From Counterpunch: “Jill Stein, the Green Party’s nominee for president, has been the sudden target of attacks from all corners of online media since the official end of Bernie Sanders’ campaign at the Democratic National Convention. Outlets like the Washington Post, New York Magazine and Gizmodo have assaulted Stein by using out-of-context quotes to […]
Tag: American politics
Babel-on-the-Bay: The GOP’s ‘Charge of the Light Brigade.’
One of our favourite bloggers is a gentleman trained as both journalist and lawyer who writes under the pseudonym ‘The Mound of Sound.’ While claiming to be a disaffected liberal, he writes from a progressive perspective. The only problem with his frequent and voluminous polemics is that they are sometimes heavy wading. He recently wrote […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: You are just encouraging ‘What’s his name?’
Psychiatrists tell us that one of the motivations for jihadists is the notoriety. They seem to consider the death and destruction as a measure of their success. Maybe that is why the Republican candidate for the American presidency is feasting on his own controversy and building his campaign on outrageous lies. Every time he is […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Gratuitous advice on snapshots in time.
You know that you get what you pay for but this advice is free anyway. You should try not to get your knickers in a knot every time a poll is announced that says the Republican candidate might win the presidency in the U.S. As horrifying as the thought might be Canadians are resilient and […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Road to November.
Last year Canadians were appalled at the beginning of August when they realized they were faced with a two and a half-month federal election campaign. Americans are faced with more than three months. They know they have a great deal to achieve in that limited time. The biggest challenge for the major candidates is pacing. […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Morning Line is Hillary by 2 -1.
It was during the Clinton White House years that many of us realized that the brains in the Clinton family are on the distaff side. And nothing pisses off ignorant men more than a smart woman. Which might help to explain why Hillary Clinton is the most despised Democratic candidate ever. But she is not […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The political zoo keeper’s dilemma.
One of the difficult dilemmas facing you when organizing a major political convention, is keeping the news media in their cages, fed, watered and occupied. As mother used to tell us, the devil finds work for idle hands. The media gather like vultures for the event. And the greater the challenge the party faces, the […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: In the City of Brotherly Love.
Philadelphia lends a panache to the Democratic National Convention this year that hard-scrabble Cleveland did not provide for the Republicans. The Republicans were hectored and urged to anger at their Trump Fest. Whereas Philadelphia can make history—as it once created a country—it can bring about a new reconciliation. And that is what America needs. It […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: What has Trump left to say?
The party is over in Cleveland. The Republican Party is no longer the Grand Old Party. It is the party of Donald Trump. We endured his over-long rant on Thursday night and knew less when he was finished than was known when his daughter introduced her dear daddy. It was an hour and a quarter […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: There’s no business like no business.
Watching the events in Cleveland this week at the Republican National Convention you realize there are two stories unfolding. The first is in the convention hall itself where the strangest and most frightening political event of all is unravelling. While outside the convention, three trigger-happy armies parade and there is a danger of collision. But […]
Continue readingScripturient: A cunning plan
I see Donald Trump’s plan to utterly eviscerate the Republican Party is working very well. Just look who he picked as his running mate: possibly the only white man more bigoted, vile, close-minded, racist and misogynistic than the passel of presi…
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s time for the Trumpet and his Strumpet.
Donald Trump continues to amaze Americans and the rest of the world. Yes, the Americans have failed to keep the Trump jokes to themselves. The entire world is watching. Particularly Canadians. Lots of them not only understand the strange American dialect but they share the same time zones. But this past week of hot summer […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A Canadian contingent for Trump.
Canadians need their own wall. It would hardly be fair for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to have a wall on the south without equal opportunity for the north. This conclusion seems to be necessary as you meet Canadians who think Trump is cool. Hard to believe, but true. Talking to one lady recently, it […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Trump – Thatcher triangle.
Trump finally did it. He lost it all over a mosquito. It was enough to make you wonder if the mosquito was real or imagined. And it was an example of the root cause of our society’s problems. Out of a 70-minute speech, social media lit up with 15-seconds of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Amigos, meet the elephant.
The so-called Three Amigos met in Ottawa this week. It was nothing more than a public relations exercise. Nothing substantive could be resolved. The American, Canadian and Mexican leaders simply tried to ignore the problems their countries face. They certainly did not want to talk about the elephant in the room; Donald Trump. With Barack […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Donald Trump supporters discovered.
It has been written numerous times that the measure of a person’s intelligence is based on how much they agree with you. And having a political science professor agree with this political apparatchik is doubly gratifying. You have to admit it is a rare occurrence. Too often we get into the typical argument with political […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Donald Trump’s White House?
You might be tired of hearing about Donald Trump. That is understandable. He is definitely a Johnny-one-note. There are still miles to go before the November election. The one way to reach people who see him as a solution instead of the problem is to ask them to imagine Trump in the White House. It […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Trump: Fascist or Populist?
Mia culpa. It must be the arrogance of a commentator that afflicted us. We wrote a casual commentary about populist politicians and thought nothing of it. At least until we read a commentary by a professor the other day that inferred that a populist was a fascist. It got us thinking. Obviously we are going […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Politicians are just like us.
Maybe it is because they are never a hero to their valets that we have never been overly impressed with politicians. As a publicist and confidante to many politicians over the years, we have found that they share the same foibles, failures and frustrations as anyone else. Nobody is perfect and the person offering to […]
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Bumper sticker solutions still work.
A fellow progressive once accused Babel-on-the-Bay of using bumper sticker solutions. What he did not realize is that the era of the bumper sticker is long gone. Maybe he had failed to note that automobiles no longer have real bumpers. Getting adhesive off a painted surface can be expensive. But what he was really complaining […]
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