How ironic is it that the Left would choose death as the political hill to die on? Killing unborn babies is so important to their voters that they are willing to abort the economy, public safety, national defense, property rights, and liberty itself in exchange.

What is evermore baffling is that Republicans would stay home instead of trying to stop it. The abortion issue isn’t just about some notion that own have a right to their bodies (Democrats have proven that to be a lie). It is that abortion candidates are a threat to our very existence. By supporting political candidates who promise to protect that “choice,” you have to give up the right to choose anything else, perhaps ever again.

Democrats who run on abortion are going to make every other aspect of your existence difficult, if not miserable, and our current circumstances are proof.

Housing costs, food inflation, energy prices, open borders, national security, printing money to pay for foreign wars, grooming children, harassing parents, the rising surveillance state, more mandates, higher taxes, a partisan police state that can’t even keep us safe, picking winners and losers, driving small businesses into failure and bankruptcy, unemployment, over-spending, the government medical industrial complex, loss of privacy, all of that, and more.

It’s not just about whether or not you are ending the life of an unborn child. By electing these candidates, you are aborting the ability to choose anything but what the government wants for you.

You abort opportunity.

You abort liberty.

You abort America.

The post Voting For ‘Abortion’ Kills America appeared first on Granite Grok.

There appears to be no issue that motivates voters as much as Abortion rights. You can maybe add the legalization of recreational Marijuana as a close second. There were a limited number of states with elections this year, but three states in particular should be warning signs for both Parties.

Ohio and Virginia showed the power of Abortion rights as voting was unusually heavy in both states. Voters in Ohio blocked any future restrictions on the phase of pregnancy that a woman can choose to terminate her pregnancy.

Virginia was a more significant blow to Republicans and shows where the priorities are for Democrats. Republican Governor Youngkin has been making incredible strides in the traditionally Blue Commonwealth by restoring the parent’s role in the education process and bringing stability and savings to Virginia’s financial condition. Youngkin had the House on his side and hoped to flip the Senate. Voters were motivated to stop Republicans from restricting Abortion to the first fifteen weeks of a pregnancy. They came out and voted for Abortion over their children, kept the Senate Blue, and took the House back from the Republicans. These results put up a roadblock for Youngkin’s agenda for the remainder of his only term as Governor. Virginia has a one-and-done law for Governor, and Youngkin’s term ends in 2026, meaning gridlock for two years in Virginia.

The Republicans did maintain the corner office in Mississippi as the Governor was re-elected. There was no abortion question on the ballot. The GOP has to solve several issues before 2024. They must develop a stance on Abortion that is palatable for both sides of the aisle. To say no to Abortion will no longer work. There must be a viable time frame and concessions for specific situations, such as rape and incest. Possession of Marijuana is still a Federal Offense, but the states are overriding the Federal Statute if it is the will of the people. New Hampshire is holding out on Pot Shops, but my adopted state of Maine has a pot shop every mile on state highways. The pot industry is now the third largest industry in Maine, behind only Lobster and Wood. Trust me, when you drive in Maine, you know pot use is far too prevalent.

Republicans also need to embrace early voting and strengthen their ground game. One is a concession or compromise, and the latter is a need to get onto the street and talk to the people. Republicans can solve this issue by rolling up their sleeves and doing the work. We cannot sit back and wait for Biden to fail so badly that we don’t win the election but Biden loses it. The polls continue to favor Trump over Biden, but Trump is one guilty verdict away from these polls being worthless. The Republican debates trudge on with the battle for second place. These debates and all of the second-tier candidates are insignificant as long as Donald Trump is a free man and the leading candidate.

With two candidates under such intense legal issues, Trump with his 91 indictments and Biden with his looming impeachment action and possible indictments, we have never seen a Presidential election with so many potential complications that may derail either or both leading candidates. The Republicans cannot fail in 2024 and need strong leadership from Ronna McDaniel, head of the RNC. A unified, concerted effort is needed to end this Biden/Obama destruction of America. As for the Democrats, unless there is a ballot question for Abortion or Marijuana, there is no motivation for their supporters. Killing babies and getting high is more important to Democrats than a solid economy, stopping inflation, returning us to energy independence, and getting our schools back to educating, not indoctrinating, our children. Democrats should be embarrassed by the message they sent to America last night, but you need a conscience to be embarrassed.

The post Off Year Elections Show Abortion Still Number One Issue appeared first on Granite Grok.

Prager U has published a “short” documentary on X titled DETRANS. “The Dangers of Gender-Affirming Care serves as a wake-up call to all of us: our children are in danger and it’s up to us to protect them.”

I’m adding it as an extra post with comments (which we can engage in below in comments), if you are interested.

WATCH NOW!

PragerU’s NEW short documentary DETRANS: The Dangers of Gender-Affirming Care serves as a wake-up call to all of us: our children are in danger and it’s up to us to protect them.

— PragerU (@prageru) November 8, 2023

The post Prager U (Short) Documentary – DETRANS appeared first on Granite Grok.

Olympic gold medalist Caster Semenya has set a new standard for small talk at meetings, banquets, weddings, or any gathering where you might encounter women you’ve never met before. And I’m sure it’s likely to catch on as quickly as the culture that justifies it.

Do you have testicles?

Maybe don’t lead with that one. I don’t think it is ready to be the ice-breaker opening, certainly not as a pickup line, unless you are looking for women with testicles, and I’m thinking with rare exceptions, you may not need to ask. But a growing number of women have them, testicles, and it’s not their fault. It is something with which they have to contend while robbing women without testicles – at least in competitive sports – of scholarships, opportunities, and even awards.

And none of that is their fault.

It is also unfair to judge them or limit them from competing with scrotum-less women. It is not (for example) Caster Semenya’s fault that “she” was born with testicles or the levels of testosterone they afford “her” or other “women” burdened with the deformity. But Athletic associations and national and international courts have noticed the difference and chosen to have a say in whether that “deformity” does, in fact, matter.

[A] Swiss court upheld 2018 regulations from the IAAF, the track-and-field world governing body now named World Athletics, barring Semenya and other athletes with “differences of sex development” (DSD) from running in certain races, including the 800-m, unless they lowered their testosterone levels to a certain threshold via medical intervention. Semenya refused, and she’s continued to fight the regulations.

Why would they step in?

On June 30, 2019, South African runner Caster Semenya—already a three-time world champ and two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 800-m—lined up at the starting line at Stanford University, to roars from the American crowd. She would win the prestigious Prefontaine Classic, with a time of 1 min. 55.70 sec., the fastest 800-m time ever run on American soil. It was her 31rd straight victory in the 800-m. Fans crowded around a fence after it was over to voice their appreciation for the superstar.

Caster’s testicles would appear to provide an advantage against textile-less women in – at the very least – the 800 meter, and after 31 consecutive victories, you’d be right to ask why women would even compete in this category. Sorry, I mean women without testicles. And so we see the problem. While Caster may be of the opinion that testicles don’t make him less of a woman, they do appear to make him a better athlete than women who lack them, sort of like a performance-enhancing drug.

Governing bodies have a vested interest in regulating the use of performance-enhancing drugs even when they are not your fault. As such – at least in the case of the IAAF – women with testicles will need to compete against other “equally impaired” individuals whether they identify as women or not.

By”equipment” advantage, if you like, to achieve the parity missing from, say, the women’s 800 meters.

The alternative is, of course, a more balanced women’s field in which they all have testicles, but then what about the women without them? What happens to their rights? Is this the new glass ceiling? The foundation of second-class citizenship, at least in contests of sport. And who will step up to defend them from this new discrimination?

And why did the women’s rights movement, after finally achieving most if not all of their aims, decide to toss women under the equipment bus?

“My testicles don’t make me less of a woman” – Caster Semenya

Of course, this outlandish statement went totally unchallenged this morning

Semenya is not a woman with high testosterone levels. He is a male with normal testosterone levels. pic.twitter.com/LKhkP7SnlN

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) November 7, 2023

The post Night Cap: Women’s Olympic Gold Medalist says, “Testicles … Don’t Make Me Less a Woman” appeared first on Granite Grok.

In open defiance of several United States Supreme Court rulings on gun ownership, Illinois has enacted a ban on certain kinds of commonly owned firearms and has required owners of other kinds of commonly owned firearms to register them with the state.

So far, compliance with the registration requirement seems to be well under 1%.  That’s the good news.

The bad news is that if you refuse to comply and you get caught the first time, that’s a misdemeanor, but the second time it’s a felony.  Which means you lose1 your right to own any kind of gun.

In other words, if the government says you have to register your guns, and you decide that it has no authority to do so, you are no longer law-abiding.  You are a felon — guilty of the ‘crime’ of believing that the federal constitution actually means what it says.

So according to the government — and for that matter, according to the NRA and the vast majority of ‘gun rights supporters’ that I’ve met — you can’t have guns.

And even when the Supreme Court gets around to striking down that law in a few years, your felony conviction will still stand.  So unless you have a pile of money and several years to devote to having it overturned, that won’t be of much help to you.

It’s time for people who think that only ‘law-abiding Americans’ have the right to keep and bear arms to rethink that position, which is what allows laws like this to exist in the first place.

At the very least, simply refusing to be disarmed (or to give the government the information it would need later to disarm you) shouldn’t be grounds for disarming you.  That’s the kind of thing that we should be reading about only in novels like Catch-22 and not in our law books.

¹ To be more precise, you don’t actually lose the right, because it is inalienable, which means it can’t be taken from you or even surrendered voluntarily.  If you’re a person, you have the right to self-defense and to own the tools necessary for self-defense.  But the state will punish you for trying to exercise that right.

The post Catch-223? appeared first on Granite Grok.

If you shop at convenience stores, you may have noticed that checking for proof of age during tobacco & alcohol purchases has quietly moved from viewing the customer’s driver’s license to electronically scanning our licenses.  I first noticed this at Circle K stores and then found the same practice in others.

Our privacy is once again under attack in a seemingly “small” way, but I became alarmed enough to dive into the legality.

A trusted State Rep pointed me to state law RSA 263:12.  The last section of this law prohibits the scanning of my driver’s license with all of my personal information on it without my consent (with an exception for pawnbrokers, scrap metal dealers, and other secondhand dealers).

RSA 263:12 states in part,

It shall be a misdemeanor for any person to:

1. Knowingly scan, record, retain, or store, in any electronic form or format, personal information, as defined in RSA 260:14, obtained from any license, unless authorized by the department. Nothing in this paragraph shall prohibit a person from transferring, in non-electronic form or format, personal information contained on the face of a license to another person, provided that the consent of the license holder is obtained if the transfer is not to a law enforcement agency.

I filed a complaint with the NH Attorney General’s office that the law – as well as my Constitutional Right to privacy – was violated. The response I received confirmed my concern as I was pointed to the phrase in RSA 263:12 X “unless authorized by the department.”

The “Department” referred to in RSA 263:12 is the NH Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), which is run by unelected bureaucrats and political appointees free to push their political ideologies with apparently no desire by the NH Department of Justice to provide any oversight or enforcement.

Below is how The Department of Motor Vehicles and the NH Attorney General’s office washed their hands of their responsibilities to monitor and safely regulate who can access, scan, and store our personal data. They closed the case in typical Jedi Mind Trick fashion, inferring “there was nothing to see here” – but as you will see, can not back up their finding of no wrongdoing.

The Attorney General’s office identified DMV “rule” Saf-C 5606.05 which was written by those ideological, political appointees in the DMV, to unconstitutionally violate our Right to privacy.  Therefore, I was told that Circle K was “authorized” (by those appointed ideologues) to scan my license electronically, and the case was closed.

DMV rule Saf-C 5606.05 states:

(a) Notwithstanding any rule to the contrary, the department authorizes the scanning of personal information from any license in any electronic form or format so long as all the following conditions are met:

(1) The equipment used to scan such personal information does not visibly identify any personal information other than driver license number and name;

(2) The equipment used to scan personal information does not retain, store, or transfer any personal information, other than driver license number and name, for any period of time; and

(3) The equipment used to scan personal information does not store any personal information, other than driver license number and name, in a central repository disaster recovery central repository, such as a cold site or hot site, whether on-site or in a remote location.

So, I asked the AG’s office three simple questions:

Before closing the case, did you confirm the following:

1. Verify the equipment “does not visibly identify any personal information, other than driver license number and name”? If so, how did you do this? Please provide documentation to prove this finding. Driver licenses have other personal information on them, including date of birth, address, etc…
2. Verify the equipment “does not retain, store or transfer any personal information, other than driver license number and name, for any period of time.” Please provide proof the equipment that is used to scan licenses by Circle K does not retain unauthorized data.
3. Please provide proof that you verified the Circle K equipment “does not store any personal information, other than driver license number and name, in a central repository, disaster recovery central repository, such as a cold site or hot site whether on-site or in a remote location.”

It appears they did not.

Instead of answering my questions, they told me I had to talk with the DMV – but could not/would not give me a contact at “The Department.”  I found that to be a strange response from an investigative body that is tasked with enforcing the law based on facts.

How could the AG’s office close the case and not have answers to the very pertinent questions I raised? Did Circle K violate the law or not?

Stay tuned…

The post Are Convenience Stores Violating Your Privacy? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Aaron Day is running for President, but not to win. He is on a mission to increase awareness about a looming issue he believes will come to the fore before November 2024, and it could mean the end of liberty in America as we know it.

I’ve known Aaron for a number of years in various capacities as a candidate for office, grassroots activist, and in a number of roles in between. He recently wrote a book and is traveling around the country talking to audiences, other Presidential candidates, Senators, and others about the threat of digital currency and how close we actually are to having one.

Note: The podcast is presented as is. The working concept is five questions, uncut. The video was recorded on Riverside FM and was not altered or edited. Length will depend on the answers, but the target is 10-15 minutes. This maiden voyage is a few minutes longer, but as noted, these will not be edited.

Here is my interview with Aaron Day. [Watch it on YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, or GAB.]

The post Watch: Five Questions with Presidential Candidate Aaron Day appeared first on Granite Grok.

Almost eighty years ago, Margaret Scoggin, a librarian at the New York Public Library, made an odd choice. As one of the founders of the NYPL children’s branch in the early 1940s, Scoggin had been contributing a column to Library Journal called “Books for Older Boys and Girls.”  In 1944, she inexplicably decided that her articles should instead be published under the title “Books for Young Adults.”

This decision catapulted the group of children for whom she was recommending books into an age bracket to which they did not actually belong.  It is to Miss Scoggin, therefore, who first coined the term “young adult,” that we owe the existence of this illogical category used only by librarians and publishers to promote books for readers aged twelve and up who are actually still children.

The American Library Association arbitrarily defines a “young adult” as a library patron between the ages of twelve and eighteen. This category does not only apply to public library patrons but also includes middle and high school students who use their school libraries.  Legally, however, adulthood is not attained until a person turns eighteen, so the youngest adult cannot possibly be younger than eighteen years old.  The age at which an individual becomes an adult also called the “age of majority,” is set at eighteen years in forty-seven states (in Alabama, Nebraska, and Mississippi, you have to be even older).

Medically, adulthood is similarly defined.  The American Medical Association and the National Institutes of Health only consider those who are eighteen and older to be adults; 13 to 17-year-olds are categorized as “adolescents.”  Considering these standards, “young adult” emerges as an illogical term.  “Pre-adults,” odd as it sounds, would make more sense, being similar to the term “preteen,” which is used, according to Merriam-Webster, to designate a child younger than thirteen. (The trendy word “tween” is also frequently used in libraries to specify children between young childhood and adolescence, generally ages 8-12.)

So, what explains this push by librarians and publishers to erroneously refer to children as adults?  Is it merely an innocuous marketing technique, or is the motivation behind it more insidious?  Some more library history may help to answer this question.  Where Scoggin got the notion to suddenly refer to older children as young adults is unclear, but in speculating about her reasons for suggesting this change, a look at the influences upon her, including her educational background might shed some light on this mystery.

In the 1940s, Scoggin attended Columbia University’s School of Library Service, the first “library school” established in the United States.  Two decades earlier, Columbia University had become the epicenter of Communist intellectual activity in the United States led by Frankfurt School intellectuals who relocated there from Germany.  It is well documented that Columbia University’s Teachers College and other departments at this institution of “higher education” were strongly influenced by Communist ideology at this time, so it is likely that the library school was similarly affected.

In the past year, the political infiltration of the American Library Association has become quite obvious as self-proclaimed Marxist Emily Drabinski has taken over the leadership of the organization.  Considering the origins of training programs for librarians, however, the roots of ALA’s ideological takeover may likely be traced back to the time of Margaret Scoggin.

Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Chris Rufo recently appeared on Fox’s Jesse Watters Primetime. In the beginning of the segment, “Dirty Books Are Being Used to Advance the Marxist Dream,” a clip was shown of Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Director of ALA’s “Office for Intellectual Freedom,” admitting to a “sustained messaging” program to “reframe” and “promote” inappropriate books on sexual themes as “diverse materials …that are about inclusion and fairness.”  When asked why the ALA is pushing this agenda, Rufo explained, “The goal of Marxist political leaders since the beginning was always to abolish the nuclear family,” an institution which they consider one of the “impediments to the revolution,” and to have kids reject “notions of ‘heteropatriarchy’” to “advance the revolution” and “to dissolve the moral notions of children and their families.”

One of the goals of Marxism, as Rufo suggests, is to eliminate parental authority so that children become mere wards of the state.  The sooner children are not under the control of their parents, the sooner they will be more easily controlled by the government.  Indeed, Karl Marx called for the abolition of the family in The Communist Manifesto because he believed that children were being exploited by their parents.  Considering its current agenda, the values of the American Library Association appear to align with Marx, and its organizational structure supports its agenda.

Just as there is a separate section in most public libraries designated as “young adult,” the American Library Association has a distinct branch called the Young Adults Library Services Association (YALSA).  It should be no big surprise that Margaret Scoggin, thanks to her efforts to promote “young adult” literature, was appointed the first president of YALSA’s precursor, the Young Adult Services Division, which was founded in 1957.  This organization was rebranded as YALSA in 1992 and continues its mission of influencing the publishing industry and libraries nationwide in accordance with its Marxist ideology.

YALSA’s recent award-winning books clearly reflect its woke agenda.  Jason Reynolds is YALSA’s recipient of the 2023 Margaret A. Edwards Award, established in 1988, which “honors an author, as well as a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature.”  What was one of Reynolds’s “significant and lasting” contributions to YA literature?—a book he co-authored in 2020 with CRT-guru Ibram X. Kendi titled Stamped: Racism, Anti-racism, and You.

Meanwhile, the YALSA Printz Award is given to “a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature.”  This year’s prize went to All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir, a novel based on a victim/oppressor worldview, which Kirkus Reviews praises for confronting “head-on the complicated realities of life in a world that is not designed for the oppressed to thrive in.” In Scout’s Honor, by Lily Anderson, one of the four honorable mention books in this category, “the cast displays an effervescent mix of racial and ethnic identities” (also from Kirkus Reviews), which certainly checks off the box for any ALA-award winning book requiring that its theme relates to racial or gender ideology.

In the latter category are the three other “honorable mention” books for the 2023 Printz Award.  These include Icebreaker, featuring a gay romance between two hockey players, When the Angels Left the Old Country, in which, according to Kirkus Reviews, “Queerness and gender fluidity thread through both the human and supernatural characters,” and Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality, a book that “offers nature-based analogs for many types of human sexual orientation and gender identity” according to a BookPage review.

With all of the YALSA Printz-ward-winning books being geared towards racial and sexual themes, there is an obvious overemphasis on woke ideology in material recommended for readers aged 12-18 (ALA’s arbitrary definition of “young adult”).

As part of the obvious agenda of libraries towards getting woke literature into the hands of older children, ALA supports all efforts to allow this age group to access these books without parental knowledge.  The ALA believes that children should be allowed to read books like Gender Queer and Lawn Boy without any parental consent, even if such books are shelved in the adult section of the library.  Article VII of the ALA’s “Library Bill of Rights,” which was not added until 2019, eighty years after the original “Bill of Rights” was written, states that all people, no matter how old, “possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use.”

This initially sounds like a good thing until you realize that it undermines those parental rights that should supersede it.  ALA also “opposes all attempts to restrict access to library services, materials, and facilities based on the age of library users.” Most current state laws maintain the confidentiality of library records for all ages so that parents are not permitted to know what books their children are reading.  The ALA is just fine with this situation and opposes all efforts to amend state law so that parents would be allowed to access their children’s library records.

Considering how strongly the ALA promotes woke literature to children, baffled parents are left wondering why.  The answer is simple: the American Library Association is just following the Marxist dictate to undermine the authority of parents.  That’s why libraries, predominantly managed by adherents to the ALA agenda, can’t just let kids be kids.  To weaken the family, kids must become adults (or “young adults”) as soon as possible!

The cancer that had its roots decades ago has metastasized, and the only cure lies with parents and concerned citizens who vehemently reject the indoctrination supported by the American Library Association.  They must support all efforts to have their towns and states cut financial ties with ALA, elect conservative library trustees who will reject ALA’s toxic agenda, and demand that their state representatives support legislation allowing parents to have access to their children’s library records.

The post Why Can’t They Just Let Kids Be Kids? appeared first on Granite Grok.

I’d call this developing, and that’s not just a photography play on words. Pictures have hit the internet taken by photographers who appear to have been embedded with Hamas militants as they invaded Isreal.

The AP, CNN, Reuters, and The New York Times used footage and photos from reporters embedded with Hamas terrorists during their slaughter of hundreds of Jews.

These Western media outlets then posted the photos in their coverage of this horrendous surprise attack on Israel.

AP reporter Hassan Eslaiah took photos and video while traveling with Hamas killers during the massacre. Hassan also provided photos to CNN.

Yousef Masoud provided photos to The New York Times.

Hassan Eslaiah was seen with Hamas leader Yahya, Sinwar following the slaughter of Jews.

I don’t suppose we’ll ever learn how they knew to be there before the events of October 7th. You know, to capture the history of it.

On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions.

What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically.

As ghoulish as that sounds – a word that keeps popping up to describe the premeditation media’s indifference to the death and destruction they signed up to record – what are the odds one or more of these “reporters” gets nominated for a Pulitzer?

The post ICYMI – The Media Had “Reporters” Embedded With Hamas as it Invaded Israel appeared first on Granite Grok.