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Progressive Bloggers // Blogues progressistes

Author: Peter Lowry

May 5, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: The Morning Line: Ontario Election 2014.

How can you have a race without a morning line? The political parties are at post and the gamblers among us need more than just performance statistics to compute their bets. The morning line gives you a starting point for your betting convenience. But please remember, these figures cannot factor

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May 4, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Welcome to Ontario’s “Nasty” campaign.

Ready, aim, smear. The campaign has been launched in Ontario. Soon all the candidates will be down in the muck wallowing in the futility of claim and counter-claim. And the losers in this mud wrestling contest are the people of Ontario. Ontario deserves better. After more than two years of

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May 3, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: The pessimism of Chantal Hébert.

Sometimes it is hard to determine if Toronto Star Quebec political analyst Chantal Hébert is serious or just firing for effect. Taking a meaningless poll of Quebec federal political leanings as gospel is like those who assured us that the Parti Québécois was going to win the last provincial election.

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May 2, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: When is a budget not a budget in Ontario?

A budget is not a budget when it is being offered as an election program. While overly exploited and old news, Finance Minister Sousa’s budget yesterday was stolid and basically ho-hum with a veneer of concessions to the New Democrats. The real question for the Wynne government is whether it

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May 1, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: The Zen of the gambler.

Casino gambling is an excellent aid in the attainment of enlightenment. If you do not obtain direct insight into the teachings of the Buddha at least you gain some respect for the law of averages. This thought comes to mind after a recent trip to Casino Rama outside of Orillia.

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April 30, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Get off the dime Justin.

Liberals are waiting for Leader Justin Trudeau to act and every day he dithers is another day when the party is losing sight of the objective. You can hardly expect everyone to be coming to the aid of the party when Justin lies to it. When he was chosen leader

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April 29, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Ontario’s ‘overly ambitious’ gaming.

The recent audit report on Ontario Lottery and Gaming (OLG) proves once again that you should not audit something you do not understand. Gaming is based on promises of riches. It takes a gamer to understand that not everybody can win. And you are hardly going to win when the

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April 28, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: The people trump the politicos.

When the Supreme Court ruled the other day on Prime Minister Harper’s questions about changing the Senate, the answer was unanimous. It was also the answer that most people expected. For the House of Commons to make substantive changes in the Senate requires the approval of the provinces and of

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April 27, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Hair today, gone tomorrow.

It seems the Hair is out of step with Canadians. He is constantly rebuked by the Supreme Court, abused by his friends in the Senate, let down by his caucus, betrayed by underlings and his cabinet might all be vying for his job. As he said at Jim Flaherty’s funeral,

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April 26, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: The fat lady has yet to sing.

Public opinion polls can never replace voting. And the provincial election is not going to happen until New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath says it will. So, you might as well cool it. There will be lots more promises made and polls taken before the voters make the decision. Ontario voters

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April 25, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Is public speaking a dying art?

Listening to a political speech the other day was a disappointing experience. The speech was by someone who already had our vote. You just wished he cared enough about the audience and his speech to do it properly. And a proper speech is not that difficult. It takes preparation and

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April 24, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Rogers discovers customers.

Some Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) hearings remind us of acts from Shakespeare’s MacBeth. You can count on the weird sisters—commonly referred to as witches—to be there. You know them as Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus. And the CRTC is their cauldron of witches’ brew. It used to be

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April 23, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Mac’s Convenience should sue The Beer Store.

Why not cut to the chase? The Beer Store advertising that is currently running on television is slandering every convenience store in Ontario. It is wrong. It is unfair. It should be stopped. If it takes a lawsuit: so what? What do you think lawyers are for? Sure we have

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April 22, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Rt. Hon. Herb Gray, P.C., C.C., Q.C. 1931 – 2014

Herb Gray was smart, funny, wise, impish, a mentor and a friend. And it was a friendship that lasted over 50 years. We met over copy he had sent to the then party publication Liberal Action in the early 1960s. He had just been elected to parliament in Windsor West

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April 22, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: The return of the F-35 Lightning.

We thought the aircraft deal was dead. After months free of hype for the purchase of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning (II), we thought the civil servants, the military and the Harper government had finally put finis on buying that aircraft. Maybe that was only until they are sending some

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April 21, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: But what if Tom Walkom is wrong?

Toronto Star writer Thomas Walkom has been an icon for progressives in Canada for many years. If there is a left-of-centre stance possible on an issue, Tom will most often take it. Readers expect it of him. Those readers must have felt let down when they read his take on

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April 20, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: They always blame First-Past-the-Post.

They call our Canadian voting system First-Past-the-Post. Some people use more scatological terms for it. Others just castigate the system when it does not work the way they want. It frustrates them. Their problem is that they cannot come up with a better system of voting. Many of the people

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April 19, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: “If they just want to play politics.”

In an ill-conceived television commercial introduced Friday, Ontario’s Premier Wynne accuses her political detractors of playing politics. The commercial makes it look as though she is striding after a moving camera, trying to keep up with the teleprompter. It is an overall badly written and badly produced effort. It is

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April 18, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Wrong again, Justin Trudeau.

Even in Julius Caesar’s day, the Rubicon was a very shallow river. Caesar’s legion waded across. Justin Trudeau dives in and ends up looking silly. When writing about the metaphorical Rubicon that young Trudeau faced in Toronto’s Trinity-Spadina riding, we were talking about his relationship with the Liberal Party. Instead

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April 17, 2014 Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay: Conservatives confuse justice and retribution.

You can see the desperation of the Conservative government in the bills it is trying to pass while still in office. You can see it in the names of their bills. The name of the bill has little to do with the content. It is intended to confuse—to give one

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