Caught My Eye…

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Quote for the Day…

The fact that jellyfish have survived for 650 million years despite not having brains is great news for you. – Unknown

Welcome to Caught My Eye (CME)!

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

Here are some of the things that “Caught My Eye” this week:

  • Asking for a Friend (Update)
  • Gianforte & The Feds
  • Montana Chatter
  • U.S. Senate – Missouri
  • One More Thing

ASKING FOR A FRIEND (UPDATE):

Readers may remember earlier this week (Wednesday) I posted the following:

Here’s an interesting question sent to me by a reader…

If a Facebook page based in Montana is spending money for Facebook ads that are either for or against candidates, does the administrator of that Facebook page need to report the expenditures to the Commissioner of Political Practices (COPP)?
The ads this friend has seen are reposts of stories that are negative or positive depending on if they support or don’t support the candidate.

Early Wednesday morning the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices (COPP) send me a direct message on Twitter and a little later followed it up with an email. Later that day I received a two-page response from COPP.

I am very impressed with their quick action.

After reviewing the information, I provided it to my friend and my friend had a question and provided some additional information for clarification. I hope to post the response next week. Stay tuned!

GIANFORTE & THE FEDS:

On Thursday Montana Governor Greg Gianforte (R) made me chuckle when he issued a press release saying, “Biden Vaccine Mandate for Federal Contractors Violates Montana Law.”

You can read the press release HERE.

I guess we may see this decided in court, but I don’t think Biden’s vaccine mandate violates Montana law. It might if Biden singled out state contractors, but it clearly singles out federal contractors. The Governor has the say over State Government and the President has the say over the Federal Government.

I know there will be Facebook and Twitter constitutional scholars who will bring up the 10th Amendment, and that is fine. As I said, the court will probably decide this.

The bottom line is this is nothing but political posturing.

One final message to Gianforte: Stay in your lane, bro.

MONTANA CHATTER:

There was some chatter on social media this week about an article in the Washington Post and New York Times about Montana.

Read the article from the NY Times *HERE.

Read the article from the WaPo *HERE.

*The articles may be behind a paywall.

One of the conservative commentators said that maybe these stories will discourage their readers from wanting to move to Montana.

The conservatives in Montana, while trying to keep outsiders away from our state, seem to forget that their three major elected officials, Daines, Rosendale, and Gianforte were all born elsewhere and migrated here.

I guess the rich, right-leaning outsiders are OK for the conservatives in Montana.

Do these conservatives understand when they say negative things about outsiders, it probably hurts the state?

Probably the best Senator to ever represent Montana, Mike Mansfield, was born in New York City.

Damn those outsiders.

As I said about seven years ago, “I wasn’t born here, but I blog here.”

So, take that…

U.S. SENATE – MISSOURI:

I follow the politics in Missouri some (I was born there) and was shocked to read the story about Republican Missouri Senate candidate Mark McCloskey.

As reported in the Kansas City Star (a great newspaper), McCloskey told an audience last week he believes 13-year-old rape and incest victims should not be allowed to have abortions, stating he had a client who was raped at 13 but who gave birth to a child who now has a master’s degree.

The Star also reported that McCloskey and his wife were catapulted to fame last summer when they brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters who were marching down their street in St. Louis.

If McCloskey wins the primary, it makes the chances of a Democrat winning the U.S. Senate seat a little better (Remember Todd Akin).

Read the complete story from the Kansas City Star HERE.

ONE MORE THING:

For those who have elections next week, don’t forget to return your ballots.

## HAPPY HALLOWEEN ##

18 thoughts on “Caught My Eye…”

  1. This is very, very disturbing. I have voted by mail for the last twenty-five years in Cascade County. Yesterday in the mail I received a letter the election administrator informing me that my signature “did not appear to match the signature on my voter registration and/or your absentee application.”

    WTF? How can that be. Who the hell is making that determination? My signature, albeit a bit sloppy, has not changed. I have never had perfect penmanship. Just ask the nuns who tried to beat it into me. And a signature should not be perfect, for it is unique to each individual. And even at age seventy when writing becomes more difficult, my signature has stayed pretty much the same.

    So now I have to fill out form 13-13-245 MCA and show up with one of the required IDs. In other words, I have to vote twice! Which is pure bullshit. Otherwise my ballot will be marked as a provisional ballot.

    Is this part of the MAGA voter fraud crap? I saw Lola on the tv diligently watching the voting machines. Is Lola looking at individual ballots now too! Or maybe another MAGA?

    So now I will go down first thing Monday and demand an explanation. I feel that we in the public are owed that. Sumthin stinks here. And I want to know why.

    (Anybody else get one? I’m still physically able to go down to their office to correct this issue. I’m sure a lot of elderly folks cannot.)

  3. I remember years ago when Randy Pinocci was sanctioned for FB posts and not declaring them as campaign expenditures. I think it was the first time that had been done re: FB.

    • Mary – I might have missed that one. I know he defeated a complaint filed against him by the MT Dems.
      Thanks, JmB

    • I see that Randy has gone full on wackdoodle. He is to be a featured speaker at the Red Pill Expo, Lafeyette LA November 7. What does a member of the Montana PSC have to do with a nutjob convention? Is he going for the free hotdogs?

  4. Jesse’s mentor and hero is back in the news again, and officially sanctioned by certain states. Of course Montana was mentioned to add to our already bad reputation as a haven for kooks and racists. Scary stuff. What sort of message does this send to any corporation thinking of locating here? Are they supposed to leave all their minority employees behind and bring only their knuckle dragging racists and confederate Nazis? (Mack was sanctioned by law enforcement up north there when he gave his little seminar. And lest we forget, Slaughter requires all his employees to take right wing “Constitution” classes. He even has his deputies teaching it out in some schools. That’s child abuse.)

    “There is a huge problem already with hate groups organizing within law enforcement,” said Jonathan Smith, who served in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration and now heads the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. “We’ve seen repeated waves of it in the past 10 years, with the recruitment of law enforcement officers on the internet. For this to move from the sort of the dark corners of the internet to officially sanctioned trainings from one of the largest states is really frightening in my view.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/ricahard-mack/

    • Larry – I’d rather my law enforcement folks enforce the law and not teach constitution classes. Leave that for the pros. -JmB

    • The Montana legislature passed some additional laws gutting home rule this past session, ostensibly because they they didn’t want people to be subject to different laws in different Montana cities. But by turning a blind eye to constitutional sheriffs in our midst, they’re saying they are perfectly okay that you might be subject to different laws when you cross any county line in Montana. Drive across the line to Lewis and Clark County? Totally different laws.

      But it could be entertaining, if you can imagine the future showdown of “I am the law!” constitutional sheriff Slaughter or whomever vs “I am the law!” constitutional AG Austie.

      More detail on what Mack was telling sheriffs in Texas. Summary: Don’t like a law? Just ignore it. And oh yeah, just like so many other righties, they are “taking America back”. From Americans.

      https://tinyurl.com/bkv6n2ra

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