This week on GrokTALK! we are joined by Congresswoman Ann Kuster’s empty chair, along with political activists Kevin Kervick, Susan Olsen, and Mike Rogers is back from Scotland. Topics? I’m not sure what we didn’t cover.

Note: Update – added segment one video on the side bar so you can see Ann Kuster’s Empty chair, or you can go here for this weeks video.

Listen to GrokTALK!

You Can Also Listen or Download Here. This segment is also available on the podcast page if you are having trouble with the flash player above.

Follow us on YouTube, USTREAM, Facebook, and Twitter …and take us with you on iTunes, iHeart Radio, Spreaker, TuneIn, or Stitcher.

Please Like, Link and Share!

All Music is Royalty Free and licensed under Creative Commons 3.0

Details available on the jump.

Read more

California passed a law (Signed by Moon-beam Jerry Brown) that hold university (funding) hostage unless colleges and universities in the state adopt their policy with regard to sexual assault (etc)…

The bill holds hostage funding for colleges and universities unless “the governing board of each community college district, the Trustees of the California State University, the Regents of the University of California, and the governing boards of independent postsecondary institutions shall adopt a policy concerning sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking…”

That policy is strictly defined within the bill, and mandates new, uniform procedures for the reporting, counseling, and investigation of alleged sexual misconduct on campus.

The prime feature of this new law is yes means yes but there are a lot of rules about when yes might still mean no but no clear definitions of when yes–according to the law–can’t possibly mean yes.  As Amy Miller at Legal Insurrection observes,

Read more

Under Skip’s ongoing updates about the GOP Platform (not being updated), the subject of abortion, naturally, came up.  One comment took a familiar tack:

Life may start at conception, but the fact is that the child’s life is not covered by the Constitution until its born and hits American soil.
What the mother of an unborn child does with its life is between her and her maker. Its their business and theirs alone. Man should not be that presumptuous to think he has the authority or the moral standing to intervene in such a serious and intimate interaction between an individual and their God.

Life is a right that exists before men form governments so no Constitution applies here.  Governments are formed among men and constitutions written, our constitution at least, to protect those unalienable rights. Getting it wrong, deliberately re-imagining it, or simply changing it does not abrogate that which exists without it.

Of those rights, life is by far the most important for in its absence the other rights need not apply.  And yes,  life does begin at conception, for there is no other place for that thing we call life to begin. 

Read more

“So who’s right? The educators who insist on making the fundamentals of mathematics as complex as a Rubik’s cube, or the kid who probably has secret access to his mom’s old flashcards and sees this as a foolish waste of time?”

My mom’s flashcards taught me the answer was 13.  Period.  The kid gets it – and the teacher is leading him/her astray.  Or, given that most teachers were nearer the bottom of the SAT scores than the top than other college students (I’ve posted about the hour of my life trying to teach a School of Ed student that was in my EC 101 class  what Y=MX + B meant for graphing homework), this teacher hasn’t grasped the error of this way.  I’ve put up examples like this before – what our kids are now being taught, a curriculum / testing regime that has NEVER even been beta tested.  I have followed some of the money – and it leads to folks that are quite happy to keep upending what used to be the best educational system in the world (and if not THE best, certainly one of them). 

Read more

Senator Barack Obama, floor of the US Senate – 2005: Mr. President why aren’t we prepared for an Avian Flu pandemic?

The failure to prepare for emergencies can have devastating consequences. We learned that lesson the hard way after Hurricane Katrina. This nation must not be caught off-guard when faced with the prospect of an avian flu pandemic. The consequences are too high.

… I urge my colleagues in the Senate and the House to push this Administration to take the action needed to prevent a catastrophe that we have not seen during our lifetimes.”

April 2010:President Obama quietly dumps planed quarantine standards whose absence Senator Obama politicized in 2005.

The Obama administration has quietly scrapped plans to enact sweeping new federal quarantine regulations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention touted four years ago as critical to protecting Americans from dangerous diseases spread by travelers.

Read more

From Pete Ingemi ‘DaTechGuy.‘

But what (if) we stay home and they still win?

What if the GOP fails to win NH & NC and loses Kansas and still manages to get the net +6 seats to win the senate and increases their lead in the house?

If this happens what will happen to any perception of Tea Party / Libertarian power and how will a victorious GOP treat our causes?

Think about it.

I’m thinking…

Read more

From CNN (reformatted, emphasis mine):

In one of the most closely-watched Senate races of the year, incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina holds a narrow three-point advantage over her Republican challenger, according to a new CNN/ORC International survey. But the poll indicates that Thom Tillis, the GOP nominee, may be falling behind Hagan because a Libertarian candidate could be siphoning off Republican votes.  Hagan edges Tillis, 46%-43%, while Libertarian Sean Haugh has support from 7% likely voters, according to the poll.  The three-point gap between Tillis and Hagan, however, is well within the poll’s sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points among likely voters, meaning the candidates are about even.

… Hagan’s favorable rating is 46%, indicating that everyone who likes her is going to vote for her. But Tillis gets a 47% favorable rating among likely voters, yet only 43% of the vote. “That suggests that there are voters who would probably choose Tillis in a two-way race but aren’t going to vote for him in a three-way contest,” said CNN Polling

Read more

Mass shooting gun violence pales in comparison.

“…the CDC bicycle-related injury report for 2010 shows that almost twice as many people died on bicycles in that one year than were killed in “mass shootings” during the 14 years studied by the FBI. Thus, while there were 418 deaths in “mass shootings” from 2000 to 2013, there were 800 deaths by bicycle in 2010 alone.”

Or maybe Mad Moms against Gravity?  I don’t think the government is doing enough…

And CDC death statistics for 2010 show there were 26,009 deaths from “falling” for that year alone. That’s right–26,009 deaths in one year from falls from ladders, counters, roofs, mountains, etc.

The Democrats could really milk this one.  Victims of gravity related ‘violence.’  That “constituency” has to be huge.  And Al Gore could write a book about it and then jet-stream and Escalade his way here and there to warn us about the increasing risk that gravity presents to everyday citizens of planet earth (and civilization as he’d like to run it).

And while we’re at it…

Read more