Florida’s new reformist Republican Rick Scott hever held political office before he won the governorship in the November election. His ideas sound like a good approach for us in New Hampshire too, even while noting the twin evils that menace society, "the permanent bureaucracy and government unions":
I Tried It At Home
Fergus Cullen has some advice in his Union Leader column this morning.(print or e-edition) Resolutions that do not include exercise or dieting, to quote the author. They are all of course political, the most entertaining of which is a suggestion that Carol Shea-Porter run for President.
But my favorite was this one.
For bloggers and online posters, man up and identify yourselves when you comment. There are too many anonymous cowards in the online world. Civility is more persuasive than angry rant. If you don’t have the courage to say who you are when taking a shot at someone, you probably shouldn’t say it.
I agree, mostly.
“We have become a nation of wusses”
A response to Kate Miller’s Letter to the Editor in one of my local dailies (page 4):
I think Cam DeJong (now a Republican NH House Representative) said it well “We believe in people”. Kate Miller, now a former Democrat NH House Representative, certainly does not believe that statement to be true in her latest Letter complaining about Republicans reversing what the Democrats had done.
The scenario she cites was of citizens in the NH House Gallery letting their representatives below know of their ire in their voting. To now state in her latest Letter “allowing for a true potential shout out at the OK Corral” is sheer demagoguery and shows a lack of respect for what was a purely legal activity. Is Ms. Miller that afraid of guns, or is she that afraid of her own citizens that she represented (I love that past tense)? If not, why else did she believe that her fellow citizens needed to be “controlled”? Actual history (of the event itself) showed that no such scenario happened – I am quite sure that there were a number of Representatives were also carrying at the time. It didn’t happen then and it is doubtful that a gallery of law abiding citizens would cause it to happen in the future. It seems the Democrat PA Governor Rendell has it right when he posited “Are we becoming a nation of wusses?”
Republicans are simply about to revise a regulation (not even a law) that was promised during the last campaign cycle. Ms. Miller has no reason to be kvetching – after all, many Republicans stated during their campaigns that many issues would be in “rewind” mode; based on the huge mandate they have given, they will keep their promises – this was one. After all, I would remind Ms. Miller – where were the Democrat campaign promises concerning gay marriage they ran on during the previous election cycle? Right – there were none. The Democrats ran in stealth mode on many issues and then rammed them through.
Now, you have the temerity to complain about campaign promises being acted upon? As that famous statement goes: “Oh please….”
Her Letter after the Jump:
GrokTALK! – Podcasts for 2010
Welcome to the GrokTALK! Podcast page for 2010! GrokTALK! is the Internet Radio show that "airs" every Saturday morning from 9 – 11 am. We cover all kinds of topics from a Conservative (with Libertarian leanings) and concentrating on things political here in NH, the country, and the world. GrokTALK! – Podcast page … Read more
Why Democrats think Rep. Michele Bachmann is stupid
The answer is contained in the insightful remark below, which appears on the TaxProf Blog, via Instapundit ("I didn’t know she had an L.L.M. in tax"): It’s amusing that Bachman, whose religious convictions were shared by Galileo, Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Bill Clinton, and a few other similarly unimpressive people, is ridiculed as a closed-minded ignoramus because of those … Read more
What’s In Your Narrative?
Plenty of people who think they are quite attuned to the echo chamber are spending a good deal of time doing the progressives and RINO’s dirty work. These are people on the right, so-called insiders who get how the game is played. Yet again (and again) I find the chorus repeating the message which the left and the media have ingrained in them…every time they hear the bell ring.
"Sarah Palin." Ding!
Independents will never vote for her. Her resignation as governor is a deal breaker. You can’t bring social issues into the debate or Republican’s lose the center, she is stupid, inexperienced, too provocative, and on and on and on.
This is the message of the establishment elites on both sides. It is the growl of a cornered animal that fears for its life. A life dependent on the growth and power of government. And it has been picked up and repeated by people who should know better.
Hasbro Capitalizes on Beer Pong
"
The Greatest Name in Games" has paved the pathway to future Beer Pong excellence with a series of "games" called Cuponk. The object of Cuponk, a creation of Hasbro, is to get a ping-pong ball in a cup doing any number of special moves or trick shots using whatever surfaces are available. The cup makes noise to reward you for your talents and if you actually use the cards provided, and complete the trick called for, you can get points and keep score.
Fortunately for us, you should not put beer in a Cuponk cup. I suspect the electronics will not like it. I can’t comment on whether the instructions warn against such amendments to the manufacturers guidelines, they seem to have gotten about as much attention as a 2000 page piece of legislation in the US House. Or maybe I threw them out with the wrapping paper.
It’s a cup and a ball. How frikkin complex could it be? "Mind it I play through?" ‘Oh by all means?’
Should every town have its own PRIVATE low-power FM radio station?
Why not? The political/government/ruling classes think this will be a big win for them, with little left-wing FM radio stations springing up, all funded by local tax money…they think. But not so fast: The Tea Party Movement, the constitutionalists, the 9/12ers, the Libertarians, the free enterprisers, the Patriot Movement, the Free State Project—all those who … Read more
Low Road To China
Carol believes what she has been told by Nancy Pelosi and the influence peddlers in her own party, believes it so strongly that she could never be bothered to accept that the truth was anything more than the opposition “pushing back.”
Ancient Chinese Secret
In an amusing week for Carol Shea-Porter, in which she almost sounded McCarthyesque in her suspicions of Chinese communist cash infiltrations into the campaigns of domestic candidates, how long can it be before she blames her 2010 election loss on Global Warming?
You heard me right.
It’s been 57 days since Carol "I wasn’t saying the Chinese cost me my election" Shea-Porter lost and she has still not called the winner to congratulate him and concede the race personally. This is a woman scorned, trapped in a world of denial, in which it is acceptable to ignore the big business, special interest international/domestic union machine that funded her own campaign while continuing to make offhand remarks about foreign and special interest money that doesn’t even exist as is she has to keep working off the same talking points palm card until the DNC sends her a new one.
Welfare – providing the basics
I have no problem in providing a basic safety net. I do, however, have a problem in defining "the basics" upward to include more and more and more: SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco has finished installing free Wi-Fi in its public housing facilities as part of a citywide housing improvement initiative. Mayor Gavin Newsom and … Read more
Conventional Wisdom – The Republican DEMolition made us safer. Skip’s wisdom – au contraire; and let me tell you why!
Many of us on the Right breathed a sigh of relief when we saw that the majority of the US House swung to the Republicans. While not booting Reid out of the Majority Leader’s seat in the Senate, the gains by Republicans there got an approving nod as well. Why not? America expressed its political will, showed its disdain for Progressive policies, and changed its political leadership.
We all thought: good, all these crazy laws and policies will now be stopped. The Republic is safe. Boy, are we all wrong!
Nothing less than the Rule of Law and the fundamental philosophy undergirding our Republic are now under attack by the Obama Administration. Given the failure of the Democrat controlled House and Senate, and with the Obama Presidency, the Progressives are resorting to put into effect what was their main goal all along:
The Administrative State
This has been the la creme de la creme of all Progressive fantasies – an ordered society, not popularly governed by The Rule of Law and the full expression of Constitutional values set by the Founding Fathers, but by the opposite: The Rule of Man via bureaucratic technocrats, well versed in the science of ruling and society, that would rule by administrative fiat.
As I wrote in an email this morning, look at what the Executive Branch is doing all on its own:
Just look at the tyranny that the Feds are doing via the Administrative State:
- HHS Secretary saying, with no authority to do, that a 10% rise (or more) in premiums announced by some insurance companies (some in reaction to Obamacare law and regulations she is penning) is "unreasonable" with no single legal basis on which to state that. Further, she has administratively put back in the "Death Panels" that were removed from the Obamacare law because of the public furor.
- The EPA is "tailoring" current law to fit its agenda of regulating anything economic under the guise of global warming (even as the actual law gives them no leeway to do it).
- The FCC, against the expressed will over 300 members of Congress and with no legal basis, and having already been rebuffed by the Court system, has decided on it’s own that it can regulate the Internet simply on its own say so.
- The Dept. of Agriculture, via Michelle Obama’s "we can’t leave it to the parents" nanny food law, can determine if Moms can send cupcakes for a school bake sale. True, a law was passed, but much of the actual effects of the law will be determined by bureaucrats and not legislators
- The Interior Department, with no input from Congress, has now effectively killed off all new exploration for energy in the Gulf of Mexico by either not leasing new plots or by making the permitting processes so onerous and time consuming, it is unprofitable for any drilling or spectating to be done. Ditto for land exploration for oil or exploitation of our newest discoveries of natural gas
Requested….asked….civic duty…shared sacrifice…shared responsibility – Just cut the crap, will ya?
We all know EXACTLY what the politicians mean when they decide to "upscale" their demands. From Best of the Web: Dear Constituents, Please Send Money. Love, Gov. A New York Times editorial notes that many states are facing insolvency and, predictably, argues that the answer is to burden their citizens with higher taxes: Too many … Read more
Formulaic Letters to the Editor – The Left Press is winding up!
Today in one of my local papers, I spotted two letters. No, not exactly the same, but using the same construction:
1. We have economic challenges here in NH!
2. Why are legislators going to spend time on monkeying with a woman’s reproductive rights! We are a pro-choice state!
4. You need to work for all of us, and not just your own personal agendas!
Yeah, mark me impressed – one of them decided to mock those of the "faith community" by the use of the phrase "archaic belief systems". Yeah, that’s gonna make me switch my views real quick, lady.
Here’s my response (the actual Letters are after the jump):
Dear Form Letter Ladies,
So nice to see that you could come up with an original idea between the pair of you! While it is true that NH faces "economic challenges", we can lay much of that at the feet of your fellow Liberal Travellers that decided, without a shred of economic understanding among them, that they knew best just how businesses should be run, regulated, and taxed so as to produce "jobs". We, thusly, find ourselves in the situation we currently now enjoy – shared misery instead of "a rising tide lifts all boats".
You know, I don’t remember seeing these same Letters as the Democrats put THEIR social agenda first during their time in power and control – where was your outrage over their lack of attending to economic issues then?
I love the euphemisms in trying to hide YOUR agendas:
- legislate family communication – "parental rights and responsibilities are outweighed by some unknown social service clerk that hardly knows your 8th grade daughter. And that 26 year old boyfriend? Irrelevant!"
- womens’ rights – "in our world, every female is a full fledged woman, you patriarchial mysogynist!"
- archaic belief systems – you moralistic Bible-Thumpers are just getting in the way of our ‘enlightened" secularism!"
- slow us down even further – "we have to move society forward!" (ah! the key phrase for Progressivism! Which is nothing more than incremental socialism – yeah, that’s the ticket! And where do we end up, dearies?)
- potentially cost taxpayers even more money – "you think abortion is expensive? wait until you have to pay for 18 years of welfare!"
Look, there is no reason why Republicans (the unstated Party in their diatribes) shouldn’t revisit the Parental Notification law that codifies that the responsibility of a minor child resides, not with the State, but with her parents. It also treats abortion as it truly is – a major medical procedure and should handled in the same manner as an aspirin from a school nurse. Treating the two is mere hypocrisy in the fight over ideologies.
Heck, we should be treating the life of an unborn child with FAR most concern than a pill.
But that seems to be all that the anti-Parents crowd wants…after all, just like Michelle said:
The Chief Blue Hampster may have learned a dead language but not so much on math….
Dean over at Blue Hampshire is kvetching again. Over Social Security. Figures:
If we Gen Xers had a nickel for every Very Serious Older Person in the Village who clamors for Social Security "reform" that doesn’t affect those nearing retirement – but is mum on those Gen-Xers who have been paying into it for decades – we’d have enough nickels to fund our retirement outside of this allegedly secure and social system.
So fun to read (between the lines) over and over again how I’ll be in the first wave of those who gave more and are left with less!
Hey Dean – meet the "Mother of all Ponzi Schemes" – no, not Bernie Madoff, but your US Government. Started by the most wonderful Progressive of all (or second, your choice), FDR.
And no, you aren’t the only one – I figure that I will have paid into that scheme for FAR longer than you – but am doubting that it will be able to pay anything. Frankly, the time of "retirement for the common folk" based simply on government dependency is probably over. Simply, a casualty of demographics – not enough rich people to tax, and certainly not enough workers of any strip to tax. The system works with "large family culture: (you know, the kind that the Progressive environmentalists hate – 4,5,…15 kids) that continually add to the base of the Ponzi pyramid to pay the previous generation. But our current culture looks down upon that type of thing.
Add to that, the massive stealing by the Political Class of the money that was in that "Trust Fund" – yeah, that’s working out real well now, isn’t it? And you have only you, and your philosophical brethren that never met a government expenditure on social issues you didn’t like, to blame. Suck that money out, replace it with…
Why Liberty Sucks
Published the day after Christmas, a young journalist named Christopher Beam explains it all in an article in New York magazine (fitting, that) called The Trouble With Liberty. You see, "Libertarians, of both left and right, haven’t been this close to power since 1776. But do we want to live in their world?"
The answer unfolds below….
What Would We Do Without Studies Like These?
Riding in on the heels of the UNH/Hirshberg cow fart research we have other news from the research front of which is just begging to be made fun.
Someone has discovered that oral sex is a gateway drug to intercourse among teenagers. A three-year study determined that teens who have oral sex are more likely to have intercourse than teens who do not. And if you ask the Baptists they will tell you that intercourse leads to dancing, or was that the other way around?
“I see most of the health policies out there and guidelines for preventive services talking about sex generally, but they do not specify oral sex. That is an important distinction because teens don’t consider oral sex to be sex, and many are not aware of the risks involved,” Halpern-Felsher said.
So oral sex leads to intercourse and intercourse leads to unwanted pregnancy. Who is surprised? The experts, of course.
A Guidebook for the New Hampshire Legislature!
Absolutely everything they need to know for 2011 is to be found IN THIS GUIDE. All they need to do is print it out, read it, understand it, and design a new tax system for New Hampshire this coming session. Excellent!
Why I Need Your Tax Dollars, by Gary Hirshberg
Gary Hirshberg CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farms wants you to know what he thinks about a recent taxpayer investment in organic farming. His editorial in this mornings Union Leader goes on at great length extolling the virtues and benefits of organic farming. It will create jobs, better food, help grow the organic farms footprint and provide fresh local dairy products.
He never mentions that his fresh local dairy farm is owned by a huge multinational French conglomerate of which he is a prominent international player. (Big Dairy!)
Agenda…
A good friend gave me a copy of a documentary a few weeks ago and asked me to watch it. Based on my association with him, the title, and by the DVD cover, I knew it was a film related to Communism and the United States. Not sure if it was some sort of far-fetched conspiracy theory movie, I gave this friend the benefit of the doubt, and I sat down to watch it with an open mind; I had no idea how powerful and compelling this movie would be.
Whether or not you agree with and/or appreciate him, think of Glenn Beck at his very best.
The film is called Agenda: Grinding America Down”, by Curtis Bowers.
See the trailer for this documentary after the jump…