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Co-founder of GraniteGrok, my concern is around Individual Liberty and Freedom and how the Government is taking that away. As an evangelical Christian and Conservative with small "L" libertarian leanings, my fight is with Progressives forcing a collectivized, secular humanistic future upon us. As a TEA Party activist, citizen journalist, and pundit!, my goal is to use the New Media to advance the radical notions of America's Founders back into our culture.

Notable Quote – Ronald Reagan

We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent … Read more

A question for all ‘Grok readers: Freedom to do or requiring Permission

And your answer should be in the context of “Land of the Free”: Should law have as a fundamental organizing principle that persons have a general right to embark on enterprises not specifically prohibited, or that a wide range of activities should require advance permission by official gatekeepers? Sadly, I think that with all of … Read more

Notable Quote – Prof. Walter E. Williams

…The entire premise behind population control is based on the faulty logic that humans are not valuable resources. The fact of business is that humans are what the late Julian L. Simon called the ultimate resource. That fact becomes apparent by pondering this question: Why is it that Gen. George Washington did not have cellphones to communicate with his troops and rocket launchers to sink British ships anchored in New York Harbor? Surely, all of the physical resources — such as aluminum alloys, copper, iron ore and chemical propellants — necessary to build cellphones and rocket launchers were around during Washington’s time. In fact, they were around at the time of the cave man. There is only one answer for why cellphones, rocket launchers and millions of other things are around today but were not around yesteryear. The growth in human knowledge, human ingenuity, job specialization and trade led to industrialization, which, coupled with personal liberty and private property rights, made it possible. Human beings are valuable resources, and the more we have of them the better.

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Notable Quote – Who knew two little words meant so much?

Is it possible that the History of the 20th Century can be explained by simple reference to a change in prepositions?  That is the gist of the epiphany that struck me while watching David M. Kennedy on Booknotes (C-SPAN).  He and Brian Lamb were discussing the fact that this book is part of the Oxford … Read more

Talk about foreign influence on American elections

And the Democrats here in NH are all up in arms about NH SecState Gardner asked to serve in President Trump’s task force on voter fraud?  What are they, and national Democrats, scared of? Emphasis mine, reformatted:

A new report released shortly after the forming of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity finds that more than 5,000 individuals were determined to be non-U.S. citizens registered to vote in Virginia.

Dubbed a “sequel” to a similar 2016 effort, the latest study found 5,556 voters were “quietly removed” from the records for reasons related to non-citizenship “between 2011 and May 2017,” according to an advanced look at the findings provided by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF). Of the total registered, one-third of unlawful voters managed to cast ballots—leading to a total of more than 7,400 illegal votes cast, according to the report.

Worst part?

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Sadly,some will never understand “All gave some; some gave all”

Without the knowledge, there is no respect for Memorial Day I’ve been putting up these kinds of videos for years – kids, young adults, that known little to nothing of our country’s history or of American Exceptionalism.  Sure, we have had wars in our past – we are a country born of war.  You’d think … Read more

When govt, and the money and its power it wields, becomes too big…

“We have always known that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. It’s worse now, because capture of government is so much more important than it once was. There was a time when there was enough freedom that it hardly mattered which brand of crooks ran government. That has not been true for a long … Read more

Memorial Day – Respect

I shed a tear There is a bond (even if perceived as a rivalry) between those that have served in our military that I, and most of us, will never share.  Looking back, I wish I had to better understand that rivalry, and the respect that is so highly intertwined with it. Brothers in arms … Read more

Data Point – I coulda told you that!

Gallup interviewed 1,011 U.S. residents aged 18 or older on May 3-7 and asked them two questions about the moral state of the nation. The first question: “How would you rate the overall state of moral values in this country today—as excellent, good, only fair, or poor.” Most think it’s pretty crappy.  Gosh, I wonder … Read more

Data Point – that “Morals” post I just put up?

Here?  Yeah, this kinda proves it, yes? Emphasis mine, reformatted: Student funding appeared to play a significant part in students’ responses, with 55 per cent of participants indicating that a drop or cessation of their student funding would make it more likely for them to enter into a sugar baby arrangement. Overall, most participants said they … Read more

Notable Quote – Mark Steyn

“Poland and Hungary and Slovakia do not have Islamic terrorism because they have very little Islam“

In part, Mark Styn’s thoughts on the Ariana Grande concert terrorism attack and the real sickness about it.  Emphasis mine:

And so it will prove for cafe life, and shopping malls, and pop concerts. Maybe Ariana Grande will be back in the UK – or maybe she will decide that discretion is the better part of a Dangerous Woman’s valor. But there will be fewer young girls in the audience – because no mum or dad wants to live for the rest of their lives with the great gaping hole in your heart opening up for dozens of English parents this grim morning. And one day the jihad will get lucky and the bomb will take with it one of these filthy infidel “shameless” pop whores cavorting on stage in her underwear. You can carry on exactly as before, but in a decade or two, just as there are fewer gay bars in Amsterdam and no more Jewish shops on the Chaussée de Gand, there will be less music in the air in western cities. Even the buskers, like the one in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens today serenading a shattered city with “All You Need Is Love”, will have moved on, having learned that it’s a bit more complicated than that.

I am currently reading Douglas Murray’s fine book, The Strange Death of Europe, which lays out, unsparingly, the central illusion of the last

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And WHY does the US continue to fund this band of World Govt wannabees?

UN health agency spends more on travel than on AIDS and malaria combined. According to the Associated Press, the WHO routinely has spent about $200 million a year on travel expenses—more than what it spends to fight AIDS and hepatitis ($70.5 million), tuberculosis ($59 million), and malaria ($61 million) combined. At a time when the … Read more

We have the worst Political Class ever. Fortunately, they’re concentrated in California

I have long railed against the Administrative State with laws that have been passed by both the Feds and State governments that unaccountable bureaucrats can make regulations that have the force of law without going through the Legislative process.  This is a failure twice over:

  • By bureaucrats that don’t seem to keep both the written and the spirit of the Constitution in mind but are mindful of “heck, why not – who is going to overrule us?”
  • By our elected Legislators who basically are LAZY by doing half-assed jobs and leave the HARD work of hammering out ALL the details to the Executive Branch via “interpreting” their laws

I’ve been covering the push for Universal Healthcare by the Democrat super-majorities in California even as the cost will be TWICE the size of their entire current State budget. But. Get. This.  They are passing the bill to do this – WITHOUT (emphasis mine, reformatted):

No funding plan doesn’t stop lawmakers from moving health care bill along.

A California Senate committee tasked with reviewing bills that spend state money passed a $400 billion universal health care proposal Thursday with no funding plan. Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, introduced SB 562, a sweeping overhaul of the state’s health insurance market. He’s also the chair of Senate Appropriations. The committee passed the bill with a 5-2 vote during a fast-paced suspense file hearing, clearing the way for it to be taken up on the Senate floor next week.

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Data Point – The Left is always yammering that only cops should have guns: they’re trained!

NH Assoc of Chiefs of PoliceWell, we certainly know that the NH Association of Chiefs of Police (don’t they look so grand?) are on the side of civilian disarmament.  The dirty little secret is that even with all of the training that the Left keeps jamming down our throats, sometimes they aren’t that much better than civilians.  Or can be much worse:

San Bernardino Terrorist Attack: Cops Had 10 Percent Hit Rate

San Bernardino County employee Syed Rizwan Farook was hit by at least 27 gunshots while his wife was struck by at least 15 — two to the top of the head — as officers fired about 440 rounds from rifles, shotguns and handguns — which the report found were proper uses of deadly force in self-defense and the defense of others.

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Education: anti-parents

SchoolhouseGeorge Will read US Sen. Ben Sasse’s new book.  A slice:

In the long-running rivalry between the realist and romantic views of human nature, Sasse is firmly with the former. This aligns him against those who believe that schooling should be “a substitute for parents” as life’s “defining formative institution.” In the progressive view of education with which the philosopher John Dewey imbued the United States’ primary and secondary schools, parents “with their supposedly petty interests in their children as individuals” are deemed retrograde influences, hindering schools’ mission of making malleable young people outfitted with the proper “social consciousness.” Schools should embrace the need of “controlling” students and “the influences by which they are controlled.” Parents must be marginalized lest they interfere with education understood, as Sasse witheringly says, as “not primarily about helping individuals, but rather about molding the collective.”

Once again, I have seen the attitude of teachers openly professing this view directly to parents at a School Board meeting.  Even when called out as “stepping over a line” (given that the parents are paying these employees who do not know their place), the teachers GLARED at those that dared to challenge their narrative.  End result: it was clear that the students knew better than the parents due to the ministrations of the teachers.

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Data Point – So where ARE those “streets running in blood” that Zandra Rice-Hawkins and NH Association of Chiefs of Police PROMISED us?

NH Assoc of Chiefs of Police

That would be those NH taxpayer funded guys and that girl (Exec. Dir. of that outside-the-State funded Granite State Progress).  EACH of said that if we passed SB12, Constitutional Carry and that if the Chiefs no longer had the Power to give or deny permission, all hell would break loose.  Stand Your Ground, Castle Doctrine, Concealed Carry – all a recipe for a killing field as all these lawfully abiding citizens would become “gun zombies” out for anyone’s blood. Hmm, I guess these predictions are about as good as those from the Climate Change Apocaliptors who keep making pronouncements of Doom that always seem to be yet another 5-10 years out.

Reality?

Concealed Carry Up 215%, Murder Rate Down 14%

Concealed carry permits rose 215 percent between 2007 and 2015, and the murder rate dropped 14 percent during that same time period. In other words, more guns being carried for self-defense correlated with fewer murders.

Can there be other factors in play here?  Of course, but these can’t be dismissed, as Zandra Rice-Hawkins and the NH Assoc. of Chiefs of Police want you to believe.

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“Ring! Ring!” – Now the Stupid Party also wants to be known as “The EXTREMELY ANNOYING Party”????

Cell phone vmailIt’s bad enough that politicians DO believe themselves to be above the law when they “carve out” exceptions for themselves when they lay the law down on the rest of us.  That “Do Not Call” list?  Isn’t it REALLY annoying to get them during supper? Yeah, politicians exempted themselves from it. And here in NH, the political calls are incessant during the political years, especially during the First in the Nation Primary season (which lasts almost 4 years nowadays….sigh). The robocalls are just the worst!

And now the GOP has decided to go there – allowing calls to go right to voicemail and you’ll never know that the call you though was from your family is from a GOP candidate or agency. This goes WELL beyond obnoxious: RNC Lobbying FCC for a New Way to Annoy Us With ‘Ringless’ Voicemail Ads (emphasis mine):

Now there’s possibly a new way to annoy us being reviewed by the FCC. The Republican National Committee is pushing the agency to adopt a new technology that would allow telemarketers to leave prerecorded messages on our voicemail without the phone ever ringing, Recode reports. We would simply get a notification that a voicemail was received, mixed in, of course, with more important voicemails.

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