Trickle Down Hate

The United States has always had a problem with racism. We’ve never been willing to tackle it head on, preferring to sweep it under the carpet and pretend that passing a law or two and paying annual homage to Dr. Martin Luther King is enough to take care of it.

Then along came Obama. In 2004, after three terms in the Illinois Senate, Obama ran for US Senate. He delivered a well received speech to the Democratic National Convention that same year.  In the interest of full disclosure, I was in Chicago on business that year, and heard him speak at a dinner I attended. He gave a fine speech – it was easy to see why there was so much buzz around him.

That was the year that birtherism was born. It’s been traced back to perennial candidate (and something of a vexatious litigant) Andy Martin, who has run for office in a number of states, including New Hampshire. Martin began the rumors about Obama – that he wasn’t born in the US, that he was a Muslim, and so on. Those rumors persisted over the years, but had nearly died down when along came Donald Trump who demanded to see Obama’s “long form” birth certificate in 2011, and birtherism kicked into high gear.

President Obama took it all in stride. He even made jokes about it. (He didn’t sit around in his underpants tweeting in a vituperative frenzy.) The Trump birtherism spread and deepened, and suddenly it was okay to be openly racist in public again, in a way that had been unacceptable since the sixties. The Trump administration has continually exacerbated that open racism.

We’ve seen violence against people of color, violence and bullying against children – including children right here in New Hampshire. The wall has served as fuel for a national tiki torch sized outpouring of racist outrage. Every day, Trump sends out malevolent rage tweets about caravans, invasions, and a crisis at the border. The reports from the border don’t bear any of this out. There is no crisis. Trump spent last weekend playing golf, which illustrates how serious this crisis is.


Given the rise in racist rhetoric, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to see it mirrored in the NH legislature. This year there are two anti-immigrant bills, one in the House and one in the Senate. House bill 232 requires state and local governments to comply with federal detainer requests and prohibits state and local government entities from adopting policies that prohibit, restrict, or discourage the enforcement of federal immigration law. (Republicans love local control….except that they really don’t.) This is an unpleasant bit of work, called the “anti-sanctuary act,” and sponsored by a variety of tea partiers and Free Staters.

HB 232 pales in comparison to Senate bill 317, which bills itself as “an act prohibiting sanctuary locations in New Hampshire.” From the statement of intent…”is necessary to protect our country from foreign and domestic terrorism, diminished prosperity caused by artificially low wages paid to those present in the United States in violation of our immigration laws, a disregard of the rule of law, the presence of foreign criminals, foreign persons participating in our elections, and strained local and state finances caused by a disproportionate participation of foreign welfare recipients…”

This is a load of codswallop. Domestic terrorism in this country is perpetuated by angry white men. Foreign terrorists aren’t behind mass shootings. The pinkos at the CATO institute found in 2018 that you were more likely to die from an animal attack than be killed by a foreign terrorist. There are no foreign persons participating in NH elections. That is a nasty bit of xenophobia aimed at perpetuating the GOP myth of voter fraud. The Republicans need to keep that myth alive, because it’s how they’ll continue to chip away at voting rights. As for foreign welfare recipients? More bunk. Undocumented people don’t have the documents needed to receive public assistance.

New Hampshire Republicans eliminated the state minimum wage, and have resisted every attempt to put one into place. Yet here they are, mouthing concerns about artificially low wages? These hypocrites have turned their backs on the plight of low wage workers for decades. 

Please read SB 317, and take notice of the sponsors. There is only one from Carroll County, State Senator Jeb Bradley. Jeb Bradley has long enjoyed an undeserved reputation as a moderate. These days, he’s a political windsock, flapping in the racist breeze generated by what the Republican Party has become in the era of Trump. Wealthy old white men like Senator Jeb don’t actually march with tiki torches. They write the inflammatory rhetoric that ratchets up the kind of anger that fuels the mob mentality and leads to violence.

No matter how you feel about the wall, you should be ashamed that our state senator put his name on this dishonest and shockingly xenophobic piece of legislation. 

Published as an op-ed in the February 8, 2019 edition of the Conway Daily Sun Newspaper 

It Is Who We Are

(Rob Rogers cartoon)



 As I watch the horrifying human rights violation unfolding in my country, where children are being taken from their parents and sent to various locations around the country, I keep hearing, “This is not who we are.” That, unfortunately, isn’t true. It’s exactly who we are. It is who we’ve always been. 

A number of our founders owned slaves, and they wrote a founding document that counted those slaves as three-fifths of a person. From the very beginning, the US was okay with white people owning non-white people. The plantation system allowed those white owners to abuse the non-white slaves.  Eventually slavery ended, but the long-term effects continue to resonate in this country where black men are shot by police, without reprisal. 

Beginning in the late 1800’s Indigenous American children were forcibly taken from their parents and sent to boarding schools where they were given European style haircuts, European style names, and were forbidden to speak their native languages. There are many documented cases of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse that took place in those schools. Children were taken from their families and communities and tortured. Sound familiar?

In June of 1954, the US began what was charmingly referred to as “Operation Wetback.” This resulted in the arrests of over 100,000 people in a two month period, and as many as a million were affected during the life of the program.

We’ve always had a tortured relationship with Mexico. The US has interfered mightily in the political affairs of South America. We have always relied on undocumented workers to do the work we don’t want to do ourselves. Undocumented workers built Trump’s hotels. Undocumented workers clean our houses, care for our children, mow our lawns, and work in our meat packing factories, our hotels, our farms, and vineyards. And despite all that, we have nothing but contempt for these people who do all this work at considerably lower wages than white people would command.

The mythology sprung up that undocumented workers are taking jobs away from “real” Americans. (Real = white.) There hasn’t been a flood of white workers moving to California to pick lettuce. White Americans aren’t lining up at hotels to scrub bathrooms. The myth was useful though, because it allowed for the perpetuation of anger against all brown people. That anger simmered for decades, but reached full boil when Barack Obama was elected president. The ideological divide also became an ugly racial divide, which allowed the far right to blame Obama for inciting their racism.

For years we heard that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States, he was born in Kenya. One of the loudest, crudest proponents of that belief is now the president of the United States. Trump has always been a racist. In the 1970’s, Trump the landlord fought against complying with the Fair Housing Act. He took out ads urging the death penalty for the black and Latino teenagers who became known as the Central Park Five, who were accused of raping a white women. A decade after they’d been exonerated by DNA evidence, Trump continued to insist they were guilty. 

Trump began his run for the presidency calling Mexicans criminals and rapists. He’s surrounded himself with white nationalists like advisor Stephen Miller, the architect of family separation at the border. Like Jeff Sessions, career racist.

That has led us to this place, where we have children being kidnapped by the US government at the border. We’ve seen footage of boys in repurposed Walmarts. What we haven’t seen is footage of wherever it is they take the girls and the babies. We don’t see where they take the girls and the babies, because that doesn’t fit in with the propaganda. Trump and Sessions talk about MS-13 all the time, to create the illusion that every brown person who crosses the border to escape from the hell their own country has become is a burgeoning gang member and criminal. Even the most hardened member of the Trump cult would have a hard time selling that story over footage of toddlers crying for their mothers. 

A nation that proudly declares itself Christian is allowing this to happen. A party that pretends to be pro-life is encouraging the torture of children.

The rest of the world is watching us in horror. The United States, is engaging in a massive human rights violation and no one dares step in because we have a lot of nuclear weapons, and our president is an angry, unpredictable toddler who lacks impulse control. The country that liberated concentration camps in WWII is now building them, right here at home.

It’s been an interesting experiment, the United States. We had a lot of lofty goals. Could we rise above now, and give voice to our what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature? I wish I thought we would. Racism has broken us. It is who we are. It is who we’ve always been. 

published as an op-ed in the June 22 edition of the Conway Daily Sun 

Empire in Decline

This isn’t what I set out to write. It isn’t what I originally wrote.

But - the world as we know it has just changed a great deal, and I feel a duty to write about that. 

This election is about anger. The anger is real. I believe it is misplaced, but that really doesn’t matter now. The angry people have spoken, and the rest of the nation and the rest of the world will be living with the consequences for a long time to come.

Some social media snapshots from friends around the world:

From the UK: “World leaders are in shock. Apparently, Marine LePen is the only politician outside the US who has congratulated Trump, which is unprecedented.”

From Australia: “Come on, it's pretty funny that the USA has elected a clown, an actual one with makeup and wig, to govern. If you don't laugh you will go mad.”

From the UK: “Welcome to the Brexit Club, America.”

From Panama: “On several levels, it's the end of an era for the USA. Geopolitics and economics are generally forces for continuity, but in case you haven't noticed, the United States is not the power it was. Other countries' leaders and people who shift money to and fro around the world surely notice.”

From Australia:

“So it's looking like Donald Trump will be the president of the USA. What does that say about a political system that endorses a candidate like this lunatic? It is ok to be a bully? It's perfectly fine to be a misogynist? To be racist? To be a billionaire and not pay any tax? It's no problem at all to be a liar? It's ok to deceive people with conspiracy theories and manipulate opinions with empty statements that cannot be substantiated? To my American friends who I know did not vote for Trump. I'm so very sorry.”

Sorry, world. The US has just officially become a rogue nation.

The recriminations have begun. The Clinton supporters are blaming the third party voters. The third party voters are (in some cases) blaming the DNC for misreading the political climate. The Democratic Party has moved so far to the right since 2000, that they’re no longer the friend of the working stiff, in a year when it was terribly important to be that friend.

Republicans are not friends of the working class, either – they just have better PR. People with stagnant incomes hear “tax cuts” and they think that will mean more money for them. They do not understand that those cuts will be for the wealthy. People heard Trump talk about bringing manufacturing jobs back to this country. That was a cruel message to people who badly need good paying jobs. Manufacturing is never coming back. Trump’s own products are manufactured overseas. We’re a nation and a world on the verge of big economic changes, and we’ve chosen an ill-informed carnival barker to lead us into the future.

As a nation, we’ve never gotten past racism. We tried a few times, but it’s not over. As a nation, we have never confronted our misogyny. We just elected a guy who has said awful things about women, and admitted to assaulting them. A man who says we need to build a wall to keep out Mexicans. He mocked a reporter with disabilities. He was cheered on by angry people who applauded him for “telling it like it is.”

That’s what we do here. When the economy is lousy for us, when we are fearful for our future, we blame THOSE PEOPLE. Whoever they are. The politics of hate, anger, and fear have won the day. What do we tell our girl children about what just happened here?

The media deserves a great deal of blame for this – but not the kind that we began to see at the end of Trump’s campaign. Men showing up at Trump events with t-shirts suggesting that lynching reporters was a good idea isn’t funny. Somewhere along the way the second amendment has become the only one that matters to a large segment of the population.

Nowhere is that truer than NH, where the politics of guns and pledges have won the day. NH has just chosen another Sununu to govern our state. Jumping on the Trump train worked for him. We can now look forward to 2 years of businessman Chris Sununu telling us why it’s a mistake to invest in our own state. He’ll be aided and abetted by the great visionaries of our legislature, whose idea of the future is firmly planted in 1952. 

Guns aren’t going to fix our roads and bridges – and neither is our new state government. Instead, the demonizing of the poor is likely to be ramped up, along with MOAR GUNZ, less access to health care, business tax cuts, MOAR GUNZ, right to work, eliminating bodily autonomy for women, and plenty of other stupid that has yet to reveal itself.

As I write this, the US Senate race between Kelly Ayotte and Maggie Hassan is still undecided. Congresswoman Ann Kuster kept her seat, despite a last minute surge of support for challenger Jim Lawrence. Carol Shea-Porter was reelected in the first district, despite the best efforts of the independent candidate. He might have swayed the election to Guinta, had it not been for the rats. That was just a bridge too far (and too bizarre) for many people. New Hampshire did manage to fend off some of the damage that was done in the rest of the country.

There are some bright spots in the darkness. In Las Cruces, NM, a young woman I met at a conference in 2012 was just elected to her state legislature. Angelica Rubio describes her campaign as being “built on a foundation of community and inclusion, speaking to values that unite us all.”

We need more of this.

Published as an op-ed in the November 11 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

Wanted: Evangelical UU's

Late in September, I was the guest speaker at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Tamworth. I called on my fellow UU’s to fight back against the inflammatory racist and xenophobic rhetoric that are a part of our current national dialogue. Since the shootings in San Bernardino, the hate speech is ratcheting up – and that comes with consequences. This week a sixth grade girl in NY City was beaten up by a bunch of boys who hit her and tried to pull off her hijab while calling her, “Isis.”

A friend in the congregation suggested I publish my sermon as a column. With some adaptation, this is what I said on September 27. At a time when we hear so much angry religious rhetoric perhaps we can all try to be more UU.

After the accident last year, I spent two months in the hospital. I met women who worked there, women from all over the world. Many came here as refugees. There were women from Haiti, who told stories of political unrest and having to move their families to safety. There were women who were bringing up their grandchildren because their children had become addicts. They bathed me and cared for my broken body. They were so kind to me. We humans are capable of such kindness and compassion.

For months I was in an isolated bubble where I didn’t pay that much attention to what was going on in the world. It was my job to heal. It was my job to learn how to stand, and how to walk. As the months went by, little by little I moved back into the world. Then I went back to work, and I was immersed in reality again.

And then along came Donald Trump. He was something of a breaking point.

Racism, bigotry, homophobia, misogyny; all of these things are increasingly tolerated by our society. Throw in some science denial and rewriting of history, and this is a scary time. In an effort to show leadership skills, presidential candidates are trying to outdo one another with racist rhetoric or loathing for the poor. 

It’s time to stop tacitly accepting this. UU’s have a long history of action when it comes to all social justice issues. We also have a reputation for being quiet and relatively unobtrusive in our approach.

We don’t cause scenes or make a mess. We aren’t a big visible presence on the word stage. We don’t have mega churches or a values voter summit, like the Christian right does.

We ought to. Our values include justice, compassion, and love. Inclusion and not exclusion.  At a time where there is so much hate, violence, and ugly rhetoric, it’s time for us to vocalize and apply our UU principles loudly, proudly, and zealously.

As UU’s we are not bound by scripture or dogma. We have our seven principles, the first being our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We need to try hard to love our neighbors, even the most difficult and bigoted. Love them loudly and proudly. When hate comes to town, we must counter it in the way that Dr. King suggested: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Our planet is suffering. There is no part of it that isn’t being affected by climate change. Here in the US a particularly virulent form of denial exists, the kind where non-scientists deny science. We need to get out there and preach about that interdependent web. We can’t live without our planet.

Our principles call for justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. That, too, is hard to argue with, but it is not the way that human interaction works these days. The right of conscience. The goal of world community, with peace, liberty, and justice for all. These aren’t feel good phrases. These are values, and they are values that need to be spread around with evangelical zeal.

There are so many angry people in our country, our state, and in our municipalities. You probably have one shouty uncle who rants on your Facebook page or at holiday dinners. You know, the one who thinks the president is a homosexual Muslim communist from Kenya.

It’s easy to ignore the angry. You can unfriend Uncle Al on Facebook. You can’t do is argue with them and have any kind of a reasonable discussion. What we can do is be kind to them. Talk to them – and really listen. Try to understand their fears. It’s harder to hate people when you’re talking to them face to face.

I realize this all sounds kind of humorous, especially coming from me. I am deadly serious. We’re in a mess, people, and love is the only way out.

We UU’s are uniquely qualified to take a greater role. Some of the greatest names in our nation’s history were UUs – names like Emerson, Thoreau, Vonnegut, Seeger, Anthony, Stone, Adams, Cummings, Bradbury, Darwin, and Nightingale. UU’s have been visionaries and activists. We still are. We’re just modest about it. I am suggesting that we need to speak up when there is injustice and hateful rhetoric on the national, state, and local level.

We need to get zealous. We need to become fundamentalist Unitarian Universalists, ready to preach the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Ready to preach about loving our planet. Wendell Berry said, “Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”

People, the planet, equality and justice. These are the biggest things we face. They are all things we UUs have been talking about for years. Who better to lead the way in our communities than us?

We’ve been working quietly in the background for a long time. What’s next will make us uncomfortable – and that is true whether we do anything or not. We’re going to be just as uncomfortable if we stay in the background, so we might as well make some noise.

Unitarian Universalist 7 Principles:

1. The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

2. Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

4. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

5. The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all;

7. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

This was published as an op-ed in the December 11 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

He's Lost His Marples

Dick Marple (pictured above) is a NH State Representative from Hooksett. He's well known for taking some peculiar positions on issues - like his 2008 opinion that a woman can't legally be elected president.

The NH legislature has an internal email system that is supposed to be used for doing The People's business - official communications. Far too often, it's used to spread offensive communiques. ( Like this one: Vagina's and Children First) 

Representative Marple was moved by the events in Paris to send this out to all of his fellow representatives:

Incoherent?  ✔

Offensive? ✔ 

Racist? ✔

It's also a lot of bunkum. Marple links to a YouTube video that is supposed to fuel the anger of his fellow white American  incoherents, narrated, curiously by a fellow with a British accent. The video

is available here: https://youtu.be/0R81h6rWgtU

The video is completely debunked by SNOPES here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/4wives.asp

This man is an elected representative from the state of NH. He's using the NH House internal email system (paid for by NH taxpayers) to spread fear, hate, and xenophobia. 

Diaper heads. That's what an adult man is sending out as a message to his colleagues. 

The NH GOP covers our state with glory once again. 

Tuck over at Miscellany Blue and I attended the same choir practice yesterday. 

You Break It, You Own It

An immigrant is a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country. They migrate and settle.

A refugee is forced out of their country to escape violence, persecution, war, or natural disaster.

These words mean very different things. Since the flood of child refugees knocking on the US door began, the word “immigrant” is being used instead of the proper term, which would be refugee. It’s often preceded by the word “illegal.” The average age of these children is eleven.

The same people who are desperate to force white women to serve as involuntary incubators because they venerate “life” so much are the same crew who are now shrieking and name calling about these children. Apparently the lives of imaginary white fetuses are far more important than the lives of brown children fleeing violence, traffickers, and rape.

The reporting on this topic is dreadful. The response is dreadful. The commentary from the far right fringe is dreadful. What these children have experienced already is worse than anything the US xenophobes could possibly say.

Last week I spoke with Jen Smyers of Church World Service. CWS is a group of religious denominations that came together to help refugees after World War II. This is their mission. Jen told stories about the violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras – the countries these children are fleeing. They aren’t leaving their families by choice. Their families are sending them away in order to save their lives. Their families have been targeted for violence, and the governments of their countries are either unable or unwilling to protect them. The average age of these children is 11.

Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world. Since the military coup in 2009 the violence has gotten worse. The coup was brought about by military forces that trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia, where we’ve been training the future despots and dictators for Latin America since 1946. The US supported the 2009 coup, and we continue to send military aid to Honduras, even though they’re murdering and terrorizing their citizens. In the 1980’s in Guatemala, the US financed counterinsurgency campaigns with forces trained at the School of the Americas. Ronald Reagan supported the regime of Rios Montt, claiming he got a “bum rap” for his massacres of indigenous populations. Reagan also interfered in the civil war in El Salvador, providing exorbitant military aid to the nationalists, who used death squads to make people disappear. When Salvadorans attempted to flee to the US, we sent them back. Many of them were never seen again.

In short, we helped create this mess. Remember what Colin Powell told President Bush about Iraq, “you break it, you buy it?” We’ve never applied that standard to US interference in Central America. Now we have angry white people yelling at buses full of children in California. We have Rick Perry sending the Texas National Guard to the border. That should be a big help in dealing with traumatized children. And in NH, we recently had a group of yahoos on a highway overpass in Rochester, bellowing about illegal aliens.

They were headed up by Jerry DeLemus of Rochester, who most recently covered himself with glory out at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, where he defended the fraudulent claims of Cliven Bundy, welfare rancher. It was Jerry DeLemus who sent Jared and Amanda Miller away from the Bundy Ranch. After leaving, they headed for Las Vegas, where they killed 2 police officers and a civilian. DeLemus said he sensed something wrong with them, but naturally he didn’t bother to report that to law enforcement, seein’ as how he and the boys had their guns trained on the legal authorities.

DeLemus claims to be a Christian, and his wife wears a cross large enough to ward off even the most persistent vampires. Susan DeLemus distinguished herself while serving in the legislature by bellowing at an assistant AG during a ballot law hearing on whether Obama should be on the NH ballot. Mrs. DeLemus is a birther and one assumes that so is Mr. DeLemus. They’re both opposed to a woman’s right to medical privacy and bodily autonomy. Yet, there he was, on an overpass with Billy Baer, who most recently achieved renown for engineering his own “on camera” arrest over a book his daughter was reading at school. The daughter was at this protest. Apparently she was too delicate a flower to learn about date rape, but hardy enough for white supremacy.

Jason Margolis, writing about this for PRI, mentioned a protestor named Desiree Tumas. She believes that the gubmint is secretly bringing in “illegals” to the US and placing them in NH. The far right fringe thinks that Obama is bringing the children here to vote Democrat. The average age of the children is 11. Tumas also bemoaned the idea of bringing in children when “we can’t take care of the homeless people we have.” The rest of the year homeless folks are filthy moochers, but suddenly, Ms. Tumas and her ilk are feeling all warm and fuzzy toward them. I’m certain that warmth has a very short half-life.

The most disturbing aspect of the PRI story was the quote from a 12 year old that has already assimilated the lessons she has been taught. She told the reporter that these children (many younger than she is) should be sent back because otherwise little boys and girls in NH will be kidnapped or killed because of “the illegals.” The average age of these children is 11.

These people aren’t brave enough to call themselves white supremacists. Just as well. They have no reason to feel superior. Teaching intolerance, cruelty, and hatred for children is unfathomable.

In NY Harbor, the Statue of Liberty hangs her head in shame. 

© sbruce 2014

Published as a biweekly column in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

NH Republican Rants about "Those People"

A former Republican state representative stopped by my blog to comment on this column that I wrote for the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.  Steven J. Connolly writes for the septic tank  known as NH Insider.  He defends the xenophobic remarks made by Pete Silva, who ran against Latha Mangipudi in a special election for a vacant NH House seat in Nashua. I suspect those remarks cost Silva the election. The whole exchange between us is worth reading. (you can read them on the link above)

This is the most unpalatable of his comments:

"Since you seem to have the inside track, perhaps you could share it with me." 
I do have the inside track. Having served two terms in the NH House myself and being active in NH politics since 1987. 
In terms of your 'endorsements' you might not have been holding a sign, but you've endorsed Rep. Latha Mangipudi or at least you were there in principle. 
Have you been to India Ms. Bruce? This is a country that is like a train wreck. This is a country that refuses to help itself. And other than bringing their cultures, their values and their ideas to the U.S. what do these individuals from India bring to New Hampshire and the NH House? 
Former Rep. Silva's comment about "New Delihi" is likely accurate. Instead of assimilating to values that have existed since the 1700s these people have chosen to remake and rebrand NH into how THEY want it. Including using economic models, values and ideas that fail and continue to fail in their own countries. 
Socialism is an economic model that has continually demonstrate that it can't work over time. Yet it is one that yourself and other continue to espouse and promote and an a direction that will tax and spend New Hampshire into oblivion. 

This is just ugliness. Rep. Mangipudi is a US citizen, which makes her one of us. She's one of the many flavors of the melting pot that is the United States. 

After Connolly came by to leave that fetid offering in my comment section, I did some research on Latha Mangipudi. She's lived in Nashua since 1989. Her kids went to Nashua public schools. When she came to the US she had a Masters degree in Speech Language Pathology and Audiology. She has worked toward a PhD in Behavior Neuro-Sciences at BU. She's interested in education, health and human services, and encouraging community involvement. I've never met Rep. Mangipudi, but she sounds like an asset to her community and to our state. 

It's also worth pointing out how quickly we forget. At one time, people with surnames like Connolly were regarded as THOSE PEOPLE. 

PS:
Hey Steven Connolly what about this guy? You paleocons were eager to trot out Marion Noronha the immigrant from India who built his whole business all by himself with no gummint help....well, except for the help he got. Gonna tell him to go back to New Delhi? What about Bobby Jindal?

Overt Racism and Other Ugliness Fail in Nashua's Ward 8

They tried. In Nashua's Ward 8 special NH House election, the Republicans tried everything they could to get that seat back for former House Majority Leader Pete Silva. Pete himself tried, too. It turns out that the voters of Ward 8 weren't impressed with overt racism. Silva commented that it looked like "New Delhi" outside the polls on the day of the primary. That "they'd be coming out of the woodwork" to vote for his opponent, Latha Mangipudi. Silva not only refused to apologize, he ramped it up, decrying "political correctness." 

Last week I wrote:

Silva's refusal to apologize was stupid. By refusing, he's kept this story alive far longer than it needed to be. Unless he thinks he's going to win BECAUSE of those comments, the refusal to apologize is a big tactical error. Someday the NH GOP is going to want the immigrant community's votes. This isn't the way to get 'em. 

I wasn't wrong. 

Pete Silva lost.  And so did the Republican Party, BECAUSE they tried everything. The racist commentary wasn't all they tried.

Somegopone put out ugly fliers: Nashua Patch.

Racism and fliers weren't all though. From the Nashua Telegraph:

A few rumblings of controversy were heard on Election Day at Ward 8, when at least two voters took issue with being videotaped inside the polling place at Bicentennial Elementary School.

Karen Thoman, who tended a small video camera mounted on a tabletop tripod behind where the ballot clerks were seated, said, “One called me a Nazi.”

It’s all perfectly legal and permissible, Thoman said, producing paperwork as confirmation. “The only restriction is I don’t record children. That’s easy, because there’s no school today,” she said.

Anderson, the ward moderator, said Thoman had the OK because she got written permission from city clerk Paul Bergeron, who ran it by state officials early Tuesday.

Outside the school, GOP city committee member Ed Stebbins indicated the video camera idea was supported by the committee, but Thoman said she wasn’t part of an organized initiative.

“I’m not working for anyone; it’s just a project I wanted to do on my own,” said Thoman, who is currently the secretary of the GOP city committee.

She said the only other person involved was her husband, who spelled her from time to time. Her reason for recording voters, Thoman said, was “to see the process, that’s all.”

Apparently the Republicans decided to attempt to intimidate the brown skinned voters of Ward 8 with a video camera. Who were the "state officials" that approved this nasty bit of business? If anyone thinks that Thoman was doing this on her own, I've got a bridge in New Delhi for sale.