And Obama has SUCH a nice smile, doesn’t he?  Benjamin Weingarten has a short explanation:

It can be said that progressivism at its core seeks to turn the world upside down.

It is an ideology and a tactic of modern-day Sophists who seek to replace facts with narrative, justice with injustice, morality with immorality and virtue with vice — but it does so with a smile on its face.

Consequently, in order to identify whether one is in fact living in a progressive Utopia, one merely needs to identify instances in one’s society, economy and political system, themselves a natural outgrowth of the culture (itself an outgrowth of the ideas that a people has imbibed), in which facts, logic and history have been shoved aside in favor of the whims of the wise collective.

Most conservatives have had that feeling that down is up, right is wrong, decency is bad, and normality is now only for “Extremists”. 

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• Michael Brown – stole tobacco (taking the private property of another), physically intimidated the shopkeeper (assault)  and then got into that now infamous event with Darren Wilson (bad decisions have consequences)
• Eric Garner – stole money (cheated The State out of tax revenues) by selling untaxed cigarettes

Consider the above and then this snippet from Liberty Unyielding on seeing the resulting street actions as Occupy Wall Street reborn:

The connection between big money and police interactions with blacks is elusive. But the New York protesters are not alone in the belief that capitalistic greed is a driver in the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Raphael Warnock, pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, was a guest on Wolf Blitzer’s CNN show, where he spoke curiously of Wall Street bankers “gambling our money away.” Unless the reverend is mistaking Barack Obama for an investment banker, I have no idea what he’s talking about.

Right out of Occupy – anti-capitalism (see here).  Yet, look at the abridged version of the two deaths again.  One was

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One can be a “Leader” only if there are people willing to follow.  It looks like Jack Flanagan is having this problem:

From: HouseRepublicanOffice
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2014 3:39 PM
To: HouseRepublicanOffice
Subject: House Republican Caucus December 17th

House Republicans will hold their first caucus of the upcoming session on Wed., Dec. 17 at 10 a.m.. The caucus will held in Representatives Hall at the State House in Concord. This fact finding meeting will help to develop the House Republican agenda, policy, pending legislation and support.

Contrary to what you have been hearing, the Republican meeting scheduled for Monday, December Dec. 8, at the Grappone Center in Concord, is not a House Republican caucus.

I look forward to seeing you all on the 17th and working with you this session.

Rep. Jack Flanagan
House Majority Leader

________________________________________

From: Hoell, JR
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2014 10:41 AM
To: Baldasaro, Al; LeBrun, Donald
Cc: HouseRepublicanOffice; ~Republican House Members
Subject: RE: House Republican Caucus December 17th

Dear Rep Flanagan,

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New Hampshire establishment Republicans hew to one principle and only one. How do we keep the DC money spigot open and how do we keep the first in the nation primary. (Is that two principles?)  Nothing else matters to them. They will abandon their platform, its principles, and any candidate that dares espouse them, for money and the perception of influence.

This may well be how we ended up with a Democrat elected Speaker of a Republican majority House.

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Starting in October a small liberal paper in Milford began questioning The Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers articles about interstate vote thief Jared Steven Cram, a lawyer who lives in Philadelphia Pa. and who votes in both states to maximize his vote value. That is something real NH voters can not do legally.

See RSA 659:34-a.

The Milford Cabinet, without contacting a single source we know of, proceeded on its editorial page, to call us out for writing falsehoods about their protected vote thief, Jared Steven Cram. They did this for three editions.

Well, CNHT sent the paper, through its comments section, a simple pathway to all the evidence they needed to prove us wrong – Jared Steven Cram’s Pa. and NH voting records. But the paper has yet to offer a retraction or apology to CNHT or explain how we are wrong.

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By Al Baldasaro
December 5th, 2014

Subject: A SAD DAY FOR HOUSE REPUBLICANS

Fellow Loyal Dedicated Republican Representatives,
I have been a veteran activist for years, a Proud Representative going on my 5th term and I can continue that fight as a Representative voted in by the people of my district.

I can not accept a chairs position, nor do I expect to be asked because I couldn’t live with myself knowing that the new Democrat Speaker “Screwed Republicans” for his own gain and not the good of the Republican party.

How can the New Democrat Speaker say he respects the institution but he disrespects the Republican Caucus by making a back room deal with the Democrats? Are you proud of that or just don’t care for some who are only concern about what leadership/parking you have?

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A curious reaction from him in the Concord Monitor on how he will “deal” and “unify” with dissenters within the Republican caucus – he’ll just order them around:

On Tuesday, Republican House members will meet in a caucus to elect a state party committee member, who would in turn lead the body’s Republican majority, said Amherst Rep. Stephen Stepanek.  “Jasper is the Democratically elected speaker of the New Hampshire House,” Stepanek said. “He is not the Republicans’ man.”

After all, Shawn Jasper does not meet the requirements of the NH GOP By-Laws to sit on its Executive Board as the Democrats appointed him to be Speaker and not a majority vote of the NH House caucus (unless NH GOP Chair Jennifer Horn pulls a “lawless Obama” and changes that with a snap of her fingers).  But here’s the meat of Jasper’s problem – and his tone deafness:

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This time from the Union Leader (reformatted, emphasis mine):

CONCORD — To head off “some interesting shenanigans going on,” House Speaker Shawn Jasper officially named Rep. Jack Flanagan of Brookline as House Majority Leader Friday, and Rep. Steve Shurtleff of Concord Democratic Leader.  Supporters of former speaker Bill O’Brien who lost the speaker’s race to Jasper Wednesday, has called a “GOP Caucus” Tuesday to elect the Republican Leader for the House

“Whatever this group plans on doing,” Jasper said Friday, “frankly we’re just not interested.”

Uh-huh.  I think a decent translation of that is “My way – there is no highway“.  Isn’t that the exact same thing he accused Bill O’Brien of – being an authoritarian supreme?  And, oh, by the way, didn’t Bill O’Brien allow the majority caucus to elect its OWN Majority leader?  I guess Democrat appointed Speaker Shawn Jasper must have an issue with that whole secret ballot thingie, eh?

But, hey look, you say, he allowed the minority caucus, the Democrats, to elect their OWN leader, didn’t he

So it was OK for the Democrats, Mr. “Republican Speaker” to vote and elect their own leader but not for the Republicans to do the same?  What is your reasoning behind that?  Or is it that you don’t trust your own caucus?

Oh, back to Jack Flanagan (would this make him the Democrat appointed Majority Leader, seeing that the Speaker who just gave him this job is the Democrat appointed Speaker?) – is this a little bit of the “Royal WE” creeping in already?

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The State of New Hampshire recently released financial audits of New Hampshire’s abortion clinics in response to New Hampshire Right to Life’s Right to Know Request and litigation it has filed in Strafford Superior Court. The information received in response to this request details a startling increase of taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood abortion clinics here in NH and northern New England.

In late 2012, the State of New Hampshire applied to the federal government for funding of family planning clinics. The federal government responding by directly funding Planned Parenthood and giving a grant to the state to cover the other parts of the state. On June 13, 2013 the Executive Council approved family planning funds (Title X) for clinics not already funded by the federal government . At the insistence of Executive Council members Pappas and Van Ostern, it was discussed that, regardless of the fact it was already being funded by the federal government, Planned Parenthood needed to receive its “fair share” of state dollars. In response to this, NH DHHS promised the Executive Council that funding would come forth RETROACTIVE to give Planned Parenthood their “fair share” of state family planning dollars.

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We were talking with Jorge Mesa-Tejada this morning about the problem in the Timberlane/Hampstead School Districts (SAU 55) where it seems the School Board is being co-opted by an evil confluence of their relatively new Superintendent and NH School Board Association in that they are moving in a direction to limit free speech and the ability of voters and parents to seek redress of grievance and air their concerns to their elected representatives.  This is becoming, more and more, a situation seen around the state (e.g., the Gilford School Board has done the same thing – made itself rather unapproachable to those that elected them).

After Jorge (whom I have known for almost a decade now) sent us this quick blurp on the Earl of Metzler (Dr. Earl Metzler):

The superintendent’s name is Dr. Earl Metzler, III [LinkedIn here  -Skip].  His doctorate is brand new, from Walden University.

He hired his wife as Spanish consultant—no bid—for $50K.  This week, he hired the wife of the Timberlane BudCom(Jason Grosky, just defeated candidate for Rockingham County attorney)  as the new PR person for $18,000 contract.

This guy can keep a newspaper reporter busy for life!

This is the kind of guy that gives local governance a bad name – no problem in co-opting enemies or financially aiding friends??

Update:

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In what was often an insanely frustrating (the live feed kept going down) and sometimes amusing election for Speaker of the House on Wednesday, Republican Representative Shawn Jasper was elected as Speaker by a majority of Democrats. The majority in the Republican Caucus voted for O’Brien.

If you recall, the Republican race for Speaker was originally between Bill O’Brien and Gene Chandler. That had its own drama when Senator Kelly Ayotte, John Sununu and some other “Establishment’” types urged Republicans to back Chandler. When Chandler lost his bid and backed O’Brien, most just assumed O’Brien would become the next Speaker of the House.

Flash forward to Tuesday. Rumors swirled around NH politics that Jasper and others were up to no good. It appeared they were working with some to make sure O’Brien didn’t become the speaker. For some reason, the Establishment was afraid that O’Brien wouldn’t be the speaker they needed to gear up for the 2016 races in which Senator Ayotte is running for re-election and of course the Presidential election. Clearly they don’t seem to know much about Jasper’s personality in the House. How did this all come about?

It has been confirmed by multiple sources that Senator Jeanie Forrester was indeed making phone calls to Republican Representatives to support Jasper.

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