Skip, Author at Granite Grok

Blogline of the Day – nice turn of phrase

September 21, 2020September 21, 2020 Skip

From Facebook, on Doris’s post “In Emergency Order #69, Sununu Packs the Public Health Ethics Committee” is this from Mary Anderson: 2020: Flu d’etat to Coup d’etat Too often, it does feel this way in that too many “people in charge” have seen a lifting of regular Constitutional Republic norms (e.g., “stay Constitutional”) and a … Read more

Liberty is freedom from Government - Von Mises

Notable Quote – Liberty?

September 21, 2020September 21, 2020 Skip

How can liberty be anything other than negative? Liberty is the absence of external control. Only in our age of collective thinking and untidy language could such a thing as “positive liberty” be conceived. The state power to coerce is not liberty. -Bruce Walker (Negative Liberties and Obama Newspeak) Because Socialists never talk about that in … Read more

Data Point – and where does all that Federal money go?

September 20, 2020September 20, 2020 Skip

Yesterday I posted up, in another Data Point, the absolutely horrendous amount of money that the Federal Government has been spending and what levels (or is that depths) that the National Debt as gone to – enslaving our children, their children, and their childrens’ children into indentured servitude to the US Government. It has been … Read more

A Bleg for Steve Mac Donald, if you would

September 20, 2020 Skip

UPDATE and BUMPED: I’m happy to announce that Steve is now home and doing better. Whatever it was (and the medical folks are unsure), it was not a heart attack or effects from the first one. As he wrote, everything is in the green. ************** As most of you know, Steve had a heart attack … Read more

Data Point – Americans believe a SCOTUS opening should be filled this year

September 20, 2020 Skip

I did not see this coming: A new poll conducted shortly before the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed that an overwhelming majority of U.S. adults of all political stripes supported holding hearings for a nominee if a vacancy opened on the nation’s highest bench. Marquette University released the survey results on Saturday … Read more

ICYMI – Trump has been nominated for TWO Nobel Peace Prizes

September 20, 2020 Skip

Yep, the first one I caught here for the agreement that he and Jared Kuchner (+ others) forged between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Bahrain also joined in with Trump saying that other Arab nations may join in. Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of the Norwegian Parliament and chairman of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, … Read more

Cancer cell with killer scaffolding structures

Well, as Glenn Reynolds says, this IS the 21st Century? Novel way to kill cancer cells

September 20, 2020September 20, 2020 Skip

Actually, a way to have the cells kill themselves, sorta, sideways. By taking advantage of the changes in the environment inside ONLY cancer cells, a new mechanism hits the “Big Death Button”. Every cells has a mechanism by which it kills itself off – but this is certainly new in how scientists are turning it … Read more

Free Trade vs National Defense

September 20, 2020September 20, 2020 Skip

As even recent readers of GraniteGrok know, I like short (er, mostly short) snippets of what someone has said or written that make what I think is an important idea that I label as “Notable Quote”. Many are just a couple of sentences – a few have multiple paragraphs but in either format, express ideas … Read more

Dem Majority Leader Doug Ley sans mandatory mask

Is That Manner of “Mask Wearing” Democrat Party Approved (Majority Leader Ley)?

September 21, 2020September 20, 2020 Skip

For all of the yammering by the Democrat Party and its NH House leaders over the 50 or so Republican Representatives that went without masks in the “Freedom” section, you’d think that they would have thought about the blowback: glasshouses, throwing stones, and all that.

Quick Thought – Republican “packing” or Democrat “packing” – which is worse?

September 20, 2020 Skip

With the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the Democrats have threatened, like FDR did, to “pack the Court” by adding new Justices if Trump and the Republicans ram through a replacement for RBG as soon as possible. Governor Sununu, as Grokster Doris pointed out (In Emergency Order #69, Sununu Packs the Public Health … Read more

Notable Quote – what kind of life do you desire? A variant of “Who Chooses?”

September 20, 2020 Skip

The issue, of course, was that there have always been two kinds of people: those who agree with Chris Sununu that merely prolonging life trumps every other consideration; and those who agree with General John Stark that there’s little point in prolonging life if it means giving up the freedom to live that life the … Read more

CHAZ City 206 Wikicommons - The Seattle Autonomous Zone

As if the Seattle “CHAZ” autonomous zone was such a rousing success??

September 19, 2020 Skip

Here they go again! Elected Representatives on the Minneapolis City Council are already yammering that with their “Defund the Police” initiative, crime is rising. Now, they’re allowing what Seattle allowed – protesting anarchist and BLM activists setting up their own version of Seattle’s lawless “country within a city”. The idea of having the various States … Read more

Palate Cleanser – “Confused” Should Have Been at the Top of the List

September 19, 2020September 19, 2020 Skip

Was this going to a wordsmith specialty store? Or just someone that decided to liberate one from the clueless others…

My first reaction was “Or WHAT? Demands means you’ve got something to back them up with. You don’t”.

September 19, 2020 Skip

Over at NH Journal, Michael Graham asks the actual question I answered: “Will NH Pols Meet BLM Demands?” My answer is “only if they are scared of their own shadows“. This is yet another ploy by an extremely small group of people trying to shove their way forward on the political surfboard based on the … Read more

Notable Quote – one important basis of Freedom is the Right to Private Property

September 19, 2020September 19, 2020 Skip

The essential teaching of liberalism is that social coöperation and the division of labor can be achieved only in a system of private ownership of the means of production, i.e., within a market society, or capitalism. All the other principles of liberalism – democracy, personal freedom of the individual, freedom of speech and of the … Read more

Data Point – At what point does the rest of the financial world go “no mas”?

September 19, 2020September 19, 2020 Skip

The US Dollar is the currency of the world and has been for quite some time. Thus far, it has maintained that status even as our rivals (the EU to a degree; Russia and especially China) have tried a number of schemes to usurp that status. But as the US continues to borrow more and … Read more

Black Lives Matter – BLM Leaders Saying what they Really Are

September 18, 2020 Skip

When the real “peaceful protests” started to not be peaceful at all, and when you couldn’t tell the BLM rioters from the Antifa ones, we shouldn’t have been surprised. I try to take people at their word when they are saying something “important” (as opposed to noticeably just joking around).

Breaking: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsberg has passed at 87

September 18, 2020 Skip

We pass our condolences to Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s family at this announcement of her death from her latest bout of pancreatic cancer. She had said that she would serve for as long as she was productive and then and ONLY then, retire.

DISQUS Doodlings – Just Putting Republicans into Those Seats is Insufficient

September 18, 2020 Skip

Sigh. Once again, we see an instance of what I call the Republican Republicans’ for the Sake of the Republican Party (“RRftSofRP”). I don’t consider myself the brightest bulb in the lot; just an ordinary schlub from Central New Hampsha.

NH GOP Amos Tuck Reception – South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem

September 17, 2020 Skip

Gov. Noem used to be US Representative Kristi Noem but returned home and won election as Governor. She became famous in Conservative Republican circles for her handling of this COVID-19 pandemic for doing EXACTLY opposite what most other Governors were doing – basing her governance on Constitutional values: