Pat Condell: There's no racist like a liberal racist

I still find the term "progressive" in the way it's used preposterous. 

A world where "progressive" means totalitarian liar

I've been saying the same thing for a while now...

Toronto - the city where stupid leftists' self-esteem is tied to municipal politics

Does your sense of self-esteem fluctuate depending on whom is your municipal councilor or mayor?

Do you feel better or worse about yourself and your ability to hold your head high depending on whether you have a socialist or a conservative being called "Your Honor" at City Hall?

If the answer is no, then you're obviously not a "progressive" Torontonian.

It's a fascinating phenomenon that only affects one type of political class  I've heard it in conversations, seen it on facebook postings and the National Post's Chris Selley noted in a tweet that the Toronto Star's dunce columnist Christopher Hume is feeling personally humiliated because Rob Ford is the mayor of Toronto.

When the pompous, inept David Miller ruled Toronto for two previous terms and imposed a preposterous agenda while sending taxes skyrocketing, I don't remember a single conservative whining about how they were personally embarrassed. Have I missed something where socialist websites have been offering a discount on those online genealogy packages and a bunch of them have discovered they are related to Rob Ford though their bloodlines?

When David Miller utterly capitulated to civic employees unions after leaving the city with six weeks worth of stinking garbage piled high in the height of the summer, was anyone on the right ashamed to be a Torontonian because of him?  Again, a resounding nyet.

To understand this, one has to know a little about the "progressive" mindset. They are hopelessly insecure and see their entire value as human beings being based on what others think of them. By that extension, being in a city where a boisterous fiscal conservative won the last civic election by an enormous margin over all his rivals must come as a painful personal blow. It must be so shameful for them to have to explain that to their enlightened friends who live in places like Vancouver.

They must hang their heads low when they travel and go to diner parties with friends from other locales.  Sitting at tables with flowing chardonnay and Joan Baez' singing playing on the sound system to remind them of their youth, while their comrades can talk about how much progress they have made, the Toronto progressive must have to cower in shame. It must be incomprehensible for such a gathering to grasp how a modern Canadian city chose to be governed by someone who believes government shouldn't spend more than it can afford.

Clearly this sort of personal affront must have been caused by the progressives not being progressive enough. If only they had raised taxes even further, incurred more civic debt while doling out public funds to  any grievance-monger capable of filling out a form and found new laws to restrict personal liberties, more people would see things their way.

Oh, the sorrow and humiliation. And the worst part is, when they create a performance art interpretive dance piece to express their dismay, it might be a little harder to get that tax-funded arts grant so that a total of 14 people in an audience can experience their plight.

"Ford must go," declares Christopher Hume. bit.ly/TbBMje Replaces former slogan, "Ford won't win." thestar.com/news/gta/toron…
— Chris Selley (@cselley) November 19, 2012

An irrational hatred for a good mayor

At a dinner party I attended on the weekend in the west end of downtown Toronto, the composition of  guests couldn't have been more representative of what people would expect from that area of my home town. Virtually all of them white and middle or upper middle class, comprised of York University graduates, an OISE professor, single professionals and some parents who delayed having children until a point that would have put them in the age range of grandparents a couple of generations ago. And I; aside from whom, there was a uniform political outlook that night that is euphemistically referred to as progressive. 

I tend to avoid political conversations at these type of social events. Though I enjoy discussing interpretations of government policies and the possible motivation of the officials who formulate them, there are some people who become rather agitated when the facts don't bear out their emotional reactions to an idea to which they are attached. On one occasion, I heard after-the-fact from a woman I briefly dated, that at a party of hers, one of her friends became infuriated and left immediately after overhearing me say that some disadvantaged people in our society may be responsible for their own condition and it isn't the role of government to intervene in and correct every bad decision people make. Okay, to be totally honest, the way I may have phrased it may have been slightly different and may have been punctuated with a colloquial term for fornication, but that was the gist of my argument.

Toronto's mayor Rob Ford is a current example of how local progressives, captivated by their own emotional reactions and biases, but without any factual substantiation, have distorted reality into a pessimistic Apocalypse of societal collapse. An ex-girlfriend who works in the Social Services sector expressed the same sentiment as the party guests over drinks a few days earlier, as she righteously pontificated about how Rob Ford is destroying the city.

When I asked her exactly how Ford was supposedly destroying the city, she wasn't able to come up with a single concrete example. She talked about Ford making service cuts as a general concept, but couldn't actually name any that were implemented. What was more telling was that she could not come up with a single example of how anything this alleged Shiva, the God of Destruction who now holds Toronto's mayoralty, has done that personally affected her negatively in any way.

Rob Ford has been in office for almost 14 months and has for the first time in the amalgamated city's history brought in a budget that reduced spending from the previous year. There has been a property tax increase of exactly 0% under Ford and he has kept his promise of reducing Council expenses and eliminating the municipal Vehicle Registration Tax.

By contrast, his predecessor, David Miller imposed huge property tax increases, reduced the frequency of trash pick up while imposing, for the first time in the city's history a trash pick up fee that every household continues to pay. Miler took a lot of money out of people's mouths while giving back virtually nothing to anyone but a few of his special interest friends.

But for people who see themselves as progressive, perception and pessimism frequently trump reality. They don't like the idea of a hated right-winger having been the overwhelming democratic choice in a city they see as theirs. It results in a outlook that refuses to admit that Ford could do anything right and that he must be derided at all times, not for what he's done, but for what he might do.

I say this as someone who voted for David Miller the first time he ran for mayor. His opposition to the Island airport tunnel struck me as a reasonable approach, but more to the point, his opponents were uninspiring. But his terms in office were a huge disappointment because he grew government and government spending while gouging Toronto's tax base. That was the reality of the mayor who preceded Ford. The current mayor may be less smooth but he is more capable and committed to serving the public, and I'll take a poor perception over a bad reality any day of the week.

Occupy Wall Street vs The Tea Party

"Progressive" nutcase convinces Sirhan Sirhan that he was a CIA patsy used to assassinate Bobby Kennedy

Just when you thought things were getting weird, they get weirder:

Stephen Lendman, host of The Progressive Radio News Hour on The Progressive Radio Network (whatever the hell that is) reports a jailhouse interview with Bobby Kennedy`s murderer, Sirhan Sirhan.

The interview, titled  My Morning with Sirhan is described: "On January 21, 2010, Academic Prison Teacher, Gerald B. Reynolds, spent time with Sirhan and wrote it up in detail."

Reynolds seems to have convinced Sirhan that the CIA drugged him with LSD and used him as a "Manchurian Candidate" patsy to conduct the Kennedy assassination for them. Or maybe Sirhan was just firing blanks while the real killer(s) got away with it. It`s all too crazy and stupid to waste time over-analyzing.  Lendman uses this as evidence of a big, bad  CIA plot. Because nothing is more reliable than a murderous madman agreeing with paranoid suggestions put in his head by a loony radical.

You would have to be insane to believe that, but I do believe that at least one of these people is suffering ill-effects from taking acid in the 60`s.

Reynolds: "Did you have your gun with you?"

Sirhan: "Yes. When I was in the pantry, the gun was in my hand."

Reynolds: "Did you know Robert Kennedy was going to be walking toward you?"

Sirhan: "No. I didn't know where I was and I don't know how I got there. I was in a state of blackout."

Reynolds: "You were a Manchurian candidate....It's something the CIA uses. They assassinate a president, or senator, or anyone they wish, and make it look like some crazed, lone-nut assassin did it. But he has been heavily drugged, possibly with LSD, and undergone intense brainwashing followed by reprogramming. Everything you're saying about yourself follows the established pattern of the drugged, duped, CIA patsy."

Sirhan: "They used me, framed me, and they set me up to die."

If you want to shake your head at some Craaaazzzzy stuff, you can read Lendman`s report here.

"Progressive" Jew hate at rabble.ca

rabble.ca is the radical left website founded by Judy Rebick, who no doubt has ingratiated herself to her wretched Marxist pals by her denunciations of the middle east's only liberal democracy as an "apartheid state" and gets double progressive bonus points in the process for being an Israel-hating Jew.

A supposed home for anti-oppression, anti-racist activists, the rabble talk forums are pretty Orwellian in their approach to free speech. Users who criticize unions (who keep rabble.ca afloat with large disbursements) or political Islam, or are too forward in their praise of "the Zionist entity," or use "sexist" terminology are given the boot post haste.

But in keeping with the current trend, hating Jews and saying so is super cool as you can see from some of their user forum comments below.

We're seeing a lot more of this from the far left, where they don't even pretend it's about Israel anymore, it's just about hating Jews.

Welcome to the future if the party of the spouse of the publisher of rabble.ca ever gets into power.

(click comments below to enlarge or links to direct source)

This POS is calling Michael Coren a "damped Jew" which allegedly explains his Zionism. (I have no frickin' idea what a "damped Jew" is supposed to mean, unless the moron just can't spell 'damned') UPDATE - later in the thread, he explains that a "damped Jew" is a term for a fake convert - I never heard that one before.

UPDATE 2: That "damped Jew" Coren replies

This idiot is defending douchebag Richard Falk's anti-Semitic cartoon folly:

Paul Krugman and what's left of The Left

In December, Krugman and five other liberal economic thinkers (Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Jeffrey Sachs, Alan Blinder, and Larry Mishel) were invited to the Oval Office for a 90-minute off-the-record audience with the president. It was a month after the midterms, and many progressives were worried that even the modified liberalism of the administration’s first two years would dissolve in a new spirit of conciliation with the ascendant right. The economists present understood the meeting, one of them says, as the moment when Obama “talked to the left."   

The economists sat ringing Obama�two Nobelists, a former Labor secretary, and a former vice-chairman of the Fed. Not a Gentile among them, Krugman noticed, but �an amazingly high proportion of beards.� To begin the meeting, Obama asked each of his guests to identify the most pressing economic issue. Five of the economists emphasized the same problem. Unemployment, they said, was so high that the recovery might never get out of first gear. It was not the time for austerity; the president should focus on short-term job creation and turn to the deficit later. But the other economist, Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, held out. Concentrate on the long-term outlook, he told the president.  

For Krugman, the path forward was perfectly clear: The only way to avert a deepening crisis was massive Keynesian stimulus. During the nineties in Japan, he had seen the nightmare alternative. Officials in Tokyo, faced with a very similar scenario, had done too little to stimulate the economy, again and again, and as their nation’s recovery stumbled, they found they were toggling an unplugged joystick. And yet now, after more than two years of economic calamity at home, the liberal solution again wasn’t getting through: Krugman couldn’t even build a consensus among six like-minded economists, let alone convince a Democratic president. �I have no idea what Jeff was talking about,� he says.

Read all of this very interesting article at New York Magazine:

Juan Williams starts using my term to describe "progressives"!!

For a while now, I've been making the argument that the radicals in the political spectrum who call themselves "progressive" are liars. They aren't advancing civilization, they are attempting to send it backwards, many of them are racists, and "regressive" is what they should be called.

Nice to see Juan Williams has come around to my way of thinking!

Want results in Toronto? Call Ford. Want sarcasm? Call a regressive councilor

Readers of this blog know I won't use the term "progressive" to describe the socialist-leaning political wing. Their policies show that they are mired in decades-old, discredited, regressive ideologies that would take us away from what most intelligent people would consider progress.

One of the six Toronto city councilors who voted against the repeal of Toronto's unpopular Vehicle Registration Tax was Janet Davis who is often euphemistically referred to "progressive."

Rob Ford, who won the mayoralty in a landslide, campaigned on repealing the tax as one of his main campaign platforms. Janet Davis won in her ward, so she is completely within her rights to vote however her conscience dictates.

But it is interesting to note that Ford's campaign slogan was "Respect for Taxpayers," and putting that slogan into practice was a hallmark of his 10-year career as a city councilor. As a councilor, Ford was famous for being the "go-to guy" for constituents all over the city who couldn't get help from their local representative. Rob Ford's brother, Doug is the new councilor in Rob's old Etobicoke ward and made the same commitment to returning constituents' calls and getting action at city hall.

In today's Toronto Star, columnist Joe Fiorito reported a story of a 77 year old woman who wanted security cameras in her city-owned apartment building after a frightening incident.

Fiorito wrote:

She has been pushing to have security cameras in the parking garage for the past two years. She was told that the money was in the budget. But every time there was a meeting, and every time she asked, she was put off.  

This time? 

“I called TCHC security. They said I should have called the police.” Duh. “I called TCHC. I couldn’t get them on the phone. Then I called Doug Ford’s office.” 

Doug Ford is not her councillor. Janet Davis is her councillor. But Maxine called Ford because the Fords have promised to return all calls and get action. 

She got action. 

Very shortly thereafter, TCHC called Maxine and made mealy-mouthed and apologetic noises about emergencies and delays. 

And then a staffer from Janet Davis’ office called Maxine and said the cameras would be installed shortly. The Davis staffer said, with a tinge of sarcasm, “If they’re not installed, I guess you know what to do.” 

Yeah, I guess she does. And maybe that’s why you-know-who got elected.

The whole article is here at The Toronto Star

Regressive billionaire George Soros says it may be time to stop supporting Obama

According to The Huffington Post, regressive billionaire George Soros "voiced blunt criticism of the Obama administration, going so far as to suggest that Democratic donors direct their support somewhere other than the president.

The Hungarian-American financier was speaking to a small side gathering of donors who had convened in Washington D.C. for the annual gathering of the Democracy Alliance -- a formal community of well-funded, progressive-minded individuals and activists.

According to multiple sources with knowledge of his remarks, Soros told those in attendance that he is "used to fighting losing battles but doesn't like to lose without fighting."

"We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line," he said, according to several Democratic sources. "And if this president can't do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else."

Read the rest here at The Huffington Post 

Why the "Progressive" movement is actually a "Regressive" movement

Don't let socialists get away with calling themselves "progressive." They are anything but that.

The "Progressive" movement never really was about progress. Not in the way most people in a liberal democracy would define social progress. They have a vision of a socialist, non-racist society, which they undermine at every turn by defining everything in terms of race. And despite their claims to the desire of a society without class differentiation, they believe very religiously in class. The class of the ruling and the ruled. And guess which class they aspire to?

What is progress?

Technological progress is very easily defined. While there may be negative environmental ramifications to some technologies, innovations which improve the speed and efficiency of performing tasks qualify. Why is it that capitalist societies have always been more advanced and produced more technological innovations than non-capitalist ones?

Simple.

Less government interference and more incentive for individual creativity.

But that doesn't line up with a "Progressive" socialist world-view which implicitly creates disincentives for individual achievement in the form of fewer rewards for more work than a capitalist culture. So as far as technology goes, "progressives" are actually regressive.

What about social policy?

In an ideal world, all people would be treated and thought of as equal regardless of their skin color, race, or ethnicity. In our world, the people who are arguing for racial preference, who are suggesting racial conspiracies and ethnic guilt are none other than the "progressives."

Judging a person on the basis of race, whatever your motive, is racism. Racism is regressive behavior.

Which leads to cultural relativism and equivalence - the ideas that all cultures are equal.

Some cultures suppress women's rights. Some cultures persecute Gays and minorities. Some cultures do not allow press freedom and some will execute you for blasphemy.

These are all manifestations that a liberal democracy would consider backward. But cultural relativists say that those cultures are equal to ours.

Who are the cultural relativists in our society?  You guessed it. The self described "progressives".

Lots of self-described "progressives" are adherents of Marxism. Yup, the same Marxism that is responsible for millions of deaths under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the repression of free speech and civil rights in the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, and more.

So the next time one of these buffoons tries to call themselves a "progressive," consider reminding them: "No. You're not progressive.  You're a follower of a regressive socialist ideology. The rest of us have already progressed beyond you."

George Smitherman wants to be the conductor on the Gravy Train and only you can stop him!

Adam Vaughan, the councillor for Ward 20, came by my house the other day, campaigning for re-election and...

On a personal level, Adam's a nice, sincere guy. I think he's wrong about quite a few things in his political stances. His support for the despicable Krystin Wong Tam, one of the people behind Queers Against Israel Apartheid, is inexcusable. Adam is one of the councillors who appears content with the Miller status quo and from what I inferred, he thinks Miller's greatest failing is that he hadn't effectively communicated all the wonderful things he'd accomplished during his time as Toronto's mayor.

Vaughan doesn't appear to believe Toronto needs spending cuts and that a lot of our financial woes and the deterioration of roads and infrastructure not being properly addressed is because of the city's growth and the costs of transportation.

Some of those transportation costs being due to the incredible waste that happened during the St. Clair street car construction that cost than 300% of its proposed budget. Vaughan's leftist council colleague Joe Mihevc, as Deputy Chair of the TTC and a principle proponent of that mismanaged disaster, bears a huge measure of responsibility for that, and hopefully the electorate in Ward 21 will remember that and put in an alternative like Shimmy Posen.

The conversation with Vaughan took a strange turn. Vaughn has pretty much a lock on his downtown Trinity-Spadina ward. He's not facing any serious competition, so he seemed more interested in investing his time, not to advocate for himself in his ward, but to advocate voting against Rob Ford as mayor.

It was bizarre. First Vaughan started making comparisons between Ford and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Obviously the comparisons were meant disparagingly and I interrupted Adam to point out that he was making a big assumption to posit that I shared his views about Limbaugh and Beck. (While I find neither  to be exceptionally profound individuals, I don't find their positions so outrageous as to share the socialist "progressives" assessment of their being devils incarnate.)  Adams' response suggested he wasn't taking me seriously. It appeared incomprehensible to him that an intelligent person couldn't feel the same way. Particularly an intelligent person who lived south of Bloor Street.

As I said, the conversation was a bit bizarre. Adam made some very cogent points about Ford's council record being less impressive than his campaign would suggest, and then he undermined his arguments, in my mind, by trying to suggest I shouldn't vote for Ford because of Ford's father's record as an MPP when Mike Harris was Premier.

Adam then proceeded with an argument that may play well with some of his constituents, but struck me as the ultimate in political cynicism. He brought Ford's having lied (or forgotten about) his DUI/marijuana incident 11 years ago in Florida and his drunken outburst at a hockey game. The cynicism of harping on those matters is that it suggests Annex voters are more concerned with image than substance. My concern is with having a mayor who is determined to get our roads fixed, our municipal costs down, and who isn't in the pocket of detestable unions like CUPE Ontario. I told Vaughan I don't care if Ford smokes joints during council meetings, as long as he can cut the waste at city hall.

Ford is still preferable to councillor who spends $13,800 on their website or one who launches libel suits at the taxpayers' expense.

As far as I was concerned, the conversation reached its nadir when Adam told me "Ford is like George Bush, he tells you he's smart, but he's not."

It became apparent then that I was speaking with someone so blinded by their ideology that it was impossible to recognize or acknowledge any truth beyond it. George Bush was the president of the United States for two terms. In debates, he bettered supposedly more intelligent opponents like Ann Richards and Al Gore. You may disagree with what he did, but one of the reasons for his successes was that he was faced by adversaries so arrogant that they refused to concede the fact that someone who disagrees with them might actually posses some intellect. And he mopped the floor with them.

Adam conceded that Smitherman is not someone people could bring themselves to vote for. That part of the conversation was like his tepid Smitherman endorsement. I like Joe Pantalone in the same way I like Adam. I disagree with him, but at least I know that I'm talking to someone who is communicating what they honestly believe. Vaughan's endorsement of Smitherman is not based on any enthusiasm for Smitherman but on an all-consuming abhorrence of Rob Ford.

The 'strategic voting' endorsements of Smitherman by Mihevc and Vaughan should be instructive to voters. Smitherman has lately been talking about himself as a "progressive" candidate. Those paying attention need no reminder that "progressive" is also a code word that Marxists and radical socialists use to describe themselves.

Is Smitherman a Marxist or a radical socialist? Absolutely not. But he appears to be someone who will make shady deals and talk out of both sides of his mouth to achieve power. He's a McGuinty Liberal. The "progressive" who is going to cut taxes and waste? Don't hold your breath.

Yesterday the Globe and Mail endorsed him. It was the least enthusiastic endorsement I have ever read from a newspaper.

Here is some of the Globe's "endorsement" of Smitherman:

"Mr. Smitherman is vague. The risk in supporting Mr. Ford is what he might do as mayor, the risk in supporting Mr. Smitherman is what he might not do. The latter of the two has failed to articulate a vision or a strategy of his own, and he could easily end up as a second David Miller..He is essentially a professional politician, an office-seeker with a taste for managing, but not for transformation."

One of Eye on a Crazy Planet's readers provided this rendition of what we could look forward to if Toronto doesn't have the sense to reject Smitherman