Month: July 2018

by William Skink

I took my boys to Silverwood this weekend because they earned free tickets during the school year. After a long, hot day we were ready to get to my Grandma’s house in Spokane, but when we got to I-90 the traffic was at a stand-still.

When we finally got to the scene a cop was placing a giant bottle of booze on the hood of a smashed truck. A few hundred feet away we saw the gnarled wreckage of a car somehow pushed onto a concrete barrier.

We arrived safely at Grandma’s and within minutes the local news she was watching showed the accident. The man in the truck was suspected of intentionally causing several accidents in a drug/alcohol fueled trail of destruction that went from Washington State into Idaho.

Seeing a wreck like this the damage is obvious and tangible. Seeing the wreckage of our criminal justice system is much more difficult–that is, until it starts spilling onto the pages of newspapers.

Starting in Missoula we have Justice of the Peace Marie Andersen presiding over her fiefdom in ways unbecoming of a judge, like telling staff to drop-off court payments on her back porch, walk her dog, and aggressively recycle. Oh, and not showing up for court. The absenteeism is perhaps the most troubling because what court isn’t drowning in cases to clear?

Marie Andersen is up for reelection, so vote accordingly.

No one needs to vote out Hill County Attorney Jessica Cole-Hodgkinson because she resigned. Showing up to work was also a problem for Cole-Hodgkinson, apparently, among other serious deficiencies in competency.

It’s hard to measure what negative impacts just these two poor examples of public servants have had on already over-crowded jails and over-burdened courts. Considering what rampant drug and alcohol abuse is doing to communities across Montana, I’d say it borders on criminal negligence.

Up in Great Falls last week Cascade County Sheriff Bob Edwards took a drastic step to deal with jail over crowding by sending a letter detailing who would be accepted to jail, and who wouldn’t:

Cascade County Sheriff Bob Edwards sent a letter Monday afternoon announcing that he’d no longer accept offenders for non-violent misdemeanor warrants or non-violent misdemeanors due to overcrowding.

On Monday, the jail population was 531 in a facility built to house 360. On Tuesday morning the number had dropped to 511.

People being held at the jail, whether awaiting trial or having been sentenced, are sleeping on floors, sharing bathrooms and tensions are high, Edwards told The Electric Tuesday morning.

“You get a situation like that, it gets very volatile,” he said. “We have to do something.”

Then, over the weekend, there was a 4 hour riot in one of the pods that caused upwards of $10,000 worth of damage.

Our criminal justice system is broken.

by William Skink

I don’t think Democrats can stop themselves from imploding over Russia-gate. It doesn’t matter that according to a recent Gallup poll, less than 1% percent think it’s the most important issue facing America. Despite the unenthusiastic perception of the general public, the obsessive focus by the resistance on RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA continues to be a useful tool capable of multiple functions, like a political Swiss Army knife.

The first function was to shift attention away from the exposure of DNC corruption and HRC’s uniquely awful candidacy. A similar function has been to distract from the growing evidence of political bias within the FBI/DOJ. If you are not concerned that Strzok himself declared there’s no there there, then your hatred of Trump has impaired your ability to think objectively about the serious ramifications for what this admission means, especially after Lisa Page allegedly confirmed Strzok was indeed referring to the Russian investigation.

The gift of Russia-gate for Democrats also allowed spurious attacks on Jill Stein, tainting the despised Green Party in the process. Montana Democrats should appreciate that.

Also ignored thanks to Russia-gate is any serious focus on domestic voter purges, vulnerable voting machine software and gerrymandering. And let’s not forget that brazen smear of alternative media facilitated by the Bezos Post. Matt Taibbi did a great take down of the effort at the time for Rolling Stone.

Even local media upstart Missoula Current is getting in on the Russophobic bandwagon by running an absurdly hysterical op-ed recently by some former Marine by the name of Jon-Claud Nix. After stating (without evidence, as usual) that VLADAMIR PUTIN DID THIS (meddled in the US election), this former Marine says:

Americans of honest faith should no longer judge Trump based on the results of Mueller’s probe of election collusion; they must recognize that right now their president, the most powerful person in world governance, openly works for Russia’s interests and against America. (We’ll leave aside the completely baffling question of, “Why??”)

This is what collusion looks like in real time.

To many of us who care deeply for and even served our country against foreign enemies, Trump publicly siding with Putin is treasonous. Continuing to criticize allies while mimicking the talking points of an autocratic, lying, former KGB, Russian dictator are the words and deeds of someone who is a traitor to his country.

I find it quite interesting that this Jon-Claud dude is downplaying Mueller’s investigation. Could this be a result of a growing awareness that the bigger story is how Team Obama exploited opposition research to direct the vast powers of the surveillance state to spy on their political opponent? And still haven’t come up with convincing evidence of collusion?

No, that narrative can’t be acknowledged by the resistance. Instead we get condescending shit like this:

This doesn’t matter much as it pertains to Trump himself: True Believers in the Dear Leader will never see the truth, no matter how often or comprehensively it is pointed out. Montana Trump supporters are all-in, psychologically and politically. The Great Falls rally two weeks ago settled this point. They deserve a marginal amount of sympathy: it must be crushingly difficult to recognize that you were duped by a con-man and voted for someone who never cared about your interests.

What matters now is that Greg Gianforte and Steve Daines (the latter is not on the November ballot) either declare that they are for America and not Trump-and-Russia or get replaced.

This highlights anther use of Russia-gate: deploy against Republican politicians in a manner that calls into question their patriotism. McCarthy would be proud.

As an added bonus, Russia-gate could also help establishment Democrats fend off the progressive insurgency threatening to inch their center-right positions to the left.

For more on that front I suggest reading this MoA post, titled ‘Progressives Are Putin Stooges’ – How Centrist Democrats Help To Reelect Trump. I found this perspective from Doug Henwood (referenced in the post) to be worth highlighting:

It seems that Democrats are now incapable of talking about anything but Russian interference in our sacred elections.

The Trump administration is eviscerating environmental regulations, appointing horrific judges, prosecuting a grotesque war on refugees and immigrants, and we’re hearing about little other than Putin’s alleged hold over Trump, often expressed in grossly homophobic terms.

In doing so, they’re accepting uncritically the version of events proffered by cops, prosecutors and the CIA, organizations made up of professional liars who’ve been enemies of democracy and free expression at home and abroad for decades.

We’re seeing Dem pundits even accusing Bernie Sanders and other insurgents within their party of being Russian agents, witting or unwitting. Their indictments of Trump for treason make them sound like demented right-wingers at the height of the Cold War.

This obsession does relieve mainstream Democrats of concocting an attractive agenda that might win an election or two, but to do that they’d have to tack left, and Goldman Sachs wouldn’t like that.

This Russia obsession’s a win win for the establishment though – subdue Trump and the domestic left insurgency all at once.

I understand why those within a half a standard deviation of the center would embrace it, but why anyone further left would play along with it is beyond me.

Please stop.

Sorry Doug, they’re not going to stop. Why? Because Russia-gate is the gift that keeps on giving.

That is, until it doesn’t.

by William Skink

With accusations of TREASON bouncing all around social media after the press conference where Trump SOLD OUT AMERICA to Putin, we are at a point where Trump could probably be assassinated on live tv by John Brennan himself and the rabid resistance would sing hallelujah to the CIA and the rest of the professional liars who have been fucking up the world since 1953.

Half a century ago there were intelligence officials who saw the thawing of relations with Russia as a major threat. The president at the time was framed as being a weak leader because he blinked during the Cuban missile crisis.

That president was assassinated for his transgressions.

If this current round of political assassination doesn’t work, the scene is being set for a repeat performance by intelligence forces who have acted in much more treasonous ways than Trump.

by William Skink

Late last month Cy Hersh made an appearance on Jeremy Scahill’s podcast, Intercepted. While he was primarily there to sell his memoir, Reporter, he let a teaser slip about a story he’s been onto for years:

Let’s just start with this premise: After 9/11, before he invaded Iraq, we were told by the American intelligence community that they had high confidence, that phrase was said again and again, that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. They’re saying now the same thing about Russia.

I have been reporting something, I’ve been watching something since 2011 in Libya, when we had a secretary of state that later ran for president, and I will tell you: Some stories take a long time. And I don’t know quite how to package it. I don’t know how much to say about it. I assure you that there’s no known intelligence that Russia impacted, cut into the DNC, Podesta e-mails. That did not happen. I can say that.

I can also say Russia learned other things about what was going on in Libya with us and instead of blowing — oh God, this is too tantalizing. Why are you asking me these questions?

Cy Hersh is not some blogger in Montana saying this, he is part of a dying breed of truth-seeking journalist with decades of experience and carefully cultivated sources. People who want to know the truth about how certain political players have been operating should not ignore the hints being dropped here by Hersch.

It’s not too difficult to make some educated guesses about what Hersh is referring to. After Gaddafi was deposed by the R2P nuts surrounding Obama, there were a lot of weapons floating around the country. For years there has been speculation that weapons were being funneled from Libya to Syria to arm the jihadists tasked with keeping the regime-change trains chugging along. According to this scenario, the CIA was exploiting diplomatic cover in Benghazi to accomplish moving weapons along their ratline and that was the backdrop to the attack, not the lies that were initially told about a spontaneous uprising because Muslims were pissed off about a movie.

I understand why our brilliant intelligence agencies prefer to arm terrorists covertly. It’s a big pain to come up with different names for the same terrorists when you are funneling weapons in an official capacity. Also, it’s kind of embarrassing to have to shrug off report after report of those same weapons suddenly showing up in the hands of the terrorists who didn’t get the name-change memo.

A draw-back to doing things covertly is you don’t want anyone to know what you’re doing, otherwise it wouldn’t be covert. Cy Hersh is claiming Russia found out about something that was happening in Libya. I suspect it had to do with arming jihadists, the movement of money and the Clinton Foundation, for starters.

The indictments that got rolled out Friday by the DOJ are a useful distraction to confirm a false narrative for partisans, who eat this shit up, and a way to poison the upcoming Trump/Putin summit. Will it work? Probably. Up to this point the Russiagate campaign has successfully kept the focus away from what really matters.

by William Skink

Nazis are bad and should always be opposed, wherever they pop up, right? But what if Russians are involved? Are Russians worse than Nazis? Is Russia so bad that the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend mentality applies?

With a new round of anti-Russian hysteria taking hold, the above stupid questions don’t seem so stupid to me. I’ve heard the deceitful claim that RUSSIAN INVADED UKRAINE so many times recently I’m starting to feel crazy for knowing better.

At The Montana Post, a blogger by the name of The Polish Wolf used to do the heavy lifting in apologizing for America’s instigation of regime change in Ukraine. You can read his “answers” to those pesky questions from the left about the crisis America provoked here, and here is what PW had to say about Nazis:

Aren’t the protestors in Ukraine Nazis or neo-Nazis? It seems quite likely that some of them adhere to radical right-wing ideologies. It’s also clear that the deaths of protestors during the Euromaiden protests have greatly strengthened the hand of the most radical elements. However, even groups like Pravy Sektor or Svoboda, I would hesitate to describe as ‘neo-nazis’, if only because I know some very rational, cosmopolitan Ukrainians who believe that these parties are their best chance to gain national sovereignty. In the several months of peaceful protests before the first protestor deaths, a great many parties from across the political spectrum took part. No radical right wing party currently hold a majority of seats in the Ukrainian parliament or the cabinet.

That was back in April of 2014, before over 30 people were burned alive in a building in Odessa. To contrast the Nazi-apologist above, read this:

Andriy Parubiy, who founded, along with Oleh Tyahnybok, the Social-National Party of Ukraine–subsequently renamed Svoboda (Freedom)–is now Kiev’s National Security Chief and in charge of military operations against Ukrainian civilians who oppose the unelected junta in Kiev. These actions are being termed an “anti-terrorism operation” while the terrorism that accompanied the Maidan coup in Kiev, which included throwing Molotov cocktails on police, neo-Nazis patrolling Kiev in armed groups, and serious allegations regarding Maidan activists hiring snipers who fired on crowds, is accepted as legitimate by the West and not questioned.

John McCain and Victoria Nuland had no qualms meeting with Tyahnybok, although his party, Svoboda, glorifies fascist leaders such as Stepan Bandera, the infamous Ukrainian Nazi, whose Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was responsible for massacres of tens of thousands of Poles and Jews. ‘Right Sector’ leader Dmytro Yarosh is the security deputy of the interim government. He claims that it is Ukraine’s destiny to be in eternal war with Russiaand espouses Nazi ideals. Members of his group are now an official part of the National Guard and are sent to fight East Ukrainians who do not feel represented by the Kiev government. Right Sector neo-Nazis also received police training in Poland two months before the Maidan coup. US support for Ukrainian Nazis has been taking place for over 70 years.

Let me ask again, is Russia a big enough threat to America that it’s worth empowering literal Nazis in Ukraine?

I’m sure the authors at MP would bristle at the notion they support Nazis in any way. It’s just innocent omissions when they forget to mention the fact American regime change preceded the INVASION of Ukraine and the ANNEXATION of Crimea and has led to, again, LITERAL NAZIS to rise again to positions of influence within a fractured nation.

And if you think things have gotten any better, prepare yourself for a headline you probably never expected to read from a publication like Haartz. Since I’m in the mood for screaming apparently, here it is in big letters:

RIGHTS GROUPS DEMAND ISRAEL STOP ARMING NEO-NAZIS

Seriously. From the link:

A group of more than 40 human rights activists have filed a petition with the High Court of Justice, demanding the cessation of Israeli arms exports to Ukraine.

They argue that these weapons serve forces that openly espouse a neo-Nazi ideology and cite evidence that the right-wing Azov militia, whose members are part of Ukraine’s armed forces, and are supported by the country’s ministry of internal affairs, is using these weapons.

An earlier appeal to the Defense Ministry was met with no response.

So, the next time you hear someone assert Russia invaded Ukraine, ask them if they support Kiev’s safe space for Nazis.