O'Rumors: Round 52

Thanks much to the O’Mayor himself, the O’Rumors just aren’t going away. At a press conference yesterday, Mayor O’Malley blasted Gov. Ehrlich for continuing to spread the O’Rumors via his pals at WBAL Radio. “I’m calling upon the governor to end this cowardly abuse of power,” blah blah blah, O’Malley said. Ehrlich called him a “whiner,” thereby begetting a blovious Michael Olesker column.

To make some sense of this latest round—basically, each gubernatorial hopeful thinks he can make the O’Rumors work for him—read David Nitkin’s analysis.

Baltimore Blast

For those who have been staying up nights wishing and hoping for a 3-D horror video game featuring the mean streets of Baltimore, you got it. Abigail Tucker gets bloody playing Surreal Software’s “The Suffering: Ties That Bind” for The Sun.

In other local vid-game news, Tucker and Rasheim Freeman, in yesterday’s Sun, check in with the Urban Video Game Academy, a Maryland effort to diversify the gaming industry through a program at Federal Hill’s Digital Harbor High School, and African American Gamer, a Columbia-based advocacy group behind that effort.

Quick Hits

Benediction By refusing to attend Loyola College's commencement ceremony--the pro-abortion rights Rudy Giuliani is the speaker--Cardinal Keeler brings the culture war to Baltimore.

They Have the Internet in Salisbury? Ehrlich appointee gets caught making ethnic slurs on his right-wing blog. Via The Washington Times, the AP story.

Holler! Howard Dean tells Maryland Democrats to get their shit together.

No Health for You: Gov. Bob to veto "Wal-Mart bill", which would have compelled large private employers in the state to offer health insurance to more of their workers.

It’s a Mystery: Prominent local businessman Robert Lee Clay found dead; foul play is suspected.

In This Week's City Paper

In the cover feature, David Axe dances with Kurds (and their U.S. National Guard occupiers). For more on Kurdistan (an area covering northern Iraq and parts of Turkey and Iran whose people would like to become independent), a quick Google search is overwhelming. This looks like a good place to start, though. And in the Q&A, Bret McCabe claps hands with Rock-n-Romp Baltimore organizer Tracey Gaughran-Perez, who, bless her heart, is hosting rock shows for kids and their parents in her backyard.

Over in Mobtown Beat, Edward Ericson Jr. pounds nails in Reservoir Hill, where shoddy and unfinished work by unlicensed contractors is causing consternation. Ed wrote about this same problem back in September. For more on licensing regulations in the state, visit the Maryland Home Improvement Commission and the Maryland Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing. And Gadi Dechter spreads more O’Rumors: Seems an anonymous letter campaign accuses WBAL-TV I-Team reporter David Collins of plagiarism. Collins’ alleged copying can be found here.

In Arts & Entertainment, McCabe digs into the local underground hip-hop DVD scene. You know, Stop Snitchin’ and all that. Though these are more focused on actual music, parties, and other fun stuff. More blog-link friendly (underground, see?) is Dechter’s review/interview in relation to ground-zero Left Coast punk photographer Jim Jocoy’s show at G-Spot .

Showing Some Muscle

Since Gov. Robert Ehrlich has turned out to be a less-than-terrific salesman for slots, Pimlico/Laurel Park owner Magna Entertainment Corp. is resorting to, basically, extortion to get slot-machine palaces at its horse-race tracks. Last Friday, as detailed in The Sun, in a private meeting Magna told Ehrlich and Senate President Mike Miller to get slots passed or the Preakness Stakes will be leaving Maryland, which is what various entities have been threatening since the mid-1990s, but the pro-slotters genuflected to their masters: "The bottom line is Magna is a business operation. It's a publicly held company, and it's got to answer to its shareholders," Ehrlich said at last Wednesday's Board of Public Works meeting. "Maryland's not making it, and to the extent Maryland's not making it, we have a problem. . . . It's not the governor threatening. It's a fact."

The Third Floor is pretty much OK with slots at racetracks but doesn't like corporate extortion, so props then to House Speaker Michael Busch, who's totally getting beaten up on this and could use some love, for not caving: "This is a big set-up," he tells The Sun. "Basically, this is Mike Miller and Bob Ehrlich trying to blame somebody else for the fact that they didn't take the House bill."

Slots talk means, of course, exasperation from Dan Rodricks ("[I]t's all so transparent and grotesque, without an ounce of political courage or morality. So, fine. Let's just go with the Magna flow.") and grandstanding from Michael Olesker ("[T]hat thin line is the same problem we face on slots: the difference between our false piety and what's now characterized as political and economic necessity."). And speaking of slots, mark Senate candidate Kweisi Mfume down as for.