Retired Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis (and nominee as Trump’s DoD Secretary) is beloved by his former Marines – this is one anecdote why:

A couple of months ago, when I told General Krulak, the former Commandant of the Marine Corps, now the chair of the Naval Academy Board of Visitors, that we were having General Mattis speak this evening, he said, “Let me tell you a Jim Mattis story.” General Krulak said, when he was Commandant of the Marine Corps, every year, starting about a week before Christmas, he and his wife would bake hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Christmas cookies. They would package them in small bundles.

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This is the fifth year I’ve done the Top 20 most Commented posts and I’m happy to report two new names in the top five. Scott Morales and Ed Naile bent the most commenters ears in 2016, with Skip and myself taking slots four and five and Kimberly Morin breaks into the list at number 14.

The Top 5 from this year’s crop are all in the top 20 most commented-upon posts ever here at GraniteGrok. The next 9 (6 through 14) are in the top 40 all time. The rest fall into the top 60. That is with nearly 26,500 published posts on this site.

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Permits.

Yeah, permits.  You see, in order to make a living, one doesn’t have the freedom to just do what one wants for a living.  Nope, one has to get permission from the Nanny State in the form of “permits” to pretty much do anything nowadays.  Land of the Free?  Not so much, but I digress.

Seems that Michael Turner of Turner LP Gas made it known (if you read Steve’s post, you’d know) he was only going to sell to non-Trump supporters.  Problem is, he wasn’t supposed to be selling any propane to anyone.

Permits (emphasis mine):

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I never used to play games on my smartphone until I discovered Crossy Road. This addictive spin on Frogger is fast, fun, and can fill a few seconds or a few thousand seconds, whatever your need.

But before you tap your way to a free copy of this endless arcade hopper I must warn you. My nickname for this game is dammit!

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Glad to know about the little mysteries of life:

Why Do My Eyes Close When I Sneeze?

Is it a foregone conclusion that we can’t help closing our eyes during a sneeze? Not quite, researchers say. It is possible (albeit difficult) to keep our eyes open during a sneeze, said Dr. David Huston, an associate dean at the Texas A&M College of Medicine Houston campus and an allergist at Houston Methodist Hospital. “The fact that it is possible to sneeze with the eyes open suggests that it is not hardwired or mandatory,” Huston said in a statement. It’s not entirely clear why people blink while sneezing, but it likely plays a protective role, he said.

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“…only 9.9 people a day seeing the movie in any given theater”

That the American people, especially those of us in flyover country (or of that outlook if not geographical location), have HAD it with their inferiors preaching to them from heights that they have not attained on all matter of subjects and issues? We’ve just finished eight years of Best-Gun-Salesman-in-Chief making all kinds of disparaging remarks about we bitter clingers and trying all he could with his “pen and phone” to thwart that Second Amendment Right of ours?  Didn’t they see that the Obama’s-Third-Term-Its-My-Turn candidate Hillary, who ALSO wanted to push that meme into double-overdrive?

Apparently not – that “Miss Sloan” movie TV advertising that has been hectoring gun owners for a couple of months has met its match – a loser with the American people.  But really, THIS bad?

YOU CAN’T ASTROTURF THE BOX OFFICE: Hollywood’s Gun-Control Dud. “Miss Sloane, a highly anticipated movie demonizing the NRA and calling for gun control, has bombed. The movie succeeded only in emphasizing the top-down nature of the gun-control campaign and

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