Apparently the weapon was real and he could do this legally in the state of New Hampshire. Organizers called the event not a gun rally but an "Honor Your Oath" event as a warning to lawmakers who break the faith, presumably to the Second Amendment.

via The Union Leader

Organizers said the event, which happened to fall on the birthdate of Thomas Jefferson, was not a "gun rally."

But that didn't stop 11-year-old Hunter Cogswell of Concord from bringing an AR-15 and a big white flag with black lettering: "Come and Take It."

The boy said he was there to "stand up for gun rights."

"I believe in gun rights. It's our constitutional right," he said, adding the gun was real but "not loaded."

Emcee Jeff Chidester, a local radio talk show host, jokingly welcomed "all you racist, hateful tea-baggers to this event."

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As we await Mitt Romney's upcoming speech at this year's Republican National Convention, it might be worth noting that he's already given a speech in New Hampshire which was packed full of lies and will likely resemble greatly the speech he's going to give at their convention this year.

That upcoming speech will also likely bear a great resemblance to the speech that George W. Bush gave before their convention back in 2000, if Romney decides to repeat any of what he's said in past speeches this year.

I had the unfortunate circumstance of catching George W. Bush's acceptance speech from the Republican National Convention back in 2000 on C-SPAN this weekend and started having flashbacks to Mittens speech in New Hampshire which I posted on here: Mitt Romney's Dishonest New Hampshire Campaign Speech.

The clip above is a reminder that both men are promising the same policies, using the same sort of flame throwing against their opponent and have likely hired the same speech writers. We already know Romney has hired a whole bunch of Bush war mongers for his foreign policy advisers and what that's likely to mean when it comes to getting our country involved in more unwise military interventions across the globe.

Romney, along with the rest of the Republican Party would prefer to pretend that they never heard of George W. Bush even though the policies they're promoting now, have been tried and failed under his presidency.

And for a party that wants to pretend he didn't exist, they sure are fond of repeating his rhetoric. I guess they are counting on Americans having no collective memory of what's happened as recently as the last decade' and sadly our media has been more than happy to help them along.

I thought a little reminder of how similar their rhetoric has been that we've heard out of Bush and now from Romney might be a useful reminder to voters as to just what Romney is promising us if we're unfortunate enough to see him end up in the White House.

You can read the full speeches by both men here that the clip above has been cut from:

Governor George W. Bush - Acceptance Speech

and here:

Mitt Romney’s New Hampshire primary speech (TEXT).

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You know someone is pretty freaking far out there when even Republicans are calling your comments “Irresponsible, outrageous, and inappropriate.” Not surprisingly, Szabo has no background in law enforcement at all, though does have a history with the Tea Party and other political groups.

via WBZ, Boston:

MANCHESTER, NH (CBS) – A man running for sheriff in New Hampshire says if he is elected, he will arrest anyone involved in an abortion in his county.

Frank Szabo set off a firestorm with the comments. People on all sides of the political spectrum have condemned the statements, but Szabo stands by them. He says it’s the sheriff’s job to protect every citizen – even the unborn.

Republican for Hillsborough County Sheriff. But he injected a new issue in the debate when he sent out a press release saying he would arrest anyone performing an abortion.

He took it a step further when asked how far he’d go to stop one.

“Deadly force is the last thing law enforcement should be using, if a citizen’s life is in danger they should be protected,” says Szabo. “If there is no other choice, that’s what’s needed to protect the citizen.”

Republicans called Szabo’s statement, “Irresponsible, outrageous, and inappropriate.”
...
Szabo isn’t backing down.

He says, “Why is there a difference between someone who is 20 years old and their life is in danger and someone who is nine months in utero.”

Szabo will face off against the current sheriff in the Republican primary next month.

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From the man whose policies are what amounts to "the Robin Hood story — only in reverse" for the poor, a man whose time at Bain represents everything most Americans hate about capitalism, we had him trying to "pivot" for the general election tonight with a message against government"unfairness" after this Tuesday evening's primary wins.

Mitt Romney Kicks Off The General With Crusade Against ‘Unfairness’:

Finally able to acknowledge what’s been plain for weeks, Mitt Romney seized the mantle of his party’s presumptive nominee after winning a series of primaries in the Northeast Tuesday night. Billed as one of his first major general election speeches, Romney pledged to combat government “unfairness” and challenge President Obama with a relentless focus on the economy.

“Tonight I can say, ‘Thank you, America,’” Romney told supporters in New Hampshire. “After 43 primaries and caucuses, many long days and more than a few long nights, I can say with confidence and gratitude that you have given me a great honor and solemn responsibility. And, together, we will win on Nov. 6.”

Romney warned that “because [Obama] has failed, he will run a campaign of diversions, distractions, and distortions.”

“That kind of campaign may have worked at another place and in a different time,” he said. “But not here and not now. It’s still about the economy — and we’re not stupid.”

Romney outlined an agenda aimed at combating what he called “unfairness” in government, spinning a phrase often employed by Democrats as they make the case that wealthier Americans and corporations should pay higher taxes. Earlier Tuesday, Obama said the rich should “pay their fair share” in a speech to college students in North Carolina. While other Republicans often debate these arguments by emphasizing “opportunity,” Romney adopted the “fairness” language to criticize federal spending.

As TPM noted, Romney was still attempting to run on his father's resume:

“I’ll tell you about how much I love this country, where someone like my dad, who grew up poor and never graduated from college, could pursue his dreams and work his way up to running a great car company,” Romney. “Only in America could a man like my dad become governor of the state in which he once sold paint from the trunk of his car.”

More there with the Obama campaign's response to the speech. Text of the portion of Romney's speech in the video above below the fold.

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It's true. Mitt Romney really does like firing people. With a somewhat condescending tone after Newt Gingrich paints a grand picture of his dream of a moon colony (not that it wasn't a bald pander or anything), Mitt lets him know that corporate investors would guffaw at him right before they fired him. The joy Mitt gets out of saying "you're fired" just shines through. Channeling his inner Donald Trump, perhaps?

BLITZER: We're going to move on, but go ahead, Governor Romney.

ROMNEY: I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, "You're fired."

The idea that corporate America wants to go off to the moon and build a colony there, it may be a big idea, but it's not a good idea. And we have seen in politics -- we've seen politicians -- and Newt, you've been part of this -- go from state to state and promise exactly what that state wants to hear. The Speaker comes here to Florida, wants to spend untold amount of money having a colony on the moon. I know it's very exciting on the Space Coast.

In South Carolina, it was a new interstate highway, and dredging the port in Charleston. In New Hampshire, it was burying a power line coming in from Canada and building a new VHA hospital in New Hampshire so that people don't have to go to Boston.

Look, this idea of going state to state and promising what people want to hear, promising billions, hundreds of billions of dollars to make people happy, that's what got us into the trouble we're in now. We've got to say no to this kind of spending.

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Mitt Romney gave a fiery speech after his expected win in the New Hampshire GOP primary race this Tuesday evening which was full of red meat for the base and full of lies and ad hominem attacks on President Obama and a lot of projection to boot.

It started out with a lot of the standard fare we've heard from him on the campaign trail, claiming that our current President who has, to a fault in my opinion, bent over backwards to try to get Republicans to work with him only to be met with unprecedented obstruction every step of the way is the one dividing America.

ROMNEY: We remember when Barack Obama came to New Hampshire four years ago.

He promised to bring people together.

He promised to change the broken system in Washington.

He promised to improve our nation.

Those were the days of lofty promises made by a hopeful candidate. Today, we are faced with the disappointing record of a failed President. The last three years have held a lot of change, but they haven’t offered much hope.

Then from a member of the party that's been trying to sabotage the economy on purpose for political gain, Romney went on to attack President Obama for failing to turn the economy around quickly enough, as though he's the only one that's got any control over that, or that Mitt Romney has any credibility on the issue of job creation.

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From MSNBC's New Hampshire primary coverage, former Governor John H. Sununu expressed his discontent with some of the recent attacks by Mitt Romney's fellow Republican presidential candidates, going so far as to call the attacks on Mitt Romney "Socialist."

So we had Mary Matalin calling them "shameful" and now Sununu upping the ante and pulls out the Socialism card. I await many more attacks like these to come on Gingrich and Perry if they keep going after Romney.

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I was really hoping Newt Gingrich would take the gloves off and hammer Mitt Romney, but alas. It seems he has gotten over his sadness over Mean Mitt and decided to play nice just like the rest of them who appear to have reached consensus that Mitt Romney is the Nominee Apparent. However, that didn't stop Ron Paul and Newtie from going personal with each other, and boy did they.

The kerfuffle seems to begin with an interview Ron Paul gave to CNN earlier this week, where he came right out with it and called Gingrich a chickenhawk. (Video) Diane Sawyer asked Dr. Paul if he stood by his comment. He did, and when asked whether he'd say it on the debate stage, he was happy to oblige. Suffice it to say, Newtie didn't take it well. Not at all.

This is one area where I agree with Ron Paul. Far too many politicians want to send our young people off to fight wars when they haven't served and really don't have a clue about what a sacrifice it really is. For all of Newt's righteous indignation, it was clear the punch landed and landed hard. As it should.

I will give Newt this much. Being in a military family is its own kind of sacrifice. It's hard, whether a spouse or a child, to wonder if your parent is going to come home safely and be the same parent they were before they left. It's hard never to put down roots and to live on the salaries paid to our troops. This is why Michelle Obama works so hard on behalf of military families -- she knows it's a difficult haul. He's right about all of that, but it doesn't serve as a substitute for service itself.

The transcript follows after the jump, via Washington Post.

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Mediaite's Tommy Christopher actually summed up this segment from this Saturday's ABC GOP debate quite nicely where he explained some of Mitt Romney's feigned ignorance on the issues of privacy, women's reproductive rights and whether states should be allowed to ban contraception.

Romney Trips On Contraception Question: ‘It’s Working Just Fine, Just Leave It Alone’:

At tonight’s ABC News/WMUR Republican presidential debate at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney stumbled badly on a Constitutional question from moderator George Stephanopoulos, first trying to punt it to “our Constitutionalist” Ron Paul, then demonstrating painful ignorance about the issues of privacy and banning contraception. To his credit, George pursued him like Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. The Republican crowd was none too pleased with the line of questioning, booing Stephanopoulos several times.

As Christopher pointed out, Romney pretended not to know that a number of states have introduced "personhood" laws that could ban most forms of birth control and Stephanopoulos had to answer Romney's question for him when he asked this:

Then Romney displayed the fruits of that education. “Has the Supreme Court decided states do not have the right to provide contraception?” he asked.

Oof. The first thing you learn in law school is never to ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.

“Yes,” Stephanopoulos answered, “they have. ’65, Griswold v. Connecticut.”

What Christopher failed to note is that Mitt Romney has actually been confronted on the issue of defining life as beginning at conception and the fact that it would ban most forms of birth control at a town hall meeting back in October, which makes his little act of his here particularly egregious.

Here's more for a trip down the memory hole that Mitt Romney has pretended to forget about during this debate from October of last year -- Iowa Woman Schools Romney on Anti-Abortion Amendment and Birth Control:

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Yesterday we were informed by supposed presidential aspirant Rick Perry that the voting age was 21 and that New Hampshire would be voting in their primary on November 12. This morning we were told by candidate Perry that New Hampshire has caucuses instead of a primary.

A few not so original observations, if I may:

(1) Rick Perry is none too bright -- but you knew that already.

(2) Fox News will just glibly prop up these village idiots and continue to foist them on gullible republican voters.

(3) The sighing you hear from Perry at the end of the clip with Greta is the last remaining air in the Rick Perry balloon.