This article is kind of alarming in how crazy the folks running New Hampshire are. My personal favorite is that they are going to redefine what it means to be a citizen to keep liberals from voting. And I’m not reading between the lines, they said it straight up:
Turning to the issue of voter fraud prevention, O’Brien said his party will “tighten up the definition of a New Hampshire resident.”
He said that Plymouth, a college town, experiences 900 same-day voter registrations.
“They are kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience,” he said.
He then discussed the need for voters to have a photo I.D., to prove who they are, just as they must do when cashing a check.
For obvious reasons, this cracked me up:
Horn said that America was moving away from being “a Democratic Republic” to a “European Socialist” system.
Dick Fuller, of New Durham, took her to task for the term “Democratic Republic.”
“We have a Constitutional Republic. Democratic waters it down,” he said.
This country is like They Live!, but with crazy people instead of zombies.
(via reader Greg B.)
Redshirt
Live free (according to our rules) Or (preferably) DIE!
singfoom
As a giant nerd, I’d like to point out that They Live! was about aliens, corporate aliens to be specific.
Our earth was just another part of their LLC empire. Bonus points for the They Live! reference, though.
I like that. No life experience. Better than no facts, easy to change it to apply to our more conservative brethren.
TooManyJens
I just wish any of this surprised me. Not trying to be more jaded-than-thou, I just … these people are living in a completely different world than we are. And it’s exhausting to see the evidence of that pile up and have no idea how to reach people in the other world.
beltane
New Hampshire is like Vermont’s crazy aunt. I think there is a Robert Frost poem about this.
Omnes Omnibus
Granite, huh? Their skulls, right? Solid all the way through.
Joseph Nobles
In the ongoing attempt to turn the AZ memorial into a Wellstone memorial fiasco and Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” banner, the wingnuts have discovered that John Berry, Obama’s director of the Office of Personnel Management, wrote an Organizing for America blog post in February 2008 entitled “Together We Thrive.”
KG
@beltane: two roads diverged into a yellow wood, and I took the highway to some place else?
adolphus
NH has historically been the crankiest state in the Union. Some legislator or another is always proposing crap that never happens. When I lived there ten years ago some state law maker proposed a bill to close all the universities and give all NH students checks to go somewhere else. If I recall correctly there was also debate in at least some local select-men meetings over whether to draft a non-binding resolution to protest the government’s broad use of chemicals from air planes (you see to sane people, those are called con-trails or condensation trails, to insane people they are chem-trails)
I liked living there for the parks and Mount Washington, but the politics is fucked up from local town bodies to the governor.
It is one of the major reasons it sucks that they get one of the first primaries.
MattR
@singfoom: Not that they are terribly difficult to recognize once they start talking, but it would be nice to avoid having to listen to their bile by having a pair of sunglasses that allowed you to identify TeaPartiers on sight.
Tom Hilton
Isn’t New Hampshire the state where highway rest stops all have liquor stores?
jrg
Funny, I feel similarly about Teabagger Medicare recipients who don’t have the mad computer skills it takes to Google “US Federal Budget”.
licensed to kill time
Maybe they should make it a requirement to have your vote previewed by the proper Constitutional Republic authorities before it is cast into the circular file.
beltane
@Joseph Nobles: They can try but they will get nowhere this time. I just saw a bit of the repeat of last night’s Charlie Rose, and the Village has already delivered its verdict on the speech. Sorry wingnuts, better luck next time.
merrinc
If only Jed Bartlet was still governor of NH.
negative 1
@KG: … and I took the road less sane.
El Cid
You can’t deny that this country would be much better off if potential voters had to first be screened by Real American Tea Party Patriots before they were allowed to register. What other way is there to ensure that voters are truly responsible citizens who take their responsibility seriously when they choose how to vote correctly?
For example, the vast majority of places in Georgia are able to make voting choices sensibly, while there are a huge number of people in Atlanta who make completely irresponsible choices.
DJShay
Stupid kids with their emotions and feelings. Only Stepford kids need apply to vote from now on.
On a completely different topic, I was shamed into buying the Tunch Obey Throw pillow. Expect pics to come with my own Snarklepants lounging on it.
jibeaux
Well, they may not be trying to redefine what it means to be a citizen. It may just be that when New Hampsherians (hell, I don’t know what they’re called) present their papers for voting, they should also present an affidavit that no “feelings” were involved in making their voting decisions, as well as a resume (picture the accents) of course for verifying adequate life experience.
freelancer (itouch)
…but all I have is bubblegum!
Tom Hilton
By the way, isn’t it aliens, not zombies?
Dank
NH has the largest (I believe) state legislature in the country, approximately 400. This current crop was largely swept with the massive wave of spending that accompanied Ayotte’s campaign.
The House Republicans have spent the last week threatening to throw out the Democrats Minority Leader, based on the fact that he also serves as Democratic Party ED. I spent my first 20 years living in NH, and this is the most extreme bunch I’ve ever seen.
lovable liberal
Mention that we live in a democracy, and the fuckwits say, “Oh, no, this is a constitutional republic,” as if the two are mutually exclusive. This is how they justify their supposed right to rule even when they’re out-voted.
Davis X. Machina
In related snow-capped moron news today, the newly-elected governor of Maine, Paul “Mr. 38%” LePage (Thanks, vanity 3rd party candidates and thickies who can’t figure out complicated concepts like tactical voting) tells the Maine NAACP to kiss his ass.
Jay C
I wonder if it has ever occurred to the NH teatards that suppressing something like, say, the student vote, might just backfire on them? Like, say, spurring a registration drive among teed-off NH students – and probably insuring that they’ll vote “liberal” – or at least against the assclowns who tried to disenfranchise them?
Sad to say, though, that attempts to disenfranchise folks who the PTB aren’t too happy about having the vote are probably a LOT easier to enact, and put into practice, than we would like to think. It’s usually done in the name of “fighting voter fraud“, of course: it’s just mere coincidence that the “fraud” that’s being fought is all coming from “liberals”….
piratedan
loved this lil nugget:
see. if we had managed to force women to carry all those unwanted pregnancies to term, our orphanages would be full of cheap labor for us to tap!
unbleepingreal
singfoom
@MattR: @Tom Hilton:
Indeed, it is aliens. Everyone should go back and watch They Live! It is actually pretty prescient for our times.
It also strikes me as a super SOCIALIST (and I mean that in a good way, which might blow some Teabagger minds) US film. I doubt it could get made today.
The sequel where they had contacts to see the aliens instead of glasses just wasn’t the same. Needed more Rowdy Roddy Piper.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@jrg:
This. My wingnut, central Misery neighbors, most of whom have rarely ventured more than 100 miles from their birthplace pretty much vote their feelings since their life experiences are confined to drinking, screwing and yakking about who they saw in Wal Mart yesterday.
eemom
OT, but a shooting victim and military veteran is the latest “blood libeler.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/14/tucson_shooting_survivor_it_looks_like
This should be interesting.
Krystal
@Joseph Nobles:
Only these people could see a tragedy, and decide that the most valuable use of their time is to reshearch how to shit on the President for some t-shirts at a memorial service. Spending their time trying to reduce gun violence, so that no more, say, nine year old children are killed would never occur to them.
beltane
@Tom Hilton: Liquor stores at the rest stops along with no seatbelt laws, no helmet laws for motorcyclists, and no requirement to have auto liability insurance. When you cross the border into Maine there are BIG signs that say Maine has TOUGH seat-belt and drunk driving laws that will be prosecuted VIGOROUSLY. Gotta love northern New England.
Davis X. Machina
@Krystal: They’ll just tell you that from time to time the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of nine-year olds.
Zifnab
I can almost hear the stampede of college students joining the Young Republicans club.
geg6
How about all Dems and liberals being required to wear patches on their clothes with a blue six-point star or something? That way, it’ll be easy to identify them and, well, no need to go into that any further.
Davis X. Machina
@Dank:
So large, and so easy to run for, that thirty years ago I knew a girl in college who ran for, won a seat in, and served a term in the NH lower house as a poli-sci project, and the dean in charge would only grant her 6 credit hours for the experience.
Davis X. Machina
@Zifnab: Given half a chance the eedjits in Concord would probably de-fund Plymouth State — it has a large, and well-regarded meteorology program, and its students probably all brainwashed by Al Gore and Big Climate Science as a result.
burnspbesq
Lots of strange people in NH.
My favorite NH story:
My parents used to have a summer house on the big lake. We were up there for a visit when the kid was about 18 months old. One day we took the kid and his 14 year old girl cousin into town to buy groceries. As we were standing in line to check out, the person behind me complimented me on how cute my grandson was.
j low
@piratedan: Beat me too it. Really she’s completeing Chunky Bobo’s plan for the Baby Market. The four of five babies that don’t actually get adopted can go to work camps!
Redshirt
@beltane: Yeah, Maine hates NH. There was talk (joking) back in 2000 or so about a war over an unresolved border in Portsmouth that just so happens to have a big shipyard on it.
Maine won. :)
Also, go to hell LePage. You will hopefully provide the example many people need to wake up.
GregB
In the 80’s NH Republicans wore the fact that they didn’t make Martin Luther King Day a holiday as a badge of honor.
Back then it was common for wingnuts to call King a commie and adulterer and all.
We also had a state rep. Jack Chandler who said of Jesse Jackson: “When I saw that black man kiss a young white girl, it made me want to vomit.”
That was after he saw Jessie Jackson at a campaign stop kissing a white child.
There was also a neat little trick wherein the “Run, Jessie, Run” bumper sticker was place on the front of the wingnuts trucks…Get it?
Then there was rep. Mildred Ingraham who, in response about a bill debating whether gays should be able to give blood in light of the growing AIDs epidemic in the 80’s.
“If they want to give blood they should have to give ALL of it.”
NH has had a wingnut strain, but like someone said above this crop is batshit crazy and they aint gonna back down.
Zifnab
@piratedan: Funny, but since the start of the recession we’ve seen a big drop off in illegal immigration.
We didn’t need aborted babies to water our lawns and scrub our dishes. We just needed 10% unemployment to motivate all those unemployed blue and white collar professionals into the servant caste.
Krystal
@Davis X. Machina: I’m pretty sure that’s what they’d say if Loughner said something like, “Sarah Palin told me to do it.”
Davis X. Machina
@beltane: Half of Maine wishes it were New Hampshire. Exhibit One here.
Dave
@Davis X. Machina: Don’t blame Cutler (3rd party cand). The problem was that the Democratic candidate ran an abysmal campaign. Had she run a decent campaign, Cutler wouldn’t have gotten any traction.
Poopyman
‘Taint called Moo Hampshire for nothing.
Bulworth
Which conservatives don’t do.
Stooleo
Tee hee lolz.
trixie larue
Ah, Na Hamsha…
the non-preferred state motto is “30 million squirrels can’t be wrong.”
Comrade Javamanphil
@beltane: No, NH is more like our (VT) drunk, heavily-armed Uncle I think.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bulworth: Nope, they vote their princi-hahahahahaha…bwahahahahaha…. [I just fell over.]
GregB
Paul LePage isn’t a racist. Some of his favorite adopted kids are black.
Zifnab
@Davis X. Machina: I don’t even see this as a bad thing. If running for office was this easy, I think more people will be engaged. Knowing your state representative is a next-door neighbor, rather than some faceless party gump with a letter in front of his name, changes the relationship with your government considerably.
I think New Hampshire also has a bumper crop of independent and third party candidates.
scav
So, NH-conservatives are anti-intellectuals that don’t vote their brains, feelings or life-experiences: What do they use, darts?
Davis X. Machina
@Zifnab: But they don’t actually get elected….and the local Overton window needs to have its sash tracks rubbed with the butt of an old candle.
beltane
@Davis X. Machina: 38% to be precise. A teabagger like LePage would also get at least 38% of the vote in Vermont so I will not stand in judgment of Maine though I do pity them enormously right now. New Hampshire has always been a little crazy, teabaggers before teabagging was cool. A commentator on VPR once attributed this to geological factors, saying that NH’s soil is more acidic than Vermont’s thus making its citizens less sweet.
Joseph Nobles
@beltane: As much as they seem to hate 9/11 Truth advocates, they sure love the same logical fallacies.
Dank
@Davis X. Machina
0T, but more fun: http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/234174/delaney-bill-violates-the-constitution#comment-170351
“At a standing-room-only hearing yesterday, state Attorney General Michael Delaney told a House committee a bill ordering him to challenge the constitutionality of last year’s federal health care reform law is, in itself, unconstitutional.”
Basically NH Republicans have decided that there are no limits to legislative power, and they’re going to FORCE the AG to waste hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars challenging ACA. This from the state with no income tax.
Bulworth
They could ensure that all Democrat Party registrants be marked with the book of Revelation’s mark of the beast.
Not that teabaggers are Republicans of course. They’re as non-bi-partisan as real true americans come.
Zifnab
@Davis X. Machina:
If a 20-something college student can win a seat, I imagine a popular PTA leader or someone of equal standing could do the same.
Mnemosyne
Isn’t New Hampshire the state where the libertarians keep talking about setting up their very own system of government?
Of course, taking over a state that already has 300 years of infrastructure and pretending that you built it all from the ground up with your mighty Galtian hammer is pretty much par for the course with those guys.
Paul in KY
@Davis X. Machina: Damn, that was a tough Dean. I think I would have gone to the ombudsman.
Bulworth
This is the standard posture for Republicans during times of Democratic presidencies. Seems hard to believe how fast the Unitary Executive Theory disappeared from the conservative lexicon.
Davis X. Machina
@Paul in KY: @Zifnab: She was hot, was the difference. Seat hadn’t got to a Dem in fifty years, and has gone Dem maybe three times since.
Tonal Crow
@Tom Hilton:
Some of the more prominent ones had liquor stores the last time I visited. The route 93 rest stop just north of the Massachusetts border had a huge liquor store on each side of the highway. I suppose they’re still there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve added gun shops.
ETA: still, the mountains are beautiful. Climb Madison from the north sometime. It’s a treat.
grumpy realist
New Hampshire is also afflicted by a sizeable percentage of people who live just over the border into it so as not have to pay taxes and then work in Massachusetts, which is where the jobs are.
A lot of Boston people who vacation up in NH and think that “New Hampshire would be a nice place to retire to,” do so, and then discover that no taxes == no services. Ooops.
Mike in NC
Long before there was Glenn Beck, N.H. had Bill Loeb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Loeb_III
Tonal Crow
__
You mean Republicans don’t just vote their feelings? Tell me another one.
PeakVT
@Redshirt: Too bad we can’t swap the locations of Maine and NH. Of course, NH couldn’t afford to be quite so crazy if it suddenly wasn’t an exurb of Boston.
cleek
nice!
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
@Tom Hilton: Yep, booze, lotto tickets, and fireworks. Add whores to the mix and we’re batting the cycle for degenerate behavior. That’s how I Live Free or Die!
Davis X. Machina
Hmn… gambling and ED drugs both banned….
Reposted with emendations.
Paul in KY
@Davis X. Machina: All the more reason to give her more than 6 credits (elected while a Democrat). She got elected to the legislature while a student. I would have run with that.
Omnes Omnibus
@cleek: Do these people lack any semblance of a clue?
/naive and rhetorical question
hilts
OT
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and possible GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain: “Obama has awakened the sleeping giant called ‘we the people”
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/01/13/herman-cain-call-me-regular-folk
Vintage Godfather’s Pizza ad
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/01/the-wacky-mildly-racist-godfathers-pizza-ad-that-could-affect-the-gop-primary/69590
Davis X. Machina
@Tonal Crow: There’s a pair of them on I-95, too, with their own exits, and a third, off the highway, but with a big sign and all, just before Portsmouth heading north.
NH also had a near-monopoly on state lotteries until the mid-70’s or so. I’d have thought they’d have had state-run cas1nos a decade or more ago. And there’s the $2 toll each way for their 13 mi. stretch of interstate between MA and ME, taking a page from Delaware’s book.
beltane
@PeakVT: I approve of your plan. Driving down to Portland would be so much faster if New Hampshire wasn’t in the way.
Punchy
His wife says otherwise
LGRooney
New Hampshire will be a tiny US enclave when New England finally follows its common sense and joins Canada – along with pieces of Maine.
cleek
@Punchy:
perhaps that’s a transcription error. it’s easy to mistake a ‘P’ for an ‘F’ in sloppy handwriting.
Sko Hayes
You guys in nice blue states can laugh all you want, but some of us are in real trouble in the red states.
Here in Kansas, our new governor (Sam Brownback) has decided to save money by cutting education by over $100 million, cutting all state funding to public radio and TV stations and cutting corporate taxes.
Then, our charming Secretary of State, Kris Kobach (who helped write the AZ SB1070 law, and vowed to fight non-existent voter fraud), has decided that absentee ballots are bad, and will try to get the legislature to require photo ids for any and all voting.
As one commenter said, they won’t let us have sensible gun laws, but will eagerly take away our right to vote.
stuckinred
@Tonal Crow: Ah the Kangumangus Highway. In hitched up there after seeing the Allman Brothers on the Common in the summer of 71. Got picked up by a drunk house painter who thought all us goddamn hippies were insane. “Where else could you paint houses and drive around drunk” says he! I lit off into the wilderness and stayed up there for a week.
fleeting expletive
I innocently thought that NH was one of them librul new england states. This is the first discussion about the state I’ve ever read, and makes the place sound worse than Oklahoma, and I live in Oklahoma. Well, now.
GregB
The libertarian project to populate NH is called the Free State Movement.
PeakVT
@Davis X. Machina: I’m surprised NH hasn’t followed Delaware’s lead with some “business-friendly” incorporation laws.
Brachiator
Obama needs to call these people on this shit. I mean, really throw it down.
“The people are saying that the don’t want a European Socialist system. Therefore, in my state of the union address, I am proposing the following: the immediate end of Social Security and Medicare; the elimination of the Department of Transportation and the administration of the federal highway system; the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC and the FCC. Also effective immediately, I am shutting down the FDIC. If a bank failure results in the loss of your life savings, then this is just a natural risk of the free markets working.”
beltane
@Sko Hayes: It has been made abundantly clear that the only right they value is the right to bear arms. The rest of the Constitution is nothing more than a bloody nuisance to these tribalists.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods:
Don’t forget Indian casinos.
Dank
@fleeting expletive: It’s a weird place. I’d compare it to Montana, without the militias; lots of gun nuts and a strong, defiant libertarian streak for no particular reason. And a fair number of Massachusetts income tax dodgers.
Culture of Truth
“They are kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience,” he said.
This dovetails with what we were saying about *certain* libertarians, as well the wealthy, tea baggers and conservatives in general – they are deeply suspicious of Democracy.
El Cid
@beltane: They’re not openly happy about Article I, either, because apparently any law which is passed which is not explicitly in the Constitution is un-Constitutional.
Logically that suggests that the notion of a legislature which passes laws, laws which have words and sentences not present in the Constitution, is un-Constitutional. Therefore, Article I in its aspects of establishing Congress should be struck down as un-Constitutional.
I mean, unless Congress can be made to make laws entirely comprised of various sentences from the Constitution. In order. With no fiddling around.
BGinCHI
New Hampshire is Alabama without the Drive-By Truckers and sports.
Froley
From the article:
Horn recounted that former President George Bush had said that immigrants were needed for the U.S. labor force. Her answer to that was that if millions of abortions had not been conducted, America would not have difficulty in boosting its labor force.
It is like “They Live”, but we don’t need special glasses. All we need to do is hear them speak.
jl
Thomas Jefferson once said that even fools have the same right to vote and express their choice of government as everyone else.
So, that would include college kids, liberals, extremist reactionaries, celebrity TV pundits, politicians, and even GOP Congresspeople.
The NH extremists are betraying the expressed beliefs of one of the Founders.
Culture of Truth
If there was equivalency Angry Liberal radio shows would be telling you all day that the GOP wants to ban all college students from voting.
shortstop
@PeakVT: They hate people too much to have thousands of them coming in to work the processing centers.
piratedan
@El Cid: well gee…
why bother having a legislature then? the Constitution has already been written…. who needs anything else?
feels like an Animal House moment where the Faber Greek Council is now badmouthing the United States of America…so in tht case I think we should adjourn to the Delta House for a toga party.
Hogan
@Redshirt: In my life experience, the way it works is “live free AND die.”
Tonal Crow
@El Cid:
__
So they’re against federal criminal law (except for the offenses of treason and high-seas piracy) and federal indefinite detention?
goblue72
The media loves to gin up the idea of these Teatards as some sort of spontaneous wave of populist reaction to liberal “over-reach”, but the fact remains that these nuts have always been a part of the Republican party. They’re the same set of John Birchers, fundagelicals and Texas oilmen that Eisenhower considered the far-right nut spectrum of the Republican party to be safely ignored.
Unfortunately for Eisenhower and us (much like his warnings about the military-industrial complex), the forces of butt ignorant authoritarianism just kept growing and these nuts & their financial backers on the former fringe now have taken over the GOP and center stage.
But they are still the same nuts, requiring the rest of us to exercise even stronger viligence and, quite frankly, party unity, to beat back and destroy. I fear at times in our dismissive snark that we don’t take them seriously enough.
They once-elected (and once installed) a President who while not a card-carrying nut, was enough of a light-weight moron going through the motions that the nuts behind the scenes were able to control the levers of power to such an extent that they turned an historical budget surplus (and solvency of Social Security) into a historical deficit (and plunging SS into crisis) in order to raid the Treasury on behalf of the rich, got us involved in TWO land wars in the Middle East, and bankrupted the world economy.
Now, in only two years times from THAT fiasco, the nuts are back having taken over one branch of Congress and most of the state Houses and Governor’s offices. These people are dangerous with a capital “D” – I can understand why Cole goes into apopleptic fits over the firebagging and intra-party navel-gazing pie fights over whether Obama is or is not a “real” Democrat.
Gravenstone
I would just like to state for the record, that when I was a kid, with no life experience, I voted for Reagan. So yeah, he may have a point, just not quite in the direction he thinks it’s headed.
Also, our wonderful fucked up state of Wisconsin now has a Republican governor and legislature. Which means they’re going to implement photo ID requirements to vote (sponsored by my state senator, bonus pain for me). Added to which, they are going to try to amend the state constitution to try and make it difficult, if not impossible to repeal the ID requirements going forward. Of course, they also want to banish same day voter registration, since that allows far too many of those people to sully up the process. Doing so, will force WI to comply with “Motor Voter” registration though, so they can’t totally exclude the brown from voting.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl:
Well, what the hell did they know? None of ’em even knew how to drive a car.
Hogan
@BGinCHI: And the black people.
Tonal Crow
@jl: Republicans hate Jefferson with the heat of a million losers wanking off to photos of Sarah Palin.
beltane
@El Cid: Making laws that are entirely comprised of various sentences of the constitution could be the premise of a very entertaining drinking game for first year law students.
PeakVT
@fleeting expletive: It almost was, for a few years. It now seems to have done a triple lindy into the deep end.
BGinCHI
The real impact here, if this is any indication of how conservative NH has gotten (or at least its GOPs), is on the Repub primary.
It’s gonna be a good, early place for Whackjob candidates.
Gunner
The Tree of Stupidity must be refreshed from time to time with the utterances of teabaggers
geg6
@Tonal Crow:
Or they would if they had half a fucking clue as to what his political proclivities were.
I had a conversation with a guy recently who seriously argued that Jefferson would have loved Citizens United.
Bulworth
@Gunner: True dat.
BGinCHI
@Gunner:
The Tree of Stupidity must be refreshed from time to time with the
utterancesblood libel of teabaggersFix’d.
beltane
@BGinCHI: It will be interesting. One thing to keep in mind is that New Hampshire Republicans prefer libertarian flavored crazy over Christian crazy. Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee are just not their type of crazy. At the end of the day, they’ll probably just stick with Mitt because they are Republicans and they will fall in line.
JD Rhoades
Reminds me of the first time I tried to register to vote when I was 18. I was in college, and I tried to register in the town where my college was located (Chapel Hill, NC ) The registrar did everything he could to persuade me to get an absentee ballot from my home county. Nope, I said, I got a driver’s license, a mailing address, and a job here, sign me up. He made me wait a good half hour while he conferred with a supervisor to see if there was some way, ANY way, they could keep me, a college student, from voting in the town election. But that was more town/gown tension than conservative/liberal, since you don’t get much more liberal than Chapel Hill.
David Hunt
@Jay C:
You’re not current on the voter fraud lore. It’s not a coincidence. It’s an organized conspiracy amongst liberal groups to steal elections away from deserving conservatives. You need to keep your krazy konspiracies straight.
Francis
just for the record, according to the school song, Men of Dartmouth have the granite of New Hampshire “in their muscles and their brains”.
After a few years of fraternity life, I doubt the first. It’s mostly fat around the belly. But granite in the brains? No doubt.
[Class of ’86.]
Svensker
@Mnemosyne:
Oooh, I just got tingles.
Malaclypse
New Hampshire is also afflicted by a sizeable percentage of people who live just over the border into it so as not have to pay taxes and then work in Massachusetts, which is where the jobs are.
Since Mass income tax is assessed by the state, and withheld by employers, based upon where you work, not where you live, but property taxes in NH are rather high, this is about as stupid a tax strategy as I can imagine.
handy
@hilts:
Stacy classy wingnut Pizza moguls.
jl
@Tonal Crow: Except when they want to advocate for states rights, and when they want to rip his ‘a little revolution is a good thing’ quote out of context when they wave guns around to intimidate people at public meetings.
But, you are getting at a good point. They probably would hate Jefferson with the heat of a million losers in every way if they understood what he said. Except for issues infected by Jefferson’s racism against African-Americans. But even there, maybe that would be canceled out by his non racist view on other groups. His views on Native Americans were positive, and while his ideas on how to handle the conflict with Native Americans over land can be called cynical and disingenuous, if his ideas were followed, the map of the South would far different. There would be a huge swath of Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw communities from Georgia through southern Arkansas. He thought every educated American should learn Spanish.
If you read the whole letter that contains the revolution quote, what he is saying is that a free society has to tolerate a spirit in the population that will result in revolts from time to time. But in the end, violent revolution has no place in a democracy, and the people who participate in a revolt should, if possible, be ‘pardoned’ (which implies that they have committed crimes by revolting) and ‘educated’ in an attempt to bring them back into enough harmony with the community so that violent revolt is not needed.
So, people yammering about watering the tree of liberty with blood should realize that Jefferson would recognize any such action as CRIMINAL, but would recommend to the majority lenient treatment of them, and attempts to peacefully resolve the issue.
Madison was less optimistic about the results of a recourse to violence in the spirit of guarding ones liberty, and noted that people going outside the Constitution for redress of grievances should calculate their chances carefully.
These extremists live in a fantasy world, stoked by cynical moneybags and media hatemongers.
daveNYC
So they’re going to get rid of state level funding for school districts, but totally promise that they’ll take care of the poor districts. I don’t see monkeys flying out of my ass right now, so I’m going to call bullshit.
And the second half of They Live broke out the contact lenses. Great movie.
Smurfhole
@Davis X. Machina:
Delaware does not have that tollbooth. It’s in Maryland.
Bill Arnold
@PeakVT:
Actually, Vermont (to the left of NH, literally and figuratively) is a leader here; in 2008 they introduced virtual corporations:
(If some lawyer knows that this is incorrect or out of date, please feel free to update the Wikipedia entry.)
Nerull
@Culture of Truth:
I’ve talked to a few “Objectivists” (Rand-worshippers) who’s ideas are damn close to fascism. To the point where people who are not as “moral as they are” are subhuman, and are to do the bidding of their betters.
Villago Delenda Est
When the Jeebusites insist that this is a “Christian Nation”, they’re doing that, too.
Jefferson explicitly rejected the divinity of Jesus.
This is nothing at all new.
Redshirt
@beltane: But Todd rides a “snow-machine”, and that really appeals to the Northern version of Larry the Cable Guy.
PIGL
Where can I run to? Where can I hide?
Matthew
These clowns tried to rename Mt. Clay as Mt. Reagan. And failed.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2010/05/22/on_the_trail_to_mount_reagan_forgetting_the_feats_of_clay/
PIGL
@Culture of Truth: scratch a libertarian, find a fascist.
Simple as that.
asiangrrlMN
OK. I’m done. I’m leaving the human race now, kthxbai. From now on, I am asianotterMN.
asiangrrlMN
OK. I’m done. I’m leaving the human race now, kthxbai. From now on, I am asianotterMN.
asiangrrlMN
@asiangrrlMN: FYWP.
AAA Bonds
So . . . pursuing higher education is a sign that you SHOULDN’T have the vote at the constitutionally guaranteed age? Like a reverse literacy test?
It is really hard to keep up with who conservatives want to disenfranchise.
AAA Bonds
@PIGL:
True.
Among other maladies, you’ll find that “libertarianism” is where the states’-righters hang out now. I was actually surprised the FIRST time a libertarian explained to me that states should be able to set their own drug laws and abortion restrictions. Shouldn’t have been.
Tlachtga
@AAA Bonds:
Luckily, the answer’s pretty simple: everyone.
Cain
@Sko Hayes:
If possible, just get the hell out of there. Eventually, their economy will tank and they’ll be looking for scapegoats.
cain
TruthOfAngels
Poor old Dagwood! If only there was a place outside the house where you could play your beloved ukelele.
Or hold garage sales. What a shame Planet Earth isn’t designed like that.
In other news, you are a screaming fuckwit and I hope Blondie cuckolds you with the postman. Jesus.