Ah, good old Baltimore politics...

I've had a certain amount of respect for Martin O'Malley, who is the mayor of Baltimore. He seems like a decent guy (for a Democrat), and there have been some improvements in the last couple years during his mayor-hood.

But his recent comments comparing Bush's budget cuts to Bin Laden make my blood boil:

"Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores, two of America's great cities. They did that because they knew that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most," O'Malley said. "Years later, we are given a budget proposal by our commander in chief, the president of the United States. And with a budget ax, he is attacking America's cities. He is attacking our metropolitan core."

Well, first of all, I don't think Al-Quaeda attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon because they hate city life. They attacked them because the Twin Towers were a huge financial center, and because the Pentagon is the control center for the military. Granted, those kinds of things tend to be in cities, and if you want to kill as many people as possible you are going to aim for a place with lots of people, like a city, but I don't think that the AQ are attacking cities because they hate having lots of Thai places that deliver nearby.

I recognize that being the mayor of a city means trying to get as much money as possible from the federal government. City governments depend on this money since they don't have a whole lot of tax base (crack addicts don't own a lot of property). But comparing the President to terrorists, or saying that cuts in food stamps and heat subsidies is the equivilant of killing 3000 people in cold blood.