Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s use of pejorative labeling to defile and dehumanize their political opponents is not only their “go-to” strategy of late but also a potential bellwether of more sinister intentions. Biden’s use of labels to vilify those who don’t support his agenda is heard on a nearly daily basis.

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Their apocalyptic tone makes Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment seem endearing in comparison. Whether it’s Biden referring to his political opposition as “MAGA Republicans,” “domestic terrorists,” or “threats to democracy,” his use of these categorizations is insulting at best, and, at worst, a painful reminder of similar strategies employed by his Leftist predecessors during darker periods in modern history.

Biden’s use of labels to define and target his enemies is eerily similar to that of other Progressive despots.  Joseph Stalin used the term “enemies of the state,” while Mao placed those opposed to his Cultural Revolution, including “Right Wingers,” into one of five “Black Categories.”  These cohorts were rounded up and sent off for political reeducation, otherwise known as torture, imprisonment or execution. Pol Pot, Che Guevara, and Kim Jong-Il – all the Leftist heavyweights, employed similar labeling tactics to coalesce their followers and marginalize and breed contempt for the non-compliant.

The historic precedent of this type of labeling leading to violence and marginalization of large subsets of a national population is, therefore, well established. The question that remains is what combination of factors escalate this from simple name-calling to actual persecution? What causes the scales of reason to tip irrevocably from political rhetoric to policy? Adolf Hitler took advantage of a horribly depressed German economy and a desperate citizenry to advance his obscene agenda. In a few short years this progressed from Anti-Semitic grumbling to the adoption of the Nuremberg Laws that robbed German Jews of citizenry and political rights, and ultimately to the grotesque atrocities of the Holocaust.

While genocidal events resulting in the slaughter of tens of millions of innocents may seem like extreme examples, they are relevant because they are emblematic of how motivated, Leftist regimes execute their strategies. The first and most important step in their process is to target a subset of their populations (the opposition) and label them as “threats” to the agenda of those in power.

This labeling creates division, and division leads to an irreparable fracture in a Nation’s foundation – a united Citizenry. Labeling is an insidious cancer used by those in power to create disharmony and contempt between brother and sister citizens. While seemingly harmless at first, labeling has a hidden superpower – an ability to rapidly metastasize and destroy its host from within.  Beware the power of labels.

 

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If you pay attention to Democrat majorities, it won’t take long to realize something. There’s never enough revenue – no such thing as enough. Every stream shall be tapped, which got me thinking. Vermont doesn’t currently tax medical services, but it is about to pass suicide tourism.

It would be the only state in New England with assisted suicide and no residency requirement. And according to this NYT article, they’ve already got customers waiting. And Vermont is eager to serve. And no, it’s not a new topic on these pages.

 

Vermont Passes Bill to Make The State a Sanctuary For Death and Dismemberment

Live Free In New Hampshire or Die in Vermont

Assisted Suicide is Now Available in Vermont after a Zoom Call with Dr. Death

Suicide Six Ski Resort to Change its Name ‘cuz Mental Health Awareness

 

That last one is because unassisted suicide, which the party of death and depopulation pretends it doesn’t like, is also on the rise, but that’s typical in the wake of Democratic rule. It only makes sense to make killing yourself polite and legal. Then you expand the franchise.

At first, you need a doctor to sign off on your terminal illness, but what does that mean? Terminal depression? Anxiety? Upset because your gender mutilation surgery disfigurement didn’t make you happy like they promised, or the hormone drugs made you intolerably ill. The doctors, who increasingly rely on the government printing press the way climate “science” does, find themselves living like it’s COVID all the time. Hospital services equal reimbursements, and the party of death will inevitably pay for corpses.

And why not. You’d have to be crazy to re-elect Liberals.

Concrete evidence of any mental illness will quickly rise to the top of the list of acceptable reasons to ask for state-sanctioned self-murder.

The depopulation party makes depopulation legal, calls it assisted suicide (a cure for what ails you), then makes it increasingly easier.

 

Follow the Bouncing Ball: Canada Wrecks Health Care, Legalizes Assisted Suicide, Organ Donations Rise …

Introducing Modern, High-Tech, Self-Assisted Suicide Pods – Yes, They’re Serious

Canadian “Coloring Book” Normalizes Assisted Suicide for Children

The Public Schools are Grooming Your Kid for a Lifetime of Anxiety and Depression

New Research Suggests Puberty Blockers May Make Your Kids Suicidal

 

Make them hate themselves and life, and they’ll line up to shuffle off their mortal coils with a please, Daddy.

Democrats are also the party of rationed care (Death Panels), and in the context of their policy priorities, that’s a flat-out truth. Surgery costs too much, or the wait is too long. Maybe you should kill yourself. Your government therapists and doctors agree (and your dying is easier on the unbalanced balance sheet). Here’s a note, gind a field and shoot yourself up (or swallow this) at sunset. We’ll send a cart later to pick you all up.

And the next thing you know, it is outspoken public figures or inconvenient political opponents who have something terminal. They were chronically depressed after being confined without due process or picked up in the middle of the night after experiencing an existential crisis unrelated to acts of free speech or assembly. And thanks for the organs and the donation of your assets to the government. What a patriot!

What, you can’t take it with you? They’ve never wanted your family to get much of it (unless you’re a wealthy Democrat donor). So why not aan actualdeath tax? We’ll let you kill yourself  (we’ll pretend to care) for a small fee (taxable, of course), and after you’re gone, we’ll tax what you left behind and then tax anyone who manages to hang on to whatever we missed. And then we’ll take the rest.

Death and taxes, right? The only two things you can count on are death and taxes, and the political Left is happy to profit from both.

 

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I have no idea what prompted Packard’s statement (see below). But I would still like to know what he means by “transphobia.” Does it mean opposing “drag shows” aimed at children? Does it mean opposing the chemical castration of children and other “gender-affirming” procedures on children?

Does it mean believing that biological boys shouldn’t be allowed to compete in girls’ school sports? Does it mean believing that biological boys shouldn’t be allowed in girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms? Is everyone who believes that, for example, Rachel Levine is a man, not a woman, transphobic?

Is everyone who has “de-transitioned” transphobic?

Don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer … you’ll get none. Your support is NOT important to the NHGOP. You are taken for granted. You have “nowhere else to go.” The political troglodytes running the NHGOP are concerned with the proverbial “suburban moms” … because these troglodytes lack the capacity to understand that the political universe realigned in 2016 and it’s not going back.

This is what prompted this post:

 

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But when will that Preference Cascade, that tipping point, happen? From Angelo Codvilla, a Professor from my alma mater (BU) that DID make me feel grand to have matriculated from there (twice).  Emphasis mine

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.

When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.

Perhaps just a “touch” of the French Revolution might be in order. The Ruling Class has learned nothing in a decade because we haven’t MADE them learn anything (PAIN is how most politicians learn, us inflicting political pain upon them). So they continue to ignore us. Why?

Too many of We The People are too apathetic to care.

(H/T: Instapundit)

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Is the climate changing, getting warmer, or is it cooling? Don’t ask the scientist. They don’t know either. And listening to the hysterical, “the world is coming to an end,” environmentalists will only give you ulcers.

Keeping in mind when these panic-stricken, nonexperts, who have no background in anything related to the issue, are now talking “about climate change,” they are spreading the old myth of the end of the world, “global warming.” The same baloney sandwich they severed before.

If they actually believe this stuff, they should be addressing their concerns to China which is burning all the coal they can buy from Pennsylvania coal mines to power the factories making all those solar panels and sneakers they sell to Americans.

So heads up. Take a look at what is actually happening.

Snow, snow, snow all across the northwestern American States. Rain covers the mid-US and Sothern states, and not a desert that was not already a deserts in the Sothern half of America.

Nor are the seas rising nor the Artic Ice Capmelting – some parts of which are the thickest in a decade. Plus, not any reports of palm trees sprouting north of the Mason/Dixon. H

How do environmentalists explain that? Oh, right, glaciers are melting. Have been for a century or more last I checked.

It’s simple. It has nothing whatsoever to do with climate it’s all about politics and money. The more electric-whatever they can sell the richer that element of industry becomes, and if they keep the hysteria pumping, the more money leftist politicians get from those industries.

BTW, news from Saudi Arabia is that they are planning to reduce oil production soon. Swell, now aren’t you sorry we are no longer energy independent and are dependent on middle eastern oil along with Europe?

Can Mr. Biden explain exactly how any of this benefits regular Americans or Western Europe? We are pretty well sure he and his cronies are fairing quite well via dealing with China, but when do the rest of us see any advantage?

Here on the ‘Grok, there have been numerous articles exposing how the U.S. will never be able to create enough electric energy to power the left’s dream of a clean new world without fossil fuels. But the ‘Grok is preaching to the choir and must find a way to expand readership.

This problem affects all of us regardless of politics, so, any ideas?

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Dave Powers, a long-time aide to the President, was a man without a meaningful job in the White House. He had the innocuous title of Special Assistant to the President and his duties were mundane but pivotal.

While on the road with the President, if the First Lady wasn’t present, one of his jobs, according to sources in the Secret Service and staff, was to prowl the streets of whatever city they were in and fetch the most attractive women he could find. It wasn’t unusual for him to bring back as many as three, walk past disapproving Secret Service agents, lead them to the presidential suite, and bid the Commander in Chief goodnight in his thick Boston accent.

The Secret Service and FBI Director Hoover at the time (circa 1961-1963) were not amused. They were fearful that pillow talk might compromise national security, a concern that survives today. It’s dangerous stuff, and it does happen. One slip and there was no telling who’d get hold of the classified whispers.

President John F. Kennedy’s womanizing was hardly a secret among the adoring press and even those who disapproved of his politics. They were noted but unreported. There was an unwritten “gentlemen’s agreement” back then that presidential dalliances were out of bounds.

Not so today, although those engaging in sexual interludes are not presidents (as far as we know), but various law enforcement agents, who are comprising national security through pillow talk most foul.

The House Oversight Committee has had a parade of Justice Department and other agency and department heads testify that while those in their charge had indeed acted badly, especially when it came to illicit sex, they could not fire them. Instead, the agents would be sent home for two days to a week, then reinstated, security clearances still intact.

That is what comprises today’s punishment, save for particularly egregious offenses which can result in the revocation of a security clearance. Back in the 1960s, especially in the FBI, if Hoover got word of an agent’s hair being out of place, at best, that agent would be assigned to northern Alaska and, at worst, fired on the spot.

To the person, when asked by Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, why offenders identified in The Handling of Sexual Harassment and Misconduct Allegations by the Department’s Law Enforcement Components1 had not been canned, each director or agency head testified that under current Civil Service laws, not even they can fire an agent, not from the DEA, not from the Secret Service, not from the IRS or FBI, Short of committing a capital offense, firings seem to be impossible in Washington.

In checking through the OIG report assigned, the bad actors were identified and questioned. Sins were uncovered with stiff resistance and often via heavily redacted documents.

Chaffetz vented his spleen at DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, according to The Blaze.2 “ [when she] testified at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing after a damning Inspector General report said DEA agents used prostitutes in Colombia that were provided by a drug cartel in that country. The report also said the DEA didn’t fully cooperate in the investigation.”3

“This is a matter of national security,” Chaffetz said. He went on to touch on the key findings: “The report goes on to highlight repeated sexual abuses including ATF training instructors sleeping with their students; using government vehicles to facilitate inappropriate sexual relationships; and managers sexually harassing employees and then asking them to watch pornography. The report also makes clear that when law enforcement engages in inappropriate and illicit sexual behavior, the agencies they work for oftentimes simply look the other way. To use the IG’s language, these cases of sexual misconduct are treated as, quote, local management issues, end quote. In other words, they’re basically swept under the rug.”4

He went on to say that the FBI and DEA tried to hide these incidents from their own Inspector General…and even told their employees not to cooperate. He explained that the IG asked the DEA to run more than 40 search terms to identify relevant information. “The three terms that they ran out of forty included, ‘sex,’ ‘prosti’ and ‘exposure.’ Why exclude the search terms the inspector general is asking for?”

He then read the DEA head the riot act for submitted documents so heavily redacted that the IG couldn’t figure out what they were about.

Citing all of the agencies investigated, Chaffetz said, “It’s incumbent on the leadership of these law enforcement agencies to weed out employees who put our security at risk, embarrass the country and break the law.

“People make mistakes,” he continued, “but these weren’t simple mistakes. This went on and on and on, multiple reports of sex parties, of loud parties to the point that the landlord was complaining back to our federal government about how out of control these parties were,” he said, his tone incredulous.

He concluded with a head shake, “It’s a sad day for the DEA.”

No, Mr. Chairman, it’s a sad day for the United States, and it clearly demonstrates how government agencies and departments seem to find nothing wrong with debauchery. Is it any wonder why the rest of the world regards the U.S. with a highly-raised eyebrow?

The only and best way to rectify this ethically is to rewrite the civil service laws and grant agency and department heads the power they need to fire any agent who engages in these kinds of activities. Period.

 

CITATIONS AND REFERENCES

1.       The Handling of Sexual Harassment and Misconduct Allegations by the Department’s Law Enforcement Components Evaluation,  Evaluation and Inspections Division 15-04 March 2015
2.      ’They Need to Be Fired’: Chaffetz Explodes After DEA Chief Says She Can’t Fire Agents Who Get Prostitutes From Drug Cartels, ‘They Need to Be Fired’: Chaffetz Explodes After DEA Chief Says She Can’t Fire Agents Who Get Prostitutes From Drug Cartels, by Pete Kasperowicz, Apr. 14, 2015 12:23pm      http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/14/they-need-to-be-fired-chaffetz-explodes-after-dea-chief-says-she-cant-fire-agents-who-get-prostitutes-from-drug-cartels/
3.      Ibid.
4.      Ibid

 

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Kenn “The Out of State Lobbyist formerly known as Ken” Quinn works for Term Limits USA, but after reading his latest article, “So Voters, What Did We Learn From Last Week’s House Vote on Term Limits (HCR 4)” March 24, it appears that he may be moonlighting with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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A good portion of the article contained a rehash of left-wing diatribes against The John Birch Society.

HCR 4 was not a vote on Congressional term limits; it was a vote to apply to Congress for an Article V Convention, ostensibly for proposing a Congressional term-limit amendment.

Mr. Quinn tells us that “In New Hampshire, over 3/4ths of the voters support term limit for Congress with an average of 77% which breaks out at 74% Republicans, 78% Democrats, and 78% Independents.”  If these stats are correct, why did New Hampshire voters re-elect all three of the incumbents running for Congress?

Just maybe, New Hampshire voters and legislators are leery of an Article V Convention. Sixty-six percent of the voters said no to a state constitutional convention in the last election.

Mr. Quinn will never learn that spending most of his testimony trashing the opposition doesn’t generate much support for his cause.   In 2021, State Rep Max Abramson sponsored a resolution applying for an Article V Convention.  I have known Max for a number of years and respect him.  He offered to debate the issue, and I arranged to have him debate Robert Brown, one of the nation’s foremost experts on the subject…The debate took place on Camp Constitution Radio. Max and Robert both made their cases without smearing and vilifying each other. (A  link to the debate)

That is how people of goodwill who disagree with each other manage controversial issues.

 Refuting Mr. Quinn’s accusations against The John Birch Society:

 Its founder Robert Welch called Eisenhower a “communist.”

Robert Welch was a Republican Party activist who was deeply troubled by President Eisenhower’s policies.  He did some meticulous research about him and only discovered more troubling history, including his willing participation in one of the little know but darkest chapters in our nation’s history, “Operation Keelhaul,” which was the forced repatriation of people fleeing the Red Army. Several million people, including women and children, who were promised safe haven by the allies, were forced into the hands of Stalin. Some women with babies in hand jumped to their deaths rather than being turned over to Stalin’s henchmen.  Most were murdered, raped, and worked to death in Siberia’s labor camps. 

Robert Welch published his finding in a book titled The Politician. He concluded that Eisenhower was either naïve, a willing opportunist or a conscious instrument of the communist conspiracy.  He let the readers of the book draw their own conclusions. Mr. Welch’s findings were independently corroborated by two authors years later in Other Losses and Target Patton:

 

The Civil Rights Movement was communist-controlled:

A picture is worth a thousand words. Here is Martin Luther King at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, run by American communists.  Seated next to King are high-level members of the Communist Party U.S.A:

 

 

President John Kennedy learned of the communists that worked for King, which included Karl and Anne Braden, Hunter Pitt O’Dell, Bayard Rustin, and Stanley Levinson who was the author of King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”  Kennedy, during King’s visit to the White House, told King that he needed to get rid of the communists.  He never did. To learn more about the sordid record of MLK, I recommend the recently released documentary by my friend Vince Ellison titled “Will You Go to Hell For Me.”

The JBS tried to impeach Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren because the court ruled state laws separating children based on race were unconstitutional:

Here is Mr. Quinn playing the race card,  a tactic usually employed by the Left with the purpose of causing hatred and division.   For the record, The John Birch Society’s membership has always included blacks.

The John Birch Society launched The Impeach Earl Warren campaign and listed various reasons calling for his impeachment.  As California’s Attorney General, Warren enthusiastically supported the interment of over 100,000 Japanese- Americans.   Warren had no judicial experience and was little more than a political appointee.

Warren wrote the majority decision in  The Brown v Board of Education, basing it on social science studies from  Swedish socialist Gunnar Myrdal’s book An American Dilemma rather than court decisions. In so many words, he said that blacks feel inferior in all black schools, which is paternalistic racism. While this decision seemed right in the eyes of many Americans, it granted the federal government total and unconstitutional jurisdiction over local schools-a power the U.S. Constitution never granted to the federal government.   It also paved the way to forced busing. I was a student during the disastrous forced busing era in Boston. Thanks to Warren’s Supreme Court, the city erupted in violence.  Boston’s public school system was once the best in the nation and now it is one of the worst.  The schools are now segregated, with only a 15% white enrollment.  Warren’s court also gave us the Engel v. Vitale decision which made prayer in local schools illegal.

John McManus called Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan “communist lackeys.”

Prior to Biden, most conservatives ranked Jimmy Carter as the worst president in our history.  Carter’s pro-communist credentials include formally recognizing Communist China, cutting relations with Taiwan, and turning the Panama Canal over to Marxist  General Omar Torrijos.

Ronald Reagan is regarded as a great conservative leader even though, as Governor of California, he signed legislation decriminalizing abortion.  As a candidate for president, thanks to the influence of Dr. Mildred Jefferson and Phyllis Schlafly, Reagan came out as Pro-Life. Reagan did cut the growth of government but only vetoed one annual budget. I was an enthusiastic supporter of him in 1980, but after he was elected, I learned some troubling things about him, including bailing out Communist Poland, sending millions of dollars worth of military hardware to Communist China, and giving Communist China financial aid. For an understating of the Reagan Administration, I recommend a book by former Ambassador to Rumania David Funderburk, Pinstripes and Reds:

I admit that the term “communist lucky” may be harsh, but I am sure those people suffering under the Communist Chinese brutal regime may beg to differ.

The John Birch Society Bribed  New Hampshire State Senator Kevin Avard:

Mr. Quinn did not include this in his article, but he may have if we did not get word of this ugly lie.  In 2016, a friend of mine forwarded me an unsolicited E-mail from the New Hampshire Convention of States, led by Mr. Quinn at the time, which accused The John Birch Society of bribing State Senator Kevin Avard to change his support of an Article V Convention.  I wonder how many more lies were spread by the Convention of States against their opponents that we did not learn about.

Former JBS CEO Art Thompson called Thomas Jefferson a traitor:

I don’t have info on whether or not Mr. Thompson made such a statement, but if he did, it was his opinion and not a position of The JBS. He may have been referring to Jefferson’s initial support of the French Revolution and some of the correspondence between Jefferson and the man known as “Citizen Genet.”

In the end, the New Hampshire House wisely voted against HCR 1 and HCR 4, both applying for an Article V Convention by comfortable margins. After ten years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, Article V lobbyists on both sides of the political spectrum, which include Wolf PAC, founded by the odious Cenk Uygur, have had no success in New Hampshire. Let us hope that their losing streak continues.

 

The post “Poisoning the Well” is not Working in New Hampshire, But We Can’t Help Ourselves appeared first on Granite Grok.

A little while back, during the Rule of Barak I – may he live restlessly in his propane-backup-powered sea-level mansion – his Czars made waves about the light bulbs you should be allowed to use. They preferred the curly ones from China with the poisonous mercury inside.

If you broke one, the EPA had rules and warnings, and unlike the cheap and reliable incandescent, you could not just toss them away (though many did).

You don’t see Compact Fluorescents as much, and not just because the Biden administration recently banned their sale. They have been eclipsed by LED bulbs, which last longer and lack the same hazardous innards – but incandescents are still cheaper and available, at least until August of 2023.

 

Under the rules, incandescent and similar halogen light bulbs will be prohibited in favor of light-emitting diode, or LED, alternatives. While U.S. households have increasingly switched to LED light bulbs since 2015, fewer than half of households reported using mostly or exclusively LEDs, according to the most recent results from the Residential Energy Consumption Survey.

… In December, the DOE introduced separate rules banning CFL bulbs, paving the way for LEDs to be the only legal light bulbs to purchase.

 

Guess who will be hit hardest by this compassionate, progressive mandate? Low-income “families.”

Because of its higher cost, LED lighting is overwhelmingly preferred by those with a bit more disposable income, while those with less can defer to the cheaper good ol’ standby – incandescents—better stock up. And maybe buy some candles before they ban those as well.

The Bidenistas have come for the Edison bulbs, but not everyone agrees it is a good idea.

 

 

“We believe that further regulatory interference in the marketplace is unwarranted given that more energy efficient lighting choices, namely light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs, are already available for those consumers who prefer them over incandescent bulbs,” a coalition of free market and consumer groups opposed to incandescent bulb bans wrote in a comment letter to the DOE last year.

“While LEDs are more efficient and generally longer-lasting than incandescent bulbs, they currently cost more than incandescent bulbs and are inferior for certain functions such as dimming,” the letter continued. “Consumers are best served by retaining the choice between incandescent bulbs and LEDs rather than regulating incandescent bulbs off the market.”

 

We use LEDs in my home because it makes (cents). The Electric rates in New Hampshire have always been high. They are now the second highest in the nation, thanks to a mix of legislative and bureaucratic meddling and mismanaged mandates by service providers. Paying a little more for LED bulbs inevitably saves me money. It also forces you to change your habits and behaviors, which is what the Left is after. By making electricity expensive, they gain leverage. But it is always at the expense of the people the ruling class claim to champion.

Those they loathe.

Since long before Jonathon Swift’s Modest Proposal, the ruling class has trampled on the poor, many of whom are trapped there because that is where those in charge want them, especially in the once-prosperous West.

Poor, disenfranchised, race, sex, or gender-baited mobs make for a good revolution. And while the proto-Marixst Democrat socialists pretend to champion the victims, they only want their votes. The moment they’ve achieved the perennial one-party state and no longer need voting (it feels like we’re there already if you ask me), the only thing the victims should expect is that their numbers will swell.

That means more hands and mouths fighting for the same or dwindling resources, leaving everyone with less except those in charge. And, thanks to new rules regarding visible radiation, in the dark, which is precisely where your would-be “betters” want you.

 

 

HT |The Gateway Pundit

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It wasn’t that long ago when Exeter’s school counselor Kristie Torbick pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 14 year old student.

You would think that administrators and school board members in the district would do everything in their power to make sure nothing like this ever happened again. Sadly, that doesn’t appear to be the case. 

Torbick used grooming techniques on the young student who was seeking counseling–that has bee reported in the press. Torbick did end up being sentenced to 2 – 1/2 years in prison, and must now register as a sex offender.

What are ways that sexual predators groom children? One is by providing children with pornographic and obscene materials. Most parents know that if an adult gives their child pornography, that child is most likely in danger.  UNICEF even warns that pornographic content can harm a child. With all of the focus now on the mental health of children, you’d think that school administrators would be doing everything to make sure children were safe when they were in school.

Psychology Today reported this on giving children pornographic content,  “the bulk of literature reveals that for adolescents, such exposure can be harmful (Rothman, 2021). For example, adolescent pornography exposure has been linked to permissive sexual attitudes (Doornwaard et al., 2015), dominant or aggressive sexual behaviors (Wright et al., 2021), self-objectification and body comparison (Maheux et al., 2021), and the development of pornography-influenced sexual scripts (Bryant, 2010).

Knowing all of this, you’d expect school personnel to be doing everything in their power to eliminate any exposure to pornographic content. 

At Stop it Now, exposing children to pornography is considered child sexual abuse. (emphasis mine)

 

Is it considered child sexual abuse if someone shows a child pornographic pictures but doesn’t actually touch the child?
Question:
Dear Stop It Now!,
Is it considered child sexual abuse if someone shows a child pornographic pictures, but doesn’t actually touch the child? Doesn’t a child need to be physically molested in order for it to be considered child sex abuse?*

Response:
Dear Concerned Adult,
Showing pornographic pictures to a child is considered sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse can include non-touching behaviors.

Purposely exposing a child to adult sexuality is considered a form of child sexual abuse, whether or not a child is touched. Non-touching behaviors can be just as upsetting and emotionally harmful to a child as some touching behaviors. Non-touching behaviors that are considered to be child sexual abuse include:

Showing pornography to a child.
Exposing a person’s genitals to a child, or asking children to expose themselves.
Asking a child to interact sexually with someone else.
Online enticement of a minor for sexual purposes.
Photographing a child in sexual poses.
Exposing a child to sexual acts (including masturbation) either in person or through digital, computer or video images.
Watching a child undress or use the bathroom, often without the child’s knowledge (known as voyeurism or being a “Peeping Tom”).
Please note that although there may not be harmful intent, even having adult pornography or sexual toys in the home where a child could come across them has been viewed by authorities as sexual abuse in some circumstances. For complete information, see our definitions of child pornography.

Take care,
Stop It Now!

And yet, schools across New Hampshire are now making pornographic and obscene books available to children in New Hampshire public schools. Since this is considered harmful to children, and child sexual abuse, how do these materials remain in the school library available to children? That’s a good question. Maybe more of us need to start asking our elected representatives on the school board, the librarians and school personnel. One thing’s for sure, no one I know would ever trust an adult working in the schools who approve of these books.

Here is an example of what is available to children in SAU16/Exeter:

 

 

 

Why are they still grooming, and sexualizing children in school?

You can access this content by going here. Then click on EHS library catalog. From there, search for, Queer A Graphic History.

 

 

Whether it’s gay or straight, parents of many gay and straight children do not want their children exploited, and groomed by sexual predators. They do not want their children put in harms way.

It is up to the adults in the community to push back on this kind of sexual abuse aimed at children in the public schools. There are laws and policies in place for parents to opt their children out of objectionable material. That’s good. But this kind of content is a way to groom children, and is considered child sexual abuse. Those who continue to support this in schools, like other creepy predators, should not be in charge of children.

Keep speaking up at school board meetings and demand better for these kids.

 

The post SAU16: Pornography and Grooming Students [Content Warning] appeared first on Granite Grok.

Trump tried to Make America Great Again, and he was succeeding. Employment, our economy, and world standing all dramatically improved from the Obama years, and even our enemies were put on notice.

Democrats have undone all of that, and the fallout has global consequences to the long-term detriment of Americans.

To summarize what that looks like in just one week, we have a tweet that runs down just how far Biden and the Democrats have dragged our reputation and value in just two short years. This list of actions is alleged to have occurred or been announced over the course of a single week.

Talk about a failure cascade.

 

 

 

Who was it again that was going to crash the economy and start world war III. Joe Biden, right?

The post A Few of the Biden Admininstrations Recent “Accomplishments” appeared first on Granite Grok.

I recently wrote about NH Rep. Mike Bordes of Laconia and his vote for HB224, which would remove all penalties from the Fetal Life Protection Act, which would make it risk-free for doctors to perform abortions on babies past 24 weeks gestation.

Related: Rep Mike Bordes Wants to Protect Cats but Not Babies

Bordes is also the prime sponsor of a bill to ban the declawing of cats. His social media is filled with impassioned posts about the harms of declawing cats. Responding to a tweet by Union Leader reporter Kevin Landrigan about HB224, Bordes tweeted:

Misinformation! HB 224 did NOT return abortion to on demand at any time, rather it eliminated the penalties. It absolutely does not mean abortions can be provided after 24 weeks. The FLPA is in the same Chapter of the law as the board of medicine disciplinary proceedings section.

His defense is total fiction.

I was in the public hearing for HB224 when the prime sponsor, Rep. Dan Wolf admitted that there wouldn’t be a single penalty left in the law for performing an abortion in the last three months of pregnancy if HB224 is passed. There would be no black mark on the doctor’s license, no disciplinary hearings, nothing.

Bordes ignored the admonitions from the NHGOP House leadership to vote against HB224, the pleas from his constituents to defend life, and his own party’s pro-life platform.

Bordes continues to tweet about the horrors of declawing cats but makes no mention of the horrors of ripping babies limb from limb a few weeks from their due date.

Contact your state senator and ask him or her to oppose HB224. Sign-in in opposition to HB224 and consider coming to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to the bill on Thursday, April 6 at 1 pm.

Get more information about the bill and how to oppose it at Leaven for the Loaf.

Imagine the blood & gore from a late-term abortion. Your vote to remove penalties could allow those gruesome procedures to continue in NH. It's not just fingertips removed. It's a baby's arms & legs pulled off, the head & chest crushed & no anesthesia. #NHPolitics @nhcornerstone https://t.co/gZIMSplXnz

— Beth (@BethRS62) April 1, 2023

The post NH Rep. Mike Bordes Has No Defense for His Inhumanity appeared first on Granite Grok.

So, Moses took advantage of “technology” back in the day, too?

And just like in modern times, Moses’s tablets crashed as well (Exodus 32:19) and had to have a factory reset (Exodus 34:4).

(H/T: Powerline)

The post Palate Cleanser – So Moses Was Ahead of His Time?? appeared first on Granite Grok.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Narcan, 4 milligrams (mg) naloxone hydrochloride nasal spray for over-the-counter (OTC), non-prescription use. Making Narcan readily available to all will save lives from Fentanyl and opioid poisoning and overdose, but it should not be seen as a solution to the Fentanyl crisis. Making this pharmaceutical spray available without a prescription may ease people’s minds that they are protecting themselves and their families, but it is putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. We cannot let this action take our eye off the massive problem of China and Mexico conspiring to kill 100,000 Americans yearly with illegal Fentanyl.

Many facets of this story need to be looked at before we begin to celebrate the release of Narcan to the public. Narcan is to Opioid and Fentanyl overdoses, as the Epi-Pen is to severe allergic reactions, also known as anaphylaxis. These reactions can include food allergies like a peanut allergy, allergic reactions to insect stings and bites, and allergies to medications. These two situations are very different. The Epi-pen is a quick solution to a health condition. The Narcan spray is possibly first aid for someone exposed to illegal drugs. To me, we should be thankful for both but not celebrate the mass availability of Narcan.

Narcan is a wonderful creation that will save thousands of lives but it does not solve why we need such a remedy. People who suffer from anaphylaxis are innocent victims of a breakdown in their body that makes them susceptible to a severe allergic reaction. People who benefit from a blast of Narcan are using illegal or poorly sourced tainted drugs. 

In talks with police who have administered Narcan, it is not an easy procedure. The victim is usually restrained for everyone’s protection as the recovery brings about an involuntary violent reaction. It often takes multiple doses before the victim recovers fully. The ordinary person is not trained to administer the Narcan spray. It is not a quick fix.

The government is taking credit for this development, but they are fooling themselves and anyone unfamiliar with Narcan. This will grab some attention away from the Fentanyl epidemic and attack from the Mexicans and Chinese. That distraction will be short-lived. Narcan will not hit the shelves until late summer, and the Fentanyl deaths will continue.

My concern with the FDA’s decision is that it will create a false sense of safety and security. People who use illegal drugs, or buy prescription drugs on the street, will think that if they get into a bad situation, Narcan will be available to save their lives—foolish, deadly thinking.

New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman created a rowdy scene this week, calling the GOP cowards for not adopting Democrat gun-control policies. There are far more young people dying from drug overdoses or poisonings. The noise you hear is American parents yelling back at the Congressman, asking what he and the Democrats are doing to seal the border and stop the flow of Fentanyl. Narcan is not the solution. Ending the flow of Fentanyl into our country is.

The post Narcan OTC is a Bandaid appeared first on Granite Grok.

More to unstack and I have to be honest – more keeps coming in faster than I can keep up! First up shows how badly schools are willing to go in sexualizing your children. I believe the title speaks for itself – and why is this pervert teacher still employed?  As always, reformatting and emphasis mine (unless otherwise noted):

• Watch: Dad Goes off on School Board About Assignment Asking HS Students to Describe ‘Sexual Fantasies’

…But a video posted on Friday doesn’t feature a loony lefty. It features an every day dad in Oregon standing up for his right as a parent to know what his daughter is being taught in school—and promises that those who were responsible for a particularly disturbing assignment be held to account. .

For those students who were absent, you will write a short story of a paragraph or two. This story is a sexual fantasy that will have NO penetration of any kind or oral sex (no way of passing an STI). You will choose 3 items (romantic music, candles, massage oil, feather, feather boa, flavored syrup, etc) to use in your story. Your story should show that you can show and receive loving physical affection without having sex.

He continues that his daughter told him that “the teacher put up a wheel on the class board, and it stated ‘anal penetration, oral sex, licking of the ear, kissing,’ and he wanted them to write down the initials of a boy or girl that they would do these activities with. Now, I don’t know what’s worse: wanting to know my child’s sexual fantasy or who they’re going to have anal penetration and oral sex with.”

A parent DESTROYS @4Jschools board after a teacher gave students an assignment which asked them to describe their sexual fantasies in detailpic.twitter.com/WhHAyfjutO

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 31, 2023

and the assignment:

High School Teacher assigning this? And did he expect to get away with it?

Unfortunately, there seems to be no reaction at all from this school board as if this Dad was asking about a permission slip to allow his daughter to go on a field trip…

Well, with assignments like that, what high schooler would be ready for higher education?  Probably not many but when high schools are turning out such a cruddy product (ill-educated young’uns), instead of having to do the remedial work that government schools SHOULD be doing, colleges used to.

Until now – and there’s that stupid word again!:

• ‘Ungrading’: Universities Eliminate Grades in Favor of Equity

Ayup – applying the bigotry of low expectations and coddling students who have learned NOTHING

In the ongoing pursuit by the Social Justice left of elusive and fictitious “equity,” universities across the United States are increasingly dropping grades altogether in favor of equity.

Emphasis not mine:

Joy Malak floundered through her freshman year in college.

“I had to learn how to balance my finances. I had to learn how to balance work and school and the relationship I’m in.” The hardest part about being a new college student, Malak said, “is not the coursework. It’s learning how to be an adult.”

That took a toll on her grades. “I didn’t do well,” said Malak, who powered through and is now in her sophomore year as a neuroscience and literature double major at the University of California, Santa Cruz, or UCSC. “It took a while for me to detangle my sense of self-worth from the grades that I was getting. It made me consider switching out of my major a handful of times.”

Experiences like these are among the reasons behind a growing movement to stop assigning conventional A through F letter grades to first-year college students and, sometimes, upperclassmen.

Called “un-grading,” the idea is meant to ease the transition to higher education — especially for freshmen who are the first in their families to go to college or who weren’t well prepared for college-level work in high school and need more time to master it.

Colleges and and universities are lowering their standards to be able to sing that old rock standard “Take the money and run”. Sorry, that’s the end result – the kid isn’t ready, can’t handle the material.  And it seems that all of this feel-good, participation trophy, social promotion, and those government school teachers not caring enough lead to that. However, the operative statement for me was this: It’s learning how to be an adult.”

Where were Mom and Dad in all this? And if you’re going to throw shade with excuses, well, been there so I will pick on the single Mom I had, the Mom and Dad divorced I had.  But they had the [loving] meanness about them to make sure that being an adult was a necessary item and not an “experience”. There’s too many willing to give out too many excuses.

And if you can’t get your act together and study hard, go get the academic help you need, and spend ALL YOUR TIME on this, I don’t want you designing the plane I’m in, the bridge I’m crossing, or the guy cutting into me for surgery.

And like many, I’m also tired of the Left ASSUMING that because of your skin color, you’re always on their political plantation that requires everyone be identified by their group, not you as an individual, so you are a Race TRAITOR!

• ‘I Am An American’: Black Missouri Republican Rep. Questioned By Black Democrat About Ethnicity After Opposing DEI

Black Republican Missouri state Rep. Justin Hicks was yelled at this week by black Democrat state Rep. Marlene Terry over his opposition to the state government funding diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.  On Thursday, House Bill 6, an appropriations bill for Missouri’s departments of agriculture, natural resources, and conservation, was sent to the state Senate by the Republican-controlled state House by a vote of 105-46.

…During debate on the bill, Hicks, a Republican elected to represent part of St. Charles County in 2022, was grilled over his opposition to state funds going toward DEI programs by Terry, who has been in office since 2021.  “You said you were OK with the DEI [measure], and that there is an equal playing field. Did you say that?” she asked Hicks, who said that he does support banning government funds from going towards DEI.

…Terry then asked how the freshman representative ethnically identified. “I identify as an American,” he replied, which led to applause from some of the lawmakers present. After Hicks told Terry that she had been given the same opportunity to be elected to state government as everyone else, Terry said that Hicks was “delusional.”

DIE is the “academic” version of affirmative action in the corporate world, IMHO, but worse, as it is a blatant attempt to bring Critical Race Theory to fruition but in a way that more stealthy and under the radar.

And I get taken to task for using the phrase “Trans-Authoritarianism”.  This next clip, while Not Safe For Work because of what the Transgender “woman” is saying and THEN attacking a guy that is just standing there, shows what happens when you won’t bow down and “affirm” their delusion.  And and the second shows what the Politically Correct police go with:

• Canadian Cops Watch As Radical Trans Activists Assault Lone Man Defending Kids

Yep, the man who believes he can be a woman shows his male instincts (and growing your hair and getting a boob job can’t hide that for many) and clocks the guy in the sandwich board protesting the transgender movement:

Another angle of the assault on me today. Police did nothing.

The investigating officer says I instigated, and she told me it was a mutual fight. pic.twitter.com/rCQZyntjSY

— Billboard Chris (@BillboardChris) April 1, 2023

Helpful police?  To serve and protect all who?

After my first assault, which occurred within seconds of my arrival, I called 911 for police.

This officer arrived quickly but stayed in her car, so I walked over.

She told me maybe I cut my own nose!

More farcical policing ensued. pic.twitter.com/v6mORvgAjd

— Billboard Chris (@BillboardChris) April 1, 2023

GroomING, GROOMing, all the way into schools…and Parents want it stopped. But then the question of “whose kid IS IT?” pops into play

• Children Groomed for Trans Lifestyle by Gender Ideology in Schools: Experts

Maryland parents are on the warpath against gender ideology, which they believe is steering their children onto the wrong track. And so the mothers and fathers of Frederick County have petitioned the County Superintendent of Schools to notify a parent when his or her child signals a desire to change gender. On March 23, a public forum in Eldersburg, Maryland, heard from a panel of experts that public schools are grooming vulnerable students to transition away from their sex at birth. The gathering was sponsored by Moms for Liberty and co-sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute.

“One is grooming a child for sex,” he said, “but there is also ideological grooming that gets a child in a total new thought world. “That’s why the word ‘grooming’ is important even when the teacher is not a pedophile,” Richards added.

“Introducing children to these concepts in gender ideology whereby you can have a gender identity that is totally contrary to your biological sex is the worst toxic ideology you could teach to a kid because you are teaching a child that he or she is born into the wrong body.”

“What the schools are doing is definitely grooming,” said Utah-based advocate Dr. Erin Brewer, co-founder of Advocates Protecting Children and Compassion Coalition, at the gathering. Brewer added: “It allows teachers to talk to small children about their genitals, breaking down barriers, and teaches the kids to deceive their parents, telling them ‘what goes on in this classroom, don’t go tell your parents!’”

And I’m just going to leave this next one here:

• Maybe It’s Time to Start Treating Transgenderism as a Mental Illness Again: A trans person murdering children is worse than trans people getting their feelings hurt.

Well, I’ll leave it here but will add that those that advocate that others can be something they never can should be charged with abuse.

And talk about a REAL Insurrection?

• ‘Whose schools? Our schools!’: Trans activists occupy yet another state Capitol

Activists for so-called trans rights have invaded yet another state Capitol to protest legislative efforts to protect children and public spaces from the trans agenda.

On Friday, hundreds of leftist activists stormed the Florida Capitol building in Tallahassee, outraged that state legislators had dared to consider the New WindowSafety in Private Spaces Act, which would prevent people from using restrooms and other “changing facilities” such as locker rooms that do not correspond to their biological sex. Rather than accept that, as then President Obama once said, “Elections have consequences,” the trans activists, most of whom appear young, occupied the Florida Capitol to express their outrage. Florida’s Voice, a news outlet which purports to bring “honest political reporting to Florida, minus the mainstream talking points,” shared a one-minute video of the protestors in action.

https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/1641861622678315010https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/1641861622678315010
And I think this is good advice:

• Christian college president: ‘We’re not hiring people … who endorse critical race theory’

Southern Wesleyan University President Bill Barker says that the school will not hire people who support critical race theory.

“I made it very clear where SWU stands on critical race theory, and we made it very clear in our hiring processes,” Barker told tNew Windowhe College Fix. “We’re not hiring people – and I’ve been clear since I came here and the Board of Trustees has supported this – who endorse critical race theory. We will have the courage to let faculty or staff go if they are teaching critical race theory.”

Christianity sees people as individuals and not just as part of a larger collective. DEI does not see individuals, only groups based on shallow attributes – antithetical to Christianity.  So why SHOULD Christian organizations go against their beliefs?

And as Steve pointed out recently, companies are not hiring people who list their pronouns. THey rightly see that these folks generally mean trouble and divisiveness – the last things a company wants to have to deal with.

And Transgenders are willing to kill someone that refuses to go along with their delusion:

• I told my peers men cannot have babies. They’ve threatened to kill me because of it.

On Tuesday, my peers and I at William & Mary university hosted a table on behalf of our Tribe for Life campus club that took on what we consider some of the lies that pro-choicers tell. We set up a big sign, handed out brochures, and had conversations with students about those lies, which we argue are that: men can have babies, Planned Parenthood cares about women, chemical abortions are safe, and women need abortions to succeed.

Some of them I expected, such as the ironic “Skylar is a threat to humanity” post. But the one that sounded alarm bells was: “tribe for life makes me want to commit suicide and also mass murder.”

The threat of violence was enough for me to alert the local authorities, and I have been working with campus leaders as well to ensure the safety of not only fellow students and the community but even for this troubled individual…With the death threats, the doxxing, the vitriol thrown at us, it’s tough. Such is life for a conservative on campus these days.

There can NOT be any heresy against us!

• University Suspends the ‘American Club’ After It Claims ‘You Are Either a Man or a Woman’

March 8th was International Women’s Day, and Long Island University student organization LIU Freedom Fighters celebrated. On Instagram, the group honored “all transgender women and femmes, who are facing the threat of transfemicide across these United States, and beyond.”

The school’s American Club — comprised of Turning Point USA, Young America’s Foundation, Young Americans for Liberty, and Students for Life — responded with posts of its own.

Quotes from a collection of four Instagram entries:

• “On International Women’s Day, the ‘LIU Freedom Fighters’ Honors Men.”
• “On International Women’s Day, we honor real womanhood.”
• “Men can’t be women, women can’t be men. How many times must it be said?”
• (As part of a meme) “When men pretending to be women celebrate International Women’s Day.”
• “‘You are either a man or a woman. You do not get to switch from one category to another.’ — Matt Walsh”

HATE SPEECH! The “Freedom Fighters” started the process to get them punished.  And did.

On March 13th, the American Club…was notified via email that it had been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation being conducted by the University.

Campus Reform obtained access to this notice, which was addressed to LIU American Club President Matthew Cairo, who is also a Campus Reform Correspondent.

The notice begins, “It has come to our…attention that at least four Instagram stories connected to International Women’s Day were shared from the LIU American Club account on or around March 8, 2023,” claiming that the stories constitute “potential violations of the LIU Student Code of Conduct and LIU Internet and Social Media Policy.” The notice goes on to cite the school’s “verbal or physical harassment” policy.

So much for Freedom of Speech and acknowledgment that biology is biology.

 

The post Dad Takes On Limp School Board over Sex Fantasy Assignment, – Stack of Stuff #43 appeared first on Granite Grok.

Bruce Jenner brought great joy and glory to the United States of America as an Olympic Decathlon Champion in 1976. We should be grateful that Caitlyn Jenner attempts to bring sanity to the conversation about Transgenderism.

We want to thank Charles Bradley for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.

Caitlyn, as reported in an article in Breitbart, explains that the “ Radical Rainbow Mafia” engages in grooming children and advocates and uses political violence. Jenner says, “We live in a beautiful country called America, where we are free to be whomever we want. The “Radical Rainbow Mafia” has hijacked LGBT ppl (population) and is the worst thing that has ever happened to LGBT ppl! They are DOMESTIC TERRORIST.”

 

We live in a beautiful country called America, where we are free to be whomever we want. The Radical Rainbow Mafia has hijacked LGBT ppl and is the worst thing that has ever happened to LGBT ppl! They are DOMESTIC TERRORISTS!

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) March 30, 2023

 

Her words, not mine; I just thought readers should know.

The post Bruce Jenner & Caitlin Jenner appeared first on Granite Grok.

Perhaps the worst take I’ve seen on the Bragg indictment was on this site: Alvin Bragg Just Elected Donald Trump. Take off the rose-colored glasses and look around you … half the voters in this country, the Blue half, want their political opponents put in jail.

The Bragg indictment is just the beginning. Georgia is going to indict Trump … you know the grand jury headed by that woke forewoman who told the regime-media that she fantasizes about personally serving a subpoena on Trump … on bogus charges too.

And the Biden-regime’s totally corrupt DOJ is going to indict Trump on bogus charges too.

And if somehow Trump … despite all these political prosecutions, and despite elections in the crucial swing-States: AZ, GA, NV, PA being rigged … manages to win the general election, the Left will ASSASSINATE him. They will kill him rather than allow him to become President again.

And if you don’t think the permanent government in Washington DC would assassinate Trump if that is what it takes to keep him out of power, then you are willfully blind to what America has become.

The post Bragg Is Just The Beginning appeared first on Granite Grok.

Should we adhere to the original Constitution of 1789 or the Constitution of 1868? You might be asking, “What is the difference?” Last year, I talked about the rise of the “Progressive Originalists,” those who buttress their loose construction on a distorted reading of the 14th Amendment.

That is the Constitution of 1868, and there is no louder supporter of this position than Professor Randy Barnett.

Barnett is a “conservative/libertarian” who claims to be a “14th Amendment Originalist.”

Though Barnett does not explicitly say so, he designed his recent book on the topic to be a thorough takedown of Raoul Berger’s Government of Judiciary and subsequent The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights.

Leftist legal scholars hate both with a passion and let Berger know it throughout the 1980s. Why? Because if Berger was correct, and he was, then the entire basis of the modern civil rights movement was built on a house of cards.

In other words, these lefties don’t want to believe it because it was slaying their sacred cow. Barnett rides to the rescue, sort of.

Barnett unconvincingly argues that those who insist that the author of the Fourteenth Amendment, John Bingham of Ohio, really intended the amendment to incorporate the Bill of Rights and, in the process, provide the intellectual firepower for the expansive civil rights programs of the general government.

Bingham’s reputation has been revived in the last twenty years by people like Eric Foner, James Oakes, and others who insist that he was a “second Founding Father” who crafted an amendment that would transform the United States.

They are partially correct, but not because that is what the Fourteenth Amendment intended to do. It is only because that is how the federal courts have interpreted the Amendment.

Barnett calls this the correct position.

As a result, he urges “originalists” to reject the “original Constitution” in favor of the Constitution as altered by the Republican Party and the Fourteenth Amendment.

I get why. This takes the “racist” sting off the table, but it also creates its own fairy tale of interpretation.

Barnett wrote a long essay on this position and the “proslavery” or “antislavery” origins of the Constitution. It deserved a thorough review, so I will tackle it on THREE episodes of The Brion McClanahan Show.

Part 1, Episode 772:

The Brion McClanahan Show · Ep. 772: Should We Abandon the Original Constitution?

Were the Founding Fathers Proslavery?

People have a hard time separating slavery from racism.

The two terms have become synonymous in American society because of the history of the slavery in America.

This description lacks complexity, as white Europeans were also enslaved, albeit at a different rate and manner, as white indentured servitude disappeared long before African slavery in the United States.

But that does not mean it didn’t exist, as did black slaveowners, most of whom owned slaves for profit over humanitarian concern.

Regardless, Americans eventually associated slavery with Africans and no other racial group.

Yet, you could be anti-slavery and believe in “white supremacy” in the 18h and 19th centuries. The vast majority of Americans would not have known any other explanation for a stable society. Western civilization was, after all, crafted by Europeans.

And most emancipationists and later abolitionists were indeed “racists” under a modern definition of term.

The notable exceptions would be the several leading American black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and some white radicals like the Grimke sisters of South Carolina. But these were the exceptions in the antebellum United States.

Modern historians, who dabble in the business of “systemic white supremacy” never can answer one simple question: what was the alternative for 18th or 19th-century people living in the 18th or 19th centuries?

Many dreamed of a world without slavery, Southerners like Jefferson included, but most could not figure out how to reconcile abolition with a multi-racial society, not even in New England where African-Americans made up less than one percent of the population and yet faced severe restrictions on their lives and property.

They did not think Africans were capable of self-government, not even after the War, as Connecticut among other Northern States prohibited blacks from voting. That only changed with the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Antebellum Americans did not hold our modern views on race, and to insist that they did and that their actions should have matched our own is the very definition of presentism.

This is why I argue that Lincoln’s “proposition nation” was indeed a myth, not because Jefferson didn’t write it or some people–even many members of the founding generation–didn’t rhetorically use it, but because actions spoke louder than words. American commitment to racial egalitarianism, or any egalitarianism for that matter, was suspect at best and mostly non-existent.

They didn’t believe it beyond political rights for citizens, and citizenship had restrictions.

Even Jefferson’s proposed revisions to the Virginia Constitution limited voting rights and citizenship.

So much for Jefferson’s belief in “all men are created equal.”

So what?

Does it change the fact that these men drafted two constitutions for the United States and several State constitutions or that they won two wars against the British, a naval war against France, and were, in my opinion, the greatest generation in American history?

No other generation comes close.

That’s why “conservatives” who run around championing Lincoln and the 1850s Republican Party aren’t really conserving anything except a nineteenth-century leftist dream based on a real myth, the myth of the proposition nation and the righteous cause.

Is that “conservative”? Randy Barnett seems to think so, which is why I spent three episodes of The Brion McClanahan Show this week on Barnett’s piece.

You aren’t going to win an argument with a leftist by relying on leftist talking points. You’ve already conceded the field.

Part 2, Episode 773:

The Brion McClanahan Show · Ep. 773: Were the Founding Fathers Proslavery?

The Original Constitution vs the 14th Amendment

Should we follow the original Constitution or the Constitution of 1868?

If you suggest the former, then according to many “conservatives” and libertarians, you are walking into a minefield.

You see, many Americans see the original Constitution as “pro-slavery.” This stance comes from the arguments of nineteenth-century abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, who considered the document to be a “covenant with death.”

On the other hand, some abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Lysander Spooner thought the Constitution was explicitly anti-slavery. Douglass, in fact, came to this position after reading Spooner.

Neither are correct. The Garrisonian position is more popular among those on the left because it works well with their political positions. If the Constitution “enshrined slavery,” and if the document was nothing more than a “covenant with death”, then scrapping it makes logical sense.

Who says the 1850s are dead? It’s not the right that’s living in the 1850s, its the progressive left who constantly dust off early Republican Party talking points.

The right likes to use the Douglass narrative because it buttresses their Lincolnian myth and theoretically helps them ward off charges of racism.

We know that doesn’t really work.

The reality is that the Constitution was neither proslavery nor antislavery. It was neutral. The word “slave” never appears in the document, and while Americans could make the case that the United States government was the government of the “white man”–and what else would it have been in the 1840s?–race was not specified in any article of the Constitution.

It did not “enshrine slavery.” It allowed for States to use federalism to either maintain or abolish the institution. It continued the international slave trade for 20 years, but gave the power to Congress to abolish it at that point. It mandated that fugitives from the law face justice. It did not give Congress any power over the institution either pro or con. It did protect property rights, and as slaves were property in the nineteenth century, the United States government had a legal obligation to protect that property in federal territory, hence the rub with the common property of the United States, but again, that does not make the document “proslavery.”

Barnett and I, whom I have sharply criticized over the last three days, agree on this point.

Just because the left wants to make stupid arguments doesn’t mean we should come up with our own stupid arguments to push back, like abandoning real originalism for “14th Amendment originalism.”

You know who wins in that scenario?

The progressive left and the progressive right.

Not you or I.

I wrap up my three episodes on Barnett’s piece with Episode 774 of The Brion McClanahan Show.

 

Brion McClanahan | The Tenth Amendment Center

The post Should We Abandon the Original Constitution? appeared first on Granite Grok.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hampton Falls, NH — On Wednesday, Hampton Falls Selectman Lou Gargiulo and his Attorneys will present findings to the NH Ballot Law Commission from the 2022 New Hampshire State Senate District 24 Election between Lou Gargiulo and Debra Altschiller.

PRESS AND PUBLIC ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND. 

Date: Wednesday, April 5, 2023
Time: 10 AM

Location:

STATE ARCHIVES BUILDING
9 Ratification Way
Concord, NH 03301

 For Further Information Contact:

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By Pierre Kory, Pierre Kory's Medical Musings When my friend and colleague “A Midwestern Doctor” (AMD) wrote a recent deeply referenced post about how SSRI antidepressants can cause homicidal psychosis, I was shocked. Not so much at the knowledge of... Tom Bowler

I keep hoping that the purported peace-loving moderate Muslims are indeed the great majority who would prove me right by demonstrating their peacefulness and moderation in action. Thus far, only a faint murmur of equivocation is all that I hear from these people.

Originally published March 2011

“I am already against the next war,” read the bumper sticker on a car ahead of me. I long to tell the driver: the next war is already here; Islamists are waging it in every corner of the globe, and the “moderate Muslims” are either actively supporting them, placing the blame on the West, or simply looking the other way. This war aims to wipe out everything that free people cherish, including the right of expressing their sentiments. Banishing war has been the perennial dream of mankind’s best, while its worst has been frustrating its realization. To renounce war unilaterally and unconditionally is surrender and death.

Humanity has suffered horrific wars in the past. Yet, the present multi-form and multi-front war waged by Islamists has the potential of inflicting more suffering and destroying more lives than any before it. Ruthless Islamic forces are advancing rapidly in their conquests while those of freedom are acquiescing and retreating. Before long, Islamism is poised to achieve its Allah-mandated goal of cleansing the earth of all non-Muslims. Any and all means and weapons are to be enlisted in the service of this final holy war that aims to establish the Islamic Ummah.

But Islam is a religion of peace and the great majority of Muslims are not a party to any plans and actions of the radicals, so claim academic pundits, leftist journalists, and hired Islamic apologists. The incantation of these “authorities” is the lullaby that puts the people into a sleep of complacency. For an average free human busy with all manners of demands on his time and resources, would hardly want to worry about the threat of Islamism when those he believes are “in the know” emphatically claim that there is nothing to worry about. Some of these advocates of Islam go further by accusing those who sound the alarm as racists, bigots, hatemongers, and much more.

But where are all the peace-loving moderate Muslims that supposedly are in the great majority? The Muslims who are neither jihadists themselves, nor do they support them? I and others, time and again, have been calling upon them to stand up and show the world that they oppose the fanatical Islamists. It is small comfort even if the vast majority of Muslims are not fanatic radicals when they do nothing to demonstrate their position. It is instructive to recall that it is invariably a minority, and more often than not a very small minority, that launches a campaign of death and destruction.

Perhaps it is wishful thinking on the part of the non-Muslims to believe that one can be a Muslim moderate, given that Islam is radical at its very core. To be moderate Muslim demands that the person explicitly renounce much of the violent, exclusionary, and radical teachings of the Quran. By so doing, the individual who issues his own death warrant in Islamic countries is condemned as apostate if he lives in a non-Islamic land and may even earn a fatwa on his head.

It is deadly, in any confrontation, to assess the adversary through one’s own mental template, because the two templates can be vastly different from each other. People in the West are accustomed to relativistic rather than absolutistic thinking. To Westerners, just about all matters range from black to white with an array of gray shades between the two poles. To Muslims, by contrast, nearly everything is in black and white and with virtually no shades of gray. The former type of thinking is typical of more mature minds, while the latter is that of young children and the less enlightened.

This absolutist thinking is enshrined in the Quran itself. When the starting point for a Muslim is the explicit fanatical words of Allah in the Quran, then the faithful are left with no choice other than literally obeying its dictates or even taking it to the next level of fanaticism. Good Muslims, for instance, do not shake hands with women, even though the Quran does not explicitly forbid it. Although the Quran stipulates that men are rulers over women, good Muslim men take it upon themselves to rule women not much better than they treat their domesticated animals.

All extreme systems operate outside of the constraints of checks and balances and according to the principle of a negative feedback loop. That is, once it starts, the extreme becomes more and more extreme until self-destructs and takes the larger system down with it. Cancer is a case in point. It begins with only a few cells. Left unchecked, the few cells continue expanding and stop only with the death of the host.

Fanatical Islam may indeed be a minority. Yet it is deadly cancer that has metastasized throughout the body of the world. Urgent confrontation of this advancing disease is imperative to stave it off.

Dozens of Islamist shooting wars of lesser and greater bloodletting are presently raging in the world, aided and abetted by the “moderate Muslim” majority. The so-called moderate Muslims, even if they exist, are complicit in the crimes of the radicals either by providing them with funds, logistics, and new recruits or by simply failing to actively confront and unequivocally renounce them.

As is the case with cancer cells, it is the malignant minority that is death-bearing.

In Germany in the 1930s, for instance, very few people were Nazis and most Germans dismissed them as a bunch of hot-headed fools. Before long, the hot-headed few cowed in the dismissive masses and as a result, millions lost their lives.

The tentacles of the Islamist hydra have deeply penetrated the world. The Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood poses a clear threat in Egypt with its large block of representatives in the parliament, but also wages its deadly campaign through its hundreds of well-established and functioning branches all over the world.

The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot soldiers for the Petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.

The end-of-the-world believers of the bomb-aspiring Iran’s Khomeinism are busy establishing the Shia hegemony in an arc extending from the Gulf of Oman to the Mediterranean Sea.

Al Qaeda and dozens of its like-minded jihadists relentlessly carry their barbaric campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, the Philippines, the former Soviet Union republics, the Russian Federation, Somalia, North Africa, and parts of Europe, as well as other lands.

I keep hoping that the purported peace-loving moderate Muslims are indeed the great majority who would prove me right by demonstrating their peacefulness and moderation in action. Thus far, only a faint murmur of equivocation is all that I hear from these people.

Are “moderate Muslims” an illusion? The only viable alternative for peaceful people of Islamic background, therefore, is to leave the bondage of violent Islam altogether and join ranks with humanity’s free.

The selected puppet president Ahmadinejad boasts that Iran’s mullahs’ nuclear train has no reverse gear and lacks brakes. He should harbor no illusions. The non-Islamist masses of Iranians will not docilely submit to the mullahs’ maniacal plans. It is the unmatched force of freedom that has no reverse gear and it is the force fully capable and determined to bring the mullahs’ train to a screeching halt before it is armed with the Armageddon nuclear weapons they so doggedly pursue.

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