Rob Ford's Toronto

[basic]

MM said something about it only takes domino to topple many. The people who matter need to put some distance between themselves and the falling dominoes.
The people protecting the Ford's can inspire fear. In regards to his vagueness, he says he's being as candid as possible without putting himself in a litigious position.

 

[bistmath]

Back when Rob Ford was elected in Oct. 2010 a neighbour (who grew up in Etobicoke) told me that Doug Ford was a big drug dealer back in the 80's. A couple of years later the Globe and Mail came out with their 80's DoFo hash dealer expose. But that was Doug.....

Apologies for the late post.

FWIW, I was told our esteemed mayor had a coke problem pretty early on. I was out with a friend who's a municipal geek and I mentioned the rumours that there was a big city hall story. He straight up said that it was coke. He'd gone to school with some of the local reporters and they'd quietly told him. I was surprised when alcohol was mentioned after the Garrison Ball story.

 

[basic]

He restated that the charges are a phone call away. It sounds like the police are at the point where nothing else needs to happen on their end to arrest him. They are ready to go (home/office/deco search warrant and arrest?) at the drop of a hat. Other people/outside forces are holding it up.

Edit: To clarify, he is still saying an arrest is for sure. I think he is annoyed because he truly thought the arrest was happening last week, based on what he knew from TPS. They are ready to go. It didn't happen so there was a backlash on twitter and here doubting him. He's letting today's info out to explain to those people why he used word imminent. That seemed to get people's knickers in a knot, when going on the info had it was reasonable to say. Maybe MM can speak to that himself here?

It still sounds like it is going to be soon soon soon!

 

[adma]

Salvaged the tree, I guess he's not a kitten strangling oaf after all.

As to being less of an eyesore that's damning by faint praise. Lower the standards enough and all the girls are variations of Miss Piggy, kinda like this campaign.

Given the gender sociology of the broad Ford clan, I'd imagine than any "redeeming" aesthetic worth there is courtesy of Karla and the daughters. Y'know, wimmen "know style", they bone up on current editions of Architectural Digest and In Style, etc.

Which also explains why the colour scheme resembles some of those fitspirational fruit-and-cocoa-bean smoothies Doug's girls post in grotesque hi-def on their Instagram accounts.

 

[casita]

MM said something about it only takes domino to topple many.

Possible collateral damage?

 

[W. K. Lis]

Wow. That is fascinating. And creepy and paternalistic. Thanks for posting!

I remember that I (as a 10 year old) having to fill out a liquor order form for my father at the LCBO store. He would then take the order to the cashier. No credit cards. No cheques. No debit cards. No gift cards. Cash only. They would stamp or imprint that the order was paid. He would then take the imprinted order form to a counter, a man would fetch a bottle or bottles, put them in a paper bag before giving them to my father.

 

[Greg Banks]

MM said something about it only takes domino to topple many. The people who matter need to put some distance between themselves and the falling dominoes.
The people protecting the Ford's can inspire fear. In regards to his vagueness, he says he's being as candid as possible without putting himself in a litigious position.

Who, may I ask do you suggest? The Conservatives seem to have cut ties...The only one who seems to have an interest in protecting the Fords is Flaherty who is now himself on the outs...The family business is not some monolithic presence in their industry (#26 with 33M sales and 150 employees in 2012 compared to the largest with 2B in sales and 11,000 employees)...their US division is even a smaller influence on that market (9M according to D&B)...Are you suggesting some underworld connection?

 

[Electrify]

Not saying you're wrong - idle speculation is practically de rigueur in this thread, after all - but would either of those two actually have the power to slow down police charges?

I'm grateful for MM's input here. And I've been following him on Twitter for months now, there was something in this thread early last year that made it apparent what his Twitter handle was, he wasn't hard to find on there. But it seems to me that the accuracy and timing of his predictions took a hit after his city hall source left/was fired. I think a lot of his predictions now are probably coming from someone in the TPS, but that he reports them with an element of wishful thinking added. Either that, or I've wondered if recently he is being played or used by someone feeding him less than accurate information. I guess time will tell. But the use of the word "imminent" in the most recent prediction probably wasn't the wisest choice. To me, that implies anything from minutes to a few days, and another day or so, and we'll be well past "imminent."

Building on this, perhaps that is the source's intent. If you knew that your arrest was "imminent," you would be bunkering down with lawyers, or skipping town if you could not afford them. If an arrest does go down, I don't think even MetroMan will know.

On that note, if we make it to election day with no arrest, Blair needs to resign. If not for the G20, then for knowingly allowing someone to break the law in order to play political blackmail with them.

 

[basic]

I didn't gather anything about organized crime in there. The call to go ahead with the arrest is incoming to police. I doubt bikers/mafia are telling the police what to do on this case. Even if they were, there's no way MM would know. It's coming from someone else in power.

 

[hper]

If I recall correctly, "Ladies and Escorts" rooms were common in Toronto into the late 1970's or early 1980s.

That would have been before Rob Ford's time.
View attachment 24205

Back in my OCA days (no 'D' or 'U' back then) the Beverly Tavern and the Cabana Room in the Spadina Hotel were hotbeds of punk and whatever music. Lots of art school kids hanging out. Both were ladies and escorts type places. They were all over the then-seedy downtown, in fact. But that was the so-called "Toronto The Good". Now, alas, it's Crazy Town.

 

[Dubster]

My own Rob Ford coke story involves someone who knows a family friend. They recall Ford doing coke in a bathroom with two girls who were not his wife. This was after 2010 mind.

 

[adma]

The family business is not some monolithic presence in their industry (#26 with 33M sales and 150 employees in 2012 compared to the largest with 2B in sales and 11,000 employees)...their US division is even a smaller influence on that market (9M according to D&B)...Are you suggesting some underworld connection?

Or, just as much, as I've long questioned...is Deco in worse shape than it looks? Or at least, would it collapse like a souffle without said "underworld connection" or whatever?

Seems like Doug Jr. inherited Doug Sr.'s knack for "creative boosting", y'know, for projecting the notion that we're solid, solid, solid, folks, and *we* did it, and *we're* still doing it (i.e. factoring out Deco's co-founder), bla bla, yak yak, bla bla. Yet, if the way the Rob campaign's been handled by Doug is any indication, the bozo-isms over corrupted website, "bubbleheads", etc--how can *these* goofs competently run a company like Deco, other than on vestigial fumes plus a little boosterish smoke and mirrors? I mean, I just can't help getting a whiff of that Eaton/Bronfman-esque next-generational squandering in process here--so, don't be surprised *at all* if Deco's among the most spectacular dominos to fall here...

 

[Greg Banks]

I didn't gather anything about organized crime in there. The call to go ahead with the arrest is incoming to police. I doubt bikers/mafia are telling the police what to do on this case. Even if they were, there's no way MM would know. It's coming from someone else in power.

That was pretty obvious last year when the COI appeal came down, don't you think? The Justices turned themselves into pretzels to uphold the appeal...The question is where does it eminate from...I would suggest from those in power at Queen's Park, it was a provincial court of appeal wsn't it? There is enough going on at the Provincial level that to have s*** to hit the fan at the municipal level would cause too many reverberations in financial circles elsewhere...The Ford's themselves have got nothing to do with the "protection"....

 

[whatthe]

I suspect the politics holding things up are within the Attorney Generals office. That is an extremely political place, and as has been pointed out many times, they are the ones to make the final call before charges are laid. I suspect the police have turned over what they have, and there are struggles within the AG's office about how to proceed.

 

[hper]

On that note, if we make it to election day with no arrest, Blair needs to resign. If not for the G20, then for knowingly allowing someone to break the law in order to play political blackmail with them.

No fan of Blair here. However, there was an article in the Walrus (?) that reported he was apparently totally sidelined throughout the whole G20 shitshow. The whole damned debacle was reportedly directed by some kind of 'CentCom' operation in, like Barrie. Fantino was in on it IIRC. It was 'Copstock' for those guys. Three days of war, hate, and chin music. Anyway, that article tempered somewhat my antipathy towards the chief. As would an actual arrest and commencement of criminal proceedings against Ford. So, here's hoping.