Tag Archives: New Hampshire

May 13, 2013 · 5:42 PM

Bobby Jindal To GOP: ‘It’s Time To Get Over’ Election Loss

Governor Bobby Jindal’s poll numbers may be low in Louisiana, but once again he’s giving his fellow Republicans some sage advice.  The last time he gave the GOP advice, they were not too happy with his choice of words.

The Huffington Post

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) spoke at a GOP dinner in New Hampshire on Friday, urging his fellow Republicans to “get over” last year’s electoral defeats and instead focus on reassessing party priorities ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

“We lost an election that we probably should have won,” Jindal said at a GOP fundraiser in Manchester, N.H., according to ABC News. “It’s time to get over it. … I think we can win elections by sticking to our principles, but I do think we need to make some changes and I think we need to think seriously about where we go from here.”

He continued, “We spent too much time last year criticizing the other side without saying what we were going to do instead, without saying what we were for.”

The Republican governor made headlines last year when he called on members of his party to end “dumbed-down conservatism” and “stop being the stupid party.” During his New Hampshire speech, Jindal offered an explanation for those remarks.

“What I meant by that was we’ve got to present thoughtful policy solutions to the American people — not just bumper stickers, not just 30-second solutions,” Jindal said, according to the Washington Times. “We have to have the confidence and the courage in our convictions and show them that our ideas will benefit them.”

Jindal has frequently been floated as a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. However, he has brushed off the speculation, insisting that it is too early to wade into the race.

“Anybody on the Republican side even thinking or talking about running for president in 2016, I’ve said, needs to get their head examined,” Jindal said during a February appearance on “Fox and Friends.” “And the reason I say that is, we’ve lost two presidential elections in a row, we need to be winning the debate of ideas– then we’ll win elections.”

 

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May 1, 2013 · 5:22 PM

Ohio Republicans Want To Punish Colleges That Enable Students To Vote

Another outrageous GOP policy…

Think Progress

In 1979, the Supreme Court affirmed a decision holding that state cannot place unique burdens on college student votes that do not apply to other members of the electorate. Nevertheless, Ohio Republicans now want to punish state universities that encourage students to cast a ballot. Under a budget amendment filed by Republicans in the Ohio House, state universities that provide documents enabling students to register to vote in their college town, rather than in the state where their parents reside, will be forbidden from charging those students out-of-state tuition. Thus, the amendment would effectively reduce the funding of state schools that assist their students in registering to vote.

This is the second GOP attempt to restrict college students from voting in just the past month. About a month ago, a North Carolina Republican lawmaker filed a bill that would raise taxes on families with college students if the student registers to vote at school rather than in their parents’ hometown.

It’s not difficult to guess why Republicans support these — and other — efforts to make it harder for college students to cast a ballot. As former New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien (R) said when explaining his support for measures to make it harder to vote, “the kids coming out of the schools and basically doing what I did when I was a kid, which is voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do.”

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April 24, 2013 · 1:54 PM

Kelly Ayotte’s Approval Rating Plunges After Vote Against Gun Background Checks

Kelly Ayotte Approval

I’d call this revelation an excellent example of just desserts…

The Huffington Post

A new poll has New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte down a total of 15 points from her previous approval rating in a survey that followed her vote against requiring background checks for firearms purchases.

Ayotte’s plunge underscores the changing politics around gun control and gun safety. In years past, lawmakers worried that a vote for gun control would bring the anger of the National Rifle Association. In the new reality, votes against gun control also carry a political risk, as the Ayotte (R) poll indicates.

A full three-quarters of New Hampshire voters support such background checks, along with 56 percent of Republicans, according to Public Policy Polling. A WMUR Granite State Poll taken in January and February found that more than 9 in 10 state residents supported implementing background checks at gun shows.

It’s not entirely clear yet how opposition to background checks will play out at the polls, but there are signs Ayotte’s vote may have taken a toll.

In October, the last time that PPP surveyed voters about Ayotte, she had a 48-35 approval rating. She has now tumbled underwater, with 46 percent disapproving and 44 percent approving. The 11-point surge in disapproval threatens Ayotte’s 2016 reelection, when she could face popular Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. Ayotte won her 2010 race by 23 points, but in a hypothetical matchup against Hassan trails 46-44.

Forty-five percent of independents in the state disapproved of Ayotte, up 13 points since October. Half of voters said her vote on background checks made them less inclined to vote for her, with only a quarter saying it made them more likely to support her.

Among the critical third of voters who described themselves as moderates, disapproval of Ayotte increased by 21 points, with two-thirds saying her vote against background checks made them less likely to vote for her. Only 13 percent said it made them more likely to back her, an overwhelming 5-1 margin.

Local coverage has not been friendly to Ayotte. Sunday’s Portsmouth Herald headlined its editorial: “If you want gun control, vote Ayotte out of office.”

“New Hampshire voters who care passionately about sensible gun legislation can contribute to the effort by defeating U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, the only senator in New England to vote against the Toomey-Manchin bill. Ayotte justified her vote by parroting the NRA, saying the measure would ‘place unnecessary burdens on law-abiding gun owners and allow for potential overreach by the federal government into private gun sales.’”

The Concord Monitor was flooded with angry letters and ran a rough cartoon of her. The editorial page called it a “double abomination.” She was hit by a tough ad paid for by Gabby Giffords’ group — the kind of on-the-ground spending that is helping to alter the political dynamic.

Dean Debnam, president of PPP, sees it as trouble for Ayotte. “New Hampshire is a good bellwether for fallout from the gun vote,” he said. “There’s serious backlash from voters toward Kelly Ayotte for how she handled this issue.”

The PPP poll surveyed 933 New Hampshire voters using automated phone calls between April 19 and 21.

 

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January 15, 2013 · 9:52 AM

Colin Powell Calls Out The GOP’s Racism Problem: There Is ‘A Dark Vein Of Intolerance’

I’ve been dealing with flu symptoms and somehow missed posting this yesterday…

Think Progress

On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Colin Powell condemned the GOP’s “dark vein of intolerance” and the party’s repeated use of racial code words to oppose President Obama and rally white conservative voters.

Without mentioning names, Powell singled out former Mitt Romney surrogate and New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu for calling Obama “lazy” and Sarah Palin, who, Powell charged, used slavery-era terms to describe Obama:

POWELL: There’s also a dark — a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? I mean by that that they still sort of look down on minorities. How can I evidence that?

When I see a former governor say that the President is “shuckin’ and jivin’,” that’s racial era slave term. When I see another former governor after the president’s first debate where he didn’t do very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn’t say he was slow. He was tired. He didn’t do well. He said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans, but to those of us who are African Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third word that goes along with that. The birther, the whole birther movement. Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?

Watch it:

Powell added that the Republican Party is “having an identity problem,” noting that its significant shift to the right has produced “two losing presidential campaigns.” “I think what the Republican Party needs to do now is a very hard look at itself and understand that the country is changed,” he said. “If the Republican Party does not change along with that demographic, they a going to be in trouble.”

Powell also called on Republicans to focus on a more equitable and progressive economic policies that help middle and lower income Americans, as well as immigration reform. “Everybody wants to talk about who is going to be the candidate,” Powell said. “You better think first about what’s the party actually going to represent.”

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January 12, 2013 · 1:45 AM

2nd Amendment

I’m bookmarking the following site.  I really appreciate its historical facts…

Cognitive Dissidence

Thanks to the vast right wing echo chamber, it appears that we cannot have a real debate on guns until we first make clear what the Founders had in mind when they authored the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Unfortunately, the right wing echo chamber has been hard at work trying to convince people that the 2nd Amendment was written to protect people from their “tyrannical Government”!   Studying the Founders, we realize that is wrong and just plain silly!

We also know that Founders wanted every man to be part of a “well regulated militia” instead of have a standing army.  They wanted everyone to band together to protect out country when the time came, instead of having a standing army.  Standing armies scared them:  Thomas Jefferson himself called them “an engine of oppression.”

Later, in an 1814 letter to Thomas Cooper, Jefferson wrote of standing armies: “The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.”

Had the early framers of the Constitution embraced a standing army during times of peace, then there would be no need for a regulated militia, and thus no need for the 2nd Amendment.

 Need some more:

In fact, during that first gun debate, the state of New Hampshire introduced an amendment that gave the government permission to confiscate guns when citizens “are or have been in Actual Rebellion.” To those early legislators in New Hampshire, the right to bear arms stops as soon as those arms are taken up against our “we the people” government.

Just ask the ancestors of those who participated in the Whiskey Rebellion. In 1794, armed Americans took up guns against what they viewed as a tyrannical George Washington administration imposing taxes on whiskey. President Washington called up 13,000 militia men, and personally led the troops to squash the rebellion of armed citizens in Bedford, Pennsylvania. No Army. No right to have guns to overthrow the oppressive US government.

Need some more let’s look  at the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion:

On August 1, 1794, President George Washington was once again leading troops. Only this time Washington was not striking out against the British but rather against fellow Americans. The occasion for this was the Whiskey Rebellion. Various efforts had been made to diminish the heated opposition towards the tax on distilled liquors. However, there was only one man who has derived the best course of action. That man, President George Washington, deserves all the credit and recognition for his actions concerning the Whiskey Rebellion. In September 1791 the western counties of Pennsylvania broke out in rebellion against a federal “excise” tax on the distillation of liquor. After local and federal officials were attacked, President Washington and his advisors decided to send troops to assuage the region. On August 14, 1792, under the militia law, Henry Knox (secretary of war) had called for 12,950 troops.

The Founders who had just overcome the British to form our own country, had no interest in the people that they governed doing the same thing to them.  So when there was that possibility George Washington squashed it quickly!

http://youtu.be/dBtZ6go_R4g

So its time to listen to people like General McChrystal:

 “I spent a career carrying typically either an M16 or an M4 Carbine. An M4 Carbine fires a .223 caliber round which is 5.56 mm at about 3000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating. It’s designed for that,” McChrystal explained. “That’s what our soldiers ought to carry. I personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind of weaponry on the streets and particularly around the schools in America.”

By the way, Hitler encouraged the ownership of guns….he didn’t take your guns!  

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January 8, 2013 · 3:39 PM

John McCain and Chuck Hagel were once BFFs. What happened?

John McCain and Chuck Hagel, best friends no longer.

We’re talking about John McCain here, so anything could have happened to set him off…

The Washington Post – Chris Cillizza

When Chuck Hagel sits before the Senate Armed Services Committee, one face staring back at him will be decidedly familiar — that of Arizona Sen. John McCain.

McCain, the ranking Minority member on Armed Services, and Hagel were once inseparable — two decorated Vietnam veterans who found common-cause in rebelling against their own party orthodoxy.  McCain campaigned for Hagel in the latter’s first race back in 1996 – here’s visual evidence — and Hagel was one of four Senators to endorse McCain’s 2000 presidential bid. The duo even had Senate offices close to one another to stay in constant touch.

Now, the two mens’ friendship has, by most accounts, dissolved entirely. McCain, in a statement shortly after Hagel’s nomination as Secretary of Defense was made official Monday, said that he has “serious concerns about positions Senator Hagel has taken on a range of critical national security issues in recent years.”

So, what happened? And why?

The answer, as you might suspect, isn’t a simple one. One Republican familiar with the two men insisted there was “no blow up or argument really” and that Hagel simply “stopped coming by the office or socializing outside the Senate.” In conversations with a number of people familiar with the relationship, however, it’s clear that a combination of policy disagreements, political slights and personality conflicts led to the collapse of a once-close friendship.

The most obvious break in the McCain-Hagel relationship came in the early 2000s over the war in Iraq. While Hagel, like McCain, voted for the use of force resolution against Iraq, he was always wary of America going it alone in the conflict and, as time wore on, became a more and more outspoken critic of the war.

McCain, on the other hand, remained a stalwart defender of the necessity of the war and went on later in the decade to become the face of the surge strategy to put more troops in the country.  Hagel opposed that strategy and panned it repeatedly.

“Quite simply, the split began over the length and cost of the Iraq war and Hagel’s decision to not support the surge, which John took as a personal insult,” said one McCain ally granted anonymity to speak candidly about the relationship. “It’s very sad.”

While a disagreement over the right course of action in Iraq might have been the biggest factor in the dissolution of the friendship, politics also played a role in the split.

While Hagel was intimately involved in McCain’s 2000 presidential bid — he served as national co-chairman and was in New Hampshire the night the Arizona Senator won the Granite State presidential primary — by the time McCain ran for president again in 2008 Hagel was much less on board.

Not only did he not endorse McCain, but Hagel also didn’t entirely dismiss the idea of serving as then Sen. Barack Obama’s vice presidential nominee. (Hagel’s wife endorsed Obama in the 2008 race.)

Then, in 2012, Hagel endorsed the candidacy of former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey (D) in the Cornhusker State’s open seat Senate race, a move that badly rankled McCain, who had endorsed Kerrey’s opponent — Republican Deb Fischer — and campaigned with her the day after Hagel made his endorsement of Kerrey public.

Adding to their policy and political disagreements, there was (and is) the fact that McCain and Hagel are similar enough in terms of their personalities — hard charging, irascible, certain that their deeply-held beliefs are correct — that they were always destined to be either best friends or the exact opposite.  Put simply: The very personality traits that made McCain and Hagel fast friends in the mid 1990s is what has driven them apart in the last few years.

While no one disputes that the once-close relationship is in tatters, one source familiar with the two men voiced hope that the break is temporary, not permanent. ”It’s like brothers who get in a big fight and don’t talk for a while.” said the source. “They’re still brothers.”

Maybe. How McCain treats Hagel during the confirmation process will be a telling indicator of whether a reconciliation is in the offing or whether the relationship has been irreparably damaged.

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October 29, 2012 · 8:41 PM

Electoral College for Kindergartners

Thank you Claudia for this very useful article…

Claudia Just Saying

I live in Florida, a swing State, and evidently a swing County, Flagler.  The News Journal, our local paper, recently reported an Associated Press pre-election analysis that points fingers at 106 communities in nine states. Bullseye, voters living in Flagler County got real influence.

electorl

Remember the Chad uproar of the 2000 Bush/Gore election, the nation held hostage for a month, while volunteers inspected ballot tickets.

Nominee
George W. Bush Al Gore
Party Republican Democratic
Home state Texas Tennessee
Running mate Dick Cheney Joe Lieberman
Electoral vote 271 266
States carried 30 20 + DC
Popular vote 50,456,002 50,999,897
Percentage 47.9% 48.4%

Bush won 271 electoral votes, Gore 266, because of the twenty-five(2000 census) votes in question. Gore lost the election by 4 electoral votes. The chads spiced up the questionable  recount vote. Gore would have won 291 to Bush 246, so we know the significance  of Florida swinging.

Thirty states went to Bush; Gore, twenty; plus, the District of Columbia. However, Gore won the popular vote by five tenths of one percent, 50,999,897 to Bush, 50,456,002.

Does this make sense? Not to me either.

I went online to refresh my knowledge of the Electoral College, and by the way, there is no campus.

Each state is allocated a number of electoral votes equal to the number of members it has in the U.S. Congress.

The most recent Huffington Post   a “snapshot of where the presidential race stands based on hundreds of state-wide and national opinion polls, filtered through a poll tracking model and updated throughout the day.” On October 29th the polls  indicated the electoral vote distribution below:

Barack ObamaBarack Obama  277

(217 Strong Obama + 60 Leans Obama)

Mitt RomneyMitt Romney 206

(15 Leans Romney + 191Strong)

The graph shows five tossup states; Colorado 9 , New Hampshire 4, Virginia 13, North Carolina 15 and Florida 29, a total of seventy electoral votes. Polls have confidence Obama will win New Hampshire, Colorado and Virginia, and that Romney will win North Carolina.  In Florida the polls are split 48% to 48% with a 10% greater confidence Romney will win.

It takes an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to change the electoral college and popularity does not count.

The way Florida swings needs watching.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            …just saying
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September 30, 2012 · 10:13 AM

Romney campaign says President Obama didn’t kill Osama bin Laden fast enough

Duh…

Think Progress

Mitt Romney campaign co-chair and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu accused President Obama of waiting too long to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, in an interview with the New York Times that was published on Saturday.

Sununu said that Obama was “timid,” could have gone after the terrorist mastermind sooner, and attributed the successful operation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

The president is trying to take credit for following the strategy and the tactics put into place by George W. Bush. At some point the president is going to have to explain why he was timid on the first two or three opportunities that we had. Thank goodness Hillary Clinton was there was to convince him to do the right thing. [...] His trying to take credit for having been decisive belies the fact that he wasn’t decisive until pressed by others.

But former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served in both the Bush and Obama administrations, described Obama’s decision to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden “gutsy,” saying that “people don’t realize” what a tough call it was and not everyone would have made the same call. Vice President Biden and Gates both advised Obama against taking the course he chose on the bin Laden raid, noting that “There wasn’t any direct evidence that he was there. It was all circumstantial.”

Indeed, even Romney had hinted that he would have not followed in Obama’s footsteps. In April of 2007, Romney said, “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,” but quickly changed his mind after bin Laden was killed. “Any thinking American would have ordered exactly the same thing,” he proclaimed earlier this year.

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September 8, 2012 · 1:05 AM

Obama jokes he should make Clinton ‘Secretary of Explaining Stuff’

Bill Clinton (R) and Barack Obama (AFP_File, Stan Honda)

I thought that phrase “Secretary of  Explaining Stuff” was funny and as far as I’m concerned, something to really consider since our POTUS sometimes mangle his words like the “you didn’t build that…” fiasco.

The Raw Story

US President Barack Obama joked Friday that he should appoint Bill Clinton as his “Secretary of Explaining Stuff” following his acclaimed speech at the Democratic convention.

Clinton is expected to follow his address, which even some Republicans admitted was a masterful summary of the election arguments and Obama’s presidency, with appearances for Obama in crucial battleground states.

“President Clinton made the case in the way only he can. You know, somebody — somebody emailed me after his speech and said,’You need to appoint him secretary of explaining stuff,’” Obama joked in New Hampshire.

“That was pretty good. I like that. Secretary of Explaining Stuff.”

Obama’s spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters aboard Air Force One Friday that the campaign would be keen to have Clinton’s help again on the campaign trail ahead of the November 6 election clash with Mitt Romney.

“We’d love to have him out there as much as he is available,” Psaki said.

“He’s been an incredible advocate for the president for quite some time,” Psaki said.

Clinton told Americans at the convention in North Carolina on Wednesday that Obama had placed them on a path to renewed prosperity and deserved four more years to finish the job.

Lending his signature dazzle to Obama’s re-election campaign, the two-term former president told the Democratic convention that he believed “with all my heart” that the 44th president had led a remarkable, if incomplete, recovery.

“No president — not me or any of my predecessors — no one could have fully repaired all the damage he found in just four years,” Clinton said.

“He has laid the foundations for a new, modern successful economy of shared prosperity, and if you will renew the president’s contract, you will feel it. You will feel it.”

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August 16, 2012 · 12:10 AM

Pawlenty suggests that Soledad O’Brien doesn’t understand English

Tim Pawlenty speaks to CNN’s Soledad O’Brien

The Raw Story

Romney surrogates going up against CNN host Soledad O’Brien clearly haven’t learned their lesson.

A day after former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu angrily told O’Brien to “put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead,” former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney’s national campaign co-chair, suggested that the CNN host didn’t understand English.

During an interview on Wednesday, O’Brien told Pawlenty that one of the presumptive Republican presidential candidate’s ads falsely claimed that President Barack Obama had cut $716 billion from Medicare — but the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had determined that it was actually reduction in spending, not benefits.

“Isn’t that just patently untrue in that ad?” she asked the former Minnesota governor.

“No, that’s not correct, Soledad,” Pawlenty replied. “It is absolutely beyond factual dispute that [Obama] has cut $716 billion out of the money that was projected to be spent on Medicare over the next 10 years.”

“But, sir, it’s not a cut in Medicare, right?” O’Brien observed. “Let me just read from the CBO. It’s a ‘permanent reduction in the annual updates to Medicaid’s payment rates.’ It’s a cut in the spending — future spending. And it’s cut that actually goes to insurers, right? I mean, it’s not cuts to individuals.”

“No matter how you say this, it’s a cut to Medicare,” Pawlenty insisted. “You can’t even with a straight face, look your viewers in the eye and tell [them] that it’s not a cut to Medicare.”

“Well, I can’t look viewers in the eye from where I am,” O’Brien pointed out. “I’m saying the way the CBO puts it. … That is a savings.”

“Do you know what that is in English?” Pawlenty quipped.

“I speak English incredibly well, sir, as you know,” O’Brien shot back. “So, tell me what it is in English.”

“In plain speaking is this — and I just mean in compared to the mumbo jumbo in the bureaucracy in the CBO — what they’re saying is that Medicare was going to go up by X and now it’s going to go up by X minus $716 billion. There is no question that is a cut in where current law was before Obamacare was passed. There is no way you can present that in any other way.”

“Of you can call it a savings is actually the other way to present that,” O’Brien explained.

Although O’Brien is of Latino (and Irish and African American) descent, she actually only speaks English fluently.

On Monday, Sununu, who serves as the chairman of Romney’s national steering committee, had  lashed out at O’Brien after she tried to fact check his claims about vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s plan to cut Medicare.

“Soledad, stop this!” Sununu shouted. “All you’re doing is mimicking the stuff that comes out of the White House and gets repeated on the Democratic blog boards out there.”

“I’m telling you what Factcheck.com tells you, I’m telling you what the CBO tells you, I’m telling you what CNN’s independent analysis says,” the CNN host explained.

“Put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead when you do this!” the frustrated surrogate shot back.

“You know, let me tell you something,” O’Brien said. “There is independent analysis that details what this is about. … And name calling to me and somehow by you repeating a number of $716 billion, that you can make that stick when [you say] that figure is being ‘stolen’ from Medicare, that’s not true. You can’t just repeat it and make it true, sir.”

Watch this video from CNN Starting Point, broadcast Aug. 15, 2012…

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