Skip

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.

Notable Quote – Law Professors Daniel Farber and Philip Frickey

Ultimately, the health of the republic rested on civic virtue – that is, on the willingness of individuals to sacrifice private interests to the common good. This school of thought, which sought to revive the classical virtues of the Roman republic, has become known as republicanism…. The dark side of republicanism is its potentially totalitarian … Read more

Williams – Sonoma: the Dick’s Sporting Goods of the kitchen set?

Updated & Bumped: This is when you get caught being stupid.  From CNSNews:

Williams-Sonoma Releases Statement Apologizing for Pulling Pressure Cookers

“Pressure cookers are available at all our stores nationwide.

“In the days immediately following the tragic bombings in Boston a local decision was made to remove pressure cookers from the sales floor of the stores near where the bombing occurred. We apologize if we offended anyone by this action.”

Offended?  No, that’s not the word I would pick.  Cowardly?  Political Correctness junkies?  Just plain STOOPID in trying to put as much space as possible from even a HINT of being associated with the Boston Marathon Bombers.  I do wonder if this decision was from their Sr. Leadership (such that might exist) or from an avalanche of “dumbness” sent their way.

*************************************

Back in December, just after the tragedy of Sandy Hook, Dick’s Sporting Goods stopped selling AR-15s.  They screwed over customers and they screwed over their suppliers as they did not honor their contracts and did not honor transactions in process.  They didn’t care – their cowardly side showed over this particular style of modern sporting rifles.

But really, this??  From Big Government (emphasis mine):

Williams-Sonoma pressure cookerWilliams-Sonoma Pulls Pressure Cookers

Read more

Biden: “If it only saves one life!”

From Philly.com: An Elkins Park man was killed late Friday after he forced his way into a stranger’s apartment in Cheltenham Township. Jasper Brisbon, 32, wandered up to a couple late Friday at the Lynnewood Apartments as the pair spoke outside their unit. Brisbon, they told police, appeared to be on drugs. He stared at … Read more

A plug for Network for Educational Opportunity

Network for Educational Opportunity  (aka NEO)

Why shouldn’t be all about Freedom in Education – moving the Power from the teachers unions, school boards, and the Edu-Industrial Complex to the Parents?  Why does Education have to be location dependent – why can’t we make it truly child centered?  Here is the mission from NEO’s viewpoint:

“Scholarships from the Network for Educational Opportunity are building a bridge, for each child, from a bad situation to a better situation, from a school where a child is struggling, to a school where they have a chance to succeed.

Does the school system need reform? Absolutely. But a promise to work hard on reforming the school system won’t do anything for that child who’s struggling today. A NH Bridge Scholarship can help a child right now.

Thanks to a law passed by the New Hampshire legislature, businesses can receive a substantial tax credit 85% against BPT and/or BET for contributing to NH Bridge Scholarships from the Network for Educational Opportunity and help a child now.”

Their Vision and philosophy:

Read more

Notable Quote – Steven N.S. Cheung

Government should not be assumed to command more knowledge than the individuals affected. The latter, at least in the absence of the free-rider problem, have every incentive to inform themselves. Government – politicians and bureaucrats – will do so only if votes are at stake. In general, government may prove to be willing to intervene, … Read more

Notable Quote – US Senator Mike Lee

On the commenting of Progressives that if you are not “for community” you must be for isolated individualism: Ours has never been a vision of isolated, atomized loners. It is a vision of husbands and wives; parents and children; neighbors and neighborhoods; volunteers and congregations; bosses and employees; businesses and customers; clubs, teams, groups, associations … Read more

Tyranny – you WILL save for retirement and yet again, continue the incremental transformation of employers into being part of Government

Once again, a mandate that will cost you whether you like it or not, but Obama has pre-determined “how much you need”.  “From Obama’s 2014 indentured servitude and Budget (here, page 24, emphasis mine) we see the “benevolent hand” of Tyranny Our Betters Our Rulers our Government  with the socialist glove forcing paternalistic nudging yet another behavior simply because they do not approve of current sovereign citizen behavior:

Encourage Retirement Savings with Automatic Individual Retirement Accounts and Support for Small Employers Who Offer Retirement Plans.

About half of American workers have no workplace retirement plan. Yet fewer than 1 out of 10 workers who are eligible to make tax-favored contributions to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) actually do so, while nearly 9 out of 10 workers automatically enrolled in a 401(k) plan continue to make contributions. The Budget would automatically enroll workers without employer-based retirement plans in IRAs through payroll deposit contributions at their workplace. The contributions would be voluntary—employees would be free to opt out—and matched by the Saver’s Tax Credit for eligible families. Small employers would be eligible for tax credits to defray the administrative costs of setting up these savings plans. The Budget would also double the existing tax credit for small employers that start up new qualifying employer plans.

So, not only must the working contribute to Social Security, we all will be forced contribute even more to our own retirement.

Read more

Feinstein lets the cat out of the bag: Progressives want to take away ALL semi-automatic firearms

I spent this afternoon at a gathering of good friends where the purpose was to get out of the house, have a chance to yak, consume some good comestibles – and shoot guns!  Handguns, long guns; small calibers and larger ones (not quite .50 cal, but long range); semiautomatics, revolvers, and bolt action.  I’ve shot steel before, but only at short range and indoors so having the ability to shoot multiple 8″X5″ steel plates with both my Sig P220 and Colt AR in .223 was a lot of fun.  In fact, this was only the second time I’ve shot outdoors and beyond an indoor range’s limitation – and it was a blast.  Still have to adjust the sights on P220 as it shoots left and low (or is it my right hand trigger motion while left eye dominant?) but what a thrill to finally be able to try the new Vertex red/green dot with a 3X magnifier on the AR and see if I measured up to the capability of the system.  Am happy to report that just after a few rounds downrange to “figure it out” a bit, that to hit that same size steel plate 5 out of 6 shots out at about 170 yards put a smile on my face!  Next time, I’ll put the iron sights back on and try to duplicate it (and yeah, just like with those who customize cars and trick out their PCs, the AR is the same type of platform for gun folks to do set ups the way they want without having to be a gunsmith).  It was a delight to “compete against myself” in trying to better my skills – and the freedom to do so as a law abiding citizen.

So after having a great day with my semiautomatic modern sporting rifle and handgun, when I heard US Senator Diane Feinstein, once again on today’s Fox News Sunday, tell me that “I don’t need that” simply because she can’t trust me with it, I get ticked:

 Yes, I get tired of these coastal Progressive elites having the temerity that they “know” what is best for me and what my needs are.  I also get mad when they torture the simple language of the Constitution when they say “my need” is only for hunting and self-defense and totally disregard what the Founders actually believe it is for (or worse, believe that human nature has “progressed” past the Founders concerns in just the past 200 odd years).  Here is the transcript (emphasis mine):

Read more

Notable Quote – Russ Douthat

“When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good.” – Russ Douthat, author, NY Times Columnist

An observation: Does the Left now hate Muslims?

Quick observation: all week long, one Leftist / Progressive / Democrat has trotted out the meme that it had to be a white TEA Party extremist that set off the bombs – someone who loves a lo-cal Government struggling on a pittance.  Three examples: David Axelrod’s “hanging” innuendo of a tax day protest, Charles Pierce that it as a “patriot” because of the MA Patriot Day holiday, CNN, David Sirota – and that’s just from today’s quick run through my normal blog readings (there have been a LOT since Monday – here’s a better list).

Chalk it up to the Progressive politicization of everything where nothing is off limits. They just couldn’t wait to see what actually developed – after all, they traffic in emotion and not facts.  They were wailing before it was known if this tragedy was created by a lone wolf or an entire cell network behind this.  Yes, the Right reacted as well, but mostly AFTER the first few punches / tweets / quotes / op-eds had already been unleashed by the Left who just couldn’t constrain their hatred.  They were DYING that it be their opposition.  Not just any opposition, but those that keep them from achieving their goals.  You see, they believe they ARE the moral ground (and not just merely standing on it or holding it).  Their fevered minds believe if they can JUST show that their political opposition is as evil as they believe that are (re: that old saw that Conservatives think that Liberals are just wrong / misguided; Liberals believe Conservatives are EEEEEvil), they could convince the Middle to hate them as well.

Me?  I think it is just

Read more

This Week On GrokTALK! – the after edition

While creating today’s GrokTALK! podcast, we had Dean Dr. Julianne Cooper from Liberty Harbor Academy and Josh Youseff who ran for the NH State Senate this last cycle on to talk about education. We ended up talking on a number of issues concerning education and during that discussion, I remembered this post from 2009 about then retiring NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin and read some of his words:

Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.

…And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year, because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.

…This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary. These are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.

Here is the clip:

Read more

Palate Cleanser – two pictures

Two pics – one from the Hubble Telescope and the other is of 19 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two Boston Marathon Bombers, when he was hiding in the boat in Watertown, MA just before he was apprehended.  This from Hubble is just gorgeous on its own:

Orion-hubble-620

This of Tsarnaev shows how good the quality of the IR camera of the police helicopter is:

Read more

This Week On GrokTALK! – the after edition Part II

We also talked about this post from Instapundit so I figured somebody might want the text / link (emphasis mine):

So, as tactical officers, 9 deep, hang off urban military assault vehicles, they feel great. I look at those things rumbling through empty streets and feel sick.

Bad guy #2 was bleeding for 20 hours outside the perimeter the cops and FBI had set. That was a miscalculation I wouldn’t dream of second guessing, but luckily for all of us, a regular guy noticed the torn and bloody tarp on the boat parked out back and called it in. They answered the 911 call and did what was required–excellent! But if Average Joe hadn’t noticed, how long would the officials have kept the city locked down? But I expect we’ll hear how important it is that they have more domestic P.D. paramilitary, oh yeah, and that CISPA that just passed under the radar was a must.

Law enforcement has been working very hard, but how about a little recognition that this was another instance when an alert citizen rose up, without official permission or sanction, to take reasonable, effective steps?

And my response this morning was “Gee, not to take anything away from the Boston PD (et lots of al), but once again, we see that it was NOT the apparatus of the Progressive State (and make no mistake, MA is a Progressive / Democrat dominated State) that “solved the problem”, but just a regular citizen”.  Glen Reynolds links to his book, An Army of Davids, at the end of the post.  The message he is trying to send by doing so is that ordinary  technology has so empowered  regular citizens, that crowd sourcing has outstripped the often outdated notions of how Business and Government should and can act.  Indeed –  just look how Twitter and Facebook are acting as the “first responders” of the news cycle simply due to the ubiquitous presence of  ordinary citizens than specialized “professionals”.  Often, there are domain specific experts “among the crowd” that can quickly relay highly detailed observations that are far beyond the pros – and then technology makes that knowledge widespread in just a few clicks.  Ah, the disruptive force, that Internet!

Read more

Share to...
BufferCopyFlipboardHacker NewsLineLinkedInMastodonMessengerMixPinterestPrintRedditSMSTelegramTumblrVKWhatsAppXingYummly