Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

One of the things I love about NH–I get stuff I want without spending too darn much. Just for example, here’s part of the menu of Manchester’s Goldenrod Restaurant and Drive-In.

And, just for example, my blogfriend Critt drove all the way up from Boston to Nashua last Thursday night. He wanted to see Howard Dean. He was hoping his dream for our nation’s political future could maybe come true. And he too was not disappointed in New Hampshire. Just a short quote from his first-person account of meeting Howard Dean at a NH “Meetup.”

I chose to listen well, rather than attempt to take detailed notes. I’m a blogger, thus I’ll leave voice transcription processing to the pros. Surely a full transcript will become available? But, I will tell you something now – some things I learned and felt from tonight’s meeting.

It is time for us to stop temporizing and compromising.

We are tired of being divided by race.
We are tired of being divided by income.
We are tired of being divided by gender.
We are tired of being divided by sexual orientation.
We are tired of being divided.

Howard Dean’s Call to Action is about giving you, giving me, a reason to stand up for what we believe in….Howard Dean is resolute. And, you know what? 

So am I.

Go, resolute Critt! Go, Howard Dean!

And (woo hoo!) I am tired but resolute too!

Goldenrod Restaurant and Drive-in
1681 Candia Road
Manchester, NH
Exit 6 (Hanover St.) from Rte I-93
603-623-9469

Picnic tables outside. Lots of pickup trucks. The menu includes fried smelt, chicken croquettes, grape nut ice cream. If you sit inside, there is a smoking section.

Yes! Yes! In a brand-new world where people confess to the most embarrassing stuff–yes! I confess! I love the Goldenrod.

I love the fried shrimp and belly-clam plate, half and half, with melted butter, red spicy sauce, tartar sauce, salllllty french fries. . I love sitting here with so many NH people, enjoying ourselves, eating yummy high-calorie foods for not much money.

Does God exist? Brilliant philosophers argue either side, and I can’t understand a word they say. My two arguments for a loving God are simple, based on food:

1. Strawberry-rhubarb pie is possible only because strawberries and rhubarb come in season together.
2. The Goldenrod Restaurant and Drive-in in Manchester, NH still exists.

(John Fladd at HippoPress.com also gives Goldenrod a super-top rating.)

There’s something about the landscape you grew up in. The trees are just the right color, in every season. The mountains have just the right shape. And everyone’s accent is so familiar, so welcome.

The landscape I grew up in is New Hampshire. And New Hampshire always seems just right to me–not just the postcard pretties, the mountains and lakes, but all of it. Manchester’s Elm Street, once the world’s broadest main street. The roadside fruitstands. The bustling strip malls. The gold-domed State Capitol. So many small red-brick towns with few stores left. Families who go for a walk to get ice cream cones and stand around swatting at each other’s mosquitoes.

So, if you wondered why I’m adding a new “New Hampshire” section to my weblog–that’s why!

Last night, a few tons of granite fell down a NH mountainside, injuring nobody, landing on more tons of granite that fell before it.

But this new heap of granite used to be special. It was NH’s landmark stone profile, our “Old Man of the Mountain.”

Daniel Webster made speeches about it. It was the subject of thousands of amateur sketches and watercolors before anybody invented the camera. Every NH kid was dutifully taken to admire the craggy stone face. After you looked at the face for a while, you looked at the upside-down version reflected in Profile Lake. Then you and your folks could all go drink local birch beer and hike in the Flume.

I grew up in NH, and though I don’t live there now I took my own two daughters to see the Old Man. Now I’m having a lonely feeling inside, thinking of generations stretching ahead who won’t see what I saw, what Daniel Webster saw.

I also grew up enjoying clean air and clean water, a strong Bill of Rights, and a sense of being part of one human family. There wasn’t a darn thing I could have done to save the Old Man, but I’m going to keep working to pass that other stuff along.

Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe, jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.

Daniel Webster (1782-1852) — also known as “Black Dan”; “Defender of the Constitution”; “Great Expounder of the Constitution”

My great-grandfather Patrick Devine started work as a carpenter when he was 8. Patrick moved on from making good solid Irish coffins to undertaking–then used the skills he’d acquired shipping coffins “home” to build up a small but prosperous travel business. As a little girl, I’d visit my great-uncle Joe who still ran the family business and dream of traveling as I read his brochures. He never invited me to the other half of his building, but he kept a big black hat next to the door, and would put it on when he left the travel office.

My grandfather, all six-foot-three-inches of him, went to Harvard instead–class of 1912, followed by law school. I don’t know what they did to him there–apparently the Irish boys, like the Jewish boys, had a dorm of their own so the “real” Harvard boys didn’t have to spend time with them–but he came out a red-hot Democrat and liberal. He shocked our home town (Manchester, NH) by refusing to write restrictive housing deeds that would keep Jewish families from living in certain neighborhoods. He broke with precedent by setting up his first law firm with a Jewish partner. (I might add his Jewish partner was also breaking local precedent setting up to do business with my grandfather.) And he drummed the following mantra into his children and grandchildren:

“An Irishman with one shirt is Democrat. An Irishman with two shirts is a Republican. By god, I don’t want any of those two-shirt Irishmen in my family!

My grandfather was proud of his many shirts–but to him, that wasn’t the point of politics. Politics was about people getting together, figuring out what a just society would look like, and working together to build one.

So, my grandfather is one of the reasons why you see Dean for President buttons all over my blog. And he is one of the reasons why, tonight, I am going to go to the Dean2004 meetup in Boston–even though I don’t like to drive in Boston, I don’t know anybody who will be there, and I’m feeling very nervous about it.

I’d hate to imagine my peaceful, affection-filled life has “unmanned” me to the point I can’t do something scary. My grandfather, who served with great honor in World War I, used to wake the whole household, years later, as in his dreams he yelled at the Army mules to get those xx&*!! guns up out of the mud. So this is a very small thing I’m planning to do. Still, I’d love to have company if you can join me.

Post-Meetup-Update: I went to the April Dean2004 meetup alone and had such a great time! I am now enthusiastically working with so many of the new people I met there to help elect Dean in 2004. Come to the next meetup!

• Dean2004 meetup
• (First Wednesday of every month)

Blocking Democrats’ phones on election day with repeated hang-up calls–an Idaho phone bank was paid thousands of dollars to do just that. NH Republicans admit paying $15,600 to the firm that set up these calls. Phone foolery is just a misdemeanor, but interfering with elections is a felony. So, is any NH Republican in trouble?

No.

The NH GOP claimed the only guilty party was GOPMarketplace.com. Did state or federal agencies follow up?

No.

According to the Feb. 20 Union Leader, the GOP Marketplace attorney said “the firm hasn’t heard from federal or state investigators, either.”

The party of law and order blocked calls to the Manchester Firefighters’ Union as well as to Democrats. This infuriated Manchester police, who asked both state and national officials to investigate. Did anything come of this request?

No.

A week later (Feb. 12) the Union Leader reported “For the third consecutive business day, the Justice Department’s public affairs office in Washington did not return The Union Leader’s call.“

Republicans run NH, Republicans run DC. This investigation was over before it started.

The Feb. 21 Union Leader reports that Manchester City Republican Party Chairman Joe Kelly Levasseur used his TV show to call NH Democratic chair “Kathy Sullivan a bitch” and city chair Raymond Buckley a “political masturbator.” Was he reined in by the party of “family values”?

No.

“State Republican Party Chairman Jayne Millerick issued a statement saying Levasseur “certainly has a colorful way of expressing himself.” But Millerick questioned why Democrats were focusing on Levasseur’s behavior instead of important state issues. She would not answer a question about whether Levasseur’s behavior violates the new Republican code of ethics.”

What new code of ethics? The one that forbids GOP staffers to indulge in “any activity which would corrupt or degrade the political process.”

In today’s Union Leader, veteran reporter John DiStaso smashes the Republican cover-up piece by piece.

The Republicans have claimed at various times:

• That they never hired GOP Marketplace.
• That they paid GOP Marketplace for get-out-the-vote calls.
• That they were demanding a refund from GOP Marketplace.“If we don’t get it back, you might see a theft of services charge,” said Republican leader Richard Kennedy .

Within the past few days, GOPMarketplace.com has disappeared from the web, replaced by a collection of “Access Denied” and “404-not found” pages. The phone still works, though, and DiStasio talked to the company’s attorney, who said that NH Republicans have made no effort to get back the $15,600 spent on phone-jamming.

When confronted by DiStasio, GOP State Chair Millerick explained “she hasn’t tried to get a refund since she’s been in office, preferring to ‘move forward’.”

The GOPMarketplace attorney John Partridge also says the firm hasn’t been contacted by any investigators–federal or state. If true, that makes the disappearance of their website even more strange.

And one more question. If no NH Republicans knew about the plan to block get-out-the-vote phone lines–how did Virginia-based GOP Marketplace or the Idaho-based phone bank get the phone number of the Manchester Firefighters’ Union?

Update: Feb. 13:NH Republican leaders are blaming their phone-bank scandal on Allen Raymond’s company, saying GOPMarketplace owes them $15,000 . Democrats ask, “Who paid for it? Who authorized it? Who knew about?” Republican leaders, ignoring those questions, would rather talk about a brand-new eight-point ethical pledge they all plan to sign.

GOPMarketplace, the firm that paid Idaho telemarketers to jam NH phones, may also be the moving force behind more deceptive phone tactics there and elsewhere. Commenting on the Republican phone-blocking scandal in Plastic.com, one NH voter describes another telephone dirty trick by Republicans :

“I can attest to another deceptive practice in the last campaign. I got a call from someone who said they were conducting a survey (pretty common occurrence here in election years) and asking for whom I would be voting. When I responded that I would be voting for the Democratic candidate, I was then treated to the caller reading a diatribe listing various reasons I should vote against that candidate. “

This twist on fake-grassrootery is called a “push poll.” It may or may not be one of the services offered by GOPMarketplace.com, whose list of services promises:

We are experienced in program design, targeting and script design for outbound telemarketing using both live callers and automated messaging.

A recent online article, “Consultant with N.J. ties implicated as New Hampshire campaign trickster” , dishes the New Jersey dirt on phone bank scandals. The article singles out Allen Raymond, head of GOP Marketplace, as a likely suspect.

The NJ Attorney General handed down a 20-count indictment against 2002 Senate candidate James Treffinger for a scheme to deceive Jersey voters with false negative phone calls about his opponents. Speculation abounds that Raymond, who was working for Treffinger at the time, is the “consultant” mentioned in the indictment.

Josh Marshall is looking into the NH phone scandal and its connection with Allen Raymond, so check out his blog for more details and news.

Oops. Somebody told the Republicans that Hank Kalet, managing editor of the South Brunswick (NJ) Post, was a small businessman and a Republican. He isn’t.

Read his very funny account of being courted to front an astroturf business group for the State of New Jersey. Inducements they offered included not only “the prestigious National Leadership Award” but a special dinner with President Bush.

Kalet did some research, and discovered:

According to information about the council on the NRC’s [GOPTeamleader.com] Web site, the “Honorary Chairmen are clearly the key, first step” in “forg(ing) a new and dynamic alliance between the Republican leadership and the small business community.” The key element, however, would be the use of my name “whenever possible” in national and local advertising — see the above definition of astroturfing. The GOP would craft the message and I would get to lend my name in support — which takes the pressure off of me, of course, to actually have something to say.

Fortunately, there is plenty of money available to support the Republicans’ enthusiastic astroturfing outreach–Kalet says they are spending “in excess of $3.6 million recruiting broadbased support, and an additional $2.5 million in advertising.”

Was this one paid for as “advertising” or as “recruiting broadbased support?

According to the Manchester (NH) Union Leader, Republicans hired telemarketers to jam Democratic Party phone lines on election day. The apparent goal was to block “get out the vote” phone calls not only by Democrats but also by the local Firefighters union, both of which offer rides to the polls. Police have asked the Justice Department for help, since the telemarketers hired were based outside NH.