Month: January 2019

by William Skink

I’ve had conflicted feelings about football for years, and for many reasons, like the absurd non-profit status of the NFL, the hoovering of public money to get flashy stadiums with corporate names built, the concussions, the off the field violence, and the obscene commercialism mixed with a gladiator-proud national militarism. I went so far as to question whether I would continue watching at all.

Part of what makes me conflicted is how much my oldest enjoys watching the game. I turned 40 this year and my wife surprised me with tickets to the Seahawks season opener with my dad and my son. It was a great experience.

And then along comes Patrick Mahomes.

I spent 5th grade to the end of of high school growing up in the suburbs of Kansas City. I was a huge Chiefs fan. I remember players like Christian Okoye, the “Nigerian Nightmare”, and defense greats, like Derrick Thomas. The Chiefs got Joe Montana at the end of his career, along with Marcus Allen. All the talent over the years never translated to playoff wins. For a taste of what became known as the play-off curse, here’s some of the more recent heartbreaks:

The 2014 playoff loss was a tough one and was the first Chiefs playoff game that really got to me. KC led 38-10 at one point and wound up losing 45-44.

The only playoff win that people my age had witnessed since that 1993 season was in 2016 (the 2015 season) when the Chiefs shutout the Houston Texans on the road in the Wild Card round. I remember watching that game and even though the Chiefs ended up winning 30-0, I still thought they were going to blow it. That’s what this curse has done to me, and I’m sure to other fans.

The next season they’d lose in the playoffs despite the opposition not scoring a touchdown. I remember I started crying when the Chiefs got the two-point conversion because I thought the curse was over, but nope. Eric Fisher was flagged and the curse lived on.

In the 2018 playoffs, KC was leading 21-3 and lost 22-21 after Marcus Mariota threw a touchdown pass to himself and Derrick Henry ran all over that Chiefs D. I attended that game and when the Mariota touchdown happened, I turned to my brother and said, “Here comes the implosion.” It was the damn curse eating away at my confidence once again.

I hadn’t allowed myself to think the Chiefs could win for a long time, then Patrick Mahomes comes along and leads the Chiefs to a record breaking season for a young quarterback (he’s not technically a rookie, my son keeps reminding me), throwing 50 touchdowns and making even the losses memorable, especially the epic, high-scoring showdown against the Rams, who I hope DESTROY the goddamn Patriots in two weeks.

I say that because the goddamn Patriots ended the miracle season for Mahomes and the Chiefs on Sunday. It’s been at least 2 decades since I acted like the raving maniac who hijacked my body on Sunday, causing it to leap around the room while making guttural noises like a wounded animal. I may have to convince my mom to destroy the evidence of my regression.

I’m not back in the saddle to support the NFL by any means. My kids will not play the sport competitively, and that reality, combined with the increasing difficulty of schools to get insurance, means the sport is still in serious trouble. Here is the stark, succinct lead in to the NPR interview with Steve Fainaru:

The NFL has, over the last decade, been rocked by lawsuits over traumatic brain injuries, allegations of player domestic violence off the field and rule changes of their own. But according to an ESPN investigation, the sport is facing a problem that could threaten its very survival – lack of insurance. The NFL no longer has general liability insurance covering head trauma. And only one carrier is willing to cover teams for workman’s comp. In short, if there’s no insurance, there’s no football.

That’s a pretty bleak prognosis for our national pastime.

Next month, when Super Bowl whatever goes down between the most dominant football dynasty of all time (pause to spit on ground) and the Rams, I’ll be thinking about the lifespan of football in between hurling insults at Brady, TidePod Gronk and Darth Belichick.

by William Skink

It’s Friday night, a time when people with active social lives do social things. People are out and about, talking about the week and the latest headlines. Tonight the chatter probably includes hopeful speculation amongst the resistance that Trump is done, he told Cohen to lie to Congress, it’s obstruction, it’s impeachment, it’s over.

But like so much of the breathless headlines that promises significant developments in the Russiagate investigation, this bombshell has backfired after Mueller’s Special counsel issued a “rare statement” Friday night contesting Buzzfeeds explosive allegations:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office issued a rare statement Friday night disputing an explosive report from BuzzFeed News that President Trump had told his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.

A number of Democratic lawmakers had seized on the report throughout the day on Friday, calling the latest bombshell allegation against Trump the most damning yet, with several raising the possibility of impeachment.

“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” special counsel spokesman Peter Carr said in a statement obtained by The Hill on Friday night.

Gee, I wonder why Trump supporters view “the media” as their enemy?

by William Skink

A new development in the battle for your mind got some attention recently from MintPress, in a piece titled How a NeoCon-Backed “Fact Checker” Plans to Wage War on Independent Media”. From the link:

As MintPress News Editor-in-Chief Mnar Muhawesh recently wrote, MintPress was informed that it was under review by an organization called Newsguard Technologies, which described itself to MintPress as simply a “news rating agency” and asked Muhawesh to comment on a series of allegations, several of which were blatantly untrue. However, further examination of this organization reveals that it is funded by and deeply connected to the U.S. government, neo-conservatives, and powerful monied interests, all of whom have been working overtime since the 2016 election to silence dissent to American forever-wars and corporate-led oligarchy.

More troubling still, Newsguard — by virtue of its deep connections to government and Silicon Valley — is lobbying to have its rankings of news sites installed by default on computers in U.S. public libraries, schools, and universities as well as on all smartphones and computers sold in the United States.

In other words, as Newsguard’s project advances, it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site’s ranking systems on any technological device sold in the United States. Worse still, if its efforts to quash dissenting voices in the U.S. are successful, Newsguard promises that its next move will be to take its system global.

This should give anyone who values non-corporate media efforts serious pause. And when you read further, the people involved in this should raise serious alarms:

Newsguard is the latest venture to result from the partnership between Steven Brill and Louis Gordon Crovitz, who currently serve as co-CEOs of the group. Brill is a long-time journalist — published in TIME and The New Yorker, among others — who most recently founded the Yale Journalism Initiative, which aims to encourage Yale students who “aspire to contribute to democracy in the United States and around the world” to become journalists at top U.S. and international media organizations. He first teamed up with Crovitz in 2009 to create Journalism Online, which sought to make the online presence of top American newspapers and other publishers profitable, and was also the CEO of the company that partnered up with the TSA to offer “registered” travelers the ability to move more quickly through airport security — for a price, of course.

While Brill’s past does not in itself raise red flags, Crovitz — his partner in founding Journalism Online, then Press+, and now Newsguard — is the last person one would expect to find promoting any legitimate effort to “restore trust and accountability” in journalism. In the early 1980s. Crovitz held a number of positions at Dow Jones and at the Wall Street Journal, eventually becoming executive vice president of the former and the publisher of the latter before both were sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2007. He is also a board member of Business Insider, which has received over $30 million from Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos in recent years.

In addition to being a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Crovitz proudly notes in his bio, available on Newsguard’s website, that he has been an “editor or contributor to books published by the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation.” Though many MintPress readers are likely familiar with these two institutions, for those who are not, it is worth pointing out that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is one of the most influential neoconservative think tanks in the country and its “scholars,” directors and fellows have included neoconservative figures like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton and Frederick Kagan.

It seems like independent media is particularly vulnerable to attack right now as we move deeper into the anti-Trump/anti-Russia hysteria. Corporate media can report on any crazy shit they want, like sonic weapons used against Diplomats in Cuba that turned out to be crickets, and a Russia hack on the electrical grid in Vermont that turned out to be utter bullshit. Regarding the latter, here’s how Forbes describes what happened:

On Friday the Washington Post sparked a wave of fear when it ran the breathless headline “Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials say.” The lead sentence offered “A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials” and continued “While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter, the penetration of the nation’s electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability.”

Yet, it turns out this narrative was false and as the chronology below will show, illustrates how effectively false and misleading news can ricochet through the global news echo chamber through the pages of top tier newspapers that fail to properly verify their facts.

The original article was posted online on the Washington Post’s website at 7:55PM EST. Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, we can see that sometime between 9:24PM and 10:06PM the Post updated the article to indicate that multiple computer systems at the utility had been breached (“computers” plural), but that further data was still being collected: “Officials said that it is unclear when the code entered the Vermont utility’s computers, and that an investigation will attempt to determine the timing and nature of the intrusion.” Several paragraphs of additional material were added between 8PM and 10PM, claiming and contextualizing the breach as part of a broader campaign of Russian hacking against the US, including the DNC and Podesta email breaches.

Despite the article ballooning from 8 to 18 paragraphs, the publication date of the article remained unchanged and no editorial note was appended, meaning that a reader being forwarded a link to the article would have no way of knowing the article they were seeing was in any way changed from the original version published 2 hours prior.

NewsGuard is a very worrying development in the battle for your brain. We need an actual resistance to the real threats we face.

by William Skink

Mountain Line’s General Manager, Corey Aldridge, issued a statement on their selective use of “leaning benches” and the controversy that ensued on social media after they were installed in 3 locations near the Poverello Center. The statement came despite the continued disinterest by the majority of local media. I believe ABC Fox has been the only local media outlet to report on this so far. 

Before getting to Aldridge’s statement, let’s take a look at what is considered a Mountain Line story worthy of some media attention. Missoula Current has an article about Mountain Line appointing a seasoned employee, Jennifer Sweten, to the position of Operations Manager. From the link:

Sweeten, who steps in at a time of growth, earned the Transportation Safety Institute’s Certification for Transit Safety and Security from the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2017.

She was named Mountain Line’s safety and security officer the same year.

She also holds a safety and security director certification from the World Safety Organization.

“I’m thrilled for this opportunity,” Sweten said in a statement. “Missoula is a beautiful community to live and work in, and I look forward to serving our agency and our riders into the future.”

Now, to contrast the stellar work of someone who holds a safety and security director certification from the World Safety Organization, here is the statement from General Manager Corey Aldridge about why Mountain Line’s inability to deal with safety and security issues at three bus shelters has forced them to creatively redefine what constitutes a “bench”:

Mountain Line was recently made aware of complaints regarding leaning benches at three bus stops in our system. Our agency is always tasked with trying to balance the needs of various interests, and this balancing act is never easy. Accessibility and the safety of our riders are just a few of the concerns we grapple with everyday. The benches in question were installed at three bus shelters on W. Broadway in early 2018. This action was in response to frequent, almost daily, complaints at these shelters, from riders and local residents alike, of litter, public drunkenness, illicit drug use, and people sleeping in bus shelters. Missoula Police were contacted on several occasions to deal with individuals who refused to move at the request of our staff and became belligerent. Divided benches were used, but they were continually vandalized. Since the installation of the leaning benches, these problems have decreased substantially, but we may have unintentionally created another problem in its place.

In the past few days, many people, both in Missoula and elsewhere, have expressed their dislike of the design of these benches. Upon hearing the concerns of the public, it is apparent that our solution may have not been the best remedy to these problems. In response, we are examining other ways to ensure the safety of our riders while keeping our stops accessible and friendly. We ask for your patience we continue to work through this process and thank you to those who have voiced their concerns.

First, I think Aldridge may be confused about what constitutes a bench. A bench is something you sit on, and requires a long, flat surface on which a person places their respective butt. Mountain Line did not install benches, they removed benches and installed some hostile architecture to solve a problem that has apparently gotten so bad not even city police can effectively address it.

Which brings me to the second point, why is Mountain Line responding to criminal complaints regarding drug use in the first place? Have Mountain Line staff been deputized to police their own bus shelters? And why can’t police deal with this? Is Missoula PD over-extended? Is the jail full? WTF?

If local media was actually interested in this, there are other questions that need to be answered, like how did this decision get made in the first place? Was there a process that included public input? Mountain Line gets Federal funds, so must adhere to things like the Civil Rights Act. Was that even a consideration?

Now that this is starting to get some attention, the statement from Aldridge indicates awareness has percolated up to decision makers who realize they’ve created an unforced error that could, if not remedied, expose them to litigation.

The smart thing to do for Mountain Line is to bring back the benches and acknowledge the installation of leaning posts near a homeless shelter and specific housing for those with disabilities was a stupid response to the larger issues of addiction, mental illness and homelessness.

by William Skink

The biggest responsibility Montana’s 2019 class of legislators have this session is deciding the fate of Medicaid expansion in Montana. An early skirmish amongst Republicans over rules–pegging the number of legislators needed to blast a bill out of a kill committee to how many happen to be in the majority (58 this year)–gives a slight tilt to the “solutions caucus”. Will it be enough to avoid the worst inclinations of the punch-the-poor-in-the-face zealots who could care less if the state gets sued as long as some poor people have the screws turned on ’em?

Coming off the failure of trying to save Medicaid with a tobacco tax, Bullock is now trying to make saving Medicaid expansion all about jobs. There is plenty of data to back up Bullock’s claim that Medicaid expansion has been a great jobs creator, but will this be a compelling argument for conservatives? There doesn’t seem to be much concern about government workers at the Federal level right now, so I’m doubtful.

If I were in elected office this session trying to reshape the debate over Medicaid I would include the positive impact of the expansion on law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Medicaid plays a huge role in increasing access to treatment and supportive services. With an addiction crisis playing out on the streets, in emergency rooms and in jails across the state, explaining this positive impact could be compelling.

I’ll be reading what I can about this session as it unfolds. There is serious business that needs to be done, so hopefully there’s no more stupid shit like the stunt demanding Montana taxpayers shell out 8 million dollars for Trump’s border wall.