Month: March 2021

by Travis Mateer

The decline of Montana Democrats, as reflected in their last electoral slaughter in state-wide races, might lead one to question if this party has hit rock bottom yet.

One partisan who spent the last 16 greasing this downward skid won’t be around to answer that question. According to one of the last liberal bloggers, James Conner, the Democrat cheerleader once known as “Pogie” is throwing in the towel and moving to Hawaii.

My initial reaction? Good riddance.

When I wrote for the progressive blog, 4&20 Blackbirds, my sense of what progressive meant didn’t include DNC bootlicking. Over the years both myself and fellow blogger, JC, took issue with how our Helena-based progressive advocate conducted himself. Like this post from 2014 where JC took Pogie to task for attacking Dirk Adams.

For a media scold like Don Pogreba (Pogie), it must have stung to have a candidate say this about his blog:

“This is the stuff of Fox News and worse. 

I have to get back to reality now.”

Going down memory lane can be fun and ALSO informative. Here is one of my posts from 2013 about lip-service progressives and here is one from JC about the inevitable boringness of liberalism.

Those in the world of recovery understand that the real work doesn’t usually start happening until after one “hits bottom”. Can the same concept apply to political groups?

I’m sure there is something I will miss about a partisan blog hanging up the rhetorical spurs, like those insightful peeks into the rarified lens of liberal elitism Don provided, but for now I’m looking at the potential positive of a divisive partisan saying adios to Montana and aloha to Hawaii.

Since I’m a curious fellow, I wondered what kind of connection this Hawaiian school might have to Montana, and I found it in a Parker School board member by the name of Frances Simperman. From the link:

She is currently a board member of both the Elsie Pauly Corette Scholarship Fund at Carroll College in Helena, Montana and the Simperman Corette Foundation in Seattle. 

A little more digging turned up this article (PDF) about her husband, Roy F. Simperman, a working class man from Butte who married up and made it big with a career that included work at Boeing and NASA. From the link (and note that Diane passed away in 2000, so Roy remarried):

In 1965, Roy married Diane Core􏰁e. From one of the 50 most influen􏰀al families in the state of Montana, her affluent and prominent background clashed with Roy’s working class heritage, but love won out. The couple moved to Sea􏰁le, where Simperman went to work for Boeing, coding and calcula􏰀ng trajectories for NASA lunar orbiter computer simula􏰀ons, crea􏰀ng so􏰂ware for NASA mission naviga􏰀on and guidance control, and working on a fusing system for a nuclear warhead in a missile. Realizing he needed another degree, Simperman enrolled part‐􏰀me in the highly compe􏰀􏰀ve MBA program at University of Washington, earning an MBA in finance and economics.

Simperman next brought his exper􏰀se to bear in a thirteen‐year career at Weyerhaeuser Timber, where he designed and developed a computer simula􏰀on to model the forestry program from gene􏰀cs to 􏰀mber harvest, making the company more profitable. In 1985, he purchased Audio Control, a manufacturer of equalizers and signal processers for audiophiles. He also bought a stock photography company which sold photos online before the Internet was widely known. Simperman’s work at the stock photo company led to the crea􏰀on of Semaphore in 1994.

I don’t know if this is the connection that afforded Don Pogreba’s sunny relocation opportunity, but Roy and Frances will surely be good people to know, considering they all have roots in our State’s capitol.

Adios Don!

by Travis Mateer

This week’s episode of Zoom Town is a solo effort on my part to discuss Montana’s unseen dementia crisis. I use the article I wrote about last week regarding a dementia patient who ended up at Montana’s state psychiatric hospital as a starting point, and I highlight the effort by Rep. Danny Tennenbaum to study the issue at the state level.

If Democrats are serious about protecting vulnerable populations, and if Republicans are serious about being fiscally conservative, then there should be some common ground on this issue on which to work.

To find that common ground, though, our bickering legislators would have to take a timeout in depicting their opponents as either human-hating assholes or smug elitists spending other people’s money. With the current levels of dysfunctional partisanship gripping our Capitol, is that even possible?

On the losing side of the political divide, Democrats just lost a loyal cheerleading blog with the shuttering of The Montana Post. Without their partisan media scold, Don Pogreba, Democrats will be even MORE adrift than they are now.

At least Democrats will always have Missoula, right?

Jennifer Shepard is a doctor in Missoula and she thinks it’s time for me to roll up my sleeve and get the COVID jab. Jennifer’s OPINION was promoted by the Missoulian recently in the OPINION section. Let’s take a look at why Jennifer thinks a healthy dude like myself should take an experimental, emergency authorized jab for something I have a high 90% chance of surviving. Let’s get started!

Nearly one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us have become accustomed to wearing masks, social distancing, virtual schooling and working remote. We have all made sacrifices to protect ourselves and one another, but there is another very important step you can take to help end this pandemic and get back to normal. Starting April 1 for all Montanans age 16-plus, please consider getting the COVID-19 vaccine.

Ok, not too coercive or manipulative yet. Let’s continue.

The first COVID-19 vaccines were granted emergency use authorization from the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) in December. At Community Medical Center, we are proud that so many of our healthcare heroes stepped up and decided to get vaccinated so we can help bring this pandemic to an end and continue advancing our mission of Making Communities Healthier.

Why not ALL healthcare heroes? Have some healthcare heroes decided to NOT take the vaccine? Why the heck not?

The next two paragraphs of this OPINION piece suggests people in Missoula should take ANY of the vaccines ASAP. And here is why Jennifer Shepard claims everyone in Missoula over the age of 16 should be rushing out to take the first jab available:

All COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. The FDA committed to giving these vaccines priority review at all phases of the studies, so you can feel confident that their development was not rushed.

Um, Jennifer, it was called OPERATION WARP SPEED and the phase that included animal trials was skipped. How much is BIG PHARMA paying you to say this process WAS NOT RUSHED?

To date, millions of people in the United States have received COVID-19 vaccines, and these vaccines have undergone the most intensive safety monitoring in U.S. history. This monitoring includes using both established and new safety monitoring systems to ensure that these vaccines are as safe and effective as possible for you and your loved ones. Results from these continued monitoring efforts have reinforced that the benefits of receiving the vaccine outweigh the risks for most people.

No examples of NEW SAFETY MONITORING SYSTEMS were given by Jennifer. Do these systems have a name? Can I research them for myself? Or am I just supposed to take Jennifer’s word that they represent THE BEST EVER MONITORING IN U.S. HISTORY!

Next, Jennifer really gets amorous with the results of the jab by making some broad, sweeping claims:

All COVID-19 vaccines reduce the likelihood of contracting the virus. All vaccines currently available have been shown to be highly effective at preventing COVID-19. Other vaccines in development will be authorized for use only if they make it substantially less likely for you to get COVID-19.

All COVID-19 vaccines lessen the severity of illness. COVID-19 can have serious, life-threatening complications, and it affects different people in different ways. Based on what we know about vaccines from other disease and early data from clinical trials, experts believe that getting vaccinated will likely lessen the severity of your illness should you get the virus, reducing your chances for hospitalization or death.

How can Jennifer reference other vaccines and other diseases? Isn’t that like comparing apples to oranges? Vaccines that use MRNA have NEVER been used before, so I don’t know what the hell Jennifer is talking about. There is also no reference in this OPINION piece to the survival rate for people under the age of 80 who have contracted COVID because that wouldn’t help BIG PHARMA push their experimental vaccines.

To emphasize the difference of these vaccines, here is Jennifer describing what the vaccines DOES NOT have:

None of the COVID-19 vaccines contain a live or weakened virus vaccine, so it is not possible to contract COVID-19 from getting vaccinated.

Ok, sure, and I guess we’ll just ignore the odd fact that Covid seems to be spiking in over a dozen states, including states with high vaccine rates. This is from Forbes:

Coronavirus cases are again spiking in 13 U.S. states, according to an analysis of trends over the past week, including some states among the highest in vaccination rates as health experts warn that more contagious variants of Covid-19 will soon dominate the United States.

Ah, yes, the convenient VARIANT will be a great word to use to make sure the fear stays at the levels necessary to disrupt rational thinking while simultaneously scapegoating evidence that these experimental vaccines aren’t as effective as Dr. Jen is claiming.

To conclude her opinion piece, Dr. Jen uses some emotional manipulation about all the human things us humans were told to STOP DOING during the pandemic:

For me, I chose to get the COVID-19 vaccine because I want to help protect those in our community that are most vulnerable, so I could finally see my parents again safely after a year, so patients don’t have to be alone in the hospital during some of the scariest moments in their life, so kids can finally play with their friends again at school, and so I don’t have to worry about my mom, who is a teacher. I chose to get the vaccine because it is our responsibility to help protect others.

Sure, if you’ve been cowering in fear for the past year, dutifully obeying the dictates of pathological liars and convicted felons (Big Pharma) who have no qualms pushing dangerous drugs like Vioxx, then I’m sure you’re eager to do the thing that they are saying will allow you to return to normality.

And that’s YOUR CHOICE. Until, of course, we transition to a more coercive phase of requiring vaccine passports as a mandatory prerequisite for returning to normal.

by Travis Mateer

In a poem I posted yesterday titled It’s On I call myself a Synchro-Mystic. Well, what the heck is a that? Good question.

The term was coined back in 2006 by Jake Kotze and essentially takes the Jungian concept of synchronicity and adds mysticism to it. For a better description, check out this article. Here’s an excerpt from Kotze as quoted in the article:

“My idea about the significance of meaningful coincidences in movies with mystical connotation is not that it points towards real truths, but that they point towards possible realities that might emerge from the collective psyche into consensus reality. We vie and jostle for acceptable limits of consensus reality through our art and philosophy. Our ideas and concepts about reality are the very fabric of reality itself. We try to sell each other beliefs in a creative effort to allow new ‘things’ to emerge into the accepted matrix of the now. I don’t fundamentally fret about what ‘is’ real; I care about checking the zeitgeists’ temperature in order to project future possibilities of acceptable norms and find hidden pockets of knowledge embedded in the pattern of ‘AUM’.”

Synchronicities–or meaningful coincidences–seem to be happening for me at an accelerating rate. I’ll give you the most recent example, which happened yesterday, to give a better idea of how this phenomenon plays out for me.

I watched the movie Jacob’s Ladder after several recent references to this film indicated I needed to watch it. Near the end of the film Tim Robbins’ character meets a chemist by the name of Michael Newman who tells him about the experimental drug given to the men that caused them to go berserk and kill each other.

Later that day I was listening to Sam Tripoli’s spiritual podcast, called Zero (on Rokfin). The guest was talking about life after death and reincarnation. When he mentioned the name of a therapist–Michael Newton–the sound was so similar to Michael Newman that I experienced a powerful synchronicity.

Another recent batch of synchronicities occurred for me around the author Jasun Horsley, who is actually referenced in the synchronistic wikipedia entry. I contacted Jasun weeks ago about doing an interview for my podcast and, after an initial response, I didn’t hear back for awhile. Then I ran across his brother’s book at the Loose Moose downtown, and a few days later (last Sunday actually) after referencing Jasun’s work in two separate conversations, he emailed me.

If I was a skeptic on this topic then I could easily just dismiss all this as coincidence, but that is NOT what I think is going on here. What exactly IS going on, I’m not sure, but it appears to be a rich vein of spiritual inquiry, so I’m going to mine the crap out of it.

Another writer often cited as a synchromystic precursor is Robert Anton Wilson. I’m going to be including aspects of his esoteric research, including Chaos Magick and Discordianism, into my own work.

I hope this fascinating topic of spiritual thought finds more open minds to explore it because the expansive possibilities are so much more invigorating than anything the limited secular materialist paradigm can produce.

If you are intrigued by this, stay tuned, there will be much more to come…

by William Skink

I'm a neo-gnostic
synchro-mystic
spiritual warrior for Christ
plotting with Sophia to expose
their narrative heist
the docu-drama matrix
now rapidly descends
I'm not your fucking battery
or means to immortal ends

you got your jab in mother
congrats, you monstrous pricks
another host inside the fold
on which you can affix
like the parasites you are
fastened by the teeth
fuck your blinking demon star

we seek
to heal
the breach