James Pindell Archives - Granite Grok

But there was a Republican Sheriff there!

September 26, 2018May 5, 2013 Skip

This is not to excuse some of the national types. They story was there in the audience. Ayotte’s team was able to pack the audience the same way gun control groups artificially packed the audience. But Team Ayotte wasn’t doing any effective blocking and tackling either. Just one example: with all the Republican sheriffs who backed Ayotte in 2010, no one was put out there to defend Ayotte?

Well, for starters, James Pindell, there was at least one “Republican” Sheriff at one of Kelly’s town halls: Craig Wiggin of Belknap County at the Tilton event. Two friends of mine was there and relayed these takes on how “supportive” the Sheriff was:

We were told at the door by a police officer that no signs were allowed in the auditorium. We complied and played by the rules. However, the left wing radicals were allowed to display two signs while in the auditorium, one disparaging Ayotte and the other a pro-gun control slogan and nothing was done about it. These signs were not far from Ayotte where the media could film and exploit them for their usual purposes. Jeb Bradley who moderated this said nothing while the media cameras kept rolling.

So, who actually made a stink about following the rules and trying to knock this down for Kelly? Well, the other friend made it clear that it was neither Jeb Bradley or Sheriff Wiggin:

Some thoughts on the Pindell / Cline / Douglas criticisms of the Honor Your Oath Rally – Part 1

September 26, 2018April 26, 2013 Skip

I’m not even sure that James Pindell, Chuck Douglas, and Drew Cline were even at the same rally I was from reading their criticism (one at the WMUR site, two Union Leader Op-Eds) – or even bothered to watched the videos that were up at several sites. Each of them decided to tear the folks apart that stood up for their beliefs without seeing what was, to me, the obvious. In fact, I’m not even sure they even saw the obvious reason why 600 folks turned out to participate, volunteers doing the grunt work necessary to put on such an event, and the dozen or so speakers up at the podium. Yes, when you put yourself out in public, this is what happens – others will take pot shots at you, at the rally, or the issue for a variety of reasons: their sense of “professionalism”, their overarching specialized knowledge has been “violated”, their standing within their own specialized communities “demands” they take a stand, or they decided to reject the perceived issue out of hand as “being without merit”. None of them seem to have caught the intense sense of importance of the actual subject to the speakers and the attendees.

Or, to put it simply, wielding a hatchet just because they have an audience to impress or a thinly veiled purpose that may be getting set for the future. Or both.

Honor Your Oath. It wasn’t about journalists worried about column inches, punctuation, and delicately chosen words and sentence structure; it is about keeping a promise. It wasn’t about case law, or legal briefs, or court battles (even if from a former Supreme Court Justice); it is about a man and the importance of his word. It was not about bright lights, teleprompters, self-absorption, politics, or even the crowd; it is about judging a man and his bond. It wasn’t about guns or self-defense or “Stand Your Ground” (although that’s all these three seemingly heard), it wasn’t about Right or Left; it is about answering the question “Do we trust this person when their actions do not match that Oath”?

“Honor Your Oath” Rally – NH State Reps John Hikel and Dan Itse

September 26, 2018April 14, 2013 Skip

Verified Complaint of Breach of Oath of Office and Conspiracy against Rights

At the rally yesterday, the next speaker was NH State Rep. John Hikel. As the above line (and link) shows, he along with Jack Kimball signed the complaint that was delivered to the correct authorities on Thursday. The reason? If you swear an oath, there is the expectation that you will keep your promise as there is still great emphasis put on the phrase “A man’s word is his bond”. I have been writing about Trust lately and in the case of our elected leaders, we do expect some semblance of acknowledgement of the purpose of their service and that is “we will not violate the Constitution and its values”. That, of all things, should be the minimum of expectations of actions by them.

Why should we not keep folks accountable? For if you break your bond, what good are you? If you cannot keep your promises (and yes, we can excuse and forgive the ocassional “Oopsies!”), what good are you? And if you are merely mouthing the words and your imaginary fingers crossed behind your back as you do this, why shouldn’t we give you a collective (um, one of the few times that word makes sense) “SCREW YOU” and have you suffer the consequence of LYING? If you CANNOT or WILL, then we should remove you, yes? This is not a partisan thing – for I believe there are both Republicans AND Democrats who have failed to uphold the basics!

And yes, WMUR’s Jimmie Pindell, this is also part of the answer to your question!

Here is John Hikel explaining why he signed and delivered his Complaint and NH State Rep Dan Itse fulfilling his role, once again, on the importance of part of the Constitution:

NH State Rep John Hikel NH State Rep Dan Itse

Previous Videos:

Why, James? We’ll let you know what you missed later – maybe at the Rally, even.

September 26, 2018April 13, 2013 Skip

On the occasion of the day of the week being Friday, I sometimes go over to WMUR‘s Political Scoop to see what Pindell is yakking about in NH politics. Hey, it’s what we political bloggers do here in NH and everywhere else – find a story and take a riff off it or a fisking … Read more

James Pindell interviews Senator Rand Paul

September 26, 2018February 10, 2013 Steve MacDonald

Back on February 5th James Pindell interviewed Senator Rand Paul on the WGIR morning show. Foreign Policy, Immigration, Right to Work, and more… If you missed it, well–here it is. (Audio) [jwplayer mediaid=”47238″]

Andrew Manuse on WMUR

September 26, 2018June 22, 2012 Steve MacDonald

Andrew is the Executive Secretary of the RLCNH, the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, and he sat down for a few minutes with WMUR’s James Pindell to talk about not running for office again, and the current state of the Republican Party in New Hampshire.

In answer to James Pindell: how many?

September 26, 2018April 22, 2012 Skip

Over at WMUR Political Scoop, James has a weekly feature of Up and Down on which he comments on the political waves of the week past as well as what he can see from the top of yardarm (and we shan’t posit on the method by which he was hoisted up there); this week he … Read more

Where Diane Lacy, President of NH SEA / SEIU can’t even get simple facts right – and tips hand on the upcoming NH election cycle.

September 26, 2018January 23, 2012 Skip

On WMUR “Closeup” this morning, replacement host James Pindell interviewed Diane Lacy, President of the NH State Employee Association and NH Rep. Will Infantine (R-Manchester) during his first segment). Well, during the interview, Ms. Lacy shows that either she has no grasp of real facts or is just what many people believe: that the SEIU is just another name for “Progressive Democrats” in that they just make up facts and say them as truth. And keep repeating them, just like NH Progressive Press Sec. Harrell Kirstein and Uber-Progressive Chair Ray “Buckles” Buckley And are in the tank for Obama, as the national SEIU spent over $70 million, by their own admission, trying to get Obama elected. Lacy concentrated on three things:

Unions = Middle Class
Republican supported budget hurts union workers (with an assisted jab question from James Pindell)
Speaker Bill O’Brien is a Free Stater
In fact, NH is overrun by Free Staters (and she has no clue who or how many)!
She is making the wedge appeal to the RINOs for support with “hey, THOSE Republicans are not like you – support us!”
But she’ll replace those RINOS with union members who will be running for election.
And kinda mumbled something that without automatic union due deductions from union member paychecks, e-commerce in NH is dead.

Like this first statement by Diane Lacy:

“Middle Class is under attack here in NH and the way to get to the Middle Class is by taking away their rights.”

This is getting to be old, but let’s walk through this, shall we?

Yes, we are still here, James, and thanks for noticing!

September 26, 2018January 1, 2012 Skip

Every Friday (pretty much), James Pindell at WMUR Political Scoop does his Up and Down for the past week; given that it’s New Year’s, he swapped the timeline for the year’s span; in his Down side, he had this:

Local political blogosphere: With Dean Barker no longer running the day to day of Blue Hampshire, and with Red Hampshire gone, the blogosphere is less robust, is not growing, and is not driving the conversation like they were. At least Granite Grok got a face lift.

Well, at least thanks for noticing! And I also note: we’re still here, we have no plans to go away, and RINOs and Statists will still hate us and get annoyed by us. Yes, like RH, many sites that started out around the same time we did have gone away or the passion has flamed out…..blogging takes a lot of passion to do well and it requires discipline to make it work. Unlike others that tried it simply as a way to earn a living, this is our avocation (serious obsession?), not our vocation. Being a full time political blogger is not easy to do, at least on the Right side of the blogosphere. Financially, all I hope to do is pay the server bill and acquire the technology that will allows us to extend into different areas – more podcasts, more live streaming, more video, and whatever the next big tech thing coming down the line that will enable us to get our message out there. And getting out the message transcends the technology – the goal is to influence people no matter the media.

Thus, I would tend to agree with the assessment, at least in part.