Month: September 2015

by William Skink

The Missoulian has a new editor, but that doesn’t seem to have changed the inaccurate reporting going on.

Back when the Sheriff’s Department took issue with reporter Kathryn Haake for a number of reasons, which included inaccurate reporting, some people thought that was the Sheriff’s department being unfair.

Well, if you were to check out the Missoulian today you would see the first paragraph of this story contradict the caption of the photo, and it’s not some pesky little detail.

Here is the caption:

Investigators look over a vehicle that was involved in an attempt to flee police early Saturday morning in downtown Missoula. After hitting one officer with the car, another officer fired his gun at the driver.

And here is the first paragraph of the article:

The Montana Highway Patrol has arrested and charged a man who allegedly hit a Missoula police officer with his car, prompting that same officer to fire his weapon at the vehicle early Saturday morning.

When an officer fires his weapon that is a serious matter, one that is specifically documented by the police department. It’s really unfortunate that, for whatever reason, the Missoulian can’t get basic facts straight about which officer fired his weapon.

by William Skink

The Missoulian likes to remind its readers of important people’s birthdays, and usually that means a celebrity, but today I was informed that it’s Bernie Sanders’ b-day. Now that I know Bernie is a fellow Virgo, I feel compelled to bring attention to a non-critical article amplified by those political scoundrels at Counterpunch, titled The Sanders Paradox: a Brief for Bernie.

This part in particular about why the far left are such self-defeating scolds some readers of this blog may appreciate:

How to awaken tens of millions of people from the entrapments of mass hypnosis, prostration, and indifference and into the first halting steps toward recognition and self-emancipation? The quandary is as old as the parable of Plato’s cave—that mythic netherworld of darkness and illusion inhabited by us fallible mortals. The solution—the way out of the cave into the liberating light of knowledge—is as stubbornly elusive now as it was then. But simply naming the problem of the “false consciousness” that stymies the oppressed—as endlessly and vehemently reiterated by the legions of the far left for a small eternity—does not by itself yield a solution, as the long history of leftist impotence and isolation attests. It is understandably frustrating for the leftist sects and sages to have all the answers except that most important one: how to lead the “masses” out of the darkness of ignorance and ideological deception into enlightenment. The leftist groups—with their obscure tomes of theory, their blogs, their conferences and meetings, their tinker-toy bureaucracies, their streams of manifestoes and critiques, their insular feuds and splits and fiery excoriations of left, right, and center—are self-declared leaders without followers, generals with an invincible plan for battle who lack only one small detail: an army.

Happy B-day, Bernie.

by William Skink

When I almost got my ass kicked on a cold February night in downtown Missoula it was because I told a dude outside of Red’s I didn’t have a lighter. I was walking to my car after watching a documentary about homeless train kids, so I wasn’t drunk like this asshole. If I was I might not have handled the situation as well as I think I did.

After a three day hiatus from posting, I’m back from my Labor Day break, catching up on what’s been happening. Apparently if you were in downtown Missoula Friday night, around 12:30am, right where I had my incident, you’re lucky you didn’t catch a bullet:

Officers responded to the corner of Ryman and Main streets shortly before 12:30 a.m. Saturday for a report of a disturbance.

The man involved in the incident got into a vehicle and attempted to flee the scene, according to a news release issued by the Missoula Police Department.

The man crashed into another car, then drove toward one of the officers, hitting him. Another policeman fired his duty weapon at the driver, police said.

The suspect, who was not injured, stopped and was taken into custody. Montana Highway Patrol processed the driver for drunken driving. The officer who was hit by the vehicle was treated and released from the hospital with minor injuries.

It’s a miracle no one was hurt in this incident.

If alcohol was a factor (it almost certainly was) I’d want to know where he was served, by who, and how much.

I have a feeling certain stakeholders will be taking a hard look at what alcohol is doing to our community, and some of the ugliest stuff is happening downtown. I literally lost track of how many women were allegedly raped downtown, some in vans, some in alleys—sometimes in the same fucking alley:

Missoula police are investigating the third alleged rape in the past week – and the second in the same downtown alley.

Police spokesman Travis Welsh told the Missoulian the latest rape allegedly occurred Tuesday in an alley adjacent to the 200 block of Ryman Street.

What the hell is it with Ryman Street?

So far much of the reaction to the shooting has been criticism of the officer, and that’s too bad, because I think the story not being told is the reckless rivers of booze intoxicating revelers beyond, I suspect, what the law allows.

I hope those who sell alcohol are familiar with the laws and have all their employees serve-safe trained because I have a feeling closer scrutiny is coming.

by William Skink

To live, we need water, so water is a part of war. Anything vital to surviving plays into global conflict. b at MoA digs into the water angle in the Syrian/Iraq mess. It’s worth reading.

I’m going to contrast that little bit of water politics with late breaking news about a really fucking crazy last-minute lawsuit aimed at preventing the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes from taking ownership of Kerr Dam this weekend.

I’m just going to say it: I am deeply impressed with how State Sen. Bob Keenan, R-Bigfork, and former state Sen. Verdell Jackson, R-Kalispell, decided to legally frame their argument against this transfer of ownership. Because it has to do with the nation of Turkey and the spread of Islam. On the Reservation. In Montana. Seriously:

Court documents filed by Kogan suggest the nation of Turkey has sought to invest in Native American tribes because the 2009 Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act makes Indian reservations “largely off-limits to federal and state regulatory and law enforcement authorities.”

“It would appear that this setting would provide Turkey and such organizations with the opportunity to more freely promote their brand of Islam on reservations and/or to pursue other potentially more dangerous activities,” the complaint states.

That includes the possibility that Turkey seeks “access to the uranium deposits and bountiful water sources surrounding the Flathead Reservation for production of yellowcake capable of later conversion to a gaseous state for eventual use in incendiary devices,” it goes on.

The complaint asks a judge to issue an emergency temporary restraining order and temporary injunction prohibiting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from conveying the dam to the tribes.

What do you even say to this? I entertain all kinds of conspiracy theories, but a Turkish invasion of the Flathead Reservation to spread Islam is some of the stupidest shit I’ve seen in a long time.

Keep it coming, you crazies.

by William Skink

A person I have a lot of respect for posted this article on her Facebook page that features a heartbreaking, graphic picture of a dead Syrian toddler who washed up on a beach. The little boy is face down in the surf, dead.

The first comment on that post is from a local Democratic politician who I have absolutely zero respect for. The comment stated simply this: yes.

I’m not sure what that “yes” is supposed to mean. The intention of the person who posted the article is to bring attention to the worse refugee crisis the world has seen since WWII. I’m assuming the yes is in solidarity with this effort to raise awareness.

The reason I can’t stomach that response is because that politician also ardently supports Hillary Clinton, a despicable warmongering hawk who gleefully celebrated the news of Gaddafi being sodomized with a bayonet, then executed.

Here is the Facebook response I wrote then chose not to post:

What needs to change is not European attitudes but American foreign policy. There are Syrian refugees because American foreign policy has been to arm “moderate” rebels who are not actually moderate but violent foreign fighting mercenaries and terrorists. There are Libyan refugees because interventionists like Hillary Clinton exploited a trumped-up humanitarian crisis to justify ousting and executing Gaddafi. This is geopolitics at its worst, and Americans remain mostly ignorant of what’s actually going on with their tax dollars abroad because our corporate media feeds us propaganda (even MSNBC). Maybe a picture of dead toddler washing up on the beach will change that. I doubt it, though.

Now, in Syria, Russia is getting more directly involved. How would a President Clinton respond?

The end of summer. It means back-to-school shopping, tearfully ended beach-borne romances, Labor Day barbecues—and, it would seem, the increased likelihood of new Russian adventurism. As if Moscow weren’t satisfied with the game in Ukraine, the last month has seen a flurry of reports about its ever-expanding military involvement in Syria.

One report has even alleged that Russian pilots are gearing up to fly missions alongside the Syrian air force, dropping bombs not just on ISIS but on anti-Assad rebels who may or may not be aligned with the United States or its regional allies.

Several sources consulted for this story said the Pentagon is being unusually cagey about Russia’s reinvigorated role in Syria. A former U.S. military officer told The Daily Beast, “I’m being told things like, ‘We really can’t talk about this.’ That indicates to me that there’s some truth to these allegations.”

Russian adventurism? How is that for propaganda?

Here is an analogy for RD readers. Both America and Russia have military bases in other countries. How do you think America would respond if China was blatantly arming “moderate rebels” in Japan? Do you think America would just stand by and allow strategic military bases to be threatened by a foreign nation? Hell no, America would intervene.

So why would we expect anything different from Russia?

Anyone who supports Hillary Clinton supports more war. More war means more war refugees. That’s the reality.

And remember, the neocons have become reluctant fans of Clinton’s ME adventurism. In that NYT article, a neocon alignment with Hillary Clinton is described as “not as outlandish as it may sound,” then goes on to state this:

Consider the historian Robert Kagan, the author of a recent, roundly praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto. He has not only avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department.

Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he’s a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article “magisterial,” in what amounts to a public baptism into the liberal establishment.)

Refugees will continue dying in the thousands. Politicians can lament over that harsh reality, but if they support Hillary Clinton, then I’m not interested in anything they have to say about the consequences of American foreign policy.