FishSayWA?

PNW dude. DevOps, baseball, opinions, faith, family, ordnance, ordinance. Hey/You/Guys. Not a fish & chips shop.

[AG @AGHamilton29]

Teacher's unions have some of the largest lobbies in politics.

Funding for schools keeps going up without any improvement in results. There is no funding shortage, the money is just allocated wrong.

Why is their policy prescription dependent on lying about the basics?

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

America burned Japan's first gift of cherry trees. All 2,000 of them, on President Taft's direct order.

The 1910 shipment arrived in DC crawling with insects and nematodes. Agriculture inspectors condemned the lot, Taft signed off on the bonfire, and the State Department braced for a diplomatic disaster. Tokyo's mayor, Yukio Ozaki, responded by sending 3,020 more, grafted from the famous grove along the Arakawa River.

Those trees have spent a century paying the friendship back.

Four days after Pearl Harbor, vandals chopped down four of them. Park officials renamed the survivors "Oriental" cherry trees for the rest of the war to protect them from axes.

Then came the twist. By 1952 the original Arakawa grove in Tokyo, the parent stock, had nearly died from wartime neglect. Japan asked Washington for help. The Park Service shipped budwood from DC's trees back across the Pacific and restored the grove that created them. When a flood wiped out more Japanese trees in 1982, horticulturists took 800 fresh cuttings from the Tidal Basin.

These 250 new trees solve a real problem too. The Tidal Basin is sinking, and a $133 million seawall rebuild forced crews to rip out roughly 150 trees. Japan offered replacements before anyone asked, timed to America's 250th birthday.

So the genetics run in a loop. Tokyo's grove seeded Washington's. Washington's saved Tokyo's. The saplings going in this spring descend from both.

114 years of diplomacy, running on grafted branches.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Japan declares its friendship with the U.S. is “stronger than ever” as it gifts an additional 250 cherry blossom trees.

[Brian Ward @GodsRiddles]

What is unfolding in New Orleans should alarm the entire Nation.

The State Attorney General warned New Orleans officials — in writing — that their plan to seat an unauthorized officeholder through a special election the State no longer recognized was unlawful. For issuing that warning, the City convened a grand jury and indicted her on sixteen felony counts of public intimidation and malfeasance in office.

Then the court sealed its doors against the press — handcuffing a journalist and their attorney for attempting to cover the proceedings, in defiance of State law. Now that the state Supreme Court has stayed the action, the city refuses to rescind the arrest warrant. This is a direct assault on America by corruptly using the force of one's office to achieve an unlawful result.

[Max 📟 @MaxNordau]

We killed roughly 2.4 million Japanese.

We literally nuked Japan in 1945.

Then we offered peace, and they accepted.

Now we're best friends.

There's a simple conclusion to all of this: Acting Palestinian is a CHOICE.

[Infinitale: Chronicles | On Amazon Now! @InfinitaleComic]

@usembassytokyo

[アメリカ大使館 @usembassytokyo]

In Tokyo tomorrow? Celebrate America’s 250th birthday by watching the Tokyo Tower, Rainbow Bridge, and Tokyo Aqua Symphony illuminated! Snap a photo or video of Red, White, and Blue lighting up the night sky. We’d love to share your photos!
Simply use #A250inJapan

Light-up Times:
🇺🇸🇯🇵Tokyo Tower: Friday, July 3, 2026 7:00 PM – midnight
🇺🇸🇯🇵Rainbow Bridge: Friday, July 3, 2026 7:00 PM – midnight
🇺🇸🇯🇵Tokyo Aqua Symphony: Friday, July 3, 2026 6:30PM – 9:30 PM

[S.A. Dupres @Susan_Dupres]

Washington State

LAWSUITS FOR STATE AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES BAD BEHAVIOR, AKA: TORTIOUS CONDUCT

1975-2026

June 18, 2026

Note: Taxpayers have to pay for these lawsuits and tort claims.

Tort claims are run through the Washington State Dept. of Enterprise Services (DES), under the Office of Risk Management.

It seems HIGHLY UNFAIR that taxpayers are on the hook for government employees BAD behavior.

https://t.co/H8BnURu1D4

Note: Grok says this is not "unconstitutional" for government employees to be indemnified (not held personally responsible for tortious conduct).

Irregardless, I totally OBJECT!

@VP
@WHFraudTF
@ScottBradyPA

[Watch Dog WA @WatchDogWa]

https://t.co/FyV1SmiTLF

When you violate people's rights....

What do you notice?

That's when Democrats became majority in both chambers. They then went on a rampage of violating rights.

Don't believe me? Here's Ferguson withholding evidence in court

Top down corruption

[Watch Dog WA @WatchDogWa]

You know why this is an issue?

Because Democrats and bureaucrats can't stop violating people's rights.

They were warned, they ignored it.

Hell, it's a leadership problem. When top down does it, why is anyone surprised?

[stevemur @stevemur]

Nearly $1B in state payment due to lawsuits. Almost all of them due to Progressive policies which were either discriminatory, or were negligent in some way.

Completely unforced errors made by people who have an imaginary view of human behavior.

[Steve Gordon @stevemgordon67]

I have A LOT of conversations with business folks in Seattle and the state. @VijayInWA and Jon Scholes are being too generous. Seattle and Washington elected officials don't know and are openly hostile to the business community.
Virtually none have any real experience in what it takes to build and support a successful business. And what I hear over and over is owners feel that the government here is an oppositional force, that really only tolerates private enterprise as a revenue vehicle for their social aims.
Listen to Katie Wilson's NPR interview where she declares her philosophy is more Marxist than Socialist. Business only exist to provide tax revenue.
Of course the Head Tax drove businesses out of Seattle. And Bellevue is being targeted for take over by the same philosophy over time. Next year, in desperate need of even more statewide tax revenue, expect a version of Shaun Scott's statewide head tax to be implemented. They need the money and they don't want a successful counterexample like Bellevue thriving just across Lake Washington.

[PoIiMath @politicalmath]

I have never wanted progressive legislation to pass more than I want this.

Dear heavenly God, please give me this one. Let the idiots win.

[MintyHawk @minty_hawk]

There's a perfect control group sitting ten miles east, yet Robert won't look at it.

Bellevue is in the same metro, same WFH, same AI shift, same Trump. The only variable that changes across the lake is Seattle's payroll tax.

Bellevue added jobs, and it's commercial property values rose 7%. Seattle lost ~30,000 and watched its own fall 48%.

[Bonchie @bonchieredstate]

How do they not feel embarrassment, constantly claiming they can end all the world's problems with some small fraction of the amount of money they spend every single year?

[Kostas Moros @MorosKostas]

Going forward, people should have the option to have their social security tax amount invested into a mandatory 401(k) instead, and they'd retire on that instead of social security.

But again, won't happen because social security is a ponzi scheme, not some investment or bank account. Our current social security tax dollars go towards paying current retirees, not our own.

[Kostas Moros @MorosKostas]

This is funny because if you call social security an entitlement, you immediately get angrily told "it's not an entitlement! I paid into it my whole life!"

Not so. The average boomer will get much more back from social security than they paid in. And even more if you count medicare too.

Long term, it would be much cheaper for us to give them back everything they paid in (adjusted for inflation) than to actually pay out the promised benefits. Of course, that wouldn't work if you applied a fair interest rate, because of the decades of compound interest we forced them to miss out on to do this idiotic ponzi scheme. (This is why the boomers aren't entirely wrong to oppose changes, we were all forced into this BS)

We should make social security live within its means once its IOUs run out in 2032 or so. I.e., it should only pay out what it actually takes in. That would mean a roughly 20% cut to promised benefits, but it would also dramatically reduce our deficits.

Will never happen though, because retirees vote in large numbers and they'll have a politician's head for even daring to suggest that.

[Jim Walsh @JimWalshLD19]

You read it here first: The current governor said he won't PROPOSE any more state tax increases. But that's meaningless. As he's done before, he'll quickly SIGN more state tax increases that his buddies propose.
The little guy insults the people of WA.

[Charlie Harger, KIRO Newsradio @KIROCharlie]

I had a fascinating conversation with a recovering addict recently. For the first time in 13+ years, he's thinking clearly, cleaning up his legal issues, speaking with his family. Even playing baseball. He argues sobriety-based recovery deserves a seat at the table, not just harm reduction. Today's video commentary:

[KIRO Newsradio 97.3 FM🎙 @KIRONewsradio]

13 years on the street. The first time Corey Rattleff ever overdosed was after he started trying to get clean. Four Narcan. 15 minutes of CPR. What finally saved him was a handshake from Battlefield Addiction, not the system collecting the federal grants. @KIROCharlie talks about it on today's commentary.