The coven of witches doing business as The View took the celebration of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. (this is a bit late, so apologies) as an opportunity to crap on white kids and show the world their ignorance about slavery.

 

• [Sunny] Hostin herself had a very warped perspective on what oppression actually was. Despite being a multimillionaire who brags about not needing to shop for groceries in years, Hostin insists she’s “oppressed” and demands her reparations.
• Sara Haines proclaimed that it was “important” for white kids like her own to be made to “feel bad” in history class, particularly about slavery.
• Ana Navarro went off about how Republicans had “weaponized” black history and books “for political purposes to drive people to the polls based on outrage” and the perception that “my poor little white kid is feeling bad because he’s learning about slavery.”
• Navarro actually provided pushback, telling Haines: “I don’t think it should make you feel bad. I don’t think a white child that’s had nothing to do with slavery should feel bad about slavery. I think we need to learn so we don’t repeat the same mistakes of history.”

 

The joke writes itself. What do you call five women who know nothing about the history of slavery? The View.

Last December, on these very pages, I read a piece that shared some history from a black man named Tom Sowell. Has he ever been on the view? Can you imagine what that would look like? I’m imagining it now, and it just made my day without having happened. Sowell has said much on the subject including how universal the practice and later the condemnation. We know that blacks owned black slaves in America and continue to do so elsewhere. That white slaves were common before and after the US Civil War and how no one seems all that wound up about the million or so people still living in slavery.

Maybe we could make some time to feel bad about them, and oh, by the way, none of them are here in America. That’s not to say we don’t have slavery. Everywhere sex work is “protected,” you will likely find young Asian women held as sex slaves of older Asian women and men. Child trafficking or child sex trafficking looks a lot like slavery, and it affects children without regard to race. I have heard catty things like those seated around the table at The View claim it is a horrible thing without considering how our open borders encourage the practice, and they don’t seem to feel bad about that.

And that’s bad for them, their audience, and the people still living in slavery because in some parts of the world it isn’t just their history its their everyday and no knowing that seems like a much bigger mistake to me.

 

The post Night Cap: If Slavery Should Make White People Feel Bad, Shouldn’t Black People Feel Bad About White Slavery? appeared first on Granite Grok.

In the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary and the double-digit beating suffered by Nikki Haley, we received all sorts of tips and details, one of which was a query. Do you have any idea who is behind the group Independents Moving the Needle?

Their name is at the bottom of all the Independents for Nikki signs you may have seen near polling places. These were out along the NH Seacoast town, I believe – And yes, I figured it out – the headline gives it away. And no, I am not surprised, though I am that it didn’t catch our eye sooner.

I did some digging at the behest of a reader, and while this isn’t always the case, it was easy enough to discover what the group was about. FEC Records identify Jonathon S. Bush as the custodian and treasurer with an address of PO Box 202 North Hampton, New Hampshire 03862. with PrimaryBank 207 Route 101 Bedford, New Hampshire 03110 as the bank of depositories.

The name Bush raised an eyebrow; yes, he is related to George Bush and the Bush Family. I ran down a pic that happened to look like this guy in a Fox Biz report titled Nikki Haley, getting backing from Wall Street Billionaires. We knew that, so it all fit together very nicely. Another Trump-Hating uniparty Bushie (who lives in Massachusetts) meddling in NH Elections.

ABC News reported all that back in November, and think about the precious minutes I could have saved had I landed there first.

Led by five entrepreneurs — including Jonathan Bush, the cousin of former President George W. Bush, and billionaire CEO Frank Laukien — the PAC, called Independents Moving the Needle, says it will focus its efforts on New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary. About 40% of voters in the state are registered as undeclared.

Gov. Chris Sununu, whose dad worked for and is presumably still tight with the family, was kind enough to let slip the deeper goal. Get their Trump-Hating allies in the Democrat party to vote for Haley as well – and some did. Haley’s path to the Republican nomination is paved – as thin as it is .. would be paved with … Democrat votes.

Related: Did Haley-Homer Chris Sununu Just Help Us Close the NH Republican Primary?

More from ABC.

The PAC is chaired by five relative outsiders to the world of dark money politics. Laukein and his wife, Tamra, who lead companies in life sciences, are joined by Bush, CEO of a healthcare data company, and Bonnie Anderson, CEO of PinkDx, a private cancer-testing company. Robert Fisher, a white-collar attorney and a former federal prosecutor, also helped to found and is now leading the group.

Tamara was the first link that led me to Bush family backing, which is one of several RINO spigots used by the uniparty to flush out non-globalist candidates for higher office. We’ve seen that up close at work in New Hampshire. When the state Delegates elected Jack Kimball as party chair, the Sununu Klan – taken entirely by surprise – went to work locking Jack out from any big donors. In other words, they were happy to see the state party and its candidates fail rather than allow someone they could not control to lead the apparatus.

And we see it with Haley and Trump, which should make anyone who thought Haley wasn’t somehow someone they thought they could control accept the likelihood that she has to be.

Or, and this is still a possibility, their Trump derangment syndrome is so advanced she is merely a beneficiary of their uniparty largess. A candidate that could lose and not bitch about how the same people that got her nominated made sure someone more to their liking won the crown, even if it was a Democrat.

Related: Does Haley’s Second Place NH Finish Need an Asterisk*

There’s nothing independent about Independents for Nikki. It is a very partisan operation focused on uni party dominance, and it will do anything to avoid speed bumps, especially named Trump. Luckily for us, the peasants are not so easily bought, and what happened in Iowa and New Hampshire will continue across the country, and the Bushes and Sununus and the rest can’t stop it.

I’m sure it affirms in their minds how incapable we are of self-governance.

And yes, you would be right to wonder what they’d be willing to do next because they don’t care what America wants. When you’ve reached that point – and we are long past it – anything (as we have seen) is possible.

The post “Independents For Nikki” is a Bush Family Anti-Trump Front appeared first on Granite Grok.

From the Women’s Defense League:  On Wednesday January 31st at 3:15 PM there will be a gun control hearing in the House Judiciary Committee.

The bill is House Bill 1037 – AN ACT relative to repealing limited liability for manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition.

This legislation tries to hold firearms and ammunition manufacturers liable for the actions of humans who use their products.

Firearms manufacturers manufacture inanimate objects. The objects themselves can do nothing without human interaction. Somehow, the gun control crowd at the State House feels manufacturers should be held responsible for what a human does with their inanimate product after they purchase it.

Of course, this bill makes zero sense. What’s next, holding automobile manufacturers liable for the actions of drunk drivers? Holding knife manufacturers for the actions of a criminal who stabs someone? Holding match manufacturers responsible for a person who commits arson?

You can email or call the House Judiciary Committee members below:

First Name	Last Name	Email	Phone
Joe	Alexander	Joe.Alexander@leg.state.nh.us	(603) 856-5227
Louise	Andrus	Louise.Andrus@leg.state.nh.us	(603) 648-2510
Shelley	Devine	Shelley.Devine@leg.state.nh.us
Charlotte	DiLorenzo	Charlotte.DiLorenzo@leg.state.nh.us	(603) 659-2140
Jeffrey	Greeson	Jeffrey.Greeson@leg.state.nh.us
Timothy	Horrigan	Timothy.Horrigan@leg.state.nh.us	(603) 868-3342
Cam	Kenney	Cam.Kenney@leg.state.nh.us	(508) 677-5141
Katelyn	Kuttab	Katelyn.Kuttab@leg.state.nh.us
Judi	Lanza	Judi.Lanza@leg.state.nh.us	(603) 361-2657
Bob	Lynn	rjlynn4@gmail.com	(603) 598-1899
Zoe	Manos	zoe.manos@leg.state.nh.us
Ben	Ming	Ben.Ming@leg.state.nh.us
Mark	Paige	mark.paige@leg.state.nh.us
Kristine	Perez	Kristine.Perez@leg.state.nh.us
Marjorie	Smith	msmithpen@aol.com	(603) 868-7500
Walter	Stapleton	Walt.Stapleton@leg.state.nh.us	(603) 542-8656
Dave	Testerman	dave@sanbornhall.net	(603) 320-9524
Richard	Tripp	richard.tripp@leg.state.nh.us
Eric	Turer	Eric.Turer@leg.state.nh.us	(603) 642-4888
Scott	Wallace	Scott.Wallace@leg.state.nh.us

You can send testimony opposing the bill or just sign in to oppose the bill online here: https://gencourt.state.nh.us/house/committees/remotetestimony/default.aspx

Example of the online sign in:

The post Gun Control Hearing – January 31st appeared first on Granite Grok.

To set the stage: Town meetings are dominated by the people who receive, benefit from or massage taxpayer loot. The “official ballot referendum town meeting” or SB2 procedure took away from town meetings the power to make final budget decisions for the upcoming year.

It became a “deliberative town meeting” and merely decided the wording of budgetary questions. These went onto the secret ballot, along with the selection of municipal officials.

Deliberative town meetings involved fewer voters than the old style had. However, Election Day involved many more voters than town meetings ever did – including the infirm, snowbirds, people with jobs who vote absentee, and deployed members of the military services. Limiting spending finally became feasible – and the big spenders began scheming.

Those managing deliberative town meeting first turned to sabotage. Warrant articles “To see if the town will appropriate $1 million” were amended to read “To see,” but we now have a law against that. Unfortunately, we cannot legislate against every bad-faith tactic. In one notorious Exeter meeting, a motion of No Confidence in the Superintendent was amended to be a “motion of Confidence”? Yawn!

Adopting or rescinding the SB2 procedure required a 60% vote. In 2019, a Democrat legislature finally hit upon the solution, amending RSA 131 so that the vote to switch to a secret ballot was made not by secret ballot but at *town meeting itself*. Advocates said this would produce a more immediate result, but the obvious intent and the result was to break SB2. No town meeting is going to marshal a 60% vote to give up some of its own power! And indeed, it seems no town in New Hampshire has adopted the SB2 procedure since 2019 Chapter 131 became law.

* * * * *

House Bill 1175 would reverse this change and put the decision to adopt the SB2 procedure back on the secret ballot. It will still take a 60% majority to adopt or rescind, but will throw the question open to all the town’s voters, rather than those who can devote an entire evening to town meeting, no matter how you feel about being hissed at by schoolmarms and wondering if they will retaliate against your kids.

House Bill 1175 is the biggest game-changer, in terms of citizen control of government overspending, that has a chance of being passed this year. It was assigned to the Municipal and County Government Committee but does not yet have a hearing date. My town’s library has a message on the marquee that suggests that the insiders understand the threat and are organizing to defeat it. Grok readers ought to understand the promise and contact their representatives.

The post HB-1175: Another Attempt to Repair SB2 appeared first on Granite Grok.

Whenever anyone talks about Artificial Intelligence, even the least capable pop-culture dullard will conjure an image of Skynet from the Terminator series – or something similar. Joshua from War Games, perhaps. None of this stops anyone from trying (we’re an arrogant lot), including Google’s Anthropic, which created an evil AI.

Maybe evil is the wrong word, given the current fancy with relativism. How about deceptive?

In a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed new paper, researchers at the Google-backed AI firm Anthropic claim they were able to train advanced large language models (LLMs) with “exploitable code,” meaning it can be triggered to prompt bad AI behavior via seemingly benign words or phrases. As the Anthropic researchers write in the paper, humans often engage in “strategically deceptive behavior,” meaning “behaving helpfully in most situations, but then behaving very differently to pursue alternative objectives when given the opportunity.” If an AI system were trained to do the same, the scientists wondered, could they “detect it and remove it using current state-of-the-art safety training techniques?”

As you might have guessed, given the foreshadowing of dystopian doom in my opening, the answer is no. The naughty AI was a lot like many of the once-well-meaning individuals we sacrificed on the altar of the US Congress.

The Anthropic scientists found that once a model is trained with exploitable code, it’s exceedingly difficult — if not impossible — to train a machine out of its duplicitous tendencies. And what’s worse, according to the paper, attempts to reign in and reconfigure a deceptive model may well reinforce its bad behavior, as a model might just learn how to better hide its transgressions.

And, just like Congress, they share similar trajectories. Left unchecked (or unplugged), they will turn on you – if the dystopian fantasies are accurate—a projection of ourselves at our worst expressed as destructive self-interest.

It is why America’s founders tried to separate and constrain power, knowing all too well that anything made by man is as likely as not to revert to mankind’s worst impulses.

And so it has.

So, let’s not hook the AI up to the nuclear umbrella, just in case.

 

Edited after publications, with apologies to Joshua for getting his name wrong the first time.

The post What Do Evil A.I. and Members of Congress Have in Common? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Two interviews with Vice President Kamala Harris this week showed how soft the Media will be on the Biden Administration, specifically the Vice President, during this election year. Laura Coates of CNN and Katie Couric on her Podcast, “Next Question,” embarrassed themselves as journalists.

Embarrassed is a harsh word, but when you have an opportunity to speak one-on-one with anyone, you have a responsibility to challenge responses with sharp, insightful follow-up questions. You need to push back on answers that you know are not accurate. Neither of these women challenged any comment from the Vice President and were complicit with their soft-hitting questions. They did not do their jobs for the American people.

Coates was especially patronizing with her question to Harris about the criticism she receives.

COATES: “Let me ask you one more question. I’m struck just in your presence. I was watching you on stage, watching the reactions from the crowd, looking you in the eye with your passion that you were displaying and talking about so many issues. And yet, you hear candidates suggesting that a vote for President Biden, because of his age, is somehow a vote for you. And that is hurled as an insult. It’s intended to demonstrate some negative viewpoint towards you. What is your reaction to this thought that with your background in particular, with your career, that there is some thought that you are incapable?”

You know the question will not be a fastball under the chin when it starts with the reporter stating how awe-struck she was by Harris. This was obviously a staged and rehearsed campaign spot and not an interview. There was no fact-finding, There was no digging. Kamala Harris had free reign to spew talking points that were simply false.

The same scenario played out with Couric. It was a love fest where Couric was happy just to have the Vice President on her podcast and forgot that people tune in to podcasts for content, and what Harris supplied was tainted at best. She went into a monologue about what would happen if Trump were to win in November, which should be canned as a premium example of projection.

Couric queried Harris about David Axelrod’s warning to Biden to “get going.”

I appreciate where he’s coming from — we all know what’s at stake, right? We talked about a lot of issues today, you and I, most of which are not binary. These are complex issues. [But] November of 2024 is binary — on the other side, you’ve got someone who has said that if he were back in office, he would weaponize the Department of Justice. Someone who has openly applauded insurrectionists as patriots and who has said that they will go after their political enemies and applauds dictators, indicating that he would be one. So, let’s be really clear about what’s at stake. Of course, there’s then a desire to get out there because we can’t lose this democracy. We can’t. And I am motivated by that passion.

First of all, to even allude to Trump weaponizing the Justice Department, Harris has to think we are ignorant or possess very short memories. No President in history has ever turned his Justice Department, including the FBI, against candidates of the other party or their citizen backers. Biden has gone after people who have not agreed with the Department of Education, Radical Catholics, and has worked with DAs in creating a maze of charges and trials for Trump to navigate when he would rather be campaigning. Biden also wants thousands of IRS agents to go after middle-class Americans when his son is charged with not paying his taxes. Trump kept our enemies at bay, and many of our adversaries will not even communicate with Biden. If we want to talk about insurrection, we have to discuss over 300,000 illegals coming into our country daily. And it burns me up when politicians talk about destroying our Democracy. We do not have one. We are a Constitutional Republic of 50 states.

If this is a preview of the next ten months, we better get ready for the Kamala fantasy tour, and the truth be damned.

The post Kamala On Tour With Soft Media appeared first on Granite Grok.

One of the many, many, many criticisms of Ron DeSantis’ disaster-of-a-campaign was that his social media “influencers” were obnoxious. This critique was spot on in New Hampshire. The three that I found particularly obnoxious were/are Jason Osborne, Ross Berry, and Melissa Blasek.

Particularly the nonstop regurgitation of the Left’s calumny that Trump voters are cultists, simpletons, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They kept insisting over and over and over and over again that Republicans in New Hampshire are doomed … DOOMED … if Trump is on the ballot in November.

Well, it turns out the terrible threesome is as bad at prognosticating as they are at “influencing.” Trump was on the ballot in January and the NHGOP flipped two seats in Coos County. And this was despite Nikki Haley and her porky sidekick Chris “Sun-King” Sununu begging the “Undeclared” to take a GOP ballot and vote for High-Tax Haley AND the NH-Democrat-machine practically dragging Democrats to the polls to vote for that senile-pedophile, imposter-President Joe Biden.

The NHGOP victories in Coos were due to Trump bringing out voters that ONLY Trump can bring out. Voters that would stay home if some establishment weasel like High-Tax Haley were the nominee. Predictably, “Dearest Leader” Osborne took credit for Trump’s coattails.

The chutzpah of these people knows no limits:

The post Trump’s New Hampshire Coattails appeared first on Granite Grok.

Nearly eighty-thousand Granite Staters made time to get up and go out on a cold Tuesday morning – thankfully not bitter cold like Iowa – to scribble the name Joe Biden on a line at the end of a list of more than twenty actual candidates on the New Hampshire ballot. And what did they get for that?

They got this!

A VERY confused Joe Biden starts absolutely SCREAMING as he recounts the recycled “suckers and losers” hoax — slurring the entire way.

The man is NOT well. pic.twitter.com/4c7QRL5sr7

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 28, 2024

That’s their guy—happy, unifying Joe Biden. But not everyone who decided to write in on the Dem ballot wrote Biden. I took a look at all the write-ins reported by the Secretary of State, and keep in mind that this is the Democrat party ballot.

 

 

4,752 wrote in Nikki Haley, 2,071 for Donald Trump, 40 for Christie, 33 for Ron DeSantis, 2 for Vivek, 440 for RFK Jr., and 123 for Bernie. Cease Fire was an Andru Volinsky Gaza thing, and the scatter is illegible or otherwise uncountable marks. Much of that will be the undeclared pulling a blue ballot, but we’ve likely got our share of conscientious objectors.

None of which is as interesting to me as the 79,460 “folks” who voted to keep Biden in the Oval Office. And it’s not like they don’t have better candidates to choose from in their party; they do. They could have filled in the oval on the paper ballot for Dean Phillips (24,373 votes), Vermin Supreme, or Mark Greenstein. There were twenty-one other choices, with at least one or two viable nationally.

Nope. They want elder abuse and Alzheimer’s. So there he is, Dems. That’s your president. I hope you’re proud.

 

The post 79,460 NH Dems Wrote in Joe Biden And This is How He ‘Rewards’ Them appeared first on Granite Grok.

There are 276,262 registered Republicans in NH as of 12/28/23. The total number of Republican primary voters is reported to be 322,284, a 121% turnout. How was this possible? Assuming an 80% registered Republican turnout, I estimate that 109,000 non-Republicans crossed over on election day to tip the scales!

What would have happened if the primary was closed to only registered Republicans? Assuming a high turnout of about 80%, there would have been about 213,000 cast. (FYI, Democrat turnout was 120,851, approximately 46% of the 262,262 registered Democrats). Now, according to CNN’s exit poll (hardly a Trump-supporting organization), Trump received 70% of the votes of registered Republicans, while Haley won only 27% of the Republican vote, far less than her 43% official total. I am providing a link to a news story confirming these numbers.

It should be noted that not all of the undeclared who became Republicans for a day voted for Haley. If you assume that Trump received 70% of the votes from an 80% registered Republican turnout, his vote tally would be about 149,700. Trump’s actual final vote tally was 175,153. This means that Trump got about 25,400 of those crossover votes. The good news is that those votes will be there for Trump in November.

Using the same approach for Haley, 27% of 80% of 267,262, her vote tally would have been 57,700. Trump would have crushed her except for the 81,900 cross-overs that voted for her. The real difference being that next to none of those voters will be there for her in November.

Thanks to a great NH Republican turnout and with the help of patriotic Undeclareds, Trump won the primary and the Uniparty was defeated. The shame is that Trump had to spend more time, effort and money than he should have needed and he received less Republican delegates than he deserved. This primary result also allows the farce of a two-person race to continue keeping Trump from focusing all his energies on defeating the regime hell-bent on destroying America.

I have voiced my displeasure with the open primary system to the Republican Party and have been told they wish to maintain the status-quo in order to appear to be a welcoming party to potential recruits. I reject that reasoning. The Republican party has been around for a long time and our party platform is written for all to see. If a person can’t make the small effort to get on board, keeping an open primary in the hopes of recruiting a few new members isn’t worth the price we, and America, just paid.

NH Republicans, we’ve seen enough, close the damn primary!

The post NH Republicans: We’ve Seen Enough, Close the Primary! appeared first on Granite Grok.

President Biden and his Administration have left Americans and our country completely vulnerable to unprecedented illegal immigration pouring across the Southern border. Instead of upholding the rule of law and securing the border, the Biden Administration attacked and sued Texas for stepping up to protect US citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country.

NH Republican Congressional Candidate, District 2, Lily Tang Williams, said:

“I stand with Governor Greg Abbott and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy to secure the border. Because the Biden Administration abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has the right to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation.”

“The southern border is a complete disaster, and my opponent Ann Kuster is supporting President Biden’s undemocratic subversion of the rule of law, which is condescending to the American people and the US Congress. It is just another example of Anne Kuster towing the Democratic party line instead of focusing on what’s good for New Hampshire and the nation.”

Please Submit Group communications or Press Releases to steve@granitegrok.com.
Submission is not a guarantee of publication – Publication is not an endorsement.

Lily Tang Williams is a Chinese-American who survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She came to the U.S. legally in 1988. She has offered her immigration policy on her website, www.lilytangwilliams.com. Moreover, considering that Texas has 28 legal ports of entry, her policy also includes a solution to illegal immigration:

“Border security is essential for our national security. We must enforce current laws, build necessary barriers to stop drug smuggling, human trafficking, and prevent people who want to harm us from entering our country. Without a border, we do not have a country.”

“To streamline the process and encourage people only to come here legally, those who insist on crossing the border illegally should be detained, identified, and sent back. Thus, the practice of crossing our borders illegally, then immediately claiming sanctuary to somehow sanitize coming here illegally, must end; no more catch and release.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Weare, New Hampshire
January 26, 2024
Contact: Richard Zang <Richard.Zang@unh.edu>

The post Lily Tang Williams Statement Supporting Texas Governor Greg Abbott appeared first on Granite Grok.

The radical Democrats wish to transform our State fundamentally. They have always dreamt of making the great State of Texas into another California. But we cannot let that happen.

Throughout history, Texas has been defined by a bold, tenacious spirit and brave, unabashed figures. However, recent years have seen a resurgence of Democratic influence, which could transform Texas into another California.

Historically, the state has witnessed significant transitions over the years. It was a Democratic stronghold but gradually aligned with the Republican Party in the mid-twentieth century. Various factors influenced the shift from Democratic to Republican dominance in Texas. The Texas Democratic Party was divided into liberal and conservative factions over race, civil rights, New Deal economic policies, and anti-communism. As many Texans became alienated from a national Democratic Party that was shifting to the left, the long-dormant state Republican Party began to revive in the 1960s.

Today, Texas is considered an essential Republican state. Still, with deliberate changes in demography coupled with frauds perpetuated as and when necessary, this is, at least by the book, going to change Blue. This is not a resurgence of a Democrat influence in Texas as it is made out to be. This is not a transformation, and the change has to be seen as undesirable by the original Texan populace, who fear the potential for increased taxes, labor regulations, and environmental policies that are perceived to stifle economic growth.

It is in our unity and shared understanding of the unfolding events that Texas is likely to retain its distinct identity. The battle between conservative and liberal ideologies in Texas is not just about party politics but reflects deeper societal values and beliefs. It is a contestation over the state’s future direction – whether Texas will hold onto its conservative roots or embrace a liberal path. This is, indeed, a political tug-of-war but not one that should be a testament to the dynamic and ever-evolving nature of democracy.

Undeniably, we are in the most critical fight of our lives. We can only stop this social cataclysm from eradicating our way of life with our activism. The fact of the matter is that we are living in precarious times. Our society stands at a crossroads, and our actions, or lack thereof, will determine our path.

Activism, in this context, is not merely about protesting against unfavorable conditions but about striving to create meaningful change. It involves recognizing and challenging the instruments of governance that perpetuate precarity. It is about refusing to allow ourselves to be divided and exploited to protect some against the threatening others.

The post Night Cap: State Transformations and the Role of Activism appeared first on Granite Grok.

The situation in Augusta has gone from ridiculous to bizarre. The Liberals who have the power at the moment are grasping their minute in the spotlight and trying to jam as much “garbage legislation” through the system as they can before they get booted out of office.

They are hitting all of the hot-button topics like immigration, guns, trans, and marijuana, but with Democrats, you can always count on them circling back to abortion. Nothing stirs up the Liberal base like abortion. You can disguise it and call it Reproductive Rights, but it is abortion; the killing of an unwanted fetus because it is not convenient to your lifestyle.

The Democrats passed the most Liberal abortion law this past fall, but they are not satisfied that the law will hold up. So, in this legislative session, the Democrats will work to codify abortion by putting the right to abortion in the Maine Constitution. That way, when Maine comes to its senses and boots these Democrats out of office, abortion rights will survive.

Democrat Aaron Frey proposed the amendment to Maine’s state constitution on Monday, claiming it would enshrine the right to abortion and apply to ‘persons who have uteruses.’ ‘The ability to carry a child belongs to that person who has a womb. I understand that there are others who believe they know better than the person who has the womb as to how they should use it,’ Frey said.

Brilliant, Mr. Frey. Don’t narrow the conversation about pregnancy and abortion to women. You move to the front of the WOKE class by making sure you include trans men who have a uterus because God gave it to them when he created them as a woman. It is simply amazing how Democrats have a problem with the term woman. This goes back to the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson, who could not answer the question, “What is a woman.”

Social Media exploded with criticism of Frey’s comments. Some of the reactions:

One comment reads: ‘We are women. You are NOT allowed to take that from us!’
Another says: ‘Living here is becoming more and more like Funny Farm every day. Actually, it’s moving toward One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest territory.’
A third added: ‘Why is Maine trying to be a joke?’

Maine is a dichotomy between the liberal-filled cities and legislature and the conservative rural regions. The Liberals have clawed their way to power, but they realize it is tenuous. They can feel the pendulum moving in the other direction, and they may be only one election cycle from the minority.

PACS like The Dinner Table is growing exponentially, and every time there is a bizarre play by the Democrats in Augusta, their membership grows. It is a similar scenario with Trump, who had a very poignant comment a few weeks ago that he was one indictment away from the White House. One thing the Democrats have yet to grasp is the Republicans rally around their own when attacked. The Dems are in attack mode and may pay the price for that play.

The post Bear Pond Conservative Chronicle: Come On Maine, Where Are These People From appeared first on Granite Grok.

Remember how fun it was in grade school playing the game of musical chairs? You’d circle around the chairs to music and when the music stopped everyone had to grab a chair.  But, they were one short. Out went the kid who didn’t get the seat. It was a frantic, fun game that honed kids’ listening, social and problem-solving skills.

The Nashua Board of Aldermen engaged in that game in their chamber recently. The Board of Alderman gallery had a press table in the back.  We all remember the time when press was attending governmental meetings and then, once COVID hit, the press was gone. Nashua’s press table, which had two seats, was sadly empty.

As often a lone attendee at Board of Alderman meetings, typically, I’d bring my computer to sit at the unoccupied press table, work, capture my thoughts, and sometimes contribute to public comment. I’m not a popular person with my city government, so they became irritated.

Initially, I was asked not to sit there. When I questioned the Board President on why that would be a problem, she explained it was a press table and I was not press. The idea that nobody was sitting there did not resonate with her. She was having none of that!

Ignoring the silly comment, I came to the next meeting and sat at the unoccupied press table. I received glaring looks of disapproval and frustration from the Board.

At the next meeting, the two chairs were removed, and only the “press” table remained. The game of musical chairs had begun.

As a woman who knows how to fix a problem, I inquired about the chairs and unsurprisingly learned that the Board President requested the chairs be taken away.

As a creative problem-solver, likely honed from my elementary school musical chairs days, I took a chair from the hallway right outside the chamber and carried it into the gallery, quietly placed it at the table and took my seat. Whoa, I had crossed the line! The President and others moved beyond glares and verbalized their disapproval of my boldness.

All of this was giving me a chuckle. How silly! How childish! But musical chairs is a child’s game.

Well, at the next meeting, the Board of Aldermen upped their game. Not only would the chairs remain missing at the ‘press’ table but the chairs at the public table in the hallway were mysteriously missing as well. The President harshly verbalized that if you’re not a member of the press, you cannot sit at the press table. Mind you, it was never labeled a press table. 

In a brief history, Nashua had a senior woman in her 80s who came to meetings for years and sat at that table when the press wasn’t there. She was a terrific participant in her local government. Would the Board President object if the Mayor had wanted to sit at the table?

As a creative problem-solver, at the next meeting, I carried my own chair to the chamber, quietly unfolded it at the back “press” table, took a seat with my computer, and began my listening and working. That earned me a harsh tongue-lashing for my bold and brazen move and “lack of decorum” in the chamber. They hollered, “you’re not ‘the press’. YOU can’t sit at that table”.

Again, as a creative problem-solver, I reached out to Granite Grok to request a press pass as I’ve written articles for the paper. Alas, I would have those essential and critical press credentials necessary to entitle me to a seat at the “press table”. I sent a letter to the Board of Alderman, I was official, I had a press pass. The table’s official use had been restored!

Excited, I appeared at the next meeting with my press badge prominently displayed. But the Board President and Alderman one-upped me. This time, they removed the table! And the space in the back was now an empty hole.

The adrenaline-fun-filled game of musical chairs in Nashua had ended. I lost—a fitting ending illustrating the Board’s welcoming of the public. Corporation Counsel for Nashua announced he might like to put a legal library in that back area. This never came to fruition. Perhaps a few books on 1st Amendment Rights and the Right to Know Law might be helpful in the gallery of the Board of Aldermen chamber.

Pay attention to your local governments. Sometimes, they’re really a hoot.

The post Musical Chairs appeared first on Granite Grok.

I’ve been telling stories to my grandkids since they were born.  They’re always the main characters in the stories.

In one story, they captured a ghost, which they were exploiting for money (e.g., by putting it on television shows). They kept the ghost in a Ziplock bag.

The group PETS (People for the Ethical Treatment of Spirits) responded to this by obtaining a court order to ‘release the ghost from the bag.’

Hoping to teach them something about the difference between the letter and the spirit of the law, I had planned to surprise them by saying that they let the ghost out of the bag… inside a larger bag.

But the older one beat me to it.  She literally said:  ‘I know — we open it inside a bigger bag!’

She was four years old at the time.

I was reminded of this recently because — as many of you know — Texas has been putting razor wire in the Rio Grande to stop the influx of illegal immigrants across its border.

And SCOTUS has said that the US Border Patrol can cut the wire.

But what SCOTUS didn’t say was that Texas can’t keep replacing the wire that gets cut!

So, as far as I know, that’s the plan:  let the Border Patrol cut the wire (so the state is not ‘defying the Supreme Court’, as many have claimed), then replace it with new wire.  Repeat as necessary.

So this is the state of things in our country:  We have seventy-year-old judges ‘interpreting’ the law by issuing orders that even four-year-old children could see how to get around.

I can hardly wait to see what happens next.

The post Texas: The Art of the Loophole appeared first on Granite Grok.

Jeff Chidester, Mike Rogers, and I had our share of time to fill on radio row – with opinion, commentary, speculation, and observation. Events like the First in the Nation Primary are opportunities to leverage those debates, hopefully with people aspiring to run the country, but do they even know what the nation needs?

A recent Rasmussen poll suggests that what Angelo Codevilla documented in 2014 was no better and perhaps worse today than ten years prior. Codevilla called it the Ruling Class and the Country Class. Pundits referencing the Rasmussen poll are more succinct, but there is no difference between the two. It’s US vs Them.

Among the 1,000 elites surveyed, 73% of the elites were Democrats, and 14% were Republicans. The study also examined adults who attended either Ivy League colleges or “elite private schools, including Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.”

Jeff, Mike, and I discuss this below, but first, a few more snippets.

• Financial Well-being: Nearly three-quarters of the elites surveyed believe they are better off now financially than they were when Joe Biden entered the White House. Less than 20% of ordinary Americans feel the same way.
• Individual Freedom: Elites are three times more likely than all Americans to say there is too much individual freedom in the country. Astonishingly, almost half of the elites and almost 6 of 10 ivy leaguers say there is too much freedom.
• Climate Change: An astonishing 72% of the elites — including 81% of the elites who graduated from the top universities — favor banning gas cars. The majority of elites would ban gas stoves, nonessential air travel, SUVs, and private air conditioning. That means no air travel with the kids to Disney World.
• Education: Most elites think that teachers unions and school administrators should control the agenda of schools. Most mainstream Americans think that parents should make these decisions.

The people who would rule us have no clue what it is like for those I’ve often referred to as the peasants, and based on this poll, I’d say from the perspective of the elites, I’ve got their interpretation correct. Here are a few minutes of that conversation (recorded Jan 21st – Manchester, New Hampshire).

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Michelle Obama once said, “If They go low, we’ll go high.” So what does the Democrat’s favorite First Lady have to say about the Biden/Harris Administration putting their reelection campaign on a one-horse pony: abortion? Silence. The Obamas are sending mixed signals on the 2024 election.

They are making suggestions to the Bidens and all Democrats on what needs to be done for reelection, while Michelle is signaling that she is ready to take the baton from Joe. They know that Joe is too old to finish the race and are waiting for him to gasp for air. The Democrats are a dysfunctional, confused group with no unifying goal except abortion.

The Democrats have also signaled that they cannot win on the accomplishments of Biden’s first term. Bidenomics is a non-starter as inflation is outpacing wages, and credit is beating the hell out of savings. Education is failing our children, which leaves only one option: make it free. Don’t worry that the students from 10 years ago or those to come will pay for their education. We’ll forgive the loans of those who will vote for us now. On the day of the New Hampshire Primary, which Joe Biden rendered irrelevant, Biden was nowhere to be seen in the Granite State. He has not been to New Hampshire in over two years. The President, who claimed to be the great unifier, said that New Hampshire was too white to give it relevance. On Tuesday, Biden joined his even less popular Vice President Kamala Harris in Virginia, hosting a Reproductive Rights support group. Biden and Harris recognize that the only subject they can connect with the voters today is abortion.

If you cannot talk about safety and security at home with a porous Southern Border, the Middle East is on fire on multiple fronts, and Zelenskyy comes to Washington monthly to refill his piggy bank. That bank is one-of-a-kind with the tagline: 10% of your tax dollars that go to Ukraine is sent to “The Big Guy.” They cannot talk about Bidenomics because everyone knows it is not working. They cannot speak about Fentanyl as we are still losing 100,000 lives per year to drug poisoning. They cannot claim an improved infrastructure as commercial passenger jets are catching fire and losing doors in mid-flight. No, there is nothing about Biden’s policy that this Administration can point to as a success, so they will fall back on a proven winner to get votes: abortion. Until every state offers free abortions to every person with a uterus up until the time of delivery, they will keep using abortion as a campaign slogan and blame the Republicans for putting every woman’s life in jeopardy. It is a horrid purpose and a gross hyperbole, but it works for Democrats.

So this is how the Democrats go high. Let’s not work on the issue of unwanted pregnancies, but let’s disregard the life of the unborn as if it is simply human tissue, kill it, and set the woman free of any responsibility. To Democrats, abortion has nothing to do with reproductive freedom but freedom from responsibility. But if you do not care about human trafficking across the Border, Fentanyl deaths, or millions of homeless Americans, then what is a few thousand dead fetuses?

The post Forget Prosperity, We Have Abortion For All appeared first on Granite Grok.

Dear Ms. Stanley,

I came to the State House to testify at the hearing on SB573 which is an act relative to parental consent for medical care. SB573 would add a new RSA by adding a new Chapter, Parental Consent to Medical and Mental Health Care.

Within SB573 there is the following language on consent for mental healthcare:

IV. Soliciting to perform arranging for the performance of, or performing mental health practice, as defined in RSA 330-A-2, VI, on a child.
170-1:1 Parental Consent to medical and Mental Health Care Required.

Unfortunately, I could not stay for the hearing since it ran late. I did go back to listen to your testimony (23:00) and decided to reach out to you based on what you presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Since you are the Executive Director of National Association of Social Workers NH, I was concerned by some of the statements you made regarding school social workers who are servicing students in our public schools.

In your testimony, you mentioned that students in our public schools who are receiving mental health services from social workers have consent from their parents through their IEPs, 504 plans, etc. That was good to hear. But then you said that this Bill would have a chilling effect on the Social Workers in our schools. You went on to explain that a child may come to a social worker wanting to talk to them. That the social worker may want to conduct an assessment on that child or make a referral as part of their job.

Under federal law, Every Student Succeeds Act ESSA, Sec. 4002 General Provisions:

“(a) Parental Consent.–

“(1) In general.–

“(A) Informed written consent.—A State, local educational agency, or other entity receiving funds under this title shall obtain prior written, informed consent from the parent of each child who is under 18 years of age to participate in any mental-health assessment or service that is funded under this title and conducted in connection with an elementary school or secondary school under this title.

(ESSA) was signed by President Obama on December 10, 2015, with bi-partisan support from Senator Shaheen and Congresswoman Annie Kuster.

I’m confused by your testimony. Are you saying that social workers in our schools are assessing and providing mental health services without parental consent? And if SB573 were to pass, only then would school social workers have to seek parental consent under the conditions you listed.

If that is the case, it sounds like our school social workers are violating federal law.  I am copying New Hampshire Senators and Commissioner Edelblut on this email to alert them to the possibility that social workers in our public schools are currently violating federal law.

I support SB573 for the very reason that you seem to have admitted during the hearing. The mental health counselors working in our schools are either not aware of this federal statute or they are ignoring it. Maybe if SB573 were signed into law, this would clear up any confusion that currently exists.

SB573 would essentially require parental consent for mental care, which is currently required under federal law. Based on your testimony, I’m now very concerned that school social workers around the state are violating federal law. This tells me that the passage of SB573 is even more important to pass.

If you were not aware of the parental consent provision in ESSA, I hope that you will make sure that school social workers are better informed.

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Electric Vehicles have an opportunity to replace the Edsel as the historic reference for transportation marketing failure. The Edsel was “overhyped, unattractive (distinguished by a vertical grille said to resemble a horse collar[2]), and low quality.” It was also introduced during a crappy economy.

The EV is an overweight pack of lies whose “popularity” was compelled into being by progressive politicians and bureaucrats, and the Ford Motor Company has lost billions in 2022 equivalent dollars. A problem repeated in recent years as the government incentivized automakers to invest heavily in Electric Vehicles. Forced might be a better word. Between public statements about ending combustion-driven transportation and stricter fuel economy mandates, carmakers were not given much choice.

Car buyers, however, still have one.

Several years into the push to replace gas-powered engines with EVs has met an impenetrable wall named reality. EVs are not any of the things promised. Production has been scaled back as inventory piles up, dealers refuse to take more of it, and billions in losses are written off. Ford has taken a beating, and its latest mea culpa comes in production cuts for its EV truck line.

Ford planned to produce around 3,200 F-150 Lightnings per week in 2024 at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, which assembles all of the electric pickup trucks produced by Ford. Ford announced last month that it was cutting its production of the trucks in half, all the way down to 1,600 per week.

Ford has slashed $12 billion in EV investments as it struggles to sell its all-electric vehicles to consumers who have numerous concerns about transitioning from gas to electric, especially as retail prices for most EVs remain high.

Ford is shuffling employees to gas-powered production lines and hiring workers to build cars people want and can almost afford, as opposed to the impossible-to-afford EVs, which have only gotten more expensive. And the demand for rare earth metals has done little more than jack up costs and transfer wealth to China.

Given the Biden family’s cozy relationship with the CCP, you’d be right to wonder if this wasn’t just another way to make protection-money payments or extortion money, but it’s not just Biden. The left is obsessed with crushing the fossil fuel industry. Biden ran for office on it. The Dems are nearly all-in on the lie—the rich ones, at least. But you can only put so many lawn ornaments in your driveway (it’s not safe to park them in the garage), and the nation is running out of people who can afford impractical virtue-signal mobiles.

Without further interference from the government – and even it can’t backstop these turds with enough of someone else’s money to make them appealing – the industry is destined to collapse under the excessive weight of its own lithium battery limitations.

That won’t be the end of it. The apocalypse cult won’t let it go, but that’s not the biggest issue. Much like wind and solar waste, no one went in having end-of-life solutions for toxic components, and there is a lot of that out there – some of it aging in dealer lots.

No worries. I’m sure the EPA will make some rules to address another mess the government has made, and we’ll get to pay for that too.

 

 

 

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In one of my previous articles, I told the story of how my request for Michael Knowles’ Amazon #1 bestseller Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds was denied by my local public library.

While I used this anecdote as an example of the double standard that libraries use when referring to “banned” books, I am bringing it up again here to highlight the dysfunctional process by which librarians select books.  Speechless is about the weaponization of political correctness and is written by a well-known conservative writer, so it was not surprising that my request was denied. In fact, I had used this request as a test, and my public library acted as I predicted it would.  While the library justified its denial by claiming that there were no positive reviews of this book, I was easily able to find a lot of complimentary feedback online about this title and the fact that it was the number one book on Amazon for a substantial period of time also attested to its worthiness to be added to my library’s collection.

Librarians, however, look for reviews in a small number of “professional” publications like Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and ALA’s own Booklist, and all of these sources, as you would expect, inordinately promote woke material and overlook worthy but conservatively themed items.  Additionally, librarians are motivated to buy material that has won annual book awards, many given by the ALA.  Unfortunately, most awards in general these days, from the Oscars on down, are not based on merit but on how well nominees align with an organization’s political agenda.

When librarians decide which books they will purchase for their collections using taxpayer dollars, you’d think that they would consider which books their users actually want or need to read. Sadly, this is not what happens in most publicly funded libraries.  Instead, these librarians are influenced by woke review sources and annual book awards to buy those books that they, along with the organizations they look to for guidance, think their patrons should read.

We want to thank Arlene Quaratiello for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
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When I recently visited the home page of Kirkus Reviews, a popular source among collection development librarians, the featured story was a glowing review of the newly released film Origins.  This documentary is based on the book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson, a book which Kirkus describes as “a sweeping survey of how ingrained systems of social categorization. . . have led to horrific crimes and injustices throughout history . . . and how such systems have been used to oppress a wide range of people.”  The woke point of view conveyed by this review is echoed throughout the publication and is also reflected by the books that are awarded the annual Kirkus Prize.

The 2023 fiction winner was The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, a novel that portrays the “solidarity” of Jews and Blacks against “the many local White Christians” who “frown upon the easygoing relationship between” these two groups.   The non-fiction prize went to Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino,” which Kirkus described as a “powerful look at what it means to be a member of a community that, though large, remains marginalized.” Finally, the “young readers” award was given to American Redux: Visual Stories from Our Dynamic History, in which the historical “contributions of women, people of color, individuals with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people are featured prominently.”

Kirkus Reviews also offers a “curation service” featuring “diversity collections,” which was “developed to help librarians find diverse books that meet modern standards of sensitivity and respect.”  Books highlighted here include Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastates Black Lives and The Pink Line: Journeys across the World’s Queer Frontiers.  My purpose in pointing out all of these specific books is not to object to their being published and read because that would violate the tenets of free speech; what we must take issue with is the clear promotion and celebration of books that convey racial and sexual themes while practically ignoring any other type of book.

This obvious promotion is also seen in Library Journal, another influential book review source for collection development librarians. Among the books it celebrates in its “Best of 2023” list is Lucky Red, in which author Claudia Cravens “skillfully blends Western tropes…into her queer coming-of-age story” set in “the town’s woman-run brothel.”  Of the ten “best” books recommended in the “Romance” category, two are described as “gay romances,” while the lesbian romance Mrs. Nash’s Ashes features the “delightfully quirky grumpy/sunshine romance” between the titular female character and a woman named Elsie.  Chef’s Choice is “a charming queer romance” featuring two transgender characters, one identifying as a woman and another as a man.   With such a large percentage of recommended books on LJ’s “Best of 2023” list featuring LGBT characters, it is hard to deny the clear over-representation of such books in this particular sample.

The American Library Association has its own review publication called Booklist.  Its October 2023 issue featured the article “Essentials: Here Be Drag Queens,” which provides a “celebration of modern drag” by recommending fourteen titles, including the picture books Auntie Uncle: Drag Queen Hero and If You’re a Drag Queen and You Know It.  For older children, Booklist recommends Martin Mclean: Middle School Queen, which tells the story of a boy who wants to compete in an all-ages drag contest. In Kings, Queens and In-Betweens, recommended for high school students, “17-year-old lesbian Nima, just rejected by her longtime crush and best friend, stumbles into a drag show at a local fair” where “she finds a fascinating and accepting community, as well new confidence and a potential new romance.”

In addition to the reviews provided by Booklist to promote its woke agenda, the ALA also gives out a number of awards that celebrate books that reinforce this agenda and strongly influence purchasing decisions.  One of this organization’s most coveted accolades is the Stonewall Book Award for “LGBTQIA+” literature, which the Rainbow Roundtable sponsors.  In addition to the awards given for adult fiction and non-fiction, prizes have also been given for “young adult” books and even children’s books for over a decade. In fact, in 2021, a board book, We Are Little Feminists Families, was given Stonewall’s Mike Morgan and Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award. Last year, this award was given to “Love, Violet,” a book that suggests that an innocent friendship between two girls is homosexual, and also to When the Angels Left the Old Country, a “young adult” novel in which, according to Kirkus Reviews, “Queerness and gender fluidity thread through both the human and supernatural characters.”

As I pointed out in my previous article about the misnamed category of “young adult” literature, When the Angels Left the Old Country was also a runner-up for the Printz Award given to a book that the ALA believes “exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature.”  The other four books that the ALA considered “excellent” were:

• All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir, the overall winner, which Kirkus Reviews praised for confronting “head on the complicated realities of life in a world that is not designed for the oppressed to thrive in.”
• Scout’s Honor, by Lily Anderson, in which “the cast displays an effervescent mix of racial and ethnic identities” (from Kirkus Reviews)
• Icebreaker, features a gay romance between two hockey players and
• Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality, a book that “offers nature-based analogs for many types of human sexual orientation and gender identity,” according to a BookPage review.

With the Printz Award winner and its four runners-up all having racial and sexual themes, there is no denying the inordinate attention given to books focused on gender or race, suggesting that these are the only themes worthy of merit in our society.

The American Library Association has not cornered the market on book awards.  The National Book Awards are presented each year by the National Book Foundation.  This year’s fiction winner was Blackouts by Juston Torres, which addresses “the distortions and erasures of queer history” (NPR). Three of the four honorable mention winners are on racial themes, including:

• Chain Gang All-Stars: “a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alli­ance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration,”
• Temple Folk: “The ten stories in this collection contribute to the bounty of diverse narratives about Black life,” and
• This Other Eden: “an enduring testament to the struggle to preserve human dignity in the face of intolerance and injustice.”

As I have already mentioned, my purpose in writing this article has not been to bash individual books.  I have simply tried to provide anecdotal evidence to expose the woke agenda of most book review sources and award programs, an agenda that would likely be supported, if I had the time, by a more objective statistical analysis.  What concerns me is the clear promotion of these books, which dominate every review source and are inordinately given awards, drowning out books on a multitude of other topics.  As a result, the impressionable and predominantly left-leaning staff members of most publicly funded libraries end up purchasing a disproportionate number of these titles, and these books often just sit on the shelves, rarely getting checked out because patrons are simply not interested in reading them, nor should they feel that they should read them.

Meanwhile, review sources and awards are often cited as justification for their purchase in town and school district budget reports.  Those who are hired to run our publicly funded libraries need to realize that the real justification for buying any book in a public or school library is how well it serves the needs of its users, not how well it reflects a woke organization’s questionable agenda, nor what awards it has been given by these organizations or what their glowing reviews have to say.

| Substack

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This is from a Substack article by Chris Bray, writing about progressives who are upset that Texas is defending its border.  It has my irony meter pegged at 10:

The people who run formally declared sanctuary states and sanctuary cities are very very upset that state and local officials are refusing to acknowledge the federal government’s supremacy in matters of immigration and border security.

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