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All I can do is shake my head in disbelief:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A GOP-controlled Senate panel has voted to lift a decades-long ban on travel to Cuba, giving a boost to President Barack Obama’s moves to ease travel restrictions and open up relations with the Castro-governed nation.  The Senate Appropriations Committee also voted to block enforcement of a law prohibiting banks and other U.S. businesses from financing sales of U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba.

The Obama administration issued rules in January to significantly ease travel restrictions to Cuba and allow regularly scheduled flights for the first time. The Senate Appropriations Committee 18-12 vote comes just days after the U.S. and Cuba formally ended more than a half-century of estrangement by re-establishing diplomatic relations cut off during the Cold War.

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A very good show, in my estimation (which makes two good shows in a row)!

Segment 1 – Groksters Steve, Mike, and Skip yak with Kimberly (on the phone) about the News of the Day and Week

Segment 2 – Keith Carlson comes in to talk about the Health Compact movement; a way for States to get out from under the strictures of Obamacare?

Segment 3 – Michelle Levell comes in to talk about some of the Educational bill that Gov. Maggie “The Red” Hassan vetoed as they took power away from government and returned them to where it should be – with parents.

Segment 4: started up with more Grokster banter as we waited for former NY Gov. George Pataki to come in (parking in Concord is all screwed up right now).  He did show up but certainly we did not get to all the subjects that we would have wanted to  – but a decent start.

Segment 1                                       Segment 2

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Rad Mod had left the following as a comment to my post that called out to him: This one is for you, Rad Mod!.  So, I figured that if he had the time and inclination to write it, I’d elevate it to its own post.  Emphasis mine:

Thank’s for the shout out Skip, but I would never be able to enjoy using the public soapbox if it wan’t for the good graces of those at GraniteGrok [You’re welcome, Rad  -Skip]. I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to engage in public discourse.

The American Thinker column highlights the fact that both parties are attempting to take America down a specific path regardless of the wishes of the remnants of traditional America. Two key definitions from the article;

Progressive Democrats: “The people who adapt these ideas to current needs are not the Democratic base, but a small group of intellectuals drawn almost exclusively from a handful of elite universities.”

Establishment Republicans: “They provide the illusion of a contest to events that have been carefully choreographed in advance.”

What do these to descriptions have in common? They indicate the existence of an external force or ‘idea’ guiding both parties in a common direction

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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

Yup, not working (reformatted, emphasis mine):

A suspected meth lab exploded in a federal laboratory Saturday night, and now Congress wants to know why.  Congress opened an investigation into the blast that occurred at a laboratory on the National Institute of Standards and Technology campus in Gaithersburg, Md., after initial reports that it was caused by a security guard manufacturing drugs.

Get that last part – by a security guard.  Read on:

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This is just one snippet out of a longer fisking at The College Fix – go ahead and tell me, if you are just a regular kind of folk taking care of God, family, friends, and job, if you can understand this absolute gibberish:

A binary trans* person who is heterosexual aromantic is part of our community. An intersex man who is heterosexual heteromantic is part of our community. A cisgender woman who is asexual homoromantic is part of our community. A nonbinary demigirl who is bi/pansexual bi/panromantic is part of our community. I identify as a queer nonbinary femme, and I am a part of this community. Not all of us are gay and not all of us are comfortable with the reclamation of “queer” due to its historically pejorative usage, but we all have a place in the LGBTQIA+ movement.

And being your self-taught political blogger who has to read this crap-on-a-stick on a regular basis, even I can’t figure this one out completely.  Yet IF YOU DON’T, these Social Justice Warrior (“SJWs”), will do their best to make your life a living hell.  Remember, there is no argument with them to be had in nuclear sexual identity social warfare. Even as you have no idea what they are talking about.  I certainly don’t.

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From American Thinker:

• A liberal is someone who thinks tax increases on businesses are paid out of the secret stash of cash all businesses hide in their basements.
• A liberal is someone who wants stricter gun control but has armed bodyguards.
• A liberal is someone who wants guns out of honest citizens’ hands but who also wants more lenient sentencing for criminals who use guns.

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It’s early.  Too early to put all THAT much stock in these but I consider them, in part, a guidepost.  With Hillary, that guidepost arrow doesn’t seem to be pointing in the right direction; from The Blaze is the Quinnipac poll:

and

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And if you are supporting, if you are donating, you OWN part of this “baby organ crushing”.  And like the non-profits that Steve posted that support baby organ trafficking Planned Parenthood (spawn of the black eugenist Margaret Sanger), here are the the BIG for-profit Companies that also support Planned Parenthood’s activities (just like NH GOP Committeeman Steve Duprey):

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We have a similar problem here in NH – I’ve had this bookmarked for a bit but just had to post it after NH Gov Maggie “The Red” Hassan was on the news with her “I demand that everyone does what I tell them to”:

“None of us can do this alone,” she said. “It takes everybody in New Hampshire committed to coming together and recognizing the value of each and every one of us.”

No, not everyone has to take this one, not at all.  I refuse.  Just like the Greeks in this Zero Hedge post:

President of Greek Banks Association Louka Katseli appealed at the citizens to return their money to the banks. “Banks are absolutely trustworthy,” Katseli told Mega TV “as guaranteed by the ECB and the Bank Association, but they would have been even more powerful if 40 billion euros had not been withdrawn in the last months.

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From The Corner:

Within the past couple weeks, three separate national polls have been conducted on the issue of same-sex marriage. Interestingly, each of these three polls shows a decline in support for it. Both Ipsos/Reuters and Gallupconducted polls in early July — just days after the Supreme Court handed its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Both polls found a slight decline in the percentage of Americans who support same-sex marriage as compared to previous polls that each firm conducted earlier this spring.

Additionally, a third poll by the AP found that only 42 percent of Americans support same sex marriage. This is a decline of 6 points from the organization’s last poll on the issue in April. It also found a significant increase in percentage of people — 59 percent in June vs. only 52 percent in April — who said wedding-related businesses with religious objections should be allowed to refuse service to gay and lesbian couples.

Americans hate to see sore winners – that then go and beat up on others.  This isn’t over just like Roe vs Wade ain’t over; from Hot Air this:

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More from Erick Erickson who has some specific items to back up my broad brush strokes of late (emphasis mine):

The GOP told its voters that if they elected them, they’d stop Barack Obama. Instead, they gave Barack Obama a blank check to raise the debt ceiling to avoid a fight with him.

They told the base that they’d hold Barack Obama accountable. Instead, they did not blink in approving his replacement for Eric Holder.

They told the base they would stand up against crony capitalists. Right now they are set to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank.

This included US Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH).  I bet I have video with her saying otherwise, too.

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You just can’t make this up.  First it was non-criminalization, then civil unions, then gay marriage, now transgenderism, and soon to come will be polyamory and polygamy.  Many of us said that will be not the end point.  Only total embracing of and full throated embracing and celebration of “life decisions”.  This observation from the ESPY awards (which I intentionally decided not to watch in the privacy of my own home – let’s see how much longer that lasts) PROVING our supposition about the culture totalitarians:

In a truly surreal display, NFL great Brett Favre is being denounced by the left’s new cultural commissars for not clapping long and hard enough at ESPN’s ESPY awards, as Bruce/“Caitlyn” Jenner received a “Courage” award for his efforts to become a woman.  Oddly, Favre did applaud – not doing so would have been a grave heresy to America’s new church of progressive inquisitors.  His sin was not applauding enthusiastically enough.

The New York Post placed a video of Favre’s blasphemous insufficient clapping, juxtaposed with Jenner’s celebratory ascent to the stage.  The video repeatedly replays Favre’s cruel, disgraceful, calloused political-ideological-cultural faux paus for the stunned amazement and universal condemnation of the New American masses.  Yes, Mr. Favre, you’re guilty – we caught you on tape!

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Radical Moderate is one of our more prolific and thoughtful commenters and I thought that he’d like this on the nature of the Democrats and Republicans.  Angelo Codeavilla calls them the Ruling Class (or as other say, the Political Class).  From the House of Eratosthenes (emphasis mine):

Excellent stuff. One E. M. Cadwaladr, whom I intend to research & follow now, writes at American Thinker:

The representative model is now defunct, destroyed in somewhat different ways by the two political parties. We will start with the inappropriately named Democrats.

The Democratic party of today is not a representative party, but a top-down political machine organized around a reformulation of traditional socialist ideology. They are not a party of the popular will, but a party of a particular set of ideas. The people who adapt these ideas to current needs are not the Democratic base, but a small group of intellectuals drawn almost exclusively from a handful of elite universities. Trusting the public will is a laughable proposition for academics, who consider themselves a superior breed — like the philosopher kings of Plato’s Republic. They may adapt their rhetoric as required for the sake of harvesting votes from the lowly herd, but the core concept of public sovereignty was dropped from leftist thought long ago — about the time it passed from the hard hands of embittered revolutionaries into the soft hands of tenured professors.

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A pack, not a herd – De Tocqueville example where regular citizens see a need, and go fill it.  No Government necessary to provide “guidance” – in this case, Government has been running away from it.  Given the anger that many have towards their Government (re: Obama Administration) is more for itself, a fundamental transformation, and now Obama’s legacy, and seeing that this Administration is all too willing to throw those that have given much to protect the rest of us, ordinary citizens are doing the job that Government won’t do.  So they have, all over the country, gone and stand guard at recruiters’ offices.

And gaining a LOT of PR and media attention.  Methinks the brass is mostly caught in the middle, but some of this is of their own political natures at the top, so now they’ve decided that they’re tired of being embarrassed.  And sent out an order to the recruiters to call the cops on these armed citizens – putting them at risk of getting SWATTED?  Emphasis mine:

Subject: USAREC Policy – Armed citizens at recruiting centers ATO’s,

Situation: The USAREC COC has received reports from two Brigade ATOs, social media and TV coverage that law abiding armed citizens are standing outside of our recruiting centers in an attempt to safeguard our recruiters.

Execution:

1) Recruiters will not acknowledge the presence or interact with these civilians. If questioned by these alleged concerned citizens; be polite, professional, and terminate the conversation immediately and report the incident to local law enforcement and complete USAREC Form 958 IAW USAREC 190-4 (SIR)

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This one is for you, Ed Naile (the foremost Voter Fraud hunter in NH), and one is accomplished with the help of your friends:  the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program.  The Heritage Foundation has documented nearly 250 cases where nefarious citizens, officials, candidates and campaign operatives conspired to commit vote fraud, compromising the integrity of our elections to achieve their ideological goals.

New additions:

Kentucky: In eastern Kentucky, Ross Harris and Loren Glenn Turner funneled $41,000 to the 2002 county judgeship campaign of Doug Hays for what the defendants claimed was a lawful operation to pay more than 1,200 people $50 each to drive voters to the polls.  But a jury determined that this alleged vote-hauling program was just a disguise for what was in reality a vote-buying scheme. The punishment reflected the severity of the fraud: Hays was sentenced to six months behind bars, and Harris was hit with a $100,000 fine.

Mississippi:

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