The Scent of Irony

This week, Maryland's First Lady Katie O'Malley is making a big push to stop bullying in our public schools.

So then, I wonder why her husband Martin O'Malley refuses to condemn the intimidation and bullying by union thugs of an innocent 14-year old boy trapped in his home?

So does that mean that Martin O'Malley supports all kinds of bullying, or just the bullying of his political opponents?

Slick Spots

Martin O'Malley's endorsement of union violence isn't the only bad decision that's coming back to bite him. After all, his pronouncements about oil washing up on Maryland's shores sure looks stupid considering it was O'Malley who took over 20 percent of the state's Oil Disaster Cleanup Fund to cover his excessive spending in other areas.

Of course, we have documented Martin O'Malley's irresponsible budgeting for some time now. Maybe O'Malley doesn't understand that you have contingency funds such as the Oil Disaster Cleanup Fund in case of a contingency such as the need to fund an Oil Disaster Cleanup, not to line the pockets of the union thugs and special interests who support his candidacy.

With Martin O'Malley in Annapolis, you get a Governor who never has your best interests at heart. It's past time to put the adults back in charge in Annapolis. Just another reason Red Maryland backs Bob.

Purple Shirted Punks

By now, you might have heard of the absolutely abhorrent scene in Montgomery County where 500 SEIU protesters showed up on the lawn of a Bank of American lawyer and scared the hell out of the lawyer's 14-year old son, who was home alone at the time......well, that is if you get your news from places that aren't the Baltimore Sun or Washington Post, who seem to have punted on the story.



Nobody was charged with trespassing. Nobody was charged with inciting a riot. Nobody was charged with anything. Never mind the fact that every one of these protesters was on the lawyer's property illegal. This apparently is perfectly acceptable behavior in Montgomery County.

Of course, this isn't acceptable behavior anywhere in a free country, whether or not you're doing it in support of the right or of the left. As Erick Erickson said:

When it becomes fair game to attack and intimidate private citizens and their families to advance a public policy, we cross over from an orderly civil democracy to something decidedly third world.

And that's what this is. Third-world thuggery from purple-shirted SEIU punks. It's an embarrasment to the country that these people are taken seriously.....

.....oh, you think that the SEIU isn't taken seriously? Because all you have to do is take a look at the White House employee roster or guest list to see that the SEIU is a big player in Barack Obama's White House.

But I'm not even going to focus on that. Because the SEIU is more importantly a major in the Maryland Democratic Party as we have referenced before. A huge source of funding for the Democratic establishment. What Senator Mac Middleton referred to as "the hand that feeds you."The people who bus rioters to Queen Anne's County to protest Obamacare. An intergral part of the Thugocracy.

Of course what that means is that the Purple Menace is an integral part to the victory strategy of Martin O'Malley and Susan Turnbull's Democratic Party. And there has been not a peep from either of the two regarding this embarrassing and crass display that occured right in their backyard.

In this case silence is acquiescence and acceptance of the SEIU's antics and behavior. Therefore, I am demanding that Governor Martin O'Malley and Maryland Democratic Party Chairman Susan Turnbull condemn and repudiate the intimidation and violation of civil rights the SEIU brought forth upon this lawyer's family. Anything short of all full condemnation and a full repudiation will tell me anyway that Martin O'Malley and Maryland Democrats are in support of thuggish violence against their opposition.

It's time for honest Democrats to take a stand against this third-world way of participating in the process. But sadly, I do not for one second believe that Martin O'Malley or the Maryland Democratic Party has the guts to take such a principled stand.

Call Martin O'Malley and Susan Turnbull and let them know that Maryland will not stand for extremism:

Governor Martin O'Malley
Email: governor@gov.state.md.us
Phone: 410-974-3901; 1-800-811-8336

Matthew Gallagher, Governor's Chief of Staff
Email: mgallagher@gov.state.md.us
Phone: 410-974-5258

Democratic Party Chair Susan Turnbull
Email: sturnbull@mddems.org
Phone: 410-269-8818; 301-858-8818

Democratic Party Executive Director Travis Tazelaar
Email: ttazelaar@mddems.org
Phone: 410-269-8818

Ground Control to Susan Turnbull.....do you copy?

Susan Turnbull has completely lost touch with reality.

As you might have heard, the Office of Attorney General Doug Gansler has cleared WBAL radio and Governor Bob Ehrlich from any alleged wrongdoing in the continuation of Governor Ehrlich's Radio Show on WBAL. You can read the opinion here.

Susan Turnbull, the blithering chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party issued a response to this which is somewhat otherworldly:

Today’s opinion is not surprising given that Bob Ehrlich is using a loophole in the law to keep his talk show on WBAL-radio. Common sense and Bob Ehrlich’s own actions clearly show that he is a candidate for governor. By exploiting a technicality in the law to absurdly claim he is not a candidate, he has managed to lawyer his way out of playing by the rules. Bob Ehrlich is violating the spirit of this law, just like he continues to use his Womble Carlye lobbying firm as his campaign headquarters. Bob Ehrlich is violating the spirit of the law, and he knows it. But like most lobbyists, Bob Ehrlich is willing to use whatever loophole he can to get what he wants for himself and his clients.

Mind you, an I think I need to emphasize this for the Democrats that seem to be a little not so swift on the uptake, a Democratic Attorney General agreed that Bob Ehrlich and WBAL committed no wrongdoing, and your droning on about it makes you look stupid.

And of course, if you read the opinion, you will note that the opinion relies heavily on the protections of the First Amendment. So it would appear to a cynic, at least, that Susan Turnbull and the Maryland Democratic Party are opposed to your First Amendment rights.

Of course, Turnbull and the Democrats look equally stupid when they go blabbing onand on about lobbyists when lobbyists who actually committed crimes are revered as the highest, holiest saints of the Democratic Party.

Susan Turnbull has lost all sense of political reality and political sense, if she had any at all. Turnbull's continuous blabbering about grievances real or imagined while hoping people don't look behind the Democratic curtain, and goes to show how much of a tailspin Maryland's Democratic Party is heading into Martin O'Malley's impending defeat this November.

Democrats hate lobbyists...

...unless they ARE the lobbyists.

Screwball Antics Continue to Mar AA Nominating Commission

The Anne Arundel School Board Nominating Commission process continues to provide us with new and wondrous screwball antics that continue to show why the process should never have been created in the first place:

Three years after the state legislature revamped the way members are placed on the county Board of Education, confusion over the details continues to muck up the process.

In another case in point this week, the commission that nominates candidates to the governor for appointment relied on a new opinion from the state Attorney General's Office to conclude that board President Ned Carey was seeking another term.

Meanwhile, Carey was reading the law differently.

"My understanding was, the way the law read, by not submitting an application, I would not be considered," he said Thursday. "It wasn't my intention to run."

Just a day earlier, Joshua Greene, chairman of the School Board Nominating Commission, had said Carey was definitely still in the running even though he had not submitted an application, because under a ruling by the attorney general, incumbents don't have to be vetted. Their names go straight to the governor for consideration.

"He'll have his name forwarded, and that's it," Greene said.

Read the whole thing.....and incidentally I find it extremely curious that nobody asked these questions when two Republicans were up for reappointment to the School Board, and thus allowed them to go through the public confirmation process.

This kind of slapstick comedy shows exactly why a Nominating Commission process continues to lack legitimacy (in addition, of course, to the other well documented reasons why such a process is a travesty foisted upon county residents). The fact of the matter is that the General Assembly in creation of Nominating Commission process punted on a lot of the nitty gritty details of the process. That might not be a bad thing, except for the minor detail that the Nominating Commission is made up of political hacks who don't seem to be bothered to actually give a damn.

This process involving Ned Carey is a joke, and continues to undermine whatever credibility the Nominating Commission might have had by providing adequate incumbency protection by allowing sitting members to circumvent the process. And once again, it is necessary to point out that legitimate elections would eliminate all of the cloak and dagger stuff, opinions from the office of the Attorney General, and the lack of credibility in the process, and replace it with a process that would adequately provide representation for the students, parents, teachers and taxpayers of Anne Arundel County...

Hartley ignores Legum's shady side

Eric Hartley had a write-up in today's Capital about District 30, including a few brief words about left wing darling Judd Legum. The way that Hartley presented Legum left out, shall we say, a few key details:

Judd Legum, a 31-year-old Democratic candidate for delegate, walks a narrow line as he makes his first run for office. Unlike the Republicans, he's not running against the Democratic power structure. Legum is hoping to knock off Del. Ron George, the Republican incumbent, and see his fellow Democrats re-elected.

At the same time, Legum doesn't want to be too closely associated with the old-line Democrats in the district, at least publicly.

"I think we could benefit from new energy and fresh thinking in the state legislature," said Legum, an attorney who lives in downtown Annapolis. "I come from a different generation, have a different perspective on things."

There are, as usual in things associated with Legum, a certain level of untruthiness to the things that he said, as we have documented at Red Maryland. One of the two most glaring of those things, of course is that Legum has "fresh thinking" that is going to shake up the state legislature, when Legum's far-left ideology is the same old tried and true, tax and tax and tax, do as I say not as I do, statist politics that have brought Maryland to the bring of financial collapse.

The other, of course, is that fact that Legum isn't fighting the establishment; he IS the establishment, considering that he has worked for ethically challenged establishment Democrats, that he is bought and paid for by Washington lobbyists and Clinton staffers, out of state Democratic interests, and of course might be receiving donations of questionable legality. It's hard for Legum to fight the problems within the Democratic Party when he is part of the problem with the Democratic Party.

But the somehow, Hartley completely ignores Legum's being the brains behind the deceitful and thuggish Center for American Progress, who just found themselves caught in another lie this week about the net neutrality legislation.

Not my problem with Hartley's story is not the fact that Hartley mentioned Legum in his story. It's the fact that the mainstream media, most glaringly the Capital, has completely ignored this race and the skeletons in Judd Legum's closet. The truth is out there; why won't the Capital report it other than to protect just another establishment, out of touch Democrat running for office?

Of course, that's why blogs like this one exist....not only do we provide a voice for Maryland's middle and working class families, but we also work hard to keep frauds like Judd Legum from being elected to office.

Salisbury is the Place to Be this June

What are you doing June 18th, 19th and 20th?

• Do you want the opportunity to meet and network with Republicans from up and down the East Coast and across the country?
  
• Do you want to have the opportunity to meet Governor Bob Ehrlich, State Senator Andy Harris, State Republican Party Chair Audrey Scott, and other leading Republicans?
  
• Do you want to learn more about campaign strategy, new media, and other facets of running a successful campaign?
• And, most importantly....do you want to have some fun with fellow conservatives?
  

Join us June 18-20 in Salisbury for the 2010 Maryland Young Republican Convention and Leadership Conference, sponsored by the Maryland Young Republicans. It is going to be a great opportunity for Republicans from across Maryland and across the region to get together, discuss the future of our state and our party, and create the lasting relationships that are necessary so that we can work together to win back our state from the Democratic establishment.

If you have any questions about the event, just ask me.

Ignore the Hype: This is a Dead Heat

I think we all know what the headline from this morning's Washington Post story said about the Governor's race: O'Malley has 8-point lead over Ehrlich among registered voters.

And it is in the headline that shows exactly why the headline is misleading, and why this race is already too close to call.

The key point of the headline and of the poll results as they are reported by John Wagner, Aaron Davis and Jon Cohen is that Martin O'Malley is far ahead of Bob Ehrlich when you restrict the data to registered voters; in that case, O'Malley has 49-41 lead. The problem with that part of the poll, however, is that while it deals with a statistically significant number of voters for the scope of a statewide race, the results are just that; registered voters.

That 49-41 number is not indicative of the people who are actually going to go vote in the polls on Election Day. As the Post story notes (but in the second paragraph, naturally) is that among those individuals who are certain to vote on election day, Bob Ehrlich and Martin O'Malley are tied 47-47.

Of course, a poll of registered voters and a poll of certain voters are both reasonably meaningless; the real action in polling is in the realm of likely voters, because those are the margins that make the difference in an election as close as this one. And for reasons that I cannot begin to fathom, the Post neglected to poll on the one number that would actually make for a relevant story.

Nobody should make too much out of this, but given the data that is available it is safe to say that this race is undoubtedly in the margin of error. Forget the headline, forget the hype, and forget the people trying to make too much out of the results of this poll; the race can't get any tighter than this, and O'Malley and Company are already feeling the heat as evidence by O'Malley's babyish rants on WTOP this morning.....

Of Course He Does

I'm not going to wax too poetic about the fact that Anne Arundel School Superintendent Kevin Maxwell wants more money in his budget and that he is predicting doom and gloom if County Executive John Leopold's budget isn't adjusted to provide more funding for education. Given his record of telling the county to drop dead, Kevin Maxwell demanding more money in his budget (and of course, calling for higher taxes to go with them) is about as shocking as the sky being blue these days. It remains, of course, a sad indictment of modern education that in the minds of these mindless bureaucrats that money equals success, but that is not the point that I want to make (again).

The point I (again) want to make is the fact that the Anne Arundel County Board of Education that allows Maxwell to act like this is made up completely of unelected bureaucrats, only one of which (the Red Maryland-endorsed Vic Bernson) has any fiscal sense among them. Every single one of them is a Democratic appointed, Democratic endorsed flunky who seeks more and more spending to keep the unions happy and higher and higher taxes to pay for it. And not one of them is truly representative of the parents, teachers, and taxpayers of Anne Arundel County because nobody elected these people.

Until we the people here in Anne Arundel County can elect the members of our Board of Education, there is nobody who can hold Kevin Maxwell responsible for his irresponsible spending and his refusal to spend within the means of the County budget. We are well past the need for true reform of how we select our county's school board members...

Help Out

This is something entirely almost not politically related, but I'm co-captain of the Anne Arundel Young Republicans team in the Relay for Life being held in Arnold next Friday night.

Please consider sending a donation to support our team and my efforts to fight cancer. Thanks for your support.