The Sun “newspaper” carries skimpily-clad Sunshine Girls on the back page, features way more sports coverage than international news, and is filled to the brim with bright, colourful photos, eezee-to-read sentences, and sensationalist headlines up the wazoo.

Basically, if you want to have your news predigested and regurgitated for mindless consumption along with a heaping bowlful of red-blooded stereotype, the Sun is for you!

Normally, I wouldn’t give a toss about the Sun. Live and let exist to wipe my ass with, I say. But recently it’s become painfully clear that this “newspaper” is a reflection of the myocardial infarction we currently have sitting in Toronto’s mayoral chair, as well as his ruddy-faced lap dogs like Giorgio Mamolitti who whine like little girls whenever their precious feelings have been hurt by public opinion, contradictory free speech, or that terrible terrible thing we call a democracy (I’ll have to post his bitchings during the last marathon depositions on YouTube).

And to be honest, I’m getting fucking sick and tired of hearing clamoring idiots calling for myopic, one-dimensional, all-pennies-and-no-brains bullshit with which to fix this city’s problems with.

Most meat-headed partisans like to think they’re in the clear, the “he was voted in so he must have majority support” fallacy. Except that only 47% of the people who voted actually voted for Rob Ford. That means that less than half of the people who voted directly support His Rotundness. Moreover, only about half of Toronto actually voted, so the bellowing loudmouths milling around in Ford Nation account for only about 25% of Toronto. And guess what, most of downtown didn’t vote for Ford — the people who will be most affected by his actions are the ones who can’t stand him the most.

The other fact that Fordites continue to forget is that there are 44 councillors at City Hall which must approve stuff before any of Ford’s ridiculous plans can ever come to fruition. “But Ford is going to do blah blah blah…” Yeah, no he’s not, because he’s a bully and he can barely make friends with a fire hydrant let alone a thinking councillor.

Fordites also can’t seem to come to grips with the fact that their portly hero is full of shit.

Here are some golden nuggets, straight from the horse’s mouth:

“…[Ford's 2011 budget] will create $585 million available room in the 2011 operating budget. This is more than enough to overcome the $503 [million] opening pressure estimated by city staff. Altogether my plan will generate a very modest surplus of $23 million in 2011, growing to $712 million in 2014″

Next year the budget deficit is expected to increase to about $774 million. For a mayor who’s vowing to cut every last scrap of fat from city spending, and who is claiming he’ll be balancing the books, why the hell is the deficit going up by 50% next year?

 ”This surplus will be used in 3 ways: 25% percent will go to improving services … improving child care, service for seniors, improvements and accessibility for people with disabilities, and affordable housing.”

Mamolitti is now in charge of a task force studying cuts to daycare (yeah, that’s how I define “improving”), cuts to seniors are also on the table under Robbie’s “consider everything for annihilation” policy, and the affordable housing office is also potentially under the axe.

Is it any wonder people are pissed? Less than a year ago, Robbie was throwing his weight around claiming we’d have money for all of this and that it would be improved, now he’s putting proposals on the table and making budget claims that are the exact opposite of what he said. If he went any farther in the opposite direction, he’d be traveling back from where he came. If only. And it’s all on video in wonderful wonderful Gravy-Vision.

Okay, these are just a couple of examples of Rob Ford’s litany of lies. And yeah, they are lies, because if he wasn’t sure, he should’ve said so during the election. If his forecasts were off, he shouldn’t have shot off his mouth about his business acumen or maybe come clean and said he hadn’t been paying attention to how City Hall worked during his last 10 years as Councillor. If he wasn’t certain, he shouldn’t have “guaranteed” it, repeatedly, emphatically, over and over again.

Worse still are his greasy little turncoat minions like Mamolitti who, instead of trying to work for their constituents or trying to make the city a better place, are running around during Gay Pride taking videos of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, trying to have them and everyone else who doesn’t agree with him silenced, and basically being a whiny little bitch. Hey, Mamolitti, political statements aren’t “hate”, and someone misusing the word “apartheid” isn’t the next holocaust.

Now, more recently, Mamolitti is making an idiotic push to make homelessness illegal. Yeah. If you’re on the streets and begging for change, regardless of how you’re doing it, how you got there, what your problems are, etc., you should be rounded up and either locked up or put into a hospital and forcibly dealt with. That actually does sound kind of holocausty.

Boggles the fucking mind, this guy.

And then, we finally come full circle to the knuckle-dragging media that go along with this little cohort of dullardry — like the Toronto Sun. In fact, it was an editorial in today’s Sun that set me off. Oh, but of course they agree with Mamolitti — those dirty, filthy, shiftless layabouts on the streets (many of who are aggressive, don’t you know?), should be removed from our sights. They’re unseemly! Fuck their “civil rights”, these putrid street urchin, toss their asses in jails or stuff them full of medication. Who gives a shit about studies that say the best treatment starts with finding them affordable housing? No no no, affordable housing is up for chops. And screw you for thinking that Robbie ever promised it would be improved — HE NEVER SAID THAT!

We’ve had enough studies and it’s high time we ignored them, common sense, and our own humanity in favour of a bunch of lies and ineffectual promises that were broken almost as soon as they left Rob Ford’s lips. Yeah — let’s follow the lead of the small-minded, the hypocrite, the angry overweight dude from the suburb who’s top priorities are smooth fucking roads and removing annoying cyclists out of the way of his ass-cradling SUV.

Damn … can you tell I’m starting to get a bit irked by this?

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It may have been the general aversion to such a word as “bum” by the company I kept during my formative years, but other than being used to describe:

 
…well, you’re not supposed to call people of no fixed address that. That is the only foul version of that word.

Panhandling is done for many different reasons so I try to judge each book by it’s cover. If the person looks really destitute, I won’t miss a quarter. But there are others who make it a bit harder to part with my nickels.

This morning, for example, I passed a fellow under the subway tracks who I recognized as an area local. Aside from not being able to figure out if people were dropping imaginary money into his cup, or if he was taking sips of imaginary coffee, or if both were real and he was just drinking change, I couldn’t help but notice his clothes.

His shoes were sparklingly new, as were his bright white slacks and a gorgeous scarf tossed carelessly around his neck. Yes, he had an ensemble. Meanwhile, I was walking by in deep need of new shoes and a winter jacket that finally allows me to use the word threadbare. It’s a good word. Lotsa uses.

No, my money wasn’t going into that coffee.

As I stepped on the escalator to the platform, the word “bum” floated through my consciousness and I caught myself feeling a bit embarrassed. But then, with majestic bravado, the manly part of my brain walked on over, swooped that little lady off her feet and told her everything would be alright. After all, he really was trying to “bum” money off me. If the need were great, it would be “begging”, “panhandling”, or “soliciting”. If the need doesn’t seem that great, it’s “bumming”, and the person performing that action is a “bum”.

If we take some of the generalized pejorative connotations out of the word, it sounds a bit more reasonable. In fact, I’m in favour of adding a little weight on the cheeky side of the definition because I believe those kinds of “bum fights” would make the world a better place.

Though down, be not thee out.