Rose's Cantina

      Perhaps the graphics department at CTV News decided to have a little fun at the expense of embattled Senator Mike Duffy this week. It's gotta be tempting. I mean, he is a pretty big target, just like Rob Ford who is constantly shown in a gonzo state on the late night shows.   If the graphics team was to blame, that might be CTV's best excuse for running this photo last night of Mike Duffy, shown in hues of pink and grey, resembling one of the Gargoyles that dress the stone facades in front of Parliament Hill.   While Lisa Laflamme solemnly read the story that Duffy's court case was ripening and finally being hatched, the graphic was a clear signal that Old Duff was still a pretty fine piece of catnip for the news cats to play with, have fun with, to swat back and forth before finally being consumed in bite sized pieces.   While some people in the newsroom might have had a great guffaw over this -- the stoning of one of ...

#181897456 / gettyimages.com Glass is half full kind of Canadians should thank Mike Duffy for the investigative journalism he's undertaken which is revealing the depth of corruption and depravity within our system of government. For years now, Old Duff has been toiling on your behalf, posing as a political Senator, to unearth how many ways it's possible to screw the Canadian taxpayer. At times, he's even revealed that it's possible to do double duty, fingering the front orifice of Josephine Lunch Pail while putting a digit in the back end of Jimmy Conservative. Indeed, he should win himself a Michener Award, or a Genie at the very least. Do they still give those out for enterprise journalism? Seriously, folks, everyone who lives in Ottawa knows the system stinks -- especially Senate operations. We've had major evidence of this for years. Like the Senator who spent all his time in Mexico instead of warming his seat in the Red Chamber. How long did i...

Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (naypong) Yesterday was the perfect day to be sick in Ottawa. As I lay prone on the couch, clutching the recently spayed pug Sophie to my chest lest the evil Finnigan break her stitches, I was able to distract myself with some good television, some very good television indeed. First came Question Period, with Tom Mulcair giving a masterclass on interrogation. "Will the Prime Minister?" "When did the Prime Minister?" "With whom did the Prime Minister?" He was really getting Harper's goat. You could almost see the red rising in the Prime Minister's cheeks. You couldn't really. By the look of him, Harper has been undead for some time, hidden away in the bowels of a boat headed back and forth to Europe in a quest for some very fine wine and cheese to ply the voters of Brandon Souris. Harper was clearly pissed at that little nugget Mike Duffy who has been delighting the rest of us with his tale...

  Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (naypong)     Stephen Harper rose in the House of Commons (yes, he was actually there!) yesterday looking like the whitest man in Canada. The pallor of his cheeks matched the color of his hairpiece and he was all droopy eyed. Doesn't seem like all that travel is agreeing with him. Or maybe Mike Duffy's lawyer made the blood drain from his earthen cheeks. In any event, Harper looked like a bag of warmed over dog feces yesterday. I haven't watched QP in years because it's stupid, ridiculous and pointless. But I couldn't resist after watching Don Bayne rub the lotion all over the skin of Stephen Harper to make it easier to peel off. I know Don Bayne only slightly. His criminal office represented my son when he got caught in a five finger discount at Walmart. Now, I suppose the firm is becoming a little more uptown, defending murderers and Senators. Harper managed to stonewall the House until everybody's eye...

It was all over the news last week that Pamela Pitstop had coughed up nearly 200 grand to pay back the taxpayers of Canada for her fraudulent travel claims. For her part, Pammy says she has done nothing wrong, that the Deloitte auditors changed the rules and that she was only guilty of being a bad beancounter. She may be the only person in Canada who thinks she's a victim. But it made me wonder: why are there so many political crooks in Saskatchewan? To begin with, Saskatchewan has a bit of a reputation for being a crime culture. and Saskatoon and Regina are always within the top five cities in Canada with the highest crime rates in all categories. Did it begin with Al Capone in the tunnels of Moose Jaw? Or it is part of a wild west mentality every man and woman for themselves? I think it all began with Conservative leader Grant Devine, the former premier of Saskatchewan whose government smelled like Regina before the invention of the water softener. During the Devine ye...

Stephen Harper would do well to tell Senator Marjory LeBreton to zip it. Instead of giving Canadians some useful information yesterday, she took the time to lambast other parties and what she called "media lickspittles" for asking legitimate questions about the Senate expenses fiasco. This is vintage Marjory, herself a quintessential "lickspittle" or toadie mouthpiece. LeBreton is well known as a hyper-partisan having polished the toenails of Tory leaders since before Brian Mulroney was pocketing Shrieber money. Essentially, the good Senator has been on the public dole since 1984 -- that's thirty years -- and she's got another few to go, suckling at the public tit either as a patronage princess dispensing goodies to Conservatives across the land or as a publically-paid apologist for Tories everywhere. Yesterday, she was showing her partisan thong accusing people who are paid to question the government of being biased towards the opposition. I can tell...

Word came down from high yesterday that Mike Duffy's expense claims were going to be re-examined by the same Senate committee that whitewashed his case in the first place. This, after a Liberal proposal failed to have the whole thing punted into the waiting arms of the RCMP. Doesn't this make you feel better? And didn't you feel even better upon hearing that our Fearless Leader was "upset" and "angry" yesterday? Let me give you something else to think about. The head of that Senate committee is one Dave Tkachuk from Saskatchewan, a man who had a distinguished career as principal secretary to Grant Devine in the 1980s. His claim to fame back then was the time he tore the blouse of a female MLA. Which again makes a sane person wonder: how do these guys pass the smell test? Okay, so a history of sexual harassment shouldn't disqualify a guy from getting a cushy seat in the Senate and leading a probe into the expenses of his peers, right? T...

Could you qualify for a seat in the Canadian Senate? Take the following standard psychological test. Do you agree or disagree with the following statements. Be honest! 1. I can be very smooth, engaging, charming and slick. 2. I can be very self-assured, opinionated, even a braggart. 3. I can be shrewd, crafty, sly and clever. I can also be deceptive, unscrupulous, underhanded, manipulative and dishonest. 4. In my life, I have repeatedly used deceit and deception to cheat, con or defraud others for my personal gain. 5. I often don't feel much concern for possible losses or suffering of persons I leave behind. 6. If something goes wrong, I rarely take full responsiblity but tend to manipulate or put the blame on others to divert from my own failures. 7. At times, I feel the need for novel, thrilling and exciting stimulation. This might result in me taking chances that are risky. 8. I have made significant amounts of money by intentionally exploiting or manipulati...

A knock at the door. "Come in, come in." "Sir, you wanted to see me?" "Ya think?" "I can explain everything. I was just doing what we do on Bay Street. You have a problem that involves money, you solve it with money. It goes away. Gerry taught me that." "Ah, well, I guess this isn't Bay Street." "Seriously, sir, I know it looks bad but it's on me. I was the one who took the decision, I am the one whose bank account is $90,000 lighter. Besides, by keeping you in the dark, I've given you plausible deniability." "This might work in the private sector, but this is fucking Ottawa. When you fart in a room in Ottawa, it sticks to everybody's clothes. The smell rises to the top. And who is on the top?" "You your Majesty." "Damned straight." "Sir, the man couldn't afford to pay back the money. He's nearly a million dollars in debt. He has a heart condition. And f...

I've known Mike Duffy for three decades. Drank with him. Dined with him. Travelled with him. Duff is one of my favorite people of all time. He was always kind to me when others weren't. He was generous to a fault. When our good friend Annette Leger died a few years back, Duffy offered to throw a wake in the Parliamentary Restaurant -- on him. Nobody questioned where the money came from. It was the kind of thing that happened on the Hill all the time. Old School. The Gus Cloutier way of doing things. In retrospect, it explains a lot. Playing loose and fast with the public purse used to be the way things were done on Parliament Hill. Wonderful Wednesdays in ministers' offices. Posh Christmas parties. Next to free meals, dry cleaning and hair cuts. The Press Gallery was right in there, lapping up the canapes and swilling cheap beer out of a vending machine in the "hot room". Reporters also benefited from free phones, offices, supplies and parking. ...

Watching Mike Duffy on television last night as he agreed to repay his housing premium reminded me of another television gem -- when Brian Mulroney was before a House of Commons committee talking about taking money from German businessman Karlheinz Shrieber. Both admitted taking money they shouldn't have. Both refused to take blame for their action. The difference between the two scenarios, of course, is that Mulroney didn't have to pay money back, just the income tax on it. The Puffster and Brian Mulroney are very similar characters, full of hubris, needing to be loved, playing the angles, engaging in some pretty dodgey behavior particularly when under the influence. And neither of them sees anything wrong with what they do, so  full of themselves and their entitlements. Duffy needed money to renovate his cottage, so he took advantage of the people of Canada. Mulroney needed money to keep Mila in the style to which she was accustomed so he kept the Shreiber money. B...

My earnest and hard-working husband will be going for a job interview today to be a school bus driver. To get that job, which pays not much above minimum wage, he had to have a criminal and vulnerable person background check to make sure that he is not a child molester. He then had to go down to the cop shop to have his fingerprints done, because apparently, one person was born in Manitoba, on the same date as him, who just got pardoned for sex offences. The fingerprints will rule Scott out as that deviant. After the criminal check, he has to take an airbrake licence and have a three-person interview. After that, his references will be checked. This is the process that the ordinary Canadian has to follow to get a crap job. People with higher up jobs have quite a bit more vetting. They are first screened by the head hunter, then undergo a series of interviews, often testing for their ability to speak various languages, to write at a Grade Nine level and think logicall...

Do you think the media is being hard on Senator Patrick Brazeau? Aside from focusing on allegations that he's a wife beater, a child-abandoner and a mysogenist, in addition to being a bad boxer. And calling Chief Theresa Spence fat. Ouch! I'm not talking about his personal life, which is a shambles. I'm talking about his work as a member of the Senate of Canada. So I decided to take a journey into the heart of darkness, into the very chamber itself, the place that pays the good Senator a six-figure salary. We know he has been censured for not showing up much in the Senate, but surely that's because he's working on behalf of his constituency. So I looked at his personal, Senatorial, website. ( http://senatorpatrickbrazeau.com ) Hmm. Well, he got off to a good start in February, 2009, with his first maiden speech in the Senate. Added a bit of eye candy to that smelly and musty old box of chocholates. Check. And he gave us a few bon mots --six -- congratu...

There has never been a question, among a lot of Canadians, that the Senate should be abolished. It has never really made any sense to give people jobs for life based on their ability to raise money for political parties, or garner other favors for the governing party. The Canadian Senate is a Tony Soprano wet dream. The first time I questioned the Senate was when I was working in Trudeau's office and he appointed a gazillion of his friends to the Senate after taking his walk in the February snow. Two words. Colin Kenny. Colin Kenny has been a Senator now for 30 years and he's only 69. This means he has more than five years left in the Senate, if you can believe that. Now, Kenny has done some fine work over the years, nobody can question that, but at the time, he was just a Trudeau fartcatcher. Even some of the party hacks found it hard to believe that a man shy of 40 could be a Senator. Over the years, there have been some fine individuals appointed to the Senate, pe...

Imagine if a Canadian cabinet minister responded to questions by a journalist by calling her a bitch on Twitter. I would hope that cabinet minister would do more than just say, "sorry, my bad". I'm sure the cabinet minister would be forced to apologize to the journalist in the House of Commons. That's the very least the cabinet minister should do. The cabinet minister should be a) censured and b) fired. Now, I'm not saying that King Stephen would do the right thing by firing the asshole, but I'm sure there would be some kind of punishment. Not, apparently, for Senator Patrick Brazeau who is getting away scott-free for his unprofessional and sexist behavior on Twitter. From what I hear, Brazeau gets rewarded every time he does something inappropriate such as turning his former office into a speakeasy and acting like Don Draper. What happened when he was run out of his big chief job? He got a Senate post. What are his qualifications to be in the Canad...