Above: Working each week to support community recycling efforts.
In the past, bake sales, car washes and raffles were used to raise money for school projects.
Back in the 90s, catalogs were sent home for friends and family to order candles and other small items (Made in China) from the giant catalog company in the tall office building in Chicago. The big middleman took a cut of the school donations so that educators and parents could minimize the human interactions that may serve as lessons for students on their way to becoming well-adjusted adults.
Small town, USA once featured raffles where educators, Moms and Dads or students went out and explained themselves to the WWII veteran who owned the hardware store. He donated a new toaster in exchange for a little free advertising and he set a tone of goodwill in the community. The gas station would donate a free tank of gas. The grocery store would donate a gift card, a coupon for a car wash, or movie tickets could be in the mix.
Today, the college educated people who run public school districts get together and decide to have machines take care of what used to involve human interaction.
Families may live hours apart. Maybe they haven’t seen or heard from each other in years. Maybe it’s all a big dysfunctional stew.
Maybe the text seems like soliciting tips at a restaurant.
Not asking about the oath of enlistment. Asking about what happens after the oath has been taken.
Love to see newspeople interview elected officials and let us know how sending US Troops to Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, etc., is somehow defending the constitution.
It feels like a society where honest and meaningful ideas stand up to questioning and discussion, but the questioning and discussion rarely takes place. Alternative media is good about asking questions and operating active comment sections.
Judge Napolitano – Judging Freedom
America 250
Credibility squandered, enthusiasm dried up.
A giant flag ritual at the next ball game will make it all good.
Don’t lie to people and maybe they would be more patriotic.
From 2004
“Today, however, the Congress has relinquished its delegated powers, giving the President license to do whatever he and his office determine that they can get away with. Consequentially, the presidential and legislative oaths to the Constitution have just turned into a great photo op on inauguration day.”
“It is a sad and hard realization for a grunt who loves the Marine Corps to admit that the organization is not used in the preservation of liberty, and has not been used toward that end for a very long time.”
“There is no sign indicating Trump plans on taking his foot off the gas when it comes to Venezuela and Maduro. The operations will continue, and our guys will continue to get the job done.”
Looking Forward To A Year-Long Freedom Tour
Past Super Bowl – US Air Power
Back To Asking Questions
Glenn Greenwald
How is the U.S. Going to RUN VENEZUELA?
Would any newsperson ever ask:
If the CIA (est 1947) serves as an advantage to the US, why does the Department of Defense have such a poor record of winning undeclared wars going back to 1949, the year DOD was established?
“As was the case the morning after “Shock and Awe” signaled the start of the Iraq war, many are cheering the US military raid on Venezuela and capture of its president, Nicolas Maduro. Overwhelming US military power – and likely some bribed Venezuelan officials – ensured that the operation was swift and dramatic.”
“Warmongering US Senator Lindsey Graham has taken to the television news programs to urge President Trump to continue on to Cuba and then Iran.”
Any Newsperson Anywhere
Please let us know when Seattle area drug addicts have any difficulty finding their cartel product of choice.
Don’t lie to people and maybe they would be more patriotic.
Judge Napolitano – Judging Freedom
Judge Napolitano – Judging Freedom
Glenn Greenwald
Would any TV newsperson ever ask:
Did the advantage of US air power allow the undeclared wars in Iraq or Afghanistan to be prevented, won or shut down?
US jet aircraft have been able to strike targets in what wars won by the US?
Above: A meetup with newspeople who ask questions.
From 2004
“Today, however, the Congress has relinquished its delegated powers, giving the President license to do whatever he and his office determine that they can get away with. Consequentially, the presidential and legislative oaths to the Constitution have just turned into a great photo op on inauguration day.”
“It is a sad and hard realization for a grunt who loves the Marine Corps to admit that the organization is not used in the preservation of liberty, and has not been used toward that end for a very long time.”
“While most Greenlanders favour eventual independence from Denmark, opinion polls show overwhelming opposition to becoming part of the US.”
Trade, Travel and Friendship
Some might say trade, travel and friendship (as much as possible) are good for the economy. This approach may help to avoid misunderstandings and wars.
Welcoming Visitors – USA Style – 2026
Friends and family or an exchange student visiting from Canada, Japan or Europe?
You’d like to have a good visit when you travel to see them. Plan to roll out the welcome mat when they visit here next summer.
A trip to a national park might be a chance to leave the pressures of the world behind for a few hours. Now, it will be a stop and ID event? Sort of like trying to enter a military facility.
Step over here and show us your papers before entering the park.
How many passengers are in the vehicle? All US citizens? Please pull over into the inspection lane for a brief interview and REAL ID check.
A giant flag ritual at the next ball game will make it all good.
Newspeople have a long history of not asking questions in this area.
After a Port Angeles CBP buildup that took place more than a decade ago, is there any follow up made by the press to inform the public on whatever results have been achieved?
If you run a government operation-these are the reporters you want to see on interview day:
Welcome Home Troops. Thanks for doing time/risking your ass in Iraq and Afghanistan, working to keep a post 911 USA safe & secure.
Don’t worry-The Super Bowl and public affairs will be safe:
Welcome Home Troops
Common flashlight batteries are now locked up like diamond jewelry:
Kristi Noem is sealing off the border. Any day now, cartel drugs will no longer be available anywhere in WA.
People will no longer need cash to support a drug habit. There will be no more need to steal, and we can all go back to how things were in the last century.
Back to a time before the US Dept. of Homeland Security was established in 2002. This giant federal agency now has more than two decades of experience and lessons learned in working to prevent cartel product from entering the US. More overdose deaths now, or before DHS?
We’re not impressed.
Credibility squandered, enthusiasm dried up.
Don’t lie to people and maybe they would be more patriotic.
Macho Swagger
Watch Secretary of War Pete Hegseth takes thrilling fighter jet ride with ‘Top-Gun’ pilots:
The US Dept. of Defense was nowhere to be found on 911.
We haven’t won a war since.
Decades after the lessons of Vietnam, it feels like the people who run the Pentagon specialize in undeclared/unwon wars. Is it understandable that young people and their parents and grandparents would take a dim view on all this?
TV Newspeople Function Like Paid Actors Reading A Script
TV newspeople:
Would any TV newsperson ever ask:
Did the advantage of US air power allow the undeclared wars in Iraq or Afghanistan to be prevented, won or shut down?
US jet aircraft have been able to strike targets in what wars won by the US?
“After finally getting the absurdly invasive pat-down, I barely made my flight. All this for an unconstitutional agency that isn’t even good at its job,” Duffy-Alfonso wrote. “Perhaps things would have gone more smoothly if I’d handed over my biometric data to a random private company (CLEAR). Then I could enjoy the special privilege of waiting in a shorter line to be treated like a terrorist in my own country.”
“She called current security measures for air travel on par with a setting from a dystopian novel written by George Orwell.”
She is being scolded in the comment section for questioning & criticizing federal policies.
The Oak Bay Starfish Take
Americans were told they faced a life and death situation after 911. If certain actions were not taken, terrorists could come to America to disrupt our way of life and attempt another 911.
If all this was a life and death situation that required sending the troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, wouldn’t it be important to ask a few public policy questions about what was going on?
A Fake War on Terror features TV newspeople out at the airport cheerfully reporting on the busiest travel days of the year.
In a real War on Terror, real newspeople would ask:
What keeps the terrorists of the GWOT from creating a disruption at the back end of the airport security screening line?
Guaranteed: No TV newsperson anywhere will ever ask this question. Americans do not live in a free and honest society.
Imagine the TV newsperson, on camera, escorting the TSA official all the way to the back of the “be sure to arrive early line” and asking what keeps the bad guys from creating a disruption at that point.
The mainstream media functions like paid actors reading a script.
Over and again- Newspeople play the role of federal public affairs staff instead of asking questions.
Every year is the same. Similar cheerful video, no mater where you are in the USA.
No voices of dissent. No passengers with questions about security theater will ever make it on air.
“Releasing the Epstein files is the easiest thing in the world. Just release it all. Let the American people sort through every bit of it, and, you know, support the victims. That’s just like the most common sense, easiest thing in the world. But to spend any effort trying to stop it makes – it just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Wrong.
We are here to suppress information. Get on board or suffer the consequences.
A giant flag ritual at the next ball game will make it all good.
The US federal government has been involved in decades of various events where records were sealed or redacted and files were kept secret.
Our take: The US should maintain strong and ready military forces.
Decades after the lessons of Vietnam, the Pentagon seems to specialize in undeclared/unwon wars. Understandable why young people & their parents & grandparents would take a dim view on all this. Continuing on this path will wear down the energy American families once had for encouraging young people to enlist.
Some will say obese teens and young adults are to blame for the big recruiting crisis. Thousands of young, intelligent and athletic Americans participate in college athletics each year. Certainly, they would qualify to enlist- no rehab/prep program required.
Why are these people not showing up at the recruiting office?
Zero questions from small or large newspapers. Zero questions from TV newspeople.
Forced to pay for a $51.6 billion (every 12 months) US Dept. of Homeland Security that fails to create any shortage of cartel product in the Puget Sound area.
Our take: Go with a social security grandfather clause. Let people who become adults (18 and up) in the year XXXX know that the program will work differently for them.
The Department of Defense track record for winning undeclared wars goes back to 1949.
Whatever happened to the formal congressional declaration of war?
This would be the time to hear from elected leaders and top generals on all the issues that have doomed the Department of Defense track record for winning wars since DOD was established in 1949.
“To recall a related fairy tale, Washington enjoys conjuring the genie, and is later unwilling and unable to put the genie back in the bottle. Vietnam, Central America, Yugoslavia, Iraq I and II, Afghanistan, and Ukraine – in every case Americans woke up to the fact their government lied, created the problem, never had a plan to resolve the problem…”
“We’re always told versions of the same lie: We need to fight them over there so that we don’t have to fight them here. Communism had to be rolled back in Vietnam else commies would be landing in Manhattan. Iraq had to be pummeled and Saddam overthrown before WMD landed in Boston. Afghanistan had to be pacified and modernized before the Taliban enforced conservative Sharia law in Biloxi.”
“None of this was true. The United States would have been perfectly safe without committing any troops to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In fact, the U.S. would have been far better off if those wars had never been fought.”
The Oak Bay Starfish Take – US Armed Forces Recruiting Crisis
Some will say obese teens and young adults are to blame for the big recruiting crisis. Thousands of young, intelligent and athletic Americans participate in college athletics each year. Certainly, they would qualify to enlist- no rehab/prep program required.
Why are these people not showing up at the recruiting office?
Any questions from newspeople?
Currently serving four-star officers and high level DOD civilians brought us a US Armed Forces recruiting crisis.
Thousands of American families have now had a loved one who did one or more tours in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Will they support new enlistments?
Decades after the lessons of Vietnam, it feels like the people who run the Pentagon specialize in undeclared/unwon wars.
Understandable why young people and their parents and grandparents would take a dim view on all this.
If DOD was an NFL team, sports talk radio would feature comments like:
The Dept. of Defense was nowhere to be found on 911. We haven’t won a war since.
Any college or pro football coach would have been fired a dozen times over for what DOD has done with the US Armed Forces during the fake GWOT era.
Flag officers and high level DOD civilians built careers made of undeclared/unwon wars. Now they must mastermind ways to recruit a new generation.
In past decades, people could do time in uniform, then return to the US with a feeling that they were living in the best country on the planet.
A giant/$51.6 billion (every 12 months) US Dept. of Homeland Security with more than two decades of experience and lessons learned fails to keep cartel product from arriving in all 50 states.
American Families
Will you question the idea that sending troops to Iraq was essential to keep terrorists away, but somehow, cartel drugs are able to show up in all 50 states?
Another of many examples where American freedoms may come & go-completely unrelated to military operations/US Troops in distant lands, or the Sound of Freedom over Coupeville:
KOMO allows comments. Several comments are posted with the story above.
The Show Must Go On
A big Homeland Security/made for TV show of force at the Super Bowl each year. Staged by the same people who fail to keep cartel product from showing up in Hometown, USA.
Welcome Home Troops
Thanks for doing time/risking your ass in Iraq and Afghanistan, working to keep a post 911 USA safe & secure.
Don’t worry-The Super Bowl and public affairs will be safe:
JFK speaks about the role of the press and voices of dissent in a free society:
Source/Daily Status Reports: Washington State Department of Health Shellfish Safety Map
Click image once or twice to show detail.
Several Whidbey beaches remain closed all year long for recreational shellfish harvest because of sewage treatment outfall.
Sewage treatment outfall. Not stormwater. Not climate change.
Reporting on this topic appears to be completely off limits to the press.
View the Washington State Department of Health beach list here.
Penn Cove
Love to see newspeople ask:
When is the last time all of Penn Cove was safe for recreational shellfish harvest?
Love to see newspeople visit Penn Cove and ask about the Award Winning Sewage Treatment Plant and why the beach adjacent to the Award Winning Sewage Treatment Plant is unsafe for recreational shellfish harvest.
Has anyone ever seen the Puget Sound area press ask questions about Whidbey water quality impacted by sewage treatment plant outfalls?
Has anyone ever seen any government agency, elected official or volunteer organization seeking answers related to one or more sewage treatment plants sending unsafe product into the waters near Whidbey Island?
Zero questions from small or large newspapers. Zero questions from TV newspeople.
Alternative media is a good place to look for voices of dissent.
“My group and scientists from the University of Albany are now studying the meteorology of the LA wildfires earlier this month and have significant early results. At the American Meteorological Society meeting last week, I attended many wildfire meteorology sessions and talked to several colleagues who have actively studied such events. The LA fires were a topic of considerable discussion.”
“We have a good idea of what happened: an extreme/unusual Santa Ana event associated with severe downslope winds. In this blog, I will show you some early simulations and explain why this event occurred.”
“I will also describe why climate change did not play a significant role.”
“There are several media outlets and climate activists that are suggesting that LA fires were the result of global warming or significantly enhanced by human-caused warming.”
“I am particularly troubled by the media pushing weather/climate theories that are untrue. A prime example is the unsupported claim that the Lahaina fire was associated with the passage of a hurricane to the south. This was proven to be false.”
“Some climate activists and media outlets are claiming the drought or climate change were major contributors to the recent wildfires around Los Angeles (see sample below)”
“These claims can easily be shown to be false.”
“Once the wildfires got to the homes or burning embers reaches the homes, the homes THEMSELVES supplied the fuels.”
“One house ignited the next.”
“This is very similar to the situations of others major urban wildfires, such as the Camp Fire (Paradise, CA), Lahaina (Maui), and the Marshal Fire (Superior, CO). Homes flammability has little to do with weather conditions. But poorly constructed homes (e.g., flammable roofs, no screens to stop embers moving into home spaces) are major problems.”
“There is No Trend of Less Precipitation in Southern California”
“Very strong video and photographic evidence indicated the Los Angeles Eaton fire, which resulted in the most deaths was due to a faulty power line. Clearly, this transmission line was not de-energized even with the forecast of severe Santa Ana winds.”
“Washington legislators put $5 million toward the program as part of the 2023-25 state transportation budget, with money from the Climate Commitment Act.”
If ethanol made a lot of sense we wouldn’t have to subsidize it or mandate its consumption:
Did hostile forces in distant lands attempt to replace US consumer demand with government demand and end the free enterprise system?
Alternative media provides an update on the banning of gas powered outdoor equipment:
Unlike many local newspapers, alternative media is good with maintaining an active comment section. More than 3,000 comments are posted with the video above.
Mainstream media functions like paid actors reading a script:
Americans do not live in a free and honest society. Today, the mainstream media will function like paid actors reading a script.
Would any newsperson ever ask:
Did the advantage of US air power allow the undeclared wars in Iraq or Afghanistan to be prevented, won or shut down?
US jet aircraft have been able to strike targets in what wars won by the US?
JFK speaks about the role of the press and voices of dissent in a free society:
Talk of calling out the mistakes of government and encouraging voices of dissent is the sort of stuff that might get social media accounts suppressed or restricted today. The wrong thoughts could be branded as misinformation.
Let’s go ahead and post that same speech from a different source, maybe both will stay up.
Same speech from another source:
Back in 2020, I posted a blog and included the same JFK speech. That video is no longer available.
JFK speaks about the role of the press in a free society:
My Take
What did JFK’s free and independent press turn into?
Newspeople play the role of federal public affairs staff as authorities prepare for the Super Bowl.
We are the very best at militarized pageantry for pro sports events.
Sorry, no time for newspeople to ask:
Did the advantage of US air power allow the undeclared wars in Iraq or Afghanistan to be prevented, won or shut down?
Today, the best example of a free and independent American press is what you will find in sports culture.
Think of an NFL game. Coaches and quarterbacks face the press after every game and answer questions, win or lose.
No press secretary. No public relations spokesperson. No freedom of information act requests. No classified documents.
Instant replays, commentary in the broadcast booth, analysis from network studios, sports talk radio, etc. Fans get tons of info all of the time. No chance for conspiracy theories to develop. Missed calls by NFL officials may be discussed for weeks on end. No such thing as: “We can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.” Instant replay is for all to see. Sports writers are OK with being critical of coaches, teams, players, the rule book, the league, referees, team owners, when the season starts and ends, etc. This is what a free and independent press looks like. Go ahead and have sports writers cover public policy, Homeland Security and US Dept. of Defense news and I’m good with that.
In 2023, the press tends to support government agencies, departments and policies rather than question them.
Zero questions from small or large newspapers. Zero questions from TV newspeople.
The small papers will say they need more support from subscribers and advertising dollars or cash from the federal government to stay alive. All this because COVID or the internet or lack of newspaper sales, or a free and independent press that needs taxpayer support.
People who take no public funds, private donations or advertising dollars are free to ask questions at any time. Why not the press? Call for unpaid volunteers and you’d get better news coverage than what we have now.
I’d be more interested in paying (again) for a local paper subscription if there was more in the way of newspeople asking questions.
No sense in subscribing to newspapers that do not ask public policy-related questions.
Instead of waiting for school teachers to teach about individual rights and limited government authority, waiting on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein or the take down of the next bad guy in distant lands, waiting on the press to ask questions, or courts to handle cases, these guys go out and update us with a quick reality check.
Above: Working each week to support community recycling efforts.
