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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.

“There may yet come a day when you will have no choice.”

Steve beat me to it in using the Second Amendment support from Ice-T (“The right to bear arms is because that’s the last form of defense against tyranny.”); it was going to be my lead in for this post I found over at Hot-Air where the money line, THE important line, is the title to this post:

That was the moment when it hit me. The combination of that premise taken by anti-gun groups with the previous historical perspective on our country reminded me of what may be the most important piece of the puzzle. When having this conversation, it’s far too easy to say, “Oh! Of course we don’t want to kill people! So let’s discuss your proposition.”

It’s time to come out with it and speak the plain truth which was born and bred into the very soul of the United States from day one:

There may yet come a day when you will have no choice.

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Lakes Region Porcupines, Free State Project, Liberty, Freedom, and self – responsibility

A while ago, a now former NH State Representative Seth Cohn urged me to come to a meeting at the New Hong Kong restaurant to, as he said, “talk some politics with folks that are involved”.  Little did I know what I’d be getting into – and that was fine!  Many of the folks that attend are Free State Project “members” in that they came to NH because compared to other states, it had a low overall level of taxation and better yet, small government.  I have interviewed Dr. Jason Sorens before, so I knew the overall mindset – we tolerate a limited government, let it do a few things very well, and then leave us alone – we can be responsible for ourselves (the absolute antithesis of Democrats, who all but worship bigger government with the mindset, as we are seeing, that no one can be successful without out).

Sidenote: with that mindset, aren’t all Democrats then assuming that we are all LOSERS from the get-go? And boy, don’t the Dems go absolutely bat-crazy as more of the FSPers get involved in local and state politics – because the Dems just cannot understand that most of us don’t WANT the larger government they do.

Anyways, after this Saturday’s meeting, some of them went out to go clean the highway.  You often see those signs along the highways saying that such and such is doing the litter cleanup?  While some of them actually do the work themselves, most hire firms that specialize in doing just that.  The LR Porcs, on the other hand, believe in that self-responsibility and doing it themselves.  If one is going to be in Society, then one cannot outsource that responsibility.  So, out they went to show, in this small way, that they are not the anarchists that Ray Buckley (NH Dem Chair) claims they are and out to kill off government completely.  A very quickly done video:

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GrokTV Event-Rumney home event for Ovide Lamontagne (Candidate, NH Gov.) – Question 10 – Come to NH but vote like still in MA?

And the last question for Ovide Lamontagne who is running to be the Republican nominee for NH Governor, and the person who asked it was genuinely concerned that the traditional lifestyle and outlook of New Hampshire is changing due to folks moving into NH because of that attracton, but continue to vote as if they were still “back home”.

Question 10:

A lot of people moved across the border  and they came to NH because they wanted the NH way of life yet they still vote the way they did in Massachusetts

Previous:

  • Ovide’s talk
  • Question 1:  The Speaker has announced that he wants to cut an additional 2% out of the budget. what are your feelings on that?
  • Question 2:  Last year, the health insurance at the bank increased by 7%.  We just got new numbers for this year:14%. You know, last time we talked you wanted to join the fight against Obamacare and now the Supreme Court has come out with their ruling. What can you do for the State of NH against Obamacare at this point?
  • Question 3:  Do any tort reform in the State in order to help us?
  • Question 4: Competition in the medical industry.  I want to have a test done and I have to pay for it myself.  I start to call around and I find the best place for me to have it done is Concord Hospital. But in order to go to Concord Hospital, I have to hire a physician at Concord Hospital because my physician cannot send me to Concord Hospital. There’s a problem with that system!
  • Question 5:  Ovide, one of the issues going on at the Federal level right now is this arms treaty at the UN and everyone is predicting that that’s probably going to go through and what its going to end up being is gun control. How do we protect ourselves here in NH other than Jerry shooting everyone?  How do we protect ourselves from them coming in and taking our guns?

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EMail Doodlings – how about a definition for “Free Market”?

Free MarketsI think that both Steve’s and Mike’s posts on the ills of Socialism at spot on and as a counter point to what some feel are the overriding positives of Socialism, one of the email lists I’m on, a request came in to define “Free Market”:

I’m trying to write a short description of why the free market is good, why we should encourage it.
My problem is that I don’t have the skills of Friedman, Hayek, Rothbard, Hazlitt, Bastiat, Smith, etc. to be able to convincingly describe its virtues. What I hope is that through crowdsourcing, we can come up with a good description.

So please, everybody, give me a sentence or a paragraph explaining why a free market is a good thing that we should “cherish”.

To get things started I will start with a paraphrase of Milton Friedman [Nobel Prize winner]:

“The record of history is crystal-clear. The free market is the best way so far discovered of improving the lot of ordinary people.”

Now, it could be said that what Mitterand did (and rejected, as well as China, and the Soviet Union, and the rest of the Iron Curtain countries, plus Viet Nam and what even Sweden is moving away from and….well, you get the idea), and what Hollande is about to do,  just do the opposite.  So, a number of folks responded including moi:

 The Definition:

The free market (the TRUE free market) is the simplest of systems: you have something I would like to have, and visa versa.  For this transaction to happen, I am estimating the value of what I have versus the value *I* place on what you have to transact.  I will make the trade if it is in my self-interest and my perception is that I will become “richer” in value by giving you what I have, and you give me what I would like of yours.  This is a win-win situation as the other person is ALSO making the same calculation.  My self-interest is satisfied – and the other person’s is as well.  I want your dozen ears of corn more than the $3.00 in my pocket; you would rather have my $3.00 and we agree to swap.  That is the essence of free market capitalism – a price point is reached where the transaction happens, or not.  That price signal says my want is sufficient to pay the price that affords you to cover your costs, and a bit of extra (profit) to start your process all over again and is credited as possible “wealth to you”.

Note this – one ONLY succeeds when you offer something of value to ME.  It means that your good or service PLEASES me sufficiently to give you something for it.  You win ONLY by pleasing and serving others.  Yes, it is in your self-interest to serve others for when you do so, and do it well, you will “profit” by having more transactions come your way.

The Freedom:

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Internet Doodlings – GUESS WHAT! There’s a Timothy Horrigan that lives over at TreeHugger.

You know, I am glad that Timothy Horrigan does come over and read here at the ‘Grok – and comments as well.  He’s one of the few “Liberals” that does so, so I’ll give him kudos for trying hard.  I just wish that his comments were a bit more on topic and not just deflections that might be technically correct but not really making a point that is “tracking” the discussion.  However, it seems that “Luke” is a simulacrum over at my favorite haunt where Watermelon Environmentalists meet True Believer Environmentalists and fairly nary a Freedom that can’t be dismissed lives.

ClimateGate, where hackers obtained (stole?) hundreds of megabytes of emails, code and data – often showing that the code was GIGO, the data so mauled over for “homogenization” that it was all but worthless, and the main characters in promulgating Global Warming (now climate change, following the lead of Progressives / Liberals / Progressives / Pragmatists that learn they the make toxic every word they try to abscond from common parlance) participating in avoiding all kinds of FOIA and RTK demands.  It basically was the beginning of the end to the facade of GW / CC, regardless of the 50, 000 UN / NGO / VIP / Pandering Politicians junket goers that traipse around the Globe pontificating grand designs and documents (while really just enjoying the 5 Star hotels and incredible edibles and SWAG bags).

So, Brian Merchant wrote a post that ClimateGate was a “hack that was a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack”  whose point was not that it was an inside job as has been commonly thought but done by outsiders.  Fair enough – and he elicited comments from the readers: who?

Well, ‘Grok commenter C.Dog e.dog took up the challenge with a whack of “Do you know who I am in the Ivory Tower-ism” with the usual snark and hyperbole:

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Batman, culture, guns….freedom vs safety / security…..Second Amendment vs “Responsible” – Part 3: “You don’t need that” Doodling

Every Sunday I watch pretty much the all the talking heads / pundits Sunday morning shows (isn’t DVR a wonderful thing?) and easily the topic of the day was the horrific shooting in Aurora, Colorado at that midnight showing of the latest Batman movies (Part 1 on my thoughts, specifically on  irresponsibility of ABC here, Part 2 on my thoughts on responsible concealed carry here).  It was rather predictable in content and in slant – I knew that just about all of the Liberals would kvetch about getting more gun control into our laws.  Unfortunately, I was not disappointed as my low expectations were met.  In almost all cases, the concern (and rightly so) was about safety and security.  The problem for me (and I figure that some commenters are ready to pull the trigger on this) is they have placed safety and security above all else but refuse to acknowledge how much government would have to do in order to actually achieve it.

The line of thought, however, was especially clear on ABC’s This Week, hosted by one half of that dubious TEA Party smearer duo and Democrat rumpswab, George Stephanopolous (and I kept waiting to see if the apology would be offered again but to no avail).  It can be summed up by: “You don’t need that“.

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GrokTV Event-Rumney home event for Ovide Lamontagne (Candidate, NH Gov.) – Question 9: Position on FRM being re-opened

Complete switch in topic – The FRM financial scandel that took a lot of people in NH to the cleaners.  We hear so much that Government has to regulate more and more and more; what seems to have happened is that the state failed to do anything in the way of regulation at all.   But should it be re-investigated with a bigger flashlight?

Question 9:

The FRM financial scandel – lots of people lost their life savings.  And it seems to me most of this stuff got swept under the carpet.  What would your postition be on this?  Would you reopen that or is it a sleeping dog?

Previous:

  • Ovide’s talk
  • Question 1:  The Speaker has announced that he wants to cut an additional 2% out of the budget. what are your feelings on that?
  • Question 2:  Last year, the health insurance at the bank increased by 7%.  We just got new numbers for this year:14%. You know, last time we talked you wanted to join the fight against Obamacare and now the Supreme Court has come out with their ruling. What can you do for the State of NH against Obamacare at this point?
  • Question 3:  Do any tort reform in the State in order to help us?
  • Question 4: Competition in the medical industry.  I want to have a test done and I have to pay for it myself.  I start to call around and I find the best place for me to have it done is Concord Hospital. But in order to go to Concord Hospital, I have to hire a physician at Concord Hospital because my physician cannot send me to Concord Hospital. There’s a problem with that system!

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EMail Doodlings – Presidential warning still relevant

On one of the email lists I’m on, there was a discussion concerning the candidates just before the NH First In The Nation Primary – the typical thing of folks boasting of their candidates and who was better than the other guys.  I took a different tack in trying to point out what the end goal should back then in early January, but the warning is still relevant for those scared for our country:

Your daily dose of knuckle rapping and snark deliberately delivered by the dufus….

….AND, once again, we are back to the  conundrum of “there is NO single candidate without flaws”….yes, NO one.  Not a single one in the lot.  Even the guy I was backing, Herman, had flaws.  Even Ron Paul has flaws – maybe not to his supporters, but to the rest of us (and just as big as those pointed out earlier).

Remember one thing – OUR GOAL IS TO BEAT OBAMA.  Period.

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GrokTV Special Interview – Rick Parent (Candidate, Congress (NHCD-1) – Question 8 – How fix Social Security / Medicare entitlements due to demographics?

The biggest expenses in the Federal budget that are driving the national debt (and will continue as the “rabbit in the snake” of Baby Boomers retire) are Social Security and Medicare.  With crashing demographics and the money “alternatively used” by Federal Agencies, how would you fix this problem that could bankrupt the nation?  Question 8: … Read more

Batman, culture, guns….freedom vs safety / security…..Second Amendment vs “Responsible” – Part 1 on ABC News

OK, I’ve been REAL busy doing interviews and then taking care of the care, feeding, and placement of the videos

Sidenote: which means take the video, transfer to the PC, bring it into the editing software, start chopping it up, export each question (making sure to, you know, write the question down), upload to YouTube, make the post on GraniteGrok, and then filling in the “post” on YouTube – not a small amount of time and I just do it as a blogger and not taking the time that a REAL videographer would be taking (ouch!)

and since I’ve been running 4 threads per day for a while, that DOES take up a lot of time prepping.  But they’re almost all up and scheduled, so back to writing.  Finally.  Now to play lots of catchup here.

A horrendous event in Aurora, CO for the midnight screening of Batman.  Now, I’m not a movie person and there’s no way that I’m going to a midnight showing of pretty much anything except the “count the sheep” flick (I’m such a fuddy-duddy).  But now we have the one of “our national discussions” once again.  I have a bunch of things to say but a couple of things real quick.

First, why hasn’t ABC’s “Chief Investigative Reporter” (and using the scare quotes deliberately) been fired yet?  You know, bloggers get dumped on all the time by the lazy Mainstream Press all the time because we do not have the “layers of editors and fact checkers” that they do (well, when you have no income from what you do and still have to pay the hosting charges, there is no money for those “layers”).  Yet, to say that Brian Ross was irresponsible is to say that a tsunami will give you a bad hair day.  Years and years of being the “go to Journalist” allowed he and Democrat hack George Stephanopoulas (also posing as a tried and true journo) breathlessly coming up with fact they wanted “Hey, this guy, this James Holmes, HE’S A TEA PARTY GUY!”.  They thought they finally had the clincher to the meme they’ve being trying to make for the last three years – TEA Party folks are violent and gun crazy”.  Yet, a simple Google search showed up an entire network’s resources as being worse than being Lefty hacks – in fact, they were just incompetent, untrustworthy, and in the rush to “move the story”, showed their ideological spines under the bright TV lights (in fact, they guy they “found” was in his 50s and not like the shooter who was in his 20s).

Yet, how forthcoming was ABC on issuing an apology?  Not far at all, it seems – a “move along, nothing to see here”:

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Batman, culture, guns….freedom vs safety / security…..Second Amendment vs “Responsible” – Part 2 on concealed carry doodling

The Lakes Region Porcupines meet at the New Hong Kong Buffet in Belmont, NH every third Saturday of the month, and this Saturday ONE of the big topics was the despicable act by a brilliant but sick, demented, mentally ill person.  Now, these folks  are rather Libertarian to full bore Libertarians (heh!  I seem to be the token Conservative) and just about all of them fully support the Second Amendment – and some open carry all the time.  I have a concealed carry permit and I believe several others do as well so it was logical that the topic of the murders in the Aurora, Colorado would come up.

Some were insistent that if someone had been carrying (open or concealed) in that theater, some of those that died or were hurt could have been saved.  I was the only dissenter in that if you looked at the environment and looked at how the shooter, James Holmes, had equipped himself, it would be unclear.  A dark theater, a deranged shooter who was in rapid fire mode wearing complete body armor (ballistic helmet, body armor including throat and groin protection) who also had thrown two “grenades” that emitted a noxious gas that affected breathing and sight (not sure exactly what as I haven’t seen or heard the details, but it could have been tear gas or pepper spray cannisters – or something homebrewed).  Mass confusion – people screaming, moving to get out; unless someone was a trained SWAT or Spec Ops operator used to working and reacting PROPERLY in such a situation, I’m not convinced if a single person would have been able to make a difference.

Before I started shooting, I used to think “that can’t be THAT difficult, right?”  Aim it at a target couple hundred feet, pull the trigger.    Shooting a target with a handgun, if you have not done so, is HARD – and starting out, being consistent at 5 or 10 yards is much harder than I ever thought.  Further out, and you learn that just a wee bit of a tremble in your hands, your stance, your finger pulling the trigger ALSO putting a sideways “push or pull” on the handgun, anticipating the recoil ahead of the shot, having bad eyes (like me); well, let’s just say that this is a high skill technique to do it well over and over.

Now add in a Red Bull can of adrenaline when you realize the horror of what is going on, your eyes are tearing up from the chemical agent, trying to avoid getting shot yourself – this is not an easy shot just at a unprotected person trying kill you but with the body armor the spots that are vulnerable become exceedingly small.

And he’s moving.

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GrokTV Special Interview: Susan Olsen,NH House Candidate (Merrimack-7) – Question 11 – Live Free or Die – too harsh? Do we follow it? Are some trying to get rid of it?

This was our final question for Susan and once again, we thank her for taking valuable time in talking with GraniteGrok!  Progressives want us to pay for what they Government to do for (or to) us.  How does that square with our legacy of individualism and the idea that we have a government and not … Read more

GrokTV Special Interview: Bob Burns (Candidate for NH Exec. Council Dist. 4) – Question 8: Coming up to a primary – why “me” versus those I am running against?

And this is the final question we had for Bob Burns – the final pitch to those that could vote for him for NH Executive Council in District 4. Question 8: Coming up to a primary – why “me” versus those I am running against? Previous: Question 1: Why are you running? Question 2: You … Read more

GrokTV Event-Rumney home event for Ovide Lamontagne (Candidate, NH Gov.) – Question 8: Citizens dealing with State Agencies?

Speaking of Commissioners and department heads, how about the agencies themselves?  Given our foray into Right To Know Requests to the NH Depart. of IT and Depart. of Environmental Services, I figured that I would venture a question / comment for a response:

Question 8:

GraniteGrok issued RTK requests against DES and DoIT for taxpayer paid network data – and were refused. What is your methodology to make sure that not only is the Law of RTK followed but the Spirit obeyed as well?  Dealing with the head legal person at DES was like running into a stonewall.

Previous:

  • Ovide’s talk
  • Question 1:  The Speaker has announced that he wants to cut an additional 2% out of the budget. what are your feelings on that?
  • Question 2:  Last year, the health insurance at the bank increased by 7%.  We just got new numbers for this year:14%. You know, last time we talked you wanted to join the fight against Obamacare and now the Supreme Court has come out with their ruling. What can you do for the State of NH against Obamacare at this point?
  • Question 3:  Do any tort reform in the State in order to help us?
  • Question 4: Competition in the medical industry.  I want to have a test done and I have to pay for it myself.  I start to call around and I find the best place for me to have it done is Concord Hospital. But in order to go to Concord Hospital, I have to hire a physician at Concord Hospital because my physician cannot send me to Concord Hospital. There’s a problem with that system!

    Read more

GrokTV Event-Rumney home event for Ovide Lamontagne (Candidate, NH Gov.) – Question 7: Why is the resigned Commissioner of Employment Security still on the payroll?

The next question that the attendees asked of Ovide (after asking if he’d keep Attorney General Delaney on) was a similar one concerning the Commissioner of Employment Security that resigned under a cloud of nepotism and a “bending” of the rules for unemployment insurance afterwards: Question 7: Why is the resigned Commissioner of Employment Security … Read more

GrokTV Special Interview – Rick Parent, candidate for US Congress in NH CD-1 – Question 6 – On a political line, where would you see yourself (Nancy Pelosi to Jim Demint)?

A question that I have not asked for a while can go along ways to help voters on the Right decide where someone stands on the issues and that is to figure out if there is a “known entity” out there that is well known with a track record that is established.  And is the … Read more

GrokTV Special Interview: Bob Burns (Candidate for NH Exec. Council Dist. 4) – Question 7 – What else does the Council do?

Contracts.  Judges.  Appointments.  The NH Executive Council does that – but we asked Bob Burns what else the Exec. Council does that he thinks needs to be changed? Question 7: You’ve mentioned contracts, you’ve mentioned judges / dept. heads; what else does the Council do that has a specific interest in your heart that you … Read more

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