You’re Just Not Smart Enough For Free Speech

All things being equal, the only reason Democrats might have to complain about the affect of FEC vs. Citizens United on paid political speech is if it somehow removed some pre-existing advantage they had.  Why else cause such a fuss?  The left clearly has just as much right to take advantage of the current state of political discourse as anyone, right?

So that’s not the problem, is it?

The real problem has nothing to do with money.  Democrats have tons of that and always have.  And they never complained when they could afford more “speech” than anyone else.  So spending money on speech is not the issue.

And it has nothing to do with ‘transparency, not the way they have framed it.  They want “transparency” because without it they can’t use their media advantage to intimidate opponents into keeping their opinions, ideas, and money to themsleves.  Democrats can’t silence groups of donors they cannot specifically identify (see also Obama/FEC trying to force Right wing groups to release donor lists).

So Democrats are not worried about money in political speech.  They are worried about money and speech they can’t control.  They are worried about people hearing any message that is not their message.

Democrats are afraid of free speech because they simply do not think you are smart enough to know what you are supposed to believe.

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Running in Rockingham 17 – A Democrat Socialist From Tennessee?

William Hudson Connery III is running for the New Hampshire House.  He is a Democrat.  He is running in Rockinham 17.   And with the registration deadline just past, he’s already got problems.

William-Hudson Connery III cant stand church goersLet’s start with that picture of the anti-religious bumper sticker he had posted on facebook that he abruptly took down…just after he signed up to run for the New Hampshire House I’d guess.  The one that says, “I’ve got Nothing Against God, It’s his fan club I can’t stand.”  He is certainly welcome to his opinion but not being able to stand most of the population seems like a strange condition for someone seeking public office.  If he “can’t stand” 8 out of 10 constituents who exactly is he hoping to represent?

He’s also rather partial to another bumper sticker (if you read the updates next to the picture) that says “I’m sorry I missed Church I was too busy practicing witchcraft and being a lesbian.”

Well where’s the left wing outrage about that?

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GrokTV Event: GSPLPAC presents Rosa Koire on Agenda 21 – Parts 6 and 7

I’ll tell you, the more I hear about the subject, the thoughts of “are you serious”?  Yet, when I look at the example in Portland, Oregon where “sustainable development” is the end-all-be-all of urban planning, I start to think “mmmm, maybe there is something to this” (here, here, here, and here).  Skyrocketing housing costs have … Read more

Book Review – Rebuild the Dream by Van Jones – Part 1: Lie 1

Rebuild The Dream by Van JonesAs I posted here, I purchased a copy of Van Jones’ new book and had it signed by Van himself.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a shot to start reading it.  Until today.

There’s been a lot of stuff going on, both in my blogging life as well as in the life outside of the laptop (little as it might be) and I just needed to switch gears for a bit.  So, I started to read some of the books that have been sitting on the shelf for a while – and realized how much I’ve missed holding a book in my hands!  So I as said earlier, it was time to read this book by one of the biggest cheerleaders for a “government centered life” for us all – and basically, someone who has no problem in slagging folks like TEA Partier me.  After all, I’m not someone who studied Marx as a political way to follow and have little truck with Communitarianism – a word that you’ll be seeing more often here on the ‘Grok.  Essentially, the emphasis is on “the community” and while the Wiki definition makes it seem benign, read the section on Positive Rights:

Central to the communitarian philosophy is the concept of positive rights, which are rights or guarantees to certain things. These may include state subsidized education, state subsidized housing, a safe and clean environment, universal health care, and even the right to a job with the concomitant obligation of the government or individuals to provide one. To this end, communitarians generally support social security programs, public works programs, and laws limiting such things as pollution.

A common objection is that by providing such rights, communitarians violate the negative rights of the citizens; rights to not have something done for you. For example, taxation to pay for such programs as described above dispossesses individuals of property. Proponents of positive rights, by attributing the protection of negative rights to the society rather than the government, respond that individuals would not have any rights in the absence of societies—a central tenet of communitarianism—and thus have a personal responsibility to give something back to it.

I digress in a small part -but make no mistake in that in many cases, the emphasis is always that the individual Rights must be subsumed to the need of the Collective.  With these watermelon environmentalists, there will be more and more emphasis that we need to give up stuff and Rights “for the common good” – at and by their command.  The problem is that ” the needs for the Common Good”, just like the vaunted “social contract” that Leftists accuse Conservatives of violating, there is never a sheet of paper that lay out what the “Common Good”‘s needs are, or the boundaries vis-a-vis our Individual rights.  All there is seems to be a never ending, vaporous commentary of “we more, you less”.  How do you defend yourself against what is basically vaporware?  (er, easy: start asking them the hard questions of “what?”, starting writing them down, and don’t take “no” when they say “er, later – we have to go over this other stuff” or “I’ll get back to you”.

Thus, this fits in both with Van Jones as an environmentalist and with the Granite State Future Plan / Sustainable Communities Initiative posts I’ve been putting up lately. So, back to the review – I haven’t even made it to Chapter 1 yet – the Prologue is 35 pages long.  In it, two things struck me:

  • He shoulda listen harder to his Dad; he comes around to believe him but missed the most important point
  • He lies

About what?  “Of course, President Obma had no intention of closing America’s coal mines.” (page xxvii).  Just one big lie through that nice big smile he has!

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Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court. It is also doomed.

This from Holman Jenkins, Jr. in The Wall Street Journal recently: “The mandate’s survival could actually be a convenience to those who remain seriously interested in fixing health care….Reality could not have instructed President Obama more plainly: The last thing we needed, in a country staggering under deficits and debt, a sluggish economy and an unaffordable … Read more

GrokTV Event: GSPLPAC presents Rosa Koire on Agenda 21 – Parts 3, 4, and 5

Rosa Koire continued to talk this past Tuesday night about how the UN Agenda 21 program has made its way into the Federal bureaucracy and what it means for New Hampshire citizens, their private property, and the traditional NH town life.  She outlined how representatives from the EPA, DOT, and HUD are out to change … Read more

I just couldn’t stop coming back to this headline:

Over at Fox:

Supreme Court upholds ObamaCare and Americans have lost the right to be left alone

Regardless of what I wrote here concerning the Commerce Clause (it is now longer unlimited) and that Federalism has been strengthened (roping in Federal coercion of the States by  ransoming monies that came from the States in exchange for meeting certain mandates), the above hit home – hard.  When I heard that inactivity cannot be regulated via the Commerce Clause, I went YES!  When I heard no more coercion by the Feds, I went YES!  And then what Roberts said about taxation and individual choice, my heart dropped.  The headline had it right – they just won’t leave me alone.

One of my regular Internet Doodlings come from TreeHugger.  It’s a great site for a Conservative to visit (as loyal ‘Grok commenter C. dog e. dog now frequents those haunts, howling at the entrenched denizens, has learned).  They now combine an absolute faith that there is a future of  “no future” for any of us unless their Green vision is realized in how we all should live in their Utopia of a pre-modern civilization / Gaia dystopia of a low energy world (and a low level of life to boot).  There is that loud stream of “all in for one vision” and we all should have no choice in it. “You cannot live your life your way because if we let you, the planet will die.”  Thus, they will do and support anything that will force the rest of us to change our behavior – for them, keeping the planet alive trumps the Rights and philosophy of the Constitution.  They will not stop until we live the way they want and as you have seen with some of my recent posts (here and here), they are on the march to make that happen, forcibly if necessary.

From the political side, Obama and his fellow Progressives are also convinced they can create a Utopia here on Earth – and as Obama has said:

“my individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country.”

Translation:

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Nullification – Sort Of…

Section 400-A:14-a  400-A:14-a Health Insurance Coverage. – No resident of this state, regardless of whether he or she has or is eligible for health insurance coverage under any policy or program provided by or through his or her employer, or a plan sponsored by the state or the federal government, shall be required to obtain or … Read more

Former Obama Appointee that wanted to crucify energy companies, expectedly turns up at Sierra Club (who wishes to do the same)

A while ago, Al Armendariz (an Obama recruit / appointee), a high level EPA district administrator for the oil areas of the South and Southwest regions got caught in a 2010 video admitting that his style of environmental overwatch was akin to the Roman soldiers (video after the jump) (emphasis mine):

“But as I said, oil and gas is an enforcement priority, it’s one of seven, so we are going to spend a fair amount of time looking at oil and gas production. And I gave, I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said. It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up. And, that won’t happen unless you have somebody out there making examples of people. So you go out, you look at an industry, you find people violating the law, you go aggressively after them. And we do have some pretty effective enforcement tools. Compliance can get very high, very, very quickly. That’s what these companies respond to is both their public image but also financial pressure. So you put some financial pressure on a company, you get other people in that industry to clean up very quickly. So, that’s our general philosophy.”

Of course, the whitewash machinery went to to work right away to disavow his actions and words and to make him out to be an outlier and not typical of the outlook of the EPA itself.

Yeah, like anybody believed that – and with this news as to where he landed after he resigned (just before he was to go before a Congressional hearing), does anyone believe that the Obama Administration WASN’T out to get the oil companies (disbelieve me?  See after the jump for a reminder)?  The Hill reports:

A former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official who resigned earlier this year for comparing his work to crucifixion has found new employment with a leading green group.

The Sierra Club on Friday announced that Al Armendariz would be joining the group’s “Beyond Coal” campaign next month as a senior representative:

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GrokTV Event: GSPLPAC presents Rosa Koire on Agenda 21 – Parts 1 & 2

Behind The Green Mask: UN Agenda 21

Tuesday night, the Granite State Patriot Liberty PAC presented Rosa Koire, author of the book “BEHIND THE GREEN MASK: U.N. Agenda 21” – The Agenda for the 21st Century Sustainable Development.

She spent two hours talking about how zoning laws have been targeted by those wishing implement mandatory high density housing, the community data compiled by local towns and cities that would be used against them in attempts to “provide justice against institutionalized racism”, the attacks on personal property by calls to move to a commutarian philosophy (where the “common good” outweighs any Rights of the individual), and a forced move from personal cars to an all public transportation model.  Governance would go from elected and accountable officials to an unaccountable and unelected bureaucratic regionalism model.

Here is Part 1:

Part 2 after the jump:

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Holder in Contempt

Eric Holder held in contempt The other ‘big’ story from yesterday was the House vote to hold Attorney General Eric “Guns” Holder in contempt of the House.  He was and is in contempt.

The left, lead by Nancy Pelosi, continued to spin it as a partisan political stunt, though coming from her that means nothing.  Democrats are committed to making everything “political” so that they can control it with legislation, or use it to construct narratives, or rhetoric.  And under no circumstances should they step aside in the face of corruption or incompetence–how could they that is how they govern.

So we get to play this game where Democrats lie and hope it all just goes away.

But the facts are not in dispute.

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The emergence of Chief Justice John Roberts….

Chief Justice John Roberts...and Chief Justice John Marshall

The Obamacare decision crafted by Chief Justice Roberts…may be the best of all possible outcomes, including striking the whole thing down as unconstitutional. I’ve been mulling the decision over since it was announced yesterday, and have had the persistent feeling that…something is going on here that is not clear. It’s been a nagging suspicion I’ve had since the decision was announced. Skip blogged yesterday about it, saying, that “I’m no lawyer, but….” Even so, Skip came very close to seeing entirely through the noise and chaff, and discerning what actually may be going on. At one point he said “has Roberts actually laid in a hidden ambush (albeit, long term) by creating a virtual dead-end canyon into which Lib Big Govt-ers are going to get led into?” 

I believe the answer to that question is…

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Marilinda Garcia – In Support of a Veto Override on HB 1679

After the Union Leader tricked me yesterday (corrected here), I felt compelled to share the actual remarks from Republican House Rep Marilinda Garcia, in her support to overturn the Veto on HB 1679, the ban on Partial Birth Abortion in New Hampshire.

As I should have known all along, she and I are in complete agreement about the need for this bill.  Her remarks clearly outline and define why we need to pass State level protections of this nature.

She was kind enough to share those remarks with me.  Now I shall share them with you.

***

I rise in support of the veto-override of it HB 1679 which would ban the procedure known as “partial birth” abortion from occurring in the State of NH.

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A new name for Obamacare? And other Obamacare random thoughts

A little thing, perhaps, but this caught my eye over at Betsy’s Page:

Now that Obamacare has become Obamatax…

After all, the Supremes (a la Chief Justice Roberts made it so) have made it simply a taxing offense (“According to the CBO, the Obamatax may amount to $1.7 trillion over a decade.”)…

*******

A friend of mine asked:

Now that Obamacare has been ruled valid, are Republicans ready for Tenth Amendment solutions like the Health Care Compact?

My response :

Wrong first question.

First Question: are Republicans willing to man up sufficiently to grow TWO pair each first???

*******

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Shaheen On Wildfires…You Can Smell The Hypocrisy (From Day 1)

Jeanne Shaheen had some harsh words for the White House regarding the Wildfires…

I Can Almost Blame George Bush From Here!

“These wildfires are a direct result of this administration’s failure to do something about global warming,” Shaheen said with passion and to applause as the microphone cut out on her.

…back in October of 2007.  Back in 2007 she was talking about California Wildfires and then President George W. Bush.

Whether you believe in Global warming or not, and regardless of whether you think it could or would have any affect on wildfires as Jeanne Shaheen believes–at least for the sake of campaign rhetoric–what bearing do these remarks have on the current situation in Colorado today?

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GrokTV Event: Brookfield Planning Board – presentation on “Sustainable Communities Initiative” – Part 2

Ken Eyring continues and finishes his presentation of some of the paperwork that just never seems to stop once a local community signs onto the “Granite State Future Plan” (the NH adaptation of the Federal program called “Sustainable Communities Initiative”  operated by a consortium of the Federal EPA, the Federal Dept. of Transportation, and the Federal Housing and Urban Development).

Sidenote: viewed from one angle, that last department’s name is indicative of the goal – to fundamentally transform how Americans will be allowed to live by creating “urban development” villages with high density housing and just public transit: not just bringing the city to rural areas but making rural communities into “micro-cities” where everyone is forced to live together instead of the types of town NH has historically had).

Some main points, overall:

  • The endpoint has already been established
  • Local control will be a thing of the past
  • Why is taxpayer money being used against taxpayers best interest?
  • Those presenting “the plan” are not being honest – they are not upfront about what towns are about to get themselves into and not honest about the techniques being used to do so.

Part 3:

Part 4 (and last) after the jump:

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GrokTV Event: Brookfield Planning Board – presentation on “Sustainable Communities Initiative” – Part 3

Eileen Mashimo next addressed the Brookfield Planning Board and added some of the connections to some of the groups that are behind the scenes of this initiative, how the people and the groups all  interconnect, and the methods by which this “Granite State Future Plan” is being rammed through the process (it is rather manipulative).  All said and done, it is clear that those behind this do not have the standard model of democracy in mind, nor values that our Founders would agree with or give their blessing to them.

Part 1:

Part 2 is after the jump

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