As much as there is an ongoing hullaballoo about President Elect Donald Trump as America runs up to his inauguration, we should never forget the people who elected him. It is quite likely that not even half these people can explain the process of the Electoral College but they are
Continue readingTag: American politics
Babel-on-the-Bay: Reprising a year of bad bets.
The regrets of a political junky can be many. After years of easy political prognostications, to be a failure and ground under the heel of a person such as Donald Trump is ignominy. The guy did not even appear on our political radar until March. And we foolishly picked him
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: The phony War On Christmas reaches Canada.
You’ve probably noticed over the last decade around Christmas time there is a hue and cry from conservative folks about a “War on Christmas”. They speak darkly about those apparently seeking to somehow strip the Christian roots of the holiday out of Christmas. This has been mainly taking place in
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Who chose who?
It is grating when we read about Ontario politics and a careless reporter refers to Patrick Brown as ‘winning’ the leadership of Ontario’s Conservatives. He hardly won it. It would be the same as saying Donald Trump won the most votes on November 8, 2016. He did not win the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: You only know what Donald Trump is not.
You can never accuse President-Elect Donald Trump of being a politician. He is the antithesis of that. He despises politicians. You saw how he treats both Democrats and Republicans. He is neither. At best, he is an oligarchist. It is a system he knows from business. It would suit a
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Forecasting what President Trump will do.
It was Franklin Roosevelt who showed us how a politician can get around the news media. His fireside chats on radio were his direct connection with the American voters and they loved him for it. It was a lesson we noted early in our career as a political apparatchik. Some
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Joe Biden: Lame duck or solution?
Before the U.S. Vice President’s visit, Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion explained Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Ottawa last week as routine. While some people might see it as a stick in the eye of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump, Dion treated the visit as routine. There was nothing routine
Continue readingthe disgruntled democrat: Considering What Just happened in the US, It should Be Painfully Obvious Why Canada Should Change Its Voting System
It’s hard to believe but it’s true. Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States of America. A man who has never held a public office in his life now is Commander and Chief of the most potent and lethal military force in history. Put another way, the fate
Continue readingthe disgruntled democrat: Considering What Just happened in the US, It should Be Painfully Obvious Why Canada Should Change Its Voting System
It’s hard to believe but it’s true. Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States of America. A man who has never held a public office in his life now is Commander and Chief of the most potent and lethal military force in history. Put another way, the fate
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A trumpeted win for Trump in Indiana?
You have never heard so much BS from so many supposedly knowledgeable writers. Why would anyone think that Donald Trump’s grandstanding in the Indianapolis Carrier plant was a win? It was a farce that cannot survive an Indiana winter. For President-Elect Donald Trump to show up at that plant with
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Lord Black lauds buddy Trump.
You get the feeling that there could be another boring book by Lord ‘Cross-the-Pond’ in this. Yes, Conrad Black came out of seclusion on his Toronto estate the other day to promote another book that will look good on your coffee table. He told the news media that his raison
Continue readingDented Blue Mercedes: Pitting “identity politics” against class struggle is backwards, and the path to self-defeat
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that one of the first things America’s political left would do during the 2016 election post-mortem is to attack minority groups like trans* people, and “identity politics.” That narrative says Americans decided a potential fascist (when you consider his policy proposals, unilateral rhetoric, media
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It was not Trump’s win; It was Clinton’s loss.
We were all guilty. Our prejudice said Trump cannot win. We just did not look hard at Hillary. She thought she was winning. She acted like she was winning. She was running a losing campaign and we all got sucked in because we could not believe in Trump. Who could
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Let’s have a tag day for journalists.
Professor Penny Collenette wrote in the Toronto Star the other day that “all news is not fit to print.” Frankly Penny, your problem is that you need to define ‘news.’ Do we really know how to separate bias, comment, opinion, speculation and reporting from the comic pages? And do we
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Party is Over?
The good news is that we are doing away with organized political parties. The bad news is that we are doing away with organized political parties. And one or both of these statements has the seeds of a problem in it. The bad news is that non-political people with very
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Breaking in the new POTUS.
POTUS is what the U.S. Secret Service, who are charged with protecting the President, call the President of the United States. The service has a long tradition of doing that job. It is a job that can involve four years of excruciating boredom and three seconds of horror. It is
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: The Travesty of the Electoral College
Of the myriad outrages that define last week’s United States presidential election — namely, the elevation of scandal over policy, of demagoguery over competence, of unabashed sexism and racism and conspiratorial paranoia over reasoned debate — perhaps the most egregious is the fact that the winner of the popular vote
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Nightmares sometimes become real; the US Election being one of them.
I woke up this morning 2 days after the US Election hoping I’d dreamed a very bad dream… but alas, not to be. It appears that Clinton will end up winning the popular vote by about 1.2% (or 1.5 million votes), but simply put, there weren’t enough Democrats in the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Trump Travesty.
The Bastille has fallen. The Reign of Terror will soon begin. The tumbrils will roll in Washington. President Obama will keep that stiff upper lip as the patricians of politics are dispatched. Donald Trump will not be the first incompetent in the White House. He is just the most dangerous.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Lament for the late United States of America.
The unease set in early. While Americans were voting on Tuesday afternoon, we were sifting through public opinion polls trying to analyze what was wrong. Donald Trump was acting unusual. We assumed it was either the stress of the campaign or heavy doses of Valium. After all, how much experience
Continue reading