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Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

It sounds like the plot of a straight-to-DVD espionage black comedy, but unfortunately the bizarre story of Hardin’s albatross of an empty jail just keeps getting more uncomfortably weird, and even Jim Carrey and a handful of mushrooms couldn’t make this shit funny. Now it has taken a chilling turn that requires immediate action.

The American Police Force (I’m sorry, I can’t type that name without laughing, thinking about “Team America: World Police”) was incorporated in some Kinko’s in Southern California last spring, just after Hardin announced that its unused, 27-million-dollar prison would be accepting detainees from Gitmo. But what the hell is the American Police Force? So far, the APF has yet to show that it has anything to offer beyond a bush league website and three SUV’s.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

A watering hole in Central Montana is where I ran into Max Baucus. It was only a few hours after the town hall meeting in Belgrade last summer, where the Senator had appeared with President Obama to talk about his health care bill. But here he was in jeans and a casual shirt, chatting with the locals and relaxing after a contentious gathering in the airport hangar.

I asked him if he’d mind posing for a photo with me. My kids would be thrilled, I told him, to see their dad standing with a United States Senator. Baucus happily complied (“Call me Max,” he said), and a friend of his snapped the photo.

Now I wish I’d taken the opportunity to ask him a few questions, armed with the knowledge of his intentions on the health care bill.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Our dog is 49 years old and still cannot bathe himself. I frequently tell him to go take a bath, but he just looks at me like I’m giving the wrong answer to his constant stream of telepathic requests. (Sample: “Go to the cupboard, Bob. Open the door, Bob. Get me a sardine, Bob.”)

So of course I’m forced to do the deed myself, and I’m forced to do it often. Houdini is not one to run away, because he could never abandon this glorious castle where Milk Bones seem to grow on trees. But when he does leave the perimeter, he’s bound and determined to seek out something foul and nasty to roll in. I don’t know what the hell he’s finding out there, but it is some rank-smelling shit. Year-old dead crow? Fresh badger vomit? The grave of a zombie that’s surfaced to ground level? I have no idea, but the worse the funk, the more attractive it is to Houdini.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

When it comes to identifying potential terrorists, racial profiling is not only controversial, it’s also unreliable. That shifty-eyed dude with the beard and the burnous skulking around the cafeteria at the hospital? He’s probably just a janitorial supply salesman who’s gauging the quality of the floor wax.

So, while you can’t finger people purely on appearances, there are some telltale signs that you should note, and keep your antenna up.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

It’s coming. The leaves are starting to color and drop off the trees, there’s a chill in the air that means business, and I’m starting to wear underwear again. Autumn is here, and that means one thing: Halloween is on the horizon.

Speaker and Rusty are looking at costume catalogs, stores have been displaying mountains of candy since Labor Day, and the party invitations have already started arriving in the mail (presumably to give you plenty of time to build that Michael Jackson zombie costume). But the impending holiday (is it a holiday, really? Are the banks closed?) brings the vague feelings of uneasiness and guilt that are never far from any parent’s consciousness.

It’s the candy largesse that bothers me. I’ve been working on my annual anti-sugar tirade, but it occurs to me now that I’m picking unfairly on Halloween. If ever there was a holiday that belongs to the kids, this is it. It’s the tremendous glut of sweets that feeds my worry. My kids will be ingesting an amount of sugar over the course of a weekend to make enough cakes to build a life-sized replica of the Eiffel Tower. And that includes frosting, Monsieur.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

The big CAT diesel thrummed ominously beneath the floorboards as our tour group clomped across the gangplank and found our seats on the school bus-sized boat. The fifty-year old Sacagawea casted off, with our tour guide at the six-handled wheel.

“Welcome to the Gates of the Mountains boat tour,” he said into the microphone as he turned to face us. Our skipper was a barrel-chested swab who looked a lot like Ernest Borgnine, with a gravelly voice that sounded like Moms Mabley on codeine. His bushy salt and pepper eyebrows looked like a pair of small badgers perched atop his mirrored sunglasses. “This is the Sacagawea, one of two tour boats we use on the Missouri River,” he said in his monotone growl. “She was built entirely out of wood in 1956, and takes hundreds of tourists every day up the same route that Lewis and Clark followed on their famous expedition of 1805.” It sounded like he was reading the speech off the inside of his glasses.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Sometimes it’s all a guy can do to keep from blowing a gasket in this hyped-up, sped-up, messed up modern world. The stress of trying to earn a living in our gut-shot economy, piled on top of the constant worry and emotional roller coaster that come with raising kids, can easily have a guy like me spiraling out of control like a dustbowl tornado spinning towards the nearest liquor store.

What I need is something that will provide some tranquility in my life; something to give me a stress-relief outlet without turning my liver into a charcoal briquette. It’s got to be something creative, something constructive, but not too complicated. Something that will keep my hands and mind occupied, but not a whole new source of leisure-related stress. You’ve probably figured out by now the obvious answer I came up with: crochet.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Just when it seems that the conservative crowd can’t possibly make themselves look more foolish and bitter, here comes a firestorm of outrage over President Obama having the audacity to address American schoolchildren on their first day of school.

Why, the nerve of that man! Trying to inspire our children to study hard? Stay in school? Pay attention to their teachers? How dare he! Could it be that conservatives are just mad because it never occurred to them to say these things to their own kids? (“Heston, the Hummer’s in the shop; you’ll have to walk to school.”)

Seriously, the raging paranoia and delusional ranting that spews from the Fox News crowd with their snapping jaws and rolling eyes is not just disturbing, it’s becoming tiresome in its predictability. Did the Fox News think tank fail to broadcast the news that President Obama actually WON the election last fall? It’s been ten months! Why are conservatives still treating the sitting President like he’s a candidate?

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

As the wagons are circled and information is slowly pried out of the Barkus/Rehberg camps like so much pork between your molars after a BLT, Montanans are left in the dark about one thing: what really happened on that boat that night?

For those of you who’ve just returned from a tour of the subcontinent, Rep. Denny Rehberg and four others were injured several weeks ago when the boat in which they were swashbuckling crashed head-on into a rocky bank on the east side of Flathead Lake. State Senate Majority Whip Greg Barkus was at the wheel of the boat, which is registered to his wife. Also on board, and injured in high-speed docking were Barkus’ wife and two Rehberg staffers.

Since a complete picture of the accident has yet to coalesce, I’ve decided to paint a scenario of what might have gone down that dark, calm night on Flathead Lake. All we know at this point is that Rep. Rehberg had a BAC of .05 three hours after the wreck, one of his staffers was in a coma, and Barkus has lawyered up.

For the sake of argument (and entertainment), let’s imagine what might have been learned if boats, like airliners, were required to be fitted with a black box.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

The simple fact is that you cannot live in Missoula without being a Griz fan. At least in public. So when I won a pair of season tickets last spring in the little league raffle, I suddenly became a BIG Griz fan. I couldn’t wait till this first home game. I wanted to capture the sights, the sounds, the smells of a hard-working football team on the field. And I got that. But I got more. A lot more…

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