Tagged: Neil Livingstone

Posted: February 10, 2013 at 5:02 pm

Stapleton Jumps In

by Cowgirl

Corey Stapleton, former state senator from Billings, has thrown his hat into the ring for US Senate, for the right to challenge Max Baucus in the race. Stapleton turned in a fair effort for Governor in 2012, but ran out of steam in the end. In his gubernatorial campaign, Stapleton informed us that he served in the Navy and once was a wrestler. The question is what, specifically, he will propose as a candidate or will criticize Baucus for. His first day on the hustings produced bland, empty charges of “big deficits in Washington” and the like. Generally speaking, the GOP field is shaping up to be seven dwarfs with no Snow White. Champ Edmunds, Scott Reichner, Stapleton–all are state legislators with little to recommend them beyond their service in the legislature. And as usual with Republican primaries in Montana, the field will likely consist of all, or nearly all, men. Continue reading →

Posted: January 23, 2013 at 6:43 am

Livingstone Resurfaces

A small crowd of gun rights advocates came to the Capitol this weekend to protest Obama’s plans to crack down on gun violence in America.

And wouldn’t you know it, one of the speakers at the rally was Neil Livingstone, as you can see from this AP photo. The GOP gubernatorial candidate lost in the primary in 2012 when it was revealed that he had once authored an instructional book for world business travelers which included a chapter on how to solicit a prostitute. Protect Yourself in an Uncertain World: A Comprehensive Handbook for your Personal and Business Security is available for $4.98 at Amazon. Continue reading →

Posted: January 1, 2013 at 8:46 am

Cowgirl Blog’s Best and Worst of 2012

Happy New Year Cowgirl readers! Here are some of the highlights and lowlights that made 2012 so memorable–and these Cowgirl posts the year’s most read.

Best book by a GOP candidate:

When Republican gubernatorial hopeful Neil Livingstone admitted to the Associated Press this year that he was once “a guest on a yacht full of hookers in Monte Carlo,” few people realized that Livingstone is actually a leading authority on such matters.

Indeed, it turns out that Livingstone actually published a detailed instructional manual in 1997, which provides candid advice for world business travelers on how to solicit a high-quality prostitute.

This is not a joke. This valuable handbook appears as a chapter within a greater literary work by Livingstone, a book entitled “Protect Yourself in an Uncertain World” (Amazon, $3.39 used). You can read the Cowgirl Blog’s review of Livinstone’s masterpiece here.

Worst TEA Party call to action:

As a child I learned that empty vessels make the most noise. That rings especially true this year after a Montana TEA Party leader called for a boycott of all news. The TEA Party leader said the boycott was needed because news agencies in Billings and elsewhere “are complicit in the destruction of America.”

Most hypocritical speech of 2012:

The award for this year’s Most Hypocritical Speech goes to Congressman Steve Daines. The congressman’s speech at the RNC lionized his ancestor as not being “Saved by Government” when that ancestor received a huge government handout in the form of a homestead under a federal program called the Homestead Act.

Best way to dispose of a TEA Party imbecile, for good:

Part of what has made Governor Brian Schweitzer one of the most popular governors in America is his ability to stand up to the TEA Party. This made How to Dispose of a Tea Party Imbecile, For Good one of 2012′s most popular posts.

Montana’s stalest political cliches:

Two hackneyed phrases sucked the last shred meaning out of Montana political pablum this year more than any others.

The phrase “double down” became so overused in Montana politics that anyone who hears or reads it now doubles over. Enough already.

And any time you hear a politician propose, “a uniquely Montana solution,” notice that the cliche is never followed by an actual example of what that solution might be. Everyone knows that the people spewing this nonsense are doing so to disguise the fact they they have no actual solutions to offer. Offenders, you know who you are.

Best example of ridiculous Fox News lies:

Fox News this week called the Westboro Baptist Church a “left-wing cult” in their story about the group’s protests of the Newtown shooting victims’ funerals. As the Atlantic Wire asks, “if these people are “left-wing,” just how far “right” is Fox News?

Most outlandish conspiracy theories:

A Montana legislator is behind both of 2012′s dumbest conspiracy theories. Chair of the House Judiciary Committee Rep. Krayton Kerns (R-Laurel) this year authored the conspiratorial screed on how birth control is the “death nail in the coffin of our Republic”. He also made national headlines after the Cowgirl blog uncovered his belief that the relocation of 60 bison — which he blamed on Walt Disney’s movie “Bambi” — could lead to $25 a gallon gas prices as part of a liberal government plot.

Worst movie of the year:

Kalispell movie producer Gerald Molen can’t figure out why the Academy overlooked this high quality of this piece of fine art. Perhaps because is is actually one of the single most oppressively embarrassing movies ever made, reaching levels of galling unwatchability. Meanwhile, the director and writer of the movie, and the author of the book on which it is based, has been caught with his pants down.

Posted: November 14, 2012 at 6:58 am

Hill, Rehberg Have Time for Reflection

Several things are going through Rick Hill’s and Denny Rehberg’s minds today. First, he is wondering why he ignored the old adage, “pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.” Taking the $500,000 donation in circumvention of Montana law–even though the law was in a state of limbo–was a bad move. It wasn’t worth the risk, and Hill’s political instincts were clearly dulled from years on the sidelines. Taking the loot ensured weeks of awful headlines, branding him as a guy in a smoke filled room, flanked by fat cats chomping on cigars, and talking proudly of the fact they own the candidate, and handing him a briefcase packed with big bills.

Second, he must be reconsidering the pick of Sonju. Hill only won by 1000 votes in Yellowstone County which makes victory virtually impossible for a Republican. Presumably, any Billings name on the ticket would have brought in substantial votes there, but would have left Hill’s performance in the Flathead (where Sonju comes from) largely intact. Sonju got the good end of the bargain. He’s now a rising star with statewide name recognition and will run for statewide office soon, a blueprint stamped out by Steve Daines, who ran with Roy Brown in 2008. His ticket tanked, but Daines carved out his own little thing, and made it work.

The other thing that Hill is kicking himself about is that he way overestimated the likelihood of a competitive primary, and the strength of the idiots who challenged him. All of them embarrassed themselves and were never serious contenders at all. They were political neophytes on the statewide scene, and if Hill had gauged this accurately, he would have done two things: pick a Billings running mate. (Sonju was a pick designed to shore up right wing votes in the Flathead, a conservative battleground), and he could have saved his money, and refrain from spending anything in the primary. Hill believed, in error, that his past sins of marital infidelity would blow up in his face in a primary, especially one inhabited by “moral” conservatives like Essman and Miller and Stapleton. He turned out to have been wrong. None of those yahoos had the skill or finances to mount a serious challenge. But Hill blinked, and Bullock came out of the gate in June with a huge financial edge, ran a mistake-free campaign, turned out key constituencies like Indian voters, and never looked back.

As for Denny, his contemplation today should be about his choice. Why did he choose to run for Senate? The answer cannot be that he wanted to accomplish some affirmative thing for Montana, because he does not believe in that type of stuff. He believes in negative government, occupying an office for the purpose of keeping liberals, or Democrats, out of it, lest they destroy society. So all Rehberg was doing was trying to upgrade the size of his office, get a larger budget for offices and an entourage of staffers, and have people call him Senator.

Denny is also probably wondering why he ever voted for a pay raise; and why he voted to allow the federal Homeland Security office to have domain over public lands. The pay-raises produced brutal copy for negative ads by Tester and Dems, while the land grab enraged Rehberg’s own base, especially when they were reminded about it in a terrific ad funded by an environmental group, who successfully used the issue to get conservatives to flee Rehberg and vote Libertarian. Dan Cox the libertarian got a record 6.5 points.

And Rehberg is also wondering why his twenty million dollar barrage of attack ads, telling voters that Tester supports Obama 95 percent of the time, was so ineffective. After all, Karl Rove came here and told Denny that he’d take care of business and put a knife in Tester by linking him to the president. But Rehberg knows the answer to this, and its eating his guts out: Tester worked hard for constituents for six years, hammering things out for loggers, vets, hunters, the elderly, Indian peoples, women and so on. And he earned the trust of Montana citizens, which allowed them to conceptualize Tester as someone distinct from Obama. Rehberg, on the other hand, sat around for twelve years, doing nothing at all except complaining about Democrats, riding the occasional right-wing wave, and free loading on a generally conservative state electorate. A worker always beats a free loader.

Posted: August 18, 2012 at 9:21 am

The Crew that Brought You the Iraq War, Hanging out in Whitefish

We now know that Karl Rove, the slob who helped bring us the George Bush presidency, two wars at a trillion dollars a piece, a giant deficit, and a giant economic mess, was in the Flathead last week for at least two purposes.

First, he was at a Whitefish fundraiser. The Huffington Post reports that he was raising money for Denny Rehberg and the Republican Party, with special guest Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell is the imbecile who said recently in a FOXNews interview that it should not be a concern at all that 35 million cannot afford medical care, to the shock of the FOXNews interviewer Chris Wallace.

The second thing Rove was doing was meeting with Ryan Zinke. Zinke proudly tweeted about this meeting of the minds. Zinke, who is coming off of a lopsided defeat in his campaign for lieutenant governor with Neil Livingstone (aka The Hooker Man), has started an organization called SOFA, for the purpose of attacking Obama over his management of the armed forces. He evidently was meeting with Rove to discuss strategy and perhaps get money.

Zinke is claiming that Obama failed our country by revealing the identity of the Seal Team that got Bin Laden (not the names of the individual seals, but rather, revealing that it was Seal Team 6). There are other theories about this you’ll want to read. Zinke also plans to try to convince Americans that Obama is taking personal credit for the raid. Zinke, who was a member of Seal Team six many years ago, intends to raise money to conduct a “swiftboat” type of attack on Obama regarding this matter.

You should appreciate the irony that Zinke was rubbing elbows with George Bush’s mastermind in Whitefish. Rove was the man who micromanaged the publicity event aboard the aircraft carrier, nine years before the Iraq war was actually ended (by Obama, thankfully), where the dunce George Bush (talk about trying to take personal credit) landed in a fighter jet beneath a banner declaring, in large letters, “Mission Accomplished.”

The mission was accomplished–by Obama in 2011, in Pakistan, when Bin Laden got wacked and dumped into the ocean. So you gotta love the idea of Zinke and Rove scheming together to try to take down Obama. For that matter, you gotta love Rehberg and McConnell being there two. Those two geniuses were among the herd that bought into the Iraq war, hook, line and sinker, and got so revved up about it that they basically were accusing anybody who opposed the war of “siding with the terrorists.”

The best news, I suppose, is that if Zinke’s new effort is anything like his campaign for governor, Obama has nothing to worry about.

Posted: July 9, 2012 at 8:07 am

GOP Gov Candidates: Where Are They Now?

Have you been eagerly awaiting news of what’s next for the crackerjack slate of GOP-ers who failed to win their party’s nomination for Governor?

In an email presumably addressed to the one “Gentleman” who must have inquired along these lines, the former running mate of international prostitute guide-book author Neil Livingstone has provided an answer to that question.

As James Conner at the Flathead Memo reports, former state Senator Ryan Zinke (R-Whitefish) has begun raising money for a super-PAC. The PAC is called “SOFA,” though it is not meant to intentionally invoke the couch-potato-ish manner in which Livingstone and Zinke attempted to fund their own unsuccessful campaign for Governor and Lt. Gov of Montana. Instead, Zinke will be raising money for this super-PAC via the no-fail method of selling water bottles online. Stylish men’s sleeveless t-shirts like this one are also on offer, which you’ll want to order now before the TEA Partiers buy them all up.

Zinke’s entire email is pasted below:

Gentleman,

I am pleased to announce the stand-up of Special Operations for America (SOFA) and the soforamerica.org website. SOFA is a super Political Action Committee (PAC) with a simple mission: Defeat the Obama train wreck by leveraging various Special Operations organizations and military members in the key battleground states. As you know, the military is not politically monolithic and it is critical that all active and prior serviceman are both informed and energized. SOFA will be the voice of the Special Operations community by providing well researched and documented media presentations that expose the truth about the state of our military and related National Security interests. We are all in this fight together and with your help, we shall prevail. Please pass the website to all. An electronic copy of the SOFA organization and specific objectives is available upon request.

Keep your Powder Dry and your Aim True,

Senator Ryan Zinke Chairman
Special Operations for Americahttp://soforamerica.org/

Posted: June 11, 2012 at 12:18 pm

Let’s Talk About Rick Hill’s Record

Now that Rick Hill is the Republican nominee for Governor of Montana, it’s a good time to take a closer look at his record. It isn’t good.

The Democratic party has already pointed out that Hill led the effort to create a new 4% sales tax. He supported the privatization of Social Security, voted against increasing the minimum wage, and backed special tax breaks for big corporations. As head of the workers compensation board, he set up the most expensive worker’s compensation system in the U.S.

Democrats aren’t the only people with concerns about Hill’s abysmal record. Here’s how members of Hill’s own party explained why Hill would make a terrible Governor.

Corey Stapleton first pointed out in a campaign ad (which was later backed up by the Associated Press) that Rick Hill not only made a king’s ransom renting office space to the Montana state government in the 1990s and 2000s, but that his wife Betti used her job in Governor Judy Martz’s office to steer business his way. Thus did Rick and Betti Hill become very wealthy people. Stapleton also pointed out the sales tax Hill proposed.

Ken Miller raised concerns about how much time Rick Hill spends in California, saying “perhaps Congressman Hill should have spent more time enjoying what Montana has to offer,” instead.

Neil Livingstone said Hill failed with Montana’s work comp system, “I think a lot of the problems that we have today we can attribute to Rick and his tenure there […] he really didn’t get his arms around the problem. Today there are 19 people working in the State Fund that make more than the governor […] and they give each other big bonuses of several hundred thousand dollars a year”

Bob Fanning expressed concerns at a GOP forum about Hill’s support in Congress for the de-regulation of banks and the management of the U.S. economy:

“Mr. Hill, during your tenure in the 106^th congress, I pointed out that there were four (4) sectional charges placed underneath the American economy that blew it up. Number one (1), The Community Reinvestment Act and the expansion of Fannie Mae between 1993-2001. Number two (2), the continued de-regulation of credit default swaps, which are the instruments that blew up the economy. Number three (3), the repeal of the Glass-Stegal Act, which ultimately turned our banks into securitization mills and blew up the economy. And, number four (4), the Commodity Modernization Act. With three million people out of their homes, and 14 million people out of their jobs, do you feel any reason that you should be held to account for our financial crisis because your votes were all yea [in favor of these measures]?”

Now that the primary is over Montanans will start to look deeper in to Rick Hill’s background. Given what’s known already, its unlikely they’ll like what they see.

Posted: June 2, 2012 at 2:46 pm

Report: Rick Hill Used Wife’s Influence to Get Plum State Contracts

Dirty Betti

The Associated Press is reporting that Rick Hill not only made a king’s ransom renting office space to the Montana state government in the 1990s and 2000s, but that his wife Betti used her job in Governor Judy Martz’s office to steer business his way. Thus did Rick and Betti Hill become very wealthy people.

E-mails from Betti Hill, obtained by the AP, show that she was using the influence of the Governor’s office to arrange meetings for Rick with high-level players in state government who dole out state rental contracts. It stinks to high heaven.

Betti and Rick put pressure on the Martz administration to kill a plan to construct a new building. Martz put the new building project in her budget. But shortly after Rick and Betti met with Lt. Governor Karl Ohs and several cabinet officials to complain about it, it got yanked from Martz’s budget. Why did Rick and Betti want to kill the project? Because a new building in Helena would have brought down the price of rent in the Helena market, and landlords, naturally, do not like that. Oops.

By the sound of it, Betti Hill was large and in charge, busting out her Helena GOP street cred, ordering people throughout state government (even the Lt. Governor) not to do anything that might compromise Rick’s business, and even going to bat for other landlords, including a “party leader” who owned a building and needed a favor. As a result, the Hills’ business stayed sweet and they kept raking in taxpayer dough, more than a million bucks worth.

Hill also appears to have used his job as Congressman and his perch as State Fund chair to get similar sweet treatment, since these jobs overlapped with his sweetheart deals. While sitting in these posts, ranting the GOP’s favorite rant about “less spending” and “less government,” he was guzzling down taxpayer money that should have saved rather than spent. Montana taxpayers got bilked because the rent was too damn high.

Betti’s conduct might well be a violation of the ethics law, which says that a state worker may not use state facilities for a personal or business interest.

At any rate, the Hills are clearly no model of fiscal restraint. Betti clearly interpreted her job in Martz’s office as nothing more than a nice opportunity to rake in some serious scratch for her and her hubby, so that they could fly first class to their posh Palm Springs crib.

These e-mails vindicate Corey Stapleton, Hill’s GOP primary opponent, who accused Hill of getting cake deals and special treatment from state government for his mega-landlord business.

But will any of this affect the outcome of Tuesday’s GOP primary? I doubt it. Sure, it is in the newspaper, but most right-wing voters do not read the newspaper. Glenn Beck is unlikely to cover this story.

Stapleton and Miller and Livingstone should have done their homework, hit the pavement, and moved this damaging story a month ago. It might have been a game changer. But they were all either too lazy or too stupid (or both, probably) to bother. Coming out on the Friday before the election, this story will have very little effect on Tuesday’s election.

However, these revelations will be center stage during the long general election battle ahead. Rick Hill is now CORRUPT LANDLORD, INSURANCE EXECUTIVE, CONGRESSMAN, LOBBYIST (and let’s not forget ADULTERER). Geez, if that isn’t a resume for success in politics, I don’t know what is. These are just about the five worst things an American political candidate can possibly be. Plus, Dems will be able to run TV ads against Hill that will simply repeat the accusations made against Hill by all of his GOP opponents. That’s a rare opportunity in a general election, and it’s a very effective play.