Tea and Vitriol

  Now that the Democratic Primary is over and the Warren regime is winding down to its inevitable end, there is one question that needs to be asked and answered: Who's minding the store? There has been a power vacuum in Rochester for the last eighteen months, since the pandemic began.  That became apparent with City Hall's inability or unwillingness to deal with people congregating in public in violation of Governor Cuomo's directive forbidding it. It was obvious when City Hall collapsed before the demands of the Free the People, ROC terrorists after the May 30, 2020 riots, violence, vandalism, looting and general disruption of Downtown Rochester. The mayor and her then police chief claimed that they were caused by "outsiders," when anyone seeing video footage knew they were locals, and mostly Black people involved, straining their credibility even further. Worse to come was when the conspiracy of silence over the death of Daniel Prude came unraveled in August and

  Early last year, when COVID struck, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a "state of emergency" and assumed emergency, dictatorial powers to combat the pandemic. He shut down New York State entirely, with massive disruptions to the economy, the working class and to the human need for socialization. Cuomo then held near daily press conferences, to relay to the homebound public his strategies for combatting the disease. These so impressed the daytime television industry that, along with shows about menopausal women, castrated husbands and their juvenile delinquent brats, Cuomo won an EMMY Award! Heady with this success, Cuomo prompted his state employees to ghost a largely fictional, pretentious book about his successes in combatting COVID. He hoped to make his mark in history with it, as inaccurate and untrue as it was, and that it should serve as a textbook on how to handle pandemics. He got $5 million for the book deal. Then it all began to go wrong. His own staff

 Let's face it. Rochester has become a very dangerous place in which to live. Last night we had four shootings within an hour, only a short distance apart from each other. This is besides the other shootings, stabbings and assaults that are now Rochester's "New Norm." The victims were all women. One of them died. She was the 36th victim so far this year. Usually, shooting victims are men.  I suppose that, in a spasm of equality, women are now considered fair game for violent death. And the interim chief of police took off for the weekend, going on "vacation." Despite all the Pollyannas out there trying to tout the benefits of living in our fair city, Rochester was considered to be New York State's "Murder Capital" long before Mayor Warren's administration began. The anti-cop, pro-criminal atmosphere created by both her administration and City Council merely intensified the situation in Rochester, helping to maintain and expand its grip on t

David Gantt was a fixture in Rochester politics for fifty years. Starting out as an angry young Black man who was tired of Black folk being patronized by White politicians, he carved out a career of influence in the New York State Assembly, getting re-elected year after year. In Rochester, he became a power broker for politicians, usually Black, who sought election to public office. He was also a mentor to most of the current crop of Black elected officials in Rochester. To do so, he had a head-on collision with the White, elitist Morelle faction of the Monroe County Democratic Committee, since they exemplified the patronizing White politicians of Gantt's youth. The kindest thing I can say about the Morelle faction is that they resembled the British Liberal Party of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, whose patronizing attitude towards the poor and the working class forced those people into the Labour Party. It is that attitude that disrupted Rochester's political life for

Now that the smoke has cleared from Rochester's Democratic primary we are being treated to the usual, nauseating spectacle of the media glorifying the winners, especially in the race for mayor. We are being treated to the perfections of Malik Evans as a person and a politician that were never evident before, either in  his lackluster, nearly invisible, four years on City Council or his rather dismal ten years on the School Board. What the media has chosen not to concentrate on, in its rush to make nice with the probable Mayor of Rochester after the November general election, is how someone like Evans could win the primary against an incumbent mayor. Because the answer is rather embarrassing and blows to smithereens the praise they are heaping on Evans. People chose to vote "Not Lovely" rather than to vote for Evans. The voters were willing to choose anyone other than the mayor after her last disastrous 18 months in office. After she fired him last year, people were pushin

Flashback to the late 16th century. Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded on the orders of her cousin, Elizabeth I of England. A quatrain by an anonymous author, describing the event, was circulated throughout England, frightening the Virgin Queen. It served as an explicit example of the dangers facing political leaders everywhere. "The noble, famous queen, who lost her head of late Is proof that kings as well as clowns are bound to Fortune's fate. And that no earthly prince may so secure his crown That Fortune, with her spinning wheel, hath power to pull him down." Fast forward to 2021: Rochester's Democratic Mayoral Primary. Mayor Lovely Warren was defeated in her bid for a third term in office by a "landslide," although barely 25% of Rochester's registered Democrats bothered to vote at all. It was the worst defeat an incumbent mayor ever suffered since Rochester began to elect its mayors by popular vote forty years ago. Her opponent, Malik Evans, won sole

  Tomorrow, June 22, is the Democratic primary election in Rochester, New York. Since this is a one-party city, the primary usually determines the winners for the various elected offices in Rochester, making the general election in November seem almost superfluous. I have already written at length about the race for the mayoral throne, so I can skip that here. Today's topic is the race for the five positions of city councilperson-at-large. The four district city councilpersons race is two years off, which is a shame because one of them is  quite crazy and needs to be removed from office and institutionalized, both for her good and the city's. Well, in two years... This year, there are some seventeen candidates running for the five at large seats. Almost all of them are unacceptable. They represent either woke progressivism or far-left radicalism that has created a distrust for law enforcement and the Rochester Police Department and seem more concerned with the rights of violent