You think you know stress? When I grew up if you missed a TV show you just missed it. Forever. –Unknown

Today’s independent commentary deals with these people/issues:

• State Work Period
• Missoulian Editorial Board
• Jeffrey Epstein

STATE WORK PERIOD:

I’ve written several times about U.S. Senator Steve Daines and U.S. Representative Greg Gianforte, both Republicans, not holding in-person town hall meetings in Montana.

They are scared to face the tough questions. I’ve called them chickenshits in the past and that may be harsh, so I’ll just call them cowards.

Now their hometown newspaper, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle (BDC), has noticed and the BDC editorial board urged Daines and Gianforte to meet with Montanans face-to-face during the “State Work Period” which is also known as August recess or fundraising time!

The BDC editorial board said:

Congress is on a break now and will be until September. According to the Senate’s calendar, the next few weeks are set aside as a “State Work Period.” Let’s hope Montana’s senators and congressman take that suggestion to heart and make themselves available for face-to-face townhalls where all their constituents have an opportunity to question them on issues that concern them most.
That doesn’t mean “telephone town halls” in which questions are screened. That doesn’t mean “roundtables” where participants are carefully selected to participate. We’re talking face-to-face meetings where all participants and questions are welcome.

Daines is running for reelection; Gianforte is running for Governor. It’s awfully hard to vote for someone who is afraid to meet with the voters.

You can read the whole BDC editorial by clicking HERE.

MISSOULIAN EDITORIAL BOARD:

The Montana Republican Party Chair, Don “K” Kaltschmidt, responded to an August 3 editorial by the Missoulian Editorial Board telling U.S. Senator Steve Daines to watch his words and better represent Montana.

It all started with President Trump’s “go back” tweet and Daines saying he stands with the President.

The Editorial Board said that instead of demonstrating Montana-style statesmanship, Daines doubled down with his own rhetoric, posting on social media that “Montanans are sick and tired of listening to anti-American, anti-Semite, radical Democrats trash our country and our ideals. We’re the greatest country in the world. I stand with @realdonaldtrump.”

I do appreciate some Montana papers still doing editorials. I do about five a week. They are welcome to use a few of mine to fill space and start arguments.

One of the most important things I learned from Kaltschmidt’s response is that he has a tattoo from his Marine Corps days that says “America, love it or leave it.” This, in my humble opinion, makes Kaltschmidt the best chair of the Montana Republican Party ever!

By the way, I always wanted a tattoo that said “REO Speedwagon” with their logo, but it never happened.

Kaltschmidt warns:

Make no mistake, socialists have infiltrated our country. They were born or immigrated here, have benefited from the freedoms America provides, but now wish to alter America’s capitalist, free-market-based economy to an everyone-gets-the-same-no-matter-how-hard-you-work socialist economy.

I disagree with that. Socialists have been in our country for a long time. With social media, we just hear more about them.

Kaltschmidt says that while the ink fades, the sentiment endures. He says that he is a Marine who unapologetically favors action over words, and that he swore his duty to actively defend America against all threats foreign and domestic, and that he actively defends her today.

I also took the same oath a few times in my years in the military. I actively defend her today against the clowns to the left of me and the jokers to the right.

Kaltschmidt closes his response saying that the Missoulian is welcomed to criticize me for my actions, but perhaps before casting stones toward Republicans, the Missoulian should fill its left hand with stones earned by Democrats.

That’s a nice closing, but c’mon man – this is the Missoulian you’re talking about. Why waste your time?

JEFFREY EPSTEIN:

In case you missed it, Financier Jeffrey Epstein reportedly killed himself while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in New York, officials said Saturday.

The Associated Press reported that Epstein was accused of paying underage girls hundreds of dollars in cash for massages and then sexually abusing them at various locations, including homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and New York from 2002 through 2005.

This death is very interesting and raises many questions. The AP reported that Epstein had recently been injured with bruises to the neck while in custody, though it was not clear if those were self-inflicted or the result of an assault.

He was placed on suicide watch, and then he was removed. It was reported that he was to be checked by guards every 30 minutes, but that did not happen because the guards were working “extreme” overtime in the unit where Epstein was housed.

After the death, conspiracy folks shared many thoughts and even the President retweeted a conspiracy theory. The AP reported that Epstein’s relationships with President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, and Britain’s Prince Andrew were at the center of those online rumors and theories.

It’s a sad state of affairs in our jail and prison system that someone can take their own life. The Huff Post reports that in 2014, three-hundred and seventy-two people killed themselves, accounting for more than a third of all inmate deaths that year, according to the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics report on mortality in local jails.

We’ll probably find out that Epstein did indeed kill himself, and if that is the case, then our system failed us.

I’ll bet with the conspiracy folks leading the way we’ll probably see photos one of these days of Epstein enjoying a cold drink on the beach of one of his private Caribbean islands.

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