Sunday • April 20 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.XVI
Manchester, N.H.
Nikki Haley is campaigning to the wrong crowd. Her campaign would probably say that’s part of her strategy. To conservative voters, that’s exactly the problem with Nikki Haley: Republican primary voters aren’t Haley’s real constituency.
The individuals Haley is truly trying to appeal to, the people whose opinions she cares about the most, are the neoliberal elites who run establishment institutions like the media and Wall Street banks.
Tucker Carlson, my former boss, made this point over a year ago. I was with him in Iowa when he gave a speech explaining why Haley is unfit to lead the Republican Party.
In the speech, Carlson recalled Haley’s response to George Floyd’s death in 2020. Just days after the incident (and notably, before any facts had emerged), Haley tweeted that “in order to heal,” Floyd’s death “needs to be personal and painful for everyone.”
“I thought, why should what happened between a cop and George Floyd outside a convenience store in Minneapolis be personal and painful to anybody,” Carlson wondered. “What are you even talking about? Oh, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re trying to please the people whose opinions you actually care about at The New York Times.”
Carlson was and is, of course, right. He added that Haley’s tweet was a perfect example of why she’s unfit to lead the country.
“The second things get intense and the second the other side really unleashes and starts yelling so loudly that you can’t think clearly — I want a leader who can still think clearly,” he said.
Nikki Haley may be a nice person and a good politician, but she’s not that type of leader. More often than not, she’s been the type of Republican who behaves exactly like the institutional left believes Republicans should. She is the media’s favorite Republican running this cycle, and it’s not hard to see why.
For one, Haley believes in identity politics. She’s made her gender a central part of her pitch, from her bizarre comment about the “ammunition” in her heels at a primary debate to the campaign gear on her website. Haley sells bumper stickers and t-shirts that say “Sometimes It Takes A Woman,” which sounds more like Hillary Clinton than your average female GOP voter.
When asked recently why minorities should vote for her, Haley didn’t cite any policy proposals. Instead, she answered, “I am a minority first, so I think I’m as diverse as it gets.”
In other words, Haley wants people to vote for her because she’s an Indian woman. That message has earned Haley praise from the media.
On Wednesday, NPR ran a piece titled “Strong but ‘feminine’: how Nikki Haley navigates gender as the only woman in the GOP race.” The author wrote that Haley has been “highlighting the traits that make her unique … including her gender and her family’s immigration story.” As if those things weren’t obvious to voters.
It’s clear the media is attempting to rehabilitate Haley’s image on the left to make her more palatable to their audiences.
After the first Republican debate, MSNBC host Joy Reid said Haley “seemed like a reasonable Republican politician who kind of made sense.” Comedian Bill Maher recently called Haley an “as-good-as-it-gets Republican.” A November piece in Politico said Haley was “consolidating the NeverTrump vote” among donors and organizers.
Then there’s the support for Haley from the corporate establishment on Wall Street. Last month, fresh off declaring she would end limits on legal immigration and instead reform the system based on what corporations “need,” Haley met with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and other business executives to court their support. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is arguably the most significant proponent of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing in the United States.
When asked after the meeting if she was concerned about those ESG policies, Haley ignored the question. Instead, she pointed to her record as governor and said, “I partnered with my businesses. I use them as a resource. One, they hire people that we need to hire. They help us with our economy.”
Around the same time as Haley’s meeting with Fink, Axios reported that she had been having private conversations with J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. Days later, he publicly called on business leaders, even liberal Democrats, to support her.
Perhaps even more important, her ties to the neoliberal establishment are that Haley is a staunch proponent of involving the United States in foreign military conflicts like the war in Ukraine. By extension, Haley also supports enriching the defense contractors that benefit from those conflicts. In fact, no other Republican currently running can be counted on to protect that system — the military-industrial complex — the way Haley would.
That’s because Haley herself was part of it. She also directly benefited from it.
As South Carolina governor, Haley signed over a billion dollars worth of economic development legislation for Boeing. The company rewarded Haley with a seat on its board just months after she left the Trump administration in 2018. That relationship, along with Haley’s work with several other companies with ties to the defense industry, gave a huge boost to her personal finances. As journalist Lee Fang reported earlier this year, Haley went from being over a million dollars in debt and having just $15,000 in a bank account to amassing a fortune worth over $12 million.
Amassing personal wealth is not in itself disqualifying. But Haley ingratiating herself with the defense industry is part of a pattern. At a time when conservatives increasingly want leaders to buck the establishment, Haley has been too willing to go along with it.
Whether because of her own personal conflicts of interest, her general desire to be embraced in the mainstream and by donors, or simply her lack of courage, Nikki Haley has repeatedly shown conservatives that she can’t be trusted to take principled stances on controversial issues.
Republicans deserve a nominee who represents them first, before the interests of Wall Street and permanent Washington. They want a nominee who will not cower when faced with criticism from the media establishment.
Not only does Nikki Haley fail to fit that bill, but she’s the exact opposite. There’s a reason why establishment forces are coalescing to prop up her campaign. Voters: beware of the moderate dressed in conservative clothing.
Eduardo Neret is a conservative writer and political commentator, and a former producer for Tucker Carlson.
Eduardo Neret | Daily Caller
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
The post Night Cap: Why Nikki Haley Is The Neoliberals’ Favorite Republican appeared first on Granite Grok.
In the new black century, the race-baiters have been working overtime to undermine one of their own. MLK, once an icon of the civil rights movement, can no longer be honored as he once was. The color of your skin is the only thing that matters, and it must be black.
From Barry Obama, the “black” president who destroyed decades of progress on race relations, to Ibram Kendi, CRT, and the 1619 Project, content and character only matter if you are repeating their divisive rhetoric. Whites are born racist. There is no such thing as reverse racism. And we must now ask this question. Did the black 26-year-old female suspect who was pouring gasoline on the home where MLK was born prevented from perpetrating a Hate Hoax or from exacting New Age Civil Rights Revenge on an old age icon? (Related: If MLK Were Alive Today, White CRT Advocates Would Shout Him Down.)
This dumb bish AKA Laneisha Shantrice Henderson was just arrested after she tried to burn down MLK Jrs. birth home.
She was dousing the outside with gasoline when two tourists stopped her.
Do you think she is mentally ill or pulling a Jesse Smollett? pic.twitter.com/25lOgip7MF— Chris Randolph (@TrumpAF2024) December 8, 2023
No one seems to know (as of this writing) what her motivation was, but she appears to be a former Navy Vet, and it is impossible to dispute that she was dousing the home in gasoline. FOX Atlanta 5 says the judge has denied her bail as a flight risk, but the motive remains unclear. No one is reporting why she traveled to Atlanta (she gave an out-of-state address to police) to buy a gas can gasoline and then dose the home with it. (Related: Did the Slaves or MLK Know Freedom Was Actually a Dog Whistle for White Supremacy?)
It seems like a lot of effort to perpetrate a Smollett, but in contrast, not nearly as consulted, planned, and perpetrated as Jussie’s not-so-excellent adventure. I’ve also yet to find significant commentary from the new generation of race baiters who consider quitting King’s content of their character quite as racist.
We’ll try to update the story as it develops.
The post Was This a Hate Hoax or was This Black Woman Part of the Hate MLK Crowd? appeared first on Granite Grok.
During the 2020 election, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) partnered with the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a consortium of groups led by the Stanford Internet Observatory, to track and counter what they considered mis- and disinformation.
EIP surveilled hundreds of millions of social media posts and collected from the cooperating government and non-governmental entities that it calls its “stakeholders” potential violations of social media platforms’ policies concerning election speech.
It coordinated its efforts primarily through a digital “ticketing” system. There, one of its as many as 120 analysts or an external partner could highlight a piece of offending social media content or narrative consisting of many offending posts by creating a “ticket” and share it with other relevant participants by “tagging” them. Tagged participants could then communicate with each other, in something of a group chat, about the veracity of the flagged content, concerns about its spread, and what actions they might take to combat it.
For social media companies, this meant removing the content outright, reducing its spread, or “informing” users about dubious posts by slapping corrective or contextualizing labels on them.
During the 2020 election cycle, EIP generated a total of 639 tickets, covering some 4,784 unique URLs – representing content shared millions of times – disproportionately related to the “delegitimization” of election results. Major platforms, including Twitter, Google, and Facebook, responded to tickets in which they were tagged at rates of 75% or higher. The platforms “labeled, removed, or soft blocked” 35% of the URLs shared via EIP.
RealClearInvestigations has obtained data associated with nearly 400 EIP tickets, data produced for the House Homeland Security Committee in connection with its oversight efforts. The tickets come in the form of a series of spreadsheets. Each row represents one ticket. The Stanford group provided no key for the spreadsheets. Much of the information is redacted.
Here are just a few examples of the tickets EIP produced:
Ticket EIP-482 (created October 27, 2020) was originated by the CISA’s Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center (EI-ISAC). It concerns a tweet from then-President Trump indicating “most” states permit one to change one’s original vote after engaging in early voting, which EIP categorized as potential “Procedural Interference.”
The analysts point to fact-checks from, among other sources, Buzzfeed and ABC News challenging the president’s claim. Following two redacted comments on the ticket, an unnamed commenter writes, “Twitter received and is reviewing.” A subsequent comment reads: “We heard back from Twitter through CISA with this response: Our team concluded that the Tweet was not in violation of our Civic Integrity Policy.”
CISA-produced documentation shows the sub-agency’s chief counter-MDM (mis-, dis-, and malinformation) officer, Brian Scully, had also reported the tweet to Twitter, which responded to him directly about it. Therefore, EIP and its stakeholder, an executive agency, both forwarded the chief executive’s speech to a social media platform for potential censorship.
Ticket EIP-257 (Sept. 29), originated by the EI-ISAC, concerns a social media post from an unnamed user, alleging an absentee ballot had been delivered by mail to his dead father. An EIP stakeholder “flagged the post to Facebook for removal and the link is no longer active which means it has either been taken down or made private to the individual’s Facebook.” A subsequent comment notes that “We also received confirmation from Facebook (by way of CISA) that Facebook took action on this case,” again showing EIP and CISA seemingly working as force multipliers in content moderation.
Ticket EIP-301 (Oct. 2), originated by the EI-ISAC, concerns a “tweet regarding voting machines.” An elected official reported that the since-deleted and unavailable tweet “is false. Voting machines work the vast majority of the time. Old machines do have issues, but to phrase it like [this] vastly overstates the scope of the problem.” CISA inquired as to whether Twitter took the tweet down. It did.
Ticket EIP-954 (Nov. 8), the origins of which are not discernible, concerns social media posts sharing an article from The Federalist, where I am a senior contributor, titled “America Won’t Trust Elections Until The Voter Fraud Is Investigated.” According to the ticket, the article “Misconstrues Disinformation as Evidence.” One tagged post comes from Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway. A stakeholder writes to Facebook and Twitter in connection with the ticket that “this seems to be the greatest hits from the past 3 days wrapped up in one article. The article links to several of the gateway pundit links which have received action since Tuesday.” Twitter indicates it was reviewing the tweet, though it appears not to have taken action on it. RCI asked Hemingway for comment on the flagging of her tweet and publication’s work. She replied:
This unconscionable censorship of The Federalist and its reporters is sadly unsurprising. The censorship-industrial complex in this country clearly views free speech as its enemy and will do anything to shut it down, including spreading lies and using intimidation to coerce private companies to censor factual, legal speech on behalf of the regime.
Hemingway concluded with a warning: “The censorship-industrial complex better buckle up because the days of conservatives taking this lying down are over.”
Ben Weingarten | RealClear Wire
The post How the Federal-Private Speech Police Operated in Election 2020 appeared first on Granite Grok.
Artificial Intelligence apps have begun to proliferate across the internet that allow you to take pictures of clothed girls and women with a smartphone and make them nude. Victims feel humiliated, and the potential for abuse is enormous, but I’m sensing a disturbance in the transgender force.
While the rare and few who actually suffer from gender dysphoria deserve appropriate medical and mental health, there is also a known faction of male abusers who use the culturally accepted feelings of femininity to gain access to vulnerable women in once-private spaces.
When I read about young men using some new idea or bit of technology to creep on girls and women, even when the naked parts don’t truly belong to the person to which they are attached, I am offended but, at the same time, reminded. A boy can let his junk hang out while ogling girls in a locker room if he claims to be one, but no one has a right to feel humiliated by that.
To borrow from one of the victims of the AI App incident at Westfield High School in New Jersey.
‘We’re aware that there are creepy guys out there but you’d never think one of your classmates would violate you like this.’
What if these creepy boys announced that they were girls so they could watch you change in front of them or step in and out of a shower in the girl’s locker room? You have zero consent with an understanding that if you complain about the locker room, you are an intolerant bigot.
To be clear, neither of these things is acceptable, but when you invest that much time and energy sexualizing the culture and dehumanizing the meaning or product of intercourse, then build onramps to voyeurism and sexual assault, you’re going to have a hard time justifying any outrage over things we used to just accept as inappropriate or offensive.
Before you get offended, ask yourself: did you enable it, were you forced to enable it, and are you prepared to do whatever is necessary to reel that back in, if that is even possible? And if not, how do you expect to move forward in that world if this isn’t going away?
So many questions.
The post Smartphone Apps that Make Pictures of Clothed Girls Naked vs. Boys in Girls Locker Rooms … appeared first on Granite Grok.
Thousands of busybodies have descended on Abu Dhabi to forestall what they see as an imminent apocalypse. The twenty-eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP28) being held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), is presided over by its president, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and UAE Special Envoy for Climate Change. Al Jaber is also the chief executive officer of Adnoc, the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as well as the chairman of Masdar, otherwise known as the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, a state-owned renewable energy firm. The irony of an oil executive leading a meeting intended to eliminate fossil fuels from the world economy was not lost on participants.
In fact, the climate conference was rife with controversy and intrigue even before it began. Immediately after Al Jaber’s appointment as president, climate activists decried his presidency as a conflict of interests and an outrage, with one activist complaining, “This appointment goes beyond putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.” COP28 is the first conference to have an industry CEO, let alone an oil industry CEO, placed at the helm of the climate change mitigation agenda. Calls for Al Jaber to step down from his CEO position at Adnoc soon followed his appointment and were promptly ignored.
The controversy only increased as the summit approached. A mere month before the conference began, in an online meeting of a She Changes Climate event, Al Jaber responded angrily to Mary Robinson—an Irish politician, the chair of the Elders group, and a former UN special envoy for climate change—after Robinson challenged Al Jaber to commit to phasing out fossil fuels entirely. Robinson claimed, “We’re in an absolute crisis that is hurting women and children more than anyone.” Making such absurd connections is typical of climate activists, who often roll identity politics into their climate activism, which apparently gives them the sense that they are tackling all the world’s supposed problems in a single effort.
Al Jaber responded by countering:
I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation. I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C [the temperature increase cap decreed in the Paris Climate Accord]. . . .
. . . Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves. (emphasis mine)
Al Jaber’s remarks have been regarded as verging on, if not explicitly representative of, climate change science “denial,” and he has been savaged for them. Yet, they represent the only rational, evidence-based statements made during this embattled conversation.
Further charges that Al Jaber aims to undermine the climate change agenda came from leaked communications between COP28 and Adnoc staff members, some of whom have been working in both capacities. The leaked documents strongly suggest that Al Jaber planned to use his position as the COP28 president to make oil deals on the side with government officials of participating nations. These revelations caused a frenzy among climate activist groups. One can only hope that these plans are true and that Al Jaber will have succeeded in making some oil deals for Adnoc and its potential customers. Such economic activity is not so much a sign of hypocrisy as it is evidence that economic actors will pursue rational exchanges, despite the obstacles posed by the market interference of interventionists like the United Nations and its political accomplices, including obstacles that are self-imposed by the economic actors themselves.
Other accusations leveled at Al Jaber’s presidency of COP28 include the charge that Adnoc “has the largest net-zero-busting expansion plans of any company in the world.” Adnoc, it is claimed, has been vastly expanding its development of fossil fuels, which would betray efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Given that fossil fuel exports account for approximately 70 percent of the UAE’s merchandise exports, such efforts at expansion only make economic sense.
Al Jaber may be the only sane person in attendance at COP28, but he will likely be pressured into acceding to the demands of climate catastrophists. The rest of the participants appear to be in hysterics while under the sway of a mass delusion. Against the facts of science and the benefits of fossil-fuel-enabled technology, they believe that CO2 is “pollution,” that “sustainability” requires imposing an enormous tax on humanity for the respiration and growth of plant life, and that the farming methods of the original Green Revolution—which have increased yields by many factors—must be eliminated and replaced with a new environmentalist Green Revolution. They believe that industrial production must be undertaken using non-fossil-fuel inputs and that myriad industrial products must exclude fossil-fuel-based materials. These demands are as delusional as anything enacted by Chairman Mao Zedong during the Great Leap Forward.
Carbon neutrality by 2050 is an insanely impossible demand. Our industrial civilization and the population it supports depends on the advances made in fossil fuel extraction and use. Even Canadian scientist and polymath Vaclav Smil—a believer in climate change who is an otherwise credible source—agrees. In his book, How the World Really Works, Smil writes:
For those who ignore the energetic and material imperatives of our world, those who prefer mantras of green solutions to understanding how we have come to this point, the prescription is easy: just decarbonize—switch from burning fossil carbon to converting inexhaustible flows of renewable energies. The real wrench in the works: we are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years.
Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat or as a result of extraordinarily rapid transformations relying on near-miraculous technical advances.
As Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber seemed to suggest, the climate change catastrophists of COP28 would consign humanity to preindustrial conditions—relegating those in poorer regions to misery and hunger—all while tackling a phantom whose existence is dubious at best.
The economics of climate change catastrophism involve global centralized planning and interventionism on a scale hitherto unexampled. It is irrational to the extent that it purposefully forgoes known economic advantages, jettisons tried-and-true methods, and rejects the market-based approach that has proven to maximize inputs for efficient wealth production. It artificially imposes technological change rather than allowing it to develop of its own accord. Furthermore, it aims to curtail economic freedom by supplanting the choices of producers and consumers and overwriting them with the plans of a climate change dictatorship.
The full results of COP28 will become known by December 14. One can only hope that it ends in abject failure. Climate activists have suggested that it already has.
Michael Rectenwald is the author of twelve books, including The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda, Thought Criminal, Beyond Woke, Google Archipelago, and Springtime for Snowflakes. He is a distinguished fellow at Hillsdale College.
Michael Rectenwald | Mises Wire
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The headline is “property taxpayers bear the brunt of costs.” The subject is education funding, which, if you are paying any attention, is a dramedy akin to The Money Pit but with no beautiful anything at the end of the “movie.”
There is no conclusion. Viewers, or in their case, taxpayers, get nothing for the effort except a larger bill every year and a declining return on investment. But the goal here, aped by the Valley News, is to increase taxes by pretending to offset the burden. They argue that programs will be cut without proper funding but never broach at least one very real problem.
Bloated administrative overhead sucks up most of the resources you would otherwise have for those programs.
Instead of addressing the contradiction that more money does not provide better results, they argue that the current funding model is unconstitutional. A cherished opinion backed by robed activists willing to screw taxpayers by giving progressives what they want. To expand the administrative state in Concord and add a metastasizing statewide taxing authority with an always carbon footprint.
They seek to wreck what has made New Hampshire a great place to live, with low poverty, high quality of life, the most economic opportunity, and better growth and freedom than any state in New England and most of North America.
There’s a reason for that: low tax burden and a focus (at least recently) on reducing bureaucratic burden—the opposite of the public education funding model.
Property taxes are an anchor around the neck of expanding government. A tax bill is a visible reminder of costs and obligations. But, the Schoolies, the Education Industrial Complex, effortlessly grinds conscientious objectors into dust. Towns negotiating contracts with national teachers’ union lawyers or reps can’t compete and almost always cave. Anyone daring to challenge an expansion of the money pit is met with a political firestorm.
Sure, 60% of funding comes from property taxes, but 75% of that tax bill is public education, and much of that has nothing to do with providing students with an education.
If property taxes in New Hampshire are too high, then the first question should be, why are we spending so much for public education and getting so little in return? And is it, perhaps, time for the town to consider separating some of the things a public school does that have nothing to do with reading, writing, or arithmetic and getting them out of the budget?
If a school can’t teach more than 4 or 5 kids out of ten to read at grade level, then no one deserves to be rewarded with anything extracurricular.
Alternatively, a town could probably hire a third-party vendor to run their schools and get better results, with more accountability to taxpayers, parents, and town officials at a fraction of the cost. And guess what? If they start to suck, you can replace them, and all you are doing is changing one lean management team for another.
The Valley News is more interested in pandering to the growing government education industrial complex than saving taxpayers money or educating kids.
The post Valley News Pimps Progressive Education Tax Propaganda appeared first on Granite Grok.
Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explained to the American people what’s really wrong with US foreign policy. Some might find his conclusions surprising.
The US standing in the world is damaged not because we spent 20 years fighting an Afghan government that had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11. The problem has nothing to do with neocon lies about Iraq’s WMDs that led to untold civilian deaths in another failed “democratization” mission. It’s not because, over the past nearly two years, Washington has taken more than $150 billion from the American people to fight a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine.
It’s not the military-industrial complex or its massive lobbying power that extends throughout Congress, the think tanks, and the media.
Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California’s Simi Valley, Austin finally explained the real danger to the US global military empire.
It’s us.
According to Secretary Austin, non-interventionists who advocate “an American retreat from responsibility” are the ones destabilizing the world, not endless neocon wars.
Austin said the US must continue to play the role of global military hegemon – policeman of the world – because “the world will only become more dangerous if tyrants and terrorists believe that they can get away with wholesale aggression and mass slaughter.”
How’s that for reason and logic? Austin and the interventionist elites have fact-checked 30 years of foreign policy failures and concluded, “Well, it would have been far worse if the non-interventionists were in charge.”
This is one of the biggest problems with the neocons. They are incapable of self-reflection. Each time the US government follows their advice into another catastrophe, it’s always someone else’s fault. In this case, as Austin tells us, those at fault for US foreign policy misadventures are the people who say, “Don’t do it.”
What would have happened if the people who said “don’t do it” were in charge of President Obama’s decision to prop up al-Qaeda to overthrow Syria’s secular leader Assad? How about if the “don’t do it” people were in charge when the neocons manufactured a “human rights” justification to destroy Libya? What if the “don’t do it” people were in charge when Obama’s neocons thought it would be a great idea to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected government?
Would tyrants and terrorists have gained power if Washington did NOT get involved? No. Tyrants and terrorists got the upper hand BECAUSE Washington intervened in these crises.
As Austin further explained, part of the problem with the US is democracy itself. “Our competitors don’t have to operate under continuing resolutions,” he complained. What a burden it is for him that the people, through their representatives, are in charge of war spending.
In Congress, “America first” foreign policy sentiment is on the rise among conservatives, and that infuriates Austin and his ilk. He wants more billions for wars in Ukraine and Israel, and he wants it now!
And our economic problems? That is our fault, too. Those who “try to pull up the drawbridge,” Austin said, undermine the security that has led to decades of prosperity. Prosperity? Has he looked at the national debt? Inflation? Destruction of the dollar?
There is a silver lining here. The fact that Austin and the neocons are attacking us non-interventionists means that we are gaining ground. They are worried about us. This is our chance to really raise our voices!
Ron Paul | Ron Paul Institute
Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.The post The Real Problem With Our Foreign Policy… appeared first on Granite Grok.
Progressives have been working hard to conquer the problem of Christmas. Undermine might be a better word. Erase it would be a likely goal. And this story about a #woke black female Santa has me pondering whether they ever wanted her to appear.
The story.
A city in Belgium has cancelled a scheduled Christmas event in which a black female ‘Santa Claus’ was set to reeducate attendees about “colonial ideology” and how “generations of Flemish people are racists.”
The Telegraph reports that people in Ghent have pressured the mayor to call off the appearance of one Queen Nikkolah, a character created by artist Laura Nsengiyumva, who would have ‘reworked’ Christmas fables about Santa for children at the event.
The report claims that the character was set to be dressed in the colours of the Palestinian flag (for some reason) while handing out gifts to children.
Was the point of featuring Queen Nikkolah (and to be honest, wouldn’t it have been better if she was a Drag Queen) to have her do her thing, or was it to get people so outraged they’d just cancel Christmas – or in this case, the Christmas event?
I’ve no issue with a black Santa or one of any other color. The message of individuals giving of their own free will is far too important to get muddled in minute details, especially since Jesus was most certainly not a pale white guy with Fabio’s hair. But how far from the template was this, and to what end?
Belgium is not known for its conservatism, but Europeans have begun to push back against the #woke cultural mandates of the EU, especially with regard to immigration and climate policy. So, was the choice of Queen Nikkolah to further bend and then overwrite the culture or to get it to cancel itself?
Who won?
The post Belgian City Nixes Christmas Event ‘cuz Black Female Anti-Colonialist ‘Santa’ appeared first on Granite Grok.
This past Thursday marks the 82nd anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. December 7, 1941, was described by then-President Franklin Roosevelt as “a date that will live in infamy.”
This attack happened on a Sunday, and it is interesting to see the schedule for the crew on the ships:
0745- Rig for Church (starboard forecastle, weather permitting).
0750- Send boat to Officers’Club landing for Chaplain Maguire.
0830- Chaplin’s Bible discussion class (port side Crew’s Reception Room).
0830- Confessions (Crew’s Library)
0900- Divine Service (Catholic)
1000- Divine Service (Protestant)
Of course, the attack began around 8:00 am, and this schedule was never followed.
I included this officer’s schedule to emphasize again the role of God, the Bible, and its doctrines of faith in the daily affairs of our country, and especially our military. From George Washington to Pearl Harbor, God was honored in our military.
Today, sadly, not so much. Chaplains have been instructed to recuse the name of Jesus Christ in their prayers. The “Woke” agenda has become the measuring line of acceptance and tolerance.
Few people know that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto actually studied English at Harvard University from (1919-21). He was also assigned first as an aide to an admiral and then as a naval attache in Washington (1926-28).
He grew to have a deep respect for the industrial aspect of America but a little affinity for the military as he viewed them as an officers club of bridge players and golfers.
It is said after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said, “I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with terrible resolve.”
And that is exactly what happened. Americans did not pursue peace as he naively believed they would but instead took action to destroy those who had done such a vicious act of tyranny on innocent people.
President Abraham Lincoln, in his famed Cooper Union address, used a phrase that had been a part of philosophical writings and Stoics quotes since the 14th century. The phrase, Might Makes Right, had been a harbinger of the use of force to bring about social change at the behest of a leader strong enough to overcome everyone else and impose his/her will on others.
President Lincoln reversed the words of the phrase to say that “Right Makes Might.”
Lincoln, affectionally known as Honest Abe, understood, perhaps more than other leaders during his era, that if you are living the right lifestyle and doing the right things by your neighbor, i.e., the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Then, when the odds are against you, though you appear to be weak or even vulnerable to defeat, there is a spiritual law of truth that will prevail against every lie.
Pearl Harbor was an example of people doing the right thing who were severely wronged. Because they were doing life as they should, their might proved to be unstoppable.
America as a nation has done a lot of right things…but we must seek God to reform the dark areas of our culture…we have accepted abortion, alternate sexual lifestyle choices, sex trafficking, homelessness, drug addiction, prescription (legal) and illegal, lawlessness, drunkenness, mutilation of our most precious commodity our young children, the future of America. I can add to this list; however, if we do not have a great awakening or a return to morality, we will continue to lose our might. By that, I mean our ability to have a civil society of peace and prosperity, which we have all known for most of our lives.
So far, all the major attacks against our country have come from enemies from foreign shores…but little by little, we are seeing riots, burnings, looting, and murders from within on an unprecedented scale…the open border should put the fear of God in all of us. We are being inundated by thousands of young men, (healthy, strong). As one Texas ranger asked a group of young men they captured…if you are fleeing persecution and your life is threatened, why did you leave your family? ( Many of them had been questioned as to whether or not they had a family), they simply smiled.
Meanwhile, many Congressional Leaders, men, and women, are reaping personal financial gains beyond anything we could imagine. They boldly lie to us without a twinge of conflict in their souls. They refuse to reform the laws they have created for their own personal gain. They refuse to stand up for the innocent Americans who have been lied against in the media and jailed without a fair trial, and they refuse to stop the twisting of laws to condemn the innocent. All the while, bribery is the mode of operation in our government. Isaiah, the prophet, said, Truth is trampled in the streets, and we are living in an age where evil is called good and good is called evil. We put darkness for light and light for darkness…bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. ( Isaiah 5:20 )
I realize that some Congressmen and Women do go on TV and speak about these issues, however have you noticed there is rarely if ever any action in a timely manner to bring justice? I certainly have…those who have taken the oath to protect our country and us in return seem to be incapable of not only naming what is wrong…. (You know the buzzwords… alleged, appearances, follow the story where it leads? (Whatever that means?) With that attitude, it appears we are creating the story as we go along. How about we know where it leads? How about we know how the story ends? It is clear what you have done. Of course, it never leads to any conviction or justice for the person doing the wrong, no matter which political party they are a part of. Slaps on the wrists, pardons, daytime prison while you live in your own home, these are the rules for those who govern us.
However, we pay with our lives for infractions far less devastating than what they have done to us and our country. We have seen people go to jail before a trial. We no longer accept innocent until proven guilty. You are guilty and must prove you innocent…a bit like old England under Monarchial rule. Or Communist culture on steroids. We’ve all heard the song and dance. But the song and dance is usually on just one side…the other side just tells the lie as if it were true! No dancing around what they see as wrong…
But remember, right (actions based on moral integrity and truth) will always win…light will always triumph over the darkness.
In closing, if you have the time this week, read Deuteronomy 28. Here, Moses told the Nation of Israel that if they turned away from following God and His Laws, this would be the end result. A lot of it fits our country right now.
Awakening is not just a social buzzword; it is a necessity if we are to survive!
Until next week,
Allen
The post From George Washington to Pearl Harbor, God was Honored in our Military appeared first on Granite Grok.
Perky CDC Director Mandy Cohen seems to have been picked for the job based on her communications skills, though she does have a bunch of letters after her name. And while the delivery is better, the message is the same.
With elevated cases of Flu, RSV, and even Pneumonia, the CDC wants you to know that you should do what you’ve always done to protect yourself, where “Always” means since mid-2020, and where “protection” means those things that didn’t work.
Masks were a fail. The Shots made things worse. But here we are, so this message is for those still not paying attention because the rest of us can’t believe it.
Virus season is here! Hear the latest. https://t.co/4jNWBWWzzl pic.twitter.com/RkMVttAygw
— Mandy K. Cohen, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) December 6, 2023
COVID and flu vaccines, masking, and staying home if you are sick. The last one is the only one we’ve always done, so credit where due, but without knowing whether cases of this, that, or the other thing are up – well, they should be. It is almost winter. That’s also something we’ve always done. And I understand that Perky Mandy must do her Public Service Announcements. Pfizer money doesn’t launder itself. And maybe she’s just another useful idiot.
A perky, useful idiot. The CDC Glee Club president. The vaccine cheerleader. This is the program. It may have resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths worldwide, but much like socialism, if we keep trying, it will eventually work. Get vaccinated. Obstruct your airway. Again, with the understanding that we do not know what they mean by “work,” but we have our suspicions.
The post Perky CDC Director: This COVID Season Get Vaccinated and Wear a Mask appeared first on Granite Grok.
Nobody can say Hunter Biden doesn’t see himself above all others. Being the son of Joe Biden, he learned early on that he was one of the elites in America and rules do not apply to that group. Hunter Biden has been a self-proclaimed porn star, pop artist, and chief financial officer of the Biden Family Cartel.
CFO may not be totally accurate as Hunter was the front man who shook down foreign companies, officials, and governments for money in exchange for access to his Vice President, now President, father. Hunter had one of his Dad’s puppets in his corner protecting the First Son, but that puppet has been forced to the center of the ring. Special counsel David Weiss leveled a nine-count indictment against Hunter Biden late Thursday, accusing President Joe Biden’s son of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes from 2016 to 2020.
There is so much to this story that is not in the headline. The period that Hunter failed to file with the IRS goes back to 2014, but due to Weiss dragging his feet, the statute of limitations has run out on the sins of those earlier years. Coincidentally, those earlier years are when Joe was the Vice President. Weiss did his job well, not for the American people, but for the Biden family by ensuring the information from this period never hits the light of day. Hunter’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, caused many to scratch their heads when he claimed that Hunter was charged solely because he is a Biden. Most people with minimal insight see the special treatment Hunter received by delaying action on these charges for five years. If his name were not Biden, he would be in prison serving his sentence. Attorney Lowell got the message on Biden Communications: lie, lie again, and end your lie with “That’s a fact.” It is that last part that makes everything so believable. People are beginning to see through the smoke.
The glitch in the Biden Administration’s handling of Hunter’s felonious crimes was the IRS Whistle Blowers. These two gentlemen came before Congress, at dire penalties to their careers, exposed the delay tactics of David Weiss, and crushed the plea deal Weiss tried to ram through the system. They stood their ground in front of a barrage from the Democrat members of the committee, and their conviction was absolute. They were not going to let the injustice they witnessed go unchecked. Weiss had no choice but to act quickly to bring indictments against Hunter Biden in Los Angeles. This trial will take place next year while Joe is trying to win a second term and continue the era of Biden Corruption in D.C.
This action by Weiss comes on the heels of Hunter being subpoenaed to appear in front of a House Committee, and he is to appear next week or face possible contempt charges.
Hunter displayed a higher level of hubris by offering to testify in front of the House Ways and Means Committee regarding his role in the Biden Family money laundering scheme. The problem is that Hunter had already been served a subpoena to testify, so he really did not have an option. He was subpoenaed for a closed-door meeting. He has offered to testify in a public hearing. Hunter loves the bright lights and thinks the truth will be buried in a closed hearing. He will probably negotiate for a primetime made-for-TV hearing.
Getting into Hunter Biden’s head is a scary thought. It is challenging to uncover his motive for pushing for a public hearing. There does not appear to be an upside, but he has a history of airing his sins on primetime, as he did a 60 Minutes interview to discuss his Pornhub videos, womanizing, and drug use. He is banking on the format of a public hearing being easier to manipulate. Jordan and Comer will have no part in his offer. He can have his public hearing after the private deposition and the release of the transcripts to the public. Hunter may have directed his porn videos, but he is only the star of this show. Comer and Jordan will be calling the shots, and Hunter will keep his clothes on, but hopefully, his story will be stripped naked.
The post This Time, He’ll Keep His Clothes On, but Hopefully, His Story Will Be Stripped Bare appeared first on Granite Grok.
Context: After a “judge” in the New Hampshire trial, courts attacked our democracy (yes, bitter-clingers, this was an actual attack on democracy) by
“ordering” that “the State” (which has no money of its own) spend an additional one-half a billion on public education (which means, dear bitter-clingers, that the “judge” is ordering the legislature and governor to raise taxes or to spend less on roads, police, etc.), some Democrats began talking about not eliminating the Interest and Dividends Tax as is planned.
Kelly Ayotte’s response: NYET.
We need a tough conservative in the corner office who can win this race and beat back the left’s foolish plans to increase taxes on working families and small businesses.
As Governor, I will never allow the Democrats to increase taxes or impose an income tax. #nhpolitics https://t.co/zZyuFQFvWE pic.twitter.com/Lj8ypwzv9O
— Kelly Ayotte (@KellyAyotte) November 29, 2023
This is a fine response EXCEPT we know from Kelly’s stint as Attorney General that she AGREES with the Democrats that the judiciary has the power to tell the elected branches how much to spend on public education and what kind of taxes can be used to raise that money. More specifically, as Attorney General, Ayotte NEVER argued that the Claremont decisions and their progeny were illegitimate and should be overturned. Rather, she accepted the absurd premise that the judiciary has the power to tell the elected branches how much to spend on public education and what kind of taxes can be used to raise that money.
In other words, there really is NOT that much difference between Ayotte and the Democrats on this looming issue. Needless to say, the can is being kicked down the road via an appeal to the New Hampshire Supreme School Board … oh, I’m sorry, I meant Supreme Court. But what if that appeal is unsuccessful? Voters deserve to know exactly what every gubernatorial candidate would do in that scenario. So, “tough conservative,” Kelly … how are you going to pay???
The post Night Cap: Dear “Tough Conservative” Kelly Ayotte … So, How Are You Going To Pay appeared first on Granite Grok.
Most of New England has some work to do to keep up with New Hampshire’s status as the nation’s freest state. In the latest edition of the Cato Institute’s Freedom in the 50 States report, while New Hampshire finishes first in overall freedom (an index of personal and economic freedom), the other five New England states each finish in the bottom half among all 50 states.
Overall freedom:
When breaking down the rankings, all New England states do well on personal freedom (Connecticut being the lowest ranked at No. 16), but New Hampshire rises above the rest on economic freedom.
Economic freedom:
The two components of the economic freedom index are fiscal and regulatory freedom, on which New Hampshire also scores much higher than its regional neighbors.
Fiscal freedom:
Regulatory freedom:
Needless to say, all of New England, New Hampshire included, could use some regulatory reform. (These rankings accounted for laws enacted as of December 31, 2022, meaning New Hampshire’s universal license recognition law didn’t make the cut.)
In the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of North America 2023, New Hampshire is first in economic freedom among all North American jurisdictions, while Connecticut is the next “freest” at No. 25 among just the 50 U.S. states. After that, it’s Massachusetts (28th), Maine (41st), Rhode Island (42nd), and Vermont (48th).
How free your state is directly affects many important outcomes. One is the movement of people.
“Fiscal, regulatory, and personal freedom are all independently, positively, statistically significantly correlated with net in-migration,” write William Ruger and Jason Sorens, authors of Freedom in the 50 States.
It’s no surprise, then, that New Hampshire is winning the migration game. According to data collected by Kenneth Johnson at the UNH Carsey School of Public Policy, the Granite State experienced a net migration gain of 18,300 in 2021 and 2022. Forty-four percent of those migrants came from Massachusetts, 8% came from Maine and Vermont combined, and 14% came from elsewhere in the Northeast.
New Hampshire was one of only two New England states to see its population increase every year from 2018–2022, growing to nearly 1.4 million today—a 6% increase since 2010—while a state like Vermont sits at about 647,000 people. (The other was Maine, which saw a migration surge during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
Net in-migration isn’t something New Hampshire can take for granted. More people died in the Granite State than were born in 2021 and 2022, and New Hampshire consistently has one of the lowest birth rates in the country, meaning the state’s recent population growth has been entirely due to those moving into the state.
And what explains the Granite State’s net migration gain? “One channel by which economic freedom affects in-migration is by increasing economic growth,” Ruger and Sorens write. “We found a robust relationship between economic freedom in one year and income growth in the next.”
The bottom line is that freedom isn’t just valuable in its own right (which it is). Freedom, fundamentally, leads to greater economic opportunity and prosperity. More freedom generally means more of the other two as well.
New Hampshire’s median household income of $83,449 is $15,000 higher than Vermont’s and $20,000 higher than Maine’s.
While the rest of New England champions increased government spending for social programs and public welfare, higher tax rates, more regulation, and top-down control over education and the economy, they get in return lower levels of economic opportunity, growth, and prosperity than New Hampshire does.
Mitchell Scacchi | JBartlett
The post While Freedom Flourishes in New Hampshire, the Rest of New England Is a Different Story appeared first on Granite Grok.
The DeSantis v. Newsom debate last week; can trump win in November if nominated? Should DeSantis hit trump harder on electability and many other issues? Ed M believes Trump can’t win Iowa; from whom will RFK Jr. pull more votes, Trump or Biden? More covid information coming out all the time about how much we were lied to; will Fauci ever be hurt in any way for all of his lies? Where is congress on missiles being shot at boats by Houthis in Yemen?
The post The Conservatarian Exchange Podcast #183 appeared first on The Liberty Block.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortex, the recently minted millionaire (yes, it’s true) and former bartender, shared some keen-Cortez insight on the rising objections to boys being allowed to participate in girls’ sports. “Exposing,” if you like – not just the problem – but some of the contradictions in her argument.
.@AOC lays out the new Dem talking points on men in women’s spaces: “We are talking about opening up all women and girls to genital examinations when they are under age, potentially just because someone can point to someone and say, I don’t think you are a girl.” pic.twitter.com/zHPuwOyh6p
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) December 5, 2023
Aren’t genital exams the Dem Party’s bread and Butter regardless of age? Hello, abortion! I’m not sure how familiar you are with those, but to have one, you need your “genitals examined.” Too extreme? Well, there are several situations where a medical professional might examine girls or women in that vicinity. Women’s Health Care – as I understand the Democrat definition, is impossible without it. That vicinity is the center, the apex of health for women from the progressive side of every aisle. A strange development after decades of suffrage and women’s rights marches (even some with cute pink pussy hats) whose point was to have the world view women as something other than that.
You Could say that in preparation for a lifetime of being defined as a vagina by an entire political party, we should “open up all women and girls to genital examinations when they are underage.” Good practice for when the world is run by tyrannical men pretending to be women.
So, is this a privacy issue? That would be ironic.
The one-time “physical” is standard practice in all school sports.
Your concerns would allow boys who are attracted to girls to get their creep on in bathrooms and locker rooms -“examining girls’ genitals” frequently and potentially at length. Obviously, in this context, the words examination and genitals cover a lot of territory, not just in the number of girls or the frequency of observation but in various states of dress and undress.
The infamous Lia Thomas is alleged to have been – on occasion – visibly aroused in the ladies’ swim team locker room, which, adding to the Sandy Cortez narrative, reminds us that the girls in her world are being forced to “examine” genitals against their will. (Related: College Hack: Just Do This Guys, And You Can Parade Naked Through Women’s Locker Rooms …)
And if we understand correctly, the discomfort at being examined once by a medical professional is significant, while objecting to being examined regularly in various states of undress by a boy (who could be naked with an erection) is bigoted. Peeping Tom only needs to change his name to Tammy, and exhibitionism and peeping become a right; its rejection is an act of discrimination.
More unpunishable crimes on the streets of the naked city.
And while the odds of serious injury are less common among pre-pubescent athletes, allowing the comingling of sexes based on how one feels (as in, I feel like staring at girls in their underwear without fear of punishment) not long into puberty, boys pretending to be girls present a significant “women’s health risk.”
Again, defenders will insist that rights trump risks, and generally speaking, as a society, we police after the fact, but is that truly an argument you’d like to make in the wake of years of rape-culture rhetoric? Men pretending to be women who are transferred to women’s prisons have an alarmingly common tendency to rape actual women.
It seems like that’s the culture you’re looking for, in which case women had best think about changing their party of preference before their daughters find themselves examining male genitals in ways that would be inappropriate to explain on these pages.
The post Sandy Cortez “Exposes” Herself … appeared first on Granite Grok.
The New Hampshire Republican State Committee is “looking forward” to ABC News hosting a Republican debate. Have they ever watched the ABC Nightly News with David Muir? It is 30 minutes of schilling for the Biden regime and attacking actual Republicans.
Why would any institution charged with electing Republicans be “looking forward” to having a panel of activists posing as journalists asking GOP candidates questions that are not important to GOP voters and are intended to embarrass and weaken the GOP candidates?
Why? Because FITN is a grift. It is about the elites making money and feeding their egos. The Republican State Committee is a grift. No institution that actually had as its objective electing Republicans would be “partnering” with Fake News ABC, never mind “looking forward” to partnering with Fake News ABC. At best, the Republican State Committee is a joke. But you know as well as I do it’s a grift.
The post The New Hampshire Republican State Committee, AT BEST, Is A Joke appeared first on Granite Grok.
And then there were four… The Republican national championship has been whittled down to its final four competitors, and not without controversy.
Despite having an undefeated polling season and walking away with gigantic lead after gigantic lead, Donald Trump was nowhere to be found as the season-ending playoff among GOP hopefuls saw four candidates all having at least one loss on their record – they weren’t Donald Trump.
Sweet home Alabama was the site for this last and almost best brouhaha, where the crimson tidal wave crashed on the stage like the 2022 election season. Both contestants and moderators brought their A games, but in a country with the educational standards of a Mad-lib an A just isn’t what it used to be.
Hosting the event was media upstart News Nation, which, like the debate stage, has become a clearing house for also-rans. Elizabeth Vargas, Megyn Kelly, and Eliana Johnson were the moderators, and these fiery vixens had carefully crafted questions intending to evoke the highest in journalistic inquiry since the nation was confronted with that timeless query, “What is a woman”? Don’t bother asking these ladies because manning up was the soup du jour as two of the three men on the stage set out to make misogyny great again!
Megyn Kelly began the interlocution by suggesting one of them had the chance to become “leader of the free world” if only they could overcome a fifty-point deficit held by Grand Wizard Trump, who CNN and MSNBC reported was either harassing the next Miss Universe or holding another MAGA Klan Rally. At this point what difference does it make, right Hillary?
Fixing her gaze on Florida Governor Ron Desantis, she reminded him he was trailing the aspiring dictator even in his home state of Florida. Desantis quickly retorted by listing off the string of successes he’d had in combating leftist-woke ideologues in his home state before reminding Mrs. Kelly of her failed NBC show then pointing out Mrs. Haley’s eye-shadow was too dark for her dress, which would set the tone for the rest of the evening.
Haley was next to respond to a question about her entanglements with big banks and defense contractors and whether or not she would be beholden to them rather than the voters. Still stinging from Desantis’ slight, she said, “Ron’s just jealous they want someone who actually knows how to wear heels,” which elicited thunderous applause from her high-paying cheering section.
Speaking of heels Vivek Ramaswamy wasted no time in turning his sights on Haley. Fielding a question about his viability due to a recent drop in the polls, he suggested the stilettoed former governor from South Carolina couldn’t find Ukraine on a map before challenging her to play Are You Smarter Than A Third Grader with his nine-year-old son, who was recently accepted to his alma mater Harvard. This elicited a cacophony of boos from the third-grade loving crowd of southerners, which quickly turned into cheers after he yelled out “Roll Tide!” while holding up a picture of Alabama football coach Nick Saban.
A game Chris Christie could be seen stewing on the sideline as he leaned against his podium in a three-point stance like an offensive lineman. Clad in an oxygen mask and gulping down water with a look on his face that said, “Put me in coach,” Christie gamely came to the wounded Haley’s defense by calling Ramaswamy a “blow-hard” and then took a long drag from his mask before calling a time-out.
The half-time show featured 98 year-old Dolly Parton dressed in a cheerleader costume where she sang a few of the GOP favorites. Mrs. Parton bravely tip-toed up and down the stage, accompanied by two midgets she appeared to have smuggled inside her bustier. Also wearing seven-inch heels, which were the envy of more than one of the debaters, she belted out such conservative classics as “9 to 5”, “Take This Job and Shove It” by Johnny Paycheck, and “Money” by Pink Floyd. Praise the Lord and pass the ridiculously overpriced ammunition, I say!
Desantis and Ramaswamy had been working on some plays during the break, then came out in another coordinated offensive set where both men set blocks for the beleaguered phantom menace Trump before running the ball up the middle again right at a defense-contractor-less Haley, who was performing CPR on a fallen Christie and his political ambitions.
Color commentators Tony Romo and Jim Nantz cried foul on behalf of the apparent abusing of a woman by two men in a competitive event but were silenced after Ramaswamy and Desantis emerged from the pile wearing wigs, lipstick, and sensible shoes while holding a sign that read “Queers for Palestine”. This was clearly a play to gain votes from the crowd of collegial attendees but sadly for the panderers they failed to appreciate the context of the moment and after the jeering crowd of genteel southerners calmed down both were censured by the moderators for “harassing and bullying” a fellow candidate, which turns out is a big no-no.
Finally, the candidates were asked to choose a president from whom they drew inspiration. A resuscitated Christie went first, choosing Ronald Reagan, then proceeded to pitch his new book titled “What Would Reagan Do?” Clearly, in the holiday spirit, Christie then donned a Santa Claus costume and walked to the edge of the stage before casting dozens of WWRD bracelets into the mostly Reaganite worshiping crowd, just in time for Christmas. Haley chose Hillary Clinton as her former president yet was reminded by Eliana she didn’t win back in 2016 and came dangerously close to calling her an election denier, also a no-no for conservatives. Desantis made the unusual choice of Vermont’s very own silent Calvin Coolidge, then dared Mrs. Haley to name which state he hailed from.
Lastly, Ramaswamy paused briefly before waxing historically on the merits of yet another famous misogynist, Thomas Jefferson, who, he aptly pointed out, not only wrote the Declaration of Independence at a youthful thirty-three years of age but also “invented the swivel chair you ladies are sitting on” to the moderators, none of whom seemed to be as impressed as the seats themselves.
An exit poll was taken, and the results showed the candidates ranked as follows:
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Facebook has been tossing up an alert asking if you are registered to vote. I ignored it when I saw it, as did a few other folks who noticed, but a Grok reader screen grabbed it, and it found its way to my inbox.
I’m waiting on Secretary State of Dave Scanlan to confirm this, but I had a secondhand conversation with someone who spoke to him. He said that his office has nothing to do with it, and he did not give anyone permission to use his name or office.
This is a big deal, and for our readers outside New Hampshire, please let us know if you’ve seen that yet or when you do. It seems likely this will be appearing either before your primary or just in general.
We will do a follow-up as soon as we have confirmation from the Secretary of State and any details about what his office has planned in response.
12/9/23 3:30 pm Update!
Secretary of State Dave Scanlan has responded to my email about whatever it is Facebook is doing.
Steve, Thanks for sending me this. This is the voter information lookup page on our website, however we do not contact voters in this manner. I will be alerting the attorney general. Dave
We will report any additional updates as we receive them.
The post [Update!] Is Facebook Fraudulently Fishing for Voter Data Using NH SOS Dave Scanlan’s Name? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Monday this past week, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, “One of the reasons that [Hamas] doesn’t want to turn over women that they’ve been holding hostage… is they don’t want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody.”
He later added he meant sexual violence. He also said that this issue played into why the ceasefire ended late last week. It is why Hamas doesn’t want to re-engage in talks. Mr. Miller’s statement caught some people by surprise.
It caused media outlets to react with a degree of alarm. CNN interviewed Democrat Pramila Jayapal, who claimed that she and other Democrats condemn Hamas and their tactic of rape but that it is also important to “be balanced about bringing in the outrages against the Palestinians.”
We want to thank Marc Abear for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
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Hamas denies the allegations made in the State Department’s allegations. They issued a statement Monday saying their fighters are Muslim. They would never engage in sexual assault. In that same statement, they also said they never attacked the music festival in Israel.
The music festival was where Hamas fighters paraglided in, slaughtered, and raped over 100 people. That’s on video. Also on video and retold by a survivor from that festival was a young woman assaulted by a gang of Palestinians who shot her in the head when they concluded their assault.
That story was published on Sunday by the Times of London.
Make of the warzone reporting what you will. Just know there are facts somewhere. They will vindicate one position and condemn the other, but is Hamas using sexual assault as a form of warfare? Does Islam condone such a thing? Have you heard condemnation by Islam of the tactics? Why are many Democrats and Progressives not reacting to it? Why aren’t they reacting, at least not negatively?
Reminder: The views and opinions expressed in Op-Eds are those of the author and may not reflect the opinion of GraniteGrok.com or its authors.
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Slavery is one of those topics, like abortion, that can’t just be brought up in casual company. – without knowing who stands where and on what, you might as well drop a lit-match into a room full of black powder.
People with opinions will share them. Those without will flee to avoid being a casualty. But since no one is arguing that the company we keep here is polite, we broach these subjects often and enthusiastically with the hope that it will expand the debate and arm us with some options. These are tools for prying the crazy back long enough to inform the innocent bystanders who hung around the way people watch NASCAR for the collisions.
To do this, we often seek the observations of experts, and when talking about slavery, it is difficult to get a better expert than Thomas Sowell. The man is brilliant, well-spoken, and fearless.
@bobanderson77, responding to a July 4 Tweet from Cori Bush in which he demands reparations, shared some of the wisdom of Dr. Sowell in rebuttal, and it’s …well, brilliant. Not all of it is new to our readers, but it is worth your time to be reminded and, most certainly, a valuable set of observations to keep handy should you find yourself confronted online by some progressive asshat.
“Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years, nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century. People of every race and color were enslaved – and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.
“Everyone hated the idea of being a slave but few had any qualms about enslaving others. Slavery was just not an issue, not even among intellectuals, much less among political leaders, until the 18th century – and then it was an issue only in Western civilization. Among those who turned against slavery in the 18th century were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other American leaders. You could research all of the 18th century Africa or Asia or the Middle East without finding any comparable rejection of slavery there. But who is singled out for scathing criticism today? American leaders of the 18th century.
“Deciding that slavery was wrong was much easier than deciding what to do with millions of people from another continent, of another race, and without any historical preparation for living as free citizens in a society like that of the United States, where they were 20 percent of the population.
“It is clear from the private correspondence of Washington, Jefferson, and many others that their moral rejection of slavery was unambiguous, but the practical question of what to do now had them baffled. That would remain so for more than half a century.
“In 1862, a ship carrying slaves from Africa to Cuba, in violation of a ban on the international slave trade, was captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy. The crew were imprisoned and the captain was hanged in the United States – despite the fact that slavery itself was still legal at the time in Africa, Cuba, and in the United States. What does this tell us? That enslaving people was considered an abomination. But what to do with millions of people who were already enslaved was not equally clear.
“That question was finally answered by a war in which one life was lost [620,000 Civil War casualties] for every six people freed [3.9 million]. Maybe that was the only answer. But don’t pretend today that it was an easy answer – or that those who grappled with the dilemma in the 18th century were some special villains when most leaders and most people around the world saw nothing wrong with slavery.
“Incidentally, the September 2003 issue of National Geographic had an article about the millions of people still enslaved around the world right now. But where is the moral indignation about that?”
..
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