Not even remotely truthy anymore


 Posted on October 15th, 2013

As Rob and Doug Ford took to the airwaves to promote their continuing assholery in picking on exclusively one councillor for his vote (19 other councillors voted the same way as Ainslie — obviously they’re not singling him out!), in Rob’s most recent pet project (subways for Scarborough), the compounded stream of pure lies and disrespect for both voters (a.k.a. taxpayers), and just plain common sense hit new heights.

In fact, it can now be accurately, and without exaggeration, be stated that most of what comes out of Rob and Doug Ford’s mouths are complete and utter lies. And when, on the rare occasion that they manage to say something even remotely truthful and accurate, they still manage to fill their claims with all sorts of bullshit, derision, and spiteful hypocrisy. What the Fords say and what they do are more often than not exact opposites; just browse a bit through this blog — the number of examples is staggering.

Here’s just a smattering from the radio show:

Caller Paul from Scarborough challenged the Fords’ claims that the Scarborough LRT, the above-ground alternative to the subway, will lead to “ripping up roads” and all of the other deceitful fear mongering that the two Fords have been menacing Torontonians with. He accurately called them “liars”, and provided a variety of facts to back this claim. Turns out the environmental assesments have all been paid for and done, and most of the LRT route would cover the existing Scarborough Rapid Transit tracks (i.e. no ripping up of roads, etc.) The Ford “plan” scraps all of those years of effort and costs a whack of money (based on previous EA costs, $1 million seems like a conservative number), in favour of back-of-the-napkin calculations, seemingly done by a 3-year-old (though apparently no one’s seen it so that’s really just a best guess).

Doug’s dismissive response was to entirely ignore all of these facts and instead respond with the usual Fordian drivel, “Do you believe in a two-tier transit system?”. No facts, no reports (even skewed ones!) to his singular claim — nope, Doug just called Paul a “liar” and then proceeded to heap lie upon deception upon insult.

Doug also included Josh Matlow in his dis session, most likely because Matlow is one of those disgusting downtown “elites” who know how to count and read; according to the Fords, all Toronto newspapers and magazines are tools of the wasteful “elite” now that they’re questioning the brothers, so start burning your books, Ford Nation!

Ensuring that his brother wasn’t the only one publicly spreading incorrect / incomplete information, Rob added that the average household will pay $10 a year extra as part of a property tax increase (yet another topic demonstrating the Fords’ double-crosses). The numbers are actually closer to $38 per year for the next 30 years, and that doesn’t cover the cost of running the new line. I wouldn’t call this last part a lie — it’s entirely possible that this is simply just another example of Ford’s willful, bull-headed ignorance.

Continuing the radio program, Robbie went on to express his outrage at the expenses of Pan Am Games officials, which almost threatened to shine a ray of honesty onto the Ford administration until I recalled how completely unconcerned he was (and continues to be), when Pan Am organizers met with him and basically refused to discuss the costs of finding a mascot for the event. This would look pretty bad in and of itself, but it takes on Fordian proportions when you consider that Rob’s former hand-picked Chief of Staff Amir Remtulla has been Pan Am’s vice president for well over a year, and the guy in Amir’s position prior to that was none other than Nick Kouvalis, Rob’s previous Chief of Staff and the man generally credited with getting Ford the mayoralty. And this outrage-in-absentia isn’t uncommon for Fordo.

So in case you missed that, Rob Ford not only knowingly allowed secret Pan Am spending to occur on his watch without lifting a finger (this doesn’t even include the number of times that the Games were before Council as votes, reports, etc.), but he personally appointed the people who he now feigns outrage at. Not that there’s any insinuations of impropriety, mind you — unlike Ford, all of the Pan Am executives’ bonuses were above board. And while I agree that the bonuses are quite exorbitant, it doesn’t address the fact that Rob and his brother knew about them for years and did absolutely nothing about them. Actually, that’s not 100% correct — Ford is directly responsible for ensuring that some of those people received the exorbitant bonuses.

The bullshit didn’t stop there.

Rob continued by telling guest sports commentator Mike Toth about the lessons he learned from coaching football — the importance of being on time — a wonderful example to teach newcomers to Canada what the word “hipocrisy” means. If that example doesn’t quite hit home, there’s always the follow-up statement that Robbie made on the radio show by repeating his claim that City Hall has a spending problem, not a revenue problem, and he calls bullshit on higher taxes and other revenue “tools”. What he actually meant is that he thinks you’re so fucking stupid that you won’t remember that he voted to increase property taxes by 1.6% all while simultaneously decrying any tax hikes, and at the same time hiking trasit fare and reducing services, championing massive police budget increases, cutting Councillor pay, wasting hundreds of thousands in unjustified firings, and millions in ass-backwards (some believe illegal) decisions … hell, I could go on for hours, but you get the picture.

It’s gotten to the point where that old joke has taken on a sad new gravity:

You know when the Fords are lying when they open their mouths.

One Comment on “ Not even remotely truthy anymore ”

  • Daniel J. Christie
    October 16th, 2013 7:16 am

    Sunday’s show was stellar -one of the best ever. It had it all: lies, belligerence, self-glorification….and…..and SQUIRMING! Yep real, on-air squirming! The boys new they’d done real bad so they tried, like nine-year olds, to explain why they done bad hoping to pin it all on Paul Ainslie. Hell, no mention was made until Tuesday that the real Machievelli of the robo calls was….DOUG! Probably because Rob is just too stupid to dream up anything so complicated on his own. Now, Ainslie comes right out and calls either one or both of them ‘liars’. And Jerry Agar says the “issue’ isn’t robo calls or lying or anything like that at all. The ‘issue’ is Paul Ainslie’s wimpiness. Wow. You gotta love the right wing whether it’s two-bit psycho like Ted Cruz (born in Calgary by the way) or the Bloat Brothers or Jerry Agar. May we live in interesting times, eh?


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