TA TA TO THE BIG APPLE…UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN.

The election in the United States in November is becoming much more serious than not liking Donald Trump. It is becoming an issue of what kind of America do people want.

Over the July 4th weekend in Chicago there were 47 shootings with 87 victims and 17 fatalities. Over the same holiday weekend in 2019, there were 42 shootings, 66 shooting victims and six deaths. Shootings in Atlanta are up 100% over last year.

Many of these shootings, which of course you will not see in the media, are black people killing black people. Where exactly is black lives matter now? Wait. Because they don’t like this news they are ignoring it? Is this helping the police communicate better with minorities?

One of the spin-offs of the black lives matter quest to better the lives of black people is to defund police departments and replace the police with community programs and social workers aimed at becoming more sensitive to minorities. While that is well and good, on the ground the reality is not a movie, rather very raw and real.

We saw a commercial from Trump which sadly spoke volumes. While it is on the extreme end of the spectrum, it’s also not far from the truth  if the Democrats cannot control whoever has taken over their party.

Someone calls 911. An answering machine picks up the call with the following message: Due to less officers, we are unable to respond  to your call. For rape, press 1. For a shooting press 2. For a robbery press 3. We will get back to you within three days.

Is that what people are looking for? If the answer is yes, then a vote for the Democratic Party is your ticket to get there. If on the other hand, you want do want to sensitize police departments, rather than retiring half the force, then perhaps community programs should be directed to sensitizing the police instead of getting rid of them.

As things stand now, Americans are in the process of exchanging one big problem with a much, much bigger one.

So a bar in Quebec had five people infected with the coronavirus and are now appealing to those who were there to come forward. Can we talk?

Tracking people is not the answer as everyone knows governments will take advantage of our data, no matter what they say. Perhaps the answer is that when you go to a bar or restaurant, you register your name and phone number. Or just your cell number. You would then get a call and know that you were exposed.

Of course bars are different than restaurants and inebriated people are much less willing to cooperate. Sorry to say, if bars cannot figure something out, they may have to close down for now.

And now for the some-of-the-biggest-geniuses-in-the-world department, we’ll start with the mayor of Atlanta. She has tested positive for COVID-19 after joining the in the blm protests. Right now she has no symptoms. Big whoop. She already shed her virus load all over the place, making sure to infect everyone around her.

The kicker is that she is ‘shocked’ to have heard she has the virus. Shocked. Seriously.   We saved the best for last:

“It leaves me for a loss of words because I think it really speaks to how contagious this virus is. (Good morning America). We’ve taken all the precautions that you can possibly take. I have no idea when and where we were exposed.” How about thousands of protesters who were not wearing masks?

And then there’s the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, another dufus. On Sunday, he wasn’t feeling very well, on Monday it got worse when he started feeling tired, feverish and with muscle pain.

Brazil is second only to the United States in numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths. But Bolsonaro has often appeared in public and at rallies without a face mask, even hugging supporters. He also dismissed the virus as a little flu. He’s now singing another tune entirely, from his bed with Tylenol.

While we are duly impressed that Valerie Plante has made masks mandatory in indoor public spaces, we are wondering why it is going to take until July 27 to make this law. In case you didn’t notice, the date today is July 7.

Can we make an educated guess that if this had to do with bicycles, it would have been done before she got the words out of her mouth?

So far, this is only happening in Montreal, but the Quebec government is thinking about making it mandatory all over Quebec – from Montreal to Point-aux-Pic and beyond. Oh yes. Plante decided to make masks mandatory without tell the provincial government. They found out just before her press conference. Blanche, do you think they don’t get along with each other? Quel surprise.

One of the biggest issues of the pandemic is how to open those monstrous office buildings. How do you get 3,000 people to work without stuffing them into elevators like sardines in olive oil? The picture is not a pretty one, especially the olive oil part. But we digress.

The suggested capacity is now four people per car, down from nine to 12 in the past. Asking some elevator riders to face the wall is one option that some buildings are considering in order to squeeze more riders onto each car. Face the wall Morris and don’t turn around – hehehehehehe. Blanche, stop it.

The estimate for the time it will take to populate a tall building to full occupancy with limited elevator capacity ranges between 90 minutes to four hours. Many returning employees might receive a scheduled boarding time for their ride up and down the elevator.

Four hours to wait for an elevator? You wouldn’t want to be the owners of those skyscrapers which, from the sounds of it, will remain mostly empty for a very long time.

Back to the deadly shooting sprees in the United States. The NY police chief was interviewed recently and said that NYC is “a mess and it’s going to get a lot worse.” Why?  New York’s finest is at an all-time low after “getting attacked from all sides” and “being defunded and demeaned.”

Even more troubling, he said, are citizens who would normally cooperate with police to ferret out crime are not doing so because they “feel intimidated” by their neighbors.

Bratton was particularly baffled by City Hall’s sudden decision to reduce police manpower — noting the additional 1,300 police officers added under his watch bolstered neighborhood policing, which was broadly supported as a move to improve relationships between cops and the community. Now they’re gone.

He said many council members were too young to understand the fear of crime that gripped the city in the 1980s and early ’90s, when there were more than 2,000 murders a year.

Looks like New York City is off our vacation list until people come to their senses. And that, ladies and gentlemen, could take a very long time.

We’ll talk…