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Well, it’s Friday and once again WMUR Political Scoop has questions and lots of softballs were served up.  So I have answers…and in a couple of cases, I question the question or perceived observation:

If you watched Marilinda Garcia, the national Latino rising star, on CNN en Español to check out her Spanish speaking skills… well the station uses an interpreter because she speaks in English.

Isn’t it rascist to think that just because someone has a Spanish derived surname that they should be able to

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Last night, the Gun Owners of NH (“GONH”) had a meeting at the Holiday Inn in Concord, NH with their keynote speaker being former US Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) who is trying to become the next US Senator from NH.  Their rule, as been pointed out here and here, was that Scott Brown had insisted they they not allow:

• Cameras or other recording devices
• Media / reporters

We went down anyways (for nothing says New Media on the conservative side like GraniteGrok) with camera(s) in hand to see what was to be seen, get some interviews, and generally make an annoyance of our ourselves.  Last night, I am happy to report, we achieved all of those goals!  However, one of the things that most disturbs and annoys US are politicians and their coterie of campaign staffs that act contrary to their own request of others

AND LIE DOING IT!  ON TAPE!

Yup, that’s what they did.  WE can’t video them – but they can video others with impunity?  Er, no, not when we have our own camera ready! 

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The wholly owned creature of former NYC Mayor Bloomberg, Moms Demand Action, is an organization whose intent is to rid guns from lawful Americans by any means possible.  One of their “victories” of creating yet another gun free zone, Jack In The Box restaurants, has kind of backfired on them. In fact, we can blame them entirely for creating another gun-free-zone victim!  First they rejoiced:

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is thanking Jack in the Box for its statement out today that it will begin enforcing the company’s no-firearms-in-stores policy. The company’s statement comes in response to a social media campaign and national petition launched just over 24 hours ago by Moms Demand Action to ask Jack in the Box to enforce its policy after last week’s semi-automatic rifle carrying demonstration at a Fort Worth Jack in the Box store that terrified employees so much that they locked themselves in the freezer, according to local police. The petition launched just yesterday has already received more than 5,000 signatures and social media hashtag #JackedUp in popular use.

A statement out today from Jack in the Box’s Vice President of Corporate Communications Brian Luscomb makes it clear the company is responding to pressure and acting on behalf of its corporate and franchise stores: “The presence of guns inside a restaurant could create an uncomfortable situation for our guests and employees and lead to unintended consequences.” According to Luscomb, copies of the company’s entire statement will be available in restaurants for employees to hand out to guests.

And then reality barged into their narrative:

Yesterday, a shooting occurred at the Jack in the Box restaurant at 1504 Hampton Street in Nashville, TN. Yes, you read this correctly. Jack in the Box! The same Jack in the Box that caved to pressure from Moms Demand Action asking them to ban guns less than 1 week ago! 

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Really, can a single man, a town-level elected official, ruin an entire State’s reputation?  Or was this an excuse to list a bunch of Republican politicians again (with a single Democrat to be “fair and balanced”?).  Once again, star and ace political reporter, Kevin Landrigan goes uber-Collectivist in damning a whole state of 1.3 million people for the actions of a Senior Citizen (emphasis mine, reformatted):

Analysis: Wolfeboro official’s racist slur about Obama threatens state’s reputation

A Wolfeboro police commissioner’s use of a racial slur against President Barack Obama attracted nationwide attention, and the state’s political leaders joined local residents in calling for his resignation. But that doesn’t mean Robert Copeland, 82, will step down willingly. The longer he lingers, the more harm will be done to New Hampshire’s reputation as a family-friendly, politically savvy, well-educated state, an expert said.  “The problem with this kind of controversy is that once it becomes viral, it threatens to stick as a toxic narrative about what life is like where this man comes from whether it’s accurate or not,” said Dean Spiliotes, civics professor at Southern New Hampshire University and author of the blog nhpoliticalcapital.com.

Actually, at the time he wrote that, Copeland was not resigning.  Tonite, we know he has.  And I think that Spiliotes is off base as well.  Certainly Wolfeboro newbie Janet O’Toole took the opportunity to get her name out there (I wanted to find out where she traveled in from and such, but there were just pages and pages of the same story in Google and I didn’t bother to further bore myself) but that wasn’t the purpose of the hit piece. 

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NH, for its size, has a lot of colleges.  Certainly UNH and Dartmouth get a lot of attention but there are a bunch of colleges dotting the NH landscape.  I keep reading about the “rape epidemic” at our college campuses but I keep wondering: “If the stat is that 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted, where are all the watchdog reports on it??”.  Yes, tongue in my own cheek here – but where ARE all of the media reports (newspapers, TV, radio, blogs, social media) reporting them all.  C’mon, with college students making up an inordinate percentage of NH’s population, it should be “a standing head” (headline) that we see all the time – FAR more than what we do.

Well, it seems that “the truth” seems to be different than “conventional wisdom” as portrayed by some that would have us believe otherwise:

Look, there are going to be those that will scream at me “how DARE you!” for even bringing it up.  Public policy cannot be done (GOOD public policy, that is, which should be what all of us that are not pursuing an ideological dogma should be about) just on the back of a few anecdotes.  Violent crimes have been falling for years now and this FBI stat shows that rape is no different.

“The chart above is based on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports

Operation American Spring was an event held this weekend in DC that was talking about having 10 – 30 million people show up to protest (Phase 1, below). What was its purpose?  From its website:

Mission: Restoration of Constitutional government, rule of law, freedom, liberty “of the people, by the people, for the people” from despotic and tyrannical federal leadership.

Assumptions: Millions of Americans will participate American veterans and patriots are energized to end the tyranny, lawlessness, and shredding of the US Constitution. Government is not the target, it is sound; corrupt and criminal leadership must be replaced. Those in power could use force against unarmed, peaceful patriots exercising their constitutional rights. Patriots could be harmed, but not expected. There is no hope given today’s technology of secrecy for the effort nor do we want it secret.

Concept of Operations:
Phase 1 – Field millions, as many as ten million, patriots who will assemble in a peaceful, non-violent, physically unarmed (Spiritually/Constitutionally armed), display of unswerving loyalty to the US Constitution and against the incumbent government leadership in Washington D.C., with the mission to replace with law abiding leadership. Go full-bore, no looking back, steadfast in the mission.

Unfortunately for the organizer, Col. Harry Riley, USA (Ret.), instead of a few million people that were expected to show up for this Phase 1 event, the report from Jack Kimball was that only a few hundred showed up yesterday. 

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I understand that a lot of folks are going to be showing up – and why the stricture when all of his rivals are MORE than happy to talk with the media.  That would also include us, GraniteGrok (emphasis mine, reformatted):

FRIDAY, MAY 16: BROWN AND GONH. It should be quite a meeting on Tuesday evening when Republican U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown talks to the membership of one of the largest pro-Second Amendment groups in the state, the Gun Owners of New Hampshire.

The meeting of the GONH board of directors is scheduled for Tuesday, May 20, at 7 p.m. at the Concord Holiday Inn — and Brown should have some ‘splainin’ to do...GONH vice president Ralph DeMicco, owner of Riley’s Gun Shop in Hooksett, said of Brown, “He’s in a tenuous situation. He has a questionable voting record.”. …Brown and DeMicco spoke at the shop when Brown recently visited.  “I have told him that you’re not my first choice, but you’re obviously the party’s first choice,”

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 …In 1964, 76 percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing “just about always or most of the time”; today, 19 percent do. The former number is one reason Johnson did so much; the latter is one consequence of his doing so.

…When Johnson became president in 1963, Social Security was America’s only nationwide social program. His programs and those they subsequently legitimated put the nation on the path to the present, in which changed social norms — dependency on government has been destigmatized — have changed America’s national character. 

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I know that Steve is having great sport (here, here, here, here, and here) with the utter stupidity that seems to inhabit both the White House (see left) and the upper echelon of the State Department; sorry but just “saying” it is insufficient to “doing it”.  After all, God can do that (did that!) but He refrained from imposing His version of Utopia upon us (Obama will be learning the meaning of the word hubris soon).

In the mean time, the adults over at Black Five decided to give the right answer: 

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From AEIdeas:

I got my license right after OPEC declared war on the US with an oil embargo so I remember the outcry that the US had to become “Energy Independent”!  And for the last 50 years I have listened to politician after politician say “I WILL DO THAT!” during every election cycle – and all we ended up with was higher net oil imports from unfriendly countries and a Department of Energy that has failed its basic mission.  Instead, it has been the PRIVATE SECTOR that has created that downslope (via fracking on private lands).

“According to data recently released by the Energy Information Administration, America’s net petroleum imports fell to 28.4% during the first three months of 2014 (see chart above, data here). That’s the lowest dependence on foreign sources of petroleum since 1985,

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