Note to readers: Flathead Memo is returning to action

It’s been a long week. Tuesday, I went outside to mail my ballot. At that point, I had an attack of suspected atrial fibrillation. An ambulance too me to Kalispell regional hospital. Two days later, I acquired a cardiac catheter for emergency kidney dialysis. I’m now on life support for the rest of my life. I’ve had three dialysis sessions, and Monday start dialysis, three days a week.

Everyone was very kind to me, especially as my questioning of the doctors made Perry Mason look like a pussycat.

I won’t be posting all that much as I settle into a life changing situation, but I will be posting. I followed the news on my iPhone. Now I have almost a thousand emails to examine.

Thanks for waiting. — James Conner

Memorial Day notes

According to the veterans administration, Memorial Day, then known as Decoration Day, was observed first in 1868:

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Political briefs

Why is Whitney Williams running a dirty campaign, four GOP legislative primaries in the Flathead, Trump’s dog whistle to supporters who resent elites, and more.

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Are dense packed airliners also virusliners?

Phase Two’s lifting of quarantine for travellers
may increase risks for the Flathead and Gallatin

Gov. Bullock’s directive for Phase Two of reopening Montana removes the quarantine requirement for non-work related travel:

That means visitors from places hit hard by the coronavirus will be able to step off the airplane and immediately mingle with people in the national park gateway communities in Flathead (Glacier) and Gallatin Counties (Yellowstone), which receive huge numbers of air travelers during the tourism seasons.

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Do barefaced people have a right to infect others?

When the First Amendment collides with emergency orders

Protests of stay at home and no large gatherings orders are becoming more frequent. Many of the protesters are barefaced, and some are carrying firearms. At what point does their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble collide with the public’s right not to be harmed by reckless behavior?

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Should the health board censure Bukacek?

The Whitefish City Council’s letter on Dr. Bukacek
contains a dangerous definition of free speech

Whitefish’s city council, convinced that Annie Bukacek, M.D., should not be a member of the Flathead’s city-county board of health, sent to the Flathead County Commission a letter (below) urging her removal from the board. The letter accuses Bukacek of malfeasance, of being “…a danger to the citizens of Flathead County, and given the viral status of her video, the entire country,” and to “…incite others to violate and ignore a lawful order ofthe Governor.” The letter concludes by asserting that “Dr. Bukacek’s right to engage in free speech ends Where the public’s right to be safe from COVID-l9 begins.”

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Dr. Annie Bukacek: annoying gadfly or poisoner of weak minds?

Near the end of a 52-year career, a registered nurse I knew crossed medical paths with a young physician, Annie Bukacek. Years later, after Bukacek made the news for her political activity, the nurse, now somewhere beyond the pearly gates, told me that Bukacek was “extremely kind to her patients.” A high compliment, that, for kindness heals.

But there’s another side to Annie Bukacek, one for which she’s much better known. A fierce combination of Ayn Rand libertarian and bomb throwing anarchist, she has no love for government and seizes every opportunity to shout out her views, which — and here I’ll be kind — are as close to being major league wackadoodle as one can get without actually foaming at the mouth.

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The sexual assault accusations leveled at Joe Biden
are without merit and should be ignored

Twenty-seven years ago, Tara Reade was a staff assistant for Sen. Joe Biden. Now, with Biden certain to be the Democratic nominee for president, Reade claims that Biden assaulted her in a senate hallway.

• Reade left Biden's employment in 1993. According to the New York Times, she never again worked in Washington.

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