After watching Conservative Party leadership contender Andrew Scheer M.P. on Global’s West Block program last Sunday, it felt like you were coming down from a sugar high. You wonder if that guy can ever rid himself of that grin. The wife liked him at first but after a full six
Continue readingAuthor: Peter Lowry
Babel-on-the-Bay: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
William Shakespeare is a writer for most human experience. You could not help but think of that line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream the other day reading a commentary on guaranteed basic income. Who the writer was is not important. The approach was serious. He wrote of a guaranteed basic
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: An equal and opposite reaction.
Maybe we are talking about different sciences here but you would think that politics and energy would have some similar characteristics. What we are thinking of here is the tendency of the politics of the left to react to the actions of the politics of the right. For example, if
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Mother of all Bombs: No oversight required?
During his presidential campaign, President Trump promised to bomb the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL) brigands in the Middle East back to the Middle Ages. He now seems to have given America’s generals carte blanche to do that. The only problem is that the ISIL fanatics involved
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: “You don’t say, Mr. Spicer!”
On the wall above our computer is an old framed black and white Frank & Ernest cartoon with four characters in the wigs and knee-britches of the colonial period. One of the gentlemen, who does not look like George Washington is saying: “’Cannot tell a lie,’ eh? … In that
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Conservative schism becomes a chasm.
And you used to wonder why Prime Minister Stephen Harper was always flying off with his hairdresser to other parts of the world? It was obvious to many that he was under the constant pressure of keeping his disparate party under some semblance of control. It was during his third
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The bafflement of blow-hard Brown.
It is probably for the best that the Ontario Progressive Conservatives have a schlemiel such as Patrick Brown as their leader. They will be relieved when he goes. And here is the poor guy trying to explain the difference between carbon taxes and Cap and Trade to a political party
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Morning Line: B.C. Provincial Election – May 2017.
This morning line is not up to our usual standards. We simply lack the complete information needed to assess the public mood. All we can do is provide a baseline for betting based on what stats and performances are available. And there is no getting around the fact that B.C.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Conservatives in the back stretch.
At most race tracks today, the race fans are offered television views of the back stretch. It helps them follow the race, recognizing that most of the positioning moves in the back stretch develop the story of the race. It is the same in a political race such as the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Resuscitating Canada’s New Democrats.
You really have to laugh at Ed Broadbent’s attempts at resuscitating the moribund federal New Democratic Party. He seems to be the only person who believes you can do mouth-to-mouth life saving through a microphone. Ed’s modestly named Broadbent Institute had a conference for Canada’s leftists last week in Ottawa.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: You think Trump got it right in Syria?
There were pictures in North American papers the other day of Trump and his key advisers in a small room at his Florida resort. The captions explained that they were being briefed on options in Syria. The question that has to be asked: Is a strike against one airfield any
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: And you want their names spelled right too?
Henceforth it is resolved that we will post our commentaries after our second cup of coffee. Despite how much we try to ignore the Conservative M.P. for our neighbouring electoral district of Simcoe-Grey, we really should spell her name right. And you would think one of our loyal readers would
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Teaching Trump ‘The Art of the Deal.’
The first thing Canadians should do is stop sweating over renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It has never been a really fair deal and it became overly complicated when Mexico joined. Given the opportunity to renegotiate, Canada could improve its position. The only problem is that we
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: They are by-elections for goodness sake!
You just love it when the government has to call some by-elections for seats in parliament that have become vacant and people want to analyze the results. Why? We knew the likely results when the by-elections were called. If you want to see hotly contested by-elections, come back when there
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Elizabeth May: The last liberal.
Elizabeth May M.P. is the leader of a party that never was. She is the only Green Party member in parliament and therefore is deprived of real recognition of that leadership status. She also appears to be the only real liberal in the House of Commons. That must be the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Alibiing elitism 150 years later.
If there was just one institution in Canada that could be changed this year, many Canadians would choose the Senate. They are tired of the elitism shown by the prime minister and his elitist friends in choosing Canadians to serve in this anachronistic reminder of Canada’s British beginnings. The Senate
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: When in doubt do nothing.
Is this the new political mantra? At all levels of government, we are seeing variations of stalactites and stalagmites frozen in their political positions as the world revolves around their caves. From their superior position hanging down from above, the stalactites in Ottawa are the most obvious. With the government
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The constipated Conservative contest.
Back on March 11 and 12, Babel-on-the-Bay published its morning line for the current Conservative Party of Canada leadership. We are somewhat surprised that nothing has changed. With two more months to go at the time, candidates’ teams needed to assess their strategy and make their changes for the home
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Did April Fool come early this year?
We read in the Toronto Star the other day about some ‘go-bold’ re-election strategy being used by Premier Kathleen Wynne. We practically wet our pants laughing until we realized the item was written by Bob Hepburn. Bob has always been a quite astute observer of things political for the Star
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A churlish chap called Cole.
You get the strongest sense from Toronto Star writer Desmond Cole that if you are white, you are wrong. And the Toronto Star editors allow this form of discrimination? It might surprise Mr. Cole to find that there are people who do not approve of discrimination in any form. And
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