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It is appropriate to post this Op-Ed as the NH House of Representatives starts its business.

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While cleaning my garage of junk recently so I could get my car in out of the season’s first snow, my mind was wandering and I started to think about the term “moderate Republican” and what it might mean.

My first thought was that it might be a Republican who was temperamentally willing to reach across the aisle, as they say, to others with diametrically opposed political beliefs to reach a compromise on important issues to get some legislation passed.  Anything, as long as it passed with some bipartisan support.

Then, I thought of the term that a legislator must “go along to get along.”  I have always heard that is one of the first things new legislators must learn.

So, I took a deep breath and with the renewed oxygen in my brain I started really thinking about this issue.  What does it really mean?

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That’s been a big complaint stemming from the time that the Reps held all three branches – they still acted like they were in the minority.  Too scared to stand up and man up to the Principles they gave campaign lip service to – and they wondered why they were kicked to the curb in 2008?  No one trusted them.  It has taken them 8 long years to regain some of it back.  Notice I said “some” – I think much of why they now hold Congress and the Oval Office (well, the later in two weeks) is not the Rs themselves but an unwillingness to let Hildebeast carry on a third Obama term.  But I digress.

So the VERY first thing that they wanted to do was to get rid of the Office of Congressional Ethics?  Yeah, that’s really being “laser focused” on the real problems at hand as this newest Congress gets started.  Sorry, it just showed me that they Haven’t. Learned. A. Dang. Thing.  Business as usual and watching their own backsides. The reasons why they got put there in the first place?

Second place.  Or third.  Or “anything but”.  And then you know what happened that made me think – instead of the Rs keeping Trump in line, it may well be that the best thing that has ever happened to the DC Republicans is Trump:

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Since Obamacare was passed, the Republicans have said “REPEAL!”.  I’ve been waiting for this to happen for real quite some time , again to see if actions would finally match the political rhetoric:

Senate Budget Committee Chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) introduced a budget resolution Tuesday that includes “reconciliation instructions” that enable Congress to repeal Obamacare with a simple Senate majority. Passing a budget resolution that includes those instructions will mean that the legislation can pass through the budget reconciliation process, in which bills cannot be filibustered.

That means Republicans will only need 50 of their 52 members in the Senate, and a bare majority in the House, to pass legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act. According to the Wall Street Journal, the budget resolution could be passed by both houses as early as next week.

To be clear, passing the budget resolutions does not itself repeal Obamacare. But it’s the necessary first step if Republicans are to do that this year, and unless three or more Republican senators defect (or 24 House members do), it’ll be smooth sailing for the repeal effort from there on out.

Live by the sword, die by it.  I just hope that the Rs don’t lose

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(H/T: Animal House, Kevin Bacon)

“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 Obama, Inauguration (2009)

Apparently, Obama is going to make like George Washington and make his “farewell” speech (sigh….if only).  I do wonder if he’ll mention these two specific things rather than his logic-twisting, alternative-reality pronouncements that he’s been making lately (e.g., how FORTUNATE we’ve been to have him as President).  After all, if he says it seems to be that he thinks it becomes real – you know, like God speaking something into existence:

Medicare?: “The Medicare Actuary says that taxpayers now face a Medicare unfunded liability ranging from $27.9 to $36.8 trillion.”

The VA?: “One year after outrage about long waiting lists for health care shook the Department of Veterans Affairs, the agency is facing a new crisis: The number of veterans on waiting lists of one month or more is now 50 percent higher than it was during the height of last year’s problems, department officials say.”

Let’s take the latter one first as this has been totally under his control and it has only gone from worse to abysmal.  

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This is the year that Republicans in both Concord and DC have absolutely are out of excuses to get things that the base has been demanding for years.  The excuses started after the Democrats won the House, Senate, and the Corner office(s) – we can’t get anything done as we don’t have a majority!  Safe to to say, they didn’t go into much detail as to WHY they lost – they had everything before and didn’t get it done then.

They said – things will be different if we get the House.  So, we gave them the House.  Then the whining started in on “what do you expect from us – we only have 1/2 of 1/3 of Government.  We need the Senate, too”.  So we did – and the whining didn’t stop even then: “that Obama, he keeps blocking everything we try to do….Waaaaaa” (but in the meantime, they gave Obama all the funding for all the stuff they campaigned against).  GIVE US THE OVAL OFFICE (and here in Concord, the Governorship, even as the turncoat Republicans GAVE Maggie “The Red” Hassan the Obamacare Medicaid Expansion she and other Dems wanted (and not just a few Republicans, too).

So now both sets of Rs have a complete run of the three branches twice over.  There can be no more excuses.  Right?  Am I right?

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The entire purpose of Government is providing services to its citizens.  We can quibble or argue over what services and in what quantity but they must be paid for. It is becoming increasingly clear that services must be paid for in the now but that past services are ALSO being paid for now and in the future.  Which as many towns, cities and States are coming to grips that those past services are very expensive indeed.  Especially out in California, services for the present are being drastically in many places due to the high price, via pensions, of those past services.

And now Nashua is feeling the price of former politicians giving too much to former government employees as they are seeing the cost of kicking that can down the road – only a snippet from the Telegraph (pay wall):

NASHUA – With the city facing a likely budget crunch in fiscal 2017-18, caused in large part by increasing pension costs, lifting the spending cap is seen as an unlikely way out of trouble.

The city’s spending cap can be lifted with a vote of 10 of the 15 members of the Board of Aldermen. That figure is out of reach given the current makeup of the board, said Brian McCarthy, president of the board…

Back to California, from Reason.com:

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Completely safe is what I’m told.  Um, maybe not so much? Emphasis mine, reformatted:

Mysterious illness tied to marijuana use on the rise in states with legal weed

For more than two years, Lance Crowder was having severe abdominal pain and vomiting, and no local doctor could figure out why. Finally, an emergency room physician in Indianapolis had an idea. “The first question he asked was if I was taking hot showers to find relief. When he asked me that question, I basically fell into tears because I knew he had an answer,” Crowder said.

The answer was cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS. It’s caused by heavy, long-term use of various forms of marijuana. For unclear reasons, the nausea and vomiting are relieved by hot showers or baths.

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Tolerance and pluralism are important values in a free society. So are choice and association. Your choices may not be mine; my preferred associations may not be yours. In a diverse, live-and-let-live culture, our differences are manageable — as long as government doesn’t interfere. The state can’t force Elton John to take a gig he doesn’t want. It shouldn’t be able to force anyone else to, either.

-Jeff Jacoby (Boston Globe columnist)

But, so it seems, if you are a Christian baker, florist, photographer, bed-and-breakfast owner, or wedding chapel operator, the State will, with the screams of the gay mafia, force the ordinary people to “take a gig” they do not want.  And the Left is perfectly fine in have local, State, or Federal Government force Individuals to go against their conscience for deeply held religious beliefs. Don’t let me forget the coercion that Obama and his pack of Progressives have forced me to support (via my taxes) abortion against my religious beliefs via the HHS “regulation” (that comes with the force of law) by redefining the English word “access” to now mean abortifacients must be “free” to those that want it via Obamacare.

Yet, when the shoe is on the other foot, as we are seeing with their candidate having been kicked to the curb by the American “flyover” public in favor of Trump, all of a sudden that long neglected clause of the First Amendment has become very, very important.  This tweet says it well:

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A few excerpts from a piece by Matthew Continetti at the Free Beacon (emphasis mine):

This is the conservatism of Bill Gavin who, in his 1975 book Street Corner Conservative, gave voice to the instinctual conservatism of the men and women who populated the Jersey City neighborhoods in which he was raised. “They do not want to overthrow the system,” Gavin wrote. “But they are not quite satisfied with the system either. They supported the United States efforts in Vietnam, but at the same time deplored the strategy of piecemeal escalation that led to such a disastrous state of affairs. They are sick unto death with the follies and the arrogance of liberal Democrats, but they have not quite snuggled up to the Republican Party.”

The Queens-born Trump, like other street corner conservatives, has never quite felt at home in either political party. And while he went to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate, he, like other street corner conservatives, lacks the graduate degrees and credentials that establish oneself in society as a professional or as an originator and exponent of ideas. “We were all, I am convinced, conservatives,” Gavin wrote of his family and friends. “We never intellectually knew that we were, but instinctively, it seems, we knew that certain people and institutions and places have claims upon our loyalties.”

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We’ve railed about the vivisection of what used to be the common morality of right and wrong, of duty and honor, of a shared work ethic.  Since the 1960s, with the Free Love, If it Feels Right, God is Dead (or should be), we’ve seen the century long fight to unhook our Society from the traditional mores.

And have succeeded – out of wedlock births, binge drinking, drug abuse, higher mortality

Post reporters Kimberly Kindy and Dan Keating want to blame increased alcohol consumption by women on advertising. Using the left’s favorite new word, the Post argues that clever advertisers have used social media to “normalize” heavy drinking by women. This is hardly an unexpected line for a liberal newspaper to take.

An alternative view would connect the rise in alcohol abuse with the phenomena I pointed to at the beginning of this post — the increase in single-parent families, the rise in drug abuse, and a declining work ethic. The Post implicitly makes some of these connections by including its article on alcohol abuse in a series that also encompasses drug abuse. As noted, though, when it comes to drinking the Post elects to focus on advertising.

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SHOT:

Alan Dershowitz: “Obama Had Israel’s Back So He Could Stab Them In It”

CHASER:

John Bolton: Obama Didn’t Stab Netanyahu in the Back; He Did in the Front

Front, back, no matter – I can only think of the most defining of Obama’s words why he decided to not protect Israel at the UN vote last week:

• “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.” – Barack Hussein Obama, P 261 -“Audacity of Hope.”

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