Month: January 2023

by Travis Mateer

While the reaction on Twitter is fairly entertaining, the monstrosity below is supposed to be an artistic rendering of “The Embrace”, a picture of Martin Luther King hugging his wife, Coretta.

Here is a better angle, along with the image this sculpture is supposed to be referencing for context. Ask yourself, what is the message of artistically decapitating the heads of this loving embrace?

Here in VERY WHITE Missoula, the socio-economic reality of those struggling to survive is given a back seat to the liberal obsession with RACE whenever possible, as exemplified by this article at Missoula Current about housing, titled City housing review suggests racism, violations in Fair Housing. From the link:

Through its outreach, the city gleaned several key themes that impacted fair housing in Missoula including constraints in the rental market, the experience of voucher holds, “choice and autonomy,” systemic racism and perceived restrictions in current zoning, particularly related to traditional single-family neighborhoods.

Many of the issues mentioned by Harris-Shears landed at the feet of landlords. She referenced tenants facing rising rents during renewal, confusing evictions and non-renewal of leases, fear of retaliation when seeking maintenance or property support, and alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act.

“Fair housing concerns came up a lot in our listening sessions,” Harris-Shears said. “We heard about denials based on sources of income. We also heard about language discrimination, where property owners or management companies told people who didn’t speak or read English as a primary language that unless they could respond to emails in English, they wouldn’t rent to them.”

Yes, that’s right, our enlightened liberals in Missoula thought it was a GREAT idea 8 years ago to bring refugees into a rental market with a vacancy rate that’s been under 5% for years, then, when the predictable barriers arise, these idiot do-gooders complain about it endlessly, using “listening sessions” and surveys to beat Missoula residents over the head with how supposedly racist they are because refugees with no credit or rental history can’t find an affordable place to rent.

If you’re one of these idiot do-gooders with a burning desire to self-flagellate yourself with white guilt, St. Anthony’s Catholic Church will have something for you, including some kind of performance by Ja’Ton Simpson, a black man who popped up two years ago to tokenize himself after Black Lives Matter became a lucrative “movement”.

If you find this post at all offensive, imagine how a black family who had their loved one euthanized in Missoula must feel when they see how quickly this community virtual signals while their quest for answers about what happened inside the Poverello Center and that hospital room three years ago remain unanswered.

Until that changes, Missoula will remain a community of surface-level concern sitting on top a dark river of hypocrisy.

Thanks for caring.

by Travis Mateer

Eleven years ago the political union of Neil Livingstone and Ryan Zinke was fodder for national media, like Mother Jones. Why? Because, even back then, what Montana Republicans were allowing to seep into their party was almost too absurd to believe.

From the link (emphasis mine):

According to his official campaign bio, Montana Republican gubernatorial candidate Neil Livingstone has, at various points during his illustrious career as a Washington-based security consultant, “dined at gangster clubs in Moscow and in the back rooms of Georgian and Uzbek restaurants with members of the Russian Mafia”; “been stalked by terrorists and Nazis in Argentina”; “been paid in stacks of $100 bills by clients”; and held “a business meeting with a six-and-half foot tall pink-eyed albino dressed in white from head-to-foot in a Miami-area motel with the peculiar distinction of having more ‘floaters’ in its pool than any other hospitality establishment in the U.S.”

But it was the line about spending time aboard a pirate ship filled with hookers during the Monte Carlo Grand Prix that landed him in a spot of political trouble. In March, local blogger Montana Cowgirl got wind of the flooze cruise, and it quickly went national. Livingstone purged the item from his bio and attempted damage control, explaining to an Associated Press reporter that his wife had accompanied him and, anyway, he was on official business. When in Monte Carlo, right?

Out of all the craziness in the two paragraphs above, why did I bold the part about hookers? Well, maybe because Ryan Zinke celebrated his most recent political victory at a restaurant owned by billionaire tech bro, Michael Goguen. You know, the one with the “boom-boom room“.

If Montana Republicans (especially the ones prone to believing Qanon drops) are serious about rising up to protect the vulnerable from societal scourges, like sex trafficking, then they need to start in their own backyards, where the Californians are tech-billionaires like Goguen who compromised the integrity of basically the entire criminal justice system of Whitefish.

I was sent a link to a podcaster by the name of Bobby Capucci while doing research for this post because Michael Goguen came up in his Epstein Chronicles podcast when that New York Post article came out in November of 2021. In that episode Capucci predicts this Goguen story is about to blow up, but it hasn’t yet. Why not?

At the end of that Post article, the now-retired police Chief, Bill Dial, had this to say about the billionaire who embarrassed his department:

“This man has to be stopped,” said Bill Dial. The retired Whitefish police chief sued Goguen in December 2019 for alleged interference in his own investigation. “He’s a billionaire a la Harvey Weinstein and [Jeffrey] Epstein. There’s a lot of people in this community who know what he’s about and they’re afraid of him.”

It’s funny that Dial references Epstein, considering just two years previous to this scandal, Dial was hosting America’s AG, Bill Barr. For those who don’t know the connection, Bill Barr’s dad, Donald Barr, just happened to be the guy who hired Epstein at the prestigious Dalton School in New York City. From the link:

Epstein, who was charged last week by federal authorities in the Southern District of New York with sex trafficking with sex-trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex-trafficking, was a 20 year old college drop-out when he was hired to teach at Dalton—possibly by the school’s headmaster Donald Barr in the mid 1970s. Donald Barr was the father of current United States Attorney General William Barr, who is currently overseeing Epstein’s prosecution.

According to at least one former student, Dalton alums have long joked about a Barr connection to the Epstein hire.

“The joke has been [that] this is the Epstein-Barr problem at Dalton, said Harry Segal, a 1974 graduate who is now a senior lecturer at Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medical College, in an interview with the Huffington Post. Epstein-Barr is a type of herpes virus best known as the cause of infectious mononucleosis.

While Epstein faced charges for SEX trafficking in July of 2019, Bill Barr was more interested in METH trafficking when he visited western Montana just four months later:

Barr attended a roundtable discussion hosted by U.S. Sen. Steve Daines with representatives from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies as well as from the health care community. The hour-long discussion took place at the Flathead County Sheriff’s Posse Center in Evergreen.

During his opening statements, Barr pinned much of the blame for the methamphetamine crisis on Mexico, where local and federal officials say much of the drug is coming from.

“We have to get Mexico to fight these drug cartels … They have totally lost control of their own country,” Barr said. “The head of this snake is outside of the United States and we have to stomp on it.”

In the time since Barr came to Montana, a billionaire from New Jersey became Montana’s Governor and drug-fueled crimes have sky-rocketed. If this is all Mexico’s fault, we don’t have to go to the southern border to find perpetrators. In fact, I’m aware of threats that are MUCH CLOSER to home.

For a state banking on tourism to replace the financial engine of resource-extraction , drug-fueled violence–which INCLUDES sex trafficking–is a serious threat. It’s just that we don’t have serious people in positions of leadership to actually address it.

If you appreciate this content, please consider making a financial donation at my (updated) about page. Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

That’s right, after nearly a year on hiatus, I’m bringing back the Zoom Chron podcast! My plan (as I work out some kinks) is to publish a WEEK IN REVIEW episode every week, probably on Sunday mornings at 8am. That means the context I can’t fit on the virtual written page will be discussed in greater detail, and with perspectives beyond my own.

This past week, and the upcoming week, will be unique because my focus is primarily on the murder trial of Lee Nelson. I have author and victim’s advocate, Allie Harrison, joining me to provide her perspective on the week’s activity in courtroom 3, with Judge Vannatta presiding.

Another component of the podcast will be an original song or performance of some kind at the end of each episode. Last April, after the Coroner’s Inquest into the “officer involved shooting” of Johnny Lee Perry, I coined the term “journa-tuning” to describe my creative approach to news reporting. The song at the end this week’s episode is about “good good guys”.

If you appreciate the independent journalism bringing you five blog posts a week and now a podcast episode every Sunday, you can financially assist my efforts by making a donation at my about page.

Thanks for reading…and listening! And don’t worry, I’ll get the audio levels better adjusted next week!

by Travis Mateer

I’m not sure what I expected before this murder trial began on Monday, but it certainly wasn’t a growing fear at the end of the week that doubt would exist in my mind about who is responsible for doing this to Lee Nelson:

I debated with myself about whether or not to publish this picture, but the way the week ended convinced me the entire criminal justice system in Missoula needs a fucking reality check that this isn’t just some game we’re playing, with jailhouse snitches and manipulative cops protecting their own asses in this goddamn farce.

The world inside the jail, which is under the direct supervision of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, has become a significant part of the state’s effort to convict Charles Michael Covey of deliberate homicide, starting with a decision SOMEONE at the jail made to put Covey in leg restraints before trial.

Why does this matter? It matters because perception is everything in a case like this, where a murder weapon was never recovered, a confession was never formally obtained, and the culture this murder arises from is one heavily influenced by addiction, desperation, and violence. Even worse, Covey’s mobility and physical health are factors that have come up in witness testimony, so the perception that Covey had a limp due to injury could very well be prejudicial for the jury.

The defense made a motion at the beginning of the trial about the leg restraints, and in order to address this, Judge Vannatta had to examine his correspondence with the jail regarding the security plan to determine that two plain clothes officers were requested, but NOTHING about restraints of any kind.

Exploiting jailhouse bravado appears to be a BIG component of the state’s case against Charles Covey. So, who is helping out LEAD Detective, Guy Baker, to obtain such credible statements of guilt? Well, inmates like Bryan Hindman, someone I know well from my time working at the Poverello Center.

Bryan Hindman, from my direct experience, is a VERY adept manipulator, so good he was a manager for a short time at a local motel, and offered his perspective on the problem of the homeless just a few years ago.

From the link (emphasis mine):

Down the road, Mountain Valley Inn Manager Bryan Hindman leads Angela to where people have been taking shelter in the hotel’s stairwell, one of *several* areas seeing problems on the premise.

“They’d be sleeping under the stairs and you can take the stairs all the way up to the third floor landing. That’s where I’d find them sleeping,” Hindman adds.

And if they weren’t there, he knew they had been.

He says, “The majority of time they’ve probably urinated or defecated back there. So we have to get in there. We have to clean it up immediately.”

Clean up and repeat.

“I think part of our problem as a community is we ignored it too long,” Hindman expresses to Angela. “We ignored the homeless situation too long.”

Another quality witness emerged just a few months ago, despite this homicide being two years old. It’s VERY convenient that the man pictured below, who recently faced drug charges with intent to distribute, popped up to provide testimony regarding the elusive weapon, thought to be a bat.

Yep, according to Joseph Brian, Covey was his cellmate recently and told him that he burned the bat at his camp after the murder. So POOF, I guess that wraps up THAT loose end.

Another reason I published the gruesome photo of Lee Nelson’s fatal injuries is because the weapon, or lack thereof, is a BIG problem for the prosecution. Lee’s injuries include BOTH sharp force wounds and blunt force wounds, something the medical examiner, Sunil Prashar, testified was unusual.

Could there be more than one weapon? And could there be more than one perpetrator? The fact I’m asking these questions at the end of a long week with over THIRTY witnesses providing their testimony is NOT a good sign for the prosecution.

I recorded a two hour conversation about this case last night with someone who is much smarter on these legal matters, and definitely more objective, so I hope to put that conversation out as the Zoom Chron podcast REBOOT on Sunday.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Today’s post is a quickie because court and recording a two hour podcast episode took up a lot of time. As much time as it took for Detective Baker’s investigative team to determine that Cottonwood sap isn’t blood? You’ll have to wait for the episode for more on THAT.

In the meantime, here’s Montana’s Governor explaining how geography doesn’t insulate Montana from cartel activity. From the link:

“Federal officials admit that fentanyl is coming into our country illegally from Mexico,” began Governor Gianforte. “Even though we’re some 1,200 miles away Montana is not out of fentanyl’s fatal grip. Just last month in Butte, we saw authorities bust a large scale drug trafficking organization with ties to the Sinaloa cartel that’s pushing meth, fentanyl and heroin into the state.”

And what is the Governor’s response? This:

“To ensure we’re cracking down on criminals, our budget also funds 16 new highway patrol troopers and criminal investigators, as well as six new prosecutors at the Montana Department of Justice,” he said. “These Criminal Investigation Division agents will focus on drug trafficking, human trafficking, narcotics, major crimes and crimes against children, and the new highway patrol troopers will strengthen our drug interdiction programs.”

Will bolstering law enforcement produce the desired results? We’ll see.

To support my independent journalism, please consider making a donation at my about page. And a BIG thank you to the most recent supporter of my efforts, who put a downpayment on a $10 dollar monthly pledge. I couldn’t keep my morale up without the help.

Thanks for reading!