Saturday • April 5 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.XIV
Manchester, N.H.
The proxy war in Ukraine appears to be spreading to Niger, where a recent coup d’état ousted President Mohamed Bazoum and sparked a series of events that may lead to a larger regional military conflict.
We want to thank Marc Abearfor this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
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France, a long-standing ally of Niger, has condemned the coup. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs reaffirmed its commitment to press freedom, freedom of expression, and the protection of journalists. This comes after the junta blocked the signals of French broadcaster France 24 and Radio France Internationale.
The move was seen as a direct affront to France and further strained a tense situation.
Meanwhile, Russia, through the Wagner Group with its influence in Africa, seems to be capitalizing on the situation. At the recent Russia-Africa Summit, Vladimir Putin stood next to Ibrahim Traore, the military officer who seized power in Burkina Faso. This act of solidarity with the coup leaders is raising concerns among other African leaders.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) issued an ultimatum to the coup leaders. Reinstate President Bazoum or face military intervention. Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Benin have signaled their readiness to engage in military action if the ultimatum is not respected. But, there is a lack of trust among ECOWAS members, which could hinder a coordinated response.
Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali are known as the ‘Coup Association.’ They have pledged to defend Niger against any foreign intervention. These countries are also friendly with Russia and are warning neighboring African states against intervening in Niger’s affairs.
The ousted President, Mr. Bazoum, has called on the international community, particularly the American government, to help restore constitutional order. His plea underscores the consequences of the coup, which includes growing Russian influence propagated by the Wagner Group in the Sahel region.
Diplomatic negotiations are underway to prevent a conflict that could engulf Russia and the West in another proxy war. The stakes are high. The world is watching anxiously as Africa becomes the latest battleground in the struggle for global dominance.
What is apparent is the unfolding crisis in Niger is more than just a civil war or a regional conflict. It’s a complex web of power struggles, alliances, and interests that could ignite a larger, more destructive war.
It’s important for the international community to think through the alternatives.
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Have you seen the ‘Ads’ for the latest COVID pulp fiction paperback thriller? In this installment, the goddess of discord and strife, Eris, code name EG.5, takes control of the headlines of your favorite government-run information portal, pretending to be unbiased media.
It’s the latest variant which is strange because everything they have to say sounds the same.
Politico says, “Although hospitalizations from the coronavirus have risen slightly over the summer in the US, the Biden administration has continued to express optimism about beating the pandemic.”
That’s odd. I thought the pandemic was over.
USA Today writes, “Eris has already surpassed Arcturus in the US, becoming the most prevalent variant in the two-week period ending on August 5, with 17.3% of cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”
As if 17.3 percent means any more than 98.5 percent did the first time they played this broken record.
Live Science adds, “All four of these subvariants belong to the broader XBB lineage, which will serve as the target of the new COVID-19 boosters coming this fall.”
And now we know why the media cares. They’re brought to you by Pfizer or would like to be, so they are peddling the latest bottle of piss as an essential part of your pharmacological diet—the latest cure for declining “sales” from the fiscal line of COVID injection treatment variants.
Boosting revenues!
The same cures that are responsible for cases of flu in the summer in the first place.
Remember when we didn’t get flu in the summertime? Those were the days. Carefree, fancy-free. The public health industrial complex scared us with mosquito-borne illness, tick bites, and drowning. Encephalitis. Lyme. And we’ve still got those, but they’re not as attractive as Eris, whose increase in cases is based on – at least in theory – people locked down (trapped inside) by the heat or the rain.
That’s interesting. People forced to stay inside have effected more cases of covid.
So what are the symptoms, aside from a decline in booster uptake and what Off Guardian observed as the sudden August cooling in the UK that ended all that warming hysteria?
Or perhaps it’s not COVID. As it turns out, these are the symptoms of many things. The flu, the common cold, Lyme, HIV, Meningitis, adenovirus, pneumonia, carbon monoxide poisoning, Sepsis, blood cancer, Mononucleosis, cat scratch fever, Babesiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Strep Throat, Bronchitis, RSV, and let’s not forget Flu and COVID vaccines.
So get tested with the test that tests for COVID and then stay home, which was how you got it. Be sure to wear an N95 mask (yes, they’re serious). And stay up to date on your boosters. Compromising your immune system is critical to job creation in the Biden economy—everyone from the test makers to the jab givers to the caretakers and gravediggers.
It’s a little like broken windows theory, except they are breaking people on purpose as a matter of policy and not doing anything about that crime.
The post Have You Seen the ‘Ads’ for the Latest COVID Pulp Fiction Paperback Thriller? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Quick … two words to describe Ron DeSantis’ New Hampshire surrogates. If you picked PETTY and STUPID … bingo! These people aren’t serious about winning the next election. At best, they are serious about grifting and winning control of the NHGOP.
If you are serious about winning, you don’t go out of your way to insult and alienate the voters you will need to win a general election.
Ron DeSantis’ campaign is a train wreck. His arguments that Trump made horrible personnel decisions are, at best, sadly ironic when you look at his personnel choices, such as Ross Berry.
Campaign blackout rules for 8/7/23 pic.twitter.com/BPiRmDVMxv
— ???????????????? ???????????????????? (@Ross_Berry) August 7, 2023
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The People’s Republic of Hawaii is a beautiful place populated primarily by progressives. An odd place for people obsessed with sea level rise. They are big on taxing (HI has the second highest total tax burden in the US) and banning things which can get taxing as well.
Trying to keep track of the rules and prohibitions is exhausting, especially when the public school system is proving less capable than ever of teaching kids to read and write. It’s enough to make you angry and violent, which is why Hawaii wants to ban weapons. They don’t want the people they’ve let down to take it out on them. Blame it on random white men (just not the tourists, please they need those) or Republicans if you can find one.
Whoever you blame, Hawaii has a crime problem. Property crime is higher than the US average across the board (burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft).
Hawaii has 44 crimes per square mile. For comparison, gun/knife-crazy New Hampshire has four. Hawaii also has four times as many property crimes as the Granite State and nearly double the violent crime.
That’s probably because Hawaii bans butterfly knives (In Hawaii, it is a misdemeanor knowingly to manufacture, sell, transfer, transport, or possess a butterfly knife—no exceptions. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 134-53(a).). Two locals, who felt a strong need to carry these knives for protection (from what, you say!), challenged the law, which the local district court upheld, but a 3-panel verdict of the Ninth Circuit overturned that and remanded it back to the District Court.
The panel determined that plaintiffs had standing to challenge § 134-53(a) because they alleged that the Second Amendment provides them with a legally protected interest to purchase butterfly knives, and but for section 134-53(a), they would do so within Hawaii. Plaintiffs further articulated a concrete plan to violate the law, and Hawaii’s history of prosecution under its butterfly ban was good evidence of a credible threat of enforcement.
The panel denied Hawaii’s request to remand this case for further factual or historical development in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022), determining that further development of the adjudicative facts was unnecessary. The panel held that possession of butterfly knives is conduct covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment. Bladed weapons facially constitute “arms” within the meaning of the Second Amendment, and contemporaneous sources confirm that at the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment, the term “arms” was understood as generally extending to bladed weapons and by necessity, butterfly knives. The Constitution, therefore presumptively guarantees keeping and bearing such instruments for self-defense.
..
HT | Breitbart
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If you pay a lot of money to attend college or university, you would hope that your professors might question their own claims and look at counter narratives so that you end up with a well-rounded education.
We want to thank Claire Best for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
Recently a few feminist professors have exposed their complete rejection of academic rigor in favor of flawed idealism for their cause and grants. Since they/their academic institutions receive grants using public money, I have no problem calling them out. We should know where our taxpayer money is going, especially with escalating costs of higher education:
Sally Kenney at Tulane University, Tania Tetlow (Tulane & Fordham), Rebecca Richman Cohen (Harvard), Michele Dauber (Stanford Law), Sharyn Potter (University of New Hampshire) are a few names I’ve come across.
Sally J Kenney:Sally J Kenney’s bio at Tulane University is quite hilarious and not one she should be proud of for the highlights she mentions: The Dartmouth Sexual Assault summit was heavily criticized for its failures to address due process, and Dr David Lisak’s statistics, which he admitted were extremely flawed. “Its On Us” is a political lobby group tied to Blue Crab Strategies, Civic Nation, and the DNC while “The Hunting Ground” is a tainted, racist piece of propaganda filled with several stories and statistics which have not only been debunked but have led to lawsuits. Viewers of “The Hunting Ground” were asked to take the “Its on Us Pledge.” The film premiered at Sundance in January 2015 in a slot sponsored by George Soros’ “Open Societies.” The film’s executive producers include Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who later accused Harvey Weinstein, the film’s distributor, of rape — but not until several years later and after she’d called Rose McGowan on behalf of Harvey Weinstein’s attorney David Boies to ask her how much money it would take to get her to drop allegations against Weinstein.
Later on, Kenney mentions that she worked with the Prout family and their non-profit “I have the Right To” ihavetherightto.org to block former New Hampshire AG Michael Delaney’s nomination to a judicial position on the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Ironically the Prout family’s Government Affairs PR person, Dan Hill of hillimpact.com, who claims he was working all alone with Chessy Prout (recruited accuser of Owen Labrie whose high profile sexual assault arrest warrant was broadcast conveniently in the middle of the 2014 Dartmouth Sexual Assault Summit listed on Kenney’s resume) has now been shown up by Sally Kenney’s bio in which she states she too was working with the Prout family. I wonder if she is a beneficiary of the $21 billion in Government contracts that Dan Hill boasts he helps his clients obtain using special ops tactics and stealth media?
work on sexual violence kenney
Tania Tetlow is currently the President of Fordham University. She was President of Loyola University in New Orleans, but she can be found on YouTube giving lectures at Tulane University in which she states that when she was a prosecutor, she told police that it didn’t matter if their investigations into sexual assault were biased. She led the Domestic Violence Unit at Tulane from 2005–2014. She also states in these videos that they (activist feminists) need to get inside police departments, prosecutors’ offices, and administrations in order to achieve a paradigm shift (funny how Sally Kenny uses the same lingo). Ms. Tetlow was part of a US State Department delegation sent to China in 2014 to advance the feminist agenda. What a disaster — a believer in getting rid of due process heads to China. What could possibly go wrong? China has been pouring millions into US universities and colleges via Confucius Institute Contracts. Kangaroo Courts are right up their street. China must love Tania Tetlow for doing its bidding. I wonder if she’d feel the same way about tainted investigations if she were an Uighur or a student protester in Tiananmen Square.
Rebecca Richman CohenIn 2016, Tulane Chief of Staff Tania Tetlow was a former Federal Prosecutor. In the following clip she discusses how she trained New Orleans police detectives to work hand in hand with the Advocates, and she states that she told the detectives they are not the jury and do not have to be neutral in their investigations.:
The following link begins at 27:34. Listen through 30:34:
Eliminating Sexual Violence — Shifting the Paradigm
Rebecca Richman Cohen is a Law Lecturer at Harvard when she is not making documentaries or being sponsored by George Soros. Her latest documentary: “Recall Reframed,” smacks of a piece of crisis PR management for the Democratic Party and Dem Caucus Rep/Stanford Law Professor Michele Dauber, who was behind the recall of Judge Aaron Persky following the high-profile sexual assault trial of the People v Brock Turner.
I’m not sure what “research” Ms. Cohen did before she made the documentary, but clearly, she didn’t read some of the very basic statements made by her participants, notably former Judge LaDoris Cordell, who had stated that she thought Michele Dauber wrote the “Emily Doe” victim impact statement herself, not Chanel Miller (a family friend of Michele Dauber’s), the real Emily Doe.
Rebecca Richman Cohen did a Q&A with a group called “Women Against the Registry” a couple of weeks ago after a screening of “Recall Reframed.” She was quite sure that Chanel Miller had written the Emily Doe victim impact statement. One wonders why she never questioned her participant, a former judge, LaDoris Cordell, on this. She didn’t even seem to be aware that many victim impact statements are written by activists/victims advocates and then read in court by the “victim.”
It’s such common practice that a portion of the Emily Doe victim impact statement (which coincidentally Michele Dauber had shared with the filmmakers of “The Hunting Ground” before it was read at sentencing) was plagiarized verbatim in the sentencing of another young man in another state who sits in prison currently and is alleged to be the 3rd target of the same false accuser – who must have run out of ideas to get judicial sympathy so she borrowed from another trial.
I guess Rebecca Cohen is just not interested in questioning propaganda (I assume because subscribing to it conjures the grants to make documentaries?) or looking into the trove of emails revealed in a 2019 Freedom Of Information Act quest by local journalists in Santa Clara County who don’t enjoy the Ivory Tower grants & status that Ms. Cohen uses to make her political film. She defended Michele Dauber, who specifically stated that she’d managed to get California sentencing laws changed in light of the People v Brock Turner (increasing them) for the Democratic Party but claimed that Michele Dauber was not a carceral white feminist. She maintained in the Q&A that she made her film in response to carceral white feminists. So if Michele Dauber is not a carceral white feminist, who are the carceral white feminists she is referring to?
Michele DauberStanford Law Professor Michele Dauber founded the “Enough Voter Movement,” for which Amber Heard was a spokesperson. She instigated the Recall of Judge Persky in the wake of People v Brock Turner, and she colluded behind the scenes of the trial with the Santa Clara County DA. In addition, Michele Dauber co-drafted the unregulated “Dear Colleague” Title IX letter, which Vice President Joe Biden launched at the University of New Hampshire on April 4, 2011, and which spawned a lucrative cottage industry for attorneys, social justice warrior non-profits, and political PR companies recruiting “activists” and “ambassadors” along the way. Dauber herself is a questionable character who appears to be carrying out a Machiavellian operation on a global scale. Machiavelli, per Wikipedia, “notably said that a ruler who is establishing a kingdom or a republic, and is criticized for his deeds, including violence, should be excused when the intention and the result are beneficial to him.”
Michele Dauber was 17 and 4 months pregnant when she got married to a 32-year-old musician. She allegedly has a history of alcoholism and has been accused of driving drunk with her children in the car. Nevertheless, she is a political fundraiser for the Democratic Committee of Silicon Valley and has a vengeance against “Shitty White Men.” Her brother, Michael Landis Dauber, was incarcerated and is a sex offender registrant for alleged incest, although nobody knows if this is one of Michele Dauber’s many hoaxes. The records in Illinois are sealed. From online research, it would appear that Michele Dauber’s parents have taken a side with her brother and that there is a rift in the family — she has even referred to this. Others have called Michele Dauber “dangerous.” A petition which garnered several thousand signatures to have her removed from Stanford has been ignored. It would seem that she must be untouchable and an intelligence asset like Jeffrey Epstein, who apparently doesn’t qualify to be a “shitty white man” in her book.
Sharyn PotterRetired Palo Alto Judge LaDoris Cordell, a vocal opponent of the movement to unseat Judge Aaron Persky, has accused recall leader Michele Dauber of staging a mailed rape threat containing white powder, which caused two rooms at Stanford Law School to be evacuated yesterday (Feb. 14).
“I’m glad that the powder was harmless. I also question the timing of all of this. This has the hallmarks of a publicity stunt,” Cordell said. “I say that because it is clear that the tide has turned.”
Dauber said one of her former students opened the envelope, which appeared to have been mailed from the Boston area, to find the note reading, “Since you are going to disrobe Persky, I am going to treat you like ‘Emily Doe.’ Let’s see what kind of sentencing I get for being a rich white male.”
Sharyn Potter is an Executive Director and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of New Hampshire where the unregulated “Dear Colleague” Title IX letter co-drafted by Stanford Law Professor Michele Dauber was introduced in April 2011. She is also Co-Founder of the University’s Prevention Innovation Research Center which has received millions of dollars in grants for “Know Your Power” and “Bystander” training to address sexual violence. “Know Your Power- A Message to America’s Daughters” is, coincidentally, the title of Nancy Pelosi’s 2008 memoir.
Unfortunately Sharyn Potter’s grants appear to have all come from the Department of Justice Office of Violence Against Women and thus the bias in her solutions for ending sexual violence should be tossed out. The proof of the damage of her bias can be seen in the results in New Hampshire where sexual and domestic violence by females upon males & females upon children has been almost completely ignored or forgiven. Title IX forbids gender bias on campus but due to a strategic partnership formed between the White House “Not Alone” task force in January 2014 and the University of New Hampshire, Sharyn Potter and her ideologists have become useful weapons for the non-profit and movement which preceded #MeToo — “Its on Us” — which is tied to both Blue Crab Strategies, Civic Nation (aka “United States of Women”) and Obama, Biden’s and Hillary Clinton’s PR company SKDK.
Sharyn Potter was present at the launch of the unregulated “Dear Colleague” Title IX launch in April 2011. She also spoke at the 2014 Dartmouth Sexual Assault summit during which 18 year old St. Paul’s School scholarship student Owen Labrie’s arrest warrant was announced by the husband of her colleague Amanda Grady Sexton of the NHCADSV which is officially partnered with Sharyn Potter’s UNH PIRC department. Ms. Potter & Ms. Grady Sexton used the trial to implement “Bystander” training at St Paul’s School (there was inclusion of it in a statement made on the day of the verdict). It was so successful at rival prep school Phillips Exeter Academy that it resulted in a retired teacher, Mr. Weber, being ostracized by the school and smeared in front of the community for a sexual assault his alleged victim claims never happened.
Sharyn Potter went on to form “Soteria Solutions” to market the trademarked “Know Your Power” and “Bystander” training. The company shares the exact same logo as Soteria Mutual Holdings in London and Luxembourg which are tied to the CCP linked Binance and Stephen Schwarzmann of BlackStone. Soteria Solutions however continues to be sold around the world. Universities and colleges might want to examine the cool-aid before they pay for it and drink it.
The post Beware the Feminist Activist Professor & Her Research Failures .. for They Have Caused Untold Damage to Society in the Name of “Social Justice.” appeared first on Granite Grok.
I really liked Ron DeSantis the Governor. I have less and less respect for Ron DeSantis, the candidate for President. Here’s DeSantis pandering to the Regime-media by saying what they want to hear … OF COURSE TRUMP LOST. The correct answer candidate DeSantis: Trump lost a RIGGED election where the FBI and “intelligence community” interfered by planting false stories (Hunter Biden laptop = “Russian disinformation”, Russian “bounties”, etc. etc. etc.), the Regime-media ran with these false stories and CENSORED the truth … where Oligarch Mark Zuckerberg spent nearly half-a-billion to convert election offices in swing-States into Biden-GOTV offices … where States controlled by Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans used COVID as a pretext to allow universal mail-in voting and “drop-boxes” which made these “votes” impossible to verify … ETC. ETC. ETC.
The post Ron DeSantis Goes Full Election-Denier appeared first on Granite Grok.
As promised in the last Monday Memes, I have an overflow. My meme cup runneth over. Fairly certain about a Friday Overflow-Overflow.
Let the mayhem, mockery, and ridicule resume:
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
The world is poised to collapse. The economy is tanking in slow motion (I know people looking for work – and I am for customers – where things are definitely drying up). Stores are closing in huge numbers with parallel job losses (a recruiter I know mentioned one company laying off multiple thousands). The world is facing increased instability. Food shortages are coming and in some places globally already here. Crime is rampant in many areas, and is spreading to other areas. WWIII is a distinct possibility. On and on and on. And all anyone wants to talk about are the latest sportsball-game, or movies, or Harry-Meghan, or, or, or. Everything trivial, nothing consequential.
I understand not wanting to talk about uncomfortable things, and yes – there are times when the trivial is what’s OK – but serious things are happening. This total avoidance of everything, all the time, strikes me as playing ostrich.
“We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.”
— Ayn Rand
=+=+=
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Cashless society is here!
It will be done, slowly-slowly. Until you use your irises or your palm or chips or whatever. And far, far too many will be dog-panting Isn’t this cool! eager…
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/woman-at-whole-foods-pays-by-palm.mp4
until the next step of controls come in and they can’t buy that pot roast they wanted for the planned dinner party because they’ve come up to their meat allotment for the month. The trap is set, the prey approaches…
48 Hogs in the trap
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Hashem, I love this country!
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Whether about CBDC, or 15 minute cities, or “climate lockdowns”, or digital IDs, social credit scoring systems, or one-world government, or anything else, I’m seeing the term Whether you like it or not an awful lot these days.
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PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA
Oz MP has MELTDOWN
I’ve posed this question before, and will again now:
Imagine you truly believe, as this guy clearly does, that mankind (at least, the number we have now) is a direct and dire – and existential – threat to all life on earth. Imagine that you truly believe, as this guy does as he calls critics “psychopaths”, that those who oppose your good and noble desire to save the planet as not just irredeemably evil, but actively complicit in that biosphere’s murder.
What would you not do to that opposition if you believed that the only thing that could save the planet was fast and drastic action, over their balking? What would your limit be?
That’s right.
To saaaave the plaaaaaanet from heat death, you’d be perfectly willing to kill your opponents and commit genocide on a scale unimaginable. And you’d feel perfectly justified in doing so.
EU Backs Bill Gates’ Plan to ‘Fight Global Warming’ by Blocking the Sun – Slay News
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THE FIX IS IN: Joe Biden Sits on the Beach, Has No Plans to Hold Campaign Events, Is Not Spending Campaign Money, Holds Few Fundraisers, Has Crappy Poll Numbers, the Worst Record in History, Was Caught in Massive Bribery Scandal, and Democrats Aren’t Worried | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft
TINVOWOOT.
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.@MarcoPolo501c3: “We reached out to every single pimp, hooker, drug dealer, and business partner on Hunter Biden’s laptop…
We put all of his emails and photos online… You have FARA violations, money laundering, sex trafficking, and conspiracy to commit bribery…
Not one email has proven to be false… We put all of the metadata out there… When you go through the emails, they clearly show how the Bidens were an agent for a foreign principal…
Hunter was on the hook for Joe Biden’s living expenses… There was a joint bank account between Hunter Biden, Eric Schwerin, and Joe Biden… Emails prove it.
Joe isn’t listed on official documents, but Hunter pays his living expenses, house payments, and everything else…
Hunter’s business paid for Joe’s second iPhone. His burner phone… That phone was exclusively for Hunter and Joe…
The Secret Service didn’t harden the phone. It was a clear national security risk. It was probably bugged by multiple Five Eyes countries…
It’s tax fraud because you got money going to Joe every single year without declaring it as a gift… It is FARA violations, and because it’s FARA violations, it’s money laundering.
Again, this is all laid out through emails, text messages, WhatsApp messages, pictures, screenshots, audio recordings, and videos… Joe Biden got the money through house payments and joint bank accounts…
Hunter blew through a million dollars on hookers and blow in 11 months. At the end of 2018, he asked Joe for a $75k wire so he could check into rehab. The very next day, he’s wiring $10,000 to a Russian pimp…
We have 20 separate drug deals of crack cocaine with the U.S. President’s son. We put the name and number of the drug dealer…
In certain cases, the drug dealer was prosecuted, and Hunter wasn’t… This is the epitome of unequal application of the law.
https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1687684347913183232
@KanekoaTheGreat
And nobody cares. Not the courts. Not the enemedia. Certainly not the half of the country that votes “D”.
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Covid and Jab Stuff (Wide Ranging)
Health regulators round the world ignore Covid vaccine damage evidence that’s staring them in the face – The Conservative Woman
VAERS data is crystal clear: The COVID vaccines are killing an estimated 1 person per 1,000 doses (676,000 dead Americans) (kirschsubstack.com)
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/e6f3356e02641a52.mp4
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Pick of the post:
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/climate-mockery.mp4
Cross-reference with the PSA above and that loon having a meltdown. This is mockery and ridicule at its absolute finest.
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Note what the headline is. That the idea of protecting cash in the economy is a “far right” idea. Just like being fit and healthy and eating well is now being pushed to being a sign of “white supremacy”. Ultimately, anything that stands in the way of the Left is a “far right” idea.
>>>>>=====<<<<<
Palate cleansers:
—
—
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Depending on one’s perspective, technology can be viewed as either an opportunity or a threat. Some people celebrate technical advances, while others show disdain. Entrepreneurs are frequently eager to capitalize on the potential advantages of new technologies, but where entrepreneurs see room for dynamism, naysayers see doom.
In this story, entrepreneurs are akin to wizards who use the magic of technology to improve the world, and naysayers are prophets of pessimism.
In his insightful book The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World, Charles Mann illustrates the conflicts between wizards and prophets, who both advocate different approaches to solving problems. Wizards trust in the liberating power of technology to improve conditions, and prophets endorse restraining human behavior. Norman Borlaug and William Vogt are the main figures in his work. Both men had an interest in the issues posed by population growth, yet their proposals were opposite.
Borlaug, who is credited as the father of the green revolution, felt that innovations in technology would increase food production and minimize the burdens of population growth. However, Vogt proposed limiting consumption to save humanity. Unlike optimists who thought that affluence was a monumental achievement, Vogt felt that prosperity encouraged overconsumption, and this would lead to the demise of society. Luckily for society, Borlaug’s model became the catalyst for the green revolution, which resulted in the emergence of high-yielding plant varieties.
Scientific advancements in agriculture increased food supplies and staved off famines in developing countries. Despite population increases, the production of cereal crops tripled during the green revolution, and Malthusian predictions did not materialize. Developing countries managed to overcome chronic food deficits, and more crops were cultivated using less land space. Wizards have a better track record of performance than prophets, although the fearmongering of prophets is still influential.
In 1981, Julian Simon published The Ultimate Resource as a response to Paul Ehrlich’s doomsday manifesto, The Population Bomb. Ehrlich preached that population growth would lead to the exhaustion of resources, but Simon turned this argument on its head by contending that population growth churns out new ideas, and ideas lead to an abundance of products and resources. Simon foresaw humans innovating to compensate for shortages and, in the process, even creating superior alternatives. Ehrlich was unimpressed by Simon’s foresight and waged a bet in 1980 arguing that resources would become more expensive.
Ehrlich selected a basket of resources containing copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Fortunately for humanity, Simon emerged victorious, and by 1990, these resources were cheaper, despite fears of scarcity and population growth. Recent research by Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley has further vindicated the assumption of Julian Simon. Their research asserts that population growth is failing to halt the multiplication of resources. Notwithstanding the tremendous population growth from 1980–2018, resources not only became more abundant but also increased at a faster rate than population growth.
The positivity trend gets even better. Intuitively, we think that as the economy expands, people will begin to use more resources; however, Jesse Ausubel has been observing a wave of dematerialization. Although the American economy is generating more products, people are using fewer resources. Promoting the work of Ausubel in his fascinating book How Innovation Flourishes in Freedom, Matt Ridley touts the virtues of innovation:
By 2015 America was using 15 percent less steel, 32 percent less aluminum, and 40 percent less copper than at its peaks of using these metals, even though its population was larger and its output of goods and services much larger. . . . This is not because the American economy is generating fewer products: it’s producing more. It is not because there is more recycling—though there is. It’s because of economies and efficiencies created by innovation.
Innovations provide a world that’s more efficient and livable for human and nonhuman life. But the hysteria of prophets can deter progress by limiting discoveries, and they are powerful agents in the environmental arena. Environmentalists concerned about pollution are lobbying for the mining of minerals that they argue can limit emissions. Deep sea mining is the latest innovation in the environmental industry, yet if the passion of activists is not contained, then we will miss out on opportunities as the Economist suggests.
The Economist notes that the criticisms of activists are questionable and mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone will prove to be beneficial:
When it comes to nickel, mining the ccz is greener and cleaner than mining on dry land. Research shows that the amount of carbon stored in the ccz is negligible, meaning that mining will not stir up enough of it into the atmosphere to add to warming. Nor, according to research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will the sediment churned up spread as far or as thickly as claimed. . . . The most serious concern is the threat to diverse organisms that are unknown to science. But life in the ccz is scarce—some 270,000 tonnes of biomass would be destroyed by mining—and mostly microbial. And because the ccz is the oceanic food web’s final stop, there would be few spillovers to other ecosystems.
But unfortunately, prophets of doom like Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have a disproportionate influence on policy. Therefore, the biggest threat to the survival of our species will not be social and political challenges that can be solved by intelligence but rather the unproductive influence of negative personalities who sway thought leaders with dangerous rhetoric.
Lipton Mathews | Mises Wire
Author: Contact Lipton Matthews
Lipton Matthews is a researcher, business analyst, and contributor to Merion West, The Federalist, American Thinker, Intellectual Takeout, mises.org, and Imaginative Conservative. Visit his YouTube channel, with numerous interviews with a variety of scholars, here. He may be contacted at lo_matthews@yahoo.com or on Twitter (@matthewslipton).
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When I first moved to New Hampshire 33 years ago – yes, I predate the Free Staters, the “joke” went like this. The Granite State didn’t have many folks on unemployment or welfare because they bussed them to Massachusetts, where the benefits were better.
The unemployment benefits are better, which is why the Granite State has traditionally had lower unemployment and higher workforce participation. We don’t pay people to sit around. You can’t live on it, so you must find work if you can or move to a state where you can live off sitting on your ass. That has evolved a bit over the years, but it still holds (mostly) true.
And while we’ve seen an uptick in illegals leaking into New Hampshire from Vermont (a sanctuary dumpster fire) and Canada, which is how they got to Vermont, we’re not inundated like … Massachusetts.
Governor Maura Healey, who lives in a shoe (Massachusetts), has so many illegal aliens she doesn’t know what to do. She has declared a state of emergency.
Help, she says.
Governor Maura T. Healey today declared that a state of emergency exists in Massachusetts due to rapidly rising numbers of migrant families arriving in Massachusetts in need of shelter and services and a severe lack of shelter availability in the state. The declaration serves as a notice to the federal government and the Commonwealth that the state’s shelter system is rapidly expanding capacity in an unsustainable manner, and that further assistance is urgently needed. There are currently nearly 5,600 families or more than 20,000 individuals in state shelter, including children and pregnant women.
This is where we point out that the people she is asking for help created the problem. The Feds left the doos open and refused to do their Constitutional duty to secure the border and control immigration. And while it won’t matter much to Massachusetts, which is run by Democrats, the result of that dereliction is increased fiscal reliance on the Feds and all the strings and regs that come along for the ride.
The central planners, faced with the problem of sovereign states, have long worked to reduce the supremacy of the several into a dependence on the one. Even New Hampshire is not immune. We rely too much on DC dollars and keep electing politicians who can’t get enough of them. Massachusetts is just several orders of magnitude further along that path. And the open-door invasion policy of the Democrat party and the Biden administration isn’t just about embracing an army of individuals cum dependents who are expected to return the favor at the ballot box. The stress forces state governments to cry out for help.
They can’t print their own money, but the Feds can. They’ve printed trillion, devalued the dollar, and created generational debt—taxes due piled on the backs of generations yet to be born. And the feds aren’t worried about balancing that budget because it serves a greater purpose.
It unbalances power.
States need to balance their budgets so the Federal money becomes the drug whose addiction ends their right to self-govern. Massachusetts’ politicians would never get too worked up about losing that or trading it away for a few pieces of silver. It’s just a different sort of sex work. And they don’t care where the money comes from or what they must do to keep getting it. And it is of no consequence to them that they pimped your grandchildren’s labors and liberties out to the central government sugar daddy without their permission which is not, by the way, a voting rights issue.
It’s not human or child trafficking either, but it should be. Adults today are turning children yet to be born into slaves of the state. But that’s progress. They’ll keep on keeping on, and eventually, the Feds will expect things that Massachusetts or its posterity – as Democrat as it has long been – might be disinclined to allow as if that option had not been sold generations before.
The feds will demand, and refusing your pimp gets you beat when you’re a whore, after which they get what they want, especially when there’s no one to defend you or speak for you and your right to defend yourself was long ago legislated away in the name of common sense.
Yes, Massachusetts has a state of emergency, but it is not what they think it is.
And it isn’t just Massachusetts.
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This is an article that should never be written. I write it to document the stories of the Gold Star Families who gathered in California on Monday to celebrate their lost sons and daughters. The greatest failure of a Commander in Chief is to forget the fallen and disrespect the families they leave behind.
There were thirteen brave men and women who lost their lives trying in vain to protect the thousands of people who were hoping to be airlifted to safety from the hell hole of Afghanistan. These young people were the last line of defense nearly two years ago when they fell victim to a suicide bomber at the perimeter of the airstrip where American jets were taking as many souls as they could. Like the seventh grandchild that Joe Biden worked hard to disavow, Biden has done his best to forget these thirteen heroes and their families.
He does not want to admit to the death of these young people because to do so is to admit to the failure that was the abandonment of Afghanistan by the United States of America. Biden wants to call the operation in Kabul the greatest evacuation of human life in history. Sorry, Joe, you get no accolades from anyone, for this was not an evacuation but a surrender and failure of leadership. A failure that has become the standard of the Biden Administration.
Often, a single image is locked in your memory associated with a significant event. In this case, I recall the President and the First Lady gathered with staff members standing outside the military plane returning the thirteen flag-draped coffins containing the physical remains of these fallen heroes. In a dramatic show of indifference and disrespect, President Joe Biden checked his watch as the color guard carried the coffins down the ramp. Biden had other places to be that were more important than receiving back home thirteen dead military personnel who lost their lives because of the botched plan of Biden and his Pentagon staff. This picture is a disgusting image I wish I could delete from memory.
As mothers and fathers of the fallen came to the microphone, you could hear the pain in their voices but the pride and love in their words. They talked about their son or daughter and the intense love of their country and the military. You could also hear the anger in those same voices as they talked about the failure of this President and his Administration to ignore these Gold Star Families. Joe Biden loves to tell of his son Beau who served in Iraq. Beau came home from Desert Storm and later died of Cancer. Biden usually says that his son died in combat. It is another Biden lie.
Joe tells that story to evoke pity and empathy for his courageous son, yet he does nothing to acknowledge these parents who do not have to embellish the story of fallen children who did die in a combat environment. Maybe the next time Joe uses the memory of his son for impact, we should all check our watches and tell joe we have somewhere else to be.
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We’ve covered it for years, but sometimes what you need is something you can share that encapsulates the chaotic contradictions in climate chaos into a neat little package. Wildfires, scorching hot temps, global boiling, Climate change is the new COVID! Paul Joseph Watson is here to help.
A lot of crazy from the left parsed and packed into nice neat little minutes.
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As I contemplate my next run for governor on the Flatlander Party ticket, I have been paying attention to what some of the “Same old same olds” of the other parties who have already declared their candidacy are using as their campaign platforms.
We want to thank Brendan Smith for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
One candidate is an ex-New Hampshire U.S. senator who is back on the trail and getting many endorsements from a bunch of political so and so’s. (I didn’t notice the name of Sally, the woman who works at the convenience store, on the list, I like to wait to see who she endorses.)
I am not sure if this candidate will continue to run on this premise, but she did declare out of the gate that New Hampshire is just a step away from becoming Massachusetts.
As a Flatlander originally from New York, I don’t necessarily disagree since you could substitute New York for Massachusetts and have the same effect. In fact, you could substitute the names of plenty of other states in America.
But my question is, how does electing a popular career politician, backed by big money, change any of that?
It isn’t career politicians that are going to change anything. After all, most candidates on both sides of the aisle who want a chance of winning are beholden to others and are too easily influenced by a handful of flawed humans with gobs of cash who have been really running the show since, well, forever.
So, if elected I promise to be influenced as well, but not by the usual crowd with deep pockets.
Back in February, I proclaimed my faith in Jesus Christ in The Weirs Times. Not an easy thing to do in this day and age. Some Christians are hesitant to share their faith loudly since they are nervous about what others might think of them. They’d rather keep their beliefs to themselves and not rock the morality boat while it is slowly sinking.
For my 2024 campaign I have decided not to be quiet about this. In fact, I was thinking that my campaign slogan might be something like: “I’ll Ask Jesus First.”
In making any decision as governor, I will first pray to the Lord to guide me before I ask for input from the other flawed humans around me like myself. I know it will help provide me with clearer answers and better decisions.
Okay, who out there just thought: “What is he nuts? What kind of campaign is that?”
A difficult one for sure, especially in an increasingly secular state like New Hampshire.
But isn’t it that what you always hear from other candidates anyway, especially so-called “conservative” ones? Though not always so directly.
A lot of politicians, and people in general, are quick to send their “thoughts and prayers” during difficult times and situations, which implies, whether they are even aware or not, that they are planning on asking the Lord for help.
I’m sure some spend a few minutes actually “thinking” about whatever the situation might be, but how many actually pray after they say it? I’d bet not many. Some will say it and then go eat a sandwich. If they truly believe that they should send thoughts and prayers, and it isn’t just lip service, then shouldn’t they also be doing the same thing when faced with any difficult decision?
You never hear anyone honestly say” “That’s terrible. I guess I could send thoughts and prayers, but I’m very busy.”
So, my campaign will be the “thoughts and prayers” (with a bigger focus on the prayers) on spiritual steroids, if you will.
I feel it would be a good idea for the media to confront candidates as to their thinking on this issue as well, but I won’t hold my breath.
Will they commit to expanding on their routine, boilerplate “thoughts and prayers” responses, and commit to some real prayer when the going gets tough and then go and actually pray?
Maybe at the next WMUR debate for governor, the hosts might deviate from their lighthearted “What is your favorite color” type folksy questions at the end of the debate and ask something like: “You have all at one time or another said you offered your thoughts and prayers after a terrible situation. So, did you actually pray after you said this and if so, will you continue to pray when faced with other difficult issues as governor?”
But, of course, I’m guessing no one in the media would dare go down that road and would instead safely pivot to “What is your favorite flavor ice cream?”
I realize that my campaign slogan will not be popular with many, but I don’t care. Professing your faith out loud is always hard. If you have read the Bible, you realize that going in. It’s a battle, and many will do what they can to discredit you based on that alone.
Who are they really working for?
So, will my campaign strategy succeed?
It doesn’t really matter. Even if I lose the governorship, I still will have gained what matters most.
And if you have to ask what that is, then I’ll pray that you get the answer sooner than later.
Brendan Smith is the editor of The Weirs Times weekly newspaper, where he also writes the column “A F.O.O.L* (Flatlander’s Observations On Life) In New Hampshire.” Brendan also started The Flatlander Party in New Hampshire in 2000. He is also the author of “The Flatlander Chronicles,” “Best Of A F.O.O.L. In New Hampshire,” and “I Only Did It For The Socks – Stories And Thoughts On Aging,” available at BrendanTSmith.com. Comments are welcome at brendan@weirs.com.
Reminder: Content about candidates or by candidates is not an endorsement by GraniteGrok.com or its authors.
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Camp Constitution has been blessed with some of the nation’s top instructors in their given fields of expertise, and one of them is Professor Willie Soon. Professor Soon has been teaching classes and bringing his family to Camp Constitution’s week-long annual family camps since 2017.
We want to thank Hal Shurtleff for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
This year, he gave an incredible class debunking global warming and its harmful impact on the world in his class titled “Why We Cannot Trust The UN’s IPCC’s Temperature Dataset.”
Please share this video far and wide.
Professor Soon’s bio from the Heartland Insititute’s website:
Dr. Willie W.-H. Soon, an astrophysicist and geoscientist, is a leading authority on the relationship between solar phenomena and global climate. His discoveries challenge computer modelers and advocates who consistently underestimate solar influences on cloud formation, ocean currents, and wind that cause climate to change. He has faced and risen above unethical and often libelous attacks on his research and his character, becoming one of the world’s most respected and influential voices for climate realism.
Dr. Soon is an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a position he has held since 1997. He served as receiving editor for New Astronomy from 2002-2016, astronomer at the Mount Wilson Observatory from 1992-2009, and contributing editor for Environment & Climate News from 1997 to 2000. He is a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute.
Dr. Soon earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in science and a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California.
Dr. Soon’s honors include a 1989 IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society Graduate Scholastic Award and a Rockwell Dennis Hunt Scholastic Award from the University of Southern California for the most representative Ph.D. research thesis of 1991.
In 2003, Dr. Soon received the Smithsonian Institution (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory) Award in official recognition of work performance reflecting a high standard of accomplishment. In 2004, Soon received the Petr Beckmann award for courage and achievement in defense of scientific truth and freedom from the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. In 2014, Dr. Soon received the Courage in Defense of Science Award from the George Marshall Institute. In 2017 he received the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award from the Science and Environmental Policy Project.
Dr. Soon is the author of The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection (World Scientific Publishing Company, 2004). He is the coauthor, with Sebastian Lüning, of “Chapter 2: Solar Forcing of Climate” in Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (The Heartland Institute, 2013); the author of “Sun Shunned” in Climate Change: The Facts 2014 (The Public Affairs Institute: Melbourne, Australia); and coauthor, with S. Baliunas, of “A brief review of the sun-climate connection, with a new insight concerning water vapour” in Climate Change: The Facts 2017 (The Public Affairs Institute: Melbourne, Australia).
Dr. Soon’s research has appeared many times in peer-reviewed journals.
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With each headline or chyron across your TV screen, we wait for the next item or service that some Democrat wants to eliminate or restrict. I can envision these folks driving or walking the city streets, and rather than come up with a plan to get the homeless off the sidewalks, they are salivating about their next item to target. Their mission has become so foolish you cannot believe how far they will go to control our lives.
This initiative is fueled by the radical extremists that push the buttons of the Democrat agenda. But the tone is set by the President, who has seemingly developed a Restriction of the Month Program. He, of course, started with our internal combustion cars. With no plan, Biden set an arbitrary deadline to have us abandon our favorite car or SUV for a battery-operated alternative. There has been no consideration for improvements to an already stressed power grid or the number of charging stations needed to keep Americans moving. Even the auto manufacturers are dragging their feet to get on board Biden’s green dream. Electric vehicles (EVs) have been expensive for manufacturers, and they currently lose money on every EV coming off the line. This idea was not appropriately planned and is certainly not being sold well to American drivers. That sounds about right for the Biden Administration.
After our cars, Biden aimed at our refrigerator, air conditioner, washing machine, dishwasher, gas stoves, and water heaters. Nothing we use to facilitate our days or make our lives easier is off-limits for Biden.
While Biden is attacking the big-ticket items in our homes and garages, he leaves the low-hanging fruit for State and Local Environmental Crusaders. By the most recent news stories, these low-level autocrats are getting into the flow and enjoying their power. It started slowly with simple straws. This may seem trivial, but in retrospect, this initiative may have been a trial balloon to test resistance and pushback. They must have been satisfied with the results as paper straws are nearly impossible to find in some fast food restaurants. So in New York, it was time to go bigger, and the first big item targeted was the wood-burning ovens that New York Pizza Shops are famous for. The fact that most of these pizza shops are family owned and the cost of a new oven might force them to close their doors was not their concern. The sweet-smelling smoke had to go in the name of Climate Change.
With pizza shops on their knees, it was time to go after the whipped cream and cherry. This weekend, far-left Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler pushed new legislation requiring Mr. Softee and other Big Apple ice cream trucks to stop powering their soft-serve machines and freezers with fuel generators. Converting these trucks to solar and electric freezers will cost an estimated $5,000 per truck. This legislation will result in fewer trucks or higher prices for that ice cream sandwich to inner city kids. Excellent work, Councilman.
These seem like insignificant issues with all of the problems facing New York. But for people craving power, why go after challenging matters like crime, drugs, and illegal immigration when you can shut down a pizza shop or soft-serve ice cream truck? We will never see our big cities come back while we have politicians with such warped priorities.
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Oh, joy! The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has decided that by 2032 all vehicles on the road shall get an average of 58 miles per gallon. There are zero combustion engines or hybrids that can achieve that requirement today. None.
As of today, there isn’t single new car available that can comply with this decree. “Comply” in italics to mark the outrageousness of the “administration” of such decrees, which no one in this “democracy” of ours ever had a chance to vote for – or against. The only car that comes close to being able to “comply” is the Toyota Prius, a small hybrid – and even it doesn’t quite get there. It averages 57 MPG.
The new number would still apply to their fleet average, so they could still sell larger vehicles if they find a way to add models that get significantly better than 58 MPG or its equivalent. Yes, they likely mean more earth wrecking, road wrecking, fire-risk emission monsters (EVs) in their fleets.
[Forbes] The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposal calls for vehicle manufacturers to start boosting their Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, target starting in 2027. It seeks an improvement of 2% per year for cars and 4% per year for light trucks. The goal is to hit a fleetwide average of 58 mpg by 2032. A final rule won’t come until after a 60-day public comment period is concluded.
and,
[The Drive.com] CAFE standards do not take drivetrains into account, meaning electrification will be helpful (if not crucial) for avoiding sharply escalating fines for falling short. Their calculation, however, is designed to reduce the effect of extreme outliers, which EVs represent, so meeting the proposed CAFE standard will still require major fuel economy gains across the rest of automakers’ lineups. That would likely require broader electrification instead of the ineffective but oft-emphasized all-EV strategy. Greater volumes of plug-in hybrids, or PHEVs, could also achieve the desired effect. (It could also tighten the belt enough on light trucks to make crossovers less economical, encouraging consumers to downsize.)
If this NHTSA thought bubble sticks the landing and DOT gets its way, automakers would need to begin to retool their businesses if they want to keep selling cars that meet the demands of the government (not the people). But automakers are not just sitting on their hands.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents GM, Toyota, Volkswagen and others has asked the EPA to soften its emissions proposal, calling it “neither reasonable nor achievable.”
I don’t think automakers care how they make their money, proof being their inability to have much effect on federal interference in their marketplace. If they have to make EVs, they will. The issue for them is the timeframe. Nine years is a long time to spend in prison, but the innovation they seek isn’t even within reach. And if it were, the infrastructure to charge all the new hybrid and EV vehicles doesn’t exist, and I think that’s the point.
Biden’s NHTSA and DOT want to push hard for charging infrastructure to make the unaffordable EVs less unappealing. If there is some arbitrary mandate that will reduce driving options, pressure will mount for local and state politicians to get involved whether they want that or not.
The appearance of progress, however, is not progress. And the goal of the Left continues to focus on forcing you into a lifestyle where individual transportation is unaffordable. Which, in turn, forces you into their preferred living environment; walkable 15-minute ghettoes of the future.
None of this was ever about saving the planet, but the war on the Right to Travel is real, and stripping future generations of any notion of at-will movement anywhere in the US, forget the world, is on their bucket list.
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I just came back from TN, and up and down the state, from Nashville to eastern TN, it’s like a literal boom town. New businesses (from mom-and-pop shops to large corporations) are everywhere. Shopping malls (massive ones) every few exits off I 40, and not an empty parking space to be found.
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Every restaurant we visited, from chains to one-off family-owned joints, was packed with people. New housing areas (NOT multifamily housing, but traditional single-family home neighborhoods) are being built everywhere you turn. There was a lively, positive vibe throughout the state. The roads and highways are packed with people every hour of the day — commerce, income, and opportunity.
Look around you in NH. Do you see a thriving economy? If someone claims that, perhaps they need to get out more. Go to the capital city, Concord, and half of every strip mall or office building is empty, boarded up, for lease. The mall in Concord, which used to be a happening place when I moved to the area in the late 2000s, is a frigging ghost town, with tumbleweeds blowing through the completely empty and dust-filled parking lot. Go inside the mall, and the only people you will see are senior citizens taking their daily constitutional — from a thriving driver of the local economy and job provider to a covered walking track for people that don’t have or won’t spend a spare dime there.
And yet there’s Sununu for years, gaslighting us all, repeating his tired talking points about the resilient and strong NH economy. “We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country!” No sh!t, Sherlock — that’s not difficult to do when you only have 1.4 M people in the entire state. There are more things that need to be done than people. But there are not enough of the types of jobs that create wealth. In fact, NH is losing those types of jobs. (As you well know.)
Part of the reason is New Hampshire’s inexplicably myopic and downright stupid business tax regulations and policies. New Hampshire is not business-friendly. When was the last time a major corporation announced they were moving their HQ to NH? Hahahaha, right? Tesla? Amazon? We can’t even get frigging Hardees.
And when confronted with the reality of the situation here, the apologists trot out the lame-ass “It’s all Covid’s fault, wah!” bullish!t. If that’s the case, why are so many other states (RED states, keep in mind) thriving now? It’s because of their POLICIES. Period.
Am I saying let’s turn NH into an overpopulated copy of a different state? Of course not. But the only way to get things back on the right track in NH is to face reality and admit the state is in a crisis. No, not for elites with big money like Sununu, but for normal, hard-working citizens trying to do the right thing, support their families, and stay off the government dole.
By the way, I have a good friend who lives in the Columbus area of Ohio. He says the same thing is happening there. Expansion, opportunity, growth. All missing from Sununu’s magic “thriving” New Hampshire. Good riddance to Sununu. He can’t leave soon enough.
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Once in a while, we run across a situation where two people have opposing claims that can’t really be resolved through compromise or adjudication or mediation.
We used to have a mechanism for dealing with this kind of situation: the duel. We’ve since outlawed the duel in favor of other resolution mechanisms, but it might be time to bring it back because there are some situations where its replacements just can’t get the job done.
In particular, could we apply the mechanism of the duel to the situation of the unwanted pregnancy?
Note that a duel doesn’t have to be fair. In fact, in most situations, it won’t be fair. One of the parties will be better with a sword, a spear, a pistol, a poison dart, an airplane-mounted machine gun, a phaser, or whatever the choice of weapon is. That’s why the challenged party traditionally gets the choice of weapon.
A duel just has to give both parties a sporting chance. It has to present the possibility of real harm — even death — to both of them.
There are two obvious problems that have to be overcome. First, what kinds of weapons could be used by an unborn child? Second, how would the unborn child express his choice of weapon?
But maybe we can finesse those questions by embracing fairness instead of dismissing it.
That is, the fairest possible duel would involve tossing a coin, something that depends on luck rather than skill. Heads, you shoot yourself; tails, I shoot myself. At its heart, a duel isn’t really about the exercise of skill. It’s about the willingness to accept responsibility, to display honor.
So we could do this for unwanted pregnancies. Both parties show up with their seconds in a remote field at dawn, where a neutral referee flips a coin. Heads, the pregnancy is terminated. Tails, the pregnancy continues — which, it’s always worth pointing out, is something that could end up killing the woman.
Note that a coin toss (50%) is halfway between ‘on demand’ (100%) and ‘under no circumstances’ (0%). The mother has to accept a substantial risk; the unborn baby at least gets a sporting chance at survival.
Until we develop technology that will let a woman evict an unborn baby from her body without also killing it — that is, to terminate the pregnancy without terminating the life — this may be the best we can hope for. You want to get an abortion? You have to submit to a duel with the baby first.
I know I know: Like a lot of ideas, this one seems crazy — until you compare it to the other ideas we’ve tried.
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The Financial Times has dropped a report that sheds much-needed light on companies bragging about their environmental, social, and governance scores (ESG). It turns out they are a lot like ISO. A way for people to make money while pretending to do something that matters.
In the latter decades of the last century, someone thought we needed a metric to measure a company’s commitment to quality control. ISO 9000, ISO 9001, and so on. Quality control matters but in the real world, your customers measure it and then decide whether or not to do business with you. But ISO was never an honest indication of anything other than your ability to meet the stated standard.
I was a Quality Control Manager. I wrote and managed an ISO system. We paid third-party auditors to certify our process, laundering money into the hands of alleged experts whose only job was ensuring that employees followed the documented procedures. You could write any instructions you wanted. It could produce crap. As long as the workers followed it and the end product met the documented requirements, you could get ISO certified.
That’s a bastardization of an oversimplification. We did a lot to ensure quality because staying in business demanded it. My job was to figure out how to make my job less necessary. Work with the managers and staff to determine how to efficiently get the best results and reduce waste, defects, and errors. What we didn’t need to do was spend many thousands more annually keeping and updating an entire ISO system that we could pay an external ISO auditor to verify. Except we did. This latest thing captured many industries, and the ISO label, meaningless as it could be, got you more business while an entire industry (see also abscess) grew to service it.
Quality Control always mattered, but suddenly there was a new expense item for an extra-judicial overseer everyone agreed to pay for the BS label. And like all such constructs, it only seemed to get more extensive and expensive, self-important, corrupt, and corruptible. ISO auditors could fail you because they felt like it or pass you for the same reason.
The quality control auditors needed quality control, which was a downstream expense in and of itself – creating this massive bureaucracy that cost millions across multiple industries annually but produced nothing.
Pandering to social justice is also expensive, and many companies hired experts to make them appear #woke, only to discover how wasteful and unproductive that can be – and ESG is no different. It creates a perception for investors, potential business partners, or consumers that you’ve done something. That something is a bunch of paper in binders (or on company servers) that don’t mean anything in practical terms—Potemkin social and climate justice.
From The Fiscal Times.
Companies rated highly on widely accepted environmental, social and governance metrics pollute just as much as lowly rated companies, research has found. This perverse lack of correlation holds even if companies’ carbon intensity — their carbon emissions per unit of revenue or market capitalisation — is compared purely to their environmental rating, according to Scientific Beta, an index provider and consultancy. …
ESG ratings have little to no relation to carbon intensity, even when considering only the environmental pillar of these ratings,” said Felix Goltz, research director at Scientific Beta. “It doesn’t seem that people have actually looked at [the correlations]. They are surprisingly low.”
And this makes perfect sense. Net Zero, Electric Vehicles, Wind, and Solar are all affectations assigned a false perception. None of them is good for the environment; many may be worse than what they are meant to replace. Things with which we could do more and inevitably emit less (if that mattered) will be mothballed and replaced with environmental shibboleths that are less useful and dirtier than their predecessors. But they have been assigned a symbolism to which they have no right.
“The carbon intensity reduction of green [ie low carbon intensity] portfolios can be effectively cancelled out by adding ESG objectives.”
And we’re not even talking about investing in (for example) solar, which enables the world’s number one ocean polluter, air polluter, carbon emitter, and (perhaps) human rights violator China. But it is still viewed as earth friendly.
If you want to install solar, don’t pretend you are not enabling environmental disaster and the opposite of pro-rights, human, social, or environmental. It is one of many deceptions perpetrated upon us at great expense.
Think of it like gloves on food service workers. They look like they do something, and in a minimal sense, there is a value, but if you don’t change them between tasks, you can still cross-contaminate food and surfaces – which is why you are told they need to wear them. Not used properly, they do the opposite of the stated purpose. Or you could wash your hands a lot and skip the gloves, which are themselves an added expanse with a front and backend carbon footprint and a potential environmental hazard.
Medical face masks are another example. They may keep you from sneezing or spitting into an open chest cavity, but they don’t stop the spread of germs and never did. And the moment you touch them, that minimal advantage is lost – but people still think they can do things they cannot while frequently adjusting them, voiding what little value they had. And no one – even medical professionals who know these truths – are allowed to communicate them. It would destroy the illusion.
ESG is annother illusion. It is an affectation that hides harm and distracts from meaningful investment and innovation in things that could improve the air and water worldwide, not just in the places you can see – all to make more money.
HT | ZeroHedge
The post ESG is MBS (More Bull Sh**!) appeared first on Granite Grok.
Reports of a new underground railroad spiriting people from captivity on the west coast have emerged in recent days. Families, mostly white, conservative, and/or Christians, are leaving in the dead of night via a network of rural routes and safe houses.
It is still uncertain where the railroad began, with many claiming California, others Oregon and still others certain it started in Washington. Sitting around a campfire, several of the investigative journalists covering the story bandied around the likely genesis.
“California just legalized sex with minors, and no one can find a decent scriptwriter,” pointed out one anonymous camper.
“Yeah, but women in Portland, Oregon, are being beaten by homeless people, yet it’s illegal to box a kangaroo!” another voice cried out from the shadows.
“That’s nothing, Supreme Chancellor of Washington, Bill Gates, just funded super ticks that make people allergic to meat, and the state banned lollipops!” decried another incredulous reporter.
The erstwhile outdoorsmen comforted themselves by passing around a handle of maple moonshine (which is not only legal in Vermont but encouraged) despite having lost two of their compatriots. One was arrested for painting his horse, and the other for failing to leave his house while naked.
In an ironic twist, the new railroad sees many of its escapees fleeing the north and west while heading south to freedom in hopes of finding a decent Chik-Fil-A. The thought of escaping to a place where you’re free but not so free you can keep your donkey in a bathtub, as in Georgia, has many packing up to make the treacherous trip. Some have made it all the way to Alabama, where they were protected from saboteurs who were executed for putting salt on the railroad tracks.
Mexico also became a destination for those seeking asylum, including thousands of migrants who had recently crossed into America.
“Estados Unidos está lleno de locos” shared one passenger as he strode defiantly back over the border. “Al menos los cárteles no querían que comiéramos insectos y nuestras mujeres saben jugar al fútbol” which was lost in translation since Banana’s Media doesn’t have anyone who speaks native Texan.
There was some discussion of using one of the original routes to escape to Canada, however, many of the passengers feared being ruled by fancy lad Governor Justin Trudeau who exercised a limp-wristed iron fist over his citizenry during the pandemic. Still, many remain hopeful as Trudeau’s wife recently had the good sense to divorce him after reports arose she decided she likes men, as does her estranged husband.
Vermont, once the first colony in the union to abolish slavery, has been rumored to be yet another state ready to see its nearly 3% Christian population fleeing to safer spaces like Florida; however, time estimates for construction of the Vermont underground railroad forecast well into the 2030s due to the anticipated wait time for Larry, Daryl, and Daryl to finish arguing over the road work after the recent floods.
At least in Vermont, they have the good sense to make sure their women get their husband’s permission before getting false teeth and keep those atheists in check by telling them to keep their blasphemy holes shut about the God they don’t want to believe in.
Amen.
The post Banana’s: New Underground Railroads Emerge Along West Coast appeared first on Granite Grok.
There are a lot of numbers and stats out there, as well as gun-grabbing groups spouting “White Extremist!” and “Right Wing!” as soon as news of another mass shooting flashes across the Left-leaning Mainstream Media.
They don’t bother with actual FBI stats – the “gold” standard, for as much as the politically weaponized FBI can be trusted.
But it’s always the case that as soon as the facts come out, as in the shooter was “Democrat, Socialist, Transgender, Black, other minority” or any “protected class” (that decided it wasn’t going to “protect” someone else), the Press “move on” and the story gets the “after-birth” abortion treatment.
If it were about me, the story would have “legs,” and WUMR would howl about it for weeks. Ray Buckley and company would use it over and over again (you know Ray, the guy that makes it clear that Parents are WAITING to beat their gender dysphoric kids to death at the mere sight of a tutu or some such thing).
Sidenote: Despite all RINOS (Mike Bordes, Travis O’Hara, Dave Nagel) that flaunt the NH GOP Platform or how Republican Leadership has for years magnificently failed to meet any kind of Platform discipline against them for years, I’m still happy to say that I’m a good Conservatarian but only a registered Republican to vote in the Primaries.
So, for all of the yammering by Republican Leadership about being pro-gun, why isn’t this question asked more often when they proudly proclaim that they support the Second Amendment? Why aren’t they ALSO asking this question??
What percentage of gun crimes are committed by Republicans?
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) June 10, 2023
As I said above, the Left will use ANY Republican-associated incident for years afterward. Why is that Republican Leadership? Why aren’t you returning fire (pun intended)?
Or is the reason for “why aren’t you?” because you are only comfortable taking the safe path by preaching to the choir but deliberately failing to use that question as an opportunity to go after the Constitution Deniers?
Are you telling me that a cartoonist has bigger stones than you?
HT | Instapundit
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