There has been much speculation about the lengths to which the Left-Led Bordeau-sipping, uniparty ruling-class political supremacists might go to keep Donald Trump from ever setting foot in the Oval Office again. Would they, could they, have him killed? Surprise, they have a similar problem with Joe Biden.

The long-game speculation from myself and many others has been that this Democrat primary business was all a charade, and the donor class and the people running the DNC (and even a few folks inside the Biden administration) had a plan B. Politically abort Joe for medical reasons and replace him with someone viable.

Who that someone is has been of equal interest with names including Whitmer, Newsom, Michelle Obama, and even Hillary Clinton (who has apparently raised her hand and said, hey coach, put me in). But the party of death has a problem. Whoever runs the Biden administration is as wont to cling to the power they’ve got (and why not? Everyone will blame Joe for their mistakes) as any other cabal of oligarchs managing their puppet deposit.

We like our high-paying, perk-loaded jobs, and look, we get to “run” the country (into the ground), and we won’t get any blame. That’s on Joe, who can’t count to ten anymore without help. Some other Democrat might push us out the door or off to some less high-profile posting. Joe stays, we stay.

But, but, but, that debate thing, you say. It was a disaster. Months of media lies were unmasked, the way you might rip off a bandaid, but it feels like it was pulled off slowly instead, tearing every hair along with it. But Team Biden, whatever that means, isn’t interested in stepping aside, down, or anywhere else. They are in it to lose it come what may, and that has piled additional dismay onto the shit-wagon of worries after Thursday’s expose on the mental state of President Joseph R. Biden.

The liar-in-chief is now claiming he doesn’t debate well, as if that explains what we saw.

Sorry, but a few cans short of a six-pack doesn’t begin to approach what America witnessed, and the Media can no longer deny it. CNN didn’t deep fake that. Joe Biden is the single most significant negative to the outcome up and down the  November ticket.

Millions of registered Democrats aren’t all-in on abortion at birth, or open borders, so some may be willing to sit November out or vote the other way (‘cuz the economy, crime, etc.). Some of them were thinking about voting Red Instead of Blue.

Are they legitimate swing voters now, no longer under any allusion about the state of their Commander and Chief? Is he the threat to national security his opponents have long claimed? It seems so, and there’s no hiding that, so all the Left has left is to insist Trump is a liar, cheat, fraud (in other words, He’s Joe Biden), and a dictator even though he never was in his first term.

You can’t vote for that! He’s mean, a liar, and a despot. Just ask anyone who agrees with us.

Oh, and Joe is the other choice.

Actually, RFK Jr. is the other choice, and he may benefit from this inescapable public turn of events, but we’ll have to wait on larger polls to see how that needle moved. If it did, it wouldn’t be good for Joe, who, as we’ve said, isn’t getting out of the race.

There is speculation that it is too late, anyway. What if there is no way to “replace” him short of a 25th amendment action that leaves them with President Kamala, which, believe it or not, Democrats probably view as worse? It’s quite the pickle, so here’s another question. Would the Dems resort to regicide to clear the way? They’d have to remove both Biden and Kamala and then blame it on right-wing extremists. I wouldn’t put it past the Clintons or the Obamas, but they have motivation. A Republican president following the abuses of the Biden administration might feel inclined to use its precedents to send prosecutors after Bill, Hillary, Barack, or any number of higher-ranking left-lead uniparty scions.

It’s all speculative theory, of course. I don’t want anyone assassinating anyone, and in this bizarre expiration of theory, both men have Secret Service details, so add the internal political chess match required to overcome that into the calculus. But the rabid dog of the left just painted itself into a corner, and we know it does not want to relinquish power. What will it do?

Anything is possible, including starting WWIII and declaring martial law. Let’s hope Joe can’t remember the launch codes and whoever has them doesn’t want to burn the world to keep Trump out of office. But, you have to wonder. Would they rather destroy America than give even a little of it back?

The post Would They Kill Him if They Had Too? appeared first on Granite Grok.

The old TreeHugger site, that batch of green on the outside but red on the inside Eco-Socialists, is gone forever. All of the DISQUS comments have been wiped out, and most of the more fun (e.g., combative) posts have also been deleted, including those by Lloyd Alter, who, I thought, was always on a Greenie track (with a socialist kicker of “Eat the Rich”).

Steve had voluntarily created a nice logo for me to you as the “Featured Image” (the images you see at the top of all of our posts – Steve makes sure that EVERY post has one for SEO purposes):

I thought it was MARVELOUS! And he’s much better than I am at this (my sad sack for Lloyd above – I make no bones about it that I almost failed stick figures in Junior High art class.  That said, I am trying to figure out how to use AI to create some images for me, as I certainly can’t.

Thankfully, from the standpoint of creating content fodder, he is now “blogging” / writing at Substack: Carbon Upfront!  (thus, “Substack Comments” instead of “DISQUS Comments,” where he concentrates on eliminating the use of carbon in building anything as it is killing us all and the planet. Funny, however, he never answers my questions about WHO is going to control/mandate/police that whole process (but it does give me leave to poke fun at him for his socialist/communist ways as he knows that I know that he knows there’s only one way to do it – MASSIVE Govt).

My, my, even with that, he actually invited me to his new digs so I promptly started to do what I did over at TH – come at his ideas from a different point of view than his academic/cultural bubble had. So, during my “semi-retirement,” I built up a few “comment posts-to-be” there, and it’s now time to start using them.

One of his recent posts is labeled “Cars need design for disassembly and repairability,” where he’s rather upset that Tesla, in its mantra of squeezing out every unneeded cost it can, violates his sensibilities that everything must be made repairable. Regardless, it raises the upfront cost of a product (including the expensive Teslas). To wit: Tesla’s adoption of “Gigacasting,” in which a lot of the Tesla body is now going to be made of one piece:

And then we have Tesla. According to energy and transport analyst Michael Sura, Tesla is “gigacasting” bigger and bigger pieces of their cars. While high-pressure die casting (HPDC) has been used to make complex parts for years, Tesla is making bigger and bigger parts. Sura writes on Linkedin:

“Traditionally, car manufacturers integrate numerous stamped, forged, extruded, and cast elements of their vehicle structures, connecting, welding, and gluing these components together in the production process. During the gig casting process, a molten liquid aluminum alloy is pressed into a mold under high pressure, resulting in the formation of large three-dimensional shapes with a relatively high level of precision. A large single gigacasted component can replace 50, 70, or even more individual parts.”

Lloyd is having hissy fits because unlike his old, old VW Bug, a Tesla (and Volvos and other manufacturers doing the same things) if something breaks, we all can’t fix it. Instead, we will have to buy that one HUGE piece if it gets crushed even a little (instead of one of the smaller pieces that formerly required multiple steps during the manufacturing process and added cost). It may even mean that a car gets totaled for what used to be a smallish repair.

Lloyd forgets that even running into a curbstone sidewalk with an EV could result in the battery bank getting bumped badly and the car getting totaled—after all, the battery is on that now huge structure, and any deformation of that is VERY likely to damage it. Can you say “S’mores on the highway” when it goes blooey?

So I decided to comment that EVs and their gig casting may not be as big of a problem as he thinks and from a different perspective than what he wanted:

Meanwhile, in other VW news: “Fossil Fuels Remain The Future. VW To Invest 60 Billion Euros In Combustion Engines!

In a surprising move, Volkswagen announced it plans to invest 60 billion euros in the development of new combustion engines as confidence in electric mobility plummets in Germany and elsewhere.

“This change in strategy shows that the transition to electromobility is progressing more slowly than expected,” reports Germany’s Blackout News here. “Just last year, Volkswagen assumed that electric cars would account for 80 percent of annual sales in Europe by the end of the decade. However, the lukewarm reception for its own ID models is forcing the company to adjust its strategy.” Also see (motor1: 07.06.24).

As German sales of electric vehicles fall way short of government targets due to their unpopularity and high costs, manufacturers are seeing the writing on the wall: Electric mobility still has a long way to go.

Reality check…”    https://open.substack.com/pub/lloydalter/p/cars-need-design-for-disassembly

Remember, Lloyd hates, Hates, HATES cars. Gas-powered FAR more than EVs but hates ALL cars. He wants Rack’em and Stack’em dense cities that are “walkable,” and if you have to go anywhere, use public transportation, walk, or bike. So telling him that the lesser of cars aren’t turning out the way he will at least put up with (’cause it ain’t a carbon emitter) was the way to go.

However, another transplant from TH, Bob Baal, a New Zealander, decided to answer the above with rose-colored glasses supporting the EV viewpoint. Funny that he had to pick on what here in the States is a luxury car that few can afford:

BMW seems to have a different opinion

“BERLIN, Jan 10 (Reuters) – BMW (BMWG.DE), opens new tab is investing 650 million euros ($711 million) to convert its main plant in Munich to exclusively produce EVs from the end of 2027, the carmaker said on Wednesday, a major stepping stone in the transition to the electric age.”

“”The tipping point for combustion engines was last year,” declared BMW’s Chief Financial Officer, Walter Mertl, effectively drawing a line under the era of unbridled ICE growth. “

“Meanwhile, BMW’s electrified fleet is experiencing a record-breaking surge. Sales of electric BMWs, Minis, and Rolls-Royces rocketed 74.4 percent in 2023, propelling EVs to a 15 percent share of the company’s 2.56 million-unit total output.

This momentum is set to continue, with BMW aiming to ramp up EV share to 33 per cent by 2026 and a staggering 50 per cent by the end of the decade.”

Or from VW itself

“EVs are the future, but combustion era ‘is not over,’ VW CFO says”

?Of the €180 billion ($196 billion) set aside in 2023 for research and development, the German brand said it would use more than two-thirds on “electrification and digitalization.”?

So lots of EV and PHEV from VW. Hardly the abandonment of EV’s.

“As German sales of GERMAN electric vehicles fall way short of GERMAN government targets due to their unpopularity and high costs, GERMAN manufacturers are seeing the writing on the wall as NON-GERMAN EV sales mushroom.

Fixed that for you.

Sales of PHEV and BV are online to be 1 in 12 of new cars in 2024. For every BEV sold this month in 2020 4 are being sold now.

I went contrarian to show that the rosy glasses seem to be getting darker and darker as we hoi polloi aren’t buying what’s being sold, literally:

Ford and GM are cutting back on EV investment and production (Ford losing $132K USD for each EV). Fisker just went Chapter 11 bankruptcy. So did Lordstown. Rivian isn’t doing well either.

So, President Biden had $7 billion USD to build EV chargers all over the country. $7 Billion.

8…count them…8 sites have been built thus far. And folks wonder why I’m a government skeptic – and loudly proclaim that this is not a Constitutionally permitted activity by the Federal government (States, however, are a different beast – they can if they want).

Much of the private charging sites (Tesla mostly excluded) are hit or miss on whether they work or not (mostly not).

And now my local TV station has been running clips on how range is much diminished with EVs in the heat (batteries are being drained in keeping the batteries cool; nice tech but it doesn’t help in getting where you want to go). This is in addition to the clips this past winter about the same problem.

Gotta keep’em warm, too!

And more than a few on EV school buses, costing twice to three times the price of gas/diesel ones, not being able to be used in the northern part of the US. Mountainous areas? Forgettabout it!

Let’s see how BMW goes.

I didn’t say abandon but we’re seeing the aftereffects of the over-exuberance of EV Future. IMHO, after the frenzied & large scale rollout, now that early adopters and virtue-signalers, the market is certainly pulling back – resale prices on used EVs is crashing. Almost half of EV users (https://www.eenews.net/articles/46-of-american-ev-drivers-want-to-go-back-to-gas-cars-report/) are looking to go back to gas powered cars.

Bottom line is that I’m agnostic to either EV or ICE as long as it gets me to where I want to go in hauling the people and stuff that needs to go with me without worrying about range and reliability. What I am NOT agnostic about is having govt ramming it down my throat via laws or biasing regulations in forcing its choice upon me.

Funny, nobody has taken that on yet.

Anyway, more to come as I have lots on my stack of stuff!

 

The post EVs, ICEVs, Repairability, and Outrage appeared first on Granite Grok.

The “Democrat” Party … the party of angry, shrill women and weak, feckless, leaf-eating beta-males. Perhaps no State better exemplifies that than New Hampshire.

Here is State Senate candidate Ben Ming, who is going to bring diversity to the State Senate by regurgitating the Left’s abortion is “reproductive healthcare” trope while reminding us that he is Asian. Hey, beta-boy, abortion is the antithesis of reproduction.

 

The post Night Cap: Vote For Me … I’m Asian And I Want More Abortions appeared first on Granite Grok.

It was astonishing to hear that, after neglecting the Ship of State for a solid week for debate “training,” Joe Biden failed at both execution and plan. The plan included repeating his stock lies, including:

– The “very fine people” hoax that Snopes finally debunked just this week
– The “losers and suckers” lie that even John Bolton had denied

The electorate does not know for sure who is telling the truth and who is lying — especially when CNN, following Alinsky (“Look in the mirror and call your enemy the worst thing you see”), blogs the debate punctuated with “Facts matter”. The electorate especially does not know for sure what economic policies will be successful and which will backfire. Luckily, they can sniff out character — vitality versus dotage.

But there is one chronic Biden lie that every Grok reader ought to learn to rebut: that Trump “cut taxes for billionaires.”

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1. “Billionaire” and so on are measures of wealth. What we tax is income; the government takes a portion of each year’s new production. We are lucky that government doesn’t try to tax wealth. Wealth would flee the US, at the speed of mouse clicks, in search of safety, and there would quickly be no capital to build buildings, create jobs, and buy machines to improve productivity, which is the only systemwide way that pay goes up.

2. Trump’s signature Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 did indeed cut tax rates on high-earners. This is because it cut tax rates on everyone. High-earners pay the lion’s share of US income taxes — and they paid a GREATER share after the Act lowered their rates. There is no way to pass a general tax cut without also benefitting “people who don’t need it.” The only individuals who did not benefit are high-earners in Democrat states who pay high state and local taxes and lost their ability to recoup some of them on Form 1040.

3. US income-tax revenue, even adjusted for inflation, is so much larger than before the Act that by now the Act clearly “paid for itself.” Most cuts in tax rates do pay for themselves, whenever we get a President wise enough to propose them (JFK and Reagan), because most rates are still on the far edge of the Laffer Curve, where the main effect of a rate increase is not more government revenue but serious harm to the economy resulting in less revenue. This will not undo Congress’s rule that any future tax-rate cut must be accompanied by new damage in order to “pay for it,” based on the false assumption that people don’t change their behavior when you repeal punishing taxes.

4. Biden’s lie to the contrary is stock demagoguery, which unfortunately continues to work well, many voters believing that they will benefit if government confines itself to harming classes of people we dislike. It is a variation on Obama’s and Clinton’s theme that certain classes “won’t see a dime of new taxes.” In fact, everyone will pay them, and it would be much more healthy if we did see them!

5. Biden’s drumbeat that “the rich [sic] don’t pay their fair share” is blind to history. The Tax Code has clawbacks of tax breaks, arcane rules for specific groups of taxpayers, and a complete second income tax (the 26%-28% Alternative Minimum Tax) to target people supposedly paying too little under the first one. Obamacare included a burdensome investor surtax (the 3.8% NIIT) having nothing to do with health care but only Obama’s own class hatred. He even proposed what was essentially a third tax system to “catch” those people we all hate but didn’t catch with the second one. In fact, every law-abiding taxpayer is paying his fair share. Some pay low taxes because they do what Congress has asked them to do, such as invest in depressed zones or buy low-interest government bonds. They have earned their low tax rate. Some, like Warren Buffett, pay low taxes by deferring the sale of stock; they have low tax on income because they have foregone their income. Of course, Biden, Sanders, and Warren are proposing to tax even gains that you don’t receive. This is a variation on the belief of “Gollum” that, if I can conceive of it, it should be mine.

6. There is no measurement of when a high-income taxpayer has paid what Biden thinks is his “fair share.” That is, if Biden got everything he is asking for, he could and would continue to use this line and demand a further solution to this supposed problem. The result is unconstrained government; this is a much bigger problem than the notion that someone made “too much money.”

The biggest positive of the Biden term is his inability to repeal the 2017 tax law, and it is the reason the US economy is resisting recession even as Biden continually wages war with investment, innovation, and entire industries. However, Republicans had to lower the “cost” of the Act to avoid a Democrat filibuster, so the personal tax cuts expire at the end of 2025 — and Biden has vowed that they will “stay expired” if he is re-elected. No matter the damage.

My perennial tax proposal is that, at the start of the next year, the US enact a law that any money you make for the rest of that year, above the amount you made this year, is taxed at a rate of 0%. No one loses. Take a moment to imagine how hard you would work! Everyone else would too. Explosive new productivity is worth whatever it would “cost” the Parasite Sector.

The post Trump Cut Taxes for Billionaires? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Elections Have Consequences: Let’s play, Spot the Difference … #CCP #Biden #Trump

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The post Elections Have Consequences: Let’s play, Spot the Difference … #CCP #Biden #Trump appeared first on Granite Grok.

Hurricane Season is finally perking up a notch. We’ve gone from a few tropical depressions to one named tropical storm to one actual hurricane. Beryl is currently a Category 3, north of French Guiana and Suriname.

Its current track, unfortunately for the fearmongering media, will take it across Grenada, just south of Jamaica, where it begins to lose strength. Beryl’s projection ends at the Yucatan Peninsula as a Cat 1. – no US landfall.

But it’s a hurricane, damn it. It took the entire month of June, but we’ve got one with two other depressions percolating, one of them with a high probability of needing a name itself (perhaps my other brother, Beryl?). The promise of an active season is upon us, but you know that. We’ve been reporting it for months. That’s not what this is about. We’re here to talk about the media filter of said hurricane.

Not just a Cat 3 or Cat 4 hurricane but a, Very, Extremely Dangerous version of those. As if that were not ever the case before?

The hyperbole is, I suppose, expected; they have, after all, been forced to wait nearly four weeks for anything remotely capable of earning the words very this or that. It’s all very amusing. Not the hurricane, of course; those things can get nasty, but the hutspah. As if they’re so good at climate and prediction in general, we should all drop our tea and shout, good heavens!

Beryl is now only the third Category 3 hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic in June, following Audrey in 1957 and Alma in 1966, hurricane specialist and storm surge expert Michael Lowry said.

What was the atmospheric concentration of CO2 in 1957 or 1966? It’s not a concern or even on their radar, which is of no consequence and unworthy of mention, especially since, OMG! Beryl is the first Cat 4 in that region ever recorded. All that means is that there could have been one before records were kept. It’s like that hottest hotness ever problem. Aside from almost never being true, it is an impossible lie to defend. We know the earth has been hotter and for longer just not as part of the modern or satellite record.

Related: Inconvenient Science – Warming Leads to Fewer Hurricane Landfalls

You might as well say yours is the biggest penis you’ve ever seen, having never seen any other. Or, maybe you have, but it’s been ninety years, and we are meant to 1) believe you and 2) believe it means what you say.

The storm has already set the record for the easternmost hurricane to form in the Tropical Atlantic in June, beating a previous record set in 1933.

I think, as a courtesy, the SeeOhTwoasauraus should be required to report how much carbon dioxide is in the “air” when they do crap like this. It was around 250 ppm in 1933 which suggests the trigger isn’t what they will continue to claim. It’s something else and there are a lot of somethings at play.

The other thing missing from the hyperbolic “very” headlines is how very likely it is that Beryl might be a Cat 1 before it reaches the Yucatan. I couldn’t find that anywhere. As in, “very uncommon Hurricane projected to lose almost all of its energy before it reaches Mexico.” Or, “Beryl is strong now but likely to lose a lot of punch before landfall.”

Well, heck, why bother to even read about that? Nothing to see here unless you live in Grenada or Jamaica.

We don’t know if that’s how it will pan out or if Beryl will stick to its current trajectory (maybe reach Cat5?) because the prediction game is precarious a few days out, which—again—begs us to wonder how they can feel so certain about anything ten, twenty, or fifty years along. They can’t. But there is a lot of money and much in the way of political advantage in anything that sustains the hysteria.

Another problem they invented. An irrefutable hypothesis that is justified by everything because that’s the only way to keep the green rolling in and the fear rolling out,

None predicted yet, but we’ve got four months, which, as you know, leaves us plenty of time for more hysteria absent any context. And there’s a tropical depression right behind  and plenty of potential behind that.

It’s a big year for hurricanes. just remember, we’ve been quiet for a very long time. This was due.

The post Hurricane Beryl Getting Rave Reviews from Fearmongering Media appeared first on Granite Grok.

Alissandra Murray … who appears more interested in representing Hamas than the people in Manchester she is supposed to represent … has turned down an invitation to the White House because “a genocide is still actively supported by it,” referring to Gaza. Alissandra, however, apparently has no problem with the genocide in Ukraine … where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died fighting Biden’s proxy-war against Russia.

It is fair to ask if Alissandra even knows about the situation in Ukraine and how it came to be … the Biden-regime saber-rattling about admitting Ukraine into NATO and dispatching Boris Johnson to scuttle a peace-plan Ukraine and Russia had agreed to at the outset of the conflict. It is fair to ask because Alissandra appears to be the quintessential Woke-Commy-bot marching in goose-step and never asking why or where,

The post Slavic Lives Don’t Matter To Alissandra Murray appeared first on Granite Grok.

Many readers are already familiar with that Nashua flagpole matter, which I said I would share updates on, and there are a few worth mentioning. I sent in my 91A request early on the morning of June 7 and received a reply on June 12, telling me how voluminous my request was and that I would receive another response “on or before June 25.”

Given my previous RTK experience and subsequent litigation against the City, I didn’t have the highest of hopes.

I sent a polite follow-up email on June 24, reminding city hall that I would like to have the material I requested “available for public inspection no later than” the next day. City hall closes at 4:30 p.m., so I sent a 3:45 p.m. email requesting that they make good before closing up for the day. 4:30 came and went, but a surprise arrived at 5:05 p.m., which local Grokster Laura Colquhoun said was their modus operandi.

Part of my surprise was that a city hall employee would be on duty after hours, but I was glad to see what at least appears on the surface as a good-faith effort.  The email was accompanied by two files.  One of them was a cover letter saying that my request was so voluminous that they would reply again on or before July 19 with the remainder of the responsive material.  The other file was a 172 page pdf of older flag pole requests, like 2017-2021, which I have since shared with Damien Fisher of NH Journal and Beth Scaer.  I am very interested in viewing the more recent material, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, on June 25, I was in the early stages of preparing for what to do in the event that the City played hardball, as they are known to do. Because there was a good chance that they would either blow me off completely or stall me again with another delay, I decided to explore the possibility of using the ombudsman’s services.

I emailed Mr Kehr (and ONLY him) at 10:35 am on Tuesday, June 25, inquiring when it would be a good time, THE NEXT DAY, to come to his office to discuss using his services.  It’s important to point out that I asked about coming in on Wednesday, June 26, because I was going to Concord anyway for the last meeting of the executive council before their summer recess.  Also important is that I enclosed all the information he might find relevant in discussing my situation.  I did that by forwarding him a copy of my June 24 email to city hall(and its scrollable cascade of previous emails).  Big mistake!

While it has since been clarified to me that the ombudsman does not give advice, I will explain why sharing the details of my situation via email was a mistake.  Mr. Kehr cannot be trusted any more than one can trust the nearest blabbermouth.  I did not include anyone in City Hall in my email to him.  Mr. Kehr was the ONLY recipient, and there were no “copy to” recipients, yet he decided to “school me” publicly in front of city hall, albeit cyber-style.  Now Attorney Bolton and all his ilk know everything I said to Mr. Kehr in my email to him because he copied them in his reply to me!

I will also add that his response also arrived yesterday(Thursday) afternoon with an opening lip service sentence saying, “My apologies for not responding sooner.”

I don’t know how many emails this $100,000/year government employee receives per day, but he either doesn’t check his inbox daily or was completely clueless that I was expecting his reply to my morning email later that same day.

According to NH Bulletin’s Annmarie Timmins, Mr. Kehr was nominated by the Damn Emperor in December 2022, and he is an attorney.  While I’m aware that I have no attorney-client privilege with him, I find his indiscretion disappointing, in addition to his insensitivity to timeliness.  When his appointment expires, I do plan to tell the next executive council about this, assuming that our next governor renominates him.

The post A Disappointing First Contact With The New Ombudsman appeared first on Granite Grok.

The story, if you’ve not heard, is that the US Department of Defense, at the urging of then Sec Def Mark Esper, authorized a psy-op to make Asians afraid of China’s COVID vaccines.

These were actual vaccines made in the old-school way, and the DoD is alleged to have created or paid proxies and influencers on social media to get locals to protest China’s Jab.

Reuters: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

Nice headline you got there. So, you’re telling me that the US Department of Defense was running an anti-vaxxer campaign in Asia to down-sell local vaccines so they could then offer to upsell mRNA gene therapies?

Did Pfizer or Moderna promise a commission from the sales if it worked? Were you planning to use that to offset the costs to US taxpayers to run the op?

That’s sarcasm, but why is the United States Federal Government using military and surveillance state assets to create the same sort of networks it used to overthrow the democratically elected Ukrainian president in 2014? The sorts of programs and assets it uses domestically against American citizens. This is, after all, South East Asia, and what’s it to you if they are using what we have to assume – in the DOD’s opinion or that of its handlers – is an inferior product?

Old school vaccines, Pishaw. What 20th century nonsense.

Why would you care if millions of Chinese got COVID or died because they didn’t have access to your (cough-cough) wonder drug?

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.

So, while you were being canceled for calling it the China Virus or daring to question the safety or effectiveness of what Pfizer and Moderna (and the US DOD) were peddling, your government was running an anti-vaxxer campaign and accusing China of being the virus.

To do what? Sell more mRNA for Pfizer and Moderna.

The post The US DoD’s Secret Anti-Vaxxer Campaign appeared first on Granite Grok.

Hello, Friends of Freedom. I hope your summer is amazing! Let’s continue our look at the Declaration’s signers. Richard Stockton was the first signer of the Declaration of Independence from New Jersey and was perhaps the one who suffered the most for doing so. He was captured by the British and tortured severely in prison.

He was born into affluence in New Jersey, where his father founded the College of New Jersey.

He had a brilliant intellect. After graduating from Samuel Finley’s Academy of Nottingham, he studied law under David Ogden, the most prominent lawyer of his time.

He received the degree of Sergeant of Law ( the highest law degree of his era).

He married the poet Ann Boudinot and had six children.

He was a trustee at Princeton University for 26 years. He was not known to like politics and shied away from involvement until he requested some time away from Princeton and made a trip to Europe. While in England, he engaged King George III on behalf of the University regarding the Stamp Act. The King liked him a lot, as did other Parliament Leaders who at the time were not hostile to the Colonies.

We want to thank Pastor Allen Cook for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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After returning home, his reputation only enlarged, and he was regarded as a man of immense wisdom and sound advice.

He also became very outspoken about the British and their treatment of the citizens of the Colonies of America, and as a result, he was asked to be a delegate to the Continental Congress.

He was captured by the British while visiting friends as he was on his way home from Philadelphia after signing the Declaration of Independence.

He was deprived of food ( intentional starvation) and subjected to freezing cold.

He was offered a pardon, and some say that it was in exchange for recanting his signing of the Declaration of Independence. There is no factual evidence of this recanting, and other scholars believe that George Washington was involved in negotiating his release.

He had an incredible faith, as is exemplified by his knowledge of and reference to the scriptures in so many of his writings.

A few faith statements are as follows:

I subscribe to the entire belief of the great leading doctrines of the Christian religion, such as:

*the being of God: (Genesis 1:1)

*the universal defection and depravity of human nature: (Romans 3:23)

*the Divinity of the person (John 1:14) and the completeness of the redemption purchased by the blessed Savior (Ephesians 1:7)

*I exhort and charge my children that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10)

*The way of life that is held up in the Christian system is calculated for the most complete happiness that can be enjoyed in this mortal state and that all occasions of vice and immorality is injurious either immediately or consequentially in this life.

He was a founding father who lost everything of earthly value but maintained his faith! *****(thanks again to Dave Barton’s info of his quotes out of his great book, The American Story.)

Until next time….

The post Pulpit Polity: Richard Stockton appeared first on Granite Grok.

According to retired nephrologist Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the black population has a disproportionate number of people with chronic kidney failure. Goldfarb is the chairman of Do No Harm, which opposes DEI admissions and hiring and unnecessary gender surgery on children, as well as systemic race-based trends in medical practice that they claim could cause unnecessary harm.

“A new rule, which is aimed at increasing kidney transplants for black Americans,” proposed by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, captured its attention.

Someone in the government has decided that since “the black population has a disproportionate number of people with chronic kidney failure,” it should direct taxpayer funds to figuring out how to convince doctors to convince black Americans to trust the Public Health Industrial complex. Goldfarb agrees that there is a need to help more Blacks suffering from Kidney disease to seek treatment, including transplants, but that this probably isn’t the best way to get there from here. You are welcome to wade into the details if you like, but my first thought was, why does the Black population in America have a “disproportionate number of people with chronic kidney failure”?

Racism!

I’d say white supremacy, but that’s not actually it, either. It is probably systemic Democrat rule.

Goldfarb stated that one such factor is the issue that frequently black people do not seek treatment for kidney disease until it is in an advanced stage. Some contributors to this problem include a lack of access to healthcare, a distrust of the medical community, and a lower level of health literacy. Additionally, they may not receive as much preventive care, testing, or medical supervision as people in other demographics. As a result, by the time a black person seeks treatment, their chances of success are much lower, and they may not be able to undergo the necessary surgery and regimen of medications.

Furthermore, according to Goldfarb, studies indicate that many black people are not interested in having a kidney transplant, and their family members may not want to become donors.

Lack of knowledge, understanding, education, information, access. We also have to consider politics and its policy influences on culture. Black Americans are not genetically predisposed to higher rates of kidney failure, so what inputs make this endemic to the community? Why aren’t they educated? What barriers exist to keep them from obtaining better medical information or access, and how does this play into their reluctance to seek help sooner rather than waiting until it might be too late?

Democrats have controlled most of the larger American cities for longer than anyone can remember. They spend more and talk more about serving these communities, but what evidence is there that this has been little more than a way to enrich themselves and their friends at everyone else’s expense?

The education budgets are enormous, but the kids can’t read or do math. You’ll find the same results across the entire budget. No matter what it is, they are spending more than anyone else for worse outcomes – unless you happen to be connected to the local political elite.

Spending other people’s money might fill the pockets of surgeons and hospitals in the nicer parts of town, but it will not cure what ails them. This applies to every poor or low-income community everywhere in America. They need schools that teach kids and a culture that encourages and rewards foundational learning. They need to encourage families to see welfare as a trap and parents who are willing to do with less so their kids can learn to earn more. Fathers who raise and protect their children from gangs, alcohol, and drug abuse on streets that are safer because that is a priority for everyone.

There is, as far as I can tell, no incentive for anyone in power to approach any of this seriously. More money has only resulted in declining outcomes. This won’t be any different. Advocates will point at it when talking to minorities as if they care when all they want is their vote.

 

The post Is Kidney Disease Racist? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Those who advocate for sweeping government power to reverse global warming assert it will lead to a “more prosperous” future. In fact, what we see is calls for a “preposterous future.” These measures will hurt rather than help the environment.  We will be less prosperous while we pollute more.

To couch that in soaring language of salvation from doom is, indeed, preposterous — these plans are the doom.

Consider the $300,000,000 Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources estimates it will cost to resurface Rutland businesses under the “3-acre Rule,” a preposterous proposal to “help Rutland prosper” by imposing these costs on longstanding businesses. This plan mandates businesses retroactively install stormwater drains to protect Lake Champlain. Disrupting businesses and imposing a huge economic burden on owners will hurt sales and threaten productive jobs. But the state of Vermont extols the huge economic boon this will be for engineers and construction companies.

This is a short-term, non-productive waste. No goods sold just costs of goods sold. There is no economic growth, only a government-mandated payday for one group of businesses by way of economic hardship on others. But more — and this is key — what is the environmental cost of excavating all that square acreage? How much diesel will be burned, asphalt heated and relaid, plastic pipes manufactured and installed, and CO2 generated in the transition to improved surface-water management? Can we afford those costs? Have state agencies calculated those costs? Nope. And that’s preposterous.

Consider EV vehicles. Aside from the question of their reliability or long-term efficiency, are they not manufactured using fossil fuels? Is that manufacture carbon-neutral, as will be imposed on new business development under Act 250 in Vermont? These EV vehicles will not be manufactured in Vermont. So, these vehicles (like the diesel and equipment consumed resurfacing Rutland) will be produced outside of Vermont, a boon for those businesses: a massive loss of wealth and indirect consumption of fossil fuels in Vermont. Preposterous.

Solar panels. Ditto: manufactured using fossil fuels of dubious long-term efficiency; costs imposed on ratepayers in Vermont to support foreign industry; affordable for the wealthy and not the poor. Regressive, polluting, and zero economic benefits. Preposterous.

Mandating the re-insulation of buildings (as some have advocated) — how much petroleum would be involved in manufacturing, trucking, and installing these products in Vermont homes and businesses? Assuming this helped Vermont to achieve its fantastical and arbitrary “goals” of reducing 25% of our greenhouse gases by such-and-such imagined date — what are the externalized environmental costs of that production outside of Vermont? Have the “climate warriors” calculated those costs? Nope. The effect is a drag on the Vermont economy and an increase in net pollution. Preposterous.

What if Vermont imposed pollution-control requirements on lawnmowers? That would reduce emissions and impose the costs directly on those who mow lawns. Yes, this is a federal issue, but why don’t the climate warriors tackle things that would actually help the ecosystem? Why are they interested in the preposterous but not the sensible?

How about banning fireworks displays? Fireworks hurt the environment, depend 99% on Chinese manufacture, and are shipped long distances. They offer no economic benefits to Vermont or its ecosystem. Why not ban them? Because progressive legislators want to give judges and special-interest, out-of-state nonprofits the unilateral power to do that later, along with banning snowmobiles, ATVs, and pick-up trucks. They seek to do through the back door that which they could never accomplish through the front.

What of mandating composting while advertising (with our tax dollars) that such laws won’t be enforced? Car idling laws requiring police to time your idle and then ticket you $10 (instead of fighting opioid dealers)? How will the government ensure citizens don’t mow their lawns three times a week, burn a plastic bag in a fire, or pour used motor oil in the woods? Are more laws needed so Big Brother can hire car-driving enforcers to breathe down every neck? Preposterous.

Our forebears rightly opposed “taxation without representation.” Sweeping one-sided powers granted to the government and “renewable energy” initiatives that use more energy than they renew favor certain industries and are net pollution creators that help neither the economy nor the environment. These are totalitarian regulations masked in lies of prosperity and environmental benefit where neither exists.

“Regulation without representation” is “taxation without representation.” It’s time to revolt against this revolting subjugation of Vermonters. The answer to our problems is personal responsibility, not government rescue by corporations and special interests.

Republished from March 2020

John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And Regular Contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.

The post Climate Change ‘Prosperity’: Who Benefits? appeared first on Granite Grok.

The reason why American History, particularly our Founding and its Founders, is longer a subject for learning since it’s possible that too many of its reference points would discount today’s revisionist beliefs. What then would be next; the return of law and order and limited governing?

The basic question this would ask is what our adversary fears the most; it worked back then, so why not now? In addition, the chances for a fact-based discourse on our Founding Era are taboo since such studies would also invoke a religious venue.

Instead of the normal curiosity arising from being informed, today’s rebuke strengthens this engrained ignorance and numbs our curious instincts. Another variant of what was stems from the debt incurred by our oversized government. Economists agree that with any economic example, tax revenues are limited from a ‘money in, money out’ scenario. Therefore, today’s debt-ridden budgeting is due to the miscreant’s reckless spending.

The bottom line with this economic reality is that many Americans were either complacent or had their hands extended for enrichment. This is the norm when electing a lesser caliber of what formally were ‘public servants!

Another factor in unwarranted governing is this ‘careerism’ notion that salary enrichments nurture and also belittles and/or corrupt the previous unselfish volunteerism of ‘public service. ‘ Therefore, today’s economic time bomb of debt is proportional to the irresponsible squandering of tax revenues, which now invest in and solidify re-elections!

Compare this blatant disregard to the earlier concerns of our Founders, whose original sacrifice, based upon a belief of living freely, carried their cause of our American experiment. Their sole concern was directed to their country’s free establishment and her lasting future.

Consider General George Washington’s words of commitment, “The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army – We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die…” This sealed America to whatever fate, or God, had in store. The fact that this rag-tag force would do combat with the world’s mightiest military should even astound today’s modern thinking, regarding a great generation.

Our second President, John Adams, ironically summed up today’s public quandary when stating, “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.” This is now validated with the current degradations of information. This recent ‘fake news’ tagline is a mild rendering of the depths to which our people, of whom many are devoid of any fundamental learning, have been and are being subjected.

Consequently, Thomas Jefferson added, “If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.” ‘Responsibility,’ is the weight which freedom places upon every American citizen. This denounces reading the hogwash of fakery by upping the effort for being properly informed with the soundness of what is being read. Such preemptive measures merely bolster one’s citizenship.

This truth-based content with our information is critically important, which is why our adversaries are so intent on reinventing what was our past and distorting our present. This was foreseen by James Madison when stating, “popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”

Patrick Henry also warned about the need to, “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty.” This “jealous” protection is also particular to Thomas Paine’s warning that, “When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”

This last point from so long ago, “the privilege of thinking,” connects with curiosity, questioning, and relying upon one’s personal instincts, which we all know at times act as a cautionary inner voice. Similar to today’s disappearance of public service, independent thoughts that counter the mainstream are becoming rare. Too many Americans have become so insecure and sensitive that seeking acceptance is now one’s priority!

We all would be better served by stepping back into history and giving thought to the words of those who demonstrated their own independent thought. Their service and sacrifice became their paid dues for those beliefs! We, at least, owe those gentlemen our thanks, but more importantly, we owe our children an equal effort to ensure their lives will not be as slaves!

 

The post Night Cap: In Need of Founding Beliefs appeared first on Granite Grok.

Trump was correct in demanding a drug test as BOTH TMEW (my non-political better half), and I couldn’t believe our ears and eyes at the beginning of the Debate. I have NEVER heard Biden talk so fast with “memorized” lines in my life—probably Joe’s life as well.

A minigun couldn’t have kept up with his fevered pitch. However, all for naught as while the 90 minutes droned on (and yes, I would have lost that bet that Biden could stand that long), he slowed down – not just his raspy voice but his brain and demeanor (except when he called Trump a liar and had the morality of an alley cat. However, the only cat that was present was the “cat out of the bag,” as the Narrative held to by the MSM dissolved, and they all did the 180 on Biden.

They proved again that we on the Right have been right and that all their calls about “CONSPIRACY!” just fell out of the sky on their skulls.  We’ve been saying he’s been incompetent – now they are admitting we were right.

Trump, on the other hand, pretty much kept his cool, flashing his trademark smile, and got in a few zingers of his own. The best line of the night was:

BIDEN: *rambles incoherently about his failure to secure the border*

TRUMP: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.” pic.twitter.com/lxBpOVeTqJ

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 28, 2024

Watch this next one to see the freezes, muddles, mumbles, and incoherence in a 30-second clip from last night. Seriously – “We finally beat Medicare”???

I watched the whole thing, just shaking my head.

It’s not like the MSM has covered itself with glory, again, turning away from its roots of “Who, what, when, where, why, and how” to become “Storytellers” and Narrative creators. In this case, sucking up to the Biden Administration and pushing the meme that in private he was sharp as the tack put on the teacher’s chair even as the Rightwing Racists kept harping on the video clips showing otherwise in public.

This morning, I started to go through my feeds (a LOT of them) to see how the Democrat talking heads were going to spin this.

It was so bad that right after the debate was over when people were supposed to be flowing into the “Spin Room” for amplifications and deflections, I guess the Dems truly were in a panic:

No surrogates for President Joe Biden appeared to be in the CNN spin room immediately following the presidential debate, prompting confusion from the press. “Dozens” of reporters were left waiting with only people from former President Donald Trump’s camp, Daily Caller correspondent Henry Rodgers posted on X, citing MSNBC coverage. While the Democrats’ team was seemingly absent, “endless Trump surrogates are on the spin room floor speaking to press,” Rodgers noted.

“The spin room is full of Trump surrogates,” said Axios reporter Alex Thompson. “No one from Biden’s camp we can see.”

Man, I was surprised!  Other than Kamala, the Elder Abuser (Dr. Jill), and California Guv Gavin “My hair can refill our Strategic Oil Reserves,” Newsom said Biden held his own and that he won “on the merits,” almost every Democrat talking head, politician, and political operator all threw up their hands and admitted what most of us that follow politics have known for three years now – for Biden, there is no now anymore – he’s a walking husk. Anyone who took the time to watch…

SideNote: funny, I haven’t seen any results on how many people tuned into the debate…

…that knew this were already looking for the signs even as we knew he had been “enhanced” more than the former East German womens’ Olympic team. We were not surprised. However, any Normal and generally unpolitical types got a very rude awakening as to the kind of person who could fill in the nuke launch codes.  Just during the first hour of the debate, the betting markets went nuts in declaring the winner of the election. Yes, Nov 5th, not the debate:

BREAKING: The odds of Donald Trump winning the 2024 Presidential Election surge to a new high of 63%.

Since the debate started, odds of Trump winning the election have surged by over 10%.

Odds of President Biden winning a second term have fallen from 48% to 37%.

Markets… pic.twitter.com/Y08GWO8oZu

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) June 28, 2024

BREAKING: The odds of Donald Trump winning the 2024 Presidential Election surge to a new high of 63%. Since the debate started, the odds of Trump winning the election have surged by over 10%. Odds of President Biden winning a second term have fallen from 48% to 37%. Markets believe Donald Trump will be our next president.

And GatewayPundit shows the Trump Campaign’s Fact-Checking along the way. How they ever did so is beyond me as, at times, if I were the deaf interpreter, I would have just walked off the stage.

Frankly, when all is said and done, other than for the dyed-in-the-wool Dems’ votes, Biden is toast. Almost every site has the question being asked, “How can we get him to resign now? How can we get him to NOT run and drop out of the race now?”. And more than a few “TV focus groups” had at least one person remarking, “Heck, can he actually last until November?”

Frankly, I didn’t take notes other than:

• An hour and 17 minutes in – on the topic of Dobbs where SCOTUS said that abortion isn’t a Right as it isn’t in the Constitution and returned it back to the State Legislatures to decide closer to those who have the Power – we the voters – to decide. Biden stumbled through but the intent was clear – he (like most Progressives) doesn’t trust the States (and voters) to make such decisions.
• An hour and 40 minutes in – Biden believes that any American that votes for Trump are against American Democracy. You know, that “our Democracy” crapola that keeps coming out of every Democrat’s oral orifice? Whose translation is “WE should own Government”. Nice of him to attempt to shame us into voting for him in calling us unpatriotic or worse, traitors.

Frankly, I think it is more the latter than the former. A decent 3 paragraph summary at the Free Beacon will save 90 minutes of your life:

It was clear within the first few minutes that the presidential debate was not going to go well for President Joe Biden. His breath was heavy, his voice was raspy and faint, his physical bearing poor. When he wasn’t speaking, his mouth was agape. His answers rambled, and he was sometimes incoherent. Every so often, he coughed noticeably. He did not look well.

This wasn’t the hyped-up, partisan Biden who appeared at the State of the Union in March. This was the Biden who mumbled argle-bargle at the White House’s Juneteenth celebration.

The contrast with former president Donald Trump was apparent. Trump was confident, direct, and forceful. Unlike in 2020, he did not interrupt his opponent or the moderators. He followed the debate rules. He kept his facial expressions, and even his sarcasm, to a minimum. I have watched every Trump debate since he entered electoral politics in 2015. Thursday night was his best performance.

But you know that Biden and the Dems are in Big Trouble when you lose the NY Times. From their daily missive that I get (emphasis mine as I NEVER expected to read such):

After last night, many Democrats are panicked.

They hoped that President Biden, 81, could convince voters that his age was nothing to worry about. That he could counter Donald Trump’s wild accusations and relentless falsehoods with confidence. He didn’t.

Biden’s voice was hoarse and halting. His answers were often unclear, and he struggled to finish his thoughts. “Rather than dispel concerns about his age,” wrote my colleague Peter Baker, Biden “made it the central issue.”

Some Democrats are now pushing for him to drop out of the race. “Biden is about to face a crescendo of calls to step aside,” a Democratic strategist told Peter. “Joe had a deep well of affection among Democrats. It has run dry.”

NY Post had this headline: We just witnessed the end of Joe Biden’s presidency. And it seems that the shade of Donna Brazille (who infamously had given the Trump-Hillary debate questions to the Clinton campaign) rallied forth again with this admission from CNN’s Erin Burnett after the debate was over:

BOMBSHELL

CNN’s Erin Burnett on Joe Biden’s debate performance: “He goes through six days of preparation at camp David… They know the rules. He practices with the mics. He knows every one of these questions is coming and yet he couldn‘t fill the time.” pic.twitter.com/mwtAjHpOFz

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) June 28, 2024

“He knows every one of these questions is coming and yet he couldn‘t fill the time.”

There’s two ways to take what she meant: that his campaign HAD to know these types of question were going to be asked OR, once again, the MSM covered for him in cheating on the sake of “their team”. And who was the actual leaker if there was one?

But Joe has to ad-lib – and this one is a doozy:

Biden says we need abortion because “there’s a lot of women being raped by their brothers and sisters.” pic.twitter.com/uYghPRoHCe

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 28, 2024

But here’s the deal. There’s a lot of young women to be raped by their, by their in-laws, by their, by their spouses, brothers and sisters. It’s just, it’s just ridiculous, and they can do nothing about it,”

Seriously, sisters being raped by their brothers and sisters/sisters-in-law is the reason why abortion is needed. Hey, Planned Parenthood – you good with this?

Cringe doesn’t begin to scratch this surface. And terror from the Dems: McCaskill: VP Harris or Gavin Newsom Should Be at the Top of the Dem Ticket After Tonight

NO Democrat believes he’s fit for re-election. My thought is that if he can’t serve after November, he shouldn’t be serving now. Talk about a weak and incapable President; Steve is right in demanding who is really in charge of the Biden Administration’s actions and policies?

And? Our Federal Delegation and Guv hopefuls, Hassan, Shaheen, Pappas, Craig, and Warmington, aren’t talking much here in New Hampshire (NHJ).

 

The post Presidential Debate – CNNs 90-Minute Deep Fake (Or Is it Cheap Fake?) of Joe Biden appeared first on Granite Grok.

Indira Venkat, Senior Vice President of Research at AARP, breaks down how more than half of those ages 50 and older don’t think they’ll have enough money to last in retirement and what they should do today to fix their finances.



The post The New England Take: No Money for Retirement After 50 appeared first on Granite Grok.

Two very important court decisions came down this past week but got lost in the noise following Sundown Joe Biden’s incredibly, terribly bad debate performance. Depending on whom you ask, these cases have significant, far-reaching consequences for executive branch power and its abuse.

The first was related to Administrative agency courts. These in-house star chambers operating as prosecution, judge, and jury have been handing out judgments (penalties), but the US Supreme Court, at least in the case of the Securities Exchange Commission, has ruled they can no longer operate this way. “In Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy [SCOTUS decided that]… the SEC cannot continue to handle [these] cases in-house without a jury. The decision will have a far-reaching impact on dozens of federal administrative agencies that use similar processes.”

I’m not clear on how many agencies are affected, but this ruling throws a monkey wrench into the intimidating Rube-Goldbergian works of Executive overreach, and not just at the federal level. States have plenty of agencies that operate their own in-house tribunalesque mini-courts. Executive Branch Judge Dredds. If SEC vs. Jarkesy has the potential to invalidate dozens of similar mechanisms at the federal level, it might have the legs to undermine local star chambers in your neck of the woods.

The other, bigger decision struck down Chevron Deference. The 40-year-old rule allowed agencies to decide the meaning behind ambiguous law. This rule-making authority gave them power to make law, long argued as constitutional by almost anyone who found themselves on the business end of the practice.

By a vote of 6-3, the justices overruled their landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which gave rise to the doctrine known as the Chevron doctrine. Under that doctrine, if Congress has not directly addressed the question at the center of a dispute, a court was required to uphold the agency’s interpretation of the statute as long as it was reasonable. But in a 35-page ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices rejected that doctrine, calling it “fundamentally misguided.”

Put more simply, if Congress was unclear, and not surprisingly, it got increasingly unclear after Chevron became the hot blonde in Admininstrative overreach, agencies that guess and then enforce the guess will no longer get a by your leave from the courts. Instead of saying, well – the Executive Agency rules are just as good as if the legislative Branch had written it that way, the courts can meddle based on their own interests.

Take that how you like, but what I found most amusing was that the Dissenters, Kagen, Sotomayor, and Ketanji-Brown, are worried about the shock to the legal system. It does seem likely that this will result in a lot more trips down the judicial aisle—especially taken in the context of Jarkesy—but Chevron is only 40 years old. It is a blip in the historical context of the American government.

What the hell did we do for the 208 years prior to it?

I’ll make a suggestion. We did not encourage laws deliberately written to protect legislators from the consequences of their rule-making by passing them off to bureaucrats. The government did not embrace the bloat required to manage, deploy, enforce, and litigate bills written this way.

Chevron wasn’t precedent. It was an experiment that The Robert’s court has just ended, and it will be messy. The solution is to demand that Congress revisit the mess they created and craft new or amended language to clean it up  – unless judges decide to legislate from the bench to save them the time. So, yeah, there are pitfalls here.

So, no, I am not saying that would be an improvement. But advancing tyranny without electoral consequence just took a punch to the McNuggets, and it will be interesting to see what results.

 

The post Bad Week for the Deep State – Chevron Deference is Dead; Admin Courts on Thin Ice appeared first on Granite Grok.

I’m not certain when sexuality became the openly defining characteristic of human existence. And I’m not talking about sex appeal or looking or feeling sexy. I mean announcing to everyone at every opportunity to whom you are sexually attracted. It’s a bit odd but not nearly as annoying as insisting that I not only care but “see you,” respect your choices, and salute your flag.

Why bring it up?

I accidentally found myself on MSN.com, and before I could scrape it off the bottom of my digital footprint, an article popped up about a woman who, after thirty years, realized she was an abrosexual. Ooh, what’s that about, I say? (I am attracted to stories about the ‘diversification’ of the culture.)

“I didn’t learn about abrosexuality until two years ago, when I was 30. Up until that point, I’d struggled to identify what my sexuality was because it fluctuated so rapidly.  There were times that I too scoffed, chastising myself for being so uncertain of who I was. It wasn’t that I couldn’t make my mind up, but rather my identity shifted.  One day I felt like I was a lesbian, yet days or weeks later, I’d feel more aligned with bisexuality. My sexuality was fluid.”

Fluid. Like water that can run … to one of two places. My spellchecker clears up this distinction without a difference by trying to change abrosexual to bisexual. I stopped it, the bigoted thing that it is, then I looked it up.

“Abrosexual means a person who experiences fluctuating sexual orientations over time.”

It is like bisexuality and pansexuality, but different. How so? Bisexuality is when someone might find themselves “romantically attracted” to people with either a penis or a vagina. Pansexuals can be or are attracted to people who happen to have either a penis or a vagina. Abrosexuals are people who could find themselves attracted to people with either a penis or a vagina.

In all fairness, I should include how they might be attracted to someone who used to have either a penis or a vagina after having it removed (or both a penis and a vagina), but as it turns out, the glorious spectrum isn’t as diverse as it thinks. Heterosexuals are (by the way) people who are attracted to either a penis or a vagina but are not allowed to have pride or gang colors.

That just seems unfair.

No matter what the “romantic” feeling, preference, impulse, deference, urge, or longing, there are still only two sets of parts to desire, or the not desiring of either, which is a legitimate choice but not a third set.

Be You!

If you want to hold someone’s hand, and they want to hold yours, whatever two consenting adults do with each other after that is nobody else’s business (unless it’s with someone else’s special someone). Inviting additional participants is not verboten, but consent is still required with a warning label. The additional “feelings” multiply not sequentially but exponentially.

That’s still not my problem, the same way your job, hobbies, diet, or creepy landlord who hasn’t fixed the drippy faucet in your retro-70s half-bath are not my problems. Be you. Do your thing. And I hope you find happiness and it all works out but I don’t need to know unless I ask. I also don’t need to know what foods you like and dislike unless I’m supposed to feed you, but if you are a big fan of cheeseburgers, why isn’t there a flag for that?

Hunger is a feeling, right?

Everyone gets a trophy.

Whatever your sexual or romantic instincts, whether a fixed or moving target, the need to name it, give it a flag, and then wave it at people who are expected to know and understand your special circumstances reeks of the everyone gets a trophy culture. We are all special, but these days, what’s special is people who don’t shove that in your face and get mad if you don’t smile, nod, and bless their choices.

And parades?

Pretend for a moment that wearing your sexuality on your sleeve might be an overshare whether you are hetero, homo, pan, bi, Trans, Abro, or one of the other states of sexual being (all restricted to the same two sets of plumbing). Alone with a special friend or in a group, human beings arrive on the earth with two choices – everything else is an affectation or an embellishment (can you say social construct?) to which – I will argue – like owning more than one outfit, you are entitled.

If you are attracted to left-handed albino lesbians, good for you. I happen to be very fond of a particular adult female, brunette, whom I married, and I will love no other until death does us part. For reasons I cannot explain, I prefer brunettes. Most of my pre-marriage girlfriends were brunettes, including one who colored her hair blonde. Good for me. I don’t need a flag or an award.

And I’m not going to expect you to be me – and not you. Go about your life contributing in whatever meaningful way you can manage and leave the “whom you feel like having sex with” talk to your besties or therapist(s) (or Substack subscribers). Most everyday adults don’t care, and if they do, tell them – or tell them to mind their own business, and I think you’ll discover that the world works as well or better as a result.

We all have a lot more in common than not.

If you find your “preference” affects your work or social life, it might not be your lifestyle choices but how you wear them. The problem might be you. Yes, there are bullies in the world but there always has been. History has no shortage of people who could behave better.

We could just give them a flag of their own, but another lesson from history is that this might make them act out more, and it almost never ends well.

 

| Substack

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Why are Republicans only concerned about drafting our daughters, apparently forgetting that 600,000 American men were slaughtered in the Civil War, 400,000 American men in WW2, and 100,000 American men in Korea and Vietnam?

I thought equal rights require equal responsibilities. Why are women entitled to special privileges: they decide if they want to defend our country!

The real question here is why it is necessary to reinstate the draft. Why has military recruitment collapsed? Could it possibly be that the Demolitioncrats have so mismanaged the defense of our country that our warrior class has figured out that DEI , CRT, and SEL are not worth defending and do not want to be brainwashed by idiotic Pentagon generals?

Apparently, the Biden/ Obama Demolitioncrats have figured out that the military is needed to indoctrinate men, but our academic institutions have successfully done that to women.

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The Squad is a group of radical left-leaning representatives brought together by Congresswoman Sany Cortez of New York. The Squad has some high-profile members because this group of politicians loves the attention of the cameras and media and usually addresses a crowd or reporters as a group.

This group mentality is necessary because the individuals are ineffective members of Congress, having passed no meaningful legislation, but they always have an opinion and soundbites for the crowd. This group seems to always be on the wrong side of public opinion, but incumbents are usually very comfortable in their positions and are very difficult to defeat in a primary or general election-difficult, but not impossible. Jaamal Bowman is a Congressman from New York but cannot claim that title in 2025. Bowman lost his primary race this week in New York City to become the first member of the Squad voted out of office. Bowman may have sealed his fate when he was caught on camera pulling a fire alarm in the Capital to delay a floor vote. He should have been jailed for his actions, but losing his reelection bid is a more significant penalty. Bowman and fellow Squad member Cortez appeared at a rally in the Bronx with supporter Bernie Sanders. The event was embarrassing for two sitting members of Congress. Cortez was jumping, dancing, and screaming around the stage like a caged animal while Bowman was rapping and screaming expletives to the crowd. Sanders was probably wondering why he was not in Vermont, and Hilary was thrilled she backed George Latimer, the other guy in the race. Pro-Israel and centrist groups dealt a blow to the left by taking out Rep. Jamaal Bowman. And they already have a next target in mind. Cori Bush is currently behind in her race in Missouri. The Squad was quick to call foul and said Bowman’s results show how broken the election process is in America. The Bowman/Latimer primary was the most costly on record in America. In an ironic twist, Cortez and Bowman both said that they demanded that billionaires’ funds be kept from the political arena. That is, of course, the height of hypocrisy. George Soros drops millions into every Democrat election involving a far-Left candidate. So, to clarify the Squad’s remarks, they do not want any Republican Billionaire’s money in an election. They want every advantage, or the election is not fair. This entire scenario exemplifies the thinking of the Squad. Every one of them is anti-establishment, anti-Israel, anti-capitalism, and, of course, anti-America, but they feel they are a protected lot. There shall be no discussion about a Democrat challenging them in a primary, and regardless of how egregious their actions are, they can never be used against them. The people of Bowman’s district woke up, and hopefully, they will in Cori Bush’s district, too. But what about Tlaib, Omar, and Presley? These folks have no place in American politics. Not because they are Democrats or Radical but because they hate America. They are welcome to leave this great land any time they like.

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Bioindustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem (BioMADE), which has received more than $500 million in Department of Defense funding, recently announced it is soliciting proposals to develop “innovations in food production that reduce the CO2 footprint of food production at … DoD operational environments.” Translation: The Pentagon is funding research and development of novel cell-cultured fake meats to feed US soldiers.

Fake Meats and Climate Change

BioMADE claims that lab-grown food products will reduce the Pentagon’s carbon footprint. The company’s invitation for project proposals presents a utopian mission of producing yet-to-be-invented fantasy foods, including fake meats:

“BioMADE is a Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII) sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) with a vision to build a sustainable, domestic, end-to-end bioindustrial manufacturing ecosystem.

“BioMADE is building a robust bioindustrial manufacturing ecosystem and has a national network of over 280 members spanning industry, academia, and non-profit organizations.

“Together with the DoD, BioMADE is interested in accelerating technology development related to mitigating the causes and consequences of global climate change, particularly when these intersect with bioindustrial manufacturing.”

The Pentagon – which manages the production and deployment of arsenals of devastating weapons – proposes to offset its prime mission to win wars by feeding soldiers tofu MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). Moreover, BioMADE emphasizes that project bids must enhance social justice causes:

“This implies taking actions that optimize positive social outcomes through adherence to ethical standards, including seeking ways to make products and processes that improve societal welfare. Special attention to this commitment includes equitable distribution of benefits of your project. Examples may include community engagement, whether as education or consultation; or for workforce development that addresses the need for diversity and inclusion; or for creative initiatives to bring open dialogue, perspectives and appreciation of biomanufacturing and economic possibilities to the general public.”

Corporate Trough-Slurping

Using taxpayer dollars to subsidize pro-industry propaganda for manufacturers of fake meats is far from traditional notions of the work done at the Pentagon. Despite the social justice revolution, US service personnel remain chattels to be utilized for the furtherance of equity.

Developing cultured meats for soldiers is a far cry from France’s legendarily edible MREs of venison and rabbit. Plant-based meats in a tube or can for combat troops may one day be transferred to public consumption, like Tang was popularized after it was served to astronauts in flight. It is unclear whether foods grown in stainless-steel vats from GMO plants pose health risks or nutrient deficiencies – they haven’t even been invented yet. But they are being federally funded as part of a Biden initiative to use the military to combat not tanks and mustard gas but cows and greenhouse gases.

Corporations influence ever-increasing government spending in their favor. Big Pharma sells vaccines with free advertising through the CDC. EV and solar panel manufacturers enjoy massive subsidies and regulatory favoritism in the name of reducing inflation and boosting the economy. Delivering on promises of improved circumstances or environmental benefits is as unnecessary to the social justice warriors as secure borders, lower crime rates, or equitable redistribution of the true costs of these policies. Food companies, including start-ups making fake meats, are simply dining at the same corporate trough on the taxpayers’ dime.

There is no reason to expect that grants of taxpayer funds through BioMADE will overcome the profound hurdles encountered by private venture capitalists who have poured billions into fake meats with zero profits. Producing meat substitutes at scale and cost has been proved rather elusive for the nouveau meat-makers. More like impossible.

Cows to the Rescue!

Cows grazing on pastured hillsides sequester carbon, nurture soil microbes, reverse erosion, and improve water retention. GMO monoculture crops such as corn and soy are dependent on massive applications of glyphosate and other chemicals for their production, deplete soils, taint and reduce precious groundwater resources, and release carbon dioxide from the soil through tilling. The shift to fake meats, like the shift to EVs and solar arrays, does more harm than good to the environment; however, it does much good to short-term corporate profits for well-positioned “stakeholders.”

Like prisoners, or prisoners of war, US soldiers will eat what they are ordered to eat and march where they are commanded. Increasingly, corporate domination of public policy compels soldiers and civilians alike into industrial conformity and compliance like factory animals, consuming what is compelled without question or choice.

Agrarian essayist Wendell Berry imaginatively captured this vision of corporate conscription:

“The food industrialists have by now persuaded millions of consumers to prefer food that is already prepared. They will grow, deliver, and cook your food for you and (just like your mother) beg you to eat it. That they do not yet offer to insert it, pre-chewed, into our mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so. We may rest assured that they would be glad to find such a way. The ideal industrial food consumer would be strapped to a table with a tube running from the food factory directly into his or her stomach.”

Factories are being constructed to concoct processed or “cultured” replacements for cows using insects, soy, or yet-to-be-created processes or chemicals. This is being achieved at public expense, without a vote, using the usual corporate actors, and inflicted upon noble servants who sacrificed legal rights and freedoms of choice (including diet) in order to serve the public good.

 

John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And Regular Contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.

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