Possible DHS Pick Martin O’Malley: Conservatives Are Terrorists
By Matthew Vadum
Rumors are circulating that Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-Md.) may be nominated to replace outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
Those like Napolitano, who think conservatives are terrorists, should be delighted by this development.
O’Malley regards reducing government spending as a terrorist act. He said so on Feb. 8, 2005 when he was mayor of Baltimore.
I was in the room at the National Press Club when O’Malley blasted then-President George W. Bush for daring to propose cutting spending on the truly awful $4.7 billion Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program administered by the worse-than-useless Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). (The Washington Post also reported the story at the time.)
CDBG is an out-of-control slush fund politicians use to buy votes. The Bush administration wanted to eliminate CDBG and replace it and 17 other federal community development programs with a new $3.7 billion program.
Mayor O’Malley called CDBG “one of the most effective programs to expand opportunity in our urban cores,” and likened President Bush’s call for its abolition to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
“Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores in two of our great cities and they did that because they knew that that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most,” the future governor said.
“Years later, we are given a budget proposal by our commander in chief, the president of the United States, and with a budget axe, he is attacking America’s cities, he is attacking our metropolitan core.”
When I asked the mayor during the question-and-answer session if it was appropriate to compare the president of the United States to terrorists, O’Malley looked me straight in the eye and stood by his remarks. (“Glared” might be a better verb to use here.)
O’Malley also said Bush’s argument that the nation could not afford the program because it was waging an expensive war overseas was “a lie.” Bush proposed sacrificing the program because he wants to preserve his “tax cuts for the wealthy,” O’Malley said.
But O’Malley wasn’t finished smearing conservatives.
The CDBG overhaul “weakens America’s cities” and was “a betrayal of the basic equation of what it means to be an American,” O’Malley said at the presser hosted by various associations representing local government officials.
In other words, you’re both traitor and terrorist if you believe in fiscal responsibility.
Of course, the media has long fawned over O’Malley so his inflammatory remarks got little coverage.
O’Malley adores taxes, hates private businesses and guns, has interesting hair and well-developed biceps, plays guitar, is notoriously soft on crime, and presided over a spectacular non-revival of Baltimore as that city’s mayor.
What’s not to love there?
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