Category Archives: Briefing Bingo

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks while taking part in a ground breaking event at the Iamgold Cote Gold mining site in Gogama, Ont., on Friday, September 11, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette https://www.saanichnews.com/news/trudeau-kicks-off-cabinet-retreat-warns-against-relaxing-guard-on-covid-19/

The Fool’s Gold Covid Briefing Bingo

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Welcome back, Possums. We here at ye olde raincoaster blog are still unclear whether CP Style capitalizes Possums or not, but we’re feeling our collective oats today (and also our coffee, which is beans and thus protein, right? RIGHT?) so we will allow it.

Our briefing bingo today is named after our brief, shattered hope for Universal Basic Income to have been included in the budget presented by Finance Minister and Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland. And also named in accordance with our completely arbitrarily-chosen theme because it’s 2021 and everything is arbitrary. Get a massive mandate from your own party to make Universal Basic Income happen? Guess what doesn’t happen?

we shoulda known, Possums

But I’m over that.

It is definitely, positively not named after the influence mining corporations have on politicians, nope, nosirree Bob, whoever Bob is. He’s your uncle, I guess. Especially if you’re a centrist party looking for donations.

Definitely not named for that. Perish the thought! Because we all know the gold they give to political parties is all too real.

Nobody knows better than this dude.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks while taking part in a ground breaking event at the Iamgold Cote Gold mining site in Gogama, Ont., on Friday, September 11, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette https://www.saanichnews.com/news/trudeau-kicks-off-cabinet-retreat-warns-against-relaxing-guard-on-covid-19/
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks while taking part in a ground breaking event at the Iamgold Cote Gold mining site in Gogama, Ont., on Friday, September 11, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

So far in our arbitrarily-chosen-theme-series, we’ve had:

Guesses in the comments section to win fabulous, completely imaginary prizes. And need we even tell you they’re arbitrary? You’ll have guessed it already, you clever Possums. Or possums. Whatever.

Today we have an unexpected bonus for you: a tenth generation bingo card! Yes, we found 24 new pieces of minutiae to hunt out in these very serious and important political briefings.

It’s almost as if bringing an absurdist lens to processes and systems which expect reverence and obedience under the guise of a simple celebrity culture game allows us to question our fundamental roles, responsibilities, and rights within those processes and systems, or even to choose to define ourselves against them.

And we’re doing this from Ottawa.

When they come for me, delete my cookies, wouldja?

Our video is or will be here, and I sincerely hope CPAC got its placeholder shit together because we’d vastly prefer to keep using their videos. Oh lookie, they did. We feel our complaints reached the proper department at last. 124 watching, with five minutes to go [two hours later, only 840 views]:

On Parliament Hill, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discusses the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He is joined by Dominic LeBlanc (minister of intergovernmental affairs), Anita Anand (minister of public services and procurement), Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, and Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer.
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that's no mushroom

The Toadstool Covid Briefing Bingo

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Good rainy morning, Possums. We are coming to you live from Ottawa, although today CPAC is apparently not covering Trudeau’s briefing so we are going with the CBC video instead, as the actual PMO team doesn’t get the video up for eight or ten hours and never includes other people’s speeches or the questions from the media. This should be jarring, and bad for my French, but here goes.

If you want to take a guess at our arbitrary nomenclature convention, we’re still going. One theme unifies all our briefing titles lately and we have had:

Guesses in the comments section to win fabulous, completely imaginary prizes. Our choice today is not completely arbitrary, however, as toadstools and politics could well be more interconnected than most people think. Forget mind control chips in vaccines and fluoride in the water supply: how about dosing the entire population with shrooms to fight fascism? Or at least the Alberta and Ontario legislatures?

Researchers found unlikely heroes in keeping the world from authoritarianism – magic mushrooms. Scientists from the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College London showed that psilocybin, the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms, makes people less likely to embrace authoritarian views like fascism and more connected with nature.

The study, authored by Taylor Lyons and Robin L. Carhart-Harris, a leading researcher in this field, shows that psilocybin treatment can lead to lasting changes in such mindsets.

that's no mushroom
that’s no mushroom

Here’s our CBC video, and I’m wondering about the backstory here. Did he piss off CPAC? Is Their Person sick today? I see they’re covering Question Period but not this. Come, let us overthink it together! [later: CPAC did in fact cover the briefing, although they didn’t have their placeholder in place on YouTube in advance like usual, and it wasn’t there five minutes into the briefing either].

The CBC does not go in for descriptive captions, they only promote their other channels.

And our Bingo cards are here. Play one or play the whole set or play a completely random and arbitrarily chosen subset, because it’s 2021 and arbitrary absurdism is where we are at now in Canadian politics.

https://twitter.com/sick_crab/status/1387956083684257794
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The Pokey Covid Briefing Bingo

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Morning, Possums! I wasn’t sure we were going to cover this particular briefing, because we did get poked yesterday and we weren’t sure how we’d be feeling (this is the Vice-Regelian “we” you understand) today. But we are good, other than feeling like we’ve been sleeping in a pair of too-tight goggles and somewhat creaky in the joints but then, it’s a glimpse of the inevitable gimpy future for which we should be grateful, I suppose.

In related news, I am also feeling relatively invulnerable from an invisible and ubiquitous deadly enemy, but then if you know anything about the fights I get into online you’ll know this is basically just standard operating procedure.

Let’s get right into it, shall we? We are still doing our Completely Arbitrary Mystery Nomenclature Theme, and so far we’ve featured:

Our video is here:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provides an update in Ottawa on the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He is joined by Procurement Minister Anita Anand.

And our bingo cards are thusly:

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Salvador Dali Melancholy Atomic

The Boss Covid Briefing Bingo

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Good evening, Possums. We’re a little late with today’s briefing, because as you and I and everyone in this general hemisphere of the Earth knows, our day couldn’t start until the verdict came down in the Derek Chauvin trial for the murder of George Floyd.

Guilty.

Guilty.

Guilty.

Good.

https://twitter.com/Terrence_STR/status/1384734070077337600

Here’s hoping they put him in with the general prison population. That should go well for him.

It’s fun watching people like Tim “Blue Lives Matter And Also I Wear A Beanie Because I’m Bald” Pool realize their ship is sinking, and start swimming.

https://twitter.com/neuralculture/status/1384676574524444673

So, it’s a good day to be on Planet Earth.

Better for some of us than for others; like this person, who has a plan, and an awesome and inspirational one at that. This is how you motivate people! This! This is true leadership!

A man who does not have a plan, let alone one of awesomeness or inspirationalitivity, is Doug Ford, Officially Still Premier Of The Province Of Ontario.

Tick.

Tock.

Salvador Dali Melancholy Atomic
Doug Ford’s Kabinet of Kuriosities

He had a plan. Not sure where he got it. Probably cobbled it together from Roger Stone and Steve Bannon’s old cocktail napkin doodles, which would explain its coherence. He announced it last Friday, and it was promptly thrown back in his face by that cadre of Antifa agitators, the Ontario Provincial Police.

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Trudeau at church

The Sunday Covid Briefing Bingo

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Good afternoon, Possums, and welcome back to another episode of the Justin Trudeau Power Hour Although This Time A Scant Eleven Minutes and Forty-Nine Seconds. Yes, it was a Covid briefing from the PM, but on a Sunday, a radical departure from the relentless Tuesday/Friday schedule we’ve come to expect.

And no-one was as surprised, Possums, as Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

In an unexpected yet somewhat foreshadowed move…

[aforesaid foreshadowing goes here]

See which premier is not mentioned there? The premier of Ontario.

On Sunday, Justin Trudeau made an elegant end run around the floridly hapless and rapidly disintegrating premier of Ontario, Doug “Buck-A-Beer” Ford, and announced that the federal government, along with several provinces, is stepping in and providing direct support to Covid-hit communities in Ontario without bothering to wait for the province to request help.

Trudeau at church
We’re all praying for an election these days.

This neatly avoids invoking the Emergencies Act, which gives the federal government sweeping powers to act within a province’s borders without regard to that provincial government. Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, famously invoked the War Measures Act, which itself would be fingered by a paternity test on the Emergencies Act. Diagram that sentence out if it helps.

The Kennedys. The Bushes. The Trudeaus. The Windsor-Mountbattens. Yes, the Trumps. Even the Fords. And the War Measures Act and the Emergencies Act. All politics is intergenerational these days. And it always was a little incestuous. Just ask the Borgias.

Some jokes just never get old
The FLQ fucked around and found out

Anyhoodle, as astute observers pointed out pretty quickly, it was clever of Trudeau The Younger to make his move on a Sunday, as Dougie always heads up to Fordlandia-on-the-Lake (which is what we imagine he calls his cottage in Muskoka) on the weekends.

Muskoka is too a real word, spellcheck.

Which, under his own lockdown rules, he’s not supposed to visit except for emergencies or maintenance. Unless he went even farther afield, which we do not entirely rule out. It would be so totally Doug Ford to get arrested in a Walmart parking lot in PEI for breaking quarantine while vacationing against Covid guidelines.

So, yeah, Canada’s most populous province is facing the uncontrolled spread of deadly variants of a deadly plague, with the mortality rate of hospitalized cases up 38% in one week THIRTY-EIGHT PERCENT IN ONE WEEK. And the premier faffs off to grill some burgers and down a few pops by the lake, earning his administration the touching nickname of “Murder clowns.”

So, without the formality or even necessity of invoking the jackbooted Emergency Act (in what is unquestionably exactly the kind of emergency it was meant to handle) Trudeau just stepped into the void and got shit done on Doug’s day off.

Trudeau’s cottage, I will remind you, is nicer than Doug’s, but unless someone at Harrington Lake created an elaborate mockup of his Ottawa office for the purposes of filming this, Justin Trudeau stayed home in Ottawa this weekend. Seymour told us.

In case you’re wondering why Trudeau doesn’t want to use the Emergency Act, it’s because doing so will make him look like The Fascist Jackboot Of Big Government and enable both the nominally-leftist NDP and the increasingly-MAGA Conservatives to paint him as evil and cost him popular support. Meanwhile the worse the pandemic is in their own areas of responsibility, the more deaths they can blame on Ottawa. Yes, it really is that cynical.

And there’s an election coming and I say (like the return of King Arthur) the sooner the better.

Where were we, other than rambling at the tail end of a 34-hour-long workday? Oh right, about to give you your video and bingo cards. Let’s play, Possums!

First of all, we are still naming these Briefing Bingos after an unspecified and thus mysterious, arbitrarily-chosen convention which nobody has guessed yet. So far we have had:

Here’s our video:

And here are our cards. Dear god, we thought we’d never see Seymour again!

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