Category: American Politics

The Political Instincts of a Tomcat.

by Peter Lowry

Political pundits have pondered on American President Trump for quite some time now and they still cannot get him right. The reason they fail to read him and his moves and moods is that he is not a political animal. If we accept that, we can see him for what he is. It is easiest to think of him as the terror of the neighbourhood felines.

Trump is that big fat tom that you come home to find lying on your pillow, licking his fur. He ignores you unless it is getting near dinner time. He does not slink around the house but stalks as though he owns it. He will be up on the dining room table checking out your food if there is nobody there with the speed and strength to ward him off.

And never say that Trump does not have the nerve. As President, Trump sees himself as omnipotent. He promised his clack the rewards of a world they will never see—a world free of others, a trickle-down world in which all will be trickled on, easy money in the casino of life, and easy jobs for all.

Wait until Americans see the new budget that Trump and his Congress have coming for them. No more kindness and understanding from cut-down government. The tax cuts are for the filthy rich; the rest get the table scraps. Medicare will be gutted. Americans will love a smaller and smaller-minded government. And you do not have to read the bill; read the riders.

But there are possibilities for national redemption. The fat cat had no understanding of his impact on Alabama. He turned a deep red state against him. He told them that a vote for Roy Moore for senator was a vote for Donald Trump. That was a mistake. The special election of a senator in Alabama became a cause celeb around the world. It says that a course correction is possible.

For a party without leadership, the Democrats have a cause for next year’s mid-term elections. The senate will be the target. They only need replace a few Republican senators to win control of that body. It will be a beginning.

There is much to be done to prepare for ridding America of the fat cat in the White House. The country needs leadership. It needs youth and courage. It needs people who believe in the future. That fat tomcat is part of the past.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

Beating off the NAFTA bogeymen.

by Peter Lowry

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) might not make it to New Year’s. Who knows? Mr. Trump might just like to go out of this year with a clean slate. He has promised his ignorant and uncaring sycophants a pyrrhic victory and he might as well deliver the killing blow.

It looks like the only partner in the deal that understands the ramifications of killing NAFTA are the Canadians. The Mexicans are too angry at the racism represented by the wall. The people hurt the worst by the move will be the Americans. And the one thing we know for sure is that it will take more than six months to pull the deal apart. Like the Brits with Brexit, there are likely too many aspects of the North American trading situation that Mr. Trump does not understand.

You would like to think that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knew what he was doing the other week in China. That might be opportunity lost for now but it can come back. Trudeau seemed to forget one of the cardinal rules in doing business with China. If you want to do business with China, you sell the relationship first, the product sales have to follow.

But on the positive side, Canada has deals on the offing now with Europe, the Trans-Pacific Partnership with the main player Japan and with China. That adds up to far more than just a replacement for the cross-border trade with the United States.

What it will mean in the long run will be that Canada can cherry-pick what it wants to trade with all four of the major world trading blocks. If the Americans stay with the Trump approach, that country will be heading downhill to recession and turmoil. They just will not be pulling Canada down Trump’s rabbit hole with them.

What many of us observers sitting here in the bleachers of Canada will be looking forward to will be the ramifications for the North American auto industry. There seems to be a growing body of confidence in Canada that we can live better without NAFTA. While we were originally willing to talk modifying the trade situation, there is no way we will make the concessions that Trump’s unskilled negotiators are demanding. These are Trump’s NAFTA bogeymen.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

The failing final days of America.

by Peter Lowry

This is a time of unease. America has failed us. The heroes of the Second World War are vanishing. The people who touted democracy to the world’s oppressed are fading into history. Around the globe there is a sense of a collective waiting. People are tense, on a short fuse, wary and concerned. What will this new version of America do next?

Have we lost all trust in America? The Americans have made bad decisions before but current strains are more than incidental miscalculations. The most powerful country in the world is on a path to destruction. Nobody is in control.

The White House is in the hands of a person who insults and betrays America’s most friendly neighbours, allies and trading partners. He has built walls of resentment, disgust, antipathy and distrust, at a time when America needs friends and allies on side. Instead of rallying, he has infuriated the Mexicans and pissed off the Canadians.

And why settle for annoying just a few neighbours when you can earn the lasting enmity of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims? Donald Trump has proved himself the world’s most hated racist.

The world’s Jews should be inured to the pandering politicians of our times. They must be concerned though when Trump trods where no American president has tramped before. Donald Trump was the last person that Israel ever needed for a friend. His announcement on Jerusalem could be America’s version of 1914 in Sarajevo!

But what is war to Donald Trump but a Game of Thrones? He insults China. He derides a delusional despot in North Korea. He eschews his friendship with Vladimir Putin of Russia. He trashes the peace gained so painstakingly with Iran. He insults the Brits and brushes aside the Europeans. Trump teeters on jingoism, preaches xenophobia and practices isolationism.

What is Trump? As a maybe billionaire, he is a boor. He reveals little of his wealth because of how he acquired it out of the shadows of bankruptcies. He is a misogynist and a womanizer. He does not have friends: he has leeches, losers and louts who spread his poison.

But what does this all say for the waning of America? The United States of America is a land that usually honors its heroes. Is this the end of times? Is this the Armageddon as foretold in the Book of Revelation?

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

As the pendulum swings.

by Peter Lowry

There can be a pendulum effect in politics. It means that for every aberration noted in one election there is often an equal and opposite reaction in the next election. We just might be seeing this in Alabama leading up to the special election for a U.S. senator next week. We can see why the vote is too close to call.

Roy Moore, a hard-right Republican is being challenged by Democrat candidate Doug Jones. The very fact of the race being so close in Republican Alabama is being cheered by Democrats across the United States. The Democrats need to win here to give them confidence of a mid-term swing to a Democrat-controlled Senate if not the House. A Democrat-controlled Senate could put a serious crimp in the Trump program being pushed through Congress.

And while a Democrat victory cannot be a prediction, it is certainly possible.

Roy Moore who is confident of holding the seat is, to say the least, a controversial candidate. Moore was the Alabama Supreme Court Justice who was ejected from office for refusing to remove a statue depicting the ten commandments from the courthouse and then tossed again for telling probate judges to ignore the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage.

A large part of Moore’s problems recently are the repeated charges that the 70-year old judge had a fondness for under-age girls when he was younger. They are certainly coming forward today to challenge his trustworthiness. Trump supporters are inclined to disregard these charges as false news and the Republican National Committee is sending him more money even this late in the race.

And political polling in this instance is not proving helpful. Statistically, the figures are considered even. The difference between the two candidates is well within the margin of error.

One factor that nobody can read in this race is that 250,000 prisoners in state prisons are being allowed to vote for the first time. If they vote, their choice is between a controversial Republican judge and a Democrat state’s attorney. Who would you vote for if you were behind bars? And pollsters have no effective way to ask these prisoners their questions. And why would they expect straight answers?

All us observers can say at this point is that we hope Mr. Trump has an unpleasant surprise next Wednesday morning. We will probably hear about it in the twits, he tweets on Twitter.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

Wall of Wonder.

by Peter Lowry

Is the American President going to select his wonderful wall for Christmas? Hopeful contractors have erected eight samples of wall in San Diego, CA for his decision. All he has to do is pick his favourite. His Twitter followers will likely be the first to know which wall he prefers.

But how he is going to get Congress to authorize the billion dollars he needs for it, is a question begging an answer. The likelihood of Mexico paying a peso for this wall is in the range between “Never” and “In your ear, Donald!”

But they have a few engineering problems to be faced in putting up this wall. Frankly there are visitors from Mexico who might be better at building tunnels than Americans are at building walls. And these particular visitors might not be bearing frankincense and myrrh.

And we hope the new engineers putting up Mr. Trump’s wall are smarter than the ones we hear about who put up George W. Bush’s wall at El Paso, Texas. It seems George W’s geniuses left an American El Paso golf course on the wrong side of that strip of wall.

How you build a wall down the middle of the Rio Grande, is just one of the more interesting questions to be answered. They will not welcome it on the Mexican side of the river. If you put it on the American side, you will be cutting cattle off from their water.

This is not as simple as something such as the Panama Canal. Did you know that when they started to dig the canal, they thought they just needed a trench across the Isthmus of Panama? It was not until the French realized that it needed locks at either end that the Americans bought in and did the heavy digging.

While Mr. Trump is busy deciding which of the walls he prefers, Congress is still struggling with wanting to do something about the Dreamers. These are the almost 800,000 who registered for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) who are in limbo waiting for the shoe to drop. Why the fate of these people should be tied to Trump’s wall is unconscionable.

Mind you, we have determined over this year that Donald Trump is a man without a soul. Why would you assume anyone who backs him has one?

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

Why Sarah is the perfect press patsy.

by Peter Lowry

Her name is Sarah Huckabee Sanders and she is President Trump’s White House press secretary. Watching her in action, you get the feeling that she is something of a female version of Forrest Gump. It is her gullible nature that makes her the ideal press secretary.

Having been in her position occasionally, during a career in politics, I have to be sympathetic to her plight. Laugh at her if you wish but she is the one earning the danger pay.

Back when I was looking after the media for prime ministerial events in Toronto, media briefings were often part of the job. Sometimes I would be asked to say something that was designed to mislead the media. My most frequent answer was to ask who would make that announcement. They would promise someone else to make the announcement but they would never show.

What they really wanted for those briefings was someone dumb enough to do what they were told. And that is why Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the perfect patsy as press secretary.

Anyone thinking they can defend Donald Trump’s nocturnal twitting on Twitter has got to be a few litres short of a fill.

The other day the media confronted Sarah Huckabee Sanders outside the White House in regards to the President retwitting some racist twits about Muslims. Her explanation of the retwits left the news media folks wide-eyed and amazed. She explained that even if the twits were wrong, they were right. She also claimed that the reporters were looking at these twits from the wrong direction.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that it did not matter if the twits were real or fake, the President and her thought the threat was real. The threat, according to the twits, were that if you were on crutches, you were liable to be kicked by a person made up as a supposed Muslim, someone else in costume smashed a statue supposedly of the Virgin Mary and some other mayhem. The videos were so bad, you would have to also believe in the tooth fairy to consider them credible.

The incident certainly annoyed Prime Minister Elizabeth May in the United Kingdom. The videos came from a far-right organization in England, known for their virulent and ignorant anti-Muslim sentiments. The fact that Donald Trump retwitted them to his 43 million Twitter followers just means that a large number of Twitter-users need to get a life.

But the sound of one hand clapping for Sarah Huckabee Sanders over here in Canada is in recognition of her unwavering loyalty, her creativity and her stupidity. Bless her.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

Writing Off NAFTA.

by Peter Lowry

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is still on the operating table. While it appears that the gurus at Canada’s banks are giving poor odds, that seems to be what banks always do. They do appear to like spreading doom and gloom. Despite their predictions, nobody is willing to announce time of death at this stage.

If any party is about to walk out on the negotiations, it is the Mexicans. They have suffered the most insults and the most scurrilous pressure. They are also the country that cannot afford to lose NAFTA. It has become a critical factor in the country’s economy.

Mexico also has the growing concern that Canada might just be a fair-weather friend. There is just too much talk to be heard about Canada and the United States going back to the NAFTA that existed before Mexico was brought on board. And then Trump really would need that wall to keep angry Mexicans seeking redress from coming to Washington to visit him.

Mexico needs those automotive plants and the easy access to American markets for their farm products. Tourism in ‘olde’ Mexico does not cut it.

The next round of the negotiations takes place in Mexico starting this week. All the signals at this time are that the American negotiators are passed the negotiating stage. They are expected to get tough.

Canada’s quest for labor law equalization and environmental concerns have fallen on deaf ears. Neither the Americans nor Mexicans are interested. It seems nobody has any conditions to trade to make the deal.

The essential ingredients of any trade negotiation seem to be missing from this series of trade talks. Those ingredients are good will and an eagerness for success by all parties. With the good will down the tubes as signalled beforehand by Donald Trump, the resentment of the Mexicans and the obvious preparation for failure by the Canadians, we hardly want to be the odds maker in this situation.

But the key question is whether the American President can unilaterally cancel or change NAFTA without the concurrence of Congress? (And do not bet on help from the U.S. Supreme Court.) The Canadians have been working the system hard across the U.S. with governors, representatives and senators, seeking support for NAFTA. It takes six months to cancel NAFTA and Canada might just have to find out how many American legislators really are friends.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

A travesty of travellers.

by Peter Lowry

The dynamic duo of Trump and Trudeau are meeting in south-east Asia this weekend. Neither has the other on their agenda. And neither has a similar agenda. They have different needs and different objectives.

U.S. President Donald Trump has the shortest list to match his short memory. His top-of-mind concern is North Korea. He is looking for answers and he is seeking support. He has already pressed the critical players such as the Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Da Nang, he will have all the side players including Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Trump will use his heavy-handed approach to try to get the lesser players in the Asia-Pacific area to strengthen their resolve to sanction North Korea. We will hope he gets more co-operation there than he seems to have gotten from China’s Xi Jinping. If we got one impression from the footage sent back from the meetings between the two leaders in China, we would say that Mr. Xi’s expression was not inscrutable: it bordered on boredom. If we have noted one thing about the Chinese leader over the years, it is that he does not suffer fools. Putting up with Trump is a lot to ask of a guy.

And since President Trump has already given APEC the finger in rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), it is not on his agenda. That is despite the TPP having the possible geopolitical effect of drawing the signatories away from China’s influence and into the American sphere,

Nor is TPP seemingly on Prime Minister Trudeau’s agenda. He is stalling. Trudeau is trying to influence a more environmentally friendly and human rights based agreement. He will sign fast enough if and when Trump dumps the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) but until then Trudeau can play to the bleachers.

Just where the East Asia Summit in the Philippines fits into everyone’s agenda is not clear. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will have a special request for President Trump to return of the Balangiga Bells to the Catholic church in the Philippines. And if you want to know what the heck that is about, you can look it up on the Internet. (And if you believe what you read, remember that history is written by the victors.)

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

The President who would be King.

by Peter Lowry

If U. S. President Donald Trump could just live up to his tweets, he would be more interesting—and maybe deadly. Since winning the American presidency, he has been creating a cottage industry among writers trying to understand him. He makes the understanding more difficult, because he himself has no idea how to handle his job.

The truth seems to be that Trump would rather be king.

His spare time role as an insomniac allows him to use his thumbs to type his royal proclamations. He twits about what he would like to do. When he can type “off with their head” he is happiest. His staff ignore him. When he tells us that he is going to war, the generals have a chuckle.

The twits Trump tweets are more for his followers than the nation. They please the uncouth and uninformed and stun the news media. And nobody seems to take them seriously.

Not that he has not noticed. He has been complaining lately about being ignored. He does not like it. He wants the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party and not waste its time on Russia and the help that country might have given his campaign. He seems to have a disconnect in his mind that his loyal friend Jeff Sessions is Attorney General and the FBI reports to him. We will probably see the “Off with his head” twit first because Trump does have the power to fire Sessions.

The Trump Presidency will be an unusual bump in the history of the United States of America. He moves his royal entourage from castle to castle up and down the U.S. East Coast at whim. He needs a bigger plane for his foreign forays. He wants to take his armies with him. Those foreigners would have to listen to him then.

It is getting a bit dicey for Trump when he interferes in the American judicial system. It is probably alright in the case of the sick man who ran people down in New York as he is unlikely to ever be released from whatever type of institution in which he needs to be incarcerated. It was the judge in an army deserter’s case who cited Trump’s interference for suggesting the soldier be shot. The judge let the guy off with a discharge from the army.

Maybe he might be less bellicose if everyone shouted, “Hail Donald!”?

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

The Hair harasses NAFTA hopefuls.

by Peter Lowry

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is still on life support. The end of his first year in office and President Donald Trump has not yet ended the more than US$ one trillion in trade between the three countries. Maybe he was waiting for some help from critics of the Canadian Prime Minister to help him make his case for canceling.

The ally, he must have been waiting for was The Hair: Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Not that we would recommend the Hair for successful trade negotiations. His help in these circumstances is to pour oil on an already tense situation. The Americans are making outrageous demands on our negotiators and Harper tells clients of his consulting firm that the Trudeau Liberals are too quick to reject some of the demands. It should be noted that Harper never completed a successful free trade agreement—he kept claiming the European Community Agreement was completed but it was only finalized after the Liberals took over in Ottawa.

The Hair actually complains that Canada is aligning itself too closely to Mexico to the consternation of the Americans. (Maybe he has never heard the old adage about divide and conquer.)

And true to his extremist right-wing principles, Harper claims that Canada is wrong to put labour rights on the table along with such subjects as gender equality and Indigenous rights and concerns for environmental protection. Obviously, he seems to consider these unimportant matters.

A commentator such as myself is expected to take pot shots at those negotiating NAFTA for us but it is considered very bad manners for a previous Prime Minister. And when you consider that Trudeau even hired former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to help out with the negotiations, it gives you an idea of the seriousness with which the situation is being handled.

Mind you, it is obvious that nobody thought of calling on Harper to help with the current negotiations. This is the guy who bickered with President Obama over the Keystone XL pipeline through the United States. As soon as Trump was in office, he put out an executive order telling TransCanada to build its Keystone pipeline. Mind you, it is likely that it will never be completed under today’s oil economics.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]