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Submitted By: dixiedarrow@icloud.com – Click to email about this post

President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post Feb. 13 he plans to sign an executive order requiring voter ID for midterm elections this year as the SAVE Act remained on life support in the Senate.
“We cannot let the Democrats get away with NO VOTER I.D. any longer,” Trump posted. “Even Democrat Voters agree, 85 percent, that there should be Voter I.D.”
“This is an issue that must be fought, and must be fought, NOW! If we can’t get it through Congress, there are Legal reasons why this SCAM is not permitted. I will be presenting them shortly, in the form of an Executive Order,” Trump said.

The U.S. House passed the SAVE America Act on Feb. 11. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) led the legislation that would require Americans to prove their citizenship when registering to vote.
Under the bill, citizens would have to show a photo identification when casting ballots, including mail-in ballots.
The bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said this week there aren’t enough votes to drop the filibuster to advance the bill.

The bill allows several valid forms of proof, including a U.S. passport, a REAL ID, or enhanced driver’s license, government-issued photo identification, such as a passport card, and a U.S. military ID shown alongside a military record of service showing the United States as the applicant’s birthplace.
Several left-wing and progressive organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the Brennan Center for Justice, came out against the Voter ID requirement this week.
Democrat Sen. John Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, broke party lines this week to support photo ID voting requirements, but told Dasha Burns on Politico’s “The Conversation” that his support did not extend to the House-passed bill.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who often votes against her party, became the first Republican to speak out against the bill Feb. 10. The senator claimed the bill would federalize elections.

Submitted By: Spblat@gmail.com – Click to email about this post

Happy Valentine’s Day from North Coast Pinball
Thanks for reading this monthly update! More important stuff is up top, followed by too much information about what’s going on behind the scenes at NCP. I may include a mild rant about current events at the end, which I invite you to skip if that’s not your thing. Will I keep writing these? Depends on feedback. Please let me know what you think.
Teen Night is back! Teenagers (and almost-teenagers) are invited for free pinball this Friday, February 20th from 6-8 PM. Thanks to Christy Kay of Rising Hearts Studio in Nehalem for hosting this and for doing the work to keep it funded. You can contact her with questions or make a donation at (503) 800-1092. Do you have an event you’d like to host here? Get in touch or visit northcoastpinball.com/events.
Our monthly tournament is tomorrow, Sunday 2/15 at 5 PM. Last month we had 9 charming people join us, and my friend Kris took home the token box trophy. I’ll try to write down a couple of exciting tidbits for next month’s update. If you have never joined a pinball tournament, ours is a friendly group, and it’s a great way to meet nice people and learn some skills. Come see!
After a 31-month hiatus, Avengers Infinity Quest (AIQ, 2020) is back on the floor and it’s our “Game of the Month” for February. Come on in, beat the top score, and enter your initials. If your score holds through the end of the month, you get a medallion made just for you. (If you don’t like medallions, you can surrender yours for 100 tokens.) Come in and play AIQ before I take it away again, which probably won’t take long. Congratulations to my friend Chris for being last month’s winner on Back to the Future with a monumental score of 18,273,900. You can learn more about our “Game of the Month” program at northcoastpinball.com/gotm.
Stern Pinball has finally revealed the much-anticipated “Pokémon Pinball” and I am beyond hyped. You’ll start to see it in arcades within a few weeks. Ours will be delayed a little because I’ve ordered an upgraded “premium” model, which doesn’t go into production until later. Hopefully we’re all playing it here by April. Meanwhile I invite you to come in and fill out a “game change requisition form” to let me know which game should go away to make room for it—these are important decisions!
I…finally installed a claw machine last month. Out of 5 people I ask, 4 think they’re fun and harmless, and one (I’m in this minority) is not a fan. My machine is a bit unique in that a card I wrote for the game reveals *every* *single* *detail* about how it works and why the claw seems to drop the prize at the last minute (tl;dr: yes, it’s rigged; based on the value of what I put in it, the goal is a 40% win rate). Come tell me what you think of the new machine, or what you think I should put in it.
Tech Day is every Tuesday from 3:00 to 5:30 PM. RSVP is required by texting (503) 343-4783 before Tuesday morning. Over the last few weeks I’ve had invaluable help from Scout and Levko as we work to clean games and tune up chronic issues. Come and join us—no charge to participate and learn, and no pinball repair experience or tech skills are needed.
A weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meeting has sprung up at North Coast Pinball over the holidays. It’s held Thursdays at 7 PM. All are welcome.
I’ve been thinking about merch lately. Merch has not tended to sell well enough for it to be worth the trouble and expense of having it made. I have a theory that there are people who—while they feel the specialness of North Coast Pinball—don’t feel the need to proclaim an “I support North Coast Pinball” *identity* to the world by wearing my logo on a hat or a hoodie. I’m testing this theory with a new way for you to show your support. Details here: northcoastpinball.com/icanfeelit
Also—I have written a book! It’s about the experiences I’ve had and witnessed here over the years that we’ve been open and I hope to have it out in the world by June. You can learn more (and join my street team, do you want to be on a street team? What is a street team?) at www.mysterytoken.pub.
Monday is President’s Day, set aside to honor all American presidents on the occasion of George Washington’s birthday. I revere the American flag and I do fly it on a few special occasions but February being Black History Month, I have a BLM flag up. In this way I celebrate the American principles and values that I was raised to honor. One of those principles is that we all have equal rights under the law, which—as we are learning together—does not and cannot enforce itself. It takes us.
Thank you for reading through to the end and thanks for being part of North Coast Pinball. Come visit Nehalem!
Will Irace northcoastpinball.com WillFromNehalem.substack.com February 14, 2026

Submitted By: genedieken@yahoo.com – Click to email about this post

Here’s a recent post from Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo (talkingpointsmemo.com) that provides some broader context on global authoritarianism, of which the Trump regime is just a part.
—Gene

Day after day we’re seeing more signs of Donald Trump’s slipping grip not only on public opinion, but at the margins of the GOP itself. But I thought it was a good time to remind ourselves that Donald Trump isn’t the only problem. Yes, there’s the GOP, which could easily dispatch him at any point if he didn’t have an iron hold over the party. There’s the 30%-40% of voters who are solidly in the MAGA camp. Without them, Trump’s nothing. I don’t mean either of those. I’m talking about the global authoritarian movement, which includes and is even perhaps led by Trump. But it exists quite apart from him and has roots in some of the wealthiest and most powerful people and governments around the world.

I’m talking about the Authoritarian International which includes a host of authoritarian governments around the world, the princelings of the Gulf monarchies, the sprinkling of European right-revanchist governments, the rightward portion of Silicon Valley (which accounts for a larger and larger percentage of the top owners if not the larger community), the Israeli private intel sector, various post-Soviet oligarchs and, increasingly, the world’s billionaire class. Trump is their avatar, but they exist and are now joined together in a way that will outlive him personally and electorally.

Early in the Biden administration I talked to a U.S. hedge funder who gets invited to the confabs Mohammed bin Salman has put on for the world’s billionaires since he became the country’s de facto leader. He described that world to me, a bit about its mores, what he saw. As you’d imagine for this 21st Century kind of Kremlinology, who gets to sit next to MBS at the dinners is the subject of close scrutiny and much envy. At the last of these confabs before this conversation, Jared Kushner had been given the seat of honor at something like every dinner. He was MBS’s guy. And remember, this was when Trump was at his nadir. Maybe MBS and the Saudis just had a better view of America’s political future than I did. Certainly possible. But the bigger takeaway was: this wasn’t just a transactional relationship. Kushner and MBS and Trump and MBS were a thing in and out of office.

It is not so much an anti-democratic world — though it is certainly that — as an anti-civic world. It’s a world of private, one-off deals, mutual pledges of secrecy, often enforced by soft, mutual extortion, and above all, a rejection of democratic accountability. We saw this coming into view during the late Biden administration, when Biden was already rapidly losing public support, with Elon Musk’s increasingly brazen efforts to run U.S. foreign policy from Twitter and SpaceX. The Saudis meanwhile were trying to ease Biden out of office through the manipulation of oil prices. It was no accident that Musk was advancing a strongly pro-Russian line in Ukraine, where he was most visibly trying to undermine U.S. policy.

I’ve discussed this concept in the past. So I don’t want to belabor the point of its existence. I want to point out how its forces are arrayed against civic democracy in the U.S. — quite apart from Donald Trump. This wasn’t always the case. There didn’t use to be so many U.S. billionaires. And they characteristically had economic views which aimed to preserve their wealth. But they were not clearly on the right in the way they are now. They have moved an increasingly anti-civic democratic direction as the scale of their wealth and their identity as a class has exploded. They also weren’t so increasingly allied with primitive economy petro-states of the Gulf.

The point is that they will exist no matter what happens to Trump. They command vast economic resources; they run the governments in many countries where the government never changes; they have deep tentacles into the U.S. political system and many of its key players are from the U.S. Trump didn’t create this movement precisely. But his role in global politics over the last decade solidified it as a self-conscious group and congealed it together. Any movement of civic democratic revival in the U.S. will be menaced by its continued existence. Now is the time to think about how a revived and revitalized civic democratic movement in the U.S. could combat it and avoid being destroyed by it.

Below: Jared Kushner & Mohammed bin Salman

Submitted By: stayhuman@tutamail.com – Click to email about this post

South America is burning:

rumble.com/v75ngry-south-america-is-on-fire-and-israel-is-the-reason-why.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp_a

This summer is looking to be very dry around the Pacific Northwest.

Arson is the biggest threat in my view.

Like many suspected of Oregon’s biggest fire, the Biscuit fire (2002), which seemingly came out of nowhere, just as Dubya was in Oregon drumming up support for massive logging, supposedly due to the threat of…wildfires.

Related?? The Weyerhaeuser family comes from the same Yale secret society ‘Skull and Bones’/crime family as the Bushes.

I wonder what Israeli-citizen and anti-Oregon anti-American senator Ron Wyden would say about the Israeli arsonists who were arrested in Chile, from the report from above?

And what does Israel-first America-second Ron Wyden think about Israel and Drumf gearing up to attempt to genocide Iran? Netanyahu has ‘hurried to Washington’ – of course. He’s always in the war room when the goyims in US gov’t start fighting the anti-MAGA wars for Israel.

Money for schools? Health care for all? Crumbling roads? Bad bridges? Mental health facilities for the homeless? Rehab for addicts?

NOPE! JUST WAR FOR ISRAEL!!!!!!

anti-war film dealing with Iran:

rumble.com/v650oqa-targeting-iran.html

Submitted By: pattyrinehart@nehalemtel.net – Click to email about this post

Wishing everyone Happy Valentine’s Day! The North County Resistance Protest is scheduled for February 14 from noon to 2 PM in Nehalem. We invite you to join us in celebrating our rights: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, and Freedom to Petition the Government.

Many of us are frustrated by the “mixed signals” we receive, sometimes as frequently as every hour, from our National Government. Despite these challenges, we are committed to upholding DEMOCRACY. Your participation is important, PLEASE join us.

Most attendees are familiar with the North County Resistance’s efforts to avoid interfering with local businesses in both Nehalem and Manzanita. In Nehalem, we ask protesters to remain on the right side of Highway 101 as it heads north. We will gather in the Nehalem Public Parking Lot, which has a capacity of about 100 people.

When confronted with negativity, we strive to respond with the peace sign instead of returning a middle finger. If you try both gestures, you’ll find that the peace sign is much easier. Additionally, there are instances of diesel trucks purposely emitting black smoke. For more information, you can search “purposely spewing black smoke from diesel trucks” online. It’s a bit of a rabbit hole, so be careful.

The North County Resistance is requesting support from volunteers. We need SAFETY MARSHALLS at our protests in Nehalem, and especially in Manzanita for the NO KINGS protest on March 28th. Although we had Safety Marshalls at the last NO KINGS protest, additional training would be beneficial for everyone involved.

Specifically, we are looking for at least 6 volunteers to serve as TRAFFIC MONITORS, ensuring safe passage for protest participants across Laneda and Highway 101, as well as Manzanita Avenue where it intersects with Highway 101. We also require 10 SAFETY MARSHALLS to be stationed within the crowd and respond to the dynamics of the protest.
If you are able to volunteer as a TRAFFIC MONITOR or SAFETY MARSHALL, please email or check in with the organizer tomorrow. North County Resistance would like to meet with volunteers to discuss expectations and provide information to guide your role.

And last, but not least, is a weather report. We are not looking for the water bombs and wind we had last week. That said, it is going to be cold. Bring your rain gear but you might be able to leave it in the car. You will need hat and gloves, and several layers on both top and bottom. And don’t forget your feet.

Thanks and don’t forget to volunteer to be a SAFETY MARSHALL or TRAFFIC MONITOR.
Patty

Submitted By: dwieb1@gmail.com – Click to email about this post

Following up on my earlier post “social media harm” here is a scholarly article demonstrating why we now have to be always on guard. Crucially this article also includes strategies researchers can use against these serious threats to our freedoms.

I think for us average folks we just need to be informed and aware of the dangers out there. Getting duped by malicious actors into believing stuff we wouldn’t otherwise is not freedom, it’s enslavement.
– Dave

theconversation.com/swarms-of-ai-bots-can-sway-peoples-beliefs-threatening-democracy-274778