LaRouche people are always baffling. I try to read their lengthy pamphlets. They always make somewhat outrageous accusations in the title/on the front page but then get so bogged down in boringness that I can never actually figure out what they're talking about. I used to think it was me, but I've tried enough times that I realized it was them.

This sounds strikingly similar to the R_o_n P_a_u_l people. (I messed up his name just now because I'm pretty sure they have some sort of blog search mechanism set up.)

No need, I'll defend him: I find it to be very different than the Ron Paul situation. Ron Paul has ardent supporters precisely because of his positions, whereas the article makes clear that LaRouche's supporters couldn't understand many of his writings, and that it was more of a cult of personality. Also, Ron Paul is already a legitimate politician as a congressman.

Paul's supporters are aggressive online, sometimes annoyingly so. But if I was a Republican who was rational yet unwilling to leave the party, I'd be singing the praises of Paul as well. As I've said before, I agree with much of Paul's platform, much more than his fellow Republican candidates, but where we diverge is too crucial for me to consider supporting him.

The larouche material did indeed seem insane. I would occasionally pick up the newspapers that Larouche supporters handed out on campus. The newspapers were generally 2 double-sided broadsheets folded to make 8 pages with incredibly dense type, but in reality there were only 2 pages of material, so it seems the supporters either didn't realize they were supposed to cut the broadsheets in half and not nest them, or they were trying to make the amount of material look weighty. And the dense text was little better than lorem ipsum; I tried to read it as well, and before giving up from boredom found that it had all the earmarks of a madman; incoherent ramblings, typos galore, logical fallacies up the wazoo, yadda yadda.

The only thing that disturbs me about ron paul's street team is the "rEVOLution" gimmick, where the capital letters are in stencil format and red, thus implying the word "LOVE" backward. It would make a little more sense if that word-search was something you could find in ron paul's name, but ANYBODY can put "revolution" in their campaign slogan, so why identify a backward LOVE? What does that mean? Does Ron Paul have hidden love? Is he anti-love? Why bother to highlight the love at all? Why not be straight-forward about it and call it the "Ron Paul Love Revolution"?

Seriously, if there are any Paulitians scanning this blog, I'd love to hear your take on the weird LOVE issues (not the real issues; save those for Rumors Daily, if you don't mind).

It's a revolution, with love.

> if I was a Republican who was rational yet unwilling to
> leave the party, I'd be singing the praises of Paul as well.

I agree completely. Perhaps I tarred with too broad a brush. What struck me as similar was the emphasis on quantity of messages over quality of message. (An emphasis they apparently share with the Sept. 11 conspiracy people.) Maybe it's just the particular Ron Paul people who found RumorsDaily.

I would like to have someone with political legitimacy and new ideas on the Democratic side, but so far, zzzzzz.

Ron Paul is interesting. He's got the standard regular cadre of libertarian ideals along with a few I'm not familiar with:

anti-free trade agreements
anti-abortion
anti-federal reserve existing
pro-gold standard

I actually don't know enough about the federal reserve and the gold standard issues to have real opinions about them, but they seem far enough out of the mainstream that I'm willing to be neutral-leaning-against until I actually do the research to learn what the deal is with them.

The abortion and free trade issues are disappointing.

Ron Paul is weak because he talks about issues while more importantly LaRouche talks about ideas which most Americans don't understand because they have been dumbed down.

RumorsDaily said: "LaRouche people are always baffling. I try to read their lengthy pamphlets. They always make somewhat outrageous accusations in the title/on the front page but then get so bogged down in boringness that I can never actually figure out what they're talking about. I used to think it was me, but I've tried enough times that I realized it was them."

Some people need to be spoon fed. I guess you just can't connect the dots jerkey.

Wow, you attract the crazies wherever you go, huh?

I'm like a magnet.