President Biden’s sliding poll numbers have set off alarm signals among Democrats, who are beginning to see that he might lose the 2024 election to Donald Trump. Those polls have also gotten the attention of pundits who have confidently said for three years now that Trump could never again win a national election.

The polling results published over the past few months suggest otherwise: Trump is currently the favorite to win next year’s election.

The most recent RealClearPolitics Average has Trump leading Biden by 2.6 percentage points, a switch of about four points since late summer when Biden led 45%-43%, and in a long-running decline of seven points for Biden since he won the 2020 election with 51% percent of the popular vote.

More ominously for Biden, a recent Bloomberg poll showed Trump well ahead (by an average of five points) in the seven swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It appears the most significant factor in recent months is a surge in support for Trump (from 43% to just above 47%), while Biden has essentially remained stuck in neutral.

Joe Biden is an unpopular president, almost as unpopular as any president in the post-war era. According to the RCP Average, just 40% of voters approve of his handling of the job. His ratings have been falling for more than two years since the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Not coincidentally, voters also take a dim view of where the country is heading, with 68% percent saying it is headed in the wrong direction and just 25% in the right direction.

The president’s ratings have gotten steadily worse over the course of this year. More than 60% of voters say Biden “has moved too far to the left” on policies important to them. Voters are also pessimistic about the economy: 47% say things are getting worse, while just 22% say they are getting better, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll. These are alarming numbers for an incumbent seeking reelection.

Biden is also underwater on nearly every major issue. According to an early December Wall Street Journal poll, Trump is favored over Biden on the three issues voters say are most important to them: the economy (52%-35%), inflation (51%-30%), and securing the border (54%-24%). Voters also favor Trump over Biden on crime, the Russia/Ukraine war, and even the war between Israel and Hamas. These latter two ratings, on Ukraine and Israel, undoubtedly surprised Biden and his supporters, who assumed that voters would endorse his policies in regard to these conflicts. By contrast, voters favor Biden on just two issues: abortion (44%-33%) and Social Security/Medicare (44%-38%).

Voters in these surveys also question Biden’s fitness to hold office, especially as they look ahead to the prospect of another four-year term. According to a new Harris/Harvard poll, 62% of voters doubt that he is fit to carry out the duties of the presidency, and another 48% think his presidency is getting worse year by year and month by month. Whatever their views on the issues, voters appear to think that Biden is increasingly incapable of addressing them.

Biden is losing support among Hispanics voters, a key constituent group of the Democratic Party. Hispanics have been trending away from Democrats and toward Trump over recent election cycles. Hillary Clinton carried Hispanic voters by 37 points in 2016, but Biden carried them by just 21 points in the 2020 election and lags well behind that margin this year. According to recent polls conducted by Economist/YouGov, Biden led Trump among Hispanic voters by 18 points in August, by eight points in September, by four in October, and by just two points (41%-39%) in December. These voters express strong disapproval of Biden’s performance in office, and even disapprove (51%-33 %) of his policies on immigration. Since Hispanics represent about 15% of all U.S. voters, their move away from Biden and toward Trump accounts in part for Biden’s recent slide in the polls.

Another key constituency turning away from the incumbent president is independent voters. Biden carried independents by nine points in 2020. They were a crucial part of his coalition in the swing states he carried narrowly last time, and an important ingredient in his popular vote majority since independents represent one-third of all voters. As with Hispanic voters, he lags far behind that margin in this year’s surveys. A recent Economist/YouGov poll taken in December gave Trump a six-point margin over Biden (38%-32%), with many of those voters still undecided. Still, this represents a 20-point slide for Biden among independents since the 2020 election.

Biden also faces an “enthusiasm gap” among some previously loyal groups who turned out to support him in 2020 due to their dislike for Donald Trump but are disappointed thus far with his performance in office. This is true, in particular, with young voters and, surprisingly, with African American voters as well.

Some suspect that voters under age 30 who are abandoning the president are disillusioned by his support for Israel in its war with Hamas, his failure to cancel student loans, and an insufficiently aggressive posture in regard to climate change. Biden won those voters in 2020 by a margin of 60% to 36%, but due mostly to their dislike for Donald Trump. Much of that antipathy remains. Recent polls continue to give Biden a lead over Trump among these voters: A Yahoo poll in December gave Biden a 55%-27% lead over Trump, while a more recent Emerson College poll reported a smaller margin: 45%-40%. At the same time, just 35% of those voters approve of his performance in office, according to a poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, a measure of their lack of enthusiasm for his reelection campaign.

To the extent young voters disagree with Biden, they do so for progressive reasons – and are unlikely to vote for Trump. But they could stay home, which would be a blow to the Democrats. According to the same poll, fewer than 50% of young voters say they will “definitely” turn out to vote next year, compared to 57% at this point in the 2020 election cycle. In addition, roughly 10% of these voters say they would vote for Robert Kennedy in a multi-candidate race, which further narrows Biden’s lead over Trump in this group.

Biden seems to be in unlikely trouble among black voters. They are by far the most loyal of all Democratic Party voting groups: Biden carried these voters overwhelmingly in 2020 (92%-8%), which also helped him in the swing states. Trump may never win a significant share of this vote, but a doubling of his 2020 total now seems within the realm of possibility. A recent Economist/YouGov poll has Trump with support from 12% of these voters, with many still on the fence.

Perhaps more ominously for Democrats, a growing share of blacks say they will not vote in a contest between Biden and Trump. In a series of Economist/YouGov polls, the percentage of black adults saying they would not vote at all increased from 7% in August to 11% in December. This, despite Biden going a considerable distance to appeal to those voters by appointing African Americans to prominent positions in his administration and taking their side in controversies over civil rights, crime, and government spending. Biden’s challenge among the black community, then, as with young voters, is in regard to enthusiasm and turnout, and not so much with the direct match-up with Trump.

Biden’s strategy for the 2024 campaign becomes clearer in view of his sagging poll numbers. Instead of running on his record, which will be difficult to do in view of his overall ratings, he will emphasize Trump’s defects and the dangers a Trump presidency will pose to the constitutional order.

“We may have problems,” his allies are already saying, “but the other guy is far worse.” The various legal prosecutions underway will be woven into this strategy as a means of appealing to independents and those “on the fence.”

A conviction of Trump in a court of law would aid immensely in this strategy. In addition, Democrats will redouble their efforts to mobilize minority voters and young voters, while sharpening their appeal to Hispanics. Democrats will also ride the abortion issue, which worked for them in 2022, and is one of the few issues that cuts in their favor. Democrats understand that a victory for Trump in the presidential race will also mean that Republicans will take control of the Senate while expanding their margins in the House of Representatives – and thereby enable Trump to carry out his threatening agenda.

Trump, on the other hand, if he can side-step the legal challenges, has his own cards to play in the campaign. For one thing, voters know him, and there is nothing new that Democrats can say about him that they have not already said, ad nauseam, for several years.

Voters can also compare the Trump and Biden presidencies – and Biden does not come off well in that comparison. According to a Wall Street Journal poll taken last month, 50% of voters say Trump’s policies helped them, while just 23% said the same about Biden’s policies; indeed, 53% of voters said that Biden’s policies had hurt them in some way. This allows Trump to ask the question Ronald Reagan posed to voters in 1980 during his campaign against Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Many voters will say “no.”

More importantly, Trump does not have to win the popular vote in order to win the election in the Electoral College. The election will be decided in a series of separate races in seven or eight swing states where Trump may have an advantage. If he wins even half of them he is likely to win the election. The national popular vote, measured by these polls, will be somewhat beside the point in determining the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

Democrats will register large margins of 7 or 8 million votes in the populous states of California, New York, and Illinois, as they did in 2016 and 2020, while Republicans will carry their own large states (Texas and Florida) by less than one million votes – giving Democrats a substantial edge in the popular vote that will not translate directly into electoral votes. Any vote beyond 50% in a state is of no use in the Electoral College – and Democrats tend to “waste” more votes than Republicans.

Trump lost the popular vote to Clinton in 2016 by two percentage points, but still won a safe majority in the Electoral College by carrying nearly every swing state. Biden won the popular vote in 2020 by more than four points (51.3%-46.8%), but carried the critical swing states by narrow margins, in the cases of Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, by less than one percentage point. A swing of less than 1% from Biden to Trump in those three states would have given Trump a tie in the Electoral College, so that the election would have been decided in the House of Representatives. In addition, reapportionment following the last census will allocate three additional electoral votes to the states Trump won in 2020 – two more to Texas and one to Florida – and three fewer to the states Biden won. This will make Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes slightly easier to navigate. (Pollsters would do well next year to survey the swing states and mostly ignore the national vote.)

It appears, then, that Biden must win the popular vote by at least three points, and perhaps by as many as four, in view of what happened last time in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, to be assured of winning a majority in the Electoral College. Current polls have Biden running two points behind Trump in the popular vote, but at the same time show that he is behind by at least five points in the swing states. These polls, along with results of past elections, suggest that there is a gap of at least three points (and maybe four) between the national popular vote and the outcomes in those swing states.

Some have said that Trump has a ceiling of 46% or 47% of the popular vote, and has no chance of reaching 50%, which they say he will need to win the election. This is not so: Trump can win the election with 47% percent of the popular vote if he can keep Biden below 50%, perhaps with the assistance of third-party or independent candidates. If Trump stays close to Biden in the popular vote, which current polls suggest he can do, then he is likely to win the game in the Electoral College.

Trump is fully aware of this (many are not), and will campaign accordingly. He is also aware that Biden will not be able to campaign from his home as he did in 2020, lest voters conclude that he is not up to the job; but the attempt to run a vigorous campaign may further expose that weakness. Nor can he allow his vice president to lead the campaign because she is more unpopular and prone to gaffes than he is.

Trump’s rise in the polls sets the stage for an unusual campaign ahead. Democrats may conclude, in view of Biden’s weakness across the board, that a traditional campaign focusing on issues and turnout may not succeed this time around – and that their hopes will rest upon winning the legal campaign against Trump.

This may explain recent moves by the special prosecutor to expedite the case against Trump in order to win a verdict prior to the election. The reversal of fortunes between Biden and Trump also accounts for the revival of charges that Trump, if elected, will prove to be a “dictator,” and so should be disqualified from the ballot. Those cases, and perhaps the election itself, will be decided this year by the Supreme Court.

For these reasons, and others likely to develop, this is bound to be an ugly and unsettling campaign – and one in which the traditional rules of national politics will be cast to the winds.

James Piereson | RealClear Wire

The post What’s Behind Biden’s Sliding Poll Numbers? appeared first on Granite Grok.

The People’s Republic of Vermont has a climate itch it can’t stop scratching. An irritation that persists to the point of bleeding if it were on your person. And it is. You, kind people of Vermont, will pay in ways they can’t or won’t explain.

Despite your objections, your ruling class has plans to get you all off oil and gas and running heat pumps. Separately, the peasants will be expected to trade in vehicles they need and want for Electric imposters. Pod vehicles that look like the real thing but don’t act it. This requires an exponential rise in power generation and the infrastructure to carry this increased load from the mystical place it is created (Captain Planet’s lair, perhaps) to the homes, businesses, and EVs meant to use it.

Over at Watts Up With That (WUWT), they’ve got a post about increased demand if everyone in the UK were forced into using Heat Pumps. They have the same sorts of idiots running their government as Vermont (where lunatics in its legislature rammed through the clean heat standard). It is a messy bit of business whose only redeeming characteristic is that no one tasked with implementation has a clue quite how to get started. We can hope it was all about resume pumping, but the dingbats seem serious about their fraudulent emissions reduction plan, just like the idgits in the UK.

Don’t get me wrong, they’ll find a way, but while they try to fit square pegs in round holes, look at this from WUWT.

 

If we assume then that the heat pumps are in use for 14 hours a day, that gives average hourly electricity demand of 2.1 KWh. This assumes that the heat pump runs at a constant power rating. In practice, the system would have to work harder in the early evening as temperatures drop.

There are about 24 million homes with gas and oil boilers, so a peak demand of 2.1 KW amounts to 50 GW for the country as a whole. To that we can add demand from offices, shops etc, which currently use gas and oil.

Along with demand from EVs, the UK would need well over 100 GW of capacity to meet peak demand.

 

Has anyone done similar math for the Green Mountain State? How many homes, number of offices, hourly demand, and total demand? Believe it or not, no, but that is a legislative priority – they say. But how serious are they about admitting anything past “ratepayers will pay more.”

How about a little game of truth or dare where the truth is the dare?

A commenter on the WUWT post noted that almost nowhere in the UK are the buried cables capable of carrying that sort of load, especially the end-of-the-workday variety when EVERYONE turns on (or turns up) the heat pump and plugs in the EV. It would all need to be dug up and replaced. It’s expensive and a colossal bother.

I’d guess most of that infrastructure in Vermont is above ground, but it would need to be replaced or rerun. All of it. Soon. But then not. Vermont’s sooty foot is already on the decarbonization path despite no one knowing where it leads or at what cost to not just ratepayers but the entire economy. Why rush things? Burlington’s carbon tax on buildings hasn’t been enacted yet (it starts Jan 1), but at least one councilor wants the rate hiked. That should buy them some time (/snark!).

On this side of the Connecticut River, the New Hampshire Legislature has introduced HB1644, which proactively asks the NH Department of Energy “to initiate a proceeding and conduct an investigation of the benefits and key considerations regarding support for clean or non-carbon emitting power generation, and report to the legislature in one year.” Benefits and risks. Reliability, security, and winter energy spikes. Cost-effectiveness, how it might impact economic growth – a list of things you’d want to explore in detail before making any more permanent grand gestures.

It also requests that the NH DoE define clean energy and investigate steps “taken by other states, including clean energy standards.” Presumably, to learn lessons from their mistakes, for which Vermont will be helpful – their 2024 legislative priority includes trying to back into what HB1644 requests upfront. Potential problems you’d want to sidestep or a workaround for in advance but that Vermont ignored before it latched onto the California standards. None of which addresses the genuine issue of cost.

What will it cost Vermonters, not just in dollars but in ‘sense.’ The state government is punishing everyone to reduce emissions – even if you believe that’s the problem or that a government could fix it – that China will erase in a wink of the Middle Kingdom’s military-industrial complex eye. A sum of emissions Vermonters might take decades to save, coughed into the earth’s atmosphere in a few industrial heartbeats by that Marxist regime to which Vermont’s Heat-Standard Climateers are (more than likely) most enamored.

Vermonters need to confront their legislature and demand a response. Why are they killing Vermont with these crippling initiatives when China, India, and Africa could do 100 times better – meaningful good if your goals are to be believed –  in a fraction of the time, at no cost to us?

Or if we framed it another way. How does my paying more for a paper straw keep China from dropping tons of plastic into the ocean every day?

Shouldn’t they be pressuring the Feds to pressure China by any means necessary short of war instead of pressuring a few farmers and small business owners to give up so much for so little?

 

The post Night Cap: Where Will Vermont Find the Money for This? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Senator Rand Paul mentions Aaron Kheriaty’s The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical State in his book Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up. Dr. Kheriaty’s online biography includes the following information:

Dr. Kheriaty is a plaintiff in the landmark free speech case Missouri v. Biden challenging government censorship on social media. . .. Dr. Kheriaty also serves in teaching and advisory roles at the Brownstone Institute, the Zephyr Institute, the Paul Ramsey Institute, and the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy.

For many years, he was Professor of Psychiatry at UCI [University of California—Irvine] School of Medicine and Director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health, where he chaired the ethics committee. He also chaired the ethics committee at the California Department of State Hospitals for several years. He was fired from the University of California after challenging the University’s covid vaccine mandate in federal court.

The New Abnormal’s Prologue

Dr. Kheriaty’s prologue is titled “Nuremberg, 1947.” It is the right place to begin in understanding the COVID-19 control program. Following the more famous 1946 trial of the top Nazis, the trial of Nazi doctors led to prison sentences for nine and death sentences for seven defendants. As part of the opinion of the tribunal, the Nuremberg Code was published, which contained ten items that established the criteria for conducting ethical human experimentation.

Dr. Kheriaty’s prologue only explores the first item of the Code, but it is the foundation, addressing informed, noncoerced consent. Those interested in reading an analysis of all ten items of the Code are directed to Dr. Nicholas Bednarski’s series Violations of Nuremberg Code in COVID-19 Control Program. Dr. Bednarski concludes that all ten items of the Nuremberg Code have been violated.

The New Abnormal’s prologue identifies the connection between the work of the Nazi doctors and the eugenics movement, which is disturbing for Americans initiated in the United States. The New Abnormal reveals, “Eugenics programs received funding from major foundations, including those of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, and Kellogg. Intellectuals at Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton endorsed the movement’s aims and participated enthusiastically.”

Pursuit of eugenics was not restricted to the private sector but extended to state governments and the federal government:

In the 1920s an impoverished young woman from Virginia, Carrie Buck, was diagnosed with “congenital feeblemindedness” and slated for forced sterilization. She challenged the state of Virginia’s law in federal court, and her case, Buck v. Bell, went to the Supreme Court in 1927. The court upheld the state’s eugenic sterilization law, resulting in Carrie’s forced tubal ligation.

The New Abnormal continues, “Hitler himself remarked, ‘I have studied with interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would . . . be of no value, or injurious to the racial stock.’”

The New Abnormal’s prologue concludes, “While the Nuremberg Code did not enjoy the binding force of international law, its principles did inform the laws of most nations, including the United States. The principle of free and informed consent was further developed in the influential World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki in 1964.”

Subsequent Chapters

The New Abnormal focuses on the role of declared emergencies in establishing invasive government policies that destroy our personal freedoms:

[Government policy] . . . from lockdowns and school closures to mask and vaccine mandates or passports—received its supposed legal justification from the declared state of emergency. But tellingly, the threshold for what constitutes a public health emergency—how many cases, hospitalizations, deaths, et cetera—was deliberately never defined.

Who has this power?

At the federal level, with the backing of the president, that person is now Xavier Becerra, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the NIH, the FDA, and the CDC, among other divisions. Becerra, a lawyer and former attorney general of California, has no medical training and zero public health experience.

How extensive are these powers? Dr. Kheriaty reveals that in a state of emergency the president gains access to an additional 136 statutory powers. He summarizes the implications of this concentration of power:

The full significance of what transpired in March 2020 may have escaped our attention. Without realizing it we lived through the design and implementation of not just a novel pandemic strategy but a new political paradigm—a system far more effective at controlling the population than anything previously attempted by Western nations. Under the biosecurity model, “the total cessation of every form of political activity and social relationship [under lockdowns and social distancing became] the ultimate act of civic participation.” Neither the pre-war Fascist government in Italy nor the Communist states of the Soviet Union ever dreamed of implementing such restrictions.

We have encountered new terminology that was not medical according to Dr. Kheriaty:

It is instructive to reflect on the chosen phrase, “social distancing,” which is not a medical term but a political one. A medical or scientific model would have deployed a phrase like physical or personal distancing, but not social distancing. The term suggests not a new model for health but for organizing society, one that limits human interactions by six feet of space and by masks that cover the face—our locus of interpersonal connection and communication.

According to Dr. Kheriaty, “To see where this biomedical security state will lead, many point to the Chinese social credit system—and this is a useful shorthand for the dystopian future this regime portends.”

He continues, “University biomedical security systems were also sustained by a near constant stream of propaganda generated by administrators, with catchphrases that would make even bureaucrats at Orwell’s Ministry of Truth cringe. For example, administrators constantly admonished students, faculty and staff to ‘hold one another accountable.’”

That is Orwellian, of course, but it is a good description of how people were encouraged to betray each other to the gestapo and the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Neither of these infamous security organizations had access to the digital technology that is so pervasive today. How was this used to surveil citizens during the COVID-19 control program?

“In May of 2022, Vice broke the story that during the previous two years the ‘CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed COVID lockdown orders.’ . . . What descended on us was not just a novel virus but a novel method of social organization and control.”

Dr. Kheriaty identifies two influences on his thinking—Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Although it would be imprudent to do so, one might dismiss Brave New World as fantasy. But Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago describes a seventy-four-year experiment in real social organization and control in the Soviet Union. Dr. Kheriaty makes a compelling case that we in the United States are on the road to a similar kind of tyranny.

Dr. Kheriaty’s The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State should be read if it is the only book on the COVID-19 control program one reads. But for a broader view, begin with Dr. Bednarski’s series Violations of Nuremberg Code in COVID-19 Control Program, and then read Senator Rand Paul’s Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up. The COVID-19 control program is a many-tentacled monster. It is easy to surrender to information overload.

Dr. Bednarski’s series describes an internationally recognized set of ten criteria for human experimentation by which COVID-19 control measures might be measured. He concludes that all ten were violated in the COVID-19 control program. Senator Paul explores the source of the COVID-19 organism and the efforts made within government, in particular, to cover up the facts through propaganda. But if there is any belief that the COVID-19 control program was a one-time phenomenon, Dr. Kheriaty dispels that delusion. That is a perspective we need in order to fully understand the implications of the COVID-19 control program.

 

Phil Duffy is a regular contributor to WFYL’s We the People, the Constitution Matters, a lifelong student of history, and the author of the forthcoming A Tale of Four Cities, an investigation about who really wrote the first modern text on economics and why it matters today.

 

Phil Duffy | Mises Wire

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The post When Medical Authorities Went Totalitarian: Understanding Covid Policies and Protocols appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Cuban dictatorship was built and sustained on planned executions, so this recent move by its National Assembly to legalize “dignified death” seems a bit belated. I guess, like Western Elites, they needed Political murder to feel like a kindness.

 

The Communist-run country’s National Assembly passed the measure as part of legislation updating the nation’s legal framework for its universal and free healthcare system.

“The right of people to a dignified death is recognized in end-of-life decisions, which may include the limitation of therapeutic effort, continuous or palliative care, and valid procedures that end life,” the final draft of the legislation stated.

Euthanasia and medically assisted suicide, opposed by most religions, sparks huge controversy around the world where just a handful of countries allow the practice and some equate it with murder.

 

Cuba is, of course, doing the deal in reverse. They’ve been killing off the political resistance (democide) for the entirety of their existence. Locking people up for years over the smallest slight. How convenient for them to have learned from Western progressives how to address the problem of overcrowded prisons. Sorry, I meant “patients.”

Almost anyone could suddenly take ill or request they be put to sleep like a dog, and since this is Cuba, you can’t complain unless you’d like to pay a visit to the ‘Vet’ for your last ‘vaccination.’

Closer to home, the depopulationist social engineers among us are coming at the problem from the other direction. Pretend it’s about people in pain and then expand the scope until the state can hide political executions behind assisted suicide.

And yes, there are useful idiots who honestly believe that the practice would never grow beyond expediting the voluntary deaths of terminal patients in pain. But it has, it does, and it will. This is not a pleasant reality to face, but it is better for the community and society if the government is not permitted to manage the terms and circumstances of chemical death beyond investigating murder. There will be some suffering, but you won’t have to deal with the State using euthanasia policy to end people’s lives because they are sad, poor, or there are just too many of them. Or they’ve done the government wrong.

It’ll happen if it hasn’t already. The best course of action is not to go there at all.

 

HT | GatewayPundit

The post Slippery Meet Slope: Cuba Embraces Assisted Suicide as If They Didn’t Already Have It appeared first on Granite Grok.

I read somewhere that the SPLC had fingered GraniteGrok as anti-government. I feel certain they are honored now more than ever, given that The Government has become the thing that drove the Founders to Declare their independence.

 

 We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

 

There is a lot of safety and happiness these days, and you can blame the government for that. The cabal of connected insiders bilking the people and the planet for their own benefit. A sort of Global confidence scam, though that wasn’t where I intended to go. The SPLC, a scam all its own, is another establishment tool, but it has been struggling to find relevancy.

Labeling the ‘Grok anti-government isn’t the gesture to get them there beyond this audience, so they’ve come up with a new thing. It’s called CAPTAIN.

 

That stands for Combating Anti-LGBTQ Pseudoscience Through Accessible Informative Narratives. …

What they are doing with CAPTAIN is reviving one of [SPLC founder Morris] Dees’ rare flops, an example of when the fundraising prodigy got too far out ahead of his target market. Two entire decades ago, Morris teamed up with some autogynephilic big brains like economist Donald-Deirdre McCloskey and semiconductor scientist Lynn Conway to try to cancel anyone who’d given a nice blurb to Northwestern U. psychology professor J. Michael Bailey’s book The Man Who Would Be Queen.

 

Combating Anti-LGBTQ Pseudoscience Through Accessible Informative Narratives.

I’m no expert, but I find it unlikely this will take off the way they hoped. It’s too long. It’s cumbersome and conceptually late to the party. Science is no longer the driving force behind the militant transgender agenda. It’s about fear and intimidation. The battle has moved from the streets to grade-school classrooms where groomers and activists are immersing other people’s kids in gender faith dogma.

Munchausen, by proxy in all its forms, is the captain. People, schools, teachers, and parents desperate for attention and acceptance in the go-viral or bust digital world are sacrificing children for clicks and views. They then mislabel it as compassion, forgiveness, and acceptance – none of which has a thing to do with science.

The science  is that it is unhealthy to leave kids alone and let them develop naturally. It is better to inundate them with sexualized literature that includes fringe heterosexual abuse as well as so-called LGBT themes that the average non-anit LGBTQ pro-science apologist should find offensive.

Drugs, cutting, rape, smoking, alcohol abuse, assault, adult child sex and suicide.

It is true that some members of the LGBTQ community are more inclined toward all of the vices, so perhaps that’s at least honest. Even in the most encouraging communities, nearly half will consider or attempt suicide. So, sure, that content might pass as actual LGBTQ “science” if we’re talking psychotherapy, which, if you ask a real scientist, will tell you that is not science at all. It’s pseudoscience. And look, it’s all coming together.

CAPTAIN is really about advancing LGBTQ pseudo-science narratives, which is what everyone else is doing.

Not new. Not likely to make a splash, but they at least got an anti-government blog post out of it on the ‘Grok.

 

The post Have You Met the SPLCs’ New CAPTAIN? appeared first on Granite Grok.

First, she delays her decision. Then she announces her decision. Next, she suspends her decision. The Secretary of State is not usually a high-profile state government position, but Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is making the most of her moment in the spotlight.

She is shining the light on her bad decision-making, bringing political activism into a neutral position, inability to grasp the limitations of her job, and driving a wedge between rural Conservatives and urban WOKE dwellers.

Shenna Bellows posted her decision on her personal X account (@shennabellows), and the 34-page document illustrated her consistent bias through this process of challenges, hearings, and decisions.

This is her conclusion:

I do not reach this conclusion lightly. Democracy is sacred, and the highest court of this State has repeatedly recognized that “no right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live.” Melanson v. Secy’ of State, 204 ME 127, 114, 861 A.2d 641 (quoting Burdick .v Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 41 (1992) (cleaned up). I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection. The oath I swore to uphold the Constitution comes first above all, and my duty under Maine’s election laws, when presented with a Section 336 challenge, is to ensure that candidates who appear on the primary ballot are qualified for the office they seek.

The events of January 6, 2021, were unprecedented and tragic. They were an attack not only upon the Capitol and government officials but also an attack on the rule of law. The evidence here demonstrates that they occurred at the behest of, and with the knowledge and support of, the outgoing President. The US.. The Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and Section 36 requires me to act in response.

I conclude that the Rosen and Royal Challengers have met their burden under 21-A M.R.S. § 337(2)(B). They have provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate the falsity of Mr. Trump’s declaration that he meets the qualifications of the office of the presidency. Therefore, as required by 21-A M.R.S. § 336(3), I find that the primary petition of Mr. Trump is invalid.

Her conclusion shows her decision is based more on her shared views of the challengers and less on the law. She is making accusations that the President was involved in an insurrection against the country, yet she will not be able to justify this as Trump was never charged or found guilty of such a crime. She also claims the challengers provided sufficient evidence but neglects to say the other side also provided sufficient evidence to the contrary. Her decision and conclusion is a political tool.

After 34 pages of Kamala Style word salad and a definitive conclusion, she suspends her decision in the same document. She went on:

Given the compresed timeframe, the novel constitutional questions involved, the importance of this case, and impending ballot preparation deadlines, I will suspend the effect of my decision until the Superior Court rules on any appeal, or the time to appeal under 21-A, Section 37 has expired. C.f nI er Manie Clean Fuels, Inc,. 310 A2.d 736, 74 (Me. 1973) (noting administrative agencies are free to fashion their own rules of procedure).

This decision and immediate suspension are further evidence of her inability to perform her job objectively. One thing she has done is keep the Maine Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court busy going into the New Year.

 

The post Bear Pond Conservative Chronicles: What Is Bellows Endgame appeared first on Granite Grok.

• These are the most liberty-critical hearings for the week
• Click on the bill number to read the bill.
• Click on the committee name to email the committee your thoughts.

Of the 0 hearings in the House, we are recommending support of 0 and opposition of 0 with 0 being of interest.
Of the 41 hearings in the Senate, we are recommending support of 1 and opposition of 10 with 7 being of interest.

Position	Bill	Title	Committee	Day	Time	Room	State Analysis
Of Interest	SB369	directing the office of professional licensure and certification to provide notice of public meetings and an opportunity for comment, creating a new position, and making an appropriation therefor.	Executive Departments and Administration	Tue 1/3	1:00 PM	SH Room 103	This bill directs the office of professional licensure and certification to provide to the public notice of its meetings and an opportunity to comment in such meetings. This bill also establishes an attorney II position for the office of professional licensure and certification.
Of Interest	SB487	relative to the division of personnel in the department of administrative services.	Executive Departments and Administration	Tue 1/3	1:30 PM	SH Room 103	This bill creates a new chapter for the personnel appeals board. This bill repeals 6 statutes related to the department of administrative services division. This bill is a request from the department of administrative services.
Of Interest	SB480	relative to the administration of professional licensure and certification and the regulation of real estate practice.	Executive Departments and Administration	Tue 1/3	1:45 PM	SH Room 103	This bill requires: I. Any board or commission whose total number of active licensees exceeds 7,000 to have a dedicated, trained, and knowledgeable customer service administrator that works for the administrative section of the office of professional licensure and certification to respond to inquiries from the public and licensees. II. Makes various amendments to allow for inactive real estate licenses. III. Amends the education approval process for the real estate commission.
Oppose	SB404	relative to expanding child care professionals’ eligibility for the child care scholarship program.	Health and Human Services	Tue 1/3	1:00 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill establishes eligibility criteria for child care professionals to receive child care scholarships.
Oppose	SB499	relative to reduction of hunger for children, older adults, and people with disabilities.	Health and Human Services	Tue 1/3	1:30 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill directs the department of education to expand options for free and reduced priced meals to students and directs the department of health and human services to implement a summer EBT program to provide assistance to families with children eligible for free and reduced price meals over the summer. The bill also directs the department of health and human services to participate in the elderly simplified application project within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to provide food assistance to eligible older adults and people with disabilities.
Oppose	SB335	relative to alcohol packaging.	Commerce	Wed 1/4	9:10 AM	SH Room 100	This bill restricts the use of certain images and phrasing in alcohol packaging that are attractive to minors.
Oppose	SB365	relative to the sale or use of lithium-ion batteries for electric bicycles, scooters, or personal electric mobility devices.	Commerce	Wed 1/4	9:20 AM	SH Room 100	This bill prohibits sales of lithium-ion batteries and electric bicycles or electric scooters that have not been certified by a nationally recognized testing laboratory.
Oppose	SB330	relative to allowing the ability to work from home to count toward unemployment benefits eligibility.	Commerce	Wed 1/4	9:30 AM	SH Room 100	This bill repeals disqualification for unemployment benefits for those not available for work outside a home.
Of Interest	SB341	relative to mandatory disclosure by school district employees to parents.	Education	Wed 1/4	9:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill requires all school employees to respond honestly and completely to written requests by parents regarding information relating to their children.
Of Interest	SB342	relative to school building aid funding.	Education	Wed 1/4	9:20 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill establishes a new school district building aid funding program using state funds allocated to each district and makes an appropriation therefor.
Support	SB442	relative to student eligibility for education freedom accounts.	Education	Wed 1/4	9:40 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill expands the definition of “eligible student” for the education freedom account program to include students whose enrollment transfer request was denied.
Oppose	SB522	relative to establishing an early childhood education scholarship account and making an appropriation therefor.	Education	Wed 1/4	10:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill requires rulemaking by the department of health and human services on child care early education and establishes an early childhood education account program to provide funds for an education freedom accounts scholarship organization to administer grants to eligible New Hampshire pre-kindergarten children for qualifying expenses.
Of Interest	SB303	relative to the use of renewable energy funds by the department of energy.	Energy and Natural Resources	Wed 1/4	9:00 AM	SH Room 103	This bill adds battery storage projects to uses of the renewable energy fund, deletes a required renewable generation incentive program, and authorizes a political subdivision incentive, rebate, or grant program using the fund. The bill also modifies the reporting date by the department of energy concerning the renewable energy fund. This bill is a request of the department of energy.
Oppose	SB541	relative to retail pet stores.	Energy and Natural Resources	Wed 1/4	9:45 AM	SH Room 103	This bill prohibits the sale of dogs and cats by retail pet shops except in certain cases.
Of Interest	CACR24	relating to reproductive freedom. Providing that all persons have the right to make their own reproductive decisions.	Judiciary	Wed 1/4	1:00 PM	SH Room 100	This constitutional amendment concurrent resolution would amend the constitution to provide that individuals shall have a right to personal reproductive autonomy.
Oppose	SB428	relative to the use of automated license plate readers by law enforcement officers.	Transportation	Wed 1/4	1:15 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill defines the appropriate use of automated license plate readers by law enforcement officers. The bill also makes an appropriation to the department of safety for digital automatic programming interface to connect data from the division of motor vehicles to the state police.
Oppose	SB580	relative to establishing a noise barrier on Teaberry Lane, Bedford, NH.	Transportation	Wed 1/4	1:30 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill mandates the construction of a noise barrier on Teaberry Lane, Bedford, NH.
Oppose	SB471	relative to adding a speed limit of 45 miles per hour on rural highways.	Transportation	Wed 1/4	2:00 PM	LOB Room 101	This bill adds a speed limit of 45 miles per hour on rural highways.

The post Bill Hearings for Week of January 01, 2024 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

The College Fix went back through its 2023 archives to find things it reported on that someone on one campus or another decided were racist. A White Tower Guide for 2023, if you like. It’s quite the eclectic list.

We won’t duplicate all 71 of them, but instead, pick a few that caught our attention—not wearing a mask, for example. There were several black people on the list who were considered racist, like Sen. Tim Scott or black police officers. Fast Food is racist, as are clean pantries, Body Mass Index, and Public Health Departments.

Clowns, the movie Wonka, the American Flag, Art Therapy, and The Apostle Paul – all racist.

Justice Antonin Scalia

Conservatives

President Abe Lincoln

Governor Ron DeSantis

President Donald Trump

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Ambassador Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Vice President Mike Pence, Governor Chris Christie.

All racist.

The Outdoors is racist, as are Florida, the Kansas City Chiefs, and white paint. Math, Dance, Dating Apps, and White People. Racist! In other words, anything, anywhere, at any time, is racist if it fits the circumstances in which racism is the crutch needed, and we’ve been warning the culture warriors about this for a while. The fake hate hoaxes, of which there were at least 19 on US campuses in 2023, according to the College Fix. The ease with which the idea is peddled in circumstances where it has no place.

If you overuse the thing, it will lose its power. At some point, people who were once terrified of being labeled racist and, as such, went out of their way to prevent or avoid actual racism – perhaps even working to end it – won’t give a damn.

That time is now, and it has been coming since the election of Obama. Barry is the black president who destroyed decades of progress almost overnight. He did it to destabilize the nation, and that worked, too. To pit us against each other instead of against a government working every day to make all of us its slaves.

The BLM riots enshrined that division in modern history but only improved a handful of black lives who happened to vote Democrat and used (at least some of) the money they raised by mansions in primarily white neighborhoods.

Given the Democrat party history, the systemic racism of its ideological ancestors, the Left’s modern-day urban plantations, and the failure of black support for Democrats to improve their lives in any meaningful way is being called racist just another institution the Left needed to destroy?

And what happens to black voters when Democrats don’t need them anymore?

 

The post What Happens to Black Voters When Democrats Don’t Need Them Anymore? appeared first on Granite Grok.

The State Chittenden County Prosecutor Sarah George stated at Burlington’s Community Forum on public safety that the overall justice system is not set up for timely investigation and prosecution of repeat-shoplifters.

“There isn’t a legal avenue to just hold people in jail while their cases are pending,” she said. “It is literally against the law and our Constitution to do that. So if someone is stealing repetitively from a store, I would first say that it’s often two months at least until our office knows anything about it, and that’s if we get the cases from law [enforcement].”

She said the police have to finish their investigations before her office gets involved.

“If the cases are investigated and solved, and then those cases come to us, it’s often two months at least until our office knows anything about it. So in that time, people are of course able to continue to engage in that behavior without our office ever knowing it’s happening so much later on,” she said.

She also said that her office cannot lock up anyone without a conviction.

“And then by the time we do, we can’t just hold people in jail,” George said. “They are entitled to their freedom and they are presumed innocent until we have proven at trial that they are guilty and that is another delay while we are attempting to do that so that’s how our system works.”

She continued that she wishes both the police and her office could collect, investigate, and prosecute shoplifting in a more timely manner, but “that is not how our system is designed to work, unfortunately” she said.

The clip can be seen here.

Burlington Mayor says meth and Fentanyl fueling crime

Burlington mayor Miro Weinberger was on the Morning Drive radio show on Wednesday talking about how Fentanyl and meth are fueling the crime crisis.

“Since 2020 Fentanyl and meth have become the dominant drugs in the area and that has been a game changer,” Weinberger said. “Fentanyl is a much more powerful opioid, a much higher risk and overdose and death, it’s an opioid that people have to consume much more frequently, it used to be people if they were heavily addicted they would be using these drugs every 8-to-10 hours, now it’s every 2-to3 hours. People are injecting or smoking this drug 8-to-10 times a day.”

He also talked about how meth makes people behave worse.

“Meth has this terrible side effect of making people very agitated and at times more likely to commit crimes or create other problems,” he said. “That is really the biggest change that I believe is driving this real Vermont-wide and really country-wide challenge with legal drugs right now. The fact that we have so many more homeless people is driven by our problematic housing market is another big component of it. And of course, our ability to address this is also impacted by the loss of officers that we faced.

More thefts over the holiday

There were more thefts over the holiday, especially on Tuesday. There was a request for information put out by state police after someone robbed an Aubuchon Hardware store in Moretown.

The report states, “Troopers received a report of a retail theft that occurred the previous week. Aubuchon Hardware in Moretown, Vermont reported multiple items taken from their store.”

A still from a security camera can be seen here.

Also on Tuesday, there was a car theft at the St. J Subaru dealership. A man on security camera can be seen checking car doors throughout the parking lot and when he finds one that is unlocked with a key still inside, he drives it away.

Stores are not the only target for thefts. The same day there was another incident involving two white men in a red SUV-type vehicle taking four snow tires and four aluminum rims from a residence in Glover.

 

Michael Bielawski | Vermont Daily Chronicle

The post State Prosecutor Says System Not Designed To Investigate and Prosecute Shoplifters … appeared first on Granite Grok.

I’ve tossed the idea out there that Chris Christie is playing bad cop to Haley’s good cop when it comes to Donald Trump. The NJ Governor runs the smear campaign so Haley can take the high road. If she gets the job, Christie gets one, too.

It might only look like that, but it feels right, and a recent report from a Haley Town Hall in New Hampshire makes it feel right, too.

 

A 9-year-old on Thursday labeled former UN Ambassador and presidential hopeful Nikki Haley the “new John Kerry” at a town hall event in New Hampshire, adding that they agree with her political opponent Chris Christie that she is too soft on former President Donald Trump.

“So Chris Christie thinks you’re a flip-flopper on the Donald Trump issue and, honestly, I agree with him. You’re basically the new John Kerry,” the boy, who self-identified as, Adam, told Haley, prompting laughter from the audience. “How can you change your opinion like that in just eight years, and will you pardon Donald Trump?”

Haley said at the town hall that if Trump, who currently faces 91 felony counts, is convicted, she would pardon him.

 

Haley has said nice things about her former boss, but she’s convinced he’s not the guy we need now. She is – High Road.

Another report, not too far separated in the arc of this supposed plot, calls for Christie to drop out so Haley (or DeSantis) can benefit from his voters. By which I mean Haley.

 

 Chris Christie is directly pushing back on calls for him to drop out of the 2024 Republican presidential primary in a new seven-figure ad buy debuting in New Hampshire on Thursday, according to details shared exclusively with CNN.

“Some people say I should drop out of this race. Really? I’m the only one saying Donald Trump is a liar,” the former New Jersey governor, who trails the former president significantly, says in a direct-to-camera ad launching on broadcast and digital platforms.

 

Christie says he can’t drop out. He’s the only Not-Trump candidate taking it to the former president. The low road. He’s in it to smear Trump, and he’s got the TV ad buys to prove it, which should not be construed as Christie trying to improve his standing in either Iowa or New Hampshire. He’s got no chance in hell. He’s less liked than every other candidate by a wide margin. All the numbers are against him, so there is no reason to drop a 7-figure ad buy unless it’s to help someone who can win.

Haley again.

 

“I told you, I think he was the right president at the right time. I told you that I agreed with a lot of his policies. But do I think he’s the right president to go forward? No,” Haley responded to the child, saying that both “pro-trumpers” and “anti-Trumpers” disagree with her critical approach to Trump. “We can’t handle the chaos anymore.”

 

Christie, again.

 

Christie has sharpened his response to voters who question why he stays in the race, arguing that he’s the only one taking on the GOP front-runner directly. …

He told a voter at a house party in Portsmouth last week that if Haley showed him “she was actually running against Donald Trump,” then he “might” consider supporting her.

But, Christie argued, “Nikki won’t answer the question” as to whether she would accept a vice presidential role from Trump, something he and DeSantis have both said they would reject.

 

Maybe I’m wrong, but I still believe this is all for the show. If Haley has real momentum (and that’s subject to debate), she will need Trump fence-sitters and Trump voters to get there. They won’t vote for her if she smears him. She is also the most viable not-Trump candidate this week, and Chrsite will never be viable. It is also the former NJ governor’s mission, and that of his donors, to sideline Trump, and he has performed well as a conduit for campaign cash aimed in that direction.

It makes more sense if true, but when did political decisions or campaigns ever have to make sense?

 

The post Haley Accused of Being Soft on Trump, She Says Christie is Too Hard on Him (So, Am I Right About Those Two?) appeared first on Granite Grok.

Successful public health campaigns and medical advances have enabled the United States to conquer a range of disfiguring and damaging diseases. Polio, which paralyzed thousands of Americans annually, was wiped out by widespread vaccinations. In 1999, the nation’s last hospital for lepers closed its doors in Louisiana.

A global campaign eradicated smallpox, while lethal tuberculosis, the “consumption” that stalked characters in decades of literature, seemed beaten by antibiotics. Measles outbreaks still occur from time to time, but they are small, local, and easily contained.

Recently, however, some of these forgotten but still formidable infectious diseases have begun to reappear in the U.S. For two years running, polio has been detected in some New York water samples, and this fall, leprosy re-emerged in Florida, where cases of malaria have also been recorded.

Health officials say they are not sure why these and other infectious diseases are resurfacing. One distinct possibility, which officials are loath to discuss, is that the millions of migrants who have crossed into the country in recent years could be bringing the scourges with them since many are from countries where such rare diseases persist, and vaccination programs are not robust.

“The recent polio and leprosy cases are almost certainly imports to the U.S.,” said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and scientist at Stanford University, one of the most outspoken critics of official COVID-19 narratives in the last pandemic that later proved flawed.

And the Biden administration, an aggressive promoter of often mandatory vaccination last time, now is offering little public comment on the connection between disease and the porous borders with which its immigration policy has become widely identified.

Neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the Department of Homeland Security would discuss the issue with RealClearInvestigations. Legal immigrants are required to receive vaccinations for a host of diseases, but the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged it does not have vaccination records for the millions who have entered the U.S. since the Biden administration relaxed border controls upon taking office in January 2021.

“It’s not like there is some Typhoid Mary out there, but this is something people are seeing and thinking about, even if they don’t want to discuss it publicly,” said Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes the Biden administration’s border policies.

The reticence of federal agencies has not stopped some local officials, however, from raising public health alarms over massive immigration. New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan warned in April that at least half of the migrants who have poured into the city had not been vaccinated against polio. The potentially paralyzing and life-threatening virus remains endemic in two countries in the world, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to the World Health Organization. Since President Biden ordered what proved to be a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, an estimated 90,000 Afghans have come to the U.S. under the terms of Operation Allies Welcome.

It is not clear if those migrants met the polio vaccination requirement. DHS did not respond to a question about whether medical histories were reviewed in the fast-tracked entry of Afghans who got out of their country before the Taliban reimposed its control.

Vasan’s warning pointed directly to the southern border, which has seen record-shattering arrivals on the Biden administration’s watch.

“More than 50,000 people have come to New York City in the past year shortly after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border,” he wrote in an 11-page letter. “I am writing now to underscore how critical it is that health care providers take a wide range of considerations into account when working with people who are seeking asylum.”

Citing outbreaks of chickenpox in shelters for illegal immigrants, Vasan also noted the arrival of newcomers who either began their journey in a country where tuberculosis is present or passed through such countries en route to the U.S.

The New York City Health Department did not respond to questions from RealClearInvestigations or to a request to speak with Dr. Vasan, but the numbers have only grown since he sent his letter. Since spring 2022, more than 100,000 migrants have arrived in the city, and more than 67,200 were living in taxpayer-funded housing at the end of November, according to the New York Times.

Last year, the first recorded polio case in the U.S. since 2013 was diagnosed in New York State, with the victim described only as an “unvaccinated man.” Also, in 2022, poliovirus was found in the water supply of four New York counties, including Long Island and New York City. Another positive test result was recorded in Rockland County this year, according to the state.

In the U.S., polio vaccinations remain part of “the routine childhood immunization process” under which the CDC recommends four doses. Adults who grew up in the U.S. are vaccinated, the agency said.

The last occurrence prior to the New York diagnosis had been in 1979. Since November 2022, the CDC has begun wastewater testing for the poliovirus, so long extinct in the U.S., in selected areas, but the agency did not respond to questions about those investigations. It does provide information on COVID and monkeypox, the latter a disease that primarily afflicts the gay population.

A thorough investigation, exploring all avenues of transmission and trying to source a virus to its root, is common among virus hunters, and the idea that millions of people coming to the U.S. could inadvertently carry with them some infectious disease is but one possibility. For example, thus far researchers have been unable to pinpoint where the infamous Ebola virus originates in equatorial Africa.

‘Historically Atypical Countries’

The situation in the United States is further complicated by the fact that DHS officials don’t know where all of the more than 7.5 million migrants who’ve arrived since Biden took office are living. Those whom Border Patrol agents have encountered and processed have immigration court dates, but those dates are years in advance. Many people with uncertain immigration status lack health insurance and stay off the grid as much as possible, meaning even if the U.S. launched some kind of vaccination program, it would not know where to concentrate its efforts.

In addition, the historic flood of illegal immigration during the Biden administration has also featured a much more global population. DHS uses the term “historically atypical countries” to describe the panoply of countries outside of Mexico and Central America from which illegal immigration has soared. Between 2011 and 2022, the number of annual encounters involving immigrants from historically atypical countries soared from fewer than 8,000 to almost 1 million. The first six months of 2023 saw more than half of official encounters – these numbers do not include what Border Patrol calls “gotaways” for whom little information is available – from historically atypical countries. But infectious diseases largely forgotten in the U.S. remain public health issues in both hemispheres, and many of those nations have much less robust vaccination programs than most modern Western nations.

In 1988, when the World Health Organization launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, wild poliovirus was evident in 125 countries, but the zone where it remains endemic has shrunk to Afghanistan and Pakistan, with most recent cases occurring along the countries’ nearly 1,600-mile border, according to the CDC. Vaccination campaigns have proved problematic under the militant Islamic fundamentalist Taliban, according to the CDC. Oral vaccines in “parts of the south and northeast regions” are “allowed only at health facilities, mosques, and polio vaccination sites.”

In March, Al Jazeera reported that the Taliban would allow a polio vaccination program for children, but precise figures on the country’s overall vaccination rate remain unclear. The World Health Organization estimates that 76% of Afghanistan’s children have received a polio vaccine.

But some countries have even lower vaccination rates. On Nov. 30, for instance, some 700 people, including many from Senegal and Nigeria, walked into the U.S. at the Texas border. Only 63% of Senegal’s children have been vaccinated for polio, and various fevers, hepatitis, and malaria are endemic there. Measles, which the U.S. declared eliminated here in 2000, are an issue, too. The WHO estimates 22 million children missed their first measles vaccine last year and more than half of them live in just 10 countries, all of which fall in the “historically atypical” immigration list.

Measles cases have risen in the U.S., from 13 individual cases in 2020 to 121 in 2022, according to the CDC. Recent outbreaks in Ohio and Illinois have all occurred among unvaccinated children, according to state health officials. The age and nationality of victims is not made public, but the measles vaccination rate is below 70% in many countries that have sent immigrants to the U.S. recently.

While few are publicly pushing the panic button, some public health officials worry that a creeping mistrust of vaccines in the wake of the pandemic may make more Americans vulnerable to dangerous and even deadly scourges. Syphilis, for example, has been on the rise for many years but rose sharply during the pandemic.

COVID-19 has drawn the lion’s share of attention from the public health bureaucracy since 2020, leading to shortfalls in other areas, some experts said.

“All of these diseases are more prevalent in part because of lockdown policies which diverted public health resources and attention worldwide away from its traditional priorities of controlling the spread of these deadly infectious conditions,” Dr. Bhattacharya said, referring to measles and other maladies.

And just as there is no cure for polio, there is no vaccine for some infectious diseases. Malaria, for example, the mosquito-borne fever that killed more workers than yellow fever did when the Panama Canal was built, remains endemic in tropical zones, and its path to rare outbreaks in the U.S. usually follows either a trip made abroad or someone moving here, according to health officials in Florida.

Department spokesman Jae Williams told RCI the exact sources of many infectious disease outbreaks in the Sunshine State remain unknown, but the huge increase in illegal immigrants could be a clue.

“It’s always a possibility, and our most recent malaria cases appeared to be a strain from Central America,” he said. In other words, the malaria could have been brought by a newcomer or picked up by someone who traveled there and returned.

Central Florida this summer saw leprosy return, although the exact source remains a mystery, Williams said. Information about the age, sex, and nationality of victims is not public, and most of those who contracted the infectious, skin-disfiguring disease were described only as “landscapers.” Various accounts have speculated armadillos are to blame, but armadillos are not newcomers to the region. The theory holds that somehow the leprosy bacteria, which generally requires prolonged contact and against which most humans have developed immunity over millennia, is in the dirt armadillos wallow in, and the cases that broke out among landscapers then would be linked to the animals they encounter.

But leprosy is not endemic in Florida. It is most common in parts of southeast Asia, equatorial Africa, and Brazil.

“The influx of people, sure it’s a problem and it’s always a possibility,” Williams said. “But we don’t really know.”

Nevertheless, the questions are being asked with more frequency. On Dec. 19, Ashley St. Clair, a conservative commentator, set off a firestorm on X, formerly Twitter, that her Delta flight from Phoenix to New York was filled with people who had recently been processed, released, and brought to the airport by Border Patrol.

“All the pilots, airline staff, and passengers want to know is: what medical screenings are being done?” she wrote.

Delta did not respond to questions from RCI about what knowledge it had been provided about its passengers.

 

James Varney | RealClear Wire

The post Leprosy, Polio, Malaria, TB, Measles … and Massive Unscreened Illegal Immigration appeared first on Granite Grok.

A woman from British Columbia has announced her relationship with a tree. Not just any tree, an Oak Tree. Vancouver Island resident Sonja Semyonova, who likes the feeling of being tiny and supported by something so strong, discovered her feelings for the tree during COVID.

 

Semyonova claims that this whole thing began back in 2020 during the Covid lockdowns. She would go for walks in the woods and those strolls took her past the tree. Sometime during the summer of 2021, she began to feel something erotic for the tree: “I would lie against it. There was an eroticism with something so big and so old holding my back.”

 

She says there’s no actual sex with the tree despite insisting on how erotic her experience with it is. She likens it to the natural human attraction to the outdoors.

 

 “It’s already present in a lot of people. There’s a reason we want to go for picnics in parks and hike in nature. What we fail to notice is that the reason we want this is to tap into the life force that comes from these things, which is the erotic. I believe that we could gain from having a more symbiotic relationship with nature, that relationship could definitely be erotic.”

 

You are under no obligation to agree. Your next picnic need not be burdened by an internal battle over whether the object of your passion is the person with you (depending on the company) or the surroundings. Wow, the nitrogen level in this grass makes me so horney! It’s just so…green!

Semyonova is clearly a lonely woman for whom cats were not a solution (none big enough or strong enough to own legally, if I had to guess – and where would she keep the litter box?). Her loving a tree doesn’t harm anyone or anything else. She’s entitled to her devotion as long as no one else is forced to acknowledge it as normal or natural, and the tree is not…underage (it appears to be over 50). So, hey, if it makes her happy, whatever, but she’s going to have a hell of a time naming all the children when she’s not stepping on them.

There might be some conflict over pollination, so it should be an open relationship. All those anthers and stigma. It’s one giant, umm …  use your ecosexual imagination. And I have to guess that Mrs. Sonja Semyonova Oak (or is she keeping her last name) is allowed to be ‘inspired’ by other deciduous growth. No conifers, that would be weird. Pine Cones. Seriously!

Christmas cards – no roaring fire. Not a lot of travel together options. I hope she likes hanging out at his/her place. Oh, and “loving” trees as romantic context isn’t even a new idea.

Content warning (sort of).

 

 

The post Night Cap: Ecosexual Existentialism appeared first on Granite Grok.

Honolulu, Hawaii, just came up with an interesting way to prevent its residents from buying guns. Starting next month, you’ll need a permit to buy a gun. (This is already way outside the bounds of Bruen, but it gets worse.)

To get the permit, you’ll need to complete a course taught by a certified instructor. (Sounds a little like a jobs program, doesn’t it?)

Here’s the genius part:  No instructors have been certified. There is no information about what certified instructors would need to teach or how certification would be obtained. It could be years before a certification program is in place. And even then, it could be made so onerous that no one will bother to get certified. Or the course could be made so expensive that most people won’t be able to afford it.

The heart of Bruen is that the Second Amendment is not to be relegated to second-class status. It’s to be given the same deference as the First Amendment.

Could you even imagine a city, county, or state that would require you, before speaking in public, to get a permit by completing a course taught by a certified instructor? The idea is ludicrous on its face.

And for good reason. As early as 1819, the Supreme Court made it clear that ‘the power to tax involves the power to destroy.’ The same is true of the power to license.

That was reaffirmed as recently as 1983 when the Supreme Court declared that Minnesota couldn’t use a tax on ink directed at newspapers that were critical of the state government.

And although he didn’t have any legislative role, Martin Luther King Jr. often reminded us that ‘justice delayed is justice denied.’

What’s happening in Hawaii is a great illustration of why any infringement on a fundamental right, no matter how small or innocuous it may seem, cannot be allowed — because it provides a handle that can be used as leverage by those who would seek to ban the right completely.

You want to engage in speech? You want to keep and bear arms? Are you a person? Then you’re good to go. No tax, permit, license, certificate, or other paperwork required. Have a nice day.

Anything beyond that is an invitation to abuse.

Would you let someone implant a cancer cell in your body? It’s just one little cell. How much damage could it possibly do? 

If not, you should be just as vigilant about allowing one to be implanted in your rights.

 

The post A Right Delayed (Or Taxed, or Licensed) Is a Right Denied appeared first on Granite Grok.

A National Rassmussen poll published a few days ago has Trump at 51, Haley at 13, DeSantis at 9, Christie at 9, Ramaswamy at 1,  and Hutchinson with no support. But if you listen to the establishment tools in the media, Haley is closing “the gap.”

What gap and on whom? The inference is Trump, but she’s at least 30 points behind him in New Hampshire, and the last poll out of Iowa had DeSantis in second. You can find pop-up polling or internet polling that suggests things are not as dire for her campaign as they appear, and that’s the point. There is an element of smoke and mirrors, and we get that this works (sometimes), but as Ed Mosca noted here, the most recent New Hampshire Republican primary poll includes registered Democrats, 62% of whom preferred Haley over Trump.

When I saw the poll a few days before Ed’s piece, I thought,

 

Isn’t the story that 62% of Democrats in the NH Republican primary poll picked Nikki Haley? Not sure that’s a positive. https://t.co/YcLXlIf1Ua

— Steve Mac Donald (@TheRealNHSteve) December 20, 2023

 

Some would say look, Haley is so bipartisan. My thought is quite the opposite. If she appeals that much to Democrats, why is she running as a Republican? My other more important thought (subjective as that may be) – since St Anselm’s included Democrats in a poll for a Republican primary in which they cannot vote, did the Dems not en-mass pick Trump? According to the sort of people funding Haley and DeSantis, he is the only candidate who can’t beat Biden. Trump is the guy who will inspire Dems to vote in record numbers and wipe out everyone else on the ticket.

I think the At. Anselm’s poll contradicts that notion.

It has been the practice of Democrats to change their party affiliation in New Hampshire to muddle the GOP Primary. They vote for the candidate they feel can’t beat their own. Get that one nominated, and it improves their odds. We just discussed a recent example here (in another form).

So why didn’t 62% of Democrats choose Donald Trump?

And why does the UMass poll (no Democrats) show Trump with a 30-point lead in New Hampshire while every other survey (including the pop-ups) has Haley closing that pesky gap?

 

Within an hour or so, ARG (American Research Group) released bare bones results showing Haley within 3 points of Trump. Folks, the coordination of messaging with the release of that poll right after the Trump +30 UMass Lowell Poll was released, is very suspect.

UMass Lowell put out crosstabs, a detailed methodology and met basic AAPOR standards of disclosure. The other did not and was pushed by Sununu-friendly media locally and anti-Trump media nationally, to include Mediate and FOX News, outlets which are ignoring the UMass Lowell Poll. …

This is very clearly intended to benefit Nikki Haley. …

 

Fraud and deception are the stock and trade of politics, so we should expect more of this in the weeks before Iowa and New Hampshire. And, perhaps, some of the same from the other sides. DeSantis has much to lose if Haley’s suspect polling goes unanswered, and he invested heavily in Iowa, where he’d held second place for the duration of the contest. I think he still does. But he’s struggling in the Granite State and needs to do well here to move on with any confidence.

Trump? He might want to toss a few rhetorical grenades into the relevant TV markets. Not everyone who will vote for him goes to Trump rallies or reads the glossy mailers. Haley has improved her place in the standings, and the party establishment money is lining up to give her momentum, real or imagined, and it hardly matters because if left unquestioned, one becomes the other.

 

The post NH Dems Didn’t Vote the Way the Establishment Tells Us They Should appeared first on Granite Grok.

It was supposed to be an easy play by the Democrat Machine in Augusta. Pulling Former President Donald Trump from the Maine Primary Ballot would be quick and under the radar.

They held an eight-hour public session where they allowed lawyers and citizens from both sides of the issue to get their arguments on the table, but it was an eight-hour sham session. It was a public show to appear like the politicians cared about the wants of Mainers. Like the gross Abortion bill passed last summer against the will of 80% of voters, the decision on the Trump Ballot question was predetermined.

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows was scheduled to make a decision last Friday but delayed the announcement after a Colorado Court gave her an apparent gift. The Colorado Supreme Court decided by a partisan vote to remove Trump from its primary ballot. When the Colorado ruling came down, Maine thought it had the cover to erase Trump’s name from its ballots, too. Maine would follow the same logic as a State Supreme Court, so they had the precedent they needed. Governor Mills was warming up her pen and looking for the line to sign her name. Not so fast. Michigan is throwing Maine a knuckleball.

Michigan is about as Blue a state as Gretchen Whitmer can make it. She did her best to destroy it and the will of its people with as many restrictions as anyone could impose on its people during the Pandemic. People have terribly short memories, and Whitmer’s name comes up as a possible Presidential candidate should Biden withdraw. When the question of Trump’s name on the Michigan ballot arose, it seemed like a foregone conclusion, but Michigan surprised the country and did not follow suit with Colorado. Maine now has a dilemma.

This is a very dynamic situation as the states face deadlines with primaries quickly approaching. As I was writing this article on Thursday night, Maine announced their decision, and as anticipated, it was disappointing. Maine has removed Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot.

I should not say Maine, but rather, the Democrat Party has made a decision on behalf of Mainers, and I guarantee many of those Mainers are very upset this morning and feeling totally disenfranchised. A group of Liberal politicians elected by the WOKE populations of Maine’s big cities is dictating policy for the rest of the state. The Mainers living outside the few metropolitan areas are traditionally conservative and very patriotic. They still believe in the Constitution and the pillars this country was built on. Election interference by elected officials is not why we elect leaders, and putting their finger on the scale is what Secretary of State Shenna Bellows did, and she will feel the wrath of rural Maine.

The decision will be immediately challenged, and like Colorado, the Supreme Court will probably force Trump’s name back onto the ballot. The Democrats are going to have to find a way to beat Trump at the polls and their current policies and tactics are not going to get it done.

The post Bear Pond Conservative Chronicles: Michigan Stalled Maine’s Plan To Take Trump Off Ballot appeared first on Granite Grok.

Candidate Paula Johnson had her day in court (Paula Johnson vs. City of Nashua). Paula sued the City for procedure and process violations over the handling of a school board election recount.

Thanks to Julie Smith of Nashua, you can get an overview of that day in court here as a primer.

 

All four complaints in Paula’s petition were ultimately acknowledged, some in greater detail than others: procedure not followed, chain of custody for ballot storage breached, equal protection clause violated, and incorrect handling/processing of absentee ballots.

It was a lot worse than that. One source at the recount told me, “I just watched them steal an election before my eyes.”

Paula did not sue on the grounds the recount produced the wrong result; she went after the City for violating procedure (which, if my source is correct, sounds like it might be an excellent way to steal an election). The judge has seen evidence and heard testimony. While we wait for whatever comes next, another issue is the availability of the written results of the recount. They were sealed with the ballots (another procedural issue), and much like the effort to ensure no one in the City can be held responsible for anything, the answer to the question of how those are retrieved was handed off faster than a plane full of illegals landing on Martha’s Vineyard.

 

 

If you ply the actors in this absurd play, they will tell you that City elections are different. Nashua City School board elections are different again. Another round-robin case of ‘not it’ until Julie eventually got an answer from Secretary of State Scanlan, who responded that the manner of extraction for said results from sealed boxes of ballots falls under RSA 669:95 and 659:75, included here.

 

 

    669:25 Conduct. – In towns which have adopted an official ballot system, the town election shall be conducted in the same manner as a state general election as provided in RSA 658 and 659, except that RSA 659:77, III-V and 659:78 shall not apply, and except that all duties required to be performed by the secretary of state under those chapters shall be performed by the town clerk, and except that no copy of marked or unmarked checklists need be forwarded to the state archives or federal district court as provided in RSA 659:102. Polling hours for a town meeting or election shall be set by the selectmen or by a vote of the town.

 

659:75 Forwarding; Retaining Copies of Return. –
One copy of the election return shall be forwarded by the town or ward clerk to the secretary of state in both paper and electronic form no later than 8:00 a.m. on the day following a state election unless the secretary of state orders them sooner. The other shall be kept by the town or city clerk in accordance with RSA 33-A:3-a and shall be open to public inspection at reasonable times. If an official state election return is sealed along with the ballots, the clerk having custody of the sealed ballots shall, at the request of the secretary of state, and in the presence of a state election official, unseal the ballots and retrieve the election return. The ballots shall be immediately resealed and the election return shall be delivered to the secretary of state by the election official.

 

659:75 suggests that Secretary of State Scanlan can ask for them unless, per 669:95, “duties required to be performed by the secretary of state under those chapters shall be performed by the town clerk.” In that case, the Nashua City Clerk can do it and should. Someone should. Immediately. After all – if there’s nothing there, then the people have a right to see that at any reasonable time.

I’m sure Nashua’s brightest legal minds, having dedicated most of their energy toward the obstruction of public documents, will find cause to prevent this despite the law and the precise language. It’s as if that was their default process. Obstruct. Obscure. Defer. Deny. It is a public document. There is a legal remedy to retrieve it. But it’s easier to make them sue you because they might not be able to afford it, and then you don’t have to do anything.

If I recall correctly, a judge has already told Nashua that it must provide remedial Right to Know training for City employees (although I might have them confused with Londonderry). If true, perhaps someone needs to file a 91A request for then that’s scheduled to occur. If not, and the City continues to drag its feet and the Sec. of State can’t engage them on this, the City must be waiting for someone to sue them again.

One more note. Perhaps RSA 91a needs another section to address serial abusers like the City of Nashua. The current remedy reads like this.

 

IV. If the court finds that an officer, employee, or other official of a public body or public agency has violated any provision of this chapter in bad faith, the court shall impose against such person a civil penalty of not less than $250 and not more than $2,000. Upon such finding, such person or persons may also be required to reimburse the public body or public agency for any attorney’s fees or costs it paid pursuant to paragraph I. If the person is an officer, employee, or official of the state or of an agency or body of the state, the penalty shall be deposited in the general fund. If the person is an officer, employee, or official of a political subdivision of the state or of an agency or body of a political subdivision of the state, the penalty shall be payable to the political subdivision.

 

It is either not working or the courts are not using it.

 

The post Is Nashua Waiting for Someone to File Another Election Lawsuit? appeared first on Granite Grok.

As promised on Wednesday, I have an overflow.

Let the mayhem, mockery, and ridicule for the week wrap up:

 

*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

 

Transgender Is A Stalking Horse For The Normalization Of Pedophilia – small dead animals

Gays and transgenders know full well that kids don’t have the mental barriers or strength to say NO.  They don’t reproduce; they recruit.

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t forget all the weapons bought by the Park Service and Department of Agriculture, amongst others.  And millions of rounds of ammunition.  To be handed out to all these fighting-age men soon?

 

 

 

 

Watch: Powerful New Film, ‘Art Club’, Reveals Nightmare Threat of ‘Transgender Social Contagion’ at School | The Gateway Pundit | by Michael Schwarz, The Western Journal

 

 

 

For most of my life I’ve dismissed the “War on White People” as a myth, but things like this… in my mind, it’s no longer a myth.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

In every group there are good people and bad.  Incidentally, at least in the Jewish circles in which I run with voluntary association (not my Synagogue, but people as individuals), nobody is for mass migration, everyone is for gun ownership, and nobody is for Communism or any flavor of it.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some people are just broken.

 

 

 

I agree, but also disagree.

I hated Obama with a passion; I think he was a calamity.  But I didn’t actively call for his ouster or anything.  That the Left cannot – CANNOT – abide Trump or his supporters (among whom I count myself) but rather call for his endless persecution as well as his followers – shows that their aim is to destroy us.

Just like in Israel vis a vis Hamas, you cannot coexist with someone whose stated goal is your slavery… or worse.

 

 

 

Not advocating violence, but I must opine that the idea does hold a certain appeal…

 

 

To forcibly co-opt the output of another person’s labor for your benefit has another name: slavery.

 

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA

 

 

 

This needs to be vetted, but… assuming it’s true, and I’d believe it, yet another outsourcing of government desires to censor to private industry.  And so the noose on the free flow of information tightens.  Some more detail – apparently not down to the individual.  Yet.  I have no doubt that’s coming.

New A2P, non-consumer non-compliance fees beginning January 1 – Bandwidth Support Center

Private execution of government mandates.  There’s a word for that, I think…

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

 

Here We Go Again: Scientists Propose Radical ‘Sunshade’ Plan to Fight ‘Climate Change’ | The Gateway Pundit | by Andrew Jose, The Western Journal

Remember – they want to drive all humanity to be completely dependent on solar, and wind which derives from solar energy.  And then block off solar energy.

 

 

 

If the Islamists do take the world, I’ll be dead by then.  But there will be some Schadenfreude in seeing all the “useful idiot” libtards held down and beheaded even as they bleat “But we advocated for you and took your side”!  (Assuming I go upstairs, I wonder if that’s permitted.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An oldie but goodie on that:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Pick of the Post:

 

 

All because, to my understanding, because we decoupled from gold as the base for the monetary supply.  And then the central bank – i.e., The Fed – started running the presses to fuel a debt-based government.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Palate cleansers:

 

—

—

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

And don’t forget… come back Monday for another edition.  Same Meme Time.  Same Meme channel.

Please do consider buying me a coffee.

Buy Me a Coffee

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

The post Friday Meme Overflow appeared first on Granite Grok.

Last week, a video clip of Francis Fukuyama went viral. In the clip, the political scientist called freedom of speech and a marketplace of ideas “18th-century notions that really have been belied (or shown to be false) by a lot of what’s happened in recent decades.”

Fukuyama then reflects on how a censorship regime could be enacted in the United States.

But the question then becomes, how do you actually regulate content that you think is noxious, harmful, and the like—and do it in a way that’s consistent with the First Amendment? Now, I think you can push the boundaries a bit because the First Amendment does not allow you to say anything you want. But among liberal democracies, our First Amendment law is among the most expansive of any developed democracy.

And you could imagine a future world in which we kind of pull that back and we say no, we’re going to have a law closer to that of Germany where we can designate—the government can designate something as hate speech and then prevent the dissemination of that. But the question then is, politically, how are you going to get there?

Putting aside the fact that the censorship regime Fukuyama is talking about is already here, it’s important to consider the admission behind his words.

Francis Fukuyama is often associated with the neoconservative movement. And that’s for good reason. He was active in the neoconservative Project for a New American Century and helped lead the push for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But he later turned against the war and renounced neoconservatism, so he can perhaps better be understood as an intellectual proxy for the Washington establishment.

Fukuyama is best known for his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man. The book argues that liberal democracy represents the endpoint of humanity’s ideological evolution and the final form of government because of its defeat of fascism and socialism and its supposed lack of inner contradictions.

If there was ever a time when this idea would resonate, it was 1992. The Soviet Union was gone, and the US government, fresh off its sound defeat of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, was the most powerful single entity in history.

But at the same time, an entirely new medium for information was quickly emerging. In 1996, a software engineer named Dave Winer decided to host his newsletter on the World Wide Web. The result was the first web log, or blog. He called it DaveNet. As blogs began to catch on, writers could reach their readers directly without filters, editors, or space constraints.

It is hard to understate the effect of this development. But it’s best explained by Martin Gurri in his 2014 book The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium. Gurri posits that throughout human history “information has not grown incrementally… but has expanded in great pulses or waves which sweep over the human landscape and leave little untouched.”

According to Gurri, the first information wave came with the invention of writing. The second was set off by the development of alphabets. These waves gave rise to governments and societies led by literate bureaucratic and priestly castes. The third wave came with the invention of the printing press. Suddenly, the ancien régime’s monopoly on information was shattered. The result was sweeping political change—most notably the Protestant Reformation and the American and French Revolutions.

Central to Gurri’s thesis is the idea that these revolutions did not come about because of a sudden change in the public’s sentiments but because abrupt changes in the information space allowed sentiments that were already there to spread and develop outside of the ruling classes’ control.

The fourth wave came with the adoption of broadcast media—radio and television—during the twentieth century. While this wave was certainly disruptive, the government’s early takeover of the airwaves made it easier for the political class to retain control over the information space.

But the same could not be said of the fifth wave—the digital revolution. Only two years after the launch of DaveNet, another blog, the Drudge Report, would go around the establishment press and break the story that got Bill Clinton impeached.

Ten years later, as yet another financial crisis gripped the country, the internet allowed true grassroots opposition movements to organize and spread—Occupy Wall Street on the left and the Tea Party on the right. It also allowed candidates like Ron Paul to run popular campaigns critical of the Washington establishment.

The internet didn’t just allow people to see and hear dissenting views; it allowed them to see that those views were popular.

And because of that, from the Arab Spring to the passage of Brexit, the weakening of political control over the information space began leading to real change across the world. But in the United States, after Donald Trump won the White House, the political class woke up to what was happening. And they decided to do something about it.

At first it was Russian disinformation, then hateful domestic extremists, and later covid skeptics. The establishment has used whatever boogieman or strawman they thought could scare the public into accepting more political control over the online space. Which brings us back to Fukuyama.

In a sense, he’s right. It was a lot easier for the Washington establishment to act as though they were supportive of freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas when they controlled the information space. But now that the internet has partially rolled back their control, these ideas have been “belied” in their eyes.

For those like Fukuyama, who want the Washington establishment to keep up its ever-escalating interventionism at home and abroad—funded by unsustainable debt and inflation—the digital revolution is cause for concern. But for those of us who understand that our economic, geopolitical, and cultural issues require radical change, it’s a reason to have hope.

 

Connor O’Keeffe produces media and content at the Mises Institute. He has a master’s in economics and a bachelor’s in geology.

Connor O’Keefe | Mises Wire

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The post A Free and Open Internet Is a Threat to the Establishment appeared first on Granite Grok.

Maine is in the news again after its secretary of state – a Trump-hating-partisan Democrat decided she had the authority to tell the Republican party (a private corporation) who could be on their primary ballot. That was the big news. Shenna Bellows. Trump kicked off Maine Ballot. Or, is he? No, he’s not!

After taking the Cable News Tour yesterday – to justify her decision to drop him (to the applause of the commentariat, ‘She’s so brave!’), Bellows bellowed again, renouncing her own decision. She recanted, retracted, she walked it back. Sehnna will leave Trump on the ballot pending a court review.

 

She immediately suspended her decision.

Meaning Trump stays on the ballot in Maine.

This is just for show. pic.twitter.com/Ac6haE4Kcy

— Midwest Iowa girl (@Maga4Justice) December 29, 2023

 

But will what the courts decide even matter? After getting all excited about the prospect of keeping Trump off an opposing party primary ballot, the Colorado Secretary of State agreed to “keep Trump on the Ballot.” The Colorado Supreme Court decision never technically removed him in a manner not inconsistent with the Maine Secretary of State’s 34 pages of bloviating before not removing Trump. It’s as if the exercise serves some other purpose.

Some liberal-leaning individual or body vents their spleen all over the 14th Amendment only to then say they will wait for someone else to tell them what it means.

The scuttlebutt suggests we’ll see a few more of these-perhaps before the year ends, all delivered to create headlines suggesting Trump’s ineligibility.

At some point, the Supremes down in DC will have a say. A decision likely to lean in Trump’s favor (which the purveyors already know) will then – as VermontGrok contributor Rob Roper notes, “set up a future line of attack to rally Democrat voters against the “conservative” US Supreme Court. After SCOTUS inevitably overrules Colorado, look for the Democrats to let loose a broadside accusing the conservative court – especially Trump’s appointees — of “deciding the election.” AKA – Democracy is under threat!”

It won’t be the partisan Secs-o-state of their courts who are meddling in the election; it will be SCOTUS—a strange tactic, to be honest. Partisan prosecutors have dragged the Trumpster to Court in an election year in multiple venues, an act that – had Trump done it to Biden or even his son, would have been marketed as election interference. Heck, mentioning Hillary’s illegal server got that treatment.

We shall soon see which way this blows, and the left may be crazy, but they are not stupid. They also have confidence in their ability to control the narrative. Distract us from Biden sh!t storm.

I wonder if they can get Chris Christie back on the Maine Ballot?

 

Update: Major media is still reporting that Trump is off the ballot, so I went to the Maine Sec. of State for clarification. I found it here – at the end of her “decision” claiming Trump was off the ballot.

“Given the compresed timeframe, the novel constitutional questions involved, the importance of this case, and impending ballot preparation deadlines, I will suspend the effect of my decision until the Superior Court rules on any appeal, or the time to appeal…”

 

HT | RedState

The post Trump is Back on the Ballot in Maine – Was Never Really Off it. Not Yet. appeared first on Granite Grok.

The United States, Israel, and other democracies have a huge stake in the success of the Iranian people to rid themselves of Islamic tyranny. This is not just a matter of geopolitical concern but a moral imperative rooted in the principles of democracy, human rights, and global stability. As I have continuously stated, the Mullahs are highly vulnerable.

And it is the Iranian people who continuously find themselves at the forefront of this enduring quest for freedom and justice.

A comprehensive political, moral, and economic measure by the United States and others offers the best chance of ending Mullah’s reign of terror and diffusing the existential threat it poses to the world.

We must fully engage in this great battle of hearts, minds, and ideas. Let us stop talking about unimportant issues and peripheral concerns. Let us concentrate our efforts on bringing down this foreign enemy in Iran, the Islamofascists.

The survival of the Iranian nation and its identity depends upon it. Human beings cannot create an ideal world of peace and tranquility under totalitarian, despotic, and tyrannical regimes, such as the Islamist regime in Iran. Individual freedoms would be brutally repressed. The individual would be at the mercy of the merciless despots. Based upon the general reaction among Iranian opposition groups, it is clear that the time has come to form a new brand of political opposition, a united force whose sole purpose will be a regime change in Iran and establishing the rule of law.

The moral dimension of this endeavor is underscored by the timeless wisdom embedded in the Biblical adage, “From those who are much given, much is demanded.” Perhaps it is for this reason that the people of the United States of America are again called upon to make huge sacrifices to defeat another tyranny. The United States, as a nation endowed with immense power and influence, carries the responsibility to stand against this tyranny and champion the cause of liberty.

This echoes a historical pattern where the United States has, at critical junctures, risen to the occasion to confront oppressive regimes and champion the aspirations of those yearning for freedom. It is important that this great nation stays the course and enlists its power in support of the freedom-loving Iranian people and help them topple these ruling, bloodthirsty Mullahs who are bent on wreaking death and destruction in the world.

As the spotlight shines on the vulnerabilities of the Mullahs, a crucial moment presents itself for the international community, particularly the United States, to undertake comprehensive political, moral, and economic measures. The strategic alliance of democracies, spearheaded by the United States and Israel, can only serve as a beacon of hope for the people of Iran who seek to break free from the chains of oppression.

By doing so, the world can bestow upon the Iranian people the support they need to overcome the oppressive regime and pave the way for a new era of freedom, dignity, and self-determination. Through diplomatic efforts, economic sanctions, and moral solidarity, these nations can create a formidable front against the tyrannical rule of the Mullahs.

Furthermore, empowering the Iranian people to shape their destiny is not just a geopolitical maneuver but an enduring commitment to human rights and the dignity of every individual on this planet.

In conclusion, the challenge posed by the Mullahs in Iran is not just a regional issue; it is a global concern that demands the collective efforts of democracies worldwide. The United States, with its historical commitment to liberty, is once again called upon to lead the charge against tyranny.

By standing firmly with the Iranian people, the world has the potential to witness the triumph of freedom over oppression, signaling a new chapter in the ongoing struggle for justice and human dignity. By offering support to those on the front lines of the struggle for freedom, the international community can reaffirm its dedication to fostering a world where justice, liberty, and democracy prevail.

The United States has, in secular and free Iranians, its best friends in the entire world. It is imperative for the U.S. to help these Iranians to dislodge the vicious doomsday Mullahs, not as an act of altruism, but as a prudent measure of enlightened self-interest.

The post America Must Stand With the People of Iran appeared first on Granite Grok.