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Posts By Steve Mac Donald

Did You Watch That New Reality TV Show Called ‘The Debate?’

I didn’t watch the GOP debate. I’m just not that into them. A debate is not a test of every candidates qualifications to lead.  It is not even a place to hear a lucid oration on their policies.  It is a stage on which lawyers or quick witted con men will look best, and the media is permitted to frame them.  I’d rather watch paint dry.

To be fair, living in New Hampshire, and being a political blogger with a shiny "new media" by line attached, I not only have access to most if not all candidates, I am encouraged to have access.   I get to press the flesh, write about them, even do live streamed or podcasted interviews with them; and I can develop a comfortable disinterest after twenty or thirty in-box invitation to meet "so-and-so" at "such-and-such" house party, picnic, monthly committee meeting, or fundraiser.  Not everyone has that opportunity, in fact most people don’t, so call it a luxury of New Hampshire convenience, one that I do in fact cherish.  Small state, big Primary, so debates can be viewed at a distance (even DVR’d), and oh yeah, the Patriots were on that night as well.

This is not to say I do not scroll through the reams of coverage and commentary afterwards. That is the convenience of modern advancements.  DVR, Internet, Facebook, Google +, Blogosphere, and so on.  Why kill it yourself when you can get it shrink wrapped on the cheap?  Did I mention the Patriots were on that night?

I am also privy to a stream of inter-party, partisan remarks, from people whom I respect, about why their candidate won "Best in show."  Social media, of which email is certainly a slower participant, provides me an almost endless series of fly-in-amber declarations from every choir.  Articles, opinions, personal commentary, coffee, mouse click, and go.  Information, observation, and opinion are in abundance, and I horde them in neat little virtual folders like a squirrel collects acorns for winter.

Not everything the social media funnel sends my way is ‘expert activist’ opinion.  There are also novice interjections from folks who stumble out of the political hinterland every quadrennial without having left a proper trail of breadcrumbs from the last go-round.  (Though the trail keeps getting shorter and soon, I suspect, the inauguration will be doubling as a campaign whistle-stop/fundraiser for the re-election.) In any regard, lacking the necessary cultural immersion, these electoral equivalents of the dead-beat dad, when discussing their observations about a presidential debate, can sound like Kelly Bundy describing the modularity theorem for elliptic curves.

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What’s Left Is Right – Should Obama Just Resign?

Admit it. It has crossed your mind. Obama should resign. Save us all the embarrassment of another stupid speech or the next pandering expose by the propaganda media. And just think of all the money the left would have to spend on a primary, instead of just shoving it all into Barry’s re-election cubby?

Britain Is A Riot

This is ranking quite high on the awesome scale. Thanks to Leigh Macneil for posting it on Facebook so I could then pilfer it and share it with you.

Where’s Our Cheese?

…have New Hampshire’s low tax, local government, just leave me alone voters decided that a tax and spend, intrusive big government guy like Perry is the new (old) direction they want to pursue?

Meet Bob “Bathroom Bill” Perry (Reprise)

With the Strafford 3 special election tomorrow, I thought it fitting to revisit this post about democrat Bob ‘Bathroom Bill’ Perry.  His voting record epitomizes what the left is and wants for you and your children.  You must not forget what they stand for.

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Liberals Buzz Over Take Down Of Obama

White Tower Liberal take down of obamaByron York in, Liberals Buzz over brutal take down of Obama, shares with us the thoughts of uber liberal (and very disappointed) professor, Drew Westen:

Perhaps Obama "is simply not up to the task" of being president.  Perhaps the Democrats who were so dazzled by his campaign speeches should have noticed "some disquieting aspects of his biography."  Among those disquieting aspects: "that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted ‘present’ (instead of ‘yea’ or ‘nay’) 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues."

This is posted in the Washington Examiner, where this psychology professors disagreements with Obama are not just grist for the right wing blogosphere.  When you read it you get a frightening reminder of how the institutional elites on the left think.

But instead of keeping Republicans under his heel, Obama negotiated with them.  The "truly decisive move" that showed Obama to be a failure, Westen writes, was the president’s decision to settle for an $800 billion economic stimulus bill that was far smaller than many liberals wanted.  Accepting a "half stimulus" instead of pushing for an even larger FDR-like program was a dismaying sign of "the tic-like gestures of compromise that have become the hallmark of [Obama’s] presidency."

This is supposed to be a smart guy.  Has he forgotten that during the stimulus debate Obama had a virtual mandate from his political capital and momentum alone and a legislature completely controlled by his party?  The were no Republicans to keep on any length leash. And compromise? There was none. The democrats won. Obama Won. He said it himself. It was a party talking point.   Yet this whit tower socialsit still insists the left (and Obama) failed to keep Republicans under heel and that this is a significant part of Obama’s failure? He is a failure–He really cannot lead. But Republicans have nothing to do with that. That would be the democrats who are to balme. Not that any of you would come out of the Kool Aid long enough to realize.

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Obama Makes The Same Face In Every Pic

Here is a nice little palate cleanser from Break.com. You needed a break, yes? It is called Obama makes the same face in every pic. It is strangely amusing. Let me set it up for you. It is a video of successive still shots and Obama makes the same face in every pic.

Rich Man Poor Man

If you are on the verge of being defined as low income in American, or maybe you are at or blow the “poverty line,”, you have a good deal to be thankful for. For example,you probably live in a larger home than most Europeans. There are appliances, televisions, maybe a car or two out front. In fact, you have things every American had just a few years before you.

193,000 Leave The Workforce

Bloomberg News (c/o Hot Air) reports that 193,000 more people have stopped looking for work in the Obama economy, taking 156,000 off the ‘Unemployed’ rolls.  This has effectively diminished the news that payrolls added 117,000, an anemic, lateral shift in an employment picture that sees more people giving up than finding work.

But people bailing has it’s statistical advantages.  With fewer unemployed on the books the rate of employment looks better, if you can call 9.1% better.  Another problem?  Debt management.  With such a large percentage of the available work force idle, that’s a natural resource wasted.

Meanwhile, Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary, reminded us that the White House does not create jobs.  It creates the conditions for job creation.

Yes it does…in China, India, Mexico, Brazil, just about everywhere but America. 

 

But is that the real plan?  After all, remember what joblessness means for the economy…(on the jump)

 

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Terrorists And The New Civility

Outrage flooding in now even from overseas over former Vice President Dick Cheney likening some opponents of President Bush’s policies and administration to “terrorists.”

Christopher Hill is Running For President

Christopher Hill is running for president. Who? Chris Hill. Chris is a gulf war fighter pilot who spent time in New Hampshire working in grass roots Republican politics. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1985. I met Chris about a year and half ago, and about twelve moths ago he told me over lunch that he was fed up with the government, and was interested in running for public office. He told me he was going to run for president.

Why You Should Run Screaming From A Balanced Budget Amendment

Run away -Photo Credit UK Daily MailI’ve never understood the Republican-conservative, Libertarian, Right-Wing-in General, love affair with the idea of a balanced budget amendment.  And it is not just my fear of letting the same modern Americans who think doing away with the electoral college is a good idea have a whack at the US Constitution.  It’s actually much simpler than that. A balance has two sides, and all things being equal, the side paying will get screwed.

And yes, I understand that almost every state has to balance it’s budget.  Even New Hampshire–despite what former governor (and dopey US Senator) Jeanne Shaheen thinks–must do this by law.  But this is no guarantee that a government will not spend more than it takes in.  The same government that decides what it spends will decide what it takes in.  And  unless you are a Granite Stater with a severe case of ADD, or just a very short memory, you may recall that balancing the budget need not have a single thing to do with austerity, control, or concern for the people who pay for government.  It merely requires you to find revenues to equal your spending.

For a quick review of how bad that scenario is, lets grab Simon and Mr. Peabody and jump into our way-back machine to the halcyon days after the 2006 elections when Democrats had complete control of the New Hampshire government for four years. " Balanced Budget" meant 100’s of new taxes and fees, many of them forced through at the last possible minute.  There were taxes that were enacted without a single hearing (in violation of other portions of New Hampshire law).  Land would be sold to raise revenue without anyone knowing what land or who might buy it, for how much, or if we could even sell it.  There was one time money, imagined cost shifting, raiding of dedicated funds, transfers from future years, and all manner of dark accounting magic used to create the illusion of a ‘balanced’ budget," perched in a Rube Goldbergian maze, upon a pedestal,  in a pentagram, guarded by straw men arranging goat entrails, scrying into alternate fiscal dimensions to hold off the demons of structural deficits yet to be.  To put a finer point on it, revenues were imagined to cover desired spending, without the revenue every actually being there to begin with, and when it failed to appear, someone had to pay for it to balance the budget. That or cut programs and spending. Typically, it is not the latter.

So having witnessed this abuse in one of the most politically active states, under some of the most withering scrutiny, with the benefit of the third largest representative body in the world, makes me wonder why anyone who lived through it would even suggest that things would be just ducky if we let distant, professional legislators, have a whack at it along the shores of the Potomac?

Sounds scary.  But could it get worse? Of course it could.

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The Media’s New Peep Show

Several in the New Hampshire dead tree press, and their digital protrusions, are jumping on the latest trend in information sharing (or lack of it, actually), the registration wall.  The registration wall is similar to the pay-wall except that you can receive limited access (or metered) content for free, but only up to a point.  It’s the velvet rope that leads to another velvet rope from which you can see through the open door, but no more.  It’s like a peep show. People who want more will have to pony up their PayPal account (or any approved credit-card) for unlimited access.  It’s the front page viewed through the bin.  Drop in some change and you get to see what is inside.
 
NYT graph -defamer.com.auThis old frontier on the new frontier has or is being embraced by many of New Hampshire’s media ‘titans.’  Before you get to peek they want you to register, give up your email so they can tease you with headlines, and a password; six or more characters, letters and numbers, no tildas or ampersands or pound keys–oh my!  "Sorry that password is already taken." The goal?  It can’t be traffic or money.
 
Take a look at the New York times for a clue.  The graph pictured here gives you some idea as to the likely path to failure from a meter based viewing scheme with the option to buy.
 

Want to see something else startling, look here.

 
OK.  So it won’t work for one of the worlds most well know left wing rags.  But is local news compelling enough content to attract more people than might already be bothered to purchase the dead tree edition, (or a full boat digital subscription), on a platform that has little if any tolerance for distraction or delay, and trillions of other choices just one caffeinated-energy-drink-A.D.D-twitchy-mouse-click away?
 
They don’t even have to be better choices.  Five seconds is five seconds too long and a death knell to your life-expectancy as a viable content provider.  I’m wondering if they considered that?  Or how about this?

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