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First it was Nikki Haley in South Carolina. Now we learn that Facebook Governor Palin has endorsed Terry Branstad in Iowa.
This came as a total surprise to him, not being a person naturally aligned with the radical fringe.
But it shouldn't. Sarah Palin is running for president, and she is endorsing likely GOP nominees in key primary states.
Being one of the biggest phonies ever to come across a national political stage, her lack of ideological purity in these choices (after the lesson she learned in the NY-23 debacle, that is) should come as a surprise to no one.
Except maybe to Karen Testerman, Ovide Lamontagne, and Jennifer Horn, when Palin graces her facebook status update with our lovely state and some candidate without those names.
By opening the flood gates to allow towns to assess their own Rooms and Meals taxes they are breaking New Hampshire into hundreds of small taxing governments. This scheme isn't going to work.
I totally agree. Breaking New Hampshire up into hundreds of small taxing governments is a scheme that ultimately isn't going to work.
But the ghosts of Meldrim Thomson and William Loeb cast long shadows, so we don't really have a choice on the predominant revenue structure in the Granite State, do we?
Karen Testerman's Cornerstone Policy Research was really looking forward to welcoming Mike Pence, Republican Representative from Indiana, to New Hampshire as part of the early wave of Republicans testing the presidential waters for 2012. Then that pesky health insurance reform bill got in the way and the Congressman had to be content with a conference call to supporters on Saturday morning, since he had to get back to Washington after the fund-raiser on Friday night in Bedford, NH.
Though Pence was a no-show at the house party hosted by Sean Mahoney, other candidates got to shine. Americans for Prosperity, the group that's been organizing the Tea Parties, was represented by Corey Lewandowski, and Gordon Humphrey, the former United States Senator was presumably representing himself. Or maybe he was there to provide moral support for Frank Guinta, who seems to have some sort of attention deficit.
Republican Karen Testerman is running for governor of New Hampshire.
Back in the day, Ms. Testerman was head of Cornerstone Policy Research, which opposed the current, discriminatory Don't Ask, Don't Tell military policy. Opposed it not for going not far enough, but for going too far.
Here are some statements from Cornerstone's document (click on the .pdf at the link) on "Gays in the Military":
The presence of homosexuals in the armed services threatens the military's highly regarded merit-based system. Sexual attraction encourages special relationships without regard to rank and increases the risk of favoritism.
and concerning HIV/AIDS:
Military men and women willingly accept risks not found anywhere else in society, but should they be needlessly exposed to a disease that is 100 percent fatal?
and my personal favorite:
Other behavior that harms military effectiveness, such as drug abuse and sexual harrassment, is not tolerated in private; there is no reason why homosexuality should be dealt with differently.
To repeat, Karen Testerman is a Republican candidate for governor of the Live Free or Die State.
You still have read real printed newspapers - not everything is available online.
Katrina Swett, in a letter to the editor in today's UL writes that she has been watching the health care debate with hope and trepidation. "...the trepidation comes from the Stupak amendment which, much to my dismay, was adopted as part of the bill passed by the House. The effect of the Stupak amendment would be to significantly curtail women's access to health care coverage for the full range of reproductive services. As someone who is pro-choice..."
Radical social conservative Karen Testerman's gubernatorial candidacy announcement, in part:
"NH was founded on the belief that everyone should be free. We should have the freedom to succeed. We should have the freedom to fail. We should not be forced to allow government to be our nanny who tramples on our freedoms with forced dependency.
Cornerstone's Karen Testerman:
Now, if you want to be promiscuous and sleep around with some Tom, Dick or Harry (not a good idea for a variety of reasons) forgetting your health and safety, your NH legislature recently passed a bill, signed and celebrated by your Governor, that lets your pharmacist, provide you with a pill to "wash all your cares away" without even notifying your parents.
...If you follow the money trail, you should ask, who benefits? Could it be a political contribution from the multi-million dollar a year abortion industry? Is this why your governor was so happy to request, encourage and sign this bill into law?
But the Granite State GOP's latest candidate for governor has just the thing to keep those millions from Lynch's campaign coffers:
They need to know that sex without boundaries is deadly. There are consequences when genital contact is practiced outside the bonds of marriage. Our young people need to know that if both parties wait until they make a life long commitment to one another in marriage to have sex, they have a better chance to be healthier, attain a higher level of education, be financially secure, happier and to enjoy sex more, IF that sex is with the one they are married to.
...The only 100% way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea, clamydia, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, HIV and HPV is to abstain from genital contact until marriage.
Please excuse the end of this post; I wanted to add some witty end note, but I am so creeped out right now I think I need to go read some Robert Frost or something.
Turns out I'm almost the same age as Ryan White. Remember him?
In the early 1980s, AIDS was known as gay-related immune deficiency, because the disease had first been identified among primarily homosexual communities in New York City and San Francisco. At the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, the disease was thought to be a "homosexual problem" and was largely ignored by policy makers.[20] White's diagnosis demonstrated to many that AIDS was not exclusive to homosexuals. In his advocacy for AIDS research, White himself always rejected any criticism of homosexuality.[37]
White was seen by some as an "innocent victim" of the AIDS epidemic. White and his family strongly rejected the language of "innocent victim" because the phrase was often used to imply that homosexuals with AIDS were "guilty". White's mother told The New York Times, "Ryan always said, 'I'm just like everyone else with AIDS, no matter how I got it.' And he would never have lived as long as he did without the gay community. The people we knew in New York made sure we knew about the latest treatments way before we would have known in Indiana. I hear mothers today say they're not gonna work with no gay community on anything. Well, if it comes to your son's life, you better start changing your heart and your attitude around."
Ryan White led to the Ryan White Care Act.
Set to expire during the Bush years, Congress couldn't agree on changes to access so it was extended under its original provisions until Barack Obama signed an expanded version into law last month. (Notable among the nine nay votes in the House - all Republican - were Ron Paul and Virginia Foxx):
Karen Testerman is trying to re-invent her image along fiscal issues, and Shira let her.
About thirty seconds of Teh Google pulled this up:
Testerman drew sharp criticism for her comments on a New Hampshire Public Radio talk program, comparing gay men and lesbians with "shoplifters and drug addicts." She also played a major role in helping the governor build support among legislators for the new law that requires minor girls to notify at least one parent or guardian before getting an abortion. In an interview Tuesday, Testerman defended her criticism of the gay community. "We all have behaviors that may have an inclination to harm society, and we try to keep them under control," she told The [Nashua, N.H.] Telegraph. "When we have restrictions on those behaviors, then there is less activity. Homosexuality is a method by which there is some threat to society because of the disease it promotes. We cut men's life short because they cause AIDS and become more susceptible to pneumonia. I would raise the concern that homosexuality is not good in that it is a threat to the overall health of the society as a whole."
During Grok-Gate, much attention was focused on the "f"-word. But the rest of the statement is what mattered more to me:
"Yeah you Faggot. [Pause.] That's right I said it and I meant it. You are reprobate. How the people, the Democrats, I think of some of the gray haired ladies and older people from the old party would stand behind you is beyond me. You are a disgrace to yourself to humanity to mankind and to your party.
How much space, really, is there between these two views? And can the NHGOP in good faith encourage the former to run for governor, while condemning the latter?
The other Republican gubernatorial candidate besides Ms. Testerman is Jack Kimball, who is stockpiling ammo.
This the the New Hampshire Republican party of 2009.