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Venezuela is a basket case from every view you can take – except if you are a Socialist.  Those folks don’t even want to look in that direction and do you EVER hear them talking about how GREAT Venezuela is?  This headline and article doesn’t help and it should give both Socialists and Environmentalists (but I repeat myself) a big cause for reflection and introspection (yeah, I know, I know):

Venezuelans eating cats, dogs, donkeys, horses and even pink flamingos to survive

Biology student Luis Sibira stumbled across the first set of gory remains last November: eight pink flamingos, their breasts and torsos sliced out, leaving their heads, spindly legs and vivid feathers scattered across the marshy ground at Las Peonias Lagoon in western Venezuela…

But this isn’t simple poaching, he said. Sibira and other investigators from Zulia University, a public university in Maracaibo, are convinced that the protected birds have become the latest victims of Venezuela’s growing hunger crisis. People have become so desperate, he said, that they are butchering and eating flamingos.

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Like I said earlier, my intent in going to our town’s Municipal Deliberative Session was all about Article 21 that was sponsored, in part, by former BudCom members Allen Voivod and Fred Butler (both who have tried to kill the BudCom in the past). Instead of going after it all like last time, they went after a single point person – the Chair Norm Silber (just wanted to point that out again).

However, during the discussion of another Article that I called our Selectmen on what one of them said:

Article 11:   Shall the Town vote to raise and appropriate the sum of four hundred fifty thousand ($450,000) for phase 2 of the Town Hall improvement project,

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“…if you can’t bother to do your homework”

BTW, sorry for not posting the last couple of nights – just had nothing on Tuesday and last nite was my town’s SB2 Deliberative Session for the town’s budget and other issues (all called “articles”).  For those that don’t live in NH, it is Town Meeting time.  This is the continuation of a few centuries now of a tradition, especially in the smaller towns and villages, for the residents (LEGAL residents!) to gather and decide on the upcoming annual budgets (municipal and school district), zoning changes, and any other types of “warrant articles” that are to be decided. The traditional Town Meeting has both the debate on the issues as well as the voting on these articles (either by raised hands or by voice votes).

An SB2 town is a bit different in that the debate part is its own meeting the residents can question the selectmen and budget committee members on the various articles, the budget line items – and change any desired them by voting those changes up and down and arrive at the final worded articles to be put on the ballot.  This completed ballot is then voted upon at a different day just like voting for President – via the voting booth.

The advantages of this SB2 style is that:

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SHOT: ISIS using encrypted communication to remote-control attacks on the west

The New York Times published a story by Rukmini Callimachi today which explains how ISIS handlers are using encrypted communication to remote-control attacks on western nations, including the United States. The attackers, who are often mistaken for lone wolves, have sometimes been trained and guided by ISIS handlers right up to the moment of the attack. One example: The attackers who opened fire on the Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas. Remote terror planners have been behind a number of attacks that made international news and which, at first glance, appeared to be the work of lone wolves.

CHASER: Federal employees are using encrypted communications to ‘resist Trump’

Whether inside the Environmental Protection Agency, within the Foreign Service, on the edges of the Labor Department or beyond, employees are using new technology as well as more old-fashioned approaches — such as private face-to-face meetings — to organize letters, talk strategy, or contact media outlets and other groups to express their dissent.

The goal is to get their message across while not violating any rules covering workplace communications, which can be monitored by the government and could potentially get them fired.
So let’s be clear here.  Let’s make it crystal clear so no one will miss it.  It’ll put it in bold, just in case.

What these federal employees are doing is against the law and would justifiably get them fired.  So they’re hiding it by using encrypted communications.

This is nothing new for loyal readers of the ‘Grok.  For years, it has become clear and evident that

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Is this some kind of persuasion or retribution (emphasis mine, reformatted)?

The idea, which took eight feminists to come up with, is that men and other assorted non-gendered partners should be made to feel what will happen when women become so oppressed that they disappear.

These nitwits are absurd.  Here in the US, females make up 51% of the population.  They are self-delusional.  And it isn’t just about Trump either.  Guys – they both fear and hate us all:

The strike, they say, is not just about Donald Trump, but about all men—and even collaborating women—who are contributing to the swift decline of women’s rights worldwide. “While Trump’s blatant misogyny was the immediate trigger for the huge response on 21 January, the attack on women (and all working people) long predates his administration.”

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Emphasis mine:

(Part 1)

…Should the law ban private companies from discriminating on the basis of sex (or race, religion, ethnicity, etc.)? There is wide agreement that invidious discrimination fueled by bigotry is contemptible, and most Americans accept the authority of government to suppress such ugliness from the marketplace.

I agree with the above.  But I also agree to the below which has been subsumed by the above:

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THIS is going to get a lot of traction on the Right every time (emphasis mine):

The chirpy Yahoo News anchor was delivering a biology dissertation on the Ellen show about how unpredictable gender can be. (It’s apparently a total crap shoot and genetics don’t matter.) Over the course of the discussion Katie explains how a female fetus can feel male.

Wait, fetuses can feel stuff?

Yeah, that’s gonna be a big OUCH!  From a zygote

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When was the last time you saw a politician keep their…

(H/T: Powerline)

…promises – and this quickly?  I thought the Obama Administration moved quickly when they first started – my head kept spinning and for the first time since we started GraniteGrok, I could not keep up.  And then I heard about the DensePack theory and it was being done to us on all KINDS of issues – of which very few were talked about during the Democrat Prez Primary or general election campaign.  It was like MetalStorm.

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My answer is NO.

…Some buy into the narratives proffered by Trump; others are already calling themselves the resistance to our new fair-haired, orange president. Political factions are giving a new perverse meaning to the phrase, “seek, and ye shall find.”

It’s sickening. Despite the freedom to believe and say what they wish, millions of people are taking their cues based on what the new leader says and does, as though the only question worth asking today is, “how should the power of the U.S. government be administered?” If only they asked themselves, “should this power exist in the first place?”

-Joey Clark

It parallels mine of “What is the Proper Role of Government?”.  If Government exists, per our Declaration of Independence says:

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A deliberate lie by omission, IMHO.  Here in NH, SB 12 (e.g., “Constitutional Carry”) is an anti-discriminatory law that would allow LAW ABIDING citizens, to lawfully conceal a firearm without the obligatory “Nanny Government, may I?”. Eleven States already have this in place – they TRUST their LAW ABIDING citizens to be responsible.  Vermont does, Maine now does – and none of those states have “rivers of blood” that the Statists have screamed and cried about over the years.  Heck, Vermont has been one of the safest States in the nation with its Constitutional Carry for, well, forever.

But there are those that have the mindset that ONLY Government can make the right decisions and that the current discriminatory law (enacted back in the 1930s to intentionally keep women, immigrants, and minorities from having firearms).  Like Zandra Rice-Hawkins (or as we affectionately call her, Zandra Rice-Crispies – you know, a shell on the outside and hollow on the inside) of Granite State Progress (the hard Progressive / Socialist group funded by out-of-state millionaires).  So, we KNOW she discriminates against her own gender (re: “God made men, but Sam Colt made them equal”) with this:

“New Hampshire is opening the door to allow dangerous individuals with a track record of violence to legally carry hidden, loaded weapons,” said Zandra Rice Hawkins, executive director of Granite State Progress.

Really, Zandra? You have to stoop this low in lying to make a point.

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I generally dislike posting an entire post from elsewhere unless I’m doing a fisking but I think the Left that reads the ‘Grok should see this – and then try to explain it away.  You see this pretty much every time a country goes full Chavez / Maduro (emphasis mine): From Instapundit.

THE WAGES OF SOCIALISM: Venezuela Is So Broke It Can’t Even Export Oil.

A fleet of rundown Venezuelan oil tankers carrying some 4 million barrels of oil and other fuels is wallowing in the Caribbean Sea. Not because of bad weather, or mechanical problems, but because Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, doesn’t have the cash to get them to their final destinations.

Beyond the obvious environmental risks, it’s doubly bad news for Venezuela, a country in dire economic straits and full-fledged crisis, with a political impasse, looting, dangerous food and health supply shortages, and massive protests. Venezuela is massively reliant on oil exports to bankroll government services. But the cash-strapped country can’t even find the money to service the vessels that carry its exports. And Venezuela needs the exports to get the cash to service the vessels. It’s a vicious circle.
It’s a vicious circle made possible by the Venezuelan government, and nothing free markets and private ownership couldn’t fix practically overnight.

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 “..We are anti-authoritarians working to confront racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, transphobia, and all the other various forms of oppression….”

I dryly note that their dictionary is missing the word “Irony”, especially when you read this from them:

We've been warned, everybody! pic.twitter.com/yEVlejHHHp

— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) February 3, 2017

I’m not sure if I really want to start in on this or just leave it here for your comments.  Given that it is from the Left, I invite our loyal Leftist readers to defend it. Seriously – no snark. I just can’t believe, not just the chutzpah but the cluelessness cobbled in at the same time in determining that this is:

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Whites are outright, well, evil (my post before this).  Here is an another outright racist post but it seems that because it is by elected US Congressional Representatives, racial purity is a feature and not a bug. Hey, discrimination comes with the territory – and it is condoned.  What the blacks in the Congressional Black Caucus won’t do is let a black Hispanic caucus with them because “The CBC has a long-standing policy of limiting its caucus to African-American members”.

So there’s a new “Latino of African descent” that wants to be in both the Congressional BLACK Caucus as well as the Congressional HISPANIC Caucus by the name of Adriano Espaillat (Dominican past).  The CBC doesn’t want him – not black enough for them.  Because of his skin color (or depending on your viewpoint, a lack thereof).

Now, I know that I’m about to needle the racist SJWs out there with this, but just like in politics, I think that the phrase “If a Republican did this” works here (or in discussing race -“if a white did this”) instantly comes to mind and applies here. The outrage would be volcanic and last FOREVER.  Ostracizism, shunning, destroying, writing, marching, phoning, social media storms – each and every one of the 

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