Daffodil Lane

April 13, 2007

Time is running out to get your tickets

If you are interested in attending let me know and I'll get you some tickets. Time is running out to get your tickets, so you need to act quickly.

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March 16, 2007

Full Circle - political roundtable this weekend

I got an email from the local station manager here in Anne Arundel County asking me to inform my readers of a program running tomorrow morning on WRYR-LP 97.5 FM. It's a great political round table program that they've decided to run every third weekend of the month. I expect that it will be an interesting program, you should check it out.

Robb Tufts Producer, Full Circle Station Manager, WRYR-LP 97.5 FM

The panelists for the political round table this Saturday are:

Mike Collins - Chair of the Republican Central Committee
Ray Naughton - President of the South County Democratic Club
Rob Savidge - Treasurer, Anne Arundel Green Party
Spear Lancaster - Former Libertarian gubernatorial candidate
David Whitney - Constitution Party candidate in D30

The political round table is hosted by Erik Michelsen. Erik is a member of the Franklin Manor Community Association and serves on the board of the South River Federation.

Full Circle -- Saturdays @ 9am: Full Circle is WRYR's new weekly program discussing the topics that affect us here in South County and the Chesapeake Region. Each Saturday, Full Circle features a different panel of guests to talk about our watersheds, gardening & farming, arts & culture, and politics. Our political round table is featured the third Saturday of each month. Political pundits from across the political spectrum will discuss the local issues and take calls and answer emails from the listeners. Listen to it locally or if you live outside of South County listen to it online at http://www.wryr.org Call and email us at 410-867-9677 or
fullcircle@wryr.org

_________________________________
WRYR-LP 97.5 FM
"We aRe Your Radio"
www.wryr.org
A Project of the South Arundel
Citizens for Responsible
Development (SACReD)

If you have some time tomorrow morning, you should check it out.

Listen to WRYR.

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March 10, 2007

Annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner - April 26, 2007

If you are interested in attending let me know and I'll get you some tickets.

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February 8, 2007

I am Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus

I know what your thinking, "No Jamison, you are Jamison. Dear God he's slipped completely off the deep end." Bear with me for a moment, I promise I will make sense in a little bit. First, why did this thought come into my head. I was in my fourth meeting of the day on Thursday, I'd been in one meeting or another for 5 hours at that point doing planning of one sort or another for either work or politics. So my brain was a little bit tired at that point and I was asked what I would have normally treated as a rhetorical question, what are your political ambitions. My answer is always the same, None. But my exhausted brain suddenly connected two pieces of data that had alluded me completely up until that point. Now for a quick history lesson for those of you that went to an American educational institution.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was a Roman dictator, appointed by the Senate after the current dictator of Rome and the entire Roman army had been captured by one of the barbaric tribes. Lucius was a farmer and who as the story goes was plowing in his field when he was informed that he had been given absolute authority over the Roman people to ensure the safety of the Republic for six months. He knew that leaving his crops untended could lead to hardship for his family, but he answered the higher calling and set about to defend Rome from her enemies. What makes him impressive is that it only took him 16 days to defeat the enemies of Rome, at which time he yielded all the authority he had been given back to the Senate and went back to tend his fields.

Which brings us back to the modern day and why I cause the radical right wingnuts heartburn. None of them seem to know that I have no long term political ambition, this is not what I want to do with my life. I don't stay awake at night plotting my next chance to grab power and move up the chain. I personally despise politics, it's dirty work and by all measures beneath me. I was asked to defend my country from a evil cancer that has descended upon it. Like my father before me, I left my life of quiet solitude and went to do battle with the enemies of the Republic. For me this is all the simple exercise of morality, I fight the bad guys because I have too. But for the radicals it's a baffling thing, because I don't hold back and don't triangulate like Democratic politicians. Mainly it's because I'm not one. I don't have to talk in half measures because I don't have to make it back to the "center" for election day. Trust me, I'm equally despised by the Establishment Democrats as I am by the radical extremists that make up the Republican party. It's because I lack the moral relativism that defines both of them. Right and wrong are easy for me to distinguish, just like it is for most Americans that aren't politicians. It doesn't profit me to have my beliefs change with the wind, because then I wouldn't believe in anything at all. In the market place of ideas, I have no fear that my stands on any issue would make it impossible for most Americans to call me a fellow citizen. In the end, America is about pleasing 50% +1 voter, I could care less about pleasing extremists on either side of the aisle, I'd rather stand with the American people and preserve the Republic.

So for those that spend their nights fretting about why can't he just give up and become a cowardly politician, I have to tell you it's not in my DNA. I'm a soldier, I fight, it's just all I do, it's all I know how to do. Moral certainty is an offensive thing to those without it, and for that all I can do is apologize that you are deficient. But even if I were the last American left on the planet, I would still gravitate back towards the principals of our founding in a world of total chaos, because it's just who I am. No amount of money or time can change that reality, and believing otherwise is a fool errand at best and jousting with windmills at worst. I believe Theodore Roosevelt said it best "If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful." I think our friends on the radical right have confused power for principal and have confused what's good for themselves and what good for the Republic. America was founded as a liberal democracy, crazy liberal ideas like one man, one vote are written into the constitution. We stood up to kings, monopolies, and dictators to build this great country and we will not be abandoning those principals anytime soon no matter what the radical right wants us to do. America has stumbled from time to time through out her history giving in to our baser fears and desires, but we've always stood back up and stood for something again. The rise of the radical Conservative movement is no different a stumble.

In the end, I will be the best American I can be. I strongly believe that living by the principals that made this country great, will lead us back to greatness. I'm confident that the people of America, want to get back to our greatness. And despite the GOP's continuous assertions to the contrary, I'm confident that the American people will know the difference between rhetoric and ideology. I will be Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus and stand by my nation even when all others seek to abandon it.

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Posted by: Moni at February 13, 2007 3:32 PM

January 31, 2007

Annapolis voters fill council vacancies

A high school English teacher and a retired health economist will join the Annapolis City Council, voted in yesterday by residents in a two-ward special election.

Democrat Sheila M. Finlayson, an educator, will represent Ward 4 in the western part of the city, and Democrat Ross Arnett will represent Ward 8 in Eastport.

Great news in Annapolis! Despite repeated Republican financial shenanigans the people of Annapolis stood up to say they didn't want to surrender their city to the corrupt special interest groups that the GOP represents. I send out my congratulations this morning to the new Alderwoman Finlayson and Alderman Arnett. I'm expecting great things from both of them in the coming years, but we are going to have to work on turnout in these special elections. The Republicans are ruthless in their mobilization of their few supporters and there appears to be some level of apathy on our side to stand up to them. You can just look at the state of our country and you'll get a good idea what would happen to your city if the Republicans gain control even for a short period of time. Corruption and criminality are the mainstays of their worldview. It's not safe to have them in office even for a short period of time. I suspect we will start seeing the side effects countywide with the election of Leopold before long. Failure is the hallmark of what it means when a Republican is in charge. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when their incompetence will start causing damage to the local population.

Read more over at Baltimore Sun.

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January 11, 2007

So what did you do this morning?

I checked my email this morning and there is a note from my favorite delegate candidate Rose
Forrest saying that she was going to be on CNN this morning. I had the long dumbfounded moment that I always seem to have when struck by the fact that I get a front seat to history now. So I rush in and set up the TiVo to record the event.

For those of you that don't recall, Rose is a Iraqi War Veteran and was asked to speak on the topic today in light of the President's comments last night about a troop escalation. Click on the videos below to see Rose's apperance on American Morning.

Part One:

Part Two:

It's important that we listen to the people with the real experience and not the people who put their radical ideology ahead of the lives of brave soldiers like Rose.

Posted by Jamison at 6:30 PM

January 7, 2007

Council's shake-up of Board of Appeals sparks new optimism

Normally I leave the environmental blogging to Dianne, because she's actually got a good sense of the subject and a whole lot more interest. I mostly just love the technology associated with environmentalism. While I can plant trees and grass with the rest of them, I'd much rather be indoors away from the monstrous little critters who would happily eat me while I'm trying to save their habitat. When I think of a quiet walk in the woods, it always involves an asphalt path and 3 feet of mowed area on each side so I don't have to get too close to "nature". This kind of talk makes Dianne's head hurt, but I'm perfectly happy to save the environment for as long as I don't have to get near it except under the most rare of circumstances.

Anyway, this is one of those situations were Dianne's world and my world sort of crossed. Dianne was livid to discover that some Board of Appeals had approved what can only be described as a desecration of Little Dobbins Island. I looked at the pictures and I would tend to agree that something foul was a foot. And add in my natural dislike for the Republican two sets of laws, one for us poor people and one set for their wealth buddies, I was on board with being outraged about this one as well. So imagine my surprise when I heard that Republicans had done in some of their own over this little affair. Totally out of character, I suspect it's just a political maneuver trying to split the environmentalist vote next election cycle since Republicans never question give aways to the wealthy.

Then I was going through the list of names of the new appointees and sure enough I recognized one of them Andrew Pruski. He's one of the first people that introduced himself to me at my first Young Democrats meeting and ran for the DCC and County Council this primary cycle. It's good to see such an important post falling to a guy that I know to be a pillar of the community. It makes me a lot more confident that we won't see any more of the kind of disgraceful favoritism and corruption that we saw from the previous board with a great guy like Andrew on the job.

Congratulations to you Mr. Pruski, you've earned it!

Read more over at Baltimore Sun.

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January 3, 2007

Field is set in Annapolis for city council elections

Great news! The Annapolis city council primaries are over and I can start talking about the race! OK, maybe it's only great news for me, but the rest of you can politely ignore it if you want.

We've got two great choices now in Ward 4 and Ward 8, Sheila M. Finlayson and Ross Arnett respectively. The turn out was extremely low in the primary (only 500 people total for all wards, Republicans and Democrats combined), but it was the day after New Years, so from my prospective it was higher than I expected.

If you're a Democrat out there looking for a chance to stick it to the GOP again in the New Year, here's your chance! Both candidates have contact pages so you can volunteer to help out with their campaigns. And if you're in a giving mood, I'm sure they wouldn't turn down any cash you wanted to offer them as well.

It's a New Year folks and yet another chance to keep Maryland the night Blue State that's it's been for so long now. As always the definitive work done on the subject of all things Anne Arundel is every one's favorite ND Sproll over at Blog Arundel.

Read more over at Blog Arundel.

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December 30, 2006

Front Row Seat To History

Of all the annoyance that being involved in politics has been for me, one thing about it has been interesting for me is getting a front row seat to history in the making. I've run into our new governor so much now that he almost seems like he recognizes me...Not in the "Hey there's Jamison!" sense, but more in the "That guy again??" sort of way.

So last week when some political friends of mine said they were headed down the NOLA on vacation I didn't even think about it, but when I heard that Edwards was going to announce in NOLA, the genius of the vacation choice became clear to me. So I demanded pictures immediately. Of course I'm the only one that doesn't seem to know exactly where the most critical events in history are going on, not that I could have gone anyway.

There was an entire contingent of Kossacks there to usher in the future of American politics, just as we would have all expected:

You'll notice the second woman on the left is Jennifer and her husband Mike behind her standing next to one of the front runners for President of the United States. And that's Senator Edwards in the middle of all those bloggers preparing for the future.

They also sent me a good close up picture of Edwards while he was announcing, Dianne demanded this one be at the top of the blog for the rest of time, but I'm going to relegate it to the second one on this entry:

Here's a good one without the zoom so you can get the scope of the media coverage of the event.

Mike and Jen are also in the C-SPAN pans if you watch the announcement. So I guess I'm in the second row of history, still closer than I used to be. ;) Mike included additional pictures of their time in NOLA on his blog and it's the real vision not the GOP approved vision. Nothing has been done yet and all the money we've spent has been nothing but a Republican shell game to fund their 2006 and 2008 election cycles.

Read more over at Daily Kos.

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Leopold keeps security detail

On one level this was a non-starter for me. Security decisions are generally out of the hands of elected officials, so any discussion on the topic is usually just partisan blather. We've heard this kind of whining from the radical extremists in the Republican party over and over again about President Clinton. So when I heard someone as clueless as Leopold harping about it in his campaign my instinctive eye roll and head shake about how moronic of a claim it is to make. But this kind of thing is bread and butter for radical extremists in the Republican party and the clueless among the voters sometimes get drawn into this foolishness. So being a Republican and ergo a complete hypocrite, Leopold gets into office and immediately claims that he's listening to the generals on the ground, oh wait excuse me, local law enforcement and changes nothing. Some people got all stirred up, but he's a Republican and he lies for a living it's just what they do. No one should have been surprised by this revelation. So the Baltimore Sun asked everyone to vent and I have to say other than the good belly laugh it gave me, I couldn't bring myself to care one way or another.

That all changed last week when the very same moron Leopold started really wasting my tax dollars and not through the standard incompetent mismanagement that has come define the Republican party, but this was a blatant attempt to waste tax payer dollars for no other reason than that he just wanted to waste tax dollars. Leopold demanded that William "Jay" Breitenbach be sworn in as his replacement until January 4th? Let's be clear here, the legislature isn't even in secession folks, so nothing related the legislature is going on. The brain dead moron just decided to steal $1,812.50 from the tax payers of Maryland for the hell of it. I know nothing about Breitenbach other than the fact that he's willing to happily participate in an effort to defraud the tax payers of Maryland of our money, which given that he's a Republican, once again shouldn't surprise me. The only remotely positive thing I can muster on the subject is that Michael Collins before being forced by Leopold to fill the position first thought wasn't to disgrace his party and anger the people of Maryland, but instead to leave the postion vacant. Let's hope that he gets demoted or something, because that kind of thinking could make the Republican party into something better than the criminal syndicate that it is today.

Read more over at Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore Sun.

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Posted by: Brian Griffiths at January 1, 2007 11:23 AM

Posted by: Jamison at January 1, 2007 11:32 AM

Posted by: Brian Griffiths at January 1, 2007 10:31 PM

Posted by: Jamison at January 2, 2007 9:52 AM

Posted by: Brian Griffiths at January 2, 2007 10:06 PM

Posted by: Jamison at January 3, 2007 9:49 AM

December 13, 2006

Well the District 31 Delegate race finally decided

Don Dwyer, the only voice and face of the Maryland Republican party is the victor by 25 votes. The recount started yesterday and after recounting all the paper ballots Cadden was only able to strip 3 additional votes from the Dwyer victory. I think this goes a long ways toward proving that there isn't any wiggle room in the results with the more modern counting machines. That's .001% of error if you consider the number of ballots that were recounted. So to make up 28 votes, there would had to have been 30800 ballots recounted. Ultimately without some sort of paper trail from the electronic machines to make sure there hasn't been any Republican foul play, I think that Samorajczyk is right that there isn't much point in even attempting a recount.

For District 31 this is a sad and tragic day indeed. We now effectively have no representation in Annapolis. The Republicans will line up behind their mouthpiece Dwyer and go about wasting as much of the legislature's time as Earthly possible on things that won't help the state out at all. Personally I'm just going to shelve my entire legislative idea box for the next four years because unless I'm going to be delivering it to Democrats I know that nothing will be done to help the people of my District.

It's going to be a long and counter productive four years, but now that the 2006 election cycle is officially over, we can shift gears to start working on 2008 and 2010. For now the people of District 31 and Anne Arundel Count will have to reap the suffering that comes from the election of incompetent Republicans to public office. After four years of excuses and constant mismanagement we will see how the people feel about what voting Republican has provided them.

I will review my notes on my post mortem of the election as soon as I get a chance to make sure it's up to date with the latest information.

Read more over at Washington Post.

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November 15, 2006

I'm not ignoring my district

Some of you have noticed that I haven't spoken about the results in my district of Maryland. There is one race remaining undecided and it's currently separated by 11 votes with the military/overseas absentee ballots to be counted. I'm waiting for that race to be decided before I start a post mortem on what went on in my district. So I beg your indulgence as we wait for the final results.

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November 8, 2006

Well I'm back.

Now that the local elections are over, I can get back into the swing of blogging. I'd love to tell you something about the state of things locally, but honestly there are too many absentee ballots out there to make any definitive comments about things. So any statement about such things would be purely speculative.

I will make the following comment, the Democratic party in District 31 is in serious trouble. With a two to one advantage in absentee ballots for the Republicans, my gut tells me that we've likely lost more than we had before. While I won't concede anything until the last vote is counted, its speaks volumes that in such a positive national climate for Democrats, that there seemed to be no capitalization of that climate for local Democrats. This disconnection is because of a lack of serious voter outreach and the lack of a real campaign structure.

I think one of the important activities I will be spending my next 4 years working on is fixing a lot of these systemic problem. I ran on a platform of change and I think we've gotten the proof that the change I've been suggesting is required. Unfortunately sometimes you have realize that to save the patient you have to cut loose diseased and damaged parts of the body, even if you think you need them to keep the patient alive. I'm sure that this will sound harsh and cruel to the old guard, but this election removes all doubt that the old ways are a complete and utter failure.

The statewide races on the other hand are outside the margins of the absentee vote count. Ehrlich seems to be holding out hope that he's going to win upwards of 80% of the absentee ballot vote, and that's before one of the most Democratic Counties in the state has posted it's returns. While theoretically possible, the reality is that the absentee ballot registrations suggest that he's desperately holding onto a pipe dream of victory. It's baffling that a guy the spent 4 years doing nothing but shilling for the corrupt corporate interests and attempting to undermine the future of the state, thought that the voters were somehow unaware of this fact. I know Republicans are strong believers in the Big Lie theory, but Americans are just not that stupid folks. If your only legislative success that you build your campaign around are because the legislature overrode your vetoes, that's not really a record you can hang your hat on dude. 20 million bucks can buy you the best spin on the planet, but it doesn't make people any dumber.

I'm reserving judgement on the Senate race until I see the Prince George's County returns. To win Steele would have to get 103% of the absentee ballots cast in his favor as things stand now. So for it to be in the realm of possibility, Steele would have to sweep Prince George's County. I'm not holding my breath on that happening, but that's what it would take. The other problem for the Republicans is that absentee ballots at the statewide level are split 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans. Which harms both Ehrlich and Steele's chances of getting a victory from the absentee ballots.

That's where we stand this morning in Maryland. Except for locally, I think it appears that we've done a great job on the ground of GOTV. I'm proud of my part to make all that happen. Over the last few weeks I've been going seemingly non-stop to campaign events, canvassing, phone banking and fundraisers. I'm ready to spend a few days relaxing and shaking off the last month worth of effort.

The reality for me is that I now have to get to my real job, which is planning for 2008 and Democratic victory for our Presidential Candidate. The GOP's voter suppression plans need to have counteractions planned, the 2010 Legislative elections need to start being planned. Candidates need to be picked and groomed for success. A lot of work is left to be done, hopefully I will be able to turn over to my successor a DCC with a better plan than was turned over to me.

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Posted by: Jimmy at November 9, 2006 4:05 AM

Posted by: Jamison at November 9, 2006 9:31 AM

November 7, 2006

Anne Arundel County Election Results

Found here.

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We voted!

We voted absentee. Have you voted yet? If not get out there and vote! The stakes are high! Let's take our country back!

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October 10, 2006

Craig Reynolds

Comcast has a wonderful 5 minute interview with Craig Reynolds. Check it out and be sure to vote for Mr. Reynolds on November 7th. We need a whole lot more people like him!

Note: Being that the interview is done by Comcast the video won't work on FireFox so you'll have to open it with another browser.

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September 14, 2006

It's Official!

As of 9:41 last night, with 100% of the polls reporting and all the votes counted Jamison is officially the newest member of the Democratic Central Committee in District 31 of Anne Arundel county!

Congrats to my darling husband! I'm very proud of you! :o)

Check out the official results here.

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Posted by: Jamie at September 14, 2006 8:22 AM

Posted by: reno at September 14, 2006 8:50 AM

Posted by: Royal at September 14, 2006 11:03 AM

Posted by: alice at September 14, 2006 12:26 PM

Posted by: Moni at September 14, 2006 4:36 PM

Posted by: Jamison at September 14, 2006 5:39 PM

Posted by: Yolanda at September 14, 2006 8:36 PM

Posted by: Tom M. at September 14, 2006 10:06 PM

Posted by: Jamison at September 15, 2006 9:14 AM

Posted by: Tom M. at September 17, 2006 10:51 AM

September 13, 2006

I have no clue

Something must be terribly wrong with the election process back home. They appear to have stopped counting votes at 3 am last night. There are 5 counties across the state that have yet to turn over their results to the Board of the Elections because of voting problems. I'm not clear on what's going on right now. I've started contacting my friends on the ground, I'm honestly baffled at the published results, I'm convinced they are incorrect. Of course, the electoral chaos has sort of thrown off all the parties and such for last night. I'm betting that they'll start counting votes again at 9 am. As soon as I know something, I'll let you guys know.

Read more over at Anne Arundel County Board of Election.

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September 12, 2006

Some New Faces for the DCC

For those of you that are interested in a new direction for the Democratic party in Maryland and more specifically in Anne Arundel County I have some recommendations for you.

District 30
Shenton, Mark R.
Weikel, Chuck

District 31
Davenport, Christine
Janor, Stan
Moody, Jamison

District 32
Miller, Jennifer L

District 33
Pruski, Andrew Chris
Schneider, John
Thibodeau, Stephen

These are all people I've met that want desperately for our County and State to move forward and have the Democratic party move forward as well. I don't know anything about the people in District 21, they hold one seat, but I've never had any contact with either candidate. When in doubt I always vote against the incumbent, but I have no idea if it's a bad choice in this situation. If you are interested in keeping up with the election today, the results will start appearing tonight after the polls close. I'm going to watch on our local board of elections site to start with. At the top of the ticket I notice that they don't have our governor or senate candidates, I'm assuming they've done something wrong with their database and they will correct it as soon as possible.

I think it's important for everyone to remember that you get one day to make a choice about the future of your country and today is that day. It's time to get out to vote folks!

Read more over at Anne Arundel County Board of Elections Results page.

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Election Day

It's election time in Maryland. We will see how things turn out today. I'm actually fairly excited about the two big races in our state, Comptroller and Senator. The latest polling I got from the Comptroller race shows the race as a three way tie. I'm not sure what to make of that, but on the one hand it worries me that the scumbag that's currently in the office might accidentally get to keep his post, which would be a disgrace to the Democratic party. The Senate race is a tougher one to read, Mfume looks like the favorite, but what people say and what they do in the voting booth are two totally different things sometimes. I'm hoping for an Mfume landslide, but I imagine it will be very close leading to hurt feelings for some.

OH yes, and I'm running as well in District 31, so I guess that should be pretty excited. I'm more interested in the real races in our district. Unfortunately getting to know the candidates didn't make the choices any easier except in the Senate race. I wasn't pleased with how either campaign was run and I think that whoever wins is going to have to do a lot of work to make up for the absolutely terrible way the campaigns were run in the primary. The Republican primary is going to be a bloodbath, if we come out strong after the primary we can still win this thing. Some of particularly bad candidates for the Senate seat are in the running, so we set on that front, we just have to execute properly once we have a candidate.

The Delegate race has caused me to be conflicted a lot. Craig Reynolds is a definite required person for us to have on the ballot. He's brilliant and a natural leader for the party and the District going forward. His campaign infrastructure is a thing of absolute beauty, I'm hoping that he will turn it's awesome power against the amazingly poor Republican candidates in the general to give us a sweep of the district. It's going to be a hard thing to do, but it's not beyond the realm given how incompetent the Republican candidates are for office. But given that they are running an army of Dwyer clones, none of us should really be surprised should we? I think even Republicans have grown tired of the rampant incompetence that has come to define the Republican delegation in Annapolis from District 31. I found it so funny that the Republican candidates for office listed immigration as the number one concern facing the District 31 people. If your a racist yeah that's your number one concern, but if you have an grasp of reality transportation is your number one concern in this district. The unreal disconnect between the violent and hysterical Republican candidates and the people of the District 31 is amazing thing to watch. Sad part is they are deadly serious about their racist agenda.

My next most favorite candidate for Delegate in District 31 is Rose Forrest. I've canvassed with her quite a bit lately and her instinctive leadership style and strong resolve have impressed me immensely. Everyone that meets her loves her, so I expect that she will have a great deal of success this election cycle. The one concern that she has and I guess if you were out of the loop it my cause an effect is the fact that she was in Iraq while everyone else was campaigning so she hasn't got to reach as wide of a swath of people. I think she'll do great, given that Democratic women vote for Democratic women. Given how strong a candidate Rose will be after the primary, I expect to see the standard Republican swift boating efforts to come out as they hate veterans with a passion and will work to defame and discredit her in their standard dirty politics sort of way.

The third choice took me quite a while to make on my ballot. Basically for me it was a question of to vote for Joan Cadden or Thomas Fleckenstein. I really like Tom a lot. He's a young Democrat like myself and he's been campaigning very aggressively for the office. On the other hand, we have Joan who I go back and forth on, all the time. She's extremely conservative, too conservative for my tastes, but at the same time she wins elections in this district. It was a really tough choice to make, but I expect to see the voters clarify the choice for me at the ballot box today.

There are certain races I would almost put in the unopposed category like Attorney General and County Executive, my favorites in these races have always been clear. I think it's going to be Simms and Johnson respectively. Polling suggests I'm correct on those assessments so I think my instincts are in line with the voters of the State and County respectively.

The message of the day I guess is get out to vote. You've got to send a message to the despicable Republicans about the future of this country. And if the candidates you like don't make it, mourn for a couple of days and then it's time to get serious about defeating the Republican party in November. Because their dream is to turn Maryland State government into a model of irresponsible behavior that is now the standard for the Federal government. Republicans are just too incompetent and too greedy to be trusted with our government folks, it's time for a change it's time to run them all out of office. It's time for all of us to work together to make our country a better place without the Republican cancer growing our society weakening us any further. It's time for real leadership and real change in our state. It's time to send a message.

Good luck to all the candidates running and even to the very tiny handful of decent candidates that go against the incompetent grain of their Republican party and are running campaigns for change and hoping to move their dying party away from the hate filled agenda of the radicals that have moved in and taken over their once proud heritage. Remember folks despite what the radical Republicans believe, the rest of us non-ultra conservative America haters, are still the heart and soul of America. Our values are real and not campaign slogans, we love our country and our state, we want a better future for our children and our lives do not revolve around push a radical agenda on our neighbors. We want everyone to be better off, we want our government to be effective and we want to move away from the toxic partisan rancor of the radical right.

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Posted by: alice at September 12, 2006 10:55 AM

Posted by: Jamison at September 12, 2006 11:12 AM

September 11, 2006

Opposition Research

Whisper campaigns are the cornerstone of Republican campaign strategy. They live in a world lies and rumors to win by destroying the reputation of their opponents. When you lack anything resembling a party platform and everything you talk about is based off of hate, fear, and greed, you've got few other choices. So in anticipation of that, I think it's important that if you've ever come in contact with any Republican candidate currently running for office, it's important to make sure that your stories about their negative behavior is brought to the public for review. Find a local blogger, inform the local Democratic party, and most importantly tell everyone you know. I know we all have negative contact stories to share, the problem is that it only comes up in private conversations between each other and it's time to take them to the public at large. These people are usually vile and untrustworthy. It's time that they were made to answer for their misdeeds against America.

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As I sit indoors watching the ocean

I'm watching the ocean right now and trying to catch up on all the politics that I've missed while traveling. Reoccurring themes are jumping out at me. First bloggers seemed stunned that the Republican party would yet again try to exploit 9/11 to win some cheap political points. What's the surprise folks, these people don't have souls their Republicans. They are among the most vile and hate filled creatures on the planet. Even if we defeat them, they won't be defeated they will slither back into their dark holes preaching their hate until they are strong enough to strike at America once again. That's the nature of this battle, until we are willing to do more than just chase them from the light, there is nothing that is going to change in their nature. Liars lie, thieves steal, perverts are perverse, it's just the their nature. Republicans are evil, it's just what they are. I would love it if things could be different, but they aren't. Their corporate masters will do anything to protect them and get them reelected in November so they can continue to run our country into the ground. The only we stop that is to fight them and fight them hard. We must show them no quarter, extend no mercy, treat them as they've treated us. It's going to get really ugly the closer it gets to the election. We must steal ourselves now for the coming fight. If your mad now, by November you will be completely enraged. The Fourth Estate has been successfully neutralized by the Republicans, but in the process they've managed to destroy the credibility among Americans. We've just got to relax and have a little faith, if we put the truth out there, that the American people with fulfill their scared duty to stand up against evil foreign or domestic and we will see change this November. The key thing is get out to vote, their desperate dream is to scare us away from our patriotic duty. They despise everything that America is, so we just have to stand up and be the best Americans they've ever seen. If we lead the American people will help us destroy the evil cancer eating at the soul of our great nation. The conservative cancer can be crushed once and for all. Have a little faith folks. Republicans are cowards and bullies, all we have to do is to stand up to them everytime they speak their lies.

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September 8, 2006

I'm done politicing!

I did my last canvassing today. I decided to end in one of the most glorious sweet spots in the District. We refer to them as Blue Islands, neighborhoods filled wall to wall with hard working Democrats that vote for Democrats. Rose and I, with one of her hard working campaign volunteers Amanda, zipped through 175 Democratic voters in 45 minutes. It was spectacular!

Honestly I have no idea how the race is going to turn out, and at this point I really don't have the energy to care. The last twelve months sucked the life out of me and I need a break to rejuvenate. It's hard to believe that just a short time ago Chris Bowers was saying that we bloggers had to break ranks and go out and physically rescue the Democratic party. Hundreds of us, some moving a lot more silently than others, began the rough and tumble task of infiltration and reinforcement of the Democratic party. We've spent so much time fighting the evil without, we hadn't noticed all the evil within the party. If I win or lose on Tuesday is irrelevant, all across the country we've been winning and losing, but more importantly our entry into the races has scared the Establishment Democrats to their core. The only people more afraid of our successes are the Republicans, it's tragic really that the only people that realize how powerful we are and what we can bring to the table are the enemies of freedom and democracy that we've been fighting for years now.

I'm hopeful that we will have successes in spite of the Establishment Democrats efforts to stop us. One way or another they are doomed because of their embracing the morally bankrupt ideology of the radical right in hopes that they can appease evil. It's only a matter of time before they either are destroyed by the devils they have deals with or by us. The end result will be the same. America has no stomach for cowards and fools, and neither do real Democrats.

I leave this in the capable hands of the voters now. If they don't think it's time for a change yet, that's fine with me. I honestly would rather have a free hand to go after the radical right wing America hating extremists that are going be running in this District and around the country. I think I can better serve America by making sure that these vile monsters never make it to hold any public office. But if elected, I'll leave that task to others who do not have the same restrictions placed upon them.

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September 6, 2006

Well I met Janet Owens

I would love to tell you that there was some profound revelation because I got to see her in person or that something she said was able to convince me that she was the only choice. Like many conservatives she just functions on a different wave length from me. I will say unlike most Republicans, she lacks the inhuman hatred of her fellow man, and seems genuinely interested in serving the people of the state. Which is not something I can say for all the Ehrlich Democrats I've met over time campaigning. She had some things to say about us liberals, but I found none of them to be untruthful or disingenuous. We literally do function on a different set of worldviews so there is bound to be some serious translation issues between us. Other than that, evidently Schaefer decided to bad mouth her again. Standard Republican tactics when things start getting close in the polls, they start slinging mud. Once again she showed tremendous restraint, which is probably why she's got something in her that is decent, which is why she's a Democrat.

I still feel morally compromised by the race for Comptroller. I want someone who is a fiscal conservative in the position to provide a steady hand and reason to the position. I know conservatives by their very nature are mentally and physically incapable of such a task, as we see with the current Comptroller supporting a tax break that will put the state into deficit spending at the beginning of the next fiscal year because he wanted to make sure he and his Republican buddies get reelected after mismanaging the state for the last four years. But I'm still not comfortable that Janet is the right choice no matter how good she's doing in the polls. I'm going to do some more soul searching and come up with an answer.

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Likely going to be meeting with Janet Owens tonight

Janet Owens is doing a campaign stop in my neck of the woods, so if you have any questions you'd like me to ask her please let me know. I figured I'd start with my question and see where it goes from there.

"So other than not being a misogynistic bigot, do you have any other qualifications that would convince me to vote for you?"

I'm currently in lesser evil mode on the Comptroller race, given a choice I'd rather write in Craig Reynold's name instead of any of the Democrats that are running. Janet is too pro-growth for my tastes, but I despise Schaefer so much I'm almost willing to compromise my morals and give her the nod.

Some have been giving me grief for not coming out more harshly against Owens on this site. I seldom make mistakes or oversights on something so major folks. My view into the political world told me she was gaining traction. If the other choices were viable I'd been more willing to go after her, but the reality is that she's shaping up to be the only choice. Next time, I'll have a chance to make sure there are better choices, but for now we go to war with the party we have.

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Posted by: Dianne at September 6, 2006 9:59 AM

September 5, 2006

District 31 Endorsements from Baltimore Sun

While I find the notion of newspaper endorsements to be pointless, I will mention them anyway because some people think they are important.

State Senate:

Democrat: No big surprise, they jumped on the Shandrowsky bandwagon. I'm not sure I buy the reasoning, but they seem to think it's a good idea. Personally I'm still undecided on the race, this endorsement does nothing to swing my vote one way or another.

Republican: I have to say I'm extremely surprised by the pick of Holland. In the age of Dwyer, it's hard to imagine that the Republican party picking someone like Holland. Their primary focus is not actual governing, but complaining about the fact they make it impossible to govern. I'm not sure if the Sun was just trying to be ironic with the pick or what. This race is between the Dwyer clones Jacobs and Simonaire. There really isn't any difference between them platform wise, slightly different rhetoric, but it's all 100% Dwyer.

Delegate:

Democrats

Craig Reynolds: I expect to be voting for Craig for the next 20 years to be honest. He's probably one of the best candidates I've seen in any race. If we could clone him, we could just start the Craig Reynolds party, kick back and live in the resulting Utopia. The guy is unbelievably good at whatever he decides to do. Any list that doesn't include him is totally incomplete. The guy is going to win in a landslide.

Joan Caddin: I've said it in the past that I go back and forth on Joan. That hasn't changed on that front, but I include her for completeness sake. I'll be doing my own list of endorsements before the election and we will see how I feel about her then.

Tom Fleckenstein: I like Tom, he's a rising star in District 31 politics. I still haven't seen a website from him and I sort of expect that from a Young Democrat. But he's got his ducks in a row otherwise. Update: Tom informs me I'm wrong his website is up and running. Tragically I carried hundreds of Tom's literature with me as I was canvassing for myself. I passed them out, but evidently I failed to notice they had his website on them. I must be getting really old!

Republicans

Kipke: If I had to pick between the two endorsed Republicans, Kipke would be my pick. Mostly because of the fact that I have a great deal of disdain for rich people. But in reality, he's just another Dwyer clone and the reality is that he's battling for the third slot to support the Dwyer/Corcoran slate. There is no difference between his beliefs and Dwyer's, so it's really just another vote for Dwyer.

Schuh: It's amazing to me that someone that lives out on Gibson Island, cut off from us mere mortal working stiffs, would claim that he's going to say something like "People before Politics". Knowing Republicans and their disdain for Americans, the first question that pops into my head is which people? I have a feeling we all know the answer to that question. Once again, just like Dwyer, he'll be focused on getting what ever backroom dealings need to be done to support his business interests at the cost of the people living in his district.

In the case of the Republicans, the Sun's endorsements may seem weak at best, but the reality is that the Republican party is scraping the bottom of the barrel, all they have left is Dwyer clones. No real leaders or people willing to stand up and represent what the Republican used to be. They did the best they could with the poor stock they had available.

Read more over at Baltimore Sun.

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August 24, 2006

Live Blogging the County Executive Debate

My first thought on this debate is why is the President of Comcast allowed to ask questions? He's so not non-partisan. Is he really going to make the first question are you going to support Corporate interests over the interests of the people? Go get them George!

Callahan seems to be the pro-growth candidate, no matter how much it costs the people of the county, business must always be first. Are we sure that this guy isn't a Republican candidate that came in too early?

BRAC discussions are always interesting. 15,000 new jobs should make things interesting.

Environmental questions are good for George. Pro-active, that's the key word. You never hear that from a Republican candidate. They always want to react or stick their heads in the sand. More inspectors good answers.

I forget how poor our waterways have gotten. Scary situations going on.

Callahan just zinged George claiming he wants to raise taxes? That's completely in appropriate.

Arrogance and aggressive, that seems to sum up Callahan. Leopard doesn't change his spots.

George Johnson is almost a polar opposite of Callahan when it comes to leadership. Integrity is the watch word, George has it in spades.

Interesting George says he'll go out to the people to hear their problems. Callahan says his time would be to valuable to waste on individual issues. It's amazing to see the differences between of Populous candidate and a Establishment candidate. People like George because he's one of them.

Awesome George has a plan for helping get workforce housing. Here's a link for it.

Callahan yet again comes out with the Republican talking points on the workforce housing. Government can't do anything, we should all give up and just start eliminating the poor people. What is up with this guy?

Callahan just attacked George again. The lame arrest warrant story. George didn't take the bait for negative campaigning. Infinitely stronger candidate and a better person.

The Republican debate is beginning. Basically an army of George Bush clones, all focused on undermining and destroying the county. I'll try to blog it until the ignorance overwhelms me and I give up. The audience being quiet, yeah right, these are Republicans they have no concept of courtesy.

The Comcast guy has his buddies up, he seems almost giddy to hear their response to support giving him more money.

Nourse steps up with the standard Business above all else answer of the Republican party.

Boschert actually used the term 21st century. Wow, he just lost the race. Republicans only support people that say they want everything to go back to 1950's. Being a Veteran doesn't really doesn't help you run the county BRAC doesn't change.

Angelis used the term failure, that sums up pretty much every Republican plan.

Bisset's microphone isn't working at all. Sounds like he's saying fire all the qualified people in zoning and put in Republican cronies to mismanage things. Great plan!

Leopold claims he sponsored legislation?? Since when?? We need an County Executive that accessible by the growth folks by not controlled by that industry? Dude Republicans have a strick pay to play governing style. Yet again he claims he sponsored legislation. When did this happen? Do we have secret legislation going on that no one knows about?

Boschert says we are doomed!!! Well I feel better.

Bissett wants you to visit his website to see his thoughts on matter, I popped over, standard Republican babble.

Oh the zoning law question, I can't wait to see the responses.

Leopold says enforcement is critical. Ok, Leopold is basically lifting George Johnson's answer to this question, he's just can't say it in a way to make you feel he's honest. Equal under the law?? That's an insane suggestion for a Republicans.

Boschert managed to snag the guy that wrote the Critical Areas legislation. Boschert is doing the same thing that George did the entire debate, he's talking about the office as he has already been elected. No political hacks, this guys

Bissett goes back to the fact all the money is being spent improperly. I think that's code for getting the Republican political hacks.

Nourse thinks that inspectors need a lot more power to do what?

Angelis claims that he's going to make people obey the law and is going to tear down the island house.

Boschert brings up the Comprehensive rezoning. Now the Republican plan starts becoming clear. They are going to use that to push forward their pro-growth agenda.

Leopold claims to have had legislation passed again? Back to all the money that is being misspent, if we just put more into Republican cronies we will all be better off. He's going to "restructure" the entire county government?? Translation cronies all around.

Boschert wonders why the people have lost faith in the governments. Republicans are dishonest that's why people don't trust you.

Angelis is obsessed with the Dobbin's Island issue. I guess that's his only issue.

Bissett is harping again that all government spending is wasteful.

What kind of leader are you going to be.

Angelis finds money on the ground. Gives it all to his church. Not sure how that applies.

Boschert thinks that he's worthy of their trust. Started talking about firing people effectively. I'm sure that county employees feel comfortable with that.

Bissett thinks that the government isn't listening. The county council is controlled by Republicans, I wonder how people got that impression. Oh because Republicans don't listen to anyone but their campaign contributors.

Nourse uses a collaborative management style. You speak and he tells you what you think. Pretty straight forward.

Leopold claims that he has put 45 laws in. I've got to go check that out. He claims to listen to his constituents. Hmmm, I'm a constituent he doesn't listen to me, does that make him a liar or just clueless? Isn't it so easy to be "ethical" when you rich?

Angelis wants to pick up my trash. I don't know if I would trust him with my trash.

Nourse supports the barriers between citizens and there government.

Bissett wants structure communications, translation when he is in office there will be communication only with those that support the Republican party.

Boschert mentioned rule of law. Dude you're a Republican you don't believe in the rule of the law!

Leopold claims that he doesn't take money, evidently he felt that Boschert was talking about him breaking the law. Wants to add 311, basically to allow people to complain rather than follow the standard procedures. This is going to be extremely popular with Republicans, it basically creates two levels of government one for Republicans and then the level for the rest of us.

Public Safety question:

Boschert says we need more cops, bringing back cadet program. The Fire department program is coming back, without him so I'm not sure what's going to happen with that.

Nourse says things are so bad that nothing can be done. Society has allowed kids to turn out bad. Says that we need to start beating kids. Evidently Latinos and Blacks need special education about how bad their kids are.

Leopold says more cops, technology, and community.

Boschert brings back up his Ombusman, a layer of middle management between the people and the county executive.

Bissett says everything can be fixed by giving people jobs.

Angelis says we need to police our own communities.

Transportation Question:

Bissett has a 13 point action plan. He's going to give me an extra hour, I'd have to drive at nearly at the speed of light, but hey. And hybrids won't decrease traffic.

Boschert says we need a shuttle service. Oh the key to his plan requires that business people to approve.

Leopold is complaining that Ehrlich isn't allowing him to keep money from being stolen. Well big surprise. Leopold claims that he supports mass transit.

Nourse brings up the Green line to BWI, I really like that notion.

Angelis is suggesting telecommuting. Wild idea for a Republican. Well it's half hearted it's only satellite offices. Most people don't need to go into an office at all.

Boschert thinks we can get private industry to pay for things. Back to the government can't solve any problem.

Bissett is worshiping Ehrlich again. Will support mass transit allegedly.

Leopold thinks that people's trust can be regained under Republican leadership. Laughable this guy has to be trying to kill me.

Nourse says mass transit should be self sustaining. How dude? Won't work.

Angelis has nothing to say.

Closing Statements:

Nourse says politicians are bad. Well duh!

Leopold says the finances are good in the county in spite of Republican majority county council because we've had Democratic leadership.

Angelis says hi to his mom. Very sweet. He's done a lot of things. He wants you to go to his website.

Boschert was born here, what a qualification? He's done a lot of stuff. He's still pimping that he's going to hire cronies that agree with him.

Bissett claims to have a positive plan. I can't get past the fact that he's an Ehrlich crony, but that's just me.

I'm definitely left more confident of an easy Democratic victory in November. These guys are hacks at best and incompetent at worse. Hopefully folks will get a chance to see these debates, because it clarifies just how bad the Republican candidates are. And I include Callahan in that list.

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Posted by: anonymous at August 26, 2006 7:45 PM

Posted by: Dianne at August 26, 2006 8:31 PM

August 16, 2006

George Johnson tops funds race

The Republicans can talk all the smack they want about the county executive's race, but George Johnson is getting it done!. I always carry George's literature with me when I'm canvassing and people even actual ask for George's literature. Being on the ground and living in reality, unlike the vast majority of Republicans, I'm having a hard time believing that he's so far behind in this race. Actually I've seen nothing that would even make me believe that the Republicans are even within striking distance of any of the other candidates. The notion is laughable at best. People recognize decent, honest and effective leaders when they see them. The Republicans can't even approximate that. George is a serious guy, ready to take over and keep this county on course. The Republicans in the races are wantabees looking for something to add onto their resumes so they can promote their crony friends into positions of power. There really isn't an comparison.

Read more over at Baltimore Sun.

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Posted by: Anonymous at August 18, 2006 8:25 PM

Posted by: Jamison at August 18, 2006 8:32 PM

August 13, 2006

Open Office Saves the Day again.

I really like the Open Office suite. Basically for those of you that haven't spent the last 3 years being bombarded by my praise of the suite the brief overview is this. Imagine a total free version of all the Office Products, that can read anything that comes from Micro$oft and saves in a format that can be read by back in by Micro$oft. For years now, there has been a hidden battle going on, a massive number of under the cover updates from Micro$oft trying to keep changing their saving formats so that they can keep ahead of Open Office, so that they are always incompatible. Unfortunately for the greedy Micro$oft folks, they made one too many foreign governments angry with their monopolistic practices and they decided to take serious action against them. The EU made a requirement for an Open Document standard, that is required for all government contractors to use to guarantee that while Micro$oft is desperately trying to undermine innovation and progress, that they are stopped dead in their tracks. So over the next few years expect Open Office to grow into a power house product as Micro$oft is forced to compete based off of price, performance, and reliability. A battle they are pretty much guaranteed to lose because they spend more money on lawyers than programmers.

So we were working on my door hangers, they are pretty cool actually, I'm sure Dianne will put up a picture of her handy work before too long. Anyway we went through the entire test process for the hangers and had everything working perfectly. So we started printing the first test runs. Then an evil, evil, evil bug crept into the process. Rather than accepting the customized page length (somewhere between legal and standard), the program kept switching between them depending on what we tried. The problem with this is that if you do standard, you always mess up the last one because it only prints half of it. Since the door hangers are double sided, you end up losing one from each end. Which is very, very annoying. So Dianne hacked away as she does at the problem. Finally we started looking for a way around the problem.

The first thought, of course, was to move it out of Micro$oft products because they can't handle complicated things, they are more for simple applications that don't require much effort. PDF was our first choice, Adobe makes a living out of cleaning up the incompetence that is the norm from Micro$oft. Of course, we forget how big of a scam the conversion programs are in Windows. Companies really expect you to pay them massive sums of money to convert a single document for them. Hello??? I need to convert one document every couple of years, either provide it for free or let me convert a single document at a reasonable price. That's not rocket science folks, the companies that sit down and charge reasonable short use fees for software that people don't use very often will make themselves very rich. But I digress.

The Micro$oft guys wanted to charge us I think it was 80 bucks to buy their software to convert it into a decent format to see if we could get around the poor system problems. Not happening folks! I'd rather print them off one at a time. Anyway, so I remembered that Open Office had an automatic PDF conversion button for free. So I downloaded Open Office again (My laptop already has Office, but I've never bothered to set it up). I have to say I'm pretty amazed with the improvements. I've always just used the distributions that either came with my Linux Distros or I did some Beta testing on this 2.0 release, but I hadn't seen the final improved version.

During the Beta cycle, Micro$oft changed all the formats around on us, so everything that was remotely complicated and some things that weren't got hosed up. Then I got busy with other projects and didn't get back to doing testing again when the next round of patches came out to fix all the planted bugs of the new format. So I didn't know exactly what to expect when I dropped in the 2.0 version on this computer and loaded up something as complicated as door hangers with custom page lengths that Micro$oft could communicate with the printer. I have to say it was amazing. Everything came up perfectly. And unlike in old Office, where you couldn't make it work, in seconds Dianne sat down and fixed everything for me. We converted them into PDF's, but then we decided to just run the printing through Open Office and sure enough it worked like a charm! A few tweaks later and we were printing like gang busters.

Of course, this also has wider implications in politics. Because I want to see this become the standard for the State of Maryland. As a taxpayer I see no reason why I should have to pay large sums of money to maintain the Micro$oft monopoly on Office software. I'm all about trimming the fat from government, but of course unlike a Republican I want it done responsibility to make sure government is more effective because of the decision. This is a perfect example of a way we could do some extremely effective cost cutting and all be better off in the long run. So if you need an Office replacement, or if you just need to have all the functionality of office, then pick up open office folks.

Get it over at OpenOffice.org.

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Posted by: cjmr at August 14, 2006 7:53 PM

July 31, 2006

The Bullet Voting Dilemma

Several people have told me I should be encouraging people to bullet vote for me. For those of you that don't know of the concept, basically you tell people to only vote for you even though they have multiple selections. The theory goes that if you are in a race where people are voting randomly, you end up with a relatively standard distribution of votes. By having your supports vote only for you, you rob the other people on the ballot of the standard distribution of votes allowing you to beat them because your bullet votes put you over the top.

While this tactic can work, I'm not sure that it's exactly sporting. First it gives the appearance that the party is weak because if everyone does it, you end up with what appears to be low turnout for the race. Like in the race for the DCC seat I'm seeking, there were nearly 10,000 under votes. The highest performing candidate got about 6900 votes. That screams that there was a massive amount of this bullet voting going on. Anytime I talk to someone about voting for me, I always tell them to just pick the last three names on the list. That includes the two new guys, Stan Janor and myself, plus the female incumbent Christine Davenport. I have a rule about always trying voting for Democratic women (I voted for Christine and Sandi Parrish last race as I mentioned before). So unless I get new information to make me think otherwise, she's got my vote this time as well. This seems like a more useful approach to the problem.

It will probably cost me the election, but it seems like a lot better approach than to have more under votes than votes on the books. I'd rather see Democratic Unity and lose, than to make us seem weak as a party. Let's leave that kind of stuff where it belongs, in the Republican playbook.

Read more over at Wikipedia.

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Posted by: Dianne at July 31, 2006 10:39 PM

July 29, 2006

Putting One Of My Expensive College Classes To Work! ;o)

Who needs a printing service for business cards when you've got me around! ;o)

I think however we're going to have to leave the yard signs to the professionals with bigger printers! ;o)

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My first canvassing

George Johnson's folks were doing a canvassing this morning with several candidates from the Democratic party in my district. I wasn't sure what to expect, so I got my campaign cards together and headed down to participate. Joan Cadden and Ron Bateman were there and a bunch of George's people. We were given something called walking lists. Basically it's all the registered voters in the state database for a given street. Basically they give you literature to drop off at each house and you go down the list until you are done with the street. It's a fairly slow affair. You've got to wait for people to come to the door and then you have to figure out where to leave the literature if no one answers and so on. Pretty straight forward stuff. So I did that for a few hours.

Ron Bateman was even more impressive in person. I definitely will be able to maintain my sense of security in Anne Arundel County with him taking over for George. Solid guy with great kids who were helping him out. I'm more and more impressed each day with the quality of Democratic candidates for public office in this county. I completely understand now the utter horror the Republicans are feeling this year as they march their slate of wannabees and pretenders up against the cream of the crop. It's definitely not going to be a good year for them.

Joan Cadden has been representing us since we moved here, she had the dubious task of trying to work with both Dwyer and Leopold, so I'm thinking of nominating her for sainthood before long. She's a much stronger person than I could ever be! She's bounced around on my list of candidates I'm happy with and those that I am not. But every time I talk to her in person, she always manages to win me back over to liking her again. She's got a tough job and it's hard not to respect her for the patience of Job she's been having to sport in Annapolis. I try to give her a grief about not having a campaign website every time I see her, she still hasn't bought into the notion, but I get the feeling she's weakening. ;)

I was really impressed with the Johnson folks, they thought of everything. They gave us bags for the literature, it included bumper stickers, shirt stickers, and cold bottled water for us to drink in addition to the literature we were dropping. What really impressed me was that given that my candidacy is everything that is wrong with the Democratic party, they asked for my literature to include in this weekend's efforts. Either they are completely unaware that I'm the doom of the party or they aren't worried that it will matter. Given that I'm running for a position with no power or responsibility, I think the latter is probably the most likely.

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July 27, 2006

Meeting at Stone Creek Democratic Club

After being up since 4 am yesterday morning, I got back from the 4 hour car trip from Pittsburgh, gave Alexis a hug had some dinner, kissed Dianne on her sick head and headed back out for a couple of hours of Democratic fellowship. This open house was ostensively to endorse Walter Shandrowsky. Phil Jimeno was the opening act and it's easy to see how the man held his office for so many years. Walter seemed a little nervous and stumbled a little in his speech for some reason (I was a bit surprised actually given that he's a member of the Maryland Speaker's Society), but he delivered a lot of thanks for all the help he'd been receiving on the campaign trail.

I'm always against these kinds of endorsements in a primary, because I feel it damages party building efforts. Walter seemed to make some effort to mute some of the negativity of the process, which improved my opinions of him slightly. Unfortunately there was still the anti-young people tone slipping in from time to time. Being a young person, I can tell you I'm not unqualified by being young. Sometimes energy is more important than experience, but this is a common belief inside the Establishment Democrats. It's on my list of things to fix once elected.

A lot of the leading contenders for the office of Delegate were there (listed in the order that they talked to me): Craig Reynolds, Rose Forrest, Ed Garcia, Thomas Fleckenstein and Joan Caddan. Of course, Matt McBride was there as well, despite not getting the endorsement he showed up and supported his fellow Democrats, which I think speaks volumes for the concern that it could end up being a destructive primary for the party. Of course, there were some of us reformers running around Stephen Thibodeau and myself. Strangely there were District 32 candidates for office there to support Walter, which seems somewhat out of place to me. They've been putting a lot of energy into discouraging one of our Young Democratic candidates Jennifer Miller from running for DCC. The good news is that it appears that I may have won a vote and Rose told me about the other major Democratic club in the area. I'm going to find out when they are having their next meeting and maybe put in a showing.

The most interesting conversation of the night for me was with Jared Shandrowsky. He's Walter's son, a Correction's officer for the State of Maryland. I'm always amazed by the force of presence police officers have without even trying. He reminded me of a very young version of George Johnson. Evidently he had drawn short straw and has been keeping up with my rants on local politics. He had some concerns that I might not step up after the primary. Probably my bad, because sometimes when I get in a foul mood about politics, I speak as if I would do something like that. Despite that, if you look at my voting records, I'm a super voter. I don't miss an opportunity to vote against Republicans, it's just my nature. Even if I don't like Walter, he'll have my support if he wins the primary. I think I've said it before, a bad Democrat is better than the best Republican any day. Even if I can't get a liberal on the ballot (of which there are none on the ballot in my district), I'm going to support the Democratic candidates that are on the ballot to the best of my ability. Of course, the conversation left me thinking that maybe we have the wrong Shandrowsky running for the post,