Surprising news hit us yesterday about the famous (or depending on your view of car dealership ads that scream at you, infamous) Ognibene Ford dealership in Batavia.  It seems a dispute between Ford and Ognibene has led to the whole joint getting shut down and equipment being sold off to make up monies owed to Ford.

This is a bad thing for Ognibene and a worse thing for his customers.  It’s not too good for Batavia’s economy, either.  It’s all very sad, actually.  My initial hunch was that this was a case of a business getting away from it’s owner.  That kind of thing happens all the time, especially in the world of sales, where giving out the best deal can sometimes lead salesmen to undercut their bottom line.  It might still be true, however, as things go on and reports continue to flow out, Ognibene’s actions and statements begin to take on more shades of narcissism.  The kind of narcissism that sometimes leads you blindly down the wrong path:

Court shuts down Mike Ognibene Ford || Democrat & Chronicle: Business

Ognibene, a resident of Elba, Genesee County, whose face is well known throughout western New York because of his television ads, said Ford Credit has made false accusations and used manipulative business practices against him. He said he is preparing a counteraction “unless (his) attorney is directing differently.”

Ognibene accused Ford of trying to ruin his name and reputation and trying to block the sale of the dealership.

“There’s too much to tell,” he said.

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Well, OK. So this is of little local interest, but it’s still interesting:

Ted Stevens, every thinking Progressive’s favourite Republican, has been embroiled in a scandal involving the CEO of a company called “Veco,” who has pleaded guilty to corruption charges and bribing state lawmakers (uh-oh) and is now cooperating with investigators.  On Monday, FBI agents raided his home and started taking crap out.  This looks kinda bad.

adn.com | Alaska political corruption : Federal agents raid Sen. Ted Stevens’ Girdwood home

“All I can say is that agents from the FBI and IRS are currently conducting a search at that residence,” Dave Heller, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Anchorage office, said Monday.

In discussing campaign finance reform and CMCE a while back, I noted that Senator Stephens’ campaign out-raised his competitor by a margin of 3000 to one. Well, I guess we all know where some of that money came from, now don’t we?  And I guess the Alaska Senate race (one of them) just got a whole lot more competitive.

Technorati Tags: Ted Stephens, Corruption, Scandal

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The Jon Powers blog caught on to an amazing bit of verbal trickery by the Administration’s spin masters.  The idea is to do the same crap we’ve been doing in Iraq, but just throw in the word “leaving” to muddy the waters and confuse the president’s position on a troop withdrawal.

Can you imagine?  Two centuries have been spent by fifty-plus presidents trying to make the policies of the White House more clear to the American people, and now we have a president whose spin masters are doing everything in their power to obfuscate the president’s message:

Jon Powers for Congress » Blog Archive » A Duty to our Soldiers

Howie Klein has a great post on downwithtyranny.com about a new plan by the Bush administration to use the word “leaving” while continuing the same failed policies that have created the mess we’re in today.

It is an unconscionable act of deception when the handlers of this most inept of presidents intentionally throws words into the speech that mislead the public.  It is also a tacit admission of failure.  The president cannot continue on his present course and be at all honest, assuming that was ever his modus operandi, which is an allowance that verges on over-generous.

My guess, however, is that Bush will reject the idea, but we shall see.  He has been so completely bull-headed and incautious in his handling of the war, both its execution and its political handling with the American people, I have a hard time believing he will turn back now.  I think most of us of political persuasion will forever remember the blithe Pollyanna assertions of Bush’s pre-midterm interview with George Stephanopoulos as the moment when we knew our president was genuinely nuts.

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As we all delve deeper and deeper into Alberto “Gonzo” Gonzales’ personal bout of Alzheimer’s or dereliction of duty or whatever it was, the Washington Post proves that no fact is too clear to be confused, if you want to:

Mining of Data Prompted Fight Over U.S. Spying - New York Times

WASHINGTON, July 28 — A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues.

“Privacy issues” are a legal issues, aren’t they? If the Justice Department is conducting surveillance which is unconstitutional - or if at least the lawyers at the Justice Department thought they were unconstitutional - that would be enough to quit over. Granted, we don’t know precisely what caused them to quit, but it’s really not that much in doubt, either.
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UPDATE: Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the airing of the piece, as it turned out to be aired at 5pm instead of 6pm. I guess that makes me the “Not Quite Ready for Prime Time Blogger.” They don’t have the video posted, at least not yet, but they do have the print article for your edification:

Many Constituents Disappointed with County Dems - 13WHAM.com

Local bloggers on the political left wonder about Democrats’ decision not to run against the Brooks’ political machine.

Kyle Clark of WHAM13 got in touch with me, looking for reaction to the Democrat’s failure to post a candidate for Monroe County Executive. I went out at lunch time and did a quick ten minute interview with him which I presume will be appearing on the 6 o’clock news tonight. Be sure to watch me look like an idiot!

Actually, I don’t think I did all that bad. He’d asked what I thought of the failure to produce a Democratic challenger. I responded that I don’t think it’s good for local democracy not to have an opponent from the Democratic Party, that I’m disappointed not to see a Democratic voice for change in the race, and that as a practical matter, I think it’s an electoral mistake to leave Maggie’s money out there to challenge the Legislative races the Dems are so confident in taking.

I also mentioned that the Dems should probably at least endorse Andrew Stainton and let him run on the Democratic slate. BTW, RochesterTurning.com has a great interview with Stainton posted today.

Speaking of RT, Kyle asked about the local blogging community. I told him that I certainly cannot do what I do without all the other contributors to the community, and I’m sure others feel the same way. He asked about other blogs, both Progressive and Conservative. I mentioned RT, WPB, Fighting 29th and Mustard Street as good resources. Here’s hoping that didn’t end up on the cutting room floor. Sorry to anyone who didn’t get a mention, but I didn’t expect the question.

Well, we shall see how it all comes out around 6:30pm at the latest. . . .

Everyone sit up and take notice: Ecovation is 58th on Rochester’s Top 100 businesses, and they’re doing it by providing solutions to our climate crisis.  It has never seemed very logical to me that Conservatives of business mind cannot see the value in recycling every single thing they produce in the pursuit of their products.  Well, if the tremendous growth-rate of this company is any indication, the business community is starting to get the net and get green.

But not only does Ecovation provide companies with recycling food wastes into energy, but they’re actually seeking a patent on a unique process to create Ethanol and bring energy independence to communities which otherwise live too far from the agricultural heartlands where the majority of it is produced:

Ecovation strives to save energy || Democrat & Chronicle: Business

Is there anything interesting about your company that’s worth noting?

Ecovation has a patent-pending process for managing the waste byproducts from the production of ethanol. Our process would eliminate the barriers to siting new ethanol facilities in locations that are not proximate to farmers who use the processed wastes as animal feed.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Energy Independence, Rochester, Economy

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Well, with the rain, I didn’t make it out to the Boulder Fest last night like I wanted, so I missed freakin’ One World Tribe. Sucks.

But I did manage to make it out there this afternoon. Kalu James was there, the prodigal son currently living in Austin, stopped in to check out Rochester’s new festival. Dan Ball coerced him to play a tune at the end of Dan’s set on the small stage they have setup for acoustic acts.

Boulder has really changed just since the last time I was there (January, I think). They’ve expanded both the building itself and also the parking lot, it seems. They’ve got vendors setup all along the L-shaped parking lot and a big stage setup at the small end. The smaller stage was on the patio that faces Clinton, which was formerly owned by the photography studio that used to be there.

I’m probably going back later on in the evening. Meanwhile, none of my pictures would ordinarily leave this house without a bit of post-production, but just to convince you I was there, I’ve dropped on in Flickr for your viewing pleasure:

Dan Ball on the Boulder Festival Acoustic Stage. CC Licensed



This work and all DragonFlyEye.Net photography is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

RochesterTurning.com is, as ever, buzzing with frustration and irritation over the Nachbar candidacy and the outlook for a beleaguered Democratic Party in the 29th congressional district after a costly primary.  I share the frustration, since it seems to be a choice between a guy who has all the money in the world with which to lose an election and a guy with plenty of support from anybody but the playa-playa’s in the party.

Now there seems to be some confusion about the DCCC’s stance on the race, if not outright obfuscation on their part.  We’re hearing that they’ve endorsed Nachbar; that they’ve “encouraged” both candidates; that they’re playing neutral (as if such a thing was possible); that this or that politician aught to step up. . .  all these questions appear to be just positively pissing stlo7 right off:

The DCCC encouraged Nachbar to run — WITH VIDEO || rochesterturning.com: turning the tide upstate

I have a question: What do you do when the DCCC reaches out — from inside the beltway, — to decide for you who the candidate for your Congressional seat will be, or worse, to pilfer precious resources into a losing battle?

I know primaries are a necessary cost of Democracy. How else does Joe Lieberman toss himself out of the Democratic Party? How else does Rochester Mayor Duffy (or ex Mayor Bob Johnson) unify fractured local Democratic party?

But why are these people trying to force a primary in the NY29th?

There’s more developments to be found here. What genuinely disappoints me is that, while we in the blogging community all spit and holler about the apparent offenses on all sides, while we all ask questions and make demands, there seems to be a genuine lack of anything approaching statesmanship in our party both here and nationally.   » Continue Reading…

The noose tightens more and more for poor old Alberto Gonzales, the sad little misunderstood jack-boot.  As he comes before the Senate again and again, his stories get harder and harder to resolve with out a heavy dose of Peruvian god juice. In truth, the Senate is at this point simply beating the man up for the sake of doing it.  We know he’s a lying little weasle, the only reason not to have called for formal charges by now might well be to damage him politically and make him indefensible by the president.  A special prosecutor is being called for, and yesterday’s events may well make it happen.

The latest gaff concerns the highly-dubious visit to the sick bed of John Ashcroft while he recovered from surgery.  Gonzales has decided to hang his hat on the fact that no, they weren’t talking about T.S.P., but rather some other, as-yet unnamed surveillance program.  I guess I must have missed something here, because I don’t get why he would need to volunteer that information, accurately or otherwise?
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If you’re like me, you probably heard about the Cheesecake Factory opening and thought, “Hey! Another strip bar in Rochester, how nice!” After all, with more and more people attending college these days and tuition skyrocketing up and up, we need more places in which to meet the heaving bosoms of all those hard-working grad school strippers we’ve all heard so much about. And a place called The Cheesecake Factory seems like a really nice, clean, friendly place in which to view the exposed mammary glands and scantily-clad gluteal clefts so much a part of our American heritage in all their buxom glory.

Well, allow me to disabuse you of that errant notion. The Cheesecake Factory is in fact a large chain restaurant. The women that work there are comely, no doubt, but they are waitresses and hostesses. So, a heads up, fellas: careful where you put your singles! » Continue Reading…