Month: May 2021

by Travis Mateer

My presence on social media is fairly limited when it comes to numbers, and I say that because two women I follow (a podcaster and a poet) have discussed changes in their menstrual cycles from the emergency authorized Big Pharma products circulating.

I’ll stick with the poet’s twitter feed (and some replies) because her experiences were put out there to read, starting with this:

And here are some replies:

A few weeks later, this tweet and reply:

All these comments are from people who have actually taken the vaccine. I say that because the podcaster I mentioned has NOT received a vaccine, but has suspicions, which are being discussed widely right now in the media I follow, that these jabs could be transmissible.

That probably sounds crazy and I really hope it IS a bonkers idea with no basis in reality. Except that it DOES have a basis in reality:

Transmissible vaccines may provide a promising solution for improving the control of infectious disease, particularly zoonotic pathogens with wildlife reservoirs. Although it is well known that heterogeneity in pathogen transmission impacts the spread of infectious disease, the effects of heterogeneity on vaccine transmission are largely unknown. Here we develop and analyze a mathematical model that quantifies the potential benefits of a transmissible vaccine in a population where transmission is heterogeneous between two subgroups.

Why does it feel like mad scientists have been given carte blanche to experiment on us in real time?

by Travis Mateer

Hyperbole is a word that means “excess” and it refers to figures of speech that use extreme exaggeration to make a point or show emphasis. For example, when Joe Biden calls the voting legislation passed in Georgia JIM CROW ON STEROIDS, that is hyperbole.

I read a funny op-ed over the weekend that makes the hyperbolic claim that Republicans in Montana are acting like the new Copper Kings. For a quick history lesson, here is wikipedia’s brief description of this notorious time in Montana when the copper kings reigned:

The Copper Kings were the three industrialists William A. Clark, Marcus Daly, and F. Augustus Heinze. They were known for the epic battles fought in Butte, Montana, and the surrounding region, during the Gilded Age, over control of the local copper mining industry, the fight that had ramifications for not only Montana, but the United States as a whole.

The battles between Clark, Daly, and Heinze, and later between just Heinze and industrialist financiers William Rockefeller and Henry H. Rogers are a large chapter in Montana history. Eventually, Daly’s original company, known as Anaconda Copper emerged as a monopoly, expanding into the fourth largest company in the world by the late 1920s.

Before making the hyperbolic claim about Republicans in Montana, the author’s of the op-ed pimp their dad’s role in the 1972 constitutional convention. After establishing their Montana bonafides, the McKeon brothers say shit like this:

This March, Gov. Greg Gianforte signed Senate Bill 140 abolishing the Judicial Nomination Commission. The governor now has the unconstrained discretion to appoint whomever he chooses to judicial vacancies. This was exactly the type of Copper Collar power consolidation the 1972 delegates fought to abolish when it replaced the governor’s sole discretion to fill vacancies with a system that provided a list of qualified nominees derived through an independent vetting process.

Even though the legislative session ended last week, the political posturing over the alleged independence of the judiciary looks like it will continue. But is this really analogous to the Copper King era? And if it is, then what is the commodity that gave Gianforte the financial resources to make his successful run to become Governor? Technology?

Here is more from the op-ed:

Surely, Montana did not give the current regime a mandate to seize control of all branches of our state government, and they certainly did not give them a mandate to pursue this Copper Kingesque power through misinformation and subterfuge.

The governor and Legislature are perpetrating an unshackled power-grab by upending decades of reliance on the commission to act as a shield between the partisan executive branch and the non-partisan judicial branch. Montana is better and deserves better.

The two men who are using their family history to complain about Republicans exercising the power they WON when they overwhelmingly beat EVERY Democrat in EVERY statewide race are both lawyers. Michael McKeon is a trail lawyer at McKean Law in Butte and Matthew McKeon is a criminal defense lawyer at Datsopoulos, MacDonald & Lind.

That latter law firm got involved in the controversial 4th Street Condo Project last year and they used the power of the law to bully a Missoula citizen on behalf of the developer, former Griz football player, Cole Berquist.

Here is some context to that legal bullying from an Outerlimits post:

At Monday’s City Council meeting, Mary LaPorte shared a letter that she said her friend, Shirley Juhl, received from Datsopoulos MacDonald & Lind on January 24, saying they represent developers Cade, LLC and Pupaw, LLC.

LaPorte read the letter to the council:

“It has recently come to our attention that you have posted on Facebook a rendering of what the Fourth Street condominium project would look like from the Higgins Bridge … I’m writing for the purposes of placing you on formal legal notice that this rendering presents false and misleading information apparently designed to wrongly influence the public’s perception of the project.“

LaPorte further commented that, “This is a letter from a lawyer threatening a citizen for speaking out against a project. That is so against the values of our community. This is not who we are as Missoula.”

I’m not interested in the legal tantrum of some trial lawyers over what politicians are allegedly doing to their precious process for appointing judges. I’m interested in BIGGER PICTURE power dynamics, and a law firm like DM&L is right up there in local politics, bullying citizens for their deep-pocketed clients.

by Travis Mateer

Missoula County’s Communication Coordinator wants me to GET THAT VAX so I can do fun things in Missoula this summer, but I am ALREADY doing fun things, like making music inspired by my favorite racist writer of children’s books, Dr. Seuss.

If you are like me, but nervous to assert your rights to JUST SAY NO to an emergency authorized Big Pharma product, please know you are not alone.

And please know you don’t need permission from a fucking communication coordinator to have some fun in this crazy world.

Now excuse me while I go generate some personal joy by playing with Legos on a beautiful Sunday morning in Missoula.

Thanks for reading.

by William Skink

the Prince of Virus snarled and spit
99 years - I'm tired of it!
lets stretch out this mortal coil
open cubes and watch seas boil

impatient Prince, that's not the plan
first find the seeds, prepare the land
we process them so they know
helping their abilities grow

and why do we do this, silly Prince?
leaving signs and helpful hints?
your body clock has run its course
time to go recharge your force

the Prince of Virus sighed, resigned
to let his body clock unwind
ok, bearer of the earthly crown
roll the mummies through our town!

99, this run was fun
I'll now return to the black hole sun...

yes you will, you viral Prince
their body sleeves, our fingerprints
that's the plan, the programmed show

this is why
they have
to know