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.

Carol Shea Porter…On Veterans

Carol Shea-Porter has always claimed to have some kind of commitment to the troops.  And you don’t have to look far to find some suitable rhetoric on veterans either.  But when CSP voted to maul health care, and then later deemed it passed so she wouldn’t actually have to go on the record again supporting … Read more

It’s Train Wreck Week!

I'm supposed to read what first?

It’s Carol Shea-Porter week over at Boo-Hoo Hampshire. That means quality opinion about the antics of the 1st district congresspersonista from New Hampshire are the order of the day, every day, until next Monday. So the guys at Granite Grok are more than happy to embrace Carol’s stated commitment to bi-partisan support, an angle you are not going to find at Blue Hamster, by providing alternative commentary about her for the duration, in honor of her having voted with her party leadership 98% of the time.

By the way. Do you know why Carol only votes with her party 98% of the time? She’s missed 2% of the votes.

But to be fair, and we know Carol is all about fair, we’ll leave it up to Blue Dumpster to produce Carol’s bi-partisan record in congress.  That’s when she does not vote with the leadership PAC money that keeps coming her way for being such a good little do-bee.  (Remember what Frau Pelosi says..don’t be a "Dont Bee," be a "Do Bee.") So good luck to them.  I don’t think they can pull it off.  Carol is easily one of the most reliable votes for the expansion of the Nancy-State.

I’d also like to see them merge her voting record with the "Independent voice for New Hampshire" rhetoric, an equally challenging effort given the facts. Of course Dean is not looking for facts he’s looking for sympathy. He’s mounting this "give Carol a big ol’ hug" campaign to energize whatever is left of the base or it’s support for Carol Shea-Porter since the independent voice of the independent’s has jumped ship leaving him with his voice, the left wing church choir, and a handful of RINO’s lurking over at Red Hampshire.  So how much you want to bet we get more traffic on ‘CSP Week’ than he does?

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Carol…On Helping Small Business

Even as a child, Carol could not keep the train on the tracks

Carol’s good work keeps on rolling in like the smell of low tide on a salty breeze.  Maybe you recall that five ream masterpiece of brevity appropriately mislabeled as health care reform?  Well it came fully equipped with a manifold of other disasters buried inside, one of which was that anyone with business income will have to issue a 1099 for every entity with whom they spend $600.00 or more in goods and services in a calendar year.  And you thought the Health care Castration Bill wasted paper?

 

This creates several problems for small business the biggest of which is the regulatory burden of having to deal with all that extra paperwork.   It will take more time and cost more money just to comply with the rules ‘deemed’ by Section 9006 of Carol-Care.  That amounts to millions  more dollars in lost productivity on left wing busy work that Carol and her ilk have now released from America’s employment engine and diverted into the ice-rimmed, bottomless, suck-hole of the bureaucracy.

So how does that play against Carol’s rhetoric?  Not well.

 

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Good Ol’ Two Face

  June 24th 2010  Today, Paul Hodes fought to end the influence that corporate and foreign special interests have in American elections by supporting the DISCLOSE Act. July 13th 2010 Paul Hodes’ Senate campaign confirmed that "yes, Paul did attend" the weekend fundraiser hosted by trial lawyers in Vancouver, British Columbia. June 24th 2010 "New Hampshire’s … Read more

Carol’s Union Label

Carol Shea-Porter would like you to believe that she represent New Hampshire. But if you are one of the 88% of those employed in New Hampshire who are not in a union or represented by one, (and that does not mean you want or like being in the union if you are) then odds are … Read more

More Charter Schools?

The Sunday Telegraph is heralding their governors signing of HB 1495, a bill that authorizes more Charter Schools in New Hampshire. It’s a glowing report about a state executive committed to educational opportunities until you get to paragraph six where the governors true motivations are revealed. New Hampshire’s application for millions in new federal aid from … Read more

We’ll Have A Gay Old Time

It should be common knowledge that Governor Lynch attended a secret gay-donor confab in Chicago back in May.  But no one was supposed to know.  I got wind of it when I received an article from the Washington Blade questioning the secrecy. (A repost of that blog can be found here)  Only two months later, it is finally showing up locally at the Keene Sentinel.

Of course the Sentinel seemed more concerned with the group and our governor’s evolution on the issue; his shift from what they call ambivalence to outward embrace of gay marriage.  But why not report this meaningful embrace back in May when it happened?  It seems like he could have used a lift after that beating he took from the National Organization for Marriage.  Was it too secret an embrace?  So secret that the no one wanted it known?  Was Governor Lynch afraid to come out of the gay donor closet?

He was, and for good reason.

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Lynch’s Missing 18 minutes

Do the people of New Hampshire realize that they have a governor who runs off in the cover of darkness to secret meetings with wealthy special interests, giving speeches about who knows what?  Do they know that money from many of these well heeled millionaires he just happened to be meeting with in secret has … Read more

Choir Practice

CNHTListening to twenty or so people give political speeches in succession may well be worse than being water-boarded. Listening to twenty or so political speeches in an air-conditioned room with close to 300 people who (more or less) are on board with just about everything that is likely to be said at that kind of event is choir practice. But having that kind of access to that many candidates for three hours is priceless.

That is the CNHT annual picnic, in a nutshell–plus an all you can eat buffet of picnic fare, with P.J. Rourke as a guest speaker right in the middle of it all. From noon to three today, at the VFW hall in Hillsborough New Hampshire, the 12th annual Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers picnic attracted dozens of candidates for every level of office and hundreds of people who were looking for an opportunity to meet and talk to the candidates who want to represent them. It’s like a House party for every candidate all at once, and if you missed it you missed a chance to get personal attention in a very important election year.

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Massachusetts Goes After DOMA

  The Union leader is reporting this morning that a US judge in Boston has found DOMA, the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, to be unconstitutional on the grounds that it prevents the state from administering federal aid to gay married couples.  His ruling only affects Massachusetts but clearly has broader implications. I both agree … Read more

Why Did They Donate To Paul Hodes?

  Why would an engineering firm from Colorado employed to help clean up and rebuild after Hurricane Katrina be donating money to Paul Hodes 2010 campaign?  MWH America is, in their own words, a global leader in wet infrastructure, but MWH has recently been charged with poor invoicing practices and even overcharging the city of … Read more

The House Passed It, Now Look At What’s In It

I Brought Hash-Brownies for LaterI hope Rath Young Pignatelli, Shaheen and Gordon, and all the other leftward Lawyerly types are prepared for a shot of mandatory diversity.  Those democrat congressmen from New Hampshire they like to donate to—so the government can make more law for lawyers to lawyer over—just passed more than a financial regulations bill when they voted for the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill.  They passed mandatory race and gender diversity requirements for everyone who touches anything near the financial industry.

 

Buried deep inside the forest clearing pages lay provisions mandating that all financial institutions, investment banking firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, financial services entities, underwriters, accountants, investment consultants and providers of legal services (for any and all of the above) who have or do business with the federal government or for firms doing business with the federal government on government business, must meet race and gender employment ratios.

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ONE! Singular Deception…

The ONE campaign is back in New Hampshire and looking for fresh souls to trap in its twisted web of deception.  While liberals are always ripe for a sob story, ONE is always looking for unsuspecting so-called conservatives and Republicans to call friends.  And the GOP is easy prey.  After years of being framed by the media as cold-hearted war mongers who spend long days smoking cigars and oppressing the world’s poor for the gain of their corporate paymasters, nothing looks better to them than being seen with a group like ONE campaign.

Unless of course you’ve seen the Black Widow waiting at the center of the ONE web.

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Hidey-Hodes

The Hodes campaign has made its priorities clear.  I’m referring to the attack ads on Republican primary candidate Kelly Ayotte, whom they have for whatever reason anointed as the primary winner.   What does this tell us about Paul Hodes?  Nothing we did not already know. He intends to distort the facts in pursuit of … Read more

John Lynch Goes Gay (Sort Of)

(Note: This was originally posted on May 28th at NH Insider. It is being re-posted here as an encore presentation, by request.)

 

John Lynch Goes Gay (Sort Of)

The Ray and Kathy Show has this gag they do all the time where they complain about outside money or special interests on the right affecting local elections.  It’s a serious gas because everyone knows it’s actually a projection upon others of their own involvement with deep-pocketed outside interests with which they then exert pressure upon the local worker bees doing the Yeoman’s work at hiding their radical left wing agenda.  But they think it works so we try to play along.   Case in point: Governor John “Liar” Lynch was recently taken to task for saying one thing and doing another on the not uncontroversial subject of same sex marriage.  Lynch flip flopped and plenty of us asked if someone put the thumb screws on our diminutive chief executive. 

No, no.  Lynch is his own man concerned about equality and civil rights, Blah blah blah. 

Enter into the debate this article by Lou Chibbaro Jr. from The Washington Blade, which bills itself as "the lgbtq community resource."  The article is titled, “Rare Peek behind closed doors of secret gay donor confab.”  In the article Lou Chibbaro jr reveals for us the internal happenings at an event on May 15th to May 16th (just two weeks ago).  It’s was..

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Harry Reid’s Innocent Victims

They are making hay and BS sandwiches over at Boo-Hoo Hampshire, this time about the latest unemployment benefits stalemate.   Dean Barker–the Boo Hoo Guru–had begun by waxing on the CBS news coverage on the latest unemployment extension debate when he decided to lament (or perhaps invent) 30 years of GOP policy crushing the little guy, and how even now they are somehow still pulling the levers to crush them even more.  No I’m serious. 

But the best part is the “Boo-Hoo” hook.

The innocent victims, Mr. and Ms. Joe Taxpayer, won’t get what they need to stay solvent.  And nearly one of ten of them can’t find work.  And that’s not counting the vast underemployed.

The innocent victims!  Well what about that?

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Progressivism for Educators

From the Things we missed File     Monday-Tuesday – June 28-29, 2010 HSCC will host its annual spring Teacher Workshop on The Progressive Era & World War I in the Monadnock Region from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. for any educator who wishes to expand their understanding of the Progressive Era and World War … Read more

Calvin Coolidge, July 4th, 1926

In 1926 President Calvin Coolidge gave a speech, an independence day address.  It has just come to may attention, and  I enjoyed it so much I felt obliged to share it.

We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the fourth day of July. Whatever may have been the impression created by the news which went out from this city on that summer day in 1776, there can be no doubt as to the estimate which is now placed upon it. At the end of 150 years the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgment of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.

 

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FIREFIGHT OVER AT THE RLCNH CORRAL! TOO MUCH INFO!

Everyone, if you’re not a member of the main email list of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, and you’re a libertarian, a conservative or a libertarian-conservative political activist, you may owe it to yourself to go over to the list and sign up. Right now there’s a helluva battle going on, and its implications ripple out far enough that I want a wider audience to understand. (Full Disclosure: Dan McGuire is a friend of mine, and one of the best libertarian-conservative political activists coming up through the ranks of the GOP in New Hampshire. I’m going to help him in any way possible to get elected to the state house this year.)


Dan McGuire

 to RLCNH
 
I would like to suggest that the RLCNH list be reserved for matters of NH politics.  Lately it has been spammed many times a day by Tim (and others) with irrelevant stuff.  Here’s a list:

  16039 Gun control that really works! Gun control that really works! Tim Condon Offlinesuggesto Jun 23, 2010
  16040 The Republican Party is about to GROW UP The Republican Party is about to GROW UP Tim Condon Offlinesuggesto Jun 23, 2010
  16046 It’s those bothersome Christians causing trouble again It’s those bothersome Christians causing trouble again Tim Condon Offlinesuggesto Jun 23, 2010
  16058 INSANE GOVERNMENT SPENDING CRETINS! INSANE GOVERNMENT SPENDING CRETINS! Tim Condon Offlinesuggesto Jun 29, 2010
  16063 Fwd: Military 101 — A Liberal Guide to the Military Fwd: Military 101 — A Liberal Guide to the Military Tim Condon Offlinesuggest
o		 Jun 29, 2010
  16081 The lawlessness of the socialists The lawlessness of the socialists Tim Condon Offlinesuggesto Jul 1, 2010
  16083 We Must All Vote Democratic this November…. We Must All Vote Democratic this November…. Tim Condon Offlinesuggesto Jul 1, 2010
  16084 They want THIS PERSON on the U.S. Supreme Court? They want THIS PERSON on the U.S. Supreme Court? Tim Condon Offlinesuggesto Jul 1, 2010
  16094 The Titanic, ramming speed, and what to do about America The Titanic, ramming speed, and what to do about America Tim Condon Offlinesuggesto Jul 2, 2010
  16097 Obama handles the oil spill… Obama handles the oil spill… Tim Condon Offlinesuggesto Jul 2, 2010
Fortunately, Tim didn’t post during PorcFest and we got a break.  I’m guilty of this kind of thing on occasion, but this level is just ridiculous.  
Dan
 
 
Yikes!!!

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