Missoulapolis

UPDATE: Suicide.

All respect and love to Kitteh, but I do suspect a alcohol-drugs-pharma connection here.

UPDATE: It gets curiouser. A commenter purporting to be Gary Bassett’s sister writes at Missoula Red Tape:

Thank you for the FEW people that could see that there may have been more to the story. But, no mercy was shown for my brother, who was mentally ill and told the police he was. He had been under the care of a psychiatrist for decades and was on medication that he was having problems getting. It seems that your community has no provisions for a Dr. care for someone on Medicare.

Gary was a Vietnam vet, a helicopter pilot. He would take his fellow soldiers out to the combat zones to return later a pick them up in body bags. He was never the same after he came home.

He was all alone in your town and has loved and had kitties all his life. He would call me and tell me the cute things Mercy was doing. She was his delight and she loved him. Why do you think she still showed love for humans after she was so badly hurt???

The police came to his door, he told them he was going to kill himself..They knew he was a disabled vet and under psychiatric care. With no mercy in their souls they drove Gary into his darkest corner. Why. with what they knew, did they not send a professional to talk to Gary. So Mercy is dead..my brother is dead..May God Show Mercy on all of you who judge and are without sin.

Gary was a retired MD a psychiatrist..surprise?? He leaves, a wife, 6 kids, a mother, a father, a brother and his sister who knew how good and kind he was.

I assume there will be some followup on this.

There must be more to this story don’t you think? Like the perp doing a few Jaeger-Red Bull-meth cocktails, or having a hangover from same?

UPDATE: So I’m on my way to the dentist, down 39th, and I notice the cops are surrounding a house off on Dore Lane.  I told the gals at the dentist’s office and one said, it’s probably the Cat Guy!  When I came back down 39th they had a complete perimeter set up…

She was right.

Missoula police are surrounding an apartment in South Missoula at this hour, where a man believed to have been involved in a high-profile kitten abuse case lives.

Officers responded to the scene around 1:20 this afternoon and have sealed off the neighborhood around Dore Lane and 38^th Street. That’s directly east of the K Mart on Brooks.

An MPD spokesman tells Montana’s News Station reporters on the scene officers have surrounded the unit where the man lives, and a SWAT team is being brought to the scene. Officers have not entered the house as of 2:30 p.m.

The RNC resolution Gabe blogged about at Ace yesterday has just arrived in my hot little hands.

WHEREAS, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have recently supported primary or special election candidates who professed allegiance to the Republican Party but who, as their circumstances changed and to serve their own interests, turned against the Republican Party and became or supported a candidate of another party; and

WHEREAS, many Republican leaders and Republican organizations were undermined and lost credibility as a result of the actions of such candidates; and

WHEREAS, there will be many more decisions regarding the support of candidates, and many more opportunities to enhance or diminish the credibility of Republicans and Republican organizations, in the coming election cycle; now there for be it

RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee urges its leadership and the leadership of all Republican organizations to carefully screen the record and statements of all candidates who profess to be Republicans and who desire the support of Republican leaders and Republican organizations, and determine that they wholeheartedly support the core principles and positions of the Republican Party as expressed in the Platform of the Republican Party adopted at the 2008 National Convention; and be it further

RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee urges that no support, financial or otherwise, be given to candidates who clearly do not support the core principles and positions of the Republican Part as expressed in the Platform of the Republican Party adopted in the 2008 National Convention.

As approved by the Committee on Resolutions, January 28, 2010

Of course, it’s just a resolution, not a rule.  Apparently it inspired by the proposed list of 10 principles I blogged about in December.  It was supported by Montana GOP chair Will Deschamps.

Will it work? Namely, prevent more Dede Scozzafava debacles?

So, I talked to the project manager at the County and this latest work on the Grant Creek restoration and flood control project is supposed to wind up next week. Uh huh.

This whole deal (rather ordeal) was sold to the Mullan area residents as both flood control and a restoration of the original look and flow of Grant Creek, which had been twisted and torqued out of its natural state when it was diverted into Dougherty Ditch about 100 years ago.  The map I saw showed contouring around the creek in place of the existing steep cutbanks.

Then after Katrina FEMA got involved, passing new rules as to which natural features could be mapped in as flood protection and upset all the basic design assumptions for the Grant Creek project.  To wit, the Milwaukee Road railroad berm no longer counted, nor did the built-up Mullan Road. Also, Dougherty wouldn’t let the excavators play on his land, even though clay and silt runoff from his land was filling up the creek bed below.

Anyway, we ended up with three dreary, utilitarian basins which did give us a nice “lake” (with ducks) last spring.   We got good flood control, but contouring, natural look?  Not so much.  We put out cracked corn and prayed for peace and quiet.

But soon the stakes reappeared. They couldn’t leave well enough alone. Apparently Fish, Wildlife and Parks was involved, and claimed these new wetlands as bull trout habitat.  So the stream bed had to be reworked even more, by tearing out over half the existing vegetation, filling in a big chunk of the old Dougherty irrigation ditch and diverting it around to the north, widening it out, building short levees, and generally tearing everything all to hell.

With any luck the goobs will run out of money soon and go away forever.  I hope some of the greenery, such as it was, grows back in my lifetime.

They tore out all the vegetation north of the creek and built up a small levee.

...and put in this stupid dam...

This is where they filled in old Dougherty Ditch to divert the flow.

Green shoots! Actually red dogwood planted last year.

Another fascinating emperor-has-no-clothes moment, courtesy of Newsweek and a JAMA article from last year.

The placebo effect-that is, a medical benefit you get from an inert pill or other sham treatment-rests on the holy trinity of belief, expectation, and hope. But telling someone with depression who is being helped by antidepressants, or who (like my friend) hopes to be helped, threatens to topple the whole house of cards…

More than 50 years on, the presumed effectiveness of antidepressants that act this way remains the chief support for the chemical-imbalance theory of depression. Absent that effectiveness, the theory hasn’t a leg to stand on. Direct evidence doesn’t exist.

Who knew?  (an MD says piffle, of course antidepressants work!)

HDR Engineering and Jensen won’t be happy until they’ve ripped every living thing out.

Please, make it stop.

I don’t know why comments by Rep. Mike Miller and Max Bucks were caught by Akismet and marked as spam - my apologies.   It was not my intention and I don’t know why it happened.

There is a limit on links and language but I saw no issues so - ?  Anyway they have been liberated…I guess it’s time to upgrade Wordpress.

Patterico has uncovered what appears to be curiously similar letters-to-the-editor by “Ellen Light” and “Mark Spivey” appearing in publications all over the country - decrying the Republicans,  supporting ObamaCare and so forth.

Whoever is behind this doesn’t seem to realize that the dupes can be uncovered with a simple Google search…anyway it made me wonder how original some of our local efforts are.

This letter appeared in the Jan. 22 Missoulian from a Brett Schandelson:

In January 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that the constitutional right to privacy protects the right of women to make private decisions about the most intimate of matters – including the decision to terminate pregnancies that threaten their health and well-being. A minority of Americans has consistently opposed this important decision and has worked tirelessly to overturn Roe, since it was decided 37 years ago.

Now, anti-choice activists have set their sights on the health care reform bill before Congress with the goal of using reform to eliminate private health insurance coverage for abortion for millions of women. The most extreme proposal before Congress is the Stupak amendment, which would prevent millions of women from using their own money to buy private health insurance that covers abortion.

Restricting access to private health insurance coverage for abortion in effect denies women the choices that Roe secured. Women will not stand by silently as anti-choice forces work to undermine their rights and health care coverage. Congress must vote for a final health care reform bill that includes the health care coverage women need.

***Googling***  on one line.  Aha! Note the resemblance to this letter in the St. Petersburg Times the next day:

On Jan. 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe vs. Wade that the constitutional right to privacy protects the right of women to make private decisions about the most intimate of matters — including the decision to terminate pregnancies that threaten their health and well-being…

Now, antichoice activists have set their sights on the health care reform bill before Congress with the goal of using reform to eliminate private health insurance coverage for abortion. The most extreme proposal before Congress is the Stupak amendment, which would prevent millions of women from using their own money to buy private health insurance that covers abortion. Restricting access to private health insurance coverage for abortion in effect denies women the choices that Roe secured.

Women will not stand by silently as antichoice forces work to undermine their rights and health care coverage. It is imperative that Congress remove the Stupak abortion ban from health care reform.

This letter was submitted by a Barbara A. Zdravecky of Planned Parenthood.

I suppose this is nothing unusual.  There is something rote and predictable about these cut-and-paste jobs that make my eyes glaze over.  These letters are generated by bots not writers.

Maybe someday letters to the editor will be syndicated, like op-ed cartoons.

This sounds like a good move, but let’s hope the software vendor who just lost this $18 million contract is from out of state, yes?

Anyway, the governor probably saved the Labor Department and business end-users from a mess of transition headaches. Software projects are ugly (and don’t ask me how I know).

Heh, they say this like they actually knew or something.

…while economists predict the worst is over and recovery is on the horizon in 2010, no real job growth is expected for at least another year.

“It won’t feel like a recovery until there’s job growth, which won’t happen until 2011,” said Patrick Barkey, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana.

What a gig, eh?   Base your projections on recent events.  Rinse, repeat, ka-ching!

Contrary to popular belief, Montana’s economy didn’t lag behind the rest of the nation in terms of the effects of the recession. Data show that Montana’s downturn, for the most part, was in sync with the rest of the country, Barkey said.

What was lagging was the ability to collect reliable and timely data in Montana, he said.

Which brings me back to my old perennial, the Gran Salida.

Why do I pay attention to anecdotal evidence? Because academics are always the last to find out what’s happening. If you wait until a social trend turns up in some professor’s peer-reviewed charts, you are waiting too long.

My guess is they won’t know what will happen in 2011 until about 2015.