Rex has it right. Some of my libertarian friends seem to say that the "peaceful protesters shouldn't be blamed for the hooligans. The peaceful protesters hid the thugs and cheered them on. They are equally responsible. If they were truly peaceful , they would have pointed out these thugs and allowed their march to go on. We have no idea what these marchers were protesting. I was listening to anne legace dowsonon on CJAD, a commie republican who has run for the ndp, defend these thugs as children. Well then let's charge their parents and them for the damage done. She had their representatives on the air and denounced the G20 for advocating cuts to public spending. She denounced capitalism. What a hypocrite. This is the kind of loon we have working for us at the cbc. Now she spews her...
Rex takes iffy apart. iffy really doesn't understand Canada or Canadians. He doesn't even understand his own party. I love this line: he'd be the perfect Canadian, by his terms ... if he'd never come back at all. bet the grits wish he was such a perfect Canadian
Mr. Ignatieff, in a recent Toronto speech, tried a little rhetorical judo on the Conservative ads. He tried to project the idea of Canada as a place in continual evolution, as the most internationalist of countries, and went so far as to say his "being out of the country" actually made him a better Canadian.
This last claim was merely excess and nonsense since, in logic, he'd be the perfect Canadian, by his terms ... if he'd never come back at all.
Let me be clear on this point. His absence is not a disqualification for our...
I have little use for these criminals, neither does Rex or most law abiding Canadians. Their violent actions utterly discredit them.
But a subset of these angry anti-globalist nomads — recall Quebec city in 2001; recall, more recently the Vancouver games — always ups the ante with a little direct action: a chair through a window here, pelting the police there, scampering around in their black clown masks and moaning with farcical hyprocrisy about police brutality whenever they’re called on their despicable actions.
A portion of the anti-globalist crowd tries to put such assaults on civic order under the rubric of “diversity of tactics” — another evasive, sly euphemism for simple thuggishness. Don’t try to tell us it’s for the Palestinians or the rainforests or the...
Rex also discusses the chief nag fm the UN. He suggest HM PM Harper reply to the hectoring with facts. I always appreciate Rex's climate realism. He should join me at the Climate Realist conference in Chicago this weekend. I am sure he would enjoy it. You can join me too. Watch the keynote speeches here at PJTV.
Did he take Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to task for the bristling ardency — so alien to any genuine scientific project — that now pervades the “global warming community”? Or, for the spiteful defiance of Dr. R.K. Pachauri, the UN’s IPCC Chairman, toward those who reported errors in his venerated report, or to the hints of potential conflicts of interest between Mr. Pachauri’s business enterprises and his position as the voice of the “international community” on...
Rex is not very impressed with duceppe's Canadian separatism tour....
I have not criticized Danny Williams going to the US to have surgery. We are a free country and he should have the choice. Unfortunately most Canadians do not have the choice to have private care. Premier Williams is quite wealthy.We should allow a parallel private system in Canada, so everyone can have access to private care , if they want to pay for it. It would take people out the long waiting lines and can be an escape valve for the public system. The Canada health act needs to be amended or abolished. Get well soon Premier Williams. Danny Williams, Premier of Newfoundland, had or is having major heart surgery in the United States.I'm sure everyone wishes him and his family the very best with the operation.His going to the U.S. has stirred a great volume of controversy and comment...
Rex chronicles the dying climate hoax.Rex Murphy: So, whatever happened to Copenhagen?Posted: January 30, 2010, 10:00 AM by NP EditorA little (a very little) global warming humour:Q. How is the recently concluded Copenhagen climate conference like the Medieval Warm Period?A. They both may be seen to disappear when it serves a noble purpose.Well, I warned it was very little. But, then again, global warming is a very earnest, if not positively sullen topic, and to mine even an atom of a joke from all of the frenzied evangelism of self-appointed environmentalist groups, the grim coven that ran the now celebrated labs in East Anglia, or from our modern day catastrophist Savonarola, Al Gore, is too much even for the most deep-mining humourist.Read more:...
An amazing analysis by Rex. The presidency demands substance. This is brilliant.Rex Murphy: Pickup truck 1, Obama 0Posted: January 23, 2010, 10:00 AM by NP EditorRex MurphyIt was but a single day shy of a perfect year from Barack Obama’s inauguration, when a previously unheralded, not emphatically gifted, Republican candidate, Scott Brown, won the Senatorial election in the state of Massachusetts. The Senate seat in question was not just any seat: It wasn’t so much held, as owned and occupied, stamped with the family coat-of-arms, taken under the political equivalent of copyright protection, by Ted Kennedy. This seat was Democratic in the same way we say water is wet, birds twitter, and reality TV grinds the living nerves....
Murray Dobbin picking on Rex MurphyAs usual, Murray Dobbin has a bone to pick. And as usual, it's with someone whose worldview starkly deviates from his own, and someone who has found a position of prominence from which to express it.Dobbin is evidently so threatened by Murphy that Rabble.ca has launched the "Not Rex Contest", looking for someone they feel can counter him -- somthing of an anti-Rex.“We’re looking for someone who isn’t pompous, occasionally uses facts and reflects the values of the vast majority of Canadians,” Dobbin muses.“Most commentators and columnists at least occasionally refer to some facts.”Of course, Dobbin's problem with Murphy isn't that he never makes reference to any facts -- that would be untrue. Dobbin's problem with Murphy is that he makes...
Another great piece from Rex now at the NP( an excerpt from his book). Too bad the mop and pail didn't realize what an asset Rex is.Feb. 16, 2008 David Suzuki has stirred a minor controversy, recently, by some remarks he made in a speech to 600 students at McGill University. A report in the McGill Daily tells us "he urged today's youth to speak out against politicians complicit in climate change.""Complicit" is the damning word there. People are complicit only in dark and pernicious undertakings. He went on to suggest the students "look for a legal way to throw our current political leaders in jail for ignoring science," those comments drawing rounds of cheering and applause....
It is interesting how bo won the Nobel peace prize for potential accomplishments and couldn't get on the cover of Yime for actual ones. bo's poll numbers are in free fall and I look forward to the November midterms so that his leftist agenda can finally be stopped dead in its tracks. Rex has a good analysis.Time magazine picked Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, as its Person of the Year. He gets the accolade for presiding over a “weak economy” that could have been “much, much weaker.” Pretty feeble. I can't imagine someone being named Athlete of the Year because while he “lost a few games” he could have lost “many, many more.”It's a puzzling choice, even for a magazine that has previously hailed “you” as its Person of the Year. (No offence – I...
Rex has a nice piece on Christmas. I have noticed that more people are saying Merry Christmas. This is a difficult phenomenon to pick a quarrel with. But we live in a morbidly prickly age, and a hyper-consciously politically correct one and there have been souls – if that is not too large a term – who took umbrage at the singing of Silent Night and would flinch at being the target of so non-inclusive a greeting as Merry Christmas. But not as many, it seems, this year. Maybe it's a backlash against the backlash to traditional Christmas. It doesn't seem quite as daring this year to offer the traditional greeting, rather than the timid, mingy, costive Happy Holiday. I don't see quite as many ads for the winter solstice or those other evasive circumlocutions.Maybe it's because 2009 has...
The only sensible voice at the biased cbc, actually discusses the scientific scandal of the century, unlike the cbc news....
Rex has a funny piece on Goring Alberta. What is about Alberta's massive oil wealth that makes liberals want to attack. trudeau and his gang wanted to steal Alberta's oil wealth with the hated NEP, apparently Alberta's oil and Tories are just evil. Perhaps when the goreacle needs to light his massive house or refill his jet he will change his mind. The United States will need oil for many years to come, not so the goreacle. His lies are being exposed. Even BO wants Alberta's "dirty" oil.It is very refreshing when the possible extinction of the human race can be reduced to such manageable practicalities.But, you know, I had a very naughty thought. Mr. Gore was, after all, speaking in Toronto. Was it even slightly possible he villainized the oil sands during his Toronto visit – not quite...
and their new attempts to start a new religion.What was once venerated is now, in many ways, dismissed and even despised.Matthew Arnold, the great Victorian poet, marked the turning moment. He had early intimations of “the way we live now,” a way largely evacuated of its Christian allegiances, certainly – in the public sphere – evacuated of the regard and respect that the profession of Christianity once automatically evoked.“The Sea of Faith/ Was once, too, at the full,” he wrote, before going on in lines of immense power to record:But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drearAnd naked shingles of the world....
My friend Hugh MacIntyre has a great video up of Rex on iffy. Hope you're having fun in Edinburgh, Hugh. iffy is not having much fun visiting Canada, I expect he will be returning to the UK or the US very soon for a prolonged rest....
On Rabble.ca, Judy Rebick cries "emergency"!Rex Murphy also knows...
A great piece by Rex advising iffy to think twice before hopping on the chicken little chicken mobile.There are many warning that the great rush to fix the planet, and re-engineer its economy in the middle of a huge recession, on the basis of incomplete science and vastly overblown advocacy from the world's swarm of environmental lobbyists, NGOs, foundations, action groups, Greenpeace acrobats and UN politicians, may be terribly ill-advised. For those with eyes to see, and ears to hear, there have been throughout this whole global warming enterprise serious and well-informed minds asking for a second look, proposing alternative explanations, or qualifications to the idea that man-made CO2 is the sole or main driver of an impending apocalypse.There are intellectual bubbles as often as...
but not a leader for Canada. Rex analyzes iggy.Manner is one part of the answer. He is cocky and uncertain almost simultaneously, aggressive and challenging one moment, hesitant and even confusing in his message the next. That message, what there is of it, is a muddle. He casts the word “vision” around like it's a talisman, but speaks in the mushy platitudes of a high school valedictorian. He seems stranded between the two models of successful Liberal leadership, caught between the saloon and the salon. He cannot, by nature, mimic Jean Chrétien's carefully crafted populist style. Neither does he have the electricity and presence of Pierre Trudeau. Mr. Trudeau's braininess was sexy, Mr. Ignatieff's you merely gather from the résumé....
A great piece by Rex on the difference between true class and true boorishness. Needless to say I love Dame Vera.It was the news that Dame Vera Lynn, at the age of 92, has with her album We'll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn topped the U.K. charts at No.1, an accomplishment all the more amazing in that in came in the week of the release of the gigantically hyped Beatles remastered set.It's well over 70 years since Vera Lynn earned the now indelible title – stronger than any “Dame” – of the Forces' Sweetheart and her magnificently common (that is not an oxymoron) voice gave comfort and inspiration and a sense of home to soldiers everywhere, not just her British compatriots.Winston Churchill in a famous image modestly said: “I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give...
Rex hits the nail on the head iggy and the grits feel entitled to power. they feel no need for policies or engaging their grassroots. I am sure the grits'internal poll numbers are telling them ( just like all the other polls)an election is not a good idea any time soon.There is something, however, in the Liberals' approach that suggests that, maybe from their long habit of being in power, they expect it will be theirs again simply by default. Maybe that's why Mr. Ignatieff has had, in terms of visibility and profile, so relaxed and ruminative a summer. Maybe he or his party don't think much work is required, that they also win who only sit and wait. This is an error. It may be summertime but for politicians, the bewitching Gershwin message to the contrary, the livin' is never easy....
Sure sounds like it to me. He is also recommending Prof Ian Plimer's Book.I bring this up merely to make a single point. Not that these studio meteorologists were making the elementary mistake of confounding weather with climate, for this is a distinction familiar now even to kindergartners. Rather, to point out how “accepted” the vague, soft, but relentlessly propagandized theory of global warming has become. That being on the “right” side of the global warming argument is so very much the politically correct place to be. It's the “virtuous” side to be on, so naturally our supper-hour meteorologists, even if unconsciously, were eager to encourage virtue.Now, however, Toronto in July is cool and I am waiting in vain for the lips of just one forecaster to ask how can this be....
Rex Murphy truly understands obamessiah's socialist agenda.Mr. Obama has taken the real crisis of the U.S. (and world) economy and used it as the screen and lever for a massive agenda of transformation, a transformation that calls for expenditures on a scale never before seen in the history of government on this planet. The first expenditure, which began under George Bush's tenure, was large, but it was very specific. The financial “infrastructure” of America's economy was about to be exploded, and it was argued that government “had no choice” but to shore up the financial institutions without which there would be utter chaos in the overall economy. That was the genesis of the so-called bank bailout. After that came the stimulus package, the attempt to kick-start jobs, to get...
In his column today, outspoken yet eloquent Rex Murphy takes the global-warming movement to task. Now that the recession has accomplished exactly what those who believe in man-made global warming have wanted to achieve all along, Murphy notes: Thus, though it may be cruel and ironic, what the preachments of Al Gore and David Suzuki have failed to achieve, the crisis of the world's banking systems and consequent recession will accomplish. What their stark cries of alarm over imminent planetary collapse, the rise of the oceans and the plight of the polar bear could not move people and governments to......
Rex enumerates the unintended consequences of the coup plotters. Some good like Senator Dufft and some very bad like deficit spending.Early on, by the way, Mr. Duffy is showing signs of being Mr. Harper's most inspired choice. His maiden speech (strange) had elements of pornographic fantasy. The scene called up was all about premiers Danny Williams and Robert Ghiz in bed together, with such flourishes as "when one is in bed with Danny Williams, he will come out on top" and "where that will leave PEI in the end." Is there a cover charge to listen to Senate debates now? Mike Duffy Live takes on a whole new meaning.But however much Mr. Harper may be gratified to have Mr. Duffy as an apprentice standup comedian turning riffs on Danny Williams and Robert Ghiz sweating under the sheets, it can...
Rex Murphy really is one of the brightest and sharpest minds in Canada: Has the global warming movement given up all pretense of rigour entirely? Because they're now not only telling us what the weather will be like 30 or 50 years from now, they've tied their fanciful projections and ever more intricate modelling to lining up the causes for World War IV. They're giving us the causes for events that haven't happened yet. I think Newton would have frowned on that approach....
Rex Murphy has an Interesting piece in the Globe and Mail. He mocks the runaway fantasies of the chicken littles. The chicken littles really must be upset their predictions are not very accurate. Normally when a model fails like that you analyze the data and fix the model. The chicken littles prefer to holler and stick their heads in the sand.Now I introduce this spotty survey not in any spirit of contention or with intent to counter what so many people hilariously refer to as the "science" of global warming. One season's weather is not a guide to another, an insight captured more poetically by the proverb "one swallow does not make a spring." I am, most certainly, not going to make the error of our global warming hierophants who leap with troubling eagerness on any "extreme weather...
Rex Murphy has a good piece on the press and obamessiah. The press worship of obamessiah is pretty sickening.The columnist wrote, gasped, thrilled, vibrated that Mr. Obama was “… that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health-care plans … but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve.” Rhapsody is too timid a word.Mr. Obama, the column reveals, is a Lightworker, a new-age messianic superpresence. The heading over this prostration, er, column was: “Is Obama an enlightened being?” Call Steven Spielberg. E.T. is back.There have been other descriptions of Mr. Obama during the...
Rex gets it. obamessiah is an empty shell. he is a celebrity with very little substance. His own party's big wigs have told him he needs more substance. obamessiah is just politics as usual with even less substance.His acceptance speech in the Olympic-style stadium could not gather the inspirational energy of his earlier arias. Of late, the flash supernova of U.S. politics is seen "competing" with a second-on-the-ticket female governor of a remote state. There's more than a gap between the "audacity of hope" and "lipstick on a pig." The mouth that spoke the first phrase should not be capable of the second.He has shrunk into a combative partisan. He crowds his own screen, leaves less space for projection. Others are not writing his narrative now - he's inscribing his own.A candidacy that...
I have rarely met people as nice and caring as the people of Newfoundland. I was a bit lost in St Johns once and three separate people offered to walk with me or drive me to my destination. They deserve better than Danny Williams. He has become a nasty and vindictive control freak. Rex has some words of advice for the premier.It's not Mr. Williams's quarrel with Stephen Harper that's at question. It's hauling into that quarrel all the rhetoric of "disloyalty" to Newfoundland, stirring the jingoistic fevers, and characterizing those on the other side as unworthy. Newfoundlanders have been lucky in past decades that, when we had strong premiers, we had strong ministers in Ottawa.Danny Williams has reached such supremacy, however, that he has effectively become the only voice in...