Back by popular demand....

Yet another political Christmas carol. This one is a real-live tune, modified only very so slightly, a word here and there, so that it could serve as the Conservatives' holiday theme song this campaign.

Christmas for Cowboys

Tall in the saddle we spend Christmas day
Driving the cattle on the snow-covered plains.
All of the good gifts given today;
Ours is the sky and the wide open range.
Back in the cities, they have different ways,
Football and eggnog and gay-pride parades.
I’ll take the blanket; I’ll take the reins;
Christmas for Tories and wide open plains.
A campfire for warmth as we stop for the night;
The stars overhead are the Christmas-tree lights.
The wind sings a hymn as we bow down to pray;
Christmas for Tories and the wide open plains.
It’s tall in the saddle we spend Christmas Day,
Driving the cattle on the snow-covered plains.
So many gifts have been opened today;
Ours is the sky and the wide open range.
It’s Christmas for Tories and wide open plains

NDP recycled

So how does NDP Leader Jack Layton blow off the tension that builds up on an election campaign? By riding a bike, he told CITY-TV during a morning interview.

With election day almost two months away, that's a lot of steam -- and a lot of miles.

"There's usually a break or two everyday when you're campaigning so I try to get to a bicycle, sometimes it's stationary. ... There's something very relaxing about riding a bike and it gets you some exercise," Layton said.

He and wife Olivia Chow share a tandem bike - a wedding gift to each other - and like to pack a bottle of wine, some cheese and pedal their way through the city's ravines.

"It's all very romantic, he chuckled.

Hush-hush, off the record, and on the q.t.

Life on the Harper tour is a series of adventures, each destination a surprise, mostly because the schedule is being handed out on a need-to-know basis. Harper will be heading to Halifax and then overnight in Vaughan. But tomorrow? Well, all we have are rumours. Word is some southern Ontario bus travel, then possibly Winnipeg? Speaking of buses, where are the personalized cruisers with Harper's face splashed on them? The Liberals have theirs, but the Tory ones were nowhere to be seen on days one and two of the campaign. The whereabouts of the buses are a secret too, but we're assured there are six them - two for Atlantic Canada, two for Ontario and Manitoba, and two for points West ...

With friends like these ....

The National Post's editorial board fired both barrels at the reporter who had the temerity to ask Conservative Leader Stephen Harper on the campaign's first day whether he loves Canada.

Many thought the question was a good one, the kind of query that can elicit an emotional response from a politician.

But not the Post editors apparently.

"Most of the national media, prone to treating politics like a horse race and unaccustomed to politicians of any stripe challenging the centre-left status quo, are unlikely to press for real answers. Instead we get silly questions," a Post editorial declared yesterday.

"Witness the melodramatic reporter who yesterday asked Stephen Harper the inane question."

Ouch!

Someone should tell Post editors that it was their own reporter, Allan Woods, who tossed the question. Outside of the Post editorial board, Woods is widely respected for both his questions and his writing.

Strange bedfellows indeed

One of Premier Dalton McGuinty’s more improbable pals is dropping by Queen’s Park for a visit Wednesday afternoon.

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Jr. - better known as Steve Forbes - is popping for a private chat in McGuinty’s office at the Ontario Legislature.

Forbes, who ran for the U.S. Republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000, is editor-in-chief of the influential business magazine Forbes, which was founded by his uncle and father.

While McGuinty is probably best known for raising taxes when he promised not to, Forbes is best known for proposing a flat tax for Americans to replace the supposedly punitive sliding income tax system.

A hard-line neo-conservative, he is also socially conservative, backing school prayer and opposing abortion rights.

So what does McGuinty, a Howard Dean leftist by U.S. political standards who is pro-choice and was a key supporter of same-sex marriage, have in common with Forbes?

“They met in Davos and really hit it off,” said one of the premier’s aides, referring to the World Economic Forum meeting in Switzerland last winter.

We’d love to be a fly on the wall at that meeting.

Election Campaigns Are All About Hope

If you doubt that, just check how Scott Reid, the Prime Minister's communications director, has chosen to notify people that he will be, ahem, out of the office for a while during the election campaign:

"I will be out of the office on an extended leave (but NOT a PERMANENT leave) until January 24th. If you need to reach me in the meanwhile, pls use sreid@liberal.ca"

Harper Fever?

An elderly Tory supporter fainted in the stifling heat at Stephen Harper's initial campaign rally in a west-end Ottawa strip mall.

The event kept up the campaign tradition of packing as many people into as tiny a room as possible.

She was quickly attended to and revived. Canadian Press reporter Sue Bailey reacted instantly, phoning 9-1-1 and summoning an ambulance as campaign staffers made the stricken woman comfortable.

Lessons that could be learned on Parliament Hill

Conservatives and Liberals may be slinging mud at one another now that the federal campaign is under way, but in the hinterland of Queen's Park they practice a considerably more civilized form of politics.

Nowhere was this more in evidence than in Nepean-Carleton Progressive Conservative MPP John Baird's farewell to the Ontario Legislature on Monday afternoon.

Baird, who is the Conservative candidate in the federal seat of Ottawa West-Nepean, was enjoying the tributes being paid him and other would-be federal candidates, Conservative Jim Flaherty and New Democrat Marilyn Churley, when he looked across the aisle at Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty.

"A special word to the Premier, who represents the riding beside me," said the departing MPP.

"I genuinely look forward to working with you in the months ahead for the benefit of the people of the province of Ontario. A new government in Ottawa won’t be the solution to every problem, but I think it will bring a constructive approach to begin to address some of the many challenges which you have rightly campaigned throughout the province on," he said.

McGuinty, who represents Ottawa South, smiled at nodded at that.

No tax for crack, Tories say

Ontario's Progressive Conservatives were aghast to find a taxpayer-funded Queen West community health centre in downtown Toronto issuing kits with crack pipes and accessories and instructions to help addicts smoke the highly addictive drug with less risk of spreading HIV, AIDS and hepatitis A and B.

"It's a step-by-step guide...how to smoke crack," said house leader Bob Runciman, a former solicitor general.

"Why are Ontario taxpayers stuck with the bill for enabling drug abuse?" he asked in the legislature's daily question period.

Health Minister George Smitherman said there is a need to "strike a balance" in dealing with drug addiction because of the health problems it creates.

"Drug addiction is not strictly a matter of criminal justice," Smitherman added, noting there is no proof the money spent on the kits, which include alcohol wipes and matches, is from the provincial treasury.

Aside from instructions on how to use the pipes made of Pyrex, the "harm reduction kits" include instructions on how to properly light the rocks of crack and use the alcohol wipes to clean the pipe's mouthpiece before sharing it, and gives the advice: "try to pay your bills before you score."

Runciman pressed the government to guarantee no provincial funds will be used for such kits given that police say about half the alarming number of killings in Toronto this year are between members of gangs trying to control the crack market.

PC Leader's TD

For those who are more interested in Peyton Manning than Preston Manning, there will be a hot item at Wednesday’s Queen’s Park Press Gallery Christmas party and charity auction.

Sources say Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory, former commissioner of the Canadian Football League, will be donating two tickets to Super Bowl XL at Ford Field in Detroit.

Tory, whose donation of National Football League title game tickets last year raised more than $4,000, has again secured the prized ducats from the office of NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

The gallery plans to sell just 100 of the $50 raffle tickets at the party and then announce a winner at the end of the evening.

With the game just a four-hour drive down the 401, it’s expected the Super Bowl raffle will be a huge draw.

Premier Dalton McGuinty and NDP Leader Howard Hampton and other MPPs have also donated generously - as have media organizations, banks, breweries and other corporations.

The event, which raised more than $30,000 last year, will benefit the United Way and Lieutenant Governor James Bartleman’s native literacy charity.