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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justice Antonin Scalia

Conservatives

President Abe Lincoln

Governor Ron DeSantis

President Donald Trump

Nathan Bedford Forrest

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

All racist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The clip can be seen here.

Burlington Mayor says meth and Fentanyl fueling crime

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

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

He also talked about how meth makes people behave worse.

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

More thefts over the holiday

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

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

A still from a security camera can be seen here.

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

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

 

Michael Bielawski | Vermont Daily Chronicle

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

Haley again.

 

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

 

Christie, again.

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Historically Atypical Countries’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

James Varney | RealClear Wire

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

Content warning (sort of).

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anything beyond that is an invitation to abuse.

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

This is very clearly intended to benefit Nikki Haley. …

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

As promised on Wednesday, I have an overflow.

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some people are just broken.

 

 

 

I agree, but also disagree.

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

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA

 

 

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An oldie but goodie on that:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Pick of the Post:

 

 

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

 

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

 

Palate cleansers:

 

—

—

 

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

 

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

Please do consider buying me a coffee.

Buy Me a Coffee

 

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

 

 

 

The post Friday Meme Overflow appeared first on Granite Grok.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Connor O’Keefe | Mises Wire

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

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

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

 

She immediately suspended her decision.

Meaning Trump stays on the ballot in Maine.

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

HT | RedState

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If the Border Crisis were not so severe and negatively impacting every state in this country, the insane comments by Karine Jeanne-Pierre would be comical. KJP stands before dazed White House correspondents, bats her eyelashes (which is her tell that she is lying), points her finger, and goes into her forceful, condescending tone of authority.

She then proclaims that Joe Biden has done all he can from the White House to create a secure Border that treats all illegal aliens with respect and humanity and retains the safety of every American city. Wow. Where do we begin to refute every false word of her statement?

Let’s stipulate the only fact in her statement and get that out of the way. Joe Biden is President. That’s it. Everything else should be challenged, yet not a single person in the room raised a hand for a follow-up question. This lack of effort is the shame that is our news media. It is because of this deficiency that the Biden Administration is so comfortable lying to the American public.

To the Democrats, these actions are their ace in the hole for 2024. They have to keep up this facade and illusion that Biden, all the way down to Karine Jeanne-Pierre, has been perpetuating. To suddenly acknowledge  the obvious results would be to admit to failure. The Dems have to be complicit in this play or turn the White House and maybe the Senate over the MAGA crowd.

The President never has, nor will, do anything to curb the flow of illegals through our Southern Border and now also through the North. Biden sees it as more humanitarian to subject women and children to the brutality of the Cartel than to close the Border. As far as the safety of American cities, even the Liberal mayors of sanctuary cities like New York are turning on the President. Mayor Adams, who the President has ignored, is using the power of New York’s budget to rile up support. By cutting the budgets of Education and other critical departments to fund the cost of the alien influx, he is getting the attention of New Yorkers and the national media. Even the Mayor of Ultra-Liberal Chicago is sounding the alarm for help from Washington. These Mayors are doing this for their cities but more for self-preservation. They will not go down with him if Biden loses in November.

Secretary of State Blinkin and DHS Secretary Mayorkas went to Mexico this week for a photo-op to show that Biden is working on the Border issue. It is a sham visit. There is nothing Blinkin and Mayorkas can offer Mexico that will overcome the Cartel’s control over the Mexican Government. Biden’s disastrous policies, or lack of such, at the Border, have been a boom for the Cartel, and they have gained significant power over the last three years. We no longer have the bargaining power that Trump had to get cooperation from Mexico. So maybe KJP is right when she says Biden has done all he can. Biden has so damaged the balance of power at the Border, we may never be able to secure it without force.

The post Night Cap: ‘This’ President Has Done More Than Anyone Else … appeared first on Granite Grok.

In my 87 years of life,  one of the most important lessons I learned early, taught to me by my late brother who wasted the tremendous talent God blessed him with: It’s easy to become happy while you’re drinking, but New Year’s Day you wake up with the same problems and a headache.

So, have a blessed New Year, Senator Chandley and Merrimack State Legislators Notter, Boyd, Healey, Mooney, McGough, Thomas, Murphy, and Rung.

This upcoming legislative season may seem a bit like that to you all. Maybe a headache? But I have to keep hammering at you for what I believe to be important to our state and nation today, that will hopefully someday bear the fruit of liberty for posterity tomorrow.

One of the foundational pillars of liberty, given us by Solomon in Proverbs, that I believe is an integral part of the formula for liberty – so needed and so forgotten today is, “Righteousness exalts a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people.” It goes without saying that this includes both constitutes and public servants.

With all that said, I’d like to introduce to you a video on another vital ingredient to ensure liberty. A short video of how the state of New Mexico defied federal abuse of power with state Nullification (Less than ten minutes).

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I suggest that when you consider issues of federal abuse of power, always remember the states created the federal government. Thank God that our Founders have blessed the states with this power that has become like an endangered species, to limit federal abuse of power in the 2nd paragraph of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution:

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, …“

I have underlined your responsibilities as state legislators, bound to this supreme law of the land by oath, that any laws not made in pursuance of the U.S. Constitution are null and void and unconstitutional.

Rather than separation of parties, liberty demands both parties meet on the rock-solid foundation of liberty, within the limits of the Constitution based on Judaeo/Christian ethics  – the foundation of all civilized order.

You have an awesome responsibility to “we, the people” of NH. May God bless you in all your efforts to promote continued prosperity and ordered liberty in our state. 

Sincerely & Respectfully

The post Essentials for Liberty appeared first on Granite Grok.

Nikki Haley is in some hot water because she didn’t say that the cause of the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression, as it’s called in some parts of the country) was slavery. Looking to score some points, Joe Biden chimed in on social media, saying ‘It was about slavery.’

But if anyone knew what the Civil War was about, it was Abraham Lincoln, right?  After all, it was his war.

In a letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, here’s what Lincoln himself said (in 1862) that the war was about:

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

Lincoln is often held up as an example of clear communication, and I don’t think he has ever said anything more clearly than what he said here:  The Civil War was not about slavery.

If people need to restrict themselves to one-word explanations, the proper one is this:  It was about secession.

 

The post Who Should You Believe? Nikki Haley, Joe Biden, or Abe Lincoln? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released her Christmas message, and she would have been better served to sit this one out. Cortez always tries to sound intelligent, but once you get past the gesticulations when she is orating on the house floor or dig into the words she has chosen on her online posts, her thinking is inaccurate or more emotional than factual.

Cortez went to X for this year’s message, and it reads:

“In the story of Christmas, Christ was born in modern-day Palestine under the threat of a government engaged in the mass genocide of innocents,” she wrote. “Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today’s Palestinians, so much so that the Christian community in Bethlehem has canceled this year’s Christmas Eve celebrations both out of safety and respect.”

The entire story of Christmas and Christ himself is about standing with the poor and powerless, the marginalized and the maligned, the refugees and the immigrants, the outcast and misunderstood, without exception,” she wrote. “This high Christian holiday is about the precious sanctity of a family that, if the story were to unfold today, would be Jewish Palestinians.”

I cannot condemn Cortez for her lack of knowledge about the birth of Jesus or the difference between a Jewish and Palestinian person because religion was probably not a very common topic for discussion at Boston University or the bars where Cortez worked pouring beers. But as a U.S. Representative, you have an obligation to vet your comments and social media posts for accuracy. Obviously, Cortez has her staff prepare her statements and then applies her talents to reading them. It might help if she understood the words she is reading.

Mike Huckabee, the former Governor of Arkansas and ordained minister, did an excellent job of dissecting Cortez’s comments and exposing the misinformation involved.

• Jesus was a Jew
• The term Palestinian people meant Jewish people until 1962 when Arafat took the term and created a nation.
• She claims Bethlehem is preventing Christians from celebrating Christmas. Still, she fails to recognize that just forty years ago, Bethlehem was 80% Christians, and today, the region has flipped and is 80% Muslim and 20% other religions.

Cortez has shown in her two paragraphs that she lacks an understanding of the history of the Middle East, Jesus, the Jewish people, the State of Israel, or just about anything else that is a part of this story. The problem with that misuse of information is that Miss Cortez has 8.4 Million followers on Instagram, and many are easily influenced and believe everything elected officials say is, by default, the truth. Congresswoman Cortez may represent 170,000 people in New York, but she impacts millions. That influence makes content creators or users of X, Instagram, and TikTok dangerous. People with a significant online social presence are more potent than our politicians, and in the case of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they are one and the same.

The post The Real Story of Christmas, by Sandy Cortez … appeared first on Granite Grok.

Back in the day, when Dems were insurrecting left and right because some dude named Donald had won the office of the Presidency, progressive factions coalesced under the idea that they were the resistance. They were a resistance … to the people resisting the establishment’s tyranny.

Voters chose Trump to disrupt that movement, while the Left’s revolution was to protect the status quo of Obamaism. The weaponization of the IRS, FBI, Education, Energy, all of it, against the people to whom it was meant to answer. It wanted open borders, a stunted economy, and favored America’s declining influence in the world—oh, and speech policing. There was a lot of that.

Mr. Trump was the true new way and the mainstream everything wanted nothing to do with that or the people who supported it.

Trump turned out to be a speed bump whose effect, while startling, passed quickly. Obama’s meat puppet – Joe Biden, was installed, and Barry’s court got back to business, erasing the progress of making America great again. Part of that planned decline included his super-sized surveillance state, which used COVID to expand establishment power to silence dissent.

Many people who should have known better took up arms, masks, distancing, and mandates in the fight against natural rights and free speech.

Not us, no sir, but we enjoy any opportunity to discuss that subject, and there’s been no shortage of those. When it comes to the Left, anything that dares contest their monopoly on narrative is hate speech, disinformation, misinformation, or malformation. Anyone carrying that dissenting water is anti-science, anti-government, anti-climate, anti-democracy, this, that, or the other thing. They suffer from white fragility, supremacy, or they are a Nazi, even if they are black or Jewish.

Nazis.

Nazis are National Socialists whose societal model is based on genetic superiority and despotic rule. They are better than everyone else, and intimidation and violence are reasonable tools to make sure everyone understands. It is a worldview where the party defines success at its pleasure and almost nowhere else. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds a lot like the modern-day globalist elites to me. That superior stock of people who think and act correctly and in line with the approved agenda. The very folks that the Left’s so-called resistance worked to restore to power when the Deplorables mistakenly elected Donald Trump in 2016.

Ideologically, National Socialism is a kissing cousin to Democrat Socialism, rubbing elbows with Communism on the totalitarian side of the political Spectrum—a tyranny of the elite whose power requires a police state on word, thought, and deed. Dissent is not permitted, questions are ill-advised, and the answers are almost always lies.

Opposing this is our mission, part of which requires us to accept speech from every corner, including the elites and their kissing cousin tyrants who think the world needs National Socialism.

Free Speech lawyer Ken White recently spoke to the issue after Substack tried to explain why it would not censor or deplatform Nazis in its webspace. He fisked their response, exploring branding, value judgments, tropes, and various nuances of Substack’s reaction. He also broaches the question of platform policing and policy, practically and as a reflection of the brand.

 

Site moderation is a big bundle of choices. As a writer and reader, I decide what’s important to me when I choose a site. Sometimes it’s about content I want to consume or avoid and fellow-travelers whose society I crave or despise. But sometimes it’s an ethos I want to endorse, or be seen as endorsing. Do I want to go on Twitter to signify that I am not a snowflake and that I am open to discussions of how the Jews created polio? Do I want to go on Mastodon to signify that I believe human perfection can be achieved through scolding? Do I want to go on LinkedIn and talk exclusively to people who hope to monetize my existence in their quest to be Deputy Assistant Regional Manager? Do I really only care if the app works on an iPad? It’s up to me and my array of values.

Site managers make choices too. What ethos do we want to signal, and what crowd will that attract, and how much money can we make from them? If we moderate content, will it turn into an expensive, thankless, all-consuming task? Will moderating some people (like Nazis) result in constant demands that we moderate a huge array of things that make people angry (like, say, posts that are either too supportive or not supportive enough of Palestinians)? Will it attract more people than it alienates? If we don’t moderate will the place turn into a notorious sewer? What’s our moderation brand?

 

Every individual will have some sense of what a concept like free speech means to them. In many cases, it goes something like this. Everything I have to share is free speech. If you edit it or block it, you are a censorious authoritarian bastard whose interference with the open exchange of ideas will bring about the end of liberty as we know it.

Our approach is simple and aligns with the general interpretation of the First Amendment itself. Just about everything is reasonable except true incitement, explicit threats, and acts of violence toward individuals or groups. And while nudity, pornography, and vulgarity are generally protected speech where matters of public indecency are not in play, there are limited practical reasons for it here outside the vectors of the transgender agenda and groomer lit in public schools. Hence, we are inclined to edit it out or block it outside legitimate debate along those lines.

Everything else is allowed (except trolls who are not engaging to add value or interest), with my position being that what is otherwise deemed inappropriate or offensive (all the gray areas) can and should be worked out by the commenting community.

That’s our brand, and I think it allows us to control the chaos while encouraging that open exchange of ideas. I hope you agree but welcome contrary analysis. The goal is to build the commenting community, and I am looking at ideas to improve engagement. Yours are also welcome, assuming it’s not more nudity or allowing incitement or explicit threats.

We won’t be doing that.

We will, however, continue pushing back against the establishment in all its faces and forms, and we look forward to your help.

 

The post Trolls, Cranks, and Nazis, Oh My! appeared first on Granite Grok.

This is an attempt to “break out” memes, links, and my commentary about the situation in Israel / the Middle East so as to not overload the standard meme posts that I do.  My last “normal” meme post.  In these Israel-related posts I don’t just have memes such, but lots of informative links as well as hopefully-insightful commentary.

Note that this is not meant to be a day-by-day update about what’s going on.  Rather, to highlight uncomfortable truths about the actual nature of the conflict, deep-history background, and so on, as well as to show the at-present immutable nature of Islamic Jew hate and why that matters to today’s events.

Note that these posts do not repeat information – so there is a lot of stuff in prior posts.  Please do check them out too if this is a topic of interest to you.  In reverse chronological order:

Israel: Ongoing Links, Memes, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: Ongoing Links, Memes, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: Ongoing Links, Memes, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: Ongoing Links, Memes, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: Ongoing Links, Memes, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: Ongoing Links, Memes, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: Still More Links, Memes, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: Ongoing Memes, Links, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: Ongoing Memes, Links, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: More Memes, Links, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: Even More Memes, Links, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: More Memes, Links, and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: Memes and Commentary – Granite Grok

Israel: Memes and Commentary – Granite Grok

With some Israel-related materials here:

Meme Overflow – Granite Grok

 

 

Tel Dan stele – Wikipedia

 

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

 

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Holocaust

 

 

Understand that I’m no historian and certainly not knowledgeable on this topic, but… this link below, related to the above video, is fascinating:

The Smoking Gun: The Auschwitz Blueprints and The Mufti – Geller Report

I have read – but don’t have the citation – that Hitler “merely” wanted to banish all Jews from Europe, but the Mufti allegedly said “Burn them” (there’s a lot of discussion and disputation of this).  The above article would implicitly corroborate that.  Remember, Jew hatred is hard-coded into the Koran itself.

Jew-Hate in the Muslim World | Frontpage Mag

Islamic Jew-Hatred – a religious mandate – Geller Report

Antisemitism in the Qur’an – Winds of Jihad (sheikyermami.com)

Related to that:

 

Amir Tsarfati: Waking Up to the Illusion (No Peace, No Two State Solution) @beholdisrael

 

 

You cannot coexist with someone who wants to kill you.  Nice screen background on a Gaza iPad:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/gaza-teenage-girls-ipad-opening-screen.mp4

 

And one more thing, related on history in general, a translated from Arabic essay (original Arabic piece here):

Where is Al-Aqsa Mosque located?

An argument against the significance of the mosque on the temple mount.  At least, that’s how I take it.  Related to the above:

 

 

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

 

TOP OF THE FOLD

 

Lucy Aharish, the first Muslim Arabic TV presenter and Israeli tv anchor, gives a powerful monologue

 

 

—

Arab woman tells the truth… (rumble.com)

Video at my channel.  Apparently she’s getting death threats.

—

 

A Bedouin woman in Israel:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/bedouin-woman-and-others.mp4

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/girl-was-in-a-hospital-with-arabs.mp4

 

Some apartheid.  More – video link only:

Not Apartheid (rumble.com)

Remember these videos:

A Black South African on Israel and Apartheid (youtube.com)

Does Israel Discriminate Against Arabs? (youtube.com)

And since when does an apartheid state permit those of the oppressed group into its military?

An Arab Muslim in the Israeli Army (youtube.com)

—

Tel Aviv in 1923:

 

 

Wow.  Some thriving Arab community.  Not.  Remember, the Arab influx came in because of the Jewish influx:

Were the Arabs Indigenous to Mandatory Palestine? :: Middle East Quarterly (meforum.org)

 

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

 

Copied directly from this post on Telegram.

The IDF spokesman releases to the foreign media a recording of a conversation in Arabic between an IDF officer and a resident of Gaza regarding the aid entering the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing: food, drink, medical equipment, diesel and gas.

In the conversation, the resident clarifies that Hamas has a hand in everything. It completely controls the aid administered by UNRWA – the UN Refugee Agency.

The friendly officer asks Gazati: Didn’t you try to talk to the UNRA people about Hamas taking over the aid?

Then, at minute 01:31 into the recording, Dazati says a key phrase that should resonate with everyone in Israel and abroad:

Ya sir, the agency employees are Hamas

Sir, UNRA officials are Hamas

For those who follow what is happening in Gaza, this is not surprising, but it is definitely a testimony that needs to be echoed. Many UNRA personnel are Hamas personnel. They are UN officials, receive a salary from the UN and take care of Hamas’ interests using European money.

The truth must be told. Here she is heard firsthand.

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/recorded-call-idf-and-gaza-resident.mp4

 

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

 

WAR & WHEN WILL IT END?

 

 

Understand something clearly: I don’t want violence, but to have peace both sides have to want it.  And when the other side wants violence and death – violence on you, and your deaths – this quote comes to mind:

War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.

William Tecumseh Sherman

Another quote by him:

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

And one related that I’ve posted before:

If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.

Curtis LeMay

—

Hamas uses hospitals for terror purposes, Gaza hospital director admits – The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)

Kamaal Aduan Hospital head Ahmad Kahlot of Jabliya in Gaza has confessed to the Shin Bet that Hamas took over his hospital as a military operations center, it was revealed on Tuesday.

Kahlot told his interrogators that he joined Hamas in 2010 at the equivalent rank of a brigadier-general.

…

Next, he said that many of the hospital staff doubled as members of Hamas’s az-al-adin al-Qasam brigades. These include doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other staff.

Related:

Findings prove Gaza hospital’s link to October 7 massacre (israelnationalnews.com)

—

Hamas hates Palestinians, hoards millions while Gaza suffers (nypost.com)

Except, per this Muslim who escaped Gaza and is now a Jew – video at my Rumble channel:

Gaza Muslim – a convert to Judaism – discusses Gazan support of terror (rumble.com)

Note how he opines about the relative percentage of Gazans who want peace with Jews… versus wanting Jews in pieces.

—

 

 

—

 

Pat Condell: No Peace in the Middle East? Blame Israel – תרגום לעברית

 

 

 

ISLAM: PRACTICES, HISTORY, AND MENTALITY

Hamas rockets target Tel Aviv area for first time in a week – JNS.org

Remember, in Islam, any non-Muslim is – by definition – a soldier against Islam and therefore not a civilian.

—

‘Where do you think Israel is going?’ Bill Maher quips in viral eight-minute clip – JNS.org

“History is brutal, and humans are not good people,” he continued. “Nobody was a bigger colonizer than the Muslim army that swept out of the Arabian desert and took over much of the world in a single century.”

“They didn’t do it by asking,” he said. “There’s a reason Saudi Arabia’s flag is a sword.”

…

He noted that Israel, which has the “world’s second-largest tech sector after Silicon Valley” and reportedly nuclear weapons, isn’t going to negotiate with an opponent whose bargaining position is “you all die and disappear.”

Shockingly Good: Bill Maher Throws Down – Explains Reality of the Genocidal “From the River to the Sea” Chant | The Gateway Pundit | by Margaret Flavin

Let’s look at Arab colonialism:

 

 

From Medina to Tours in 110 years.  I once used a mapping program and it works out to something like 41-odd miles per year, every year, relentlessly.  And related is this video about the relentless hammering of the spreading Arabs, and the Crusade responses:

 

Bill Warner, PhD: Jihad vs Crusades

 

 

 

ATROCITIES

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/hiding-ammo-in-incubators.mp4

 

Hiding ammo in incubators.

—

Links only to images and videos – October 7 murder victims.  Graphic, so be warned.

Dead in a bedroom

Dead in the laundry room

—

Merry Christmas, Gaza | Power Line (powerlineblog.com)

Related – more about schools in Gaza:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/school-in-gaza-has-a-tunnel.mp4

 

Also on my Rumble channel:

School in Gaza has a tunnel entrance (rumble.com)

Also, a baby’s room:

IDF finds tunnel entrance in baby’s room (rumble.com)

—

Women murdered by Hamas at the music festival Oct 7 (rumble.com)

Video montage.

—

I Saw the Children Hamas Beheaded With My Own Eyes. Shame on Queen Rania | Opinion (newsweek.com)

Grisly descriptions of eye-witnessed horrors – not for the faint of heart.

 

 

ON INTERSECTIONALITY / LEFTIST SUPPORT

The Real Reason So Many American University Students Hate Israel | Frontpage Mag

The Left’s Long March Through the Institutions has been a resounding success. Most of our nation’s colleges and universities, including — indeed, especially — those who enjoy an outsize influence on American politics and culture, have long ago ceased to be centers of higher learning and have become centers of far-Left indoctrination. Marxist sloganeering and agitprop masquerades as genuine intellectual inquiry, and so it’s no wonder that once American youth graduate from their once-renowned institutions, they happily take jobs in government or social media that involve stripping free speech and self-defense rights from Americans. They have been trained to be cogs in the machine. Their hatred of Israel is just one aspect of that indoctrination.

Back in college I participated in a protest.  But what I observed was fascinating.  The leaders got the chant going – a simple, rhyming chant – but once it took hold, they stopped and let it continue on its own… and observed the crowd they’d riled up.  Now, consider this short clip: College campus short: Israel is worse than Nazi Germany (rumble.com)

Now, if Israel is worse than Nazi Germany, and it’s already been compared with apartheid South Africa, then naturally “good people” need to join together to destroy it, right?  Here’s another clueless college student; supports “From the river to the sea…” and doesn’t even know what river or what sea:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/clueless-millenial.mp4

 

—

How does any feminist support Islam?

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/do-you-want-your-daughters-to-be-free.mp4

 

In Sharia Law – boiled down to its essence – has women as having two functions in society.  First, sex providers (and secondarily keeping house), and second, as baby factories.  “Barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen”.  A term and idea derided by feminists… except for when it’s Islam.

—

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Rabbi-Alon-on-Palestine-Supporters.mp4

 

This Rabbi’s lectures are growing on me.

 

 

PALLYWOOD, THE INFORMATION WAR, AND MEDIA IN GENERAL

 

 

Somehow, being #3 and #8 on the world obesity list does not comport in my mind with being an “open air concentration camp”.  But the media systematically believes without skepticism:

Is There Really a ‘Disproportionate Death Rate’ Among Gazans? – Geller Report

—

How CNN crafted a new blood libel that Israel is attacking civilians with “dumb bombs” ~ Elder Of Ziyon – Israel News

CNN could have done what I just did. They have access to far more resources than I do. But they chose to frame the story to make Israel look monstrous, when the facts show quite the opposite. They could have quoted the US officials who said they believe Israel is using the dumb bombs in responsible ways before extensively quoting the “experts” who are literally paid to find dirt on Israel. This article tells us much more about CNN’s desire to demonize Israel than it does about Israel’s supposed lack of concern for civilian lives.

—

Even If (Most Of) What Detractors Say About The Founding Of Israel Were True …(Andrew Pessin) (Part 1 of 2) ~ Elder Of Ziyon – Israel News

Good arguments, I think.  From the same site:

Belgian MP claims Israeli rabbis call for the rape of Palestinian women ~ Elder Of Ziyon – Israel News

Look at the name of this MP.

—

This article is from a few years ago.

An AFP photographer depicts “a young girl fleeing Israeli fire” in Gaza

People fleeing in terror from “Israeli fire”:

 

 

Or are they in any danger at all.  Look at a bigger picture – would people under fire be relaxed like this new perspective reveals?

 

 

So not only is a show being put on for the media… the media are actively complicit in the deception.  And read the whole thing – some interesting notes about a restaurant and other scenes & information about “Concentration Camp Gaza”.

Two other sidebar articles on the same site – years old.  Pallywood is a long-standing tradition:

Israeli Retaliation on Gaza: The Palestinian Lie of the Bombed ‘Water Tower’

Palestinian children killed: How AFP disseminates Hamas propaganda

—

This video was made to show the horrible destruction of Gaza.  But it inadvertently – in the “before” part – shows that this is not an “open air concentration camp”.  Flowers on the porch balcony, a pristine beach, cars on a good-looking road, people strolling along…

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/gaza-balcony-view-before-and-after.mp4

 

Also uploaded to my Rumble channel:

Gaza beach – before and after… and accidental reveal (rumble.com)

—

 

 

 

 

TERROR COMING HERE?

Here… and ready to advance and conquer.

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/islam-wants-the-west.mp4

 

—

This article dates from 2020:

Anti-Semitism On and Off Campus – Tablet Magazine

Jewishness, did not cease, even as the classroom was replaced with the Zoom call. The controversies and scandals kept coming, from California to Massachusetts. Designated terrorists were invited to virtual lectures. Zionism was denounced as racism in official organization statements. And the harassment campaign against Jewish students persisted—only now, the harassers were behind screens.

“Anti-Zionism” on college campuses is not a political disagreement confined to the boundaries of academic discussion in the classroom. It is an obsession. It is an insistence on making Jews feel uncomfortable—or worse—wherever, whenever, under whatever conditions. And this hatred does not disappear when you walk off campus and into the real world. It is finding its way into American political discourse and our most cherished democratic institutions.

Speaking of college campuses, this is chilling:

 

Would College Students Donate to Support the Killing of Jews?

 

 

—

Jewish woman attacked in London… for being Jewish:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/jewish-woman-attacked-in-london.mp4

 

And calls for genocide in NYC:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/march-in-nyc-in-favor-of-genocide.mp4

 

And in France:

The Fall of France | Frontpage Mag

These assailants were Arabs speaking in Arabic about hitting the “gwer” — the Arabic pejorative for white people. This was no ordinary assault, but a hate crime — the hate Muslims are taught to feel for non-Muslims, “the most vile of created beings.” They started the attack by falsely accusing the Frenchman of “hitting” one of them, and despite his apology — for something he had not done — these four or five assailants smashed a bottle over his head, and knocked him to the ground, where they continued to beat and to stab him nine times. By pure luck he survived. The attack is similar to others that in recent years have been reported from across France, where gangs of Muslims assault Infidels, often not even to rob, but just to enjoy the fun of beating up or stabbing a “gwer.”

October 7 Coming to America? | Frontpage Mag

Muslim Mob Terrorizes Christmas Shoppers in Small, Peaceful Tennessee City (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

NY and LA: Jihad Terrorists Shut Down Entrances To JFK and LAX Airports Causing Travel Nightmare – Geller Report

Islamist Terror Cell Plotted Numerous Attacks in Cologne, Vienna, and Madrid – Christmas Church Services Targeted | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

And yet, despite this, 1200 Rabbis call for unlimited refugee migration to the US:

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1200-rabbis-1.mp4

 

Jewicidal Yidiots.

An Open Letter to Pro-Migration / SJW Jews – Urban Scoop

 

 

TREADING ON THE POLITICAL

Biden will betray Israel on Obama’s command (wnd.com)

Yes, he will.

—

Going woke has endangered American Jews – JNS.org

But the fact that 67% of participants ages 18 to 24 responded that Jews are “oppressors” is deeply shocking though hardly surprising. If that proves an accurate assessment of opinion among generations that will lead the nation in the future, then it also means that the assumption on the part of many Jews that “it can’t happen here”—based on the idea of American exceptionalism setting it apart from other Western nations—will be proven wrong.

Too many Jews in America have Stability Privilege, and the will respond with some form of Oh, that’s just not possible to any claxon alarm.

The ‘Progressive Left’ Has Abandoned Israel – Geller Report

—

 

 

The violent animals on the left who support Hamas – Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

—

Salena Zito: For many, own­ing a gun was ta­boo. Now they’re buy­ing them. | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A quarter-million Israeli gun applicants prove the necessity of our Second Amendment | Jews Can Shoot

Good.  What was it Kahane said?  Every Jew a .22?  Though I’d recommend something larger.

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

Jews Can Shoot

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Related:

Report: Biden Administration Spying on Israel to Determine War Crimes (breitbart.com)

The curious case of the Biden administration and Hamas – JNS.org

By accusing Israel, falsely, of “indiscriminate bombing,” Biden is parroting the bogus accusations made by Israel’s fiercest enemies around the world, such as Hamas and Iran’s mullahs, who are trying to stop Israel from defeating a terrorist organization akin to Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

Did anyone call for a ceasefire when the United States was routing ISIS in Syria and Iraq, or demand that Washington end its military campaign by a certain date?

Always “Israel Double-Standard Time”.  More on that from this Telegram post:

 

 

500,000 killed in Syria?
380,000 killed in Yemen?
240,000 killed in Afghanistan?
500,000 killed in Sudan?
300,000 killed in Iraq?
It’s fine. No “Doctors Against Genocide”

Israel defends itself against Hamas?
“Doctors Against Genocide” is formed!

Note when it was founded.  And who it discusses and about whom it is silent.

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Biden Regime Refuses Israeli Request for Vital Apache Attack Helicopters – Geller Report

Hamstringing Israel.

 

 

MISCELLANEOUS

Jewish Voices for Hate – Tablet Magazine

These last few weeks, many American Jews seem to be having a rude awakening similar to the one my former friend, the judge, captured in his email. They’ve watched the presidents of Harvard, UPenn, and MIT testify before Congress and refuse to unequivocally state that calling for genocide of Jews violated the university’s code of conduct, and they asked themselves how the campuses that hold themselves out as educating the next generation of leaders are instead becoming a breeding ground for antisemitism.

…

Numerous Jewish organizations partnered with groups such as Black Lives Matter, which from its earliest days perpetuated the falsehood that Israel is an apartheid state. Others, like J Street, consistently hosted anti-Zionist speakers who advocated for boycotting Israel; last week, the organization “demanded” that Israel change its conduct in the war against Hamas.

If all Jewish organizations, rabbis, and community leaders had taken a stronger stand against the delegitimization of Israel—by condemning groups like JVP, IfNotNow, Bend the Arc, and other organizations that claim to be “Jewish” yet ignore history and promote anti-Israel vitriol—then perhaps such lies and disinformation would not have spread among some in our community, let alone in our country.

From the same site:

Our False Partners – Tablet Magazine

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Shouting Fire! | Gates of Vienna

I’d known the KGB was involved in helping to shift the narrative from BIG ARAB STATES against TINY ISRAEL to BIG ISRAEL against TINY PALESTINIANS but I hadn’t realized the true extent of it.

And up front is an echo of a theory I’ve had for a while about why rulers hate Jews so much:

Western Civilization was defined by a ‘context’, but it was a context that our academic elites did not like. That context — the Torah (Ten Commandments) — undermined their authority by placing a God over all. Marxists [or anyone aspiring to power] do not like gods (which they cannot control); they prefer to set up dictators (gods they can control).

So, too, with presidents of Ivy League universities who like to control those contexts (knowledge of good and evil) for themselves within their domains.

As far as I know, we Jews were the first to tell rulers – who in those days truly considered themselves deities – that NO, there is One above you who rules eternally… and will judge you.  Such rulers have never forgiven us for that.

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The Road To October 7 | MEMRI

Video, over 40 minutes.  More – and some repeats – what they teach their kids on my Rumble channel:

Hamas Schools Teaching Kids to Hate (rumble.com)

UNWRA lessons for kids (rumble.com)

Palestinian kids being interviewed (rumble.com)

 

 

GIVING SUPPORT TO ISRAEL

You can’t go wrong with a donation here:

Connections Israel

And please share this post far and wide.  There’s a lot of info here that many people don’t know.  Post it, email it, share widely.

Also, if you’re willing:

Buy Me a Coffee

 

A CONCLUDING THOUGHT FOR THIS POST

 

 

Thousands flee as war reaches Sudan’s second-largest city | Conflict News | Al Jazeera

Far be it from me to diminish the cataclysm that has befallen Israel, or the (few) Gazans who are innocent, but there are wars and refugees everywhere.  And isn’t this interesting – just who is attacking the Sudanese?

Sudan refugees detail second wave of ethnic purge by Arab forces (reuters.com)

Wait, ARAB forces did you say?  And from just a day or so before the Hamas attack on Israel:

Turkish airstrikes kill at least 11 in northern Syria, Kurdish security forces say | CNN

Turkey hits 71 targets in Iraq, Syria in retaliation for soldiers’ deaths | Conflict News | Al Jazeera

So, Turkey can strike at those who attack Turkish soldiers, but Israel cannot take action against those who rape and murder Israeli civilians?  And what of Turkish soldiers shooting Kurdish women (link to graphic vide0 just below – graphic!)… but I need to note that this video has no source and I have not been able to specifically confirm the situation or timing:

Video of Turkish soldiers shooting Kurdish women

Next time Erdogan is speaking of cruelty and the killing of innocents – remind him this!
Turkish soldiers kill young Kurdish women…
Will there be protests against Turkey?
Will they boycott Turkish products?
Will anyone care about this news?

Where is the BBC or Al Jazeera….?

Another atrocity, from here (bolding added):

Nigeria – New photos from within a church where at Christmas Christians were massacred in the name of Allah. Around 150 are confirmed dead so far, properties & farms were looted and burned. This is on par with what Hamas did, but the MSM & dancing Western Hamas fans ignore.

(Warning, gruesome picture):  Blood on the floor.  More from Nigeria:

 

 

Yesterday 140 Christians were killed in 20 villages in Nigeria.
In one village only two toddlers were left alive.

Anyone cares about the massacre? Any protests in European cities? Any UN condemnation? Nobody cares.

GENOCIDE: Muslims Slaughter Another 160 Christians Preparing for Church Christmas Programs in Nigeria – Geller Report

All these things, all over.  Horrors worldwide.  So why, then, the sole focus on Israel?  I think it’s psychological.  From this rather lengthy post by a Dr. Sanity, a psychologist, comes this term: DISPLACEMENT:

The entire purpose of displacement is to gain control over a conflict that otherwise feels out of control.

Displacement | Psychology Today

More from Dr. Sanity (italics replaced by underlining):

By focusing on something you have some control over, the psyche is much less threatened. After all, you can always fire your therapist; you can express your animosity unreservedly; and there will not be the consequences if that emotion were directed toward the real object of emotional conflict.

So… does anyone think that the Turks bombing or shooting Kurds at point-blank care one whit about western opinion?  Does anyone think that the Arab forces driving millions of Sudanese from their homes have any greater concern for the vapors someone in the US or Europe might have?  How about the Muslims slaughtering Christians in Nigeria?  Are they concerned with Western opinion?

Of. Course. Not.

But by obsessing over Israel, even though Israel arguably could have carpet-bombed Gaza into powder within 72 hours or so – but didn’t – they “solve” their angst over the world situation by focusing on the one place in the world they can affect.  Displacement.  It’s like the kid whose parent physically abuses them for no reason at all… but the kid starts displacing to themselves.  “Maybe if I cleaned my room better…” or “I wasn’t quiet enough when they came home and disturbed their nap…”  Nothing actually matters, of course – the parent is a monster.  But this way the child gains some sense of control over the situation, even if totally illusory.

Dr. Sanity goes on with more about the anti-Semitism in the Arab world (note that, per my readings, provocation by Muslims is typical, but then they use the inevitable response as justification to attack “in self defense”; bolding added):

At its most primitive, anti-semitism is a form of psychological projection (just as all racism is).

We see this infantile defense used repeatedly in the Arab/Islamic world. They seem unable to appreciate the irony of their labelling of Islam as a “religion of peace”, for example, and dismiss the barbarism done in the name of Islam as misunderstandings or the actions of only “a few.” In other words, they dismiss their own aggression in toto; asserting that it is the Jews who are always the aggressors; that it is the Jews who are out to destroy them; and that they are the poor, helpless victims of the Jews. By distancing themselves from their own aggression and projecting it onto Israel and the Jews; they have retained their honor as the peace-loving people they assert themselves to be.

It is essential to the success of the defense that they portray themselves as the victims and be seen as the victims in the eyes of the world. Even when their own behavior is responsible for the deaths of innocents, it is rationalized away and ultimately also blamed on the Jews.

An example:

Algerian newspaper: The Mossad murdered Detroit synagogue president because she was anti-Zionist (she wasn’t) ~ Elder Of Ziyon – Israel News

And more (bolding added):

Historically, the Jews have been the offical scapegoat (object of displacement) for many societies. If only the Jews were gone, then all would be well. The world would be perfect.

…

[I]f only the world put a halt once an for all to Israeli aggression, then the Middle East would be at peace.

When it comes to anti-semitism, you are witnessing possibly the clearest possible case of “blaming the victim” that you are ever likely to see. It is far too threatening to blame the real aggressor in the Middle East; the real source of hatred and genocidal intent; the real entity that is incapable of being rationally dealt with or deterred.

This real aggressor repeatedly states its intentions clearly and unambiguously. Yet, for some curious reason, those in the West to whom it is stated refuse to believe them! Their words are dismissed, and the actions that logically derive from their words are minimized or ignored.

In a perverse way, this defensive maneuver on the part of the West is understandable. No truly rational person is able to deal easily with persons or culures (sic) that glory in suicidal victimhood to a degree unparalleled in human history; and who scream “god is great”– even as he blows you and himself up in a nihilistic frenzy.

To say the least, this sort of behavior is truly and incredibly frightening and completely inexplicable for the modern human to psychologically metabolize. Thus, it is only natural that it’s unacceptable reality must be defended against and prevented from being digested and analyzed.

…

Denial and displacement give you the illusion that you are in control of the situation and that the solution is simple.

Thus, the obsession over Israel, and ignoring of other – larger and/or equally-horrifying – situations is completely explicable by examining psychology.  There is no doubt that, around the world, there are horrors and horrors.  But by focusing on Israel, minds can be distracted.

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