Joe Gerth touches all four: "Mayor Fischer is missing in action as Louisville struggles with racial issues."

I hope you can get through the pay wall because Gerth's eloquence needs to be read in its entirety. I've converted Gerth's commentary to baseball:



Deprived of sloganeering, the faux Democrat Greg Fischer is exposed as an inept fraud. Time for him to resign. Bourbonism's no longer an option, is it?

Gerth: Mayor Fischer is missing in action as Louisville struggles with racial issues, by Joseph Gerth, Louisville Courier Journal

Since the first people began carrying signs and exhorting us to say Breonna Taylor’s name last week, Louisville has wrestled with what has unfolded on our downtown streets.

We’ve seen protesting like we haven’t seen in more than 50 years. We’ve watched rioting and looting on our downtown streets. We’ve seen the death of yet another black man at the hands of police.

What we haven’t seen is leadership.

Where is Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer while all this is going on?

He showed up for a few minutes Monday morning to offer his condolences to Odessa Riley, the grieving mother of David McAtee, who died early Monday when police and National Guardsmen returned fire into a crowd at 26th and Broadway.

And then he left.

He’ll appear on a livestream soon from a secured bunker somewhere and then he’ll disappear.

He might even call a late-night press conference when those who most need to hear from him are not at a television or computer where they can watch.

They’ll be out dodging his police department's pepper balls and tear gas canisters — and God forbid, more bullets — then.

In the five days since this all began, Fischer has been in hiding. Emerging only to spout a few platitudes and finally — years after he should have — fire his police chief.

He’s been hunkered down and blaming the rioting and the protests on “outsiders” who have come to Louisville to raise hell and cause trouble.

To do that, however, misses the real issue.

We have a problem with race in this community.

As NAC told you a month ago, public housing neophyte David Duggins will be the interim director of NAHA -- and at Bob Lane's pay grade.

How y'all feeling, Democrats?

Your beloved leader just did another one of those things that you'd be condemning -- nay, resisting -- if it had originated with Donald Trump. But hey, it's like Jeff Gahan once said: "Nobody reads the paper."

Especially Gahan, though gazing lovingly upon his own photo is another shtick entirely.

Gahan's public housing putsch steamrolled forward on Monday evening as the mayor's handpicked NAHA board of bobbleheaded brown-nosing flatterers selected the completely inexperienced David Duggins to serve as interim public housing dismantler.

Not only that, the double-dipping economic dishevelment director Duggins was awarded the same salary and benefits as Bob Lane, recently decapitated at Gahan's command. If memory serves, Lane held the job for 15 years.

But you see, as with Trump's appointees, Duggins needn't know anything at all. He's there to tear down public housing, not build it back, with the job performance bar separated from the dusty ground by an expanse equal to a flea's nostril hair. Dugout can clear it with ease so long as the bulldozers don't run out of petrol.

This is YOUR team, Democrats. When is the protest march?

Previously:

The Green Mouse has learned that David Duggins will be the interim director of the New Albany Housing Authority.

Advocates for the vulnerable find Gahan's public housing putsch "distressing." Interim director Duggins responds by crushing a beer can on his forehead.

Fake facts and disgraceful behavior: Jeff Gahan faced opposition to his public housing putsch, so now he's seeking to discredit NAHA with propaganda.

Look, ma, Develop New Albany is in the God business again.

Jeeebus, will they ever learn? Someone teach these people what "filter" means.

But it has me wondering. The suggestion has been made that NAC should join DNA, which then would be compelled to use its social media to promote NAC's exposes on DNA.

That's just funny enough to consider, don't you think?

Fire Museum to inept newspaper: "We're not dead yet."

Truth-telling, New Albany style. The museum reacts to a News & 'Bune headline, "Vintage fire museum to close doors."

NAC made every effort to reach CNHI shareholders in Alabama retirement homes for a comment, but none of them care.

Unimaginative is, as unimaginative is, as unimaginative is ... you are now sworn into office ... unimaginat ...

This week we're being told that the Coyle property is back off the table as it pertains to a future city-county government center.

Next week, the might wheel of unimaginative non-communication will be given a mighty heave, the press will be breathlessly summoned, and mass yawning attacks will break out in all corners of the Open Air Museum.

Meanwhile, I have a vision of the following TV report flickering onto the tube, and higher-ranking local elected officials glaring at it numbly for as many as four seconds before savagely fingering the remote control to "does not compute": Project Green: Is "old" the new "green"?

Yeah, I know; NA-FC, where ideas go to die and be murdered, and all that (weary sigh of disgust).

Brutal day, great Celtic music and the usual -- you know, the usual Open Air Museum stuff.

At about a quarter 'til one on Sunday morning, I had a pint of Bitter in my hand, a stomach full of mussels, and was listening to a half-dozen musicians, some New Albanian locals and others from far-away Ballyfermot, all of them playing and singing together in the corner at Bank Street Brewhouse.

It's the little things that make it all worthwhile.

Saturday was a long, brutally hot and deathly humid day with far more in common with the equitorial rain forest than an ideal Southern Indiana day in June. Obviously, the Celts on the River show went on as planned in spite of the heat and a strictly personal level of annoyance with utterly non-communicative local powers that be which might have hit even higher on the Rog thermometer than the scorching surface temps; evidently, transparency ain't nuthin' but a four-syllable word that no one ever bothered to learn in school 'round here.

But please, let's accentuate the positive.

I crossed my fingers and NABC vended slightly more beer than last year while the great music was performed. Yes, the crowd seemed a bit down, which was understandable given the weather, but it was undoubtedly a successful event, and will be back in town next year. We may well have a tradition on our hands, but to preserve it, there needs to be a higher level of grassroots support on our side of the river. How we achieve that -- if it even is achievable -- I really don't know.

As for the usual local politician watch: Ed Clere and family were there. I saw Diane Benedetti and Pat McLaughlin (city councilpersons), and as always, searched in vain for Steve Price, Dan Coffey, Burger King and King Larry (who still believes he's a local politician). If I missed someone, please let me know. Gads -- a free concert, no tax monies extorted from them people, and still Professor Erika did not attend. Perhaps the inhaler tube got blocked with sticky tobacco bile.

By the way, in light of my experience yesterday, I have a question and follow-ups for the mayor at the coming mayoral forum on Wednesday, June 16:

Can we have fresh locally brewed craft beer down there at the waterfront for the approaching 3rd of July celebration, or is that one of the events arbitrarily selected to patriotically honor multinational swill?

What about the other events and how the city plans to treat 3-way supplemental catering permits?

Does anyone at City Hall know what 3-way supplemental catering permits are?

Is there a game plan for the decision-making process to award access to vending by the river, or is it a chaotic variation on the Oklahoma land rush?

Can you explain how the bidding system works?

Thank you.