Sunday • November 24 • 2024
Vol.XVI • No.XLVII
Manchester, N.H.
So how do Granite Staters really feel about the housing shortage? According to a recent Saint Anselm College poll, two-thirds of New Hampshire voters agree that their community needs more affordable housing.
We want to thank Alexa Carpenter for this Op-Ed. Please submit yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
Considering NH is short of 20,000 units needed to balance the market, this finding should not come as a shock.
However, what is shocking is how much the other third limits development across the state. That’s right, often it’s the minority of opponents who sway a town’s decisions over development, no matter how much broader support exists. Why? Because decisions are made by those who show up, and typically, those who show up for project approvals are homeowners who refuse changes to their neighborhood’s status quo. In fact, 85% of development meeting attendees are opponents, and this leaves a small opportunity for support to shine through, despite its existence. The problem with this is how much it skews the picture of community perception toward development. Despite its distortion, this picture influences the outcome of housing projects all the same.
New research from Katherine Einstein, a Boston University political science professor, reinforces these findings. According to Einstein, a distorted picture of public consensus is a staple of the housing approvals process in New England. And recognizing the sway that homeowners have over the development process, Einstein set out to identify the demographics of those who typically attend project meetings, specifically where affordable or multifamily housing is proposed. What she found was that those “who show up are privileged, whiter, older, homeowners, who also overwhelmingly opposed development, with only 15% who showed support.” And this crowd has no problem influencing decisions that impact the wider community.
So what’s the end result of all of this? Land use boards often yield to the wishes of the outspoken, meaning development proposals (outside the scope of single-family homes) are squashed and the inventory remains stagnant. Without a diverse housing stock, communities have fewer resources to support residents of diverse economic backgrounds and fewer resources to support adults as they age.
Although development-dissenters may think they’re “preserving” their neighborhoods with single-family-only housing, we are seeing the opposite effect take place. Ultimately, communities suffer without adequate resources to support all classes of people. Without enough multifamily homes, condos, or workforce housing, communities lose their young people, businesses lose their workers, and the remaining homeowners sacrifice what they intended to protect in the first place: community vitality and property values, compromised by lost workers and closing businesses. It’s time to wake up and recognize that our resistance toward diverse forms of housing is not informed by fact, but by fear. And the consequences of this fear spare no one—homeowner or not.
There will be a response to this submission. -Skip
The post NH’s Housing Crisis: a Product of Vocal NIMBYs and a Silent Majority appeared first on Granite Grok.
Over the weekend, Southern California got something they’ve not seen in decades. San Diego issued it’s first ever blizzard waring. Yes, Snow you can shovel.
Residents across the Southland woke up to an icy wonderland Sunday morning, the result of an frigid winter storm that broke rainfall records and scattered fresh powder at elevations as low as 1,000 feet across the normally warm, sun-drenched region. Mountain communities were slammed by intense snowfall, with Mountain High ski resort clocking an impressive 93 inches of snow. ..
The storm, which originated in the Gulf of Alaska, tapped into an atmospheric river system — a powerful plume of moisture that can deliver large amounts of precipitation. Sunday marked a short reprieve from the wet weather, with another series of storms set to hit during the week.
More rain and snow are on the way, which is good news for the state, but it could be better. It is so mismanaged that most of it will run off into the ocean instead of being secured for future use when the climate shifts. Famous for drought reporting and water rationing, the state’s perennial Democrat rulers waste billions on the wrong sorts of environmental interventions. Preferring virtue signaling and money laundering to long-term benefit or value.
Forest management is historically lousy and the cause of wildfires that often result in millions in property damage and loss of life. And they’d rather siphon off resources to force people into pricey EVs they can’t charge than develop affordable energy, build reservoirs, or desalination plants.
And they need them. For all the talk of drought, California has been in a wet cycle for over 500 years.
Statewide precip numbers since 1895 show a nearly flat trend to the hundred-year mean of 22 inches per year.
So, even in its wet cycle California is almost always at or near a state of drought which its massive population only makes worse. That much demand for water in a state that doesn’t get much of it when the climate is favorable (and mismanages that) is not a barometer for America or the world.
The place is dry most of the time, but not this year, and that’s a problem too. IThe CO2 drought model doesn’t stand up well to history of the current burst of precipitation, which, if you look at the last 120 years, isn’t odd or tied to CO2 either.
And yes! I went looking, and sure enough, Tony Heller was on top of the recent California weather and the history of media lies.
The post “More Warming Causes Cooling” as Epic Winter Storm Turns Southern California White (With Snow) appeared first on Granite Grok.
We were disappointed to see that 156 Republicans voted like SHEEP (YES) on HCR1, a call for a Constitutional Convention to AMEND the US Constitution. When confronted, many spouted the very talking points we have heard from the COS lobbyists.
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These lobbyists donate lots of money to candidates, who then are obliged to vote their way, despite our sending them good information as to why this is NOT a good idea. The bottom line is, while we would love to see a balanced budget and term limits, endangering our US Constitution is NOT the way to do it. The proponents of the COS claim that the constitution cannot be replaced, but if that is true, why then have more than three new PROGRESSIVE versions of it been written? This is the bottom-line argument that should overshadow any other in argument that favors this process. Liberals from Harvard started the movement, and this is their goal.
HCR4 is yet another push for the COS. This bill also must be defeated.
HB44 – DEFEATED
House Bill 44 would have allowed your current single-family neighborhood to be turned into a multi-family neighborhood if homes are connected to municipal sewer and water. Many traditional neighborhoods would have been at risk. In Bedford for example, some traditional single-family neighborhoods were forced to connect to Manchester’s system due to PFAS and transfer station runoff. Most had no idea what this bill could have done to their neighborhood.
COMMUTER RAIL – DEFEATED
Bringing the MBTA up to NH was squashed for now by a vote of 3-2 in the Executive Council. We have done plenty of research on this matter with guidance from a transportation engineer. One only needs to read about the problems with the MBTA of late to know that it would be a loss for NH taxpayers.
There is still another bill, HB110, which would block taxpayer funding of future rail projects. It is uncertain at this time where this bill is headed as it was retained in committee.
BAD NEWS
HB347 – PASSED
HB 347 is a bill that would create a Land Court. This gives yet a 3rd way for developers to run roughshod over your town vote. It does NOT eradicate the unconstitutional Housing Appeals Board (HAB) It would still have to be run through a Senate committee then pass the full Senate. The way the Senate has been jonesing for housing giveaways and takeovers, we are not optimistic it can be stopped. The Governor himself is big into AFFH (Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing act) so we can’t depend on a veto from him either. When it comes to the Senate we can try, however.
COMING UP
SB231 is the mother of all housing doozies. It is a $75M giveaway in part to developers to build low-income, high-density housing anywhere in NH. NH Senators Dan Innis and Jeb Bradley think that NH doesn’t have enough apartment buildings and that your town vote should not matter when it comes to how you want to let your town develop. This is another push to eradicate local control. Did anyone tell these folks that the state should have no business controlling housing with regard to what is built and where? Having plenty of jobs is a NH Advantage, not a minus. It is not up to the government to provide places for workers to live. We are sure this bill will pass the full Senate but the question is, will they allow it to cross to the House for a vote or will they sneak it into the budget like they did to pass the HAB which had failed 3 times before? Stay tuned for the details.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS?
Stop Taxpayer Funded Lobbying! – Special government sectors such as the Office of Planning and Development and groups such as the House Special Committee on Housing are basically taxpayer-funded lobbying. It seems whenever the Governor can’t get his bills passed, he creates another ‘commission’ to grease the wheels in the legislature.
The post New Hampshire Convention of States Resolution DEFEATED appeared first on Granite Grok.
Not a new story but knew to me and maybe you, as well as something with which we are all familiar. Last summer a rare, thought extinct (in Vermont) orchid was discovered, and no one blamed climate change.
Whenever something is diminished or goes away, the first order of business is to feed the climate cult narrative. You did this, you awful person. It’s your fault we must launder your tax dollars through our friends and family networks to fix it where “fix” means more taxes, bigger bureaucracy, higher prices, and less freedom.
I just got a sort-of Papa John’s vibe there. More taxes, Less Freedom – Democrat Party.
Anyway, last summer,
Botanists with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department said two local scientists alerted them to a population of small whorled pogonia, which was considered extinct in Vermont since 1902 and listed as threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act.
They have done their due diligence to protect the clutch or rare things and plot a path to secure its re-emergence. But where did they come from? Johnny small-whorled-pogonia-seed isn’t responsible, so how did they find their way back? They never left.
The Smithsonian did some actual research and discovered,
Orchids can hide. Members of this diverse family of plants, known for their wildly attractive flowers, have long been recognized for their ability to enter extended periods of dormancy—sometimes for a year or longer. The plants take refuge underground, and with no leaves and no need for photosynthesis, the orchids rely on fungi for the nutrients they need to survive. …
[The whorled pogonia] is an extremely rare orchid and as rare as it is, it’s not as rare as we thought because it spends a lot of time hiding out underground,” says Smithsonian ecologist Melissa McCormick, one of the authors of the paper. “We had done some previous research into orchid mycorrhizal fungi. . . we were interested in whether the abundance of fungi in the soil was affecting not just where they are, but also when they emerge.”
The orchid has been hiding for 121 years or, more likely, sparsely present and unnoticed at varying times across that span. In other words, if anyone said your comfortable western lifestyle was to blame for this missing American orchid, they weren’t correct. It was the absence of the correct fungus because of your comfortable western lifestyle. I’m sure that’s coming, so be prepared.
Nothing is ever natural because there is no fiscal or political upside for progressives or the government they worship.
HT | Boston.com
The post No One Blamed “Climate Change” for Re-Emergence of ‘Extinct’ Orchid in Vermont appeared first on Granite Grok.
That would be Chris White who is against what this W. Virginia bill would allow (reformatted, emphasis mine) this restoration of a specific Right in a certain location and whose view can be seen as “Safetyism trumps EVERYTHING!” (er, I’ve heard something like this before Chris Sununu, can you help me out on this):
A West Virginia bill allowing concealed guns at colleges is one step away from law
A bill that would allow people to carry concealed weapons at public college campuses in West Virginia passed by a landslide in the state’s House of Delegates on Tuesday…The Campus Self-Defense Act was passed 29-4 in the state’s Senate chamber last week and then 84-13 in the state’s House on Tuesday…The measure now heads to the desk of Gov. Jim Justice,a Republican. He hasn’t made any public indication of whether he will sign it into law.
<snip>
Marshall University professor Chris White said the bill doesn’t have enough safety measures in place. Formerly a Marine Corps infantryman, he referenced months of training that military and police officers go through “to earn that Second Amendment right and carry those weapons in public.”
“None of those safety controls will be imposed on our students or anybody else who comes on to campus,” White said, according to WVPB.
Too bad for you. I do wonder if the “good” Professor has studied up on that part of the US Constitution that he took an oath to protect and defend. This means he has to observe and “affirm” (like how the Trans-Authoritarisms demand we affirm their lifestyle choices – or else!) as well. Most professors are supposed to be smart so one would think that Prof. White would be careful about his word selection and sentence construction.
I also know that a couple of Groksters, both prior US Marines (a retired Lt. Col. and another a retired Chief Warrant Office who oversaw the armory at Parris Island), would have GRAVE consternations over his mandate that a Right is superseded by mandatory training…
Sidenote: Can we demand that White take a re-training class on both an English class and the US Constitution before he ideologically blubbers over it? Free Speech is a Right so what’s good for my gander should be dandy for his, yes?
…simply because (my words, not from NPR’s post):
Rights are inherent to being a human and not “earned”. Rights are also not geolocated, either.
“Earned” means that it is a privilege, not a Right. Which means that Government would grant such at its whim. Or not.
Not Sorry: Rights override Government. Government doesn’t create Rights nor hand them out – God and Nature’s God do and our Constitution recognizes it. Government can only deprecate or remove your ability to use your Rights.
I do wonder if the “good” Professor has studied up on that part of the US Constitution that he took an oath to protect and defend as a Marine. That oath meant that he has to observe and “affirm” it as well.
Doesn’t seem like it, does it?
(H/T: NPR)
The post A Marshall University Professor Said That You Have to EARN Your Second Amendment Right to Own and Carry. appeared first on Granite Grok.
Help Wanted: Conservative NH Blog needs a corporate planner. Candidates must be female or trans. Though we prefer Black, Brown or Red is acceptable. Must be 18-24, Single, and living alone. Applicant must be bi-sexual and not belong to any religious order.
Apply in person.
Of course, that is satirical, but isn’t that what Joe Biden has done with every position he has filled? That includes his Vice president and Supreme Court appointment. This is pure racism, and it is ugly.
If I had ever posted a classified ad like this one, I would have been guilty of at least eight violations on discriminatory grounds…..but not the Biden team. They pledged diversity and have striven to hire on those terms and competence be damned. The poor results prove the success of this mission statement.
From the onset, Biden worked very hard to fill cabinet positions with females, and sometimes, specifically, black women. Gay appointments, like Buttigieg and Karine Jean-Pierre, were integral, and neither is competent to fill their roles. We have a trans assistant surgeon General in Dr. Rachel Levine. She must be salivating at the movement to coach gender reassignment in elementary schools. Buttigieg is a gay mother and has not a clue what he is doing in Transportation And, Karine Jean-Pierre is totally out of her league, but she cannot be released as she checks three boxes; Black, Gay, and female. She cannot formulate an answer that is not prepared in her notebook, but she is valuable. She checks off three boxes.
When did Joe Biden lose his way? When was he infected by the Woke crowd? Is the Woke movement so powerful that you must abandon
your principles, disavow what you know is right and wrong, and bend your knee as the only way to succeed? But succeed for who? Certainly not America.
What you do when you get on that knee is allow the Left to win. They need us to succumb to their ideology. We in the 40-plus age group are the final obstacle. They have indoctrinated the Millennials, Gen-X, and Gen-z through our schools and media. They have sold them on the horrors of our past and the lies of our future. They are at war with the Boomers, and they are winning. We can win this war, but it starts with saying No, not on my watch.
Their arguments are based on emotion and failed theory. Climate change, BLM, and even the war on Capitalism are to make us feel guilty about our past and to atone for the sins of our ancestors who made this great country. We must arm ourselves with the facts and confront their accusations at every level. It angers me when someone interviewed makes an off-the-wall comment, and nobody dares to say you are wrong. When conversing with your friends, and someone spouts Progressive talking points, you have to say no politely. Let me give you the truth. We must keep writing and getting our opinions published, ensuring they are factual and win this media blitz from the Left.
It will not be easy and will take time, but we must start today. The future of this grand experiment stands in the balance. We can bring her back.
The post Bending a Knee to the Left Ends Here appeared first on Granite Grok.
On this day in 202 BC, Liu Bang’s coronation begins four centuries of Han Dynasty rule over China. The Republican Party was formally organized in Ripon, Wisconsin (1854).
Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the chemical structure of DNA molecule (double-helix polymer) in 1953. The Gulf War ended (in 1991) after Iraq accepted a ceasefire following its retreat from Kuwait. Michael Jackson won eight Grammys (1984), and a 2-hour TV episode of “M*A*S*H” airs, directed by series star Alan Alda titled “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” 1983.
First up, an Inconvenient Truth about Al Gore …
I have no clue how often Algore said this or each time span, but he’s made numerous predictions like it, and none of them have come to pass. We can cut the S… poster who created some slack – Gore is a fraud.
The Morning Mail
CULTURE
Biden & Trump
MISC
East Palestine-ian Crisis
The post The Morning Mail – Feb 28th 2023 appeared first on Granite Grok.
There really are at least two Republican Parties. One is the GOP of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan … a pack of globalist/corporatist grifters that serves as the controlled opposition to the Biden-regime in order to give the illusion of democracy to cover their pilfering of America … billions for the Ukraine, not a penny for the Trump voters in East Palestine. Sun-King Sununu … COVID-Tyrant and Lord-of-the-Woke … belongs to that Republican Party.
The other Republican Party mainly exists outside of DC. These are the real Republicans. The real Republican Party has no official leader … but its two most prominent figures are Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Here is big Ron really Republicaning. Every State with a Republican Governor and Republican legislature should do at least as much:
Florida will not turn a blind eye to the dangers of Biden’s Border Crisis.
We are proposing additional steps to protect Floridians from these reckless federal policies, including mandatory E-Verify and prohibiting local government from issuing ID cards to illegal aliens. pic.twitter.com/tdrZ0Jw2wY
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) February 23, 2023
The post Big Ron To The Rescue appeared first on Granite Grok.
Grokster Ian has a great line in a comment he left on “2024 Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Event: 2023-02-22 – Panel Discussion with Vivek and Drew Cline“; it’s actually repeated twice and written differently.
We REPUBLICANS here in NH, now that the Democrat National Committee has rejected NH Democrat Chair Ray Buckley and his cohort, still have the chance to thoroughly vet potential Presidential candidates. Using lines and questions gained from one SHOULD be used with others such as to be able to do A to B to C to…Z comparisons with those A-Z candidates. Emphasis mine:
A while ago, I stopped listening to what congressional candidates were saying about what they believe (or don’t), what they will do (or won’t), and so on, unless they would answer one question first: Watch The Swamp, and then explain why you’re not going to end up the same as all those guys.
https://granitegrok.com/blo...
I agree with Vivek on some things and disagree with him on others, but none of it seems relevant to me until he answers this question: Trump came to Washington as an outsider, beholden to no one, and still he was blocked at every turn. What is your explanation for how that happened, and why won’t it happen to you?
In the end, nothing is going to change until there’s a President who will tell the Supreme Court that — contrary to what John Marshall and Charles Evans Hughes claimed — the judiciary doesn’t get to say that the Constitution means whatever they want it to.
We haven’t had one of those since Andrew Jackson said to John Marshall: You’ve made your decision, go ahead and enforce it. I was hoping Trump would do that. He seemed to have the necessary temperament, and he certainly had enough opportunities, but he caved every time.
Why should I believe that Vivek will be any different? When he says, ‘The Constitution tells me that I can do X’, and the Supreme Court says, ‘No, the Constitution says that you must do Y’, what will he do? If he doesn’t have a plan for that, none of his other plans matter at all, any more than Trump’s did.
He’s right – while being President is a very powerful position, it is still subject to push back, as Ian notes, by SCOTUS. Actually, should be as there have been executive actions taken by Biden that were blatantly unconstitutional and outside any passed Law – but he tried to get away with it anyways (pandemic eviction bans, for one example). Congress, too, wants its way as well.
The biggest issue that we saw with Trump wasn’t just with SCOTUS and Congress but mere Executive Branch employees with the attitude of “screw him, he’s a Republican – we’ll just wait him out as well as ignore him now”. Personnel IS Policy – or “non-policy” if you have the wrong employees.
So a secondary question should be in bolstering Ian’s question is this:
Ready to wind the clock back and make the “Civil Service” a political spoils system again to prevent this LARGE problem?
After all, you can’t execute the Laws if your subordinates won’t obey it or any Executive Orders you give out.
But back to Ian’s question; I generally ask ALL candidates a similar question:
Do you have an unofficial “kitchen cabinet”, a group of long time curmudgeonly friends to keep you on the straight and narrow and have NO problem in SCREAMING at you to get your act together?
I, too, have been convinced by the words of such candidates (successful one) that they’d stay “straight” only to watch them get co-opted, go swamp, and then deny they have (until years have passed and they look critically back on themselves).
The post Promoted from the Comments: “What Is Your Explanation for How That Happened, and Why Won’t It Happen to You?” appeared first on Granite Grok.
The good people of Chicago are going to the voting places on Tuesday to take back their city and return it to a safe town for their families to live in. Mayor Lori Lightfoot is currently polling a distant third place and is projected to lose her re-election bid, as she should.
Chicago is the country’s third largest city and has become an illiterate and crime-ridden city under Lighfoot’s watch. Lightfoot is joined by eight other candidates. All have very different solutions to solve Chicago’s crime and education problems but are unified in wanting Lori Lightfoot to be a one-and-done mayor. Lightfoot cannot run on her record, for anyone that can see and hear knows how dangerous the city has become and how costly and ineffective the public education system has become. Lori Lightfoot has failed to deliver on the two most important reasons that people are drawn to a city, safety, and education for their kids.
The latest poll indicates that the people of Chicago have had enough of the Progressive agenda. A new voter opinion survey finds Paul Vallas leading the race for Chicago mayor with 24%, Mayor Lori Lightfoot at 18%, Rep. Chuy Garcia at 16%, and County Commissioner Brandon Johnson at 14.49%. Vallas is the most conservative candidate and has strong ideas to improve education and the police department for the Windy City.
Lightfoot has shown her true colors in this campaign and is using the race card as she sees the election slipping away. She made the following comment to anyone living on the South Side of Chicago:
While speaking to Black voters, Lightfoot said, “any vote coming from the South Side for somebody not named Lightfoot is a vote for Chuy Garcia or Paul Vallas. If you want them controlling your fate and your destiny, then stay home. Then don’t vote.”
The Lightfoot campaign responded quickly, but it was too late. They tried to say that Mayor Lightfoot misspoke and that she urges everyone to exercise their right to vote. Her comments were tantamount to voter suppression And should be condemned. Where is Stacey Abrahms? She should be blasting Lightfoot for her words, but you will never see one Democrat criticize another. Just imagine the outburst had a Republican made that comment.
There is not a single facet of life in Chicago that Lightfoot can claim is better than when she took office. The crime rate is out of sight, with homicides exceeding 700 for three straight years. She has reduced the police force while increasing her detail to 125 officers. The population is falling, and corporations are leaving the city. Even McDonald’s is making noise about closing all of their restaurants in Chicago. She has allowed Ohare Airport to become a homeless camp. The enrollment in Chicago public schools is down, the dropout rate is up, and the cost per student has nearly doubled since 2019. Much more expensive for far less results.
Hypocrisy is the cornerstone of her life and administration. Tuesday may be the end of her moment in the spotlight. Chicago will be better for her leaving.
The post Say Goodbye to Lori Lightfoot appeared first on Granite Grok.
A House Concurrent Resolution proposed in New Hampshire would express the sentiment that the legislature condemns the use of violence against any group of people who support peaceful separation and self-governance.
The post NH House To Consider Resolution Condemning Violence Against Peaceful Separationists appeared first on The Liberty Block.
How does this parasitical philosophy still exist? And I use “parasitical” as without a rich Engels to support him; there would have been no Marx.
Glen Reynolds asks the important question: But, like all viruses, it needs receptors to get inside. What aspects of our culture does it bind to? Just like COVID needs a spot on a cell in order to invade it. I think it starts with that hackneyed phrase that has now been taught for 2-3 generations now:
Sharing is Caring
And who doesn’t want to be nice and be helpful to others (generically speaking, of course)? It is the Collectivism started early, that “sharing” is a high-value attribute which may be a reason why the older norms of honest, truthfulness, courage, work ethic, and others aren’t being erased so much as they aren’t discussed anymore. It’s a redirection done with subtlety.
Reynolds added a message from a friend in his post(reformatted, emphasis mine, commentary mine):
Re communism. It’s because young people are idealists, and believe history is not relevant to them, because they invented everything when they discovered it. Including communism.
That would be their ignorance showing, to be kind. I could have just used “stupidity”.
It’s because people in bubbles like academia are sheltered enough that by and large they maintain youthful delusions. It’s because powerful people, never subject to the strictures of the policy they push, have long recognized that that the false compassion socialism and communism cloak themselves in are useful tools for gaining, maintaining and expanding their power.
Add to that people whose ideas which then get implemented by Law generally aren’t subjected to the deprivations those ideas serve onto others. That way, they can continue to hold up communism and socialism as Bright Lights (and assiduissly never talk about the downsides or just brush them aside with “no one has ever implemented TRUE socialism | communism yet!”. Er, yes, they have – to the extent that they can be and they have never ended up well.
To the young, the world is new. It is being experienced for the first time. Communism and socialism speak to their notions of fairness.
Sharing is caring, right? Communism and socialism is ALL about “equity” – everyone is the same and everyone gets the same.
Except for the elite nomenklatura – the new bosses that supplanted the “old capitalist” bosses. Which they never tell you, in keeping these young’uns ignorant of what capitalism is, that you were always able to escape a capitalist boss for a different one. The nomenklature you are stuck with forever (unless you shoot your way out).
And this next bit is why sound economics and history is no longer taught in our Government school systems:
Capitalism, property, the rights of other people who are not like them sound like something old people who never experienced this amazing new world talk about.
The problem is, some of our old people DID experience and came here. The rest of us learned from other countries’ experiences and history and figured out that “C & S” is all malarkey and a con for those who wish to practice their sleight of hand in taking your Rights to add their Power over you.
(HT: Instapundit)
The post Notable Quote: Without Slick Marketing, Communism & Socialism Could Not Exist appeared first on Granite Grok.
Puberty blockers and hormone therapy are all the rage among the woke-a-saurs despite the increased risk of death from the drugs, mental health issues, or the exponential increase in likely suicide. Now the American College of Cardiology has more bad news.
In the study, people with gender dysphoria who had ever used hormone replacements saw nearly seven times the risk of ischemic stroke (a blockage in a vessel supplying blood to the brain), nearly six times the risk of ST elevation myocardial infarction (the most serious type of heart attack) and nearly five times the risk of pulmonary embolism (a blockage in an artery in the lung), compared with people with gender dysphoria who had never used hormone replacements.
The trend in “medicine” continues to lean toward the mindless pursuit of profit at the expense of human lives or quality of life, but this instance is insidious. The Transgender Agenda targets children, and public schools carry their water. And while it seems counter-intuitive, it makes sense if you look at the bigger picture.
This is a wholly left-wing progressive project that dovetails nicely with their apocalyptic climate depopulation agenda. Gender transition is population control. If it doesn’t kill you and you don’t kill yourself, you’ve been surgically or chemically castrated. I’d say voluntarily, but children (or parents) who are lied to and told this is the only way are not volunteers. Those that push their kids into it are either willing monsters (Munchausen by Proxy) or victims of monsters (the political left).
And I’m not saying adults should be denied any of this if they’ve been fully informed of the risks and provided consent. Human beings do reckless and stupid things daily, not the least of which involves the consumption of alcohol. If they are still moved by their own will to proceed with the transition, even with the risk of stroke or heart attack, don’t make me pay for it, and we’re good. Children treated in this way are victims of adult fantasies. Toys as test subjects for a medical laundromat that moves millions and whose product they cannot just reverse when they are of age.
Not long ago, psychoanalysts began uncovering what looked like rampant sexual abuse of children (in Day Care, for example) that never happened. Impressionable young minds made of clay were convinced, which ruined or ended innocent lives. The power suggestion. That was bad; this is the same but worse. Significantly more young people are being convinced of something that will change them forever even if they decide to de-transition as adults.
You don’t get your parts back, and if you do, they are props to help play the part you were born to play, but that was taken from you by politicized or confused guardians, the progressive political establishment, Big Pharma, and Hospitals that max profits from “elective” surgeries.
And if you kill yourself or die, that works for them too.
The post Transgender Hormone Therapy Increases Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke appeared first on Granite Grok.
Three years into the worst pandemic in human history, many people are becoming understandably complacent. Despite masks being perfectly effective at preventing the spread of coronavirus, people have been wearing them less than ever before since 2019. If protecting yourself and everyone around you isn’t enough of a reason to put on a mask, here are some more reasons why you should get in the habit of wearing at least a cloth mask.
The post 7 Reasons We Should Continue Wearing Masks appeared first on The Liberty Block.
From Instapundit, I started to read the post and went “REALLY? THIS Department? WHY in God’s green earth does it matter what THIS department thinks about this issue?
Yet another department going past its authorizing Legislation “mission statement” to drag itself in to do more than it should (and probably not all that well)?
I REMEMBER WHEN THIS WAS DISMISSED AS A RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY THEORY: WSJ: Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, U.S. Agency Now Says: Energy Department’s revised assessment is based on new intelligence.
The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.
The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office. . . .
The FBI previously came to the conclusion that the pandemic was likely the result of a lab leak in 2021 with “moderate confidence” and still holds to this view.
The FBI employs a cadre of microbiologists, immunologists and other scientists and is supported by the National Bioforensic Analysis Center, which was established at Fort Detrick, Md., in 2004 to analyze anthrax and other possible biological threats.
U.S. officials declined to give details on the fresh intelligence and analysis that led the Energy Department to change its position. They added that while the Energy Department and the FBI each say an unintended lab leak is most likely, they arrived at those conclusions for different reasons.
The updated document underscores how intelligence officials are still putting together the pieces on how Covid-19 emerged. More than one million Americans have died in the pandemic that began more than three years ago.
The National Intelligence Council, which conducts long-term strategic analysis, and four agencies, which officials declined to identify, still assess with “low confidence” that the virus came about through natural transmission from an infected animal, according to the updated report.
I “get” that the FBI would be interested in where COVID came from in a national security standpoint. Ditto the National Intelligence Council. I dryly note that the Health and Human Services, HHS, wasn’t mentioned. They should be pursuing this.
But REALLY, the US Department of Energy? Since when did biologicals and diseases become part of its established portfolio? Nuclear energy, fossil fuels, renewables, how energy is transmitted and then used? Sure. Most things energy related, I’ll grant them. Is is their name, after all.
Now I deliberately, at the time of this writing, didn’t click through on the above link to write this as I’m hoping others are thinking the same thing – since WHEN should it be anything related to Energy where Wuhan Flu came from? That’s a bio domain question, an intelligence domain question, a political domain question – not energy related as far as I can tell.
Unless, of course, the entire Federal gaggle of bureaus have gone all “Woke Intersectionality” in believing that since everything MAY affect anything and everything else, they get to do what they want. Just come up with the twisted, convoluted, logic free pathway that slices the maze of “where we are supposed to be doing to what we want to be doing, eh?
And we wonder why Government no longer works? It doesn’t because it seems that nobody wants to do their jobs EXCELLENTLY and not worry about anybody else’s mission. It doesn’t because nobody respect boundaries anymore. The idea of “staying in your lane” seems to be an alien concept nowadays.
Imagine how much better Government would be IF it really did just focus on what it was mandated to do and doing it well?
It would mean that Civil Society, with respect to what the Founders believed it to be, would have to totally reconstruct itself AND wean itself from taxpayer dollars.
It WOULD mean that we, as individuals, would have to stop thinking “well somebody ought to do something about this” and get to work and do it themselves / ourselves.
I’d be good with that. And it would mean that I’d never have worry that I’d see such a headline again…
The post WHAT The Heck am I Missing Here? Are You Detecting the Same Thing? appeared first on Granite Grok.
They’re flying so thick and fast it is amazing. Take heart – there will be a Meme Overflow and almost certainly a Friday Meme Overflow-Overflow. Last week’s Overflow-Overflow.
Remember, ridicule and mockery are effective weapons:
Now, let the mockery and mayhem begin.
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
A hat-trick of past essays:
A Curious Incuriosity – Granite Grok
A Curious Incuriosity 2 – Granite Grok
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Lessons from Candle Smoke – Urban Scoop
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Just Give Me Yavneh – Liberty’s Torch (libertystorch.info)
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Dr. Bill Warner explains why Islam is not a religion, but a Political Ideology.
Related:
Bill Warner, PhD: To Know Islam, Know Mohammed
Phenomenally knowledgeable man. Here’s his website.
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But first, a random sampling of three of my cartoons. Please note these are my concepts but I pay a professional to do them.
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‘My money says a rationing app is already sitting ready on a hard drive somewhere’ | Neil Oliver
I won’t touch that bet.
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Prescient. All of this happening, Ukraine-Russia, was avoidable. Lots of people pointed that out – multiple times over multiple years since the USSR fell. That it happened regardless indicates, to me, that this was entirely planned. Indeed, I have to wonder – with what I think is 20/20 hindsight – if the advance towards Russia from the end of the Cold War was entirely to set up this situation.
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If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one ever was truly harmed. Harmed is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance.
— Marcus Aurelius-Emperor of Rome
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A few from my archived library:
I need to comment on the PLO guy’s statement. At the time, the PLO’s creation was precisely what he said. NOW… there IS a “Palestinian people”. Regardless of history or fact, the reality remains that such a people has been created from whole cloth. They now believe in this identity. To scold them now that they’re a fabrication may be technically accurate, but from a human standpoint profoundly wrong. Telling someone who has been told, his whole life, that he is “Palestinian” will not correct his thinking, but rather force him to dig in his heels.
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Gunned down for no reason. Aside from the fact that he was white.
Weep.
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Pick of the Post:
Not quite. Gandhi won, in large part, because the British were a moral people at the time, and had a sense of shame. Once they knew what was being done in their name, they could be embarrassed by it. Not now.
Now, the above is precisely right when faced with oppressors who truly believe they are doing good.
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Palate Cleansers:
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The post MONDAY MEMES appeared first on Granite Grok.
Several years ago a physician from New Hampshire wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal calling attention to the psychological profiles that are now built on children in New Hampshire schools.
Most parents have no idea this is happening in their local public school.
Year after year, mental health data is collected on children, and shared with 3rd party vendors through the Social and Emotional (SEL) software programs. In addition, some of your child’s mental health information maybe shared with New Hampshire universities.
In the WSJ article, Dr. Cerundolo describes how the medical field is governed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Schools are governed by FERPA:
“under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. FERPA can be more lenient than HIPAA, with allowances made for schools to disclose records without consent for such vague reasons as “legitimate educational interest” or “for audit or evaluation purposes.” HIPAA is more stringent and applies to “covered entities” such as hospitals and insurance companies, which are involved in the delivery and billing of health-care services.”
The weakening to the FERPA law occurred during the Obama administration. This has left student privacy activists alarmed at the massive amount of data that is now being collected and shared on children.
But in 2008 and again in 2011, FERPA was radically revised by the US Department of Education – without any vote or authorization from Congress.
In 2008, the regulations were rewritten to allow states, districts and/or schools to share PII data from student records without parental notice or consent with any third party or company designated as a “school official,” including “contractors, consultants, volunteers, and other parties to whom an educational agency or institution has outsourced institutional services or functions it would otherwise use employees to perform.”
Federal dollars poured into states in an effort to start assessing and treating the mental health of children in our schools. The Feds need some kind of data to justify the federal spending. How can they gather personal mental health information on children? Many parents would object. However, if they change the federal law governing student privacy, they can exclude notifying parents, and stop requiring their consent. That’s what happened.
Now that the law has been changed, there is one other requirement before conducting research on children. Researchers must seek approval from the Institutional Review Boards. (IRBs). Federal law and the American Psychological Association APA standards require IRB review of all human participant research projects. So how are the universities in New Hampshire gathering all of this mental health data on students without IRB approval? It’s a scheme that is legal, but many would argue unethical.
Call this an external audit instead of a research project, and you get to avoid IRB approval. The universities and school administrators are doing backflips in order to not tell parents what is going on with their children’s mental health data.
Keene State Behavior Health Improvement Institute was awarded the contract from the Department of Education in New Hampshire to gather the mental health data from various schools without parental knowledge or consent. See more about that here. Before Keene State it was Antioch and before that it was Plymouth State. The universities have been collecting this sensitive data for several years without parents knowing that their child’s PII has been shared. In some of these cases, federal law may have been violated leaving some of these schools at risk of a lawsuit.
Currently the PII data is gathered by school counselors and social workers, and sent on to Keene State BHII. This puts school counselors at risk of a parent filing a complaint with their licensing board since school counselors are required to follow a code of ethics when it comes to sharing this sensitive information on children.
Do you get the feeling that this is one big scheme to avoid telling parents that their children’s personal mental health information is now up for grabs? Some of this may be legal, but it’s certainly unethical. How do school administrators respond? I continue to see them year after year hand over the mental health PII without parental knowledge or consent. In other words, they don’t seem to care about the exploitation of children.
You can see my reply to one Superintendent that I contacted to see if they received informed consent by parents before sharing PII. I contacted Superintendents in Governor Wentworth, Hudson, Merrimack Valley, Raymond, Sanborn Regional, SAU 34, and White Mountains. All confirmed that they did not require informed consent before sharing the mental health data on their students. Here was my response to them:
As you can see, school administrators have put school counselors at risk of losing their certification. I would advise parents who find out that their child’s personal mental health information has been shared, file a complaint with The New Hampshire Department of Education. It’s too bad that the fall guy in this situation will be the school counselor, but parents have no other options.
Keene State BHII staff include mental health professionals that know that all of this is unethical. But when I speak to them, they point their finger at the school districts. They say that it’s their responsibility to get informed consent by parents. No one seems to want to protect these children. They are willing to exploit children in order to receive PII and funding. Keene State BII was hired to fulfill the requirements of the mental health grant. Keep the money flowing at the expense of personal privacy and parental rights.
The people who have worked in the field of psychology know why these ethical practices and boundaries were put in place. They know the history of exploiting human subjects for research. They know that they have an obligation to uphold these practices, but they don’t do it.
How do you trust what is happening in your school? How do you trust mental health professionals working in your school? How do you trust administrators who tell school counselors to ignore their Code of Ethics and share the data? How do you trust any of these people with your children?
Up next? School Based Medical Clinics. They are already in the Manchester Schools. That’s what’s coming next. Be warned.
The post NH Schools Building Psychological Profiles on Children Without Parental Knowledge or Consent appeared first on Granite Grok.
To say that the John Fetterman fiasco is corrupt would not be harsh enough. This scenario began when Fetterman entered the Pennsylvania Senate race last year after he had suffered a catastrophic stroke that nearly cost him his life. If there were anyone with a modicum of compassion and common sense in his circle, they never would have subjected him to the rigors of a Senate race. They would have gotten him medical rather than media attention. There is no compassion on the left. There is only a win-at-any-cost mentality and a quest for power.
There are stark similarities between the John Fetterman and Joe Biden stories. Both are suffering from depleted mental capacities. Joe because he is aging poorly and may actually be suffering from dementia. John, because of the massive stroke’s impact on his mind and body. The other is being married to women drunk on power. Instead of loving their husbands and getting them the care they needed, they propped them up and pushed them to victory. Not a win for their state or country, but purely for themselves.
Examine the complexity of the forces behind these two broken men. Biden and Fetterman themselves, if they were cognizant of what was transpiring. Their spouses and families, campaign organizers and workers, donors and the Party, the media, and ultimately the voters who cast their vote for an ideology and not for a person. These two men should be of the utmost competence and character to hold the highest office in the land and to be one of the 100 most influential leaders. These men come up short on both counts.
Both Biden and Fetterman ran their campaigns using the same playbook. Stay out of the spotlight, do not speak to the press, don’t expose your weaknesses or shortcomings, and let the media and Party do your bidding. In the meantime, the media pounced on anyone who drew attention to the fact these two candidates were not thinking clearly. The Fetterman strategy worked perfectly when he did not appear in debate with Dr. Oz until after over one million ballots had been cast. These people voted before they saw what they were voting for.
Joe Biden rarely traveled further than Pennsylvania during the campaign, and he minimized the number of debates with Donald Trump. He stayed as quiet as possible to minimize his blunders. With what we have witnessed in his first two years, many wonder how he could possibly think of running in two years. He will not gain clarity, and the thought of an 86-year-old Biden in the White House is frightening.
The Fetterman situation has gotten worse. The day after the State of the Union, Fetterman checked into the hospital with stroke symptoms. We were told he did not suffer a second stroke, but upon release, he checked himself into the hospital for treatment of severe depression. Fetterman will not resign, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro refuses to remove Fetterman and appoint an interim Senator. The people of Pennsylvania have been duped and only have one active, capable Senator.
This will not have a favorable resolution for anyone, but the voters of Pennsylvania can only look to themselves to blame. Like the voters for Biden, they were fed a false narrative and gobbled it up. We can only hope for better results with Biden in 2024. As for Fetterman, he is Senator until 2028, and who knows, he’ll probably run for re-election, too.
The post Fetterman is a Symbol of Political Perversion appeared first on Granite Grok.
My only question is WHAT is that pillar made of???
160mph is limit
(H/T: IMGUR via Linkiest)
The post Palate Cleanser – Crashing a Car at 260 MPH and 30MPH? Yup, Big Differences appeared first on Granite Grok.
It’s International Protein Day, Breakfast Day, and Polar Bear Day if you think you can fit three of those things into your morning. Is there such a thing as bear bacon (imagine the enviro-wacko reaction to that)?
It is also National Pokemon day, Kahlua Day, and No Brainer Day.
On this Day in 1933, “The Reichstag” was destroyed by fire and blamed on Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe.” Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discovered carbon-14 (radiocarbon dating) at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California (1940). General Chiang Kai-shek was elected president of Nationalist China in 1950, and seven years later, Mao (being Mao) gave his famous speech to the Supreme State Conference, “On Correct Handling of Contradictions Among People.”
On this date in 2021, Wikileaks began disclosing 5 million emails from the private intelligence company Stratfor.
The Morning Mail
Too good not to share…Babylon Bee.
LIFE AND DEATH
“Chemical Weaponry Destined For Ukraine Ignited In East Palestine” – Rense.com
CULTURE
ELECTIONS
PUBLIC HEALTH?
MISC
The post The Morning Mail – Feb 27th 2023 appeared first on Granite Grok.