Category: American Politics

Time to Try the Trump Card?

by Peter Lowry

Are we so desperate to help Ukraine that we have to ask Donald Trump for help? It seems obvious that the Russian generals have been lying to Vladimir Putin. The only person Putin still trusts is probably his friend Trump. He is the friend of despots around the world.

If Putin figures it out for himself, he is just going to strike out wildly. There is no telling what he might do. The Ukrainians were supposed to welcome the Russian soldiers with flowers for helping to save their country from the dangers of democracy. He might command his army to invade Moldova or even start nuking the Ukrainians. That will teach them to shoot his soldiers. Not that Putin would give much of a damn about the lost soldiers. There are lots more Russians that can be conscripted.

Poor Putin thought his army could conquer Ukraine in about a week. A month later, he is starting to wonder. The difference is that the Ukrainians are fighting to keep their country. The Russian conscripts who do not know why they are invading Ukraine are just so much cannon fodder. And Russian tanks were supposed to be invincible. Russian tanks and trucks run on fuel and as the supply lines lengthen, the lines become easier to cut.

Anyway, with Donald Trump being declared as a special ambassador, extraordinary and plenipotentiary, of course, we can maybe resolve matters. The simplest way is to be sure Trump is in the Kremlin presenting his ambassadorial credentials to Putin—and then nuke the Kremlin.

It is not that we are particularly blood thirsty today but it is not often that you have an opportunity to rid the world of two of its least desirable citizens.

And it would obviously be an excellent present for the Russian people. They hardly deserve the economic sanctions against Putin and his oligarchs but they are the ones suffering. After all, if you cannot buy a Big Mac or a Tim’s coffee in Moscow, what is this world coming to?

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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No Longer ‘United’ States?

by Peter Lowry

Canadians should be very concerned about talk of a divided America. There is nothing friendly about dividing up a country. The antipathy and rancor exist long after the deed is done. Americans tend to forget, that the American Civil War killed more Americans than any other conflict in which the country has been involved. And to try to divide America along the current red and blue state lines is ridiculous.

There is no north-south division to be made these days. And America would not exist as a bunch of banana republics either. California, New York and Texas could be viable countries by themselves, despite some ongoing ruction between cities and rural areas. While the blue states on the east and west coasts would do nicely, thank you, there is a lot of red state territory in between. In fact, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin would survive the breakup best by asking to join with friendly Canada.

But Canada would hardly benefit immediately from the American states having a falling out. You could kiss the free trade agreement goodbye with the red states. Even with a Trump-type dictatorship, trade agreements would be extremely difficult to arrange.

The long-term benefit to Canada could be in the dramatic migration of population around North America. The stability of Canada would attract an educated flow of immigrants with valuable skills.

The response to a fractured America would also give rise to the aspirations of world trading blocks. The Chinese, for example, would want to strengthen their trade position with South Asia. The Russians would be even less charming as they tried to return to their former dominance of Eastern Europe. The Middle East, Africa and South America would find they now have new friends. And I, for one, can see the Brits begging to get back into the European Union.

No doubt many scholarly tomes will be written about the possibilities of a shattered America. Let us hope it does not happen and we have time left to save our planet.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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‘God Bless America.’

by Peter Lowry

Somebody has to care about our neighbouring republic. It is being torn apart by strife and greed and ignorance. The Americans started 2021 by letting the zoo’s inmates attack the nation’s Capitol. The Trump is working from his lair in Florida plotting his return. And the only person we trust to tell us what is going on there is the Toronto Star’s Edward Keenan. The guy has come into his own as Washington Bureau chief for the Toronto newspaper and has been doing a superb job.

It is not as though we do not have family and friends in many parts of the U.S. We can call anytime and ask how things are going. The answer always seems to start with: ‘Oh God.’ And it is the same whether they are democratic supporters or republican or born-again or never-again or from the boonies of the west or the cities of the east. You do know there are people who believe what Donald Trump is telling them? And what he is saying is more than enough to cause concern.

At the moment the strife can be referred to as the ‘phony war.’ Both sides think they are fighting the pandemic. And they are losing that war as well. With over 50 million recorded incidents of the disease already, the country is closing on a million pandemic deaths. The most serious disappointment is that the anti-vaxxers are not the only ones dying from the disease.

Keenan wrote recently about the past year and says that the outlook is not good. He doesn’t go as far as to discuss the potential for civil war. It just seems unreasonable to have all those goddamn guns everywhere and not use them on your fellow Americans.

Keenan describes 2021 in the U.S.A. as the same as being on a year-long bender. Though it is hard to say how much is alcohol. It is hard to understand why Biden is having the problems with democratic politicians.

In an honest admission, Keenan reports that 2021 has not been a good year for Joe Biden. And he doesn’t think 2022 is going to be any better.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Trump, Trust and Truth.

by Peter Lowry

If wife Melanie doesn’t poison his late-night cheeseburgers first, Donald Trump is planning his return to the U.S. presidency in 2024. He already has a large chunk of U.S. voters convinced that he was cheated in 2020 and that the Biden presidency is not legal. And republican politicians in red states are preparing the way for his triumphant return.

In a corrupted political system, such as exists in America, it is easy for the Trump lackies to prepare to strew rose petals in his path. They are passing laws, in republican-controlled states, to control who votes and how they will be allowed to vote and whether their votes will be counted. They have gone well beyond gerrymandering. Their motto seems to be “We can steal better.”

It will not necessarily be a stealth campaign. You can expect Trump to be more open in his campaign for a white, racially pure America. (You thought “Make America Great Again” meant something else?)

And the ultimate recourse is violence. Trump showed his followers what could be accomplished last January 6—Trump’s Day of Infamy. And can you imagine the result if they had all brought along their trusty assault rifles?

The red states are once again emboldened to challenge Roe v Wade, the bedrock of liberalized abortion. It is not so much as they all give a damn about the rights of the fetus. They are exercising their right to expect a Trump-appointed Supreme Court to bend to their wishes.

At the same time, Trump has his search and destroy list of untrusted and weak-kneed republicans. He is cleaning house before putting himself before a republican nominating convention. This convention is only for those who make the Trump Pledge of Allegiance.

No, it is not likely that Trump could garner a majority of votes for president but it might not matter. We should never forget that the Nazi party won the last contested vote in the Wiemar Republic (Germany) in 1933 with just less than 45 per cent of the popular votes and winning only a third of the seats in the Reichstag.

And, in case you where not aware, Trump has launched his own Internet showcase and will have all the popular social media singing from his song sheets for 2024. It might be the last open election in America for many years.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Don’t Bother Biden.

by Peter Lowry

U.S. president Joe Biden is not Canada’s friend. It is not all that likely that Joe Biden would have time to find Canada on a world map. This poor guy gets all the problems of this crazy world thrown at him. And we think he has time to worry about us? Canada is the least of his problems.

The first consideration when you look at Joe Biden is that he is really too old for the job. Biden has spent his life as a second-string American politician. He represented Delaware in the Senate. Nobody takes Delaware seriously except for its corporate-friendly positions. He won the senate seat by a fluke and stayed for more than 35 years. Americans are parochial and do not care about the rest of the world so he specialized in foreign affairs and stayed out of trouble.

Biden’s first run at the U.S. presidency was in 1987. He used an accusation that he had plagiarized part of a speech, to drop out when he found little support. He tried again 20 years later and found that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton left little chance for him.

But he was a good solution for vice president for Obama. He was the ideal guy to look after the rust-belt states and he had some traction with the right wing because of his stand on supporting police and longer sentences for crimes. Compared to a left-wing Democrat such as Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden is definitely less progressive.       

In choosing a Democrat who could defeat Trump in 2020, the party had slim pickings. It could not bring back Hillary Clinton. There were comers like Kamilla Harris and the Energizer bunny, Senator Sanders but nobody that was guaranteed to defeat Trump. Yet it was ‘good ole’ Joe Biden that made the cut. And the Biden-Harris duo delivered the goods.

But the nation remains in trouble. Trump is not finished. The supreme court has been politicized to serve the Republicans. Gerrymandering is rampant in the red states. In a nation divided, they will rise again.

Biden has China and Russia to resolve. The Russian troops are massed at the Ukraine. And you want Biden to worry about Canada’s complaints? Get real.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Not Like You, Not Like Me.

by Peter Lowry

It’s basic bigotry. The other day a U.S. House of Representatives member addressed the House on why some countries fail. Republican Glenn Grothman from Wisconsin was talking about Canada. He said that Canada fails because of its language barriers within the country. It was Representative Grothman’s own version of the Sermon on the Mount. He was decrying the mote in the eye of other countries, while ignoring the beam in the eyes of Americans.

Being from Wisconsin, he might not know that about 40 million Americans have Spanish as their first language. And yet he was saying that this type of diversity is reason for failure.

What he needs to realize is that diversity can be a strength. It is like the multiple languages of Switzerland has helped make it one of the most stable countries in the world. Very conservative, but stable none the less.

And yet it has been people such as Grothman that hold America back. It was watching all those Halloween characters attacking the Capitol building in Washington last January 6, that showed where America had gone wrong. It was not so much as Trump had lead America down a pathway to failure, it was Americans’ who searched out and encouraged that despicable leadership.

It is division not diversity that holds back America. It is black versus white, northerner versus southerner, born-agains versus Catholics, Muslims and Jews, democrat versus republican, gun lover versus gun hater, Americans versus Mexicans, rich versus poor and any other difference is reason for distrust. It makes America difficult to govern, impedes justice, can nullify progress, fills prisons and makes city streets dangerous.

It seems strange that a country with so many heroes, can wallow in its divisions. From Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett to Ronald Regan and Martin Luther King Jr., Americans have built monuments and sung songs about politicians, warriors, parsons, actors, academics, scientists, hoodlums and baseball players. It seems that we all need to spend more time bringing people together instead of driving them apart.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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No Amigos Here!

by Peter Lowry

You heard that prime minister Justin Trudeau will be in Washington this week? He is having a visit with American President Joe Biden along with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. And let’s hope that Trudeau doesn’t get into playing poker with those guys. He would be lucky to come back with his pants. With those old politicos, Trudeau is out of his league.

Sure, Biden will lay on the No. 1 state dinner for the visitors but behind the scenes, he will lay it on the line. He has his own problems. His visitors can whine all they like about the North American Free Trade Agreement and Canada’s Auto Pact but reality is that Biden could be crushed by next year’s mid-term elections. He is not about to jeopardize his final two years in office facing both a Republican Senate and House of Representatives.

The hard facts are that a loss of both houses of Congress for Biden will open the door to a return of Donald Trump—or worse, the ghost of Donald Trump. There are some better funded, younger, smarter, more vicious Republican comers who could out-Trump Trump. And then Obrador and Trudeau (or their successors) will learn how nasty a neighbour the United States really can be.

We should all remember that the original Donald Trump was an amateur. It took him a long time to find all the rooms in the White House. He lacked the time in office to really screw things up.

It also pays to keep in mind that while Americans think of Canadians as ‘nice,’ they do not really respect us. They will take us home to mother only because we use deodorants and know which fork to use. And they will give us a roll in the hay, provided we go home afterwards. They do like our money as long as we spend it on what they want to sell us and it helps their bottom line.

But ‘The Three Amigos’ was just a mediocre Hollywood grinder that was just another insult to Mexicans. And the Americans have been insulting Mexicans for so long, they think it is the thing to do. Let’s not encourage them to try some of those insults on us.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Big Tent, Little Tent Tories?

by Peter Lowry

You often hear the conservative and liberal parties referred to as big-tent parties. We would therefore assume, in contrast, that the greens, new democrats and peoples’ party are just little tents. And that would leave the united conservatives of Alberta and the cranky bloc Québécois as pup-tents. Whatever size, we know that these tents are quite flexible and all parties like to think of their tent as being of the marquee class.

In our latest federal election, it was obvious that, conservative leader Erin O’Toole thought his conservative tent was ready to expand as he invited Canadians to step into his party. He had started through the leadership contest that was held for his party to tell everybody that he was a “true blue” conservative. This was taken to mean that he would accommodate everybody from the social conservatives to the progressive conservatives and even the united conservatives of Alberta. He assured these diverse conservatives that he would rid them of carbon taxes, gun control and abortions.

But, to our surprise, come the election, Mr. O’Toole sought to further enlarge the conservative tent. He really wanted everybody to be able to crowd in. He proudly pointed out to his fellow conservatives that he was from the greater Toronto Area (GTA) and he knew how to win there.

The O’Toole solution was simple. To win in the GTA, all you had to do is support carbon taxes, agree with gun control and go soft on abortions. And Mr. O’Toole was sure the conservatives who hated carbon taxes, hated gun control and probably hated abortions would understand if he made slightly different promises to voters in the GTA and in Montreal and in Vancouver.

To Mr. O’Toole’s surprise conservative voters were not all pleased with his solution. Some were so surprised at his changing promises that they decided to vote for Mr. Bernier’s peoples’ party and some did not even vote.

And to make matters worse for Mr. O’Toole, the conservative knives are out for him. If he thought ‘Chuckles’ Scheer got the bum’s rush as leader, he should not wait to test the party’s venom.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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At War with Michigan.

by Peter Lowry

The ongoing war with the State of Michigan is heating up. Canada’s federal government has now invoked a 1977 treaty that supposedly says that Canada can destroy the fresh water viability of the Great Lakes if it is in aid of ensuring self-sufficiency in oil to both countries. What we really need to do is resolve this matter before American tanks start rumbling across the Ambassador Bridge into Windsor, Ontario.

And the entire imbroglio is regarding the status of Enbridge’s Line 5 from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario. The general on the American side is Michigan governor, Gretchen Witmer. The Canadian contingent is led by Calgary’s Enbridge pipeline people.

It started when the Michigan governor realized that the same material that caused a major catastrophe on tributaries of the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan was being piped under Lake Michigan at the Straits of Mackinac. This is a particularly sensitive area where Lake Michigan flows into Lake Huron and down through the Great Lakes.

The culprit in this case is diluted bitumen from the Alberta tar sands. From where Line 5 crosses Lake Michigan, it delivers the diluted bitumen to Detroit as well as Canadian refineries. It was close to a million gallons of Albertan diluted bitumen that destroyed the fishing on the Kalamazoo River for years to come. After spending close to a billion US dollars in the clean-up attempt, there is still bitumen polluting the Kalamazoo River.

And nobody needs to be a scientist to guess what would happen if there was a major spill in the Straits of Mackinac. It is not just the fisheries on the lower Great Lakes but the fresh water for millions of Americans and Canadians that would be at risk.

The fact that Enbridge has already acknowledged the danger is made clear in its current construction of a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac to eliminate concerns for any spills. They really need a compromise by ensuring that no bitumen be allowed to flow through the current pipeline. And it might just end the war.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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In the land of the laissez-faire.

by Peter Lowry

When Milton and Rose Friedman published Free to Choose in 1980, laissez-faire economics was at a peak. Reaganomics was all the rage in the United States and Thatcherism was tearing up the buffers of social justice in the United Kingdom. Canada was left struggling in the economic storm. The Friedman’s basked in the rhapsody of millionaire sponsors.

Keynesian economics and liberalism were left out in the cold, to supposedly die a slow, struggling death.

It was not until the market crisis of 2007 and 2008 that people began to understand that deregulation was wrong, small government could not be trusted and not all of us can fend for ourselves. We were leaving too many of our people on the streets to die. The rich are stealing from us and their henchmen are our politicians.

Canada never had sub-prime mortgages to collapse. We suffered anyway. We found that Paul Martin was just a conservative in a liberal suit and tie.

Canadians would not settle for a pale copy and went for the real thing. Enter, Stephen Harper, chortling. There were dark days ahead for Canada.

America had to struggle through the Bush years. George the father was not bad compared to George W. Bush, the younger. George W. was dumb as a post and he lied to Americans and the world about weapons of mass destruction.

And Canadians foolishly loaned our armed forces to the Americans for their Mid-East and Afghan wars. The Americans were defeated and our Canadian forces were dishonoured.

In the United States, Barack Obama stepped into the presidency. Not all Americans joined the celebration of an articulate, black, smart, and liberal president. The sides for coming conflict were being better defined.

In the land of the laissez-faire, you cannot have just a president to care. We saw the hardening of positions as Obama tried to fight Medicare through the House and Senate. We saw a failing democracy.

And it opened the door to the debacle of the Trump presidency. And few have the confidence that President Biden can win for more than a term against the cause of laissez-faire.

We are watching the struggle of good and evil on a world-wide scale.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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