Wednesday • November 27 • 2024
Vol.XVI • No.XLVIII
Manchester, N.H.
Do you believe in miracles? How I became a library trustee was a modern-day miracle in my town of Raymond NH. It all started when a homeschool-dad named Mike Drago who is now a state representative spoke to me about the children’s section of our library.
Since I used our town library as a homeschool Mom for many years, I was interested in checking things out. My kids were older, and I hadn’t been there in a while. New folks were in positions that other people in town had been in for many years and had since retired.
I was glad to meet the new librarians and the director. About a year ago, I started asking some questions. I started going to every trustee meeting, which was being held mostly on Thursdays at 3:30 p.m. The times and places seemed to vary. Evidently, no other citizens had been to these meetings for quite a while.
Through this process, I and some other parents and adults were instrumental in making sure the board followed the rules, like making sure the meetings were posted properly and making sure the minutes and agendas were publicly posted. We also were also instrumental in getting the meetings videotaped and added to our town cable station. This helped to ensure that other patrons and taxpayers had better access to information and discussions with the library trustee board and director.
Several citizens came to meetings and asked lots of questions about the current policies. Mostly the adults were concerned that the books contained in the children’s room were free of adult topics and content not suitable for children like sex and gender identity. Last March, we were able to vote on Article 42, which states:
We also voted in a conservative trustee who beat out an incumbent who had held the seat for 20 years. However, she had to resign soon after due to health problems, and this left an open seat. The RSA states that the board of selectmen will step in and appoint a trustee in this situation until the next election.
In the midst of all of this, our town was going through some serious struggles with our select board. We had a 3-2 battle going on. I knew I would lose the vote unless there were a miracle. I went to several selectman meetings from April to June to ask for their vote as trustee. Many citizens wrote letters to the board on my behalf.
During this time, 2 of the 3 selectmen that I knew would vote against me resigned their posts, and the night the vote was taken for trustee, I won 2-1 to be appointed. This was truly a modern-day miracle!
To some people, this may be trivial, I mean, who really goes to the library anyway? Well, to me, this is bigger than the situation itself. It proves to me that when you do something, it matters. When you try, you can make a difference. When you want to do something positive, you can see things happen that you didn’t expect… for the better.
Taking a spot in town government is the way that we can make a difference. My goal is not to focus on the negative things that we don’t want but to focus on the vast amount of positive things that we should be doing. We need better phonics books in the libraries. We need to make reading a priority, not social agendas at the library! We need to make reading and learning attractive and stop using the “free” (taxpayer-funded) resources at the library as a conduit for false ideas that there are more than two genders and other such nonsense.
Children should be excited to live, grow, and learn. There is so much to learn and so many interesting topics. They don’t need to be exposed to sexual Ideas and social agendas that adults want to push on them while they are innocent and impressionable. Make the libraries safe again. Get involved where you can to protect the children and help them learn new and exciting things.
This article does not cover all the questions we asked and debates we spent hours and hours in. This is the short of it. Unfortunately, the conservatives have not been paying attention, and the “weeds” have grown, and if we want to see the “weeds” cut down and good fruit growing, we will have to step in and do something. Otherwise, we will keep paying for the very thing we don’t want. Our kids, meaning our own flesh and blood, as well as the children who will be our future. If we don’t do anything, we have no business complaining. Please get involved. Don’t just keep watching and cringing. If you are reading this, you need to step up. Look around, no one else is doing it. It’s your time.
The post How I Became a Conservative Library Trustee appeared first on Granite Grok.
This past week’s discussion in the Renewable Energy Standard Working Group, charged with drafting legislation to be considered by the General Assembly during the 2024 legislative session, highlighted some serious problems with Vermont’s energy policies, both philosophical and practical.
At its core, “renewable” energy in our state is a scam designed to enrich politically connected special interests.
In the first of several revealing topics of conversation within the group, Chris Pearson, a former senator from Burlington now works for the Sierra Club, went into detail about how the sale/trading of renewable energy credits (RECs) – basically an indulgences scheme that allows carbon emitters to pay to swap their “dirty” energy for someone else’ “clean” energy — is really just, to use his term, a “shell game” allowing certain actors both public and private to mislead the public.
“Vermonters will celebrate, ‘Hey, our grid is 100% renewable!’” said Pearson, “[But] as long as we maintain RECs this is a total fiction… Vermonters would be surprised to hear both the headline that our grid is 100% renewable and we’re burning fossil fuels into Vermont because it turns out on a spreadsheet somewhere we’re buying renewable attributes from somewhere else so we can keep the fossil fuels going to supplement our power. That is weird! That is strange and it lacks integrity….”
“At some point,” Pearson concluded, “we’ve got to end this fiction…. Just generally, I think we do ourselves and this debate a great disservice if we don’t at least try to acknowledge the shell game that goes on when we allow RECs.”
The argument in favor of the REC system is that it can be manipulated in such a way as to lower the electric bills for customers in, for example, Burlington by some estimates as much as 25%. These accounting gimmicks accomplish nothing from a genuine environmental standpoint, but it does provide cover to politicians, activists, and suppliers who want to appear to the public as if they’re actually doing something “green” without making their constituents or customers actually pay the price.
While Pearson’s protestations against RECs can be taken as a true believer’s sincere desire for honest accounting, the policy of getting rid of RECs has another motivating repercussion. If Vermont power suppliers are prohibited from buying RECs from other states, it will force them to purchase more – and require others to build more – renewable energy locally. And this is what a lot of big money donors from the Vermont renewable energy business sector are really after – laws that force Vermonters to buy more and more of their products despite a near total lack of actual demand for them.
To this point, Ken Nolan, General Manager of Vermont Public Power Supply Authority (VPPSA), described how the Renewable Energy Standard (“REZ”) creates this corrupt false market based on special interest politics and crony corporatism at the expense of consumers.
“VPPSA only buys power that has Vermont Tier 1 RECs attached to it. Before the REZ, we would buy what we call system power. It could be natural gas, oil, we didn’t care. Now that the REZ is in place, that contract has to say coming with Vermont Tier 1 RECs. Has to say it is supplying what we want for generation types and locations…. The policy decisions and the conversations that are happening are very directly pushing utilities to make certain decisions and avoid others…. The question is, who do we want to win? It’s what it comes back to. When you put solar or put a particular generation type that drives us to do business with the people who own those companies and pushes us away from folks who don’t own them.”
What Nolan is describing here – ie driving business to “the people who own those companies” — is the blatant pay-to-play political crony corruption that underlies our energy policy at the expense of Vermont citizens.
First of all, the fact that the question, “who do we want to win,” is even being asked by a group that is writing legislation should be a major red flag. It’s not government’s role to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. Those decisions belong to We the People.
But the question is being asked here and it does have an answer. Winners: wind and solar developers who are major donors to the Democrat and Progressive parties and their candidates. Losers: those who may supply better, cheaper, more reliable electricity but don’t support those politicians. Also losers: Vermonters who buy electricity.
The policy decisions and the conversations Nolan refers to are happening in this very committee, and are being driven by people with clear financial conflicts of interest and connections to “the people who own those companies”, as described in detail in my previous article, Conflicts of Interest in the Renewable Standards Working Group.
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.
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As of the time that I am writing this (Columbus Day, Monday, October 9, 10:00 AM), the “President” of the United States still has said NOTHING about the attack by Hamas on Israel.
I am talking about the real President, the de-facto President, the man behind the scenes pulling the puppet strings of the imposter/figurehead Joe Biden. I am talking about Barack Obama.
I think that Obama thinks that, in the long run, the attack by Hamas is a good thing. I can imagine him telling his coterie that the attack will get Israel off its “high horse” and force them to make, in his view, the necessary concessions for peace. Concessions that will inevitably lead to the destruction of Israel.
Indeed, I think that Obama thinks that the carnage is inconsequential not only in the … that is, his … grand scheme of things, but also in terms of Israel and Palestinians. That is, he believes that even after the Hamas attack, Israel has done worse to those Palestinians than the terrorism of Hamas, the PLO, and Hezbollah has to Israel.
I think that Americans, even Americans who voted against Obama, cannot get their heads around what Obama really is. He is a man who hated and still hates … yes, hates … America. And was and remains committed to “transforming” America into a fully socialist country and making up for all the wrong that he believes America has done both internally and externally.
The post The President’s Silence On Hamas Is Deafening appeared first on Granite Grok.
Some will find the following clip beneath contempt, but most of those people are impossible to please when it comes to whatever comes out of this man’s mouth.
You could say you’ve heard worse from better, and that may or may not be true, but taken in context, the man is not wrong. The US abandoned billions of dollars in equipment in Afghanistan, knowing it would end up in the hands of China, Iran, and anyone else who wanted it. Talk about a national security threat.
Equipment and munitions are rumored to be in the hands of Hamas fighters attacking Israel. Another win for Biden. He hates Israel and loves the Mullahs and their Islamic regime (who hate Israel), resulting in dead women and children.
Biden even gave the Mullahs in Iran 6 billion to help them buy some US hardware from the Taliban to attack Israel. We are funding two bird killers with one large taxpayer-backed stone if you like.
Which gets us to this.
Note: there is a brief dead spot in the middle of the audio; nothing is lost in translation.
Language Warning
Trump RE: Equipment left to Taliban
“Milley said it’d be cheaper to leave all of our equipment behind in Afghanistan, instead of flying it back. That’s when I knew he was a fucking idiot!” pic.twitter.com/gZUPQ3lbhv
— ProudArmyBrat (@leslibless) October 8, 2023
He’s not wrong.
The post Trump: “That’s When I Knew He Was a F*cking Idiot!” appeared first on Granite Grok.
It has been thirty years since that October 1993 week in Somalia when Mike Durant saw what hell looked like. A Black Hawk helicopter pilot, Durant, was shot down during the battle for Mogadishu. All the members of his crew were dead.
A rescue team moved him away from the aircraft and placed him next to a wall. But now they, too, were all dead. Durant had a broken leg, a broken back and was out of ammunition when a horde of Somalis descended upon him, intent on beating him to death. Already suffering a bullet wound, Durant helplessly endured the blows. A Somali fighter smashed Durant’s face and broke Mike’s nose and eye socket with what Mike first thought was a club. Then, to his horror, Durant realized he was being beaten to death with the severed arm of one of his comrades. He knew his death was imminent, and then he heard a gunshot.
BERLIN BOYFifty years ago, Mike Durant boarded a ski bus in Berlin to head north on Route 16 and then west on Route 26 with dozens of other youngsters to ski at the Wilderness Ski Area in Dixville Notch.
“I loved skiing,” Durant recalled to me over the telephone. “I loved the snow. Like so many other North Country boys, I also loved getting out into the woods and hunting. And yes, I also played hockey.”
That Durant played hockey was no surprise, Berlin then being “Hockey-Town USA.”
As that ski bus headed for the slopes, Durant’s friends in adjacent seats surely had no inkling that in 1993 their buddy’s face would be the first one featured simultaneously on the covers of TIME, NEWSWEEK, and U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT. That bruised and bloodied face became the face of an American military encounter that would change the country and the world—the first battle with Al Qaeda.
AMERICAN HOSTAGEThe gunshot was meant to quiet, not to kill. A Somali leader with some authority felt that Durant had more value as a hostage/prisoner than as a corpse. Dirt was thrown into Durant’s face, and a rag was stuffed down his throat. His agony became excruciating when his captors kicked his broken bones, and then he realized was “being carried aloft on the thundering wave of a mosh pit from hell.”
It was October 3, and Durant would face 11 days of agonizing captivity as followers of Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed stared down the United States. They used Durant as a pawn so tribal fighters could seek concessions from an American superpower caught up in an unexpectedly brutal urban battleground. Durant was confined to a small room to be interrogated and indoctrinated by select Somalis who knew some English. His wounds were not treated, but he was given water and allowed to live as negotiations continued between Somalis and Americans.
Though the Americans did not know Durant’s location and could not rescue him, they knew he was alive. Helicopters flew over Mogadishu with loudspeakers blaring: “Mike Durant! We will not leave without you!”
The messages gave Durant hope, but he knew he was dying from his wounds and was running out of time.
“If you guys are preparing a rescue mission, you’d better hurry,” Durant thought. “Or else you’ll be rescuing a corpse.”
The pain worsened by the hour as Durant suffered in the brutal African heat. When he could, he’d drift off into a semi-sleep and dream of skiing at Wilderness and of white Christmases in New Hampshire—and then awaken to his agonizing reality.
It never snows in Mogadishu.
DREAMS OF FLYINGDurant’s father was a sergeant in the N.H. National Guard and Mike always respected the military. After a pilot named Joe Brigham took Durant for a flight over Mt. Washington, Mike dreamed of becoming an army pilot. He enlisted after graduating from Berlin High School in 1979. He survived basic training and follow-on schools and eventually flight school. After earning his wings he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and soon qualified for The United States Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), also known as the Night Stalkers. Durant’s career took him to Korea, Panama, and the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert Storm.
During that 1991 conflict, Durant flew missions deep into Iraq, looking for SCUD missiles, eventually finding a site and firing it up. He also experienced the pain of losing comrades.
“Flying in combat is an adventure,” recalled Durant. “But when you lose people, it brings you back to reality, and you remember how so many pay the ultimate price in war.”
SURVIVAL
Durant’s best-selling 2003 book “In the Company of Heroes” provided material for this piece. It chronicled his Somali ordeal.
“October 9, 1993. On my seventh day as a prisoner of war, I found religion …. Literally …”
Durant’s captors allowed a “Care Package” to be delivered to him, and among its items was a Bible. Not only did Durant draw inspiration from certain passages, but he wrote coded notes in special places, thinking that his captors would let him keep the Holy Book after his release and the notes might prove invaluable in piecing things together later on.
Negotiations continued while Durant lay a prisoner, and American officials conveyed to Aideed’s people that very, very, very bad things would happen to all of them if Durant didn’t survive. Finally, on October 14, with the help of the International Red Cross, the Granite Stater and his Bible were placed on a stretcher and transported to an exchange point where he was reunited with his countrymen.
Mike Durant had escaped from hell.
A HUMANITARIAN MISSIONAmerican involvement in Somalia came about during the last days of the Bush 41 Administration in December of 1992. The country had descended into lawless chaos, which, combined with famine, meant that tens of thousands were dying of starvation. Because competing warlords prevented food and humanitarian assistance from getting to the starving people, American military forces embarked upon Operation Restore Hope to secure food distribution points and routes. The mission evolved during 1993, as forces from the U.S. and elsewhere were inevitably drawn into the internecine fighting. The Clinton administration significantly increased the American military presence in Somalia, and eventually, the Americans were seen as opponents to Aideed, the most prominent warlord. Food distribution was threatened, and both sides took casualties. Eventually, a major mission was planned for October 3 to capture Aideed and his top lieutenants. While many of the targeted individuals were indeed captured, the mission was disrupted when a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade. Later, Durant’s helicopter was also shot down. The battle resulted in 18 American deaths, with 80 wounded. Estimates of Somali casualties range from 1,500 to 2,000.
BACK TO AMERICAGiven the severity of his wounds and injuries, Durant’s rehabilitation took a long time, but he still dreamed of flying again. He was told that the prospect of rejoining the Night Stalkers in a flight status was doubtful, but he persevered. In 1995 he ran the Marine Corps Marathon to prove his fitness, and eventually, he again flew Black Hawks.
In 2001, Durant retired from the Army and married Lisa DesRoches, the widow of a helicopter pilot who was killed on a training mission. The two worked together to raise six children. They moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where Mike ran his own company, Pinnacle Solutions, an engineering and training services business that developed flight simulators and the like. Durant received the “2013 Vetrepreneur Award” for his company’s efforts on behalf of veterans. Pinnacle Solutions grew steadily and, at one time, employed almost 100 people.
During the phone conversation, Durant explained that the events from October 1993 remain with him. He spoke candidly about American policies and policymakers, from the Somalian conflict to the Afghanistan War.
“Looking back, I wish that the Clinton administration would have been more responsive to the requests they received from the leaders on the ground in Somalia,” said Durant. “Three things in particular would have made us more successful. An aircraft carrier would have been a huge plus. As it was, we were sleeping 50 yards from the bad guys on the ground. Requested AC-130 gunships would have come in handy on Oct. 3 and 4. And even General Powell requested we have tanks and armored vehicles, which were never delivered—which is why we suffered so many casualties.”
Secretary of Defense Les Aspin took the fall. He resigned in December of 1993 and died in 1995.
“I met Secretary Aspin at a memorial ceremony at Fort Bragg,” said Durant. “He could see the consequences of his decision-making on the faces of the families there. I think it contributed to his death.”
Meeting the families of Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart was especially poignant for Durant. The two soldiers were Delta Force operators who jumped from a helicopter to try to protect Durant and the crash site. Both were killed, and each received the Congressional Medal of Honor.
“When I first saw Gary and Randy, I thought I’d been saved,” recalled Durant. It was the greatest feeling. Then I realized it was only those two, against hundreds of Somalis. They never had a chance.”
Durant treasures a letter he received from Randy’s widow, Stephanie, which thanked him for giving Randy’s death a purpose. “I can look at you and see that his efforts were not in vain … Because of your bravery and refusal to be captured, I can sleep at night.”
Durant likens the Somali experience to the Vietnam experience in that American forces were hamstrung by politics. He added that he’d been asked repeatedly about the 2012 Benghazi fiasco, where four Americans died in Libya.
“Benghazi was like Somalia in that our people didn’t get the support they deserved, and they paid for it with their lives.”
Naturally, Durant watched Ridley Scott’s movie “Black Hawk Down.” Actor Ron Eldard played Durant in the movie.
“Ron seemed like a good guy,” recalled Durant, who met many cast members. “Although he really didn’t look, talk, or act like me. They mostly seemed like good guys, although Jeremy Piven was an ass.”
Piven played Cliff Wolcott, the pilot of the first Black Hawk shot down.
TODAYToday, Mike and Lisa Durant live in Madison, Alabama. In 2022, he was a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama. After taking an early lead in the GOP primary competition, he eventually finished third.
The Durants’ kids are now grown up. The youngest, Michael, was an ice hockey player.
In Alabama?
“Yep,” said Durant. “We have ice in Alabama. And Michael was on a travel team, decisively engaged in ice hockey operations. The problem was that the trips could be long ones. Like 7 ½ hour drives to Columbus, Ohio.”
Durant often thinks of New Hampshire and savors his visits “home.”
“I was always excited to see the Red Sox in the World Series,” said Durant. “Of course. But it broke my heart when Wilderness Ski Area closed.”
Durant occasionally returned to the Granite State to play in the Concord Black Ice Pond Hockey Tournament at White’s Park.
How did he do?
“Well, I’m proud to say that one year my team was the ‘Over-40 B-Division’ champs,” said Durant.
You can take the man out of Hockey Town, but you can’t take Hockey Town out of the man!
The post New Hampshire’s Michael Durant and the 30th Anniversary of “Black Hawk Down” appeared first on Granite Grok.
We have the results of our poll, and they are this. It is not a compelling point of interest. However, among those who did check in and voiced their preference, Donald Trump had a slight lead over Jim Jordan (whom Trump endorsed).
Trump corraled 44.83% of the vote, followed by Jordan with 34.48%. Fewer than 30 readers cast a vote.
[Original published 7 Oct 2023]
Shortly after Kevin McCarthy had to hand over the gavel, Troy Nehls, a Republican from Texas, nominated Donald Trump as Speaker of the US House of Representatives. I didn’t think Trump would want the job or could get it.
But Trump teased us with the prospect before he endorsed Jim Jordan for the job. I’m sure it was all in good fun, by which I mean something to make the Libs snap like twigs for the next 24-48 hours while the Demedia ranted about the prospect.
I’m not sure any of that happened, but no matter what you think about The Donald, he knows how to tweak the producers at MSNC and CNN. I can see him looking at his phone, turning to whoever happens to be in the room, an almost child-like joy in his eyes, as he says, “Watch this.”
I’m not advocating Trump for Speaker, and he’s not asking anyone to make him Speaker. He’s got eyes for another trip around the Oval Office. But we’re not afraid to present a position for debate to see what shakes out. It doesn’t have to be ours; it just has to be and be honest. Trump as Speaker would be so much fun to watch.
I’ve included announced and potential names for the gig. Not all of them will run, but for whom would you vote if they did? Feel free to elaborate in the comments, including adding your suggestions below.
The Poll ends Sunday at midnight.
Who Would You Choose for Speaker of the US House?
The post Poll: Trump for Speaker of the US House … ? [Results] appeared first on Granite Grok.
Israel is thought to have the most sophisticated systems in the world for protecting their homeland and people. The Iron Dome defies the imagination with the ease and precision it can intercept thousands of incoming missiles.
Their intelligence network is the gold standard; they usually know what their enemies think before the thoughts become reality. The protection they incorporate at all of its schools is without question of the presence of armed guards. Israel’s border and buffer zone is usually impenetrable until Friday night. The Gaza attack on Israel is an intelligence and military failure of epic proportions as the actions of Gaza and Iran are compared to our 9-11 and Pearl Harbor. This is not just a day or weekend of violence. This begins an all-out war as we wait to see who is involved and where it will be fought. Israel is prepared to protect itself, and once it recovers from the shock and surprise of this attack, it will unleash fury on those responsible.
This region’s battle over land and religion goes back to Biblical times. This battle will be a clash of two cultures and powers. Israel has been on guard, protecting its existence since it was created after World War II, and they have built a sophisticated and powerful military. Hamas and Iran are a collection of tribes. They have no conscience and will commit atrocities as they scream “Death to Israel and America.”
The question on everyone’s mind is who else will get involved. Will other countries in the Middle East stay out of the conflict, or will they choose sides and further inflame the tensions in the region? Just this week, Saudi Arabia and Israel reported they were close to a historic peace agreement. The world was excited about the possibility of these two perennial enemies finally shaking hands in peace, and that may now be in jeopardy. The feckless United Nations will meet this week to discuss this weekend’s happenings. It is a dog and pony show, as the international body is powerless and no longer significant. The appointment of Ali Bahreini, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, to chair the 2023 United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Social Forum is nothing more than a slap in the face given the human rights situation of most Iranians.
What I meant by the title is how vital a defined and secure border is to a sovereign country. The reinforced border between Israel and Gaza is considered one of the most secure in the world. Yet, it was not enough to keep the terrorist gangs from breaching it in over twenty locations—the breakdown in border security hints at collusion between some Israeli military and the Hamas terrorists. To parallel this Middle East situation with our border, we have collusion between the cartels and the Democrats. Israel knows exactly who came across their border. We have no idea who comes across ours.
It will be interesting to see how our relationship with Israel draws us into the fight. Biden and Blinkin have indicated our full support-“full stop,” as our eloquent President said. The Progressive Democrats, namely Omar and Cortez, have already called for a cease fire. They may as well pledge their support for Gaza. The anti-Semitic feelings of the Radical Left came through in their comments. Again, even when one of our most important allies is attacked, we cannot unite in our support. It is a sad observation of where we are as a divided country.
The post Border Lessons From Israel appeared first on Granite Grok.
Electric Vehicles are already impossible to make without coal. You can’t make steel without it, and there are only so many parts you can replace with polymers. Mining, moving, and processing copper, cobalt, building frames, and axels – it can’t be done. And now, Panasonic’s new EV battery plant has another coal-related problem.
In accordance with the Biden regime’s ongoing efforts to force all Americans into an EV, Panasonic has built a $4 billion EV battery factory in the small Kansas City exurb of De Soto.
Local media reports state that the factory will require anywhere from 200 to 250 megawatts of electricity to function. This is roughly the amount of power needed to keep the lights on in a small city.
On track to receive a whopping $6.8 billion from fake president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, Panasonic is proving once again that in order to create “clean” energy, you have to burn a lot of “dirty” energy, rendering it a pointless endeavor.
The amount of energy the new Panasonic EV battery facility needs is so high, in fact, that a representative from Evergy, the public utility serving the factory, testified before the Kansas City Corporation Commission that there are serious “near-term challenges from a resource adequacy perspective.”
A nuclear power plant could handle that just fine, but … those aren’t allowed.
“A 15-pound lithium-ion battery holds about the same amount of energy as a pound of oil. To make that battery requires 7,000 pounds of rock and dirt to get the minerals that go into that battery,” reports Cowboy State Daily. “The average EV battery weighs around 1,000 pounds.”
“All of that mining and factory processing produces a lot more carbon dioxide emissions than a gas-powered car, so EVs have to be driven around 50,000 to 60,000 miles before there’s a net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.”
It isn’t easy being green!
Scan the QR Code or Use the embedded form to get your tickets to Groktoberfest!
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The big problems in SAU16/Exeter started with closing down schools during COVID. Parents were left begging district administrators and school board members to reopen the schools and make masks optional. Unfortunately, they were ignored, and the Governor had to step in and force them to reopen.
Then, there was the push to force Critical Race Theory on students. The district website was full of CRT-related propaganda. After hiring the DEIJ Director, parents could see the shift away from focusing on quality academics to more of a radical political agenda that would be aimed at their children.
All of this was reflected in lower proficiency scores among the student population. This district used to be one of the most admired districts in the state, but that was changing– SAU16 was spiraling downward.
How many families were they willing to lose?
Parents began organizing in order to open up a Charter School that was focused on quality academics. Some families chose to move, some chose to send their children to better schools.
SAU 16’s political agenda even extended to the removal of Columbus Day from the school calendar. Much of the agenda to remove Columbus Day has come from hate organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. Who made this decision in SAU16? Why did they remove Columbus Day? Did they do any kind of extensive research on Columbus, or are they following the trendy political narrative that distorts actual historical facts? Political agendas seem to rule this district now.
Finally, SAU16 was committed to indoctrinating students into the Critical Race Theory or anti-racist mindset. This ideology has been pushed by CRT radicals like Ibram X. Kendi for many years. After promoting this hate-filled ideology as “anti-racist,” many people can now see that it actually encourages racial discrimination. The New York Times even published an op-ed entitled “Antiracism Was Never the Right Answer.” Now, they tell the truth about CRT. Will the anti-racists involved in our public schools finally admit the truth? I wouldn’t hold my breath; many of the people dividing our children make a lot of money peddling hate and division.
It appears that it took the collapse of Kendi’s Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, which offered no meaningful research from the $50 million in donations, to finally get people to admit that his ideology teaches children how to hate. Kendi himself says, “the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination.” SAU16 was on its way to teaching children to hate based on race. It was more about pushing a hate-filled narrative versus anything worthwhile, like improving academic outcomes. The DEIJ scam is now getting the scrutiny it deserves. What did they do to help with the achievement of black children who deserve so much more than what these public schools are now offering?
How much money has been wasted in this district on political agendas, and ignoring parents, while students were denied a quality academic education that could open doors for them in the future?
District administrators and board members owe SAU16 families a big apology for what they’ve done to destroy their reputation. They can never repair the academic damage they’ve done to the children who’ve come through this public school system. They should be doing everything to separate from this latest political fad and refocus on academic excellence for all of their students.
Kendi’s toxic ideology was a perverse goal of racial equity. It meant lowering standards to achieve equal outcomes by racial groups. That’s essentially what happened after they hired David Ryan as their Superintendent. Now that he’s left, nothing has really changed. Parents have to fight to be heard but continue to be ignored. Where is any meaningful changes that will uplift the academics in the district?
DEIJ, CRT, and political agendas continue to dominate the district at the expense of academic excellence. A good leader would develop a strategy to achieve equal opportunity for all students and a pathway that prioritizes responsibility over equity and anti-racism.
It’s time for parents to start demanding better from school administrators and board members.
The post More Proof SAU16/Exeter is Failing Their Students and Community appeared first on Granite Grok.
There was a time when Iowa attracted people and politicians who would show up and party like it was in 1959. The residents would then, after close to a year of this, gather in barns or local veterans halls (or wherever) and raise a hand for a candidate of their choice.
By the end of that day, each party would announce whom they’d prefer as a nominee for the office of the president of the United States (whether that was who they picked or not). I guess you could see why enthusiasm for what happens in Iowa has waned in recent years. Then, in 2020, it took days for the Lefties to decide which Democrat had won, which, to me, sounds like how every election works these days.
Am I wrong?
As it stands, Iowa has other issues that Democrats in Iowa, much like New Hampshire, failed or just refused to address. Their party’s obsession with color before content, for example. A trend we can only assume will evolve – as progressive things are wont to do – to punishing states that don’t leave the genderizer on full both day and night to crank out transvestite candidates or those who’ve had their private bits removed. Men pretending to be women, and so on, who will claim to be suicidal if you don’t nominate them.
In due course, but Iowa has more problems today than it can handle.
Iowa used to be important to Democrats. Iowa has more corn than pigs, and corn begets ethanol, which begot an influential lobby about which the Electric Car bugaboo party could care less. Cars that don’t use motor fuels don’t need those fuels contaminated with ethanol from Iowa.
Corn can still find a home in cancer-causing sweeteners (High Fructose Corn Syrup) as well as regular corn syrup or corn oil, with some left for sale as corn—the vegetable. But if Dems don’t have any use for liquid fuel, what happens to the 52,000 jobs and 7.2 BIllion dollars ethanol generates (52% of the corn in Iowa ends up ethanol)?
That would be up to Republicans, who didn’t change their caucus. It’s January 15th. But what about those Democrats?
Iowa Democrats will be able to register to receive a presidential preference card in the mail starting November 1. Those cards will start being mailed out on January 12, 2024, and the last day to request one will be February 19. The state party will release results on March 5, which is also the last day that voters can mail their cards.
Iowa Democrats will also hold in-person caucuses on January 15, the same day that Iowa Republicans will gather, but those meetings only be used to conduct party business, not to vote for president.
Voting for the nominee is not party business. Not this time. The DNC has kicked Iowa Dems in their caucus, bumping the results from the front of the line to Super Tuesday. Sixteen live primaries plus reading off whoever the party wants to win Iowa. That’s like taking your State Party front man/woman/whatever and tossing them into the chorus where they don’t even get to perform. Someone reads some results compiled from mail-in cards, which, as we all know, are subject to fraud. Just ask Jimmy Carter or the rest of the Western World. No one else elects anyone like that becasue – and there is some consensus – it is not secure, and never shall it be.
As for Iowa Corn vs. the Dem’s EV future, sure, the price will collapse, but if that’s what ails you, sell it to poor countries who can’t grow anything on the land ruined by China’s monopoly on third-world rare earth metals mined to make battery packs for EV that don’t need ethanol – the motor fuel of a future with no fuel.
Or you can sell your land to a billionaire. He’ll leave it fallow until he can score a giant taxpayer-subsidized contract to cover it with wind turbines or solar panels that’ll make electricity that much more unaffordable, but the Iowans can then fight the illegals for “green jobs” swabbing the dirt of the solar arrays or picking up dead birds beneath the unrecyclable but environmentally conscious “windmills.”
Who knows. One day, not long-form now, when Iowa has been transformed by the progressive utopians into a green energy parking lot, the Democrats will put you back at the front of the line. You can be the first state to pretend you get to pick the Democrat nominee for president, which, if we’re honest, is what you’ve been doing.
Hey, is the postage prepaid on those presidential preference cards or do you have to pay for that too?
The post The DNC Just Kicked Iowa in the ‘Caucus’ appeared first on Granite Grok.
Imagine, if you will, a government funded by user fees instead of by taxes.
Are you being defended? The defense department can send you a bill for that. Is Congress doing something for you? It can send you a bill for that.
The nice thing about approaching things this way is that if Congress is doing something that you don’t want it to do (like invading Iraq, or giving money to solar energy companies, or sending retirement checks to millionaires), or that it shouldn’t be doing, or that doesn’t benefit you, or that it’s totally screwed up, then you don’t pay.
With user fees, you know exactly what you’re paying for.
Could you imagine taking your car to be fixed and being handed an un-itemized bill, so you don’t know whether you’re being charged for parts, labor, or work that they did on other people’s cars, or beer and pizza for after-work parties, or anything else?
Or could you imagine getting a bill from a local garage that you’ve never used, demanding that you pay for work done on cars owned by people you don’t know? No one would stand for it. But that’s basically how taxes work.
Where government user fees are concerned, they can’t be more than a typical person can afford to pay. That places a cap on what can be spent. This is the argument for uniform taxes in the Federalist Papers: They have natural limits that do not apply to progressive taxes or even so-called ‘flat’ taxes.
You can’t just decide to spend a bunch of money and then figure out who can afford to pay how much for the total, which is basically how taxes work.
But if the government is merely enforcing contracts, punishing crimes (as opposed to sins and vices), and repelling invasions — in other words, protecting the rights of the people, as opposed to ‘protecting’ the people — how much would that really cost?
By hiding what’s going on, and by divorcing collection from spending, taxes encourage the government to expand into all kinds of areas where it has no business doing anything. That leads directly to the ability of wealthy and well-connected people to make use of government to pursue their goals using force instead of persuasion.
This is to say, taxes amplify, rather than reduce, coercion and undermine, rather than enhance, equality before the law.
Except uniform taxes, which work this way: Here’s the total bill, T, for what the government is doing. There are N people in the country (or the state or the town), so your share of the bill is T/N.
This is like a user fee, with a lot of individual fees wrapped up into one payment.
Of course, if the total bill includes subsidies to particular businesses or industries or payments to particular classes of people, then it’s not a user fee at all. It’s just a hidden form of wealth redistribution: Do a favor to someone, while passing the cost along to everyone.
That’s why each person would have to get not just a number (‘Here’s what you owe’), but an itemized bill (‘Here’s what we did for you, personally’), on which individual amounts could be challenged (‘No, I didn’t really benefit from spending $500 million on training Syrian rebels, or from spending $200 thousand on sports at our local schools’).
The federal government alone is on track to spend about $6.9 trillion next year. With a uniform tax, they’d be sending everyone a bill for $6,900,000,000,000/330,000,000, which is just shy of $21,000. And that’s every person. A family of four would get a bill for $84,000.
Imagine, if you will, the kind of reaction that would generate and the kinds of changes that would ensue. Better yet, try imagining ever getting to that point in the first place if taxes were uniform, i.e., if government was funded with user fees. It couldn’t happen. Taxes made it possible.
But what about essential spending, like defense? The defense budget is around $800 billion. Divide the cost by the population, and everyone gets a bill for about $2400. That’s steep but payable — and it includes a lot of things that aren’t, strictly speaking, about ‘defending’ anything but jobs.
Of course, most of what government does isn’t like defense. It’s mostly telling some people that they must do things or can’t do things; taking property from some people to give it to others; and so on. Most of what government does benefits one group at the expense of everyone else — or as Tommy Shelby put it, deliberately makes things better for some people by deliberately making them worse for other people.
And this is all possible because we’ve been conditioned to think that majority approval by a group of a few hundred people in one city somehow represents ‘the decisions of the whole’. But to follow the decisions of the whole, government shouldn’t be able to do anything without, say, 95% approval.
Imagine, if you will, a country where no new law (or expenditure) could be authorized without support from 95% of the entire memberships of the House and Senate, or their state-level equivalents; and where any existing law could be repealed with 5% support from the same.
We’d still have laws against directly harming persons and property. We’d still have laws against theft, robbery fraud, and breach of contract.
But we wouldn’t have laws enforcing tribal preferences regarding things like marriage, self-medication, voluntary exchanges of goods and services, unpopular forms of entertainment, and so on. We wouldn’t have laws that redistribute wealth from the people who earned it to other people who are believed, by a small number of elected officials and unelected bureaucrats, to deserve it. We wouldn’t be authorizing the use of our armed forces to police the world and try to remake other countries in our own image. And so on.
If we took seriously the idea that government should follow the decisions of the whole, rather than the decisions of a plurality, the government would be at least two orders of magnitude smaller than it is. And it would be at least an approximation to the government that we were promised in the Declaration of Independence: One that protects our rights, and derives its just powers from our consent.
Imagine, if you will, having a government like that.
The post Imagine, if you will… appeared first on Granite Grok.
Resolution To Restrict The Primaries To Registered Republicans (Resolution #2) proposed by Karen Testerman was passed at the January 28, 2023 Annual Meeting. It resolved that:
We want to thank NHGOP Chairman Chris Ager for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.
“1. The Republican State Committee adopts the rule that only voters who register as Republicans 30 days prior to the primary election day may receive and mark a Republican ballot for the primary election;”
I take the views of the State Committee very seriously, and my first order of business after being elected on 28 January 2023 was to visit the Secretary of State’s office to determine how this Resolution could be implemented.
After investigating applicable state law in consultation with the Secretary of State’s office, it was determined that the resolution violated state law and could not be adopted. Specifically, the critical “30 day prior” provision of the resolution violates RSA 654:7 a&b (same-day registration), and RSA 654:32/34 (change of registration).
I informed the prime sponsor of the Resolution and Executive Board of the problem at my first meeting as Chairman on February 6th.
Presidential Primary campaigns have also been informed that there will be no change to our current First In The Nation Primary selection process and have been campaigning accordingly.
The next opportunity to address this issue is January 13, 2024, at our next Annual Meeting. If a legal by-law was adopted, it could be in force for the 2024 State primary. My suggestion to the sponsors is to bring forth a By-Law Amendment that complies with State Law for consideration and critical analysis of the impact by the entire Committee. I will help sponsors through the process as desired to ensure the activity meets the required standards.
My primary purpose is to help get Republicans elected and represent the views of the State Committee.
Chris Ager
Chairman, NHGOP
chrisager@nhrsc.com
The post Why The Current Closed Primary Resolution Cannot be Adopted appeared first on Granite Grok.
“…The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified…” – President Obama, Inauguration (2009)
You would think that the different entities might have gotten a clue over the last 250 years. However, as you can see above, Obama tried to paper over that once an entity grows too big, it can’t keep track of itself. I also believe that he was trying to hide his most “endearing” phrase:
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.“
(Progressives and the Proper Role of Government – and Your Subservience to It)
However, back to that first quote that answers his question THEN and certainly continues to answer it NOW. Let me “set the table” (snicker) that the answer for the VAST number of people is to just stay out of the kitchen and walk away from the dining room table…
SHOT: CDC Officially Rebrand Obesity as a ‘Disease’ With ‘No Known Cure’
The CDC has officially rebranded obesity as a ‘disease’ with ‘no known cure’ as part of a plan to remove the stigma of being grossly overweight. The CDC wants the public and medical community to see obesity through the lens of a chronic disease – which coincidentally supports the globalist elite’s depopulation agenda.
That’s right – it’s no longer your “responsibility” because of our proclamation that “it is beyond your control”. Blame it ALL on Big Food – you should absolutely have no guilt in that you created your own condition. Make it a disease so it appears that you have some germ, virus, bacteria, or some other agent beyond your control that is making you lift that next set of calories to your lips and keeps you on the couch instead of walking around. Remove that stigma – and then demonize others who tell you that being FAT (and yes, I was fat) is just fine and dandy.
You’re fine and they are haters for telling you to get healthy.
Nonsense – as someone who has kept 70-80 lbs off for over 3 years now (I admit that I do bounce between that 10-pound variation), the answer lies within in. Sure, having someone to spur you on helps and, like my previous post said, holds you accountable, it can work.
And for the Right Hand Not Knowing The Left Hand…
CHASER: Connecticut court rules that obesity is not a disability
A Connecticut court has ruled against a state corrections officer who claimed he was bullied by superiors and denied promotions because of the perception that he was overweight.
The case pitted two state agencies against each other, the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities arguing against the state Department of Correction. The commission argued that the DOC violated Daniel Madden’s rights under the Connecticut Fair Employment Act, “because he was perceived by the defendant to suffer a disability due to his weight.”
Superior Court Judge Susan Q. Cobb disagreed and ruled that “being overweight or obese or perceived as such is not covered by the act.” The Second Circuit court had previously addressed the issue of obesity as it relates to the Americans with Disabilities Act, “and found that obesity is not a covered physical disability or impairment unless it is the result of an underlying physiological disorder or condition,” she wrote in her ruling.
That latter part is why I chose “VAST,” as there are some people that it IS beyond their control because of diagnosed metabolic issues.
After all, and in summary, for those of you who have also turned grey (even if masked by your barber or hairdresser), try to remember how many times Government has had to redo their recommended food plate/pyramid. How many times has XYZ been deemed to be bad only to recant and state, Oopsies – the science has progressed!
Proving another canard that Science is never settled…
The post The Science is Never Settled appeared first on Granite Grok.
They’re flying so thick and fast it is amazing.
Take heart – there will be both a Wednesday and Friday Edition. Last week’s Friday Edition.
Remember, ridicule and mockery are effective weapons:
In Thought Splinters IV I discussed my shifting position on chemtrails. It was pictures like this – not these specifically but ones very much like them – that got me thinking about the topic. Because I don’t see an innocent explanation for planes outfitted with tanks and hard-line plumbing like this:
If there’s a non-chemtrail, innocent explanation, I’m all ears.
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How… convenient this massive attack on Israel happens not long after billions go to Iran (see Grok post on that; also see this about knowing Iran uses money for terror with Hamas thanking Iran for backing them). Also, I’ve heard reports that Iran is getting close to nuclear breakout. How… convenient this happens, disrupting possible ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia in a possible alliance-of-convenience against Iran – plus adding in an “excuse” for Iran to use those weapons against the Zionist Entity. And the Taliban, who just conveniently happened to have billions of dollars worth of American military equipment are conveniently offering to cross Iran and Iraq and Jordan to come help wipe Israel out. In light of recent events and the Taliban’s offer, I strongly suspect this was one reason all that equipment was left behind. With malice aforethought.
The above from here.
Real horrors:
Israel: Babies Kidnapped By Muslim Terrorists Held in Cages – Geller Report
Taking Hostages and Desecrating Corpses: Just Another Work Day in Gaza | Gates of Vienna
And with what’s going on in Israel I’m hoping you might take a moment to consider some support for Israel.
Commercially:
Note that I don’t post any site here that I haven’t used / bought from myself.
An amazing set of products from the Holy Land. Judaica Web Store
And you all know my promotion of My Tree in Israel. Olive oil, red and now white wine, and also whiskey bottles. All with your own name on the label. Warning: NOT cheap, but definitely the best olive oil I’ve ever had. Also, if you want in on this year’s oil harvest, get a move on.
Lots of militaria – Zahal. I have bullet-resistant stuff from here, though I suspect that right now that’s not available any more.
Charities:
Connections Israel – I have donated to them regularly for almost two decades now.
Israel Trees – help plant trees in Israel. One time I even planted a whole orchard of 100 trees to honor my kids.
And just for reference:
Jew-hatred is hard-coded into the Koran:
Islamic Jew-Hatred – Geller Report
Antisemitism in the Qur’an – Winds of Jihad (sheikyermami.com)
And an excellent piece on the Islamic war cry ALLAHU AKHBAR:
Allahu Akbar is Why Muslims Kill – Daniel Greenfield / Sultan Knish articles
Remember that, in the Koran, there is the principle of reconquest: ANY land once held by Islam must be retaken. It’s a Koranic command. And lastly, some history worth noting:
The Greatest Murder Machine in History – American Thinker
Myth: The Treaty of Hudaibiya (thereligionofpeace.com)
Which is why I am skeptical of the Abraham Accords…
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Understand that I have no issue with wealth – even on this scale – that’s earned by providing genuine goods and services. Good for them. Inherited / stolen wealth? Not so much.
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See the JPFO chart here.
Related:
They’re called GULAGS, Killary. And predicted. This warning from decades ago rings very true.
Larry Grathwohl: Requiem for an American Hero | Frontpage Mag
But Grathwohl’s secret project, which put his life at risk, showed Americans that the WUO aspired to liquidate those people who stubbornly clung to the American ideals that took a daily pounding throughout the national suicide attempt known as the 1960s.
Grathwohl attended a kind of Wannsee Conference at which WUO members plotted the murder of 25 million Americans. At the Wannsee meeting in 1942, Hitler’s cabinet members and senior bureaucrats set in motion the “Final solution to the Jewish question,” that led to the systematic murder of six million Jews.
…
They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter revolution and they felt that this counter revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing reeducation centers in the Southwest where would take all the people who needed to be reeducated into the new way of thinking and teach them how things were going to be.
I asked, well, what is going to happen to those people that we can’t reeducate that are diehard capitalists and the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers. And when I say eliminate I mean kill – 25 million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people and they were dead serious.”
Worth perusing:
Victims of Communism | Keep the flame of liberty alive
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Which is why, again, assuming there is an election in 2024, I think it’ll be meaningless. Totally rigged.
Problem – Reaction – Solution. One reason the governments love the gangs… and created them.
I used to say that I can’t wear a mask because I have a rare condition called FBS. “Functioning Brain Syndrome”.
Do I really believe that there are secretly lizard people? No. But I’ve gone from a position of Absolutely impossible to I’m open to see your evidence.
Funny how “diversity” only goes in one direction. Like there’s a melanin fetish… or a war on white people.
New Zealand Gov’t Exempted Elite From ‘Deadly’ Covid Jabs, While Forcing Vax on Public – The People’s Voice (thepeoplesvoice.tv)
There’s a reason I call her HER HEINOUS THE CRONE OF CHAPPAQUA.
What have I said, consistently, about this being a century-plus old project?
Texas prohibits private employers from having Jab mandates.
IMHO only the first two are actual freedoms. E.g., “Freedom from want” implies that someone is required to provide for you.
Come on Powerball! I bought my ticket. All I ask is the chance to prove that having $500+ million in the bank won’t spoil me.
Some of the videos I’ve been seeing are utterly horrific. One, tearing my heart, is a kidnapped female Israeli soldier being taken away, pleading and screaming. She has to know what’s in store for her as a captive of the Right Hand.
Female al-Azhar prof: Allah allows Muslims to rape non-Muslim women (jihadwatch.org)
And IIRC it was the Rockefellers helping the feminist movement too.
It’s coming.
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Pick of the post:
Winner right there IMHO. Hands down. Because I’m sure the long knives are out for him, from both Left and Right.
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I’m trying to not overload with videos, abstaining more or less, but this discussion with Dr. David Martin and Tommy Robinson is very enlightening.
Episode 8 Silenced with Tommy Robinson – Dr David Martin (rumble.com)
About 90 minutes. What amazes me is that Martin’s discovering all this stuff right out in the open. And still nobody will believe. Indeed, for the most of the Jabbed sheeple, they’ll keep injecting and will drop / die suddenly rather than admit they’ve been bamboozled.
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Palate Cleansers:
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Come back Wednesday for another edition. Same Meme Time. Same Meme channel.
The post MONDAY MEMES appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Embodied Directions Wellness Sanctuary yoga studio in Dover, NH, hosted a “Kink Affirming Care Training” in September. Therapists who attended could earn three Continuing Education Units from the National Association of Social Workers – NH Chapter (NASW NH).
A Facebook post goes into detail on what the training provided:
Participants will delve into the concepts and practices of kink and BDSM, gaining insight into terminology, roles, and dynamics. Learn to differentiate between kink and abuse while exploring the core values within the kink community. We will explore power exchange relationships with an emphasis on informed consent and negotiation.
BDSM stands for bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism. Merriam-Webster defines BDSM as “sexual activity involving such practices as the use of physical restraints, the granting and relinquishing of control, and the infliction of pain.”
Related: Book Promoted by Nashua Library to Small Kids Features Bondage Gear
In the second part of the training, broaden your perspectives on relationship diversity as we explore various structures and agreements. We will discuss the difference between cheating and ethical non-monogamy. Address personal and societal biases toward ethical non-monogamy while promoting a sex-positive and inclusive mindset.
Ethical non-monogamy refers to relationships where the participants agree to have more than one romantic or sexual partner at a time. This includes polyamory, open relationships, and swinging.
Throughout the training, participants will explore the importance of effective communication, negotiation, and boundary setting as crucial elements of the relationship. This training is an opportunity to gain basic knowledge and tools to provide affirming and supportive care for individuals in diverse lifestyles.
This class, taught by Katie Hespelein, provided New Hampshire therapists with training on how to guide and encourage their clients to partake in dysfunctional and destructive relationships. Katie wants better for herself, however. She is engaged to be married. She knows that a committed monogamous relationship is what gives her the best chance at good mental health. She promotes mental-health-destroying relationships to others while she refrains from them herself.
Katie Hespelein, the Embodied Directions Wellness Sanctuary, and the NASW NH have a lot to answer for promoting this terrible stuff in our state. I was happy to read that shortly after this training the yoga studio was evicted by their landlord. That is justice.
The post Training NH Therapists to Affirm BDSM and Kink appeared first on Granite Grok.
On January 28 of this year, at the annual meeting of the full state committee of the Republican Party of New Hampshire, also known as the NHGOP, the body formally adopted a resolution as follows:
In other words, the adoption of this resolution and the rules contained in it would change the existing primary elections for the Republican Party from being “open” in which voters registered as “Undeclared” could vote in a Republican primary designed to select the nominee who would run in the general election under the Republican banner, to a “closed” system in which only registered Republicans could vote in such a primary.
This change has been under consideration for many years.
Nevertheless, Chris Ager, the chair of the NHGOP, has reportedly failed to give formal written notice to the NH Secretary of State of the adoption of the resolution and the rules contained within it even after the passage of many months since the adoption of the resolution.
Why? There are many possible explanations for this failure, and real Republicans in New Hampshire should consider the possibilities: inadvertence, negligence, refusal to accept the will of the state committee embodied in the resolution, moral bankruptcy, or some other excuse. Take your pick.
There may still be time for the Secretary of State to be notified formally of this rule change under applicable law so that he could give proper instructions to the various local election officials in the towns and cities before the next primaries.
If you want to urge NHGOP chair Chris Ager to do his duty and give formal notice of the rule change adopted by the NHGOP to the NH Secretary of State immediately, call him at 603-318-4437 and/or email him at ChrisAger@Aol.com.
The post Why has NHGOP Chair Ager Failed To Do His Job? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Oregon passes made medically assisted suicide legal in 1998. That year, 16 individuals took their lives with the help of medical professionals. In 2022, that number was 278. 2022 is the year they approved suicide tourism.
To paraphrase Barry Obama on a different subject (electricity rates), “Those numbers would necessarily skyrocket.” They will. We’ve seen it everywhere that governments normalize suicide. Encourages might be the better word while broadening the scope of their growing army of state-employed therapists can consider reasonable grounds to shuffle off your mortal coil, like being a burden.
A burden to the welfare state, including taxpayer-funded health care.
The Oregon Study observed more than just an annual increase in cases of assisted suicide.
Over this time, patients’ health funding status changed from predominantly private (65%) to predominantly government support (79.5%), and there was an increase in patients feeling a burden and describing financial concerns as reasons for choosing an assisted death. There has been a reduction in the length of the physician–patient relationship from 18 weeks in 2010 to 5 weeks in 2022, and the proportion.
Talk about putting Bidenomics in a new light. You become a burden – or are made to feel as if you are- perhaps due to government policy or interference. Fast-tracked from burden to death (In Hawaii, they’ve reduced the waiting period to five days.
And no one seems to be concerned about that. I think they should, and I’ll leave you with this pulled from a previous article on this subject as you ponder that point.
Eugenics is the foundation of the real progressive utopia. If you legalize suicide, the people you deliberately make miserable will solve your problem for you. Instead of you having to kill them, they might kill themselves with the government’s blessing.
Or, you can just make it look that way.
HT | LifeSite News
The post Oregon’s Slippery Slope – Nearly 80% Of Assisted Suicides Are People on Government Health Insurance appeared first on Granite Grok.
Before beginning, this needs to be said: the reasons Hamas has control of Palestinian areas are that it has terrorized Palestinians into voting for it in “fair elections,” and it has been “educating” children into a deep hatred of Israel from the time they were born.
I will no longer separate the terms Hamas and Palestinian – because, at this time, there isn’t an atom’s width of difference between the two.
I will only use the term Palestinian because there are effectively no Palestinians who are not supporters of Hamas. Go ahead: prove me wrong using unbiased sources.
For a very long time, I have wondered whether a two-state solution was possible in Israel. No matter how many times there were “talks,” those “talks” were almost always followed up by Palestinian “soldiers” shooting at Israeli civilians. Those unprovoked attacks were invariably followed by celebrations in Palestinian neighborhoods and by funerals in Israeli towns.
For a very long time, we’ve been reading about Palestinian children throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers, sometimes without the soldiers retaliating and sometimes with the soldiers firing back with less-than-fatal ammunition such as rubber bullets. Palestinian “soldiers” don’t use rubber bullets because they want to kill their target.
But this latest unprovoked attack should finally prove that Palestinians are not now, nor have ever been, interested in peace with Israel. They are only interested in Israel’s wholesale destruction.
It is time for Israel to finally acknowledge that a “two-state solution” is both impractical and impossible. Israel must declare the Oslo Accords as inoperative. It must also put the UN on notice that, as a matter of its own defense, it will no longer operate under UN restrictions.
October 7, 2013, was Israel’s equivalent of Pearl Harbor. Israel was attacked without warning and without mercy. Hamas targeted unarmed civilians. Hundreds have been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. Those killed were not “collateral damage”: they were the intended targets.
It is time for Israel to treat its enemy as an enemy and not as a possible friend at some time in the far future.
Blood has been spilled, and not one of us has the right to tell Israel that it should tolerate the blood of yet more innocent lives in the futile search for peace.
The post Stand Your Ground, Israel appeared first on Granite Grok.
China recently banned the importation of Japanese seafood, claiming current releases of decade-old wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant threaten citizens’ health. US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emmanuel was diplomatically dispatched to publicly eat Japanese fish to combat China’s claims. Known for often mercurial statements, Ambassador Emmanuel did not disappoint. But it seems he revealed more than he intended.
Fukushima and FoodThe 2011 Tohoku 9.0-magnitude earthquake and resultant tsunami spewed radiation into the air and sea, resulting in the contamination of Japanese fish along with vegetable crops, dairy products, and groundwater. It also was found in human breastmilk, though experts claim levels were insubstantial. There are few, if any, deaths directly attributable to the radiation release, though some 18,500 people died from the quake and tsunami.
Emmanuel countered Chinese slanders of Japanese fish with his own, stating:
“In a world where truth and trust are paramount, Japan’s unwavering commitment to science and transparency is a leading example, and I’m honored to stand in solidarity with them.”
He said he had “no reservations” about eating Japanese fish, reportedly dining on tuna, flounder, and sea bass.
Slamming ChinaNotably, the ambassador did not eat freshwater fish, which was more contaminated by Fukushima radiation than saltwater species. In the course of this fishy stunt, Emmanuel had no problem disparaging China, including condemnation for its lack of truth and transparency relating to SARS, avian flu, and COVID-19.
Apparently, these criticisms by a Democrat intimate with the Obama and Biden administrations were not racist slurs, as would be alleged were he a conservative. But Emmanuel’s remarks seemed to invite different comparisons than intended: What about the “truth and transparency” of the Biden administration and Dr. Anthony Fauci regarding COVID? What about PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in US fish? What about carbon dioxide as a pollutant? And by advocating for radioactive fish consumption, is Emmanuel unwittingly plugging the safety of nuclear energy?
Piercing the Cultish VeilPublic shenanigans like emissary Emmanuel’s are hardly new. President Joe Biden made a big show of receiving the mRNA vaccine (though that may have been an innocuous dose of sugar water to help him stay awake and cogent for ten entire minutes). Monsanto advocates have publicly suggested that drinking glyphosate is innocuous. In all these cases, such theatrics prove nothing scientific, despite Emmanuel’s promises of transparency and “science.” It’s more like snake-oil charlatans or cultish Kool-Aid guzzlers.
Jim Jones spiked Kool-Aid with cyanide in his cult. The Heaven’s Gate crowd also liked the sweet stuff, though the members used the less violent go-to-sleep method of phenobarbitol mixed with apple sauce or pudding to fly off on an imagined spaceship trailing the Comet Hale-Bopp. The Heaven’s Gate dreamers are more likely to be looking down from Hale-Bopp right now than Emmanuel is to tell people the truth about climate change.
In the climate cult, many more lives will be lost than at Jonestown. Toxins spewed from Chinese plants manufacturing EVs and solar panels using coal and chemicals went unmentioned in Rahm’s critique, as did the current crisis in China to dispose of decades-old solar panels that are unrecyclable and useless – anything but “renewable.” As US climate envoy John Kerry chides American farmers for rearing cows, Rahm’s “truth and trust are paramount” hypocrisy rings loud and hollow.
Renewable-energy manufacturing releases far more toxins than Fukushima ever did. Glyphosate has been labeled a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization, yet the Environmental Protection Agency and US Department of Agriculture tout the stuff as salvific, while Biden crosses swords with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to compel Mexicans to eat GMO corn. US fish are tainted with American-made PFAS and mercury. While the ambassador to Japan virtue-signals on the harmlessness of nuclear energy, most Americans are gulping daily doses of a different kind of Kool-Aid.
Cyanide kills quickly; phenobarbitol kills peacefully. Cancer and birth defects kill slowly and horrifically, especially in children and infants. The primary cancer caused by radiation impacts the thyroid and is easily treatable; the forever chemicals gushing from manufacturing so-called renewables dwarf all radioactive releases in history.
Carbon Dioxide, Hamburgers, and Fukushima FishAmerican children are told life-giving carbon dioxide is the chief culprit in a watch-the-birdie spectacle that distracts from logic and scientific inquiry. The United Nations recently announced that due to accelerated warming, developed nations must promptly reduce meat consumption by 80%! Unmentioned is who will eat the 20% remaining, likely affordable only by the Emmanuels and other laptop elites. The rest of humanity will be force-fed insects and patented synthetic meats concocted in laboratories from GMO crops that destroy soil, water, and human health.
Emmanuel’s surreal theater of public consumption of radioactive fish displayed clueless hypocrisy prevalent among the chattering classes. The climate cultists seek to ban fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and cows, advocating for slow genocide, claiming humanity is killing the world they plan to save. “Let them eat cake! We will eat fresh sushi and filet mignon!”
Emmanuel ought to check his privilege – and his blood for toxins. Perhaps he has been eating too much noxious food. Radiation exposure causes dain bramage.
John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And Regular Contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.
The post Carbon Dioxide, Hamburgers, and Fukushima Fish appeared first on Granite Grok.
I can see why older generations don’t want to hire young CryBullies or socialize with them, for that matter—being “on time” used to be an accepted, almost mandatory, social norm in Society—one of the things that “glued” us together.
“Are there accommodations for people struck with Time Blindness?”
Oh sure, we all know those individuals, sometimes couples (really one individual within that couple), that seem to be constitutionally unable to get their act together. Those who think he or she is the center of everyone else’s universe and inconveniencing others is THEIR problem and not his or hers. Or unable to keep themselves organized and focused. I think you get the idea.
Me? I’m the opposite. I’m “late” if I’m just 15 minutes early. And yes, TMEW can be “not happy” as I’m rushing everyone else around to be “Not Late For My Early!”
So, when I came across this video, I knew I had to save it until I had the time to share it.
I agree with the commenter – it is rude, irresponsible, and offensive. Yes, we are a society that celebrates the ideal of Individualism and the Rights that go along with that, and that SHOULD be held inviolate. That doesn’t prevent, however, the rest of us from skewering dorks like this “young thang” whose parents and educators failed to shove this into her “no one but me” mentality that time is precious even if you don’t think yours is valuable. That MINE is to ME especially when every day is another step closer to not having any more so DON’T WASTE MINE!
Yet another example of childish behavior from those who can’t spell “decorum” without reading it, much less defining it.
HT | YouTube
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