Part 1 here. Parts 2 & 3 here.  This post is the conclusion of Vivek’s address to the assembled crowd (standing room only). Very well received and I’ll be reaching out to him for some additional information.

Part 4:

He also had a long Question and Answer time after sitting in the provided chairs for both he and Chris Ager.

Q&A 1:

Q&A 2:

Given that he had mentioned a number of “Progressive / Woke” luminaries, as people were starting to leave St. A’s Institute of Politics, I had the chance to ask Vivek who he thought were the equivalent shining lights on the Right that people should read to get a better grounding:



I’d also quickly throw in Thomas Sowell, the late Walter E. Williams, and Victor Davis Hanson.

The post Beyond The SoundBite Lecture Series – Vivek Ramaswamy Part 4 and Q & A … appeared first on Granite Grok.

Vermont is already a safe space for killing yourself. It approved a constitutional amendment securing the right to reproductive freedom, by which they meant abortion. And now they are looking to become a sanctuary for death and dismemberment.

 

H. 89, An Act Relating to Civil and Criminal Procedures Concerning Legally Protected Health Care Activity, seeks to protect individuals providing or seeking reproductive or transgender healthcare in Vermont from abusive civil or criminal litigation arising from another state. H. 89 also provides address confidentiality protections for providers and seekers of reproductive and transgender healthcare and increases penalties for threatening or using force against those providing or obtaining such legally protected care.

 

If you want to sneak into the Death and Dismemberment State to get hormone therapies that might kill your kids or have something you were born with removed, they will protect your privacy (which I just assumed was covered under HIPAA, but after the COVID thing … who can you trust?

And if, as is increasingly likely, the dismemberment results in you wanting to end your life months or years later, you can go “back” to Vermont and do that without even going there.

HR 89 is not yet law. Sometimes Republican Gov. Phil Scott should object and veto it even though the legislature has veto-proof majorities. Why? It is white supremacy.

 

[Gender-affirming surgery] has long been practiced under the influence of a binary bias [that] reinforces white, western ideals about gender identity and expression, further impacting care sought by BIPOC gender diverse individuals who may come from a lineage of more expansive understandings of gender…

We continue to reinforce white ideals of what it means to be masculine/feminine which continues the ‘othering’ of those impacted by colonialism and white supremacy.

 

And just like that, Vermont Dems are a bunch of racists. But we knew that.

 

 

The post Vermont Passes Bill to Make The State a Sanctuary For Death and Dismemberment appeared first on Granite Grok.

The South Dakota legislature has passed a bill that would make it illegal to perform gender “affirming” surgery or prescribe puberty blockers to minors in the state.

 

The bill, which was passed in a vote of 30–4, would also force health care professionals who violate it to lose their licenses and be sued. The measure will now go to the desk of Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, who has indicated she will sign the bill into law.

House Bill 1080 aims to restrict medical professionals from providing certain medical interventions to minors if the aim is to alter the appearance or validate the perception of the minor’s gender identity when it is inconsistent with their biological sex.

The bill defines “sex” as the biological indicators of male and female as determined by chromosomes, hormones, gonads, and genitalia present at birth.

 

 

Some exceptions allow treatments already in progress to continue and for those diagnosed as born “with a medically proven disorder of sexual development,” but the overriding rule limits, reduces, or prohibits chemical interventions on minors that delay normal puberty. Ignoring the law could result in losing the right to practice medicine in the state.

Once a person reaches the age of majority, they are free to pursue legal treatments at their discretion, but there is a high probability that they will have (literally) grown out of it. Assuming the Transtasi public education system hasn’t waterboarded them with allusions of discrimination to the point that they’ve killed themselves.

Governor Noem has said she would sign the bill into law when it reaches her desk.

 

The post South Dakota Bans Puberty Blockers and Trans-Surgery on Minors appeared first on Granite Grok.

When considering commuter rail in New Hampshire, here’s a thought experiment that offers a great place to start. Should the Massachusetts Bay Colony have built commuter rail in Revolutionary-era Boston?

Assuming the technology had been available, would this have made any sense?

We can get to an answer by looking at the primary obstacle to building a successful commuter rail line in New Hampshire today. 

Any debate about commuter rail has to begin with basic demographic data because population density is the key to successful commuter rail service.

The general rule for light rail is that cities need a population density of about 10,000 people per square mile to generate enough riders to make rail a viable alternative to automobiles. (See here and here.)

“The performance of a rail or BRT [bus rapid transit] line is directly related to the surrounding densities,” writes author Christof Spieler. “For example, the most successful light-rail systems in the United States—San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Newark, Jersey City, Buffalo, and Houston—serve large areas of over 10,000 people per square mile.

“Put transit in densely populated places. [emphasis in original] The fundamental math of density leads to an obvious rule: put transit where the people are. Successful transit needs to go where population densities are highest.”

Some cities outside of the United States have commuter rail and overall densities well below 10,000 people per square mile. But they tend to be large metropolitan areas with compact, walkable, dense downtown areas. 

For example, looking at the city as a whole, Calgary is roughly as dense as Manchester. Calgary’s density is 3,442 people per square mile, while Manchester’s is 3,496 per square mile. Calgary has light rail and a street railway. But Calgary is also a city of more than 1 million with a dense downtown of about 7,778 people per square mile. It’s the fifth densest downtown in Canada. 

Manchester doesn’t have a single zip code with a density of even 4,000 people per square mile. 

Nashua’s population density is only 2,961.7 people per square mile.

Commuter rail boosters seem to believe that Nashua, Manchester and Lowell, Mass., can all support rail because they’re fairly close in population. Nashua has about 91,000 people, while Manchester and Lowell have about 115,000 people each.

But these totals mask huge variations in density.

Lowell’s population density is 8,489.8 people per square mile, even denser than downtown Calgary. That makes it much more hospitable to light rail than Manchester or Nashua. 

Boston’s population density, by comparison, is 13,967.7 people per square mile.

And that gets us back to our question about colonial Boston. 

In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, author Stacy Schiff notes that Adams lived in a Boston that spanned four square miles, with a population of 16,000. (Boston had about 16,000 people from the 1740s through the 1780s.) That’s 4,000 people per square mile, which makes colonial Boston denser than present-day Manchester. 

Few would argue that commuter rail would make sense in colonial Boston. But lots of people argue that commuter rail makes sense in Nashua and Manchester, which are much less densely populated than colonial Boston was. 

The hard reality is that no municipality in New Hampshire is close to boasting a population density anywhere near the level needed to support successful commuter rail. And that will be true for a very long time. 

U.S. Census data put Manchester’s population density at 3,310 per square mile in 2010. In the decade from 2010-2020, the city’s density grew by just 186 people per square mile. 

At that rate, Manchester will reach 10,000 people per square mile in 350 years.

If the city’s growth rate somehow doubled, it would still take 125 years to get to 10,000 people per square mile.

Building, or even preparing to build, a commuter rail line now makes about as much sense as telling Paul Revere to take the T to Lexington. 

(By the way, it took Revere about an hour to get to Lexington from Charlestown by horse. Today it takes about half an hour by car. By bus? About two hours.) 

 

 

Republished with Permission; Visit The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy to read more.

The post A NH Commuter Rail Question: Should Paul Revere have taken the T to Lexington (or Nashua)? appeared first on Granite Grok.

(white) goldstandard-02-14-23-H.pdf
(gold) goldstandard-02-14-23-H-y.pdf

The post House Gold Standard – February 14, 2023 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

First, I am merely an “enlightened amateur”.  Please vet & check on your own.  Caveat emptor.  Consider these to be priming the pump for your own investigations.  I know this is a long post; I am attempting to put out a lot of information as a resource.  Read or skip sections depending on your interests.

Second, I fear spicy time is very close, but even a month of food, water, etc., puts you well ahead of most of the sheeple.  IMHO, set your minimum sights on a three-month period.

Third, two things will be critical for having the best chance of making it through:

1. Mentality: first and foremost in survival is having a flexible mentality and cultivating the ability to adapt. Vanity has no place in survival.
2. Develop a meatspace network of people that are likeminded: cultivate your community ties and build alliances with neighbors (note: don’t babble about the Jab or globalists or depopulation, or start pointing political fingers when doing this)… and remember, the first rule of PREP CLUB is that there is no prep club.

And please follow both me, Nitzakhon, on Gab… as well as my blog host Granite Grok and also on Telegram Tommy Robinson Official plus his Urban Scoop site.  And don’t forget posts sometimes get cloned on American Reveille as well, which is a good site to check out in general.

FYI, here’s a link to the companion Survival Sunday – SITREP Edition.

And a hat trick of prior essays of mine:

Unsettling Connections – Liberty’s Torch (libertystorch.info) (bolding in original):

And notice the spin, saying the common good is the highest priority and a fundamental American value.

No.

Either the individual is sovereign or The State is.  And if The State is the highest good, then that is a functional definition of Socialism over Individualism. And while individuals can, voluntarily, subsume their interests to the collective, the key word to this is voluntary.

—

Rome, er, America – Granite Grok

—

Fear is the Mind Killer… – Granite Grok

Note the embedded video – is this not precisely what they’re doing to us?

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

People call preppers…. CRAZY…I call people that don’t prep…CRAZY

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Top of the fold:

Fauci: now he tells us – HotAir

The importance of this cannot be understated.  They lied, and they lied from the start.  There can be no trust in any institution – governmental or otherwise – from here on out.

A Crisis of Trust – Urban Scoop

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.”

— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Chapter 2

 

I never joined a debate club in high school or college because I knew I’d have to learn and then argue for a side that I didn’t agree with.  What a loss.

 

=+=+=

Oddments – random thoughts on prepping:

1. Car oil for a few oil changes; spare filters and some way of lifting the car up.
2. A spare set of windshield wipers.

 

=+=+=

Prepper Site URLS:

Most have daily articles; revisit daily.  Please recommend others in the comments.

Ask a Prepper, how to prepare, survive and thrive, latest news

Mother Earth News

The Organic Prepper Home – The Organic Prepper

SurvivalBlog.com – The Daily Web Log for Prepared Individuals Living in Uncertain Times.

SHTF Blog – Modern Survival

Survival World – Everything You Need To Know to Survive

Homestead Survival Site – How to Live Off The Grid in Comfort and Style

Urban Survival Site | How to Survive a Disaster in the City

Mind4Survival – Survival and Preparedness

Gray Wolf survival

Sustainable Living (sustainablelivingideas.com)

The Classic Survivalist – Surviving in a Modern World

Primal Survivor – Practical and sensible prepping advice

Em Off-grid – We & Our Off The Grid Life – Em OffGrid

Resource for Practical, Daily Prepping Skills for SHTF & Survival (geekprepper.com) (new)

And three aggregate sites listing their top favorite sites & links too:

TOP 50 SURVIVAL & PREPPER BLOGS

The 50 Best Survival Blogs

Prepper Website – Preparedness • Survival • Alternative News

—

Specific, one-up articles:

 

Blackout bread, bake without electricity, with tea lights! Also for preppers

 

 

From the same channel:

 

Blackout bread made from muesli, baked only with a tealight. No electricity, for preppers

 

 

—

Why You Need To Hide Your Harvested Rainwater – Ask a Prepper

I would never condone the violation of any laws or regulations outside an SHTF situation.

However, that being said, many preppers will still harvest rainwater knowing that they are in violation of local or state laws and regulations.

These people will definitely want to conceal these activities from the view of anyone walking by.

It would also be a good idea to hide your barrels or tanks from aerial surveillance as well. Local governments may use drones to check the backyards of people they suspect to be in violation of any rainwater collection laws.

I suspect a LOT of stuff that’s illegal will suddenly be on the table in a SHTF situation.

—

11 Fatal Mistakes To Avoid When Bugging Out – Ask a Prepper

Good thoughts.  Some I hadn’t considered.

—

Related to Spicy Time:

Just the Basics: Winter Warmth | the dying fish

Written about fishing specifically, but good winter-outdoors advice.

—

Evil Must Be Confronted! We Can’t Wish It Away!

Maybe I am just ahead of my time. I’ll never forget many, many years ago at one of my first Tea Party meetings when the leaders at the time asked me my ideas for fixing our “government”. The look on their faces, the utter shock, when I stated that there was no voting our way of this mess, was a little surprising to me. But the utter horror you could see when I said we need to kill every last communist in this world, It’s the only way to solve our issues, was telling.

I’m meant to fight this evil. I know it. I just haven’t been told its go time yet. So I write. It’s hard to not be pessimistic. With each passing day the future for my children grows ever darker. It breaks my heart watching what is happening on a daily basis. More and more people are openly discussing our final option, so that gives me hope.

I, regretfully, concur.  TINVOWOOT.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Katie Hopkins: The truth about GB News — I have been keeping this to myself…until now.

 

 

I wanted to say it was Communist Noam Chomsky who said to make the Overton window as narrow as possible to exclude as many broad perspectives as possible, but then make it seem as though there’s enormous activity and amplify the differences seen in that narrowed window to distract from the excluded voices.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Short of years and untold wealth, you cannot possibly be fully prepared for everything (I have to keep reminding myself of that).  But even some preparations, ideally at least 90 days of food, water / water purification, etc., puts you head and shoulders in front of the vast majority of the sheeple who will be in jaw-gaping astonishment when the SHTF.  The only relevant questions are:

1. When does it start?
2. How bad will it get?
3. How long will it last?
4. What will the aftermath look like?

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Keeping a Property Journal for Our Homestead, Learning to Deeply Know Our Land Over Time

 

 

And their channel in general – lots of good stuff.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

I just started a FORAGING group on Gab.  I will check 2-3 times a week to see if people have asked to join.  I just approved several new members.

—

Foraging: One-up articles

Introduction to Foraging: Foraging Benefits, Equipment, Guidelines, Resources, History and How to Get Started Foraging – Nordic Forest Foods

Basics.

—

Plant Foraging – Plant Identification and Foraging – Library Guides at University of Missouri Libraries

Slew of resources.

—

Garlic Mustard: A Delicious Invasive — Four Season Foraging

Looks good.

—

Foraging (permanent feature):

Foraging (practicalselfreliance.com)

Wild Harvests (arcadianabe.blogspot.com)

Southern Appalachian Herbs

—

Books (permanent feature):

Feasting Free on Wild Edibles (old but good)

The Lost Ways (much more than just foraging)

The Forager’s Guide to Wild Foods

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO EDIBLE WILD PLANTS FOR BEGINNERS

 

=+=+=

Shortages (broadly):

Fire at Waikato farm kills 50,000 chickens – NZ Herald

 

Something Strange Is Happening With Our Egg Supply | Ep. 87

 

Multi-topic; first part applies here.

 

 

And related:

Seafood processing plant goes up in violent blaze: It’s a total loss (wnd.com)

—

 

Boots on the Ground…Feb. 5th…Medicine shortages in the US and other countries.

 

 

—

Food Shortages Are Starting To Become Quite Serious All Over The Planet | ZeroHedge

It will hit suddenly – at least suddenly to most of the sheeple.  They will panic.  More – they will never, every forgive preppers they know for being right and will turn on us in a heartbeat.

 

=+=+=

Gardening, Food Storage, Health, and Related:

 

Onion Harvest and Curing Process #shorts

 

 

Link to the Vegetable Academy channel.

 

—

Links on old-time food storage (permanent feature):

Thanks to the Canning and Preserving group on Gab, I now have these links:

Preserving foods by drying | How to dry foods safely (uada.edu)

USDA-Complete-Guide-to-Home-Canning-2015-revision.pdf (healthycanning.com)

Canning | SDSU Extension (sdstate.edu)

Food Preservation– Canning | Consumer Food Safety | Washington State University (wsu.edu)

Canning Timer & Checklist App | OSU Extension Catalog | Oregon State University

National Center for Home Food Preservation (uga.edu)

Canning Recipes | Ball® Mason Jars (ballmasonjars.com)

—

Topical Books (also permanent):

Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking & Curing

Salumi: The Craft of Italian Dry Curing

A Guide to Canning, Freezing, Curing & Smoking Meat, Fish & Game

The Prepper’s Canning Guide

Pickled Pantry

Fermented Vegetables

Hydroponics and Greenhouse Gardening: 3-in-1 Gardening Book to Grow Vegetables, Herbs, and Fruit All-Year-Round

Hydroponics for Beginners: The Complete Guide to Hydroponic Gardening, Designing and Building Inexpensive DIY Hydroponic Systems…

The Aquaponics Guidebook: Combining Aquaculture and Hydroponics Combining Aquaculture and Hydroponics

 

=+=+=

Self-defense (broad) & Hunting:

Gun Control Kills People – American Thinker

There’s only one goal: us, disarmed.

 

 

On disarmament:

New Biden guidelines put target on gun stores (wnd.com)

When a gun store closes, all their paperwork goes to fedgov.  Thus this is a “good” way to create a de facto registration list.  Related:

 

Mental Health Screening & Permission Slip Required

 

 

If you don’t take the Jab, you will be considered mentally ill.  If you don’t worship Climate Change, ditto.

—

 

Massad Ayoob on Gun Registration & Gun Control

 

 

Registration has led to confiscation here in the US!  IIRC there was a law passed in NY state telling owners “Oh, we just want to know what rifles are out there”… sure enough, YEARS later, it was “Turn them in now”.

 

—

 

DIY Fish Trap ( that works !! )

 

 

Legality is an issue… but if the fit has hit the shan, all bets are off.  Like here:

 

 

(Cartoon by Gary Larson – used under what I believe is “fair use”)

—

Concentrate Where The Murders Are Concentrated | ZeroHedge

• The worst five counties (Cook, Los Angeles, Harris, Philadelphia, and New York) accounted for about 15 percent of homicides.
• The worst 1 percent of counties (31), with 21 percent of the US population, accounted for 42 percent of the homicides.
• The worst 2 percent of counties (62), with 31 percent of the population, accounted for 56 percent of the homicides.
• The worst 5 percent of counties (155), with 47 percent of the population, accounted for 73 percent of the homicides.
• In contrast, over half of US counties (52 percent) had zero homicides in 2020, and roughly one-sixth of the counties (16 percent) had only one.

Correlates well with Bill Whittle’s video:

 

NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET

 

 

 

=+=+=

Concluding thoughts if I’m moved to comment:

Medical Journal Floats Concept of Using Braindead Women As Surrogates Through “Whole Body Gestational Donation” – Reduxx

This is monstrous.  Utterly.

And yet… there are people who will think this is a good idea.  How far we’ve descended down the morality slope.  Yes, the woman is brain dead, but it’s still a living person.  It gets worse – I’ve seen, in a post I can’t find specifically, how the Globalists could use condemned female prisoners as gestational units for their own babies.

How soon before the organ banks from Larry Niven’s future world starts condemning prisoners and breaking them down for organs?  Consider this proposal to implant a woman’s womb in a biological man… could dead or condemned prisoners have their reproductive organs taken for this purpose?  I’m trying to chase down a rumor that in the UK there are rules being passed mandating organ harvesting.  (I’ve taken the “I’m an organ donor” symbol off my driver’s license.)

Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing on our society in debauchery.  Hashem will not tolerate being so mocked for long.

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

This is BIG!

 

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Palate cleansers:

 

—

—

 

>>>>>=====<<<<<

 

Please check out my MEMES collections; last one here.  Mockery, ridicule, and the wrapping of uncomfortable truths inside humor can penetrate the cognitive shields of normies far more effectively – IMHO – than dry facts and figures.

 

The post Survival Sunday – PREP Edition appeared first on Granite Grok.

• These are the most liberty-critical hearings for the week
• Click on the bill number to read the bill.
• Click on the committee name to email the committee your thoughts.

Of the 55 hearings in the House, we are recommending support of 8 and opposition of 7 with 3 being of interest.
Of the 42 hearings in the Senate, we are recommending support of 3 and opposition of 3 with 1 being of interest.

Position	Bill	Title	Committee	Day	Time	Room	State Analysis
Of Interest	HB550	relative to chartered public school dissolution.	Education	Mon 2/13	9:45 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill provides for the assets of a chartered public school to be distributed to the nearest public school district following dissolution of the chartered public school. The bill also establishes a committee to study the current charter public school dissolution process.
Of Interest	HB371	establishing a commission to evaluate and recommend standards for public schools.	Education	Mon 2/13	11:30 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill establishes a commission to evaluate and recommend standards for public schools. The bill also requires the state board of education to initiate rulemaking based on the commission’s recommendations.
Of Interest	HB558	relative to electric microgrids and electric grid resiliency.	Science, Technology and Energy	Mon 2/13	9:00 AM	LOB Room 304	This bill establishes the authority for and procedures for adoption of electric microgrids.
Support	SB200	relative to optometrists.	Commerce	Tue 2/14	9:00 AM	SH Room 100	This bill removes a variety of prohibitions on the types of care that optometrists may provide to patients.
Oppose	SB145	relative to New Hampshire housing champion designation for municipalities and making appropriations therefor.	Commerce	Tue 2/14	9:30 AM	SH Room 100	This bill establishes a New Hampshire housing champion designation program, including a housing production municipal grant program, and a housing infrastructure municipal grant and loan program. The bill also establishes positions within the department of business and economic affairs and makes appropriations for the programs.
Oppose	SB202	relative to establishing a homeownership innovations fund in the New Hampshire housing finance authority.	Commerce	Tue 2/14	9:45 AM	SH Room 100	This bill establishes a homeownership innovations fund within the New Hampshire housing finance authority and makes an appropriation thereto.
Oppose	SB217	establishing a rural and underserved area educator incentive program for higher education and making an appropriation therefor.	Education	Tue 2/14	9:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill establishes the rural and underserved area educator incentive program and makes an appropriation therefor.
Oppose	SB218	establishing an early educator professional development grant.	Education	Tue 2/14	9:15 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill establishes in the department of education an early educator professional development grant program to award school districts funds for their local professional development master plans.
Oppose	SB219	relative to a salary floor for public school teachers.	Education	Tue 2/14	9:30 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill prohibits public school teachers from receiving salaries below a salary floor if the corresponding school administrative unit or school district employs more than one assistant superintendent or employs one or more diversity professional.
Oppose	SB255	relative to the expectation of privacy.	Judiciary	Tue 2/14	2:30 PM	SH Room 100	This bill creates a new chapter detailing a consumer expectation of privacy.
Oppose	HB513	relative to affordability and safety of clinician administered drugs.	Commerce and Consumer Affairs	Wed 2/15	2:00 PM	LOB Room 302-304	This bill requires a health plan to utilize the lowest cost method of reimbursement for clinician administered drugs and requires a health maintenance organization to cover clinician-administered drugs if the drug cannot reasonably be self-administered and is typically administered by a health care professional. The bill also prohibits a health maintenance organization from requiring that a pharmacy dispense a medication to a patient with the expectation that the patient will transport it to a health care setting for administration by a health care professional.
Support	SB162	relative to exemptions from rabies vaccinations for dogs, cats, and ferrets.	Energy and Natural Resources	Wed 2/15	1:45 PM	SH Room 103	This bill makes the initial period for an exemption from the rabies vaccination for dogs, cats, and animals annual with the recertification of a veterinarian.
Oppose	SB212	relative to the regulation of massage, reflexology, structural integrator, and Asian bodywork therapy establishments.	Executive Departments and Administration	Wed 2/15	9:00 AM	SH Room 103	This bill requires massage establishments to be licensed, regulated, and inspected by the office of professional licensure and certification. The bill also adds compensation to members of the advisory board of massage therapists.
Support	HB559	establishing a state retirement plan group for new state employee members of the retirement system.	Executive Departments and Administration	Wed 2/15	2:00 PM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill establishes a group III, defined contribution retirement state retirement plan for new state employee members of the retirement system, who begin service on or after July 1, 2024. All new employees of state employers on and after July 1, 2024 will be required to join the group III defined contribution plan as administered by the retirement system, and any other group I employees may join.
Support	SB238	relative to the use of telemedicine to treat mental health conditions.	Health and Human Services	Wed 2/15	10:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill permits doctors and APRNs to use telemedicine to prescribe medication to treat mental health conditions.
Oppose	SB237	relative to the child care scholarship program and making an appropriation therefor.	Health and Human Services	Wed 2/15	11:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill modifies the child care scholarship program, establishes a child care workforce program and a regional fingerprinting support program, and makes appropriations for these programs, and for child caregiver supports, early childhood mental health support, and for early childhood education scholarships.
Support	HB69	relative to direct payment and membership-based health care facilities.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Wed 2/15	10:00 AM	LOB Room 201-203	This bill exempts facilities operating with membership-based or direct payment business models from the special health care licensing requirement that the facility adopt a policy to assure that it provides services to all persons who require the services of the facility regardless of the source of payment.
Oppose	HB510	relative to removing the exemption for premium cigars from the tobacco tax.	Ways and Means	Wed 2/15	1:15 PM	LOB Room 202-204	This bill removes the exemption for premium cigars from the tobacco tax.
Support	HB553	relative to school district information on personnel salaries.	Education	Thu 2/16	9:00 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill requires school boards to publish on each school or the school district website a complete list of all position names and their annual or hourly salary.
Support	HB651	authorizing the department of education and local school districts to contract with transportation network companies to provide school transportation services.	Education	Thu 2/16	11:00 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill allows the department of education to contract for buses to transport pupils with transportation network companies.
Oppose	HB528	relative to school lunches and establishing the meals for students fund.	Education	Thu 2/16	11:30 AM	LOB Room 205-207	This bill requires schools to make free or reduced cost breakfast and lunch available to children who meet federal eligibility guidelines and provides for reimbursement to schools for offering meals at no cost to eligible students. The requirement is repealed in 2025.
Of Interest	SB241	relative to graduated public assistance programs.	Health and Human Services	Thu 2/16	9:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill directs the department of health and human services, the housing finance authority, New Hampshire employment security, and the department of energy to study the creation, funding, and implementation of graduated public assistance programs to complement existing programs within the state.
Oppose	SB234	directing the department of health and human services to develop a public awareness campaign on brain health, Alzheimer’s disease, and related dementias and making an appropriation therefor.	Health and Human Services	Thu 2/16	10:00 AM	LOB Room 101	This bill directs the department of health and human services to develop a public awareness campaign on brain health, Alzheimer’s disease, and related dementias and makes an appropriation to the department for this purpose.
Oppose	HB617	prohibiting, with limited exceptions, state agencies from requiring use of proprietary software in interactions with the public.	Executive Departments and Administration	Thu 2/16	1:00 PM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill prohibits, with limited exception, state agencies from requiring use of proprietary software in interactions with the public.
Oppose	HB359	relative to legal holidays.	Executive Departments and Administration	Thu 2/16	2:30 PM	LOB Room 306-308	This bill clarifies the effect of designating a day a legal holiday and makes the days on which the state primary preceding a biennial election and the quadrennial presidential primary are held legal holidays.
Support	HB406	relative to parental access to children’s medical records.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 2/16	9:00 AM	LOB Room 201-203	This bill expands parents access to their 13 to 18-year-old children’s medical records without their children providing a release to each medical provider.
Support	HB557	relative to the department of health and human services’ rulemaking authority regarding immunization requirements.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 2/16	11:15 AM	LOB Room 201-203	This bill removes the rulemaking authority of the commissioner of health and human services on immunization requirements beyond those diseases identified in statute.
Support	HB408	relative to foster children and vaccinations.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 2/16	1:00 PM	LOB Room 201-203	This bill requires that children living in a foster family home but who are not in foster care shall be subject to the same immunization requirements as any other child in the state.
Oppose	HB342	relative to lead testing in children.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 2/16	2:00 PM	LOB Room 201-203	This bill establishes a blood lead level testing requirement for children entering day care and public schools.
Oppose	HB425	repealing the statute relative to medical freedom in immunizations.	Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs	Thu 2/16	2:30 PM	LOB Room 201-203	This bill repeals the statute pertaining to medical freedom in immunizations.
Support	HB652	relative to nonpublic sessions under the right to know law.	Judiciary	Thu 2/16	3:00 PM	SH Room Reps Hall	This bill provides that, when a public body goes into nonpublic session to discuss matters likely to adversely affect an individual’s reputation, the person affected shall be given notice of the meeting and an opportunity to attend, be represented by counsel and speak on their own behalf.

The post Bill Hearings for Week of February 13, 2023 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

Ockham’s razor is a simple idea: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.“ To the radical left, it means that almost every “issue” (real or imagined) can be explained as racism! But what if it’s not?

Take New Hampshire, for example. It is “too white” all year round, not just from November to March. The population is predominately not of color. No one tried to make it that way; it just happened.

 

The colorblind world is all about color. It’s about numbers. Butts in seats, or in front of classrooms, or at our workplaces.

What about Live Free or Die?

In a genuinely free society, people go where they want for reasons that are their own.

And in a truly diverse world personal preference would drive demographics and that would be good enough. Sorry, say the “experts,” it’s not.

 

Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont every state along the Canadian border is majority white. Why? The colder the annual temps, the whiter it seems to get. There are lots of perfectly non-racist reasons for that.

The darker your skin, the more sunlight you need for your body to generate enough vitamin D, an essential nutrient for immune health, among other things. The farther north you go, the less sun you get. It’s cold more often and longer.

While folks might accept that if they have an opportunity worth the discomfort, given a choice, how about not? These illegal aliens (of color) who ended up in Eric Adams, New York, were offered free bus tickets to Canada, but when they got there, they wanted to return. Too much snow. Too cold. The free ride is more pleasant when it’s warmer, and New York City is warmer than Canada.

And not just because it is one of the largest urban heat islands on earth.

But this simplest of explanations provides zero political leverage, so they can’t embrace it. It gets them nothing: no outrage, no protests, no tribalism or division. The truth is useless.

States like New Hampshire were or are predominantly white for the same reason as the National Hockey League. People of color chose something else. So when New Hampshire Democrats failed to promote any candidates of color to run for congress, maybe it wasn’t their fault? It was. Republicans found plenty who not only chose to live here but chose to run.

It’s the Democrats who are racist and guess what – they feel so guilty that they can’t shut up about projecting that guilt onto everyone else.

Oh, one more point from a past piece on this topic that mentioned weather as a factor.

 

What if a majority of “people of color” don’t care how safe or prosperous or job or family-friendly a state is because they hate the cold?

You know what the cure for that is? Global Warming.

 

Ayup!

The post People of Color “Mystery” Not So Mysterious After All … appeared first on Granite Grok.

 We have drifted off course as a nation and have abandoned the ideals that made us the beacon on the hill. Many on the Right have turned their heads and allowed the Woke to achieve a degree of control they do not deserve.

We are still in the grips of the Obama years, and Joe Biden is proving even more Progressive. We gave Black Lives Matter the platform to force us to feelings of guilt we did not deserve. And the education machine is reaping the rewards of one hundred years of indoctrination of our children. Many students in our public schools feel we would be better and stronger if we replaced capitalism and democracy with Socialism. We need something or someone to right this ship.

But, every so often, a voice arises with the clarity and conviction that beckons us to listen. We hear that voice from a young man who is wise beyond his years and has the charisma that grips you with his creative thinking. I have enjoyed this man many times on short segments on FOXNews, and this week got to hear him in person, and he made me a believer. For what I think he will do for this country, Vivek Ramaswamy is in this week’s Sunday Spotlight.

Vivek is a first-generation American. His father emigrated to America in the late seventies, and his mother a few years later. His father was an engineer, and his mother was a geriatric psychiatrist. Both came in through our front door and worked hard to realize the dream for their two children. Vivek was born in 1985, and his resume screams overachiever.

He holds a degree in biology from Harvard and received his law degree from Yale. He was yet to turn thirty when he formed a bio-tech company that employed thousands and held many heart-saving pharmaceuticals patents. He is the author of Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, published in August 2021, and Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence, published September 13, 2022.

Ramaswamy was dubbed “The C.E.O. of Anti-Woke, Inc.” in a 2022 New Yorker profile and has been described by the Federalist Society as “one of the most compelling conservative voices in the country. He points out the dangerous combination of big government and colluding media. That voice is clear: we must beat down the Woke philosophy, divorce ourselves from the toxic relationship we have with China, and get control of our school system to focus on education, not DEIJ and gender identity.

Vivek admits this effort will require sacrifice, courage, and leadership. The Left is not the party to guide us out of our malaise, and we have to elect a new generation of true conservative candidates in 2024. There is an urgency needed, and we need to find candidates that unify the party and the people. It will take a strong, focused effort to break the hold of the Democrats on America. This is the message of Vivek Ramaswamy. He has dared to say what needs to be done. I am confident that we will hear more from him as he lays out a blueprint to take back this country and make America great again.

The post Sunday Spotlight: A Voice and Ideas to Give Direction appeared first on Granite Grok.

The nation’s first president slept in many beds, and I don’t mean ‘slept’ in the colloquial sense. He moved around a lot before, during, and after becoming that ‘George Washington’ to the degree that “George Washington Slept Here” became a real estate cliché.” Biden’s working on something similar.

The colloquial “sleeping” around is an option, as is falling asleep (Sleepy Joe), but I’m referring to boxes of classified documents. They keep turning up. At this office, at this home, while the “most transparent administration” coordinated a months-long coverup involving multiple agencies.

The latest batch of docs linked to Biden has been found in Boston.

 

 Emails released Friday by the National Archives reveal references to President Biden’s lawyers handing over boxes of documents in Boston — confirming a little-known detail in the chronology of Biden’s classified documents scandal.

“Please ensure that the boxes in your office in Boston remain secure in a locked space and are not accessed by anyone,” National Archives official Gary Stern wrote on Nov. 7 to Biden attorneys Patrick Moore and Bob Bauer.

 

Does this answer the question as to whether Biden’s lawyers were qualified to locate classified documents? They were not, or maybe they were. According to the reporting, his lawyers – the ones who “found” the verboten Obama Admin documents in then VP Bidens off campus DC office (doing business as a Think Tank), sent them to Boston.

That’s how they got there.

 

 

The email was sent five days after Biden’s lawyers say they discovered classified documents at Biden’s post-vice presidency office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.

CNN reported in January that Moore shipped some Penn Biden Center documents to his Boston law office before he discovered classified records.

The records removed to Boston were believed not to contain sensitive information, the outlet reported at the time. The new emails, however, raise questions about the nature of the documents given the protocols requested by the National Archives.

 

So, the National archives and the White House knew about the Penn Biden DC and Boston MA doc stashes and hid that knowledge from the public until after the Mid-Term elections.

 

“Right before the National Archives came in, they handed us a letter from the Department of Justice informing them and us that the general counsel for the National Archives wasn’t allowed to say anything about the Biden documents,” Comer said. “But we had about a three-plus hour transcribed interview with the general counsel and what we learned was there is a double-standard here with how Donald Trump was treated versus Joe Biden.”

 

The FBI was too busy to stage a 5 AM raid on the DC offices, those Boston Offices, and Joe’s House (or his other house). And it looks like The National Archives was too busy too.

 

Just so you all get how this works…

While the National Archives set up an entire section on its website dedicated to the Trump raid, the National Archives has been ordered NOT to issue a single press release on Joe Biden’s doc scandal.

And Biden’s own DOJ issued the order.

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 2, 2023

 

We’ve now got the White House, the DOJ, the National Archives, and – anyone else?

This is not unexpected, but it is amusing. For four years, Dems took every opportunity to accuse Donald Trump, or anyone who said his name without sneering, of wrongdoing and coverups. Biden’s White House had so many things to cover up that they told the DOJ to put a gag order on the National Archives.

Is that obstruction of justice or by Justice?

 

Exit Question: Can we send Biden’s Lawyers to China to get the boxes of “documents” he left there, or would that create an international incident?

The post More Boxes of Biden Docs in Boston appeared first on Granite Grok.

I was asked recently to characterize the unique strengths of the New Hampshire legislature.  Size: largest state legislature by almost a factor of two. We have 400 House reps. The second biggest is Pennsylvania, with 204.

Cost: $100 per year per legislator (plus mileage) compensation. This means it is a hobby, not a job.

Character: the House is not much of a stepping-stone to higher office, especially because the Senate is so small, with only 24 senators. This means we get more retirees with lots of life experience instead of young, ambitious politicos.

Inexpensive campaigns: it is unusual for a returning Rep to spend $1,000 on their campaign. That means they can be self-funded, so they are less beholden to donors and leadership.

Bottom-up: in many places, including the US Congress, the leadership has a lot of power. Committee chairs can kill bills on their own, and leadership controls large pools of campaign funds. In NH, leadership has very little real power. They can give someone the committee they want; they can give them an aisle seat in the House and maybe a good parking space. But all bills get voted on by the full body. Since many heads are better than a few, we get more intelligence applied to problems than in most places.

Corruption: Since we are so large and there is little money needed to campaign, there is almost no opportunity for corruption, especially in the House.

I’d say perhaps the main drawback is our large turnover, with about 1/3 of the body every election; there is less institutional knowledge than there could be. This tends to give more power to the executive branch employees. They can more easily snow the inexperienced Reps and get their way.

The post The Unique Strengths of the New Hampshire Legislature appeared first on Granite Grok.

Donald Trump is definitely NOT the most narcissist person in politics. You know that if you live in New Hampshire. Sun-King Sununu is. The latest stop on his LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! pretend-Presidential campaign was some FakeNews podcast, which Sun-King’s unofficial publicist, NH-NeverTrump’s Mikey Graham, breathlessly tweeted about.

One of Mikey Graham’s tweets shows just how petty and shallow our Sun-King really is … he attacks Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene for what she was wearing at the State-of-the-Union:

In Sun-King’s defense he probably lashed out like a teenager at MTG because he was still really, really butt-hurt that Speaker McCarthy chose a real Republican Governor, Governor Huckabee Sanders, to give the Republican response to SOTU.

The post Why Is Sun-King Chris Sununu So Threatened By Marjorie Taylor Greene? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Imagine a group calling themselves patriots, afraid to use the powers constitutionally and unanimously bestowed to the states in 1787 from perhaps the greatest men of intellect ever assembled in history.

We want to thank Al Brandano for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.

This group’s tactics include hocus pocus, magician’s wand, sleight of hand, and even flying monkeys of FEAR to make you think a Constitutional Convention is the same as an “Article V” Convention of States.

Article V COS simply would allow NH to become the 20th state to authorize faithful delegates picked by the NH legislature to meet with other states and propose amendments to “THIS” Constitution. (Not Change It). To be called to enact on the Federal Government; fiscal restraints, term limits, and restoration of states’ rights. (Supported by nearly 80% of the US population)

Jan 27, 2023, the Day of Enlightenment occurred in Representatives Hall. Approximately #125 supporters took time from family and work to support HCR- 1 Convention of The States. Mr. Michael Farris, renowned constitutional scholar and practiced Supreme Court attorney, eloquently addressed the fears of the Hocus Pocus group, as well as gave a history lesson on policy and procedures of an Article V. Convention.

The chief magician from the Hocus Pocus group decided not to testify in person and left the room expeditiously as Mr. Farris spoke. Sadly this group also has never proposed any solutions to fight “The Run Away Federal Government,” the authors of Article V feared most.

Later in the week, the courage and wisdom of the State legislature and Veterans Affairs Committee passed Article V HCR-1 and shortly after HCR-4 for US term limits.

We are sure the flying monkeys of fear will be released again as HCR-1 and HCR-4 come before the full legislature session. Please contact your state legislator and ask them to take the time to become enlightened. Let’s join together Democrat, Independent, Republican, and Libertarian – make NH proud to be the 20th state of 34 to call for an Article V Convention of the States to stop a RUNAWAY FEDERAL GOVEREMENT.

In Liberty to All

The post Article V <del>Constitutional</del> Convention – Get Ready for the “Hocus Pocus” appeared first on Granite Grok.

Sun-King Sununu’s unofficial publicist … NH-NeverTrump Journal’s RINO-in-Chief Mikey Graham … has been working to position the Sun-King’s lapdog Attorney General Johnny-Woke for a gubernatorial run in 2024. I posted about it in Is The NHGOP Establishment Moving On From Chucky Morse? a few weeks ago. Well Mikey is back at it … trying to rebrand Johnny-Woke as a fierce defender of the Second Amendment:

What FakeNews Mikey Graham fails to mention is that Johnny-Woke has NOT joined a State Attorney General effort to oppose the FBI’s unconstitutional targeting of Catholics. More specifically, on February 10th, Virginia Attorney General, joined by nineteen GOP State Attorney Generals, wrote the US DOJ and FBI demanding explanations and threatening legal action in response to a leaked internal FBI memo that revealed that the FBI intends to identify and treat Catholics as “potential terrorists.”

An excerpt from the letter reveals why Johnny-Woke did not join:

Needless to say, but I will say it anyway because it needs to be said, Johnny-Woke and his sovereign, Sun-King Sununu, through their words and actions have made it fair to assume that they are on the FBI’s side.

The post So New Hampshire Attorney General Johnny-Woke Is Okay With FBI’s Anti-Catholic Bigotry? appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Climate Cult’s record is not good. Their “frontmen” keep making predictions that never come true. Their prescriptions are not “green.” And there is no evidence that their “cure” will result in the changes prophesized. There is, however, evidence that it won’t.

Since the early years, before they put the climate cult dress on their old whore, global warming was about…warming. It still is. No matter what they call it, the problem, as advertised, is warming. The interventions are supposed to prevent warming by lowering emissions. They are happy to confuse pollution and CO2 because it serves their purpose, but they mean the latter. The mythology always has and will turn on lowering the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to prevent … warming.

That’s the deal. Lower CO2. Every confab, meeting, convention, gesticulation, and rant is about lowering CO2. If we can do that, they say, it will slow or stop the laundry list of horrible things to which it has been ascribed, and that may be the biggest lie of all.

Yes, they lie about their research methods and data and what it means, but there is ample evidence of what the earth’s “climate” was like when there was less CO2. It was nasty and brutish and – if we’re honest – a lot more dangerous than it is today.

In other words, there is proof of what earth is like with less CO2 (the desired outcome), and it is not “a safe and stable climate,” as Tony Heller reminds us. Based on the science (historical fact), you could argue that lower CO2 will make all the things the Climate Climate says you should fear worse or – more likely – that the climate has nothing to do with what they claim, and it’s all a scam.

 

 

 

The post Is This The Biggest Climate Cult Lie Ever? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Thursday, February 16th is a vital day in the NH House HHS Committee. RebuildNH is taking action on 6 bills that day. This could be the most critical day of the year for you to attend the hearings in person.

Please Submit Group communications or Press Releases to editor@granitegrok.com.
Submission is not a guarantee of publication.

We want to pack the room as much as possible. We understand it is a long day and not everyone can stay for the entire day, but please attend as many hearings as you can.

Wednesday, February 15th, N.H. House
Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs
LOB, Room 201-203  10:00 a.m. – SUPPORT – HB 69, relative to direct payment and membership based health care facilities. Currently in NH, all hospitals and clinics must accept Medicaid, Medicare, and insurance, making them subject to federal government regulation. NH has direct payment and membership based primary care and we have noticed a trend of open-minded and alternative practitioners breaking free of regulations by converting their practices to this model. We need to allow hospitals and clinics such freedom.

 Click here to register your disposition.
 Email the committee.

 

Medical Freedom Day!
Thursday, February 16th, N.H. House
Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs
LOB, Room 201-203  9:00 a.m. – SUPPORT – HB 406, relative to parental access to children’s medical records. There is currently a push for medical facilities to cut off parental access to their child’s medical records at 12 years old. I’ve personally heard several reports of parents changing practices due to this policy. This bill requires that parents have access to their children’s medical records until 18 years old.
 Click here to register your disposition.
 Email the committee.

 

Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs
LOB, Room 201-203  9:45 a.m. – OPPOSE – HB 114, relative to the age at which a minor may receive mental health treatment without parental consent. This bill seeks to allow children as young as 16 years old to receive mental health treatment without parental permission or notification.
 Click here to register your disposition.
 Email the committee.

 

Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs
LOB, Room 201-203  10:30 a.m. – SUPPORT – HB 575, relative to vaccines and pharmaceutical products purchased, promoted, or distributed by the state or its political subdivisions. This bill prohibits the state and its political subdivisions from purchasing, promoting, or distributing vaccines or any pharmaceutical product without human, clinical trials, as we did with the Covid booster.
 Click here to register your disposition.
 Email the committee.

 

Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs
LOB, Room 201-203  11:15 a.m. – SUPPORT – HB 557, relative to the department of health and human services’ rulemaking authority regarding immunization requirements. Currently there are two ways that a vaccine can be added to the school requirement schedule: either through law, which requires the legislature to pass a bill, or through the rulemaking process, unilaterally proposed by the commissioner of DHHS. This bill seeks to eliminate the ability of the department to add vaccines to the school schedule through rulemaking.
 Click here to register your disposition.
 Email the committee.

 

Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs
LOB, Room 201-203  1:00 p.m. – SUPPORT – HB 408, relative to foster children and vaccinations. Several years ago, DHHS amended rules regarding vaccines and foster families to require that all the children in the household be fully vaccinated to ACIP standards in order to care for a foster child. As a result, many capable and loving families stopped fostering children. This bill seeks to eliminate this cruel standard by saying that a child living in the home but not in foster care shall be subject to the same vaccination requirements as any other child in the state with the same right to exemption.
 Click here to register your disposition.
 Email the committee.

 

Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs
LOB, Room 201-203  2:30 p.m. – OPPOSE – HB 425, repealing the statute relative to medical freedom in immunizations. One of RebuildNH’s achievements in 2021 was supporting the passage of the Medical Freedom in Immunizations Act that prohibits Covid vaccine status being a basis to receive public benefit. State universities were one way this law was applied and no student attending a NH state school was required to receive the Covid vaccine. This bill seeks to repeal this law.
 Click here to register your disposition.
 Email the committee.

The post Medical Freedom Day and More Take Action Today appeared first on Granite Grok.

Emphasis mine:

The first three quarters of 2022 have seen a rapid increase in credit card balances, after they contracted sharply during the early part of the COVID pandemic. The chart below depicts the year-over-year percent change in credit card balances—the 15 percent increase seen in the third quarter of 2022 towers over the last eighteen years of data.

 

 

For some added context:

(H/T: NY Federal Reserve via UnusualWhales)

The post Data Point – Credit Card Usage Soaring. appeared first on Granite Grok.

Super Bowl Weekend has become a national celebration. It doesn’t matter who the teams are who will compete on the field. It is what happens in the host city, in local pubs, or watching the day-long event on your big-screen TV.

One of the events that many look forward to is the long-standing tradition of the President sitting down with the network of the Game for an exclusive interview. In this year’s case, the President would sit with one of FOXNews’ best interviewers, Shannon Bream. That would be if the President wanted to continue the tradition, but as of today, he may sit this one out. After all, the Game is played on a Sunday, and we know that Joe Biden does not work weekends.

It appears that Joe’s staff will not allow him to participate in an interview where he may have to answer follow-up questions. He would rather sit with George Stephanopoulos or Judy Woodruff, where he can rest assured that nothing he says will go unchallenged.

Joe Biden continues to claim he is the most transparent Administration in history. That does not wash with the actions of this team. Biden has only had 33 press interactions in his first two years. This is a paltry number compared to the more than 200 by Obama and even the 125 by Donald Trump. Biden also has a press office that has proven to be unprepared, unable to give a truthful answer, or maybe worse, refuse to answer. There is little concern for the truth from the Biden Administration, and even Left-leaning bedrocks like the Washington Post or New York Times are souring on the credibility of information emanating from the White House.

Joe Biden sat with NBC and CBS for Super Bowl interviews in the first two years of his term, but sitting with FOX poses a more formidable challenge for the President. Joe’s handlers do not want to take the chance of their man coming off as weak, ineffective, or rambling. The Super Bowl Sunday interview would have a far greater viewership than the State of the Union speech this week. A questionable 72% of Americans graded the State of the Union as favorable. I question that number because that high a percentage would have to include Republicans, and the Right saw nothing favorable in Biden’s address.

Biden still has time to commit to the interview with FOXNews, but if he continues to pass and break the tradition, I would like to see Kevin McCarthy step in to fill the time. This would allow the Speaker of the House to refute claims made by Biden in the SOTU, detail what has been done in 2023, and spell out a platform for a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. This interview would punish Biden for not having the courage or confidence to face the “Evil” Shannon Bream.

It is your call, Mr. President. You can step up and face the tough questions or punt and let Kevin McCarthy shine in the spotlight. My bet says you don’t show up.

The post Joe, Are You Afraid of FOXNews appeared first on Granite Grok.

Well, the Federal Ambassador to NH, Jeanne Shaheen, made a promise to override the lawful decision of the NH Executive Council over its refusal to fund Planned Parenthood.

And she enlisted her fellow coven members (Chris Pappas, Annie Kuster, and Maggie Hassan) to get the Feds to overrule what should have been a local decision. Period

Thus, demonstrating a long-term dogma by Democrats that ALL Power should be pushed as high and as centralized as possible.  NEVER should there be any local control if the Federal Govt, from thousands of miles away, can “spank” those locals at a Democrat’s whim if they sit in Congress: (reformatted, emphasis mine):

The Biden administration is stepping in to offer federal grants directly to sex-education programs in Manchester and the Claremont area after the state’s Republican-led Executive Council rejected them. New Hampshire’s congressional delegation had pursued the direct grants after the council turned down repeated attempts to approve accepting the funds on behalf of the state. In 2021, the all-Democratic delegation went the same route when it convinced the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to contract directly with Planned Parenthood of Northern England and other family planning providers that operated abortion clinics.

Now doing it twice shows a pattern of disdain for what NH wants to do for itself. The idea of Federalism, that the Federal Government is tasked to do what it is supposed to do by Constitutional requirements and LEAVE THE STATES TO THEIR OWN ISSUES, is just part of the Democrat’s targeting of Constitutional norms.

And Shaheen has the temerity to call what the NH Executive Council decided a ‘crisis”??

Access to these resources never should have required a federal agency stepping up to resolve a crisis created by GOP executive councilors, but I’m relieved the Department of Health and Human Services heeded my call for assistance. These dollars are urgently needed to help allow providers in New Hampshire to continue offering evidence-based education in their communities, which experience higher-than-average teen pregnancy rates.

Talk about harboring a grievance against Republicans in a local State matter! No, this was not a crisis – merely a political difference. And Hassen is right with her on this:

“I am proud to stand with our trusted medical providers in supporting evidence-based programs that prioritize the needs of our youth,”

Proud to be yet another Democrat in working to make States irrelevant – that only DC matters.  All four of them have decided that the States (back then, the Colonies) created the Federal Government and not the other way around. However, the Democrats are out to prove that the line of “Americans happen to have a Govt instead of a Govt having subjects” can be applied in other ways as well.

And why is that?  The State of New Hampshire is performing heresy with regard to Progressive dogma:

For the past decade, the state embraced the so-called Personal Responsibility Education Program, which addresses many issues, including abstinence from sex, sexually transmitted diseases, gender identity, relationships and decision-making skills.

(H/T: Union Leader)

The post A Perfect Example of NH Democrats Balefully Showing That Federal Power Outweighs Lawful NH Political Decisions appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Obama years saw many things go sideways, including a top-down demand that Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFLs) replace incandescent, the latter to be banned by law. Ten years later, and Dems are banning CFLs.

They are outlawing the sale for reasons we objected to them being forced on us ten years earlier.

 

As of Feb. 17, Vermont will become the first state to ban the sale of compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) bulbs.

Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation moved to restrict the sale of “screw-based mercury-containing compact fluorescent lamps” in Feb. 17, 2022, but gave retailers and distributors one year to move any remaining inventory.

 

Their reasoning? Mercury in the bulbs makes them hazardous, and LEDs are comparable in price and use less electricity. But not long ago, the same folks told us we had to buy CFLs as they plotted the doom of incandescent bulbs.

 

While the total ban on incandescents was averted, the old reliable ‘heat-ball’ is still nearing extinction in the US.  When we rang in this new year, January 1st, 2013 began, the ban on the 75 Watt incandescent bulb.

It may no longer be produced or sold once supplies run out.  Its smaller cousins will not be far behind in successive years, leaving us to light our way with candles unless, of course, we’d rather use the state-sponsored (see also mandated) bulb of choice–The Compact Fluorescent or CFL.

CFLs suck. Let me count the ways.

 

And we did. Count the ways. And there were plenty of them (you can read here), but they were the new hot blonde (I prefer brunettes). Everyone was talking about them, promoting them, mandating them—no more Edison bulbs.

And yes, most of the CLFs were made in China, so maybe Barry Obama and his Barry Bros were greasing some Chinese pockets with the scheme. Lord knows he had staff who adored the Mao (mao-mao-mao) thing.

But it wasn’t all bad in hindsight. As nasty as it was, we could argue that the CLF inspired necessary innovation. LED bulbs arrived alongside the CFL fantasy. They were far more expensive than the too-expensive CFL, but they did all of the things attributed to the CFL without the immediate downsides. The mercury. The rush of bureaucrats to issue rules or advice about addressing the dangers of breaking a CFL in your home or office.

In some locales calling local hazmat experts to clean it up was not a joke.

How many people does it take to clean up a broken Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb? That depends on where you lived. In other words, many people were unnecessarily exposed to mercury, and the lower your income, the more mercury you likely added to your environment. Hey, we think we cleaned up the lead, so here’s some mercury.

A lighting choice the progs wanted very badly to make the only one, a tendency we see again with lithium batteries and the green energy movement.

I want to think the current nonsense will lead us to the next better technology, and maybe it will, but at what cost? The world has wasted trillions on garbage technology. Millionaires and billionaires have been born out of the transfer of wealth by governments into these concerns and back to politicians and activist groups. All on the backs of taxpayers and second and third-world citizens effectively trapped as slave labor.

CFLs were lousy, but we can’t directly connect that “moment” in history to a rise in human rights violations. And while they do share a degree of environmental hazard, using a CFL didn’t offshore emissions to foreign countries.

Vermont’s CFL sales ban takes effect this month. California is next, which is different; Vermont usually followed California. And we’d expect other states to pile on, and I support that. They’re nasty. We don’t need them. And we didn’t want them in the first place.

Like socialism, which, sadly, Vermont will not ban, and that’s a real shame. It’s far more dangerous to the people and the environment than compact fluorescent light bulbs.

 

 

The post Dems Go From Demanding You Use CLF Bulbs to Banning Them appeared first on Granite Grok.