The Western Word is coming to you from deep inside an underground bunker in Montana – where we’re helping to deprogram the Trump cult one column at a time…

Welcome to another exciting edition of Caught My Eye (CME)!

CME is the once a week column that is posted every Friday morning. This is when I take a look at some of the stories I did not have time to write about during the week.

Here are the topics that “Caught My Eye” this week:

• Gianforte & Judges
• Lola Sheldon-Galloway
• Marjorie Taylor Greene
• Biden Wins Again
• One More Thing

GIANFORTE & JUDGES:

In the first month of Republican Greg Gianforte’s term as Montana Governor, I think you could describe it as “go big or go home.”

It’s been 16 years since the last Republican governor in Montana, so time is a wasting! Besides, Gianforte spent about $7.5 million of his own money for the job that pays about $118,000. He needs to get his money’s worth.

This week Lee Newspapers reported that a bill in the Montana Legislature would give the Governor immediate power to directly appoint state district court judges and state Supreme Court judges. The bill would eliminate the Judicial Nominating Commission and give the governor direct appointment power. Judges appointed by the governor still need to run in the next election, all of which are nonpartisan races.

I’ve never been a fan of Montana Supreme Court justices and State District court judges being politicians. I think it lowers the respect people have for them. It has that effect on me. It’s like they prostitute themselves every few years raising money and campaigning and then they go back to acting all professional and a notch above us commoners.

So maybe Gianforte is on to something – they just need to make it where the judges are appointed for a certain length (four years/eight years) and then they go on their merry way and we get a fresh face.

LOLA SHELDON-GALLOWAY:

I don’t dislike people who are pro-life; I just disagree with them when they try to push their beliefs on others when they don’t understand the other person’s circumstances.

It is my hope and prayers that there are fewer abortions in the world and more adoptions.

Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway is a staunchly pro-life Republican from Great Falls. Twitter was all abuzz regarding some comments she made in support of her bill HB 136, “Montana Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”

Her bill says a person may not perform or attempt to perform an abortion of an unborn child capable of feeling pain unless it is necessary to prevent a serious health risk to the unborn child’s mother. For the purposes of this subsection (1), an unborn child is capable of feeling pain when it has been determined by the medical practitioner performing or attempting the abortion or by another medical practitioner on whose determination the medical practitioner relies that the probable gestational age of the unborn child is 20 or more weeks.

As for her comments about the bill, Sheldon-Galloway said this:

Never once has a human ever delivered a platypus or any other kind of animal. We deliver human beings. I haven’t been able to find this, but I thought I read this one time that only 2% of rape victims carry a baby to full-term. Most of the time, nature has a way of miscarrying those children because of the trauma of the act.

On the House floor, she said, “Nature has a way in itself to abort those children.”

These are very cruel things to say.

The Montana Post has the video of her committee testimony HERE.

I’m thinking that Rep. Sheldon-Galloway should know better than to give false or misleading information when testifying.

For saying “Most of the time, nature has a way of miscarrying those children because of the trauma of the act,” I give Rep. Sheldon-Galloway the “Dumbass of the Week” award.

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE:

Last Friday I wrote about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and her likes, shares, and comments on social media about executing Democratic leaders. I said that Greene should not be a U.S. Representative and that she should be in jail.

She was elected for the first time after most of her comments were made.

That piece of information did not make much difference even after Greene addressed the issue on the House floor before the votes.

On Thursday the U.S. House voted to strip her committee assignments by the House Democratic majority Thursday over racist remarks, her embrace of conspiracy theories, and her past endorsement of violence against leading Democratic officials. (AP)

The vote in the House was 230-199. Montana’s only Representative, Republican Matt Rosendale, voted NO (with the 199). Only 11 Republicans voted with the Democrats (230).

The sad thing is that 199 Republican members of the U.S. House seemed to agree with Greene and/or put their party over country. Think about that.

BIDEN WINS AGAIN:

Gallup reported this week that fifty-seven percent of Americans approve of the job Joe Biden is doing as president in Gallup’s first measurement of the 46th president. That is just below the average 60% rating for post-World War II presidents elected to their first term.

Gallup also reported that Biden’s 37% disapproval rating is among the highest for a president’s first reading, second only to Donald Trump’s 45%. Americans were much more inclined to form early judgments — good or bad — of these two most recent presidents than their predecessors, with no opinion responses typically exceeding 20% for presidents prior to 2017.

Trump’s approval rating was 45% as was his disapproval rating. That means that Biden beat Trump with a higher initial approval rating (57-45) and with a lower disapproval rating (37-45).

ONE MORE THING:

GO CHIEFS!!!

 

## WEAR A MASK TODAY ##