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I am writing today to express my overall heart-felt disappointment I have for the Republican Party. In the past I have been content to sit on the side lines, letting the people who know more than I do take care of things.  I now know that cannot happen any longer. I know it is not every one that claims the Republican party as their own that is responsible for the debauchery of our Party; some still fight hard for the core values on which it was founded. As for the rest, you have indeed let me down, and made me ashamed to call myself a Republican.

I have tested my mettle, and found that I am a man of action, not so much of words. I heard the call, and answered it. I fought for your freedoms, I have sweat, bled, and cried to protect our  Constitution, our  Bill of Rights, your Rights, and in the end you have failed me. Our founding document that cost so many Americans their lives to protect are being trounced upon while you bury your heads in the sand.

I call you cowards.

I, along with my fellow brothers and sisters at arms, have done our part with some giving the ultimate sacrifice to protect us all. Now I call you to the line: where have you been? What have you done? I swore an oath that I will continue to honor regardless of my duty status to defend the Constitution from foreign and domestic threats. I have gone to war to defend it. At the risk of sounding like a stuck up prude I will say this: I do not want your thanks. I do not want your appreciation. I did not serve for the glory, for there is none to be had. I did it because I wanted to stand up for what I believe in. 

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Once again, Pindell sets them up and I oblige:

• Will Republicans have to choose between supporting either the gas tax or Medicaid expansion?

The keynote speaker was Jennifer Horn – here are her remarks:

That’s right – nothing.  Now to the good, she was to give a talk and then a few questions afterwards.  Instead, sensing the angst and anger of the activists that were present, she began to take questions after a very brief into. However, with the brouhaha over “private vs privacy”, she decided not to go on record.   Again, Joe Kenney showed that he believed enough in who he is and what he stands for to go on record.  I thought that Christopher Boothby was going to be that type of person – and then his courage failed him.  Props to Horn for taking the questions, but with the brouhaha over privacy vs public and her deciding not to go on record, I think she missed a great opportunity to talk to other activists here in NH.  Openness and transparency?

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“He was for it before he was against it”

The second Republican vying to be the Republican nominee to the seat formerly held by the late Ray Burton is former Belknap County Commissioner Chris Boothby.  Along with Joe Kenney, he was there to present his case to the members present:

Oh yeah, not happening.  While I’ll go into more detail of the “private vs public” bit later, I asked both Mr. Kenney and Mr. Boothby if it was alright to video their stump speeches.  Mr. Kenney said “sure” – he had nothing to hide (I guess being the Marine Corp for 30 odd years and 3 combat tours means that an itty bitty camera doesn’t scare him).   Mr Boothby made the same decision – and then just before it was time to speak, he reversed himself.  His right, to be fair, but I again, I do this “citizen journalism” (they speak and I don’t edit any of it) as lots of potential voters can’t get to the kaffeklatch / home meetings that are conducted during the day when regular working people are, well, working.  The regular media outlets won’t bother – but GraniteGrok does (or tries to; more later).

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Cringed is what I did when I saw this on WMUR 9 this evening – especially when the kid’s head was SLAMMED into the concrete / cinder block wall.  And the Seabrook, NH cops just laughed and smirked.  Even looking directly into the camera, just smiling away.  I guess they believed that the rumored “brotherhood omerta” was in play – they’d be covered:

Mike Bergeron was the guy in the video.  Drunk? High?  Sleep walking?  I dunno but he didn’t look like he was all there.  But then again, it doesn’t matter.  What these three of the thin blue line did was wrong.  Once in custody, they are responsible for his well-being.  Slamming his head against the wall does not heighten that well-being. From the YouTube description:  

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With all of the talk of free school lunches, the need to extend unemployment rates, and the absolute need (according to NH Speaker of the House Norelli (D)) to implement Medicaid Expansion NOW, isn’t it worthwhile to see how “poor” NH really is?

That’s right – we are ranked dead last – where dead last is really best!  Given the fact that LBJ’s Great Society’s “War on Poverty” is now 60 years running at a cost of $15 Trillion and the poverty rate flatlined, the phrase “the poor ye will have with you always”, we now know to be true (an eternal truism, much to the dismay of Progressives who can’t learn from history).

Going to the source, Louisiana is the worst with an official poverty rate of 21.3%.  NH is the nation’s leader 7.5% poverty rate (and coincidentally, one of the best unemployment rates too). 

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We all know that President Obama hates rich people (“I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money“) and he sees “income inequality” as something to be done in additional to use as a political campaigning club.  Instead of trying to lift up the poor, he’s all about redistribution in a retributionist fashion – take from the rich and middle class and give it to the poor.  Well, he could take from these folks – looks like they’ve done VERY well and ought to be ripe for the plucking answering the call to “give a little more”.  From Big Government:

• UnitedHealth Executive Vice President Anthony Welters raised over $500,000 for Obama in 2012. Wall Streeters expect UnitedHealth stock to rocket 40% over the next two years. UnitedHealth “also won big contracts to help implement the [Obamacare] rollout.”
• Obamacare winner Qualcomm has a subsidiary called Qualcomm Life that Schweizer says is “specifically designed to profit off Obamacare exchanges.” Qualcomm former Chairman Irwin Jacobs raised over $500,000 for Obama’s campaign in 2012.
• HBJ Investments chief Jay Snyder bundled over $500,000 for Obama’s campaign. HBJ invests in healthcare medical companies and pharmaceuticals and is “positioned to cash in on Obamacare.”

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No one would ever mistake General “Blood N Guts” George Patton (“L’audace, toujours l’audace”) with an Establishment Republican.  Why?  Maha Rushie nails it:

What they ought to do, the Republicans ought to just say, “Let’s just extend ’em for the rest of the year and put it off the table.” That’s the Republicans’ usual plan. Just agree with the Democrats and then get it off the table and then Republicans will say, “We’ll come back and we’ll nail ’em on the debt limit, or we’ll nail ’em on the debt ceiling, or we’ll nail ’em on the budget.” So if they were to stay in character, the Republicans would say, “In an attempt to steal the compassion issue –” In fact, I’m gonna suggest this right now.

Attention inside-the-Beltway Republicans. The way to deal with this is to tell the Democrats not three months, you want to extend these emergency benefits to the end of the year and get it off the table. Take the issue away from the Democrats so you can’t be hurt by it during the campaign. And I guarantee you if there are any inside-the-Beltway Republicans who just heard this, they’ll think it’s brilliant and they might actually propose it. “My God, if we got Limbaugh on our side on this what’s to stop us?” Well, it’s what they’ve been doing with every issue, agree with it, get it off the table so it doesn’t hurt us. That’s why they’re doing with amnesty, let’s just get rid of it. The issue’s killing us.

Seems right – the “get it off the table” Republicans.  So, too scared to stand up against the Democrat Political Club du jour?  Just take it off the table by going along with it.  How many times have we seen this just the last two years in DC?  It’s always “give in now to shut down the voices, and we’ll run away to runaway another day”.

Here in NH?  From today’s Laconia Daily Sun:

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Yet another sad story on the results of Obamacare on families.  Somewhere in here, I did a post where a single mom (grown daughter) had to buy a new policy as Obama & Sebelius decided that the healthcare policy that the Mom had was “junk”.  No, this Mom was not judged capable of picking a plan that was suitable and affordable for her – Progressives are convinced that none of us can choose wisely.  She wanted to continue to be self-responsible and self-supporting and in doing so, continue that self-esteem that “I can be independent, pay my own way, and be self-reliant”.  Obama & Sebelius’s policies decided otherwise – their “socialist Potemkin marketplace” immediately clapped her into the Government jail of Medicaid – one way in and no way out.  They took away her self-esteem by telling her that they know that she can no longer support herself and gave her only their option – Government healthcare.

Now, another story.  I’ve been writing for years about the school systems / teachers / Govt believing that your kids really do belong to them: feed them 3 squares a day in school (even when schools are closed), clothe them, provide daycare for them in school, provide healthcare clinics for them in school, and take them out of school for abortions if they feel one is needed.   Now on the flip side, the Obama Administration has jiggered the rules so that parents that want to take care of their kids and provide for their kids healthcare wise, can’t.  So these parents must “give up” their kids to the government (reformatted, emphasis mine):

…Zack is married with children and self-employed. That used to be a rough row to hoe for insurance purposes. Now it’s an impossible one.  In the past, Zack had somehow managed to insure his family under Washington’s stringent insurance requirement regime, which had chased away many insurers and bid up premiums. It was expensive to cover his family but he worked hard and they found a way.  Obamacare presented them with special difficulties. Zack thought he was going to have to pay several hundred dollars more a month for roughly the same level of coverage for him and his wife, before you even factored in the kids. They didn’t have the money for it.

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Interesting article on Frank Luntz who I know only by his multiple appearances on Hannity (Fox News) or after debates of one type or another.  He (or the host) asks a focus group of ordinary folks of mixed political persuasions and either getting “hand raise” answers or “intensity dialing”.  Well, I haven’t seen much of him lately, and as this snippet from the Left leaning Atlantic shows, he is despairing of our future since his “claim to fame” is that he listens to people (before doing his political wordcrafting):

…It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn’t listen to each other as they once had. They weren’t interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor. “They want to impose their opinions rather than express them,” is the way he describes what he saw. “And they’re picking up their leads from here in Washington.” Haven’t political disagreements always been contentious, I ask? “Not like this,” he says. “Not like this.” 

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From President Obama’s weekly address:

Just a few days after Christmas, more than one million of our fellow Americans lost a vital economic lifeline – the temporary insurance that helps folks make ends meet while they look for a job. Republicans in Congress went home for the holidays and let that lifeline expire. And for many of their constituents who are unemployed through no fault of their own, that decision will leave them with no income at all.

This would be just more political gas except for one thing: “Fine for me but not for thee”.  I snicker with irony that these were words spoken from Washington, DC Hawaii while the President is on vacation himself – a rather expensive one to boo.  These are the words spoken either by the ironically clueless, the political tone-deaf, or from someone that doesn’t give a darn. 

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Once again, from Obama’s Weekly Address:

We make this promise to one another because it makes a difference to

in continuing his points about extending unemployment insurance benefit.

Sidenote: after 5 years, we have no one to blame except for him and the Democrats from the poor results of their economic policies.  So if Obama is making the pitch for yet again for an extension, isn’t that a self-indictment of his own failure?

Let’s get this straight – I didn’t make a promise to anyone about this and I bet you didn’t either.  Sure, I have a promise in my wedding vows to take care of my wife – and then, to my family.  Yes, I will help my friends – there is that implicit bond between friends to do just that.  But to make explicit promises to unknown people?  Hardly.

No, I see this utterance as being part & parcel of the Progressive “The political is personal, the personal is political“.

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Rolling Stone – the aging paper of record for the 60s hipsters.  Now it  is advising the Millennials the generation already more narcissistic than the Boomers, by dint of the “self-esteem” movement in the culture and education, that they deserve more.  In fact, much more – not only should the obligatory “I merely attended my soccer team” gold statue but reforms that would have brought a smile to FDR (at the least – see his Second Bill of Rights) if not to Marx.  After all, it’s not YOUR fault that the “economy blows” – it’s somebody else’s fault and THEY are the ones that should be responsible for supporting you (i.e., nothing less than the stratagem of the furthering of the infantilizing of America.  It also shows a complete disdain to open up a history book to see how these five doozies have worked in reality.  So here is the premise:

Millennials have been especially hard-hit by the downturn, which is probably why so many people in this generation (like myself) regard capitalism with a level of suspicion that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. But that egalitarian impulse isn’t often accompanied by concrete proposals about how to get out of this catastrophe. Here are a few things we might want to start fighting for, pronto, if we want to grow old in a just, fair society, rather than the economic hellhole our parents have handed us.

Boo-hoo! First blamed – Parents (who still have to put up with you in our basements).  Now, the real problem is that set up by other P-word entities, like Progressive Politicians, and their Progressive Policies (“hey rube, we know better than you do what is best for you!”.  We haven’t seen truly free markets for almost 100 years – I would propose that the late 1890s was the start of true Government dismantling of laissez-faire private sector where private actors were able to make contracts for themselves and determine, for themselves, the conditions under which employment was offered, employment accepted, and trading between producers and consumers happened.  But the author’s premise is that a just and fair society must be managed and controlled by some outside entity?  And this can only happen when another P-word, Politics, gets involved.  And Politics is always to be judged as fair and just?  We all know THAT premise is silly and unfactual

1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody 

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