Trust me when I tell you that I have had experiences where someone I didn't know particularly well - or at all - started spouting off Fox News-type BS, and I've usually had a response meant to bring that person back to reality.

I may have mentioned that I work with am attorney - the more limited my contact with him the better - who is not just a raging conservative, but he manages to yell and whine at the same time.  There are a couple Democrats in nearby offices who push his buttons for sport, but I prefer not to engage that way.  For one, I don't want him holding my political opinions against me in the working relationship, and for two, he's already convinced he knows it all, so it's just a complete waste of time and energy to get worked up over it.  He's generally viewed as an obnoxious little tyrant, and I have no interest in meeting him halfway on his views about much of anything.  We can talk sports, but that's about it.

Maryland isn't Georgia or Arkansas or Texas or any of the other stupid states - yet - but that doesn't mean there aren't Republicans and wingers trying hard to turn it in that direction.

Some people here have suggested that discussing sports is a good way to break the ice and start a conversation. Well, when I go back to SoCal nowadays, I can't even discuss with Teabot relatives how the Dodgers are doing, because they can't let go of their politics. Instead, they almost immediately launch into a diatribe about how they never go to ballgames any more because Dodger Stadium / Anaheim Stadium / Petco Park is overrun with black and Mexican thugs who are itching to ambush you in the parking lot before / after the game and steal your wallet and your car.

I mean, there was one alcohol-fueled and very well-publicized incident in the Dodger Stadium parking lot on opening day a few years back, in which a couple of intoxicated Dodger fans who were Hispanic happened to severely beat a Giants fan, Brian Stowe -- who also had one too many himself, and who so happens to be white -- after the game was over and fans were leaving the stadium. Yes, it was bad, and yes, it is absolutely unconscionable that any person could ever do such a horrible thing to another human being over a friggin' baseball game.

Yet the Stowe incident has since morphed on AM squawk radio in SoCal into a white people's cause celebre, with scores of stories being traded about "thugs" -- and we all know what "thugs" means -- who are lying in wait in Chavez Ravine to assault unsuspecting white people, even though that altercation had everything to do with too much beer and the longstanding Dodgers-Giants rivalry, and was not about race and ethnicity. But of course, the teabaggers are lapping up every bit of the false narrative, because it serves to validate their own warped worldview.

I mean, how do you dialogue with people who don't give a rat's a$$ about facts and truth? I really don't know how you put up with their buLL$H!+ in Georgia, because I've been there and seen what you see and experience, and I hear you loud and clear. Most white people where you and MT and Capt Howdy live apparently can't even accept the fact that Barack Obama is an American citizen, or that his childhood home of Hawaii is even a state in the union.

These people are crazy delusional, and they're highly motivated and they show up at the polls. and the only thing one can do at this point is rally your own side and try to outperform them on Election Day.

Not to start anything..

and here.

Real Americans.