Impulse Control

These: 



are the direct descendants of these:

I have no doubt that those yelling "lock her up" in 2016 would have been yelling "burn the witch" in Salem in 1692. 

Then along comes Al:

“I’m a veteran that went to Desert Shield, Desert Storm. I’m also a father who sent a son to war, to Iraq, as a Marine Corps helicopter avionics technician. Hillary Clinton to me is the Jane Fonda of the Vietnam,” he said. “She is a disgrace for the lies that she told those mothers about their children that got killed over there in Benghazi. She dropped the ball on over 400 emails requesting back up security. Something’s wrong there.”

“This whole thing disgusts me, Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason,” he added.

This is State Representative Al Baldasaro of Londonderry, currently serving his 5th term in the NH House. 

A duly elected representative calling for the death of a person who has not been charged or convicted of any crime. 

Once again, the NH GOP covers our state with glory. GOP Chair Jennifer Horn issued a weak assed statement urging Al to apologize. If she had any ovaries, she'd be asking him to RESIGN, right away. Does she really want to DEFEND this kind of conduct - because that's what she's going to have to do. 

It's also worth noting that there is no honor code, no rules for legislators on how to behave in public. GOP State Rep. Kyle Tasker sat in the Child and Family Law committee setting up a sexual assignation with a 14 year old girl. He broke both state and federal law - but he didn't break any House rules. 

Al Baldasaro has made many obnoxious and frequently dishonest statements loudly in public. If the NH GOP treats this as another instance of "oh, it's just Al," they'll be as guilty as he is of inciting and condoning violence. They'll also be handing the Democrats the House majority in 2017. 

Tom Alciere, Free State Project Role Model

Remember Tom Alciere?

He was elected to the NH House in the November 2000 election. Days after taking office in 2001, he was forced to resign after this:

Alciere told the Valley News of Lebanon that he loves it when someone kills a police officer: ''It's unfortunate that cops do make it necessary (to kill them) when they're waging a war on drugs, and I view cops as enemy officers.'' He said he is ''too chicken'' to do it himself.

He acknowledges posting his views at Internet chat sites for months, including this 1999 comment: ''Nobody will ever be safe until the last cop is dead.'' 

It seems the doughty Republicans of Nashua weren't paying much attention to whom they voted for:

In 1997, three days after Carl Drega killed two state troopers, a part-time judge and a newspaper editor in Colebrook, Alciere sent a letter saying that except for the editor, Drega was ''an otherwise innocent cop-killer taking out enemy officers in battle.'' 

And there was this:

After the election, Alciere went online and said he was elected by a ''bunch of fat, stupid, ugly old ladies that watch soap operas, play bingo, read tabloids and don't know the metric system.'' 

In 2009 he was arrested for assaulting an 11 year old girl. 

He's back on the radar, because he sent a letter out to GOP candidates warning that Paulbearers would "sink the Republican Party" if they failed to nominate libertarian extremists. Tuck has the story at Miscellany Blue.

Alciere was forced to resign in 2001 when the NH GOP cared about things like violent rhetoric. That was before the Free State Project chose NH as the state they intended to colonize and take over. They flew under the radar for nearly a decade, but their violent rhetoric has begun to ratchet up in the last couple of years. Some are quite vocal these days about their "obligation" to respond to the evil statists with violence, including those who advocate cop killing. 

http://susanthebruce.blogspot.com/2014/01/those-peace-loving-free-staters.html

http://susanthebruce.blogspot.com/2014/06/copblock-backpedaling-furiously.html

http://susanthebruce.blogspot.com/2014/06/big-turd-lands-in-free-state-project.html

It was Free Staters who started the Cop Block website, where Larken Rose (member of the FSP) narrates a video called When Should You Shoot a Cop?

Alciere isn't the only libertarian nutter who venerated Carl Drega. Vin Suprynowiscz, FSP member, wrote a book attempting to make him a sympathetic character. 

Given all that Alciere has espoused, it's no wonder that he served as an inspiration to early Free State Project colonizers, as we see in this 2002 Yahoo Group:

The point I'm trying to make is that if Tom Alciere can get elected, 
anyone can. He found a way to work the system and got himself 
elected, when he would otherwise be unelectable.

Why is he unelectable? He posted several times on Usenet that if a 
person is selling drugs, and the cops try to bust him, then the drug 
dealer has a right to shoot the police in defense of his honest 
trade. He refers to his constituents as "lame-brains who will vote 
for anyone that smiles and waves at them." He also runs a website, 
deporttheborderpatrol.com on which he gleefully contemplates the 
possibility of Mexicans sniping Border Patrol agents from across the 
Rio Grande. He is not a lawyer or well-known businessman, if I 
recall (can't find it on his site right now), he stocks groceries at 
the supermarket.

And 

So I suggest that if you think we need a new party, a porcupine 
party, independence party, or whatever, just STOP...and consider that 
what we really want to do is to get our porcupines elected. Read 
Alciere's story, see how easily he got elected by running AS A 
REPUBLICAN, just BECAUSE he ran as a REPUBLICAN. There are three 
ways to get votes: win people to your side with the issues you 
believe in, run with a party that most voters will DEFAULT to if they 
don't know the issues, or outspend everyone else in a massive PR 
blitz. By infiltrating a major party, we will have the advantage of 
all three--financial support, votes from the "default voters" as well 
as ISSUES we can use to win over the voters.

Are the Free Staters infiltrators of the NH GOP or allies? 

Read Alciere's website. Note how that if he can get elected in New 
Hampshire, certainly a Porcupine can.

Back then the Free Staters marveled that Alciere could get elected. Now they sound just like him. 

A reminder: 


Last year, NH GOP Chair Jennifer Horn was on NHPR's The Exchange, speaking of the Free State Project in the most glowing terms:

Horn said the group’s philosophy is “something that’s right in line with the Republican Party.”   

"For the most part," explained Horn, "the Free State Project has been very much a movement with character that I think has probably been a positive thing in our state.”

When is it okay to shoot a cop, Jennifer? 

Jennifer Horn's Party Loyalty Pledge

WMUR:

New Hampshire Republican Party chair Jennifer Horn has asked Republican candidates for governor, the U.S. House and Senate to sign a pledge that they would support the GOP ticket even if they lose the September primary.

Reaction to the pledge has added a dynamic to the U.S. Senate race especially. Among the candidates, Scott Brown says he will sign the pledge, Jim Rubens said he wasn't sure and Bob Smith hasn't given a response at all.

Concord Monitor

The House Republican Alliance released its annual scorecard this week, ranking each New Hampshire House member based on how strictly he or she adhered to the alliance’s position on issues ranging from taxation to health care.

Area Republican Reps. JR Hoell of Dunbarton and Carol McGuire of Epsom ranked in the top 10, supporting the party position on 118 selected bills 97.6 and 99 percent of the time, respectively. Other area lawmakers who ranked high on the list include Rep. Dan McGuire of Epsom, with a 98.3 percent rank, and Rep. Michael Sylvia of Belmont, who voted the platform 97.9 percent of the time. 

NH GOP says Jeanne Shaheen votes with Obama 99% of the time.

Pass the Popcorn

The candidates are coming! The candidates are coming! The next presidential election is three years away, but already the fringe hopefuls are coming out of the woodwork to visit NH to test the waters. Or cast the maple leaves.  (Note to candidates: careful with maple syrup. Ask Rick Perry.) Or maybe just to fatten their PAC funds. In any case, it’s time to make a fresh batch of popcorn and settle in to take a look at the first round of  hopefuls who have no chance of reaching the White House.

Former Florida Congressman Allen West will be the keynote speaker at the Nashua Republican Committee’s annual “Steak Out” fundraiser in August. West is a big favorite of the Tea Party crowd. West is indeed a colorful character, so much so that he lost his GOP seat in Florida, of all places, to a Democrat. These days, he’s a paid commenter at Fox News. He recently told Sean Hannity that we should elect someone who has been “called” to be president. Voices in his head? God? Wrong number? Stay tuned.

 In the wake of President Obama’s remarks about racism in the US, West was quick to say he’d never experienced any such thing as a boy in inner city Atlanta, because HIS parents brought him up to be respectful. His respectful nature fails when it comes to women. In 2011 he called colleague Debbie Wasserman Schultz, “despicable, vile, and not a lady.” Before being elected to Congress, West was a monthly contributing writer to a biker magazine that regularly featured misogynistic material, including one article asking readers to imagine having sex with the aforementioned Congresswoman. Other pieces referred to women as “oral relief stations.” If Allen West were coming toward my car, I would lock the doors post haste.

West was forced to retire from the Army after he admitted to watching his men beat an Iraqi policeman that West suspected of planning an ambush. West fired a gun near the man’s head to scare him into divulging the details of the alleged ambush. There weren’t any. There was no plot, as all investigations revealed, despite West’s claims that his actions saved lives. Far from being repentant, he campaigned on being proud of his actions. In some circles, torture and detainee abuse is something to be proud of, along with Islamophobia.

That leads us to noted Islamophobe, Congressman Peter King of NY, who will be speaking to the Carroll County Republicans in August, and the Strafford County GOP in September. King is considering a run for president because he wants to push a national dialogue about the need for a more robust national security. Given that we are currently shoveling 58% of our federal discretionary budget at the Dept. of Defense, one wonders how much more robusticity we can afford. Rep. King was the Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. The Dept. of Homeland Security is one of two cabinet level federal agencies that are unable to pass an audit. The other is the Pentagon.  

King was quite annoyed with Senator Aqua Buddha’s recent filibuster on drone strikes, calling it a “trivial and unimportant debate.” King also recently called for the prosecution of journalists who report on classified information. He doesn’t seem to think that we have the right to know about the US surveillance programs that came to light thanks to Edward Snowden. King would like to make sure that you don’t sully your pretty little head with any knowledge of what kind of things the government is up to in your name.

Tea Partier Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is coming to headline a NH GOP fundraiser in late August. He’s also going to be the keynote speaker at a Florida Tea Party event hosted by the Koch Bros. funded group Americans for Prosperity.

Cruz was elected to the Senate last year. This is the first time he’s held office. Cruz was born in Canada to a father who was a Cuban citizen and an American mother. There are some questions as to whether he’s eligible to be president on those grounds. The rest of us have other questions about his eligibility.

Cruz is a proponent of the Tea Party/John Bircher tin foil hat brigade on the issue of Agenda 21. Cruz thinks it’s a plot by George Soros who is leading the UN to eliminate golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads. Senator Cruz apparently slumbered through 2008, and thinks that turning the Social Security Fund over to Wall Street is a good idea. He also believes that Sharia law is an “enormous problem” in the United States, despite a lack of any evidence that this is so. It’s GOP standard issue Islamophobia.

Cruz is definitely a big bagful of nuts. He recently said that marriage equality would lead to hate speech laws and the imprisonment of pastors who support traditional marriage. Again, there’s no evidence that any group is moving toward any such thing – but a lack of fact or evidence doesn’t seem to deter the folks on the far right.

NH GOP Chair Jennifer Horn calls Cruz, “one of the most principled and exciting new leaders in the Republican Party.” This is the same Jennifer Horn who has also said that the philosophy of the Free State Project “is something that’s right in line with the Republican Party.” The Free State Project is a group of libertarian anarcho-capitalists moving to NH with the goal of taking over the state, dismantling state government, and threatening to secede. They’re hoping to move 20,000 of their fellow Rand worshippers to NH in time to swing the 2016 election. As people in some towns and counties (notably Carroll, Strafford, and Belknap) can attest, they’re already doing some very real damage. In a video of a panel discussion of Free State office holders, Rep. Mark Warden said, “The Republican Party asked Carol McGuire (also of the FSP) to recruit more FSP candidates.”

The NH GOP has obviously learned nothing from their last round of electoral defeats, and has every intention of continuing to merge with the fringiest of the fringe. This first round of presidential wannabes are straight from the Mad Hatter’s table.

Pass the popcorn. 


© 2013 sbruce
published as a bi-weekly column in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper