Back in January, I reported on the flooding caused by a blocked culvert that destroyed my neighbor’s front & back yards. While the town has worked diligently to right the wrong done to her property, the rainy weather hasn’t help.

They cleared out most of the first culvert you will see in the video, greatly enlarged it, cut down the overhanging tree limbs, removed a bunch of trees, and did work on the “inflows” on both sides of Belknap Mtn.Rd that dump into it.

Across the street, after fixing the asphalt, the town also re-dug the outflow culvert’s runoff area and laid in a lot of rip-rac (sharp-edged rocks) to bolster the banks. They also remove a bunch of trees at the same time.

Then, as you will see me peering through the foliage to see the final out culvert dumping into the swale that carries the water out to the conservation land behind the houses.

Today during the intense rain storm, the first culvert came close to overflowing again (a mere inch or two more and the road would have been overflowed. Now other hydrological issues have come to the fore in that perhaps some of the fire ponds located at a higher elevation may have failed. Thus, they may be playing a root problem that is being expressed right down by my house. And this is all because, here in central NH, it’s been pretty much raining since May.

Just call us Seattle East. Sheesh…

That was yesterday. Today, I went back over to see what today’s sunny day brought:

It shows, however, that the Town has other issues to fix after the tremendous rains…

The post Speaking of Steve’s “Excessive Rain” Post – It Was Excessive Compared to Today. Culvert Time Again appeared first on Granite Grok.

VT Digger recently published an op-ed by a local left-wing environmental lawyer. You wouldn’t know it unless you went looking, but Joslyn L. Wilschek is a Utilities and Environmental lawyer with a law office in Montpelier, and her op-ed is about (drumroll) the environment. It is also blinkered.

Related: John Lee Pettimore: “We Will Destroy the Earth in the Name of “Green Energy”

 

Wilschek sees the recent flooding as an opportunity to promote cleaner lakes and rivers in Vermont by ditching fossil fuels for some of that net-zero electric grid stuff about which the progs are so hopped up. They’ve got these mandates Vermonters didn’t want but that their Democrat legislature passed anyway.

 

Getting fossil fuels out of flood zones and replaced by cleaner sources is critical as Vermont rebuilds. The Clean Heat Standard that the Vermont Legislature just passed strives to help Vermont businesses and homes get off dirty fossil fuel heating sources.

The inundation of these fossil fuel-based heating systems provides an opportunity to upgrade to cleaner sources as we rebuild, while also reducing the carbon pollution that contributed to the climate chaos that caused so much damage.

 

She’s not wrong about the potential for pollution during a flood. Vermont got smacked hard, and everything everywhere creates some risk, including everything you’d do your best to keep away from pets or babies. From cleaning and laundry supplies to your soon-to-be-ruined septic system, major flooding has costs and consequences for people and the local environment. But she chose to focus on her obvious disdain for fossil fuels and the false promise of the people’s glorious Clean Heat Standard.

The one that will off-shore American jobs, US dollars, and – to her point –  the environmental pollution that is destroying entire ecosystems and the people who rely on them.

Mostly, brown people, by the way, if anyone thinks that might be racist.

Related: WIRED Magazine Exposes the Social and Environmental Costs of the “Green” Agenda

The Clean Heat standard mandates a switch to all-electric, but there’s nothing clean about any of that.

Many of the raw materials needed are raped from the ground in large open mines that use slave or low-income labor. This happens in third-world countries with no public health or work protections or environmental regulations. Much of the material fabrication or manufacturing is done by human rights violators like China, the world’s number one polluter, and emitter. An enemy nation that is not only being enriched by the Left’s misbegotten obsession with net zero, it has used that money to expand its fossil fuel production and consumption, complete with the rise in emissions these progressives insist we must reduce.

By which they mean you.

Vermonters will pay dearly with rising prices, decreased reliability, lost jobs, and lower living standards, all to ruin someone else’s air and water. A form of Climate and emissions colonialism that harms children and takes “indigenous” lives and livelihoods. That irreparably pollutes waterways, killing fish and wildlife while making long swaths of land unworkable and unlivable.

But since none of that pollution or destruction can be seen from a law office in Montpelier, it is okay to pretend Vermont’s Clean Heat Standard is doing something good instead of wrecking the planet in someone else’s backyard.

 

 

The post We Need to Stop Pretending That Vermont’s New Clean Heat Standard Won’t Ruin Someone Else’s Environment appeared first on Granite Grok.

The US medical industry got a wakeup call about its affirmative-care model of medically transitioning children. In a July 14 letter to the Wall Street Journal, 21 clinicians and researchers from nine countries, including Finland’s leading expert, Riittakerttu Kaltiala, challenged Endocrine Society President Stephen Hammes’ recent claim that more than 2,000 studies clearly demonstrate that the euphemistically-called gender-affirming care for children improves well-being and reduces suicide. 

The experts’ statement contradicts Dartmouth Health’s claim that medically transitioning children reduces suicide, and calls into question their trans-or-die narrative.

Related: The Trans Suicide Myth and Blackmail Politics

The letter states:

Every systematic review of evidence to date, including one published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, has found that the evidence for mental-health benefits of hormonal interventions to be of low or very low certainty. By contrast, the risks are significant and include sterility, lifelong dependence on medication, and the anguish of regret.  For this reason, more and more European countries and international professional organizations now recommend psychotherapy rather than hormones and surgery as the first line of treatment for gender-dysphoric youth.

The letter emphasizes that “There is no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide prevention measure.”

These experts implore US medical societies “to align their recommendations with the best evidence, rather than exaggerating the benefits and minimizing the risks.” Until they do so, it’s incumbent on moms and dads to protect their children from being exploited by an industry that refuses to regulate itself.

The post Experts: Child Transing Doesn’t Reduce Suicide appeared first on Granite Grok.

I can think of a few Republicans I wouldn’t want as Governor. The current governor is one of them – I voted for the other guy in that first primary – and Chuck Morse is another. We could do a lot worse, but is that really the standard to which we are limited?

So far, yes, it is – here is Chuck Morse, excited that he can run for governor now that Sununu is not.

 

Now that [Chris Sununu has] decided not to run for re-election, I’m announcing that I am running for Governor to build on those successes.

Year in and year out New Hampshire ranks among the best states to live in.

It’s not an accident and it’s not luck either.

It’s because we elect conservative who get results.

It’s what I did as Senate President and it’s what I’ll do as Governor.

 

So first, um… Sununu’s not running. Democrats must be beside themselves with glee. Second, Chuck’s biggest problem is that absent Sununu, he is the machine politics, establishment pick. This means, Third, that Karen Testerman will run again, and maybe Frank Edelblut, and we’ll have to see who else but the establishment’s money and power will be behind Morse, which is the big red flag.

Feel free to name whomever else you think will run for governor on the alleged Right and who you think actually has a chance in hell of competing. Is anyone good? Is anyone bad? If Morse fails to win the nomination, will the establishment undermine the GOP contender as they did Joe Kenney in 2008?

That should stimulate some debate.

 

Added: Departure remarks from his Excellency.

 

“After much consideration, I have decided not to run for another term as Governor in 2024. Be assured we will keep working and that the Granite State will continue to be our priority for the next 18 months,” he said in the statement.

“Public service should never be a career, and the time is right for another Republican to lead our great state. This was no easy decision as I truly love serving as Governor. I could not be more proud of our record and it’s thanks to your support that we’ve accomplished so much.”

Added: Sununu’s email announcement in full.

 

Friend,

After discussions with Valerie and the kids and much consideration, I have decided not to run for another term as Governor in 2024.

This was no easy decision as I truly love serving as Governor.

Public service should never be a career, and the time is right for another Republican to lead our great state.

It is with great pride that New Hampshire is better off today than we were seven years ago.

New Hampshire has our lowest unemployment rate ever, we have cut more taxes than any other administration in the history of New Hampshire, invested record amounts in housing, expanded school choice, defended our Second Amendment rights, revamped our addiction and recovery system, rebuilt our mental health system, and delivered full day kindergarten.

I could not be more proud of our record in New Hampshire, and it is thanks to your support that we’ve accomplished so much.

Be assured we will keep working and that the Granite State will continue to be our priority for the next 18 months.

 

 

The post Breaking News: Chuck Morse is Running for Governor – Or is it That Chris Sununu is Not appeared first on Granite Grok.

One more time into the midweek meme breach with the Wednesday overflow, follow-up, and leftovers, but hopefully, no re-runs. Well, I think re-runs are possible, we’ve posted thousands of these things, but I have tried not to duplicate any of the ones I’ve posted lately (with some success).

Other than the featured image, of course. That is – at this point – the iconic marker of Monday memes and the overflow posts. So here we go – and remember: Nitzakhon will be back at the meme helm next Monday, and I’m sure we’re all happy to hear that.

 

Reminder: not all memes are for all people, so please scroll responsibly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Meme Overflow … appeared first on Granite Grok.

Any neutral, objective person would consider Adam Sexton a partisan hack. A wannabe, mini-me Jake Tapper. Recall, for example, how in 2017 he amplified the NH-Democrats’ smear that Trump voters are “White supremacists”:

Sexton asked if the [pro-Trump] group has a way of weeding out extremists, saying: “We’ve seen extremism rearing its ugly head lately. What happens if you’re able to identify potential voters but you do see some extremism there – perhaps white supremacism, things like that.

“Is a vote a vote or are you guys going to try to keep those people separate?”

Yet the NHGOP Establishment just loves Adam Sexton. For example:

 

I recently came upon this tweet that explains it. The NHGOP Establishment legitimizes partisan-hack Adam Sexton and the rest of the enemy media as a means of controlling the Party, as a means of keeping the NHGOP “controlled opposition”:

 

There is a reason the GOP wants enemy media to moderate their debates/forums. So that they only get hit from the Left, and therefore every Republican looks like a hero. Pence is indistinguishable from Trump. Asa indistinguishable from DeSantis. So it doesn’t matter who wins primaries, because they’re all “better than the Democrats.” This scam has ruined us, the party, and this country for decades. The salt has lost its savor.

 

I get asked a lot how did we change Iowa from a purple state to one redder than Texas in about a decade? There are several answers to this. @bobvanderplaats has been a key leader in that regard the entire time. @IAGovernor with her ongoing strong leadership and Trump with his…

— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) July 17, 2023

 

I would say it a bit differently from Deace:

There is a reason the NHGOP Establishment wants enemy media to moderate their debates/forums. So that they only get hit from the Left, and therefore every RINO looks like a hero. Morse is indistinguishable from Bolduc. Mowers indistinguishable from Leavitt. So it doesn’t matter if the RINOs win the primaries, because they’re still “better than the Democrats.”

 

The post Why The NHGOP Establishment Loves Adam Sexton appeared first on Granite Grok.

For decades, I have argued that the enemy is Islam. Without adjectives, Islam is “pure and simple.” Adjectives such as “extremist,” “radical,” “moderate,” “fundamentalist,” “political,” “Islamist,” etc. mislead the blind.

The ignorant, naive, and wishful-thinking humanists, liberals, as well as soft-headed Jews, Christians, and idiotic atheists all succumb to their fears and previous follies regarding the savagery intrinsic in Islamic scriptures and history that have been recognized by former Muslims who have somehow overcome their earlier misconceptions about the most vicious and dangerous enemy of civilization and humanity.

A revealing book on the subject is Robert Reilly’s “The Closing of the Muslim Mind.” This purely scholarly work should be supplemented by the work of theologian George Weigel, “Faith, Reason, and the War against Jihadism.”

Terms such as “Political Islam,” “Radical Islam, “or Militant Islam are the contributions of Useful Idiots. These terms do not even exist in the native parlance of Islam simply because they are redundant. Islam is a radical political movement by its very nature and, according to its charter—the Quran. It is the Useful Idiot who sanitizes Islam and misguides the populace by saying that the “real Islam” constitutes the main body of the religion; and that this main body is non-political and moderate.

Regrettably, a large segment of the population goes along with these nonsensical euphemisms depicting Islam because it prefers to believe them. It is less threatening to think that only a hijacked small segment of Islam is radical or politically driven and that the main body of Islam is indeed moderate and non-political.

Islam is not a religion. It is a political ideology. In Islam, the mosque and State are the same—the mosque is the State. This arrangement goes back to the days of Muhammad himself. Islam is also radical in the extreme. Even “moderate” Islam is revolutionary in its beliefs and deeds. Muslims believe that all non-Muslims, bar none, are hellfire-bound and well-deserved, being maltreated compared to believers.

Many people wonder why Islam is blossoming in the US! They are bewildered as to why Democrats back Islamic ideology; honor their holidays and customs; and promote them as the religion of peace, knowing Islam is not a religion of peace. It is an ideology of war. The answer is simple: The Democrat Party stands with anyone who hates America and the Republican Party. History has proven that once Muslims have the majority, they institute Sharia law and adopt their legal system—a government within a government.

The Democrat Party has shown by both words and actions that they despise the U.S. Constitution. Regarding the support of Muslims, they will not hesitate to hold the Bill of Rights over anyone who dares to accuse Islam and Muslims of wrongdoing. While crime and threats skyrocket, Islamized citizens will ignore the wrongdoing. They will look the other way for fear of retribution, honor killings, and punishments from those who uphold the Islamic requirement to seek revenge on anyone who dishonors or disagrees with Islam.

The Democrat Party has descended into nihilism, which describes the present state of America. This is a logical consequence of America’s abandonment of its Declaration of Independence, which she never really understood, and which, unknown even to eminent scholars, represents a synthesis of classical and modern political science–which is elaborated in my masterwork “A Judeo-Scientific Guide for the Perplexed.”

The primary target of the Left is the Bible of Israel. The Bible says that God creates nations, as well as individuals, and the Left is opposed to both nationalism and individualism. Do you fathom this? This does not require a lengthy discourse.

“By each passing day, the death of Western Civilization – specifically, the death of Europe, will not have been a suicide, but a cold-blooded, premeditated murder, carried out by the Western ruling oligarchy.”

In plain language, western Europe has been betrayed by the people entrusted with its protection and stewardship – its political leaders and their enablers. People like former EU President Jean-Claude Juncker, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and many others.

When the wolf gets into the fold and begins terrorizing the sheep and preying upon them, who is most at fault – the wolf or the shepherd who was supposed to guard the flock? Although his fangs may be bloody, the wolf is only being what he is – a predator. On the other hand, the shepherd has failed in his duty to protect the flock.

In the case of Europe, the “shepherds” have done much, much worse than fail through negligence. They have actively aided and abetted the enemy and let them into the heart of Europe to prey upon its native peoples.

The Muslims who now terrorize Europe must be dealt with like the rabid dogs that they are – but a great evil has been done, and the job will not be done until the traitorous leaders of old Europe have been brought to justice and pay the price for their enormous betrayal. They have the blood of innocents on their hands – men, women, and children alike.

In the Germany of the 1930s, for instance, very few people were Nazis, and most Germans dismissed them as a bunch of hotheaded fools. Before long, the hotheaded few cowed the dismissive masses, resulting in millions losing their lives.

America Stay Awake. It has started to happen here too. Time is of the essence.

The post It is the Useful Idiot who Sanitizes Islam appeared first on Granite Grok.

I find it amusing that the Bangor Daily News – in the middle of what feels like monsoon season across New England and successive days of news about flooding – felt the need to run a public interest piece on drought and the state’s drought task force.

 

The task force is made up of officials from state and federal agencies representing agriculture, emergency management, the weather service, public utilities and health providers. While there have been no official meetings, Roy did say members have been holding ongoing discussions to stay on top of conditions.

“I check the Northeast drought early warning system about once a week during non-drought periods to get a sense of trends,” Roy said. “Maine is a big state, and we often see different trends in different areas — that is not really true at the moment. Today the state is pretty evenly wet.”

 

The worry is that any lower than average period or precipitation – no matter how much water fell from the sky in previous weeks or months – means Drought Action Task Force Assemble! To do what, make it rain? Issue a press release seems more likely. We at the drought task force have read the goat entrails and consulted the climate bones, and based on the absence of precipitation in recent days or weeks, this or that part of Maine is dryer than it was when it was raining.

If I may, especially this year, will it be a drought problem or a water mismanagement problem? California is a naturally dry place that sometimes – and at present, has tons of water trapped in record winter snowfalls, melting into streams and rivers. Despite all that natural water, when it comes to resources, the state is so poorly managed – mostly because of radical left-wing environmental morons – much of the potential benefit will be lost or wasted. Desert nations with coastlines build desalination plants. California Dems whine about drought, raise taxes and beg for money, then waste it on more government.

In my hometown, they announce odd-even outdoor water restrictions yearly while encouraging exponential growth by approving new apartment complexes that will further stress the (allegedly) sparse resource. Hundreds if not thousands of new flushing toilets, drinking, cooking, washing clothes, dishes, bathing – every day. Not much outdoor watering at apartment buildings but a lot more indoor water use. It makes for a bizarre contrast. 

But the odd-even restriction suggests drought even when there’s plenty of rain, so is there a drought of common sense, responsible management, forward-thinking, or all of the above?

Maine, by the way, has had above-average annual rainfall for 17 of the past 20 years. And unless it stops raining and snowing from now till Jan 1, 2024, it will be 18 out of 21.

 

 

This past June was Maine’s first above-average (way above) June in several years. 2020-2022 were all below average, with 9 of the last 20 years being below average for the month, but that looks normal for June in Maine. The state has a very up-down relationship with rainfall in that month, mostly drier, but when it rains, it does, and that story is over 120 years old. Nothing about modern Western lifestyles has a wit to do with it, according to The Science.

 

 

July runs about the same as June, with 9 of the past 20 years below average and 11 of 20 above, with 4 of the past 5 Julys above average (this year making it 5 of 6).

And sure, these are statewide averages. There will be places with less and others with more. And that gives the Drougth Taskforce something to do, which is why they exist. And who doesn’t love a little press to help justify the existence of your thing, whatever it may be, even in the wake of record rainfall?

Maybe they have some “indigenous people” on the task force who can teach them a dance or two about celebrating rain. It’ll be about as helpful as a Drought Taskforce but way more fun to watch.

 

The post The Excessive Rain in Maine Stays Mainly on the … Drought! appeared first on Granite Grok.

During an online professional development course called “How To Build and Defend Inclusive Collections” sponsored by Library Journal, Cornell University collection development librarian Carson Williams, asserted that “fostering an inclusive, safe queer library environment is the most important thing you can do.”

We want to thank Arlene Quaratiello for this Op-Ed. Please submit yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.

Williams, who identifies as “transmasculine” and prefers to be called “he,” affirmed that by doing this most important task, library staff are “appreciated” and that they “are so loved.” “His” presentation, which had practically nothing to do with books, focused instead on opposing what “he” called “anti-trans legislation” (a lot of which is more accurately referred to by supporters as parental rights laws).

According to Williams, those like “him” who oppose “anti-trans” laws are “on the right side of history.” At one point in this political activist training session disguised as a professional development course, Williams even displayed a map called the “Anti-Trans Legislative Risk Map” with states highlighted in different colors to identify them as “safest states” to “worst anti-trans law states.” Viewers were reminded by the presenter: “It is our duty, as librarians, as outlined in the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights…to resist efforts that systematically exclude materials dealing with…sex, gender identity or expression, or sexual orientation.” Williams, who was praised by the course moderator during another session as “one of our brilliant speakers,” closed with a quote that is particularly antithetical to some fairly mainstream religious beliefs: “God blessed me by making me transexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine so that humanity might share in the act of creation.”

Library Journal’s program regarding “inclusive collections” reveals that the promotion of Marxist ideology is not limited to the American Library Association but is also a driving force for this leftist trade journal that also sponsors online courses. The program coordinator provided the first indication of the overall tone of the workshop by virtue signaling at the start of every session with a “land acknowledgment statement.” It was unfortunate that none of the participants asked her which American Indian tribe “owned” the land before the tribe she mentioned because the history of such tribes was historically bloody, not the “Dances with Wolves” depiction we have been fed by liberals. The use of these statements simply perpetuates the myth of oppression that is the cornerstone of Marxist ideology, intending to destroy our society by fomenting hatred between the “oppressed” and the “oppressors.”

The first speaker, Kymberlee Powe, a consultant for the Connecticut State Library, opened the course with her presentation “Creating Inclusive Library Collections.” She actually identified an important counterargument, perhaps unintentionally in a “devil’s advocate” sort of way when she asked, “Shouldn’t we buy the books that we know that our patrons are going to take?” This hypothetical question acknowledges the true priority of libraries (especially those that are public) to serve those who use them, and it suggests the very real possibility that library patrons may not necessarily want the sort of titles that satisfy DEI requirements. But she never got around to satisfactorily refuting this counterargument, so this question, pertaining to why books would be purchased that aren’t likely to be read just because librarians think that the users they serve (those who actually pay for the books) should read them, remained unanswered.

Dontana McPherson-Joseph reiterated the agenda of the previous speaker. She first identified the parameters for conducting a “diversity audit” of library collections that included most prominently, of course, race/ethnicity and LGBTQIA identity. According to Dontana, the purpose of conducting such an audit is to provide the community with not just what they “want to read but also what they need to read.” In communities that she glibly described as “super-white,” she asserted the importance of giving patrons more resources about non-white people and reinforced the role of librarians in this obviously politically motivated enterprise.

The next speaker, Betsy Bird, Collection Development Manager of Evanston Public Library, focused on the process of “weeding” library collections. Weeding is the process of getting rid of old books to make room for new books. Bird advocated establishing “different standards based on historical inequities,” explaining that “every algorithm has inequity baked into it.” Black, “Latinx,” and indigenous authors should, therefore, according to Bird, get more time on the shelf before weeding. She also suggested displaying books about the “historically marginalized” prominently before weeding. Her implication, of course, is that these groups are oppressed and that they should be given special consideration in order to overcome their oppression.

Kelly Jenson, an editor at Book Riot (see the “about” section of this company’s website, and you’ll learn all you need to know about its super-woke agenda), offered a presentation that criticized the group Moms for Liberty and other similar conservative groups for providing lists of objectionable books held by school and public libraries. She inaccurately stereotyped all the volunteers who draw up these lists as having no background in libraries, literacy, or education and basically are ignorant “book banners” who know nothing about books.

The overall tone of the whole program was one of crisis—a Marxist technique to get people riled up—with Jenson calling the present time “the era of censorship” as libraries are “under attack from legislatures” as well as “book banners.” Those who would oppose the agenda of this course were branded as “conspiracy theorists” who are consequently on the “wrong side of history” (and aren’t loved either if one extrapolates on Carson William’s comments).

During the final session of the course, Meghan O’Keefe ridiculously addressed the alleged racism of Dewey Decimal’s call numbers. She claimed that categorizing books in social sciences (300s) rather than history (900s) reflected the belief that “history is written by the winners.” This absurd complaint reflects the Marxist dogma of “othering” (which she oddly used as a verb a lot) in which books about the “oppressors” go in the 900s while the “oppressed” are relegated to the 300s. She fails to recognize the inherent weakness of this classification scheme which requires that books on complex multidisciplinary topics be assigned a single number.

Kymberlee Powe, who had opened the course, concluded by asserting that the goal of librarians should be to “rebalance the historical inequity that exists within our libraries” and later creepily broadened this to “creating a more equitable existence.” While such statements and all that preceded them clearly reflect Critical Race Theory, the presence of the “Privilege Bead Exercise” in the supplemental materials was an egregious addition to this course. The purpose of this CRT exercise is to make participants feel bad if they are deemed more “privileged” or less “privileged” than others. At the end of the bead exercise, those with fewer beads on their bracelet will consequently feel inferior and consider those with more beads superior because of their “privileged status” due to race, religion, class, nationality, sexuality, and/or gender.

Library Journal’s online course, “Defending Inclusive Collections,” clearly opposed Martin Luther King’s dream of people being judged by “the content of their character” rather than “the color of their skin.” The overwhelming and disturbing takeaway was that books should be primarily judged by the race, gender, and other inherent traits of the protagonist rather than for the quality and merits of the story. Sadly, in today’s woke libraries, it is considered acceptable to espouse such beliefs; in fact, it is expected that staff members will support such beliefs that align with the liberal agenda that the presenters in this course arrogantly reinforced as “the right side of history.” The truly marginalized group that emerges from this egregious state of affairs consists of conservatives, especially those who work in libraries, who oppose this woke ideology and whose opinions are consequently disrespected and denigrated.

 

HT | Arlene Quaratiello’s new Substack newsletter, “No Shushing Now: Exposing Today’s Woke Library.”

The post Protesting “Inclusive Collections” appeared first on Granite Grok.

As we know, former VP Pence is running for President and, at the recent Family Leadership Summit, was questioned by moderator Tucker Carlson. In case you missed it, here are a couple of highlights:

• Tucker asked the former VP if Jan 6 was an insurrection. Pence declared it was a riot, tragic, and he regretted the loss of lives (The only direct loss of life was a conservative female Air Force Vet shot to death by a Capital police Officer).
• Pence, who had previously stated he wants more funding for Ukraine and thinks they do not have enough U.S. tanks, had this back and forth with Tucker:

Tucker: “Every city in the U.S. has become much worse over the past three years, where’s the concern for the United States?”

Pence, ” It’s not my concern” Tucker. “Tucker, I’ve heard this routine from you before, but it’s not my concern.”

So my question is, if US cities aren’t his concern, what is, and why is he running for President of the US?

 

The post Pence is Toast appeared first on Granite Grok.

On July 18, 1774, a committee led by George Washington in Fairfax County, Virginia, voted to adopt the Fairfax Resolves condemning British actions against the colonies and calling for an embargo on British imports and exports. It represented growing colonial resistance, which ultimately led to a British gun control program and the march on Lexington and Concord.

The Fairfax Resolves were in response to the Coercive Acts, a series of laws passed by Parliament in early 1774 to punish the colonies — particularly Massachusetts — after the Boston Tea Party. These acts included the Boston Port Act closing the Boston Port, the Massachusetts Government Act stripping virtually all authority from the colonial government, the Administration of Justice Act, removing authority from local courts and authorizing trials to be held in Great Britain instead of Massachusetts, and the Quartering Act allowing British troops to take over private buildings.

In response, the Virginia House of Burgesses proclaimed June 1, 1774, a day of “fasting, humiliation, and prayer” in support of Boston and the Massachusetts Colony. Virginia Royal Governor Lord Dunsmore responded by dissolving the House of Burgesses.

On May 27, members of the House of Burgesses defied the royal governor and convened at the Raleigh Tavern. During the meeting, the body called for all Virginia counties to elect delegates to a special convention scheduled for August.

Leading up to the convention, 31 Virginia counties passed resolutions in opposition to the Coercive Acts. Of those, the Fairfax County Resolves were the most detailed, radical, and influential.

The people of Fairfax County elected George Washington and Charles Broadwater to represent them at the August convention. On July 5, in defiance of Gov. Dunsmore, Washington, and others met in Alexandria and appointed a committee to draft resolutions to be presented during the convention.

George Mason was likely the primary drafter of the resolves with significant input from Washington.

The first several resolutions reveal that a constitutional crisis was at the root of the dispute between Britain and the colonies.

The opening resolve declared that Virginia was not “a conquered country,” and the inhabitants retained all their rights as British citizens.

“Our Ancestors, when they left their native Land, and settled in America, brought with them (even if the same had not been confirmed by Charters) the Civil-Constitution and Form of Government of the Country they came from; and were by the Laws of Nature and Nations, entitiled to all it’s Privileges, Immunities and Advantages; which have descended to Us their Posterity, and ought of Right to be as fully enjoyed, as if We had still continued within the Realm of England.” [Emphasis added]

The resolves then declared the people’s right to self-government and affirmed “the fundamental Principle of the People’s being governed by no Laws, to which they have not given their Consent, by Representatives freely chosen by themselves,” calling it “the most important and valuable Part of the British Constitution, upon which its very Existence depends.”

The third resolution declared that Parliament couldn’t possibly represent the colonists.

The Inhabitants of the American Colonies are not, and from their Situation can not be represented in the British Parliament; that the legislative Power here can of Right be exercised only by our own provincial Assemblys or Parliaments, subject to the Assent or Negative of the British Crown, to be declared within some proper limited Time.

Resolution number five sums up the root of the dispute between the colonists and the British government, with a nod to the unlimited power of the Declaratory Act of 1766, which asserted British power over the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”

“Resolved that the Claim lately assumed and exercised by the British Parliament of making all such Laws as they think fit, to govern the People of these Colonies, and to extort from Us our Money without our Consent, is not only diametrically contrary to the first Principles of the Constitution, and the original Compacts by which We are dependant upon the British Crown and Government; but is totally incompatible with the Privileges of a free People, and the natural Rights of Mankind; will render our own Legislatures merely nominal and nugatory, and is calculated to reduce Us from a State of Freedom and Happiness, to Slavery and Misery.” [Emphasis added]

The Fairfax Resolves were more than a list of complaints. They called for a “firm union” of the colonies and concrete action in the form of a boycott on the import and export of British goods.

With the call for a boycott, the Fairfax Resolves echoed the “Solemn League and Covenant ” passed by the Boston committee of correspondence a month earlier.

The Fairfax Resolves also condemned the importation of slaves as a “wicked, cruel, and unnatural trade” and called for its end.

George Washington presented the Fairfax Resolves to the Virginia Convention in Williamsburg in August. During the convention, they were slightly modified and adopted. Two months later, the Sons of Liberty in Boston, led by Dr. Joseph Warren, followed suit with the Suffolk Resolves, which called for non-compliance to the Coercive Acts, disobedience to courts, tax resistance, and more.

Ultimately, the First Continental Congress approved the Continental Association on Oct. 20, putting the boycott into effect by establishing a formal agreement between the 12 colonies represented in the Congress. (Georgia did not send delegates.)

The British, of course, responded to all this opposition with more of the same; more attempts to assert control, including a massive gun control program later that year and the eventual march on Lexington and Concord in April 1775.

The Fairfax Resolves and other resolutions like them drafted during the run-up to the War for Independence reveal the evolution of American political thought and their commitment to constitutional principles. John Adams argued that this was the actual American Revolution.

Writing to Thomas Jefferson in 1815, John Adams asked, “What do We mean by the Revolution? The War?”

His answer: the Revolution happened before the War for Independence:

“That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.”

 

 

Mike Maharrey | The Tenth Amendment Center

The post Today in History: The Fairfax Resolves Adopted – Condemning British Constitutional Violations appeared first on Granite Grok.

Small fortunes have been dumped into media (like NPR, for example) to promote climate columns and cult stories promoting apocalyptic prognostications. You did this (whatever it is), and only socialism can save us! This week “This” is more of that hottest hotness ever (with a side of rain and flooding).

New England has seen what may turn out to be record rainfall for July, but it is not extreme or exceptional. In fact, after years of normal or just above normal, punctuated by “media that cry wolf” drought stories, you could say we were due. I won’t waste time on that because the bigger story is global and warming.

Record heat, blah blah blah. And it’s not even a new lie.

 

• US Environmentalists Caught ‘Doping’ – Stripped of “2012 Hottest Year on Record” Title.
• 2015 Was Still NOT the Second Hottest Year on Record
• September 2015 Still Not the Hottest Ever
• 2016 Not Even Hottest Year This Century
• 2016 Still not the Hottest (or even 2nd hottest) Year “On Record.”
• 2017 One of Hottest Years on Record, Except That it Wasn’t
• Before 2018 Becomes the “Newest” Warmest Year Ever…
• Biden’s EPA ‘Erases’ the 1930s ‘cuz “Climate Change”
• Climate Cult Cries Warmest Decade Ever (But Only if You Cherry Pick the Starting Point)
• The Hottest Lie On Record?
• Biden Says July 2022 Third Hottest Ever! – Sorry, Try 17th, or Maybe Even 42nd.
• Scary Gulf or Maine “Second Warmest Year on Record” Headline Is Out of Context Fearmongering
• Sorry, but July 3rd, 2023 Was the … 49th Hottest July 3rd on Record

 

It’s hot every summer, and it’s always the hottest, whatever ever, but the narratives the paid-for climate mountebanks in the corporate media are selling these days are bigger bottles of piss than usual.

The Globe is melting! … Bullsh!t.

In 1957 a temperature of 100 degrees was recorded above the Arctic Circle. It was hot up there back then, and with only a fraction of the fraction of a fraction of atmospheric CO2, we are meant to fear today over cooler temps.

Back in the 1920s and 1930s, temps soared, setting what continued to be the hottest temps and sustained heatwaves on record, not just in the US but around the world. In other words, the hottest, whatever ever folks losing their minds today need to shut up and look back about 100 years to find the truth. But as Tony Heller reminds us in Climate Fakery Part 11, they can’t or won’t do that because it puts a hitch in their global warming fraud step.

Check out the epic fraud.

 

 

The post It’s Hot Out, but It’s Been a Lot Hotter, In More Places, For Longer, with Less CO2 – And Anything Else is a Lie appeared first on Granite Grok.

I ask the question because the Woke Left has made this personal. They have attacked the Grandson and me by requiring coerced speech (preferred pronouns) and demanding that school staff lie to parents about the transgender status of kids in school.

Given that the Trans-Authoritarians keep yammering about “trans rights” and are really trying to convince the rest of us that they DO have special rights above the rest of us, I decided to ask Bard (knowing the payloads being shoved into it for “training” aren’t coming from Conservatives):

 

Who has more Rights: Parents or LGBT people?

 

Rights are Rights, but Bard AI decided to fight – and you can see it in its sixth word (emphasis mine):

 

Parents and LGBT people have different rights, and it is not possible to say definitively who has more rights. Parents have the right to raise their children as they see fit, while LGBT people have the right to live their lives free from discrimination. These rights are not mutually exclusive, and both parents and LGBT people can enjoy their rights without infringing on the rights of others.

However, there are some cases where the rights of parents and LGBT people may come into conflict. For example, a parent may want to send their child to a school that does not teach about LGBT issues, while an LGBT student may want to attend a school that is inclusive of LGBT people. In these cases, it is important to find a way to balance the rights of both parents and LGBT people.

It is also important to note that the rights of parents and LGBT people are not static. They can change over time, as society evolves and as new laws are passed. It is important to stay informed about the latest developments in this area so that you can make informed decisions about your rights.

 

Sorry but except for the stupid idea of a “protected class,” everyone has the same rights as individuals.  Full Stop. Yet Bard seems to think that some people DO have more Rights than others – a serious flaw in how its language model is being fleshed out.  There are no different Righs, but Bard (and its masters) are slow-walking that notion down our gizzards. And that “from discrimination” never got defined. The reality is that the LGBT militants are infringing the First Amendment (speech, religion), making them “better” than the rest of us.

And it never talks about what “balancing” is.

And how about the line “the rights of parents and LGBT people are not static“? Again, another Leftist notion because the Left WANTS it to be that Government can “give” someone new rights instead of being God-given Rights.  Rights never change – but Bard wants you to be ever vigilant because they can change.

So, I asked it “What is a Right?” to try to get clarity and Bard barfed out these:

 

A right is a moral or legal entitlement to do or have something. Rights are often considered to be fundamental to human existence, and they are often enshrined in law. There are many different types of rights, including civil rights, political rights, economic rights, and social rights.

Some examples of rights include:

• The right to life
• The right to liberty
• The right to property
• The right to freedom of speech
• The right to freedom of religion
• The right to a fair trial
• The right to education
• The right to work
• The right to healthcare
• The right to a safe environment

 

Our Founders utilized the idea of negative Rights – simply put, the Right to be left alone from an encroaching Government. It CANNOT stop you from speaking or telling you what you MUST say. It cannot tell you what to believe nor direct your worship. It is a guardrail between Government and us to which it is NOT supposed to cross.

I also dryly note that the Right to Self-defense (“keep and bear arms”) isn’t listed.

And this next bit (from my same question) is just so wrong in so many ways, especially the bit about the “concept of rights is complex”:

 

The concept of rights is complex and there is no single definition that is universally accepted. However, there are some common features that are often associated with rights. These include:

• Rights are claims that people can make on others.
• Rights are held by individuals, not groups.
• Rights are not absolute. They can be limited in certain circumstances.
• Rights are often protected by law.

The importance of rights is that they protect individuals from harm and ensure that they have the opportunity to live a free and fulfilling life. Rights are also important because they help to create a just and fair society.

 

The first one is absolutely wrong. A Right is an attribute that is innate to all of us, and it CANNOT be used to force others to do something for you like the last previous four (education, work, healthcare, and what the heck is a “safe environment”?).

The second is correct, but the Left, via Critical Race Theory holds that individuals are subordinate to group status. And they won’t relent.

That “from harm” bit should have been either from Government or from harm by Government actions.

I still wanted to horn in on Government and Rights: Can Government grant Rights to Individuals?   Bard did get it mostly right:

 

Governments cannot grant rights to individuals. Rights are inherent to all human beings, regardless of their nationality, race, gender, or any other characteristic. Governments can, however, protect rights by enacting laws and policies that ensure that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy their rights.

For example, a government can pass a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation. This law would help to protect the rights of individuals who are often discriminated against.

 

I’ll disagree with this – and I hold that our Law went off target by signaling based on group identities. It should just be “prohibits discrimination against humans.”

 

Governments can also play a role in promoting rights by educating the public about their rights and by providing resources to help people exercise their rights. For example, a government can provide funding for legal aid organizations that help people who cannot afford to hire a lawyer.

 

And after having set up the box canyon, I asked a main question of interest to me, “Does a transgender student have the Right to be called by their preferred pronouns by others?” answered my question about Bard’s bias:

 

Yes, a transgender student has the right to be called by their preferred pronouns by others. This is protected under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities. This includes discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

 

Sex, not gender identity, no matter HOW hard Democrats try to redefine what sex is and conflate it with gender identity. And NO statue cannot override a Constitutional right – that is saying that the Constitution doesn’t matter and can be overridden by a “ideological phrase” (preferred pronouns) at any time. It means that a child can coerce the speech of an Adult (or other children).

 

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance clarifying that Title IX protects transgender students from discrimination. The guidance states that schools must allow transgender students to use the restrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity, and that they must be called by their preferred names and pronouns. The guidance has been challenged in court, but it has been upheld by several federal courts. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging the guidance, which means that it is still in effect.

 

Guidance isn’t law.

 

There are a number of reasons why it is important for transgender students to be called by their preferred pronouns. First, it is a matter of respect. Transgender people are people, and they deserve to be treated with respect.

 

But is it respectful to ME to demand and for Government to force its message on my speech? And I was raised that respect was EARNED, not just given. One can be polite without respecting someone, right?

 

Second, using a transgender person’s preferred pronouns can help to affirm their gender identity. This can be a very important step in their transition process. Third, using a transgender person’s preferred pronouns can help to create a more inclusive and welcoming environment for all students.

 

And no, I do NOT want to support a mental illness any more than I would support someone with anorexia. Or apotemnophilia (” is a mental disorder characterized by a desire to have a sensory or physical disability – “cut my leg off or make me blind!”). And no, my Right to Assembly also the Right to NOT assemble with those I do not wish to. A “more inclusive and welcoming environment” does not override MY priorities.

 

If you are a student or an educator, you can help to create a more inclusive environment by using transgender students’ preferred pronouns. It is a small act that can make a big difference.

 

Except it forces me to lie to myself (first order) and others (second order), and that “small act” is a signal that Reality can be distorted by Ideology. I won’t take a bended knee to that.

In my next post, I’ll zero in on this issue.

 

 

 

The post Hey A.I. – Who has more Rights: Parents or LGBT people? appeared first on Granite Grok.

The now infamous Dylan Mulvaney is the online influencer that influenced millions of consumers to stop buying Bud Light. The brand is still reeling, while gender warrior Mulvaney claims it has resulted in so much hate (with zero support from BUD) that he had to retreat to Peru.

Where it is winter (he does look like a winter to me), and same-sex marriage is not legal.

 

Homosexuality has been used as grounds for separation or divorce. Laws meant to protect “public morals,” such as Article 183 of the Penal Code on “obscene exhibitions and publications”, have also been used against lesbians and gays.  Society’s attitude towards homosexuals has generally been hostile and is still heavily influenced by the Catholic Church.

 

Things have improved in Peru in recent years. There is more tolerance, but if you feel like no one appreciates your transvestite lifestyle or how insulting it is to actual women, Catholic Peru is not exactly the poster child for LGBT rights.

Mulvaney went there anyway – he probably didn’t know.

 

“Surprise. I’m in Peru and I’m at Macho Picchu,” Mulvaney revealed to his TikTok followers.

“I’m here by myself,” the trans influencer said, explaining that he frequently traveled alone. “I’m telling you, it’s the best. If you could ever do a solo trip somewhere, it is such a good way to get to know yourself better.”

Mulvaney revealed he participated in Shaman ceremonies – local spiritual rituals that Mulvaney compared to a decade’s worth of therapy.

Mulvaney has also found solace in the company of llamas.

 

Get to know yourself better.

You know, I think I can help you with that.

 

 

All good?

 

HT | TGP

The post Dylan Mulvaney, Peruvian Llamas, and Getting to Know Yourself Better … appeared first on Granite Grok.

This is a continuation of Skip’s post, addressing Kevin Verville’s original email comments on my post and other comments made by people (whose identities will be kept private) who joined in on that thread.  Thanks to everyone who did!

I apologize in advance for the length.  But it was an interesting discussion that covered a lot of ground.

We start with Kevin:

There are two things that are difficult to reconcile:  Desire, and reality.  We desire that all students perform at some common minimum level by age.

Is that really what we desire?  I think what we desire is that they perform at some minimum level before we declare them ‘educated’.  I don’t see what age really has to do with it.  There are people who graduate from college at 13, from medical school at 17.  Would anyone consider that ‘undesirable’?  If one kid gets to a 12th grade reading level by age 10, and another takes until age 23, do I really care, as long as they get the job done?

We do not specify the age anywhere, except that we refer to it as grade level, which is also inaccurate, as we “socially promote” almost all students every year, so grade more often than not, refers to number of years attending school.

It seems to me that ‘grade level’ makes more sense if it means something like ‘prerequisite level’.  In other contexts, we use the word ‘grade’ as a way of talking about quality, or state of completion.  When we want to talk about the passage of time, we use words like ‘year’.

So it would probably be a step in the right direction to start talking about ‘First year’ instead of ‘First grade’, ‘Second year’ instead of ’Second grade’, and so on, if the passage of time, rather then the accumulation of knowledge, is what we’re trying to denote.

So I just stated the quiet part out loud, and revealed the decoder ring.  We socially promote students based on age, not based upon academic ability.  Why?  Because we do not want to commingle students across broad age ranges…such as having 10 year olds in the same class as 16 year olds.  OK, fair enough.

The value of using age as a shortcut for assigning grade level appears to be convenience — which is why we use it as a shortcut for determining whether someone can vote, enter into a contract, get married, buy a gun, and so on.

The alternative is to have to treat people as individuals, and evaluate their capabilities on an individual basis.  It’s so much easier to just treat people as statistics… which is more or less the idea behind social justice, right?  We know about the groups to which you belong, so we don’t need to consider you as an individual.

But convenience is its only value.  And that convenience comes at a tremendous cost.

The joke about the lamppost is relevant here, where age (and not money) is now the lamppost.  If we focus on age, then we’ll never actually consider what factors should control who gets grouped together in a class.

Is it better to have a bunch of 10-year-olds, some of whom are predisposed to violent or disruptive behavior; or a bunch of kids of ages 8 through 16, who have demonstrated the ability to interact with each other politely, and exhibit self-control?

Is it better to have a bunch of 10-year-olds who are at wildly different levels of preparation for what is going to be taught; or a bunch of kids of ages 8 through 16, who are at the same level of preparation, and ready to be exposed to the same material as a group?

Age isn’t a reasonable way to group people for anything.  It’s an excuse for not doing the work to find reasonable ways to group them, or to get along without the need for such groupings.

We used to segregate school kids by race.  Then we decided that was a stupid idea.  Eventually, we’re going to come to the same conclusion about age.  One can only hope that it happens sooner, rather than later.

Except that when we promote on age, then we need to instruct at many different levels in each grade.

Which is okay, if you’re just going to have individualized education.  But if you’re going to try to teach the same thing to a bunch of kids at once, it’s completely inappropriate, possibly worse than just doing nothing:

https://granitegrok.com/blog/2019/10/in-praise-of-assembly-line-schools

We used to “track,” group students by academic ability by grade.  We, far and large, no longer do that.  Now we “mainstream” students.  That is to say we work to ensure that this is a mixture of academic ability in each classroom, in each grade…almost always with one teacher per classroom.  If your gut tells you that this is a recipe for disaster in the traditional American public school, then you have good instincts.  The reality is that this “mainstreaming” system results, more often than not, in a race to the bottom.

We use the idea of ‘least restrictive environment’ for some to create what would more accurately be called a ‘most disruptive environment’ for everyone else.

The other elephant in the room is how American public schools deal (actually fail to deal) with discipline.  This is a topic for another day.

Actually, I think it’s a topic for right now, since the capacity for self-discipline is one of the metrics that we ought to be using instead of age when deciding who should share a room.

Unless we are willing to return to tracking, providing classrooms for students of particular academic abilities by grade, then we cannot improve the system.

Think about how you would run any other kind of school, like a martial arts school, or a music school, or a gymnastics school — you know, the kind of school where the teachers only get paid if the students actually learn.

Students would progress at their own rates, and be grouped — if at all — by what they’re working on, rather than by ‘age’, or ‘academic ability’, or any other vague assessment.  You work on what you’re ready to work on.  And how would a teacher decide what a student is ready to work on?  You give him some tests.

Why do public schools ignore this incredibly obvious idea?

I don’t see why it’s so hard for people to wrap their heads around… except for the sheer convenience of being able to use age to label and segregate students.  And the fact that the easiest thing to do next year is whatever we did this year, and last year.

(Another joke:  A guy walks into his kitchen just in time to see his wife cut the end off a roast and throw it away. He asks why she did that.  She says, that’s just how you cook a roast.  It’s the way my mom always did it.  They call up the mom, and she says the same thing.  They call up the grandmother, and she says:  I always threw away the end of the roast because my roaster was too small.  That’s our education system in a nutshell.)

Assessments were demanded as a vehicle for academic accountability.  We got the assessments, but not the accountability.  There are no easy answers…  Well, there is one “easy” answer.  That is expanded school choice.

As long as schools are run in the same basic way — and the state will make sure that this is the case — school choice isn’t an answer at all.  It’s a distraction from having to address fundamental questions like:  Why do we organize the education of children in a way that is optimized for sharing the kinds of resources that existed in 1780, or 1880, or even 1980?  Why don’t we educate children using the kinds of resources we have now?

If we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t have anything that even remotely resembles ‘schools’, whether public or private.  Schools are to education what arcades are to gaming.  Except that arcades didn’t offer subsidized daycare.

One participant chimed in with a question:

This is an interesting discussion.  However, what is the standard you want the children to achieve?  Does anyone have a definition for proficiency?

Actually, I do. You have a written and oral exam in which people try to mislead you, and you have to identify the means — logical, emotional, rhetorical, statistical — by which they’re doing it. To pass this test, you would have to be literate, numerate, and rational enough to participate intelligently in public policy discussions as a citizen, and capable enough to learn any trade or profession that you want to go into.

Someone else responded to Kevin’s remarks about discipline:

I have no faith in the ability of administrators or teachers to adequately discipline students.

I don’t see why this should be their job. If what you are trained to do is teach, then you should be working in an environment in which students are ready and equipped to learn.  Students who aren’t ready or equipped to learn, or who simply don’t want to learn, should be somewhere other than in your classroom.

There used to be something called a ‘finishing school’, where students would go to learn, not academic subjects, but how to behave socially in certain situations in society.  How to dress, how to dine, how to converse politely, how to put other people at ease, and so on.

Perhaps we need to have ‘beginning schools’, where students would learn, not academic subjects, but how to behave socially in schools — or more generally, in society.  Until you get through beginning school, you don’t get to attend regular school.

I suppose ‘pre-school’ and kindergarten are supposed to deal with this.  But they are age-based.  And kindergarten has become more like other grades.  You get out when enough time has passed, and not when you’ve learned what you needed to learn.

These 6-7-8 year old children are now 8-9-10 and have no idea how to socialize, how to problem solve on the playground how to share a swing, they don’t understand how to take turns on the slide or how to play throw to the crowd at recess. They have no idea how to engage in a conversation where they disagree.

And they should learn these things, not in school, but before attending school.  To put these kids into an academic environment is… I don’t think insane is too strong a word.  Telling teachers that they have to try to teach such students is like telling surgeons that they have to try to operate without anesthesia.

If we tried that, the surgeons would quit.  Teachers should do the same.

Someone else jumped in:

Yes we need change in our public education.  I had a Mom tell me that she pulled her son out of school for home schooling.

This is becoming increasingly common.

She discovered her son did not know how to read and really did not know the alphabet.  She took responsibility for not picking up on this.  He was either in 4th or 5th grade.  I was disgusted that he had just got pushed through from one grade to another.  Many of the children get pushed through school from one grade to another  not knowing how to do the basics like reading or math.  This is nothing new and has been going on for years.

I’m often reminded a lot of a cartoon that I saw years ago.  (Please excuse the nudity, but it’s the only cartoon I’ve ever seen that makes this particular point.)  The guy on the sidewalk is like a lot of parents before COVID:

No idea what was going on in school, and just assuming that everything was as they expected…  Then, with so-called ‘remote learning’, they got to peek behind the wall.  Many of those who realized what was happening pulled their kids out.  Others are trying to ‘reform the system’.  That’s been going on for a long time, with entirely predictable results:

She continues:

How do we change it and expect more from our teachers?

I suppose the first thing to do would be to stop paying teachers regardless of whether they are successful at teaching.

Would we run any business where we actually cared about the results in the same way that we run public schools?  Would a restaurant hire cooks who don’t actually know how to cook?  Would a garage hire mechanics who don’t actually know how to fix engines?

The teachers themselves, perhaps unwittingly, often tell us that they want to be ‘treated like professionals’.

I say, let’s take them at their word:  Professionals have to go out and find clients, and keep them happy, if they want to stay in business.  Which means they have to provide results people want, at a cost people are willing to pay.  And if they’re not up to it, they have to go find other ways to support themselves.

But in the end, it’s probably less about what we ‘expect from teachers’, and more about what we expect from students, and parents, and society in general.  In particular, as long as we think of education as an entitlement, instead of as a responsibility, nothing is going to change:

https://granitegrok.com/blog/2020/03/amendment-2-and-article-83

Someone else turned the conversation to the topic of standards:

The standards are supposed to measure the students abilities for each grade before moving on. Unfortunately they still allow students to the next grade stating he/she will learn more in the next grade with extra help. That is why they are promoted. That’s why the students are always behind. Some teachers claim that if they have progressed throughout the year they can move on. We are currently rewriting our standards in the district. Wakefield never adopted Common Core, a bonus. During the past couple years getting rid of administrators who were not helpful, it has been challenging. Hopefully everyone will stick to the standards and what is best for the students’ learning. Behavior can be its own thread!

Even if you ‘stick to standards’, it doesn’t help if you’ve standardized the wrong things.  Standards that focus on content that needs to be ‘delivered’ by teachers, rather than on the ability of students to learn independently, miss the point:

https://granitegrok.com/blog/2019/04/a-standard-for-school-standards

Of course, the aim of such standards would be to make teachers progressively less necessary over the course of a student’s education.  Which is why you’ll never see them adopted.

They changed the definitions too. Now our curriculum policies don’t match up. They have kept them simple up to now. The board is reviewing them as they move along. It has been working so far. Our biggest issue is when a subject is added to the curriculum. Teachers say it’s not curriculum, it’s a program. Parents want to know what materials, course work and programs they are using. Not hard to list it or as a parent, ask the teacher.

If the kids can read the curriculum (or program) materials, then it should be up to the kids (and their parents) to decide whether to read them or not.

If the kids can’t read the curriculum materials, then they should be working on whatever skills they lack that prevent them from being able to — whether those skills involve literacy, numeracy, or rationality.

How’s that for simple?  :^D

For example, if you want to ‘teach CRT’, first teach the kids to read and understand explanations that are based on logical or statistical reasoning; and teach them to be able to detect the rhetorical and emotional tricks that people use to mislead each other; and then give them the same materials that you’d give to the teachers.  (This would have the added advantage of letting the kids see how the authors of the materials are assisting the teachers in jerking the kids around.)

The same is true for teaching history, civics, economics, sciences, literature… pretty much everything.

How much better would this be for the kids?  How much less would it cost the taxpayers?  How much power would it take away from politicians and bureaucrats?

Someone new jumped in to support Kevin’s idea that school choice is the answer:

supporting and propping up the School Choice movement is the proverbial “poke in the eye” to Public Education.

But ‘school choice’ still uses taxes to pay for education.  Using taxes makes something inherently political.  So control over the schools that parents are allowed to ‘choose’ will become political — or more precisely, more political than it is already.  School choice is a feint, a delay tactic, not a solution.

The ‘solution’, if there is one, is to minimize — ideally, eliminate — the use of taxes for education.  To use education funding as a last resort (like food stamps, or heating oil subsidies), rather than as a first resort.

In other words, to start treating being educated — like being armed — as a responsibility, rather than as an entitlement.

Absent that, school choice just changes the particular arena in which the political battles take place.  And the thing about political battles is, they are ultimately won by the side with the least scruples.  The problem with poking Argus in the eye is that he still has 99 of them left.  It’s not a winning strategy.

Hit them in the pocketbook. Demand accountability of the huge amounts of money spent providing a less than adequate education.

Great idea.  How can we do that?  We could elect officials to collect the money, and to oversee how it’s spent.  Oh… isn’t that what we have already?  Why isn’t it working out?

Maybe we could pass a law to require schools to get all students to proficiency!  Oh, wait… we already have one, RSA 193-H:2.  (There was a bill — sponsored by State Senator Ruth Ward, chair of the Senate Education Committee — to repeal it this year, which thankfully got tabled.)  Why aren’t the schools doing that?

The main thing we need from graduates is for them to be literate, numerate, and rational enough to be able to guard their freedom from politicians and bureaucrats who want to manipulate them into giving it up.  The probability of creating a tax-funded, government-controlled system to produce this result is the same as the probability of creating a perpetual-motion machine.

If accountability is going to work, it has to be in the hands of the people most directly affected:  the students.  Without mandatory attendance laws, kids who are not being well-served by a school would be free to leave.  It would then fall to the parents to convince the kids of the value of getting an education, which would force them to consider the question of whether public schools — or just schools — are the right places to get one.

Those laws won’t be repealed, because a guaranteed captive audience is one of the things that keeps the whole enterprise afloat.  But if accountability is really what we’re after, that’s what it would look like.

A new participant backed me up on school choice:

If you watch a lot of the national trends and conversations surrounding school choice, many of the bills at the various state levels that support or enhance school choice simply make the alternate education choices beholden to the same standards that the public education system can’t manage to meet or uphold now. They then use tax dollars as a carrot and stick to enforce compliance and make the alternate education solution look exactly like the failed government model that it was supposed to replace.

Exactly.

I say failed government model because too many people say failing. They say our schools are failing. This is not a present tense matter. Our school system as Americans has failed.  That is past tense. (Although really, in terms of producing Marxist education camps, progressives could say they are a great success) We are now on the other side scratching our heads looking at ourselves and asking the hard questions of “what can we do about it?”

My children are not grown; these issues are not theoretical political or social; they are very real! I appreciate each and every one of you and your contributions to this discussion; I can personally testify that this generation of parents needs us asking these questions more than ever.

I couldn’t agree more.  And the distinction between failing and failed is one that we need to keep front and center.

I would just suggest that one of the first questions for any parent to consider is:

Is my goal to get my own kids an education?  Or to reform an entire system, so that my kids can use that system to get an education?

Or to put that differently:

To avoid stepping on sharp objects, should I try to cover the world in leather?  Or just wear shoes?

He answered my question this way:

As a parent, the goals are separate for me. My goal is apparent is to get my children a quality education, which public education is not going to provide.

Separate from that, as a veteran, citizen, taxpayer, My goal would be to reform the system so that our children can be sufficiently educated to safeguard our Constitutional freedoms and participate competitively on the world market.

I would suggest that the first (being able to safeguard our freedoms) implies the second (being able to compete economically), but not vice versa.

I only have a few short years to provide goal number one and I do not believe we will accomplish goal number two in that time frame. I do believe that what occurred in Croydon and what has occurred since COVID has sown seeds. However, We have been going in the wrong direction for a generation or more, and we will not rebuild Rome in a day.

I think that if enough parents who are clear on these priorities (first, educate my kids; second, fix the system) find ways to educate their kids outside the system, what will happen is that we’ll eventually realize, as a nation, that one of the biggest problems with ‘the system’ is that we think of it as a system:

https://granitegrok.com/blog/2020/03/the-education-system

https://granitegrok.com/blog/2020/06/unfit-for-liberty-part-2-education

Someone added:

God help us all but I say we keep trying to protect the children. Not just ours but all.

Sure, but do you know of any situations in which children have been protected by placing them in the hands of government employees?  Where — even if it has succeeded in a handful of cases — it hasn’t ended up doing more harm than good as a whole?

There’s a game I like to play with my progressive friends.  I tell them I’m thinking of a government project, which we’ll call X.  We’re not going to say what X is, but we’re going to set aside a pile of money — billions of dollars, say.  Maybe hundreds of billions.

Then I ask:  How much of that money is actually going to end up being applied towards the goals of the project, and how much of it is going to end up being siphoned off to people with political influence?  How much of it might even end up being used to work against the goals of the project?

When they don’t know what X is, they can see right away how things will go, how things have to go, based on both experience and common sense.  Almost none of the money will be used for its intended purpose.  Almost all of it will go to people with connections.  A significant portion of it may be used to undermine the goals of the project.

But then when I reveal that X is something that they like — ‘improved education’, or ‘affordable housing for the poor’ — they lose that clarity and think that in this case, things could be different.

It’s almost like someone who understands that the Second Law of Thermodynamics makes it impossible to build any perpetual motion machine; but who then sees a clever design for a particular one, and starts wondering whether it can work.

I think something like that happens with schools.  If you just think abstractly, and ask yourself:  Under what conditions, and for what purposes, should we be putting children in the hands of government employees, especially during the most vulnerable and formative years of their lives?  You see that the answer is:  Never.

But as soon as you start thinking concretely about ‘schools’ and ‘education’ and ‘bright futures’, clarity vanishes, and you think:  Maybe if we could just spend the right amount of money, or get the right curriculum, or make sure the right people are in charge, it can work out.

Samuel Johnson once said that remarriage represented ‘the triumph of hope over experience’.  I think the same can be said of efforts to reform the public schools.

The post SDGANH Conversation, Continued … appeared first on Granite Grok.

The idea of lactating men reminds me of a saying I can’t exactly quote verbatim, but it has something to do with how much sense there is with regard to mammary glands on a bull, if you take my meaning. As in – welcome to a bizarro world where that has become a gender slur.

Of course, you can have T**s on a bull, you bigot, but they may discover that inducing lactation creates challenges for Bos taurus, and not just because “Significant research gaps exist in this field.”

That’s the opinion of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine Protocol—no mention of whether it is acceptable for lactating men to chest-feed on a commercial flight. I’m guessing that is another significant gap in the research. But they are otherwise confident enough about the topic to issue a 12-page paper titled “ABM Clinical Protocol #33: Lactation Care for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Plus Patients.”

 

A central goal of The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine is the development of clinical protocols for managing common medical problems that may impact breastfeeding success. These protocols serve only as guidelines for the care of breastfeeding mothers and infants and do not delineate an exclusive course of treatment or serve as standards of medical care. Variations in treatment may be appropriate according to the needs of an individual patient.

 

Breasts and breastmilk seem to me to be the two biggest hurdles which, as it turns out, the science has yet to resolve when it comes to men who think they might be women. The paper gets to those “issues” after spending several pages on definitions and language so as not to offend anyone.

Seriously.

Women who think they might be men but who want to breastfeed (presumably a child) are encouraged to wait until after they are done doing that before having extensive hormone or surgical treatment. Translation: if you chop off your breasts, you can’t breastfeed.

Good advice. But not good enough to stop them from fantasizing about the other side of the social construct we call the gender spectrum; men who think they might be women that want to breastfeed. There are lots of words and speculation, but at the end of the day, good luck with that, mostly because … there just hasn’t been enough research directed at the problem. It’s not a biology problem. It is a money problem.

It’s not beyond the pale, you see; they just need bigger Grants. Not guys named Grant but cash, dollars, scratch, dough, clams, or dineros. The proper funding will miraculously present solutions to the problem of … the diminished lifestyles of scientists who write these sorts of papers.

It’s all quite nutty, so allow me to summarize how you might respond to a debate on this topic.

 

 

I think that sums it up.

 

HT | TGP

The post “Inducing Lactation May Present More of a Challenge for Transgender Individuals.” appeared first on Granite Grok.

There was an attempted coup in Russia. Remember that? The Wagner Group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, turned on Russia. He took the Russian city of Rostov, the Russian military stronghold nearest Ukraine. The Russians couldn’t take Bakhmut, Ukraine, for months.

Wagoner took Rostov in a matter of hours and was greeted like a conquering hero by the crowds. Wagner then started toward Moscow. Suddenly it all stopped. There was some kind of deal. Prigozhin is in Belarus. Putin is still in power in Russia. Everybody watched this unfold. Now, everybody’s gone silent. Nobody is talking about any of it. Why?

The questions we need to be asking are: Why is there so little media coverage of this? What does this tell us about our intelligence about Putin’s Russia? What does it mean about our position with respect to Ukraine? Why does China have better intelligence about Russia than we do? Why aren’t we backing the Ukrainians to kick the crap out of Russia? Why didn’t we support Prigozhin? Why are we buying into another endless war?

Our military, intelligence, and State Department had no idea what the hell was going on with Wagoner. They didn’t see this coming. They didn’t see the risk. They didn’t know what the outcome was going to be. They didn’t know what the hell was going on. They were deer in the headlights… frozen in place.

A lot of the assumptions American leadership made about Russia appear to have been false. During the Cold War, the CIA was often in error, rarely in doubt. They said the Soviets were hugely strong, the Soviet economy was doing extremely well, and the Soviet military capacity was outstanding. Once the Soviet Union came crashing down, we realized that the emperor was wearing no clothes.

How could they have been wrong about this? The answer is that not only is our intelligence not very good, but it is almost always dictated by assumptions that are no longer tested. The Biden administration is making a lot of important decisions based on this intelligence about the Russians. Their position is we can’t provoke Putin. He’ll hit us. As Biden says, it’s going to be Armageddon, World War III. He’s going to hit us with nuclear weapons. But the emperor was wearing no clothes…

The thing this exposes is: Putin is not the viper that attacks. Actually, when confronted with pressure, a threat to his regime, he begs for mercy, negotiates or cuts a deal. So here is this guy, Prigozhin, who is Putin’s creature. Putin funded Prigozhin, created him and they were best friends. Prigozhin was Putin’s caterer, his most trusted ally. Lots of Prigozhin people from catering built a private army. That’s what happened in Russia. Prigozhin was Putin’s creation to counter-balance the military.

Why are we so afraid of him? Why are we afraid to give the Ukrainians long-range missiles because it might provoke Putin? Why are we afraid to give them Abrams tanks? Why are we afraid to give them F16 fighter jets because Putin might get upset? We are allowing a Putin strongman mystique to deter us. Aren’t we really just deterring ourselves? In reality, what we just witnessed shows us Putin is weak. Doesn’t the Wagoner action expose Putin’s weakness?

We are being subjected to the pacifist counter-arguments coming from Berlin and Washington. Could we, should we do more to destabilize the Putin regime? Do we really want him in power? Why did we say we were supporting Ukraine?

Putin was the key element in allowing the Assad regime to stay in power. Hezbollah couldn’t do it. Iran couldn’t do it, but the Russian troops actually saved Assad in Syria. For that, Putin got, for the first time since the Cold War, a port on the Mediterranean through Syria.

Russia is now supporting Iran, and Shia over Sunni. Russia is destabilizing a whole variety of other countries. Maybe Putin is nothing more than a paper tiger. If that’s the case, why are we not pushing on him harder?

The Ukrainians are asking for weapons to fight the Russians. Wouldn’t it be great if they won and Putin fell? Wouldn’t it be great if we did what we said we were in Ukraine to do and got the hell out?

And even if things in Russia were worse after Putin, the Russians would probably be internally focused for a while as opposed to focused on threatening the West and NATO. If the Ukrainians win quickly and Putin falls as a result, isn’t that good for us? And again, why the silence? Why the inaction? Why did we not seize the opportunity when it was presented? Who is lying, and what are they lying about? What are we not supposed to see here?

 

The post Were We Wrong About Putin? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Democrat policy is built on a pile of lies, deceptions, misdirection, and deceit. But you can’t openly admit you are just making stuff up so you can use people to accumulate unassailable political power. Even rank and file Dems might balk at that.

You instead invent or create problems you then promise to solve. One of those problems is the lie that a trace gas will end the planet, and you must abandon your lifestyle to save the world. After decades of secular humanism, the godless vacuum has grown to such a degree that pandering to a socialist economic program disguised as meaning appeals. You have a purpose. I’m helping to save the planet.

You are being used to end free markets and secure one-party-state socialism. But again, that’s what is behind the curtain. What you see if the nearly intolerable heat and hate of Oz, the great and powerful. Do his bidding, an you might get some consideration. But much like the movie, no matter what you do, it is not enough, and only until you reveal and accept the truth can you be free.

The United Auto Workers is having something of a road to Damascus moment on the subject of good-paying green jobs.

 

The United Auto Workers (UAW) is going after President Joe Biden’s so-called “green energy” agenda for its wage-cutting outcomes while showering billions in American taxpayer money on the three largest automakers in the nation: Ford, General Motors (GM), and Stellantis.

…

UAW President Shawn Fain, as well as the union’s members in Lordstown, Ohio, are sounding the alarm on severe cuts to auto workers’ wages as a result of the Biden administration’s push to steer automakers towards EVs, enticing them with federal subsidies.

 

Money a plenty is being dumped on the idea but most of it is going – according to Fain – to well-connected and well-heeled investors and executives. It’s a real class struggle, a class-based conflict. The thing unions claim justifies their continued existence. And here we have it in real life and real-time, perpetrated by Left-Wing robber barons of the Church of the Green Utopia.

And auto workers should be concerned, though not just about how the EV market might be impacting wages and jobs. Ever since The Green New Deal landed inside the DC Beltway, the Dems have not been shy about their plans. Privately owned automobiles are an outdated concept whose shelf life has reached its end. The UAW’s workers are clinging to obsolete skills (learn to code, right?).

And EVs are not the future of individual transportation. They are the means by which personal transportation will be limited to the wealthy and connected, and you won’t have auto plants all over the nation to meet that need. You will have a few, run by the approved oligarch, using increased automation.

You need to listen to Lawrence Garfield (played by Danny DeVito) in Other People’s Money.

 

This company is dead. I didn’t kill it. Don’t blame me. It was dead when I got here. It’s too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered, and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead. You know why? Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence. We’re dead, alright. We’re just not broke. And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow but sure.

You know, at one time there must’ve been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I’ll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is dead. Let’s have the intelligence, let’s have the decency to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future.

 

Except that there is no insurance, and no one is coming to invest in your future. The automobile business, as we know it, as the UAW knows it, is being bled out by the political left, and they could care less how many hard-working union laborers suffer as a result.  In fact, you are no worth more to them on the dole – dependent on their largess – than anywhere else. Absent the union, the need some other way to influence you, and making you a full-time dependent “employee” of the welfare system is that ticket.

That’s no reason to lie down. In fact, I’d like to suggest you stand up and do the one thing you still can. Stop electing Democrats. Take control of your Union’s priorities. UAW President Shawn Fain appears to have gotten a glimpse behind the curtain but not enough. And is he alone in this, or are other union leaders more interested in representing the workers who elected them or the politicians that invite them to parties?

Those union bosses are a bad as the Democrats with whom they rub elbows, but the workers have more power than both unless they refuse to step up and protect their livelihood. And that begins by accepting that the Democrat party agenda is an enemy of that livelihood.

 

The post The UAW is Wondering Where Those “Good Paying” Green Jobs Grow? appeared first on Granite Grok.

In one of the last rulings of the 2023 session, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that Joe Biden’s attempt to forgive up to $20,000 of current balances of student loans was unconstitutional.

By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the Biden administration overstepped its authority last year when it announced that it would cancel up to $400 billion in student loans. The Biden administration had said that as many as 43 million Americans would have benefitted from the loan forgiveness program; almost half of those borrowers would have had all of their student loans forgiven.

When proposed in 2022, Joe Biden knew, and then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declared, that the President did not have the authority to forgive or cancel student loans. Forgiveness of the loans was never the intent of the proposal. The goal was to buy the votes of young voters for Democrat candidates in the 2022 midterms by dangling a $20,000 check in front of them. It worked, and the ruse did secure that voting block for the Dems, proving that empty promises are more important to younger voters than effective government. The Red Tsunami predicted for the 2022 midterms never happened because of a major Con by President Joe Biden.

Within minutes of the High Court’s announcement, Biden stepped to the microphone and blasted the MAGA radical Supreme Court for abandoning college students and graduates of America burdened with high-balance loans preventing them from enjoying the fruits of their college degrees. Biden used this ruling as an example of how out of touch the Supreme Court had become and why the makeup needs to be revised by adding more justices to balance the ideology of the Court. Biden’s belief was echoed by most politicians and media from the Left.

But this decision will not stop Joe Biden from benefiting from his original proposal. He promised his team would get to work and find ways to circumvent the High Court and get relief for current holders of student loans. The Con continues, and will, right up to the 2024 general election. There are votes to be bought, and damn it, the Democrats are buying.

Within days, Biden was back to the podium to announce step one of his effort to overturn the crushing defeat of his plan by the Supreme Court. His plan is to forgive the loan of any college graduate who has been making payments on their student loans for at least twenty years. Biden’s plan will not impact young recent graduates but rather graduates already in their 40s and in the major earning years of their lives.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona immediately praised the Biden proposal and said it was about time we leveled the playing field for college graduates burdened by high-balance student loans. Why is there a need to level the field? College graduates earn an average of $1.2 Million more in their lifetime than non-college graduates. Why, then, should people who did not attend college, paid for their children’s education out of pocket, or went into a trade have to dip into their pockets to pay the loan of a 40-year-old attorney? They absolutely should not, and that is what the Supreme Court ruled.

Biden’s team will continue their creative attempts to get the student loan forgiveness bill passed or the Court ruling circumvented. A check will never be written, but that does not concern Joe. Joe is concerned with how many votes he can secure with a political scam. Loan holders should be apoplectic at how they are being used. Instead, they continue to pull the lever on the Left, proving they learned nothing in college while racking up loans.

 

 

The post SCOTUS Says No, Joe Says Yes! appeared first on Granite Grok.

A black woman decided she could no longer affiliate herself with the priorities of the Democrat party. Her reward for switching sides was an onslaught of – no, not well wishes or even good riddance – but epic hate rants—nasty, racist epithets or exactly what you’d expect from Democrats.

First.

 

Georgia Stae Rep. Mesha Mainor made headlines when she announced last week that she was leaving the Democratic Party — and in the days since, she has received a virtual tidal wave of hate mail, much of it overtly racist and profane.

 

Language Warning.

 

Dear Democrat,
Sorry you feel this way. pic.twitter.com/wH0zBNp7jy

— Rep. Mesha Mainor (@MeshaMainor) July 16, 2023

 

There are many, and you can review them here or here, but I’ll offer one more again for context (feeling, impact) and, again, language warning.

 

Dear Democrat,
I’m sorry you feel this way. pic.twitter.com/IYIyukVw1W

— Rep. Mesha Mainor (@MeshaMainor) July 16, 2023

 

These Democrats seem to have forgotten that they are the party of peace and civility – especially when it comes to women of color. Maybe Ann Kuster can loan some of those Dems her duct tape.

 

 

 

That is, after all, the best and perhaps the only way to keep a Democrat from spewing hate.

Exit question: Do any NH Dems want to step up and denounce this sort of thing, or are you gonna let this actual hate against a black woman slide because it’s your people doing it, and (maybe, just maybe) you agree with them?

We’ll be waiting …

 

The post Party of Civility™ Unloads Racist Hate on Black Lawmaker After She Leaves the Democrat Party appeared first on Granite Grok.