Month: November 2021

by Travis Mateer

I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know the answer to the question posed by the title of this post. What I DO KNOW is that I filed a police report last Wednesday against the Representative of House District 95 for secretly recording the events of November 1st at Crosspoint Church despite obvious signage clearly forbidding this action.

Here is Rep. Tenenbaum after he posted the illicit footage on Twitter:

Filing a police report (2021-45445) is just the first step I plan on taking to hold this public official accountable for his actions. I will ALSO be exploring my options with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel and COPP because, if Danny Tenenbaum is an active lawyer, he should be following shit like this:

Another thing I’m curious about is Rep. Tenenbaum’s relationship with the Montana Human Rights Network. For a little context about my interactions with MHRN, here is a post from this summer, titled Why Is The Montana Human Rights Network More Interested In A Broken Window Than The Death Of Sean Stevenson In Missoula?

And here is another post where I tried to provide MHRN intern, Maggie Bornstein, with A Teachable Moment after she used information gleaned from her position at MHRN to politically attack Mayoral candidate Jacob Elder in a public letter to the editor.

While I’ve been warning about the ends-justifying-the-means approach to activism by people like Danny and Maggie, the organization ignoring dead black men in Missoula is VERY WORRIED that parents like me are a part of a MOVEMENT.

Here’s Travis McAdam, the same dude who had no problem with his own intern doing activist shit with her MHRN data, raising the warning flag about parents who think they have “rights” when it comes to their own fucking children:

Travis McAdam, with the Montana Human Rights Network, said the parental rights movement isn’t new and has percolated amongst anti-government groups for years. The movement has resurfaced recently as frustrations mount over the pandemic and its restrictions. After the Montana Legislature took action to limit the power of local health boards, he said the fight to rally conservatives shifted to school boards.

McAdam is the director of combating white nationalism and defending Democracy at the Montana Human Rights Network and has been with the group for 20 years.

“Parental rights have become another tool to recruit community members to show up and protest mask mandates and other things,” McAdam said. “Extremist anti-government folks like Ammon Bundy have seized upon the pandemic as a divisive issue to come into communities and further the division and recruit new members.”

Right now the focus over what happened at Crosspoint Church on November 1st is on the lawyer who made a dumb quip that he has since apologized for. That might change as I explore my legal options to hold State Rep. Tenenbaum accountable for HIS ACTIONS on that day.

Or maybe not.

In all the reporting that has since occurred about what happened at Crosspoint Church, NOT ONE MEDIA OUTLET mentioned MY questions to Elsie Arntzen about Grace Decker’s conflict of interest when it comes to her school-board position, her paid work at United Way of Missoula County, and her political Facebook activity.

I’m sure the makeup of United Way’s board has nothing to do with it.

When you have a newly elected City Council member as your board president, and Jim Strauss of the Missoulian, well, is it any wonder why some stuff DOES NOT GET REPORTED?

Yes, I know, it’s mystifying, especially when Jim Strauss is such a LOVER of community journalism that makes a difference.

Look at that pale-skinned mug, that is the face of corporate narrative control, and how this works is community influencers, like Susan Hay Patrick, get to bleed ink about how their 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness is NOT a tremendous failure.

Meanwhile, people like me–a parent and citizen journalist trying to make sense of virtue-signalers ignoring dead black men in Missoula–are depicted by the narrative controllers as frustrated suckers being lured in to a “movement” by white supremacists.

Yes, and Virginia went red because white suburban moms are RACIST and NOT WORRIED about convicted felons trying to jab their kids with needles.

I’m going to leave it there, for now.

by William Skink

athletes drop, it's ok
dumb-dumbs, do not correlate
such a big word
for your mouth
hello Big Bird
Elmo's down
servicing Gupta for the day
stab Rosita
to keep her safe

if this sounds like psycho talk
you hate abuela
and puppy dogs
maybe you should see a show
traverse the skull
to go astro
see the rapper?
feel the rush?
you can't escape—
sacrificial crush

by Travis Mateer

I recorded this last week, but had to add a dramatic reading of one of the most desperate attempts I’ve seen yet of a political establishment enabler trying to convince this town that the 10 Year Plan to Homelessness isn’t the shit-show it is.

Sorry, but anyone who thinks “Reaching Home” has made a substantive, systematic change in how this community assists people in need is probably getting a figurative “reach around” from our forever Mayor.

Thanks for listening!

by Travis Mateer

Michael Shellenberger, the author of San Fransicko, is a brilliant critic of wokeness. His latest Substack piece, titled Why Progressives Ruin Democrats, continues exposing the madness taking over progressive brains, along with an emerging electoral backlash against this insane ideology.

Regarding the latter, here’s a portion from the article that asserts wokeness is more akin to a new religion than an ideology:

A few weeks ago Penguin published Woke Racism by Columbia University linguist John McWhorter, whose book has in common with San Fransicko the view that wokeism is a religion. In Woke Racism, McWhorter humorously ridicules the irrationality, immorality, and supernatural components of woke religion. 

McWhorter lampoons its contradictions. If whites move into black neighborhoods they are causing gentrification, which is racist, but if they move out of them they are engaging in “white flight,” which is racist. If whites appreciate black culture, they are engaging in “cultural appropriation,” but if they ignore it they are ostracizing. How can these beliefs, which McWhorter calls “the catechism of contradictions,” be part of the same woke religion? Because they’re all in service of singular goal of calling white people racist in order to gain cultural power.  

Framing wokeness as serving the singular goal of gaining cultural power makes a lot of sense. I would add, in a town like Missoula, wokeness is ALSO being used to MAINTAIN cultural power, since progressive lip-service from our neoliberal political establishment has been controlling Missoula politics for decades.

I think this is a big reason why the ACTUAL DEATHS of black people in Missoula, like Johnny Lee Perry and Sean Stevenson, aren’t being championed by the wokesters or given big headlines and viral media attention.

Earlier in the piece, Shellenberger touches on this disparity between woke religious thinking and woke action, and I think this can be accurately applied to how Missoula is ignoring the dynamics of addiction when it comes to the violence and death of black men in our own community:

Unlike traditional religion, woke victimology seeks not universal morality, and laws, but rather one aimed at dismantling “the system.” It is for this reason that progressives are narrowly concerned with African Americans killed by the police rather than with the 30 times more African Americans killed by civilians. And the narrow concern among progressives for victims of “the system” is why progressives in San Francisco are allowing hundreds of people to die every year from drug overdose deaths, since the alternative requires working with the system.

Progressive activists on CRT, criminal justice, and climate change don’t believe, in my experience, that they are adherents to a new religion, but rather that they are more compassionate and more moral than those who hold more traditional views. And that lack of self-awareness is part of why victimology is so powerful. But it may also be what makes it politically vulnerable.

The true believers in WOKE are definitely vulnerable, politically. That may not seem to be the case in Missoula, where two socialist-leaning candidates won municipal races, but I think that has more to do with the totally inept Republican leadership of Vondene Kopetski in Missoula County than it does the strength of candidates like Daniel Carlino, the starry-eyed youngster who is eager to stop the climate from changing now that he’s a Missoula City Council virtue-signaler.

One of the exciting developments in Missoula is our incumbent’s intention to have ring-kissing meetings so that the Dannys of Zoom Town can properly pay homage to their liege:

Engen also plans to meet with the newcomers.

“My practice has been to offer all members of council a regular meeting, and that can be on a weekly basis or on whatever cadence they prefer,” he said. “I’ll make that offer and get a sense on where their particular interests lie. I’ve got some speculation in some cases, just watching their campaigns and paying attention to that.”

How exciting! I’ve heard that Emily Brock really took advantage of this “practice” Engen offers, which is why she is now the Director of Economic and Land Development, so if Carlino plays his cards right, maybe Engen will give him something climate-related to play with, like our government bus system, or our government compost business, or our government Poplar tree farm.

It must be nice to afford a luxury belief system, especially one that is so personally rewarding. The only problem is how to deal with dirty disbelievers.

Luckily we have very sane people like Noam Chomsky suggesting people like me should be starved to death. Cool!

Chomsky compared people who don’t comply with the vaccines to people who don’t comply with traffic lights, suggesting we pose an imminent danger to others and that we should be removed. When asked how unvaxxed people forced out of the economy could be fed (how would they survive), he asserted “that is their problem.” Chomsky does not explicitly say that force should be used to eliminate the unvaxxed from social participation, he merely insinuates that “actions” might be required to get the desired effect.

Here’s another sane person–Daily Montanan editor, Darrell Ehrlick–providing some sane commentary about how uncaring assholes like me just need to love life better:

I am disappointed and disheartened by leaders who won’t exercise their authority to govern to do more to save lives. Wistfully, I wonder how they’ll explain their inaction – trying to explain that, of course, they could have intervened, but didn’t. It makes me wonder if they’ve ever heard the gurgle and gasp of someone struggling to draw breath. I wonder if they have seen the terror in the eyes of someone as they take that lonely journey to whatever lies ahead.

It’s not that some of these leaders who blather on about personal freedom and choice are pro-death. The opposite of being pro-life isn’t embracing death; it’s instead a callous indifference toward life. And I’d suggest that those who shun vaccines or steadfastly refuse masks aren’t rooting for death, they’ve just radically undervalued the gift, beauty and delicate nature of life.

I read shit like this and am SO THANKFUL writers like Michael Shellenberger are putting this new WOKE religion into the zealot-context it deserves.

As the religious fervor of wokeness grows, so does the strength of the backlash.

Virginia was just the beginning.

by Travis Mateer

This image is a dramatic reenactment of City Council doing their best to toss a Wisconsin developer a precious gift two years ago. Unfortunately that developer, Nick Checota, dropped the Engen-faced bundle after it was deemed human cattle wouldn’t be allowed in physical proximity to each other because some psychos gave the common cold an extra kick in their mad scientist lab in Wuhan.

Now that a good portion of the cattle have been injected by convicted felons who run big drug dealing companies, the precious bundle is back in play. HOW EXCITING!!!!

From the link:

“My hunch is the landowner is just getting their ducks in a row for what comes next, which is great,” Missoula Mayor John Engen told the Missoula Current on Thursday morning. “It’s a positive sign. We have seen a variety of proposals, none of which are in the form of construction documents.”

What happens after ducks are all in a row? Will they get shot? How can our woke Mayor use an idiom that implies shooting? This is SERIOUS!!!

Here’s some deep research I did on the internets to prove my point:

To get one’s ducks in a row means to take care of one’s duties and responsibilities, to organize one’s affairs. Get one’s ducks in a row and have one’s ducks in a row are American idioms, the origin of these phrases is murky. One possible origin is a lawn bowling game that was popular in the 1700s, which involved setting up duck pins, obviously, in a row. Another possible inspiration for the term get one’s ducks in a row is the way in which tin ducks are lined up in a shooting gallery.

That’s my emphasis because HOLY CRAP! Did anyone secretly record our Mayor using this micro-aggression against ducks? Where is the woke mob when you need them? Demonizing Aaron Rogers? Hunting down Eric Clapton? Pinning down non-compliant 5 year olds to stick ’em good?

I think we’re on our own now, folks. No Engen-faced bundle will be tossed to us like a precious life-line.

Thanks for trying.