Over the years of the blog as a business I did a lot of things that were good and cool and I think significant, but looking back at those things I think the best thing I ever did was my series of videos called: Interviews with Immigrants where I interviewed people who came to America from all over the world.
Mary Margaret England:
Hanna From Iraq:
Joy from Nigeria:
Lucine from the Cape Verde Islands
Donald from Cameroon
Alvin from El Salvador
Maria from the Dominican Republic (Christian translates)
Paulo from Brazil
Phillipe from Haiti
Lucy from Vietnam
You’ll note that some are full videos while others were just audio because people didn’t want to be on video. People from the Fitchburg/Leominster area will recognize the old Happy Jacks Restaurant which was my favorite haunt which is alas no more. (Although as a Christmas Present this week I was given the recipe for Border Sauce!)
Thanks to the Youtube banning it doesn’t reach the audience it once did, but if I was to be remembered for one thing I did, I’d like it to be this.
One of the reasons why this blog is going to end as a business at the end of this year has been the various reverses and collapses that took place after things started to get big around here, plus I’m now kinda old to be chasing around the country in the hope that someone will fund it and maybe slip a few extra buck to keep the lights on at home.
But I had my share of big moments, reporting from the middle of an Antifa riots in Denver, My 2010 road trip with Stacy McCain. Multiple CPACS including my final one with my sons when I first reported on Trump making gains with the black community, Scott Brown’s victory party of course, credentialed press at the Romney “victory” party but likely the biggest one in terms of relevance was covering Donald Trump’s first NH rally and it’s the one that makes the point concerning letting alternative media into the press room at the White House.
When I got to that event in Derry I noticed right away that these weren’t the normal activists turning up or being bussed in that I had seen over and over when covering events in NH. These were regular people. I did a bunch of interviews talking to anyone willing to talk to me to find out why they came and was quickly convinced those regular people showing up WAS the story (Stacy McCain will tell you about my call to him on that matter). As you may or may not know I carried three cameras with me at the time because I didn’t have a ton of extra batteries. I was on my 2nd camera when Trump had his press conference where I was standing in the back. Here is my recording of same.
You might notice two things when watching.
I repeatedly attempted to get my question in and failed
The media questions were all basicially
Why does the GOP suck?
Why do you, your campaign & your ideas suck?
What are you going to do about the fact that you, your campaign, your ideas and the GOP suck?
My recording stopped 18 min in because at that point camera 2’s battery gave out and I have to resort to camera #3 which due to a problem did not allow me to zoom in so I had a wide shot when finally I got to ask Donald Trump my question:
Two things you might notice about my question:
Notice the surprise from Trump getting an actual relevant question.
Notice the media looking back to find out: “Hey, whose not with the program?”
It wasn’t a question of trying to give Trump an easy question. I had decided that those regular folks WERE the story and the question I asked was consistent with what I thought the most important thing was.
Any one of those media people there could have done those interview or asked that question but nobody bothered because they weren’t there to cover a story in the hopes of making a buck, they were there to advance an agenda because that’s how they made their bucks. And that simple act of asking that question in Derry is why he recognized me and called on me in Worcester months later again on what I considered the real story, the lack of protestors when people had been calling for them in the 2nd biggest city in New England which has 10 Colleges in it.
Although in fairness wearing a 12 ft long Dr. Who scarf and a fedora likely helped a bit for him remember me.
I suspect that if you open things up to bloggers like myself or influencers or the alternative media you will get a better set of questions and actually inform the public.
And why would you want to reward a press corps that hates you anyways?
So Donald Trump JR. I strongly suggest you go ahead and let guys like me in, even though by the time you do so I won’t be doing it anymore.
Closing thought: However I would love to get a 20 min on camera interview with the president election before the end of the year and post that as the final act of DaBlog as a business. Might as well go out in style.
If you’re willing let me know.
Update: I mentioned my call to Stacy McCain in this post completely unaware that he mentioned the same in a post today:
After going all-in on the 2012 campaign (“Doomed Beyond All Hope of Redemption”), I’d decided to avoid the 2016 campaign and was more or less neutral about the GOP primary. But then in September 2015, I got a call from Pete Da Tech Guy, who was covering a Trump rally in New Hampshire. “Stacy, this Trump thing is for real,” Pete told me. “You wouldn’t believe the size of this crowd.”
There was a real grassroots surge of support for Trump, and so the attitude of the Professional Conservative Pundit crowd turned from ridicule to hatred. Whereas they had originally treated Trump as a joke, now he was seen as threat.
Earlier this week we had our annual five top posts for 2023. Now it’s time to look at the bottom of the barrel. The posts that drew the fewest views of the year that we think deserve a little more attention then they got:
To be sure over the course of the year we’ll serve up a few lemons but these are posts that we’d like you to take a 2nd look at:
This piece is all about the war on truth. John told the truth which is why Herodias wanted him dead
There are still some who either because they still retain some backbone or fear the masses of the people more than the army of woke Herodians (who are actually much smaller then they appear) decide to reject them and side with the people and each time they it strikes fear in the hearts of the woke Herodians because they know their power is dependent on the fear of their Herods and the indifference of the masses.
There are John the Baptists out there. Tucker Carlson who faced the wrath of the woke Herodians but thrived despite it, Riley Gaines who refuses to bend the knee to Transgender Inc. Joe Rogan who talked openly about ivermectin to be used in Covid cases, Ron DeSantis who didn’t give in to either the COVID hysteria or the Disney/woke crowd on sexualizing children and yes Donald Trump as well who refused to bend the knee even as he is treated like an enemy of the state for being an enemy of dishonest elections.
I’m really at a loss why this one didn’t play better as the problem is the single most relevant thing going on.
Rules Rules Rules
It can be very dry to hear about federal bureaucratic rules but our man Jon Fournier understands that they are important and has tackled them. His pieces on Internet rules, Drinking from the feds and on norms on Transgenderism, Guns and life deserved a bigger audience then they got, but the one I’m going to quote is this piece about the resending of a Trump era rule:
The federal government forcing anyone to violate their religious beliefs is a direct violation of the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment. The original 1973 law, which is now back in effect thanks to Biden’s executive order, did not go far enough because there is no “undue hardship” exception to the First Amendment.
As you can see from this next quote, President Trump understood the First Amendment far better than progressives because his rule was instep with the original understanding of the Free Exercise od Religion Clause.
This piece was from one year ago Jan 5th. The rest of the year didn’t go much better.
You see the ring camera doesn’t care what your race or religion or the desired narrative of the day is, what it does is show the image of what is actually happening, objective reality.
And while it might be considered a good thing for a homeowner protecting their property or a neighborhood wanting to keep criminals from using it as a stomping ground or even for the mother of boys discourage them from getting into the type of trouble that boys do when they’re young and stupid if you’re trying to sell a narrative based on unreality, well it can be a killer.
Wired magazine didn’t like ring doorbells suggesting it would lead to vigilantism what they really don’t like is reality stomping on the narrative.
After all why do you think so many of the J6 videos were suppressed?
Yesterday was an excellent day for our Days of Christmas fundraiser as we went from 4% of our goal to just over 21% of our goal. We’re still $2365 away from our goal and if you’d like to help us toward it please hit DaTipJar to the left or below:
