Sarah at the slaughterhouse
This is the greatest unintentionally funny video I have ever seen. Yes, it involves Sarah Palin. I’ve already written an entire SNL skit in my head parodying this clip.
It ain’t so, Joe
Joe Kenney, the erstwhile GOP nominee for governor, has chosen to vent his disappointment in various New Hampshire Republicans in an op-ed in the Union Leader. Let us go through his points.
He says, “From the beginning, the state Republican Party backed away from challenging Gov. John Lynch. When I made my decision to run, Lynch was on the verge of a free ride. Republicans suggested he might end up the Republican nominee. I could not stand on the sidelines and watch this happen.”
When Molly Kelly defeated Tom Eaton, the GOP lost its most vocal critic of Gov. John Lynch. Eaton consistently picked up the party flag and charged up the hill against the Lynch embattlements (often alone). But the state party did continue to criticize Lynch. In fact, the press releases from party HQ were sometimes the only criticism of the governor outside of this newspaper’s editorial page. That criticism might have been too periodic for Kenney’s liking, but it did exist. And the party was vigorous in its pursuit of a top-quality challenger to Gov. Lynch. The notion that the chairman was sitting by and giving Lynch a pass is entirely untrue. Kenney might have a complaint that no other Republican chose to take on the governor, but there is no truth to the charge that the party HQ was not active in trying to find a challenger.
“Even before I announced my candidacy, however, leading Republicans had already made it clear that they supported the Democrat. As a 14-year legislator and a 28-year Marine, I believe I presented an experienced, qualified alternative. What happened to loyalty being valued in our party before money, jobs or influence?”
Walter Peterson publicly supported Lynch. No surprise there. As for “What happened to loyalty being valued in our party before money, jobs or influence?” Well, the author of that sentence is the one trashing the party, maybe he can shed some light on the subject.
“The mere fact that I was the only one willing to take on Lynch should have generated the immediate respect, support and specific actions of the party chairman with what we said we needed, within reason. There is no excuse for the party not contacting the campaign early on to see how it could help. The party should always be the one calling the candidate, all candidates. But I found that our state party did not provide me with strong support.”
Since when is it the duty of the party to provide the candidate with basic material support? Kenney complains that the state party provided him with a small room in the McCain campaign office and only one staff member. When has it ever been the duty of the state party to provide those operational needs? That is the duty of the campaign manager. Kenney’s campaign manager did not fill those essential needs. How is that the party’s fault?
“Cullen needed to criticize Lynch. He is quoted many times attacking Democratic Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen; it would have made sense to say “and John Lynch,” tying Lynch and Shaheen together.”
Fair enough, I suppose, although the state party did criticize Lynch for overspending and for pushing a far-left cultural agenda. But again, isn’t it primarily the candidate’s job to make his case to the voters?
“Our campaign did not get a statewide contrast mailer presenting Lynch’s record vs. mine. That would have helped tremendously. ”
Hmmm. Why didn’t the Kenney campaign manager see to it that this was done by the campaign? If the answer is a lack of money, well, that cannot be blamed on the state party. If potential donors withheld money from the Kenney campaign, perhaps that was a reflection on how good an investment they considered his campaign to be.
“It wasn’t just the state party that failed to support our campaign. We were not on the call script at the John McCain victory offices. Nor did the leading elected Republicans in the state campaign for us.”
Wow. I have never seen a gubernatorial candidate attack two sitting U.S. senators for failing to campaign for him, especially when one of the two had his hands full running his own campaign.
“It was a year when volunteers and money were tapped out. We produced and aired TV and radio ads on spending and got a better percentage of the vote per dollar spent than any other candidate (53 cents per vote). We spent far less than previous campaigns with hardly any staff, and yet we got better results. Clearly, our message of New Hampshire changing with runaway spending was taking hold.”
I have no idea why Kenney is bragging that he spent only 53 cents per vote. That is not a sign that his money was spent efficiently. Just the opposite. Any Republican running for governor in New Hampshire can be expected to get about a quarter of the vote. Kenney got 27 percent. To me, that means that his campaign added zero value to the GOP brand name. In other words, he didn’t get “better results,” he got exactly what any generic Republican would get, so the value added by the Kenney campaign team was zilch. If the message was taking hold, how come he got no more than the 2006 nominee got?
“The sentiment is that we need new leadership that would reward hard work, teamwork and loyalty and actively discourage infighting, selfishness, pettiness and elitism. The latter are qualities of a high school clique, not a state party.”
In an op-ed in which he attacks the state party chairman, the two sitting Republican U.S. senators and various and sundry Republicans across the board, he concludes by longing for a party that discourages “infighting”? That’s hilarious.
I got to know Joe Kenney a little bit during his campaign, and I he is a well-meaning, likable guy. He actually cut some radio ads that I thought were very good. And he does deserve a huge hand for taking on John Lynch when no one else would. But that said, any fair analysis of his campaign would reach one conclusion: it was not a well-run campaign. That is putting it generously. A less generous assessment might conclude that it was the worst-run statewide campaign in memory, if not ever.
The state party tried to help. Kenney even turned down some offered assistance, insisting that he and his campaign manager could do a better job. They couldn’t. Even with the help the party did give, which 2006 nominee Jim Coburn didn’t have, Kenney couldn’t do better than Coburn did. That suggests to me that the party and the presidential nominee pulled Kenney’s numbers up a little higher than they would have been otherwise.
Kenney mentioned his service as a Marine, for which we all should be thankful. I think that might explain the man’s courage in taking on Lynch and in fighting for his beliefs so forcefully even against such huge odds. But the reference to his service reminded me of John McCain. And it reminded me that when McCain’s campaign collapsed last year, he took full responsibility. He didn’t blame staff or the media or the party. And when he lost to Barack Obama, he took full responsibility for that, too. He didn’t blame the staff or the media or President Bush or the party. I think Joe Kenney would have served himself and his party better had he followed John McCain’s example.
I’ll trade you
Today is the Great American Smokeout, when smokers are encouraged to give up the habit for a day. Timberlane Regional High School students are giving bags of candy to smokers in exchange for their cigarettes. Some groups are giving nicotine patches to smokers who hand in their cigarettes. And that got me to thinking.
I’ve got a few bags of Halloween candy sitting here. In the interests of public health, I am willing to give a bag of this delicious, sumptuous chocolate to anyone desperate to quit his or her habit of smoking — expensive cigars. Just bring me your fresh, high-quality cigars, and I will gladly hand you a bag of candy. If you have these, these or these, I will consider giving you extra candy.
Don’t worry, all cigars will be disposed of properly. I promise to burn each one of them separately.
So, this nun walks into a bar
So, this nun walks into a bar. No, really. I’m at Murphy’s Taproom watching UNC stomp Kentucky last night, and I’m told that I really need to go see the band playing in the back room immediately. So I stroll to the back, and there on stage is a nun. In her habit. Singing “You can’t always get what you want” along with the band, karaoke-style. I’m not making this up. After the song, she walked out the front door and that was that. So I can report that the vow of poverty does not equal a vow of boredom.
Comment from Sister Lorraine Aucoin, pm, in Manchester: It’s true, I was there! I went to Murphy’s to speak at a “Theology on Tap” gathering for young adults. We had a great evening discussing the process for discerning God’s will in the different circumstances of our lives. Then I stuck around to talk with some friends and I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to sing an old song with the band. No, there is nothing boring about Poverty, Chastity, or Obedience! I had a blast!
Challenging Wakefield’s manhood
I wonder how much ribbing Tim Wakefield is getting following this story.
Judd makes the top ten
Politico.com rates Judd Gregg’s seat one of the top 10 Senate races to watch in 2010. He’s ranked 8th.
Stem cell success and media bias
Physicians in Europe report having successfully used a woman’s own stem cells to grow new tissue on a donated wind pipe, then transplanting it into her to replace a portion of her own wind pipe that was severely damaged by tuberculosis. It is being reported as a major breakthrough in organ transplants and in the use of stem cells.
This is a great story for gauging media bias. If you read about the procedure in the AP story published in USA Today, you would get a straight story with no political slant. However, if you read about it in The New York Times, you would think it had something to do with President Bush’s executive order on federal funding for stem cell research. It doesn’t.
The stem cells used in the procedure were taken from the woman’s own bone marrow. They were not only adult stem cells, but her own adult stem cells. Bush’s order would not cover anything to do with this procedure. But the Times’ Alan Cowell wrote:
“News of the procedure coincided with speculation that President-elect Barack Obama may reverse the Bush Administration’s restrictions on stem cell research, which has been contentious in some European countries, too. Anthony Hollander, a professor at Bristol University, said ethical concerns relating to embryonic stem cell research had not surfaced in the latest procedure because it had used only the patient’s own stem cells. ‘This was not embryonic stem cell research,’ he said in a telephone interview.
As Cowell quoted the professor saying, “this was not embryonic stem cell research.” But Cowell never mentioned why Professor Hollander would distinguish between adult and embryonic stem cell research. He writes of “the Bush Administration’s restrictions on stem cell research.”
Actually, the Bush administration has placed no restrictions on stem cell research. Bush’s 2001 executive order prohibited federal funding for embryonic stem cell research that would destroy embryos. Private and state funding for such research was untouched. The order also authorized federal funding for embryonic stem cell research involving embryos that had already been destroyed. This was the first time a President had authorized federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. From the time of Bush’s executive order in August of 2001 to his veto of a bill to overturn that order in June of 2007, the federal government spent $130 million on embryonic stem cell research and $3 billion on all stem cell research.
Yes, the Bush administration has spent $3 billion of federal taxpayer money on stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research. Yet somehow it continues to be reported that the Bush administration has placed restrictions on “stem cell research.” NH Democratic Party signs posted on Election Day read: “Sununu: stop stem cell research.” Sununu, like Bush, never wanted to stop stem cell research.
I think President Bush’s executive order on embryonic stem cell research was one of his finest moments, if not his finest. He found a reasoned, thoughtful compromise that would continue federal funding for stem cell research while honoring pro-life taxpayers by ensuring that no taxpayer dollars would go to destroy embryos. But the media by and large swallowed the Democratic Party’s talking points on the issue, leaving the public with the mistaken impression that Bush opposed stem cell research and had either halted it or severely curtailed it. It isn’t true; it never was true, and it likely will remain on of the enduring myths of the Bush administration.
Are oil companies still evil?
You can buy gasoline for less than $2 a gallon in New Hampshire this week. My favorite gas station in Manchester was selling it for $1.99 a gallon this morning. It’s less than $1.90 a gallon at some stations around the state. In light of this, I wonder, are oil companies still evil?
Oil prices hit a 22-month low on Tuesday. Slowing demand is driving prices down. Which raises the question: What drove prices up?
Jeanne Shaheen, Carol Shea-Porter, Paul Hodes, Barack Obama and many others suggested that oil companies or speculators were driving prices up. Some even said oil company profits were the cause of high gas prices, rather than vice versa. Obama was going to finance his “tax cuts” in part with a windfall profits tax on oil companies. What happens when oil company profits are no longer “excessive”? Or are they always excessive just because they are made by oil companies?
If speculators drove up the price of oil so they could reap windfall profits at the expense of consumers, why did they suddenly stop doing that? Why did they start betting that the price would drop? What about speculators who bet that oil prices would keep rising? There might be lots of speculators who lost their starched shirts when the bottom fell out of the oil market and they were left holding futures contracts to buy oil at more than $100 a barrel. Are they still “greedy Wall Street speculators”? Did they lose millions just to make us think they really weren’t in control?
A caller to The Exchange this morning suggested applying a windfall profits tax to the oil companies and giving the proceeds to the auto makers. What windfall profits? What about the other industries that were hurt by the rising price of oil? Do NASCAR teams get a cut, too? Does Glad? Do supermarkets?
Funny thing. As world demand for oil and gasoline rose, so did prices. When demand suddenly fell off, so did prices. Must’ve been a complete coincidence.
It’s interesting that no one is looking for a scapegoat now. When oil prices rise, it’s the fault of sinister forces. When they fall, it’s the market. Amazing how that works. No doubt Dick Cheney is really behind it all, controlling the markets with his magic puppet strings and somehow making a killing on the falling prices. Because, as Jeanne Shaheen and Carol Shea-Porter said, the reason oil prices went through the roof was because we had two oil men in the White House. Well, we still do. So obviously they must still be in control, somehow suckering us all into paying $1.99 a gallon for gas while laughing all the way to the bank with the sacks full of cash from $54.00 a barrel oil.
Secondary of State
Does anyone else find it amusing that if Hillary Clinton is appointed secretary of state she’d be the third woman in the job? Not exactly glass-ceiling-shattering stuff. I wonder if she wouldn’t rather be the first woman attorney general. Not that she would be the top pick for AG. Whitewater, cattle futures, etc. Homeland Security? Nah. Not a department with a lengthy history or pedigree. Interior? Nah, who could live down the legend of Dirk Kempthorne? It’s gotta be State or nothing. I find it a little disquieting that if selected she would hold the same job Jefferson, Madison, John Marshall, Henry Clay, James Monroe, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster held. But then, so did Warren Christopher, Abel Parker Upshur, and Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen.
Why didn’t Manchester think of this?
Manchester’s tax rate just went up almost 5 percent because the aldermen refuse to take on the unions and make the city run efficiently. But at least they are making the residents of Manchester pay for their own city’s budget. In Detroit, the city council has passed a resolution calling for a $10 billion bailout of the city. Not the auto industry, the city.
Says Council President Pro Tem JoAnn Watson, “The city of Detroit has got to be leading the way on this.”
I almost thought the Detroit Free Press’s readers had been punked by the staff of The Onion. But no, this is a real story. Most amazing: They’ll probably get it, too.
Was Bradley’s loss due to the Democratic tide?
Former Rep. Jeb Bradley told PolitickerNH.com that he lost because it was a Democratic year.
“It was a nationwide tide against Republicans,” Bradley said.
That is true. But it’s not the entire truth. We can see from the election results that a lot of voters checked John Sununu’s name on the ballot but didn’t check Jeb Bradley’s. Let’s look at some numbers:
- Derry
Bradley: 7,271; Sununu: 7,450
- Hooksett
Bradley: 3,594; Sununu: 3,757
- Londonderry
Bradley, 6,466; Sununu 6,781
- Manchester
Bradley: 19,675; Sununu: 21,236
Clearly, thousands of Republican-leaning voters made a conscious effort not to vote for Jeb Bradley. I think the reason is that Bradley failed to motivate the conservative party base, and in Manchester he even turned off many Republicans with his deceptive attacks on John Stephen in the primary.
Could Stephen have beaten Shea-Porter? I think so, but we cannot know for sure. I think Stephen would have motivated conservatives to come out. He might have drawn conservatives even Sen. Sununu didn’t, particularly in Manchester, where Carol Shea-Porter and Jeanne Shaheen both won but which Stephen might have taken from Shea-Porter.
It was a big anti-Bush year, and Bradley was tired directly to Bush and the Republican leadership that voters booted out of power in 2006. Shea-Porter didn’t have to stretch to make that connection. It was there. Bradley voted for all of the Bush budgets and against all of the conservative alternative budgets offered by the Republican Study Committee. So although it was a Democratic year, Bradley actually did worse than the other Republican who ran district-wide, John Sununu, suggesting that Bradley cannot blame his loss entirely on the Democratic tide. People voted against Jeb Bradley in addition to voting against George W. Bush.
Nails in the Mall of NH parking lot
The Verizon Wireless Arena is notorious for its poor acoustics. For rock and roll concerts, the treble is usually too low and the bass too high, and invariably it is difficult to understand the singer. This weekend, though, I came away with a different complaint, one I’ve never had at any rock concert before. It wasn’t loud enough.
The show was Nine Inch Nails, which played Saturday night. Now, if you’re unfamiliar with Nine Inch Nails, let’s just say that this is the type of band for which volume is itself an instrument. You don’t go to experience industrial rock like this sitting down, or even primarily with your ears. You want to feel it, preferably from the feet up. On Saturday night in Manchester, you couldn’t do that unless you were close to the speakers.
I saw this show from a sky box, which admittedly is not the location from which to get the full Nine Inch Nails experience. But I’m old enough to not want to be thumped about in a mosh pit. Still, I saw the last Rush show from this same spot, and the floor vibrated. You could feel Geddy Lee’s bass lines through your shoes. We couldn’t feel any of the NIN grind. I’ve got excellent hearing, and I always bring ear plugs to concerts. Didn’t need them this time. So although it was a good concert, it was a bit of a let down. Instead of going to 11, like it should have, it went to about seven.
But a friend I went with, who is a huge NIN fan, did have an experience the next day that made up for it. He had to get a new mouse for his computer, so he went over to Best Buy. Walking to the store entrance at 3:15 Sunday afternoon, he saw four guys dressed in black standing in front of the doors, looking like they were waiting for something. Then Trent Reznor walked out of Best Buy and it hit him, “That’s Nine Inch Nails. At Best Buy. At the mall.”
So he said hi to Reznor and told him he’d really enjoyed the show. Reznor, my friend reported, thanked him very politely, and that was that. My friend walked into the store, turned, and saw the tour bus pull up and pick up the band. It was as if Trent Reznor’s mom dropped off the boys at the mall for an hour then picked them up to take them to the next show, which was in Worcester that night. Some security guy or manager was with them, holding bags. I asked from what stores, but my friend couldn’t tell. I had this great image of Trent Reznor shopping for khakis in The Gap at the Mall of New Hampshire. I wonder how many shoppers that afternoon walked right past these guys and didn’t even notice them.
