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Damn! Did the MTGOP really “WHEREAS” all this embarrassing shit? Yes, they did, and before we get to the list of Fireweed Frauds I want to explain what seems to be happening to Montana Republicans, starting with this guy.

Llew Jones is widely considered to be the political architect of Montana’s “nasty nine” grouping of Republicans who aligned with and, more importantly, VOTED with Democrats last session. While this political power was critical to the “successful” effort of pushing through Governor Gianforte’s property tax debacle, it undermined Art Wittich, the titular head of the MTGOP, and significantly eroded his political credibility with the base.

Here’s how Art Wittich was positioning himself politically after the 2025 legislative session concluded:

Wittich promised new strategies for how the MTGOP will do political business, including creating a “red policy committee” to research and review new legislative proposals. Another change he floated: establishing a “conservative governance committee” to vet candidates and hand out party endorsements — a stamp of approval that could be leveraged during Republican primary elections.

And here is how that same article (Montana Free Press) frames the “internecine fight” that is sure to dominate Montana’s next legislative session:

Wittich is no stranger to the internecine fights that have defined Montana’s Republican Party for much of the last decade. By some accounts, his name is woven into the origin story of the modern GOP’s feud between conservative centrists and hardliners. That tug-of-war over which sorts of Republicans get elected to the state Legislature has led to some wins for Wittich and his allies — and some bruising losses. In 2016, a state district court jury found Wittich guilty of violating campaign finance laws by illegally coordinating with third-party political groups during a primary election. The now-MTGOP chair was fined $68,232.58.

Throughout his convention speeches, Wittich offered thinly veiled criticisms of the so-called Conservative Solutions Caucus — the amorphous faction of Republican lawmakers spearheaded by Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, that has for years backed hardliner-loathed policies including Medicaid expansion and education funding reforms.

In an attempt to regain control of the party it would appear that Art Wittich allowed AFP money to target conservatives in primaries across the state. To counter this influence, some of those candidates who were targeted chose to up their political game by hiring a “Montana” company called Fireweed. When the easy-to-find context of Fireweed’s Democrat ties broke on social media, the Republican rift became an abyss where loyalty rides and traitors die, figuratively speaking, of course.

Now, after yesterday’s scorched-earth move by the MTGOP to end the civil war, it will be interesting to see how these candidates respond:

In another Montana Free Press article about this scandal I caught the name of a behind-the-scenes promoter of this civil war and SURPRISE! It’s someone Zoom Chron readers should be familiar with–Burt Caldwell!

In a March 30 email sent to nearly 75 people and addressed to a Missoula-based group called the “League of Liberal Advocates,” a copy of which was obtained by MTFP, one donor explicitly laid out his personal rationale for donating to Republican candidates.

“Guess what I’m doing? I’m contributing to a slate of candidates the MT legislature needs. Guess what else? They’re Republican,” read the email from Burt Caldwell, a Missoula resident.

“In these races the final outcome will be a Republican,” the email continued. “The best chance for a reasonable Legislature is to elect moderate Republicans who work for their constituents, not ‘the party.’”

Isn’t this interesting? Lauren Caldwell’s daddy, Burt, is pushing a strategy of supporting moderate Republicans after Democrats utterly destroyed their brand in Montana, losing every significant political race the last few cycles. That’s why Burt Caldwell is emailing his pals and pushing a strategy that ALSO just so happens to help his daughter get paid.

The email listed a slate of specific Republican candidates running to represent House and Senate districts that span the state, from Plentywood to Hamilton to Belgrade.

Those candidates include Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad; Rep. George Nikolakakos, R-Great Falls; Rep. John Fitzpatrick, R-Anaconda; Rep. Linda Reksten, R-Polson; Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton; Rep. Ken Walsh, R-Twin Bridges; Sen. Shelley Vance, R-Belgrade; and Rep. Curtis Cochran, R-St. Regis. Other candidates referenced in the email are Susan Geise, Russ Nelson, Chisholm Christensen, Doug Martens and Michele Binkley, who did not serve in the Legislature last year.

I’m glad Burt Caldwell is putting his thumb on the political scales because it validates my contention that the UNIPARTY in Montana is all about LAND and what happens on land with regards to houses, recreation, jobs, and private-sector development in different forms, like the one currently being targeted with politically-hyped FEAR in order to serve larger agendas–the evil DATA CENTER!

The “nasty-nine” gave Llew Jones power and Governor Gianforte a Franksenstein property tax bill suddenly thrown into limbo as tax checks are literally in-coming. For those with the stomach to watch this rancid sausage-making the spoiling of this legislation is quite astounding:

The Montana Republican Party on Thursday asked a state District Court to void the entirety of a transformative new property tax law enacted by state legislators and the Gianforte administration last year.

In a brief filed in an ongoing case in Gallatin County District Court, the Montana Republican State Central Committee sided with the plaintiffs — three current and former Republican legislators — and argued that “there are no surviving constitutional provisions to save” in the new law.

The property tax spikes that hit after Montana’s pandemic-era real estate boom put many Montana homeowners in a financial bind. When legislators gaveled in for the following legislative session in 2025, one of their top tasks was implementing property tax reform.

I’ll have more on this Uniparty land/housing, high-stakes play for Big Sky Country soon. Until then, here are two other posts on Fireweed that exemplifies the value a citizen journalist NOT named Nick Shirley should have if the information landscape wasn’t as Mockingbird-psyop’d as it obviously is with those capable of seeing it.

“The Challenge Of Spotting Political Chameleons In Montana” (March 30th, 2026)

“More Fireweed Fallout For Montana Republicans” (April 2nd, 2026)

Thanks for reading!

When the owner of Snowbowl, Brad Morris, received criticism about the quality of his ski hill in 2012, he took the vindictive step of banning the skier from future ticket sales. This reaction should help the public determine how to navigate the current issue with Brad Morris and his Snowbowl parking lot problem.

The owners of Montana Snowbowl near Missoula really, really don’t like criticism. So after a skier complained, they refused to sell him a season ski pass, or even daily tickets at a reduced rate during the pre-season. Jim Sylvester says that he put a comment in a handy suggestion box at the ski area, noting that a concluding run that funnels skiers seemed too congested and rough. When nothing happened, Sylvester, who is a former president of the Missoula Ski Education Foundation, called the Lolo National Forest office to find out the name of Snowbowl’s insurance carrier so he could warn it about what he considered the “unsafe skiing conditions,” reports the Missoulian. Nobody got back to him, but the run was groomed, and Sylvester thought no more about the matter for some months, until he sought to buy a season ski pass. He was refused twice — Snowbowl owners called him “disruptive” — and was also told that he should apologize. A season pass holder at Snowbowl for 31 years, Sylvester refused to make nice: “Do I have to apologize for complaining?” Accusing Snowbowl owner Brad Morris of discrimination, Sylvester now wants the Forest Service to rule that the ski resort, which is almost all on public land, violated the terms of its special use permit. Uncomfortably caught in the middle, the Forest Service allows that it is in “fact-gathering mode right now.”

More recently the safety issues at Snowbowl have been an idiot in 2023 who got drunk and accidentally killed his friend in the parking lot with his car, and a toddler who fell from a chairlift the following year. Regarding the latter, the Morris family reminded the public that they are inspected by the Forrest Service and insured:

The following is part of the statement released by Montana Snowbowl management and the Morris family Thursday:

“In addition to conveying our commitment to investigating this incident we want to reassure Snowbowl customers that the Snowpark chair, like all of our lifts, is regularly inspected by the Forest Service and our insurance provider, in addition to the regular maintenance conducted by Snowbowl. The installation of chairlifts, including the Snowpark chair, involve intensive engineering and oversight as well as inspection and approval by our partners at the Forest Service and our insurance provider. Prior to any public use, there are several tests conducted on the lifts to insure safe and adequate operations.

Snowbowl is committed to continue to provide a safe and affordable experience for our community.

If the Morris’ were serious about providing a “safe” experience for the Missoula community they wouldn’t be ignoring the extent of the problem the parking lot by Interstate-90 is posing, but that seems to be the current plan for the 4 acres Brad Morris owns.

On Facebook the group that provides FREE volunteer cleanup efforts for Brad Morris discussed this issue recently in the usual manner of mostly uninformed people saying uninformed stuff about how the world is supposed to work. For these people it’s as simple as posting a sign about the law, then expecting law enforcement to enforce the law.

I mean, it’s just that simple, right?

First off, Marc is wrong, and that’s because this “private property” uses a special use permit issued by the Forrest Service, giving the Forrest Service some degree of authority over this parcel of land. Maybe going to the Forrest Service is the next step for the members of the public tired of mitigating the risk Brad Morris refuses to address himself.

In a conversation with The Pulp after the falling toddler problem, Sarah Duncan was sent out by the Morris’ to take the heat. Here’s one question/answer worth considering:

Back in 2004 the expansion efforts for Snowbowl featured an acknowledgment that the risky Forrest Service road and parking lot limitations on the mountain were some of the biggest barriers.

For the past few years Morris has been on an expansion jag to address the resort’s biggest albatross: a death-beckoning, bile-boiling Forest Service access road married to notoriously limited parking up top. “Bull trout slowed us down on the road,” Morris admits, smiling beneath his mustache as though to acknowledge the truly unknowable exigencies of something so seemingly benign as running an honest little ski slope.

The threatened fish, which might be known to run in the stream far beneath Snowbowl road, were placed on the endangered species list right about the time he applied to upgrade the road, leading to several years of environmental-impact assessment before the necessary permits were issued last summer. Work has begun now, and Morris hopes to achieve a much friendlier drive to the slopes in a season or two.

The other barrier to expansion referenced above–the Bull trout and its inconvenient “threatened” status–means a community stakeholder like Missoula’s Clark Fork Coalition should also be interested in finding a solution. While I know they do some work in this geographical area of the valley, so far they have been pretty mum on this politically thorny “car camping” issue.

To better understand this issue I went directly to the expansion proposal (PDF) put together by Brad Morris, Beat von Allmen, and Robert Brandenberger to see how natural habitat, recreational land use, and infrastructure meshed together in making the proposal to grow. Here’s some excerpts relevant to today’s post, starting with the fishies:

And here’s some perspective for context on the parking lot’s function to Snowbowl’s broader ski business operation:

While this context is helpful, it might not move the dial on the kind of the uninformed people who can’t even process the distinction between PUBLIC land and PRIVATE property. For those people I’m not sure what can be done.

Brad Morris is lucky to have volunteers willing to risk exposure to drugs, like Fentanyl, and paraphernalia, like needles, to do nasty cleanup work for free. That’s pretty cool.

West of Missoula, in Seattle, where one of the most alarmingly unqualified Mayors to ever exist now controls a $9 billion dollar budget, just jumping into water is a high-risk action to take.

For those who watched Seattle Is Dying seven years ago and said JUST YOU WAIT, MISSOULA, we have long been proven correct. If the same “experts” who oversaw this slow-motion disaster are allowed to keep their positions of influence, the same insanity this LA women recently described WILL ECHO in this town.

Thanks for reading! And stay tuned for updates on SOLUTIONS!!!

When I wrote this post about the movie, 3 Days of the Condor, based on the book pictured above, I missed something huge: James Grady was living in Missoula when this book was published in 1974.

How could I have missed this?

As a free-lance journalist living in Montana during this period it’s entirely possible Mr. James Grady interacted with Mr. John Talbot, the “former” CIA man turned newspaper guy long-time readers of the blog will be very familiar with, along with his son, Mr. bourbon-enthusiast, Pete.

The now-vacant building (and some day massive condo project) where Missoula’s newspaper once rolled out is located on Higgins. Now that I know Grady lived in Missoula, it makes much more sense that the CIA Agent who goes after Redford’s character in the movie, Turner, is named “Higgins”. Here’s some of the Dialogue (near the end):

Putting aside the synchronistic fact I lived on “Turner Ct.” when I first moved to Missoula, Higgins (the main street through downtown) is a name I have discovered echoing in particularly curious places, which I will demonstrate next with excerpts from Leslie Fiedler’s book, Being Busted

For Leslie Fiedler’s own, admitted historical context on being published by a publication that got CIA funding, along with his impression of “The Company” shifting focus during the time period he challenged the University of Montana President, here are some key passages from “Higgins Avenue: 1958”:

During WWII, from 1943-45, Leslie Fiedler, “served as a Japanese interpreter and military cryptologist in the U.S. Naval Reserve” according to Wikipedia. Fiedler also mentions the book The Catcher in the Rye in Being Busted. Curiously, I also came across a reference to Catcher in the Rye in Grady’s book while looking for something else.

There is a lot packed into this page of Grady’s Condor, starting with the character with a philosopher’s name (Heidegger and his notorious Nazi problem), and ending with Catcher in the Rye. To avoid getting distracted, I’ll move on to other examples of “Higgins”, starting with the hippie protestor, Summer.

In Season 4, Episode 5, titled “Under a Blanket of Red,” a group of protestors (technically, environmentalists, though they’re portrayed more as people who just thinking killing animals is mean) ruin John Dutton’s day. The leader of the pack, Piper Perabo’s Summer Higgins, is arrested after getting into a scuffle during the protest, quickly bailed out and seduced by John (as evidenced by the fact that she’s wearing his shirt, and nothing else, after spending a night at the ranch) and later, ends up in jail again after being manipulated by Beth, who doesn’t like that her Dad had sex. To make an example out of Summer, the judge sentences her to some serious prison time — a fate even the all powerful John Dutton couldn’t make go away entirely. 

Of course, this was before he was governor (and had the ability to hand out pardons or commute sentences). According to Perabo, Season 5 has more in store for the couple. “The love story is kicking into gear,” she said at a pre-show for The 28th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards pre-show following Season 4, adding “We’re turning up the heat.

Taylor Sheridan might be easy to take shots at, but I’ve been re-thinking his Yellowstone horsey-porn in light of his script-assist on the movie, Sicario, directed by Denis Villeneuve–a director I’ve recently binge-watched for an essay on his entire filmography I’m working on. And it’s because of this type of cultural analysis that I’m familiar with another character named Higgins, George Anthony Higgins to be specific, but his snuff-handle in the movie, 8MM, is “Machine”.

Speaking of machines and men in leather gimp-masks, I feel called by to point out that the leader of America’s WAR machine just made some recent and unnecessary headlines by approximating a fake prayer from Pulp Fiction. Amazing.

“The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of camaraderie and duty shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen.”

Returning to Higgins, one of the many local books I have collected over the years places an important figure in the development of University culture, H.G. Merriam, directly on Higgins, arriving in Missoula by train, to ensure a pipeline to Rhodes Scholar elitism could be established and maintained:

H.G. stepped off a train at the depot at the north end of Higgins Avenue in 1919, ready to take on the chairmanship of the English department. He brought with him his wife, Doris, and two degrees from Oxford, where in 1904 he had been in the first class of American Rhodes Scholars.

He was surprised to find UM had sent no Rhodes Scholars to Oxford from 1905 to 1919, and became the secretary of the Montanan Rhodes Scholar Selection Committee. UM to this day has a strong presence among Rhodes Scholars, an effort H.G. Shepherded long past his retirement in 1954.

While trying to find the above quote I came across some history about the University of Montana and another glaring data point I had been previously totally oblivious to: the University of Montana, where I was a student on September 11th, 2001, first opened its academic doors on September 11th, 1895.

The students were the second human asset of the new University. At the opening exercises they numbered about 50, only five of them prepared for college work, but by the close of the academic year they numbered 135. All students must be thirteen years of age, “well grounded in the elements of an English education,” whatever that meant, and successful in an entrance test, which determined the degree of preparation. Here, then, they were, all 135 of them, young prankish, exuberant, serious, proud of being in a university. They were pioneers as their grandparents or parents had been. They too were making history.

These, then, were the assets of the University of Montana, material and human, as it opened its doors on that good day, September 11, 1895.

To bring this back around to the movie, 3 Days of the Condor, I pointed out in my original post from 2023 that this movie was the first, if not the only, major motion picture to use the Twin Towers as a location for filming.

Pretty damn interesting, considering what happened. For a little more context, here’s Sydney Pollack explaining his rationale for why he thought it made sense for the Twin Towers to be the location for CIA office space:

Yes, “perfect”, like well-crafted lines in a movie scene.

Boy does this stuff hit different in April, 2026.

Yeah, don’t get lost in those New York Streets, especially if you’re performing in a fly-fishing musical.

END SCENE!

The final Higgins for this post comes from StoryHouse, the film production company recently profiled by the New York Times. Before Sean Patrick Higgins starts scooping up public money, I think Missoula needs to get better acquainted with him and his dreams for our valley:

The owners of a production company, Story House, said they planned to open a film and television studio with multiple soundstages that would create more than 400 jobs in Missoula within six years and build an ecosystem robust enough that filmmaking talent there wouldn’t have to leave the state to find work.

The founders, James Brown III and Sean Patrick Higgins, had initially planned a similar venture in Wyoming, but legislative efforts to pass a film tax incentive in that state failed. So they moved their studio project northwest to Missoula to take advantage of Montana’s tax credits for film and television production.

State Representative Mark Thane, a Democrat who had championed the tax credits in what is called the MEDIA Act, said he welcomed Story House’s presence.

While Democrats like Mark Thane eagerly throw tax credits at this Yale-trained actor, I’d like to conclude this post with a 1981 quote from William Casey, the former Director of the CIA:

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

Are we there yet, Billy?

Thanks for reading!

I took this picture yesterday on a piece of private property that will someday be condos, but right now it just has garbage everywhere because the owner, Cole Bergquist, doesn’t care enough to secure fencing or lock the gates. If you’re a homeless person this is a great spot to live, and if you’re inclined to do drugs and commit crimes, what better spot than a centralized location downtown with convenient access to the bike trial?

The $1.2 million dollars spent on implementing the “urban camping” ordinance in Missoula only addresses camping on PUBLIC land, not private. For private land it’s common to see “no trespassing” signs to message the state law that becomes more enforceable when clearly visible signage is used. That’s because that statute uses the word “knowingly”. Here’s the language of the trespassing statute (45-6-203):

Prohibits knowingly entering/remaining on private property or in structures without authorization. A conviction can result in a 24-month revocation of hunting, fishing, or trapping privileges.

Before I found that tattered Bible in a bush, I was rummaging through a nasty encampment under a walking bridge that spans one of Missoula’s irrigation ditches, also private. The Orchard Homes Ditch Company, established in 1906, is the entity that will have to clean up this mess before the irrigation water starts flowing.

Pictures of what I like to call “reality” can be annoying, especially when you just paid $1.2 million dollars for an urban camping policy that only provides a bandaid on systemic failure. Well, since using a word like “failure” has a negative connotation to it, let’s read a little about the supposed “success” of the urban camping ordinance:

Top Missoula officials described the city’s urban camping law as a “success” for reducing impacts in public spaces, although some criticized the ordinance for not providing better outcomes for homeless people.

In 2025, the Missoula Police Department cited 172 people for either sleeping on public streets or on public property under violations of the urban camping law, Police Chief Mike Colyer told the city council on Wednesday.

The law dictates when, where and how people can sleep on city property, largely restricting camps near homes, parks, shelters, schools, waterways and city trails.

“Waterways”, you say? I wonder if a privately-owned irrigation ditch can be defined as a “waterway”. Maybe I should give the Orchard Home Ditch Company a call, though my past experience is that they are notoriously non-responsive to this particular problem.

The larger problem of drug and alcohol abuse got almost totally excluded from Wednesday’s conversation about urban camping until Kevin Davis pointed out the obvious factor driving “urban camping”, which is DRUG AND ALCOHOL ABUSE. For readers unfamiliar with Davis’ work along the Reserve Street corridor, this KGVO article from 2024 highlights his experience of helping REMOVE one of Missoula’s largest encampments and KEEPING IT REMOVED.

About 20 individuals joined Kevin Davis and his Reserve Street Public Working Group on Tuesday as they celebrated Earth Day by taking a tour of the former Reserve Street Homeless Camp, both picking up leftover trash and enjoying the return of wildlife to the habitat.

I spoke to Davis on Wednesday who said it was gratifying to see the immense changes in the Reserve Street Bridge habitat since the long-time homeless camp was finally removed.

“As part of our advocacy for Missoula’s busiest corridor, the Reserve Street corridor, we do return to the Reserve Street Bridge area at least once a year, over the last six years to do a cleanup of that area,” began Davis. “Yesterday was a very successful event, and in the 30 years I’ve lived in Missoula, it’s the healthiest I’ve seen the area.”

I was very involved with the renewed energy Kevin Davis brought to this sprawling encampment terrain where lots of bad things happened–including the execution-style murder by the apparent serial killer, Kevin Lino, who I tried helping local authorities catch, which they failed to do–and the reason I was so involved is because outgoing director of United Way of Missoula, Susan Hay Patrick, did her best at the time to discourage Kevin Davis from becoming involved in cleanup efforts as a private citizen.

For an idea of how bad it was, this image represents how many campers were expressing their feelings at the time, and that was through the rampant arson of other people’s camps.

Ok, so why did I include “demons” in the title of this post?

We’re almost there, but first recall how I recently reexamined the LifeGuard Group, run by Missoula County Sheriff Chaplain, Lowell Hochhalter and family, and recall how I connected anti-trafficking efforts by this “Christian” family to things like Epstein and Charlie Kirk.

With that in mind–and when you understand the kind of things I’ve had to learn quite painfully, like why Susan Hay Patrick may have been inclined to help keep the lid on the LifeGuard Group for her pal and Missoula’s former Sheriff, T.J. McDermott–then it’s important to ask the question Candace Owens asked this week, and that’s WHO THE HELL IS VICTOR MARX?

I recommend watching the Owens episode for the primer on this guy, who is apparently running for Governor of Colorado. Just the public information available on this guy is bizarre enough, including elements of his bio straight from his campaign website:

When my mother discovered she was pregnant with me, my biological father threatened to kill her. As a child, I endured unimaginable physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. By the time I was 17, I had lived in 17 homes and attended 14 schools. But God had other plans for my life.
​
Joining the United States Marine Corps became one of the most profound decisions I ever made. The Marines taught me discipline, brotherhood, and, for the first time, gave me a true sense of purpose. Guided by faith, I turned trauma into mission and committed myself to rescuing and restoring others from the same darkness I once walked through.
​
Just last year, I built a team and led them directly into ISIS territory so we could save a group of girls who had been kidnapped. Today, as the founder of All Things Possible Ministries, I’ve led more than 150 high-stakes missions across some of the world’s most dangerous regions—delivering trauma relief, medical aid, and hope to victims of terrorism, trafficking, and violence. Our teams have served more than 45,000 women and children, many of whom were rescued from captivity and given a second chance at life.

The Christian grift I have seen up close could literally be a part of the human trafficking networks they absurdly claim they are fighting, and they could be doing this either knowingly or unknowingly.

If you’re wondering how that could possible, one of the most effective strategies for shutting down inquiry amongst curious members of the flock is for a Christian grifter to do what Victor Marx allegedly did when challenged on his plans to traffick guns for God, and that’s immediately accuse your accuser of being possessed by demons. Once you’ve been declared to be suffering from demon possession, no further talking is needed.

My hope is some day the flock will upgrade their discernment, identify the grifters, and do what needs to be done to take out the trash so the adults can get down to the serious business of ACTUALLY protecting our kids from ACTUAL demons, which I believe really do exist.

Thanks for reading!

There were moments in 2023 when I didn’t want to be alive anymore. I found myself in a toxic relationship after leaving my wife of 20 years and the price of leaving THAT relationship is a price I’m still paying.

Yesterday, the woman who turned our toxic relationship into 3 years of lawfare that ended my podcast, ended my ability to attend City Council in person, and stopped me from writing about United Way of Missoula County for 6 months spoke about love and connecting with homeless people at the Urban Camping committee update. Let me delve into why I find this so troubling.

Before the person I call my petitioner was able to get a substitute judge who knew her from law school to impose a civil restraining order on me (after he explained why her copyright claims weren’t inappropriate for a protection order hearing), she had been harassing me via texts in an attempt to get me and my mother to meet with her. My mother knew my petitioner from church and was more familiar with her relationship tendencies than I had been when I met her through Rembrandt Miller, my collaborator on Engen’s Missoula.

Here are some texts I’ve curated from this hell period in my life. I’ll note the “Susan” my petitioner is referring to is Susan Hay Patrick, the outgoing director of United Way, who I believe helped inspire my petitioner to take legal action against me, and “Quentin” is the notorious Quentin Rhoades, my lawyer until my petitioner started working for him and conflicted him out of helping me defend myself.

At the time of these texts I was living in my art studio in a building owned by someone who attended my family’s church. That’s where I recorded this footage on July 1st, 2023, when my petitioner refused to acknowledge NO MEANS NO and showed up outside my studio despite me clearly telling her to leave me alone.

I wrote about this time period in my life recently when I saw similar protection order shenanigans playing out in the case of Brandon Wayne Bryant. In that post I highlighted the email I got making the demands that I my own family suggested I should ignore. Yeah, that worked out great.

If my petitioner and I weren’t still politically active in the town we both live in, where she’s writing op-eds for political candidates, making comments about loving homeless people, and making podcasts about the amazing killing of an abusive father because the daughter called the cops on him, then this post wouldn’t be necessary.

The narrative-control around homelessness that puts me in a whistleblower role stems from what happened to Sean Stevenson and Johnny Lee Perry at the hands of local law enforcement, and that’s because when I attend Coroner’s Inquests it’s not to celebrate law enforcement’s power to kill an abusive man, but to question that power. Maybe if I had done so as a Daniel Carlino-style politician I wouldn’t have inspired such a vicious effort to destroy me.

Daniel speaks up for the vulnerable, champions the underdog, and does what’s right because it’s right. For years I’ve watched him on City Council take courageous stands, even when unpopular, demonstrating a fearless integrity rarely seen.

Through my work alongside our unhoused neighbors, I’ve seen the impact of having a voice on City Council who cares not only for the most well-off among us, but also for those in crisis. That’s the mark of true leadership. From the first time Daniel’s campaign literature graced my doorstep, I knew he was my representative.

Daniel asks the hard questions, empowers minority voices, and does the hard work. He is “the man in the arena,” as Theodore Roosevelt says, “(spending) himself in a worthy cause.” Hope thrives in adversity, and Daniel is Missoula’s man of hope for this hour. If you want a candidate who loves deeply and dares greatly, vote Daniel Carlino for Ward 3.

This op-ed was published in the Missoula Current, the unofficial mouthpiece for Missoula Democrats, since Martin Kidston used to be the literal spokesperson for Montana Democrats years ago, which I pointed out (around the same time I was being harassed by my vindictive petitioner) with this July 2023 article, titled “The Missoula Current’s “Reporting” On Monday Night’s Urban Camping Debate“.

For more context on what happens when you ask ACTUAL hard questions about the power to end life by local authorities, this May 2023 article, titled “Is This What Missoula Current Advertisers Want To Be Paying For“, shows how Martin Kidston helped our local narrative-controllers inaccurately depict me in 2023 as something I’m not.

After my divorce and desperate traveling around America on the divorce money to avoid the stated intent of my petitioner to make good on her threats, I racked up several criminal charges for trying to continue the local activism I had been doing long before becoming involved with this person. The first charge was later dropped by the city, but it served the purpose of enabling “stacking” in order to achieve the scare-tactic of felony charges.

The second charge, which I was found guilty of, was pursued by the city despite zero direct interaction with my petitioner. The incident involved my presence in the parking lot of the hotel where Missoula’s leaders were having their “state of the community” wank-off narrative-control event. My recent clean up of meth-wankers using a homeless sex swing on the side of the river meant that I had lots of recent evidence of what happens when you ignore drug addiction’s impact on “urban camping”. My arrest occurred because I didn’t leave fast enough after someone from United Way told me that my petitioner would be in attendance.

*If you click the link above you may notice all my Vimeo videos are gone. That’s because this lawfare has been very effective at making and keeping me broke, so I couldn’t keep paying for the Vimeo data storage. I still have LOTS of “urban camping” footage, though, that one day will be see the light of day again.

The third violation became a collaborative effort between the city and county, since number three could have been a felony charge, but had to be downgraded once the city stopped pretending they were going to prosecute the first one. Regardless, the bathroom judge I had previously written about regarding the Mineral County shit-show wanted to keep the case so that he could impose the restriction on my citizen journalism, which happened seamlessly because the bathroom judge is a good little kangaroo.

Did I forget to mention my petitioner’s adopted brother, Dylan Laslovich, used to be Jon Tester’s chief of staff? Yeah, sure wish I knew about Judge Vannatta’s political donations, maybe my Public Defender could have done something to get the judicial venue changed.

This is the context that makes it a risk for me to walk out the door every day in this town. My petitioner demanded a 100 year extension (I’m not kidding) of the “temporary” order of protection once the first year was up and, after being told no by Judge Streano, my petitioner used her law school knowledge to appeal, claiming bias and successfully using a higher level of kangaroos to legally browbeat Judge Streano into extending the protection order for two years instead.

If I’m not hyper-aware of my surroundings and don’t immediately leave an area where my petitioner is, like I had to do during an April First Friday event at an art gallery where I sell bulk Legos, then I could be charged with a felony and end up in prison. That’s my reality.

I’ve spent time in jail because of this and lived for 4 months in my box truck, meaning homeless. Could I have accessed homeless services? Even if I had wanted to, which I didn’t, no, because my petitioner is one of those “loving” Christians working within the Homeless Industrial Complex I’ve risked my own life exposing.

To conclude this post that may or may not be protected by the First Amendment, I’m going to publish the police report I spent a whopping $7 dollars to get a copy of. When I was at my lowest, and expressing legitimate anger and frustration at what was happening to me, this is how a Pastor (who sits on a board with my petitioner’s family pal, Mike Nugent) chose to respond.

While this post is going to suck for a lot of people, it had to be published because I’m not unique in how political power uses every human weakness possible when real power is challenged. Lawfare is one of the most awful forms of political retaliation, especially for men geared toward taking action to address issues, which I did effectively for ten years in the non-profit sector I now am called to expose.

Thanks for reading!