“…There is no mention of GraniteGrok, or Mike Rogers, as the source.  (I’ll let Skip or Mike tackle those who use their links without proper attribution.)…”

As one of the great philosophers of our recent past once said “Here I am, Moe“!  Given Steve’s post, from whence that quote emanated, where he was questioning why the Gary Lambert for Congress campaign would use material associated with the ‘Grok without attribution, I decided to ask so I emailed them a bit ago.  Not hearing back, I decided that perhaps a nudge might be in order:

From: “skipdcm” <Skip@GraniteGrok.com>
To: josh@lambertforcongress.com; gary@lambertforcongress.com
Sent: 8/12/2014 6:23:28 PM
Subject: Use of GraniteGrok materials without attribution

Gentlemen,
Why Doesn’t Lambert for Congress Mailer Cite GraniteGrok.com?
This is what Steve wrote this post earlier today; please read it for the details.

I have always maintained that any candidate is welcome to use any video or audio that we create in listening to them speak, or talking / interviewing them provided that the give attribution credit to GraniteGrok.

Read more

I wrote about the Gilford School Board’s brazen decision to limit the First Amendment Right of Gilford parents to question their elected officials on the School Board (here) by codifying that parents had no right to seek redress of grievances of the Board if  their first step, meeting with the school’s Principal, failed. I also told them, face to face, that they were holding themselves unaccountable by NOT answering questions posed to them during public input – they would only sit there, stonefaced.

I thought it was an isolated event with one school board, but then I saw this on the Cornish School Board (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Cornish — Despite opposition from several Cornish residents, the School Board on Monday passed a resolution revising the board’s policy on public participation, removing language from the old policy that encouraged public input at board meetings.  More than 30 people attended the meeting, and according to Glenn Thornton, vice chairman of the board, the portion of the meeting devoted to the public participation policy went well.  “The chair provided everyone an opportunity to voice their thoughts and opinions freely, and it was very cordial,” Thornton said.

Well, of course it went well – all they had to do is sit there and do nothing.  After all, their business is over and no interaction is unneeded.  Er, there’s someone that disagrees with this?

Read more

GraniteGrok is both flattered and confused.  The Lambert for Congress campaign recently sent out a mailer in which they referenced a web address attached to a video we posted here.

Along side the link address were additional references supporting the same claim cited as “Ernst & Young Study September 2011, Shapiro McArthur Study June 2009.

The claim in the mailer was that Marilinda Garcia supports 150 Billion in new taxes that would kill over 500,000 American jobs.

This is an incredible claim, and not simply because it is hyperbolic.   It is incredible because the odds of you finding any credible corroboration of the accusation, given the references provided on the mailer are near to nil.

Read more

In a lot of ways, the MSM has brought this upon themselves – plummeting ad revenue and dropping subscriber numbers.  Part of it has been the Internet but to a large degree, and there are no small number of folks that would agree with me, it has been the ever leftward inching that the media outlets have been taking.  In many cases, they’ve also been making sport of conservatives and those on the Right (and Libertarians) who have resisted the communitarianism of today’s “conventional wisdom” of Progressivism.  After all, ask most journalists what they think of the three TEA Party Principles (and not the TEA Party itself) – you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from most, and in a lot of ways the same talking points, from Democrat operatives / activists.  When you insult, repeatedly, half your current potential audience, bad things happen.  Like at the Telegraph:

Longtime Concord reporter Kevin Landrigan laid off by Nashua Telegraph
Newspaper decides to shut its State House Bureau

The Telegraph of Nashua has closed its State House bureau, laying off Kevin Landrigan, a journalistic institution in Concord for a generation. Telegraph editor Phil Kincade in a memo sent to yesterday to the staff said that the decision to close the bureau, “part of the recent newsroom staff adjustments … was an extremely difficult to make, not just because of the hole it creates in our news coverage, but it also means saying goodbye to one of the Telegraph’s most loyal, hard working and respected employees.”

Been there, laid off there during the 80s as the minicomputer industry got “creative destructed” by first the workstation industry which, in turn, got obsoleted by the PC industry.  It’s no fun and it does hurt.  But no room somewhere else from what Kincade is calling their #1 employee? 

Read more

David French over at The Corner has 6 simple reasons why Obama should be trying to defeat ISIS NOW instead of waiting for their Jihad to hit us in a little while:

Let’s make this simple, shall we?

1. Al-Qaeda carried out the deadliest attack on American soil in American historyand the most devastating foreign attack against an American city since the British occupied and burned Washington during the War of 1812.
2. ISIS is more brutal than al-Qaeda.
3. ISIS has more financial resources than al-Qaeda.
4. ISIS controls more territory — and possesses more firepower – than al-Qaeda.
5. ISIS has seized uranium in sufficient quantities to make a radiological weapon, a dirty bomb.
6. The leader of ISIS declared to his former American captors, “See you in New York,” and ISIS militants have pledged to raise the black flag of jihad over the White House.

In other words, ISIS is more capable in every way than the terrorists that hit America so hard on 9/11.

Read more

Part 1.  Judgment time.  The question is, was this good judgment on the part by one of the most powerful elected officials in NH – haranguing other people in a bar simply because he didn’t have the judgment to shut himself off?  In fact, you can hear someone in the video saying exactly that – in wondering if he was a State Rep (not knowing he was a NH State Senator): “They should have shut him off three hours ago!”

“I wish you’d shown me the way to go home
I’m drunk and I oughta to go to bed
I started having drinks about three hours ago
And they went right to my head…”

 Now, please note that I am not passing judgment – at least not at this time.  I don’t drink (other than a single sip of champagne at a wedding or New Years’ party merely to be polite) and there is no alcohol in my house (‘cept maybe a couple of small dusty bottles of cooking sherry in a back kitchen cabinet).  Why?  I am the son of an Irish drunk; I learned

Read more

You’ve probably seen this by now but if not, it is an open letter from Bob Smith for Senate to the Republican National Committee.  The Aug 9th letter points out to the RNC, that they are not supposed to take sides in primaries.  They are fundraising off polling between Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and some guy named Scott Brown, but there are three Republican in a primary t challenge Jeanne Shaheen.

Isn’t that one of those commandments we hear about?  The RNC shalt not fund raise off just one candidate in a primary…unless it is the Democrat.

In this case, the RNC is raising money off polling between one of the three Republican candidates and the Democrat.

Tisk Tisk.

Subject line: Open Letter of Complaint to RNC

For Immediate Release

Read more

Low intelligence estimates have forced our Black American President to have to kill brown people in the Middle East.

No word on how many terrorists will be ‘recruited’ as a result of this latest “The Man” caused contingency operation, but don’t expect any estimates from the ‘situation room’ in Maratha’s Vineyard or from the media.  They stopped real reporting on wars (body counts, the pulse of the Muslim Street) as soon as the light-bringer was immaculated.

Also waiting on clarification as to how these terrorists overthrowing another government are not part of the Arab Spring like they were in Egypt, Libya, and Syria.

Read more

To be honest, not a lot to watch as two of our segments had call in guests and it was just Steve and I in studio this week.  But, here they are!

• Segment 1 – News of the Day and Week  with Groksters Mike (on phone), Steve, and Skip
• Segment 2 – NH State Rep Emily Sandblade (physicist by training, so a Smart Person by any means) comes on to talk about Common Core and how Manchester’s School Board is trying to pull the old switcheroo by saying they are not using Common Core by putting some sugar on top and rearranging the deck chairs on this Titanic.
• Segment 3 – Grokster Susan comes on to talk about the State’s bureaucrats taking matters into their own hands without authorizing legislation and deciding to play Three Card Monte with the Pistol / Revolver License form that now asks a question that NO Citizen can reasonable and logically answer.
• Segment 4 – Steve and Skip talk about our candidates for our Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment of the week.

Segment 1                                                            Segment 2

Read more

I’ve been asking this question at the national level where we have seen the EPA, HHS, DOJ, and IRS (to name the “agencies of the day”) obfuscate, mislead, or outright lie to Congress and private Citizens.  In each case, we see a partisanship that has not been seen in decades (or worse, the first time).  Call me naïve, but regardless of Party-in-Power, the bureaucrats are answerable to “their masters” – be they their higher-ups in the Executive Branch, oversight by the Legislative / Judicial Branches and certainly to individual or groups of Citizens.  Our Republic form of government demand nothing less lest we loose that form  of Government.  Remember: The Bigger the Government, the smaller the citizen.

And the San Jose Police Dept certainly felt that it was unaccountable to Citizens, hiding something of much value to them, until it was no longer able to hide:

San Jose Police Dept. Spends Two Years Denying Any Interest In Drones Before Apologizing And Handing Over Documents

The San Jose Police Department has spent more than two years denying it has a drone in its possession, having returned no responsive documents to MuckRock during its 2012 and 2013 “drone census” document requests. The drone the SJPD pretended to not have in its possession (until just recently) may have not been acquired until early 2014, but its grant application was actually submitted sometime prior to November 30, 2012. But this is how the SJPD responded during previous requests.

When someone makes a FOIA / RTK request to government (Freedom of Information Act in most places, Right To Know here in NH), a “responsive document” means that the government entity (or one outside of government but still receiving taxpayer monies) has something in their possession that pertains to that request.  So in this case, the Government agency just flat out lied.  It decided that it no longer had to be accountable to Citizens.  It decided that it WAS Bigger Government that was larger than an individual citizen.  By lying, it made that citizen insignificant.

Read more

I live in a more rural area in Central NH – certainly not a city or “in town” that isn’t quite what I would call “suburban” and we get fairly few strangers out here – and one day, the dogs started barking up a storm.  A rather burly young guy was coming up our pathway; his truck said something about steaks and he said he was selling high quality steaks door to door – asked if I’d be interested.  I replied, through my closed and locked door (my door are ALWAYS locked, even during the day and I’m at home – shades of living in Boston for the better part of a decade).  He walked away.  Couple nights later, a repeat performance and this time he had a bit of a desperate look on his face….

This is Why People Carry a Gun When Answering the Door

Numerous people have criticized homeowners  for having a gun in their hand or on their person when answering a door.  I have always maintained that it is only prudent to do so.

…The incident occurred around 1:27 a.m. July 28, when Daryl Marquis Evans, 22, knocked on the door of the home and displayed a handgun when the front door was opened by a 29-year-old resident, according to the press release. Police later determined Evans was carrying a Taurus PT 911 9mm handgun. The resident was also armed, with a .40-caliber Smith and Wesson in his waistband, which he brought with him to answer the door due to the late hour, the district attorney’s office said.  The homeowner made the evaluation that defense instructors suggest.  “Does this attacker intend to kill or severely injure me, even if I comply?”

Read more