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It looks like this story of the EPA breaching an old gold mine and bespoiling the drinking and irrigation waters of the Animus river – deliberately and after the owner of this defunct mine warned them this might happened – has “legs”.  The EPA’s response was to “ton of bricks” him by threatening him with $35,000 per day fines.  In other words, if you don’t do what we tell you, we will bankrupt you.  Guess that’s the Obama way.

Anyways, a collection of more links:

EPA FAILS TO ACKNOWLEDGE IT COERCED MINE OWNER TO GRANT ACCESS

The Environmental Protection Agency isn’t responding to claims by Todd Hennis, owner of the Gold King mine in Colorado that the agency coerced him to grant access to his property. Once taking over, of course, EPA’s incompetent attempts to remove debris created a massive 3 million gallon toxic waste spill from the mine. Hennis told the CBS Denver affiliate that unless he allowed the EPA to have access and authority to conduct operations on the site the agency had threatened him with daily fines of $35,000…Breitbart News asked the EPA on Friday to confirm or deny Hennis’s claim, but has received no reply.

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On Meet The Press this morning, Chuck Todd had two Establishment Republican insiders on: Alex Castellanos and Charlie Black.  A couple of things caught my ear:

•  “Only 20-25% of the party”

They kept on saying that it is only a small part of the Republican electorate that is going for Trump Gosh, what makes them think that this clump of voters will vote Republican in the end?  Once again, I hear this “entitled” viewpoint – those votes are OURS.  What is it that makes these insiders believe that they have a lock on these voters?  Do they view them like the Democrats view the black vote?  As word gets out on this way of looking at THEM, these THEM may get the idea of “sticking it to the Man” politically is not such a bad thing to do.  Why?

Charlie Black goes right into it:

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“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”
– President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09

An American not doing the work that another American would do the work?  Or indicative of just a “different” work ethos overall?

A federal employee last year received $25,500, or over four months of pay, for work he didn’t do, and his manager failed to notice anything until an anonymous whistleblower left a letter saying the employee “never shows up to work” and produces “garbage.”

…While the unnamed official from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office claimed to be working hundreds of hours, “there was no evidence” he went to the office or used his government-issued laptop at all, according to an investigation by USPTO’s acting inspector general.

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Update: One of the Marines was critically injured and med evac’d to a hospital.  The other Marine suffered knife stabs.

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US Marines – on duty, even if on a French train:

 Unarmed US Marines avert high-speed train massacre by ‘taking down’ Kalashnikov-wielding gunman who injured three ‘including one Briton’ onboard service between Amsterdam and Paris. “A crazed gunman, who opened fire with an assault rifle onboard a high-speed train was detained by a group of US Marines who were travelling on the service. The man is understood to have been overheard loading the Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle in the toilet by the un-armed Marines. Three people were injured when the man, believed to be a 26-year-old Moroccan, opened fire. As well as an assault rifle, he had at least six magazines with almost 200 rounds of ammunition. He was also carrying a knife.”

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Pretty much, NO ONE ever thought that this would be coming down the pike.  I officially have to say, we are seeing Black Swan events for this Presidential campaign on both sides of the aisle: Trump and Sanders.  As to the former, one has to say that he has turned the Primary totally upside down and inside out (emphasis mine, reformatted):

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, 57 percent of likely Republican voters believe that Trump will not only stay in the race but will likely be the eventual Republican nominee.  But 42 percent of Republicans said that it’s not likely – 15 percent of which were positive that it wouldn’t happen.

Among all likely voters, 49 percent believe that Trump will be the Republican nominee. Two months ago, only 27 percent of Republicans believed Trump would win, according to Rasmussen.

YIKES!  The Establishment must be sucking down Maalox from an 18-wheeler tank truck.  They have

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NH mayors on alert after cheating site revelations include city government domains

Email addresses bearing the domain names of New Hampshire cities and towns appear to be among a slew of data stolen when hackers accessed the cheating website Ashley Madison.  The data access by hackers details millions of members of the Ashley Madison website, whose tagline is “Life is short. Have an affair.”

Although unconfirmed, some websites have posted abbreviated email addresses of reported members. The address domains include branches of the military and a long list of local governments. New Hampshire city domains included Dover, Manchester, Milford and Nashua.

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This “imaginary” (cough, cough) is from a post I wrote a while ago and its theme is “You have made them not to care” – that when confronted with an ugly truth, some Establishment Republicans refused to face reality. I repost it for a reason:

Consistency also comes with listening.  There is a large problem confronting the NH GOP – formerly dedicated Republicans, giving of their interest, time, and treasure, are just throwing in the towel.  They are dropping out and tuning out.  They no longer believe their efforts are worth it when these ‘individual contributors” look up at elected leaders and go “So, what’s the difference between the Parties?  So, what difference am *I* making”?  And for each question, one answer suffices for both: “er, not much”.  So, they quit.

Yet, some in the Party can’t understand, grok it, and then act upon it.    I tried to explain this to a female Republican of some note a bit ago:

Me: there are Republicans out there they are no longer voting nor donating to the Party.  They’ve quit.

She: Well, why ARE they doing that??  Don’t they realize that this will allow Democrats to be elected?

Me: They no longer care

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Dr. Betsy is a dear friend of the ‘Grok and we always enjoy meeting up with her at events and having her on GrokTALK!. She has an Op-Ed in the New York Sun:

America’s homeless are lawyering up to fight for a “right” to live on the street — your neighborhood and personal safety be damned.

From Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles, cities are struggling with a surge in people living in cardboard boxes and doorways. Local lawmakers are trying to ban “camping out” in public and ordering police to clear the fetid encampments.

Now lawyers for the homeless are pushing back. They’re demanding that “sleeping rough” be legally protected. In Denver, where living on the street is outlawed, lawyers for the homeless want to guarantee vagrants “the right to use and move freely in public spaces without discrimination.”

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I went to the post office this afternoon to resolve a problem with our mail deliveries — to wit, many packages addressed to our house are not being delivered there. At the office, I stood in a line with 10 or 12 other unfortunates for about ten minutes before being “helped.” The man who helped me had been summoned to his station after the only other clerk on duty had disappeared for at least five minutes, leaving all of us unfortunates standing there in an abandoned facility wondering whether everyone had simply gone home. In any case, my clerk dragged his sorry ass to the front looking for all the world as if he was a man who’d had bad luck and misfortune throughout his entire life, and helping me was only the latest insult to his gravely wounded existence. He did find the

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Which was about John Kasich:

Which, by the way, we should start gearing up as to whom we as GraniteGrok will endorse.  Thoughts?

And I did:

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Seriously, they feel “picked on” because they feel they have to – put on makeup?  And then call it “a tax”?  From TreeHugger (emphasis mine):

“Makeup, in short, is a norm, and nothing ruins a first impression like a norm violation,” writes Olga Khazan on the very real and troubling phenomena of the Makeup Tax.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, the makeup tax refers to the time and money that women spend on doing their makeup and hair in order to achieve a certain minimum appearance of professionalism. This tax is one that men don’t have to worry about, and is essentially another form of pay inequality. Even many women who do not work feel a social pressure to wear makeup in public. And there’s plenty of research to show that women who wear makeup are more likely to get paid and promoted more.

Gosh, and thought this was the “buck authority” and “be your own person crowd”.  I have three questions for them:

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When you have kids, when you have single moms with kids, when you have adult males with no education and only fit for low skilled work, and there are 42 million illegal immigrants that have poured over our borders (13% of our national population), you Libs think that is going to CLOSE the gap?  Naw, even some Libs can do that math – which is why they are ONLY saying that the rich must have (as Hillary has said) “stuff taken away” and never is said that illegals must bring more to the table.  And nowhere is this more evident than in California; Gateway Pundit shows that illegal immigrants are not pulling “their weight” (emphasis mine, reformatted):

A staggering 80% of Latino illegal immigrant families in California are living in poverty and need government assistance. The Obama administration wants to open to door to millions more.  The Orange County Register reported:

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