Vol. CCLVI, No. 24 August 24, 2012
The New Hampshire Gazette
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The Nation’s Oldest Newspaper™ • Editor: Steven Fowle • Founded 1756 by Daniel Fowle
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The Fortnightly Rant
Conventional Derangement The stakes could not have been much higher. The Romney campaign desperately needed a Vice Presidential candidate whose positions were known, clear, and firm: someone capable of inspiring the Party’s rabidly anti-government base — someone exactly the opposite of Mitt Romney. Romney settled on Congressman Paul Ryan, author of the most Draconian budget since the Coolidge era. Ryan has been a government employee since he graduated from college, but he is immune from criticism on that count because he is a Republican. Roger Stone, a GOP operative of long standing who sports a portrait of Richard Nixon tattooed on his back, claims David Koch promised to donate another $100 million to pro-Romney SuperPACs if Ryan got the nod. File that under “felonious-if-true.” Since Ryan represents the Badger State, the campaign cleverly used the decommissioned battleship U.S.S. Wisconsin as a backdrop to the announcement. Neither Ryan nor Romney has ever served a day in the U.S. military. A Democrat who pulled that would be crucified, but Romney and Ryan are immune to criticism on that count because they are Republicans.* Here Comes The Pain Train So, barring an unprecedented political earthquake or a possible Hurricane Isaac, Republicans will nominate Romney and Ryan at their National Convention in Tampa next week. That pretty well guarantees a catastrophe for somebody. The odds are it will be the Republicans
* True, Rachel Maddow did make a few snarky remarks. But she doesn’t count because she’s a shrill Communist.
who suffer. After all, why would the American electorate want a job-destroying, tax return-hiding, position-shifting hectomillionaire and his Social Security-privatizing, abortion-banning, budgetwrecking sidekick in the White House? It’s hard to rest easy, though. Two of our last three Presidential contests were decided by states in which Republicans had carried out scorched-earth voter suppression campaigns, and elections were controlled by officials who were in the tank for the GOP. Stamping Out Democracy The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-sponsored bad-law mill, has orchestrated a very successful nation-wide campaign to pass state laws making it harder to vote. Republican Party hacks — pardon our redundancy — have justified this onslaught on democracy by claiming that voter fraud is rampant. If America had a functioning Fourth Estate, that lie would have been smothered in its crib. Republicans have learned, though, that they can utter almost any lie imaginable without its being challenged by the press. The National Republican Lawyers Association conducted a tenyear study of this alleged problem. It found that on average .7 cases of voter fraud occur per state per year. On August 11th the Washington Post reported on a similar study by students at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. The students “found 10 cases of alleged in-person voter impersonation [nationally] since 2000.” One of those cases involved a 17 year-old in Londonderry, NH who used his father’s ID to vote
for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Primary. Then again, there is the case of East Longmeadow, MA, where someone surreptitiously changed the party affiliations of hundreds of voters and forged hundreds of applications for absentee ballots. The Secretary of State has taken over the town’s Primary election, and the Hampden County Attorney General is investigating the only suspect — Jack Villamaino, a Republican candidate for State Representative. Home Sweet Basement When it comes to Republicans practicing what they preach against, the most striking case might be found at the top of their ticket. In the spring of 2009, Mitt Romney sold his home in Belmont, MA and moved to La Jolla, CA. In January of 2010, Massachusetts held a special election
to fill Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat. Mitt Romney voted for Scott Brown in that election. On his voter registration form, Romney claimed he was living in the unfinished basement of his son’s house in Belmont. Fred Karger, Romney’s gay Republican opponent during the Presidential Primary, says members of the Mormon church in Belmont told him they had not seen the Romneys since they moved to La Jolla. A local merchant who used to see Mrs. Romney “all the time” told Karger he hadn’t seen her in two years. Lying on voter registration forms is a felony. Romney’s 2008 tax return, filed in 2009, would shed light on where he was living. Perhaps that’s why he’s so adamant about not releasing them — he knows he has a Constitutional right not to incriminate himself.
That’s The Ticket? Seriously — that’s the Republican ticket: a Wall Street insider, backed by a Washington insider. It looks self-destructive, if not suicidal. The online electoral vote prognosticators reflect this. They’re putting President Obama close to or over the 270 Electoral votes he’ll need to win. But that’s based on what voters are telling poll-takers. Republicans claim to hate Stalin, but when it comes to counting votes, they’re hardcore Stalinists. “It’s not the people who vote that count,” Joe said, “It’s the people who count the votes.” Just ask Pennsylvania’s House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, who told an ecstatic Republican state committee last June, “Voter ID, which is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, [is] done.”
flecting the palpable sense that national politics have reached the saturation point, beyond which they cannot possibly absorb another iota of insanity. About an hour later MSNBC reported the results of a new poll showing that by a margin of about 2 to 1, Republicans want their representatives in Congress to stick to their guns and flatly reject any compromise. By a similar margin, Democrats want the opposite — they want their representatives to compromise their principles, if they have any, in order to get things done. Since the poll presents an unmistakable picture of a mob of Republican extremists herding a flock of Democratic sheep towards a cliff, it also represents a severe challenge for a modern
corporate news organization. MSNBC was able to meet that challenge. It found an alleged journalist willing to sum up the segment by noting that, since a few bewildered voters unaffiliated with either party could be found who blamed them both, both parties were equally responsible. It’s a funny world indeed in which a pair of gargantuan multinational corporations like Microsoft and GE can form a joint media venture, broadcast such gibberish, and be routinely accused of having a liberal bias. Congratulations, BAE Our email in-box was graced recently by a press release from BAE Systems, informing us that
News Briefs
Why? Because Sheriff Frank Said So, That's Why! Frank Szabo is rapidly becoming our favorite New Hampshire Republican. He seems to represent the essence of today’s GOP and therefore makes great copy. For months now Szabo has been making sweeping unilateral declarations about the immense powers of the Hillsborough County Sheriff ’s office, which he hopes to win. On August 9th, he decreed that “[a]bortion on demand is murder. Once elected, Sheriff Szabo will arrest anyone involved in the murder of a Citizen of Hillsborough County.” Naturally the minute Szabo said that he would arrest people who have committed no crime, because he thinks a legal procedure is murder, all his fellow Republicans began denouncing him in droves … right?
Well, um, no. In fact, on August 16th, State Senator Jim Forsythe endorsed Szabo, saying, “Frank’s knowledge of the role of County Sheriff in the protection of Citizens, their property and their Rights is exactly what we need in New Hampshire. His understanding of the Constitution and the founding of our country will be most helpful in executing the duties of the Office of Sheriff.” That’s your District Four Senator speaking, New Hampshire … UPDATE: Wednesday night Szabo told WMUR he wouldn’t rule out using deadly force to prevent abortions. Thursday morning he retracted that statement. How the Media L[i]ed Us Here We consulted briefly with one of our political advisors on Monday at his place of business on
Congress Street. He quit hauling bags of trash and boxes of cardboard to the curb long enough to express his pleasure at Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan for Vice President. If you’re running on a policy of greed and cruelty, he figured, it’s admirable to be that up-front about it. Asked if he looks forward to the day when the nation eventually devolves into a pure marketplace in which the atmosphere has been privatized and we all have to wear metered helmets and pay a corporation for the right to breathe, he said, “Yes. I just wish I’d thought of it first.” He was kidding, of course. If we had to guess his position on the political spectrum we’d place him somewhere in Dennis Kucinich’s neighborhood. He was just re-
News Briefs to page two