Rachel, Rachel: Bronson beats the bimbo in the Demagogic primary.

That's right.
Aging television newscaster Rachel Barnhart was defeated in her attempt to unseat incumbent Harry Bronson for the 138th State Assembly seat tonight.
Nobody knows what prompted Barnhart to run for political office.
Perhaps Barnhart was hoping to use her local fame on television as did Rich Funke to defeat Ted O'Brien for his state senate seat two years ago.
It didn't work.
Barnhart isn't nearly as pretty as Rich Funke is.
She also miscalculated where the gay community is concerned.
Assembly District 138 includes Rochester's gay ghetto. Bronson, as an openly gay man, had that sewed up. Any hetero candidate who wants that district had better suck up to the gay community big time, literally and figuratively.
Elaine Spaull has been extremely successful in that respect.
If Barnhart counted on her being a woman to get the Lesbian vote, she was sadly mistaken. One of Bronson's main supporters was locally prominent diesel dyke Bess Watts.
In fact, Watts was Bronson's only supporter that Rochester's weekly liberal newsrag, City, bothered to interview when they threw their endorsement into his lap.
To do Barnhart some justice, she did manage to scare the shit out of Bronson. He wasn't expecting to be challenged for his own party's endorsement and was put into attack mode earlier than he would have liked.
Now that his adrenalin is flowing, he can easily go on to defeat his Republican challenger in the general election, two time loser Peterson Vazquez.
Vazquez won his primary tonight by a handful of votes. He can now go on to becoming a three time loser, since Bronson beat the shit out of him twice before.
Some people never learn.

Don't drink and drive this holiday weekend. You might hit a bump and spill it.

The cops will be out in full force this Labor Day weekend.
Any time there is a three day holiday weekend, the Rochester Police department announces that they will beef up their road details to check for DWIs.
This is standard procedure. It shows that law enforcement is concerned about protecting us from drunks driving along our city streets after too much partying. I suppose that this reassures jay walkers who cross streets and dart out into traffic wherever it suits them, rather than crossing at the crosswalk.
It didn't prevent two dipshits from having a drag race up Lake Avenue the other night. They accidentally killed a pedestrian who was crossing the street.
It also pulls police away from their usual details, which allows certain people to shoot, stab and kill other people with less than normal supervision.
That, too, has been happening in Rochester this holiday weekend, which is only one third over at the time of this writing. More will come.
Come to think of it, those human animals shoot, stab and kill people in Rochester at any time of the year, regardless of the season.
Nothing and nobody is capable of preventing that.
One thing is certain: If you get caught by the cops after being too festive this weekend, you won't get off as easily as did ex deputy mayor Leonard Redon, finance director Charles Benincasa and city court judge Leticia Astacio.
Unless, of course, you're some big shot politician or local celebrity. Outside of a little embarrassing publicity, you'll get nothing worse than a slap on the wrist.

Whatever happened to Leonard Redon? He's still alive and well and working at City Hall.

That's right.
Leonard Redon resigned or retired as deputy mayor a few months ago. He said that he'd been treated for cancer over the last year and felt that it was time to take care of himself.
Redon hadn't been seen much around the City of Rochester after his arrest for DWI two and a half years ago.
So, how has Redon been taking care of himself since he stepped down as deputy mayor?
Why, being appointed to a position in the Warren administration that never previously existed.
Redon is now Special Assistant to the Deputy Mayor, complete with a salary and his own office hidden away at City Hall. Perhaps the new deputy mayor, Carlos Carballada, just can't hack it on his own and needed more than just his personal assistant to handle the rigors of his office.
What exactly does his new position in city government entail? Who knows? It is, after all, supposed to be a secret.
It is gratifying to know that the now you see him, now you don't ex deputy mayor is taking care of himself very well. And is still on the city payroll.

Dere go da judge: Astacio guilty of DWI.

That's right.
Judge Leticia Astacio was finally convicted of DWI for an incident that occurred in February, 2016.
I've already blogged about that.
According to the D&C, Canandaigua City Court Judge Stephen Aronson issued his ruling and sentenced Astacio to a one-year conditional discharge. She also will lose her driver's license for six months, must have an ignition interlock installed on her vehicle and pay fines and surcharges.
He didn't believe her story, or rather, her defense attorney's story, that she wasn't driving drunk and that no crash had occurred.
Ed Fiandach never explained about the flat tires, the extensive front end damage to her vehicle or her behavior towards the state trooper who investigated the scene and questioned her.
Fiandach would have us believe that they were all figments of Trooper Chris Kowalski's imagination.
Astacio will appeal her conviction, of course.
Regardless of whether she appeals or not, if she keeps her nose clean for a year, her conviction will be expunged from her record. It won't be expunged from the memories of the good citizens of our fair city. That is something that nobody can legislate in America. Yet.
She got off light, since there's really no way to remove her from her position as City Court Judge.
Nobody ever expected that Astacio would do jail time, either. Orange jump suits just aren't her color.

Rochester's latest black comedy: The misguided antics of the feral cat lady.

When people don't get their way when they have a problem with government, they usually threaten to go to the media with it.
That is blackmail.
If there is nothing newsworthy going on in the area, the media might devote a few lines of copy devoted to human interest stories. The stories might be cutsie poo, and invite public comment.
Such is the tale of Janine Wagner, the feral cat lady from Irondequoit.
Ms. Wagner makes it her mission to come into the City of Rochester and set up shelters for feral cats on abandoned properties. She also feeds them.
Apparently there are no feral cats in her Town of Irondequoit that she could succor.
Her actions are illegal.
Ms. Wagner doesn't own the properties in the city where she set up her cat shelters and cat feeders. Nor did she get the permission of the property owners. That is trespassing and dumping; both are illegal.
The cat feeders also attracted vermin and wildlife: rats, skunks and raccoons. The cats have also chosen to move into the vacant houses to be near their food source, befouling the property with shit and piss. Our hot summer has magnified the problem of the stench. It's bad enough that some people live near abandoned and uncared for properties without that added problem.
Moreover, since the cats now depend on regular meals provided by Ms. Wagner, they don't need to chase away the rats and other wildlife. Most predators only kill when hungry and the feral cat lady's generosity has eliminated that.
Ms. Wagner and her supporters couldn't care less about the effect their generosity has had on the human neighbors of those properties. They are too busy patting each other on the back to care about humans.
It was those humans who got angry with Ms. Wagner and took their complaints to the county.
Unfortunately for Ms. Wagner, the City of Rochester was forced to remove those cat shelters on orders from the Monroe County Health Department.
That pissed off Ms. Wagner, who stated that she will continue to feed feral cats on those properties, where she has no legal right to be in the first place.
She also plans to replace the cat shelters on those properties, without anyone's permission, least of all the neighbors of those properties.
Her addlepated allies want the City of Rochester to compensate Ms. Wagner for the money she spent on those cat shelters, which had no business being on property she doesn't own.
That isn't going to happen.
But it made for interesting reading.
I wonder what the Town of Irondequoit would do if Ms. Wagner pulled her stunt there?
It's bad enough that some slumlords don't care about their properties and the negative effects they have on neighborhoods without Ms. Wagner's antics adding to it.

The 2017 campaign for Mayor of Rochester has already begun.

That's right.
For months, the notorious Molly Clifford has been stating that her political comments have had nothing to do with her seeking higher elected office next year.
Her tepid statements have been totally unconvincing. She doesn't want people to really believe that she won't run for mayor next year, because she has been building up her support base, specifically among the labor unions, for just such a run. At the same time, Clifford didn't want to alert the Warren administration to her obvious intention of replacing the current mayor. She thought she would surprise Mayor Warren, and the white queen would sweep the black queen from the board.
Unfortunately for Clifford, Mayor Warren and her cronies have been wary of her from the start. The hostility between the two queens and their factions has become an amusing public spectacle.
The latest episode of this black comedy has been the op-ed framed by the white queen and published in the D&C. It criticized the lack of communication between the black queen's faction and the white queen's regarding union contracts involved in the school modernization plan.
It is hardly curious that not one black city councilman signed it. Only the white elitist members ( and their indispensable Hispanic ally, Jackie Ortiz ) did.
Adam McFadden found it necessary to point out that phase one of the contracts did not live up to their object of women and minority hiring.
McFadden pointed out that UNICOM received at least a million dollars worth of labor contracts under phase one. He also pointed out that Clifford's boy toy Ken Warner is one of UNICOM's top bananas. UNICOM, and therefore the boy toy and Clifford, stand to lose out financially if the contracts for phase two are rejected.
Personal interest is therefore Clifford's motivating factor regarding these labor contracts, as it is for those city councilmen who co-signed her op-ed: They all had union support in getting elected and now might not be able to repay those unions with lucrative construction contracts.
The City of Rochester, meaning the rest of us, doesn't count for shit in their schemings.
What is also clear is that the campaign for mayor will clearly be featuring race and racism as an issue, illustrated by the color of the two queens.
The black queen and the white queen will be fighting to the death.
It's going to be a lot of fun.

Richards dumped as chairman of the school modernization board. Clifford has a hissy fit at City Council.

Politics in Rochester has been rather boring during our long, hot summer.
Most energy has been wasted upon the presidential election, debating the relative merits of electing one or the other of the most evil people the two major political parties have ever puked up for the delectation of American voters: Clinton's Bitch or The Donald.
Concern about local crime, murders and police arrests of disobedient protesters pass into collective oblivion almost as soon as they make the front page of the local newsrag, the D&C.
Last night, local politics heated up again. Ex mayor Tom Richards was ousted as chairman of the school modernization board. The majority of that board didn't trust his leadership to supervise a $1.3 billion modernization plan for the Rochester City School District.
Replacing Richards is Allen Williams, Mayor Warren's director of special projects. Nobody knows exactly what Williams' job is in the Warren administration, not even most people at City Hall.
The reason for Richards' ouster is the union contracts involved in the modernization plan.
The D&C stated "At issue in the vote was whether a similar agreement for the project’s Phase I was successful. Only five women or minority apprentices ended up working on Phase I as a result of that agreement, although larger goals for minority hiring were met. More than 20 percent of all workers in Phase I were minorities."
Richards wanted to keep the union agreements intact. The unions backed both him and the notorious Molly Clifford, after all. He and she owe them. Big time.
Williams did not, and so he replaced Richards as chairman.
Richards might take this as a sign that it is time for him to retire. He only took the appointment to the board to stick it to the mayor, to get back at her for beating him in the 2013 election.
But there is more to this story.
At last night's monthly city council meeting, Clifford needed to vent publicly about those union contracts.
She was put promptly into her place by Adam McFadden, who equally publicly stated how those union contracts had failed.
Carolee Conklin eventually jumped in to break up the fight and referee, while Mayor Warren put an end to Clifford's hissy fit by tartly stating that her concerns had been noted.
It was odd that the D&C never bothered to make any mention of that in their newsrag.