Oh, Love! The eternal rhythm, a symphony echoing through existence’s core! Is love a mere sentiment? Far from it, it’s the relentless beat in the human heart. Love, a master weaver, stitches reality’s fabric with intricate artistry, painting the world with hues of compassion, understanding, and boundless connection.

Love transcends time and breaks mortality’s shackles, granting glimpses into the infinite. It is the flame dancing with joy in newborn eyes, glowing with possibilities. Unbound by birth or death, love lingers like celestial fragrance, outlasting mortal limitations in the vast expanse.

If life’s a theatre, then love and only love take the lead, breathing life into the mundane, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, and guiding creativity’s flame. Love is a guiding star for art, poetry, patriotism, and philosophers’ pursuits, and love fuels unwavering fervor and unravels existence’s profound roots.

Love inspires, provokes emotions, and is an undisputed sovereign, ruling hearts with benevolence and poise. Love is the alchemy that transmutes despair into joy. Love is like the magician wielding its wand with divine precision and turning the commonplace into the extraordinary with regal decision.
Love, the sacred fire, warms the coldest corners, turning dwellings into havens, and is a foundation for homes and the mortar binding families in unbreakable bonds. Lit by love’s flames, hearths bring hope, dispelling shadows and illuminating unity’s path.

Love conducts the symphony as life’s music plays, melodies of shared moments.

What molds existence’s disparate elements into a masterpiece? Love, the sculptor – beyond mere attractive features, a synergy of souls connecting, creating profound beauty. An artisan of aesthetics, love illuminates gestures and smiles, crafting a beauty radiating from within, authentic and combined.

In the grand ballet of existence, love pirouettes with grace and passion. Without it, we’re spectators in a monochrome world devoid of vibrancy. With love, life transforms into a kaleidoscope, with emotions vividly painted, transcending challenges and bringing joy and fulfillment.

In love’s divine embrace, Earth becomes a celestial haven, mere mortals ascend to god-like stature, embraced by a timeless force.

Not a fleeting emotion but an eternal flame echoing through eternity, love is all we need – the alpha and omega guiding us to heaven on Earth.

And yet, even amidst the anguish and heartache, love’s essence remains eternal. It is a force that cannot be extinguished, for it resides in the deepest recesses of our souls. Though my heart may bear the scars of betrayal, I know that love has the power to heal and mend. Through the depths of our pain, we discover our resilience and capacity to rise above the ironies of life and find solace in the light of forgiveness.

Love, with all its complexities and contradictions, remains the guiding force that leads us through the darkest nights towards the promise of a new dawn.

The post Night Cap: The Power of Love appeared first on Granite Grok.

The polls show it, and the voters swapping parties prove it. There is a movement away from the Democrats and policies that do not resemble the Party of JFK or even Bill Clinton, for that matter.

2023 will be known as the year the Radicals went too far for even their own Party, and many are jumping off the Radical bandwagon and hoping it did not go so far down the wrong track that there is no getting back.

2023 was a disastrous year for America unless you intended to complete Obama’s mission to transform this once-great country into a Socialist dystopia. If that is your case, you partied last night like it was 1999.

2023 will be remembered as the year of the mandates and restrictions placed on the masses by a President with such a low approval rating that he has no chance of reelection. He went all in and did as much damage as possible, knowing he would only have one shot. But, Boy, did he make that shot hurt.

We have suffered the effects of bad presidents, but we always caught the problem in time so the next commander-in-chief could right the ship. Jimmy Carter was considered by many to be our worst president. He damaged our country at home and abroad, but Ronald Reagan came along and relit the beacon on the hill. There may be no Ronald Reagan-like president strong enough to right the wrongs of Joe Biden.

To list all of the radical, no, extreme actions taken by Biden and the Left would depress even the most optimistic. But we must write them all down to realize how badly we are hurt so we know how, or if, we can fix the mess.

Starting with the evacuation, or surrender, of Afghanistan, we showed we are not the world’s superpower but also that we lack strength and leadership. We turned away from twenty years of effort and walked away, leaving Americans behind as well as enough equipment to arm a small nation. Yet, we have the audacity to believe we can dictate the terms of engagement to Israel, which is defending herself after being attacked. We keep putting billions of dollars into Ukraine like a drunken gambler sitting at a slot machine waiting for cherries but only spinning lemons. We cannot defend our borders but tell others how to protect theirs. We are no longer the America that our needy friends can turn to for help.

At home, we squandered our precious energy independence for the sake of a dysfunctional effort to save the planet. We have imposed a death sentence on the internal combustion engine that built this great land. We think we can replace it with a battery-driven alternative and then rely on our number one nemesis, China, to give us the batteries. We are destroying our open land and seas with solar farms and windmills that are inefficient as they are ugly, and we call it progress. We are foolish and shortsighted and have not devised a plan that will work.

We still have a crime epidemic that is not unique to the big cities. Crime increases are everywhere and will escalate as the illegal aliens continue to pour across the Border and spread throughout the land. Fentanyl is still killing Americans and is just as critical as the human flow across the Rio Grande. The Border is hemorrhaging at 3 million illegals per year, and Biden, Mayorkas, and Harris contend the Border is secure.

Finally, we have inflation. Biden continues to preach the benefits of Bidenomics, but the reality is not positive. Inflation continues to outpace income, and with states putting Minimum Wage Laws into effect today, with some as high as $20.00 per hour, many will be seeing massive layoffs. That is not going to ignite the base.

There is nothing positive to report about Biden’s performance. Well, that is not 100% true. Biden does have only one year left in the Oval Office, which is good news for Americans.

The post Night Cap: The Pendulum May Be Swinging But Can We Recover appeared first on Granite Grok.

I’ve read convincing arguments that any number of individuals who are or were ineligible for the office of Vice President or President of the United States may have held the job or run for it. Why should this year’s exercise be any different?

Barry Soetoro may not have been the first birth blanket outrage, but he was not the last. We’ve had one since then. Kamala Harris has been identified as ineligible for the office she occupies.

In a 2020 Newsweek article, Eastman argued that Harris would only qualify as a constitutionally eligible natural-born citizen if her parents were “lawful permanent residents at the time of her birth.” However, in the case of Harris, if her parents were “merely temporary visitors,” then she patently did not qualify as a natural-born citizen pursuant to Article II, Section 1.

Harris’ ineligibility was no more of a deterrent than an obvious lack of qualification (for her or her boss), but since Barry O, the question of qualification tends to illicit outrage (how dare you!) in proportion to the amount of melanin in your skin, unless you are a Republican. Some have identified Vivek Ramaswamy as ineligible despite his darker tone, and Nikki Haley, whose status as a Republican is suspect to many, is having her citizenship qualifications questioned.

In Nikki Haley’s case, it is well documented that neither one of her parents were citizens, natural born or naturalized, at the time of her birth in 1972. It has been previously reported that a South Carolina-based newspaper included a quote from the Office of Nikki Haley, stating that “her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth in 1972 and did not become citizens until 1978 and 2003.” Thus, although the parents may have been lawful residents at the time of her birth on South Carolina soil, which may or may not confer her with the privileges of citizenship, it is important to note that she does not qualify for the Constitution’s higher requirement of natural-born citizenship.

Haley is not my first choice, so I’ll be accused of being a bully or some such thing for bringing it up, but two facts are indisputable. First, the Constitution on this question has been ignored repeatedly, and second, the facts regarding natural born versus Birthright do not lean in Nikki’s favor. I’ll add one more because it may be the only point we can all agree on. Democrats will rediscover a devotion to originalism to undermine or challenge her legitimacy to run if nominated or, if she wins, to hold the office. This, therefore, suggests that we at least listen to the argument so we can intelligently make a case one way or the other.

A central concern for the architects of the nascent American republic was that only the most qualified statesmen be eligible for the country’s highest office. In his Commentaries, Joseph Story elaborated that “[i]t is indispensable… that the president should be a natural born citizen of the United States… [T]he general propriety of the exclusion of foreigners, in common cases, will scarcely be doubted by any sound statesman.” Joseph Story, who enjoyed over a thirty-year reign as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, famously elaborated the principles of the republicanism of Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall well into the mid-nineteenth century. His Commentaries specifically distinguished between natural born and naturalized citizens, the latter of whom were ineligible to run for president, despite qualifying for the privileges of citizenship. This view is supported by the best legal commentary of the day, Emmerich de Vattel’s Law of Nature and of Nations, a contemporaneous authority for the Founding Fathers on questions of citizenship. de Vattel’s work states that “[t]he natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.”

I believe the Constitution is clear, but we’ve found ourselves saddled with a general ignorance or indifference that would make that matter. Neither of Haley’s parents was a citizen when she was born. She is eligible to be a citizen, but neither president nor vice president by this interpretation, and I’m sure it came up before she ran or since, and they’ve decided they can get around it.

Okay.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but getting around the Constitution’s limitation on the function and power of the general government is a leading concern among people who are more likely to vote in a Republican primary. Would it be too much to ask what other limitations of the document they are prepared to subvert or ignore?

Update: I made a few post-publication edits. ‘Melanin,’ not ‘melatonin,’ and instead of undermining a challenge to her legitimacy, we’ve changed it to undermine or challenge.

The post It’s Nikki Haley’s Turn to Be Ineligible for the Office of President of the United States appeared first on Granite Grok.

Greetings and happy new year! A suggested New Year’s resolution that doesn’t involve diet and exercise is in the title above, with emphasis on the word “town.” I say that for two reasons. One of them is that local elections are arguably just as important as their state and federal counterparts.

The other is that cities have their elections in odd-numbered years. Welcome to 2024. Living in a trashy blue city that just dropped the ball in a recent and excellent window of opportunity to remove the mayor and drain the swamp, I am urging you, faithful readers, not to let such a train wreck happen in YOUR TOWN. Local elections matter. A separate statement could be made about how who is locally elected affects your future property taxes and how local funds are (mis)used, but there is a solution. Step up to be your “town crier.”

Primary Day, January 23, is coming soon and a perfect opportunity to hang out at the polls poised in a non partisan manner to make the PSA. A talented and generous veteran graphic artist has already designed the template and has the September and November dates, in addition to January 23, already populated. All you need to do is provide the local dates on which town voters must vote. This varies from town to town, and sometimes there is more than one date. Loudon, pictured, is an example.

Interested people can visit here to get the graphic for their town and order distribution materials at a discount. (cards, magnets, etc.) Or make your own leaflets by printing the image. But hurry! January 23 is approaching soon, and that’s the first big distribution opportunity. If you can profile voters as they leave the polls, approach potentially like-minded ones and remind them that only a small number of people turn out to vote, usually people on town payroll and their families and friends. Tell them their votes are needed for the reasons I mentioned, and hand them something with the important dates to take home and mark their calendars. If you don’t do this in time for January 23, there are always Saturday mornings at your local dump to put in an hour or two, just like candidates do when election time is near. You can do this at or outside other large gathering events, but keep in mind soliciting issues and cold weather as town voting usually happens in the late winter and early spring.

We’ve all seen those bumper stickers that say, “Think globally, act locally.” Here is your opportunity to act locally. And if you live in a city, lend a hand in the suburbs. Suburbs matter. It’s those voters that get us city slickers representation in the Senate and executive council. Do them a solid.

The post “Resolve” To Help Improve Voter Turnout in Town Elections. appeared first on Granite Grok.