Today, Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford admitted to smoking crack cocaine. This after he lied for months saying a video showing him smoking something was a fabrication. Mysteriously that video disappeared until the Toronto police resurrected it last week using forensic technology.
In his first press conference of the day he admitted that he has been in a drunken stupor more than a few times, cannot remember when he took the crack cocaine, admitted he has a substance abuse problem with alcohol and other drugs and that despite all of this he will not step down as mayor of Toronto. He’s kidding right? No Blanche, he’s dead serious. For the first three minutes at his second press conference he appeared to be a tad remorseful and had everyone thinking that he would step aside for a while to get some help. Not a chance. He did an about face, basically flipped his middle finger to everyone, turned around and walked back into his office.
Who exactly will be working with him now is anyone’s guess. Only the provincial government can actually oust him. He’s certainly too big to pick up. Uh, can someone please remind this dude that he’s running the city of Toronto and as such is a public figure who is supposed to be above the law, not below it. We wonder if he’s going to call one of his ‘friends’ to get him a little ‘something’ to calm him down a bit. Oh wait – he said he’s not going to do that anymore. Riiiiggghhhttt.
Last night in the Garden State Plaza Mall in Paramus New Jersey a man fired multiple gunshots. It’s a mall that we frequent, that many people we know frequent. At 9:30 pm, just as the mall was closing, people heard shots being fired. One can only imagine what they were thinking – Nairobi Kenya and the West End mall attack. People ran for cover anywhere they could, waited until the police told them it was safe to come out and were escorted outside.
The perpetrator was a 20 year old male who legally owned a gun which he sawed off to resemble a machine gun. Sick, sick, sick. When will the United States get it? When will senators and congressmen and women stand up, once and for all to the NRA? When will money not mean more than a life?
The senate scandal is over for now. Tonight, in an unprecedented move, three of its members — Senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau — were tossed out of the chamber, cutting their salaries and use of office resources. The suspensions are to last for the remainder of the session, likely until the next federal election in 2015. It is the first time in Senate history a senator has been sanctioned in this way over expenses without being convicted of a criminal offense. If the last time you flew you felt a bit tighter in the seat, it’s because the airlines are making those seats smaller. You don’t have to go on a diet.
To put things into perspective: A movie theater seat is 25 inches wide; a seat on a train is 20.5 inches; a stadium seat 19 inches. A seat on an airplane – where you can find yourself sitting for six or so hours – 17 inches wide. Blanche go git the spanks. We’re gonna havta sit in dose skinny seats on da plane, ich. And Blanche, don’t be makin any samwiches fer da trip. No eatin on da plane or ya won’t fit in da seat.
New York city has a new mayor. Yup, Michael Bloomberg is gone. His name is Bill de Blasio, and he’s a Democrat. He is married to an African American and was able to connect with an increasingly diverse electorate. One such way was to electrify voters with a television commercial featuring his teenage son, Dante, who has a towering Afro.
Chris Christie, a republican, has been re-elected governor of New Jersey. In a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by over 700,000, Mr. Christie won decisively, making impressive inroads, exit polls found, among younger voters, blacks, Hispanics and women — groups that Republicans nationally have struggled to attract.
On the first day of the Hebrew day of Kislev (this year Monday November 4) was the yarzeit of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivky Holzberg, Chabad emissaries and four other holy Jews, who were murdered in Mumbai five years ago.
What made this year especially poignant is the fact that the Holzberg’s young son Moishy is now old enough to say kaddish (the special prayer recited for the dead) for his parents, which he did yesterday. Not much to say except that G-d should never take His eyes off that little boy.
Notre Montreal
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