Welcome to WB&A Blog Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Welcome to WB&A Blog.

The look of this blog may be pretty familiar if you have been around awhile in the Maryland blogosphere. It is the successor-in-snark to the Maryland-based (now technically DC-based) Crablaw Maryland Weekly and its spin-offs.

The "Weekly" term came from the says when I would only commit to publishing once a week, though I often did more. I never dumped the name.

It's not named "Crablaw" any more because the term "Crab" had unintended marketing consequences and "law" is not the primary focus of the blog, more politics, culture, economics and local events including, but not predominantly, law. For old times' sake, we are keeping the crablaw.com domain.

This blog is not neutral on the "moving train" of politics; we take sides here and we don't apologize for hitting hard. In general, this blog favors left-center politics with emphases on public efficiency, human dignity, human autonomy, equal protection of the laws and due process. It is explicitly counter-theocratic, i.e. maintains that religious claims are not a valid basis for the use of public resources, public power or special pleading for religion in the specific, the generic, the singular or the plural in public life.


Longer portion of post goes here.

Red Maryland Advances Republican "Democratic Violence" Frauds Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Red Maryland is engaged in a fraud, as of now. If they stop the fraud and apologize for it, I will update this post.

Red Maryland has two posts up on "violence" and "still more Democrat [sic] Election Violence.

Now I am ashamed of myself for having believed the first story until I got the actual facts - you know, the Pittsburgh B on the cheek, the complete buncombe story? Well, I got reamed - REAMED - on DailyKos for believing this story before I got all the facts yesterday. I got, I think, 18 Troll/Hide Rates on a tip jar. Believing that Red Maryland would not push buncombe on me lost me my own credibility and "trusted user" status.

I have been exceptionally diplomatic over the last 12 months with Red Maryland. But being reasonable with them cost me my reputation with people on my side of the line. So to paraphrase Chuck D, "damn if I believe them you can slap me RIGHT HERE."

It's now twenty-four hours since the first story was debunked. It had been debunked by 6:34 PM EST on the 23rd, though I didn't know it. But I put a comment on that post, urging Streiff to fix it. He didn't, and has a second "story" with a false headline: "MORE ... violence" published this morning. The headline is a lie, and I will bet that the story itself is buncombe too until I get iron proof that this isn't another scam by desperate Republican operatives.

Let this serve notice that diplomatic relations between any activity of mine and with Red Maryland are hereby cut off. It's going to be open season on every one on that site, until Streiff, Newgent, Griffiths, Burns or another editor apologizes for the continuation of a buncombe story and officially retracts it. I got conned; there will be no fool me twice.

P.S.: in case you had been living in a cave like I literally have been for the past 5 days during daylight hours - working absolutely alone with no human interaction, no radio, no TV and no 'net, this link to a series of diaries at Daily Kos will explain how the con was designed to work, how Red Maryland succeeded in conning me and why I am calling them out so severely.

P.P.S. Now after 8 PM on the 24th and no fix from any of the dozen-odd editors over at Red Maryland to these deceptive headlines and posts. They can't all be getting drunk.

P.P.P.S. Streiff apparently thinks that "oh well" constitute a retraction of a fraudulent story. It isn't a retraction at the New York Times. Nor at the Washington Times. You can judge a man by how he handles the truth, especially when it's awkward.

Blob's Park is Back Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Annapolis Capital, October 20, 2008:

Way back on the last Sunday of September 1947, when American soldiers were returning from occupied Germany with a taste for suds, schnitzel and song, the first Oktoberfest ever held in this country was at the beer garden in Jessup.

...

Now the historical treasure and others like it are getting a reprieve. Ten months after the Eggrel family decided to close Blob's Park's Bavarian Biergarten, Mr. Eggrel is pouring money into a massive renovation that will end with a reopening at the end of the year.

Blob's Park opened in 1933, when German immigrant Max Blob settled in Jessup and started a farm. A decade later, he added a bowling alley and a few tables to his farm and opened it the public.

Mr. Blob's niece, Katherine Eggrel Peters, began helping her uncle with the business in 1942, and ran it with her husband, John, and children until her death in April 2007.

One of the most disastrous sociological results of European immigration into the U.S. was the dissolution of European cultural identity in favor of "whiteness."  In time, European immigrants became "white people," losing their cultural heritages in favor of a "white" identity.  It did not happen evenly at all times in all places, but with very few exceptions, Euro-Americans learned to call themselves "white people" or "white Americans" and to enjoy the racial privileges of whiteness.

Had their been some meaningful content to "whiteness" that unified most or all "white people", distinguished them from "non-white people" and did not merely constitute the structure of white privilege itself, this might not have been so bad.  But culturally, the purpose and effect of the white melting pot was caste consolidation at the price of bleaching "white people" of their prior cultural heritage.  I hesitate to use the clumsy vocabulary of modern philosophy but whiteness has no distinguishing content other than its contrast to the non-white "other."

Now certainly some cultural artifacts are "whiter" than others.  But most of what one can identify as "white" is not distinctively "white," i.e. reasonably exclusively white AND reasonably common to all or almost all people who are "white."  Example: country music is overwhelmingly white, but the overwhelming majority of white people outside of the U.S. South don't listen to it, and New York City - the largest radio market in the country - has no country music stations.  Hockey likewise; few black people or white people play it or follow it south of Washington, DC.  What IS common to essentially all "white people" is white privilege and its post-modern aftermath.

I suppose there are a few white people who don't fit this pattern.  Arguably the Amish are not culturally "white" in a certain sense, but they specifically did not integrate into general non-Amish "English" or "Fancy Dutch [German]" culture in Pennsylvania, were and are severe critics of the enslavements practices of this country and essentially do not employ white sociological privilege for any purpose.  Maybe a similar case could be made for some Orthodox Jewish communities in upstate New York.  But even these groups are still included as "white" nominally.

For a while, some European groups did not get the full benefits of whiteness, specifically immigrant groups that were engaged in the lousiest of unskilled and semi-skilled labor.  Hungarians, Irish, some Southern Europeans, even counter-intuitively Swedes in some times and locations were distinguished from the "white caste."  Jews likewise encountered uneven acceptance into the white caste, sufficiently such that the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan not only would not admit Jews but would actively persecute them, notwithstanding the personal example of the Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin.  But in time, to be European-American was to enjoy white caste privilege. Much of the social pressure to "assimilate" was, in reality, pressure to join the white caste at its entrance fee.  To the extent that Euro-Americans don't enjoy white caste privilege, one can often notice the failure to pay the cultural price: faukyre ir refusal to assimilate into the culture of privilege, casting away the prior European identity.  Conversely, one can often see the remnants of the painful awareness of the price of this white caste admission fee in the children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of such immigrants - a zeal for the common (i.e. white) symbols of national identity rarely found in their European counterparts today or 100 years ago, a jingoist chest-beating emphasis on American identity, and mild or deep racism against or antipathy towards African-Americans.  In other words: the core of the "white ethnic" Reagan Democrat voting bloc.

I happen to be German-American, along with a great many Marylanders whose ancestors came over from Germany or its prior constituent states into Baltimore City or northern Anne Arundel County.  I am very happy that Blob's Park will come back, at least until BRAC presses it out of the neighborhood.  The liquidation of regional cultural identity was not good for Euro-Americans.  Those who know of the growth of German nationalism and centralization of power in the sixty-odd years from Bismarck through the end of the Weimar Republic will recall that it was no good whatsoever for Germany either.

Parkville Man Guilty of Threat Against Governor O'Malley Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, October 20, 2008:

A 44-year-old Parkville man accused of sending a threatening e-mail to the governor declined this morning to accept a plea offer of probation before judgment and instead went to trial on the charges. He was found guilty by a jury this afternoon.

Walter C. Abbott Jr., a construction worker, asked the judge to sentence him immediately after the jury returned its verdict. Abbott received a suspended sentenced of six months in prison and two years of unsupervised probation. In addition, Abbott will have to pay a $500 fine and was ordered to stay away from Gov. Martin O'Malley and his family.

...

He added [in his e-mail], "If I ever get close enough to you, I will rap [sic] my hands around your throat and strangle the life from you. This will solve many problems for true AMERICAN'S. Maybe you can send your MEXICAN army after me, you no good AMERICAN SELL OUT [expletive]," according to a copy of the message introduced as evidence at trial.

Abbott signed the letter with his full name, address and phone number. [Emphasis WB&A]

The Lex Luthors of the world are not responsible for most of the crime. It's Dumb and Dumber, around the moment where Jim Carrey gets his tongue stuck to a frozen pole.

Threats against public officials are no laughing matter. Bona fide homicidal threats and angry homicidal ideation and venting look the same. Law enforcement has to investigate all of the above.

I am five years younger than this fool. It just makes me bang my head against the table. This man literally hated both the Governor and, apparently, Mexican-Americans or Mexican immigrants, illegal or legal, more than he loved his own wife. You make a threat against a public official, you run the risk of an real confrontation with his security detail, some of whom are presumably better trained than others.

Washington Post: PG County Business Attempts Suicide By McCain Sign Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Washington Post, October 12, 2008:

The sign went up Sunday evening, bold black letters against the stark white background of the marquee at the Colony South Hotel & Conference Center in Clinton: "Country First. McCain/Palin."

By daybreak, pandemonium had broken loose all across heavily Democratic Prince George's County. Many local supporters of Democrat Barack Obama, jolted by the message as they headed down Branch Avenue on their Monday morning commutes, grabbed cellphones and BlackBerrys to notify friends. Operators of neighborhood e-mail group lists cried foul to their memberships. The NAACP logged calls. Community leaders demanded boycotts of the hotel, a common venue for Democratic events.

"For a business to display a huge McCain-Palin sign in the middle of such a pro-Democratic and pro-Obama area is business suicide," Franklin said.

...

The hotel's owner, Francis P. Chiaramonte, could not be reached at the hotel or at his home. His son, Michael Chiaramonte, chairman of the board of the Prince George's County Business Roundtable, did not return a call to his office or to the roundtable office yesterday.

It is difficult for me to imagine a more aggressive thumb into the eye of Prince George's County's spending decision-makers than to oppose Barack Obama's candidacy. It is breathtakingly stupid marketing.

As the article notes, Prince George's County is 2/3 African-American and over 3/4 Democratic. Furthermore, a large number of voters are "Other" or "Unaffiliated" rather than Republican, perhaps because of the large military presence and the career-related desire to remain politically neutral. Even Charles County to the south of Clinton is majority Democratic, as is almost every jurisdiction that borders Prince George's County (Calvert Democrats hold a plurality, not a majority, of the registrations there.) Unless your clientele is exclusively, I don't know, Mormons or maybe big-game hunters, why choose to antagonize not only a local Democratic customer base but also a group of voters with an unprecedented sense of loyalty and enthusiasm both politically and PERSONALLY for Senator Obama?

Does the owner know where his business is? Is he trying to build up a base of white conservative customers from out of state or from Northern Anne Arundel County 35 miles away? Especially now at the end of the campaign? I don't mean to be cruel here, but I don't get it.

Baltimore Sun: Wide Variances in Life Expectancy Between City Neigborhoods Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, October 16, 200b:

In West Baltimore's impoverished Hollins Market neighborhood, where the average life expectancy is about 63 years, residents shared beers and cigarettes on their front steps at midday yesterday while pedestrians using canes gingerly avoided two dead rats on the street.

Across town in wealthy Roland Park, where residents live on average to be 83, the scene predicably changed. One gray-haired woman rushed to swimming lessons, while a family rode past on bikes and a man with an iPod jogged nearby.

Life expectancy tends to rise with median income, the data show. For every increase of $10,000 in a neighborhood's median household income, residents lived 3.4 years longer, according to Sharfstein. But he noted that even among neighborhoods with similar incomes there are ranges of up to 10 years in life expectancies.

Though the city's poorer neighborhoods tend to be predominantly African-American, the data did not show as strong a relationship between density of black residents and lower life expectancy as other factors such as income, said Caroline Fichtenberg, the Health Department's chief epidemiologist and the project leader.

But since the city is 64 percent African-American, Sharfstein said that all health issues in the city can be viewed through a racial lens.

A number of factors play here.

One of the first is the likelihood of death by homicide. Many who die, die young and die violently, hundreds per year. And the killings are not happening in wealthy, white neighborhoods. HIV/AIDS ditto, for analogous if not identical reasons.

Another major issue is access to basic routine care. If you work a blue collar job, you are increasingly likely to be unable to afford routine health visits for yourself and your family, especially if you work construction and your insurance lapses with seasonal layoffs (and so you don't work long enough to opt in), or you are on COBRA that you can barely afford and then you lose it. While one Republican fool advising John McCain has noted that public emergency rooms must treat everyone regardless of ability to pay so there in a pedantically stupid sense no "uninsured", often it's when the diseases get to their most severe (read: expensive to treat and intractable) state that a patient goes to the ER.

Another is diet. One of the inconveniences of being a low-income urban single parent is that shopping for groceries is a major pain in the ass. If you don't own a car, you can either bus across town with toddlers and then bus back and hoof it holding groceries, toddlers in tow, or you can try to have groceries delivered into the neighborhood through the internet, if you have access and a computer. I am not per se "low income" but am aware of the challenge of shopping with two autistic pre-schoolers, and I only have them two out of twelve days. My ex and I each own cars free and clear, and have internet access and computers in our home. You want a balanced diet of healthy, fresh food? Even if you can afford it, just laying hands on it with no car and no internet is a pain.

No doubt the miserable quality of education in the City at all levels plays a role. If they cannot get basic reading down, I would have no high expectations of balanced nutrition or basic health getting covered at any level.