Know Your Crazy Third Party Toronto Candidates

John Letonja

http://supermagnetics.com/JohnLetonja.htm



This guy is so independent he's not even willing to let someone take his photo for his campaign site. He'd rather just stick the camera at arms length and snap the photo himself than, say, owe his sister a favor. His references to Dalton McGuinty as an "asshole" I find refreshing in a milieu where candidates stick to the sound bites and rarely, if ever, try to explain our system of direct taxation in terms of anal sex and lubrication for anal penetration.

He'll also get dangerous IQ-lowering substances out of the drinking water, aka fluoride. Personally, anyone worried about the dangerous effects of fluoride in the drinking water I'd be happier if the city just issued them a tinfoil hat. But then I'm not running for office.

Oh, and when you get tired of his other various brilliant ideas, he provides a set of rules for his own ball game called Happy Mr. Fun Ball. Or something like that. He suggests it should be an event at the PanAm Games. Sure, John. Sure.

Collin Magee

http://mageeformayor.ca/



Collin has a great slogan. "Magee for Mayor". Better than Ford's "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Förd Führer." The dude also loves the CENTER tag. A centrist if there ever was one. There are some good free template sites he might want to look into for his next mayoral run. Alas, he seems to have built his actual political platform from a standard "candidate for change" template.

George Babula

http://parkdaleparty.com/



He tells us he's "The Mayor Toronto Deserves". Alas, he does not have enemas for hands. So I think it's a bit of hyperbole. His site has an intriguing button that says "A Plan for Municipal Reform Today". But he does not appear to be aware a button needs to be clickable. You can click on it, surely. But you can click on anything. There's this nutty a href tag in HTML that makes things clickable. Maybe his plan is laid out in his Youtube video but it's done in rhyming verse and I can only get past the first two or three couplets before I throw up in my mouth a little and go watch Youtube videos of Vegas showgirls in bikinis firing machine guns. If Babula's plan is anything other than building more bowling alleys in Parkdale, or Parkale, call me. K?

Himy Syed

http://himysyed.com/
http://himysyed.com/peoples-mayor-himy-syed-vision-2020-another-toronto-is-possible-pamphlet-short.pdf



I like a guy with a name where the vowels and consonants all seem vaguely in the wrong place. I like he only seems to want a single street named after himself, not a whole public square like Mel Lastman.

And you have to admire a candidate that doesn't mind posting a Youtube video of him being pwnd by a bunch of scruffy skateboard rats. The fisheye lens is so Adult Swim circa early 2000s.

Christopher Ball

http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100831/20100831-mayoral-ball/20100831/?hub=CP24Weather



The CP24 site's image of Christopher makes him appear young. Youthful. The very kind of candidate that should be all over that wacky social media stuff. But he seems to have no blog, no web page, no Twitter, and no Facebook. Is he aware the Internet even exists? He's been a registered candidate since July. Is he trying to parallel the George W. Bush political trajectory where all you have to do to be successful in politics is show up? Is he thinking he'll pull an all nighter election eve and clinch it?

The Toronto Observer site's tags on this guy comes up empty:

http://www.torontoobserver.ca/tag/christopher-ball/

Wasn't Barbara Hall accused of being Toronto's Stealth Mayor? Christopher seems to be following in that tradition. His platform is a blank slate. This easily makes him the third most qualified candidate for mayor based on this election cycle's deplorable crop of contenders.

Andrew Barton

http://twitter.com/ActsofAndrewB
http://actsofminortreason.blogspot.com/



We do not have enough candidates who are trying to bring back the motorcycle goggles look. Barton's chief qualification seems to be he's a sci fi writer. Barton, when you win a Hugo, come back and ask for my vote. On his Twitter he rages mayoral candidates should not be able to call themselves visionaries. Since he is a candidate himself, he'd agree he should not call himself a visionary. ("Advertising affects people but not me of course.") So. A sci fi author who is not a visionary. Yeah, can't wait to read your stuff.

Oh. Wait. Looking at his blog, it appears he's moving out west where he's certain the winters are better. I mean, they are. So I think we should elect him just to make him move back and endure Toronto winter.

His blog is one huge whine fest. He strikes me as the kind of guy who is still sore that his grade 8 class didn't stage their end of year play the way HE wanted it staged. "Sorry, we can't have jedi in Annie Get Your Gun." And he's been a bitter cynic ever since.

BREAKING - Barton dropped out of the race months ago. I guess I should cross reference the wiki candidates listing with the, you know, official city list! Still, offer stands, I'll vote for you when you win a Hugo.

Ratan Wadhwa

http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100602/100531_mayoral_ratan/20100608/?hub=CP24Weather



Don't let the Hitler moustache fool you. Ratan is a swinger. He's all about the 3P economy: pot, porn, and prostitutes. Technically I'm a consumer of only ONE of those P's but I'm all for legalization of all three. Now, bike lanes, well, he seems rather wishy washy about bike lanes. A topless bike lane he might go for. Now if we can just convince him to annex Mississauga (suggestion, swing through Brampton and come at them via the north).

Rocco Achampong

http://roccoformayor.com/Default.aspx



Barack Hussein Guderian Obama famously quipped once it was hard for a guy with a name like his to get elected. But he did. Mayor Achampong has a nice post-Obama ring to it, in my books. And Rocco Achampong (or as Rob Förd keeps reminding us "Rocco Kusi Achampong"...as if another weirdo ethnic name would make us fear him) should be elected just on his web design skills alone. No CENTER tag abuse. The guy is a lawyer. If his Flickr page is to be believed, he really gets out in the community. And DAMN if he doesn't surround himself with highly tappable ladies. Move your saggy flat ass over Olivia Chow! The only thing that makes me suspicious is this guy appears to be a former SAC president of the U of T. He's got career politician in his DNA.

Don Andrews

http://www.natparty.com/DA4mayor.htm



You think Förd hates the boat people? Andrews probably has plans to turn the Toronto Island into a little work camp complete with "Zyklon-B delousing showers" for them. We can't have the non-whites causing Toronto to commit "racial suicide". The race for mayor is about the white race to Andrews. I'm kind of glad Rocco Kusi Achampong is in the race, just to be the first name on the ballot above Andrews. The top spot on the ballot customarily captures 2-4% of voters too lazy to become a decided voter even in the voting booth. Amazing but true. Anyway, I'd hate to think Andrews would assume getting anything more than 0.9% of the vote is attributable to the silent (white) majority.

Miller I think got in some trouble last election by a campaign slogan that claimed he looked like a mayor. Andrews looks like a guy who would take your parking spot at the mall as you were about to back in and then yell at you.

Douglas Campbell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Campbell_(Ontario_politician)



Have we ever had a mayor die while in office? This codger might. He's kind of the Arthur Meighen of local politics. (Arthur who? Oh go read your Canadian history!) He's always running for something or another but gets a homeopathic amount of the vote and dutifully runs again next election cycle. Anyway, don't look for a web site. His wiki page might have been done on a dare by a U of T poli sci frat. This guy is strictly low res. Any photo of him looks like he's afraid this devil machine will capture his soul. Still, this cat might have swung in his older days (1968). He introduced sex ed into the Newfoundland school system (insert Dildo, Newfoundland joke, insert joke about inserting a Dildo, Newfoundland joke). He firmly believes capitalists are out to kill your children. Ownership is theft. You know the stuff. All the crap that led the communist world into bankruptcy and environmental nightmares.

Kevin Clarke

http://www.childrenfirstworldleader.com/




Most of us suspect when we give money to homeless people, they're really going to buy booze and not food. Clarke, I gather, uses it to pay his candidate filing fee. You have to love a man whose election web site features a photoshopped image of a purple-winged angel baby scampering over a graffiti strewn rock. What would fellow candidate Don Andrews make of this? Could we just put some of these fringe guys in an octagon, lower a cage over it, give them Vulcan lirpas, charge admission, and give the proceeds to the homeless?

His "Letters" page appears to be nothing but all caps rants mixed in with novel uses of the comma. I guess he means it literally. It's a page. It has letters.

Selwyn Firth

http://selwynformayor.com/



Finally a candidate that boils down all the problems of Toronto into a simple, solvable engineering problem. Förd might have started a business and coaches football but did he ever develop a single step electrochemical process to manufacture stannous sulphate? YOU SUCK, FORD! Still, not sure I can vote for a guy with a 404 error on his site.



And he doesn't appear to know how to spell "congestion". I think the first step in defeating a problem is knowing how to spell it.

Still, something I like about this guy. Oh wait. Let me take that back. I just noticed his global warming nuttiness. Part of being mayor is deferring to the consensus opinion of your experts when you're a non-expert. I'm sure he made stannous sulphate his bitch but he's not a climate scientist. If 95% of climate scientists are saying AGW is real and might be pretty bad or 95% of your city's law team are saying doing X will get the city sued, it behooves one to listen to the experts. So, let me restate and say I at least like the idea we should have more trained scientists on council.

And, alas, Firth gives Campbell a run for the "candidates most likely to die in office" Lady Byng type trophy.

Vijay Sarma

http://whatyouwanttobelievein.com/11401.html



A 9-11 troofer! Running for mayor! And he thinks the Terry Fox run is in the grips of Big Cancer. Yeah! He's a cancer denialist too! John Letonja is a crank who wants kids to have rotten teeth but Sarma is a dangerous crank who thinks worthless, discredited cancer "treatments" like Gerson Therapy (read "coffee enemas") can cure or treat cancer better than scientific medicine. And of course he's an anti-vaxxer. We all get to live to be dinosaurs on city council because of vaccines. A vote for Sarma is a vote to basically kill us all.

Oh yeah, and feminism (you know where women were tired of being property) is a global conspiracy blah blah.



But, hey, a guy like Sarma needs a past time. Maybe we should deal with the issues. Stop with this mud throwing. Great. Let's look at his well developed mayoral platform. The issues:



Good to know!

*head shake* A man with his head this far up the ass of the tinfoil hat crowd, I wonder how he even trusts the fairness of the voting process. If a vast all powerful conspiracy can coordinate thousands of people to pull off 9/11, surely they can fix a hogtown election so that a jackass like Förd can win, and then inject us all with the flu vaccine?

Monowar Hossain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3UFDaABtE4



Web info on Monowar is pretty thin on the ground. So I'm simply including an image of LARPcore heavy metal band Manowar. Manowar claims to be one of the loudest bands in the world. Monowar wants to rescue people from shrinks and experimentation (according to the wiki write up on his 2006 bid for mayor). His Youtube video seems to be him trying to forestall some "birther" type conspiracy that will no doubt emerge when he's elected mayor. His platform, as best I can make out, has something to do with a horse and (here let me quote directly from the video) "the ruling ideology YOU'RE OUT OF TIME MR. HOSSAIN."

Charlene Cottle

http://twitter.com/mayorcottle
http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100831/20100831-mayoral-cottle/20100831/?hub=CP24Weather



I don't like she is already calling herself mayor on her twitter page. She's sort of putting the cart before the horse. Although, maybe she takes the mayor title from her Foursquare checkins and it's just coincidental she's also running for mayor of something actually real.

I do, however, like Cottle has a picture of an egg as her Twitter image. She seems to think people perish for a lack of knowledge. And it's a bible truth. Sure. And a stopped clock tells the true time twice a day. I don't doubt the bible sometimes manages to include some handwaving that sounds like widsom. Let me add a Twitter account dies for a lack of, you know, ideas. Cottle seems to have run out of anything worth saying back in the summer.

Battlestar Galactica fans might want to vote for her purely on the basis she shares the same last name as the doctor on Battlestar Galactica.

Her CP24 interview makes it appear she's confused over the "transit city" issue. When asked, she talks about how she's been driving for decades. As an afterthought she claims she'd like to see more buses. But not big buses. Small buses because, as a driver, she seems to have this idea Toronto buses are always empty. Ummm. Tell that to the people packed on the 60C at 7:30 am.

Michael Alexander

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_municipal_election,_2006#Information_on_minor_candidates
http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/news/local/article/23875--unusual-candidates-vie-for-mayor-s-chair



Michael Alexander has the most to lose from Rocco Achampong's candidacy. Alexander is no longer at the top of the ballot like he was in 2006 and actually came in fourth place, carried to the Miss Congeniality slot by the good citizens of Toronto who view the actual act of voting a formality. They just simply like to cue up for paper ballots and score free golf pencils. I think these are the same people who, in surveys of favorite airline seat, are part of the 3% who check "middle seat between a fat guy oozing over the hand rest and a fat snoring guy".

Alexander seems to have no web site, no social media presence. Even the CP24 site just has a black and white placeholder image for him. Maybe he's ride sharing with ex-candidate Andrew Barton out to the left coast?

A CityTV story from last election describes him as a 42 year old filmmaker that ran because he was all raw assed about Miller. Yeah, well, you and 2.5 million other people. I guess we can divine he's 46 years old now. IMDB does list a Michael Alexander working in the Toronto film biz as an animal trainer. He's worked on such illustrious projects as Detroit Rock City and Eight Below.



I can see a certain similarity between his IMDB head shot and his CP24 head shot. So maybe that's our guy.

David Vallance

http://www.provinceoftoronto.ca/
http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100831/20100831-mayoral-vallance/20100831/?hub=CP24Weather



Vallance is grabbing for two brass rings. He wants to be both mayor and premier. As mayor, he'll turn Toronto into its own province and then also become its premier. I don't think this is some skeezy attempt to double dip like those Bloc Quebec asswipes. He's a tax fighter so we can be certain he'll only try to draw one salary.

Questions remain. Will we be able annex Queen's Park as a legislature. Without a fight? Are we going to start giving the legislature pages paramilitary training as a defense force? Would it be like that Tom Cruise movie from 1981 called Taps? Where would we locate the new provincial capital? Windsor? North Bay? Avignon, France? Is anyone surprised this candidate looks like an Identity Christian mountain man?

Now I'll grant you both the federal and provincial levels of government view giving a single tax dollar to Toronto as 10 lost votes outside of Toronto. At the same time, we're our own worst enemies. The liberals can always count on seats in Toronto so they don't have to do jack shit for the city and can work on cracking the conservative parts of the province/country, or at least poaching NDP seats. The conservatives well know they'd have to do more than pay for an extension of the subway line to York U before they get Toronto seats. They'd have to pretty much finance maglev lines across the city to get us to swing right.

I do like Vallance's reality based answers to his CP24 interview. For example on the crime question, he notes crime stats are going down. True. We're not a dangerous city but how many politicians get votes by telling you you're safe and maybe we can reduce the police payroll?

Rev. Daniel Walker

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=133417870022417&v=photos#!/group.php?gid=133417870022417&v=wall
http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100831/20100831-mayoral-walker/20100831/?hub=CP24Weather

Don't let the Reverend part scare you off. At least not until you've read further. Not all reverends running for office are young earth creationists who want to pass laws based on the parts of the bible that let them justify their hate for gays (a frightening prospect given the bible has no amending formula). Walker is a reverend with the Church of the Universe which, without looking on wiki, I'm pretty sure requires you to worship the Cthulhu pantheon. I could be wrong. If I'm wrong, I think they probably should worship the Cthulhu pantheon.

Walker also seems to be your "legalize it" candidate. His Facebook fan page's Info section is a well written outline of his platform and doesn't betray the mind of someone who might be half baked every waking moment. But when you turn to this wall, his stream of consciousness writing style shows a slightly different story.

"MARIJUANA IS THE BEST MEDICINE FOR AIDS."

No. Actually that would be the cocktail of anti-retroviral drugs that lets HIV positive people live nearly a natural life span. He's also another anti-fluoridation candidate. What's up with crazy third party guys and their fetish for people with bad teeth? Come on people. The poison is in the dose.

Diane Devenyi

http://www.mayordiane.com
http://twitter.com/DianeDevenyi

If I can be your pool boy, I'll vote for you.

Devenyi is the underpants gnome candidate. She has a simple, multiple step program.

Step 1: Self actualize our genius to meet the synergistic challenges presented by the "glocal" exigency underpinning the 21st century hermeneutic paradigm shift.

Step 2: Get some green paperclips and trade up.

Step 3: Dance.

Step 10,987: Thriving economy!

What are steps 4-10,986? Anyone? Anyone?

Devenyi has mastered the jargon of the self-help Oprah set, certainly. Her verbose and plentiful web pages are dense with jargon but light on actual substance. Although next to Kevin Clarke's all caps word salad and Förd's red-faced loutish chav rantings, I do like her grammar is nearly flawless. It just reads like the Sokal affair for local politics.

Phil Taylor

http://www.philtaylorformayor.com/

Taylor is another candidate that seems to think self-help book jargon can translate into votes that aren't better attributed to sampling error. Though it's no surprise Taylor speaks the language of the self-help set as he actually wrote his own self-help book with the rather "don't try this at home-ish" title Set Yourself on Fire!

Wearing his self-help author hat, Taylor's claim is that you can achieve nearly anything, if you follow his "secret to taking your life to the next level". Like, oh, becoming mayor? Let's check who is leading the polls. 1) Förd. 2) Smitherman. 3) Rossi. Hmmm. I guess you can't achieve everything following Taylor's secret knowledge. Taylor's fail kind of reminds me of people trying to sell you their SEO services that will allegedly put your web page at the top of a Google search return yet their own web site is no where to be found in the first 8,000 results. A classic doctor heal thyself situation.

The SEO snake oilers, I think, assume you'll never check. Does Taylor think we wouldn't notice either? And does he think we won't notice 1) he doesn't know how to tie a tie properly. Pro tip: tip of the tie goes to the tip of the belt 2) he only appears to have one tie. 3) His book has 3 reviews, all five star reviews, 2 by people who seem to have only ever read one book they found worth reviewing on Amazon.com. Looks. Suspicious. I'm just saying.

So what is the secret to setting yourself on fire? Make it in Manila!

For some reason Taylor is big in the Filipino community. Or maybe he's just big with one Filipino blogger/writer. In any regard, over on the Mabhuay Radio page, we're told Taylor describes himself as a man of "honesty, integrity and truth". This self assessment is repeated by Taylor over on the Currents & Breaking News blog. I have no reason to believe Taylor is not a man of honesty, integrity, and truth. However on both blogs a woman claiming to be his wife offers a slightly different assessment:

Phil Taylor is a married man of 16 years, I am his wife, I have been raising our son alone for the past 15 years. He refuses to grant me a divorce or support his child, this doesn't seem to "match up".

You have not seen your wife or child in 12 years and when we finally speak a couple of weeks ago you tell me you will not divorce me? Please explain this Philip, you tell me I am never to contact you again, yet I am to stay married to you? You are not transparent nor honest nor do you have an ounce of integrity!

Dirty tricks by another crazy third party guy candidate? (I'M LOOKING AT YOU, KEVIN CLARKE!) You just never know. The race to not end up as a double digit in the standings ("I came in 9th! Suck it, Charlene Cottle!") can be pretty cutthroat. Let me tell you.

Anyway, I am curious about the amazing self-help secret Taylor has discovered. I'm doubly curious why self help authors always say "discovered" when they mean "obvious advice I pulled out of my ass". Taking a look at Taylor's motivational web site we can see, maybe his secret. It's seven easy steps but can basically boil down to pick a goal and get off your fat Rob Förd ass and do something. If I only knew!

7 Steps to Goal Setting the GoalAchievers’ Way

1. Write down your goal. (I want to be mayor.)
2. List the benefits of achieving this goal. (Money. Power. Someone to help me buy a new tie.)
3. List existing obstacles to be overcome. (Angry estranged wife.)
4. List the people, places, or things that can help make your goal a reality. (The Filipino community. And. Umm.)
5. Identify any specialized knowledge or skills you need to acquire or reach your goal. (I'm good at selling the "secret" that to be successful you can sell people the secret to being successful...)
6. Write out a specific action plan to achieve your goal. (Make a Youtube video. And. Um.)
7. Write down the date the goal will be achieved. (October 25!)

Anyway, okay maybe Taylor's secret method for setting himself on fire needs some tweeking based on his run for mayor. I'm sure he didn't write his book expecting people to actually follow it to political office. I'm sure it was aimed squarely at MonaVie distributors trying to figure out why their $80 bottles of snapple aren't flying out the door.

But at least he can follow his own secret, get off his duff, really do some shoe-leather campaigning. So lets peek in on his blog for a daily, blow by blow, take out double double and gimme a dutchie please no time to sit around with crazy people I gotta press flesh with the Joe and Betty Lunchbucket Toronto on the campaign trail and…

Oh. He hasn't updated his blog since August 2. And he wrote exactly two blog posts himself before he "crowd sourced" the last two items. Hmmmm. The secret is give up before you even start trying? Kids, if it's not easy, it's not worth trying.