Steve MacDonald

Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, an award-winning blogger, and a member of the Board of Directors of The 603 Alliance and the National Heritage Center for Constitutional Studies. He is the owner of Grok Media LLC and the Managing Editor, Executive Editor, assistant editor, Editor, content curator, and more (yes, there's more) at GraniteGrok.com. Steve is also a former board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, the Republican Volunteer Coalition, and has worked for or with many state and local campaigns and grassroots groups, and is a past contributor to the Franklin Center for Public Policy.

It’s GrokTalk! – At the Annual GOP Convention!

It’s GrokTalk! – At the Annual GOP Convention!
We may not be broadcasting live (or will we?) but whatever the circumstance we’ll be there from before the start until after the finish, recording and then pod-casting from inside and outside the Republican annual convention.

Jack Kimball Wins

Most everyone will know by now that the GOP convention was a rousing affair, very goodhearted and unifying overall, and that Jack Kimball is the New Party Chairman.

Is Leadership Opposing The Recall Bill? (HB 73)

Seal of the US SenateSources in the State House have suggested to me that Dan Itse’s HB 73, ‘An Act establishing a process for recall of US Senators from New Hampshire, may be opposed by the Republican House leadership.

This information comes quickly after an article in the Union Leader yesterday in which the usual suspects on the left assumed that the bill was meant as an attack on Jeanne Shaheen.  That thinking stems from the root of evil that is in side the Lefts party leadership.  If the democrats had proposed it, it would be to unseat a Republican Senator so they naturally assume that this is the intention.

Sorry.  We really do not think that way.

I am not Senator Shaheen’s biggest fan, but I agree with Dan Itse whose response to that was no.  It is not to unseat anyone. Six years is simply too long for any elected representative to be in office without any real sense of accountability and US senators, be they Shaheen, Gregg, Ayotte, or whomever, have far too much time to exercise far too much power without any regard for its actual relevance or effect on the state they are meant to represent in that body.  The history of the Senate since the institution of direct election is one of corruption, self enrichment, and political fiefdoms.

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Greg Carson For Republican Secretary

Greg Carson has a very impressive resume, one which makes him more than qualified to serve as the Republican Party Secretary. He has already served several years as the assistant secretary, the job I endorsed Pam Manney for yesterday.

Jack Kimball for NH GOP Chair – an endorsement

A guest-endorsement from Ted Maravelias, of Windham, NH.  Ted is a Conservative Activist, and has been a significant contributor to New Hampshire grassroots political action in recent years. *** Dear Fellow Committee Member, Recently, you may have received an email from Jim MacEachern citing his concerns aboutJack Kimball and a recent newspaper article concerning his candidacy … Read more

Is This The Worst Bagel Ever?

Making things taste like crap on purpose in not something the free market traditionally rewards unless it is popular-trendy “tastes like crap,” in which case all the finest people are buying it which encourages lesser mortals seeking aimlessly for some kind of identity to follow suit in the hope that they will become “better people” by association.

Loser 2: “Hey look, Chantelle puts blow-fish droppings on here arugula.”  Loser 3: “Wow, she is so hip.”

Into this confused world comes the Weight Watchers Basic Bagel, which I purchased not because I or anyone in my family is watching their weight, but because they were on sale.  How was I to know what would happen next?

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No Trespassing Sign “Authorized Replacement”

As I understand it, Ward Bird had posted his property and made it clear that trespassing was frowned upon.  After confronting a trespasser who would not stop trespassing, he brandishing his legally owned and obtained hand gun, and was arrested and sentenced to jail for it.  This was handled badly, he never should have been imprisoned, and while he has been granted a parole hearing to perhaps resolve the matter of the balance of his sentence it should not have come to this.

But I can’t help but wonder if a different sign might have helped? 

With that in mind, here’s a (viable?) alternative for anyone looking for more options to keep folks off their property so that they might avoid the same set of circumstances.  Just print off a few copies, and tack them around the perimeter. 

Although it does lose something when the hand painted sign is not made out of several different sizes of scrap wood.

(on the jump…)

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Jack Kimball for NH GOP Chair…an endorsement

Guest-endorsement submitted by Jeff Chidester.  Jeff is a well-known New Hampshire political analyst and commentator and has his own radio talk show, New Hampshire Perspective, on WGIN and WGIR AM.  Jeff also has his own political blog. * * * While most kids dream of getting their drivers licenses, I could not wait to vote.  I … Read more

What The Bi-Partisan Repeal Vote Means

Democrats are up in arms about the US House vote to repeal Obamacare. They are claiming it is just a political stunt but the real problem is that democrats do not understand how people who ran on an issue and were then elected to office because of it, would actually follow through and vote that way?

Pam Manney For NH GOP Assistant Secretary

I would like to give a personal endorsement for Assistant Secretary for the New Hampshire Republican Party to Pamela Manney. Ive known Pam for several years now, and worked along side her as an activist. She has a level of commitment and dedication to the party and the platform that make her an exceptional asset.

A Compromise?

Weapons of mass destructionThere is a very touching bit of sympathy-searching in the Union Leader’s My Turn editorial today.  Eric Merklin, husband of State House Rep Tara Sad (D-Walpole) cranks up the left wing fantasy-template on State House violence and goes fishing.

He is ‘worried’ that someone in the gallery could shoot his wife.

Does Eric realize that his wife, the third term House member, sat there in the well for years under the sights of armed observers while the democrats controlled the body, and no one tried to shoot anyone? Given what the progressives did you’d think that was the threshold opportunity for all those right wing crazies.  Balloon fines, bathroom bills, gay marriage, fines, fees, taxes, more taxes,  yet no gun battles.  He does troll out the HCR6 shouting to make the point that yelling is the gateway drug to gunning down innocent people in the House chamber despite the lack of evidence to support it, but if yelling leads to gun violence why are there still progressives walking around heating up the planet with their exhaled exhortations to ban guns?  They should have wiped themselves out by now?

So we have several years with nobody crying a public river about the risk of bloodshed in Concord’s hallowed halls until it appeared to be politically convenient, which makes the "it’s all about safety" shtick smell like rovers little donation to renewable fertilizers–which I think got a green energy grant through RGGI if I remember correctly. Its got that disingenuous feel that reeks of populist fear-mongering of the sort only the right can ever be guilty of.

This also leaves us wondering what’s next after a State House ban we didn’t need then…but have to have now? (Well, not really.  We know what comes next but just play along.)

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Uh Oh…Part 2 of ??

Yesterday, I wrote about Kelly Ayotte’s risky (and disconcerting) decision to sign Mark Udall’s letter to Congress, urging a love-fest, where members sit in a bi-partisan "boy-girl-boy-girl" fashion at the upcoming SOTU speech. Well, the bad news just keeps coming in. As I was writing, Kelly had just come back from a weekend jaunt to Afghanistan, courtesy … Read more

Bend It For The Benjamins

As a follow up to this, yesterday or maybe the day before, the NH Journal (NHJ), New Hampshire’s prominent internet news source if the news is whatever Hynes communications is being paid to call news, decided to float a lie called pin the conservative blogger to Jack Kimball.  Someone the NH Journal staff knew would stir the pot was fingered as Kimball’s communications director if he won the job as GOP State party chairman, even though no one–including Kimball and the blogger–knew anything about it until after the digital ink was dry.

The goal for Hynes and Millerick, (owner and editor respectively at NHJ)  appear to have been to send the RINO’s into a mad stampede.  RINO’s stampede easy so it worked.  Some RINO’s were so miffed, and wanting so badly for just such a story to jump on, they picked up the lie and ran with it. (Just like a progressive if that’s not too provocative a statement to make.)

There was a bit of damage control but once it’s out there, it is out there, no different than when CNN or MSNBC does it.  But the story did not end there.

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