Are The Ford Brothers Cartoon Characters?

One day it's Rob Ford lying about labour costs on the radio, then his brother is lying about the number of libraries vs Tim Hortons in his ward. This week it's Doug Ford talking about shutting down libraries "in a heartbeat" and his pugnacious sibling is yakking on his cellphone while driving and flipping the bird to a woman and her daughter. I can only assume that I've woken up in a cartoon by the guy who did King of the Hill.

Back during the election I said that in my opinion the business class in Toronto wanted Smitherman to be mayor. Not because his policies were that much different than the Gruesome Twosome but because he would be smoother about it. Smitherman is from the elite, he wears stylish suits and drinks good wine. He knows how to negotiate so that the business class gets what it wants while the rest of us accept it. Or at least that's the theory. I mean, even Stephen Harper knows that most of the time he needs to come across as smooth, polite and sophisticated even if his personal preference is to be a troglodyte.

Not so the Fordies. What's up with those bad boys? They're alienating potential centrist allies and Ford even champions votes on council when it's him against absolutely everyone else, including his bootlickers. For the business class - and the Globe & Mail is often a good gauge of the attitudes of that class - this behaviour is potentially dangerous and destabilizing to their project. Oh, they'll go along with it if Ford can manage to drive through his wild-eyed, economy-destroying austerity package. The bourgeoisie are nothing if not opportunistic and their commitment to good manners (and democracy and human rights and...) is entirely contingent upon whether it is convenient for the maintenance of profit levels. But right now there is a lot of head shaking going on in the business press over these two buffoons. Frankly that's good news for us. Right wing hawks who divide their own class and create instability amongst their supporters are easier to battle than an enemy with sophistication and an ability to unite his side in a project to attack our living standards. Hopefully tomorrow morning's Executive Committee session at City Hall will see lots of opponents of the cuts come out. After all, Rob invited us. It's clear that the more pressure we put on Rob & Doug, the more erratic and explosive will become their behaviour and that will cost them support and weaken their project. Throw in a few protests and strikes and their administration will fall into disarray. And that woud definitely be a good thing.



Ford admits to phone use while driving, but flipped finger a ‘misunderstanding’ - The Globe and Mail

Clinton Needs Smaller Venue Thus Restoring My Hope That Humans Are Intelligent Beings

Who the hell would pay $50 to see Bill Clinton speak? This is the man who ended "welfare as we know it" in the USA by drastically cutting social assistance and won election with racist attacks on black "welfare queens". He interrupted his first campaign run to return to his state of Arkansas, in order to execute a black man who was seriously mentally impaired - in order to not seem soft on crime. He backed up his "hard" stance during his time as president by expanding the number of crimes punishable by death - including serious drug offences. I have a lot of respect for African-American author Toni Morrison but I have to say that her description of Bill Clinton in 1998 as "The first Black president" was about the dumbest thing I ever heard.

Clinton was also responsible for killing 800 Somalis in the Battle of Mogadishu, he ordered the bombing of a medicine factory in the Sudan, bombed Iraq relentlessly (and illegally) while enforcing child-killing sanctions, and, of course, he bombed Afghanistan - all of which played an important role in creating the anger that found an expression in 9/11.

That's why it warms my heart that the CNE had to scale back its plans to have Clinton speak in a 25,000 seat stadium and to drop the prices of the tickets for the smaller, 10,000 seat venue. Now, don't get me wrong, I think humanity still has some way to go if there's 10,000 fools in Toronto willing to shell out even $25 to see this racist, imperialist, ruling-class blowhard. But it's a start.