Month: March 2019

by William Skink

Beto is Great-o. He has a great smile, perfect hair and a non-Progressive voting record. What more could you want?

How about a poem written under the pseudonym Pysychedelic Warlord in 1988? Here you go:

I need a butt-shine
Right now
Your are holy,
Oh, sacred cow
I thirst for you,
Provide Milk

Buff my balls,
Love the Cow,
Good fortune for those that do.
Love me, breathe my feet,
The Cow has risen.

Wax my ass,
Scrub my balls
The Cow has risen,
Provide Milk.

Oh, Milky winder, sing for us once more
Live your life, everlusting joy.
Thrust your hooves up my analytic passage,
Enjoy my fruits

Provider of Cheese and other wonderful dairy products,
We will cleanse your inner intestines.
We will bathe in your Pungent Odor
Gather cotton.

Count my eyes,
Smell my skin,
Love the Scarecrow and the Milkman.
I live only for eternity,
Thirst for the undrinkable.
Hold the heat,
Praise the dough boy at the pizza shop.
Love the Oxen dung!

by William Skink

There is a piece of legislation moving through the bowels in Helena that could address the statute of limitations for sex crimes against minors. One of the compelling cases being referenced is the 1987 rape of an 8 year old girl in which an innocent man was convicted and eventually freed when DNA evidence proved his innocence and pointed to a man who now cannot be prosecuted for the crime.

This post, however, is not about that legislation. This post is about something else entirely, but it includes that compelling case mentioned above and what we can know about what’s real and what is not.

Let me back up.

I’ve had to defend myself more than a few times on these virtual pages against the conspiracy theory label, and during those tiresome rhetorical smears all the worst of the conspiracy culture is usually thrown in my face.

On the far-out fringes of conspiracy culture lurk fakeologists who claim fakery and hoaxing about everything from Newtown to AIDS. One of those fakeologists just happens to be the father of that 8 year old girl and his name is Mark Tokarski.

Until recently I was the only person banned from commenting at his blog, Piece of Mind, which is funny considering I once defended Mark and his antagonism toward equally antagonistic online personalities during the heyday of the Montana blogosphere. I regret ever doing that.

The reason I’m banned is because I interrupted the fun Mark has making claims of fakery to his flock by using elements of his own life to make a point. When Tokarski downplayed the extent of human trafficking and the role of the occult, I speculated that maybe he was saying that because his dead Catholic priest brother, Fr. Steve Tokarski, was somehow involved in covering up the widespread abuse of children within the Catholic church.

I say “speculated” because there is no evidence that Fr. Steve Tokarski was involved in, or helped cover up, the widespread abuse of children that factually occurred, and is probably still occurring, as far as the Catholic church reaches its tentacles.

A lack of credible evidence doesn’t stop fakeologists from making claims of hoaxing and fakery. If there is any concern about the possibility that these tragedies are real and real people died and claiming it’s all fake could be hurtful, I haven’t seen it at Piece of Mind.

No, wait, I did see some actual sensitivity that some tragedies could be real. The irony is that it’s Tokarski’s own family tragedy he has been forced to defend after one of his flock speculated at the reality of what Mark was claiming.

After removing the comment and banning the commenter, Tokarski defended his action with this comment:

I lived and breathed this deeply emotional matter for decades. Jim Bromgard really was released, Ronald Tipton really did live but one block from us at that time, something I only discovered by having a friend look at old phone books in the Billings library. To be told in such a smug fashion that it was all fake was too much. She pissed me off … only one other person can pull that off. DNA is fake, Bromgard never went to prison, there was no punitive award, the Attorney General of Montana really did not say I had done the crime, the media did not print it, Tipton was merely a hired actor … there was no Montana Supreme Court ruling, there was no US Supreme Court ruling … are you kidding me? All a charade? Anyway, BM had managed to piss off every other writer here, and I held on to her right up until that outbust. She got me where I lived, the smugness being most off-putting, not an ounce of listen in her. She’s done, like it or not.

Interesting. It would appear that Mark Tokarski doesn’t like his life history called into question and his family accused of nefarious activities. Imagine that. If he wasn’t a malignant narcissist he could potentially transform his angry reactions into empathy for those on the receiving end of his claims of fakes and hoaxes. Alas, I don’t see that happening.

As Mark defends his own perception of reality while continually dismissing everyone else’s perception of reality, a grand jury is being convened to examine claims that explosives were on 9/11:

As TFTP reported, a monumental step forward in the relentless pursuit of 9/11 truth took place in December when a United States Attorney agreed to comply with federal law requiring submission to a Special Grand Jury of evidence that explosives were used to bring down the World Trade Centers. Now, the group behind the submission, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, announced the filing of a “petition supplement” naming persons who may have information related to the use of said explosives.

According to Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, the 33-page document contains 15 different categories of persons who may have information material to the investigation, including contractors and security companies that had access to the WTC Towers before 9/11, persons and entities who benefited financially from the WTC demolitions, and persons arrested after being observed celebrating the WTC attacks.

by William Skink

The German blogger who runs Moon of Alabama has the most insightful analysis of the two Boeing 737 crashes I have read so far. As a retired engineer with experience in this field, he knows what he is talking about. But more importantly, as a non-American, he adds critical context to the scandal that will now emerge after the FAA refused to follow the rest of the global community in grounding all of Boeing’s 737-8 MAX planes.

I strongly encourage you to read the post in full. Here’s an excerpt:

The Boeing 737 and the Airbus 320 types are single aisle planes with some 150 seats. Both are bread and butter planes sold by the hundreds with a good profit. In 2010 Airbus decided to offer its A-320 with a New Engine Option (NEO) which uses less fuel. To counter the Airbus move Boeing had to follow up. The 737 would also get new engines for a more efficient flight and longer range. The new engines on the 737 MAX are bigger and needed to be placed a bit different than on the older version. That again changed the flight characteristics of the plane by giving it a nose up attitude.

The new flight characteristic of the 737 MAX would have require a retraining of the pilots. But Boeing’s marketing people had told their customers all along that the 737 MAX would not require extensive new training. Instead of expensive simulator training for the new type experienced 737 pilots would only have to read some documentation about the changes between the old and the new versions.

To make that viable Boeing’s engineers had to use a little trick. They added a ‘maneuver characteristics augmentation system’ (MCAS) that pitches the nose of the plane down if a sensor detects a too high angle of attack (AoA) that might lead to a stall. That made the flight characteristic of the new 737 version similar to the old one.

But the engineers screwed up.

The proper fix would have been training, but thanks to Boeing’s greed, a less expensive fix was instituted. That fix has now proven fatal. Here’s more from MoA:

MCSA is independent of the autopilot. It is even active in manual flight. There is a procedure to deactivate it but it takes some time.

One of the angle of attack sensors on the Indonesian flight was faulty. Unfortunately it was the one connected to the computer that ran the MCAS on that flight. Shortly after take off the sensor signaled a too high angle of attack even as the plane was flying in a normal climb. The MCAS engaged and put the planes nose down. The pilots reacted by disabling the autopilot and pulling the control stick back. The MCAS engaged again pitching the plane further down. The pilots again pulled the stick. This happened some 12 times in a row before the plane crashed into the sea.

To implement a security relevant automatism that depends on only one sensor is extremely bad design. To have a flight control automatism engaged even when the pilot flies manually is also a bad choice. But the real criminality was that Boeing hid the feature.

Neither the airlines that bought the planes nor the pilots who flew it were told about MCAS. They did not know that it exists. They were not aware of an automatic system that controlled the stabilizer even when the autopilot was off. They had no idea how it could be deactivated.

If what this post describes is indeed what happened, Boeing is in serious trouble. But it gets worse. How in the hell to the FAA approve these planes to fly? And why was there such reluctance to ground these planes?

Up to now the FAA was a highly regarded certification agency. Other countries followed its judgment and accepted the certifications the FAA issued. That most of the world now grounded the 737 MAX while it still flies in the States is a sign that this view is changing. The FAA’s certifications of Boeing airplanes are now in doubt.

Today Boeing’s share price dropped some 7.5%. I doubt that it is enough to reflect the liability issues at hand. Every airline that now had to ground its planes will ask for compensation. More than 330 people died and their families deserve redress. Orders for 737 MAX will be canceled as passengers will avoid that type.

Boeing will fix the MCAS problem by using more sensors or by otherwise changing the procedures. But the bigger issue for the U.S. aircraft industry might be the damage done to the FAA’s reputation. If the FAA is internationally seen as a lobbying agency for the U.S. airline industry it will no longer be trusted and the industry will suffer from it. It will have to run future certification processes through a jungle of foreign agencies.

Congress should take up the FAA issue and ask why it failed.

I’m not sure our corrupt Congress critters are up to the task of investigating corruption at the FAA. Just add the FAA to the long list of corrupt institutions that reflect a corrupt empire in terminal decline.

by William Skink

I have never been a fan of Dave Strohmaier. He earned his “nanny-state” nickname by being an ordinance-prone city council person. Strohmaier advocated for a “social host” ordinance to criminalize adults who allow house parties attended by minors, he worked to allocate money to the police department in order to increase enforcement of the fireworks ban, and he defended the anti-homeless ordinance that nearly got Missoula sued by the ACLU in 2014.

When I moved to the County in 2015 I thought I was done with being governed by a giddy nanny-stater, but I was wrong. Jean Curtiss, in a move I am sure she now regrets, endorsed Strohmaier to take out Stacy Rye because Curtis didn’t like working with her, saying:

“After working with Stacy, I don’t think her leadership style is the right fit for Missoula County,” Curtiss said.

Curtiss got what she wanted. Rye was voted out and Strohmaier became a County Commissioner. Then Curtiss lost a close race to Josh Slotnick, which means she is now watching from the sidelines as her hand-picked choice to replace Rye actively derails the County’s plan to replace the structurally deficient Maclay bridge with a new bridge at South Avenue.

There is a lot of noise around the bridge controversy, and some of that noise now includes accusations that Strohmaier has a conflict of interest. Here is why these claims are being made:

Strohmaier has worked closely with the Maclay Bridge supporters, routinely forwarding them emails from the South Avenue Bridge proponents. The bridge supporters claim Strohmaier was coached by MBA members and regularly posed their questions to the firm the county hired to perform engineering studies for the state and federal agencies.

In addition, the Bitterroot Bridges Coalition says Strohmaier repeatedly offered to meet with MBA co-founders privately, attend their meetings, and edit their newsletter.

Coalition members said they counted between 80 to 100 email messages between Strohmaier and MBA members on the bridge issues.

“No other citizens or interested parties have received the same or any similar treatment by Commissioner Strohmaier,” the coalition wrote. “There may be other ex parte communications between Commissioner (Strohmaier) and members of MBA that we are not yet aware of.”

I wrote a post touching on the bridge controversy, along with other Missoula growing pains, in July of 2016, just a few days after the mass-towing shit-show that occurred on the weekend of the 4th of July at the Kona bridge fishing access. A year after that dumb move (enabled by, you guessed it, a new ordinance) the County reimbursed 28 people over $6,000 dollars:

In March 2016, the county commissioners passed a resolution banning parking for 1,200 feet from the west end of the Kona Ranch Bridge and along Sandalwood Court, citing concerns from local residents and the sheriff’s office.

Munro said he and the other floaters were “shocked” when they arrived at the access point at the end of their day to find their cars gone. Munro said he had to borrow a phone from another floater to call and find out where his vehicle had been impounded, and that he was never issued a citation.

“The more I thought about that, I said, ‘Wait, this is preposterous,’” Munro said. “They simply grabbed people’s property, impounded it, locked it up and said, ‘You can’t have it until a company says how much you have to pay.’”

It’s been nearly 3 years since I wrote that July post, and it’s been 15 years since the South Avenue bridge was first recommended, in 1994. Two of my kids travel over the Maclay bridge every school day on a large, heavy school bus. Thanks to Dave Strohmaier and the self-interested property owners on South Avenue, my kids are going to continue going over a structurally deficient bridge not intended to handle the current traffic volume for the foreseeable future.

Needless to say I am not happy about the troubling claims that Strohmaier has a conflict of interest and is acting as a de facto member of the MBA. And I am not happy that two groups of self-interested property owners continue feuding and obstructing movement toward resolving this issue.

Doing nothing is not an option. The bridge at South Avenue needs to be built.

by William Skink

While I haven’t completely eliminated my Facebook account, I deleted the app from my phone months ago and haven’t visited FB since. Thanks to recent headlines, I expect disengagement to grow.

For the leaning right crowd, Facebook just gave Zerohedge the boot.

Over the weekend, we were surprised to learn that some readers were prevented by Facebook when attempting to share Zero Hedge articles. Subsequently it emerged that virtually every attempt to share or merely mention an article, including in private messages, would be actively blocked by the world’s largest social network, with the explanation that “the link you tried to visit goes against our community standards.”

We were surprised by this action as neither prior to this seemingly arbitrary act of censorship, nor since, were we contacted by Facebook with an explanation of what “community standard” had been violated or what particular filter or article had triggered the blanket rejection of all Zero Hedge content.

And for the leaning left crowd, FB took down ads for Elizabeth Warren:

Facebook has removed several ads placed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign that called for the breakup of Facebook and other tech giants.

The ads, which had identical images and text, touted Warren’s recently announced plan to unwind “anti-competitive” tech mergers, including Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram.

“Three companies have vast power over our economy and our democracy. Facebook, Amazon, and Google,” read the ads, which Warren’s campaign had placed Friday. “We all use them. But in their rise to power, they’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field in their favor.”

A message on the three ads reads: “This ad was taken down because it goes against Facebook’s advertising policies.”

I wonder if Zuck is still exploring a presidential run?