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This story from The Blaze is one where one guy, foreseeing what things could go wrong, prepared for a risk he judged rightly that came to be (emphasis mine, reformatted):

As wildfires blaze throughout Washington state, one man simply sat in his living room safe and sound as flames reaching up to 20 feet surrounded his home.  That’s because John Belles built his house, a concrete dome, specifically to withstand anything and everything nature could throw his way in Okanogan County.    According to KPTV-TV, the house hadn’t yet been tested by wildfire. But after the flames passed, the survivalist said there was no damage whatsoever to his home.

I take exception to the “survivalist” innuendo, for isn’t it a fact that anyone alive generally wants to continue to live (er, “survive”)? But it looked like he properly gauged his risk and got it right. He goes on with his recounting:

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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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An observation from The Federalist:

Essentially, a sizable portion of the country is saying, “We want to stop illegal immigration,” and both parties are telling them, in essence, “You’re not allowed to want that.” Left to fester long enough, this frustration has moved beyond the point of an ordinary, partisan political controversy and is moving toward a crisis of constitutional democracy, where the bipartisan political elite has decided that a basic function of nation-state governance is, in 21st century America, illegitimate.

A self-declared nouveau-aristocracy.  Just ducky.  Serious – THEY get to determine what is “illegitimate”?  I thought we had a revolution to get rid of that nonsense, right?

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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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“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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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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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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