Your Saturday morning Coffey. I'll have mine black, like his record.

But my, how our DemoDixieDisneycrats love Dan's natural political orientation as one capable of harvesting votes from the seniors.

Newspaper's editorial board goes where Dickey, Gahan won't: "New Albany is stuck with Dan Coffey whether residents like him or not."

The Green Mouse reports that several of our city council's members, all theoretically Democratic, discussed the possibility of a motion of censure for Dan Coffey, but none would introduce it for fear of going on the record.

Seeing that it's difficult to imagine even this moderate level of spine, it's probably just a rumor.

But count it among those rumors that match the group's disposition so perfectly that it might as well be true -- not to mention the attendant fear, given City Hall's record of reprisals against dissidents.

The way Jeff Gahan is protecting Coffey is touching, isn't it? Sorry to make waves, but I'll have to keep asking why. Click through the read the entire editorial; better late than never.

OUR OPINION: Voters left with no option over Coffey’s words

Last week’s candidate filing deadline passed with no opponent for New Albany District 1 Councilman Dan Coffey. He didn’t have a foe in the May primary, either.

It’s Coffey who has been pelted with criticism recently for his comments at a June council meeting, when he said his push for the return of public prayer at meetings was fueled by the recent drive for legal rights for “gays, lesbians and transvestites.”

For starters, we believe Coffey meant transgender individuals with that last word, but there’s plenty more with his statement and actions to take issue with.

They’re full of bluster and callousness, but still we support Coffey’s right to speak his mind.

However, his grandstanding on what’s a really a nonissue — the previous format for public prayer at New Albany meetings had never been a problem — and his insensitive words come with consequences, or should.

But what really can be done? His peers on the council could censure him at tonight’s meeting.
Coffey has already declined to apologize for his remarks, and anyone figuring a public scolding is going to change his behavior is a fool.

The people who ultimately control Coffey’s fate are voters.

Refer to the start of this editorial and you’ll see the problem at present. Coffey has waltzed through the 2015 election season, and that’s a shame.

ON THE AVENUES: This is Dan Coffey, New Albany’s quintessential Democrat.

ON THE AVENUES: This is Dan Coffey, New Albany’s quintessential Democrat.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Dan Coffey is a Democrat.

I know, I know.

Go and paste a photo of Coffey into Google Images, and the magical search engine yields various glamour shots of none other than Governor Mike Pence.*

But as Coffey surely would remind you in his very best caterwauling drawl, “that Ol’ Man Goggle ain’t from HERE, is he?”

And HERE, in New Albany and Floyd County, reverting to the curiously deceptive dialect spoken by those who have their obscure reasons for not being publicly identified as Republican in a benighted place where only two options for political affiliation are permitted, Coffey remains a card-carrying, fully sanctioned and purely customary Democrat.

In fact it says so, right there, at the Floyd County Democratic Party’s web site.

Dan Coffey is a Democrat.

He also is an unreconstructed homophobe, a serial bully, and a perennial opportunist. He has occupied a council seat since the year 2000, and during all that time, while amassing a record of non-achievement notable even by New Albany’s subterranean standards, he never once has troubled himself with deep thoughts about prayers and invocations, apart from repeating them by rote, mindlessly, along with everyone else in the council chamber.

Then along came “them people” asking for their rights, and all of a sudden, Coffey sprang forward to defend the faith from these godless heathens, of whom I surely must be numbered as one. For reason of my atheism, perhaps my testimony is unreliable to some. However, as it pertains to Coffey’s most recent council displays or righteousness, you needn’t take my heretical word for it.

The following forceful and passionate passage was written by a certified believer, the Rev. John Manzo of St. Marks United Church of Christ, and posted at Facebook. Seems Coffey might not be speaking on behalf of all the city’s Christians.

The other night God got mocked at the City Council meeting.

Councilman Dan Coffey swore at another member of the Council by calling him a "lying piece of (expletive)" during a debate over public prayer on Monday.

Later, Mr. Coffey said, "No, I didn't bring this up to curry favor," Coffey said, hitting his hand against the council's desk. "I brought it up because every time you turned around, there was something coming up about gays, lesbians, transvestites and making sure they had their rights."

The council then considered an amendment that would've allowed members only to pray, give an inspirational message, or to skip their turn in the rotation.

"If someone chooses to say a prayer, that's fine," Councilman Greg Phipps said. "I they choose to read an inspirational poem, that's fine."

"I can hear it now, 'tiptoe through tulips,'" Coffey replied in reference to a gay person presenting a prayer or a devotional reading.

This was all bad an offensive in and of itself. Swearing at a colleague and bashing people is offensive behavior in and of itself. This, out of context is just bad behavior that doesn’t mock God. But in context, wow.

Mr. Coffey was promoting and advocating for a bill to mandate prayer at the City Council meetings. He swore while advocating, seemingly, for God. He mocked people while saying he was advocating for God. He was promoting prayer.

This is worse than Bill Maher. Mr. Maher regularly mocks religious people but he doesn’t believe in God. He’s a comedian. He’s an entertainer. I often find him to be offensive but he does no harm to Christianity because he simply doesn’t believe in God. I don’t take him seriously.

The problem with what Mr. Coffey did is that he was acting like he was protecting God and protecting religion. He wasn’t. He was being offensive and saying he was doing this in God’s name. That mocks God. As a pastor of a church in downtown New Albany I find his actions deeply offensive. He made a mockery of those who us who take our faith seriously and pray. My hope and prayer is that he takes time at the next Council meeting to apologize to his colleagues for his offensive behavior, but most of all, to the people of faith for his vulgar mockery of God.

Hmm. Did I mention that Coffey is a Democrat?

This Democrat, when handed the gift of tailor-made grandstanding, abruptly coiled like a copperhead and stung like a Pharisee, professing hitherto unwitnessed allegiance to points of order, and volunteering to explicate obscure passages of Constitutional law which have confused genuine scholars since before the ink was dry on the original document.

Coffey, a Democrat, knew fully well the camera was focused on him, and so he was suitably explicit for the viewing audience at home, because he no longer can suppress his revulsion at the inexorable advance of the Sodomites.

Dan Coffey?

He’s a Democrat, and he knows that as a Democrat in New Albany and Floyd County, he is perfectly free to say and believe and do anything, or nothing, however egregious, nasty and untruthful, because there’ll always be a fellow “Democrat” in need of the sin-eating services of a small-pond operative utterly devoid of scruples or ethical sensibility.

Dan Coffey’s been HERE his whole life, and he merely shrugs. How can it be a crime if there isn’t any punishment … ever?

It has been ten days since this episode of KoffeyKulturKampf was aired on the boob tube, as recounted evenly and accurately by Pastor Manzo, who has been joined by the LGBT community and numerous other fair-minded individuals in expressing revulsion.

Our leaders tend to be Democrats, just like Dan Coffey, and they ... are silent.

The Floyd County Democratic Party has said absolutely nothing. Mayor Jeff Gahan, like Coffey a Democrat, and moreover, quite content to deploy Coffey as his dull, blunt Sancho Panza, to be wielded in pursuit of his and the party’s monetization aims, has remained mum.

Both party and mayor invite you to go swimming, and forget about the rest.

Of Coffey’s city council colleagues, six of whom are Democrats, only one has referred to the landmark council evening publicly, and yet  John Gonder’s welcomed critique was mostly oblique, as usual, and his brave but doomed loyalty to a political party – to his own Democratic Party – itself largely in connivance with Coffey’s and Gahan’s despicable targeting of Gonder for defeat in the November election, is elegiac, fated and shaded with melancholy.

Ideals, anyone?

Four years ago, Jeff Gahan’s stated aim in seeking the office of mayor was to somehow alchemize New Albany into a “fundamentally” better municipality.

As Coffey’s recent human rights slurs abundantly illustrate, this has not occurred. In fact, it has not begun.

Fundamentals are basic, underlying, core standards. They must exist to serve as the foundation for what follows. They are the procedures and protocols defining more universal matters like human and civil rights, but also those daily markers wrongly viewed by many as mundane, including topics like the demeanor, practices and expectations of public officials and employees, and their bodies, boards and commissions.

Dan Coffey is a Democrat, and his peers would rather enjoy weekly colonoscopies than call his bluff.

There are no fundamental guidelines available for needed discipline, save one: The ballot box, except that Coffey had no challengers in his party’s primary in May; the GOP apparently refuses to run a candidate against him; and no independent alternative has emerged.

Dan Coffey, Democrat?

Might as well – and a lean, mean Democrat at that, mercifully stripped of any platform compliance obligations or other burdensome adornments resembling anything remotely democratic, with upper- and lower-case meaningless, and thus completely interchangeable.

Apart from the many citizens Coffey has openly denounced, he also has humiliated his nominal political party, his cowering patron of a mayor, and the entire city, for good measure. Each and every one of us looks bad at the present time.

And Dan Coffey, the Democrat, is winning.

He is winning by default.

Even by New Albany’s traditionally subterranean standards, that’s absolutely appalling.

---

* When I pasted this into Google Images ...

... this was returned.

---

Recent columns:

June 4: ON THE AVENUES: Dan Coffey speaks for Jeff Gahan and the Democratic Party … unless they say otherwise.

May 28: ON THE AVENUES: The last of the summer beer.

May 21: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: "I Just Want to Know, Can I Park Here Somewhere?”

May 14: ON THE AVENUES: Take this cult of personality and shove it.

May 7: ON THE AVENUES: In Havel I trust.

April 30: ON THE AVENUES: Until philosophers become kings.

ON THE AVENUES: Dan Coffey speaks for Jeff Gahan and the Democratic Party … unless they say otherwise.

ON THE AVENUES: Dan Coffey speaks for Jeff Gahan and the Democratic Party … unless they say otherwise.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

For many New Albany residents, the WAVE 3 video of 1st district councilman Dan Coffey’s antics during Monday’s prayer – I mean, council – meeting, during which Coffey made intemperate and homophobic remarks, then denied them even as he was chased down the stairs by the reporter, have proven shocking.

In sad fact, they’re the time-tested norm.

Many of these same residents promptly took to social media, asking why the Floyd County Democratic Party and our incumbent mayor, Jeff Gahan, for whom Coffey has recently served as unofficial council whip and “fundamentally better” enforcer, both have failed to comment on the situation.

You guessed it: Mute Democratic impotence also is the norm hereabouts.

I’ve been describing Coffey’s frequent outbursts at NA Confidential for a very long time. His career in playacting at public service has been an embarrassment to his party and the city in myriad ways since before I even began attending meetings in 2004, but there is "Something Different" about the most recent episode of the Wizard of Westside’s frothing at the mouth.

It was captured on video.

But there’s a twist, because I think Coffey planned it that way.

Why?

That’s how much he hates gays, lesbians and transvestites.

---

It’s worth remembering that Joe Stalin attended seminary school before embarking on his stellar career of thuggery and mayhem, and in like fashion, Dan Coffey’s belated discovery of prayer has not been meant to bring him a step closer to a ragpicker’s sainthood.

Rather, it has been a convenient means to an end. It’s been about inciting and assembling an angry mob – like the crowd of angry “Christians” who gathered a few meetings back to learn who was taking their cherished rituals away – which can be called back to the podium when needed.

Of course, in this case, it’s been about three years since council protocol changed, with nary a peep from Coffey. He didn’t care an iota about the Lord’s Prayer, not then or now; it merely was another chit to be safeguarded whilst nursing his elderly white man’s panoply of grudges, at least until the right cue came along.

Coffey got his chance when the council resolved to denounce the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Astronauts on orbiting space stations could see him salivate in anticipation.

You see, the gays, lesbians and transvestites had taken it a step too far … and it was time to declare Coffey Jihad Time by paying them back with the resumption of invocations.

True enough, only Sigmund Freud himself might be able to establish the Coffey-concocted connection between prayer and sexual orientation, but if Freud were reincarnated and attended a council meeting, Coffey would start prattling on about the Jews taking over.

And a majority of his colleagues wouldn’t say a damned single word about it.

---

That’s because Coffey is accustomed to saying and doing as he pleases; after all, he’s a Democrat, and generations of council presidents have been Democrats, too, and none of them have ever tried very hard to discipline Coffey.

Current president Pat McLaughlin treats his gavel as though it had only recently been dipped in Ebola jam, and he cannot so much as use the restroom until the Gahan gives him a signal via earbuds. Coffey’s been bullying his cohorts for years. He knew the cameras were there, knew he could do as he pleased, and knew he’d not be censured for it.

That’s how enduringly tone-deaf Gahan and the Democratic Party have become.

Yes, Dan Coffey’s behavior is routinely despicable, but the Democratic Party persists in enabling him. With few ethical principles of their own to promote, local Democrats jokingly handle their “Coffey problem” by siding with Lyndon Baines Johnson’s preferred method of dealing with J. Edgar Hoover:

“Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than the other way around.”

More importantly, ostensibly "respectable" elements in the party are forever in need of Coffey’s services as sin eater, and to launder their own bile. They won’t say it aloud – but Dan sure will! They believe they can use Coffey, and even if he usually turns the tables and uses THEM, non-democratic Democrats get exactly what they need in the interim.

What’s more, Coffey's invoice doesn't go to the Democratic Party. Rather, the entire city pays it, again and again, in a loss of civic reputation … and of remaining a regional backwater.

---

I’m hoping to be proven wrong, but there’s as much chance of Dan Coffey being censured for his most recent bullying as the aquatic center actually paying for itself.

Way back in 2009, when Coffey physically threatened my colleague and friend Jeff Gillenwater, only one council member, John Gonder, had the intestinal fortitude to suggest that Coffey deserved some form of censure.

The other council members sat and stared at the floor.

I watched them look the other way, ducking and covering, and I’ll watch them do it again, this time, all the while remaining pathetically incapable of grasping why they’re regarded as political laughingstocks by anyone in town who takes the time to observe them in twice monthly repose.

What of Jeff Gahan? Dan Coffey has been Gahan’s loyal, groveling Sancho Panza. Will the mayor emerge from his bunker to reassure the LGBT community that Coffey does not speak for him?

I doubt it. Gahan believes what he reads on the city’s Facebook page, which is updated by a paid contractor, who provides precisely what its client wants to hear. A typical animated Disney feature contains more reality than this.

Coffey’s snarling disregard for the rules of simple human civility is a nasty symptom of the rot within, one that is being left to fester by mayor and council alike. Coffey is a nasty bigot, all right, but far more significantly that this, he’s an apt metaphor for the diseased existence of the local Democratic Party, which now operates purely from a principle of machine monetization.

It’s more Republican than ever before. There’s a lot of censure to go around.

None of it will.

Think of it as the sorrow of New Albany.

---

Recent columns:

May 28: ON THE AVENUES: The last of the summer beer.

May 21: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: "I Just Want to Know, Can I Park Here Somewhere?”

May 14: ON THE AVENUES: Take this cult of personality and shove it.

May 7: ON THE AVENUES: In Havel I trust.

April 30: ON THE AVENUES: Until philosophers become kings.

April 27: ON THE AVENUES MONDAY SPECIAL: Et tu, Greg Phipps? Or: Anger and the electoral variability of transparency.

Mount Tone Deaf just doesn't have the same ring, does it?

It's simple, If the Democratic Party and Mayor Jeff Gahan can't step outside their soulless political machines (and bunkers) to disavow Dan Coffey's homophobia and bigotry, then they're endorsing Coffey's behavior.

Dan Coffey's homophobic council tantrum: The Video.

Dan Coffey, on fire.

Listen as Coffey maligns two of his council colleagues while the body's president sits inert and motionless.

Flinch as Coffey explains that reconstituted council prayer is necessary in light of the constant agitation of gays, lesbians and transvestites.

Guffaw as the WAVE reporter follows the Wizard of Westside down the stairway of a public building as the Wizard flees.

Worst of all: Recoil when you consider that Coffey is one of New Albany's highest ranking Democrats, and a veritable pillar of Adam Dickey's party machine.

Welcome to Jeff Gahan's New Albany, in a nutshell.

Fundamentally more bigoted.

Longtime homophobe Coffey offers heartfelt prayer for his "lying piece of (expletive)" colleague.

Prayer duly restored, the Ayatollah Coffey will now decide whether your religion deserves his stamp of approval.

Longtime homophobe Coffey offers heartfelt prayer for his "lying piece of (expletive)" colleague.

This tidbit didn't make the Jeffersonville Moore-ovian.

It speaks for itself, don't you think? Just remember: Dan Coffey is Jeff Gahan's chosen enforcer, the one running interference for the mayor.

This isn't Coffey's scandal alone, is it?

New Albany councilman swears into open mic during prayer debate, by Theo Keith (WAVE)

NEW ALBANY, IN (WAVE) - A New Albany councilman referred to a colleague as a "lying piece of (expletive)" during a debate over public prayer on Monday.

Councilman Dan Coffey made the comment into an open microphone, yet denied using the curse word during a brief, tense interview after the meeting.

"I didn't call him that," Coffey said, as a reporter followed him down a staircase in the City-County Building. "That's what you say I called him."

Coffey used the meeting to argue in favor of starting Common Council meetings with a prayer. The council approved the public prayer ordinance on a 7-2 vote after three amendments failed.

A minister who attends the meetings will likely lead the prayer, as one did before Monday's debate that became increasingly tense.

Councilman John Gonder offered an amendment that would've allowed only council members to lead in prayer or moments of reflection before meetings. The amendment failed, 5-4, after Gonder accused Coffey of trying to "curry favor" with the prayer issue.

"No, I didn't bring this up to curry favor," Coffey said, hitting his hand against the council's desk. "I brought it up because every time you turned around, there was something coming up about gays, lesbians, transvestites and making sure they had their rights."

READ THE REST AT WAVE  NEWS' WEB SITE

ON THE AVENUES: Learning from the Warehouse.

ON THE AVENUES: Learning from the Warehouse.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Two weeks ago, the Warehouse Bar abruptly closed its doors. To put it mildly, this outcome was unexpected, given what seemed to be overwhelming positives during the period of its resurgence.

In fact, the establishment’s short-lived reinvention as an overtly, all-closets-barred LGBT bar truly was the talk of the town. When NA Confidential mentioned the Warehouse, the ratings in terms of blog and Facebook page views and shares ventured into numerical stratospheres never previously witnessed.

The local chain newspaper’s SoIn supplement did a whole story on the phenomenon, in which the bar’s two managers reported huge revenue increases. Comments and feedback came from far and wide, posted by people seeing something new and interesting about New Albany, perhaps for the very first time.

But the most gratifying reactions came from several of my younger acquaintances, who merely shrugged, yawningly attributing the Warehouse’s LGBT makeover to no higher motives than a mercantile desire to place customers in seats: “Duh. They turned it into a gay bar to make money.”

Just let that sink in for a moment.

Without so much as referencing the judgmental social baggage carried for so long and annoyingly by their grandparents, to the effect that there might be something intrinsically evil, immoral or threatening about an LGBT bar located within stumbling distance of Bob Caesar’s pastry shop, what they found noteworthy was a business embracing the profit motive by catering to a neglected market.

Talk about revolutionary!

Arguably the most fascinating aspect of the Warehouse’s no-frills reinvention overnight, from an indistinct bar with virtually nothing of originality to distinguish it from any number of other area licensees into a must-visit shooting star attracting more visitors to New Albany than any number of civically-endorsed weekend one-offs, is what it actually cost to facilitate the transformation.

Basically, it cost nothing.

The bricks, mortar and fixtures were the same as before. In terms of reinvestment capital, the only need was an attitudinal shift – a difference incalculable in dollars and cents. In effect, this was nothing more than a statement of intent to customers: You are as you are, so come as you are. Be who you are. No biggie. Nothing more, nothing less.

Simple dignity, accompanied by a beer or cocktail. What a concept.

It really shouldn’t be difficult, should it?

---

I’ve never thought about these issues very much as they pertain to business, probably because I’ve always taken for granted that my own personal goal of better beer was egalitarian and inclusive, allowing folks patronizing my own two establishments the freedom to be what they are, too, with further fanfare unnecessary beyond the better beer itself.

However, I may have been mistaken in this assumption. Better beer’s higher unit costs always nagged me, and then a few months ago I was taken down another notch when it was reported to me that an anti-gay slur was uttered by a customer at the Grant Line location.

Unfortunately, staff didn’t hear it, and the perpetrator could not be identified. That’s too bad. If I’d have been on hand, heard the comment and had the opportunity, someone’s boorish butt would have been unceremoniously removed from the premises and asked not to return.

Of course, neither our workers nor the company’s ownership sanctions such doltishness, and yet this incident remains bothersome to me, probably because it illustrates how elusive simple human dignity can be, even when one tries his best to espouse an atmosphere for it.

At any rate, the Warehouse’s managers put out a literal flag of welcome, and customers came streaming through the door. The story should end happily, but it hasn’t, at least not as of this writing. The reason for this appears to be the sad fact of the managers being merely managers, and not actual owners.

---

The actual owner of the Warehouse as a business entity, who purchased it on contract from Matt McMahan and was renting the space from Matt, apparently made the decision to close it. He turned in the keys to Matt, skipped the contract and gave it back, even though business was much better off as an LGBT bar than it had been before.

It appears likely that his reason for doing so testifies to the existence, hitherto unknown, of Americans who genuinely do value personal principle over profit, although in this case, a better way of phrasing it might be “value personal prejudice over profit.”

At least that’s the way the story was told to me; after all, a homophobe might not be the best choice of LGBT bar owner. I looked at his Facebook profile, and staring back at me was a white, bearded, presumably heterosexual male of 55, wearing a Duck Dynasty shirt. Faster than it takes for John Rosenbarger to emit noxious lies, I felt the familiar, all-embracing revulsion toward ignorant, clueless, thoughtless white guys of that approximate age.

Of my age, that is, because I’m 54, and guys like this are an embarrassment, and a veritable albatross around the necks of the rest of us, not just here, but in the entire nation. To me, the sooner my cohort is outnumbered, the better.

To be sure, I’m operating on second-hand testimony. However, it would be entirely believable to me if the former Warehouse owner in question would say aloud: “Sheeee-it, boys, I only did it because I knew it would fail, and when it didn’t – well, I’m not about to let a bunch of faggots help me succeed!”

Make no mistake: He didn’t say this, at least not for attribution, but I’ve heard words to this effect so often in my life, as spewing from white male morons my general age, that it has left an indelibly negative impression.

Let’s just be happy this one is gone.

I’m not sure what will happen next. Whether at the Warehouse or elsewhere, it has been proven that an LGBT bar is viable in New Albany. Like any bar, it would need to be well-managed, and maybe more than any other bar, the regulars would double as active stakeholders worthy of consultation. I had coffee with Matt yesterday, and he seems amenable to such a course.

Get a nice Pale Ale on tap, and the sky’s the limit … even in this town.

'Ville Voice v.v. Dyche: "Not Just A Homophobe But Also A Race-Baiter?"

The C-J canned John David Dyche, and then WDRB picked him up. So far, so yawnable. But after a vigorous pot-stirring, following is an uncommonly enjoyable takedown of Dyche by Jake at TVV.

Not Just A Homophobe But Also A Race-Baiter? (The "Ville Voice)

The latest from John David Dyche further illustrates why it was a good decision to cut him from the Courier-Journal. It’s as if he believes the entire city is the Pendennis Club and no non-WASPs are allowed.

(insert frothing Dyche excerpts here, then lift off)

Jesus.

Black people = basketball? Check. Jive lingo? Check. Community activist (aka people like Barack Obama)? Check. Scandinavian (white people)? Check. “Urban” (black) terrorism? Check.

This city’s privileged white folks have been wringing their hands something fierce this week. It’s been surreal to watch.

Damnable truth-telling: "They’ve just never had to think about this."

Two excerpts tell the (becoming ever more familiar) tale of the thoughtless grappling with thoughts.

First, the backdrop.

The Log Cabin Republican, by Frank Bruni (New York Times)

ORBISONIA, Pa. — MIKE FLECK, wholesome country boy, cruised to a second term in the State Legislature in 2008, running unopposed in both the Republican primary and the general election. He got 100 percent of the vote in a largely rural, religious, conservative district.

It was the same two years later: 100 percent. And the same again in 2012.

But for 2014, primary opponents are circling. Some supporters are fleeing. He’s in trouble.

And while nothing has changed — not his deep roots in the farmland here, not his degree from an evangelical Christian university founded by Jerry Falwell, not his fondness for hunting or his pride in the bear pelt from one of his kills — everything has. At the end of last year, he announced that his marriage of 10 years was over. And that he’s gay ...

Second, the takeaway, although in a sense applicable locally without reference to sexual orientation.

... “I love this area,” he told me. “I think it’s going to catch up. But it’s never going to catch up unless there are people like me out there. And that’s true not just of here but of the Bible Belt and a whole lot of America.”

“These are good people,” he added. “They’ve just never had to think about this.”

"They’ve just never had to think about this."

It could be human rights, two-way streets, density, urbanism, the importance of local business, the idiocy of sprawl ... the list just compounds and compounds -- and I'm NOT TALKING ABOUT ordinary citizens.

I'm talking about who gets elected to office locally. We see them exposed to ideas, ducking and clawing as though rotten fruit is being thrown in their direction; visibly uncomfortable with the notion of learning anything.

Couldn't they at least be better actors?

"Life's too short to dance with ugly men."

That's what a friend of mine's bumper sticker used to say. It's too short to vote for them, too.

Only in Indiana could a matter of conscience turn your electoral attention toward a reality TV refugee.

Indiana Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Favors Constitutional Amendment Banning Same-Sex Marriage by Bil Browning, Huff Post Gay Voices

Flying in the face of the national trend in favor of same-sex marriage, Indiana Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg announced his support of a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages and civil unions on the same day President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. Gregg's Republican opponent, far-right Congressman Mike Pence, also supports the discriminatory amendment. Libertarian candidate Rupert Boneham, the former Survivor reality show star, has already announced his support of full marriage equality for all Hoosiers.

OSIN screen capture mania: Just wait until the homophobes see this one.

As long as the gay singles don't do pop-up ads, we're golden, but will the homophobes stage a nice subscription-cancelling media event? Thanks to G for the submission.

Jeers for Islamophobes, homophobes and pop-up ads for car dealers.

I'm in agreement with this jeer, but how does one cancel a subscription anonymously? When I cancelled ours last week, I had to tell the helpful young lady exactly which street address to remove, which had the effect of giving away my identity. Of course, anonymity's always been a foreign concept for me.

Hmm, I wonder if the Islamophobe referenced here by editor Van Hoy was the same as one of the two homophobes (Saundra Bottom and Betty Robertson) who wrote letters on August 4 to advance the bizarre position that as Christians, they're actually the victims of persecution if they cannot use their religion to justify persecution and discrimination against others in this, a secular society.

Apparently it's peak season here in the Open Air Museum of Ignorance, Superstition and Backwardness. By the way, how'd you like that ice-cold Budweiser down by the river last night?

JEERS

... to the anonymous caller who apparently decided to cancel her subscription because of content on the Mini Page, of all pages.

A recent edition of that page — which is aimed at young children — contained a lesson on Islamic history and Ramadan. Taking “God out of everything” did not sit well with the reader.

God, Allah, Buddha, Flying Spaghetti Monster, insert your favorite deity here, nothing at all — it’s all fine by me.

— Editor Shea Van Hoy