The opening article of this series, published in the September 9 edition of the Eagle Times and in Granite Grok, examined test results from the Croydon Village School in light of comments made by its principal, Nicole Lackie, who also shared her belief that schools do not know how to teach reading.

The conventional wisdom says that the pandemic shutdowns affected student performance in public schools. In Croydon, this proved not to be the case. Now, we take an in-depth look at what happened to student achievement at the state level before and after the pandemic shutdowns on the New Hampshire Student Assessment System (NHSAS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress test.

The NHSAS

The New Hampshire Student Assessment System (NHSAS) is administered yearly to students attending traditional public and charter schools in grades 3 through 8. The SAT is administered to NH students in grade 11; it’s free, and it’s required, whether you are college-bound or not.

Despite RSA 193-H:2 requiring public schools to have “all pupils at the proficient level or above on the statewide assessment,” no school in New Hampshire has achieved this result or even come close. One might ask what purpose is served by these tests or this statute, but that is not the purpose of this review.

The New Hampshire Department of Education (NHEd) has a record of statewide assessment data since it started using the NHSAS in 2016. Tests were not administered in 2020 because of the pandemic shutdowns.

In what follows, we use the phrase “the score” to refer to “the percentage of students performing at or above the most basic level of proficiency” on any given test.

Summary of NHSAS Scores Since 2016

The NHSAS Reading chart below shows the percentage of students scoring proficient or above in reading on the state standardized tests in grades 3-8 and 11 from 2016 through 2022.

 

 

Reading scores have been dropping linearly since 2016, when nearly 40%, 4 out of 10 students, performed below grade level.

In 2022, the number of students scoring proficient had fallen to about 50%. There is no evidence of an extra drop in reading performance because of the shutdown. In other words, reading scores seem to be just where they would have been anyway, had the shutdown never happened. But let’s break that down more by looking at student performance in each grade.

We’ll start with students who were in kindergarten in 2018 and see how they performed through 2023. This group was in 2nd grade during the 2020 shutdown. They started testing in 2021 as 3rd graders, where 44% of them were proficient in reading. In 2023, their 5th grade scores showed that 54% were proficient. These numbers seem to disprove the prevailing narrative.

 

 

Similar to the 2018 kindergarten chart, each group of bars in the Reading Group Progression chart (below) shows how the different sets of students performed in the 6-year period from 2018 to 2023.

 

 

Those same kindergarten students are shown in the first set of bars on the left. Students who were in 1st, 2nd or 3rd grade in 2018 all showed about the same levels of proficiency throughout their testing. Around half the students are reading at grade level.

Those who were in grades 4 and 5 in 2018 showed some decline after the shutdown. These two groups of students seem to be the hardest hit by the pandemic shutdown when they were in 6th and 7th grades, respectively. Even so, about 50% of students across the board read below grade level and always have.

It seems that the pandemic has distracted us from the larger problem: that half our students have been reading below grade level for a long time.

Since one score could be questionable, let’s see how a national test measures New Hampshire student performance.

NAEP: The Nation’s Report Card

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, pronounced “nape”) is called “The Nation’s Report Card.” Since 1969, NAEP has been designed and used by the education establishment to let everyone know how well the United States is educating its children. They report results for each state for grades 4 and 8.

According to this test, New Hampshire is near the top of the United States.

NAEP scores in New Hampshire tell a different story than the NHSAS and SAT scores. The NAEP Reading chart shows that scores for grade 4 had been rising (ever so slightly) since 1998 until they dropped in 2017, which was well before the shutdown. The grade 8 scores also started dropping after 2017.

 

 

What the data shows is that even when scores were at their highest, fewer than half of NH students have been reading at grade level since at least 1998.

Again, we should clearly state that all the NAEP scores are low. They show that even at their high in 2015, only 45% of New Hampshire grade 8 students and only 46% of students in grade 4 were proficient in reading.

Conclusion

The narrative that the COVID pandemic shutdowns made things worse academically for public schools is not supported by New Hampshire’s data. Reading scores were decreasing before the pandemic started.

More than half of the kids in public schools are performing below grade level in reading. This has been the case despite regular changes to pedagogy, curriculum, technology, funding, and other efforts to improve schools.

Perhaps other approaches should be considered, for example: Organizing students into groups at the same academic levels, using technology to help students learn at their own level and at their own pace, or only allowing students to attend school when they are developmentally ready to read.

Next, we will look at how Vermont’s students may have been affected by the pandemic shutdown, according to its state assessments and the NAEP test.

This article originally appeared in the Eagle Times on September 12, 2023. It has been slightly edited.

 

The post Did the Pandemic Shutdown Affect Student Performance in NH? Part 2 of 8 appeared first on Granite Grok.

The progressives with liberal privilege don’t live in inner cities, so when they defunded the police, the elites didn’t see how it made Black Lives worse. Open borders were the same—no contact with the misery until border Governors started bussing them to Liberal cities.

That chaos is exacerbated by the Pfederal effort to relocate border crossers all over the US. Now, states like Massachusetts have declared states of emergency over some illegal aliens in their midst, equal to a fraction of what crosses into Texas border towns every few days.

Whiners.

The solution to this growing problem is not to close the border or even fill the prisons (they are breaking the law) but to put the border jumpers up in motels and hotels at taxpayer expense (which led this Hotelier to bail on properties in NYC). Chicago, Boston, New York, you name it, and they’ve got a human trafficking problem. Too many humans are trafficked into their laps instead of being returned to their native lands.

And sure, maybe 1% of them have a legitimate claim to political asylum, but we are not obligated to accept anyone under any circumstance. We could be like every other control and control immigration, but instead, Chicago has blocked off at least one section of the airport and set up a Bidenville, where the illegals congregate and sleep.

 

O’Hare airport in Chicago has been turned into a shelter for illegals

The area is blocked by a black curtain and staff is refusing to let journalists in
pic.twitter.com/9DPxpB7g15

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 9, 2023

 

And the housing arrangements are legit. The Chicago Sun-Times has a piece in which  then adds,

 

After a long trek to Chicago from Venezuela and other South and Central American countries, hundreds of migrants have landed at O’Hare Airport in recent weeks to find overcrowded, unsanitary and unpleasant conditions.

Among the complaints in the airport shelter: poor quality food like instant ramen; lack of access to health care, showers and laundry; inadequate bedding; and no support for placing children in schools.

The migrants arrive at O’Hare after being flown from Texas and other states.

 

The Sun-Times claims these are temporary arrangements, but “The problems at O’Hare follow a doubling of the number of incoming migrants to Chicago seeking more long-term shelter. As of Thursday, that figure was 2,089. At the airport, the number was 411, up from just 31 at the beginning of August. That population is almost four times the capacity limit initially set by the city.”

Security is a concern, so what is the next housing solution, the wide walkways in shopping malls? Will they set up shops to sell wares or panhandle for change? Or can they shoplift with impunity until all the stores leave and the entire mall becomes a slum city within a city, as if this is better for everyone involved?

And while we’d like to think that these incursions into liberal air space might have some electoral implications, there’s no evidence. Chicago only has 2,089 they know about. That’s .0077% of the local population. Before the Dems pandemic, over 80 million people used O’Hare annually. A few hundred foreigners behind a curtain are not exactly an emergency.

Related: Mayor Lightfoot Saves Illegals From Chicago Gun Violence By Shipping Them off to the Suburbs

What is an emergency is that Nancy Pelosi is running for Congress again on San Francisco values. That place is a disease-infested dumpster fire. You could shoot episodes for a spin-off series from The Walking Dead with little set prep or makeup. And Pelois has almost no chance of losing despite decades of enriching herself and donors. At the same time, the people who elect her watch their city spiral into a physical and cultural disaster.

It is a problem that is well documented in San Fran and dozens of other Dem Run cesspools that in no way deter places (like, say, Vermont) from embracing the same failed policies (like open borders) as if they’ll do it better, but they can’t. There is no other end. So, you are either in on the scam and milking the populace dry for political power and financial gain, or you are a brain-dead, water-carrying stooge with the intellectual agility of a small soap dish for supporting it.

A homeless festering Gutamalan could defecate on your Dolce & Gabbana Floral Stretch Stiletto Booties, and you’d be like, “We need more government to do something about this”

The only place we could use some government is along the border, where they’ve abdicated their responsibility to keep America safe. But it’s not just that. The Pfeds don’t want the states or the people to secure the border. Their goal is to break the system, and whether urban Democrats realize it or not, their DC Democrat masters will break them first with a bit of help from border state governors, ensuring they get a taste of the policies they embrace.

 

 

 

The post Chicago is ‘Storing’ Illegal Aliens Like ‘Souvenirs’ at the Airport appeared first on Granite Grok.

SMILE, everyone, SMILE!  Wonderment and reflection – it can do a body (and mind) good:

 

 

(Click to embiggen)

 

It was taken from the Gilford Middle School parking lot up towards the Belknap Mountain range. Just a quick smartphone snap but it pleased me and put a smile on my face. It would have been nice not to have the building so large, but I thought the rays emanating from the clouds, tipped with sunshine, just caught a part of me.

It was a welcome relief to see.

 

The post Palate Cleanser – Sometimes, Ya Gotta Look Up at the Sky and Smile appeared first on Granite Grok.

Did you realize one country is the home to 9 of the ten most deadly cities in the world?  it is also home to 11 of the 15 most violent cities in the world. It has been the most deadly country in the world for the last six consecutive years.  Which country is this?

We want to thank Mark Abear for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
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The answer is Mexico.

A Mexican organization, The Citizen’s Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice (CCPSCJ), compiled the data laying out the murder capitals of the world.  Mexico is the country with which we share our open southern border.

The list of most dangerous Mexican cities in order of most murders per capita to least includes Colima, Zamora, Ciudad Obregon, Zacatecas, Tijuana, Celaya, Uruapan, Ciudad Juárez, Acapulco, Irapuato and Cuernavaca and two of these highly dangerous cities, Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, are located just across the US-Mexico border.

Mexico is now America’s top trade partner, taking the top spot from China owing to its location, the USMCA trade agreement, and Chinese manipulation of USMCA.

America is moving its economic supply chain to a country that is the most deadly and violent in the world.  How smart is that?  And how smart is it when we consider more US companies are moving out of China and going to Mexico?

And how is it companies are moving out of China to relocate to the very dangerous region of the South China Sea, like Vietnam? Is that really out of Chinese influence and control?

This is not acting based on thoughtful analysis and consideration.

It’s not smart. It jeopardizes America’s security.  There’s no real meaty analysis being offered here, just some common sense and something to consider.  How did we get here?  Why is what we are doing making sense?  What questions does it raise in your mind?

The post America Is Shifting Its Economic Supply Chain to a Country That Is the Most Deadly and Violent in the World appeared first on Granite Grok.

The consolidation of smaller farms into sprawling industrial food-rearing facilities has been witnessed by a largely unaware or uncaring society. Americans rallied to save the bald eagle and the spotted owl but have mustered little more than a platitudinal Farm Aid concert to reverse the decimation of the nation’s food-producing backbone. However, failing to save local farms is similar to ignoring honeybee die-offs: Humans can live without owls but not bees and the healthful foods they pollinate.

Current Farm-Bashing

Media reports sow ideas of insects for dinner, soy-burgers replacing beef, and the elimination of traditional agriculture in favor of space-age “solutions” to the supposed climate crisis caused by agriculture. Similar promises of transforming the post-World War II food supply for the Green Revolution used technology, genetic engineering, ubiquitous chemical applications to the land, and cutthroat marketing to eviscerate traditional farming, reduce food quality, and destroy the nation’s soil and water.

The circular marketing that offers humanity the same poison twice is classic doublespeak: Technology and corporate consolidation created cheap, toxic food that is killing the ecosystem as well as the children suffering from diabetes, obesity, and cancer at ever-higher rates. The solution — per Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, John Kerry, and other globalist stooges for corporate hegemony — is to eliminate all farming by human hand and compel humanity to dine on patented synthetic creations churned from humongous factories.

The Allure of Cheap Food

Americans have been understandably dazzled by cheap food and promises of endless bounty. With an average household food budget of 9% of income — until recent inflationary pressures — the nation’s food is cheaper than any people’s in history. The selection of products from around the world and newfangled food creations, often flavored with chemicals lab-designed to stimulate taste buds or appetite, are additional temptations nurturing complacency about straw-hat farmers losing their intergenerational lands.

Now most of that acreage is gone forever. Commercial development and suburban creep have irrevocably absorbed huge swaths of former fertile farmland. Small farmsteads dropped first, but the greater impact on consumers has been the lesser-known demise of the medium-sized ones.

Much is made of the term “family farm,” but the label is illusory. Massive properties of hundreds of thousands of acres may still be “family-owned,” just as Cargill, Ford, BMW, and Walmart can be described that way. The USDA also counts all agrarian enterprises selling more than $1,000 in goods annually in its census data as “family farms” that, in GNP terms, contribute little. What counts is balanced operations, both economically and environmentally: Middle-sized farms serve that vital balance.

The Demise of Mid-Sized Farms

Much as wealth disparity has split the nation and withered the middle class, consolidation enabled by heavy subsidies and favorable regulation has erased America’s middle-sized farms. USDA reported:

“[T]he USDA said U.S. agriculture is increasingly divided into two groups: a large number of small farms that produce a small part of the nation’s food, fiber, and livestock, and a small number — fewer than 80,000 — of big operations that generate two-thirds of farm production. The number of medium-sized farms is shrinking … The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said the 2017 census showed that agricultural consolidation is driving medium-sized family farms out of business and concentrating wealth among large operators.

Subsidies for corn, wheat, soy, and other crops favor large-scale operators at the expense of lesser producers. These subsidies do not much impact farmers markets or roadside stands, which also avoid most of the costly and burdensome labor, environmental, and agriculture regulations that are easily borne by large enterprises but undermine the profitability of smaller operators.

Another creeping destroyer has been tax inflation. As land prices have increased, real estate taxes in many states have become stifling for farm entrepreneurs unless protected by land use or other relief programs. A backyard gardener is likely paying taxes already on a residential parcel with a garden, so any small income from farm sales is essentially earned free of any increment in real estate taxes. Large tracts generally carry a lower per-acre real estate tax burden; medium-sized farms thus bear the greatest tax burden relative to income, as their lands will likely be valued at current residential development value rather than raw agricultural land. These pressures especially undermine mid-sized operations close to affluent cities or suburban regions.

The result of these combined pressures has been an inexorable loss of human farmers, as food is reared in chemical-soaked plains or concrete feed lots, processed in multi-storied smoke-stacked labyrinths, and packaged for institutionalized distribution and eventual human consumption. The same forces that destroyed the local farm now label cows as threats while constructing massive polluting factories to supply synthetic, patented meat products and insect patties to schoolchildren, shaping their tastebuds for the future.

The “family farm” label is unimportant: Essential is whether food is local and produced at a sensible scale for the climate, geography, and soil types of a region. Consolidating all domestic agriculture into an industrial factory-farm system is a step away from human health and liberty and devastating for the environment. Should Americans awaken from their near-comatose consumption long enough to view their plight, they would understand that the death of smaller farms represents their own demise. No farms, no food — or at least no natural, unpatented food.

 

John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And Regular Contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.

The post The Extinction of Mid-Size American Farms Hurts You appeared first on Granite Grok.

As over 100 liberty activists gathered for my sentencing hearing at federal court, two brave activists challenged the unconstitutional recording ban at the federal courthouse. One is Frank “Footloose” Staples, a longtime freedom advocate who is not afraid to throw himself into the gears of the evil system. The other is NH State Representative Jason Gerhard, who spent a dozen years in federal prison for standing with tax freedom advocates Ed and Elaine Brown. When he was released a couple of years ago, he jumped right back into activism.

While there are ridiculous recording restrictions in existence at New Hampshire state courthouses, the feds are even worse. In NH state courts, one can easily record in a courtroom, but security goons will threaten people who try to record in the other areas of state courthouses. Federal courts however, completely ban all recording devices, nationwide. The ban, “Rule 53“, has been in place since 1946 and has never been successfully overturned. Recording devices are also prohibited by NH Federal District Court “local rules” 83.8.

Will Footloose and Rep Gerhard have success by openly violating the ban, giving them standing to argue their case in court? We’re about to find out, as both were arrested Monday morning while recording at the security checkpoint. Both were cuffed and then issued tickets for violating 102-74.385, a misdemeanor. That code states:

Persons in and on property must at all times comply with official signs of a prohibitory, regulatory or directory nature and with the lawful direction of Federal police officers and other authorized individuals.

Footloose argues that the court is a “public forum”, as stated on its own signage in the lobby, so any order by the police to leave is not a “lawful order”. Gerhard is standing on the constitutionally protected right to a free press. Here’s the video of their arrests:

For more, follow “Absolute Defiance” on YouTube and Gerhard for New Hampshire on Rumble. Stay tuned here to Free Keene for the latest.

How about the survival of humanity as a good enough reason to impeach Biden? The Biden-Regime’s latest – long-range missiles to the corrupt, oligarch Zelensky. See thread below from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.. I disagree, however, with RFK when he says that the problem is that Russia will retaliate. Putin will act preemptively to prevent the Biden-Regime … through its bloodthirsty surrogate Zelensky … from showering death and destruction on the Russian people – because Putin, unlike the America-hating Socialists running the Biden-Regime, actually loves his country.

And that’s what the Biden-Regime and its lunatic warmonger cheerleaders are counting on. The Regime, and probably most of the GOP “leaders”, will then label Russia’s defensive measures “aggression” against the United States, which the Regime believes will cause the country to rally around “War-President” Biden and reelect him (an outcome that the GOP “leaders” would prefer over Trump because he would end their precious forever-wars). These people are willing to risk World War III to maintain power. These people are SICK and TWISTED.

2022: President Biden “not prepared to provide” long-range missiles to Ukraine, given the “key goal” of avoiding “the road towards a third world war.”

2023: Biden administration preparing to send long-range missiles to Ukraine.

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) September 12, 2023

The post Biden-Regime Willing To Instigate World War III To Maintain Power … Long-Range Missiles To Zelensky appeared first on Granite Grok.

Comedian Larry Miller used to do a bit about getting back together with your ex. He said it’s like finding spoiled milk in the fridge and then putting it back as if it’ll be better the next time you check. A Hospital in Maine is the bad milk, and they want their nurses to come back.

Those would be longtime employees who had careers and relied on the benefits until Maine Gov. Janet Mills signed a vaccine mandate. Healthcare workers had to get jabbed, or they were terminated. In the case of Maine General, religious exemptions were not permitted.

 

Nurses and other healthcare workers at MaineGeneral Health, one of Maine’s largest healthcare providers, were unceremoniously fired two years ago if they refused to take the experimental mRNA injections touted as COVID-19 preventatives.

Some of those workers were even slapped with misconduct charges for refusing to comply with the mandate, many were later denied unemployment benefits, and no requests for religious exemptions were honored. …

 

An EEOC claim of discrimination was dismissed after the hospital claimed that “religious accommodations would impose an ‘undue hardship’ on the hospital.” Fired, ineligible for unemployment, health benefits gone, religious rights abrogated, and charged with misconduct. For what?

 

[Terry]bPoland was never opposed to vaccines, generally speaking. Though she previously used a religious exemption to avoid taking an influenza shot, she willingly took the other vaccines required to work in healthcare prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, including immunizations for Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Hepatitis-B.

She said she was concerned about the novel nature of the mRNA technology, a form of gene therapy, which prior to COVID-19 had not been used in the standard schedule of immunizations.

“I knew enough not to take it. I’ve been a nurse long enough to know I need to question what new products are,” Poland said. “I’m not going to be the first one to jump on board of an experiment.”

 

Terry and I have something in common. I’ve received all sorts of vaccines in my life. I expect that if I had to travel (not likely to happen) to places where you are advised to get vaccinated to protect against the local scourge, and it’s been around a long time, that would be fine. But I am on the record stating that I would wait until the COVID Vaxx-human test trials were completed before deciding about the COVID-19 vaccine.

That trial is ongoing, but the results thus far are not encouraging. I have pre-existing conditions (white, male, Christian, Conservative, happily married, parent, small government, low tax, pro-liberty, … sorry, wrong conditions). Cardiac Artery Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. They are managed well and of little day-to-day concern, but based on what has been pried from the FDA and Pfizer, among others, I’m still a hard pass.

Even if it had some value in preventing infection, which it does not, the Myocarditis and Pericarditis risks alone are a no-go, no matter what the cardiologists have been told by the Hospital to say.

As for work, I was fortunate that my soon-to-be former employer never implemented any mandates during COVID, other than the one where you show up to work on time every day and do your job like you always did. But you could ask yourself, what if? Your employer fires you over refusing an untested pharmaceutical and technology (mRNA) that has since been proven to be more dangerous than doing nothing. No benefits, no unemployment pay, and you’ve been effectively blacklisted by them as a bad apple. Then they say, hey, sorry about that. Would you like to come back to work? Here’s Terry Poland’s response.

 

“I was livid. Like, how dare you force me out of a career that I’ve dedicated my whole life to, taken away my livelihood, my ability to earn a good income, and now you think I’m gonna come grovel back to you?” Poland said. “I don’t hardly think so. And that’s the attitude of most everybody that I’ve been in contact with since yesterday.”

 

She misspelled f**k off, you skeeving bastards, but you get the idea.

 

HT | Maine Wire

The post Hospital That Fired Nurses For Refusing Vaxx Wants to Know If They’d Like to Come Back (Please)? appeared first on Granite Grok.

NH Journal (NH-NeverTrump Journal) is to the Establishment-NHGOP what MSNBC is to the Biden-Regime … a propaganda organ. If you peruse NH-NeverTrump Journal’s twitter-feed … as I do regularly, in order to see what narrative the Establishment-NHGOP wants pushed … you may have noticed a change in the target. Instead of incessantly attacking Trump, as he had been doing since the Biden-Regime stole the 2020 election, Mikey Graham has instead redirected his fire at Ramaswamy.

This is also the latest tactic of the, at best, useless Super-PAC Never Back Down. From The Hill:

A leaked debate memo drafted by the heads of the pro-Ron DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down details how they think the Florida governor should attack businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, calling for DeSantis to “take a sledgehammer” to his GOP rival.

Today, for example, Mikey Graham is highlighting claims that Ramaswamy is, at best, soft on anti-semitism:

 

 

The post Is NH-NeverTrump Journal Actually Part Of The DeSantis Campaign? appeared first on Granite Grok.

The current Grand Solar Minimum is expected to last until about 2035, by which time the overall average temperature of the earth will likely have declined a few degrees. But wait, you say, Wasn’t it hot? In some spots, sure, but in others, it was cold, and the long-term averages will be lower (get into the weeds).

Related: NASA Says the Solar Minimum is Here. Climate Cult Says Meh, No Big Deal (But It Probably Is)

The Northern Hemisphere, in particular, will be a mix and mash of odd weather, common during a solar minimum, as we reported a few years back when it all started.

 

Solar minima are not wholesale drops in temperature as I understand it. The decrease in solar energy has a long term cooling effect but it’s not like turning off the heat. The seasons can get a bit odd. You will still have “weather,” meaning warm or hot spells, cool spells, especially in New England where the geography has taught us to wait a few minutes to see if the weather will change. And it does.

 

When I wrote that, it resulted from reading about the topic, but this past week, someone sent me some specifics on the science behind it. Higher levels of solar energy stabilize the jet stream. When that energy declines during solar minimums, the jet stream gets all wonky (or wavy), allowing warm air to move north and cold air to move south in weird and exotic ways. The result is areas in proximity with dramatically different weather.

 

The most immediately noticeable impact is the reduction of energy entering the jet streams, which changes the jet’s usual strong and straight ZONAL flow to a weak and wavy MERIDIONAL one.

Depending on which side of the stream you’re on, this means you’re either in for a spell of anomalously cold or warm weather and/or a period of unusually dry or wet conditions:

 

 

” …the perceived climatic changes can be fully explained by cyclical ‘buckling’ of the jet streams (Zonal to Meridional), itself caused by a bout of historically low solar activity.”

 

Here’s an actual real-world, current-day example of this in action (courtesy of the same link.)

 

Here it is, the omega blocking in all its glory, responsible for the annotated extreme weather events in Europe this week. pic.twitter.com/0TUmZMQzoT

— Mika Rantanen (@mikarantane) September 4, 2023

Related: NASA on the Solar Minimum – Next Cycle 30-50% Weaker than the Last

All of this is why, if you’d missed our previous prognostication, we think the left hit the accelerator on their Green Dream economic destruction plan. The science suggests that if they wait (which means they know the actual science), it will get too cool too often to keep the wool pulled over enough people’s eyes. It is now or never.

Selling the expected side effects of a solar minimum as extreme or chaotic just panders to their priorities at the expense of science and trillions of dollars in wealth redirected away from where it could do some good.

And yes, I suspect they understand the cost to economies, livelihoods, and lives. With fossil fuels verboten and affordable warmth at a premium, because wind and solar will always fail to deliver, people could (and will) freeze to death. That’s just alright with them. They must not have been the right sort of folks who could heat with oil or gas and virtue signal by purchasing carbon offsets. What is not alright is that there is still time to stop them. We can reverse the decline and ramp up oil and gas production in the US, and we must. There’s no way to build enough nuclear and hydro to meet the demands of their fossil-fuel-less future, not that the left would ever allow it.

But we need reliable, affordable energy for at least the next two decades while the sun takes a break; evidence of that need is all around us. What the left calls chaotic is normal, and your lifestyle has nothing to do with it.

 

 

The post The Crazy Weather isn’t Man-Made It’s the Grand Solar Minimum appeared first on Granite Grok.

As promised in the last Memestream News: Monday Edition, I have an overflow. My meme cup runneth over.  And yes there will be a Friday edition too.

Let the mayhem, mockery, and ridicule resume:

 

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

 

 

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

 

Steve’s passed some feedback to me – as is his right – that this new formatting is not quite as popular as before.  So I’ve tried to move more memes up to “front load” it.  Please let me know if this works for you.  I try to not “just” have memes but also other information / commentary that is useful – but I understand that the memes are the primary attraction.

 

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

 

“You’re just a black face!” | Larry Elder OBLITERATES Rude Woman!

 

 

Dems hate it when their vote-slaves cast off their chains.

 

 

I just rediscovered my JEXIT T-shirt.  I thought my anti-political wife had File-13ed it.

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m certainly no historian, but as I understand it, such megalomaniacs telegraph their intentions.  Churchill knew who, and more importantly what, Hitler was because he’d read the book and had the moral courage to take Hitler at his word.  Schwab and others have openly talked about their plans, including depopulation.  But nobody wants to believe them.

 

 

 

 

 

39% still approve of Biden?  What’s he got to do to lose them?  Take millions in bribes from foreign countries, be a pedo, go senile, bring us to the bring or WWIII???  Oh, wait…

 

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

 

PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA

 

 

Criminal offenses.  CRIMINAL offenses.

From Telegram (image below):

Yesterday the UK State passed one of the most liberty crushing pieces of legislation in history under the Energy Bill.  This is completely unreported by MSM and edgy UK “media” Talk TV etc.  Under the Bill – the State will be able to FORCE people to get smart meters by end 2025 and will put smart meters into all major electric appliances (see grab), which can then be controlled externally.  The have also opened the door to creating a offense with up to 1 year in prison for not complying with their energy performance certification regime.

 

 

Coming soon globally, I am sure.  A year in prison for not complying with the green diktats.  They’re making it illegal to rent the place unless it’s upgraded, at your expense.  Or illegal to sell unless it’s upgraded, at your expense.  And don’t doubt that soon they’ll make it illegal for you to occupy your own home… unless it’s upgraded, at your expense.  More on this:

 

Net Zero Police Allowed ‘FORCE ENTRY’ Into Homes

 

 

Anyone remember this ad?  Not so satirical now.

 

Audi Green Police A3 TDI Ad (Super Bowl XLIV 2010)

 

 

In rewatching this, and the scene where the guy at the sink has the police helicopter on him because he trashed something compostable, think of the panopticon world that is.  So do not doubt me on this, but the more they tighten the screws, the more virtuous they will believe themselves to be.  Paging CS Lewis’ prescient warning:

 

 

Granted that those at the tippy-top understand the real plan, for the most part the “useful idiots” just think they’re doing good:

Slip-Sliding Towards Hell with a Good Conscience – Granite Grok

Or just following orders:

 

 

More on this topic:

 

 

 

Socialists getting them indoctrinated young.  I recall seeing that thought before… whether the international or national variation.

 

 

G-d bless ’em.  Every one.

 

 

Say, what’s “cricket” in Russian?

 

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

 

Israeli journalist Efrat Fenigson has an interview coming up with MEP Christine Anderson (AfD).  Here’s a preview:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Teaser.mp4

 

I think this is going to be a great and substantive exchange.  Like the one I wrote about here:

An Open Letter to Neil Oliver and Glenn Beck – Granite Grok

And it’s up:

You’re The Voice – Episode 7: MEP Christine Anderson (rumble.com)

I’m listening now.  Fascinating.  And one thing that I never thought of with a cashless society – the inability of banks to be exposed to bank runs.

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

From Telegram:

In the UK, posters appeared advertising childlessness for the sake of “saving the environment” “Green” activists propose not to give birth to children, calling them “climate killers”. The propaganda of eco-friendly childlessness has acquired unprecedented proportions – posters are pasted on the streets with calls to “stop giving birth”. “Conscious childlessness is environmentally friendly,” promote green inadequacies turned on ecology.

 

 

Remember this video I posted a while back?

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/ending-your-blood-line.mp4

 

There used to be a “Zero Population Growth” society – and in full disclosure I was a member for a year or so waaaaaaay back.  Now there’s a full-on Voluntary Human Extinction movement.  And it’s all presented as this great and wonderful thing.

I wish I could have more kids.  But there’s the wife’s age plus triple-Jabbed status.  And, of course, there’s the fact that I’m no “spring chicken” either.

 

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

 

Specifically on Covid / medical – because it’s that important to highlight:

 

Sad excess deaths

 

 

Also see this article showing that there is a statistical strong correlation between the Jabs and Covid cases:

Comment on Subramanian and Kumar, “Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination” (pdmj.org)

 

—

How do we Reach the Brainwashed? – OffGuardian (off-guardian.org)

This discusses using art to get around cognitive barriers.

 

 

This is generic; placed here about the Scamdemic but applies to so many things.  And most people don’t want to because to see – really see – would call into question their status as morally, intellectually, and educationally superior.

 

 

—

 

Take stand now, or kneel forever.

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/stand-up-now-or-it-will-be-never.mp4

 

 

I still think the idea of a maskless flashmob is a good one, if masks are required in stores.  Organize 10-20 people and all just breeze in at once and start shopping.  Fill up carts as fast as possible, because if they do call the police, all those products will have to be reshelved.  And while that’s hard on the floor workers, that’s a heck of a lot of wasted labor.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

On masks:

Study finds wearing masks for 30 minutes exposes to toxic chemicals (msn.com)

—

IgG4 Antibodies Induced by Repeated Vaccination May Generate Immune Tolerance to the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein – PubMed (nih.gov)

What did I write about in Depopulation Speculations?  IgG4 antibodies.

—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I need some of these to hand out.

 

 

 

 

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

 

Jordan Peterson Instantly OWNS Woke Professor On Gender Pronouns

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Pick of the post:

 

SHOCKING TRUMP Destroyed The Interviewer

 

 

Can you imagine any other candidate doing this?  Any. Other. Candidate?

And note the utter astonishment and – IMHO – completely sincere belief of the interviewer that The Potato is scandal free?  You can read it in her face.  She’s baffled that Trump would think there’s a scandal with the Bidens… but no wonder, they’re all on the same playbook:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Enemedia-says-no-evidence.mp4

 

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

 

Collected links with commentary, loosely organized:

 

Compare Fenix Ammo And Liberty Safe Responses To Authoritarianism – Chicks On The Right (chicksonright.com)

An important question: Does Liberty Safes – irrespective of this particular thing – have ONE master code?

—

Biden Admin Agrees To Swap $6B In Frozen Funds To Iran For 5 American Prisoners – Chicks On The Right (chicksonright.com)

And done on 9-11 too.  On Iran:

Iran Can Produce 10 Nuclear Bombs in 4 Months, Watchdog Says (freebeacon.com)

I know some people have forgotten, but Iran’s practiced launching missiles from ships and blowing them up at 90-100 miles… and calling those launches successes.  Also remember that in Shia Islam their version of the Messiah, the Twelfth Imam, cannot return until there’s been a global conflagration.  Thus, to a believing Shiite, WWIII is a feature not a bug.

 

EMP: A Terrorist’s Dream

 

 

—

Thread by @Doc_0 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

Remember, they really do think YOUR children are THEIR children, just housed & fed by you.

—

Biden Admin FINALLY Shows All Their Cards: They’re Coming For Your Guns – Prepared Gun Owners

They want them all.  Don’t ever believe assurances otherwise.

 

 

—

Invidious Comparisons Dept. – Liberty’s Torch (libertystorch.info)

The push towards digital currency proceeds apace.

 

 

From the same site:

Sovereign Immunity – Liberty’s Torch (libertystorch.info)

Why Now? – Liberty’s Torch (libertystorch.info)

—

But…But…Greenwood Will Be At The Opening Ceremonies For The Camps! – Western Rifle Shooters Association

A fighter.

—

Judy Wood on the Twin Towers turning to dust – Jerm Warfare

I am still skeptical.  But a lot less skeptical than I was ten years ago.

 

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

 

Palate cleansers:

 

 

Powerball is up to

—

—

 

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

 

The post Memestream News: Wednesday Edition appeared first on Granite Grok.

When I was at the university, I once objected to a classmate’s lazy use of “public goods.” He had used it to favor his policy position as a shorthand synonym of what’s good for society—only a thinly veiled euphemism for what I want to happen.

“Public goods are things that are nonrivalrous and nonexcludable,” I said, almost sputtering off a nearby economics textbook. “The ones you’re talking about are neither.”

He rolled his eyes in boredom. “Yes, yes, but that’s not what people mean when they say, ‘public goods.’”

Strangely, I think he’s right. These days, the economist’s clear and rather demanding criteria of so-called public goods are largely swept aside in favor of something like “What I think would be good for the public.” And that little linguistic slip opens up a world of economic policymaking from which we still haven’t recovered.

Everything these days are public goods. In a New York Review of Books piece by Helen Epstein, we learn that money printing isn’t just important for government spending but “for improvements in health care, education, transportation, the power grid, and other public goods that might foster development.”

To proponents of government services, everything that carries even a whiff of external benefits to someone, somewhere, is therefore transformed into a “public good”—which must be provided by government. We might have excused such convictions, chalking them up to ignorance, if it weren’t for economists at the pinnacle of the profession embracing those views; Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus is a case in point.

We have to dig about three hundred pages into Nordhaus’s book The Spirit of Green before we get an admission that government failures can be worse than the failures that ostensibly run amok in private markets. Otherwise, they’re just technocratic solutions: rainbows and unicorns, public goods this, public goods that. Everything is an uncorrected externality—from the keyboards we write on to gas stations, hospitals, landlords, and the English language.

If all you wield are government solutions, everything looks like a private-sector nail in desperate need of a hammering. In his book, Nordhaus argues over the merits of internalizing external effects from pollution and then extends the logic to sin taxes on gambling, smoking, drinking, and firearms use. Like pollution, they impact other people too, and so a benign social planner must intervene. Having already convinced his audience of the need for governmental correction for an invisible gas with invisible future damages, the rest follows as a matter of course.

What’s clear is that despite holding the most prestigious award in the economics profession and being the author of a long-standing economics textbook, Professor Nordhaus doesn’t understand even the basic economics of property and rivalrousness. For public good’s two criteria, it’s the competing use of rivalrousness that has societal (and thereby economical) implications.

Property and ownership, not in their legal concepts but in their economic functions, come about only under conditions of scarcity. Scarcity means that goods and services have secondary use—opportunity costs. With unlimited abundance, property, and ownership (perhaps apart from your own self) play no role: There is enough to satisfy everyone’s wants at any given time. In everyday life, we don’t price oxygen in the air because there’s enough for everyone all the time, and Earth’s natural processes make more of it. It’s a nonscarce resource; therefore, its price is zero, and it makes no sense to try to establish ownership over this or that air molecule. (While the use of a breath of air is rivalrous in that nobody else can use the lungful of air I have just inhaled, the ever-present amount around is enough so that the good “air” becomes nonrivalrous.)

Another misunderstanding of nonrivalrousness is the anti-intellectual charge of cultural appropriation. Cultural traits, ranging from fashion to music, art, language, innovations, or traditions, are unowned and intangible things. Yet the unenlightened wokesters of the world have decided that all traits belong (in perpetuity?) to whichever group historically wielded them.

What they overlook is the basic economic concept of rivalrousness. My use of English—a language that isn’t my mother tongue and that I have thereby thoroughly “appropriated”—does in no way prevent another person from using English or changing English in any which way they prefer (think teenager neologisms). My applying a decades-old recipe for tonight’s dinner in no way strips someone else of the pleasure of using that same recipe. My use of some far-away tribe’s dance, song, or belief system in no way prevents them from dancing, singing, or believing that same thing.

Cultural expressions are unowned, unownable, and, more importantly, unlimited. They are nonrivalrous in the public-goods sense in that anyone can don a Mexican hat, grow dreads, pray to a foreign God, play the traditional instruments of some faraway tribe, or, closer to my own heart, practice yoga.

It repeatedly happens that—entirely hypothetical, of course—a young, woke, anticapitalistic woman complains about some feature in modern-day yoga as practiced in the West. We all know the character (and if not, the recent outburst by Anita Chaudhuri in the British newspaper The Guardian can serve as a decent approximation).

Sweaty from a class with dozens of other like-minded and culturally sensitive students, this hypothetical woman’s commitment to not culturally appropriate something that other humans have once made is undermined no less than three times by her own very actions. First, she’s speaking English, a language that culturally appropriated words from everything from Old Norse to Frisian, Norman, and Germanic languages (not to mention its exportation across the world in the last century or more). Second, she just came out of a physical, aerobics-like sequence of fast-paced flows that many people in the West treat as a physical workout; that is emphatically not what yoga was like for most of its five-thousand-year history. Third, she’s a woman (women feature only scantly in the historic records of yoga), and her practicing of this ancient art would have been looked down upon by most of the very cultures she seeks to uphold.

Performative contradictions are powerful, but the lesson goes wider: a practice—like yoga or food recipes or fashion or songs—made in whichever time, place, or people belongs to nobody. They are nonrivalrous goods. They can change and incorporate different things from anything else in humanity’s vast array of emergent, cultural, and artistic traditions. Mozart’s symphonies may not only be performed by white Europeans in the splendid halls of Vienna; cars and car culture are not only wielded by those demographics that contributed to its invention. Nobody owns cultures. Nobody rules cultures. And nobody can shut you out from wielding them. Therefore, you can mix them and change them anyway you like.

One would think that the sort of person attuned to celebrating diversity, praising tolerance for one another’s differences, and embracing melting pots should understand that. Alas not.

Joakim Book is a writer and professional editor. He holds degrees in economics and financial history from the University of Glasgow and University of Oxford, and was a Mises summer fellow in 2017. His main research interests are monetary economics and the history of central banks. 

Joakim Book | Mises Wire

Mises Wire We heartily encourage reprints and shares of Mises Wire articles. If you wish to reproduce an article in your blog, magazine, radio show, newspaper column, classroom material, textbook, discussion group, website, or any other venue, please do so. The original publication source must be included in an appropriate place.

The post Cultural Appropriation: The Nontheft of Something No One Owns appeared first on Granite Grok.

New Wave Feminism tried to stand on the shoulders of its older sisters but only just barely. It has been a while since it was about bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan. These days, it is more focused on “weaponizing their own unhappiness and turning it into an activist movement.”

 

It is for this reason that modern feminism is often accused of being an ideological cult for narcissists.  Everything about it seems to be designed to elevate and appeal to the worst kinds of people.  Not only that, but the belief system is now so pervasive in western countries, especially among the college educated, that 60% of women say they identify and agree with the “common definition” of feminism, even though the common definition does not match the behavior and motives of most feminists.

More like that from Zerohedge here (on men leaving the US in search of women who share their values), but that’s just my opening Salvo to a finer point. Western feminism has evolved from equal rights to accusations of benevolent sexism (attacking men for being gentlemen) to outright rage and resentment,

 

A friend who took the course with me felt the same way. “If all else fails,” she would groan as we walked out of class together, “blame it on patriarchy.” She was a convinced atheist and I was a churchgoing Christian, but we agreed that the theories we were learning did not address our most pressing questions and concerns.

 

To …

 

If it excludes trans women, it is not feminism!!!

— Women’s March (@womensmarch) September 10, 2023

 

…celebrating men who deny women opportunity or success. Women’s Liberation has evolved into man-hating women applauding the patriarchy for infiltrating and undermining women.

Related: Where Men Take Things from Women, and If You Don’t Applaud, You Are a Bigot.

Low Hanging…Fruit.

Will  Thomas (doing business as ‘Lia’), the C-team men’s swimmer who is still attracted to women, put on a one-piece, planted a flag in the feminine gene pool, and proceeded to take success, accolades, and opportunities from actual women – with the blessing and support of the woke patriarchy and feminists (excluding the TERFs).

Celebrating his womanhood has turned Dylan Mulvaney into a millionaire – money and opportunity stolen from penis-less women celebrating legitimate womanhood. And again, the elite’s golf clap and whisper to each other about how wonderful it is that men are rising to the top as “women” while raging against anyone who defends real women from men who have infiltrated their ranks and deprived them of things Feminists have been squawking about for decades.

At the other extreme, and I’m not saying there’s no Venn diagram overlap, there are ‘feminists’ who claim milking a cow is sexual assault.

 

A paper currently being promoted by a New York university calls on society to consider the rampant “sexual exploitation” of dairy cows by the milk industry in order to “fully fight gendered oppression.” Specifically, the author compares cattle insemination to “rape” and the milking of cows to “sexual abuse.”

 

The end of Western civilization can’t be far behind that sort of thinking (that was 2019), but now a group that was formed as a result of something Trump said but Biden did – the former (lockerroom talk by a Republican) and the latter (rape by Joe Biden). The Women’s March never had much to say about the latter. Still, they’ve got time to tweet support for men who have not only deprived women of victory or income but continue to integrate into safe spaces where actual sexual assault has become customary (women’s prisons, for example).

Saying the inmates are running the asylum would be ironic and an understatement. And while the prison girls would like to march in protest, that would mean stepping on the hairy toes of the sisterhood of the traveling penis, and even female inmates may want to stay away from that sort of trouble—a new next “NEXT” generation of feminism controlled by men.

Femasculism.

 

HT | Twitchy

The post It’s Not Feminism, Its Femasculism appeared first on Granite Grok.

On a split screen, I was amazed to see Kevin McCarthy’s announcement covered simultaneously on FOXNews, MSNBC, and CNN, but the post comments could not be further apart. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) on MSNBC, called the Speaker’s actions and the MAGA Republicans an arm of the Trump campaign.

Schultz is rich, saying that the Republicans have no evidence showing wrongdoing but that the Democrats had plenty of credible evidence to Impeach President Donald Trump. We know in retrospect that they did not and relied on manufactured evidence.

Congresswoman Schultz has a short memory or is lying about the Trump Impeachment Inquiry. Nancy Pelosi set the precedent in 2019 by doing the exact thing that McCarthy is now. They both bypassed a House vote and used the power of their office to call for the Inquiry. An Inquiry is the first step in the process and usually leads to a vote to impeach the sitting President. An official Impeachment Inquiry has more power for investigating than House committee investigations. The Republicans have been frustrated by the lack of cooperation with the Biden Administration and the Justice Department to be forthcoming with requested documents and evidence. The Inquiry’s power will pressure Biden and Garland to cooperate or face contempt of Congress charges.

If a vote were taken today on Impeachment, it would probably fail. Too many Republican members of Congress are running for reelection in districts won by Joe Biden in 2020. They fear an Impeachment of Biden would hurt their reelection bids, turning the seat over to the Democrats. With Democrats controlling the Senate, there is little chance of a successful Impeachment trial and vote.

A well-run Impeachment Inquiry showing how corrupt the Biden Family is, how much they have profited from their shakedown of foreign companies and countries, and the possible compromise of the President of the United States may be enough to turn no votes to yes. An Inquiry will also have to be covered by a biased media that has been protecting Joe Biden by suppressing the news and keeping half the country hoodwinked.

The timing of the Inquiry could not be worse for the President. Special Counsel Weiss has committed to indicting Hunter Biden by the end of September, which will further soil the Biden name in the mainstream media. This attention should be too much for any hopes of Biden winning a second term, putting the spotlight onto Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, or Gretchen Whitmer. None of those three excite the Democrat base, and the bench on the Left is very weak.

Democrat members of Congress and the President will all minimize the Republican case against Joe Biden, but the evidence has been piling up. The fact that Hunter Biden’s lawyers have been accused of pressuring the IRS whistleblowers to change or retract their testimony. The House Republicans have directed Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate these charges, which will be the first step in the current level of cooperation.

This process is not payback for the Democrat treatment of Donald Trump. Joe Biden has been using the power of his office for years to grow a fortune for the Biden Family. He has been using America as a piggy bank for the extended Biden family, and it is time to pay the piper. Watching Joe Biden fall like one of the many statues pulled down or defaced by hostile Democrats will be sad for the country but oh so sweet for Republicans.

 

The post McCarthy Announces Biden Impeachment Dog and Pony Show appeared first on Granite Grok.

Officials from the US Dept. of Justice announced on Tuesday that they are investigating the world’s largest cruise company for treason, obstruction of justice, and other possible crimes. Board members could face life in prison.

The post DOJ Investigating Carnival Cruise Lines For Treason appeared first on The Liberty Block.

This article is challenging to title as it is both sensitive and maddening. All of us have watched grandparents, parents, and even ourselves age to the point where simple tasks are no longer automatic. We have seen muscle memory fail, and even memories fade.

In some cases, we have had to step in and make hard decisions that limit a loved one’s liberty for the safety of themselves and others. That choice may be taking car keys or, sadly, placing them in a facility to cater to their specific needs. The aging process can be cruel if we are fortunate to live long enough to get to that point, but the truth is, it is life, and sometimes, we need to face it and make the best choices for all. The circle of life can be both beautiful and cruel, and understanding it is not always possible. Having God and loving people in your circle will help guide us through this life path.

The life expectancy in America has hit a speed bump for reasons that would be a topic for another article. Still, our nation’s leaders are aging to levels never before seen in our history. Many still appear at the top of their game in their eighties, and others we know are shadows of themselves pushing on into their nineties when they should have stepped aside. Whether these people are on your side of the aisle or the other, you would like to think they have their circle of loved ones to help them see it is time to leave public life and enjoy time for themselves with their families.

Some of us see a need for term limits for many reasons, including preempting the hard decision to leave. Still, the other option is observing our leaders and using our votes carefully to ensure we have sound, wise leaders to guide our great land. We have seen in recent elections we cannot rely on the electorate to make the right choices, and Pennsylvania in 2020 is a good example. Not only did the voters elect a Senator who had experienced a life-threatening stroke and was clearly not in control of his faculties, but they also re-elected a candidate who had passed away a month before the election. Maybe we give the electorate too much credit to think they can make good decisions.

We are watching and wondering who is allowing Joe Biden, Diane Feinstein, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and even a relatively young John Fetterman to stay in office today but also announce intentions to run for another term in 2024. Whatever their motivations, they must be counseled to rethink their decisions. Those choices are not suitable for them and certainly not for the American people. Power changes people and attracts people who bring their own motivations into one’s circle. The political game in America has become a source of wealth for politicians and their families and staff, and wealth corrupts some people to look beyond the purpose of their positions and to allow greed and more power to become their motivations. I fear this is where we are in 21st-century America. Our forefathers warned us not to let the government get too large for its good, and we are seeing their fears come to fruition. Our government is no longer for the people but despite and at the expense of the people. We, the people, cannot be only a slogan but a cause to force us to retake control of our government, and that starts by using our votes to replace lifelong politicians and their machines. If we make good decisions, which is a very big if, we may save this incredible republic for future generations. If not, we become a part of the problem rather than the solution. We, too, have a good deal of power if we use it wisely.

The post There Is Courageous And Their Is Foolish appeared first on Granite Grok.

What controls will be next to replace mandatory masks, the jab, social distancing, and selectively closing down small businesses in the latest Covid scare?

Are we to believe the virus didn’t spread in the nation’s largest retail chains while thousands of small businesses like mom-and-pop stores were closed – where crowds would be smaller? Does this make sense?

Just because the president issued an Executive Order, are we to believe that churches were non-essential and liquor and marijuana establishments were essential? I bet many of the folks who were frightened and walked in lockstep with these edicts also are among those involved in the “war against life in the womb,” who blow their horns about their “freedom of choice” to kill the baby.

Hypocrisy unlimited! The government tells those they wish to rule you can drink alcohol and smoke dope. You jump in line even though the Supreme Law of the Land tells you: “Government shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion and the free exercise thereof,” but all of a sudden, in case of an emergency, we are to jump in line like sheep follow the shepherd’s voice.

Our American Constitution is like an oasis in a desert of totalitarian regimes around the world. The purpose of our government is to limit government, not the people. But our God-given rights are only on paper: “We, the people, must enforce them. Because God is the author of liberty and all human rights, our Constitution demands limitations shall be put on Congress, not the people in the Bill of Rights. But what good is a law if citizens cower before the state?

Contrary to our Founder’s wisdom, like all other dictatorships, the UN Declaration of Human Rights grants rights on paper through the first 28 Articles, while Article 29 Section 3 takes them away with a guarantee of total government: “These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”

On May 2nd, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer issued a Climate Emergency Resolution that urged the president to exercise unconstitutional executive powers to officially add emergency powers to his existing powers to prepare for a climate crisis which the president has declared “code red,” and the World UnHealthy Organization, UN bureaucracy has predicted would cause an additional 30 million deaths. Ask yourself, will health through government control add to the problem?

We have the Freedom of Choice to demand that Congress control the president’s dreams of a New World Order. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to jump in line? Or are you going to jump in line with the “revolution of truth” with The John Birch Society? Arm yourself with weapons of truth. See the exposure of fraud behind climate change at jbs.org. You have “Freedom of Choice.” Use it to stop the power of “choice” that has a history of “choosing death.” Only this time, it is the “death of liberty.”

 

The post Beware the Coming Climate Change State of Emergency appeared first on Granite Grok.

We asked readers to help us name our upcoming event in October, and we got quite a few responses and more than a few that were similar or the same. These then went to the panel of folks helping organize the events so that each could pick the ones they liked best. The plan was to have that name by the time this post was published.

That didn’t happen.

The name and the event will be announced tomorrow on these pages and at the Right of Center (ROC) meeting to help encourage attendance and support and, primarily, to get folks to share it with their folks and save the date. October 28th, 1-4 p.m., at the Londonderry Fish and Game Club.

The voting is very close, and we are still waiting on some votes. One vote could change the winner or result in a tie, so I want to wait until everyone on our board of Grok event ‘directors’ has submitted their favorite.

If I get the votes this evening, I will announce the winning event name first thing tomorrow morning before the ROC.

If we vote for a name with multiple submissions, I will do a drawing with the submitter’s names. If you were the first to submit it, you will get a number of entries equal to the number of times it was suggested, including your own. The next person will then get one less number of entries, down to the last person who submitted it, who would get one entry.

Maybe you are Primrose Everdeen, who knows?

We’ll mix them up in a hat (I have several), and my wife or one of my kids will pick a name. I will then email that person to ask if they want their name public or wish to remain anonymous. We will honor either request and update the post announcing the event name.

Becasue a tie is possible, the organizers will each vote again on those two event names, and we will announce that when we have a winner.

I know. It seemed simple enough when we set out to do it – the naming, I think the event organizing will be easier – but as it turns out, we received a lot of suggestions, but we should have it decided and announced by tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who emailed and the two handfuls of folks who submitted suggestions in the comments. We appreciate you all getting involved with us and look forward to seeing you at the event. Updates will be provided as we firm up all the moving parts.

The post And the Name of the Oct 28th Grok Event Is … Still Being Voted On (Doh!) appeared first on Granite Grok.

Kevin McCarthy’s GOP House has been a dismal failure. Not a single impeachment. A Speaker Pelosi would have impeached, at a minimum, Garland, Wray, Mayorkas and Biden by this point. What explains the GOP’s failure to deliver for the voters who gave them the House? Perhaps the Deep State controls a critical mass of GOP Reps. Jesse Kelly believes that explains Ken Buck’s fawning treatment of the FBI. Also listen to Ken Buck on MSNBC … he’s running interference for the Biden-Regime, repeating the same vapid “talking points” of the Left – for example, that there is no connection between foreign countries and foreign oligarchs showering millions on Hunter and the “Big Guy.”

I believe Representative Ken Buck is compromised. https://t.co/sWN2IzTV9m

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) September 7, 2023

We don't have the votes for impeachment, plain and simple. @HouseGOP must instead stay focused on addressing issues that harm everyday Americans, i.e., a porous southern border, rampant, inner-city crime, and skyrocketing inflation. pic.twitter.com/V0FnhEcZoJ

— Rep. Ken Buck (@RepKenBuck) September 11, 2023

The post Rep Ken Buck … A Deep-State Asset? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Traveling was once a luxury for the rich, but today even working-class people enjoy vacations. In America, people have gotten so wealthy that planning summer vacations is a priority for many families. Living standards have improved so tremendously that elite amenities are now commonplace.

Nearly 90 percent of American homes rely on air-conditioning, and 92 percent of households have access to at least one vehicle.

Relative to the globe, most Americans are high-income people. People who are considered poor in America would be rich in developing countries. Compared to other rich countries in Europe, America is also doing remarkably well. A 2019 study published by the think tank Just Facts shows that after accounting for all income, philanthropy, and noncash welfare benefits, the bottom 20 percent of Americans have a higher level of material consumption than all citizens in most rich countries. From 1990 to 2015, consumption per capita in America increased by 65 percent, whereas Europe registered a paltry growth of 35 percent.

Some worry that consumption inequality is on the rise, but such fears have been allayed by research observing that the rise in overall consumption inequality has been rather small. Rising income inequality is a frequent complaint of the Left; however, the consumption of poor Americans exceeds their incomes by over 5 percent. Despite their social class, Americans live so lavishly that analysts are imploring them to shop like Europeans, and poor Americans are not different.

Poverty is relative to the development of a country, so poor Americans are seen as such because the country is so affluent. Further, poor Americans have seen major increases in income when compared to their counterparts. In fact, income inequality in America has been stabilizing due to the surge in wage growth for the lowest-paying jobs. Poor Americans are getting richer faster as the rich become more prosperous.

Moreover, notwithstanding the uproar about plummeting income growth and a declining middle class, incomes have been growing steadily in America since the 1970s. Americans of all classes now have greater access to wealth-creating opportunities and superior social amenities. The real median incomes of Americans are higher than they were in 1980, and millions of Americans have encountered social mobility. Indeed, the American middle class is shrinking, but this is because people are getting richer.

Additionally, empirical evidence contradicts the argument that America is systemically racist, observing that black adults made the greatest progress up the income ladder from 1971 to 2021. Black Americans have been recording significant gains in employment and income, especially in the Midwest. Between 2010 and 2019, the median black household income increased in all Midwest states. Trends are also looking favorable for Hispanic Americans, whose total economic output is estimated to be over $2 trillion.

On the other hand, East Asians surpass white Americans in income and professional success. The Asian American and Pacific Islander community accounts for 7 percent of the American population but represents 10 percent of the country’s affluent population. Americans are doing well by global metrics, and many assert that its economic prospects are favorable. Therefore, it’s possible that American pessimism is being driven by social comparisons. People care more about relative status than absolute status; hence, Americans might feel that they are regressing if they drive an old car and their friends are traveling in a Benz.

But such inadequacies can only be remedied through self-improvement. Complaining is fashionable in America, but doing so only leads to stress and anger. Americans are better off than most people on the globe and should seize opportunities available to them instead of complaining about the struggles of life.

Lipton Matthews is a researcher, business analyst, and contributor to Merion West, The Federalist, American Thinker, Intellectual Takeout, mises.org, and Imaginative Conservative. Visit his YouTube channel, with numerous interviews with a variety of scholars, here. He may be contacted at lo_matthews@yahoo.com or on Twitter (@matthewslipton).

 

 

Lipton Matthews | Mises Wire

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