The Ford Follies: International Edition

Good grief. The guy just will not go away.

Even when he actually does "go away"....he still won't go away. Not really.

Rob Ford, part-time mayor, part-time football coach, full-time buffoon, is in Chicago right now on a "Trade Mission". He has boasted, on the record, that this trip is not costing the taxpayers of Toronto "one dime". But, of course, he is lying because there are two senior staffers with him whose costs are being covered by the city. There will almost certainly be more costs, but there's already enough information to rebut his ridiculous claim.

RoFo and the Bean: A Modern Ballet
credit: Don Peat/Toronto Sun

Yesterday, while Ford was in the Windy City dancing under the "Cloud Gate" sculpture (nicknamed the "Mirror Bean" by locals and which Ford thinks should be replicated in Toronto, only in the form of a giant football, of course), one of his special assistants, Chris Fickel, attended the Don Bosco football practice, arriving at the facility in a car registered to the City of Toronto. When Dave Rider, a Star reporter covering the Chicago shenanigans, asked Ford about it he was told, "Do your homework. I paid for it last year." Paid for what, exactly, nobody is too clear on and since RoFo wouldn't comment further, choosing instead to tell Rider to, "go home, go where you came from," there's a chance we may never find out. And the exchange got a lot weirder and creepier than that. At one point, Ford asked Rider, "are you going to be sleeping with me tonight?" I can't do the incident justice here; have a look for yourself at the transcript in the Toronto Star.

But the hilarity doesn't stop there.

RoFo: The Trial Concludes

Keep laughing, Chuckles

Today's blog post will be a lot shorter than yesterday's because, while Rob Ford's Conflict of Interest trial concluded yesterday, Ford himself didn't say anything inordinately stupid in the courtroom. But there's a good reason for that: Ford did not take the stand yesterday.

Instead, we were treated to closing arguements from the two lawyers, Alan Lenczner, who represents Ford, and Clayton Ruby, who represents the private citizen who brought this case to court, Paul Magder. This still took an entire day in court, but I'd wager it felt a lot shorter than the previous day to everyone in attendance.

Again today I followed as much as I could through the live blogs such as the one by the Torontoist, and Twitter feeds such as by the indefatigable Don Peat, filling in the gaps by following the discussion hash tag #FordCourt, also on Twitter. Ruby went first because Lenczner needed time to review some "new case law and facta" given to him by Ruby that morning. The next few hours, until 3 p.m. with a break for lunch and a couple of recesses, Ruby and Nader Hasan, a partner in his firm, held the floor and spent much of that time reiterating just how muddled and confusing Ford's testimony from the day before truly was. Some of the more "on-point" quotes from the prosecutors:

“He has never explained the basis for his peculiar view of the law. My submission is that it is not a believable assertion because it is made by someone who has a 12 year tenure on city council.”

“That is not someone who has made an error. That is someone who is doing deliberately what he believes is right. It is not an error of judgment to be reckless identifying conflicts… it is not a good faith error. He is deliberately not doing what any reasonable person would do.”

“It is reckless to proceed in ignorance all of his 12 years on council. If you swear to uphold an Act and you don’t even read it, you are simply ensuring that you will breach it.”

“Ignorance of the law is not an error in judgment.”

Rob Ford: Super Genius

The Ford Bros. "running" from the courtroom
credit: Dave Abel, Toronto Sun

[Rob] Ford was elected as councillor three times before being elected mayor. He received council handbook each time but says "I don't remember ever getting a handbook." [Clayton Ruby asks:]"You have no memory of ever getting it, studying it or reading it?" "No" - David Rider, Toronto Star Live Blog

Unless you've been living under a rock the past year and a half you probably know that the mayor of the City of Toronto is a world-class buffoon. News of his embarrassing "exploits" has traveled around the globe, so you don't have to actually live in or near Toronto to be aware of just how poorly qualified this man is to be in his current position. Hell, he's probably poorly qualified to get himself dressed in the morning. He's driven at high speeds while reading a speech, because he's a "busy" man. He's repeatedly demonstrated his homophobia by refusing to attend even the most innocuous of Pride events in the city he "leads". He mugged a journalist and stole his cell phone, he may or may not have driven past the open doors of a streetcar, he swore at a 911 operator after calling about a comedy sketch gone awry, he gave a mom and her six-year-old daughter the finger after they admonished him for texting while driving. And don't even get me started on his hilarious antics while he was a city councillor. Good times, good times. Well, RoFo has taken his act to a whole other level this week. He is either perjuring himself on the stand under cross-examination or he is the single dumbest person ever to hold the office of mayor in Toronto -- and that list includes Mel Lastman and June Rowlands.

Also notable: a few minutes ago, Ford said that he didn’t attend council orientation sessions when he was first elected in 2000, because his dad was an MPP and he felt he knew how government worked. - Steve Kupferman, The Torontoist Live Blog

Ford's At It Again

Did you commute to work or anywhere else today? Did you take the car? If so, did you at any point resemble the clod in this picture?

Rob Ford on the Gardiner Expressway
credit: @ryanhaughton/Twitter

No, of course you didn't. That's because, unlike the mayor of Toronto, you are not a selfish, insensitive jackass with the social acumen of a turnip. Yes, the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, was photographed this morning reading a speech while on his commute into work on the Gardiner Expressway.

Now, Back to the Lunacy

Wonder if these will still be here next July 1?

After such a fun, sunny, Pride-filled (in more ways than one) weekend in Toronto I had hoped that perhaps we could coast on the goodwill for a few days at least. After all, the midway rides haven't even completely disappeared from Stan Wadlow Park; to be fair, though, they might still be there into next week because the company that ran the pathetic midway this year - "Outdoor Amusements" of Scarborough - are perhaps the worst bunch of slacker layabouts I have ever seen at one of these fairs. (I know I keep harping on them, but I really want to be sure their business suffers because they are truly terrible.) This picture was taken between 7 and 8 PM this evening, two full working days after the midway shut down. By way of contrast, every other inch of Stan Wadlow Park was cleaned and vacated before we got out of bed yesterday morning (with the lone exception of the Port-a-Potties, which were picked up around noon). The kids trying to have a soccer practice on that pitch this evening had to deal with the intrusion of some of the ride remnants and they occasionally lost a ball under one of the trucks, requiring them to scramble under there to retrieve it. I wonder if the organizing committee has balked at paying them their money (and balk they should) and this has caused a degree of petulance from the midway company. Perhaps we'll get our field back in time for school to return in the fall.

Rob Ford is Shiftless

A surprise visit from RoFo at the IDAHO flag-raising

I mean that quite literally. I am not calling RoFo "lazy" nor possessing of "a lack of ambition"; Ford has "ambition" out the wazoo. But in a blog post in May - on my birthday, no less - I wrote about the flag-raising ceremony at City Hall for the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. I attended that ceremony and was shocked to see the Mayor as he had stated repeatedly that it "wasn't possible" for him to be there. I mused at that time - not on my blog, but elsewhere - that perhaps we should give Ford the benefit of the doubt here; that maybe - just maybe - this was the very small stirring of a paradigm shift in his belief system and that the next few "gay-friendly" events would tell the real story. I still believe that was the right thing to do at that time.

But the benefit of the doubt is no longer an option, in my opinion. Ford clearly is not in the process of a paradigm shift - or, indeed, of any other sort of shift. Mayor Ford is completely "shiftless".

"Jays Care" Indeed!

Lawrie, Bautista, Romer-o my!

Yesterday, while I was on the balcony taking the pictures that turned into a blog post, I noticed some activity down on the ball fields in Stan Wadlow Park, below us. Specifically, I saw a couple of trucks and a sort of electric scaffold thing that can be raised up and down like a cherry picker (yeah, I'm so not a handyman kind of guy) parked behind the arena near the diamond with the new lights. It's the time of year when the school next to our building usually has an outdoor play day, so I just assumed that the field was being set up for that activity and didn't think any more of it.

More permanent Jays' signage at Stan Wadlow

However, when Sarah came home from yoga around 8PM she told me her instructor had mentioned that some of the Blue Jay players were over at Stan Wadlow Wednesday evening to help celebrate the 60th anniversary season of the East York Baseball Association. I had no idea anything that interesting was going on just a couple of hundred metres from our home; even with the windows open I couldn't hear any cheering or ruckus of any kind - and believe me, we hear everything here. So Sarah and I headed over to the far end of the park to see what was happening.

The Ford Chronicles Continue

On June 1, 2009, the city of Toronto passed a bylaw stating that retailers had to charge a minimum of 5 cents for every plastic bag they gave to a customer. I have always thought this was a good idea; Sarah and I have smoothly switched to the mindset of bringing reusable bags with us wherever we plan to purchase large quantities of goods - or just large goods. Shoppers Drug Mart, grocery shopping, clothes shopping, what have you, we bring bags with us to ensure we are not bringing home unnecessary plastic bags to clog up the landfills. Sarah and I each have a couple of "Randy Bags" with us most of the time and in the back of our car there are several cloth bags of varying sizes; we bring a few with us on all major shopping excursions. We don't do this to save the five cents; rather, we do this because it's the right thing to do. What the five cent fee accomplished is it made retailers ask if we needed a plastic bag (or several) which prompted us to say "no, thank you". There is no conceivable way this is a bad thing.

That is, unless you are a certain lame duck mayor of a certain giant metropolis in Canada who has absolutely no other "cause" that he is capable of "winning". Then it becomes the Biggest. Issue. Ever.

A Pretty Good Birthday, All in All

The rainbow flag against the clock of "Old City Hall"

Yesterday was another gorgeous day in a May that has been full of them. First thing in the morning, I opened my card and a couple of prezzies from Sarah (a Wii game and a great movie trivia book from TCM) and saw her off to work. I spent most of the rest of the morning hanging out with Addie, doing some writing, reading and answering a flood of birthday wishes (I have some amazing friends) and catching up on news. Just before noon I headed down to Nathan Phillips Square for the 12:30 raising of the rainbow flag in honour of the International Day Against Homophobia (and Transphobia), or IDAHO. I was disappointed to learn earlier in the day that Brian Burke had decided to skip this event so that he could fly to Oklahoma City for a game last night involving the Marlies, the Maple Leafs' minor-league team. It seemed to me he could have done both quite easily; he completely missed the NHL draft last summer because he decided that would be a good time for a visit to the troops in Afghanistan so there's certainly precedent for him choosing personal commitment over his "job". But Burke will likely be in the Pride parade again this year, so I guess some slack should be cut. I mean, it's not like he's the mayor of the city who won't attend any events involving Toronto's LGBT community.

Or at least that's what we all thought before yesterday.

Ford the Goon: Updates on the Saga

Before I forget: Happy Star Wars Day, everyone!

You know...May the Fourth be with you? Right?

Ahem. Sorry. Moving right along....

Hizzoner showing reporters that it's dark and there's his house

This will not be my only blog entry today because I can't bear the thought of spending two entire days on this idiotic story to the exclusion of all others. However, I had to make so many "updates" to my blog post yesterday (and there's still more "news" since then) that I thought it would be better to tie them all together in a second entry. I have also removed these updates from yesterday's post so if any of them seem like "déjà vu all over again" you may have read them late yesterday.

Rob Ford, "The Incredible Bulk"*

So, yesterday evening in broad daylight in a public park in Etobicoke, this happened.

If you don't want to click on that link, let me sum up: Rob Ford, the mayor of the largest city in the country, was alerted by "a neighbour" who "rapped on his door to say, 'there’s some guy looking over your fence taking pictures.'" So Ford did what any of us with young children at home would do: he went around to the back of the house to see what was going on. That part I don't think many people can quibble with.

However, it went off the rails immediately after that.

Thanks for nothing, Bob Barker

I'm sure Bob Barker's heart is in the right place. I'm sure he truly believes that he's doing the best thing for the aged elephants at the Toronto Zoo. Heck, he's even offered to pay out of his own pocket to have them flown to California after the Zoo's elephant keepers said they didn't think the three ladies would survive the long trip if they went by truck. And it's not his fault that the merry band of nincompoops at Toronto City Council put more stock in the "wisdom" of an octogenarian ex-game show host than in the professional expertise of the elephant keepers themselves.

But today Toronto Council's decision to move the elephants to an unaccredited sanctuary in California has resulted in the Zoo losing its AZA accreditation for at least the next year. This could pose a serious problem to the many wonderful and important breeding programs at the Toronto Zoo; hopefully they will regain their AZA standing (which they've maintained since 1977) next spring and things will return to normal.

Stupidity is Insipid

So, like, I live in Toronto? And we, like have this mayor? And he has a brother? And, like, they have this radio show? Where they just make stuff up all the time? And have their goofy friends along to chime in?

Sigh.

Even though they have been the subject of many of my Facebook rants over the past 18 months or so, I have tried to avoid talking about the Tweedle Brothers (Rob and Doug Ford) on my blog for as long as possible.

Photo: torontoist.com

Well, it all ends here.