No retreat, no surrender.

No shame.

Instead, from the trenches of city hall, a volley of outgoing fire and scatter-shots returned.

A possibly deranged man wielding a gun was, in fact, shot and killed during a standoff with the Emergency Task Force on Wednesday. Yet that wasn’t even the most hair-raising encounter that occurred in Toronto on a day of unprecedented, inconceivable and stupefying psychodrama.

That would be the shoot-out at the Rotunda Corral, where councillors took aim at Mayor Rob Ford, had him square in their crosshairs—and missed.

The mayor is hardly a slick, constantly moving target. He merely stands there, all 300-plus pounds of his gormless self, sticking out that barrel chest to deflect whatever blows come his way.

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His flak vest is constructed from a weave of tardy admissions. For the admissions, they could have charged admission.

I smoke crack.

I buy illicit drugs.

I drink myself into stupors.

Various martial-art disciplines teach how to use one’s strengths against an opponent’s weaknesses. In the inside-out Tao of Rob Ford, his weaknesses have somehow been transformed into an offensive weapon, a shield against his multiple admitted transgressions and chronic ghastly judgment.

The whoosh of indignation — with a few gusts of backhanded compassion tossed in — felt like standing in a wind tunnel, where G-force aerodynamics distort the face into a silent scream.

Listen: This is Toronto howling.

But Ford will not heed and will not bend.

He will remain our cross to bear unless criminally charged — and even then can stay in the mayor’s office pending trial, which would likely be long after the next municipal election. Police have never so much as hinted that charges against Ford are in the offing.

There might even be truth to the mayor’s contention that he is not an addict. That’s scarcely the issue anymore. He’s a fraud and an abomination.

Ford, as noted by Councillor Shelley Carroll — a most disagreeable individual in her own right — has become a verb as well as a proper name: To Ford, to be Forded; not yet adopted as new lexicon by the Oxford Dictionary, but perhaps destined for the next version of that compendium.

A mayor who will not, as per his lawyer’s advice, submit to police questioning, even though we also learned yesterday that Project Brazen 2 — which scooped up Ford’s good friend and occasional driver Alexander “Sandro” Lisi on trafficking and extortion charges—was primarily targeted at the mayor; he was not merely a surveillance extra, caught up in someone else’s surveillance warrant.

And still he defies, deceives, dissembles. Even down to the 15 Windsor Rd. home, described in police documents as “believed to be a trap house (crack house) for the named parties to sell drugs from”; the house outside which Ford was captured in a notorious photograph, arm-around with three alleged gang members, one subsequently slain, shot in the head, two others charged with drug offences in Project Traveler.

“That is not a crack house!” Ford countered, under questioning from Councillor Michael Thompson, who has been a steadfast ally of the mayor in this administration.

Has Thompson visited the address, Ford weirdly challenged.

“I have no interest in being in that house,” shot back Thompson. “I am not a crack user.”

These are the mayor’s friends , not card-carrying members of the Anti-Ford Pinko Cabal. As is Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who tabled the motion calling on Ford to apologize for misleading Toronto’s residents and asking the mayor to cooperate fully with police.

By this point, Ford has got his apology mantra down pat. Every day in the past week he’s been in front of cameras apologizing, ladling out the “sincerelys”, in the clear belief that a sorry is sufficient, even with investigations swirling around him and city hall in a state of chaos.

“I am not an alcoholic. I am not a drug addict.”

Not stressed, just stupid.

“Have I drank? Have I done drugs? Yes I have.”

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Add to that the spectre of prostitutes in his office during a drunken spree on St. Patrick’s Day, 2012, a sidebar allegation arising from search warrant documents released later Wednesday, the blacked-out parts that had originally been withheld.

Brother Doug, in yet another unhelpful outburst of truculent inanities, lowered the tenor of debate further, down into the nadir region, calling the exercise a “public flogging.”

“Have you ever smoked marijuana?” he demanded of fellow councillors. “Hold it, have you ever smoked marijuana? It’s simply, yes or no. The answer I guess is yes.

“Don’t come across that you’re holier than thou, because you’re not. You’ve never drank and driven? Everybody should be careful about throwing rocks at a glass house.”

The subject, I do believe, was crack, not marijuana, Doug. What a lug and a thug.

The extraordinary day began with 30 councillors attaching their names to a letter pleading with Ford to take a leave of absence, and ended with 37 out of 42 voting councillors agreeing on a formal motion to the same effect — even before reporters scrambling to speed-read the latest disclosed police documents began delivering their blow-by-blow hits. The allegations, encompassing dope found in his desk drawer; the mayor driving drunk; prostitutes in the mayor’s office; women encountered on his booze sprees showing up at city hall claiming job offers; Ford sniffing something, possibly cocaine, with a female in the back room of the Bier Markt pub; assaults on his staff; an OxyContin prescription, on and on, could scarcely keep up with the bombshells.

Hell, an accused drug dealer is now in court complaining his reputation has been soiled by media reporters yoking him to the mayor, in the aforementioned photo and crack video.

A stab at gallows humor from the mayor, when asked by Councillor David Shiner if he’d now come clean on everything, or there were more skeletons to come tumbling out of the closet.

“I don’t know. There might be a coat hanger left in my closet.”

In between was Minnan-Wong’s whinge that he’d been bullied — menaced — by Ford just before the morning free-for-all launched.

“He stood in my way and blocked my path in a threatening way, in a way that I have never experienced during my time on this council.”

Ford claimed he was only telling Minnan-Wong to take his seat.

Oh, and organizers of the Santa Claus Parade put out a please-stay-away-Ford statement.

Bottom line: The mayor will adamantly not collect his (bobblehead) dolls and dishes and depart, whether for a short time or forever. And there’s nothing short of driving a stake through his heart that can compel him to do so.

In Gonzo Ford World, a parody of politics, this is posited as the man’s strength of character.

It is not. It’s his pathology, his mania, and there’s no rehab for that.

“I really effed up,” said Ford. “And that’s it.”

Oh, eff-off.