With three days of all-day broadcasting and the prep to make sure that all happened without too many hiccups, I did not have time to choose a commenter of the week for last week. Yet. I will.

We will announce that on Wednesday and reach out to them for an address to which we will ship a Grok Goodie.

Thanks for your patience.

As for all the broadcasting, that will get sliced up and shared here in the coming days, though, admittedly, Post-Primary, so some of it might not be as fresh, but it will provide contrast to the actual results.

That could not be helped.

The post Comment of the Week (for Last Week) Will be Named Wednesday appeared first on Granite Grok.

President Joe Biden does not appear on the 2024 New Hampshire Presidential Primary ballot. As you drive the backroads of New Hampshire, you see yard signs urging Democrats to write in Joe Biden on Tuesday’s ballot.

This effort seems like a futile move to push the President to a victory in a state that he has abandoned, dissed, belittled, and showed disregard for the Constitution of the country and New Hampshire. Biden is not on the ballot for many reasons, but none are valid.

You need to review history for Biden’s primary reason. In 2020, Biden had horrific showings in the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary. His third attempt at the White House was dead until Representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC) came to his friend’s rescue. With South Carolina next on the Primary schedule, Clyburn pulled out all the stops to manufacture a win for Biden, who then rolled over the Democrat field to win the nomination. Jim Clyburn and South Carolina were the kingmakers in 2020.

Biden had the DNC move South Carolina ahead of New Hampshire in the 2024 schedule to reward Clyburn and South Carolina, stripping the First in the Nation label from the Granite State. The problem is that NH stipulates in its state Constitution that it must be the first primary election, regardless of any other state’s actions. NH responded to the DNC and scheduled the NH Primary a week before the SC election. This move caused Biden to get vindictive. He first refused to file paperwork to be on the NH ballot, and then he had the DNC designate there would be no delegates from NH at the Democrat Convention. Spiteful Biden made NH irrelevant in choosing the Democrat candidate for President for the 2024 election. With Biden’s actions, why should anyone waste a write-in vote for this man?

The polls show Biden with a significant lead in New Hampshire, but that is because he has derailed the primary process. He would not acknowledge any of his Democrat challengers, Kennedy or Williamson, by debating them and, on several occasions, denied requests from Kennedy for security assistance. Biden is working hard to stay out of the public eye for the entire election cycle. He does not want anyone to see the aging man in charge or hear his disjointed message. His only chance of winning reelection is to stay in his basement, as he did in 2020.

While Biden hides from Americans, he has two primary surrogates who will campaign for him and a willing media to assist him in any way possible. The First Lady, Jill Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris have begun hitting the media trail. Jill Biden did a softball session with Mika Brzezinski of Morning Joe on MSNBC. This poor showing was a rehearsed session that should have been paid for by the Biden Campaign. Kamala visited the set of The View for a love fest. There was not a single hard-hitting question in either, and that is what we can expect for 2024.

The results from New Hampshire will not be surprising, but the effects of what Biden did to the state needs to be reported. Let’s see how the networks tell the story on Tuesday night.

The post Biden Ignoring NH Speaks Volumes appeared first on Granite Grok.

According to CBC News in Canada, Aaron Trachtenberg is a resident in internal medicine at the University of Calgary. He has concluded that Medically Assisted Dying (MAiD) could save the Canadian Health Care System up to 136 million dollars.

I assume that’s annual savings, not that it matters to the soulless bean counters.

“In a resource-limited health care system, anytime we roll out a large intervention there has to be a certain amount of planning and preparation and cost has to be a part of that discussion,” Trachtenberg said, adding the provinces’ differing plans could impact the cost structure of implementation.

“It’s just the reality of working in a system of finite resources.”

The report estimated that about one to four per cent of Canadians will die using physician-assisted death. Of those, 50 per cent will be between the ages of 60 and 80.

This is a very public admission to a point I’ve made repeatedly. In any government-controlled system, the illusion of empathy ultimately boils down to a balance sheet. That might sound familiar, and it should. Socialists demanding things like government-run medicine always say it about private corporations. They leave out that private corporations don’t typically have law-making authority and police powers. On the other hand, the government has both with the added benefit of believing there is no power greater to check potential abuse.

Related: Read More about Medically Assisted Dying and the Slippery Slope

To be trite, a government with the power to give has the power to take it away. Governments run by these sorts of people -who are attracted to the role of the way pedophiles seek jobs with access to children – inevitably put the interest of the state ahead of its people. From Welfare to pensions to food aid to housing aid, the promise of a master indebted up to their gills cannot be trusted. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not a new idea, but robbing Peter’s great-grandkids to pay Paul tomorrow is not sustainable.

Costs will need to be cut. Conversations about end-of-life care will result in the state counseling expensive patients to shuffle off their mortal balance sheet.

The researchers used numbers from the Netherlands and Belgium, where medically assisted death is legal, combined with Canadian spending data from Ontario. Trachtenberg stressed that means the work is theoretical and needs to be readdressed when Canada starts collecting large scale data at home.

The savings might be theoretical, but the power to coerce people to die – especially under the beady eyes of depopulationglobalists – is not. The state will find more reasons to use pressure and take citizens off the map, and they won’t lose a moment’s sleep about doing that.

The post Slippery Meet Slope: Medically Assisted Suicide Could Save Millions in Health Care Costs appeared first on Granite Grok.

What the heck is happening in Maine? The Pine Tree State, Vacationland, has become a Progressive Wasteland. This state is not your Mother and Father’s Maine, where kids used to take time off from school to pick potatoes.

This beautiful state, with its rugged rocky coast, tranquil lakes, and majestic mountains, is being tarnished by its cities filled with homeless shelters and pot shops. Maine is also a complex state, with the Conservative residents of the rural countryside being dominated by the densely populated Liberal cities. This dichotomy is not a situation that is going to age well, and the Progressives are working hard to pass as many Leftist laws as possible before the Right rises and returns sanity to the largest New England state.

This trend can be seen starting in 2016 when marijuana was legalized for recreational use. This decision led to an industry that now ranks only behind Lumber and Lobsters in Maine. Some say it may have started earlier when the Catholic Church brought many Somali refugees to Lewiston and changed the demographics of the region forever. That scenario is now repeating in Portland with busloads of illegals who crossed the Rio Grande becoming the newest residents of Maine. The passing of the most liberal abortion law in the country this past summer and the invasion of the Chinese Cartel setting up illegal pot factories continue to make Maine unrecognizable. However, the Progressives are not satisfied, and this week, they are working on a bill that may make Maine a magnet for a new group of residents. Abortion stirred many emotions and piqued the anger of the true Conservative Mainers, but this new bill may bring those emotions to a boiling point.

Progressive legislators introduced a proposed bill this week that would not only make Maine a sanctuary state for young people who wish to be transgender but will allow the state to remove a minor child from their parents if those guardians are standing between their child and treatment to facilitate their transgender wishes. This bill is so bizarre for traditional Mainers who believe in God, two genders, the family unit, and the belief that the government has no place interfering with the family.

A Maine judiciary committee is moving to create a ‘safe-haven’ for teens seeking sex changes and protection from their parents, but critics have slammed the bill as ‘state-sanctioned kidnapping.’

The ‘Act to Safeguard Gender-Affirming Health Care’ would enable certain out-of-state teens to access hormone blockers or surgery without their parent’s consent, regardless of their own state’s laws.

If passed, LD 1735 would enable certain teens from states that have banned child gender-affirming care- such as Kentucky or Mississippi – to come to Maine, with or without their family, and access treatment.

The bill, brought by Rep. Laurie Osher (D-Orono) in April, would prevent Maine law enforcement from helping out-of-state authorities arrest or extradite patients, parents, or healthcare professionals. Maine would also be able to take ‘temporary emergency jurisdiction’ over minors from other states if they had been brought to Maine to receive sex change treatments. Osher is one of the leaders of the women’s, LGBTQ, and Jewish caucuses in Maine. She was reportedly asked to introduce the bill by advocacy group LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and instructed staffers to model the bill on similar legislation in California.

Maine is not California, and this Progressive movement can not be allowed to sink its roots deep into the Maine soil.

The post BEAR Pond Conservative Chronicles: Lobsters, Pot, And Trans appeared first on Granite Grok.

RSA 654:34, which governs how voters may change party registration, makes a bizarre distinction. In one section (I), it says that if you decide to change from one party to another party on the day of a primary, you can’t vote in the primary of your new party.

But in the very next section (II), it says that if you decide to change from having no party to being in a party, you can vote in the primary of your new party.

Say what?  Whether you’re registered as a Democrat, or you’re registered as undeclared, in either case you have told the state, under penalty of perjury, that you are not a Republican.

So in both cases, to let you vote in the Republican primary makes a mockery of the whole idea of a party primary.

Would you be happy if a million Chinese nationals showed up on the first Tuesday in November, voted for who they thought should be our president, and then went back home?

That’s pretty much how GOP members feel when a couple hundred thousand non-Republicans show up on primary day to vote for who they think should be the party’s nominee.

But to make a distinction between cases I and II is like something out of Alice in Wonderland:

Before today, Tweedledum was not a Republican in a different way than Tweedledee was not a Republican, so Tweedledum can have a ballot, but Tweedledee can’t.  Or maybe it’s’ the other way around.

Suppose Tweedledum and Tweedledee both show up at their local polling place registered as undeclared.   Tweedledum switches to being a Republican for the day, and is handed a ballot.  Tweedledee switches to being a Democrat for the day… but changes his mind, and switches again to being a Republican for the day.  So he doesn’t get a ballot.

Is this not insane?  It reminds me of nothing so much as the ATF ruling that if you have an AR-15 with a pistol brace, it’s a pistol, but once you put the brace against your shoulder, it becomes a short-barreled rifle, even if no one else sees it.

As it is currently written, RSA 654:34 encourages people to pretend that they are not affiliated with a party, not because it expresses their independence but because it enables their capacity for interference in the affairs of either party.

If we want to discourage that kind of interference, we should let only registered party members vote in the primaries of their parties.

On the other hand, if we want to encourage it, then we should just let everyone (including people who aren’t registered to vote at all) vote in all the primaries at all the locations.  Ballots for everyone, everywhere!

But to jumble things up this way is just one more reason why anyone with sense must eventually agree with Mr. Bumble that ‘the law is an ass, an idiot’ and stop paying attention to it entirely — whether regarding primaries or anything else.

Which is to say, you can’t enact stupid laws without making the law itself seem stupid.  So we should stop doing that.

The post Primaries: My ‘not’ is better than your ‘not’ appeared first on Granite Grok.

Outside of the Granite State, where undeclared voters don’t necessarily pick the Republican Party nominee, the news about Nikki isn’t very pleasant for Nikki.

Yesterday, a Boston Globe poll called it Trump 52/ Haley 35 in New Hampshire. That’s not enough, but let’s say this is where the primary shakes out next Tuesday. What does the rest of America look like?

In another poll reporting Friday, nationally, Harvard/Harris has Trump/Haley 71/9. Morning Consult’s poll has Trump/Haley at 73/14. Messenger/HarrisX (Thursday) 72/13. DeSantis is ahead of Haley in the National Harvard Harris by one point and down two from her in the Morning Consult poll. They are statistically tied in America’s eyes.

Christie’s departure has not added to her “base,” while Vivek’s has added to Trump’s. The Never Nikki crowd has to be thrilled, but that’s not the only bad news for Nimarata née Randhawa Haley. On Friday, Republican US Senator Tim Scott (a former presidential aspirant) endorsed Donald Trump. Lindsey Graham already had, as has the current Republican governor of her home state, Henrey McMaster. (Trump is polling 52/22 against Haley in SC, so it’s not just state-wide elected Republicans).

And Sununu isn’t as popular here as he used to be, which happens when you act like a Democrat often enough that even Independents begin to wonder if they prefer the real thing.

Speaking of which, New Hampshire’s Governor, Chris Sununu, who is promoting Haley like his life depends on it, has won election four times, and not once did either of our US Senators endorse him. Neither Jeanne Shaheen nor Maggie Hassan has offered their support to Chris Sununnu. Maybe they’d like to endorse Haley, as some of their deep-pocketed Democrat donors likely have.

One more point. Haley began downplaying her own New Hampshire surge narrative on Friday. “I said we want to be stronger in New Hampshire — we’re going to do that,” Haley told reporters during a gaggle. “We don’t know what stronger is until the numbers come in.”

The Haley wave refined. As in, I’ve seen the national polls, and I should wave goodbye, but I’ve got all this Left-Wing and Uniparty Military Industrial Complex cash, and I can’t even give it to Trump.

“I don’t ever talk about coming up short or winning if you notice that. I’ve done neither one and I’m not going to until Election Day. That’s the only poll that matters,” Haley said.

And that motivates your supporters how, exactly?

Americans are hungry for a disruptor and whatever comes with it. You’ve been running as the anti-disruptor, and that’s not enough. Democrats don’t play nice or fair, use friendly language, or even act civil, even after claiming they are that very thing. This is a bare-knuckles street fight for freedom. The primary is meant to pick someone with thick skin and an elevated intolerance for bullshit. Our government doesn’t trust us, hates us, suppresses our natural rights, and even the GOP has failed to address systemic irregularities in election integrity.

In other words, maybe none of this matters, but then it does. You can win so hard that cheating can’t stop it, which Trump appears to be doing in the Republican primary. The sort of support a candidate will need to get past whatever the Left is planning for November. And that candidate is not Nikki Haley.

The post No Worries Nikki – NH’s US Senators Didn’t Endorse “Their” Governor Either appeared first on Granite Grok.

Apparently, a man in St. Paul, Minnesota, was playing basketball in the gym of his local school on Family Night when his gun ‘went off,’ shooting him in the leg. As those of you who have been following the adventures of Alec Baldwin know, a gun doesn’t just ‘go off’.  Someone has to pull the trigger.

It is being reported that the man was ‘carrying the handgun on his body’, but ‘not in a holster’.  I’m having trouble imagining how that worked unless it was (1) loose in a pocket or (2) tucked into his waistband, Mexican Carry style.  Neither of those seems compatible with being on a basketball court.

In either case, I’m reminded of something that I read once in an article by Roy Huntington, the former editor of American Handgunner.  In his many years as a police officer, Huntington never saw a bad guy carrying a gun in a holster.

I’ve always seen that as a handy rule of thumb.  And I guess that remains true if we expand the word ‘bad’ to include stupid as well as criminal.

Public Service Announcement:  If you want to carry a handgun, please carry it in a holster that covers the trigger.  Incidents like this one make us all look bad.  The rights you save may be your own.  Or, more importantly, mine.

The post Is That a Gun in Your Pocket, or…? appeared first on Granite Grok.