Tagged: Missoula Independent

Posted: August 7, 2012 at 5:22 pm

UPDATED: Political Quick Hits

Young Man Admits Filing False Missoula Beating Report

The Missoula Independent is now reporting that a “Missoula gay bashing may not have happened.”  Read the story here.   Sounds like there are still some facts that need to be verified.  Hope that happens soon. UPDATE: D. Gregory Smith at From Eternity to Here has a good take on this incident.

 

Where’s Daines?

Thanks to the recent ad blitz, we know Montana’s current Congressman Rep. Rehberg supports President Bush’s millionaire tax breaks, which resulted in the worst presidential jobs record in recorded history. We know that he voted again to renew the cuts for the richest 2%–to give millionaires another $150,000 check they don’t even need. What we don’t know is what Steve Daines thinks.

If he wants this office, he needs to say where he stands.

Dems are the Party of Fiscal Responsibility

Montana’s Governor Brian Schweitzer has an op-ed in the Huffington Post today about how Montana is one of the only states in America with a budget surplus.  Schweitzer notes that this year that surplus is $453 million, while under the Republican administrations of the eighteen years previous, the surpluses averaged $54 million.

 

Posted: April 23, 2012 at 6:28 pm

They Still Don’t Get It

The University of Montana football team has penned a strange joint letter to the citizens of Montana that leaves serious doubts about whether the school understands its problem–an alarming series of sexual assaults involving football players.

The five-paragraph letter rambles on about “excellence” in football, but does not once express concern for the women allegedly raped or assaulted by U of M football players.

Instead, the letter portrays the football players as victims–for having lost their coach.  The letter is posted on the official University of  Montana Athletics website and Facebook  page, which appears to indicate that its contents are sanctioned by university officials.  The letter also contains language more likely to have been written by university public relations officials than football players. Take, for example, this sentence:

We also write this letter as students of a University we love, members of a community we cherish and as stewards of one of the most respected and honored football traditions of excellence in the nation.

If the university administration thinks this letter was a good idea, it shows that they still don’t get it. It shows that U of M officials are still more concerned with the football team than the women who were raped.

The whole letter is bizarre.  The team writes that:

We understand and accept the fact that a few of our teammates’ actions, whether intended and deserved or not, have contributed to this unfortunate situation.

Just what the players mean by whether their numerous teammates’ actions were “intended and deserved” is unclear. Do they mean that the players deserved to rape women, that the women deserved to be raped, or that the players didn’t deserve to be held accountable?

The letter goes on to say that the players acknowledge their responsibility to honor their supporters and respect their fellow players and coaches.  It does not mention their responsibility to respect women (rather than raping them.)

It shows that the trouble at U of M is bigger than the fact that football players aren’t being accountable for their treatment of women.  It’s about the school’s failure to address a systematic problem: the way women are treated by the university.  It shows that they still don’t get it.

UPDATE: John Marshall’s take on this mess in the Missoula Independent is not to be missed.

Posted: November 7, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Political Quick Hits

Supporters Wanted

Behlmer honk and waveSupporters of the right-wing City Commission candidate Lorabelle Behlmer took to the streets in support of her candidacy this weekend–or rather a supporter did.   A Cowgirl tipster captured this photograph of Behlmer’s “Honk and Wave” event.  It doesn’t look like her candidacy was able to garner much of a turnout. Matt Elsaesser and Katherine Haque-Hausrath are running against Behlmer.

 

More Time Off for Rehberg

Congressional Republicans released their 2012 House calendar recently.  Did you know that there is no month in which they plan to work more than 14 days?  As the Slate Political Gabfest reported on a recent podcast, there are only two weeks of 2012 that the House plans to put in a five-day week like the rest of us. The House will be in session 109 weekdays, and on recess 151 weekdays.   That’s 14 more vacation days than last year.

 

 Mississippi to Vote on Birth Control Ban Tomorrow

A Mississippi initiative so broad that it would likely mean not just a total ban on abortion, even in cases of rape or incest or to save the mother’s life, but also a ban on birth control and in vitro fertilization will be voted on tomorrow. As USA Today points out in an editorial page piece against the measure:

Backers of “personhood” angrily deny that some of these things would happen, but the amendment says what it says, not what they say it does.

The law is so far outside the mainstream that no state has passed it.  Mississippi’s extreme government intrusion initiative could appear on Montana’s ballot in 2012.  Montanans have twice declined to sign enough petitions to get it put on the ballot and Colorado voters have twice panned the proposal.  According to the same article, only 20 percent of Americans support a total ban on abortion.  If the measure passes in Mississippi  (or in Montana or other states facing petition drives–OH, MI, and FL among others), it would certainly face immediate constitutional challenges.  Whomever is Attorney General in those states would  then defend the initiatives against the challenges.

 

Caught on Tape

Congressman Dennis Rehberg was caught on tape this weekend waving around a picture of Obama as Qaddafi.  Talking Points Memo has the story, picture and video.   A Rehberg staffer says that the Congressman was just being “polite” by brandishing the cartoon.  But if someone hands you something that ridiculous isn’t the  ”polite” thing to do putting the cartoon away, not promising to give it to a campaign staffer, as he appears to do in the video?  I mean, if he had been handed, say, pornography would he have done the same thing?  As this  Missoula Independent article points out, a classier candidate would have handled the situation differently, while Rehberg “didn’t exactly stand up and set the record straight like McCain did in 2008.”


Posted: June 16, 2011 at 7:46 am

With Sloppy Earmark, Dennis Rehberg Really Does Want to Hurt Your Kids

If you’re paying any attention to what Montana’s congressman is doing (Intelligent Discontent is), you probably know that Dennis Rehberg has spent the last two weeks defending his controversial earmark on a House spending bill.  The earmark, or “rider” as it is known, was so bad, Rehberg’s own party leaders had to pull it from the bill yesterday amid an uproar from health advocates and anti-smoking groups.

 

As The Hill reports:

 

“Rehberg’s language was seen as controversial, and even Rehberg himself agreed to remove the language from the bill.”

 

Whoa.  Why?

 

Immediately after Rehberg introduced and passed the earmark in his committee two weeks ago, the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and the American Academy of Pediatrics—to name just a few—sent urgent warnings to members of Congress.

 

Rehberg tried to require the FDA to make regulations based only on what he calls “hard science.”  If he had his way, tobacco companies would get free rein to market cigarettes to kids by adding menthol and flavorings.  It means schools lunches don’t have to stick to basic nutrition standards.  The unintended consequences of Rehberg’s sloppy earmark abound.

 

But apparently Rehberg had no clue about the controversy until just this week, when he finally agreed to pull his earmark under intense pressure from everyone but Montana’s press corps.

 

That’s right, major national newspapers have been covering the Rehberg earmark daily.

 

The LA Times editorialized even against it.  U.S. News and World Report called it“gibberish”—slamming Montana’s Congressman in the process.  After this story crossed yesterday questioning Rehberg’s ties to big tobacco, his Twitter trend tanked.  Even Larry David’s ex-wife jumped into the debate (yes, that Larry David).

 

But incredibly, not a single newspaper or reporter in Montana has written about the controversial Rehberg earmark (I take that back, Missoula Independent, I guess you sort of did).

 

I know Montana editors aren’t known for allowing their reporters to aim for ace journalism, but come on!

 

As for the earmark itself, it’s yet another classic example of Rehberg shooting first, then asking questions later.

 

Sloppy legislation is what happens when, after a full decade in Congress, a lazy millionaire goat collector finally tries to do something other than name post offices.

 

Posted: August 26, 2010 at 7:12 am

Rattling the cage whilst inside it

According to the dictionary of idioms, the phrase “rattle the cage” means:

to make someone angry on purpose I rattled his cage by telling him I hated his art.
Etymology: based on the idea of rattling (making a noise by repeatedly hitting) the cage to annoy the animal inside it.

The Missoula Independent’s George Ochenski ends each “column” thusly:

Helena’s George Ochenski rattles the cage of the political establishment as a political analyst for the Independent.

The problem is, the only cage Ochenski seems to be rattling these days is the one he’s locked himself in by refusing to veer from the same tired formulaic rut.

Here’s how the formula goes.  Like a Mad Lib, a few words change here and there, but the structure doesn’t vary:

1-There is some kind of environmental issue being decided, it might even be interesting.

2-All the Democrats in Montana are pure evil, especially those that are the most popular, those at the top. Because I say so that’s why, and I’ve been around for like hundreds of years.

3-Everyone should do what I say, and not listen to anyone else, except those that I agree with.

I’ve read this formula time, and time…and time again, and it’s beyond stale.   It’s just a guy getting himself worked up by rattling the cage he built for himself, from the inside.