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Rob Ford's Toronto

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khristopher said:
The name calling in this thread really needs a rest. Calling people idiots or stupid because they don't feel the same way as you is not the way we should be talking to each other. Just ignore their post if it makes you that upset that you need to resort to name calling or call them on facts. I'm not telling anyone what to do, and you definitely don't have to listen to me, but it would make reading this thread much nicer and less hostile and angry.
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Almost too sensible for this wildcat thread khris!
 
TheTigerMaster said:
So to recap:

1. Three reporters from two news agencies based in two different countries who independently saw the video said it APPEARS TO BE Rob Ford APPARENTLY SMOKING CRACK

2. Ford disappeared for 8 days

3. When he came back, Ford never denied that he smoked crack cocaine

4. His Chief of Staff was fired for ALLEGEDLY telling Ford to "get help" with his drug problem

5. Doug Ford is revealed to have ALLEGEDLY BEEN operating a drug ring in his 20s

6. Toronto Police start questioning Ford and his staffers ABOUT WHAT WE DON'T KNOW

7. Two Ford staffers quit on ethical reasons PROOF?

9. Over the next few days, 4 more staffers quit

10. Rob Ford is forced to hire unqualified friends from his (former) football team. Presumably nobody else would work for him

11. Ford continues to dodge media questioning on his cocaine use. WHICH HE ALREADY ANSWERED

12. Ford has a long and well known history of CERTAIN drug use, well before this cocaine incident

13. Ford has a history of lying about his drug use. (Remember the drunk hockey game and weed possession denials that were debunked?)

14. Fell free to add to the list fellow UTers.

Yup. Nothing to see here. Ford is most definitely innocent.

comical_ali.jpg


What are you? delusional? If this were my son or employee, it would be 100% obvious to me that he has a drug problem.
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Hmmm.
 
CN Tower said:
Hmmm.
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Do go on...

EDIT: TheTigerMaster, I will add one. While the video can be disputed, the picture with Anthony Smith cannot. Ford will not answer questions about this. It's bothering me to no end that Ford supporters seem to gloss over this. That image has been confirmed as authentic. He should answer to that picture, there's no (good) reason not to.
 
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Mayor Rob Ford hires his radio producer to work at city hall

From The Star, at this link:

Mayor Rob Ford’s newest staffer is the man who produced his weekly radio show.

Dan Jacobs, a part-time Newstalk 1010 producer who handled weekend shows including Ford’s “The City,” was seen in the mayor’s office on Tuesday. Jacobs confirmed on Tuesday evening that he is leaving Newstalk to work for Ford.

He said he starts at city hall on Friday. He referred further questions to Ford’s acting press secretary, who did not respond to late requests for comment.

Ford has now added six staffers to replace the six who have resigned or been fired since he became embroiled three weeks ago in a scandal over a cellphone video that appears to show him smoking crack cocaine. (He denies that such a video exists and that he uses crack.) The new staffers have significantly less political and professional experience than the old.

Jacobs, who is expected to serve in a junior role, has no known experience in politics. According to his LinkedIn page, he has owned a DJ company for 18 years, was a division manager at a manufacturer that makes ski and snowboard products between 2005 and 2010, and joined Newstalk in December 2010, the same month Ford took office.

In February, he said on Twitter that he was beginning “yet another new job,” this one as a researcher and fact-checker for a TV game show.

He worked for the city as a lifeguard and aquatics instructor between 1998 and 2002, according to the LinkedIn page. His education is listed as Earl Haig Secondary School. Mike Bendixen, Newstalk’s program director, said Jacobs began at the station as an intern.

Ford has not yet found permanent replacements for the two most senior aides he has lost: chief of staff Mark Towhey, whom he fired, and press secretary George Christopoulos, who resigned.
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Question: did Jacabs resign from Newstalk 1010 or was he fired? Just curious, Since "He referred further questions to Ford’s acting press secretary, who did not respond to late requests for comment." My guess, it was a part-time job at Newstalk 1010, so this new job might be full-time.
 
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CN Tower said:
Hmmm.
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CN Tower, how about we take Rob Ford out of the situation. He is obviously clouding your judgement. I've changed the situation so that we're dealing with Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer. Please place yourself in the position of a majority shareholder in Microsoft and tell us what you would conclude about the CEO. I'm genuinely curious.

1. Three reporters from two news agencies based in two different countries who independently saw the video said it was Steve Ballmer smoking crack

2. Steve Ballmer then disappeared for 8 days

3. When Ballmer came back, he never denied that he smoked crack cocaine

4. His Chief of Staff was fired for telling Ballmer to "get help" with his drug problem

5. Ballmer's best friend is revealed to have been operating a drug ring in his 20s

6. Redmond Police start questioning Ballmer and his employees

7. Two of Ballmer's staffers quit on ethical reasons

9. Over the next few days, 4 more staffers quit

10. Ballmer is forced to hire unqualified friends from his (former) football team. Presumably nobody else would work for him

11. Ballmer continues to dodge questioning on his cocaine use.

12. Ballmer has a long and well known history of drug use, well before this cocaine incident

13. Ballmer has a history of lying about his drug use. (Remember the drunk hockey game and weed possession denials that were debunked?)
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And please don't edit the posts and go on to quote them without giving proper notice to readers.
 
The fact that Ford's first response wasn't "I have never smoked crack cocaine and I will take a drug test to that effect" followed by "I intend to sue the Star for liebel/slander (whatever, I'm not a lawyer) but instead a "these allegations are rediculous" dodge followed by a week of silence is fishy. The fact that his return was followed by the sudden exit of a chunk of his senior staff including his Chief of Staff (Wasn't it the Sun that said he was fired after telling Ford to get help? Why would the Sun make that up?), police sniffing around and constant attempts to change the channel with blind talking points (I'm here to FIGHT for the TAXPAYERS!111oneone") is very suspicious.

This is all ignoring the other stuff reported by the Globe and Mail, which I seriously doubt is part of the Evil Leftist Conspiracy to topple the Fords. At this point, to ignore that there is something very rotten about the Ford administration is to be willfully obtuse.
 
Dilla said:
Do go on...

EDIT: TheTigerMaster, I will add one. While the video can be disputed, the picture with Anthony Smith cannot. Ford will not answer questions about this. It's bothering me to no end that Ford supporters seem to gloss over this. That image has been confirmed as authentic. He should answer to that picture, there's no (good) reason not to.
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Thanks for bringing that up. I really wish the media would question Ford on this. I find it disturbing that he's been hanging around with a now murdered gang member.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Thanks for bringing that up. I really wish the media would question Ford on this. I find it disturbing that he's been hanging around with a now murdered gang member.
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They tried. At one of those "press conferences" (stump speeches), A reporter did ask "what's your relationship to Anthony Smith?"

Ford:
"Anything else?"
"Anything else?"

End scene.

When was the last time a Mayor of a major Canadian city was photographed with someone who was killed in a gangland slaying soon thereafter (neverish, I assume)? Yet, it seems to have gotten lost in the noise. This is real evidence, with no real answers.
 
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Yeah, it's outrageous that he hasn't had to respond to the photograph with ostensive drug dealers and TWO people who were killed. It's such an absurdly conspicuously shady situation, and yet somehow our mayor can slide out of it just by ignoring reporters?! It's unbelievable and disturbing that this tactic is working for him, as evidenced by recent reports of the dwindling media presence outside his office. Apparently our mayor is exclusively accountable to his core constituency; an international scandal can go unanswered as long as Ford Nation doesn't mind (and for them, anything goes). It's unbelievable. Currently we have a mayor so unaccountable that he routinely slips through the back doors of any building he's in to avoid having to face reality and dismisses all criticism as media conspiracy. To think that this is what Toronto politics has become sickens me.

The only time he's addressed said photograph is on his radio show when a caller asked him point-blank about it so that he couldn't squirm out of it. Of course, him and Doug acted like jackasses and evaded it by calling the caller racist in a way that ended up being way more offensive than she could have possibly been:

“That's a racist comment. Rob has taken thousands of pictures with young black men, with their hats on, with their little funny signs and everything else, but I think it's disgusting that you would even come up with a comment, ‘Why is he taking pictures of two young black youth?’†-Doug Ford

What she actually asked, of course, was “Mayor Ford, is that you in the Gawker video, and is that you photographed with your arm around drug dealer Anthony Smith?†So not only do they not answer her question, but they invent a straw-version of her question and feign outrage at it, exploiting racial sensitivity to sneak out of the situation. Unbelievable.
 
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You know, I'm going to do something that I didn't really think was possible, given the amount of disdain I hold the entire Ford family in. I'm going to actually go on record as saying that if/when the video comes out, it will show that Rob Ford didn't call Justin Trudeau a fag, and at worst didn't refute it when the person recording the video tried to goad him with the statement. I also think that while Ford probably did refer to his team as fucking minorities, it was probably in the context of describing how others see them, and not his actual opinion. I think he was trying to be self-aggrandizing by saying that he was the only one who cared about them, but couldn't quite do it coherently in his druggy haze.

Again, I think Ford is a "waste of skin", to steal a phrase (and that's a lot of skin to waste), but the description of his rants from the video don't quite ring conversationally true to me. I'd actually be happy to be proven wrong, because anything that makes him look worse obviously chips at his power base, but that's one aspect of the video I'm not quite feeling.
 
OSS 117 said:
You know, I'm going to do something that I didn't really think was possible, given the amount of disdain I hold the entire Ford family in. I'm going to actually go on record as saying that if/when the video comes out, it will show that Rob Ford didn't call Justin Trudeau a fag, and at worst didn't refute it when the person recording the video tried to goad him with the statement. I also think that while Ford probably did refer to his team as fucking minorities, it was probably in the context of describing how others see them, and not his actual opinion. I think he was trying to be self-aggrandizing by saying that he was the only one who cared about them, but couldn't quite do it coherently in his druggy haze.
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Funny, I was thinking the same thing, but couldn't express it as well as you have here. If there is a real video that shows a real Rob Ford high as a kite on crack, anything he actually says I would consider immaterial. I've never smoked crack, but I'm guessing self-control when you're high on it isn't exactly an easy thing. Plus I do think he really did love coaching those Don Bosco kids, especially given how upset he was ("allegedly") when they fired him after the scandal broke. Of course public figures should always be accountable for what they say, but in terms of judging him as a person I would focus more on other things.
 
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