Fun:New Hampshire

"I've fallen and I can't get up!"

“”I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den.

—Donald Trump

Don't let that small size deceive you, New Hampshire is quite dangerous!

New Hampshire, also known as "New Hampsha'" or "Cow Hampshire", is one of the original thirteen British colonies to throw off the yoke of government and form the United States. It was the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, making it binding. Seen by many as the Eli Manning to Vermont's Peyton Manning. In the 21^st century New Hampshire is throwing off the yoke of religion and the proportion of New Hampshire people without strong religious beliefs has been higher than in the United States generally. As of 2015 only 20% of its citizens considered themselves very religious. New Hampshire is also home to a large number of non-religious politicians, including the only name-brand Atheist (Timothy Smith, a state legislator) who served five consecutive terms anywhere in the country, and possibly in US History.

The capital is Concord, which (like its namesake in Massachusetts to the south) is pronounced "conquered". The largest city is Manchester, which is known as "ManchVegas" to the locals for reasons no one really knows. The only part that counts is the city of Nashua, a popular shopping destination for Bay Staters who don't want to pay sales tax. Libertarian stronghold, or at least as close as there is going to be to having one.

Government, or not

The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire having a normal one.

New Hampshire has no broad-based state taxes (income, sales, etc.), and rakes in most of its cash from tourists via a "rooms and meals" tax. The state only does two things - build roads and sell booze - and it does them both very well. It has by far the cheapest liquor in the country, since (like a handful of states, such as Wyoming, Utah, and neighboring Vermont) the state runs all the liquor stores and there being no sales tax and (unlike the other states with state-owned liquor stores, which tax the hell out of it) essentially no excise tax.

Their slogan is Live Free or Die ("oh lord, tell me why" - Bill Morrissey). Accordingly, NH is the only state that doesn't legally require adults to wear seatbelts, even on motorcycles. This is literally one of the selling points used by Republican candidates. Of course that costs them a bunch of federal highway funding, i.e higher taxes than otherwise for the sake of a few chuckleheads who don't want to wear a seat belt. Feel the liberty. (Let's hope Libertarians make full use of that freedom.) Still, despite its libertarian reputation, as of 2022 it is the only New England state that hasn't legalized recreational cannabis.

Since there are no real taxes levied directly by the state, the individual towns are forced to foist onerous property taxes on their inhabitants in order to pay for schools.

Libertarian takeover

Approximately 505 libertarians have moved to New Hampshire in the past few years as part of the Free State Project trying to make New Hampshire a free state by all moving there en masse. Meanwhile, the state's population grew during the same period by 52,000, of whom 51,495 were not related to the Free State Project. This means the new 505 Libertarian voters are offset by 51,495 new mostly non-Libertarian voters, a ratio of about 102 to 1.

Tourism

The state is a four-season tourist trap, with a strong ski industry, and several annual events of note, including "Bike Week" centered around the speedway in Loudon, and "Fall", when all the leaves turn pretty colors for a few weeks.

Who cares?

• The "Old Man of the Mountain", the state's ubiquitous symbol, fell down and (as of now) can't get up. (He should have gotten Life Alert.)
• "New Hampshire: Ain't Quaint" (a proposed slogan...)
• Our very own nuclear power plant; the highest electricity prices in the nation.
• "First in the nation" Presidential primary tests candidates' and press teams' resistance to pneumonia.
• Yet another misspelled early settlement: Strawbery Banke (now a "living museum").

Notable New Hampshirites

• Josiah "Jed" Bartlett — brilliant, though fictional, President of the United States
• Dan Brown — fiction writer and pseudohistorian
• Ken Burns — historian
• E.E. Cummings — poet
• Carlton Fisk — used the force to guide a baseball into fair territory for the Sawx to get them to Game 7 of the World Series… which they promptly lost (but everyone forgets that second part)
• Robert Frost — poet
• Christa McAuliffe — first teacher in space (er, not to be morbid here, but…
• Seth Meyers — comedian
• P.J. O'Rourke — writer
• Franklin Pierce — 14th US President.
• Gene Robinson — openly gay bishop
• Tom Rush — folk singer
• Adam Sandler — shitty actor
• Sarah Silverman — comedienne
• John Sununu — 2 of them, one a chickenhawk ex-senator (and the first senator with any Middle Eastern heritage), the other a vaguely racist ex-governor/chief of staff under George H.W. Bush

  Chris Sununu, son of one and brother of the other, governor; in 2022, given his distinctly non-MAGA tendencies local Republicans tried to get him to run, due to not wanting to be associated with MAGAts he took a hard pass and let them nominate a crazy who was guaranteed to tank instead.

• Steven Tyler — Aerosmith front man, though the massholes take all the credit

• The entire congressional caucus as of January 2013 — every one a woman, a first for any state

Gallery

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  The forests in autumn

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  The Old Man of the Mountain, before his fall

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  The Zimmerman House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

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  Baker River

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  Robert Frost's farm

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  A sunset over Mount Washington Resort.