Rob Ford's Scandals Pale In Comparison To...

[Anonymous]

Teddy Kennedy getting loaded and killing a woman. Barney Frank using his congressional office to fix 33 of his gay prostitute lover's parking tickets and for misstatements of fact in a memorandum relating to his criminal probation record. President Clinton having an affair with an unpaid intern...what an incredible breach trust.

[Renee]

Teddy Kennedy getting loaded and killing a woman. Barney Frank using his congressional office to fix 33 of his gay prostitute lover's parking tickets and for misstatements of fact in a memorandum relating to his criminal probation record. President Clinton having an affair with an unpaid intern...what an incredible breach trust.

Old news Shen, old news.



Unfortunately too many Americans have grown used to and actually accept Democrat liberals and their loose definition of morality and public trust. We are almost like some progressive European countries in that respect.

[Anonymous]

Teddy Kennedy getting loaded and killing a woman. Barney Frank using his congressional office to fix 33 of his gay prostitute lover's parking tickets and for misstatements of fact in a memorandum relating to his criminal probation record. President Clinton having an affair with an unpaid intern...what an incredible breach trust.

Old news Shen, old news.



Unfortunately too many Americans have grown used to and actually accept Democrat liberals and their loose definition of morality and public trust. We are almost like some progressive European countries in that respect.

Oh I know Renee, but I was just trying to put in perspective. Hell, almost mayor in the province of Quebec is more sleazy that Ford.

[Anonymous]

Teddy Kennedy getting loaded and killing a woman. Barney Frank using his congressional office to fix 33 of his gay prostitute lover's parking tickets and for misstatements of fact in a memorandum relating to his criminal probation record. President Clinton having an affair with an unpaid intern...what an incredible breach trust.

Mayor Ford is as bad an example for young people as Lindsay Lohan or some other out of control celebrity.

[Anonymous]

Teddy Kennedy getting loaded and killing a woman. Barney Frank using his congressional office to fix 33 of his gay prostitute lover's parking tickets and for misstatements of fact in a memorandum relating to his criminal probation record. President Clinton having an affair with an unpaid intern...what an incredible breach trust.

Mayor Ford is as bad an example for young people as Lindsay Lohan or some other out of control celebrity.

Ok, but he's not alone in this. Expensive parties for outgoing aldermen and other financial malfeasance is equally bad or worse, but don't expect the media circus to jump on that though.

[Anonymous]

Teddy Kennedy getting loaded and killing a woman. Barney Frank using his congressional office to fix 33 of his gay prostitute lover's parking tickets and for misstatements of fact in a memorandum relating to his criminal probation record. President Clinton having an affair with an unpaid intern...what an incredible breach trust.

Mayor Ford is as bad an example for young people as Lindsay Lohan or some other out of control celebrity.

Ok, but he's not alone in this. Expensive parties for outgoing aldermen and other financial malfeasance is equally bad or worse, but don't expect the media circus to jump on that though.

I don't pay attention to politics, but I did vote once for mayor..



I was getting weary of yearly large tax increases..



That was a long time ago now and I haven't voted in any election since and I don't think I will either.

[Anonymous]

Mayor Ford is as bad an example for young people as Lindsay Lohan or some other out of control celebrity.

Ok, but he's not alone in this. Expensive parties for outgoing aldermen and other financial malfeasance is equally bad or worse, but don't expect the media circus to jump on that though.

I don't pay attention to politics, but I did vote once for mayor..



I was getting weary of yearly large tax increases..



That was a long time ago now and I haven't voted in any election since and I don't think I will either.

If Ford loses the next election, I doubt whoever his successor is will be any better for the average working person in Toronto than Ford has been. His lefty predecessor David Miller was a disaster for people of Toronto, but he didn't provide canon fodder for the media.

[Anonymous]

As I aways knew, this is really about Ford slashing the budgets of profligate spending elitists like Adam Vaughn. Can't beat him democratically then just undo the election.

Oh, of course we're fans of democracy — just so long as the right guy is in office.



That's the dominant view playing out at Toronto City Hall.



Yes, democracy is in crisis in Canada's largest city. But not because of Mayor Rob Ford's seemingly endless list of personal faults, but because of what's being done to him.



Council removed the mayor's emergency powers and appointment abilities on Friday and on Monday took away much of his budget and staff.



This doesn't seem to violate the letter of the law. But it certainly violates the spirit of the law.



The vague argument to justify this is that Toronto is in crisis.



Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne — who might still intervene — said the situation is "extraordinary and unique" without elaborating.



The apolitical city manager Joe Pennachetti came out two weeks ago to pour water on this.



"The situation that is unfolding is unfortunate ... It has also resulted in some media reports that the City of Toronto is in crisis. This is not the case."



Very few media outlets reported that the city's top bureaucrat issued a correction on their activist reporting. This is because it didn't fit the manic narrative unfolding at the time.



But some detractors have let their true intentions slip.



The main one is that — surprise, surprise — they just don't like his politics.



Toronto Coun. Adam Vaughan on CTV News Sunday said after Ford loses his powers, "we will go on to deliver better and more mature and more stable government so that the services the city needs continue."



"Better" government? Needed services? So he doesn't like Ford's policy priorities.



On a BBC radio debate, a blogger responded to me by saying Ford's policies are hurting the city. Perhaps. So let the people vote him out in favour of other policies.



The other main reason is that people find Ford's character intolerable.



John Doyle of the Globe and Mail went on Sun News Network to call Rob and Doug "hosers," "boorish" and "lovable chumps."



Vaughan condescendingly added on CTV that Toronto needs more government programs "so we don't end up with more Mr. Fords in our city".



Post Media's Andrew Coyne argues Ford exemplifies a politics that is "aggressively dumb," "harshly divisive," has "contempt for learning" and "disdain for facts."



What it seems many out there really want to say is that Ford is fat, dumb white trash.



And even if it's true? Well, the people have the right to elect someone deemed an offensive unsavoury lummox by the rules of polite society.



The city solicitor was asked Monday if there was any precedent to these motions: "We're aware of none."



Ford is not charged with a crime, is not convicted of a crime, has not violated his fiduciary duties and Toronto is not "in crisis."



Instead, Ford is facing many personal troubles, numerous disturbing allegations and is deeply opposed by some Torontonians.



The above provided zero justification to change the rules of council in a precedent-setting manner that could see every subsequent mayor abused in a similar fashion.



Right now the only options on hand seem to be for the mayor to take a leave of absence or to be voted out in the next election.



The fact that the mayor has not resigned when most politicians would have done so long ago is immaterial.



Barbarians are indeed at the gates. But not the supposed fat, dumb white trash barbarism of Ford Nation.



It's the social media-paced mentality of Wynne, Vaughan, Coyne and the rest of the au courant mob.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/11/19/torontos-selective-democracy">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/11/19/t ... -democracy">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/11/19/torontos-selective-democracy

[Anonymous]

TORONTO - He's an idiot. But he's our idiot.



For all Rob Ford's foibles, he's still the guy we elected.



That's why I'm so pissed off at him, and his bellicose brother.



The Fordian slips? The drunken stupors? The foul mouth? The sidewalk sloppiness? The crack? The mangled grammar? The jello-belly? The sketchy pals? The homeliest mug in the history of politics? The lying? The council chamber stunts? The bullying?



Big-whoop, all of that. Toronto the Good's history teems with mayoral buffoons, liars, scoundrels, bullies, even murderers. They got away with it. No cellphone cameras. No Twitter.



Same the world over. Winston Churchill was a boozer, Ted Kennedy a skirt-chaser. Bill Clinton was a hound, period.



I don't mean Rob Ford's lifestyle isn't problematic, for instance when railing against drug dealers, gangbangers and other acquaintances. Not to mention it is going to kill the guy, his days-long health kick notwithstanding.



But, no, that's not why Rob Ford is such a gigantic bust to Ford Nation and its allies, to me.



This is why: The Fords had the entitled, smug political elitists of this town by their mollycoddled balls. And THEY BLEW IT!





How could they do that? The Ikea monkey could have pulled it off.



Ford rode into the mayor's office on a tidal wave of pushback.



Folks had a jelly-bellyful of David Miller, the loony left, of city workers with jobs for life, of an arrogant TTC, of the gall of pols like former councillor Kyle Rae and his tax-funded $12,000 retirement wing-ding.



How could you muck up a mandate like that?



Don't blame the entitled class, the career pols, the elite. You know they'll try to crush you like scorpion in their plush playpen.



But you outnumber them — if you're smart.



The Fords weren't smart. Yes, they won a few early rounds — taming the unions, privatizing garbage, killing the car tax, curtailing councillors' expense accounts.



It must have gone to their head. Suddenly, they acted like THEY were entitled.



Suddenly, they thought they could do whatever, behave however, the hell they liked.



They strutted, they bullied, they pissed people off, including their allies.



Paul Ainslie and Doug Ford used to be best buddies, even sitting beside each other in council.



Ainslie's a wuss, but the Fords needed his vote. Demonizing the guy because he tried to get a drunken mayor out of the Garrison Ball was just plain stupid. When Ainslie voted against the Scarborough subway — no doubt partly to spite the Fords — the brothers practically spat on him in council. Why bother? They had the vote locked up. They just bolstered their bully rep.



Even after Bumgate and Crackgate and Stuporgate and P---ygate, Ford might have spared his reputation, his mandate and our tax load. It was so, so, simple. Take a break, go see Betty Ford, come back stronger than ever.



That was the smart thing to do.



And don't give me this crap about the haze of addiction. Surely Rob and Doug have enough untainted brain matter between them to play it smart.



They had it in their power to quash the tax-and-spend habit at City Hall. They threw it away.



Boys, you really, really, really effed up.



Maybe Ford can come back like coke-sniffing, jailed mayor Marion Barry did in Washington, D.C. in the 1990s, but it would take a miracle.



The coup of the past few days, as I wrote Tuesday, actually plays into his hands. But the web has made miracles obsolete — ask Anthony Weiner — and a year of Fordian slips or worse until next Oct. 27 vote would be Ford's coup de grace.



Now that council has stripped the mayor's powers, staff, office budget, the barn door is closed.



So, Ford Nation and its environs need a new horse. One with more, well, horse sense.



Anybody out there?

http://www.torontosun.com/2013/11/19/entitled-ford-blew-chance-to-beat-elitists">http://www.torontosun.com/2013/11/19/en ... t-elitists">http://www.torontosun.com/2013/11/19/entitled-ford-blew-chance-to-beat-elitists

[Anonymous]

John Robson points out the hypocrisy and partisanship of Ford's elitist enemies.

If Rob Ford has a 42% approval rating despite everything, what wouldn't his supporters like?



Being laughed at as dirty hicks, it turns out. But it's no excuse to act like them.



On Wednesday, my colleague Anthony Furey noted various snooty comments tying Ford supporters' right-of-centre policy preferences to the mayor's horrifying personal qualities.



So how can what Anthony called the "au courant mob" of political and media snobs be surprised that Ford supporters respond just as nastily?



They're not so much defending the Toronto mayor's actual conduct or policies as defending themselves against an elite that seems to regard them as total losers who must be crushed. It's tribalism.



So is federal Tory insistence that, "We are good to go from the PM" is proof positive they were not good to go from the PM. In their hearts they know it's a smoking gun.



But they're just so sick of being ridiculed instead of reasoned with. Not without cause.



Listen to Jeffrey Simpson sniffing in the Globe and Mail that Rob Ford's general revoltingness "is less to be remarked upon — for all this is self-evident — than that perhaps a third of the electorate stands resolutely behind him."



Oh yes. One recoils. But less at Ford than the dirty horde following him.



"That they stick with him really says more about them and their way of viewing the world of government than it does about him. ... The Conservative/conservative core, as we see in the federal government, is resistant to evidence if it conflicts with ideological nostrums."



So there you have it. Conservatives are brain-dead bozos. Yuck.



A sentiment some might find polarizing even if expressed with less polysyllabic passive-voiced aristocratic disdain.



Has it not occurred to Lord Jeffrey that the modern world, a maze of government rules and requirements for formal credentials, is slanted in favour of the verbally clever and privileged like, say, him (we attended the same private school, by the way, one does you know) and against the sort of people now clinging to Rob Ford lest they drown in a cold, hostile sea of snobbery?



It is certainly felt viscerally on the streets of Scarborough.



Hey, which of you dirty peasants wants to smarten up, bathe, and vote for our beloved Linda McQuaig? Odd. I don't see many hands.



Nor should we forget how many current federal Tories were schooled in malevolent partisanship during the 1990s, when the Liberals gleefully mocked the divided right-wing rubes' efforts to hold the Natural Governing Party to account over scandals like HRDC or Adscam.



And don't think the NDP is innocent. Remember how they insisted there was nothing to see when the police found Jack Layton naked on his back in a house of ill repute that employed vulnerable female ethnic immigrants.



Imagine if it had been someone from the other tribe.



To say so is not to excuse the current tribalism of Ford nation or Harper supporters. In partisan terms it is pathetic to play into hostile stereotypes that ensure political defeat and elite mockery.



And it's dangerous to lower the bar on political ethics so low it would take archeologists to find it.



Morally it is repulsive to have nothing better to offer the world than Jim Hacker's "In defeat, malice; in victory, revenge."



To be sure, mean-spiritedness has always been a significant feature of politics. But are we then to descend into cynicism, to say we will not try to be better, it can never be better, now watch us put the boots in?



Surely conservatives aspire to do better.



Listen, folks. Your enemies can call you anything they want any time they want. But only you can make it true.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/11/22/slippery-slope-of-tribal-partisanship">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/11/22/s ... rtisanship">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/11/22/slippery-slope-of-tribal-partisanship