From the Antisocial Media Dept...

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. . .

Cat bloggers for Harper. . .

And now a message from the Party of Fiscal, ummm, Responsibility...

Just, maybe, not the definition of responsibility they thought they meant. . .

Item: PM orders MPs to flog child care bribe

Sigh. Back to kitty blogging...

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. . .

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...

Julian Fantino - Minister of Veterans Affronts

She tried to break the Internet...

...only broke Photoshop®...

Canada's fight against ebola: Side by side with, ummm... North Korea.

You may have noticed that in the past week, Canada's currently sitting Government Of The Base, By The Base, For The Base, has banned visas from citizens of countries that have ebola outbreaks.

At a guess, it's probably calculated to play well with The Base. Especially in the drear-long, ummm, year-long run-up to what HarperCo is doing its level worst to turn into a tawdry burlesque of an election. I digress. We were talking here about ebola, not elections. Weren't we?

So in only the latest of what's becoming a pretty impressive pile of really badly misinformed — or maybe just plain pandering — sorta-science-y decisions, they've taken a policy cue from, I guess, North Korea. Which, along with those other global intelleckshul heavy-hitters, Gabon, Haiti and Mauritius, has banned travellers from the State of Ebola.

The sole other developed nation that's done it is Australia. Whose prime minister and ours, you will recall, held a like minded mutual butt sniffing and tail wagging session ummm, exceedingly cordial official state visit, back in June.

So we can probably take it as a given that Canada's rigged-on-the-fly visa policy on travelers from ebola-stricken nations was instituted for bad reasons. Given that, it also holds that if we were to look at, say, any intellectually-sound medical evidence, we can call the ban boneheaded for good reasons.

It falls under the aegis of what an editor of one of this country's large financial dailies is pleased to call "junk science". Which in his case, is just about any science with which he personally disagrees for inchoate ideological reasons. And in our case, is just about any policy purporting to appear to be evidence-based, from those clever hyperpartisan children running amok in the prime minister's office. And all of their uncritical mouthpieces.

You could look that up, but you don't have to, because I did it for you.

Sigh. In the hands of the prime minister's office, Canada's science-related policy (using the term ever more loosely as time goes one...) lately looks like a coyote blues standard: if it weren't for bad science, we wouldn't have no science at all. . .

Harper wears Iraq

The PM, it is reported, has decided to dip a toe, likely newly-clad in spit shined combat boots for the photo op, into the sucking morass that is Iraq: "It's just Noble, okay? Clear and present danger to Canada, okay? But I'm not telling you anything else, nyah, nyah, nyah!"

One columnist type, probably tick-boxed on the PMO Enemies List as "mostly on-side, except when he's disturbingly off-script" called it Harper's Churchill moment.

In fairness to the pugnacious ol' bon vivant, we must note that for Churchill the danger was far more clear and present, and the actual battle arena far better defined. As opposed to being an amorphous wanna-be state moshing around the outback Middle East.

We jaded coyotes, by now probably on the PMO Enemies List, period, know that the moshers are vile people who do very vile things. We're just not clear how tossing a half-dozen planes and maybe two dozen guys into that pit to chase 'em is noble, or makes the PM the kind of heavy international playa he thinks he is. And he and his minions remain fatally short on supporting details. But we await his no-doubt historic speech with interest:

"We shall defend our shrinking polls, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches of our fake lake, we shall fight on the landing grounds we shall build for the F-35, we shall robocall the hell out of our data fields, we shall run for in the hills ; we shall never surrender! Although you can bet your fuzzy asses we'll prorogue. Whenever."

Yup. Words for the ages.

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...

"Spin": not the same as "Rinse"

It has come to my (increasingly) jaundiced yellow coyote eye that HarperCo,  feeling (increasingly) singed under the (increasingly) lampoonable The Harper Government (™®©) brand, has lately been  trying what one would expect of persons that rely more on spin, respin, and re-re-spin, than on intelligent policy:  semi-stealthily trying to rebrand itself as Canada's Founding Party.  

Hey, nothing distracts an electorate curling its lip at the fragrant kind of openness, transparency and hyperpartisan overentitlement that leads straight to, well, DuffsterCluck and thence to the PMO slamming its door in the public's face. Except maybe callin' in makeup to respackle and respin that ol' pig.  Again.

Guess they haven't learned much from the mistakes of the country's former Natural Governing Party, except to rewrite 'em as cartoons.  Sadly for them, "spin" ain't quite "rinse".

Set aside for the moment the fact that the current Conservative Party reads as more Reform usurper than Tory. Which makes its claim to be the sole legit license holder for all those tacky souvenir Sir John A. MacDonald shot glasses and beer mugs, ummm, debatable in some circles.

Which somehow segues, with our usual cement-mixer-like grace, to how all us semi-mythical coyotes have been amusing ourselves this summer. We've been playing that meme-ish word game in which one removes a letter or two from a book, movie or play title, to arrive at a different better title.  Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven becomes The Rave, f'rinstance, which I picture to be about goths being bricked into a warehouse where a DJ is spinning really dark tunes.  Frank Herbert's Dune becomes Dun, a really, really long, dull science fiction epic. And Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus becomes Tits Andronicus.  Whom I see as a 40s noir private eye who holsters her gat  in her stocking top.

I digress. It's not hard, with my attention span. Where the hell was I?

Right.  Seeing this "Canada's Founding Party" gag in that light, I figure that a bunch of PMO staffers a few Fridays back got squiffled on two-for-the-price-of-one lite American beers after work while brainstorming - using the term loosely - how to hose down and hotwax that increasingly soiled bus that so many expendable bodies have been thrown under, lately..

So it's not hard for a coyote to rediscover the title from which they were trying to depart:  "Canada's Foundering Party."

There.  Fixed that for you . . . much better.

The principal principle principle

Lately, I have noticed a disturbing trend in the language of the prime minister and his henchthingies. You know, the new-but-rapidly-aging trick with which, faced with any old screwup of their own making, they contrive to still appear (heh...) right, because their stand is based on "Principles".

This phrase is uttered in tones of finality. The kind that suggest that all things the PM labels as "Principles" cannot, must not, be questioned. By anybody. Because it's, you know, a Principle. Therefore Unassailable.

To the PM's fans, the term also implies pleasing undertones of moral discourse. Therefore even more Unassailable. One never negotiates Morality.

In a short time, the trick has become a trope, the new lazy-ass-all-purpose spin management tool over at the PMO. Splop a few random "Principles" into the speaking points on everything very arguably sketchy and/or dumb and, hey, presto, all butts are completely wallpapered clear up to the ethical ceiling. Which at this juncture, is, ummm, low.

My Oxford Big Word Thingy, Canine Ed.©®™, is an admirably clear (and massive) reference, but with two-odd dense pages of alternative definitions for "principle" ya know there's plenty of room for creative (and handy) misinterpretation.

Avowed principles - especially in politics, and especially among recent ruling parties, are not necessarily fundamental or immutable, or even true. They are ideas upon which policies are based. Sometimes pretty bad ideas. Even rotten ones. If you have a minute, you could look up "rotten" in the Oxford Big Word Thingy, Canine Ed.©®™.

I could, of course, have gotten all of this deplorably wrong. I am semimythically canine and fallible.

The prime minister could - and maybe would - logically argue that his principles can't be wrong. Because he has none left.

O'Brien's brain

Anybody heard much from Mayor Larry lately? I mean, aside from innocuous grip and grin snaps in throwaway tabloids, and the usual public pabulum? No? Thought not. Us coyotes, neither.

We may have to thank the mayor's latest handlers for this. It's the kinda brain trust that epitomizes a simple rule: if ya don't have a brain yourself, buy one. Although I note that in this case there's a whole team of, ummm, expert henchthingies to stitch up the ol' intellectual fabric. Possibly from the whole cloth.

While we can imagine it, coyotes are not party to the (no doubt) Hunter-Thompson-esque blend of medieval restraint devices, modern psycho-pharmacology and space age adhesives that it might take to keep some kinda lid on hizzoner's natural, ummm, exuberance. Whatever it is, it works like a damn. The result has been (mostly) blessed quiet for the citizenry. We needed it after all that came before.

Enquiring coyotes everywhere suppose that the reason His Nibs is actually paying heed to his high-powered advisors for a change is because he might still be eyeing that second term in the big chair, and hoping a short stint of relative decorum will do the trick.

Fortunately for those of us who are sensitive, the new strategy so far has merely reinforced the esteem with which we hold our beloved mayor. One hopes the electorate's famously lousy long term memory holds on just a teensy bit longer, so we can all support him right out of office in fall elections. In the style which he deserves.

Scammed and looking for advice...

I was scammed last spring by an Ottawa U professor who reminded me of Mr. Bean. Here is the sequence of events:

1) I met Mr. Bean at a conference in a European country. Mr. Bean confesses that he has no cash, and can't even buy himself a cup of coffee because he can't get the bank people to understand him and for some reason he can't get a cash advance on his credit card.
2) Aggie, realizing that he is from Ottawa, the city in which she lives, hands over 50 Euros to Mr. Bean, along with her business card, saying, "Here. Borrow this. I know where you work."
3) Mr. Bean is grateful, and says how embarassing it is, but takes the money.
4) Aggie does not hear from Mr. Bean.
5) Aggie decides to email Mr. Bean in late August, reminding him that she is there.
6) He responds with photos of the conference, good wishes to Aggie, and says he is heading off to Paris for another conference.
7) Aggie responds with, "Have fun in Paris. Don't forget to bring your Euros this time!"
8) Mr. Bean doesn't respond.
9) Aggie's work colleague who also met Mr. Bean at the conference runs into him by chance on the Ottawa U. campus and says, "Hi. Remember me. Aggie's friend. Remember Aggie, the one who so generously bailed you out." He mutters, "Oh, yes." then rushes off.
10) Aggie's colleague recounts this chance meeting to Aggie. Aggie is now pissed off at this scamming bastard and sends another email, this time saying. "Ok, Mr. Bean. Write me the check for $80 and send it to this address"...
11) Mr. Bean responds curtly with a "Yes". No thank you. No Sorry. Nothing.
12) That exchange was a week and a half ago. No cheque has arrived.

So, blog readers. I am asking for your advice here. What are the next steps? What should Aggie do?