Month: February 2022

by Travis Mateer

A very odd kind of protest took place recently at Beehive Homes, a congregate living facility serving disabled individuals. The issue, apparently, is the booster status of a Beehive resident who REALLY wants a booster shot, but can’t get it because they are in lockdown.

And why are they in lockdown? Is it because the vaccines aren’t working as we’ve been told? Or is it because 25% of Beehive staff are vaccine resistors?

“A disabled resident of BeeHive Homes recently contacted Summit Independent Living after contracting COVID-19 in the facility,” explained Travis Hoffman, the interim director of Summit.

Although the resident was vaccinated when all BeeHive residents were initially vaccinated, the resident decided to get a booster shot after contracting COVID last week, Hoffman said. Since the middle of January, BeeHive Homes of Missoula has been under health officer’s order from the Missoula City-County Health Department for an uncontrolled COVID outbreak.

That meant the resident has been unable to leave the facility to get a booster shot or have someone come in, Hoffman said.

“In addition, and more importantly, BeeHive does not require staff to be vaccinated,” Hoffman said. “Disabled people are at far greater risk from COVID-19, and people living in any congregate setting are at extreme risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19.”

The emphasis is mine because the little fact that the resident was ALREADY vaccinated SHOULD call into question the efficacy of the vaccines, but that is NOT what these “protestors” have taken away from this shit-show.

No, these vaccine bullies instead focused their ire on the staff who are refusing the pressure campaign and, as we’ll see, Montana Republicans who got HB 702 passed.

Several of the protesters, including Marsha Katz, Jenny Montgomery and Gavin Workman, asked Harding what he is doing to encourage his staff to get vaccinated. They suggested he offer incentives for vaccination, because a Montana law called House Bill 702, passed in 2021, prevents employers from requiring vaccinations.

Harding said the law, written by Republican legislators and signed by Gov. Greg Gianforte, prevents his facility from requiring vaccinations.

When I saw Montgomery’s name, I wondered what a booze peddler who got Covid relief money to stay in business was doing bullying a facility like Beehive to make their staffing crisis worse by coercing a medical intervention 25% of the staff are refusing. Then I read further and discovered Montgomery is ALSO a Summit Independent Living board member.

Jenny Montgomery, a board member of Summit Independent Living, said HB 702 has put people’s lives in danger. Monday’s protest was also aimed at trying to convince the 25% of staff members to get vaccinated and stepping up pressure on state government.

“We need the Legislature to step up and protect people,” she said, adding that she doesn’t understand how staff members rationalize not getting vaccinated when residents get extremely sick or die from COVID-19.

I would LOVE to educate Jenny Montgomery about the reasons people are refusing to get jabbed. Maybe I should go to her distillery to see if an educational opportunity presents itself?

That distillery, located on Front Street in downtown Missoula, was busy SAVING LIVES when this plandemic first got going, and it was this distillery where Jon Tester chose to tout the benefits of President Biden’s American Rescue Plan.

Senator Jon Tester made a visit to Missoula, touting President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan and the impacts that it is having on Western Montana.

The Montgomery Distillery was the scene for Friday’s press conference.

The distillery received aid from the plan that was passed by Congress back in March, but the plan didn’t just help financially, it helped the local vaccine supply in Western Montana.

Ah, cool, so Jenny Montgomery got some aid for her distillery where she makes the booze that does so many wonderful things for the people who consume it, then is pivoting to adding her voice to the pressure campaign to jab all Beehive employees so that one disabled person can get boosted because the first two jabs didn’t do the job.

One of my favorite parts of the bully article is when local comedian, Michael Beers, threatens to return and protest if the owner of Beehive doesn’t take additional guidance from the Health Department.

After an hour-long conversation, the protesters convinced Harding to at least seek guidance from the health department on how to get a booster shot for the resident.

“If you don’t, we’ll be back again with more people,” said protester Michael Beers.

With all this protesting and THREATS of protesting being discussed, I’m thinking of rallying some counter-protestors myself in SUPPORT of the staff refusing the jab.

I’m also considering a Friday evening megaphone session outside the Montgomery Distillery to raise awareness of the bullying tactics influencers like Jenny Montgomery are utilizing.

I’ve been aware of Jenny Montgomery since she got involved in the Mayor’s Downtown Advisory Commission all the way back in 2014. Four years later, Montgomery was giving a tiny little donation to Nancy de Pastino, the woman who tried to impose her gun control beliefs on the suicide prevention effort known as Project Tomorrow.

Here’s the screen shot of Montgomery’s Democratic support:

As I was researching Jenny Montgomery yesterday and leaving messages with comedians with the last name BEERS about their little threats (little, ha ha) and the counter-measures I am planning, I was SHOCKED to find a curious little proposal to BEER a vacant school building. This proposal got County Commissioner backing around this time last year for the Montgomery’s vision.

If you’re worried the Montgomery’s may run into a pesky “policy” regarding making money peddling booze in a school building, don’t worry. STRICT policies are only for my kids’ faces. LOOSE policies exist for those who loosen their purse strings for the GREAT political party serving GREAT LEADER.

Here’s the reporting on the bending of the rules for a pair of privileged enablers of LEADER’S GREATNESS!

“We were thinking about economic vibrancy, neighborhood development, more economic activity, jobs, etcetera, in what is right now a pretty unused space,” Slotnick said.

The proposal was brought forward by Ryan and Jenny Montgomery, owners of the Montgomery Distillery in Missoula.

MCPS has a district policy that prohibits alcohol on school property.

The County’s letter stated that they believe the Montgomery proposal is an ‘appropriate exception to that rule’.

Well, if it’s APPROPRIATE, who am I to complain?

No, complaining is the LAST thing on my mind. What I want to do is EDUCATE and I will use appropriately LOUD methods to ensure my message is heard.

Thanks for reading.

by Travis Mateer

Well, it finally happened. After dozens of attempts to bounce the audio file on my bloated laptop, I have thrown in the towel on posting my unexpected interview with writer and film maker, Greg Sestero.

Instead of being annoyed, I’m going to try and schedule a follow up to see how Missoula’s Roxy audience received his new film Miracle Valley on Saturday. Lucky movie goers also got a chance to see The Room, a so-bad-it-becomes-a-cult-viewing-experience film that Sestero wrote a memoir about.

Podcaster pro-tip: research your guest ASAP, otherwise you might casually discover a higher caliber guest than you are accustomed to is about to walk into your little art studio in 30 and you have to condense your anxiety into an eternity of minutes.

Anyway, I’ll get this tech stuff figured out soon so I can get this good stuff out. Thanks for being patient.

by Travis Mateer

I am FULLY aware that my choices of topics to write about and engage with has the potential to be used to discredit me if I’m getting too close to something. I’ve even brought this up, unprompted, with Rebekah Barsotti’s mother so that she is aware of the risks involved when dealing with new media content creators like myself, who are filling the void being created by the crisis in corporate media credibility from the industry’s short-sighted, bottom-line slashes to newsrooms.

The problems with conventional reporting are happening at the same time that technology has deputized the entire world to armchair-solve all kinds of things that were once considered the sole domain of public law enforcement officials and private investigators.

Armchair sleuthing got a big boost with the Netflix series Don’t F**k with Cats, but it’s been a phenomenon for as long as the public’s obsession over the genre “True Crime”. To better understand how technology is changing the investigative landscape, this article takes a look at the phenomenon, and mentions the website where someone is now looking into me (emphasis mine):

Then there’s Websleuths.com, an internet community website that was launched in 1999. It was purchased by Tricia Griffith in 2004. Griffith gave up a 25-year career in radio to work full-time on the website in 2008. Her web forum famously ended up helping solve the case of a casual laborer who was murdered after winning a lottery in Florida in 2006. The lottery winner, Abraham Shakespeare, went missing in 2009 and people on the web forum suspected his business partner Dorice “Dee Dee” Moore, who ended up with Shakespeare’s assets, as being responsible. Moore herself signed up to websleuths.com in a bid to clear her name. Griffith passed the information onto police, who then managed to solve the case and arrest Moore.

With the emphasis above in mind, here are some interesting screen shots I was made aware of from web sleuths dot com.

There are some things in this initial screen shot that I find VERY curious. For example, the bearded guy (who I later found out was Joe Danzer) never once specified going out to search as a “private citizen”. That language sounds like someone preparing a legal defense.

Another glaring question I have–besides whether or not “NoSpoonFeeding” actually read my post on the LifeGuard Group–is this: if they don’t have resources to look for missing persons, then why is Joe Danzer’s job title SEARCH COORDINATOR?

Yesterday I made an attempt to contact Lowell Hochhalter, the President/CEO of the LifeGuard Group AND the chaplain at the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department. Who better to clarify this confusion about what this group is capable of doing, especially now that they’ve received $30,000 from Town Pump?

Here’s Hochalter expressing his gratitude to the Governor and Town Pump for the funds that I can only hope will equip Joe Danzer with the business cards he needs to accurately describe his job duties so there’s no confusion about what he might be doing as a “private citizen” vs. his job as SEARCH COORDINATOR.

“The generosity of Town Pump is overwhelming. We are filled with gratitude for their donation and Governor Gianforte’s new partnership, but also have the affirmation of the importance of this task of protecting those who may be sold or exchanged. This is an act of protection and prevention for all those in our communities,” Lowell Hochhalter, founder of the LifeGuard Group, said in the release.

I’ve read this quote over and over again and it still doesn’t sit right with me, though I can’t quite put my finger on it. And it’s not like it’s some weird direct quote from the reporter, since it came from a press release.

Maybe it’s the those who may be sold or exchanged part, like that’s all human trafficking is. What about control? Human trafficking victims aren’t just moved about the country like inanimate objects through the mail. Also, dealing with the myriad strategies of predatory abusers to coerce, manipulate, blackmail and CONTROL their victims seems like more than just an important “task”.

Whoops, did I just accidentally put on my English major hat in order to impose a subjective analysis onto this press release? Maybe NoSpoonFeeding can sleuth out whether or not I’m on the slippery slope to conspiratorial theorizing before it’s too late.

But before NSF does that, I recommend this commenter reread (or first-read) my post, because this “websleuth” commenter has some facts VERY wrong, like who I actually spoke with (bearded guy is NOT Lowell Hochhalter).

Again, from the sleuths site:

So much confusion, I can only hope the 10 minutes I waited on hold with the Sheriff’s Department yesterday–and the email the woman assured me would be sent to Lowell Hochhalter–results in some clarification from the person best positioned to provide that needed clarity.

If I don’t get the chance to have a clarifying conversation with Lowell Hochhalter, here’s the series of questions I’ve gleaned need answering from the many calls I’ve been making to find clarity: WHERE does the HOTLINE go, WHEN will the safe house be open, and HOW will victims of trafficking be safely connected to services?

I don’t care what kind of media finds the answers to these questions, as long as they’re satisfactorily answered, I’ll be happy.

As for the conspiracy smear NoSpoonFeeding led with in the first comment, the reason for doing so became clear after I perused the etiquette and information page of websleuths:

Ok, so let me restate some facts to conclude this post.

On February 1st, 2022, I located the office of the LifeGuard Group on the 4th floor of the Florence building in Missoula, Montana. I knocked on the door and Joe Danzer answered. I gave Joe my card and mentioned the Rebekah Barsotti case and asked if he was familiar with the case. Joe told me that he went himself to help search, but could not recall a date, when asked. Before and after this exchange with Joe Danzer, I spoke with Angela Mastrovito (Rebekah’s mother) on the phone, and she contests this claim of direct assistance.

Is it possible BOTH are telling the truth? Sure. Maybe Joe DID go searching at some point last summer, and as a private citizen, and maybe that tidbit never got to Angela, who keeps excellent notes.

If anyone can help provide clarity for Rebekah’s mother, her private investigator, James Terry, can be reached at 1-813-993-2242, and I can be contacted via email at willskink at yahoo dot com.

Thanks for reading.

by Travis Mateer

Shirley Lou Spehn was NOT considered attractive enough in 1950 to win the 15th Anniversary 15-year-old beauty contest, but she DID win herself a gold wrist watch, a set of Harriet-Hubbard Ayer Teenage cosmetics, and appeared SEVERAL times on KGVO programs.

The honor of being recognized as THE MOST beautiful 15 year old went to Jackie Lee Barnes of Albuquerque, N.M., though it doesn’t say if she got a gold watch or not.

These images come from another fascinating Antique Mall find: a printed radio program from KGVO. While the creepy contest of attractive 15 year olds is interesting, it’s the opening of the Fox Theater that impressed me about this 72 year old publication.

It’s funny I ran across this piece of historic promotional material on Sunday, considering the previous day I interviewed someone promoting his new film in Missoula, but I’ll save that story for tomorrow.

In the meantime, here’s me modeling a Missoulian “money belt” and old Denny Washington hard hat. Who’s ready for the work week? THIS GUY!

by Travis Mateer

It is entirely possible you think the title of this post is hyperbolic. Or unnecessarily sensational. Or just not true. If so, let’s take a few trips around the info-landscape to see what we can see.

While I was shouting the names of two dead black men into a megaphone on the streets of Missoula Friday evening to a mostly oblivious public, Joe Rogan was issuing his SECOND apology as the sustained attack on his podcast escalates with old audio sliced and diced and assembled for maximum impact.

Happy Black History month!

Moving on, Bloomberg “accidentally” reported that Russia invaded Ukraine a few days ago. Oops!

Bloomberg made a blunder.

The financial news site accidentally reported that Russia had invaded Ukraine Friday afternoon with a headline on its homepage.

“Live: Russia invades Ukraine,” read a jarring headline on Bloomberg’s homepage at around 4 p.m.

How does an entity explain such a “blunder”? Here’s the mea culpa:

“We prepare headlines for many scenarios and one of those headlines was inadvertently published at around 4 PM ET today on our website,” a Bloomberg News spokesperson wrote in an email. “We deeply regret the error.”

Stating information deemed to be inaccurate by an elected official was enough to silence Missoula citizen, Matt Larson, in the waning days of 2021.

In a post titled with the question A NEW METRIC FOR MAKING PUBLIC COMMENT? I included a portion of an email J. Kevin Hunt (former Council candidate) sent to local officials sounding the alarm regarding our Mayor’s enhanced powers to silence speakers of inaccuracy with technology.

Here’s the quote:

At the December 13, 2021 City Council meeting, Zoom attendee Matt Larson (with whom I have neither a personal acquaintance nor any shared political/ideological organizational affiliation of which I’m aware), had his microphone cut off by the Mayor a few seconds into Mr. Larson’s Citizen Comment (the first of three comments by Mr. Larson at this meeting).  Mr. Larson was respectful and was not using profanity. Nor was he yelling. Nor was he making offensive personal comments about the Mayor or any member of the Council (although doing so would be fully protected speech and expression under both the Montana and United States Constitutions). Nor was he disruptive. Nor did he expressly or impliedly threaten violence of violation of any law. Nor did he engage in any conduct constituting breach of the peace. Nor did he utter anything akin to “shouting ‘FIRE!’ in a crowded theater”or otherwise posing a clear and present danger to anyone. 

The reason given by the Mayor for abruptly censoring Mr. Larson in mid-sentence was that Mr. Larson had said two things about city policy that were historically inaccurate. This authoritarian action by the Mayor, which evoked no objection, opposition or disapproving remark from any member of the Council, violated the following provisions of the Declaration of Rights proclaimed in Article II of the Montana Constitution.

Going back to the possibility a senile, hair-sniffing American President could trigger a kinetic war with Russia over pipeline posturing in Ukraine, a handful of adorable protestors showed up on a renamed, virtue-gleaming bridge in Missoula to register their displeasure.

Despite any reasonable, sane quotes these protestors may have slipped into our shit newspaper, they can’t stop the fucked framing at the beginning with this second paragraph of the piece:

While promising no direct action in Ukraine, President Biden has ordered 3,000 troops to easter European NATO countries, while Russia has built up 100,000 in the region, raising fears of a potential invasion.

What obvious, one-sided propaganda. I hope the paycheck is worth it, Cory Walsh. Is this what you had in mind for your career when we were both attend the University of Montana?

If you’re gonna make propaganda, at least make it a little more enjoyable. Like a Mad Max homeless cart billboard machine with a megaphone, or the videos I made during the Trump days to have a laugh.

Like this one.