“Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in.” —Confucius

“I am deeply sorry that I accidentally ran over several wild ducks near the Crowne Plaza last Monday night…”

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This years top 20, like last years, is based entirely on comments.  So it is  not so much the top 20 best posts for content, reporting, or style  just the ones that inspired the most debate.

This years number one comment-getting post is number one because the subject of the post was so ‘inspired’ by their having been reported on, that they unloaded so many comments on the post I lost count.

But before we get to that, here are the 19 that could not be #1 this year but tried.

So here we go, starting with number 20.

#20 Rush Limbaugh Mentions Me On The Air.

This goes into the “Wow that’s kind of cool category.”  Today Rush Limbaugh mentioned me by name.  I didn’t hear it but Skip called me from the road, and he was pretty darn excited for me.

#19 Stupid women

Ms. (Wendy) Davis and hundreds of thousands of hundreds of thousands of other women can freely exercise, without Big Government getting in their undergarmets, the choice to be more careful while having sex in order to prevent becoming pregnant in the first place.

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The NH GOP should go “X Contests” a la the Ansari X Prize that was offered by the X Foundation

Frank Guinta was on WMUR’s (just like the logo says) “Close Up” – no big surprise as like all shows, we are now in the “wrap up for the year” time slot for all the news and talking head shows.  This week was one of “quick bites” from politicians from both sides of the aisle and Frank basically got one quick shot at it – but brings up an interesting concept:

Be respectful of different views and perspectives in our party because there are a lot of great ideas. Whether you identify yourself as an ideologically in the middle or on the Right, there are a lot of ideas that come from different people.

Indeed!  I have often said that the only people who have a monopoly on good ideas are those that, well, have good ideas.  And yes, they can come from a bunch of people and sometimes, from people you have never heard of before but has taken quite a different slant than the Conventional Wisdom would dictate.  However, this does beg a question: HOW do you decide what is a great idea – or not?

I have a suggestion (yeah, no surprise there, eh?).  Usually, great ideas fall into a few categories: 

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Advantage Guinta in the “Answer the Question” category.  Host of WMUR’s Closeup, Josh McElveen, asked what I thought was a simple straight-forward to US Senator Kelly Ayotte:  Is there a collective unity or is it still as fractured as it was Nov 7?

Well, you know, just like any place, there are divergent views within a Party.

C’mon! It’s not like it’s a secret or anything – I’ve been blogging about this topic for a while. Not only that, but the NH Media is oft covering the same (after all, many are Democrat operatives with bylines, as Glen Reynolds is oft to say) and like to turn that shiv a little at a time.  Or, just read / watch / listen to the media that seemingly delights in reporting that Karl Rove and the US Chamber of Commerce are raising 10s if not 100s of millions of bucks to “fight” the Liberty and Freedom wing of the Republican Party (e.g., loudmouth US Representative Peter King is a great example, if you need one).

 But I think what we need to do is make sure to focus on, really, the core principles of the Republican Party: fiscal responsibility, making sure that we have economic growth and jobs by creating the best climate in the world for you to grow your business, thrive and grow here in NH and across the country, and strongly defending our nation. That’s been my focus in the Senate and I have found many like-minded individuals that want to work on those issue not only the Republican Party but looking for opportunities across the aisle to solve problems for America – that’s what’s needs to happen and I hope to be a strong voice within our Party that we need to be problem-solvers and that we need that we show the American people why our principles make sense and why they are going to provide a better future for America.

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New Hampshire Democrat David Campbell sped over a family of ducks with his BMW, crushing a number of them.  Before we cater to his litany of excuses consider this.

When proposing an 83% increase in the state gas tax last year he insisted that we needed the money for roads and bridges but later confided that this gas tax would provide a bounty of revenue for ‘other purposes. ‘

Conclusion: Scare people with spin about crumbling infrastructure to pick their pockets.

The spread sheet of estimated revenue from the increase double counted the previous increase in future years adding a million dollars in estimated revenue that did not exist.

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I haven’t written as much as I should have about this – that’s what this weekend will be set for as the underlying issues are what are important and not just that a TV network suspending one of the stars of its best show.  That said, I am betting that this info had quite a bit to do with their white flag surrender:

According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, in the days after the Duck Dynasty patriarch was benched for his anti-gay remarks to GQ writer Drew Magary, A&E experienced a significant downturn in its deliveries. In the week of Dec. 16-22, A&E averaged 1.51 million viewers in prime time, down 13 percent from 1.73 million in the year-ago period.

The target demos took a bigger hit, as adults 25-54 dropped 22 percent to 678,000, while members of the 18-49 set fell 18 percent to 646,000.

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