"There are reasons to be cheerful. These are the dying days of a rancid old order."

On the one hand, the essay linked below by Will Sutton bears a degree of thematic unity with my column last week.

ON THE AVENUES: Unless you open your eyes, “resistance” is an empty gesture.

But it's an ideal link for posting because the Democratic Party swamp meme needs to be seen as often as possible between now and November.

There are reasons to be cheerful. These are the dying days of a rancid old order, by Will Hutton (The Guardian)

In the UK and the US, the political wind will soon change in favour of those demanding good government

Don’t despair. We may be living through an attempted rightwing revolution, but its foundations are rotten. There may be a counter-revolution, as there is after every revolution, and it will be built on much firmer ground. The charlatans may be in control in both Britain and the US, but their time is limited. Their programmes are self-defeating and destructive and they do not speak to the dynamic and increasingly ascendant forces in both our societies ...

#CultureOfCorruption: Consider the privileged arrogance of Gahan's clique, planting political signs in spite of being asked not to do so by the Election Board.

We have DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party chairman Adam Dickey's own words.

"Some vote center sites such as area churches have expressed concern about candidate signs being placed on their property and, in particular, signs being left after voting hours. In response, the Election Board is asking candidates to not place signs at vote centers."

Seems clear enough, but as we already know, Gahan and his brown-nosed lickspittles don't believe they need to play by the same rules as the rest of us. That's why it's Tricky, Dickey.

Can they get any more arrogant?

#FireGahan2019 
#FlushTheClique

Charbonneau vs. FitzGerald, House 72, Democratic primary. What do you know, and who do you have?

In their spare time between spiffy ritual brushings of the mayor's venerable Hush Puppies, AdamBot's muzzle-happy DemoDisneyDixiecrats have disgorged a mildly interesting contested primary race for the Indiana House, District 72, a seat currently held by Republican Ed Clere.

In terms of platforms, there is almost nothing of substance at the web sites of the two candidates. 

Chris FitzGerald's web site
Sam Charbonneau's web site 

Social media is more interesting, especially for Fitzgerald. While obviously scripted with the usual DNC-crafted templates, there is less cheerleading, more content and some spicy Clere-bashing. 

FitzGerald at Facebook
Charbonneau at Facebook

Partisan readers, here's your chance to tout your candidate. As an aside, the incumbent Clere recently was endorsed by the We Are New Albany organization, which is significant.

What do you think about the challengers? We know very little about either of them, so please -- fill us in.

Trump? He's a symptom -- and he's not reading your tweets.

Come to think of it, it's also been just about a year since Dan Coffey demanded city council attorney Matt Lorch's head on a platter -- and both Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey replied, "How'd you like it cooked, SIR?"

ON THE AVENUES: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

It’s where Gahan’s and Dickey’s creation, the Good Ship Democratic Lollipop, currently rests, and taken together, these two narcissistic beached whales in a child’s overmatched wading pool are managing against all imaginable odds to make the buffoonish serial liar Donald Trump look precisely like George Washington.

And it's been 367 days since I mentioned that I can handle only one resistance at a time.

---

If you intend to “resist” Trumpism by doubling down on behalf of the Democratic Party as it currently exists and operates on a daily basis right here in the real world, as opposed to Disney World, then you’re in for yet another apocalyptic shock, because the party requires gutting down to the foundations, and probably beyond.

Speaking personally, I don’t care. Both major parties can go to hell, and the Democrats might as well go first. If the Democratic Party disappears, perhaps something better can be built in its place. How can it be worse?

Our gutless right-wing local version of pretend-Democrats is on life support, and the chairman’s delusional cluelessness seems to have become institutionalized. The humane thing to do would be to euthanize the party, and start all over again.

It’s also time to consider a point that almost none of us are prepared for, including me. This is the element of risk sustained by the resistance during the course of the opposition.

Or, if you will, an occupation.

If you’ve studied history at all, you know that when the going gets tough, the majority usually remains seated atop its collective hands. Meanwhile, the minority resolving to openly act finds that standing up for what they believe requires some skin in the game.

It’s risky, and isn't always pretty, either. Demonstrators are beaten and jailed. Dissidents are harassed and lose their jobs. Neo-Nazis attack people in the street, and Soviets ship them off to the gulag. It’s precisely the sort of retaliation that blacks, union members and Native American pipeline opponents experience as a matter of course, although whites like me tend to think that we’re exempted – because “law.”

Yeah, right.

I’m guessing that precious few Americans have a clue about how painful this “resistance” might become. We’ve taken for granted inalienable rights and freedoms, and when these pipe dreams actually have existed outside our idealized and addled imaginations (again, mostly white), they have been gained through direct action -- agitation, peaceful protest, civil disobedience and at times, regrettably, bloody violence.

That’s history, plain and simple, and a better appreciation of history would at least be helpful, although you may or may not discover the most relevant bits on your iPhone.

Finally, it won’t be enough for the left-of-center resistance to be solely predicated on identity politics and social justice issues of the precise sort that Mayor Gahan routinely and insincerely barters to local Democrats who are sufficiently gullible to accept toothless Potemkin human rights lean-tos in exchange for looking the other way as Gahan’s increasingly self-serving and megalomaniacal “luxury” expenditures exit the rails.

Up and down the line, Democrats have fiddled past the carnage of neoliberal economic orthodoxy for far too long, and it helped bring us to this lamentably idiocratic juncture. Understand that what’s coming over the horizon is very much about economics, too. Capitalism didn’t “win,” and all those –ism frictions have never left us, although we may have left them.

Earlier today, I remarked to friends that there’s nothing like a room filled with annoyed citizens to produce remarkable levels of concentration on the part of local elected officials. Everything changes when humans act together, in concert, as opposed to separately, isolated from each other. I'm a cynic, but I haven't abandoned hope.

Resistance?

I’m trying my best here in Anchor Flats. If there is any time left over, I’ll help you with Trump.

Deal?

---

Now, that was a vintage rant, and I'm sticking with it. Granted, I didn't foresee the Dan Canon candidacy, or the delightfully concurrent way the civil rights attorney's campaign for 9th district congressman has held a mirror up to toxic Gahanism during a time of Lorch purge, Speck grid botch, NAHA putsch and Mt. Tabor subjugation.

By the way, here's some truth from Bernie Sanders. Friends, look past the diversions and shell games ... and follow the money.

Let’s wrench power back from the billionaires, by Bernie Sanders (The Guardian)

If we stand together against powerful special interests we can eliminate poverty, increase life expectancy and tackle climate change

Here is where we are as a planet in 2018: after all of the wars, revolutions and international summits of the past 100 years, we live in a world where a tiny handful of incredibly wealthy individuals exercise disproportionate levels of control over the economic and political life of the global community.

Difficult as it is to comprehend, the fact is that the six richest people on Earth now own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population – 3.7 billion people. Further, the top 1% now have more money than the bottom 99%. Meanwhile, as the billionaires flaunt their opulence, nearly one in seven people struggle to survive on less than $1.25 (90p) a day and – horrifyingly – some 29,000 children die daily from entirely preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia ...

Maybe those NAHA resident children should consider finding a home in the Floyd County Democratic Party.

Although the costumes being worn on an everyday basis by adult Democratic party members are plenty entertaining, too.


MUST LISTEN: This brilliant podcast exposes Jeff Gahan's public housing putsch for what it is, and that's sheer "Let's Pretend We're Democrats" class war brutality.

NAHA and Pleasant Ridge? They're lookalikes, and it's only a matter of time until Jeff Gahan is exposed to the same scrutiny as Bob Hall.

This one's dedicated to Deaf Gahan and his merry band of local Democratic Party sycophants: "America Can't Fix Poverty Until It Stops Hating Poor People."

Pay no attention to what Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey's local Democrats say.

Rather, take note of what they don't/won't say ... and moreover, what they're doing (public housing hostile takeover) and not doing (adhering to their presumed political party's own platform).

It's world class hypocrisy, right here in Anchor City. They can pray in the Church of Pretend Disney all day long, but the stench remains. 

America Can't Fix Poverty Until It Stops Hating Poor People, by John A. Powell and Arthur Brooks (CityLab)

A bipartisan plea to stop “othering” those living on the economic margins.

“Hell is other people,” famously wrote the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre at the close of his 1943 play No Exit. While for Sartre this was a philosophically sophisticated point, in America today it has become simply the way we increasingly treat people at the margins of our society. We see whole groups of people as unlike ourselves—as the undesirable “other.”

Many different kinds of people have been harmfully “othered” throughout our country’s history, and the plights of these groups have received well-deserved attention and focus. But there is one group that we systematically other today—with hugely damaging consequences—while hardly even realizing that we are doing it. Those people are Americans living in poverty.

Research consistently finds that Americans exhibit a disturbing level of antipathy towards those on the economic margins. In a 2001 word-association study, researchers from Kansas State and Rice Universities asked subjects to rate how well a variety of words described different social groups. Compared to their ratings of middle-class people, and given no information except economic status, the average subject described poor people as 39 percent more “unpleasant,” 95 percent more “unmotivated,” and twice as “dirty.”

In another 2002 study, researchers from Princeton, UCLA, and Lawrence University asked students and adults to gauge society’s views toward several often-stereotyped groups. Other out-groups were demeaned as either incompetent but personally warm, or unfriendly but competent; only the poor were consistently classified as both unfriendly and incompetent. Americans, it seems, have a uniquely low opinion of poor people: We offer them neither our empathy nor our respect.

This antipathy is not the result of comfortable Americans having to endure constant exposure to the poor. On the contrary, a sharp uptick in socioeconomic stratification and segregation has been widely documented across the right and left, from Charles Murray to Robert Putnam. For growing percentages of middle- and upper-class Americans, interactions with poor and working-class people are very rare. Well-to-do Americans have almost no meaningful cultural contact with anyone from economically marginalized communities—from struggling inner cities to decaying suburbs to depressed rural counties.

One might surmise this separation is the result of the widespread negative attitudes about people in poverty. But there is good reason to believe the causality also runs in the other direction. Psychologists have long studied a phenomenon called the “Ben Franklin effect,” named for the Founding Father’s observation that our appraisals of other people can actually follow our behavior towards them, rather than just the other way around. Specifically, Franklin noted, we tend to like people more after we have granted them a favor ...

As Floyd Dems gut public housing: "In (Bernie Sanders') reckoning, the problem with the American economy wasn’t some shadowy cabal of interested parties, but the entire billionaire class."

Yesterday in the aftermath of Charlottesville, Adam Dickey rushed to assure doubters that all the standard requisite anti-fascist bromides were being dispensed via social media.

In other words, his usual form sans content.

Meanwhile, eight months into Deaf Gahan's public housing takeover, with fumbling functionary David Duggins doing just as slipshod a uninformed stooge's job at his new megabuck NAHA appointment as any of Donald Trump's federal appointees, neither Dickey nor his party has uttered so much as a peep about resisting this outrage -- although they remains united in censoring heretics like me, which conveniently enables them to ignore valid questions and maybe even sleep at night on widely scattered occasions.

But androids don't sleep, do they?

Populism for Plutocrats, by Matt Karp (Jacobin)

Democratic leaders still haven’t learned: you can’t fight the forces of oligarchy without naming the enemy.

 ... If “our politics and our economy” are rigged, who rigged them? Democrats, after all, have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-five years. From Bill Clinton’s serial deregulation of Wall Street to Obama’s decision to bail out predatory banks rather than victimized homeowners, elected Democrats have done their fair share to fashion the plutocratic order that now dominates the American economy ...

 ... But if “A Better Deal” is a blueprint to challenge the forces of plutocracy, it could use another draft. It includes lamentations about monopoly control over airlines, eyeglasses, and craft beer, but not a single mention of unions. (Without a much more comprehensive program to boost the power of workers, no combination of antitrust enforcement and infrastructure dollars — let alone job training programs — will level the playing field) ...

 ... Yet even as Schumer and Pelosi announce the dawn of a new Democratic populism, the weakness of their own language betrays them. Is it possible to fight plutocracy without identifying any actual plutocrats?

The main point: Know Your Enemy.

What distinguished the Bernie Sanders campaign more than any other issue — including his support for free college or Medicare for All — was that he named his enemy. Among his other objectives, Sanders’s attacks on “the 1 percent” were an attempt to reorder American politics around class lines: not with a stale disquisition on stratification, but by tapping into Americans’ anti-billionaire sentiment, religiously excluded from mainstream politics by both parties but thrumming powerfully just below the surface.

With hilarity, #OurNA: Now Democratic donor Ginkins is added to Gahan's NA housing authority yes-board of lickspittles ... but is Riverside Terrace off the demolition schedule?

Ever since Susan Ryan's column was published in the Jeffersonville newspaper, prominent local Democrats have been even more deathly silent than usual.

It's #OurNA, all right: "New Albany attempting to purge itself of the poor" ... so, are local Democrats finally catching on to the Gahan shell game?

"To tear down someone’s home then send them off with a voucher hoping they will move to another city as was expressed publicly, is just plain cynical and cruel. There is already a waiting list for voucher approved housing. If we cannot accommodate everyone on that list, why would we add several hundred families to that list?"

The Green Mouse reports that uber-important, highly-placed Democratic donor and local contractor Terry Ginkins (they're all coincidental, mind you) has been placed on the New Albany Housing Authority (NAHA) board to further ensure a "favorable" outcome for Jeff Gahan's "screw the poor" NAHA putsch.

At the same time, the Green Mouse has been told that all isn't peachy keen with the mayor's war on those unsightly folks who stand in the path of luxury.

Hired gun consultant Rod Solomon evidently has been redlining the city's demolition wish list, with certain Redevelopment Commission members named Irving Joshua responding by huffing, puffing and threatening to ... to do what, exactly?

Hold his breath until the pool opens?

According to a source, among the sites removed from the bulldozer target list is Riverside Terrace. Solomon allegedly pointed out that David Duggins' tagging of the area as "brownfield" was ludicrous, and federal criteria for demolition could not be met.

"Theater of the absurd" seldom gets better than this.

Gahan artlessly lied to the newspaper when pleading ignorance about months passing without necessary board housing board appointments being made. Duggins (performing Mr. Spock on acid to Gahan's reverse James T. Kirk) and the mayor were informed several times, but waited for the propitious moment to pack the board for putsch duty.

There still isn't a resident commissioner, a position intended as liaison between board and tenants. City Hall has delayed constantly in making this appointment.

Pathetically, a mayor unwilling to dirty his hands with public housing is allowing minions like Duggins, a Clark County resident, to run interference for him.

The newspaper interview with Duggins – "who came off crowing like he just negotiated the Marshall Plan"* – unsurprisingly alarmed both residents and staff. Many attended the NAHA board meeting following publication and expressed questions and concerns, which Duggins brushed aside with his usual frat boy condescension.

Yo, local Democrats: Still feeling good about your commitment to social justice? Still delusional about Gahan's embrace of the same?

Isn't one Trump at a time enough?

---

* What makes this statement so funny is that Team Gahan doesn't know what the Marshall Plan was. Let's put it this way: Gahan isn't Harry Truman, is he?

It's #OurNA, all right: "New Albany attempting to purge itself of the poor" ... so, are local Democrats finally catching on to the Gahan shell game?

It's surprising the Jeffersonville newspaper even published this piece.

Jeff Gahan's taxpayers are big weekly ad buyers, aren't they? The newspaper's editorial team recently concocted a paean to Gahan's Public Housing Putsch 2017 so namby-pamby that it appeared Eddie LaDuke had been reinstalled in the editor's chair.

1 of 2: Nick Vaughn eloquently demonstrates that Jeff Gahan's Great Public Housing Putsch of 2017 does nothing to address poverty -- the real problem.

2 of 2: Newspaper editorial board displays abject cluelessness about the Great Gahan Public Housing Putsch of 2017.

Make no mistake: I'm delighted to read this column. For far too long, local Democratic pretend-liberals have denounced Republican anti-social behavior while venerating Gahan for precisely the same knee-and-phallus-jerking.

In particular, party chairman Adam Dickey spews hypocrisy like the wood chipper following in the wake of downtown street tree deforestation.

Thanks, Susan Ryan. We deeply appreciate it. Does anyone else other than you in the local party get it?

RYAN: New Albany attempting to purge itself of the poor, by Susan Ryan

On Monday, April 24th, the New Albany Housing Authority will vote on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the City of New Albany. It is a path to purge the city of poor people by tearing down over 600 units of public housing and then giving occupants vouchers to find a place to rent. Cleansing a city of the poor by evicting them and tearing down affordable housing seems to be in vogue (consider our neighbor Charlestown and the Pleasant Ridge neighborhood).

It seems to me that there has been some bullying behavior toward the New Albany Housing Authority (NAHA) by the Mayor’s office. This has led to some serious governance issues for the board of NAHA.

Sure was. After the snip ...

While the Tribune reported that Mayor Gahan said he was unaware of this problem, the fact is that the Board President personally spoke with him several times about the need which only seemed to be filled when the city needed the MOU signed. 

Gahan lied? Say it ain't so.

The City has several ways in which they can put a choke hold on what NAHA can accomplish including refusing to sign off on grant applications, refusing to issue demolition permits, refusal to issue building permits, and failing to make necessary appointments to the governance board. These have been used strategically undermine the vision and action of the board. 

If chicanery's the objective, there's no better point man on the planet than David Duggins.

The point is they work. If we would like to see them get out of public housing a good first step would be to raise the minimum wage. Why do we insist on believing that poor people are lazy when the reality is that most poor are working poor?

Because Eastridge Drive Rules.

To tear down someone’s home then send them off with a voucher hoping they will move to another city as was expressed publicly, is just plain cynical and cruel. There is already a waiting list for voucher approved housing. If we cannot accommodate everyone on that list, why would we add several hundred families to that list?

Son of Eastridge Drive Rules. They're elected officials, not book readers.

We can learn a lot about ourselves by how we treat the poor among us. 

And as such, we continue to learn a lot about local Democratic priorities.

Monday, April 24th, 5:30 p.m. at the NAHA. Will you be there to lend your voice and support to the vulnerable in our community?

I'll be there. Some recent links:

ON THE AVENUES: It's all so simple, says Jeff Gahan. Remove the impoverished, and voila! No more poverty!

Authority fact sheet and ponder the safety net Jeff Gahan seeks to demolish along with bricks and mortar.

Public housing demolition men: "Hi, I'm Mayor Jeff Gahan and this is David Duggins, and we're here to help."

ON THE AVENUES: Never preach free speech to a yes man; it wastes your time and annoys Team Gahan.

Susan Ryan's excellent newspaper column about symbols.

As local pretend-Democrats whistle Dixie(crat), Gahan prepares to launch the public housing pogrom.

Loss leader? Adam wrote a press release about himself as standard bearer for the Democrats.

“It feels like planners in the U.S. sort of exist in a history vacuum. It’s important for them to look at this information and understand that a lot of city planning really involves dismantling systems like zoning and redlining.”

ON THE AVENUES: In 2014 as in 2015, then 2016, now 2017 ... yes, it's the "Adamite Chronicles: Have muzzle, will drivel."

Today's New Albany Housing Authority meeting has been cancelled, so Jeff Gahan's undemocratic Anschluss will have to wait until just before the Ides of March.

Pleasant Ridge in the NYT: All that nice outside money waiting to be invested, and all those low-income people refusing to get out of the way.

Time to learn facts, Democrats: Myths and misperceptions about public housing ... and lessons from Chicago's reform effort.

Gahan's Grab: Yes, principled Democratic positions on public housing actually DO exist, and here's one of them. But first, some Kool Aid!

Right when Greg Phipps said it's no big deal; after all, the sycophant-packed mayoral lickspittle NAHA-N board would have to vote on any public housing changes.

Precinct, trust, communicate ... three strikes and local Democrats are "out," though free to continue pursuing a GOP-style public housing power grab.

Let's summarize 2017 with a Gahan and Floyd Democratic Party meme and a few essential links.

Four things you should know about Jeff "Dead Inside" Gahan's public housing hostile takeover and land grab.

So-called "Democrat" Jeff Gahan's "Memorandum of Understanding" details his hostile takeover of the New Albany Housing Authority, and the land grab to follow.

ON THE AVENUES: A luxury-obsessed Jeff Gahan has packed a board and now seeks to break the New Albany Housing Authority. Can we impeach him yet?

I've been on it this year, haven't I? Hope I'm not bugging anyone.

An essay the Adamites won't read: "Our movement must base itself on a politics capable of confronting both Trump and the rotten elite liberalism that enabled his rise."

Here in Floyd County, the only mantra local Democrats have been able to muster is Make Monetization Great Again.

They'll wail and moan about Trump, then without even washing their hands, praise Jeff Gahan for promoting luxury at the expense of the most vulnerable, as in the instance of public housing "reform."

I'd say this sort of inattention to basic ideological hygiene can spread disease, except the rot's already so pervasive that it probably doesn't matter.

Politicking Without Politics, by Paul Heideman (Jacobin)

Democratic elites are delusional — you can’t subdue the reactionary right without a robust alternative political vision.

For a distillation of the Democratic Party’s self-conception today, one could do worse than consult Nancy Pelosi’s recent pronouncement: “We don’t have a party orthodoxy — they [the Republicans] are ideological.”

For some time now, this view of the political divide — Democrats are consummate pragmatists, Republicans are rigid slaves to dogma — has predominated in elite liberal circles. Hillary Clinton, after all, centered her campaign on competence and experience far more than any actual conception of politics.

And despite the resulting disaster, this desire to have a politics without politics — this strategy to build a coalition bereft of any clear values or principles — has continued to animate liberals’ opposition to Trump. Democrats really believe, it seems, that they can subdue the reactionary right without articulating any alternative political vision beyond prudent governance.

SNIP

Over the longer term, the fruits of the Democrats’ strategy are even more troubling. In framing their opposition to Trump as non-political, Democrats are perpetuating the crisis in American liberalism.

Obama initially appeared to be liberalism’s savior, promising to redeem it from its abject failures during the Bush years. But eight years of managerial centrism left the party hollowed out both institutionally and ideologically. Without any real challenge from the left, Obama never strayed far from the path laid out by the banks and tech companies that funded his campaigns. While his personal gifts allowed him to win very high approval ratings for a two-term president, his policies did little to alleviate the growing misery in many parts of the country. Obama’s inability to rewrite the political and economic rules of the game ensured that any candidate who lacked his talents would be unable to stitch together the same coalition.

It is this continued fidelity to American capitalism, this unwavering commitment to keeping things more or less as they are, that stands behind the Democrats’ apparent fear of ideas. Any actual attempt to advance the principles that loom large in the American liberal imagination would entail some sort of confrontation with capital, and the Democratic Party, bought and paid for by capital, is unwilling to contemplate such a step.

FINAL SNIP

Fortunately, the alternative to Democratic vapidity is not hard to find. It has reverberated through much of the popular resistance to Trump’s presidency. When thousands of people gathered at JFK Airport to protest the Muslim ban, they didn’t make an hour-long subway trip to stand in the cold because they thought Trump was being hypocritical or unpresidential. They gathered because they felt Trump had infringed on core values of egalitarianism and fairness. They were moved by a basic sense of injustice. They were moved, in other words, by politics.

While the liberal evasion of politics gives the impression that the Democrats have no ideas they are confident enough to defend, mobilizations like the refugee solidarity protests do the exact opposite. When thousands of people assemble with signs declaring “Refugees are Welcome Here,” they stake out a political ground that directly confronts Trump. They provide a political pole capable of further mobilization.

Pretend neutrality: The DNC's bias brings to mind Chef Dickey's own local delicacies.

"Obviously (Trump) has run a very divisive campaign himself, assaulting and assailing just about anyone who is in a minority group, a religious group, just about anyone who doesn't completely agree with him."
-- Adam Dickey, local professional Democrat (WHAS)

How very providential of Adam to offer counterpoint to his own club fraternity party's angelic inclinations, as in this e-mail from Democratic National Committee CFO Brad Marshall, also quoted by Charlie Pierce.

From:MARSHALL@dnc.org
To: MirandaL@dnc.org, PaustenbachM@dnc.org, DaceyA@dnc.org
Date: 2016-05-05 03:31
Subject: No shit

It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.

Of the recipients, only DNC CEO Amy Dacey answered: "Amen." A-my D-acey. A-dam D-ickey. Reptilian coincidence?

Even the Smart Reptiles Don't Write This Stuff Down, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

... So thus does ideologically aligned press get a Dems In Disarray narrative to write, the ostensibly non-aligned press gets the Both Sides In Chaos story of its dreams, and the DNC under DWS demonstrates, for possibly the last time, that it would screw up a two-car funeral if you spotted it the hearse. These are the people standing between the Republic and El Caudillo de Mar-A-Lago.

Back in here in Swelterville, local Democrats remain stone cold silent in the face of these WikiLeaks side-splitters, obviously waiting for ranking boy genius Dickey and his creation, Jeff "Mortimer Snerd" Gahan, to tell them what they can admit to thinking, if at all.

Earlier today, I surveyed the range of ranking local Democrats on social media.

I'm shocked -- shocked, I say -- to learn that the Democratic National Committee, "which isn’t supposed to favor one Democratic candidate over another until they receive a nomination," did exactly that.

Really?

Debbie Wasserman Schultz wasn't neutral?

Of course, if you're among the New Albanians who supported David White for mayor in last year's Democratic primary, you've heard this story before.

Local party chairman Dickey lifted his entire pro-Gahan playbook from Wasserman Schultz ... unless it was the other way around, and she copied off Dickey's paper.

Dickey as role model for neutrality? Local Demos should be choking on their Bud Lights, but instead, someone needs to fetch a shitload of dimes.