UPDATE3: A man’s home is his castle? Not quite…

by Doug

After several weeks of waiting, we finally have some news on the story (links at end of this post) about the Nashua man arrested for audiovideo taping police as they stood within that man’s home. And no, at that point, they did not have a warrant- they got that later, after they found out they … Read more

“Dope of the Week” Nominee: John Kerry

by Doug
The July 23rd Detroit News is reporting via its online Detnews.com website on a recent utterance of Sen. John "Loathesome" Kerry. This time, he’s pontificating on the recent events of the Middle East.:
"If I was president, this wouldn’t have happened."
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"The president has been so absent on diplomacy when it comes to issues affecting the Middle East…We’re going to have a lot of ground to make up (in 2008) because of it."
The story further tells us that Loathesome John’s statements were made during a stop at a Detroit bar ironically named Honest John’s bar & grill. He also remarked that
This is about American security and Bush has failed. He has made it so much worse because of his lack of reality in going into Iraq.…We have to destroy Hezbollah,"
Now how does Sen. Kerry propose to "destroy Hezbollah?" Being the consummate liberal, he despises the military. How would a Kerry administration have dealt with these terrorists? Bore them to death with his snotty "Boston brahmin" pseudo- intellectual dialect?

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How often does this happen in YOUR town?

by Doug

Foster’s Online reports on the use of taxpayer funds to promote voting one way or another. One such case has reached the NH Supreme Court. Attorney Charles Douglas, who represented the organization in court, said taxpayers should not be funding government-produced newsletters urging support for a particular viewpoint. He said the town spent $1,300 to … Read more

NH’s “Governor Do-Nothing”

by Doug

For the past year and a half, it has been an inside joke between me and my wife: whenever New Hampshire’s Democrat governor John Lynch appears on TV, we each do our best Howdy-Doody imitations, wildly waving to some imaginary crowd with the dumbest, blankest looks we can muster, complete with exaggerated smile. Of course … Read more

Democrat Vision: “A New Era of Braveness Internationally”

by Doug

Consider the nightmare vision, as presented by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi as she addressed the 97th annual NAACP convention July 18th: Democrats are proposing a New Direction to take our country forward for all Americans, not just the privileged few. And when we do take back the Congress, the Congressional Black Caucus will lead … Read more

CCAGW 2005 Congressional Ratings

by Doug
Press Release
Washington, D.C. – The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) today released its 2005 Congressional Ratings.  For 17 years, CCAGW has examined roll-call votes to separate the taxpayer advocates in Congress from those who favor wasteful programs and pork-barrel spending. 
The 2005 Congressional Ratings cover the voting year 2005, or the first session of the 109th Congress.  CCAGW rated 34 key votes in the House and 24 key votes in the Senate.  Votes included a budget reconciliation bill that will save a $39.7 billion over five years in mandatory programs, a tax reconciliation bill that would protect the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003, reforms in class action lawsuits, the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and affirming the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) recommendations. 
The entire House had an average of 45 percent a six point increase over 2004.   House Republicans averaged 73 percent; House Democrats averaged 13 percent.  The entire Senate had an average of 46 percent also a six point increase over 2004.  Senate Republicans averaged 68 percent; Senate Democrats averaged 18 percent. 
There were two Taxpayer Super Heroes with a score of 100 percent:  Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) in the Senate and Ed Royce (R-Calif.) in the House.  Taxpayer Heroes are members who scored between 80 and 99 percent.  The total number of Heroes and Super Heroes in the House dropped from 59 in 2004 to 52 in 2005.  The number of Heroes and Super Heroes in the Senate remained the same at 10. 
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“Talk is cheap,” CCAGW President Tom Schatz said.  “The voting record is the best way to measure a member’s commitment to fiscal discipline.  Unlike the Taxpayer Super Heroes and Heroes, too many members of Congress demonstrate little regard for the harmfull effects of a large and cumbersome federal government.”
CCAGW’s website features the complete 2005 Congressional Ratings, including vote descriptions, scorecards for the House and Senate, personalized scorecards for each member of Congress, historical comparisons, and averages by chamber, party, and state delegation.  Visit www.cagw.org 
The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

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Those pesky American Engineers…..

by Skip

Three guys – a farmer, Osama bin Laden, and an American engineer are together one day.  They come across a lantern and a genie pops out of it. "I will give each of you one wish, which is three wishes total" says the genie. The farmer says, "I am a farmer, my dad was a … Read more

City & Town. Voters & Tax Caps.

by Doug
Besides public employee salary and benefit costs, nothing impacts local property taxes more than big construction projects like new $chools, mammoth libraries, and police $tation megaplexes. Throughout the state, and indeed the entire country, we see massive projects proposed or under way. Why not? The economy is good right now. People seemingly have enough money to continue paying the ever-rising cost of funding their government. Or do they? How often do we hear the liberal Democrats and their comrades in the news media tell us that the “Bush economy” only benefits the rich and leaves “the little guy” losing ground as their costs grow faster than paycheck raises? Perhaps one reason there may be a grain of truth to that notion is that the fiscal backsliding is being caused in large part by people’s ever-growing tax burden.
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Can it be that ordinary folks are beginning to understand that their local governments have a spending problem that finds tax bills digging deeper into their weekly paychecks? Let’s look at the “tale of two cities” if you will- Laconia and Gilford (actually, a town). Both locales have recently passed initiatives aimed at either directly, or indirectly, slowing the pace of government growth. In both, “It [is] the best of times, it [is] the worst of times.”

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Thought You Had a Tax Cap? Think Again…

by Doug
MORE LOCAL (central NH) NEWS- KEEP READING- IT’S PROBABLY HAPPENING WHERE YOU LIVE TOO…(*followup to this prior posting on the Laconia tax cap issue*) …Now that the Laconia “Broken Arrow” City Council is proceeding with preparations for a tax-cap breaking, new middle $chool building construction bond issuance, the options left for the already over-burdened taxpayers are few. Back in April and then in May, the Broken Arrows led by Mayor Matt Lahey started the ball rolling with the approval of “supplemental appropriations” to pay for engineering and associated costs of the multi- million dollar project. While those actions were apparently not in violation of November’s voter- approved tax cap by the letter of the law (according to the AG’s office, the tax cap applies only to NEXT year’s budget) requiring an actual vote to specifically “override,” they certainly went against the spirit. I’ll bet money that those voting for the cap expected a cap- now.
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Moving forward with the spending commitment on a new middle school pitching the premise that new construction is cheaper than renovation, the Broken Arrow Council seems to have paid little heed to the City Manager’s forecast of future necessary tax cap- busting budgets even with NO new school being built. What will the hapless Laconia taxpayers do? The voters passed a tax cap and then elected big spending candidates who actively campaigned on an anti-tax cap platform with a promise of business as usual. With the manager’s dire predictions regarding upcoming budgets, the situation demands a radical alteration of how the city is conducting its operations.

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Facing the Face of Evil

by Ken

The morning news tells us that Islamofascists in Iraq not only brutalized and killed two of our soldiers in June, they video taped the barbarous act.  Arab networks are running segments of this latest display of man’s inhumanity to man, this time against Pfc. Thomas Tucker and Pfc. Kristian Menchaca.  There seems to be an audience for that sort of thing among segments of the Muslim world.  For us civilians sitting safely at home in America, this act – and so many others like it – serve as a reminder of the nature of our enemy.  We should also be reminded – forcefully, constantly – that we have faced evil before, and that we once had the will to destroy it.

I wish that President Bush would address the county in prime time and give us a history lesson.  I wish he would use news reel footage and military reports from World War II to show the nation what it took to win a war against an evil, determined adversary.  In this address he would talk about the massive aerial bombings of European cities, the vicious combat on islands in the Pacific, the civilian casualties, the military casualties, the destruction of religiously-significant places, of loss of irreplaceable artifacts from our own culture.  He would explain why this destruction was required, and why our culture, our political philosophy, was worth defending in this manner.  Behind him on a big screen would be shown the fire bombings of Dresden, the destruction of Monte Cassino, Marines on Tarawa, and eventually the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Claremont solved?

by Doug

The legal fallout from the Claremont education funding edicts issued by the NH Supreme Court continues. Like the swallows returning to Capistrano and Massachusettes tourists returning to clog up our roads and restaurants here in the Lakes Region year after year, NH residents can count on some group of school districts suing the state for … Read more

But who “paid” for the tax cuts?

by Doug

Wait a minute, I thought tax cuts added to the deficit? What is this? The New York Times (THE NEW YORK TIMES!) is reporting today (Saturday, where all good news that might help Bush gets relegated) that An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit … Read more

GraniteGrok FAQs and Policies

by Skip

Ownership I am the sole owner of this blog. Given that, since we are doing this in order to be able to get our views out, everything you see here is retained as our intellectual (such as it is) property and we retain all rights / copyrights to all that material. We do not own any … Read more

This is the Religion of Peace?

by Skip

The MSM (Main Stream Media) keeps harping that Islam is harmless, that most Muslims are not terrorists. While I agree that most are not, there are sufficient numbers to make it far more than troubling. Doug has been posting a few things about it, so I figured I’d chip in here a bit more. When I read about this from that failed state of Somalia where the Islamofascists have taken over, I thought that others might want to see it:

ISLAMISTS vowed to execute Muslims who skip prayers as they tightened their religious grip on the Somali capital Mogadishu and again Thursday rejected government calls for foreign peacekeepers.

Under an edict issued by a leading Mogadishu cleric, the five-times daily prayer required by the Koran will be enforced under penalty of death, a move that appears to confirm the hardline nature of the city’s Sharia courts.

"He who does not perform prayers will be considered as infidel and Sharia law orders that that person be killed," said Sheikh Abdalla Ali, a founder and high-ranking official in the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS).

At the opening of a new Islamic court in a southern Mogadishu neighborhood late on Wednesday, he added that it was the duty of every Somali to implement the provisions of Sharia law.

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Acknowledging the right way

by Skip

During lunch, I do tend to surf a bit.  A number of the blogs that I read are reporting this news (hat tip to Powerline and the article here) about the New York Supreme Court decision just handed down.  What they just ruled on was that the New York State Constitution has no inherent right … Read more

Dope of the week: NYC Mayor Bloomberg

by Doug

The list of so-called "Republicans" from New York who hack me off has long included NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg. In a contest for the worst between him and Gov. Pataki, I’m not sure who I would pick. This week, it’s the mayor. The AP reports on July 5th that Bloomberg, testifying before a Senate committee, said … Read more

What would you expect – loonies acting looney

by Skip

North Korea is trying to join in the fireworks displays for the 4th.  Sad to say, however, this is no joyous occasion but very serious.  Now we have a certifiable mad man lighting off rockets that can potentially hit both Japan and the US’s West Coast. I wish I could just leave it at that.  … Read more

Party Pooper

by Skip

From Treehugger – I have a couple of "environmental" blogs that I read.  Why?  I do believe that we should and can be able to use other technologies utilizing alternative energy sources.  For instance, my former house had "active" solar hot water and space heating to conserve and cut my energy bill.  My current house … Read more

Patriotism (or not) on 7/4/06

by Skip

I read a lot of blogs pretty much most days.  This entry from Thomas Sowell caught my eye, and while it is talking mostly about the NYT and the lack of concern / the overabundance of hubris, for me the money quote is this:

Patriotism is not chic in the circles of those who assume the role of citizens of the world, whether they are discussing immigration or giving aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime.

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire was as much due to the internal disintegration of the ties that bind a society together as to the assaults of the Romans’ external enemies.

The pride of being a Roman citizen was destroyed by cheapening that citizenship by giving it to too many other people. The sense of duty and loyalty eroded among both the elites and the masses.

Without such things, there could be no Roman Empire. Ultimately, without such things, there can be no United States of America. In neither case have tangible wealth and power been enough to save a country or a civilization, for the tangibles do not work without the intangibles.

In my mind’s eye, true Patriotism is putting your country ahead of any other.  Patriotism is fully believing in the ideals and potential of your country to the exclusion of others, and willing to make a stand for those beliefs even when unpopular. And Patriotism is willing, when and if necessary, to put your country ahead of your needs.

That is not to say that the ills of your country are swept under the rug; nay, one works to correct those ills.  However, while doing so, one advances, publicizing and dissemimates the positives. 

 

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A need for Patriotism

by Skip

Independence Day

This past Saturday, I attended the One Voice (www.onevoiceministries.org) Celebrate America! concert – an old fashioned patriotic celebration whose theme was “America – my home” and standing with our Founders on the premise that it is God who has so blessed our Nation. Seeing the flags and listening to the songs, I was stirred to put away my “working” column for this instead. I realized, once again, how fortunate we are to live in this great country, warts and all. There is no perfect place; even America has its bad with the good. Yet because some constantly dwell only on the negative, they believe it overwhelms that goodness. And I am tired of taking it on the chin because of it!

Nativist, xenophobe, bigot, unsophisticated – pejoratives used by those who consider outward displays of affection for our country as beneath them (especially those that besmirch it)

 

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