Preparing for the Long Haul

Straight talk on the SARS Cov-2 virus

By Kyle Waterman

I have written before about how I believe that wearing masks is a sound public health policy designed for how we can keep Montana open and protect the continuum of public and private business. I still believe this to be true, we need to work on public education and make mask wearing ubiquitous. Unfortunately, the County Fair went forward with relaxed enforcement of the mask requirement and we will see the negative impact in as soon as a few weeks, but lasting through the end of the year.

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Governor is Montana’s most important election

Early summer polls report Gianforte
has a serious lead over Cooney

Four publicly available polls of Montana’s gubernatorial election, conducted in July and late June, found Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte leading Democrat Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney by 3 to 9 points, with a weighted average lead of 5.4 points. That’s outside the margin of error/credibility interval of all of the polls. If the samples of the polls were combined, the MOE would be ≈ 1.7 percent.

Neither Cooney nor Gianforte has released a poll contradicting these polls. That usually indicates the campaigns’ internal polls agree with the publicly available polls.

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Guest post

Could we slide into the abyss like Germany in 1933?

By Stephen Brehe and Jim Nelson

Will Donald Trump leave office if he loses the election? Many are wondering how he might bend the law to stay in the White House. The president frequently inveighs against “voter fraud” and says his opponents will steal the election with fraudulent mail-in ballots. Further, he refuses to say if he will accept election results.

Matters are so serious that a bipartisan think tank of 100+ current and former senior government and campaign leaders conducted matrix games on what could go haywire between the Nov. 3 election and the Jan. 20 inauguration. The Transitions Integrity Project concluded that there is “a high degree of likelihood that November’s elections will be marked by a chaotic legal and political landscape.” You can read the report at https://paxsims.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/preventing-a-disrupted-presidential-election-and-transition-8-3-20.pdf

Trump has at his fingertips secret emergency powers called Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs). They are, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, “executive orders, proclamations, and messages to Congress that are prepared in anticipation of a range of emergency scenarios….” They only require Trump’s signature.

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The pre-convention polling picture

Biden leads Trump by 8.7 point nationwide —
but in Montana, Trump leads Biden by ≈ 9 points

President Trump’s net job favorability rating is 11–12 points underwater on a national scale, but he’s still above the waterline in Montana. And largely because of that, going into the national Democratic and Republican conventions he was leading Joe Biden in Montana by almost nine points according to seven publicly available polls of Montana.

An abbreviated discussion of the polls follows these plots of the horserace and job approval polls. The Spry poll, incidentally, is a publicly released poll conducted for a partisan, probably a conservative partisan.

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A “major correction” drops Flathead County’s
active Covid-19 case count from 177 to 60

Yesterday, Montana reported that Flathead County had 177 active Covid-19 cases. Today, just 60 active cases were reported. Flathead County’s active cases per 1,000 now is 0.6, well below the 1.4/k for Montana. Big Horn County leads Montana with 21.4/k.

What accounted for the Flathead’s massive drop in active cases? Here’s the Flathead County’s department of health’s explanation, published in red bold letters on the county’s webpage:

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Both sides now

By Mary Sheehy Moe

They called him “The Great Artiste” — either because of his pinpoint precision in dropping bombs or his way with women. Charismatic and swashbuckling, Kermit Beahan was a squadron favorite. On this day 75 years ago, he was aboard Bockscar, a B-29 bomber headed to Nagasaki.

Nagasaki had not been the first choice for the detonation of Fat Man, the first plutonium bomb. In fact, until the day before, it hadn’t even been on the list of potential targets. Kokura, with its arsenal and munitions workers, had top billing. But the clouds simply would not part over Kokura that morning, and Bockscar was running low on fuel. The crew could not make it back with Fat Man aboard. Nagasaki was nearby.

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Mainstream news media should report rates of infection

Flathead County remains a Covid-19 hot spot with
180 active cases, third among Montana’s counties

There’s more bad news to add to those grim numbers. To the 180, one must add 47 or fewer tourists and summer residents whose positive Covid-19 tests are assigned to the state of their primary residence. And the Flathead’s 1.7 infections per 1,000 residents is above the 1.5 per 1,000 state average.

After the jump, I present a table of infections and infection rates for all of Montana’s counties.

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I know my rights

Guest post by James C. Nelson
Montana Supreme Court Justice (Ret.)

With the social, economic and pandemic-related turmoil in this Country, we all are learning about our rights. Experts on individual rights have sprouted like a bloom of constitutional law professors. “The government can’t tell me what to do; I know my rights.”

Some do know, but more are simply clueless. True, the Bill of Rights in the federal Constitution and Montana’s Declaration of Rights set forth the basic civil rights that we Americans and Montanans are guaranteed. But, none of those rights is absolute — save, in my view, the right of inviolable human dignity under Montana’s Constitution. Each right is subject to statutory exceptions and limitations or to interpretational court decisions commencing from the founding of our Nation and State.

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Biden’s VP, and the carnival is over

Joe Biden still has not announced his choice for vice president

Joe Biden, who will accept the Democratic nomination for president from his Delaware home on 20 August, still has not announced his choice for vice president. Although he may still be pondering his options, he could simply be waiting for 18 August, the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote.

Most news sources report that the half dozen or so women still under consideration include Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamela Harris, and Tammy Duckworth, plus former Obama diplomat Susan Rice and Reps. Val Demmings and Karen Bass. I suspect it’s come down to Warren or Harris.

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139 plus 45 uncounted turistas

Flathead County now has more active
Covid-19 cases than all but two Montana counties

The SARS-cov-2 coronavirus is loose in the Flathead; there is community spread. The number of confirmed active Covid-19 infections (see table below) of residents was 139 as of 3 August (source). Add to that another 45 non-residents (scroll down) who are here, are infected, but, by epidemiological reporting convention, are assigned to their state of residence.

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Unfair means to promote a fair

Endangering the health of others at public meetings is not
a legitimate protest tactic — in fact, it’s against the law

Last night’s meeting of Kalispell’ city council was brought to an abrupt end a few minutes after it convened because approximately 45 citizens in the council’s chambers refused to mask-up. Their objectives? Making a political point and shutting down the meeting (Flathead Beacon):

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