The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Greetings From the Granite State!

Posted on | January 5, 2012 | 26 Comments

MANCHESTER, N.H.
My flight arrived late at Boston’s Logan Airport, and I ought to demand a refund from AirTran because their advertised in-flight WiFi service was out of order, which no one seemed to notice until the passenger in Seat 30D — that would be me — asked the flight attendant about it. Of course, none of the crew knew how to fix the problem and my expressions of anguished desperation were met with helpless shrugs of indifference.

“Customer service” is so 20th century.

Da Tech Guy was waiting curbside at Logan, his 1999 Buick Le Sabre fueled and read for the race up I-93 to New Hampshire. The question was where in New Hampshire? Pete had the Rick Santorum schedule. There was a 1 p.m. event in Tilton, but my delayed flight made that an iffy proposition. So we resolved to wait for the 3:30 p.m. event in Concord. This gave us time to stop off here at the McDonald’s near the Manchester airport where I can attempt to do some of what I would have done if the WiFi on that AirTran flight had been functional.

UPDATE: Just when you thought my idiot cousin Meghan couldn’t possibly make herself more obnoxious:

“If he had endorsed Santorum, I mean, I would be like slitting my wrists on the table right now,” Meghan McCain said about her father’s endorsement of Mitt Romney.”

This is another reason why conservatives should support Rick Santorum: Because I’m sure if he gets the nomination, Senator Santorum will ban Meghan from the convention in Tampa.

UPDATE II: Da Tech Guy has dubbed this McDonald’s “The Ray Kroc Memorial News Center.”

UPDATE III: I read the Des Moines Register on the plane, and they had several excellent follow-ups to the Iowa caucuses:

In Jefferson County, in Iowa’s southeast corner, Paul won a stunning 49 percent of the vote, more than doubling next-place Santorum.
He also won there in 2008, his only first-place finish in that contest.
What gives?
County seat Fairfield is home to thousands of devotees of the Transcendental Meditation spiritual movement and site of the Maharishi University of Management, which is aligned with the movement.
Followers tend to share Paul’s views opposing military intervention and the Federal Reserve, said Bob Glade, the county’s GOP co-chairman.
“They had a campaign headquarters here for the last two months, and they were pushing real, real heavy,” Glade said of the Paul campaign.

Devotees of the Maharishi’s meditation cult in . . . Iowa? Damn. I mean, damn.

Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz, who endorsed Santorum in December, said he thought the former Pennsylvania senator has a chance as a national candidate, adding that his Iowa momentum should be a boon for fundraising.
Anyone who heard Santorum’s post-caucuses speech on Tuesday night would be impressed, Schultz said. Santorum told the story of how his grandfather had immigrated from Italy to work in Pennsylvania’s coal mines and how he had sacrificed to bring his family to America.
“That speech really resonates with Americans,” Schultz said. “I have heard him give it many times, but the way he sequenced the elements was brilliant.”

  • A story on Rick Perry’s decision to stay in the race (an updated and expanded version of this post by Josh Hafner), which mentions Joe Allbaugh and Dave Carney among the crew of idiotic “strategists” responsible for running the doomstruck farce that is the Perry campaign. Evidently, Allbaugh and Carney didn’t get enough humiliation in Iowa to suit them, and are determined to utterly destroy any future political prospects for their client, the once widely-respected governor of Texas whom they’ve turned into a national laughingstock.

UPDATE IV: Linked by That Mr. G Guy — thanks! At the airport, I picked up a copy of the Boston Globe, the front-page headline of which is, “New dynamic for GOP as scene shifts to N.H.” And on the plane, I also read the New York Times, whose front-page story includes this interesting detail:

While Mr. Romney dominated the day-after-Iowa news coverage with his victory lap here, Mr. Santorum and his staff were slowly making the 1,400-mile journey from Des Moines in a King Air propeller plane that did not deliver them here until suppertime, too late to make a star turn on the evening news. He made a nighttime turn on Fox News and CNN and landed in time for a rally that drew hundreds

Santorum raised $1 million Wednesday, the same day I published my American Spectator column, “An All-American Miracle.” And Santorum has now jumped to 21% in the Rasmussen national poll.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Well, it’s now 2:30. We’ll have to hurry to make it to Concord in time for Santorum’s event, and Pete’s Buick LeSabre isn’t as fast as that sweet black Mustang. Sigh. I miss it already.


Category: Da Tech Guy, Election 2012, Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, Meghan McCain, New Hampshire, Rick Santorum

Comments

26 Responses to “Greetings From the Granite State!”

  1. Anonymous
    January 5th, 2012 @ 1:35 pm

    Nice catch on Megyn.  I linked your comments to this:  
    http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/01/megyn-mccain-um-like-if-santorum-wins.html

  2. Datechguy's Blog » Blog Archive » Axis of Fedora Update Manchester NH 12:50 p.m. » Datechguy's Blog
    January 5th, 2012 @ 1:37 pm

    […] Here is the initial report from the National desk of Stacy McCain meanwhile Angel Clark answers the question why some nice young man hasn’t snatched up Meagan […]

  3. JeffS
    January 5th, 2012 @ 1:39 pm

    Meghan slitting her wrists?  That would be a healthy dose of chlorine in the gene pool.

  4. JeffS
    January 5th, 2012 @ 1:42 pm

    BTW, Stacy, was the WiFi really out of order, or did the flight crew deliberately shut it down in retaliation to the mid-flight emission of global warming within the confines of the cabin?

    IFYKWIMAITTYD.

  5. Adjoran
    January 5th, 2012 @ 2:02 pm

    Meghan deserves to be flogged for Crimes Against the English Language. 

    It’s hard to be angry at her for her outrageous politic statements, knowing her to be of such limited intelligence, and trying to keep the spirit of compassion for those less fortunate, bless her heart.  But it’s getting easier all the time . . .

  6. Finrod Felagund
    January 5th, 2012 @ 2:02 pm

    Word of advice to Meghan about slitting her wrists:

    Down, not Across.
     

  7. Mike G.
    January 5th, 2012 @ 2:03 pm

    I keep looking for the news story confirming the demise of this scourge of Conservatism, but no luck yet.

  8. Greetings From the Granite State! « That Mr. G Guy's Blog
    January 5th, 2012 @ 2:16 pm

    […] Greetings From the Granite State!. […]

  9. Bob Belvedere
    January 5th, 2012 @ 2:28 pm

    In the Terminal of Life, Mzz. McCain has boarded the short bus.

  10. Bob Belvedere
    January 5th, 2012 @ 2:29 pm

    What a gentleman!  Always ready to help a lady in need!

  11. Anonymous
    January 5th, 2012 @ 2:35 pm

    Meghan knows her dad better than that anyway.  

  12. Finrod Felagund
    January 5th, 2012 @ 2:38 pm

    Indeed.  Heck, “Down, not Across” was the motto of the Usenet group alt.sysadmin.recovery.

  13. richard mcenroe
    January 5th, 2012 @ 3:12 pm

    Woodchipper.  To be sure.

  14. richard mcenroe
    January 5th, 2012 @ 3:12 pm

    Stacy, it’s NH.  If you’d kept the Mustang you’d probably have cross-rutted into a ditch by now.

  15. richard mcenroe
    January 5th, 2012 @ 3:15 pm

    Has anybody told Rick Perry Mark Block’s available?

  16. asmith
    January 5th, 2012 @ 3:20 pm

    Maharishi TM cult in SE Iowa:Rajneesh cult in central Oregon in the 1970s.  Infesting unlikely rural locations with small, unsuspecting, compliant populations is actually a business model for these folks.  Caveat: sometimes ends badly.

  17. richard mcenroe
    January 5th, 2012 @ 3:37 pm

    So Rick Perry insults the Iowans, Jon Hunstman insults the Iowans… has either of these buffoons figgerd out THEY STILL HAVE TO COME BACK THERE IN NOVEMBER?

  18. JeffS
    January 5th, 2012 @ 5:45 pm

    And a month in the stocks for her crimes against Critical Thinking.

  19. Adjoran
    January 5th, 2012 @ 5:55 pm

    He WAS, but is on a smoke break right now.

  20. Adjoran
    January 5th, 2012 @ 5:56 pm

    Maybe they’ve figured out they WON’T be coming back?

  21. Mike G.
    January 5th, 2012 @ 6:01 pm

    Ya know…that was the same advise our D.I.’s gave us in bootcamp should any of us decide to avoid military service by going that route. Less paperwork or something, I guess.

  22. Blogs That Make You Cooler: The Other McCain Does the Primaries!
    January 5th, 2012 @ 6:16 pm

    […] Greetings from the Granite State! […]

  23. Axis of Fedora Update: Manchester, New Hampshire
    January 6th, 2012 @ 11:42 am

    […] Here is the initial report from the desk of Stacy McCain. Meanwhile, Angel Clark answers the question of “why some nice young man hasn’t snatched […]

  24. Roxeanne de Luca
    January 6th, 2012 @ 12:48 pm

    Well, it’s now 2:30. We’ll have to hurry to make it to Concord
    in time for Santorum’s event, and Pete’s Buick LeSabre isn’t as fast as
    that sweet black Mustang. Sigh. I miss it already.

    But my Volvo is. 😉

  25. Fear And Loathing 2012: Granite Grist « The Camp Of The Saints
    January 6th, 2012 @ 7:20 pm

    […] -Greetings From The Granite State!: Santorum raised $1 million Wednesday, the same day I published my American Spectator column, “An All-American Miracle.” And Santorum has now jumped to 21% in the Rasmussen national poll. […]

  26. Departing from Logan: Live Free or … : The Other McCain
    January 11th, 2012 @ 12:04 pm

    […] in Nashua, N.H.Jan. 5: Rick Santorum in Windham, N.H.Jan. 5: Rick Santorum in Concord, N.H.Jan. 5: Greetings From the Granite State!Jan. 5: Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Eight Days in a Mustang Later …Category: Election […]