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 The Concord Monitor has a story on Ben Cohen (as in “Ben & Jerry’s”) and his misguided “stampede” to quash Free Speech.  Just like NH Rebellion and the Mayday PAC, he wants tax monies used to pay for campaigns.  Yeah, once again, we’d have to petition Government to provide money just to be able to get elected.  Gee, “what CAN’T government do for YOU??” seems to be their mantra – in direct opposition to our Founding Fathers that wanted to keep government out of most things unless expressly permitted. Reformatted, emphasis mine:

Setting aside the ice cream, Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s spends his time these days working on solving an issue that he says has a chance to send the government as we know it “down the tubes” and replace it with a plutocracy.

So, he wants to replace the Founders’ philosophy on governance all together?  Plutocracy:

1. the rule or power of wealth or of the wealthy.
2. a government or state in which the wealthy class rules.
3. a class or group ruling, or exercising power or influence, by virtue of its wealth.

Why is it that Liberals / Progressives hate the government “by and for the people” except when they are the people at the top?  After all, that’s what these incremental Socialist want. So here is what he’s trying to do:

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When Jeb Bush was just leaving the Governorship of Florida as we were just getting the ‘Grok off the ground.  What we learned, in that still early stage of the blogosphere, was that many older pols just didn’t get the Internet – and that what they said was never, EVAH going to be forgotten.  Not only that, what they said (accidentally or by design) to one set of folks is going to be compared to another set.  The message presented to “groom” one set of potential voters would likely tick off a different set but these candidates figured that they could get away with it without consequences.  And then, one by one, they learned (the HARD way) that the Internet was the Disruptive Technology for Campaigns they never thought would BITE them.

Apparently, it still does; has Jeb Bush fallen into that trap?  This from the Daily Caller, and there’s so many flips, I might start calling him Lurch (although Lurch, after what seems to a chin implant, is looking more like Odo these days) (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Republican presidential aspirant Jeb Bush has different positions on amnesty depending on which audience he’s talking to. Bush visited New Hampshire this weekend

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“…so at least they’re trained, but most of us don’t really care what they have to say.”  – Instapundit

You know, Laura Ingraham (conservative talk show host and pundit) wrote a book a while ago called “Shut up and Sing” whose message was “I have given you money to entertain me – not lecture me about your liberal politics.  Stop the latter and just do the former”.  And now Starbucks has decided that schlepping out overpriced and over-pretentious coffee-in-a-cup isn’t enough – it agrees with AG Eric Holder that Americans are too cowardly to talk about race so CEO Howard Schultz has ordered his baristas to “engage”:

This week Starbucks patrons in line for coffee may find themselves waiting for an impromptu discussion on race relations to take place between barista and fellow patrons as part of the new “Race Together” social awareness campaign initiated by CEO Howard Schultz.

The idea is for a barista to write “Race Together” on a customer’s cup and then engage that customer in a dialogue about race relations in America.

“When did you first become aware of your race?” is one question a barista might ask a patron who is interested in starting one of these free-range “organic dialogues,” according to Starbucks’ spokesperson Linda Mills, in a phone interview.

Yup, The Stupid is strong in that place.  Now, I have

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There are several people that I’m now starting to watch on the Republican side of the 2016 Presidential Primary (and several I have no intention of voting for as well).  Rick Perry is one of the former but there may be a lot of consideration going on after reading this news.  When I co-founded GraniteGrok, one of the things that caught my eye were the political campaign staffers, especially those here in NH that float from one candidate / advocacy group – the political musical chairs game.  Who ends up where, who are the grunt level work-a-day folks and up to the senior “strategists” and “advisors”.

Sidenote: frankly, I get more enjoyment talking with the lower level folks that tend to be much younger and work extremely hard for very little money.  And it is interesting to watch who works for who and see if principles count for something applied to who they work for (all the while knowing ya gotta earn something to support oneself).

So when RedState reported on the national senior hires that Rick Perry has just made, having noted their past words and actions, I cringed knowing that if it were up to them, folks like me would b

e kept a Texas mile away (fortunately, we have friends here in NH….!):

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Progressives believe they are “good” and only looking out for others when in reality, they are micro-totalitarians willing to boss, at the end, others at the end of a gun (re: this).  From Café Hayek.  Gee, who does this sound like being described?

The officially proclaimed Terror was, however, no random savagery.  The approximately ten thousand men and women who were killed were selected quite carefully: if the new national assembly, the Convention, demanded such blood-thirsty policies, if its all-powerful committees sent cartfuls of aristocrats, priests, and assorted opponents to the guillotine, it was, they considered, for a good reason, and no one was more coldly logical, or more blood-chillingly threatening, that Robespierre.  The Republic, he explained, was the hope of mankind; if it disappeared, tyranny would prevail forever; thus, in order to preserve liberty, it was necessary to suppress it temporarily.  That line of reasoning, for all its self-evident fallacy, has continued to have enormous appeal.

Of course, no one in the throes of a passion to remake society (always, of course, a remaking that is believed to be ‘for the better’) thinks of himself or herself as evil – as prone to commit sanguinary atrocities that history will properly judge to be utterly inexcusable.  ’Our goal is so great and good,’ the social engineer with power assures himself or herself, ‘that the executions and tortures of today are justified to create the far more just and fair and equal and truly free (and [fill-in-the-blank]) society that we are now using our power to construct.  And anyway, those people being executed and tortured deserve their fates.’

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But that is exactly what Reps. Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL)42%, Bob Dold, Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY)26%, David Joyce, Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ)53%, Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ)42%, Rep. David McKinley (R-WV)52%, Rep. Pat Meehan (R-PA)39%, Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA)38%, Aaron Shock, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID)43%, and David Valdao appear to be. All of them are members of the union-funded Republican Main Street Partnership. They have all taken money from the NEA. They all have abysmal Heritage Action and Club for Growth scores (bar Dold, for whom ratings aren’t fully available given when he was elected). And they have all taken stances on key education legislation right in line with the NEA.

And NH State Senator David Boutin can be lumped with these union supported Republicans – go ahead, ask him if he would EVER vote for Right To Work legislation, even a watered down bill that merely mandates that unions have to collect their member dues directly instead of the State of NH taking it out of union members paychecks.  And yes, a little blue bird did tweet in my ear that he’s been spotted in diners with union leaders. Maybe not the NEA, but little difference.  You know, the same unions that beef up and work for Democrats.  Good deal for him, not necessarily us trying to derail the Statists policies of the Dems.

RedState:

Others at RedState have written before about the problems caused for advancing conservative policy by the union-funded Republican Main Street Partnership and their members. It just so happens

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