Style, Substance, Perry, and the Media

Rick Perry gave a superb speech to NH Cornerstone, a New Hampshire conservative group.  The full speech is here and well worth the time to watch (about 25 minutes).  In fact, this partisan New Hampshire reporter considers the speech close to perfect for the audience. 

How did the left-leaning media react?  As could perhaps be anticipated, with ridicule and mockery.  For example, in a harsh piece by Brian Browdie of the NY Daily News titled "Rick Perry's unusually expressive 2012 speech in New Hampshire sparks rumors he was drunk," Mr. Browdie said:

During his remarks at the Cornerstone Action Dinner in Manchester, the Republican presidential candidate seemed to titter at his own jokes, gesticulate wildly, make odd facial expressions and go off on strange tangents.

A video, edited to about eight minutes, is included in a Politico posting by Alexander Burns titled "Rick Perry's Bizarre New Hampshire Speech."  There are several other similar edits.  A three-minute, forty-second version that appeared on the ABC News website was used to create a timeline for the comparisons that follow.  The edited versions went viral, but very few people took the time to watch the entire 25-minute speech.

Why did the media react this way?  Maybe because Perry is a conservative, and the media are liberal.   Maybe for Perry's exhibiting "unquestionably unpresidential behavior," as David Badash of the New Civil Rights Movement put it.  What is the current definition of presidential behavior during a speaking engagement?  The loud, monotonous rant we are witnessing so often of late?  The disingenuous or worse content of those rants?

Perry opened his remarks with the World Series.  He said that he had arrived in New Hampshire Thursday evening with the Rangers leading 7-4.  He gave an exuberant shout, with much arm-waving ("gesticulating wildly").  Texas was finally going to be a world champion after fifty years.  Then, in a much more subdued voice, Perry said that it was now Friday, and they were still playing.  This is where the edited version dropped out.  In the actual speech, Perry went on to say that Chris Carpenter was pitching, and he is from New Hampshire, implying that Texas had no chance.  Self-deprecating humor, timing that Jack Benny would envy, and audience involvement.  The crowd went wild -- cheers and applause.  He had them.

As an aside, President Obama snubbed the Cardinals (from the swing state of Missouri) by not giving the traditional presidential congratulations.  Presidential behavior, Mr. Badash?  Smart politics, Mr. Badash?

A Field of Flags

There is a field of American flags in Plaistow.  There are 6,295 of them to be exact.  There is one flag for each serviceman or woman whose life was lost in Afghanistan or in Iraq since 9/11.  God bless them all.



The Field of Flags

The field of flags went up a couple of weeks ago and I finally stopped to learn about it the other day.  I went into the Art Gallery located just in front of the field and was met by the proprietor, a charming young woman, Nicole DeClerck (see here and here).  She gave me permission to photograph the display and to use the pictures to illustrate an article on the Internet.  I took my iPad and wandered through the flags, snapping pictures.  Later, Nicole and I exchanged e-mails.  I sent the pictures I had taken and she sent a picture of the painting shown.  It is titled “Isaiah 1” and is inspired by a painting by Van Gogh. 

Isaiah 1 by Nicole DeClerck

The painting touches me inside and echoes God and country.  Thank you, Nicole.

The flag field covers about an acre.  The individual flags are the size used to mark the graves of service people for Memorial Day, some two feet high.  They are located on two-foot centers with a wider aisle for handicapped access every four rows of flags.  Each flag is identified with a card bearing the name of the service person, the branch of service, the home town, the age, and the date of death.  Flags of female service members are decorated with a small flower.

The Flag in Honor of Brian K. Van Dusen

The Flag in Honor of Chystal Gaye Stout

There is a stage at one corner of the field.  The stage is a field of blue with white stars.  The Flag of Honor flies from one corner of the stage, the American Flag from the other corner.  The Flag of Honor is similar to the American Flag but with the names of all of the victims of 9/11 printed within the flag’s stripes.  There are wreaths at the base of the stage honoring our fallen in all of our wars.

The Flag of Honor

For all of its physical beauty, the field of flags is more a stimulus for the psyche, an elicitor of emotions, and a probing of the soul.  It is intended to evoke contemplation, reflection, and introspection.  What does it mean to be an American?  What do we ask of our young people?  Can we adequately honor our fallen?

The field of flags is the loving work of the Rock Church Ministries and is located at the Rockingham Church, 90 Newton Road (Route 108 at the intersection of Sweet Hill Road) in Plaistow, N.H.  The Rock Church Ministries have other locations in Sandown, NH and Amesbury, MA.

The field is open to the public.  There will be a special services on Sun, Nov. 13 to honor our veterans.  All are welcome.

This post appeared originally in the Exeter Patch on 10 November 2011.

Restoring the Right to Work in New Hampshire

After several years of complacency and conceit among New Hampshire Republicans, the combination of which saw the Democrats take a U.S. Senate seat, both House seats, the governor's office, and both branches of the NH legislature, the Republicans had a resurgence in 2010.  In the midterm elections, Republicans, invigorated by the Taxed Enough Already (TEA) party, swept both houses of the legislature and both U.S. House seats.  Incidentally, all this wasn't enough to defeat the extremely popular Democratic Governor John Lynch.

The Republicans, with a whopping 297-103 advantage in the NH House and a 19-5 advantage in the NH Senate, set about a return to small government.  In a July 2011 speech to a Republican gathering, Speaker of the House Bill O'Brien said that the Republican-dominated legislature cut the budget 11%, from $11.5B to $10.4B while significantly reducing business taxes.  State unemployment fell from 5.7% to 4.8%.  The unemployment rate is not all good news, though; Speaker O'Brien tells us that "[i]n part it's because our young people are leaving New Hampshire."  New Hampshire needs new business and new jobs.

The Republicans passed a Right to Work (RTW) Act, HB 474, by margins of 221-131 in the House and 16-8 in the Senate.  Governor Lynch vetoed the bill.  Sixteen to eight is sufficient to override in the Senate, but the House seems to be a few votes short.  According to Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard, there are some 35 Republican union supporters who will vote to sustain the veto.  (Trade unionism is a legacy in some families, surviving from the days when a union job could be passed from generation to generation.)

Support the Ayotte-Brown Fisheries Legislation

Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Scott Brown (R-MA) have introduced S.1678, the “Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011.”  The Ayotte-Brown bill is similar to, but stronger than the House bill, HB.2772, also called the “Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011.”  Both bills are aimed at limiting the fisheries management technique known as catch shares.  The House version addresses future implementations of catch shares while the Ayotte-Brown version extends the legislation to existing catch shares programs.  Ayotte-Brown requires that an existing catch shares program be terminated if it can be shown that the program has reduced fishing jobs by more than 15%.

Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)

Senator Scott Brown (R-MA)

Catch shares, a fisheries management technique developed by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), is documented in a 184-page playbook titled "Catch Shares Design Manual."

President Obama’s handpicked ecozealot, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of NOAA and former bigwig at the EDF, is implementing catch shares nation-wide.  In New England, she has personally driven fisherman allocations drastically below those levels that even her own scientists say are sufficient to sustain and allow growth of the stocks.  Dr. Lubchenco wants the industry to shrink.  She envisions a fixed number of catch share permits allocated within a small community of fishing boats.  Let the fittest fishermen survive.  Her implementation of catch shares has some curveballs.

Death of an Industry: The President's Impoverishment of America's Fishermen

Déjà vu: President Obama vacationed again on Martha's Vineyard.  While Barry lazed here last year, the fishermen of New England ran a full-page ad in the Vineyard Gazette titled "Mr. President, We Need Your Help."  The fishermen came to the Vineyard in their boats and paraded in the harbor to emphasize their plight.  The American Thinker ran a piece on the events.

The ad was in the form of a letter from Russell Sherman, the captain of the fishing vessel Lady Jane out of Gloucester, MA.  The letter was well-written, elegant in its simplicity and comprehensive in its content, befitting Captain Sherman's Harvard education.  It read in part:

My business is only one of hundreds facing extinction.  While there will be a small handful of "winners" under these new rules [Catch Shares], the vast majority of us will be losers.  And when we "losers" are forced out, jobs will be lost, coastal communities gutted, and crucial commercial fishing infrastructure gone forever.  ...

Mr. President, we desperately need your leadership. 

How much help did the fishermen get from the president?  None!  Nada!  Not even an acknowledgement of their efforts.  Not even a receipt from the White House for the copy of the letter they sent directly to the president by "Certified Mail, Return Receipt Requested."

And what has happened to the fishermen since?  How has the past year gone for them?  Badly!

• Catch shares (see Nils Stolpe's "Is this the future of fishing?") has worked to perfection -- if you are a malevolent, vindictive, bureaucratic eco-zealot. As Dr. Jane Lubchenco predicted, the fishing fleet has consolidated -- a euphemism for "most of the fleet has been driven out of business."

Ovide Lamontagne Is Running for Governor of New Hampshire

Ovide Lamontagne was already at the GOP Chili Fest and we got there early.  My wife Joan went right up to Ovide, grabbed his hand in both of hers, and said, "Tell me you are going to run." He said he was.  Good!  He will have our support for Governor.

The GOP Chili Fest was held in Stratham, NH, on Saturday, 10 September.  I took the picture.  Isn't that a great smile?  He is such a nice man, charming, knowledgeable, and a true conservative.  When he spoke at Hampton Airport a few weeks ago, he gave a powerful speech in which he allowed as to how he might run for Governor.  The Manchester NH Union Leader ran a piece on 25 August indicating that Lamontagne might soon announce for Governor.  SeaCoastOnline's 11 September report headline was "Lamontagne mum on gubernatorial run at GOP Chili Fest."

NOAA Fisheries Management -- Masters of Mendacity

The 2011 Annual Catch Limits (ACLs) for the New England fisheries go into effect on 1 May 2011.  They are essentially unchanged from the extremely low ACLs that virtually crippled the fleet in 2010.

NOAA spins things quite differently.  They put out a statement on 18 April titled "New England fishing season to open with higher catch limits."  The catch limits for 12 fish stocks are being increased.  They made no mention of decreases. 

In fact, some catch limits that are being decreased and the decreases are significant.  The catch limits for haddock, a major contributor to fishing revenues, are decreasing 25%.  The catch limits that are being increased are increasing marginally.  The total of the Annual Catch Limits for the New England fisheries will actually be about 10% less in 2011 than it was in 2010. 

On 20 April the Gloucester Daily Times revealed the subterfuge in an article and a blistering editorial.  The original NOAA statement received wide release, driven by NOAA and its environmentalist allies.  The subsequent "rest of the story" got play within the industry, but not by the major outlets that covered the original.

On 21 April, Patricia Kurkul, NOAA Fisheries Northeast Regional Administrator, responded to the Gloucester Times editorial with a piece that appeared on Bob Vanasse's SavingSeaFood.org website.  Ms. Kurkul implies that "publicizing the increases in limits for twelve smaller stocks rather than the decreases in three relatively large ones" was deliberate.  She claims that "[t]he catch limits, although lower than in 2010, are not expected to be much of a barrier to higher catch in 2011."

Ms. Kurkul seldom appears at public outreach events and seldom publishes outside of the agency.  A good plan.  How does that old cliché go?  You know the one, it ends in "remove all doubt."

The multi-species nature of the New England fisheries does result in low population species, the so-called choke species, restricting the landings of the more plentiful stocks.  The choke species problem is one of the issues with catch shares in New England.  It was stupid for NOAA to first launch their catch shares debacle in the complex New England environment.  But don't for a minute believe, as Ms. Kurkul would have you, that the 12 stock increases came about because of an altruistic NOAA's desire to help fishermen.  The increases were just the serendipitous consequences of the rather inappropriately termed best available science. 

And the new ACLs are still painfully low.

This post originally appeared in the American Thinker on 26 April 2011.  

Obama Arrested for Drunk Driving

MetroWest Daily News of Framingham, MA ran a story, byline Norman Miller, titled “Cops: Illegal Immigrant Drove Drunk in Framingham.”

The alleged operator, Onyango Obama, 67, blew a 0.14 on the breathalyzer.  The Massachusetts limit is 0.08.  Mr. Obama is also accused of driving to endanger, having almost collided with the police car.

The MetroWest Daily News story states:

Obama has a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement warrant for his arrest. ICE has previously ordered him to be deported back to Kenya.

Kerry Picket of the Washington Times theorizes that this Onyango Obama (born 3 June 1944 according to the police log) is also the half-uncle of President Obama, Omar Onyango Obama, born on 3 June 1944 in Nyang’oma Kogelo, Kenya per Picket’s theory.

President Obama’s aunt also lives in the Boston area.  Howie Carr, the Boston Herald columnist, refers to her as “Auntie Zeituni.”  Howie features her in a column now and again (the latest was 5 August), usually pointing out her status as a welfare recipient living in public housing.

“What family doesn't have its ups and downs?” as Katherine Hepburn says in “The Lion in Winter.”

This post originally appeared in the American Thinker on 28 August 2011. 

A Letter from Lucy - Carol Shea-Porter

Earlier this month, the 'Grok ran a guest piece of mine.  It received several comments, pro and con, and was a totally entertaining experience.  Thanks, Skip [Most welcome, sir!  -Skip].

In due course, the piece rotated off as other pieces were published.  Ten days after the piece appeared, Skip received another comment from Lucy Edwards.  Her comment had two subjects, Bill O’Brien and Carol Shea-Porter (CSP).  This article addresses the CSP comment, shown in part below:

And I suggest Mr. Johnson do some more homework before he writes about Carol Shea Porter [sic] again. The story about having someone removed from her town hall is untrue. James Pindell reported the following after the incident:

Lucy could have saved some of the homework she recommended by providing a link to her reference to Mr. Pindell, but she didn’t so it was off to Google.  Since the incident, Mr. Pindell has been hired by WMUR and his old website now directs the reader to a WMUR site.  Mr. Pindell’s article is not directly available, but a reference can be found on the Democratic Underground.

Lucy, you asked for more homework.  OK, it is an incident that can be remembered with fondness.  If you recall, it was towards the end of August 2009, Obamacare was still being debated, the people were generally opposed to the approach and wanted guidance from their representatives, and CSP ended up on a milk carton – have you seen this woman?

Are NOAA and Other Regulatory Agencies above the Law?

Dr. Brian Rothschild, the prominent fisheries scientist, recently published an op-ed titled "Fish, the intent of Congress, and jobs" in the New Bedford, MA Standard-Times.  He advocates removing the management of our nation's fisheries from NOAA, the regulatory agency currently in charge.  This writer wholeheartedly agrees.

Recently, the cities of New Bedford, MA and Gloucester, MA sued the federal government and NOAA over inappropriate and potentially unlawful interpretations of the Magnuson-Stevens Act that supposedly governs fisheries management.  The courts ruled against the cities.  Dr. Rothschild says that the judge, Judge Rya Zobel, had little choice but to rule as she did.  It is a feature (or a bug) of administrative law.
I looked up administrative law in Nolo's Plain-English Law Dictionary and found the following:

The procedures created by administrative agencies (governmental bodies), including rules, regulations, opinions, and orders. These procedures are often unique to each agency and are usually not found in statutes.

Judge Zobel ended up affirming what Congress never intended.  Per Dr. Rothschild:

Congress never intended to generate a fisheries management system that wastes huge quantities of fish, disregards fishing communities, is inherently unfair and ignores science.

Dr. Rothschild has made a point of far-reaching impact in his opinion piece.

[W]hen the language of the law is ambiguous (as is typical for most laws), [regulatory] agency determinations are always right.

Think of this.  The Congress passes a law that requires regulations to be written after the law is enacted.  The regulatory agency has a free hand.  The courts are powerless with respect to regulations promulgated by the regulatory agency. 

Remember when Nancy Pelosi told us we wouldn't know what was in the Obamacare law until after it was passed?  We still don't know all of it, but we see Kathleen Sebelius making new law (e.g., birth control without co-pay) almost daily as "agency determinations that are always right."

Scarier and scarier.

This post originally appeared in the American Thinker on 16 August 2011. 

Guest Post by Mike Johnson: Carol Shea-Porter and Maggie

Kensington is a bucolic town, horse country, affluent, comfortable, a pretty place for an afternoon’s drive, but with the occasional discordant note.
This is a photograph of a small barn on a large horse farm located on Drinkwater Road near the intersection of North Road.  It was taken on 24 July 2011, some 262 days after the last election, or maybe more apropos, 469 days before the next election.  I drive by the barn twice a day and get emotional every time.

It’s always a pleasure to drive by the barn and it is also highly satisfying that these two women are no longer representing us in the halls of power.  It’s sad that my neighbor is so ideologically obsessed that he needs to maintain this monument to his fallen candidates.  But more than sadness, my fanatical neighbor evokes anger by insisting on subjecting me and mine to this display of ungraciousness in defeat. 

NOAA’s Climate Office – Precursor to Cap and Trade?

What does Obama mean (video) by the fundamental transformation of America?  Is it towards European socialism as postulated by Newt Gingrich?  Is it aimed at destroying the neocolonial America as put forth by Dinesh D’Souza?  Or is it some even more dire goal not yet articulated?  Some three years into his presidency and we still do not fully understand where Barack Obama is taking us, only that it is to a lesser America.

Cap and trade is a key element in Obama’s fundamental transformation.  He knows the consequences.  He promised skyrocketing electricity costs when he was elected in 2008.  To date, we have lucked out.  Obama tried and tried and tried again to get his cap and trade bill through Congress and make good on his promise.  So far he has failed. 

Obama has failed in large measure because the credibility and thus the hysteria of his science have eroded.  Obama has been stymied by a public made skeptical because of the shenanigans of the UN’s IPCC and the self-promoting climate experts in East Anglia and the United States.  Can Obama recover?  Not before the next election, but if he is reelected (bite your tongue) and if he can resuscitate the hysteria by co-opting NOAA, the cream of American governmental science, he has a good shot at it.  Bear in mind, Obama has a predilection for using regulatory agencies (e.g., EPA) as weapons.

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the environmentalist rock star and former vice chairperson of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), was appointed as the administrator of NOAA by President Obama.  She has installed a team of ecozealots and they have a Climate Service Office ready and waiting to proceed with only Congressional approval standing in their way.

Dr. Lubchenco first proposed the Climate Service Office on 8 February 2010.  She presented it as a budget-neutral reorganization, a consolidation of existing capabilities.  Any such reorganization requires approval of Congress.  The recent FY2011 Continuing Resolution prohibits NOAA from expending any funds on a Climate Service Office in FY2011.  President Obama included the NOAA reorganization in his FY12 budget issued in February 2011 and so ingloriously voted down (97-0) this spring.