Special Note: This is the Montana Blog's 350th post
I woke up this morning and I heard a disturbing sound.
I lay in bed wondering what it was it.
It grew in pitch and tone, cacophony and sound.
I lay there wondering what it was, and then it occurred to me:
It’s the sound of thousands of small and tiny and inconsequential voices shouting out for help.
You can hear them if you listen, if you try hard enough.
It isn’t hard to do.
These are the voices of fear, frustration, discontent, hopelessness, depression, angst, anger, and remorse.
I think it might be that last one most of all, remorse.
People feel sorry for themselves, they feel a deep regret that they let things get so bad.
We gave up, ignored things too long. And now we pay the price for that indifference, we pay it in a way we can see.
I woke up this morning with thoughts of the Montana Supreme Court’s medical marijuana ruling on my mind.
All of the seven justices voted against it but one, and that one was Mike Wheat.
I knew back in Election 2014 that we could count on him.
The other ones, not so much.
That takes us back to the title of this post – Big Sky Words’ promise to you.
We’ll profile all these fools because you need to be informed of the issues so the state can operate as you want it.
Or did you want those ass-hat legislators from 2011 passing a law that reversed what you yourself said at the ballot in 2004?
I don’t think you want that at all, but if you do want that, well shit – get your ass over to the state newspapers and TV stations.
They’ll feed you that crap in spades.
Here at Big Sky Words you will not get the talking points, the party message, the tired spiels or any of that take-one-for-the-team bullshit.
You will, however, get honesty and insight and neither arm tied behind the back.
But then you knew that already.
You also know that no one pays me and that these posts are put up for reasons of passion, not profit.
That’s why they’re so convincing.
I like that.
I like to convince voters.
I know that on each issue I speak at least 1 voter has been convinced, and that’s me.
So we’ve got 1.
Thankfully we’re up to 1,300 unique daily visitors now so I’m sure I’m swaying some minds.
That’s what it’s all about – swaying people so they vote a certain way.
I know that when you read this site you often smile and nod and agree with what I’m saying.
Sometimes you might even decide to vote a certain way because of that.
That’s what having a platform will do for you and I try to keep mine clean and operating as well as it can for you.
You get information, ideas, stories, and it’s all free – you don’t pay one dime.
I like that.
I like that you can go to a place each day and get a bit of news about the place you live.
Of course, my news is heavily-flavored with a viewpoint, and that viewpoint is pretty plain for all to see. Here’s what it looks like:
So that’s a bit of the viewpoint that I push here when I talk about the news.
I just want to make that clear…in case you didn’t know already.
I lay in bed wondering what it was it.
It grew in pitch and tone, cacophony and sound.
I lay there wondering what it was, and then it occurred to me:
It’s the sound of thousands of small and tiny and inconsequential voices shouting out for help.
You can hear them if you listen, if you try hard enough.
It isn’t hard to do.
These are the voices of fear, frustration, discontent, hopelessness, depression, angst, anger, and remorse.
I think it might be that last one most of all, remorse.
People feel sorry for themselves, they feel a deep regret that they let things get so bad.
We gave up, ignored things too long. And now we pay the price for that indifference, we pay it in a way we can see.
I woke up this morning with thoughts of the Montana Supreme Court’s medical marijuana ruling on my mind.
All of the seven justices voted against it but one, and that one was Mike Wheat.
I knew back in Election 2014 that we could count on him.
The other ones, not so much.
That takes us back to the title of this post – Big Sky Words’ promise to you.
- I promise that we will continue to point out hypocrisy, corruption, incompetence, indecision, ill-repute, and the bloody ugliness that is Montana politics.
- We’ll profile the dill-heads, doofuses, dipshits and ding-dongs.
- Scaliwags won’t escape our radar, nor will carpetbaggers, bigots, hypocrites, nuts, idiots, whackos, hacks, shills, cronies, crazies and thugs.
We’ll profile all these fools because you need to be informed of the issues so the state can operate as you want it.
Or did you want those ass-hat legislators from 2011 passing a law that reversed what you yourself said at the ballot in 2004?
I don’t think you want that at all, but if you do want that, well shit – get your ass over to the state newspapers and TV stations.
They’ll feed you that crap in spades.
Here at Big Sky Words you will not get the talking points, the party message, the tired spiels or any of that take-one-for-the-team bullshit.
You will, however, get honesty and insight and neither arm tied behind the back.
But then you knew that already.
You also know that no one pays me and that these posts are put up for reasons of passion, not profit.
That’s why they’re so convincing.
I like that.
I like to convince voters.
I know that on each issue I speak at least 1 voter has been convinced, and that’s me.
So we’ve got 1.
Thankfully we’re up to 1,300 unique daily visitors now so I’m sure I’m swaying some minds.
That’s what it’s all about – swaying people so they vote a certain way.
I know that when you read this site you often smile and nod and agree with what I’m saying.
Sometimes you might even decide to vote a certain way because of that.
That’s what having a platform will do for you and I try to keep mine clean and operating as well as it can for you.
You get information, ideas, stories, and it’s all free – you don’t pay one dime.
I like that.
I like that you can go to a place each day and get a bit of news about the place you live.
Of course, my news is heavily-flavored with a viewpoint, and that viewpoint is pretty plain for all to see. Here’s what it looks like:
- Democrats are better than Republicans but not by a whole lot and not that often;
- Politics as a whole is ungodly corrupt and full of money and if it had a smell it’d be worse than a trailhead shitter.
- The media is hopelessly incompetent and at the same time completely bought and paid for by corporate interests that want to push a corporate agenda that, let’s face it, probably isn't that good for you and your family.
- Nine out of ten issues that are discussed in this country don’t directly impact you in any way, never have and never will.
- You'll likely continue to work at a job that has little meaning for you, the same as most Americans, and the pay will remain at 1990 levels well past the point you should have saved enough for retirement.
- Those in power will continue to tell you that things are getting better when you can see quite clearly that they’re not, nor will they ever.
So that’s a bit of the viewpoint that I push here when I talk about the news.
I just want to make that clear…in case you didn’t know already.
We're already 775 words into this post and it’s taken me 24 minutes to write.
Sometimes I wonder if my time would be spent doing something else.
Thankfully I was wondering that earlier and decided to just go ahead and write out 1,272 words on my next novel.
So that’s out of the way.
It’s important to channel your anger and frustrations into meaningful activities.
I’m glad I do that each day, as it allows me to pay my bills and keep writing for you.
Because I got that novel writing out of the way early, I felt no hesitation whatsoever about diving right into the 2016 campaign finance reports for our current Montana Supreme Court justices, at least the ones running for reelection in 2016.
I’m doing that for one simple reason – those justices made a mistake.
They made a mistake yesterday in that ruling on medical marijuana.
Because of that they’ll have to pay.
Hey, no big deal, we have a name for this kind of stuff.
It’s called politics.
Let’s begin with Jim Shea.
Montana Supreme Court Races for 2016
You can find out which people are running for the Montana Supreme Court in 2016 by going to Ballotpedia:
If you want to find out what their C-5 campaign finance report looks like, go to the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Page and type in their name for 2016.
That’s how I got Jim Shea’s finances.
And wow, as you can see, Montana’s Jim Shea is wildly corrupt:
Every Tom, Dick, and Harry in that fucking report is a lawyer!
So in effect, you have a bunch of lawyers giving money to a judge so that judge will rule favorably on their cases.
That’s what it is.
- Now, you can argue that these are good people and that they don’t want to influence cases.
I won’t argue that.
- You can argue that the Montana Supreme Court wanted to get rid of this kind of shit but the U.S. Supreme Court overruled them with Citizens United.
I won’t argue that.
- You can argue that these guys have to take as much money as they can, damn it, and you should shut the hell up because if you don’t we’ll get another Van Dyke carpetbagging-asshole comin’ up from Texas to make our lives even worse.
I won’t argue that.
What I will argue is that yesterday those justices (except Mike Wheat), made a mistake.
Because of that, they’ll pay.
Hey, it’s just politics.
I’m going to go head and stop here as I want a new post with a flashy title that people will click on when they type in “Montana Supreme Court races 2016” or maybe even “Jim Shea Montana” or something like that.
That way I’ll get more traffic from Google from regular people that don’t follow politics.
More minds will be swayed.
More voters will decide.
That's my promise to you.
