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While Wall Street decided to throw itself into the gutter, Main Street is doing very well, thank you very much, and is very much looking forward to good time thanks to Trump’s changing Government’s view of capitalism and making it easier to do business by getting Government out of the way and letting people keep more of their own money.  Results are starting to show up (reformatted, abstracted, emphasis mine):

Main Street continues to flourish under the Trump administration. The National Federation of Independent Business reports that optimism is at a 45-year high among America’s small businesses. The “Small Business Optimism Index” — a monthly gauge of sentiment among the owners — has broken the record for the measurement, established 45 years ago.

• 41 percent of the members reported they expect the economy to improve
• 33% say it’s an ideal time to expand
• another 33% report an increase in job openings
• 31 percent reported “higher worker compensation” for their employees.

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It wouldn’t be the first time that someone is crying “Wolf” over…..wait for it…..CLIMATE CHANGE!  Now, I have NO problem in city officials in trying to head off problems – it’s what humans do as being the almost the most adaptable species on the planet (er, cockroaches perhaps a tad more?) and certainly the species that can make the environment adapt to us (emphasis mine):

“Because that’s so important to Portsmouth we wanted to follow up on that to see what we could do to better understand it and to start preparing for it,” Britz said. “The idea isn’t to scare people, it’s not to get people worried about it, it’s to get them prepared.”

That would be city planner Peter Britz. Nice to not scare people – and in the same article, decides to do exactly that:

City planning staff has estimated that Portsmouth will see sea water rise 2 feet by 2050 and 6 feet by 2100, Britz said.

Right – that would be 0.75″ per year for the next 32 years.  Scary numbers, eh?  Being that I can’t help myself, I decided to bring up a couple numbers of my own:

Methinks Peter Britz needs to go back to 3rd grade for a remedial class in simple arithmetic.

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That would be in conjunction with “white”. Here’s the headline over at the SentinelSource (online presence of the Keene Sentinel, who we are currently beating in Alexa ratings):

Two Virginia residents countersue white nationalist with Keene ties

And that would be about Christopher Cantwell.  Now, I could care less about him; what is more important is what the Sentinel wrote.  It always was “white supremacist” when talking about the KKK and that ilk.  I’ve read that phrase for years and decades as that IS their main ideology – the white race should be primary.  Yeah, up yours with all that.

However, since Trump took office 

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Tim Matheson seems to be bemoaning the fact that Animal House couldn’t get made today, while embracing the mindset that would prevent Animal House from getting made today.

That would be Otter – the “debonair” worldly frat boy seducing one gal / woman after another. Who knew that his blacken eye in the movie would give rise to such Cognitive Dissonance in real life today?

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I guess that NH Rep Sean Morrison never learned about the Theory of Holes. Steve first mentioned him in his post on voting for HB628, Paid Family Leave, HB628, whereby he believes that Government has the right to crowd out the Private Sector’s offerings (in this case, insurance policies aGAIN). The financials are such, just like Medicaid Expansion, that to keep that “promise”, monies will end up coming from the General Fund instead of this “pay as you go” fiasco in the making.

I then decided to do my post, “…for a RINO of the Week” and methodically went through what his voting record ratings are and asked a number of very pointed questions about the program, political philosophy, and what happens when it all goes south.  Well, back on Steve’s post, he decided to double down (emphasis mine):

Indeed. I am not a slave to anyone.

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Just like I railed on NH State Rep Sean Morrison here, a quick thought on NH’s bureaucrats disliking competition in the “wine & spirits” marketplace as they seek to stifle any competition to their Power.  A Snippet (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Some wine lovers who look forward to getting new vintages in the mail would be affected if lawmakers approve a bill that would remove “retailers” from the list of those who are allowed to ship wine into the state. Joseph Mollica, chairman of the New Hampshire Liquor Commission, said the change is aimed at “brick-and-mortar” sellers in other states who compete with state liquor stores and other stores selling wine. “A winery that sells wine isn’t a retailer. A wine club that sells wine isn’t a retailer. But a large big-box store is a retailer,” he said Monday.

The bill, Senate Bill 353, would alter the existing law by removing the word “retailer” from the list of out-of-state groups that can get licenses to directly ship wine into New Hampshire, impacting customers who order wine by mail. In testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee last month, Mollica said the bill would affect “about 81” of 1,174 institutions that have the licenses, or about 7 percent of the license holders. But those 7 percent of license holders account for about one-quarter of the annual $11.3 million of “direct ship” sales in the state.

“We are looking to protect our retailers and tax structure,” Mollica told the committee, which is expected to vote on the bill soon.

My Response to this effort to keep a captive marketplace within “their fence”:

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UPDATE: The name of the unregistered vote is Jeanin Onos. She is, from what I understand, going to mount a write-in candidacy.  Which, I am pleasantly pleased to say, is that if there is a Conservative in Gilford that wishes to do the same, you now have the same possibility.  We’d be mightly obliged and certainly willing to help out.

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We are now in the tail end of this year’s budget season.  Last items have been buttoned up, budgets have been finalized,  and the General Ledger (“GL”) accounts/line items at the lowest granular level that we’ve slaved over for tons of hours over the last few months have been rolled up into the aggregate NH Department of Revenue (“DRA”) MS forms lines (further reporting on that later on).  The Public Sessions, whereby the Budget Committee presents both the Town and the School District (“SD”) budgets have been presented to the townsfolk, were done middle of last month.

Have I mentioned that we are an SB2 town (of COURSE I have!)? So while we don’t have the traditional Town Meeting where everything is presented and voted on all at the same time with everyone watching everyone else to see how they voted, we do have the Deliberative Sessions for both the Town and SD and both First Sessions were held this past Tuesday (the SD’s) and last night (the Town’s) (the Second Deliberative Session is where the townsfolk vote by secret ballot).

And in listening to the opening remarks by the Moderator, Sandy McGonagle who served as the Moderator for both the School District and Town First Deliberative Sessions there was a very disturbing difference between the two First Deliberative Sessions.

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Steve correctly singled out the 21 RINOs that decided that a paid Family / Medical Leave (via HB628) is a Proper Role of Government.  One of them, Sean Morrison (bottom row, second from the left (heh!  Left – it fits!) decided to visit the ‘Grok and call us out. That would be NH State Rep Sean Morrison, erstwhile “Republican”, from Epping representing Rockingham District 9; you all should be right proud of this boy for basically outing himself.

Bad move in coming to gun fight without a gun, dud.  We LIKE people like you but not for the reasons you might think.

So he left this snarky comment (along with some videos I won’t repost here):

And I thought fake news was only on the left. Hey anyone ever hear of a TAX you can opt out of? Would anyone not put 0.67% of your pay towards insurance that would give you 60% of your pay(taxed) for up to 6 weeks if their husband or wife got cancer, or their kid needed an operation? If any Republicans voted against this bill that Governor Sununu campaigned on, and Trump endorsed LAST WEEK, who’s the real RINO’s? Sincerely, Rep Sean Morrison.

Of COURSE, I decided to have a bit of fun with him:

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By noted attorneys, Gilles Bissonnette (ACLU) and Mark Sisti (defense attorney).  If only our Legislators actually read and adhered to both the Letter and the Spirit of our Constitutions….sigh….this piece of legislation, “Marsey’s Law”, would have been ITL’d (Inexpedient to Legislate) right from the get-go (reformatted, emphasis mine):

On Tuesday, the New Hampshire Senate held a hearing on Marsy’s Law, a proposed amendment that would add certain victims’ rights to the New Hampshire Constitution. Throughout the hearing, proponents of the amendment argued for the need to provide victims “equal rights” to that of the accused in state criminal prosecutions. This notion of “equal rights” is a seductive appeal to one’s sense of fairness. But it is a misnomer that misunderstands how the New Hampshire Constitution works. The state provides constitutional rights to the accused in a criminal proceeding because the state is attempting to deprive the accused – not the victim – of life, liberty and property.

New Hampshire’s founders were aware of the unparalleled power of state government to imprison or even execute its citizens. As a result, in 1784 – five years before the United States Constitution was even established – they provided in the New Hampshire Constitution a Bill of Rights for those accused of crimes as a necessary safeguard against government abuse. This New Hampshire Bill of Rights even, in some areas, provides the accused with greater rights than those provided under the federal Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution.

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There is a water crisis going on in Cape Town, South Africa right now – they are expecting to run out of potable water in this city of 4 million people rather soon (a few months) and the Concord Monitor is both wringing its hands and bunching up its panties over it.  Given the headline of this post, you can quickly devine what it believes the root cause it. They actually say what they are but then quickly shift to their ideological casting:

…There are many factors that contributed to the crisis in Cape Town beyond the drought, such as outdated water infrastructure, and poor population planning and crisis management. And it’s not like the whole mess came out of nowhere. Baker cited this April 26, 1990, headline in the Cape Times as proof: “City will run out of water ‘in 17 years.’ ” The math may have been off, but the warning was clearly not taken as seriously as it should have been. Now 4 million people find themselves preparing for a worst-case scenario scheduled to arrive on May 11.

Cape Town’s lesson for a world living under the increasing strain of climate change is this: waiting for crises to move from the horizon to the front door before acting is an expensive and potentially catastrophic failure of government.

Sadly, that is too often the way in this short-sighted world, from Concord to Washington, D.C., to Cape Town, South Africa.

And this is TOTAL nonsense, 

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From a study “The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence From Over a Million Rideshare Drivers.”, the folks at Freakonomics Radio did an interview with the authors (RE: “…The paper was written by five economists — two who are employed by Uber; two Stanford professors; and one researcher who’s been on Freakonomics Radio several times: John List, who’s chairman of the University of Chicago economics department, and he moonlights as head of the ubernomics team at Uber.”)

The Pay Gap has been debunked all kinds of times – that 77% is merely a talking point by lazy Leftists.  In fact, studies show that women now out-income males coming out of college as long as they are in the same industries (and studies show that women often choose lower much lower paying careers than men).  But that’s not the difference here as an Uber driver – I guess that militant Feminists might just chalk it up to another instance of “toxic masculinity” because the male drivers don’t drive like female ones.  From the transcript, a fascinating story why men make about 7% more than women:

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