Month: August 2025

Does former JSOC drone operator turned whistleblower, Brandon Bryant, express himself online in ways that can be concerning? Sure, if you didn’t know better, Bryant could be seen as a loose cannon if you based your opinion solely on his online persona, but that would be a mistake, just like it was a mistake for the County Attorney’s Office to pursue felony charges against Bryant during the Great Anti-TIF Missoula Uprising of 2019.

Here’s how KPAX reported on Bryant’s arrest in March of 2020:

The man that was banned from Missoula City Council meetings for making threats has been formally charged.

Brandon Bryant of Missoula appeared in court on Thursday, after making a threatening YouTube video about city council members.

Bryant is accused of threatening mass murder-those threats apparently directed at Missoula City Council members. He is charged with one felony count of threats/improper influence in official and political matters.

After beating these charges, which stemmed from the Great Missoula Tax Uprising of 2019 (see Engen’s Missoula), Bryant has continued to face harassment locally, which I have spoken to him about on multiple occasions.  

For example, the wooden staff Bryant uses as a disabled Veteran was recently identified inside the Missoula County Courthouse by a Sheriff Deputy as a threat, and yet, when harassed by the Sheriff Deputy, Bryant did NOT snap and attack, but instead calmly advocated for himself and put this stupid Sheriff Deputy in his place. Well done, Brandon.

Recently a new person arrived on the scene where the social circles I circulate in have their little rag-tag sense of community. I was sympathetic, at first, of the criminal charges this person is facing, and the seeming pariah status this person achieved in their respective social circles, but that was before I learned about the double homicide of William and Yesenia Larsen in 2020, allegedly committed by several Missoula residents arrested in March of 2021, who this person may have some connections to.

Three Missoula residents have been arrested in connection with a California double murder.

Mono (California) Sheriff Ingrid Braun says arrest warrants were issued for Bradley Kohorst, 35, Cory Spurlock, 33, and Orit Oged, 32 in connection with a double homicide in Bridgeport, California.

Two bodies were found by a snowplow driver in the early morning hours of Nov. 9, 2020, on the shoulder of Highway 395, approximately 10 miles north of Bridgeport.

Sheriff Braun says the victims — who were identified as William and Yesenia Larsen, a husband and wife, from Burbank, California — had no known connection to Mono County.

“A thorough investigation ensued, which led our Investigators to the determination that several former business associates of the victims were connected to the deaths,” Sheriff Braun stated in a news release.

The more I looked into this story, which entails drug trafficking and a third potential murder tied to these “Missoula residents”, I started to get a REALLY bad feeling. Then, the more I heard this supposed “activist” talk about “building community” while, at the same time, leaving social carnage in “their” wake, I knew there could be big trouble if no one stood up and started asking questions out in the sunlight, where I like to operate.

Some of my investigating doubles as ass-covering, since I didn’t know about this double homicide when I assisted this person in trying to get a lock off a storage space at a house this person once lived at. The fact that one of the accused murderers shares the foreign nationality of this “activist” who accuses anyone that criticizes “them” of being anti-semitic, only makes me more concerned about what’s going on with this person, their role in this community, the criminal charges they are facing, and the Israeli daddy who owns the house right by Interstate 90, in the Rattlesnake neighborhood.

If I had gotten a response from the Missoula Detective I reached out to weeks ago, I might not be writing this post, but I didn’t, so I am. And I am making this preemptive threat assessment because this activist person is now threatening to make public claims that Brandon Bryant is the threat when everything I’ve seen indicates the opposite is true.

The documentary about the local tax uprising treated Bryant’s role pretty harshly, since by the time it was made there had been a falling out between him and the filmmaker I worked with, but that is all in the past now, and it’s in the past because Brandon Bryant is NOT the threat some people assume he is when all they see is his online commentary.

The location of this “New Jersey owned” house in the exclusive Rattlesnake section of Missoula gets even more curious for me when I recall how a former New York Homeland Security agent turned Montana Representative who likes to sneak into churches to record Christians lives in this hood.

For context, here’s a screen shot of Danny’s wikipedia page:

I’d like to say more about what some of my research is pointing me toward regarding a very old and very interesting connection between Tibetan Buddhism and Zionism, but that’s beyond the scope of this particular post, so I’ll leave it here for today.

Thanks for reading!

I’ve long-known that bursting is happening all over our judicial system because the seams stitching our system together can’t handle what’s being put into it, and the result is everyone pretty much is tired of it. The judges are tired of the lawyers, the lawyers are tired of the cops, the cops hate the judges, and the clients being chewed up in petty and subjective ways that would make Kafka blush leverage whatever victim-box they can check off in order to avoid consequences.

In short, the system is fucked, which leads to a local reporter using an exciting adjective like BURSTING (from the link):

A series of recent vacancies at the Missoula public defender’s office, including at least one termination, burst into open court Thursday as a judge admonished the agency for failing to assign attorneys to criminal defendants.

Montana’s Office of Public Defender represents defendants unable to afford their own legal defense, a role necessitated by the constitutional right to counsel. Leaders at OPD said Thursday that vacancies are normal at an agency known for relatively low pay, high caseloads and frequent employee turnover.

But Missoula District Judge John Larson, along with county prosecutors, suggested the disappearances of four public defenders who routinely appear on felony cases is creating unnecessary delays for defendants, some of whom continue to sit in jail.

For those paying attention to local Marsupial drama, this is the same judge that other prosecutors threw a tantrum over, which resulted in an entire treatment court meant to allegedly help defendants get handed over to Missoula’s notorious bathroom judge, the confused kangaroo who currently thinks the first amendment shouldn’t protect my citizen journalism.

Since this societal breakdown puts a heavy burden on someone being targeted for blowing the whistle on the Homeless Industrial Complex and its collusion with local law enforcement, my attempt to stumble through my first official pro se defense of myself over the most recent charges I’m facing is off to a fun start. Not only did make the overture to conduct a pre-trial interview of my arresting officer, I learned the officer can say NO to this request.

If I get a no to that request, and if the city isn’t inclined to seriously consider my offer to save them time (which means taxpayer money), then I’ll be super excited to get some pro se trial experience when I take my charges to a jury trial and ask the cop under oath what he declined to offer in my request, which I have a legal right to make.

Public Defenders are some of the most over-burdened actors in this justice LARP, so I understand the frustration. I also understand WHY the city is so dedicated to protecting certain illusions from popping–or BURSTING–like fragile balloons.

Because if people REALLY knew what was going on, they would revolt in ways our elected officials are desperately trying to insulate themselves from.

Thanks for reading!

Here in Missoula County, inaction from the Sheriff’s Office looks like the failure to arrest anyone in the murder of an 88 year old woman with a pair of antlers. Back east, however, it looks more like this:

Developers of a controversial 70-mile, 500,000-volt transmission line cutting across three Maryland counties to power data centers in Northern Virginia’s “spy country data center alley” have faced mounting backlash from residents, prompting the project’s backers to request U.S. Marshals to escort survey crews after repeated threats from property owners, according to local media outlet WJZ 13.

PSEG Renewable Transmission, a New Jersey-based developer, is leading the Piedmont Reliability Project to install 70 miles of high-voltage lines through Baltimore, Carroll, and Frederick counties to supply power to AI data centers and ease strain on the regional grid. 

In a motion filed in federal court last Friday, PSEG detailed new threats against survey teams, including gun violence, unleashed dogs, and an ATV that nearly struck private security guards. Local police and the sheriff’s office declined to intervene, dismissing the confrontations as civil matters.

Is this a dick move by the Sheriff? Yeah, I’d say it is, but considering other jurisdictions are getting realistic and doing things like trying to restrain the unending appetite of data centers for energy, maybe one day we will come to appreciate the forethought coming from those who wised up early and said FUCK NO to sacrificing humans on the psychotic altar of nerd-dork gods like Grok.

Texas Senate Bill 6, signed into law in late June of 2025, imposes mandates on large energy users (like data centers) to fund infrastructure upgrades, enable remote disconnection during emergencies, and register backup generators to bolster grid reliability. No less important is the goal that tariffs ensure data centers bear grid upgrade burdens, rather than passing them to residents.

SB6 will require significant disclosure from the data center industry. In its initial form, the bill applies to customers drawing 75 MW or more (a threshold that is adjustable by the PUC), including hyperscale data centers, crypto mines, and manufacturers. Probably the most significant, or at least the most noticeable requirement is setting infrastructure cost-sharing and connection standards.

Does using AI-generated images at the top of my posts make me a giant hypocrite? Right now it IS a tool I am using and will continue to use as I navigate being a pro se lawyer on top of everything else I’m doing, but AI could go away tomorrow and it wouldn’t bother me at all.

This post is a shorty today, and that’s only because the latest rabbit hole I’ve stumbled down is SO deep, I’m trying to get my bearings as I go.

That said, thanks for reading!

Greater Missoula has around 100,000 humans calling this valley home and one of them is so reviled by her City Council peers that a recent Monday meeting turned into the rhetorical equivalent of a pro-wrestling smackdown as Kristen Jordan learned explicitly why she’s purposefully marginalized. 

To see how this meeting is being regurgitated by the establishment mouthpiece, the Missoula Current, I’ll be using a lengthy excerpt from the article. Here it is:

“Never was I called, never was I invited,” Jordan said. “When I found out (talks) had been going on, I asked to collaborate and was told absolutely not.”

Jordan added, “Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s ethical.”

Council member Jennifer Savage brought the Pride flag measure to City Council after discussing the resolution with other council members. Savage works for Missoula County Public School and said the process happened organically as the flag came under attack.

She said Jordan wasn’t included in crafting the resolution due to her past behavior.

“I did that work with people I have trusted and people who have shown themselves to be trustworthy council members,” Savage said. “You (Jordan) have not proven to be a trustworthy colleague.”

Jordan has been vocally critical of City Council, it’s process and, at times, the administration. She has yelled at peers, attacked colleagues and members of the public in emails, and stormed out of meetings while shouting slurs.

Other council members have noted the behavior over the past three years. 

“That is why no one called you. It’s not because we were trying to be exclusive. It was because you’ve slammed your computer in this chamber and told us all to F&$! off. You have yelled at more than one of us on numerous occasions, over the phone, in person, and people have seen it. It’s something that has made it very clear that you’re not a collaborative partner.”

Ideology aside, Kristen Jordan is so bad at her job of representing constituents and communicating with her peers that I could probably be convinced that she’s a political op to discredit the idea of “Socialism” as a viable alternative to the controlled demolition of our late-stage Capitalist economy.

I was tempted to engage in a similar line of conspiratorial thinking when I read that the top cop in Washington DC, Pamela Smith, didn’t know what the phrase CHAIN OF COMMAND meant. How is that even possible?

It’s possible if you expand your thinking to include the possibility that a centuries old plan to meta-gaslight humanity is now rapidly emerging from the shadows to become our unquestioned dogma.

We are at an inflection point, as a species, and what are we doing about it? Buying tickets for Ari Aster’s new film so we can see how the controller class accomplished the build-out of our digital prison while townie caricatures hit our brains like bullets of demoralization in the larger information war?

Sheriff Dumbass and Mayor Fuckface (Eddington) aren’t characters that exist in a vacuum, they’re inverted mockeries of core archetypes that have actually been integral to human evolution. If Aster becomes orthodoxy, then the hero’s journey made famous by Joseph Campbell has been reduced to turning your cop car into a political circus of primary colors and misspelled bumperstickers.

The Aster flick I watched a few weeks ago is set in a Western town in New Mexico and, like I said above, it’s all about mocking humans as the REAL threat gets quietly constructed in the background as the movie drama unfolds. “Keep your eye on the data center,” my friend advised.

To finish up this post I’d like to include two examples of humans using AI in a completely unnecessary and disturbing manner. The first example comes from Kevin Dahlgren, the former homeless service provider who now makes content about the Homeless Industrial Complex. Here’s the AI-enhanced poverty porn Kevin recently put out on his X-feed, then deleted when I suspect he realized it was incredibly tasteless:

While this is pretty bad, it’s not anywhere as fucked up as what Jim Acosta did recently. If you think mainstream has reached its nadir, think again!

Jim Acosta, former chief White House correspondent for CNN, stirred controversy on Monday when he sat for a conversation with a reanimated version of a person who died more than seven years ago. His guest was an avatar of Joaquin Oliver, one of the 17 people killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.

The video shows Oliver, captured via a real photograph and animated with generative artificial intelligence, wearing a beanie with a solemn expression. Acosta asks the avatar: “What happened to you?”

“I appreciate your curiosity,” Oliver answers in hurried monotone without inflection or pauses for punctuation. “I was taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school. It’s important to talk about these issues so we can create a safer future for everyone.” 

It’s true that humans can suck, but when you consider the existence of a psychopath class deploying Large Language Models to reshape the entire world for their benefit, I’ll take shitty humans like Kristen Jordan over Grok or Chatty any day of the week.

Thanks for reading!

I like to tell the local power structure what I think about their policies to their faces and there’s a reason for this that has nothing to do with the personal satisfaction I get from showing them, through my actions, that I’m still kicking despite their best efforts to shut me down.

Yesterday, for example, when I attended the Police Commission, my physical presence inside the conference room allowed me to hear the pre-recorded banter, which centered on Kelly Clarkson’s Montana connection. When JD Vance and Butte came up, I couldn’t help myself and started shit-talking the Town Pump dynasty and its dubious relationship with the Missoula-based LifeGuard Group.

For context on Town Pump, here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

Town Pump, Inc. is a Butte, Montana-based chain of convenience stores, truck stops, casinos and roadside hotels founded in Butte in 1953. From a single full‑service gas station, the Kenneally family has expanded the company to more than 200 sites and 3,800 employees statewide.

National business media have profiled Town Pump’s strategy of pairing travel‑plaza fuel sales with franchised hotels along Interstates I‑90, I‑15 and I‑94. The firm also maintains a high public profile through its Town Pump Charitable Foundation, which has raised more than US$52 million for the state’s food banks since 2001.

And for context on Missoula’s police chief, who had to listen to me reference the lack of scrutiny our SHERIFF Office got during Missoula’s little rape scandal, the part about his former police work controlling THAT narrative is very interesting to me.

As a patrol officer, Colyer was a motorcycle officer in the Traffic Unit and Field Training Officer before being promoted to Sergeant in 2001. As a Sergeant, he supervised Uniformed Patrol Teams, the Traffic Unit and the Street Crimes Unit. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 2008 and served in the Office of Professional Standards, where he was responsible for citizen complaint investigation, internal investigations, recruiting and new officer hiring.

In 2011, he graduated from the 244th Session of the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Later that year, he was promoted to Captain and assigned to the Detective Division. A significant accomplishment in that position was his role in guiding the Missoula Police Department’s work with the United States Department of Justice to reform the department’s response to sexual assault. 

Knowing this context AFTER my public comment yesterday just makes my comment even funnier.

Back at the beginning of July I entered a different conference room and told some hotel developers, our Mayor, and the other Mayor (MRA director, Ellen Buchanan) what I thought about their hotel plans vs. dead bodies that become dead in ways I’d like to know more about, especially as it relates to the shitty and/or non-existent law enforcement investigations.

Part of my shit-talking in THAT conference room included my assessment that MRA’s “land-banking” strategy was a total failure. Now, more than a month later, the Missoula Current has an article confirming this failure and the hilarious reason WHY the former library and empty Sleepy Inn lot haven’t been developed.

Earlier this year, Davis convened the Task Force on City Lands Redevelopment to explore the lack of progress on 45 acres owned by the city. The 11-member group included a range of professionals across sectors and it came to a number of conclusions, some being rather obvious.

Among them, the city’s redevelopment strategy sought to wring too many goals from a single project, making it nearly impossible to deliver at cost. In essence, the city’s aspirations were deterring the sale and redevelopment of the very lots the city is seeking to activate.

Convening a task force to be told your pie-in-the-sky wishlist is a major impediment to achieving your goals is quite something. Is this what Harvard teaches our local officials?

Last week, when I rolled up on two of our three County Commissioners on my bike, I jokingly said “WHAT’S THIS, A QUORUM?” Without missing a beat, the Commissioner who ALSO just attended Harvard said “Yeah, and we’re about to raise your taxes, Travis!”

Although it was meant as a good-natured response, Slotnick’s words belies the maddening reality that not only did we pay for this Commissioner to attend Harvard, he absolutely IS part of the quorum raising your taxes and then asking for MORE money for infrastructure. Galling isn’t strong-enough a word for this:

This November, voters in Missoula County will face a decision on a proposed $1.8 million infrastructure levy. The levy aims to address local maintenance needs, according to county officials.

Chief Administrative Officer Chris Lounsbury explained the purpose behind the levy. “We have this request that we ask the commissioners to put on the ballot for the public to consider an ongoing $1.8 million that would be used year over year towards maintenance and also towards matching those federal and state projects that we go after,” he said.

If you feel upset about all this and are looking to send a message in the form of helping a citizen journalist who speaks truth to power despite significant risk and continued fallout, I’ll remind readers I do still have that GO FUND ME page where I accept donations.

If you want a more entertaining experience, I’ll be having a garage sale this Saturday and this flyer, posted locally, will have more specific information (please excuse the dyslexia ChatGPT seems to have):

Thanks for reading!