The ATF has been busy promulgating rules to restrict firearms, but so far, all it has done is keep lawyers fat and happy from legal fees and the US courts busy throwing out partisan acts of overreach.

 

A three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decided on Thursday against the ATF’s 80 percent frame rule, finding that the ATF overstepped its bounds in issuing it.

The 80 percent or partial frame rule is contained within ATF Final Rule 2021-05F, and makes clear the ATF’s position that partially completed pistol frames–commonly known as 80 percent frames–are “firearms.”

 

The politics of civilian disarmament being what they are, we should expect ATF to either appeal or come at it from a different angle. They won’t give up. Even if a Republican wins the White House and the GOP lands on both feet withmajorities in both chambers, the bureaucracy is its own branch of government. Congress has granted it so much power that it assumes more on a whim.

I am, however, reminded of a case in New Hampshire. Prior to clarification in the law, a citizen was charged with illegally concealing a loaded firearm in their vehicle without a permit. If it is unloaded, you could conceal it, but the prosecution charged that the proximity of a magazine to the unloaded weapon constituted a violation.

New Hampshire courts, in a moment of clarity, observed that a firearm without either a magazine or no round chambered could not possibly meet the definition of a  loaded weapon.

There will always be those who seek any means to harass those who choose firearms as a tool with which they might exercise the natural right to self-defense. The ATF appears to be full of them.

But we should not need courts to come you our rescue. As Ian noted on Thursday,

 

If the government says you have to register your guns, and you decide that it has no authority to do so, you are no longer law-abiding.  You are a felon — guilty of the ‘crime’ of believing that the federal constitution actually means what it says.

So according to the government — and for that matter, according to the NRA and the vast majority of ‘gun rights supporters’ that I’ve met — you can’t have guns.

And even when the Supreme Court gets around to striking down that law in a few years, your felony conviction will still stand.  So unless you have a pile of money and several years to devote to having it overturned, that won’t be of much help to you.

It’s time for people who think that only ‘law-abiding Americans’ have the right to keep and bear arms to rethink that position, which is what allows laws like this to exist in the first place.

 

It’s what allows the ATF to do what it does. And it is not about to stop.

 

 

 

The post Night Cap: Another Biden ‘Gun-Grab’ End-Run Around Congress Get’s Beaten Back in Court appeared first on Granite Grok.

There is a lot of enthusiasm and expectation leading up to a wedding. A pre-wedding retreat offers a calm break in the bustle of wedding planning, allowing the bride or groom to spend quality time with their closest friends and family. Careful planning and a little imagination are needed when creating such an adventure to create a memorable experience.

Selecting the perfect locale

An amazing pre-wedding retreat starts with the right setting. The site should match the honouree’s interests, whether it’s a bustling city, a peaceful beach, or a scenic countryside. It should balance leisure and group activities. Consider the time of year, visitor accessibility, and budget when choosing a party location. A good site boosts guests’ comfort and delight and sets the tone.

Crafting a shared experience

The retreat’s main purpose is to create lasting memories. Activities that foster friendship and celebrate the wedding produce these moments. The agenda should include spa days, adventure sports, cultural visits, and food adventures to suit the group’s interests. Planning ensures guests have ample entertainment without being overcrowded. A well-balanced program that encourages individual relaxation and group closeness should allow enough time for solo relaxation and exploration.

Accommodation matters

The group’s gathering and relaxation area is a key component of the retreat, and it requires careful consideration. Hen party houses are a great option for these kinds of events. These homes are made to accommodate large gatherings of people seeking a comfortable yet opulent setting that can accommodate quiet times and celebrations. Make sure the hen party house you reserve has all the amenities required for the size of the group and the activities you have planned. Furthermore, these homes frequently have distinctive features like game rooms, hot tubs, and spacious dining areas that can enhance the pre-wedding getaway’s excitement and luxury.

Personalising the retreat

Give the retreat a personalised touch to make it genuinely unforgettable. This might be anything from themed dinners that showcase the tastes of the bride and husband to personalised welcome bags full of goods and itineraries. Personalisation can also be seen in the activities selected; for example, the honouree’s favourite pastime or a private lesson in an endeavour they’ve always wanted to pursue could be included. Make sure the pre-wedding event is meaningful and pleasurable by customising the retreat to each individual’s unique qualities.

Ensuring flexibility and comfort

The retreat’s success depends on flexibility as much as careful planning. Whether the changes are brought on by the weather, your attitude, or unforeseen events, be ready to adjust. Ensure that every guest’s comfort is a top concern, considering dietary needs, physical limits, and individual preferences. A well-run pre-wedding retreat is characterised by a relaxed, welcoming environment where all participants feel eager to join in on the fun.

Conclusion

Arranging a pre-wedding retreat is a creative undertaking that involves thoughtful evaluation of various aspects. The precursor to the wedding becomes an enriching experience by picking the ideal location, fostering a shared experience, picking the ideal lodging, customising the event, and guaranteeing the retreat’s comfort and flexibility. It’s a celebration that strengthens the relationships between individuals who will soon join in the couple’s big day, as well as honouring the impending wedding.

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We are one year out from the 2024 presidential election, and as usual, the American people remain eager to be persuaded that a new president in the White House can solve the problems that plague us.

“We’ve got to face it. Politics have entered a new stage, the television stage. Instead of long-winded public debates, the people want capsule slogans—‘Time for a change’—‘The mess in Washington’—‘More bang for a buck’—punch lines and glamour.”— A Face in the Crowd (1957)

Yet what is being staged is not an election.

It’s a con game, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko, a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, and a bamboozle, and “we the people” are nothing more than marks, suckers, stooges, mugs, rubes, or gulls.

We’re being duped into believing that this mockery of a choice between two candidates who are equally unfit for office actually translates to having some say in how the government is run.

To the contrary, this particular con game is part of a long-running, elaborate scam to keep the Deep State in power and leave the populace deluded, distracted and incapable of demanding accountability, transparency and decency from the government and its cohorts.

Politics is entertainment.

It is a heavily scripted, tightly choreographed, star-studded, ratings-driven, mass-marketed, costly exercise in how to sell a product—in this case, a presidential candidate—to dazzled consumers who will choose image over substance almost every time.

This year’s presidential election, much like every other election in recent years, is what historian Daniel Boorstin referred to as a “pseudo-event”: manufactured, contrived, confected and devoid of any intrinsic value save the value of being advertised. It is the end result of a culture that is moving away from substance toward sensationalism in an era of mass media.

As author Noam Chomsky rightly observed, “It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars.”

In other words, we’re being sold a carefully crafted product by a monied elite who are masters in the art of making the public believe that they need exactly what is being sold to them, whether it’s the latest high-tech gadget, the hottest toy, or the most charismatic politician.

Politics is a reality show, America’s favorite form of entertainment, dominated by money and profit, imagery and spin, hype and personality and guaranteed to ensure that nothing in the way of real truth reaches the populace.

After all, who cares about police shootings, drone killings, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, school-to-prison pipelines, overcriminalization, censorship or any of the other evils that plague our nation when you can be sucked into an alternate reality so emotionally charged and entertaining as to make you forget that you live in a police state.

But make no mistake: Americans only think they’re choosing the next president.

In truth, however, they’re engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting. It’s just another Blue Pill, a manufactured reality conjured up by the matrix in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process.

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid, America.

The nation is drowning in debt, crippled by a slowing economy, overrun by militarized police, swarming with surveillance, besieged by endless wars and a military industrial complex intent on starting new ones, and riddled with corrupt politicians at every level of government.

All the while, we’re arguing over which corporate puppet will be given the honor of stealing our money, invading our privacy, abusing our trust, undermining our freedoms, and shackling us with debt and misery for years to come.

Nothing taking place on any Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people.

The government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to trudge along a path of misery.

Corporate greed will continue to call the shots in the nation’s capital, while our elected representatives will grow richer and the people poorer. And elections will continue to be driven by war chests and corporate benefactors rather than such values as honesty, integrity and public service. Just consider: it’s estimated that more than $10 billion will be spent on the elections this year, yet not a dime of that money will actually help the average American in their day-to-day struggles to just get by.

And the military industrial complex will continue to bleed us dry. Since 9/11, we’ve spent more than $8 trillion to wage wars abroad. Although the U.S. constitutes barely 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 40% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 10 biggest spending nations combined. Even with America’s military might spread thin, the war drums continue to sound as the Pentagon polices the rest of the world with counterterror activities in 85 countries.

Americans should be mad as hell.

Many of our politicians live like kings. Chauffeured around in limousines, flying in private jets and eating gourmet meals, all paid for by the American taxpayer, they are far removed from those they represent. Such a luxurious lifestyle makes it difficult to identify with the “little guy”—the roofers, plumbers and blue-collar workers who live from paycheck to paycheck and keep the country running with their hard-earned dollars and the sweat of their brows.

Conveniently, politicians only seem to remember their constituents in the months leading up to an election, and yet “we the people” continue to take the abuse, the neglect, the corruption and the lies. We make excuses for the shoddy treatment, we cover up for them when they cheat on us, and we keep hoping that if we just stick with them long enough, eventually they’ll treat us right.

People get the government they deserve.

No matter who wins the presidential election next year, it’s a sure bet that the losers will be the American people.

As political science professor Gene Sharp notes in starker terms, “Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.”

The Establishment—the shadow government and its corporate partners that really run the show, pull the strings and dictate the policies, no matter who occupies the Oval Office—are not going to allow anyone to take office who will unravel their power structures. Those who have attempted to do so in the past have been effectively put out of commission.

So what is the solution to this blatant display of imperial elitism disguising itself as a populist exercise in representative government?

Stop playing the game. Stop supporting the system. Stop defending the insanity.

Washington thrives on money, so stop giving them your money. Stop throwing your hard-earned dollars away on politicians and Super PACs who view you as nothing more than a means to an end. There are countless worthy grassroots organizations and nonprofits working in your community to address real needs like injustice, poverty, homelessness, etc. Support them and you’ll see change you really can believe in in your own backyard.

Politicians depend on votes, so stop giving them your vote unless they have a proven track record of listening to their constituents, abiding by their wishes and working hard to earn and keep their trust.

Stop buying into the lie that your vote matters. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the only thing you’re accomplishing by taking part in the “reassurance ritual” of voting is sustaining the illusion that we have a democratic republic.

What we have is a dictatorship, or as political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page more accurately term it, we are suffering from an “economic élite domination.”

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved, whether that means forgoing Monday night football in order to attend a city council meeting or risking arrest by picketing in front of a politician’s office.

It takes a citizenry willing to do more than grouse and complain. We must act—and act responsibly—keeping in mind that the duties of citizenship extend beyond the act of voting.

As Justice John Josephus Grant warns in the 1943 film A Stranger in Town:

“As citizens, we carry a burning responsibility. It means that when we elect men to public office, we cannot do it as lightly as we flip a coin. It means that after we’ve elected them, we can’t sit back and say: ‘Our job is done. What they do now doesn’t concern us.’ That philosophy of indifference is what the enemies of decent government want. If we allow them to have their way to grow strong and vicious, then the heroic struggle which welded thousands of lovely towns like this into a great nation means nothing. Then we’re not citizens, we’re traitors. The great liberties by which we live have been bought with blood. The kind of government we get is the kind of government we want. Government of the people, by the people and for the people can mean any kind of government. It’s our duty to make it mean only one kind – uncorrupted, free, united.”

The post Stop Drinking the Political Kool-Aid, America: Voting Will Not Save Us appeared first on Granite Grok.

If Vermont is the poster child for Democrat decline, Burlington is the picture at its center. It is by far Vermont’s largest municipality and, again -and perhaps then some – its greatest cistern of liberal policy, making its decline, while sad, easy to predict.

The people of Burlington made it illegal to prosecute prostitution, gave illegal aliens the vote, defunded the police (then regretted it), and the list goes on and on. It is as if the citizens elected a cadre of toddlers and left them unattended in the liberal policy candy store. They grasped at every sweet-tasting shiny lie of the Left. If it failed somewhere else, they felt sure it could work here.

They were wrong.

The disaster of Democrat rules has followed the same prescribed pattern of decline, and the latest evidence is the exodus of small businesses.

 

(WCAX) An exodus on Burlington’s Church Street– where three more businesses are leaving the downtown following other recent departures and adding to the number of vacant storefronts. That has city officials wondering what will happen as the holiday shopping season heats up.

 

Whatever could be the problem?

 

“Sales volumes are down,” said Kelly Devine of the Burlington Business Association.

Devine pointed to a number of factors for the decline: public safety concerns, a shortage of workers and fewer people working in downtown offices to provide regular foot traffic to supplement tourists.

 

Local businesses are hoping for a holiday boost to sustain them with the promise of more business when a development project creates living space for many new residents. People who will ignore the crime that has plagued Burlington since the Summer of Love? How exactly does that change this dynamic? If anything, it creates more targets of opportunity.

The Legislature has set its feet firmly on the path of civilian disarmament. If it allows local municipalities to set their own gun restrictions, Burlington will jump in with both feet. The already declining value of a right to self-defense, which exacerbates property crime, robbery, assault, and murder, will turn Burlington into what gun-free zone mass-casualty-seeking shooters call a target-rich environment.

Every day, misery will increasingly be relieved by acts of robbery or petty theft. Those who resist will be assaulted to separate them from their cash and belongings. A process that is already underway. You have a 1 in 27 chance of being a victim of property crime in Burlington, nearly three times the state average.

Given the current trajectory, that’s not about to change, and anyone who can eventually leaves for safer spaces.

 

The post The Blight of Democrat Rule Continues to Take It’s Toll on Burlington, Vermont appeared first on Granite Grok.

Remember when an elementary school paraprofessional for the Mill Falls Charter School (who is also a Goffstown Budget committee member) spoke at a September School Board meeting and publicly announced that gender information was being taught to kindergarten-aged children?

She proudly exclaimed, “It is being done.” Then, was angry that a Department of Education investigation was initiated into the school.

Well, another example of unhinged bias in the Goffstown Public Library happened recently through public comment that was circulated at a Goffstown Board of Library Trustees meeting. The incident started when a Goffstown resident emailed the board asking why they renamed a recent holiday and how that decision came about. After a lapse in response, the resident (who happens to be openly gay) filed a Right to Know request for all emails relating to that holiday subject.

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Once received, those emails showed evidence of the Library Director, Dianne Hathaway, asking fellow Library Trustee Board members for “help in crafting a response that doesn’t call [name redacted] an asshole.”

 

The Library Board of Trustees Chairperson, Diane Hebert, responded with an email that ended with “Tell him to suck it, bigot boy.”

 

 

Shocked, hurt, and appalled by these responses, the resident asked for a public apology from Dianne Hathaway, the Library Director, and for the resignation of Diane Hebert, the Library Board of Trustees Chair. Neither of which ensued. Dianne Hathaway and Diane Hebert only apologized to the resident through a private email AFTER being required and recommended by the Library Board of Trustees to do so, not before. Their behavior is concerning and unprofessional. Libraries are meant to be inclusive, safe spaces for all members of the community, and such behavior goes against the principles of respect, tolerance, and inclusivity.

Goffstown’s Code of Conduct for elected, appointed, paid, or volunteer officials states that “it is important that the public have confidence in the integrity of its government.” How do calling citizens “assholes” and “bigot boys” represent integrity? All he did was ask a question. Lately, Goffstown residents have submitted multiple complaints to the Select Board, Parks & Recreation Commission, School Board, and Library Board against different town board members, and the board’s leadership continues to find that ‘no violations have taken place,’ and there have been zero consequences for bad behavior.

Brian Campbell, a liberal Library Board trustee member who stepped into that position after running unopposed last year, recently stated that “they” (referring to conservatives) are organizing and producing candidates for Library Board to bring about harmful change. They are opposed to our award-winning director’s leadership.” It is so interesting to watch leftists take a situation and twist it into a narrative to suit their agenda. Is he saying because she won an award, her behavior is ok? I wonder if she was a conservative in leadership, would he be singing a different tune, demanding her resignation, and plastering what she said all over the town’s social media pages?

As of today, the majority of Goffstown has no idea that the Library Director and Library Board of Trustees chair were engaged in this type of name-calling behavior. Now they will. The Library Board of Trustees should demand Diane Hebert’s resignation as chair immediately. Dianne Hathaway should make a public apology statement on their social media page for full transparency.

It is crucial for such appointed and elected town individuals to be held accountable for their actions. What’s the point of a Code of Conduct if the boards don’t use it as a guideline for addressing these kinds of behaviors?

Goffstown and others, local elections are important.

 

Editors note: the author’s identity has been confirmed but shall remain anonymous.

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Recently, I came across yet another in a long line of calls for ‘holding accountable those who are supposed to serve us.’  In this case, the writer was talking about public schools. Yes, we should definitely do that.  We should hold accountable the people who operate our public school system.

Also, it’s time for us to reduce our energy costs by investing in the development of perpetual motion machines.

Those efforts would be equally likely to succeed.

Seriously, when we set up an inherently political welfare project as our primary mechanism for educating children, it’s delusional to expect results other than exactly the ones we’re getting — and have been getting for at least half a century now.

Think about it.  The idea is for elected officials and appointed bureaucrats to be held accountable to voters, right?

Is the solution to elect (and appoint) ‘the right people’?  There are three insurmountable problems with that.

First, if the job involves wielding power over other people, there is no right person for the job.

Second, even if you think you’ve found the right kind of person, as soon as he gets into power, he’ll quickly become the wrong kind of person.  (Ron Paul and John Valera seem to be the exceptions that prove the rule.)

Third, and most importantly, the best you can hope for is that a majority — really, just a plurality — to which you happen to belong is able to push something on everyone else that they don’t want.

The smaller the plurality, the more nearly this becomes the opposite of government by consent, and the more brazenly this ignores Jefferson’s admonition that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.

P doesn’t like what Q is teaching in schools when Q is in control.  But Q doesn’t like what P has been teaching when P was in control.  And the rest of the alphabet doesn’t agree with either of them.

Is this really something that can be settled with coercive funding extracted by majority rule?  Or should we start treating being educated the way we treat being armed — not as an entitlement, but at a responsibility?

For consent — and accountability — to be meaningful, people have to be able to understand what they’re being asked to consent to (which is why they need to be educated); and they have to be able to say no and back that up with force if necessary (which is why they need to be armed).

That’s why the federal constitution (in Amendment 2) says that arms are necessary to the security of a free state; and why the state constitution (in Article 83) says that education is essential to the preservation of a free government.

Arms and education are the principal mechanisms of accountability available to a free people.  Putting either of them under the control of the government is the first step towards disabling them.

 

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It’s been less than a year since our last report on the hurdles associated with “greening” winter road maintenance. In December of last year, the folks in New York City who are in charge of such things discovered that Electric Vehicles suck when it comes to snow removal but held out hope for a solution.

As it turns out, the solution was to scrap the notion entirely.

 

Primarily intended to clean streets and remove garbage, one of these Mack trucks had been fitted with a snow plow as part of an experiment. Essanews reports the move has been a failure. The reason was given as a simple lack of power:

The plow, dragging across the road and the snow buildup in front of it, created substantial resistance. Moreover, the plow required almost constant movement, eliminating the option for loading pauses.

Consequently, the electric vehicle’s power supply was insufficient for the demands of a New York winter, known for its heavy snowfall.

The report further detailed that after nearly two hours, the electric plow had to discontinue the route for recharging.

While the truck was efficient for garbage collection, its performance significantly dipped when faced with the snow removal tasks.

 

I’m not surprised NYC tried it, but I am amazed that no one expected this result. Battery-powered heavy equipment fails are legion. Add to this the deleterious effects of cold weather on EV tech, and success was never likely unless the goal was wasting money on another empty virtue signal. And waste the money they have.

Garbage trucks do double duty as plow trucks in winter. EV garbage trucks can’t plow snow. Storing EV anything in a garage or near other vehicles invites disaster, but there are only so many places to put any vehicle, especially municipal vehicles. The City will continue replacing aging equipment (the garbage never stops piling up), but if they want garbage trucks to keep plowing snow, they must be diesel.

On a bright note, the City only purchased seven EV trash haulers in a fleet of 2000, and the lesson could translate to other municipalities with similar green dreams.

The real question, however, is whether failure will translate to common sense when pursuing EV versions of other heavy equipment. This seems unlikely. The indifference to wasting other people’s money combined with their starry-eyed devotion to the net-zero lie is how they spent more than three million on trash trucks without much thought about their ability to move snow.

I’m sure someone, somewhere in the mammoth mountain of nonsense doing business as the City of New York, asked the question, but was it only in their head? Did they suggest it in a meeting, an email, or a Zoom call? Were they dismissed, or did political pressure overwhelm common sense, standard procedure on liberal urban plantations?

In 2021, news broke on NYC ordering EV trash haulers. In 2022, Mayor Adams proudly announced the City was expanding its EV fleet three years ahead of schedule. That included another nod to buying seven new Electric Garbage Trucks. In Dec of 2022, we reported on how they were not suitable for the plow duty existing trucks had handled with ease. And now they’ve been benched for not being plow-capable in winter.

And no one saw that coming? Did no one mention this to the manufacturer to ask if it would work?

I guess what I’m wondering is who screwed up and if we’ll ever know because green dreamers walk among all of us, and they aren’t much different in their thinking than the goons running New York City. They don’t think things through because if they did, they’d stop saying how expanding the EV fleet is greening the planet and would admit they are just offshoring emissions.

 

HT | Breitbart

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You’ve heard the term when pigs fly. How about the one where progressive left-coasters advance legislation requiring insurance companies to define pigs that can’t fly as disabled and eligible for medical intervention? Now, replace pigs with “men” (that should be easy) and fly with “pregnancy” (not as easy).

 

SB 729, which already was passed in the state Senate in October, would “require large and small group health care service plan contracts and disability insurance policies issued, amended, or renewed on or after January 1, 2024, to provide coverage for the diagnosis and treatment of infertility and fertility services,” with “infertility” defined as the inability to reproduce “either as an individual or with their partner” without medical intervention, without any consideration of the distinct mechanics by which the two sexes contribute to reproduction, or whether or not a couple is comprised of both sexes.

The bill also declares that “coverage for the treatment of infertility and fertility services shall be provided without discrimination on the basis of” numerous identity factors, including “gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.”

 

This is the progressive utopia doing business as California. Where ideology comes first, and the costs don’t matter.

 

[T]he California Health Benefits Review Program projects the legislation to increase Californians’ annual insurance premiums for employer health plans by more than $330 million annually.

 

And while it is not unreasonable for a “queer” couple to want to have access to fertility services in the event that they would like to bring another taxpayer into the world to help fund the bottomless pit of government, the lack of clarity is – if nothing else – amusing. Nothing about the bill, as written, dares to suggest that unless you were born female, the resources would be a waste of time, health resources, and money. In fact, it is quite clear. Refusing to cover such costs is a deliberate act of discrimination with – presumably – all the progressive accouterments. Public pillory. The threat of mob justice. Criminal prosecution.

A last straw that could break one or more insurers whose actuaries might decide the risks of doing business in California are too great, and that too might be the point. Socialist Utopias can’t afford to have any competition. Put another way, there can be only one.

 

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Long-time progressive activist and sometime Concord City Councilor Zandra Rice Hawkins has been unseated. After Tuesday’s elections, the three-term incumbent is one of only two incumbents in Concord replaced by challengers.

She lost to Jeff Foote, 618-566 (“preliminary” citywide results can be viewed here).

I’m unfamiliar enough with Concord to know what a good turnout looks like, but the 2022 mid-terms attracted over 18,000 voters. The November 2023 city race for mayor attracted 6,720. We could say it was a typical municipal election. One where turnout is low, so turnout is everything, like the race for mayor in Manchester. Hawkins didn’t turn out her Ward 10 city Councilor voters, or something made them stay home.

That seems odd to me. Dems are typically much better at getting their base to show up than their Republican opponents, especially in cities that run blue.

 

Congrats Jeff Foote on your win for Concord Ward 10 City Councilor over Zandra Rice Hawkins @progressnh #nhpolitics #nhlibertyhttps://t.co/a1aN7YZXjb

— NHLA (@nhliberty) November 8, 2023

 

Some folks suggest that Republican wins in places like Manchester are a sign. The disaffection among center-left voters over Biden has trickled down to local races and will lift a tide in 2024.

We saw that in 2010 and again in 2016. I would love that to be the case, but presidential election years are different than stand-alone municipal races. They are different from mid-term elections. And we’ve got a lot of loopholes in the electoral process that remain wide open without the legislative capacity or will to fix.

Zandra will be working full-time to ensure any advantage.

What are we prepared to do?

 

 

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According to his LinkedIn Profile, Donald Sullivan worked as an “Independent Compliance Overseer” for St. Paul’s School, Concord New Hampshire from January 2021 to October 2023. The AG of New Hampshire and St Paul’s School also have him listed in this position for the same period of time.

A September 2018 settlement agreement between the AG of New Hampshire & St Paul’s School required St. Paul’s to hire an “independent” compliance officer with a proviso that any dispute in the agreement should be brought to the AG’s attention.

St. Paul’s School’s fall term started on approximately 7th September 2023. Donald Sullivan was either on St. Paul’s School payroll or hired as a full time independent contractor in September 2023.

Yet on Tuesday September 12th, 2023 at approximately 3pm, Donald Sullivan was present at 100 Main Street, Concord in the offices of the NHCADSV where he presented himself to alleged victim of domestic violence- Robert Tanguay- as a retired police chief who was “representing” the NHCADSV.

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NHCADSV’s Pamela English had called Robert Tanguay between 12 and 1pm and invited him to present himself at the NHCADSV after Robert Tanguay had requested assistance from the coalition with regard to alleged domestic violence he had experienced from his ex partner who had left him for a police officer and allegedly alienated him from his children. When Robert Tanguay arrived at the NHCADSV he wasn’t allowed into the office. Donald Sullivan appeared instead to greet him.

According to a police report from Concord Police for Tuesday September 12, 2023:

At 1526 a call came in “Phone — Unwanted guest. …Location: New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence, 100 Main Street, Apt 300”

Details were then given on the phone call of Robert Tanguay’s date of birth, social security number, race and sex.

Details were also given by the caller to Concord Police of the other “involved party” whose name is blacked out on the report.

At 1527, the caller to Concord Police from the NHCADSV advised “there is a male screaming in the hallway and an off duty police chief Don Sullivan is trying to get him to leave. It is Robert Tanguay.”

At 1602 “X (blacked out name) said that Robert wanted to speak to someone at the Coalition in regards to getting an attorney. They said they told him that they don’t provide those services and they could see his behavior escalating. X (blacked out name) became concerned and asked for help but Robert had left when he was told to do so. No threats or assaults. X (blacked out name) authorized trespass paperwork to be served for Robert.”

Let’s wind back a moment:

Robert Tanguay was asked to show up by Pamela English of the NHCADSV to the NHCADSV Concord Office. He did as he was instructed but when he got there Donald Sullivan, an employee of St. Paul’s School, was there to greet him and the NHCADSV called Concord Police to say that Robert Tanguay was an unwanted guest and gave details to the Concord Police of his social security number and date of birth — all within the space of one minute.

September 12th at 3pm would be a school day at St Paul’s School for Donald Sullivan. So what was he doing on St. Paul’s School’s dime, turning up to greet an invitee of Pamela English of the NHCADSV instead?

Donald Sullivan described himself as a former police chief who was representing the coalition, not as an employee of St Paul’s School.

The video of the incident is worthy of review — compare it to the police record of the phone call and assertions above. It’s very clear from the video that Robert Tanguay is quite calm and that Donald Sullivan is not. Is that because he shouldn’t have been there in the first place because he was being paid by St. Paul’s School and was instead moonlighting at the offices of the coalition? The NHCADSV caller referred to Donald Sullivan as an “off duty police chief” yet he had maintained in the video that he was not a police officer.

Imagine if this incident had become more contentious. Where would the liability be? Normally it would be with the employer. Donald Sullivan was threatening Robert Tanguay with arrest after Robert Tanguay had turned up to the offices of the NHCADSV per the request of the NHCADSV.

Was Pamela English trying to entrap Robert Tanguay by inviting him to the NHCADSV and then getting Donald Sullivan, St Paul’s School’s employee, to threaten him with arrest even though Donald Sullivan said that he wasn’t a police officer, represented the coalition but was not employed by them? Was Pamela English an agent for the police given that a phone call was then made to the coalition to the police to report an unwanted guest — Robert Tanguay- who they had invited to the coalition’s offices? Was Donald Sullivan guilty of false impersonation of someone acting under the color of the law? He seemed to have too many details about Robert Tanguay and his child “Bobbie” and his situation for him to be some random security officer.

On 9/18/23, a written order was written up for Robert Tanguay to stay off the property: 100 Main Street, Concord. The order was signed by a Megan Sioux Barrett. Who is Megan Sioux Barrett? According to Zoom Info she is an administrative assistant for Concord Schools. According to Linked In, Megan Sioux Barrett is a “Medical Transcriptionist at EDIT”. There doesn’t seem to be any authority for Megan Sioux Barrett to sign an order to stay off the 100 Main Street property. Yet she wrote her name above the line specifying: “Type or Print Name of the Property Owner or authorized person (if a business include person’s title)”. No business name was given. No title was given. According to the order, Robert Tanguay was served with this order on October 31st at 1310 by Concord Police Officer #55 — “N. Carrey.”

On November 2nd, 2023 Robert Tanguay received a letter from Jennifer L Smith, “Director of Citizen Services” for the State of New Hampshire Office of the Governor. That letter advised Robert Tanguay to seek private legal counsel and to cease contacting the Governor’s office.

Robert Tanguay is not the first person to be in such a frustrating run around when it comes to the NHCADSV, the courts and the Governor’s office. There are multiple documented cases of female upon male domestic abuse being ignored in the state. There are multiple documented cases of females being ignored by the coalition as well.

There have been numerous commissions in New Hampshire set up by several governors to address domestic and sexual violence. The coalition has just received another round of funding to provide assistance to victims & survivors. However, for some bizarre reason, when the NHCADSV invite a man to their office, they borrow an employee of St. Paul’s School to threaten that man to leave their premises or face arrest. And for some other bizarre reason, an assistant administrator from Concord High School signs an order to stay away from the building in which the NHCADSV is housed as though she were the owner of the building or the authorized representative. Where is all the money going?

The State of New Hampshire needs to clean up its act. It needs to make it known publicly if members of the NHCADSV are agents of the police, if “independent” compliance officers working under the payroll and employ of St Paul’s School have the authority to threaten citizens with arrest on property that does not belong to St Paul’s School nor falls under its jurisdiction. If assistant administrators for Concord High School have the authority to sign anything for 100 Main Street, Concord — an address which does not appear to belong to Concord Schools.

When there are arrests, restraining orders, altercations, it is the employers & property owners or their insurers who carry the financial liability. There is a staggeringly dangerous lackadaisical approach to this when it comes to the NHCADSV and 100 Main Street, Concord, New Hampshire.

I wonder what the City’s Insurer, PRIMEX, would make of this. I wonder what St. Paul’s School makes of it. They were required to hire an “independent” compliance officer by the AG. Did they hire someone who spent his time on their payroll hanging out at the NHCADSV as some kind of bouncer/mock police officer? I wonder what Concord’s Police Chief Bradley Osgood has to say.

According to the video recording of the incident on September 12th, 2023, Robert Tanguay asks Donald Sullivan not to touch him. Donald Sullivan states he is not a police officer (was it misconduct that led him to leave the police force?). He doesn’t have qualified immunity.

631:2-a Simple Assault. —
“I. A person is guilty of simple assault if he:
(a) Purposely or knowingly causes bodily injury or unprivileged physical contact to another; or
(b) Recklessly causes bodily injury to another; or
© Negligently causes bodily injury to another by means of a deadly weapon.
II. Simple assault is a misdemeanor unless committed in a fight entered into by mutual consent, in which case it is a violation.”

According to the video recording, Donald Sullivan did assume the functions, powers, duties of office of law enforcement because he threatened Robert Tanguay with arrest while he himself had no authority to do so since he is not a police officer but an employee of St Paul’s School. In essence, there is arguably no difference between Donald Sullivan threatening Robert Tanguay and a student or faculty member of St Paul’s School threatening him. But if it were a student or faculty member who’d shown up that afternoon and threatened the same, the call from the NHCADSV to Concord Police would have involved a request to arrest the impersonators of law enforcement.

104:28-a False Personation. — “Any person who knowingly and falsely assumes or exercises the functions, powers, duties, or privileges incident to the office of sheriff, deputy sheriff, state police officer, police officer of any city or town, or any other law enforcement officer or investigator employed by any state, country or political subdivision of a state or country, or who wears or displays without authority any uniform, badge, or other identification by which such sheriff, officer, or investigator is lawfully identified, and with the intent to be recognized as such, shall be guilty of a class B felony.”

A list of the New Hampshire Coalition’s Staff and Duties can be found here. There is no mention of any representative by the name of Donald Sullivan.

Here is Pamela English’s bio:

Pam English is the Coalition’s Administrative Director. In this role, she is responsible for the financial management of the Coalition, including budgeting, financial statement preparation, and policy development.

Pam has more than twenty years of experience in the areas of non-profit administration, finance and human resources. Pam has worked for the Coalition since 1993 and has been in her current role as the Administrative and Finance Director since 2006. Pam works in collaboration with the Coalition’s national partners to provide technical assistance on implementation of new data or financial systems. Additionally, the National Network to End Domestic Violence contracted with Pam in 2015 to create and present two national webinars on financial management and oversight for Coalition financial staff, and for Board of Directors.

Pam has written many grants and annually manages between 11 and 15 federal, state, and private grants or contracts. Pam has experience in NH employment law, regulations and rules. She has working knowledge of federal and state grant compliance requirements, including specific knowledge of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) code of federal regulations that govern cost principles for non-profits. Pamela manages the collection and reporting for two of the Coalition’s statewide databases.

Here is the employment information for Donald Sullivan — confirmed by his own Linked In, St Paul’s School’s website, the AG’s website. Notice the attention given to the word “Independent.”

The Governor has announced millions in new funding for family violence prevention for the coalition but if they can’t help a father with young children who is a victim of domestic violence who are they helping?

If they can’t help female victims of domestic and sexual violence either, who are they helping?

If they can’t provide assistance to those who have been stalked by their own members, who are they helping? And if they get millions from grants, why do they need to borrow someone on St. Paul’s School payroll to pose as a representative for them to threaten a guest they’d invited to turn up at their offices?

Donald Sullivan has a side business — Surveillance.

Astro Investigative Services.

Was he hired on September 12th, 2023 via his Astro Investigative Services by the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence? By his Robert Tanguay’s ex partner and her police officer new partner? Does Donald Sullivan carry insurance for his business on the 3rd floor of 100 Main Street, Concord in the offices of the NHCADSV? Do they? Does Megan Sioux Barrett who has the authority to sign orders for the building?

Donald Sullivan’s Astro Investigative Services covers:

“Marital Infidelity
Fraud
Employment
​Child custody issues
Skip Traces — people locating
Asset Location
Background Investigations
Residence verification
​Due Diligence

Domestic Violence — Donald Sullivan retired after 24 years in Law Enforcement with a specialization in Domestic Violence and Sexual assault investigations and training. We can provide individual consulting and Corporate Training. Our Training curriculum focuses on understanding Domestic Violence, recognizing Domestic Violence and Proper Response.

Active Shooter Preparedness — physical assessments and training for employees response

Event Security

Executive Protection”

Who was Donald Sullivan working for on September 12th, 2023 at 3pm on the 3rd Floor of 100 Main Street, Concord, New Hampshire?

The post The State of New Hampshire Needs To Clean Up Its Act appeared first on Granite Grok.

Last week, Joe Biden’s FBI gave NYC Mayor Adams’ top fundraiser an early morning wake-up call. Something about conspiring with foreign governments to collect illegal campaign contributions. One of the few things on which Joe Biden might be an expert. I labeled it a warning shot over Adams’ bow.

 

The FBI recently showed up at the home of Brianna Suggs. She’s an associate of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. She’s also a fundraiser for a mayor who has been increasingly critical of the “migrant” situation and the impact it is having on his sanctuary city.

 

Mayor Adams has been getting feisty about the situation as hotels once flooded with tourists get taken over by hordes of relocated border jumpers. Businesses continue to abandon the city, still struggling with covid apocalypse departures. But everyone continues to pretend this has nothing to do with Eric Adams or his bitching about Biden’s Migrant invasion, and now the FBI has seized two iPhones and an iPad belonging to the Mayor.

 

The search was first reported by the New York Times, which said the probe centered on whether the campaign had conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations.

…

A search warrant reviewed by the New York Times reportedly indicates prosecutors are looking into whether the Adams campaign conspired with Turkey’s government or individuals with ties to Turkey to violate campaign finance law.

Investigators also want to know if the Adams campaign kicked back any benefits to the country or these individuals in exchange for donations.

Foreign nationals are barred from making contributions to US election campaigns.

Law enforcement officials familiar with the matter told CNN that the alleged scheme being investigated by the FBI would have allowed money coming from foreign entities to be masked as donations from American citizens.

 

Adams is cooperating, but what other choice does he have?

And if the Bidenistas are sending a message to Adams, it is a curious choice. The Biden crime family’s pockets have swelled in the wake of foreign influence operations using VP Joe Biden’s name and access as collateral.

Not that foreign money hasn’t been polluting campaigns without a whisper of interest from the alleged authorities. Another example of something that happens that everyone knows is left hanging like a noose with no one in it.

I still feel strongly that whoever is Running the Biden administration got their dander up about Adams’ complaints ala ‘illegal alien invasion’ and has decided to send a message.

It makes you wonder if Obama has someone else in mind to run New York City, and if so, who?

 

 

 

The post Biden’s FBI Just Sent Another Message to NYC Mayor Eric Adams appeared first on Granite Grok.

What does Iran have on Barack Obama and Joe Biden? What kind of a deal did these two Presidents cut with the number one supporter of terrorism in the world? For nearly sixteen years, Obama and Biden have been clearing the way for Iran to build tremendous wealth, and the cash flow was only interrupted for four years when Donald Trump sat behind the big desk and slapped sanctions on Iran, not pad their fund.

Let’s examine just how much money was diverted to Iran during Obama’s two terms and Biden’s one term. I think you will be shocked at the number, but it is still growing.

Estimates vary, but the consensus is that Barack Obama is responsible for $150 Billion injected into the Iran economy. Most of this money comes from unfreezing Iran’s assets as part of the Iran nuclear deal signed by Barack Obama. This cash was in addition to the pallet of money and gold bars a U.S. cargo plane delivered to seal the nuclear deal. Obama admitted to giving Iran $400 million. Obama knew that Iran was financing Hamas and their terrorist activities in the Middle East and that some of this money given to Iran would end up in the hands of Hamas and Hezbollah. Obama consummated the deal anyway.

When Trump took office in 2021, he immediately terminated the nuclear deal with Iran and again froze their assets. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done, and Hamas and Hezbollah had the funds they needed. Without access to their cash, Iran was quiet for the four years that Trump was in office. All of that changed on day one of Biden’s first term. Biden signed executive orders to re-enter the nuclear agreement and released the sanctions imposed by Trump. Iran and the Democrat party were back in business.

Obama said this week that nobody’s hands are clean when it comes to the Middle East and this current battle between Israel and Hamas. He is absolutely correct, and his and Joe Biden’s are very bloody hands. When Biden took office, Iran was virtually broke. By releasing the sanctions on Iran and allowing them to start selling oil to Russia once again, their cash reserve has increased by $80 billion in less than three years. This money is the direct result of Joe Biden’s policies. This money is being used to fund Hamas and resulted in the slaughter of over 1400 Israelis on October 7.

There is no upside to what Joe Biden had done. There was no benefit to the United States or the world for allowing Iran to be again this close to having nuclear weapons. The only conclusion that a logical person can come to is that some of this money given to Iran found its way into the Democrat Party or Obama or Biden’s personal bank accounts. There is nothing that these two presidents have done that has not benefited them personally. There is no argument that these two men dislike America that much that they would get into bed with Iran to put Israel and the world in danger

The post Obama And Biden Funded Iran And Their Attack On Israel appeared first on Granite Grok.

Here is yet more evidence that the 2020 election was rigged. In brief, election workers in Georgia questioned absentee ballots that showed signs of actually being mailed.

The trial court judge … like the other judges sitting on lawsuits challenging the propriety of the 2020 election … dismissed the lawsuit on a technicality. An appeals court has reversed the trial court. Stay tuned.

 

There is NO EVIDENCE, they claim
(because it's been kept secret for over 3 years)

Take it to COURT, they whine
(GA Supreme Court said bring out the ballots)

No JUDGE has found, they assert
(because they all run away)

Joe Biden didn't 'WIN' Georgia in 2020, you can now reply https://t.co/7OxYspHIGW

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) November 10, 2023

Reminder that Raffensperger never performed an actual audit of GA election results.

All the “audit” did was verify that "the only software or firmware on the components was certified for use" by SoS Office. https://t.co/dnNxfN6sme

— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) November 10, 2023

 

The post 150,000 Fraudulent Absentee Ballots For Biden In Georgia? appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Nov. 7 elections were a sobering reminder that we live in a godless country. For the sane, it’s terrifying to realize the people voting with you on which laws and politicians will hold power have forgotten what human dignity is. Still, the blame for Ohio voters passing Issue 1 is not with the immoral hoards. Conservatives are responsible for this loss.

Voter turnout for Tuesday’s election was embarrassingly low, considering the topic of constitutional importance was whether or not the state would be creating an open season for the killing of unborn babies. It seems like such a no-brainer. Of course, the littlest ones among us deserve the most care. Conservatives had the chance to remind our fellow countrymen what it means to protect the truly vulnerable in our society, and instead, they stayed home.

 

The 57% of Ohio voters who chose to put abortion rights in the state constitution yesterday is right in line with national public opinion on the matter in recent years: Surveys have consistently shown ~60% support for legal abortion. https://t.co/d6MdEWwl6z pic.twitter.com/TngQzCpxZY

— John Gramlich (@johngramlich) November 8, 2023

 

Despite all the talk about being the party of common sense, the unofficial numbers show that only 48% of Ohio’s eligible voters showed up to vote on Tuesday. This continues a trend of decreasing voter turnout that started in 2018. This excludes the 2020 presidential race, but outside of having former President Donald Trump on the ballot, there hasn’t been a single issue that forces otherwise apathetic Republican voters to cast their ballot. (ROOKE: Leftist Moral Rot, Not Conservative Bullying, Killed The Alabama Drag Queen Preacher)

 

Completely stupid and naive to tell pro-lifers to compromise on abortion. The pro-abortion side isn’t interested in compromise. They’re for abortion on demand through all nine months without apology – nothing less. They will fight as adamantly against a 25 week ban as they will…

— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) November 8, 2023

 

The Republican Party failed miserably to prepare for this election. ABC exit polls found that “46 percent of people who voted in Ohio today said they voted for Biden in 2020, versus 43 percent for Trump.”

Surely, there are a lot of reasons why people did not show up to polls yesterday that have nothing to do with their views on abortion. However, it is undeniable that this issue deserves galvanizing support from the party that claims to understand the importance of human life and what it means to give everyone a chance at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The narrative coming from the GOP machine is that abortion is a losing issue. While gaining favor with the Susan B. Anthony List is important in a Republican primary, they act like any general election leaves them with both hands tied behind their back. The idea is to ignore it and hope their opponent doesn’t bring it up.

Voting is possibly one of the easiest ways Republicans can participate in their government — so it’s shocking there were not enough voters willing to show up to protect innocent life on Tuesday. Still, why would any voter wait in a government line on a cold November Tuesday to vote for a political party’s objectives when they act like losing is all they can deliver?

Democrats run every election with the understanding that defeat is not an option and the only way to win is if voters actually cast their ballot. It’s no surprise when they mop the floor with Republicans. The GOP’s leadership can’t even reach out to ballot and voter registration expert Scott Pressler, who runs a one-man machine ping-ponging operation across the country, teaching people how to create more Republican voters.

Pressler says he has contacted GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel for 207 unanswered days to ask for help in overhauling their campaign strategy, according to a Wednesday Twitter post.

Why wouldn’t the leader of the GOP want to connect with someone who single-handedly created the party’s only effective response to the Democrat’s well-oiled election machine? Did they decide that losing every election and blaming it on Trump would be an effective voter turnout strategy in the future? The base is tuning them out and refusing to show up to vote.

It’s not enough to sprinkle a few yard signs around town a couple of weeks before the race is over. Democrats act in military precision, going door-to-door and getting their voters to the polls. (ROOKE: The Only Thing The GOP Loves More Than Donor Money Is Losing To The Dems)

Where is the GOP’s outreach to the thousands of young people marching for life around the country every year? The perfect group to ask to go out and spur voters into action. Democrats dominate Republicans in these off-year races because they concentrate on voter turnout no matter what’s on the ballet or how it gets counted.

GOP messaging needs to change. Republicans have no answer when Democrats go on television and claim that the GOP wants to take away the right to an abortion, even for cases of incest, while flashing some stock footage of a little girl playing with her toys. The cases of abortion from rape or incest are nominal compared to the number of elective abortions performed in the U.S. Still, it’s hard to fathom a little girl getting pregnant after a horrific rape, and Democrats understand the messaging behind it puts conservatives on defense.

Rather than compassionately convey their answers to helping single pregnant women get the support they need or calling for harsher punishments for abusers, the GOP flounders. Conservatives should be telling women they are important enough to protect during their most vulnerable time. Single women vote for the Democrats offering them death because the only other political party is putting its head down, hoping not to get called on.

Mary Rooke is a reporter at the Daily Caller and host of “Trad-ish with Mary Rooke.”

Mary Rooke | Daily Caller

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline, and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The post Cry About Abortion All You Want, But Know Conservatives Are To Blame appeared first on Granite Grok.

You might not like Trump, but you have to respect him. The ruling class, swamp rats, are terrified of this guy. And since the left always tells you who poses the greatest threat to their agenda, that has to mean something. You get to decide, and if you live in Minnesota, you still get to choose at the ballot box.

 

Former President Donald Trump will stay on the Minnesota primary ballot after the state supreme court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit seeking end his candidacy under a rarely-used constitutional provision that forbids those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.

The Minnesota Supreme Court declined to become the first in history to use Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to prevent someone from running for the presidency. The court dodged the central question of the lawsuit — does Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol disqualify him from the presidency — by ruling that state law allows parties to put whomever they want on the primary ballot.

 

The Trump deranged will still have an opportunity to try and keep him off the general election ballot. The Minnesota Supreme Court made no judgment there, leaving the door open, which we should expect one or more well-funded left-wing groups to pursue. They’ve got the money and the time, but do they have the political capital?

Think of it as a boy in a dress who cried wolf. The Dems have gone all-in for years, throwing everything at the wall, but nothing sticks. Their fourth estate stenographers trumpet every engagement as the big one. This time, we’ve got him. But they never get him, and the current raft of prosecution reveals a trio of corrupt above-the-law prosecutors whose cases are thin partisan gruel.

The Dems made a yuge deal about Trump having unauthorized access to documents he declassified that were in his possession while he still had top-secret clearance (every former president has it). Leaving those facts out won’t survive long-term scrutiny. However, I suspect they hope to keep the will pulled down over voters’ eyes until after November 2024, which is not, contrary to past protestations, election interference.

And there’s the rub. Hate him, love him, suspect he will drive left-Wing turnout leading to a down-ticket wipeout – whatever your concern – if you refuse to stand up and protest how they’ve manipulated the process, you’ve no grounds to complain when they come for someone you do like. And if you don’t stand up, they will.

 

The post If You Thought Trump Would Be off the Primary Ballot in Minnesota, That’s Not Happening appeared first on Granite Grok.

Let me note the date and time … Friday, November 10th, 10 AM. Guess who has NOT condemned yesterday’s “protest” at UNH by some hard-left student group that featured the chant of “from the river to the sea.” The “Leader” of the Democrats (Communists would be more accurate) in the New Hampshire House of Representatives … Matty Wilhelm.

I previously posted about Matty, who considers himself the moral compass of New Hampshire, tweeting about various non-local issues but ignoring the antisemitism IN AMERICA following the Hamas attack on Israel  … New Hampshire House Leader Is Soft On Antisemitism.

 Now, it is no longer NOT a local issue. But just keep pretending that Matty and his ilk are the “loyal opposition,” and we share the same objectives and just differ over how to get there.

 

The post Guess Who Has NOT Condemned UNH’s “From The River To The Sea” appeared first on Granite Grok.

Six years ago, following the incident in which a violent mob of Middlebury students chased author and social scientist Charles Murray off the stage, assaulting and injuring a faculty member in the process, I wrote an article titled “Stop Calling Them Snowflakes.”

The piece referenced the parallels between George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where Napoleon (the dictator pig) “educates” in isolation a litter of puppies before unleashing them as his obedient attack dogs, shouting down or viciously suppressing any opposition, and the students on college campuses of the day.

I concluded, “So, let’s stop referring to these students as ‘snowflakes,’ which implies fragility and a certain amount of insignificance, and recognize them for what they are – the isolated, brainwashed, fiercely loyal, and dangerous attack dogs of an aspiring totalitarian regime.”

Sadly, if things have changed at all since then, it’s only for the worse.

What has become undeniably clear since October 7 and the Hamas attack on innocent civilian Israeli families and concert goers is that we are systematically raising a generation of young adults – at great taxpayer expense no less — who are perfectly willing to cheer on an antisemitic, anti-women’s rights, anti-gay rights, overtly genocidal, internationally recognized terrorist organization that is committing crimes against humanity on par with those of the sickest Nazis – Dr. Josef Mengele comes to mind – and they call it social justice!

When I took an introduction to ethics class in college, as well as, come to think of it, Psychology 101, and in several history and political science classes a question routinely came up: how could millions of otherwise normal German citizens simply go along with a plan to commit the industrialized genocide of every Jew in Europe and, presumably, that accomplished, the world? Answer: many were “educated” and propagandized into believing what they were doing was right and just and received the “social proof,” to steal a term from behavioral economics, from enough respected community leaders and authority figures to believe that this was indeed the case.

Nazis didn’t think of themselves as evil. Far from it. As Hitler proclaimed in Mein Kampf, “by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord [p. 60].” They rather saw themselves as oppressed victims who were standing up as the Social Justice Warriors of their day. Jews (in today’s vernacular maybe it would be called “Jew-supremacy”) for the Nazis was essentially what “white-supremacy,” or the “patriarchy,” or “systemic racism” is for today’s Woke: they represented the powerful economic and cultural institutions and conventions controlled by an oppressor class to victimize and exploit the innocent who, absent that corrupting presence, would thrive in peace. So, they justified a solution to this problem. A Final one. And almost everyone went along because everyone was going along.

Those who disagreed were frightened or brutalized into silence, or worse into complicity in the holocaust that sprung from this cancerous state of mind as it gained widespread and then total political power. Better, after all, to be putting others on the trains than to be put on the train yourself.

How all that happened was what we were never supposed to forget. But we are living and watching an alarmingly similar attitude develop today in America.

Our schools, through Critical Race Theory or DEI or Woke – whatever you want to call it – are indoctrinating young people into a dangerously tribalist, grievance dominated world view every bit as toxic as Aryan versus Jew in the 1930s. Be it anti-racist versus racist, white (and white-adjacent) versus BIPOC, or oppressor class versus marginalized class, the adults today are forcing the kids into camps and to choose sides and pick fights in a culture war. This is a twisted recipe for widespread mutual animosity if not outright group on group hatred. It’s the systematic “othering” of those superficially different from you.

Add to this dynamic a rewards structure that incentivizes students to exhibit the greatest amount of intolerance for the ostensibly intolerable “other”, and you can see why we have an increasing intensity toward theatrical and even violent reactions to every perceived offense. It’s what leads the so-assumed best and brightest of the upcoming generation to chant, “F— the Jews,” throughout the quads of our most elite universities, and parrot slogans for genocide with an enthusiasm that would make Joseph Goebbels proud. But this is how our schools, television, news media, and politicians have trained these young people to think and act. It’s not good!

If there is any silver lining to the war between Israel and Hamas, it is that the horrific reaction by these students has awakened (reWoke? unWoke?) at least some on the Left to the youthful monster that they have helped to create. Some are taking steps to reverse the damage by stopping their funding of universities, calling for the removal of teachers and administrators who spew this bile, and blackballing students who march for genocide from future employment.

Vermont’s leaders and parents and education taxpayers need to speak up as well. All of us do if we are to reverse this dangerous trend in education that starts in grade school. It was therefore extremely disheartening to read that amidst this turmoil the Essex-Westford School District released a policy stating, “This nation would not have evolved as it has without the genocide of the indigenous people, nor would the economic infrastructure exist as it does without the enslavement of native African people and their descendants. In an effort to recognize and undo the harm of centuries of systemic inequities and oppression, we begin with this lens and framework.”

This “lens and framework” is the same one that feeds the kind of hatred and justifies violence on the scale of flying in on paragliders and mowing down hundreds of innocent people peacefully dancing in a field because that’s what so-called decolonization looks like.

By warping children’s perceptions of their world by filtering it through this dark and dystopian “lens and framework” we are not really undoing any harm committed in the past, but we are very much sowing the seeds of harms that will be committed in our future, and in many places, our present.

So, let’s get back to teaching kids through a “lens and framework” that we are all created equal, and should be treated so under the law. That each of us has inalienable rights, including those to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. We all have and should respect each other’s rights to free speech, religion, and association. This country, the United States, was founded upon these principles at a time in history when none of them was “self-evident.” That they are today is testimony to how far we have come in living up to those principles, even if we don’t always do so perfectly.

The exceptional ideas that gave birth to this nation are what have attracted people of all races, religions and cultures and allowed us live side by side not just in peace, but to build together the most prosperous and successful nation ever in the history of humanity. It’s an incredibly optimistic story! A bumpy road at times, for sure, but there is much more to be proud of than ashamed. So be proud. Learn from our history and look forward to doing your part to make the next chapter of our nation “more perfect” than the last.

 

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years of service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank. He is also a regular contributor to VermontGrok.

The post The Hamas/Israeli Conflict Exposed a Horrible Flaw In How We’re Educating Our Own Kids appeared first on Granite Grok.

The parallel media has been reporting on several instances where adopters of the all-electric future appear to have swallowed a red pill. Net Zero is not so much an emissions goal as a result for investors, so they are talking their green elsewhere.

 

Just as the quarterly reporting season revealed crippling losses for wind power and EV’s, so it is with Solar energy.

The general US S&P shares index gained 15% this year but The Invesco Solar ETF (Fund) which invests in solar energy stocks around the world — fell by a dire 40%. Even the US “Inflation Reduction Act” couldn’t save the solar sector. As finances tighten with rising interest rates, apparently solar panel orders are among the first to be cancelled.

This collapse is despite the ongoing support of tax dollars from government subsidies, price support, and new project funding: the government’s gold-digging, green-energy trophy wife. At first, she was the darling of Net Zero, but she has maxed out the credit cards and overextended her spending. All while “hubby” was dumping trillions into foreign wars.

The American economy isn’t the only one in the world, but when it struggles, the world feels it and the Bidenistas have been waterboarding Uncle Sam, and it has wide-ranging side effects.

 

Some of the worst performers in the whole US share market are solar shares, with SolarEdge and Enphase losing 70% each this year.  A few weeks ago, the CEO of SolarEdge said revenues this quarter were about half of what was expected. He blamed  “unexpected cancellations” from European distributors. But US demand was down too. Indeed, the bad news started in California, the largest market in the US, when the government slashed home solar  “net metering” payments in April by about 75%. Suddenly, it was going to take 10 years to pay off the panels. Solar panels were a luxury item.

 

Inflation is beating the crap out of everyone. Overextended governments are looking for revenue to fill fiscal potholes. Cutting off the trophy wife is easier than making hard decisions about streamlining government. Austerity that is not limited to marketplace meddling. When the economic rubber hits the road, those people fretting about the imagined harms of a government shutdown will be the first to shut down anything and everything to keep their glorious government funded.

At the same time, Middle America’s misguided belief that humans are responsible for climate change is having a collapse of its own.

 

According to the results of new survey, there’s been a sizeable shift in just the last five years in the percentage of Americans who believe humans are the primary driver of climate change as opposed to natural changes in the environment.

Though three-quarters of Americans believe climate change is happening, only 49% say it’s mostly or entirely precipitated by human activity — an 11% drop since 2018.

Digging into the demographics, the falloff was most pronounced among Democrats and independents. In 2018, 72% of Democrats said climate change is mostly or entirely a result of human activities; in 2023, that figure fell to 60%. For independents, the decline was even steeper: from 61% in 2018 to 42% in 2023.

Creeping doubt about humans’ impact on climate could be affecting the choices people are making, or not making, to reduce their carbon footprint.

 

The shift is not huge, but it is meaningful, driven by a handful of crap sandwiches. To get there from here, they will have to sacrifice. They will have infrastructure in their backyard. The Green Dream/nightmare requires tens of thousands of acres of “infrastructure” to create intermittent power that needs more infrastructure to get to you.

And you’ll have to pay for it. Or, you can harden the grid and support natural gas, cleaner coal, oil, hydro, and nuclear -almost none of which you will pay and whose generation will save you money compared to so-called green alternatives. A fact that isn’t presumed to have penetrated the collective consciousness but could.

Investors are skittish, EV makers are pausing expansions, and developers are backing out of projects. As the rats jump ship, Mr. Mrs. and Miss America must step up to ensure that the politicians don’t decide to spend even more of your money on a scheme no one else wants. That happens in the voting booth and in numbers sufficient to prevent the vote-by-mail fraudsters from stuffing the ballot box.

 

 

 

The post As EV Makers Discover There is No There There Solar Stocks are Crashing appeared first on Granite Grok.

It is a distinct honor to recognize my dear friend, a West Point graduate who received a Silver Star for Gallantry and heroism in Action, a Purple Heart for his wounds, an Air Medal, and a Combat Infantryman’s Badge, the Honorable Captain  Allen Clark.

“There are a host of heroes to whom this country owes a debt it can never repay. Allen Clark lost both his legs while serving his country in Vietnam. When he came home, his body was broken, but his spirit never faltered. He went back to school. He earned his master’s degree in business administration. He served his state in a high government post and is now a successful businessman. He’s an inspiration to all who know him.” – President Ronald Reagan.

His service as a Special Forces officer in the heart of Vietnam marked the beginning of an intense transformation. Allen served as a U.S. Army Special Forces captain in Vietnam when he was wounded. He lost both his legs to a mortar shell. On his encampment, he exhibited incredible bravery, even as he endured severe injuries and the loss of friends and fellow officers. His life was saved by the heroic actions of a young medic, and from that moment on, Allen’s path took an unexpected turn.

Allen authored several books, an autobiography, Wounded Soldier, Healing Warrior, “Foreword by Ross Perot. Valor in Vietnam, “Foreword by LTG Dave Palmer, former Superintendent U.S. Military Academy at West Point.” Soldiers, Blood and Bloodied Money Wars, and the Ruling Elites, Foreword by LTC Allen West. Chronicles of Honor, Courage, and Sacrifice (http://www.valorinvietnam.com, (http://www.woundedsoldierhealingwarrior.com)

“Allen’s passionate commitment to public service and to helping veterans began with an appointment in 1979 as the Special Assistant for Administration to Texas Governor William P. Clements, Jr.  In 1981, Allen was President Ronald Reagan’s selection to be Deputy Administrator for the Veterans Administration (now the Department of Veterans Affairs).  However, he chose to remain in Texas, where in 1982, he received the Texas Republican Party’s nomination to run for State Treasurer in a race that former Texas State Governor Ann Richards won.  In 1989, he was nominated by President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary for Veterans Liaison and Program Coordination at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.  In 1991, he received his second VA confirmation as Director of the National Cemetery System. He served until the end of the President George H. W. Bush administration.”

In a distant time and a distant land, a war was fought that forever altered the course of many lives. Allen’s story, both then and now, is about duty, honor, integrity, and love of country. It is also a story of valor, endurance, and faith. Allen has faced immense challenges and overcome them with unwavering determination, and his journey from wounded soldier to healing warrior is nothing short of inspiring.  Allen often speaks of his profound faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Multiple surgeries and months of physical and psychological therapy followed, and he found himself grappling with the profound emotional depths of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. But he didn’t give up. He persevered through these challenging times, seeking healing and recovery with unyielding resolve.

His journey from a healthy, self-assured officer to a man with a broken body is a testament to his strength and resilience. He faced worries about whether he would ever walk again and confronted the consequences of the choices he made to serve his country in Vietnam.

Despite the adversity Allen faced, he discovered a deeper well of strength and courage within himself, and he found a new purpose in life. He achieved success in both the realms of public service and business, earning the admiration and respect of internationally respected political, business, and journalistic leaders.

Allen founded his lay ministry Combat Faith, where he visited Warrior Transition Battalions at all the major Army bases. He shares his healing story and mentors individual veterans and active military members. His own healing process is a testament to his enduring commitment to those who serve. Allen’s ministry offers hope and guidance to those struggling with the scars of war, giving them the tools to find peace and personal victory.

 

Allen is a devout Christian and a staunch follower of Lord Jesus Christ. Allen often speaks about the importance of traditional values in America, which resonates with many Americans who value these principles as essential to the nation’s moral fabric.

Allen shares his insights through his books, offering guidance and support to others who face extraordinary life challenges. Through his experience, he has developed a unique perspective on addressing unhealed hurts, unmet needs, and unresolved issues. His approach is a beacon of hope for those who carry the weight of past traumas and seek a path toward healing.

His book, “Wounded Soldier, Healing Warrior,” is a tribute to his remarkable journey, inspiring and guiding others on their recovery paths. Allen’s public speaking and sharing his story of victory over adversity has touched the hearts of countless audiences.

Allen’s dedication to helping veterans and his unwavering support for those who have served their country is truly commendable. His beautiful wife, Linda, is a living example of the resilience of the human spirit and the ability to overcome even the most challenging obstacles.

While we honor him, let us thank him for his service, sacrifices, and commitment to making his beloved America and the world a better place for all. He is a hero in every sense of the word, and his legacy will continue to inspire future generations. I am honored to call him my friend.

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The term “mental illness” has gained near-ubiquitous status in our daily lives.  Once a rarity among friends and relatives today it seems those without a mental illness are in the minority.  Among the flagship mental illnesses are depression, ADD/ADHD, and gender dysphoria.

The field of psychology, considered a soft science, has sought to validate itself among the sciences with its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).  The DSM is a rather weighty tome filled with categorical entries for virtually every mental illness one can think of, which may be part of its problem.

A 2020 presentation given by Dr. James Davies (PhD), Co-Founder of the Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry, details the history of the DSM while exposing its un-scientific structure and many financial entanglements of its contributors.  His concern rose among the many similarly disturbed voices within the practices of psychology and psychiatry who saw their disciplines being compromised by bad medicine.  Namely, Dr. Davies and his colleagues noticed that their understanding of mental illness felt more like an illusion rather than a proper diagnosis, and much of the preferred treatments rested on weak evidence, poor causal links, and a heavy reliance on pharmaceuticals.

The history of systematic mental illness diagnoses goes back to the 1800s.  In 1844, the  Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane was formed.  In 1860, Florence Nightingale made a proposal for an international practice of systematically gathering statistics per medical diagnoses and care.  By 1872, the American Medical Association published its first Nomenclature of Diseases with a section devoted to Disorders of the Intellect, though its use was short-lived.  By World War 2, the influence of the American military was felt.  Much of the use of psychological terminology and diagnoses was run through the office of the Surgeon General, and military psychiatrists worked in coordination with Hospitals to develop Medical 203, the new standard of categorization.  In 1948, the World Health Organization intervened by taking over the International List of Causes of Death (ILCD) and renamed it the International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD).  The APA was then commissioned to develop a US-based manual that birthed the first DSM in 1952.

The 1960s saw the rise of social change agents impacting the veracity of one particular disorder – homosexuality.  Prior to the research of Evelyn Hooker, it was deemed a type of “sociopathic personality disturbance”.  Based on the findings of her lone study where she compared the reported mental well-adjusted nature of homosexual to heterosexual men were essentially the same, homosexuality was down-graded to “sexual orientation disturbance.”  However, this was not the result of etiological discovery, but the combination of Hooker and Alfred Kinsey’s highly controversial work and pressure from activists gathered at the site of the 1974 DSM convention in San Francisco.  As the panel discussed the matter, activists shouted down and ridiculed those who deemed it a mental disorder.  Rather than a matter of scientific discovery and analysis, the change was the result of a paucity of medical research combined with social pressures from unqualified activists.  Dr. Davies speech notes this pattern of modification continues to this day; only now the influence over psychiatric medicine include the interests of large-scale pharmaceutical interests.

Seeking to understand the development of today’s DSM, Davies reached out to the chair of the DSM-III task force, Robert Spitzer.  Spitzer spent most of his time in practice at Columbia University in New York.  Now living in Princeton, NJ, he agreed to meet with Davies to enlighten him about his involvement in the advancement of the DSM.  Among his admissions were the criteria for determining changes to psychiatric categories that simply arrived as the result of a democratic vote.  This is not science, points out Davies.  Among the anecdotes he learns, those tasked with determining appropriate nomenclature and symptoms were hand-selected professionals who sat in meetings and debated the merits until they reached consensus.  The similarity to the terminology used by Dr. Anthony Fauci during the COVID pandemic, where he likened himself to “the science,” with science also being identified via consensus rather than falsifiable evidentiary results that can be replicated by other scientists helps the laity see the “science” of psychology could easily go off the rails of the crazy train otherwise known as pseudo-science.

Like we’ve learned with Fauci and Big Pharma, thanks to internal whistle-blowers and external critics like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., there are strange bedfellows who were never intended to share the same room.  The integrity of science, as well as commerce, is upheld by non-interested third-party agencies intended to give accountability for the purpose of best practices and best outcomes.  Davies discovered this same type of medical incest, which sullies the good work of actual medical science.  In one case, he notes Astra-Zeneca used a questionable DSM condition called “Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder” to release a drug targeting women who presented as such.  Claiming a new medication would help treat it the company made billions in sales to women whom Davies states were suffering from completely normal female hormonal issues and not a disorder.  It turns out the new medication wasn’t new at all but was simply re-named re-packaged Prozac.  This was also not a one-off occurrence.

As I researched the history of the DSM, I came across this entry from Wikipedia (equally questionable as a scientific source, however, this illustrates the point):

“Obscuring the Root Causes of Psychological Distress

The role of the DSM-5 in protecting the interests of wealthy and politically powerful owners of the means of production in the United States has been criticized as well.[113] Placing the blame for predictable and common psychological distress caused by the deleterious effects of economic inequality in the United States on individuals by attributing it to mental pathology has been criticized as hindering change of the root causes of the distress.[113] “

The citation [113]?  Zeira A (February 2022). “Mental Health Challenges Related to Neoliberal Capitalism in the United States.” Community Mental Health Journal. 58

UNSPECIFIED – CIRCA 1865: Karl Marx (1818-1883), philosopher and German politician. (Photo by Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images)

This entry uses the language of Karl Marx to criticize the entire field of American psychiatric medicine. It also raises the question – who is behind the Community Mental Health Journal and should they be included among those worth citing?  One is reminded of the Greivance Studies Affair exposing the rise of quasi-academic journals.  Perhaps the most egregious was feminist studies journal Afilia: Journal of Women and Social Work acceptance of a re-write of the thirteenth chapter of Hitler’s Mein Kampf replacing “Jews” with “men”.

Curiously, the author of Political Ponerology noted Karl Marx exhibited “schizoidal personality disorder” as he and his fellow students of psychology observed the machinations and abuses of communism among their populace.  People with schizoid personality disorder exhibit a marked lack of emotion, lack of motivation, and almost no desire to form relationships with others. In other words, the entry is the pot calling the kettle black by virtue of the inmates taking over the asylum, if you’ll allow the mixed metaphors.  Where is this headed? 

Just this week we saw the release of the Covington school shooter’s manifesto.  In it we see their notes riddled with vitriol using the language of woke ideology (re: cultural Marxism), which explains her desire to kill “crackers” and children, even praying God would bless her slaughter to achieve a high body count. 

How does this relate to the DSM?

The DSM-V was the top-selling book on Amazon upon its release.  It currently holds the top five spots in Amazon’s psychiatric category.  It also generates most of the operational costs of the American Psychiatric Association, around six million dollars each year.  When Davies asked to speak with the contributors to DSM-V, he was denied as they were all forced to sign confidentiality agreements.  This lack of transparency for such a significant influencer of America’s mental health is alarming. 

 Rather than hold itself together with scientific rigor, it has indeed been captured by those seeking to control the means of production, in this case, the production of sound mental health criteria, and in the process, they are normalizing pseudo-science and, by proxy, mental illness. 

Davies also noted Autism has now been redefined to limit the spectrum in the DSM-V; it’s simply no longer a diagnosis for many who may, in fact, have it.  Odd that the industry that has been successfully sued for causing autism via vaccines also has its financial tentacles entwined in this quasi-medical manual and enjoys the benefit of this disappearing act. 

Furthermore, each DSM grows in the number of mental illnesses and sub-categories it lists.  Thus, if this is the standard, it explains in part why we hear of our mental health crises, as it is both real and manufactured. 

Dr. Davies believes we need to scrap the DSM and start over.  As someone who has several family, friends, and clients who struggle with mental illness, I couldn’t agree more. 

 

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