Month: February 2022

by Travis Mateer

First, some obvious housekeeping: my blog is not a platform to attack my friends and colleagues.

I edited a comment recently made by someone claiming to be David Bethman, and when I did a quick search of the name, I found an article about a Hamilton man by that name who is organizing a rally for the Freedom Convoy.

But here’s the thing. THIS David Bethman is NOT the David Bethman who made the comment. So, who is DB?

The second comment that came in from DB, which I will not release in full, says this:

I won’t use my legal name, since it apparently triggered you. Poor Travis Mateer. It turns out, there may actually be multiple people by the same name existing in the world. I know that is tough for you to wrap your head around, but in my day there were phonebooks showing all sorts of people in Missoula with the same name. Wild, I know! Thanks for reaching out to me to check for facts, I know you fancy yourself a journalist.

The bold part is where this “DB” continues trying to pretend he’s the David Bethman I spoke to over the weekend. While I’m clearly being trolled, the specificity of the comments points to a few possibilities.

One possibility is someone who didn’t like how they were depicted in the documentary, Engen’s Missoula. Another possibility is fallout from reporting I’m working on regarding Roger’s International, the private security company just highlighted by NBC Montana (excellent reporting, by the way!).

While it might just be a coincidence, the emphasis this person is putting on the initials “DB” makes me think of David Barsotti, the estranged husband of Rebekah Barsotti who went missing on July 20th, 2021.

Here’s a picture of David wearing an eye-patch, a style he was sporting during the conservator hearing I attended a few months ago.

Why would David Barsotti be motivated to make comments on my blog? Could it be the conversations I’ve had with his “caretaker”, Brandy Walker? Could it be because I notified the Veteran program David is allegedly a part of that his “caretaker” is sending me pictures of his injured foot as proof that David COULD NOT have been present at the river on the day David’s wife disappeared?

In order to mitigate her exposure to claims of HIPPA violations for sending me pictures of “disabled” David’s injured foot, Brandy had a LONG conversation with me, which I recorded with her knowledge. In this conversation Brandy claimed she sent me the pictures at David’s behest. So I guess that clears that up.

I have never spoken to David Barsotti, but if I did there are LOTS of questions I can think of to ask him, questions a more discerning Sheriff, or Sheriff deputy, might have asked him if they weren’t busy turning down help from Crime Stoppers, and not finding the firearm in Rebekah’s vehicle, and not releasing the 911 call supposedly made the day Rebekah went missing by a family passing through from Oregon.

At the end of the day I don’t know if the coward using another man’s identity to issue trolling comments on my blog is David Barsotti, but maybe this fake email and IP address could be helpful.

I don’t expect this screen shot to glean any useful info, but it was something I told the REAL David Bethman I would provide him when I get the chance to meet him in person.

And that is the note I’d like to conclude this post with, a note of appreciation to “DB” for connecting me to a nice guy in Hamilton who understands the REAL enemies are tyrants like Trudeau, not commenters who hide behind real men’s names.

Thanks for reading (even you, DB).

by Travis Mateer

On Saturday I got the good news, delivered by my wife, that my kids will be attending school on Monday WITHOUT masks. My wife was attending my middle kid’s basketball dinner, and EVERYONE was elated at the news, including the coach, who is a family physician and started a petition to stop the bullshit.

What finally stopped the bullshit is the CDC gave the school board cowards cover to do what we, the parents who had had enough, had already determined was GOING to happen.

If I wasn’t trying to maintain my hyper-localism right now, I’d give some of my energy to make sure the Biden cartel and all its little “d” enablers get decimated in the midterm elections.

But the problem is MUCH bigger than partisan politics.

This week I’m gonna really demonstrate what citizen journalism looks like in Zoom Town as the cold snap snaps and the second month of 2022 moves into round 3. Why? Because the media is a BIG part of the problem.

While no local media covered the commentary provided by parents last week, KGVO is sure excited to give the lead coward, Rob Watson, a chance to appear like the fast-acting hero of the day.

Watson said it was a shock to see the CDC recommendation, but he immediately made the announcement pertaining to masks on Monday.

“I think all of us are still a little bit shocked that things changed that quickly,” he said. I mean, I know the CDC had been talking about changing their numbers but it all came out at one o’clock today and we had to react pretty quickly and make some decisions before 4:00 p.m. and I think everyone was just kind of feeling a little bit shocked to see things change that quickly. But you know, that’s been the nature of the pandemic is that things kind of change overnight it seems, so I guess we’re kind of getting used to that.”

One of the realities that will emerge next week is the fact the Covidian op-ed writers, who so desperately want everyone to think parents like me are a FRINGE minority, are absolutely WRONG in their depiction. Even the coward Rob Watson seems to be acknowledging this at the end of the article:

“Of course they’ll probably still be some kids that feel more comfortable wearing masks because COVID is still in our community, which is fine,” he said. “We want to be clear with our parents as well that it’s not necessary that they don’t have to go without masks. They can still wear them if they want to, but there’ll be a lot of kids I’m sure that will be glad that they don’t have to.”

Yes, Rob Watson, the kids who haven’t been reduced to cowering heaps of fear by the true-believing adults in their lives are happy to leave the virtue-signaling cloth jokes at home.

As for parents like me, the memory of what’s been done to our children WILL NOT FADE just because the CDC has finally told these fucking cowards to stop smothering my kids with their fear policies.

Now, let’s see who these condescending board members want to replace Watson with. I’ll be watching, cowards.

by Travis Mateer

A war to determine the future order of the globe? Is that what’s happening? If you believe mouthpieces of the US Government, then that is what was tactically admitted this week when State Department spokesman, Ned Price, said this (emphasis mine):

China has given “tacit approval” for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine, in the judgment of U.S. officials, as part of a joint effort to undermine the institutions that American and allied leaders established to minimize conflict in the decades following World War II.

“Russia and the PRC also want a world order,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday. “But this is an order that is and would be profoundly illiberal. … It is an order that is, in many ways, destructive rather than additive.”

Moving back from 2022 to 1990, here is George H.W. Bush discussing what today will get you branded a CONSPIRACY THEORIST!

A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor. Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we’ve known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak. This is the vision that I shared with President Gorbachev in Helsinki. He and other leaders from Europe, the Gulf, and around the world understand that how we manage this crisis today could shape the future for generations to come.

The test we face is great, and so are the stakes. This is the first assault on the new world that we seek, the first test of our mettle. Had we not responded to this first provocation with clarity of purpose, if we do not continue to demonstrate our determination, it would be a signal to actual and potential despots around the world. America and the world must defend common vital interests — and we will. America and the world must support the rule of law — and we will. America and the world must stand up to aggression — and we will. And one thing more: In the pursuit of these goals, America will not be intimidated.

There is a big assumption inherent in this two quotes spanning three decades that is never questioned by the populations of geopolitical superpowers, and that is this: the opposition between leaders of nations that results in war is a real, authentic opposition that aligns the lethal actions of the state (war) with the actual intentions of “leaders” like Putin.

In the future world created by Anthony Burgess in his novel, The Wanting Seed, one of the assumptions the speaker of the narrative grapples with is the assumption that the earth is experiencing overpopulation and that it’s a crisis worthy of extreme policies.

Here’s one scene that jumped out at me as I flipped through the pages. It’s a conversation between a man and a woman having an affair. The man, a political figure, has to conceal his heterosexual affair because it would destroy the homosexual identity he has cultivated in order to gain political advantage in this fictional future world.

Where the scene picks up, the word DICHOTOMY has just been introduced by the man.

‘What about –‘ she yawned ‘–the human whatever-it-is?’

‘The division. Contradictions. Instincts tell us one thing and reason tells us another. That could be tragic if we allowed it to be. But it’s better to see it as comic. We were right,’ he said elliptically, ‘to throw God out and install Mr. Livedog in his place. God’s a tragic concept.’

Further on, he continues.

‘It’s the old story. Liberalism prevails, and liberalism means laxness. We leave it to education and propaganda and free contraceptives, abortion clinics and condolences. We encourage non-productive forms of sexual activity. We like to kid ourselves that people are good enough and wise enough to be aware of their responsibilities. But what happens? There was a case, only a few weeks ago, of a couple in Western Province who’d had six children. Six. I ask you. And all alive, too. A very old-fashioned couple–God-followers. They talked about fulfilling God’s will and all that nonsense. One of our officials had a word with them, tried to make them see sense. Imagine–eight bodies in a flat smaller than this. But they wouldn’t see sense. Apparently they had a copy of the Bible–Dognose where they’d got it from. Have you ever seen one of those?’

The horror over this flagrant disregard for the policies that limit procreation imposed on dirty, breeding humans for their own good by the enlightened authorities leads, inevitably, to this realization near the end of the narrative.

‘What,’ said Tristram, persistent, ‘is the point of posting sentries? There’s no enemy over there. The whole thing’s a fake. Very shortly this trench will blow up and the blowing-up will be done by remote control, by some bloody big spider sitting at base. Don’t you see? This is the new way, the modern way, of dealing with excess population. The noises are fakes. The flashes are fakes. Where’s our artillery? Did you see any artillery behind the lines? Of course you didn’t. Have you seen any shells or shrapnel? Stick your head over the parapet and what do you think will happen?’ Tristram clambered up some bags filled with earth, a neat pattern, obviously bricklayers’ work, and looked out. He saw, momentarily lighted by a firework, a flat stretch of country with a distant vista of trees, hills beyond. ‘There,’ he said, stepping down.

In Ukraine, the president, who first pretended to be president as an actor on TV, is now supposedly REALLY the president, and he’s asking the citizens to turn their vodka bottles into little bombs and grab their shotguns to fight Russians.

I don’t have time for that, and I won’t be writing about what Russian gangsters and American gangsters have to say about the world they seek to dominate and control. Fuck ’em both, is what I say, while at the same time I also suggest OILING UP THAT SHOTGUN!

But not to fight Russians.

No, the tools that shoot projectiles out metal barrels at high rates of speed are going to be necessary in order to protect oneself from the DISORDER that cyclically comes before these high-functioning sociopaths impose their NEW WORLD ORDER, which is really just whatever degree of control we let them get away with.

Thanks for reading, and get ready for MUCH more, because Zoom Town is a cornucopia of corruption.

by Travis Mateer

I’m not fighting a war in Ukraine, or saving victims of human trafficking in Los Angeles, or organizing freedom rallies in Hamilton.

Are you?

I’m not waiting for the next ballot to arrive by mail, or hoping someone else is going to say what needs to be said, or do what needs to be done.

That’s a waste of time.

I started with what I was putting inside of me and changed that shit. Energy increased. Did it flow to indiscriminate anger? Hell yes. Did it ALSO flow to daily acts of creative expression? Oh yeah, baby.

The further away you get from your immediate surroundings, the easier it is for parasites to latch on and suckle.

Ya feel me? Nah, cause this is a screen. Not like a concert in downtown Missoula, in August, where the roots of our river city shines so bright.

I made a little ditty for the wise dispenser of TIF, a person who knows what it means to get out there, roll up one’s sleeves, and get to work. She’s working hard to find the expertise to tell you how amazing her projects are, so I figured the best I could do was deploy my modest skills in musical reverence.

For Ellen so does love a good show.

by Travis Mateer

One of my local sources of information is a Facebook group called Let’s Improve Reserve Street. Here is how this modest citizen effort to provide information is described by its creator:

This open, public, and engaging community page is an evolving project using social media to bring more attention to smart growth opportunities in Missoula.

While I despise Facebook, I find myself going to pages like this one more often because I simply can’t find the analysis and commentary on local issues anywhere else. And the commentary can be VERY interesting, sometimes adding so much context the comments themselves become the story.

I don’t think a recent comment by Dax Keuhn rises to THAT level, but I do think it’s helpful to examine who is coming out of the woodworks to say STOP TALKING ABOUT THAT.

Yesterday, in my open letter to Daniel Carlino, I essentially warned him that overt collaboration with a person like me will more than likely result in guilt by association smears on his character. I don’t say that to DISSUADE Daniel from doing what he can to stop the TIF madness, but to let him know what he’s getting into.

Me, I give ZERO FUCKS about loudly proclaiming how truly impressed I am that GREAT LEADER commands such a fervent following from GREAT supporters of GREAT things, like art. Brian and Karen Sippy, the owners of the Radius Gallery downtown, are first in mind when I think of how political contributions can lead to GREAT things.

Before getting to that greatness, here’s a screen shot of Brian’s political lubricant:

And here’s Karen’s:

Now, to understand exactly WHAT can be accomplished when properly lubricated, here’s the “reporting” on the sweet TIF this couple received after making these contributions:

A dated building in downtown Missoula will get a face lift and a new facade that hearkens back to the 1930s and an old art dealer that occupied the block before it was destroyed by fire.

Brian and Karen Sippy of Apple Lane LLC, and the owners and developers of the new building that now houses the Radius Gallery, plan to begin the $2.4 million project this year.

Last week, they received $94,000 in assistance from the Missoula Redevelopment Agency to fund deconstruction and make improvements to the public right-of-way in conjunction with the project. The funding is authorized under state law and meets the goals of Missoula’s Downtown Master Plan.

It’s moves like this, benefiting politically-connected couples like this one, that makes me think the TIF tool needs to be totally and 100% ABOLISHED.

But that’s just me. You out there reading this have a stake in what’s happening as well. What can YOU do to help?

One thing that’s very easy to do, if you have the capacity, is GIVE ME SOME MONEY! I’m currently recouping the cost of making Engen’s Missoula and every little bit helps.

Beyond helping me play the money game, just caring enough to read outside the corporate control grid is GREATLY appreciated by me, so thank you, and stay tuned for more!