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GraniteGrok

Shawn Millerick: kettle, black

Jethro BodineYou know, I ALMOST forgot about this line:

——– Original Message ——–
Subject:     Kuster??
Date:     Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:39:47 -0500
From:     Shawn Millerick <shawn.millerick@gmail.com>
To:     skip@granitegrok.com <skip@granitegrok.com>

How is it the biggest opportunity to bash a Democrat/Liberal comes along and you guys have stories about snow storms on your site? Kuster dodging taxes is not big enough to cover?? You guys are lame. Keep going after everyone else. I suspect I was the only person who read your site today so you should thank me.

Shawn P Millerick

Now, we make no bones about it – we are a state level blog in one of the Union’s smallest States staffed by a small group of part-timers; we know where we stand in the greater blogosphere.  While we do have several award winning bloggers and while our traffic is mild compared to some, we’re ok with our size and are grateful to every reader that comes to the ‘Grok, even if it is just one.  But this had me scratching my head – NH Journal puts itself up as THE place to go here in NH for this kind of stuff, and has full timers (or did – I only go over there maybe a couple times a year at best) and with Hynsie’s former blogger cred for link love, I figured that their traffic would give credence to Millerick’s sneering.  Instead, we’ve caught another acting like Fergus “The Fringe” Cullen.

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Palate Cleanser #2 – Can you serve table tennis this fast?

I used to play a lot of table tennis (“ping-pong”) quite a bit in college in the dorm as there were a lot of Chinese students coming over.  No, I didn’t win hardly ever against these guys – they humored me.  At some point, I started to actually win some points (vs them just really … Read more

On the dole: “A hand up or a hammock?” Let’s get back to basics

Welfare, that is.  Used to be called “charity” from private sources, and sometimes, folks stayed at the county “poor house”.  Nowadays, the dole (heck, even “welfare”)  is dressed up in smooth bureaucratise so as not to “cause undue stigmatism towards those that need assistance”.  Payments go directly from Government “dole-er outers” to those that supply the services or goods like Section 8 housing or EBT cards.

coca-cola-2-liter-botleAh yes, EBT cards – groceries, drug stores,….vacation hot spots, casinos, and strip clubs!  Money is money and fungible if you are a well-flushed non-profit (Planned Parenthood moving abortion money as well as any crafty hedge fund operator), well-connected politician, or welfare “client”.  From an efficiency standpoint, an EBT card is just as easy as technology can make it inexpensive for Government to allocate taxpayer monies – and for those on the dole to purchase a lot of things that they normally can’t.  Oh, not necessarily directly with the card, but how often have you been behind someone in the grocery store buying groceries that are sometimes more expensive than what you can afford – even as you are dinged for higher taxes for these “most vulnerable”?  Well, it has been my mindset that while a safety-net does need to be provided, why does it have to purchase filet mignon (and yes, I did see that purchased with an EBT card)? It shouldn’t – and given technology, it should easily be possible, using a longer term benefit / cost ratio, to limit EBT transactions to less variety and less costly food products (and locations).

One California legislature is willing to make a first swipes:

The money California taxpayers pay that funds CalFresh, the food stamps program, may be earmarked so that the recipients of government largesse cannot use the food stamps to buy sugary sodas and other beverages that have more than 10 calories per cup.

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The White House is out with its Sequester Doom & Gloom – but what does the chart really say?

Ah yes, Obama hoisted on his own petard.  How “smooth” is it for the White House to start hauling out these “the Sequester is going to hurt children and old people” stats, but fail to note “Oh yeah, our boss was the one that first suggested this with his last self-serving hissy fit on the last debt ceiling fight”:

  • Some 600,000 poor women and children will no longer get free milk and cheese
  • 2,100 fewer food inspections will take place if federal budget cuts expected to kick in March 1 actually take place.
  • federal agencies notified hundreds of thousands of federal workers that furloughs could be around the corner
  • 70,000 children would get kicked out of early childhood intervention programs that help poorer children catch up to middle-class peers, heading into kindergarten.
  • 1,000 fewer criminals would be prosecuted due to furloughed federal prosecutors.
  • 4 million fewer “Meals on Wheels” would be delivered to the elderly.
  • 1,000 fewer research grants would be awarded, cutting research and laboratories for some 12,000 scientists and students.

Oh, the horror of it all – this PROGRESSIVE policy of “try to trick the Republicans” – Obama set this up to take a hard toll on the Military, believing that the Republicans would cave before letting that happen.  Seems, however…

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What a combo of jobs – but pushing the limit of ‘Grok Rule #1?

OK, so it is a lightweight Friday nite.  Yes this is off the regular beaten pathI don’t think I have EVER seen one person with such a combination of jobs interplaying both at the same time. I’ve hesitated for a while about posting this – this is about as close to ‘Grok Rule #1 (adult … Read more

NH HB 514 – NH State Reps having a “I want my free lift ticket” hissy fit bill

HB 514 – can you say “Give us a perk that mere voters can’t have”?  Whiners, they are.  Talk about voting something from the Public Larder Treasury!  Grant Bossie from NH Watchdog has the sordid tale of the “NH State Reps who want free skiing” (reformatted, emphasis mine):

(CONCORD) Some New Hampshire Representatives want their free lift ticket back. After getting free passes to state-owned Cannon Mountain Ski Area for years, a Legislative Ethics Committee letter last winter found that the freebies violated the Legislature’s ban on gifts over $25. But a trio of lawmakers have introduced a bill that would exempt Cannon Mountain from the gift ban.

 And who are these fine, upstanding ethical NH State Reps that want us to pay for their skiing?  The ones that are supposed to be leaders here in the State?

Representatives Gary Coulombe (D-Berlin), Andrew Schimdt (D-Grantham), and Herb Richardson (R-Lancaster) are sponsoring HB 514, which adds an exemption to the ethic guidelines for House and Senate members to receive passes to Cannon Mountain. The House Legislative Administration Committee takes up the bill with a public hearing Thursday morning at the Legislative Office Building in Concord.

 Hey, why not?  Don’t like the current definition of what true ethical behavior is?  Simple – with our descent into relativism and subjective morals, all one has to do is simply redefine what ethical behavior is?  Isn’t that the lesson that the Progressives have given us with post-modernism and deconstruction?  Neitzsche nihilism – does anything matter?  It used to: “Live Free or Die; death is not the worst of all evils” – strong words built on a strong philosophy of knowing what was right – and what was wrong.

These chuckleheads could take a lesson from that wise saying – they really should.

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Messaging: So Obama wants to decide if more people should not be allowed their Second Amendment Rights?

Click to watch
Click to watch
“But there are certain people, people who have mental health issues, perhaps.    People who have felony records.  These are all categories of people who are not entitled to carry guns and I think that we have to make sure that it continues to be the case.  One of the things that the President has asked me to do is to look at that list, those categories, and see if we have to expand it to make sure that, again, the wrong people do not come into possession of guns.”

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“So God made a Liberal”

I do have to put up the RAM truck ad from the Super Bowl – while people figured out it was a Dodge Ram ad, the star that every one has talked about since was the monologue on farmers that the late Paul Harvey gave and served as the narrative for the ad.  Very well … Read more

Tyranny #3 – Minimum wage isn’t about economics – it’s about “Community”, dontcha know?

“All one community…“

Of all the reasons to raise a minimum wage (leaving aside for the moment, the utter crassness of know-it-all politicians who believe they know what’s best for the health of a company, especially a small biz in this economy, than the owners do), this has GOT to be one of the stupidest:

CONCORD – The state’s business community, large and small, turned out in force Tuesday to attack two bills that would raise the minimum wage while allies with organized labor and anti-poverty programs said reinstating a state minimum and raising it above the federal standard would have an economic stimulus effect.

Both Rep. Peter Sullivan, D-Manchester, and Rep. Timothy Robertson, D-Durham, said the new Legislature should undo the work of the last one, which got rid of a state minimum wage that had been on the books since 1949.

Sure, why not – they are actively working to undo everything that the Republican supermajorities did last session.  Hey, monkey-DC, monkey-Concord as far as the Democrats are concerned.  Is this now the “new normal” – whip sawing the State simply “we’re not Republicans”?  Instead of governing well (which used to mean “do the least harm, or even better, emulating Cal Coolidge), do the Dems really want to descend to tit-for-tat eternally?  Or, again as what is happening in DC led by Obama, trying hard to erase the GOP?  Either way, that is not governance, that is elementary school playground.

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Biden:”If it only saves one life!” Does Joe want the Elderly just to take a knee and die?

Imagine what would have happened if the Progressives are successful in effectively neutering the Second Amendment: A 72-year-old homeowner immediately retrieved his handgun when he heard several home intruders attempting to gain entry to his Las Vegas residence early Monday morning. And when the criminals entered his bedroom, he opened fire, killing one of the … Read more

Data Point – Future Entitlement Spending

When you look at future Federal budgets and wonder why you can’t feed YOUR kids because the Progressive programs (and the debt for funding them) are sucking it away from you, you can blame ourselves for putting these chuckleheads at the helm. (H/T: Heritage)

Data Point: Homeschooled students place higher than the government schooled

Just cruising around and ran across this over at Breitbart: In a study published in 2009, 12,000 homeschooled students from across the 50 states were tested on national measures of reading, language, math, science, and social studies. In the core studies of reading, language, and math, the average homeschooler scored at the 88th percentile, while … Read more

Ted Nugent? Piers Morgan? Gun control? Slapdown!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkjIMxf0VyU “Why does anyone need…”  Always, the Progressive not understanding that Freedom does not require a need to obvious to anyone other than the person who wishes to possess or do someting.” Uncle Ted’s line of the interview: “Would you leave us the hell alone!”  I really do wish that Progressives would stop trying to … Read more

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