Much ink is being spilled and many bytes of web copy being posted pondering the progress of the populist pugilist Rob Ford.

Canada's largest city, Toronto, is not blessed with a particularly strong slate of candidates for mayor. And those with interesting ideas, Joe Pantalone, the lone progressive and Sarah Thompson, the lone female, get far less attention than the twin bloviators Rob Ford and George Smitherman and the quasi-revitalized Rocco Rossi.

In fighting the Ford über-recht phenomenon, Smitherman has played the slippery middle; he's right, he's sorta left, but a floundering attempt to straddle the middle has resulted in merely a muddle.

In a column I wrote in October 2009, "Quitting the Conservatives", I mentioned that one of my reasons for fleeing the conservative movement was the increasing pervasiveness and dominance, carried over from the Reform movement, of social conservatism heavily imbued with right-wing Christian fundamentalism.

A party dedicated to blindly doling out tax cuts and stroking the outsized egos of corporate masters was becoming more comfortable with theocracy.

God Talk

The Toronto municipal election is many months away, but so far the mayoral front-runners have offered nothing inspirational.

George Smitherman and Rocco Rossi, both Liberal in name only (LINOs?), are in a heated race to the bottom over who can say "privatize" the most, who can more adeptly lambaste unions, who can continue to repeat that insidious fabrication that government shouldn't be in the business of being in business.