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Co-founder of GraniteGrok, my concern is around Individual Liberty and Freedom and how the Government is taking that away. As an evangelical Christian and Conservative with small "L" libertarian leanings, my fight is with Progressives forcing a collectivized, secular humanistic future upon us. As a TEA Party activist, citizen journalist, and pundit!, my goal is to use the New Media to advance the radical notions of America's Founders back into our culture.

Data Point – Where are the Entrepreneurs?

021313jobs-600x373

Let me say right off the bat that I am no economist and would never even try to fake being one here on the ‘Grok.  That said, I see this chart as being extremely troubling.  Our traditional economics here in America has depended people, drawn to America on the idea that they too could make their own American Dream, that were willing to take that risk.  They knew and understood that while the risk to succeed meant great riches if they did indeed succeed, they could also nose-plant – yet took that risk anyways.

Some, being imprudent, failed to do the requisite homework, failed to calculate the risks, went ahead and risked it all anyways by starting up their business, and did the nose plant.  And yes, some did succeed despite themselves (re: anyone remember Pet Rocks?).  Most look, however, evaluate those risks and as this chart shows, have decided that the future is too unknowable to risk it.

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Biden: “If it only saves one life!” It did, it really did!

Gun Appreciation Day - Concord
The UN does want to come and take them

It has been a bit since I put one of these stories where a gun helped to save a good guy against some bad guys (who also had guns), but given that 60 nations have just signed the UN Small Arms Treaty (sending US Secretary of State John “Lurch” Kerry into a paroxysm of joy that Obama said he was going to sign it), it is good to point out that most often, guns are used to protect the good folk (as opposed to just be used by those that would commit malfeasance):

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — Fort Wayne police say a man fatally shot a man who tried to rob him outside his home.

Police say the intended victim was standing on or near his porch Saturday night when he was approached by two men who tried to rob him. However, the man was armed with a handgun and fired several rounds, striking one of the would-be robbers several times while the second fled on foot.

The intended victim called police immediately to report the exchange of gunfire. He was shot in the foot and was in good condition Sunday at a hospital.

Police said the robber who was shot was pronounced dead at the scene and that a weapon was recovered near his body.

Police didn’t release the names of the men who were shot.

They should.  And as rapidly as possible.  And as for the dead robber, a lesson: Thou Shalt Not Covet.   Else you get Covered (up, as in body bag).

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Notable Quote – Scott Rohter

Only a few countries follow the principles of limited government and individual liberty as set forth in our Constitution, and only a few countries actually have free and open markets. These are the political and economic principles that built America into a great and flourishing nation. Whatever strategy the United States is employing, it is … Read more

Extreme Pandering – really? Republicans can’t even master level 1 Pandering.

AmnestyIsRepublicide(Image H/T: Powerline)

It is my belief that any movement on making the actions of illegal aliens now legal will not result in a brand new group of voters for the Republican Party no matter how much the R blowhards in the US Senate (McCain, Graham) would have us believe.  Even the fresh face of Marco Rubio now has some mud on it as he as alternatively tried to parlay his “newness” in the Senate as being a “third way” on making millions of illegal aliens US Citizens.

Sure, I’ve heard the warbling of “it will take them years!”, and “they will have to prove residency!” and of course, the money issue of “Pay back taxes!”.  Eyup!  And yes, “we’ll secure the border or start yet another commission” does NOT warm the cockles ANYwhere in the proximate vicinity of my body.  Right – I have NO hope that anything other than lip service will back up Marco’s claims that ANY of that will be done.  In fact, I posit that our crack TSA security theater workers will catch 100% of all “test contraband” (think: guns, bombs) before these immigration strictures are actually working 100%.

Not my first rodeo here – and I have YET to see My Government keep its promises or properly enforce both the letter and spirit of the Law. Clinton didn’t.   Bush didn’t (and we here at GraniteGrok were part of that effort back in 2006/2007 that help to melt the switchboards in DC).  Bush II didn’t.  And for all of the brouhaha that Obama “raised” deportations, let us not forget three things:

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Notable Quote – Dr. David Beito

The shift from mutual aid and self-help to the welfare state has involved more than a simple bookkeeping transfer of service provision from one set of institutions to another. As many of the leaders of fraternal societies had feared, much was lost in an exchange that transcended monetary calculations. The old relationships of voluntary reciprocity … Read more

Quick Thought: Democrat Cognitive Dissonance

I had bookmarked this a couple of days ago as it mirrors the same situation here in NH – Voter ID.  For Conservatives, this should be but a simple matter: with the current and  rampant Identity Theft epidemic, what is so wrong with making sure that the person who is asking for a ballot is … Read more

FairPoint….happens

FairPoint Communications purchased all of Verizon’s landline business a few years in NH, VT, and ME.  They made a big deal out as well they should have – it greatly increased their subscriber base.  They also made a lot of promises, such as ramping up employment and rolling out “high speed” Internet, especially out in the northern part of the state.  However, they took on a ton of debt to do so – and it showed early on in carrying out those promises.

Personally, their customer service sucked.  Just as soon as they announced their “new website”, I went over to set up electronic payments – especially since they had to pay Verizon to continue to provision a number of software packages as FairPoint was not ready with their own when Cutover (when the line transferred from Verizon to FairPoint).  Accurracy and quality of response simply sucked when the FairPoint systems kicked in.  I CANNOT tell you how many hours I spent on the phone trying to get my online account to actually allow me to pay my bill.  I finally gave up and just recently tried again (and was quite surprised when it actually worked).

Yeah, that feeling lasted a whole long time.    I called them a bit ago on a billing question and ended up signing up (under NH’s deregulation of the electricity provider industry) to sign up for their electrical provisioning arm, FairPoint Energy (yeah, delusional at the time).  Kept paying the PSNH bill as normal – and I did see a small downtick in the cost.  But NOT enough to put up with this:

Fairpoint Energy -title-proc

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So, Obamacare has just declared me to be a Winnah – a Trifecta even!

Heritage: Projected Premium Increases by State
Heritage: Projected Premium Increases by State

But this is more of the case of winning the “TSA Lottery” – and frequent fliers know EXACTLY what I mean.  You have just gotten the attention of theatrical security corps and they are about to go through your stuff and your junk and apply that micro-duster to your carryon.  Well, in the last couple of days, our HHS Bureaucratic Overlords (you know, the ones that have decided that Religious values has no place in THEIR Public Square) have announced a few more “features” that our pocketbooks are going to cringe over.  Most of us knew that the Young are going to be paying well MORE than their fair share in supporting Obama’s Socialized Medicine and that Oldsters would not be (mostly because they vote more frequently).  Those following this “train wreck” (great line, Senator Baucus!  Thanks for being the “Architect” for this – and now retiring as it comes into reality) pulling out of the station already knew that smokers are going to get hit REAL heard by this – their premiums may lead the pack (yes, pun intended).

But the news of the day is that there are now others in the Obama line to pay the Obamacare train wreck ticket prices:

  • If you are overweight – BMI, anyone?  (Check)
  • If you have high blood pressure (Check)
  • If you have high cholesteral (Check)

Yeah I win the Trifecta – even as the last two CAN be modified by weight loss, but EVERYone in my Mom’s family had the last two two – ya think the IRS will give me a pass on my paperwork (due to genetics)?  I CAN fix the first (yeah, I gotta start that diet again) but the genetics are already stacked against me there.  Hey, IT.JUST.ISNT.MY.FAULT!  But what about…

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“Morally Ambiguous” – And Secularists everywhere go “Amen!”

New Boy Scout Oath

That used to be “Morally Straight” – kinda hard to be (or teach) as our society becomes more and more Secular – which is already leading to “situation ethics” or “relative morality”.  This will result in a time there will be no absolute right and wrong – so how to hold people accountable for something that is obviously wrong but they simply say “No, it’s NOT!”?

There a tight connection between Cultural Marxism (aka Political Correctness) and being Morally Ambiguous in this case.  Simple, really.  Throw out the old religious tenets, which for centuries formed our moral foundation, and replace it with what ever we (Progressives) want it to be.  After all, it’s what we do, we on the Left.  How ELSE can we redefine Government in our own image if we don’t give society a new set of values that are favorable to us?  We HAVE to pick off and subsume those institutions that promulgate those old standards.  That way, OUR Government will be the only institution left that can dictate what is right and what is wrong.

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Speaking of Moral Ambiguity – yes, there is a War on Religion if it is not Secular Humanism

Marines Cross PendletonAdding on from “Moral Ambiguous” is this snippet from Imprimis (emphasis mine, I urge you to go read the whole thing – GRTWT) explains it well:

The idea seems to be that moral views historically supported by religion—which of course means all moral views other than modern secular ones—are constitutionally suspect.

Even as our Constitution was built, in no small part, on values from our country’s  Judeo-Christian heritage.  We are starting to live that phrase “a prophet has no honor in his own country”.

Here we come to the unifying feature of contemporary challenges to religious freedom—the desire to limit the influence of religion over public life. In the world envisioned by Obama administration lawyers, churches will have freedom as “houses of worship,” but unless they accept the secular consensus they can’t inspire their adherents to form institutions to educate and serve society in accordance with the principles of their faith. Under a legal regime influenced by the concept of public reason, religious people are free to speak—but when their voices contradict the secular consensus, they’re not allowed into our legislative chambers or courtrooms.

Freedom of expression, freedom of speech?  Only that which is allowed by Government which is to say, no freedom at all. Those Constitutional values…..

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More thoughts on Republicans passing SB11

Grokster Susan has the list with the title of “All your water are belong to them….“; it is still GraniteGrok’s belief that the finger has been removed from the dike with respect to the right to private property concerning the water underneath one’s land and that this may well give the Taxaholics yet another revenue stream of taxing (you watch – 4% of income is a magic number) private wells and septic systems (either directly or via metering).  Grokster Steve points out that the idea of New Hampshire-ites being taxed for the rainwater falling on their land has already been breached.

My concern, however, was with the evolving process of Legislators creating more and more “enabling legislation” that creates more opportunities for “UnDemocracy” – as Rich Lowry points out (reformatted, emphasis mine):

It is appropriate that the worst scandal of the Obama administration— the IRS targeting of conservatives — is a scandal of administrators and bureaucrats, of otherwise faceless people endowed with immense power over their fellow citizens and running free of serious oversight from elected officials.

They are the shock troops of the vast bureaucratic apparatus of the federal government. Its growth has been one of President Obama’s chief goals, and the one he has had the most success in achieving. He has greatly enhanced the reach and power of regulatory agencies that are an inherent offense against self-government, even when they aren’t enforcing the law in a biased way.

The administration’s corruption isn’t bags of cash or lies about interns; it is the distortion of our form of government by sidestepping democratic procedures and accountability and vesting authority in bureaucrats. The Administrative State…

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“Reward our friends and punish our enemies” – are we now in the final push in “breaking us” to Fundamentally Transform” us?

Commerce Claws the rest of the Constitution?I have been scared for a while now – for our Constitutional Republic built on our Constitution and its Classical Western Liberal values (not to be confused by the very illiberal Liberals who absconded with yet another word, placing their own definition on it (like gay)).  It has been under assault for decades but from what we have seen over the last five years, over the last eight months, over the last week, the pace has only increased.  Obama said just before his first inauguration that his goal was to fundamentally transform the United States.  From Wilson to FDR to LBJ, and now to Obama.

Each is tied to each other by their hatred of the US Constitution.  Wilson was very open about it, and wrote about it.  FDR wanted his Second Bill of Rights that would change, forever, the Founders Vision that the best government was the least government.  Instead, it would have become that “positive rights” that would have had Government give Rights to people instead of the “negative Rights” that keeps Government from doing things TO you.  FDR set the table with his New Deal that helped to start that transformation.  Face it, look at the uncoupling of the nuclear family to its intergenerational extended one – no longer did the children affirm their bonds to their parents once the latter become unable to provide or care for themselves – Government would and did step in.  Parents could be “independent” for years with Social Security.

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Notable Quote – Don Boudreaux

The fundamental question raised by the IRS scandal isn’t whether Obama ordered, or even knew of, the apparent misuse of the taxing power to punish political opponents. Rather, the fundamental question asks about the wisdom of creating in the first place government agencies that can so easily abuse their power in order to play political … Read more

BlogHeadline of the Day – courtesy of the Gang of Eight Immigration Bill

Now clocked at over 1,000 pages (detailed down to the exact wages to be paid to some classes of immigrants).  This headline courtesy of Powerline: Marco Rubio is “our Republican,” says Chuck Schumer — and with good reason For someone that rumor has him paying attention to the next Prez election, this is not good.  … Read more

Data Point – Support for President Obama is falling

It has been a while since I put up the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Poll – time to restart: Since his Second Inauguration, his job approval level has been dropping – and fast. Yes, his personal approval levels remain positive (something that I have never figured out).  It seems that the scandals that are now engrossing … Read more

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