Foreign interests

Last week, the federal natural resources minister, Joe Oliver, came out all rabid attack-doggy on "radical foreign elements" set on infiltrating and hijacking the Northern Gateway pipeline hearings to bring up environmental issues. Some kafuffle, huh?

Northern Gateway would be, if you've had your head buried in the, ummm, sands, these last weeks, a really big pipe for pumping great wads of sludge from the Athabasca tar sands, through some of BC's most pristine remaining wilderness to the west coast, where megatankers (...none, we hope, named Exxon Valdez...) would bug out for China with it.

It's the government's, ummm, better alternative to the now-shelved Keystone XL project, another big-jeezuz pipeline that was designed to pump that self-same sludge through some of Nebraska's most pristine wilderness, and thence to the refineries of Texas et.al. Are you starting to see a theme? And what could possibly go wrong?

Yesterday, in another vaguely-fawning Peter Mansbridge interview, the PM appeared to cool the hot oil cauldrons. Although we should remember that: A) This is a guy who's all about appearance over reality; and: B) He'd have to have approved Oliver's frothy yappin' in the first place. There's a definite strategic messaging advantage in that kind of thing: He looks about as reasonable as he's capable of of - which ain't very - as he sweetly opines that "Canada shouldn't be one giant national park for the northern half of North America."

This is pretty much standard operating procedure. The Prime Minister's Office tells the useful idiots on the back benches and in the ministers' thrones to say the really dumb/incendiary crap, so he can later look prime ministerial while he pours heavy oil on troubled waters.

The troubled waters in this case, though, are in the Athabasca River. As an Alberta doggy, I can vouch for its beauty if you ever get that far north. Not to mention the Beaufort Sea, where it empties. You know. The Arctic Ocean. Where, notwithstanding all those, well-enforced environmental regulations, increasing masses of escaping toxic aromatics seem likely to eventually ooze from the giant settling ponds surrounding a growing bunch of heavy oil mines - pretty much owned by, ummm, foreign elements.

One is China. Judging by the monumentally appalling way that country's government treats its own environment in the name of economic gain, I don't imagine they'd give a rat's ass about screwing up Canada - good - to feed their own strategic oil wants. Ditto the U.S. of A.

If Joe Oliver thinks I'm some kind of dangerous radical for considering that environmental concerns deserve a serious airing in any discussion of the tar sands, let him. He's kind of heavily biased. And kind of wrong. In his own way as much as a fossil as the animals from which all that evil-smelling goo in Athabasca came from. Hey! Maybe he's so defensive about the tar sands because he's related!

Way I see it, Canada being one giant national park may indeed be dreaming in technicolour. But it shouldn't be one giant black national toxic waste dump, either.

Gregg: "Artifice is the kryptonite of public life..."

"We may all have the right to our opinions but we do not have the right to our own facts..."

More about that here in today's Great Gray Globe...

Peter MacKay...

...Never a man to back away from a Challenger...

Vote...

Parked as we are atop a few clawed mittsful of cute, furry food chains, us coyotes got no illusions that life is guaranteed to be fair. Or to make sense.

Still, with the ballot countdown now in the hours, I gotta raise a fuzzy eyebrow at Stephen Harper's last shot of gall and wormwood-twisty logic: commanding lefties to vote for him, or, ummmm, dangerous lefties will screw up the stable government that only he can give us.

From his gang's performance to date, I think it must be the kind of stable that needs regular shoveling out.

Con strategists, as in previous kicks at that increasingly dented can full of majority, were counting on their voter base being the only one motivated enough to show. Everybody else was supposed to feel so disheartened and discouraged by the gutter politics of late that they just blew off the balloting. If you didn't vote tomorrow, then they'd win.

That clever script's obviously had an emergency rewrite. And semimythical coyotes -- uncharacteristically -- have little to say about that, except this:

If Liberals vote Conservative to stave off the NDP... then the Toryists win.

Oar not...

It's unclear at the moment, what with different sources touting vastly different he-said-she-said versions of the story on Sunday. But it seems at least likely that the reason the incumbent minority PM is so certain that those costly new stealth fighter planes he's set his heart on would cost ludicrously less, by at least half, than the figures that every other financial and military authority other than the PM and the Department of National Defence has come up with, is because they're ummm, gliders.

But us coyotes can see the, ummm, logic. Yeah. That's it. Logic. Because this solves everything. All the haters who've pointed out that our
economically-trained PM has never actually practiced economics - nor, apparently, economy of any kind - look like losers this time.

Because ordering motorless planes saves a veritable billions-and-billions bundle on up-front costs and downline engine maintenance. And it'll put the Canadian military at the tippy-top forefront of those petroleum conservation and low carbon footprint thingies. Just what the country needs to counterbalance that plethora of negative tar sands environmental impacts, I'm sure. Not to mention how much stealthier they'll be than everybody else's stealth fighters, if they don't make any noise.

How to make 'em go, then? Look no further than Canada's proud and ancient voyageur tradition, people! Just borrow the Olympic rowing team's supply of high-tech carbon fibre oars (to match the high-tech carbon fibre wings, y'unnerstand...) and paddle them suckers! Using penitentiary prisoners as galley slaves would, without a Tory doubt, save huge bucks on the big prison-building schema, too!

All done within budget, just like those prudent, conservative fiscal managers said they would! Problem solved! Mission accomplished! Where have I heard that line before? Never mind! How could I have ever doubted?

Stockholm Syndrome

Well, since today's Ottawa Stun's screaming front page compares Michael Ignatief to Chairman Mao for mentioning, ummm, flowers in last night's debate - 'cuz we all know only Alberta-tarsands-hatin' godless commies like flowers - it's time to bring the smaller, feistier, crazier counterpropaganda machine we know as Coyote News back outta mothballs. Excuse the smell.

It may also be time to point out that godless Chinese commies have invested in a multibillion-dollar gooey black glop of the tar sands themselves. I'm unsure of the implications for godless communism, neocon theology or the filthy strip mine formerly known as the northern half of Wild Rose Country (oops). But I imagine I'm the only one so confused. Everybody else seems sure of their facts, however specious. I also imagine I digress again. Excuse the smell.

Over at Knitnut today, Zoom is wondering how people can bring themselves to vote for Stephen Harper. She ain't the only one. Poll after poll since the election began has depicted conservative approval ratings floating airily above the rest, into something not far off majority territory. Harper's contempt for parliament and, really, anybody who isn't Stephen Harper, as well as numerous scandals; issues of, ummm, human resources in the backroom; and criminal and procedural slams, all seem to slide off his hunched, oily back like so much heavy crude...

I blame Stockholm Syndrome. Hence my whacked-out counterpoint to today's calculated Stun Mao inhibitor: five years ago, a neocon terrorist kidnapped this country and held it hostage. He and his terrorist crew began doing everything they could to degrade the country's existing reputation and institutions.

Initially, most citizens were appalled. But after five years of abusive, coercive brainwashing, the hostages started feeling sympathetic for that poor Mr. Harper. Everybody throwing up roadblocks in his way, every time he tried to do the least reasonable little thing. Read that last sentence any way ya want.

Even the pundits started to say "Look. He's changed. He's become so much more reasonable". Well, except for that pesky prorogation thing. And that pesky stonewalling thing. And that pesky information control thing. And those pesky "throw all the executive assistants under the bus when their ministers get caught with their mitts in either flagrante delicto, the cookie jar, the pork barrel, the office supplies, or the back door of the institute for lame statistical reasoning" things. Depending on the day.

Yeah, well. History has proved the pundits pretty much wrong about Brian Mulroney's wonderfulness, too.

Harper hasn't changed. He spent much of last evening's debate holding his usual face in a flabby rictus determined by his PR handlers to resemble, as closely as possible, Dopey the Dwarf. (Sorry, Fourth Dude. I know the Dopester is a relation...)

They determined that it made him look innocuous and reasonable. Zoom, whom I respect much more, determined that he actually looked scary. Good instinct, that. Keep Stockholm Syndrome in mind, and go with it...

The (completely) unreliable narrative

It used to be that unreliable narratives were a device of true artists. Such as, say, Joseph Conrad, considered still to be a master of the novel.

Us semimythical coyotes have gained a certain smaller, more folklore-ish rep as unreliable narrators in prairie cultures with storytelling traditions. I admit we may tend to fudge ummm, small details in the interests of extending a good shaggy dog narrative. In this ramshackle blog's salad days, we had quite a snappy repartee on the roles of unreliable narrators. Begun, if memory serves, by our departed Muse.

But dissembling doggies got nuthin' on the current crop of political operators. As a cog in the unreliable narrator biz, I feel increasingly insulted by their rapid-fire repeater talking points as they attempt to, quote, "seize the narrative". These guys don't give a beaver's butt (or posterior of another rodent of your choice. Porcupine's patoot? I digress...) about the all-important kernel of truth any more. Every good fiction needs it. Yet sucking deeply from the pressurized cylinders of rarified weirdness inside their bubble/hothouse/echo-chamber/whatever, the minority ruling party has convinced itself that voters won't notice it's tossed truth aside completely.

Tasting power has made 'em kinda hallucinaTory. Sad really. I'm supposed to be the critter with the loose grip on reality.

I think the blatant, repeated fibbage bears on the current much-discussed-and-lamented election malaise, particularly in the under-35 cohort. Can't blame 'em. Being born in the path of a relentless tsunami of consumer advertising has made 'em awesome bullshit detectors. Faced with an eternal flush of overspun, overwhelming effluent, of which politics has become a pathological subset, most put the shields up and pointedly slope off to higher, drier ground.

Awhile back, some amoral backroom operator decided they no longer needed to pay lipservice even to the tiny grain of truth that good fictions rely upon. Because just making crap up "works". Well, yeah. For a while. Crudely. But blowing off an entire rising generation is a spectacularly shortsighted tactic for democracy and the nation as a whole.

Neocon backrooms harbour teams of strategists, spin doctors and writers whom I imagine are considered in their small, specialized circles to be "artists" at what they do. By the logic they themselves surely would write into Stephen Harper or John Baird's or Tony Clement's briefing books if they'd thought of it, that makes 'em, ummm... con artists. Ba-da-bomp. Rimshot.

If you're a wanna-be government whose much-vaunted base seems to be a bunch of pissed off old poops, and you're running out of time to nail down a majority before they die, and you're on a self-assigned mission to change the ethos of an entire country against its will, it makes a Pyrrhic kind of sense to lie your way into power. And at what cost to the rest of us?

* * * Update * * *

Oh, and? When you finally do see fit to artistically insert a kernel of truth in your narrative? Make sure it matches the matter at hand.
Pro-tip: Do not screw with one of Canada's most trusted - and feisty - Parliamentary officers...

Let the mud wrestling begin...

It doesn't take a cranky semimythical doggie's sahnsitive schnozz to smell the soft reek of an unwanted election hardening. The finance minister positively beamed as he spooled up his precast talking points with yesterday's interviewers, that his prudent budget was, no, nay, never intended to provoke an election. Because you know, his government would never indulge in that kind of game playing.

Ptui. And yes, motivated canines can spit as well as cats, anytime.

The PM must feel relief at ditching the mime show of interest in the nation's policy good. I'm sure it's been a strain. Now he can get back to his hyperpartisan self, start smearing other parties as the irresponsible motivators - those jerks - and get on with his real agenda. One more tiresome crack at that elusive majority.

He is far from the first PM to maneuver thus. It's as if he has combed and taken to heart every instance of political gamesmanship for the past 40 or 50 years. But only from comic books. Finer nuances have been lacking from the beginning. And every time the PM or his wunderkind perceive that they got away with another one, they dumb their playbook down another notch, to even cruder ploys.

Hence the near-permanent barrage of contemptuous US-Republican-style ads slagging the opposition leader's character and telling Canadians - in terms of the lowest possible denominator - "Tories good. Others evil".

Finally in the last couple of weeks, emboldened by a growing flood of character and corruption issues starting to jet out from behind the PMO's crumbling disciplinary dike, opposition parties have started throwing back smears of their own. Parliamentary politics lately has become like hippos mud wrestling in a smallish plastic playpool. Hardly germane to any watcher, but unavoidably backsplattertastic.

Lost in that storm is anything like discussion of actual platforms or policies. The best we can hope for is the rote equivalent of a Grade 11 Pep Club Coordinator's high school election promises of free beer in the water fountains. Meant to charm superficially for a moment, but unbelievable, unattainable, and after the spray settles, undelivered.

Very well. Let the mud wrestling begin. But ask yourself: what the hell are federal elections actually supposed to be about? And based on that, maybe ask a candidate or two a question. Or two. And possibly keep at 'em until you get real answers.

When in doubt, mumble. Again.

Canada's minister for international co-operation ain't nicknamed "Bev Yoda" for nuthin'.

Whenever she wades deep into (another) ministerial bafflement about exactly what "international co-operation" might mean, she's a verbal Jedi. As she spouts the political equivalent of "I'm not the droid you want", her characteristic circular confusion fogs everything around her, all the way up to the already-tortured ozone layer.

Now, there's a theory out there that she's really a genius, hamstrung by her prime minister. He doesn't know tweet (or Tweet©) about international development yet micromanages it on the fly, pulling partisan pseudo-policy out of his ass ummm, thin air. Then he kicks her onto the public gym mat, to flip-flop gracelessly in defense of the indefensible.

But the evidence suggests the incompetence is her own. Under her, the Canadian International Development Agency is so knotted up by contradictory ministerial directives that it doesn't do much anymore. This may be what she wants. Or what her boss wants. That way he can declare CIDA, and/or her, redundant.

Bev Oda's latest misadventure involves somebody who, after all the relevant high-level civil servants signed a funding approval for an aid group called Kairos, scrawled a big, crude "NOT" into the official typed document to reverse its intent at the last minute. And incidentally, the labours of CIDA's own approval process. After which the minister signed it. Ummm, maybe. She's called it a routine decision ever since, up to and including the point where the parliamentary speaker said yesterday that he probably should censure her for lying about it. Except that he was so damn confused he couldn't. See what I mean? Yoda.

Why would a semi-mythical coyote in a paw-sucking midwinter funk rouse himself to rail about the deeds a lousy second-tier minister, when bigger battles loom? Because of what it shows. Her party's, and her leader's partisan manipulation of every area of government policy, and its arrogant disdain for due process is something previous governments took decades to get to. It ain't doing much for Canada's shredding international rep. Or for that matter, us at home. These guys want an election? A majority?

Thank you for listening, InterTubes. I shall now subside back into my Slough of Despond, until only my wrinkled, seasonally affective nose is visible. Other, bigger, battles later...

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'...

Oh, hey, StatsFans!

The statistic I'm most urgently concerned about right now is a disturbing spike in the unreported proportion of Canadians that think Stockwell Day is an unreported bonehead.

Not that we coyotes would ever resort to ad hominem slurs ourselves, y'understand...

Lug nuts and the census

So, even when faced with near-universal opposition, and even when the Chief Statistician quits in protest, the government has no problem trashing the mandatory census long form: "It's intrusive!!!! We're pandering to our loony fringe base, dammit!!!!"

So we coyotes will try to explain the issue in terms that make sense to the would-be defenders of this move, WHO ALWAYS SEEM TO FULL-CAP THEIR (OFTEN FURIOUSLY UNGRAMMATIC AND ANONYMOUS) FORUM COMMENTS: the lug nuts on that cherished Chevrolet half ton you use to earn your living.

Suppose your neighbourhood garage guys - call 'em Steve and Tony - say outta the blue that they want to replace all your lug nuts with Dodge lugs, because they think Chevy is arbitrary and intrusive for insisting on Chev lug nuts. Hell (they reason), Dodge lugs look pretty much the same, so no problem, right? Oh, and? Steve and Tony can pump gas, but neither's ever worked as a mechanic.

Would ya buy that, Durango? Nope. Because you, lug nut connoisseur that you are, know that Chev and Dodge lugs have different diameters, thread pitches and chamfers. Assuming they even sorta fit, those babies are gonna strip out, or leave wheel slop. Your wheels will come off, someplace inconvenient and possibly fatal.

There are a bunch of trucky things you could customize that, arguably, wouldn't wreck the ol' Silverado's utility: running boards, exhaust stacks, a big pair of them fine-looking chrome bull balls hanging off the trailer hitch. Dodge lug nuts, not so much.

Now, assume your pickup is a census. (It's a metaphor, Durango. Work with it.) See, reliable census information is Canada's business edge. Lotsa smart people rely on it to make sure the country as a whole can earn its living more efficiently. As every civilized country in the world aspires to.

A mandatory long form is intrusive, but a small price to pay for citizenship in this country you claim to love so much. Much like obeying stop signs at intersections. We work co-operatively toward common goals, unlike, say, those anarchists you hated so much at the G20. To do anything else is to court rump of skunk, and madness.

A voluntary long form is pretty much like Dodge lug nuts on your Chevy - doesn't match. Reading statistical trends properly makes tracking changes accurately over time really important. Even if you label the data you collect by the same name, changing the method you use to collect it means that you can't reasonably compare it with, well, anything that came before. The wheels come off. Just like that Chevy.

Now, I'm only a dumb coyote, so here are my questions: why would you trust an ill-fitting lug nut named Steve to change that? Why does Steve think some lug nuts are more equal than others? And why, if Steve keeps saying his opponents are unpatriotic and unCanadian, is it always him that seems hell-bent on changing this country, lug nut by lug nut, into something unrecognizable...?

Just askin'...

Please...

...make the angry wasps go away! For days, they've followed me everywhere I go, drivin' me crazy and causing me to beg complete strangers to stand ready with EpiPens®!!

We paws for technical difficulties...

The as-yet-unnamed critter is outta the bag. Mere femtoseconds after the Stately Glob disclosed former Harper media thingy Kory Teneycke's lengthy obsession with firing up a hard-right Foxic News North - now bankrolled by Stun news chain owner Quebecor Media - the chattering classes leapt on it. The principals maintain an annoyed tightlippedness at their premature outing. Damn them left-wing media, anyway!

We coyotes were never ones to resist a good (heh...) dogpile, so leave us hasten to leap.

Teneycke is one of the smallish subspecies of over-partisan neoCons who opine ("Rightly" as opposed to correctly) that Canada can only benefit from the import any truly lousy political developments from the (pre-Obama) US.

Actually, his former boss is another. So we could do worse than to ask - pointedly - just how much fatherly blessing the PM is giving Teneycke on this.

The PM has shown a hard-line, hard-right hate-on for the media in this country since getting elected. He's tried, not without success, to control the message by excluding them wherever he can and substituting a flurry of PMO spin. But still he keeps getting shafted by them media bastards at odd, inconvenient moments. Imagine that. So having a "real" TV network to tell self-serving lies about ummmm, fawningly propagandize his every move, would probably look like a winner.

I've noted before that this particular variety of neoconservative feels constantly aggrieved about the way the media portray 'em. It's an article of faith. Which means it ain't backed by facts. They don't seem to get that: 1) they're not really a representative majority in Canada; 2) that while they're "Right" all of the time, they're not right all of the time, and; 3) that there might conceivably be any legitimate criticisms of what they do.

Lacking such basic self-awareness, they resort to any tactics they think will help 'em change all that, however ill-advised for the country. They assume Canadians would love 'em if they could just control the message tightly enough.

If this thing goes strictly to the Republican, ummm Tory, ummm Kory plan, the proposed network eventually would tilt the country's already quite conservative (actually, thank you) media even further off that desirable centre bubble.

Us coyotes guess that the PM and his ummm, brain trust don't think they've trashed what lately passes for public discourse in this country quite enough yet. Apparently they envy what's happening down there... Jesus wept!

So I guess it finally comes to this: us against them, lie for lie. Down and dog-dirty. And speakin' of truly lousy ideas, we're up to it, and already up and running. We are also open to investment funding. The Coyote News branding is already sewed up, but I'll give that Teneycke kid a hot tip from the left paw anyway: Beaver News. The Google hits on your website'll be massive...!

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.

Cabbages and kings

Even a casual flip through the collected history of Canada's prime ministers makes it evident that almost the entire lot have been kinda cranky, whatever their public personae. And even a casual flip through the Oxford Big Word Thingy, Canine Edition, shows that we coyotes define "kinda cranky" as, pretty much,"venal, manipulative, backstabbing sonsabitches".

Protestations of the heartwarming benefits of public service aside, I'm not sure what drives people to seek the job. Lately politicians score somewhat below coyotes on measures of public trust. And as long as I'm bloggin', I'll be doing everything I can to keep it that way... I digress. And you're shocked, shocked, I know.

If you know this blog at all, right now you're prolly asking, "Coyote, if they're all kinda cranky, why do you dislike this one, so?" Good question.

I think it might be his attitude. People who are as sure of themselves as Stephen Harper appears to be, seem to me to be lacking a vital bit of humanity. Questioning oneself is a good thing. And in most democracies, compromise, however abhorrent it is to any one high-rankin' individual, pleases more people than does dictatorship by fiat.

A year ago, as the prime minister spouted patent nonsense about coalition governments being unconstitutional, I thought he was just spinning his sound bites for - how to state this delicately? - the dumbshits in his voter base. The ones who get wa-a-a-y too much of their cable edjumafication about government on Foxic News. How could he believe that crap?

Lately, I reach toward a darker thought. That maybe he really is the same kinda dumbshit as his voter base. That he does believe that crap. Maybe in Harper's mind, his election magically turned the prime ministership into an American-style imperial presidency and gave him a rather startling range of powers. Many of which never were foreseen by guys who actually, you know, crafted parliamentary government over the past few hundred years.

So, what if he thinks this makes him a law unto himself and dares the opposition to do anything about it? Well. If ya wanna look back past Canada's parliamentary history, even a, ummm, casual flip through Britain's history suggests that guys who tried to screw over the ascendancy of parliament did not end well.

But hey. If, in deference to the PM's tender feelings, we were to use an American example, the president who most epitomized this kinda thinking was ummm, Dick Nixon. Dear me. That did not end well, either...

Difficult as the concept seems to be for him, personally, the PM may wish to study compromise. It might be on the final exam.

Rahim redux

The quiet sucking sound at ex-MP Rahim Jaffer's parliamentary hearing Wednesday was his former pals vacuuming the last of his political oxygen from the room. The whumpwhump as they tossed him under the crosstown 95 was just punctuation.

It's taken me a couple of days to puzzle out what went down, because us coyotes are just slow that way. Jaffer led with bravado, proclaiming his simon-purity in the matter of peddling influence; moved to bathos when he choked out a little well-timed contrition toward his wife, ex-minister Helena Guergis; then changed it up to bafflegab in cross-examination, to blow smoke over his (many) inconsistencies. He seemed convinced it would work, even after Tory MP Tom Lukiwski passed copious photocopies all 'round to contradict what Jaffer had said.

I finally got the plot when I realized that Jaffer copped his script straight from his parliamentary days. Tories use the bravado/bathos/bafflegab gag in every duel in Question Period. Come out firing, briefly tug the constituents' heartstrings, then bellow any arrant nonsense that unsubtly ignores the actual question. Admit no fault, however self-evident. (Preferably wearing a snarky sneer - for manifold examples, I cite the face beneath John Baird's hair. I digress.)

It seems to work - for governments. That, say, think they have the power to sit on document trails that show who knew what, about Afghan prisoners being tortured. I digress again. Sadly, this time...

Regular schmoes are not so lucky. Jaffer ain't plugged into government anymore, despite his alleged illusions to the contrary. With less hubris he might've noted the prime minister missed no opportunity to label him a private citizen. And he coulda guessed that if Mr Harper could blackball former PM Brian Mulroney - party luminary such as he is - then a problem partyguy from Edmonton-Strathcona would barely rate.

I'd say Harper lives in secret fear of taint. Yeah, he's a coldly calculating stinker who seems indifferent to what others think of him. But any hint of potential irony around a narrowly-defined sort of government corruption gives him the cold willies. He squeaked out a couple of elections by promising to end all that. So if some of his ministers tolerated an alleged illegal lobbyist who used to be one of 'em, without ratting him out in the fashion the PM hisself ordered, it would look, ummm... bad.

The real irony is that it was an impossible promise. The PM has gotta think that even with his stranglehold on his caucus, it's only a matter of time until one of 'em screws up. Coulda happened already. Inevitable human nature will kneecap him right where he staked out his only moral high ground. Sometime, his bus will come. Bummer about that squeaky-clean legacy...

Honestly...

I hate rainy days. And we coyotes find that honesty as defined by our elected representatives is a strange thing indeed.

Current events suggest that the current Prime Minister practices a form of petty-cash honesty - scrupulous about accounting for pennies, nickel(back)s and dimes, in ways that firmly address the letter of election promises to bring accountability back to government, but that are infinitely greasier on larger matters of ethics. Petty-cash honesty can be way to feel virtuous while more problematic pathologies of the soul need addressing.

A recently gauche minister was turfed because she is accused - but not proven - of applying her publicly-elected mitts to encourage a little private gain in the family. It's close enough to the kind of thing that helped the PCs deep-six Liberals and gain power, that the PM calculated that he had to cut her loose, or look even more like a cynical hair-splitter than he already does. Yet, nickel and dime stuff in the end.

In Ottawa's political bubbleworld, most big-picture statements made during elections seem to be covered by a blanket equivalent of crossed fingers behind the back. Politicians who spout 'em, believe them only as far as they need to to sell the message. Once asses are snuggled into seats in the House, neither they, nor any the other gamesters sitting across the aisle, expect to be held to such promises.

Cynical as hell, yeah, but it certainly helps a poor dumb canine to understand why a government elected on broad promises of openness and accountability can merrily strangle both, while the PMO's chief of staff mouths black-is-white platitudes about the great job it's doing on the file.

And the question of whether Cabinet, or ministers, condoned or encouraged the torture of human beings in Afghanistan, was dismissed with the suggestion that Canadians don't care about it. "Canadians" in this case probably means the Conservative's core voters. Problematically, I am left to conclude that the party's definition of "human beings" may mean the same exclusive group.

So even if the nickels and dimes in petty cash add up so far, it doesn't follow that a government is intellectually honest - or ethical.

And thinking about it, I kinda wonder if maybe the current government has as much problem with the "intellectual" part as it does with honesty. Shudder. We coyotes would do well to save that one for an entirely different rainy day, I think...

Kicked out of a concert

Okay, so in my defence, I hafta admit that I was distracted when I read the poster. I thought it said "Emo-fest".

Upside: Biggest damn drumsticks I ever saw.

Downside: Biggest damn drumsticks I ever saw. Testy damn birds, and man, can they kick!

Ottawa's anti-prorogue rally

Ottawa's prorogue protest, timed to coincide with several dozen across the country today, wasn't exactly slick. It was long. The student cheer leaders were endearingly amateur. A speaker or two wandered lengthily off-track. And there looked to be a lot of ad-hoc cooks trying to salt their own spice into the bouillabaisse.

But ya know what? If it had all been slick clockwork, I would have been more concerned. That might've meant some oily pro had pumped backroom grease into what looks to be real Facebook populism, rising spontaneously among concerned citizens.

Ya know what else? It was big. Far larger than the coalition rally after Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued in late 2008.

Even so, I heard a trio that looked like pro journalists, asking each other as pros are sometimes wont, if there was any story.

We coyotes, amateur and unjournalistic to a fault, would say there is. It is this: Anger and frustration over Harper's cynical manipulation of the democratic process in general and the prorogation card in particular is grassroots, authentic, and to be reckoned with.

If no smooth professional political types are involved yet, it may well be because the PM's disregard for the niceties of traditional politesse confounded and hamstrung them.

But while he smugly ties Parliament in knots, apparently he forgets that the real power of this country rests in many millions of people who, while they may never step onto the Hill, care deeply that what goes on there should be aboveboard. Especially when somebody starts jacking around with it too much. There's irony in self-anointed populists being bitten by the populace they claim to represent. Based on today's event, the PM might do well to remember that. If he ever got it in the first place.