Mostly Woot

So you've been forced, at gunpoint, to read a boatload of crap from me of late, all of it about local politics, and I've promised you an end to it, but it's the morning after and I wanted to gloat share the results of the races I've been yammering about. Okay, fine, I wanted to gloat.

I hear tell that Saqib Ali conceded his District 39 Senate race to Nancy King. If it's true...well, good on you, Saqib. It's about time you did something classy in that race. I want to hope that Saqib learned something from his missteps in this filthy campaign. In fact, I'm sure he probably did. On the other hand, I suspect that, while he's young, he's also well enough set in his ways that the legacy of this race, and his term in the General Assembly, will haunt him. Saqib is a tendentious motherfucker. I'm not going to say that's always a bad thing; in fact, if I did say that, I should immediately be struck by lightning. But there's a time and a place for that, and those places are fewer and farther between when you're representing a constituency. I really do hope that Saqib has figured that out.

In the MoCo at-large County Council races, it appears that three of my four candidates won (the top four advance to the General Election and, most likely, to the Council), though if there are a lot of absentee ballots (I don't think so) and none of them voted for George Leventhal, he might be in trouble. Mancrush Hans Riemer (*sniff*...the post that started it all) appears to have finished second, and Nancy Floreen appears to have finished third. Much-reviled Duchy Trachtenberg (it's "Dutchy," by the way) appears to be done, at least for this cycle. Apple Ballot candidate Becky Wagner appears to have finished sixth, and Marc Elrich, for whom I didn't vote, but whom I no longer characterize intemperately, was the top vote-getter.

What does this say? As usual in MoCo, it says we're schizophrenic, both in the actual sense of meaning dissociated from reality, and in the common usage of meaning we have split personalities. The top vote-getter has a green streak the size of a cornfield in July; Hans is a tad green for my taste, but an okay guy; and Floreen and Leventhal are relatively moderate (compared to green folk, and compared to a number of the district-based probable electees, especially the one for my district).

As a science experiment, it says that Minions' intemperance has a mixed effect. So it's really not much of a science experiment.

Minions' intemperance paid off big-time in the BoE races, though the magnitude of the whomping taken by the Parents' Coalition candidates, and the margin of victory for the Apple candidates--every one of them--suggests that it's still a crappy science experiment. Every Apple candidate won, big; every Coalition candidate finished last.

This is especially pleasurable today, because I reported to you the other day on the increase in MCPS SAT scores. Scroll down to the comments for Sasha's prophecy, which was, of course, fulfilled, because she's often pretty smart that way. The whinging is that fewer Hispanic and African-American students took the SAT in 2010 than did so in 2009. If you go back to 2006 (the MCPS report covered 2006-2010), you'll find that more Hispanic and African-American students took the test in 2010 than did so in 2006. Fewer white kids did so. Hmm. There's some effect of the ACT here; a lot of students took it as an alternative.

So, how does the Parents' Coalition view this? With a jaundiced, paranoid, and wackaloon eye, of course. Oh, and let's not forget the cherry-picking. In a post authored by a BoE candidate recently called out by Minions (actually, he begged for attention and I responded), the Coalition's blog cites to a few critical lines in a story in a notoriously right-leaning newspaper, claiming that MCPS (according to anonymous sources) is "not telling the truth." The only numbers cited in the story are those for 2009 and 2010, and much is made over some guy from some "National Center" for whatever its special interest is wanking on about the need for an investigation and speculating about the sources of cherry-picked numbers from a study he may or may not have read. And yet the Coalition, as it does, highlights this nonsense approvingly as if it's the focus of the story.

Awesome. Break out the tinfoil hats for the Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County. While their BoE candidates were, quite rightly, soundly embarrassed at the polls, these people remain noisy, meddlesome, ignorant, misfocused, and potentially dangerous. I'll keep an eye on their ravings and entertain you with the best of it.

But not any time soon, I hope. It's time to get back to doing what this blog does best* (I hope); self-indulgent snarking about football, futbol, entropy, and life. And, of course, about you.

*There are those who claim that what this blog does best is shut up, for weeks at a time. I will not dispute that contention.