Rob Ford's Toronto

[pw20]

And you think catering to that is the solution?

What we need to do is reverse the market-driven society cliff we went off a while back. Because we do need smart people telling us what to do. And it just isn't politics...we used to dress better and listen to better music when we had half the sense to take the lead from those who knew what they were talking about.

Read my entire comment, and the last paragraph, please: Until we can find a candidate or leader that is respectful of both the suburbs AND urban cities while also trying to put forward a progressive agenda then we're pooched. I personally believe it can happen (its happening Calgary). Rob Ford obviously is NOT that candidate - but "we" the "urbane" progressive core needs to cut the paternalism or we're going to be cut from the dialogue."

 

[christiesplits]

Ran into Daniel Dale inside Old City Hall.

I asked him "how's business?" He smiled, slouched his shoulders and gave an audible sigh of fatigue.

 

[adma]

Person A: Red is good
Person B: Blue is good
Person A: Of course you would you philistine! I mock you and your rudimentary understanding of anything and everything and I will respond to you with run on sentences full of characters attacks, red herrings, ad hominems and any other forms of sophistry I please, because it makes me sound bigger and better and more important than you, so much so that only I, not you, will bother to read my post and appreciate the glory that my verbal masturbation is. I'll mock you further, vis-a-vis some kind of tangential picture (tee hee hee) and since that really doesn't make me feel quite as good about myself as I'd like, I'll go ahead and post some completely unrelated subject and say "Since YOU think SO-and-SO about this particular topic, well then YOU must like THIS or THAT" and of course you can protest all you like, but you're still a philistine for not liking Red.


Which person is the idiot in this example?

You.

 

[k10ery]

The only thing I learned reading this thread today. But it's a cool one!

The only citizens over 18 not eligible to vote are the Chief Electoral Officer and Deputy Chief Electoral Officer.

 

[doady]

Read my entire comment, and the last paragraph, please: Until we can find a candidate or leader that is respectful of both the suburbs AND urban cities while also trying to put forward a progressive agenda then we're pooched. I personally believe it can happen (its happening Calgary).

In Calgary it's a lot easier since there are only suburbs and no urban city.

 

[anonymoose]

And you think catering to that is the solution?

What we need to do is reverse the market-driven society cliff we went off a while back. Because we do need smart people telling us what to do. And it just isn't politics...we used to dress better and listen to better music when we had half the sense to take the lead from those who knew what they were talking about.

It's funny that no one ever wants to be in hands of an uneducated, incompetent or simply mediocre brain surgeon or airline pilot, but as soon as it comes to politics, many people suddenly want a "regular guy you can have a beer with" to make all the decisions.

 

[adma]

Hi everybody!

 

[Silence&Motion]

what the liberals under was that they talked down to the population. They acted with an obnoxious paternalistic attitude that basically said: "Don't worry Canada, we know what's best for you." Miller, and Smitherman followed a similar ethos. While you may have agreed with Miller's policies - they came across similarly. "I'm smaaat and went to Harvard and I know what's best for you." Therefore its not big surprise that people voted in a reactive way against Smitherman, and migrated towards the simplistic: I will not raise your taxes and I'm going to cut the gravy. It was retail politics at its finest.

Isn't this more of a problem with people who have been in power for a while rather than something endemic to the Left or to certain politicians? Harper and Flaherty strike me as people who are quite happy to carry out their agenda without asking anyone for permission/advice. The only reason Ford can't adopt this kind of ethos is because he has no power outside raw populism. Miller could jam through policies without having to go to the electorate because he had control of council and the bureaucracy.

Because we do need smart people telling us what to do. And it just isn't politics...we used to dress better and listen to better music when we had half the sense to take the lead from those who knew what they were talking about.

I'd much rather live in a world where people elect populists like Ford than one in which "smart" people tell me what to do, how to dress, and what music to listen to.

It's funny that no one ever wants to be in hands of an uneducated, incompetent or simply mediocre brain surgeon or airline pilot, but as soon as it comes to politics, many people suddenly want a "regular guy you can have a beer with" to make all the decisions.

The difference is that politicians aren't technocrats. They're not elected to apply expert knowledge to technical problems, they're elected to make value decisions. In that sense they are supposed to be "one of us". Though it helps if their drug-addled brain isn't leaking out their ears.

 

[Johnny Au]

Hi everybody!

Suppose someone who speaks only Spanish decides to visit Dr. Nick. Dr. Nick does not speak good Spanish, especially given that "Espanol" is missing a tilde over the "n." Not just that, but it is ungrammatical (it reads "Self [he] speaks Spanish" or more freely, "He speaks Spanish himself" but with the wrong conjugation) (note that I cannot read Spanish, have no formal education in Spanish, and am barely exposed to Spanish outside of comparative linguistics, but can notice grammatical errors in it). It should read on the ad: "HABLO ESPAÑOL" ( speak Spanish). Therefore, the Spanish speaker has the right to be suspicious of Dr. Nick.

 

[pw20]

Isn't this more of a problem with people who have been in power for a while rather than something endemic to the Left or to certain politicians? Harper and Flaherty strike me as people who are quite happy to carry out their agenda without asking anyone for permission/advice. The only reason Ford can't adopt this kind of ethos is because he has no power outside raw populism. Miller could jam through policies without having to go to the electorate because he had control of council and the bureaucracy.

Short answer... no. And I mean that. The Liberal party of Canada (and Smitherman was very much a Liberal Party of Canada candidate) has always had this problem wherein they considered themselves Canada's natural governing elite. Miller, as much as he was an NDP, was (in my opinion) a part of the central Canada, white upper middle class, downtown Toronto elite that very much liked to consider themselves the natural governing clique in Canada. Miller of course was a bit more of a socialist but I think the intention was there - dear suburbs - I know what's best for you. In my opinion, Miller behaved like a early twentieth century protestant reformer who went into the slums and told poor people how he was going to provide moral uplift to the masses.

Ford was reactionary to that attitude. A rebellion of sorts wherein the population simply got tired of politicians telling them "what was good for them" based on some study that a nice (white) woman or man (who worked at the United Way) told them would make their lives better.

Ford (or his people) understood that all of the gobbldyguk of the Miller era meant nothing to Joe the Plumber, who just wants to know how much money he or she has in their wallet at the end of th month.

IMO the conservative party has been very careful not to talk down to its electorate even if it wields more power. It understands that the electorate doesn't want to be outwardly told what to do (this is why the Harper government is so bloody secretive. It just does).

Some of this is, of course, a bit hyperbolic - but I think those of us who REALLY dislike Ford (and I hate the man with a passion) have to take a closer look at our own actions (as downtown elitests) to understand just how we ended up with the reactionary mayor that we did. Just as the Liberal Party under Trudeau is trying to remove its nose in the air elitest sensibility, so too must the Downtown Toronto elite - instead of snickering at those who live in the suburbs (you just don't understand what architecture is) we ourselves need to be more empathetic, reasonable and accepting.

 

[anonymoose]

I'd much rather live in a world where people elect populists like Ford than one in which "smart" people tell me what to do, how to dress, and what music to listen to.

Yeah, hard to disagree with this. I guess the idea of having a Philosopher King leader who's smarter and wiser than everyone else is kind of seductive in a way, despite the fact that taking the idea to its logical conclusion leads to totalitarianism.

I still don't have a problem with trying to elect leaders who are smarter and better-educated than average, just like I would want my GP to be smarter than average. Obviously no one expects the mayor to be an expert on everything or anything to do with running the city, but he should be able to properly evaluate the data presented to him by his own expert advisers, to make informed choices about the issues, instead of just going "SUBWAYS SUBWAYS SUBWAYS".

The difference is that politicians aren't technocrats. They're not elected to apply expert knowledge to technical problems, they're elected to make value decisions. In that sense they are supposed to be "one of us". Though it helps if their drug-addled brain isn't leaking out their ears.

No, they are not technocrats. I imagine the world would be a much different place if most politicians had, say, an engineering degree as opposed to a law degree. But typically when we have a problem in a given field, we turn to an expert authority in that field. At the highest levels of government, we trust people who may have little to no knowledge in a given field to make the right decisions. As a result, we have stories like this:
http://arstechnica.com/staff/2012/10/editorial-meet-a-science-committee-that-doesnt-get-science/

Missouri's Todd Akin, a Representative running for Senator, made headlines through his bizarre misunderstanding of biology, specifically that of the female reproductive system. Overcome by his desire to believe that pregnancy (and thus abortion) shouldn't be an issue for rape victims, he infamously claimed that the female body could somehow block pregnancy in the case of "legitimate rape."

But Akin's (very public) misunderstanding of science pales in comparison to that of Georgia Representative Paul Broun. He's an MD who is apparently convinced most of modern science is a plot, fostered by none other than Satan. "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory," Broun declared, "all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell."

 

[Johnny Au]

Closer to home, our federal Minister of Industry (also in charge of the National Research Council, the Canadian government's main science department) is a Young Earth Creationist.

 

[CowboyLogic]

The whole point of the show is to be over the top, much like a lot of their work. I've seen a few of them and, while I can understand some people finding the presentation annoying, all I've ever seen them do is slam conspiracy nuts, wackjob pseudoscience, or anyone lacking critical thinking. I don't recall hearing them claim anything that isn't a verifiable fact.

Penn & Teller go well beyond being "over the top". Many of the arguments they put forth on their show are disingenuous, use flawed logic or excessive rhetoric, and are contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. One big tactic they use on that show is choosing complete idiots and lunatics to represent the opposing side, so instead of actually having to prove their point, they simply pull apart the flawed arguments or simply make the people look dumb through editing and narration.

Its hard to demonstrate this without going into specific examples. Off the top of my head, the "Fast Food" episode was atrocious. They argued that "fast food" isn't unhealthy. One of their main arguments was that there's nothing unhealthy about eating fast food, so long as you just eat smaller proportions of it. They said you could eat something like a third of a burger a day instead of the whole burger, thus not going over your calorie quotient. The argument just doesn't make sense, because (a) it focused entirely on calories, ignoring both other nutritional values (like sodium and fat) as well as the chemicals used in a lot of fast food, and (b) nobody is going to eat a quarter or third or half of a burger and be full, as the amount of calories is disproportionate to the amount of food. So, their argument was essentially that a third of a burger is as healthy as a fruit salad with the same amount of calories. They also interviewed the CEO of Arby's(?) to help prove that fast food is healthy.

I like the show, but MetroMan bringing up Penn & Teller, of all people, as the guys who should reveal Ford's "bullshit" is just absurd IMO. It would be like thinking Ford should be the guy to call out Trudeau on smoking pot.

Personally, I thought anti-vaxxers were typically libertarians. So I decided to look it up:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/i...-politics-of-vaccine-resistance/#.UiXUVDZwp8G


Funny how our respective assumptions probably betrayed our political biases, though.

Good to know. Guess I was wrong on that one. I always thought it was a liberal thing, but I do remember now that there was some anti-vax backlash against Michelle Bachmann in the US, so

 

[ThinkRicky]

I'd much rather live in a world where people elect populists like Ford than one in which "smart" people tell me what to do, how to dress, and what music to listen to.

These are both the same world, and you are forced to live in it anyway.

 

[jusbokeh]

quiet on all fronts.
No rob ford antics or many new leaks from the media.

Either it was a boring a weekend or both sides are hunkering down for something big to blow out soon.

I will be at the ryerson jschool hearing for the media complaints and try to get some videos up