Rose's Cantina

Years ago, in a land far, far, away, the scribes from Parliament Hill used to take off for a long, liquid lunch on Friday afternoons at the Bel Air which was on Queen Street near the Sparks Street Mall. The Bel Air disguised itself as a pizza parlour, but it also had a swanky restaurant on top where the under-paid, over-refreshed set could put molar to some nice steak and seafood. One long afternoon, one of our notable scribes finished his lunch, then slyly dipped his paws into the lobster tank and set off onto the Sparks Street Mall to "set free" the lobsters. Yesterday, I had a flashback to that day. Trudeau, the younger, just dipped his well-manicured hand into the Senate tank of sharks and jellies to set free the lobsters. Who knows if they will make it to the Ottawa River before their oxygen runs out. This is a masterstroke worthy of Jerry Yanover, the Cheshire Cat who brought down the Joe Clark government while holding hands with Queen of Hearts, Allan...

You don't have to watch the clip below. Just show it to your children. Demonstrate to them that we live in a democracy with a highly effective system of government. We have a Senate that provides a unique check on the government, a sober second thought if you will, to make sure that the duly elected Members of Parliament don't do something stupid. And we have a government that provides clear answers whenever confronted by a scandal or a mistake. Show your children that we can count on The Stephen Harper Government to act, on behalf of Canadians, in a dignified manner during Question Period. Civics Lesson 101. Paul Calandra is an asshat.  

The Parliamentary precinct is beginning to smell like a steaming pile of horse manure. There's no escaping it. Everybody -- the media, the cops, the politicians -- has a fork in it and they're all trying to find the Prime Minister. He says he didn't make the mess. His pals did. But that doesn't cut it with Canadians. Harper may not have created the shit, but it's on his shoes and anyone who's ever stepped in shit knows what that feels like. You try to wipe it off and it sticks to your hands and you can never, ever, get rid of the smell. It's sickening what's happening in Ottawa. And it's stopped being funny. Well, in truth, it's still a little bit funny. It's great to see Oz, the Great and Powerful, squirming in his seat, answering the Opposition questions in that same robotic tone until he can't take it anymore then hands it off to the Chief Parliamentary Clown Paul Calandra who would have made an excellent warm-up comic on the P...

The only person in the Senate scandal that has managed to stay classy is Nigel Wright . Nigel Wright made an error in judgement, as we know, but he only made one. Wait, maybe two. He should have discussed the possibility of giving Mike Duffy $90k with the Prime Minister before he did it. What if he had? If he had, then Stephen Harper would have told him not to do it. I believe that to be true. But Nigel Wright most likely felt sorry for Mike Duffy. As is evident in the emails released by Duff, Nigel believed that the old windbag was just doing what other Senators had been doing for decades -- fudging the books for their own gain. I'm sure when the Auditor-General has a gander at a few other Senators, he will be not surprised to find that they, too, had abused their expenses and living allowances. Already, the Prime Minister's gal Friday Carolyn Stewart Olsen is in trouble. I suspect, nope, I know a few Liberals who have also used the hallowed office of the Senate to c...

      You know your life is pathetic when you're watching the Hallowe'en shows on daytime television. In my own defence, there wasn't much else to do. The weather was crappy, I'd already walked the dogs and this house is so small, it could almost clean itself. Well, that's a lie. I hate housework, but yesterday, I yearned for the big old house I once lived in and the five bedrooms to clean.   I'm so bored, I'm thinking of a career with Molly Maid.   Thank goodness for the political drama that is playing itself out on the all news channels. Afternoons, which were once filled with All My Children and lesbianic talk shows, can now be wasted watching Amanda Blitz's body swell.   Canadian news channels have more content than Wikipedia these days.   Who needs Joan Collins and Linda Evans, when we have the dueling blowouts in the form of Pamela Wallin and Carolyn Stewart Olson? Then there's Duffy, the walking puffer with his lon...

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (digitalart) I'm not an expert but I do know a thing or two about political fundraising. Back in the 80s, after my journalism career imploded, I took a job as a writer at 102 Bank Street, the rickety old office space rented by the Liberal Party of Canada. My job was to sell the Trudeau government to the Liberal masses through a tabloid magazine and direct mail fundraising letters. The best part for me, because I wasn't really political, was answering the mail from what the Party called its "militants", the people who forked over money to keep the Party operating. This was near the end of the Trudeau era and Pierre had pissed off a lot of people including many of the Party's own supporters. So most of the mail came from people who were pretty mad. It always amazed me how much time people spent crafting these letters. I guess they actually thought that Pierre read all his fan mail. One day, I opened up a letter a...

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (Stuart Miles) I'll admit it right here, I am a lazy writer. It's so much easier to conjure up images using pop culture references than to explain away a behavior or to characterize a person. For example, when Pamela Wallin stood up in the Senate to skewer Marjorie LeBreton and Carolyn Stewart Olson for being jealous of her infamy, the image that immediately came to mind was Rachel Macadam torturing Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls. I started that on Twitter and 56 seconds later, another journalist came up with the same reference. Was he copying me? I know he was following me. Of course he was, I said, but maybe (a reference to Louis C.K. I am shameless). Maybe he saw the same movie. As a writer, I will never, ever, win a Nobel Prize for Literature and neither will Tabatha Southey who wrote a shameless piece of satire in Saturday's Globe and Mail about the Senate debacle. Read it here I'm sure that Alice Munro could wri...

Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (Marcus) It's been a rough week for our beloved Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He's getting a Goldring shoved up his arse by a member of his own carcass, I mean Caucus. Even some Conservative bagel eaters in the Senate cannot stomach his attempt to toss The Three Amigos into the Rideau River. Pretty soon Tories will be eating their own tails. I bet Stephen Harper can't wait for Calgary. At least at the Convention, there will be some Tories who have his back. Just make sure they leave their weapons at the door. How needs a hug, huh?

During this luscious August week, it's hard to believe we have to be bothered by the Pamela Wallin travel expense scandal, but bothered we are. If I were Pam Wallin, I would never travel again. Put yourself in her $800 pumps for a moment. Imagine standing in line waiting for a flight and having everyone stare at you, or jeer at you, for taking a flight headed to T.O. from Ottawa. Or waiting in the Timmy's line for your double double with eyes boring into the back of your Donna Karan smock. I can hear the wise cracks now. "She'll be having the chocolate donut," someone might say. "You know, the one that's double dipped." Harharhar. Some of my Facebook friends are actually saying that Pamela Pitstop is being unfairly treated because she's a woman in a bouffant hairstyle. I'm not so sure. Like Lucy being caught by Ricky, she's got a lot of 'splainin' to do. The University of Guelph loved her as a Chancellor because she d...

Consultants in Ottawa and Toronto have made piss pots full of money doing media training for politicians. These one-on-one sessions cost the taxpayer thousands of dollars, yet the basic messages are simple and can be found in any public relations text book. Never have more than three messages. Stay on message. When you make a mistake, admit it. Too bad none of our federal, provincial and municipal politicians are practising what the "experts" are preaching. They lie. They cover up. They run from the cameras. Dalton McGuinty, take a bow. Stephen Harper take a plane out of town. Mike Duffy take your unfortunate wife on a cruise and have her photographed in an unflattering bathing suit. Rob Ford retreat to your private bathroom and have some blow. You can run. But you cannot hide. Daltie, Steve-o, Mikey, Robbie Boy listen to your media trainers. Your lying, cheating, obfuscating ways will not just get you in trouble. People will vote you out of office. Don...

Boy, the NDP is looking pretty good of late. Dick Wolff should give Tom Mulcair a call should he decide to resurrect his franchise as  Law and Order: Special Senate Unit. Frankly, though, it's hard not to look good in Ottawa when you don't have any Senate seats. And now the Ontario Liberals have given the NDP another gift. This gas plant thing is a hot mess that's getting positively nuclear now that it's been revealed that McGoo's crew and staff in the energy ministry have been pressing the "delete all" buttons on all of their computers hoping that they won't smeared with the shit that the ex-premier left for Kathleen Wynne to clean up. His stall is mighty dirty. She's going to need an extra pair of rubber boots. Again, the NDP haven't been in power in Ontario for decades, so none of the manure will stick to them. My kids were tiny tots when Bob Rae was premier, when Rae Days were all the rage. Look it up, children. His complete debasi...

I guess CTV was none too happy about Don Martin's commentary on Friday, in which he tore a new asshole on Mike Duffy's expensively tailored rear. The video, which I posted last week from Youtube, has been yanked. Nobody is saying why. Update: The National Post is reporting today that the video was yanked after CTV got legal advice. Maybe Duffy threatened to sue Little Don for slamming him. Maybe the video reinforced what many of us have been thinking: that CTV has been embarrassed by Duffy, who is a long time former employee and network star. Or maybe it's a personnel vendetta, which slipped out in Martin's diatribe. Whatever the reason, copywright infringement or further embarrassment heaped on CTV execs. It's gone. But wait! canada.com has a transcript. Here's part of it. But in the last year, Mike Duffy has become the all-Canadian poster boy for political fakery. Auditors have proven him to be a fake Prince Edward Islander, pretending to represent a pr...

Okay, okay. So I was going to make Rose's Cantina a Duffy free zone today, but it just wasn't possible. Like the Ikea monkey story, this one continues to have legs. It wasn't enough for Duff to get a six figure salary plus reasonable expenses. Nope, not Captain Potato Head from PEI. He wanted to be a Minister without Portfolio so he could have a car, driver and a bunch of staff. And be paid not just from the government coffers but also from the PC Fund. Was there no depth to which Mike Duffy could sink? I can't remember the last time there was a Minister without Portfolio. I seem to recall that was the brain child of the Trudeau Liberals, but I can't remember what a MWP actually did. I mean, you have to think Crime Minister Hairpiece would have to give people some indication that the MWP was doing something aside from riding around in cars getting coffee with comedians. The car wouldn't be too good to get Duff to Conservative speaking engagements ...

Watching yesterday's clown parade in Ottawa, I couldn't help but feel some nostalgia for the old Press Club. If the Club were still alive, we would all be heading there noonish to chatter about former colleagues, rivals and ne'er do wells who seem to have their knickers in some pretty serious knots over their juvenile spending habits. The talk would turn to Mike Duffy, of course, who, as the French say had been farting above his asshole in recent days. The usual crowd would chow down on Chef Paul's famous roast beef and pea soup lunch. Everybody who was anybody in Ottawa would be there. Charles Lynch, Stu McLeod, Gus Cloutier and the Van Dusens in one corner. The French table spreading out in the middle. Nino would be fighting with Michel Vastel who would be telling the manager to go fuck himself. Vastel would be expelled. Again. Over at the Sandinista table all the Tories would sit in their various states of "in or out". They would be chain smok...