American Politics – Page 2 – Babel-on-the-Bay

‘Cousin’ Kyle is leaving us.

August 4, 2021August 3, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It is hard to imagine anyone willingly wanting to go to Florida at this time. Not that I pay much attention to basketball. It was only when the Toronto Raptors won the National Basketball Association (NBA) championship that the wife and I noticed them. Sure, we had attended a game, once. The tickets were a gift from an old friend—directly behind the Raptors bench. That was when we, laughingly, started to refer to Raptor Kyle Lowry as ‘cousin’ Kyle.

We not only share the same last name but we were really impressed with Kyle’s skill and determination. The guy lacks the height of many basketball players but he sure makes up for it. He is a classy player.

But there is more than the ‘Heat’ going on in Miami these days. From Sunny Florida to the Land of the Pariahs, the state has fallen into a state of disgrace. That governor, Ron DeSantis, comes across as a republican idiot. He and his pal Donald Trump are giving the state a bad rap.

The current COVID stats in the state are staggering. Donald Trump did not understand the pandemic and so, he ignored it as much as possible. For DeSantis to follow in the steps of his mentor, Trump, is a disgrace. Now that the vaccines are available to vaccinate the entire population of the state, it is setting astonishing new records in infections and deaths.

But there will be no coronavirus inconveniences for Governor DeSantis. While the state’s hospitals are overwhelmed by the number of cases of the Delta variance of COVID-19, he is busy deregulating state employment and business regulations. He is a true republican and if his hero Donald Trump does not run for president again in 2024, DeSantis is ready to step into the breech and run for the republican team.

All I know is that ‘cousin’ Kyle is never going to feel so welcome and appreciated in Miami as he has been by all those Canadians in Toronto. He will be missed.

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Red is Dead and Blue is True!

July 30, 2021July 29, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It is possible to get confused between the political colors of Canada and the U.S.A. The problem is that the liberal red in Canada is the color red of the Republicans in the United States. And then, of course, the Democrats in the U.S.A. are stuck with being blue.

But if that was the only difference between the two countries, we would consider it very minor. What is serious is the bitterness that has developed between red and blue, Republican and Democrat. The relationship today is caustic. And it is all based on lies.

Credit former president Donald Trump for most of the lies. That man never gave a political speech that was not a constant series of one-liner lies. And most members of the Republican party appear to be buying into those lies. Any sensible person should recognize a lie when they heard it. For example: If you believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, then, logically, Al Gore won the year 2000 election and Hillary Clinton won the election in 2016. You can hardly accept one set of figures without believing the figures for the other party. Or does the party involved matter more than the figures?

And yet, some Republican politicians went out in the heat of the noon-day sun of Washington the other day to complain that 548 people have been arrested so far for rioting and trespass and violence on the American Capitol on January 6 this year. The Republicans obviously felt that these people might be Republican voters and they were being harassed and were suffering unjustly. They complained that this supposed abuse of human rights was going on while ‘violent’ Black Lives Matter groups are left free. This sounds like bigotry but we can leave that for another time.

You have to recognize this situation as very dangerous. I would say that Donald Trump pushed those poor people to the limit when he spoke to them on the morning of January 6. He told them to invade the Capitol. He incited them to violence. He was as guilty as any of them. He should be on trial. This is not a political matter. It needs judges and juries.

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Biden is a Baby Bonus Booster.

July 19, 2021July 18, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Did Canada’s prime minister give American president Joe Biden the tip? It’s a political axiom in Canada: If you don’t know what to do in politics, increase the baby bonus. Where else would Biden get the idea? The Baby Bonus is a tradition in Canada that the conservatives hate. It was the backbone of liberal party policy—along with Medicare—for the last half of the 20^th century. It was resurrected by Jean Chrétien’s liberals after they came to power in 1993. What started after the Second World War as a $5 to $8 per month subsidy, can now be over $500 per month for a child under 6, depending on the parents’ income and is slightly less through to age 18. Some Canadian provinces provide additional Baby Bonus amounts.

What president Biden has done is launch a $300 per month per child subsidy this month for American families. The money can go directly to their bank accounts. It is planned to happen monthly to the end of 2021. He is now proposing to Congress that it continue and is defying the Republicans to take back the effort that hopes to end child poverty in the United States.

This is all in aid of Joe Biden being able to prove to Americans that government can have a part in improving their lives. He wants to drive holes in the Republican argument that small government is better. This philosophy has been fed to America since the Regan administration. The attacks on government led to the extremes of the Trump administration because even the poorest and jobless Americans were buying into the proposition that big government is bad.

Addressing Congress earlier this year, Biden is reported to have said he wanted Congress to help him prove that democracy still works and that the American government still works and can deliver for its people.

Biden has to make his point conclusively before the mid-term elections in 2022 or likely face a Republican dominated Congress for the rest of his term in office. He is already facing formidable opposition in the Republican controlled states and in the well-funded conservative news media. We wish him well.

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Fueling the Fourth.

July 4, 2021July 6, 2021 by Peter Lowry

The fourth of July is Independence Day in the U.S.A. It is a day for patriotic parades, barbeques, family gatherings and fireworks. And it has something else to celebrate this year: the beginning of the overdue take down of the aspirations of former president, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump did a disservice to America and it is important there be a day of reckoning. He besmirched the reputation of his country around the world. He made friends of America’s enemies and enemies of its friends. And he lied to Americans. The Trump trademark was lies. He let Americans die in a pandemic. He lied about the outcome of the 2020 election. All you had to do was ask a question and he will tell you a lie.

He bases his campaigning on lies that can only fool the ignorant and the jingoist. He lies about his wealth. He lies to the tax people. And not even Al Capone got away with that!

The Donald Trump presidency was a period of embarrassment for America. And the time has come for an accounting.

The New York prosecutors have Mr. Trump in their sights. They know he was party to a tax fraud to which he has not yet been charged. Instead, they have charged the Trump organization’s chief financial officer. The man is 73 years old and he could spend the rest of his life in prison. His only hope for some pity is if he dimes out Mr. Trump’s involvement in the tax avoidance.

As it is, Donald Trump’s signature is on enough of the cheques to show that he is involved in the schemes to hide executive perquisites and income, file false taxes and accept fraudulent tax refunds. Trump relatives and others were involved. It was always a secret, known to too many people.

Trump’s rejoinder is pure Trump. He claims that it is a political witch hunt by what he calls “the radical left democrats.”

It looks like those radical left democrats are going to settle some scores with Donald Trump. Happy Fourth, America.

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“If I can make it there…”

June 24, 2021June 23, 2021 by Peter Lowry

“I can make it anywhere, New York, New York.” You can almost hear Frank Sinatra singing ‘New York, New York’ in the background. It is a last chance for ranked voting. New York City and its five boroughs are choosing the democratic party candidate for mayor. The only problem is that it could take more than a week to figure out who has won.

Nobody seemed to understand the consequences when the democrats opted, in 2019, for ranking up to five choices for mayor in their primaries. And they had no idea of the massive number of absentee ballots would be caused by the pandemic. It could take until after the July 4 holiday to determine the winner in a tight race.

And obviously nobody told the democrats that ranked balloting has its own special problems. It is a system that drills down in the counting to produce a win for the least contentious candidate.

In ranked balloting, every candidate wants to be every voter’s second choice. In counting the ballots, if nobody has a majority, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is dropped out of the count and the second choices for that losing candidate are tabulated for the survivors. In effect, the losers pick the ultimate winner.

And in New York, the democrats are all a-giggle that they might have chosen the first women Democratic candidate, the first Asian-American candidate or the second black candidate for mayor.

What might cause the most trouble in the election is that the party officials are going to announce the “maybe” winner before adding in the absentee ballots. That announcement, without including the absentee ballots, at that time, is just begging for trouble and even lawsuits. At least, with all ballots counted, there will be no ‘ifs,’ ‘ands’ or ‘buts.’

But why settle for the least contentious, when you can have a candidate who is interesting?

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The Trump of the West.

June 13, 2021June 13, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It is a long way from Mar-a-Lago Resort in Palm Springs, Florida to roof-top dining in Calgary, Alberta. Nor is former president Donald Trump likely to be confused with Alberta premier Jason Kenney. They are just kindred spirits.

It might be that Jason Kenney enjoys being linked to the much more successful (and more vilified) Donald Trump. They both share a vision of conservative politics far to the right of anything practical. They both share the autocratic attitude that some might confuse with leadership.

But they make fools of their followers. Their followers are but log jams on the rivers of life. They are there to be used by these losers. They march to the off-beat of their drums. Born again or biker, they are there to support the sacrilege of their leaders.

Kenney and Trump share visions of thrones that are there for them to seize. They believe we should all prostrate ourselves before them. And we should all tithe to them. For what is ours, they consider as theirs.

The difference between them is that Jason Kenney spent his formative years learning of politics. He learned how the politician can use the unwary. He was Stephen Harper’s go-to guy in using groups of ethnic Canadians.

And yet, the political nuance is of no interest to Donald Trump. He is a user. He is a gross communicator. He preens for his audiences. He uses women as disposable. He is only impressed by power and billions. He looks down on America’s allies and honors its enemies. He cares nothing for the environment, turning loose billionaire friends to plunder the land of its high-carbon contents of coal and oil. He let millions die in the pandemic because of his ignorance.

Kenney sees himself as an oil man. He puts on his ten-gallon hat and swaggers into the Petroleum Club. He wastes more than a billion of taxpayers’ money on a losing pipeline. He is also of little use during a pandemic.

Messieurs Kenney and Trump are both losers.

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Bitumen is not oil.

May 3, 2021 by Peter Lowry

If pipeline companies were honest about what they are transmitting around North America, there would be fewer problems with environmentalists. It would also help if reporters were more accurate and editors more diligent There are differences between refined oil products such as the different grades of gasoline and crude oil. There are also serious concerns about pipelines carrying diluted bitumen to refineries for processing.

In the current dispute between governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Enbridge over Line 5, it makes considerable difference. Whitmer’s experience with a pipeline spill is based on the ten-year old spill of an Enbridge pipe that polluted a major tributary of the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan. That spill cost more than a billion dollars, resulted in huge fines for the company and never could be completely cleaned up. That was a spill of diluted bitumen.

A spill from Enbridge’s Line 5 where it crosses the shallow lake bed of Lake Michigan at the Straits of Mackinac—from which the water flows into Lake Huron and through the Great Lakes and to the Atlantic Ocean—could be catastrophic if it is diluted bitumen.

The difference is that crude or refined oil products float and can be trapped and cleaned up. Diluted bitumen floats for a while until the diluent is washed away and the heavier bitumen sinks to the bottom. This can deny close to 40 million Americans and Canadians their source of water for home use, for farm animals, for industrial use, for leisure activities and for commercial fisheries. There is no doubt that Governor Whitmer has made a case.

And the battle has been engaged in the halls of both Ottawa and Washington. President Joe Biden has already put an end to the Keystone XL pipeline over the objections of Canada’s Justin Trudeau. Closure of Line 5 would have serious impacts on the Canadian economy as well as challenge the American self-sufficiency in oil.

But it is important to recognize that the main fight is over the diluted bitumen, not the refined products. If citizens understood the difference, there is a work-around that could mitigate the economic problems. Enbridge can complete its tunnel solution at Mackinac in about three years, In the meantime, we should tell the whole story so that people can understand the concern.

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The strength of Joe Biden.

May 1, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Listening to American President Joe Biden address his nation the other night was a rare delight. Here was a politician at the apex of his career. He was entitled to those words of self-congratulation. His first 100 days in office did set new records. He not only knew how to do the job but he got a lot done.

And he did it with confidence. In a time of the worst plague of our world history, Joe Biden brought order to the chaos in America. He did it with the soft gravelly voice of an elderly man. He did it with respect for the women behind him and at his side. He introduced a child-care plan for his country that could work. He wants the minimum wage to be a living wage. He is promoting caring over confrontation.

How different it was, after the past four years, to see a leader holding out the olive branch to the opposition. He is willing to compromise in detail but was plain in his intent to change how America treats its citizens. His strategy was clearly jingoist, “Buy America” and such—simple words for all to rally to but strategic in intent. America’s allies will not be mistreated as they were by the previous administration. This is a president that rushed to vaccinate his country but still took time to think of and send vaccines to its neighbours.

It was critically important in the speech that the president said, “We have to prove that democracy works.” Democracy is under attack around the world. And nowhere is the attack more serious than in the USA. In the bitterly polarized political climate of America, it is critically important that all realize the damage that continued polarization can cause.

The lessons of the last four years in the United States showed Americans and people around the world the potential weakness of the once most powerful country in the world. Internal division is the secret weapon of enemies. Joe Biden’s call is for unity.

On Wednesday, April 28, 2021 the president was talking to the congress, the American people and to the rest of the world. It was an important message.

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Is Trump just a tool of QAnon?

March 1, 2021 by Peter Lowry

I love conspiracy theories. I delight in challenging them. Some of the stories you hear from the United States these days are not being spread to generate amusement but many are quite funny.

I am puzzled by the the basic tenet of QAnon. They say that the world is really managed by a bunch of Satanists, who abuse children. How these devil worshipers manage to have time to abuse children while trying to run the world is an unanswered question. Mind you with the shape of the world these days, it is easier to blame others than take any responsibility yourself.

But over the past four years that we have been hearing all this false news, I thought that Donald Trump was their hero and leader? Is he not their leader? Are they trading the Donald in on a newer model? I am sure he was counting on all those people to get him a second term. Nobody stole that election from him but himself.

Watching that awful scene in Washington on January 6, did not make for a pleasant afternoon. It was certainly not something you see everyday. If I had been a Capital policeman, I would have shot that guy with the horns. I think his head, complete with horns, needed to be mounted over the speaker’s chair in the senate chamber. It would serve as notice to fools everywhere not to disrupt the senators’ afternoon naps.

I think the Donald left the white house in a snit. Actually, it was a Marine helicopter. I guess that was a final perc of office.

But it is not. He is on the payroll for life. He even gets money for a library. The true need for his library would be a professional collection of every lie he told Americans over his four years in the white house.

There is also the possibility that his library could do some good. If he could just gather together in readable form every entry he ever made in social media on the Internet, it would be of service to mankind. There are many of us who would never want to waste our time plowing through that morass of egotism and ignorance. After all, Mr. Trump now has nothing but time on his hands.

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Biden is ahead of Trudeau on climate.

February 26, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Hey Joe, what did you think of the hypocrisy you got from Trudeau during your virtual summit on Tuesday? One of the first items of business when you became U.S. president was ending that Keystone XL pipeline that was designed to take Canadian bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to the Texas gulf coast tanker ports. Did the Canadian prime minister mention to you he is still twinning the TransMountain pipeline to take bitumen to the tanker access in the Burrard Inlet at Vancouver?

If you were really congratulating each other on your being environmentalists, Trudeau is letting the side down. Many of us in Canada are annoyed with him about that. He not only spent C$4 billion buying the 67-year-old pipeline that runs from Edmonton to Vancouver but cost estimates for the twinning of the line are now running at an additional C$12.6 billion. The government is hoping that they can get 20 years at least out of the dual pipeline with revenues of C$1.5 billion per year. (The company has signed contracts for this much.)

While everyone involved is proud of the performance of this old pipeline for so long, they are really stretching the envelope. The difference when you are pushing diluted bitumen through the pipes is that you are heating the bitumen and pushing it at considerably higher pressure.

But Canadians are not just concerned about the possibility of a pipeline leak and fouling of the fresh waters for the people of British Columbia and northern Washington State. The heavy traffic of ocean tankers through the Georgia Straits is an extreme concern for the orcas and other whales that summer in the area.

All we know is that the supreme court in Ottawa does not want any more appeals to stop the twinning of the pipeline. The appeals have failed us. The construction is in process. Short of laying our bodies in front of the construction equipment, there is little we can do.

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