Setting The Record Straight About Doug Ford

As Ontario nears its next provincial election, the political establishment is working itself into a panicked frenzy.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Liberal Party are so unpopular that it seems a near certainty that she'll lose on June 7, and will be replaced by the Progressive Conservative Party headed by Doug Ford.

Both Doug and his late brother Rob were the subjects of unprecedented media attacks while they served as elected officials in Toronto, Rob as mayor and Doug as a City Councillor and his brother's right hand man. Those attacks involved media stalking the Fords, inventing lies about them, and writing columns so histrionic that they did more damage to the credibility of the news outlets which published them than they did to Doug and Rob. The main motivation behind the attacks was that the Fords were populists committed to serving the actual public and not the city's well-heeled establishment and the special interest groups with which they work hand-in-glove.

Doug himself has been accused of being part of the 'elites' he decries. Indeed Doug Ford does come from an affluent family, but it was recent, self-made wealth by Doug Ford Sr. The Fords were never part of Toronto's established Old Boys Network. The business that Doug Sr started was built up to a huge, transnational success by Doug, who established a branch in Chicago as well as the home base in Etobicoke that is one of the continent's major label manufacturers.

I've come to know Doug pretty well in the last few months and I've come to consider him a friend. He's spent time at my home and we've had long talks about political philosophy, the direction Ontario, Toronto, and the country has been and is heading, the role of media, and all sorts of topics.

The establishment is worried to the extent that they're pulling out all the stops and spreading every lie they can think of to slander Doug before election day. And hearing those lies being told about a friend is somewhat upsetting, so I think it's time to set the record straight on a few of them.

An astroturf group which implausibly denies links to Kathleen Wynne's Liberal Party has been dishonestly implying, and in cases outright lying, about Doug being antisemitic and homophobic.

These are blantanty false accusations which are the opposite of the truth.

One incident, which I only recently recalled, is a particular example of how Doug went out of his way to fight antisemitism in Toronto when almost all of his then-City Council colleagues were too cowardly to do anything about it.

A few years ago, back in 2011, I was in contact with Rob Ford's office about the proposed use of city property to host an antisemitc hate fest known as Al Quds Day.  That annual event was created by Iran's despotic, homicidal Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to promote the genocide of Israel's Jews. These al Quds Day rallies routinely feature calls to violence against civilians and expressions of antisemtic hatred.

While most of City Council sat on their thumbs in fear of offending the Islamists behind Toronto's al Quds Day, Doug stepped up to the plate without a moment's hesitation. Fighting the City's bureaucracy, which contains a few unsavory, pro-Islamist people who are armed with a spool of red tape big enough to color the CN Tower crimson from top to bottom, Doug nonetheless did all he could to have the al Quds Day fanatics prevented from using a taxpayer-supported facility to spew their hate.

In the end, because of opposition by some of the entrenched, NDP-linked bureaucracy at City Hall, Doug was unsuccessful at getting the al Quds Day event removed from the City facility, but much to the Islamists' chagrin, had Toronto Police send an officer from the Hate Crimes Unit to monitor their malevolent jamboree, which forced them to moderate from their usual vicious bile.

Doug stood up for the Jews when the so-called 'progressives' at City Hall enabled or cowered in silence in the face of antisemitism.

As to Doug's supposed homophobia, the 'proof' offered by an asinine propaganda website operated by anonymous trolls relates to the complete distortion of something Doug said about an incident that occurred when a few protesters crashed a Ford Fest, a  big, multicultural barbecue put on by the Ford family every year. One of the anti-Ford protesters carried a sign upon which was printed '#1 Ford Hater." A couple of the protesters were wearing rainbow flags. The anti-Ford protesters were confronted by some Ford supporters and among the back and forth, regrettably, there were some anti-gay comments made by a couple of people.

In the aftermath of the kerfuffle at Ford Fest, Doug, who said and did nothing homophobic, and who was not in the altercation, nonetheless apologized for what those few Ford supporters did to the protester. He also reasonably noted that if people go to an event, even a sporting event, for the purpose of taunting people as the protesters did, the result, far from being surprising, is more likely exactly the attention the protesters wanted.

At the time, Doug observed, "you can't show up at a Yankees game with a Red Sox hat on" or in that instance, it's absurd to come to a Ford party for the purpose of trashing the Fords, and expect no trouble. That's just obvious logic. Characterizing that as homophobia by Doug, as the anonymous trolls at notdoug.com attempt, is a sleazy lie, just as disseminating sleazy lies and intentionally deceptive mischaracterizations is the purpose of that website.

As it happens, Doug has many friends in Toronto's gay community, has reached out to help them when they were in need, and had even donated $4000 of his own money to Toronto's Pride Festival. These are hardly the hallmarks of a homophobe.

From a long career in different aspects of media, including a major Hollywood production company which has won multiple Academy Awards, experience has taught me that the personalities of public figures as they present on TV are rarely precise representations of them in real life. But there are exceptions.

My friend Tarek Fatah is one who is very much in private the way he comes across in media, he's passionate, excitable, and deeply committed to the causes about which he speaks. Doug Ford is another case where the private and public person are basically the same.

The ways that the private Doug and the public one differ is that Doug's great sense of humor, his politeness, and the touch of shyness that is about him don't fully come across on TV. But the essence of the man is there and what you see with Ford is what you get. If he says something he means it, which contrasts with the politicians we're used to, and who spend more time trying to avoid telling us what they really think than they do in being straightforward. He's absolutely committed to doing good for his community and the people. Unlike just about every other politician I've ever met, Doug does most of that good without seeking publicity for it, taking satisfaction in having helped out the people who needed his assistance.

One of the reasons Doug is running for Premier which he and I have discussed is that he believes in the rights of individuals to be respected as individuals. The government takes money from us in the form of taxes, and taxpayers have a right to expect government to be accountable to them and treat them fairly. We have a right to be treated as individuals, not members of a collective.

The Liberals cynically play the identity politics game pitting communities against each other while completely disregarding individuality or accountability. That was in plain display recently when Kathleen Wynne spoke about telling young voters that they have to vote to prevent old white people from deciding elections.

Compare that with Doug, who in explaining why he opposed al Quds Day fanatics from using City property to demonize Israel's Jews said he doesn't "believe city facilities should be used by one community to denounce another."

There's a stark choice in this election. Continuing with Kathleen Wynne's disastrous fiscal policies and cynically divisive Identity Politics from a Liberal government that believes it should be able to control every aspect of the lives of Ontarians. Under her administration, the overriding philosophy is that the people should be accountable to government.

Alternately, we have Doug Ford, who respects individual rights, and who believes that government's role is to protect people's freedom, and not to take it away from them. Doug will make sure government is fully accountable to the people, respects all of us, and will ensure that public servants are there to serve the public, not the other way round.

Take the chance to meet Doug if you can in this time leading up to June 7th. The real Doug Ford is not the person that most of the establishment media portrays. He's a good, decent, compassionate man and he will be a great, much needed Premier for Ontario.

Takeaways From Last Night's Presidential Debate

A surreal moment from last night's Presidential debate was the point when Hillary Clinton started giving a lecture about how she would improve America's cyber security. The same Hillary Clinton whose cavalier mishandling of classified information would have landed anyone who isn't named Clinton in jail. It was like getting a lesson in how to slim down and look sexy from Lena Dunham.

The bar was unusually low for both candidates' path to success, but for Trump, it was a hurdle that a Chihuahua could leap. All the real estate developer needed to do was to demonstrate that he wasn't insane and could behave reasonably. To accomplish that, he showed uncharacteristic restraint, disappointing the expectations of those who wanted fireworks, but for the most part, it was pulled off successfully.

Hillary's bar was something most people could manage, but for her, is something she's never been able to surmount for the last quarter-century of her public life. She had to convince people she is likable and not a pathological lair. Her smug smile and reminders about her email scandal, and her testimony to Congress after her lies about the Bengazi massacre, did nothing to convince anyone that the Hillary Clinton Americans saw last night isn't the same Hillary Clinton they've seen since Bill Clinton first ran for the presidency.

Everything Hillary said had a subliminal boomerang effect that made it come back and hurt her if anyone bothered to think about it. She criticized Trump for, while as a private citizen, expressing equivocal support for the Iraq War that she voted in favor of when she was a serving US Senator. She criticized Trump's insults of women while she was an enabler to a husband who is subject to rape accusations that are beginning to rival in numbers those of Bill Cosby.  Anyone who watched the Republican primary debates and heard what he said about his male rivals knows that Trump can at least lay claim to being an equal opportunity insulter.

With regard to insults, though Trump has a reputation as being rude and bombastic, it was Clinton who threw vicious insults at Trump, calling him a racist and sexist. Clinton claimed that Trump's 'birther' questioning of President Obama's birthplace was racist. That only makes Clinton look more dishonest, unless she's suggesting that Trump's almost identical challenge of his Republican primary rival Ted Cruz means he's racist against Canadians. And as Trump reminded viewers, it was Hillary Clinton's campaign that started much of the 'birther' controversy by sending out a picture of Obama in traditional Muslim garb and questioning his 'American roots' during the 2008 Democratic primaries.

Clinton, on the other hand, will pander to every special interest laying claim to victimhood. Or she will during the election campaign. Once it's over, were she to win, she'd forget them the same way that Democrats have forgotten dilapidated Chicago neighborhoods they represent that are beset with gun violence despite being subject to some of the strictest gun control laws in the US.

Trump made some missteps during the debate, such as when he took the bait to respond in excessive detail when Clinton suggested his net worth was less than he claimed. But on the whole Trump was the more human, the more genuine, and the more commanding of the two.

Partisans on both sides are claiming victory, but what's interesting to note is that partisans on both sides are also complaining about how their candidate lost. For the most part, the consensus is that Trump and Clinton essentially tied, or if one outperformed the other, it was by a slim margin.

However this was the first of three debates, and that bodes badly for Hillary Clinton. In twenty five years of public life, she has shown little in the way of a learning curve. Trump's ability to change through the Republican primaries, the presidential campaign, and now the first debate shows that he has a strong ability to adapt when necessary.  Trump is also a showman, and in show business, you know that you need to open well, but what's most important is to end the act with a strong closing scene.

With two debates to come, Trump is more likely than Clinton to provide the big debate finish that will end the political career of his opponent.

“Don’t you someday want to see a woman president of the USA?”

The Toronto Taxpayers Coalition's election guide is out!

I'm running for Public School trustee in Toronto's Trinity-Spadina ward.

"Richard Klagsbrun’s answers were very specific and addressed all issues, and he proposed unique and detailed solutions such as analyzing the value of TDSB conferences and alternative schools, forensic audits of expenses, and contracting out some services while still giving careful thought to the issue of students with special needs."

You can read about some of my policy proposals HERE

Want details on Toronto trustees' expenses? That will cost $3,300

The disgraceful lack of transparency at the Toronto District School Board intimated by this Toronto Star article is one of the many reasons why I'm running for Public School trustee in Trinity-Spadina.

Want to know exactly what Toronto trustees have charged taxpayers for since the 2010 election? Getting that information will cost you $3,300.

That’s the amount the Star was quoted after filing a freedom-of-information request to the Toronto District School Board for the expenses, including receipts, of the 22 elected officials.

eBay/Participant Media's Jeff Skoll endorses Toronto School Board Candidate Richard Klagsbrun

Participant Media's Jeff Skoll

TORONTO, Sept 16,2014 /CNW/ - World-famous Canadian philanthropist, entrepreneur, and Hollywood movie producer Jeff Skoll has done something unprecedented for him this week. The eBay innovator who was both its first employee and first president, took a public position in Toronto politics by endorsing Richard Klagsbrun for Public School Trustee in Toronto's Trinity-Spadina district.

Skoll's eponymous Skoll Foundation is one of the premier catalysts for Social Entrepreneurship in the world and his Skoll Scholarship program has awarded millions in education grants. Among Skoll Foundation awardees is Sal Khan'sKhan Academy, whose highly effective methods Klagsbrun has proposed utilizing to a greater extent in the Toronto District School Board.

Said Skoll, "I have personally worked with educators in both Canada and the US at a systems level.  Amongst other partners in education, the Skoll Foundation has been a long-time supporter of Free the Children in Canada and the US and as such we have had great visibility into both country's systems.  While the Canadian system in many respects is superior to that of the US, both systems suffer from bureaucratic logjams.  It takes someone like Richard Klagsbrun, who is passionate, knowledgeable and fearless, to break these logjams and help our kids get the best possible education to prepare them for the modern world."

Klagsbrun was one of the first employees at Skoll's Participant Productions, where as a Strategic Planning and Creative Executive, he helped formulate the organization's unique model of tying social action campaigns to the company's films in partnership with legislators and social action groups.  That model is considered one of the main reasons of the tremendous success of Participant's Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

A writer and consultant who has been a fierce critic of the decline in standards in public education, particularly inToronto, Klagsbrun has been featured in national publications and as a television commentator.  He also served for a year as co-Chair of the School Council at Central Technical School, the largest school in Trinity-Spadina.

"We need a complete overhaul of the way education is delivered in Toronto's public schools, where our kids are becoming victims of a politicized curriculum,"  said Klagsbrun. "The current political establishment will only make things worse. The NDP is trying to impose a candidate on Trinity-Spadina who represents deplorable aspects of identity politics. She was a speaker at a rally that supported the terror group Hezbollah and at a pro-Marxist conference, and according to the University of Toronto newspaper, The Varsity, as a U of T union official, colluded in a corrupt investigation of a crooked student election. The other ward candidates have offered nothing but meaningless platitudes. This election is an opportunity for Trinity-Spadina voters to choose between real change or the dismal status quo."

Among Klagsbrun's other endorsers are author and CFRB radio host Tarek Fatah,  Harvard University professor Aurel Braun, broadcaster Michael Coren, and Toronto FC Goalkeeper Chris Konopka.

Added Skoll, "I have known Richard Klagsbrun for over 20 years and he is thoroughly knowledgeable and passionate about public education and the need to improve it. Ward 10 couldn't hope to have a better representative at the TDSB.  As education standards are declining and the curriculum is becoming increasingly politicized, Toronto needs Richard, who will fight for the next generation's right to an education that provides them with the tools they will need to succeed."

SOURCE Campaign for Richard Klagsbrun

 For further information: The Campaign for Richard Klagsbrun at voltaire@hotmail.ca, Website: www.klagsbrun.ca

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.

No media bias here at all: anti-Ford protesters booed at Ford Fest, so CTV characterizes it as homophobia

Here's a shock. Ford Fest is the annual gathering where legions of Rob Ford's supporters come out to party with Toronto's most popular municipal politician. But it's no news that Ford has plenty of detractors too, and a handful of these bitter characters with nothing better going on in their lives decided to crash Ford Fest to heckle the Mayor. Today, some of those Ford-haters presented themselves as being from the LGBT community, and they came carrying insulting placards and shouting abuse at Ford.

It would seem pretty natural and predictable that party-poopers who turn up to crap on other people's fun would get booed and insulted. But Toronto's mainstream media has a hate-on for Rob Ford, so with glaring, unprofessional bias, CTV characterized the exchange between Ford's fans and foes as if it were an unprovoked outburst of homophobia from 'Ford Nation.'

"'Go home': LGBTQ members greeted by angry shouts at Ford Fest," screamed out the CTV headline.

Mitch Wolfe & friends at Ford Fest

Ford has been viciously depicted as a bigot in the media, but as local writer Mitch Wolfe observed, Ford's supporters at this year's Ford Fest, as has been the case in years past, were overwhelmingly comprised of people from Toronto's multi-racial, multi-ethnic communities.

That monkey wrench in the media narrative has Toronto's latte-sucking pseudo-intellectuals in a tizzy. There's a panic going on among the elites in our city now that despite his travails,  Ford is back on the scene, beating his rivals in debates and polling evenly with the other two top contenders.

Get ready for plenty of media histrionics about Ford in the weeks and months to come before the October municipal election.

An Eye on a Crazy Planet endorsement of Adam Vaughan in tomorrow's Trinity Spadina by-election

In elections, for the most part, we don't vote for who we want, we vote for who we can live with.

Of the three major political parties in Canada today, the Conservatives have, far and away, the best leadership. Our current government may get some things wrong, but measured against the radicals and incompetents in Tom Mulcair's NDP and the bumbling stupidity of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a superlative statesman and leader by comparison, and a good one by any standard in today's world.

Tomorrow, on Monday, June 30, a by-election is happening in Toronto's Trinity-Spadina riding. I know the riding very well, having been born in, grew up in and lived in it for 30 years and it's where my son currently goes to school.  In the early 1980's I was Vice President of the riding's Liberal Youth Association when Jim Coutts, who had been Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, unsuccessfully vied for Spadina's Parliamentary seat. The riding has an over-concentration of privileged, aged socialists on the public teat who think more taxes and government control are the solution to all life's problems along with a recent influx of shallow condo Yuppies.

The reality is that the Conservatives have absolutely no chance of winning Monday's Trinity-Spadina by-election. The last time a Conservative represented the area was 1970-72 when Perry Ryan, representing the old Spadina riding, switched parties from the Liberals.The riding, with its old and new boundaries, has changed hands between the Liberals and NDP since then and there's no indication that is likely to change any time soon.

The effective two person race is between former Toronto City Councillor Adam Vaughan, running for the Liberals and Joe Cressy, who was an aide to the NDP incumbent MP Olivia Chow, whose resignation to try to capture Toronto's mayoralty necessitated the by-election.

Given that choice, Adam Vaughan is clearly the superior candidate.

While there is much in the way of policy that I disagree about with Adam, and I think he is likely to be as partisan a parliamentarian for the Liberals as they come, there are also very compelling reasons to elect him.

In the first place, Adam is smart. There was a time when we used to take that for granted among those who held seats in the House of Commons, yet such is no longer the case, and the examples of that decline are too many to enumerate here. But perhaps the best example of the decline in intellectual standards among elected politicians is the leader of the Liberal party for which Vaughan is running.

It does seem paradoxical to condemn Justin Trudeau while in effect asking people to vote for him by extension in casting a vote to strengthen his party's position in parliament.There is, however, a logical explanation. Justin Trudeau may have below-average intelligence, but if intelligence is quantifiable, then that description applies to half the voting public.

I know a woman who plans to vote for Justin Trudeau for no reason other than she likes his hair and thinks he's cute. No, I'm not joking, and unfortunately, yes, she was serious.

Stupid people vote, and there's every possibility that enough stupid people will vote for Justin Trudeau to elect him as the next Prime Minister. If you don't believe that, remember that Kathleen Wynne's hopelessly inept, corrupt government just got a majority in Ontario.

So in the event that Trudeau were to lead the country, it's far better he be surrounded by bright people like Adam Vaughan and sitting MP Marc Garneau than some of the idiots who are currently in the Liberals' Parliamentary caucus.

There are many other qualities possessed by Adam to recommend him for the office he's seeking tomorrow. He has demonstrated during his years as a City Councilor that he doggedly researches and familiarizes himself with relevant policies and procedures affecting his duties. Adam is also very responsive to constituency needs. Compare that with say, Ontario's Minister of Education who signs off on a curriculum she hasn't even bothered to read and dismisses public concerns about its radical and detrimental effects.

Another thing recommending Adam to higher public office is that he is not corrupt. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of Toronto City Councilors about whom I'd say that with any measure of confidence and Adam Vaughan is one of them.

Vaughan's NDP opponent Joe Cressy doesn't have much in his favor to speak of. His party has two vacuous Deputy Leaders in the persons of Libby Davies and Megan Leslie and the NDP would run a ruinous economy if ever given the chance. Cressy himself, working for Olivia Chow, was serving a 57 year old person who has spent practically all of her adult life as a politician, yet has no notable achievement to speak of other than having married Jack Layton. So basically speaking, Cressy's resume is that he helped Olivia Chow suck up public finds for doing nothing, which isn't much of a recommendation for a Parliamentary seat.

For those who think Adam Vaughan is nothing but a stuffy old leftie, I've met him many times and he's personable and has a pretty decent sense of humor. And there's a story a good friend of mine relayed that may make Adam seem like more fun still.

This friend of mine was a drinking buddy of Adam's way back, before he was a City Councilor and even before he was a reporter for Toronto's CITY-TV. From what my friend told me, on occasion, when Adam was doing some power-drinking and knew he was on the path to getting sick, he would start to swallow the contents of vials of food coloring dye so that when he puked, it would be in rainbow colors.

Our nation's first, and many believe greatest Prime Minister was known for vomiting in public from drink, but never as impressively as with Adam Vaughan's rainbow barf.

And so tomorrow, when Trinity Spadina chooses its next MP, it strikes me that a smart guy who used to puke rainbows is a much better choice than the other guy, whose party would crush our national economy.

Rick McGinnis: Why I'd vote for Rob Ford again

“When Toronto voters chose Rob Ford to be their mayor on October 25, 2010, they knew full well they were electing a flawed man.” This is the sentence reporter Robyn Doolittle chose to begin the final, summary chapter of Crazy Town, her book on the rise and (apparent) fall of Toronto mayor Rob Ford, and to give her credit, it shows that she understands the people pejoratively dubbed “Ford Nation” better than many of her colleagues at either the Toronto Star – the paper where Doolittle made her reputation covering Ford – or the Globe & Mail, the paper that poached Doolittle just after Crazy Town hit the shelves. 

“Ford was,” Doolittle admits with candour rare among Canadian journalists, “the best candidate in the race. He ran the best campaign, he stayed on message, and he talked about issues people cared about.” This simple fact was almost impossible to explain to Ford’s opponents both before and after Ford’s 2010 victory. I know – I tried...

More HERE

In the "I told you so" file: 'Toxic' Marine Le Pen blamed for Geert Wilders defeat in Netherlands

France has its own special set of conditions, including a massive problem with its inability to integrate an ever-growing Muslim population, which has created enclaves around Paris in which even the police are afraid to enter.  The French government's inability to deal with that ongoing issue, and certain historical sympathies for ultra-conservative extremism in France has created a regrettable but understandable backlash resulting in the growing popularity of the reprehensible far-right in that country.

But not all of Europe is in the same condition as France and while the public is seeking a more prudent and conservative policy outlook, the racist far-right is not the solution that the public in places like the Netherlands want as an alternative. So as I predicted, Dutch Freedom Party's Geert Wilders' alliance with the racist National Front in France was a catastrophe for him and his political movement.

A disastrous European Union election vote for the Dutch far-Right has been blamed on a "toxic" Marine Le Pen and is seen as vindication of Nigel Farage's refusal to work with the French Front National.

The result is a blow to Miss Le Pen and will be widely seen as the consequence of her failure to break from the Front National's extremist past, a legacy embodied by her father Jean-Marie who remains an MEP and honorary president of the party.

His close alliance with Miss Le Pen is seen as the key factor in the unexpected defeat of Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party (PVV) on Thursday night after Dutch exit polls put him in fourth place behind all the pro-EU Dutch political parties.

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!

Jimmy Kimmel visits Ford Nation

Kimmel:  I'm saying I was so drunk, I don't know what happened"

Rob Ford: "I used that excuse one too many times myself"

Great Stuff!

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:

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More on Olivia Chow and her trustworthiness HERE

Survey says more Americans admire Rush Limbaugh than Hillary Clinton

 Rush Limbaugh laughed off the “shock and dismay” Monday from those who just can’t believe Americans “admire” him more than the presumptive 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The poll was conducted by YouGov.com, which ranked the top 10 “most admired” people according to the U.S. and twelve other countries. While Clinton just barely made the U.S. list at #10, Limbaugh came in just ahead of her at #9. Pope Francis I was at the top of the list, followed by President Barack Obama, Revered Billy Graham and former president George W. Bush. Besides Limbaugh, the only true media figure on the list was Oprah Winfrey at #6.

More at Mediaite.com

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.

Mitch Wolfe: Rob Ford Is Getting His Groove Back

This has been a good week for Rob Ford's campaign for re-election as Toronto's mayor in 2014.

Say what?

I can just see and hear those from the old media -- the Star, the Globe, the Post and the Sun -- spitting up their gluten-free almond milk all over their granola, down at their local Whole Foods store.

The consensus among the Toronto literati, intelligentsia, and Richard Florida's creative class, (who all apparently live within the Annex or cycling distance to the Annex) is that Ford has made Toronto into an international laughingstock.

...Ironically, a very well-respected CBC reporter Neil Macdonald, has come indirectly to Rob Ford's defence. He wrote in an article:

"But embarrassed? Us? As in 'Oh. My. God. He's turning us into a LAUGHINGSTOCK?'  Spare me.The only Canadians I know who actually think that are the Torontonians who never shut up about how cosmopolitan their city is."

Plus, from England's Daily Mail: Crack-smoking Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is more popular than Obama and U.S. Congress