Oh, Canada!
Remember all of the Hollywood types who threatened to leave the country if Donald Trump became president but knew they would never have to go because he couldn’t win? Yeah, none of them ever left.
Now, singer Barbra Streisand, who threatened just such an action in 2016, is pondering moving out of the country, again, because of Trump, she recently told The New York Times.
“Don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about, do I want to move to Canada? I don’t know. I’m just so saddened by this thing happening to our country. It’s making me fat. I hear what he said now, and I have to go eat pancakes now, and pancakes are very fattening. We make them with healthy flour, though – almond flour, coconut flour.”
In the meantime, and to fatten up her wallet while she’s still in the U.S., she’s made a new album, referred to as the musical embodiment of her dislike for the president. It’s called “Walls,” the title track of which warns that people now “build them where they shouldn’t be.”
Another track, “Don’t Lie to Me,” supposedly is a direct address to Trump.
When’s lunch?
Did he have sympathy for the terrorist, forget why he was there or just have other things on his mind? Whatever the reason, New York City Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio recently spoke during a ceremony marking the one-year anniversary of an attack in Lower Manhattan where “bike path terrorist” Sayfullo Saipov allegedly mowed down eight cyclists and runners in a rented Home Depot truck, but the mayor forgot to mention the victims or the family members who came to honor them.
Instead, in a 15-minute ceremony, de Blasio praised first responders, the politicians in attendance and even the people who marched in a Halloween parade after the incident, calling their participation “one of the most moving things I’ve seen in my life. Then, having referenced only “eight good lives lost,” he went to shake the hands of those in attendance. One of them, apparently a family member, set him straight, and he rushed back to the podium.
On this pass, he apologized, read the names of the victims and called for a moment of silence. A City Hall spokesman later said he hadn’t read the names because they weren’t on the program.
“I thought [the victims] was what this was about,” a friend of one of the victim’s mother told the New York Post, “that this is a moment where we would say ‘You know, we care, we really do care,’ but I didn’t get the feeling. [The mayor] said this attack has been in our hearts for a year Really? Do you believe that?”
A nut-rageous flavor
The founders of Ben & Jerry’s, the Vermont ice cream company, have never made any attempt to hide their far left political leanings. So it’s probably not surprising that their newest flavor is Pecan Resist, emblematic of the left’s activism movement in the U.S.
A limited flavor, it features chocolate ice cream with white and dark fudge chunks, pecans, walnuts and fudge-covered almonds. The idea, according to the company, is to “lick injustice and champion those fighting to create a more just and equitable nation for us all.”
In case you had the idea both political parties want to create a more just and equitable nation, the ice cream company says differently. “The company cannot be silent,” its statement said, “in the face of President Trump’s policies that attack and attempt to roll back decades of progress on racial and gender equity, climate change, LGBTQ rights and refugee and immigrant rights – all issues that have been at the core of the company’s social mission for 40 years.”
In conjunction with the flavor, Ben & Jerry’s will donate $25,000 each to Color of Change, Honor the Earth, Women’s March and Neta.
Republicans can show their resistance by buying their ice cream elsewhere.
How’s that working out?
Several months ago, we noted that San Francisco was preparing to register noncitizens – including illegal immigrants – who are over the age of 19, are residents of the city and have children under the age of 19 in order for them to vote in only – wink, wink – school board elections.
The effort was the first in its kind in California, the city having passed it in a 2016 ballot measure, and is likely to birth other such efforts elsewhere. To set up the registration system to allow the noncitizens to vote and to encourage the voting of such a population, the city spent $310,000.
The effort to sign up folks for the Nov. 6 election began in July but must be considered something of a bust. When all was said and done, only 49 people who fit the bill had signed up. If you’re ciphering at home, that’s $6,326.53 per voter. We’d say that’s not much of a return on investment for the City by the Bay.