During the tour around the state to gain support for HB229 (Defend the Guard Act), I spoke in front of the State Veterans Advisory Committee. The chair heard my criticism of the US foreign policy with regard to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and linked me up with Catie Foertsch, the director of a new documentary film entitled “What I Want You to Know.”

She gave me a private screener, and I was blown away.

Veterans from both wars, across all the branches and from lowly enlisted to high-ranking officers, gave their perspective of the conflicts in a sobering way that resonated with me on a deeply personal level. As a two-time Iraq war veteran, I could relate to the stories the men and women told –from going through the motions day to day to keep yourselves and your squad mates alive to how there was no clear mission besides feelgood slogans like “win hearts and minds,” whatever that meant.

I’m honored to work with the director to bring this movie to New Hampshire!

I have secured a public screener for this amazing film and am hosting it this Thursday, December 21st, at 6:30 pm at 8025 South Willow Street, suite 205, Manchester. There will be a short discussion afterward about three bills I’m sponsored on that granite staters can rally behind to ensure the next generation does not live through the mistakes of the last:

HB229 – Relative to requiring an official declaration of war for the activation of the New Hampshire National Guard. (Defend the Guard )

HB1247 – Relative to requiring the display of certain information concerning Selective Service registration. (Transparency in military recruiting)

HB1338 – Relative to New Hampshire’s enforcement of the Military Selective Service Act. (Selective Service Sanctuary.)

 

Tickets are free but limited. Please RSVP here at Eventbrite.

 

Here is the Teaser Trailer:

 

 

Tom Mannion

State Representative
Hillsborough 1 – Pelham

The post See “What I Want You to Know” – Free Documentary Screening This Week! appeared first on Granite Grok.

I don’t mind air travel, but I do mind what’s been done to it. What was once an exciting adventure in the previous century has evolved into a cluster **** of systemic inconveniences. Wait times, canceled flights, and the risk that your “vaccinated” pilot might drop dead after takeoff. Oh, and the TSA!

There is no shortage of problems that need solving, so Southwest Airlines, attuned as they are to systemic failures and customer concerns, has decided to give away free seats to people who are too big to fit in just one.

A decision that, as David Strom points out at HotAir,  “is good for those (oversized) people and great for the unlucky middle seaters who would have been squeezed by a neighbor whose body encroached into their personal space.” At the same time, the cost burden of lost fares will ultimately be borne by every passenger. All of which you can explore here, but you’d be right to wonder how long it will be before someone who is not calorically challenged or burdened with some sort of systemic disorder claims fat privilege to get a free extra seat.

Aircraft cabins are cramped and stuffed with the unwashed masses (unless you can afford First Class). Our culture has also embraced, mostly for ill, the idea that any one of us can pretend to be things we are not, and everyone else has to play along. Men can claim to be women. Old men can claim to be young women. Democrats can pretend to care about women. Why not claim to be obese (at least in your mind) and scream discrimination when Southwest is less than enthusiastic about giving you a free second seat?

Are you not as entitled to just as much elbow room despite your lack of girth as someone who is “super fat” (a term coined by fat activist Jae-lynn Chaney)?

Stroll your scrawny white beta male ass up to the counter and demand to be treated like an obese woman of color. Two seats for the price of one, and don’t you dare tell me I’m not what I think I am even though I might be something else tomorrow (meaning anything but a mental patient). That’s where we are. To suggest otherwise is to discriminate against the foundations of the worldview that justifies grown men sharing locker rooms with little girls.

 

The post Southwest Airlines and ‘Fat Privilege’ appeared first on Granite Grok.

Now and again, we get a message asking us why we’ve stopped sending someone the Daily Grok! Newsletter. For those unfamiliar, it is a digest of most of the past days’ new content, and there is some suspicion that Gmail may be hiding it from you.

We’ve never dropped anyone from the list, so it is a concern if you are not getting it. If you have Gmail and are subscribed to the Daily Grok, are you getting your daily Grok? If you use Gmail and are not subscribed, could you please sign up so we can further test this suspicion?

Most, if not all, of the people who have reached out over the years, are using Gmail. Whenever we look, our WordPress newsletter plugin – it’s all automated – says it is sending to these addresses daily, but they are not receiving them.

A recent issue was resolved when the recipient who wasn’t getting the newsletter signed up with a non-Gmail account, and they got it the next day.

If Google is censoring the content, it might be nice to know. If it is a more isolated issue with an ISP or some other snafu, we’d like to work that out as well.

Many of our readers use the newsletter as a vehicle to reach us, and we want to ensure all of you who have signed up are getting it every day.

If you are a Gmail user and not receiving it, try signing up again, then let us know if you don’t get it – you won’t get (or not get) it twice. The automation filters out duplicates. If you have Gmail but have not used it to sign up for the newsletter, can you sign up as part of this test? You can unsubscribe from that mail account after the test or keep receiving the newsletter (assuming you get it), whatever suits your inbox fancy.

The system launches the distribution at 4 PM ET daily and releases a few hundred every hour until late evening. Email me at steve@granitegrok.com (give it a few days) if it doesn’t work.

And thanks in advance to everyone who helps out!

 

Note: yes, I understand that those who signed up but don’t get it and have not noticed will not be participating. That can’t be helped.

 

The post Gmail Users – Are You Getting Your ‘Daily Grok!’? appeared first on Granite Grok.

A few weeks ago parents in Stratham received a permission slip so that their 1st grade children could attend a field trip at the high school. The field trip indicated that the purpose was to learn about political activism.

Parents began questioning the purpose of learning about political activism in 1st grade, and why chaperones would not be needed.

Not long after the permission slip came home, the district issued another communication to parents.

Some of this appears to be teaching children academic content that needs to be covered in a social studies class, but many people were left wondering why 1st-grade children needed to learn how to become political activists. Given the left-leaning positions by teachers and administrators in SAU16, what kind of message would the young children be receiving?

You can see from this document their goal is to create change-makers, not to educate the children. You can also see that if students pass their competencies, they have not mastered or learned quality academic content in this important subject. I’ve seen the term “change agents” referenced by political activists when identifying the people who will be the disrupters of change.
Curriculum Document RTK AMB

Once again, we see the flawed move towards Competency-Based Education in New Hampshire. Academic content is marginalized while skills replace knowledge. In this case, 1st graders won’t even be learning workforce skills, they will be trained on how to become political activists.

What should 1st grade social studies cover in class? You can find that information here. Download the sequence for k-8 and scroll down to 1st grade History and Geography:

History and Geography
World history and Geography
I. Geography
A. SpatialSense
B. Geographical terms and features
II. Early World Civilizations
A. Mesopotamia:the“cradleofcivilization”
B. Ancient Egypt
C. History of World Religions
III. Modern Civilization and Culture: Mexico
A. Geography
B. Culture
American history and Geography
I. Early People and Civilizations
A. TheEarliestPeople:HuntersandNomads
B. Early American Civilizations
II. Early Exploration and Settlement
A. Columbus
B. The Conquistadors
C. English Settlers

III. From Colonies to Independence: The American Revolution

IV. Early Exploration of the American West
V. Symbols and Figures

These are the topics that should be covered in 1st grade. There is nothing about the need to teach 1st-grade children how they should become political activists. The focus k-12 should be learning the academic content and when they are older, how to debate in a persuasive and respectful manner.

Public schools have an opportunity to educate students, so if students have concerns, they can take their opinions to the places that will make a difference. Too many students have no idea about the subject they are protesting, which makes them illiterate protesters. Taking high school students on a field trip to the State House might be a better use of their time. Then, they can see respectful dialogue that brings about real change.

SAU16 continues to brush aside teaching children the academic content in an effort to push a political narrative on children. This isn’t good for public education, and it certainly is not good for the students enrolled in the public school.

This is why alternative schools and home-schooling are growing in popularity–parents are demanding better for their children.  Education lobbying organizations will oppose school choice options but, at the same time, refuse to acknowledge what is driving parents to seek alternatives for their children. Enrollment numbers in our public schools continue to decline while alternatives see an increase in demand. This isn’t rocket science, parents want their children educated.

You can see from the emails below that I obtained from the district that a quality education for children in SAU16 is not their goal. But until more parents demand better from the people they employ in their district, they are only denying their children a quality education that opens a world of options. Just think if they spent their time focused on making sure the students were proficient in math, reading, science, and all of the core academic subjects!!

There is a lot of money spent in SAU16; parents should expect better than this.

 

 

The post The Continued Downfall in SAU16–Exeter appeared first on Granite Grok.

And so another week begins…

Take heart – there will be both a Wednesday and Friday Edition.  Last week’s Friday Edition.

Remember, ridicule and mockery are effective weapons:

1. Ridicule cannot easily be fought
2. Ridicule makes the enemy angry, and angry people make mistakes
3. For those in the “squishy middle” a Thought Splinter (and Part II and Part III and Part IV) can often be hidden inside humor.

Now, let the mockery and mayhem begin.

 

*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

That’s funny right there…

 

 

I want to say it was Eisenhower who said something to the effect that before you pass a law giving you more power, try to imagine what your political opponents would do with such a law.  But that requires thought, and IMHO a deep sense of honor – neither of which are Leftist strong suits.  Remember how The Turtle warned Schumer about switching to a pure majority vote on judicial nominees?  A warning that went unheeded… until Trump came in, and Mitch – for all his RINO allegiance – pushed through many judges that would not otherwise have gotten in?

 

 

IMHO if you’re a three-time offender, you get deported into the Gulf of Mexico… Pinochet-style.  Sharks have to eat too.  And after that the recidivism rate is zero.

 

 

 

 

 

You have to read that twice, but then… powerful when you get it.

 

 

 

 

Don’t forget to bring your insulated bucket so you can walk to someone’s home to get a bucket of electrons…

 

 

Are there many elections in the US for which this is not a sufficient margin to flip things?

 

 

 

Reminds me of this one:

 

 

How many times does the world have to run the “Socialism” experiment and have it fail each and every time before people grasp that it just doesn’t work.  Brings to mind this Bill Whittle video:

 

 

 

 

Each post I’m including several of these.  It makes me wonder – just how many people have to “die suddenly” before it creates a mass, preference-cascade awakening to the harm that’s been done?

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

(Link to AZ Quotes per their policy)

 

Echoes Truman:

“You can’t get rich in politics unless you’re a crook. – Harry S. Truman”

― Harry S. Truman

I remember, growing up in the “Peoples’ Republic of Cambridge, Marxachusetts”, hearing all sorts of bad things about Goldwater.  But then I stumbled on Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing Speech” – and not only did I come away awestruck at Reagan’s delivery, but the power of what he said:

 

“A Time for Choosing” by Ronald Reagan

 

 

And I’ve come to realize two things:

1. How I was completely fooled about Goldwater
2. The power of the media – The Narrative – to shape what I believed

On point 2:

 

 

Understand, this is how “in the tank” the MSM is for the Left.

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.

Jim Morrison

Consider this:

The Deception Campaign: Dispatches – Liberty’s Torch (libertystorch.info)

And the embedded link to another critical essay on the enemedia’s controlling the information flow “for the public good”:

“The Responsibility to Not Report”: Irish Journalist Defends Suppressing Stories for the Public Good – JONATHAN TURLEY

And

Al Gore Says People Having Access to Non-Mainstream Information ‘Threatens Democracy’ – modernity

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

Talk about a lack of thought…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just heard on the radio tonight (Sunday) that the GOP had to have multiple members get their arms twisted to vote just for an impeachment inquiry, with the expectation that many would fall away were there to be an actual vote on an actual impeachment.

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA

 

 

Even though I’ve filled out religious exemption forms for my kids, this is a fear (yes, yes, if it were possible I’d homeschool – there’s a marital dynamic here).  At least my kids are old enough to say NO – DADDY SAID NO.  Tell your kids – DADDY AND MOMMY SAID TO SAY NO!

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

 

There is enormous danger in monoculture crops.

Crop diversity loss threatens global food security, as the world’s human population depends on a diminishing number of varieties of a diminishing number of crop species. Crops are increasingly grown in monoculture, meaning that if, as in the historic Irish Potato Famine, a single disease overcomes a variety’s resistance, it may destroy an entire harvest, or as in the case of the ‘Gros Michel’ banana, may cause the commercial extinction of an entire variety. With the help of seed banks, international organizations are working to preserve crop diversity.

 

 

Not just Hunter.  Who remembers the outright fan-boy attitude towards Barackus?

 

 

MHO, a short drop and sudden stop would suit him even better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A GOP Presidential candidate would do wonders in my book if he committed to rolling this back, and also undoing the MPG mandates.

 

 

 

I loved Blazing Saddles.  But there is one line in there that I did – recently – see to which I now object.  It’s where they’re talking and Gene Wilder is describing the townsfolk as simple people… salt of the earth… you know, morons.  A laugh line for the chattering / uber-intellectual class.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Pick of the post:

 

 

First, MHO of course, it’s waaaaay too late to prevent that now.  But even if it were theoretically possible, the political will to make those hard decisions and take the necessary actions does not exist.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Palate Cleansers:

 

 

I met someone recently who talked about being at the gym at 5:30 AM.  OOH, good for them.  OTOH, how in the heck do they get up that early?  That’s when my alarm goes off.

—

—

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Come back Wednesday for another edition.  Same Meme Time.  Same Meme channel.

Please do consider buying me a coffee.

Buy Me a Coffee

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

The post MONDAY MEMES appeared first on Granite Grok.

It is no secret that I think Nikki Haley is a Constitutional threat. And you won’t find many, if any, authors here who support her bid. That’s not to say we should not have some op-eds that support here. But so far, that’s not what people are sending me.

This particular content does not provide any actual evidence or proof of its claims, but it is amusing, especially if you agree with the idea that Haley appears to be an establishment meat-puppet backed by globalists and the military-industrial complex. Her donors and her supporters (like Chris Sununu) tend to be your classic inside-the-beltway types. She’d have a hard time selling herself as an outsider or a disruptor, nor has she tried.

Prove she is or prove she isn’t. Pick a side and have a go. Just be nice about it—no personal attacks or threats. Defend the candidate or defend the video (or pick some ground in between).

And please feel free to send in op-eds for or against any of the candidates. It’s good for debate, and that’s good for the ‘Grok! and our readers.

Latest NH Poll: Trump 45, Haley 18, Christie 14, DeSantis 11, Ramaswamy 10, Hutchinson 0

Latest National poll: Trump 67, DeSantis 11, Haley 10, Ramaswamy 3, Christie 3, Hutchinson, Burgum

Note: Some browsers will block this video (‘cuz Facebook), so you may also be able to view it here.

 

 

 

The post Pick a Side: Is Nikki Haley an Establishment Meat Puppet? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Born and raised in the US, I married into Australia in 1980 and stayed there for most of 38 years. The Australian government recently asked for public submissions concerning “the Covid response.” Here I quote parts of my reply, verbatim, dated December 12, 2013, re-arranged with numbering for GraniteGrok.com:

1. What about the fact that the whole pandemic fakery was intended to lead to a police state with loss of freedom of speech, surrender of property rights, and humiliation of everyone? What about the unjustified lockdowns and loss of small businesses? What about Australia’s worldwide loss of reputation? Can it be regained? It sure can. Let Oz be the leader in the jailing of ministers, bureaucrats, medical traitors, and judges. Remove Australia’s signature right now from the UN Charter and all its pomps and all its works. Throw the globalists out. Or reinvent Port Arthur jail to hold them.

How is it possible, after so many facts have come to light, that the Australian government still doesn’t acknowledge that the Covid illness was planned? It was a bioweapon (similar to many previous ones, such as AIDS and polio). US Senator Rand Paul has shown that certain American persons interacted with Chinese persons in Wuhan to make Covid-19 “jump.”

2. I quote from the 2023 book, “Wuhan Cover-Up,” by Robert F Kennedy, Jr, Chapter 38:
“The CIA’s cutout USAID invested $64 million in bioweapons research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV] and, with NIAID, funneled all their grants to WIV through EcoHealth Alliance, which the evidence suggests was functioning as a CIA front after December 2015. Sir Jeremy Farrar, who masterminded the coverup with Dr. Fauci, [Francis] Collins, and [Peter] Daszak, is the Director of Wellcome Trust, an organization with deep ties to MI5….

“In May 2021, President Biden asked US intelligence agencies [oh, please] to conduct an investigation of Covid’s origins…. In August…they told the White House they were unable to determine whether the Covid bug originated in the Wuhan lab. Then … a current CIA officer told Congress that CIA officers had bribed officials on that team … with ‘significant monetary incentive’ to change their position from that [the virus] originated in the Wuhan lab to ‘unable to determine.’ …” Congress then “detailed those charges in a letter to FBI Director William Burns.”
No Law enforcement action by Attorney General Merrick Garland has followed.

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

Fraud vitiates everything it touches. Everything about Covid is fraudulent. Just the fact that no one got arrested after the above whistleblower’s revelations is enough to tell you the US government is hopelessly corrupt. UK, too. From Kennedy’s book again, page 360:
“[British epidemiologist] Neil Ferguson made a professional career using crooked modeling to sow panic in a series of concocted pandemics…. In 2001, Ferguson’s wildly exaggerated projections about … foot-and-mouth disease sparked the British government’s culling of eleven million sheep and cattle.” (Bet they knew…. Bet it was economic sabotage.)

3. My expertise in the matter at hand can be seen in my 2013 book “Consider the Lilies” and such parts of my 2011 book “Prosecution for Treason” that deal with disease as a bioweapon and describe how traitors can and do avoid the law.

In 2020, as soon as President Trump ordered Operation WarpSpeed to attain a vaccine for Covid, I was in US district court and later in First Circuit Court of Appeals to seek a restraining order against the mandating of any vax. My appeal brief, in Maxwell v US Department of Defense, quoted from Questions asked in the Australian Parliament, published in Hansard 1 June 2021 and 5 February 2021. My purpose was to show the irresponsibility of various governments and the absurdity of the pandemic:

In Parliament, Tony Zappia, MP, asked John Skerritt, Deputy Secretary of Health Products Regulation. “Once you get vaccinated, will you have to be vaccinated in, say, 12 months’ time?” Dr Skerritt replied: “If you know the answer to that, could you tell us? That’s the $64 billion question. And that, of course, is one of the primary questions that people following this epidemic are asking. We hope not. There are two possibilities: either the current vaccines don’t provide long-term protection per se, or there is antigenic or virus strain drift.”

Senator Malcolm Roberts asked (thinking of ivermectin?): “The vaccine only has provisional approval. Is it true that provisional approval is only possible where there are no approved pharmaceutical treatments available?” Mr Edwards replied: “The provisional approval is possible where there is not a similar treatment available in that, for that group of patients.”

Fiona Martin, Ph.D., MP, asked about the inconsistency between states as to vaccinating children up to age four years. Dr Murphy replied: “We are spending well over $23 million, I think, on a comms campaign, which is in three phases. The first phase is to get people confident about the registration process. They feature gentlemen in white coats and other people to assure people that our registration processes are as rigorous as anywhere in the world….”

Tony Zappia, MP, asked, “Have there been any concerns raised in respect to pregnancy and the vaccine?” Dr Skerritt replied: “Again, it’s more a lack of data rather than any evidence of miscarriages and the like. … Some clinical groups are recommending that, if you’re not in a high-risk or high-exposure group and if you’re pregnant, you hold off until you have the kid.. …There hasn’t been any evidence—and I’ll check with Dr Cook that my statement is correct—of ill effects in pregnancy. It was more that, in clinical trials, it’s normal to exclude pregnant people.”

Mike Freelander, MD, MP, asked about providing vaccines to our Pacific neighbors. Dr Murphy replied: the “Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have invested over half a billion dollars in a vaccine for the Pacific.” Dr Skerritt said, [Our funding] will cover the full population of East Timor, Papua New Guinea and all the Pacific islands, …and a lower percentage targeted at vulnerable groups—in countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, we hope, and the Philippines.” [Poor things.] — end of Hansard quotes

4. Shame, shame on Australia for always licking the boots of the US and the UK. And shame on America for throwing away its birthright. I can show you that the autism epidemic and the tragedy of Thalidomide were deliberately caused. And now you are asking citizens to weigh in on the COVID response. Here is my best advice: Round up all Australians, here or abroad, who played any part in the production or dispensing of Covid and the vaccine. Who approved of the false PCR testing? Who mandated masking and social distancing? Who made a fortune with taxpayers’ money on the testing and ventilating? Was there genocidal intent?

If so, you can get them for the crime of genocide. You can also get them for war crimes, although that has to be in the context of war. Is killing thousands of citizens and injuring millions a war situation? Probably, but we need not go that far. Ordinary crimes of homicide and assault will do. Grievous bodily harm. Terrorism. Funding terrorists (I mean paying our terrorists in office). Perjury. Theft of public funds. What about the ‘theft’ that occurred when people were dismissed from their jobs and lost their income based on refusal to be assaulted by the vaccine?

5. Honor to the first man who will take charge! Admiration to new heroes! If you’re going to die for your country, don’t do it by taking a stupid vax. Do it with truth guts, and energy…. Come on, it’s late. Hurry! — end of quotes from my submission to pmc.gov.au.

 

Dear Grokkers, There is a little problem with my publishing at GraniteGrok.com. Namely, Disqus has canceled me. Thus, if readers challenge me in Comments — as I hope they will — I may be unable to reply.

The post Arresting a Government Wholesale appeared first on Granite Grok.

Londonderry Times publisher Deb Paul has been dragged through the court system thanks to detractors around town who are less than enthusiastic about her refusal to toe their line. This Wednesday, a judge will decide how effective their campaign against her has been.

Deb has been found guilty of not knowing that while the words don’t explicitly make her responsible, she must ensure that politicians who advertise in her publication send her artwork and copy that satisfies state election law. The secretary of state does not pay Deb Paul. She is not on the payroll at the AG’s office or any other enforcement authority. Yet, according to a judge (to the applause of the scoundrels that reported her as the state does not police the practice unless notified), it is her job to know every nuance of this bit of election law text and enforce it – in her spare time.

The Union Leader Editorial Page put it like this.

 

She spent the day before Thanksgiving standing trial over political ads purchased in her newspaper. She will now spend a day the week before Christmas finding out her sentence for failing to use what reporter Damien Fisher, writing for InDepthNH, termed “the magic words.”

The New Hampshire campaign finance law specifies a number of requirements for political advertising. It does not say who is responsible for a failure to meet those requirements. Attorney General John Formella’s office insisted that Deb Paul was responsible and not the campaigns or candidates. Judge Kerry Steckowych, presented with a one plus one equals two case, decided that yes, the ads in question did not contain the “magic words.” Somehow, even without the magic words labeling the ads in question as “paid political advertisement,” witnesses in the case easily identified them as the political ads they obviously were.

 

The UL further suggests that Deb Paul has paid enough. A trip through the court system is not inexpensive in either time or actual money. She is not likely to make the same mistake again, and we agree. No one was harmed. Not even the detractors in the political cesspit of Londonderry on whom she reports. Individuals whose cabal deserves the appropriate and necessary sting of the free press.

Hers and ours.

Regardless of what punishment the judge decides is fair, and we think a warning will do, the free press and independent media are more important to the liberty of the nation, the state, and the town of Londonderry than the “magic words.” We feel obligated to rise in support of Deb Paul and her newspaper. To share more of its content with our audience who, and this may not come as a surprise, agree that the town has become a stink-hole of political insiders. A swamp of its own that needs draining.

We can’t promise anything will be drained. The kind of politicians who attack the media by any means necessary to silence them are not the sort to go quietly. The general public’s tendency to sit on their hands and ignore what goes on in plain sight is likewise a persistent problem, but they are the laxatives needed to move the bowels, so to speak. And quite often, you only need a hundred voters who never showed up to vote in a local election before to show up once. Sometimes fewer, and on occasion more.

Deb has been working on encouraging this for years, and we’d like to help.

Wouldn’t it be something if the attention brought upon the town by self-proclaimed doyens attempting to silence independent media was a breeze that brought much-needed winds of change?

It would.

 

The post Let Londonderry Times Publisher Deb Paul Go … With a Warning appeared first on Granite Grok.

There are questions about Hunter Biden and his prior acts in the public arena. To the extent his actions have a bearing on his dad, they may be worthy of note.  Those questions include but are not limited to:

·         Did the federal bureaucracy act differently in cases involving Hunter Biden than they otherwise would have?

·         Did Hunter Biden receive special treatment in interviewing?

·         Was he given preferential treatment in the form of alleged felonies being allowed to expire?

·         Did he receive warnings about planned federal raids?

·         Did he receive any sweetheart deals?

Something we know is that President Biden enlisted White House staff to push challenged accounts of Hunter’s conduct. Something else we know is the White House staff was used to attack the House Republicans’ investigative process.

It appears now that the White House may have given House Republicans another avenue of investigation. This time, it may bear on the formal impeachment inquiry into the President rather than the criminal charges against Hunter Biden.

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

Hunter Biden defied a congressional subpoena. That act opens him up to another criminal prosecution. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the first son’s decision.  She told reporters President Biden “was certainly familiar with what his son was going to say.”

The comment suggests Mr. Joseph Biden knew in advance that his son would defy Congress.  It seems to imply father and son had discussed it beforehand.  Is that true?  And if that is true, it is almost certainly a mistake both legally and politically. Doesn’t it imply the President obstructed a Congressional investigation?

If it is true the president was speaking with his son about committing a potentially criminal act, don’t we need to know how the president may have supported his son’s effort to commit a felony?

Jean-Pierre has since declined to clarify her remarks about what may have gone on between the Bidens, father and son.  Clearly, multiple sources reported Joe Biden knew about Hunter’s planned speech on Capitol Hill.

Will the Justice Department prosecute  Hunter Biden for contempt of Congress?  Merrick Garland and his DOJ had no issues prosecuting Steve Bannon when he defied a subpoena for the Jan. 6 committee two years ago.

President Biden has stated any individual who defies Congress should be criminally prosecuted.  We shall see if that applies to everyone.

Will House investigators probe Joe Biden’s role in Hunter’s defiance of a congressional investigation?  It seems like the White House has admitted to that.

Stay tuned for another episode of “As the Crackhead Turns.”  Who will he bring down with him?

The post How Will Hunter Bring Dad Down?  appeared first on Granite Grok.

The owner of the shop, who is known as ‘Silver Dave’ told The Liberty Block that he is very excited about the new shape. “It’s beautiful, useful, perfect for bartering, and it’s better than pre-1965 90% silver dimes because it says right on it that it’s a tenth ounce of pure silver,” Dave told TLB, adding that “It may be the lowest premium (cost over silver price) fractional silver in the world.” Indeed, the roughly $3.30 per item does appear to be less expensive than any other 1/10th Troy ounce silver product on the market. The large online sellers have already placed large purchase orders for the small rounds, according to Silver Dave.

The post Silver Dave Launches Best Silver Barter Piece Yet! appeared first on The Liberty Block.

President Biden recently repeated the claim that high prices are caused by greedy businesses. Biden is not alone in trying to gaslight the people into thinking price inflation is rooted in the actions of private individuals and not the fiat money system Americans have lived under since 1971.

In the media, we see excessive consumer spending on luxury items, for example, being blamed for continued price inflation. The fact is that increased consumer demand can only cause prices to rise in those sectors of the economy subject to the increased demand. Prices increasing across the economy are always the result of the Federal Reserve’s conduct of monetary policy.

Trying to minimize the harm of inflation, some people in government and media will insist that, while many prices for goods are higher than they were pre-lockdown, they are still lower than were prices in the 1990s when you consider that the quality of these goods has increased. The argument is that buyers are getting higher value today than 30 years ago. Of course, any increased quality is because of market-driven innovation. If America had a free-market monetary system instead of central bank-controlled fiat currency, prices would drop as quality increases.

It is also important not to ignore the fact that the Federal Reserve’s devaluation of the dollar’s purchasing power creates an incentive for individuals to spend money as soon as they receive it and a disincentive for them to save. This is because the dollar will have less value a year from now than today. Therefore, high levels of spending are a rational response to an irrational fiat money system.

High prices and supply shortages were inevitable after the lockdowns. However, prices would have adjusted back more if the Federal Reserve had not pushed interest rates to zero. While the Fed has raised interest rates, it has not raised rates to anywhere near where they would likely be in a free market. In fact, rates are not at historically high levels, yet many worry the Fed’s rate increases are pushing the economy toward a recession. This shows how addicted Americans are to the Fed’s “easy money,”

When the dollar’s purchasing power erodes, workers will seek higher wages. This is why periods of high price inflation are accompanied by strikes and other types of union activity aimed at increasing wages. This has made unions another popular scapegoat for price inflation when the truth is that Fed-caused price increases are the real reasons behind labor unrest.

Sadly, the increase in nominal wages gained by the recent series of strikes is unlikely to keep up with the declining real wages resulting from the Federal Reserve’s assault on the dollar’s value. This is why, contrary to the claims of many progressives, working people are the victims, not the beneficiaries, of price inflation. As a Texas union official once told me, “Gold has always been the friend of the worker.” This makes sense because gold is money whose value cannot be manipulated by the central bank.

Inflation is the act of money creation by the Fed, and high prices are a symptom of inflation, not a cause, and not the fault of greedy businesses, consumers, and unions. The Federal Reserve is also the engine of the welfare-warfare state. Therefore, to restore a system of limited government, individual liberty, and free markets, Congress must cut spending and audit, then end the Fed.

 

Ron Paul | Ron Paul Institute

Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

The post Night Cap: Biden, Media Gaslight People about Inflation appeared first on Granite Grok.

HB1291 reduces the power of our consistently anti-liberty zoning boards to write anti-liberty rules where there is no basis. A typical town’s 1.8-acre minimum lot size has been justified by the scarcity of water and septic capacity and was adopted in an era of poorer understanding and technology.

HB1291 simply limits the ability of town zoning to impose this restriction when water and sewer are not an issue. The previous bill freed lots that are on town water and sewer; the current bill frees those lots, plus lots for which engineering ensures adequate water and septic capacity. That is not exactly “HB44 on steroids,” as the Coalition of NH Taxpayers claimed here on Saturday.

I did check the bill’s sponsors, as that article requested. One is my own Representative, Josh Yokela, rated 100% and Legislator of the Year by the NH Liberty Alliance. Another is nearby Scott Wallace (93.8%, grade A), for whom I have voted. Even prime sponsor Ellen Read (27.1%) is not quite rated a Constitutional Threat.

The text of the bill, as introduced, is available on the General Court website. That version does not permit minimum-acreage lots to be “chopped up” into four lots, as the CNHT article states. It permits one “accessory dwelling unit” as a matter of right and one more subject to the usual restrictions for subdivisions, including “aesthetic standards,” but only as applied to ordinary lots.

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The conflict between zoning and liberty plays out across the state. I hung out with some sign carriers outside the polls a couple of years ago and was astonished to be arguing for liberty AGAINST my comrades. You see, a landowner here is planning a huge subdivision of riverfront condos. (“He’s not even from New Hampshire,” my homies whisper.) The development will have a drastic impact on traffic and on our “rural character,” as development always does. So the goal of local “conservatives” is to use our gunpoint apparatus to shut the flatlander down: to deny him his preferred use of what is his land, no matter if he recently bought it to develop it.

New Hampshire’s unaffordable housing is legend and is caused by insufficient supply to meet demand, driving up home prices and rents. The key reason we can’t meet demand is municipal regulation. HB1291 limits this regulation in cases where it is clearly senseless. It is a dainty amendment of RSA 674:71. I would instead have taken a chainsaw to a power originally granted to protect against contaminating adjacent water but now corrupted to let town busybodies dictate “aesthetic standards.”

And lack of “affordable workforce housing” has been deemed a “crisis,” and towns are now required to ensure that they provide a suitable amount, now written into law (RSA 674:58). That’s a big-government solution to the problem. HB1291 is a small-government solution.

Preserving the “rural character” of a town is a value. It’s not everyone’s value. My town has a board that uses tax money to achieve “conservation” – and another board tasked to lure new business. A politician’s “vision” for a town or the state should always face a key question: Do we have to make this decision as a collective? Do we have to have a single “vision” and use the threat of armed force to restrain nonconformists?

And how does restraining town zoning boards become a key issue for a “taxpayer coalition” at all? Ah yes, the newcomers, certainly illegals from Brazil with twelve kids apiece, will burden our government schools. But this is a consequence of New Hampshire providing free instruction as an entitlement. Declaring something a right, with its price set to zero, results in overuse and calls to and by conservatives to regulate unrelated things that might drive up the cost of providing that “right” – just as “free health care” gave Washington a rationale to punish unhealthy lifestyles.

Who should decide? In this case, the landowner should decide. That is the essence and the huge benefit of having private property.

 

The post Zoning: HB1291 is NOT HB44 On Steroids appeared first on Granite Grok.

Desantis on townhall last night; no questions about Disney and don’t say gay; his views on abortion and trump’s presidency; the resignation of the president of UPenn contrasted with the president of Harvard hanging on with support of the university; banning conversion therapy (SCOTUS turned down a case visiting this issue) and its implications for free speech. Houthis attacking ships with little reprisal from the U.S. or other nations and its implications for an upcoming election year. Is the U.S. in danger of terrorist attacks as Director Wray has been alluding to?

The post The Conservatarian Exchange Podcast #184 appeared first on The Liberty Block.

Man Made Global Climate disasters have an annoying habit of not happening. The predictions of experts never come to pass. And that’s great for blogging. One sad tale of demise we are particularly fond of is the disappearing beaches.

 

In 1995, 2500 experts got together and decided they could make a comfortable living if they said things like in 25 years, “most of the beaches on the East Coast would be gone.”

 

Tony Heller uses Jones Beach on Long Island as his example, showing satellite photos from 1994 and 2023. The beach looks bigger today than before the doomsday predictions. We prefer the shoreline closer to home. Hampton Beach is a top-shelf, well-maintained strip of sand. It’s clean, and it’s still there. It hasn’t shrunk at all, not since 1995 or, as we showed here, 1950.

 

Hampton Beach, NH shoreline 1950 Hampton Beach High Tide 2020 For educational use only

 

My wife made a few trips this past summer and assures me it’s the same beach she’s been visiting since she was a child. The prediction wasn’t just bad or wrong; we’re three years past the end of East Coast beaches, and there’s not only no there there, but there might be more there than in 1995. A result common when considering the armageddon predicted by those who – predictably – have a fiscal interest in precipitated fear.

We also spent a lot of time boating over Portsmouth Way and out into the ocean, and high tide or low, and there is zero evidence of the apocalypse predicted by the Climate Cult or the myriad globalist beneficiaries of those fears.

It’s a scam. An expensive one. And it is not going away unless we make it so.

 

The post Reminder: It’s Been Almost Four Years Since East Coast Beaches “Disappeared” appeared first on Granite Grok.

Power-hungry, lawless and steadfast in its pursuit of authoritarian powers, the government does not voluntarily relinquish those powers once it acquires, uses and inevitably abuses them.

Likewise, any presidential candidate who promises to be a dictator on day one, if elected, will be a dictator-in-chief for life.

Then again, the president is already a dictator with permanent powers: imperial, unaccountable and unconstitutional thanks to a relatively obscure directive (National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20), part of the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, which gives unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the president in the event of a “national emergency.”

That national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be—civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”—as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the name of so-called national security.

The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

For all intents and purposes, the Constitution has long been suspended, and we’ve been operating in a state of martial law for some time now.

The emergency powers that we know about which presidents might claim during such states of emergency are vast, ranging from imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus to shutting down all forms of communications, including implementing an internet kill switch, and restricting travel.

Yet according to documents obtained by the Brennan Center, there may be many more secret powers that presidents may institute in times of so-called crisis without oversight from Congress, the courts, or the public.

Deploying the same strategy it used with 9/11 to acquire greater powers under the USA Patriot Act, the police state—a.k.a. the shadow government, a.k.a. the Deep State—has been planning and preparing for such crises for years now, quietly assembling a wish list of presidential lockdown powers that could be trotted out and approved at a moment’s notice.

We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die.

Mind you, the police state with the president at its helm has been riding roughshod over the rule of law for years now without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill.

The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.

All of the imperial powers amassed by past presidents—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were passed from Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden and will be passed along to the next president.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

These are the powers that continue to be passed along to each successive heir to the Oval Office, the Constitution be damned.

The war on disinformation, the war on electoral corruption, the war on COVID-19, the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration: all of these countermeasures have become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

This is what you might call a stealthy, creeping, silent, slow-motion coup d’état.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

After all, it is a tale that has been told time and again throughout history about how easy it is for freedom to fall and tyranny to rise.

What we desperately need is a concerted, collective commitment to the Constitution’s principles of limited government, a system of checks and balances, and a recognition that they—the president, Congress, the courts, the military, the police, the technocrats and plutocrats and bureaucrats—answer to and are accountable to “we the people.”

We must recalibrate the balance of power.

Congress must also put an end to the use of presidential executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements as a means of getting around Congress and the courts.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely—no matter which party holds office.

The process of unseating a dictator and limiting the powers of the presidency is far from simple but at a minimum, it must start with “we the people.”

Make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.

 

John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute

The post How Absolute Power Corrupted the President appeared first on Granite Grok.

If you’ve forgotten who Peter Vlaming is, he’s a French Teacher in Virginia who (in 2018) was removed for refusing to address a Transgender student by their preferred gender/pronoun. Vlaming was accused of bullying and discrimination and let go. He sued on religious and free speech grounds.

And he’s winning!

 

In a gratifying win for religious freedom and free speech, the Virginia Supreme Court concluded Thursday that embattled Virginia high school teacher Peter Vlaming, who had been fired over his refusal to use a student’s preferred pronouns because of his religious faith, was protected by the free exercise and free speech clauses of the Virginia Constitution.

The majority decision, which was written by Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, is a landmark victory for freedom of conscience and expression in the state. In its opinion, the court held that religious exercise is protected under the Virginia Constitution unless it threatens the public safety or order.

 

The case returns to the trial court to address “constitutional, statutory and breach-of-contract claims” with the State Supreme Court ruling attached. A ruling that makes the school’s claims impossible to defend. It based his termination on the presumption of what amounts to bullying, framing his beliefs as a threat, but the court tore that up and threw it away. (Related: Students Walkout in Support of Teacher Fired for Not Using Transgender Pronoun.)

 

The court wrote that the issue was not whether the school board’s policies forbidding discrimination and harassment applied (as the school board had asserted) or did not apply (as Vlaming had asserted) to the compelled-speech situation Vlaming alleged. Rather, the issue was whether Vlaming’s sincerely held religious beliefs caused him to commit overt acts that “invariably posed some substantial threat to public safety, peace or order,” and if so, whether, under a “strict scrutiny” review of the claim, the government’s compelling interest in protecting the public from that threat could be satisfied by “less restrictive means.”

The court wrote that when religious liberty merges with free-speech protections, as it did in Vlaming’s case, mere “objectionable” and “hurtful” religious speech (or in Vlaming’s case, “nonspeech”) wasn’t enough to meet this strict scrutiny standard.

 

Your feelings don’t trump his natural rights.

That’ll leave a mark and provide hope for educators across the state – especially in places like the infamous Loudon County.

 

Alliance Defending Freedom is handling the Vlaming Case.

The post Fired School Teacher’s Day In Court: School Can’t Compel Him to Use Preferred Pronouns appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Bill of Rights turns 232 years old today. Adopted in 1791 as a consolation prize for the Anti-Federalists,  it has been perhaps the most important part of American legal history since the eighteenth century and has served as an inconvenient reminder of the laissez-faire libertarian philosophy that permeated American political theory in the late 18th century.

As I noted in “Magna Carta and the Fantasy of Legal Constraints on States,” words written on parchment do not actually protect anyone’s freedoms, and legal constraints on state power are only as good as the ideological backing they receive from the population.

Nevertheless, for all its weaknesses, the Bill of Rights—when taken seriously by the general population—has played a part in preserving basic human rights for Americans that were eviscerated in many nations long ago. Thanks to the First Amendment and those who support it, for example, freedom of speech is often more respected in the United States than is almost any place one might hold up as an example. One can be arrested and imprisoned for saying unpopular things in France and Germany, just to name two examples. (And we’re not even considering the far more illiberal states of Asia.)

How absurd it was, for example, to hear the French pretend to be supporters of freedom of speech in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre when the French state imposed legal sanctions on people for saying allegedly anti-Semitic or racist things. In Germany, one can be imprisoned for saying unpopular things about Nazis or the Holocaust. What most (but not all) Americans understand—and what the French and Germans don’t—is that in a free country, some people will say repugnant things.

The First Amendment can also be partly credited for the lack of strong anti-defamation laws in the United States. For example, thanks to the First Amendment, federal law makes it very difficult for government agents to sue members of the public for alleged “defamatory” behavior. The whole concept of defamation, of course, is just a way to shut people up who say things the “victims” don’t like.

Moreover, religious freedom has never been more than a temporary convenience for people in most of the world. The French government seized Catholic churches long ago, and most of Europe shut down religious services during the Covid Panic. In the United States, these shutdowns were shorter, less widespread, and more haphazard due primarily to the lingering power of the First Amendment, as written. And certainly, for all the anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism that has reared its head in America over the decades, nothing compares to the government-sanctioned anti-Semitism that has at times permeated France, Germany, Austria, and a host of other “free” countries in Europe.

And as far as being Catholic goes, even the worst anti-Catholic persecutions in American history have nothing on the persecutions concocted by anti-Catholic regimes of the Spaniards, French, Mexicans, Brits, Japanese, and many others.

As for property rights — which includes the right to own weapons for self-defense — the US regime has managed to find new exceptions to this every year, but even in that case, the US often comes off looking relatively less awful. We need to look no further than the French regime’s scattered jihads against basic privacy and property.

Of course, most regimes do this every time there’s an “emergency.” In Canada, during World War II, the federal government mandated registration of all firearms, which it claimed was necessary to fight domestic subversion. Human rights go right out the window in the UK whenever the state feels the “need.” The US itself suspended habeas corpus and a host of other human rights during the Civil War. And the Bill of Rights didn’t prevent the internment of the Japanese-Americans, many of whom, unlike the Reservation Indians of old, were full-blown American citizens.

In the long sordid history of conquest and colonialism, the US has held its own (in a bad way), whether in the Philippines in Iraq or on the Western frontier of North America. And yet, the presence of the Bill of Rights and the ideology it represents has long been an inconvenience and an impediment — albeit often a weak one —to an even more aggressive state in terms of prosecuting “enemies” of the state who oppose American militarism.

A Bright Spot in an Unnecessary Constitution 

Bizarrely revered by many as a “pro-freedom” document, the document now generally called “the Constitution” was originally devoted almost entirely toward creating a new, bigger, more coercive, more expensive version of the United States. The United States, of course, had already existed since 1777 under a functioning constitution that had allowed the United States to enter into numerous international alliances and win a war against the most powerful empire on earth.

That wasn’t good enough for the oligarchs of the day, the crony capitalists with names like Washington, Madison, and Hamilton.  Hamilton and friends had long plotted for a more powerful United States government to allow the mega-rich of the time, like George Washington and James Madison, to more easily develop their lands and investments with the help of government infrastructure. Hamilton wanted to create a clone of the British Empire to allow him to indulge his grandiose dreams of financial imperialism.

The tiny Shays Rebellion in 1786 finally provided them with a chance to press their ideas on the masses and to attempt to convince the voters that there was already too much freedom going on in America at the time.

The Federalists didn’t mention that they’d benefit personally from the new constitution, of course, but instead focused on the idea that without a stronger central government, the country would be overthrown by the powers of “faction.”

Patrick Henry and the Anti-Federalists pointed out—correctly—that the US already had proven it had sufficient means to deal with European powers, and that in the bloody history of states, the true threat to freedom lay not in there being too much freedom, as the Federalists claimed, but in the overweening power of centralized states.

Virtually no one believed that a new constitution was necessary to secure what they had earlier called their “English Liberties,” including freedom of speech, a right to due process, jury trials, and more. Those freedoms were already assumed to be assured to all non-slaves. Those freedoms had been won in the Revolution. The people didn’t need a more powerful Congress to protect them. If their freedoms were threatened, the people could rely on highly democratic (for the time) state legislatures and a decentralized militia system.

But, in the end, the Federalists won out after they promised to adopt a Bill of Rights to limit the power of Congress. As we know, though, the Bill of Rights began to break down immediately, and it was only a matter of time until the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson’s embargo, and other even worse crimes perpetrated on the states and the people.

It was the Constitution of 1787, after all, that strengthened the institution of slavery, set the stage for the fugitive slave acts, and made provision for the criminal prosecution of those who attempted to help set escaped slaves free.

That’s what sort of “pro-freedom” document the Constitution was and is.

What the Constitutions Should Have Said 

The Bill of Rights would never have been necessary, however, if so much power had not been granted to the central government by the constitution of 1787 in the first place.

Indeed, the earlier constitution of 1777 (the so-called Articles of Confederation) had itself been too detailed and powerful.

After all, the whole idea of a national constitution had always been sold on really just two premises: 1) It would assist in national defense and 2) it would facilitate trade among the member states.

In other words, it should never have been anything more than a customs union and a mutual defense agreement. So, in the service of sound political science, I have composed a new constitution for us:

Article 1. The United States shall meet every two years in Congress assembled to negotiate terms for the maintenance of a union of independent states. There shall be no duties or taxes imposed on trade among the states or the people therein. The states, in Congress assembled shall set the standards for membership in the United States and provide provision for member withdrawal and the conditions for receiving the benefits of mutual defense as a member of the Union.

The End.

Nothing more is necessary or prudent. Independent states enter into mutual defense agreements quite frequently, without surrendering their independence, and trade agreements are a quite mundane affair in the history of states.

Any appeal to “patriotism” or lofty ideas of “America” or the fanciful notion that people in Arizona are the countrymen of people in New York has no backing in the day-to-day realities of living. Never in history was there a group of 330 million people spread across four million square miles who were part of the same community and who shared the same experiences, interests, or even the same economic ties.

In reality, the people of Colorado, for example, have more in common with the people of Saskatchewan—in terms of economic interests, culture, and history—than with the people of Georgia or Delaware or Pennsylvania. People only believe the residents of the US states make up “one people” because their third-grade teachers told them as much. Actual experience tells us otherwise.

Those who demanded the Bill of Rights had attempted to preserve this idea of government on a human scale: government that reflects the realities of daily life, human relationships, and the necessity of free commerce—rather than the ideological fantasies of nation builders. Even to this day, the idea that the minutiae of life and commerce should be governed by a group of millionaires sitting in luxury 2,000 miles away is repugnant to the reasonable mind. In preventing this, the Bill of Rights has largely failed, although things most certainly could have been worse.

 

Ryan McMaken is executive editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public policy, finance, and international relations from the University of Colorado. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

 

Ryan McMaken } Mises Wire

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The post The Bill of Rights: The Only Good Part of the Constitution appeared first on Granite Grok.

America’s university systems are rotten to their core. The proof is in the Congressional hearings when university presidents refuse to denounce calls for genocide and in the streets filled with college kids chanting their approval for mass murder.

BREAKING: Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), presses Harvard President Claudine Gay on campus antisemitism during Congressional hearing. pic.twitter.com/8U7LnVqZ26

— Breaking 4 News (@Breaking_4_News) December 5, 2023

Still, our academic institutions weren’t captured on Oct. 7 when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel. This isn’t a new nightmare for American students. They have suffered in the ever-increasing radicalized world of collegiate education for decades. Traditional beliefs are demonized, while professors promote harmful sexual and racial ideologies as inherently good. (ROOKE: There’s A Good Reason Trad Wives Can’t Stop Telling You About Their Sex Lives)

And thus, there is little campus support for college-educated conservative women.

Most groups available to women are geared toward uplifting progressive causes antithetical to traditional values and beliefs. In “You’re Not Alone: The Conservative Woman’s Guide To College,” author Karin Lips shows young women entering their college years how to navigate their hostile campuses to find like-minded students and mentors.

“This book is here to mentor you on how to thrive on campus as a young conservative woman, even in the face of liberal intolerance,” she wrote. “You can earn good grades. You can make friends. You can successfully prepare for your career.”

Lips is the founder and president of the Network of Enlightened Women (NeW). It originally started as a book club for women who wanted to read classic books which were being left off the University of Virginia’s college syllabus. However, it has since grown into a national organization encouraging conservative women to connect on issues important to them.

In my new book, I tell the story of @CHSommers visiting UVA when I was a student.

Buy it today to see how campuses have changed and strategies for dealing with what’s happening on campuses today.https://t.co/8hBPS7DUhh

— Karin Lips (@klips) December 13, 2023

Although we differ in opinion on whether it is positive how our campuses have become predominately female, offering women a different path than bitter feminism is important if we want them to find their purpose. GirlBoss attitudes strip women of their femininity and encourage them to search for a life without family. It does our society no good to have large swaths of our female population stuck in lives that don’t fulfill them. Feminism would have them believe a family is incompatible with success, while the right mentor could show them options giving them the possibility of having both.

Lips’ advice for women to look for college campuses with higher ratios of women to men was ingenious. Of course, it would make sense that if a woman is looking for a man willing to marry young, she will need to be in an environment where men have less of a romantic choice. She calls this the “man deficit.” (ROOKE: Why Are So Many American Men Killing Themselves? The Answer’s Obvious)

“In places where there is a ‘man deficit,’ or an undersupply of college-educated men, men are less likely to commit. The college and post-college hookup culture, declining marriage rates among college-educated women, and lack of commitment by men, … are byproducts of an undersupply of college-educated men,” Lips wrote.

Her research found that “58% of women in college self-identify as liberal…whereas only 15% identify as conservative” and “almost 60% of female professors identify as liberal, while 22% identify as conservative.” Although the lack of intellectual diversity among the faculty and students can be lonely, it also makes it easier to find professors sympathetic to conservative students, according to Lips. She urges these women to create relationships with friendly faculty because they often help connect students with programs and think tanks looking for the next generation of conservative thinkers.

Lips’ guide gives conservative women a much-needed blueprint for holding on to their traditional values while finding their purpose.

 

Mary Rooke | Daily Caller

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline, and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The post “Offering Women a Different Path Than Bitter Feminism Is Important if We Want Them To Find Their Purpose” appeared first on Granite Grok.

Another tragic loss as an otherwise young and healthy man suddenly drops dead. Lt. Col. Jered Little, “commander of Public Health Activity-Hawaii,” was proudly advertised en masse to encourage uptake of the COVID Vaccine. He died suddenly on Nov. 30 of a heart attack or stroke.

 

Arlington, VA mourns the sudden loss of one of its own, Army Lieutenant and Officer Jered Little, who passed away unexpectedly on Thursday, November 30, 2023, at the age of 39. The exact cause of his death has not been disclosed, but it is believed that he suffered a heart attack or a stroke.

 

Jab Poster Boy for the military passes away Nov 29 at age 39 pic.twitter.com/OxIA9pl6Ct

— Bama_Jeans (@bamajayt) December 12, 2023

 

 

Jered Little was an exceptional officer known for his leadership, dedication, and commitment to service. His military career was marked by strategic acumen and an unwavering sense of duty. Beyond his military life, Jered was a respected member of the Arlington community, often volunteering at local schools and mentoring young people.

 

 

His government and its public health apparatus lied to him despite his service, and now he is dead.

 

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Hello, Friends of Freedom,

Our wonderful country has been beset with an atmosphere of incivility for quiet sometime now. In my awareness of politics over the last 40 years it keeps going from one depth of darkness to even lower levels of attack not only on candidates but their families as well.

It seems the ability to speak in a disparaging way about each other as candidates is more important than addressing the issues we see all around every day, i.e., Poverty, homelessness, looting in our stores, suppression of freedom with civil implemented mandates that have no legal bases at all, and the ongoing spending our tax dollars for foreign wars, wasteful government bureaucratic offices, and of course lavish lifestyle of our leaders while the average American struggles to pay bills.

What is civility, and did we ever have it as a country? In our beginnings, we certainly did have attacks in the press at the time of each political party, but there was a limit, and when the important work had to be done, they actually did work together for the common good.

Our fathers and founding statesmen affirmed over and over in their writings that the most important source of our civil virtues was our grounding in religious faith and its freedom of expression in the culture.

A few quotes:

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall: “One great object of the colonial charters was avowedly the propagation of the Christian faith.”

John Adams: “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were….the general principles of Christianity.”

The list of government officials who validate the role of the Christian faith in our founding as a nation is or could be a good-sized book containing those quotes.

President Harry Truman openly affirmed that, “ In this great country of ours has been demonstrated the fundamental unity of Christianity and democracy.”

Also, our great French ally and statesman Alexis de Tocqueville recorded in his great work, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA: “There is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America-and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.”

We were blessed with the most unique form of government, perhaps since governments have been formed for the overall good of society. Our incredible Constitution, our Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights have enabled mankind to achieve dignity, self-respect, nobleness, and prosperity that is unprecedented yet in modern or ancient history.

The Constitution, of course, being the CORNERSTONE of the building of the country, has laid a clear blueprint of the ideas of the founding fathers in relationship to freedoms that should be afforded to all of humanity.

Since we have had a decline of civility, perhaps we should examine the reason why. Could it be that we have simply accepted the cultural buzz and lies from the media about the role of faith and particularly Christianity that is nowhere regulated by law in any of their founding documents yet is presented as fact to a historically uneducated populace?

Let’s look at the celebration of Christmas. Since it is fast approaching, many people will not acknowledge its important role in the formation of Western Society. In fact, we have been pressured and had a veil of fear placed over us as Christians (if you are one). The simple greeting is no longer delivered with a robust smile and confidence but many Christians shy away from this incredible time of joy and often mutter the pablum phrase, “Happy holiday.” WORDS MATTER! (on an aside note, three of the Presidents of Ivy League colleges would not acknowledge evil with their words, and it cost one of them their job, and hundreds of petitions are moving for the firing of all three of them) Yes, WORDS MATTER! To deny the celebration of your faith by not acknowledging history is a dangerous thing, not just a polite way of saying I don’t want to offend anyone. The offense is in the suppression of your freedom of expression.) But I digress…lol.

For example, the widespread use of the word “HOLIDAYS” to describe what has traditionally been called Christmas for over 180 years in our culture. The removal of the Christian emblem of the Holy Family from public venues. No observance or acknowledgment in our public schools of the largest celebrated holiday in the Western World, if not the entire world? Yet we are reduced to and subjected to silence about it. This never happened when I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s. Christmas still had a space and a place in every public venue, from banks to grocery stores, to libraries, and even public schools. But now people are even afraid to wish someone a MERRY CHRISTMAS? How did we get here?

I will tell you how we got here.

A simple phrase called Separation of Church and State. First of all, this phrase is found nowhere in any of our founding documents. Many have been taught that it is a part of the FIRST AMENDMENT, which simply states,

“CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXPRESSION THEREOF.”

The words “separation,” “church,” or “state” are not found in the First Amendment. Yet many people, having never read the Constitution, think it is there. Also, if you prove to them it is not there, then they will say, but it is implied.

I hope in the next weeks to show you the origin of this phrase and how it has been used as a political tool to drive a wedge between common sense and civil celebration. Targeting the historically uneducated as they unwarily defend this phrase and use it to detract from the original intention of the founding fathers ideas, and especially targeting the idea of faith in the public arena.

Until Next Week,

Allen

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