Presidents normally have news conferences on a somewhat regular basis. He goes to the podium, takes questions from the press, answers them and banters back and forth. Today is different as Biden is holding his very first press conference since he became president.
Is he capable of holding a live press conference, not reading from a teleprompter? Was the media given softball questions to lob at him so making a huge gaffe is less likely? One thing we can say with certainty: The background of where he was standing was tres shmancy.
One question that Biden was not asked was about the pandemic. Not even a hint of a question about that. Of course there has been a mass shooting and a surge of migrants, but really? The virus has dominated our lives for over a year and no one asked him a question about it? Softball.
Were you vaccinated? If so, and whether or not you also had covid, do you know what your parameters are? Can you gather with other people who have also been vaccinated? If you had covid and have been vaccinated, can you start to hug your grandchildren? Can you visit your kids? Can you travel? Are we getting an app that can prove we have been vaccinated?
These are questions for the public health department in Canada to answer. Specifically Canada’s health minister Patty Hajdu and our chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam. Don’t you wonder where they are and why they are not giving us some direction? Just asking.
Speaking of vaccines, as of yesterday the total number of Canadians who have been vaccinated so far is 4,393,876. Canada’s population is around 38 million people. We may be wrong, but our calculations show this is 10.5% of the population.
To give you some comparison, the United States has vaccinated 133,305,295 which is 40% of their population. To speed things up, of course depending if we keep getting the vaccines from other countries, people need to think out of the box.
As it is still too cold to ask people to wait outside as they do in Florida, how about opening Place des Arts and other theaters, like the St. Denis theater. Places that cannot open now but have the ability to accept large numbers of people as well as the capability for wiring computers.
If you are planning to go through the Suez canal anytime soon, perhaps take another route. A massive container ship called the Evergreen – longer than the Eiffel Tower – ran aground during a dust storm in Egypt. This mongo ship is completely blocking the Suez Canal.
So far, all attempts to move it have been unsuccessful. They have tried moving it with tugboats, tried to re-float it, in other words, loosen it any way they can so the ship can start to move.
The traffic jam is now 185 ships and counting. The only option they have if the Suez Canal remains closed is sailing around the southern tip of Africa.
It appears that the old boys club is alive and well in New York. Or, that Governor Andrew Cuomo managed to stare down the media, the multiple accusations of improper and possibly lewd behavior and/or a combination of both.
Blanche, have you seen one article about him in any paper or on any media platform in the past week? Zip. Zilch. Nada. The boys are rallying around one of their own.
One of the Montreal Canadiens has covid and the team has been sidelined at least until Sunday. The team won’t say who it is but they did say he doesn’t have a bad case.
Talk to us on days 7-10 when the worst of the virus comes out. It seems that every team member was in contact with the infected person during a practice session. This story may not be over quite yet.
Israel is actually showing the world what the definition of insanity is: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. We speak of course of the country’s 4th election in 2 years, with the outcome of this election like all the other ones. No clear victory for anyone and the same scenario with the President asking someone to try to form a coalition.
Netanyahu’s Likud party has emerged with the majority of the votes, however, he still does not have a clear path to a 61-seat majority needed to form a coalition. The vote count is expected to continue through Friday.
Again we will most likely be witness to Bibi trying to form a coalition with different the parties which could take a few months. Seriously? There has to be a better way to do this.
The Suez Canal is not an option for a vacation these days and neither is Miami Beach. There’s yet another spring break this weekend with hordes of people en route to South Beach which is on high alert with the 8:00 pm curfew (which many ignored) still in effect.
We are guessing that the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis is much less scary than any other southern governor, as nothing seems to be stopping people from going to his state in droves.
Good Shabbos and Happy Passover. We’ll talk…