A long post from Matt Kibbe about the TEA Party’s demise – the milestone WAS this latest “CRomnibus” act that kept the Feds open (again, no big deal to me if it had shut down) and also spent FAR more than we can afford.  GraniteGrok was one of the co-founders of the NH TEA Party Coalition – a group of us that had had it with politicians up and down the chain. We all agreed that if we weren’t willing to do something ourselves, no one did.  We did – and we had an impact. Using the Constitution as our Measure of Quality, we held their feet to the fire and it worked. At least for a while.

Again, with the Republicans leading the charge on spending and widening the deficit, what IS the difference between the Dems and the Republicans???   Sigh…

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The Tea Party Is Officially Dead. It Was Killed by Partisan Politics.
I helped make the grassroots activist movement a reality. But now the party’s over.

The grassroots movement that fought so hard for fiscal sanity in government over the past decade is no more. It was killed off by the very same Washington establishment it sought to overthrow. Its death leaves proponents of limited government with some big questions: What went wrong? And what do we do now?

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Previous here and here. To recap: at about the time we put up a post,  Windham School Board Approves Unconstitutional “BATHROOM BILL” Policy, I received an email from a Donna Sawyer who believes that people (other than her) are SO stupid that they have to be told “oh, GraniteGrok might get a spiff if you buy something there”.  In my email back to here I had written:

I generally believe that most people are smart – after all, you found them (being from MIT and all) so I believe others that cared such things would as well. And yes, we are independent.

After all, caveat emptor.

She just couldn’t help herself (as if it would make a difference):

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It’s not a gun problem – it’s a heart, mind, and soul problem:

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin called on Americans Friday to “wake up” and recognize that school shootings are a “cultural problem.”

“We have become desensitized to death, we have become desensitized to killing, we have become desensitized to empathy for our fellow man and it’s coming at an extraordinary price and we have got to look at the root causes of this,” Bevin told the Associated Press.

“We can’t celebrate death in video games, celebrate death in TV shows, celebrate death in movies, celebrate death in musical lyrics and remove any sense of morality and sense of higher authority and then expect that things like this are not going to happen,” he added.

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In the Concord Monitor a bit ago, a Dr. Oge Young had a piece on abortion with the thrust being (emphasis mine):

Many people seem to think a woman’s pregnancy is an open invitation to decide what is best for her. Lawmakers who know nothing of a woman’s complex life circumstances should have no voice in her decision making, particularly when it comes to pregnancy.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade, handed down more than 40 years ago, in no way resolves the divisiveness and polarization surrounding abortion. The decision was not written to protect women’s rights, but instead to protect the privacy of the physician-patient relationship. Once more we are seeing legislation throughout the country and in our state that define what is medically necessary…

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Yep, the Association of Undemocratic States and Tinpot Despots who have made it clear that they are there because MO MONEY, MO MONEY, MO MONEY, getting cover for their actions, and oh yeah, hating on Israel. In a piece titled “My Turn: Strengthen the UN“, Ray Perkins Jr (professor of philosophy, emeritus, at Plymouth State University and vice chairman of the Bertrand Russell Society board of directors) seems to be typical of those academicians that went to Germany in the 1880s that brought back that foreign political philosophy that called for a larger, more intrusive government that dismissed the US Constitution – Socialism.  Now, Perkins wants to pick that up a notch and centralize government control even higher – to the UN.  Self-government, representative republic?  Not if the UN is in charge.  And he’s happy as a jay bird in doing so.

…But how dare the U.S. take it out on the U.N.’s meager budget and even threaten member states with financial retaliation. Never mind that the U.N. has denied Israel lawful control of Jerusalem since 1947 (and reaffirmed the original plan for international control many times since, despite Israel’s illegal seizure of control after the 1967 Six-Day War). But in practice the issue in recent years has been a point of contention which the Palestinians have hoped to settle peacefully in forthcoming talks with the Israel. It’s hard not to think that this internationally disapproved action by the U.S. has undermined hopes for peace in the region.

Say, Professor – you left out that Israel has been under attack since 1948.  And contrary to popular Progressive belief, violence does solve problems and answer questions (like it or not). Read the rest but this is what caught my eye (note: he forgets the fundamental rule for “respect”):

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“Collusion” is writing fake news articles about the media’s most favored candidate? Is that what Russian meddling in an election is about? I feel safer already.

What will Mueller’s next move be, arrest Putin and make him talk?

We all know this is nuts, right? Indicting foreigners for an almost non-existent case of collusion, meddling, and hacking – but letting George Soros spend billions trying to influence American elections – for real.

I think this Russian “collusion” just turned out to be an “illusion.”

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By Steve’s In-Box

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I just read this piece by David French at NRO. At first read, I was, and am still, skeptical and a little suspicious. But he makes some good arguments and does address the due process problem found in the other list approaches where the list restricts someones access to firearms without recourse and thus obliterating someone’s constitutional rights.  And the Gun-Violence Restraining Order (GVRO) places the responsibility to act and seek a GVRO on the person(s) who are closest to the potential threat (a sibling, spouse, parent or roommate), not the bungling Bureau or other federal authorities that have the track record of doing nothing with information they received to stop the carnage.  Charleston, Pulse nightclub, Sutherland Springs, and now Parkland school, that’s four since 2015. I think anyone objective would see this record and come to the conclusion that the federal authorities really are not capable of stopping these types of things. At least not yet.

But a GVRO, just might be.

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ZeroHedge reports that Buzz Feed, WaPo, and Soros backed Media jumped on a story about the Florida Shooter that turned out to be Fake News.

In the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s tragic school shooting in Parkland, Florida, several major news outlets published a report that the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was a member of a white supremacist organization. In fact, the MSM was hoodwinked by 4chan users into publishing fake news.

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Tucker Carlson speaks to the recent shooting in Florida with a different angle than what the media typically offers.

“Let’s stop lying about this,” he said. “The calls we are hearing today for gun control have nothing to do with protecting Americans from violence. What you’re witnessing is a kind of class war. The left hates rural America, red America, gun-owning America, the America that elected Donald Trump. They hate them. Progressives are still in charge of most of the major institutions in this country, and they despise the autonomy of an armed population. They want collective punishment for the sins of a few. They seek to obliterate a core constitutional right rather than trying to mitigate its downsides. They call it gun control, but it’s not. It’s people control. For the left, voters who can’t be controlled, can’t be trusted.”

| Breitbart

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Talk about virtue signaling. The New Hampshire House overwhelmingly passed a resolution this week (HCR13) condemning hate crimes and urging aggressive prosecution by law enforcement.

The resolution, approved 234-69, calls on the attorney general to deploy a task force to “detect and deter hate crimes and discrimination in order to protect minority communities.”

It also urges the Governor and Executive Council to offer state assistance to victims of hate crimes, and to enhance security measures at religious institutions, places of worship and other likely targets due to affiliation with particular religious, racial or ethnic minorities in the state.

It fascinates me to watch this because “hate crimes” are a made up thing.

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Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) just spent the week sweeping through Los Angeles scooping up criminal aliens and citing business who hire them for violating federal law.

No sanctuary for you.

Federal deportation officers staged one of the biggest enforcement actions in years against businesses in Los Angeles this week, arresting 212 people and serving audit notices to 122 businesses who will have to prove they aren’t hiring illegal immigrants.

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With these folks, it comes down to money – if I have to pay money because you do “dangerous” behaviors, I have the right to restrict your freedom of behavior.  I’ve been saying this for years – the more that Government does (because of pickle-pussed Progressives) that costs them money, the more they decide to control your life.  And get mad, REAL mad, if you say “fine, don’t pay for me”.  They can’t seem to understand that they can’t (or should) have it both ways.

In a piece at (where else??) the Concord Monitor titled “If you skip the helmet, give an organ“, one Nick Perencevich makes the claim that because NH doesn’t force adults to use a motorcycle helmet or buckle their seatbelts, they should become organ donors and if not willingly, the State should just force it.

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