Oklahoma City voters approved a proposal for a new sales tax to fund a $1 billion downtown arena that will keep the NBA’s Thunder in that city through 2050.  Interesting. I’m sure Oklahomans who don’t care for basketball or sales taxes are less than pleased.

So, will the Thunder still leave in 25 years? And how long is an arena supposed to last?

The Thunder used to be the Seattle Supersonics. They played in several Seattle venues, including the Kingdome, which hosted the 1979 NBA Finals—won by the Sonics, led by future Celtic Dennis Johnson. Built for “only” $67 million, the Kingdome had around 60,000 seats and was also home to the MLB Mariners and the NFL Seahawks. Toronto Blue Jay—and future Celtic—Danny Ainge hit a couple of home runs there.

I actually saw some college basketball there in April of 1989 when Seattle hosted the NCAA Basketball Final Four. My seat was so far from the court that I watched the game on the giant video screen above the stands.

The giant edifice was demolished in 2000, only 25 years after it opened. Go figure.

Speaking of new NBA arenas, Washington Wizards owner Ted Leonsis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced plans to move the Wizards out of Washington, D.C., to a multi-billion sports and entertainment complex in Virginia that will also host the NHL Capitals.

(One wonders if the two new Virginia teams will still claim to be of Washington, D.C. But then the New York Giants and Jets play in New Jersey.)

The Washington Wizards used to be the Washington Bullets, but “Bullets” were seen as politically incorrect in a city plagued by gun violence—despite the nation’s toughest gun laws. So, the Bullet nickname went away. (Can you say “Redskins?”)  Political correctness is important in Washington. Of course.

The Washington Bullets used to be the Baltimore Bullets. After they switched their home arena from Baltimore to Landover, Md., they were also called the Capital Bullets for a while. The franchise had moved to Baltimore in 1963 from Chicago where they were known as the Zephyrs. They’d previously been the Chicago Packers, but they changed their name out of deference to a nearby NFL team.

There was another Baltimore Bullet NBA franchise in the 1950s, which didn’t move anywhere. It just folded.

Got it?

Anyway, one wonders how long these new arenas will last. Who’d have suspected that the Kingdome would be demolished only 25 years after it was built? Michigan’s Silverdome—once home to the Pontiac (nee Detroit) Lions—was similarly demolished, despite having hosted a Super Bowl in 1982.

When the Dallas Cowboys moved to Texas Stadium in 1971, fans probably thought that venue would be the eternal “Home of the Cowboys.” But America’s team now plays in Arlington, Texas, in a 100,000-seat palace known as the “AT&T Stadium.” Dallas owner Jerry Jones described the new Cowboy home as the greatest stadium ever built when the team started playing there in 2009.  But now the Rams and Chargers play in L.A’s $6 billion SoFi Stadium—the world’s grandest sports venue. Take THAT, Jerry Jones!

So, one wonders how long these giant sports temples will last. If the past is prologue, then someday “AT&T Stadium” and “SoFi Stadium” will be demolished—like the Kingdome, the Silverdome, and so many other sports venues. And citizens will vote for new taxes to build new edifices.

Consider that Rome’s Coliseum was constructed almost 2000 years ago without imposing any sales tax—although the Romans did use non-union slave labor. But despite being sacked by the Visigoths even worse than Giant QB Dan Jones was sacked by the Vikings, the Coliseum still stands—unlike the Kingdome, the Silverdome, et al.

We just don’t seem to build lasting sports arenas anymore.

Except for maybe Fenway Park?

 

The post Sales Taxes and Stadia appeared first on Granite Grok.

It’s been a good month for NH AG Formella. The week before Christmas, they reported a 700 million-dollar settlement with Google. Couch cushion money for Alphabet, but a decent haul for Jackpot Justice New Hampshire. Do we need a huge payoff to get the AG to chase everything?

Nope. He is still trying to get the Courts to let him police speech as a civil rights action as if by persisting, he can make the First Amendment go away. The AG’s office also chased down Deb Paul over a handful of political ads. Deb had to spend a bunch to defend herself and was ultimately fined $620.00, which is probably enough to cover a few minutes of the AG’s office time on this other case.

See! Money isn’t everything. I’m sure it was a matter of principle. But if that were true, why hasn’t the AG updated The People on the CD2 political mailer case?

 

The Democratic mail shop in Massachusetts that barraged Second Congressional District mailboxes with illegal ads, Reynolds Dewalt, has not been shut down. Nor has it been charged with a crime, despite its admission that it sent Democratic-funded mailers with no disclosures of any kind to voters during the 2022 GOP primary.

The anonymous mailers pushed GOP voters in the 2nd District away from moderate Keene Mayor George Hansel and toward MAGA Republican Bob Burns.

One piece featured a photo of Burns with a headline reading “I Stand With Trump” on one side and declaring him “100 Percent Pro-Trump” on the other. The mailer claimed Hansel was not. Another mailer asked, “Who Stands With Trump?” and made it clear the answer is Burns, not Hansel.

 

Even if you can only get – let’s say, $124.00 per violation, there were thousands of them. Political mail was sent to Republican primary voters by Democrat operatives, hoping to advance whom they thought would be a less desirable general election candidate against Ann Kuster. And it worked.

Whatever happened to equality of outcome? Shouldn’t the Governor’s Commission on Equity and Inclusion be putting pressure on the so-called Department of Justice to get this done?

The last NHDOJ presser I found (and I could have missed one) was Sept 2022. The NHGOP filed a complaint with the FEC a year ago, and what happened with that? 

 

Yet more than a year later, no charges have been filed, and no actions have been announced by New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella or any other law enforcement agency. And while the state Republican Party filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in September 2022, the agency declined to answer any questions about whether or not an investigation is even underway.

For all the talk of election integrity, what about election law accountability? Our taxpayer-funded organs have no interest in the serious pursuit of justice – unless it is some small-town thing unlikely to upset the rotten applecart. Deb Paul’s town newspaper or the odd double voter case – usually an out-of-state student or a senior who forgot they voted by mail – are the best the state’s top cop can do?

It’s almost as if they are feeding a narrative that while there is fraud, it is small potatoes and nothing like what some folks (like us, for example) have been saying for years.

Can we rename Formella’s office to the Department of Selective Justice because it’s not just him? Every AG going back to at least Kelly Ayotte in this century has failed to adequately or consistently enforce election law.

The New Hampshire Department of Selective Justice. The legislature should propose a bipartisan bill to rename it.

We ought to be able to get a bunch of BLM Democrats on board with that.

 

 

The post NH’s Department of Selective Justice – Election Law Division appeared first on Granite Grok.

Over two thousand years ago Three Wise Men followed a heavenly star that led them to the newborn baby Jesus. Today, billions of people around the world still celebrate his birth and follow his teachings. Teachings that are filled with love, joy, hope and peace.

Over two hundred years ago another group of Wise Men, known as our Founding Fathers, signed a Declaration of Independence that would ultimately lead to the birth of our Nation.

Most will agree that our Nation was founded by these Wise Men who believed in the same Judeo-Christian principles that Jesus taught.

Others may argue semantics, as they try to minimize the part God played in the founding of our Nation. However, God is imbedded in our Nation, and the naysayers will need a sandblaster and a history revisionist to remove him from our buildings, money, monuments and documents.

Like the Three Wise Men who sought out Jesus, our Founding Fathers left comfortable lives to pursue a dangerous journey in search of something bigger than themselves.

They risked everything to give the men and women of our future Nation a better life. A life rooted in something more valuable than material possessions or status. They sought to provide us all with a life free from government tyranny.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Most Americans have read or heard that first sentence of the second paragraph in The Declaration of Independence.

How many have heard or read the last sentence of that paragraph?

“The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

If you read the facts they then list, you may see some eerily similar injuries and usurpations being levied upon our country today.

The first fact they list, “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” This of course means that the King refused to accept our laws.

Sound familiar? Like the King of old, our current leaders refuse to accept, or enforce, our laws for the public good.

We watch silently as our “leaders” either ignore our laws, or selectively and unequally enforce them.

They blatantly refuse to secure our border to protect the American people.

They allow unvetted foreigners to invade our country, human traffickers to prosper, and drug cartels to poison our children.

They aid and abet law breaking criminals by allowing our failed justice department to simply release them back onto our streets.

As they let these violent criminals, rapists, murderers and the like free, they arrest, imprison and then zealously prosecute non-violent citizens who dare to question their King like behavior.

Our Founding Fathers refused to bow to tyranny, and In the last sentence of the Declaration, they put everything on the line.

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

This is where their words and their actions came together. They were willing to back up their words with their very lives.

Our current leaders take an oath, but unlike our Founding Fathers, they pledge nothing of real personal value. Their lives are pampered, not risked, their fortunes are increased, not put in peril, and their honor is often times compromised for personal or political gain.

Do we have any Wise, principled, independent leaders representing us in Washington, or are they all just “Rich Men North of Richmond”?

This Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, let us remember his life, his death and his resurrection as we look forward to his return.

Let us also remember The Three Wise men who honored him and our wise Founding Fathers who risked everything to create this unique Nation that far too many Americans now take for granted.

Let us pray that our Nation is able to find wise, ethical, moral leaders who are worthy of the Nation our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. Men and women who are willing to put the good of our Nation first, before themselves, their donors and their political parties.

Regardless of personal religious or political beliefs, let us all embrace the love, joy, hope and peace that Jesus gave to the world such a long time ago.

Merry Christmas and God Bless America.

 

The post Wise Men appeared first on Granite Grok.

Vivek Ramaswamy has been running ads in NH Since March, but his campaign just announced that it was shifting gears. It canceled all of its TV buys in Iowa and New Hampshire and intends to work its ground game in the remaining weeks. Team DeSantis is doing something similar.

 

“Never Back Down is laser focused on its core mission – running the most advanced grassroots and political caucus operation in this race and helping deliver the GOP nomination for Governor DeSantis who will deliver America from the disastrous policies of the Left,” Wagner said in the statement. “We are thrilled to have Fight Right and others covering the air for Governor DeSantis while we work the ground game in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond.”

 

The DeSantis campaign has – or appears to have – been run on the Ad side by super PACs. It’s not illegal, but it hasn’t exactly worked. The DeSantis slide has been ongoing for nearly nine months with campaign shake-ups and now changes in PAC leadership. In other words, this new approach can’t hurt.

 

Taryn Fenske, a spokesperson for Fight Right, said in a statement to The Hill that the group will spend more than $2.5 million on ads before the caucuses start in the Hawkeye State.

Never Back Down has faced departures in the last few weeks, with the top strategist Jeff Roe, leaving in the wake of a detailed report published by The Washington Post.

Fenske said part of Fight Right’s $2.5 million plan includes a $1.3 million broadcast and cable reservation in Iowa, with one ad, scheduled to air Sunday, targeting Haley’s stance and record on China.

Meanwhile, another pro-DeSantis Super PAC has emerged. The group, called “Good Fight,” registered with the FEC on Wednesday and placed a $1.3 million reservation for an ad to run on broadcast and cable right before the Iowa caucuses, The Hill has learned.

 

I like Ron more than Nikki, but Haley has managed to corral the ‘anyone but the Trump’ crowd in a way that  – until now other candidates have failed to do. Her rise has forced the competition to change its plans, strategy, and tactics. All except Christie. I don’t think he can slow whatever passes for his role at this point if he tries. He’s got his lane. Bash Trump, which tells me his donors aren’t donating to get him elected. They are paying him to bash Trump.

He’s a good choice, so where does that put him on the Haley Team radar? What does Christie get out of it if he’s their hitman so that she can play the rise-above candidate? If I had to guess, AG in a Haley administration, which – to be honest -might be a hell of a lot of fun to watch. I don’t want a President Haley, but if you’ve ever watched what passed for Christie porn – when he was going up against unions as a new Governor of New Jersey, he can bring it. He’s still a RINO stooge and a GOPe meat puppet of the globalist elites, but sometimes you have to look for the ray of sunshine.

Anyway, Trump is still kicking butt nationally, but the nomination was always his to lose, and a lot of Republicans are working to make that happen. In a few weeks, we’ll know who did what was right and wrong. And if Haley can keep up, Super Tuesday will look a lot more interesting.

 

The post Night Cap: Vivek Bails on TV Ads in January, DeSantis PACs Shuffle Priorities appeared first on Granite Grok.

New Hampshire has at least ten proposed bills related to Electric Vehicles for the upcoming 2024 Session. We’ve also got legislation to prohibit parking gas vehicles in EV charging spaces or parking EVs in a parking garage, infrastructure, rebates, and state fleet use (or prohibition).

There are bills for EV scooters and bike rules, smart meters, grid resiliency, recovering lost gas tax revenue, and my favorite: phasing out the renewable portfolio standard. That last one is not an EV bill but is related to “renewable” electricity mandates I’ve wanted gone for ages.

Whatever your Net-Zero poison, the legislature likely has a bill for you to be for or against. Time permitting, we’ll take a closer look at some of these, but before the session starts and fence-sitters pick a side, does this inform the debate?

Nearly 1000 (soon to be former) US Buick Dealerships have taken a buyout from GM in exchange for dropping the brand. They had to choose between spending 300K for site upgrades to sell and repairing Buick EVs or giving up their right to sell them, and nearly half of US Dealers said, take it back; we don’t want the hassle. That’s a stunning gut punch as auto-makers decide how to meet Biden-Era EV mandates (or not).

 

The move comes as U.S. car dealers are so concerned with EV sales that they are urging Biden to abandon his EV mandates and carbon emission regulations that would effectively force all-electric cars on consumers.

“The reality, however, is that electric vehicle demand today is not keeping up with the large influx of [EVs] arriving at our dealerships prompted by the current regulations. [EVs] are stacking up on our lots,” the car dealers write:

With each passing day, it becomes more apparent that this attempted electric vehicle mandate is unrealistic based on current and forecasted customer demand. Already, electric vehicles are stacking up on our lots which is our best indicator of customer demand in the marketplace. [Emphasis added]

 

Another nail in the coffin?

We’ve noted the decline in EV car commercials for the holiday season, an alarming shift given how frequent they were in the months prior. We still saw plenty of car commercials, but they were for conventional vehicles. Car makers needed or wanted to sell cars people want and need.

Christmas 2023 has passed us by, but not the buying season, so we’ll keep seeing those car commercials, but will the EV ads make their way back, or have dealers sent a message that they can’t take anymore? If you ask the media, they’ll tell you how excited they are about the US breaking a million EVs sold in 2023. This represented 9% of all cars purchased. But how many of those are virtue signal mobiles?

The used EV Car Market is Collapsing.

Used EV car sales are further down the toilet than new EV sales. In China, where they made people buy them, the landscape has acquired a new feature. EV graveyards. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Electric Vehicles are piling up in fields across China. Metal, rubber, glass, technology, and lithium firetraps rusting away over no longer unusable land. And it makes sense. The only thing less desirable than a new EV is a used one. Those aged-out fleets of EV rentals to leases to government EV fleet vehicles will all need to go somewhere.

We can expect some enterprising individuals, propped up by taxpayers, will claim they can recycle these for a “small” handling fee, but more than likely – just like solar panels (or unrecyclable wind turbine blades – they will get buried somewhere so no one has to think about how bad an idea this was (or that you can’t crush a lithium power pack).

Cold Shoulder

From New York City to Oslo, to Duluth, Minneapolis, and St Paul, EVs continue to be an expensive failure. One could almost make the case that there was a conspiracy to mislead in the interest of hoovering up available tax dollars for Garbage Trucks and public buses that won’t run, get half the range, can’t climb hills, or are always broken down. Vehicles hampered by these green exercises in futility don’t run on time or at all, leaving cities with expensive paperweights they should not park indoors for fear of fire taking out the whole fleet.

Closer to home, Maine was expected to vote on a statewide EV mandate this past week, but it was canceled due to widespread power outages.

Green, they said.

New Hampshire doesn’t have any bills to address that, but neither has it addressed the more pressing matter of Solar Panel waste. Perhaps the unwanted EVs and scrapped solar can poison the earth together for eternity. Side by side. A new generation of superfund sites with lines of rusting cars framed behind a close-up photo of a sign that says, do not play on or around (written in whatever language is spoken by the local Africans who live nearby)

What, you don’t think they’ll offshore this mess, too?

 

The post Is Legislating EVs Like Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Chris “Sun-King” Sununu thinks he is the smartest person in the room … that his intellect is so far superior to the ordinary Volk that he can make them believe anything. He is NOT. He is a nincompoop. A Trump-deranged nincompoop.

For example, His Majesty thinks he can make you believe that our open borders are Trump’s fault, not Biden’s:

 

 

The truth is that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, the globalist/corporatist RINO leaders of the House and Senate (Mikey Graham would call them “traditional Republicans”) refused to fund a wall because they and their ilk, which includes His Majesty Sun-King Sununu, support open borders because they represent the GOP donor class, not GOP voters.

Sun-King’s claim that Biden would have been powerless to open the Southern border if The Wall had been completed before he took the oath of office is totally preposterous. Once Biden, with incidentally a major assist from RINO frauds like Sun-King Sununu, took the oath as President, he assumed total control of the border.

Here is more nonsensical bloviation. The Sun-King, who obviously is incapable of original thought or argument, pushing the neocon/globalist lie that their war against Russia is to save the world from Putin :

 

 

The truth of the matter is that Putin could take all of Ukraine if that were the goal. The Ukrainian Armed Forces has been decimated. Putin’s goal, obviously, is not to use Ukraine as a springboard to conquering all of Europe but to create a buffer zone against NATO. The peace deal he negotiated with Ukraine at the outset of military operations, which the Biden-Regime undermined, shows that.

What’s “nonsense” is to claim, as the Sun-King does, that unless you support continuing to pour hundreds of billions into the military-industrial complex under the pretext of defending Ukraine’s border (at the very time the UniParty is allowing an invasion at our Southern border),  you are an “isolationist” or “Putin’s puppet” or some other puerile neocon pejorative.

 

The post Chris “Sun-King” Sununu Is A Trump-Deranged Nincompoop appeared first on Granite Grok.

Pandemics, as it turns out, are incredible opportunities for profit. Trillions globally was dumped into the funding streams of states, local governments, and public health apparatuses – from pharma to hospitals. They are Sacred Cash Cows of the New World Order.

Money laundering on a global scale.

To get ahead of the next windfall, the German-based EU-Vaccelrate consortium asked its members to guess the pathogen responsible for the next global pandemic. Influenza was overwhelmingly the popular blonde at this party, followed by some unknown disease x. They were followed by two versions of SARS, EBOLA, MERS, ZIKA, and the rest. Here on Gilligan’s Isle!

It is unclear whether any of the participating experts in the Vaccelerate program called any of the “labs” sprinkled about the globe engaged in illegal germ warfare research in the interest of public health. Or if Tony Fauci got a call. You, Tony! Wassup! Quick question. What sort of biotech start-ups are you investing in these days?

I’m sure Bill Gates would have had some advice to give, but we do not know if he was consulted either, which is a real tragedy. If anyone has an idea about the next pandemic, it’s Gates. Something he’s bought or dropped a few million into, most likely either as a pathogen or its cure. Bill’s taken the blue screen of death to heart and wants to share it with yours.

Vaccelerate, by the way, is similarly handicapped by members with vested interests in both the likelihood of an outbreak and its treatment.

 

The Vaccelerate consortium is led by the Clinical Trial Unit of the German Centre for Infection Research (DZIF). The Clinical Trial Unit is based at the University of Cologne. The DZIF is a German public agency which partners with pharmaceutical companies in developing vaccines. One of the DZIF’s partners is none other than BioNTech. …

The head of the DZIF’s Product Development Unit is none other than Klaus Cichutek, who is at the same time the President of the German vaccine regulator, the PEI or Paul Ehrlich Institute (so-named for the German immunologist, not the American population control theorist).

It is this dual role of enabler and regulator which raises obvious questions about the impartiality of the PEI’s oversight of the BioNTech vaccine, and these questions are all the thornier given the leading role which, by Cichutek’s own admission, the PEI plays at the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Oliver Cornely of the University of Cologne is both the Vaccelerate project leader and the coordinator of the DZIF’s Clinical Trial Unit.

 

These not at all disinterested experts and their colleagues have decided that the Flu will be the next global pandemic. We should take them at their word, especially since the cure to the last “pandemic” damaged millions, if not billions, of immune systems.

Starting another one ought to be child’s play. And this is guidance (theoretical or not) coming out of Germ-any. What more need we say?

 

The post The Next “Pathogen with Pandemic Potential” Winner Is? appeared first on Granite Grok.

Obama’s third term, which began in January 2021, a/k/a the Biden-Regime, has been a time of WAR. The Biden-Regime has waged war on Donald Trump, on MAGA-Republicans, on pro-lifers, and on Russia. The Biden-Regime has also been waging war on Elon Musk.

The Biden Regime has been waging war on Musk because Musk is NOT a communist like Obama and the Obama ilk running the Biden Regime. Rather, Musk is a believer in, not a hater of, Western Civilization. In practical terms, Musk is adamantly opposed to DEI and to censorship … the latter being necessary to impose the former … and refuses to have X (formerly Twitter) engage in censorship on behalf of the Biden-Regime like Facebook, Google, etc..

Perhaps Musk is the greatest threat to Obama’s dream of “transforming” America into his vision of a Brave New World. The following tweet summarizes how the Biden-Regime has been waging war on Musk. Click on it and check out the whole thread.

President Biden stood at a White House podium & stated that Elon Musk “is worth being looked at.”

When asked "How?", President Biden responded “There’s a lot of ways.”

There certainly are. The DOJ, FAA, FTC, NLRB, SDNY, & FWS have all taken action.

The FCC now joins them.

— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) December 13, 2023

The post The Biden-Regime’s War On Elon Musk appeared first on Granite Grok.

Hope everyone that celebrates it had a good Christmas!

Take heart – there will be a 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 ***

 

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

 

 

 

 

Assuming this is California, I see a full body cavity tax audit coming soon…

 

 

I am not a “religious fanatic” trying to keep women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.  But there is value in having a woman at home raising your children your way.

 

 

Related:

 

 

In about one year more had cardiac arrests and died than in the 50 years prior.  I wonder what changed…

 

 

 

 

Except, likely not true.

Claims of a pregnant Ken doll originated on satirical website | Reuters

Now, it wouldn’t surprise me if they wanted to do this.  But this just proves that we must vet information, especially information that we want to be true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If this is “genocide”… then the Israelis really suck at it.

 

 

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

 

 

 

 

Things Fall Apart… With A New Cartoon “Getting Ready for the Spicy” – Granite Grok

Things Fall Apart 2 – Granite Grok

IMHO, alas, it’s only a matter of time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But… but… but we’ve been assured by our intellectual and moral superiors that there is no war on white men.

 

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

 

PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA

 

 

Start paying attention to the ingredients label, folks.

Cochineal: What is it and where is it used? (drugs.com)

And my understanding of the kosher rules is that insects are a no-no.  I wonder if this stuff is kosher-certified… will look the next time I’m at the store.  If it is, and it has this extract, I’ll write the certifying agency.

 

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

 

 

 

So many quotes exist regarding the destruction of a people by destroying its memory and its monuments to its past.

 

 

A rising population of Muslims in Gaza… but calamitously-large falls in Jewish populations in Arab countries.  So, tell me, just who is “ethnically cleansing”?

 

 

Better put out a statement, stat, that she’s neither depressed nor suicidal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Give it up, GOP.  The Potato could have deep fried a living infant and then the still-hot body on video and the enemedia would give him a pass.

 

 

 

Excellent book:

No More Wacos: What’s Wrong With Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

By definition, since the original strain was man-made, all of them are.  But this seems to indicate that each and every one – individually – was made.

Czech Microbiologist #SonaPekova has claimed that the #coronavirus strain which caused the 2nd and 3rd wave was artificially engineered.

Related:

COVID Vaccines Integrate Into Human DNA, Study Finds (vigilantnews.com)

Boy do I hate being right all the time.

 

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

 

 

 

 

Very subtle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laughing in volcano…

 

 

 

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

 

Pick of the post:

 

 

There are people who, for legitimate reasons, don’t like Trump.  That’s fair.  But let’s not pile falsehoods on the guy.

 

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

 

Palate Cleansers:

 

—

—

 

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

 

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

Please do consider buying me a coffee.

Buy Me a Coffee

 

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

 

The post Monday Memes on Wednesday appeared first on Granite Grok.

First question: Why do we even have a Climate Council at this point? Why have we ever had one? All these twenty-three (twenty-two, really, because the corrupt Speaker of the House has refused for over a year to appoint a representative from the Fuel Dealers as required by law) unelected, self-important bloviators do is sit in a circle and spew “woke” jargon at one another for a few hours each month in pointless exercises of mental masturbation. At, I should point out, considerable taxpayer expense.

Just a reminder of what the Climate Council is supposed to do per the Global Warming Solutions Act: “On or before December 1, 2021, adopt the Vermont Climate Action Plan…. The Plan shall set forth the specific initiatives, programs, and strategies that the State shall pursue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; achieve the State’s reduction requirements…[emphasis added].” They never actually did this.

The “Plan” they produced in December 2021 was not a list of specific recommendations or strategies that, if enacted, would achieve the state’s greenhouse gas reduction requirements. It was/is an a la carte menu of pretty much every climate-related boondoggle policy they could think of dropped into an Excel file with no cost analysis, timeline for implementation of programs, etc. Not a plan. It’s like if you hired a team of nutritionists to create a diet for you that would specifically help you lose twenty pounds and lower your cholesterol and your blood sugar levels by the end of the year, and they delivered you a copy of the Joy of Cooking. They are unwilling and/or incapable of making a decision.

This gets us to the latest farcical chapter in this bureaucratic clown car’s history.

The “Plan” delivered in 2021, for all its 200-plus pages, did not include any viable option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. A rather big omission, given that cars and trucks, are the source of about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the state. The Council blames the official implosion of the Transportation Climate Initiative in November 2021 for their failure, but anybody with eyes attached to a functioning brain could have told them that TCI was never a truly viable plan. (See my own op-ed from January 2020, nearly two years before the Climate Action Plan was published, heralding the inevitable death of TCI, With TCI Imploding, a Worse Bill Is on the Horizon).

Nevertheless, since December 2021, the Climate Council has had another two full years to come up with an alternative to TCI. And for two full years they had come up with zip, zero, nada recommendations. Lots of jabber. Endless clips of Liz Miller rolling her eyes and lamenting the evaporation of TCI, but no plan. So, big decision, they created a Transportation Task Force to finally tackle the issue, and that task force recently released its long-awaited decision. Drumroll, please … Blast of trumpets…

…. The Transportation Task Force of the Vermont Climate Council’s recommendation regarding a policy plan to replace TCI for the transportation sector of the Climate Action Plan is… to hire an independent consulting firm to come up with a recommendation to replace TCI for the transportation sector of the Climate Action Plan.

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. But you will, taxpayers, have to pay for it.

This gets back to my original question. Why does this useless committee, the government equivalent of an inflamed appendix, exist? If we’re going to hire an independent consultant to make the recommendations the Council is paid to make, why can’t the Agency of Natural Resources just do that? Or one of the legislative committees of jurisdiction? Maybe, lawmakers, it’s time — past time — to scrap the Climate Council.

Better yet, just scrap the whole Global Warming Solutions Act because Vermonters don’t want and can’t afford ANY plan to levy a carbon tax on gasoline and diesel fuels anyway, which is what any recommendation in this area comes down to.

In fact, what the Climate Council specifically wants this independent consultant to do is look at whether or not Vermont should join New York Cap & Invest, a program that does not yet exist and is probably about as viable as TCI or The Western Climate Initiative, a non-profit organization that handles the logistics of auctioning off “carbon credits” (aka carbon taxes) for the states of California and Washington as well as a couple of Canadian provinces. It is essentially a West Coast TCI. And, like TCI, most of the original “observer” states willing to consider the concept ultimately declined to participate. The difference being that California, unlike Massachusetts, was big enough to go it alone.

And here’s what Vermonters should be concerned about regarding potential participation in WCI. According to AAA, the state with the most expensive gasoline in the country is Hawaii because it is way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The next two most expensive states after that? California and Washington. The two WCI states. By a lot. California’s average gas price today is $4.60 a gallon. Compared to its neighboring states, that’s 69 cents higher than Nevada, 75 cents higher than Oregon, $1.41 higher than Arizona, and $1.52 above the national average. Do Vermonters really want to sign up for that?

If the recent Campaign for Vermont poll is remotely accurate, the answer is not just no, but HELL NO! 71 percent of Vermonters oppose any carbon tax/fee/surcharge on gasoline and diesel, and 59 percent strongly oppose it. So, lawmakers, how about you listen to your constituents for a change? Save the taxpayers several hundred thousand dollars and forget about paying extra to study a policy nobody wants, save several million dollars by scrapping the Vermont Climate Council that doesn’t do anything, and save us hundreds of millions by abandoning any thoughts of putting a carbon tax on our motor fuels that we can’t afford.

Just a suggestion.

 

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years of service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank. He is also a regular contributor to VermontGrok.

The post Climate Council Can’t Decide Which Tax It Likes Best appeared first on Granite Grok.

On the 2020 Presidential campaign trail – what of it there was – Joe Biden promised to end fossil fuels. True to form, Whoever is Running the Biden Administration has – since day one – acted toward that end. Joe’s administration has been US history’s most hostile to affordable energy.

COP28, which ended a few weeks ago, was focused on getting other nations to join them in this madness. Led by John “Lurch” Kerry, the private-jet-setting US Ambassador to mass delusion, America got promises from many but then did this.

 

Barely a week after its representatives committed the United States to a COP28 agreement pledging to “transition away” from fossil fuels – oil, natural gas and coal – the Biden government held its first significant auction of offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday. It was not just any old lease sale, mind you, but the most massive one since 2015 with more than 72 million acres up for lease.

 

That sounds hypocritical, and I Was quick to judge, but not so fast.” Without Congressional intervention, this is the final lease sale until at least 2025.” There are no more plans for this presidency. The next president will decide the question moving forward, and if that president is a Democrat, the keep-it-in-the-ground coalition will likely get its way.

We can’t afford that.

Energy prices are unstable, and while motor fuel has dipped a bit in price, it is significantly more expensive than when Obiden was anointed. Nikki, Ron, or Donald would open up our mineral deposits on Day One for different reasons. DeSantis and Trump to unshackle the economy and take price pressure off everyday Americans, Nikki ‘cuz her war machine buddies need it, though, regardless of who is the CIC, the US Military will need fossil fuels to do anything.

So does most of America.

Public transportation, infrastructure, buildings, roads – heck, you can’t even make any of the garbage labeled “green energy” without coal, gas, and oil. There is no future without it, but here we are. They are promising to end our existence as a functioning modern economy to feed the lie of climate socialism.

Name one socialist nation that isn’t burning everything in sight to fuel itself. They are all major “global” polluters alongside every other second or third-world tyrant and despot.

If you give them what they want, the ruling class led by Democrats, or you let them take it without any resistance, that regime will inevitably remove every protection except those that keep them in power.

 

 

The post Biden Admin Follows COP28 Promise to End Fossil Fuels With Massive Oil/Gas Lease Sale appeared first on Granite Grok.

The “insurrectionist” clause of the 14th Amendment says, “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Enacted after the Civil War, and ratified by the states in 1868, Congress wanted to prevent officeholders who joined the Confederacy from holding office.

Four of the seven Democrat-appointed Colorado Supreme Court justices ruled this clause prevents former President Donald Trump from appearing on that state’s primary ballot. The Michigan Court of Appeals rejected this argument, and the Minnesota Supreme Court dismissed a similar lawsuit. But several more states have pending lawsuits based on the insurrection clause. (RELATED: ALAN DERSHOWITZ: The Ridiculous Colorado Ruling To Keep Trump Off The Ballot Will Create Disarray In US Electoral System)

Despite Democrats having appointed all seven Colorado Supreme justices, three dissented. Trump vowed to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where six of three justices were Republican nominees. It is practically a foregone conclusion that the Colorado case will be overturned, and the Supreme Court’s ruling could even be unanimous. Also, note that while Trump faces three federal conspiracy counts and one count of obstructing an official proceeding, the special counsel DID NOT charge the former president with “insurrection.”

In its 200-page majority decision, the Colorado Supreme Court said that on Jan. 6 Trump told supporters to “walk down to the Capitol” and “fight like hell” and “take back our country.” Not mentioned is that Trump also said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the capital building to peacefully and patriotically. Make your voices heard.”

The Colorado Court found “substantial evidence” the Trump was “laying the groundwork for a claim that the election was rigged” before the November 2020 election and before the Jan. 6 riot. But does not Trump, or for that matter, any politician have a First Amendment right to complain, however unjustifiably, about the integrity of an election?

Hillary Clinton frequently called the 2016 election “stolen” and President Trump “illegitimate.” Never mind that former President Barack Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testified that there was no evidence that the Russians succeeded in changing a single vote tally. As to the effect of the Russian interference, Johnson said there was no way of knowing whether it affected public opinion or altered the election. But Democrats believe otherwise. A 2018 YouGov poll found that 66% of Democrats believe the Russians, to elect Trump, changed vote tallies. A 2018 Gallup poll found that 78% of Democrats believe the Russian interference “changed the outcome of the election.” But the media do not call Democrats “election deniers.” (RELATED: LARRY ELDER: The Feminist Movement Is Nowhere To Be Found After Hamas Brutalizes Jewish Women)

About the 2020 presidential election, a Quinnipiac University poll found that “seventy-six percent” of Republicans believed there was “widespread voter fraud.” Republicans, although slightly less likely to call 2020 stolen than Democrats about 2016, are, of course, “election deniers.”

Finally, the anti-Trump media accuses Trump of peddling “the Big Lie” about 2020 voter fraud, irregularities or illegality. After all, there is supposedly no evidence to justify the assertions. John Eastman, a former Trump lawyer who argued that state legislatures and Vice President Mike Pence possess the legal authority to reject certification, now faces disbarment. The California Bar Association asked this once respected and courtly former dean and law professor at Chapman University School of Law for evidence about 2020 election-altering widespread fraud. Eastman turned in over 80,000 pages of documents. In an hourlong speech available for viewing on Rumble, Eastman spoke in detail about just some of what he considered substantial election irregularities. It’s called “Taking a Stand Against a Weaponized Justice System.” I urge the most ardent believer in the “Trump promoted baseless conspiracy theories” narrative to watch the speech. Be prepared for discomfort.

Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. To find out more about Larry Elder, or become an “Elderado,” visit www.LarryElder.com. Follow Larry on Twitter @larryelder. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

 

Larry Elder | Daily Caller

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