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Co-founder of GraniteGrok, my concern is around Individual Liberty and Freedom and how the Government is taking that away. As an evangelical Christian and Conservative with small "L" libertarian leanings, my fight is with Progressives forcing a collectivized, secular humanistic future upon us. As a TEA Party activist, citizen journalist, and pundit!, my goal is to use the New Media to advance the radical notions of America's Founders back into our culture.

Chris Christie – Fallen off the Pedestal?

barack_obama_chris_christieFace it, when Chris Christie first burst onto the scene campaigning for the NJ Governorship, he became an instant hit with a lot of Conservatives.  Not that he was all THAT conservative but that he was willing to take on the press, unions, and nay-sayers in a “take-no-prisoner” fashion.  And in that manner, just like Gingrich during the Republican Primaries (and here in NH when I went to events where he was), he refused to play defense; instead he went on full offense.

Nice to see a Republican go toe to toe and not descend into the “don’t rock the boat” mode. Not nice to see him these past two weeks slobbering over Obama and “The Boss” Springsteen (really, cried?).  Conservatives will forgive a lot, over time, but when you are first seen waging war FOR Romney, then playing patty-cake with the opponent (beyond what many believed was needed for a Governor talking with a President during a crisis).  Now this:

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Voting – 11/6/2012 Results compendium

Fox News calls it: President Obama has been re-elected

Romney does not have a mathematical road to victory

My unexpected guests have left, the ‘Grok dogs have had some attention paid to them, hopefully the laptop problems have gone to sleep.  Long nite ahead, so time to see what polls are doing.  Pretty much will just update this post with observations, pithy words, and anything else considered “election kitchen sink”.

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NH Exec Council – 3 to 2 R to D thus far

Fox announces US House to remain in Republican hands

NH Kuster is leading almost 2-1 over Bass

NH Constitution: Banning income tax is leading

NH Constitution: Legislation to have oversight over Judiciary losing

No Constitutional Convention is winning

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WMUR, Associated Press has just called the race for Maggie Hassan

Governor
NH Ovide Hassan Babiarz
WMUR 08:22 PM 575 1,862 85

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Interesting way to think about it:

One of the claims was that he had a “first-class temperament.” And I was thinking, yesterday, “That’s possibly the thing I like least about Obama — his temperament.” His big-government policies are bad enough. But the temperament? “Mitt Romney: Not one of us,” and all that? I think he’s a nasty and divisive figure.

Mitt Romney — there’s a first-class temperament, come of think of it. At least I have that impression. If he has four years in the White House, we’ll see.

I believe that Obama hates the likes of us — Reagan conservatives. I believed the same about Al Gore. I remember saying during the 2000 campaign, “I’d rather be stranded on a desert island with Bill Clinton for a year than have a brief, delicious lunch at the Four Seasons with Al Gore.” You could tell that Al Gore hated you: It was on his face and in his tongue. Joe Lieberman, I felt, did not hate you. Hillary did. Kerry did. John Edwards loved himself, mainly, I thought.

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A last thought for this evening

Fox News just called it: Obama has been re-elected. Will we be? “Some New Criterion stalwarts congregate to ponder the future of the land of the free and home of the brave:  will it continue to be free?  Will we continue to be brave?” Freedom (TRUE Freedom) requires self-responsibility, self-restraint, delayed gratification, and self-reliance. True … Read more

RightWingNews Right of Center Poll: Result of Tuesday Night?

Updated and bumped:  The results are in at RightWingNews:

1) Who do you think is going to win the election?

  •  Mitt Romney 87.9% (58 votes)
  • Barack Obama 12.1% (8 votes)

 2) Whom are you voting for?

  •  Mitt Romney 92.6% (63 votes)
  • Gary Johnson 2.9% (2 votes)
  • I’m not voting 2.9% (2 votes)
  • Won’t say 1.5% (1 votes)

Original post after the jump:

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Humor – A wish to understand women (small bit of humor (sorta sideways))

Look, all of we political junkies are on the veritable edge – worse than a druggie looking for that next fix or the gambler looking for that elusive royal flush.  It is both the best of times (“NOW it all comes to an end”) and the worst of times (“NOW it all comes to an end”) for this (here in NH) two year process.  So, time for a bit of a joke – so, since we at the ‘Grok have now riled up the Democrat Socialists / Progressives, always have the Establishment RINOS ticked off, and now have torqued off a lot of the Libertarians, who else can we get mad at us?

Oh yeah – Feminists!  From Maggie’s Farm:

A man on his Harley was riding along a California beach when suddenly the sky clouded above his head and, in a booming voice, God said, ‘because you have tried to be faithful to me in all ways, I will grant you one wish.’

The biker pulled over and said, ‘Build a bridge to Hawaii so I can ride over anytime I want.’

God replied, ‘Your request is materialistic; think of the enormous challenges for that kind of undertaking; the supports required reaching the bottom of the Pacific and the concrete and steel it would take! I can do it, but it is hard for me to justify your desire for worldly things. Take a little more time and think of something that could possibly help mankind.’

The biker thought about it for a long time. Finally, he said, ‘God, I wish that I, and all men, could understand women; I want to know how she feels inside, what she’s thinking when she gives me the silent treatment, why she cries, what she means when she says nothing’s wrong, why she snaps and complains when I try to help, and how I can make a woman truly happy.

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Libertarians – some might be the “Cloward-Pivens of the Right this election”?

This may not sit well…. Actually, what I wrote below I did before stumbling on this: “The Cloward – Pivens of the Right” where the topic is about a Libertarian that will be voting for Johnson and will not even consider a vote against Obama:

The fact that his vote might end up causing Romney to lose and Obama to win is irrelevant to this man. He and others of his ilk, who might be addressed by Bill Whittle’s video [here -Skip] but who close themselves to its message and who look instead to the imminent arrival of an economic apocalypse, have more in common with the far left than they think they do. They are the Cloward-Pivenistas [who willingly almost drove New York City into bankruptcy; more here   -Skip] of the right. They believe that, if things get bad enough, the system will break down and enough people will see the light and then the true conservative dawn will break.

Cloward and Piven thought the breakdown would lead people towards the leftist light. People like Susanamantha’s friend think it will be the light on the right. But the idea is similar: endure (or even cause) pain now for future gain….Both sides are idealists, Don Quixotes if you will (although perhaps that’s being unfair to the Don) against the rest of us plodding Sancho Panzas. It’s an old story, isn’t it? A perfectionistic idealism is where the Don Quixotes on the right meet those on the left, in a dangerous no man’s land. The ones on the right could well end up encouraging the triumph of what they most hate.

It seems to me that the full bore / hard core Libertarians (“HCLs”) on this list (which, after all is the REPUBLICAN Liberty Caucus and not the LIBERTARIAN Liberty Caucus – I could not resist) are turning out to be not Libertarians concerning this election but Nihilists.

Given that their more favored candidates absolutely bombed out during the primary and have gotten no traction since, you folks are all deciding to go home and pout.  Given that the expected Home Run At Bat (perhaps expected given the tremendous gains that Libertarians had here in NH in 2010) has turned out in THIS election to be the Biggest Whiff since Casey in Mudville in actual candidate attraction to the general electorate (as opposed to other Libertarians), all I am hearing is a massive hissy fit.  Instead of treating it as a double or triple in 2010 and knowing that sometimes that only singles or strikeouts happen, if you can’t get that four bagger, then the game is rigged, the umps stink, and the ball has lard on it.  So effectively, you all are going to throw your votes away.  Period.  That is how you all are coming across (and that means you Jane – I saw some of the NHTEAParty tweets and retweets during the debates you sent and utterly cringed).

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Guest Post by Lee Schalk – “Question 1: Live Free or Tax Harder”

Question 1: Live Free or Tax Harder

By Lee Schalk, National Taxpayers Union State Affairs Manager

Whichever way they identify themselves politically, Granite State citizens who abide by the “Live Free or Die” motto tend to agree that government has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. For New Hampshire, one of the State’s trademark features is its lack of a personal state income tax, and Question 1 is an opportunity to enshrine that freedom in the constitution.

Positioned in the Northeast amongst largely liberal leaning, tax-and-spend states, New Hampshire has remained one of the most attractive states for businesses and individuals, thanks to the absence of punitive state income and sales taxes. In fact, New Hampshire was recently ranked seventh in the Tax Foundation’s 2013 State Business Tax Climate report, while the rest of the Northeast failed to crack the top twenty.

For the sake of economic competition, neighbors Vermont (47th), Maine (30th), and Massachusetts (22nd) would be wise to follow New Hampshire’s lead on the state income tax, and get rid of it. Though, it’s likelier they’ll seek more money from taxpayers than reform their governments, and breathe a sigh of relief if Question 1 fails.

For their part, New Hampshirites seem to be divided into three camps on a constitutional income tax ban: for and against, and those who are on the fence because they’re hesitant to alter the State Constitution in any way.

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It is your’s to choose tomorrow: Marxism / Progressivism / Black Liberation Theology vs the American Experiment of our Founding Fathers

What is at stake tomorrow?  It is, once again, a time that I cannot just excerpt a piece of another’s post and then do the obligatory “go read the whole thing”.  This piece sums up why Conservatives are going to vote for Romney, like him or not.  And once again, it illustrates why Libertarians should also do the same without explicitly stating such.  This encapsulates the difference between the incipient Marxism masquerading as Progressivism with Black Critical Theory and Black Liberation Theology all rolled into the Collectivist known as Barack Hussein Obama, vs the Sovereign Supreme Individual who was the focus of the American Founding Fathers.  They could not be any further apart.

Michael Walsh has written a knockout defense over at The Corner of why voting against Barack Hussein Obama is a vote for America.  Emphasis is mine but go read the entire piece as I have taken some out:

  Conservatives have a rare opportunity tomorrow to do something they signally failed to do in the landslide elections of 1972 and 1984: finish the job…

…In retrospect, of course, William Jefferson Blythe III was Pericles of Athens compared to Barack Obama, who far more than Clinton has revealed the true face of contemporary American left-liberalism in all its coercive ugliness: a blizzard of executive orders; the deployment of the regulatory agencies that have (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) “sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance”; and the naked Marxist appeals to race and class envy. The most anti-American of American presidents has run the most un-American of campaigns.

 And that, by rights, should be it. That it’s not explains the alarm of conservatives whose view of patriotism is that they love their country as it is, not as they wish it might someday be. From Day One of the Obama administration, real conservatives understood the explicit threat of “fundamental change,” whose meaning can now be clearly discerned in Obama’s “revenge” remark; for the Left, “revenge” is precisely what this election is all about. For them and their voting-bloc constituents, it’s payback time: payback for slavery and segregation; payback for poverty; payback for foreign wars; payback for restrictive immigration laws. They’ve long used the goals of the civil-rights movement — which after all was directed precisely against Democrats – and the Vietnam-era “anti-war” movement — which arose in opposition to the foreign policy of the Democrats — as wedges with which to crack the larger social structure and now, so close to realizing the ultimate expression of “critical theory” — that everything about America stinks — they and their media allies are doing their best to swing one last election for Obama.

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Blogline of the Day: The TEA Party

From Instapundit: They will crawl over broken glass to unseat Obama, whose actions over the past 4 years have consistently demonstrated that he neither loves this country nor its Constitution. Yep, that about sums it up!  As I have told many over these last couple of years (as that is how long the Prez campaign … Read more

Historic Voting in Gilford, NH?

Just returned from voting  – in my little hamlet in Central New Hampsha, it seems like this may be a record setting vote. We have 5,454 registered voter (excluding new registrations today) – as of 12:30pm when I left, there were 2,093 votes today and 600 absentee ballots to be counted. That’s almost 50% – … Read more

So, RINO Republican Alida Milham of Gilford decides to endorse the Democrat in the race – instead of the Conservative Republican in the NH House race

To regular readers of the ‘Grok, this should have come as no surprise at all – in fact, this is almost expected (think Ray Burton in drag.  Or is that the other way around?  I dunno, all RINOs not only talk and vote alike, they seem to look alike….) as she has won our RINO of the Week award in the past.  This is what happens when the Republican Party Leadership (such as it is) continues to do head-in-the-sand reactions when Democrats-with-Rs-next-to-their-name sully the Republican Party brand.  Oh, I’ll ask the Belknap County Chair, and I’ll ask the Area Vice-Chair (a two-fer, in this case) and I will ask the NH GOP Chair for what they will do, but I bet I already know the outcome of doing such – words, maybe even a lot of words, but in the end, it’s back to a mush muddle of middlingness madness of self-denial.  I would use Jim Bender’s magnificent phrase of “self-assured incompetence” but that seems to be a bar too high for this crop.

So, Alida has seen fit to endorse someone that openly financially threatened the entire Town of Gilford simply because voters would vote Her Highness’s spending ways?  Yup.  Way to go, Alida – endorse not the person who wants you to keep your own money and make your own decisions, but someone who had no problem DEMANDING that others pay for her demand.  To wit, Lisa DiMartino, NH Democrat Extremist from the Town of Gilford.  She wants to go to Concord to spend your money.  She says so herself – and RINO Alida agrees.

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Guest post by Jim Adams: “DERELICTION of DUTY”

DERELICTION of DUTY

Veterans, the Benghazi massacre showed Obama’s true concern and his real agenda regarding the safety of our troops and Americans on foreign soil. As the truth continues to come out in bits and pieces, through little help from the national media, the evidence is very clear. Obama’s Rose Garden comments were the beginning of the worst cover-up and distortion of the truth seen in this country since the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that led to our ever-deepening commitment to a war in Vietnam. Whatever the virtues of stopping a vicious Communist takeover of a predominately Christian nation (South Vietnam), LBJ’s political expediency trumped making an honest case to the Congress and the American people. Much like today, his political dissembling to the nation had the effect of snatching stalemate or worse from the jaws of victory ~ at terrible cost.

The highest ranking Administration personnel watched this well-planned and executed military-style attack take place, in real time via camera link from predator drones. Meanwhile, the Obama spin team crafted the clumsy lie; that it was a spontaneous response to a provocative YouTube video degrading Islam. When Obama endorsed this fabrication in the Rose Garden, he also apologized to the Islamic nations regarding the video and stated that the guilty parties would be hunted down.

The truth: his administration is guilty of criminal dereliction of duty. Numerous requests were made for additional security for the consulate and embassy prior to the attack; yet each time they were denied, leaving all of those Americans in grave danger. However, even that incompetence pales in comparison to what actually happened on the night of the attack. Do you remember the famous White House Situation Room scene where the President watched brave Seal Team Six nail Bin Laden? Likewise, on September 11, 2012 the White House was getting a live-feed of exactly what was happening at the Benghazi consulate and knew from multiple real-time videos, that this was not a spontaneous demonstration.

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FaceBook Doodlings: Libertarians & Free Staters: let me amplify what Tim said about Tuesday

Tim put up this post, urging movement Libertarians to consider how they’d be voting on Tuesday:

If you are a libertarian, or if you are a Free Stater, or if you just believe in limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility….

David Mamet, the famed playwright that was hard Left and just veered Right after finally realizing what the results of the Left have done, put it another way (even as he was speaking to Liberal Jews, it fits here):

Are you prepared to explain to your children not the principles upon which your vote is cast, but its probable effects upon them?

Go read the whole thing.  Tim’s post started a bit of a conversation on Facebook and I waded in (note: I’ve not been active on FB for a while but given the tenor (pretty much, I “went there”.  Now Leah was the main respondent and we’ve been friendly ever since we met when the TEA Party decided to “meet & greet” back in 2009 when Obama sojourned to Portsmouth, NH.  On FB, she expressed an attitude that many Libertarians seem to hold:  both Romney and Obama are pretty much communists and there’s no difference between them (and many view Romney as actually being worse).  The comment that set me off was one about Romney not being able to reverse what Obama has done:

“He is not a king, and cannot just make a pronouncement that he declares a law null and void.“

Have you not been paying attention!!  What the heck do you think Obama has actually been doing????  My response (edited to be more bloggish and a bit more expanded here):

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Blogline of the Day: by Instapundit’s Glen Reynolds

“let me just say that if Obama wins on Tuesday, I intend to be every bit as gracious and cooperative as the Democrats were in 2000 and 2004.” here.  And remember, we will only be mirroring what US Senator / US Senate Majority Leader  and Democrat Harry Reid said if Romney wins: “Mitt Romney’s fantasy … Read more

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