Before we launch into the news, a public service announcement. When you are on zoom, often with many people, and you have go to the loo, what’s the first thing you should do? Close the video so no one can see you. But there’s a second, equally important thing: put yourself on mute.
Unfortunately, during a Supreme Court argument, Attorney Roman Martinez forgot step two. Ergo, he was making a very exciting point when all of a sudden the unmistakeable sound of a terlit flushing was heard ’round the world’. Oops.
There have been almost 700,000 people who have listened to his flush on Twitter. That doesn’t include Drudge, Facebook and all news channels. There’s no doubt that right after that flush, Mr. Martinez wanted to flush himself down the terlit.
What do countries with the best Coronavirus responses have in common? Women Leaders. Here ya go and take the time to read what real leaders sound like, how they act and why they are leaders:
Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwan: Back in January, at the first sign of a new illness, she introduced 124 measures to block the spread without having to resort to the lockdowns that have become common elsewhere. She is now sending 10 million face masks to the U.S. and Europe.
Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand was early to lockdown and crystal clear on the maximum level of alert she was putting the country under—and why. She imposed self-isolation on people entering New Zealand astonishingly early, when there were just 6 cases in the whole country, and banned foreigners entirely from entering soon after. Clarity and decisiveness are saving New Zealand from the storm.
Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir of Iceland is offering free coronavirus testing to all its citizens, and will become a key case study in the true spread and fatality rates of COVID-19.
Norway’s Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, had the innovative idea of using television to talk directly to her country’s children. Solberg held a dedicated press conference where no adults were allowed, responding to kids’ questions from across the country.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen held the same kind of press conference a couple of days earlier.
Where are Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir when we need them?
There is no doubt that this next piece will become a neflix series once Trump is gone. In a stunner today, the Justice Department moved to drop its case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. This comes after internal memos were released raising serious questions about the nature of the investigation that led to Flynn’s late 2017 guilty plea of lying to the FBI.
DOJ officials said they concluded that Flynn’s interview by the FBI was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Flynn” and that the interview was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.” Woah.
To add to the intrigue, earlier today the top prosecutor on the case, Brandon Van Grack, abruptly withdrew from the case, without explanation.
That Russian probe by the Democrats was a towering failure and no doubt Trump will be harping on it during the fall presidential campaign.
This is a very big uh oh. One of Trump’s personal valets has tested positive for the coronavirus. Like him or not, as we saw in Great Britain when Boris Johnson was very ill in the hospital, it’s not good when the leader of a country gets sick. Let’s hope Trump dodges a bullet.
Montreal is a hotspot for COVID-19 and that doesn’t augur well for people living here. Stores were supposed to open next week. Then the opening was pushed off a week. Today it was pushed off until May 25, the reason being that there are simply way too many people still contracting and dying from the virus.
Lego, Quebec’s premier, seemed to have a handle on things for a while. Now? He’s shooting darts. Open the schools. Close the schools. No one over 60 can work. Now no one over 70 can work. All of a sudden people over 60 are not the target of this disease? They certainly are everywhere else.
Open the stores next week. Open the stores May 25. We have the senior homes under control. We don’t have them under control. The family minister of Quebec says don’t send your kids back to school. The Premier says send them back to school.
Before having their daily press conferences, may we suggest that the left and right hand get their act together. And…don’t hold a press conference every day if you can’t keep up with the information.
And now for the weather. Yes dearies, along with killer hornets, we have snowstorms in May. The northeast corridor of the United States is expecting some significant snowfalls this weekend. In addition to the snow, in case that wasn’t enough, it will be freezing cold and windy.
It appears that Montreal will be spared the heavy snow, but we will see flurries on Saturday. At least it’s not those nasty hornets.
Good Shabbos We’ll talk…
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