Even the pathologically anti-Israel Toronto Star hints that "pro-Palestinians" hate Canada

Showing solidarity with "starving" Gazans, who have one of the world's highest obesity rates

It had to be oblique, of course. The Toronto al Starzeera's editorialists consist of pathological Israel-haters like Tony Berman, Linda McQuaig, Heather Mallick, Haroon Siddiqui, Rick Salutin, etc and even what is supposedly "straight-up" reporting in that rag usually reflects their extreme biases. So they would never tell you the truth about the blatant hatred for Canada, the overt support for terrorism, and vicious anti-Semitism that is a regular feature of "pro-Palestinian" activism in Canada.

But it's Sunday, and one of al Starzeera's weekend reporters did slip in something that is very telling, and very typical of pro and anti-Israel demonstrations - the people who are pro-Israel are also pro-Canada, while the leftist anti-Semites and bloodthirsty Islamists, who make up the entirety of the anti-Israel protests, hate Canada too:

...Brandishing Canadian flags and placards calling to free Gaza from Hamas, the pro-Israeli contingent stood on the north side, in front of the Israeli consulate, and played Bob Marley over the loudspeakers... 

... On the south side, in front of the Royal Ontario Museum, the pro-Palestinian contingent waved “end the siege” placards and Israeli flags with the word terrorist spray painted across the Star of David...

EXPOSING THE ANTI-ISRAEL MEDIA BIAS

A 72 hour ceasefire was announced, but the media battle continues...

Olivia Chow's awful debate performance makes it clear she's the candidate of Toronto's civic unions and not the taxpayers

In the days leading up to Olivia Chow declaring her candidacy for mayor, I'd had a few conversations in which I warned some of her supporters, "...you know, I bet 99% of the people who think Olivia Chow would be such a great candidate have never met her or heard her speak in public."

Now Chow also shows that when it comes to running a civic economy, she's completely in over her head. 

I'd say I hate to say "I told ya so," but I don't hate to say it at all...




The funniest part of this was that Chow's scripted "We're not on the gold course, I don't need to take any lessons from you" she threw at John Tory, which was supposed to be her big zinger, was delivered at such an inappropriate moment, it backfired on her and she was booed.

UPDATE: As will come as a surprise to no one, The Toronto Star has already gone into meltdown mode.  I'm willing to place bets right now that before the end of October, The Star tries to push for all candidates except Tory to drop from the race to try to prevent a Ford re-election.

Thornhill MP Peter Kent stands up to al Starzeera's attempt at bullying

Background HERE

UPDATE: al Starzeera's "Join out vendetta against Ford, or else" article is finally published.

In my opinion, The Toronto Star is run by bullying pieces of shit

In his column in The National Post last month, Conrad Black described the attempt by The Toronto Star to intimidate him into speaking out against Rob Ford.

Thornhill MP Peter Kent received the same crude effort by The Star to intimidate him into denouncing Toronto mayor Rob Ford.

His response is an example of integrity and courage that other politicians would do well to emulate and is well beyond the moral grasp of the fatuous, self-absorbed, sanctimonious garbage running the show at One Yonge Street:



DEAR MR OVED,


WHENEVER A REPORTER FOR THE TORONTO STAR MIGHT WISH TO ASK FOR MY THOUGHTS ON AN ISSUE OF THE DAY, I STAND READY TO RESPOND.

HOWEVER, AND DESPITE YOUR "EXTENDED DEADLINE"' I WILL NOT ANSWER THE DEMANDS IN YOUR LETTER OF DECEMBER 16TH, 2013, WHICH I CONSIDER TO BE A CRUDELY CRAFTED, VEILED THREAT THAT I (AND OTHERS) ENDORSE AN EDITORIAL COLUMN WRITTEN BY TORSTAR CHAIR JOHN HONDERICH...OR FACE CONSEQUENCES IN YOUR EVENTUAL STORY.

YOUR LETTER IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF WHAT MIGHT BEST BE DESCRIBED AS CRUSADE JOURNALISM; A NEWSPAPER'S ATTEMPT TO IMPOSE ITS EDITORIAL WILL FAR BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF ACCEPTABLE JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE.

MR HONDERICH IS CERTAINLY ENTITLED TO HIS OPINION.

I WILL NOT BE BULLIED INTO COMMENTING ON THAT OPINION.

YOUR MANNER OF NEWS-GATHERING IS, I BELIEVE, AN UNFORTUNATE EXAMPLE OF THE DECLINE OF A CRAFT I ONCE PROUDLY PRACTICED.

SINCERELY,

HON PETER KENT PC MP


h/t Dodo Can Spell

David "Sock Puppet" Soknacki is a tool of the media trying to oust Rob Ford

"David Miller's Budget Chief"

NOW magazine's "fiscally conservative"
alternative to Rob Ford

Those four words are all anyone really needs to know about David Soknacki, a former Scarboough City Councilor who was the budget chief for the former mayor who hiked taxes and spending in Toronto to astronomical levels.

The media is billing Soknacki, who has no known policies or ideas, as a "fiscal conservative. " How exactly do we know about Soknacki's "conservative" bona fides? Is it from his record? No.

The only evidence we have is that The Toronto Star and the hard-socialist weekly tabloid NOW magazine and some other media that detest the genuinely fiscal conservative Rob Ford tell us so.

The first time I heard of Soknacki was when I was speaking with a writer from The Toronto Star-owned BlogTO, who was extolling him as a sensible "fiscal conservative" alternative to Ford. That writer is both very left-leaning and despises Ford, which are traits that invariably go together in Toronto.

In fact, I haven't met anyone outside the media who had even heard of David Soknacki prior to a month ago. For all we know, he could be Sarah Thomson in drag. After all, has anyone seen Thomson and Soknacki in the same place at the same time?

The way that an unknown whose only accomplishment was to help Miller drive city spending through the roof is being lauded by media outlets that either hate fiscal conservativism, or hate Rob Ford, or both is particularly revealing.

Rob Ford's support is holding firm and a sanctimonious, self-obsessed Toronto media is already anxious that the man who they think has embarrassed Toronto could win a second term.

John Tory, as is his fashion, has been vacillating and hinting, without committing to entering the 2014 mayoral race, but odds are, like in the last election, he won't enter as long as Ford is running. Tory is intelligent and decent, but is a poor campaigner who has no real support base. He has never held elected public office other than a brief stint as an MPP prior to his leading the Ontario Progressive Conservatives to a devastating loss in the 2007 election, in which Tory also lost his seat.

With the prospect of Ford carrying the vote from Torontonians who still cringe at the thought of David Miller-era spending, taxes  and total subservience to public service unions, the anxious media needed a faux-conservative sock puppet to bleed away those voters from Ford.

"Sock Puppet" Soknacki fit their bill. The clue is when The Toronto Star is friendly to what they tern a "right-leaning" candidate, it's a lot like when the Grand Ayatollah of Iran endorses a US presidential candidate. With friends like that, we should all be worried.

A despicable Toronto Star publisher tries to intimidate civic leaders into joining its vendetta against Rob Ford

Conrad Black in the National Post:

...In another aspect of the Ford controversy, a number of people have angrily sent me copies of a letter that the disgraceful John Honderich — the chair of the board of Torstar Corporation (the Star’s owner) and a former Star publisher — assumedly approved for distribution to 70 prominent Torontonians, urging them to agitate for the mayor’s removal in mid-term, and taking them to task as moral outcasts of the community for not joining in the full Christmas revelry of the Star’s attempted putsch....

Analysis: Ford comes out the winner in the Dale/Star saga

Even if you're convinced you're in the right and that you will eventually win, lawsuits suck.

They're time consuming and stressful and very expensive.

So even though a number of legal authorities were fairly certain Rob Ford could have won the defamation suit launched by The Toronto Star's Daniel Dale, the apology, and subsequent clarification of the apology the day later was a smart move by Toronto's mayor. The suit, the costs of which were funded by The Star, was dropped by Dale and there were probably reasons other than the spirit of forgiveness involved.

In the first place, Ford never said Dale was a "pedophile". The only people accusing Ford of having implied that were Dale's media cronies. Ford was talking about his own feelings of concern when he was told by a neighbor that someone was taking pictures of his backyard (which Dale denies and Ford has now said was not what Dale was doing). Thus, aside from the obstacle of proving Ford had defamed him, it would have been difficult, if not impossible for Dale to establish any damages even in the event of a ruling in his favor. As Ford never said Dale was a pedophile and nothing Ford has said has led anyone to believe Daniel Dale is a pedophile, how could Dale establish that his reputation has been harmed?

As a tactical move, the Ford apology, which clarified that he retracted any negative interpretation of Dale that could be attached to the TV interview the mayor had with Conrad Black, changed the equation. Almost certainly crafted with assistance from lawyers, the apology placed Dale and The Star in a position where they would very likely have been hit with all of Ford's costs if the matter went to trial and a judgement were reached against them.

Moreover, as much as the law suit was seen, from the onset, as another example of The Star's obsessive agenda to go after Ford using any means they could think of, following his initial apology, the tides had turned a great deal.

Even people not necessarily sympathetic to Ford were viewing the continuation of the suit at that point as petty, vindictive, and a substantiation of a vendetta The Star has had against Ford for the last 3 years.

The Star has come off as the major loser in all this. When Dale stated that with his employer's support, he would continue to be the City Hall reporter while suing the mayor, it became obvious beyond any doubt that even the pretense of objectivity could no longer be maintained by The Toronto Star.

Now Ford can concentrate on his campaign for re-election, with issues working in his favor such as his opponents' wastefulness, their penchant for taxation, and their corrupt subservience to unions.

So for Ford, the lawsuit has gone away, whereas for The Toronto Star, the stigma of bias, pettiness and unprofessionalism will stick around for a very long time.

A public cat fight between two scandal rags

More HERE

h/t Blazing Cat Fur

Rob Ford apologizes to The Toronto Star's Daniel Dale

Interestingly, the apology confirms just about everything that was anticipated in this blog post...



UPDATE: The reporter for the Toronto Star, which has conducted a pathological, political vendetta against Ford, says he will continue with his lawsuit despite Ford's apology and clarification.

It would be in Mr. Dale's best interests that the Star has committed, in writing, to cover all expenses and awards in the law suit, because a plaintiff can be hit with costs in what is determined to be a nuisance suit.

The Toronto Star and Daniel Dale's lawsuit against Rob Ford is too implausible to make good fiction

When I used to work in Hollywood for a production company that's films garnered a slew of major Oscar nominations, one of my jobs as a Creative Executive was to decide whether or not to recommend screenplays for production and to write notes on them.

With the news that The Toronto Star's City Hall reporter Daniel Dale is planning, with the enthusiastic support of his employer, to sue Toronto Mayor Rob Ford for libel in a lawsuit of dubious merit, an analogous thought occurred to me, particularly after reading this in The Torontoist:

Dale will continue covering municipal politics, he also explains. “With the full support of the Star, I will stay on the City Hall beat while pursuing this action… I can easily imagine the mayor and his brother attempting to turn the tables on the Star and calling for me to take a leave of absence…I will not let this affect my job. I will not be bullied off of my beat.

I thought of my reaction if I had received a screenplay in which part of the plot involved a City Hall reporter, for a newspaper with the largest circulation in a major city, suing a mayor for libel and continuing to cover the City Hall beat while pursuing the suit.

The ensuing conversation in that imaginary scenario would have gone something like this:

ME: The gags need to be punched up a bit, but on the whole it's a pretty good premise for a comedy. 

WRITER: Comedy? This is a serious political drama. 

ME: I love your sense of humor! It's great, we've got the John Goodman-type regular guy slob, and all the stuck-up elitists are out to get him, like King Ralph, but at City Hall. But seriously, we need some more gags with the reporter and the mayor encountering each other. Oh, and that flaky female reporter that made a name for herself by stalking the mayor, I think her motivation should be that she has this sexual fixation on him, like she's a chubby chaser or something. Here's a scene you might want to consider: maybe she could corner him in private and flash her beaver and demand he eat her out. She could say something like, "You look like you know how to eat a lot of pussy!" And he's squirming to get away and says,"I've got plenty to eat at home!" 

WRITER: You don't understand! I mean it, this is a serious political drama about an oppressed reporter seeking justice from an evil politician! 

ME: Seriously???

WRITER: Yes! My sympathies are completely with the newspaper and its reporters.* 

ME: Okay. You realize that changes everything. Here's why that's not going to work. First off, you've got who are the villains and who is the hero mixed up. You have this guy who was elected, and he's this silly doofus who tells ridiculous lies about his personal life, but when it comes to serving the public, is scrupulously honest. The guy even coaches underprivileged kids and takes them into his own home. And that's your villain. 

On the other side, you have a newspaper run by hypocritical snobs who support a corrupt government that misappropriated billions of dollars in public funds. And they lie about this mayor character, they hate him mainly because he's not part of their "in" crowd, they obsessively stalk and harass him, and support every undemocratic effort they can think of to get him out of office.  And those are supposed to be your heroes?? 

WRITER: But this terrible mayor has made the city a laughingstock!


ME: That's pretty harmless, and again, it's what makes this all more of a comedy.

WRITER: But the real drama comes when this detestable mayor slanders one of the hero reporters by implying he's a pedophile, potentially destroying his life!! 

ME: Yeah. Well, here's your problem with that. The way you describe it, in the first place, the Mayor never said he was a pedophile, he was talking more about his own state of mind when he heard that some guy was peeping in his back yard. In fact, this mayor character explicitly says he doesn't know if the reporter was taking pictures of his kids. He was talking about how a father feels when he hears someone might be invading his privacy and talking pictures of his young kids. That doesn't sound like slander to me and there's no threat to the reporter's reputation because quite reasonably, nobody takes seriously the possibility that the reporter could actually be a pedophile.


WRITER: No! Wait, you're wrong about something! I never had the reporter peeping in the back yard!


ME: Alright, then here's where you've got some more problems with your storyline. After a neighbor calls him, the mayor comes charging out to confront the reporter, who freaks out and runs away.


WRITER: That's right, the Mayor is a bully!


ME: Okay, so let's assume your reporter never peeps in the mayor's back yard. How does the mayor know he's there? Why would a neighbor call the mayor to tell him someone is walking around on public land? The only way your story makes sense is if, even if he wasn't taking pictures of it,  he was at least peeping in the mayor's back yard. I still think you should give some thought to the comedy angle. Maybe have the reporter be a bit like Jim Carrey's character in The Cable Guy...


WRITER: No! It's not a comedy and no, the reporter was never standing on cinder blocks and peeking in the mayor's back yard!!


ME: Well, it's your story.


WRITER: That's right! I think every decent, social justice-seeking person in the audience is going to identify with the crusading newspaper and its heroic journalists!


ME: Interesting. The way I read it, in your story, the only people you've got siding with your newspaper are pompous douchebags and sanctimonious nitwits. But aside from that, we get to the most blatant problem with your story...


WRITER: Which is?


ME: Well, while this reporter is suing the mayor, he still is doing City Hall coverage for the newspaper.


WRITER: Yes, so?


ME: So? So that's completely implausible. There's no way a real newspaper could ever allow that to happen. It would undermine any shred of credibility even as biased a newspaper that you've written about could even pretend to have. I mean, how could there even be a pretense of objectivity and fair journalism when you allow a guy who is suing the mayor to be writing City Hall coverage!? It's like committing seppuku as far as all credibility goes. There's no way an audience would believe that even a third-rate rag of a newspaper would do that.


WRITER: That's the way I've written the story and that's the way I'm keeping it. So when will I hear about whether we go into production?


ME: Don't call us, we'll call you. 

* Actually, this is the point where I would have thought I was dealing with a lunatic and would have edged the meeting to a quick conclusion.

Conrad Black and Carol Off interview - which one is the deficient journalist?

The pathological hysterics at The Toronto Star have characterized this as "Carol Off sends Conrad Black to journalism school"

It's more like a biased interviewer who doesn't understand the nature of the type of program Black does, trying to prove her points and making herself look fairly stupid and belligerent in the process.

What's laughable is a CBC host trying to chastise Black for not challenging a guest who may have made an inaccurate statement. What makes it funny is the statement was about something that Ford says happened to him, while the state-funded broadcaster routinely allows not only its guests, but its own journalists to broadcast completely false, slanderous assertions involving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

You can listen to the interview at THIS LINK and judge for yourself.

The Rob Ford interview with Conrad Black

This is quite an interesting interview. Ford makes some good points in his favor. One of the interesting aspects that emerges is the sleazy stalking to which The Toronto Star's reporters, particularly Robyn Doolittle and Daniel Dale, have subjected him and his family.

Toronto Star: Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka aren't murderers, they're freedom fighters

The Toronto Star puts these two on the same moral plain:
One fought to defend Osama bin Laden and to keep women from the right to education
and the other fought for racial equality

What's that?  The Star hasn't quite bestowed the term `freedom fighter` on Bernardo and Homokla yet?

It's probably just a matter of time. I always thought The Star's columnist Thomas Walkom was an idiot and now the element of doubt has evaporated. 

Because Nelson Mandela used violence, apparently in Walkom`s tiny bubble of comprehension, any bloodthirsty murdering maniac or moral imbecile who supports killing, as long as that killing is for a cause, is potentially a freedom fighter.

And because Mandela supported totalitarian dictators like Ghaddafi and Castro and terrorists like the PLO, they're probably pretty good too, because after all, Mandela was an infallible god, wasn't he?

Removed from Walkom's thought process, such as it is, is any moral compass or standard of values, to say nothing of tactics, that differentiate terrorists from people legitimately fighting for liberty. Also removed from that equation is the heresy that while Mandela was a man of courage, dignity, and determination, and exhibited great wisdom in many instances, in many others he was emotionally and philosophically married to some reprehensible ideologies and individuals.

So, just so it's easy, here's a simple rule-of-thumb that even someone so thoroughly stupid and morally bankrupt as a Toronto Star editorial columnist should be able to understand:

If you kill and commit violence against innocent people for political purposes, you're a terrorist. Similarly, if you're fighting to support or aiding people who do that, you're a supporter of terrorism. 

It's pretty easy. The old, vapid, banal saying 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' is something idiots say to try to justify their moral bankruptcy and intellectual limitations.

George Washington was not a terrorist, because he never ordered or condoned the killing or systematic mistreatment of civilians. The government of Iran are terrorists because they have ordered and executed the killings of innocent people with no connection to any military or political role, far from any combat area, for political ends. And if, like Castro, you throw someone in jail or have them executed for publicly disagreeing with you, then you're on that same sunken moral plain.

See? It's simple.

I don't really expect anyone at The Star to actually follow a rule as straightforward as this though. Because with it, there's just no way Rob Ford can fall into that terrorist category.

A political Hit Job by the Toronto Police Services

The real revelation in the latest release of reports of investigations and wiretaps surrounding the Rob Ford controversy is that there is no revelation. At least not about Rob Ford.

The "shocker" is supposed to be that some people talked on the phone about Ford having done heroin and that people discussed his attempting to buy the "crack video" which was at the centre of the media firestorm.

But these are reports not of anything Ford actually said but what some people have said about him.

There are even some Toronto City Councillors suggesting that Ford should face criminal charges. If your Councillor is among them, the big concern you should have is that your municipal representative is a moron.

Ford should be charged with what, exactly?

If there is actual evidence of his attempting to pervert the course of justice, then absolutely he should face criminal charges. But if there is any such evidence, there has been no indication of it so far.

Furthermore, most of the released information about Ford has nothing to do with a criminal investigation. It seems to be in the report for the sole purpose of smearing and humiliating him. That aspect, which seems designed chiefly to benefit Ford's political enemies, is not, as far as I know, what police or judges are supposed to do as part of their paid duties.

To be clear, to the best of my knowledge, Ward 21 Councillor "Fiasco" Joe Mihevc has never had sexual relations with a farm animal. But the Ford-related transcripts are not dissimilar to what could occur in a hypothetical situation in which a recorded conversation was released in which Mihevc was alleged to have had sexual intercourse with a goat, and if then outraged activists railed "Why hasn't Mihevc been charged with cruelty to animals!?"

What would happen if police released a transcript of a recording in which someone said: "Yeah, Mihevc tied the goat to a post, then pulled his pants down. He lubed up his cock and then jammed it into that goat doggie-style. Or I guess it would be goat-style in this case. Mihevic was grunting and the goat was groaning. Or was it the other way round? Anyhow, he started screaming as he was cumming, 'you're the best goat I ever fucked!!' Then he untied it and walked it back to the organic goat milk farm. That poor goat looked traumatized."

Now, had such a conversation occurred among third parties and a transcript been released, would there be any legal grounds for charges against Mihevc? Of course not. It would have all been unproven allegations and baseless hearsay.

But the release of the conversations among third parties about Ford have been nothing more than a political hit job by a politicized police department for no other apparent reason than that it can be exploited by some sleazy municipal politicians, their allies and media stooges.

Among the issues raised was Ford having been allegedly blackmailed by some of the drug gangs in the suburbs. That would be a serious matter and the first question which should be raised is, did Rob Ford ask or in any way try to influence police to not investigate or enforce the law against those criminals?

Unless there's something I haven't heard, the answer to that question is a clear and resounding "no."

Moreover, Ford has been the more supportive of Police and their efforts to combat drug crime and gang violence than any other Toronto mayor in living history. Ford himself has devoted countless hours to volunteering to help youth in those at-risk neighborhoods, so he is well aware of the need for police to take a hard line on them.

If this sounds like some sort of bizarre contradiction, that Ford associating with some of them and using drugs belies that, the problem is that indeed Ford does have some personal failings which he has committed to remedy.

But this goes further to the point that Rob Ford's personal life and issues have no bearing on the job he was doing as mayor. He is still far more competent and professional in exercising his public duties than his City Hall opponents.

There are a lot of people whose lives may not look so good if continually put under a microscope the way that Rob Ford's has for the last three and a half years.  There is even a very, very senior Toronto Police official who has been described to me by reliable sources as having been "a major pot head."

To say nothing of other politicians and media figures.

The new transcripts with fewer redactions do have some interesting revelations. Among them that many of the allegations of which the media are making so much are actually contradicted in the document by other allegations.

It's quite interesting to note that the one person who claims to have seen Rob Ford "do lines at the Bier Markt" never saw it. If the report is accurate, then this server speculated that he saw Ford snorting cocaine and then went around boasting to both as many of his fellow employees he could find and The Toronto Star's Robyn Doolittle that he had eyewitnessed something which he admitted to police that he in fact hadn't.  Even more interesting is that this same server had been a volunteer for George Smitherman, whom Ford defeated in the mayoral race.

Speaking of The Star's Robyn Doolittle, she comes across in the report as an obsessive stalker of Ford, practically harassing people and turning up unannounced at their homes to pester them for information after being told by people they had nothing to say to her.

The Toronto Star's vendetta against Ford was made even more clear in a recent panel discussion that included Doolittle and Star editor Michael Cooke. Cooke described to the friendly audience that during the mayoral race, The Star had sent reporters to Chicago to investigate every facet of Ford's business to dig up dirt on them.  Disappointingly to him, he described the way Ford conducted his business as "squeaky clean."

Did The Star send cohorts of reporters to investigate "party drug addict" Smitherman's personal life? The Star's anointed candidate cost Ontario taxpayers billions through the waste of the EHealth and ORNGE debacles, but as long as he was toeing the line they liked, evidently that didn't matter. Smitherman's husband was recently found in what appeared to be a drug-induced stupor in a ditch after a massive police search, following his going missing for a day. And that is the same George Smitherman The Star wishes were running Toronto now.

This all points to why Ford's support remains solid. He is a man who, whatever personal problems he may have, confines them to his personal life, but in exercising his professional duties is meticulous. This is the opposite of a number of City Councillors who have clean personal lives but whose incompetence and corruption, along with their subservience to special interests, cost Toronto taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

  Rob Ford court documents: ITO With Pub Ban-edited by Crown-Dec 3 13

The tree that was killed so you could read a Toronto Star editorial was smarter than the person who wrote it

By producing oxygen, the trees killed to produce print copies of The Toronto Star contribute far more to society than the nitwits who currently write editorials for that egregiously biased newspaper.

Apparently the trees are also more intelligent.

In The Huffington Post, Mitch Wolfe rips apart al Starzeera's latest display of idiocy in which they try to compare the Wynne/McGuinty Liberal government's cancellation of much-needed Gas Plants for political purposes to Ford's cancellation of the unwanted LRT in order to get a much-needed subway extension in Scarborough.

The most ironic part of the al Starzeera editorial is the way in which the tax-and-spend socialists who head up that rag have miraculously transformed into fiscal conservatives when the issue is a small property tax increase to fund essential infrastructure.

There is one sentence in Mitch's column in The HufPo I do do find puzzling, however.

He concluded with: "Ironically, the more the Star goes after Ford, the more its reputation for fairness and objectivity is undermined. "

At what point in this decade did al Starzeera have a "reputation for fairness and objectivity"?

The Rob Ford "death threat" video is obviously him joking about a celebrity boxing or wrestling match

Kathy Shaidle at Five Feet of Fury observed that Rob Ford sounded like he was doing a Hulk Hogan impersonation in the latest "scandal" released of the mayor after it was purchased by The Toronto Star for $5000.

That sounds pretty close. The video was made around the time of Ford's celebrity arm wrestling match with the famous pro wrestler.

In the video, you can clearly hear Toronto Mayor Rob Ford talk about being "in that ring" and when he talks about killing and only needing "15 minutes".

He also says if he wins, he'll "donate.." One of the other people in the room talks about how Ford's opponents "are pros."

Now under what circumstances other than a celebrity boxing match/fight does someone talk about donating???

It does sound a lot like it was in the spirit of his match with The Hulkster.

Ford admits being extremely inebriated when the video was made. But is it so terrible to get drink, in private, and joke around about what you'd do in a celebrity fight, and imitate the bluster of professional fighters?

This new "scandal" with which The Star is trying to outrage Toronto is no scandal.

But after they paid for this piece of nonsense it does firmly establish that The Toronto Star is a scandal rag with about as much credibility and integrity as The National Enquirer.

Toronto's media hates you stupid people for liking Rob Ford

Rob Ford's support numbers means something his obsessive opponents haven't figured out

The recent Forum Research poll, taken after Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair disclosed the existence of a video in which Toronto Mayor Rob Ford puffs on a glass pipe, shows some pretty good approval ratings for the embattled civic leader.

Particularly noteworthy is that Ford's highest approval rating, 55%, comes from Scarborough, for which Ford successfully managed to get funding for subway expansion from Kathleen Wynne's heel-dragging Provincial government.

Ford opponents in politics and government have been insisting how unnecessary the Scarborough subway is and how the eastern borough would be so much better served by what would have been a fully-funded Light Rail Transit system. Much of that attitude is illustrated by The Toronto Star's Urban Affairs columnist Christopher Hume, when he bravely, and obviously painfully, ventured out of his elitist downtown enclave to Scarborough recently to assess the surroundings and reiterate his preformed conclusion about Scarborough's transit needs.

Here's the funny thing, though. Why is it that the people who actually live in and know the Scarborough area best are the ones most supportive of Rob Ford?

Therein lies a clue to much of Ford's success, and why the media and his obsessive detractors have such little success is swaying support away from him.

It's because Ford actually listens to his constituents and tries to give them what they ask for, rather than condescendingly and paternalistically deciding what is best for them, whether they want it or not.

Weird, isn't it, that the public will loyally support a politician who listens to and seems to care about them, even though their intellectual betters and moral superiors in the media and politics tell them they shouldn't?

That sound you hear is heads exploding at The Toronto Star - Ford approval rating goes up after news breaks of existence of video

The popularity of Toronto’s top politico has risen slightly following the announcement that a video that allegedly shows him smoking crack cocaine exists, according to a new poll.

A Forum Research poll conducted Thursday night puts Mayor Rob Ford’s approval rating at 44 per cent – up 5 points from a poll conducted earlier this week.

This is the best laugh I've had this week!

What was that about The Toronto Star being the Wyle E. Coyote of newspapers?