Well, romance must be in the air because this afternoon the council has this upon thy sweet agenda:
We, of course, will let you know how this all pans out!
How romantic! A rezoning workshop on Valentine’s Day!
This is what persistence looks like
Today in Frederick there was a rally in support of Planned Parenthood–an organization that has helped one in five American women. Your local ladies have been grateful supporters for their role in our own family planning. Some amazing first-hand stories were shared today, and we would like to ensure they are given some daylight.
Women on the street were talking about the difference Planned Parenthood had made in our own lives in helping literally plan our parenthood prior to the ACA mandate that birth control be covered by health insurance. If the ACA disappears, this will become critical again. Another woman used their services because she needed to escape life-threating abuse. Access to reproductive choice is an essential part of being free from abusive partners (as is access to health insurance regardless of preexisting conditions–the last thing we need is women staying in abusive marriages so they don’t lose their health care).
The first speaker shared that in 2006 she had just started a business when she was in a committed and loving relationship and became pregnant. She was devastated when she suffered a miscarriage. Not being able to afford health insurance, she went to Planned Parenthood for her care. It was at this point she learned she had an ovarian tumor and was diagnosed with stage 2 ovarian cancer. Planned Parenthood saved her life eleven years ago.
A minister from the community also spoke in support of the organization, explaining that she went to Planned Parenthood to get a pregnancy test when she was working as a social services coordinator and did not have insurance. When she told her family she learned that she was expecting at a Planned Parenthood clinic, they asked, “Did they try to get you to abort?” This underscores that we have work to do so the reality of Planned Parenthood is understood. She now has insurance, but the healthcare for women’s health needs is so expensive that she plans to return to Planned Parenthood for some services. The icing on the cake was that the person who spoke before her in the capacity of Community Outreach Coordinator for PP is the daughter she was pregnant with at the beginning of her story.
Planned Parenthood is not the gruesome villain painted by opponents. They provide essential life-saving services. These are services that will become more critical if the ACA is repealed. Delegate Karen Lewis Young spoke about her membership on the Health and Government Operations Committee. Delegate Lewis Young also spoke eloquently about the very real difference between being pro-birth and pro-life. You go, girl! Real pro-life is pro-choice, too!
Stand with Planned Parenthood. They matter.
Please don’t…on second thought this could be so fun for us!!!
Yesterday, we brought you news of the Facebook family drama that was going on between the different factions of the Young family. The Frederick News Post also wrote a little about it. Most families, after they were made aware that lots of people were looking, would perhaps take pause, maybe even delete the post or at the very least STOP ADDING TO THE DRAMA! Well, none of those things happened! Before we show you a little snippet of what surely belongs in a family therapist’s folder, let’s take a short trip down memory lane.
You may remember a few months back when the rumor mill was buzzing that Blaine was going to run for mayor of Frederick. We did a post enlightening him to the fact that we do not have the Electoral College here and the Democrat vs. Republican ratio, plus his sordid past would not equal a victory in a city election. And he was all like: “I’m not running for anything, how does this stuff get started”? Well, this is how this stuff gets started:
WOW! This is August:Osage County level family dysfunction. First of all, Blaine your past will be brought up in any election you run in. We here at the Yokel will not let anyone forget about all the terrible things you did while on the BOCC. No one up here has a sudden case of amnesia concerning your prostitution arrest nor do we believe your excuse that you were just looking for a quick massage. Like the judge said, any 12 year-old boy could have discerned what the ad you answered was selling. Also, how about learning the names of the districts BEFORE announcing your intention to run for one of them? We took the liberty of doing a quick check in with the governor to see whether or not he wants your help:
Well that was fast!
We are going to go ahead and close our latest poll. Now we know none of our answers were right! Poor Billy just wanted to sound off on someone who sounds like they were *GASP* doing their job. We know that is oh, so, hard for poor Billy to grasp. Some people take their responsibilities seriously. Thanks for playing! That was fun.
Don’t worry. The Ouija Board will be back to play again soon.
Kirby told us to follow the money…
From the #SAD teardrop flow chart to Tuesday night’s council member comments!, Kirby keeps reminding us to follow the money. He loves to throw around catchy sayings such as: “Everything’s for sale around here!” and “Gotta pay to play!” He also listed off a bunch of “suspicious” campaign donations that Jan has received. M.C. warned him that he may regret getting into the game of listing off campaign donations and to that we say: Oh we hope so! Here’s a sampling of donations that Kirby has received since 2014. Feel free to explore the list yourself at Maryland’s campaign finance website.
The mystery is solved!!!!
Council member comments are now up and running as a part of the February 7th meeting. We’ve been speculating wildly as to what the hell Billy did to cause the county AV department to have to go into full editing mode. The mystery has been solved:
Billy claims that we have a rogue inspector roaming through the county randomly inspecting businesses! And this very naughty inspector is costing these businesses, which have been cited for violations, tens of thousands of dollars!!! Billy says that this individual, that he NAMES out LOUD, is “out of control!” He needs to be stopped! Billy is called out by both Bud and the county attorney for disparaging a county employee by name in a public forum, to which Billy screams, “Strike that from the record.” We know someone we would like to strike from our county government.
Billy is also very agitated that while he was out globe trotting, the council would not allow him to conference call in concerning the MTC. To him it is “sad that we have a government that operates this way.” One cannot help but wonder if this call was to take place while he was soaking up the rays with Blaine in Costa Rica. Nevertheless, Billy really hopes that there are some serious repercussions!
Kirby is also worth mentioning if for nothing else, his wild conspiracy theories.
First off, now Kirby’s not accusing anyone mind you, BUT if county employees are aware of the bargain basement price some of the county machines are being auctioned off at..well ya know they could grab them up and then sell them off for a pretty penny!! Let’s be clear though, he is NOT aware of ANYONE doing such a thing. But hey, what if? It’s very interesting to him.
Next on the conspiracy ticker, Jan Gardner. Did you people know that for as little as $50 you could get yourself a seat on the Planning Commission? Everything, and he means EVERYTHING is for sale around here! “Gotta pay to play”! Kirby then starts ticking off some donations that Jan received and guess what? We are looking Kirby’s up as well! If he wants to start the donation listing game we will be more than glad to participate! What set Kirby off on the donation trail? Well, Michael Hough’s last minute ethics bill. You know the one that was submitted on February 1st with a February 3rd turn around date? Not the ethics bill that was properly vetted by the public, just something Hough scratched down last minute. If you are asking how Kirby found out that Jan was so unethical, you need look no further than our frenemy Red Maryland. That’s right a blog just like our own!(Come on Kirby, where’s the love? Don’t we get a mention?) Too bad that we couldn’t see Billy’s face when Kirby brought them up because man oh man they don’t like the Shreve!
As usual, the other council members had positive things to report, along with the unenviable job of telling us why everything that came out of Shrelauter’s collective jaw is so very wrong indeed. And for that, we thank them!
Speculate wildly. Please!
Frederick County Government *reality* TV has a missing episode
What has happened? We looked into our crystal ball and told you that Council Member Comments is where it hits the fan. And so it seems. If you know more, do tell!
In other must-see TV news, the Young family (who, if you’re new here, straddles both sides of the political aisle–can you imagine Thanksgiving?) is having a nuclear Family Feud on Facebook. These people are awesome. Our own version of The Young and the Restless. The drama is Aaron Spelling worthy, and you will never in a million years guess why this mushroom cloud has been cast over the community…
It seems that State Senator Michael Hough is in a huff because Delegate Karen Young introduced some legislation without his blessing. Allowing the student representative on the BOE to occasionally (seemingly almost never meet all the conditions required for it to actually occur) vote on BOE decisions. Oh la la. You’d think she tried to read a letter from Coretta Scott King on the Senate floor. Nevertheless, she persisted.
Right about now, being the analogue to Mitch McConnell in a story is just about the worst conceivable place to find yourself. These control freaks who insist on shutting out whatever they find disagreeable must be very fearful that their points of view can’t stand up on their own merits. Who’s the snowflake here? Such projection.
If you aren’t following this on Facebook, there is absolutely no way the Frederick News Post is doing the Hatfields versus the Hatfields scene adequate justice. We’re here to tell you, local politics is where it’s at.
Rat and roach report: a partial account
So FredCo’s archives do not yet include lasterday’s meeting, and we can only update you kind folks on the parts we caught. That doesn’t include council member comments, and the regulars will know that’s where things consistently go off the rails.
Now that the custom is to just make up whatheheckever you might want reality to have been anyway, we don’t even know why we should bother looking for the rest later, TBH. We always joke on the sidelines that we could pretty much predict what is going to happen without watching and that we should try it out sometime and see how it compares.
What did happen while we were juggling parenting and citizenshipping? There was a discussion about establishing procedures for rezoning application hearings that sounded like some good stuff for the people. Billy was adversarial. If Billy is reading this, adversarial means acting like a teenage boy does when his parents tell him he can’t drink beer and ride dirt bikes on a school night. What ever in the world would be wrong with just offering constructive criticism?
Tony Chmelik tried to reason through it for him for a second, and Jessica Fitzwater explained that some stuff he didn’t like was exactly as it had been done during his tenure on the BOCC. Pretty regular stuff. We would go back and review it and tell you which part exactly, but maybe later. Or not. We’re unpaid writers. You’re lucky we don’t move to Macedonia and put some teenagers out of work, at this point. Our patience is wearing thin with reality, anyway.
Speaking of which, that’s the other part we caught, after the break. A lot of people came to talk about M.C. Keegan-Ayer’s legislation for permitting solar collection on farmland. Everyone seemed to like the idea in some form, but there were many suggestions about how to improve what was written. None of the public commenters behaved the way some of our council members do on a regular basis. Perhaps one of these kind folks could unseat Billy in the next election.
We thought Billy had a visual aid and we were super looking forward to that. Maybe it happened in the negative space here. Or maybe it was emasculated by M.C.’s two large and colorful ones with easels. Who can say?
What did y’all think of the Super Bowl commercials?
Your Lady Yokels are not so much into the whole football thing. We do, however, enjoy the commercials and half time show. Lady Gaga brought down the house with her choice of songs. And she seems to have tricked a whole bunch of people into thinking she did not make a statement. Well, let’s get those of y’all who think she didn’t get political a clue. Whenever anyone chooses to sing This Land is My Land, they are making a statement. Here’s a list of our most favorite commercials:
Airbnb’s co-founder’s personally edited this commercial. Take a look if you missed it.
For at least 40 years now, Coca-Cola has been at the forefront of inclusive advertising. So it should come as no surprise that they would step up their game this year. Here’s a link in case you had to make a beer run.
Never in a million trillion years would we have expected such a thing from 84 Lumber. Of course, we had to wait awhile since their server crashed with everyone scrambling to see the end. All because FOX, who thinks it’s all fine and dandy to broadcast the Orange Menace morally equating The United States with Russia, thought it “too controversial.”
Guess what peeps?! Unless you are 100% Native American your ancestors came from somewhere else! It’s true, look it up! This commercial nicely illustrates the journey of one such young immigrant looking to make a name for himself in the New World.
Now who do you think it going to ruin all these nice commercials for us? Who possesses that uncanny ability to mess up the good vibes?
Jeeze O’ Flip Kirby why do have to be so terrible all the freaking time? Can’t you just give it a rest for one damn day? Oh, this really burns us up…we need some comic relief….STAT!
frederick local yokel 