Friday • March 7 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.X
Manchester, N.H.
Another high-profile result has arrived to confirm your suspicions about masks being useless acts of public health theater. St George’s Hospital, London, The UK’s largest teaching hospital, has announced that masks made no difference in infection rates.
Long story short.
Infection rates didn’t soar when mask mandates were removed in NHS facilities during the middle of an Omicron surge.
Daniel Horowitz at Conservative Review has a slightly more colorful evaluation of the St George’s Study.
The U.K. Daily Mail reports that researchers from St George’s Hospital found absolutely no “statistically significant change” in the hospital-acquired COVID infection rate between the period of time when a mask mandate was in place vs. when it was relaxed. During the first phase of the study – from December 4, 2021 to June 2022 – all workers and visitors in the hospital had to wear masks everywhere. From June through September 2022, there was no mandate, except for “high-risk” wards, such as cancer treatment and ICUs.
The results? Given that rape victims were mercilessly forced to mask, we should have expected an unmistakable death count in phase two. Instead, there was no difference in infection rates observed in either phase. Moreover, those in high-risk wards – which served as the control group – “found no immediate or delayed change in infection rate,” aka no benefit whatsoever.
No surprises, but you’ve got to love the source because you can share it with the Mask-Nazis in your life because they’re still out there, and what do they have for a comeback? The largest teaching hospital in England isn’t a reliable source. Okay.
The post St. George’s Hospital London: Masks Made No Difference in COVID Infection Rates appeared first on Granite Grok.
There is a division of the house. On one side are the politically correct in government, the leftist mainstream media, and a raft of Islamist apologists. One and all are tripping over each other in reassuring us that the mass murderers such as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and suicide bombers who detonate their explosive vests in crowded marketplaces and even mosques are individual anomalies and Islam is not responsible for what they do.
On the other hand, are those who have been fed up with the numberless daily horrific acts that are clearly committed under the banner of Islam throughout the world. In all fairness, there needs to be a distinction. Numerous criminal acts are also committed, on a daily basis, by non-Muslims. The critical difference is that non-Muslim criminals do not hoist a religious banner to justify their misdeeds, while Muslims proudly claim that they commit their heinous acts in obedience to the dictates of their religious faith.
“Investigators in the FBI and U.S. Army determined that Hasan acted alone and as of yet have found no evidence of links to terrorist groups, satisfied that his communications with Awlaki posed no threat. Regretfully, Attorney General Eric Holder has declined to state that radical Islam was the major motive for Hasan’s attack.”
Would someone, please, explain what motivated Nidal Hasan who had been, at tax payer’s expense, educated from college all the way through medical school and post-medical-school training, to turn his deadly weapons against a nation that gave him everything he had?
If Islam had nothing to do with what Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan did, why:
had he repeatedly preached the ascendancy of Islam to the U.S. Constitution?
had he publicly supported Islamic suicide bombing?
had he proclaimed his highest loyalty to Islam?
had he been in contact with violent anti-U.S. Islamists and a virulent Yemeni Imam?
did he distribute copies of the Quran to people on the morning of his bloody attack?
did he keep screaming “Allah-o-Akbar” as he heartlessly sprayed over a hundred bullets, killing thirteen and injuring some thirty innocent men and women?Here is the truth, as bitter as it may be. Islam is the culprit. Islam is anything but a religion of peace. Violence is at the very core of Islam. Violence is institutionalized in the Muslim’s holy book, the Quran, in many suras:
Qur’an:9:5 “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.”
Qur’an:9:112 “The Believers fight in Allah’s cause; they slay and are slain, kill and are killed.”
Qur’an:8:39 “So fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief [non-Muslims]) and all submit to the religion of Allah alone (in the whole world).”
Qur’an:8:65 “O Prophet, urge the faithful to fight. If there are twenty among you with determination they will vanquish two hundred; if there are a hundred then they will slaughter a thousand unbelievers, for the infidels are a people devoid of understanding.”
Qur’an:9:38 “Believers, what is the matter with you, that when you are asked to go forth and fight in Allah’s Cause you cling to the earth? Do you prefer the life of this world to the Hereafter? Unless you go forth, He will afflict and punish you with a painful doom, and put others in your place.”
Qur’an:47:4 “When you clash with the unbelieving Infidels in battle (fighting Jihad in Allah’s Cause), smite their necks until you overpower them, killing and wounding many of them. At length, when you have thoroughly subdued them, bind them firmly, making (them) captives. Thereafter either generosity or ransom (based upon what benefits Islam) until the war lays down its burdens. Thus are you commanded by Allah to continue carrying out Jihad against the unbelieving infidels until they submit to Islam.”
And the Quran is considered by Muslims as the word-for-word literal edicts of the Muslims’ god, Allah.
Right from the start, violence served as the engine of Islam under the command and supervision of Muhammad himself. For one, the Prophet’s son-in-law’s cousin, Ali, was titled the Commander of the Faithful for his unsurpassed feats of butchery. Ali with the assistance of one or two of his thugs, beheaded some seven hundred captives, most of them Jews, in only one day. This man, highly esteemed by the prophet of Allah, had a sword that had its own name—Zulfiqar. Ali’s portrait, holding the menacing sword, adorns the homes and shops throughout Shi’a’-lands. And the Shiites, at the same level as Muhammad, revere Muhammad’s executioner, Imam Ali.
On the Sunni side, Muhammad’s co-revered is Umar, another unabashed killer of untold numbers. And of course, the choice weapon of these champions of the religion of peace was the sword. And to this day, a sword adorns the flag of the birthplace of the religion of peace, Saudi Arabia.
And Islam, by the nature of its very doctrine, appeals to man’s base nature. It promotes intolerance, hatred, discrimination, and much more:
Qur’an:61:2 “O Muslims, why say one thing and do another? Grievously odious and hateful is it in the sight of Allah that you say that which you do not. Truly Allah loves those who fight in His Cause in a battle array as if they were a solid cemented structure.”
In reality, Islam is like a deadly contagious disease. Once it invades the mind of its victim, this debilitating disease is capable of transforming him into a helpless pawn that has no choice but to execute what he is directed to do.
Of the reported 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, millions are already trapped in the terminal stages of this affliction while millions of others are rapidly joining them. The people enslaved with the extreme cases of Islamic mental disease are highly infectious. They actively work to transmit the disease to others, while they themselves engage in horrific acts of mayhem and violence to demonstrate their unconditional obedience to the dictates of the Islamic cult of violence.
The savagery and variety of the actions of these Islamic captives are seen daily around the globe. Many of these acts, committed under the banner of Islam, have become so commonplace that the world has come to view them as the normal part and parcel of troubled humanity. And, from time to time, the world is shocked into a passing and momentary realization of the evil deeds these Islamist robots commit and quickly gets over it and does nothing to seriously address this affliction of humanity.
November 5, 2009, dastardly mass murder at Fort Hood, committed by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, is no longer in the public eye. Life will continue on its deadly course, pushed along in a variety of ways by agents of death, Islamists. Only the families who lost their loved ones and those who survived the bullets have to live the rest of their lives with incapacitating injuries, in the main, won’t be able to put the episode behind them.
…
The mass murderer Nidal Malik Hasan did not riddle people with bullets under the pressure of momentary insanity. The insanity, ironically, in a man who was trained to help people with sanity was introduced in him from the moment of birth and from the very early years when he prostrated himself five times daily toward Mecca in the expression of total submission to the dogma of hate called Islam.
Islam is a mental retrovirus that has mutated into numerous varieties and degrees of severity, over the past 1400 years. Everyone born in a Muslim family, as well as those who convert to Islam, contract a particular mutation of the Islamic Virus. As is the case with all retroviruses, the Islamic Virus burrows deeply in the person and erupts, from time to time with potentially devastating consequences.
The Islamic Virus first divests the person of his most fundamental human attribute. It takes away his right to make decisions himself and absolves him, in return, of any responsibility for his actions rendered in blind obedience to it.
A true Muslim does not and cannot believe in freedom of choice. In the religion of Islam—Submission—everything is up to Allah, as clearly and repeatedly stipulated in the Quran. The Raison d’être for the Muslim is to be unconditionally submissive to the will and dictates of Allah. Everything that a “good” Muslim does is contingent upon the will and decree of Allah, he is indoctrinated to believe.
Humanity is facing a deeply troubling dilemma. On the one hand, is the desire of enlightened people whose aim is to forge a world of diverse people into one universal society ruled by peace and justice for everyone while, on the other hand, Islamists are hell-bent on imposing their stone-age system on everyone. Tellingly, the Muslims themselves are at one another’s throats regarding which of dozens of Islamic sects’ dogma should rule.
For now, Islam is busy with what it did from the time of its birth, fighting the non-Muslims and infighting. Truth be told: Violence is the animating force of Islam. Islam is a religion born through violence, raised by violence, thrives on violence, and dies without violence.
The post Does Islam Breed Violence? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Life-Expectancy in America dropped for the first time in modern history. The change follows the years-long response to the alleged SARS-CoV-WIV epidemic. But it wasn’t the virus or the response. According to the FDA, it was misinformation.
Califf said a new factor has joined the list of known causes of life expectancy disparities like race, ethnicity, income and education: living in a rural area, where he noted that people are exposed to different information sources. ..
He said there’s a need for better regulation, including “specific authorities at FDA, FTC and other areas” to root out misinformation.
Free speech has caused Americans to live shorter lives. This is actually common knowledge under socialist regimes. Saying the wrong thing shortens already reduced life expectancies on a daily basis. The government addresses instances of disinformation and misinformation by intimidating, arresting, jailing, or executing offenders.
That is how they root out misinformation. Is the head of the FDA suggesting something similar in the United States, and if not, how does he plan to prevent his agency or any other – given their weaponization and militarization in recent years – from descending into that trap?
No plans would be the best guess. It is in the interest of the agency to address mistakes, bad judgment, poor decisions, graft, and corruption, by preventing whistleblowers and isolating anyone who demonstrates the intellectual agility to ask uncomfortable questions.
We, of course, understand why. A systemic advance in the centralization of public health information (socialized medical propaganda) is to blame. The global narrative was more dangerous than the virus from which they claimed to be saving us. The suggestion of misfeasance or malfeasance cannot be permitted to persist. But the Constitution still stands in their way.
Maybe they could label opposing scientific opinions, credentialed or not, as hate speech. That’s a growing vector for intimidation. Or perhaps you can buy Twitter. I hear that place is a hotbed of public health debate since Elon Musk took the helm.
Substack | Igor Chudov
The post FDA Blames Declining Life-Expectancy on Free Speech appeared first on Granite Grok.
Naomi Wolf was once a darling of the Democratic Party. A Yale graduate with a Ph.D. in history, Wolf worked as an advisor to the Clinto-Gore administration. Described as an American liberal progressive, feminist author, and journalist, she rose to prominence as the author of The Beauty Myth in 1991, which was named one of The New York Times’s seventy most influential books of the twentieth century.
For all intents and purposes, she had built up political capital both in and outside of Washington D.C. None of which was able to keep her from being canceled once she started to push back against the elite left’s manipulation of the pandemic.
Wolf made a now famous video that went viral where she expressed profound concern over the proposed vaccine mandates being discussed in her state of New York. Governor Cuomo and Mayor Deblasio had both exposed themselves as authoritarians whose agendas superseded the Constitution, and civil and human rights, all of which Wolf holds dearly as a Jewish American.
Following her fall from grace, she was targeted again for speaking out against the rising number of reported abuses from mandates and adverse reactions specifically harming women. The number of miscarriages, jobs lost from refusal to comply, and attacks on parents’ rights were cause for more concern resulting in Wolf being kicked off most of her social media accounts for speaking out.
Suddenly she was embraced by the strange bedfellows from the right, such as Steve Bannon and other lifelong progressive liberals like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Together, they were amassing a body of intellectual and medical professionals who knew the pandemic and it’s government response was not an organic anomaly due to random biological evolution but a well organized, well funded, and targeted bio-weapon attack on American’s including their loved ones.
As a result, Wolf seized the opportunity made when Pfizer was court-ordered to release their trove of COVID research documents rather than their preference to have them sealed for 75 years. At a rate of 55,000 documents released monthly, Wolf knew she needed help weeding through the jargon to develop the picture she suspected would emerge. That people were being injured at record numbers in the U.S. and likely around the world. That Pfizer knew this was happening and hid it from the public, and that members of the government, the military, Big Tech and Big Media were colluding to deceive, coerce, and intimidated Americans into injecting themselves with not just an experimental mRNA gene “therapy,” but a bio-weapon that would decimate thousands if not millions of Americans.
Her appeal for help netted 2,500 experts willing to volunteer their time to read the Pfizer documents and produce reports. The team included: physicians, RNs, bio-statisticians, medical fraud investigators, lab clinicians, research scientists, cardiologists, pathologists, and anesthesiologists. Wolf was barely able to manage the incoming reports. However, what she and her staff uncovered she describes as “evidence of the greatest crime against humanity in the history of our species.”
Here are a few of the details from the 58 reports she shared during her recent speech at Hillsdale College:
It’s no wonder they wanted to seal the evidence for 75 years, given these details alone indicate crimes against humanity on a global scale worthy of the death penalty. However, the leviathan behind all of this is international in scope and so well funded. Thanks to the trillions of dollars controlled by the captured industries, the battle for justice already in the courts is severely uphill.
The second part of Wolf’s speech details her reasons why she is convinced this is a bio-weapon intended to target Americans and Western culture in general. We will cover this in part 2 of this series due out tomorrow.
The post Naomi Wolf’s Howl: Pfizer COVID Docs Reveal “Greatest Crime in Human History” appeared first on Granite Grok.
Many years ago, we warned our readers that campus craziness was the Left’s beta test for what their Utopia would be like when they released it upon the nation. Not a tough call to make, but it was still the right one.
The campus crazies even put on shows for us as primers for the world in which we would soon live, and here we are. If you object to sexually explicit content in a public grammar school, you are a book-burning Nazi.
Welcome to the land of diversity and inclusion. Where any insult, threat, or crime is justifiable if it pulls the lever to the left. A downhill journey that began decades ago and will culminate with the progressive endgame. A nation where everyone is bullied by the government, including the people who got us there and the people in it.
Even the progressively homogenized media will have to sing for its supper. But, where one wrong word can, today, get you canceled, in the Liberal paradise, one wrong word could get you disappeared in the middle of the night.
That’s how it works in China, Venezuela, Cuba, the old Soviet Union, and every Democrat-socialist bastion of equality across the scope of human history. Our version can’t be any different because the ingredients are the same—people with power and people with none.
Human beings will put up with a lot, but the same urge that drives elites to want more control is alive in each of us, and sure – some more than others. But yearning to be free is not a bumper sticker. It is an ingrained facet of human existence. We may enjoy company, family, and community, and some of us are energized by these connections, but we don’t want them telling us how to live every moment of our lives, and that’s what the Left is after.
Diversity and Inclusion are a Marxist smoke screen for divide and conquer. The goal is equity defined by a handful of ruling-class despots whose meddling leads to less of everything except government intrusion.
No one on the Political Left is looking downriver to a land where you are accepted for who you are. That’s not even in the cards.
The goal is to silence your speech and mandate theirs. To homogenize compliance and systematize obedience.
In the end, there is o only one party, one message, and one thing they will tolerate. Your silent obedience.
So yeah, maybe silence is violence after all.
The post The Goal of the Diversity-Equity Agenda is a Government That Bullies Everyone appeared first on Granite Grok.
Biden promised to make fossil fuels extinct and is taking steps to do so with the help of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Joe Biden vowed to do it when talking to blurry-eyed environmental groupies during the 2020 election.
He has thought through his plan as well as these dreamers have charted out their future. Biden has visions of everyone driving Electronic Vehicles (EVs) and our landfills filled with the beautiful gas vehicles that we have loved since we were kids. I dream of being the person to push the button and crush Joe Biden’s treasured Corvette. Good for us, good for him.
As Biden was boarding Air Force One, that evil gas-burning jet, on his way to Ireland, he directed the EPA to announce new guidelines that the auto industry would never be able to comply with. He took the EPA in his feeble hand like a gladiator yielding his sword, and he took control of the auto industry and pulled the guillotine lever that hung the fossil fuel industry to its death. Greta Thunberg was so giddy today that she had to skip school. But seriously, why go to school when we will all be extinct in 10 years, right, John Kerry? Cue James Taylor for your favorite diddy. By the way, Hunter is on this trip to Ireland with The Big Guy. The Irish best get their checkbooks out. Hunter’s idea of a souvenir is a check to the Biden cartel with at least nine zeros.
Regardless of the standards involved, the bigger picture is that the government is mandating to the American people how they will travel about the country. Only about 6% of cars on American roads today are Electric, which is not enough for Biden and the Climate Change advocates. The numbers and the infrastructure are against the speedy growth of EVs. First is the price, which averages over $60,000 for EVs, while gas vehicles are still in the $40,000s. Filling stations today number about 145,000. There is no statistic on the number of pumps but at 6-12 per station, the pumps total 900,000 to 1.8 Million. The Administration brags about the 130,000 public access chargers. They are not even close to filling the demand in the future. Currently, there are only two significant owners of the chargers, ChargePoint and Tesla. There is no push on the part of petroleum companies to convert filling stations to charge.
The power grid in America is well below the capacity we need today. It is prevalent in some regions to see scheduled “brown-outs” or even black-outs. Ee cannot keep the lights on our air conditioners running. What will happen when we start plugging in the family SUV every day? In California, there were orders last summer forbidding the charging of EVs. Try using that excuse for your boss when you don’t have enough battery life to drive to work.
Finally, these EV charging stations will not be wind-powered. We will need fossil fuels to generate the wattage we will use, so these EPA standards will not eliminate fossil fuels but transfer the user.
We love our cars, trucks, RVs, and boats, and we are not ready, and possibly never will be, to have the government mandate that we need to give them up. Please tell me where this power is given to the President in our Constitution. I’ll wait.
The post Biden Has Militarized The EPA appeared first on Granite Grok.
If you are one of those who insist that nominating Trump will fix everything OR if you are one of those who insist that “moving on” from Trump will fix everything, then don’t read this … you will find it very triggering and upsetting.
FACT: The GOP has done virtually nothing to prevent the 2024 election from being rigged in the same manner the 2020 election was rigged. What’s the plan to prevent regime-media/Big-Tech censorship? What’s the plan to combat “Zuckerbucks” and copycat Zuckerbuckers? What’s the plan to compete in vital swing-states where election-day has been replaced with a month(s)-long ballot-harvesting contest?
Two new FACTS: One is a recent article from Kelly Conway regarding how the Biden-regime is planning to turn out waves fo zombie Tic-Tok voters:
Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said she’s worried young voter turnout in the 2024 election will hurt the Republican party as the Biden administration turns to social media influencers. …
Conway also said she’s concerned the left is becoming a “turnout machine” with young voters because of the administration’s use of influencers. …
Voters ages 18-29 prefer Democrats by a significant margin, with the demographic voting for Democrats over Republicans by a 28-point margin in 2022 as well as voting for Biden over Trump by a 24-point margin in 2020,
What’s the plan for combatting the legions of zombie Tik-Tokers?
And another FACT … the GOP “mega-donors,” at best, cannot be counted on. Zuckerberg invested nearly half-a-billion into turning out Democrat voters in 2020. The GOP’s Zuckerberg equivalent, instead of matching that investment, gives his money to Harvard:
GOP mega donor Ken Griffin is giving Harvard $300,000,000. Imagine what useful work for the country could have been done with that amount! But nope, he funded the communists.
Griffin is a DeSantis backer who says it’s time to move on from Trump. pic.twitter.com/R2Y3M8n3fv
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) April 11, 2023
How are we going to beat the Communists, when our mega-donors are bankrolling the Communists?
The post Two More Reasons Why The GOP Has No Chance In 2024 appeared first on Granite Grok.
OkThis post on this day, April 15th, 2023, at 2 PM ET is the 50,000 published post on GraniteGrok.com. That sounds like a lot, and maybe it is, but the ‘Grok had some very humble beginnings, and it wasn’t until more recently that we truly cranked out the content.
Related: Attorney General Bill Barr Explains Why New Hampshire Needs GraniteGrok.com
It took a bit of digging, but I worked out a few waypoints in the journey from where two guys shared thoughts they didn’t think anyone would read to whatever it is we are today.
If you don’t know the story, GraniteGrok started in 2006 with two guys, some cameras, some free time, and the wide-open internet. Not a lot of blogs back then, and they did well in that landscape, establishing a practice that continues to this day—operating on a set of constitutional conservatarian principles through which politics and culture are filtered.
Put another way, we are here for the unapologetic principles, not some political party or agenda, and sometimes that pisses people off.
From 2006 to Feb 2010, when I came on board, GraniteGrok had published 4,790 posts, or about 1,198 a year.
In early 2010 Skip began recruiting more writers. He needed and wanted some help. At the time, I was aggravating NH Libs from NH Insider.com when several other folks and I were invited to broaden the style, tone, and audience of GraniteGrok – many of whom have since drifted away (or, in the case of Ed Naile, passed away).
From late Feb 2010 (when I started here) to December 2017, Granite Grok added 23,848 more posts. That’s just over 3400 a year or 280+ every month. And no, that is not a strange place for a pin drop. Early 2018 was when I promised we could surpass the Keene Sentinel in online traffic and eventually everyone else in online NH print media along with them.
And we did.From Jan 2018 until this post you are reading now, we added another 21,362 articles or items, 4000+ a year or 334 per month. And before getting canceled by Facebook, we were catching up to WMUR (Election season 2020) and owned the number one spot for traffic among all online print news media portals in the state, much of Vermont, and parts of Maine and Massachusetts.
Since Facebook canceled us (though I’ve recently gone back to sharing some milder stuff there to see what happens), we’ve added footprints on other platforms, but most of our traffic comes straight to our front door. We could drop social, and it wouldn’t make much difference.
Is it because we added more op-eds? We give our readers a place to express their views to stimulate more debate. Content-sharing agreements have been developed. And someday, though I can’t say when because it is out of my hands, we’ll have a Grok App and the site updates we’ve promised, including an ad-free premium option (fingers crossed).
What’s Next?Adding another 50,000 posts at this pace will take 12.47 years, but if free speech is still a thing, and I haven’t dropped dead or wandered off the mental acuity plantation (or been put in jail for disagreeing with the regime), I may still be at it. I hope someone is, if it’s not Skip or me. 100K seems like a milestone worth achieving, as long as it is still original content filtered through that unapologetic conservatarian filter.
NH should always have that.
We’ve seen many political blogs come and go in this state on both sides. Groups, coalitions, alliances, organizations. People have risen fast and burned out, never to be heard from again. Longevity is not typical. It’s rare. Maybe we’re the only ones dumb enough to persist at a hobby that increasingly looks like shouting in the darkness.
We like to think of it as lighting a candle and minding it with perseverance and tenacity. We want to ensure people who are looking can find their way, which I think I summed up nicely in my memoriam to Ed Naile and John Irish.
Ed and John were in it for the long haul, come what may. And they woke up, maybe not every morning but most, with an idea about how they could help, what it would require of them, and they did that.
We cannot replace them; we can only succeed them. And not like them but in their spirit, because the battle against tyranny is eternal, as is the desire for liberty but tyranny never rests, so – like them – neither shall we.
Whatever happens, for however long it does, we intend to keep at it, and we hope you’ll continue to come along for the ride.
The post This is the 50,000th Published Post on GraniteGrok.com appeared first on Granite Grok.
Traditionally, our “Ruling Class” understood that America came first before its ideological aims. They understood that this demanded a “Limited Government” that let the rest of us decide for ourselves what is best for us.
That there was no comprehensible way they could know enough about our Civil Society to know all the elements and interconnections to make sweeping changes.
They understood that “change for the sake of change” mostly resulted in calamity.
And then the Progressives started in with the Woodrow Wilson Administration that decided WE didn’t know what was good enough for us – but that they did. They moved us away from being a Republic using democratic processes to their desired Administrative State that would “govern” use via technocrats who are non-partisan and “only have our best interests at heart.”
Biden’s America – A Society That Has Given Up on Itself. Well, it’s more a ruling class that has given up on the society it rules. They’re following Rhett Butler’s maxim that you can make as much money by tearing a civilization down as by building it up. – Instapundit
We’re not far from that Administrative State, but we have learned that those we elect to be part of that Ruling Class have their own agendas and not ours. And we’ve learned that the “non-partisan technocrats” are highly partisan and generally not as smart as many of those of us that don’t receive a government paycheck. Sure, there are some good people in government, but too many are all but willing to change us into their own image.
/rant
The post “It’s More a Ruling Class That Has Given Up on the Society It Rules.” appeared first on Granite Grok.
Corporations have been jumping hoops to get a good ESG and Net-Zero score or favorable rankings from The Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equity Index. But, there’s a new corporate “score” on the block, and it is starting to unnerve the oligarchs.
The Viewpoint Diversity Index (by The Alliance Defending Freedom) measures “corporate respect for religious and ideological diversity.”
Viewpoint Diversity Score’s annual Business Index is the first comprehensive benchmark designed to measure corporate respect for religious and ideological diversity in the market, workplace, and public square. True diversity requires protecting freedom of expression and belief for employees, customers, shareholders, and other stakeholders. Accordingly, the Business Index evaluates a wide range of corporate policies, practices, and activities to determine whether companies respect these fundamental freedoms as a standard part of doing business.
It gauges tolerance for things outside the progressive plantation, like the religious rights of Christians, free association, or free speech, so Companies with high ESG or CEI scores obsessed with appeasing the Net-Zero Zombies tend to have outrageously low Viewpoint Diversity Scores.
The 2022 report lists Go Daddy at 2%, Adobe, Microsoft, and Airbnb at 5%, Amazon at 6%, Apple at 8%, PayPal gets 7%, and Google and Meta at 9%. Few, if any, significant banks can manage a score of above 25%. Twitter was 6% in 2022, so we’ll be able to see if Elon’s influence can improve things.
From the report.
The two industries with the lowest overall scores were computer software at 6%, and internet services and retailing at 8%. The financial and data services industry also came in at a low overall average score of 11%.
The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) has taken to introducing resolutions for consideration at upcoming shareholder’s meetings based on these rankings of large #woke institutions, and they’ve gotten support from an unexpected quarter.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sided with conservative investors this week in their request to investigate what they say is PayPal’s systematic political and religious discrimination against customers.
Over the objections of PayPal’s management, the SEC allowed a proposal by the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) to go to a shareholder vote at the company’s next annual meeting. This decision follows a similar decision on March 29, in which the SEC green-lighted a proposal regarding alleged political and religious discrimination at JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank.
This follows in parallel or perhaps on the heels of efforts by State Attorneys General to investigate banks that use their pursuit of favorable ESG and CEI scores to discriminate against customers of faith.
Nineteen states, led by Missouri AG Eric Schmitt, are investigating Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo for putting UN (BS) Net Zero ESG banking goals ahead of American laws.
And I get it. In the New World Order, appeasing the new emperors might make sense for oligarchic executives perched atop piles of money with this or that company name. When the revolution comes, the government will pick winners and losers, and you’d rather have a seat at the table than be in a body bag under it. But until the Progs can mingle the ashes of the US Constitution amongst the charred waste of the once great American Republic, it’s illegal for financial institutions to discriminate based on a wide range of tags.
These companies, like PayPal, are quick to line up their lawyers and protest, though I can’t imagine why. Don’t they trust their shareholders to vote in line with the board of directors’ vision of partisan one-party political hegemony?
JP Morgan Chase was likewise forced to allow shareholders to vote on a similar resolution.
In the past two years, Chase has denied payments or canceled accounts associated with people and organizations—such as former ambassador Sam Brownback, the Arkansas Family Council, Defense of Liberty, and retired general Michael Flynn, Jr—for holding mainstream American views.
That was Nebraska State Treasurer John Murante, one of many in state governments delegated as flyover country pushing back against the Left’s use of the banking system to undermine political opponents. And yes, banks are owned by people, not the government (at least on paper), but because of what they do, state and federal regulations were developed to prevent this sort of abuse. Rules that were applauded by many of the same people now are using ESG and CEI to reject loans or refuse services based on an ideological profile.
I don’t have high hopes for resolutions presented at stockholders’ meetings, with or without teeth. Still, the SEC’s tolerance for them is surprising, and I applaud ADF’s mission to shine another light on corporate progressive appeasement tactics peddled as diversity or equity initiatives when they result in systemic discrimination and inequity.
ADF Business-Index
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The more I read about Islam, the more concerned I have become about its threat to democracies everywhere. I truly understand how it is that the people in Islamic nations cannot question Islam for fear of death, but I cannot for the life of me see how an educated person can fall victim to this falsehood.
I thank Anwar Shaikh for my awakening to Islam being an imperialistic doctrine, as opposed to a religion. “Freedom Is Not Free,” and it takes vigilance to keep it free. In the past, I spent many hours contacting American Congressmen to get our country off dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Fortunately, America is now a major exporter of oil and gas.
There is no such thing as “Islam” one can reform and find a way to make moderate. There are numerous Islams. One and all are extreme and not in the least amenable to change. Remember that Islam claims it is the perfect eternal faith for mankind. Splits have occurred and will continue to occur in Islam. Yet a Reformation-style change has not happened in nearly 1400 years, and is not going to happen, and will never occur. Islam is carved in granite just the way it is. No change. Allah’s book is sealed.
There are indeed some Muslims who are moderate in the way they practice their faith. These people, for the most part, are cultural Muslims. They don’t practice Islam the way it is mandated. They pick and choose. Therefore, “moderate Islam” is like being moderately pregnant. It is not possible. The only way to deal with the menace of real Islam, the jihadist variety, is to fully dismantle it and relegate it to the confines of museums.
My relentless search took me to numerous sources with various explanations. Some praised Islam, specifically Shiite Islam, to high heaven and presented their evidence in support of this adulation, never mind the fact that even Shiite Islam is fractured into no less than one hundred different sects.
I found the house of Muhammad fractured so extensively that there was no way any one of them could represent what Muhammad launched. The Sunnis, for instance, consider all Shiites infidels and the Shiites label Sunnis as betrayers of Muhammad’s faith and his household.
Beginning with the Constitution’s adoption, America has been a republic. But the dominant trend over the last two centuries has been to call it a democracy. A woman asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government the Constitution was bringing into existence. Franklin replied, “A republic if you can keep it.” Democracy is the guardian of our liberty. Embedded in a democracy are provisions that can make it implode from within. Democracy also has its own guardian: a resolutely vigilant, proactive, and ethical citizenry.
What can be done? Is there a way of resisting and reversing the imminent coming Islamic assault on our most cherished right of liberty?
Here are some suggestions:· Become an active worker for liberty, instead of a passive, non-caring, devil-may-care nihilist. Many Europeans are already paying the price of non-caring complacency as Islam is rapidly gaining greater power, casting its suffocating pall on their lives.
· Interact with Muslims in your locality and try to wean them away from Islam by pointing out how the Quran and the clergy are enslaving them in a defunct ideology of intolerance, backwardness, and death.
· Use the political process, while it is still responsive to the demands and wishes of freedom-loving people, by supporting laws that guard freedom and reject those that infringe on liberty.
· Actively support political candidates who are deeply committed to the tenets of freedom.
· Run for office, any office. Encourage your friends and other liberty advocates to pitch in and help in any way they can.
· Hold to account those politicians who sell themselves to Islamic advocacy groups and promote Islam. These for-hire politicians will do anything they can to keep their position, power, and benefits from the generous financial backing of Islamic groups.
· Be an active educator by informing others about the creeping danger of Islam. Islam is seriously eroding the very foundation of liberty by various means. Powerful moneyed Islamic organizations threaten anyone who dares to criticize Islam with ruinous lawsuits (CAIR).
· Contribute small or large money to causes and individuals fighting to preserve liberty. As the old saying goes, freedom is not free.
In short, liberty is your most prized possession, and democracy is the shield that protects it. Yet this shield of democracy is vulnerable and needs to be repaired and strengthened on a regular basis. I am calling on you, the individual freedom-loving person, to play your part in defense of freedom; not only for your sake but also for mine and all others who cherish this precious blessing of life.
The post How to Stop the Islamization of America? appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Climate Cult has a lot of canaries in its coal mine. Rain, snow, no rain, no snow, glaciers (growing and melting), sea level (rising or not), and let’s not forget increased storms and the decline of coral reefs. To those last two points, the Cult has fresh trouble.
Despite rising CO2 that likely has nothing to do with you, Cyclones in the Australian region have not been more frequent or severe—quite the opposite.
I added a not-mathematically-exact trend line to emphasize the conspicuous decline in cyclone energy in defiance of all the high sticking over atmospheric carbon dioxide and perennial exclamations about the hottest month or year ever.
The Coral Of The Story Is …The end of ocean coral, like glaciers and snow, is another bugbear of the climate left, the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) being the mothership or posterchild for this hyperbolic venting. But the GBR has been rapidly growing new coral since at least 2012 (The hottest year ever!), and it has not stopped.
The Australian Institute of Marine Science recently published a piece titled, ‘Highest Coral Cover in Central Norther Reef in 36 years,’ which is almost as long a period in time as AlGore Global Warming. Imagine their chagrin – if there were even capable of it. Since their caterwauling began, there has been more CO2, heat (somewhere), and coral.
Dammit, Jim (Hansen), I’m a fat masseuse fondling politician, not a scientist.
Add it to the rising sea of predictions they got wrong.
Both linked pieces, by the by, are from organs of the Australian Government or pretend NGOs and rely on them for outrage funding, so you’ll find plenty of hedging from ‘scientists’ grown alongside the coral to think they are only grant-worthy if everything is couched in end-times Book of Revelations exhortations. This is doing the opposite of what we said, but over here, OMG! – the world is ending – we need more funding!
When can the Climate gods rapture them to the climate-controlled utopian progressive paradise? Not soon enough. And there are still trillions of other people’s hard-earned Australian dollars to launder on wasteful climate research doing business as science, and not just down under. It is money they need, not to do science but message control to silence those who dare to question their methods, motivations, and conclusions – you know, actual science.
Cyclones, I am “read” to believe, can do a lot of damage to coral reefs, but since cyclones show no connection to your rising CO2 climate paradigm, it looks disturbingly natural and not at all man-made.
By the way – the spleen-venting climate Pharisees that read the runes or bones or entrails have predicted a milder-than-usual Atlantic Hurricane season for 2023, so we should expect it to be one of the worst years on record (global warming!).
The post Climate Cult Ignores Record Coral Expansion and Decline in Cyclones appeared first on Granite Grok.
That new person you sit next to in your regular pew may not be there for the Sign of Peace. They may be looking at who you connect with in your house of worship. You might even see their weapon and FBI badge if their sports jacket opens.
It was bad enough when the FBI and Justice Department were weaponized against people who had the audacity to speak up for their children at school board meetings. How will Joe Biden and his Administration explain violating the sanctity of our churches to seek out “Radical Christians.” They will, of course, start by denying any knowledge of the “hunt for domestic terrorists” in our churches.
According to internal documents released by the House Judiciary Committee on Monday, the FBI sought to develop sources inside Christian churches and Catholic dioceses to combat domestic terrorism.
The documents were obtained last month by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La. The FBI planned to use churches as “new avenues for tripwire and source development,” with a specific focus on “mainline Catholic parishes.”
Regardless of your faith, you should be up in arms with this latest assault on our freedoms by an out-of-control government. Even if you do not claim a faith, you must worry about the next assault. No branch of government has a place in any house of worship. We are fortunate to have the Republicans in charge of the House and Jim Jordan protecting us and bringing these atrocities to light.
The FBI also cited a desire to sensitize religious congregations “to the warning signs of radicalization and enlist their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires.” If the FBI is concerned about radicalization, get out of the Catholic Churches and into a teacher’s lounge.
This rogue effort by the FBI cannot be explained, and somebody has to be identified as the initiator and terminated immediately. If Director Wray continues to plead ignorance, that is reason enough for his head to roll.
The assault on Christianity and specifically Catholic Churches does not end with FBI infiltration but with the Department of Justice (DOJ) ignoring violent assaults on churches. The 69 brutal attacks so far this year against Catholic Churches have escaped the attention of the DOJ. These attacks should be classified as hate crimes against a religious group and its followers. Give them a hate crime or an anti-trans crime; these departments will be all over them.
The House has acted quickly since the Republicans took control in January. What they have found has put a razor focus on the importance of the 2024 election. If the Democrats maintain the Executive Branch and Senate, we will see more of the totalitarian efforts that are being uncovered. Or, we can vote these Democrats, especially the more Radical members, out and regain the freedoms our Constitution guarantees us. The next time you hear a politician from the Left claim they are the “Democracy” Party, push back with the facts. They are out to destroy our freedoms and control us as much as they can get away with.
The post Be Careful Who You Sit Next To In Church appeared first on Granite Grok.
Order anything at the ‘Grok Store by April 17th, and you can take 25% of the purchase price (excludes Shipping). It’s a spring fling kind of thing, and while we don’t have a ton of stuff there, we’ve started making some of it available in different colors.
That’s, in part, a learning curve issue, though the addition of color only seems to add to the number of items we sell in black or white.
Go figure.
Anyway, since I have to come up with the ideas and the designs and do all the backend stuff (see why they are all so simple), if you’ve got something you’d like to see on a shirt or monogrammed on a hat or on a mug, or whatever else they offer – and it’s not someone else’s work, let me know. I can create anything as long as it is original or well within the public domain.
At present, the Z28.310 hat is the biggest seller (also available in camo and a handful of colors for men and women – we know what those are). It is a monogrammed cap, and we did have one commenter say they ordered it, and it never shipped. I ordered one myself and it all seems to be going along just fine, so – not sure what happened there.
How It WorksWhile we do the design and pick the colors and products, everything else is handled by a third party. If something goes sideways, we won’t know until you tell us. So, please, if you do have an issue, let me know (steve@granitegrok.com), and provide the product, description, problem, or just the order number, please – if you can.
While we don’t make a lot on these sales, and it’s mostly a novelty/marketing thing, I will make time to try and solve your issue.
If you are interested in how often we have those sorts of issues, only twice that I have heard, and one was about the country of origin. SO, about that. Everything is printed or monogrammed in the US on US soil by US residents at a US company, but we have no control over where they buy the mugs, hats, shirts, or glassware (etc.). The mugs are still made in China, and I get it if that’s a non-starter. Just remember that the odds that you are not supporting “China” by simply using networks and technology to access the internet is close to zero. Your smartphone, desktop, laptop, cellular infrastructure, electric grid, and government use Chinese hardware, software, or influences. And I’m down with the struggle, but please do not get on a high horse about it unless you know for certain your life is devoid of something made in China.
I have looked for an all-domestic products alternative and come up empty.
You can support us with a donation. That’s the best way (and many of you have and do so, thank you!). But if you want something tangible, we have a storefront, and until April 17th, you can save 25% when you use the Code ‘FRIENDS&FANS25.’
The post We’re still Offering 25% off Everything at the ‘Grok Store appeared first on Granite Grok.
I wonder what homicide Detective Mike Stone and his upstart partner Inspector Steve Keller would think of 21st-century life on The Streets of San Francisco. The characters would be appalled. So are most retailers.
And despite the city by the Bay recalling its soft-on-crime DA, San Francisco continues to stumble, and that’s not a surprise. The COVID response showed a wide audience that it is easy to break things but no small matter to fix them after. Decades of Democrat rule – which remains unchanged – cannot be undone with one election of a slightly less liberal crime boss.
Related: Amazon is Closing Retail Stores in Dem-Run Cities ‘cuz Crime!
Rhetorically speaking, San Francisco has already fallen into the ocean. Even Whole Foods can’t stand it anymore.
The nearly 65,000-square foot location at Trinity Place in the city’s Mid-Market neighborhood shut its doors Monday to “ensure the safety” of its employees, a Whole Foods spokesperson said. Although Whole Foods did not share any additional information on the conditions that led to the store closing, the spokesperson added that it was a “difficult decision to close the Trinity store for the time being.” Affected employees will be transferred to nearby stores.
The location was only a year old, opening in 2022 and heralded as a flagship for the brand. But this is San Francisco. Drug use in the bathrooms forced the company to limit access. They even cut their operating hours, but in the end, decades of Democrat rule won out. There was no way for them to protect their employees or their product from crime, so they closed the location.
CNN reports that this particular unit offered 3700 local products, so this doesn’t just affect the rich bastards running Amazon, who own the brand. Locals trying to eke out a living have been deprived of sales, diminishing their livelihoods.
Don’t feel too sorry for them. The odds are good that they are Democrats who continue to exacerbate local decline by refusing to see the root cause of it. Electing Democrats. And thanks to ranked-choice voting, they get to pick from which Lefty gets to screw them over and over.
And odds are good that despite all the bad management, crime, and decline, things will keep getting worse. That, and they are in California, which, as a state, is on the same downward trajectory, a path reinforced by the departure of not just retailers but people.
The people who might vote for change saw the forest for the trees and hoofed it out as soon as they were able or were hoping too soon. That will leave the systemic failure of Liberal rule and those trapped by it.
And at this rate, with very little in the way or choice when it comes to the store’s from which they can steal.
The post Dem City Crime Forces Whole Foods To Close Flagship Store in San Francisco appeared first on Granite Grok.
While I was on my town’s Budget Committee, I warned the town and school board against taking “free money” that the Feds were giving out like the candy thrown out by Old Home Day marchers. The analogy was apt.
The kids along the marching route eagerly went after the candy just lying in the street while department heads and town leaders pursued any and all money that the Feds were throwing their way. No difference at all – one having the lure of sugar, the other nothing but sugar – both addictive, but at least the kids had [more] responsible adults in charge of them to limit their access to that “free” stuff.
My warning was that the “money candy,” like the candy on Old Home Day, would run out. You can only hand out free stuff for so long before the bills come due.
That was when the national debt was between $4-$6 Trillion.
Such a trite and quaint idea it was, telling them that too much was too much. Telling them that the cost will come due and you all won’t like it. I told them that all it would take would be the rise of 2-4% points in interest rates, and just the interest payment on the national debt (forget about principal payments) would soar. Well, guess what: now those financial chickens have come home to roost.
The Congressional Budget Office on Monday revealed that the cost of payments on the federal debt soared 41 percent in the first six months of the fiscal year thanks to higher interest rates — driving the deficit up to $1.1 trillion over the period.
…The Federal Reserve Board has pursued an aggressive rate-increasing campaign to try and tame inflation, but one of the risks was always that this would further exacerbate the nation’s fiscal problems by adding to the cost of interest payments on the debt.
…In February, CBO projected that by the end of the decade, the federal government would spend more on interest payments than on defense.
Only an optimist would hold that it would take until the end of the decade to hit that point (defense spending will be $816.7 Billion this year) but is also dwarfed by Welfare, Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment compensation ($4 Trillion). Just interest payments on the National Debt are projected to be $308 Billion this fiscal year. And that’s ONLY IF:
Just for the first half of this fiscal year, the deficit has gone up $1.1 Trillion already. The second half, I bet, will be larger.
As we have seen, we haven’t had enough responsible adults either in Congress, in the Federal Reserve, in the Executive Branch, or in voters to have seen this three-decade man-caused disaster coming like a slow-moving train wreck. And stop it.
We’ve become far too greedy as a nation – we spend far too much on far too many things that, at the Federal level, we shouldn’t be spending at all.
Oh, to Point #3?
Gross interest owed on the $31.4 trillion national debt—that is, interest owed on both the $24.9 trillion publicly traded debt and the $6.7 trillion debt in the Social Security, Medicare, and other trust funds—will reach a gargantuan $1 trillion in 2024 for the first time in American history, according to the latest data gathered by the White House Office of Management and budget.
While Biden wants to jack up the Federal Budget north of $7 Trillion this year, it nominally has been around $4 Trillion the last few years. So 25% will be for debt payment.
We’re screwed.
The post The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost; It Just Took a Decade+ Longer Than We Thought appeared first on Granite Grok.