It’s every bit as important to the Mike Grahams, the Chris Sununus, the Bill Barrs, the Mitch McConnells as it is to the Communists Democrats that you believe that the 2020 election was free and fair.

It’s essential to Mike Graham et al.’s narrative that GOP voters believe that 2020 was a massive … MASSIVE … repudiation of Trump AND that the same thing will happen if Trump is the nominee in 2024.

It’s a LIE. A big, fat LIE. 2020 was the most corrupt election in the history of America:

 

The more we learn about the 2020 election, the more undeniable it becomes that Biden owes his “victory” to blatant political corruption. To wit:

1) An IRS probe into the Bidens money laundering payments from hostile nations — the normal outcome of which would have ended his… pic.twitter.com/bHu49qGUST

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 24, 2023

The post Hey Mikey … This One’s For You … A Timeline of FBI/DOJ/CIA Interference In The 2020 Election appeared first on Granite Grok.

If you want to sum up New Hampshire’s child abuse and censorship problem in a nutshell, look no further than this from 2012 about the election of Stacie Laughton. You will notice that the link to Stacie’s interview with the Nashua Telegraph has now been removed – at whose orders?

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The NH Press Association, formerly headed by Howard Altschiller, married to Dem Rep Debra Altschiller because it’s politically inconvenient.

Laughton is more focused on using the position as an opportunity to improve society: advocating for the homeless, those in low-income housing, and those with mental illnesses and physical disabilities. She also said she would like to strengthen the public school system.

Child abuse recognizes no political affiliations or genders, but unfortunately, the NHCADSV, HAVEN, DCYF, Children’s Trust Fund, and Children’s Advocacy Centers are too tied up politically and too tied to the Judiciary and Police to be able to see the wood from the trees because it doesn’t suit their fundraising narratives.

Stacie Laughton got a pass. Henry T Nicholas III (who funded Marsy’s Law campaign) got a pass (Amanda Grady Sexton told the public not to pay attention to news reports of his sex, DV, and drug abuse history). Police Detective James F McLaughlin got a pass (he used sexual images of children to federally entrap) but was rewarded by the New Hampshire Police & Fire Department for lifetime achievement while the AG’s office helped block his history of misconduct from becoming public.

Stacie Laughton has now been arrested for child pornography in a daycare center. The NHCADSV of course, is silent as they were when a Manchester Middle School teacher was arrested for sexting with a 6th or 7th-grade male, as they were when Phillips Exeter Academy covered up sexual abuse because their funding relied on the goodwill of Governor Hassan; as they have been about Chuck Douglas’s ordering of a 13-year-old female rape victim back to YDC because she failed to name her rapist. As they were about James F McLaughlin and his use of child sexual images to federal,ly entrap in the name of cracking down on sexual assault as they were when a female from Concord pled guilty to sex abuse of minors in YDC.

It’s not complicated. Public funds have been abused in New Hampshire to promote a dishonest judiciary in bed with non-profits who cover up and hide sexual abuse in partnership with their relations in the media.

 

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With inflation battering the peasants and long-term recession looming, the first priority of Vermont Democrats was to add hundreds of millions in new spending and then increase their own salaries so they can afford to live with their policies.

We wrote about the pay and benefits hike for elected officials back in May. The Dem majority was trying to fast-track it without public input. The bill was eventually passed and then vetoed by Gov. Scott.

The poverty-stricken legislature does not have enough votes in the State Senate to override. But they are working on it because, according to Chittenden Central Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky,

“… the bill was needed to ensure that more working Vermonters can afford to serve in Montpelier — something that she says is not true today.

“The barriers to service in the General Assembly are astronomical, which is why the demographics of the General Assembly do not match the demographics of Vermont,” Vyhovsky said. “And this is a problem. This is one of the reasons why we have such a difficult time meeting the needs of average Vermonters.”

 

 

She’s not all wrong. It is clear that the priorities of the legislature do not match the wishes of voters, but piling on salary and benefits will take an already overpaid body and turn it into a professional political project. It is also true that one of the priorities of Democrat majority legislatures is to turn them into full-time professional occupations. Raising pay and benefits will do that and the citizen legislature is anathema to the progressive project.

The Founders pictured people coming to serve for a few years out of duty to the interests of friends and neighbors and then, out of necessity, drawn back to the source of their means. Government service was a public service, not an occupation. You made your living farming or ranching or shipbuilding or lawyering, jobs that pay the bills just waiting for you after a stint serving the people.

But much like the news, once they figured out they could make money on it, truth and transparency went out the window.

Job one becomes serving the needs of the political cult and those that feed and water it regularly (lobbyists, special interests). The will of the people being a barrier to overcome every few years with fast talk and false promises, and lots of lobbyist and special-interest money.

To the progressive mind, elected office is a tenured position that starts the moment you adopt their priorities, retained until retirement or death when the latter is not in fact, the former.

Professional politicians are difficult to unseat. Paid professionals are even more so. This is not new, it is not news, and everyone paying attention knows it.

The goal is a permanent one-party state run by people who get paid a lot more than most to rob everyone else. And there are no examples of Democrat rule where this is not the case, nor are there examples where this formula results in prosperity for the people at the expense of the people in charge. It’s exactly the opposite.

That’s what Vermont Democrats are building, and I don’t think the “peasants” have the votes or the will to stop it. I’m not even certain they see the threat.

 

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Do you know about Doug Burgum? He’s a Republican. He’s the Governor of North Dakota. He is Reaganesque, and he is running for President. He would be the PERFECT candidate … IF it were 1983. It’s not.

It’s 2023, and America’s most dangerous enemies are DOMESTIC, not foreign – Mayorkas, Wray, Garland, Biden, and their ilk pose a far greater threat to America than Xi or Putin.

Yet in the glossy SIX-page flyer I received, there is not a mention of the threat the FBI/DOJ and the CIA/”Intelligence-Community” pose. Instead:

Doug will rebuild our military and win the cold war with China. His energy policies will help defeat Putin …

Winning the Cold War with China means taking on Blackrock, JP Morgan, and all the other “American” businesses who are funding China’s military buildup by investing in China in lieu of America.

Putin is not Hitler. He is not even Brezhnev, and the border dispute between Russia and Ukraine could’ve and should have been avoided. But Biden/Blackrock chose WAR and big profits for the military-industrial complex … over compromise and peace.

It’s not 1983, Doug. America’s most dangerous enemies live in and around Washington, DC.

 

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United Nations peace is more deadly than war. Without a shot fired in our land, U.N. theft of our liberty continues. 90% of U.N. “peacekeeping” is funded by your taxes.

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Yet, the peacekeepers serve the interests of the United Nations while our national sovereignty continues to erode. Did you know that the first Secretary General of the U.N. at the San Francisco Conference, Alger Hiss, was later exposed as a Soviet Agent? Alger Hiss and Soviet Foreign Minister Andre Gromyko co-authored the UN Charter to promote U.N. “peace of the graveyard.” The generational “Deep State” plot to create a New World Order depended on senatorial ignorance and public trust in 1945. Today, it depends on uninformed voters that continue to support this evil, mythical dream.

The majority of our people must awaken from apathy and ignorance about the U.N. and stand up for our troops. Informed voters must convince Congress to rise out of their timidity and challenge the unconstitutional process that permits the U.S. President to request a UN/NATO Resolution to go to war. The only permanent solution is to restore congressional power to Declare War per Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution to get out of the U.N. and to get the U.N. out of the U.S.

What is the root cause? American citizens who vote for boughten, spineless representation. We have hired the congressional incompetence that permits presidential collusion with the UN/SEATO/NATO to supersede the authority given to Congress by the Constitution. As we view in the mirror the bloodstains of all of our American soldiers, some of that vivid picture of congressional moral cowardice belongs to us that surrendered the power to declare war in Korea, Vietnam, and the 20-year War on Terror. Have you paid a personal price for a U.N. war they call peace?

We cannot continue to let the majority in our Congress remain silent, for the surrender of this power hides their commitment to sending our sons to battle with no accountability. Silence enables Congress to hide from responsibility. We cannot continue to trust the lives of our sons and daughters to their inaction. Bucking the party line of the two major parties takes courage. An intimidated representation that allows the surrender of “war powers” to continue must be punished at the ballot box.

Get out of the bleachers and onto the playing field at jbs.org. Help Get the U.S. Out of The U.N. Demand that your Senators and Representatives sponsor and support the American Sovereignty Restoration Act. Then make a difference in N.H. Support a bill to stop our state’s support of unconstitutional wars. HB229 will nullify sending N.H. troops to fight them.

 

Note: HB229 is currently retained in the committee and won’t see ‘action’ until the next session.

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Reporter Tom Elliott has compiled a compelling list of facts pointing out the US government’s institutional corruption. You’ve likely seen some or most of them, but they paint a disturbing and unpleasant picture of America when laid out in succession.

They are also evidence of systemic internal interference in U.S. elections by the police and surveillance state.

Democrats love to talk about election meddling, but it is nearly impossible for anyone willing to pay attention not to conclude that this is projection to distract us from all of their election meddling. And, of course, it is. Everything they do is that. It’s rule number one. If Democrats are accusing someone of it, this is because they must be doing it.

And how does that make you feel about all the Republicans, including governor (Sununu), who could take the evidence and beat the Democrats relentlessly about it (the way the Dems flog Republicans with Left-Wing lies) but instead pander to the Progs narratives to smear a guy (in this case, Trump) who has been the object of police and government abuse of power on a scale that rivals anything in the nation’s history?

Most of them would wilt after even a fraction of that, but Donald Trump is pushing back and claiming back. Whatever you may think about him – and be honest about whether it isaccuratee or just another internalized Democrat-Party talking point, he’s probably the only politician who has your back.

The Establishment, political/ruling class elites don’t, and Elliott’s listcements that reality, either through their inaction or indifference, accounting for the handful of pols who are engaged but will never do anything significant base-appeasement via dog and pony hearings, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

 

Here is the tweet – the complete list is replicated below.

The more we learn about the 2020 election, the more undeniable it becomes that Biden owes his “victory” to blatant political corruption. To wit:

1) An IRS probe into the Bidens money laundering payments from hostile nations — the normal outcome of which would have ended his… pic.twitter.com/bHu49qGUST

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 24, 2023

 

1) An I.R.S. probe into the Bidens money laundering payments from hostile nations — the normal outcome of which would have ended his candidacy — was instead given a stand-down order

2) The F.B.I. & I.R.S. wanted to search Biden’s house in September 2020 but were given a stand-down order.

3) The @FBI authenticated Hunter’s laptop a year before the NYPost first reported on its contents

4) Rather than use the laptop’s voluminous documentation of myriad felonies to initiate criminal investigations, the F.B.I. hatched a plot to warn social media companies of an imminent “hack & leak” operation of what they heavily suggested was Russian disinformation

5) The F.B.I. used its 2016 Russia collusion probe — which the Durham probe has since proven was essentially an extension of the Clinton campaign — to rationalize its meddling in the 2020 election.

6) The F.B.I. also conducted an influence operation with various reporters at major newspapers to convince them that forthcoming damaging reporting about Biden that they knew was true was in fact not

7) The F.B.I. was spying on Giuliani when he shared the laptop’s contents with the NYPost

8) When the F.B.I. told Twitter & Facebook a Russian disinformation campaign was coming, they had already concluded Russia wasn’t trying to game the election

9) In their attempt to corroborate their own rumor of Russian electoral influence, the F.B.I. became aggressive with its demands for user data from Twitter, eventually getting shutdown for seeking users’ private info without a warrant

10) Nonetheless, in the preceding years, the F.B.I. established a beachhead inside Twitter, with an operations center of former agents who communicated via their own dedicated slack channel. These ex-agents included Jim Baker, the F.B.I.’s former top counsel who played a central role in the F.B.I.’s Trump/Russia scam, as well as Comey’s former chief of staff, Dawn Burton, who started the F.B.I.’s Russia collusion probe.

11) The C.I.A., in collusion with the Biden campaign, seeded disinformation claiming the laptop was itself Russian disinformation. The major media used this as a pretext to avoid reporting on its contents and instead attack those who were.

12) The F.B.I. also arranged a meeting with Sens. Grassley & Johnson about supposed Russian disinformation & Hunter Biden.

13) The F.B.I. then used this briefing with the senators to justify quashing their own agents’ probe into the Bidens’ corruption.

14) When the story broke mere weeks before the election — one that polling later indicated would have altered enough Democrat votes to send Trump to a second term — Twitter & Facebook orchestrated an unprecedented & anti-democratic mass censorship campaign.

15) When Twitter initially resisted censoring the story, it was Jim Baker who convinced them to do so (despite the F.B.I. having known for a year the information was true).

16) In December 2020, after the operation’s success and Biden’s “victory,” the F.B.I. agents working at & with Twitter celebrated the outcome.

17) The F.B.I. subsequently paid Twitter $3.5 million for the staff hours expended on their influence operations.

18) At the time Trump was being impeached for asking Ukraine to investigate Biden’s alleged corruption in Ukraine, the F.B.I. & I.R.S. already knew the Bidens had indeed laundered more than $10 million from Burisma, via fake companies and dozens of bank accounts, while at the same time VP Biden had used U.S. aid as leverage in getting the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma fired.

P.S. And that’s to say nothing of Democrats orchestrating a state-by-state campaign to change voting rules to enable the widespread adoption of voting boxes … Left-wing activist groups, funded in part by Facebook, facilitated the exploitation of these drop-off boxes on behalf of the Democratic Party. That part may not have been illegal since they simply changed the rules, but it’s especially shady since it was done alongside federal health agencies then-knowingly overstating the threat of Covid, which was used as the rationale for the change of rules in the first place.

P.P.S. And this is just what we know despite the feds’ best efforts. Imagine how much we don’t.

 

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We’ve seen this blatant truth from the Alphabet Mafia before. And while I generally say, “believe politicians’ actions (legislation and votes), not their words,” the San Francisco Gay Men’s Choir appears sincere about their LGBTUVWXYZ agenda.

 

The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus released a song outlining how they’ll “convert your children.”

Read more: https://t.co/1j9DybR12W pic.twitter.com/xyNs1RS7Z9

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 7, 2021

WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK

The NEXT video shows way too much – especially in public where children might be watching – and these marchers don’t care. And they wonder why there’s a growing backlash against them. Many of us said that their push for “equality” was just code for “you gave us an inch, now we’re going for your throats.”

 

 

Confirmation from one of New York City’s Drag Marches.

These sad sacks are completely honest about what one of their aims is – going after Parents. Sure, their rallying cry is about children, but the real message is for Parents. We will hurt you by going after your children. And the problem for Parents is that the LGBT movement is in full control of where their kids spend more of their days: Government schools. Too many staff members believe and act that Parents hate their children.

Again, it’s the  Childism philosophy, that bastard offshoot philosophy of Critical Race Theory applied to nuclear families, that believes all Parents are Oppressors and children are Oppressed. Can’t be any clearer on how Critical Race Theory can be applied to nuclear families as a tool to destroy them – from a previous post of mine (about a 1/4 of the way down):

Progressives, in their never-ending crusade to force everyone to adhere to their religion, have added another commandment to their list of evils: Childism. They describe it as “anti-child attitudes” which lead to oppression of children. What fresh hell is this? you may be wondering. Not so fresh actually: two psychiatrists, Chester Pierce and Gail Allen, proposed the theory back as 1975. They described it as “the automatic assumption of superiority of any adult over any child.” One can assume that this would include parents as well.

…But in 2012, psychoanalyst Elisabeth Young-Bruehl resurrected the theory in her book, Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children. The book’s description reads, in part:

In this groundbreaking volume on the human rights of children, acclaimed analyst, political theorist, and biographer Elisabeth Young-Bruehl argues that prejudice exists against children as a group and that it is comparable to racism, sexism, and homophobia ….

…Rather this emerges from a generation which has acquired these two beliefs: 1) that children are not gifts from God, but are expendable prior to birth; and 2) the ultimate achievement in life comes not from raising responsible children, but from attaining fame on social media.

…The scientific theory of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget has long instructed those who study child development that there are four stages of cognitive development. Piaget also found that a child can’t begin to understand abstract concepts until the adolescent years. Later, 2009 research from the American Psychological Association asserted that emotional maturity lags behind cognition in those same adolescents. Yet anti-Childists insist that immature children must have authority to control their lives. And adults who would deny them that? They’re exercising bigotry similar to racism.

And this article does a throwback to my first snippet:

The speaker also told students that “parents aren’t safe, and that it’s OK to lie to them about where they are in order to attend this meeting.” The mother added:

She doubled down that parents aren’t safe [and] that heterosexuality and monogamy are not normal.

The school district acknowledged that such a club does exist, but would not address the mother’s allegations. Yet anti-Childists would insist that such undermining of parents is perfectly appropriate. Because a 12-year-old has equal rights to their parents, who are guilty of bigotry should they deny the child what they want.

So the bottom line is, in their own words (even as the SFGM Choir disavowed their song after the HUGE blowup over it), believe them. They mean it. It gives new meaning to the phrase “Gay Conversion Therapy.”

 

HT |  Matt

 

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First, to our readers in Bristol, New Hampshire, and neighboring areas, if you know Cindy, we’d like a chat. She’s been arrested by the FBI “for her alleged actions during the breach of the U.S. Capitol on 1/6/21.” And what were those, exactly?

According to Boston.com

 

Cindy Young is charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or ground, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in any of the Capitol buildings, according to officials.

 

Wait, there’s more!

 

Young is shown entering the Capitol through the Senate Wing doors at around 2:22 p.m., according to officials.

“After entering, Young traveled through varying areas of the Capitol. Young came into possession of a Trump 2020 and an American flag,” according to court documents, Boston 25 News reported.

 

Wow. Such criminality. Was it the Trump or American flags that made the Federales snap like twigs? Is there any chance she is a distant relative of Joe Biden? Not only would she not be detained, she’d be ‘home for dinner.

And yes, there was a bit of pushback on Twitter, but this was my favorite.

 

pic.twitter.com/SG8fwMpsSk

— Doc_Scott (@js_stevens) June 23, 2023

Our government is a wholly politicized clown car of partisan tyrants.

 

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I’d like you to read the quote below and decide if you think they better fit the ideas of a Democrat ora  Republican. I’ll give you my thoughts at the end.

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• “The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people, as long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and any deprivation.”
• “Education is free. Freedom of education shall be enjoyed under the condition fixed by law and under the supreme control of the state.”
• “Give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” AND “Destroy the family, you destroy the country.”
• “Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” AND “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”
• “Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”

These quotes are, respectively, from Adolf Hitler, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Antonio Gramsci

See where this progression is taking our country. We are a Constitutional Republic (elected representatives making laws, but limited by rules, i.e., the NH and US Constitution, Bill of Rights, guard rails per se), to Democracy (mob rule, no guard rails, no constitution, majority rule), to Socialism (centralized government control of schools, the economy and more – the key word being centralized) finally to Communism (claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people, including your Children).

HB10 and SB272 Parental Rights Bills, where you would have the absolute right to know what is going on with your children at school, were killed by the elected representative Democrats. Maybe they just don’t trust parents, or they want total control of your children!

Parents, you have options for schooling. Get them out of public school now to save our Constitutional Republic and your child’s mind.

Happy Independence Day to all.

 

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Rather than try to defend the indefensible … that is, rather than actually addressing the FACTS that show the USDOJ covered up multiple crimes by Hunter Biden and his daddy, the “Big Guy,” our figurehead, illegitimate President … Merrick Garland instead took to the podium and bloviated about attacks on democracy. Yeah, right, democracy in America is now an unelected, unaccountable, heavily-armed federal agency that sees its mission as propping up the Democrat Party.

In the real world … the world that so many in the GOP refuse to live in … Merrick Garland, Chris Wray, Joe Biden, etc. are the real threats to America. But these GOP refuse to see what is apparent. So they pretend that America is not a creeping Police State by pretending that Putin, and not Garland, Wray, Biden, etc. are the real problem … Putin and Russia are the real threat to our freedoms! Russia hacked our election! He’s Hitler reincarnate!  

Forget about those pro-life activists being arrested by heavily-armed FBI agents, that parents who spoke out at school board meetings were classified by the FBI as domestic terrorists, the whistleblower who exposed that everything we are being told by DoD about Ukraine is a LIE, just as everything DoD told us about Afghanistan … we’re winning! we’re winning! just a few more decades and the troops can come home! … was a LIE, that virtually everything our wonderful government told us about COVID was a lie, the J6 protesters being held in the DC-gulag for years, that the USDOJ is going to put Trump in prison.

Keep your eye on the ball, people. The real threat is Putin! Putin! Putin! Putin! Putin! Putin!

Here is Herr Himmler … oh; so sorry; I mean Merrick Garland … warning people not to criticize USDOJ:

Garland: "Some have chose to attack the integrity of the Justice Department by claiming that we do not treat cases alike. This constitutes an attack on an institution that is essential to American democracy… Nothing could be further from the truth." pic.twitter.com/fHkHPUiNyn

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 23, 2023

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Treehugger, that former font of Eco-Socialism, went pretty much dry when they fired the writers (like Lloyd Alter and Sami Grover) that were smart, stuck to their guns – and provoked a community of commenters that often were more interesting than the articles themselves. However, the pickings have been far and few between – until a couple of days ago. TH has become, for the most part, a Lefty feminist hangout with “fluffy” style posts that often have little to do with what their mission used to be.

I still stroll over every once in a while in search of a weed or two poking out of that barren ground, and I found one just CHUNKY with Social Justice gibberish.

The title is kinda middling of the road, but the subtitle gives you what Hayley Bruning wants you to believe. If you can cut through the Leftist lexicon (reformatted, emphasis mine):

What Is Food Apartheid?
How we analyze and reform our food systems begins with the language we use.

Indeed. Words matter, and words SHOULD have very specific and precise meanings. Sure, English, with overloaded words (words that can have very different definitions based on context), lots of idioms…

Sidenote: it’s been fun raising the Grandson. And part of that is watching him trying to parse what most of us take for granted – words strung together that get across an idea but to the uninitiated, just a blank look. I often, when confronted by a confirmed SJW, have to parse the words and then translate these made-up words to “normal English” as the PURPOSE of those words is to seem benign, seem neutral, but totally change the topic and what is REALLY desired.

…and a subset of people who are deliberately trying to put Orwell’s 1984 warning into reality by weaponizing language to change thought processes by redefining words. Hayley is stupid enough to be upfront to admit that’s her purpose:

How we analyze and reform our food systems begins with the language we use. Food apartheid is a concept that sheds light on the structures that limit access to affordable, nutrient-dense foods in low-income communities. It often pushes ultra-processed food with wasteful packaging that is not optimal for people or the planet. The term is often used in conversation with food desert, which refers to areas with limited access to supermarkets but does not imply the systemic issues that cause the low access. In this article, we analyze these terms, the impacts of food apartheid, and how to achieve more just food systems that promote food sovereignty and sustainability.

Language Overview
When considering the origin of “food apartheid,” sources commonly refer to a 2018 Guernica interview with Karen Washington, an activist and community organizer who popularized the term. Washington stated in the interview that the term “food desert” inaccurately represents neighborhoods that are not in close proximity to supermarkets with nutritious foods. This has been echoed in a blog by the National Resources Defense Council, which points out that “food desert” has been criticized for undermining the vibrancy of the neighborhoods and implying, with the use of “desert,” that these situations are naturally occurring.

On the contrary, food environments are built and designed unequally, with racial and economic factors to analyze, and “food apartheid” more accurately identifies the oppressive structures that created this inadequate access than “food desert.”

Everything is based on race – Critical Race Theory and Racism has totally permeated the SJW mind thought and processes. NOTHING else matters if they can’t attach some remains of racism to everything in Society to keep the Oppressor/Oppressed going – even as they have to strain hard to see the tiniest atom of such being present.

“[‘Food apartheid’] looks at the whole food system, along with race, geography, faith, and economics,” said Washington in the Guernica interview. “You say ‘food apartheid’ and you get to the root cause of some of the problems around the food system. It brings in hunger and poverty. It brings us to the more important question: What are some of the social inequalities that you see, and what are you doing to erase some of the injustices?”

The thing that drives me nuts the most is the word “designed” as if there is some racist set of gnomes sitting around some candle at a round table constantly scheming on how they keep people down. Sorry, there’s another name for them – Planners and they get paid by Government. Since Hayley is talking about urban areas that are, pretty much, controlled by Democrats, she has no idea she’s blaming people like herself. After all, in the large cities in America, when is the last time those cities had Republican mayors (and forget about the city council majority being Republican)?

And NO discussion of the illiberal word salads can be complete without their most “powerful” word (other than “FASCIST!” of which they have no idea what the real definition truly is):

In addition to characterizing inequitable food environments, the term “food apartheid” begins an intersectional conversation about race, policy, agriculture, and reform.

Ayup, “intersectional” – the word that is THE nexus point of all of their arguments. It is their main justification meaning that NOTHING can be deconstructed into its component parts (what an engineer does – taking a large problem and breaking it down so that each part can logically be analyzed (and rectified) and then, and ONLY then, reassemble the parts. And it’s THE way to hide flaws and disregard some of their chaff they flow up into the air that hides their intents.

Anyways, this I couldn’t leave alone so seeing a long lost opportunity to take a whack at an Eco-Socialist again (even if Social Justice Warrior is a better fit), I took it. After all, my TH friend Vindaloo Bugaboo had alerted me that he tore her a new one as well so I felt duty bound to join in the fun. After all, “apartheid” is a GOVERNMENT Policy. Really, a Government flunky that doesn’t even know the history of the word (or is deliberately ignoring it)?

Let me chime in as well – the inanity of trying to use “Food apartheid”.

You DO know how “apartheid” is defined, right? Oh, no you don’t as VB pointed out. Let’s start with the strict definition:

An official policy of racial segregation formerly practiced in the Republic of South Africa, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites.

A policy or practice of separating or segregating groups.

Do you know what that takes? GOVERNMENT. So are you blaming Government for “Food Apartheid”?

No, you’re not – it’s just part of the Leftist word salad of newly made up words or phrases used strictly for political purposes and generally to induce guilt in others. But yes, you SHOULD be blaming Government for this but not for the amorphous and ambiguous sense of “Society’s fault” you intended.

Ever think that the policies put in place by Government is actually the root cause? WHY are people poor? Much is because of crappy public education. Remember that case where a high school senior in the Baltimore school system wasn’t going to graduate because of his 0.15 GPA? After four years, he was illiterate 14 different ways to Sunday.

Yet, he was in the top half of his class. GOVERNMENT failed him – continuing to socially promote him. And his Mom railed against the school District “Why did you let this happen to my boy???”.

I asked the same question of her – where was SHE during his K-12 years?

So failure up and down. That comes down to a failure, not of Society, but of the Local Culture – a culture of failure. Yet here you are, Hayley, attempting to use the language of the Left to blame everyone else. Go ahead, continue to make them “victims” and find fault with everything that have nothing to do with the situation that the residents themselves have caused (and yes, VB’s Portland and Seattle are far from the only examples but are certainly the best known). [from VB’s comment]:

Send them to a farm in Ohio to work for it. I would guarantee nearly 100% of them will cut & run within a day, if not the first hour, after stepping foot on that farmer’s land.

Again, Culture (or the lack of culture or the WRONG culture). Some folks might flourish if you did that – but not most because Government policies have caused a severe entitlement mentality problem here in the US. “Victimization” breeds contempt for those that refuse to want to continue to give free stuff because the idea of “Self-responsibility” has been beaten out of them.

And you just added to that. And don’t squawk that I’m victim blaming. Being a former daycare owner, I saw plenty of examples of what I just wrote about. “You should do this and You should be doing that” was what I heard – but when I turned the table and asked what THEY are doing, all I got was screams in return.

That’s what the Left has done to a formerly “Can-do, bootstrapping, self-responsible, and self-reliant” culture under the guise of “a hand up”.

You can thank LBJ’s “Great Society” that brushed aside husbands and Dads when a family got into rough straits because the Government policy demanded that they couldn’t be around if Government was going to give the Mom and kids the help they needed.

So, what’s that rate of absent fathers in the family again, especially in the Democrat controlled cities you are writing about, Hayley?

Yeah, 70% or so. And you don’t think THAT changed the Culture and changed it from depending on Dad and husband to being one dependent on Government?

I agree with VB – your blinkeredness has blinded you.

I’ll end this long post with the SAVAGE end of VB’s post:

Stop blaming racism for every damn thing “wrong” in this country. It’s race baiting gaslighters like you who keep lying to the gullible public, making them think that racism is keeping minorities down when it’s in fact poverty. And you fight poverty with education, dedication, sacrifice, and work ethic. Inner city minorities often turn their noses on all of that.

 

The post Treehugger Serves Up a “Food Apartheid” Word Salad appeared first on Granite Grok.

Some Communist in the audience of a WMUR political show asked Bobby Kennedy what he was going to do about “weapons of mass destruction” … her term for semi-automatic firearms. The answer she got, I suspect, was NOT what she was expecting.

It certainly was not the shallow, insipid, rile-up-the-communist-base, canned answer Joe Biden or any other Communist Democrat would doubtlessly have given. It was thoughtful and, frankly, courageous for someone running in the Communist Democrat primary.

 

Here are @RobertKennedyJr’s statements from last night’s New Hampshire town hall regard the 2nd Amendment.

Some highlights:

-Reiterates he’s “not going to take anyone’s guns away”

-“Anyone who tells you that we can end the violence to our children that’s going on now by… pic.twitter.com/Tie7VisoTd

— Will Fite (@WillFiteForYou) June 24, 2023

 

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The post Not The Answer This NH-Communist Wanted To Hear … Bobby Kennedy On “Weapons Of Mass Destruction” appeared first on Granite Grok.

Let’s stipulate that the Left is passionate about writing laws that make it easier to kill unwanted babies up to the point of birth and beyond. The reason for the termination is immaterial.

In the Left’s world, if the mother, the birthing person, decides the unborn infant is inconvenient, they have every legal avenue to end the pregnancy. Maine is poised to allow late-term abortions against the will of Republicans, and 80% of Maine residents polled. Getting 80% of people to agree on any topic is nearly impossible, but 20% can override that supermajority.

In a marathon session on Thursday, the Maine House of Representatives passed LD1619, which has the support of Governor Janet Mills. The Democrat-controlled State Senate is expected to pass the bill on Friday, and Governor Mills will sign it as soon as it hits her desk. Planned Parenthood actively lobbied for passage and spent over $830,000 to ensure passage. There was also a series of questionable manipulations of phrasing in existing Maine abortion policies that made passage of LD1619 more important to Democrat backers and assuaged the Planned Parenthood representatives in the chambers.

There was already an abortion law in Maine that allowed for late-term termination of a pregnancy if the mother or fetus were in medical jeopardy. With this law in play, there was no need for LD 1619. This is where the OAG (Office of the Attorney General) came into play and went to work. The AG distributed a text of the existing policy, omitting the late-term provision. This act turned some to see a need for the new law.

The presence of Planned Parenthood at the Statehouse should concern anyone with a conscience. Planned Parenthood professes to be concerned with women’s health and reproductive assistance. They have a unique definition of reproductive, for in PP’s book, reproductive means abortion. They are in the business of killing the unborn and are doing it with our money.

Planned Parenthood receives money from the government in two main ways: reimbursements for providing services to people covered by Medicaid and grants from government agencies, primarily HHS. Congressional Budget Office estimates that Planned Parenthood receives over $400 million in federal and state Medicaid reimbursements, making it the nonprofit’s single most significant revenue stream. They also receive over $500 million in direct funding. Much of this money, our money, goes to campaign contributions. The potential law in Maine brought nearly $1 million. The government should be looking for a detailed accounting of this money, but you will never see that happen, as many Democrat lawmakers saw some of that money hit their campaign coffers. Let’s be clear that is our money buying votes for a law to kill unborn children. That should anger every taxpayer, but nobody will touch this third rail.

Finally, this bill passed on a party line with a few Democrats crossing the line. Two Republicans were absent; coincidentally, this bill passed by two votes. Showing up for work can be a life or death Matter!

The question I have when the topic of abortion arises is what motivates the Left to push abortion rights. There is never an answer, but the obvious is power and money. The Pro-choice folks tend to be more active and aggressive in supporting Women’s Reproductive Rights. That may be changing as Pro-life proponents are getting more involved and, maybe more importantly, younger. The power is in the form of Pro-choice votes, and the money is all that Planned Parenthood money. These Democrats are selling their votes. This is a classic example of how dirty government can be, even at the state level. We saw on Thursday the convergence of a messy issue and politics. The outcome was a terrible decision that went against the majority’s will.

I want to think the reps that voted for this bill will get their just do on Election Day, but we all know people have short memories, and these politicians with such little regard for life will rarely be held accountable.

The post Maine Joins Legion Of Anti-Birth States appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Constitution continues to get in the way of radical Government overlords pressuring people to abandon their principles to do its bidding. And while it only takes a few judges to thwart that, for the moment, religious conscience has another defender—the US Fifth Circuit Court.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is tasked with enforcing laws that make it illegal to discriminate against job applicants or employees based on a laundry list of “classes” (including religion), fined a Christain business in Texas. Braidwood, a wellness company, opposed allowing “employees to use restrooms that correspond to their gender identity, regardless of their biological sex or whether they have undergone sex-change surgery.”

The EEOC came down with the discrimination hammer (even though religion is a class the EEOC is supposed to protect). Braidwood sued.

 

BREAKING: America First Legal has won a major Fifth Circuit ruling against federal transgender edicts. The EEOC issued a federal mandate compelling employers to allow men to use the women’s facilities. Our client claimed this violated his rights — and the Fifth Circuit agreed.

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) June 21, 2023

The Court ruled that Braidwood is protected from discrimination by the EEOC under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

 

The court’s decision stated, “On the merits, we decide that [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] requires that Braidwood, on an individual level, be exempted from Title VII because compliance with Title VII post-Bostock would substantially burden its ability to operate per its religious beliefs about homosexual and transgender conduct. Moreover, the EEOC wholly fails to carry its burden to show that it has a compelling interest in refusing Braidwood an exemption, even post-Bostock.”

 

The First Amendment tells us that Congress shall make no law abridging religious freedom. I’m sure the genderstasi at the EEOC argued that Congress didn’t make a law; the EEOC made a rule. In real terms, there’s no difference if you are at the pointy end of the stick. Rulemaking with the force of law is law, but The Fifth Circus didn’t throw out the rule or make the case that Congress never intended Title VII to be used this way. It merely said that the Braidwood couldn’t be punished because another law (and related precedent) protects them.

Okay, but for how long? In the hands of progressives (lawmakers or rule-makers), that could transition at any moment into something the genderstasi can use to deny them their rights. And what about the religious rights of Christian women who = as a matter of conscience – are opposed to sharing a bathroom with a biological man?

The EEOC appears ready and willing to force employers to discriminate against them.

 

HT | TGP

 

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When I asked Bard – Google’s AI product now competing with ChatGPT AI (Artificial Intelligence) – who was against SB272, I got answers that were not surprising – using REPUBLICAN NH Representative Mike Bordes (R-Laconia) as my entree into the subject.

After all, he was the guy most responsible for gutting and then permanently tabling both the House and Senate versions of Parental Rights.

As far as I know, he has no children of his own, but it did take no small amount of Union money to fund his re-election campaign (what, Laconia, you can’t do better than this demonstrable RINO concerning his votes against you but with the Democrats?). So my question was: Why is NH State Rep Mike Bordes against NH SB272?  And remember, NH Gov Chris Sununu has Bordes firmly as his pet and in his pocket – and Sununu was the Republican that launched this attack on families by the Left by signing that infamous SB263 that enshrined transgenderism as a protected group (and continuing the shredding of “E pluribus unum” of the American population into tribal sects).

Bard answered:

New Hampshire State Rep. Mike Bordes is against SB272, a bill that would require all public schools in the state to teach about the history and contributions of LGBTQ+ people. Bordes has said that he believes the bill is unnecessary and that it would be better for schools to focus on teaching traditional history. He has also said that he is concerned that the bill would be too divisive and that it would lead to protests and disruptions in schools.

Here are some of the reasons why Bordes is against SB272:

• He believes that the bill is unnecessary. He argues that schools are already teaching about the history of LGBTQ+ people, and that the bill would simply be redundant.
• He believes that the bill would be better for schools to focus on teaching traditional history. He argues that students need to learn about the history of their country and its founding principles, and that the bill would take away from this important learning.
• He is concerned that the bill would be too divisive. He argues that the bill would lead to protests and disruptions in schools, and that it would create a hostile environment for students and teachers.

What?? Er, WHO is actually doing the protests in the past couple of years up until now? Yeah, the LGBTXYZ/Alphabet Mafia. Not the Normal kids (although we are starting to see the blowback from having this immoral sexuality religion rammed down our student’s [virtual] throats.

It is important to note that Bordes is not the only person who is against SB272. There are many people who believe that the bill is unnecessary, divisive, and harmful. However, there are also many people who support the bill, and who believe that it is important for schools to teach about the history and contributions of LGBTQ+ people.

It’s clear to see the bias in this AI model, which is derived from the information being fed into it – Google is no right-leaning commercial entity.  So I asked the obvious follow-up question: Who else is against NH SB272?

And like I thought, having seen their tax money lobbyists speak against every individual.

In addition to New Hampshire State Rep. Mike Bordes, there are many other people who are against SB272, including:

• NH School Board Association
• The New Hampshire Association of School Principals
• The New Hampshire Association of School Superintendents
• The New Hampshire Association of School Business Officials
• The New Hampshire Association of Teachers
• The New Hampshire Human Rights Commission

Don’t believe me? Take a DEEP dive into your school district’s budget. In it, you will find the money spent for the above, gathered from your property taxes. They represent the teachers’ best interests, the School Principles, the Districts, the Superintendents, and the Teachers. All of which you are already paying for, and if you’ve been reading GraniteGrok regularly, you know that each of those organizations advocate for their members…

…and not the people, us, who fund them.  Sweet deal to have a double-barreled shotgun aimed at both your wallet…and your Rights as Parents. And the NH HRC is an NH governmental commission.

The rest of these organizations are also in the tank with respect to eliminating all semblance of Parental Rights in the Government School system:

• The New Hampshire Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)
• The New Hampshire American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
• The New Hampshire League of Women Voters
• The New Hampshire Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Health Center
• The New Hampshire Transgender Resource Center
• The New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• The New Hampshire Coalition Against Sexual Assault

Bard continued:

These organizations and individuals believe that SB272 is unnecessary, divisive, and harmful. They argue that the bill would:

• Prevent schools from teaching about the history and contributions of LGBTQ+ people
• Create a hostile environment for LGBTQ+ students and teachers
• Encourage discrimination and harassment against LGBTQ+ people
• Undermine the rights of LGBTQ+ families

The opponents of SB272 are calling on the New Hampshire legislature to vote against the bill. They believe that the bill is harmful to LGBTQ+ people and to the state of New Hampshire as a whole.

See what’s missing (shouldn’t be hard as I emphasized WHICH families Bard is protecting)?  Or rather, whom? Yeah, all of the emphasis is on a singularly teeny minority (but with loud voices and lots of money behind them).

Yes, that would be Normal Parents – the VAST percentage of the population and those that put their children into the schools that are turning against them when it comes to this struggle of “Who is responsible for teaching my kids about morality and sexuality? WHOSE moral and sexual mores should reign supreme?”.

More and more, and with Mike Bordes’ blessing, it’s the school systems – the teachers, the principals, the superintendents, and their lobbying groups – that believe that parents are PROBLEMS.  Given that most of these folks are Democrats, should we be surprised as their Party would rather do away with Parents? Sure, they will protest these words but look at their POLICIES that tell another story.

The simplest one is their dogma that Parents should never have the Right to decide how their child is to be educated.  Your child is THEIRS and your money is THEIRS in accomplishing THEIR goals. Go ahead, change my mind (with data – not talking points). I dare you to try because I don’t think you have the intellectual heft to do so.

So, dear readers, in looking over Bard’s “words”, how do YOU think it tilts?  Us versus them?

Oh, and my next question was this: “Who is for NH SB272?”

That will be the next post and I can assure you, none of them were tax money supported.

 

 

The post A.I Says Entities Opposing NH’s Parental Rights Bill Are All Supported by Your Tax Dollars appeared first on Granite Grok.

Two New Hampshire House Special elections have been authorized, with dates set for both primary and special elections. They are in Rockingham County District 1 (Northwood and Nottingham), and Grafton County District 16 (Enfield).

Rockingham County District 1 (Northwood and Nottingham)

Primary Election: August 1, 2023

Special Election: September 19, 2023

Filings:

Democratic:
Hal Rafter, Nottingham (22 N River Lake Rd) 03290

Republican:
James Guzofski, Northwood (87 1st NH Tpke) 03261
Jessica Sternberg, Nottingham (8 West Lane) 03290

 

Grafton County District 16 (Enfield)

Primary Election: August 22, 2023

Special Election: October 10, 2023

Filings:

Democratic: David Fracht, Enfield (PO Box 1065) 03748

Republican: John P. Keane, Enfield (PO Box 1233) 03748

If the Republican candidates or their supporters would like to submit op-eds in support of their campaign, provide get out the vote, events, or fundraising activities, please email steve@granitegrok.com.

If you have information to share about the Democrat candidates, online or social media craziness, or their out in left-field op-eds, please forward links or screen grabs to steve@granitegrok.com

Reminder: Content about candidates or by candidates is not an endorsement by GraniteGrok.com or its authors.

 

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We are looking for a few benefactors, but every donation helps.
Thank You for Your Support.

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Independent media is a rare and precious thing, even here in New Hampshire. Please consider the value we provide and then commit to a monthly subscription, a one-time online donation (via PayPal or GiveSendGo), or you can donate by check*. Thank You for Your Support.

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The post Two Upcoming Special Elections for the New Hampshire House appeared first on Granite Grok.

You don’t need researchers or some fancy A.I. to tell you that conservative women are happier and prettier than liberal women, but someone did some research, and it’s been confirmed by science.

 

“Approximately 3,200 publicly submitted photos of political candidates who ran in the 2017 Danish municipal election were used in the study,” reports Newsmax. “The researchers inputted the photos into Microsoft Azure’s Face API tool to evaluate the person’s emotional state, with 80% of the faces analyzed read as happy and 19% read as neutral.”

“For females (though not males), high attractiveness scores were found among those the model identified as likely to be conservative,” the study concludes. “These results are credible, given that previous research using human raters has also highlighted a link between attractiveness and conservatism.”

And if you want or need confirmation, show this to a liberal and watch things get ugly (uglier?).

HT | PJMedia

The post The Science Says That Conservative Women Are More Attractive Than Liberal Women appeared first on Granite Grok.

This series of essays focuses on those American Founders who exercised the most influence on the original Constitution as amended by the Bill of Rights. Each essay thumbnails the life and contributions of at least one individual. The essays also will tell you more about “the supreme Law of the Land.”

Before proceeding with the series, some terminology may be helpful. When the series uses the word “framers,” it means the 55 men who drafted (“framed”) the Constitution. They were the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, held in Philadelphia from May 25, 1787, to Sept. 17, 1787.

The word “ratifiers” means the 1,648 delegates at the 13-state ratifying conventions meeting from December 1787 (Delaware) to May 1790 (Rhode Island). The term “Founders” includes the framers, the most significant ratifiers, and major opinion leaders in the public debate over the Constitution.

A Reason for this Series

Most discussions about the original Constitution over-emphasize the roles of just a few Founders. Americans hear a lot about James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington, but little about others.

For example, in 1791—before the final ratification of the Bill of Rights—members of the Washington administration debated whether the new Constitution authorized Congress to charter a national bank. Here’s how that debate is usually portrayed:

“President George Washington asked Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to write legal opinions on whether the Constitution authorized Congress to charter a national bank. Hamilton interpreted the Constitution expansively and concluded Congress could do so. Jefferson interpreted it narrowly and concluded that Congress could not. The president agreed with Hamilton, and even James Madison, who initially opposed the bank, later relented. The lesson is that expansive interpretation makes more sense than narrow interpretation.”

That’s pretty much how I learned the story in high school and college. But it leaves out key facts—and the omissions render it, as we lawyers say, “materially misleading.”

Here’s the rest of the story:

First: When the Constitution was written, the dominant way of reading legal documents was neither “expansive” nor “narrow.” It was a middle ground known as “fair construction.” Jefferson was wrong to interpret the document narrowly, and Hamilton was equally wrong to interpret it expansively.

Second: Whether the Constitution gave Congress the power to charter a bank was a genuinely close question. Both opponents and advocates had reasonable arguments.

Third: The typical narrative omits another Founder of great importance: Edmund Randolph. Randolph was the U.S. attorney general, and it was his job—not that of Jefferson or Hamilton—to write legal opinions for the president.

Fourth: Randolph was far more qualified than either Jefferson or Hamilton to address the issue. Prior to becoming U.S. attorney general, he had served for 10 years as attorney general of Virginia. He was a member of the committee that wrote his state’s constitution. As governor of Virginia, he led his state’s delegation to the Constitutional Convention. As a member of the convention’s “committee of detail,” he participated in writing the first draft of the Necessary and Proper Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 18), which was at the center of the bank dispute. And at the Virginia ratifying convention, Randolph (not Madison) was the lead spokesman for the Constitution, and addressed the Necessary and Proper Clause.

By contrast, Jefferson had been in France during the constitutional debates. Hamilton had been absent during most of the framing. Moreover, he admitted that the Constitution didn’t match at all what he favored. After the convention, he even wrote a private memorandum (pdf) evidencing his intention to try to subvert the Constitution’s limits and “triumph over the state governments and reduce them to an entire subordination.”

Thus, neither Jefferson’s nor Hamilton’s constitutional opinions were particularly reliable.

Fifth: Randolph duly submitted a legal opinion using the “fair construction” method. He concluded that Congress had no power to charter a bank.

When you know these facts, you can see that what happened was very different from what is usually taught in school—and that Randolph has been unfairly neglected. In this series, he will be given his due.

The Founders’ Places on the Political Spectrum

Another common, and erroneous, narrative is that the Constitution was the product of a “conservative counterrevolution” against the “radicalism” of the American Revolution. This is categorically false.

The Constitution, especially as amended by the Bill of Rights, wasn’t the product of any one faction, conservative or otherwise. It was the product of negotiation among people of different views—with moderates working to bring all parties together. The result was a coalition spanning most, although not all, of the American political spectrum.

What was the political spectrum during the constitutional debates of 1787–1790? And where on the spectrum did the key Founders reside?

Different writers describe the spectrum in different ways, but I divide it into six loose categories, running from “right” to “left.” (Keep in mind that this isn’t the same way we use “right” and “left” today.) The six groups are as follows:

Group #1: Unreconstructed Tories

On the “far right” were the unreconstructed Tories. These were Americans who had been loyal to the Crown during the Revolution, and who never accepted the war’s outcome. They favored limited monarchy over republicanism, with privileges for the aristocratic few. Their view of individual rights was more constricted than that of other Americans. Instead of a new constitution, they preferred a deal with Britain whereby the states became largely self-governing units of the British empire.

During the Revolution and immediately afterward, many unreconstructed Tories fled to Canada or Britain, so during the constitutional debates relatively few remained in America. For reasons of personal and professional safety, they tended to keep quiet.

Unreconstructed Tories were not part of the coalition that adopted the Constitution.

Ironically, the closest modern American analogs to unreconstructed Tories are on the political left: today’s “progressives.” While there are significant differences, “progressives” echo some key Tory beliefs: a limited view of individual rights, a broad view of government prerogatives, a tendency to promote certain government-created privileges as if they were rights—and disdain for the original Constitution.

Group #2: High Nationalists

Next from the “right” were the high nationalists. Unlike the Tories, they welcomed American Independence. But they admired the British political system and would have preferred to partially replicate it in America.

However, the high nationalists recognized that Americans would never accept a king or hereditary aristocracy. As the next best alternative, the high nationalists proposed a “high toned” republic: an executive chosen for life and lifetime senators to complement an elected house of representatives.

High nationalists also favored the British model of an all-powerful central government.

Although the Constitution didn’t meet all their desires, several high nationalists contributed greatly to it. Featured in this series are Hamilton, John Adams of Massachusetts (in Europe during the Constitutional Convention, but the author of a widely consulted book on constitutions), and Gouverneur Morris, a New Yorker representing Pennsylvania at the convention.

Group #3: Moderate Nationalists

Next on the spectrum were the moderate nationalists. They also sought a very powerful central government, but they were more republican and democratic than the high nationalists. Moderate nationalists were willing to reserve a constitutional place, although a subordinate one, for the states.

From this group, the series will profile James Madison of Virginia, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, and George Washington (although his political stance is difficult to categorize).

The Virginia Plan, presented to the Constitutional Convention on May 29, 1787, embodied the moderate nationalist position.

Group #4: Centrists

The final terms of the Constitution reflect many of the centrists’ positions because they played a pivotal role in negotiating the final bargain.

Centrists favored a strong federal government but wanted to restrict it to specifically listed (“enumerated”) powers. Some centrists wanted the states to participate in selecting federal officials. The original Constitution’s provision giving state legislatures power to elect U.S. senators was a centrist proposal.

Like the moderate nationalists, centrists favored a fair amount of democracy. Unlike the moderate nationalists, they wanted enhanced protections for the rights of individuals and the position of the smaller states.

Prominent centrists included in this series are John Dickinson of Delaware, John Rutledge of South Carolina, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut.

Group #5:? Conditional Federalists

Just to the “left” of the centrists were the “conditional federalists.” I coined that term for them because they (1) favored the federalism of the Constitution but (2) only on condition that the document be amended.

Among the changes they sought were a bill of rights, a more democratic House of Representatives, stronger protection for the states against central interference, and full state control of federal elections.

Because they differed on which amendments would be sufficient, the conditional federalists ultimately split on whether the Constitution should be ratified. Randolph eventually favored ratification, while his Virginia compatriot, George Mason, opposed it. Both men are thumbnailed in this series.

Group #6:? Firm Antifederalists

Anchoring the “far left” were the firm antifederalists. Some wanted to retain the Articles of Confederation, with a modest increase in congressional power. Others didn’t think a 13-state union was viable in the long run and favored dividing the country. The most notable firm antifederalist was Patrick Henry of Virginia.

Some of the Constitution’s advocates were convinced that this group on the “far left” was receiving quiet support from unreconstructed Tories on the “far right.” (In my political experience, I have seen similar phenomena.) Perhaps the Tories were thinking that if the country split, some sections might return to British tutelage.

Thus, the coalition that ratified the Constitution excluded the two extremes, but otherwise spanned the political spectrum.

To the individuals mentioned above, I reserve the right to add one more.

Final Comments

Two facts will become clear as the series progresses: First, several of the figures profiled have been seriously underestimated or underappreciated. Perhaps the leading examples are Dickinson and Randolph.

Second, although the men profiled in this series often disagreed with each other, each played a part of which Americans can be proud.

 

 

Rob Natelson | The Tenth Amendment Center

The post The Founders and the Constitution: Introduction appeared first on Granite Grok.

The traditional roles of a man are the head of their family: Husband, Provider, Father – and Protector. Sadly, what the so-called Elites are trying to do is to condition and “breed that out” of us. Why?

First, it destroys our natural history of why a Husband and Father are important, not only to the nuclear family but to Society in general. Sheeple, who refuse to do for themselves and expect others to do for them, is not a threat to those that wish to remove the Constitutional Republic that our genius Founding Fathers bequeathed upon us as their legacy. By taking over, bit by bit, how does one dare bit the hand that may not care about your but leverages your spouse and children against those seemingly quaint notions of Freedom from Government and making do for oneself?

And here’s a guy, an ordinary schlub, that simply blows up that entire narrative by being that traditional guy (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Dad shoots would-be intruder who “accosted” kids in backyard

Police in Johnston County, North Carolina are investigating a Father’s Day shooting involving an armed dad and a 23-year-old who allegedly “accosted” an 11-year-old girl before trying to gain entry into the family’s home.  Authorities were called out [to] the scene of a breaking and entering in the small town of Wilson’s Mills around 9 p.m. on Sunday evening, and when they arrived they discovered the body of the 23-year-old at the home, along with the armed homeowner.

Chief A.Z. Williams said, based on the preliminary investigation, the suspect entered the backyard of the home where children were playing outside. The suspect allegedly tried to accost an 11 year-old girl. Other children ran inside the home and alerted the mother and father.

Stupidity flew into that backyard and into this 23-year-old’s skull filled with vacuum for not understanding the MOST important question: “What is it about this house that I don’t know but should?” In this case, his two brain cells were answerless:

Police said the suspect attempted to follow the children into the residence by pulling on the back door handle and shaking it violently.

The homeowner and father shot the 23 year-old suspect who died from his injuries. The name of the suspect is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Chief Williams said this appears to be a case of a father protecting his family. The suspect was unknown to the family.

Failure to even:

• “Play checkers” – to check his next moves and what the responses would be (“What don’t I know?”)
• ask the question, “what’s the worst thing that could happen to ME?” (“What is it about this house that I don’t know about?”)
• Assuming that Dad (based on decades of commercials, sit-coms, movies, and general Societal put-downs) would be just a wimp and of no account.
• Contemplate Dad would become Godzilla when his children were put at risk.

And was armed.  My hat is off to the Dad in this case. Attack my kids, start to attack my home and hearth? Yeah, full Protector beast mode – and justifiably so.

Even then, the armed dad didn’t run outside to confront the man who accosted his daughter. It sounds like if the 23-year-old had wandered off into the gloaming instead of trying to enter the home he’d be alive today, though he might have been in police custody. Based on the public statements by Williams, this wasn’t a case of vigilantism, but of self-defense. A strange man shows up in the yard where kids are playing, tries to grab one of them, and then when the kids run inside tries to gain entry to the home himself. Only then did the homeowner fire the fatal shot; not out of malice or rage, but to prevent the stranger from coming inside and possibly harming the kids and/or the homeowner himself.

I’m betting it was only seconds from start to finish – worst case, 1-2 minutes. Unless a roaming police car was nearby in this 3,000-person village, too short of a time for a “wait for the police” situation – you know, the kind that Big Daddy Government types wish to turn us into. That only Government should be in charge of our self-defense (yep, another oxymoron there), and we should run and hide.

Dad said SCREW THAT, these are MY kids!

You know, Dad didn’t know if that 23-year-old was armed with a firearm or with just a knife or nothing at all. He simply went, I imagine, “Kids -> protect! I will put myself at risk to protect them because *I* am responsible for them.”. Kudos to him.

All of us that own guns have gone over that kind of situation, and many others, in asking ourselves, “How would I react? Would we hesitate? What is my mental checklist? What is the situation? Do I have the skills? How big is the threat? Is there time for the police – or not?” and many others.

The biggest one? “Although the aim is to neutralize a threat, am I prepared to take a life to protect those that I live and that are around me?“. For many, too difficult a question, and their answer is no”. That’s fine, but don’t then be those that would prevent me from answering yes but then rendering me helpless (as I’m closer to 70 than 60 and I, like all at my age, am seeing the biological clock remove muscle mass and strength typical of this age) with “The Equalizer.”

Yes, it is a difficult decision and fraught with all kinds of ramifications leading up to and afterward. Who knows if that Dad had done this “wargaming” ahead of time or just did the right thing instinctively (and YES, it was the right thing to have done)?

What what you do? I know those of you who own guns for various reasons have most likely thought this through – what were your reasoning and your conclusion?

And for those of you who don’t own firearms AND answered “No” to my question, what would YOU do?  How would you protect yourself and those around you? WOULD you protect yourself?

HT | Bearing Arms

The post Second Amendment Happy Ending – Dad Protects Family on Father’s Day appeared first on Granite Grok.

It’s very hard for anyone who has been serially abused as a child to have the courage to speak up as an adult, even more so when the State of New Hampshire endorsed the abuse and the very people arguing both sides of the YDC horror show may have been involved in the cover-ups — for decades.

We want to thank Claire Best for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
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I have heard reports that victims of abuse at YDC are being censored about what they say because it incriminates New Hampshire’s Law Enforcement agencies as well, and the AG is protecting those. Why should attorneys be silencing them for speaking the real truth to power? Are those attorneys scared that their own lucrative businesses will be blackballed?

It is critical to shed sunlight on what is happening in New Hampshire. It follows a pattern across the US that can no longer be ignored:

Systemic abuse of children under state care: brainwashing, sexual abuse, violence, trafficking by State agency-backed, DHHS, FBI & CIA-backed operations that public officials can no longer hide.

A lot of it can be tied to the CIA program MK Ultra and Maximus Inc.

The rise in child abuse under New Hampshire state care directly correlates to the introduction of Maximus Inc founded by David Mastram, a Vietnam vet.

New Hampshire was an early target for Maximus via Kathleen Kerr from NH DCYF, who now sits on the board of Maximus, which is located at 10 Ferry Street, Concord, New Hampshire, where a number of other dubious agencies related to the CIA, FBI, children, and drugs are located.

As over 1000 complaints against the State of New Hampshire for child abuse at the Sununu Youth Detention Center get underway, we cannot forget that former NH AG Gordon MacDonald blamed “victim negligence” when Russ Rilee filed the class action lawsuit a couple of years ago for David Meehan et al. v New Hampshire.

“Contributory negligence is nothing more than the state’s way of saying that I am to blame for the horrendous torture, rape and abuse I endured at the hands of their systems, institutions and employees,” Meehan, 39, said in a phone interview Saturday. “These people were allowed to do the unthinkable and get paid for it, and now they’re being protected, while me and my family suffer.”

AG Gordon MacDonald was talking about children when he blamed “victim negligence.”

When Anna Carrigan blew the whistle on child abuse under state care, she faced retaliation. She, too, was dismissed by former AG Gordon MacDonald, and then she was dismissed by the New Hampshire Supreme Court. When I spoke up about a “Kids for Cash” type enterprise, I was threatened with a defamation suit by Shaheen & Gordon on behalf of the NHCADSV and Amanda Grady Sexton. I was asked to back down while Amanda Grady Sexton was running for re-election in Concord.

This is what matters to Gordon MacDonald and Amanda Grady Sexton — their own careers above a very serious issue in which they/their agencies/ city councils have been involved and which involves serious child abuse paid for with taxpayer money. They/their agencies/city councils are accountable to the public and to the victims of child abuse, coercion, cover-ups, bullying, lying, stalking, and worse.

I’ve heard attorneys dismiss Gordon MacDonald’s response to the class action YDC suit as just a standard response, but it’s not. It shows you the true value the former AG and current New Hampshire Supreme Court Chief Justice assigns to children — zero for their welfare, a lot for the amount of money that can be made in grants and lawsuits from their abuse.

Gordon MacDonald follows in the footsteps of others in the New Hampshire Supreme Court — especially Chuck Douglas Esq, who allegedly ordered a 13-year-old girl back to the Youth Detention Center after she was impregnated and she refused to name her rapist. I understand the State paid for the abortion. Chuck Douglas is the Chair of the Judicial Selection Committee. Why?

Until AG John Formella came along, every AG and every Governor and the entire New Hampshire court system, and the child welfare system ignored, brushed aside, or hid decades of child abuse under State care.

Nobody was charged for ordering an intern to delete files of child sex abuse during a time when the DCYF knew there was a criminal investigation going on. Why not?

All that happens is that the head of the DCYF steps down, and the head of the DHHS steps down.

No charges, no prosecutions. No accountability. That leaves only one answer: The State Officials in New Hampshire — the very ones who disburse federal grants, who are supposed to look out for the constitutional rights of ALL New Hampshire Citizens, who are supposed to be prosecuting employees of the YDC — endorsed the abuse and endorsed the cover-ups of abuse.

If the AG’s office were to prosecute the head of the DCYF or the head of the DHHS, Youth Prosecutors, Sheriffs, or anyone else who is a decision maker, the discovery would reveal the complicity of the AG, the agencies tied to them, and State Officials.

Actually, these need to get exposed for the future safety of all children.

Two prosecutors for the YDC abuse from the AG’s office have resigned. Why?

Millions of documents have been hidden. This is not by accident. It was coordinated. Budgets were approved, contracts were approved, new hires were approved, and reviews were approved. The State was given documents. The people in charge in the AG’s office, DCYF, DHHS, Department of Corrections, Department of Revenue, Executive Committee, NH Bar, and NH Courts, made choices, and those choices indelibly harmed the lives of children and their families— forever.

A Judge has cited conflicts of interest for the State to be playing both sides.

Rockingham Superior Court Judge Andrew Schulman called out the conflict in the Attorney General’s Office prosecuting the former state employees who allegedly abused children, while at the same time defending the state in the civil lawsuit brought by the victims.

The Sununu Youth Services Center was formerly called the Youth Development Center or YDC where juveniles were incarcerated as delinquents.

“But you seem to be saying it’s fine if the person hasn’t been convicted yet, for the state to go to court, seek bail, put somebody on trial, stand up, tell the jury this guy committed aggravated felonious sexual assault on that day, and the state of New Hampshire can come into a different courtroom and say, oh, no, that never happened. The person we called the victim in the other courtroom is a liar. It just — that seems incongruous to me,” Schulman told lawyers for the state during a recent hearing.

It’s not yet clear if any representative from the Attorney General’s Office or the New Hampshire State Police will sit for depositions.

Michael Garrity, communications director for the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, said the matter is being considered.

“We have received the notices, are reviewing them, and will respond as appropriate,” Garrity said.

The deposition notice allows state employees to skip appearing if the state produces documents lawyers for the victims are seeking.

The NHCADSV puts out a message to solicit victims, but the NHCADSV is responsible for the abuse of teenagers: NH v Griffin Furlotte, in which a teen girl testified that police and public officials lied to her, bullied her, stalked her, and turned her life into a nightmare. Furlotte (who was 17 when arrested) indicated he’d been treated as a “monster” in pretrial detention. The NHCADSV meanwhile gloated and turned up at his hearing, wearing pins in support of “the victims.”

A third alleged victim decided not to continue with the charges. She spoke in support of Furlotte in court Monday.

“For months, I was jerked around by the staff at Pembroke Academy, local police and officials involved with the investigation,” she said. “I was manipulated, lied to, kept in the dark and force fed enumerated versions of events that supposedly happened between griffin and I.”

Furlotte has been incarcerated since his arrest in June. He is expected to remain in jail until June 2020.

“He was a teenager who made some mistakes, but he didn’t do the most serious and graphic things he was accused of in this case,” defense attorney Charles Keefe said.

Furlotte will also have to register as a Tier 1 sex offender.

The county attorney’s office said the victims and Pembroke police gave their consent to the sentencing agreement.

Missing from WMUR’s report is the statement by one of the girls who mentioned that she felt manipulated by the prosecutors. Also missing are Furlotte’s own statements about the treatment he received in pretrial detention as a 17-year-old: “I was verbally abused, assaulted and worse as a direct result of these accusations.”

They were accusations. They had not been proven, and the State of New Hampshire, NHCADSV, Police Department, DA’s office, and Department of Corrections thought it was perfectly fine to lie to Furlotte’s mother, cart him off in front of her and then abuse him in pretrial detention and beat him into submission to plea for his life. It’s NOT OK, and there must be accountability.

Here is the NHCADSV’s fickle message regarding the YDC abuse, having celebrated their victory on Griffin Furlotte — putting their hand out to help because they get an estimated 20% of each civil settlement. Like the AG’s office, they play it both sides for their own advantage.

Anyone who was physically or sexually assaulted or abused at the YDC is encouraged to contact their local crisis center. Crisis center advocates are available across New Hampshire to provide free and confidential support to anyone impacted by sexual violence. Crisis center services are also available to anyone who has experienced or witnessed abuse, or who is looking to find ways to support someone who has. Crisis centers can provide individual support, support groups, assistance reporting abuse, help understanding options and the legal system, court and hospital accompaniment, housing assistance, and referrals for local services including mental health and substance abuse services. To speak with an advocate, please call the statewide domestic violence hotline at 1–866–644–3574 or the statewide sexual assault hotline at 1–800–277–5570 or find the crisis center nearest you at https://www.nhcadsv.org/member-programs.html.

The YDC cases present conflicts of interest for David Vicinanzo/Nixon Peabody as well since he is legal counsel for the NHCADSV (along with Shaheen & Gordon), and it was to the NHCADSV that AG Gordon MacDonald (formerly David Vincenzo’s partner at Nixon Peabody) referred complainants. Douglas & Leonard have a conflict of interests too.

Letters from Nixon Peabody and Riley & Associates have been going out to solicit more plaintiffs against the state and to get more money for victims. Why are they not going after police, corrections departments, juvenile prosecutors, former AGs, Governors, NH Supreme Court Chief Justices, Department of Corrections, DHHS, DCYF, and other Children’s Agencies who were involved in the coercion of minors, bullying, abuse, drugging, cover-ups? The club is why. The club was referred to in the 1990s in the Washington Post. The same club continues 24 years later in 2023. The club with Chuck Douglas, ex-NH Supreme Court Chief Justice, as Chair of the NH Judicial Selection Committee.

There has been widespread dissatisfaction for some time in New Hampshire, they say, with the state’s clubby, closed-door method of handling complaints against judges and other lawyers.

Not a single thing has changed in 24 years. Why not?

.[more] …

HT | Claire Best – Medium.com

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