Month: July 2024

by Travis Mateer

It’s been 6 years since Mountain Line responded to complaints about homeless people sleeping on benches by REMOVING those benches and replacing them with “leaning posts”. Here’s how the rationale was explained in a local news article at the time (emphasis mine):

Some bus stops in Missoula are raising some eyebrows, after the Mountain Line transportation replaced the standard benches with leaning posts. 

A Mountain Line representative says the standard benches were removed after frequent requests from nearby residents.

“It’s my understanding that we installed three of these benches last year in response to numerous complaints, almost daily complaints, of people sleeping in bus shelters,” Mountain Line Community Outreach Coordinator Bill Pfeiffer said. 

I’ve written critically about this decision, but that was before I learned how much difficulty government agencies, like the United States Secret Service, have with sloped surfaces. From the link:

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said in an interview that aired Tuesday morning that a sloped roof used by the gunman who attempted an assassination of former President Trump last weekend at a rally had “safety factor” considerations.

“That building in particular has a sloped roof, at its highest point,” Cheatle said in an interview that aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Tuesday morning to the outlet’s Pierre Thomas. “And so, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.”

For more visual context on these “leaning posts”, here’s a short clip showing how the slope is not conducive to setting something on it, like a Lego Meth Lab, for example. Also, as I was recording, the black guy who bikes around with a cat mask on zoomed by. I had just seen this dude bike in front of a truck on Broadway street, cutting it VERY close. It’s the second time I’ve seen him bike into traffic like a total asshole trying to get hit.

Later today I’ll be attending my second Mountain Line board meeting in order to tell them that their leaning benches are dumb and that Missoula can’t become a globalist Mecca with this kind of stupid on display. If you appreciate this kind of civic engagement, consider supporting Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). With more legal charges looming on my horizon, the support is needed now more than ever.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Did you know posting bills on telephone poles could land you in jail? It’s true, but not for much longer if our adorable code reformers have their way and reform themselves some municipal code. From the link (emphasis mine):

Currently, a number of codes for the city of Missoula don’t have specified penalties. In the event of a violation, individuals automatically face a criminal misdemeanor.

“Types of violations that we have with the general penalty are fairly low level, most people wouldn’t think they’re crimes,” Missoula Deputy City Attorney Ryan Sudbury said.

Examples include if a property owner builds a fence too high, building without proper permitting or posting bills on telephone poles.

Earlier this month I got an email about someone who has been sitting in jail for quite some time after snapping and getting a slew of charges thrown at him, including deliberate homicide. It’s been well over a year since David Winterburn was arrested. What’s going on with his case? Good question. If I go back to jail and end up in the same pod, I’ll ask him about that Jamaican shakedown I heard he experienced before he snapped.

After checking out Winterburn’s status at the Missoula County Detention Portal I scrolled up and was surprised to see that the Sheriff’s Office favorite non-compliant sex offender, Todd Keith Spence, has been in jail since May. I guess all the work I’ve done to bring attention to this individual and his curious lack of accountability has paid off!

Since Todd Spence is such a fascinating anecdotal example of Missoula’s homeless drug culture, I’ll include all the links to the articles I’ve written over the years about this dude’s antics.

Unpacking The September 8th Assault On Montana Transportation Staff By A Homeless Sex Offender (September 11th, 2022)

My Unauthorized Window Into The Non-Charging Decisions Of Missoula County Authorities (September 29th, 2022)

AA#7-The Meth Den Clean-Up That Synchronistically Culminated With A Press Conference On Homeless Camps (April 27th, 2023)

Saving The Homeless Sex Offender From The Clark Fork River (May 4th, 2023)

Missoula County Sheriff, Jeremiah Petersen, Has Some Explaining To Do (May 11th, 2023)

If I Had The Resources To Do Actual, In Depth Investigations… (July 17th, 2023)

The Cop Who Became A Council Member Is Going To Need More Than “Side-Rails” To Deal With THIS Investigative Journalist (January 11th, 2024)

Urban Camps And A Broken Criminal Justice System Are Skipping Hand In Hand Toward Armageddon (March 22nd, 2024)

On a lighter note, the conversations I’m having about my Lego Meth Lab continue to be quite delightful. For example, check out this chat I had with a drug dealer (Pharmacist) about my vision of getting the city directly involved in meth production:

Will better drugs lead to better outcomes along Missoula’s riverfront? I can only hope so, but I’m no HOPE DEALER, so I don’t have a stash of baseless hope to rely on. Instead, I have a Ukulele and plenty of toy brick ideas to keep me busy.

If you’d like to support my unique independent journalism, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is the place to do it. Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

I was pretty quick to sense that some serious weirdness was afoot when I wrote about Donald Trump, Donnie Darko, and the manipulation of fate just one day after the attempted assassination of the former president, but, over a week later, well, it just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

Butler, Pennsylvania, where the assassination drama unfolded, is around 50 miles north of Pittsburgh. I visited Pittsburgh last year because it’s the city where Sean Stevenson was born–the man who I’ve said repeatedly was EUTHANIZED by the Missoulas County Sheriff’s Office.

Sean’s birthday was on Sunday, the same day America learned President Biden will NOT be the Democratic candidate for the upcoming election. If the Sheriff’s Office, acting as Coroner, had NOT pulled the plug on Sean, he would have turned 50 years old on July 21st.

Sean’s dad, Dr. Kenneth Stevenson, shared some experiences he had recently that highlight the number that Sean was drawn to.

The number three popped up as I was looking into the town of Butler, and it popped up in the guise of the TRINITY, a word I saw over and over again when I was traveling this past year. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

The Pullman-Standard plant closed in 1982, but was purchased in 1984 by Trinity Industries. Trinity Industries left the factory in 1993, and the factory was completely demolished in 2005. The site is now occupied by a vacant strip mall, as well as the Butler Transit Authority inter-modal facility. In 2011 the BTA moved a covered hopper rail-car, built in 1974, to the bus terminal in recognition of the former Pullman-Standard plant.

Over the same weekend of Sean’s birthday and the President’s withdrawal from his reelection bid, a fire broke out north of Missoula near BUTLER creek, prompting the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office to issue evacuations.

While trying to find out some local history about this area I first found the website of a company named Butler Creek, a company with ties to Montana and a curious product line, considering what precipitated this research (emphasis mine):

Another piece of weirdness that’s emerging is speculation that Biden had a medical emergency based on rumors amongst Las Vegas law enforcement that are swirling around. One theory is that Biden fell and seriously injured himself, which makes this post of mine from last year, where I highlighted a Biden fall, stand out.

Another feature of my travels over the past year has been my interest in the element of water, and bodies of water, like the Susquehanna River, which I wrote about in a post titled Can Lies Pollute Water? Well, where does the Susquehanna River empty into the ocean? This mystical, 444 mile river drains into the Atlantic at the Pennsylvania town named HARRISburg.

What could this portend? Can you say PRESIDENT HARRIS?

What else? Well, when I was in New York last September I had a HISTORIC amount of rain fall on me as I transported a very rare book back to my hotel from Brooklyn. My goal had been to walk to the Brooklyn Bridge to see the structure that the poet Hart Crane immortalized in his long poem, The Bridge.

For the final synchronicity of this post, here’s a little more history about Butler (emphasis mine):

Some famous inventions and discoveries were made in Butler County. Saxonburg was founded as a Prussian colony by John A. Roebling, a civil engineer, and his brother Carl. After farming for a time, Roebling returned to engineering, and invented his revolutionary “wire rope.”, which he first produced at Saxonburg. He moved the operation to Trenton, New Jersey. He is best known for designing his most famous work, the Brooklyn Bridge, but designed and built numerous bridges in Pittsburgh and other cities as well.

Beyond fueling my own curiosity about how the world works, I don’t expect these data points and other bits of weirdness to prove anything about what’s happening in our political sphere, but I’m laying it out anyways because I think something VERY STRANGE is going on.

If you appreciate my unusual perspective, please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Any little bit helps as I tread these difficult financial waters I find myself in.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

Remember the story of the meth-smoking woman who killed one of the oldest living trees on the planet in Florida? If not, here’s a quick summary:

Sara Barnes used to like sitting in the hollowed-out center of “The Senator,” a 3,500-year-old cypress tree in Longwood’s Big Tree Park, after the park closed.

She enjoyed the breeze that blew through the top of the 125-foot-tall tree and travelled down its core.

On a night in January 2012, while Barnes and a friend smoked meth inside “The Senator,” the breeze was a bit much, so they started a fire. The fire grew and what was then the fifth-oldest tree in the world burned from the inside out like a bellowing chimney.

This was the story that popped into my head when I saw the headline about a homeless woman who torched a juniper bush at a local post office near the Johnson Street Shelter.

From the link:

On July 17, 2024, Missoula Police Department Officers were dispatched to the U.S. Post Office located at 1100 Kent Avenue for a report of a fire. Call details described a homeless female lit a bush on fire next to the building and the flames were almost as tall as the flagpole. An officer responded to the Post Office and contacted the complainant who is an employee.

The employee said she observed a female feeding paper towels into the fire. She said the female got up, walked away, looked at her, and cursed at her. She advised the flames were nearly as high as the light pole the bush was touching, which is approximately 25 feet tall. She described the female and said she was pushing a shopping cart toward Albertsons.

The woman was later found by police near the Johnston Street Shelter and arrested. Here’s a picture I took yesterday of the torched bush:

While Missoula police respond to homeless fires, Mineral County just had another Officer-involved shooting. Here’s the information released by the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office. My immediate question, is the CITY Detective our very own Detective Guy Baker?

While this MONTANA drama hints at a Big Sky dumpster fire burning, it takes a cognitively impaired president stepping down from a CAMPAIGN to signify the burning of a dumpster fire with NATIONAL proportions.

How is Biden able to run a country when he can’t run a campaign? I’m sure amphetamines have nothing to do with it. Maybe the Montana Senator who got our Missoula State Senator excited for change had something to do with it?

The reaction from Montana’s delegation includes our junior Senator, Steve Daines, making the obvious point that Democrats, including Senator Tester, will now have to contend with (emphasis mine):

“If Joe Biden is no longer capable of running for re-election, he is no longer capable of serving as president. Being president is the hardest job in the world, and I no longer have confidence that Joe Biden can effectively execute his duties as commander-in-chief.”

Daines cited concerns over national security as the reason for a formal call to Biden to resign. Tester’s office said that the president was elected by the American people and the senator respects the results of that 2020 election.

This weasel-worded response from Tester regarding Biden’s fitness to serve as PRESIDENT won’t serve him well, especially with one of his key demographics: Veterans.

How many months under a cognitively impaired Commander-in-Chief are those serving in the U.S. Military supposed to endure? Tester better have a better response than the one above on the campaign trail, and if that crafted response doesn’t play well, expect to hear Tester start calling on Biden to step down as PRESIDENT in the coming weeks.

The rising flames of the Great American Dumpster Fire coincide with the dog days of summer, named for the appearance of the Dog Star, Sirius.

The dog days or dog days of summer are the hot, sultry days of summer. They were historically the period following the heliacal rising of the star system Sirius (known colloquially as the “Dog Star”), which Hellenistic astrology connected with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck. They are now taken to be the hottest, most uncomfortable part of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

Stay hydrated out there, the dog days have just begun! And if you’re feeling generous, float a little currency my direction for Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Any little bit helps.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

I’m enthusiastically declaring today that Joe Biden MUST REMAIN in his glorious role as figurehead of the Democratic Party because anything less would be disingenuous. You’ve shit your own bed, Dems, and, as a former “progressive” run off during the Bernie Sheepdog days, I’m really enjoying watching all these duplicitous snakes squirm as the stench becomes impossible to conceal.

Before I get to my HILARIOUS song, I want to highlight a Zerohedge piece about a Pritzker that I find interesting. Since there’s a Pritzker who covertly went Buddhist and built the Buddha garden north of Missoula, up in Arlee, I definitely notice when this surname pops up in the media.

For context, here’s an idea of how this family got their money back in the day:

The origins of the Pritzker family fortune was her grandfather’s mob connections when he was a tax attorney for a lot of people in “The Outfit,” the Chicago mob, beginning under Al Capone, and continuing through the 1980s. This connection to organized crime was reportedly what financed the creation of Hyatt Hotels by Penny’s father. There was no crime involved, but the financial backing came from organized crime, plain and simple. The details are in Gus Russo’s 2006 tome Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America’s Hidden Power Brokers. Russo’s book is crucial reading for anyone trying to understand why America’s ruling elites are, well, so bad.

And here’s an excerpt from the Zerohedge piece (emphasis mine):

Gov. Pritzker is a leading voice in today’s Democratic Party and a major surrogate for President Biden and his own messaging. Pritzker’s words matter. When he calls Trump a “threat to our democracy” and accuses him of fascism and authoritarianism, Pritzker knows he’s effectively labeling the 70 million-plus MAGA Republicans the same because of their support for Trump. It’s not the name-calling itself that matters, but rather the impact such language has on the left. Pritzker is telling his half of the country there should be and can be no compromise, no cooperation with the other “fascist” half. It’s polarizing to the extreme.

Pritzker’s rhetoric became more extreme when he began hinting at presidential ambitions. During his first presidential preview speech in New Hampshire, he remarked: “Let me be clear, I loathe Donald Trump. Every stump speech I delivered in my 2018 campaign began with ‘Everything we care about is under siege by a racist, misogynist, homophobic xenophobic president.’” The crowd cheered, and since then he’s upped his rhetoric even further.

Pritzker’s latest speeches and tweets go so far as to call Trump a “threat to the nation” as well as declare “right wing extremism” a threat to “our democracy and our freedoms.” Today, the governor is the Democrats’ main attack dog, if the New York Times headline “This Top Democrat Is Leading His Party’s Attack on Trump as a Felon,” is any indication.

President Pritzker? Yeah, that has a nice, nefarious ring to it. Maybe my harping on how local Missoula Democrats, despite geographical distance, are VERY CLOSE to the Chicago heart of darkness will be taken a little more seriously as the Democrat rot becomes more and more obvious.

Next week I’ll be writing about rats, sinking ships, and the CURIOUS rebranding of local culture, among other things, so stay tuned! And throw me some dollars if this Biden economy hasn’t already destroyed your economic security by clicking on Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Any little bit helps.

I mean, where else do you find such hilarious and timely songs like this one!

Thanks for reading!