Friday • December 27 • 2024
Vol.XVI • No.LII
Manchester, N.H.
As promised in the last Monday Memes, I have an overflow. My meme cup runneth over. Fairly certain about a Friday Overflow-Overflow.
Also, for those prepper-minded, my last two Survival Sundays:
Survival Sunday – Sunday PREP Edition – Granite Grok
Survival Sunday – Thursday SITREP Edition – Granite Grok
Now, let the mayhem, mockery, and ridicule resume:
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
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A moment of dread seriousness:
Prepping America for Genocide › American Greatness (amgreatness.com)
No genocide ever succeeded without first convincing collaborators that the target group had it coming.
White people. Anti-vaxxers.
Anyone to the Right of Stalin. Religious people – e.g., Christians and Jews – or indeed anyone with faith in something larger than the Lord Marx. The list goes on and on.
As you read this, you might feel a little uncomfortable with a comparison between the fashionable bigotry of present-day America with genocide-enabling demagoguery of the past. Indeed, there’s been enough casual bigotry within American universities and government that most of the victims have internalized the propaganda into shame. This is why you see so many whites apologize over and over again for being white.
And more:
Yes, our government trains our own soldiers to believe that their countrymen with European features are infected with dangerous rage. These are racial stereotypes used to justify official action. It’s a sign of the madness of any social justice movement when its adherents seek to make race discrimination and racial stereotyping seem normal and just.
It’s time to start resisting the toxic racial demagoguery of the new Left. Assigning collective blame to any group—particularly because of religion or race, is immoral and un-American. It’s time to end this madness. All persons should be judged on the basis of their own actions, not their skin color or faith. We must complain and push back when powerful people casually express bigotry against any race or religion. We should contradict racial stereotypes and resist making generalizations about anyone based on their skin color. Any time you hear “white privilege,” in the workplace or school, you should immediately file a discrimination complaint. It’s a slur intended to stoke resentment and racial strife.
It is astonishing to me how readily so many white people have, indeed, internalized this collective guilt (one day, while waiting for my kid to finish religious school, another equally-white parent was going on about how black people are “profiled unfairly”; when I commented that, statistically, black people commit a disproportionate share of both non-violent and violent crime, particularly murders, I was told I had “white privilege” and was one step away from being called raaaaaacist…).
And don’t forget the myriad calls for white people to be exterminated. Openly. Brazenly. You think you can virtue-signal your way out of this? Nuh uh. If you are a “person of pallor” – as I am (blond, blue-eyed, pasty-white me) – you will be on the chopping block. No matter how many yard signs or bumper stickers you have.
Black Man Calls For White Extermination On C-SPAN
Listen to the applause. Doubtless more were agreeing even if they were silent. Every ill in the world is being blamed on eight percent of the global population – and then people wonder at the rise of white ethno-nationalists (I’m certainly a nationalist, at least).
The fanaticism is growing, and those who are not of The Body, whether racially or ideologically, will be tarred as heretics by this new religion. We all know what history shows about heretics and how they’re treated.
Call it out. Now. Before your door gets kicked in. Before your best case scenario is slogging through the woods, remembering better times, simply because you wanted to be left alone. Or because you thought Oh that’s not possible…
And in particular, shame on my fellow Jews for aiding in the Great Replacement and ethno-genocide; you’d think we, of all peoples, would have learned better.
An Open Letter to Pro-Migration / SJW Jews – Urban Scoop
Taking the side of those who want us all dead, regardless of any assistance you gave them, will not end well for us. And if white people manage to hold the day, we will not be remembered kindly either. Your arrogance, your Tikkun Olam fetish, will result in this:
Why do you think they want to disarm Americans – particularly white Americans – so badly?
Elie Wiesel, the noted Holocaust survivor and speaker, once said “When someone tells you they want to kill you, believe them”.
There are large numbers of people who say they want you dead. They want your nation dead. They want your culture and civilization dead.
You’d better believe them.
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Move Disney World
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I remember, back in the late 1990’s, seeing a quip from someone (James Bovard?) to the effect of “All you have to do these days to get labeled a dangerous extremist is to go around quoting the Founding Fathers as applied to today’s situation”. That’s doubled and tripled now. Just read the Declaration of Independence and tell me so much of that couldn’t just as easily be said about today’s abuses of governmental power.
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And these people vote. Not just that, they believe – TRULY BELIEVE – themselves to be your intellectual and moral superiors.
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My suspicion is it isn’t merely what Tucker has said, especially recently about corruption in the enemedia and the pharma industry… it’s that he said it having reach and influence. Millions of people listened to him daily. Millions more heard clips and snippets sent through emails or other social media. It was not merely what he said, it was that so many heard it.
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Pick of the post:
First, about April 19th – Patriot’s Day – I highly recommend this book about that famous day and the Battle of Concord Bridge, and its aftermath as word of the battle spread through the colonies.
The Day the American Revolution Began: 19 April 1775
Second, Waco – and Ruby Ridge – were seminal moments in how I viewed my government. From then on, the seed was planted that I cannot trust FedGov. That seed was the proverbial mustard seed that has grown into a seething revulsion at, and loathing & distrust of, what my government has become. And into that fertile loam of distrust fell first Covid and then The Jab.
Once more: I have BETRAYAL TRAUMA over the shattering of my view of my country. Perhaps that’s an accident… perhaps that’s intentional as the Globalists seek to undermine resistance and sow chaos. For now, if FedGov said the sun rises in the east, I’ll be up before dawn with a compass.
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Who the living F has FIVE laptops and SEVEN cell phones???
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Please consider my two mugs along this theme:
Back off… we’re scientists coffee mug | Zazzle
Help Global Greening – More CO2 Please Coffee Mug | Zazzle
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Palate cleansers:
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The post Meme Overflow appeared first on Granite Grok.
Bed Bath & Beyond has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Remember the company that dropped the highly profitable “My Pillow” from their inventory because they didn’t like the conservative Mike Lindell? Many folks would say that is why B B & Beyond will be no more.
We want to thank Live With Liz for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.
But VERY sadly, the Wokeness Cult is just one of the many proverbial ‘nails in the coffin’ of our American businesses, both large and small, and of our once great nation!
What has transpired here in America and across the globe, with America leading the way over the last 15+ yrs, is bigger than the Wokeness Cult… (Btw, Kudos to Barack Hussein Obama for really getting America’s Woke Marxist Party started!)
The Wuhan Virus is by far the largest catalyst to B B & Beyond’s and to America’s demise.
The names are many… ‘Big Dogs and Little Dogs’ as I call them. Many we know and many we don’t know, who supported, enabled and weakly succumbed to so much of the illegal, unconstitutional, inhumane, and treasonous tyranny & crimes against humanity (i.e., the much too quick development & forced distribution of the poison shot, forced masking, isolation, lockdowns, etc.). So many who wittingly or unwittingly did so for the “good of the people.”
Though I won’t name names, other than the one, I will say with confidence that with the advent of the Wuhan Virus, and the absolutely weak, feckless, incompetent, and I would add, corrupt actions and inaction, by virtually ALL American political/military leaders and bureaucrats, (including Donald J. Trump), this company, and thousands like it, and 10s of thousand much smaller, have, are and will continue to drop like flies!!
They are all who we can give credit to for B B & Beyond’s demise!
Capitalism is virtually nonexistent in America and certainly Globally… Large corporations, conglomerates, and Governments and coming soon… A.I. is the future. Elitists of all shapes and sizes across the globe have ‘almost’ won the war and are very much enriching themselves with power and money in the process.
The biggest winner by far is CHINA! China owns and controls the purse strings, actions, and futures of its puppet leaders and their nations around the world… China, as they especially enjoy the pathetic show of American weakness and ultimate demise… much of it self-inflicted!
So once again, Bed Bath & Beyond’s Bankruptcy is due to much more than Wokeness!
The good news?? As long as We, the People here in America, have a shred of our God-Given Liberties and Freedoms left, we must continue to fight … to the end!!
And we will!!
The post It’s Much Bigger Than Just Another “Get Woke Go Broke” Story appeared first on Granite Grok.
While Anheuser Busch hasn’t felt the Bud Light Boycott in any meaningful “financial way” (yet), the anecdotal evidence that sales of that brand are down continues to pile up. And that shouldn’t upset anyone on any spectrum, after all – as the saying goes – “be you!”
If someone can identify as male one minute and female the next, presenting as a non-bud drinker at will shouldn’t be an issue. But it is, at least for the Left. Bud customers are annoyed at the indifference to their values, and many have sworn off the piss water. They are saying, why couldn’t you stay out of politics? And that’s the message. Just make beer. But to the Left, everything is political, and it might make sense to take a few for the team in the name of – in this case – a flighty transvestite prancing about as some absurd caricature of a modern woman.
Does that mean (gulp) drinking Bud Light?
No self-disrespecting Liberal of means would sully their palate with that swill, even in defense of cultural Marxism, but some people somewhere need to do something. What might that something be?
The Biden Administration has been buying “doses” of drugs it alleges will address the ongoing global COVID conflict. They paid Pfizer for truckloads of doses of an injectable that both the FDA and Pfizer knew didn’t do any of the things advertised. The Biden administration purchased millions of doses of Paxlovid which transitions you from symptomatic flu to asymptomatic superspreader – with good odds of a relapse. Why not do the tranny fluid a solid.
The FDA could announce that Bud Light has been awarded Emergency Use Authorization as the next COVID “booster” because someone in the West Wing’s ministry of meaningless “pharmaceutical stockpiling” will have already ordered a few hundred million “doses.” It’s parked at an IRS black-site next to the mRNA, and tall that Paxlovid taxpayers ‘bought’ that no one wants, and Big Pharma refuses to refund.
The money has been laundered. No backsies.
But no worries. The refrigerated trucks are powered by recycled bullish!t, and hey, Team Biden’s got free beer. They can hand them out to the five or six staffers forced to show up at his “rallies” as “supporters. Staffers always get crap jobs, so deal with it. But no making faces in front of cameras or spitting out the “booster,” where someone will see.
The optics would be bad.
But look on the Light side, Bud. This booster is much less likely to kill you, even if you go for two in the same sitting.
Editor note: As Always, please “boost” responsibly.
The post How Long ‘Till FDA Approves Bud Light as Next COVID Booster, White House Orders 500 Million “Doses” appeared first on Granite Grok.
The City of Nashua has engaged in a game of hiding records and subverting the spirit of the Right-to-Know. In 2021, self-represented, I won several Court rulings on Right-to-Know petitions. I won both cases, but the City appealed the Judge’s ruling to the Supreme Court.
The first case was briefed and presented for oral arguments before the Supreme Court on March 21, 2023.
Nashua Deputy Counsel Attorney Leonard represented the City during oral arguments. She introduced a new argument to the Supreme Court to claim that my request for assessing (AssessHelp) emails sent to the assessing office was not sent to the proper “agency.”
Ms. Leonard stated in oral arguments:
To your earlier question, Chief Justice, the trial court did find that the records were readily accessible from the backup tape to the IT department. There are no IT documents requested in either of the cases. It was the assessing department. And the City has one name, but the City is many little agencies. The assessing department S drive is different from the — or U drive is different from the legal department, is different from administrative services, community development, public works. They’re different agencies. It is IT that then has to be contacted. It’s not readily available to the agency itself, in either.
The City refuses to tell citizens how the records are stored and where they are located. In the recent past, the City would forward a request that was submitted to the wrong agency to the proper agency for response. Apparently, this has stopped.
In my case, within 60 days, emails were moved to a backup tape in violation of the Municipal records retention act and the Right to Know statute, as the City never responded to my request for the records within the 5 days required by law. Additionally, in violation of the law, the City did not cite the statute to deny the records and did not disclose that the records had been moved to backup tape. I filed the lawsuit based on this lack of compliance.
Assessing staff believed that AssessHelp emails were not moved to backup tape as the city had no written policy on backup tape storage for AssessHelp emails. During the Superior Court Trial, the Office Clerical Supervisor stated that she was unaware of the City policy for email retention and she had never heard of the Municipal Records Statute.
If the experts closest to the information are unaware of the City’s policies and are uneducated on the laws, how are citizens supposed to know where these records are located? We are not mind readers. Attorney Leonard’s persistent lack of candor and misrepresentation to the Courts should be a sanctionable offense within the Rules of Attorney Professional Conduct. Nashua’s leaders are engaging in acts of Official Oppression, under RSA 643:1 and should be charged with misdemeanors for their conduct.
A lack of transparency is a symptom of dishonesty.
The post The Agency Issue, Nashua’s New Twist to Withhold Public Records appeared first on Granite Grok.
Fast and furious, it continues. More stories/snippets of what’s ailing our education system and the children placed within it. First up, a realization that the social contagion that is affecting our young ones with the activists message of “a live trans boy or a dead daughter” isn’t holding as much water as they would have us believe.
Oh, and always: abstracted, reformatted, and emphasis mine apply:
In findings that will shock no one living in the real world, reviews of evidence in several European countries reportedly found that transgender treatments and surgeries don’t actually solve mental health issues as predicted. Many young people are talked into “gender transitions” because they are told that this is the best or only way to prevent suicide. But the evidence simply isn’t there to back up such a claim.
A review published on April 14 for Current Sexual Health Reports acknowledged the fact that hacking off body parts and halting normal puberty development doesn’t create the utopian joy LGBTQ that activists anticipate. The review explains under “Recent Findings”:
Systematic reviews of evidence conducted by public health authorities in Finland, Sweden, and England concluded that the risk/benefit ratio of youth gender transition ranges from unknown to unfavorable. As a result, there has been a shift from “gender-affirmative care,” which prioritizes access to medical interventions, to a more conservative approach that addresses psychiatric comorbidities and psychotherapeutically explores the developmental etiology of the trans identity. Debate about the safety and efficacy of “gender-affirming care” in the USA is only recently emerging.
…Despite claims of the lifesaving nature of gender transition for adults, none of the many studies convincingly demonstrated enduring psychological benefits. The longest-term studies, with the strongest methodologies, reported markedly increased morbidity and mortality and a persistently high risk of post-transition suicide among transitioned adults.
The root cause isn’t the body, it’s the mind. Solve or care for the underlying mental illnesses first – something I would hope that trans-activists will finally adopt. However, that message keeps getting lost because those with mental illness can’t seem to “take” any message that would prove them wrong. And YouTube is helping them censor those of us that hold counter to the accepted Narrative:
YouTube has demonetized prominent conservatives and other dissenters in an apparent campaign to squelch criticism of the transgender agenda. Sara Gonzales, the host of BlazeTV’s “The News & Why It Matters,” podcaster Tim Pool, and Matt Walsh, the recently hacked conservative commentator behind the film “What Is a Woman?”, have each reportedly seen their revenue streams dammed in part or in full on the platform in recent days.
Gonzales noted on Thursday, “My YouTube channel had 3 videos removed today and received a strike for telling the truth about transgenderism. @Timcast just had 2 videos removed on his channel. They demonetized @MattWalshBlog’s entire channel.” “They want to censor us out of existence,” said Gonzales, adding in a subsequent tweet, “We will never surrender.”
And certainly this teacher isn’t backing down. TMEW, who occassionally will watch the Dr. Phil Show, said that I needed to watch this – so I did:
A fifth grade teacher stood his ground on “Dr. Phil” this week by defending biological sex and refusing to back down when criticized by trans activists. On an episode focused on “gender inclusivity” in schools, Dr. Phil and his guests debated, among other topics, Oregon’s Menstrual Dignity Act, which mandates that every school bathroom in the Beaver State make menstrual products available to students. Several of the guests argued that putting menstrual products in boy’s bathrooms is absolutely necessary. But the teacher, whose name is Ray, had enough.
“Men do not menstruate. Only women menstruate,” he declared. A trans activist named “Jordan” immediately pushed back. “Cis-men don’t menstruate, but trans men do menstruate — same as non-binary people,” Jordan said. “Menstruating is not exclusive to women.”
Note how “Jordon” is trying to manipulate the definition of what a man is to promote and inculcate that a woman can be a man. No, there are NOT two types of men but there they go trying to erase basic biology.
“Yes it is. Yes it is,” Ray said. “If your [sex] chromosomes are XX and you’re young, you menstruate. If you’re XY, you don’t.”. Jordan responded, “Correct,” and claimed Ray was “excluding” a whole group of people, referring to trans men. “They’re not men,” Ray responded. “They’re women dressed as men. You are not a man. You can pretend to be a man, and that’s OK. That’s perfectly fine. Live your life.”
Again, let’s bring back the more descriptive term: transvestites. At least that is an honest term.
And now we know the OTHER definition of manipulation, “inclusive” vs “exclusive” whose only reason of being is to flip your belief system by radically redefining that which cannot be actually is. The taunt of “you’re not inclusive” is now easily seen as just another attempt to say “you’re a BAD person for not taking our side”.
Par for the course. And yet the “emotional hostage taking” by the Left continues unabated:
A self-proclaimed transgender lawmaker in Montana has been shut down after he railed against a bill banning child mutilation in the state. Zooey Zephyr, the member in question, delivered a “hate-filled” rebuke of Republicans who are seeking to end the use of “gender-affirming care” on minors. Zephyr claimed (The Daily Caller) that Republicans would have “blood on your hands” if they moved forward with the ban. He also described the provisions within the bill as “tantamount to torture.”
“This body should be ashamed,” Zephyr said Tuesday. “If you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”
This kind of rhetorical hostage-taking is just grotesque, yet it’s becoming more and more common. In fact, it’s now the go-to attack from the radical transgender movement, i.e. claiming that if you don’t affirm their delusions and desires for self-harm, you are somehow the cause of high suicide rates within the demographic. Of course,
We have now reached a point in society where a large percentage of Americans (I’m speaking of the broader left) actually believe it’s “torture” to not chop the breasts off of young girls and sterilize young boys. That would have been unthinkable just a decade ago, but it’s where we are now.
Zephyr was censured and essentially barred from speaking on the Montana House floor going forward.
Bravo! And more pushback is needed and here’s another case of it:
There was a time when former Fox News host turned independent journalist Megyn Kelly and conservatives didn’t see eye to eye on much, but over the years Kelly has had a wake-up call of sorts on some of the more important issues, with perhaps the most notable being her thoughts on the transgender rights movement.
…In the below clip, Kelly goes off during her show, telling women and the men who support them to stand up and be heard because if people are silent, “We can kiss women’s rights goodbye.”:
“If we don’t find our voices and start speaking up against this nonsense, we can kiss every woman’s space goodbye! We can kiss women’s rights goodbye. We can kiss sororities goodbye. We can take off our tops and our underwear and do our yoga in front of perverted men who just want to get off watching us til the cows come home. Stick your daughter in the sorority, let ’em at her.
Find your voices, ladies, and the men who support us. Otherwise, this is our future. I’m sorry. I’m done. I’m done. I don’t want to deal with this sh*t at Tri Delta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, in the women’s locker room. You can be supportive of trans people and what they’re going through without surrendering to this madness!”
And still sowing madness, political correctness, and chaos in Vermont: abstracted from a letter sent to parents because EQUITY!!!!
It is time for our science/health unit about the human body focused on puberty and the human reproductive systems. This unit will take place during the last few months of school. We will focus on the physical and emotional changes that occur during puberty and briefly introduce the basic structure and function of human reproductive systems. Students will be participating in whole group discussions and have private reflection time. There will also be three interview opportunities coming home throughout the unit.
In an effort to align our curriculum with our equity policy, teachers will be using gender inclusive language throughout this unit. With any differences, we strive to use “person-first” language as best practice. You will see examples of this below. We will be using the following language with students:
- Person who produces sperm in place of boy, male, and assigned male at birth.
- Person who produces eggs in place of girl, female and assigned female at birth.
It’s like all of these Woke people can’t bring themselves to use short words (boy, girl) and are so scared of of the tumult they’d cause someone of the “too easily offended religion”. I feel sorry for the kids under her care (ze? zir? they? blech?) and hope that parents are giving her a what-for.
And ditto for this school district that has, like too many others, fallen for EQUITY!!!! And this identity trash is being taken too farm – really, “mathematical identities”??
A Missouri school district is updating its K-12 math curriculum to include “they/them” pronouns in the name of “equity considerations.” The plural pronouns should be used along with traditional “he/she” pronouns in “word & contextual problems,” according to a Webster Groves School District “math program evaluation” presentation.
“A persistent myth within math education is that since ‘numbers are universal,’ math classrooms are objective and free of bias,” the presentation states. “Research shows clearly that any space where learning occurs is neither free of bias nor resistant to oppressive systems such as racism, sexism, classism or xenophobia.”
Well now, one can get away with being a Peeping Tom and a Pervert simply by saying the magic words “I’m Trans, you know” – 18 year old man oogles and exposes himself to 4 freshman girls in the shower room:
According to the letter, titled “Serious Violation of Girls’ Privacy Rights in Sun Prairie East Locker Room,” four Sun Prairie East High School freshmen girls were disturbed when an alleged “undressed” 18-year-old transgender woman came into the locker room and got into the showers with the girls. WILL attorneys’ letter claims that on March 3, four freshmen girls at EHS participated in a swim unit as part of their first-hour physical education class.
After the class, the girls entered the girls’ athletic locker room to shower and change for class. However, upon entering, they noticed the transgender student, a senior, in the area containing lockers and benches. WILL claim that the transgender student was 18 years old at the time of the incident. The girls said that the transgender student was not in the first-hour PE class they were participating in.
…Furthermore, WILL claimed that the girls entered the shower area with their swimsuits on to rinse off, a practice that is common after swimming in PE class. Moreover, the letter alleges that the transgender student entered the girls’ shower area, approached them, and announced “I’m trans, by the way.“.
The letter alleges that the transgender student “undressed fully and showered completely naked right next to one of the girls.”
“He was initially turned towards the wall but eventually turned and fully exposed his male genitalia to the four girls.”
But as it always seems, Normal people are made by school administrators to bow down to anyone labeling themselves as Trans.
And did you know that Michigan State University now believes it can ban the word “America”?
The style guide is updated yearly and appears easily translatable from its original Chinese (that’s a joke… I think… ). The new additions are sure to annoy you—and brainwash your kids—who are forced to toss the 1st Amendment into the trash lest they “offend” the school’s incoming milksops.
The words are broken down into categories.
For instance, you could earn the labels racist, sexist, or ableist for spewing the following profanity:
- cakewalk
- tipping point
- bonkers
- rule of thumb
Apparently, MSU is expecting a wave of thumb-free students. Winter is clearly a grim time for some snowflake students and MSU’s grinches have declared ye shall not blaspheme by using the following utterances:
- merry
- Christmas trees
- wreaths
There’s more! The words “holly,” “reindeer,” “bells,” “bunnies,” (really??) “chicks,” “eggs,” (oh come ON) and “gifts” are also verboten. The words “frontier and “pioneer” might offend a squaw, so don’t use them.
- Fat kids are now “students of size.” I’m not kidding.
- Illegal immigrants are now “aspiring citizens.”
- Girlfriends/boyfriends are now “partners.”
The style guide commie manifesto goes on for days. The change that steams my clams the most is this one: students are told not to use the word “America.”
Control the words, control what someone can think. That’s the purpose. And who are they taking their lead from (or is it the other way around)?
Changes to The Associated Press style guide direct reporters to avoid mentioning biological sex in favor of the term “sex assigned at birth.”
Ah yes, we’re back to the “guy with a clipboard in the delivery room going “this one is a boy, that’s a girl, so’s this one….”. No, the whole idea of “assigned at birth” is that if SOMEONE is assigning sex, it can be re-assigned just as quickly. Tranformational. Changable. Not an immutable characteristic. Sorry, the real phrase is “observed at birth” as that is following the actual science of fertilization of a sperm and egg (or ova, if you wish).
“Avoid references to a transgender person being born a boy or girl, or phrasing like birth gender,” reads a new entry to the guide, announced at the Society for Editing conference on March 23. “Sex (or gender) assigned at birth is the accurate terminology.”
According to the updated guides, someone “assigned female at birth” who identifies as a male is a transgender man, while a person “assigned male at birth” but who identifies as a female should be called a “transgender girl or woman.”
Your ideology is blinding you from being precise. And don’t get me started on demanding I obey your restrictions on deadnaming and misgendering.
The post Transgender “Transitions” Solve Nothing, YouTube Still Censoring, And a Teacher Stands up for Biology – Stack of Stuff #44 appeared first on Granite Grok.
Chicago, Chicago, that bussing town, where violent protesters aka rioters, have set fires, destroyed property, and created massive havoc along with 11 murders and multiple assaults, is again in the news. With a new mayor, are things going to change?
Not on your life. The new guy is excusing it all. He says the perps’ young ages and lack of opportunity need to be taken into account.
All that is needed now is for some leftist media hack to call it “mostly peaceful.”
Reports say more “demonstrations” can be expected.
So a major U.S. city in the iron grip of liberal democrats can not 1) create opportunities for its young residents, 2) control these rioters burning and destruction. How come?
Well, first, it’s liberal socialist policies we are talking about, like “defund the police.” Police are the current Democrats’ scapegoat for the riots. Then there are decades of substandard schools and substandard housing but plentiful drugs, drug gangs, and career criminals on early release, along with low or no bail. What could go wrong when Democrats can always blame someone or something else?
Really, are the local liberals here in the Lakes Region much different? Not on your life!
They are too busy patting themselves on their backs for being more moral, more ethical, better educated, and informed than we Conservatives. Do you believe it can’t touch you here?
Go, TRUMP, bring back hope and sanity.
The post Riot, Loot, and Burn appeared first on Granite Grok.
Lithium batteries are dangerous. If you don’t believe me take a hazmat certification course to ship them anywhere. It’s a big deal. Lots of rules. They can’t be fully charged. Very specific packaging requirements.
Doing it wrong can bring down the aircraft carrying them or ignite freight cargo cars on trains.
It’s a thing, and as more things use lithium packs for power, the more fires they can spark. A few months ago, we reported that Havila, a pro-ESG and Self-Proclaimed green shipping concern, has banned Electric Vehicles from its ships.
Havila shipping company boss Bent Martini said the risk analysis showed that the fire in an electric car required a particularly complex rescue operation. The crew on board could not afford this. Passengers would also be at risk. This is different for vehicles with combustion engines. A possible fire is usually easy to fight by the crew.
NY Fire Department Assistant Chief explained it like this (same article). “The problem is that lithium-ion fires burn extremely hot and are virtually impervious to conventional firefighting methods that use water or foam. Lithium reacts very badly to water, which is really a problem if firefighters are attacking a fire for which they don’t know the cause.”
A few other suggestions from the NYFD which has gone to great lengths to create protocols to address the rising number of lithium battery fires in the City.
– Transmit a 10-80-1 and request BFI. The IC should then contact Haz-Mat 1 or the Haz-Mat
Battalion via cell phone for further instructions.
– Wear full PPE, including a donned SCBA facepiece, whenever near a damaged/smoldering
lithium-ion battery.
The combustion is more dangerous than COVID, which I also take to mean, not so good for air quality or the environment. And that’s just the battery. EV battery fires have taken out garages, homes, bus terminals, apartment buildings, and the lives of parents, friends, and children.
April 15, 2023- Fire Officials Issue Warning After Electric Bike Sparks Blaze, Killing a Child and a Teenager. “A 7-year-old and a 19-year-old were killed in a house fire Monday that officials said was caused by an e-bike battery.”
Sep 2022 – Electric Scooter Fire Ignites Showroom, Kills 8 in Deadliest Incident Yet – … “Monday’s fire started in a hotel basement that housed the showroom, which contained about 24 electric scooters in Secunderabad, police told Reuters. The fire was brought under control and an investigation was underway, they said. Most of the casualties in the blaze were hotel guests in the building, which was choked with smoke.”
Aug 2022 – E-Scooter/Bike Battery Sparks Apartment Blaze, Kills Woman and Child, Leaves Father in Critical Condition. “The fire, which started just before 2:30 a.m. in a sixth-floor apartment in the Jackie Robinson Houses in Harlem, per the Times, was sparked by the lithium-ion battery from an electric bike or scooter, the New York City Fire Department said Wednesday afternoon on Twitter.”
The girl and her family were trapped within their flat when the fire began, officials said, according to the New York Post.
Jan 2022 – NYC Landlords Ordered to Post E-Bike Warning After 140 Fires and 6 Deaths. “E-bikes are responsible for at least 140 fires which have injured 140 people and killed six throughout 2022, according to a fire department bulletin posted on Nov. 23.”
2019 – 8 firefighters hurt in explosion at APS facility in Surprise; 3 flown to Phoenix burn center
Battery recycling and disposal operations are also subject to these sorts of fires – most common carriers like UPS, DHL, and FedEx will not transport expired or damaged batteries in or out of equipment.
I often get asked what is causing the growth in fire incidents, and the answer is quite simple: lithium-ion batteries.
According to my colleague Ronald Butler, the Jedi Master of lithium-ion batteries, “Lithium batteries are capable of spontaneous ignition and subsequent explosion from overheating. That may be caused by electrical shorting, rapid discharge, overcharging, manufacturers’ defect, poor design or mechanical damage, among other causes. Overheating results in a process called thermal runaway, which is a reaction within the battery causing internal temperature and pressure to rise at a quicker rate than can be dissipated.”
This is why you should not dispose of any lithium batteries, no matter how small, in general, waste like household trash. Subjected to heat or damage, they could ignite and, if surrounded by anything flammable, the material around them, creating what, for lack of a better term, would be another significant emissions/pollution event that erases any perceived benefit the use of the device pretended to create.
The effect has been property damage, injury, and death caused by the race to net zero, which represents a significant threat to the quality of life and the environment before we even get to the problem of battery fires.
They want to build massive banks of these things to store power from weather-dependent solar and wind to replace fossil fuels. Even if we had the material and time, and they could deliver as promised – they are not – people who think this is safer than Nucelar should have their heads examined.
The post Shouldn’t We Talk About Lithium Battery Fire Emissions? appeared first on Granite Grok.
Timing is everything … and the timing of Tucker Carlson’s exit from Fox does NOT support the various theories being disseminated to explain his exit. It was the Heritage speech on Saturday night that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Tucker had the courage to call out the American Left for being EVIL and that, apparently, was the final straw for the Murdochs.
Fox News is controlled opposition. The GOP Establishment is controlled opposition. Some things … no matter how true … can no longer be said. This, sadly, is the current state of America.
It’s okay to criticize America’s involvement in Ukraine … but only if the criticism is that the Biden-regime is not doing enough. It’s okay to go after Fauci … because that deflects from all the talking-heads on television who were pushing the “vaccine” that isn’t a vaccine, while their networks take in massive amounts of advertising revenue from Big Pharma. It’s okay to mock CNN and MSNBC for being regime-media … but don’t you dare even intimate that Jennifer Griffin is a shill for the Pentagon. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
America has become a police-state. An insidious police-state where the storm-troopers where expensive suits and fly private jets.
The post Tucker Carlson … Do You Get It Yet? … You Are Living In A Police State And Fox News Is Part Of The Controlled Opposition appeared first on Granite Grok.
John Fetterman has gotten a pass. We have been too kind to this man out of respect for his stroke and his bout with mental illness. We have avoided the core issue that this man is a perfect example of how the Left can get anyone elected to any office, regardless of credentials and quality of the individual. John Fetterman is the poster child for a corrupt system that anyone with a shred of decency and common sense can see exists in this country. This broken and abused system has given us Sandy Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and of course, Joe Biden. This organized mayhem is far more dangerous than any assault by an adversary, pandemic (natural or manufactured), or phony insurrection because this attack on America is by Americans. Maybe we have fallen so far that we need to classify these people working tirelessly to tear down America as something other than American. Traitor comes to mind.
To stay with Fetterman, he is a buffoon. We knew that before his stroke and hospital stay for depression. Fetterman should never have made it to an election with Mehmet Oz for a seat in the United States Senate. He did not have the credentials to sit in the Senate. The Senate was never a house of saints, but it was a group of intelligent individuals that could govern the country without destroying it from within. Those of us old enough remember when we respected that body of men and women. John Fetterman said it himself this week when he told NPR precisely what most of us knew:
From Fox News:
NPR spoke to Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., about returning to Congress after spending the first few months of his first Senate term in the hospital for depression.
In the exchange, the stroke survivor admitted that during his time away, he felt like he was “not the kind of senator” that his state deserved and that he was not the family man he should have been.
Do they deserve better? They knew what they were getting with Fetterman, an uneducated individual with a poor work ethic (as shown by his lack of effort as Lt. Governor), and only two goals-emptying state prisons and legalizing recreational marijuana. Did they get what they asked for, or did they get what the system fed them? It makes you wonder how so many people can be led like sheep, unaware or unconcerned about the ramifications of their actions. It is this lack of consciousness that will bring down this country.
I have written previously about Fetterman and his path to the Senate. What should concern us is his future. Fetterman, and his wife, who pushed him through the election when she should have been checking him in for rehab, are probably raising money for his re-election bid. The Left will invent some phobia to describe the people who want him out of the Senate. In the meantime, Pennsylvania will only have one active Senator representing them, but the Democrats will have Fetterman’s vote. He serves their purpose if they can prop him up and get him to vote Yeah or Nay on demand.
In addition to his interview with NPR, Fetterman tweeted a picture of himself holding a pro-marijuana flag acknowledging 4/20, an unofficial holiday dedicated to smoking and celebrating marijuana. “It’s 4:20 on 4/20. That’s the Tweet”. He also tweeted his support for unionizing marijuana workers. “You know what goes great with some weed? A Union.”
Fetterman is the person voters in the Keystone State put in the Senate, but this is also the state that gave us Scranton Joe. Maybe there is a pattern here.
The post Let’s Take The Gloves Off On Fetterman appeared first on Granite Grok.
A few weeks ago, we reported on a newly elected select board member over four months past due on their property taxes (still looks unpaid, by the way). We’ve got another board member in the same town, just elected, who lost their mind (on camera) in the middle of a board meeting yesterday, quit, and walked out.
Why?
Item number five on the meeting agenda. “RFP for Printing and Copying Services.” The details required for submitting a proposal. The paperwork. Jennifer Brown is not happy about it. She believes the Board Chair has targeted her, gets pissed, drops the F-bomb a few times, says she is F-ing done, and walks out.
Here’s the exchange leading up to the cursing, the adult language (alert!), and Brown’s departure.
If you’d like to look for more context, here is a link to the entire meeting. The ‘fun’ starts around 40 min and runs to about 45:25.
So, why all the drama? My local contact says, “She’s a printer and is upset her crony deal with the town is going to take more paperwork, so she quits.”
As in quits the board. And it looks like that from here. I’m done. I can’t work with her. Blah, blah, blah. And we don’t know if there’s any more backstory to that, but here’s what I found interesting. Jennifer Brown ran for office on a campaign to lead with civility and respect toward town employees.
Not for nothing, but dropping F-bombs in official public meetings is not precisely civil.
Maybe she didn’t mean civility and respect for town board members or other elected officials. Or, perhaps she was never civil but rode the civility banner like many Democrats do to get elected.
Popcorn worthy.
So? Will Ms. Brown refuse to complete those documents to get printing work from the town for her business?
Note: Local elections in NH are non-partisan, but we have it on good authority that Jennifer Brown is listed on the state voter checklist as a registered Democrat, as is Kary’ Late on her taxes’ Jencks (sitting to Jennifer Brown’s left) and the Chairwoman (Donna Momborquette) with whom Brown is arguing.
The post Democrat Politician Drops Successive F-Bombs Mid-Meeting and Walks Out appeared first on Granite Grok.
What the Greenies and their supporters in the mainstream media want you to see – and believe:
Are they lying? No, generally not. What they AREN’T including is what gives away the grift – Context:
And all that RE shortfall is pretty much made up of lots of natural gas, coal, and nukes.
Yet, we already know that our electrical grid is on shaky ground. Just look what happened to California last summer with the wildfires – lots of blackouts and brownouts to the point where Gov. Newsom declared that owners of EVs (Electric Vehicles) shouldn’t be recharging their cars to prevent the grid from failing altogether. There was just not enough juice to go around.
NH has had enough to to face that problem – but just barely. And now, even with these known issues, the Biden Energy Totalitarians who only believe that top chart (wink, wink) are now going to make electricity even MORE expensive and harder to get and use. And they will do so because Congress gave away its Legislative Powers to the Executive Branch by allowing the latter to create “Rules”:
Biden admin preparing major crackdown on power plants that fuel nation’s grid
Expected power plant rule is ‘latest in President Biden’s anti-fossil fuels agendaThe Biden administration is reportedly finalizing a proposal that would force fossil fuel-fired power plants to substantially curb emissions or utilize costly carbon capture technology.
The proposal — which will soon be released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — is expected to require coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to cut or capture the vast majority of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2040, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing officials briefed on a draft of the plan. The regulation, if finalized, would represent the first-ever federal action curbing power plant emissions.
…Overall, there are 3,393 fossil fuel-fired power plants nationwide, the majority of which are natural gas plants, according to the most recent federal data. Those plants generate more than 60% of the nation’s electricity, compared to the roughly 14% of electricity generated by wind and solar projects.
A 52% total emission drop by 2030 (in seven years??) and 100% by 2035? This is a forced suicide pact.
So just like the Obama Administration forced coal plants to shut down (along with cheaper and more efficient nat gas generation), Biden is going to force a lot of our current generation capacity down because of how expensive upgrades will be. They won’t OFFICIALLY shut them down, just regulate them out of existence.
You see, the Executive Branch has become so powerful that it can ignore Congress and practice Economic Fascism – you don’t have to own the means of Production in order to control it. In this, they are no different than the Italian Mussolini, German Hitler, or Soviet Administrations (and no, I am not breaking Godwin’s Law).
The issue is that even while Biden is screaming, “ELECTRIFY EVERYTHING,” they know that this last bit is going to keep that from happening. We, peons, will just have to do with nothing. It’s part of their WEF (World Economic Forum) compatible process.
So, the Feds own the healthcare industry (Medicare, Medicaid, Tri-Care, Indian healthcare), they are taking control of the electrical generation market (buh-BYE!) and doing the same via regulation, the transportation system. YOUR transportation – your personal vehicle. And they have decided who will have a car and who will not just on price AND by skewing numbers that auto manufacturers can make (don’t sell enough EVs, you can’t make that up by selling gas cars).
It comes down to this: “We will own nothing and be happy.”
Some links:
“Whatever their reason for caving in to White House demands,” we observed at the time, “the fact is that carmakers have just handed over their businesses lock, wheel, and engine to the dictates of government bureaucrats and global warming enthusiasts.”…We also predict that none of these automakers will have the stones to argue that this entire socialistic campaign is horribly misguided. That it is a vast overreach of government power. That it is an affront to our basic liberties. That it will cost consumers a fortune. That it will be massively disruptive. And that, even if the EPA gets its way, it will achieve nothing climate-wise.
The rules, you see, are for people like you and me; people who don’t have the means to spend a fortune working around the system imposed on us.
Rules – not legislation dutifully passed by our elected Representatives. Mere bureaucrats on an electrified power trip that throws us under their bus.
[The math on this is amusing too, especially on oil savings. We currently use 20 million barrels of oil a day. That would amount to a savings of 1,000 days’ worth of oil in a 25-year period. That’s a savings of roughly 11% of expected use, which is not *insignificant* but is hardly a blockbuster or a sign of complete independence from foreign sources either. One has to imagine that we could achieve the same outcome by just innovating and improving on internal-combustion engineering. — Ed]
More to the point, while it’s entirely inappropriate for the government to make such mandates, it also may hinder future progress on E.V. technology.
It’s all about the power. They — and I mean Democrats — want to shove it down our throats. That’s what makes it all worthwhile to them. Every day we move closer to the announcement that from now on underwear must be worn on the outside. Silence! It’s all about the climate…
The Administrative State is moving faster to cement its totalitarian rule over the United States of America than we can to keep pace.
They are doing this because they realize the majority of our people oppose their wishes, but if they are able to impose them by fiat before that opposition forms and reacts, most people will eventually go along. Unfortunately, it’s human nature for many.
(H/T: Powerline)
The post Energy Propaganda v. Energy Reality and the EPAs War on Mobility appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Left’s rainbow soldiers took over another State legislature. This time it was Montana … yes, Montana. Just like Mao’s Red Guards, America’s rainbow soldiers use public shaming, public ridicule, the threat of violence, and actual violence (e.g. the attacks by BLM and Antifa) to achieve their political aims.
Meanwhile, the GOP just keeps its collective head buried in the dirt … “these are our friends; our fellow Americans; you don’t judge the apple tree by a few bad apples.” The Left is EVIL and the GOP is too gutless, too bought-and-paid-for, too LOW-T to do anything about it. Where is John Dutton?
BREAKING: The Montana House of Representatives has been overrun by left-wing “protesters” after the censure of transgender Democrat Zooey Zephyr for telling Republican colleagues they have "blood on their hands" for passing anti-child mutilation bills. pic.twitter.com/ifVOrsJrHR
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 24, 2023
The post And In Other News … There Was An Insurrection In Montana Yesterday appeared first on Granite Grok.
Mayor Donchess and I rarely align on issues, but one thing we agree on is justice is not served in Judge Temple’s Courtroom. The Mayor has been expounding in his many public forums about Judge Temple’s ruling in favor of some of my Right-to-Know cases. He believes the Judge is picking on the City as the City has provided “hundreds of thousands of pages of documents” to this “individual” who is retaliating against the City. He is speaking of me.
In listening to the Mayor’s Ward 7 town hall forum, he was asked by a citizen about the Right to Know problems in Nashua. The Mayor carried on for over 6 minutes (far more than we get for public input) with his conscious twist of the facts shirking responsibility. In the eyes of the Mayor, this is the result of an overbearing citizen and unjust court. A dissection of the Mayor’s remarks is the writing of another day.
I agree with Mayor Donchess that the Judge Temple runs an unjust courtroom, but my reasons differ completely from the Mayor’s assessment. Judge Temple treats Right-to-Know cases like criminal trials. This has driven up the costs for both the City and the citizen, but the City makes out much better with this process. The City has the deep pockets of the taxpayers and happily runs up the legal bills on citizens. Ultimately, the City wins by losing slowly and justice is never served for the Citizen. The Judge does not appear to want these cases, so due process is squashed by staggering legal bills, and so goes access to public information.
Judge Temple’s process and the Courts; Clerk willful disregard of the Administration Orders of the Court in handling civil cases, send a powerful message that citizens have no business in the Nashua Court. Take your Petition elsewhere.
Nonsensically, every motion within a Petition requires a hearing. Why? Some of the issues are minor with little to say, but hearings are scheduled with no apparent purpose, other than to delay the outcome and run up the bills.
My observation based on my three years of Court experience and historical research is that Judges, carrying little interest in these types of citizen cases, get the ruling right about 30% of the time. So, do citizens justice and embrace your lousy records and stop ringing up our legal bills to produce incomplete, partially-correct rulings. The harassment, burden and financial ruin associated with Right-to-Know records Petitions must stop.
A lack of Transparency is a symptom of dishonesty
The post My Rare Alignment with Mayor Donchess. appeared first on Granite Grok.
Once again, I take great delight to remind you all of NH Governor Chris Sununu’s own words about running for President:
Hangover: An “Evergreen” statement by Sununu himself on low-rated wannabes:
Mr. Sununu also warned minor candidates not to carve up the field.
“I think there’s a lot of hope and opportunity for good candidates to get in, drive the message where it needs to be,” he said. “But the discipline is getting out, too. The discipline and saying, ‘Look, you’re only polling at 5%, you got to get out.’ We don’t want a crowded field here.”
So last week, Sununu stood at 0.5% over at RealClearPolitics polling. One would think with his attention veering towards facing the north end of any TV camera available that his rating, with his “genial and upbeat” demeanor would be making an impact (except ticking on a large population percentage Primary voters as he’s ransacking Trump for being too old and being a Loser) in bettering his standing in the polls.
‘Fraid not – not at all:
In fact, he dropped a tenth of a point: 0.4%. There he is – rightmost column which means dead last. I dryly note that Vivek Ramaswamy, who is getting a good looking at by those on the Right, went up: from 0.9 to 1.4%.
Sidenote: he was here in NH last week but being sick/taking care of sick family, I missed him.
True, not in the troposphere level of Trump and DeSantis. Vivek is making the same kinds of round that Sununu is but seems to be a better ROI than Chris.
Doesn’t hurt to think that perhaps (heh!) it was Vivek’s go-round with Don Lemon part of Lemon’s firing today from his CNN gig.
Watch the latest video at foxnews.com
(H/T: Fox News)
The post Chris Sununu Poll Watch – week of 4/2/23 appeared first on Granite Grok.
If you dare to question election integrity, the Left will brand you with a scarlet letter and pretend nothing else you say can be taken seriously. Does that apply to Democrats, too?
From Rasmussen, last week.
Dems have been milking the issue full-time for three years. None of the reported irregularities in the 2020 election was evidence of anything suspicious. Anyone who disagrees is anti-democracy, a racist, and doesn’t want college kids to vote. Pick any angle. They’ve worked them all.
Their media homonculi have dutifully tossed anyone under the bus who dares to suggest that either the process or the results were suspect: any method, any result. Even reliable RINOS, those useful Republican idiots, have carried their poisoned water. To what end?
Nearly half of Democrats think the 2022 election outcomes are the product of cheating, as in the absence of election integrity.
And why not? When Trump won in 2016, election denying was a patriotic act. It was the resistance. It kindled a handful of movements to launder money that rode every rumor, a fake dossier paid for by the Clintons, and even riots. The illegitimacy narrative was systemic, even sacrosanct, much like the lie the Left still tells about how the Courts elected Bush over Gore in 2000.
And here we are, at the beginning of the 2024 roadshow, and 48% of Democrats are convinced that cheating wins elections.
Is that good or bad?
I have thought for some time that elections are just another institution the Left needs to destroy.
The modern Democrat party is all-in on the revolution. “The only form of revolution beneficial to the people is one which destroys the entire State to the roots and exterminates all the state traditions, institutions, and classes… Our task is terrible, total, universal, and merciless destruction.”
Sergey Nechayev’s Revolutionary Catechism inspired Marxists from Vladimir Lenin to Saul Alinsky to our manifold of Modern Leftists. It is the objective of Cloward-Piven. It is the goal of rampant inflation and the rising cost of water, electricity, and energy. The open border. Medicine and Public Health Policy since Wuhan. To break every institution, including the government, by wrecking them from within or making them unreliable to those who rely on them.
When it comes to elections, you can’t offer alternatives until voter confidence is so low that almost anything seems like a solution to the problem, real or imagined. I think the same can be said for Congress, which consistently has some of the lowest approval ratings of anything polled every year after year. It is another institution that must be remade in the Marxist Utopian Image. And elections make that impossible, so they need to go.
The Electoral College isn’t racist or outdated. It’s in the way. They’ve been working at that for years even though its absence would deny millions of people a voice in the so-called Democracy.
So, the question before us is whether a poll suggesting 6 out of 10 Americans (and nearly half the Democrats) think that elections are rigged is good or bad for America. Do half the Democrats step up and demand tighter controls, secured chains of custody, and strict observance of state and federal election laws, including poll closing times and the end of vote by mail and ballot harvesting that would improve election integrity and voter confidence? Are they willing to vote for candidates who at least pretend there is a problem they intend to fix?
Or are they just concerned that Republicans stole a few seats to cling to a sliver of a majority that is preventing their party from “fixing” the nation for good?
HT | Just the News
The post Nearly Half of Democrats Think Cheating Affected the 2022 Midterm Election Results appeared first on Granite Grok.
Now THIS is a dog toy!
Owner made his dog a trebuchet.. pic.twitter.com/sgChR2RApp
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) April 19, 2023
Throw and fetch all by hissself!
And they definitely are not smart enough to go to the next level (scroll down to see):
The post Palate Cleanser – I Wish My Dogs Were This Trainable appeared first on Granite Grok.
By hiking interest rates, the Federal Reserve has pulled some of its monetary stimulus out of the economy. While the Fed hasn’t done nearly enough to put the inflationary fire it lit with more than a decade of easy money, cooling consumer price index (CPI) indicates that this has put a modest dent in price inflation — for now. But the federal government has opened the fiscal stimulus spigot even wider and government spending is mucking up the inflation fight. In fact, unless the federal government reins in spending, there is no way inflation will lose this fight.
And that’s not going to happen.
In just the first six months of fiscal 2023, the U.S. government ran a $1.1 trillion budget deficit.
To put that into perspective, the Obama administration ran its biggest deficit in 2009 during the depth of the Great Recession. That was a mere $1.4 trillion – in an entire year.
Ironically, President Joe Biden keeps bragging about how his team has lowered the deficit. But that’s just because he’s comparing it to the massive $3.1 trillion deficit the government ran in 2020 during the pandemic. In fiscal 2022, the Biden administration piled up a $1.3 trillion budget shortfall despite strong receipts to the U.S. Treasury. That was bigger than three of the four largest deficits Obama ran during the stimulus years after the Great Recession.
This is not to let Republicans off the hook.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised to deal with the skyrocketing national debt. In fact, he said he could take care of it “fairly quickly.” But during his four years in office, he didn’t even pay lip service to reining in spending, instead, approving bigger outlays for both military and domestic spending.
Most people blame the coronavirus for the surging deficits in the final years of Trump’s presidency. Pandemic-related spending certainly exacerbated the situation, but Uncle Sam had a spending problem long before the coronavirus reared its ugly head. In FY2019, the Trump administration ran a $984 billion deficit. At the time, it was the fifth-largest deficit in history. Through the first two months of fiscal 2020, the deficit was already 12 percent over 2019’s huge Obama-like number and was on track to eclipse $1 trillion.
The bottom line is the U.S. government has a spending problem, and it doesn’t matter who is sitting in the Oval Office.
The March 2023 Deficit
According to the latest U.S. Treasury report, the March budget deficit came in at just over $378 billion. Other than last September when the Treasury recognized some of the cost of Biden’s student loan bailout, it was the largest deficit month since March 2021 when Biden signed the last COVID bailout package.
The problem is the U.S. government faces a double-whammy of falling receipts and increasing spending. Through the first six months of fiscal 2023, tax receipts and other federal revenues are down 3.5 percent while spending is up 12.9 percent.
There has clearly been a shift in federal receipts. The federal government enjoyed a revenue windfall in fiscal 2022. According to a Tax Foundation analysis of Congressional Budget Office data, federal tax collections were up 21 percent. Tax collections also came in at a multi-decade high of 19.6 percent as a share of GDP. But CBO analysts warned it won’t last. And government tax revenue will decline even faster if the economy spins into a recession.
But the real problem is on the spending side of the ledger. The Biden administration is blowing through roughly a half-trillion dollars every single month. In March alone, the U.S. government spent $691.3 billion.
And there is no indication that the spending freight train will slow down any time soon. Congress passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill for 2023 that increased outlays by about $1.5 billion over fiscal 2022.
Of course, this is only one component of federal expenditures. The U.S. government is still handing out COVID stimulus money, and in March 2021, Congress approved $1.9 trillion in spending to address the pandemic. Last year, it passed the euphemistically named “Inflation Reduction Act.” Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to shower money on Ukraine and other countries around the world. All of that spending will pile on top of this most recent allocation of funding.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by another 25 basis points in March. That will add to the quickly ballooning interest cost.
According to an analysis by the New York Times, net interest costs rose by 41 percent in 2022. According to the Peterson Foundation, the jump in interest expense was larger than the biggest increase in interest costs in any single fiscal year, dating back to 1962.
The U.S. government has already spent over $300 billion servicing the interest on the national debt in fiscal 2023. At this rate, interest expense alone will cost Uncle Sam in the neighborhood of $600 billion this fiscal year. If interest rates remain elevated or continue rising, interest expenses could climb rapidly into the top three federal expenses. (You can read a more in-depth analysis of the national debt HERE.)
Mucking Up the Inflation Fight
This massive level of government spending creates two big problems for the Federal Reserve in its battle against price inflation.
In the first place, higher interest rates mean higher borrowing costs for the government. As already discussed, the trajectory of interest payments already looks unsustainable over the long term. Unless it cuts spending, the federal government will need interest rates to come down in order to borrow money cheaply and sustain its spending levels.
In the second place, the Fed will end up having to monetize at least some of this debt.
The only reason the U.S. government can borrow and spend to the extent that it does is because the Fed keeps its big fat thumb on the bond market. The federal government needs the central bank to buy Treasuries to prop up demand. Without the Fed’s intervention in the bond market, prices will tank, driving interest rates on U.S. debt even higher. But debt monetization means money creation. The Fed buys Treasuries with money created out of thin air. This is – by definition – inflation.
Right now, the Fed gets a little wiggle room because the US government has run up against the debt ceiling. It can’t borrow money right now, and it’s currently running “extraordinary measures” to fund government spending But as soon as the fake debt ceiling fight ends, the US Treasury will need to sell a large number of bonds to catch up to the ballooning deficit.
This isn’t merely speculation on my part. A paper published by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank acknowledged that the central bank can’t slay inflation unless the US government gets its spending under control. In a nutshell, the authors argue that the Fed can’t control inflation alone. U.S. government fiscal policy contributes to inflationary pressure and makes it impossible for the Fed to do its job.
Trend inflation is fully controlled by the monetary authority only when public debt can be successfully stabilized by credible future fiscal plans. When the fiscal authority is not perceived as fully responsible for covering the existing fiscal imbalances, the private sector expects that inflation will rise to ensure sustainability of national debt. As a result, a large fiscal imbalance combined with a weakening fiscal credibility may lead trend inflation to drift away from the long-run target chosen by the monetary authority.”
This clearly isn’t in the cards.
Something has to give. The Fed can’t simultaneously fight inflation and prop up Uncle Sam’s spending spree. Either the government will have to cut spending or the Fed will eventually have to go back to creating money out of thin air in order to monetize the debt.
You can decide which is more likely.
Mike Maharrey | The Tenth Amendment Center
The post Here’s How the Federal Government Is Mucking Up the Inflation Fight appeared first on Granite Grok.
American citizens left behind in Sudan may have to accept that to Joe Biden, they are a lot like military hardware in Afghanistan. They were left behind to be sold to China or “used” by the locals.
Biden’s administration made a hasty exit from the country, airlifting about 70 Embassy personnel out of Sudan as the security situation deteriorated.
US troops carried out the operation as fighting between two armed Sudanese commanders —which has killed more than 400, put the nation at risk of collapse, and could have consequences far beyond its borders—moved into a second week.
There are reported to be another 16,000 US citizens in Sudan, and no immediate plan to get them out.
The White House has said it has no immediate plans for a government-coordinated evacuation of American citizens trapped in war-torn Sudan as Africa’s third-largest country descends into civil war. An estimated 16,000 private U.S. citizens are registered with the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum.
I’m guessing Aid workers, doctors without borders, missionaries, Habitat for Humanity folks, and at least a few Americans with family there.
Biden said he was receiving regular reports from his team on efforts to assist those remaining Americans in Sudan “to the extent possible.”
I’m sorry, I don’t think Joe Biden is getting regular updates about anything except when to take his meds, nap time, what words to say, in which direction was supposed to walk, and when he can expect his next scoop of ice cream. That’s not to say there isn’t someone else doing that, but using Democrat administrations as a guide, if you have the financial means, might I suggest you find someone with the skills (it won’t be cheap) to get them out yourself.
And yes, we can point you to someone that does this if needed.
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Cash is king, at least until our “overlords” at the Federal Reserve and the Totalitarians that have infested the Executive Branch decided to make our paper (actually made of a special cloth) dollars digital – just PERFECT for tracking everything we’d do).
Anyways, this from Instapundit that should remind you to keep cash handy for when our modern society gets a hiccup (emphasis mine):
SO, SHOPPING AT THE FRESH MARKET TONIGHT, we were among the very few to buy groceries, because their computer network was down and they couldn’t process credit or debit cards. They couldn’t even accept checks because those are run through an ACH payment system rather than deposited in the old way. We, however, were able to pay and get out, something only a couple of other customers could do. (One older guy, and a couple of teenaged girls who said “we rock it old schoool with cash,” which I thought was hilarious.) Most people didn’t carry enough cash for groceries.
Two lessons: (1) The “cashless society” is less robust than cash; and (2) Always carry enough cash to buy groceries, a meal out, and a tank of gas. Just in case.
Flashback: Amy Langfield on the handiness of a stack of small bills in the New York blackout, when nobody could process credit cards. Though with inflation today, “small bills” probably includes twenties, and possibly fifties.
Debit and credit cards are nice, quick, and easy to use (and over use as well). However, when things go south/sideways in small (like the farmer’s market above) or worse (a blackout), having sufficient liquidity is a big plus. At least, at those places where they look at the cash in your hand (that could be theirs) and their dead Point Of Service terminal and they choose your cash over a no-sale. It is clear from the above that the farmers were a lot more nimble in creating a backup system (paper and pencil) than most stores would be, so who knows?
But you never know what will happen when that next EMP event is going to happen, do we?
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If you search any variation of “Bud Light Sales down,” the results will look like a drunk guy peeing in an alley, as in, all over the place. Down 30%, 69%, and 80%. You will find fact-checks by major media outlets whose relationship with the truth is spotty at best. But are they wrong?
The center-right is taking a victory lap, claiming scalps in the culture war, but if you look at BUD’s numbers, there’s not much to cheer about. Sure, the initial outrage coincided with a dip in both the stock price and market cap, but Anheuser Busch (AB) is a massive global company with, as I noted here, a lot of moving parts.
The first casualty (for the sake of appearances, IMO) is Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing. She is credited with the decision to pick a man to represent women. Alissa (a woman who identifies as a woman) is on a leave of absence but not for the Mulvaney thing, exactly. She was “dismissive” of the product’s customer base and whatever this is.
“I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light. It was, this brand is in decline, it’s been in decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light,” she said.
The brand overhaul she was driving, she said, would require “having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different and appeals to women and to men.”
Instead of building a new customer base, she pissed off the old one. How about you use up some of that vacation time you’ve been banking, Alissa?
BUD has also asked a guy who identifies as a guy “who oversees marketing for Anheuser-Busch’s mainstream brands” to step away. Daniel Blake will be using up some of his vacation time as well, so no one is going without pay or benefits. And if either needs to change jobs, this will look great on a resume at any number of #woke corporations.
But why are they stepping away?
The initial reports were that AB had lost up to 5 billion in market Cap in the first few weeks of the “controversy,” but that is no longer true. BUD’s Cap was at 132.38 billion when the outrage began. The stock price was 66.92. Before the Bell rang Monday, April 24th, Market Cap was back to 130 (129.72), and the stock closed on Friday at 65.52.
Past 30 days 6 Months
The off Hours trading had it opening at 66.08 (and it did). And while a 2.5 billion shift in Market Cap is not “nothing” – on this playing field, it looks like nothing.
So, what about the reports from bar owners and beverage distributors that there is a glut of products on the shelves that people are not buying? I bet some of that is true but a handful of anecdotal reports from neighborhood bars are not changing the big picture.
And so we are clear, I’m not saying you should not vote with your feet. If you like Blight and want to stand up for real women, do that. Drink PBR, Stroh’s, Keystone, Natural, Milwaukee’s Best, Rolling Rock, Narragansett, Old Milwaukee, and Schlitz; there are plenty of weak American beers to replace it with (Rainier, Lone Stare, Ultra Deluxe Yellow Dog Water, etc.). Some are not terrible if you are already drunk on good beer, and for the price of a four-pack of something worth drinking, you can get 18 or 24 of those.
Keep the party going!
And assuming none of those are brewed by BUD or have fallen into the CEI trap (your due diligence is required), have at it. Free markets are only free if you choose the products and services yourself for reasons entirely your own. But before you knee-jerk share-re-share or promote a headline about how far mighty BUD hath fallen, understand that they have not.
Not yet.
Stumbled might be a better word. And the difference might be a matter of March Madness ending and the NHL and NBA playoffs beginning.
Sure, a few Bud Light ad peeps tripped over Mulvaney’s swelling social following as part of a lighter and brighter campaign that appeals to … men who act like women, but Human Rights Campaign was (I’m sure) happy with the effort and fundraising off of the protesting beer-drinkers response.
So, what if Mulvaney appeals to a sliver of confused ‘youtes’ who aren’t old enough to drink legally and a few rubberneckers who don’t care what gets pitched on that feed? He’s a social media influencer, and if you want to appeal to women who are not sure what shitty beer to drink, a man in a dress who behaves like a shallow caricature of a woman – might be a mistake.
But it should come with a higher price than a few Execs getting paid vacation time to burnish their resumes, so we need to be realistic about the problem and the solution – and relentless about the response. The situation on the Right has always been stamina. The Right can muster the numbers but rarely for the long haul, and the Left knows that. They wait us out or beat us down to speed up the process.
If the brand was already a damsel with a prostate in distress, just excise Bud Light from your lives.
Drink something else (please), and don’t go back. Ever. Don’t serve it at your house or bring it to a friend. If they offer, politely pass. Life is too short to drink Blight, and you deserve better than that. As I said here, “Mulvaney thinks he’s a girl. Bud Light thinks it’s a beer. A guy who thinks he is a girl drinking Bud Light should be the perfect fit.”
Whatever is happening hasn’t made much of a difference for the beverage giant, but it could. It might take months or years, but this is Bud Light. It shouldn’t be hard to give that stuff up.
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