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…and seeing a beaming Harry Reid and Obama on the other side of the counter.  After all, by not fighting hard and not throwing sand into the gear works, Democrats have now flipped the ideological bent of the DC Court of Appeals with Reid’s nuking of the filibuster – Obama will probably not have to worry at all about suits against Obamacare regulations (or anything else) as it is the locked door to the Supreme Court.

And now, the ONE item that actually implemented the idea of “limited government” – the sequester – has been blown up with the “news” of the micro-Grand bargain of US Rep. Paul Ryan (R) with the uber-Progressive Patty Murray.  Could you praise her any more, Paul?  Bipartisanship is not giving up the only real  achievement that the Rs were able get that actually reduced spending – it’s a cave-in as nothing of real value was gained in return.  Future leverage, from the scant details available thus far (but don’t sound good), has also been removed.  No long term restructuring of entitlements, of the “non-discretionary” programs – and $20 billion “reduction” (in the realm of a $4 Trillion annual budget) isn’t even worth spitting on.

All for the sake of “no government shutdown” (PLEASE, DON’T CALL US BAD NAMES ANY MORE) and “stability” – the same status quo that has given us a $17 Trillion national debt.

Way to motivate the base, duds. Nice present for the Democrats.  UPDATE – some details from Redstate (emphasis mine):

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Seems like the Lakes Region Planning Commission is distressed about all the “misinformation” being disseminated recently. During a Nov. 20 meeting, directors spouted the need to turn on their public relations machine to “…get the word out…there are efforts to divert the local planning effort for political reasons…those people write prolifically and it’s a misinformation campaign…” Not so much, really. Rather, it is an “education campaign” designed to inform our communities about the truth behind Regional Planning Commissions here in the Granite State. (The meeting can be viewed in its entirety, at www.governmentoversite.com. It’s a doozey of a meeting!)

NH RPCs are also working to come up with even more legislation/rules in Concord. They are now paying a lobbyist, Ms. Nancy Johnson, to lobby legislators on the wonderful benefits of RPCs.

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Yup, just like the New Gas tax (get it – New Coke!  New Gas Tax?  Hopefully suffers the same death by embarrassment), now we get a new tax on the boats that “Every Man” can afford.  I certainly can’t afford a 45 foot cruiser for whiling away lazy summer days – but I can afford a canoe, a real dinghy (rowboat), sailboat,or kayak (e.g., anything non-motorized).  But now, yet another Republican NH State Senator (Bob Odell, R-Lempster) is proposing that you pay him $10 for each one you want to launch for a couple of lazy hours on the lake.  I imagine that my Eldest (1 canoe, 2 kayaks) ain’t gonna be happy camper.  Steve had the proper response here.  From AFP/NH:

New Hampshire (AFP-NH) today called out a new, proposed $10 fee for all small, non-motorized boats such as canoes, kayaks and rowboats. According to today’s Eagle-Tribune, a bill, sponsored by Senator Bob Odell, would establish this new charge on these watercrafts in order to increase funding to the Department of Fish & Game.

“As the old adage goes, if you want more of something, you subsidize it, and if you want less of something, you tax it,” said Greg Moore, AFP-NH State Director. “This new Dinghy Tax would send a clear message that New Hampshire is more interested in growing government than promoting tourism and outdoor activities. Especially for those individuals who might come to our state for the day to row or paddle the Saco or Pemigewasset from Massachusetts, Maine or Vermont, this new tax would rip out the welcome mat, and cost our state millions in lost tourist revenue. This proposal is penny-wise and pound foolish at best and a triumph of short thinking bureaucratic logic.”

 And here are the money line(s) from that Eagle-Tribune piece:

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From the Daily Mail (a UK paper that does a lot better on reporting edgy American news than most US papers):

• The Affordable Care Act forces companies with more than 50 workers to buy them all health insurance or pay hefty fines
• The IRS says volunteer firefighters are ’employees,‘ even though the Department of Labor says they’re ‘volunteers’
• Out of more than 1 million fire departments in the U.S., 87 per cent are staffed entirely or mostly by life-saving volunteers
• Members of Congress are weighing in, but the Obama administration hasn’t taken any action yet to carve out a fire-fighting exception

Yup, pass it to see what’s in it, eh Madame Pelosi?  Nice to see that this is gonna hit New Hampshire towns and hamlets HARD!  But remember, you all voted in these Progressives – welcome to another agenda item FORWARD!  Once again, our Godlets-in-DC are absolutely convinced that they know what’s best for us out here in the ‘sticks!  Nice to see that not only is Obamacare effectively stripping us of healthcare insurance (what middle class family can afford to shell out $12,700 in deductibles on a $40,000 income?  Effectively, they will HAVE NO insurance).  Now, here’s the next shoe to fall in Obama’s plan to “fundamentally transform America”:

Now he’s about to strip us of home insurance.  And that’s not all!

And Jeanne Shaheen and Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter?  And let’s not forget Annie “Benghazi-in-headlights” Kuster!   They, too, believe that most NH town Fire Departments are optional – after all, there’s nothing in it for them, is there – NO Fire Unions with volunteers to man the phone banks and empty their wallets to make the Democrat campaigns flush with cash.  Not only that…

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Let’s be clear – it seems that for Progressives, politics drives their very being, and they pursue avidly.  It fills their souls so much that they can’t begin to grok that when conservatives talk about religious values, progressives think that use of personal religion conscience is only a dodge from agreeing with something in the political realm.  They truly do not understand or accept that that conservatives really do refer to “religious values” being outside the political – they don’t care in their striving to have The State be the be all and end all of life.   EVERYTHING is political for Progressive – and they refuse to see otherwise or accept that for a lot of people, politics holds little value at all as their “managing principle”.

And so when Sally Kohn wrote this screed she called “When Religion and Liberty Collide” in the Daily Beast, several things came to mind as I read it.  However, to set the stage, what is the let’s stage for this fisking. The latest news is not so hot for Obamacare (and Zandra Rice-Hawkin’s claim that people just LOVE Obamacare) – Rasmussen:

• 38%  – believe businesses should be required by law to provide health insurance that covers all government-approved contraceptives for women without co-payments or other charges to the patient.
• 51%  – employers should not be required to provide health insurance with this type of coverage.
• 11% are not sure.

I would be one of the…

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Yeah, and the NY Times keeps claiming that they are to be believed because of the “layers of fact checkers & editors” they have – we’ve seen how that’s worked out, huh?  Well, tell me, how is this real math problem going to make our kids better prepared to complete against others?

  See #15, here.  From the Daily Caller:

What, exactly, is the content of this Common Core that’s going to make American kids so much smarter? So far it appears to be a slew of worksheets and tests involving various, incomprehensible arrays of squares and circles.

There are also traditional word problems. Twitchy has found a word problem that may be the most egregiously awful math problem the Common Core has produced yet. 

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• Born – 1937 (now 76 years of age)
• ROTC, Army career 1956 – 1991 (35 years)
• Chair, Joint Chief of Staff – 1989 – 1993
• National Security Advisor – 1987 through 1989
• Secretary of State – 2001 through 2005

Pretty much his entire career, Colin Powell (former Army General, US Secretary of State) has worked for the US Government. At multiple times during his career, he has sworn an oath to protect and uphold the US Constitution.  Over at Big Government, we hear of his support for the US Government to act in a “post- Constitutional” manner (or if you prefer, “extra-Constitutional”:

…“I think universal health care is one of the things we should really be focused on, and I hope that will happen,” Powell reportedly said last week. “Whether it’s Obamacare, or son of Obamacare, I don’t care. As long as we get it done.”

…The retired four-star general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said he thought, “Every country I’ve visited, every developed country, they have universal health care. They don’t understand why the United States of America, which uses more health care than just about anybody else, still (has) 40 million people not properly insured.”

That is because, Mr. Powell, there is that pesky 10th Amendment in OUR Constitution that

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Let him punch you in YOUR collective noses so that you just might actually start picking on the right folks – like Ray Buckley and his pack of Left Wing  Socialists (emphasis mine, reformatted):

As some idiot wrote in Rules for Radical Conservatives:

So there you are, lying flat on your back on the canvas and wondering whether the referee got the number of that truck. For decades, we’ve pummeled you and pounded you, if not quite into submission than pretty close to it. We’ve robbed you of your tongue, of your fighting spirit; we’ve hamstrung you with lawyers and political correctness. We’ve made you doubt the worth of everything you once held dear – now there was a practical application of “Critical Theory” if there ever was one! – including your culture, your history and, well, you. We’ve practically criminalized everything about you, including your thoughts, and it’s just a matter of time before we get those too . . .

You stand there and let us whale away on you, imputing every sort of ignobility to you, your culture, your belief system, your faith tradition, and your families unto the generations. By our lights, since we despise you so roundly and so thoroughly, any weapon to hand is useful, and so we club you to death with your own good manners, telling you all the while that to fight back would be wrong, would be deconstructionist, would be advocating at least symbolic violence and hate-mongering, would be trying to force your opinion on us.

And so you take it, when what you should do is punch us right in the face.

They’ve been shoving you around like school yard bullies, destroying and turning everything of  traditional American values and traditions totally upside down.  For over 100 years, they’ve been weakening that which has held us together, our social contract – the US Constitution.  And now, the Progressive-in-Cief has been laughing at you. Congress has become his right arm, the Press his PR department.  That’s right, keep your eyes on the goal and stay on the attack. Oh, oops!

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I was out with TMEW doing errands this afternoon and was listening to Rush as he started his show – and he started to talk about Nelson Mandala and his reaction to his imprisonment in South Africa for 27 years.  He was just SO in awe of a profundity from Mandala that he kept marveling at it:

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”

His theme then shifted a bit in observing how the White House was using the death of Nelson Mandala to boost Obama.  He then started to intersperse the above with previous statements that Obama has said – the contrast was startling for someone who has been called The Lightbringer:

Nelson Mandala, President of South Africa –  Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

Barack Obama, President of the USA – If they bring a knife into the fight, we bring a gun

Nelson Mandala, President of South Africa –  Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

Barack Obama, President of the USA – It’s very rare that I come to an event where I’m like the fifth or sixth most interesting person

Nelson Mandala, President of South Africa –  Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

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We went through this gas Tax stupidity last year – starting in the House:

Yup, that’s right.  The NH House’s Public Works and Highway Committee members decided that it was so durn important to fix roads and such, they couldn’t be bothered to really set a priority list and bump down others much less important (remember:  “Maggie the Marxist” – she choose diapers over students??  $2 million for adult diapers? great prioritization)  HB617 was just passed out of that Committee, 17-0, with nary a “limited government / less taxes” Republican throwing a single “Nay!”.  Not one Republican could say “er, is this really not a good thing to do right now with gas quickly heading towards $4 / gallon WITHOUT the State of NH helping it along??

And we were all over HB167: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.  I even gave some advice to NH GOP Chair Jennifer Horn on “messaging” and Consistency when she went after Maggie Hassan and not the Republicans who voted to raise the gas tax:

“I am saddened that any Republican voted to enlarge Government, to go along to get along, and not fight the good fight to find savings elsewhere and restructure Government priorities within the current budget to deal with these important matters.  It would have been better for issues and needs of lower importance to receive less monies so as to take care of these higher ones; after all, it is what we all do around the family kitchen table every single day.  Raising such a tax that affects so many citizens in a time of already high gas price only places a burden on them; Republicans should know and do better and I ask them to review the Platform so as to re-familiarize themselves what our word stands. After all, if we cannot stand by our own words, what do we stand for?“

Well, THANK you, NH State Senator Rausch (Republican), for trying to finish what the House Democrats and their Jr. Partners in making Government more costly last year: 

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From the NH Constitution:

[Art.] 28-a. [Mandated Programs.] The state shall not mandate or assign any new, expanded or modified programs or responsibilities to any political subdivision in such a way as to necessitate additional local expenditures by the political subdivision unless such programs or responsibilities are fully funded by the state or unless such programs or responsibilities are approved for funding by a vote of the local legislative body of the political subdivision.

My favorite Article in the NH Constitution (mostly).  It shows a respect for the Citizenry and the local towns “We won’t force you to raise Property Taxes for expenses we foist upon you”.  The problem with this limiting Article for our limiting Government Document, few in State Government, either by elected or employed officials either know about it or govern by it.  I know that when I asked my local officials what we have to pay for that is unreimbursed, I got laughed at.  Imagine, however, if more ordinary folks did demand “If they ain’t paying, we ain’t doing”?

Like the School Board in Conway, NH (emphasis mine):

Although they admit there’s little chance of getting reimbursed, the members of the Conway School Board are asking the state to pay for costs related to switching to Smarter Balance testing as required by the new standards called Common Core, which they believe is an unfunded mandate.

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As Rush points out, it is the Left that has been, continues to, and will continue to attack what used to be seen as the main building block of both Civil Society and our Republic – the traditional family of a committed husband/ father and wife / mother that own the main responsibility of raising their children (and NOT that of “the village” or that those kids “belong to us all”).  Government Welfare (“the dole”) of LBJ’s “Great Society” effectively castaway that committed husband; he left so that his family could get “aid” .  This has all but destroyed the urban Black families and is rapidly doing the same to other minorities and poor whites as well.  The MSM and Pop Culture Gatekeepers (magazines, Hollywood) extoll the excitement of cheating on your loved ones and the “Greed is Good” mentality.  Religion, which once formed a common public morality” is under attack and the selfish ideologies of the 60s are now running amok (love that word, amok)  full blown in this “All about ME!” mentality and ALL authority is not just suspect, but to be the object of an outright revolt.  To wit – to heck with anything traditional and that goes against the Left’s morality is that Government is your Friend, your Daddy, your Husband, your Protector, and God.

I’ve said for a while now that Obama’s

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