Zoom Chron Blog

The black man dressed like a pimp, and pictured with two liberal white women, is Laurent Mugondozi, a man from the Congo who now lives in Missoula, Montana. The picture is a part of Mugondozi’s interview with StoryCorps, a national non-profit launched in 2003 to promote the following mission:

StoryCorps is committed to the idea that everyone has an important story to tell and that everyone’s story matters. Our mission: to help us believe in each other by illuminating the humanity and possibility in us all — one story at a time. Since our founding in 2003, we’ve helped over 700,000 people across the country have meaningful conversations about their lives. These recordings are collected in the U.S. Library of Congress and in our online archive which is now the largest single collection of human voices ever gathered.

What “important story” did Laurent Mugondozi have for the smiling white ladies? Based on the subject log of the interview, Mugondozi told Greta and Genevieve about the benefits of his zucchini, his love of gardening, and the culture he’s bringing to Missoula.

Less enticing than a chat with a real life African man about the benefits of his zucchini is having to dodge bullets on a Saturday night, something that seems to be happening on a more regular basis here in Missoula. This time, though, two men were quickly arrested, including a man by the name of Laurent Mugondozi. Since I don’t have a mugshot to confirm it’s the same Mugondozi who enjoys shoving a trowel in fertile soil, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it is.

For some details on what is alleged to have happened late Saturday night, here’s the reporting from KPAX:

Missoula Police responded to a report of shots fired in a busy downtown area just after 2 a.m. Shortly after, an adult male arrived at the Missoula Police Department with a gunshot wound and what appeared to be multiple strikes from bullets on this vehicle.

Officers found multiple spent shell casings near the 200 block of Ryman Street. Later, officers found another man involved in the incident in the 200 block of Woody Street. Nearby, they also found another vehicle and a handgun, according to a press release from the department.

One of the men was transported to St. Patrick Hospital and the other was interviewed by detectives at the Missoula Police Department.

Missoula Police consulted the Missoula County Attorney’s Office and charged 33-year-old Laurent Mugondozi and 36-year-old Anthony Brodie with Attempted Homicide and Criminal Endangerment, due to uninvolved pedestrians being nearby when shots were fired. Mugondozi was also charged with a 3rd offense DUI.

After scrolling through Laurent Mugondozi’s Facebook profile I searched for the other man arrested, Anthony Brodie, and found a profile for an Anthony “BrodiethePharoah” in Missoula. This you, bro?

Brodie was, I’m assuming, a passenger in the vehicle that Mugondozi was driving when this shooting in a BUSY area of downtown occurred. At least Brodie appears to be a Grizzly fan!

If the identities of these two men connected to the weekend shooting holds up then Montana Democrats might have another inconvenient example of what can happen, in reality, when their liberal useful idiots eagerly embrace Schismogenisis, which I’ve written about before.

If you need a reminder, here’s the definition:

Schismogenesis is a term in anthropology that describes the formation of social divisions and differentiation. Literally meaning “creation of division”, the term derives from the Greek words σχίσμα skhisma “cleft” (borrowed into English as schism, “division into opposing factions”), and γένεσις genesis “generation, creation” (deriving in turn from gignesthai “be born or produced, creation, a coming into being”). The term was introduced in the 1930s by anthropologist Gregory Bateson and has been applied to various fields.

If you don’t think immigration is a critical issue for Montana Democrats, well, you’re not paying attention, and even if you were paying attention, you wouldn’t find the kind of criticism I bring to this issue, having been a critic of relocating refugees to Missoula since 2016, when I was still working at Missoula’s local homeless shelter, the Poverello Center.

For a trip down memory lane, here’s what Missoula’s Mayor, alcoholic John Engen, had to say about re-starting the refugee relocation efforts in Missoula ten years ago:

There’s been opposition to refugee resettlement in Missoula, but it’s largely been from elsewhere and based on misinformation, fear and outright lies. Most Missoulians, the folks I and Missoula City Council members swore to serve, believe that we’re up to the task of helping our share of refugees, whatever their situation, provided they’ve been thoroughly vetted by our government and the agencies who only continue to exist if they keep communities and refugees safe. And if I’m wrong about this or any of a number of issues, I will learn soon enough at the polls.

Was John Engen wrong about Missoula and his confidence in “the polls”? That’s debatable, but one thing is for sure, political challengers to his drunken reign, like Lisa Triepke, had to learn the hard way how despicable those controlling the levers of power in Missoula can be when they feel their power is being threatened.

Now, in 2026, the issue of immigration has blown up nationally, with the trickle-down effect visible in Helena’s failed showdown with Montana’s Attorney General, and featured as the main talking point, from what I could hear, for speakers pushing the corporate NO KINGS bullshit last weekend. All this context makes it VERY UNLIKELY local legacy media will investigate the potential immigration angle of this past weekend’s shooting.

If you find my decade-long skepticism about the refugee/immigration issue, delivered from the perspective of a former insider of the Homeless Industrial Complex, to be helpful, then please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

Since I’m legally forbidden from stepping foot on the property of the church where my parents worship God, I spent Easter morning watching Jesus fight demon-snakes in the movie The Carpenter’s Son. The title of this post is taken from a line of dialogue, spoken by Satan to Jesus, foretelling how the Jews would be dealing with his divinity. “You will die for miserable people,” Satan says.

Was Satan right?

This coming week I’ll be posting part II of my Old Money vs. New Money series, so get ready to learn even more about how money steers local development in Missoula, while naysayers like me get targeted and persecuted for speaking up. Thankfully, for those who cater to the powerbrokers in this town, like the Risho family, they have good Christian volunteers like my own mother, and the First Presbyterian Church, to help them as Mommy Risho struggles with her health.

For me, I guess I’ll just have to work harder at forgiving them for what I had to endure as their cocaine-abusing kitchen manager got investigated as a person of interest for potentially killing our co-worker, Leah Hartley, a part-time Silk Road kitchen employee who the Risho family didn’t even acknowledge after she died.

One method I’ve relied on over the years for making my inner rage more presentable is to make it rhyme, so enjoy the words of this poem-song I recorded yesterday with Pirate Booty (Instagram reel coming soon). I’m calling it “Brunch with Juice Box”. Hopefully, if good Christians can’t access their deep wells of forgiveness, they will at least appreciate that no act of obscenity with mere words comes close to the obscenities of what’s currently transpiring in the name of God.

BRUNCH WITH JUICE BOX

spice my loosh with Cortisol 
sweet Jesus, let us walk 
meat is not the final curtain 
let's take a seat and talk 

which lamb should we blam, blam, blam
and which one gets the milk?
I'm tired of my sackcloth, Jesus 
at night I dream of silk 

pussies drink milk from the floor 
while bitches stand and cry 
you, my son, are on the run 
from eating the whole damn pie 

me, I cry for ice cream 
melting slowly in a bowl 
or listening to shitty music 
coming for your soul 

that's nice advice, wise Jesus 
but the gun is in my hand 
and the script is so exciting 
so let's stick to the plan 

maybe you're trying stalling
so here, I'll kill them all 
and if you do not like it
you know who to call 

there's no rhyme or reason 
like a breeze to cool the heat 
it's his little season now 
they claim on groundless feet 

some will lose by winning 
some losers will be just fine 
and some refuse to play the game 
until refusing becomes a crime 

If you’re wondering where I cultivated such impressive rhyming skills, I give lots of credit to the University of Montana, an institution considering letting this guy take the helm:

Tomorrow, to start off the first full week of April (the cruelest month), I’ll be helping Dr. Fore-Shinn unpack his Boise baggage in the manner only I can, since my familiarity with another Boise transplant–Ellie Boldman, formerly Hill–gave me the immediate political lens through which to view this incoming skin-bag.

The link above is to an article archived at Western Montana News, and it’s the best one regarding Ellie’s time in Boise. For even more context, this link takes you to the post of mine that has links to 12 others documenting Ellie’s shenanigans over the years, like how she maximized her taking of emergency Covid money in what I think is an act of fraud she should have been prosecuted for.

I guess when you help make the laws in Helena, it’s less likely you’ll have to adhere to the laws in Zoom Town.

Thanks for reading!

Thanks to privileged, entitled women like Amber Heard and Blake Lively, the powerful “victim card” is starting to provide diminishing returns for white women, and it must be very terrifying for them. I mean, what’s the world coming to if a hottie can’t feel safe enough to commit an act of violence against the evil patriarchy by slapping Clavicular in the face at the club?

Yesterday, a Federal judge dismissed the claim of sexual harassment that Blake Lively added to her lawfare campaign against Justin Baldoni for alleged “harassment” that included non-consensual nuzzling while dancing and simulated nakedness for a birthing scene. Yes, really.

During a January court hearing, Lively’s lawyer Esra Hudson had argued that Baldoni repeatedly went too far, including by deviating from the script by adding unnecessary sexual content.

Hudson alleged this included a dance sequence in which Baldoni “nuzzled” Lively without consent, and a scene when Lively’s character was giving birth and ​she was pressured to wear little clothing and simulate nudity.

Liman wrote that Baldoni’s alleged conduct appeared to be directed towards Lively’s character in the scene, rather than Lively herself.

“Creative ​artists, no less than comedy room writers, must have some amount of space to experiment within the bounds of an agreed script without fear ⁠of being held liable for sexual harassment,” the judge wrote.

Here’s the problem: women don’t want actual equality, they want social power, and like most fallible humans seduced by the intoxicating effects of power, once they get a taste of it they can’t get enough. Then, what usually happens next, is that those who acquire this kind of power start acting tyrannical with it because why wouldn’t they?

The fear of becoming targeted by this social power removes accountability and the fear of consequences for those wielding it, so inevitably we see the kind of behavior pictured above: a young, attractive white women casually assaulting someone on camera, then acting shocked and horrified when confronted with the consequence.

The entire fabric of society is now deeply enmeshed in the social power of female victimhood and the downstream realities for men are real and horrifying, ensuring even things like “dating” have now been transformed into a gauntlet of total insanity, with costs that stretch far beyond the monetary if you make one wrong move.

To show readers how knowledgeable I am of this cultural trend to “believe all women”, my post yesterday highlighting two political operators (who happen to be women) is getting A LOT of traffic this morning, and that’s going to be a problem for Lauren Caldwell, Caite Butler, and all the moderate conservatives going into Easter weekend wondering how they’re going to spin working with a “Drag Story Hour mom” to conservative voters back in their districts.

One option that might be getting some consideration right now, if the preferred option of IGNORE THE BLOGGER doesn’t hold, is pivoting to BLAME the blogger and make the story (or whisper campaign) about my personal baggage and motivation for doing something as awful as showing my readers that Lauren Caldwell is willing to use her own kid in a political photo-op.

For example, didn’t Travis get arrested multiple times? I heard Travis had felony charges. I heard he beat up his girlfriend. Did you hear that church had him trespassed? I see him on the streets with Legos. Yeah, me too, and now he has a puppet he calls “Pirate Booty”. And he’s slashing tires. And smoking meth. And, and, and.

Yesterday I recorded a deep analysis of the movie Eddington with Thomas from PsyOp Cinema (available in a week or two). We also looked at Ari Aster’s 2023 release, Beau Is Afraid, and the movie Bugonia. A meta-analysis of Hollywood, from the shared perspective of the PsyOp Cinema duo (which I agree with), is that Hollywood operates under the influence of goddess-oriented death cult, symbolized by a spider and a spider’s ability to spin webs and catch its prey, and Aster is currently at the top of its worship-pile.

I mean, how much do you have to hate Jesus to have his ugly face seemingly squeezing out the meat flaps of a vagina on a billboard?

While I don’t have much control over the most important parts of my own life, I’ve doggedly maintained my ability to control this small patch of virtual space after going rogue against the Homeless Industrial Complex and all the creepy-crawlies I found when I started kicking over rocks and NOT shutting up about what I found underneath them.

So, that’s what I’m going to keep doing, and I’ll do it how I like to do it with Fireweed Campaigns because THEY are the ones who got caught with their pants down, and I don’t give a flying fuck what kind of genitals these political operators have as they work with politicians who don’t return calls, like Linda Reksten (HD 13, Poison), and seem to con nice old men, like Curt Cochran (HD 90, St. Regis).

*while finishing this post I did get a call back from someone I contacted yesterday, and what I learned I’ll write about next week.

If you’d like to help support a rogue citizen journalist brought low by nasty lawfare, my Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) could use a buck or two.

And, as always, thanks for reading!

Meet Caitie Butler, a liberal woman from Portland working with Montana conservatives this election cycle. At least she was working with Montana conservatives until scrutiny descended on Fireweed Campaigns. Now, Montana’s statewide GOP leadership is doing damage control by pressuring its compromised candidates to take concrete steps to distance themselves from this growing controversy:

The Montana Republican Party (MTGOP) Executive Board passed a resolution on Tuesday rebuking 17 Republican legislative candidates and three elected party officers for working with progressive political groups tied to out-of-state billionaire donors.

According to publicly available records, these progressive billionaires are attempting to advance their agenda in Montana through a multi-layered, deceptively designed network of political action committees (PACs) and dark-money nonprofits, including Helena-based Fireweed Campaigns Inc., which manages political candidates and liberal ballot initiatives.

Fireweed began billing 11 Republican primary candidates thousands of dollars in January 2026 for “campaign management” services. Additionally, Fireweed’s staff made maximum contributions to the 11 candidates for whom they provided services, as well as six other Republican candidates.

The same candidates supported by Fireweed are also backed by Conservatives4MT, a phony group that shares leadership with progressive organizations like Big Sky Fiscal Guardians, Treasure State Stewards, and Montanans for Election Reform Action Fund. Three elected officers of MTGOP county central committees are tied to the progressive PAC infrastructure.

Earlier this week I took the breaking of this story by the MissoulaGOP and added my perspective. By mid-week the paid reporters at the Missoulian decided to join the party, framing the New Kids on the Political Block like this:

This election season has also given rise to a new player in Montana politics: Fireweed Campaigns, a campaign consulting company that was formed in 2024 but appears to have taken on many more candidates this cycle. The firm has made a name for itself in the state’s political world as the group running campaigns for more centrist Republicans in contested primaries. If a candidate was at odds with the hardline faction of Republicans during the 2025 legislative session and they are running for reelection, they are likely employing Fireweed.

Notably, the company is in part run by former Democratic staffers or former staff at left-leaning organizations. The company’s owner, Lauren Caldwell, is the former director for the Montana Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the group dedicated to getting Democrats elected to the Legislature.

When you read the press release from the GOP’s statewide machine, led by Art Wittich (link above) you see the breakdown of candidates PAYING Fireweed and candidates GETTING PAID by Fireweed, which is pretty brazen and impressive, if you ask me.

I called a handful of candidates yesterday in preparation for this post, but only Curtis Cochran (HD 90, St. Regis) had the under-developed political instincts to call me back. Linda Reksten answered, said she’d call me back, then never did like a REAL politician. I also called Michele Binkley and David Bedey, but neither bothered to call back. Because why would they?

When Curt Cochran called me back the name Lauren Caldwell was unfamiliar to him. Curt is a first-time politician living in Mineral County and running for office at the young age of 70, so I told him that he might be hearing more about the name Lauren Caldwell, since she’s the kind of liberal who takes her kid to Drag Story Hour so her liberal pals at the Daily Montanan can write about it. In my PiratePuppet Instagram report on this I made sure to block out Caldwell’s kid with something more appropriate:

This morning, before writing up today’s report, I also called George Nikolakakos to see if he would answer the phone, but no luck. If I hear back from any candidates today, or the State GOP office, I’ll add a comment or update, otherwise…

Thanks for reading!

These three marbles, pictured above, represent a missed opportunity my corporate father, Tom, decided to pass up recently, so now I’m going to explain what exactly that opportunity was for Zoom Chron readers, starting with the Freemason who fathered James Wells, a well-meaning old man in Kansas City, Missouri.

If this is the correct man, then Belva Johnson is the marble collector whose marbles I now have in my possession, along with other items, like a decorative Masonic sword belonging to a “J. Raymond Wells”. I’m still waiting for a Masonic lodge in Missouri to get back to me regarding the sword and sword’s owner.

While my former father-in-law appears to have Masonic roots, it’s actually his wife, Joan Barkley Wells, who can boast a more relevant claim to the historical influence of America’s development, since her Daddy was a decorated war hero with a family tree going back to Daniel Boone, a famous American figure who became an archetype of the American Frontier.

Before we get to Joan’s war hero Daddy, John Lewis Barkley, here’s a summary of the inconclusive research into whether or not Daniel Boone was a Freemason:

Ray V. Denslow, specialist in early Middle Western Masonry, reported to The Builder, January, 1925, that “in his opinion” Boone had not been a Mason. He added however that “a very good friend” had in earlier days heard Boone spoken of as a Mason. Both the Grand Lodges of Kentucky and of Tennessee have searched the old membership rolls but have not found his name. When appropriating a sum toward the Boone monument at Frankfort the resolution passed by the Grand Lodge of Kentucky made no mention of Boone’s possible membership. At least one pall-bearer at Boone’s funeral wore a Masonic collar.

Joan Barkley Wells is the only child of John Lewis Barkley, a man so intent on fighting and killing Germans during WWI that he persevered with enlisting, despite a bad stuttering problem that threatened to keep him sidelined during the war. Instead of being sidelined, Barkley rose to the occasion and did MORE than his part, thanks to his exemplary woodsmen skills.

Here’s some of Barkley’s story from a 2018 NPR article:

Barkley was born in 1895 and grew up on a farm near Holden in west central Missouri. He prided himself on being a woodsman and claimed to be a descendant of Daniel Boone.

While he knew how to handle a gun, Barkley had a bad stammer that made it difficult to pass the Army’s medical examination, even after the U.S. entered the war. Once he was accepted to the military, his officers soon recognized his skills.

“He could hunt. He could trap. He was an excellent shot. So when he was sent to Camp Funston in 1917 the Army realized here was someone that could do this kind of intelligence work,” Trout said.

Barkley would do dangerous reconnaissance work in wartime France; scouting ahead of American troops, observing the enemy and reporting back, as well as serving as a sniper. He excelled in the role.

His actions on Oct. 7, 1918 made him one of the most decorated soldiers of World War I.

Like many Americans, Barkley struggled financially after the war, writing his memoir to help his widowed mother save the family farm. Originally titled “No Hard Feelings”, less than 4,000 copies were published. With his daughter’s blessing, the book was republished under the title John Lewis Barkley originally envisioned, “Scarlet Fields”.

John Lewis Barkley was a badass because he wasn’t raised with money, like his spoiled-ass grandson living lavishly in Jackson Hole and spending his family’s money so recklessly, I had to listen to his granddaughter bitch about it all the time when I was married to her.

After growing up relatively poor, however, John Barkley did end up doing pretty well for himself by doing two very important things: NOT dying in the war, and marrying a woman who had valuable land assets that he capitalized on.

Also worth noting, at least for me, is that Barkley’s brief stint as a Private Detective was definitely NOT a part of his recipe for acquiring wealth. Yeah, no shit.

Ironically, when I get to the “new money” blog post putting my own father into the corporate context he deserves, part of that story will be how my family moved to Johnson County, Kansas, in 1989, right as the rapidly expanding suburban sprawl south of the city was actively gobbling up farmland so that ugly houses that looked the same could be built.

Since I haven’t been successful in conveying to my father why securing these rare antique marbles is a good idea–in part because of their sentimental value to the “old money” side of the family, which still owes him $140,000 for covering what I was legally owed from the divorce–the opportunity to own a piece of history is NOW YOURS (on Facebook marketplace).

Coming up in part II of my Old Money vs. New Money series, I’ll be going into more detail regarding my family’s complicity in changing and gentrifying Missoula, along with the role of my parent’s church, First Presbyterian, and the timing of their flock getting into the subsidized housing game with the Hogan House.

For now, I’ll conclude with what Pastor Dan Cravy said to a local reporter as his congregation celebrated breaking ground on this discriminatory, age-restricted subsidized Senior housing complex:

“Just give thanks for this worthy endeavor, this vision on behalf of goodness, and life, and wholeness, and flourishing for so many people,” Pastor Dan Cravy said.

Amen, Pastor Dan!