iSlamming Rob Ford!

Unintended outcome ... for the win!

Cue the shrieeeking from Ford Nation and other rightwing nut jobs.

Has Ezra Levant seen this?

The above is probably a consequence of Rob's incoherent rant at Toronto City council on Monday.

Bigger fish...

Through all the mind-numbing histrionics of the Rob Ford saga, the large pachyderm in the room is not the Mayor himself but THE question: what could be the target of Toronto police investigations?

It was StunTV Ezra Levant who indirectly raised the edge of the rug, with his habitual shrieeking excesses on the Ford Nation premiere* yesterday. His flamboyant misdirection might have backfired, in this case.

At DJ! we started wondering about the Fords' agenda, back when Rob tried so desperately to bring a casino to Toronto.

Gambling and organized crime are long-time associates. It's worth noting that Sheldon Adelson is a huge supporter of the Republican party, and is currently under investigation.

And now, the Fords have retained the counsel of George Rust-d'Eye** to defend Rob's interests. Some say he's an over-rated, over-priced, way past his best-before-date shill. Will taxpayers have to pay for Crack Mayor's legal bills?

Rust-D'Eye is known for spectacular invoices that he believes reflect every penny's worth of his *expertise*, and his overbearing manner of delivery.

A carefully cultivated façade of punctilious and unctuous civility... The man has a history of advancing semi-truth, under the cover of legal advice and 'integrity'... though eventually facts do surface.

But back to Levant. The overweening excuse for his trademark trashy and flashy infotainment glurge: that he has a civic duty to speculate about the underbelly of his ideological and political opponents.

So, let's speculate about the Fords, shall we?  Are investigations also probing the possible existence of organized crime schemes? 

Is the family business involved with wise guys?  Did the illegal adolescent antics of Doug, Kathy and Rob provide leverage to pressure Doug Senior into mutually beneficial business arrangements?

There are historical precedents.  The Kennedy dynasty and wealth was founded on criminal entrepreneurship.  And the stench never left that cursed, tragic family, in spite of patriarch Joe's obssessive drive for respectability and political power.

Consider the range of resources dedicated to Ford surveillance.  It only makes sense to use a plane and that level of staff deployment if there's much, much more involved than only Rob scoring dope. Are there many Canadian and US law-enforcement agencies conducting forensic analysis to follow financial transactions and shipment of goods? 

Project Traveller looked at guns and gangs. Project Brazen dealt with drug dealers.

What else could there be... Money-laundering? Drug-smuggling? Contracted murders?

What other factual dots remain to be connected?

Here's a link to a brilliant compilation of Ford Bros shenanigans from Alison at Creekside. The picture at the top is her work.

My co-blogger fern hill has done much heavy lifting to date, in blogposts after blogposts about dodgy and bizarre Ford clan machinations, as well as documents linking them to criminal elements.

If TPS investigators have diligently and scrupulously gathered evidence required so that charges can be filed, and prosecutors can make their case, it will be an EPIC take-down.  No wonder Police Chief Blair was so circumspect during his media conference.

Unfortunately, the Fords (and their silent business partners?) have deep, deep pockets.  

As with Michael Bryant, lawyers will use all the legal tactics and loopholes available to get their clients off the hook, if the TPS investigation even gets to trial.

It was clearly said here, you can bully and bluff your way out of anything, when you're a wealthy, christian, well-CONnected, privileged, heterosexual and cis white man.

*Just when I was about to publish this blogpost, we heard that StunTV has aborted Ford Nation.  Darn.  And I was about to launch the hashtag #FORdNicATION, too!

** Thanks to our Vaughn insiders who steered me towards more info about Rust-D'Eye.

Pop Icons, Part D'oh.

In reply to dBO's blogiversary post, I was going to add this:


You could say that keeping up with the right-wing horror show in Canada at the moment is like trying to stuff ten pounds of horseshit into a five-pound bag.

Here's where we take some of our inspiration from at DJ!




But in trying to add it, I rofo-ed her coding. And now I'm skert. *hides*

Pop icons...

Five hilarious years, blogging with my virtual roomie fern hill. Time flies when you're having fun deriding venal right wing nut jobs, fundamentalist religious zealots, and vapid political ideologues of all stripe. The video above captures something of the flavour of our dynamic interaction, I think. Happy Birthday to DAMMIT JANET!

The November Seventeenth Gang

It's our birthday here at DJ!!

Co-blogger deBeauxOs yesterday introduced me to this nifty shared birthday site.

DJ! shares this auspicious day with a cool gang.

August Ferdinand Mobius

Field Marshall Montgomery

Rock Hudson

Canadian icon Gordon Lightfoot

Martin Scorsese

Danny Devito

And the fabulous RuPaul.





Happy Birthday to all of us.

Holy Trademark Infringement!

So, today our Crack Mayor signed bobbleheads for idiots people who waited in line for hours. He signed and schmoozed for four hours.

It's all good. It's for charity.

But then the bobbleheads ran out, but the line-up didn't, so he started signing t-shirts.

Ruh-roh. Wonder what the Ford Motor Company thinks of being connected to a crack-smoking, criminal-associating moron.

Not to mention trademark infringement.

Stay tuned. And if you're on the Twitter, retweet this.

Hey @FordCanada! Have a look at this. pic.twitter.com/2iqgaaQXs7 You good with it? #topoli

— Fern Hill (@fernhilldammit) November 12, 2013

Photo via Don Peat

UPDATE: Ah. It is revealed.

A woman in the crowd is apparently selling the Ford Nation t-shirts with the car company's logo

— Ben Spurr (@BenSpurr) November 12, 2013

She was ejected from City Hall. Selling stuff not allowed.

MORE UPDATE:

Ford Motor Company did not grant permission for the use of its logo and thank you for bringing this to our attention.

— Ford Canada (@FordCanada) November 12, 2013

Dear Liberal Party of Canada: the 1990s are over.

Justin Trudeau's campaign organizers seem to be surprisingly unaware that we are now in the 21st century.  The worst excesses of the Clinton years, as exemplified by the _Sex in the City_ TV series and atrocious movies are sooo over.

Perhaps someone on his team thought this was deliciously ironic and oh-so-vintage coy?

I'm being generous here.

I have yet to read one tweet from a woman of any generation or any political stripe who doesn't find the above regressive, patronizing and offensive.

It's not the worst recent display of oblivious hipster arrogance ever but it comes close. 

I could *storify* the varied clever responses and legitimate criticism to this MASSIVE marketing failure but I would invariably leave out some excellent contributions.  So I encourage you to seek out those winning pithy and witty tweets.  And you may certainly add links to your favourite ones in our comments thread!

The Winter of Our Dys-CONS Tent

Ah, the five dimensional chess game of our uber-logistician Prime Minister. It's all clear to me now. His geeeeenius plan to destroy the Senate of Canada was cunning as a weasel tied to the underbelly of the diving chickenhawk taunting the eagle as it startled the bear out of the tree. Sabotage the sober second thought lounge by handpicking loyalists to populate its greenery, convince them they could do no wrong, (pay no attention to the little man behind the heavy velvet curtains muttering darkly about legality) and lead them down the Hill Garden Path where His PMinence would leave them to hang, monkeys on sticks, swinging in the mighty wind He could use to change Parliament ever more to his whimsical liking.

But then came the near-Ides of June Flood and the triumphal Conservative march through the Olympic Arch at the mouth of the Calgary School was stalled, unable to cross the RoBowCalln. Not even a Very Concerned speech upon the Hills above, enrobed in Imperial Flight Jacket, caused the waters to recede, and the throne of CONut was dragged ashore to await a drier season. Some things even He could not turn back with a command.

And so comes that delayed season of the wolf.  Over Samhain, when the veils between the worlds thin and those that should be dead walk among the living.  Cold, unwarmed by hurried passage of PMperial laws and the smothered breath of Canadians that would question laws laid in place to authorize the placing of a favorite among the senior jurists of Democracy, He and His descend upon this place, promising a bump in merchants' depleted coffers and solace to the urban councilors that would support them had the hoi polloi but been better solicited.

But what are these? Are there men (and women) with swords upon which they have not loyally fallen yet? Shall they not join the others who leave crimson the street under the wheels of His bus? Will their tongues prove sharper than blades? Is Cicero finally at the Gates, damning speeches in hand, louder than Hannibal's elephants?

Nah, likely not, as it doesn't matter how low my expectations get, the Conservatives under Harper limbo beneath them, but the Circus is definitely in town, replete with horse...talk. I expect Sophisticated (look it up, it's not a compliment) rhetorical flourishes on Black is White Jobs Lawn Order Flags War of 1812 God Save Us All Competition Free Enterprise Foreign Investment Enemies of Liberty Assimilate and likely entertaining intermissions of throwing scientists and their heretical Facts to the young PMO hyenas in civilian drag on a gazebo-shaped stage.

I leave the final imperial word to "This Hour Has 22 Minutes". This is how you do satire. Close to the bone. Close to painful, painful bone.  We need more of it.

Lorde Parody "Tories"

Fetus Fetishists' Tricksiness

Here at DJ! we have (intermittently) followed the career of Arch Fetish Fetishist and Chief Persecutor of Dr George Tiller, Phill Kline.

It is with great satisfaction that we report today that Phill has had his legal nads nipped.

The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday suspended the law license of former state Attorney General Phill Kline for misconduct in connection with his prosecution of abortion providers, including the late George Tiller.

The court unanimously found that Kline’s “overzealous advocacy” and “improper motives” led to “significant and numerous” violations of professional conduct, which the court deemed “particularly troubling in light of his service as the chief prosecuting attorney for this state and its most populous county.”

Kline, whom Operation Rescue named “Man of the Year” in 2006, prosecuted cases involving Planned Parenthood and Tiller, who was one of the country’s few remaining late-term abortion providers before he was murdered by an antiabortion activist in 2009.

Shortly after being elected in 2002, Kline began an investigation into Tiller’s clinic, eventually obtaining patients’ personal medical records. Many of these documents were later leaked to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, though Kline denied he was the source of the leak.

The case against Tiller was eventually thrown out by the Kansas Supreme Court.

Regular readers may remember that we ascribe a great deal of the blame for Dr Tiller's assassination to Bill O'Reilly, armed by Phill Kline.

Disbarred!

In other news of fetus fetishist tricksiness, the loophole the Fetal Gore Porn Gang, who have been plaguing the good citizens of Hamilton, Ontario, for the past month, is revealed.

Officials can't nab them for interfering with city property when they hang their gory banners because:

But protesters aren’t attaching the banner to any city property — instead, they’re tying the banner to their bodies and standing next to the edge of the overpass. That technicality ties the city’s hands, says Ward 7 Coun. Scott Duvall.

“We were hoping to get them on the sign by-law, but they are not hanging these signs on public property, they are attaching the signs to their bodies,” Duvall told CBC Hamilton.

“I have received many phone calls and emails on this. I have contacted our bylaw staff and they have stated to me there is nothing they can do.”

Anti-choicers must lie and cheat because there is no logic or sanity to their 'arguments'.

And today we have two splendid examples of it.

(As if any more were needed.)