Free Republic

It’s like Obama’s playing blackjack, dealer shows an ace, and Obama doubles down on a 16. This is not the recipe for a winning hand.

Who do you think does the Republican Party the most real good, those who call the people back to the core principles of the securing of the unalienable, God-given rights to life and liberty, or those who are willing to spin compromise with the Left and their destructive agenda as a good thing if it serves the perceived needs of political expediency?

Unlike you, I'm a political realist. I realize that a President McCain would have been mediocre ... but far, far better for America than a President Obama.

Provide one link to one post where I’ve done anything but oppose liberalism, regardless of party, or support conservatism.

You have relentlessly attacked the Republican Party and its candidates. You demand perfection. You're like a New York Jets fan who expects a 16-0 season every year. The minute they lose their first game, he's out in the back yard piling up his Jets jackets and paraphernalia, dousing them with gasoline and lighting a match.

The Republican Party is not perfect. It is merely good. By demanding perfect conservatism, you are the enemy of the good. Any Republican is better for conservatism than any Democrat, and those are our only two realistic choices.

Dartaniel Palmore, Pedro Kennedy and Wynesha Johnson.

Why do I get the feeling that all three of them voted for Barack Obama?

This is a Newsmax article about how left-wing activists are editing Wikipedia articles to smear Free Republic and several Republican politicians.

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/5/13/212015.shtml

Wikipedia is a wildly popular online encyclopedia that anyone can edit – and in some cases, sabotage with misinformation and libelous or politically slanted content.

Its co-founder, Jimmy Wales, has explicitly stated that he doesn’t make any distinction between the contributions of an Ivy League professor and a bright 16-year-old, as long as the 16-year-old is doing good work.

Whenever a student in the English-speaking world hears the name of an American politician for the first time, he or she is likely to run a Google search on the name. The first, second or third Internet page produced by such a search is often the Wikipedia biography about the public figure.

Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the Internet, with over 2 million page views per day. Because Wikipedia articles are mirrored on other sites such as Answer.com, the number of daily hits on articles written by Wikipedia editors is about 2.6 million per day.

Editing decisions are made not by a team of experts in a given subject, but by a consensus of whoever shows up to edit the article. Many have written about the failures inherent in this system.

Knowledge vs. Agenda

Some of the most pithy critiques are from Ikkyu2, a board-certified neurologist and clinical epilepsy specialist whose peer-reviewable work on Wikipedia’s “Epilepsy” article kept getting messed up by others who, to put it kindly, did not share his level of expertise.

There have also been several publicized examples of staff members for Democrats in Congress, such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Sen. Tom Harkin, Sen. Joe Biden and Rep. Marty Meehan, “airbrushing” or spiffing up their bosses’ Wikipedia articles.

Wikipedia traced Capitol Hill IP addresses contributing to their site and found the source of the airbrushing, as well as vandalism of articles about Republicans including Rick Santorum and George W. Bush. Staff members of a few Republicans, including Sen. Norm Coleman, have also done some airbrushing.

Accusations of libel have also peppered Wikipedia’s recent history. A former staffer for Robert F. Kennedy, John Siegenthaler Sr., attacked Wikipedia in print for “false and malicious” content when he learned that for 132 days in 2005, his biography said “he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John and his brother Bobby.”

Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller sued a Miami firm, alleging that libelous statements about him that appeared in his Wikipedia biography were posted from a computer at that firm. The statements claimed that he had abused drugs and alcohol, and committed domestic battery.

“Courts have clearly said you have to go after the source of the information,” said Zoeller’s attorney, Scott Sheftall. “The Zoeller family wants to take a stand to put a stop to this. Otherwise, we’re all just victims of the Internet vandals out there. They ought not to be able to act with impunity.”

Who’s Minding the Store?

Wikipedia’s Site management simply doesn’t have the manpower to supervise 1 million editors. But perhaps the worst failings of Wikipedia arise not from its Capitol Hill visitors, its libel-mongering vandals or its editorial policies, but from the people who have risen to positions that grant the power to interpret and enforce those policies.

A scandal involving academic fraud recently brought unwanted notoriety. A 24-year-old community college dropout from Kentucky passed himself off for years as “Essjay,” a lecturing professor with a doctorate in divinity, supporting his claims with quotations from “Catholicism for Dummies.”

This case has been presented by most of the mainstream media as if it is somehow unique. It is neither unique nor surprising, given the leadership at Wikipedia.

“Essjay” was serving on the 13-member Arbitration Committee, which serves as a kind of Wikipedian Supreme Court. Its senior member, 60-year-old Fred Bauder, describes himself as a “retired lawyer” living in Colorado, but the truth is that in 1997 he was officially censured for inappropriate activities.

Aside from Bauder, the average age of an Arbitration Committee member is around 22. The committee, and the 1,000 or so administrators who enforce their rulings, appear to include a disproportionate number of high school and college students.

As a result of Wikipedia’s open-door policy, hordes of political partisans have flocked to the site from such liberal Web sites as MoveOn.org and Daily Kos, and made it their “turf.”

The Left Takes Over

Newcomers who try to put Wikipedia’s “neutral point of view” into practice on sensitive political subjects are often shouted down, or baited into committing rules infractions that lead to a lifetime ban.

Wikipedia members from Democratic Underground and MoveOn.org have the power, the numbers and the seniority. They can win any argument about content, either through mob tactics or a well-placed block by a friendly administrator. The rules and policies form an online minefield, and they derive immense satisfaction from baiting newbies into that minefield.

Editors are recruited from Democratic Underground. The author of the recruiting drive, Ben Burch, is the Webmaster of a site whose motto is “Fighting the Rise of the New Fascism.”

Articles about politically delicate subjects such as the war in Iraq, the dismissal of seven U.S. attorneys, and Republican politicians and conservative organizations have been turned into hatchet jobs.

Take the case of Republican Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico. Several years ago her husband, Jay Hone, was accused of molesting a teenage boy. Until March 5, the accusation was blared loudly in a boldfaced headline in Rep. Wilson’s Wikipedia biography: “Husband Jay Hone’s hidden file on alleged sexual harassment of male minor.”

But the fact that Hone was thoroughly investigated and cleared of any wrongdoing didn’t make it into the article at all. The biography has now been amended to remove any reference to the charge.

Then there’s Colorado Republican Tom Tancredo. Until March 4, his Wikipedia biography strongly hinted that Tancredo’s congressional office falsely reported a bomb threat during a visit to South Florida, which was scheduled to include a gathering at a local restaurant: “While it was first reported by South Florida media that the congressman had received a bomb threat, Miami Police detectives stated they were not treating it as such, and the [restaurant] denied any such report.”

Eventually it was revealed that the bomb threat was actually reported by the restaurant’s manager, and it was removed from the article.

Early in 2006, Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska was another Republican lawmaker whose Wikipedia biography was vandalized. Terry was falsely accused of domestic violence.

The problems at Wikipedia are many-layered, and yet it thrives as the most popular reference source on the Internet.

Most people accept information that is at their fingertips and don’t take the time to check original sources. Thus the information superhighway offers everyone access to the same often inaccurate and biased information.

Obama is an attorney. He has recently been criticized for assuming that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is guilty. Statements by political leaders that assume a defendant’s guilt can be used by crafty defense lawyers at trial, to claim that the verdict has been pre-determined.

"Rustic"? Did Hugo Chavez say "rustic"?

I wrote an article for Newsmax a couple of years ago, about the left-wing propaganda takeover of Wikipedia:

Newsmax Article

Wikipedia is a wildly popular online encyclopedia that anyone can edit – and in some cases, sabotage with misinformation and libelous or politically slanted content.

Its co-founder, Jimmy Wales, has explicitly stated that he doesn't make any distinction between the contributions of an Ivy League professor and a bright 16-year-old, as long as the 16-year-old is doing good work.

Whenever a student in the English-speaking world hears the name of an American politician for the first time, he or she is likely to run a Google search on the name. The first, second or third Internet page produced by such a search is often the Wikipedia biography about the public figure.

Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the Internet, with over 2 million page views per day. Because Wikipedia articles are mirrored on other sites such as Answer.com, the number of daily hits on articles written by Wikipedia editors is about 2.6 million per day.

Editing decisions are made not by a team of experts in a given subject, but by a consensus of whoever shows up to edit the article. Many have written about the failures inherent in this system.

Knowledge vs. Agenda

Some of the most pithy critiques are from Ikkyu2, a board-certified neurologist and clinical epilepsy specialist whose peer-reviewable work on Wikipedia's "Epilepsy" article kept getting messed up by others who, to put it kindly, did not share his level of expertise.

There have also been several publicized examples of staff members for Democrats in Congress, such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Sen. Tom Harkin, Sen. Joe Biden and Rep. Marty Meehan, "airbrushing" or spiffing up their bosses' Wikipedia articles.

Wikipedia traced Capitol Hill IP addresses contributing to their site and found the source of the airbrushing, as well as vandalism of articles about Republicans including Rick Santorum and George W. Bush. Staff members of a few Republicans, including Sen. Norm Coleman, have also done some airbrushing.

Accusations of libel have also peppered Wikipedia's recent history. A former staffer for Robert F. Kennedy, John Siegenthaler Sr., attacked Wikipedia in print for "false and malicious" content when he learned that for 132 days in 2005, his biography said "he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John and his brother Bobby."

Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller sued a Miami firm, alleging that libelous statements about him that appeared in his Wikipedia biography were posted from a computer at that firm. The statements claimed that he had abused drugs and alcohol, and committed domestic battery.

"Courts have clearly said you have to go after the source of the information," said Zoeller's attorney, Scott Sheftall. "The Zoeller family wants to take a stand to put a stop to this. Otherwise, we're all just victims of the Internet vandals out there. They ought not to be able to act with impunity."

Who's Minding the Store?

Wikipedia's Site management simply doesn't have the manpower to supervise 1 million editors. But perhaps the worst failings of Wikipedia arise not from its Capitol Hill visitors, its libel-mongering vandals or its editorial policies, but from the people who have risen to positions that grant the power to interpret and enforce those policies.

A scandal involving academic fraud recently brought unwanted notoriety. A 24-year-old community college dropout from Kentucky passed himself off for years as "Essjay," a lecturing professor with a doctorate in divinity, supporting his claims with quotations from "Catholicism for Dummies."

This case has been presented by most of the mainstream media as if it is somehow unique. It is neither unique nor surprising, given the leadership at Wikipedia.

"Essjay" was serving on the 13-member Arbitration Committee, which serves as a kind of Wikipedian Supreme Court. Its senior member, 60-year-old Fred Bauder, describes himself as a "retired lawyer" living in Colorado, but the truth is that in 1997 he was officially censured for inappropriate activities.

Aside from Bauder, the average age of an Arbitration Committee member is around 22. The committee, and the 1,000 or so administrators who enforce their rulings, appear to include a disproportionate number of high school and college students.

As a result of Wikipedia's open-door policy, hordes of political partisans have flocked to the site from such liberal Web sites as MoveOn.org and Daily Kos, and made it their "turf."

The Left Takes Over

Newcomers who try to put Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" into practice on sensitive political subjects are often shouted down, or baited into committing rules infractions that lead to a lifetime ban.

Wikipedia members from Democratic Underground and MoveOn.org have the power, the numbers and the seniority. They can win any argument about content, either through mob tactics or a well-placed block by a friendly administrator. The rules and policies form an online minefield, and they derive immense satisfaction from baiting newbies into that minefield.

Editors are recruited from Democratic Underground. The author of the recruiting drive, Ben Burch, is the Webmaster of a site whose motto is "Fighting the Rise of the New Fascism."

Articles about politically delicate subjects such as the war in Iraq, the dismissal of seven U.S. attorneys, and Republican politicians and conservative organizations have been turned into hatchet jobs.

Take the case of Republican Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico. Several years ago her husband, Jay Hone, was accused of molesting a teenage boy. Until March 5, the accusation was blared loudly in a boldfaced headline in Rep. Wilson's Wikipedia biography: "Husband Jay Hone's hidden file on alleged sexual harassment of male minor." But the fact that Hone was thoroughly investigated and cleared of any wrongdoing didn't make it into the article at all. The biography has now been amended to remove any reference to the charge.

Then there's Colorado Republican Tom Tancredo. Until March 4, his Wikipedia biography strongly hinted that Tancredo's congressional office falsely reported a bomb threat during a visit to South Florida, which was scheduled to include a gathering at a local restaurant: "While it was first reported by South Florida media that the congressman had received a bomb threat, Miami Police detectives stated they were not treating it as such, and the [restaurant] denied any such report." Eventually it was revealed that the bomb threat was actually reported by the restaurant's manager, and it was removed from the article.

Early in 2006, Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska was another Republican lawmaker whose Wikipedia biography was vandalized. Terry was falsely accused of domestic violence.

The problems at Wikipedia are many-layered, and yet it thrives as the most popular reference source on the Internet.

Most people accept information that is at their fingertips and don't take the time to check original sources. Thus the information superhighway offers everyone access to the same often inaccurate and biased information.

Of the 138 total recipients from employees of all 15 of the [class action plaintiffs'] firms, 122 were Democrats and just 16 were Republicans. The Democrats received contributions averaging more than $4,700, while the GOPers averaged $646.

Fascinating.

The ObamaCare bill is unconstitutional. The states are the primary regulators of health insurance and the primary distributors of government financed health insurance (such as Medicaid and SCHIP). With this bill, federal government is making a huge power grab to control 18% of our economy. It violates the Tenth Amendment.

Did you notice how the left-wingers complained about Bush “shredding the Bill of Rights,” when there were some warrantless wiretaps or a few terrorists were interrogated without the kid gloves? But now, the don’t mind when the Bill of Rights actually gets shredded.

I just hope and pray that there are enough honest people on the Supreme Court to declare this massive power grab unconstitutional. State governments have always been the primary regulation powers of health insurance, and the primary distributors of publicly-funded health insurance such as Medicaid and SCHIP. With this bill, the federal government seizes that power from the states. It violates the Tenth Amendment.

My guess is that eight or nine of the 11 states are Blue States, each with a pair of Democratic senators. And that the chances of that $100 million going to a Red State are zero.

Obama is doubling the number of US troops in Afghanistan. He couldn’t produce a health care reform bill with a public option or government funding for abortions. He couldn’t get an agreement signed at Copenhagen regarding global warming.

The far left nutcases at Daily Kos and Move On feel they’ve been betrayed by Obama. The next 11 months are going to be a lot of fun.

The plot didn't fail. This should be obvious if you had bothered to watch the movie.

Okay, we get it. Based on all of your comments, you think this was the greatest action movie since Spielberg made Saving Private Ryan. But I'm not so sure that you read the commentary of James Cameron as quoted in The Times, posted by Freeper flair2000:

The Times:

Cameron said yesterday that the theme was not the main point of Avatar, but added that Americans had a “moral responsibility” to understand the impact that their country’s recent military campaigns had had. “We went down a path that cost several hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. I don’t think the American people even know why it was done. So it’s all about opening your eyes.”

After the Na’vi homes collapse in flames the landscape is coated in ash and floating embers in scenes reminiscent of Ground Zero after the September 11 attacks. Cameron, who was born in Canada, said yesterday that he had been “surprised at how much it did look like September 11. I didn’t think that was necessarily a bad thing”. Referring to the “shock and awe” sequence, he said: “We know what it feels like to launch the missiles. We don’t know what it feels like for them to land on our home soil, not in America. I think there’s a moral responsibility to understand that."

Also, I think you may have missed Spielberg's remarks after Revenge of the Jedi. And the elegant evisceration of that partisan left-wing Hollywood slant by Freeper BradyLS:

Post by BradyLS

So you see, others can recognize that while the film was a masterpiece of animation technology, the plot was so burdened with left-wing partisanship that it sucked.

No, I haven't seen it. But my comment referred to previous cameron films I've seen. Unless he talks the left-wing talk and walks the left-wing walk, he'll be blackballed in Hollywood (or, at the very least pigeonholed) by the likes of Spielberg, Rob Reiner, Lucas etc.

Cameron has a habit of making 3-hour epic movies that are visually stunning, but have plots that fail miserably. If you'll recall Titanic, it's really a movie about a couple of teenage mall brats. They spit over the railing, have sex in the back seat of a car, flip the bird to an authority figure, defy a parent, and generally indulge in every action that a teenage bad boy and bad girl would do in the 1990s.

The ship was the real star, and it stole the show.

When I was a kid, they had a musketry re-enactment group that gathered the last Saturday every April and September. There were just a couple dozen on each side, but it was very realistic. They used Civil War uniforms for their April re-enactment, and Revolutionary War uniforms for September. They also used a little muzzle-loading cannon with a 2-inch bore that fired blanks, and was hauled around with a team of horses.

It was not 100 percent accurate. But it gave the kids some idea of what those wars were like. There was also a buck skinners’ rendezvous during the summer, complete with the coonskin caps.

These were farm communities with a lot of creeks and woods for hunting, and game was plentiful, so most of these kids weren’t strangers to firearms or the great outdoors. But muzzle-loaders’ events were very educational. Those days are gone forever. Most of the area is covered with golf courses, expressways and McMansions now.

This is an amazing world we live in, full of surprises. Some good, some bad. What we are seeing is the left-wing fringe element realizing that they aren’t going to be able to implement their entire socialist agenda. There is a lot of resistance, and even their own party is splitting into factions. Just a month ago, after the results in NY-23 the left-wingers were celebrating the death of conservatism. Mark Twain might say reports of the death of conservatism are “greatly exaggerated.”

I’m sure recent events have come as a real shock to them.

Between the failure of the public option, the possible failure of the entire health care bill, public opposition to the closure of Gitmo and the terrorist trials in New York, continued 10 percent unemployment despite the much heralded economic stimulus bill, and on top of it all came Climategate and the failure of the Copenhagen summit conference, the left-wing fringe has had some unpleasant surprises lately.

No wonder they hate Lieberman so very, very much.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to beat the crap out of a liberal, and be able to say that it was self-defense?

They say they want to start something, but nothing happens.

All talk, no action.

Where are the mournful daily casualty reports on MSNBC and CNN?

Oh, wait. There’s a Democrat in the White House. Never mind.

I couldn’t agree more. As far as the MSM were concerned, the race was between Obama and Hillary. There was a large number of journalists who were rooting for Hillary, and the rest were rooting for Obama. Whichever one of them got the nomination was going to be anointed by the MSM as the next president of the United States. I’m convinced that the only reason anyone in the MSM finally paid any attention to the Obama/Wright issue was that Hillary was getting her clock cleaned, and her supporters in the MSM went looking for some dirt on Obama.

I was working as a freelance writer for Newsmax in 2007 and 2008. Sometime around Match 16, 2008 an ABC News reporter brought up that August 7, 2007 column that I wrote about Obama attending Wright’s church. Before that happened, Obama had won eight primaries in a row and seemed unstoppable. After that ABC News reporter brought that article to the nation’s attention, the Obama juggernaut lost six out of the next eight primaries, some by very wide margins.

As you know, in the final delegate tally Obama won the nomination by a razor thin margin. If the mainstream media had noticed just two weeks earlier, we wouldn’t be talking about President Barack Obama. We’d be talking about President Somebody Else.

Four years earlier, I was working for the Jack Ryan for Senate campaign. If we had won that one, Obama would still be an obscure state senator down in Springfield.

This link, of course. From the other thread:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/BC-Post-Tea-Party-popularity-should-lead-to-dominance-of-the-Republican-Party-79541072.html

I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. The biggest problem for a third party is ballot access. It’s very hard in many states, mine included, for a third party to gain ballot access until it becomes an established party. The Democratic Party successfully sued in several states to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot. So unless you have large sums of money for petitions and petition challenges, that is a huge obstacle.

Now we can all say “change the law, and give third parties ballot access!” But do you really think that can be done legislatively, if it affects the legislators’ incumbency? Click on the link and read Freire’s column. The solution is for the Tea Party to take over the Republican Party.

Yoo hoo. Read this.

You sound a lot like those NFL fans who expect a 16-0 year every August. The minute your team loses its first game, you’re making a pile of your pennants and stocking caps and team jerseys in the back yard, pouring gasoline on it and lighting a match.

Rather than start an expansion team, we need to fire the head coach. The team has plenty of talent.

The Tea Party movement needs to take over the Republican Party. It won’t happen in one year, but it’ll be a lot faster than building a third party from the ground up.

Well, good luck with your principled vision. The sad part is that it’s virtually identical to mine. I just have a better idea about where to apply it: take the Republican Party back from the RINOs.

I want to take our party back. Going third party is what the Democrats want us to do, because it will ensure their dominance for many more years as you build a new party from the ground up. Look at how well the Green Party is doing on the left, and the Constitution Party on the right. Look at the Libertarian Party, which defies such labels as “left” and “right.” All three of them have been around for many years, and not one of them has ever won a single seat in Congress.

Not "plausible" at all. First, you're supporting "moderates," which every sane conservative knows to be a code-word for "liberals."

No, I would describe a "moderate" as someone who gets an American Conservative Union rating of about 75 or 80, rather than a 95 or 98. A "liberal" gets about a 20, and a "left-winger" gets a 5. Let's keep it real.

And so, no matter what nice conservative words you might utter, because you refuse to return to fundamental republican principles and stand firm for them in your actions, you're guaranteeing the continued decline of the patient. Your party is dying because of consistent and ongoing compromise of fundamental American principles. And you say you're going to do nothing about it.

Incorrect. I'm doing everything I can about it. Our group threw everything we had into NY-23 to support Doug Hoffman, not Dede Scozzafava. I was personally working behind the scenes, calling people I know in the Scozzafava campaign to convince her to drop out of the race. It worked, but not quite soon enough.

Again, according to the people who run the GOP, "conservatives can't win" anywhere. The party's resources continue to be focused on pushing liberals, not true conservatives. One other thing: the GOP long ago abandoned those areas you're talking about. They refuse to use any resources to do what you say.

Again, you're wrong. In district after district, we're finding real conservative candidates and pushing them up to the top. We're making real progress in states like North Caroline, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. But we won't get to a 100 percent conservative level nationwide this year. As I said, we can't go to war with the army we wish we had. We have to go to war with the army we've got. We can make it more conservative, and we're trying.

You might be able to fool some with what you're saying, but not me. I know too much about the reality of today's Republican Party.

Oh really? In what capacity have you worked for the party, or any of its nominees? I worked for Jack Ryan's Senate campaign in 2004. If we had won that race, Barack Obama would still be an obscure state senator in Springfield, Illinois (and he'd still be working his day job as a community organizer and ACORN lawyer in Chicago).

I have a plausible diagnosis for you: we get conservative Republicans elected wherever we can, and moderate Republicans elected wherever we can’t find a conservative who can win the election.

Some tumors can be removed immediately with surgery. Other tumors have to be reduced in size through radiation and chemotherapy, and it’s a long process. In districts and states where a conservative can’t win, we need to develop conservatism from the ground up.

I hear you. We have to get directly involved in the Republican primaries in each House district, and in the Senate primaries in those states where Senate seats are up for election.

We can take our country back, but first we have to take our party back. The Republican party is ours. The Party belongs to the rank and file voters like you and me, not the RINO leadership who hand picked Dede Scozzafava in NY-23. Like I said, the Republican Party is not RINO. It’s the current party leadership only.

Let’s take our party back first.

I’m not sure you’re listening. We have a choice between taking a tiny victory next year (and leaving the Democrats in charge of both the House and the Senate), or sweeping the table: taking back the House in 2010, and the Senate and the White House in 2012.

The GOP is not RINO. We hear you, and we’re doing whatever we can to recruit true conservative candidates who have a chance to win. But you need to pay attention to every word of that sentence: true conservative candidates who have a chance to win.

I’m sure you don’t like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, for example. But if there were a couple of liberal Dems in those Senate seats, the government takeover of our health care system would be a done deal: not just a public option but single payer, driving the private insurance companies out of the market (and many of them into bankruptcy).

I completely agree that we need more true conservatives as Republican candidates, and we’re doing everything we can to recruit them. But like Rumsfeld said, we can’t go to war with the army we wish we had. We’ve got to got to war with the army we’ve got.

Obama, Axelrod, Emanuel and the rest of the Democrats are jubilant about the way things turned out in NY-23. Yes, we forced the RINO to withdraw from the race and we almost got a true conservative elected, but the final result was that the Democrats won a seat they hadn’t won since the Civil War.

If the Tea Party movement continues on its slash-and-burn course, you can expect to see the NY-23 result repeated across the country, in dozens of congressional districts, in 2010 and 2012. Obama will win a second term, with the Republican nominee splitting the non-Democrat vote with a Tea Party conservative like Sarah Palin.

At some point, the Tea Party needs to reach common ground with the Republican Party. This is the only way we will take our country back before it’s destroyed.

This nation was founded by Christians and plank number one is the principle that all men are created equal and granted certain unalienable rights by God their Creator, including among others the rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Jim, I've never said we should abandon these planks. I just don't believe we should be bringing them up or talking about them.

The only legitimate government responsibility regarding the economy and “creating jobs” is to stay the hell out of our way!!

Of course, Jim. But we can't afford to alienate any of the independent voters. In 2010 and 2012 we can either take a small victory (that leaves us with a minority in the House and Senate, and Obama in the White House), or we can run the table. we have to play our cards right.

Nobody said anything about kicking out those planks, Jim. We should just stop bringing them up in conversations. If anybody asks, just say, “Well, I’m sure you’re familiar with our party platform,” and leave it at that.

This is what we need to focus on:

1. Create Jobs

2. Balance the Budget

3. Smaller Government and Lower Taxes

Keep it simple, steer clear of any ugly, divisive arguments over abortion, and we win big. Then we get to pick people like Roberts and Scalia for the Supreme Court.

Republicans can win big in 2010 and 2012 by talking less about social issues and more about economic liberty and federalism.....

Thisa is exactly right. We should be talking smaller government, low taxes, and balanced budgets. The next time any Republican should mention abortion or gay rights should be December 2012, when we're discussing potential Supreme Court picks by the new Republican president.

The New York Times can't stand Lieberman because he supports the war in Iraq. Now he's preventing this latest Democratic Party goodies bag from being passed. If he'd just remounce Roe v. Wade, the Republicans could nominate him for president and win in 2012.

Wouldn't that be amusing? Wouldn't it make a thousand tiny little heads explode at DU and Daily Kos?

Hardastarboard: If I remember my geography correctly, there is no land mass under the North Pole anyway, so if the ice cover melts, the water levels won’t rise an inch. The Inuits can all buy convertibles and cut off jean shorts and start growing vegetables instead of killing all those furry little innocents for food. Sounds like everybody wins with GW to me.

palmer: true except for Greenland. But there are a few caveats to Greenland, while the whole thing melting would cause about 30 feet (IIRC) of sea level rise, the whole thing won't melt even if temps get back to Medieval levels. The proof is fairly simple, although Greenland was tree and habitable on the edges back then, sea levels were no more than 1/2 meter higher.

Another caveat is that while Greenland's glaciers sped up a bit in the 80's, 90's and early 00's, in 2005 they abruptly slowed to pre-80's speeds. The faster motion was not going to flood the world either. A final caveat is that even taking all of Greenland's ice and sticking it in the Sahara, it would take centuries to melt absorbing all the Saharan sunshine. The only flood would come from it somehow turning into slush and flowing into the ocean which would obviously raise sea levels. But there is no realistic danger of that and the current trend is the other direction.

True to a certain extent, but oversimplified. Global warming could open enormous tracts of agriculturally useless land in Siberia, Mongolia, Canada, Scandinavia, Alaska and Manchuria for human development. On the other hand, removing the weight of the ice on millions of square miles of land will increase volcanic activity. Deep inside the earth's crust, the pressure can reach thousands of pounds per square inch. The weight of the ice presses down on the earth's crust, increasing this pressure and prevents the formation of magma, in parts of the earth that would otherwise be sprouting active volcanoes like a 14-year-old sprouting zits. (See Iceland and the Aleutian Islands for examples.)

To Continue In English, Press “Republican”

1. Small government

2. Balanced budget

3. Low taxes

Victor Jerome Lee

Do you think he might have voted for Obama?

See suppressor on 20MM at site above also cartridge size - larger than 50cal in both height and diameter...

Yeah, it's a LOT larger. A 20mm is approximately .80-caliber. Multiply all .50-caliber dimensions by 1.6 and weight of the shell by 4.1, and you'll get the idea. Since 20mm has been a standard anti-aircraft caliber since World War II, I'm sure they have plenty of ammo from somewhere.

If Bill Ayers is really angry at Barack Obama, then I look forward to Ayers going public with all the details of his friednship with Obama through the years. Ayers has been uncharacteristically silent about this close friendship ever since Obama announced his candidacy in January 2007. Now, nearly three years later, it’s time to spill the beans.

The microphone is right here, Professor Ayers.

I could give you a lift. We should talk further on that via Freepmail.

You really, really need to ping all the Illinois Freepers to get more people there. The link I posted above goes to the Illinois Freepers list. I am sending instructions via Freepmail on how to convert it into a ping list. Watch your Freepmail.

To answer all of your questions with one post.

Jim Edgar has a serious heart condition. He really doesn’t have the energy to go 16 hours a day, seven days a week for a campaign. Besides that, he can’t handle the stress. Let him enjoy a long and healthy retirement with his family.

We should have stuck with Jack Ryan in 2004. I was working on his campaign. We can blame the Ray Lahoods and Judy Topinkas of the party (as well as the Chicago Tribune, the allegedly “conservative” paper that endorsed Barack Obama for every race he’s ever been in) for chasing him out of the race. He could have won.

Bob, we can’t relocate the meeting based on one attendee’s needs. I’m sure we can arrange a carpool.

Phil, I really like the idea of attending the January 2 meeting of the ICRC.

A week later would work better for me. Must it be downtown Chicago? Parking is miserable. Last time I tried to go to one of these we picked a downtown place (The Berghoff) that was swamped because they were closing in a few weeks.

Piece Restaurant on North Ave. (Route 64) has the best pizza in the city. There’s always one of the many Harold’s Chicken Shacks. Or one of Barack’s old hangouts, Valois Cafeteria in Hyde Park. If I am going to go all the way to Chicago, I want to make it worth my while.

We need to get a rough idea of how many people are going to be there. Then we can pick a place. I recommend South Suburbs such as Joliet. People from downstate can get there fairly quickly via I-80, I-55 and I-57 (although I doubt we will get many people to make the six-hour drive from the Effingham/Carbondale area). Chicago area people can also get there quickly, and there will be plenty of venues with plenty of free parking.

You’ll need to do an Illinois Ping. Here are the Freepers from Illinois. Most are from the Chicago suburbs.

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/profiles2?m=member-list;location=61

Read Charlie Cook. We’ll have the votes. Independent voters are already getting sick and tired of Obama.

Once you have this kind of socialism/communism in place then the only thing that can be done regarding policy and lawmaking is to tinker around the edges. It would take a second Civil War and a near bloodbath, which nobody has the stomach for, to remove this kind of major legislation from the books and the Dems know it.

Once these are made into law then it limits the conservative argument to how we can run programs at a slightly lower cost. Communism will prevail and the Dems know it and know that even if they are booted out of office after passing these they will have positions of power waiting for them so as to rule us.

Yeah, the Dems know it. On non-partisan talkboards, they are taunting conservatives about it: once it's passed, they claim, it'll be there forever.

However: I have some good news for you, and a shocking surprise for them. Most of the provisions of this gigantic mess aren't set to take effect until 2013. Obama and the Democrats (particularly Rahm Emanuel) don't want the entire crushing burden of the deficits caused by this gigantic mess to take effect until after (cross fingers) Obama is re-elected.

This means that if it passes, in 2010 and 2012 the GOP can run on a promise to repeal this gigantic mess before it bankrupts America. And there won't be any desperate single moms with handicapped kids using "public option" insurance yet, to be interviewed by a sobbing Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News. The public resistance to this gigantic mess will be about the same as it is now: fairly high. And the public resistance to repealing it will be fairly low.

Publius Forum is deadly accurate with this. The township level of government serves a useful purpose in rural areas, especially in southern Illinois where there’s a substantial amount of poverty and lots of rural roads to maintain. We also have some smaller cities (not small towns) downstate, such as Decatur and Peoria, where unemployment and poverty have created a long-term need for “township relief.”

But in more prosperous areas with few rural roads and few poor people, township government collects far more in taxes than it needs. So these townships are case studies in “the Chjicago way” of patronage jobs, where you don’t do much work and you take home $60K - $100K a year.

I don’t see how any operating system could be worse than Windows XP. Go with Windows 7. I haven’t even done it yet, but I plan to.