How Can We Not Help You?

The Fortnightly Rant for July 1, 2011, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 255, No. 20, posted on Tuesday, August 8, 2011. New Hampshire’s Republican Party, given an indisputable mandate last November by the voters, is returning that favor by doing its best to wreck the state completely. If they haven’t quite succeeded yet, it’s not for lack of trying. They are making great strides. Rather than run the risk of solving some real problems — inadequate school funding and ruinous property taxes immediately spring to mind — the state’s Republican leaders are focusing on non-problems, giving themselves the opportunity to proffer solutions which make …

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Post-Factual Politics

The Fortnightly Rant for June 17, 2011, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 255, No. 19, posted on Tuesday, August 8, 2011. Sarah Palin and her amazing Technicolor™ dream bus pulled into Portsmouth recently. The maybe/maybe not Presidential candidate and her entourage checked into an enormous new corporate crackerbox on Maplewood Avenue, then whooshed off in a big black SUV to attend a private clambake at a secure, undisclosed location. In a one-in-a-million coincidence, Mitt Romney was just ten miles away in Stratham, also attending a clambake and announcing his candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination. Palin, the former half-term Governor of Alaska, had just …

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There Must Be Some Way Out of Here

The Fortnightly Rant for June 3, 2011, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 255, No. 18, posted on Thursday, June 23, 2011. Having temporarily set aside some of their other fetishes, such as government-funded abortions that never existed, gay marriages that no one asked them to participate in, and blue-collar felons on parole, Congressional Republicans are now fixated on another of their intermittent concerns — they have vowed to let the U.S. Government renege on its financial obligations rather than allow Congress to raise the debt ceiling. Yes, any day now we’ll be able to proudly proclaim, “Among deadbeats, we’re No. 1!” To prove he …

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Billy the Delusional Bully

The Fortnightly Rant for May 20, 2011, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 255, No. 17, posted on Wednesday, June 8, 2011. New Hampshire Democrats are liars, according to House Speaker William O’Brien. Addressing the Seacoast Republican Women at the Elks Club on Monday morning, the Speaker said, “When … the facts don’t agree with their rhetoric, the Democrats invent. They lie about our motives, and our actions. They fabricate about what’s going on in the legislative process, they lie about legislative bullying.” The credibility of the Speaker’s own statements might best be judged by what he went on to say next: “They lie about …

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Trumped Up

The Fortnightly Rant for May 6, 2011, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 255, No. 16, posted on Sunday, May 22, 2011. Here we are with only nine months remaining until New Hampshire’s® 2012 First in the Nation© Presidential Primary™, and for all the excitement we’ve had we could just as well have been in Minot, North Dakota. Finally, though, on April 27th, Portsmouth got a visit from what passes for a candidate these days: Donald Trump. The debate over whether or not America is on the skids has now officially ended. In the two days preceeding Trump’s visit the Portsmouth Herald, Foster’s Daily Democrat, …

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Battle of the Budgets

The Fortnightly Rant for April 22, 2011, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 255, No. 15, posted on Thursday, May 12, 2011. With the fiscal year more than half over, Congress finally passed a budget for 2011 on April 14th. To placate Republicans who were threatening to shut down the government, Democrats agreed to inflict billions of dollars in cuts upon those who are already bleeding. Cruel though it was, the budget bill was not cruel enough to satisfy 59 House Republicans who voted “nay.” Fortunately for Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), 81 Democrats ran true to form and betrayed their constituents with …

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