It’s not peaceful protest if you bring guns

By Dan Brooks in War on Terror 1 Comment
Ammon Bundy, who led an armed takeover of a vacant federal building in Oregon yesterday

Ammon Bundy led an armed takeover of a vacant federal building in Oregon yesterday.

As you have no doubt heard on the shortwave radio set in your guard tower, anti-government militia members took over the visitor’s center at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon yesterday. Led by Ammon Bundy, son of patriot/delinquent grazing account Cliven Bundy, the group massed to protest the arson convictions of Dwight and Steve Hammond, who were sentenced to five years in prison last week for burning several acres of federal land. But that’s bullshit. Federal land does not belong to the federal government; it belongs to ranchers, who have a constitutional right to graze it/set it on fire/shoot does on it while the rest of us pay for its maintenance. Bundy and his supporters are just standing up for their rights. There’s nothing violent about marching through the streets with guns and then seizing a federal building, as the Missoulian reminds us with its headline, Peaceful protest followed by Oregon wildlife refuge action.

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Still real sick

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 7 Comments
Stringer MD advises me to take two naps and feed him in the morning.

Stringer, MD advises me to take two naps and feed him in the morning. Or right now.

Despite the revolutionary treatment administered to me by Stringer, Medical Dog, I am still sick. I would say this is the sickest I’ve been all year, but remember when I dislocated my shoulder, developed painful complications from my vasectomy, and contracted a virus of the inner ear that gave me the spins for two months? I do. This common cold or possibly flu is as nothing to me. I am modern man, and if I am not as robust as my ancestors, I have at least practiced putting up with mild annoyances. There is no blog today, because my lungs are full of cotton and I’m barely hanging on. But when I’m feeling rotten, I compose a little song, which soothes me when I’m moody and I feel like passing on. I just whistle and remember that this year will soon be gone.

I’ll see you in 2016. I promise.

 

I am sick

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment
This person is sad.

This person is sad.

Remember that thing I said yesterday about defeating microbes? They’re tenacious. Despite the close attention of Dr. String, MD, I am forced to admit I have a cold that makes me disinclined to think. It’s not so bad. But it feels like a cosmic injustice, even though I flew on an airplane this week, and illness was pretty much guaranteed. While I pity myself, how about you read this article from the New York Times about how the very richest Americans avoid taxes. Oligarchy now! It seems like we don’t really have a choice, so I’m going to get with the winning team.

 

Combat! blog flies through air, isn’t useful

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 2 Comments

Airplane

I got up before 6am this morning, went back to sleep when I saw my flight was delayed, then dragged myself through a snowstorm to Des Moines International Airport. Now I am back in Missoula, where I guard Castle Faswell and its furry ward, and the first flakes of snow are beginning to fall. Could it be that the storm followed me across the country? Nope: it’s busy smashing Chicago. I am busy compulsively swallowing and trying to convince myself it doesn’t hurt, plus satisfying various deadlines, plus eating a burrito. There is no blog today—at least not one of any substance. While I fight microbes, how about you read this insightful consideration of the Mast Brothers chocolate scandal. “What our delight at their downfall truly reveals, more than anything,” Helen Rosner writes, “is how we as a consumer culture lie to ourselves about being consumers of culture.” They’re from Iowa, you know.

The year 2015 in review

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment
"Make the word 'orbit' look like it's orbiting."

“Make the word ‘orbit’ look like it’s orbiting.”

Christmas is nigh upon us, and Combat! blog has pretty much succumbed to torpor in its ancestral home. It was 45 and rainy most of the day in Des Moines yesterday, which is unseasonal, but we also got snow, a little hail, 20 mile-an-hour winds, more rain, and finally a hard freeze. You can tell I’ve been in Iowa, because I’m writing about the weather. The only thing more interesting than the weather in Iowa is what happened to me the other day, per this week’s column in the Missoula Independent:

I won’t bore you with the science, but I made a Vine dancing to “Power of Love” in the mirror and then accidentally took a Snapchat of myself watching that Vine, and now I am in the distant future. Everything has changed. Dogs are represented in Congress, almost exclusively, and watches with biometric monitoring systems tell us when to eat. They pretty much tell us everything: where to work, when to get back to work, whom to seize. We never should have invented superintelligent watches.

Thus begins our review of 2015. It was an exciting year in Montana politics, both at the state level and closer to home. From the GOP splitting apart to Mayor Engen enacting Moby-Dick with the water company as the whale to a book about rape called “Missoula,” we had a fine time. My personal year was marked by injury, illness, and death, but all that’s over now. I’ve got it from a reliable source that a savior is coming tomorrow, and nothing bad will ever happen again. So suck up those cookies, ’cause tomorrow you’re off the hook. Merry Christmas, you guys! Happy holidays to everyone.