What the flying fuck happened yesterday?

Let’s do this TUMBLR STYLE.

  • So they kicked off the Extra Special Surprise Transit Meeting by presenting a shit-ton of petitions from all over the city, mostly for Stintz’s plan.
  • Mammoliti banged the drum for a subway on Finch, which no one had even been considering until today and which no one can pay for.
  • His argument was that the people up there are real nice and they deserve subways.
  • Like the transit version of the Nice Guy™.
  • The spectre of the St. Clair Right-of-Way Disaster was constantly raised, causing innumerable PTSD flashbacks.
  • Gary Webster pretty much earned his whole year’s salary patiently answering councillors’ wrong-headed questions about LRTs.
  • Denzil Minnan-Wong and others brought up an ’86 vote on subways, because that was the last time subways were actually a good idea. I was not even crawling by then, if that gives you any perspective.
  • Possibly the funniest moment: Nunziata flipping out having just realized that the Stintz “don’t call it the Stintz” plan was basically Transit City. OH SHIT GUYS, SHE’S ON TO US.
  • Nobody knows the fucking difference between LRTs and streetcars.
  • Someone had a button maker and was turning out “I ♥ Gary Webster” and “Karen Stintz Fan Club” pins, seen on the lapels of many centre/left councillors.
  • Rob Ford moved to defer the vote for a month for no damn good reason.
  • Karen Stintz extended an entire goddamn olive tree to the man and he apparently refused any compromise, even though it would make him look good. WAT.
  • Perruzza got all fiery and shit.
  • Doug Ford and Norm Kelly demonstrated their extraordinarily shaky grasp of Canadian history. No, the 2010 mayoral election was not “the largest referendum in Canadian history”, and Toronto is not actually the capital of Canada.
  • Berardinetti shared an impassioned plea to “depoliticize transiAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA I can’t even type that with a straight face.
  • The audience died of hunger and dehydration while every goddamn councillor had to stand up and have their say instead of just having the fucking vote.
  • They had to vote THREE TIMES.
  • Ford et al. (that makes them sound so much classier) threw a fit by opposing all the subsequent motions, even the routine one to end the meeting, WAT.
  • We won!!!

The takeaway: The same people who lectured us since last summer about “nice-to-haves” and fiscal responsibility turned around and argued for throwing away billions of dollars from the province and pouring billions more into the exorbitantly expensive and unnecessary transit option (subways) just because they can’t abide seeing public transit vehicles sharing space with CAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSSSS. And when they don’t get their way they’re extraordinarily petty and mean-spirited about it.

The good news: they’re no longer a majority on Council. The best-case scenario a lot of lefties were hoping for when Ford got elected seems to have come to pass — he’s staked out a position extreme enough that most of Council won’t stand with him. He’s unwilling to compromise or build consensus, and that’s finally coming back to bite him in the ass. People are pissed-off, mobilized, and — for the first goddamn time in years — paying attention.

I don’t think it’s too early to declare Rob Ford the best shitty mayor this town’s ever had.

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