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:
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.
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.
Here’s hoping they put him in with the general prison population. That should go well for him.
Not to be dark but if I was this guy and I knew what prison was probably gonna be like for me as the man who burned down America……… I'd just go ahead and bash my brains in against the bars. 24 hour suicide watch.
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.
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!
My kid can draw you a few sets of flames whenever you’re ready to decide
Also she says “no offense mommy I’m glad I was born but probably I want this instead of kids too”
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.
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.
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]
This afternoon, in response to rapidly rising numbers of COVID-19 cases across Ontario, I reached out to Premiers @FureyAndrew, @DennyKing, and @IainTRankin. We spoke about how we can work together to help Ontarians get through this third wave. pic.twitter.com/QtGHHW8Nh1
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.
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.
His dad Fidel Castro was pretty strong to be fair. I dont like him but definitely not weak
.. you might expect that logically – but 'the Valise' presumes that exchange happens while or after the danger passes .. like picking up a cat by the scuff, rather than waiting for the swimmer to stop struggling .. #DaddlyArts#JustinTrudeauhttps://t.co/UrhEsPM4cL
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:
Well Possums, while it seems that we are still the front-runner in the stakes to become Canada’s newest Governor-General, that’s only because nobody else seems to want the job. Nonetheless, we will not allow ourselves to be discouraged (as you can see, we’re already slipping into the Royal Third Person). Nay, nay! Quite the contrary.
There have been a few refinements to the platform over the past several weeks and indeed more than a whole month now. How the time flies when you’re running a satirical campaign to make an anarchal communist the Queen’s Representative in Canada!
First of all, we have our first fan-created marketing collateral, in the form of this beauteous featured image from @Owlerine.
For one thing, it looks like kd lang is indeed on board as our Ambassador to Narnia, a post necessitated by the past activities of our Grand Vizier, Vermine Supreme, who has previously called for the elimination of the scrappy fantasy nation by the use of nuclear weapons. If anyone can smooth this over, it’s kd lang.
Good morning, possums, and welcome to the latest in our Completely Arbitrarily Named Briefing Bingos. There is a unifying concept, if a completely arbitrary one because everything is meaningless and nothing matters anymore, and also because the post needs a title in order to go live, but the title has to be chosen before the briefing happens because time is linear, but nobody has guessed it so far. The concept, not the nature of Time.
Your guesses can go in the comment section for a chance to win fabulous, completely imaginary prizes. Nobody has even attempted this yet, but we’re getting to the point where there’s no excuse. Gonna get pretty obvious soon. Much like whether or not we’re getting an election this year.
It’s not easy being green
We’ll plant 2 billion trees over the next ten years. That’s it. That’s the tweet.
Here’s our video, starting fifteen minutes late today so you get to mark your “Starts more than ten minutes late” square right off the bat. 557 people watching right now. By 2pm that’s gotten up to 1500, but Fridays are always lower than Tuesdays for some reason. It’s not like people are off to the cottage on Fridays these days.
raincoaster 