As the Wuhan Flu was starting up I whipped up a quick video based on the classic "Fake Steve Armitage" rant about Edmonton. There was a long ad libbed rant that involved the two radio hosts breaking characters a lot, so they re-edited into a "Edmonton promotional DVD". I then threw some basic COVID images up on there and got this:
Last month I posted this should-be speech about Parliament being shut down over the Wuhan Flu:
Parliament must be reopened immediately. All 338 Members of Parliament should be encouraged to attend in the same way that in May of 2019 we also encouraged Members to attend this House. This House of Commons is just that: the free people of Canada electing those to represent them. Parliament started in 1341 and for centuries afterwards Members of the House of Commons fought hard -- at the risk of their own lives -- to ensure that Parliament had more and more power and therefore more and more political power was held by the people themselves. We had a rocky beginning: in 1376 Sir Mare was imprisoned for making what the King thought was "non-essential" pushes for more power and respect for Parliament. Under many sovereigns Parliament was not called upon at all except to rubber stamp spending bills. This however was not sufficient for our Roundhead Parliamentary ancestors who kicked off a decade-long Civil War in 1642 that, combined with the 1688 Glorious Revolution, forever established that Parliament was the basis of our democracy.Below is the video version I made of that speech:
I call on all Members to be mindful of that heritage, of the blood spilled by our forebears to preserve Parliament. Today is no different: though we do not fear that the Cavaliers loyal to the House of Trudeau will execute MPs from Corner Brook to Coquitlam, we do have to fear a chance -- minimal, but existent -- of being infected by COVID-19. However much like in 1642, the risk to the country of having nothing more than a rubber stamping Short Parliament is surely worth minimal risk of life to a mere 338 Canadians: our country lost ten times that many people to a single battle in April 1917. That single battle was itself in service of a higher cause ultimately less vital to our Dominion than a strong Parliament is in 2020. Jumping over a trench in the Great War was a lot more risky than sitting in our chamber could ever be! We should never lose sight of the undeniable fact, a fact being denied by several Honourable Ministers and their so-called scientific advisors, that being in the same room as a COVID carrier does not automatically confer infection. Furthermore, infection does not automatically confer symptoms. Symptoms meanwhile do not automatically confer hospitalization, and hospitalization does not mean a death sentence. To claim otherwise is to lie, and deceive Canadians, and that is precisely why Parliament must resume: such deceit withers in the disinfecting ultraviolet light which is the debating of our cherished democratic system.
The other Members of this House have done well personally as a result of their election into this grand chamber: they receive a salary that is the envy of all but a small proportion of Canadians with pensions and benefits to match. They are ferried across the country at the taxpayer expense, are honoured by law societies and media outlets and charitable foundations. Their names are forever blazed in the history books of our great nation, their every utterance is given a weight far greater than any of the citizens they are here to represent. Upon leaving this chamber they can move onto profitable endeavours in industry or media or elsewhere in government. Even in the wake of this global pandemic they have continued to have freedom of movement many other Canadians have had to do without. Unlike so many Canadians impacted by government policies they continue to draw their salary even as their workload diminishes. It is now time to give back to the people of Canada who elected them.
Parliament is more important than mere parliamentarians. If Members of Parliament from the Prime Minister to the newest backbencher to the Speaker are to be considered 'essential' to the operations of Canada in the same manner as nurses or grocery clerks, then we must be willing to perform to the same standard. Every caregiver who walks into a hospital may get infected and die: but we all understand that risk has to be taken because otherwise this essential service so vital to Canadian life will not be performed. Every employee at your local grocery chain or convenience store is at a risk of contracting this illness: we don't make ludicrous claims that the customer coming in to buy the food they need to survive "killed them" and justify shutting everything down. We can take reasonable precautions but at the end of the day my message to every Member of Parliament is that your job is essential. For years we have used vehicles with wheels and wings to travel around understanding that the risk was worth the reward, this is more public a risk and a more possible outcome, but it remains true that the calling of our higher mission supercedes any selfish interest in our own personal safety and comfort.
Parliament is by far the most important institution in Canada: in this critical time in our history facing the worst economic collapse since the time Queen Victoria signed the British North America Act, we must meet. We must have the opportunity to debate and deliberate the unhitherto expenditures of money from the public purse. We must be able to, in full view of the public we serve, question and challenge the claims made by unelected advisors to the Minority Government. Canadians deserve a full and frank accounting of what the Government of Canada will be doing, what goals we are aiming to accomplish, when and how we will know if we have succeeded or failed at them, and what information we know for certain and which information we are merely guessing or modelling. Perhaps even more importantly Canadians deserve to know that the decisions that are being made, many of which have larger or longer reaching impacts than any ever before made by the Federal Government, are not being made by a tiny cabal answerable only to a small number of the Members of this House who serve extremely narrow regional and ideological masters and instead are being made by a majority of Parliament who represent every person region and belief system within our shores.
It is wholly wicked and undemocratic to have Canada be led from the front porch of a building the vast majority of Canadians would be arrested for trying to visit, by a man who less than eight months ago failed to obtain the confidence of this House. We are not a technocracy where unelected experts of narrow fringe research are directed to set public policy, nor are we to be governed by snapshot polling without a true public realm free from the manipulations of Big Tech and Big Government in a distorted marketplace of ideas. King Charles' policies were generally popular as well, but that didn't make his eleven years of tyranny any less dangerous, and we have no wish to have to fight the 9 year bloody real world war that resulted. This destructive course of action could easily tear the country apart.
Throughout history Parliament has been a place of meeting: the concept of people forming together is the perfect distillation of our democratic system. If we do not have regular in-person meetings of the Commoners' Representatives than we are no longer a country nor do we deserve to be. The price to save the nation is a statistical blip on the ever-present possibility that any of us at any time for any reason be taken away from this earth. Anyone who has been chosen to pay this bargain of a price and still rejects the bill is free to abandon this duty forever: but they should be forevermore banished from this House and the sacred mission it has to play in the days ahead.
Next, (almost) every day during the lockdown Mark Steyn has been regularly producing audio shows, almost all of which open with a song parody. At first it was only a brief bit of "Kung Flu Fighting", he expanded to some other songs and then eventually put out a full length version of "Kung Flu Fighting". He's only played it twice and you have to listen to the whole show to get it. I edited out the date reference and then threw on some basic Wuhan Flu memes:
Update, February 10 2021 5:05pm: YouTube pulled it down, here's the DTube version:
And finally, the jokes about Jay Bauman from RedLetterMedia being a homo have been around for years: but his comments about what he dislikes about the movie Highlander, not liking Queen and sweaty men touching each other, should put those rumours to rest forever!
