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Yesterday, we were hearing from sources that Shawn Jasper was shilling for David Hess to push aside Bill O’Brien even though the NH House Republican caucus nominated Bill O’Brien for NH House Speaker.  Turns out, with the letter below, that we were right about the coup, just off concerning the players.  Shawn Jasper was not shilling but the target, and Bob Mead (former friend and aide de camp to Bill when I first met Mead) is doing the shilling (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Dear Representatives-Elect,

For all of you who were planning to protest the caucus speaker nominee by withholding your vote or casting a blank ballot on Organization Day,  you now have another choice. You no longer have the dilemma of wasting your vote or voting for a speaker candidate you are opposed to.  Although the motion was brought forward, the Caucus failed to vote to unanimously support the Caucus’s speaker nominee.

This deliberate slight by the Caucus, opened the door for another candidate’s nomination on Organization Day, which has now happened. Bowing to growing pressure from a long list of supporters, Representative Shawn Jasper, who will be starting his eleventh term, will now have his name placed in nomination for speaker on Organization Day.

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“If one, then many” – a phrase many of us heard over and over (if we have heard it once).  Like Steve said:

As we head toward a new session it is important to know who the Democrats are in the Republican party.

And so it is – where there’s one, there’s more!  Let’s us re-introduce Shawn Jasper (R (sorta), Hillsborough 37) and his record.  Just as with David Hess, his record on the Right of Citizens “to keep and bear arms” – a fundamental bellweather of whether or not a politician truly believes in what the Constitution means in its original intent – or whether they are willing to trade those Freedoms for the “culture of the day” will o’wisp at best – or at worst, throwing in with the opposition.  Following in Steve’s suit, I decided to go over to the Dark Side and see how the illiberal opposition (that would be Granite State Progress) rated Shawn Jasper on Second Amendment issues rather than us being cited for “right wing bias” against RINOs:

• Rep. Jasper voted against allowing someone who was denied a handgun license to petition directly to the Superior court and skip the local process. (HB29, Roll Call #7, 1/4/2012)
• Rep. Jasper voted against allowing guns on college campuses and dorms, in athletic stadiums and public parks and beaches. This bill additionally restricted local communities from making local decisions regarding firearms in these areas. (HB334, Roll Call #11, 1/4/2012)

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Heh!  Now we start to watch all of the CLIMATE APOCALYPSE!!!!  predictions starting to come due – and #FAIL.  This one is rather inconvenient – it will, pretty much, shorten the Christmas buying season, much to the dismay of retailers everywhere:

Only three days left to save The Earth

Prof Penny Sackett, Herald Sun December 04, 2009

We’ve got 5 years to save world says Australia’s chief scientist Professor Penny Sackett.  THE planet has just five years to avoid disastrous global warming, says the Federal Government’s chief scientist. Prof Penny Sackett yesterday urged all Australians to reduce their carbon footprint.  The professor said even if all the world stopped producing carbon dioxide immediately, temperature increases of 1.3C were unavoidable.

Well, we didn’t and temps didn’t get an Al Gore fever, either.  In fact, she seems to be a bit off on that:

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You betcha!  One of the main complaints of the TEA Party was that the Federal Government should not be in charge our healthcare.  That it should not be trying to take over and socialize 1/6th of our economy simply because: Government! Top down, gazillion page law and resulting regulations would do NOTHING to lower costs.

Mandating that EVERYONE have health insurance would do nothing to help actual care giving.  Marketplaces would be inefficient and limiting of choice – that in the “Land of the Free” was wrong and certainly in the spirit that America was not governed by a Government but by its citizens for themselves.

Marketplaces that were created by Government and highly regulated by gazillions of bureaucrats (and influenced by every single special interest group grubbing for their slice of the political pie) was not really a marketplace at all but a disgusting bastardization of the English language simply to “make the [Democrat] medicine go down”.

And make NO mistake – ONLY Democrats voted for it (and have been continuing to pay the political price for something the American people have been against since before its inception.  So even with the passage of time, even with the promise of Obama that our premiums would go down, the promise that healthcare costs would be lower, what has happened?  Yeah, the TEA Party was right: the AFFORDABLE Care Act law is not (emphasis mine):

Medical Costs Drive Record High Number of Americans to Delay Treatment

One in three Americans has delayed seeking medical treatment due to its high cost, according to a recent Gallup poll. This marks the highest percentage ever recorded in the 14-year history of the survey question.

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The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”
-President Barack Obama, inauguration, 1/20/09

So, not only are Obamacare high deductible costs making people put off needed procedures, Obama’s signature policy’s Shiny Object, healthcare.gov is STILL not finished even four years after the Law being signed and over $2 billion spent:

OBAMACARE’S BACK-END STILL NOT BUILT; OFFICIALS VERIFYING APPLICATIONS BY HAND

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It has been a busy couple of days here at chez Murphy with Thanksgiving on Thursday and then my now extended family decided to all come back and do it again yesterday so blogging has been light from me.  It has ALSO been very light from pretty much all the other Groksters as most of us got hit with power outages.  Yeah, *I* had power but the rest were pretty much part of the 200,000 other New Hampshireites that did without – news reports say this was the fourth largest state wide power outage event in history.

Anyways, catching up bit by it and this caught my ear on Fox News this morning as I played back yesterday’s DVR’d Special Report on the Walmart protest:

Protester with bullhorn, call and response:  “IF WE DON’T GIT IT?”   “shut it down!“

Really?  Is this another instance of the Union

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TMEW and I are no longer spring chickens, I guess.  I think we knew this, innately, but really haven’t wanted to face up to it directly (but few of us do, right?).  Well, reality has a way of intruding on one’s outlook – and it is persistent.  Like many, I was outside on Thanksgiving Day  trying to get rid of the snow so that our guests could get into the driveway and up to the house – wet, heavy and in a lot of places, just plain compacted “cement”.  And my back decided to let me know of ITS reality and all but quit on me (even with the John Deere snowblower).

Both the Youngest and the Eldest came over quickly and spent the next hour or so doing the rest of the cleanup – the pathway up to the house, finished snowblowing the driveway, raked the roofs, cleared out the mailbox on the street, and removed the veritable ice ridge at the end of the driveway from the plow trucks.  And that’s when it hit me…

….just like I used to do for my parents when my two were those ages.. 

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Michael Yon, former Special Forces and combat reporter, gives his takes on why there was no attempt to “shoot to wound”:

Ferguson: Why did the officer not shoot Brown in the legs?

Many people are innocently asking this question. The answer could go on for pages, but to be succinct, a couple handfuls of reasons:

1) This ain’t the movies
2) Most police do not fire their weapons much. Most are not great shots.
3) He would have to be an incredible shot to be crazy enough to fire wounding shots.

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Obamacare is in force and the big corporations that were in Crony Capitalism mode are slowly understanding that the only person that matters is Obama.  Deals struck with him, like all of his campaign promises, have expiration dates.  Matters not whether much money and efforts have been expended on his behalf earlier – you’re no longer needed.  From Yahoo News (reformatted, emphasis mine)

Exclusive: U.S. CEOs threaten to pull tacit Obamacare support over ‘wellness’ spat

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Leading U.S. CEOs, angered by the Obama administration’s challenge to certain “workplace wellness” programs, are threatening to side with anti-Obamacare forces unless the government backs off, according to people familiar with the matter. Major U.S. corporations have broadly supported President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform despite concerns over several of its elements, largely because it included provisions encouraging the wellness programs.

The programs aim to control healthcare costs by reducing smoking, obesity, hypertension and other risk factors that can lead to expensive illnesses. A bipartisan provision in the 2010 healthcare reform law allows employers to reward workers who participate and penalize those who don’t.  But recent lawsuits filed by the administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), challenging the programs at Honeywell International and two smaller companies, have thrown the future of that part of Obamacare into doubt.

The lawsuits infuriated some large employers so much that they are considering aligning themselves with Obama’s opponents, according to people familiar with the executives’ thinking.

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