Month: February 2023

by Travis Mateer

I’m confused and, looking back at the tweet, it’s totally my fault. I mixed up the campaign electronic reporting system for the system Missoula County maintains for candidate filing information. That’s on me. Here’s the tweet:

Luckily, when I went to the election office on Wyoming Street, the staff were available to set me straight. Previously my effort to understand a broken link, in person, wasn’t addressed because the staff were apparently giving awards to each other (source, Alison Franz, comms for the County).

What did I learn? I learned about important dates on calendars, like April 20th. This is NOT just a date to smoke massive amounts of weed. No, it’s ALSO the date when candidates can begin filing for municipal elections. The date for the CLOSE of candidate filing is June 19th.

Why is the electronic reporting system already showing results for 2023? Before answering that question, I went to the website just to confirm that T.J. McDermott is still an active candidate for Mayor. Here is the result:

When I contacted the Commissioner of Political Practices office I had a MUCH better experience than I did with the person in Missoula, and I ended my conversation with something called CLARITY instead of confusion. What was this clarity? Well, instead of making it sound like I found info I wasn’t privy to, the way the Missoula election guy did, I was told that YES, if a candidate is RAISING MONEY then they must go through a process with the State of Montana, and that process can be gleaned by using the Campaign Electronic Reporting System.

Now, separate from the nitty-gritty of election processes, the decision of WHEN to announce a candidacy is NOT constrained by calendar dates, as Mike Nugent and Jordan Hess’ candidacy announcements clearly indicate.

So, what is T.J. McDermott waiting for? Is he afraid of something? Because my impression from the people I talked to was that an announcement from McDermott was imminent, but then something changed. What changed? And does it have anything to do with the strange omission (end of post) from Sergeant Prather of the LifeGuard Group on a recent podcast episode about human trafficking, which is this group’s signature issue?

One of MY signature issues is how a Sheriff’s Office, acting as the coroner, can euthanize a black man BEFORE any members of his family can be notified, which is precisely what happened to Sean Stevenson on January 5th, 2020, a fact one of our City Council members didn’t want to hear, so she shut me down with a point-of-order.

Well, Stacie Anderson, maybe unplug those willfully ignorant ears of yours long enough to listen to my interview with Sean’s sisters. There it is, right below these words. All you have to do is hit the PLAY button!

One of the side-benefits of going into the elections office in person was the opportunity I had to educate the new guy about some interesting political dynamics in Missoula. It’s amazing how shocked people are when I explain to them, in just a few minutes, what happened to Sean Stevenson inside that hospital room.

As I was finishing up this post I went looking for an image of the particular Deputy/Coroner who pulled the plug on Sean, but instead what I found was an EARLIER appearance of Missoula County Deputies on a reality tv show, earlier than our County’s relationship with Live PD. This show was called Frontier Force, and the article was written by Gwen Florio, same reporter who congratulated herself and the Missoulian for noticing Sean’s death.

Here’s an excerpt from the first link:

It sounds so scary, and colorful, too, what with the subzero weather and the marauding bears and the occasional domestic terrorist.

Which is the whole point of “Frontier Force: Montana,” the latest entry in what might be called the adventure policing genre from National Geographic TV. For the last two years, the channel has brought viewers “Alaska State Troopers: Frontier Force.” This year, its focus turned south.

“Auto theft, drug overdoses and trespassing grizzly bears are all in a day’s work for the Montana police,” the tease for the show promises.

So are two frightened little girls. That’s what it came down on a cold night last March, when Missoula County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a tip that an East Missoula woman was moving a 90-pound meth shipment.

Since I was too busy working at a homeless shelter around this time, I wasn’t paying close attention to the antics of people like Bill Burt, the guy our then-Sheriff, Mike McMeekin, put in charge of being LEAD CLOWN for the cameras. My impression of Burt being the funniest candidate ever last year is not changed by his performance for the cameras in 2011. Here’s more from the article (emphasis mine):

PSG first approached the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office nearly two years ago, when it was looking for a follow-up to its Alaska State Troopers show. Then-Sheriff Mike McMeekin put Deputy William Burt in charge, and for about month, the PSG crew hung out with him, going on ride-alongs and collecting footage for the pitch they’d send National Geographic to persuade it to fund the new show, Burt said.

“We got to be pretty good friends,” Burt said of the crew. “But we got into arguments about keeping it accurate.” Sometimes the film crew folks wanted more dramatic action from the deputies – say, drawing a gun when they normally wouldn’t. But crew members backed down when the deputies refused, he said.

So, an image of Burt stalking through the woods, rifle at the ready, aiming watchful glances into the trees, actually was shot in Burt’s back yard rather than on the job. “In Montana,” a voice intones on the video, “the Wild West is still being fought.”

Shockingly, McMeekin didn’t pull the trigger on the show. That took the next Sheriff, Carl Ibsen, who Burt convinced to say YAY instead of NAY.

McMeekin took one look at the brief promo and deemed it “too police-y,” Burt said. Missoula County’s participation was a no-go.

Which was a problem. PSG had already snagged a new contract from National Geographic, based on its pitch. “So they ended up going all over the state” for episodes, Burt said.

Fast forward to November 2010 and the election of a new Missoula County Sheriff, Carl Ibsen.

Burt knew PSG was still shooting in Montana. “I went back through the chain of command” at the Sheriff’s Office with a plea that Missoula County be included. “I saw this as an opportunity or people to get to know who their law enforcement is,” he said.

So did Ibsen – especially after Burt told him about Arkansas’ experience with a similar show, after which the State Police there saw recruitment numbers “go through the roof.”

While some of this obviously predates McDermott’s tenure as Sheriff, I’m including it because I find it to be fascinating context nonetheless of a Sheriff’s office that just might produce Missoula’s next officially elected Mayor IF that candidacy is ever officially announced.

I’m EAGERLY waiting to see what the timing of that announcement might look like.

If you appreciate the Missoula County Sheriff histrionics, or how I resolve my own confusion, please consider making a financial donation at my about page.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

While geopolitics isn’t a topic I write much about at this LOCAL blog, every tax-paying American is implicated in the charade playing out in Ukraine, so today I’m going to spend a little time pondering the possibility that our HUMAN overlords are stupid and crazy enough to bring machine learning to the theater of war. Because why wouldn’t they?

Before we get to war let’s talk about school essays, or cover art for bands, or any other way AI seems to be seeping in to our culture. I heard one podcaster sheepishly explain why he uses AI to generate images to promote his content around the same time a local friend showed me his experiments using prompts to do the same thing. It’s new, it’s fun, and I think it’s extremely fucking dangerous.

The quality of images and deep-fake video content being created by AI will do, or maybe already HAS DONE, some seriously screwed up things to our culture. It could help perverts normalize child porn because HEY, NO VICTIMS!, or it could be used in targeted ways to get people to question their own reality. The ability to make oneself LOOK younger is also feeding all kinds of unhealthy psychological responses to the reality we humans still experience, which is the experience of time reducing our bodies to dust. This is a fancy way of saying WE ALL DIE, although I’m sure countless dollars and hours are being spent to stop the offensive process of dying, thus giving up all you accumulated material wealth here on earth.

To get there, the psychopaths who are terrified of death must MASTER death on the ground, because the control of physical resources is still a critical component in the technocratic delusions the master class has to control and extend life in any unnatural way their fucked up minds can imagine. Passively watching this unfold is akin to suicide.

One of the latest little distractions in the information war accompanying the Ukrainian war theater is the “accidental” image of a Zelensky double supposedly captured by Polish media. Whoops!

Assuming this is accidental is to ignore the reality that EVERYTHING happening online is being fed into massive efforts by nation states to bring powerful AI resources into greater effectiveness for the purposes of controlling humans, which means controlling ANYTHING we use to survive, like food and water.

In a post like this, this is the point I’m glad my focus remains on LOCAL issues because going down rabbits holes on clones and other weird interpretations is tantamount to becoming a casualty in the information war.

This doesn’t mean I ignore strange possibilities, it just means I try to keep ideas that could be weapons from figuratively detonating like a grenade in my own head.

Regardless of what benefits this war might be providing to psychopathic war planners, no one can argue that MORE American tax money is heading to Ukraine to cause mayhem.

President Biden on Monday announced the U.S. would be providing $500 million in additional military aid to Ukraine during a surprise visit to Kyiv, and he teased new sanctions to crack down on entities aiding Russia’s war efforts in the country.

Biden, appearing alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, touted the sizable commitment of military equipment the U.S. and its allies have already provided Ukraine in the year since Russian first invaded.

If you think a half billion dollars is making the sniffly President of Ukraine appreciative, think again.

If Americans grow tired of financing the war in Ukraine, that loss of funding might slow down the ground lessons for Skynet, but here in Montana a bipartisan group isn’t waiting around to fight killer robots. Nope, they’re trying to get some legislation passed to STOP THEM NOW before our skies are filled with lethally armed drones.

A bipartisan group of Montana lawmakers wants to be sure no one in the state can use robots affixed with guns, swords or other weapons to kill people under a bill that was heard Friday that would establish the “Killer Robot Attack Ban Act.”

House Bill 594, sponsored by Rep. Kelly Kortum, D-Bozeman, aims to bar people and businesses from building, possessing, using or selling any “lethal autonomous weapon system” (LAWS) in Montana. It would subject anyone who violates the prohibition to up to 20 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.

The measure defines a lethal autonomous weapon system as one that “utilizes technological means to attack targets without further intervention by a human operator.”

“This is one of those proactive things that we can do to ensure all of our futures and our children’s futures,” Kortum said. “… I believe we as Montanans, we as Americans, and we as human beings really need to get ahead of this and prevent a disaster 10, 20 years in the future.”

How timely! Thank you Facebook algorithm for giving me this article while writing this post, nothing ironic or creepy about that at all, considering the subject matter.

Anyway, if you appreciate having a HUMAN like me providing insights on the issues of the day, you can help my efforts by making a financial donation at my about page. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

There was so much going on this week, it took a bonus Friday post AND a Saturday post to document most of what I wanted to document. Despite this effort, some significant developments weren’t included in the week’s coverage, like the Mineral County Mandamus status hearing I attended, and Josh Slotnick’s embarrassing mea culpa for not being more upfront about the business he’s connected to, which recently had a variance request before Commissioners.

From the link:

Missoula County on Thursday confirmed that one of its three elected commissioners is a partner in a project seeking a variance request that would allow a business to operate in conjunction with an agricultural operation off Third Street, along with future residential development.

Members of the Planning and Zoning Commission, along with Missoula County Commissioners Dave Strohmaier and Juanita Vero, recommended the county approve the variance request at a meeting on Feb. 9.

But during the meeting, county officials never disclosed the fact that fellow Commissioner Josh Slotnick was a partner in the project the county was recommending for approval.

Slotnick was not present at the meeting in which the recommendation was given. The Missoula Current didn’t report Slotnick’s involvement.

“The presentation by WGM, who was representing the project, did mention his spouse by name and the name of their business a few times,” Missoula County Communications Director Allison Franz told the Missoula Current. “But no one specifically disclosed his involvement, and we should have, for transparency’s sake.”

Sending the Comms person, Alison Franz, out to cover for something Slotnick should have just disclosed, upfront, in the first place, is pretty low.

Since Josh Slotnick is ALSO a poet, and since I like to collect the books of our local officials, I pulled out Josh’s poetry book, HomeFarm, and looked at the table of contents. The cluster of poems about pigs at the end of this collection seemed promising, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Like David Barsotti, Josh Slotnick has to kill animals sometimes with a gun, like he did in 2008 at the PEAS farm. From the link (emphasis mine):

A problem arose when a woman who lives on Duncan Drive called police to report that someone at the farm was shooting pigs.

That much was true. Slotnick said he had a friend with extensive experience in raising pigs come to kill the animals, which weighed an average of 270 pounds. It’s also true, that even though pigs have been shot in previous years at the farm, they probably shouldn’t have been because city ordinances forbid discharging a firearm in the city limits.

In past years, the pigs’ deaths haven’t caused a problem. But this year, the farm has a new neighbor, and she didn’t take kindly to the process.

“Basically we had a call about shooting in the city limits in regards to pigs,” police Lt. Mike Brady said. “We talked to the farm manager and it was over by that time.”

Here is how Josh Slotnick processed the trauma of having a neighbor call him out for breaking the law.

Poor Josh! Good thing there’s media around to let the public know what’s going on, right? And I’m a part of that proud local niche, which Josh appreciates, according to the inscription I received when I met with him last summer.

I am keeping up the good work, Josh! But it’s difficult sometimes, like when the election website showing who has filed for Mayor is down, and has been, for weeks.

It’s been OVER a week now since I spoke with Alison Franz, the same person sent out to cover for Slotnick. She confirmed the link to the candidate filing didn’t work, and that she would follow up with the election people. What’s been the result so far? Instead of a broken link, the link is just gone altogether. Good work Team Elections, Missoula Chapter!

The work, though, isn’t all links, quotes and screen-shots. No, the poet in me has kicked out another set of simple verses for my ukulele to help me bring to you, at the conclusion of this week’s episode. I do hope you enjoy it! And if you want to hear the songs, and podcasts, and 5 (or more) posts a week, please consider making a financial donation at my about page.

Thanks for reading/listening!

UPDATE: I forgot to include a video clip of Graham Cooke showing what a FUN Christian response can look like when the Satanists come a-cursin’! Enjoy!

by Travis Mateer

There is no shimmer or loss of time (unless you’re drinking) when you enter the strange dimension known as Mineral County, so travelers must be weary. Was I weary on February 24th after writing this post? Not enough, apparently. I got in my shitty vehicle and jumped on the interstate where the traffic trafficks people and things to get me some Mandamus updates.

My intention weeks ago for this date was to drive to Spokane so Sam Tripoli could make me laugh at a comedy club. Instead I parked at the St. Regis Travel Center with the intention to piss, but that need turned into an opportunity to see the infamous “wounded” Veteran, David Barsotti, walking one of the dogs he HASN’T killed due to a case of alleged rabies. Not yet, anyway.

After saying good morning to a man who showed NO sign of a limp when I walked by him outside the Travel Center, I did what I needed to do and returned to my shitty vehicle. The vehicle this “wounded” Veteran on disability got into was definitely less shitty than my child-chariot, which is literally being held together in places by tape. If I sound jealous, trust me, I’m not.

I made sure the screen-shot of the Yukon cut off the plate, since I don’t know who the owner of this vehicle is. What I DO know is this “wounded” Veteran has some interesting friends. I also know, since I’m such a forthright talker when asked by cashiers how my day is going, that at least one person at the Travel Center thinks David Barsotti is protected by the local Sheriff’s Office.

As I sat in my car eating my trail mix, I noticed the man in the Yukon get out and fiddle with something in the back. This time I DID notice a limp. Well done, brave soldier man!

Once upon a time a REAL soldier by the name of Jason Maxwell called out David Barsotti for having claims that didn’t pass the smell test. Jason used to be VERY active on social media as well, but now things are sort of quiet. Unless you take into consideration this trolling Facebook post from the Northwestern Malinois account:

Less than a month after this Facebook post, according to a source I spoke with on Friday, David was drinking at a local watering hole and told to go home by local law enforcement. Later that evening something happened at the residence that required the full siren-show response. Did David’s dog, Stryker, have rabies and attack him? Did David shoot the dog 9 times and kill it? And did he get treated at the local hospital for wounds, including on his neck, from this “rabid” dog attack?

In a normal County, during normal times, there would be consequences if this claim wasn’t true and the dog was merely shot 9 times and killed. But Mineral County is not a normal County, and these are far from normal times.

As if I needed MORE reminding of this, I still had that Mandamus status hearing to attend, so I got back on the interstate, where the traffic trafficks people and things, and headed to the adorable little Courthouse where the humans inside struggle to accomplish basic tasks.

But THAT is a story for a different post, or maybe a podcast episode, which should arrive tomorrow morning.

If you appreciate what I’m trying to do, a great way of showing that appreciation is with money, and the method I currently have for accepting online donations can be found at my about page.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

I am choosing today, February 24th, to announce that something dark is stirring in Brickland. Dark, like the actual origins of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, a show that wasted no time talking to kids about the political assassination that took out JFK’s brother, Robert.

Here is how Mr. Rogers helped kids process the fact that a cabal of sociopaths were flexing on the quaint notion of “Democracy” with a little help from those smart or, should I say, INTELLIGENT people who do what needs to be done for the people who matter. From the link:

This special program attempts to console children in the wake of the June 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during this “disturbing time in our nation’s history.” Songs, sketches with puppets, and play sessions are aimed at helping children work through their anger and confusion about his violent death. Highlights include: tree trunk resident Lady Elaine Fairchild hectors a reluctant X the Owl into taking the part of assassin Sirhan Sirhan in a ghoulish game of make-believe; Lady Elaine, X, and Lady Aberlin discuss playing games and venting aggressions; a dancer leads a group of five children in a series of games in King Friday the XIII’s castle, allowing them to channel their energy in positive, imaginative ways; Rogers croons the song “What Do You Do?” which deals with anger and aggression; Lady Aberlin comforts the sensitive, taciturn Daniel Striped Tiger, who fears that people, like balloons, can lose all their air, and asks her the meaning of assassination; and Rogers urges parents to protect and support their children from the graphic display of violence which has been shown frequently by the mass media. 

Since I watched the documentary on Mr. Rogers recently, this strange attempt by Fred Rogers to broach the subject of political assassination is intermingling with my recent re-watching of Apocalypse Now and all the baggage that came along with. Shit is weird and getting weirder.

Twin Peaks is another show I re-watched, but not for enjoyment–far from it! I consider viewing this kind of material as necessary research, and part of what drives where my attention goes is the oddness of synchronicity. So it definitely caught my attention that February 24th is the fictional date Laura Palmer is found dead and wrapped in plastic next to a body of water. Here’s an interesting quote from a fan-page I found:

If this fictional darkness isn’t in your face enough, try this: February 24th, 2022, is the moment in history we might look back on as the date this guy got the call to be the puppet for instigating WWIII.

One final February 24th moment happened a hundred years before RFK was assassinated, and it features a REAL President (unlike Zelensky, who just plays one on TV). Since impeaching presidents and civil wars are part of our current discourse, it’s interesting to think about 1868 and the moves being made against Andrew Johnson (emphasis mine):

Isn’t this QUITE the date in history? Indeed. So maybe today isn’t the best day to be hitting icy roads for the town of my birth. Maybe I’ll stop where I originally intended, which is the mystical land of Mandamus.

Stay tuned…