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.