Whoopsie

Well, my misattribution of Steve Harper's party affiliation isn't the first mistake I've made. And won't be the last. Mea culpa....

My critique of the severe and drastic overreaction of Harris supporters to the Banks campaign remains....

Lateral Move

Just in case you didn't see the 15 or so laterals from Division III Trinity on Saturday, here it is:

Understatement of the Year

"I know it is somewhat of a regressive tax,"
- Speaker Mike Busch talking about the sales tax

Yes, and hiking and expanding the scope of the sales tax is going to put the screws to the people the Democrats allegedly are looking after...

It starts tomorrow

Annapolis' long-awaited version of budgetary Armageddon comes to town tomorrow. And let's face it: other than the fact that taxpayers are about to get hosed, we don't really know what is going to happen. If legislative Democrats reverse four-years of precedent under the Ehrlich Administration and decide to support a slots package, the entire session could be over relatively quickly. Mike Miller will likely allow most of the O'Malley tax package through the Senate. In that case, we will see slots, and we will see higher income and sales taxes, to say nothing of the expansion of services and items covered by the sales tax.

But if the slots bill is a no go, the General Assembly will likely go the full thirty-day distance. I see no way that the legislative leadership and the O'Malley Administration will be able to come together on a deal. The O'Malley folks want there to be a consensus on the issue with the leadership, but the O'Malley idea of consensus is everybody agreeing to do what the Governor wants. Given the fact that this leadership style is even more defiant of legislative wishes than even the Ehrlich Administration, O'Malley is risking a lot of political capital on something that is nowhere close to being a sure thing.

My prediction for the session? Nothing gets done, O'Malley's position is seriously compromised, and he finds himself incredibly vulnerable to a primary challenge in 2010, to say nothing of increasing the likelihood of a Republican victory in the 2010 gubernatorial election.

Splitting Humanity

No this does not deal with a magic trick, but with the future of human evolution:

The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist.

100,000 years into the future, sexual selection could mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed.

The alarming prediction comes from evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry from the London School of Economics, who says that the human race will have reached its physical peak by the year 3000.

No word yet on how future Maryland Democrats will attempt to protect the goblin class by jacking up taxes on the goblin class....

Anything but Confidence

Memo to Harris supporters: I understand that the candidate and his supporters are confident that the Senator is going to beat Congressman Gilchrest in the primary. However, when supporters start talking to the press about half-baked theories about why certain candidates are jumping into the race, that doesn't exactly exude confidence, now does it?

Again, I'm not supporting or endorsing a candidate. But color me unimpressed with the lame attempt at spin of some Harris supporters...

Checking in where I have been

In this Friday's Gazette, Barry Rascovar checks in where I have been for some time now: that Peter Franchot is positioning himself extremely well to mount a challenge to Governor O'Malley's left during the 2010 gubernatorial primary.

The more Franchot fights the special session, and the more likely it becomes that O'Malley's tax-hike gambit fails, the more likely a Franchot challenge will become....

Fuzzy Math

How come that during a structural deficit of $1.5 billion does Governor O'Malley think the public is going to buy a new half-billion dollar entitlement program?

Governor O'Malley must have a quite a low opinion of the intelligence of Maryland taxpayers if he thinks that they will let this pass by without comment. The disingenuousness of this O'Malley Administration continues to amaze...

Derangement Personified

Air America's Randi Rhodes has accused the Bush administration of a cover-up in the San Diego fires. Yes, she says that the fires are an arson so that the land can be turned over to Blackwater. Click here to hear the actual audio.

No word on whether or not Randi Rhodes is getting the psychiatric help she needs...

BREAKING: O'Malley approval plummets in new Gonzales Poll

Our friends over at Gonzales Research have released their October statewide poll as it relates to the upcoming Special Session. Of note, Governor O'Malley's approval rating has dipped to 46%; I believe that is lower than Governor Ehrlich's approval rating at any time during his four year term. Of special note:

When we asked those who disapprove of the job Governor O’Malley is doing why they felt that way, 61% said it was because of his proposal to raise taxes, 17% said it was because of his proposal to legalize slots, 12% said they generally don’t like his style or manner, and 9% specifically said they thought he was “arrogant.”

Amazing. Additionally, now fewer than half of Marylanders believe that our state is moving in the right direction.

I have made the entire poll available here.

Third Bases

Political Insider takes on the issue of potential third party candidacies from the usual suspects (Bloomberg, Paul, McKinney, et. al.). But I have to ask this question: is there really a constituency for such third party candidates? Does Cynthia McKinney really embody the fringe left? Are the wing-nuts supporting Ron Paul's candidacy going to follow him to a Libertarian nomination? Does anybody take Ralph Nader seriously? A third party candidacy has really not taken off since Ross Perot's 1992 run. Sure, Nader had something to do with the results of the 2000 Presidential election, but really it was Perot who had the last chance to actually win electoral votes.

I don't see a way for a third party candidacy to gain traction if the Democrats nominate their far left candidate (Hillary) and the Republicans nominate a mainstream conservative. However, if the nominees are Hillary and a liberal Republican such as Giuliani or Romney, there is a chance that a third-party on the right will emerge and attempt to run to the right of the Republican nominee. This is, of course, is not an optimal situation given the fact that this increases the likelihood that Hillary Clinton is elected....

Some things are still OK...

A live shot of the sun setting over the Pacific....

Another SD

More SD pics

Pictureblogging the San Diego fires

I am in San Diego, and that is one of the clouds from one of the many, many fires burning in San Diego County.

Out There

The Sun really cracked me up this morning with their editorial on the budget situation. Particularly since the editorial was entitled "Reality-based budgeting," because it was their typical, rather panglossian view of the government that can do no wrong and the government that can never do enough.

Personally, this is my favorite part:

The reality of state government is that most tax dollars go straight into schools, public safety and health care - and often, it's still not enough.

When the General Assembly convenes one week from tomorrow in special session to consider Mr. O'Malley's plan, every option should be on the table, including eliminating government programs that are no longer vital. But anyone who claims cuts can balance the budget is either ill-informed or baldly mendacious.

The deficit wasn't caused by waste; it's primarily the result of failing to pay for programs that most people living in this, one of the wealthiest states in the nation, would regard as sensible and prudent.

Read that last sentence again. According to the geniuses on Calvert Street, the deficit was not caused by paying for too many government handouts, but the deficit was caused by too few government handouts.

There is nothing reality based about the Sun's position on the budget. It is the typically urban liberal perspective that the taxpayer is merely a bank, and that government can withdraw however much it wants in order to waste the money on programs that are either ineffective, obsolete, or just plain unwanted. Though maybe the Sun's position on the issue explains its ever declining circulation numbers; maybe readers get tired of hearing that the Sun's editorial writers want them to be poor...

Good News for the Good Guys

2007 may have been a rough year for the GOP, but at least the party can claim victory in Louisiana with the election of Bobby Jindal as that state's new Governor.

Jindal's victory , however, came at a heavy price. The victory was heavily influenced by the catastrophic damage of Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana's dysfunctional government, led by corrupt and incompetent Democratic mismanagement before and after the storm, failed the people of Louisiana during that crisis. The people, both those who perished and those who survived, paid a heavy heavy price.

I look forward to seeing what kind of progress Governor-elect Jindal can make in bringing Louisiana back...

Music for an early Saturday

On my own island

I said before that I have not endorsed, nor will I be endorsing any candidate in the 1st Congressional District scrum. But from the perspective of being an observer, am I the only person who does not think Andy Harris is going to beat Wayne Gilchrest?

The Numbers Game
The numbers are just not adding up for the Harris campaign. The lowest percentage Gilchrest ever received during a primary as an incumbent was 47 percent of the vote, back in 1992 when the district had a larger slice of Anne Arundel County. With the current composition of the District, he beat Dave Fischer 60-36 in 2002, and Richard Colburn 62-38 in 2004. It's hard to imagine that such a large slice of the electorate would defect after two contested elections.

The Others
Also complicating the issue for the Harris team is the fact that there are three other candidates in the race: Joe Arminio, Robert Joseph Banks, and John Leo Walter. Arminio and Walter have been in the race for some time and have both campaign extensively across the district. One would have to almost assume that those three candidates will split around 10 percent of the anti-Gilchrest vote.

District Geography
Senator Harris represents only two precincts that vote in CD-1. He does not start off with the name ID that one would usually expect from a State Senator challenging and incumbent Congressman, and certainly at more of a disadvantage than Senator Colburn (who represented a large chunk of the Shore) did in 2004.

Additionally, it seems that a lot of Eastern Shore Republicans prefer their Congressman to be one of them, living on the eastern shore. That, from the people I have talked to, seems to be as much of a determining factor as ideology. This also plays into the Walter factor, since Walter is a resident of Centreville. On top of that, Arminio lives in Arnold, Anne Arundel County. That may peel a few extra votes away from Harris than might happen otherwise.

The Kratovil Factor
Some Republicans I have spoken with are fearful of Frank Kratovil, Queen Anne's County State's Attorney and current Democratic frontrunner. There is a fear in some that a Harris win will make it more likely that Kratovil, not Harris, will be elected in November. They point to Kratovil being, like Walter, from the Shore and being somewhat of a moderate yet popular elected Democrat. It may mean that a lot of moderate Democrats who may otherwise pull the lever for Gilchrest (or most Republicans in most years) would switch to Kratovil.

To his credit, Senator Harris has been running a textbook campaign, one that has been more effective than any of the previous primary challengers. But he needs to run a perfect campaign and cross his fingers for luck in order to win this race. Missteps like his awkward new TV spot that mixes messages do not help his campaign any.

There is a long way to go between now and February 12th, but if the election were held today I would say that Wayne Gilchrest is going to win the primary by between five and eight percent...

Good Riddance

Next:

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) will resign as general chairman of the Republican Party today, saying he wants to spend more time on his work as Florida's GOP senator, Politico has learned.

Martinez, who took the job nine months ago as the public face of the national GOP, steps down during a tough time for the Republican party, out of power on Capitol Hill and trying to gain traction in the national campaign under the shadow of an unpopular, lame duck president. Martinez, who publicly parted ways with GOP congressional leaders earlier this year on immigration issues, will not be replaced as general chairman.

The day to day duties of running the Republican Party's political operation will be left to chairman Mike Duncan, the current chairman of the Republican National Committee.

I said last year that this was a bad idea. So now that we've all been proven right, can somebody please call Michael Steele?

Run for the Border

Remember when Bills fans beat up current Ravens RB Willis McGahee when he said the Bills should move to Toronto? Well...

The Buffalo Bills on Thursday announced they are seeking approval to play a preseason and at least one regular-season game in Toronto as part of the franchise's attempt to expand its market base beyond western New York.

"The team hopes to capitalize on the increasing interest of fans in the Canadian market by playing a regular-season game in Toronto," the Bills announced in a release.

The Bills hope to play a preseason game at Toronto next summer, with plans to play a regular-season game as early as 2009. The games would be played at Rogers Center, a downtown stadium with a retractable roof that serves as home to baseball's Blue Jays and the Canadian Football League Argonauts.

Of course, the NFL in Toronto does sense. Possibly one of only two viable major metropolitan area on the continent that currently do not have NFL football (the other being Los Angeles; you're not gonna sell me on Mexico City). Certainly more viable than Jacksonville or Arizona have proven to be (two cities which got teams, incidentally, ahead of Baltimore; though I think it's safe to say that we came out ahead on the Cardinals deal).

Fuzzy Math

In addition to their noted spelling problems, John Leopold's campaign people can't get math right. The District 32 GOP Club website links to this flier which talks about a fundraiser celebrating "Celebrating 20 Years of Public Service to District 31" by John Leopold.

Well, given the fact that it is Leopold, it would be unsurprising to note that it was 25 years ago that John Leopold was elected to the House of Delegates. 25 years since Leopold finished up his "district shopping" for a winnable district and settled on District 31, a mere six months before the 1982 election.

And here's a better question; why are they not celebrating John Leopold's 40 years of "public service"? Or does Leopold forget that he was a professional politician for 15 years in Hawaii, known for much of the similar untrustworthiness and liberalism there, before he ever stepped foot in Maryland?

Then again, I have no idea why anybody would vote for this guy....

Leopold endorses O'Malley Tax Plan

One thing Streiff did not point out earlier was that, as usual, John Leopold is showing his true colors:

County Executive John R. Leopold, a Republican, said the state's transportation demands justify higher taxes.

True, transportation demands are at an all-time high. But as we noted yesterday, there are alternatives to taxpayer-funded roads. Leopold's snap judgment that taxes should be raised to fund transportation projects are just another notch in his pro-tax, pro-big government, pro-liberal belt.

A Reasonable Approach to Fixing our Traffic Woes

Drew Carey on private sector solutions to highway gridlock (H/T absentee on RedState):

Wouldn't it be nice if the state of Maryland would outsource the construction of the Intercounty Connector, a new Bay Bridge, or HOT lanes (like the aforementioned 91 Express Lanes in California)? Wouldn't you, as a taxpayer, feel better about the construction, maintenance, and expediency of construction of these roads as opposed to the ten-years plus it may take to even turn the first shovel of dirt on these projects if the State of Maryland takes the lead?

Knowing your Strenghts

ESPN has a fascinating article about Red Sox ownership using the team's brand name to make a lot of money in other athletic pursuits, such as Roush Fenway Racing and Boston College athletics.

Memo to Peter Angelos: you own the Orioles, a brand with significant cache in the Mid-Atlantic area. You own MASN. There are a great number of other pro sports and Division I athletic programs stretching from Central Pennsylvania to Charlotte. Might be something you want to consider to make some extra cash to push past 70 wins every once in a while...

D-Day

We know when the General Assembly is going back to work:

Gov. Martin O'Malley today formally called a General Assembly special session that would start Oct. 29, despite a warning from the state Senate president that lawmakers were far from consensus on O'Malley's plan to close a projected $1.7 billion budget shortfall.

OK, now let's delve into the gobbledygook:

"The time for delay is past. I am very, very optimistic about what the leaders of our state can accomplish when they know so much is at stake,'' said O'Malley, who signed an executive order calling the session. "We have the ability to come together and forge a consensus.

Which is amazing given the fact that the Administration has gone out of its way to exclude the Republican leadership from this process. Also, don't forget the fact that the Administration knows so much is at stake. Why have they sat on the sidelines during O'Malley's entire time in office, fiddling without dealing with the spending problem like responsible adults?

O'Malley has said the special session is needed to prevent the budget gap from growing wider. He has said the state could face a $2.2 billion budget shortfall on July 1 if lawmakers don't act now, rather than in the legislature's regular session that starts in January.

Again, the budget gap could have been lessened or eliminated had O'Malley introduced a responsible budget back in January. One that did not call for increases in state spending.

At a news conference, the first-term governor said he hoped legislators would take action by Thanksgiving, but he added: "If they need to take more time, they will."

"We don't want this to be a slapdash process,'' O"Malley said.

No, they want to continue to fiddle as the deficit goes higher and higher. It's almost as if it took six months for the Administration to realize there was a problem before saying "hey, we have to fix this." Unless you believe that this was their motivation all along; to continue to increase state spending to push through the buffet of taxes O'Malley wants to ram down our throats.

And whether you like Mike Miller or don't, you have to respect him and his intelligence. As evidenced by this:

Although Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller had been pushing for a special session, he told reporters before O'Malley's news conference that he had recommended holding off on calling lawmakers back to Annapolis.

"I asked him if he had the votes, and he doesn't as of this day," Miller said. "I counseled him not to call a special session until he had the votes. He is determined to go forward."

Starting October 29th, the taxpayers of Maryland are going to pay roughly $40,000 a day (a cost of nearly $1 million if it goes to Thanksgiving) for some bizarre Kabuki theater allegedly designed to get us out of the financial hole. In reality, the Administration is going to try to ramrod through historic tax increases that will do little more than cripple our state's economy in an already economically disadvantageous time. And they will try to do so under the cover of darkness, right before the Holidays so your average taxpayer doesn't know what hit them.

Somebody needs to remind Governor O'Malley that there are a lot of things that you could call this, but leadership is not one of them...

Truth on An Inconvenient Truth

Every so often somebody will moan about there being no scientists who are saying that what Al Gore is doing is wrong. Well, piling on to the court decision outlining Gore's lies is this:

ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".

Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.

His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.

"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."...

...But Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.

However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.

"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said....

..."It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."

I'll think I'll put my faith in a guy with a long, respected history of academic scholarship in the field of meteorology than I will a politician from Washington, DC Tennessee.

Unsurprisingly, no domestic news outlets have picked up on this despite the fact the Dr. Gray's speech occurred in North Carolina. They have to protect the agenda at all costs, you know...

Who wants to win a National Championship?

That's starting to become more and more of a valid question as the bodies continue to hit the floor.

LSU goes down. California goes down. Even (formerly) undefeated Cincinnati goes down.

The likely top three tomorrow when the first BCS poll of the year is released: Ohio State, Boston College (!) and South Florida (!!!!).

And that leaves only those three teams, Hawaii, Kansas and Arizona State as undefeated teams (and at this second, the Sun Devils are losing to Washington).

Somebody is going to have to step up and win this thing. And the longer this goes on, the higher the likelihood that one-loss teams like Oklahoma, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia Tech, Oregon and even Southern Cal have a shot at this thing, along with the newly minted one-loss teams....

Yikes...

You think the marriage debate is rocky now? Try this (H/T Instapundit):

The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots.

David Levy, a British researcher at the college, wrote in his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," that trends in robotics and shifting attitudes on marriage are likely to result in sophisticated robots that will eventually be seen as suitable marriage partners.

I'm not going there. The jokes will come to you....

Who are they kidding?

Gotta love the comedians at the Sun. They can turn a story about a reunion of players in the Mandel trials into something humorous:

The United States of America vs. Mandel et al officially began Nov. 24, 1975, when a federal grand jury handed up a 24-count racketeering and mail fraud indictment against Mandel and five members of his inner circle.

On the heels of the resignation and guilty plea from Vice President Spiro Agnew, the case against Mandel was also handled by federal prosecutors in Maryland, who established a national reputation for going after public corruption. Many believe the Mandel trials also marked of the end of the backroom, political-machine era in Maryland.

Needless to say, I got a chuckle. I guess the Sun really hasn't been paying attention to the Governor's attempts at a slots deal, have they?

Cheapening a Prize

Apparently being a hypocritical let-them-eat-cake biased Chicken Little on the environment has its benefits:

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it.

"I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," Gore said. "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

I suppose he'll take his private jet to Oslo to pick up the hardware and, of course, the check.

As always, Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus makes sense on the issue:

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a rare vocal global- warming sceptic among heads of state, is "somewhat surprised" that former US vice president Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize, the president's spokesman Petr Hajek said in a statement.

"The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct," the statement said. "It rather seems that Gore's doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace."

Klaus said in a recent speech that environmentalists' efforts to halt global warming "fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity."

I would say this cheapens the value of the Nobel Peace Prize that was given to people who have actually worked to do good in the world, like Martin Luther King (1964), Norman Borlaug (1970) and Muhammed Yunus (last year). And David Keelan says he has lost all respect for the prize. But given the fact that Communists, terrorists, anti-semites, and crooks have already won the award, I'm not exactly sure how Al Gore being a hysterical hypocrite makes thing any worse than they already were.

Proving the Point About the Size of Government

Those who modify their cars to run on biofuels are doing so, generally to save money in the long term on the cost of gas, but also in order to help clean the environment. Naturally, the bloated size of government could theoretically get in the way:

But it is technically illegal to modify a car to run on any fuel other than the one it was designed for. Because the Environmental Protection Agency has not approved vegetable oil as a fuel, grease cars are in violation of the Clean Air Act.

This does not apply to the use of biodiesel, an EPA-regulated fuel created from soy and other organic oils.

People who modify their cars to run on vegetable oil could face a $2,750 fine, although the EPA has no record of any such penalties, said spokesman Dale Kemery.

People who run their vehicles on homebrewed fuels are also supposed to pay a Maryland fuel tax of 24.25 cents per gallon, be licensed as a special fuel user by the state and file a monthly report on the use of fuel.

But because the use of vegetable oil fuel is so new, nobody has been penalized for not paying taxes, said Warren Hansen, spokesman for the Maryland Comptroller's Office. He said there are only about 100 licensed special fuel users in the state.

I think that it says so much about government overreach that innovators and early adopters of such emerging technologies could be subject to fines and penalties for doing something so innovative. Though I bet somebody in the Comptroller's office is looking at how to enforce this now given Franchot's zeal for collecting tax dollars...

Blast from the Past

Yes folks, Vinny Testaverde may be in an NFL starting lineup near you this weekend:

Carolina Panthers quarterback David Carr missed practice for a second straight day Thursday with a sore back, increasing the chances 43-year-old Vinny Testaverde could start on Sunday at Arizona.

Testaverde, signed on Wednesday, and undrafted rookie Matt Moore, signed just over a month ago, took all the snaps in practice for the banged-up Panthers. Coach John Fox wouldn't say which QB he'd use if Carr can't play Sunday.

I am stunned an amazed that the same Vinny Testeverde that was run out of Baltimore after the 1997, only to be succeeded by a guy who is now Stanford's Head Coach.

Vinny getting pretty close to Steve DeBerg and George Blanda territory, actually...

Much Thanks

Much thanks out to the Elephant Club for having me as a guest speaker for their meeting this morning. We talked about blogs in general, and opened up into a general discussion about blogs in general, the Presidential race, the Gilchrest/Harris race, the reasons I'm not a Don Dwyer fan, and my goals as a blogger and an activist.

Very vibrant discussion, and I 'm glad that I could be a part of it.

Special Session Rumblings

Streiff is all over it at RedMaryland. He's got the reporting that the Special Session will start October 29th and that O'Malley's tax proposals are causing dissent in Montgomery County.

He's all over it, so stay tuned over there for updates.

Reminder...

I'll be speaking to the Elephant Club tomorrow morning at 7:30 am. I'll be discussing blogging and some of my views on issues impacting us as Republicans.

The event will be at Our Shepherd Lutheran Church, 400 Benfield Road in Severna Park.

Misusing the Office

We have gone over before the duties and responsibilities of the Office of the Comptroller and Peter Franchot's inability to understand them. And I'm pretty sure that this isn't in there:

State Comptroller Peter Franchot has agreed to cull state income tax records to identify Howard County families who might qualify for health care assistance and then send them letters offering help, county officials said yesterday.

"Who knows better than the state comptroller who is making less than 300 percent of [the federal] poverty [level]?" asked Dr. Peter L. Beilenson, the county health officer, referring to the income cutoff to qualify for federally funded health care programs for children.

The letter campaign was to be announced today at Franchot's Baltimore office on West Preston Street as the latest component of what Howard County officials say will be a comprehensive plan to offer health care access to all uninsured residents. Details of the plan are to be revealed Tuesday.

So the state is going to spend taxpayer dollars to help Howard County spend more taxpayer dollars on covering the uninsured? Where exactly is that in the Comptroller's job description?

Franchot's job is to collect the taxes, and realistically not much else. His job is to not turn the resources of the Comptroller's office over to help Howard County expand the number of citizens on government assistance, no matter how well meaning he is about it. If the people of Howard County want to offer comprehensive health care to its uninsured, and so long as they are using the taxpayer dollars of Howard County residents, I don't really have a dog in the fight. But I do have an issue when the Office of the Comptroller, funded by my taxes, is being misused in this manner.

I will note, however, that the same people who praise Peter Franchot for his "courage" would be first in line to charge the Bush Administration with high treason if they proposed using IRS records to track terrorists...

A Pivotal Day in Western Civilization

On this day 1,275 years ago, The Franks under Charles Martel defeated Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi at the Battle of Tours. Of course the battle had a few longstanding effects, particularly in that the battle led to:

• Christian domination of Europe;
• The holding of Muslim influence in Western Europe no further than the Iberian Peninsula;
  
• Establishment of the Frankish Kingdom, the forerunner of the Kingdom of France;
• The reign of Charlemagne and the Birth of the Holy Roman Empire;
• Basically, the birth of Modern Europe
  

So yes, all of western civilization as we know it owes its existence the events at Tours. Yet, I wonder how many students get taught the importance of this battle in their studies?

Not a Chance Pal

This Kremlin inside makes a logical point that won't see the light of day any time soon:

Russians should move the embalmed body of revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin from Moscow's Red Square and bury him as an act of closure on Russia's turbulent past, a Kremlin insider said on Wednesday....

...."We have only just moved away from revolutions, from turbulent political battles, the country wants to live normally, to work, to be rich," Vladimir Kozhin, one of the Kremlin's top administrators in charge of its property portfolio including Red Square, told the official daily, Rossiskaya Gazeta.

..."Of course, having this necropolis at the centre of the city is nonsense," Kozhin said, adding he wanted a national referendum on whether Lenin should be moved and buried.

Of course, that's not going to happen any time soon, because one Vladimir Putin likes the concept of honoring Lenin in this manner. And since Putin wants to hold on to power as long as possible, that's not going to happen.

Incidentally, I went to the Lenin Mausoleum when I was in Russia in 1997. And it's a pretty odd site to see the body of a guy who died 73 years before being guard by soldiers with Kalashnikovs...

Naming Issues

Villa Julie looks like it may not learn from the mistakes of others:

Villa Julie College went coeducational in 1972 and became a four-year school in 1984, but a lot of guidance counselors don't seem to know that.

The college separated from the Roman Catholic Church four decades ago, but to many employers and would-be students the words "Villa Julie" still summon images of a religious institution.

Now the suburban Baltimore college is considering changing its name.

At least Villa Julie has better reasons to change their name than my alma mater did when they made the bonehead decision to change its name five years ago. And like many people, I have not given a dime to the school in response.

I hope Villa Julie considers long and hard about the consequences of poor decision making like the Western Maryland decision before making any such changes...

The Dope Show

I'm hesitant to even give Free State Politics more traffic then they deserve, but since Andrew Kujan has to be smoking dope to come to