The keynote speaker was Jennifer Horn – here are her remarks:

That’s right – nothing.  Now to the good, she was to give a talk and then a few questions afterwards.  Instead, sensing the angst and anger of the activists that were present, she began to take questions after a very brief into. However, with the brouhaha over “private vs privacy”, she decided not to go on record.   Again, Joe Kenney showed that he believed enough in who he is and what he stands for to go on record.  I thought that Christopher Boothby was going to be that type of person – and then his courage failed him.  Props to Horn for taking the questions, but with the brouhaha over privacy vs public and her deciding not to go on record, I think she missed a great opportunity to talk to other activists here in NH.  Openness and transparency?

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A group calling itself NH Rebellion has picked up the crusade of the anti-corporate-speech left.  They held an event in Hanover, NH recently, at which their spiritual leader, Larry Lessig was the keynote speaker.

Members of NH Rebellion are going to walk across New Hampshire preaching the psalms of the Democrat and RINO prophets.  They will say things that appeal to folks who are concerned (or have been told to be concerned)  about money and its corrupting effect on politics.  They will talk about cutting off the revolving door with K-Street Lobbyists and ending special interest money.

The goal is “publicly funded” elections and campaign money transparency, all under the assumption that the Founders never intended corporations to have the same unalienable rights as individuals.

They and other so-called “campaign finance reform” groups have proposed any number of legislative solutions and or constitutional amendments to “fix” this “problem,” but we don’t need a slew of new reforms to fix this.   The answer is very simple.  We just need to Repeal one amendment we already have.

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“Letter to the editor” – Concord Monitor

The Monitor has recently published several letters and written a couple of editorials supporting Medicaid expansion in New Hampshire. Every one of these pieces has implied that expanding Medicaid is “free” because the federal government is paying for it. I don’t know if in our race to become an entitlement society we’ve become willfully ignorant, or whether this is a partisan political ploy, similar to the lies selling Obamacare, to shut down debate and marginalize those who might disagree with you, but it cannot stand without objection.

Expanded Medicaid is not free.

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The “Maunder minimum” is a fancy-pants sciency phrase for a little ice age.  A little ice age is a long period of weird weather where it mostly just gets colder for longer over a series of consecutive decades.  These events are predicated on oscillations of total solar radiance, and solar or sunspot activity, which can be plotted, measured, and used to predict long term effects on climate based on previous solar activity in relation to recorded historical temperatures, observations, ice-core data–you know sciency stuff.

We’ve recently left one of those very active solar periods (when it got warmer), which even the scientists who write at Wikipedia refer to as a solar maximum.  During the solar maximum, there was a lot of solar activity and the globe got warmer.  After solar maximums you get the opposite, according to the science, which suggests  a long period of colder temperatures–and more of those Polar vortex thingies.

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“He was for it before he was against it”

The second Republican vying to be the Republican nominee to the seat formerly held by the late Ray Burton is former Belknap County Commissioner Chris Boothby.  Along with Joe Kenney, he was there to present his case to the members present:

Oh yeah, not happening.  While I’ll go into more detail of the “private vs public” bit later, I asked both Mr. Kenney and Mr. Boothby if it was alright to video their stump speeches.  Mr. Kenney said “sure” – he had nothing to hide (I guess being the Marine Corp for 30 odd years and 3 combat tours means that an itty bitty camera doesn’t scare him).   Mr Boothby made the same decision – and then just before it was time to speak, he reversed himself.  His right, to be fair, but I again, I do this “citizen journalism” (they speak and I don’t edit any of it) as lots of potential voters can’t get to the kaffeklatch / home meetings that are conducted during the day when regular working people are, well, working.  The regular media outlets won’t bother – but GraniteGrok does (or tries to; more later).

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