Of mice and doofusses ...

Image: Rat deserted by ship?

March 13: See photo addendum at foot of page.


Of mice and doofusses ...

That's no Parliament; it's a circus!

Thanks to commenter "Jill" for the following comment to my Feb 21 post "Does Canada's Prime Minister Actually Exist?. I've spent most of today attempting to formulate a reasonably cogent, albeit belated, response.

Jill said: 

• "Butts is/was likely Trudeau's 'handler', but I'm curious as to when he was chosen and groomed for the role. Usually these people come from rich families and are chosen early in life."

Jill also queried the significance of the content of this article, which I'll deal with first:

BuffaloChronicle: Scheer wants BMO and Treasury official questioned in SNC-Lavalin probe

• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said publicly that, if Brison hadn’t resigned then he wouldn’t have removed Wilson-Raybould as leader of the Justice Ministry. That logic has confused many Canadian political observers.  Why would the Treasury Board President’s resignation impact the tenure of the Justice Minister?

In light of another, more recent report (also submitted by Jill) ...

BuffaloChronicle: Widespread rumors that it was Iacobucci who first insisted that Jody Wilson Raybould be removed as Attorney General.

... I have to say that I think it's probable that Trudeau is just looking for a nail upon which to hang his sacking of Jody Wilson-Raybould.  He's making the implausible case that a shuffle had to happen because of a vacuum left by Brison's resignation, and there was no alternative but to shuffle JWR in the process.

Scott Brison may well have serious personal reasons for jumping ship. For most of his political career, he was a Conservative, and it was only after he came out as gay (2003) that he apparently began to think he might be safer among the Liberals, so he switched and did very well there.

This may also partially explain Scheer's inability to hear the word "Pizzagate" at the recent Town Hall meeting. It was a Conservative who said it, but Scheer may want to appear a bit more liberal than that, at least until after the election.

Trudeau's fate because of SNC-Lavalin is obviously not looking good, and therefore also the fate of the whole Liberal ship. Conversely, the outlook for the Conservatives is improving, and because so many of them are anti-gay (it's a sin against God) and they connect gayness with paedophilia, if there is a move afoot among them to push that as an election issue (along with female reproductive rights) and if Trudeau is personally smeared in the process via the rumours of paedophilia in his own family, added to the fact that he made a huge donation on behalf of Canadians to the Clinton Foundation (read Pizzagate), how much more difficult would it be for Brison to re-win his seat considering that he and his male spouse recently adopted two baby girls via a surrogate mother?

Whatever Brison's connection may be with SNC, the anti-gay component that caused him to leave the Conservative party may well be a big factor in his decision to resign.  He's much safer working for the BMO, even if there's some hanky-panky there regarding SNC.

With regard to Jill's first question, I imagine that Justin was groomed by his father from day one for the job of PM. But no doubt his father could see the lack of critical thinking his son possessed, and it's almost certain that the elder Trudeau would have taken a subtle approach in seeing that the kid was nudged or enticed, rather than pushed, lest he rebel, so he may well have arranged, through the use of his own reputation, to have Justin meet up with more solid influences in university.
 
Incidentally, in the process of looking for answers, I came across a free e-book offered by Huffington Post, the author of which, on Page 22, mentions Jonathan Ablett, the person who introduced Trudeau and Butts to each other in their first year at McGill U:

Free Download: Contender: The Justin Trudeau Story
By the Huffington Post Canada’s Ottawa bureau chief Althia Raj

I've only scanned it a bit, but from the little I've seen it does seem to make Justin appear smarter than maybe he really is. Devious is not the same as smart.

It's just now occurred to me, though, considering the innuendo regarding the closeness of Gerry and Justin as school pals, strongly alluded to in the BuffaloChronical article quoted at length below, that the international media attention paid to a complaint of groping levelled by a female against Justin might just have been what the doctor ordered to rehabilitate his boy-toy calendar image.

The mystery man who introduced Justin to Gerry was Jonathan Ablett. He's apparently not famous enough to warrant a wikipedia page (or he's possibly too secretive -- read further down to see why), but I was able to locate him through LinkedIn.

You may have to login to LinkedIn to see the blurb and his photo, but just to prove I did see it:
Jonathan Ablett - Director, Economic Modelling - IHS Markit | LinkedIn   https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-ablett-a67a502
Jonathan Ablett is a Director of Economic Modelling at IHSMarkit, where he leads a team ...

Before being kicked out, I was able to copy the following directly from LinkedIn:
Jonathan Ablett is a Director of Economic Modelling at IHSMarkit, where he leads a team of economists and econometricians who specialize in the delivery of insights and analytic tools to help clients with strategic and operational decision making.

• Prior to working at IHSMarkit, Mr. Ablett worked with McKinsey & Company's Strategy Practice and the McKinsey Global Institute, where he specialized in economic and strategic analysis for both private and public sector clients. His client work was been concentrated in the public, infrastructure, energy & materials and consumer sectors.
• Mr. Ablett has published several white papers on global economic scenarios, the emerging middle class in China and India, and a monthly Global Economics Intelligence report for clients on U.S. economic developments.

The following came from the IHSMarkit website, but they name no names at all:
IHSMarkit: The New Intelligence. A wider picture, a deeper focus.

• Every day, people in business, finance and government make decisions with wide-ranging implications. These leaders need to see the interconnected factors that impact their organizations. This knowledge allows them to make the best choices and achieve their business goals. We call this the New Intelligence.

"Global Economic Intelligence" may well be the clue to Mr. Ablett's extremely low profile, despite the fact that, according to LinkedIn, he actually sat on the House Ways & Means Committee, Massachusetts State House, at one point. A search of the House website does not mention him.  It would be nice to know more about his family background but those "intelligence" guys play their cards close to the chest.

It was, however, very clearly stated at LinkedIn that Ablett received his BA in the exact same year at McGill as did Trudeau.

Moving on: Butts and Trudeau hit it off so well that eyebrows were reportedly raised, and the Buffalo Chronicle is quite suggestive in the words chosen to describe their relationship:

BuffaloChronical: Deep and penetrating’ relationship may taint Butts’ testimony

• Since their days on the McGill debate team, Gerald Butts has wanted to become Prime Minister. But he knew early on that Trudeau was the one with the money, name, and charisma to step out front.
• Friends at McGill University say Justin Trudeau and Gerald Butts had the kind of ‘deep and penetrating’ relationship that is common among privileged young men in their late teens and early twenties: lofty in their aspirations, pedestrian in their work ethic, and, at times, ambiguous in their orientation.
• Critics say that the depth and intimacy of that friendship call into question the veracity of Butts’ testimony at the House of Commons’ Justice Committee on Wednesday. Widely seen as being ‘thick as thieves’ and partners in the apparent political crime that is SNC Lavalin, it’s hard for many Canadians to believe that Butts would offer a truthful characterization of a plot that he hatched and recommended to the Prime Minister.

As already stated, the innuendo in the BuffChron article is pretty thick.  Here's a further example:

• Butts invited Trudeau to join the debate team, and the pair traveled to tournaments together, including a trip to Princeton University during which the two were observed being ‘particularly close’. Butts was a far more skilled and tactical debater than Trudeau, but Trudeau projected greater confidence.

At the very least, the two have come across as a veritable Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee combo:

Wikipedia: Tweedledum_and_Tweedledee

• They agree to have a battle, but never have one. When they see a monstrous black crow swooping down, they take to their heels. The Tweedle brothers never contradict each other, even when one of them, according to the rhyme, "agrees to have a battle". Rather, they complement each other's words.

Considering Trudeau's avowed deep religious faith, which he may well assume indicates a pristine character, a commenter to the Buffalo Chronicle article article, one Joey Beargrease, put that image neatly into perspective:

• "How do you know you will stand before God naked? Have you been there before?"

At first I laughed loud and long when I read that because it was an extremely good question and I wished I had thought of it. Then I began to wonder if it was a veiled reference to the elder Trudeau's rumoured proclivities and the younger Trudeau's suggestion in his eulogy (YouTube) for his father (with help from Gerald Butts in writing it) that his father was a god-like figure -- in his words, a "truly powerful" man, being a close friend of Santa Claus himself.

Santa, of course, is all-powerful like God. "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows when you've been bad or good ..."

Which is why I tried not to inflict Santa on my kids, and I wonder how a truly intellectual person (along with his own father  -- Justin's grandfather who Justin said accompanied them on the North Pole trip) would travel so far to make Santa a living reality for his kindergarten-aged first-born son.

The very idea of Santa inhabiting a Northern military base is worrisome in itself, since "conspiracy theories" abound that military bases are notorious for paedophile activities.

Jill, in her comments, said, "I don't know about Jody Wilson-Raybould", meaning, I assume, that she doesn't know if there was a much earlier connection in the same manner as Butts and Trudeau - in other words, a planned life for all three of them, choreographed behind the scenes as a means to influence the workings of Canada's government (as Soros obviously has through Chrystia Freeland).

Well, Jody was born in March of the same year as the birth of Justin. She studied for her BA at the University of Victoria while both Trudeau and Butts were undergraduates at McGill.  But, get this, Trudeau studied for his B.Ed at U of BC from 1994 to 1998, at the same time and the same university at which JWR was working on her law degree.

(Gee, what if he actually did take the LSATs after all in order to be in the same faculty with JWR, but failed them -- yet had to spend the time there for further "grooming". It's rare for someone to take a full four year bachelor's program and then do the same all over again for a slightly different bachelor's degree.) 

Then, while JWR articled in a downtown Vancouver law firm, Justin taught school in the same city between 1998 and 2002, after which he went back east to continue his rather eclectic, some might say prolonged though somewhat scattered, education.

Gerald Butts, on the other hand, obtained his entire education, both BA and MA in literature, at McGill.

It's not clear whether or not Jody Wilson-Raybould socialized with Justin Trudeau during the time he was in BC but she had to have known he was there -- at least when they studied at the same school.  But if there is such a thing as young people being deliberately groomed for directed careers in government, this is the kind of picture one might get when looking back.

One last thing before I sign off, in case readers missed the addendum at the foot of Sheila, How Could You?, I feel it's important to reiterate as follows:

During Butts' testimony before the Justice Committee I actually lost count of the number of times he slipped in the words "9000 lost jobs", but it was around 15 times.  He was doing the same thing to the Committee that he denies was done to Wilson-Raybould.

Only one questioner asked, "Do we know for a fact that jobs would be lost?", but somehow the question never got answered.

That's the smoking gun, as far I'm concerned, and if the Finger of God fails to reach down from the Heavens to rescue the Liberals, they are toast. It does appear, at the moment, that the ship is slowly deserting the sinking rat.

-- Liberal MP TJ Harvey announces he will not run in 2019 federal ...
-- 'Feels very right': Liberal Scott Brison resigns from cabinet, not ...
-- Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes says she will not seek re ...

ADDENDUM:

Finally managed to get back into LinkedIn and took screenshots. So now we see Jonathan Ablett and his education at McGill, as well as some of his workplaces (the middle is missing, but the most relevant stuff is there).