Wasting Money We Don't Have

I don't expect many of readers outside of Toronto to know this, but Scarborough is pretty much the asshole of the world. Were it up to me, we'd be building a wall around it, not subways into it.

But Scarborough is also a target-rich environment for huckster politicians looking to buy their way into new mandates, so it appears that it is subways that they will get.

Look, unlike most deviant cheerleaders for Toronto's crackhead mayor and Stephen Harper's supposedly "conservative" government, I'm an actual conservative, which means that I don't support buying shit we don't need with money that we don't have. And among the very last things we need is subways into Scarborough.

Don't get me wrong, pretty new subways that go right into my basement would be nice, but so would my having a fourteen foot cock. But neither is necessary and both would be hideously expensive.

Nobody in their right mind goes into Scarborough, which has all the charm of East Germany in the 70s. If we absolutely have to have new, unfinanced subways, we'd all be better off with a downtown relief line. Getting downtown at pretty much any time of the day is enough to induce a fucking stroke. And it should surprise no one that none of the subway suicides in this city occur on tracks leading away from the downtown core.

Downtown is an economic driver and most serious people couldn't come up with three reasons why Scarborough shouldn't be attacked with mustard gas. So guess who's getting a subway!

This is actually easy to understand, but only if you're willing to credit everything that's wrong with the human spirit. Ford and the Harper Tories know that there are no votes to be had downtown, so they want even bigger margins in the useless and ignorant parts of the city. And you'd be hard-pressed to be more useless and ignorant than Scarborough.

But Ontario's Liberal premier, Kathleen Wynne is behind this, too, isn't she?

Well, sorta. Wynne supports a much more restrained - and affordable - Scarborough line. She's also alone in trying to finance it, whereas Ford, Harper and his spending machine of a finance minister, Jim Flaherty, are all throwing around plans and numbers without regard to their actual cost.

But even Wynne is trying to buy people's votes with their own money. She presides over a minority government that could fall at any time, and she knows that if she loses seats in Scarborough, she'll be sexually humiliated by Andrea Horwath's NDP everywhere else. So Kathleen either supports the Scarborough or she starts fitting herself for a dildo gag and a gimp suit.

As for Crackhead Rob, he's not willing to kick in the bare minimum he needs to pay for this atrocity.

His own Council reported that he'd need a 2.5% property tax increase over 30 years to finance this mess, but he'll only commit to a fifth of that. And even with the federal and provincial giveaways, Ford's folly still comes up hundreds of millions of dollars short.

Harper and Flaherty have always treated financial responsibility like a bad joke. When shitheads like  Grover Norquist and the editors of the National Review point to them as fiscal heroes, they only highlight that they don't know what they're fucking talking about.

Harper first pissed away a $13 billion surplus on electioneering nonsense, then dumped hundreds of billions more on his crazed "Canada's Action Plan" that he's unashamedly wasting millions more on advertising a full five years after the financial crisis. Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty have thrown away more money on useless shit than even Barack Obama. If you support Harper while condemning Obama, that's all the evidence I need that you're a twat and very probably a moron.

Metrolinx had a fully financed plan that Ford killed, literally filling a hole where the Sheppard LRT was going to be with $30 million that he didn't have, just like his spiritual father, Mike Harris, did with the Eglinton subway back in the 90s.

One of life's great ironies is that Rob Ford ran on "stopping the gravy train," But he also promised to spend hundreds of billions of dollars of other people's money on trains.

You can call that any number of things, but "conservative" isn't one of them.

Ted Cruz is Stupid, Cynical or Both, And I Want Him to be the Republican Presidential Nominee

 

I've never met Ted Cruz, so I can't say as an absolute certainty that he's a psychopathic retard. But because he's a Republican and a Tea Partier, he can't honestly object to either characterization, since both are such a central part of his political base.

Republicans and Teapers get awfully pissy when I say things like that, but I'm hardly the one that's been in the trenches finding new and ever more self-defeating ways to turn superstition and stupidity into conservative virtues.

Even before the advent of the Tea Party, supposedly conservative politicians have equated self-promoting ignorance as folksiness, which explains the non-sexual appeal of Sarah Palin perfectly. Christ, when I try to explain to reasonable, intelligent people why I hold conservative positions, I have to bend over backwards to demonstrate that I'm not a fucking yahoo. And that's exhausting because people like Ted Cruz have made it their life's mission to make it exhausting.

I'm going to explain the antics of the junior senator from Neverland this week as succinctly as I can.

Cruz filibustered for 21 hours - reading Dr. Suess and comparing everyone that isn't him to the goddamned Nazis - on a day when there weren't any bills pending in the Senate, which makes it less of a filibuster and more a spectacular at of public masturbation. By the way, he did this on a measure that he said that he supported and ultimately wound up voting for. It was the single most bizarre spectacle I've witnessed in my 35 years of studying American politics.

Cruz has so entranced the stupid that Erick Erikson hasn't been able to get his head out of Ted's lap long enough to write a coherent blog post in over a month. He's made Mark Levin even more insufferably Mark Levin.

But people with normal cognitive functions - including most rational Republicans - have come to loathe Cruz with the power of a thousand suns. Jon Dickerson of Slate explains why;

He wasted precious time: Republicans don’t want to get the blame for a government shutdown. By soaking up valuable Senate time with no-win maneuvers, Cruz has left House leaders with less time to follow their legislative strategy—one that might have won limited concessions from White House. Or, with significantly more time, House Speaker Boehner might have been able to produce a funding bill that would have at least included a one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act. That would have put Democrats up for re-election in vulnerable states in a tough spot; at the very least, red state Democrats would have had to take an unpopular vote. Now the GOP looks fractured, time is short, and Boehner may only be able to pass the funding bill passed by the Senate Democrats—which he’ll almost certainly have to do with Democratic votes, offering even more leverage to the enemy.

Ego: He has used his colleagues to elevate himself in the furtherance of his 2016 presidential ambitions.

He made Obama’s critique look accurate: For years, President Obama has said a minority faction of zealots controls the Republican Party. By hijacking the system for a cause that had no chance of success, Cruz confirmed Obama’s cartoonish vision of a party controlled by a wing unconcerned about practical results.

He turned a tactical fight into a purity test: The majority of Republican senators agreed with Cruz on the importance of defunding Obamacare, but they disagreed with him on tactics. He characterized those with whom he had a tactical disagreement as ideological turncoats.

He blunted the GOP’s best plan of attack on Obamacare: The Affordable Care Act was falling under its own weight as stories of rickety implementation, layoffs, and companies dropping coverage of their employees continued to be published. By linking the “defunding effort” to continued funding of the government, Cruz distracted the public from Obamacare’s inherent problems. That distraction undermined Republican efforts to chip away at the legislation through smaller attacks, like a one-year delay that might have led to a full repeal if the GOP took back control of the Senate in 2014.

Let's try to look at this dispassionately, shall we? Cruz took something really unpopular (Obamacare) and attached it to something even more unpopular (a government shutdown.) The GOP is on the record as being against the former, but they know that they can be seen as favouring the latter.

This ain't 1995, teenagers. When Newt Gingrich convinced his party to commit ritualistic suicide back then, there were continuing resolutions to fund all but the most trivial parts of the government. America wasn't at war with three-quarters of the world and threatening to bomb the rest. And nobody was crazy enough to threaten to not raise the debt ceiling and destroy what's left of the world economy. Bill Clinton wasn't afraid of a government shutdown. Shit, he used it as a opportunity to get suck-started by the unpaid help.

The ramifications are so much worse now than they were then, and Senator Cruz and his shithead brigades couldn't care less. "We can let it burn now or later," is one refrain I've heard a lot from supposed "patriots" and "conservatives." These people are actually willing - no, eager - to drive their own interest rates through the fucking roof just to score points in some idiotic ideological beauty pageant.  They honestly believe that the ruination of the full faith and credit of the United States is a credible electoral path. And shitheels like Erickson say that if Obama doesn't want a shutdown, he should just give the Tea Party everything they want, which would make him a fantastic terrorist whisperer.

They aren't just assholes, They're out of their fucking minds.

But what did Cruz actually accomplish this week? Well, he wasted time that serious people could have used to make a deal. Oh, and he was on TV a lot.

Aside from that, not much. He actually wound up voting for the cloture motion that he was supposed to be (but actually wasn't) filibustering. Everything he wanted is going to be eviscerated in conference, but now it's going to happen with malice. Ted Cruz is singularly a man without friends in Washington. Good luck with having a career that way.

On the other hand, he's now the number one choice for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination among people without teeth or common sense. And you know what? I'm with them 100%!

Establishment tool Jonah Goldberg thinks it unfair to compare Cruz to Tailgunner Joe McCarthy. I don't, because neither actually did anything to further their stated aims. McCarthy never actually named an actual communist and Cruz has done nothing in real terms in stopping Obamacare. McCarthy and Cruz are both third-rate demagogues who were just smart enough to know that they could only further their own careers by exciting mouthbreathers.

And that's exactly what the GOP needs in a presidential nominee this year. I wasn't so silent in wanting Sarah Palin to be the nominee last year, and I want Cruz for the same reasons.

There needs to be a Great Cleansing in a conservative movement, and that isn't going to come through the wingnuts forcing sane nominees to act like lunatics, as happened to John McCain and Mitt Romney. And Reagan wouldn't have passed the Tea Party's schizophrenic purity test. Neither would Barry Goldwater.

They want the first Bircher nominee, never mind that most of the country knew that was a horrible idea 65 years ago. Jesus, they've made Barack Obama - who would have fit well in Gerald Ford or George H.W Bush's Cabinets - into a Maoist Antichrist.

I'm suggesting that sensible conservatives give them exactly what they want and nominate Ted Cruz. The apocalypse will take care of the rest.

I figure that Boy Ted will lose about 39 states. In the last ten years, the GOP has seen Colorado, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia and Florida slip away. Indiana, Georgia and Arizona have all been tighter than they should be, and the demographics suggest that even Texas is going to start turning purple in the next decade.

I've spent three years trying to make a map where a Tea Partier wins the presidency, and I can't. In the last two cycles, those idiots have thrown away perfectly good Senate seats in Delaware, Colorado, Nevada, Indiana, Missouri and (if it weren't for Linda Murkowski running as an Independent,) Alaska - all of which, except Delaware, used to be pretty reliable Republican states.

There's no reason to believe that a Tea Party presidential nominee will be any more successful than their Senate nominees were in Republican-leaning states.

The Republican Party doesn't have many more elections in them to lose until they become the Whigs. The GOP only survived FDR because they Eisenhower was willing to save them. But no one with the seriousness of purpose of Ike would ever carry the idiotic standard of the Tea Party. Who needs to throw away their dignity with their professional prospects?

The Tea Party needs to run, win or lose, on their own. They can't be allowed any excuses, such as being hindered by a "moderate", which hasn't actually happened yet, or a lack of institutional support, which they say they don't want.

In an ordinary time, I'd support someone like Chris Christie, Jon Huntsman, Mitch Daniels or Jeb Bush (assuming that we could collectively forget who his brother is) - considered conservatives that can win - for president. Hell, I even like about half of what Rand Paul says, depending on my mood.

But I'm not. I'm tired of the Tea Party horseshit, and willing to give them their turn. Let them nominate a hack like Ted Cruz. It'll be fun to watch him struggle to win by 10 points in a cesspool like Mississippi, where the Republicans usually win by 25.

I don't want to see Cruz turned into Robert Taft, the serious conservative that wasn't given a chance. He needs to be Alf Landon, the guy who got beaten within an inch of his fucking life.

Then, and only then, does the Republican Party have a real chance of surviving the decade.

Besides, how bad could President Biden really be?

Rob Ford's Heroic Struggle

So Toronto's mayor, Rob Ford, is supposed to arm-wrestle Hulk Hogan tomorrow morning. In most big cities, this would be something of a spectacle. In Toronto, we just hope Etobicoke Slim is sober.

A lot of folks who are interested in such things are probably betting on The Artist Formerly Known as Terry Gene Bollea to win, but I'm not so sure.

First, the Hulkster is 115 years old and to the best of my knowledge hasn't ever done anything that wasn't scripted in advance by Vince McMahon.

Second, Hizzoner is a celebrated crackhead, and those fucking people are wiry!And can anybody say with any certainty that he hasn't added meth to his training regimen in the last few weeks? I sure as shit can't. If Doug Ford is introduced from the ring as Rob's manager, "Jesse Pinkman," Hogan might start worrying.

We should all join together in congratulating the Heavyweight Champion of Pretend Sports for finding a figure every bit as ridiculous as he is to appear with. That couldn't have been easy.

But tomorrow won't be Ford's most heroic struggle. Not by a long shot. He is still in a titanic, almost Albert Speer-like  Battle With Truth.

And so we tuned in to the Ford brothers’ Sunday radio program to hear something—if not the truth we might feel we are owed, then at least an explanation. Broadcasting live from the CNE, the program offered a heavy dose of Doug Ford as, for half the program, Rob was stuck in traffic after a family trip to Niagara. Or so brother Doug said. There’s no reason to doubt the story except for its source, whose increasing unreliability as a narrator became immediately evident.

For instance, on the show, Doug claimed that he and Rob “aren’t politicians,” which (at least lacking a modifier such as “normal” or “effective”) is a verifiable falsehood. That’s small potatoes, of course, but part of a pattern. At another point in the show, he said, “For the first time ever, in the history of Toronto, we have balanced the books.” He said it twice. In truth, Toronto has balanced its books in every single year of its history—it is forbidden by law to run an operating deficit.

Then Rob finally appeared, and claimed that by keeping tax increases below two per cent per year for three years, he and his brother had not only achieved the lowest tax increases in North America, but that such a small increase was “unheard of.” You don’t have to scour North American history to hear of such feats, though: In the city of Markham, tax rates were frozen for three years leading up to 2011, and increased 1.5 per cent in 2012 and 2013. Even here in Toronto, Mayor Mel Lastman delivered three years of tax freezes after amalgamation in 1998.

It went on: Doug claimed the St. Clair streetcar line was an example of LRTs like those planned in Scarborough (it is not) and that 80 per cent of people polled support the expansion of the island airport (in fact, recently published polls show the actual support at 47 per cent).

Later, Rob fielded a question from a listener who asked about the tight rental market, and the bidding wars it is creating. This has been headline news in these parts for a long while now—the lowest vacancy rates in decades are leading to skyrocketing rents, which raises a real concern about the affordability of the city for many residents. But Rob doesn’t share those concerns: “With interest rates so low now, landlords are begging for tenants…they’ll give you free parking, a free month’s rent…” he said. False. He maybe got that impression by seeing some ads, but it’s very transparently not backed up by the official numbers from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, numbers that are readily available to (and should be a key concern for) the mayor of the city. 

And that, my friends, is the Rob Ford I know. Even when he isn't talking about his heroic propensity for getting fucked up on crack and Russian Prince vodka, his first instinct is always to lie. Always.  

No matter what happens tomorrow morning, Hulk Hogan can walk away secure in the knowledge that Ford could never cuckold Bubba the Love Sponge as thoroughly as he has.  Christ, the mayor can hardly be in the same room as his wife for ten minutes without one of them calling 911. If Hizzoner got within thirty five feet, of Heather Clem, he'd almost immediately suicide, knowing that he has nothing close to what "appears to be the size of a thermos you'd find in a child's lunchbox" between his legs.

Long story short, that's why I'm sad that Ford isn't arm-wrestling Heather tomorrow. Conservatives, and the city, would be better off.

Reince Priebus isn't Very Bright

You what a good sign that the Republican party has finally gotten it's shit together would be? When they stop running against the media.

Too many of my fellow conservatives embrace the conflicting positions that the mainstream media is dead and ignored by everybody, yet still powerful and nefarious enough to foil the GOP at every turn. You can believe one or the other, but not both.

Well, I guess that's not entirely true. You can argue both positions if you're appealing solely to inbred yokels and the recently head injured. They loves them as much anti-intellectual populist fuckheadery as they can stuff inside their little pin heads.

And that brings me to Reince Priebus, the singularly ineffective chairman of the Republican National Committee. I thought that anyone would have been an improvement after Michael Steele's reign of error at the RNC. I thought wrong.

Priebus was supposed to be the Godhead brought to earth. Under his stewardship, the GOP was supposed to expand its margin in the House, win control of the Senate and banish forever the vulnerable Barack Obama from 1600 Pennsylvania Boulevard.

None of which actually happened. Republicans wound up losing two seats in the Senate, eight in the House and Obama put Mitt Romney down like a rabid cur. Oh, and the party came out of last November looking more like wild-eyed dipshits coming out of the election than they did going in. Not a spectacular result, to say the least.

So Republicans did what they always do: Blame the media for their own bad performance.

Now Priebus is getting pre-emptive with his retatded nonsense, declaring the RNC won't partner with NBC or CNN for the 2016 primary debates if the networks go forward with planned Hillary Clinton-centric projects. 

The liberal media is on notice: If you’re in the business of spending millions to promote Hillary Clinton, you will not take part in Republicans’ primary debates in the 2016 presidential election.

On Monday, I sent letters to NBC and CNN informing them that the RNC will not sanction any primary debates they sponsor if they do not cancel their plans to promote Hillary Clinton.

NBC is planning a miniseries, CNN a documentary. If they don’t cancel these poorly disguised political ads by August 14, they can plan on watching Republican debates on networks other than their own.

Oh, fucking spare me.

I'll ignore for a moment CNN, which no one watches. But it should be pointed out that young Reince wasn't bitching too hard when CNN ran a Mitt Romney documentary last year.

The NBC mini-series (starring the always hot as fuck Diane Lane as Dame Clinton) is being produced by NBC's entertainment, which is a largely separate entity from the news division. You know how I know that? The entertainment division is located in Hollywood and news is run out of New York.

Moreover, who gives a shit if the RNC doesn't play with the networks? I can almost assure you that the networks don't.

The freakshow primary debates are expensive to produce, a nightmare to coordinate and don't do much in the way of ratings. There's a reason the broadcast networks stopped running them years ago. They can make more money with re-runs of a snuff movie or Saved By the Bell.   The only reason that they run the hour a night of the convention coverage that they do is because their FCC licenses demand it.

The presidential debates between the nominees are vapid and pointless enough. The primary debates are little more than an excuse for the candidates to show off how dumb and psychotic they are. And there are literally dozens of the fucking things now.

From there, Priebus just starts lying outright.

I called out NBC and CNN because I refuse to let biased networks turn the 2016 debates into the same traveling circus they caused the 2012 debates to be. This is just one step toward creating a better, fairer debate system. But this is also an opportunity for us to begin to do something even bigger.

The networks didn't turn the 2012 debates into a "traveling circus." The candidates did more than an adequate job of that all on their own. 

The fact is that all of the halfway smart Republicans stayed as far the fuck away from the 2012 nomination as they possibly could. The '12 primaries were so sad that at various times the main challengers to Mitt Romney were Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, some pizza lobbyist who likes pussy, and the stupid and stoned governor of Texas. How can that be anything but a travelling circus?

Furthermore, the shithead base of the GOP, as exemplified by blogs like RedState, has served only to force the candidates to marginalize themselves - and their party - to the point that they're almost incapable of winning a presidential election. People watch the Republican primaries for the same reason they stop to gawk at car accidents; Because blood has a certain glimmer to it when it's mixed with gasoline.

The fact is that you can't put a dozen third-tier mutants like Michele Bachmann together on stage and not expect people - including even the media - to not point out that they're third-tier mutants.

Were it up to me, the primaries would be abolished in their entirety and the nomination would be decided in the "smoke filled rooms" of yore, by people who at least have some idea of how government and politics work. No party that considers people like Erick Erickson power brokers can be taken seriously by anyone else.

But I think we all know that I'm not going to get my way, don't we? I rarely do.

However, there is a way to make the primary debates at least a little less self-destructive

1. Have fewer of them: Look, whoever decided that having upwards of two dozen debates that no one watches should be committed.

Dozens of debates serve only to provide dozens of opportunities for the eventual nominee to make mistakes that will kill him or her in the fall. Or the losing candidates will launch attacks that will cripple the nominee later.

As much as Republicans like to pretend otherwise, the Democrats didn't make Romney's ties to Bain Capital an issue, Newt Gingrich did. And Rick Perry, not Barack Obama, coined the phrase "Vulture Capitalism." They set Obama up for the layup that destroyed Mitt Romney forever.

2. Have no more than five: Primary debates are no being held upwards of seven months because the first primary, which is insane. All that does is take unelectable misfits like Bachmann and Herman Cain and make them national figures with access to the money they need to cause irreparable harm to the party. Say what you will about the Democrats, but they've never run a collection of monsters like the Republicans did last year.

If you deny the real freaks national TV time, you deny them the money to keep their campaigns going. And if they're out, you allow yourself to present what passes for your party's best face right from the get-go. That wouldn't have stopped Gingrich and Santorum from clearing that bar last year, but I suspect that 2016 will be different.

Since there are only five primaries that matter, there should only be five debates. Those would be within two weeks of voting in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Super Tuesday. If the nominee isn't decided on Super Tuesday, the party has problems that will only be amplified by more debates.

3. Have the most antagonistic moderator you can find, or none at all: Political swine and their shithead consultant-lobbyist enablers aren't really interested in debates, they want an infomercial. That's why Priebus wants them turned into ball-washing exercises conducted by idiots like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin.

But that doesn't prepare you for a general election. Sure, it'll thrill the practically retarded primary base of the party, but it doesn't get the nominee ready for the attacks that they'll face from increasingly disciplined Democratic nominees.

If it were up to me, I'd find the smartest, most viciously liberal Harvard professor in all of Christendom to moderate the Republican debates. Or I'd have no moderator at all, and just let the candidates beat each other to death with their podiums.

The Conventions became infomercials after 1976, and the broadcast networks carry the minimal amount they can get away with, and the cable networks only carry them because they're starved for content. That will happen to the debates if fuckheads like Reince Piebus get their way.

On Morsi, Democracy and the "Freedom Agenda"

What better day than the Fourth of July to discuss yesterday's events in Cairo, which saw Egypt's first elected president deposed.

I carry no water for the Muslim Brotherhood, but there's no shortage of supposedly conservative nonsense out there that begs responding to. Fox News Republicans and their moronic fellow travelers in the idiot blogosphere have managed over the last year, and especially in the last 24 hours, to be both hypocritical and hysterical. And like most bitches with the vapors, they need to be sent to their fainting couches for a good long time.

Although I thought it would have something to do with a change in foreign policy toward Israel, I predicted that the Egyptian military would depose Mohammed Morsi since he was first elected. Most of my freedom loving friends thought me a knave, a fool, or both. Y'know, because Obama.

The unmitigated balls of some of these people, talking about freedom in the Middle East! The simple fact is that the single greatest retarding factor for democracy in the Muslim world has been American foreign policy. But lets look at places where "freedom" has been imposed at gunpoint, specifically Iraq and Afghanistan. Are things looking good in either country? I think the consensus is that they are not. Any country that requires a massive foreign military presence to sustain its "freedom," absent third-party aggression, is ultimately doomed.

My friend Richard at Eye on a Crazy Planet wrote about this earlier today. Sadly, he was almost spectacularly wrong and wildly ahistorical on almost all of his points.

Richard does hint at a couple of things that I generally agree with, specifically that some dictatorships are better than others and that freedom just isn't for everyone, but he never actually comes out and says so. Instead, he seems to believe that the rest of the world should get a vote on the kind of government a given country should have, Israel excepted.

Here are some of his sillier points;

Though bolstered by support from the foolish and ineffectual administration of US President Obama,  Morsi's slip into acting like a democratically elected dictator made him more popular in The White House than it did in Cairo. Massive nightly demonstrations that exceeded those at the end of the reign of Hosni Mubarak were proof of the popular discontent in Egypt.

Um, not exactly. The U.S foreign aid under Obama changed not at all than that from Nixon through Bush 43, meaning that the overwhelming majority of it went to the military.  Oh, and that's the same military that deposed Morsi yesterday. Think that would happen with its money cut off? I don't. And didn't most of the Right go ape when Obama "abandoned" Mubarak, when it wasn't giving credit for the Arab Spring to President Bush?

Something to remember when considering that is that elections don't always lead to democracy. The other duly elected Muslim Brotherhood government, that of Hamas in Gaza, proves that once in power, Islamists, like fascists before them, will suspend democracy to retain their power for as long as they can hold on to it by force.

Though the so called "Arab Spring" in Egypt happened in the 21st Century, that country was less prepared for democracy than the American Colonies were more than two centuries earlier.

When was Hamas elected again? Oh right, in 2005, when the Bush White House ignored the protestations of both Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon as part of his idiotic "freedom agenda."

And why was Egypt "less prepared for democracy than the American colonies were more than two centuries earlier"?

Well, in part, that's because the American colonies didn't have the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA  constantly subverting the necessary conditions for democracy in the decades prior to 1776.

Furthermore, lets not pretend that the early days of the Republic, where anyone other than landowning white males were disenfranchised for decades was particularly Athenian.

But things are different now, right? They sure are. There are no shortage of people howling about a supposedly unreconstructed Kenyan Marxist routinely steal elections through the offices of the ACORN and the New Black Panther Party.

Jokes aside, history is sort of import here. And the history is chilling.

Institutions that are essential to democracy, like an educated population, a healthy system of rival political parties, a constitution that safeguards rights and an independent judiciary are all democratic facets Egypt had.  The only political organization that was organized was the Muslim Brotherhood, which used mosques and madrassas to force-feed subservience to the faithful and a country that is more than 95% Muslim.  Rural Egyptians welcomed Morsi's tyranny of devout Islamism that was a bludgeon to the cosmopolitan citizens of Cairo who have spent the last weeks protesting en masse.

The embarrassing fall-out of the Egyptian coup is that after decades of the west acting superior and lecturing the Muslim world about democracy, the reality is that both they and we are better off if, in Egypt, it takes a time-out.

Until the death of GamAl Nasser, Egypt was in the Soviet sphere of influence. When the United States took over as its patron, Nasser's designated successor, Anwar Sadat, was give the same free reign to suppress his people by Washington that Moscow had. In fact, the CIA had trained Egypt's secret police to crush any democratic alternatives to regimes of Sadat and Mubarak. That left only groups like the Muslim Brotherhood  as any kind of governing alternative.

Because of Cold War politics, America foreign aid was never predicated on Egypt's developing the kind of social conditions necessary for the kind of democracy that it took the United States 180 years to perfect. Successive American administrations - and especially traditionally conservative ones - wanted a police state in Egypt.

This is exactly what we saw in Iran, after the United States overthrew the only democratic government it ever had. As the great Dan Carlin has said, when you replace Mossedegh with the Shah, you wind up with Khomeini.

Richard's idea of a democratic "time-out" is as adorable to me as it is fascinating. After all, it's worked out so well in Pakistan, with its eight military coups in sixty years. On top of all their fantastic democracy, we also have their nuclear weapons and the Taliban, all subsidized - albeit indirectly - by the American taxpayer.

What Richard doesn't do is show us where a democratic time-out has worked in anybody's interests, particularly the country being put in the corner. That certainly wasn't true in Iran.

But, Richard tells us ... Hitler!

Morsi is a maniac who adheres to the murderous Muslim Brotherhood creed. Though we seem hypocrites to welcome his removal, what if the same had happened in Germany in 1934?

Adolf Hitler came to power the year before that in a fair election. The last fair election Germany was to have until after the Second World War and the millions of deaths to which the result of that election eventually led.

Certainly there would have been an outcry from some quarters in the west if the German Army, seeing Hitler's insanity, had chosen to remove him the year after he was elected. But millions of innocent lives and untold devastation would have been averted if the Wehrmacht had taken such a bold step.

There are a few problems with this theory.

First, Weimar Germany was an almost total democracy that didn't persecute democratic alternatives to the existing government, which was the case in Egypt.

Secondly, the rise of the Nazi Party was due entirely to economic conditions, not political ones. Absent hyperinflation and the Depression, it's unlikely that an Austrian misfit like Hitler would have ever come close to power in Berlin.

Third, the Treaty of Versailles made such a theoretical coup by the German military, which was limited to 100,000 troops, impossible. The army was actually outnumbered by Hitler's political army, the SA, which was three million strong.

It was only after Hitler's clandestine remilitarization of Germany that he disposed of the SA on the Night of the Long Knives, at which point, the SS was a professional military force sworn personally to him.

Lastly, there's no guarantee that if Hitler hadn't subverted Germany, the communists wouldn't have. The economic conditions in 1930s Germany made democracy all but impossible. And since remilitarization was the clearest path to economic recovery, as it was under the Nazis, it's difficult to see how a gutted army would revolt against that.

I really don't want to be a prick to Richard, who I actually like a lot, but history is sort of import in discussing matters like this.

In Praise of Bob Rae. A Goodbye to a Good Man

On the day that he announces his political retirement, I come not to bury Bob Rae, but to praise him.

Not only did I vote against Rae twice when he was leader of the Ontario NDP, I actually enjoyed doing it. But I don't vote for someone as much as I vote against everybody else. Indeed, the proudest ballot I ever cast was for a transvestite to be mayor or Toronto, so convinced was I that he/she would be less embarrassing than Mel Lastman.

Having said that, there's much to respect and even admire about Rae.

He's easily one of the smartest people in Canadian elective office in my lifetime. Even those that disagree with him, as I repeatedly did, acknowledge that he's a heavyweight. And that's something that's profoundly lacking in public life today, where stupidity is too often considered a virtue.

Rae also engaged in the single greatest act of political bravery in my lifetime. For all intents and purposes, he pulled the plug on his time at Queens Park because he thought it was necessary.

Shithead conservative bloggers and dishonest Sun Media hacks, like Brian Lilley, enjoy pummelling Rae for Rae Days, all the while heaping praise on Republicans like Scott Walker for doing essentially the same thing.

Rae Days requires absolutely no courage for conservatives, since that's what their base vocally wants, anyway. However, the public sector unions were Rae's political base, and he knew it. And he still immolated himself doing what was right. If that's not bravery, I have no idea what is. Moreover, it speaks to the bald hypocrisy of his critics.

Speaking of hacks like Lilley,  (who, full disclosure, is apparently a friend of my ex-girlfriend) He joyously posted this retarded and fundamentally dishonest chart from Sun News on his Facebook page this evening.

Did Premier Rae spend a literal shit-ton of money in the face of what was then considered a brutal recession? He sure did. And that's the primary reason I voted against his government in 1995.

What is nicely left out is the fact that there was a worldwide recession during Rae's tenure at Queens Park. What those lying fucks at the Sun neglect to point out are the federal and U.S employment and deficit figures at the time.

Why is that? I suspect that it's because the prime minister of Canada during the worst of it was Progressive Conservative Brian Mulroney and the president of the United States was Republican George H.W Bush, who to varying degrees, did pretty much exactly what Rae did as premier of Ontario. All three raised taxes, all three had high unemployment, and all three had massive deficits.

But Rae is studied not only in isolation from the context of the time, the figures also leave out what his conservative peers were doing at the time.

By the way, why does Sun poster boy Stephen Harper get a pass? Unlike Rae, Harper started out with a $13 billion surplus, which he immediately pissed away on electioneering hucksterism. Then, in the guise of his Keynesian "Action Plan," he created tens of billions of dollars in new deficits, which he spends millions more advertising on television, five years after the fact. And none of that happened twenty years ago, when Keynesian economics were the the accepted wisdom, Harper's doing it now.

I point that out not to defend Rae, but to highlight the intellectual dishonesty and gullibility of what passes for the Right these days. Not only can we not win on our merits when we engage in nonsense like this, we don't deserve to.

I made no secret of my opinion that Bob Rae was the Liberal party's last, best chance of surviving, if not actually winning power. He was uniquely qualified to call the Harper government on its own bullshit. Rae was not only smarter than the rest than the rest of the federal leaders, he was more politically experienced and intimately familiar with the pitfalls of having headed a party and a government before.

If Rae compared his record in Toronto to Harper's in Ottawa, I believe it would have been devastating ... for Harper. And I think the Tories knew that, too.

But the Liberals insisted on being the Liberals. They continue to hate one another more than they hate Harper, and they refuse to renounce their addiction to stunt leaders, like Michael Ignatieff and Justin Trudeau. And that's precisely why "Canada's Natural Governing Party" is going to cease to exist by the end of the decade. By forcing Rae out of the permanent leadership race last year, I think they signed their own death warrant.

Although I opposed almost everything that he did in public life, I never doubted Rae's sincerity. I believe him to be someone who actually got into politics to serve what he thought was the greater good, rather than personal enrichment or self-aggrandizement.

Unlike most of the ward-heelers out there, I'm of the opinion that Bob Rae will better off without politics. Sadly, politics will be worse without Bob Rae.

I never voted for him and I never would, but I wish the man well in private life.

Scott Reid States the Obvious, Is Still Wrong

Here I go again, saying something utterly uncontroversial to anyone that isn't three years old, a partisan fuck, or an abject idiot.

People in politics, as a general rule, don't enter the life to serve you. And they really haven't for about thirty years.

Politics has become a laboratory for mediocrities to see how rich they can make themselves off of the public teat.

There's no greater example of that than the revolving door between politics and lobbying. This is nothing more than a legal version of influence peddling and trading in on public service. I actually have more respect for those that actually have the balls to steal taxpayer money without the pretence of serving anyone other than themselves. Were it up to me, politicians, their appointees, and the senior civil service would be banned from lobbying for life.

Actually, that's not true. The only reason I wouldn't advocate stuffing the lot of them in a bag and drowning them like cats is that it would be impossible to find a big enough bag. So a lobbying ban will have to do.

The more mediocre a staffer you are, the more likely you are to moonlight in opinion journalism, especially in Canada. You almost never see the real kingmakers on TV or writing columns that even third-graders know are horseshit. Instead, you get the worst sycophants imaginable pretending to know "how it really works."

Which brings me to Scott Reid, the former Paul Martin consigliere. In 2005, Reid said the single most balls-out stupid thing I've heard in thirty years of studying politics.

You see, then-Opposition leader Stephen Harper was hoping to steal the Liberal issue of a national daycare credit from out from the Grits. So he offered a $1,200 a year tax credit to families as a way of ward-heeling himself into office.

Now, if you opposed the Tories, there were any number of ways to attack the proposal. For example, you do what I did: call it an unaffordable welfare program for the middle class and an example of hucksterism at its worst. The left is always going to oppose Harper's programs. If you want to beat him, you need to turn fiscal conservatives around from voting for him. I thought everybody knew that.

Apparently, Scotty didn't. That's why he said this ...




The "beer and popcorn" debacle reinforced the long held and richly deserved Liberal reputation for unbridled arrogance. Even when its true, you never tell the public that the government can spend their money better than they can. And, unsurprisingly, Harper made the Liberal Party wear that remark for years.

That's why I'm amazed that anyone listens to anything Reid has to say about politics. On the other hand, a lot of people are very fucking stupid.

On Friday, he published this in the Ottawa Citizen, and it stands as an example of how you can be right, while still being completely ignorant of a history that you yourself lived through. It really is a remarkable read.

Stephen Harper is gradually turning into Jean Chrétien.

From Teflon to tinpot, from insuperable to insurrection, the two leaders appear to be travelling remarkably similar paths in the second half of their time as prime minister.

That's demonstrably not true. Harper was Chretien from as far back as 2005, well before he moved into 24 Sussex drive.

This is because Harper heads a party populated mostly with lunatics and fetus fetishists. Hyper-religious "Big Government Conservatives" are not only fewer in number in Canada than in the United States, they also tend to be more geographically isolated and don't carry as many seats as they do in the U.S Congress. Majority governments do not rely on these people's support.

But they can fuck up the chance of winning one, as we saw in 2004. The Conservatives were enjoying a 10 point lead over the majority Liberals, when their candidates started spouting off about abortion, gay marriage, and other shit that sane people don't give a shit about. The Tory hopes of a majority evaporated and Liberals were only reduced to a minority, instead of being physically destroyed.

When the Martin minority government was defeated in the fall of '05, Harper knew that he had to muzzle those psychopaths, lest he be humiliated again. Not only did he vow not to legislate on those issues, he imposed brutal message discipline on his candidates. Since nothing succeeds like success, it shouldn't surprise anyone that he carried that discipline into government.

Chretien's experience was different. As a minister in the Trudeau government, he was routinely humiliated by the Prime Minister's Office. The Sun King once went so far as to rewrite one Chretien's budgets and release it to the public without consulting him first.

Then there's the nature of the Liberal Party itself, which is based almost entirely on regicide. Since about 1975, every Grit leader has had a powerful leader plotting behind the scenes to relieve him of his job. And Chretien knew that Paul Martin (who Scott Reid worked for, remember?) would do to him exactly what he did to John Turner, as he in fact later did.

Similarities in the personal styles of the two leaders have long been noted — and many of the qualities they share are admirable. They are both good at winning elections. They each lack any shred of indecision. And they both hold their ground stoutly. Perhaps most important of all, they understand who they are, what they stand for, and the importance of communicating consistency.

Each of those points are demonstrably false.

Both Chretien and Harper won their elections as a result of hopelessly divided governments. The Progressive Conservative coalition built by Brian Mulroney was destroyed by 1993, and Harper beat (albeit, only barely) a Liberal Party in a state of open civil war. Neither was a fantastic political accomplishment.

Furthermore, neither stands for anything at all. Chretien ran on the tired platform of "free shit for everyone," opposing the GST and NAFTA, only to head the most fiscally conservative, globalist government in Canadian history. Chretien successfully carried out Mulroney's legacy.

Harper, on the other hand, ran as a manager and a fiscal conservative. Once in office, however, he blew up the deficit faster and bigger than anyone since Trudeau himself, mostly on ward-heeling nonsense that the Liberals invented.

Neither communicated consistency, and only a moron would suggest they did. Both transparently lied to the public and dared them to vote for someone else, knowing that realistic alternatives didn't exist.

Increasingly, it is not just character but circumstance that begs the comparison of Harper with Chrétien.

The most top-of-mind parallel is caucus unrest. Brent Rathgeber, until his recent resignation, was as unknown to Canadians as the whereabouts of Mike Duffy’s dignity. Suddenly, we are to believe his departure heralds the evaporation of Harper’s control over his own backbench. That would be a gross overstatement.

But it is plain that a number of government MPs are no longer content to suffer in silence. Their personal ambitions are stagnating. Their ideological itch is going unscratched.

And they’re sick of taking orders from the hired help while getting the high hand from the prime minister.

Christ, Reid can't really believe that nonsense, can he? The facts are very different, and they go to the fundamental differences between the Liberal and Conservative parties.

The Tories are generally more disciplined when it comes to caucus and messaging generally. They are also much better team players until things become intolerable, as they did in the latter Mulroney years.

The Conservatives also never have a very deep bench. There's rarely a clear successor to power that everyone knows can win an election, which is why they've never enjoyed party dynasties, like the Liberals used to.

The Grits, on the other hand, tend to have very deep benches of talent. The problem is that they all think that they should be prime minister right away. Since Lester Pearson died, they've devoted themselves to stabbing one another in the back more than they have to actually governing. Whenever the the Tories have shown even a modicum of discipline, they've kicked the shit out of the Grits.

And if Reid is right, there's a Paul Martin in the Tory benches ready to take over when Harper is done in by his own hubris. If there is, I don't see one. Harper's most likely successor is Jason Kenney, and I can't think of anyone who wouldn't be able to beat the snot out of that greasy prick.

I will say one thing about Scott Reid's column. It has the worst people in the world publicly furious, and demonstrates as clearly as anything can that the Liberal civil war is far from over. Those crazed bastards are going to continue to going into elections devoting more time and energy hobbling each other than they do the Conservatives. And they're going to keep doing it until they cease to exist at all.

If there's anything at all the Conservative government can take comfort in during these dark days, it's that.

Things Fall Apart: Rob Ford's Continuing Crack-Up

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Plowing Through More Republican Horseshit, IRS and NSA Edition

Most of you remember my old blog, dont'cha? I spent shitloads of time there from 2005-2008 bitching endlessly about the power of the US federal government and the potential abuse thereof.

And you know what I got for my fucking trouble? A endless amount of nonsense about the Unitary Executive Theory and the righteousness of George W. Bush. Most of those people would describe themselves as Tea Partiers today, and not readily admitting to knowing who Bush even was, let alone ever having supported him so throatily.

Then there's the Citizens United decision, which I've always had a mighty bug up my ass about.

I'm on the record as having said that political activity should get no preferential treatment under the tax code, from deducting lobbying costs right on down to deducting political contributions from your taxes. Shit, I don't even support the charitable deductions for charities that actually accomplish something other than shitty commercials.

If you're interested in knowing why, I'll tell you.

The more deductions you allow in the tax code, the higher the rates have to be to generate the revenue the government needs to operate. And if you want a government with the capability of both providing accessable health care to everyone and being prepared to bomb everyone from Jakarta to Winnipeg, we're talking about a fair bit of revenue.

Advocates of a flat tax have never been able to answer that basic fact. The more you deduct for yourself, the more everyone pays in higher rates. And this is what made the Ryan-Romney tax proposals last year such a bad fucking joke to anyone with a basic grasp of arithmetic.

My personal hero, Velociman, has one of the most misguided things I've ever seen up here.

A Redress of Grievances
That was, and is, the crime of the Tea Party groups. They are loose, and unaffiliated. When anyone attempts to wrest control of the Tea Parties at any level above the community they are whipsawed, and lashed.
That was the fearful thing. That is what keeps Obama awake at night. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of assembly and the right to redress grievances not as a sop of government, but as a natural right of man. From God, if you will. The Tea Parties were actually fomenting during the Bush bailout leading up to the 2008 election. They have never been specifically anti-Obama. Merely anti-spending. And yet they have been targeted and reviled as mutants, and racists.

There are any number of factual errors in those paragraphs, not least of which is that the Tea Party isn't almost wholly constituted by mutants.

Firstly, nothing calling itself the "Party Party" existed before Rick Santelli's retarded rant of February 2009, and that addressed relief to underwater homeowners under the thumb of the cocksucker banks, who themselves were just bailed out. And that Santelli said this from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade went almost completed unnoticed by everyone that isn't me.

Second, it's almost impossible to know if Tea Party groups are "loose, and unaffiliated" in light of Citizens United, which restricted disclosure of their donor base.

Thirdly, this isn't about a redress of grievances or even the First Amendment.

Let me repeat that. This isn't about a redress of grievances or even the First Amendment. The Obama administration never shut down the right of Tea Party groups to speak and, if they tried, they did a godawful job of it, since I couldn't escape those mutants last year.

It's actually about administrative tax law.

The Tea Parties weren't asserting a right, they were seeking a favour from the government in the form of non-profit tax status. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of the right to tax-exempt status for anyone but Indians in the Constitution. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either ignorant of lying.

My ultimate problem with these shithead Republicans is that they want other taxpayers to subsidize the cost of their bitching about how taxes are so high. Their right to free speech isn't inhibited as much their ability to get other people to pay for it is, so fuck them.

Now, do I think that that the administration specifically targeted conservative groups through the IRS? Sure I do.

Is that "Watergate," like so many idiots suggest it is? No, it is not.

President Nixon specifically targeted individuals for IRS harassment,  just as Johnson and Kennedy did before him. The difference is that they weren't organized groups seeking deductions in a post-Citizens United world, which begs such scrutiny. Nixon went after individual members of groups, journalists and sundry political enemies, which is a clear abuse of power and something no one has accused Obama of.

Then there's the recent NSA scandal, to which I ask ...... What did you think was going to happen? 

Most of you will remember that I went apeshit when I first heard about the Bush NSA program that was implemented in secret, without congressional authorization, after 9/11. I went on about it for years, actually.

But the people who were fine with it then - and in some cases demanded the prosecution of journalists that reported on it - are out of their tiny pinheads about it now. Of course, these are almost universally the same twats that want a secret war in Syria, so go figure.

However there are a couple of important distinctions.

First, Obama sought a FISA warrant for the records, which Bush never did, and Republicans insisted that he didn't have to under Unitary Executive Theory, the Authorization to Use Military Force Resolution of 2001 and the "Because ....Lincoln!" argument that they deploy whenever it fucking suits them.

Second, the GOP voted to change the law to to allow for exactly what Obama is doing today. Something I would advocate impeaching Obama for, Republicans legitimized way back when.

And that goes back to the tax case. Do you want to pay higher tax rates just because shiityy people with dishonest thinking don't wantto pay any at all?

The Slow Suicide of Rob Ford

Look, I don't especially give a shit if Mayor Rob Ford injects himself with horse tranquillizer, Ibogaine and erectile medication every morning, let alone smokes a little crack. As I'm sure you recall, Whitney Houston's ruminations on crack were well known, for all the good they did her.

I'm on the record as supporting recreational drug use, and I further think that cocaine should be reclassified as a food group. And all things being equal, it could very well be that drugs make Rob Ford a better person. God knows that he could hardly be any dumber.

It isn't the drugs that bother me so much about the latest of la Ford follies. It's the hypocrisy and the arrogance. If there's one thing that's almost certain to set me off, it's the combination of arrogance and stupidity in a single person. I'd say that it's almost a chemical reaction, but that might be the blow talking.

More importantly, this entire clusterfuck reinforces an already well-established narrative of what a balls-out disaster this mayor has been. He can't do anything right, not even something as innocuous as handling the fallout of smoking crack with a gang of Somali narcotic peddlers.

Ford wasn't even bothering to deny this one for an entire week, which is unusual. Whenever he creates a giant mess of things, which happens about every other week, he gets out front and denies it, even though he's always lying. He did call the reporting of Gawker and the Toronto Star ridiculous, but that's not exactly a denial. There very probably are things in the story that are ridiculous, but Ford didn't actually address the core allegations in them.

When he finally did make a public statement last Friday, he went directly to the Clinton playbook, saying, "I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I am I an addict of crack cocaine." The use of the present tense is notable. And in fairness, a glass pipe was seen nowhere near the podium.

The only reason I think this story is important at all - outside of the obvious factor of Hizzoner's inability to deal with it prudently - is because this is the same stupid bastard who once demanded that convicted criminals be subjected to a Stalinist regime of internal exile for convicted criminals. And given that he can now be fairly classified as a one-man crime spree himself, Rob Ford has got to go.

Do I think that he will? Short answer? No, I don't.

Etobicoke Slim has too much pride and too few brains. He insists that he's willing to put himself up for election, but he isn't willing to do the one thing that could force one: resigning and declaring his candidacy in a by-election.

I howled like a retard at the prospect of a by-election last fall when it looked as if Ford's other contraventions of the law would force his removal, and I oppose one now. The idea of wasting seven to ten million dollars to feed Ford's demented hubris is anathema to me, and it should be to any fiscal conservative.

In the last seven days, no fewer than five of Etobicoke Slim's senior staff have quit or been fired. That the people closest to him have lost faith in the mayor should send a strong message to the public and, more importantly, Council.

Hizzoner hasn't accomplished much of anything after his first six months in office, two years ago. He's routinely humiliated by Council. The only person there who'll regularly side with the Brothers Ford is a brain-damaged Gino Boy like Georgio Mammolitti.

It doesn't matter if Rob Ford stays in office or not. In fact, it doesn't matter if he wins the next election, which is a distinct possibility. Oh, he'll destroy conservatism in this city for a fucking generation by way of his continuing and increasingly lunatic shenanigans.

The guy is a chronic fuck-up, a congenital liar and his only claim to conservatism is that he can pay for a massive subway expansion with nothing more than unicorn farts. The fact that he's doing crack might be the least objectionable thing about Rob Ford.

This is where modern conservatives always fall down. They love the rhetoric of their mongoloid figureheads more than they pay attention to their actions. You see that happening over and over again, and that's why winnable elections are being routinely lost.

By instinctively defending the shitheads on our side, we marginalize not only ourselves, but our ideas. By making heroes out people like Rob Ford and Sarah Palin, we pretty much make our agenda unelectable. In doing that, we guarantee that our base isn't broadened enough to win elections.

Sure, you can point to the 2010 U.S congressional elections and Ford's own victory, but that only proves that you aren't paying attention. Those victories came only because the governing Left overreached, not because of the merits of any argument put forward by the Right.

And no sooner than the Right was elected, they began overreaching. Look at the classically ignorant Tea Party. They presented themselves as libertarians, but as soon as they took office they started trying to legislate shit like birth control and effectively destroyed themselves. Most of the Tea Party governors elected in 2010 are on a trajectory to get annihilated next year.

Liberals aren't stupid. They learned important lessons from the way that conservatives marginalized them in the 1970s and '80s. And they've pretty much been on a winning streak ever since. When George W. Bush, Stephen Harper and even Rob Ford were elected, it was partly because they promised to preserve or even expand social spending. All three campaigned on that idea.

Mitt Romney and John McCain ran to the Republican base and suffered the worst defeats of any GOP presidential candidate where there wasn't a third-party candidate since 1964. The Wildrose Party in Alberta threw away a sure thing in Alberta by doing the same thing last year.

Now, if you listen to Mayor Ford and his impossibly dumb brother, you get the idea that they're just dying to fight an election over this scandal.

Well, here's the good news. They can. Any time they want. They'd just have to resign and declare their candidacies in a by-election. In Doug's case, the by-election would be automatic. In the case of the mayor, Council could appoint an interim mayor to fill out Ford's term, but if the demand was there, there'd almost certainly be an election.

But they're lying. That's why they haven't resigned yet.

Toronto is a very liberal city, I may not like it, but that's a fact. Ford won for two reasons; he was unopposed on the right (if you don't count the joke candidacy of Rocco Rossi) and roughly a dozen people ran to his left.

If a snap election were called tomorrow, the field would be narrowed down to about three candidates: Ford, John Tory and Oliva Chow. Chow would be alone on the Left in her ability to raise money and build an organization in a short period of time, say 60 days. And it's safe to say that "the Orientals" would "work like dogs" to elect her, in an effort to "take over." 

As I write this, Etobicoke Slim's approval rating is at about 37%. The only way to win under those circumstances is to run against a divided left. And if Tory runs, that cuts down on  Ford's support from conservatives who aren't abject idiots.

Rob Ford can't win a snap election, which is further proof of their bluster and abject fucking lying.

The Big Crack Up

Hey, can we all stop pretending that Toronto mayor Rob Ford isn't the most spectacular fuck-up in human history? Because that'd be great.

I'm addressing that question to braying mob of liberal shitheads out there, who seemingly aren't smart enough to just stand back and let their enemies die on their own. There's just no talking to those assholes.

No, I'm asking this of my fellow conservatives, who almost to a man are determined to be repeatedly humiliated with Ford and his unending follies, both personal and professional.

Not only is Ford a repellent and disastrously ignorant human being, he's endlessly damaging to conservatism. At this point, it's hard not to see how how Etobicoke Slim's only lasting legacy will be inflicting Olivia Chow on the City of Toronto as mayor next year because of his chronic inability to keep his mouth shut and his shit together. And you know what? Conservatives will have no one to blame but themselves.

Look, I don't know for a fact that this morning's allegations of Ford smoking crack in the last six months are true or not. But I'm inclined to believe that they are.

After all, this isn't Hizzoner's first time at the pharmaceutical rodeo.

Ford was actually arrested in Miami 14 years ago for drunk driving and marijuana possession. Any foreigner carrying pot in a jurisdiction as savage as fucking Florida can only be described as hubris-crazed retard. That's ballsy to the point of stupidity. Hadn't that motherfucker ever seen Midnight Express? Florida's a little more merciful than Turkey toward drug offenders, but not much.

Of course, Ford lied about it. 

Then there was the story of Ford promising to get OxyContin for some HIV positive lunatic.

In case you were worried, there are multiple stories about Ford's booze-fuelled craziness, too.

Given the record, it's hard not to believe the crack story. There's just too much history out there now to write it off a fantasy driven by the Goddamned Liberal Media. And as much as my friends on the Right like to pretend otherwise, the Toronto Star isn't in the business of committing professional suicide or setting themselves up to get get sued out of existence.

Yes, the story started with Gawker. And yes, Gawker has a ... dodgy history. But, at this point, Ford can't just rail against the media if these stories are false, he needs to sue. And he needs to sue Gawker in an American court, under the Sullivan v. New York Times Co. standard. As I and my conservative friends have said over and over again, Canadian libel laws are entirely too friendly to the plaintiff.

I can almost guarantee you that by 9 am, Team Ford and their sycophantic bloggers are going to be playing this as another instance of "The media is out to get us." Know up front that that's horseshit.

The fact is that Hizzoner keeps putting himself in the middle of the scandals. When he's not having his picture taken with obvious gangbangers, he's posing with Latvian Nazis.  He keeps doing this to himself. There has yet to be a Rob Ford scandal that hasn't started with Rob Ford's conduct. Not one. Its well past time that conservatives start admitting that.

The "Ford Nation" comprises about the thirty percent of the city that has suffered a grievous head injury. They'll support him if he campaigns in a loincloth made entirely of dead babies. It's become clear that they'll excuse anything from him.

That's enough for Ford to win, assuming that the Left insists on being the Left and runs a dozen candidates.

But what if they don't? What if they decide that Etobicoke Slim is entirely too much of a menace to stay in office, and clear the field for Olivia Chow?

I can see a scenario where she wins pretty big in a head to head race. She'd sweep the downtown core, and pick up more than enough heavily Chinese suburban wards to put her over the top.

Conservatives are playing a dangerous game in a left-wing city, assuming that liberals are just going to let Ford get re-elected in a cakewalk

I'm not. I'm assuming the worst - the the Left will get behind Chow and beat the shit out of Hizzoner, possibly in an asshole blowout. Conservatives that continue to support Ford are potentially voting for the Widow Layton.

Let's see how well that works out for us.

We need someone like John Tory or Doug Holyday to push Ford out of the race, soonest.