Arthur Weinreb

Fox News Gutfeld mocks Canadian soldiers

On a segment of the relatively unknown Fox News show “Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld” that airs daily at 3 am, Gutfeld and his three guests took shots at Canada; specifically our military that is currently engaged in Afghanistan. Gutfeld commented on the testimony that Lt.-Gen Andrew Leslie gave before a Canadian Senate committee wherein the general advised that the troops will need to take a break from operations after the current mission ends in 2011 in order to build up manpower and repair equipment. Gutfeld then sneered, “The Canadian military wants to take a breather to do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach with gorgeous white Capri pants”.

The media is never able to “get it”

As everyone knows, these are not the best of times. This is especially so for the mainstream print media that is witnessing a constant decline in revenues and circulation. Much of this decline is separate and apart from the current economic woes that the media, in lockstep with their left wing political masters, loves to call the worst economy since the Great Depression. In the past few weeks, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News and the Christian Science Monitor have folded their print publications. More mainstream publications will follow suit and there is even speculation that the venerable New York Times will go under in the not too distant future.

Where is Howard Beale now that we need him?

Howard Beale was the TV anchor in the 1976 movie, Network. Played by the late Peter Finch, Beale was reeling about the problems of his time; inflation, unemployment and high crime rates. He told people to go over their windows, open them, stick their heads out the windows and yell, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore”.

Let’s bail out ordinary people

The early 1980s, a time of high and growing unemployment was also the heyday of the Rhinoceros Party of Canada. The party was named after its leader; a rhinoceros at the Granby Zoo just outside of Montreal. The rhino was the consummate politician; thick-skinned, not too bright, and slow moving except when it was in its interest to move quickly. And it spent all of its time wallowing in mud.

Fighting child poverty – the solution is so simple

Ontario Liberals are planning to reduce child poverty by 25 per cent in five years in the province. The bill that was introduced last Wednesday and titled, The Poverty Reduction Act, 2009, calls for 90,000 children to be lifted out of poverty by 2014.

Battle of the big city mayors

Mirror mirror on the wall Who’s the silliest mayor of all? The recent shooting of a 17-year-old boy on a Toronto bus is the latest in what seems to be a rash of violence on the city’s transit system. Since 2009 began there has been a shooting on a subway platform, a stabbing at a bus terminal and two young teens were pushed onto the subway tracks, barely escaping death, in a random act committed by a stranger.

Now everything is a “stimuli”

Several community activist groups in Ontario are calling upon the provincial government to increase social assistance payments by $100.00 a month per person. They are asking for this increase as a “Healthy Food Supplement” on the basis that people on welfare must sometimes choose between paying rent and eating properly. This proposal has the support of Dr. David McKeown, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health.

Ontario to ban the recession

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty tabled legislation earlier this week to keep the worldwide recession from the province. The Act to make Ontario Recession-free is expected to easily pass in the Liberal-dominated legislature. McGuinty stated that recessions are bad and we just cannot have them in Ontario, especially during a time when job losses are rising, manufacturing plants are closing and peoples’ savings are dwindling.

Raising taxes in a recession

What is now happening in the city of Toronto is a good indication of what will happen in the U.S. when Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled congress really gets going. Toronto serves as a good example of how socialists run things during an economic turndown. To give you a hint, it’s pretty much the same way as government business is conducted during good times, with ever increasing taxes and spending.

Time to disunite the right

Many Canadian small “c” conservatives are unhappy with the budget that Stephen Harper tabled two weeks ago. There certainly was very little “conservative” about it.

Canada’s incredible shrinking love affair with Obama

It was bound to happen. What is surprising is not that it happened but the fact that how a Barack Obama administration with a Democrat congress would adversely affect Canada became obvious less than two weeks after the 44th president of the United States was, albeit awkwardly, sworn in to office.

The increasing irrelevance of the NDP

Politics is all about power. While there may be an occasional politician who seeks elective office for what they perceive to be the public good, these men and women are few and far between. In federal politics, there are some MPs whose primary interest is the well being of their constituents. They never make it into cabinet, keep getting re-elected no matter what happens in the rest of the country and are usually unknown to everyone outside of their ridings and their immediate families.

There is probably no Allah

The Freethought Association of Canada (FAC) has entered into an agreement with the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) to place ads on buses and in subway cars. Following a similar ad campaign in Great Britain, the ads will read, “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

Inauguration quizzes – Obama flunks

Many newspapers included inaugural quizzes in their January 20th editions; the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the Peoria Journal Star and the Los Angeles Times just to name a few. Even some non American newspapers such as Canada’s National Post got into the act. Questions such as who was the youngest or who was the oldest president on Inauguration Day were included in the quizzes that contained other questions on the topic.

Ontario holds secret trials

And the province seems to be proud of it!

Boycott CUPE???

Shortly after Sid Ryan, the head of the Canadian Union of Public Employees of Ontario (CUPE-Ontario), decided that Canadian universities should boycott Israeli academics unless they specifically denounce their government’s actions in Gaza, some calls were made for people to boycott CUPE. As well meaning as this suggestion is, it is simply impossible. Much like mosquitoes on a hot, damp summer’s day, Sid’s brothers and sisters are everywhere.

Hockey, snowboarding and backcountry skiing

Don Sanderson, a 21-year-old defenseman with the Whitby Dunlops of the Ontario Hockey Association’s Senior A league, passed away early Friday morning at Hamilton General Hospital. Sanderson had been in a coma since December 12 when his team was playing the Brantford Blast. Sanderson was involved in a third period fight during the course of which his helmet flew off and he went down, hitting his head on the ice.

2008:  The Year of the Bizarre

Some years are more memorable than others. For example, the year 1969 is often referred to as “The Year of the Impossible”. On January 20th of that year Richard M. Nixon, who famously told the press that they wouldn’t have Nixon to kick around anymore after losing the California gubernatorial race two years after losing the presidency to John F. Kennedy (aka Caroline’s dad), was sworn in as the 37th president of the United States. In July 1969, the world watched while a couple of guys took and walk on the moon and if that wasn’t enough, in October the then-hapless New York Mets won the World Series.

Harper comes through for the Ontario Conservatives

It’s hard to glance at or hear the news these days without the word “bailout” popping up. Prime Minister Stephen Harper had the chance to bailout Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory this week and graciously declined to do so. Tory has spent since the election of October 2007 without a seat in the provincial legislature. Unlike other party leaders who end up at the head of their party with minimal legislative experience, Tory decided not to run in a safe seat that would have allowed him to spend time throughout Ontario bolstering his party instead of trying to win his riding. Tory, for reasons that are hard to understand, decided to run against popular Liberal Education Minister Kathleen Wynne in her heavily Liberal Toronto riding. His Arrogance lost. Since then Tory has been trying to get someone in his caucus to give up their seat so he can run in a by-election, all to no avail. That was probably a good thing because John Tory could have possibly lost the by-election too, making a complete joke out of the party that recently spent eight years with strong majority governments.

What Harper should say about the economy: “no comment”

Sometime you can’t win for losing. In Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s case, he can’t even win for proroguing. In a television interview on Monday, Harper made a lot of negative comments about the current state of the economy. He said that he was “very worried” about it and that he had never seen such economic uncertainty.