Free Republic

eleni121: You and the ACLU are clueless ...we are at war.

Not according to the Attorney General's office we're not. But maybe he's clueless too. :shrug:

<rimshot>

You forgot. Some folks aren't just entitled to their own opinions, they're entitled to their own facts. Including making them up out of thin air. And they get mighty indignant when some upstart points it out.

Here's what's going to happen over the course of the election:

EEE, I'm surprised at you.

I plan to win. Yeah, it's uphill. But we can win this thing. There are several scenarios that could allow it to happen. And there are some intangibles that can really help him.

I do agree that treating RP badly is extremely bad politics for the GOP, something that can poison the party's prospects for decades possibly.

When your party has spent like a drunken sailor and you libel the only small-government candidate in the race and with the ground organization and funding to compete, you are planting seeds of genuine bitterness and you will reap what you've sown. And you will have utterly repudiated your small-government ideology, namely the Reagan-Gingrich philosophy that won Congress for us after 43 years in the minority. This prospect of bitterness is especially true when so many RP supporters are venturing into politics for the first time. Screw those kids over and they won't forget it in coming elections.

And if the GOP thinks that Fear Of Hillary in 2008 is going to work any better than Fear Of Nancy did in 2006, they'd better think again before it's too late. I know we're the Stupid Party but that's just brain-dead. This party needs both some new direction and a return to its roots in liberty and small-government. Continuing this Bushism is a guaranteed loser.

As usual, the toddlers here on FR wax hysterical over their own FUD.

Well, we do believe in free speech and the First. So they're entitled to their own opinions. But not their own facts.

You sir, have the patience of a saint.

No, I don't but it's sweet for you to think that.

That's a good philosophical question. You should start a thread with that question in "general/chat".

Hmmm...no, I think I'd rather remain a member of FreeRepublic. ; )

And, yes, stupid is better than malicious. You can educate those who don't know the facts or are careless about them. You know, a lot of folk don't read more than one or two sentences before they post. And that's okay, this is a forum to educate and discuss. But with the malicious Paul-hater types, they know the truth and prefer the lie. The Bible warns us against such persons. And we can conclude quite a lot about their personal character in real life, at their work and with their families, based on such behavior even on an anonymous internet forum.

All I can spare is a 2-lb brick of Ex-Lax.

Hunter people have been the most civil & fair non-Paulers on FR.

I can think of only one Mittster who has trolled us. And every crowd has at least one like that.

Upon further review, the quote was taken out of context. BTW, I am a Duncan Hunter supporter and have never supported the Ron Paul campaign.

Thanks for being fair. There is such a thing as just being honest and standing for the facts.

Few of the Duncan folk have gone in for this dishonest trolling. And Duncan and his fence bill did save us from an election utter disaster in 2006, something the national party will never acknowledge.

And this is trolling, to put it mildly. Many, perhaps most, of these people know perfectly well that they are libeling Ron Paul. It is deliberate dishonesty and goes well beyond what they would do even to the more hated Democrats in the country.

I'm not sure exactly what justifies doing this to our own forum over a candidate they all say can never break 1% in the primaries.

If these RP trolls spent as much time promoting their own GOP candidate as they did trying to slime RP, we just might get a Republican into the White House. But I am thinking that they might rather Hillary win!

EEE and I can probably find at least 20 different quotes by FReepers on these threads that stated outright that they would vote for Hitlery when (if) Ron Paul becomes the 2008 GOP nominee.

Now I wish I would have bookmarked them all.

Yes, they would vote for Her Thighness and a return to Xlintonism. That says a lot more about them than it does about Ron Paul and his supporters.

Anyway, this isn't Breaking News, and it does FR a disservice for a false hearsay report to be at the top of Breaking News for an extended period of time.

And that is the choice of the forum owner. It is his property. We RP folk do believe in property rights after all.

Not so.

I notice your quaint little history of Iraq completely ignores the British invasion eighty years ago, the slogan "we come not as conquerors but as liberators", and all the other rather comedic parallels to Parliament and the debate in our Congress, like they just recycled the script. Our revival of this little British production has played to tepid audiences, much as the original cast did.

The British Mandate of Mesopotamia - At the end of World War I, the League of Nations granted the area to the United Kingdom as a mandate. It initially formed two former Ottoman vilayets (regions): Baghdad, and Basra into a single country in August 1921. Five years later, in 1926, the northern vilayet of Mosul was added, forming the territorial boundaries of the modern Iraqi state.

And the Kurds of the appended vilayet? Those pesky savages that Winston Churchill was referring to when praising the merits of poison gas warfare circa 1919? I think the Churchill worshippers need to be reminded of his real policies occasionally.

---

Winston S. Churchill: departmental minute (Churchill papers: 16/16) 12 May 1919 War Office

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas.

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.

from Companion Volume 4, Part 1 of the official biography, WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, by Martin Gilbert (London: Heinemann, 1976)

Winston Churchill's Secret Poison Gas Memo and other writings

---

I like these little historical gems. They are revealing of the means and methods of empires throughout history. People prefer to see these actors as titans of history than to see what fallible human beings they are and how easily they fall into brutal ways.

So, it's no sale for your tidy little Golden Age Of Baghdad. It's an old military district of the British empire, seized following the Ottoman collapse and given a veneer of legitimacy by the useless but amusingly named League of Nations which our Senate soundly refused to ratify.

One can assemble such a rosy little narrative for almost any region and it is actually pretty routine. Creativity is a plus. However, the lines on the British maps were not drawn on that basis. Nor were they under the Ottoman satraps. The kinds of nostalgic and dreamy writings you quote are produced well after the fact and are used as a justification for restoration or revanchism. They are a familiar propaganda narrative over the last few hundred years.

I'm rather surprised anyone familiar with the region would take such a fairy tale at face value.

If the residents of the old Mesopotamian Mandate do actually have any desire to make it into a real nation, they sure have peculiar ways of demonstrating that when they've had every opportunity to make progress. Instead, they go on vacation, refuse even the smallest compromises between factions, allow the Ministry of the Interior to become an armed and dangerous camp of corruption, etc.

Now, the Kurds, there you can see real progress and genuine national identity, the problem being that their kinsmen in western Iran and southern Turkey make those countries so nervous. They even have good commerce and elections and treat the Christian minority and the other strange minority sects in the area quite well with a good general human rights record to boot.

The Kurds might make themselves a nation. But Iraq? No real signs of it. It's sad too. The ordinary people of the area really are in a bad situation but our presence is a bandaid, not a solution.

I agree that these descriptions are a little vague

In a nutshell, exactly. I hope my rare brevity impresses this point!

Some people misunderstand what Mormons consider success as a missionary. By our standards, he was a stellar success.

I gathered the impression that it was Mitt who considered his missionary work a failure. I never read anyone else criticizing his record in France. You see, I like the guy who looks to see why he failed at something. It shows a real capacity for reflection and growth. It shows determination. It shows that he doesn't like to lose. No one does, of course. But I like the guy who is bugged if he doesn't win. We need someone that determined.

LOL. Still, when it comes down to a close race in IA, will the Paul supporters stick with their guy, at the cost of seeing Huckabee win the nomination? I hope the supporters of all the lower-tier candidates are more sensible than that.

Now, do you really think we would give up in the very first state?

If Mitt somehow failed to live up to expectations, would you? I've overestimated you if that's true. But only a month ago, Romney was considered the kind of Iowa. And he's spent a fortune there. Yet, you haven't given up. And you won't no matter what.

And if Huck won, Ron Paul grabbed second and Mitt came in third, you still wouldn't quit and neither would Mitt. If that were the case, then Iowa would be the only primary in the nation and we'd just give the nomination to the winner of the strange little Iowa caucuses...caucusi...whatever. It's some kind of caca from Iowa anyway.

So, no, the Paulian Horde is staying in through Super-Tuesday. We do have a Blimp Of Death to fly after all. Now, my primary is mid-May. If RP can't make it and I think my vote can make a difference to help Mitt against Huck or Rudi (and those two may be working together already), then of course I would vote for Mitt. Symbolic votes don't mean much even if they make you feel all principled and stuff for a while.

At least Romney supporters HAVE a decent candidate they are willing to promote and support.

I like that they debate, they have confidence in their man and his record of success in life and his ability to win, his positive outlook and can-do attitude (I will do wonder exactly what he wants to do exactly, heh-heh). And, except for just one (and every crowd has at least one), they're polite, almost to a fault. And they're steadfast, a few rough patches don't shake them like we see with some of the Fred supporters now who are talking so gloomy about their guy just because some pundits (????) are talking him down. The Mittsters will stick with their man. I like that too. They won't turn tail and leave him if he doesn't do as well as hoped in a few contests or his campaign makes a few faux pas.

Mitt's become my unofficial backup candidate now. Well, I could look Fred over again if he can make a comeback.

Sure, but I don’t see how sharia law is a threat we face seeing implemented here in the us.

They have some little psychotic idea that electing Ron Paul would result in our surrender to Osama who would then rule the U.S. in 2008. By 2009 at the very latest.

Just let them explain it to you. I might have to make some popcorn for this.

That way when later Huckster is using his political capital to get fried food banned, some mouth-breathing huckbot doesn’t tell me that I knew what I was getting when I voted for him, and that I should should shut up.

LOL. That's funny because it's so true.

Germany and Japan to name a couple, are examples.

Both were well-established nations. Japan from ancient times. Germany, like Italy, was a series of small territories ruled under petty nobles and only unified in the past few hundred years.

So those really were both established nations with a cohesive culture and national identity prior to our garrisoning of them.

Iraq? Just some lines drawn on a map to create military administrative districts by generals of the British empire. When Saddam and his predecessors took it over, it still was only something to hold by force because it had no cohesive national identity and history other than as a colonial entity composed of two violently opposed rival Arab theologies and a Kurdish minority with legitimate aspiration to independence.

Still, with enough oil wealth you might make it into something like a country. I won't say it's impossible. But it would happen more quickly if we would withdraw, at least to our desert bases to guard it from its greedy neighbors until they can re-establish a national defense. Better yet, bring the troops home altogether and simply guarantee its borders against Iran, Syria and especially Turkey who has its eye on the oil-rich Kurdish north.

So those of us that do not support Ron Paul are trolls?

I'm sorry but you have a considerable amount of homework to do before you can even qualify as a troll.

Shoo.

To my astonishment, he told me that he agrees with Paul. This relative stated that our problems with the Middle East began with our assistance in establishing the state of Israel!

You might tell your relative that Ron Paul does not support aid to Israel, "Palestine", or Egypt or our meddling in a "peace process" that compromises Israel's security. We oppose all foreign aid and meddling, including the usual nation-building farces. You can't build a nation for someone else. We've never done so and our few Wilsonian attempts have always failed.

Israel is an established country. While the circumstances of the founding of many countries may be discussed or questioned, Ron Paul and his supporters do not question Israel's right to exist, her control over her territory or her means of dealing with internal security matters including the so-called Palestinians.

We also oppose continued meddling in Kosovo or recognizing its independence by carving off a chunk of Serbia. Another example of Bush/Xlinton unity in foreign policy and a miserable failure although Bush pretended to oppose Xlinton prior to election on this issue. Unless you just really like to reward Muslim genocide against Christians and giving the long-established lands of Christian nations to Muslim narco-terrorists who are the scum of the Balkans and the main processing center for the heroin trade with Europe and the United States. Oh, yeah, and provoking the Russians far far more than even our expansion of NATO to the east. That is why the Russians started talking tough and flying their old Cold War air patrols against the West again too.

Thankfully that's one thing about which we won't have to concern ourselves; Rudy's campaign is disintegrating quickly.

Well, at least that's one thing RP's supporters agree with most every other FReeper on.

No cross-dressing Republicans as our nominee. After the Mark Foley/Larry Craig thing, I think we should abandon that whole pervo-Republican agenda.

Reconsidering Huck

I don't have to reconsider Huck. I never considered him in the first place.

Even McCain would be better. (ducks to avoid flying objects) Yeah, McCain. I know. But it's true.

The gold standard is one of the few issues I disagree with Paul on, though I admit I’m not an expert in monetary policy.

As I've pointed out before, in every presidential election in our history in which hard currency was the central issue between the candidates, the hard currency candidate has won.

Ron Paul is the first real hard currency candidate in decades. One might argue that JFK was a hard currency advocate as well but not to the extent that Ron Paul is.

RP's appeal on Austrian economics and hard currency should not be underestimated. It is a message that draws the crowds. I guess Ron Paul is shrewd enough to convince him they might as well just give him their worthless fiat money. LOL.

Today, we're at $18.52M raised in Q4. I think Fred is standing in a snowdrift by a bus that's out of gas in a small town in Iowa with a sign that says "Will campaign for food".

You know, I do like Fred and could vote for him if RP drops out. But I would think the Fred supporters here at FR would be working and organizing for him and donating till it hurts. How can Fred's campaign be so broke that they pulled all TV ads, radio ads, and stopped their mailings and are now down to just a bus? Well, Iowa has surprised us many times so Fred could pull it out. At this point in Iowa in 2004, Kerry was still considered Dead Man Walking by the libmedia that's telling us the same about Fred.

I notice that Huck's good numbers in Iowa haven't seemed to help his fundraising a bit.