At long last having pulled out a majority. . .

. . .Stephen Harper revealed his grand vision for the country to Canadians

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.

Greasy pols, greasy polls and greasy poles

An election now lunges toward either the final gong or buzzer, I forget which, with a speed approaching terminal gravitational acceleration. Certain half-smart tory backroom operators who helped manipulate the damn thing in the first place have hit the ground. Not running gracefully, as they thought they would, but with aerodynamic qualities akin to lead pancakes.

It is telling that Stephen Harper has stomped on (m)any faces in his scramble for a majority. It is also telling, in a negative way, that he hasn't really told anybody what he would do with a majority if he got it.

But it is even more telling that some opinion polls place those unhinged socialists he keeps harpering on about, within hard spitballing range of "his" majority.

Citizenship fatigue, finally, maybe? Five years ago, in the face of a decayed liberal machine, Harper promised Reform-a-Tory honesty and transparency if elected. Since, he and his stable of hyper-partisan frat boys have ridden a breathtaking string of dishonesty, opacity and mean-spiritedness to where we are now.

Their fallback strategy when nailed - and there have been nailings aplenty - has been to wriggle, split hairs and misdirect. Say they're only doing what the Liberals did already. Maybe throw someone who's not named Harper under the bus.

That pristine Tory bus is gettin' pretty gory.

Then, if your name is Harper, you feign an eerily robotic approximation of calm reason to state, "Now, now, you know that's simply not true."

Provable lies, but they play real well with the rural base in Alberta. Also, apparently, with the Globe and Mail, which just endorsed the crud-covered incumbent as the best choice for PM. Because he's you know, a good financial manager. Yucko! As if!

Where was I? Oh yeah: so the reductio ad absurdem Con subtext is that they are now exactly what the Libs were, right? The devil's spawn of which their endless barrage of attack ads do constantly remind?

Seems like the copious backsplatter from all that ugly ordnance may finally be soiling the tailored blue Harry Rosen suits of the firing crews. One can hope.

This election ain't a done deal. What we seem to be learning as the campaign closes is that liberals are still wandering the political wasteland, and that conservatives have emulated them, badly. Could explain the surge of a former fourth-place long shot who seems pretty upbeat and positive.

How it'll play at the real polls, as opposed to the fleeting snapshots of opinion polls, is anybody's guess.

If it's a Tory majority, I still have my doggy helmet, flack jacket and poisoned ink supply from Ontario's Mike Harris years. Anything else, that yodelling, yipping laugh you hear in the distant night after the ballot count will be moi.

Meantime, I'll stock in the English breakfast tea and a crumpy or six for a big, very early-morning wedding. I approve of weddings. They're a welcome diversion. And more important than politics.

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...