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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.

Socialized Medicine – here’s one take on it

Paul Hsieh is the owner of GeekPress that I visit on a regular basis – mostly short pointers to science / geeky tidbits of stuff and have posted some of the stuff he has found here. He is also a practicing doctor and has been writing, as of late, on the ills of socialized medicine.  … Read more

Unions – about power. Yeah, that sums it up….

Own the politicians, own the power.  Own the power, own the money.  Spend the money on politicians. Watch that loop cycle over and over again.  After all, it is your tax dollars that allow this nonsense to continue over and over and over again. (H/T: RedState)

Guest post by Tom Tomson: Sharing Some Great Advice

Tom Tomson is a conservative activist and the Honorary Chair of Americans for Prosperity / NH

Dear Friends,

Please find below an article I wrote about our Mother and wanted to share it with you. Many of you reached out to me and our family one year ago and I thank you for your support.  Tom Thomson

Sharing Some Great Advice

One year ago on March 8th, 2010 my family lost a loving, caring Mother at age 90 and New Hampshire lost a gracious former First Lady; Gale Thomson.

My Mother, Gale Kelly Thomson, was a mother of six children, 18 Grandchildren and 28 Great Grandchildren. She was like many in New Hampshire, a very independent citizen. She believed it was her responsibility to care for her husband, former Governor Meldrim Thomson in their home, located in Orford, at the Mt. Cube Farm while Dad fought the good fight against Parkinson Disease for many years. After years of loving care Dad lost his battle on April 19th, 2001.

It’s important for me to digress for a moment and tell you that on this same day April 19th, hours earlier the New Hampshire Legislature was voting on a bill to impose a sales tax. Dad had fought against increasing taxes on our citizens for years; at the end of the day, they the lawmakers defeated the sales tax bill and I know Dad knew his work was done and he passed on.

Mother continued to live by herself at the place she loved best, the Mt. Cube Farm, with family close by until the day she left us on March 8th, 2010. This was Dad’s birthday and later my brother Robb reminded me that it also was on this very day that Dad and Mother were engaged 72 years earlier.

Many years ago a good friend shared with me some great advice, as he had recently lost the last of his parents. He said to me, “Be thankful your parents are still with you. Tonight, give them a call or better still stop by and give them a big hug and tell them how much you love them.” This was…

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Common cause – Granite State Fair Tax Coalition with NEA and SEIU. Birds of a feather?

And when I talk about the Granite State Fair Tax Coalition (not to be confused with the Americans for Fair Taxation, commonly known as The FairTax, a group that wishes to get rid of the Federal income tax and the IRS and substitute a consumption / sales tax with a "prebate" in its stead).  In fact, all protestations aside, the GSFTC does nothing BUT complain that NH’s property taxes are too high and its members / spokespeople are more than happy to give comparisons of NH’s ranking of property tax to other States (where NH ranks as one of the most highest).  They are more than happy to point out that because "the rich" refuse to "buy big" with respect to property, their tribute to the State is less than what they would want from them on combined bended knees.

What they REFUSE to do, however, is to discuss OVERALL taxation rates and NH’s rankings with respect to a citizen’s TOTAL level of taxation – the lack of a sales tax, an income tax, and a whole host of other taxes that other States have – and NH ranks VERY well on the LOW taxation scale. 

GSFTC won’t and can’t – as their secondary position also is clear; it is obvious that they believe that NH State Government is starved for income streams so as to be able to grow government and spend more.  The reliance on property taxes at the local level prevents the State from having more.  To me, that’s a feature and not a bug!

Now, up to now, it has been groups that I could consider to be genuinely concerned about the poor (even though they have tendencies that favor redistribution of other peoples’ money).  However, they have now made common cause with:

  • SEIU (state employee union)
  • The NEA – the Teachers’ Union

as can be seen by this screen shot of the GSFTC page at the time of this posting:

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GrokTALK! Special – Jim Babka for the Nullify Now!

Jim Babka is a writer, activist, and former radio talk-show host. He currently serves as president of the Downsize DC Foundation and DownsizeDC.org, which states as its mission: “We believe the federal government has grown too centralized, too intrusive, and too expensive. We believe in constitutional limits, smaller government, civil liberties, federalism, and low taxes. … Read more

GrokTALK! Special – Ed Naile (Chair, CNHT)

I really don’t think that this was entirely correct, Landrigan reports on yesterday’s NH Democrat Party elections: What if they held an election and nobody runs? That’s the state of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, which, despite the pasting it took from voters last fall, had no opponents for a nearly full slate of incumbents. … Read more

I AGREE WITH RON PAUL!

H/T – The Corner: Courtesy of the Daily Caller, here he [Ron Paul] is on the topic of Charlie Sheen: “Why does anybody care? The guy’s goofy, just leave him alone.“ “It seems like we’re running out of things to deal with. We have wars going on. We’re flat out broke, and we’re worried about … Read more

How does a homeschooler change a lightbulb?

According to Grok friend Cathy, this makes it way around the homeschooling set – I just thought it was cute! First, mom checks three books on electricity out of the library, then the kids make models of light bulbs, read a biography of Thomas Edison and do a skit based on his life. Next, everyone … Read more

FB Doodlings – Gay marriage

There is a bill in the NH Legislative schedule that would redefine marriage out of the legal realm of the state: HB 569.  Essentially, it would "demote" all marriages from the aspect of "the State"; the title or label of "marriage" would be the sole call of the private sector – in my reading of the bill, I could call my marriage a "marriage", but so could anyone else label their relationship such as well. 

Frankly, I think this is a "run-away" bill;  it removes politicians from the social battle of what constitutes a marriage and what doesn’t – and doesn’t solve the question.  And it does deserve to be answered and settled – thus far, almost all of the decisions to recognize homosexual marriage has come from the Court (the favorite hangout for Liberals trying to change the social fabric of the country, as pretty much with the exception of NH, the general public has always voted it down as a step too far). It is a "punt" – it removes traditional marriage from what should be a pedestal and brings in, a la our government schools, the concept of "the lowest common denominator" to still the waves of political opinion.

So anyways, from FB:

The obvious problem is that many disagree that gay marriage is marriage from the traditional standpoint (and history). I disagree with the notion that by getting the State "out of marriage", it is merely hiding from the issue – it doesn’t solve the problem. In fact, it can make it worse. The idea was that Govt only sanctions civil unions and not marriage still allows the problem to fester in the social arena – anyone can call anything that they want a marriage.

By slinking away, the State also punts on the next issue – why should civil unions only be between two people?

And this bill specifically enumerates only 2. Major logical flaw in the bill is that number, for if one is going to get the State out of marriage, what is that logic surrounding the number two?

The moral authority in this country has been its Judeo-Christian background and philosophy (like it or not). This has been…

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Belknap County – screws up again!

A couple of years ago, the Belknap County Delegation got caught short by trying to have a public meeting – without properly "noticing" / publicizing it properly.  Well, the next meeting on the County Budget was suppose to be tomorrow night. Well gues what – bagged again!  From yesterday’s Laconia Daily Sun was this notice: … Read more

NEA – Get the Family and Religion OUT OF HERE!

You know, if these kinds of things keep happening, somebody’s gonna scratch the "Great" out of that tag line.  Heck, with this starting to be a pattern instead of a outlier, people are right to really start asking their local NEA union heads, their Superintendents, and their School Boards seriously hard questions.   I wrote here (concerning whose responsibility kids are in the daycare we owned):

Never did I think that we were that important to believe that we should or could supplant parents.

I also pointed out in that same post that there are teachers in Moultonboro, NH that "look down" upon the parents on the topic of attitudes; in fact, if I had been their boss, I would have pulled them aside after they had said what they did about their actual employers – the parents – to knock it  off:

…students are WAY ahead of the times, way ahead of parents on multiple issues especially when it comes to openness and sexuality…I disagree with having parent being allowed in.  I think that student are willing to talk about this because they have different views than their parents

And now, we know why – it seems that "Public Schools" teachers are going out of their way to teach their students differently than what their parents do on moral issues; we talked about this on Saturday’s show (emphasis mine) about what Diane Schnieder of both NEA (teachers union) and GLSEN (a militant pro-homosexual advocacy group whose founder, Ken Jennings, was Obama’ "Safe School" czar) gave as a talk at a UN conference:

“Oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms need to be taught in education,” Diane Schneider told the audience at a panel on combating homophobia and transphobia.  Schneider, representing the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the US, advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in US schools, with curricula based on liberal hetero and homosexual expression.  She claimed that the idea of sex education remains an oxymoron if it is abstinence-based, or if students are still able to opt-out. 

Comprehensive sex education is “the only way to combat heterosexism and gender conformity,” Schneider proclaimed, “and we must make these issues a part of every middle and high-school student’s agenda.”  “Gender identity expression and sexual orientation are a spectrum,” she explained, and said that those opposed to homosexuality “are stuck in a binary box that religion and family create.”

Kids, forget your parents and your God – you only have to listen to me!

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GrokTALK! – Podcast page for 03/05/11

Podcast – week of 02/26/11 GrokTALK! Streaming Live! from GraniteGrok To play (or "stream") a clip now, just click on it.  To download it to your PC, right click on it and tell the process where to save the file for you. (Click here for the promo page) Hour 1      Hour 2 Kirk … Read more

Not until this happens, it seems…

CNSNews: When asked if it was necessary to seal the southwest border to combat transnational drug gangs, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton did not directly answer but said the border is more secure now than in the last 20 years and that crime is part of life in the United States. Uh, … Read more

Data Point – what happens gun ownership goes down in Massachuesetts?

From Truth About Guns: “But I don’t want to go on that commission. . . It’s just another example of how wrong Massachusetts has it when it comes to gun laws. Twelve years ago we had 1.5 million guns owners. Today that’s down to about 230 thousand. Gun crime has risen 200 percent. What else … Read more

Data Point – Is the Earth overcrowded?

The eco-weenies think that there are way to many people on the earth.  Among other things, they say we are running out of space – why else do our land use planners keep speaking "smart growth" which invariably means: Setting up regulations so as to not allow folk to live how and where they want … Read more

Sometimes to make it work, you have to shut things down…

I’m a software guy, and like any other coder out there, there are times you look at what you’ve written and go "hey, let me just add this one thing more" – and a while later, you say "time to test".  And THEN that famous phrase kicks in: "Aw, crap".

Not only has the new "feature" turned into a bug, but it has taken other parts of the system with it.  Even after commenting out all that new / modified code, the bug is still there.  Examples of this conundrum have been seen here on the ‘Grok – add a new post and all of a sudden, the front page look wacky;

  • all older posts have the same nutty formatting
  • picture look crazy
  • videos won’t vid
  • and the sidebars take a vacation.

OK, the normal thing is to remove the offending post.  Ooops – that "one more thing" wasn’t enough to put things right.  More posts have to be taken out to get back to a stable system before adding stuff back in to "progress forward".  Perhaps tickling a few other areas of code too, in many cases.

Because when a software app is broke, adding more stuff to it ain’t gonna make it right, not going to make work, and you aren’t going to move forward.  You’re only going to make a bigger, more tangled spaghetti code mess.  And as you add new features to a system, especially those that were not originally "designed in", things get more and more tangled.  It finally crushes itself under it’s own weight.  Sure, you may get that new feature, but the overall system ends up harder to maintain (costing more to keep running), works slower (forcing users to use "faster" computers), and takes up more space (bigger disks).  That’s why most engineers always call the smallest possible solution that does the job is called "elegant"; those that construct such packages are hailed as superstars by their peers.

A great proxy (or metaphor) for our government?

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