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.

Every legislative session is presented with too many bills and, in recent years, too slim of a majority to get the good ones to the Governor. But because we have so many new ideas, there are always some you might not expect, like legislation to ban weather modification.

To be clear, I’m not making fun of the bill or its sponsors. In a world where some folks can’t shut up about unnecessary “emissions” or pollutants in our atmosphere, this should play well on both sides of the aisle. New Hampshire House Bill 1700 (HB1700),

[E]stablishes a regulatory process to prevent the intentional release of polluting emissions, in New Hampshire’s atmosphere and at ground level and provides penalties for violations. This bill requires reports of such violations to be made by state officials and members of the public to the department of environmental services air resources division of compliance and requires New Hampshire county sheriffs carry to enforce the provisions.

What emissions? The intentional release of polluting emissions, including cloud seeding, weather modification, excessive electromagnetic radio frequency, and microwave radiation.

The general court finds that many atmospheric activities such as weather modification, stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), solar radiation modification (SRM), and other forms of geoengineering, involving the intentional release of polluting emissions, harm human health and safety, the environment, agriculture, wildlife, aviation, state security, and the economy of the state of New Hampshire.

Without using the word chem-trails, which can trigger people, the bill does address a genuine set of circumstances. From public figures to leading universities, there is chatter about aerosolizing the atmosphere with material to block the sun. We have less information about what that means than we did about the COVID vaccines, and we can assume it is neither safe nor effective.

Absent the knowledge or understanding, knowing that the agents or agencies likely to suggest or attempt such a thing will lie about it. That our elites have, at best, a declining opinion of human life and, at worst, a commitment to end it in their depopulation quest, this is not a ridiculous piece of legislation.

One of the sponsors is a friend, so I’d expect them to offer some follow-up, but if I’m honest, I don’t know how far this bill will likely go. I hope we get some vigorous debate in the comments, but the current makeup of the State House and Senate do not suggest to me success with the understanding that you are guaranteed to miss 100% of the shots you never take.

There are factions who mean to spread things in the air above us. They are not shy about it, and if we lack any sense of transparency, limits, or regulation, we might find ourselves subject to man-caused atmospheric effects without knowledge of recourse.

This is worth discussing.

The post NH Bill Seeks to Ban Cloud Seeding and Other Forms of Atmospheric Geoengineering appeared first on Granite Grok.

I am writing with regard to the proposed bill to legalize assisted suicide in New Hampshire, which you have been (rightly) concerned about. I was horrified to learn that this is being proposed and packaged as a “medical freedom” bill.

I think one aspect you have not yet argued that is fundamentally important is that it is WORSE than the beginning of a slippery slope to eugenicism, such as Canada and the UK have undertaken in horrible ways. New Hampshire tried but ultimately failed to pass several key parental rights bills, including clear language protecting the decision-making rights of parents for minor children in medical scenarios. Children will NOT be the decision-makers for themselves right from the get-go.

It will literally be a life-and-death battle between parents and hospitals for the lives of children right from the beginning.

Because high profile cases like that of Ewa Kowalski are sadly not unique; children and minors are frequently removed from their parents’ guardianship in hospital situations when some officiating person does not see eye to eye with the parent or feels challenged by them (see the case of Justine Pelletier, from Connecticut, a few years ago, and Boston Children’s.) This is moving backward, not forward, in the cause of freedom!

I am morally opposed to suicide, but if you ask me, the issue is nowhere near being a philosophically consistent freedom position, either. One cannot simply ignore all the other legal apparatus and what it means in conjunction with one’s proposed legislation. If those freedom people who philosophically support the concept of a right to a death wish to formulate that as legislation and remain consistent, they must do so only after they have successfully warded off the state from the rights of parents, families, the religious, etc., in medical situations. Something that was grossly violated, I may add, for many thousands of Americans for the duration of Covid.

From the beginning, it is my belief that such a bill as this, if passed, will enable hospitals and doctors to take the decision to terminate out of the hands of parents and into their own when it comes to children. They always want our children.

From a very concerned mother of four and staunch supporter of genuine medical freedom.

The post A Life-And-Death Battle Between Parents and Hospitals for the Lives of Children appeared first on Granite Grok.