Have you noticed that whenever the Senate Scandal gets a little too close to Harper, "new" Rob Ford allegations blow it off the front page?

Coincidence?

Take today for example. The Conservatives used their Senate majority to squelch the appearance of the senior Deloitte director who was stage-managing the Duffy audit. That's an egregious bit of self-serving senate manipulation that should outrage the public and the media watch-dogs.

Nor only that, but also today Tom Mulcair was hitting rather close to home with his pointed questions about why a couple of New Brunswick senators, who appear to have been playing the same fast-and-loose game with their expenses as Duffy, remain in the senate.

All in all, a day of serious questions, serious enough that they would have led the evening news at CBCCTVGLOBAL....

But then, late in the afternoon, HOLY MOTHER OF BATMAN IF IT ISN'T A WHOLE NEW SORDID BATCH OF ROB FORD REVELATIONS!!!

Yup, that cleared the boring old senate scandal off the news agenda for the rest of this week!

And Ford doesn't mind. He's become bigger than Toronto. In fact my pal AC is talking him up on CNN even as I write these words. Did you see how they loved him at the Bills game on the weekend?

If Hunter S. Thompson had any idea the Ford story was coming down the pike he woulda stuck around just to see it for himself.

CBC misses the boat on senate scandal

Big Steve is juggling so many scandals his head must be spinning.

Lucky for Big Steve, Canadian media are determined to give him a free pass.

Take today's interrogation of the auditors who were examining senate expenses. The auditors, employees of Deloitte, the reigning international accounting giant since all the other reigning international accounting giants were destroyed by scandal, claimed that their boss, the managing partner of the firm, asked them how things were coming along on the senate file, to which they claim to have replied, "sorry boss, that would be a breach of confidentiality and we just can't reveal that info."

Ya right.

That's not how it works.

When you sign up with an accounting firm for an audit, you are contracting with the firm, not the individual auditor. You fully expect that the work of the auditors will be actively supervised by the big dogs at that company. The idea that these Deloitte auditors wouldn't tell their boss how the job was going is whole-cloth bunk.

So self-confessed bag-man Senator Irving Gerstein calls his pal, the managing partner at Deloitte, on behalf of Big Steve's political party. He wants to know how the audit is coming along. Managing partner asks the auditors but is rebuffed on the grounds that telling him would breach rules of confidentiality.

And this obvious rubbish is allowed to pass unchallenged by the media?

Today's performance by the Deloitte auditors was just the latest chapter in an ongoing cover-up.

Big Steve throws himself under the bus

Stephen Harper doesn't seem to realize it yet, but by shitting on Nigel Wright he has put paid to his political career.

Nigel is a Big Capital insider with bona fides out the ying yang. Onex is in the big leagues of the hedgie world and has myriad connections to the big players in the US and around the world. For Harper to pin his current, mostly self-inflicted difficulties on Nigel is tantamount to biting the hand that feeds him.

That's not something the big boys are going to forget anytime soon.

Puffy Duffy destined for last laugh on senate scandal

The Puffster had a court appearance today and it's looking like he is not prepared to go quietly into that good night.

The official story thus far; the Duffster gets dream job of his lifetime, goes crazy over-billing his expenses, gets caught with fat fingers in cookie jar and goes crying to PMO to bail him out.

The real story thus far; the Duffster gets dream job of his lifetime, becomes one of the top fund-raisers for Harper gang, rakes millions into party coffers, and over-bills expenses just like most senate denizens have always done. Targeted in media "gotcha" sting and tells party bigs to make it right or he's gonna spill the beans. Nigel Wright coughs up 90k on behalf of party, but Duffy still in media cross-hairs.

I think this story is now at the place where Duff gonna spill the beans, and nobody in the Harper gang can say they weren't forewarned.

Go Duffy!

Mike Duffy, King-maker

As Machiavelli said, he who breaks the King is the new King-maker.

Puffy Duffy has finally got the clout he always aspired to. He has undone the most powerful man in Ottawa, Nigel Wright.

It's interesting how this story is being spun. Mike pleaded with Nigel,...  pleaded! What would become of his family if he suddenly died, etc.  Finally, to stop the whining and save the Canadian taxpayers a few bucks, Nigel pulled out his chequebook and solved Mike's problems with the Senate audit committee.

Mike Duffy was among the upper echelon of Canadian journalists for twenty or thirty years. Those guys don't make hedge-fund salaries but during that era they did OK. He's been in the Senate since '08, where they do OK too.

He's on the speaker's circuit where he makes up to $5,000 per appearance.

And we are to believe that this guy can't scare up 90 thou?

Bullshit!

This $90,000 personal cheque wasn't philanthropy on the part of Nigel Wright.

It was a shake-down!

And let's keep it in perspective. Mike got to know the Senate and its inhabitants back in the day, when enforcement of arcane accounting rules was unheard of. His Senate dreams come true and whoa, all of a sudden the trough has a meter on it?

Damn!

Frankly, I think there are other scandals that could benefit from some of this bright light and hot heat that Duffy's been getting.

Just as a for instance, it would seem that Arthur Porter, the charlatan who wormed his way into the confidence of Stephen Harper and was subsequently made the top civilian at CSIS, is a lot more newsworthy than Pam Wallin or Mike Duffy.