Free Republic

And I’m fired up to vote for a write-in or the Libertarian nominee. This country will to socialist hell, or it won’t. I’m tired of fretting over how long it takes.

An even wider margin. The Western Shore suburbs are coming in last.

How rare is it for incumbent MOC to lose in primaries? Let alone two from the same state on the same night.

Gilchrest’s opposition to the war grabbed most of the headlines in this race and started the ball rolling, but I have gathered that in the end Bob Ehrlich’s endorsement and the issues of immigration and taxes/spending had a much larger role in this result. I think the invasion and occupation of Iraq was and is a mistake, and yet I made GOTV phone calls for the pro-war Harris this past weekend.

Gilchrest is not only liberal, but sleazy and arrogant. Harris is not only an authentic conservative, but a good man. I didn’t think he could pull it off, but I’m quite happy to be proven wrong.

Marines Deny Request From San Fransisco To Defend City From Attack

Disillusioned isn’t a strong enough word. I drove from Maryland to Cleveland to GOTV for Bush in November of ‘04. Now I think I must have been possessed or brainwashed to have done it. I’m done with the charade. Let Hillary do her worst.

I wonder how many fans has he alienated in the last 15 years?

About as many as will come crawling back if the team ever wins. I used to let Angelos get in the way of my enjoying the Orioles. But I'm a baseball fan more than an Orioles fan. I guess that lets me look past Angelos and the losing of the past 10 years and appreciate them for what they are: a local major league baseball team.

This is the feather in Angelo’s cap. 10 straight years the O’s havent been able to play even .500 ball after meddling; spending millions on mediocrities, now culminating in this humiliation against an awful Rangers team. If he had any dignity whatsoever he’d take the elevator to the top of Alka Seltzer Clock and take a swan dive head first into the Chesapeake Bay Inner Harbor... A totally pathetic owner and team.

Actually, anyone paying attention to the O's this season would know that, despite this glaring rout, they are playing their best baseball since 1997.

Yes, living in Northern Virginia tends to alter my entire perspective on things just a wee bit.

You're not kidding. I live and work near the I-95 corridor in between Baltimore and DC, which is an expensive, well developed, and congested metropolitan area in its own right. But every time I drive into Northern VA I feel like I'm in another world. Can I suggest that you folks place a moratorium on all new building permits, restrict your women to having only one child, and ban the sale of new automobiles?

I only stop there for bait and ice, but it’s got its share of “colorful” characters.

Colorful is putting it nicely, I fear. My friends give me an endless amount of grief for my Pasadena roots. But it was a great place to grow up.

I heard the idiot speaking so many times

I have heard him speak as well. But I have the intelligence and sense to put his words into context, look beyond the superficiality of the sound-byte, and comprehend the broader meaning of what he's trying to say. When you hear him "blame America for 9/11,” I hear him say that misguided American policies set the stage for and indirectly led to 9/11. When you hear him suggest that we should "surrender to the terrorists," I hear him say that an invasion and occupation of Iraq is not an appropriate and sensible strategy with which to combat Islamic jihadism. When you hear him suggest that the government might stage an event designed to lead us into war with Iran, I hear an understanding of history, a healthy and refreshing suspicion of government, and a recognition that governments lie and thirst for power.

It’s instructive how the fever of war can change things so dramatically. A man once respected and admired is now hated and slandered. An ally to liberty and the Constitution is now a traitor to his country. The only thing different between now and then is that he happens to oppose the adventure that has since taken place in Iraq. The philosophy and ideas which are at the foundation of his opposition are exactly the same as when he was in better standing, and incidentally have nothing in common with the bases of the leftists’ opposition: an intelligent foreign policy recognizes that less is sometimes more, and that actions have unintended consequences.

Anybody who is seriously interested in limiting the federal government and protecting our sovereignty would be making a huge mistake in vesting his support in a fringe candidate who wouldn't capture a single district outside the bounds of Victoria County, TX.

So Republicans who are interested in limiting the federal government and protecting our sovereignty (the few who exist, at least) should support a candidate in the Republican primary who will not limit the federal government and will not protect our sovereignty, rather than one who will? Voting for the "lesser of two evils" is something to be considered for the general election. It makes little sense in a party primary.

Paul has approximate zero chance of winning the nomination (and less than zero of winning the election, should he run as an independent). Consequently, he will be unable to ever do a damn thing about limiting government and protecting our sovereignty.

Does the candidate who wins the nomination have anything other than a zero chance of limiting government and protecting our sovereignty? Ron Paul as a fringe candidate who has zero chance of winning anything can do and has done more to limit government and protect our sovereignty than any other candidate, including which ever one wins. Just because he's there.

he wants to surrender in the war on terror and he blames America for 9/11.

Repeat if often enough and perhaps it will come true, eh? It's okay to not like Ron Paul. But try not to distort, slander, or lie. It makes you look like a Democrat.

Unions aren’t the whole problem. Toyota has a better image. This image is not exactly rational. Fords and chevys are very good cars. They seem to need a better marketing strategy. The success of toyota is more about perception than it is about actual quality.

I would agree that the difference in quality between the Asian makes and the American makes is sometimes overstated. But much of the perception that you refer to stems from the fact that American cars often look and feel cheap, shoddy and inferior, even though they may not necessarily be mechanically inferior. There is definitely a market for "affordable, basic transporation," but when push comes to shove most consumers, whether they publicly admit it or not, will spend more to drive a car that's not composed completely of plastic, doesn't vibrate and make loud noises, doesn't look ugly as hell, doesn't belong in a rental fleet or a Wal-Mart parking lot, etc. Putting aside the debate over actual longevity and reliability, Japanese cars are simply more refined. And consumers are willing to pay for this.

Am I the only one who has these? A great cover by one of the few bands from the 70's that still rocks.

Public grows more cynical about politics

Gosh, I can't imagine why.

How about patriotic Americans backing our troops as they man the front lines of WWIII, you crazy, demented kook.

If Iraq is the front line of WWIII, by which of course you mean the war between the West and militant Islam, why are we not also in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Pakistan? Are there not more militant Islamists there than were ever in Iraq? Why Iraq? If we're in Iraq to fight the terrorists there instead of here, which I hear frequently from the war's supporters, why have we yet to close our borders and reform our immigration system to the extent necessary to prevent the terrorists from coming and staying here in the first place? Is occupying Iraq the most efficient long term investment of our resources, attention, and political capital in the war on radical Islam? Is landing an occupying force in Islamic territory, removing governments, and killing Muslims an effective way to prevent Muslims from bombing us? Is it reasonable to expect the government we have erected in Iraq to be a stable and long term ally of ours against radical Islam? Is handing Congress and likely the White House to the Democrats on a silver platter a reasonable sacrifice for what has been achieved in Iraq?

The leftists and Democrats oppose the war in Iraq for reasons that are typical of leftists and Democrats. But there are many Americans, Ron Paul and myself included, who oppose the war in Iraq for different reasons; namely, that the war was and is not in the best interest of the United States.

I have nothing against Ron Paul but it’s a little disingenuous for a libertarian to run as a republican and have his supporters preach to us about his qualifications. If he were being honest he would be running to get the libertarian nomination. But then he wouldn’t be on national TV would he.

If Paul is disingenuous to run as a Republican, so are Guiliani, Romney, and Thompson. And Bush, for that matter.

(l)ibertarians, and for that matter Freepers and conservatives, quibbling with and even denegrating Ron Paul strikes me as similar to someone who wins $100,000 in the lottery and complains that they didn't win $1,000,000, or a 16 year old who complains that the brand new car his parents bought him isn't the right color. It would be impossible to come up with a candidate who better articulates and more genuinely represents the ideals of liberty, limited government, and conservative constitutionalism if you went into a laboratory and tried to create him from scratch.

And yet still Ron Paul isn't good enough. His position on Iraq blinds pro-occupation conservatives to his other positions and renders him merely a crazy, demented kook. And, of course, libertarians are confronted with the most significant and impactful national libertarian campaign ever conducted and have the gall to turn their back on it and say, "But his position on ------- isn't libertarian enough."