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And I thought I had a problem with FairPoint?  As a former frequent flier, I am SO glad my longest biz trip lately is from the kitchen to my home office and that airports are not in my immediate future as they used to be (a weekly affair):

Over at The New Yorker, Tim Wu identifies the two little, insidious words that explain why airlines have made flying more and more awful: calculated misery. 

Perhaps you didn’t realize there was a name for the way that the airlines nickel and dime travelers, but if you’ve flown lately, then you know all about the effects of this economic strategy. Unless you’re a devotee of Southwest Airlines, the good old days of free checked bags are pretty much gone. But it’s not just bags: The airlines now extract huge amounts of cash by degrading the basic flying experience and then charging fees for priority boarding, slightly better economy seats, paid in-flight Wi-Fi, and other features that make the flying experience something less that totally unbearable. Delta and United each made more than a billion dollars in 2014 just from rebooking fees. Wu writes:

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Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., is using alleged police brutality victims to raise money for a re-election campaign he promised not to run.

“The historical election of President Obama doesn’t mean the end of racism and injustice in America,” says @cbrangel
Rangel, the veteran Harlem congressman, barely eked out an electoral victory this year in part by vowing to retire in 2016.

But citing the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police, Rangel earlier this month asked supporters to pony up for another electoral bid.

“The historical election of President Obama doesn’t mean the end of racism and injustice in America. It didn’t suddenly heal the wounds that have been left through the centuries of racial hatred and prejudice,” he emailed. “Whether it’s Eric Garner or Mike Brown, these unjustifiable deaths remind us that we’ve come a long, long way from how we got here, but we have a long way to go.”

The “Contribute” button at the bottom of the email links to a “Re-Elect Charlie Rangel” page for credit-card donations.

Supporters are encouraged to fill Rangel’s campaign coffers so they can “make a difference in this election.”

The Daily Signal has the fund raiser letter here.  So, who here in NH did the same thing – PROMISED NH voters that he would be “one more and done”?

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After all, if you are all out praising a Racist for what she’s done, how is that any different for Hillary and Sanger than what we are seeing with the current Scalise and the kerfuffle on speaking at a white supremacist group (or not, as the case is turning out to be), why can’t we hold Hillary to the same standard?

Hillary: “there are a lot of lessons we can learn from her” –  like that Sanger’s major push for both contraception and abortion was aimed at those minorities and “disadvantaged” communities, Hillary?

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So, as I described here, I cut the cord with FairPoint – with the sole reason was that I was not going to pay for bad service.  Yesterday was the cut-over day – the cable guy (no, not THAT Cable Guy!) came over, swapped out my modem for theirs, checked the levels, did a couple of tests, and pronounced us “whole”.  Since then, we did purchase a new cordless / handset system (yes, the guy from FairPoint was right – mostly dead, truth be told).  Let it charge overnight, ported over all the numbers, my headset works, played with the ring tones (dum dada Dum dum, Dum Dada DUM da, DUM DADA DUM da, dum dada dum!) and have made some calls. And cheaper to boot, too.  Happy tie.

But I ran across this a bit ago (bloggers oft bookmark LOTS of stuff they never use or forget they have) so as part of New Year’s “clean up”, a final word on FairPoint.  From the Concord Monitor (12/19) was this rally that the striking FairPoint workers held at the State House that I forgot to use first time around (reformatted, emphasis mine):

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Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

(Thom­as Ken, 1674)     You betcha – the Concord Monitor (aka “Pravda on the Merrimack” for its support of just about all things Leftist and little on the Right) ran a story earlier last month about the absolute handwringing over that abortions in NH would soon – lose taxpayer funding.  Ah yes, like all Leftists, they continually rewrite the Christian doxology where their first line would be “Praise Government from Which all blessings flow” and the killing of unborn babies using tax money is certainly one of them.  Yet, notice that their Savior is completely missing from their parable but be sure, the Concord Monitor does identify their Devil (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Women’s health agencies and their supporters, including Gov. Maggie Hassan, are bracing for yet another attempt to strip state funding for Planned Parenthood and other groups that perform abortions.  Rep. Warren Groen, a Republican from Rochester, plans to introduce a bill that would “ban public funding going to any organization or group that does abortions or refers for abortions.” Groen filed a legislative service request for a bill “prohibiting the use of public funds for abortion services,” and he said it’s currently being drafted. Groen said he has a long history of opposing abortion and has assisted crisis pregnancy centers.

And I agree with Warren – I am

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One of the first items that the Obama Administration was to re-engineer the Auto Bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler to the tune of 10s of billions (after Bush gave them billions more).  The reason was “jobs, we have to save these jobs!” never heeding the cries of the opposition that the American capitalistic system of Creative Destruction would slurp up the various parts  during regular regular bankruptcy proceedings (yes, at bargain basement prices) and repurpose them under new management – and probably under new labor agreements.  And that showed us the first face of the Obama Administration is subverting the Rule of Law in going around the normal process, screwing over the bondholders, shareholders, and (now former) auto dealers to protect Labor Unions.  And now in the final tally, as many of us had said at the time, the American Taxpayer:

Federal government lost $9.26B on auto rescue

Washington — The U.S. government lost $9.26 billion on the auto industry rescue, according to the final accounting released late Monday.  In its report, the U.S. Treasury Department said it recovered $70.43 billion of the $79.69 billion it gave to General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC and auto lending arms Ally Financial Inc. and Chrysler Financial. The government was repaid through a combination of stock sales, partial loan repayments, dividends and interest payments.  The books are closed on the program because the Treasury, on Dec. 19, sold its final 11.4 percent stake in Ally, the Detroit-based auto lender and bank-holding company formerly known as GMAC. The bailouts began in December 2008 under President George W. Bush with $25 billion in aid to GM, Chrysler and their lending arms. President Barack Obama added about $55 billion to the total.

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And remember, EVERY Progressive is a socialist…in this, they perfectly fit the definition of Orwellianism – they use the same words as everyone else but mean them to mean other meanings – bastardizing the common language so as to advance a leftist / socialist agenda.  They can’t be honest to us or to our common language else they’d never win elections.  Liberal used to imply “let others do as they wish – leave them alone”.  Instead, “Liberals” are all about controlling and being bossy about how others should behave and how to spend their money.  Prof Don Boudreaux (one of my favorite reads) has more on this notion and pretty much calls Progressives out as to who they really are – tyrants, as they have no problem in taking the Freedom of others away from them because: LIBERALS!  (emphasis mine):

Liberal is a good word with positive connotations, which is why English-speaking statists (people who are today commonly called “liberal”) appropriated the term despite it describing almost nothing about their political and policy beliefs.  There is nothing liberal about the itch to order other people about or the arrogance that encourages the scratching of that itch – there is nothing liberal about this itch and arrogance even when those suffering these afflictions genuinely believe that their commands will help the people who are ordered about, and when a majority of voters suffer from that same itch and arrogance.  Recall what Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) wrote on page 372 of his History of Economic Analysis (posthumously published in 1954) about 18th- and 19th-century proponents of free markets; he wrote that these free-market proponents believed

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OK, I josh – studies have shown that the NEWS part of Fox News is closer to the center than CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC (not to mention NBC, CBS, and ABC) – but that’s not the point here). What IS the point is that if one listens to the Left, NO one is watching Fox (or the diminutive of that – Fox is losing viewers).  Well, here’s the latest – first number is total viewers and the second number is the audience that has been deemed to be the most valuable – “the demo” of people aged 18-54″.  From Deadline (via Big Journalism)

For the 13th consecutive year, Fox News annihilated its left-wing counterparts at CNN and MSNBC. In total viewers, Fox beat MSNBC and CNN combined.

2014 total day viewers — total and news demo viewers, respectively:

Fox News: 1,052,000 – 214,000

CNN: 399,000 – 126,000

MSNBC: 347,000 – 108,000

HLN: 257,000 – 105,000

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Even though French philosopher Alexis De Tocquville toured the nascent American Democracy back in the mid-1800’s, even as he was in wonderment of the strength of its Civil Society (e.g., non-governmental), he was prescient in diagnosing its probable demise in the rise of those that would control the others under the guise of “we’re here to help and keep you safe” (reformatted, emphasis mine) in his book Democracy America:

I had remarked during my stay in the United States, that a democratic state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer singular facilities for the establishment of despotism…

I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world: our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it, the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it.

It seems that many refuse to see, or acknowledge, that this can happen “in America” – after all, are we not “the Land of the Free”?  Most, in thinking of tyranny and despotism,

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“…doctors who have been receiving the enhanced payments will see their fees for primary care cut by 43 percent, on average”

As Medicaid Rolls Swell, Cuts in Payments to Doctors Threaten Access to Care

WASHINGTON — Just as millions of people are gaining insurance through Medicaid, the program is poised to make deep cuts in payments to many doctors, prompting some physicians and consumer advocates to warn that the reductions could make it more difficult for Medicaid patients to obtain care. The Affordable Care Act provided a big increase in Medicaid payments for primary care in 2013 and 2014. But the increase expires on Thursday — just weeks after the Obama administration told the Supreme Court that doctors and other providers had no legal right to challenge the adequacy of payments they received from Medicaid.

They NEVER said anything about this when passing Obama’s Medicaid Expansion here in NH, did they?  Now with having shoved 20,000 new people

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Thoughts on Democrat appointed Speaker Jasper on CloseUp this morning:

• Overall, he seemed to be, right from the start, to have Bill O’Brien under his skin and the majority of Republicans that didn’t vote for him (and lest you have forgotten, it was the Democrats that appointed him Speaker).  Not a single word about the ENTIRE Democrat caucus voting for him and a tiny minority of Republicans voting for him.  And certainly the HRA & NHLA scores don’t show him being a “solid” conservative.  Rather dismissive (and/or clueless) as to how his committee appointments have gone over.  Nice to see that he’s calling a large number of Republicans in the House “fringe”.  That won’t go over well going forward.
• He threw Right To Work right under the bus, didn’t he?  Nice to see that he took “the way of McConnell” – we’re only a small part of the Government without stating his union support – or that not a small number of his Republican supporters are also anti-RTW union type folks as well  (last heard up to 60-70 unionists casting themselves as Rs simply for this issue).
• On Medicaid Expansion:

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After all, Michelle Obama’s federalization of our school cafeterias has turned out so DANDY, hasn’t it?  Pictures and pictures of more and more kids literally trashing their lunches and waging a #WarOnMichelle for the absolutely disgusting meals they had to buy.  No competition – Progressive Michelle also went after the vending machines and bake sales traditional for raising funds “for the children”.  Really, Michelle “hates the children”?  Or just another Progressive ideological agenda item in federalizing the “one-size-fits-all-in-everything”?  After all, doesn’t “intent” trump “results”, especially bad ones?  And never having to apologize for being wrong?

So what spurred this post?  From Rand Simberg at PJ Media:  The Nutritional Junk Science of Our Government Nannies.  Yup, pretty much:

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Copied in its entirety (reformatted, emphasis mine):

ACHIEVER OF THE YEAR: Sarah Palin?

For all her detractors’ cries of “irrelevance” and “she’s just a reality show entertainer” (those two being among the nicer epithets), Palin goes on, election cycle after election cycle, populating Congress with her endorsed candidates in a cost-effective manner, and in such numbers that the likes of Karl Rove with his 1% success rate can surely view only with hidden admiration, if not downright envy.  In what is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Palin’s year of achievement, in instance after instance where Palin was ridiculed for a straightforward statement (e.g., “death panels” or the true history of Paul Revere), her most strident critics have agreed, in whole or in part, with her views. But 2014 saw the most impressive of this historical revisionism.

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Anti-Police Protesters Make Weary Travelers’ Lives More Difficult with a New Kind of Demonstration

Out of the many protests we have seen against police officers since November, there have been various approaches taken. Protesters in Seattle disrupted a tree lighting ceremony and made children cry, for example. Now protesters in St. Louis are trying a new tactic, one commonly seen in the late 1960s, staging “die-ins” at the local airport on the busiest travel days of the year.

According to Fox 2 St. Louis, protesters came to Lambert St. Louis International Airport to spread their message to travelers:

On one of the busiest travel days of the year, Ferguson demonstrators marched inside Lambert St. Louis International Airport Friday afternoon. They stage a so-called “die-in”, lying down on the floor of the airport’s concourse to spread their message: African American lives must be protected and racial profiling by police must end.

The protests began around 5:00pm and the demonstrators left the airport peacefully around 5:30pm. They arrived and left using Metrolink.

Here’s a video of the “die-in” and travelers just stepping over them and ignoring them.

…regret that I had not worn my heavy weight steel shod backpacking boots as

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As I mentioned here, Michelle Obama’s signature act as co-Progressive President is swirling the waste can – and now, more schools (in Wyoming) are dumping her program into the hopper as well (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Seven Wyoming schools have decided to go it alone when it comes to serving their kids lunch, saying “goodbye” to the federal Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act. After Sheridan County One scrapped the program, the number of students who chose to buy school lunch went up twenty percent.  Jeremy Smith, the district’s business manager, said, “Universally, it was, ‘We are starving. We are hungry. This isn’t enough food for us.’ But we couldn’t blame them, because I looked at that school lunch and said, ‘I wouldn’t eat it either.’”

Wyoming Public Media reports:

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