Sometimes They Really Are Just Fucking Morons

Reagan, bush II, harper, Mike Harris, Tim Hudak, Ernie Eves, John Baird, Jim Flaherty, William Kristol, Ezra Levant, and of course, Rob Ford.

When you factor in the way that they get so handsomely rewarded for their services and the fact that they want government to fail in order to slash services or privatize things, sometimes you wonder if they're just putting on a stupid act, because heads they win, tails we lose.

But then, every once in a while, everything blows up in their faces and you realize: No. They're really just fucking morons.

Like Rob Ford's slinking back to Queen's Park, to beg money from Dalton McGuinty so that he can get federal funding for his Sheppard subway extension that was all supposed to be funded from private sources.

If Mayor Rob Ford had convinced anyone the Sheppard subway expansion would be paid for with corporate cash, he shattered the illusion on Wednesday.

In a morning meeting at Queen’s Park, Ford asked Premier Dalton McGuinty to give the city $650 million for Sheppard by 2014. His justification: $333 million in federal money depends on that provincial money.

For a mayor who said in April that the $4.2 billion Sheppard project would not require a major government investment — “I’m not quite sure where taxpayers’ money is coming in when we’re using private money,” he said — the request represented a notable turnabout. It also provided ammunition for critics, transit experts among them, who say the project is not feasible.

Turns out Ford even got that wrong:

While she said other levels of government must contribute to all projects paid for with fund money, she said the specific amount of provincial assistance needed for Sheppard was up for discussion.
...

Fund rules say only that the federal government cannot provide more than 50 per cent of a project’s cost. The rules do not say Ottawa’s contribution to a project can never exceed Queen’s Park’s.

“Despite the agreement between the mayor and premier four months ago that made the Sheppard line the city's responsibility, the city is now saying they need provincial funding up front for that project,” the McGuinty source said. “That’s a change from the agreement from April.

“One of the reasons that change is requested, the premier was told, was because the federal money was contingent on provincial money. Now it seems that isn’t true, either.”

As Martin Regg Cohn says:

The last time he swaggered into Dalton McGuinty’s office, Rob Ford was at the top of his game — lording it over the premier, wearing his fresh electoral mandate like a wrestler’s prize belt. After a mere 25 minutes, the mayor emerged triumphant last December to declare he’d remake Toronto’s subway system in his own image.

Now, Ford has returned to Queen’s Park showing his tummy to a Liberal premier who appears, eight months later, to have nine lives in the opinion polls. His swagger gone, the mayor is asking for a modest “advance” to dig him out of a financial hole so he can start tunnelling the Sheppard subway extension.

Bereft of his once-shimmering prize belt, Ford looks increasingly like a mayor with no clothes — but for the cap in his hand.

...

A contrite Ford mumbled awkwardly that he’d known McGuinty “a long time,” but then babbled, unprompted: “I don’t have a great friendship because I’ve never known him that well.”

When the premier emerged a few minutes later in shirt sleeves, he took pains to avoid gloating. But the contrast between the two leaders couldn’t have been sharper: While Ford fled the scene after two minutes, McGuinty ignored entreaties from his own press secretary to wrap things up, lingering until reporters had run out of questions.

Now, Ford’s Sheppard tunnel is stuck between a rock and a hard place that he negotiated himself into.

The complete farce of Toronto politics under Ford, the failure to find the gravy, the all-night "consultations"/political stunt that reduced Mammoliti to a raving lunatic, the huge gift of a contract to the Toronto Police Services that's going to serve as a blue-print for other essential services, the budget cuts that are going to mean less cops on the street to cover the pay increases of those who remain, and this imbecilic incompetence on public transit, ... it's all testimony to the reality that yet another right-wing hero is just as big a shit-head as the drooling thugs who bray and gloat on their blogs.