Bloggers and blogging – Page 32

The missing links

Over the last week I found much to my chagrin that I have to change some of my links because the URL’s were removed. Occasionally this does happen but it’s unusual to have such a large number in such a short time.

Before I go on with my story I think I need to note that, for having such a small population compared to the rest of the states of Maryland and Delaware, our little area that boasts maybe 300,000 people if I stretch the boundaries a little bit may have one of the best blogging scenes for a community of its population in the country. Since I happen to be number one on the influence meter this week, it makes 8 straight weeks an Eastern Shore blog has topped that list, likely because there’s no shortage of controversy here yet we can also put in our two cents on the doings in Annapolis and just down the road in Washington D.C.

And it’s not like these little wars haven’t gone on for quite awhile. Because I was there fairly close to the beginning I’m sort of a self-appointed historian on Eastern Shore blogging and I’ve played referee before as this post attests. Yes, the last line still applies, especially after last week.

Returning to point, my linkings were scrambled because of the order by one local blogger for certain local bloggers which offended him to remove their sites under pain of legal action, a threat that was sliced, diced, and made into Julienne fries by Tim at Gunpowder Chronicle. Some of them have returned and the rest of the links I’ve revised to their new locations. Having been on the receiving end of some of this gentleman’s barbs, I can understand the reasons that several bloggers have taken offense to his methods and attitude.

I’m also grateful to many of these folks who came to my defense when they felt I was being wronged, and as one effort to repay them I’m taking up an invitation I received by the webmaster of the site Pro-Maryland Gazette to contribute. This will be my first crosspost with them, but unlike my frequent posting on Red Maryland these forays to PMG will be limited to the occasional times I check into the local blogging scene. Well, at least I hope they’re limited after I finish this post tonight.

Unlike the many political issues I see in black and white, because of the number of personalities involved there’s a whole lot of gray area. Does Salisbury News always get it right? No, but when he and his associates stick to straight-up reporting and maintain a reasonable amount of fact-checking before running with the post, Joe Albero’s site can be a pretty good resource for local breaking news. (Someone needs to get Joe a roster for the Shorebirds reporting though.) Where most of the detractors tend to disagree are the times when certain personalities and groups are undeservedly brought under fire because they’re perceived to be allies of a particular group Albero is at odds with over issues that weren’t necessarily resolved to his satisfaction several years ago. (Either that or they’re competing BlogNetNews bloggers – sometimes the rivalry’s not so friendly.) And these detractors who make their own valid points diminish their argument when they get too personal or allow attacks via post comments that aren’t really on point but serve solely to trash the target.

While the whole lot of you may think the other side started the argument, I hope you agree it’s beneath all of you to bring it down to the level that it’s gotten to.

However – and it’s one large “however” – we still have a set of court cases to deal with, ones on the docket or threatened to be. While Albero threatened legal action against some of those he deemed to be prime offenders, he’s on the receiving end of two lawsuits brought by local figures who he allegedly offended, cases that are winding their way through local courts. It’s an interesting conundrum – if Albero loses both cases because he’s been judged to have unfairly smeared the characters of the plaintiffs, it gives him ammunition to use in turn against those he’s felt have done the same to him. But if Albero successfully defends himself it weakens any case he could bring against those like “Straight Shooter” of Off The Cuff.

All that being said, I’ve decided to reverse a long-standing philosophy I’ve had of not linking to those sites which don’t link to mine. Obviously I’m not going to have many of the national sites I link to return the favor, at least until I do something they notice. On that score I keep plugging away, but as far as local blogs I’ve decided that the best way for people to judge who’s right and who’s wrong is to go ahead and let them read all the sites for themselves. So what I’ve tried to do is add whatever links I needed to cover both the sites of those who contribute to Salisbury News (some of whom I already had anyway) and some of those who have billed themselves the “Pro-Maryland” bloggers. With two exceptions these will be under the category of “Delmarva bloggers” (The No BS Zone and Maryland Politics Today will be in the “Bloglist” because they’re from the Western Shore.)

So my readers should give both sides a fair reading; meanwhile both sides should bring up the level of discourse and give up on acting like little children. I don’t care who started it, now it’s high time all this “I’m gonna sue you” bullshit finished.

Crossposted on Pro-Maryland Gazette, and if Salisbury News wants to repost this in its entirety Joe has my permission.

By the way, I’m skipping the usual afternoon post tomorrow because this needs to stay on top for maximum exposure.

Am I being stalked?

It’s sort of amazing that over the last week I’ve had four different articles on me over at Salisbury News, with three of them featuring pictures of me at various times over at Perdue Stadium. My friends at Off The Cuff noticed this too (at least the latest incident), and I think I’m now ahead of such Joe Albero enemies as Barrie Tilghman and Wayne Barrall for the month as far as pictures go – hell, I think I’m ahead of most firefighters since the recent fire shots didn’t mention firefighters by name. While I’m flattered to be in such august company and doubly flattered that these pro-Maryland bloggers have noticed this too, I’ll take a few moments and share the real story.

As of just a few days ago, I indeed became a season ticket holder because the company I work for opted not to renew their passes. Fortunately I was able to secure the exact same seat I sat in for the last two seasons when I used the tickets they generously provided for any employee who wanted them…usually I would forgo the fireworks games and such that my cohorts wanted to go to and take the regular old weekday games simply because I like watching baseball. Of course, now I can go to any game I wish and Sunday I actually arrived pretty close to when the gates opened at 1 p.m. Even though it was only 46 degrees out and misty I figured they’d play.

Now, I saw Joe arrive up at the press box level as I was leaving it because I’d walked upstairs to talk with someone – he didn’t see me because we were both heading the same direction and he arrived (or returned) just after the game had been called. I walked down to ask Chris Bitters and confirm a makeup date but he was busy helping with the tarp so I went by the previous answer I’d gotten from another involved employee. (I was told correctly, the makeup game is next Tuesday night beginning at 6:05. They’ll play two 7-inning contests.) And that’s when photofreak Joe struck, unbeknownst to me until I saw the post at noontime yesterday.

You know that Joe might be pretty smart, as somehow he talked somebody with the Shorebirds into giving him press box access. Not too shabby for a blog that is “opinionated only.” So he watches the games for free while I paid for the privilege. But I suppose as a member of the Shorebird Fan Club and pretty loyal patron (in 3+ seasons I’ve made it to about 80-90 games, increasing that number each year) I don’t mind helping out the team and encouraging it to remain here – do you know how many cities would kill to get a minor league baseball team like ours? Anyway, I don’t need a press pass to take my pictures and get the stat copies which help me when I do my Shorebird of the Week so I’ll not begrudge Joe that – if having a press pass makes him feel like a reporter more power to him.

More to the point, I think Joe is looking to corner the local blogging market. Over the last few months what used to be a big four is now a big three because Delmarva Dealings has combined operations with Salisbury News. So G.A. is no longer the target of Joe’s wrath and apparently he’s deemed Bill Duvall to not be a threat anymore, probably because he’s not a BlogNetNews member anyway. It just leaves him and I, and even though my focus is quite a bit different I may be the last threat to his local news blog monopoly. I’m sure he’s seething just a bit when he sees my website and all of my “self-hits” ahead of him in the rankings on some Sundays. I’ll just be content with my usual top 5’s and the occasional number one rank, seems fair to me. I sleep well at night about what I write, even if it is about local music or some other off-the-wall subject he doesn’t care for.

On the other hand, while there have always been a few bloggers out there who called out Joe for some of his more egregious items, their number has grown over the last few months as more and more take issue with his methods and half-truths. To the extent that they are on my side in this fight, I welcome them.

Assuming that Joe continues his coverage of the Shorebirds once the novelty of the new season wears off and other events take precedence in his gathering of news, he and I will be in the same place a lot because I’ll be at most of the games sitting in my usual spot. So I suppose I better dress reasonably and make sure my hair’s combed although typically I have a cap on anyway. But it would be nice that a couple or three times during the season Joe leaves the laptop at home and brings Jennifer and the grandson instead because something tells me the tyke would enjoy seeing Sherman and riding the merry-go-round and playing in the arcade and even watching a little bit of baseball too.

Quit playing reporter and photographer all the time and be a grandparent. Maybe you didn’t care for how I helped to raise my daughter, so show me a better way since someday I’ll be a grandparent too.

Yes, it was an April Fool’s joke…but it was noticed!

Judging from the readership numbers today, a lot of you read this morning’s post about the ersatz energy breakthrough. It has an interesting story behind it.

I got an e-mail from Bob McCarty about 10 days ago with his intention to pull the April Fool’s prank and asking if I would help him spread it. I thought it was pretty humorous and agreed, so I set it to come up later this morning because I wanted it to be not as obvious as if I’d placed it at 12:02 a.m. as he suggested. Then I wrote the parts around the blockquote just to give it a little more local flavor and hopefully a bit more believability. I’m not sure how the other bloggers who also helped out did their take on it, but hopefully they had a bit of fun with the spoof too.

Bob’s prank did get mentioned on the news.com website as part of a larger story about April Fool’s pranks, so he was excited about it. And what the heck, it hopefully gave us all a laugh after all the serious news about things like this Baltimore Sun story by Andrea K. Walker about a grocery strike averted.

So tomorrow – or later today, since this will serve as an early midday post – I’ll get back to other more weighty (perhaps a poor choice of words given my photoworthiness) topics. There’s a bit of a backlog of interesting stuff on my plate I need to get to.

Doing Joe two better

If you’re here because you followed a link, read on and you’ll get it. First, the title subject:

Regularly readers of Salisbury News will notice that Joe Albero does a “one year ago” post highlighting whatever was in the news that day a year prior. Sometimes it’s a nice reminder while other times we’d rather forget.

In my case, April 1st is my blogiversary (if that’s indeed a word) and tonight’s post marks three years of this personal writing odyssey. I shudder to think just how many words I’ve typed out over the time, my best guess from knowing the number and approximate length of my average post is roughly 600,000 words. There have been close to 900 actual posts here on monoblogue (this is post number 902 but not all have been posts, that number also counts a few pages I’ve created) as well as the 100+ I did for its predecessor blog called ttown’s right wing conspiracy, prior to buying my own domain name and server space.

What I’ll do this evening is link back to the other two anniversary posts as well as the “Introduction” post that started this whole process in the wee hours of April 2, 2005. (The Blogger account was created on the 1st though, so I celebrate on April Fool’s Day.)

In 2007, I called the occasion Blogiversary number 2. It’s amazing that I’ve cranked out almost 500 posts since then.

2006 brought what I called One year in the books. Man, that was post number 85 so obviously I skipped a few days in 2005-06.

And here’s the post that started it all, Introduction. Dig the color scheme I ended up with. It’ll be interesting to see my count this Friday because I still have my Site Meter active there and get 3-6 views a week.

I hope you enjoy the trips down my personal Memory Lane.

Also, I had an interesting challenge from Oceanshaman. I’m supposed to write a six-word memoir. So much for being verbose, eh? I already linked to the post so number 3 is accomplished, and I’m choosing to omit any items for number 2. In a moment I’ll get to number 4, but here’s the six words.

Marching to my own personal drummer.

I think it fits pretty well, don’t you?

Now the tough part, because some of the five I’d choose were taken. So I’m going to expand the range a bit with other regional bloggers.

David at Soccer Dad, one of my earliest supporters and provider of much-welcomed encouragement;

Attila at Pillage Idiot, who helped to start the Maryland Bloggers Alliance I belong to;

Mike Netherland at the appropriately named Mike’s Nether Land, a heckuva nice guy and fellow Harris supporter early on;

Elbert at That’s Elbert with an E, because he’s a frequent commenter who runs a real Delaware blog;

As for the fifth one, I’m going to cheat a bit and not directly link to it because it’s my daughter’s blog and hers is a restricted blog. But she’ll be interesting to hear from.

There, folks, is your fab five and it’ll be intriguing to see what happens when I refer back to this in a year’s time.

An energy breakthrough?

If we’re hearing news about a trucker’s strike today, you can thank the alert nose for news that Missouri-based blogger Bob McCarty has and writes about at his site, called (fittingly enough) Bob McCarty Writes. (By the way, he followed up on that yesterday with an opinion post.)

I get an occasional e-mail from him when he has a post he feels I might be interested in, and today he sent me word of an interesting scientific breakthrough. I guess I have to learn to do more than hunt-and-peck typing, but given the rates Delmarva Power charges this certainly would be worth looking into:

Researchers at the American Petroleum Research Institute’s Laboratory for Fuels announced today they have developed an economical means via which they can use the kinetic energy generated by users of computer keyboards to make a dent in the nation’s energy bill.

“The fact that many Americans spend eight hours or more per day typing on computer keyboards caused us to explore the feasibility of harnessing the energy being expended by computer users as they type,” said Dr. Isaac M. Postor, CEO at the St. Louis-based institute which receives a majority of its funding from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

“What we found is that the typical American office worker executes an average of 20,000 keystrokes per day,” Postor continued. “When harnessed using the nanotechnology we’ve developed, that number of keystrokes can power a 60-watt light bulb for one hour.”

Not yet named, that nanotechnology device appears similar in size and dimensions to a typical USB flash drive and, in fact, plugs into a computer’s USB port, Postor explained. The difference, however, is that this flash drive features a thin cord protruding from one end which plugs into any standard 110-volt electrical outlet.

“In essence, small nanogenerators inside this device enable computer users to send electricity back to their utility provider and thereby reduce their power consumption by several dollars per month,” Postor added. “Since more than half of Americans use computer on a regular — if not daily — basis, this device promises to make a significant dent in the ever-increasing energy costs.”

Postor expects to be able to market the device at a suggested retail price under $30, meaning that most users will realize returns on investment within one to two years, depending upon the amount of time spent at the keyboard.

For more information, click here to visit the institute’s web site.

Let’s see, between doing two posts a day at monoblogue and the typing I do at my “real” job, plus the e-mails I send out to friends – yeah, I think I’m looking at a pretty handsome payback. We’ll see how Dr. Postor’s research works out in a year’s time.

Again, thanks to Bob McCarty for bringing this to our attention.

Cutting a public figure

I actually had a different post in mind for this evening, but it can wait.

I’ve become the subject of a free-fire zone between Joe Albero and “Straight Shooter” at Off The Cuff. After Joe put up this post with a picture of me in what could appear to be an odd if not compromising situation, Straight Shooter replied thusly. Of course, it all started with this (sort of) tongue-in-cheek post I did. (Actually, with Joe’s wealth and the energy he puts into his blogging effort, he could be a politician – albeit in the William Donald Schaefer mold. It would be a test to see just how good of a businessman he really is, would it not?)

Anyway, the debate centers over whether I am a “public figure”. Obviously, having a website where I put my views in the public domain can make me a target of criticism. Add in the fact that I’m an elected official and that’s another piece of the argument in favor of Joe’s side. While people may not always walk up on the street and recognize me, those in the political realm usually do. My website doesn’t have my picture on it, maybe someplace it should. I do have pretty much a face shot on my Myspace page, linked to the right column. (As a bonus, I have a good theme song.)

Sometimes I think Joe keeps a large file of pictures of various people and items that he brings out when he feels a need to (like event anniversaries); in this case he pulled out a pretty recent picture, one which I’ll explain the circumstances with momentarily. While I like to take a lot of photos myself, generally I take them in connection with an event like a political gathering, baseball game, or band concert. Once in awhile I’ll do the usual tourist thing if I’ve been someplace new, but generally pictures that appear on monoblogue are of subjects I describe above. (I have a camera filled with shots of 12 bands from last night and more from today.)

Now as for my appearance, that I can’t do a whole lot about with the exception of weight. Considering I was 330 pounds at one point and now weigh about 260-270 (still slowly losing) I’m certainly not of an average weight but aside from the large middle and a mild case of asthma I’m blessed with pretty good health – further, like most people I’m aware that I have a family history of various maladies so I make sure that I have those particular items checked out on a regular basis.

I do have to say that some of the insinuations about which way Joe goes or that he has a double life spent at the Park n’ Ride are disgusting and I don’t believe them anyway. As for me, I’ll just say that people who truly know me know which way I look as far as THAT is concerned.

The picture of me Joe used was taken a couple weeks back at the Shorebirds Fan Fest. I actually never saw Joe and didn’t think he’d made it to the event until I saw some of his other Fan Fest pictures a day or two later. At that time, we in the Shorebirds Fan Club were taking down some of the games we’d ran, the pools in question were those used for the duck pond game and the treasure hunt game (it was filled with sand.) The gentleman whose top of his head you see was picking up the pool to carry overhead (had his back to me) and I believe I was getting ready to pick up a pail of sand or something else to carry down to the truck of the volunteer who’d provided the items.

You see, while Joe was there taking pictures (and I wonder if his grandson was there, he’d have enjoyed it) I was working one of the games in our carnival for most of the four hours the Fan Fest was ongoing. I was happy to take some of my Saturday morning and help out the Shorebirds Fan Club because I’m proud to be a member and officer. I didn’t have my camera on me to record the event but I did my best to promote it here because I’m a huge baseball fan and the Shorebirds are my adopted hometown team. Joe alluded to my post here but instead of linking to my post asked me to comment on his blog about it. (Maybe I would have but I didn’t read Salisbury News until after the fact!)

Above all, while I didn’t really want to delve into these sorts of accusations and innuendos, I thought it would be better to have my side known. I do appreciate those who have commented in my defense and hopefully I have posted this in a manner that reflects the way I attempt to write my site – with class, dignity, and a few subtle attempts at humor. To paraphrase what has been said on other occasions in other venues, if you don’t like what’s on monoblogue there’s a big “X” in the corner you can click on. But the same goes for Salisbury News and if Joe’s out of line there’s other news sources out there you can turn to that stay on a higher road.

A draft movement

Pity the Delaware Republican Party. It seems that no one wants to run for Governor there under their banner even though this year the governor’s chair is an open seat because current Governor Ruth Ann Minner is a lame duck due to term limits. At the moment there are two GOP candidates in David Graham and Mike Protack, but neither seem to have much chance if you believe this blogger. Since Terry Spence, who was mentioned in the piece, decided not to run and both Graham and Protack were also-rans in the 2004 GOP primary to eventual nominee Bill Lee, perhaps it’s time for someone else to throw his hat into the ring, and I know just the guy. His name is Joe Albero.

You may say, but he does the Salisbury News website…yes, but he actually lives in Delaware. And think of all the advantages he could bring as Governor of Delaware.

First and foremost, with the relatively small population in Delaware and all the millions he’s made and is making with the rush orders for his products, he certainly could self-finance his campaign. That would save the Delaware GOP a ton of money that they may be able to use on shoring up Mike Castle’s chances as well as building the party for future races. You know, Senator Biden can’t live forever.

Secondly, he’s on a first name basis with our own Governor, Martin O’Malley, so he has that leg up. After all, he has claimed that Martin reads Salisbury News on a daily basis. And while he may not be familiar with Mike Castle, Joe Biden, or Tom Carper he certainly knows the odds-on favorite for Congress on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in Andy Harris and has been hedging his bets by getting to know Frank Kratovil a little bit too. I understand that neither of these two would represent Delaware but that is where we in Maryland go to buy our big-ticket items and play the slots so we sort of know you already, kind of like kissing cousins.

Most importantly though, Joe is an expert on everything. If he would only run for Governor, citizens of the First State would never have to worry about overspending at local fire departments from sending too much apparatus to a scene, or driving at excessive speed to arrive. Citizens could also sleep much better at night assured that the workmanship on construction jobs would be first-rate, especially when it came to concrete slabs. The wastewater in Delaware would be the cleanest in the country since Joe knows his way around those plants and could point out all the flaws which would need to be corrected.

Furthermore residents of the First State would be the most prepared in the country for the next Great Depression sure to come since he keeps predicting it! Between his business expertise and his economic forecasting, soon Delaware would reach new heights as a job magnet. And as the population grows, particularly with refugees from the Salisbury area who are already familiar with his attributes and move across the line to bask in his leadership, he could easily week after week capture the award for the most influential political blog in the state.

Yes, Barrie Tilghman, Jim Rapp, Louise Smith, and others would become fond memories for Joe as those who got him started on his political career. After all, why mess with a small town when you can use your website to take on an entire state’s worth of politicians? Anyone who crosses him in Delaware’s legislature would be certain to incur Joe’s wrath and would soon deduce the error of his or her ways – soon every piece of legislation Joe favored would pass unanimously lest they receive an unfavorable mention in the redubbed Delaware News. Within months he could have the newspapers in Delaware straightened out as well, but eventually they’d fail because all they’d deliver is old news while Joe could have an entire state government of contributors to work with.

Citizens of Delaware, think of the possibilities! It’s not too late to draft Joe Albero and save not only the Delaware Republican Party but the state itself from a bland menu of politics-as-usual as practiced by those already in the race.

All that and more is the promise – even better is that I managed to express it in a small enough number of words to satisfy even his criteria. The end of this sentence is word number 750.

A promise fulfilled and a milestone

On Saturday I promised more pictures and a review from Friday night’s show I attended. If the links don’t work correctly you can go here as well and follow over to my Myspace blog. It’s the more personal side of monoblogue; besides you can listen to Semiblind over there because they do the theme song I selected for my site. I’ll be checking them out Saturday night as part of Skip Dixxon’s Spring Luau so join me over at the Steer Inn in Ocean Pines.

Or, if you want a different set of young people to hang out with don’t forget tonight is the Lower Shore Young Republican Club meeting at the Salisbury Chamber of Commerce building (144 East Main Street), beginning at 7 p.m. It’s the same place we meet for the Wicomico County Republican Club, except I suspect at least a portion of the group will make a beeline to someplace more rowdy afterward. Us old folks generally go home after WCRC meetings but I only do that so I can post about them. For now I’m sparing the LSYR’s that same posting treatment, but I will plug their meeting for those interested who are 18-40 or close enough for government work like me.

By now someone is reading this and wondering what sort of meds I’m on, going from heavy metal to Republicanism in the space of a paragraph. Well, I’d have to guess people like that sort of thing to at least some extent because like a car odometer today should be the day monoblogue flips the 100,000 mark on readership according to my Site Meter. In reality I’ve passed the mark already because I didn’t start my Site Meter until about six months (and probably a couple thousand readers) after I began this odyssey but it’s fun to see just who will be the historic visitor. Yes, I was hoping this would happen a few months earlier but this site’s still done better than I honestly expected it would – I was excited by triple-digits in a week when I began, now three digits is an off week.

And on one final note – just one week until I begin that annual monoblogue tradition known as Shorebird of the Week, so be ready!

Lunchtime reading

I came across a couple posts yesterday which I thought were worthy of mention and comment of my own. The beautiful thing about WordPress is that I can have them open in a new window so you can read these posts I link to then come back and see if you agree with my assessments.

I’ll start out with a post by Richard Faulknor, who writes a fairly new blog called BlueRidgeForum. Yesterday he pointed out GOP legislators he called the “CASA 8”, referring to Republicans voting in favor of the advocacy group for Latino immigrants (legal and illegal) based in the Washington, DC area.

They voted not to withdraw an appropriation of $1 million from the FY2009 budget for this group, despite the budget woes we’re facing and the fact many other deserving organizations will get nothing. Among the CASA 8 was local Delegate Page Elmore, who also cast a vote for the bloated O’Malley budget as I noted as part of yesterday morning’s “Odds and ends” post.

I’m hoping 2010 will be an opportunity for a change in District 38A. If Andy Harris can pull off a win against an entrenched incumbent by playing to the Shore’s conservative base, perhaps a conservative candidate could contest the seemingly moderate Delegate Elmore in the primary. Personally I like to have a choice in the primary election regardless of the merits of the incumbent and in this case an alternative is sorely needed.

Speaking of Senator Harris, yesterday the Daily Times had a front page story above the fold on Republicans who support Democrat opponent Frank Kratovil. The AP piece by Kristen Wyatt focused on one dissatisfied GOP voter, a fact that was not lost on my fellow Red Maryland contributor G.A. Harrison in his Delmarva Dealings post yesterday.

I don’t suspect Kristen Wyatt or anyone else at either the AP or the Daily Times is going to look very hard for a Democrat who would support Andy Harris. I’m sure there’s many out there because conservatives continually win in this area despite the fact we on the Republican side labor under a disadvantage in terms of party affiliation. (By the way, it was also noted in Faulknor’s post that Senator Harris was the Senate sponsor of the budget amendment to strip funding from CASA de Maryland in the FY2009 budget.)

I wrote a few weeks ago about some of the factors in this Congressional race and key among them is the fact that Frank Kratovil is pretty much a blank slate as far as issues are concerned. Certainly the Democrat can talk like a conservative on a number of issues but if he’s going to do that, you may as well elect the true conservative and not a Johnny-come-lately. Frank’s staying pretty silent about other stances on issues which may not resonate as well but with the help of sympathetic media is defining himself rather than allowing Andy Harris to define him. (I’ll define Frank Kratovil – talks tough but would vote with the liberals in Congress at least 70% of the time. If he wins you can make book on that.)

So take a look at what Faulknor and Harrison have to say and feel free to comment both here and on their sites.

Odds and ends no. 12

This morning there’s not a lot of news out there, so I’ll place a smorgasbord of small items and updates in this post.

First is a mini-Election Calendar. Tonight I’m inviting you to our monthly Wicomico County Republican Club meeting starting at 7 p.m. with the social hour and getting down to business at 7:30 p.m. under our newly elected President Marc Kilmer (an occasional monoblogue commenter who I butt heads with from time to time. Despite that he’s a good guy and I look forward to serving under him.) Our speaker this month will be John Cannon, and hopefully he’ll be armed with information about the state of Wicomico County as we struggle with a number of issues like Landfillgate and its associated audit, the Davis Ruark situation, slowing tax receipts, budgetary dealings, privatization of liquor sales, and the possibility of a new Civic Center. (Think we could hit up Perdue for naming rights? That may bring in a few million.)

And just as an FYI, our next two speakers will be fresh out of this year’s General Assembly session. Delegate Addie Eckardt will be the guest speaker on April 28 and after a break for Memorial Day Delegate Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio takes her turn on June 23.

The other meeting of note next week will be the Lower Shore Young Republicans meeting at 7:00 on Thursday, March 27. They’ve gotten off to an impressive start and have grown enough to need a regular meeting site that can accomodate those interested. Both meetings will be held at the Salisbury Chamber of Commerce, 144 E. Main Street in Salisbury.

Sticking with politics, I got a note from Delegate Rick Impallaria (via the ever-handy Gail Bartkovich) that alerted me to how the House of Delegates voted on the FY2009 budget. While it passed with 34 votes against, Delegate Impallaria notes that is the highest vote total against in the six years he’s been in the General Assembly. Of the nine Eastern Shore Delegates, six of the seven Republicans voted “no” – the only exception being Delegate Page Elmore of District 38A. Not surprisingly, neither of the two Democrats voted against the O’Malley budget.

To change the subject drastically, sometimes monoblogue gets results. On Friday I lamented the absence of new posts on Karen’s A Woman’s Point of View. Yesterday she returned with a new post and a little credit to me for bringing her back. So enjoy reading and encourage her to write some more! You won’t be sorry.

Last Tuesday I was excited about my alma mater‘s women’s basketball team getting to the Big Dance – alas, it was a short trip as Miami University lost to Louisville 81-67. The other bummer was having the game on at the same time as Maryland vs. Coppin State so I didn’t get to watch. Our men’s team lost in their tournament as well, so it was a tough week all around. But the Miami hockey team did make the 16-team NCAA field despite losing to Michigan in their conference tournament (Central Collegiate Hockey Association) and will be the #1 seed in the Northeast Region, playing #4 seed Air Force in their opener.

So that’s a nice little breakfast buffet of stuff. Tonight I’ll discuss the WCRC meeting and hopefully have some good info about how Wicomico County is doing.

More female bloggers, and other stuff

When this actually arrives at the top of monoblogue, hopefully I’ll be compiling the photos for the next in my semi-regular series called “Weekend of local rock.” (Did you really think I sat at this computer during all of the waking hours I’m not at work? Please.) In the meantime I wanted to take this opportunity to point out another in what hopefully will be a continuing series and comment about recent changes here on monoblogue.

About 10 days back I wrote on two excellent posts put up by blogger John Hawkins, who hosts the Right Wing News blog. One of them was about blogging while female, and looked at five of the most prominent ladies in the blogosphere. On Tuesday John put out an additional list of five, a list that includes a young lady from close by my old neck of the woods (just up the pike in southeast Michigan), Emily Zanotti of American Princess.

It got me to thinking about female bloggers here on Delmarva. Probably my favorite local lady blogger is Karen from A Woman’s Point of View but sadly she’s not been posting lately. And of all the 40-plus members of the Maryland Bloggers Alliance, I think, give or take, only ten are women. I’m sure it’s not a majority since I’ve known most of my peers in that group for awhile. While I’m certainly not saying that everything should be equal down the middle genderwise in the blogging world, a few more female voices wouldn’t be a bad thing.

I also wanted to make a point about what I call my increased operational tempo. I’ve already noticed an uptick in readership since I went to a format of two posts a day and hopefully it’s something I can maintain over the summer because readership tends to decline as the weather gets warmer and people spend less time sitting at the computer perusing the blogosphere. It’s something I’ve found is not all that hard to maintain and will probably continue for the near-term future, at least as long as I have material I find interesting and worth commenting on. Likely I’ll shift slightly to having at least two posts Sunday through Thursday and one post each on Friday and Saturday – it matches up with my best readership days.

But I appreciate the increased readership and particularly the excellent reaction I’ve seen in my comments. Unlike some other websites, those who leave comments on monoblogue tend to do so in a civilized, mature fashion. Hopefully it will stay that way. I tend to allow the vast majority of comments through and thus far it’s worked out well. Keep it up!

A leading linkee

This includes a *shameless plug alert*.

I got an e-mail from Elbert last night and it gave me a laugh, so I give him the hat tip and a fresh 180-day cycle. You’ll see what I mean in a moment.

But as he said:

Joe’s gonna be mad and have a tantrum when he sees this.

What he’s referring to is a post he came across on ShoreBlogs, one where Technorati rankings are discussed. According to them, monoblogue has the largest number of links among Delmarva bloggers, with 73 sites linking to mine. Salisbury News is second with just 54.

I’m sure some will argue that, yeah, it’s because you crosspost to Red Maryland all the time. Nope, sorry, that only counts as one link regardless of how many articles I crosspost. While it’s true that each time I do so restarts that 180 day clock, the same can be said for the multitude of sites linked up with Joe’s. I suspect I do pick up a little extra by being in the Maryland Bloggers Alliance, but not all of those blogs have our widget so it doesn’t always accrue to my benefit.

I just take this as a sign that I’m doing something right in all of this because people continue to find my site worth reading. It’s also why I’m trying to increase my operating tempo to 2 posts a day during the week so there’s more variety in what I write about and incentive to visit more than once a day. Sure, it will still be predominantly political but I’m trying to work in other issues and viewpoints that you may not have seen or heard before and commenting as appropriate.

By the way, have you noticed how Joe posts every few days a picture of what the price of gasoline was a year or so prior? Over the last 2 years, I’ve done the same with grocery prices in posts I call the market basket. When I do my shopping next month and see how the prices on the list compare to prior periods, I’ll begin to add the price of a gallon of gasoline as a seperate comparison item too. So I’ll give credit to Mr. Albero for that part of the idea; however, I’m really scared to see what inflation has done to the price of groceries when I do my shopping. I think it’ll be brutal.

Now for the shameless plug. Tomorrow morning I’ll again be on with Bill Reddish, doing the AM Salisbury program at 7:40 (WICO-AM 1320). Truth be told, I’m actually the spot starter for the slot as the originally scheduled person was a scratch. But I’ll do my best to make it interesting and I think I’m going to focus on local and state politics this time rather than the Congressional race. You know I have a lot to say, it’ll just be a matter of saying it well and keeping on point. Check it out and see how well I do.