The local Sun Media newspaper in Babel is very thin. It has very little advertising and little budget. It therefore welcomes free articles from local writers. Some of these writers are from the political fringe. An example this week was an article by a political hopeful boosting a September conference
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Babel-on-the-Bay: Political survival for party leaders.
Reading a political survival strategy for Ontario Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak proposed by Bob Hepburn in the Toronto Star the other day, it seems that what he says applies at all political leaders—and not even just in Ontario. Mind you, Ontario has been without leadership for some time now and
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Marois sells inferiority.
Quebec’s sovereignty soliloquists believe they have a free hand to sell separatism to their captive audience. Quebec Premier Pauline Marois bragged to the media recently that her Parti Québécois are planning a campaign for sovereignty without a referendum in sight. It is like an uncomfortable rash on our country’s backside
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Wither without Verizon on the horizon?
Somebody took away Prime Minister Harper’s big stick. Verizon has declined the opportunity to come up here and play in the Bell-Rogers-Telus sandbox. Do the Canadian telecom trio look pleased? Yes they do. Did they scare off Verizon? Not really. You do know who is going to get screwed now,
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: A duplicitous Charles Sousa?
An old friend down in Windsor has posited in a blog that Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa is running a covert campaign for Kathleen Wynne’s job. While it is a mildly amusing hypothesis, you have to remember that the Windsor area of Ontario thrives on putative political putsches. And the
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Harper can skate backwards.
Do you feel that you have been getting mixed messages from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) lately? It is like watching a fast-paced hockey game. The puck and the teams keep changing ends. From a hawkish stance a week ago, we are now seeing a more reticent Prime Minister and
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Do you expect a humbled Hudak?
The Ontario Conservatives’ hapless leader Timmy Hudak is a continuing problem for his caucus and party. Ontario pundits have continued to have their say about him and nobody knows anything they did not previously know and worried about. And if Timmy and his political handlers have no idea what to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Winning at casinos is not impossible.
There was an outraged response from a reader to our recent suggestion that problem gamblers needed to learn how to gamble. This person swears he is never going to go near a casino again in his lifetime. Okay, that is one solution. Just stick to it. But the urge to
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The long hot summer of M. Mulcair.
It has been a tough summer for our parliament’s Leader of the Opposition. Thomas Mulcair of the New Democrats has been leading from the rear. We have seen more of some of the party’s spokespeople than we have seen of its national leader. It has been a time of Canadians
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The Hair is hawkish on war.
Is war just a telephone call away? Is it that simple? Can the Canadian Prime Minister just call up the President of the United States and say, “It’s okay. You can go to war with Syria. Canada is behind you. In fact, since we are hiding behind you, you might
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The boring battle over bitumen.
It is really not our favourite topic. Bitumen is boring. The conundrum we are facing is that the Harper Conservatives are so bereft of any solutions to our country’s economic malaise that they are putting more and more reliance on selling the output of the Athabasca Tar Sands. As long
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Joining the Fords to defend democracy.
Issues often make strange bedfellows. You would have thought that the entire left wing of Toronto Council would have voted with Mayor Ford on Monday. Instead, most of these people just reacted to the mayor’s position rather than taking a position of their own. Anyone who believes in democracy was
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Marois bares Quebec bigotry.
Bigotry in Quebec has deep roots. In the past week, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois has been testing those roots. Her planned ‘Charter of Quebec Values’ is nothing but a bigot’s demand to ‘speak white.’ It hardly matters if her phony charter wins the approval of the Quebec National Assembly or
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Whoring with the Ottawa press gallery.
You used to be able to take a story to the Press Gallery bar. It was right there on Wellington across from the Houses of Parliament. The drink prices were reasonable. You met on the media’s turf. The conversations were relaxed and casual. It was a convivial relationship back then.
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: It’s always April Fools’ at the Fraser Institute.
You have to wonder how anyone could come up with anything as ridiculous as the Fraser Institute. For these people it is always April Fools’ Day. For the past 35 years, the Fraser Institute has been the antithesis of public policy think tanks. It has built its questionable reputation on
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Remember Justin, pot is just small beer.
Ok, point made. Moving on, Canadians have far more important issues to consider than legalizing marijuana. Let us not keep gilding the cannabis. Sure the news media are always in a rut with their questions but there is certainly more exciting news. What about the way Prime Minister Harper is
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: How to tell if the publisher is angry.
The best gauge newspaper people have to tell the publisher’s mood is by the placement of his signed editorials. If it is on the editorial page, he probably has just a mild case of heartburn. If it is on page two of the paper, this is serious dyspepsia. And if
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Hair today, gone tomorrow.
The Hair is doing Canada’s north. That just might be the only part of this country where the Hair can find a friendly audience. He took his hairdresser, his wife and his PMO flacks, boarded his jet and headed for Whitehorse, Yukon. Only in front of a friendly audience of
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The environmental waiting games.
The games are endless. Only the representatives of the people change. The current combatants are President Obama of the United States and Prime Minister Harper of Canada. Both have finite time left. Harper will have to face election in 2015 and Obama will be out of office in 2016. The
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: Will Wynne win with Waitzer?
The confirmation process of Ontario’s provincial government was shown up for how artificial and shallow it is the other day. A lawyer named Ed Waitzer appeared before the Standing Committee on Government Agencies because he has been chosen to head the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). Yet Waitzer appeared
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