Month: November 2016

by William Skink

Too much fun with effects? Possibly, but no one can deny the cuteness of the brown puppy in this video, nor my mutant power to bring a political slant, which includes a reference Edward Abbey and Derrick Jensen. Enjoy!

by William Skink

While it might be difficult to see Trump’s brand of Fascism as a continuation of Obama’s Neoliberal fascism, Trump’s capacity to be a dangerous demagogue doesn’t exist in a vacuum. From surveillance to drone strikes to indefinite detention, Trump is taking over constitution-negating systems of oppression that liberals refused to pushback against while their slick-talking president was the one wielding the power.

Now, with Jeff Sessions being picked for AG, and internment camps for Muslims being normalized, American fascism will become nakedly overt. This is going to get very ugly very fast.

William Skink

So, Chuck Schumer is going to be your minority leader? Fuck you, Democrats.

And you want a “progressive” interventionist to head the DNC? Fuck you, Democrats.

Congressman Keith Ellison, candidate of progressive Democrats and many regressive Democrats for chair of the Democratic National Committee eagerly urged the illegal and disastrous violent overthrow of the government of Libya in 2011, which he celebrated as a success despite what it meant for the rule of law, despite all the death and suffering, despite the predictable instability and weapons proliferation to follow.

Ellison moved on to pushing, and using his perch as co-chair of the Progressive Caucus to push, for a similar war on Syria. For years now he has advocated for the illegal and murderous creation of no fly zones and “safe zones” — what Hillary Clinton admitted only to Goldman Sachs would require that you “kill a lot of Syrians.” Ellison was an early backer of bombing Syria in 2013. He met with peace activists but rejected their appeal.

And all that noise about the terrible notion that Trump wouldn’t accept the election results? Fuck you and your professional protesters stirring up trouble, Democrats.

I know, the corporate media is pretending like professional protesters don’t exist, and you’ll eat that shit up.

But what about this?  And this?  From the second link:

With that in mind, Soros-backed groups are, indeed, shaping the anti-Trump, “Not My President” protests. Although it would be utterly irresponsible to say a large faction of demonstrators weren’t self-motivated, it would be equally capricious to imagine an organic movement would remain as organized as it has without outside, professional involvement — of which evidence abounds with a little research.

In a November 9 article in Business Insider discussing the emergence of protests around the nation, a featured photograph by the Associated Press shows students marching in the streets holding banners. One reads, “Trump = Always Racist” — but along the bottom of that banner is a curious suggestion to “Text NeverTrump to 877-877.”

When you do just that, you will receive an automatically-generated reply text with the opening line, “Welcome to UWD – let’s stop Trump together” with the option to reply “Help” for more information. Doing so reveals UWD is “United We Dream” — an immigrant advocacy organization receiving funding from none other than George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

I see Democrat friends on Facebook echoing the propaganda that it’s dangerous for Trump to question the “grassroots” nature of the protests. When Ben Sasse asks why there isn’t more reporting on this, Matthew Yglesias tweeted this:

One of Trump’s leading former GOP critics now laying rhetorical groundwork for an authoritarian crackdown

Because you ignorant fucks haven’t paid attention to what your neoliberal warmongers have done with color revolutions abroad to destabilize countries like Ukraine, you won’t recognize that this strategy is now being fully deployed domestically.

I guess the ‘fuck you’ wasn’t loud enough. Your ignorance is what’s dangerous, Democrats. You are allowing the Plutocrats to position this country for a civil war.

You want riots to overtake American cities? You want to throw out the election results and destroy President-elect Trump before he’s inaugurated? Go ahead, assholes. Just know it will be you who is culpable for the violence that is unleashed. It is you who are condoning the very behavior you decried would come from Trump supporters if he lost.

Basically, fuck you, Democrats.

by William Skink

The strangest and most disturbing part of the Wikileaks Podesta email dump is what online sleuthing has produced regarding pizza. For those of us who have looked into the Franklin Credit Union scandal in Omaha, Nebraska and the disappearance of Johnny Gosch, and how it relates to pedophile networks operating at the highest levels of government, it’s not necessarily as shocking as it would appear to someone who has never gone down this particular rabbit hole.

My suggestion would be to NOT go down this rabbit hole if you don’t want to be confronted with the possibility that those in power are capable of this kind of evil. Oh, and don’t watch this video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ngGCRjyu4

by William Skink

Juxtaposing the jail overcrowding crisis with the effort to relocate refugees to Missoula provides the perfect contrast between things that get done and things that get talked about.

Soft Landing was created in September, 2015. Within a year they had met their initial goals and were moving full steam ahead:

This week marks a year that the organization Soft Landing Missoula was created with the goal of bringing refugees to Missoula, which has been a topic of controversy throughout the state.

In that year, Soft Landing achieved their goal. An International Rescue Committee field office reopened and last week Missoula received their second group of refugees, another family from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It only took a year to go from idea to families arriving. That’s impressive. And for the refugee families, the barriers that keep housing-insecure people already in our community from accessing stable housing just disappeared. No income, no credit, no rental history, no cosigner? No problem.

Also in September of 2015, Missoula’s leaders got together at the Double Tree Inn to discuss the initial alternatives to jail from a flurry of listening sessions done with local stakeholders. The master plan was still in the works (at a final cost of $40,000 dollars) and was unveiled to the public in April of this year.

So what’s happening with the plan? According to this article from Missoula Current, Municipal Court pushback and City Council infighting. From the link:

The discussion marked the second time in as many weeks the committee has addressed the plan. But unlike the last hearing, Wednesday’s debate saw Missoula Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Jenks air a number of concerns related to the document.

“I have some concerns about the plan – I have concerns about the data,” Jenks said. “The data is wrong. That’s not something that should reflect on the people that have tried to compile the data, but rather, that the database isn’t built to create the kind of data you need for this analysis.”

Not only is Judge Jenks contesting the accuracy of the data, she is also concerned that her ability to impose jail time as a consequence is going to be taken away from Municipal Court:

“I have some serious concerns also with the language directing the courts to do this or that, or not do this or that,” Jenks said. “I would have preferred that the options be offered as tools, not as something that seems to be a mandatory requirement on the part of the court. That does disturb me.”

If jail were removed from the court as a tool, Jenks said, some offenders would disregard the court’s instructions. While the plan recommends a long list of alternatives to jail, none of them will work if jail is removed as a more severe penalty, she added.

So how did one of the architects of this master plan, Emily Bentley, respond to this pushback?

Ward 3 council member Emily Bentley, one of the plan’s primary sponsors, defended the data.

“The data is not inaccurate,” she said. “It just doesn’t give us all the tools we need to get to the bottom of these problems. The first recommendation is to collect better data, but it’s not like it’s wildly inaccurate or anything. You need to be careful when you start throwing bombs like that.”

So, as refugees prepare for their first winter, our city leaders can’t even agree if the data in this master plan is accurate or not. But Bentley wasn’t done lashing out, and her next target was her fellow council person, Jon Wilkins:

The plan has also created an ongoing spat between Bentley and Ward 4 council member Jon Wilkins. Last week, Bentley asked Wilkins to reveal his “conflict of interest” when discussing the plan.

“I have a conflict of interest?” Wilkins replied.

“Were you going to address that?” Bentley stated.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Wilkins said. “I think this whole thing is flawed, so yeah, I guess I have a conflict of interest.”

The conflict I think Bentley is referring to is the fact that Jon’s wife, Sue Wilkins, runs the pre-release center, and the pre-release center refused to provide their data for this master plan. There are some interesting rumors floating around about what might be going on behind the scenes, and clearly this is about to come out in some form.

It’s been over a year since city leaders began examining this problem in detail. $40,000 dollars was spent to create a master plan that contains questionable data, according to the Municipal Court. The lack of cooperation from the pre-release center and the potential conflict of interest of a city council person further erodes confidence that our city leaders have a firm grasp of what the problems fueling the overcrowding even are.

Those working within this systemic crisis, and those being chewed up by it, deserve better than this.