Remember when Kim Jong Un saved America from another self-indulgent James Franco project? That was cool, but he shouldn’t have used terrorism to do it. Of course, this conflict between a pampered manchild exploiting a brainwashed peasantry and Kim Jong Un didn’t require any actual terrorism. The Guardians of Peace needed only to invoke the name of September 11th, and the American film industry—theoretically unafraid to challenge any taboo in the name of art/money—couldn’t take a $44 million loss fast enough. When Pyongyang threatened to “turn Washington into a lake of fire,” we all laughed. Let an anonymous email imply that terrorism might happen, though, and America’s last viable industry becomes a quivering mass. Let’s admit it: the terrorists won. That’s my bitter contention in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, which is more fun than it sounds—I swear. It’s at least better than Your Highness.

There is no Combat! blog today, as I make my annual sacrifice of time and dignity to the commercial airline industry. By the time you read this, I’ll be stranded in Denver. If historical trends are somehow interrupted, I meet even make it all the way to Des Moines. Either way, I’ll be blogging again tomorrow. In the meantime, how about you catch up on the continued adventures of Diamond Joe Biden? I’m pretty sure he’s the perfect comic hero. He may also be the president of United Airlines.

 

You there, boy! What day is it? Why, it’s Thursday day, Mr. Scrooge, and that normally means an Indy column by me. This week is the holiday issue, though, so you get a whole damn essay in which I report the unvarnished truth about ghosts, divorce and, of course, Fantasy for Adults Only. It’s a local pornography store. You can probably masturbate in there, but I digress. The point is that I wrote this humorous essay not based on any previously published work, and you should read it. Then you should read the rest of the Indy, which includes delightful work by Sarah Aswell and another holiday essay by Bob Wire. But if you don’t have time, just read what I wrote and lie about it later. That’s more the New Year’s spirit than the Christmas spirit, but I’ll allow it. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

Not long ago, Majority Leader Austin Knudsen (R–Folksville) announced committee assignments for the Montana State House. Seniority did not rule the day. Two freshman representatives, Jeff Essmann of Billings and Art Wittich of Belgrade, became heads of the Human Services and State Administration committees, respectively. Sarah Lazsloffy, daughter of Montana Family Foundation president Jeff Laszloffy and Helena’s youngest legislator, leapfrogged senior colleagues to chair the Education Committee. Besides their unexpected rise to power, what these representatives have in common is their loyalty to the conservative faction of the Montana GOP. You might remember this schism from the 2013 session, when moderate Republicans joined Democrats to vote down Knudsen’s proposal to use public funds to finance private schools. You might also remember the leaked email chain in which Essman, Wittich and alleged partner/family member abuser Jason Priest hatched a plan to “purge” said moderates from the Republican Party. Montana politics is awesome, and you can read all about it in my column for this week’s Missoula Independent. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links, an alarming number of which involve close cooperation between government and industry, as well as police brutality. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Those of you who do not live in town are hereby forewarned that the names of Missoula-area schools are kind of crazy. Many of you are already familiar with Hellgate High, a pleasant reminder of my days in Astoria living by the Hellgate Bridge. But even the straightest face can be shaken by learning about Target Range School, which is named for a local mountain range and not for an unfortunate trend in modern gun violence. None of that matters now, since the new name of every school in Missoula is Fuck City, USA. Local districts have suspended a grand total of four administrators at three different schools this semester and refused to say why in each case, calling them “personnel matters.” You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. Then you can read the comments section of just about any story on the subject in the Missoulian, where anonymous people will happily tell you details of these administrators’ personal lives that they heard from their kids. I would say that allowing comments on news stories is a sneaky way for the Missoulian to get around sourcing, but they’re perfectly happy to ignore such ethical constraints the old fashioned way. That’s the name and photo of a Billings man arrested for sexually assaulting a toddler, although at press time they didn’t know if he’d been charged or whether the toddler was okay, hadn’t talked to police, and couldn’t get ahold of any court documents. Run it! I dislike both keeping secrets and publishing unconfirmed information. There’s no pleasing me. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links, pretty much all of which will be about police officers killing people.