By Ralph Schwartz
I assume the Politics Blog’s readership falls off a cliff about this time on a Friday, only to bounce back on Monday, assuming Stark and I are posting items.
Still, this is the first good chance I’ve had in a while to attend to the Politics Blog. I’ve been working on a few bigger stories, including one on the Whatcom Tea Party and the stance of some of its officers against Agenda 21, the U.N. prescription for sustainable development practices worldwide.
In the story, which will appear on Sunday, Dec. 23, I only observe and report, I don’t judge. I do talk to some people who criticized those who subscribe to Agenda 21-as-a-plan-for-one-world-government as advancing an “unhinged conspiracy theory.” (Those words were from popular left-leaning blogger Riley Sweeney. *Apologies to Mr. Sweeney, by the way, for this post’s headline.)
A good news website for the conspiratorially inclined is WorldNetDaily, which emphasizes Barack Obama’s purported ineligibility for the presidency based on his birth status. Here’s a recent article from WND on that issue.
Rosa Koire is an author who is well spoken on the notion that the U.N. plan is being practiced, wittingly or not, by local governments in Whatcom County and elsewhere. She spoke to a friendly audience (at least it was friendly in the first hour; I didn’t watch beyond that) at Western Washington University in October, which you can see in this video.
One other thing, to make sure we’re all on the same page. With social media we’re in a new era, and a lot of people still don’t know the rules. Here’s one rule relating to Facebook: Imagine you are a public figure, and you post on Facebook something that’s in the public interest, *and* your Facebook page is visible to the public such that I can see it even though I am not your friend. That information is already out there for the whole world to see, so if I write about it in The Herald or post it on this blog because it has news value, then I am simply doing my job as a journalist. In this case, Facebook is just another source of information for me.
If you’re posting about your dog’s trip to the vet, or a photo of your first-grader’s latest school project, it’s safe to say I’ll leave it alone.
Bottom line: On Facebook, just as on any other blog site or website, public means public.
I have a few more “odds and ends” that I’ve held onto, to post next week. Hope you get away from your digital devices long enough to have some quality time with family then.
Thanks for the shout out! Odds and Ends for everyone!
Whatcom County is a rich vein to mine for far-right crackpottedness. The black helicopter crowd is alive and well, perhaps further out than ever. Outside Bellingham, much of the county is a soggy Idaho — a rancid stew of land-use anarchy, fundamentalism, and thinly veiled racism. They’re numerous enough to have their own government representatives, too, like Jason Overstreet, Bill Knutsen, and Kathy Kershner. (They couldn’t quite get John Koster over the hump.) Sam Crawford, a more traditional Republican, is far, far to their left. They’re armed to the teeth and have their Glenn Beck survival kits at the ready, prepared to fend off an invasion of brown socialists that never seems to arrive.
I look forward to the article. One could write a thousand-page treatise.
Corvid,
You’ve accused three local elected officials of being racists. Can you provide any evidence of this or are your just crowing?
Wow…
Great comments…(Tongue in cheek, crossing fingers)
If you do not like whatcom county, then you do have the right to leave… And I say, “you can leave quickly”…
I have seen nothing but respectful people here in Whatcom County… Being armed, is their right and mine to be armed should we choose. Although I may not agree with them, I do support their rights to be themselves…
I mean just think howscrewed up the world would be if you looked in the mirrir and everyone thought like you… Scary thought eh… I wish we had a breath a liser or a drug test meter before we got to post online….
Corvid, did you serve in teh military? If not, it is ok, many of us did for everyone to have their voice… whether coherent or not, we all have our voice…
Remember the guy from Tianamen Square (the one who stepped in front of the tank so it would notmove forward on students)? He was shot three days later in an alley for standing up to the Chinese Establishment…
I see that Shane Roth has written about exactly what I was thinking while I was reading Ralph’s “Tea Party” article.
The Tea Party? Really? …Really!? With all the real stuff that’s going on, we get an article that presents the unsupported declaration that “Whatcom Tea Party still going strong …” and drivel about Agenda 21.
In 2013 the State Senate is going to be controlled by the Republican’s plus two turncoat Democrats. With that in mind, why hasn’t there been any coverage of what our very own (42nd LD) State Senator, Doug Ericksen, is up to. Doug is a long time member of The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC has been making the news nationally… their lobbyist written model legislation has been showing up in Republican controlled State Legislature all over the country.
It would even be good to know what Ericksen has to say about the Newtown school shootings, since ALEC has work hand in hand with the NRA to put guns in the hands of lunatics and criminals.
And here’s a little help looking into it: “Resources for Investigating ALEC/NRA Gun Bills”