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You are right, my FRiend, and it was indeed dear FReeper Bahbah who was our top reporter on what was said on the shows. I still miss her and her wonderful reports, among other things. Still, and in fairness, we have many excellent Sunday show reporters, such as most recently Bray, posting on the Krugman on the Meet the Press roundtable a few moments ago. Rodguy911, along with the weather and fishing reports from the Florida keys, goes out of his way to post DNC Dave Gregory's weekly mind mumblings, too.

Perhaps we need another round of reporter badges passed out, and I'll certainly encourage all to post what they see on the shows, but I really don't think that's been the issue.

Free Republic has changed. It has gotten courser and people here have gotten more mean spirited, and thread fights between two hard heads can go on for hundreds of posts.

Also, Free Republic is middle aged now, and the vibrancy of its youth, when we were taking on Bill Clinton, grifter, and the wooly headed liberals and move on (dot org) is no longer our defining issue. The terror attacks and the Bush years also wore us out, and I think that 2008 really depressed so many of us, that despite all our efforts, Zero still managed to fool enough to win, and we didn't have a way to challenge those who attacked Sarah and spread lies...

Fast forward a year or so and there came the TEA party, I honestly think it was inspired and encouraged by so many on this site. We did well to regain the House of Representatives given such a huge deficit in numbers the Republicans had. But in reality, the red states just got redder and the blue states stayed the same, and we've lost a lot of ground in Colorado, Nevada and Virginia.

There is still a HUGE fight ahead of us and now is not the time to pale and leave. As Miss Marple said up thread, we must overcome our fear and speak out. We might be banned from here, but we cannot give up.

Now I still content that our biggest enemy has not been political but cultural, and by that I'd mention the biggest, and that is the media. They still get away with their lies. Witness the latest, the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin spectacle, and how easy it is for them, in their lies, to fire up a whole country into an outrage that's grossly misplaced.

So yeah, last week I was ready to give it up, but y'all have re-inspired me.

I'll say one last thing to EVERYONE: Do not feed the trolls. If others come on this thread disputing what you say, argue plainly, calmly, but do not fall into their trap of getting you angry.

...argue plainly, calmly, but do not fall into their trap of getting you angry.

I ordinarily hate to quote a movie catch line, but this is irresistible:

Nobody's ever seen me angry.

(Pardon the late post, but I've been over visiting No. 1 grandson. Kid's been looking for a job for two solid years, had absolutely bupkis for results and I went over to tell him that Grandma and I are going to make him our hired man out on the Homestead to keep him from going over to The Bakken.....which might be "a sure job for big bucks", but the drivers/roads/work over there is killing somebody every four or five days.)