Waving Your Life Away

There is no way to sign wave without looking like a schmuck. It's just part of the way it is. You are holding a sign on the side of the road waving at people. It's an effective way of campaigning and getting your name on the street. But you have to do it the right way. I personally prefer sign waving with my sign by myself at street level. You want to be able to look at the voters as your wave. Waving from a bridge is just an easy way to detach yourself from the people and not look them square in the eye.

Sign-waving is effective, but let's hope it never replaces actual voter contact.

A new definition of CFL(not involving the Stallions)

Check this out:

Sitting humbly on shelves in stores everywhere is a product, priced at less than $3, that will change the world. Soon. It is a fairly ordinary item that nonetheless cuts to the heart of a half-dozen of the most profound, most urgent problems we face. Energy consumption. Rising gasoline costs and electric bills. Greenhouse-gas emissions. Dependence on coal and foreign oil. Global warming...

...Compact fluorescents emit the same light as classic incandescents but use 75% or 80% less electricity.

What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.

Something you might like to know; save the environment and a load of cash at the same time! Read the whole article, which is fascinating insofar that Wal-Mart is trying to be out in front of CFL bulb sales.

Dems Have Nothing on Obrador

John Kerry et. al have nothing on these Mexican Leftists:

Mexico's leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador plans to seek a popular mandate to make him a force to contend with despite losing the presidential election to his pro-business rival, Felipe Calderon.
Mr. Lopez Obrador, who won in most of Mexico's poorer states, is calling on the people to attend a National Democratic Council on Sept. 16, during which they will hold their own elections.
"We hope the NDC can a elect a legal and democratic president," Jorge Antulio Romero, spokesman for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), told The Washington Times in an e-mail.
Mr. Lopez Obrador has vowed to establish an alternative government that would promote his party's social welfare programs. Analysts see the move as a tactic to ensure his role as the country's most powerful opposition figure.
"What he is trying to do is bank on the fact that he was able to capture the majority of the vote in 16 out of 32 states, and legitimize his transformation from presidential candidate to a leader of the opposition," said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, director of the Mexico Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Right now, he is a defeated presidential candidate unwilling to accept the outcome of the election," Mr. Peschard-Sverdrup said.

Obrador's biggest problem:

The survey also showed that 68 percent rejected any calls to civil disobedience by the PRD, and 69 percent were against Mr. Lopez Obrador's call for a national convention on Sept. 16, Mexico's independence day.

But that's probably because of this:

In his effort to remain a relevant political player, Mr. Lopez Obrador has led his supporters to take over Mexico's central Zocalo Square in Mexico City, creating a tent town in the area's main streets.

This makes the Democrats look like graceful losers...

He Said It...

"Yeah. An effort like that would require planning and initiative and those are two things the Democratic Party is incapable of."
- Martin O'Malley on accusations that Duncan's withdrawal was an orchestrated political move

Pew Poll Results

Interesting results from the latest Pew poll for the '08 Primaries:

Democrats: First Choice			Republicans: First Choice
Clinton	32		Giuliani	32
Gore	19		McCain	20
Undecided	11		Undecided	17
Edwards	11		Gingrich	10
Kerry	9		Frist	8
Biden	5		Romney	5
Feingold	3		Allen	4
Bayh	2		Huckabee	2
Richardson	2		Brownback	1
Warner	2		Pataki	1
Clark	1
Dodd	1
Vilsack	1

What does this all mean? Not much. At this point four years, ago, only one credible candidate had filed an exploratory committee, and at that point nobody knew who Howard Dean was...

Stuck in the Mud

While Kerry exercises his First Amendment rights, the FEC continues to deny the right to others:

Federal election regulators refused to ease limits on political advertising Tuesday, blocking an effort to let interest groups run radio and television ads mentioning elected officials within weeks of an election.

The Federal Election Commission voted 3-3 on a proposal that would have allowed such ads as long as they addressed public policy issues and did not promote, support, oppose or attack a sitting member of Congress. Supporters of the change said they wanted to strike a balance between campaign ad restrictions and constitutional free speech guarantees.

The measure failed with the commission's three Democrats voting against the proposal and the three Republicans backing it.

Even the proposed regulatory change did not go far enough to correct the damage done by McCain-Feingold, still an appalling stain on our nation's Constitutional record. McCain-Feingold was just another case of public officials thinking that they are protected by divine right from any criticism of their record or their actions.

On a side note, I never cease to be amazed that Democrats who will stand up for the right of free speech for just about anything except God and political campaigns. As Michael Silence of the Knoxville News-Sentinel notes:

If the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the ACLU are on the same side, something must be seriously messed up!

Echo Chamber

It's Tuesday; must be time for a Democrat to start kvetching about a stolen election:

Sen. John Kerry didn't contest the results at the time, but now that he's considering another run for the White House, he's alleging election improprieties by the Ohio Republican who oversaw the deciding vote in 2004.

An e-mail from Kerry will be sent to 100,000 Democratic donors Tuesday asking them to support U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland for governor of Ohio. The bulk of the e-mail criticizes Strickland's opponent, GOP Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, for his dual role in 2004 as President Bush's honorary Ohio campaign co-chairman and the state's top election official.

"He used the power of his state office to try to intimidate Ohioans and suppress the Democratic vote," Kerry says in the e-mail, according to a copy provided in advance.

This has less to do with Kerry's 2008 Presidential Campaign than it does with the 2006 Ohio gubernatorial election, where Democrats once again are shameless impugning the character of a minority Republican Candidate.

I will say, however, that the Democrats constant whining about their inability to win is really just sad and pitiful.

What's funnier?

Two links here today, and I ask you to vote on which link is more humorous:

• The Kossacks complaining that Joe Lieberman is not endorsing Democratic candidates for Congress after his party abandoned him, or;
• Our favorite local left-winger Jamison Moody liveblogging a County Executive debate held in an alternate universe.
  

About the debate, I was in the hall for both the Democratic and Republican debates, and I can assure you that Moody had to have been watching a different program. Of course, when you write things like, and I quote, "Republicans are dishonest that's why people don't trust you," "failure, that sums up pretty much every Republican plan," "Republicans they have no concept of courtesy," "Dude you're a Republican you don't believe in the rule of the law!", you can see why I think he may be seeing things through rose colored glasses.

Democrats: Please elect this man!

Which of these posts are funnier?
	Kossack: Whining about Joe Lieberman
	Jamison Moody: The Debate from Another Dimension
	How can I choose just one?
	I am a Democrat and have no concept why these would be funny
Free polls from Pollhost.com

End the Epidemic

OK, it is time for everybody to come to their collective senses and end the epidemic of political sign desecration in Anne Arundel County.

Do people realize that sign stealing or desecration does nothing to help the candidate of your choice? If you support Candidate X and you steal Candidate Y's sign, all you are doing is brining attention to the fact that Candidate Y's signs are being stolen. It does nor hurt Candidate Y that you did it, and it does not help Candidate X; in fact, it could even harm the candidate of your choice.

But this is getting out of control; everywhere you go, candidates in all races are having their signs be destroyed or vanished. Even my parents, who live on a quiet street, can't have the signs for the candidates of their choice in their yard without someone riding their bikes through the yard and over the sign. It's a sad commentary on the current state of political affairs that people would resort to this childish, immature behavior. If you have to resort to this kind of thing in order to make a point, just stay out of the public discourse.

I hope that the people who have been desecrating or stealing these signs are caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It does not matter if they are a volunteer or a candidate; this sort of behavior is not appropriate, and it makes everybody of all political stripes look bad.

Pluto Designated for Assignment

After nine days, astronomers finally decided that eight is enough:

Leading astronomers declared Thursday that Pluto is no longer a planet under historic new guidelines that downsize the solar system from nine planets to eight.

Pluto is now a "minor planet"; and not even the largest one of those as what 2003 UB₃₁₃ gets that honor. Which, I suppose, makes the New Horizons probe the first NASA expedition to such a body (as opposed to being the last first-tome mission to one of the planets).

Luck Through Incompetence?

Have the Orioles achieved luck in the off-season player acquisition market by being too incapable of getting the big deal done?

Think about the players the Orioles had interest in, but were unable to acquire:

• Josh Beckett
• A.J. Burnett
  
• Jeremy Burnitz
• Bartolo Colon
  
• Carl Pavano
• Ivan Rodriguez
  

Of those players, only Rodriguez has not spent a significant amount of time injured or struggling since the Orioles attempted acquisition.

In the meantime, the moves fall into two categories.

• Deals that were a wash
• Sammy Sosa (giving up Jerry Hairston was, as it turns out, not significant)
• Javy Lopez (served the purpose)
• Jeff Conine (also served his purpose)
  
• Deals that improved the team
• Kris Benson (a trade that happened over my objections that has turned out alright)
  
• Ramon Hernandez (the offense is down from the first half, but his defense is a substantial improvement over Lopez)
• LaTroy Hawkins (serviceable reliever and we got rid of Steve Kline in the process)
• Cory Patterson (admit it; they swindled the Cubs on this one)
  

All in all, that's not too bad. Sure, you'd like to think that the Orioles can get Vlad Guerrero or Alfonos Soriano if they so choose, but recent times and Angelos' management has made that somewhat difficult. And in-season acquisitions can only work so well (Russ Ortiz, for example).

I just hope that Flanagan et. al are able to seal the deal when the time does come. With the pitching on the way (and how many times have we heard that before) the O's could actually get back to respectability. Especially if the Loewen/Markakis show continues as it did tonight...

Another Democrat That Gets It

Paul Kujawsky is a California Democrat who is a member of the State Democratic Central Committee in California. He seems to realize what many of his fellow Democrats cannot; that people do not trust Democrats with Homeland Security:

In the 1960s, my sister was part of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. She was arrested in a civil rights sit-in. Naturally, she was a lifelong Democrat.

Today, she is a "9-11 Republican."” She is not alone.

My sister is no less committed to civil rights than before. But she believes that not being murdered by Islamist terrorists is also an important civil right. She is not sure that the Democratic Party completely agrees with her.

For 9-11 Republicans, this is the most significant political issue. The GOP "gets it,"” while the Democratic Party doesn't....

...After all, the Democratic Party as a whole is more centrist than its leftist activists. For example, a 2005 Penn, Schoen and Berland poll shows that only 27 percent of registered Democrats describe themselves as "“liberal," while almost twice as many (53 percent) consider themselves "“moderate."” (The remainder are"conservative."”) These centrist folks, the weight of the party, need to become its dominant voice again.

If not, the Democratic Party can expect to lose my sister, and national elections, for the foreseeable future.

(Emphasis mine. Hat Tip: Red State)

Read the whole article, because it is very poignant for this and future elections. For all that some people disagree with the Republican agenda, the Republcian ascendancy will continue because people understand one fundamental concept of the Republican ethos: Republicans believe in protecting our nation from enemies foreign and domestic. In these modern times, voters cannot say the same about Democrats.

Planet Moon?

Apparently, even the Moon may not be safe from the IAU's potential definition of a planet...at least in the long-term:

The new definition, proposed this week by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), basically says every round object orbiting the sun is a planet, unless it orbits another planet. But there is a big caveat: If the center of gravity, called the barycenter, is outside the larger object, then the smaller object is a planet. That wording elevates Pluto's moon Charon to planethood, an idea some astronomers have criticized.

But here's the thing. Earth's moon was born in a catastrophic collision more than 4 billion years ago. It started out very close to the planet but has been moving away ever since. It's currently drifting away about 1.5 inches (3.74 centimeters) every year.

For now, the system's barycenter is inside Earth. But that will change.

"If the Earth and moon do survive, then the barycenter will eventually move outside the Earth as the moon recedes," Laughlin told SPACE.com. "At that point the Moon would be promoted to planetary status."

SPACE.com also has a picture of what will seemingly be the new Solar System as of August 24th...

Spreading Technology on the Cheap

No matter how many times I hear about the hand-cranked laptop, it's still cool:

More than 500 children in Thailand are expected to receive the machines in October and November for quality testing and debugging.

The One Laptop Per Child program, which began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab and now is a separate nonprofit organization, hopes to deploy 5 million to 7 million machines in Thailand, Nigeria, Brazil and Argentina in 2007.

Thailand's government is expected to buy 1 million in the first year.

This kind of project proves, once for all, it's not how much money you spend, but the quality of what you spend the money on, that should motivate investment in education and social services. The best solution is not always the one with the highest price tag.

I Love Creative Ads

And this one from GOP Nominee Mike Bouchard in Michigan is another example of good creative media work. Good stuff like this doesn't always win an election, but it certainly helps....

Enough is Enough

Can we please stop sending any UN Peacekeeping troops anywhere if this kind of stuff keeps happening?:

The United Nations is investigating a suspected child prostitution ring involving its peacekeepers and government soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the U.N. mission said on Thursday.

Among accusations being investigated is that pimps are using the presence of U.N. peacekeepers to lure vulnerable girls to go and work as prostitutes in areas of South Kivu where they are deployed, the mission said in a statement.

How come some Democorats still think we need to pass a UN related "Global Test?" The UN, in this and other similar incidents, has shown that it has as much moral turpitude and authority as the despotic regimes in which troops are deployed under its auspices.

Is Johnson's Campaign in Trouble?

It looks like George Johnson's campaign may be getting some interesting polling data regarding his primary fight with Dennis Callahan. Johnson's campaign went back on television today, including spots on VH1. VH1 these days trends as a network aimed at middle-aged suburban women, so this choice is interesting. And it leads me to two key questions:

• Is Callahan a lot closer in polling numbers than a lot of us think he is?; and,
  
• Is Johnson having polling problems among middle-aged suburban women in General Election head-to-heads againts potential Republican nominees?
  

Now this could all be part of a planned pre-primary ad buy and all my speculation could be that. But given the fact that it starts two days after Johnson reported twelve times as much cash-on-hand as Callahan, it's just interesting.

Responding to this and That

More Green: Robb Tufts commented in my post about his presentation in Crofton and Tuesday night, I would like to correct the record by saying that he does use transit to get to work in Washington. But I stand by all of my other comments, including about trying to force public transit upon people. As far as Boschert goes, I don't think any comment is necessary.

Who is Anonymous?: I'm gregarious enough to allow for anonymous comments. But I would love to know which Leopold apparatchik is posting comments directly related to Leopold's fundraising. Will this person come forward?

False Start

I thought that when you went to the endodontist, that you went it, got the root canal and that was that. Apparently, I needed a "consultation" first, and then the endodontist asked me if I wanted her to start today and finish up next week, or just do it all at once last week.

Needless to say, I was a little surprised. So now I get the procedure next week, even closer to the primary and my anniversary...

Cash Game

Looks like I was almost right about John Leopold raising less money than any other candidate. Current GOP fundraising numbers for this period:

Bissett	$70,000
Boschert	$62,000
Nourse	$42,000
Leopold	$8,330
Angelis	$2,275

Of course, both Leopold and now Boschert have loaned themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in addition to the toals above. But I have said it before and I will say it again: money will not buy happiness on September 12th...

Signs of the Times

When you drive around the county and the district between now and the primary, don't get too caught up in how many signs you see for a particular candidate. Just because a candidate has a bunch of signs on the street does not mean that they have a tremendous amount of support. Take Washington, DC, for example. If you drive around the city, you would think that Linda Cropp, Adrian Fenty, and Vincent Orange are in a tight, three-way scrum for the Democratic nomination to be Mayor. However, the latest SurveyUSA poll indicates that Fenty is nearly lapping the field.

Campaign signs are important. But they aren't the most important aspect of a campaign by a long shot.

Excusing the Hypocrites

Our favorite left-wing District 31 blogger Jamison Moody is at it again with another...different rant regarding. Regarding Barack Obama driving away in a GMC SUV after a speech that he gave regarding decreasing our dependence on foreign oil, Moody writes this:

See to the hypocrite there is never a high enough standard that can be reached to please them. The fact that the American automakers offer nothing along the lines of what is required for Obama's needs are irrelevant to them. They need desperately to score political points on an issue where they have no credible stance. Now if some evidence could be given that Obama was resisting some good faith effort by automakers to provide him with fuel efficient vehicles and he declined to use them, then he would be a hypocrite. But until that time, this is nothing more than a cheap partisan attack that is now being parroted by yet another media outlet that should know better.

That's right, it's OK that Obama is a hypocrite on the use of foreign oil because he needs a big car. It's the same argument that liberals used to defend Rosie O'Donnell sauntering around with an armed guard. Of course, I can't imagine what Moody would say if a suburban mom needed a large car to carry her family around.

Know what really cracks me up about Moody's site? Their rules. I personally like # 11, since they don't tolerate it yet link to DailyKos and Firedoglake, which routinely paraded out anti-semitic material directed at Joe Lieberman in recent weeks...

Logic Gap

We attended the candidates forum at the Waugh Chapel Community Center tonight in Crofton, and while all of the candidates had their say, the most lasting impression came from the final candidate, Robb Tufts, the Green Party candidate for County Council in District 7.

Tufts big issue is workforce housing and developers. See he wants to make workforce housing the number one issue for County Government. At the same time, he wants to stick developers with the bill for the 100% of all infrastructure costs from new development. But, if Tufts wants to stick it to developers, who is he going to get to build the workforce housing developments that are his top priority? There's just a gap in logic in Tufts wanting to so negatively impact the people he will need to make workforce housing more affordable.

Of course, Tufts also talked about the evils of fossil fuels and the need to make everybody use transit and alternative means of transportation, glossing over the fact that he commutes by car from Churchton to Arlington, VA on a daily basis...

8, 9, 10, 23, 39, 53....

You would almost think that the government was involved in this, but scientists of the International Astronomical Union are gathering to finally define what a planet is:

For decades, the solar system has consisted of nine planets, even as scientists debated whether Pluto really belonged. Then the recent discovery of an object larger and farther away than Pluto threatened to throw this slice of the cosmos into chaos.

Among the possibilities at the 12-day meeting of the International Astronomical Union in the Czech Republic capital: Subtract Pluto or christen one more planet, and possibly dozens more.

But the decision won't be an easy one. Scientists attending the conference are split over whether Pluto should be excluded from the list of planets.

The numbers in the title are some of the possible number of planets that could be in our solar system depending on what the definition of planet turns out to be. But it's about time that somebody decided what 2003 UB₃₁₃, Quaorar, Sedna, and the Kuiper Belt and other Trans-Neptunian Objects really are defined as.

These IAU folks move with all of the deliberate speed of a federal bureaucracy...

Uh-oh...

You don't want to be the guy staring at a root canal 26 days prior to the Primary when you're running for office, even something as far down the ballot as the Central Committee. However, that seems to be the predictament I'm facing Thursday afternoon...

More Campaign Finance Fun

How come the "Official Republican Slate, District 31" that only has two members raised at least 59-percent its money ($857.62, to be exact) from outside of District 31 during this reporting period? ( I say at least that much because $290 of the remaining money did not include the address in the report, so it could be much more than 59%)...

Trolling for Votes on Craigslist

I'm not certain that the demographic of our Central Committee race is really going to see it, but more power to Brian Casto if it works.

Leopold raises Peanuts

John Leopold was the first candidate from the area to post his campaign finance report for this cycle. And his fundraising total was, shall we say, a paltry $8,330. And of that $8,330, 18-percent of it was PAC money from the Maryland Realtors PAC and Outback Steakhouse PAC.

Now, I don't begrudge the fact that Leopold has taken PAC money. Unfortunately, that is the nature of doing business these days. But you can't take PAC money and at the same time say you aren't "beholden to special interests" because you have loaned your campaign $355,263.83 from your trust fund either.

What's really puzzling: Leopold's website says that his campaign currently has $450,000 in the bank. His statement (above) says he has $412, 285.01. So either his campaign website is wrong or his campaign finance statement is wrong. Somewhere, Leopold is lying about his cash on hand.

What's amazing is that it is theoretically possible for Leopold to finish dead last in fundraising among the seven candidates for County Executive during this cycle. Not that it really matters. Money will not buy you happiness on September 12th.

What Could Have Been

Former Maryland Forward Joe Smith was traded from Milwaukee to Denver yesterday. That got me thinking about what would have happened had Smith stayed at Maryland for his junior and senior seasons.

How much better of a team would Maryland have been? The 1996 team was a 7-seed that finished 17-12 in the regular season and got bounced by Santa Clara in the first round. The 1997 team was a 5-seed that finished 21-11 in the regular season and got bounced by Charleston in the first round. How high of a seed could they have been? How far could they have gone? Would it have taken until 2002 for the Terps to win the national title?

How much better a player would Smith have been? Golden State took him # 1 overall in 1995, but his career stats indicate an average player who has never averaged more than 18 points per game in any season. His career has been such that Sports Illustrated called him a bust. Hard to imagine this is the same player that the Timberwolves tried to circumvent the cap with. But think about how much more ready for the NBA he would have been with additional seasoning in the ACC.

Oh, what could have been, for both Smith and the Terps.

A Win for Fair Voting

Though we all know the appeals process is not done, the people of Maryland won today when early voting was declared unconstitutional. As I noted in April, I'm sure there are constitutional arguments for and against early voting (though it seems clear that state constitution does not allow for it in this context). But more importantly, and again as I pointed out previously:

Given Maryland's notorious history with shady elections, the last thing we need are to have mechanisms in place that could bring the validity of election results into question.

This is a win for fair elections and a (more) even playing field, especially given examples such as this story (hat tip: David Wissing).

It Could Always Be Worse...

It could be Belgium, where police harrass bloggers and homeschoolers.

Fighting for Second Place

Why can't Peter Franchot and Janet Owens get along in their battle for second place? What an absolutely goofy exchange between two politicians who will be unemployed very soon.

What's sad and pathetic is that Franchot has never gotten beyond the partisan label issue, which just generally seems to be the Democrats problem these days.

Rise of the McGovernites

“This shows what blind loyalty to George Bush and being his love child means...This is not about the war. It’s blind loyalty to Bush.”
- Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL)

With Ned Lamont's victory over Senator Joe Lieberman, the McGovern wing of the Democratic Party is firmly back in control, and the inmates are running the asylum.

In the end, this Left-wing triumph of singlemindeness over service will turn out to be a pyrrhic victory. The Liberals defeated the Moderates, but at what cost? People all around the nation have watched what has happened in Connecticut. The single-issue zealousness of Lamont and his supporters triumphed over Lieberman, who tried to make the primary campaign about more than just the war. But in the end, the Lamont folks turned out the left-wing of the party and they won...barely. The Democrats problem at the moment is that such left-wing rhetoric will stir up liberals to vote for them, but how many moderates will now stick with Republicans? How many conservative Democrats will abandon the party? The more you look at this, the better news this is for common sense and the Republican Party. Especially since Michael Moore is on the job:

To every Democratic Senator and Congressman who continues to back Bush's War, allow me to inform you that your days in elective office are now numbered. Myself and tens of millions of citizens are going to work hard to actively remove you from any position of power.

As Pejman Yousefzadeh notes:

Basically, this whole dynamic resembles nothing more than the ostracism suffered by the Scoop Jackson Democrats in the 1970's. That ostracism brought about the Reagan Democrats and the leader who lent his name to their demographic. A victory by Senator Lieberman as an Independent in the general election will do little to stop this dynamic from playing itself out. At the end of the day, movement Democrats have told the Lieberman Democrats that the latter are no longer welcome at the table. The Lieberman Democrats cannot be expected to take this lying down, and they won't. The result of this clash will likely look hauntingly similar to the clash over the Scoop Jackson Democrats in the 1970's. In politics, there is rarely anything new under the sun, after all.

And the Democrats know all too well what happened in 1972...

Even Democrats Are Seeing the Light

It's bad when some Clinton Administration officials are realizing their party is in dire straits. When Lanny Davis uses the phrase "Liberal McCarthyism", things are bad on their side.

My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.

This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing--in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." The word "McCarthyism" became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right's fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a "communist" or "socialist" who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field.

I came to believe that we liberals couldn't possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years--with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage--I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right.

Now, in the closing days of the Lieberman primary campaign, I have reluctantly concluded that I was wrong. The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony.

I'd like to welcome Mr. Davis to reality. What's really pathetic, though, is this:

But the issue is not just emotional outbursts by these usually anonymous bloggers. A friend of mine just returned from Connecticut, where he had spoken on several occasions on behalf of Joe Lieberman. He happens to be a liberal antiwar Democrat, just as I am. He is also a lawyer. He told me that within a day of a Lamont event--where he asked the candidate some critical questions--some of his clients were blitzed with emails attacking him and threatening boycotts of their products if they did not drop him as their attorney. He has actually decided not to return to Connecticut for the primary today; he is fearful for his physical safety.

Some people just need to grow up and realize that just because somebody disagrees with you does not mean that your world ends. Some people need to realize that we can have useful political discourse and disagreements. Unfortunately, some people on both sides don't get that.

Lieberman Hacked

Was Joe Lieberman's website hacked today, the day before his primary with left-wing darling Ned Lamont? Was it an inside job and they're just late on their bills? Are they desperate, as the Lamont-ites want you to believe? The website now has just a box saying "Vote for who you know, Vote Joe; Please Check back soon."

What a bizarre ending to a bizarre primary campaign.

Attention to Detail

I suppose that we have seen that John Leopold will not pay attention to detail as County Executive. If he did, wouldn't he have ensured that people such as myself who most certainly will not be voting for him in the primary would be removed from the list of people to receive his get-out-the-vote robocalls?

Another fine job by Scott Reed...

Enough is Enough

After today's performance in Toronto, Russ Ortiz is 0-2 with an 11.57 ERA and a .405 batting average against as an Oriole. I think I would have a decent shot of getting a hit off him, and the only organized ball I've played recently was on the GOP slow-pitch team two years ago.

Unfortunately, this goes back to everything I said before the Orioles signed him. Let us please replace him with somebody else. They had the opportunity after today's game when they recalled Daniel Cabrera from Ottawa, but optioned Winston Abreu instead.

That Only Took Three Years...

Low and behold, John Leopold kinda sorta updated the look of his website today. OK, he updated the header. That only took three years.

Here's a simple campaign tip: if you are going to take pictures for your campaign, don't wear the same thing in three different pictures in three different places that just proves you did all of this on the same day. Besides, last time I passed Leopold waving on the road he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, long khakis, and had a hat pulled over his head. I have never seen him (or anybody else) waive in a suit and a sweatervest.

Here's a prognosticating tip: anybody who finds it necessary to proclaim that they are the frontrunner in their race like Leopold does......is not the front runner.

Doing the People's Business

Glad we cleared this up:

State Court Rules Miller Genuine Draft Is Actually Beer
READING, Pa. -- A judge who dismissed charges against a man accused of buying a case of beer for a 17-year-old, saying prosecutors failed to prove Miller Genuine Draft was an alcoholic beverage, was mistaken, state Superior Court ruled.

"This finding was incorrect,'' said the Superior Court ruling in the case against Gregg R. Hartman, 44, of Kutztown.