Tuesday • April 16 • 2024
Vol.XVI • No.XVI
Manchester, N.H.
Post Traumatic Stress is not so much a disorder as it is a natural human reaction to things that happen to us, and new research alleges that Climate Change is now a growing cause of it.
There are so many things wrong with this research.
First, the subjects are Californians. Need I say more? I will.
The bulk of the trauma experienced as “climate” in this research was the 2018 California Camp Fire, a devastating blaze that killed 85 people and burned down thousands of structures, including homes and businesses. It was a wholly unique and terrifying event. The idea that people who survived it might have post-traumatic stress is like suggesting people a majority of those surveyed were less thirsty after drinking a tall, cool glass of water.
The reporting suggests that traumatic weather events resulting from Climate Change created PTSD-like symptoms and that mental health experts must be prepared to help the survivors.
The California Camp Fire was the result of political negligence and progressive priorities. It was started by an agin transmission line and spread by typical California winds in a state with a history of land-management neglect, especially forestland.
It was a Liberal-man-caused disaster and not the result of a warming planet or any other Climate Cult myth.
To be clear, the trauma is real, and some folks will carry that around their entire life. Some of them may need support. And yes, people have been traumatized by severe weather for as long as humans have tried to live on a planet that has it. It’s not new. It will always result in stress. Though I’d argue equally for that, there is significant unjustified stress created by false or incomplete narratives about things like climate (or COVID) which contribute.
The non-stop harassment of regular citizens creates plenty of stress, which is justified by events like the Camp fire or natural earthly weather.
It’s gaslighting.
A more accurate survey would examine the mental stress caused by excessive regulation and taxation – especially in California – resulting from the progressive obsession with using climate to launder tax dollars into certain people’s pockets. We could use call it Post Tax-Bill Stress Disorder PTSD). A genuine and complicated mental health threat with vectors from every level of government.
The study was published in PLOS Climate. I think they meant POS.
The post Post Tax-Bill Stress Disorder (PTSD) Linked to Climate Change appeared first on Granite Grok.
To all those who are sending in memes, thank you! Keep them coming please, as it helps me gather weaponry to fight the Left. Please do share this post, and if you share an individual meme, consider mentioning you saw it on the Grok!
A request: if you grab a meme from here, please do include a linkback to this post and say “Found here” or some such. Helps me, helps the Grok.
Speaking of, from this week, Monday Memes and Meme Overflow. Also don’t forget both complementary parts of my Survival Sunday feature: PREP edition and SITREP edition.
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
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First, a PSA. In general, throughout my life, few have been in front of me in terms of my trust in, respect for, and deference towards the Thin Blue Line. Police have an incredibly difficult job, a potentially very dangerous job, and I respect that enormously. But if you recall from the last SITREP post, towards the end, I discussed Betrayal Trauma and what I see is it being one of the reasons why so many people do not want to see so many things going on. Seeing the police, in country after country including the US, become basically enforcement goons for the Covidian tyranny – with scant few people saying I will not obey that order (Bill Whittle video, six minutes) – I am finding my trust in, respect for, and deference towards them vastly diminished. And I’m traumatized by that. I don’t want to view the police, any police, with suspicion. Increasingly, I am. (Consider this disqus comment, embedded within is a comment about a lone woman being shooed off a bench for resting in public. Thuggery. And by myriad accounts, few police had the decency to let things pass.)
I fear this is deliberately done. Peoples are increasingly becoming hostile towards their militaries & police because of the last few years. The police, in turn, know which side of their paycheck bread is buttered, and the anger towards the police turns those police (and more broadly the military) against those they are sworn to protect and serve (consider the military in the Netherlands against the farmers, who doubtless now view each other with suspicion and resentment). And thus, the people – police and military – that should be our first line of defense are sundered from us in what I see as a shrewd divisive strike by the globalists.
So directly to my email box came a request to post the following video, link below. Text from this article is here:
In the early morning hours of December 13th, 2022, officers from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department obtained a search warrant for a residence in Bear Paw, NC after a disturbance call made to 911 dispatch hours earlier.
In addition to obtaining the search warrant, officers from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department also requested assistance from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ SWAT team and a siege of the residence was conducted.
Just before 5 AM that morning, SWAT officers tossed a robot equipped with cameras into the residence and awoke the sleeping couple.
Go watch that video. I saw NO JUSTIFICATION for the shoot. Also read the comments.
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Mockery level: EPIC. As is this:
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And did anyone catch this at the WEF? A crippling cyberattack inevitable within two years? Another case of telegraphing the next move?
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/wef-2023-cyber-attack-inevitable.mp4
Remember Klaus’ predictions as related by Candace Owens?
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/candace-owens-on-inevitable-cyberattack.mp4
Just yesterday my daughter was asking about a coronal mass ejection and what that might do to the grid. Would we survive? Depends on how long the grid would be down, sweetie. And from several years ago is this piece from Bill Whittle:
And reports of ongoing attacks on substations. Yes, the grid is enormously vulnerable, and without hardening it and protecting it, it can be taken down whether naturally or by intent. With the grid down… things get very, very difficult – and if down for more than a few days, a lot of people are going to die. Which, if you recall, is the intent.
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More EPIC mockery:
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SURAK has a must-read essay at his new substack:
Murder by hospital – Surak substack blog
As he is wont to say, “They really do want you dead”.
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Pick of the post:
The EPIC ones were notable – and all had value. This, however, is the best because it is a necessary reminder that Crimes against humanity do not just include active murders or executions or prison guards. They include those who contributed to the mass misleading of The People to enable and drive cooperation with these things.
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Help a guy make a buck – buy a few of these!
Build Back Better – the hidden message Bumper Sticker | Zazzle
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Palate Cleansers:
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And suddenly, I now have a to-do list to start planning.
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The post Friday Meme Overflow-Overflow appeared first on Granite Grok.
On Monday, Hollis Grok contributor Aaron Penkacik sent a shot across our bow about a new ATF rule that turns millions of law-abiding Americans into felons overnight. But it’s worse than that. Trying to comply with the rule is a trap.
As a refresher,
What the new rule demands are that anyone who owns a large format pistol equipped with a stabilizing pistol brace must register it with the ATF as a short-barreled rifle (SBR), or the short barrel removed and a 16-inch or longer rifle barrel attached to the firearm, or permanently remove and dispose of, or alter, the “stabilizing brace” such that it cannot be reattached, or the firearm is turned in to your local ATF office, or the firearm is destroyed.
The rule is complex and poorly written but includes a grace period for you to license your firearm under the new rule. You have 120 days after it has been published in the Federal Register, and here’s where the trap comes in.
ATF is now handling all firearms background checks. They are busy. The process for required licensing of a qualifying firearm prior to the writing of the new rule could take a lot longer than 120 days. Adding millions of new requests in the days after they publish the rule means it will take longer. Years?
Filing requires you to provide the ATF with your name, address, and all sorts of stuff, including fingerprints.
Any request that goes unapproved for 88 days is automatically declined. At that point, the ATF’s default response is to engage in an enforcement action against you, and you’ve sent them all the information they need to find you, arrest you, and confiscate your property, because you tried to comply with their rule.
The violation is a felony; up to ten years in prison and 250,000 dollars in fines. And this is the ATF, so hide your dog (you can’t hide the gun you already told them you have).
If you want to watch it explained, I’ve included a video below with a lawyer for Gun Owners of America.
Now!
Last year, New Hampshire passed HB1178, which prohibits any state agent or agency from enforcing this sort of thing, but a provision in the law permits cooperation, and there’s nothing I see about stopping them – leaving us to wonder what the State will do.
We hope that any number of lawsuits will stall publication in the national register or prevent them from starting the 120-day clock. That the courts will tie it up and eventually toss it.
We want to hope that the justice apparatus in the Live Free or Die State would defend its citizens from arbitrary prosecution, given both the rule itself and the trap set by the ATF in the new rule.
There are no guarantees, and it is best to assume you’ve got no backup from law enforcement or the AG.
So, have any NH gun groups or 2A advocates mailed, emailed, or filed anything with anyone at the State or federal level about this pernicious rule change?
And what do you do if you have a firearm that fits the ATF’s new criteria and needs to be licensed?
Here is a link to the ATF rule change.
And here’s the video I promised.
The post Trying to Comply With the ATF’s New “Short Barreled Rifle Rule” (SBR) Is a Trap! appeared first on Granite Grok.
I have to admit, again, that I do spend quite a bit of time over at Treehugger “mining” for fodder. Sometimes, too much time because then I can’t decide what to bring back here and there are a lot of times, on a lot of their posts, my comments go in all kinds of directions.
However, this one, not so much.
For years, Lloyd has been against gas stoves. The root cause, though, is the poor ventilation in most houses. But, given his “ELECTRIFY EVERYTHING” outlook, it turns out this was just another time to beat the drum against gas stoves back in November before the lastest round of “BAN GAS STOVES” Culture War (and Governance War) that just popped up when the CPSC’s Trumka said “yeah, we can ban that”.
The post is “It’s Time to Get Serious About Particulate Pollution“:
Nobody used to talk much about particulates. Like these guys having a smoke at noon in Pittsburgh in 1940, everyone was swimming in a soup of particulates from cars, from burning coal for industry as they did in Pittsburgh, and of course, from smoking. It was a given in our lives.
As Treehugger’s Russell McLendon noted:
“People have been choking on manmade air pollution for roughly half a million years, ever since Pleistocene cavemen huddled around the first campfires. That was clearly worth a few lungfuls of soot — fire gave us warmth, night vision and cooked meat, most likely outweighing the times it gave us bronchitis.”
At least this last guy realized that life is a bunch of tradeoffs – Lloyd, being a purist, isn’t. His way / highway seems to be it and that highway is always in a search for almost to a complete ban on what HE decides is bad for everyone. And he set his gaze upon the insides of our homes:
Most of his post then goes into all the stuff that we should CARE about in our homes – and get rid of it. Simple because of Particulate Matter (yes, go read the post). Of COURSE, to eliminate everything, he calls for everything to be regulated. Everything.
Of course I couldn’t let it go:
So, Lloyd, I am hearing you say that EVERYTHING must be taken away from our homes in order to live well – just take that pretty in-home image of all the PM pollution sources.
So, no more kitchens for cooking, no cleaning supplies, no more “mood setting” candles (but what about them when the RE grid goes down…again?), can’t get rid of the mold because you took away our cleaning supplies, and how the heck can I air out the house when you take away the outside air? Dust mites galore, other allegens…why aren’t we all already dead?
And you can take my wood stove only out of my cold dead hands.
Heck, you’re presenting a pretty bad picture for those that are going to have a real hard time just with Heat and Eat because of Bidenflation and Green New Deal energy policies. How many more must die because of bad governance???
So many problems but no practical solutions.
Like minded Bob (most of the time), pitches in on Lloyd as well and let’s him know that there is more than just Green:
So, we take away everything that gives us joy. Like fried steak – that spills PM2.5 like you would not believe. We take away our floor coverings because particulates. We take away all of our pets, lots of contamination there. And at the end of it we still end up dead!
And it kills tens of thousands of people every year.”
Perhaps it’s time to remind ourselves of something:It’s not how long you play the game for that counts it’s what you do with that time in the game that shows the quality of your life.
He’s not wrong, you know. What medical experts / COVID queens and the Lloyds of the world do is hone in on the smallest or single parts of Life. But to them, that’s ALL Life should be about – and they demand that we make their concerns our AND to the same maximal amount as they do.
Sorry, I’d like to think that I’m not a single or two dimensional kinda guy. That’s not how most of us live our lives (though I do admit I spend more time doing the blogging stuff than might be good…but that’s my decision, not theirs, and I don’t force it on them).
And I left a last comment to that effect and pointed out the biggest difference between them and us:
So, we take away everything that gives us joy.
Indeed. They lock into these issues that normal folks don’t care about and demand that we obey them as they turn our lives upside down and inside out. They demand that we accept that their issues MUST be ours as if we have no agency of our own.
We Normals only have such agency as they allow us to have as they manipulate Govt to bend us to their wills.
No choice, no freedom of our own. Only the freedom to obey.
Sure. Cold dead hands wrapped round that cylinder atop your shoulders.
The post Treehugger – Yep, I’m Unstacking Stuff. Treehugger Was against Stoves before They Were against Stoves. appeared first on Granite Grok.
Forewarned is forearmed. Thus, this is intended to be a compilation of articles, with my commentary, to try and get like-minded people to grasp what’s coming. Even merely being aware of events in the world will make you better prepared than the hordes of sheeple. Note that these compilations are catch-as-catch can, and presented as is. I make no guarantee of accuracy or complete coverage of the world.
Please follow both me, Nitzakhon, on Gab… as well as my blog host Granite Grok and also on Telegram Tommy Robinson Official plus his Urban Scoop site. And don’t forget posts sometimes get cloned on American Reveille as well, which is a good site to check out in general.
For prep materials, please see:
Survival Sunday – PREP Edition – Granite Grok
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Top of the fold:
Moderna Withheld Data From FDA Regulators to Get Bivalent Booster Approved – PJ Media
Fraud. Period. More:
The narrative is dead, and the only ones still refusing to accept it are the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Israeli media (rtmag.co.il)
The COVID gene injection (Pfizer, Moderna etc.) were a fraud failure from day 1: Respiratory mucosal layer & mucosal immunity; “Gene-based vaccination–quo vadis? Immunity to respiratory viruses (substack.com)
A little jargony, but as I understand it there was no possibility at all that the Jabs would prevent transmission. Which was the whole selling point. “Protect grandma” and all. Yet despite the censorship that Narrative is indeed crumbling.
And related to the above:
Leana Wen: We’re overcounting COVID deaths now – HotAir
Not just now. They always were.
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The U.S. is controlled by ten cartels – by Toby Rogers (substack.com)
That’s what we are up against — one nation, under the cartels, polarized, with liberty for them and misery for us.
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Deceiving the Deceivers
Interesting. Certainly there are powers moving beyond what we see.
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Technocrats-At-Work: Medical Profession Implements WHO’s Digital Diagnosis Code For The Unvaxxed (technocracy.news)
Turning your doctors into agents enforcers. I already don’t trust the medical establishment.
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BE UNSHAKEABLE – The Ultimate Stoic Quote Collection (Powerful Narration)
Also recommend this book highly:
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
I liked this so much I sent a copy to one of my best friends. And I was surprised at how much of the philosophy I had already incorporated into my life.
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Deep State / Coming Tyranny / WEF / Globalists (broad):
Wells Fargo Cancels Prominent Florida Gun Dealer’s Accounts, Implies it Won’t Work With Gun Companies | The Reload
And after that, any activity deemed wrongthink. Speaking of wrongthink:
Bill Gates Calls for Increased Censorship to ‘Moderate Insanity’ That Prevents People ‘Using Masks or Taking Vaccines’
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/125/137/275/playable/cae61c97278480d3.mp4
War on car ownership ramping up.
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‘Dark Side Of Davos’ Revealed As Global Elite Bookings For S*x Workers Soar | ZeroHedge
Degenerates.
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How the Davos elite took back control – UnHerd
How dare the peoples resist!
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Protecting Children:
Watch this children’s hospital employee talk about taking wombs from living women and planting them in men | Not the Bee
Not children specifically, but indicative of the general degeneracy we face. And I can’t help but think of Frankenstein and its warning about the hubris of science. Related:
Shared post – American Board of Family Medicine instructs physicians to recommend puberty blockers for gender dysphoric children (locals.com)
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17 Year Old Girl’s Emotional Plea to Santee, CA City Council After Being Exposed to Naked Man in Women’s Locker Room at YMCA (Video) (thegatewaypundit.com)
More concerned with the right of the “trans” than the actual, biological girl.
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National Security (specifically):
So much going on with Biden’s documents I can’t keep up. Suffice it to say, IMHO, the broader picture is this: the DS is determined to get Biden out. My personal bet is that he will soon be Arkancided pass away from the strain of the situation – rather than a drawn out criminal proceeding.
And Tucker Carlson had a monolog where he asked what the broad topic of the documents is/are. And that the enemedia has no curiosity about the nature of the contents is telling.
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BREAKING: Navy Secretary says US may need to choose between arming itself or Ukraine in the next six months | The Post Millennial | thepostmillennial.com
This is a disgrace.
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Shortages (broadly):
Converging Downturns – Granite Grok
From a while ago, but sadly prescient.
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Side note: Had to suddenly get new wipers for the wife’s car. And it hit me – what if there’s a shortage of those? Or engine oil. Sigh. Another thing to make sure to have.
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On The Jab (and Covid)
WATCH: Neil deGrasse Tyson Throws a Fit After Interviewer Questions Covid Vaccine Efficacy – Summit News
The furor with which people attack negative news about the Jab is IMHO the same furor that fanatic cult members attack negative information about the cult. Reasonable people can accept questioning, even if they don’t change their views. Fanatics attack questioners.
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Covid Vaccines Are “Obviously Dangerous” and Should Be Halted Immediately, Say Senior Swedish Doctors – Summit News
The evidence is so overwhelming that, per the above, only a cultist can’t see it. Related:
FDA Chief Calls for an Immediate End to COVID Vaccines: “Millions Are Dropping Dead” – News Punch
The Damage is Ubiquitous
And curiouser and curiouser:
WEF Hires Unvaccinated Pilots To Fly Them Into Davos: “Safety of Our Members Is No. 1 Priority” – News Punch
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MUST SEE: Ultra MAGA Combines Blatant Lies by Fauci and DC Elites with TGP TRUTHS… “No Question – It’s Mass Homicide” -EPIC VIDEO (thegatewaypundit.com)
Excellent video.
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Inflation:
7 Reasons High Inflation Isn’t Likely To Go Away Any Time Soon (thefederalist.com) (bolding added):
Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman’s maxim that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” — meaning, inflation is always caused by government overspending — predicts continued inflation for at least the next five years, if not longer.
Related:
Things We Should Understand: The Aristocracy Is Eating The Peasants | ZeroHedge
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Over One Third of Europeans Left Struggling to Pay Bills Amid Inflation Crisis
Global.
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‘O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!”
-Walter Scott
In parallel, I remember my father telling me this one:
A liar must have a good memory.
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Enemedia:
SHOCKING (I remind you) that FDA published a study (Wong et al.) using surveillance data finding Pfizer COVID vaccine increases risk of lung blood clots by 50%; not one media outlet ran it, NOT one! (substack.com)
Of course not. That goes against The Narrative of SAFE AND EFFECTIVE. Related:
Beware When the Media Trots Out ‘Experts’ and Studies – PJ Media (link in original):
Gottlieb is a member of Pfizer’s board of directors. Yet during the pandemic, he appeared regularly on legacy media outlets that simply introduced him as the “former FDA Director Scott Gottlieb.” CNBC even made him a contributor following his exit from the agency. His status with a news outlet and the way the media introduced him gave him the veneer of an unbiased expert.
However, the media left viewers and readers ignorant of his fiduciary responsibility to the pharmaceutical giant. Due to his obligations, even if he had contradictory information about Pfizer’s product, he would be prohibited from disclosing it to the public. It would also be common for board members to receive additional compensation based on financial performance. By February 2022, Pfizer had banked $37 billion in vaccine sales.
Gottlieb had apparent conflicts every time he appeared to discuss the pandemic. His aggressive pursuit to silence jab skeptics like Berenson should make you question everything he ever said or will say.
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A Troubling Pattern Is Starting to Emerge… – by Dr Panda (substack.com)
IMHO the dam will truly break when:
And THEN it will dawn on people, like it dawned on these guys that they ALL put the yeast in:
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SO BIDEN AND THE MEDIA LIED AGAIN! JOEY WAS NEVER TRANSPARENT AFTER NEW DOCUMENTS FOUND
Lying. It’s what they do.
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Pro-life:
Illinois Hospital Created ‘Comfort Room’ For Aborted Babies to Die In – Summit News
I have no words. Well, perhaps, simply to say that such a room needs to be created for anyone who so designated that room, or any who used it.
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Know your Leftist / Globalist & Islamic enemy:
REPUBLICANS DID IT! The View Pushes Conspiracy Theories About Biden Classified Documents (VIDEO) (thegatewaypundit.com)
These people are mentally ill. No question.
Given some of the more… pungent ones I let out sometimes, I can understand if they claimed olfactory rape.
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German Justice Minister Replaced For Being a White Male – Summit News
Choosing someone because of their skin color. There’s a word for that. Related to racism of the Left:
Rep Byron Donalds’ Wife Erika: “The Most Racist Attacks We Experience Are Always From the Left” (thegatewaypundit.com)
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Immigration / Migration:
Biden Released More Illegals in Three Months Than the Entire Population of Montana – Geller Report
Great replacement.
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Watch–Republican Maria Salazar Lectures Americans in Davos: Illegal Aliens Owed Amnesty (breitbart.com)
With friends like this, who needs enemies?
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Economy at large:
Shocking Video: FDIC Knows Banking Collapse is Coming & They’re HIDING it From You
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BIDEN ECONOMY: Banks Are Preparing for Billions in Losses in 2023
Here it comes. More:
Davos: Global Recession Likely in 2023 | Newsmax.com
Economists Warn Americans Recession Is Coming: “Don’t Be Fooled” | ZeroHedge
High Power Costs Force US Industrials, Factories to Shut – Bloomberg
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Political War
Two-thirds of Congress cashed a pharma campaign check in 2020 (statnews.com)
Bought & owned, lock-stock-and-barrel.
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Whose Country Is It, Anyway? House GOP Bill Prohibits All but U.S. Flag From Flying at U.S. Embassies (jihadwatch.org)
Duncan explained: “Our beautiful flag, Old Glory, should be the only flag flying and representing our country over our diplomatic and consular posts worldwide. The American flag is a beacon of liberty, and no other flag or symbol better portrays our shared values than the Stars and Stripes.” Indeed. But since the Left has been and remains so intent upon destroying those shared values, it’s not surprising that it would find the idea of flying only the American flag at American embassies so offensive.
AMEN!
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US Stability (broad catch-all):
Actor Richard Dreyfuss Tells Glenn Beck America Will Die If We Don’t Revive The Study Of Civics (VIDEO)
A nation that doesn’t know who it is and where it came from is, indeed, doomed.
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Former Top Intel Official Douglas Wise Admits Knowing Hunter Biden Laptop was Real But Lied Anyway and Signed On to Bogus intel Letter
File charges and squeeeeeeze. See who he names. Related in my mind:
IT WAS ALL PLANNED: Tactical Commander for US Capitol Police Admits During Testimony That “Agitators” Who Were “Highly Trained” Ripped Down Fencing Prior to Protest at US Capitol on Jan. 6 – Flopping Aces
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San Fran City Panel Urges Reparations Of $5 Million Per Black Adult | ZeroHedge
Never mind the pure financial impossibility. This will set a precedent that people can be held accountable for the misdeeds done by people long dead. And that will spiral out of control. But I’m all for reparations… if it includes a one-way ticket back to Africa with revocation of American citizenship.
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World Stability (broad catch-all):
Ukraine Defence Minister: We Are A De Facto Member Of Nato Alliance
What happens when Russia realizes it has to deal with NATO in its entirety? Related:
Western Tanks Appear Headed To Ukraine, Breaking Another Taboo
Russia Warns That Belarus Could Enter Conflict in Ukraine – News Punch
‘Proxy war’: Russia announces sweeping military changes in retaliation for U.S. aid to Ukraine (wnd.com)
What do I keep saying? That every nation will take “every logical step” consistent with what’s known at the time… just like prior to WWI… and then the shooting cannot not start. Related:
Escalation to Direct Conflict (italics replaced by underlining):
With these actions, the US government and military has now provided Russia with no shortage of legitimate casus belli. It now appears the only question is when, not if, the Russians decide to strike back directly at the Clown Worlders who are responsible for the establishment, maintenance, and militarization of the Kiev regime.
And understanding:
What makes Russia what it is?
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Japan’s Shift to War Footing – War on the Rocks
I’m not saying this isn’t necessary; I’m saying this is one of myriad “perfectly logical steps in the context of what’s known”. More (cheesecake alert):
Rule Five Japan Defense Friday | Animal Magnetism (frombearcreek.com)
It’s hard to fault Japan on this estimation. While the Trump Administration had very good relationships with then-Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, the subsequent Biden(‘s handlers) Administration has been marked with incompetence and indecisiveness. Add that to the increasing tendency towards nationalism in the USA, and you can see how Tokyo may be concerned that the USA no longer has Japan’s back in the event of a conflict.
What did I say here about US allies no longer trusting us under President Potato? And nearby:
War game suggests U.S. needs to bolster Taiwan’s defenses now to avoid heavy casualties | Fox News
China Warns Japan
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Israel Convinced U.S. To Assassinate Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, Fmr Israeli Intel Chief Boasts
IMHO the world is a far better place with him splattered… but assuming this is true, WTF are you doing bragging about this?
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The EU and the Biden Administration Still Appeasing and Rewarding the Mullahs of Iran :: Gatestone Institute
The same mistakes made over and over. How much of the world will burn this time?
Santayana weeps.
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Neil Oliver: It’s Anti-Human & Evil | StarCrestSoloist (gab.com)
Video about 17 minutes. Can’t embed.
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Specific to energy:
Net Zero Will Lead to the End of Modern Civilisation, Says Top Scientist – Summit News
Yes it will.
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Explosion Rocks Natural Gas Pipeline Connecting Lithuania, Latvia; Village Evacuated | ZeroHedge
Another one goes boom.
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Too Much Medicine & The Great Statin Con – Dr Aseem Malhotra
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Big Tech in general:
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/face-recog-in-china.mp4
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Top 10 VPNs That Support Liberty and Protect Your Privacy – News Punch
I’m going to ask my contact at The Shepherd Group what he things of each of these. If I get an answer I’ll add it in. If you do engage them, please tell them you heard about them through me – in full disclosure I will get a commission. I have done some high-value work (four figures) with them and they’ve always been good to me.
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Microsoft’s new VALL-E AI can capture your voice in 3 seconds (newatlas.com)
Increasingly, you cannot believe your own eyes and ears unless you’re physically there.
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Boston Dynamics Atlas Robot Can Now Grab and Toss, Like People Can – CNET
Skynet smiles. More:
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/boston-dynamics-robot.mp4
And related, have you seen the promo for the new Google / Android concept car?
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/google-car.mp4
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Catch-all miscellaneous:
Nothing that piqued my interest.
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Concluding thoughts if I’m moved to comment:
I’ve opined multiple times over the last few months about why people don’t want to see… see the dangers of The Jab, see the dangers of the coming economic crash or CBDC, of shortages, of a possible spicy time, or WWIII being possible, and so on. I’ve attributed it to a sense of Oh that’s just not possible, or an inflated sense of moral superiority:
Or just not wanting to admit you’ve been taken:
But… I just watched this video:
In the above I may have stumbled on another reason why people don’t want to see – why they fight tooth and nail not to see – and it relates to the Crisis of Trust that I wrote about. To wit, we have people who are so trusting of the institutions about them, the ones they’ve believed in all their lives. Government. Financial. Medical. Educational. Religious. Et cetera. Trust in all these things is collapsing. But like a spouse that subconsciously knows that their other half is cheating on them but refuses to acknowledge it or confront the other, they don’t want to consciously see – because their subconscious understands the absolute wracking hell they’ll have to go through if they admit the things they’ve trusted all their lives have been shown to be untrustworthy.
How Can We Trust Institutions that Lied? ⋆ Brownstone Institute
We can’t. That’s the short answer. Once betrayed, once we’ve seen – and had proven – that our institutions have outright betrayed us, there can be no true trust. And to avoid that enormous discomfort, people will simply refuse to see it, to avoid the inevitable trauma that comes from that betrayal.
I’m not saying that it’s RIGHT. I’m saying that to understand how to break through to them, even to plant a seed, we need to start understanding the varying reasons why their minds are not open to seeing.
>>>>>=====<<<<<
Why Is No One Stopping This? (NEW ‘GLOBAL’ LAW PASSED!)
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Palate cleansers:
Location, location, location.
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—
>>>>>=====<<<<<
Please check out my MEME collections. Here’s the last one.
The post Survival Sunday – Thursday SITREP Edition (On Friday) appeared first on Granite Grok.
Thanks to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Secretary Mayorkas, our entire country is impacted by the broken Southern Border. Every state is now a border state.
The crisis no longer affects just California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Even New England is feeling the wrath of illegals, drugs, and violence we are importing from Mexico. The scourge comes through Mexico, but we know that these people, whoever they are, come from over 150 global countries. We don’t know who many of them are, where they come from, or their background, but according to Mayorkas, the Border is secure. Who in their right mind believes the drivel and lies from Mayorkas?
Cartels control the Mexican side of the Border, pulling in billions of dollars a year by transporting illegals across the Rio Grande into America. According to information from the DEA, seen on the map below, the Cartels are also alive and well on this side of the Border. They are operating in virtually every nook and cranny of America. Thank you, Joe Biden and every soft-on-crime District Attorney, for turning America into a war zone. Every shooting, murder, and drug death is on you.
Goshen, California, is in Tulare County, about 350 miles from Mexico. Six people, including a sixteen-year-old girl and her ten-month-old baby, were executed Cartel style. They were all shot in the head. All of the victims were related and living at the same residence. Investigators do not know the motive but believe this family was targeted and that this was not a random shooting. There is a massive search for the two shooters responsible for the horrendous murders.
As the cartels spread out across America, so will the crime and carnage in their wake. The network of cartels will also make the distribution of illegal Fentanyl quicker and more efficient. Pete Buttigieg should look at their distribution methods, as they seem to have solved the supply chain issues for Fentanyl. Fentanyl is manufactured into various types of tablets in Mexico after the raw materials arrive from China which is the origin. First, China kills millions with the COVID virus, and now they are responsible for over 100,000 deaths yearly among young Americans 18-45 from Fentanyl poisoning.
Some Democrats, unlikely ones at that, seem to be getting the message. New York’s Mayor Adams had been highly vocal, pointing the finger at Governors DeSantis (FL) and Abbott (TX) for transporting illegals to sanctuary cities like New York. Adams visited El Paso this past weekend and saw a different picture than the sanitized one set up recently for Joe Biden. After seeing the damage done to Southern Texas, Abbott lashed out at the Biden Administration to take action to control the Border. That is a 180-degree flip, and you must give kudos to Abbott for finally being honest.
The other Mayor who had an epiphany this week was Mayor Bowser of Washington, D.C. She recently vetoed a soft-on-crime bill passed by the city council, and the board voted to override her veto. The city’s criminal code overhaul includes reduced maximum sentences, the elimination of nearly all mandatory minimum sentences, and expanded rights to jury trials by those accused of misdemeanors. Mayor Bowser claims the action by the council will significantly increase major crimes in a city already struggling with a very high crime rate. That makes two liberal Democrat mayors who have seen the light. We can only hope the virus spreads and other sanctuary cities smarten up to this crime epidemic sweeping our big cities.
This spread of cartels needs to be labeled as a terrorist attack and fought accordingly by every facet of law enforcement. Gangs are invading us and need to be expunged before they establish roots. Let’s pray it is not too late already.
The post Open Borders + Soft on Crime = Cartels Across America appeared first on Granite Grok.
Sometimes I spend too much time on Treehugger. Well, after all, it’s sometimes a great place to sharpen my arguments against authoritarianism, eco-socialism, and neo-aristocrats that decided that their Enviro-Nirvana MUST be achieved regardless of what you and I think about their end point and ESPECIALLY how they want to drag us to it. And yes, it will be more than just kicking and screaming on my part during the entire process.
But it can be fun at the same time, so I bring the stories back here. And Lloyd had a rant about this penny-ante game that does absolutely nothing but got under his skin because it triggered him (reformatted, emphasis mine):
This Useless Game Spotlights the Roadblocks to Fixing Our Cities
“SIM NIMBY” is the most useless game ever … which is exactly the point.
And here’s where I got to add to my vocabulary:
There’s no shortage of nicknames for people and their building opinions. There are the NIMBYs who say, “Not in my backyard!” There are the BANANAs who say, “Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.”
Those I knew. Here’s the new one AND it isn’t just this “game” (SIM NUMBY)
And there are even the CAVEs who are “citizens against virtually everything.” These types show up in droves at public meetings to oppose bike lanes, intensification, transit, and many of the changes we need to get people out of cars or create much-needed housing, particularly of the affordable kind. They are particularly powerful in California.
NIMBY Bingo has been around for years, but Steve Nass and Owen Weeks, advertising copywriters in Brooklyn, now bring us SIM NIMBY—a play on SIM City—with 54 commonly heard NIMBY quotes. (Turn down your sound before you try it.)
Unlike SIM City, you can’t actually build anything, ever. You click and click and every time, you get the same popup message: “ERROR. CAN’T BUILD IN NIMBYVILLE.” You’ll also receive a hilarious quote such as, “Housing is a human right! Just why does it have to be here?”
And what REALLY drives Lloyd nuts (and people like him):
We talk about green building and many cities have developed greener building codes, but the single biggest factor in the carbon footprint of our cities isn’t the amount of insulation in our walls—it’s the zoning. it rarely gets changed because … you CAN’T BUILD IN NIMBYVILLE.
People like Lloyd don’t like it that “uneducated and uncaring” (and unwoke) people don’t want to change. They seem to “like things the way things are”. Like the reaction that local folks are having when developers want to turn their towns upside down and are using the tools that NH Gov. Chris Sununu game them in trying to do what the Obama HHS was doing – overriding local control and zoning that locals like to make NH turn into NY via workforce housing and other such “changes”. So like Baby Huey, Lloyd isn’t happy with his “opposition”. He quotes a report and makes it clear he doesn’t like that “others get in their way”:
The pro-density nonprofit California YIMBY recently covered a study about how NIMBYs and these ridiculous statements actually do make a difference. They wrote: “Comments made at public hearings do matter, but tend to be made by unrepresentative voices, resulting in planning outcomes that entrench elite preferences.”
The people making comments are generally whiter, an average of 21 years older than the median resident. California NIMBY concludes that “the findings suggest that policymakers and planners should closely examine the role of the public hearing in planning.”
Handy NIMBY bingo card. pic.twitter.com/JRKjirn56g
— Martyn Schmoll (@martynschmoll) April 12, 2019
Well, you can see the attitude. GraniteGrok fought the Agenda 21 back 10 or so years ago. Same condescension then as it is now. I bring it up now because Lloyd, 4 months later, showed it when the first commenter (with whom I cross swords a lot of times) left a retort (emphasis mine):
jim heameach: This article sets a new bar in its contempt for and mockery of local democratic control. This is a good example of why many people see environmentalists as wealthy elites who’s preferences ride roughshod over the democratic wishes of the local people. And it does not escape notice that once again “professional environmentalists” are doing the bidding of wealthy developers in fighting against local democratic control ( you know the people you mock with terms like BANANA, NIMBY).
We’ve spent a bit of time a decade fighting the snootiness of the professional planners towards we who settled in our towns BECAUSE of the “look and feel” of those towns. Enamored of these professions know-betters, we weren’t – so I guess that’s why I’ve held onto this post since September.
Jim is right – the Elite Enviros against the Normal folks that make up the bulk of the town. Lloyd’s simple answer said a LOT even if it was just three words long:
Thank you, Jim
I didn’t like that answer BECAUSE I took it to be condescending, so I left this. REALLY – “Unrepresentative voices”(quoting what Lloyd quoted):
“Comments made at public hearings do matter, but tend to be made by unrepresentative voices, resulting in planning outcomes that entrench elite preferences.”
We have these “highly educated and credentialed” planners here in mostly rural NH that act like every little hamlet be zoned like cities. They get upset when folks tell these planners to buzz off as they (the residents) LIKE the character and the “look and feel” of their town and that the planners come SECOND to actual residents.
>> preferences ride roughshod over the democratic wishes of the local people.
The planners still have yet to learn that while suggestions are fine, trying to ram them threw over the complaints of the residents WHO PAY THEIR SALARIES is not earning them “warm fuzzies“.
The problem, like everything at Treehugger, is that there is little empathy of “not them”. They really do expect folks like us to just roll over and accept them and their ideas as just being better than you and yours. It’s “Utopia by Slices” only they are the only ones with the knives making the slices.
Democratic process – I may not always like the results but voting, especially here in NH, on town stuff is the stuff of legends and tradition. WE get to decide and frankly, annoying people “not from heah” that want to change “heah” like they had it “back theah” need to be loaded into the U-Haul and helped to go BACK to “theah”. And folks like Lloyd and the professional planners should realize that they are only a few voices that are no better than the rest of us.
The post Treehugger: At Least Lloyd Taught Me a New Word – CAVE appeared first on Granite Grok.
When it was obvious that Tom Brady was leaving the New England Patriots, I predicted he’d become a Los Angeles Charger. That team needed a quarterback and had just moved to L.A. where it would play in the world’s greatest new football stadium.
Brady is a native Californian, and L.A. is a great place for supermodel wives.
But Tom went to Tampa instead.
Not being all that close to Brady, I’m not privy to all the factors that took him to the Sunshine State instead of the Golden State. But I’ll guess that TAXES influenced his decision. You see, Florida—like New Hampshire—has no state income tax. California has a state income tax of around 13%.
Contracts can be complicated. Brady reportedly earned a base salary of “only” $1,120,000 in 2022. But that doesn’t count a “signing bonus” of $28,880,000 and other perks. So let us just round down his total annual compensation package to $30 million. So 13% of that is about $4 million. That’s what would have gone to California in state taxes. In Florida, Tom could keep that $4 million.
Hello Tampa Bay Buccaneers!
So sports agents now factor in state taxes when negotiating for their clients. The Lakers have to pay LeBron James over $44 million a year because if he played in Florida, he’d take home more pay from a $38 million contract than he would from a $44 million contract in California.
This brings us to Massachusetts, which has long had a state income tax, along with numerous other levies that we don’t have in New Hampshire. In November, Bay State voters approved a “millionaire surtax,” bumping up the state income tax from 5% to 9% for the “affluent.”
Red Sox outfielder Kiké Hernández recently signed a one-year $10 million contract. The Boston Globe reported that he was surprised and displeased when he learned of all the money he’d now be sending to Beacon Hill.
“Well [expletive] me!” said Hernández over the phone. “This is news to me. My financial guy hadn’t told me. As soon as I hang up with you, I’m reaching out to him.”
Sports agents will now have to ask for extra Red Sox money for their clients—like they already do now in California to keep contracts competitive with those issued in Florida or Texas. So Red Sox ticket prices will go up. Fans will pay the millionaire tax, not the players!
Other states, mostly blue Democrat states, have also passed “millionaire” taxes. But New York ended up losing revenue when countless millionaires then moved to Florida.
Blue states like Massachusetts, California, New York et al. are stuck. Illinois is especially screwed. Dems love to grow government. But public sector pension liabilities are overwhelming these states. Unlike the federal government, states can’t print money.
Consider that retired UMass President Billy Bulger has an annual pension of over $270,000. He and other fat cat public retirees in the Bay State must be paid. And Granite State sports fans help to pay them indirectly whenever we buy inflated tickets.
It’s a cautionary tale. Like the above states, N.H. will be screwed if we elect the big government types who thump tubs for broad-based taxes so they can hire more public sector types who vote Dem. It worked politically in California, Illinois, etc. But those spending chickens will come home to roost.
Tom Brady made a good move in choosing Tampa—where he immediately won a Super Bowl.
Granite Staters can make good choices with their votes—so we don’t end up with blue state blues and then echoing those sentiments so eloquently stated by Kiké Hernández.
“Well [expletive] me!”
#####
A retired Sports Management professor, Rep. Mike Moffett of Loudon chairs the House Committee on State-Federal Relations.
The post Tom Brady, Taxes, and Kiké appeared first on Granite Grok.
Donald Trump was right about the risks of Germany relying on Russia for energy, and now they need to burn a lot of coal. Muppet Greta and the other climate muppets staged a protest at a town that will be leveled because … Donald Trump was right.
Related: Why Would Germany Dismantle a Wind Farm to Expand a Coal Mine?
This fact is missing from all the reporting, as is the fact that Greta’s arrest – which they did report – was staged.
LMFAO Greta literally staged being arrested for the cameras.
pic.twitter.com/qGNurU0lrO— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 17, 2023
Feel free to wonder why German police would cooperate with a climate-muppet photo-op or who approved that. It suggests the protest and arrests were agitprop (for the WEF cabal?), and if so, what will Germany get out of it?
The post Fake, Like the Crisis She Peddles – Watch Greta Thunberg’s Staged “Arrest” in Germany appeared first on Granite Grok.
Once again, a round up of what teachers and school administrators are doing to your children and ACTIVELY going “shhhh – it’s our secret!”. As always, some reformatting and emphasis mine
The removal of staff-worn LGBTQ badges is being demanded by a number of parents from central Ohio who are suing Hilliard City Schools in federal court because teachers are engaging in “intimate sexual conversations” with pupils as young as 6 years old.
In the case, Ohio Republican Council of Clubs‘ attorney Joshua Brown said he represents parents who claim activist instructors are conducting private conversations with their children about sexuality and mental health while keeping those conversations hidden from parents.
“The schools do not have the right to withhold information from parents for any reason. Especially when it involves mental health. When you are denying parents the knowledge their child is having mental distress, you are literally robbing the parents the opportunity to show their children, unconditional love,” Lisa Chaffee, director of Ohio Parents Rights in Education and one of the eight plaintiffs in the lawsuit said.
Indoctrination anyone? This is taking kids out of the hands and responsibility of parents. Seriously, calling themselves out as being LGBT missionaries? How more blatant can you get?
And not only should the courts be the ones deciding that teachers, staff, and School Boards are in the wrong but Legislators should be as well. After all, they control the money (and the Left set this precedent years ago):
Many Americans despair of reforming the culture of higher education. But a substantial majority of college students attend public institutions, and these schools are subject to state law. If legislators are determined to restore free speech and academic freedom, there’s a lot they can do. In cooperation with the Goldwater Institute, we’ve developed model state legislation based on four reform proposals:
• Abolish “diversity, equity and inclusion” bureaucracies. These offices work actively against norms of academic freedom and truth-seeking, advance primarily political aims, and fuel administrative bloat that raises costs and exacerbates student debt. Administrators at public institutions should maintain official neutrality on controversial political questions extraneous to the business of educating students. Leave compliance with federal and state civil-rights laws to the university counsel’s office.
• Forbid mandatory diversity training for students, faculty and staff. Even when DEI officials claim their training is “voluntary,” it’s often required for faculty who wish to perform basic extracurricular roles, such as serving on hiring committees. Typical diversity training includes unscientific claims about “microaggressions” and “implicit bias” and rejects the basic American principle that everyone should be treated equally. It indoctrinates an ideology of identity-based grievance, guilt and division.
• Curtail the use of “diversity statements” as a means of political coercion. These serve as litmus tests in employment processes to exclude applicants who don’t adhere to critical race theory and other radical beliefs. Although the Supreme Court has long held that requiring loyalty oaths in public education is unconstitutional—as are other forms of compelled speech—universities increasingly require that applicants state their belief in the importance of DEI, cite prior personal efforts to promote DEI and pledge to integrate DEI into their teaching. Applicants for many positions have been eliminated on the basis of diversity statements alone and many universities condition their hiring decisions on the applicant’s ideological conformity.
• End racial and other identity-based preferences. The Supreme Court may do this in a few months anyway by holding that racial preferences violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, in the case of public institutions, the 14th Amendment. Regardless of how the justices rule, discriminating based on race, sex, ethnicity or national origin is antithetical to universities’ basic missions. Outlawing admissions and hiring based on these characteristics would curtail universities’ efforts to evade a mandate against them from the high court.
These straightforward reforms would go far in pushing back on some of the negative trends that have afflicted higher education—without intruding on curricula or other aspects of academic life. They would free faculty and students alike to explore intellectual ideas without fearing the thought police.
While this was written concerning “higher education” (college, university level), this DIE movement has transmographied itself down to lower and lower grades in education. And we know who are the “water carriers” are for this. However, for all of the “local control” that is yelled from the rafters here in NH, most school districts receive quite a bit of State monies as well (just look at your tax bills).
Education should be just that – not roping people into the ideological fray. At each and every point, legislatures should be looking at not just the Law already in place (and here in NH, Education Rules) and find out where local Districts are finding/inserting their own loopholes HOPING that ordinary people wouldn’t notice.
Like what I’ve been doing for the last two years in working to remove unconstitutional and CODIFIED policies that, if they were to get into the court system (where school districts fight extremely hard to keep from happening – you know, that “lack of standing” schtick even though its OUR children!), should be and are being shot down around the country.
Parents, too, ought to be complaining to their legislators and putting pressure on them. Especially over having to pay for that “mandatory diversity training for students” bit. It used to be “voluntary, then it was one class, then a couple of classes. Each of those classes, I will hold, do NOTHING to prepare one for being a citizen or for a job unless your goal is to be yet another DIE parasite that brings little in the way of value (go ahead, challenge me on that!). However, they are a MASSIVE profit center and make no mistake – even schools are going to hoover up the bucks if they see them laying on the ground. Remember: from movement to racket. It’s now to that latter stage.
Education is out of control in a lot of areas and every time somebody comes up with yet another fad, our education system moves that much further away from its main mission – academic rigor and teaching.
I found another paper by the same authors (Illya Shapiro and Christofer Rufo). While copyrighted, I feel safe using this under “Fair Use”:
Abolish DEI Bureaucracies and Restore Colorblind Equality in Public Universities
The absurdity of the status quo can be illustrated by way of a simple counterfactual: Imagine a world in which UC Berkeley had an administrative division, funded at $25 million per year, whose sole purpose was to train students, faculty, and staff in conservative ideology;
Or make it mandatory to take long distance precision rifle classes under the rubric of the Second Amendment? I bet we could come up with a long list of “contra” classes to those of DIE and related ideologies. However, NONE of them should be made mandatory or required to either attend school or work at one.
Gilford is about to send staff to a DIE training class up at Plymouth. Now, how to threaten an action for not being willing to send staff to the complete opposite type of training? Wouldn’t that get their knickers in a knot over a threatened “worldview discrimination” action?
There is a lot to this approach so don’t be surprised if we write about this in later posts. But here’s a quicker one that has LARGE ramifications if you think about it:
JOANNE JACOBS: Bring back the ‘F’ to help students succeed. “If college students don’t do the work, a timely “F” can be useful feedback, writes Louis Haas, a history professor at Middle Tennessee University.”
I received an F or two early in high school, and the feedback that came with them — from my parents — was instructive.
It isn’t about giving out “F” grades – it’s about recognizing excellence and when someone is is deep trouble and won’t ask for help. And yes, for recognizing that some students just don’t care and probably should be elsewhere.
While I never got an F, I did get a D in a math class in high school that I should have aced the first time – and the teacher knew it. Yes, the first time – when Mom found out, I ended up in summer school – involuntarily. Screwed up my entire summer as I had already made other plans. It did teach me a lesson – when you CAN do the work, don’t screw around or screw up – there are consequences to doing so and I learned the hard way. I redid the class in half the time and got the grade I should have the first time. Lesson was learned.
Sidenote: bring back the old A-F grading system. Gilford shifted to the new fangled system that no one likes, doesn’t understand, and doesn’t allow (if you’ll excuse me) A to B comparisons. I hate this “competency based” system as there is no competency about it.
And that Equity Movement is proving that Socialism (whereby EVERYONE must have exactly the same outcome regardless of capabilities) is now endangering students futures – badly. We seeing schools in Virginia refusing to withhold National Merit Awards to top achieving students:
…At least 13 Virginia high schools are under investigation after failing to deliver merit awards prior to college admissions, with the state attorney general alleging that the move specifically targeted Asian American students. Following the case against 11 Fairfax and Loudoun County high schools, officials from Prince William County Public Schools revealed two of their schools did not tell 16 students they had earned a National Merit award. Attorney General Jason Miyares condemned the schools’ actions as the state launched an investigation over alleged Anti-Asian bigotry.
The National Merit awards are only given to 50,000 of 1.5million high schoolers who score well on the PSATS – and can help students compete for scholarships, honors accolades, and college admissions.
And here’s the cause
What we’ve found from news reports is that our schools have a maniacal focus on equal outcomes rather than rewarding high-performing students. This effort of withholding academic achievements is hurting the same students school officials claim they are trying to help. pic.twitter.com/4s4Kguw5gk
— Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) January 17, 2023
The progressive concept of “equity” is a rejection of the equality of opportunity and a commitment to equality of outcome. Let’s be frank. This is communism, and it’s antithetical to everything the United States of America was founded upon.
No, they aren’t helping ANYONE. Socialism and Equity can only be “accomplished” by lowering standards to the lowest common denominators.
No.One.Can.Be.Better.Than.Anyone.Else. Unless you happen to be the ones making all the decisions.
And we’re right back to where this is being hatched, nurtured, inculcated, and sent out to infect the rest of us just like China infected the world with COVID. A bit long and “bits and pieces” so read the whole thing to see where a college is attacking Free Speech:
…Tenured Bakersfield College history professor Matthew Garrett said he and other faculty members of a free speech coalition were targeted with false allegations after they asked questions during a campus diversity meeting last October. Shortly afterwards, Garrett received a notice of unprofessional conduct by the administration that claimed he had caused “real harm” to students and said he was being removed from the diversity committee “effective immediately.”
In December, vice president of the school district’s Board of Trustees John Corkins made headlines after he lashed out at the group during a board meeting saying the “abusive” and “disrespectful” minority of teachers needed to be “culled,” and taken “to the slaughterhouse.”
…“Many of the faculty quietly tell me thank you for speaking up because we’re afraid to do so,” he said. He described how critical race theory and other racial equity initiatives had become popular after Black Lives Matter drew national attention in 2020.
“Our campus has been really radically transformed in the last two years or so. In the last two years we’ve adopted critical race theory, diversity training, implicit bias training, micro aggression trainings. We’ve adopted racial quotas and preferences, affirmative action-type behavior, we’ve adopted racially segregated classes, we’ve adopted mandated masks, compulsory vaccines, and location tracking software. We’ve got funding going to propaganda webpages you can track through grants,” he said.
…Other professors had raised concerns these social equity initiatives were weakening academic standards, he claimed. “A lot of the faculty are really concerned about the dissolution of rigor,” Garrett said, as academic programs were replaced with social programs focused on “inclusivity, [where] everyone passes.”
And it is happening in our high schools. If you thought that academics can’t get much worse, just wait.
And then there’s the doctors:
The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), in a collaboration with the Fenway Institute, is training doctors and other medical professionals to affirm a young patient’s chosen gender identity. In a training video reviewed by Breitbart News, you can see how doctors are taught to interact with a child who might be experiencing symptoms related to gender dysphoria.
From the report:
During the training video, titled “Talking with a Parent and Child About Gender Identity,” a doctor asks a young child, referred to as Sam, what his gender is. “Can you tell me, do you feel like a boy, like a girl, like both, or like neither?” the doctor asks the young child in the video before adding “There’s no right answer.”
Sam’s dad interjects, telling the doctor how the family has approached the topic. He also says “I don’t know, I think he just wants to be like his big sister.” The doctor doesn’t offer a response to the parent, other than to simply say “Thank you for sharing. I would like to ask Sam.” He goes on to inquire “So what do you say Sam?” The child responds “I’m a girl.”
The doctor asks “How long have you known you’re a girl?” prompting the child to say “I don’t know, but a long time.”
“So when we’re talking about you, would you like us to say he or she?” the doctor asks, with Sam requesting that he be referred to as “she.” The doctor then responds simply “Okay, thanks” before the video comes to a close and displays the MUSC logo.
And Legislators to the rescue!
Breitbart also noted that the university ceased offering hormonal care for children identifying as transgender “after the South Carolina Freedom Caucus began preparing to pursue legislation banning child sex changes.”
And does DIE Training actually do what it espouses it does?
Hardly:
Over the years, social scientists who have conducted careful reviews of the evidence base for diversity trainings have frequently come to discouraging conclusions. Though diversity trainings have been around in one form or another since at least the 1960s, few of them are ever subjected to rigorous evaluation, and those that are mostly appear to have little or no positive long-term effects. The lack of evidence is “disappointing,” wrote Elizabeth Levy Paluck of Princeton and her co-authors in a 2021 Annual Review of Psychology article, “considering the frequency with which calls for diversity training emerge in the wake of widely publicized instances of discriminatory conduct.”
Dr. Paluck’s team found just two large experimental studies in the previous decade that attempted to evaluate the effects of diversity trainings and met basic quality benchmarks. Other researchers have been similarly unimpressed. “We have been speaking to employers about this research for more than a decade,” wrote the sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev in 2018, “with the message that diversity training is likely the most expensive, and least effective, diversity program around.” (To be fair, not all of these critiques apply as sharply to voluntary diversity trainings.)
If diversity trainings have no impact whatsoever, that would mean that perhaps billions of dollars are being wasted annually in the United States on these efforts. But there’s a darker possibility: Some diversity initiatives might actually worsen the D.E.I. climates of the organizations that pay for them.
And if it is a company that is blowing its shareholders’ money, that’s one thing. Blowing taxpayer money for government workers is another.
And WHY are Public Schools so interested in the sexuality of minors???
A father attended a school board meeting recently to confront educators regarding sexual content found in a book that he says is available to his daughter, age 7. David Todor, whose daughter attends a school in the Waterloo Region District, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, read passages from a book called “The Bluest Eye” a national best-seller readily available on Amazon.
“I can assure you this book has been approved, and it’s accessible to my daughter, the one that’s seven years old by the way … this book is approved … for grade four to five reading level,” the father remarked to the board of trustees.
“He could have been an active homosexual but lacked the courage, beastiality did not occur to him, and sodomy was quite out of the question for he did not experience sustained erections and could not endure the thought of somebody else’s,” the parent read.
“Who’s interested in knowing and affirming, celebrating, my daughter’s sexual orientation?! Why is the school board facilitating child abuse and has these books available in the library?” the father asked.
This evening @wrdsb father David Todor wiped the floor with school trustees who want sexually explicit material available in schools for seven year olds to access.
"Who is interested in knowing my daughter's sexual orientation? Why is the school board facilitating child abuse?" pic.twitter.com/rr0RQehk1n
— Cosmin Dzsurdzsa (@cosminDZS) January 17, 2023
And here are more excerpts:
His attention therefore gradually settled on those humans whose bodies were least offensive — children. And since he was too diffident to confront homosexuality, and since little boys were insulting, scary, and stubborn, he further limited his interests to little girls. They were usually manageable and frequently seductive. His sexuality was anything but lewd; his patronage of little girls smacked of innocence and was associated in his mind with cleanliness. He was what one might call a very clean old man.
And no, this is not new – NH Gov Chris Sununu made this law in NH years ago (contra our NH Constitution which mandated that the State MUST provide the funds to do stuff like this – but didn’t):
NEW FRONTIERS IN MENSTRUATION
When it comes to gender follies, Minnesota Democrats are keeping up with their insane colleagues on the coasts. DFL state representative Sandra Feist has been pushing a bill “that would require school districts and charter schools to provide students in grades four through 12 with access to free menstrual products in student restrooms.” Feist’s bill was approved in committee last year by a 12-4 vote. See Feist’s news clip. The news clip also maps out new frontiers in poverty: “Elif Ozturk, a sophomore at Hopkins High School, said ‘period poverty’ is an issue she’s encountered among classmates.”
Following the 2022 elections Democrats rule the roost in Minnesota. Feist’s bill has a better chance of passage this time around, although embarrassment and ridicule might serve as some kind of a deterrent. I hadn’t noticed that the text of the bill makes no distinction between boys and girls in mandating the availability of menstrual products. When Feist says students, she means all students.
Feist explains (video below): “[N]ot all students who menstruate are female. We need to make sure all students have access to these products. There are obviously less [sic] non-female menstruating students and therefore their usage will be much lower. That was actually calculated into the cost of this.”
Lower usage? Try zero. But they can’t be honest, can they? 2+2=5 with these people – sorry not sorry, boys don’t menstruate. They can’t have periods.
And you can’t be honest.
And once again, taxpayers have to pay for unneeded and ideological socialist bents.
The post Teachers: I’m Here to Coach You on Your LGBT Sexuality and We Won’t Tell Mom or Dad and More! – Stack of Stuff #37 appeared first on Granite Grok.
On Monday, we experienced a cornerstone moment in COVID history. A member of the Public Health Industrial Complex got an unpleasant truth about COVID published in the Washington Post. The Hospitalization and Death numbers were a lie.
There is nothing new or groundbreaking about that. The so-called COVID disinformation cabal has been making that claim since (at least) day 15 to flatten the curve. Skip had a comments brawl about it on Facebook after I shared this cartoon on April 7th, 2020 (not long after NH announced its COVID state of emergency and the lockdowns).
The soon-to-be pro-science anti-disinformation folks lost their minds. How could you say that?
It was easy. The Feds were going to pay hospitals to say they had cases of COVID, and they got more money for each escalation in the death-by-hospital protocol.
Where there is a trough, there will be pigs!
COVID was a cash machine, and Hospitals and Big Pharma do not exist to protect the public interest or health. They are there to make money off them. If the Federal Government was going to hand them buckets of cash with little or no oversight just for saying patients were “hospitalized” or “died” from COVID, they would, and did.
It was an expensive lesson for many with a side of, you’re right. I can’t trust them, can I?
Not everyone was or is on board with that truth, but here comes Dr. Leana Wen, who you might remember as the most honest Director of Planned Parenthood ever. She made it clear that abortion was their core mission and more of it was good for business. They asked her to resign. That sort of honesty isn’t good for business, which makes me wonder what comes next after this.
Two infectious-disease experts I spoke with believe that the number of deaths attributed to covid is far greater than the actual number of people dying from covid. Robin Dretler, an attending physician at Emory Decatur Hospital and the former president of Georgia’s chapter of Infectious Diseases Society of America, estimates that at his hospital, 90 percent of patients diagnosed with covid are actually in the hospital for some other illness.
Dr. Wen, a card-carrying member of the COVID-Cult, has opened a door, and everyone on the center-right has pushed through it to say I told you so, including me, but I’m more interested in why? Why now? Remember, Dr. Wen wrote it, but the Washington Post published it. Why?
The original miscoding had two distinct purposes. Money Laundering and fearmongering. It is why no one “in charge” ever took the flaws of the dysfunctional PCR test seriously. It was never designed to do what it did, but it could be used to aid and abet systemic money laundering and fearmongering.
If you ever visited your state’s COVID dashboard (we shared daily analysis on these pages for months), you knew there was no threat. It was all smoke and mirrors. And while some of that smoke has cleared in recent months, this latest revelation brings what we have known for years into the public sphere for open debate.
Why?
I don’t think Dr. Wen is trying to clear her conscience. What does the COVID-CULT gain? Is this one of many fence-mending admissions now that the Public Health Oligarchy is officially a functioning propaganda arm of the US Government?
They are convinced we can’t take it back, so why not offer up a few sacrificial narrative lambs? I’m open to suggestions, but I will add that the CDC is spending at least a million on an AI project to try and identify medical misinformation spreading “before it happens” so they can figure out how to combat it in advance.
That’s a bit ironic.
HT | AoSHQ
The post Why is the COVID-CULT Admitting the Hospital and Death Numbers Were a Lie? appeared first on Granite Grok.
So, it turns out that a second biological (non-binary male) has been paid to promote “women’s health” products. I know; who was the first? I’m not all that interested but is this a job women won’t do, or was it another job stolen by a man?
In a stunning victory over the patriarchy, women now have yet another transgender icon who was born with a penis to represent them and their feminine hygiene needs. A second transgender (self-identified “girl”/adult human male Dylan Mulvaney being the first) named Jeffrey Marsh just scored an endorsement deal with Tampax.
Jeffrey describes himself as a “non-binary person who does not menstruate” and took the job to “help end the stigma associated with periods.” Because humans born with a penis have had so much success with that to date?
And to that point, I’ve been around menstruating women all my life, and based entirely on their remarks or response to it, where’s the stigma? Some want to talk about it with you – perhaps a bit too much – and others don’t want to hear a word.
So, how does a non-menstruating anyone have the medical or cultural authority to discuss that?
Tampax is just being #woke, and it might cost them some sales, but – and I have to ask – did a man or a woman make this call? And can we expect a new line of Manpons for non-menstruating women with a penis (Is anyone curious about the printed application instructions for that?).
Did you pick him because menstruate has the word men in it? Can Jeffrey get gigs to talk about the stigma associated with men-o-pause, or do we have to wait until he’s in his fifties?
Is there an opportunity for once-prolific aged-out male-actor to get jobs for this the way they sell supplemental Medicaid insurance or mobility aids? “I’m Sir Christopher Lee, and this is Robert Duvall. We want to talk to you today about …”
And yes, Marsh says he got some hate from the TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). The Girl Power collective wasn’t feeling it, including the bit where something born with a penis took a job away from an actual woman.
First women’s sports and now “women’s health care” products. What female thing will men be allowed to take over next? Has JK Rowling had her say?
One more question? Why wasn’t he black and in a wheelchair, you ableist racists?
HT | PJ Media
The post Tampax Gives in to #Woke Culture – Pays ‘Non-Binary’ (Guy) To Promote Its Products appeared first on Granite Grok.
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Anti-Gun expert Alec Baldwin has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins after an on-set “accident” resulted in his pointing a loaded gun at her and firing. Hannah Gutierrez Reed has also been charged.
Related: Review Our Alec Baldwin “Rust” Shooting Collection
Gutierrez Reed was the weapons supervisor on the set of the movie Rust.
Assistant director David Halls, who handed Baldwin the gun, has signed an agreement to plead guilty to negligent use of a deadly weapon, the district attorney’s office said.
Involuntary manslaughter can involve a killing that happens while a defendant is doing something that is lawful but dangerous and is acting negligently or without caution.
The charge is a fourth-degree felony, punishable by up to 18 months in jail and a $5,000 fine under New Mexico law. The charges also include a provision that could result in a mandatory five years in prison because the offense was committed with a gun.
Baldwin’s attorneys say there was no way he could know there was a live round in the pistol. Gutierrez Reed claims it was sabotage. But Halyna Hutchins is dead, and it’s a high-profile tragedy.
“If any one of these three people — Alec Baldwin, Hannah Gutierrez Reed or David Halls — had done their job, Halyna Hutchins would be alive today. It’s that simple,” said Reeb, also a newly sworn Republican state legislator.
The DA and Sherriff probably want to make a case, so we’ll see what shakes out, and let’s be honest. If someone handed you or I a gun and said it was or wasn’t loaded, and we shot and killed someone, well … we’d be guilty of not doing what you always do with a working firearm. Check it. Recheck it. Check it a third time.
You always check the firearm. I guess anti-gun expert Alec Baldwin didn’t realize, and I doubt they teach you that at Anti-Gun training class.
Charges will be filed by the end of this month.
The post Breaking: Santa Fe DA Charges Alec Baldwin With Involuntary Manslaughter in On-Set Shooting appeared first on Granite Grok.
The reporters yell out questions at the President, hungry for answers from the most transparent administration in history. Answers are not forthcoming, but a laughing, smirking gaze from the President is. It is time to lose the smirk, Mr. President.
We know you see yourself and your delinquent son above the law, and there is not enough kryptonite to bring you down. As with most everything else in your career, you are wrong, dead wrong. The Republican House smells blood, and they have your scent. McCarthy, Jordan, and Comer are not going to let up. They want you on the mat for the count and the end of your compromised reign.
Document Gate is the third major scandal in the last decade involving a sitting President, a Vice President, and a wannabe President. Two Democrats and one Republican and equal application of the law has no standing here. One has his home and his wife’s lingerie, and undergarments searched. The other two, the Democrats, get a free pass to have their lawyers search for any remaining documents without any FBI or DOJ oversight and destroy over 30,000 emails under subpoena. Nothing to see here for the Democrats, while we are not done looking, ever, for the Republican. Trump is blasted daily by Democrats and the media, while the same two groups make excuses for Biden and Clinton.
There is no equal application. That is a joke. Need proof, look up the Hunter Biden Laptop and the fact he has not been charged. Look at the $50,000 a month “rent” Hunter was paying to live in Joe’s Delaware beach house. Yes, Hunter was staying in the same house where most of the documents were found, but no problem here; they were locked in the garage with the ’67 Vette…….What a joke, but Americans are not laughing. By the way, that $50,000 was an excellent way to launder the 10% payment to “The Big Guy.” You cannot make this up, yet Joe smirks and laughs. Guess Jim Clyburn was right when he said this whole investigation is laughable.
I watched Jim Clyburn interviewed, actually pressed, this afternoon, and it was amazing how calm he was about Biden’s missteps. It was as if he knew nothing would ever come of the allegations. He knows that Biden, Hunter, heck, the whole administration is protected because they are Democrats. Yes, mistakes were made, but let’s be patient and let it play out. No such patience ever rose to the surface with Trump. Not until his head was on a stick, Game of Thrones style, would Clyburn and his colleagues be satisfied. With Joe, let it play out. What a corrupt quagmire. This swamp is too deep and too overgrown ever to be drained. Not in my lifetime, for sure.
The White House Press Briefing has become a daily sparing match. The questions are more direct, and the answers are the same. Why schedule these exercises in futility? Is Karine Jean-Pierre trying to wear down the press? She is no match, but for now, she will hide behind the catchphrases: “there is a process” and “I refer you to the DOJ.” Lame, but it is working for now. I almost feel bad for her. She is totally out of her league, but then her arrogance shines through, and my empathy fades as that big smirk on Joe’s face grows. These events of the last few weeks paint a sad picture. The Republicans have to be cautious not to get swept up in investigations that they forget to legislate. I think it is giving them too much credit to think this is the plan of the Democrats. They are not that savvy, just that corrupt.
The post Equal Application of the Law……Yeah, Right appeared first on Granite Grok.
Over the past few years, the list of things most Americans won’t speak of or discuss has become a long list. A recent addition to that list is the dramatic increase of people “suddenly dying” since around October 2021. Why is there a huge increase in excess deaths across Western Civilization?
The studies and data are out there if one wants to find them, and there’s been some coverage by independent and foreign media, but the North American corporate media gives this topic a big leaving alone. Why aren’t we talking about it? Are we afraid of what we might learn?
There’s little objective and factual discussion about the current transgenderism movement. It’s obvious that athletic events shouldn’t allow biological males to compete against females. Why are we allowing this to happen? Why are we allowing self-proclaimed females with a Y chromosome access to female locker rooms? The majority of people know it’s wrong, so why aren’t more speaking up and questioning this absurdity?
The list of political topics we won’t talk about grows daily. There’s no discussion in the legacy media regarding the egregious and ongoing corrupt practices and selective law enforcement by the Department of Justice, and particularly the FBI. Why is that? Why do we have an Attorney General that seemingly determines prosecution based on political affiliation? And since when has any Attorney General anywhere had the latitude not to enforce laws they personally disagree with, as we witness in cities like Boston, Chicago, LA, and even Burlington, Vermont?
Why aren’t we having a national conversation about how our public servants in Washington regularly become multi-millionaires after a few years in office? How did Joe Biden become worth over $10 million? How did Obama become worth over $70 million? While we hear things about Pelosi and Feinstein on this issue, It’s not just the Democrats getting rich. Plenty of Republicans have also feathered their nests while “serving the public”. How does that work?
Where’s the questioning of why Ukraine needs to be defended while our southern border does not? Our state-run media has been doing a good job bemoaning the border states sending busloads of illegal aliens to Democrat-declared “sanctuary cities,” but will not question the current administration’s policy of letting just about anyone into the US that shows up at the border. What’s happening at the southern border is effectively an invasion. Where’s the national concern?
Racism, green energy, censorship, wokeism, reparations, etc., etc. The list really is endless. There is a point to this madness: It’s easier for our rulers to maintain control and scoop up the loot while the little people are busy fighting with each other about non-existential issues.
We the people bear much of the responsibility for letting this happen. There are few rulers, and many of us, but over the past few decades, we’ve become ignorant, apathetic, and, yes, even fearful. Many have shrugged off the role of citizen in favor of subject, allowing the decline of our culture and looting of our country.
It’s getting late. If more of us don’t start loudly questioning our ersatz public servants at every opportunity and saying a loud “no” to the scams, distractions, false premises, and other bright shiny objects put out there to pit us against each other, we’re done.
It’s time to start speaking up and demanding answers to these and other questions while we still can.
Ted Ropple is a resident of West Charleston, VT, and can be contacted at https://www.tedropple.com
The post Things We Won’t Talk About appeared first on Granite Grok.
A Right to Know put in by a Hudson Resident asking what most of us should be doing more of: WHAT did you use that boatloads of COVID money on?
Perfectly executed. In chronological order:
From: Terry Stewart <yrrets@aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2023, 8:54 AM
To: Gary Gasdia <ggasdia@sau81.org>
Subject: [PROBABLE SPAM] Right to Know RequestJanuary 10, 2023
Hudson School District
20 Library Street
Hudson NHRE: Right to Know Request
RE: Right to Know Request per RSA-91APursuant to the Right to Know Law (RSA. 91-A), I am requesting public access, within 5 business days, to the governmental records reasonably described as follows:
- How much federal and state funds did the Hudson School district receive for Covid?
- A breakdown on how those funds were spent.
Per RSA 91-A:4 IV(c) If you deny any portion of this request, please cite the specific exemption used to justify the denial to make each record, or part thereof, available for inspection along with a brief explanation of how the exemption applies to the information withheld.
Please let me know when these records are available for inspection, or you may email the records to me at yrrets@aol.com
Thank you for your lawful attention to this matter.Sincerely,
Teresa Stewart
Hudson, NH 03051
From: Gary Gasdia <ggasdia@sau81.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2023 9:01 AM
To: Daniel Moulis <dmoulis@sau81.org>
Cc: yrrets@aol.com
Subject: Fwd: Right to Know RequestMs. Stewart,
I am forwarding this on to the Superintendent who will be able to handle this request.
Thanks,
Gary
From: Daniel Moulis <dmoulis@sau81.org>
Date: 1/10/23 10:19 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: yrrets@aol.com
Cc: Gary Gasdia <ggasdia@sau81.org>, Jennifer Burk <jburk@sau81.org>
Subject: RE: Right to Know RequestMs. Stewart,
I am in receipt of the Right to Know Request and I will provide this correspondence to Ms. Burk, Business Administrator to provide this information.
Dan Moulis
Superintendent
From: yrrets <yrrets@aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2023 6:32 PM
To: Daniel Moulis <dmoulis@sau81.org>
Cc: Gary Gasdia <ggasdia@sau81.org>; Jennifer Burk <jburk@sau81.org>
Subject: [PROBABLE SPAM] RE: Right to Know RequestThe information I requested per my RTK was due today, I have not received it.
From: Jennifer Burk jburk@sau81.org
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2023 9:47 AM
To: yrrets yrrets@aol.com; Daniel Moulis dmoulis@sau81.org
Cc: Gary Gasdia ggasdia@sau81.org
Subject: RE: [PROBABLE SPAM] RE: Right to Know RequestPlease note that today is a school holiday and all schools & offices are closed.
We received $449,195.37 in CARES funding which was used in the following ways:
- To help with cleaning our buses ($37,089.50)
- Add hotspots for students ($2,035.70)
- Software for ELL students ($4,500)
- Stipends for summer work to support returning to school ($260.30)
- To purchase cleaning supplies for our buildings ($181,722.77)
- Purchase food for remote meals for students ($13,617.24)
- Purchase additional laptops for students ($89,274)
- Software for general remote learning ($72,868.81)
- Materials for Presentation of Mary Academy ($3,406.58)
- Equipment for Presentation of Mary Academy ($44,420.47)
We received an allocation of $1,816,122.62 from ESSER II, and to date we’ve budgeted $1,794,562.80 of it, and received $1,374,398.07 in reimbursements:
- Additional software to support staff & students ($338,224.81)
- Indirect costs (offset administrative expenses – $42,537.82)
- Summer Scholars (staff, materials, transportation & food service – $1,038,063.11)
- Signage for communications ($39,940.90)
- Teaching Assistants ($109,803.60)
- Instructional Coaches ($225,992.56)
The ESSER III allocation is $4,082,746.60, we’ve budgeted $3,579,401.04 and received $1,475,748.37 in reimbursement to date:
- Software to support staff & students ($455,955.87)
- Indirect costs ($62,977.48)
- Schoology Master Trainer stipend for staff ($25,730)
- Curriculum Materials, Programming & Setup ($116,240)
- Referral Bonus budget ($45,034.50)
- Retention Stipend budget ($631,312.07)
- Instructional Coach ($112,996.28)
- Curriculum Coordinator ($144,104.75)
- Website upgrade ($18,000)
- Laptop carts ($36,000)
- Facilities Cleaning ($32,000)
- Additional Staffing to support transition to in-person learning ($77,818.79)
- Pathways staffing for 2 years ($350,273.69)
- Class size reduction staffing ($201,381.42)
- High School summer programming ($49,216.28)
- SEL Interventionists for 2 years ($597,758.26)
- EBD Counselors ($325,261.58)
- Math & Reading Tutors ($297,340.07)
Jennifer Burk
Business Administrator
Hudson School District
jburk@sau81.org
From: Daniel Moulis <dmoulis@sau81.org>
Date: 1/17/23 8:09 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: yrrets <yrrets@aol.com>
Cc: Gary Gasdia <ggasdia@sau81.org>, Jennifer Burk <jburk@sau81.org>
Subject: RE: [PROBABLE SPAM] RE: Right to Know Request
Good evening,
The following message was sent yesterday by Ms. Burk regarding the Right to Know request.
Dan Moulis
Superintendent
The post Right to Know – How Did Hudson Use Their COVID Money? appeared first on Granite Grok.
There are a number of original source materials available for studying the U.S. Constitution, including notes on the 1787 Constitutional Convention and articles written in favor of ratification (The Federalist) and against (the anti-federalist papers). The ratification debates held in the various State ratifying conventions are also very informative.
The post Coining Money and the Coinage Act of 1792 appeared first on The Liberty Block.
At the January 10, 2023, Board of Alderman Special meeting for the City of Nashua on the development of the Mohawk Tannery/Fimbel Door property and the EPA superfund clean-up of the property.
The presentation by Blaylock Holdings and Thorndike was very well done; however, a lot of questions remain unanswered, and I would caution the Board to proceed slowly and methodically to fully vet this project that was described by Director Cummings as a complicated and complex project with “lots of fragilities,” “built on a house of cards” with elements stack on top of each other.
Observation 1: The City of Nashua had to make more concessions than Blaylock. However, Blaylock will be making a lot more money off this property than the City of Nashua taxpayers. If you just take the following as an estimate:
Apts 192 $1,500.00 per month – Annually, Blaylock will get $3,456,000
Condos 316 $400,000 per unit – Blaylock will make $126,400,000 on all units sold.
Observation 2: It should be noted that the property taxes owed is a combination of actual back taxes and interest. It is not the $1,000,000 stated by Mr. Cummings during the meeting.
Principal $304,657.72
Interest $926,997.62
Total $1,231,655.34
This may not seem like a significant amount of money, but given that taxpayers have received no tax money on this property for 34 years, coupled with the new assessments and new tax rate, every million counts.
Observation 3: The presentation showed a payment of $300,000 for the Mohawk/Fimbel Property. Who is getting this money? Mohawk owes the above amount of $1,231,655.34, and Fimbel has not been charged any property taxes since 2002. Therefore any money paid for these properties should be given to the City of Nashua. This should not be a talking point, and/or is this another concession that the City of Nashua is making?
It also does not mention how much Blaylock will be paying the City of Nashua for the two pieces of property that they want to acquire. One slide stated that the cost to acquire the ROW parcel will be determined and added to the development equity. What does this mean in plain English in terms of the money transacted?
Currently, the City of Nashua has assessed the Mohawk properties as follows:
Parcel 2023 Assessment Acres
L Intervale $240,900 14.44
11 Warsaw $25,000 6.85
L Hughey St $84,300 .15
L Hughey St $73,100 .08
L Hughey St $80,700 .17
66 Fairmount $39,100 7.70
L Fox St $0 4.98
$543,100 34.37
If the city has assessed these lands with value, then why is the city willing to walk away from their value? Should this be a concession by the City?
Observation 4: The Affordable Housing part of the city has taken the $75,000 per unit and brought it down to $37,000. Benefit for Blaylock and a concession for the city. Why? If the city is agreeing to bring down the number of units, then why cannot Blaylock pay the full price per unit of $75,000? I understand that Blaylock is funding some environmental remediation; however, if the properties were not contaminated, Blaylock would have to pay that price just for the land, if not more.
To sum up :
City Blaylock
Loan* $2,500,000.00 $3,367,844.00
Loan* $2,000,000.00 $500,000.00
Walkway $3,000,000.00 $0.00
Write Off $1,231,655.34 (back taxes + int) $0.00
$8,731,655.34 $3,867,844.00
*Does not include interest
On the Environmental Remediation Sources, there is a note that Blaylock is to repay the $500,000 balance plus accrued interest at the time the RIF bond is put in place. This requires further “plain English” explanation (RIF?).
Observation 5: The Parkway Widening & Signalization is listed in the presentation material at $750,000, and the Parkway Drainage Relocation cost at $290,000. Is this another City concession? What is the rationale for the City covering these costs and not the developer? Is this typical for new developments?
Observation 6 – Is there a traffic study being done, and who is paying for that? What is the estimated cost for this study?
Observation 7: On the Projected Tax Revenue sheet, it appears that the figures did not add up. I say that because, currently, the city has just reassessed the properties, and it does not appear that Blaylock is being charged on these new assessments. Is this another City concession?
Observation 8: Who pays for the Interest Reserve Balance as shown on the Projected Tax Revenue?
Observation 9: The Blaylock representative stated in the presentation that the apartments would be constructed first. I assumed that Blaylock would want the current rent in order to have additional funds on hand; however, the physical report shows that Blaylock will do more Condos than apartments. Was this just a mistake, and/or did the city want to show more income coming from Blaylock?
Observation 10: Your report also shows a tax rate of $23.22, which was the rate for 2021 and not $18.07, the 2022 current rate. Your report numbers would come down substantially.
Also, looking at your figures and using the old tax rate, you have given incorrect numbers on the report:
EXAMPLE
It also seems strange that Blaylock stated that their budget is $125 million dollars; however, if using the City’s figures, the valuation of the property is only $101,000,000 for both apartments and condos. Blaylock would be going into this project with a loss of $24,000,000, which I think is highly unlikely.
Observation 11: If anyone in the city wants to review a past project, they should look into the Cotton Mill Project. Because the developer purchased the land with contamination and the State of New Hampshire gave them a break of all property taxes for six years, and therefore the Nashua taxpayer did not get the full property taxes for six years (see below). Will this also happen with Mohawk? Another concession against the Nashua taxpayers?
Cotton Mill Taxes Collected
Why does it seem that the burden is always on the Nashua taxpayers?
It just does not seem right that the Nashua Taxpayers should pay more than Blaylock because they will be benefiting in the future from all the rents that they will collect. However, the City of Nashua budget will go up to accommodate all the additional services necessary to accommodate approximately 1,000 new residents.
Observation 12: If that is the case, would Nashua be better off just cleaning up the land with the EPA and selling the property once completed? If the city did do the remediation, they could put the EPA money of $6,000,000 and the city adding in $5,527,299 to add up to the total Clean-up of $11,427,399. Once the land is cleaned up, the city could sell the land for $5,155,500 ($150,000 new rate for an area) at minimum. It would be the responsibility of the investor to come in and widen the Parkway and redo the Parkway drainage. At this point, the Nashua Taxpayers can actually recoup some of the monies that we have paid out on this project.
I think before any city officials vote on any changes for this land, many more questions need to be asked and answered.
The burden should not fall on the Nashua taxpayers’ shoulders. Period.
The post It Looks Like Nashua Taxpayers Will Be Making All the Concessions and Get Nothing in Return appeared first on Granite Grok.
We’ve drawn more than a few conclusions connecting the Climate and COVID Cults. It’s not complicated. They are run by the same lot of hooligans. The same media, lies, flanking maneuvers, and cover-ups when things go sideways. And here’s another one.
Related: What if COVID is in 2020 What Climate Change was in 1980?
Two graphs. One is COVID cases with a line marking the (Dec 2020) introduction of the vaccine*. You can see that despite all the do-si-doses and boosters and whatnot, the rise in cases is effectively unchanged. Constant.
I will offer one caveat. Not everyone is doing as much reporting as they once did, so it’s likely this number is undercounted, which makes matters worse for both the COVID Cult and their magic elixir. And yes, the crappy PCR test has always skewed the numbers. The Cultists were happy to use them then, and so shall we now, knowing that it’s a wash in both directions and the vaccine is still crap (without going down the “it makes it easier to catch” rabbit hole).
The second graph (from National Observer.com) is a dramatic, dirty-looking representation of emitted atmospheric CO (as measured at Mauna Loa) with a list of climate summits/treaties.
They fly their private jets to these CO2 circle jerks and glad-hand each other for but one purpose. How best to redistribute western wealth laundered through the hands of the jet-setters who show up.
What else could it be?
If lowering global emissions was the goal, they’ve done a lousy-ass job of it, which suggests that, like The Jab, these were likely never conceived (or at least sustained) as anything but money-laundering tools.
Related: Warren Breaks 7th Seal – Blames Coronavirus on Climate Change
What, aside from wasting trillions to accomplish nothing, have they managed? They’ve changed the name of it a few times. They decided that the tipping point wasn’t 2 Deg C. It was 1.5C. Do I hear one? How about point seven-five? Screw it. We’re tipping … we need global Marxism Now!
Did you know that there are actual climate experts who will tell you that CO2 is not only NOT a driver of the earth’s climate, but the earth’s alleged “greenhouse effect” isn’t either. That this construction is a simpletons ruse to distract non-experts from trusting any actual science?
Others note that 1.5C (remember, 2C) is not a tipping point anywhere or everywhere. Repeating that can get you labeled a science denier, except that we’ve passed 1.5C more than once in various parts of the world, and nothing happened. No tipping, No points (unless the massive expansion of greening, farmland and crop yields counts). And that’s because it’s a made-up number with no basis in reality in either cause or effect.
The models they insist are proven right are always wrong. They can’t even achieve the least scary made-up line on their forever-moving goalposts. And so it was with COVID, which turned out to be 99.97%, not life-ending.
Both graphs share symmetry, history, histrionics, and fraud.
In both instances, the response (the government) is the threat, which continues to be true.
The post Something Else the ‘COVID’ and “Climate” Cults Have In Common appeared first on Granite Grok.