Skip

I just don’t understand how the IOC decided to add this one final event to the Winter Olympics – nation invading!  Or was it that have the attention of the world focused on Sochi just wasn’t big enough for Putin?  Today we are seeing that Russian Spetsnatz and other troops coptered / jetted into the Crimea as the Ukraine was throwing off Putin’s puppet.

During the 2008 election, Sarah Palin was roundly criticized by the Left for this:

“After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next,” Palin told Foreign Policy in 2008, “

And reminded people of it again:

“Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I’m usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as ‘an extremely far-fetched scenario’ by the ‘high-brow’ Foreign Policy magazine,” she wrote. “Here’s what this ‘stupid’ ‘insipid woman’ predicted back in 2008.”

And again in 2012 during the Presidential Debate, Romney knew what was right – and Obama was wrong.  This is what the New York Times had back then: 

Read more

(H/T: Liberal Logic 101)

The purpose of a company is to make money for its owners: sole proprietor, partners, C Corp, LLC, or bigger.  They exist to make wealth – I know my job when working for someone else is to maximize profit.  I was rather blunt with my employees – your job is to put money in my pocket.  Don’t do that, and no one here has a job. Even entry level employees must do that – but there is that economic risk in hiring that person.  While time must be given, and training given, to that employee, the goal is to make them profitable.   What stands to reason is that the lower the cost to employ that person, the easier the risk is to take on that new guy.

The Left sees companies as mere extentions of the Welfare State (that they don’t completely have total control over – yet).  I should do a post on this soon (been thinking about this for a while).  They chatter about that EVERY Company must pay a higher rate for rank newbies even as most just aren’t economically worth it.  They come at it from a “we’re all in this together – hey, we’re a rich country, right?”  – two fallacies at once.

Read more

Planned Parenthood of New England – I guess that whole thing about “womens’ reproductive health” is a front for an XXX movie shack, eh?  Congrats, Jeanne; I NEVER want to hear that the civil discourse and society are getting coarser and coarser, as your support helped to make this possible.  As Grokster Tom pointed out here, when you take money from an outfit that creates PORN FOR TEENS, you are complicit with them.  When you thank them for their endors.  Whips, chains, leather, bindings, submissions – and letting teens and pre-teens “hey, have a ball!” (innuendo intended).  That a sitting NH State Senator is complicit in pushing porn to teens should evoke a backlash.  Along with, as Tom points out, these “fine upstanding pornifiers:

PPNNE also endorsed and funded the campaigns of: Governor Maggie Hassan, Senator Molly Kelly, Senator Bette Lasky, Senator Sylvia Larsen, Senator Lou D’Allesandro, Senator Andrew Hosmer, Senator Martha Fuller Clark, Executive Councilor Debora Pignatelli, and lone Republican Senator Bob Odell (who should be drummed out of the Republican Party, today).  What a fine bunch we have in Concord.

NH State Senators – and now with their association with PPNE, providers of pre-teen porn.  Indeed, what a fine bunch we have in Concord!  And just think, US Senator Jeanne Shaheen is also complicit in this porn pushing – when the NH Executive Council voted against funding PPNE, Jeanne Shaheen decided “I’ll show those rube New Hampshire Citizens – *I* will override the democratic process in NH and fund it with Federal monies“.  So she’s more complicit than the above.  After all, if she got them Federal money, what’s the over/under that the Shaheen money was used for the video, hmmmm?  Such a partisan act, such an act against one of the pillars of our Constitutional Republic – Federalism (e.g., let the States take care of the States, but Progressive Shaheen, it seems, hates that idea too (“how DARE you act differently than what we in DC decree!”).  Take my word for it – this group of “leaders” are sending a message to parents:

WE OWN YOUR KIDS and WE will teach them OUR Morality

Read more

We do a lot of bashing of teachers unions here at the ‘Grok and often, they bring it upon themselves.  I truly believe that their power ascendency has meant a lessening of actual teaching of our kids (along with a whole raft of other things, educational fads that should have never seen the light of day, and busybodies).  However, this post is for commenter Balencesto who keeps crying that all I do is bash teachers.  Some, to be true, but they deserve it.  But all of us have teachers that touched us and that we remember later on in life (1st grade Ms. Walsh, 5th grade Mrs. Johnson (math – what a hard nosed horrible teacher that demanded the most from me, and sophomore history teacher Mr. Dominishie who taught me “context”).  So when I ran across this at The Home Front, I had to share:

 Every Friday afternoon my son’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week… She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.

And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns.

Read more

I’m talking about the decision of the NH State Senate Republicans (Jeb Bradley, Chuck Morse, Nancy Stiles, Odell (whatever his first name, although after the next election, it may really be “whatever it was”) to help carry President Obama’s water in implementing Obamacare’s Medicare Expansion.  Regardless of their claim of “it’s not Medicaid – we’re putting them onto private insurance!”, it is lipstick on a pig.  Regardless of their claim that it doesn’t impact NH taxpayers, it hoovers money out of us NH citizens that are Federal taxpayers.  They say it will sunset in 3 years unless the Legislators vote it back in; the lame message is “Wait, we’ve given us ALL a way out of this!” – but why is it that I have the visualization of the Democrats as being Junkyard Dogs snarling and drooling over their brand new bone – “Sure, go ahead and try to take it away!”

The only even lamer excuse for them to be doing this is “to take it off the table” with the elections coming up.  Only Massive Stupidity says “let’s advance the Democrats FAVORITE agenda in order to get re-elected”.  Note to the Silly: trying to make the Democrats your base has had only one result: torquing off your PRESENT Republican base and those Independents that used to be Republicans (and congrats, you may well be making more of the latter from the former).

So the question is, with the vote of “NO CONFIDENCE” from the Rockingham, Manchester, Strafford, Bedford, Merrimack, and Plaistow (and a whole raft more from what I understand) in resolutions basically saying “HELL no!”, are these Rogue Republicans 

Read more

Well, just after I wrote this, I saw that John Distaso’s latest popped up on my Google watch list.  And NH GOP Chair Jennifer Horn had this to say about this (emphasis mine):

State GOP chair Jennifer Horn told us today, “There is a healthy debate about the Senate’s health care compromise taking place among Republicans. This sort of debate and discussion within a political party is natural and nothing new.

“As we’ve always done, I am confident that come November, Republicans will unite behind our candidates and rally around our fiscally responsible solutions to address the difficult issues facing our state and our nation,” she said.

Happy talk.  JENNIFER!  Medicaid Expansion is NOT a “fiscally responsible solution” – and you can’t put lipstick on this pig. Medicaid Expansion is NOT something that Republicans are going to “rally around“, is it (its rather plain to see now)?  There is another political leader that makes these King Canute type statements – and for this country, there is no success there either.  Maybe it IS me, but Jennifer, you are facing a revolt; 

Read more

“Further, is the NH DMV going to be hacked for our private information – and what recourse do we have?“

And I thought that killing off HB675 (a bill to outlaw automated license plate readers) might have solved this problem.  I got an email from a person that I respect that brought a rather disturbing message:

Skip,

As [we] were leaving the rally today there was a guy photographing license plates of attendees

Immediately upon seeing this, I asked: “Did you happen to get a picture of him?  Where was he doing it when you saw him?”.  I guess my emailer got a real good look at him: 

Read more

Rent Seeking:

An example of rent-seeking is when a company lobbies the government for loan subsidies, grants or tariff protection. These activities don’t create any benefit for society, they just redistribute resources from the taxpayers to the special-interest group.

Among those industries that are most apt to seek demand tax relief for what is just ordinary business is the Entertainment business.  Film, TV; their financial crie d’acoeur always seems to be “give us monies from your Publick Treasury or we shall go elsewhere (where the Publick Officials are more likely to swoon and hand over that Key simply because of who we are)”.  Politicians may be thinking the equation of most “the giving away of our peoples’ monies will be more than compensated by the extra revenues spent by the production crew” – it hardly ever works out that way.  So it usually comes down to bragging rights: “we have them and you don’t”.

This letter to Maryland from the House of Cards production company makes it clear (with commentary): 

Read more