Montana Articles

Capitol Hill Shills

9/30/2021

Today I’m going to talk congressional politics. I’m also going to do a long-view approach to the ‘24 races, and a little beyond.

If I get some more ideas, I might add some stuff later in the day.

Big Votes

Today we have some big votes on Capitol Hill.

I can live with the Tracy Stone-Manning confirmation, if she gets in...which she has a real good chance of.

I can’t imagine living in this country if the massive $3.5 trillion ‘infrastructure’ package passes. I think that’ll ruin this country for good, the final nail in the coffin.

The bill is over 2,000-pages long, and hardly anyone knows what’s in it. It seems that lots of things are being slipped-in at the last minute.

All of this is being done in secret, behind closed doors...as it’s been done for years.

The real change came in 2017.

That year saw the lowest number of amendments offered up on congressional bills in a decade, with just 159 in the Senate. In the House, 55% of bills weren’t even up for debate or amendments.

Compare that to 2007, when we had 1,037 amendments offered up on bills. This is how the legislative process worked for our nation’s whole history - a bill would be put up, it’d be debated, people would add to it, and when everyone was happy, it’d typically pass.

And it’s only gotten worse since then. In 2008, the Senate allowed votes on Amendments for 67% of the bills put forth. By 2018, that’d fallen to 20%.

There are only four people to blame for this - Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Paul Ryan. Those four and the corporations that controlled them.Those four swine have been in charge of congress since ‘17, and they’ve done a lot to destroy this country.

Now we largely have corporations and their paid lobbyists write the bills behind closed doors, the bill is not shown to legislators until a day before voting (if even that), there is no debate allowed on the bill, no amendments are allowed, and legislators are threatened to vote on a straight party-line basis lest they be ostracized and cut-off from campaign funds from the large corporate PACs.

In other words, go along...or commit political suicide. Most go along, and we’ve seen the results - a country destroyed.

Will the final death nail be put into the coffin today? Chances are extremely good. The corporate media wants you to think just two people can save you - Manchin or Sinema, two individuals that don’t care about you.

I think we’re in real trouble. Even if this bill today fails, the process is inexorably broken and the corporations show no signs of letting the paid-off congresspeople in their pocket ever fix it again.

On the Horizon for ‘24

Looking forward at the upcoming political cycles, I think the general consensus in the two parties is that it’ll play out like this:

Gianforte will run for governor again in ‘24, and will likely win.

Knudsen will run for AG again in ‘24, and will likely win. This sets Knudsen up to become governor in ‘28, following the typical path of AG to Gov that five men have taken before, though just three of them directly:

Steve Bullock: AG from 2008-12 (governor in ‘12)
Marc Racicot: 1988-92 (governor in ‘92)
Forrest Anderson: 1957-68 (governor in ‘68)
John Bonner: 1941-42 (resigned to get into WWII, governor in ‘48)
Sam Ford: 1917-21 (MT supreme court ‘29-33, governor in ‘40)

Most that have served as AG usually run for governor at some point. It’s just that most of them don’t win. At this point, Knudsen has a good chance to become #6...but he also has over 6 more years to fuck that up.

Rosendale will run for U.S. House again in ‘22 and I think he’s the most likely candidate to challenge Tester in ‘24. At this point, I’m 75% sure that Tester will not be running that year. It’s been about three years since he got reelected, but in that time he’s done relatively little and has kept himself largely out of the media. That’s not something someone gearing-up for another run does.

Arntzen is termed-out of OPI in ‘24 and I really have no idea where she might go after that. I think a lieutenant governor position would be a large step down for her at that point. All I can think of besides that is a run for one of the U.S. House seats (Rosendale will likely be vacating his seat that year, while who knows who might have won the new seat that hasn’t even been drawn yet). Besides that, retirement or some nonprofit or think tank.

And that brings us to the end of our current statewide officeholders that are likely going to make a jump to one office or another in the coming years. What about Downing and Jacobsen? I suspect they’ll run for their current offices again in ‘24. I have no idea what the Dems will do. They don’t really have a bench, and it seems that whatever rich recently-transplanted woman wants to be the flavor-of-the-week this week, well...she files to run and that’s that - support them or you’re a chauvinist bigot.

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What’s In It?

9/28/2021

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What’s in the vaccine?

What are the ingredients?

What’s in the booster shot? What are those ingredients?

This is what the CDC says:

“Vaccine ingredients vary by manufacturer. None of the vaccines contain eggs, gelatin, latex, or preservatives. All COVID-19 vaccines are free from metals such as iron, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth alloys. They are also free from manufactured products such as microelectronics, electrodes, carbon nanotubes, or nanowire semiconductors.”

Wow.

They’ll tell us what’s not in it...but they won’t say what is. I especially like the part that “ingredients vary.”

I bet every food producer in the country would like to put that on their nutrition label, instead of the truth.

Hm...if we put something into our mouths, it’s required by law that we know every single ingredient.

But if we put something into our veins, it doesn’t matter.

Sadly, tens of millions of Americans are perfectly fine with this. They don’t want to know the truth.

But the truth is out there.

Sometimes it comes right from the mouths of those working for Big Pharma.

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Missoula: Where the Citizens Suffer and the Homeless Thrive

9/27/2021

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It’s called Dakota House.

It’s where we send wasters of life and limb, complete losers of society that have decided their lives aren’t worth shit.

They gave up on themselves years ago. But Missoula won’t. Missoula thinks we can rehabilitate these folks, get them back into a productive role in society.

Hence, the Dakota House...a crisis residential center that caters to individuals with severe substance abuse disorders.

Drug addicts.

One of these addicts is named Doug Skoczek. On Saturday, just before 10 PM, he severely assaulted a female staffer at the Dakota House.

It all started when Doug showed up at the residence demanding that someone call him an ambulance to take him to the hospital.

(Quick aside: It’s interesting that homeless people get free rides to the hospital in the ambulance, but all the rest of us would have to pay over $1,000 for the privilege.)

The female staffers had the audacity to say, “That’s not how it works.”

Woops, huge mistake. That’s not what Doug wanted to hear.

So Doug proceeded to run at that woman, slam her into the wall, punched her around 15 times in the face, pulled three tufts of hair from her head, kicked her four times in the side while she was down, and then left.

Here’s what this piece of shit Doug looks like:

Folks, this is exactly how Missoulians want our community to be.

We welcome people like Doug into our community, we coddle them, we enable their addictions, and when they have an ‘incident’ like the one above, we excuse it.

It’s not really the individual that’s doing these things; it’s the addiction.

And Missoulians eat it up, coming back to ask for seconds.

That’s why we went from one homeless tent city last year to three this year, and likely six next year.

Someone’s making money. You know someone’s making money, or this wouldn’t be done.

You’re just going to see more and more stories like this as the months go on, as Missoula becomes more and more like San Francisco and Seattle.

There’s nothing you can do to stop this.

Look at those business owners over by the new homeless camp. They’ve been saying for months that they don’t want it, that it’ll create all kinds of problems, and likely lose their businesses money because people won’t want to go down there.

Our city and county ‘leaders’ do not care.

Kinda funny, considering how desperate our ‘leaders’ are for more of your money. But instead of helping out small businesses, they just try to hurt them. And then when the city/county does spend money...it’s not to help hardworking, responsible Americans that are doing everything right...it’s to help out homeless people that don’t give a fuck about themselves, let alone whatever community they might call ‘home’ this month.

But this is how Missoula wants it.

And that’s exactly why we’ll see a lot more stories about people like Doug, and the innocent women they beat the shit out of.

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A hamster has been trading cryptocurrencies in a cage rigged to automatically buy and sell tokens since June - and it's currently outperforming the S&P 500

9/27/2021

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Written by Matthew Fox and appearing on Insider

A hamster in Germany is redefining "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" author Burton Malkiel's belief that a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a stock ticker list in the newspaper could do just as good as a human investment professional.

The livestreamed hamster, named Mr. Goxx, has been independently trading a portfolio of various cryptocurrencies since June 12, and so far its performance has been impressive. As of Friday, the portfolio was up nearly 24%, according to the @mrgoxx twitter feed that documents daily performance, along with every trade made by the hamster. Mr. Goxx's performance outpaces bitcoin and the S&P 500 over the same time period.

Mr. Goxx's caretaker built the "Goxx Box," a crypto-rigged office attached to its larger home that gives the hamster the ability to perform various exercises that then execute specific cryptocurrency trades. The hamster can enter its office whenever it wants to make trades.

First, Goxx runs on the "intention wheel" to pick which one of about 30 cryptocurrencies to trade. Once the crypto is chosen, the hamster runs through one of two "decision tunnels" that trigger either a buy or sell trade of the chosen cryptocurrency.

The top cyptocurrencies currently held by the hamster include Tron, Ripple's XRP, cardano's ada, and ether.

Goxx's portfolio was funded with the euro equivalent of $390, according to a report from Protos. Mr. Goxx's unidentified caretaker and business partner told Protos that the trades the hamster makes are automatically set to 20 euro increments.

"There are plans to give Mr. Goxx more control and let him intentionally pick his buy amount if the interest in his channel keeps growing," the business partner told Protos.

Mr. Goxx has so far generated profits of 77 euros as of Friday afternoon. Its portfolio hit a high of nearly $580 in mid-September, when its performance was up nearly 50% in less than three months, according to performance data compiled by Protos. But since then, the recent crypto sell-off put a dent into the hamster's profits.

But a profit is a profit, and Mr. Goxx likely understands that. "Mr. Goxx is happy to see that some of his investments finally pay off," the business partner told Protos.

Note:

I love this story. I think it’s a good illustration of how dysfunctional our economy is. It reminds me of the old Joe Kennedy story.

How did he do it? There is a famous anecdote about Joe and while he was trading stocks during the Roaring 20s. Markets were SPIKING. Money was flowing. But, days before the crash, a certain moment lead Joe to sell everything at the highs and hold his cash. In 1996, the writer John Rothchild wrote a piece called “When The Shoeshine Boy Talks” and he says:

“Joe Kennedy exited the stock market in timely fashion after a shoeshine boy gave him some stock tips. He figured that when the shoeshine boys have tips, the market is too popular for its own good.”
The story continues:

“A theory also advanced by Bernard Baruch, another vested interest who described the scene before the big Crash: “Taxi drivers told you what to buy. The shoeshine boy could give you a summary of the day’s financial news as he worked with rag and polish. An old beggar who regularly patrolled the street in front of my office now gave me tips and, I suppose, spent the money I and others gave him in the market. My cook had a brokerage account and followed the ticker closely. Her paper profits were quickly blown away in the gale of 1929.” – Fortune Magazine, When Shoeshine Boys Talk Stocks

I sold all my stocks months ago. I have absolutely no confidence in the markets. Many can’t sell. So many are locked-in. Others don’t know what to do with their money if it’s not in the markets.

I think many will wish they had a safe or a mattress or even a sock drawer to sock it away in. The longer the Fed holds off on the correction/panic/depression...the worse it’ll be.

But who am I to talk? I’ve got thousands in crypto right now, in coins you’ve never heard of. Tezos, Theta, Tron, Cardano, Ox, XRP, EOS, OMG.

I’ve got 1,000 Zilliqa coins. That might sound impressive, until you realize each of them is worth 8 cents.

What the hell is Zillqa, you might ask?

Zilliqa is the world's first high-throughput public blockchain platform - designed to scale to thousands of transactions per second. Zilliqa brings the theory of sharding to practice with its novel protocol that increases transaction rates as its network expands. The platform is tailored towards enabling secure data-driven decentralised apps, designed to meet the scaling requirements of machine learning and financial algorithms.

Wow, that’s some good bullshit. Whoever wrote that must have a Ph.D. in bullshitting.

But that’s a lot of what crypto investing is. Personally, I think it’s a lot more honest than Wall Street is. At least with crypto, you know you’ll probably get fucked. Wall Street pretends you won’t, but at this point, I don’t think there’s much difference between the two.

Joe Kennedy. The shoeshine boy. What the hell has changed?

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"Damn You To Hell, You Will Not Destroy America" - Here Is The 'Spartacus COVID Letter' That's Gone Viral

9/27/2021

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This is an anonymously posted document by someone who calls themselves Spartacus. Because it’s anonymous, I can’t contact them to ask for permission to publish. So I hesitated for a while, but it’s simply the best document I’ve seen on Covid, vaccines, etc. Whoever Spartacus is, they have a very elaborate knowledge in “the field”. If you want to know a lot more about the no. 1 issue in the world today, read it. And don’t worry if you don’t understand every single word, neither do I. But I learned a lot.

The original PDF doc is here: Covid19 – The Spartacus Letter

Note: The Spartacus Letter is very long, very detailed...and I'm not going to post it all here. Click on the link if you want to read more, which I encourage you to do. It's a 14-page document, yet has 17 pages of references.

That said, I do think the conclusion says a lot, and that's posted below. Thanks.

Update: The original link has been taken down. Here's another source.

Conclusions:

The current pandemic was produced and perpetuated by the establishment, through the use of a virus engineered in a PLA-connected Chinese biowarfare laboratory, with the aid of American taxpayer dollars and French expertise.

This research was conducted under the absolutely ridiculous euphemism of “gain-of-function” research, which is supposedly carried out in order to determine which viruses have the highest potential for zoonotic spillover and preemptively vaccinate or guard against them.

Gain-of-function/gain-of-threat research, a.k.a. “Dual-Use Research of Concern”, or DURC, is bioweapon research by another, friendlier-sounding name, simply to avoid the taboo of calling it what it actually is. It has always been bioweapon research. The people who are conducting this research fully understand that they are taking wild pathogens that are not infectious in humans and making them more infectious, often taking grants from military think tanks encouraging them to do so.

These virologists conducting this type of research are enemies of their fellow man, like pyromaniac firefighters. GOF research has never protected anyone from any pandemic. In fact, it has now started one, meaning its utility for preventing pandemics is actually negative. It should have been banned globally, and the lunatics performing it should have been put in straitjackets long ago.

Either through a leak or an intentional release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a deadly SARS strain is now endemic across the globe, after the WHO and CDC and public officials first downplayed the risks, and then intentionally incited a panic and lockdowns that jeopardized people’s health and their livelihoods.

This was then used by the utterly depraved and psychopathic aristocratic class who rule over us as an excuse to coerce people into accepting an injected poison which may be a depopulation agent, a mind control/pacification agent in the form of injectable “smart dust”, or both in one. They believe they can get away with this by weaponizing the social stigma of vaccine refusal. They are incorrect.

Their motives are clear and obvious to anyone who has been paying attention. These megalomaniacs have raided the pension funds of the free world. Wall Street is insolvent and has had an ongoing liquidity crisis since the end of 2019. The aim now is to exert total, full-spectrum physical, mental, and financial control over humanity before we realize just how badly we’ve been extorted by these maniacs.

The pandemic and its response served multiple purposes for the Elite:

Concealing a depression brought on by the usurious plunder of our economies conducted by rentier-capitalists and absentee owners who produce absolutely nothing of any value to society whatsoever. Instead of us having a very predictable Occupy Wall Street Part II, the Elites and their stooges got to stand up on television and paint themselves as wise and all-powerful saviors instead of the marauding cabal of despicable land pirates that they are.
Destroying small businesses and eroding the middle class.
Transferring trillions of dollars of wealth from the American public and into the pockets of billionaires and special interests.
Engaging in insider trading, buying stock in biotech companies and shorting brick-and-mortar businesses and travel companies, with the aim of collapsing face-to-face commerce and tourism and replacing it with e-commerce and servitization.
Creating a casus belli for war with China, encouraging us to attack them, wasting American lives and treasure and driving us to the brink of nuclear armageddon.
Establishing technological and biosecurity frameworks for population control and technocratic- socialist “smart cities” where everyone’s movements are despotically tracked, all in anticipation of widespread automation, joblessness, and food shortages, by using the false guise of a vaccine to compel cooperation.

Any one of these things would constitute a vicious rape of Western society. Taken together, they beggar belief; they are a complete inversion of our most treasured values.

What is the purpose of all of this? One can only speculate as to the perpetrators’ motives, however, we have some theories.

The Elites are trying to pull up the ladder, erase upward mobility for large segments of the population, cull political opponents and other “undesirables”, and put the remainder of humanity on a tight leash, rationing our access to certain goods and services that they have deemed “high-impact”, such as automobile use, tourism, meat consumption, and so on. Naturally, they will continue to have theirown luxuries, as part of a strict caste system akin to feudalism.

Why are they doing this? Simple. The Elites are Neo-Malthusians and believe that we are overpopulated and that resource depletion will collapse civilization in a matter of a few short decades. They are not necessarily incorrect in this belief. We are overpopulated, and we are consuming too many resources. However, orchestrating such a gruesome and murderous power grab in response to a looming crisis demonstrates that they have nothing but the utmost contempt for their fellow man.

To those who are participating in this disgusting farce without any understanding of what they are doing, we have one word for you. Stop. You are causing irreparable harm to your country and to your fellow citizens.

To those who may be reading this warning and have full knowledge and understanding of what they are doing and how it will unjustly harm millions of innocent people, we have a few more words.

Damn you to hell. You will not destroy America and the Free World, and you will not have your New World Order. We will make certain of that.

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The Desperation

9/27/2021

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Montana Democrats are desperate.

Grasping at straws...hoping against hope...pretending things will get better.

It’s sad. It’s so fucking sad.

I remember talking to a high-ranking Democrat over five years ago now. “What happened to my Democratic Party,” he said.

I didn’t have an answer for him.

At the time, I’d been lambasting the MT Dems something fierce, chastising them for how they run their races, how they fund candidates, and how the Party brass is the only group that seems to benefit.

I was surprised that an important person felt the same way I did.

But that was years ago. He's since donated to Engen this election cycle. I guess the problems he once saw are now corrected. Or maybe it’s just that he wants to get back in the game.

Pretty bad when one of the most popular Democratic politicians this state has seen in three decades has to kiss the ass of some of the least popular.

I used to be a Democrat.

I voted for Dems many, many years. Hell, I ran as one in ‘14 and ‘16. I was even endorsed by Planned Parenthood one year, if you can believe that.

But like many Americans...we didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democrats left us.

I simply cannot recognize that party anymore. It’s not the Democratic Party my parents grew up with, or that my grandparents voted for. No, this is something else entirely.

I remember thinking about my forebears and feeling shame.

I was raised with the notion that the Democrats were the party of the people, and that they were there to help me.

That might have been true at one point in time, but it’s certainly not true today.

It pained me to say that, for many years. But then I came to the realization that the Dems were not the party of the people. That came crashing home with the rigged 2016 primary election that saw unpopular Hillary take out the oh-so-popular Bernie Sanders.

We all remember. We all know how the MT Dems sold out to the Hillary Victory Fund for $86,000. We all remember how the state voted for Bernie in the primary, but the bought-off super delegates all voted for Hillary...as they’d been paid to.

Steve Bullock really thought he’d win after selling out like that. He was shocked that he lost. God works in mysterious ways.

If I was a Democrat in Montana, I’d feel lost.

Where do I go to get my news? Who will feed me my talking points? Where do I go to feel I’m not so alone?

Used to be the Montana Post. But that site died. There’s no MT Cowgirl anymore. And Facebook and Twitter can only give you so much.

For a political party that holds itself in such high regard...my, they’ve fallen quite far.

The brass could do something about this.

Why isn’t MT Dem HQ in Helena funding some kind of new political blog or website?

Well, I think the answer is obvious - doing so would take away from the money they pay themselves. Anything left over is of course used to eat out at restaurants.

We followed their money trail for years, so we know that’s true.

$6,000 a month they pay their Dem executive director...yet I can’t name a single Dem that will be running for office in ‘22, just 13 months from now.

Good job, Blue Bench Project.

I used to be mad about this, how inept the Montana Democratic Party was. Now I’m just thankful.

Democrats in this country have lost their mind. They’re unhinged.

I thought them getting the White House might ameliorate some of their craziness. Sadly, things have only gotten worse.

Their foot-soldiers here in Montana know this, and that’s why they’re lashing out more than usual. Like rats on a sinking ship, they’ll do anything to survive.

This is why you’re seeing more Dem comments than usual on this site. These are hopeless and desperate individuals.

Imagine putting all of your hopes and dreams into anyone that’ll beat Trump...and then you get Biden.

Democrats know they’ve failed miserably. And they will never stop being angry at you for this.

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The Futility

9/26/2021

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Look at them.

Look at them parade around the state, posting their selfies on social media for ‘all’ to see.

Who’s even looking, at this point? It’s over a year away until the 2022 elections that will determine if one of these women gets the new U.S. House seat for the as-yet-to-be-determined congressional boundaries, or if it’ll be Zinke.

My money’s on Zinke.

He took the seat in ‘16 with 80,000 votes. That’s an astronomical margin.

Zinke has name-recognition. He’s a known quantity. Yeah...the clowns on social media will chastise and lambast him, but they’re loudness is drowned-out by the silent majority that shows up to the polls.

Zinke doesn’t do Twitter. No Montana Republicans do anymore. They know it’s a complete and utter waste of time to play around on #mtpol. No one reads that shit, aside from tired and lonely and desperate Democrats, meaningless individuals with no purpose in their lives.

And yet that’s exactly where the Democratic women spend most of their time.

Yeah...Zinke has over 73,000 people following him on social media.

The Dem women? About 1,900 for both Neuman and Bishop; Tranel has just 600.

Can’t they see what’s coming? Of course they can, and we’ll get to that in a moment.

Yesterday was a big day for them. Most paraded themselves around at the Griz game, hoping someone might know who they are. It was a good photo-op, a way to get another selfie onto social media.

None of these ‘oh-so-important’ women feel the need to help any of the various municipal candidates running around the state. Their election is just weeks away, considering ballots will be sent out soon for the November election.

But to care about others would mean putting their own ego aside. Like that’ll ever happen.

These three women could save themselves a lot of time and hassle if they’d just call Kathleen Williams up on the phone. She’ll tell them exactly how this race will go - she’s lived it twice.

It’ll be a fucking rout, with the Republican winning by tens of thousands of votes.

Everyone knows it.

So then we have to be honest with ourselves, and ask what the real goal and motive is for these three women.

If we all know they can’t win, surely they do as well. So what’s their game?

I think it’s obvious - a cushy, high-paying position with some outfit or organization or nonprofit.

One of these women will eventually head-up the Montana Democratic Party, serving as executive director, making $6,000 a month.

One will likely end up at Carol’s List, or maybe Treasure State PAC, or Brock Consulting, or any other favorable Dem outfit that takes in thousands each month in donations from all over the country to play the game of politics.

This is the goal.

Many have realized that elected office isn’t really the end-all, and is actually a kind of ‘step-down.’

You’re constrained. You have a term-limit. You're one of many. You can only do so much.

But if you’re some ‘important executive’ at an outfit that keeps you employed for years to play behind the scenes, perhaps you’re even more powerful. Amanda Curtis is following this example to a ‘T.’

Neuman, Tranel, and Bishop won’t be elected to Congress next year, but they will land some cushy position somewhere, likely with a lot more influence on how Montana operates.

I don’t like it anymore than you do, but we can’t ignore reality.

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Stuff and Stuff

9/25/2021

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Friday was the seventh school day in a row that I was home with my daughter.

She should be in daycare. We pay $850 a month for that. But she has a runny nose, so she has to stay home. The daycare still takes our money.

Over the past six weeks, she’s been home for three of ‘em.

I was planning on getting another part-time job after the election. Something, I dunno what, maybe something to help out some of our struggling small businesses.

I was hoping to work just a few hours a day in the late-mornings, early-afternoons.

But it’s become obvious to me that this is simply impossible.

Maybe my little girl will be fine next week, able to go to daycare. But what about the week after that?

You just don’t know. And I’m sure an employer would love a new employee calling up and saying, ‘Sorry, but I’ve got to take today off because my kid is home sick...maybe tomorrow too, and the next day - I just don’t know.’

If my kid ain’t sick, someone else’s will be, and mine will get it. Or it’ll be a close-contact covid case (her daycare closed for two weeks already because of that).

It’s very frustrating.

In a sign of what’s likely to come, a Florida judge tossed out a city’s vaccine mandate.

It all started when the city’s city manager ordered all city employees to get the vaccine, at least one shot by October 1. Over 200 city workers sued.

The city, Gainesville, felt so confident that the mandate would hold on its own weight that they didn’t bother putting forth any arguments or evidence at the injunction hearing.

So the judge tossed it out. The city gave no comment on this.

I think this is what will happen all over the country - overzealous and overreacting governments feeling so confident that they blow it.

Biden’s blown everything else he’s done, so I feel he’ll blow this one as well.

Thank God!

Ryan Zinke’s got a letter to the editor in the Missoulian this weekend. I didn’t read it, but I suppose it’s something about him feeling good about Montana, hoping you remember he’s running for office next year.

No way Bishop, Neuman, or Tranel is gonna beat Zinke. Hm, let’s see...he won in 2014 with 55,000 votes. Took ‘16 with 80,000. No statewide GOP got that many votes in ‘20. It’s gonna be a route.

I put that comment on the Missoulian article. So far, I've gotten 7 downvotes.

Where the hell are these people living? I guess in the world of make-believe.

We used to have this mantra in America called, In God We Trust.

That’s so passe.

Let’s change that to Every 90 Days. Because really, that’s all we care about.

Selling as much product as possible, no matter the risks. Maximizing profits. Delivering the returns to shareholders. Meeting the expectation of the quarter. Making Wall Street happy.

Like rats on a wheel...Every 90 days.

The Pope has declared that anyone that criticizes him is doing the work of the devil.

“I personally may deserve attacks and insults because I am a sinner, but the Church does not deserve this. It is the work of the devil,” he said.

Hm...so let me get this straight:

It’s alright to attack the Pope because he’s a sinner. But we can’t attack the church, right?

Is this the same church that had over 1,700 priests abusing countless thousands of children on countless thousands of Sundays after Mass?

So...we’re not allowed to criticize that...because that would be “the work of the devil” to do so?

But molesting children is ok.

Thanks, Pope - thanks for clarifying that!

Who the fuck cares about Gabby Petito or Brian Laundry?

I don’t. I haven’t talked to a single person that does. But the corporate media sure cares.

It’s fun to see some pushback against that from the ‘missing indiginous’ crowd. They wonder why no one cares about their missing family members.

Um...because you’re not white. It also helps if you're young and blond.

Every few years the media gets itself into a tizzy with these silly stories. Things like the Cuban boy Elian Gonzalze, the disappearance of Chandra Levy, the Scott Peterson case...and tons more.

No one cares about these people. If they did, we’d hear about them after the media sensation ends. But we never do.

Of course, the real problem is us.

If we didn’t click these stories or watch those news broadcasts, the corporate media would change their tune real fucking quick.

All they care about is money. Sadly, we enable their greed.

It’s clear to me that we’re heading for a civil war in this country.

I don’t know how it’ll start, or when...but it’s coming.

We hate each other. We can’t even have civil conversations anymore. Everything is about politics. If someone doesn’t agree with your point of view, they’re the enemy; they deserve to die.

Half the country wants the other half to die. This mostly comes down to those that drank the Big Pharma Kool-Aid.

Those that have, they blame the unvaccinated for killing them.

Um...if the vaccine worked, that wouldn’t happen. But it doesn’t work, that’s so obvious by now.

Ever hear the unvaccinated blame those that have had the shot? Nope. Why is that?

It’s because half the country doesn’t feel the need to vilify the other half. Mostly, it’s just Democrats that do that, egged-on by their corporate media, which in turn is funded by Big Pharma.

That’s how it’ll start - Big Pharma, feeling they aren’t making enough profits, will tell their media peons to ramp-up the hate against the unvaccinated, and the talking heads will happily oblige.

Weeks…months...how long before those talking heads start to encourage the killing?

Right now, they’re telling us to keep the unvaccinated out of stores, out of work, and separate from family members.

How long before they tell the unvaccinated to just die already? It won’t be long after that before they say we should just be killed.

That’s when the camps will start. And the war with them.

At this point, I think it’s inevitable.

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The Best and the Worst States for Covid

9/23/2021

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Let’s start with the ‘best.’

The District of Columbia has the highest percentage of their population fully vaccinated, at 74.8%.

Next is Rhode Island with 73% and then Vermont at 71%.

Now, some states are larger than others. That’s why California currently has the most people fully vaccinated, with 23.5 million (D.C. has nearly 414,000 fully vaccinated).

Texas is the next state with the most vaccinated individuals, with 14 million, followed by New York and Florida, with 12 million each.

What about the ‘worst’ states?

Wyoming has the lowest percentage of their population fully vaccinated, at 40%, followed by Alabama at 42% and then Mississippi at 43%. Other ‘low-level’ offenders include North Dakota, Louisiana, Idaho, Arkansa, Georgia, and West Virginia. The latter is at 45%.

Wyoming is also the state with the fewest number of people fully vaccinated, at 236,000. Next is North Dakota at 334,000 and then Alaska with 370,000.

Now let’s compare the graphs of current covid cases and deaths between the ‘best’ and the ‘worst’ states.

Here’s D.C. compared with Wyoming, the ‘best’ vs. the ‘worst.’

This is pretty interesting. Despite D.C. being the best for taking the vaccine, and despite Wyoming being the worst...both states have the exact same curve of infection at the moment.

Sure, Wyoming is seeing more daily cases (553 vs. 149 on Tuesday), but I have a feeling Wyoming will see that come down soon, while D.C. will have their rate remain constant.

The death graph is also interesting. Despite D.C. being the best in the country for the jab, they’ve counted 23 deaths since the end of May. In Wyoming, they haven’t had a death from covid in over 5 months.

Now let’s compare the second ‘best’ and second ‘worst,’ these being Rhode Island and Alabama, respectively.

Again, both graphs of daily cases are about the same...though Alabama has been trending down all month while Rhode Island has remained fairly constant. The case counts are wildly different, though, with Rhode Island having 336 new cases on Tuesday compared to the over 5,000 Alabama reported the day before.

Alabama is also dying a lot more than Rhode Island is. Alabama had 161 new deaths on Friday, while Rhode Island had zero. In fact, Rhode Island has been having relatively few deaths for months. Alabama was the same, but then began to skyrocket starting in August.

I think a lot of that has to do with the BMI of people in the two states, their eating habits, and how much they exercise. Alabama was one of the most unhealthy states in the country before the pandemic started.

In conclusion, I think we’re seeing exactly what we saw going into last fall, the traditional cold and flu season.

Here are some graphs to show what that looks like:

As you can see, after the initial pandemic shock from early-2020, we had the larger winter outbreak, which began to really see an uptick start in mid-September 2020.

By early January that had peaked. That particular outbreak fell to its lowest point by early-March.

There was a slight uptick in cases around spring break, but not deaths, and then both continued to fall until July, when we saw a summer bump in cases and deaths.

That fell-off again slightly before rising. It’s still rising. And we’re currently at a case point where we were last November.

That tells me this outbreak will have a flatter curve and won’t last as long. I suspect we’ll get done with this one well before Thanksgiving, perhaps even around Halloween.

Maybe it’s the vaccines that are causing this less-serious outbreak, though I believe they were the cause of the summer uptick we saw.

Bermuda is a fine example of this. That country didn’t impose mask mandates or lockdowns until December 2020. They hadn’t seen a covid case in months, but then they began to see an uptick after they put those rules in place.

Currently they have a 63% vaccination rate, though their covid cases have jumped by 5,600% this month alone (they haven’t had a death all year).

Sadly, Vermont is seeing the exact same trend.

I can’t wait to see which of these ‘best’ and ‘worst’ states will get over the current outbreak the soonest, and with the least damage.

It’ll be interesting to see how the corporate media spins it.

After all, why are states with some of the highest vaccination rates seeing such a huge uptick in cases?

Why do states with some of the lowest vaccination rates mirror the exact same trend?

Why are the graphs so similar?

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Missoula Hospitals Have Over 100 Open Beds

9/22/2021

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Today we’ll compared the Sept. 20 DPHHS report about covid hospitalizations in Montana with their Sept. 13 report.

It says right on the report’s cover page that the reports are updated every Monday, but we didn’t get this week’s report until Wednesday morning.

Like many things in the economy, perhaps a staffing shortage caused the delay.

More and more are beginning to question whether our hospitals are actually full - as the media suggests - or if they’re simply dealing with too few staff:

“What I’m hearing, though, is staff at hospitals like St. Pats are leaving their jobs in droves and that is driving the staffing shortage,” RD wrote today. “I’m hearing the shortage is so bad that administrative personnel are doing things like changing the sheets on hospital beds.”

Let’s get into the numbers that the hospitals actually report to the state each week.

So for the entirety of last week (Sept. 13-17), Montana hospitals had 1,321 non-covid patients, 377 covid patients, and 712 open beds.

Comparing this to the week before, we learn that Montana hospitals saw 275 new non-covid patients from one week to the next; 15 fewer covid patients; and 102 fewer open beds.

So from Sept. 13 to Sept. 20, we actually saw fewer covid patients in our state’s hospitals.

Let’s look at the Missoula hospitals, which are supposedly having major issues right now.

Community Medical this past week had 31 non-covid patients, 21 covid patients, and 51 open beds. This hospital has nearly as many open beds as they have patients, putting to rest the argument that they don’t have enough space.

A more apt description of this hospital’s problems probably has to do with staffing.

Hospitals all over the country are short of nurses. Even travelling nurses are hard to find right now. Why is that? Are they burned-out...in quarantine...vaccine-hesitant...or just sick and tired of that job and they’ve moved on for good?

A report yesterday said some patients in Montana hospitals are throwing their own shit at nurses. Who’d want to work in that environment?

Yeah, shortages. It’s the same story all over the economy. I drove by a Jiffy Lube downtown last night that’s now closed indefinitely because they don’t have the staff.

Across town at St. Pat’s, we learn that this past week they had 116 non-covid patients, 30 covid patients, and 52 beds available.

At Community, they have 6 more covid patients than they had the previous week. At St. Pat’s they have 5 more.

For the first time ever, I’m seeing a red box in these reports. That comes up with Bozeman’s Health Deaconess Hospital. They have 69 non-covid patients, 26 with covid, and where it should list beds available, it instead lists 16 in red, meaning over capacity, or 90% of beds occupied.

This is the only hospital in the state reporting this...so far. The previous week, they had 5 beds available, with 15 covid patients and 66 regular patients.

Another ‘horror story’ in the media right now comes to us from the Billings Clinic. The big problem there is that their ICU is at 160% capacity, so they have to use hallways, and they’re running out of hallways.

They’re sure not running out of beds. Last week they had 88 available. And I imagine some of the 159 non-covid patients could probably go home.

But remember, if a non-covid patient is at home, the hospital isn’t making money.

I guess I just don’t understand.

If you have twice or three times as many regular patients as covid patients, and you have dozens of open beds...is it really a crisis?

A crisis for whom? The people that are in the hospital sick and dying? Most news reports say these folks are unvaccinated, so isn’t it their own fault? Aren’t we coming to the point in society where we want these people to die?

Putting them on a ventilator is one of the fastest ways to make sure they do die. The survival rate from that is abysmal. The lucky ones have a 50% chance to survive the vent; the unlucky have just a 3% chance.

When they’re so far gone that you’re going to hook them up to a machine that’ll likely kill them, why not just try some Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine?

But our health system doesn’t think like that. I wonder how many had to needlessly die because of this.

We’ll likely never know.

In conclusion, it’s clear covid cases in Missoula continue to go up. It’s also clear that at each of our hospitals, over 50 beds are just sitting there, open and available.

The hospitals aren’t full. They might be short of staff - we have no way of proving that, and the hospitals are more afraid of lawsuits than public disclosure.

It seems to me the hospitals are dealing with a problem of their own creation - management can’t hire and retain staff, likely due to poor working conditions, too-long-hours, and low pay.

Something tells me if you doubled every nurse’s salary, word would get out to surrounding regions pretty quickly.

I bet that staff shortage would be gone real quick.

“Billings Clinic would hire more than 100 additional nurses if it could,” KPAX told us yesterday. “The staffing shortage is not unique to this hospital; it’s nationwide, meaning the needed help isn’t arriving anytime soon.

Baxter tells the story of a young nurse who quit, saying he had grown tired of lying to patients he knew would die.”

If the crisis is so bad, why isn’t the federal government allowing hospitals to use the tens of billions in covid relief money that has yet to be spent to hire new nurses or give the hospitals whatever else they need?

Maybe a White House reporter will ask Biden that question, though his handlers don’t allow questions.

So I can only assume the situation will just get worse. Thankfully, all the blame can go toward those that haven’t been vaccinated, ensuring we’ll never get this situation under control.

About 30% of this country simply will never get the vaccine, even if you say you’ll fire them, imprison them, or kill them.

They just won’t. A year ago, that would have been fine, aligning us with a 70% herd immunity rate. But those goalposts have been torn-down, never to go up again.

No, if it’s not 100% vaccination rate, there’ll always be someone to blame.

I wonder, even if we do get to a 100% vaccination rate and cases inevitably still keep coming, who will be blame then?

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