Contributor John Klar on 2-Sep lamented that the agricultural sector is “in decline” if measured by manpower. As is the manufacturing sector, though in both cases, output is up. America is producing more with less — that is what we do — and, all other things being the same, that is the only way that real pay rises.

Compare India, which maintains a caste of farmers, each working their own one acre of land and, if they’re lucky, having an arrangement to rent someone else’s tractor at key times of the year or have large enough families to rely on manual labor.

“Larger farms on ever-pricier land” implies that ag consolidation is pushing up the price of farmland. Of course, the real culprits are the depreciation of the dollar (which means some pricier things aren’t pricier at all, notably gasoline, still way under 2 silver dimes per gallon) and galloping land-use regulation.

Yes, the manufacturers of industrial farm equipment, including unmanned tractors, make extravagant claims that are sometimes false. But in a voluntary economy, they eventually have to deliver. And every farm still has a human owner who, under capitalism, has an incentive to preserve the value of the land rather than let machinery prevent it from growing future crops.

Mr. Klar’s fundamental complaint is social, that we are drifting away from a “community” that esteems its farmers, “to a time when a man is no longer valued for his labor.” Baloney. Surely there was a craft behind the skilled making of buggy whips, and the watchmaker with his eyepiece was especially prized, but break open a watch or a computer now and gaze at the etches that no human could have drawn. Here too, we are better off.

And will be, provided we resist various people’s laments that strangers don’t seem to share my values, and resist responding with coercion. Surely Mr. Klar does not support the drafting of youngsters to be farmhands — no matter how many lessons in simple living they would learn. But what he does advocate for are “regulatory, tax, and fiscal benefits” (subsidies!) to support the small farm — that is, that we do for the farm what we have already done for the electric vehicle: Coercively make prices wrong, to induce people to make decisions that don’t benefit them, as though they shared our values.

It is nonsense that “dependency on foreign…foods…threatens… international competitiveness.” Access to foreign goods, especially where foreigners can produce more cheaply than Americans (repeal wage-and-hour laws, including the remaining Obama-care mandate!) is how we remain competitive — combining the best values the world can provide into American products. Government impeding commerce is how we ruin this process — even before farmers start spending their time flocking to Concord and DC to beg for favors rather than cultivating their land and studying the market for their products.

And yes, farmland speculator Bill Gates does not care about either farming or our values; he is sneaking around to impose his own values on us. But the billions he made enriching our lives with software that made us more productive, belongs to him, and not only if he spends it in ways that please us.

We will be best off under liberty. Eliminate government obstacles to land ownership. Eliminate obstacles to modernization and consolidation, leaving it to the farmer to decide what suits him. Eliminate “Marketing Orders” and other federal policies that tell the farmer what and how much to grow, so he can spend his time studying the market and deciding how to please the customer. Eliminate the Department of Agriculture, ignoring arguments, including this one, that we first must prove we “care” about the farmer.

* * * * *

Now, nearby, Ian Underwood suggests that we adopt a collective goal for government schools of achieving 95% literacy. He’s absolutely right that clearly stated goals, like JFK’s moon-shot goal, are essential to focus large groups of people. What he omits is that America stopped worrying about a huge waste of money only when JFK was shot to death.

Mr. Underwood describes the government schools as “one of the largest enterprises in New Hampshire” that lacks a single mission statement. But the schools are in fact a gunpoint monopoly (you have alternatives but only if you pay for both, even with Education Savings Accounts), staffed by employees with tenure and a national, Marxist labor union resistant to innovation and willing to cripple students to support a political narrative about a chest cold that didn’t threaten them.

Yes, sure, let’s mandate that the schools teach, and honestly measure how well they do it. The only problem is that we are not the majority at School Town Meeting — and if we briefly find we are, the Moderator recesses the meeting while those who receive, benefit from, or massage the loot get on their phones and bring out reinforcements.

We are faced with competing mandates that schools drive COVID infections to zero, encourage cross-dressing and recruit kids for sodomy, teach a corrosive view of American history when they aren’t advocating that we ignore it altogether, harass and assault prom-goers if they seem to come from conservative families, and throw athletes off sports teams for privately questioning orthodoxy.

Yes, the state constitution says education is “essential to the preservation of a free government”. So are shoes, which enable us to walk to the polls; neither means the government ought to be the sole or dominant provider; nor that, failing this, education or shoes would not exist at all. Part 2, Article 83 of our constitution of 1783, which Mr. Underwood quotes, is full of such platitudes, which have been corrupted by a mischievous judiciary; above all, the one for future legislators “to cherish the interest of…schools” — to have specific values, no matter what their voters prefer — which supposedly dictates equal funding in every town.

But what if we had a Republican legislature? Alas, no. Instead, we now have Donor and Recipient towns which, if they do anything other than goose campaign contributions, direct the money of strangers toward districts that our best measurements show are failing. Rather than cut through centralized mandates, we have simply added healthier mandates. Cursive writing and multiplication tables?

This is the bureaucratic and legal environment we are dealing with, and Mr. Underwood has not shown how his appeal for the schools to do a simple job well will prevail against all the other “stakeholders,” including some who don’t want the job done at all. What we need to do is undercut the bureaucracy, starting by striking at least the first half of 2:83. After 4 years, repair the 2019 vandalism to the SB-2 procedure, so the decision to take power away from Town Meeting no longer needs the approval of Town Meeting. Let us underfund the government schools until dozens of attractive and competitive alternatives emerge. Those that achieve 95% literacy will thrive — if that is what the customers want.

* * * * *

Whether farming or schooling, we don’t especially need a clear call for gunpoint agencies to “act like a business” and deliver against specific values that we are to embrace as a collective. We would do better to rediscover the benefits of individual liberty.

The post Two Grok Articles: Make Mine Liberty (a Commentary/Riposte) appeared first on Granite Grok.

Notch another win for Marxist state-run health care and its inherent depopulation agenda. Doctors in the UK have decided to unplug a 19-year-old girl from medical support equipment even though she is considered legally competent, self-aware, and doesn’t want to die.

Related: Slippery Meet Slope: Woman Asks for Help with Suicidal Ideation, Her ‘Therapist’ Recommends Euthanasia

 

[The woman, known only as] ST is suffering from a rare genetic mitochondrial disease that is progressively degenerative. The case has similarities to that of Charlie Gard, an infant who was removed from life support at the insistence of doctors despite objections from the parents. The Gard family was seeking to take Charlie to the United States for experimental treatment.

ST has been in the ICU for the past year, requiring a ventilator and a feeding tube. She also requires regular dialysis due to chronic kidney damage from her disease. She wants to be allowed to travel to Canada for an experimental treatment but the doctors oppose the plan and say that she is not accepting the realities of her terminal illness. They say that she is “actively dying” without any hope of resuming life outside of intensive care.

 

Her desire to live under any circumstance is unrealistic, so her State-employed doctors, buttressed by state-employed judges, have decided it is in her best interests to die. “Medically” assisted suicide without your consent. Why? “The judge found that she is mentally incapable of making decisions for herself because “she does not believe the information she has been given by her doctors.”

The confluence of the medical misinformation narrative and socialized medicine.

Therapists had deemed her mentally competent and capable of expressing herself. Still, becasue that was based on opinions outside the UK’s approved medical industrial complex narrative, they don’t matter. And neither does she.

The bottom of the slippery slope is closer than you think.

While ST had a rare disorder, we must assume that mentally competent individuals will increasingly be “peacefully” executed by the state, against their will (for their own good), in the name of compassion and the bottom line – be it financial or political – becasue the state can no longer afford to have you breathing.

 

 

Read More Slippery Meet Slope Articles here.

 

The post Slippery Meet Slope: When the State Decides That it is in Your Best Interest to Die appeared first on Granite Grok.

Labor Day is the holiday when we celebrate the American Worker. It is celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the work and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States.

This definition sounds like a union mantra, but today, we celebrate every worker contributing to this great country’s incredible success and growth. We are still a very young nation on the global stage, and looking at how far we have come as a technological and industrial powerhouse is mind-boggling.

This country was fueled by the investment of brilliant entrepreneurs willing to risk their fortunes for progress and the middle class who supplied the workforce to turn the ideas into reality. Though we have celebrated Labor Day for more than 140 years, it was really the post-WWII era and the Greatest Generation that set the pace and standard for how successful the American workforce could be.

The middle class and the American worker have been under incredible pressure in the last few years and suffering greatly under Bidenomics. We are gaslighted by Joe Biden and his administration that the Biden economy is on the rise and that Americans are enjoying prosperity as a result. These people are out of touch with reality and could not be more wrong. They use manipulated statistics to support their narrative, but reality exposes the charade. Slight of hand does not help us stretch the dollars in our wallets. Forget the inflation numbers, and let’s instead talk about affordability.

The push to increase the minimum wage has certainly put more money in the pockets of entry-level employees. What this effort has actually done is force small businesses to scale back their staffing and increase prices. Unfortunately for many of these small businesses, the one-two-punch of COVID and increased labor costs has driven them out of business. Combine these increased costs with a shrunken labor force, and you have a very difficult economy for owners, workers, and consumers.

The White House points to recent inflation numbers in the threes as a triumph of administration policies, but it is a fake statistic and a significant lie. First of all, the inflation number is a comparison of certain costs this year to last year. The 3% they brag about today is higher than the nearly double-digit inflation numbers of 2022, which were increases over 2021, and so on. This compounded effect is what Americans feel when the money earned does not cover the expenses paid. That is reality versus fiction. The government has also pulled energy, housing, and food out of inflation calculations, which is a disservice to Americans. That is the difference between the theory of inflation and the reality of affordability.

Biden says he is the man who will put the middle class in a better place and prepared for the future. With rising costs outpacing wages and the negative impact of the economy and inflation on our 401k accounts, the middle class will not have to worry about raising the retirement age because we will all be working into our eighties. The economy is just another aspect of the job that President Joe Biden has not a clue. If he would like some insight into affordability, he only needs to ask a member of the middle class who has four days of expenses ahead and eight days to go until payday.

The post A Few Post-Labor Day Thoughts … appeared first on Granite Grok.

David Vicinanzo defends government corruption and represents survivors of government corruption. Currently, he is a lead attorney, bringing over 1000 civil suits against the State of New Hampshire and its Youth Detention Center for decades of cover-ups of child abuse that happened under state care.

However, after reading David Vicinanzo’s bio, you have to wonder why he is allowed to bring any cases against the State of New Hampshire since his background is protecting against inquiries of Government corruption — precisely what led to the cover-ups of the child sex abuse at the State’s youth facility.

A trial lawyer, David A. Vicinanzo serves a broad array of clients — from Fortune 100 to pro bono — in New England, New York, the Washington, DC, area, and elsewhere. He practices primarily in the area of government investigations and the representation of organizations and individuals in complex civil and criminal matters, and in representing survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

The first tab next to David Vicinanzo’s name is a link to Nixon Peabody’s expertise in:

“Government Investigations and White Collar Defense”

“Rely on our customized defenses and proficiency in counseling, investigating, and litigating all forms of government inquiry

We know how government cases are made and what it takes to get them resolved. We are best positioned to conduct internal investigations; defend you as a target, subject, or witness in an investigation; and handle crisis situations to protect your brand.

In addition, our compliance measures help prevent and detect violations and minimize the risk of government action.”

Another tab leads to:

“Public Corruption”

“Managing personal, professional, and financial exposure before litigation can be as critical as courtroom defense.

Representing government officials, their staff, and others, we explore all options to avoid indictment on public corruption charges in grand jury proceedings and complex investigations and build effective defense strategies to mitigate immediate and future consequences.

Our team of former prosecutors and criminal defense trial lawyers, many of whom have held supervisory positions in DOJ and various state AG offices, brings in-depth knowledge of the complex federal and state laws underlying public corruption offenses, including those brought under the Hobbs Act, Travel Act, RICO, the program bribery statute, and mail and wire fraud statutes.

As a result, we resolve matters successfully, confidentially, and quickly.”

Another tab leads to:

“Congressional Investigation”

Our team has decades of experience in federal oversight matters and has played key roles in numerous high-profile inquiries — a critical advantage if you are involved in a complex and unfamiliar process.

We guide your engagement with Congressional investigators from the start, all the way through providing statements and testimony.

When David Vicinanzo joined Nixon Peabody, he was chosen by Edward Arsenault (the Diocese’s “compliance” officer) to be the attorney for Father Gordon MacRae to make an appeal. The law firm (in what appears to be at Father Edward Arsenault’s direction) had replaced another one that had long been representing the Diocese. “Sheehan, Phinney, Bass + Green.”

Edward Arsenault (who later pled guilty to defrauding the Diocese) told the incarcerated priest (in a recorded call to the prison in 2002) to forward his files so he could pass them to the attorney. There was a condition, however — that Father Gordon would cease contact with the Wall Street Journal, whose forthcoming exposé by Dorothy Rabinowitz would show that the priest was framed and wrongfully convicted.

David Vicinanzo didn’t contact Father Gordon MacRae even though his partner, Gordon MacDonald, did — to ask him if he would object to the law firm making a settlement with an accuser whom the priest had never met nor heard of, just for the sake of a quick deal. David Vicinanzo was briefly announced (in the early 2000s) to become the Attorney General of New Hampshire, and then suddenly, he was no longer mentioned.

In 2017, David Vicinanzo’s name appeared again — this time as the first candidate suggested to replace Robert Lynn, who was retiring from his position as New Hampshire’s Supreme Court Chief Justice. Then Gordon MacDonald, Vicinanzo’s partner from Nixon Peabody and who was the AG, became the candidate. The New Hampshire Executive Committee rejected MacDonald’s first application even though it was supported by Brian Harlow- one of the victims of the Diocese of Manchester, and Amanda Grady Sexton of the NHCADSV. The second time round after the 2020 general election, Gordon MacDonald was appointed as New Hampshire’s Supreme Court Chief Justice even though he had no experience as a judge, and he had to recuse himself from police disciplinary cases since he had fought to keep the list of corrupt police officers (which included James F McLaughlin — the police officer who framed Father Gordon MacRae) withheld from public access.

In 2022, David Vicinanzo and Russ Rilee wrote a letter to AG John Formella — Gordon MacDonald’s successor — about the State’s cover-ups of child abuse at the State’s Youth Detention Center. What he didn’t mention is that he was well aware of the State’s cover-ups because when he was representing Phillips Exeter Academy, which had been covering up child sex abuse, the DCYF admitted to deleting files relating to this.

When it came to a judge for the Youth Detention Center cases, Vicinanzo was quoted:

“And while Attorney General John Formella and the victims’ attorneys agree that John Broderick was the best choice, the attorney representing most of the victims, David Vicinanzo, says the process as written will fail because it is deeply flawed.”

Someone pass David Vicinanzo a mirror, please…

The AG’s office under Gordon MacDonald rejected the first class action suit against the Youth Detention Center filed by Russ Rilee on behalf of David Meehan and hundreds of others. He referred plaintiffs to the NHCADSV (David Vicinanzo’s client). Then David Vicinanzo, Gordon MacDonald’s ex-partner at Nixon Peabody, and Russ Rilee joined forces. Suddenly, the cases against the YDC were allowed to go forward.

Russ Rilee forwarded a letter I wrote to him — after he filed the original (and rejected) David Meehan class action lawsuit against the YDC — to explain that I believed there was a kids-for-cash scheme going on.

In my letter, I stated that I believe that the NHCADSV, Amanda Grady Sexton, and Gordon MacDonald were involved in it along with others, including the police. My letter was forwarded to the NHCADSV and Amanda Grady Sexton, who then instructed Timothy McLaughlin at Shaheen & Gordon to send me a letter threatening me with a defamation suit if I did not recant my statements. They wanted me to remove the reference to Amanda Grady Sexton and NHCADSV — especially while Amanda Grady Sexton was running for re-election as a Council Member for the City of Concord (and Chair of the Public Safety Committee to whom the police report, have their budgets approved). Timothy McLaughlin also wanted me to stop contacting three-letter national agencies about the corruption — I had filed a complaint with the IRS, FBI, and others.

I believe the reason Shaheen & Gordon wanted me to remove my statements was so that the NHCADSV could work with Russ Rilee & David Vicinanzo on the suits (and get kickbacks from the settlements). David Vicinanzo had acted as special prosecutor for a case between Shaheen & Gordon clients and mortgage specialist Mike Gill. The relationship between Vicinanzo and Shaheen & Gordon is, therefore, tight. The relationship between David Vicinanzo and the three letter agencies I had contacted about my beliefs in a kids-for-cash scheme is also tight.

David Vicinanzo’s expertise is defending against Government and White Collar corruption probes. Shaheen & Gordon have this expertise as well, coincidentally. The NHCADSV calls itself a private non-profit that is funded by over 99% public funds. It advises on Governors’ commissions and is involved in oversight committees. It creates and controls media for the AG, police, prosecutors, DCYF, Governors, and selected “victims” of institutional abuse — institutions paid for or receiving public grant money.

How is David Vicinanzo allowed to represent plaintiffs of YDC abuse with this background? He knew the Government agency DCYF deleted files because he witnessed it for his own client, Phillips Exeter Academy, and he said nothing. AG Joseph Foster declined to prosecute. Police were told not to arrest. There was a media blackout. Governor Maggie Hassan’s husband was the principal of Phillips Exeter Academy, and she was running for a position in the Senate. His client, the NHCADSV (and Shaheen & Gordon’s client), got a contract out of it.

David Vicinanzo’s client, the NHCADSV, also got a contract with St. Paul’s School out of the Grand Jury Criminal Investigation, which they lobbied for to his ex-business partner, Gordon MacDonald, when the latter became AG. MacDonald declined to prosecute St. Paul’s School, the records were kept secret despite the school’s waiver of privacy. David Vicinanzo praised Judge Richard McNamara in his decision to withhold the report from public scrutiny. He had represented members of the school’s faculty/administration who had been named in the investigation. Nobody went to jail. His client, the NHCADSV, got a contract with the school.

The NHCADSV’s Lyn Schollett praised the settlement agreement with St. Paul’s School, calling it a model for other schools. An attorney in Massachusetts said he’d never heard anything like it — allowing the Government in to monitor a school.

The NHCADSV had hired Brian Harlow, a solicited victim of the Diocese of Manchester priest sex abuse, to expand its business in 2012. Harlow endorsed David Vicinanzo’s partner, Gordon MacDonald, to be Supreme Court Chief Justice. So did the NHCADSV, and none of them said anything when Gordon MacDonald dismissed the abuse at the Youth Detention Center as “victim negligence”. None of them criticized the DCYF for deleting files at the YDC or Phillips Exeter Academy.

Who is David Vicinanzo? A Government operative (he was a federal prosecutor) or the person who steps in to smooth over Government agency fraud and keep it all behind closed doors in the secret society club atmosphere that is NH Bar?

The post Who is David Vicinanzo, Lead Attorney for the Victims of Youth Detention Center Abuse? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Popular YouTube First Amendment Auditor, “Press NH Now” aka Marc Manchon has moved to Keene and has already made an impact on the streets of Keene, catching KPD officer Michael O’Donnell with a bait bottle of non-alcoholic beer:

O’Donnell approaches Manchon in a apartment building parking lot and seizes his beer, then after Manchon refuses to show ID, O’Donnell puts him in cuffs. All the while, Manchon is explaining to O’Donnell that he’s going to have to let him go, pointing out O’Donnell should have conducted his investigation of the beer prior to cuffing Manchon. Once he does look at the bottle, O’Donnell looks embarrassed as he uncuffs Manchon and lets him go.

The whole incident reminded me of the Keene City Council Drinking Game over a decade ago, where activists were wrongfully arrested over fake beers. They dropped my charges in that case a year later, just prior to trial, because they knew it was an illegal arrest.

The City Council Drinking Game was a protest of Keene’s “open container” law that we won in two ways – first them dropping the charges. Second, subsequent iterations of the City Council Drinking Game went unmolested, including one that happened at the next Council meeting after the arrests.

Despite having backed down on enforcement within the Council chambers, Press NH Now’s video shows the enforcement of this victimless “crime” of “open container” continues unabated on the streets. Thank you to Press NH Now for his service to police accountability.

Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG) rattled the cages of the Republican Party in DC promising to vote against a Continuing Resolution to fund the government unless the House passes impeachment inquiries against President Joe Biden and to protect President Trump from the Democratic weaponization of the Courts and agencies attacking him. Wow! That got folks’ attention but before you jump up,  clearly understand two things.

First, MTG said this more for effect on the news cycle than any real possibility that a Continuing Resolution would not be passed. Republicans may try to make some modifications to such a bill but how successful they would be remains to be seen.

Second, understand that such a failure to approve such a Resolution would affect the whole government and not just the weaponized FBI, DOJ, and leftist District Attorneys trying to jail Trump. It would effect every federal agency including the Social Security Administration, and Medicare; all of it. I can’t imagine handing Democrats a bigger club to pound Conservative candidates with.

But don’t worry, MTG isn’t stupid she knows there isn’t a snowball’s chance that any such nonvote will happen Party-wide this bombastic declaration. It was aimed for the media’s consumption and to raise awareness of the corruption Democrats have created in our government agencies.

I do fear that it may backfire as the Left will certainly use this as a reflection on all Republicans. Thus, we just need to laugh it off

The post Vote Against the “Continuing Resolution” to Continue Spending Us Into Oblivion appeared first on Granite Grok.

Tax dollars were handed out to states, hospitals, organizations, and the media (primarily as advertising) to promote the COVID vaccines as safe and effective. The Pfeds also bought the silence of the Machine media and most of the medical community.

One of the many stipulations of acceptance (strings) is that the recipient must do or say whatever the Pfeds demand. Compliance and silence, in this case, where wandering off that scripted plantation could require them to return the ill-gotten gains.

Buying hospital and media compliance was easy. They didn’t even put up a fight. But how about the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)? The largest American organization overseeing the health and safety of moms and their unborn babies.

To borrow from Edward Longshanks’ care of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.

 

I gave Mornay double his lands in Scotland, matching estates in England. Lochlan turned for… for much less.

 

Eleven million. They turned for 11 million.

 

Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests reveal that the main professional organization of obstetricians and gynecologists (OB-GYNs) in the United States accepted over $11 million in taxpayer money to promote the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines and claim that they are safe for pregnant women and their unborn children.

 

You can imagine how this went at the office, probably much like the experience shared before the Texas State Senate by Nurse Jennifer Bridges.

“When I worked the COVID unit the whole time until I was fired (she refused to get the mandated vaccine), bad in the beginning, they did use hydroxychloroquine in the hospital for the first couple of months. It worked very well. Patients were seeing improvement. All of a sudden they pull it, and witch it for the very expensive drugs like remdesivr … We would question the doctors. We should ask, well, why did this happen? They all said the same thing. I have no idea this is just the new hospital protocol.”

 

 

One day, out of the blue, the ACOG passed down a fatwa announcing that COVID-19 was safe for pregnant women and their unborn babies. Many, perhaps most members just took it at face value. The ACOG was supposed to ask questions and ensure accurate information to doctors in their organization.

Anyone who questioned it was putting all that easy money in danger.

 

In an interview with COVID-19 vaccine expert and Big Pharma critic Dr. Naomi Wolf, Thorp laid out how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) created what he called a “covenant of death” with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) – the largest professional organization for OB-GYNs in the United States and the rest of the Americas – in exchange for $11 million.

“What’s in this covenant of death? … They took well over $11 million. They signed the covenant with death, and they’re not allowed to deviate one iota from the lethal narrative of HHS. If they do, they will be liable for paying back every single penny, which they’ve already pocketed,” said Thorp.

 

As you’ll know from our reporting and that of other outlets that were not or would not be bought out, post-COVID-19 vaccination miscarriages soared by hundreds of percentage points. It was not only not safe or effective but unsafe for women who were pregnant or planning on getting pregnant.

Pre-born babies that did not die post-jab have or could expect any quality of health and life issues as a result, for a sum that is less than a rounding error on the average Pfederal Budget. And the Pfeds spent a lot of money to buy compliance and silence, but I get the sense that the ACOG “turned for… for much less.”

 

HT | CDC.News

The post The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Sacrificed Moms and Their Babies To the COVID gods for 11 Million Dollars appeared first on Granite Grok.

One of the most insidious aspects of the political left’s strategies is the creation of a new language. In the past year or two, this has been epitomized by the campaign to remove gender-related language indicating the two-sex reality.

The Democrat-led leftist US Congress in Washington has pushed for the removal of the word ‘woman’ from the legal lexicon. Playing along with the verbal nonsense of the culture warriors is usually not worthwhile.

No term is more idiotic to accept than the phrase ‘people of color.’ This little gem spawned in the late 1990s and grew in popularity through the ‘00s, taking firm root by the time the Obama presidency kicked off in early 2009.

The term is essentially dualist, splitting all people by race into two groups— Whites and everyone else. This moronic conceptualization of identity is inherently politicized by wokist nonsense like the theory that all of the planet’s societal ills are caused by Whites. Therefore, everyone else should team up because they are, by default ostracized altogether by the White race.

Nothing could be further from the reality of the civilizations of the planet, and painting in such a broad and childish linguistic brushstroke seriously stigmatizes anyone who plays into this ridiculousness.

To begin with the deconstruction, White, in the usual stupidity of the US political Left, means European Caucasian. While many ethnic groups in the Asian races are actually often whiter than the average Caucasians, Asians are typically lumped in with people of color. Furthermore, Asian societies today are some of the wealthiest on the planet, and Asia-based empires have historically played a very powerful role in world history— consider the Japanese empire in the mid-20th century, the line of Chinese dynasties, and the current strength of Singapore, Beijing, and Tokyo. The term people of color does not take this into account because the Europeans and Americans who have bought into its use have mostly never lived in Asian countries and have no conceptualization of what life is really like there.

Furthermore, the racial stratification of the planet is roughly balanced between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics/Latinos, Semetic/South Asian, and Far East Asians— to paint in broad strokes. Race is a very poor and unsophisticated way to accurately develop an understanding of socioeconomics and politics. That is why “people of color” is a cudgel, but one better totally deconstructed and destroyed. Jews, for example, are Semitic— just like the Emirati and Saudi, yet these three very powerful ethnicities are unaccounted for by people of color.

In the USA, many Blacks and Hispanics have become very successful— millionaires and billionaires. They are well-respected celebrities and leading figures in society. Yet they still pretend that they are oppressed by Whites in some way. These people consider any relationship with Whites where there is a fair exchange of value— goods and services in exchange for money or vice versa— to be a form of White Supremacy. It is total idiocy.

Keep in mind that idiocy is a vulgar expression for ideologue— someone who is dogmatically enslaved to an idea or ideology. These people who use the phrase people of color are obsessed with a conspiracy theory that Whites are oppressing them to the extent that they see racial oppression and race in everything that they do, from using silverware to walking down the street to buying groceries.

A final point— white is a color, just like black, red, yellow, brown, and whatever other color the modern racist would use to describe people by the shade of their skin. One trite way to etymologically consider the word human is by breaking it down to hue, denoting a shade of color and man. That accurately frames the plight of mankind civilizationally in the present age. Some humans are stuck in a paradigm where the most important thing they see is the color of other humans. It’s past time more of us moved past that to a more enlightened existence. Many already have.

Above all, we should be clear— if we are going to uphold a civil society, we cannot let idiots define the rules of the playing field. That is why, under all circumstances, this rude and despicable phrase, ‘people of color,’ should be ignored and soundly rejected.

 

The post A Strong Rejection of the Racebaiters appeared first on Granite Grok.

Our country was created to protect life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This requires boundaries set by law and custom to keep people from interfering with other people’s rights.

When it suits their purposes, Democrat politicians allow these boundaries to be violated with few or no consequences despite the harm to innocent people.   Examples include the very destructive and deadly BLM and Antifa riots and the Democrats’ softness on criminals, which enables them to continue preying on innocent people.

Perhaps worse is how Democrats use their dominance in Education to, in addition to often providing poor educational outcomes, violate the customary boundaries of parental rights, harming children for Democrats’ ideological purposes.

Some teachers do what no decent adult would do without explicit parental approval by presenting graphic sex talk and images to young children (opening some to sexual exploitation).   Other teachers confuse children about gender, suggesting that maybe boys and girls are in the wrong bodies and should get life-changing hormone or surgical treatments.   Some teachers hurt innocent children by teaching that young white children are bad, and young black children can’t succeed, because of past injustices/crimes (e.g., Democrat Jim Crow laws and lynchings) done by and to others.

When parents, and others, rightfully demand that school policies stop these harmful teachings and violations of decency, Democrats, who banned the Bible and Judeo-Christian teaching of love and tolerance, slander them as attacking free speech, book banning, and jeopardizing children’s health.   Biden sent his FBI to investigate and intimidate parents who peacefully protested and petitioned for policies to protect their children.

For their political purposes, Democrats allow the protective boundaries between people to be violated resulting in harm to innocent people and our peaceful society.

The post Our Country Was Created to Protect Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness appeared first on Granite Grok.

Nitz seems to be the ‘Grok Meme-Master” on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but I thought I’d put these out there as a comparison of the Looney Lefties to we normal people.

 

(HT: Powerline)

Okay, let me be the “political” engineer in that the “person” on the left may indeed have “daddy” issues but certainly is talking gibberish.  Guns don’t have Rights, but the people who “keep and bear arms” certainly do.  And that would include Transgenders – they certainly have the Right to exercise their Second Amendment Rights just like anyone else that’s an American citizen. In fact, they have ALL the Rights that the rest of us have.

However, they certainly want to deny us our Right to Free Speech and Free expression of religious values (mandatory “preferred pronouns” to coerce the speech of others, making a hot mess of any English set of paragraphs or news stories written by the weak-kneed scribblers that have given into this “social construct” by the Left (their first mistake, I might add). And, given their Leftward worldview set, I’m happy to state they are most likely wanting to destroy our Second Amendment Rights as well.

As to the guy on the right (who appears in many of these types of Left vs Right memes), he’s technically correct in making sport of the fact that most of the transgenders are cutting off their “barrel and magazines”- just pony up the sawbucks and head for that knife-room. Just provide your wallet that will be hoovered up.  Oh, wait!

They expect us, via insurance and government, to pay for their “barrel cutting”. And for the life-long care that comes with that transitioning. It’s their “Right” to be happy, they say (never understanding that a true Right is something that is innate to each of us; to have their “Right”, they cannot demand anything from the rest of us).

Meanwhile, various levels of government still have a “Daddy, may I” outlook in exercising our 2A Rights – including making a short-barreled rifle or shotgun. Yes, technically, we can, but we get “Government entangled” and have to pay the government in order to use that Right.

 

Next up:

(H/T: Powerline)

 

And this one is just a statement that gender is immutable – that’s MY “social construct” and biologically sound. We DON’T have to accept the Left’s repeated pronouncements (re: think propaganda to move your Overton Window). The pesky thing is that Biology proves that there are only two genders by deliberately marking us as different. Not unequal, just different.

But they really expect us to bow to their demands:

 

 

They are just Selfish and Narcissistic in doing so.

(H/T: Matt)

 

 

 

The post A Couple of Transgender Memes to Get Off My Chest appeared first on Granite Grok.

If you live in America, then surely by now you have heard about its desperate need for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Despite its historical reputation as the global melting pot and the land of equal opportunity, America has been recently outed by the really-super-smart types in colleges and universities as none of the above.

A brief survey of America’s history, which was desperately in need of revision, reveals the cold, harsh, and blindingly white truth that America was built on the backs of the BIPOC (re: Black-Indigo-People-Of-Color) community while the ashen complexioned Euro-centric “founding fathers” looked on with cold indifference, because hey, that cotton wasn’t going to pick itself and they needed some socks for those long cold winters and equally long toenails.

Despite the historical fact that nine out of the thirteen colonies had abolished slavery by the time the constitution was ratified and the founders, though writing openly about their distaste for the trade, some even having let their slaves go free, the systemic racism was already deeply ingrained because melanin guides the hearts of men.  The less you have, the worse you are – this is a fact.  Just ask the scientists like world-renowned race psychologist Dr. Robyn DeAngelo and Professor of Historical Blackness (who is currently totally black and therefore really, really good) Dr. Ibram X. Kendi.

As the vanguard of the new cultural call to “do better” by singling out the most populous and problematic demographic in the country, white people, the good doctors, and their comrades have developed a method of leveling the playing field by leveling the hopes and dreams of whitey so as to elevate the hopes and dreams of non-whities.  As Caitlyn Jenner used to say before, she was a cereal killer, “Don’t forget to eat your whities”!

This begs the question, how do you have diversity, equity, and includity when you are an evil white person?  Is it even possible?

Probably not, but we’ve got to try anyway because, just like climate change, this whiteness is going to kill us all if we don’t start doing something about it.  So take a deep breath, hold in that carbon dioxide, and let’s save the country from white folks!

How to Diversity

Webster’s Unabridgeable Woke Dictionary defines diversity as:

1. The condition of having or including people from different ethnicities and social backgrounds.
2. A variety or assortment.

Thus, when you are trying to create diversity, especially in the workplace, it’s important to look for people of different ethnicities and social backgrounds, just like the slave owners did, but not as racist.  Rather than buy them on the open market, you want to pay them to add their assorted and preferably highly melanized ethnicities to your place of business.  Now, this may sound like judging a book by its cover, but it’s not if you’ve already read the book, right?  Remember, it’s racist to think all black or brown people look the same, but it’s NOT racist to believe they should all think and act the same – it’s diversity.

Also, unlike the slave owners, you’re not there to boss them around but to learn about their lived experiences and honor their epistemological standpoint because this will lead to increased revenue thanks to Kendisian economics.  People aren’t coming to your business for a business experience. They want to hear about your employee’s lived experience.  Diversity = profit$$!

Speaking of economics, you’ll also want to build equity in the workplace.

How to Equity

The Oxford English How-To-Be An- Anti-White-Racist Dictionary defines equity as:

1. Something that is just and fair.
2. Justice achieved not simply according to the strict letter of the law but in accordance with principles of substantial justice and the unique facts of the case.

 

Of course, in order to understand equity, it’s important to understand the meaning of justice, so when we consulted the Grand Master P-Funk and Wagnall’s Social Justice Dictionary, we found:

Justice:

1. the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments

This definition of justice is problematic because it uses words like “impartial” and “merited,” both of which are horribly racist.  Do better P-Funk!

So, we thought it prudent to apply the K.I.S.S. principle and change a couple words:

 

1. the maintenance or administration of equity especially by the use of partial adjustment of the claims made by those who have become woke whereby we assign present discrimination as merited punishment for past discrimination by non-woke, in particular, white people

 

Keep it simple simpletons!

Thus, the goal of equity is to level the playing field so everyone is equal because to truly rid ourselves of whiteness, we need everyone to be equal with white people, then they’ll stop being so, so….white! Like the old Chinese proverb says, two wrongs don’t make it white.

How To Includity

Of course, we don’t want anybody to miss out on these nouveau critical changes, which is why we wrap this social justice trifecta up in a big bow of inclusion.  As one of the great philosophers of our time, Kamala Harris, says, “Inclusion is where everyone who was excluded is no longer excluded… because we include the excluded… so now they’re included.  This is inclusion.” OMG, she should change her name to Vice President Crystal Clear, am I right?

Of course, inclusion doesn’t mean:

White people, or Trump supporters, or Christians, or cis-gendered, or heteros, or nationalists, or Tucker Carlson fans, or parents, or patriots, or Republicans, or libertarians, or the patriarchy, or orthodox Jews, or orthodox Catholics, or biologists, or female swimmers, or homophobes, or transphobes, or the unvaccinated, or truckers, or climate deniers, or Nazis, or anti-Ukranians.  Essentially 70% of Americans are not going to be included in inclusion because they’re either white or they act white, and that’s not how inclusion works.  Get it?

Just think of diversity, equity, and inclusion like you do, like a packet of Skittles, tons of color except no white ones. Better yet, a rainbow – all of the colors are represented, and they go together as one over-arching symbol bending ever downward, eternally, without a hint of whiteness.

If that’s not clear enough, then go read the 42nd chapter of Moby Dick, and maybe ol’ Herman “The Sperm Whale” Melville can reel it in for you.

 

The post Banana’s Guide To: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion appeared first on Granite Grok.

A California School District has had to cough up $100,000.00 to settle a lawsuit in which it is alleged to have coached an 11-year-old girl to socially transition to a male gender.

 

According to the Center for American Liberty and allegations in the lawsuit, Alicia [Konan] was recruited to join an “Equality Club,” where she was taught about bisexuality, transgender identities, and other LGBT concepts when she was in the sixth grade.

Alicia began to use a male name and pronouns and wore a chest binder under boy’s clothes.

School staff finally called a meeting the last day before winter break during Alicia’s seventh grade year and demanded that Ms. Konen refer to her daughter by a male name and male pronouns, she said.

 

Teachers and counselors first recruited and then indoctrinated Alicia, suggesting things like, “I was told by the counselor—it was brought up that I was sad because I wasn’t who I was supposed to be, and that’s kind of where it all started,” she said.

At the time, her mom was confused and trying to be supportive until …

 

Jessica Konen, the child’s mother, came forward after a leaked audio recording revealed the two teachers telling other educators about how they secretly recruited students into the school’s LGBT club at a California Teachers Association weekend conference in Palm Springs in October 2021.

 

Her daughter was having a typical tween life experience, but public “educators”  instead of helping her through it – used her normal emotional roller-coaster as an excuse to recruit her permanently into their gender cult.

I’ve posited in the past (a reader found the link) that this collusion reeks not just of a religious cult but one with RICO-like implications. The California Teachers Association, state and local unions, and even politicians and special interests are moving and sharing resources to irreversibly alter the lives of other people’s children.

The Konen’s win is a victory, but a small one. Alicia is happily a 16-year-old girl, and she and her mother have worked through it. And the money is nice, but it’s not enough. While the teachers were fired, the infrastructure behind what they did is unchanged, nor is the cultural price behind it.

Until this is viewed as an illegal criminal enterprise and people are brought up on conspiracy charges to permanently harm children, there is no incentive for the Pharisees of the gender cult to change course.

These stories will continue to make the news, and most of them will not have happy endings.

 

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You do NOT need to be a “scientist” … an increasingly meaningless term … to know that Fauci is full of sh*t. His latest? Masks work on an “individual basis” but not on a group basis. HUH?

A group of people is simply a number of individuals. So if masks work … as Fauci claims … on an “individual basis,” they would necessarily also work on a group basis.

Fauci and his ilk continue to LIE because they have never been held accountable for their past lies. Why, for example, is “Dr.” Chan still the “State Epidemiologist” when he spewed the same LIES about masks, etc. as Team Fauci?

If you want a more technical takedown of Fauci:

Today on CNN, after devastating study citations from the interviewer showing that masks don't work, Fauci responded: "but masks work on an individual level".

But this is nonsense. Here's why.

To do science on masks, you have a masked group and an unmasked group. You compare the… pic.twitter.com/MEsJ1RrNdJ

— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) September 3, 2023

The post More LIES From Fauci Because He (And Others) Have Never Been Held Accountable For Their Past Lies appeared first on Granite Grok.

New Hampshire is being blanketed in campaign ads. The current beatings come courtesy of Nikki Haley and Chris Christie. I liked Haley as a UN Ambassador, but she bailed on her boss when the rubber hit the road. Christie, on the other hand?

His latest ad focuses on how Trump’s presidency was centered on distractions and disruption. That’s not a lie. But Christie’s current ad ignores how all those distractions and disruptions resulted from Democrats and Republicans like Christie trying to prevent Trump’s electoral mandate from succeeding.

It was a 24/7/365 election denying doing business as collusion to unseat a duly elected President of the United States. From election night to his final day in office, the Uniparty threw mud, rocks, whatever it could imagine, which Trump batted back at them at every opportunity. He defended himself, his supporters, and America from these attacks.

Are we to assume Chris Christie would not? That he would sit on his hands (sorry, that’s an image that will be hard to forget) while the lies, conspiracy, and treason upon which most of that was founded are peddled as truth and investigated by the police state at great taxpayer expense. Trump’s responses were deliberate acts of self-defense to the distractions that Chrsite claims plagued Trump’s presidency.

Chris Christie wouldn’t just take it, and the same ad tells us so. His claim to fame was going toe-to-toe with teachers’ unions, which was never a distraction, not that his tenure lacked them. Two words. Bridge Gate.

 

For four days, school buses, ambulances, and infuriated motorists alike were trapped in gridlock for hours. Paramedics responding to 911 calls even had to abandon their emergency vehicles and walk.

Ultimately the public would learn that officers in the administration of Christie, the Republican governor, ordered the lane closure to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for refusing to endorse Christie’s re-election bid.

 

Christie, of course, claims he knew nothing about it, and in the end, the aides he “fired” were exonerated of fraud and corruption charges. Feel free to take any of that whichever way you like, but it was a distraction and not the only one. From a no-bid post-hurricane Sandy Contract to other less-than-stellar moments, he has more than a few distractions like most politicians at his level. The difference is in how much they mattered to the uniparty of which Christie is a card-carrying member.

Trump doesn’t have to be your guy, but Christie’s Campaign is pulling a fast one when it says the things the Uniparty did to a sitting President are that President’s fault. They could have let the people have their mandate and let the man work, and absent the non-stop harassment, it could have been a very productive and peaceful four years instead of a mostly productive four years. But that would not have addressed the real problem.

Trump could expose the dirty secrets of uniparty power and dismantle the foundation upon which it stood.

Donald Trump may never get a second bite at that rotten apple. Odds are no Republican will, even if they win the nomination. But Chris Christie will never be the answer to that problem, and outside New Hampshire, his polling is crap. But I’m sure he’ll spend his days much like Governor Sununu, another uniparty stooge, creating distractions and then blaming Donald Trump for them.

 

The post Something Misleading This Way Comes … appeared first on Granite Grok.

Ever since Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his groundbreaking “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963, the Deep State has been hard at work turning King’s dream into a living nightmare.

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” — President Harry S. Truman

The end result of the government’s efforts over the past 60 years is a country where nothing ever really changes, and everyone lives in fear.

Race wars are still being stoked by both the Right and the Left; the military-industrial complex is still waging profit-driven wars at taxpayer expense; the oligarchy is still calling the shots in the seats of government power; and the government is still weaponizing surveillance in order to muzzle anti-government sentiment, harass activists, and terrorize Americans into compliance.

This last point is particularly disturbing.

Starting in the 1950s, the government relied on COINTELPRO, its domestic intelligence program, to neutralize domestic political dissidents. Those targeted by the FBI under COINTELPRO for its intimidation, surveillance and smear campaigns included: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, the Black Panther Party, John Lennon, Billie Holiday, Emma Goldman, Aretha Franklin, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, Felix Frankfurter, and hundreds more.

In more recent decades, the powers-that-be have expanded their reach to target anyone who opposes the police state, regardless of their political leanings.

Advances in technology have enabled the government to deploy a veritable arsenal of surveillance weapons in order to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” perceived threats to the government’s power.

Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. License plate readers. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security cameras. Geofencing and geotracking. FitBits. Alexa. Internet-connected devices. Geofencing dragnets. Fusion centers. Smart devices. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Contact tracing apps.

What these add up to is a world in which, on any given day, the average person is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

Consider just a small sampling of the ways in which the government is weaponizing its 360 degree surveillance technologies to flag you as a threat to national security, whether or not you’ve done anything wrong.

Flagging you as a danger based on your feelings. Customs and Border Protection is reportedly using an artificial intelligence surveillance program that can detect “sentiment and emotion” in social media posts in order to identify travelers who may be “a threat to public safety, national security, or lawful trade and travel.”

Flagging you as a danger based on your phone and movements. Cell phones have become de facto snitches, offering up a steady stream of digital location data on users’ movements and travels. For instance, the FBI was able to use geofence data to identify more than 5,000 mobile devices (and their owners) in a 4-acre area around the Capitol on January 6. This latest surveillance tactic could land you in jail for being in the “wrong place and time.” Police are also using cell-site simulators to carry out mass surveillance of protests without the need for a warrant. Moreover, federal agents can now employ a number of hacking methods in order to gain access to your computer activities and “see” whatever you’re seeing on your monitor. Malicious hacking software can also be used to remotely activate cameras and microphones, offering another means of glimpsing into the personal business of a target.

Flagging you as a danger based on your DNA. DNA technology in the hands of government officials completes our transition to a Surveillance State. If you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you’ve already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database—albeit it may be a file without a name. By accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc. After all, a DNA print reveals everything about “who we are, where we come from, and who we will be.” It can also be used to predict the physical appearance of potential suspects. It’s only a matter of time before the police state’s pursuit of criminals expands into genetic profiling and a preemptive hunt for criminals of the future.

Flagging you as a danger based on your face. Facial recognition software aims to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. Coupled with surveillance cameras that blanket the country, facial recognition technology allows the government and its corporate partners to identify and track someone’s movements in real-time. One particularly controversial software program created by Clearview AI has been used by police, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to collect photos on social media sites for inclusion in a massive facial recognition database. Similarly, biometric software, which relies on one’s unique identifiers (fingerprints, irises, voice prints), is becoming the standard for navigating security lines, as well as bypassing digital locks and gaining access to phones, computers, office buildings, etc. In fact, greater numbers of travelers are opting into programs that rely on their biometrics in order to avoid long waits at airport security. Scientists are also developing lasers that can identify and surveil individuals based on their heartbeats, scent and microbiome.

Flagging you as a danger based on your behavior. Rapid advances in behavioral surveillance are not only making it possible for individuals to be monitored and tracked based on their patterns of movement or behavior, including gait recognition (the way one walks), but have given rise to whole industries that revolve around predicting one’s behavior based on data and surveillance patterns and are also shaping the behaviors of whole populations. One smart “anti-riot” surveillance system purports to predict mass riots and unauthorized public events by using artificial intelligence to analyze social media, news sources, surveillance video feeds and public transportation data.

Flagging you as a danger based on your spending and consumer activities. With every smartphone we buy, every GPS device we install, every Twitter, Facebook, and Google account we open, every frequent buyer card we use for purchases—whether at the grocer’s, the yogurt shop, the airlines or the department store—and every credit and debit card we use to pay for our transactions, we’re helping Corporate America build a dossier for its government counterparts on who we know, what we think, how we spend our money, and how we spend our time. Consumer surveillance, by which your activities and data in the physical and online realms are tracked and shared with advertisers, has become a $300 billion industry that routinely harvests your data for profit. Corporations such as Target have not only been tracking and assessing the behavior of their customers, particularly their purchasing patterns, for years, but the retailer has also funded major surveillance in cities across the country and developed behavioral surveillance algorithms that can determine whether someone’s mannerisms might fit the profile of a thief.

Flagging you as a danger based on your public activities. Private corporations in conjunction with police agencies throughout the country have created a web of surveillance that encompasses all major cities in order to monitor large groups of people seamlessly, as in the case of protests and rallies. They are also engaging in extensive online surveillance, looking for any hints of “large public events, social unrest, gang communications, and criminally predicated individuals.” Defense contractors have been at the forefront of this lucrative market. Fusion centers, $330 million-a-year, information-sharing hubs for federal, state and law enforcement agencies, monitor and report such “suspicious” behavior as people buying pallets of bottled water, photographing government buildings, and applying for a pilot’s license as “suspicious activity.”

Flagging you as a danger based on your social media activities. Every move you make, especially on social media, is monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line. As The Intercept reported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies are increasingly investing in and relying on corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior. This obsession with social media as a form of surveillance will have some frightening consequences in coming years. As Helen A.S. Popkin, writing for NBC News, observed, “We may very well face a future where algorithms bust people en masse for referencing illegal ‘Game of Thrones’ downloads… the new software has the potential to roll, Terminator-style, targeting every social media user with a shameful confession or questionable sense of humor.”

Flagging you as a danger based on your social network. Not content to merely spy on individuals through their online activity, government agencies are now using surveillance technology to track one’s social network, the people you might connect with by phone, text message, email or through social message, in order to ferret out possible criminals. An FBI document obtained by Rolling Stone speaks to the ease with which agents are able to access address book data from Facebook’s WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage services from the accounts of targeted individuals and individuals not under investigation who might have a targeted individual within their network. What this creates is a “guilt by association” society in which we are all as guilty as the most culpable person in our address book.

Flagging you as a danger based on your car. License plate readers are mass surveillance tools that can photograph over 1,800 license tag numbers per minute, take a picture of every passing license tag number and store the tag number and the date, time, and location of the picture in a searchable database, then share the data with law enforcement, fusion centers and private companies to track the movements of persons in their cars. With tens of thousands of these license plate readers now in operation throughout the country, affixed to overpasses, cop cars and throughout business sectors and residential neighborhoods, it allows police to track vehicles and run the plates through law enforcement databases for abducted children, stolen cars, missing people and wanted fugitives. Of course, the technology is not infallible: there have been numerous incidents in which police have mistakenly relied on license plate data to capture out suspects only to end up detaining innocent people at gunpoint.

Flagging you as a danger based on your political views. The Church Committee, the Senate task force charged with investigating COINTELPRO abuses in 1975, concluded that the government had carried out “secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power.” The report continued: “Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles… Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials.” Nothing has changed since then.

Flagging you as a danger based on your correspondence. Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts. Headed up by the Postal Service’s law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with “inflammatory” posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid “potentially volatile situations.”

Now the government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from these mass spying programs as long as we’ve done nothing wrong.

Don’t believe it.

As Matthew Feeney warns in the New York Times, “In the past, Communists, civil rights leaders, feminists, Quakers, folk singers, war protesters and others have been on the receiving end of law enforcement surveillance. No one knows who the next target will be.”

The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding Americans on a staggering scale.

Moreover, there is a repressive, suppressive effect to surveillance that not only acts as a potentially small deterrent on crime but serves to monitor and chill lawful First Amendment activity, and that is the whole point.

Weaponized surveillance is re-engineering a society structured around the aesthetic of fear.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the police state wants us silent, servile and compliant.

They definitely do not want us to engage in First Amendment activities that challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

And they certainly do not want us to remember that we have rights, let alone attempting to exercise those rights peaceably and lawfully, whether it’s protesting police brutality and racism, challenging COVID-19 mandates, questioning election outcomes, or listening to alternate viewpoints—even conspiratorial ones—in order to form our own opinions about the true nature of government.

 

John & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute

 

The post We the Targeted: How the Government Weaponizes Surveillance to Silence Its Critics appeared first on Granite Grok.

So the GOP field for Governor in 2024 is … with the announcement by Frank Edelblut that he will NOT run … exclusively RINO. If you want to pretend that Kelly Ayotte and Chucky Morse are conservatives, have at it. I’m not pretending.

Having prayed and counseled with many over this decision, I have decided that I will not be running in this cycle. Rather, I will continue to serve out my term as the commissioner of education.

While I believe Edelblut’s stated reasons for not running … primarily the opportunity to spend more time with his wife … his decision nonetheless reflects the reality that NO conservative will ever win statewide office in New Hampshire during most of our lifetimes. Indeed, after 2022 it is probably safe to say that NO conservative will ever win even Congressional District One … the supposedly conservative district … during most of our lifetimes.

Edelblut stood no chance. He would have gone down to a crushing defeat. The battle for New Hampshire has been lost. Any hope for a GOP resurgence was destroyed by “Republican” Governor Chris Sun-King Sununu, who passes on a MUCH bluer State than the one that existed when he was first elected.

Indeed, “NHGOP leaders,” such as the Sun-King, are at this very moment pushing policies that will help the Communists Democrats maintain and strengthen their political control of this State. I am referring, of course, to “affordable housing” … that lovely euphemism for apartment complexes. These GOP “leaders” see New Hampshire as an economy and their mission as providing businesses with labor. They’ve made their money; built their mansions and dachas; and won’t be affected in the least by turning Southern New Hampshire into an unbroken series of apartment complexes.

If living in a Red State is important to you … move to one. The best that you will ever be able to do for the foreseeable future if you insist on remaining in New Hampshire is … possibly … to create some islands of red in a sea of blue. That is, move to a red town and make it redder and take over local politics.

And if despite what I’ve written you still want “the plan” for turning Dartmouth and Exeter and Keene red, see a political alchemist.

The post Edelblut’s Decision Not To Run For Governor Reflects The Reality Of Blue Hampshire appeared first on Granite Grok.

Fixing America Starts With Education. Most Americans are not taught what’s in the Constitution, nor are they aware of its limitations on government that have helped make America great.

The John Birch Society has a new series of DVDs for you to learn how the Constitution was intended to secure rights, not to enable the federal government to infringe on those rights. You’re invited to attend a six-part workshop based on these DVDs that will provide you with a practical, common sense understanding of how the Constitution was intended to limit the government, not the citizens. This understanding will equip you to work with others to solve many of the problems Americans face every day that were created by Big Government.

Franklin was asked “Sir, what have you given us” at the end of the Convention in 1787.

Franklin said a “Republic if you can keep it”! The Constitution is the solution and Education is the key! The six part series will be held at the Marion Gerrish Community Center, 39 W Broadway Derry, NH each Wednesday from 9/6/2023 to 9/27/2023 from 6:00pm to 9:00pm.

Doors open at 5:30pm

More info: Call Matthew Rhodes at 207-391-0970

Yours for America’s Future,

The post The Constitution Is the Solution! appeared first on Granite Grok.

A bear perched precariously on a bit of ice snapped climate Cult twigs that sent us spiraling into a period of OMG, Ice-Free Summers, the Polar Bears will go extinct – and YOU DID THIS. Did you do it in the Early Holocene for 1600 consecutive years, 11 700 years ago?

Not likely. So what gives? There were polar bears but no ice during the summer. If that’s true, then the decades of endangered polar bear rhetoric is a bunch of bear hookey. Not that we were never suspicious, everywhere, all the time.  The Cult is good at only one thing. Making predictions that don’t come true. And while we enjoy exposing these systemic failures, we also like to buttress our positions with science.

 

New evidence indicates that Arctic areas with the thickest ice today probably melted out every year during the summer for about 1,600 years during the early Holocene (ca. 11.3-9.7k years ago), making the Arctic virtually ice-free.

 

 

The evidence comes from the linked report, “Seasonal sea-ice in the Arctic’s last ice area during the Early Holocene.”

 

Modeling studies suggest a transition from perennial to seasonal sea ice during the Early Holocene, a period of elevated global temperatures around 10,000 years ago. Here we show marine proxy evidence for the disappearance of perennial sea-ice in the southern Lincoln Sea during the Early Holocene, which suggests a widespread transition to seasonal sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean. Seasonal sea-ice conditions were tightly coupled to regional atmospheric temperatures.

 

It is worth noting that the linked research is very climate cult-friendly, with numerous references to anthropogenic warming. Under no circumstance was it intended to debunk the polar bear myth, but it must. The special with which we are familiar evolved about 10,000 years before the early Holocene.

 

Evidence from several sources indicates that the Eemian produced conditions even warmer than documented during the early Holocene and they lasted longer, as explained in the excellent summary by Leonid Polyak and colleagues (2010). During the early portion of the Eemian at least (ca. 130-120k years ago), summer temperatures were about 5–8 degrees Celsius warmer than today and the Arctic was virtually ice-free. At about 120k years ago, there is evidence from Finland and the Norwegian Sea off Norway that a cooling event lasting 500-1,000 years broke the long stretch of warmth (Helmens et al. 2015).

Not only did polar bear survive these two extended periods when ice-free summers prevailed, but the Eemian warm summers came only about 10,000 years after the bears arose as a unique species. This makes polar bear survival through the Eemian even more impressive than most scientists acknowledge. The polar bears’ ability to store excess energy as fat in the spring and metabolize it later when needed must have been fine-tuned by natural selection during this challlenging time (Crockford 2023).

 

Pro-Global-Warming-Rhetoric ice-melt “science” just disproved any threat declining ice represents to polar bears.

Nice work, “science.”

 

The post New Research Meant to Fearmonger Arctic Ice Melt Accidentally Disproves Threat to Polar Bears appeared first on Granite Grok.

Well, after almost four months into this “gig”, I finally saw the breadcrumbs I expected to see.  Read on!

Yes, DCYF is still taking up the bulk of my time as I’m still having to “bird dog” all kinds of details for them (“the Division”) and the last of the School District in getting the Granddaughter registered for school.

SideNote: Yes, I read the District policies a LOT – and I would encourage ALL concerned parents to do the same thing.  For my situation right now, to that latter point I remembered that SAU73 (Gilford/Gilmanton) has a policy, JFABF, that details how the District is supposed to deal with DCYF entangled children (“EDUCATION OF CHILDREN IN FOSTER CARE”). It describes that the District has, in that Policy, a part about “District Point of Contact with Child Welfare Agencies.”  Ergo, DCYF:

The Superintendent shall designate a staff member to serve as the District’s point of contact (the “Foster Care POC”) between the New Hampshire Division of Children, Youth and Families (“DCYF”), NHDOE, other districts, and other child welfare agencies. The main duty of the Foster Care POC is to facilitate the prompt and appropriate placement, transfer, and enrollment of students in foster care…

So instead of beating my head against the steel plate for the last couple of items, wasting gobs of time, I informed the FC POC designee that I was turning over all of the last remaining items and stepping out of the process:

If more information is needed by the District, given that you are the District’s DCYF POC per Policy JFABF, please contact <name redacted> at DCYF to finish the registration process.  I have no idea who to believe, <conflicting messages from an admin assistant or their information system). I have no idea what information is lacking.

Have at it.

So, back to DCYF taking up all my time which translates as taking “DCYF class” (online). TMEW and I have decided that since we are caring for a special needs child, we might as well “learn up” about some of her conditions (and some on the Grandson since he has his own issues, too), I’d take the suite of classes that certify us at a higher level than “general Foster Parents). And yes, showing out self-interest (which the Left continuously tries to slander as “SELFISH” when someone engages in Capitalism (which is what we are doing relative to DCYF). And for us, it means a higher level of compensation as our “skill set” has improved by said class (even as we have been raising special needs kids for 30-odd years (our two, the Grandson, and now the Granddaughter – we’ve had experience aplenty already).

So where is the post going (as Steve, Managing Editor, is already muttering (heh!)?  About the first class in the “Specialized” series. Yes, I passed and sent the results back to my “DCYF handlers” (nice women but sometimes don’t know quite what to make of me completely – yet).

Sidenote: At least they do one thing right. The material isn’t all that difficult in and of itself but this class was a lot about learning about Government programs to help Foster Parents – who, what, and where. However, a passing grade is 80% or better – this one had three short quizzes. I admit I had to go back through the material (“ok, I read that, but WHICH is the exact name in this pulldown list of that entity??”) as there seems to be a fair amount of overlap of those offering help.

Observation #1:

A few years ago, it seemed that the field of Social Work had this “thing” that every person in that field had to have a “Disposition” – a point of view that became MANDATORY for all students pursuing that field as a vocation. And students were being summarily ejected from their graduate classes if they espoused wrongthink:

It even intends to redesign its admissions process so that it screens out people with the wrong beliefs and values-those who it judges will not be able to be brought around to the correct beliefs and values of “cultural competence” even after remedial training.
the “Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group” has proposed mandating certain beliefs and values—”dispositions“—for future teachers.

Here’s a couple examples from 2007 and 2009. Social Justice was just getting to be the rampaging bull in their china shop. And it migrated to Schools of Education.  And the classes I’m taking are from CWEP (Child Welfare Education Partnership, an offshoot of UNH – College of Professional Studies (DCYF outsources the classes I have to take). And

It seems, however, that Social Justice has morphed into Critical Race Theory and Gender Identity. Well, no, it hasn’t – just like Democrats and “Liberals” and “Progressives”, they’ve just changed the name and slightly changed to presentation of the underlying political philosophy to make the rest of us guilty in one way or another (Oppressors, Oppressed).  And one way to show that one isn’t one of the Oppressors is by use of your Gender Identity “pronouns”.

My instructor, in looking at all the people shown in my current class in Canvas (the Learning Management System used by UNH and the NH Community Colleges), was the only one that had this:

<Name Redacted> (She/her/hers)

Oh boy, there’s a flashing light, by gosh! Oh wait!

Observation #2:

After taking the End-Of-Course Knowledge Quiz, I was presented with a survey and I decided to ask a question just to see what the answer (reaction?) would be. Using Canvas’s internal email, I sent this to the instructor early on Saturday morning when I “took” this self-based class (emphasis added now – not in the actual email):

Good morning,

An inquiry, if I might.

Perhaps I am reading this wrong and perhaps it is because I am old school, but it seems that even though the Pre-Course Knowledge Check (that I ASSUME makes the assumption that I know nothing about the class content at all) is marked as non-graded, it does seem to be calculated as part of my final grade thus far (please see attachment).

So my questions are:

– Is it truly part of the final grade for this class?
– If it is, is it really “equitable” (as the end-of-class survey question noted, which also included “inclusive” and “respectful” to do include “non-graded assignments” into a final grade?

And the attachment:

So yeah, a bit of beef with the grading system in that it seems that one is supposed to know more than “diddly” to get a decent score. And I’m not clear on how the match is calculated – which of the “events” are used/counted and which aren’t. And shouldn’t “Non-graded” actually mean non-graded???

And 161.01/200 is 80.9%, if you were wondering.

As of Sunday night as I write this, I haven’t had a response thrown my way. It may be interesting on Tuesday morning to find out how the math is calculated out.

It will ALSO (the main reason for this post) be interesting to see how “equitable”, “inclusive”,  and “respectful” pan out in all this.

Frankly, I think “respectful” covers the whole thing and the other two modifiers are irrelevant?

The post The Social Worker-Industrial Complex Has Gone WELL Beyond “Dispositions” appeared first on Granite Grok.

In April of 2020, top coronavirus fearmongers, including Anthony Fauci and his coconspirators, turned on a dime from advising against wearing masks to protect against coronavirus to recommending that everyone wear masks for that purpose.

This major change in advice occurred despite the fact that there was no clear evidence that masks provided any such protection while there were known health problems caused by mask-wearing.

Early on, the “wear a mask” chorus hectored people to wear only cloth masks that were argued to provide protection. But, with time, Fauci and company increasingly encouraged people to wear N95 masks that they started arguing are more protective.

The mask-pushing was all shady snake oil salesmanship.

More and more dangers of masks, including N95 masks, are becoming widely understood. As with many other aspects of the coronavirus crackdown — including coronavirus “vaccine” shots promotion and mandates, suppression of early treatment, copious use of ventilators and remdesivir, and the isolation of people in hospitals and nursing homes from family and friends who could provide medical and emotional support — N95 mask wearing is increasingly recognized as a dangerous sham.

Among the expanding evidence of the danger of mask-wearing are medical study results released this year regarding how people who wear N95 masks are exposed to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals. A Sunday Daily Mail article by Emily Joshu discusses this and other medical studies indicating the dangers of wearing masks. Her article begins with the following:

The surgical N95 mask has been held up as the gold standard when it comes to protecting against Covid.

But a study quietly re-shared by the National Institutes of Health in spring suggests the tight-fitting mask may expose users to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals.

Researchers from Jeonbuk National University in South Korea looked at two types of disposable medical-grade masks, as well as several reusable cotton masks.

The study found that the chemicals released by these masks had eight times the recommended safety limit of toxic volatile organic compounds (TVOCs).

Inhaling TVOCs has been linked to health issues like headaches and nausea, while prolonged and repeated has been linked to organ damage and even cancer.

Yes, guard against inhaling TVOCs from N95 masks. Also, to protect your health and freedom, it is important to guard more broadly against inhaling the proclamations of “public health” charlatans like Fauci.

 

Adam Dick | The Ron Paul Institute

Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

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