Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/blog/page/20/)
This is the weblog page of Last Best News. Here you will find some news, perhaps, but also lots of commentary, opinion and satire. Just so you know.
Politico predicts that Donald Trump should easily win Montana this fall, and quotes Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., as saying that he hopes to be able to work with Trump if that happens. “He’s got some pretty goofy opinions, but hopefully we’ve got some stuff we can work on,” Tester said. Continue Reading →
First Merle, then Prince and now comes the news that Guy Clark is gone, too. Clark was a songwriter’s songwriter, one of those funny, literate, hardboiled, authentic masters who showed the way to so many others. It didn’t hurt that he was a good guitar player with an affecting, whiskey-soaked voice. I didn’t start listening to Clark until about 15 years ago, and I came at him backward, through listening to Steve Earle and then turning to Clark, who was a mentor to Earle. Clark played at the Texas-heavy 2011 edition of the Red Ants Pants Music Festival in White Sulphur Springs. I can’t remember where I was, but I know I couldn’t make the festival that year. Continue Reading →
Reports last week that Donald Trump called media outlets years ago claiming under another name to be his own publicist brought back memories of my first encounter with Donald Cyphers. While I have never been as obsessed with Cyphers as Ed Kemmick is, I wrote a series of columns for the Billings Outpost about his legal and financial irregularities after he took over the weekly Lockwood Crier and converted it to the Montana News Association. For a while, I was Cyphers’ Enemy No. 1. Those columns are no longer available on the web (you can find a few quotes here) but I recall that when I first heard about the change in ownership of the Crier, I called and was connected to a man who identified himself as “Mark Johnson.” Continue Reading →
Can I admit that until this afternoon I hadn’t even checked out the whole Outside magazine best-town-in-the-nation thing? I had seen headlines and photos and mentions of it on Facebook and Twitter, on the Q2 website and in the Gazette, but I hadn’t bothered to really look into it yet. I’m busy, for one thing. For another, in my Gazette column over the years I took many opportunities to make fun of this or that contest, including several previous Outside contests. As I pointed out every time, these contests are not designed primarily to determine which town is the coolest, or the family-friendliest or the best to retire in, etc. Continue Reading →
This clip from National Geographic shows a baby bison that survives a lonesome night, then fends off a wolf until help arrives. Continue Reading →
A few weeks ago, I wrote a column more or less defending tourists unwise enough to think their trip to Yellowstone National Park should include a close encounter with a bison. I’m going to have to reconsider my stance after reading about the father-and-son team who put a bison calf in their SUV and took it to a ranger station, worried that the creature was freezing to death. What’s next? Will tourists net fish to save them from drowning? Maybe capture a pelican and put it in a cage so it doesn’t get hurt falling from the sky? Continue Reading →
https://vimeo.com/166314068
In the line outside the Montana Pavilion at MetraPark in Billings on Wednesday, thousands of people were waiting to get into the Bernie Sanders rally. David Scott Smith, armed with a video camera, asked some of those people why they were supporting Sanders. Their answers ranged from detailed discussions of policy to simple affirmations of trust. One man wearing a Donald Trump hat even weighed in. Continue Reading →
Narratively, which describes itself as a digital publication and storytelling studio based in New York, has launched a series called “The New Wild West.” The first piece in the series was contributed by Livingston resident Scott McMillion, publisher of the Montana Quarterly and author of “Mark of the Grizzly: True Stories of Recent Grizzly Bear Attacks and the Hard Lessons Learned.” (more…) Continue Reading →
Here’s an ugly twist in the immigration debate in Missoula, where there have been big rallies for and against welcoming refugees. Missoula Current is reporting that someone forged a letter, purporting to be from the three members of the Missoula County Commission, to the U.S. Department of State and the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. The three commissioners continue to strongly support the International Rescue Committee and to support plans to reopen a refugee resettlement office in Missoula, but in the forged letter they tell the bureau: “After further review, we don’t feel (M)iddle (E)astern cultures are compatible with our community values.”
The letter had a Great Falls postmark, which was a pretty good indication something was amiss, but as one commissioner said, news of the letter spread “some serious concern … throughout the community.” What a low move in an already unsettling situation, and what a revealing turn of phrase it was to frame the commission’s supposed opposition in terms of cultural bigotry. Continue Reading →
It appears that Donald Trump is not the only politician who wants to use laws to bludgeon unfriendly reporters. Up in Fairfield, between Great Falls and Choteau, the publisher of the Fairfield Sun Times is reporting that state Rep. Randall Pinocci, R-Sun River, in an email to a supporter, said he hoped to pass a law making it illegal to impersonate a reporter—apparently defined as any journalist he disagrees with. (more…) Continue Reading →
