Some of the current Progressive stands taken by the Left cost them dearly in the pocketbook. That financial hit is the best way to get the attention of a Liberal. Some of the results of elections at home and worldwide are evidence that voters are anxious to get the radical liberals out of office.

It shows we are heading to a more moderate, even Conservative, place in politics.

First, look at two elections where voters might want a second chance. In Chicago, the Homicide Capital of America, Lori Lightfoot was replaced with, hard to believe, a more radical leftist, Brandon Johnson. In addition to the kill rates climbing, he has made other decisions that will further add to the decline of the Windy City. Chicago had a chance and blew it. They will not next time. (Related: Signs The Pendulum Is Swinging To The Right … Part 1)

In California, Gavin Newsom survived a recall election. You cannot find one parameter that indicates positive growth for the Golden State except for the salaries of the Los Angeles Dodgers. As bad as the gem of the West Coast has become, Gavin Newsome is considered the next Democrat in line for the White House. Newsome has to be the poster child for the Peter Principal. God have mercy on us if Newsom’s next stop is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But some recent elections have moved their countries sharply right. Europe is not known to be a bastion of Conservatism, but the conservative Popular Party won the elections in Spain. However, it fell short of its hopes of scoring a much more significant victory and forcing the removal of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Instead, the party led by candidate Alberto Núñez Feijóo performed below the expectations of most campaign polls. A split ticket is a win for Conservatives.

Sweden and Norway have also seen Conservatives win in major political positions. Paraguay and Guatemala have also elected Conservative leaders. These countries have been known for their Liberal leanings for some time. That tide has changed and in a big way. We hope these hot spots become the epicenter for a Conservative wave.

The elections of 2023 showed the winning key for Liberals in our country. If any Abortion related question was on a ballot, Democrats came out in droves. Abortion is the hot-button ticket in politics, and Democrat candidates are riding the emotional power that Abortion conjures.

Sheila Jackson Lee was a force in Congress and left the House to run for Mayor of Houston. She thought the election was a slam dunk, but she was on the losing side of a landslide win by a more moderate candidate, state Sen. John Whitmire. Ms. Lee wasted no time announcing she would run to regain her seat in the House. Lee is a member of the aging Democrat party that has been in power far too long. The young Radicals are proving not to be worthy heirs, and people on both sides have tired of their hatred and disrespect for our country. The Squad may be the poster children for the Conservative rebirth. Representative Cortez was seen polishing her shaker!

 

The post Signs The Pendulum Is Swinging To The Right Part 2 appeared first on Granite Grok.

There is one and only one way to determine the “true cost” of an adequate education. That is to create a competitive education marketplace. Alas, that is not the approach New Hampshire has taken.

Instead, legislators have tried to set the cost by decree. Public school districts, asserting with some justification that the amount is too low, have asked courts to… set the cost by decree.

Now a court has done so, and the results are as absurd as one would expect.

On November 20th, Rockingham County Superior Court Justice David Ruoff ruled that the Legislature’s decreed amount ($4,100 per pupil; he excluded differentiated aid) was unconstitutionally low. But, he said, the plaintiff school districts’ asserted amount ($9,929) was too high. The actual minimum constitutionally permissive state per-pupil expenditure was, he figured, $7,356.01. 

Note the penny. Such precision carries the weight of both mathematical and legal certainty. 

Except, the entire number, including the penny, is merely a guess offered as a suggestion for legislators to consider because the court lacked enough information to find the true figure. So says… Justice David Ruoff.

“Although the evidence demonstrates that a base adequacy aid level of $7,356.01 would be constitutionally insufficient, the Court cannot set a higher threshold at this time,” Ruoff wrote. “Such a step is precluded by the limitations of the evidence presented at trial, as well as the involvement of certain policy considerations. The Court is confident, however, that the guidance offered here will empower the legislature to meaningfully consider and appropriately respond to the relevant issues.”

Well, glad that’s cleared up. 

How did Justice Ruoff conclude both that $7,356.01 was the minimum threshold of constitutionality and that he had too little information to make such a conclusion?

After reviewing the statutory and regulatory requirements for adequacy, and examining actual school district spending, he undertook the following policy analysis: 

He used “common sense” to guess that some district spending wasn’t essential for adequacy, lopped off an arbitrary percentage from some figures (without examining others that would be relevant, such as public charter school spending), and wound up with a back-of-the-envelope guess that can’t quite be called educated, but probably could pass as educated at a cocktail party if it didn’t talk too much. 

Justice Ruoff tasked himself with deciding three questions:

“[T]here are three inquires before the Court: (I) what are the necessary components or cost-drivers of a constitutionally adequate education, as defined by the legislature, exclusive of additional services provided to students eligible for differentiated aid?; (II) what funding is necessary for school districts to provide those components and cost- drivers?; and (III) how does that amount compare to the funding currently provided via base adequacy aid? As the third inquiry is a matter of simple mathematics, the evidence presented at trial largely focused on the first two inquiries.”

To answer these questions, Ruoff considered state requirements and district expenditures. At no point did the court consider whether there might be other, more effective, more efficient and less costly ways to satisfy the state requirements.

Damning for the decision is that the word “market” appears just nine times in the 69-page ruling. Plaintiffs use it to argue for higher teacher compensation, as competition for good teachers drives up wages, and the court uses it to argue that professional development funds are part of adequacy. 

The word is used to justify higher spending, never lower. That’s odd, given that competitive market forces have been shown to improve productivity and drive down costs in K-12 education. 

• A 2010 Harvard University Graduate School of Education study found that “competition from private schools boosts achievement and lowers costs.” According to the study, “a 10 percent increase in enrollment in private schools improves a country’s mathematics test scores on PISA by almost half a year’s worth of learning. A 10 percent increase in private school enrollment also reduces the total educational spending per student by over 5 percent of the OECD average.”
• A 2012 study of open enrollment policies in Wisconsin found that “schools respond to competitive forces by improving quality.”
• A 2003 study found that “regular public schools boosted their productivity when exposed to competition.” That productivity increase typically took the form of higher performance rather than lowered spending. Nonetheless, the study shows that schools can produce better results without higher spending when competition is introduced.
• A 2019 study of private schools participating in Wisconsin’s voucher program found that “private and independent charter schools tend to be more cost-effective than district-run public schools in the state overall and for the vast majority of individual cities.” Particularly, private schools received 27% less funding than district public schools overall but generated “2.27 more points on the Accountability Report Card for every $1,000 invested than district-run public schools, demonstrating a 36 percent cost- effectiveness advantage for private schools.”

Any examination of school spending that ignores chartered public schools and non-public schools is incomplete at best. And any that doesn’t even consider the effects that competition could have on the system is negligent. 

The understatement of the ruling came in Justice Ruoff’s caveat that he was hindered by the “limitations of the evidence presented at trial.” Those limitations, he acknowledged, prevented him from determining with certainty how much an adequate education should cost. But the limitations were greater than he realized. 

Not only did the court lack sufficient school district data to make an accurate cost determination, but it lacked equally important data on the efficiency gains created by competition. Going forward with an analysis despite such huge gaps in available data was a critical error. 

The ruling was plagued with numerous problems, the first being its roots in the wrongly decided Claremont decision. But even accepting the Claremont fallacy, the ruling was doomed by fatal methodological flaws and a devastating shortage of information. 

The information problem should have been obvious from the start. Prices are information. Prices absent competition are woefully inadequate information. Since no competitive education market exists in New Hampshire, the court is left applying legal analysis and back-of-the-envelope math to discover something that only the market can discover: the best available cost of a service. 

It’s clear that legislators set a low figure in the hope that this will press district spending downward. Districts, however, encourage local voters to approve ever higher budgets, which counters the Legislature’s intent. Districts then use those higher levels of spending to claim that the state appropriation is too low. Given these dynamics, it’s impossible to determine with any accuracy just how low district spending could go while meeting the state mandates for adequacy.

Until New Hampshire introduces some form of robust market competition, Granite Staters will never know what an adequate education really should cost. 

 

Andrew Cline | JBartlett

The post Markets, Not Judges, Set Prices, Even for Education appeared first on Granite Grok.

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs sent Joe Border Bender Biden a bill. She says he owes Arizona a 512 million dollar handling fee for illegal border crosser management. Those aren’t the words she used, but that’s what this is. She also wants more troops, not to stop the invasion but to manage it.

 

In a letter to President Joe Biden, Hobbs is requesting that the 243 National Guard troops already on federal orders in the Tucson Sector be redirected to helping with the Lukeville Port of Entry’s reopening.

She also said that she wants “additional National Guard members currently on federal active duty orders to be reassigned to Arizona to assist U.S. Customs and Border Protection to reopen the Lukeville Port of Entry.”

In addition, the governor included in her letter a request for the federal government to reimburse $512.5 million to the state over border security-related costs including “migrant transportation, drug interdiction, and law enforcement.”

 

Hobbs abrogated the sovereignty of her state and its people to the will of the Federal government and its open border policy but needs them to step up and help her manage their mess.

Here’s an idea. Send your own troops and block the border. Keep the illegals out. Make them stay in Mexico. Send a message that the law as written – not as reimagined by a doddering fool named Biden – will be enforced. Don’t make the trip. Don’t risk your life. Stop selling your children. We won’t let you in. We can’t. There are too many here already.

That won’t happen. Hobbs’ Arizona is a franchisee of the Progressive Cloward Piven agenda. Overwhelming the system is the goal. But if that’s the point, why ask for help preventing the system from being overwhelmed? It’s not like you need votes from actual voters to stay in office.

And what if Biden says no? What do you do then?

 

HT | Just the News

The post If Overwhelming the System is the Point, Why Are You Asking for Help? appeared first on Granite Grok.

If ever a picture is worth a thousand words, it is the painting of George Washington kneeling and praying by his white horse in the snow at Valley Forge. Because of our forefathers’ prayers and sacrifice, our families enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas by warm fires, stuffing our bellies, and watching football.

In spite of the freezing winter of 1777, the divine seeds of liberty were growing in the hearts of our troops. Even while most observers agreed with John Adams’ conclusion: “The prospect is chilling on every side; gloomy; dark, melancholy, and despairing,” Washington’s faith was the Continental Army’s most powerful weapon. Washington sought guidance to overcome previous defeats, retreats, and how his men would survive the freezing winter. Our forefathers paid the price of liberty with their lives, fortunes, and sacred honors. Let us pray to the same God who guided and answered Washington’s prayers.

Imagine the dark outlook endured by soldiers, half-naked, leaving bloody footprints in the snow of 1777. The Continental Army all but beaten after September’s retreat from New York. Suffering defeat at Brandywine: 200 troops killed, 500 wounded and 400 captured. How did the troops endure the dark gloom when Philadelphia fell to the British? They were a destitute army with soaked ammunition as their only weapon. No one today suffers the hunger our soldiers endured at Valley Forge: “One soldier’s meal on Thanksgiving Day declared by Congress was a “half a gill of rice (1/4 of a standard pint, 2 oz of rice), and a tablespoon of vinegar.”

Beaten down with defeat, the count of 4,000 soldiers was incapacitated in January and February of 1778, resulting from exposure, undernourishment, and disease. Historian George Bancroft tells us that “love of country and attachment to General Washington sustained them through these unparalleled hardships, and that without his leadership, the army would have dissolved and vanished.” Tory Quaker Issac Potts, after observing the source of Washington’s power, praying in the snow, related to his wife, “Independence will be established because God in His Providence has willed it so because Washington was the only one on earth the Lord would listen to.”

Prayers were answered that spring, cheering our soldiers as France entered the war as an ally with the promise of French money and troops. The Continental Congress acknowledged this as the hand of God, declaring a National Day of Thanksgiving on May 7th following Washington’s orders issued at Valley Forge on May 5th of 1778. He proclaimed:

“It having pleased the Almighty Ruler of the Universe propitiously to defend the cause of the United American States, and finally by raising up a powerful friend among the Princes of the earth, to establish our Liberty and Independence upon a lasting foundation; it becomes us to set apart a day for gratefully acknowledging the Divine Goodness, and celebrating the event which we owe to his benign interposition.”

Yes, the political climate of our day is gloomy as globalists move to control our lives. Read Psalms 2, where David tells us that “the Lord laughs at the Kings of the earth and the rulers who counsel together against Him.” Pray that our people once again will rise up in a thundering appeal to the same God our fathers relied on for divine protection. Who was, who is, and who will always be, “The great I Am.” Just as at Valley Forge, prayer was the Continental Army’s greatest asset. Today, it still remains our most powerful weapon.

 

The post Prayer is Tyrannies Most Powerful Enemy appeared first on Granite Grok.

The fiasco that was the COVID response continues to find new broken ground as the truth seeps like sand between the fingers of a despotic American government.

An institution that was deliberate in its deception, forceful in its demand for compliance, and has yet to be held accountable for the damage it has done.

 

Lieutenant Ted Macie is an active-duty officer with the U.S. Navy Medical Service Corps who serves as a health administrator and medical recruiter. His wife Mara Macie is running for Congress in Florida’s Fifth District. Both have been speaking out against the Pentagon’s COVID jab mandate and its treatment of service members who objected.

In a video uploaded to social media, Lt. Macie cited a July letter from U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel & Readiness Gilbert Cisneros Jr. acknowledging the authenticity of previously exposed data from the Pentagon’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), which shows that 2021 saw drastic spikes in a variety of diagnoses for serious medical issues over the previous five-year average, including hypertension (2,181%), neurological disorders (1,048%), multiple sclerosis (680%), Guillain-Barre syndrome (551%), breast cancer, (487%), female infertility (472%), pulmonary embolism (468%), migraines (452%), ovarian dysfunction (437%), testicular cancer (369%), and tachycardia (302%).

 

The military vaccine mandates have proven to be one of the most effective attacks on US Military readiness in our lifetime. A chemical injection mandated by our government, justified by a virus if paid to an engineer, is released from a lab in China.

The numbers are staggering, but on the matter of fighter pilots, those people don’t grow on trees, and replacing them doesn’t happen overnight.

If you’d like to talk about an insurrection, perhaps you start with the money and permission trail that led to the virus and then the chain of command for mandating the poisoning of our troops.

 

“There is a complete lack of trust in the military ‘leadership’ among those who were not only involuntarily separated, but also those who walked away (including just shy of retirement), those who fought from within but were flagged for promotion, those who didn’t want to take the shot but were coerced, and us family members who have been told that our community’s mental and physical health is important to that alleged leadership,” Mara Macie said on X.

“Accountability is the only answer,” she continued. “Every single voice of servicemembers who suffered because of these ILLEGAL mandates should be heard before Congress. Every single military ‘leader’ who was informed by servicemembers presenting them with the law and still did nothing should be investigated until we remove all those who put their careers above the mental and physical safety of our servicemembers and their families.”

 

Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen who cannot trust the chain of command present a huge problem for the service and the nation. And you’d be right to wonder if that were not the point. And if that is the case who decided what, and when, and what is their endgame?

And if it was just a mistake? What are those people still doing in positions of power?

 

The post Night Cap: It Sure Looks Like Your Government Tried to Undermine Your Military appeared first on Granite Grok.

Most things in this world change over time. There is an ebb and flow to life, and if we do not think we are heading in the right direction, we can be comforted that the pendulum will eventually swing back. That ball has been swinging to the Left for what seems like years, and it felt like the whole world was embracing Socialism.

We who believe in history know the experiment is not working now, nor did it in the past. It would help if you looked no further than Venezuela and Cuba. A major problem we face, if we hope to change course, is an entire generation of our children have been indoctrinated to believe our country was founded and grew on the backs of Black slaves. These young people have been taught an alternate version of history that our country is evil and only a move towards the Left and a more Socialist form of government will save America. Of course, we on the Right think differently and believe in our history as documented. We recognize that we are not a perfect union, and there are sins in our past. However, we realize those sins must be evaluated and judged in the context of time, and once identified, we take the steps to correct our errors.

A vivid example of this indoctrination is the extremely high number of young people who are turning out to protest against Israel and in favor of Palestinians. They are pulling for the independence of Palestine when there is no such country. They deny the holocaust and the atrocities committed against the Israeli people on October 7. They instead look at the effort to destroy Hamas as an unprovoked attack. These people get a filtered version of history and the news that is created to support the narrative of the elites on the Left. This brainwashing has been done by a complicit group consisting of Academia, elected politicians, and the media. The education system has failed us, the politicians have filled our heads with lies, and the media is willing and able to support them. It is a dangerous cartel, but we on the Right are up for the challenge of righting the ship.

Whenever you discuss trends, there is one factor that is always aligned, and that is the money. Follow the money. In the case of rising conservatism, it is not only money spent on the cause but also money pulled back from the opposing trend line. First, there were the big-money contributors that began notifying their liberal Alma Maters the big checks would no longer be coming. That trend is continuing as donors watching the campus demonstrations calling for the genocide of Israel made some of these individuals tear up their checks. The President of U Penn could not denounce the call for genocide as hate speech when testifying in front of a House Committee. The result was her resignation, but not before $100 Million in potential donations was withdrawn.

Then, the wealthiest man in the world put up a crazy amount of cash to purchase Twitter. Elon Musk saw what bias, censorship, and misinformation were tilting the political landscape unfairly to the Left. His promise was to eliminate censorship and return Twitter, which he renamed “X,” to the Free Speech platform that it had always professed to be. Twitter, like Facebook, had become toxic. Musk stepped up to correct a part of that toxicity. Because of his efforts, X should not have a role in electing our President as it did in 2020.

Tomorrow, in the second installment of this article, I will highlight some of the Conservative candidates worldwide who are surprising the pundits and shocking their Liberal opponents. I hope you will come back and check it out.

 

The post Signs The Pendulum Is Swinging To The Right … appeared first on Granite Grok.

In the Not So Great White North, a 50-year-old York University professor named Nicholas Cepeda was allowed to compete in a swim meet against Tween and Teenage girls. He was also seen sharing their locker and shower room with the permission of the East Bayfield Community Centre and Barrie Trojans Swim Club.

As is often the case, one might ask why a 50-year-old man would want to be in a locker room with girls as young as thirteen. Because he’s a woman, you bigot. “Melody Wiseheart swam against girls as young as 13 during the Trojan Cup swimming competition at the East Bayfield Community Centre in Barrie, Ontario, according to a report by Rebel News.”

As alarming and disturbing as it may appear, I have a different question. Does “Melody” also believe he is a teenager?

To what purpose does an aging adult swimmer compete against pubescent girls? Might he also believe he is black, Hispanic, or Innuit? All of the above? Is there a lazy Susan of demographic characteristics from which to pick, like condiments for today’s #woke sandwich, or does he get up in the morning and take a few throws at the diversity dart board?

Teenage, and Girl. Got it!

 

This is not the first time Cepeda has competed against young girls. In October, Cepeda swam against children ages 13-14 during the Richmond Hill Aquatic Centre Fall Classic swimming competition.

Event organizers initially denied that Cepeda had participated in the event until confronted with his name on a copy of their schedule. They “eventually” relented, Menzies reported, “but they didn’t want to get into a debate about gender and age.” Representatives for governing bodies Swimming Canada and Swimming Toronto were reportedly “too busy” to answer questions about the incident. 

 

You are proud to be a partner in the rainbow pride culture, then run away (or, at least, hide) when asked about it. Not so proud, or are you looking for a way to put that back in a closet?

And I don’t care where you think you stand on the issue of the gender spectrum; how is this not creepy, and why isn’t this guy on a sexual predator watchlist?

Because he says he’s a woman, Bigot!

 

 

The post 50-Year-Old Man Allowed to Share Changeroom With 13-Year-Old Girls appeared first on Granite Grok.

CBS News recently reported that inflation under Biden has cost the average American family over $11 thousand per year. Rest assured, that figure is understated because it is based on “government data.” The tweet below links to the CBS article.

Americans need an extra $11,400 today just to afford the basics. https://t.co/t79U2FLqFv

— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 29, 2023

But if you really want to take a deep dive into what can only be described as the UniParty’s decades-long war on the American middle class, check out David Stockton’s The Destruction of The American Middle Class: Some highlights:

Since money-printing went into permanent high gear after the dotcom crash in 2000, the top 1% of households have gained $20 million each in inflation-adjusted net worth. Likewise, the top 0.1% or 131,000 households at the tippy top of the economic ladder have gained $88 million each in inflation-adjusted net worth. … [in contrast]  during the last 22 years the median real annual wage, as tracked by Social Security payroll tax records, has risen by only 14.5% or just $235 per annum.

[the] median annual wage for 2022 was just slightly above $40,000, and that by definition half of the nation’s 172 million workers with wage records earned less than that amount. … this figure amounts to only 65% of the Federal poverty line for a household of 4 persons ($27,750) and is barely above the $14,580 poverty level for a single person household.

Yet “traditional Republicans” … you know, the ones funded by and beholden to the donor class that have gotten richer and richer while the middle class gets poorer and poorer … continue to claim that globalization and “free trade” are good for the middle class.

 

 

The post The UniParty’s War On The Middle Class appeared first on Granite Grok.

The propaganda war against conscientious objectors to the COVID-19 injections was fierce, and while most of the parroted fearmongering came from Liberals or the left, recent research identified a significant number of “Trump supporters” who blamed the unvaccinated just as they’d been told to do, by their government.

From Igor Chudov.

 

You would expect me to rant against the above-mentioned left-leaning individuals. Instead, I would like to point out that “Trump supporters” were also prone to scapegoating and hatred towards the unvaccinated, although to a lesser extent:

 

 

Here are a few more Liberal examples.

 

Consider, for instance, how in 2020, more than 30% of Americans believed that a COVID infection led to a 50% chance of hospitalization; it never did, nor was there ever evidence to suggest it might. Left-leaning individuals tended to over-estimate COVID harms to a greater degree than conservatives.”

…

The results of Study 1, based on 570 American residents, revealed that people were more likely to scapegoat the unvaccinated or unvaccinated-recovered characters compared to the vaccinated characters, regardless of the characters’ risk profiles. In particular, the participants believed that unvaccinated individuals were “responsible for overwhelmed healthcare systems,” “to be blamed for the effects of hospital staff shortages,” “at fault for C19 deaths and hospitalization, and “guilty of severely jeopardizing his/her community’s public health.”

…

 

“This last scenario focused solely on a 28-year-old healthy man who works outdoors alone and has either recovered from COVID or got vaccinated more than 6 months ago without plans for a booster. Both characters, the recovered and vaccinated, are at low risk for hospitalization and are equally capable of spreading the virus. Yet, the unvaccinated but recovered character received more blame. Moreover, individuals who identified as liberal were more likely to blame the unvaccinated compared to their conservative counterparts.”

 

The reasons for all of this are obvious. The Media, Government, and Public Health apparatus engaged in a 24/7/365 campaign to justify the extreme response and an all-out war on human liberty. It could brook no dissent. But it lied about the risk, and that was evident from the state-level data after the first few weeks of shutdowns and lockdowns.

Evidence was only useful to those inclined to cherish freedom before safety, so while a vector of Americans began to push back with questions, concerns, legitimate constitutional objections, and so on, the governments/global terror had already done its job even among ‘Trump supporters.”

People were told they’d die even though almost no one outside the groups typically affected by the flu did. When the vaccines rolled out and made matters worse, blaming people who refused them was easier than asking how positive cases, hospitalizations, and deaths might spike after the salvation of a vaccine had arrived.

The vaccine was the only new variable. How could that be? It had to be the people who hadn’t received it, and the media made that lie their institutional truth. Lies they tried to hide. Perceptions that linger still, even though there is no doubt that the COVID vaccines were never tested to prevent transmission or that they ever could. The long list of side effects, many dangerous, was not a mystery before launch; the real conspiracy was to hide that truth. And they are still trying to hide it.

The New Zeland Whistleblower data is not just damaging but devastating.

The same government that scaremongered you into getting an unsafe and ineffective pharmaceutical treatment with complex and dangerous side effects deliberately hid or refused to look for safety signals because had they found any, they would have had to pull the vaccine.

And we’re not done with revelations but this research shows how effective the psy-op was and continues to be.

 

The post Yes, Master, The COVID Vaccine Psy-Op was Successful appeared first on Granite Grok.

The memes are stacked up like cordwood. Here’s the first selection of the week…

Take heart – there will be both a Wednesday and Friday Edition.  Last week’s Friday Edition.

Remember, ridicule and mockery are effective weapons:

1. Ridicule cannot easily be fought
2. Ridicule makes the enemy angry, and angry people make mistakes
3. For those in the “squishy middle” a Thought Splinter (and Part II and Part III and Part IV) can often be hidden inside humor.

Now, let the mockery and mayhem begin.

 

*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the 1965 immigration law was passed assurances were given that the demographics of America would not change.  Meanwhile, the Dems used this to import millions of new voters.  And with the advent of the vast majority of those coming in now being males of military age, how soon before they’re connected with the weaponry & ammo purchased for all those federal agencies under Barackus and set loose on the public?  Remember:

 

 

 

 

One of the minor ironies I have seen in the latest situation is the Lebanese pr0n star, Mia Khalifa, who has done FF scenes, taking the side of Hamas against Israel… when, by dint of her now former career (and I admit, good for her for quitting that industry), she’d be stoned to death under the Sharia laws Hamas et al want to impose worldwide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

EU lawmaker dies of ‘heart attack’, age 70, following accusation of Von Der Leyen in corruption. – Rivasi was investigating EC head von der Leyen and Pfizer, who are preparing to extend their contract to supply the vaccine until 2026 at inflated prices with a 40% oversupply of doses. – Rivasi was preparing to give a report to the European Parliament on December 15. She wanted to announce the results of the investigation and provide copies of documents to the press. Very conveniently timed heart attack! https://t.me/LauraAbolichannel

Remember.  Money on this scale buys anything, including “convenient” deaths of “inconvenient” people.  And it’s not just money, but untold power… total tyranny, plus getting rid of the useless eaters. The 7.3 Billion Dollar, er, Person Question – Liberty’s Torch (libertystorch.info) Proverbs 16:18… and What’s Coming? – Granite Grok Dark Thoughts in the Small Hours – Granite Grok Borrowing from a Dog Food Ad – Urban Scoop Depopulation Speculations – Granite Grok These people are SERIOUS about this.  Meanwhile: More on that: The Ministry of Health granted vaccine exemptions to hundreds among its key staff whilst hypocritically insisting that the public be vaccinated – Daily Telegraph NZ >>>>>=====<<<<<

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I foresee a “tragic accident” in his near future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ability of people to deny evidence – a la Yuri Bezmenov – that’s right in front of them is astonishing.  Consider… I once mentioned that in a TED talk Gates talked about reducing the population with vaccines.  He said it.  The person didn’t believe me.  I said Gates smirked at the prospect of the “next pandemic” waking people up.  They didn’t believe me – so I showed them the video.

 

https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Bill-Melinda-Gates-Giggle-Smirk-Over-2nd-Wave-of-Pandemic_ZmP6_gy-MIE_360p.mp4

 

And they STILL didn’t believe that he said what he said and they both smirked.  “Oh, that’s just faked”.  Out of context too, don’t you know?

We talk about trying to wake people up.  They won’t… until it affects them personally, either directly or through a loved one.  Related is this next meme:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Pick of the post:

 

 

This is subtle.  But once you “get it”… powerful.

 

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

 

Palate Cleansers:

 

—

—

 

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

 

Come back Wednesday for another edition.  Same Meme Time.  Same Meme channel.

Please do consider buying me a coffee.

Buy Me a Coffee

 

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

 

The post MONDAY MEMES appeared first on Granite Grok.

As Republicans search for a successful messaging strategy on abortion, one Candidate for President, Pro-Life Democrat Tarissa Bukovinac, is dropping all posturing an pretense, hoping to expose the extremism of her party on the issue.

The American left is almost singularly obsessed with aborting the unborn from conception to birth. No other nation does it. Most Western Countries prohibit them after 15-20 weeks. New Hampshire Dems called the state’s Republicans extreme for passing restrictions after 24 weeks, while many more liberal states surrounding New Hampshire have similar or more restrictive laws in place.

But Dems have had electoral success painting Republicans as out of touch on the issue when they are more in line with America and the world. But, it works at the ballot box.

We have to wonder what this will accomplish. According to a Campaign press release (below) the Bukovinac Ad is extremely graphic, airing tonight, during the Jimmy Fallon Show.

“Although this strategy has generated controversy, the Bukovinac Campaign remains steadfast in exposing the violence of abortion.”

The goal is to get the reality of abortion, especially late term abortion, in front of people who refuse to see it for what it is.

All I can say is imagine if a Republican candidate for anything did this? Would they even have the nerve to try it?

Here’s the press release.

 

Contact: Stephanie Luiz, (305) 877-0893, stephanie@terrisa2024.com

Washington, D.C. (December, 11th, 2024) — Today, the Terrisa Bukovinac for President Campaign announced it will begin airing explicit anti-abortion ads in the Boston/New Hampshire market. Bukovinac is on the ballot in New Hampshire for the Democratic Primary.

The advertisements will air during The Jimmy Fallon Show on NBC in Boston/New Hampshire and Massachusetts on December 11. The scheduled TV ad can be accessed here.

The 30-second TV ads show in gruesome detail the gut-wrenching remains of five babies killed by later abortion, featuring footage captured by Bukovinac when she recovered the remains last year outside an all term abortion business in Washington DC. This effort is part of the campaign’s strategy to engage voters on the atrocity of later abortion during the 2024 presidential election by embracing the power of visual storytelling to expose the brutality of abortion. The ad condemns the Biden administration and the Democratic party’s extreme, out-of-touch abortion platform, which stands at odds with 30% of Democrats.

Although this strategy has generated controversy, the Bukovinac Campaign remains steadfast in exposing the violence of abortion.

Bukovinac stated that her aim with this advertisement is to “disrupt the consciences of the American people, particularly leftists who are complicit in abortion by supporting pro-abortion candidates.”

Bukovinac also states: “pretending like millions of pro-life Democrats like myself don’t exist isn’t a winning strategy. The right to life must be protected at every age, everywhere, and that is why I am on the ballot as a presidential candidate—to be a voice for the innocent and oppressed and rekindle the debate inside the Democratic Party. ”

FCC regulations stipulate that news stations “have no power of censorship over the material” in campaign ads. The campaign aims to communicate the gravity and urgency of the abortion issue to American voters through impactful visuals. As the 2023 presidential race intensifies, the Bukovinac Campaign remains dedicated to educating voters about the violence associated with abortion.

Terrisa Bukovinac is a leading secular progressive pro-life activist running for President of the United States. She previously served as the President of Democrats for Life of America, and is the Founder of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU). Bukovinac’s bid for the Democratic nomination amplifies the voices of the 1 in 4 Democrats who support common sense abortion limits.—

Stephanie Luiz Campaign Manager e. Stephanie@bfp2024.com w. Terrisa 2024

The post Breaking: Dem Presidential Candidate to Run Graphic Anti-Abortion Ad Tonight on NBC appeared first on Granite Grok.

It is impossible not to have a wave of patriotism and pride take over your body as you settle in for the annual Army-Navy Game. This year, it is even more special as the Cadets and Mid-Shipmen gather in Foxboro, Massachusetts, the home of the Original Patriots and the six-time Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots.

The young men who took the field are not your typical student-athletes. These men take the field in their unique uniforms designed just for this game, but tomorrow, they will don the United States Army or Navy uniforms. These are the future leaders of the most powerful military in the world. But for sixty minutes, they will defend their end zone from the team on the other side of the line of scrimmage. Adversaries on the field, men united on a mission every other day to keep the enemy away from you and me. These men are football players, but they are also our heroes. They are indeed a unique lot.

This game is the greatest rivalry in sports. Forget the Yankees and Red Sox. This matchup eclipses the Celtics and Lakers. Move over, Bruins and Canadians. On this Saturday, it is not Tom and Peyton exchanging touchdowns. Only one game is on the schedule: Army vs Navy. The khaki vs the navy blue and the spread doesn’t matter. These men will leave everything on the Gillette Stadium Field. As the Black Knights of the Army and the Midshipmen of the Navy ran onto the field, their respective classmates roared with support. This meeting is the 124th edition of a tradition like no other. It is not only sport but Americana.

Of course, these teams are playing to win and the bragging rights for the year, but to us, they are all winners. The score is immaterial to the rest of us. Every player on that field is a winner. There will be a losing team but never a losing player. At the end of this game, hard knocks will turn to firm handshakes and friendly embraces. The next time some of these players meet, they may be on a battlefield on the other side of the world.

At a time when the country cannot be more divided comes a sporting event in which every American can find pride. The Left and Right may differ on when we should use our military might, but both sides love our men and women with the American flag on their shoulders. These men represent the best and brightest our country has to offer, and God Bless those young men and women willing to put their personal lives on hold while they serve their country. There was no outstanding offensive outburst, and it was a defensive battle, which is fitting for defending the homeland is what these young men will do. The game ended at the one-foot line with a mass of twenty-two massive athletes in a stand-off.

Army won the game, but all these men will be Brothers in Arms forever.

 

The post They May “Fight” Each Other On this Field … appeared first on Granite Grok.

Talking about Hillary’s illegal server was election interference. Discussing Hunter Biden’s Laptop was also election interference. Everything being done to Trump, however, is not – according to political elites, but a majority of voters disagree. Recent polling suggests they see it for what it is.

If ever there were a definition of election interference, understanding that the definition of anything is a moving target on the Left, it would be frivolous politically driven litigation during an election season.

And so it is.

 

Among all voters, 60% agreed that the unprecedented legal charges against Trump were politically driven by the Democratic Party, while 31% disagreed.

What’s surprising isn’t that majorities of Republicans (81% “agree,” 13% “disagree”) and independents (53% “agree,” 35% “disagree”) see eye-to-eye, but that a plurality of Democrats (49% “agree,” 44% “disagree”) also believe the prosecutions are politically motivated.

 

 

Even Democrat voters appear nearly in the majority on the matter, but the ominous undertones don’t stop there. 76% of Republicans and 63% of Independents polled said they would still vote for Trump (in the Primary) if he were convicted of something. The folks at AFP-HQ must be scratching their wooden heads over that one.

Did we send all those glossy mailers for naught? I think perhaps you did, but as I’ve noted in the past, you can do with your money what you like. Pick a candidate, an issue, and be whoever you are in defense of that. But I think you backed the wrong horse. Trump won in 2016 because he was an outsider—a disruptor. Eight years later, despite being President for four of them, Donald Trump is still the outside/disruptor candidate, at least in the eyes of most Republicans, and that’s whose Primary he needs to win.

And at a time when more Americans, perhaps than ever, see the political establishment as a threat to their privacy, lives, and livelihoods.

It doesn’t make AFP or anyone who claims Trump can’t win the General wrong (given the lack of attention to election integrity, what Republican can). Still, they’ve been unable to prove that to Republican primary voters, and the NH Primary is in six weeks, the Iowa Caucus is in five weeks, and the wind is blowing favorably in Trump’s direction.

 

 

The post 60% of Voters (Incl. 49% of Dems) Think Charges Against Trump are Politically Motivated appeared first on Granite Grok.

Conservatives focus on their base, but even the most ardent now recognize that their failure to persuade swing voters, and particularly women, is a giant wall — maybe the only wall the left likes — dropped across the road to victory.

That wall shattered the “red wave” conviction that inflation and Biden’s sorry track record were sufficient appeals to prevail in ’22. Yet, while there’s plenty of discussion about the need to appeal beyond the base, many campaign consultants act as though putting the same talking points in a dress will solve the problem. It won’t.

At Independent Women’s Voice (IWV), we think there are many issues conservatives should talk about and about which they will find common ground with women and other swing voters. They’ll not only win support among these essential audiences but create momentum for actionable solutions that will actually yield positive results for the American people.

This can start with IWV’s Hope Agenda, which includes elevating five issues that matter deeply to most Americans, first and foremost women. (RELATED: BOB EHRLICH: It’s Not All Doom And Gloom. Here Are Some Signs Of Progress Against The Woke Onslaught)

In polling done in early October, Independent Women’s Voice asked 1,000 likely 2024 voters the following question: How important are each of these issues to you when making your decision on who to vote for?

The answers, totaling “Very Important” and “Somewhat Important” for the following five statements, all polled at 70% or better not only nationally but across women, independents, Hispanics, millennials, and 18-35-year-olds:

• Preventing biological men from accessing women’s private spaces, athletics, and academic opportunities: Nationally: 71%, with 18-35-year-olds registering 75%. Looking at just the highest intensity “very important” – 48% for women.
• Securing borders in America and welcoming safe and legal immigration: Nationally 80%, with women at 81%. For “very important”: 51% for women.
• Returning schools to teaching academics and pathways to success, not ideology and victimhood: Nationally 81%, with Hispanics at 84%. For just “Very Important”: 56% for Hispanics and Independents, and 58% for women.
• People being able to freely share opinions and beliefs without being ‘canceled’: Nationally 83%, with women at 82% and Hispanics at 83%. Looking at simply “Very important”: 50% for women and 54% for Independents.
• Being able to see the price of all non-emergency health care in advance: Nationally 85%, women 86%, Independents 89%, Hispanics 91%, 18-35 82%. For just “Very important”: 51% for women, 54% for Millennials, and 55% for Hispanics.

Interestingly, conservatives are talking about shifting from abortion to transgender issues as their chief cultural focus. While at IW we take a back seat to no one when it comes to fighting to protect minors and provide fully informed consent and equal rights and protections for detransitioners (health insurance generally fails to cover anything that might alleviate or repair, where possible, what has been done), we note that “preventing the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on minors” while important is not yet as strong a concern as the other five issues. It polls nationally at 68%, with 42% of women viewing this as “very important.” (RELATED: HIGGINS: COVID Precautions Are Back — Everywhere But On The Southern Border)

At Independent Women’s Voice, we don’t think it’s enough to flag an issue; we want to help our fellow Americans learn about it, know who will advance it, and do something about it. To that end, we have initiatives on each: education materials, video stories, and policy solutions.

Patient Protection Commitment – supports true healthcare price transparency and affordability—implementation of which would drop our nation’s health care costs 40% and would benefit patients and businesses rather than private equity investors and the healthcare special interest groups.

Free Speech Commitment – promotes free speech and opposes the bigotry of cancel culture and – as Vivek Ramaswamy neatly puts it – the psychological slavery it engenders.

Trust Through Transparency Commitment – commits to schools being transparent and pro-parent, returning schools to teaching academics and pathways to success, not ideology and victimhood.

Safe Borders Commitment – highlights the importance of securing borders to prevent economic, national security, and public health issues in America, applying the same rules we have for entering the country via air to those coming on land.

Stand with Women Commitment – lets constituents know who is pro-woman pro-science and will fight for policies that prevent sex discrimination and preserve women’s rights, safety, and opportunities.

Our Hope Agenda commitments on health care, safe borders, free speech, women’s rights, and educational trust through transparency will help elevate the importance of these policy issues that will genuinely benefit women and all Americans. They’ll be backed by a range of proven educational approaches, including:

• Educational engagements that help users realize that many well-intended “solutions” are harmful and there are better approaches.
• Real-life, emotional stories of victims who have been hurt by dangerous misguided policies.
• Emotionally gripping ads that quickly highlight the problems
• Reaching each audience on platforms where they are listening and engaging.
• Activating Independent Women’s Network—a growing group of roughly 35,000 women across the nation with 29 chapters established in 19 states—to carry these messages to other women and allies in their communities.

There is more to come. But each of these components of the Hope Agenda will help bring hope back to America, and we welcome partners and allies in elevating a Hope Agenda that talks about the issues that women, as well as Independents, Hispanics, and younger Americans, care deeply about and want addressed.

 

Heather R. Higgins is the CEO of Independent Women’s Voice.

Heather Higgins | Daily Caller

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

 

The post The GOP Can Win Women With The Hope Agenda appeared first on Granite Grok.

The gaming industry has always been at the forefront of technological innovation, and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into game development is no exception. In recent years, AI has been making significant strides in transforming various aspects of the gaming experience, and one area that stands out is slot game development. The combination of AI and slot technology has opened up new frontiers, enhancing player engagement, personalization, and overall gaming satisfaction.

AI-Powered Game Design: Crafting Unparalleled Experiences

Traditionally, slot online game development relied heavily on manual processes and creative intuition. However, with the advent of AI, game designers now have a powerful tool at their disposal. AI algorithms can analyze player preferences, playing styles, and feedback to generate data-driven insights. This data is then utilized to design games that are more likely to resonate with the target audience, leading to the creation of more engaging and immersive slot experiences.

Moreover, AI allows for the creation of dynamic and adaptive gaming environments. Slot games can now adjust their difficulty levels, themes, and rewards based on the player’s skill level and preferences. This level of personalization ensures that players remain captivated, as the game evolves to meet their evolving interests and skill sets.

Intelligent RNG (Random Number Generation): Fairness and unpredictability

Random Number Generation is the backbone of slot machines, determining the outcome of each spin. AI has brought about a revolution in this aspect by introducing intelligent RNG systems. These systems leverage machine learning algorithms to analyze vast datasets and generate more complex and unpredictable number sequences. This not only ensures a fair gaming experience but also adds an extra layer of excitement as players can never predict the outcome with absolute certainty.

The intelligent RNG systems also enable slot game developers to create more intricate and varied game scenarios. From bonus rounds to jackpot triggers, AI-driven RNG adds an element of unpredictability that keeps players on the edge of their seats, enhancing the overall thrill of the gaming experience.

Adaptive Gameplay: Tailoring the Experience in Real-Time

One of the most remarkable ways AI is transforming slot game development is through adaptive gameplay. Traditional slots offered static experiences, with predetermined paylines and fixed features. However, AI allows for real-time adjustments to the gameplay based on player behavior.

For instance, if a player consistently enjoys a particular type of bonus round or theme, the AI can dynamically increase the frequency of these elements in the gameplay. On the other hand, if a player seeks a new challenge, the AI can introduce novel features or adjust difficulty levels to keep the experience fresh and engaging.

This adaptability not only keeps players entertained but also contributes to longer sbobet gaming sessions and increased player retention. By tailoring the gaming experience to individual preferences, AI ensures that players feel a sense of connection and personal investment in the games they play.

Behavioral Analysis for Responsible Gaming: Mitigating Risks

While the primary goal of AI in slot game development is to enhance the gaming experience, it also plays a crucial role in promoting responsible gaming. AI algorithms can analyze player behavior in real-time to identify signs of problem gambling or compulsive patterns.

By monitoring factors such as playing frequency, bet sizes, and session durations, AI can detect anomalies and trigger interventions to encourage responsible gaming practices. This might include pop-up messages suggesting a break, setting deposit limits, or providing information on resources for seeking help with gambling-related issues.

End Note

The integration of artificial intelligence into slot game development represents a paradigm shift in the gaming industry. From personalized gaming experiences to intelligent RNG systems and adaptive gameplay, AI is redefining the way players interact with slot machines. As technology continues to advance, we can expect even more groundbreaking innovations that will further elevate the excitement and engagement levels in the world of slot gaming. The future of slot tech is undoubtedly AI-driven, promising a landscape where every spin is a unique and tailored experience.

The post Slot Tech: How Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing Game Development appeared first on Granite Grok.

Nikki Haley is campaigning to the wrong crowd.  Her campaign would probably say that’s part of her strategy. To conservative voters, that’s exactly the problem with Nikki Haley: Republican primary voters aren’t Haley’s real constituency.

The individuals Haley is truly trying to appeal to, the people whose opinions she cares about the most, are the neoliberal elites who run establishment institutions like the media and Wall Street banks.

Tucker Carlson, my former boss, made this point over a year ago. I was with him in Iowa when he gave a speech explaining why Haley is unfit to lead the Republican Party.

In the speech, Carlson recalled Haley’s response to George Floyd’s death in 2020. Just days after the incident (and notably, before any facts had emerged), Haley tweeted that “in order to heal,” Floyd’s death “needs to be personal and painful for everyone.”

“I thought, why should what happened between a cop and George Floyd outside a convenience store in Minneapolis be personal and painful to anybody,” Carlson wondered. “What are you even talking about? Oh, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re trying to please the people whose opinions you actually care about at The New York Times.”

Carlson was and is, of course, right. He added that Haley’s tweet was a perfect example of why she’s unfit to lead the country.

“The second things get intense and the second the other side really unleashes and starts yelling so loudly that you can’t think clearly — I want a leader who can still think clearly,” he said.

Nikki Haley may be a nice person and a good politician, but she’s not that type of leader. More often than not, she’s been the type of Republican who behaves exactly like the institutional left believes Republicans should. She is the media’s favorite Republican running this cycle, and it’s not hard to see why.

For one, Haley believes in identity politics. She’s made her gender a central part of her pitch, from her bizarre comment about the “ammunition” in her heels at a primary debate to the campaign gear on her website. Haley sells bumper stickers and t-shirts that say “Sometimes It Takes A Woman,” which sounds more like Hillary Clinton than your average female GOP voter.

When asked recently why minorities should vote for her, Haley didn’t cite any policy proposals. Instead, she answered, “I am a minority first, so I think I’m as diverse as it gets.”

In other words, Haley wants people to vote for her because she’s an Indian woman. That message has earned Haley praise from the media.

On Wednesday, NPR ran a piece titled “Strong but ‘feminine’: how Nikki Haley navigates gender as the only woman in the GOP race.” The author wrote that Haley has been “highlighting the traits that make her unique … including her gender and her family’s immigration story.” As if those things weren’t obvious to voters.

It’s clear the media is attempting to rehabilitate Haley’s image on the left to make her more palatable to their audiences.

After the first Republican debate, MSNBC host Joy Reid said Haley “seemed like a reasonable Republican politician who kind of made sense.” Comedian Bill Maher recently called Haley an “as-good-as-it-gets Republican.” A November piece in Politico said Haley was “consolidating the NeverTrump vote” among donors and organizers.

Then there’s the support for Haley from the corporate establishment on Wall Street. Last month, fresh off declaring she would end limits on legal immigration and instead reform the system based on what corporations “need,” Haley met with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and other business executives to court their support. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is arguably the most significant proponent of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing in the United States.

When asked after the meeting if she was concerned about those ESG policies, Haley ignored the question. Instead, she pointed to her record as governor and said, “I partnered with my businesses. I use them as a resource. One, they hire people that we need to hire. They help us with our economy.”

Around the same time as Haley’s meeting with Fink, Axios reported that she had been having private conversations with J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. Days later, he publicly called on business leaders, even liberal Democrats, to support her.

Perhaps even more important, her ties to the neoliberal establishment are that Haley is a staunch proponent of involving the United States in foreign military conflicts like the war in Ukraine. By extension, Haley also supports enriching the defense contractors that benefit from those conflicts. In fact, no other Republican currently running can be counted on to protect that system — the military-industrial complex — the way Haley would.

That’s because Haley herself was part of it. She also directly benefited from it.

As South Carolina governor, Haley signed over a billion dollars worth of economic development legislation for Boeing. The company rewarded Haley with a seat on its board just months after she left the Trump administration in 2018. That relationship, along with Haley’s work with several other companies with ties to the defense industry, gave a huge boost to her personal finances. As journalist Lee Fang reported earlier this year, Haley went from being over a million dollars in debt and having just $15,000 in a bank account to amassing a fortune worth over $12 million.

Amassing personal wealth is not in itself disqualifying. But Haley ingratiating herself with the defense industry is part of a pattern. At a time when conservatives increasingly want leaders to buck the establishment, Haley has been too willing to go along with it.

Whether because of her own personal conflicts of interest, her general desire to be embraced in the mainstream and by donors, or simply her lack of courage, Nikki Haley has repeatedly shown conservatives that she can’t be trusted to take principled stances on controversial issues.

Republicans deserve a nominee who represents them first, before the interests of Wall Street and permanent Washington. They want a nominee who will not cower when faced with criticism from the media establishment.

Not only does Nikki Haley fail to fit that bill, but she’s the exact opposite. There’s a reason why establishment forces are coalescing to prop up her campaign. Voters: beware of the moderate dressed in conservative clothing.

Eduardo Neret is a conservative writer and political commentator, and a former producer for Tucker Carlson.

 

Eduardo Neret | Daily Caller

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.

 

The post Night Cap: Why Nikki Haley Is The Neoliberals’ Favorite Republican appeared first on Granite Grok.

In the new black century, the race-baiters have been working overtime to undermine one of their own. MLK, once an icon of the civil rights movement, can no longer be honored as he once was. The color of your skin is the only thing that matters, and it must be black.

From Barry Obama, the “black” president who destroyed decades of progress on race relations, to Ibram Kendi, CRT, and the 1619 Project, content and character only matter if you are repeating their divisive rhetoric. Whites are born racist. There is no such thing as reverse racism. And we must now ask this question.  Did the black 26-year-old female suspect who was pouring gasoline on the home where MLK was born prevented from perpetrating a Hate Hoax or from exacting New Age Civil Rights Revenge on an old age icon? (Related: If MLK Were Alive Today, White CRT Advocates Would Shout Him Down.)

 

This dumb bish AKA Laneisha Shantrice Henderson was just arrested after she tried to burn down MLK Jrs. birth home.
She was dousing the outside with gasoline when two tourists stopped her.
Do you think she is mentally ill or pulling a Jesse Smollett? pic.twitter.com/25lOgip7MF

— Chris Randolph (@TrumpAF2024) December 8, 2023

 

No one seems to know (as of this writing) what her motivation was, but she appears to be a former Navy Vet, and it is impossible to dispute that she was dousing the home in gasoline. FOX Atlanta 5 says the judge has denied her bail as a flight risk, but the motive remains unclear. No one is reporting why she traveled to Atlanta (she gave an out-of-state address to police) to buy a gas can gasoline and then dose the home with it. (Related: Did the Slaves or MLK Know Freedom Was Actually a Dog Whistle for White Supremacy?)

It seems like a lot of effort to perpetrate a Smollett, but in contrast, not nearly as consulted, planned, and perpetrated as Jussie’s not-so-excellent adventure. I’ve also yet to find significant commentary from the new generation of race baiters who consider quitting King’s content of their character quite as racist.

We’ll try to update the story as it develops.

 

The post Was This a Hate Hoax or was This Black Woman Part of the Hate MLK Crowd? appeared first on Granite Grok.

During the 2020 election, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) partnered with the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a consortium of groups led by the Stanford Internet Observatory, to track and counter what they considered mis- and disinformation.

EIP surveilled hundreds of millions of social media posts and collected from the cooperating government and non-governmental entities that it calls its “stakeholders” potential violations of social media platforms’ policies concerning election speech.

It coordinated its efforts primarily through a digital “ticketing” system. There, one of its as many as 120 analysts or an external partner could highlight a piece of offending social media content or narrative consisting of many offending posts by creating a “ticket” and share it with other relevant participants by “tagging” them. Tagged participants could then communicate with each other, in something of a group chat, about the veracity of the flagged content, concerns about its spread, and what actions they might take to combat it.

For social media companies, this meant removing the content outright, reducing its spread, or “informing” users about dubious posts by slapping corrective or contextualizing labels on them.

During the 2020 election cycle, EIP generated a total of 639 tickets, covering some 4,784 unique URLs – representing content shared millions of times – disproportionately related to the “delegitimization” of election results. Major platforms, including Twitter, Google, and Facebook, responded to tickets in which they were tagged at rates of 75% or higher. The platforms “labeled, removed, or soft blocked” 35% of the URLs shared via EIP.

RealClearInvestigations has obtained data associated with nearly 400 EIP tickets, data produced for the House Homeland Security Committee in connection with its oversight efforts. The tickets come in the form of a series of spreadsheets. Each row represents one ticket. The Stanford group provided no key for the spreadsheets. Much of the information is redacted.

Here are just a few examples of the tickets EIP produced:

Ticket EIP-482 (created October 27, 2020) was originated by the CISA’s Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center (EI-ISAC). It concerns a tweet from then-President Trump indicating “most” states permit one to change one’s original vote after engaging in early voting, which EIP categorized as potential “Procedural Interference.”

The analysts point to fact-checks from, among other sources, Buzzfeed and ABC News challenging the president’s claim. Following two redacted comments on the ticket, an unnamed commenter writes, “Twitter received and is reviewing.” A subsequent comment reads: “We heard back from Twitter through CISA with this response: Our team concluded that the Tweet was not in violation of our Civic Integrity Policy.”

CISA-produced documentation shows the sub-agency’s chief counter-MDM (mis-, dis-, and malinformation) officer, Brian Scully, had also reported the tweet to Twitter, which responded to him directly about it. Therefore, EIP and its stakeholder, an executive agency, both forwarded the chief executive’s speech to a social media platform for potential censorship.

Ticket EIP-257 (Sept. 29), originated by the EI-ISAC, concerns a social media post from an unnamed user, alleging an absentee ballot had been delivered by mail to his dead father. An EIP stakeholder “flagged the post to Facebook for removal and the link is no longer active which means it has either been taken down or made private to the individual’s Facebook.” A subsequent comment notes that “We also received confirmation from Facebook (by way of CISA) that Facebook took action on this case,” again showing EIP and CISA seemingly working as force multipliers in content moderation.

Ticket EIP-301 (Oct. 2), originated by the EI-ISAC, concerns a “tweet regarding voting machines.” An elected official reported that the since-deleted and unavailable tweet “is false. Voting machines work the vast majority of the time. Old machines do have issues, but to phrase it like [this] vastly overstates the scope of the problem.” CISA inquired as to whether Twitter took the tweet down. It did.

Ticket EIP-954 (Nov. 8), the origins of which are not discernible, concerns social media posts sharing an article from The Federalist, where I am a senior contributor, titled “America Won’t Trust Elections Until The Voter Fraud Is Investigated.” According to the ticket, the article “Misconstrues Disinformation as Evidence.” One tagged post comes from Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway. A stakeholder writes to Facebook and Twitter in connection with the ticket that “this seems to be the greatest hits from the past 3 days wrapped up in one article. The article links to several of the gateway pundit links which have received action since Tuesday.” Twitter indicates it was reviewing the tweet, though it appears not to have taken action on it. RCI asked Hemingway for comment on the flagging of her tweet and publication’s work. She replied:

This unconscionable censorship of The Federalist and its reporters is sadly unsurprising. The censorship-industrial complex in this country clearly views free speech as its enemy and will do anything to shut it down, including spreading lies and using intimidation to coerce private companies to censor factual, legal speech on behalf of the regime.

Hemingway concluded with a warning: “The censorship-industrial complex better buckle up because the days of conservatives taking this lying down are over.”

 

Ben Weingarten | RealClear Wire

 

The post How the Federal-Private Speech Police Operated in Election 2020 appeared first on Granite Grok.

Artificial Intelligence apps have begun to proliferate across the internet that allow you to take pictures of clothed girls and women with a smartphone and make them nude. Victims feel humiliated, and the potential for abuse is enormous, but I’m sensing a disturbance in the transgender force.

While the rare and few who actually suffer from gender dysphoria deserve appropriate medical and mental health, there is also a known faction of male abusers who use the culturally accepted feelings of femininity to gain access to vulnerable women in once-private spaces.

When I read about young men using some new idea or bit of technology to creep on girls and women, even when the naked parts don’t truly belong to the person to which they are attached, I am offended but, at the same time, reminded. A boy can let his junk hang out while ogling girls in a locker room if he claims to be one, but no one has a right to feel humiliated by that.

To borrow from one of the victims of the AI App incident at Westfield High School in New Jersey.

 

‘We’re aware that there are creepy guys out there but you’d never think one of your classmates would violate you like this.’

What if these creepy boys announced that they were girls so they could watch you change in front of them or step in and out of a shower in the girl’s locker room? You have zero consent with an understanding that if you complain about the locker room, you are an intolerant bigot.

To be clear, neither of these things is acceptable, but when you invest that much time and energy sexualizing the culture and dehumanizing the meaning or product of intercourse, then build onramps to voyeurism and sexual assault, you’re going to have a hard time justifying any outrage over things we used to just accept as inappropriate or offensive.

Before you get offended, ask yourself: did you enable it, were you forced to enable it, and are you prepared to do whatever is necessary to reel that back in, if that is even possible? And if not, how do you expect to move forward in that world if this isn’t going away?

So many questions.

 

The post Smartphone Apps that Make Pictures of Clothed Girls Naked vs. Boys in Girls Locker Rooms … appeared first on Granite Grok.

Thousands of busybodies have descended on Abu Dhabi to forestall what they see as an imminent apocalypse. The twenty-eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP28) being held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), is presided over by its president, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and UAE Special Envoy for Climate Change. Al Jaber is also the chief executive officer of Adnoc, the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as well as the chairman of Masdar, otherwise known as the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, a state-owned renewable energy firm. The irony of an oil executive leading a meeting intended to eliminate fossil fuels from the world economy was not lost on participants.

In fact, the climate conference was rife with controversy and intrigue even before it began. Immediately after Al Jaber’s appointment as president, climate activists decried his presidency as a conflict of interests and an outrage, with one activist complaining, “This appointment goes beyond putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.” COP28 is the first conference to have an industry CEO, let alone an oil industry CEO, placed at the helm of the climate change mitigation agenda. Calls for Al Jaber to step down from his CEO position at Adnoc soon followed his appointment and were promptly ignored.

The controversy only increased as the summit approached. A mere month before the conference began, in an online meeting of a She Changes Climate event, Al Jaber responded angrily to Mary Robinson—an Irish politician, the chair of the Elders group, and a former UN special envoy for climate change—after Robinson challenged Al Jaber to commit to phasing out fossil fuels entirely. Robinson claimed, “We’re in an absolute crisis that is hurting women and children more than anyone.” Making such absurd connections is typical of climate activists, who often roll identity politics into their climate activism, which apparently gives them the sense that they are tackling all the world’s supposed problems in a single effort.

Al Jaber responded by countering:

I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation. I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C [the temperature increase cap decreed in the Paris Climate Accord]. . . .

. . . Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves. (emphasis mine)

Al Jaber’s remarks have been regarded as verging on, if not explicitly representative of, climate change science “denial,” and he has been savaged for them. Yet, they represent the only rational, evidence-based statements made during this embattled conversation.

Further charges that Al Jaber aims to undermine the climate change agenda came from leaked communications between COP28 and Adnoc staff members, some of whom have been working in both capacities. The leaked documents strongly suggest that Al Jaber planned to use his position as the COP28 president to make oil deals on the side with government officials of participating nations. These revelations caused a frenzy among climate activist groups. One can only hope that these plans are true and that Al Jaber will have succeeded in making some oil deals for Adnoc and its potential customers. Such economic activity is not so much a sign of hypocrisy as it is evidence that economic actors will pursue rational exchanges, despite the obstacles posed by the market interference of interventionists like the United Nations and its political accomplices, including obstacles that are self-imposed by the economic actors themselves.

Other accusations leveled at Al Jaber’s presidency of COP28 include the charge that Adnoc “has the largest net-zero-busting expansion plans of any company in the world.” Adnoc, it is claimed, has been vastly expanding its development of fossil fuels, which would betray efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Given that fossil fuel exports account for approximately 70 percent of the UAE’s merchandise exports, such efforts at expansion only make economic sense.

Al Jaber may be the only sane person in attendance at COP28, but he will likely be pressured into acceding to the demands of climate catastrophists. The rest of the participants appear to be in hysterics while under the sway of a mass delusion. Against the facts of science and the benefits of fossil-fuel-enabled technology, they believe that CO2 is “pollution,” that “sustainability” requires imposing an enormous tax on humanity for the respiration and growth of plant life, and that the farming methods of the original Green Revolution—which have increased yields by many factors—must be eliminated and replaced with a new environmentalist Green Revolution. They believe that industrial production must be undertaken using non-fossil-fuel inputs and that myriad industrial products must exclude fossil-fuel-based materials. These demands are as delusional as anything enacted by Chairman Mao Zedong during the Great Leap Forward.

Carbon neutrality by 2050 is an insanely impossible demand. Our industrial civilization and the population it supports depends on the advances made in fossil fuel extraction and use. Even Canadian scientist and polymath Vaclav Smil—a believer in climate change who is an otherwise credible source—agrees. In his book, How the World Really Works, Smil writes:

For those who ignore the energetic and material imperatives of our world, those who prefer mantras of green solutions to understanding how we have come to this point, the prescription is easy: just decarbonize—switch from burning fossil carbon to converting inexhaustible flows of renewable energies. The real wrench in the works: we are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years.

Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat or as a result of extraordinarily rapid transformations relying on near-miraculous technical advances.

As Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber seemed to suggest, the climate change catastrophists of COP28 would consign humanity to preindustrial conditions—relegating those in poorer regions to misery and hunger—all while tackling a phantom whose existence is dubious at best.

The economics of climate change catastrophism involve global centralized planning and interventionism on a scale hitherto unexampled. It is irrational to the extent that it purposefully forgoes known economic advantages, jettisons tried-and-true methods, and rejects the market-based approach that has proven to maximize inputs for efficient wealth production. It artificially imposes technological change rather than allowing it to develop of its own accord. Furthermore, it aims to curtail economic freedom by supplanting the choices of producers and consumers and overwriting them with the plans of a climate change dictatorship.

The full results of COP28 will become known by December 14. One can only hope that it ends in abject failure. Climate activists have suggested that it already has.

Michael Rectenwald is the author of twelve books, including The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda, Thought Criminal, Beyond Woke, Google Archipelago, and Springtime for Snowflakes. He is a distinguished fellow at Hillsdale College.

Michael Rectenwald | Mises Wire

We heartily encourage reprints and shares of Mises Wire articles. If you wish to reproduce an article in your blog, magazine, radio show, newspaper column, classroom material, textbook, discussion group, website, or any other venue, please do so. The original publication source must be included in an appropriate place.

The post COP28: Scandal on Top of Fabrication appeared first on Granite Grok.