Sunday • May 5 • 2024
Vol.XVI • No.XVIII
Manchester, N.H.
Lost amid all the political and economic news this month was an important bit of data that’s particularly noteworthy as the 2024 governor’s race gets underway. (Yes, already.)
The state’s fiscal year ended in June. When it did, the state posted a General and Education Trust Fund surplus of $538.9 million.
When revenues exceed budgeted expenses by more than half a billion dollars, that’s notable. Large budget surpluses have become so commonplace, though, that they barely prompt a blurb anymore.
And this is after multiple rounds of business tax cuts that critics said would devastate the state budget and leave New Hampshire with too little revenue to fund basic services.
The surge in business tax revenues is one of New Hampshire’s most important economic (and political) stories of the last decade.
It hasn’t stopped. Business tax revenues for the 2022 fiscal year were $323.2 million (or 33.7%) above plan and $68 million (5.6%) above the prior fiscal year.
Looking back to 2012, it’s remarkable how state General and Education Fund revenues have grown. Total revenues for both funds were $3.23 billion in the 2022 fiscal year. In 2012, they were $2.16 billion.
Inflation (using the national Consumer Price Index) can account for $663 million of that $1.068 billion revenue increase. The rest, about $404 million, is new money.
The other big economic news this month was the achievement of a new record-low unemployment rate of 1.8%. New Hampshire’s economy is churning out jobs and revenue. This isn’t all because of the business tax cuts that have occurred since 2015, but they’ve helped. And the phase-out of the Interest & Dividends Tax by 2025 will help more.
While New Hampshire is enjoying these successes, other states are showing why punishing successful residents with high tax rates is a bad idea.
In Massachusetts, the new 9% income tax rate for millionaires helped to push Celtics star Grant Williams to seek a trade to low-tax Texas.
In April, a new 4% surtax on homes worth more than $5 million took effect in Los Angeles. Movie stars including Mark Wahlberg and Brad Pitt rushed to sell homes before the tax took effect, and since April 1, the supply of homes worth more than $5 million has plunged as owners pulled their listings, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
California legislators in June had to cover a $32 billion budget shortfall caused by rising spending and falling revenues. Massachusetts is dealing with declining revenues, and current spending proposals for the new fiscal year exceed revenues by about $500 million.
Keeping taxes and spending low is paying off for New Hampshire’s economy and the state budget. Having the latest state data confirm that fact yet again, as poster-child progressive states spend beyond their means and send rich residents fleeing, is a good starting point for the governor’s race.
Drew Cline | Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy
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Seventeen paragraphs into a story about COVID-19, the New York Times admits something you’ve all known for years. Deaths from COVID-19 reported during the pandemic were overcounted. No kidding? Really?
The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.
Remember that time at COVID Lockdown Camp when you said something crazy like, how do we know they didn’t just die with COVID? Or how they claimed that the public health apparachiks weren’t just saying it was COVID-19 to collect from the bottomless trough of taxpayer money? Diagnosis, admission, treatment, ventilation, and even death resulted in payouts of COVID cash. The idea that this might incentivize false reporting was so crazy it was labeled a conspiracy theory.
The fact that the payout was outlined as policy and reward meant nothing, nor was how it might skew results toward the favored narrative of the political class.
Whatever the motivation, the Paper of Record has finally admitted that the official position of everyone in the media and the Corruptible Public Health Industrial Complex they enabled was wrong. You were right. But there’s still work to do. The NYT is claiming the overcount was a mere 30% – which is still a lot of grandmas – but back in January 2023, WashPo published an op-ed by the infamous Left-Winger (and former Planned Parenthood President) Leana Wen claiming the COVID death numbers were off 90%.
The Times must think they need more time before leaping that far, but they may catch up to the truth eventually. In, say, 50-75 years when all the tyrants are dead. Until then, we took the time to document the doubters and skeptics who resisted the government’s approved talking points.
There are a few more like that in our archive (maybe hundreds more). “Covid” produces about 3300 hits on our site. Articles and research shared that got us flagged, banned, throttled, put in Facebook jail, blocked on Twitter, and we just kept at it.
We applaud the Times for their pathetic 17th-paragraph admission, even if they’ve only met us a third of the way, but as with every such movement by the Covidistas toward truth, we have to ask. Why now?
The post Now That It Seems Safe the New York Times Admits COVID Deaths WERE Overcounted … appeared first on Granite Grok.
We are a large country, and those who live on the coasts wrongly assume that we represent all Americans in values and wants. Most of America is insulated from the problems of the big cities and the population-dense regions of the East and West. I envy these lucky folks who live in the forgotten fly-over areas of America.
These folks are still living in the America we work hard to remember. They are true Americans, and I pray they keep their way of life for many decades.
Jason Aldean is a popular Country music artist that has found himself in a battle this week between small-town middle America and the pompous, self-important influencers on the coasts. The irony is how slow these brilliant protestors were to find a cause to protest. Aldean produced a song in May called “Try That In A Small Town.” It is a story about the social unrest and destructive behavior in many large cities in the Summer of 2020, The Summer of Love.
Jason Aldean knows firsthand about violence and mass shootings. At his concert in 2017 in Las Vegas, a deranged individual began raining bullets on the crowd at Aldean’s outdoor concert from a nearby hotel. There were 59 innocent people killed in one of the worst mass shootings in American history. He speaks from experience and with authority when he chose to publish this controversial single.
The “Try That In A Small Town” video is a collage of actual news footage sampling the violence of 2020. Viewers also noted that scenes in the video were shot at the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, where a Black man named Henry Choate, 18, was lynched in 1927. The site is also where the infamous Columbia Race Riot occurred in 1946. Nowhere in the song does Aldean call for violence of any type, and it certainly does not hint that shooters or people who participate in violent protests should be lynched.
Aldean says this song shows this behavior would not be tolerated in small-town America. In small towns, people still have values, morals and stand up for each other. Violent protests would be shut down quicker than they started. Aldean released his “Try That In A Small Town” song in May but dropped a video Friday to promote the single while building anticipation for an upcoming album release. The music had been on the air since May with no adverse publicity. The video was a different story, and Twitter was on fire with criticism and support for Aldean.
Country Music Television is no longer airing Jason Aldean’s music video “Try That In A Small Town,” which sparked criticism after its release Friday. The TV network pulled the video from rotation. A CMT spokesperson confirmed to USA TODAY in an email Wednesday. Ironically, the negative publicity and banning of the song have only made it more popular and drove demand for downloads. CMT showed how influential cancel culture is and how little they know about their viewers. The people up in arms about this video are not Country Music fans, and those of us who are, are disappointed in the cowardice of CMT.
Amazingly, these same protestors are mute about the people abused and dying crossing our Southern Border. They say nothing about Fentanyl deaths and sex/child trafficking. Yet a video has them riled. These people are irrational and inconsistent; it is a shame they are given credibility by yielding to their demands. Let them make those demands in a small town and see who listens.
The post You Can’t Handle The Truth appeared first on Granite Grok.
Nitzakhon is back in charge of our three-ring meme circus come Monday, so this may be our last dance with this particular form of ridicule for a while. I will continue to engage in regular scheduled blog-induced ridicule, as always.
We’ve got a decent mix of politics and general humor for your outrage or amusement. We won’t judge. Be you.
As always, please scroll responsibly.
This, I know to be true…
I love this picture – never seen her happy before…
No clue if this is true…
The post Friday Meme Overflow (Nitzakhon is Back on Monday Edition!) appeared first on Granite Grok.
So this is in response to this post: Joe Manchin Might Be Our Unlikely Hero. The post describes Manchin as “a moderate Democrat in a government that is more polarized than ever.” The Biden-Regime is packing the federal judiciary with hard-core Communists. Manchin did not cast a vote against any of these Communists until May of this year. If that is “moderate” I would hate to see “extreme.” These judges will … in the increasingly unlikely event the GOP prevails in 2024 … block every single attempt by the GOP to roll back the Biden-Regime’s policies.
As for “polarized” government … WHAT?!?! The UniParty is all in on giving a blank check to Zelensky, and by extension Blackrock and the military industrial complex. The UniParty continues to generously fund the totally corrupt FBI and “intelligence community.” If that’s “polarization” I would hate to see “consensus.”
The post also claims that “Manchin was correct when discussing both parties going too far to their respective fringe.” I would love to know who is a “fringe” Republican and what makes said Republican “fringe.” A Republican to the right of Mitch McConnell? That would make most GOP voters “fringe” because good old, “moderate” Mitch is the most unpopular (18.8% popular per RCP) major political figure in the country.
By “fringe” Manchin is necessarily referring to the majority of West Virginia voters who, based on the polls, see through and are tired of his “I’m a moderate” charade. The truth is that these voters constitute the “middle” and their rejection of Manchin means that it is Manchin who is fringe.
The post Joe Manchin Is Neither A “Moderate” Nor A “Hero” appeared first on Granite Grok.
We have another incident that rings of NH Gov. Chris Sununu’s Amen moment, where nine individuals in a crowd were arrested for disrupting a public meeting. There was no disruption, and charges had to be dropped. Compare that to the arrests of three residents of Moscow, Idaho.
An Idaho college town is set to pay $300,000 to three Christians who sued the city over their arrests for not wearing Covid masks at an outdoor church service during the pandemic.
The city of Moscow said it will settle with Gabriel Rench, and Sean and Rachel Bohnet, who were filmed being handcuffed at a communal psalm singing event on 23 September 2020 in footage which later went viral.
The trio sued city officials in March 2021, alleging their First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the undue and heavy-handed response.
Moscow in Idaho. College Town vs. Christians.
The event occurred outdoors on public property to protest the city’s mask mandates, so it was both religious and political expression, but police were on hand with instructions to cite those who disobeyed their master’s mask and distancing mandate, and they did. Just following orders!
We covered the story when it broke back in September 2020.
The Public Health tyranny continues without much objection except by those being persecuted for refusing to follow what are, by some accounts, unconstitutional mandates. And the five people cited were not in the minority. According to this report, most of those who attended the Christ Church “protest” neither wore masks or social distanced. The two arrests “were arrested for suspicion of resisting or obstructing an officer.”
Suspicion of resisting or obstructing?
One of the two is a Republican candidate for Latah County commissioner, known by the officer who arrested him but detained for refusing to provide identification when requested.
Three of those five were a school basketball coach, a music teacher, and his wife. They sued, and according to the Daily Mail, Moscow, Idaho’s municipal insurance company suggested they settle after “The trio sought damages for the violation of their constitutional rights, hoping to set a precedent so the city could no longer restrict political or religious activities.”
A magistrate judge later dismissed the city’s case for their arrests, while US District Court Judge Morrison C. England, Jr. said they ‘should never have been arrested in the first place’. …
Meanwhile, the city said its liability insurance provider, Idaho Counties Risk Management Program (ICRMP), ‘determined that a financial settlement in the case was the best course of action to dispose of the suit and avoid a protracted litigation proceeding.’
You misspelled “to avoid protracted embarrassment and a much larger settlement” wrong.
In my comparison tyranny, the New Hampshire Nine were arrested for no good reason and, in some cases, forced to wait 18 months before the charges were dropped – because there was no “there” there and never was – they should never have been removed from the meeting. The charges should never have been filed, and the case should have been dropped that day or the next with a generous apology from the Governor and the State Police.
They dragged it out, knowing they had nothing, and as rumors of civil suits against the Governor continue to swirl, his excellency has decided not to run for re-election. That is very odd. Despite his many flaws, he is still a popular governor. He could easily win his primary and the general. He’d be (I think) the first five-term Governor in state history, and the Sununus’ are not ones to miss an opportunity to think they’ve made history.
Other potential scandals are swirling, and only time will tell. Still, Chris Sununu was as much a COVID tyrant as any of them at the beginning, and the arrests in Moscow, Idaho, reek of a similar failure. People in positions of authority were given an opportunity to abuse power and infringe on constitutional rights, and they took it.
I think Moscow, Idaho, got off easy. We’ll have to wait and see if Sununu has to defend himself and his actions or if he’ll get off easy too.
The post Town Decides to Settle Lawsuit with “Random” Protesters It Arrested for Not Wearing Masks appeared first on Granite Grok.
You may have noticed a couple of really popular posts: Pence is Toast (currently #1 as of Thursday July 20 @ 7AM) and A Few Thoughts on Mike Pence and His Lack of Concern for the United States. Both posts commentate on Tucker’s recent interview of Pence in Iowa where Pence famously said, in response to a question about his obsession with Ukraine, that America’s deteriorating cities are not his concern:
But tell me what is the difference on the issue of Ukraine between Pence and Nikki Haley? Or Pence and DeSantis? Or Pence and Tim Scott? As far as I can tell every GOP candidate for President, with the possible exception of Trump, will continue to fund Zelensky. In other words, Pence just said out loud the part that you aren’t supposed to say out loud. Kudos to Tucker for getting Pence to do so.
As for Trump, as best I can tell, he is going to tell Zelensky that he has a deadline to negotiate a deal with Putin, and that he will cut Zelensky off if he fails to meet the deadline. Simultaneously, he is going to tell Putin that he will give him a lot of money, if he makes a deal. Perhaps this doesn’t sound all that sophisticated, but it’s better than continuing to give Zelensky a blank check, which apparently every other GOP candidate would do.
The post They Are All Mike Pence appeared first on Granite Grok.
I studied in Innsbruck, Austria as a sophomore in college. Actually, that is one of the reasons we left the D.C. swamp fifty years ago and moved to Laconia. I read Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust in German at the time. Unfortunately, at 75 years old, I completely forgot the story.
We want to thank Charles Bradley for this Op-Ed. Please submit yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
So, recently, I re-read this literary masterpiece in English. I was absolutely flabbergasted at the parallels between Goethe’s Faust, written in 1808, and the Biden Demolitioncrat Party (BDP).
Mephistopheles takes Faust to a mountain overlooking Western Civilization and promises Faust, “All this can be yours if you give me your soul when I come for it.” Faust bought the DEAL and sold his soul for money and power.
Does this story strike a chord? It should. So, I will let the reader figure it out!
Hint: Mark Twain’s late writings told the same story about humanity and human nature.
It seems to me Goethe and Twain, many moons ago, predicted the Biden- Demolitioncrat Debacle. If the reader does not understand it yet, they never will. Our grandchildren and children will pay a colossal price for our stupidity.
The post Faust, Biden, and the Demolitioncrats appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Editors at the New Hampshire Gazette enjoy commenting on letters to the editor and getting in the last word from their leftist viewpoint. Their comments in response to my recent letter to the Editor about the recently defeated NH Parental Rights Bill included,
“First, Republicans propose a law that requires teachers to rat out their kids.
This is actually impressive, in a depressing kind of way. We would not have guessed that anyone in the state GOP could read German well enough to crib from an East German law book.
The Stasi, it is said, had one secret policeman for every 166 East Germans. That’s not good enough for our local branch of Authoritarians International, though. The’ll see your one in 166 and raise it to one in 30.”
Since the government requires that children attend school, and since most people have no alternative but to send their children to government schools, it seems to me that government schools should be required to answer questions from loving parents who try to understand changes in their child’s behavior. So, I readdressed this topic and the Editors’ comments to which I appended the following note to the Editors:
“Note to Editors: I see my letters amuse you. Your commentary amuses me too since your ad hominem attacks and irrelevant comments don’t refute the facts that I present. It’s good for your readers to see facts and different opinions. So, I’ll keep sending letters as long as you print them.”
I submitted the letter below. It is probably too tame, but they do control what they publish and they have the opportunity to comment. We’ll see if they publish this letter, and look forward to seeing their comments.
“To the Editor:
Parents try to protect their children because children are vulnerable to, among other things, human predators. Children become increasingly vulnerable as they age because parents have decreasingly control of the adults that interact with their children.
Children have been harmed by teachers, coaches, medical professionals, Pastors/Priests, Scout Leaders, and others who often start by befriending children.
Many children are harmed in school, e.g., some are blamed for other people’s actions; some are confused by premature introduction to pornography, sex, and/or gender; some are told not to trust their parents; and hundreds of children are sexually exploited in schools annually ( https://tinyurl.com/2p89at3y).
When parents see their child’s behavior change negatively, most parents want, and try, to help their child. Experience teaches us that the sooner a problem is addressed, the sooner the suffering ends.
Shouldn’t parents have a right to learn what a school system, or any organization entrusted with their children, knows about their child? The Editors of the New Hampshire Gazette apparently say “No”. They say it’s, “ratting out”, ala the East German Stasi, the child to tell parents if their child’s behavior change is due to gender confusion or transitioning. ( https://tinyurl.com/263u66ad)
The Editors apparently don’t care that parents worry and children’s problems worsen. I do.
Most students who are bullies, cheats, thieves, inattentive or disruptive in class, have an improper relationship with an adult, or victims of bullying probably don’t want their parents informed. Is it “ratting out” students to tell their parents about these problems too?
Is information kept from concerned parents to help children or to protect adults?
Parents, not teachers, will spend their lives trying to repair a child’s problems. Is providing honest answers to parents’ inquiries “ratting out” children or helping to protect children and get their problems resolved?
The post I’m Sure You Have a Better Idea What to Do with This than I appeared first on Granite Grok.
I don’t want to talk about J6. I want to talk about the future. Please don’t make me talk about J6. Please, please, please. What a pathetic performance by Ron DeSantis. Does he not get it … or is he just that much of a tool of the donor class?
The two things we should be talking about the most are UniParty’s forever war in Ukraine and J6.
The Biden regime to this day, continues to bring political prosecutions against everyday Republicans whose “crime” was to peacefully walk around the Capitol after being invited in by “law enforcement.” That is, talking about J6 is not “looking backward”; it is opening our eyes and recognizing that, at this very moment, America is a Police State. But DeSantis apparently wants to pretend that America is NOT a Police State.
The Ron DeSantis running for President is NOT the same Ron DeSantis who ran Florida:
.@RonDeSantis: We must “have a debate about the country’s future…I’ll…articulate a positive vision…I don’t think it serves us good to have a presidential election focused on what happened [on January 6]…I want to focus on looking forward. I don’t want to look back” pic.twitter.com/5vI6vUfXB1
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 18, 2023
The post DeSantis Interview With Jake Tapper … Gutless And Weak appeared first on Granite Grok.
We’re all being targeted now.
We’re all guilty until proven innocent now.
And thanks to the 24/7 surveillance being carried out by the government’s spy network of fusion centers, we are all now sitting ducks, just waiting to be tagged, flagged, targeted, monitored, manipulated, investigated, interrogated, heckled and generally harassed by agents of the American police state.
Although these precrime programs are popping up all across the country, in small towns and big cities, they are not making us any safer but they are endangering individual freedoms.
Nationwide, there are upwards of 123 real-time crime centers (a.k.a. fusion centers), which allow local police agencies to upload and share massive amounts of surveillance data and intelligence with state and federal agencies culled from surveillance cameras, facial recognition technology, gunshot sensors, social media monitoring, drones and body cameras, and artificial intelligence-driven predictive policing algorithms.
These data fusion centers, which effectively create an electronic prison—a digital police state—from which there is no escape, are being built in partnership with big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, which helped to fuel the rise of police militarization and domestic surveillance.
While these latest expansions of the surveillance state are part of the Biden Administration’s efforts to combat domestic extremism through the creation of a “precrime” crime prevention agency, they have long been a pivotal part of the government’s plans for total control and dominion.
Yet this crime prevention campaign is not so much about making America safer as it is about ensuring that the government has the wherewithal to muzzle anti-government discontent, penalize anyone expressing anti-government sentiments, and preemptively nip in the bud any attempts by the populace to challenge the government’s authority or question its propaganda.
As J.D. Tuccille writes for Reason, “[A]t a time when government officials rage against ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ that is often just disagreement with whatever opinions are currently popular among the political class, fusion centers frequently scrutinize peaceful dissenting speech.”
Indeed, while the Biden Administration was recently dealt a legal blow over its attempts to urge social media companies to do more to combat so-called dis- and mis-information, these fusion centers are the unacknowledged powerhouses behind the government’s campaign to censors and retaliate against those who vocalize their disagreement and discontent with government policies.
Already, the powers-that-be are mobilizing to ensure that fusion centers have the ability to monitor and lockdown sectors of a community at a moment’s notice.
For instance, a 42,000-square-foot behemoth of a fusion center in downtown Washington is reportedly designed to “better prepare law enforcement for the next public health emergency or Jan. 6-style attack.” According to an agency spokeswoman, “Screens covering the walls of the new facility will show surveillance cameras around the city as well as social media accounts that may be monitored for threatening speech.”
It’s like a scene straight out of Steven Spielberg’s dystopian film Minority Report, set in 2054, where police agencies harvest intelligence from widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs in order to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage.
Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality.
Our world is now characterized by widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, fusion centers, driverless cars, voice-controlled homes, facial recognition systems, cybugs and drones, and predictive policing (pre-crime) aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage.
What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.
The American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick have all been rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.
In this way, the novel 1984 has become an operation manual for an omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state in which ordinary Americans find themselves labeled domestic extremists for engaging in lawful behavior that triggers the government’s precrime sensors.
The technocrats who run the surveillance state don’t even have to break a sweat while monitoring what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, how much you spend, whom you support, and with whom you communicate and then classifying you as a danger.
Computers now do the tedious work of trolling social media, the internet, text messages and phone calls for potentially anti-government remarks, all of which is carefully recorded, documented, and stored to be used against you someday at a time and place of the government’s choosing.
In this way, with the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.
It’s also a setup ripe for abuse.
For instance, an investigative report by the Brennan Center found that “Over the last two decades, leaked materials have shown fusion centers tracking protestors and casting peaceful activities as potential threats. Their targets have included racial justice and environmental advocates, right-wing activists, and third-party political candidates.”
One fusion center in Maine was found to have been “illegally collecting and sharing information about Maine residents who weren’t suspected of criminal activity. They included gun purchasers, people protesting the construction of a new power transmission line, the employees of a peacebuilding summer camp for teenagers, and even people who travelled to New York City frequently.”
In one Florida county, police have been using their precrime program to generate “lists of people it considers likely to break the law, based on arrest histories, unspecified intelligence and arbitrary decisions by police analysts.” Then, according to the Tampa Bay Times, deputies are deployed “to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a specific crime. They swarm homes in the middle of the night, waking families and embarrassing people in front of their neighbors. They write tickets for missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, saddling residents with court dates and fines. They come again and again, making arrests for any reason they can.”
The goal? “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”
This is how the government is turning a nation of citizens into suspects and would-be criminals.
This transformation is being driven by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency notorious for militarizing the police and SWAT teams; spying on activists, dissidents and veterans; stockpiling ammunition; distributing license plate readers; contracting to build detention camps; tracking cell-phones with Stingray devices; carrying out military drills and lockdowns in American cities; using the TSA as an advance guard; conducting virtual strip searches with full-body scanners; carrying out soft target checkpoints; directing government workers to spy on Americans; conducting widespread spying networks using fusion centers; carrying out Constitution-free border control searches; funding city-wide surveillance cameras; and utilizing drones and other spybots.
Twenty years after being formed in the wake of 9/11, the DHS is a massive, costly, power-hungry bureaucracy working hard to ensure that the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.
Yet here’s the thing: you don’t have to do anything illegal or challenge the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.
In fact, all you need to do is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious to a neighbor, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.
The following activities are guaranteed to get you censored, surveilled, eventually placed on a government watch list, possibly detained and potentially killed.
Use harmless trigger words like cloud, pork and pirates. Use a cell phone. Drive a car. Attend a political rally. Express yourself on social media. Serve in the military. Disagree with a law enforcement official. Call in sick to work. Limp or stutter. Appear confused or nervous, fidget, whistle or smell bad. Allow yourself to be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun, such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane, for instance. Stare at a police officer. Appear to be pro-gun, pro-freedom or anti-government. Attend a public school. Speak truth to power.
It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.
Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score.
Without having ever knowingly committed a crime or been convicted of one, you and your fellow citizens have likely been assessed for behaviors the government might consider devious, dangerous or concerning; assigned a threat score based on your associations, activities and viewpoints; and catalogued in a government database according to how you should be approached by police and other government agencies based on your particular threat level.
Combine predictive policing with surveillance, overcriminalization and precrime programs, then add in militarized police trained to shoot first and ask questions later, and as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, you’ll be lucky to escape with your life.
If you’re not scared yet, you should be.
John Whitehead | The Tenth Amendment Center
The post We’re All Suspects Under the Government’s Precrime Program appeared first on Granite Grok.
Joseph Robinette Biden is a corrupt politician. At least that’s what a recent survey suggests. A poll by Trafalgar Group indicates that more than half of American voters believe Biden and his family are guilty of influence peddling – receiving payments from foreign countries aimed at influencing national policy decisions. Less than one-third of voters believe they are innocent.
There are sound reasons for those poll results.
Early signs of Biden’s character flaws appeared in 1987, when he was forced to abandon his first presidential campaign. After several plagiarized campaign speeches were exposed, voters learned about more plagiarism going back to Biden’s years in law school. Besides that, as he often does today, Biden was embellishing his academic accomplishments and fabricating his involvement in the civil rights movement. It seems that back then, Democrat voters had no tolerance for dishonest politicians.
These days, political corruption doesn’t seem to bother Democrats, as long as it’s in-house. We’re not talking about plagiarism. That barely registers on today’s scale of corruption. But 50 years in politics is a long time for bad habits to fester and grow. And while most Americans now believe Biden has sold out his office, his supporters seem OK with it.
They can’t claim ignorance. The supporting evidence is so clear and overwhelming, that it’s impossible not to see it. There are more than 150 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) tied to the Biden family, including millions of dollars from foreign sources paid into family accounts. Much of it came from America’s adversaries. There are the executive decisions and policies that inevitably benefit other countries while hurting American interests. There are incriminating emails from Hunter Biden, referencing a cut for the “big guy.” And there’s Hunter’s ill-fated WhatsApp message to a Chinese businessman, threatening Joe’s vengeance if he doesn’t pony up some agreed-upon payment. There are former business partners and whistleblowers – numerous career federal employees – documenting specific incidents of influence peddling by the Bidens. And there are congressional investigations corroborating all of it.
Biden’s supporters argue that there is no “smoking gun” directly linking the president to all of this. As the saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water…”
Taken together, the cornucopia of evidence should convince any reasonable person that the man occasionally occupying the Oval Office is putting personal gain ahead of America’s interests. In fact, most Americans have been convinced. Only Democrats, with their newfound tolerance of political corruption and their irresistible impulse to circle the wagons refuse to see it.
But Joe Biden’s corruption is not the worst part. Like raw sewage, corruption flows downhill. The people currently in charge of our government departments and agencies have been either unwilling or unable to stand up against the deluge of muck. Time and again, they’ve proven themselves to be nothing more than loyal apparatchiks, willing to say and do whatever is necessary to protect Biden’s presidency.
That becomes more apparent every time Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas smugly announces “the border is secure,” while record numbers of citizens from more than 100 different nations continue to surge across our southern border. It becomes increasingly obvious each time Attorney General Merrick Garland pontificates about “equal justice under the law,” while he stretches prosecutorial boundaries to ensnare conservatives, and then offers a sweetheart deal to Hunter Biden.
That sweetheart deal, incidentally, would probably have evaporated if the Secret Service investigation connected that bag of cocaine found in the White House to the president’s son. It’s one reason so many are dubious of the investigation.
No one can say with certainty that the USSS is covering for the younger Biden, but the 2018 mystery of the phantom Secret Service Agents adds to the suspicion. That was the incident surrounding Hunter’s illegal handgun purchase. Based on reliable sources, Politico reported that after it came to light, two Secret Service Agents visited the shop where Hunter purchased the weapon and unsuccessfully tried to seize the incriminating paperwork. That could have been an attempt to conceal evidence of a serious crime. Naturally, the Secret Service denies that it happened.
Whatever the case, the outcome of the recent cocaine investigation was never really in doubt.
Any U.S. President expects, and is entitled to loyalty by his administration. But when administration officials engage in unethical or illegal activities and routinely deceive the people to protect their jobs and to defend a corrupt president, they do more than compromise their own integrity. They erode trust in our government.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but at the same time that most of the country believes Biden is peddling his influence, trust in our government has declined to an all-time low. According to the Pew Research Center, in 1958 roughly three-fourths of Americans trusted our government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time. Throughout the years, that number has continued to decline, and today only two-in-ten Americans trust Washington to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time.”
Democracies and constitutional republics function only because the people generally trust their governments. As corruption spreads throughout this government, we can only hope that it’s just an anomaly – that it will end once Joe Biden leaves office.
The post Corrupting the Federal Government – One Department at a Time appeared first on Granite Grok.
CMT (Country Music Television) has canceled Jason Aldean … for a thought crime. The crime? Releasing a music video that criticizes the tactics used by BLM and Antifa during the so-called 2020 “Summer of Love,” which, like COVID, was the system using a situation … in this case, the death of George Floyd … to rig the 2020 election.
Want all that to stop? Elect Joe Biden. Joe will make things normal again.
Here is Aldean’s video:
Jason Aldean just released an absolutely epic music video for the song “Try That In a Small Town” that rips into the left-wing riots, soft on crime governance in cities, gun control, and other leftist degradation. pic.twitter.com/dUYzGbnvc6
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 17, 2023
And here is Aldean’s response to being canceled by the drag show promoting CMT:
In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous.…
— Jason Aldean (@Jason_Aldean) July 18, 2023
And here are some of the lyrics CMT considers “hate speech,” “misinformation,” “racist,” blah, blah, blah:
These are the Jason Aldean lyrics liberals are saying are racist:
Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk,
Carjack an old lady at a red light.
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store.
Ya think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya like.
Cuss out a cop, spit in his face.
Stomp on…— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 19, 2023
But just keep pretending that we can vote our way out of this, that America is NOT a Police State, that every institution in America is NOT controlled by Communists. That is, just keep drinking the kool-aid and believing that Putin … not Jack Smith, not CMT, not BLM or Antifa and the politicians SUCH AS SUN-KING SUNUNU who supported the “Summer of Love” … is the real enemy, the real threat to freedom.
The post The System Says – You May NOT Say “Try That In A Small Town” … appeared first on Granite Grok.
Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is a veteran Democrat Senator representing a predominantly Republican state and may be the last of a dying breed. He is a moderate Democrat in a government that is more polarized than ever.
With the super slim majority in the Senate, the passage of a Bill usually comes down to how Joe Manchin and his colleague from Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema, vote. They are so entrenched in the ideological middle you can never predict which way they will vote. Manchin is down 25 points to his Republican opponent and is possibly looking at the end of his career coming soon. He may have one chance left to make an impact and a splash.
Joe Manchin was in New Hampshire on Monday with the first public appearance of the political group “No Labels.” This group is raising money and investigating the possibility of presenting a third-party presidential candidate in 2024. Joe Manchin is hinting at the possibility that he would be the Common Sense candidate of the No Label Party. Unlike third-party bids of the past that were nothing more than protest campaigns, the No Label Party says they would be in the race to win the race.
Biden deceived Manchin and has given the Senator a personal reason to run against Biden and probably Trump. Manchin was promised programs to bring a boom to the West Virginia Mining Industry. These promises were traded for Manchin’s vote on the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden reneged on those promises, which has given Manchin the impetus to run as a third-party candidate. Biden played Manchin, embarrassed him with his colleagues, and jeopardized his future in the Senate. Manchin deserves to be angry and vengeful.
Manchin was correct when discussing both parties going too far to their respective fringe. He pointed out that most Americans live in the moderate middle and are not served by either party. This polarization leaves a pathway for a moderate third-party candidate to make a legitimate presidential run.
The threat of a Third-Party candidate is making the Democrats apoplectic. They know it would hurt Biden more than the Republican candidate, and could tilt the election away from Biden. There are some Democrats that are forming PACs and raising money to combat the efforts of the No Label group. The Democrats created the problem, and they should own it, but accountability is not a strong suit for Democrats.
This election cycle is morphing to be an embarrassment. There are far too many candidates on the Right. The Left will only acknowledge one of their three candidates. It seems to be the same issue as Joe accounting for his seven grandchildren. And the third rail may not commit until late 2023 or early 2024. In the meantime, Biden will be looking to squash the No Label candidate. Maybe he can come up with some bogus crimes like he is doing with Trump. It will work until you sacrifice Hunter to stay in the race.
The post Joe Manchin Might Be Our Unlikely Hero appeared first on Granite Grok.
What are you talking about? Are you nuts? THEY’RE ALL BETTER THAN JOYCE CRAIG!!!
Nope. No thanks. I’m done playing that game. Morse is no conservative … unless you believe that codifying Obamacare into State law is conservatism, which probably the majority of folks calling themselves Republicans in Blue Hampshire believe. What did Edelblut accomplish as Commissioner of the Department of Education? Nothing, nada, zilch. The Communist education-bureaucracy is still indoctrinating children with CRT and DEI. And as for Ayotte … fool me once. She spent her last year as a United States Senator voting (most of the time) with Jeanne Shaheen.
You can keep pretending for as long as you wish. I’m done.
The post #NeverMorse #NeverAyotte #NeverEdelblut Etc. Etc. Etc. appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Granite State Children’s Alliance’s label is “Know and Tell.” So I’m going to take them at their word. Know and Tell cannot be distinguished from the infamous DCYF – the agency that ordered an intern at the Youth Detention Center to delete files about the sex abuse of minors in state care.
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The same agency that admitted to deleting files about sex abuse at Phillips Exeter Academy; the agency that has received a damning report over and over and over from the US DHHS Office of Inspector General for utter failures on every single level.
On the board of the Granite State Children’s Alliance, there’s an interesting mixture of names and affiliations who are tied to law enforcement, DA’s offices, the AG’s office, an accounting firm, law firms, and car dealers. Four names that stick out, in particular, are Andrew H Crews, Phil Taub, Chris McLaughlin, and Richard C Tracy. Then there are police officers from Manchester and Nashua and a curious married couple Jared Vartanian (an accountant), and his wife, Kristin Vartanian, of the Rockingham County Attorney’s office.
When Harmony Montgomery went missing, it took two years before anything was said, and the police statements – when they finally did say something – wreaked of a cover-up. Is it possible that Adam Montgomery was actually working in cahoots with the police in a drug trafficking enterprise?
With a member of Manchester’s police department on the board of Children’s Advocacy Centers (CAC), none of the official Harmony Montgomery stories adds up – at all. Manchester Police Department knew that Adam Montgomery had a criminal record, and they knew that Harmony Montgomery had a black eye and that she was living with a criminal. Demetrius Tsaros was the case worker not just in Harmony Montgomery’s case but also in the case concerning Anna Carrigan’s nephew, which caused her to bring her whistleblower lawsuit documenting the horror show that is DCYF (and, therefore, CAC by connection on its own site) and which was summarily rejected by the State’s Supreme Court.
And yet, Richard C Tracy (Criminal Investigator for the State), and Chris McLaughlin (DA for Cheshire County) are on the board of an “advocacy” center for children that works hand in glove with the DCYF, the NHCADSV, police, and prosecutors. The rejection of Anna Carrigan’s suit and the rejection of David Meehan et Al v New Hampshire for Youth Detention Center Abuse reflects very badly on the very board members of the Children’s “Advocacy” sham. It also reflects extremely badly on New Hampshire’s Supreme Court Chief Justice, Gordon MacDonald, who was once a partner at Nixon Peabody with Phil Taub, one of the board members of the CAC. Gordon MacDonald blamed child abuse at the Youth Detention Center on “victim negligence.”
Governor Sununu, after whose father the YDC was named, dismissed the class action suit as an ambulance-chasing enterprise. Then the criminal charges against former employees started to roll in, and the reports from the Office of Child Advocate. The descriptions of abuse of children under state care are nothing short of MKUltra-type experiments. Who gave these employees license to hold kids down in chains, drug them, beat them, starve them, rape them, and order them to have sex with each other? The DCYF (the CAC, the NHCADSV, and all of those board members from the NH Bar and Police Departments who can no longer be separated from the DCYF by virtue of their own advertisement of it on the front page of their “non-profit” Children’s “Advocacy” Center inviting us all to “Know and Tell” when we see child abuse.
What are the millions of documents hiding that the State has only recently come across with the YDC? What was the need for Gordon MacDonald to hide corrupt police officer names from the public and his deputy Geoffrey Ward to delete their files? These are questions that become particularly relevant with Chris McLaughlin on the board of CAC. James F. McLaughlin, who was one of the corrupt police officers and the state’s top sex crimes officer, went to work in Chris McLaughlin’s office after his name was revealed on the list. What was he doing there? Deleting files?
In the latest tell-tale sign that the New Hampshire Courts know they have misbehaved, Tina Nadeau – Chief Justice for the Superior Courts – has resigned with no explanation given.
Just like Lori Schibinette of the DHHS resigned with no explanation given. But a little visit to the US DHHS OIG website reveals that New Hampshire had just been fined a week before for $7.9 million due to Medicaid fraud and that 90% of claims were fraudulent. Funny how local news media left that little detail out.
More Than 90 Percent of the New Hampshire Managed Care Organizations and Fee-for-Service Claims for Opioid Treatment Program Services Did Not Comply With Medicaid Requirements.
A 2020 US DHHS OIG report (also not covered by NH news organizations coincidentally) reveals that: New Hampshire’s Monitoring Did Not Ensure Childcare Provider Compliance With State Criminal Background Check Requirements at 21 of 30 Providers Reviewed.
Now Manchester Police and Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig are also at odds with each other over correspondence concerning Harmony Montgomery. The whole lot of them should be put on the trial stand in front of a federal judge and be forced to testify under oath of their monumental and appalling screw-ups that led to the brutal and horrific murder of a child under state watch.
The “Children’s Advocacy Center” was registered in New Hampshire in 2003 – right when former Monsignor Edward Arsenault was in his prime. But let’s not forget that he defrauded the Diocese of Manchester, nor that Assistant AG Jane Young (now US Attorney for NH) shook hands with him after he took a plea deal for a super light sentence. Coincidentally, Jane Young co-endorsed the renewal of Richard C Tracy (a board member of CAC) as the State’s top criminal investigator. Looks like he’s got a huge blind spot when it comes to members of the police and bar. Is that because they are all cozy together on the board of the CAC?
If you read reports advocating for the Children’s Advocacy Center published by UNH, it doesn’t take long before you realize that CAC is a recipe for abuse of power. What could go wrong: a single police investigator model from a corrupt police department playing into a “non-profit” whose board members are also from corrupt police departments, DA’s offices, law firms, and auto dealers, which feature in both the Pandora Papers and Paradise Papers. The enterprise is helped by having Jarad Vartanian on the board, the CPA who just happens to be married to another board member who comes out of Rockingham County DA’s office.
Pity the child who ends up in the CAC, starved, lied to, bullied. You cannot separate Children’s Advocacy Centers from DCYF, NHCADSV, CASA NH, Police, Prosecutors, DAs, Attorneys, Auto dealers, or Primary Bank.
No wonder Anna Carrigan faced retaliation when she spoke up. Got to protect the racket, not the children.
Is Governor Sununu stepping down because the Pandora Papers and Child Abuse racket is catching up? Is everyone leaving the Titanic? Edward Arsenault went to Florida. So did Autofair. So did Eric Spofford of Granite State Recovery Centers, where fentanyl trafficker Jeff Hatch was all set to shake hands with Vice President Mike Pence….until he wasn’t.
Why did police take from August 2022 to July 2023 to investigate and arrest the budget commissioner for Londonderry, Tim Siekmann?
The news failed to mention that he had an IT Consulting firm and a non-profit for veterans’ affairs. The sale of child sex abuse images is big business.
What other elected officials or members of the bar or law enforcement are involved in this? Is elected representative Stacie Loughton in on the same disgusting game?
Is the Children’s Advocacy Center an empty cover for child abuse, trafficking, and corruption?
The post Know & Tell — NH’s Children’s Advocacy Center — A Shell Organization for PD & Court Corruption appeared first on Granite Grok.
John Kirby and Lloyd Austin showed Tuesday just how low the Biden Administration has taken the conversation, our morals, and our country in just thirty months. I have referred to Joe Biden’s need to “finish the job” in his second term, and I am convinced that means the total destruction of this once great country.
Joe Biden has parlayed his mediocre talents into a lifetime of privilege and corruption at the expense of America and Americans, and to repay his debt, he is tearing our country down.
Two of the key individuals he put in place are Kirby and Austin. John Kirby is a retired rear admiral in the United States Navy, serving as Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council in the White House since late May 2022. He is also the man the White House calls on to clean up after Karine Jean-Pierre. Lloyd James Austin III is a retired United States Army four-star general who has served as the 28th United States Secretary of Defense since January 22, 2021. He is the first African American to serve in this role.
How each of these men rose to their respective positions in the military is a mystery, but how they have sold out to the WOKE culture is a travesty. In two separate appearances on Tuesday, both men explained to America how critical abortion is to the readiness of our military to protect us and how sacred a right abortion is to female military personnel. Sacred and abortion are words I would never link together in any context, but that is where we are in Biden’s America. It was not an accident that these two spoke on the same subject simultaneously. This was a purposeful effort to promote abortion. It was embarrassing and disgusting.
Taken from Kirby’s comments:
“And — and our policies — whether they’re diversity, inclusion, and equity; or whether they’re about transgender individuals who qualify physically and mentally to serve to be able to do it with dignity; or whether it’s about female servicemembers — one in five — or female family members being able to count on the kinds of healthcare and reproductive care specifically that they need to serve — that is a foundational, sacred obligation of military leaders across the river. “
Healthcare and reproductive care, of course, refer to abortion. According to Kirby, providing abortions to female military personnel or the wives of personnel is a sacred obligation. Killing the unborn is never sacred.
Lloyd Austin responded that it is absolutely essential the military makes female healthcare and reproductive care available so that we can attract females and families to the military and be ready to protect our country. Thank God he did not get the memo that abortion was a sacred right.
If these two men wanted to discuss readiness, then they should have addressed the munitions shortage that Joe Biden let slip last week. We are nearly twenty years from replenishing our supply of arms and missiles. It is ludicrous that we are making that information available to our enemies. Still, obviously, our military leaders are more focused on killing the unborn than our enemies who may want to do us harm.
The post Abortion Is Key To Military Readiness? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Instapundit directed me to a post by James Lileks, proprietor of The Bleat, that takes on those who believe that travel to “touristy” places by the masses is just so gauche, starting with cruise ships.
Sidenote: I’ve always wanted to try ONE cruise, but TMEW is terrified when I bring it up – “out in the middle of the sea?” I’ve relegated it to the dust heap that includes having a motorcycle, a private pilot’s license, and a few other things.
It’s the same kinds of people that believe that food is too cheap and too ordinary, that we all should be willing to pay far higher prices for “better” foods. “Choice is for knaves” is the general theme of these “snoots in the air.” And, of course, it’s all for their version of “utopian culture.” Lileks fights back (emphasis mine):
Why? Because it is important to trash the happy things – at least the happy things regarded as such by people who are irritatingly ordinary. The people who would not, for example, bed-rot. The people who, ugh, do things. Now, I don’t think that all of the people who are attracted to this ship are industrious go-getters who want five days of high-octane activities; maybe some are. Bring the kids. They’ll be amazed. Time of their life, even if they barely remember it. Others just want a spot on the deck, lots of food, a nice view, and some fun. A party atmosphere enlivens the vacation.
Which means the majority of us. These “culturally upper-crust” agents are just like the Eco-Socialists in that there is only ONE way to be happy, and that’s their way. There is no sense that happiness is different for different people. It is outside their ken that others do not share their outlook on life.
I like art, but I’m no art critic, and I almost failed Jr. High art class stick figures, but I’m not stupid enough to fall for most pieces of modern abstract art (I think many of which are examples of “where’s the gullibility horizon can I push the limits?” Like the image at the top, which is, according to Bard (Google’s AI), “some of the most important works of abstract art ever created.” A blank canvas. But it would be hoi-polloi and gauche of me to say, “It represents nothing, not even art.” A null “thing isn’t art; it’s just a nullity.
I summoned Bard to cough a couple more modern “art” pieces. Like this – can you tell me without reading further what it is?
Neither could I. Looks like a high school failure of something (Ashtray, glazed ceramic, Sterling Ruby).
Or this: I can see the “head” (at least that’s what Bard said it is), but can you?
Done by Oscar Murillo. It’s art, I get it (well, that’s what I’m being told to do). But back to that “gullibility” event horizon. Another word that can be used is “pretentious”:
The catalog “essay” gave the game away:
“The individual canvases are very much the DNA; they record that movement, the process of making.”
Oscar Murillo, 2013In Oscar Murillo’s practice, concepts of distance, displacement, and movement play a monumental role. He explores the themes of movement and change in location as well as physical activity in his work, which becomes a mixture of both the artist’s incisive inquiry into the geographies of space and a manifestation of his body in transit. His work is also defined by questions surrounding studio practice. In fact, it is a collaboration of the artist’s creative body and his creative environment, which merge into a variety of textures and layers. Before the work is elevated into the realm of fine art, he likes to expose every element of it to the real world. Always made on the floor of his studio, “a cradle of dust, dirt and pollution,” Murillo leaves his paintings lying for several months to wear them off and let them gather “DNA information.”
The present lot, Untitled, from 2011 certainly appears to layer the numerous activities that he performs in his studio. It combines oil paint, oil stick and graphite to result in a kaleidoscope of cobalt blues, urgently tangled, both expressive and aggressive but harmonious and beautiful. Whisks of various tones of blue are mixed to lines of grey and black to form a spontaneous and intuitive composition, relating to themes of distance, displacement, and movement. Left on the floor of his studio, dirt, dust and debris, more than just widely available materials, become as much component materials as oil paint, pastel or graphite. This process of democratization also adds an archival element to his production. By ignoring the formal ideas of painting but intensively processing materials, Murillo unwraps a consciously composed wildness based on things that make life and art.
It sold for $377,000. So what do *I* know about art? I still hold that there are a lot of people with a lot of money that want to be in the “in crowd” at all costs. Jr High and High School only got older and richer, but the same cliques exist.
Back to Lileks. He had the temerity to show what I understand to be real art – when it really spoke to all men’s souls and when it “connected” with “awe” in the artist and in what was meant to be awe-inspiring like these sculptures:
And this (I know I said three, but I meant four):
You instantly connect – I have no idea what the title is or who the sculptor was, but I see age, grief, and sorrow. I see the attention to detail in the fingers, the knuckles, and the forearms of skin, blood vessels, bone, and sinew. It is striking; it grabs.
Contrast that to the top image: detail vs nothingness. Life vs. nullity. Fullness vs emptiness. Skill is present in both, but I could NEVER do this sculpture – but I’m betting with a little bit of practice, I could get some rich guy or gal to buy my pretentious crud as long as I can wrap it up like that “essay”; that I could spin up (though it might make me ill in the process).
Most modern art is meaningless, with no foundation in reality. Our Society has moved in that direction with post-modernism along with “the present is unknowable, there is no absolute truth, there is no sure morality, no right or wrong.” Mere solipsism to make themselves feel superior to us in the “lower classes.”
While many hold that art is a mere reflection of society, too many, I believe, are the equivalent of Black Lives Matter, Social Justice, Transgenderism, and the turning inside out of our Education system to be not about academic rigor but molding children; another way to change what Society should be to THEIR liking and for their means. Look at the news, movies, TV, and the rest of the media: who controls it (no, do NOT leave a comment stating “The Jews” as I’ll ban you straight away)?
Yes, those that don’t like Liberty, Freedom, Choice, and a bunch of other things they don’t like. They do want serfs, however.
The post A Tale of Two Civilizations in Three Pictures appeared first on Granite Grok.
An awful lot of stupid tweets flow from DeSantis’ New Hampshire twitter-surrogates. For example, there was Jason Osborne’s silly claim that voters simply vote straight-ticket based on their choice for top-of-the-ticket and that, therefore, Trump as the nominee in 2024 guaranteed a Democrat majority in the New Hampshire House. Jason apparently has some issues with short-term memory: In 2020, with Trump at the top of the ticket, Republicans flipped 47 seats to take the majority in the New Hampshire House.
But this tweet from Melissa Blasek absolutely takes the cake. Indicting Trump for January 6th … which the Biden-regime DOJ has all but announced is coming … marks the open end of America as a free country. Autocracies, dictatorships, monarchies, and police states throw their political opponents in jail. Free countries do not. The coming Trump indictment should make manifest what has been apparent for some time … that America is a Police State.
Either Blasek is so Trump-deranged that she can’t see that America is now a Police State, or so Trump-deranged and hopelessly naive that she actually believes that the system will stop at Trump.
Here’s the tweet. Blasek is outraged … OUTRAGED … not that Trump will soon be a political prisoner (he has no chance in DC – the judges are total political hacks, and the jury pool are Democrats who believe that Republicans are Hitler), but that people may be more concerned about the Biden-regime arresting its main political rival than some policy-paper released by the DeSantis campaign.
The post An Incredibly Stupid Take On The Coming Trump Indictment (Jan. 6th) appeared first on Granite Grok.
New Hampshire public schools have been dumbed down for over a decade now. Even before the Common Core/Next Generation Science Standards, the State was using poorly crafted and dumbed-down academic standards for our public schools.
Who is to blame?
Before Common Core, New Hampshire’s academic standards were considered poor quality when compared to states like Massachusetts. Anyone who researches education policy understood which states had high-quality academic standards and which ones did not. During that time, some Governors and their Commissioners worked to improve their academic standards. Not in New Hampshire. During Governor Lynch’s term and Governor Hassan’s term, they didn’t lift a finger to improve the academic standards for children in our public schools. That legacy continued under Governor Sununu. He will leave office failing to improve the academic standards in our public schools.
Governor Sununu even took his kids out of the public schools to avoid this catastrophe. Most people who understand how poorly crafted the standards are, will either get their kids private tutoring or remove them from the public school.
Teachers across the state have no real choice when it comes to what they will teach in a classroom. Many schools have hired Curriculum Coordinators to try to align the curriculum to the dumbed-down Common Core/Next Gen. Standards. Teachers can embellish it a bit, but they are stuck using poorly crafted curricula. Unfortunately, we don’t hear much from the Unions either on this important subject. Everyone just accepts the dumbing down, and does nothing to help the kids in our public schools.
The radical political indoctrination coming from some teachers? Yes, they own that, but we can’t ignore all of the other players in this game!
So who’s really to blame?
We have a Governor who could have easily led New Hampshire to better academic standards. Governor DeSantis worked to improve their academic standards. We have a Commissioner of Education who could have prioritized academic excellence in our schools.
Superintendents will follow what you serve them. In this case, the state standardized test is Common Core aligned. In this era of teaching to the test, that means aligning to Common Core!
We have a Governor, Commissioner, and Superintendents who decided it’s not worth it to help public school students in New Hampshire. We have many school board members who go along with this. Teachers have no choice but to use the dumbed-down curriculum that aligns with the standards.
So who’s really to blame?
Democrats and Republicans on the state level have let our public schools and students down. School officials have let our students down. If you are pointing fingers at teachers, you need to understand who sets the agenda in their classrooms and start pointing your finger at them. This is one of the biggest education failures of the Sununu/Edelblut team.
The post Stop Blaming Teachers for the Education Failures at the State Level appeared first on Granite Grok.