16%)
Mike or Micheal / 50 / 8 (16%)
John / 45 / 8 (18%)
Jim or James / 30 / 10 (33%)
Joe or Joseph / 12 / 6 (50%)
Diane / 7 / 4 (57%)
Bev or Beverly / 8 / 2 (25%)

I'll have a non-fat chai latte, hold the cup

Waiting for Audrey recently at a downtown Starbucks, I ordered a latte.

The woman behind the counter responded in the same tone she might use had I asked her to co-pilot an imaginary spaceship to the planet Xatox or express milk my waiting llama on the sidewalk.

"You want an actual cup?" she asked.

"Yes, an actual cup would be great," I said with a smile.

I also ordered a piece of banana cake, and upon hearing the crinkle of a paper bag I chimed in, "That's for here, too."

"Oh, yes," she said, soon adding, "We only have this saucer. All the actual plates are broken."

"A saucer would be fine."

I'm not a green-tinged saint but, hey, I try.

Common sense, not to mention a study or five, tells us ceramic mugs and plates are more environmentally friendly than disposable cups and paper bags, even when you factor in the energy needed to manufacture and wash the dishes.

But invariably the chain coffee joints offer you a disposable cup rather than a reusable one.

Starbucks says it wants to "re-establish" the ceramic mug as its "global standard" for people swilling java in-store by 2010.

Let's hope the planet is still around.

Image: http://yogitimesblog.blogspot.com/