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Rob Ford's Toronto

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Just came across this:


http://stevemunro.ca/?p=8674

"Is tearing apart the city for real or invented inequities to be the badge of every politician? Are a few subway lines the issue which should pit neighbourhoods against each other? Whatever happened to social issues and services, severe problems all over Toronto, not just in Scarborough or Rexdale or Downsview or downtown? Will the politicians so eager to promise subways in the future do anything about the quality of bus service today?

The Ford brothers are all about divisions, about heavy-handed, take-no-prisoners politics where winning is all that matters and whatever happens along the way, happens. I don’t want my city to be collateral damage in the Ford wars."
 
RC8 said:
DD13, cowboylogic routinely ignores replies to his arguments and then regurgitates the same tired, already disproven arguments in his following visit.

He said Ford was honest and competent. I pointed to a video where he is shown to be either a liar or incompetent and asked him which one is it. His reply? None. A few posts later he is insisting Ford is honest and competent.

He's been at it for a while, and he clearly does it just to piss people off at this point.
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Cowboylogic has invented a new kind of trolling, one that relies on a weird kind of long-winded tendentious, tedious, fallacious form of argumentation. Responding to him only invites ever longer sheets of specious and sophistic hair-splitting that leaves one completely baffled as to what his point is.

Anyway, he is definitely in the running to be the first troll ever to be banned for boring people to death.
 
chuckbot said:
I wonder how much Doug working Rob up behind the scenes has to do with this obvious provocation and message being sent out. Rob is a pretty weak guy and Doug is six years his senior. I can imagine a lot of aggressive manipulation going on in that relationship. After all, it's always Doug who comes out to speak on his little bro's behalf when things go apesh#t.

I hope the council chamber rises to support their colleague. Talk about attacking an elected official's integrity. Councillor Ainslie was only doing what he felt was right on behalf of his constituents and acting in good conscience. To publicly attack a fellow professional for following his better judgment and then to claim with a straight face that you're taking the high road is sociopathic, something you would expect from a bully like Doug.
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Rob and Doug Ford are more like GW Bush and Dick Cheney when it comes down to who is ACTUALLY calling the shots here. Even if Doug never made it on council, I think he would still have a large hand pulling the strings. It would just be less transparent.
 
Blackballed, I completely understand. My respect for Rob Ford has fallen from very little to non existent and its easy to apply that to his staunch defenders. By the sounds of it, Cowboy Logic had a visit from Ford once (to fix a pothole?) and will remain forever grateful. That's why politicians, even in the era of twitter and youtube, make a point of pressing the flesh. It's a powerful tool that Ford understands well.

But even if I felt a debt of gratitude to someone, I would consider it bad judgement to call a man with a known past involving drugs and violence towards woman a "good guy" or to recommend someone who had assaulted a peace officer to coach high school football. CL can say he doesn't care about drug use (most of us don't, within reason) but such a pattern of bad decisions suggests to most reasonable people that he is not fit for the job. The right always wants to run government like a corporation. Well, as CEO, he would have been out on his ass a long time ago.

I also agree that calling him 'honest' is insane. You might like his policies (I don't) and maybe even be blind to just how ineffectual he is at getting things done, but honest? He has been proven a liar over and over again. So much so that now he just ignored EVERY question. Okay, some are about his personal life, but many more are not. A transparent leader would sit down and answer some tough questions with more than pathetic sound bites.
 
pattycakes said:
Councillor Jayne Robinson on 680 News:

http://www.680news.com/2013/10/12/audio-coun-jay-robinson-calls-robocalls-underhanded-politics/

I wonder if the councillors we haven't heard from agree?
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I'm always a little suspicious when any politician puts "my constituents are telling me" at the front of any sentence. However, I'm sure councilors like Robinson and Ainslie have a pretty good sense of what their most vocal constituents care about before they take very public positions. By taking on suburban councilors so viciously, Ford might be turning off more voters than he's attracting.

Ainslie and Soknacki are very well liked in Ward 43. I suspect they will have a receptive audience when they explain their reason for opposing Ford's transit plan (and the tax hike that came with it).
 
allabootmatt said:
While I am as eager as anyone to find out what the police have in store, questioning/ charging the mayor on Thanksgiving--if that is indeed what's happening--seems less than optimal. It would become yet another talking point for the Fords' boundless sense of victimhood; 'those leftie cops won't even let me spend the holiday with my family, how dare they come to my home' etc etc. better to do this at City Hall on a workday, to the extent he is ever actually there of course.
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First, it doesn't matter when and where it happens (and I think we've moved beyond "if"), the Fords are going to make themselves out to be the biggest martyrs than Jesus Christ.

Second, if the severity of the charges is what we have been led to believe, most people won't be talking about turkey and cranberry sauce.

Third, who really cares about the people might fall for that line? They likely think the Fords walk on water and there's little point in trying to convince them otherwise.

Fourth, lefty reporters, sure, that fits with the Ford narrative. But I think Doug may have jumped the shark - even with their own suporters - by suggesting that the cops were working with the Star.
 
adma said:
Are the Fords skedded to do their show tomorrow, or are they on long-weekend vacation?

Incidentally, I find something in Ford's self-description as "f*cking right-wing"--barnyard epithets as a verbal crutch by the truly stunted. He'd be incompetent even as a message-board troll...
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I think it's important to remember who Ford was addressing with his "I'm fucking right-wing" comments. He was hanging out with a bunch of black kids getting high, and he was sort of trying to downplay his reputation in a "I know I'm supposed to be this big conservative, but I'd really rather just chill here in the basement with you guys". He was doing a whole "I know you think I'm this evil rich white guy, but I'm really just like you", thing.
 
adma said:
Again: you write like this is designed.

wengleforesthill.jpg


And you write like someone (for the sake of hypothesis, let's say: the owner/builder of said home) engaging in an endless "explain to me" argument over domestic aesthetics here.
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The atmosphere in the photo might be contributing to this, but I think that house is almost kind of cool in Charles Addams sort of way. It would make a good basis for a Halloween attraction, with a few tombstones in the yard, and whatnot. I guess that's not the intent of it's design, though.
 
DD13 said:
I would hope that the discourse with Cowboy Logic could become a little more civil. While I find his contortions to support Ford a little infuriating, he is generally respectful and takes time to answer the board's questions of him. I even agree with him, in the abstract, that a politician's personal life should be less considered that his or her policies. Now of course this is never applied evenly (I recall many a right-wing talking point about Obama using French mustard on his hamburger, Giambrone went down for a fling, etc) but it's not a terrible thing to aspire to.

For me Ford's troubles go beyond this for several reasons: if he smoked crack he broke the law, it will impede his ability to do his job, etc. etc. There's also the hypocrisy given his pro-police, anti-gangs rhetoric. Not to mention connections to other nefarious activity.

I am hoping something happens soon, with all this hype I can see myself pretty frustrated if nothing has happened by mid-week.
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The amount I judge a politician based on his personal proclivities is directly related to things that my own character either would or wouldn't allow me to do. I'm no saint, so a lot of things fall into the "if I was in his position, who knows?" category. The things Rob Ford and his brother get into fall so far outside that scale that anyone who can still support him knowing what they know makes me very suspect about what they get into themselves.
 
RC8 said:
DD13, cowboylogic routinely ignores replies to his arguments and then regurgitates the same tired, already disproven arguments in his following visit.

He said Ford was honest and competent. I pointed to a video where he is shown to be either a liar or incompetent and asked him which one is it. His reply? None. A few posts later he is insisting Ford is honest and competent.

He's been at it for a while, and he clearly does it just to piss people off at this point.
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Plus, those 18 paragraph rebuttals picking apart very specifically chosen points (while ignoring a dozen others) are just plain boring and monotonous to read. That's the cardinal sin, in my opinion.
 
CowboyLogic said:
Well, plastic bags are the issue we're discussing, so the "many" are all irrelevant. And on this issue, there was no support for the ban, as the councilors didn't even do the proper consultation. They had to back down to avoid opening themselves up to a lawsuit, so essentially the ban was a complete waste of time and Ford succeeded in getting rid of the tax. I'm not sure why anyone would defend them on this count.
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well, plastic bags were banned in san francisco and now people are using their own bags and businesses are using biodegradable plastic/paper, for which they charge - nooooo - 10 cents. it's a good idea and it's moronic and lazy to think that it's not worth trying to move in that direction (do a tiny bit of research instead of consulting your gut).

edited to add: then again, san francisco didn't have scarborough and etobicoke appended to it by a government attempting to straight-up sabotage the city.

also, graffiti, wtf? with all the issues facing the city, graffiti??? TFI = total fucking idiot.
 
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Note how he keeps talking about it being a 'tax' in spite of it being explained to him countless times that it was never a tax, hahah. If I were a mod I would ban him on the grounds that he is clearly just trolling people for fun.
 
From Wikipedia: Raymond Heard (born 1935) is a Canadian-South African journalist, editor, media executive and political strategist. He is President of Toronto-based Heard-Cosgrove Communications, whose clients include some of Canada's largest companies. He is a contributor to Canada's National Post and appears on the CTV, Global and Sun News networks as a political pundit.
 
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