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Donald Trump: Ego Equitus.

October 5, 2016 by Peter Lowry

In very few weeks from now, the American people will have their say. Given nothing catastrophic in the intervening weeks, the Republican candidate is going to hear “You’re fired!” It will spell the end of the worst reality show in American political history.

Nobody deserved this. It has been a frightening prospect for Americans and their friends. A giant, puffed-up ego has been dominating the airwaves and Internet. It has been the worst of extremes and chilling in what it portends and pretends. All other subjects pale in face of the horrendous possibilities. Nothing titillates more and no greater lies can be told.

And we have been watching a campaign of lies. This is a man whose entire life is a series of lies and pretenses. He (maybe) built a house of cards that promised billions and he does not want anyone to know the truth. Is the truth dust? Is it all in his imagination? Did he build towers on imagination?

But does anyone seriously believe he could guide a country? Can a man who insults and belittles women as sex objects lead them? That type of person is called a pimp. Can a man who wants to build walls and interdict an entire religion from the country help maintain a world at some level of peace?

How un-Godly does this person have to be to finally turn off the ardour of the born again? How hidden do the real figures have to be to turn off the respect of the fiscally conservative? How limited does his understanding of world affairs have to be to please the true xenophobe?

But even then there is the occasional vote he can count on—if only they get to the polls. And that is what it all comes down to on November 8.

In politics, it is called the Ground Game. It is that effort that is made in politics to identify your support and then to deliver it to vote on election day. The facts are that the Republican Party that could have supplied that army of volunteers to carry out the ground game cannot do the job. The Republicans are too busy trying to rescue what political wins are possible as the Trump campaign crumbles. House and Senate seats are at risk.

The Republican Party leaders are sure of only one thing. They never want the embarrassment of running such an ego again.

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Donald Trump: Ego Parentus.

October 4, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It is truly amazing how Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump can put down women so casually and then hide behind one. The question is though whether his daughter Ivanka is like any ordinary woman you know? She fronted Trump at the Republican convention in the summer and is back again to star in $7.5 million worth of television commercials.

The very fact that the Trump campaign is finally spending some money on television advertising is a message in itself. The message is that he knows he is losing. He has discovered that social media alone cannot do the job. He has already hit the ceiling with the social media reach. He is old news.

But using Ivanka is in itself a story. To say that Ivanka is a Trump product is only half of it. She is a slim and perfect 30-something Barbie Doll. Mattel should sue Trump for infringement on their copyright. Animated, tall and cold, she is an amusing foil for her misogynist father. She appears on the television screen as the best that money can buy.

All she lacks is credibility as she reads the prompters about the plight of women in her father’s society. From her opening lines. It is almost as though she is saying: ‘If he can produce a person as perfect as me, he can’t be all bad!’

But it leaves you wondering if she could possibly be the result of accidental meeting of sperm and egg. Is she human? Would she be as rich if she were not so loyal to her father? Would she be as articulate without the coaching and scripting? Would we even listen if she was not her father’s daughter?

But when he uses her is it not really his ego that it serves? If there is one thing that Donald Trump convinces us of, it is his ego. There is an ego there that could serve an army of politicians. It is that ego that we watched carry him through the Republican Party primaries. We watched him glibly lie and tell tall tales reviling his opponents. A politician would have gone down in flames doing what he did.

But Trump trumpeted on. He won a free pass into the Republican National Convention. It was his to co-op into his triumph. It fed his ego from beginning to end. He did it by trusting family over politicians.

And he continues to use family as an extension of himself. It is as though he were an ancient potentate establishing his dynasty. It will be interesting to see how many Americans buy into that dynasty on November 8.

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Donald Trump: Ego Imperious.

October 3, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Watching the Trump phenomenon in the United States has become a Canadian pastime. It is almost as good as the Toronto Blue Jays making it to a bid for the wild card. Though it is nowhere near as exciting as the Canadians winning that faux World Cup of Hockey the other night.

But what puzzles Americans and Canadians alike is where this hatred comes from? Trump’s campaign is feeding on hatreds. It is reaping votes from ignorance. How can ‘born-agains’ support such an ungodly candidate? Is the American dream to be destroyed by a rape and pillage capitalist?

Donald Trump does not want to be President of the United States of America. He wants to be Emperor Trump I. He neither understands nor cares about the system of government of the country. He wants to rule. He wants to launch a dynasty. He wants to create a Trump Thousand Year Reich on North American soil.

And he hardly cares how. The litany of lies, fabrications, and falsehoods of his campaign are there for all who want to see to see. He has no interest in the truth. He titillates his mob. He has no truths for them. They feed on his fabricated rants and he suggests further lies to keep them coming back for the next episode. His is a campaign of hatred and they dose on it daily.

It is interesting that Secretary Clinton has stopped responding. She would prefer not to mention his name. It just seems there is little point to giving any credence to his abuse of truth.

Trump’s supporters are having to reach further and further each day to try to alibi his falsehoods. The best the other day was some purported tax documents from 20 years ago that showed his manipulation of the system. One foolish supporter told the media it shows how smart he is. If he was a serious candidate, he would release his tax returns. Serious candidates for President for many years have shown his (and now her) tax returns. It simply goes with the position.

But Trump stands defiant. He is not your ordinary candidate. He makes his own rules. Nobody tells him what to do.

He wants to be leader of the free world. And where would he lead?

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Donald Trump: Ego Rampant.

October 2, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Watching the claims and counterclaims of the presidential candidates in the United States this past week has been both a political apparatchik’s nightmare and a spin doctor’s dream. As expected both sides claimed victory at the first debate for presidential candidates.

As a political apparatchik, you look at the mistakes, the opportunities lost, the facial give-aways, the forgotten words and scripting—and that is just your own candidate. And all the time, you are admitting that the opponent was at the top of his or her game.

But the political spin doctor sees if differently. You have to analyze the total picture. What had effect? On both sides? What phrase had legs? What were the distractions? What will the gurus, analysts and commentators decide they have seen three or four days later? The spin doctor has to see that future and it is not as easy as some of them make it out.

Sitting here in the catbird seat, safe from the daily grind and involvement in the American scene, it is easy to see where the protagonists are standing. A wily Hillary Clinton is doing deep breathing in her corner, waiting for the next opportunity to inflict pain on her opponent. A flustered and frustrated Donald Trump is barely listening to to-day’s advisors. He claims victory and yet aches for revenge.

Hillary Clinton is savouring the successes of her intense preparation for the first-round debate. She knows there was no knockout. There were some good blows landed. Trump lacked the experience and briefings to ward off the traps he fell into. What Clinton achieved was to reassure her base.

But Trump’s greatest enemy continues to be his ego. His most obvious gaffes in the debate were his rude comments that helped Hillary hang him high as a misogynist. He accepts what he sees as the pandering of politics to the voters but fails to follow through. He knows Hillary is hurting with her studied and accurate advertising targeting him. He personally hates the repetition of television advertising but hardly wants to spend his own money to make a countering campaign happen. He is obviously doing more with social media but fails to understand its limitations.

There seems to be little chance of seeing a reformed Donald Trump in the remaining weeks of the campaign. There can be little redemption in the remaining debates. His ego remains rampant. He only destroys himself.

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

How green is my gas?

October 1, 2016 by Peter Lowry

There has been another example of how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can suck and blow at the same time. It took three federal cabinet members to burst the environmental bubble in B.C. They travelled from Ottawa unnecessarily to provide word that the government would allow the building of a gas pipeline from Alberta to the British Columbia coast where the gas would be converted to Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) and loaded on tankers for the trip to China and the far east.

The good news was supposed to be that the amount of carbon allowed to be released would be capped at the equivalent of putting one million more automobiles on the road across Canada. The problem was that how you cap carbon emissions, how you count carbon emissions and who gets the money for the carbon tax were never discussed.

These LNG operations are touted to be the largest sell-off of Canadian resources ever. The operation is going to cost Malaysia-owned Petronas about $36 billion—if it can make it a profitable investment despite the currently low prices of natural gas.

If this huge expense creates just 300 (maybe) permanent jobs, it is not very impressive. (B.C.’s Premier Christie Clark was smiling because it looks like her province gets to tax the pipeline, the LNG plant and shipping terminal.) Alberta is where the natural gas will likely be sourced, compressed and pumped over the Rockies to the new plant.

The good news is that the gas pipeline is much safer for the environment than the pumping of diluted bitumen. The gas tends to harmlessly mix with air unless there is something to ignite it. Even a very small leak near a pumping station could be a very explosive proposition.

The pipeline is supposed to follow the Skeena River to the sea. As it is the second largest salmon run in British Columbia, the native communities in the Skeena area and environmentalists are appalled. They feel that Prime Minister Trudeau continues to break promises and ignore concerns.

This is on top of the Trudeau government’s recent approval of the $8 billion mega-project known as the Site C Dam on B.C.’s Peace River. This mega-project is going to flood 83 kilometres of valley near St. John. This flooding will cover traditional hunting lands and ancient burial grounds of B.C.’s indigenous people. They claim it is just one more example of Prime Minister Trudeau promising one thing and then doing another.

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

Another redneck heard from.

September 30, 2016 by Peter Lowry

You would think in this era of instant communications and extensive broadcast media coverage throughout rural Canada, there would be little excuse for rural politicians to have so little understanding of their country. And yet, Leamington, Ontario Mayor John Paterson has joined Conservative MP Kelly Leitch in demanding that newcomers to Canada conform to their version of Canadian culture.

Xenophobia must be rampant. (Our Oxford Concise tells us that xenophobia is a morbid fear of foreigners.) Promoted by Trump in the U.S. and shouted out throughout Europe, xenophobes have been less evident in Canada. They can be embarrassing—like the bad manners of that premier’s son who stood in line to greet the royals with his hands in his pockets.

But the small-town mayor further embarrasses Canadians by suggesting that Canada’s history is tied to Great Britain and the monarchy. He thinks those ties are more important than promoting multiculturalism. It makes one wonder about the quality of his education about Canada.

The first question for both of these Ontario rednecks is what the heck do they think Canadian values might be? They need to think long and hard before answering that question. It might also help if they can also think about the answer in French and some of the country’s aboriginal languages.

Mayor Paterson says “Come to Canada and be Canadian.” He thinks that means you have to be an Anglophone and a monarchist. We expect Kelly Leitch would echo that but we have never heard her say it.

But in the same way as the Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency uses this fear of foreigners to rail against Latino’s, Muslims, blacks and women, you begin to wonder if there is anyone he likes besides himself. These Ontario rednecks are certainly not doing their political careers much good. Leitch is hardly going to take her campaign for the Conservative leadership to Quebec. While her Canadian values might translate and have a certain appeal to the Parti Québécois, those people are not really in tune with your typical Conservative Party supporters.

Canada has every right to be proud of its reputation around the world for its tolerance and acceptance of multiculturalism. It is a wonderful country but it only takes a few dimwits with the wrong attitude to screw things up!

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Lessons from the world of twits.

September 29, 2016 by Peter Lowry

The first question for today: ‘Is there life after Twitter?’ Front-page news the other day at the Toronto Star was that columnist Paul Wells is boycotting Twitter. It is a form of protest. He will forego his 30 tweets per day and his 60,000 followers until Twitter gets its censorship problems corrected to Mr. Wells’ satisfaction.

So welcome to the real world Mr. Wells. Welcome to the Twitter-free universe. This is your chance to get a life. You can walk around your city with your head held high—no longer myopically peering at your smart phone. You no longer even need that weather app; you can look up at the sky. And you can look at the world around you.

You could even be ahead of that guy Trump in the U.S. He has far more followers of his twits than you. He is a braggart and a buffoon and he entertains. Just wait for his reaction in November when he finds there is no app that will get those Twitterites to follow him to the polls.

A few years ago a grandson convinced us to give Twitter another trial. He said that all writers have to promote themselves on Twitter. That was not true. Twitter proves to be a colossal waste of time. If every Twitterite took that time to read a few good books, they would have something interesting to talk about. They would know more about their world. They would know more about people and how they live.

We spent many years of being an early adopter of things technical. The first home computers, the radio telephone in the car before the concept of cells was developed. Boy, did we have the gadgets—usually at excessive cost and then the analysis, report and rejection.

Social media has done almost as much for the Internet as pornography. Both build users. They both repel. Social media is intrusive, dangerous, exploitive, vulgar and eventually nauseating—come to think of it, so is pornography.

So good on you Paul Wells. You might have done the deed for your own purposes but you could be helping free the slaves of social media. Think of all those young people learning to interact properly with their peers instead of sexting. Think of the exercise our youth will get as they go out to explore their neighbourhood without the life-line of a smart phone. They will be the ones looking around them in wonder. They might be seeing their real world for the first time.

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

Protecting public assets.

September 28, 2016 by Peter Lowry

What government, municipal, provincial or federal, has not looked longingly to selling off public companies as a fast way to some ready cash? The government can promise to do nothing but good with the money. The only problem is that once the asset is gone, there is no more revenue from it beyond its corporate taxes.

But there are exceptions. There are assets that can be sold off and improve their revenues to the government. It was hoped that the lotteries component of Ontario Lottery and Gaming (OLG) could be one of these assets. The objective of dealing through a service provider, is that the government would gain from the company’s creativity, experience and knowledge of the business. The government would still get most of the revenues generated but would share a reasonable operating profit with the purchaser.

It is obvious that none of the three major companies bidding on the OLG operation was offering enough money to the government to make the deal worthwhile. The government lottery operations might not be as creative and aggressive as private enterprise but the government apparently still likes the return it is getting.

This would not necessarily be the case if the Ontario government sold off the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). It is obvious to any business analyst that the parts of the LCBO are worth far more than the whole. Private sector wine merchants are long overdue in Ontario and the government gets the licensing revenue as well as the alcohol taxes. Selling six packs of beer is a bludgeon to upgrade and improve Ontario convenience stores.

And if the LCBO is really the largest importer of wines in North America, that business could be worth more than all the stores combined. All it has to do is look outward beyond the province, instead of inward. It could become a giant in the business.

And there is a huge recycling business in the province that can be separated and stop interfering with how customers buy their beer.

But instead a smart sell-off the Ontario government wants to sell off some of Hydro One that is already infuriating customers across Ontario because of the electrical distribution operator’s sloppy billing practices. Premier Wynne hardly needs more of Ontario’s rural electricity users hating her.

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

Donald Trump: Ego Erectus.

September 27, 2016 by Peter Lowry

The world was witness. Someone said yesterday that Republican Donald Trump would win the first of the presidential debates last night because he was experienced in using television. He obviously forgot everything he ever learned when he walked on that stage last night. He also forgot that it was not all about him.

The contrast between the two candidates was dramatic. Secretary Clinton was almost frighteningly political. Trump was abusive and a bully and talked over her and the moderator. She rattled off a list of policies at the beginning and then watched as Trump tried to take the debate down his personal rabbit hole. She seized the lead position of polished politician and held on to it for the rest of the evening.

Trump wasted the audience’s time. He gave a litany of old tales of the Rust Belt that he must have learned at his daddy’s knee. He made wild and unrealistic promises that no serious person could believe. The only sham he left out was the Mexican wall and we were all waiting for it. Instead he got caught up in the President Obama Birther story and somehow wanted to stay with the story when his audience wanted him to get over it.

It might have been a better evening if there had been a stronger moderator. Mind you, keeping Trump on subject is a tough task.

Trump thought he got one good lick in against his opponent when he said she decided to stay home instead of being out campaigning in recent days. He was saying he did not see the need to prepare for the debate (which became obvious). Her comeback was yes, she prepared for the debate and she was also prepared to be president.

We are not saying here that any votes changed among the viewers of the debate. That would be an unrealistic objective. Trump was Trump and Clinton was Clinton. Though Clinton was at her best. Trump’s claque will have to write the evening off as a weak effort. Clinton’s supporters will be cheered by her performance.

But there is still six more weeks of this presidential water torture. Trump will continue his self-aggrandizement and bluster, his rash promises and his pie in the sky lies, his strutting and posturing.

What the debate showed was that Hillary Clinton is the only choice on November 8. She deserves to win. Trump is somewhere back there with the Neanderthals of North America. They are the breed we do not need.

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Oh, what wimps these Liberals be!

September 26, 2016 by Peter Lowry

This would have run sooner if we had not written the weekend’s commentaries earlier last week. Have these Liberals learned nothing from watching former Prime Minister Harper over the years? Those hypocrites on the Conservative benches ridiculed the new and experimental House Leader who gamely tried to stick her fingers in the dike. The neophyte MP tried to stonewall the Conservative and New Democrat opposition

But then, to make matters worse, the Prime Minister’s Office caved in to the criticism. Justin Trudeau’s key people, Katie Telford and Gerald Butts said “Mia culpa” on their moving expenses and undid almost a year of hard work in the inner sanctum of Trudeau’s office. They made the prime minister look naïve and made themselves look twice as guilty by promising to return some of the expense money.

Did anyone think to check with a firm that supplies re-location services to business? Looking at the figures that were released, it appears that the government got off on the cheap.

And there are nine years of figures available to compare the costs of moving Conservatives in similar positions to and from Ottawa. Somebody finally got around to look at those—and could have included a ratio for inflation.

At a time when the Conservatives needed something to entertain them, the new Liberal House Leader was hardly doing her job. And where Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef was born did not qualify for any discussion. Anyone who can find the border of Iran and Afghanistan on a map of the world would know that the one objective of anyone born there is to get out of that land that God forgot.

But the point of this is that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can forget his promises to the voters, he can forget his promises to the environmentalists, he can forget his promises to our first peoples but the last people you desert are your staff. You forget them at your peril because you will never get people as loyal again. Any replacement you hire will be aware that you threw their predecessor under the bus. You can never live that down. It was the beginning of the end for Mr. Harper. It could also eventually prove to be the turning point for Justin Trudeau.

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