Disqus - Latest Comments for BillSamuel

Re: Worst Parking Lots in Montgomery County (2025 Edition)

BillSamuel — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 09:23:04 -0000

Trader Joe's reputation is generally deserved. However, not every store has difficult parking, and you shouldn't have listed all of them. The Travilah Square location is easy to park at.

Re: Two Maryland Restaurants Recognized in “The Best Thai Restaurants in DC” List

BillSamuel — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 13:56:38 -0000

When my wife and I lived not too far from Wheaton, we would often dine at or pickup from Ruan Thai. Not only do they have great food, but the price is very reasonable and the portins are huge.

Re: Capital Women’s Care Contract with UnitedHealthcare Set to Expire On August 1

BillSamuel — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 20:18:09 -0000

Usually failures in such negotiations are not the sole responsibility of one of the parties. Here you are just parroting one side's claims while not seeking the position of the other side. This is not real journalism.

Re: Council Passes Measure to Allow Duplexes, Triplexes, and Small Apartments Along Major Corridors

BillSamuel — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 20:56:41 -0000

The confinement of this to certain corridors makes it seem like ghettoes.

Re: SUV Overturns After Driver Strikes Parked Car Sunday Morning

BillSamuel — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 15:14:18 -0000

Maybe the driver will be more careful in the future.

Re: Fire in Gaithersburg Injures Two Firefighters, Displaces Six Families, and Causes $1 Million in Damage

BillSamuel — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 11:36:01 -0000

Certainly shows why no-smoking should be the policy in apartment buildings.

Re: Worst Parking Lots (2024 Edition)

BillSamuel — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 20:51:57 -0000

The Travilah Square location of Trader Joe's is an exception to the general rule about difficult parking at TJs. Parking there is easy.

Re: Trump has a devastating weapon to end the Musk fight in his favor: analyst

BillSamuel — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 14:41:37 -0000

He also could order the DEA to go after him and arrest him on drug charges since he's a known big drug user.

Re: Tick Bites Are No Joke. Here’s How to Prevent Them and Protect Yourself.

BillSamuel — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 09:25:20 -0000

I'm not sure why you don't mention Insect Shield products. They produce clothing - shirts, pants, socks, hats - pretreated with permethrin to last a lifetime. And the clothing is all good quality. Using them, you only need to use repellent on exposed skin.

Re: How National Park Rangers Protect Themselves From Bugs (and How You Can Too)

BillSamuel — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 09:21:58 -0000

I'm not sure why you don't mention Insect Shield products. They offer clothing pretreated with permethrin that will last a lifetime. You only need to spray bare skin.

Re: Don't blame Dems for Trump

BillSamuel — Mon, 26 May 2025 10:09:25 -0000

We wouldn't have Trump as President today if the Democrats hadn't been a dysfunctional and anti-democratic party that was not in accord with its grassroots on the key issue of genocide. Huge numbers of people that voted for Biden in 2020 were so disgusted with the Democrats that they left the Presidential line blank in 2024 or didn't show up at the polls at all. If we didn't have the duopoly controlling the political system, and instead had a viable opposition party to the MAGA Republicans, Trump would not have been elected.

Re: Montgomery Update: “Last Chance to Support Fully Funding MCPS, AstraZeneca Opens New $300 Million Facility, and Ride-On is Expanding to HoCo“

BillSamuel — Tue, 13 May 2025 10:01:54 -0000

Why did you run a Moderately MoCo that is just Ehrlich's email, which probably most of your readers get directly? I guess this explains why this is the first time your emails have been classified as spam by Google. There was absolutely nothing from Moderately MoCo in it. Please return to your regularly scheduled program.

Re: There is no magical way out of this — there will be blood

BillSamuel — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 08:04:35 -0000

An outpouring of hate will not save us. Dr. King said, "Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." Hate-filled screeds directed at the Trump Administration will just get us deeper into the abyss. We must seek to change the atmosphere in our country. That is so much harder than to shout our anger, but that's the one thing that can really change things.

Re: Dancer Tackled During Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl Halftime Show After Unplanned Protest Stunt

BillSamuel — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 20:52:09 -0000

We need to use every opportunity to support freedom and peace. We need "good trouble," as the late John Lewis said.

Re: All Rockville Streets Now Have Speed Limits of 35 MPH or Less

BillSamuel — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 22:13:17 -0000

Studies show that the speed at which people drive has very little to do with the official speed limit. Officials who refuse to recognize reality think they are lowering speeds by lowering speed limits. The evidence is that is not true.

A good example. Drive on I-270 south from Frederick. At some point the speed limit changes from 65 to 55. The speed people drive changes not one iota.

Re: Dctom.com Scam Alert: Don't Trust This Fake Store

BillSamuel — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 15:18:25 -0000

There is some incorrect information here. The DCTOM website does show a physical address, a customer service phone number, and a customer service email address. That does not mean it's not a scam website. I could only get a busy signal at the phone number and didn't get a response from emailing.

Re: Eleven Activists Arrested in Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Office Demanding Diplomacy Instead of Funding More War in Ukraine

BillSamuel — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 10:01:58 -0000

He has a long history of changing his tune on war depending on what seems opportunistic at the moment. He also has a long history of hostility to antiwar activists.

Re: Gmail down? Current status and problems

BillSamuel — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 09:28:19 -0000

Gmail has been problematic for several days now. Rockville, Maryland, USA 20850. It is very slow to respond and sometimes won't send emails. It keeps trying but not succeeding. Otherwise my Internet is working well, so it is clearly a Google problem

Re: Brunswick County changes help explain why NC Democrats keep losing races for Senate and president

BillSamuel — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 11:39:40 -0000

So really two reasons: 1) demographics, the primary focus of the article, and 2) extreme views on social issues like abortion which turn off people who might otherwise be open to voting Democratic, which only comes in slightly at the end. Of course, likewise Republicans have become more extreme at the other end, but the polarization generally helps the Republicans in states like NC, with exceptions for outrageous candidates like Madison Cawthorn.

Re: Hundreds of MCPS support staff vacancies will cause district to ‘suffer’ if not filled, union president says

BillSamuel — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 18:22:41 -0000

We need to spring for adequate pay and benefits to fill vacancies. The 10-month employees should get full benefits. We need to be aggressively competitive with pay and benefits for teachers, and not work them to the bone doing non-instructional tasks. There are many out there who want to teach, but the working conditions and pay cause many to leave.

Re: Blair and Elrich still locked in tight race for Montgomery County executive

BillSamuel — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 15:50:23 -0000

At least one political commentator has noted that Elrich ran a lackadaisical campaign. If he had taken the election seriously and run a vigorous campaign, I think he would have been the clear winner at this point. He doesn't like campaigning, but it is necessary. He does want to govern, but he can't govern unless he makes a serious effort to get elected.

Re: State law prohibits GOP’s Skolnick from running as write-in candidate for County Council

BillSamuel — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 12:00:11 -0000

I understand "sore loser" laws which prohibit a candidate defeated in a primary from running for the position in the general election, although I don't think it fits the current undemocratic process for elections here. When the "winner" is opposed by the majority of voters, which is fairly frequent in MoCo, the provision is questionable. It would be valid if we had Rank Choice Voting allowing us to have candidates fairly elected.

I don't understand barring the loser in one race from running even as a write-in for a different office. This has particular value in an area with one dominant party, like MoCo, where it may allow a party to have a candidate in a race in which no one filed for the primary.

I also think Maryland's primaries are undemocratic because 1) although state-funded they disenfranchise voters who are unaffiliated or who are affiliated with an alternative party (even a party recognized by the state), not allowing them to participate in the process determining who is on the general election ballot; 2) they allow candidates to be classified as winners even when more people (sometimes many more) voted against them than for them, which could be fixed by instituting Rank Choice Voting; and 3) they don't allow write-ins, which becomes particularly absurd when a party does not have enough candidates filed to cover every position (like the Republicans for At-Large Council).

Re: Here’s a look at the process for counting mail-in and provisional ballots in Montgomery County

BillSamuel — Sat, 23 Jul 2022 11:13:55 -0000

Old story. Elrich now has the lead. Bethesda Beat has really gone downhill under the new ownership. Lots of old news and much less current news.

Re: County election officials face calls to fix electronic ballot design that could impact outcome in a County Council race

BillSamuel — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:12:44 -0000

It is unacceptable that the electronic versions were not previewed as the paper ones were. The presentation must change. Where there are more candidates than fit on one screen, the screen must clearly indicate that so it is clear to voters they have to consider more than one screen for the race. Ideally, that would not be necessary and presentation would be changed so everyone in each race was on the same page. This was probably not an intentional error, but it was one of carelessness that could have been avoided by following the same preview practice as for paper ballots.

Another thing to consider is to eliminate the bias towards the front of the alphabet by programming it so candidates appear in random order.

Re: After Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, Montgomery County restricts employees’ business travel to several states

BillSamuel — Sat, 25 Jun 2022 14:55:45 -0000

Case of not thinking. What if the states with different policies than our own retaliate by refusing to send employees to states that allow abortions? We get silos where there can be no national conferences. Is this healthy. And think. There are other areas where states have different policies. What if we extend the principle to other policies? This is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. It's childish. I supported Elrich last time and was planning to so this time, but this is just too crazy. He has lost my vote.