The Blanche Report: White Elephants, Birthers & Obscene Tolls

So what is the biggest white elephant in Canada? If you guessed Montreal’s Big O – aka the Olympic stadium you win the prize. We have said on more than one occasion that they should set up seats around the perimeter and blow it up. But no, it seems they may want to pour more money into it. Last year there were 1200 rips in the roof. This year – 3400. Obviously it cannot withstand any kind of weather – summer or winter.

Maybe now that we have a new mayor who actually seems to know what he’s doing, he will take five minutes to figure out that nothing will ever fix that roof. Stay tuned – we may have some tickets to sell you.

Who is Onyango “Omar” Obama? Ok, it’s not that hard if you recognize the last name. It’s Obama’s uncle. Seems he was going to be deported until he invoked the name of his nephew. Originally from Kenya, he had a student visa that expired in 1970 and since then has been living in the United States. Oops – he needed something more current wouldn’t you say?

He also dropped a mini-bombshell contradicting his nephew saying that Barack lived with him in Cambridge for three weeks while the future president was a student at Harvard Law School in the late 1980s. Watch out for those birthers – the ones who say Obama wasn’t born in the USA and therefore should not be president. They’re acomin back.

Can you imagine spending $100 to drive over a bridge or through a tunnel? Well, as of Sunday, that is the new reality for truckers driving into Manhattan over the GWB otherwise known as the George Washington Bridge.  This will be the third of five toll increases passed since 2011. It means only a 75 cent increase for car drivers using E-ZPass. For cash paying truckers, on the other hand, it means a $12 hike, taking them from $90 per crossing to $102 just to cross the George Washington Bridge.

Getting nervous about the new tolls about to come here with the coming of the new Champlain Bridge? And speaking about the new bridge, we really hope those designing it will make it at least 4 lanes wide in each direction. It is the busiest bridge in all of Canada. We also hope that the engineers are not related in any way to anyone who designed the metropolitan here. That’s a piece of work, eh?

We have no doubt you will want to be a fly on the wall when Conrad Black interviews Rob Ford. Now that’s going to be quite the interview. One thing we can say with certainty – Rob Ford would not have consented to be interviewed unless he knew the interviewer was in his corner. And so, here’s a quote from Black: “…”a very large number of other people” smoke crack occasionally. As Perry Mason would say, the defense rests.

Not that we are baseball aficionados, but honestly, something’s wrong with this picture. The New York Yankees signed a seven-year deal with free agent outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury Tuesday night for $153 million. Are baseball players worth more than a surgeon who can save your life, or a nurse who can tend to you when you are helpless or a teacher who molds your children? No sports player, no matter how good he is, is worth that kind of money. If you are planning to fly anywhere over the holidays we have some news for you. You know those TSA agents (Transport Security Agents) in US airports? The ones who when they put on a uniform suddenly become a somebody. Well, they’re soon becoming a nobody.

Those in a program called SPOT – Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques have been unsuccessful in finding the bad guys. Very unsuccessful. And there are 3,000 of those agents costing a cool $900 million a year. The government said they are going to reassess all programs and agents. Good morning America. May we suggest that they call the Israeli government? They seem to have this deal down pat.

We’ll talk…