Friday • May 2 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.XVIII
Manchester, N.H.
We’ve had three named storms in June. Arlene and Bret didn’t get very far, and while Cindy managed to rise to the level of a Tropical storm, she gave up a few days ago just north of the Dominican Republic.
This year’s third named storm fell apart and is drifting aimlessly toward Bermuda. There is still an opportunity for her to get her groove on, but it’s low, and as she moves north into colder water, the fuel required becomes scarce.
NOAA has predicted 12-17 named storms for the 2023 season from June 1 to November 30, 5-9 Hurricanes, and 1-4 major hurricanes. A normal hurricane season. That’s probably a safer guess after last year. Hurricane NOAA predicted an above-average season for 2022 that never happened. They missed by a country mile.
This year scientists are certain that they are uncertain.
After three hurricane seasons with La Nina present, NOAA scientists predict a high potential for El Nino to develop this summer, which can suppress Atlantic hurricane activity. El Nino’s potential influence on storm development could be offset by favorable conditions local to the tropical Atlantic Basin.
Maybe, maybe not. But we are doomed by 2050 or wherever the goalposts got moved to after the last jet-setting, carbon-intensive climate cult conference. Being uncertain about that is to deny science.
As for Cindy, the hurricane, not the youngest Brady Girl; she’s the green smear in the middle of the Atlantic.
Not much to look at, and so far, most of the action has been in the Pacific, off the coast of Mexico.
Maybe those storms will spin up and try to migrate across our open southern border.
The post ICYMI The Atlantic Hurricane Season Is Almost One Month Old, And So Far … appeared first on Granite Grok.
“He is the smartest person I know” and “My son did nothing illegal, and I am proud of him” are two comments that President Joe Biden made about his son, Hunter Biden. Those comments came when the Joe Biden camp tried to justify the $80,000 monthly salary given to Hunter by Ukraine energy company Burisma. Hunter had no experience in the energy sector but was named to the Burisma Board shortly after a trip to Ukraine with then Vice President Joe Biden. Hunter did not have a lot of investment expertise, yet received billions of dollars to invert for the Chinese Government. This transfer of funds also coincided with a trip to China with his father, Vice President Joe Biden. Biden and his associates worked daily to convince Americans that his son was more intelligent enough to handle the rigors of these complex jobs.
About a year ago, the story and talking points had to change. The Administration was forced into defense mode as facts and whistleblower testimony came into focus. With the advent of this damning information, the Administration had to find a way to deflect the facts. The people going on the record were credible and could not be put down, so they had to discredit Hunter by pointing out he was an alcoholic drug addict at this point in his life and could not be held responsible for his words or actions.
You cannot have it both ways, but you cannot claim no masse on the allocations of bribes, shakedowns, and extortion while declaring the perpetrator a genius. This is a classic conundrum of the Biden White House. The stories are never consistent, and you can never trust any statement from Biden or White House spokespeople. Leadership is based on trust and consistency. Neither of these traits is present in the Biden White House.
Each day, more information is disclosed by the whistleblowers that indicate a collusive effort between the White House and the Justice Department to change the narrative of all stories involving Hunter Biden. The whistleblowers face stiff penalties for dispersing false information, so you have to give them the edge on credibility. Each statement released is damaging to all Bidens and Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland is in the crosshairs, and talk of impeachment proceedings against the AG may be forthcoming.
There were reports over the weekend that the Bidens had added a criminal defense attorney to their legal team. That is an absolute admission that the walls are crumbling in, and the hearings, indictments, and potential charges are forthcoming. The tactic of avoiding questions by Joe and Karine may stop working soon, as the people insist on answers and the media realizes they must stop covering for the first family. When that finally happens to the mainstream media, the Bidens should start packing up their personal effects.
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The post Hunter Biden: Genius Or Incoherent Addict appeared first on Granite Grok.
It was a slow weekend, with nothing on the calendar, but I caught an email telling me one of our Presidential candidates would be in Alton Sunday evening. I said, “What the heck – why not?” Vivek Ramaswamy was/is a little-known candidate, but like I said, “What the heck, I’ll go” (By the way, the cookies were great).
Cutting to the chase, Vivek was introduced by his wife, who, by any judgment, would make a stunning First Lady. Okay, I know this young man (age 37) is a virtual newcomer to big-time politics and is only poling maybe 3% while Trump is pushing near 60%. Not a chance, really?
Still, I was blown away, Mr. Ramaswamy has a presence and composure equal to or better than the far more experienced candidates twice his age. After his opening remarks, he took questions with no hesitation or evasion, proving that he has a solid grip on the issues and plans to deal with them. I’ve been around the block, closer to 81 than 80, so believe me when I tell you he is the real deal. Although overcoming polling leads of the many better-known candidates may not be a reasonable expectation but how about you give the guy a chance? Or at least a look?
Sure, I am impressed, but I’ll make no promises or outrageous predictions but invite you to go and meet him.
I know that as a Constitutional conservative, he checked all my boxes, So if you’re a conservative or moderate Republican or independent fed up with the Lefty Democrats’ make-believe realities and lawless double standards, you will welcome the fresh air he provides.
Can he win the NH primary? I don’t know. Does it really matter? The way I felt listening to him was a mental vision of Donald Trump as Obi-Wan and Vivek as the new hope.
The post The Real Deal – Vivek Ramaswamy appeared first on Granite Grok.
In case you missed it, Terese Grinnell (Bastarche) has had the charges dropped against her. New Hampshire State Police arrested her for “disrupting” an Executive Council Meeting – a ridiculous accusation and a story regular readers know well.
A video of the entire event was available since the day of the arrest (here’s a short excerpt). Anyone who watches it can tell the whole exercise was harassment and intimidation (even members of the governor’s staff could see it, I suspect).
Terese was not about to stand by and put up with either.
She eventually subpoenaed Governor Sununu as a witness. The judge quashed the subpoena, claiming it was delivered too late as if this was somehow more unfair than being escorted out of a crowded public meeting for saying Amen, and having to pay lawyers and legal fees because of His Excellencies’ petty vendetta.
No way he’s taking the stand under oath, and that’s sad. Sununu says he has big shoulders, but this guy had someone who was legally carrying arrested for trespassing on his lawn with a firearm. Pro-Gun Big Shoulders Sununu then canceled his outdoor inauguration just in case any gun nuts might disrupt the occasion.
It was a whiney little d!ck move, and here’s another one. The baggage that needs unpacking.
New Hampshire Journal has an article on Grinnell’s charges being dropped. The headline is “Charges Dropped Against Anti-Vax Protester on Eve of Court Date.”
Anti-Vax protester. How incredibly clever. Sorry, I misspelled ignorant narrative stooge. What moron labels a nurse an anti-vaxxer? And we know they knew she was a nurse.
Terese has had many nursing jobs and has given just about every “vaccine” to people who have consented to receive them. She has received vaccines herself over her life. She explained to me that her family got the COVID vaccines.
That didn’t bother her, probably because she has administered hundreds, if not thousands, of injections of all types to people of all ages. Calling her an anti-vax protester is absurd and dishonest, and just wrong. It panders to a false progressive narrative, not unlike the claims that protecting children from sexualized age-inappropriate material is book banning. It’s not.
The correct modifier for Grinnell is anti-mandate. She objected to policies that ruined people’s lives and shared several stories with me of people in health care. Nurses who had exemptions- legitimate exceptions – denied that cost them their jobs. In at least one instance, it put a home, family, and their access to health insurance at risk, not to mention on the cusp of financial ruin.
The mandates affected many in that way.
Mortgages and bills don’t pay themselves. The mandates she opposed put a lot of people in dire straights. Turned their lives upside down. That was what she opposed.
So, I’m curious to know more about whoever wrote the NH Journal piece. Did they get both jabs, all three boosters, and the bivalent? Did they skip one or more because they thought, I don’t need that, and if so, why aren’t they an anti-vaxxer? The experts said you needed it, and you, at some point, said no.
Vaccine-hesitant?
So yes, we’d love to know, but the by-line is NewsNHJ. The author’s name is unknown, much like the vaccine’s side effects that were hidden in contradiction to informed consent law as they were yelling about mandates, testing, pushing passports, and lining people up to get jabbed.
The things that Terese Grinnell actually opposed that you wouldn’t know from the NH Journal piece.
We’re happy to have cleared it up.
The post Charges Dropped Against Terese Grinnell – And a Quibble with NH Journal appeared first on Granite Grok.
It’s a GREAT question. Why?
But first, this is from Dan himself for context:
OF COURSE, it’s a constitutional crisis.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling yesterday, in Moore v. Harper, comes the day after I filed my case with the NH State Supreme Court (docket # 2023-0097), which is the same theme and argument in Richard v. Sununu, et al. now before the Court.
Under stare decisis the NH Supreme Court will now be bound by the SCOTUS opinion in Moore v. Harper, causing a constitutional crisis in NH, as this case validates my complaints in my lawsuit.
SCOTUSBlog has a quick background and why it applies to Dan’s case
In a major election-law decision, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that although the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to regulate federal elections, state courts can supervise the legislature’s exercise of that power. By a vote of 6-3, the court rejected the so-called “independent state legislature theory,” holding that the North Carolina Supreme Court did not violate the Constitution when it set aside a congressional map adopted by the state’s legislature.
Daily Signal has more:
Justices ruled 6-3 Tuesday in Moore v. Harper to reject the “independent state legislature theory,” the idea that legislatures have unrestricted power under the Constitution to administer federal elections without review from state courts.
The Supreme Court held that the Constitution’s elections clause “does not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections.” The case stems from the North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision in February 2022 to toss a congressional map drawn by the Republican-led legislature after the 2020 census as “an egregious and intentional partisan gerrymander.”
“State courts retain the authority to apply state constitutional restraints when legislatures act under the power conferred upon them by the Elections Clause,” Roberts wrote. “But federal courts must not abandon their own duty to exercise judicial review. In interpreting state law in this area, state courts may not so exceed the bounds of ordinary judicial review as to unconstitutionally intrude upon the role specifically reserved to state legislatures by Article I, Section 4, of the Federal Constitution.”
Since 2019, Dan Richard has been waging a one-man skirmish in the election arena – what are the rules, how did they get to be, and why are we having such a problem with out-of-state voters (mostly college students who pay out-of-state tuition, go figure)? And more importantly, how can the Constitution be “amended” by mere State Statute/law instead of by the mandated Constitutional process on which We, the People, make that decision? Instead, our elected legislators, over time, made the incremental changes by passing bills that bypassed that Constitutional process.
While it can take many to do a wrong by consensus, it only takes one person to do the right thing by being persistent. That’s Dan. But this asks the most important question:
Why did legislators do so (an effort that has taken place over 50 years) to change NH election law by statute rather than doing the right thing in properly amending the NH Constitution? That we may never know, but in having the Judiciary put on the spot for their results, perhaps these legislative wrongs can be righted. From Dan:
After a lot of work, and help from others, my appeal to the NH Supreme Court was filed today. Please share far and wide as all of our constitutional rights are being violated. All of my complaints are unresolved and still law;
- Amending the constitution by fraud;
- Unconstitutional voting machines;
- Unconstitutional, illegal absentee voting (no affidavits);
- Allowing unqualified out of state residents to vote
Here is his NH Supreme Court appeal petition (it is meaty):
Dan Richard – NEW HAMPSHIRE SUPREME COURT-2And the appendix with the supporting information:
Dan Richard – APPENDIX PDF copyWe wish him well and hope to be in the courtroom for the hearing on this. And in talking with him a few minutes ago, as of this writing, there will be a lot more on this.
The post Dan Richard – How Did Our “Employees” Get To Write the Rules on How They Get Re-Elected? appeared first on Granite Grok.
I have been honored to represent the people of New Hampshire as their US Congressman and US Senator for 18 years. I know New Hampshire values. I also know that those values are not currently represented by the Biden administration and its left-wing cohorts in the media.
We want to thank Senator Bob Smith for this Op-Ed. Please submit yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
The 2024 elections must bring us back to these values if America is to survive. Pause for a moment and think of all of the candidates who are running for President in both parties. Ask yourself which candidate you really believe will stand up to the left and fight for these New Hampshire and American values that we are losing?
Who do you want to face China, Russia, and North Korea in a crisis? You know that person is former President Donald J. Trump. You know this not because he said he would fight for our values and stand up to those dictators but because he has done so as President and continues to do so now.
Six years ago, in June of 2015, Donald Trump promised us that he would secure our borders, drain the swamp, build up our military, make us energy independent, fill our courts with conservative constitutionalists, and get us out of endless foreign wars. In spite of the incredible dirty tricks and lies perpetuated by the swamp, Hillary Clinton, the media, and yes, even Obama and Biden, Donald Trump prevailed and accomplished what he promised he would do for us.
They did not stop after the election, however. Two political impeachments and even an accusation that he was a Russian asset hounded this good man for four years, and the harassment continues to this day with politically motivated indictments by a weaponized Biden-controlled Justice Department. In spite of all of this, President Trump accomplished more in four years than most presidents do in eight years. In our hearts, we all knew how bad these people were, but the Durham Report confirmed the level of corruption was far beyond anything we could have imagined.
Now that President Trump is running for re-election, they are currently using the same old playbook because they know that they cannot beat him at the ballot box, where millions of his supporters will rally to his defense and elect him again. Why this extraordinary effort by the left to take President Trump down? The answer is clear. Donald J. Trump is the only candidate in the field with the stamina, experience, and backbone to prevail against these vicious forces, and the left knows it. Donald Trump is not only their enemy. He is the symbol of all freedom-loving Americans. If they defeat Trump, they defeat all of us. America will be lost to the left, the globalists, and the swamp.
A few days ago, my wife, Mary Jo, and I had the honor to meet personally with President Trump. When you look a man in the eye, you can see his heart as well. When we left that meeting, we knew that Donald Trump loves America and its people, and he is doing everything he can to save it and preserve our freedoms at great personal sacrifice. President Trump stood up for us when we needed him, and now it is our turn to stand up for him. He has earned our respect and our support. Trust me when I say America needs Donald Trump, and I am proud and honored to support him for re-election to the Presidency of the United States.
Reminder: Content about candidates or by candidates is not an endorsement by GraniteGrok.com or its authors.
The post My Endorsement of Donald Trump For President appeared first on Granite Grok.
I want you to think back to the days of “Tom Sawyer” and one of his greatest pranks performed on his friends. Burdened with a chore for skipping school, Tom comes up with an ingenious way to get out of it.
Sidenote: That is before the SJWs got their uppity mitts on that story and declared it racist because THEIR morals say that anything that doesn’t hew to their “presentism” ideology must be banned or torn down.
Side-Sidenote: Presentism – the only thing that matters is how we think and feel right NOW and judge history from it – as opposed to understanding how those back then felt and instead “punishing them” for wrong-think decades or centuries later.
Back on topic, Skip. Last week I received the result of my NH Legislative Ethics Committee complaints against NH State Rep Harry Bean, Travis O’Hara, and the One-Who-Cannot-Be-Named. The former two waived their Confidentiality so that I can name them. The third did not, so I’ll just call him Voldemort (no, not because he’s that evil, but I legally cannot name him – and no “Lord” title for them – though I’m betting that the three of them are thinking of themselves that way).
The official Summary by the Committee for all three of them is effectively whitewashed. Because neither RSA 91-A (Right To Know law that demands that public meetings be properly noticed) nor RSA 24:9-D (the law that regulates the behavior of how NH County delegations made of all the NH House Reps in that County – including how THEY publicly announce their meetings) have penalties for misbehavior, so there can be no unethical behavior.
Even though the Committee stated in the Travis O’Hara summary that the public meetings for which they were on the hook for handling properly were “That fact is uncontested.” From Bean: …it is clear that they were not properly noticed pursuant to RSA 91-A”. A similar language was used for Voldemort.
However:
I’ll address that in a bit, but here are the official summaries for the first two.
NH State Rep Harry Bean:
NH Legislative Ethics Committee – Harry Bean exoneration
NH State Rep Travis O’Hara:
NH Legislative Ethics Committee – Travis OHara exonerationNo, I can’t put up the summary for Voldermort because that Rep never waived their confidentiality but if you read the two public ones above, you get the idea.
So what are MY takeaways, as an ordinary citizen trying to act in accordance of Article 8 of the NH Constitution?
…all the magistrates and officers of government are their substitutes and agents, and at all times accountable to them. Government, therefore, should be open, accessible, accountable and responsive. To that end, the public’s right of access to governmental proceedings and records shall not be unreasonably restricted. The public also has a right to an orderly, lawful, and accountable government.
Now, go look at the image at the top of this post again. Why say you folks?
I wasn’t looking for a criminal conviction – it was my understanding that this was a panel of former and current legislators to judge these three Legislators’ behaviors from an ethical standpoint – above and beyond (and in some cases, below) the Law and not a LEGAL standpoint. But it’s clear that to me, an ordinary citizen, they turned it into that. Do so ONCE, and I can accept “bad faith.” Doing the same behavior, NOT listening to those that are more experienced or reading the actual law to them multiple times?
I now know that I no longer understand what the definition of unethical is.
However, I did send Rich Lambert, the Executive Administrator (for whom I have nothing but good words) a follow-up to see if another action by these three (and other Reps would fall under Donna Sytek’s Book of Unethical Behaviors. They all put in for and accepted the RSA 24:9-eee meeting and mileage fees for these now admitted-to-be-illegal meetings. Given that “this fact is uncontested,” – would not return the County’s money (I have their forms, they all self-signed, as well as the remittances) be considered unethical behavior? I’m betting it isn’t in that Book:
—— Original Message ——
From “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
To “Rich Lambert” <Rich.Lambert@leg.state.nh.us>
Date 6/27/2023 7:46:28 PM
Subject A question for you and the Honorable Sytek’s Book of Unethical behaviorGood evening Mr. Lambert,
I am in receipt of the exonerations of Harry Bean, Travis O’Hara, and <Voldermort>. In reading each, it seems that the wordings for each are a bit tortured in coming to their conclusions.
So be it as the NH Legislative Ethics Committee has made its rulings and exonerated all three even as the Committee found that the illegal meetings are summarized by the Committee’s words of “That fact is uncontested” (Complaint 2023-6, Travis O’Hara, second paragraph).
I have a number of takeaways from that line and those rulings but the main one is that if State Statutes in these cases (e.g., RSA 91-A and RSA 24) does not have associated penalties for bad behavior, there can be no ethical unseemliness. My second main takeaway will remain unstated fully but the phrase “his two remaining brain cells are vying to be in third place” as a line of defense / explanation seems to be acceptable and viable.
So before I spend the time that might well be better spent on more productive efforts, let me ask a question of the Committee’s words: “That fact is uncontested” in that the improperly noticed meetings were illegal. My question:
Would those three, and other Belknap Representatives as well, having put in their self-authorizing forms for the per meeting and travel expenses (RSA 24:9-eee) and accepting such taxpayer monies for the now uncontested illegal meeting be considered to be an unethical action? That having this official ruling about the meetings, not returning the monies for meetings that should never have happened, be considered unethical?
Or would it be a charade to attempt to hold them fully accountable per Article 8 of the NH Constitution?
-Skip
So yes, a “pre-question.” I wonder if I will hear back from:
The post The NH Legislative Ethics Commission Results Are In … And Guess What? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Recently I’ve started pushing the idea here at Grok that libraries and schools are inherently political institutions, so we should start treating them as such by electing librarians, teachers, and school administrators.
To give parents and taxpayers more voice over what happens in schools.
Lots of people have had trouble getting their heads around this idea, but Donald Trump has picked up the idea and is running with it.
He’s starting with just school principals, but he’s always been more of an incrementalist than I am.
The post Trump Reads Grok? appeared first on Granite Grok.
This comes to us from the inimitable Victor Davis Hanson (VDH), one of Conservatisim’s deep thinkers and observers of what Society is doing – and where it is heading.
Drawing on his vast historical knowledge and the ability to compare and contrast our situation against those of other cultures and times, he’s always a necessary read. Lawrence Person’s Battleswarm Blog has a video of VDH doing exactly that, and he pulled out a lot of quotes – this post’s title is one of them – so go over and read them.
His post is about how California has gone from hero to zero in a few short decades and made easy by just using pull quotes from VDH.
It’s the epitome of when Progressive/Socialists take over Government – the end results in a type of governance that has never succeeded EVAH, and we can see that in real-time. In the meantime:
“…The consequences of their own ideology”.
I used to fight that battle over at TreeHugger – that our “betters,” that MUST know so much more than we do concerning what is best for us just too casually toss off the downsides (especially the financial ones) of any of their ideas. However, they demand that we embrace those ideas totally and without reservation.
They want themselves to be our gods.
The proper response should always be “Up Yours!”.
The decline of California under one-party Democrat rule has been one of the long-running themes of this blog. Today Victor Davis Hanson discusses how California’s wealthy destroyed the middle class with policies whose baleful effects they knew wouldn’t fall on them.
And because of their wealth, they can weather whatever their policies do to them – but don’t care about what happens to anyone else because of them. I used to, semi-jokingly, ask those that wanted expansive and expensive that intruded upon my financial and liberty freedoms when they’d be sending me a check, like when they wanted to eliminate my propane furnace and wood stove and put in rather expensive heat pumps (that yet are unable to work well in the -20 F temps that are certainly not unknown here in central NH). While they all yammered that I HAD TO BECAUSE WE’RE SAVING THE PLANET, not a single one sent me a check.
Why was I not surprised? That’s how they roll and do exactly the same thing as in California (but with more zeros to the left of the decimal point). And that’s what those that have achieved much financial and/or political success seem to believe – having done so; they have the right to boss other people around.
Actually, they don’t, and the middle class that has borne the brunt of their policies is voting with their feet as California is the largest state in terms of legal outflow (as opposed to the illegal alien inflows, which is going to be another problem for them soon). Already, Gov Newsom is starting to have a bad hair day, and that smirk is getting to get wiped off his face as the billions of surplus last year (of which he boasted broadly) has now gone into the dumper bigley.
The State has been riding its reputation and financial success for decades, where it went from being the best to now cratering (and if you look at their roads and highways, literally cratering). The analogy is like when vulture venture capitalists take over a company simply to siphon its money out of it (instead of the normal VCs that want to BOLSTER the value of a takeover) where the Democrats became the “political culture vultures”.
It’s the same problem that I see in our general culture. Religion, especially the Judeo-Christian tradition, gave us a shared morality and outlook (plus or minus). With the advent of religious animosity starting in the late 1950s, that shared attribute began to disappear and now is, IMHO, now in a death spiral.
For instance, it ISN’T the gun that is committing the crime that the Left blames on guns; it’s the heart/soul/morality (or lack thereof) of those using the guns. The Left can’t stand to admit that their constant pulling out the bricks of our wall that is our norms and mores has brought it to a teetering point – can it stand, or is it inevitable that it will just collapse? When I see that the killing of babies has been normalized, that sexuality has gone wide and into the gutter, and that stealing has been legalized (with California being the prime example, again), what other conclusion can I rationalize?
The Left has now said that we no longer have shared values (Obama wanting to restrict us only to HIS designated media and values!) – that we must yield to them. WHY would I do that, given their results (again, look at California)? An Elite again trying to tell us what to do?
Yeah, screw that. Shut up, Obama, and leave us to our own designs for our own lives. Ditto the rest of them, too.
The post “We Created a Very Very Wealthy Elite Not Subject to the Consequences of Their Own Ideology.” appeared first on Granite Grok.
In lieu of current Iranian protests in Iran, let us make a note of it: If we remain divided, there will not be a chance against the robust Islamic regime with the vast and destructive power apparatus that has no problem using it against their own population as they did in the 2009 Green Movement.
Unlike anything encountered in recent memory, the formidably complex and unique situation in today’s Iran poses an enormous challenge. It defies any conventional solution, and simply resorting to civil disobedience is the equivalent of fighting off a pack of hungry and blood-thirsty wolves with toothpicks!
The incredibly ruthless, deceptive, and cunning nature of the present regime, bundled together with an Islamic modus operandi, creates an enigma and several paradoxes.
Recommendations for Expatriates• Your ideological differences should not stand in the way of uniting against Islamofascists who have made life miserable for all Iranians. Breaking unity at a time when the Islamic vultures want to extinguish the forces of resistance is an abandonment of your national duty.
• Fight the disinformation campaign launched by the Islamic Republic through radio, Internet, and TV broadcasts in Iran.
• Combined with a proposed strategy emphasizing the interdependence of a secular and free Iran with economic rewards for industrialized nations is another major step in gaining meaningful support.
• It is imperative to Launching a widespread information campaign in Iran and across the globe that exposes the regime and its evil deeds is imperative.
• Counter hostile public relations against US/Israel and broadcast meaningful and structured information to Iran that will counter IRI propaganda.
• Inform people about the true nature of Islam and its counter-cultural impact on Iranian civilization, culture, and traditions. This must be done tactfully and in an informative manner.
• Strongly emphasize the role of the Iranian civilization in shaping Western and Eastern cultures and influencing many schools of thought.
• Expose the atrocities committed against the people of Iran (i.e., gross violations of human rights) and the terrorist acts committed against the world.
• Reemphasize the importance of the unity of different Iranian ethnic groups based on shared cultural roots.
• Ward off opportunistic separatist movements by exposing their phony historical and linguistic “justifications.”
• Reinforce that irrespective of linguistic differences, the Iranian people’s common enemy is the Islamic regime. Expose separatists’ deceptive tactics.
• Expose the real reason for the pursuit of nuclear technology.
• Work with LEGITIMATE opposition inside Iran and expatriates that are in tune with the CURRENT issues inside Iran.
• Expose the regime’s lobbyists and sympathizers with personal agendas and those who have had any connection to the Islamic Republic in the past or present.
• Unite your forces with secular democratic groups and persons who promote freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.
• Avoid those whose perceptions of Iranian realities are locked in the 1970s and have no concept of the day-to-day issues facing the Iranian people.
• Worked with labor and organized grassroots movements inside Iran. Non-stop support of independent secular activities.
• Form a provisional coalition of capable individuals, preferably trained in conflict resolution, leadership, and management, who are charismatic and pragmatic enough to lead the post-IRI transitional government.
• Try to work with Iran’s fundamental military forces to destroy the paramilitary forces, such as Basij, Pasdaran (IRGC), Ansar Hezbollah, and other pressure groups.
• Work with International agencies to capture and round up the commanders of these forces and the leaders and key figures of the Islamic regime to hand them to an international tribunal for crimes against humanity.
• Review 50 crucial points about non-violent struggles.
The post A Call to Iranian Expatriates appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Conway Daily Sun has an article on how gun ownership in New Hampshire rates to other states. The piece includes a ranking by the Gun-Grabby Gifford Law Center, ranking states by gun owners and how restrictive their gun laws.
That report also includes homicides per 100,000 for each state.
The premise behind the piece is to explore what percentage of the population owns or possesses firearms but to know these things, there would need to be a record or registry, and the last time I checked, New Hampshire was not allowed to collect or share that sort of information. I might have that wrong, and let’s assume, for the sake of this fisking, I do. But the Sun wants everyone to know that despite the perception of a concealed carry wild-west persona, a minority of Americans own a firearm.
According to a 2020 study published by the RAND Corporation, a research and public policy advocacy group, only about 32% of American households own a firearm.
The article (a reprint sourced here) also shares the Grabby Gifford Law Center data to presumably make a connection between gun ownership, gun-grabbing laws, and violent crime. Except that the data doesn’t compare violent crime. It uses firearm deaths, which probably include suicides. That’s not a proper frame of reference, but even if we accept those terms, the Gifford data contradicts its likely intent.
New Hampshire scores a gun control grade of ‘F’ with 8.3 firearms deaths per 100,000 people, but 18 states in the survey have better grades but more firearms deaths per capita. It also ignores violent and property crimes which are affected by the likelihood that a criminal will be met with equal or superior force or knowledge that they won’t.
Using the same data year (2021) as the Giffords report published in the Conway Daily Sun, Homesnacks compiled FBI crime data to generate their most recent Safest States survey, including violent and property crime.
The 10 Safest States In America For 2023 in Order – after which I have added the Giffords Gun Grab Grade.)
1 New Hampshire F
2 Maine F
3 Vermont C-
4 New Jersey A
5 Idaho F
6 Rhode Island B+
7 Virginia B
8 Connecticut A-
9 Massachusetts A-
10 Wyoming F
As we can see, there is no obvious or consistent connection between gun-grabbing laws and public safety.
If you need a better example, Illinois got an A- from the Gifford Center for lawless gun violence, but Chicago has more murder and violent crime in one year than loose-gun-law New Hampshire could have in nearly a century.
Add the remainder of the state, and Illinois ranks 25th on the Homesnacks list. (A -) but twenty-four states are safer.
It is ridiculous, but gun-grabbing has never been about safety. The driver of violence and gun violence is not firearms. As Democrat Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted,
“NIH needs to research what psych drugs are doing to kids mentally – school shootings are a new phenomenon and that his school had a gun club growing up – Switzerland has the same amount of guns and hasn’t had a school shooting in 21 years. – “Something has changed in this country. It’s not the guns. We’ve always had the guns.”
That’s not to say he (RFK Jr) wouldn’t or doesn’t have some Democrat-like thoughts about disarmament, but he’s right, and the article republished in the Conway Daily Sun is just pandering to the lies without even asking any of the questions we pose here.
It’s filler, and some days you need that, but it’s contradictory. Neither gun ownership numbers nor so-called “gun safety laws” correlate to gun safety or crime.
The post New Hampshire’s “Gun Grade” Makes No Sense appeared first on Granite Grok.
Housework is hands down one of the most difficult things to deal with when it comes to managing your adult life. It is, after all, both ubiquitous and unending, which is why it’s so important to engage with anything you can that makes this work easier.
Fortunately for you, this article aims to highlight a handful of great tips that can help you to keep your housework under control.
Dealing with Your LaundryOne the most ubiquitous and unavoidable jobs that will continue to crop up in your housework is laundry. This is such an unavoidable job because clothes are such an unavoidable part of day-to-day life. So, what can you do to make your work with laundry as easy as possible?
One of the best things that you can do is to go ahead and create a specific laundry space where you both wash and dry the clothes that you need sorted. Not only does this allow you to set aside a specific place to deal with your clothes, but it also helps you create a space that’s properly ventilated to ensure that it doesn’t get too humid when drying clothes.
Talking of ventilation, you should also make sure that you take the necessary steps to properly vent your laundry drain so that you don’t cause yourself more problems down the road.
Engage with AutomationIn today’s age of technology, there are plenty of tools that can help you to get work done that would otherwise have taken you a long time.
Things like dishwashers, Roombas, and even laundry chutes for your home, help to automate some of your most time-consuming housework and keep your home looking good for a minimal amount of effort.
Stay ConsistentAs ridiculous as it sounds, one of the best things that you can do to make sure that your housework is under control and easy to deal with is to simply do it often. Or to phrase that another way, make sure that you don’t let it build up.
After all, one element of housework that people don’t often consider is the cost to willpower that comes along with these chores. Your willpower is a finite resource, and every time you start a chore that you don’t want to do, you have to spend a little bit of that precious resource to push through and get it done.
When you let your housework build up, the amount of willpower required will increase exponentially, meaning that it’s going to cost you way more willpower to do a huge amount of chores all at once. This means it’s far more sustainable to do consistent small pieces of housework than it is to let it all build up and then do a huge amount at once.
Reward YourselfFinally, one of the most important things to remember is that you deserve a reward for the housework that you’re getting done. It’s easy to dismiss the housework that you’re doing as just the cost of being an adult, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Your efforts deserve a reward.
Of course, you shouldn’t go overboard with this, but it’s easy to create a simple reward system where you get some of your favourite candy, for example, when you finish your housework.
The post Useful Tips to Help You Keep Your Housework Under Control appeared first on Granite Grok.
I don’t have to say a word – “Linz” says it for us all to hear, and she is targeting your children via your children’s teachers. After all, the Alphabet Mafia doesn’t care about you as long as they have your children all to themselves most of the day – in the classroom.
Trans non-binary kid’s content creator and LGBTQ activist gives teachers a guide for bringing gender ideology into the classroom and dealing with “disgruntled parents” pic.twitter.com/ZjBsZmD15m
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 19, 2023
Do you know what these kinds of people hate? Do Right To Know/Freedom of Information demand about your child’s curriculum – EVERYTHING. And not just the materials. Start going after the accounting records to see who is asking to buy stuff and who approves it, and then go get the “paper trails.” Purchase orders, invoices, remittances, shipping and receiving records – it’s all there.
Sure, it’s a lot of work, but it is all available. Then expose the LGBT missionaries like this monster.
Since when should schools get mixed up in sexuality when they can’t even get the basics right anymore (the NAEP scores!)?
Yes, they DO want to replace you, Mom.
The post They ARE Coming for your Children and Schools are Ground Zero – By Their Own Admission appeared first on Granite Grok.
There was much praise from the center-right and parent’s groups when Florida passed a law to protect children from drag shows. Gov. DeSantis signed it, but a court just tossed it out. For all its good intentions, it was poorly written and contradicted existing law.
Eugene Volokh has relevant excerpts from the Court’s opinion here, and while not difficult to wade through, don’t feel bad if you find your un-lawyer-like mind a bit muddled.
Defendants argue that the Act’s language and restrictions track those upheld in Ginsberg v. New York (1968) [which did ban the distribution of “obscene-as-to-minors” material, such as books and magazines, to minors -EV]. There are several significant distinctions, however, between the narrowly tailored statute in Ginsberg and Fla. Stat. § 827.11. First, the Supreme Court in Ginsberg “relied not only on the State’s independent interest in the well-being of its youth, but also on the consistent recognition of the principle that ‘the parents’ claim to authority in their own household to direct the rearing of their children is basic in the structure of our society.'” The prohibition against the sale to minors of material considered obscene for their age in the statute at issue in Ginsberg “d[id] not bar parents who so desire[d] from purchasing magazines for their children.”
As we’ve often stated, especially in support of the argument that limiting access to age-inappropriate material is not “book banning,” parents have rights affirmed in law and statute. One of them is that they have authority in their household, and the material in question is widely available outside a school library.
Physical libraries also have limited space which requires them to decide what books will be removed so others may replace them. This is not, by even the most strained definition, banning books.
When confronted with removing age-inappropriate material from any collection, the question should be, do you still have every book that has ever sat on a shelf in this library? To say yes would be a lie, so the next question is, why did you ban those books?
They didn’t. But I digress.
Adult Drag shows are burlesque. Transvestities engaged in sexualized performance with implicit or explicit material most of us would call “adult.” If that’s your thing, have it. But in its race to protect kids, Florida lawmakers ran afoul of matters in existing Florida law, tripping over precedent on their way.
The most blatant is Florida’s Parental Rights Law. As written, the new law would make protected actions illegal.
“All parental rights are reserved to the parent of a minor child in this state…including…[t]he right to direct the upbringing and the moral or religious training of his or her minor child.” Id. § 1014.04(1)(b)
According to the Court, the Florida Drag Show law is both broad and unclear, with no carve out that would comport with a parent’s rights under Florida Law. A parent who consented to the content has a moral and religious right the Drag Show law would abrogate.
In other words, Florida needs to explain better its compelling interest in protecting children from mature material deemed harmful. It needs to clarify the definitions of terms like lewd, exposure, child, and prosthetic, to name a few, at which point it could take another bite at this apple. But the Court has declared the original law unconstitutional and unenforceable.
Any state looking at Florida as a model for their version should look more closely and choose its words wisely.
The post Florida Drag Show Law Gets Tossed Out appeared first on Granite Grok.
Yes, we had a gap – 3 weeks as Life intruded (especially on Monday mornings when we SHOULD be doing this). No, it didn’t make too much difference in the loss department – we both slowed down (and I got a bit lax, and he went to his daughter’s wedding and had a great weekend gastronomically speaking (and otherwise as well!).
So, we saw each other last week and agreed to get back on the wagon and make up for gained pounds and lost time (as this should have been completed a bit ago). So total, Tom’s lost an impressive 30 pounds while I’ve done 14 (and I’m just there if I stay disciplined – that works at the beginning of the week but not so well in the middle, lately).
And the tale of the tape.
They say the last 4 pounds are the hardest – and I’ve found that out.
What else I have found is that I have to buy new gun belts because I can’t get them any tighter.
The post The Skip & Tom Weight Challenge – Week 17 appeared first on Granite Grok.
Have you seen the WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to some Communist official in China demanding millions of dollars in pay-to-play money? The WhatsApp message that proves that the “Big Guy,” our figurehead, imposter President, was knowingly and directly involved in Hunter selling influence to foreign officials. Details, such as the multi-million dollars the Biden Crime Family received subsequent to the message, in the Federalist. Here is a screen shot:
Here's a screenshot of the text message. pic.twitter.com/Il2GuWsbxO
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) June 22, 2023
And here is Trump, as only Trump can, exposing the Bidens as the criminals they are:
TRUMP: “Just two days ago, a very respected IRS whistleblower revealed that Crooked Joe sat in a room while his son, Hunter, messaged a Chinese Communist Party Official… Within ten days, the Bidens got $5.1 million from China.”pic.twitter.com/kucsnB8NhQ
— ALX (@alx) June 25, 2023
The post I’m Telling Daddy!!! … How Hunter Biden “Made” His Millions appeared first on Granite Grok.
Are Campus snowflakes rioting after years of encouragement from professors and administrators the best form of social justice? They deserve whatever grief they get, yes? But they aren’t the only victims. The L, G, and B folks started something that has come to haunt many.
Ben Bartee summed it up nicely over at PJ Media. He has another example of “T dog bites the LGB hand that feeds it.” A French women’s rights group comprised of lesbian and bisexual women has been fighting for “women’s sex-based rights and the rights of lesbian women” for thirty years. Their reward has been to be shouted down and told they are not welcome at a local pride parade because they do not allow transwomen in their group.
Here’s the summation.
As strong as the impulse to defend the women who defend biological reality is within me and probably within most onlookers, it would be an oversight to not acknowledge the tasty irony that feminists, who pioneered the concepts of “gender” and “sex” as social constructs with no grounding in biology, birthed this transgender monster that has now taken over their political movement.
They opened — through their pseudo-philosophy propagated first through the university system in the West, which then seeped into popular culture and lower levels of education — the gender ideology pandora’s box.
Upon seeing the result of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer is alleged to have said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
I don’t think anyone coming out of the closet at street level to begin digging under the foundations of Western Culture suspected it might fall on them. Progressive action doesn’t worry itself with consequences or side effects. Knocking things down is what it does. You have to break all the eggs to make the Marxist omelet, including the ones helping you get it done, but you don’t tell the activists that. You praise and motivate them, even finance them, without regard to casualties.
The end game is greater than the bits players.
Same-sex marriage was never about extending rights. It was about ending marriage and families. A few couples will benefit from loosening standards, but acceptance in and of itself was never the goal. Western culture stands on the shoulders of unbroken families who build communities and even states that resist the sucking sound of central planners.
They have broken families, marriages, men and women, and now they’ve moved on to breaking children, which has alarmed many in the LBG part of the movement and more than one or two parents. State-sponsored grooming in public schools. The normalization of transvestitism as a gateway to gender transition drugs and surgery.
They are not proud of that, but any effort to inject an observation or even the slightest pushback results in a wave of anger and cries of bigotry and discrimination. It should look and sound familiar. As should the years of warnings about what was at stake and who would be made to pay the price.
As weary as I grow of repeating myself, no one on the political left cares about your status, be it minority, religious, sexual, citizenship, age, occupation, race, or gender. You are a tool to be discarded, melted down if necessary, to make the next weapon in the culture war. An actual victim, not of the white, male, colonialist patriarchy, but the lies Marxist whisper to get you to help them put on the boots under which we will all be crushed.
I know, a bit dramatic considering the topic. Or is it? Lesbians are denied their place in a Pride parade. Women are denied their position on a podium at a sporting event. “Women” with penises rape female inmates. Blacks are cordoned off into urban ghettoes with no path to success outside crime. Vets are left homeless. Drug addicts are swamped with influxes of Fentanyl from Mexican gangs. Naturalized citizens are overwhelmed by armies of illegals. Gun-free cities are rampant with violent crime.
A black president undermined decades of improved race relations in a few short years while anti-white racism in a white-majority country is offered as a required curriculum.
It’s all about destruction and anyone who thinks otherwise is doomed to end up under the rubble while the political class watches from somewhere in their private jets, traveling between their white towers.
The post Lost Pride: When The Monster They Created Comes for Them appeared first on Granite Grok.
Notice how they hide their faces when their masks get ripped off. As they should. Because they are the modern-day equivalent of the Cheka, the Stasi, the Gestapo, etc., etc.. Every day America becomes more and more and more a Police State.
Wray, Garland, etc. should have been impeached months ago. The FBI and the entire “intelligence community” needs to be demolished and scattered to the winds.
This is the BEST video on the internet right now.
– Pro-America Patriot rally ongoing
– Feds show up dressed as “Nazis”
– Patriots force Feds out of rally
– Unmask the Feds, who PANIC
– The “Nazis” cry, tremble in fear
– Cops rush to save FedsWATCH:
pic.twitter.com/kWBdRiu9hw
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 25, 2023
The post Nothing To See Here … Just Some FBI Agents Deservedly Getting Their Butts Kicked appeared first on Granite Grok.
Long term readers remember that I used the website TreeHugger as a foil – going into the lair to counter their enslavement to the Eco-Gaia religion as well as being peachy with adopting totalitarian tactics by Government that ensures we all toe that GAIA religion of doing less.
Travel less, live smaller, and what travel there is will be constrained. After all, carbon emissions will kill us all! Just ask that climate muppet Greta Thunberg about her prediction! But alas, as I have said, it is a shallow shadow of itself nowadays with almost all fluffy posts.
Which, like all the other climatista Apocalyptic predictions made since the first Earth Day back in 1970, fell flat on their collective noses. Not a single one has come true. Now, too many people, as the Eco-Socialists’ demands become bigger and more strident (even as their models are STILL way off), are figuring out this grift and making it clear that they are no longer willing to put up with that. And we’re sick of the stupid taunt “Oh, you just hate clean air, wants us all to drink dirty water, and want kids to die” – enough of the emotional blackmailing, you social connivers!
Anyways, back to the post title. While there were a small handful of writers, the two main ones that drew most of the comment frenzies were Sami Grover and Lloyd Alter – and TH canned both of them. And I’ll be honest, while I pretty much disagreed with Lloyd (from which most of my commenting there was based on), he was detailed, had the stats and numbers, and did his homework. He was also honest about his beliefs – he was walking his talk. And he’s opened up his own site, Carbon Upfront!. So now I get to again ride forth and let the Eco-Socialists know that “grams of CO2 emitted” should never be the highest plane on which we should be governed – self-government should be.
Anyways, his post that got me started again was this:
Why we should be designing for intermittency
Australian study shows how electric hot water heaters can shave peak loads and deal with intermittency.
Immediately upon seeing “intermittency”, I knew that Lloyd was starting to get the message that this continued path of inadequate energy generation, because of Eco-Socialism, is going to get much worse – and soon.
Recent research from Australia found that using electric water heaters to store renewable energy could do the work of 2 million home batteries and save billions. The study authors note that about a fifth of Australian residential greenhouse gas emissions come from domestic hot water, which could be made with renewable off-peak energy and stored in a decently insulated tank.
It’s a clever way of dealing with the lack of solar power at night, and is the most common and obvious form of what could be called “design for intermittency.”
One thing to note is that Australia, even being a large coal exporter (especially to China), is ahead of us in shutting down their coal generation facilities and more push than the US (but not Germany) in moving to renewable energy. Problem is, like with Germany, their electricity costs have skyrocketed and has become “intermittent” as the demand for electricity is outstripping its supply. Thank you, Government policies. And the Australian people are starting to get fed up with it.
But Lloyd? He’s simple taking it as “a matter of course” and something that MUST happen if we are to decarbon everything. Remember from earlier posts, these Eco-Socialists have already run out of everybody else’s money and they keep pushing this downward spiral faster – regardless of who it hurts.
Alter even quotes someone that goes back in time in trying to make an equivalence that since our ancestors had to make do with less, we should as well
“Because of their limited technological options for dealing with the variability of renewable energy sources, our ancestors mainly resorted to a strategy that we have largely forgotten about: they adapted their energy demand to the variable energy supply. In other words, they accepted that renewable energy was not always available and acted accordingly. For example, windmills and sailboats were simply not operated when there was no wind.”
Limited technology? What ISN’T said is that at that time, windmills and sailboats were the BEST technology to be had at the time – so it was used. I keep saying that they want us back in the Stone Age but they’d never admit to it. Finally, a bit of a crack in that wall but it’s also a crock – our modern technology can ensure that when we turn on a light switch, keep our food cold, warm our houses in the winter and cool it in the summer. And in that single paragraph above, they want us to take our eyes off what our modernity gives us.
Now, Lloyd does talk about supply and demand a bit but it is clear that he is willing to settle for a lesser life. What’s worse, he’s happy to have Government work through our “smart appliances and thermostats”. It’s already a deed done in California with people making the bet that the electric companies won’t pull that trigger even as the power companies are sending them money. If I was there, I’d be calling that a suckers bet as Governor “Hair Creme” Newsom is pulling down more generation plants even as demand is soaring – not me, for sure.
But Lloyd’s all in and his new book’s title says it all:
Upfront Carbon
How a Life of Just Enough Offers a Way Out of the Climate Crisis
In other words, never strive for better – just apply “Quiet Quitting” to your lifestyle and never expect (or demand) for better. And he expects us all to hew to that philosophy because GAIA and the “pulled out of the air” 1.5 degree C lifestyle for all.
Yeah, I had words:
“design for intermittency.”
Translation: Government is going to force you into a lower standard of living because Greenies have taken control of the levers of Government. With “Electrify EVERYTHING!”, as Lloyd has said for years, he’s basically saying the an “Energy Monoculture” is great even as he’s said, in the past, that “agriculture crop monocultures” are bad. Sorry, the problem is “monocultures” no matter what you’re talking about.
Now add mandatory 15 minute cities (which increasingly lowers your standard of living in other ways), the removal of all but government approved modes of transportation, one can think of this as an encroaching “wall-less prison” of how mandated living will be.
Just like over at Treehugger, I was always bringing up the idea of “what happened to the Western Classical idea of Liberalism” (that would be TRUE philosophical Liberalism and not the political label which has come to mean, in words and deeds, illiberalism). I do that today as well.
If your energy source is controlled by Government, if your movement is controlled by government, if your 15 minute apartment is no larger than a small closet (and I could go on for a while – just ask Lloyd), are you truly free?
Or is that some old-fashioned and trite notion nowadays? After all, the Slippery Slide does exist. Just look at the US and gas stoves and what’s happening since that first Trumka announcement.
Added: Kinda hard to run a biz with intermittent energy: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/18/grid-asks-factories-to-use-less-energy-next-winter-under-blackout-prevention-plan/
So, in a strange way, I’m glad he’s back. And I left comments on a couple others. Sadly, though, this new set of commenters haven’t figured out what I am yet so there are no replies as of yet. I look forward to it to see what these new folks have to say.
The post Be Less, Do Less: TreeHugger Eco-Socialism is ‘Recycled’ into “Carbon Upfront!” appeared first on Granite Grok.
Nitzakhon is on hiatus for a few weeks, so he will not be uploading the typical cache of memes. Sadly, I don’t have the same time or dedication to that craft (yet), but people do send me stuff for him, so here we go!
To borrow from the master,
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!
Until he comes back, send them to steve@granitegrok.com. I’m not sharing as many, but they will be bigger.
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
Let’s start with a classic.
Something cool that was sent by a friend. Not a meme, but it could be.
From the Never Forget Category…
Not a meme, but more people need to ‘warm’ up to it.
Another classic.
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/dems-saying-2016-was-stolen.mp4
Nancy Giving Lessons on how to be a Good Democrat
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/Pelosi-Smear-Tactic.mp4The post Monday Memes on Tuesday – Filling in Edition appeared first on Granite Grok.