Buzz driving: Council candidate learns from DUI

Schilling is skilled. He demands accountability and he garners it.

RS is a shameless self-promoter and carnival clown. No serious candidate for any public office should consider appearing on his "show".

Nancy, Nancy, Nancy! And everybody else..... People in the city are not elected based on their past criminal records, qualifications, age or sex. Campaign promises of having the ability and trying to solve the city's problems are meaningless rhetoric as well. They are elected only after the Demorats nominate the person as their candidate of choice in this city. If the local Democrats endorse the recently accused UVA stalker as their candidate, he will be on City Council. Period.

Curse those pesky Democrats and their open and transparent nomination process!

I thought James did a nice job on the show but didn't really reveal a substanitive plan on how he will make the City better if he is elected. I applaud Rob for having a democratic candidate on a show that is quite conservative

Bully for you, Steve. But what of your earlier sniveling barb about the local Democrats' nomination process?

Are you seriously asserting that the 1600(!) people who voted in the last Democratic primary for City Council were somehow engaged in some sort of disingenuous enterprise? That'd make for one darned-big smoke filled room!

Nope. You initially insinuated something shady about the process, and now you're trying to glibly back away from it.

Typical Steve Shifflet - talking out of both sides of his pie-hole until he gets called on it.

Stop deflecting. This is what you ACTUALLY said:

"Nancy, Nancy, Nancy! And everybody else..... People in the city are not elected based on their past criminal records, qualifications, age or sex. Campaign promises of having the ability and trying to solve the city's problems are meaningless rhetoric as well. They are elected only after the Demorats (sic) nominate the person as their candidate of choice in this city. If the local Democrats endorse the recently accused UVA stalker as their candidate, he will be on City Council. Period."

The inescapable implication of this statement is that you think the people who vote in the Democratic primary do not care about the qualifications of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination and will instead pick candidates based on some nefarious criteria. There is no other way to interpret your post!

Not only is that insulting to the 1,600 people who voted in the last City Council primary, it is downright preposterous! Only an imbecile who lacks a basic understanding of the process would espouse such nonsense.

That the Republicans and some Independents in this town have abdicated their role in the democratic process is not the fault of the Democratic Party. In fact, given the weakness of the city GOP, the Democrats should be commended for taking the steps that they have to open their own process as wide as it is – they certainly did not need to do so in order to maintain power. Yet no other local Party in the state (D or R) has such REMARKABLY broad participation in the nomination of candidates for local office. Your slimy innuendo completely mischaracterizes their efforts.

So NancyDrew is absolutely correct. The local media has an obligation to provide a complete picture of ALL candidates seeking public office in Charlottesville. In our current political climate, that obligation begins well before nominations are extended to candidates. The filing deadline for Democratic candidates is Friday, July 8th (many nomination seekers have already declared their intention to run). The actual primary (unassembled caucus) will not take place until August 20th. The media should make good use of this time period to delve into the qualifications of all office seekers – even if its efforts serve only to inform the votes of Democratic primary voters.

@Gasbag.... Could you for once stop whining about the Sheriff's office and about how everyone has done you wrong and stick to the subject?? All you ever do is complain about things, how there seems to be a conspiracy going on at all times....blah, blah, blah! Oh and in the end it always ends up about what has been done to you...you should take responsiblilty for you own actions and realize that maybe you are the problem!!

I swear Steve, with every character you type, you further cement your status as this town's biggest loon.

Need I remind you that after Julian Talliaferro and Mike Baird lost their respective nominations two years ago in the first firehouse primary, you crowed to anyone who would pay attention to you (on this very board!) that the "old guard/good ole boy network" was dead?! Now, you trot out ghosts of past injustices (real or imagined) as justification for this latest assertion that the "old guard" is not, in fact, dead - but apparently alive and well and pulling the strings on the next firehouse primary!

Which is it, Steve? Or are you simply unable to keep up with your own BS, given that you spew so much of it?

Forgetting about the Sheriff’s office for a moment (if you think you can handle that?) since this thread began as a discussion of the Council race, do you care to explain how the “Party Bosses” will manage to keep a grip on a Council nomination race that so far consists of upwards of eight candidates? Or how those illusory “bosses” will exert their control over sixteen hundred (if the last firehouse primary is any indicator of turnout) voters who will be casting their ballots in private? For that matter, on what nefarious criteria will you be basing your vote in the firehouse primary (as I read on another thread is your intention)?

I mean, you aware that you will be required to sign an oath declaring your status as a Democrat and your intention not to support any candidates running against the eventual Democratic nominees in the general election? So if you plan to vote in the firehouse primary, then what you asserted regarding Democrats not caring about the qualifications of the candidates and instead picking candidates based on some nefarious criteria should apply to you as well, no?

Good Lord, Steve! Is there any trace of a brainwave boucing around that thick skull of yours? This is a discussion about the City Council race - why do you insist on talking about the Sheriff?! You made a crack earlier in this thread about the Democrats unfairly manipulating the COUNCIL race. I called you on it, and now all you can talk about is Sheriff (which is not even up for grabs this year!)! Why can’t you be a man and either back up what you said earlier about the COUNCIL election, or admit that you were full of crap?

Please explain how ANY local Democrat (Good Old Boy or otherwise) is able to manipulate a system as transparent and as open as the current firehouse primary. Please explain - since you seem to know so much - without lobbing unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about shadowy networks who, according to you, can “oust” office-holders at will; or Democratic breakfasts (although the six or seven retirees who attend them will be glad to know that you hold them in such high regard); or events that took place ten or twenty or thirty years ago! Please! I want particulars!

While you may not have indicated on THIS thread your intention to vote in the firehouse primary, you DID indicate that intention on the Hook thread dealing with the Clerk of Court (Gunning for Garrett: Two challengers vie for 8-year, $112K job):

“I personally know and like two of the three candidates. It's gonna be a hard decision while attending the firehouse primary and casting a vote.”
- Gasbag Self Ordained Expert

Perhaps you intend to only vote for Clerk and abstain from voting for Council at the firehouse primary, therby absolving you of any moral dilemma? All I can say is that an oath is only as good as the word of the person signing it. At least you acknowledge that an oath with your name on it is not worth the paper it is printed on. But that is between you and your conscience.

I would also remind you that there were other candidates in the last general election. Paul Best, Bob Fenwick, Paul Long, and Andrew Williams might take exception to your assessment of their candidacies as nonexistant. Similarly, deciding ahead of time that an Independent or GOP candidate does not stand a chance, and then blaming the Democratic Party for your failure to show up and vote seems pretty stupid to me.

I'm sorry, but you seem to have a reading comprehension problem. And you are having a very hard time keeping up too it seems.

What part of the three words "that has changed" did you not understand in my reply of 5:20 p.m. 5/12/11 in this thread? I said I had no intention in voting in the firehouse primary this coming year, but "THAT HAS CHANGED". Then you say "ohh ohh ohh, but you said you were going to vote in another thread!" A free clue, I said it in the other thread and I said it here in this thread too.

At least I acknowledged that an oath with my name on it is not worth the paper it is printed on? Where did you read that?. I very clearly said.... " I still think I would have voted for him because he was the Democrat and I had sworn oath to do so." The reality of any of this is the fact that no oath signed by any person is worth the paper it's written on. If you violate the oath, the Democrats can't do a thing to you. If Sally Votemin violates the signed oath, the Democrats can do nothing to her. And it's compounded by the fact that the Democrats are not suppose to know who you, I or Sally Votemin casts our ballots for anyway.

As far as Paul Best, Bob Fenwick, Paul Long, and Andrew Williams, they never were any type of opposition in the elections. That's the point I have been making all along, the Democratic candidate ALWAYS wins. The general election is nothing but the formal act of putting them into whatever elected position they are running for. Or we can call it nothing more than a totally useless show that must go take place.

Who doesn’t have a hard time keeping up with your convoluted logic? But for the record, yes, your phrasing was a little confusing in the sense that you had indicated that you would be voting for Clerk but then immediately expressed indifference to the Council races. So I was trying to establish your ACTUAL intent. I think anyone could be forgiven failing to fully comprehend the meaning of your gibberish.

By the way, you still haven’t explained (and apparently don’t intend to) how or why you would participate in a process that you have already derided as being dishonest:
“the Democrats do not care about the qualifications of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination and will instead pick candidates based on some nefarious criteria.”

If the firehouse primary is so flawed (you still haven’t explained how), why would you lower yourself into the mud by participating? (Don’t worry. I know you won’t answer that. Because in order to answer, you would have to acknowledge that your second post at the top of this thread was incorrect. And you are pathologically incapable of admitting that you are wrong.)

Clearly, in your mind, an oath is binding only as long as some external authority compels you to honor that oath:
“It's not like they could put me in jail though if I had broken party lines and voted Donald Trump for sheriff.”
True. You wouldn’t go to jail for cheating on your wife either, so do you take your wedding vows so lightly too? I hope your wife does not read this.

Where I come from, you don’t need to be forced to keep your word.

"As far as Paul Best, Bob Fenwick, Paul Long, and Andrew Williams, they never were any type of opposition in the elections. That's the point I have been making all along, the Democratic candidate ALWAYS wins. The general election is nothing but the formal act of putting them into whatever elected position they are running for. Or we can call it nothing more than a totally useless show that must go take place." - Gasbag

Rob Schilling notwithstanding, how about we address your FIRST point (and the one that you steadfastly refuse to acknowledge!) - namely, that the Democrats are somehow engaged in deceitful conduct.

PLEASE show us the conspiracy you alude to when you say:
“the Democrats do not care about the qualifications of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination and will instead pick candidates based on some nefarious criteria.”
You can’t just throw that out there and then refuse to back it up. (Well, YOU can. But it makes you look like a fool.)

Do the City Democrats nominate candidates for public office? Of course. And in a highly transparent and painstakingly scrupulous fashion, I might add. But so could other groups of like-minded citizens if they so desired. If you are not happy with the status quo, find others who agree with you, organize, nominate candidates and DO something about it other than whining! That is what political parties DO. You might as well criticize the sky for being blue or the ocean for being wet.

Your take on this matter actually reminds me of some advice offered by Homer Simpson to Bart and Lisa after they’d come up short of some objective:
“Kids, you tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”

Of course, Homer Simpson is an idiot.

I agree. I forgive you. It is probably my fault. I should draw pictures. :)

OK, so how is the firehouse primary flawed and/or dishonest? As in all elections, the local primary splits the party right down the middle very often. 800 democrats will cast their ballot for Mary, and 812 will cast their ballot for Sue. Since Sue won the nomination with 812 votes, the other 800 have to vote for Sue also in the general election as well after signing the oath at the primary. This means 800 people are being asked to to cast their vote in the general election for a person they didn't want in the first place, a person they didn't vote for in the primary.

Sure, you will say the other 800 democrats can sit it out and not vote in the general election at all if they don't want to. But this is not what democrats do. This 800 will not sink the Democratic ship by letting the Republican candidate win with 900 republican votes while Mary only gets her 812 democratic votes. Don't waste your time giving a political history lesson now, I know this is the way it works. But I also feel it's flawed and dishonest.

I am one of the 800 who will not let the Democratic ship sink, I am one of the 800 who will vote in the general election so they Republicans can't prevail. You get it yet? You probably are too?

Where I come from, you don’t need to be forced to keep your word as well. But, like I said, if Donald Trump showed up as a candidate I have to wonder what I might have done. :)

I am going to explain why I feel the Democrats do not care about the qualifications of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination one more time. And that's it..... pay attention because I will not repeat it again. Dave Duncan was much more qualified than the candidate the Democrats ran against him in a primary a few years back. Russell Marshall was much more qualified than the candidate the Democrats ran against him in the general election. And as much as it pains me to say this, Mike Baird was much more qualified than the candidate the Democrats ran against him in the recent primary. All three had worked in the office for years and knew the office. The candidates the Democrats actually put in office had not worked in a city sheriff's office a day in their entire lives. Not one day. To go one step further, in the early 80s I had to take a newly elected sheriff out into the field and teach him how to execute some of the legal papers we serve. He had no clue what the office did at the time he was elected. Just one example, I feel quite comfortable in saying that not one sheriff the Democrats have put in office since the early 80s even knew what an "unlawful detainer" was when they were sworn in as sheriff. Yeah, I know, you will come back with something to the tune of the sheriff is an administrator, not a worker bee. Well, you certainly will get no argument from me there. The point being, the Democrats putting people into an office where the candidate of their choice doesn't even know what the office actually does. How would the sheriff know if the staff is doing their jobs correctly or not?

I agree Homer Simpson was an idiot for telling Bart to never try. We finally agree 100% on something. And by God, it has to be a cartoon of all things? What is this discussion turning into? And what is it with 25 to 65 year old people sitting around and watching The Simpsons in the first place? Would this be considered a small portion of The Dumbing of America?

And for the record, I don't care what people do on bicycles. What bothers me is the fact I might be blamed if and when I run over one of them with a 8,000 pound vehicle. I am quite surprised the city didn't stick it to their employee who recently ran over and killed a young man. I have to wonder if it would have gone down the same way had it been a civilian rather than a city employee.

@JennSilv , currently David Brown and his colleagues are also meeting behind closed doors to figure out a way of allowing RWSA to build a new dam on city property at Ragged Mountain without requiring that RWSA purchase the assets up front.
@Nancy Drew, the questions you asked at the beginning should have been asked of Maurice Cox back in 1996 - how long had he been here and what had he done for the community in the past?

Gassy,

I’m running out of steam here, so this will have to be my last two cents…

Let me get this straight. Your objection to the firehouse primary is that the voters who participate in it are expected to support the eventual nominee? SERIOUSLY!!?? Your beef is that Democratic voters tend to vote for Democratic candidates!!?? I am sorry, but that just might be the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I literally had to stop laughing before I could finish reading your post. So do you disapprove of all political primaries (and not just the City Dems’)? I mean, generally speaking, folks who vote in a party’s primary DO tend to vote for that party’s candidate. If someone’s not comfortable with that, nobody’s putting a gun to their head to vote in the primary. And despite what you think you “know” about how it works, I can vouch for the fact that THIS stalwart Democrat has, on occasion, abstained from voting for certain Democratic nominees in past general elections (I did not vote for any of their opponents, but I did not necessarily feel obliged to vote for them either.)

I wonder if you at least give the City Democratic Committee credit for adopting the firehouse primary over the EXTREMELY successful but far less inclusive nominating convention? After all, they had a pretty good track record of electing Democrats using an all-day convention, so they did not really NEED to open up the process. Of course, the drawback was that far fewer people were able to participate in the all-day convention, and the party was constantly fending off the charge (from people like you) that Democratic nominations were being given out behind closed doors by a small group of people (granted, those conventions generally drew 600-800 people, so the word “small” was somewhat misplaced). I wonder how many people were in the room when Rob Schilling was given the nomination to be the GOP candidate for City Council in 2002? Not many, I’ll bet. Have you been as critical of that procedure?

Your explanation for why you think “the Democrats” do not care about the qualifications of their candidates (besides sounding more like a guy who is bitter that his past choices lost their nominations) also ignores a couple of things:
#1 - I’ll say it ONE MORE TIME (You are the one who needs to pay attention) – we’re talking about RECENT history here. Not what happened 20-30 years ago.
#2 – You keep referring to “the Democrats” as though they are some sort of monolithic, single-minded entity, or a secret confederacy of cigar-chomping robber barons. This makes you sound as foolish as Glenn Beck. Take it from me, Charlottesville’s Democrats are an EXTREMELY diverse bunch. Even if an “inner circle” existed (it does not), it would be hard pressed to coerce the mass of Democrats into doing its bidding. Think herding cats. In the case of the firehouse primary, herding sixteen hundred cats.
#3 – In nominating candidates for public office, Charlottesville’s Democratic Party is not doing anything that any other party in the city cannot do.

As an aside, I simply do not know what to make of your fascination with Donald Trump. Personally, I think the guy is a douche and would vote for almost anyone else. But hey, I gave up trying to figure you out long ago.

Finally, I came up with a pretty funny choke on the heels of this debate:
Q. What is the difference between Homer Simpson and Gasbag?
A. One is a cartoonish simpleton, and the other is a character from a television show. (Rimshot!)

OK, we will end this discussion with your having the last word, your last two cents. The discussion is getting extremely boring now. And it has sunk to a grade school level with namecalling having being introduced.

Maybe some day we can discuss how the Presidential elections are held, that's an even bigger joke in this country! If we voted for gun control like we vote for our president, the only people who would have guns are the criminals.

(And on a serious note, please tell me you don't sit around watching The Simpsons? Especially after questioning my fascination with Donald Trump. Let's see.... Homer or Donald, Homer or Donald...... yeah, I will take Trump over a cartoon!)

ps - Trump announced today that he will not be running for Prez.

Wondered why he would want a $400,000/year job anyway.

Old Timer, as I said above, a few of them are well known Republicans. They only become a Democrat when they try to seek office in the Democratic City of Charlottesville.