Personal stuff – Page 18

A slow evolution

With this week being the runup to Thanksgiving, don’t look for a whole lot of news on the MDGOP Chair front. To me, it seems like most people who wanted to get in and make a serious effort are already making the rounds and the splash they need to enter the race.

As you can see on the sidebar, we have somewhere around a half-dozen people who want to be Chair. But now they get the hard part of convincing a majority of the nearly 300 members of the respective Central Committees that their vision for the MDGOP is the correct one.

And it’s not just me asking (although I may be the only one who gets a vote.) You know my wish list but Richard Faulknor at Blue Ridge Forum has his own thoughts, as does Ann Corcoran at Potomac TEA Party Report. Matt Newman at Old Line Elephant interviewed Sam Hale, who is portraying himself as the TEA Party candidate, for a RedState piece.

But all these outsiders will have to crack the inner circle of the party to gain influence – while there’s a lot of new influence in the Central Committee, we still have the larger part of the group that allowed their problems to take root and grow. The ‘establishment’ will still be in force and may be another obstacle to overcome.

Blogservations

To begin with, you may have noticed the survey I had on the sidebar. I wanted to have something of local interest to test a hypothesis I had…of course, then I latched onto a statewide story and didn’t let it go. So I actually ended up with fewer Salisbury readers than I had when I started (as a percentage, anyway.) So much for my theory!

Strangely enough, the survey was about two other local bloggers who focus on local issues and would presumably have a predominantly local readership. Well, I don’t know about their percentage of local readership but I know mine is pretty good – the plurality of my readers come from Salisbury, but they indeed come from all over Maryland. By the way, I was right in the fact that most people don’t like those two bloggers (if they even know who they are.) They’ve been known to be a touch on the vicious side and it rubs people the wrong way.

But I’ve noticed of late that the Delmarva Dealings site is no longer online. G.A. has taken a hiatus before but I don’t think his site actually went offline; I think he just didn’t post. So I don’t know if he’s just taking time off or washing his hands of the situation entirely. Maybe those two rub him the wrong way too.

Anyway, he does have a political perspective that’s being missed so hopefully he’ll be back soon.

In print: Large field lining up for state GOP chair

I love it when they get the name AND the website right:

“For a party that everybody thought was kind of dead on Election Day, there’s a lot of people that sure want to lead it,” said Michael Swartz, a member of the Wicomico County Republican Central Committee who operates Monoblogue, a conservative political blog.

This is one of the lead paragraphs in a story by writer Alan Brody in the Gazette this morning. I spoke with Alan yesterday afternoon as he apparently was putting the piece to bed.

It is sort of amazing that, when you speak for almost 23 minutes (according to the timer on my cel phone), you only get a couple good quotes out of the deal. Having done a little bit of journalism myself, that aspect of the business still makes me shake my head. And certainly that’s no criticism of Alan, who I think did a nice job of selecting my money quotes; it’s just my observation on the process.

I was impressed with what young Sam Hale said on the subject of Mary Kane, which unknowingly served to bolster my point that Kane is the favorite – well, it’s hers to lose anyway.

But one point I made in my conversation with Alan is that each candidate will likely have a bloc of voters they believe they can count on – Kane is probably working from the base of Montgomery County and their 48 allotted votes, a number which dwarfs other county delegations but is just a fraction of the nearly 300 who will be voting on December 11.

This also allows me to work in a tidbit I learned from Audrey Scott’s “Message from the Chair” yesterday:

We have 131 new (county Central Committee) members and 139 returning members for a nice balance of old and new. This represents a 48% turnover, which is roughly half and an ideal situation for continuity and fresh ideas.

The number is only elected members; some counties have a few vacancies which still aren’t filled. At ‘full strength’ the number is about 290 members. Also unknown is how many ‘new’ members are returning after a hiatus; for example our Central Committee has a ‘new’ member who was previously in office during the 1990’s. My best guess is that around 100 of the newbies have those ‘fresh ideas’ Scott speaks of. Now THAT is a formidable voting bloc!

Personally, I think by the time all is said and done we will have between two and four candidates to choose from. Some of the nearly one dozen names we’re dropping right now won’t have the support they think they have once December arrives while others will say “thanks, but no thanks” in the next week or two as the Gazette story recounts Larry Hogan did. But it likely won’t be a walkover like we had with Audrey Scott being elected midstream a year ago; this one may be more like the RNC election of Michael Steele with multiple candidates and ballots.

All I know is that we’re going to have a spirited convention, which belies the perception of a party that was “kind of dead on Election Day.”

An honor to be nominated…

To be honest, I completely forgot about this but some good Samaritan took a moment to nominate this site for a Mobbie (one of Maryland’s Outstanding Blogs) in an annual contest held by the Baltimore Sun. Naturally, I’m nominated in the Politics category. I guess one can vote for my site here, if not just shuffle down to the politics category and vote for me there. (The icon is on my site now.)

(Yes, I know it’s a cheap way for the Sun to build its e-mail list, but humor me on this, okay? I’d like to finish closer to the top than to the bottom and represent the Eastern Shore since mine is the only blog from around here I recognize.)

And who knows? Maybe I’ll win the category – people tell me I have talent for this writing thing and it’s a good way to be recognized.

Update: For the record, there were only 22 political entries this year. Here’s how they stacked up, and I even looked up last year’s results as they were applicable. [Those results are in (parentheses) – most nominees are new this year.]

The Hedgehog Report
Deaf Politics
Steve Charing OUTspoken
Tales of Two Cities (1)
HoCo Rising
Cross Purposes
The Mobtown Shank
monoblogue (9)
Baltimore Independent Examiner
Red Maryland (4)
Darkness Rising: Joe Steffen’s Rants and Raves (5)
Baltimore Spokes
Maryland Politics Watch (13)
PunditMom
Anthropo-con
Baltimore Criminal Justice Blogger Page Croyder
Baltimore Organ
Loud American
Oliver Willis (14)
The Sundries Shack
Annapolis Capital Punishment (2)
PG Monitor

Friday night videos – episode 50

What better way to celebrate half a hundred than kicking out the jams!

Normally I stick to local groups but this is an exception. I dedicate this to all Maryland Democrats and those who voted for them.

I know the song is called ‘Bound for the Floor’ but I always refer to it as the Democrat song.

Another staple of these musical voyages is the Christian metal rockers Not My Own. They get a little more melodic to open this one called ‘Sink or Swim’.

In that same slow-to-fast vein, the Delaware-based band 13:1 plays an old song called ‘Angel’.

A few weeks back I featured a local band called Naylor Mill. This video is from an acoustic show they did about a year ago here in town.

I hope the lady got over her cough…the perils of live music I suppose.

I want to reach back to my own archives and grab a couple gems I think need to be played again. The first one is from Crookedfinger.

The other archive clip (it’s funny I use the term when my Youtube channel is barely a year old, but it is what it is) comes from my friends in Semiblind and their take on ‘Hotel California.’

They’ve been a staple of my ‘Weekend of Local Rock’ series, which sort of gave you the idea I like live music around here.

Finally, I’m debuting this one recorded last month at the Good Beer Festival. Closing out the festival on the main stage was the hard rock of Lower Class Citizens with ‘Keep On’.

This was a little bit different version of the song but it still rocked. And ‘Keep On’ is what this series will do, whether it will be for another 50 episodes or even more.

The aftermath

Well, for one, my page looks a lot emptier. No need for the election links anymore and I took my monoblogue Accountability Project page private. It will return for the 2011-14 session at the appropriate time, although I have some ideas now on how to improve it and make it more user-friendly.

Obviously some people voted against their best interests. For example, how could the voters in Frederick County dump a former Legislative All-Star in Alex Mooney for a guy whose score will likely be less than half of his?

Locally, we replaced a retiring state Senator with a nice MAP rating in the 70’s with a guy who will likely be in the teens or twenties – is that very smart? Hard to believe the same voters who elected two conservatives in Mike McDermott and Charles Otto would fall for the absolute “I’m just as conservative as you” b.s. Jim Mathias spouted in all those mailings, brought to you courtesy of the Baltimore boys and special interests.

Instead of gaining State Senators, the GOP lost two so now they have an even dozen. At least we may have gotten the Democrats under 100 seats in the General Assembly, but 43-98 is little better than 37-104.

So I guess we regroup and look at victories. We did contribute our little bit to the 60-plus seat sea change in the House by electing Andy Harris. It will be interesting to see what Frank Kratovil does in the lame-duck session and how he votes. Think his staff will be courteous if you call to complain?

Perhaps this is a Pyrrhic victory, but the Maryland GOP can finally move out from under the shadow of Bob Ehrlich now. We have candidates who ran statewide and may have bright futures as conservative lights in Jim Rutledge and Brian Murphy – we can build from their experiences. (I’m not sure Eric Wargotz quite fits in the “conservative” mold so I didn’t include him.) Nor should I exclude Charles Lollar, who did plenty to piss off Steny Hoyer – and that’s a good thing. We actually may be seeing the beginnings of a statewide bench, even in defeat.

What needs to happen in the next four years, though, is for the Maryland GOP to take a conservative stand on fiscal issues and appeal to the pocketbook. (Yes, we all have social concerns but we need to get into a position of influence first.) Look at what other successful states like Texas do and bring those ideas to the hopper here in Maryland. Sure, they will be shot down and locked in the committee chair’s drawer at first but activism can make them prevail.

Simply put, the time is not now to be silenced but instead to become the squeaky wheels.

I wrote a few days ago about the situation in 2014. With Martin O’Malley out due to term limits, there’s going to be a number of statewide candidates itching to move into Government House and abandoning their previous posts. It’s going to be difficult for Democrats to enforce discipline and tell certain politicians who have spun their wheels for two terms in statewide office or served awhile in the General Assembly or Congress to wait their turn.

And we all know nature abhors a vacuum. Guess which party can position itself as the fiscally conservative alternative?

Of course, we have a number of traps set for us. Redistricting, since it will be controlled by Democrats, will place us at the hugest of disadvantages. Look for heretofore “safe” Republican districts to become as large as the law allows and attempts made to spread out the small pockets of Democrat voters (like in towns such as Salisbury) among more than one district to negate the GOP advantage. Conversely, areas like Montgomery County will have small districts and try to isolate GOP-leaning areas within a sea of Democratic voters.

We also aren’t going to see a friendly press anytime soon. How much of an effect do you think the phony polls which had Bob Ehrlich down 14 points had on GOP turnout across the bay?

It seems to me that the great GOP turnout locally was somewhat negated by Democrats “staying home” – in other words they started with O’Malley and kept pushing the “D” button down the ticket. The only exception seemed to be Matt Maciarello. I thought Bob Ehrlich would need 25% of Democrats to win, but when his number is only in the 50’s in Wicomico County it’s apparent that he only scored a few points among Democrats. While O’Malley won the same five counties as he did last time, Ehrlich’s percentage went down in 18 of 24 counties. I wonder if a more conservative candidate (who presented a clearer choice and didn’t have a previous record) would have done better.

In the meantime, we have work to do. The next opportunity to make a difference could be as soon as tomorrow.

Oh, one other observation while I have your attention.

I read a criticism on The Salisbury Grinch about the candidate videos other local sites did and how poorly they were seen. In truth, many had under 50 views – by comparison, the AFP protest video I did had over 1,200 because it was picked up nationally. If you totaled up the viewership of the 20 videos he cites, it still doesn’t match the number which saw mine because it was exposed to a wider national audience through Pajamas Media.

It seems to me that for all the heat not a lot of light was shed. One cannot win an election by internet alone and perhaps these candidates would have been much better off spending the time recording an interview making phone calls or knocking on doors. Obviously they didn’t realize it at the time and perhaps wanted to make sure they got on that newfangled internet bandwagon.

We as bloggers often think that we have the eyes and ears of the community, but in many cases these interviews were more to show how important we were as opposed to focusing on the candidate. When I used a series of candidate interviews over the summer from the Right Coast blog, the reason I liked them was because it wasn’t about personality. Joe Ollinger’s video was similar because he narrated it himself. (His channel got over 1,300 views but the video is no longer available.) Since my specialty isn’t sitting in front of a video camera sharing my thoughts, I chose not to create any videos.

So we bring down the curtain on Election 2010, with the next up being Salisbury’s local municipal election next spring. After the holidays we’ll know how that race will shake out as three City Council seats (Cohen, Comegys, Smith) become available. I’ll surely devote some coverage to it but there will be other important things going on as well, so don’t stray far now that the election is over.

Are you ready for the next step?

Chances are when you read this tomorrow will be Election Day, since I’m writing this shortly before midnight.

It’s been a tremendously long campaign since it really began about the time the TEA Parties began in the spring of 2009. Everyone involved believed the government had finally overstepped its bounds after a series of debacles which began under the Bush Administration and overlapped into President Obama’s tenure. In their eyes, more spending and government weren’t the answer for kickstarting a moribund economy.

Locally, I’ve seen the impact of this movement both on and off the ballot. All three local parties have at least one candidate who was inspired to take part in the political process thanks to the TEA Party movement. And although neither the Brewingtons (Julie and Mike) nor Chris Lewis was successful in their aspirations for legislative office, it can be argued that the TEA Party has affected the local Republican Party. We have a lot of new blood in the lower levels of the party thanks to the TEA Party, but the trick will be to keep them there and not make them disillusioned over what happens beginning November 3rd.

Normally I don’t discuss inside party baseball, but I’m sure most are aware that the local Republican Party will have a new Chair for the next term because current Chair John Bartkovich opted not to run again. But many of those who were on the Central Committee previously ran and won, and while I’m not going to name names in this space I will let you know that three people are interested in taking over the reins of the local party. (Let me say up front: I’m not one of the three! There are some who might be disappointed by that, but there are better qualified people among the group than I.) I think two of them would be acceptable to the local TEA Party to represent a non-establishment presence there while the other may smack too much of the ‘old guard’ establishment.

(A note to local Republican establishment types: this new group of activists doesn’t believe the best conservative candidates necessarily will have an ‘R’ after their name. This is the new political reality; get used to it.)

Some of the things I believe we will need to address will depend on that which happens in the next 48 hours – of course, the first thing we need to do is get as many Republican candidates as possible elected locally and that’s my main focus. Given the absolute worst-case (but possible) scenario of having Rick Pollitt as County Executive and four fairly leftist Democrats controlling County Council, we have plenty of work to do to protect our wallets. (I won’t go into just how damaging it would be to have Democrats control the federal or state levels.)

But if I have my say, the Republican Party of 2011-14 will be out in the community more and better tapping into the resources we’ve been presented by this new political resurgence. The idea, though, isn’t to elect people simply because they have an ‘R’ after their name but to elect good conservative stewards of our community and way of life. There are some positions locally which haven’t had a good pruning lately and need to be addressed in the next cycle; that’s another job to take care of.

As the next few months progress, I’m sure we will begin to pull back the curtain on a new era in the local GOP. I’m looking forward to being on the winning team for awhile and trying to cement local success while pushing back the frontiers of ignorance (as Walter E. Williams would say) on the state level.

On Tuesday, let’s win some for the Gipper.

Weekend of local rock volume 35

By the time you read this, I will be at the Autumn Wine Festival. Unfortunately, their musical lineup this year doesn’t promise to be anywhere near as good as the one at last weekend’s Good Beer Festival.

Let’s start with the program – you can’t tell the players without a program! (Assuming you can read it, of course. Otherwise I took a picture for nothing.)

This means that the first band up was alex&shiloh, who played on the small side stage near the front entrance. Thus people coming in at the beginning were treated to their music.

Unfortunately, as was the case with most of the side stage bands, I didn’t get to hear them either – remember, I was there to work at and coordinate a booth (along with drinking a little beer!)

But I could easily hear the main stage, and first onstage there Saturday was the eclectic sound of Interesting Monsters.

They certainly played with a bit of a twist, although to be honest they weren’t my cup of tea. Not to say they are bad musicians, just not my style.

More to my musical liking – but unfortunately placed on the side stage – was the Davis Holiday Band.

From what I was able to hear during my trips to get a sample splash, they were rocking some good covers. But I know Wes Davis as a talented musician anyway so this wasn’t surprising.

Returning to the main stage, it was another fine band that mixed originals and covers, The Electric Co.

They definitely have their roots in classic rock, to be sure.

A guy whose roots were in some downhome blues completed the side stage bill on Saturday. I think Dr. Greg Belcher, my partner in crime for most of the day, truly enjoyed the sounds of Chris English. He seemed to disappear for an awfully long time…

But the biggest crowds of the weekend came for Saturday’s final act, the well-known party band Love Seed Mama Jump.

Let’s put it this way – if I were in a bar and drinking, I’d hang for them. They like the classic rock found on your ’70’s FM stereo to be sure.

So that concluded the bill on Saturday, and the throngs which showed up had a veritable cornucopia to choose from. Yet it had nothing on Sunday’s lineup for variety.

It started out with songstress Nancy Micciulla; just her and her guitar.

Since she’s a semi-frequent ‘Live Lixx at Six’ guest I have heard her and I knew she could sing. It’s too bad more weren’t listening.

Next up on the main stage: the groove rock of Blackwater.

They seemed like a pretty good way to start the main stage day by giving me a jam band feel.

Back over on the side stage, they had the vocal stylings of Time Police.

What little I heard basically reminded me of a updated, much more hip version of a doowop band – one instrument but three vocalists who could do harmony or rhythm, depending on the song.

Sunday’s biggest crowd didn’t wish to wait around, as many came to see this band.

Chester River Runoff has developed an avid following in these parts by being a solid bluegrass band. Needless to say, it’s not my style but the folks who came to see them surely weren’t disappointed.

The final two bands – well, they were more my style. First was Naylor Mill to close out the side stage (conveniently, the Redskins won just before they were set to play so those who were there were there to listen.)

I actually stuck around to listen to a few songs (and record the video which I debuted last night) so let me tell you these guys are tight and – dare I say it – pop radio-friendly. I should have picked up the CD but didn’t. And the chicks dig ’em.

And most of you should know that I really, really like Lower Class Citizens.

Yes, I do want them to ‘Keep On’ playing that rock n’ roll. If you’ve ever heard them (and if you’re any sort of FNV fan here you have) it’s easy to detect their Led Zeppelin influence. Indeed, they got the Led out for a midset medley of Zeppelin tunes that got a lot of people headbanging. (I was banging my head to the originals they did.)

They provided a fitting end to a great weekend of music that the people who put the Good Beer Festival together would be hard pressed to top (although I bet I could if I tried!) But it was a lot of fun, and good tunage to drink beer to.

Beer!

(Updated 8:30 p.m. Saturday.)

Yep, that’s where I’ll be today…at the Good Beer Festival in Pemberton Park. I’m coordinating and helping to man the GOP tent so come out and visit. It’s a nice day and an event I’d like to see become a lot bigger and better next year.

Oh, and I might try a sample or two as well. And they have some seriously good tunes.

One prediction: hot and cold running politicians. But I’ll be there to set any wayward ones straight.

**********

As a report on Day 1, it wasn’t quite what I expected but it certainly was a fun event nonetheless.

The traffic at our GOP booth was slow but steady, and we gave out quite a bit of Ehrlich-related items. There was also a lot of interest in Matt Maciarello, although Seth Mitchell was there attempting to counter it.

Also out and about campaigning today were Delegate Norm Conway, District 4 Councilman David MacLeod (who participated in the ribbon cutting along with County Executive Rick Pollitt and outgoing County Councilman John Cannon), and County Executive candidate Joe Ollinger – he seemed to get a favorable reception.

We’ll see who shows up tomorrow.

Open for business

As many of you know, today not only marks the beginning the enforcement of several new laws (including the nanny state intrusion of hands-free cel phones) and the new federal fiscal year (for which we have no budget, as usual), but also the beginning of a new quarter and a new opportunity to lock in a prime piece of blogging real estate.

I look at advertising in a unique way – I would rather lock in an advertiser for the long-term (that term being three months, or a quarter) and allow them to set their own price – although I do set a floor price which is based on what I’m paid by a long-term advertiser. If there is a market, the advertisers determine it and right now there are two political ads I’m in the process of adding once they complete a simple process of getting me the graphics and paying for the space. I also give the opportunity for candidates to add an associated business of theirs gratis for the quarter as a thanks for advertising here.

Perhaps other websites do things differently, and some place political ads for free because they like the candidate. (I was the beneficiary of one of those sites.) But having released the genie from the bottle by accepting paid political ads I don’t think it’s either fair to those who pay to put up freebies or good for my long-term goals for this site.

However, business ads are a little different and in order to make this a year-round profitable enterprise I need more of them. Needless to say, there are sites which accept business advertising, with the “leading” one charging $100 per month. But is it the leading one?

Let’s look at some of the local sites which contain advertising. One measure of readership, while perhaps flawed, is the Alexa rating. As of today, here are World and U.S. ranks of some local political and news websites.

monoblogue – world rank 395,413; U.S. rank 77,079
Salisbury News – world rank 339,963; U.S. rank 86,363
The Salisbury Grinch – world rank 802,682; U.S. rank 467,153
Delmarva Dealings – world rank 753,577; U.S. rank 237,163
The Daily Times – world rank 86,706; U.S. rank 19,194
WBOC-TV – world rank 110,922; U.S. rank 23,059
WMDT-TV – world rank 686,267; U.S. rank 203,838

Admittedly, the Grinch’s numbers may be skewed since he recently changed his URL. Normally it’s in the same neighborhood as Salisbury News.

But the interesting thing about Alexa is the site demographics it provides:

The fraction of visits to this site referred by search engines is roughly 2%. Visitors to the site spend approximately 44 seconds on each pageview and a total of 24 minutes on the site during each visit. Monoblogue.us’s visitors view an average of 14.0 unique pages per day. About 14% of visits to the site consist of only one pageview (i.e., are bounces).

In essence, what this says is people come to my site to read it and stick around long enough to get a message. Compare that to:

The time spent in a typical visit to (Salisbury News) is approximately two minutes, with two minutes spent on each pageview.

Is two minutes really long enough to read an ad? I’ll leave that to you to decide. And just so I’m not perceived as picking on Salisbury News, this applies to the WBOC website.

The time spent in a typical visit to Wboc.com is roughly four minutes, with 60 seconds spent on each pageview.

However, I can guarantee that the competition would rightly say that they get more repeat visitors in a day, and that may be true. Obviously they’re not keen on telling people how many people read their site daily, but do you know what? I have nothing to hide. See if you can spot a trend here among the SiteMeter and StatCounter numbers I use for the last quarter.

Week of July 5: Site Meter (SM) 1090, Stat Counter (SC) 1169
Week of July 12: SM 960, SC 1133
Week of July 19: SM 1132, SC 1223
Week of July 26: SM 1109, SC 1188
Week of August 2: SM 1153, SC 1168
Week of August 9: SM 1141, SC 1214
Week of August 16: SM 1108, SC 1152
Week of August 23: SM 1302, SC 1351
Week of August 30: SM 1221, SC 1431
Week of September 6: SM 1664, SC 1540
Week of September 13: SM 1677, SC 2030
Week of September 20: SM 1237, SC1358

My peak week, naturally for a politically-based website, was the week of the election. Guess what we have again in a month?

So there are the facts which I have to present. I have an uncle who was in business for himself for nearly 30 years and he occasionally advises me on how I conduct this website as a business – I’m not sure he’d appreciate my blunt honesty in revealing these “trade secrets” but that’s how I deal with people.

I think this is a great place to advertise for certain businesses:

restaurants (since much of my clientele reads this from work and no one I know of blocks this site)
professional services (a large percentage of clients are professionals with college education)
sports-related (because I do Shorebird of the Week in the summer)
politically-related (this goes without saying)

By having this information, I believe you as prospective clients can judge for yourself whether this would be an effective tool. If you believe it will be, the actual details of how I do advertising are here. Bear in mind that the higher the bid, the better the placement.

I know I have a lot of supporters out there, and many of them own businesses. We can support each other in this endeavor called life, so give this a shot! I look forward to doing business with you. My e-mail address is ttownjotes (at) yahoo.com.

Weekend of local rock volume 34

I’m sure some people will hate me because I’m not talking politics and others will be unhappy that I slapped 19 pictures up onto a slow-loading post. Well, sometimes you have to be a little different and for the most part this was for a good cause. If I didn’t have the pictures I couldn’t do it justice.

Indeed, I kicked off Bike Week by checking out this second annual gathering of bands for a good cause. These young ladies were some of those representing the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition, which benefitted from the event.

Also helping with the task of selling raffle tickets and drumming up business outside along Philadelphia Avenue were these women on roller skates, the Salisbury Roller Girls.

This nice young lady was the one who sold my raffle ticket. She wasn’t on skates, though.

Nor was Michele Hogsett, who put together this event as someone personally affected by the cause. Michele can feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I was told over $700 was raised that night. It definitely had a better crowd than last year’s inaugural event, which was forced to be rescheduled due to the untimely closing of Cowboyz in Ocean City the very day it was originally slated.

By the way, her shirt says ‘Survivor’ and that best explains Michele’s vested interest. She did get the perk of drawing winning raffle tickets.

And yes, there were bands. Now we can get to those who played the tunes in the order shown below (it also has the handy effect of showing the nice prizes they had.)

Nate Clendenen began the show with his solo act. I was a little late so I only caught the last song or so – just long enough to get his picture.

The first female-fronted band of many came up next. Petting Hendrix did a set rich with covers, including a pair from Journey.

Needless to say, things perked up when one of the best blues acts around took the stage – lower case blues nearly set the place on fire.

The smoke had barely cleared when a band with a pair of sassy females in front rocked more classic rock covers – Marla, Kathy, and company from Agent 99 put up a set that got people on the floor.

The boy-girl rotation continued apace because next up was a band with ‘more rock than a crack house’, Fuzzbox Piranha. I enjoyed their song selection in particular.

And what benefit would be complete without my friends from Semiblind? They had a couple new cover songs they were polishing in this set, including the oldie ‘Mustang Sally’.

Yet there were two bands to go. Freshly Squeezed had more of a pop feel to them, perhaps because of the vocals. It made songs a little different but still done well.

But instead of slowing down, the crowd was amped-up by the high-energy heavy metal that Witches Brew put out. No, I don’t see Stevie Nicks covers in their future.

I thought they were a good choice to wrap up the show, although some of the faithful had departed.

But Bike Week wasn’t done. Kim and I happened to check out the proceedings at Perdue Stadium and WinterPlace Park last Saturday; not because we’re avid bikers but because we know people who are and it was an interesting diversion on a Saturday afternoon. We were also treated to a good Alabama-based band called Thunderfoot.

The last five shots are from that show, which featured a number of their original tracks along with covers of bands like Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, and Molly Hatchet. Hey, anyone who starts the show with a few bars of ‘War Pigs’ has my attention and is placed on my ‘like’ list.

I suspect they will return for next year’s Delmarva Bike Week and hopefully add another show or two.

A treaty with the electorate

It’s always amusing when politicians make promises and issue statements before they are elected, but actually have to live with what they said they’d do afterward. Some are successful and others…not so much. (“Read my lips” seems to be one of the better examples, although that middle-class tax cut his successor promised but couldn’t deliver on seems a good one too.)

So Republicans took about 20 pages to expand on what is stated here. (It’s sad when I have to use North Dakota as an example given that this isn’t on the Maryland or national Republican websites.) But I suppose it’s better than the 67 pages our last party platform from two years ago took up. In this case, the GOP is trying to replicate the success of the “Contract With America” as a bedrock campaign slogan from 1994.

But so have many other people; for example, what was wrong with the Mount Vernon Statement or the Contract From America?

Here we have oh so many words to describe in excruciating detail what Republicans in Congress promise to do, if only they are given the levers of power. Yet there already is a roadmap in place; one which has been there for 222 years (albeit amended from time to time with the last being in 1992.) You know as well as I do what that document is.

To varying degrees these more recent documents pay lip service to the supreme law of our land, but who’s going to be the first to say, “look, it’s time to sunset entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid”? I’d say it but my chances of being elected to any position of power lie between slim and none, and slim just left town. Yet that step is necessary to insure the continued prosperity of this Republic.

No one truly wants to be the person to make the hard choice. I don’t necessarily fault politicians for this because, after all, they generally receive the job by winning a popularity contest expressed in our votes. “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage” is a pretty good slogan, but the question is how one goes about getting it. (In Herbert Hoover’s case, the bubble of prosperity built on easy credit burst – maybe that’s a lesson Keynesians who believe that government spending will get us out of our economic doldrums should heed.) Franklin Roosevelt couldn’t get a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage no matter how much his New Deal spent because there weren’t enough other job producers around – how could those in the private sector compete with the government, an entity which need not make a profit?

A legitimate criticism of many TEA Partiers is the hypocricy they exhibit by complaining about government-run health care when they themselves are the beneficiaries. I can see the point, but if you frame it as a question of whether they believe their grandchildren should be saddled with the debt that’s being incurred on their behalf the answer makes more sense. And perhaps if a truly open-market private system were made available they would take advantage. For example, many millions of seniors saved for their retirement by investing despite the fact a government program was also there to subsidize their golden years. No one told them how much to invest nor were there any restrictions on where they could put their money.

But perhaps the most immediate step government can take in the correct direction is to stop using the tax code to reward or punish certain behaviors like buying a home or putting in a solar panel. Our granting that sort of power to government is what makes change so difficult. Of course, we should dismantle Obamacare and maintain the Bush tax rates as a stopgap measure, but the real change needs to come from a shift from income-based taxation to a single-point consumption-based tax. While it may life a bit more difficult for business in one aspect, other parts of the accounting system would vastly improve, not to mention people would have more money in their pocket.

Right now it seems that all we want to do is tinker around the edges, and most assuredly by having a President of the opposite party in charge for two more long years that may be all we can do on a national scale.

But states can also lead the way by asserting their Tenth Amendment rights and becoming the “laboratories of democracy” (albeit in the opposite manner that Brandeis would have preferred) by electing conservative governors and legislators and testing the waters of dismantling their statist controls over the citizens. Obviously Texas is a popular destination for both business and the population which follows it due to its low-taxation, small-government reputation.

In many cases, even after the 2010 election those who believe in freedom and liberty through limited government will still be saddled with elected officials who try the same old same old statist remedies which haven’t worked the first ten times. But we have a role to play there as well by exposing them for what they really are and educating the rest of the population why these legislators aren’t acting in their best interests by showering them with goodies from a goose they’re betting will still be laying golden eggs. Hopefully Atlas only has to shrug once before a lesson is learned.

The fight will be long, and victories may be few. But what we believe in is something well worth fighting for, and I plan on continuing my part of the battle for either as long as I draw breath or we win, whichever comes first. It just may come down to our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor again.