Month: April 2016

  

by William Skink

For those hoping that their choice for president wasn’t going to be between a neoconservative and Donald Trump, last night’s New York primary was, though expected, still depressing. A lot can happen, like an alien intervention or a giant sinkhole that swallows all of DC so we can just start over, but barring some spectacular set of unlikely events, it’s gonna be either Hillary or The Donald. Gross.

To lighten the mooood, I’d like to welcome Cowgirl to the conspiracy fringe where paranoia blossoms like weeds–genetically modified Monsanto weeds that may or may not put mind-controlling spores into the atmosphere. What the hell am I talking about? It would appear the Cowgirl site suffered a malware attack that may or may not be an attempt by Gianforte to silent the important progressive “news” Cowgirl reports on. Here is one of the hilarious comments from Cowgirl’s moderator, Mt Temperance:

We caught the hackers as they were testing the waters here. they certainly didn’t get too far…..
It seemed the only reason for the attack was to shut us down, and keep our readers from viewing our site.
While I did find Malware code to re-direct our viewers to porn and pill sites, I did not encounter any viruses or malware structures that could harm our readers….. just Cowgirl’s site. The codes were stripped and defenses put in place. We rescanned our site and it is now certified as clean by Surcui and Google Folks, so you’re good to comment at your leisure.
Thank you to our concerned readers for tipping us off! you guys rock!
This was all probably because of our opinions and real news gathering as progressives in this election year…….
I am sure there are some conservatives somewhere, who are not very happy at this time.

Are Republicans paying hackers to attack Cowgirl with malware because of the “real news” that is reported there? Anything is possible, I guess. More than likely this attack isn’t anything special, but kudos to Cowgirl for not letting an opportunity to play the victim pass without taking advantage of it. Gullible commenters quickly took up the conspiracy theory, claiming only rich Republicans have the resources to attack partisan gossip sites like Cowgirl:

Richard Miller: Who else has the power to do such a thing other than the “Double G” that is trying to lie his way into the Governors office.

Norma Duffy: Or the Money for that matter.
Hiring a Black Hat costs money, something only our millionaire republicans who want to takeover the state have.

Too funny. I guess oligarchs like the Pritzker clan don’t exist, or if they do (they do), they would never stoop to the tactics those nefarious Republicans are being accused of (without evidence, mind you). For more on the Pritzkers, Consortium News has a new piece, titled Bowing to America’s Oligarchs worth checking out (h/t JC).

Playing the victim here keeps the narrative of rich Republicans being big meanies alive for the Dem party faithful. But that other narrative of Democrat corruption keeps getting legs, with Ochenski taking it on in his column this week (sorry, no link).

At Cowgirl, there was one commenter who suggested not getting paranoid regarding this attack. That comment, and the response from Temperance, is just priceless:

IT Professional: Lets not get paranoid – wordpress sites are scanning continuously by bots trying to find vulnerabilities. Getting one hacked to redirect to a porn site is not uncommon. Not being critical of the platform used for the blog – it is just the nature of the framework

Mt. Temperance: No one here has gotten paranoid. This was a specific hack.
Let’s be specific shall we. It is our duty to report our news to our viewers cleanly. And it is important to keep them safe in the process. The word-press site wasn’t hacked, the domain was. Nothing else to see here….. move along!

Yeah, nothing else to see here. Thanks for the laughs, Cowgirl.

by William Skink

While I understand some of the ridicule that comes this direction regarding the more conspiratorial subjects we examine here, I really struggle to understand the mockery directed at the years of criticism I, JC and others have heaped on the ideology of neoliberalism.

Before writing a post there is usually some article I’ve noticed that I file away in the back of my mind for the right time to use. When I read George Monbiot’s piece on the ideology at the root of all our problems I knew if I waited I would have opportunity to reference it.

Well, once again ID has provided the perfect opportunity with this repost of a 6 month old missive on privilege and useful idiocy of the inactivists on the enlightened left. From the link:

Where many I admire offer trenchant, sensible critiques of the politically calculated timidity of the Democratic Party, the enlightened left, in a desperate bid for moral and intellectual superiority, only seems to offer a nihilistic, absolutist position that offers nothing but the smug posturing of those who have little to fear.

In general, the truth is that we’d be better off ignoring them. Their irrational anger and logic-free claims have little appeal outside a small group of similarly privileged, similarly ignorant inactivists who somehow imagine that posting diatribes online to the same small audience will change the world. They don’t trouble themselves with understanding domestic or foreign policy, preferring to throw around words like “Zionist,” “hegemony,” and “NeoLiberal” as if those are actual arguments, not just poorly understood catchphrases.

While the author couldn’t be bothered to update this weak hit piece from last year, a comment from this year, thanks to the repost, shows that this isn’t November, 2015 anymore. Here is the comment from Tom Clark:

So a a Progressive New Deal Democrat I am no longer allowed to use the term neoliberal? I am an avid supporter of Senator Sanders and his efforts to bring the Democratic party back to where it was from 1932 through 1992. There is a major split in the Democratic party and it is much more serious than many of the Hillary supporters think it is. Neoliberal “Third Way” politics has not only shifted the Democratic party to the center, it has betrayed the working people of this country. I am currently reading Thomas Franks new book Listen Liberals, and even though most of the issues he discusses are ones that I have agreed with for the past ten years or so he has brought up some that I had not contemplated before. In this article you chastise people who are privileged and are not threatened by the right wing, yet today that is what makes up the core of the Democratic party. Upper income white professionals run not only the national party but most state and county levels as well. This is where the disconnect has occurred, while they are very supportive of social issues such as abortion rights and LGBT issues, they have supported poor trade deals such as NAFTA and TPP, relaxed banking regulations and other predatory practices that hurt the working class. This is why many of us do not trust Hillary Clinton, she has never stood up for the working person and now that she wants to be President we are supposed to believe that she now will. Once she is elected she will appoint more Harvard educated policy people and once again pivot to the center. For the past 35 years there has been a long slow spiraling decline of the working middle class in this country and many of us on the left see electing Hillary Clinton as just more of the same. So I will continue using the term neoliberal, and not as a good thing.

Well said, Tom.

Democrat apologists are losing the argument that the Democratic Party is corrupt to the core, and the Clinton pivot to neoliberal triangulation is one of the main reasons why. Shove Hillary Clinton down our throats, and it won’t be fictional Russian nihilists that benefit, but the ruling class who have suckered partisans into thinking their incrementalism and symbolic identity politics is worth selling their political souls for.

It is not, and carrying on desperate attacks like the ones experienced here over the last few years shows which side of the argument is getting desperate.

For those interested in reading a good critique of neoliberalism, please read the Monbiot piece. It is excellent.

Guest Post by Freddy S. Neechy, founder of N.O.T.H.I.N.G. (Nihilism Offers Truthful Honest Insight Negating God)

Hey friends, I am so welcome for the chance to tell you about my excitement for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Not since killing Tsarist bastard Alexander II have nihilists been so gun-ho over big opportunity for more to share in the meaningless nothing that is existence.

First, thank you pal and great blogger William Skink for this important platform in Montana to say loud and proud, VOTE HILLARY!!! We here in Mother Russia were sad that blogger Skink might miss this chance to sink America into lawless hell since by not voting at all. Surely, based on his writings (which we read very closely) he very much hates America, so sinking America into lawless hell must be his true desire. We have sent him in private emails pictures of scenic plenty awaiting for him if he helps us by voting for Hillary on June 7th in Montana.

All readers of this blog who dream of releasing your crazy desires on dystopian American landscape, how amazing are these times we are seeing, am I right? VOTE HILLARY and count your ammunition rounds.

Don’t even talk to my hand about Bernie or Donald, American blog readers. Bernie makes hope seem still burning and Donald, well, Putin has a great many pictures of Donald, which is why he always says such nice things about Putin.

VOTE HILLARY!

Putin can’t believe his luck and has already planted in America many lethal Russian mail-order-brides you sad American men keep buying, and they know from careful conditioning true meaning of meaninglessness after education camp teaches them good.

Hillary and her Neocon friends will be much easy to get into war with Mother Russia, and we are ready to survive nuclear winter because strategic partnership with China built over decades makes us strong in ways America will soon discover.

SO VOTE HILLARY!

by William Skink

Missoula elitist Pete Talbot wants to know why I have remained silent on the idiocy of Greg Strandberg and the delusions of Mark Tokarski. He said this after going on a late night tirade in which he eloquently referred to Standberg as a “stupid fuck” and offered a list of disorders he thinks plagues Tokarski. When I expressed doubt that Pete has the qualifications to diagnose mental health disorders, this was his reply:

Do you read Tokarski’s stuff, Skink? You don’t need a Ph.d to see that he’s delusional.

But let’s take a look at an earlier comment of yours concerning my lack of intervention in a previous flame war: “but I interpret silence as complicity.” Your silence on delusional Tokarski and idiot Strandberg is deafening.

I don’t take this kind of stuff lightly. People suffering from legitimate delusions can be a danger to themselves and others. I know this intimately because I’ve been physically assaulted and had my family threatened by people suffering from delusions. The mentally ill woman who still sends me letters to my home knows my kids names and has threatened to take them after I go to prison for raping her. She also thinks my father is Chuck Norris, so yeah, clearly delusional.

I have people fixated on me because of the work I did at the shelter. During that time I started realizing something about Missoula: image is more important than substance.

Protecting Missoula’s image became very important last year when Jon Krakauer’s book about sexual assault in Missoula hit the shelves. One of Missoula’s cultural elitists, Andy Smetanka, seemed more upset about the impact on Missoula’s image than he was about the traumatizing experiences of women seeking justice for being raped:

Smetanka doesn’t know what’s in the book, but he knows Krakauer has tapped prepositional phrases for other titles. “Into the Wild.” “Into Thin Air.” “Under the Banner of Heaven.”

Why not one for Missoula? (See related interview with Krakauer.)

“I wanted to come up with something that was an artful protest against the name of the book, but it ended up being a little more ambiguous,” Smetanka said.

In fact, the depiction by him and Greg Twigg appears to reflect some community members’ reaction to the rape reports, as well as the later protest against the title.

In the poster, Smetanka blocked out letters in Krakauer’s name so the poster says “Our Missoula” instead of “Jon Krakauer” and “Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town.”

Early on, some UM officials and Grizzlies boosters similarly tried to block out news the campus had a rape problem. Former UM vice president Jim Foley, for instance, protested the media’s use of the term “gang rape” to describe a report a UM student made that she’d been assaulted by four UM Grizzlies football players.

Foley since left the university, and current UM president Royce Engstrom fired former football coach Robin Pflugrad and athletic director Jim O’Day.

The poster also reflects the reaction many people had to the book’s title. Why not call it Boulder, where Krakauer is based?

“Missoulians are kind of wonderfully defensive and touchy about our image,” Smetanka said.

One of the University’s biggest mistakes was focusing primarily on mitigating the damage to the image of the University instead of focusing on how to keep students from being raped by collegiate sexual predators. Then the book came out and Missoula was forced to deal with the ugly reality of women’s experiences with sexual assault and the extra trauma stemming from the problems in our criminal justice system. Unlike Smetanka, I don’t think it’s wonderful that people in our community got so defensive and touchy about Missoula’s image.

While Missoula likes to promote itself as a progressive utopia, the rest of the state deals with negative stereotypes, like being gun-toting hicks driving big trucks with Hippie-Hater stickers. Montana also has a reputation for harboring conspiracy wackos, thanks largely to the Unabomber’s choice to reside in Lincoln, Montana. A recent piece of satire from The Onion perpetuates this image.  I should also mention that I wouldn’t have even seen this piece if it wasn’t for Pete Talbot using it to ridicule Tokarski. From the link:

LIBBY, MT—Ken Hausch, a Libby-area Luddite separatist and conspiracy theorist, announced Monday that his much-anticipated manifesto, My Lonely Battle Against The Mind-Control Slavery Of The Illuminati And Its Footmen In The CIA, KGB, U.N., Vatican, NASA, IRS, AT&T, Federal Reserve, Disney, The Order Of Skull & Bones, And The Rosicrucians, is “coming along fine” and should be completed by fall of this year.

The workspace of Ken Hausch (inset), who is “really pleased” with how his manifesto is turning out.

“So far, so good,” the unemployed, one-time University of Washington physics graduate student said. “Right now, I’ve got about 14,600 pretty solid pages in the can, with probably fewer than 5,000 to go. Once that’s done, it’ll just be a matter of double-checking the facts, tightening up the writing and making sure the whole thing’s got a nice, cohesive flow.”

Hilarious, right? But I wonder how people in Libby feel about this depiction? Pete seems to know a lot of people around Montana, so maybe he can do some research and write up a post about whether or not this rural Montana town that was poisoned by W.R. Grace and Company appreciates being the butt of this mocking piece of Onion satire.

Now, I’m not a mental health professional, so I won’t speculate on the mental health status of Mark Tokarski, but if he is mentally ill, as Pete Talbot asserts, then making fun of him is pretty low. And perpetuating negative Montana stereotypes by using a rural Montana town that suffered so greatly, as Libby has, is even lower.

But that’s what I’ve come to expect from Democrat partisans who try to punish those who tarnish the image of Montana Democrats with substantive criticism, even if it means NOT promoting posts about local homeless issues. I will never forget this comment from Talbot:

You have a great capacity for alienating potential allies, Skink. I’ve thought about linking to your well-written posts on homelessness and mental illness, even advancing your agenda when I have the opportunity. After all your caustic posts on Don, me and Intelligent Discontent, though, I’m disinclined to do so.

With sentiments like this thrown my direction, I’m becoming increasingly dubious about voting in this election cycle. Instead of constant Zinke/Gianforte attacks, Democrats might want to consider giving us better reasons to vote for them. If their only reason is Republicans are terrible, then I’m staying home on election day.