In one of my last posts I wondered how any sane Canadian could vote for a bestial Con ape like Doug Ford.
And whether we should call those who support him the ugly Canadians.
I pointed out that Ford was both intellectually and emotionally unfit to be the leader of anything, let alone the Premier of Canada's most powerful province.
But what I forgot to mention is how the rest of the world would react.
Or what they would think of us for electing such a clown.
And how they would laugh at Ford, and at us, like John Oliver did four years ago when Ford ran for Mayor of Toronto.
Luckily Ford lost, but can you imagine how the world would have laughed if he had become Mayor?
Or imagine how they would roar with laughter if he was elected Premier.
You know it's so sad. After ten years of being disgraced in the eyes of the world by Stephen Harper...
And being regarded by the world as the next best thing to rednecks and crackers.
Canada got a chance to redeem itself with a new Prime Minister...
But the Con media said he was embarrassing Canada.
And all they would say about Ford was that he wasn't Trump.
So now we could soon be wearing bags over our heads again...
In a tired old country, the more things change.
They more they don't.
If we want to avoid that fate, we know what to do...
14 comments:
Anybody but Ford. Why is he against the foreign buyers tax? Is this not the ultimate elitist position. Another thing you can say goodbye to if he becomes premier is the Greenbelt, and the ban on jets at Toronto Island airport. Lastly I believe he believes like Thatcher, if your taking public transit your a failure.
I'm voting for ol Dougie. Hopefully once he wins you can piss off to Scotland.
Always the "con media" with the crybaby Liberals, isn't it?
Love or hate Ford all you want, but perhaps you should check out the Twitter feeds of the OLP/Wynne and see where they are deliberately lying about what Ford has said he will do, and the sheep like you lap it up.
Only "low information voters" - as Liberals like to call them, in this campaign are Wynne's supporters who swallow what they are fed whole.
ANYONE but Wynne.....whether PC, NDP, Green or other.
FYI, dotard: Simon voted for the NDP in the previous federal election, but has been writing favorably about the Liberals because they've done the most to turn the country around since the Reign of Error that was the Harperreich and its provincial fiefdoms. Like many pragmatic progressives, he and commenters here just want the leftier-left to stop fighting the center-left and come together against their common enemy in the cons ("Unite the Left" <-> "Unite the Right"), much the same as pragmatic progressives in the U.S. were livid when the wannabe revolutionaries stayed home and pulled a tantrum instead of a voting lever to "teach Americans a lesson" about nominating Hillary instead of St. Bernard. That's one reason those of us south of the border ended up with Trump.
Now, the U.S. is different from the multiparty parliamentary democracies of the Commonwealth, because we don't have an NDP or Labour Party proper as a leftier-left counterweight to the Canadian Liberals or the U.K. Liberal Democrats. But in all three countries, the only low-info voters are the con idiot sheep who lap up the WWE-style stupidity, raw bigotry, and draconian austerity measures of the Tories/Republicans. Less "low-info" but still a problem in many ways are their enablers who fight the wrong enemy.
I don't know much about Wynne other than she's made some errors in her political career and has a low approval rating, and there are some (many?) in the party calling for her to step aside and hold a new leadership contest to get some fresh blood in for the fight against Dougie Dotard. I will say, however, that even as a Yankee I've noticed a LOT of unfair and vicious attacks against her (in the cons' Twitter feeds) based on her sexual orientation, similar to the attacks against Trudeau for what the cons' perceptions of his identity are. Reminds me a lot of Hillary Clinton, and that's why this Ontario race concerns me as an American. A vicious, loudmouth, fat orange pro wrestler versus a disliked woman in a pant suit. That's not a rerun I want to see Canada adapt for TV.
ANYONE but Donald J. Ford, period.
To be honest, Ontarians just baffle me. I've tried to wrap my brain around Ontario provincial politics for years, but their actions don't correlate to what makes them upset. They demand world-class infrastructure, but aren't willing to pay a dime more in taxes. They want cheap resources, but then bellyache about putting the plants in their backyard, then caterwaul that the politicians listened to them and cancelled those projects. They despise Wynne for privatizing Hydro, but then clamour for the party entirely devoted to privatizing public services?! What the hell kind of sense does that make???
I just wish I could grab my province by the shoulders and say "It wasn't Rob Ford's behaviour that was problem, it was his policies!" During Rob Ford's tenure as mayor, I watched him detonate the fully funded Transit City plan and rally the screaming mobs to City Hall demanding subway extensions to the suburbs when they were neither funded nor warranted by city planners. And for what? Mere ego! Nothing more than "you downtown elites have subways, we want them too because subways are special!"
And what did we get? A one-stop Scarborough subway that costs billions and is rising by the month. Coulda had the improved bus service to better link the existing subway lines to every part of the city (including the 'burbs) and turned our attention to that downtown relief line we need, but no, we had to sacrifice it to bunch of petulant screamers chanting "Respect for Taxpayer" like it was "Make Toronto Great Again" and now look where we are.
And these jokers have the gall to be deficit scolds, too. Good luck solving that after doing away with the carbon tax, Dougie.
*sigh* I feel like this is a failure of three parties in particular: the Ontario NDP, the political media, and Kathleen Wynne herself. After being a marginal party since the Rae years, the NDP seems completely adrift, lacking a core message and never seeming able to grab the spotlight. The very things that people hate the Ontario Liberals for are things that Ford is, only ten times as worse. More corruption. More privatization. Higher deficits. So why does Horwath keep playing footsie with right-wing politics instead of just delivering the very Bernie Sanders narrative we're all thirsting for. And why doesn't the political press point out the glaringly obvious Tory hypocrisy for all Ontario to see? Point out that voting for the Privatizer-In-Chief when they're upset about privatization is the kind of thing the mindless Trump voters do! Scrape away all the layers of obfuscation and expose the raw resentment politics lurking in the PC base. These people don't care about policy. They just hate other people, be they experts, teachers, or transgender Ontarians. Nothing else is motivating them.
Finally, Wynne herself needs to step up her game. As tempting as it is to hold Rob over Doug's head or go at his drug-dealing, I think these will backfire. She needs to stick to a simple message: Conservative policies hurt Ontarians. Call out his "race to the bottom" bullshit. Point out his deficit hypocrisy. Don't mince words and don't get bogged down in details. Hammer him hard. If Horwath can't get on the front page and do it, Wynne might as well.
Late night TV will have a field day if Ford is elected. He'll provide fresh comedic oxygen for the viewers who must be getting weary of the Trump circus by now(myself included).
Sadly, as in the US, we will be seen as a bunch of slack jawed yokels for voting in the likes of Ford and the 4 years of nonsense that will surely ensue.
Our only hope is that the Libs and NDP can win more seats than Ford and can forge an alliance to prevent this ill equipped thug from destroying this province.
I believe that Kathleen Wynn's biggest failure will be seen by what she didn't do, not stepping down to let someone new take on Ford or whoever. She had to have known she didn't have a hope in hell of winning but I guess the reins of power are not easy ones to let go.
JD
Politics of personal grievance. All you right-wingers have got.
hi Steve....Doug Ford would set Ontario back at least ten years. What the Fords did to Toronto was bad enough, and had people all over the world laughing at us. What Dougie could do to Ontario will be ten times worth. He will bring in every regressive policy that has been rejected by those who know what they're doing. And will have to fire so many people to make up the dark hole in the PC platform that he will almost certainly plunge the province and the whole of Canada into a deadly recession...
hi anon@9:43...well of course you would vote for Dougie, you sound dumb enough to qualify as a member or cabbage in good standing of the Ford Nation. But as for me leaving Canada dream on. I am actually planning to head off to the highlands soon, but I will be back...
hi anon@4:13PM...don't bother with that troll. The things they write tell you who they are, and they are all very sad and sorry people.
hi anon@11:24...Wynne may not be the strongest candidate, but the province is booming, and please "low information voters" is just another name for the dummies of the "Ford Nation."
Hi Jackie...thanks for neatly summing up my political position, so I don't have to explain it to the right-wing oafs. As for Wynne, she might lack the ability to inspire people, but she is way more competent than Doug Ford, and the irrational hate for her is mostly a product of misogyny and homophobia. I hope to write about that soon...
Hi anon@1:52 PM...
I could have written this myself:
They demand world-class infrastructure, but aren't willing to pay a dime more in taxes. They want cheap resources, but then bellyache about putting the plants in their backyard, then caterwaul that the politicians listened to them and cancelled those projects. They despise Wynne for privatizing Hydro, but then clamour for the party entirely devoted to privatizing public services?! What the hell kind of sense does that make???
And unfortunately the answer is it makes no sense at all. And it's a sad reflection on a people and a province that our political choices are so limited, and our leaders so mediocre. I hope both Wynne and Horwath can rise to the occasion, and I will be voting for the one who is in the best position to defeat Ford. Beggars can't be choosers, and too much is at stake to play cheap politics...
hi JD....I'm afraid you're right. If Ford is elected the world will take another look at Canada, and recognize that it is not as cool a country as they thought. And they will howl with laughter. I know that when I see Ford on TV, he's so abysmally ignorant and brutish, that I can't help calling him Bluto and burst out laughing. Let there be no doubt, if that beast is elected, Canada will be reduced to the status of a third world country, and will have nobody to blame but itself...
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