Juliette Kayyem, CNN’s national security analyst and former Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, is really, really upset that the U.S. does not have an Ambassador to Mexico during “our time of need” which, in her mind, is the arrival of Hurricane Patricia in Mexico.

Apparently, we are greatly disadvantaged by not having an Ambassador to “do the right thing”, because “helping other nations is the right thing to do”. So, following Kayyem’s logic, our proximity to Mexico and their subsequent (and almost assured) sufferings from the “strongest storm ever recorded” will impact us in extraordinary ways. We simply can’t respond adequately because we have no Ambassador to lead the way into our necessary intervention into Mexico’s meteorological problems.

Kayyem’s statements of “our time of need” and “so where Mexico goes, so do we” are intended to establish a link between–or maybe a fusion of?–our two countries by subtly erasing that nationalist idea of a border. She continues in that vein with the comment about “shared ideas, people, and industry across a border.”

The question is almost begged: why bother having a border at all, if we share everything, anyway?

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With the advent of the US House Republicans caving into Paul Ryan’s demands in order to just get a new Speaker to replace John Boehner

Sidenote: why is it that Republicans hate to fight ANYone for principles?

Sidenote: except, of course, when it is Establishment fight TEA Party folks – then it seems the fight is more determined than against Democrats

this may be a bit passe, but still bears note.  What if a renegade left-of-center Republican (or just Establishment trying to deny conservatives a seat at the table?) did exact that – a “compromise” with those that hate limited government, self-responsibility principles? (Emphasis mine, reformatted):

If Republicans struggle in the coming weeks to unite around a candidate to become the next speaker of the House, some GOP lawmakers are warning that Democrats may be required to elect the winner. Though many Republicans would consider that to be a nightmare scenario, some centrists view it as a political necessity if a group of conservatives choose to reject the majority’s choice for speaker.

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Wow, I thought I would never write about this but it actually happened. The NH AG’s Office has dragged Carl Robert Gibson (now writing for Aljazeera and other fine web sites as “C. Robert Gibson”) past a NH Grand Jury for a grand old time.

Indicted on two felonies of voter suppression, Carl awaits his fate at his hideaway on Center St. in Concord.

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 California begins to reward residents who cut water use with rate increase to make up for lower water use.

…you get shafted for doing EXACTLY what they wanted.  Once again, we see Progressive Government proving that F.A. Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit” true- that a single individual or committee canNOT ever know enough to be able to ably make decisions for hundreds of millions of people.

We’re already seeing this story play out in two other venues: cars and electricity.  DRIVE smaller calls, the environmentalists demanded – and normal folks said “go pound sand”.  So the environ-“let’s deindustrialize back to the Middle Ages”-mentalists joined with Progressives to use the force of Government to change the MPG standards to FORCE you to drive smaller, more efficient (and more dangerous – doubt me and you sit in your Fiat 500 as I T-bone you in my Suburban) tin-cans.  Sure, they get better MPG (as if that’s the only metric that counts – it is for them, however) but like all Progressives, they keep forgetting two little words:

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It’s been reported today that Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign is implementing budgetary and staffing cutbacks, mostly in response to his donors’ increasingly urgent concerns about Jeb’s poor showing at the polls. Jeb’s donors are rightly concerned; no amount of advertising seems to yield any lift in his standings amongst the Republican candidates.

But that doesn’t stop the spin doctors from launching into high gear. One unnamed Bush advisor spoke to Bloomberg News, making the ridiculous “position of strength” comment, only to continue the inanity with the following: “This is about winning the race…we’re doing it now and making the shifts with confidence. We expect to win.”

Well, every campaign HOPES to win, but EXPECTING to win may be a problem for Jeb,

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Kim’s post on Jeb! making the decision to cut his staffers’ salaries brought a thought to my fingers:

Shot:

Jeb!: We’re making campaign staffing cuts, but it’s from a “position of strength”

Chaser:

Obama: President tells CBS’s Steve Kroft in interview previewed on-air Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s moves into Syria are out of weakness, not strength

IAM confused – what is

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This past July the University of New Hampshire came under fire for its Bias-Free Language Guide. The Guide, produced under the University’s Inclusive Excellence program (which STILL has its Facebook page, don’t-ya-know), was ordered removed by UNH President Mark Huddleston after a national media pig-pile of stories.

You will be hard pressed to find the words inclusive and excellence next to each other and in that order on the UNH website. But you will find them over at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) where their Inclusive Excellence Center is using something called a ‘Just Words’ Campaign to declare the use of terms like ‘Politically Correct’ (or just PC), as microaggressions.

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Rich is running for the Manchester School Board (Board of School Committee) and recently refused to sign a pledge from a DC PAC to support universal Pre-K. His opponents are attacking him so it is important that his letter explaining his reasons gets as much air as possible.

In response to a solicitation from a Washington, DC based political action committee seeking “early childhood education” pledges from candidates running for local office, Manchester school board at-Large candidate Rich Girard released his answer.

Dear Chris and Meryl:
Thank you for presenting your Statement of Principles and requesting my support.  As the father of five, I am obviously interested in how best to educate children and know from my own experience that each child is unique in their abilities and in how they learn.

While I would like to sign your Statement of Principles, I find myself with more questions than answers, assertions without reference, a school district that has struggled for years with its existing pre-school program, the questionable results of the Head Start program nationwide and the opinions and analyses of many experts that don’t agree with the solutions proposed by your organization to the issues raised.

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One of the most unadvertised law enforcement practices in New Hampshire, and across the nation, is civil asset forfeiture. This is when the people enforcing the law charge your property with a crime without ever actually charging you with one. You are a person of interest but your property is placed into protective custody where it enters the fiscal equivalent of witness protection. It gets a new name and a new life as the property of the agency or agencies who seized it.

You are never charged with a crime but your property is serving  life, and good luck “breaking it out.”

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And Hillary and the then Democrats Presidential candidate knew it.

Standing in front of four flag draped coffins holding the murdered Americans she and her president abandoned, she told the families and the American people:

“We’ve seen the heavy assaults on our posts in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men.  We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with.”

What she told the Egyptian Prime Minister two days earlier (h/t @redsteeze):

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Yep, National Debt Ceiling time again and we’ve seen this movie already.  Kelly Ayotte has a new bill (2/15) and Kim had a post on it here; US Senate sponsors are: “Mr. Portman (for himself, Ms. Ayotte, Mr. Barrasso, Mr. Enzi, Mr. Grassley, Mr. Isakson, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Lee, Mr. Rubio, and Mr. Toomey)”.  By setting up “automatic” appropriations  to take effect if Congress can’t get its second act and responsibility together and actually passing legislation, it kicks in to save their collective butts for a job poorly done (i.e., setting the nation’s priorities via a budget) – it lapses their responsibilities (yes, again) and puts the government onto autopilot.

Tell me again – WHY then do we need Congress?  You have TWO jobs – protect Citizens from attack (and yes, I would say that includes a slow rolling invasion via open borders that you continue to allow) and figure out what to spend on and how to pay for it.

Yet, Kelly Ayotte is all cheerful like in absolutely miserable  radio ad being run by CommittmentsKeptNH (an org on which I wrote about here) and its funding PAC, ESAFund (formerly Ending Spending Action Fund, info here, here, here, here, here, and here).  I first saw this on TV – can’t track down the video but the radio ad transcript after the jump.

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MITT ROMNEY: DEMISE OF LEGACY MEDIA EMPOWERING CONSERVATIVE ‘INSURGENTS,’ PREVENTING MORE ‘COLLABORATIVE ACTION’

Ugh…this post about Romney, divisiveness, Democrats, media, and Paul Ryan is wrong on so many levels….but that’s why I pay myself the big cents to wade through this slosh. Emphasis mine, reformatted:

Failed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney lamented that the demise of traditional media is empowering Republican “insurgents” and preventing establishment Republicans from compromising more with Democrats.

Gak!  First thought – it was BECAUSE the traditional media that the Left didn’t appear to be all that Left in the first place.  Why?  There was no contrarian and competing media to present other views.  Homogenous was all you get – and all of the news anchors of the Big Three Networks were very much Liberals as well as the powerhouse print media.  It really wasn’t until Rush went and took talk radio over (from around 125 stations at the time to over 1500 today) that stalwart conservative views were heard on a wide basis.

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