@JohnToryTO: Veering hard right? Stepping into the asshole vacuum? WTF? | #TOpoli

Look, I'll be the first to acknowledge: this makes no sense on first review.

The guy's cruising. He's managed to define the comfortable centre, make himself the default anti-Ford candidate, and take advantage of Olivia Chow's miscalculations and bad positioning. All he has to do is not fuck himself up again, and he's got some very serious help to keep from doing just that.

And then Friday:

• Opens the Queers Against Israeli Apartheid / Pride thing again, only to have it blow up in his face.
• Thinks "some of my best friends are gay" constitutes effective damage control.
• Blows off the Globe.
• FUs @Goldsbie, both directly and indirectly.

So what the fuck is going on? Can only speculate: now that Olivia's started playing to her strengths, finally, he's afraid of losing support on the left, so he veers hard right in an attempt to milk what's left of Ford Nation before Brother Dumbfuck starts campaigning in earnest?

Maybe the latest numbers are prompting this, who knows, but really, John? You think you need people like this? Maybe it isn't a series of gaffes. Maybe this is a well-thought out strategic move that we mere mortals aren't smart enough to understand.

Let's see if we can follow the calculation here. He's ready to risk losing people who are basically progressive but willing to hold their noses and support him because Olivia's been running a shitty campaign and he's become the default "only one who can beat Ford" candidate. And he's willing to throw them away because he needs some of the stupidest, most deluded people in the world -- aka "Ford Nation?" You know, the people who think he's a closet Liberal in bed with Kathleen Wynne?

Or is there a simpler answer?

Internetz? Anyone?

Related posts:

• Just how fucking stupid are Ford supporters, anyway? | #TOpoli
• Mayor Stupid on transit: Clueless doesn't begin to describe it | #TOpoli @JoshMatlow

#TOpoli Dipshit of the Day: @TrusteeSam Sotiropoulos, grubby little homophobe

I know, I know. Been a while. Excuse the shit out of me for having a life.

Anyway, anyone following #TOpoli knows what Mayor Stupid and Brother Dumbfuck have been up to recently. It's not as if they matter to the city's governance any more, given that Toronto Council has done the only sensible thing and neutered them, but unfortunately the verbal vomit continues to stream unabated from their pieholes to be licked up by their drooling base.

To wit: consider Mayor Stupid's *cough* subtle wink *cough* to the remaining homophobes still polluting the gene pool. He's never gone to a Pride parade, he says, and he's not going to change. Whoop de do. Not even bothering to lie about going to the cottage any more. (Probably unique for the Fords, whose default setting is to bullshit no matter what the subject matter.) And, with the unique predictability of flies landing on shit, along comes Brother Dumbfuck to insist that the Ford boys aren't homophobes — they just get all icky at the sight of "buck naked men."

And if that's not clear enough, witness Rob Ford's hissy fit about the Pride flag at City Hall's ceremonial flagpole. It shouldn't replace the Canadian flag, he sputters (it didn't). It's about patriotism and supporting the athletes, he says. Yeah, sure, Rob. I mean, dozens of other flags have adorned the ceremonial flagpole, but only when the rainbow flag goes up does Mayor Stupid object and pretend it’s all about the Canadian flag. Right.

So why are we wasting oxygen and electrons on this pathetic civic cancer? Well, could it possibly be that it's part of his "brain trust's" re-election strategy? You know, get the bigots and mouth-breathers all het up about the Ho-Mo-Sekshuals and Les-Beens? Again, no great insight there.

Enter TDSB Trustee Sam Sotiropoulos. True, not that many people pay attention to school trustees, at least not to the same extent that they watch city council. Well, Sammie's decided he wants to change all that, so he's been popping off about his own obsession with buck naked men. (Maybe he and Dougie need to get a room or something. God knows they spend enough time thinking about it.)

https://twitter.com/kristynwongtam/status/432758606283292672

Well, not surprisingly, Sambo's been called out for this and other stupidities. This is a guy who makes policy about education, mind. And his response — surprise! — has been to play the victim card, and insist that people are trying to stifle his freedom of speech, and bullying him, and being all "homosexist" and everything.

Deep sigh.

For starters, this isn't a free-speech issue. There is no right not to be criticized. You don’t get to silence people who disagree with you. You can say whatever you like, but if you say stupid and hateful things, you don’t get a free pass. Calling you on your ignorance isn't censorship. Let's move on.

Sammie then doubles down and bleats that he's against ALL forms of discrimination, and what about the poor white kids of Canadian descent?

Oh, dear. Here's where it gets a little, you know, "nuanced." (Protip to Sambo: don't go looking that up on Urban Dictionary. It'll just bring you more grief.)

To insist, as Sammyboy disingenuously does, that all forms of discrimination and exclusion are equal, and have an identical impact and merit equal condemnation, is to ignore decades — centuries, even — wherein gay people have been marginalized, victimized, attacked and even murdered by straight people. Or wherein people of colour have been marginalized, excluded, exploited and lynched by the dominant class — i.e., straight white males. It’s the height of ignorance, and a well-established far-right trick, to get the oppressors to see themselves as victims.

And his obtuse and wilful disregard for these historical truths can’t help but raise questions about his motives (not to mention his role as an educational official, but we’ll leave that alone for the moment). What, exactly, is he trying to accomplish by repeatedly braying about naked men at Pride parades, if not to sound the same homophobic dog whistle recently slobbered on by the fuckhead brothers? Not to mention singling out the only openly gay member of Toronto Council for this bullshit?

Sam is a nobody. And he’ll continue to be a nobody, regardless of what happens at the next election. The lesson here is, as we’ve seen, another illustration of the toxic Ford effect, and a consistent poisoning of public discourse. With their transparent nod to the knuckledraggers and their desperate and pathetic attempts to rally the drooling remnants of their base, the fuckhead brothers have given an implicit licence to other bottom feeders to come out of the woodwork and ooze their hatred and ignorance all over everything. And that’s the most insulting and dehumanizing thing of all — that our LGBT friends have to listen to this shit All Over Again.

Related posts:

• Just how fucking stupid are Ford supporters, anyway? | #TOpoli
• Via @cityslikr: #Fordfest, integrity, and the slow but steady fouling of the public sphere | #TOpoli
• Mayor Stupid on the Danzig shootings

@ThomsonTO fires back at @TOMayorFord. Cue flying-monkey / Sun "reader" attack | #TOpoli

As my good friend @Cityslikr pointed out earlier today, there's no contortion too painful, no logical leap too implausible, for the boil on Toronto's ass formerly known as Ford Nation. Our guy under attack? Never mind the lies, never mind the ignorance, never mind the sexism, never mind the racism, never mind the homophobia -- just another leftist conspiracy by a bunch of sore-loser special-interest teat-suckers.

So it seems Mayor Stupid suggested on his radio show today that Sarah Thomson might not be playing with a full deck. Well, wasn't that an invitation for a good old-fashioned mud fight, because Sarah's fired back on Facebook. The money quote:

Unlike the Mayor, I do not have a history of lying about my behaviour. Mayor Ford has lied publicly numerous times. He denied the drunken incident where he verbally assaulted a Durham couple during a hockey game but later admitted to it. And During 2010 civic election campaign he denied being arrested for pot possession in Florida and then admitted it and another DUI charge. The Mayor has a history of denial but usually owns up to his mistakes once the facts become overwhelming and I expect that he will eventually own up to this one.

Sigh. This little corner isn't going to come right out and say it, but then really, who needs to? But goddamn if the comments on Sarah's FB note didn't take a wrong-way turn down the road to Sun Commentville. Check these out:

Hoo boy. All the trademarks -- the bad spelling, the non-existent grammar, the spittle-flecked hatred, the stolid, wooden-headed, belligerent ignorance, and the determination to overlook patterns, discount evidence, reject analogies and excuse misbehaviour in their boy while simultaneously rushing to undermine, question and practically lynch anyone who questions him.

As I pointed out to @cityslikr, there's no engaging with these people. They're so wrapped up in their identification with Mayor Stupid that an accusation aimed at him is a personal attack on them. And perhaps they're getting some vicarious kicks out of him getting all fucked up and then pawing at women in public. Maybe they can't get away with it, but it does their hearts good to see Robbie getting away with it ... and with way more.

Well, that's Ford Asspimple for you. Maybe they don't care that the rules don't apply to Mayor Stupid. Maybe they don't care that unlike everyone else, he doesn't have to face any consequences when he breaks them. But come 2014, how well will that play with the adults?

Related posts:

Mayor Stupid plays grabass with @ThomsonTO. Fuckwits rush to excuse it

Mayor Stupid plays grabass with @ThomsonTO. Fuckwits rush to excuse it | #TOpoli

Well, maybe he was so fucked up he thought he was coaching football or something. Football players do that, don't they?

Ed Keenan and Ivor Tossell have already weighed in on this, so not much to add to their analysis, but I have one question for the "Ford Nation" deadheads rushing to the mayor's support:

You think you'd be able to get away with this shit? Yeah, I know the guy's apparently Teflon-coated, and no matter what the left-wing conspiracy throws at him, he manages to skate, but why don't you try pulling some of his shit? You know -- scream drunken obscenities at women at hockey games, flip the bird at women in traffic, call women "wastes of skin," blow off female integrity commissioners and ombudsmen, or grab their asses in public ... and see if you can walk away without a scratch.

All we can do, really, is hunker down and ride out the next year and a half while trying not to be distracted by the daily embarrassments. What else is there to do?

Related posts:

• Just how does Mayor Stupid propose to pay for any kind of public infrastructure?
• Mayor Stupid on the Danzig shootings
• Rob Ford's mayoral trajectory | #TOpoli

Conflict of interest, Mayor Stupid, and the Globe's stunning incoherence

There was a short-lived meme on Twitter recently, riffing on the Teutonic gift for coining words that have no exact English equivalent, but nevertheless capture meanings beautifully. "Schadenfreude" is one of the best examples. (I'm trying not to indulge at the moment.)

So I'm left wondering whether there's a German expression for times when reprehensible people appear to do the right thing, albeit for questionable reasons and in contexts which make the rightness of their actions suspect.

As we all know by now, Judge Charles Hackland, ruling in the conflict of interest proceedings brought against Rob Ford, has ruled that Mayor Stupid must be removed from office. No surprise at the finding, although there was a fair bit of energy backing the prediction that the court would somehow find a way not to apply the maximum penalty.

However, it's the reaction of our supposed Newspaper of Record^TM that begs further examination. As the pinstriped pamphleteers of Front Street argue:

Mr. Ford didn’t want to play by the rules. Not the ones he didn’t like, anyway, such as those governing conflict of interest.

Well, no argument there, although it's not as if the observation first came to life in the Front Street drawing room over brandy and cigars. Pious and paternalistic, but essentially correct. But it's what comes after that triggers the WTF:

The country’s biggest city gave him a strong mandate to reduce costs and attack what Mr. Ford described as a culture of entitlement at City Hall. He has even had some success.

Um ... what?

[Slim Pickens voice]
Did you say "Attack a Culture of Entitlement?"
[/Slim Pickens voice]

Is there anyone who embodies that more than Mayor Stupid and Brother Dumbfuck? A pair of guys who think they can flout the rules and blow off the consequences whenever they feel like it because … because ... shut the fuck up, OK? Taxpayers taxpayers taxpayers, subways subways subways, mandate, drool, release the trolls.

Let's review: here's a guy who thinks he's entitled to

• Phone Andy Byford and demand to know where his bus is
• Abuse and demean public servants
• Ignore the rules whenever they don't conform to his own sense of what's right
• Demand that city staff fix the road in front of his family business
• Blow off his official responsibilities to go coach football, and use public resources to do it

And that's just off the top of my head.

But let's move on, and compare that to the Globe's support for their charming ideological brethren in Ottawa, and ...

• electoral fraud
• robocalls
• naked attacks on dissent
• instructions for disrupting parliamentary committees
• secret "free-trade" deals
• Mordor
• embarrassment and damage to Canada's international reputation.

These are the people, mind, whom the Globe endorses as a way of "finding new ways to protect Parliament."

Are you fucking kidding me?

(But never mind all that just now -- is there a trend we might not be catching? Like, omigaaaawd ... )

In the continuing train wreck otherwise known as the Wente Clusterfuck, it's easy to lose sight of our National Fishwrap's many other acts of civic and linguistic vandalism. While this little corner isn't fit to polish Carol Wainio's flatware, perhaps this one little bit of paint on the cave wall might merit a footnote.

Related posts:

• "Find new ways to protect Parliament?" WTF?
• Woodward and Bernstein are dead
• @marcusbgee calls Ford on his bullshit, but who helped put him there?
• Why it's important to kill off the Pissed-off Taxpayer meme

The downtown/suburban divide and its fetid offshoots

Doug Holyday gets grumpy about families downtown, Ed Keenan responds with facts | OpenFile:

"On a darker note, it also explains the laissez-faire attitude that so many suburban conservatives had towards the abuses of the G20, as if living downtown was itself incriminating enough to deserve the suspension of our civil liberties. After the G20 weekend, Rob Ford told his AM radio listeners "Personally, if you didn't want to be down there, then you shouldn't have been down there." "Down there," in this case, included a part of the city where tens of thousands of people live."

'via Blog this'

It's been a fun couple of days, mostly related to Holyday's Grandpa Simpson act and conviction that downtown Toronto is no place for kids. Next thing you know, little Ginny's not just playing in traffic -- she's doing crack in the alley behind the meth lab.

But this piece also draws the connection between putative suburban suspicion and resentment of downtown and the smug you-had-it-coming, you-shouldn't-have-been-there reaction to the mass arrests, police brutality and wholesale violations of civil and human rights during the G20. Remember Mayor Stupid suggesting the cops were too nice and didn't go far enough?

Related posts:

• Two years later, no accountability for #policebrutality at the #G20
• @thekeenanwire and the police / government / society we deserve
• Toronto's brutal cops and their shit-for-brains enablers

Rob Ford's mayoral trajectory | #TOpoli

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Originally I thought this was a good representation of George Smitherman's campaign, but I'm an environmentalist, and I believe in recycling, and given Mayor Stupid and Brother Dumbfuck's handling of the transit file (subways, subways everywhere ... )



Related posts:

• Oh, look: everything Team Ford touches turns to crap. Don't look so surprised
• So Mayor Stupid takes one in the nads on the waterfront ...
• @TOMayorFord puts Toronto on @KeithOlbermann 's map

The door's this way, Chief Blair

So it seems Bill Blair isn't getting with Team Ford's austerity program.

Instead of being a good boy and implementing the 10-per-cent reduction the mayor's team is demanding of city managers, he's looking for a budgetary increase. Not a lot, mind, but the surrounding drama, already at a slow boil, has been cranked up even farther, and now there's speculation that his job's on the line.

Oh, look: everything Team Ford touches turns to crap. Don't look so surprised

I'm all for respectful dialogue and agreeing to disagree, but there's a point at which you just have to admit it: we are right and they are wrong and clinging to their illusions just makes them look even dumber.

For Christ's sakes. All those disgruntled Ford voters out there who are suddenly discovering that Mayor Stupid has no commitment to transparency and just loves him some tacky backroom waterfront deals with big developers – what the hell did you expect?

A monorail for Toronto? I'm late for this party, aren't I

Sometimes the posts practically write themselves.

I'm sure all the obvious Simpsons references have already been made, although the giant Ferris wheel thing does put me in mind of that scene from The Third Man with Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.



Either Mayor Stupid's on vacation or Brother Stupider's gone off message again. Can never tell with these two, and more often than not, it doesn't really matter.



Related posts:

• Another day, another embarrassing eruption from Mt. Ford
• @cityslikr on Team Ford's bullshit, and our complicity therein
• Team Ford's malignancy: It's not just the Jarvis bike lanes
• Core Services Review: Rob Ford is a hazard to Toronto's public health

@AntoniaZ, @SusannaKelley, @marcusbgee, and the Rob Ford ascendancy | #TOpoli

Wonderful thing, the Tweeter. Keeps things lively, and keeps you on your toes.

So apparently there's some question over what I wrote about the Globe's ideologically reliable urban affairs curmudgeon and his role in helping propel Mayor Stupid into the Chief Magistrate's office. Over at ontarionewswatch.com, Editor-in-Chief and Ontario Bureau Chief @SusannaKelley apparently takes issue with a tweet from @AntoniaZ regarding a post from me yesterday morning.

@cityslikr on Team Ford's bullshit, and our complicity therein | #TOpoli

Which Lie Do You Buy? « All Fired Up In The Big Smoke

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

– Winston Churchill

So over at his place, @cityslikr's on about the fact that politicians have an uneasy relationship with the truth, and the cynicism and disengagement that breeds.

Critics accuse Mayor Ford of getting all Shock Doctrine-y | Ford Focus | torontolife.com

Critics accuse Mayor Ford of getting all Shock Doctrine-y | Ford Focus | torontolife.com

Writing in Toronto Life, John Michael McGrath draws the comparison but then appears to soften it:

... but given that 96 per cent of Toronto’s services are impossible to cut, as those KPMG audits keep finding, Ford really isn’t going to be able to change people’s lives the way, say, a Latin American junta might. So it’s a mild shock, if it’s anything.

That may be, but the broader picture includes a looming provincial election which could see the return of the Harrisite slash-burn-and-pillage approach in the form of a Hudak government. When we consider that the municipal government is a creature of the province in that light, there's no telling what kind of services will continue to be mandated, and what kind of latitude Mayor Stupid is going to have to wield the axe.

Just something to keep in mind.

Related posts:

• @cityslikr on Team Ford's Soprano wannabes. They wish | #TOpoli
• Some late-night thoughts on Mayor Stupid with @thekeenanwire and @UnionSt | #TOpoli
• Team Ford's malignancy: It's not just the Jarvis bike lanes | #TOpoli #bikeTO
• Core Services Review: Rob Ford is a hazard to Toronto's public health / #TOpoli

On second thought, Rob, stay at the cottage | #PrideTO

The whole idea of Mammoliti at the Dyke March just seems ... wrong.

Ford's right-wing governance: no vision, no soul, no future

This little corner's taken its whacks at the Ford "vision" before, but the saga of the Fort York bridge just underlines it all over again.

The context for the discussion is ably set up by cityslikr over at AFUITBS and by the comments on this piece by Luca de Franco over at Spacing.

Bitter partisan politics, the ethnic vote, and Israeli apartheid hysteria

Never underestimate the sheer batshit stupidity that can come of combining the wrong ingredients in the wrong proportions under the wrong conditions.

First example is an easy two points. Some guy working for a Conservative candidate in Etobicoke wants a bunch of funny brown people to serve as a background mosaic for a Harper photo op, so what does he do?

Organized labour under attack, from Pinochet to Ford to Wisconsin

Sometimes the connections between history and current events aren't that easy to see. Sometimes, however, they're hard not to see – especially when they're framed in the context of the widening gap between haves and have-nots, the polarization of society between those who have power and those who do not, and the attendant implications for social cohesion and democratic governance.

Democracy: the latest word to be stripped of its meaning

If you're not reading DownWithTyranny – a marvellous, thoughtful, progressive source from one of our friends to the south – then start now.

Best use of Craigslist ever

Someone in Toronto wants to swap mayors with Calgary. I can't imagine why.

Or maybe it's the other way around. I could be wrong, you know. Who knows what kids get up to on the intertoobz these days?

The Putz likes Ford. Who knew?

Really. Who could have foreseen such a thing?

As sure as a turnin' of the earth, as John Wayne might have said. Honestly, did anyone seriously expect anything else?

It's not especially surprising to see the Putz endorsing Ford. What's instructive, though, is the rationale – which, like most far-right tropes, doesn't really stand up to close examinations.