Data Point – Transit Growth 1980-2012

“In short, it took at least a 170 percent increase in spending to produce a 136 percent increase in transit service which resulted in just a 24 percent increase in transit ridership and an 18 percent decline in per capita ridership. Since APTA’s goal is to increase transit spending, it should be proud of that … Read more

Just for Susan The Bruce: Liberals just don’t like real equal protection

The Cognitive Dissonance is strong with this one.  Over  at Steve’s post (“NH Democrats Put a Price-tag on Rape“), well known NH Progressive blogger Susan the Bruce decided that she wanted to start a flame war with the premise that women should NOT be able to protect themselves against bigger, stronger male n’err-do-wells with what the … Read more

GrokTV Event: US Senator Ted Cruz – MicroInterview with Ted Cruz

When US Senator Ted Cruz had finished with his address to the crowd and the questions, he did come over to the ‘Grok area where we had set up to talk for a few moments.  Knowing that time was valuable in getting to a couple of other meetings / events that day, it was nice to meet him in person; we had time for two quick qestions:

  • What Constitutional matters did we miss yesterday (he was on GrokTALK! the day before: “..the most substantive, serious conversation I’ve had in terms of a discussion of the issues,”  and he went on to “complement the degree of depth we got into on constitutional issues.”)?
  • The importance of politicians believing in “Honor Your Oath”

Previous videos:

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First Responders – Susan The Bruce shows us the Progressive view

From the March 2015 of America’s Freedom (p.39, emphasis mine):

In the United States and other nations, more and more people are recognizing that victims have the best chance of survival when they can be the first responders.

First Responders.  We usually think of these folks as heros – and they are, no doubt.  But they are also Government employees – police, firemen, EMTs..  Nothing wrong with that – unless you feel that the role of first responder should only be government workers.  However, that is the outlook of Progressives like Susan the Bruce (here, here) where in the real world when bad people go after nice ones, individuals are not to do anything – especially defend themselves.  They are to outsource responsibility for themselves to others.

In government.

It is yet another startling,

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Carlos Martinez, Constitutional Conservative, I have an answer for you! Ted Cruz to announce…

Ted Cruz MicroInterview at TurbocamLast Sunday at Turbocam, Ted Cruz was asked by Carlos when he was going to announce his run for the Presidency – you can see the video here as Cruz was a bit out front (and coy) with his answer.  Well, we now have the answer  from the new GraniteGrok Twitter follower,  Ted Schleifer ( @TeddySchleifer ) from the Houston Chronicle (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Ted Cruz to announce presidential bid Monday

Sen. Ted Cruz plans to announce Monday that he will run for president of the United States, accelerating his already rapid three-year rise from a tea party insurgent in Texas into a divisive political force in Washington.  Cruz will launch a presidential bid outright rather than form an exploratory committee, said senior advisers with direct knowledge of his plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been made yet. They say he is done exploring and is now ready to become the first Republican presidential candidate.

The senator is scheduled to speak Monday at a convocation ceremony at Liberty University in Virginia, where he is expected to declare his campaign for the presidency.

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GrokTV Event: US Senator Ted Cruz – “The Wallet” & “The story of Snowflake and the White House”

  • “The Wallet” – I’m not sure how to describe this segment where a man in the front row went on a bit of a rant in support of a Ted Cruz penalty to the point of throwing his wallet in front of Ted Cruz (e.g., an open check)
  • “Snowflake” – a cute story about a new dog and the White House

  

The Wallet                                                                    Snowflake

Previous videos: 

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GrokTALK! for the week 3/21/2015 – the videos

Unfortunately, the UStream servers had hiccups during Segment 2 with Hal Shurtleff on the Article V Convention of the States, so apologies.  In the mean time:

  • Pre-Show – Steve, Mike, and Skip just yak for a bit
  • Segment 1 – Judiciary Update with NH State Rep Max Abramson
  • Segment 3 – Dr. Betsy McCaughey comes on to talk about the Supreme Court case of King vs Burrell where the issue is whether or not the black & white words in the actual Obamacare law are to be obeyed – or not.
  • Segment 4 – More with Max

  

Pre-show                                                             Segment 1

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GrokTV Event: US Senator Ted Cruz – Questions 5 & 6

From last week’s Ted Cruz event comes a couple of more questions from the audience:

  • Question 5 – From former NH GOP Chair Jack Kimball: “will you push MORE against Obama’s Constitutional Lawlessness?
  • Question 6 – From a teacher:  what would you do about Common Core?

  

Previous videos:

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Let’s see if you pick up on what I oberved in this snippet?

From Instapundit:

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Breaking a decades-long trend, the world gets more violent. “That’s a pretty disturbing spike by anyone’s terms. And if you look at the first few months of 2015, the violence doesn’t seem to be waning. What’s even more worrying is that this seems to be part of an ongoing trend that now goes back eight years. According to the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), global violence — as defined by a range of measures from conflict deaths, to displaced persons, to homicide rates — has been rising since 2007. This news is in many ways surprising because up to 2007, the data suggested the world was becoming a much safer place.”

Gee, look at that year…

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Data Point – Driving is going up

“From 1980 to 2005, driving grew at about 2 percent per year. But it grew even faster than that before 1980, and many people think that the market for driving is nearly saturated as 75 percent of households with workers have two or more cars and only about 4 percent have no cars at all. … Read more

GrokTALK! Videos from 3/14/15 (Segment 3 and 4)

And I’m still late with posting up the videos of last week’s GrokTALK!  So, here are segments 3 & 4.  I will post up our interview with Ted Cruz later on tonite. Segment 3 – Groksters talk about the News of the Day and the Week Segment 4 – Dr. Jeffrey Singer returns to talk about … Read more

GrokTALK! – At Liberty Forum – The Videos (Segments 11 & 12)

  • Segment 11 – Former RNC Committeeman (R-MI) Saul Anuzis comes on to talk Presidential politics and Aaron Day of the Atlas Society comes on to talk about “The Cronies” award
  • Segment 12 – Matt Philips comes on to talk about PorcFest! and  former RLCNH Chair and NH Governor candidate Andrew Hemingway comes on to also talk about Presidential politics with an emphasis on Carly Fiorina.

  

Previous videos:

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Data Point – Marriage rate per 1K Unmarried Women

US Marriage Rate per 1000 Unmarried Women 1968-2008

But the problem, the 800-pound gorilla sitting calmly in the corner, eating Doritos, and throwing the bags in Putnam’s face is not named. It is the destruction of the traditional two-parent family. Instead of dozens of charts, Putnam needed only one

And it all stems from that.  I grew up in a broken home and there was no one there to teach me how to be a Dad as I was growing up.  I never learned the real reason why my Mom & Dad split up so I will never know if it was for infidelity or incompatibility.  I do know, regardless of those extreme points, it was a failure of values:  faithfulness, selflessness, love not as an emotion but as a choice of will, responsibility, and other what used to be considered foundational attitudes: those of “the children come before self” and that a promise of “’til death do you part” really was a promise not to be broken.  Yes, a lot of stuff packed in tight.  No, there was no abuse of which I am aware of, so we can let the dog lie.  But I did sense, even as a young boy when it happened, a tad bit of aloneness creeping in.

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So Socialism works? Really? Let’s watch Seattle for a few more months

Back in October, we called your attention that Seattle decided that it had the right to take from business owners to give to the workers.  And they were JOYOUS about it.  The outright socialist city council member,  Kshama Sawant, put it this way:

“We forced the city establishment to lift the wages of 100,000 low wage workers in Seattle – to transfer $3 billion from business to workers at the bottom of the wage scale over the next 10 years. We did this. Workers did this.

And now we are going to see how Kshama Sawant’s economic experiment is going to fair; it is starting to show exactly what they have done to themselves:

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Another person leaves the Republican Party

And that would be Glenn Beck – Allahpundit reports and then opines:

… And who can blame him after the big cave on executive amnesty? Remember, the DHS funding debacle wasn’t just a Republican capitulation to Obama on separation of powers. It was a sham from the beginning, a bogus fight the GOP set up to show conservatives that they’re pretend-serious about resisting Obama but don’t quite have the numbers to force a meaningful confrontation on the issue … even though they now hold a majority of seats in both chambers. How do you keep a party together when the leadership disdains its own base and their priorities and the base knows that and disdains them right back? Is there anything holding it together at this point beyond the simple math involved in coalition-building?

And then he uses one of my questions (“we may not win but you will surely lose”) using different words:

GOP minus tea partiers equals President Hillary, right?

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GrokTALK! Videos from 3/14/15 (Segment 1 and 2)

Yeah, I’m late on posting the videos from our last installment of GrokTALK! this past weekend – here’s the first segment (in two parts) and the second one: Segment 1 Part 1 – Legislative Update with NH State Rep Guy Comtois Segment 1 Part 2 – Second Amendment Update with Susan Olsen Segment 2 – … Read more

Data Point – The Federal Government does not have a revenue problem

“Inflation-adjusted federal tax revenues hit a record $1,185,613,000,000 in the first five months of fiscal 2015, but the federal government still ran a $386,537,000,000 deficit during that time, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement.” (H/T: CNSNews) But Obama is eyeballing the idea that he can raise an additional $100 Billion in taxes by Executive Order … Read more

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