Author: Gatemouth

To be sung at fromer Assemblywoman Diane Gordon's Welcome Home Party

There is a house in southern Queens
They call the Rising Sum
And it's been the ruin of many a poor girl
And God I know I'm one

Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
Over the House of the Rising Sum

Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other is in chains 
I'm goin' far from  southern Queens 
To wear that ball and chain

Well, there is a house in southern Queens
They call the Rising Sum
And it's been the ruin of many a poor girl
And God I know I'm one

In a fast developing story, an honest writer is often forced to eat crow and re-evaluate his initial conclusions.

Months ago, I noted that Vito Lopez was personally responsible for building and obtaining funding for a multi-tentacled social service empire (mostly run under the auspices of the Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Citizens Council) which seems to have an interlocking relationship with his well oiled political local political operation in Bushwick/Williamsburg and its vicinity. My conclusion had always been that most of the reason that the social service agencies inure to Lopez’s benefit is that they actually and competently delivered social services to the communities they serve.

At the very least, some of the reports in the press now cast doubts about the empire’s competence.

First of all if Linc Restler is a "hipster," he's from the nerdcore division of the breed (and take it from me, it takes one to know one).

But there's a far more important question here than who gets to be the male member (perhaps not the best choice of words) of the Democratic State Committee from AD 50.

The important question is, "who takes over running Steve Cohn's annual Friday before the election political breakfast at Junior's?"

To Hell With Reform; We Must Save Stevie Cohn's Breakfast. This tradition MUST BE KEPT ALIVE!!!

It is the salaries that shock the most.

Six Hundred Grand and change for an Executive Director?

The one thing people who know Vito Lopez acknowledge first is that he is parsimonious. He runs the party’s operations on less money in a year than his predecessor had spent on one of his gold bracelets. One of Clarence Norman’s socks probably costs more than vito’s entire wardrobe.

WARREN COHN: WHO DAT gonna stop the goldrush tonight!!! As far as my race…My opponent is currently up 85 votes and the race is still too close to call with 300+ paper ballots left to count. If you hear otherwise it is false info, straight from the source – W

Much to my embarrassment, my prior post on this matter, predicting victory in the 50^th AD male leader’s race for Warren Cohn, was based on the information that the canvas of voting machines (usually mislabeled as a “re-canvass”) had already been done.

This was not the case.

The Rules changes being proposed by New Kings Democrats at Brooklyn’s Democratic County Committee Meeting fall under the category of well intentioned, but lame.

A slyer leader would finesse the whole thing by including all this stuff in his changes and avoiding the confrontation the “reformers” are just aching to have. What real difference would these rules changes make anyway?

Why not propose instead getting rid of Vito's the five personally handpicked At-Large members of the Executive Committee? Why not propose that members of the Executive Committee who openly endorse nominees of another party against a Democrat forfeit their positions by operation of the rules (though that might lose one the Barron families votes)?

Now, those would be real reforms.

MISSISSIPPI GOVERNOR HALEY BARBOUR (in a recent edition of “Human Events”): [T]he people who led the change of parties in the South … was my generation. My generation who went to integrated schools.