Our secret correspondent has learned that embattled Prime Minister Steven Harper’s request for a “timeout” was accepted by the Governor General because of his provocative “fingers crossed behind my back” argument. As Harper explained to her while wearing his favorite blue sweater, “in regards to this whole confidence thing, the video will clearly show that everything I did and didn’t say about things like the ‘economy’ happened while my hand was placed firmly behind my back. I can assure you that, at the time, my fingers were indeed crossed. Furthermore, at no time did I say ‘black ball beats them all, stampsies no erasies’, thus there is no reason not to have confidence in what I really didn’t mean, and every reason to give us a ‘do over’.” According to our sources, this argument overcame Dion’s original “liar, liar, pants and fire” position, in addition to his last-ditch effort at a “we’re rubber and you’re glue” rebuttal.

In a move eerily similar to the coup currently taking place in the Republic of Congo Canada, The Pittsburgh Penguins are leading a coalition with the Dallas Stars and Philadelphia Flyers to be declared the 2008 Stanley Cup Champions. As spokesman Dan Deluth explains:

Sure, it seemed cut-and-dry in June when the Detroit Red Wings defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins to become the Stanley Cup champions. However, looking back we noticed that this wasn’t really fair. After all, if you combine the playoff wins for the Penguins, and conference finalist runner-ups Stars and Flyers, you can clearly see they had a lot more than the Red Wings. In turn, we are asking Governor General, er, I mean NHL commissioner Gary Bettman to retroactively decide that a coalition of the Penguins, Stars, and Flyers be declared the 2008 Stanley Cup champions.

While there has been a struggle over who should lead this coalition, the teams eventually settled on Penguin Sidney Crosby remaining captain, even though his sub-par performance early in the series was an oft-cited reason for the loss. In exchange for their support, the Philadelphia Flyers (who narrowly missed representing the Eastern Conference themselves) will get access to the Cup on holidays and weekends, while the Dallas Stars team will receive official “league within a league” status and gets to play for their own “Stars Cup” next season, to be paid for by all the other teams.