Masks? We don’t need your stinkin’ masks
Drawing a mask in the sand
Even someone who has paid a minimal amount of attention the past coupla years can rationally assume that the NHGOP, especially among the elected members of its House caucus, has either surrendered to Covid or, at the very least, they’re enabling it.
So let’s just say they have been infected by Covid Enabling Syndrome. Want proof?
Of course, there’s the outbreak of bills the NHGOPers sponsored last session and this. All of them essentially are a variation on the theme that they want to prevent businesses, schools, colleges day cares, healthcare facilities — basically you can name any kind of place where human beings congregate — from doing what they can to prevent the further spread of Covid.
While most of that, at least so far, is just on their wish lists. As for real life, they are practicing what they preach.
Just mull this over for a sec: At the first gathering of the NH House of Representatives (in the Doubletree Expo Center at the Doubletree in Manch), at least two members who attended were Covid-positive.
Yes folks, there were hundreds of reps there, gathering indoors in a venue where there was a section where masks were required and another where masks were “optional.” And all of the reps not wearing masks were GOPers. Just sayin’.
BTW, all reps were sent at-home Covid tests before the session but were under no obligation to take them or report results.
In fact, for further proof that the anti-mask, anti-vax, pro-Covid wing of the NHGOP has gone off the rails, here’s an interesting tidbit from the Twitter feed of Dover Dem rep Sherry Frost:
“Overheard in the ladies’; one R woman chastising another for wearing a mask: “I should; I took the test and it came up positive.” So we have at least one self-professed, active infection in the @NHHouseofReps #NHPolitics.”
Super-spreader anyone?
“I don’t love it.”
Guv Sununu goes out on a lonely limb in the NHGOP by voicing his opposition to the redistricting plan for congressional districts that’s already passed the House. “We are a very independent state, so you shouldn’t have a district that is all Democrat or all Republican,” the guv added.
“Please maintain a high degree of vigilance as community transmission rates continue to be high across the state. Please monitor yourself for symptoms, and stay home if you’re sick.”
— An email from NH House leadership to reps sent days after it was reported that two Covid-positive members were in attendance at the 1/5-1/6 opening session.
Covid madness, Dem style
Just to show that Covid Enabling Syndrome has not only infected the NHGOP, here’s proof that it has spread to certain locations in the NH Dem party.
For reasons that remain known only to the powers that be at the Manch Dem Committee, an in-person meeting was scheduled by the aforementioned PTB for Saturday 1/15 at the Manchester Public Library. A meeting, BTW, at which MDC chair Alan Raff assures(?), “Masks will be available, and we will conduct the meeting in safe and responsible manner.”
Not “masks required,” but they’ll be “available,” mind you. Which somehow calls into question the claim of a meeting being held “in a safe and responsible manner,” especially considering that AF apparently expected, or at least hoped for, a big turnout: “We need all hands on deck,” he announced.
BTW, AF’s email opened with the greeting, “We hope that you had a relaxing and safe December!” Which apparently means they’re going in a different direction in Jan.
Partying like it’s 2019: Yes folks, that’s Andrew Yang, and his wife Evelyn, getting together for a reunion with fellow failed Dem prez candidate Marianne Williamson, at left. As probably only both candidates’ NH supporters remember, after reading the writing on the wall, MW endorsed AY right before the Iowa caucuses.
MAKING THE ROUNDS
For those of you who prefer your state agencies to give us easy-to-use, nonconfusing acronyms, a bill being sponsored this session is seeking to rename the Department of Environmental Services to the Department of Environmental Protection. Does that mean it will be safe to call the Department of Employment Security the DES without risking confusion?
The entry by Senate Prez Chuck Morse into the NHGOP US Senate primary is a major test to prove that a charismachallenged candidate can indeed win a statewide election in NH.
BTW, Dave Carney — who actually knows his hack from his elbow — actually tried to paint other entrants in the NHGOP’s US Senate primary with the “political hack” label by saying that his guy in the race, Chuck Morse, isn’t one. Not for nothing, but if the guy who’s spent over 20 years in the Senate isn’t the “political hack” in the race, then no one in that race is.
Did Speaker Sherm open up a can of worms with his announcement that he would rule as “nongermane” legislation seeking to eliminate the requirement snuck into the budget last year that women seeking abortions must first get an ultrasound. You know, the one that the guv himself wants to repeal.
If it’s true, as so many of his supporters have claimed, that the now ex-SOS Billy Gardner singlehandedly has ensured that NH’s prez primary remains the first in the nation, then that speaks volumes about the actual tenuousness of that first-in-the-nation status, doesn’t it?
