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Rob Ford's Toronto

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juniorfox said:
Rob Ford (and I'm paraphrasing here): "See, I'd want me gone too if I were you. But since I'm me I can't actually bring myself to make myself gone, even though obviously I should be gone as even I can see, and I happen to be the only one with the power to make myself gone, which as I said is the thing I ought to be and what I would want if I were anyone but me. But I'm me, therefore I must stay because I could never not support me even though I don't want to support me. It ain't easy being me."
Click to expand...

Bravo.
 
I took Rob's contradictory statements to mean, "I get what's going on, but my brother and mom are making me sue."

Not that I have any sympathy for him whatsoever...that's just me guessing at the dynamic in play.
 
Adaax said:
I took Rob's contradictory statements to mean, "I get what's going on, but my brother and mom are making me sue."

Not that I have any sympathy for him whatsoever...that's just me guessing at the dynamic in play.
Click to expand...

Can I just say that even after all of this we REALLY dodged a bullet in that it was Rob and not Doug who ran? Imagine all the horrible things about Rob's politics and personality, and none of the wild shitshow that would lead to him being outed and ousted. Doug would have been frightening as mayor...
 
Mammoliti is here. He protested the two votes by not being on the floor.

The famous MetroMan was here, as well. I had the pleasure of meeting him. Forgot to ask for an autograph, though :)
 
The Star on Renata Ford:

"It was late at night, nearly a year ago, that Renata Ford pulled up in a taxi outside her parents’ home.
According to a police report, the contents of which have not been proven in court, the mayor’s wife was slurring her words and belligerent with the driver. She either refused to pay the fare or did not have the money.
Their argument became so heated that the cabbie called for police assistance.
When cops arrived, they observed that Mrs. Ford appeared to have bruising on her limbs. But, when asked about it, she refused to say how the injuries had been suffered. She was, in fact, too incoherent to say much of anything — either inebriated or on drugs.
The upshot of this event is that nobody was charged. When police tried following up the matter in subsequent days — as they always do when domestic abuse may be involved — Mrs. Ford was not cooperative.
This occurrence was just one of among more than two dozen incidents in the past eight years or so when a member of the Ford family has intersected with police, sources have told the Star."

http://www.thestar.com/news/city_ha...tims_may_be_those_closest_to_him_dimanno.html
 
With the Fords we really see this kind of pure conservative attitude toward life: ultimate value is placed on unwavering loyalty to family. Conservatives believe in law and order, but mostly as punishment against people they think aren't like them (i.e. criminals). But law and order takes a back seat to loyalty, which is why they're willing to overlook wrongs committed by themselves and their family members. (Someone pointed out earlier that the leaders of organized crime are overwhelmingly politically conservative).

Liberals (including libertarians), by contrast, place more value on abstract systems of rules and principles. This is why they could be criticized for loving bureaucracy and committees. But in the end, personal loyalties must take a back seat to following rules.
 
pattycakes said:
The Star on Renata Ford:

"It was late at night, nearly a year ago, that Renata Ford pulled up in a taxi outside her parents’ home.
According to a police report, the contents of which have not been proven in court, the mayor’s wife was slurring her words and belligerent with the driver. She either refused to pay the fare or did not have the money.
Their argument became so heated that the cabbie called for police assistance.
When cops arrived, they observed that Mrs. Ford appeared to have bruising on her limbs. But, when asked about it, she refused to say how the injuries had been suffered. She was, in fact, too incoherent to say much of anything — either inebriated or on drugs.
The upshot of this event is that nobody was charged. When police tried following up the matter in subsequent days — as they always do when domestic abuse may be involved — Mrs. Ford was not cooperative.
This occurrence was just one of among more than two dozen incidents in the past eight years or so when a member of the Ford family has intersected with police, sources have told the Star."

http://www.thestar.com/news/city_ha...tims_may_be_those_closest_to_him_dimanno.html
Click to expand...

And that link now seems to be dead but I guess the ol genie is out of the bottle.
I have mixed feelings about playing this card...
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
And that link now seems to be dead but I guess the ol genie is out of the bottle.
I have mixed feelings about playing this card...
Click to expand...

Here's the rest of the article:
The Star obtained the incident report from this episode many months ago. The details were also confirmed with police sources.
Senior management at this paper decided not to publish a story about the matter. Editors agreed with police that Mrs. Ford, though the mayor’s spouse, was not someone in the public eye and was therefore entitled to privacy. Nobody here had any stomach for expanding the scandal engulfing Toronto’s mayor to encompass his family, thereby causing harm, particularly to the couple’s two young children.
But there is a strong argument to be made that those kids are at risk.
From a father who, as he’s acknowledged, sometimes drives after drinking. According to allegations of past and present Ford staffers in a police document, on the evening last March when he was asked to leave the Garrison Ball because of alleged impairment, Ford had defied advice of staff against attending it and charged ahead to the marquee affair with his children in tow, his friend and occasional driver Alexander “Sandro” Lisi — since indicted on drug and extortion charges — at the wheel, and another crack addict pal also in the vehicle. A staffer took the youngsters to McDonald’s.
From a mother who, the Star has been told by several sources, has her own issues.
In March 2008, police investigated a disturbance at the Ford home following a 9-1-1 call believed to have been placed by Renata, though other family residents later insisted it was Rob Ford who made the call, complaining of “verbal abuse” from his spouse. In any event, Rob Ford was charged with assault and threatening death, the charges later withdrawn, prosecutors citing “inconsistencies” in Renata’s statements.
Leo Tolstoy wrote: “All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
It is the mayor who has now dragged his wife into the sordidness of his squalor-without-end.
Thursday morning, Ford pushed-pulled Renata — a woman rarely seen in public — through a throng of reporters outside his city hall office. Even amidst the every-which-way madness, where it feels like the needle on the Shock-O-Meter cannot possibly spin any further around, Renata’s stunning appearance was a game-changer, a media rule-changer. (As a news editor for PBS in Washington told me in an email yesterday: “I’m sure your jaw is in a permanent state of ‘drop.’”)
Ford has deliberately dumped his wife in his slop, the final deflective refuge of a scoundrel.
Presumably, to the mayor’s cockamamie way of thinking, Mrs. Ford by his side for a damage-containing press conference — or at least shuffling desultorily in his wake — was intended to mitigate the astounding crudeness of remarks he’d made to journalists a couple of hours earlier.
Wearing a Toronto Argonauts jersey, Ford announced he was taking legal action against former staff and a waiter from the Bier Markt pub — who, it was revealed in the formerly blacked-out portion of police documents used to support a search warrant against Lisi, believed he’d seen the mayor, in Ford’s words, “doing lines” (as in lines of cocaine) at the popular Esplanade restaurant during a well-oiled spree on St. Patrick’s Day 2012.
The lawsuit threat is absurd because nobody can be convicted of libel for giving statements to police.
Buried inside the warrant information is a reference to Ford allegedly telling a young female security guard at city hall that he “was going to eat her box”; that — as some of the mayor’s staff told police — he’d brought a woman (“Alana”) they believed to be a prostitute or “escort” to his office during that St. Patrick’s Day; and that Ford had claimed that same evening to have had sex with former policy adviser Olivia Gondek. (Gondek has emphatically denied this happened.)
“I don’t appreciate people calling Alana a prostitute,” Ford harrumphed. “Never had a prostitute here. I’m very happily married at home. This is very disturbing against my wife...Alana is not a prostitute. She’s a friend and it makes me sick how people are saying this ...”
After a weird segue to the upcoming playoff game between the Argos and Hamilton — “we’re going to have to spank the little Tiger Cats” — Ford appeared to have suddenly reminded himself of another point he wished to make, though seemingly mixing up the cast of characters.
“Oh, and the last thing was Olivia Gondek. It says I wanted to eat her pussy and I have never in my life said that to her. I would never do that. I’m happily married. I’ve got more than enough to eat at home, thank you very much.”
Heads exploded all around city hall.
Not long after, Renata was standing by her husband’s side — with that grim, faraway look we’ve seen in so many humiliated political spouses over the years — as Ford offered Apology No. 68 in a series.
“I want to apologize for my graphic remarks this morning.”
Terrible day ... under stress ... trying to move forward...
“The revelations yesterday of cocaine, escorts, prostitution, has pushed me over the line, and I used unforgiveable language and again I apologize.
“These allegations are a hundred per cent lies.
“When you attack my integrity as a father and as a husband, I see red. Today, I acted on complete impulse in my remarks.
“I fully realize in the past I have drank alcohol in excess. I wish you to know I’m receiving support from a team of health-care professionals. I am taking accountability and receiving advice from people with expertise.”
With wife as a prop, Ford pleaded with everybody to respect his family’s privacy. Yet it’s Ford who has lassoed his family into the glare of publicity.
Renata Ford then took her leave of city hall, walking briskly through the underground parking lot, trailed by reporters and TV cameras, head down and mostly refusing to be drawn in. Mostly.
“I think my husband’s already said enough.”
 
pattycakes said:
Here's the rest of the article:
The Star obtained the incident report from this episode many months ago. The details were also confirmed with police sources.
Senior management at this paper decided not to publish a story about the matter. Editors agreed with police that Mrs. Ford, though the mayor’s spouse, was not someone in the public eye and was therefore entitled to privacy. Nobody here had any stomach for expanding the scandal engulfing Toronto’s mayor to encompass his family, thereby causing harm, particularly to the couple’s two young children.
But there is a strong argument to be made that those kids are at risk.
From a father who, as he’s acknowledged, sometimes drives after drinking. According to allegations of past and present Ford staffers in a police document, on the evening last March when he was asked to leave the Garrison Ball because of alleged impairment, Ford had defied advice of staff against attending it and charged ahead to the marquee affair with his children in tow, his friend and occasional driver Alexander “Sandro” Lisi — since indicted on drug and extortion charges — at the wheel, and another crack addict pal also in the vehicle. A staffer took the youngsters to McDonald’s.
From a mother who, the Star has been told by several sources, has her own issues.
In March 2008, police investigated a disturbance at the Ford home following a 9-1-1 call believed to have been placed by Renata, though other family residents later insisted it was Rob Ford who made the call, complaining of “verbal abuse” from his spouse. In any event, Rob Ford was charged with assault and threatening death, the charges later withdrawn, prosecutors citing “inconsistencies” in Renata’s statements.
Leo Tolstoy wrote: “All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
It is the mayor who has now dragged his wife into the sordidness of his squalor-without-end.
Thursday morning, Ford pushed-pulled Renata — a woman rarely seen in public — through a throng of reporters outside his city hall office. Even amidst the every-which-way madness, where it feels like the needle on the Shock-O-Meter cannot possibly spin any further around, Renata’s stunning appearance was a game-changer, a media rule-changer. (As a news editor for PBS in Washington told me in an email yesterday: “I’m sure your jaw is in a permanent state of ‘drop.’”)
Ford has deliberately dumped his wife in his slop, the final deflective refuge of a scoundrel.
Presumably, to the mayor’s cockamamie way of thinking, Mrs. Ford by his side for a damage-containing press conference — or at least shuffling desultorily in his wake — was intended to mitigate the astounding crudeness of remarks he’d made to journalists a couple of hours earlier.
Wearing a Toronto Argonauts jersey, Ford announced he was taking legal action against former staff and a waiter from the Bier Markt pub — who, it was revealed in the formerly blacked-out portion of police documents used to support a search warrant against Lisi, believed he’d seen the mayor, in Ford’s words, “doing lines” (as in lines of cocaine) at the popular Esplanade restaurant during a well-oiled spree on St. Patrick’s Day 2012.
The lawsuit threat is absurd because nobody can be convicted of libel for giving statements to police.
Buried inside the warrant information is a reference to Ford allegedly telling a young female security guard at city hall that he “was going to eat her box”; that — as some of the mayor’s staff told police — he’d brought a woman (“Alana”) they believed to be a prostitute or “escort” to his office during that St. Patrick’s Day; and that Ford had claimed that same evening to have had sex with former policy adviser Olivia Gondek. (Gondek has emphatically denied this happened.)
“I don’t appreciate people calling Alana a prostitute,” Ford harrumphed. “Never had a prostitute here. I’m very happily married at home. This is very disturbing against my wife...Alana is not a prostitute. She’s a friend and it makes me sick how people are saying this ...”
After a weird segue to the upcoming playoff game between the Argos and Hamilton — “we’re going to have to spank the little Tiger Cats” — Ford appeared to have suddenly reminded himself of another point he wished to make, though seemingly mixing up the cast of characters.
“Oh, and the last thing was Olivia Gondek. It says I wanted to eat her pussy and I have never in my life said that to her. I would never do that. I’m happily married. I’ve got more than enough to eat at home, thank you very much.”
Heads exploded all around city hall.
Not long after, Renata was standing by her husband’s side — with that grim, faraway look we’ve seen in so many humiliated political spouses over the years — as Ford offered Apology No. 68 in a series.
“I want to apologize for my graphic remarks this morning.”
Terrible day ... under stress ... trying to move forward...
“The revelations yesterday of cocaine, escorts, prostitution, has pushed me over the line, and I used unforgiveable language and again I apologize.
“These allegations are a hundred per cent lies.
“When you attack my integrity as a father and as a husband, I see red. Today, I acted on complete impulse in my remarks.
“I fully realize in the past I have drank alcohol in excess. I wish you to know I’m receiving support from a team of health-care professionals. I am taking accountability and receiving advice from people with expertise.”
With wife as a prop, Ford pleaded with everybody to respect his family’s privacy. Yet it’s Ford who has lassoed his family into the glare of publicity.
Renata Ford then took her leave of city hall, walking briskly through the underground parking lot, trailed by reporters and TV cameras, head down and mostly refusing to be drawn in. Mostly.
“I think my husband’s already said enough.”
Click to expand...

Hah take his job, take his kids, this just keeps getting better and better. Seriously I hope they do take his kids and then parade them back and forth in front of his house once a day to show him what he lost. My sympathy for this man is less than nothing, I actively want to see him suffer in some way.
 
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