Gosh…what’s there not to talk about?
So much stuff is going on right now that it’s not even funny. What’s especially sad is how little the corporate media is covering it all.
We saw that yesterday when we profiled the Standing Rock injustices.
And what else might be going on?
Let’s just get right into it.
Montana’s Refugee Issue
RD did a good job reporting on this, and you’ll find the link to the original Missoulian story there.
For the most part, the recent refugees from Congo aren’t going to have enough money to get into apartments.
They get about $1,100 in one-time assistance…not even enough to pay rent and deposit.
My family recently moved and we had to pay $1,560 in first month’s rent and deposit.
We didn’t get a portion of our old place’s deposit back until 28 days after we’d moved.
Besides that the refugees have limited English skills and no real job prospects.
Why on earth did we bring them here in the first place?
That’s kind of what Mother Jones is asking on Tuesday in an article called How Refugees Became a Campaign Issue in Montana.
The article quotes Gianforte’s campaign manager, Aaron Flint, quite a bit.
He says he hears about the concern over refugees everywhere he goes.
After that we get MSU’s Dave Parker telling us that this is only an issue because of Trump’s landslide win here in the primary.
Please remember that Dave Parker is from New Hampshire originally and has only been living here for 8 years.
Parkers speculates that we’ll see more of the refugee issue in attack ads later.
And that’s it – nothing on the lack of money for the Congolese refugees in Missoula.
I have a feeling we’re just beginning to hear about problems there. I also feel that the refugee officials like Molly Car will leave Montana within the next three to six months.
The problems that those refugees face will of course remain.
Slipping Polls
I thought she had this one in the bag!
Now CNN is telling us that both Trump and Hillary are “on essentially even ground, with Trump edging Clinton by a scant two points.”
It’s Hillary at 45% and Trump at 43%.
Johnson has 7% and Jill Stein’s got 2%.
A total of 1,001 people were called for that poll and there’s a margin of error of 3.5%.
The poll happened at the beginning of the month, so we know people weren’t turned off by Hillary’s latest coughing fit.
So bad was the 2-minute bout that MSNBC actually pulled away from live coverage of the rally.
Many are wondering if it was really a stroke she suffered in 2014 and not just a fall.
Are we seeing lingering effects?
It’ll become a campaign issue, you can count on that.
Currently Hillary is grasping at anything to get back up in the polls. I just don’t think Trump’s tax returns will do that.
It’s simple – keep saying you won’t release ‘em until the audit is done. Let Hillary bitch and moan about it.
We know that 55% of Hillary supporters “say they’re less excited about voting this year than usual.”
When it comes to Trump, 56% of his backers “say they’re more excited” to vote this go-round.
People just don’t like Hillary, even those that plan to vote for her. I see a lot of Hillary, Juneau, and Bullock signs in the same yards in Missoula, and I wonder…will that hurt Juneau and Bullock?
James Conner thinks it might. At Flathead Memo he has the results of a Washington Post online poll of 999 people in Montana.
It has Trump at 44%, Hillary at 31%, Johnson at 14% and Jill Stein at 5%.
If you make it a two-way race Trump blows it away, defeating Hillary by 13%.
Now, I believe Jill Stein will get a major boost in the polls because of the ‘crimes’ she committed in North Dakota.
Old coots like James Conner disagree, but to his way of thinking, there should have been no graffiti on the Berlin Wall.
The two main things that divide us in this country – money and age.
Depending on how much you have or how many years you’ve got under your belt, your thinking will be different.
A lot of it comes down to the level of corporate and government brainwashing you were subjected to, how long, and at what periods in time.
We’ll discuss that more below.
Tester’s 2018 Dilemma
At this point it even seems like Zinke will opt to stay in the House and gain seniority, letting Rob O’Neill run against Tester in 2018.
I saw him on Twitter’s #mtpol yesterday so I know he’s dipping his toe in already.
And did you know he’s a sometimes-correspondent with Fox News?
Now, in case you’ve forgotten, O’Neill is the guy that killed Osama Bin Laden.
That coup, coupled with Tester’s repeated failures to bring about any meaningful changes in our VA system, could hand O’Neill the race.
And Tester’s kicking-to-the-curb of progressives in the late-2000s will come back to haunt him as well.
No one gives a shit about Pearl Jam anymore, so that won’t save him either.
I hope he does lose. He’s not working for families like mine, just rich Wall Street types.
Republicans will likely do overwhelmingly well in 2018 in a mid-term election that serves as a backlash against Hillary’s first two years in office.
Of course, if Trump wins then Tester is all but assured of keeping his seat.
Either way, Tester will be raising tons of dark money. He’s already taken Baucus’s place when it comes to cozying up to Wall Street.
And if O’Neill does run, expect a lot of bad press about his breaking the code of silence to tell about killing Bin Laden as well as smears against his character over that DUI he got a few months back.
O’Neill could parlay the DUI into a good bit of support via the PTSD angle, if he so chooses. Or he could just say he made a mistake – most Montanans have, as our driving records show.
And what is there to get excited about when it comes to Tester?
Well, he did just help out a lot of people by getting Missoula’s Neptune Aviation a bunch of grants to hire 100 new workers.
Perhaps his 2018 campaign staff will add that to whatever list they’re working on.
Still, I’m not sure it’ll be enough. If Hillary wins, nothing may be enough.
Montana’s 2016 Races
I see that Mike Dennison has a good, 1:52 report on the statewide races in Montana this year.
You get a good view of all the candidates in short clips, including Juras and Sandefur for the Supreme Court.
I don’t know anything about those two, and I’d say most of Montana is about the same.
I’ve seen more Juras yard signs in Missoula than I have Sandefur. Wow, what a fuck up.
You have to expect this, however – Montana Democrats, for the most part, are old and tired.
It’s why so many go home instead of continuing the fight in the arena.
Moving on…
There’s a shot of Melissa Romano at the end of Dennison's report, and I wonder if many in the Democratic circles are starting to get worried.
Will she pull it off? Does she have it in her? If she loses…how bad will an Arntzen administration be?
Most MEA-MFT union brass and some teachers might be worried about this, but as a regular person, I really don’t know how it affects me or how it affects my kid’s school.
The messaging on the OPI race has been terrible. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
When it comes to Lindeen, she’s lucky the media hasn’t reported much on the health insurance increases.
That hurts Stapleton, but I guess he could change some of that with some heavy ad spending. Now’s the time.
Once again, I’m glad I don’t have a TV. Those that do will be bombarded endlessly from several different candidates.
When it comes to Rosendale, my, what a pussy.
You can’t even do one debate?
Laslovich needs to release the ads now, shame the hell out of him, and in my opinion, hit him in the balls over and over and over again.
Then hit him some more.
The guy’s a schmuck, he’s from Maryland, he moved out here to weasel his way into our politics.
Why? Simple – so he can rob Montana’s poorest citizens of social services and take that money and hand it off to his rich transplanted friends.
It’s a shame that Laslovich is continuing on in this race with one arm tied behind his back.
Oh well, timidity is about all we can expect from the powerhouse that was once Anaconda.
Losing your identity has a tendency to take away your strength, after all.
Employment Perceptions
Most people think that the unemployment level is 9%, not the 5% that ‘experts’ report.
Thank God people are not buying into all the corporate and government brainwashing! Yes, they’re actually starting to think on their own!
I can see why people think this – jobs that are available usually suck. On top of it just 11% of our jobs are union these days.
Wow, that’s depressing.
It’s also depressing that unions continue to collude in the fantasy that Americans have that unions make up 30% of workers.
That’s helping no one. Unions should say, ‘hey, we’re in trouble – let’s talk about it and find a solution!’
Instead they continue to stand idly by and let our jobs ship overseas to China and Vietnam and other shitholes.
Considering union brass takes monumental payouts and cozies up to Wall Street and big political donors, this is not surprising.
We know that 77% of Americans think the job situation will be worse for their kids.
In related news, ITT Technical Institute announced on Tuesday that they’ll be closing all of their 130 schools across 38 states, laying off 8,000 workers in the process and leaving 35,000 students wondering what the hell they’ll do.
Yeah, the economy is great...isn’t it?
Marijuana: It’s Time
I’m sick of Montana Democrats not supporting an issue that will create millions in new tax revenue and thousands of jobs.
I’m sick of old and antiquated thinking that was brought about by corporate and government brainwashing a generation or more ago that marijuana is evil.
Lots of old-timers really got subjected to a daily barrage of Nancy Reagan’s government propaganda in the 80s and now they can’t think on their own when it comes to drugs.
On top of that our federal regulatory agencies are nothing more than an extension of Big Pharma.
Keeping marijuana illegal does a great job at boosting addicting opiate pill sales, and if people can’t get a prescription they can always get hooked on heroin.
That’s great for our pay-to-play judicial system and our private, corporate prison system. Folks in those industries will have enough for that second car and maybe a house on the lake.
Wake up, folks – marijuana built this country.
Columbus’s sails were made of the stuff, the Declaration of Independence was written on the stuff, and Betsy Ross made the first American flag out of it.
Hemp…marijuana…cannabis…reefer…whatever you want to call it, my God, let’s legalize it!
I mean, gosh…we know that states that have legalized marijuana have seen decreases in heroin use, decreases in prescription drug abuse, and decreases in the judicial system’s workload.
Even the jails get less crowded.
Why on earth, as someone that pays property taxes and is always asked to pony up more, would you not support legal marijuana and the millions in new tax revenue it produces?
That means you pay less! And my goodness, those marijuana smokers would love to pay their taxes on legal pot, they’d just love to.
The support or medical marijuana this November will be overwhelming, and not just in Montana. We’ll see several more states pass it and quite a few will legalize outright.
Here in Montana we have old and antiquated thinking, however, and that thinking means we’ll continue to fall behind other states in the region.
And to think, we’re an agricultural state.
What a joke.
We could be growing the biggest cash crop there is. Instead we let old and antiquated thinking steer the course.
Democrats…Republicans…both parties are to blame in Montana.
Nothing, however, is to blame more than our old and antiquated thinking.
My, how we hang on to it as if our lives depended on it.
Montana Blogs Agree
The situation at Standing Rock Indian Reservation sucks and should stop.
That’s about the gist of it, though I’m sure if you boil it down and get into specifics, there’s room for disagreement.
For now, just let the amazement wash over you.