However one feels about Rob Ford, his transit plan makes more sense than Tory's or Chow's

Ford's Transit Plan is about "subways, subways, subways!"

Toronto is growing and the city will need subways to handle that growth.

And like it or not, subways aren't something you can wait until you need them to start building. We need to start now in order to prepare for the obvious, coming requirements for the future.

It turns out that between Rob Ford, Olivia Chow and John Tory, Ford's plan is the most visionary.

TORONTO - Mayor Rob Ford is rolling out his subway-heavy transit plan on Wednesday.

The eight-page "Toronto Subway Expansion Plan" was posted briefly on Ford's campaign website before his announcement and shows the embattled incumbent will be continuing his "subways, subways, subways" mantra in the lead up to the Oct. 27 election.

Ford is proposing to build 32-kilometres of subway at an estimated cost of $9 billion. Those numbers include burying the 8.2 km stretch of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT that would run at street level in Scarborough.

The mainstream media did no homework on Rob Ford's shirtless stalker John Furr

Yesterday morning, at a public press conference, an hysterical opponent of Rob Ford named John Furr whipped off his shirt to reveal a pasty, doughy, 52 year-old torso and screamed abuse at Toronto's mayor for the entire proceeding.

Toronto's mainstream media, which for the most part shares a detestation for Toronto's embattled mayor, was more than happy to give Furr air-time and promote a sanitized representation of him. Doing absolutely no homework, or at least not willing to report any of it, they played accomplice to Furr's efforts to portray himself as someone who, as the Globe and Mail uncritically reported,  "wanted to represent normal people."

So how 'normal' is John Furr, someone who histrionically screamed at Rob Ford while the mayor was trying to explain his opposition to a proposed LRT line along Eglinton Avenue?

The blog Socialist Studies, which concerns itself with education issues, took an interest in Furr when he declared himself a candidate for the Toronto District School Board. Furr's campaign garnered virtually no support and ended quickly, however the intervening picture revealed someone who is anything but 'normal' by most people's standards.

Furr is a supporter of Ford's rival Olivia Chow, which the media that interviewed him, such as The Toronto Star, didn't bother to ask or disclose. While it did emerge that Furr ran a brief candidacy for the School Board, the mainstream media neglected to note his positions, such as that education should not teach facts but values.

The image of a weird, obsessive twitter stalker is also something that comes into focus through Socialist Studies' reporting on Furr.

I've had my own twitter encounters with Furr, when he decided to take it upon himself to make unsolicited replies to tweets of mine. Those episodes show someone who promotes the hateful slur, which Canada's Prime Minister described as "the new face of antisemitism," about Israel supposedly being an apartheid state, when all facts belie that.

In fact, Furr is someone who is either so stupid or dishonest (or both) that he tried to extrapolate an insult against the fanatical anti-Israel group "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" as a "smear" against the entire LGBT community.

If that's what 'normal' people are like, then normal doesn't mean what it used to.  But then, Toronto's mainstream media has its own definition of normal by which thinking exactly what they want you to think is a part. And if there's pertinent information which contradicts their version of normal, they obviously think it's better that you never know about it.

Olivia Chow appeals to her natural constituency - the obsessive moron vote

The campaign ad produced by Olivia Chow's team features a weird, obsessive woman who claims to have not received a return call from Toronto mayor Rob Ford after phoning him 20 times.

The woman in Chow's ad adds that she has Rob Ford on speed dial.

Why?

Because she had to wait for public transit.

I hope she has the number of a good psychiatrist on speed dial too.

Olivia Chow's laughable, pathetic campaign still hasn't been able to come up with a single credible reason to vote for her.

Chow's entire effort is devoted to running down Ford, who has accomplished more in one term as Mayor, like eliminating the Vehicle Registration Tax and privatizing half the city's garbage pick-up, than Olivia Chow has in her more than 20 useless years as a politician sucking off the public teat.

UPDATE: The ad backfires on Chow -This idiotic ad attracted so much derision and so many negative YouTube comments that the Chow campaign had to disable and remove user comments. Ha!

How stupid is Olivia Chow?

The Scarborough subway, reduction of the Land Transfer Tax, privatization of garbage pickup east of Yonge Street, expansion of the Toronto Island Airport, reduction of the size of City Council and of Council expenses...

Olivia Chow may not like these Rob Ford policy proposals, but it is idiotic for her to claim, as she did, that: 

“... I’ve not yet heard anything specific coming from him in terms of specific proposal...I’d love to have actually some real policy that one could debate on...“I just hope that Mr. Ford would engage in this kind of discussion on the policy level"

It is in fact Ms Chow who has offered nothing substantive in the way of policy. Her positions are completely reactive to Ford's and her entire election policy strategy seems to be nothing more than taking the opposite position of whatever Rob Ford proposes. But in typical NDP/socialist fashion, she finds a way of making them exponentially more damaging to the city. For example, Chow wants to keep the tax increase that was supposed to support the subway expansion but without delivering the subway.

Torontonians are unlikely to see any serious policy from Olivia Chow. Because if it did, it would mean she would have to sell it. Ms Chow is infamously inarticulate, is not a deep thinker, and is incapable of standing up to tough questioning.

Ms Chow may want to try to project the spurious meme that Ford has no policy, but it is she who has no policy, other than that she thinks she'll be a better "role model" than Rob Ford, which itself is a doubtful proposition.

Her handlers and media supporters at The Toronto Star are evidently of the opinion that the sole qualification Chow needs to be elected is to be the widow of Jack Layton.

That strategy would work fine if she were running for mayor of the hyper-leftist Annex neighborhood. But to win the city, Chow will have to garner substantial numbers of votes from Scarborough, which overwhelmingly supports Ford's subway proposal, as well as the mayor's home base of Etobicoke, and from the suburban voters of North York among whom Ford performed extremely well in the 2010 election.

Unfortunately for Ms Chow, every time she opens her mouth, by introducing Torontonians to her many deficiencies, she reduces the chances of her success that much more.

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.

Olivia Chow wants to take back Toronto for the NDP

Sue-Ann Levy:

...[Olivia Chow] was forced to resign from the police services board for her lack of judgement.

The woman who purports to be a good role model for children also endorsed a move by OCAP in 2005 to urge the poor to flout welfare rules and seek a special $250-a-month diet benefit, to which most were not entitled.

Last Thursday, she claimed that as mayor she’d know how to make every penny count and has the “strength to say no to spending” that isn’t smart or responsible. .. 

..Tory MPP Doug Holyday, who served on city council with Chow, said she was part of a group who never saw a tax dollar they didn’t want to spend...

...According to media reports from back then, Layton and Chow — purported champions of the homeless and the poor — were living in an $800-month three-bedroom apartment in a heavily subsidized co-op, while making jointly $120,000 a year (one-third of which was tax-free).

The city would have given away land for free to build the co-op and about 30% of the units would have been offered to low-income people with subsidies.

While Layton and Chow were not in one of those units, it was only in the final few months before they moved out — largely due to public pressure — that Layton coughed up an extra $325 a month to try to bring their rent up closer to the true market value of their unit.

In her book, My Journey, Chow explained that they actually had two apartments in the same building. When they married in 1988, Chow moved into Layton’s two-bedroom, leaving her mom in the one-bedroom downstairs, she wrote.

She also said Layton paid $1,200 in monthly market rent for his 10th-floor apartment and that a “self-appointed lynch mob” sought to destroy their safe haven.

In September of 1998, then-municipal affairs minister Al Leach told an estimates committee, during questions on the Layton/Chow co-op affair, that the cost to operate each unit was $1,200 per month and anyone claiming $900 was market value still received a “subsidy from Ontario taxpayers"...

More HERE

The Shorter Coren on Chow: She's neither smart nor competent and she'll waste piles of tax dollars on her hateful special interest buddies

Can't say I disagree with one word of this:

)

More on Olivia Chow and her trustworthiness HERE

Look who's backing Olivia Chow for mayor

Guess who's backing Olivia Chow's as mayor of Toronto? The Muslim Prof who expelled a non-Muslim from her class! pic.twitter.com/2HeHJ65GKr
— Tarek Fatah (@TarekFatah) February 12, 2014

Olivia will have the Islamist vote wrapped up if she's foolish enough to give up her job as MP to take the risk of running for mayor of Toronto. Or maybe not, if she shares her position on Gay Rights with them. It will be one of those "unspoken" matters that the far left like to rely on as they sell out western values to try to buy power.

Below she is attending a demonstration with Khomeinist hatemonger Zafar Bangash:

Olivia Chow wants to be your kids' role model

Chow demonstrating with Islamist hatemonger and antisemitic al Quds Day organizer Zafar Bangash

NDP MP Olivia Chow has been making the rounds pushing her memoirs and in an effort to boost sales, is coyly hinting about her widely presumed entry into Toronto's 2014 mayoral race.

Part of the purpose of Chow's tedious exercise in narcissism, titled My Journey, is to whitewash her past with some revisionist history.

As The Globe and Mail reports:  

Ms. Chow also tries to clear the air on the accusations that she and Mr. Layton lived in subsidized units when they both had apartments in a downtown Toronto co-op housing building before and after they were married.

“Both Jack and I paid full market rent for our apartments,” she writes, later adding, “The self-appointed lynch mob sought to destroy the safe haven Jack and I sought not just for our family but for the community. To this day, the slander is repeated by people who mistakenly believed it at the time – as well as by opponents who know better.”

Since Ms Chow is claiming it's "slander" to accuse her and her husband, who were making a combined annual income of almost $150,000 of exploiting taxpayers and abusing their position by helping themselves to subsidized housing, then she may want to take issue with the official record of the Legislature of Ontario.

According to Hansard (the Legislature's official transcripts), a 1998 exchange between Provincial Housing Minister Al Leach and MPP's Rosario Marchese, Terence Young, and John Gerretsen went as follows:

Mr Young: In New York City today, I'm sure you're aware, Minister -- I don't know if the committee members are aware -- there are rental control units occupied by wealthy movie stars, $2,000 a month or whatever. We've seen a situation here where two Toronto councillors with the combined income of I think over $130,000 to $140,000 a year were both living in government-assisted housing. How do we prevent wealthy people from living in housing subsidized by their fellow taxpayers and just get money to the people who have the need?

Mr Marchese: They were paying market value, Terry.

Mr Gerretsen: Those people were paying market value.

Hon Mr Leach: I'm aware of the councillors in question. I understand that they are no longer living there but they were paying market value. But as I pointed out earlier, the market value that was charged to a co-op was about $900 a month where the actual cost of operating the unit was $1,200 a month, so that people who claimed that they were paying market value were still getting a substantial subsidy from the taxpayers of Ontario. There is no doubt about that whatsoever. I believe that the individuals you are talking about, who will go nameless, are no longer in that circumstance.

Mr Marchese: Would that be Jack Layton and Olivia Chow?

Hon Mr Leach: I think if you look around the city of Toronto council, you might find that there are still a couple who are living in co-op housing units.

Mr Marchese: I used to live in one too.

Hon Mr Leach: It's a good concept as long as you pay your full share. If you want to pay $1,200 a month, which is the actual operating cost, be my guest, but don't live in a co-op saying you're paying market rent of $900 when it costs $1,200 to operate and you're getting a subsidy of $300 from the taxpayers of Ontario.

When asked about Toronto's current mayor, Chow's pat line, which she has repeated in a number of interviews, is that she doesn't 'think Rob Ford is a very good role model for the kids.'

Oh. So is that what we elect our mayors to do, be role models for 8 year olds?

Actually, 'a role model for the kids'  isn't a consideration when I cast a vote. I want a politician who tries to keep election promises and takes the use of public expenditures and the wishes of constituents very seriously. As long as he or she is doing a good job representing my interests, as far as a politician's personal life goes, as the expression goes, I couldn't give a toss.

If being a role model is the case, then one could as easily question the value of the leadership of a dopey pothead who only got his job because he has a famous last name. Or that of a pompous liar who frequented hand job parlors.

Ms Chow's repeated criticism of Ford's adequacy as a role model suggests she thinks that she would make a suitable substitute in that department.

There probably aren't a lot of people who would want someone for a role model who is a rich person who shrilly accuses people of "slander" for calling her out for milking taxpayers for $300 a month.

For that matter, I'm not sure how someone who has spent almost all her adult life in the public trough as a professional politician, with no notable political achievement to her name other than being the junior partner in a political marriage, qualifies as a role model. But you wouldn't know that from the way the liberal media fawns over Ms. Chow.

While they were both MP's Jack Layton and Olivia Chow could be described as Mr. & Mrs. Gravy Train. The pair of them charged over $1.1 million per year to Canadian taxpayers in expenses alone so they could maintain their lavish lifestyle.

Rob Ford has voluntarily returned his salary increases back to the City each year and cut his own office budget and expenses. Considering that, Olivia Chow may want to stop using her "role model" line, because upon closer examination, compared to Rob Ford, she may not do too well in that area either.

h/t Sanwin

How would Toronto's media react to THIS Rob Ford scenario?

The frustration is unspeakable!

The antics of Rob Ford are so infuriatingly embarrassing that they taint every single citizen of Toronto with a cloud of shame. At least that is the inescapable impression one gets from reading The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Now Magazine and a variety of other self-obsessed media orifices is the world's most world-classiest city.

If the media is any reflection of popular will, Ford has made being a Torontonian in 2014 so overwhelmingly humiliating, it is mind-boggling that Ontario's entire capitol city hasn't filled up an armada of U-Hauls and embarked on a mass exodus to more progressive pastures, such as in the enlightened Pacific metropolis of Vancouver.

Still, Ford seems to enjoy unassailable popularity with a subhuman class of citizen known by the sobriquet Ford Nation. But the cultivated people who comprise the rest of the city understand the damage caused by the daily assault on the self-esteem of the thinking Torontonian as a result of being vicariously associated with Rob Ford.

Toronto's media nabobs have assumed a near-unified voice that was best expressed by an outraged protester at a City Hall demonstration, her pain reflected in her sour,  prune-faced declaration:

"The world is talking about us, they're laughing at us, and they're finding it to be very funny!"

Remember, that is a bad thing! A very bad thing!

Ford has used cocaine, he has been drunk in public, and yet his support remains rock-solid. But what if Ford was to do something far worse than any of these past transgressions?

What if Ford were to be involved in the type of scandal where he was caught in a brothel, perhaps of the type that exploited poor, immigrant women, turning them into virtual sex slaves?

Imagine Rob Ford being caught by police naked in such a place. Then, with a prostitute leaving his rented cubicle holding a kleenex freshly damp from Ford's venereal excretion, he lied to a police officer and claimed he was just getting a "shiatsu."

Then imagine if higher-ups in the police department colluded to keep the matter a secret.

A "community clinic." Seriously?

Of course, though we're used to Ford lying, what an insult to the intelligence of every one of his constituents it would be, if when caught, he tried to excuse himself with the laughably implausible claim that he mistook a place that any teenager would recognize as a hand-job parlor for a "community clinic."

Surely then, all of Canada's media would be clamoring for Ford's head and the public along with them?

Let's take this scenario another step. What if this denizen of sleazy, disease-ridden bordellos were to contract a "mystery illness" which he and his family refused to disclose? Were Rob Ford to tragically die from a malady of that nature, there would be no end to the media speculation of the nature of the illness,  how he came by it, and why it was being kept a secret.

Or take it just one more unlikely step further. What if Rob Ford's wife, who has no real noteworthy political accomplishment to her name, and who is a dismal public speaker with no real achievement in life other than being the wife of a famous person, was then practically dragooned into running for mayor?

No doubt the media would be united in reviling such a candidacy, wouldn't they?

Naturally, this is all just fantasizing. Nothing so far-fetched could happen in real life, could it?

A dramatic reading of Olivia Chow's self-aggrandizing tripe

  

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.

Captain eHealth endorses the Velvet Touch Widow

Two people who have one thing in common -  their joy in wasting your tax dollars

Funny how Olivia Chow isn't embarrassed about being associated with this drug addict

The real "shame and embarrassment" of being a Torontonian

Olivia Chow, a Member of Parliament for a downtown Toronto riding and a presumed candidate for the position of mayor in the city's next election, spoke recently of the "embarrassment" that Rob Ford had brought upon her by his antics. "We are being embarrassed" she professed at a recent media scrum. This is the same Olivia Chow who is the widow of Jack Layton, who led the New Democratic Party from 2003 until his death, and about whom it was revealed that during their marriage he was caught by police in a dingy Chinatown brothel after receiving a hand-job (at the least) from a hooker.

I don't recall Ms Chow professing her embarrassment about that, just as she did not proclaim her "shame" about being exposed for taking advantage of subsidized housing while she and her husband were making a combined six-figure salary.

But because of the current Toronto mayor's occasional drug use and his intemperate remarks, now, finally, Olivia Chow has come to learn what it is to be humiliated.

If you say so, Olivia...

Toronto Ward 21 Councillor "Fiasco" Joe Mihevc sent out an email to his constituents a couple of weeks ago in which he bemoaned "the shame and embarrassment Mayor Ford has brought upon us."

The very same Mihevic whose advocacy for, and bumbling oversight of an unnecessary dedicated streetcar lane along St. Clair Avenue in Toronto became the exemplar of how not to do a civics project. Disruption from the lengthy construction, which went more than twice the planned time at almost three times the cost to taxpayers, caused some local businesses to go bust. The resulting lane divided the neighborhood, created a nightmare of traffic congestion, made a number of intersections death-traps for pedestrians, and resulted in only a minimal reduction in travel time for public transit patrons.

I haven't been able to locate any expression of "shame and embarrassment" for his role in causing that fiasco. Last time I checked, Mihevc was still praising himself in the face of his incompetence.

But now, because of Rob Ford, a man for whom Mihevc has frequently and very publicly expressed his detestation, suddenly, a grotesque, enormous blot of shame has enshrouded "Fiasco" Joe.

A couple of days ago, I had a long conversation with an old friend in Los Angeles who is a film producer who has worked with people such as Steven Spielberg and Michael Mann. He asked me about Toronto and rather than shame, there was quite a bit of laughter in recounting the recent goings-on in my city's municipal politics.

One thing that did seem to surprise him was the increase in support for Ford since his confirmation of having smoked crack cocaine. It's easy to understand how someone not familiar with Toronto politics would find that unusual, and to explain that, I had to describe the Rob Ford phenomenon.

Despite the obvious problematic components, Rob Ford, at least in his role as a public servant and politician, is completely forthright, which places him in stark contrast with his opponents. He may tell stupid lies about his personal behavior, but when he says he wants to do something in the political arena, you know he means it and isn't saying it just for public consumption as is so often the case with his rivals. Ford may me prone to bizarre outbursts, but he is genuinely passionate about his concern for the average citizen.

After years of the city's being run by a wasteful nanny-statist, Ford was in large measure a reaction to the paternalism and deceit coming from our city's "mainstream" politicians.

Conrad Black put it well earlier in the week in an editorial for the National Post when he wrote that the people who support Ford "are not scandalized by obesity, occasional cocaine use, occasional drunkenness, or the odd whirl at the wheel of a car when a breathalyzer, if applied, could be problematical. They are, however, scandalized by rank hypocrisy from mouthy journalists and gimcrack municipal politicians, and by the confected and inflated sanctimony of prigs and twits."

Ford`s supporters are frequently portrayed by some of the stupider pundits and political prognosticators as only being concerned with keeping taxes down. If that were the case, then that fails to explain why Ford`s support held firm despite the need for a tax increase to help pay for a much-needed subway expansion in Scarborough. What those ideological enemies of Ford fail to grasp is that the mayor`s support is not based from people who hate taxes, but those who hate seeing taxes used wastefully, as they are so often by Toronto politicians who want to double as social engineers.

Last week, in what some have described as a palace coup, Toronto`s City Council stripped Ford of most of his mayoral authority, even though the excuse was little more than that they dislike and claim to be embarrassed by him. Ford has neither been charged with nor convicted of a crime while in office.

Then, as if on cue, only a couple of days later, the idiots on City Council started talking about imposing a property tax increase well above the limit Ford would have ever proposed. The backlash was swift and immediate. Ford`s opponents fell right into his hands, playing to his strength as a champion of taxpayers and his narrative that the rebellion was motivated entirely by ideology.

Ford is now rising even more in the polls, with him being favored more than any other candidate to be best qualified to manage Toronto`s budget.

Explaining Ford`s rise in popularity to my LA friend, I said, given the pathetic alternatives we have among municipal politicians here, the idea of a guy who takes the occasional puff of crack and goes on weird drunken tirades is still a lot more attractive than anyone else we have on offer.

"Wow," he replied, "things must be really bad there."

It was then that I felt a tinge of embarrassment. "Yeah," I said back, "they are."

Plus : No comment on this

Snortin' coke, smokin' pot, pounding vodka and hangin' with hookers - and he's still a better mayor than Olivia Chow would be

Now I'm really starting to admire Rob Ford - he's a party animal and still doing a fine job running a major city.

Click HERE to buy your Vote for Rob Ford t-shirt

Be careful walking around One Yonge Street - You may slip on goo from Toronto Star staff's exploded heads

Mayor Ford’s approval rating up from May

TORONTO – A new poll has found support for Mayor Rob Ford is on the rise, despite the allegations of drug use that surfaced more than a month ago.

According to a Forum Research poll conducted for the Toronto Sun, Ford’s approval rating is at 47 per cent — up from 42 per cent in May.

The president of Forum Research said the approval rating isn’t surprising now that the alleged drug video allegations have died down and Ford is focusing on issues at city hall.

More HERE

NDP and Union-linked groups aid the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is a federal agency which, in the words of its mission statement is "dedicated to the protection of Canada's national security interests and the safety of Canadians." Like any other branch of government, it's not perfect, but their goal is to serve Canada and to foil its enemies, so who would say that Canadians should not cooperate with it under any circumstances?

Operation Maple at Occupy Toronto

The obvious answer is: Canada's enemies and those working in tandem with them.

The first time I heard of group called "Operation Maple" was when I encountered its representative among the angry radicals and mentally-ill street folk that comprised the disorganized, cult-like, public service union-financed Occupy Toronto campground a year and a half ago.

The Operation Maple representative, dressed in an astronaut costume, was one of a slew of self-promoting weirdos who appeared at the outdoor loon-fest. So despite looking like a finalist in a Halloween costume contest, he blended in perfectly with his surroundings.

But rather than a one-off, Operation Maple, like Occupy Toronto's initial incarnation that has since crumbled,  turns out to be a well-financed, partisan, NDP and union-linked astroturf (fake grass roots) effort designed to promote a disturbing agenda. That includes demonizing politicians who aren't on the far left, and bizarrely, to act as promoters for fanatics allied with Canada's enemies in the terror-sponsoring regime in Iran.

NDP MP Olivia Chow palling it up
with Operation Maple spokesman

Operation Maple's website lets visitors know they are the same people behind a film called "Poor no More" which stars CBC comedienne Mary Walsh. The film is an unabashed polemic promoting union interests.  Mary Walsh may be far from the peak of her career, but renting her costs more money than the typical grass roots group has at its disposal. Still, her fee would be insignificant to the affluent Public Service and other unions.

More ominously, a recent Operation Maple video devoted to paranoid ravings about "criminalizing dissent" in Canada, that doesn't actually delineate how in any way dissent has been criminalized, features a creepy Hamilton, Ontario activist by the name of Ken Stone.

Olivia Chow stands shoulder-to-shoulder
with Khomeinist hatemonger Zafar Bangash

If all you had to go by was the information provided by Operation Maple's paranoid Scott Garland, this time sans spaceman outfit, one could easily draw the conclusion that CSIS agents arrived unannounced at Stone's home to intimidate him simply because he is an activist who dissents from government policy.

Bolstered by Stone's self-serving account, it seems these agents of the Canadian police state approached him merely because he wrote an editorial proposing Canada soften its stance towards the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ken Stone at Zaraf Bangash's
Khomeinist al Quds Day rally

The truth, however, is substantially different than Operation Maple's version of things.

It was not because of criticism of the Harper government in Stone's asinine editorial in The Hamilton Spectator that instigated an inquiry from CSIS. It was that combined with the fact that he went to Iran as a paid guest of the world's leading state-sponsor of terrorism.

Back in Canada, Stone continues to serve the interests of the dictatorship of Iran's brutal mullahs. He has done radio interviews to try to promote the homicidal dictatorship of Bashar al Assad in Syria, one of Iran's few regional allies.

Iran has tried to influence radical groups in Canada.  It is little wonder that Ken Stone has also tried to infuse himself in that Native movement, which is being courted by Stone's allies in Iran.

Operation Maple's anti-CSIS video
promotes pro-Iran Ken Stone

Interestingly, in the Operation Maple video, Stone describes receiving a phone call from someone he describes as an "Imam in Toronto." What Stone fails to mention in the video but has noted elsewhere is that the Imam was none other than the notorious Khomeinist hatemonger, Zafar Bangash.

Bangash is a racist fanatic who has delivered anti-Semitic threats in Canada on behalf of the Iranian Mullahs

Operation Maple's  recommended links are almost identical to those affiliated with rabble.ca, a website published by the spouse of NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies. They include the NDP think tank The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the radical, anti-globalization and anti-Israel group, the Council of Canadians, Public Service Unions like OPSEU, and other organizations on the hard left that have expressed positions that were soft on Iran's apocalyptic, misogynistic dictatorship.

Take back Canada for whom? ...Iran?

Hamilton radical Ken Stone has resembled a clownish parody of far-left activism dating back to the 1960's. According to the Toronto Star, when accepting his Bachelor's Degree at the University of Toronto, Stone  "ripped his diploma in two." Then, " "Fellow niggers" the 21-year-old shouted in front of other University of Toronto graduates, professors and his uncomprehending parents. "Look what Mr. Charlie's done to your minds." (Mr. Charlie was a disparaging reference to white people.)."

CSIS is charged with defending the interests of democracy in Canada, while people siding with dictatorships like Iran and Syria pretend they are democracy's champions. It doesn't take much to figure who, between them,  is more credible. For some time, radical groups have been utilized, sometimes wittingly and sometimes not, by foreign nations hostile to the west.

Operation Maple and radicals like Ken Stone may appear too ridiculous to take seriously. But  the implications of powerful public unions, Native movements and even Canada's Official Opposition being utilized by Canada's enemies in Iran is something that we disregard at our own peril.

CBC comedienne Mary Walsh fronting for the anti-CSIS people's film.

Hell has frozen over: al Starzeera publishes a pro-Rob Ford editorial

Now that their Rob Ford video was eaten by the Loch Ness Monster and their best efforts to get rid of Ford have only resulted in half of Toronto being convinced that The Star is made up of pathological liars, they may have finally recognized the writing on the wall.

But I doubt it will last.

Since 2010, a common cry from some of my anti-Ford friends has been, “It’s not my Toronto, anymore!” Sure it is. When Miller was mayor I never thought it wasn’t “my Toronto.” I just thought it was my Toronto run by a grandstanding incompetent. 

And this is what those who want Ford gone have never understood: their inability to admit that Miller was a disaster and that Smitherman or Chow would be more of the same.

h/t  The Hammer

Toronto Star trying to push Olivia Chow into mayoralty race

An interesting aspect of the polling done for the Toronto Star concedes that, “..Ford Nation seems to be a pretty loyal group of supporters. Unless the issue deals directly with the performance of his duties, these things don’t seem to impact his popularity,” Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff said in an interview..Rob Ford is really both the Teflon and Kevlar Mayor – nothing sticks to him and nothing penetrates his armour.”

The Star report polls that the wife of late NDP leader Jack Layton would beat Ford if an election were held today with 56% of the vote.

However no campaign has begun and Olivia Chow is an incredibly vulnerable candidate outside of the downtown core that forms the basis of her support. Her speaking style is stilted and cold and her NDP-style policies would result in skyrocketing taxes and unions resuming their stranglehold on City Hall.

An informal poll of Ford supporters suggest they welcome the opportunity to face Chow and offer the voters of Toronto the choice between a fiscal conservative who has made huge strides in getting the city's fiscal house in order and an irresponsible spendthrift known for little else than being the widow of a famous politician.

The NDP wants to give you a big tax deduction for paying off Brian Topp's debt

Jack Layton's unsuccessful designee to the mantle of federal NDP boss spent a lot of money and incurred a lot of debt in his failed leadership campaign.  Brain Topp was one of the old Gang of Four, the unofficial policy brain trust (if one can use that expression referring to our federal socialist party) along with Layton's wife, Trinity Spadina MP Olivia Chow and the aged, cranky sage of the west , Ed Broadbent. It was that committee who crafted Layton`s `deathbed letter`of inane platitudes that has become some sort of Sermon on the Mount to the sub-par intellects of the left.

As both a gesture of party solidarity and as a means of solidifying his control at the top, Official Opposition leader `Tin Foil` Tom Mulcair is joining Chow and Topp at a fundraiser to help pay off his former rival`s campaign debt.  According to the NDP email,  `all proceeds will be donated to retire Brian Topp`s campaign loan - part of our party`s commitment to clear the deck and then focus on the next federal election so together we can defeat Stephen Harper.``

The laws around campaign debt are murky and confusing in Canada. Even so, the NDP`s offer of a generous tax credit for paying off Brian Topp`s bills sounds pretty hypocritical. The so-called Next Step Dinner has tables which can be purchased for $1000 and taking money out of the tax base to benefit a party that wants higher taxes and more public spending. If you want Peking Duck dressed with a sour sauce of resentment and a stale fortune cookie predicting years of unwarranted entitlements, then this is the dinner for you.