Author: North Coast BBQ

Earlier this year I sent you the op-ed linked below. Oregon’s legislature begins a new session next week, so I’m sharing it again. I also sent it out to every state rep and senator.

The north coast can improve how we spend tax dollars collected from overnight visitors. We can make sure that money sustains our scenic rural heritage in ways that model fiscal stewardship.

To do that, we need to think beyond the narratives made by the same old lobbies that have driven discussions about tourism. That’s why I wrote this, in hopes of opening up the conversation. Thanks for reading it.

Watt Childress

www.upperleftedge.com/2026/01/06/smart-travel-money-helps-care-for-places-we-love/

Ashley Babbitt was part of a mob involved in a violent insurrection at the US Capitol with the goal of overturning a free and fair election. This mob was inside the Capitol and attempting to breach a set of double doors that had been barricaded with office furniture by Capitol Police. She was climbing through broken glass of one of the doors when U.S. Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd fired a single shot to stop her entry to the secured area. This stopped her from crossing the threshold and scared her accomplices away, preventing their advance into the breach. While her death is regrettable, I feel that his use of force is one of the few captured on video that remains defensible.

In contrast, Renee Good and Alex Pretti were both in their own city, unarmed, outnumbered, and shot multiple times while engaging in activities that are protected by the First Amendment. Jonathan Ross, who murdered Renee Good, and the two as-yet-unnamed Border Patrol agents who murdered Alex Pretti did so while acting recklessly and unprofessionally, and their superiors immediately lied about their victims in official statements.

There is no equivalency here.
I do not mourn Babbitt. I am angry that her co-insurrectionists were pardoned.
My heart breaks at the fate of Good and Pretti, because they were trying to make the world a better place. I am heartened that their comrades are still doing their best, and I would like to be counted among them.

As for some of the other issues raised, I am not Sisyphus to attempt to correct every factual error on the internet [ https://xkcd.com/386/ ] but I will point out that President Barack Obama issued fewer executive orders than President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton. In each of his terms President Obama issued fewer executive orders than President Donald J. Trump did in both President Trump’s first term and the first *year* of President Trump’s second term.
www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/executive-orders

There’s also a lot of whataboutism going on here!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

While Obama and Biden and all modern presidents have abused executive power, the levels of overreach we are seeing now are more frequent, more severe, and escalatory. It is established fact that the left critiqued Obama and Biden. A more meaningful exercise may be to compare the contrast the right’s reaction to the Jade Helm exercises of 2015 with the current deployments of ICE and DHS.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Helm_15_conspiracy_theories
We now have New York Times infographics on “How to Make Sense of the Federal Forces on the Streets”
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/24/us/us-federal-agents-national-guard-ice-fbi.html
And the Minnesota Star Tribune can help you identify the crowd control munitions that are being deployed in the neighborhood
www.startribune.com/federal-agents-are-deploying-clouds-streams-and-spatters-of-chemical-irritants-what-are-their-health-consequences/601568140
ICE has internal memos that say it no longer needs a warrant signed by a judge to enter a home.
apnews.com/article/ice-arrests-warrants-minneapolis-trump-00d0ab0338e82341fd91b160758aeb2d

I will be standing along Highway 101 at the next No Kings rally on March 28th. US politics is currently a two party game, unfortunately, but we’re at a heady moment of change. While most of the party leadership is center-right technocrats, there is a real and tangible shift for the Democratic Party towards rejecting the billionaire and oligarch class and moving towards progressive ideals that will help the vast majority of Americans, with inroads being made with Democratic Socialist candidates like Zohran Mamdani, and AOC. The Republican Party, however, has decided to go all in on the far right, Christian nationalism, and neosegregationists. I can pull the Democratic Party to the left. The Republican Party wants to exile, harass, and eliminate my friends, family, and community members. Team Blue might not be always right, but right now Team Red is dead wrong.

That’s enough out of me for now, your friendly local idealist solarpunk socialist. I’m glad to have a discussion by email if you like, but am more inclined to forum lurking than posting.

I am including links to media literacy guides from both the University of Oregon as well as Oregon State University so as to avoid any appearance of bias in that regard. =)
researchguides.uoregon.edu/medialiteracy/evaluating-sources
guides.library.oregonstate.edu/newsliteracy

A better world is possible.
Jeremiah Shepersky

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbN-AhFoN6M

THE START OF A NEW WORLD ORDER
That should be the title if you click on the above

Ma Muse link
www.facebook.com/share/v/1DBu4FJXXX/

Lyrics:
I am home in the holy
I’m stepping in fully
To the shift
To the change
To the ground
That’s holding me.
I’m alive to the midnight,
Wide eyed in the twilight
Giving up
Giving in
Giving over to the mystery
May my life be an offering
To serve our mutual flourishing
We are in the care of one another
I keep my inner fires burning
fuel the passion and the yearning
To give these gifts
To keep on learning
Without end

…. “The glorification of cruelty and rejection of compassion don’t just shape the Trump administration’s policies. Those values are also at the core of Trump’s own character and worldview. And they have become a rallying cry for a cadre of hard-right “Christian influencers” who are waging a war on empathy.

“Their twisted campaign validates Trump’s personal immorality and his administration’s cruelty. It marginalizes mainstream religious leaders who espouse traditional values that conflict with Trump’s behavior and agenda. And it threatens to pave the way for an extreme vision of Christian nationalism that seeks to replace democracy with theocracy in America.

…. “The tone was set right at the beginning of this second Trump presidency. The day after taking the oath of office last January, Trump attended a prayer service at the National Cathedral. The Episcopal bishop of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, directed part of her sermon at the new president: “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” She spoke of children of immigrant families afraid that their parents would be taken away, refugees fleeing persecution, and young LGBTQ Americans who feared for their lives. It was an honest plea, suffused with the kind of love and generosity toward neighbors and strangers that Jesus taught.

“Bishop Budde was immediately vilified. One Republican congressman said she “should be added to the deportation list.” The pastor and influencer Ben Garrett warned his followers, “This snake is God’s enemy and yours too. She hates God and His people. You need to properly hate in response.” The right-wing Christian podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey called the sermon “toxic empathy that is in complete opposition to God’s Word and in support of the most satanic, destructive ideas ever conjured up.” Toxic empathy! What an oxymoron. I don’t know if the phrase reflects moral blindness or moral bankruptcy, but either way it’s appalling.” ….

Her article goes on and on. Near the end she offers some ideas on what we can do, but I think misses the most direct and effective action: to call it what it is – Cruelty and Corruption. Their actions are CRUEL and CORRUPT, things most of us (Christians included) don’t want done in our names and would never vote for.

– Dave

But there was not a peep from the left, not a tear shed from the left, when the Feds blatantly murdered Ashley Babbit on J6.

If you consider yourself on the left, I challenge you to watch the feds murder of Ashley Babbit:
rumble.com/v6e3a71-ashli-babbitt-shooting-analysis..html?e9s=src_v1_s%2Csrc_v1_s_o&sci=eba5222e-d225-4c0e-b102-dd2a0f7f064b

The divide and conquer dual party fascism run by the oligarchs/bankers/tech bros needs to end.

TEAM RED VS TEAM BLUE needs to end.

It’s the people (the 99%) versus the bankers who create money out of thin air, their minions within corrupt elements of our military, the SiliCON valley tech boys, and the obedient oligarchs who make wars and make us sick in order to keep the scam going.

No Kings?? It’s easy for the left to see Drumf behaving as a King. But what of Biden and his autopen? Who was king then? And what of King Obama and his record persecution of whistleblowers and journalists? What of King Obama and his record number of Executive Orders, outdoing his predecessor King Dubya? What of King Obama dropping drone bombs in the Middle East weekly, or using USAID money to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Ukraine in 2014, doing the bidding of the bankers and starting NATOs current war with Russia? What of Queen Hillary overthrowing Honduras, installing death squads and causing a mass exodus north? What of Queen Hillary overthrowing Libya, laughing about the murder of Ghadaffi on 60-minutes, and causing a mass exodus to Europe?

My main problem with the left, and why I will NOT be joining the protestors along HWY 101 in Nehalem, is the left thinks Team Blue is ALWAYS RIGHT, and they as a whole tend to be extremely self-righteous about it, even as they traumatized our children with mandatory masks at school for months – just one example I can highlight.

Here are two comedians commenting on the need to end the two-party divide and conquer scam from on high, through the lens of the Minneapolis murders:

rumble.com/v74wyiw-what-theyre-not-telling-you-about-the-ice-killings.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp_a

Also, in my view, it was Jacob Frey and Tim Walz who are most to blame for the utter destruction of Minneapolis last time around. What will these two anti-American operatives do for the oligarchs this time around?

rumble.com/playlists/MJLsajTRn58

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