Good morning, America, how are you? Here are the topics for today’s commentary:
- Merchant Responds
- The Second Debate
- Job Approval
- Football Roundup
MERCHANT RESPONDS:
Earlier this week I wrote about a letter sent from the Great Falls Public Schools to the Cascade County Commissioners that, in part, said: ““We are writing on behalf of Great Falls Public Schools to formally request the duties of Cascade County Elections Office be transferred to the jurisdiction of the Cascade County Commissioners.”
According to reporting from The Electric, Sandra Merchant, Cascade County Clerk and Recorder, and Elections officer issued a response to the school district asking the County Commission to remove election duties from her office.
Basically, Merchant said the county commission could run the elections in the county when they pry that right from her cold dead hands.
That last sentence was a joke.
She did say in The Electric article, “I do not believe that having elections be managed by the County Commissioners is necessary or positive in any light,” Merchant wrote.
It was also reported that County Commissioner Joe Briggs and Merchant plan on having a meeting to discuss the issue when their schedules allow.
I don’t think that most people have a lot of trust in Merchant and her crew who are running elections. Those who know the process best, like the Great Falls Public Schools, want someone else to do it. I hope the County Commissioners take their concerns seriously.
Read the complete article from The Electric HERE.
THE SECOND DEBATE:
Yahoo News says that It only took half an hour Wednesday night for the second Republican presidential debate to descend into chaos.
Former President Donald Trump did not participate. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie called Trump “Donald Duck” and that was about the highlight of the night according to several sources.
According to a poll on Drudge, the winner was former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, with 35%, followed by businessman Vivek Ramaswamy with 20% and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with 19%. These results were checked early this morning so they may change.
Haley may be the one that pulls the Republican Party out of the MAGA mess.
You can read the AP coverage of the debate HERE. Reuters covers it HERE.
JOB APPROVAL:
Gallup has new polls out that show with lawmakers struggling to pass an appropriations bill to fund the government and as a possible shutdown looms, few Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job. Congress’ current 17% approval rating is in line with the 16% to 23% ratings it has received since October 2021. More than eight in 10 U.S. adults, 82%, disapprove of the job Congress is doing.
Meanwhile, Gallup reports that President Joe Biden’s job rating remains mired in the low 40s, with 41% approving and 58% disapproving of his performance. Biden’s approval rating has ranged from 37% to 44% over the past two years.
Read the complete report HERE.
FOOTBALL ROUNDUP:
Thursday Night Football with the Detroit Lions at the Green Bay Packers kicks off week #4 of NFL football. The game starts at 6:15 Mountain Time and is broadcast on Prime Video.
Last week in my college pigskin pick contest, I went 10-0. I did not win any money or prizes, but it’s the little things, right?
As for local college football, I can’t believe the Montana Grizzlies lost to Northern Arizona last week. That was a shocker. The Griz host Idaho State this week. Montana State beat Weber State 40-0 and will host Portland State. It looks like both games kick off at 2:00 p.m. Montana time.
My Missouri Tigers are 4-0 and ranked #23 in the nation. They play at Vanderbilt (2-3) Saturday.
My Kansas City Chiefs play at the New York Jets on Sunday night. It looks like the Chiefs have gotten their offense on track. Maybe it was because Taylor Swift was at the game in Kansas City where the Chiefs hosted the Bears. Of course, some folks did not care about Taylor possibly dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Even Great Falls City Commissioner Rick Tryon took time out from raising our taxes and promoting an enormous public safety and bond levy that will raise our taxes, even more, to say that he does not care about the possible Kelce-Swift romance.
Other people do care. The game was a blowout, but Fox Sports said the game had 24.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched telecast on any network. The game’s viewership was ranked first among 12- to 17-year-old female viewers, 18- to 34-year-old female viewers, and 18- to 49-year-old female viewers. (Source) Then there were the Travis Kelce jersey sales. A spokesperson for apparel manufacturer Fanatics told The Associated Press that sales of Kelce’s jersey blew up Sunday with “a nearly 400% spike in sales throughout the Fanatics network of sites, including NFLShop.com.”
The Denver Broncos lost to the Miami Dolphins 70-20. Whatever experiment they are doing in Denver is not working. I hope it continues to not work for the Broncos as the Chiefs play them twice in October.
The Western Word 
Tryon lists the Beatles as as a musical influence. I imagine he’s heard Taxman.
Haha. Yes!
Polling 1,000 people (w/3.5% margin of error) out of at least 100 million people does not a poll make. I’ll trust a poll a bit more when they start polling at least 30-40 million
I forced myself to watch the debate, telling myself it was what a responsible citizen should do. I had a couple of takeaways: Mike pence loudly talked about being pro-life, and then turned around to say that the time between conviction and execution in capital offense cases should be shortened. To my thinking, that is totally contradictory. Then I was really turned off when Chris Christie and Mike pence had their exchange about sleeping with teachers while discussing their stances on Union membership. And really, curtains?
Thanks for watching it and sharing your thoughts. -JmB
I forced myself to watch the debate, telling myself it was the right thing for a responsible citizen to do.
That Tryon: Always got to love it when someone goes to all the effort to sign into some social media account just to proclaim to the world that they don’t care about something. That’s not caring at it’s finest.
On the subject of not caring, looks like our radical right Rep. Matt “Nope” Rosendale, his fellow running dog Freedom Caucus members, and disgraced ex-president Trump STILL don’t care about our folks in uniform as they cheerlead for a general government shutdown (and continue to load up the defense spending bill with poison pills so even that can’t pass). The service people would not get paid, and civilian contractors would be furloughed.
Presumably that would include all our local service people as well as our friends and neighbors who work out at Malmstrom. Not to mention the impact on all the other Federal employees in town, and businesses where all these people spend their paychecks.
But naturally, congressmen like Rosendale would continue to get a paycheck.
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/27/1201956915/government-shutdown-us-military-national-security
Very good analysis of Tryon. It looks like the Fed government will shut down. Sometimes they find a solution in the last hours. We’ll see. Thanks, JmB
Yes but, still the lingering odor and disdain for the military infuriates me beyond relief to see chicken hawks like Rosendale dishonor our men and women in uniform with their trademark coward’s smirk! Jackie, I know that you served too, honorably. I too served my year in Vietnam. Honorably. And if I said what I actually felt about chickenhawks like Rosie who never served, I know I would be banned by the internet forever. Let’s just say this puke deserves about a week long blanket party to make up for his transgressions against the best people this country has produced. I’ll leave it at that.
Ms. Merchant and the MAGA mantra. If it ain’t broke, we’ll break it. And then whine mightily that it was already broke, and only they can fix it, all the while denying it worked in the first place! Which begs the question, why would a denier not be overjoyed to be relieved of a job they don’t want and serves only to humiliate the deniers for their incompetence? I don’t get it. MAGAs, not quite ready for prime time!