Yes, the populist angle is clear. But the votes come at an absolutely insane cost ($3.5 billion at a bare minimum) and only from one area. Nobody in other parts of town is going to love him because he spent their money building a subway to Scarborough. More to the point, it suggests a...

I've said this before, but I have no idea why Tory has decided he wants to stake everything on this. I disagree with the man's politics, but I assumed he was smarter than this.

Sure, it's straightforward as a piece of populist theatre. But as we actually start talking about signing cheques and putting shovels in the ground, it should be pretty readily apparent that it's a poor idea and a hugely expensive one. And unlike, say, the PanAms, there's no obvious chance...

Why on earth does Tory want to fight so hard for the Scarborough stubway? He's had dozens of opportunities to walk away from it and save face, to write it off to budget or votes, or to instead use his bully pulpit to make a great case for the LRT...

I agree that Canada presents massive logistical challenges for transit, especially due to our size, weather, and population density. But a high-speed line that ran from, say, Windsor/Sarnia to Montreal/Quebec City would capture a huge slice of Canada's population and be barely 1000km long...

Agreed. If the NDP's position is that they're opposed to things like road tolls, what exactly is the point of voting for them? How do they differentiate themselves if they're suddenly a 'small-government/low-tax' party? And how on earth have they allowed themselves to be outflanked both on...

I agree, although I think this is still more damning of Ford than Tory. Politics, ultimately, is the art of the possible and is about trying to shape and implement policy. Tory is doing that, and Ford couldn't. Imagine fo a moment that you were a bona-fide supporter of Ford. You truly...

I don't want to absolve the Ontario Liberals of anything specific here, but: I think we should all let go of the idea that government can - or even should - "run like a business" in any substantive ways. Governments exist for fundamentally different reasons and operate in fundamentally...

'Jeff,' I'm not sure about the extent to which you represent BLM, or their ideals; I'll direct this reply to you anyway but hopefully some others might want to chip in. If this is truly what you want, then you don't want to live in a modern liberal democracy. Looking at your list, you seem...

I think this is mostly attributable to the fact that the video is pathetic - in the literal sense of eliciting pathos. Ford doesn't come across as a rager or a party animal, just as the worst of skid row. Totally off his head, doing just about anything for a high, dishevelled and unwell in a...

So after all this, what? Ford walked, all of his cronies and enforcers walked, no public officials are held to account for a remarkably bad mishandling of the case, and handful of dark-skinned guys get their front doors smashed in, get thrown in jail, and have their lives ruined. I've said...

I had assumed that more people would come out of the woodwork after Ford died, with books and tell-all interviews and so on. Of course, this isn't the USA, so the market for that kind of thing is limited. And maybe the media feel that the public appetite has cooled. As for the case, I take a...

This is a bit of a strawman though, isn't it? At least in my case, the problem isn't with a disadvantaged group demanding equality. It's a problem with some specific demands or tactics, in the context of BLM's protest during the Pride Parade. On most of those demands, I'm agnostic - I don't...

On this front, I think you've got it exactly backward. The classically liberal position would be to limit speech as little as possible. Traditionally, that's meant that you place limitations on things like libel, slander or harassment. We also have the classic example of yelling "Fire!" in a...

My main problem is with the insistence that there be no police float at the parades. I see it as a free speech/assembly issue: some people are saying that some other people should not have the right to be in a specific place based solely on their membership in a group. We do have some laws...

Jesus. There are people who still think there's no crack video? And those same people are able to operate a computer?

No, that's obviously not what I meant. You can tell I didn't mean that, since I didn't write that. The "justice" that I'd like Rob Ford to face is the same that I'd like anyone guilty of similar offences, including but not limited to: jail time for drunk driving; censure and penalty at...

Much as I find the "haters" tag childish - I think reasonable people can disagree with someone without being a 'hater' - I'll go ahead and speak on behalf of myself and probably lots of other 'haters' here. This very much was not "my wish." My wish would be that Rob Ford have to face justice...

True. It's just that, when you comb through the middle few-thousand pages of this thread (!), you start remembering a whole cavalcade of insanity and loose ends that never got tied up. What ever happened to all those wild stories of connections here and there - Windsor, Fort Mac, etc - and all...

I'm less interested, frankly, in Ford's final days than I am in what comes after. I'm curious to hear how people think it will shake down. Will people start coming out of the woodwork to tell even more incredible stories? Will things get published that had been 'sat on' for months/years...