So whadda ya think, baseball is coming back to Montreal? Of course with the stipulation that there will be a stadium built, sooner than later. Does anyone think that it will be less than five years before such a structure emerges from the ground given Montreal’s reputation for getting ‘quotes’. Look at the Champlain bridge. It’s collapsing and we just keep paying to keep it from falling in the St. Lawrence river. Have you heard when they are starting? But we digress.
Given what happened to that shmancy group known as FIFA, which by the way stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association (en francais), if Montreal wants a baseball team the entire business, from top to bottom, best be 100% transparent. Forget those little brown envelopes, money in socks, hush-hush restaurant dinners where money passes from hand to hand under the table. Blanche, really, do you think that still happens here?
Then there’s Quebec city who hoped to get an NHL team back. Fuggedaboudit. Every time Peladeau opens his mouth to speak about his ‘country of Quebec’, every NHL owner takes another giant step back away from awarding a team to Quebec city, despite the fact that the city already built the $400 million Videotron arena. Hold on a second. Doesn’t Videotron belong to Peladeau? Zut alors.
And speaking of scandals, the FIFA soccer fiasco is about as juicy as it gets and no surprise at all. Seems many people knew that bribes had been passing from hand to hand, humongous ones at that, for decades. Some very well-heeled executives of FIFA were arrested this week, taken from their five star hotel suites. We wonder if they were allowed to put on their pants. Blanche, honestly, you’re crude. Let’s continue with the scandal at hand.
The international investigation into bribery, fraud and corruption at FIFA involved some surprising American names: The Miami chairman of a popular nationwide soccer league, and a major U.S. sportswear firm some believe could be Nike.
For more than two decades, the Justice Department said Wednesday, five “unscrupulous” U.S. and South American sports and banking executives helped funnel more than $150 million in bribes to officials atop FIFA, the multibillion-dollar goliath governing the world’s most popular sport.
The indictment also alleges bribes were paid and pocketed in connection with the sponsorship of the Brazilian national soccer team by “a major U.S. sportswear company.” Although investigators will not name the company, the indictment says the sportswear firm signed a 10-year, $160 million sponsorship deal with the Brazilian team in 1996, closely matching Nike’s clothes, shoes and equipment deal with the team that year.
All of this will come out in the wash. The best part of the whole deal is that the current president of FIFA, a dude by the name of Sepp Blatter (is that a name or what?) refuses to step down as prez and insists that FIFA must do a better job of policing itself. He must be taking some kind of laxative that went in the wrong direction.
We read an excellent article written by a weatherman. A real weatherman. Not one from CNN holding onto a pole in a hurricane. The title of his piece was The Age of Disinformation. The bottom line: Boring weather does not make the news, pay the bills or get new advertisers. Disasters, floods, tornadoes etc do even if the cause is truly natural and not from climate change or global warming. We will quote his last paragraph verbatim: “You will never hear about the low tornado count in recent years, the lack of major hurricane landfalls on U.S. coasts over the past 10 years, or the low number of wildfires this year. It doesn’t fit their story. But, never let facts get in the way of a good story…. there will ALWAYS be a heat wave, flood, wildfire, tornado, tyhpoon, cold wave, and snow storm somewhere. And, trust me, they will find them, and it will probably lead their newscasts. But, users beware…
And finally, Blanche was sent one of the best one-liners we’ve seen in many years and we thought it’s so good we should share it… Holding a grudge is like letting someone live rent-free in your head. Badda bing badda boom.
Good Shabbos We’ll talk…
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