When Mr. Matt Vincent found out about Billy’s joining BT, he had him pass the word along to me that he was interested in playing too.

So ladies and gentlemen (…drum roll…please…) I give you Matt Vincent!

Look for his contributions soon… (No pressure buddy.)

Thaks to everyone who turned out for this year’s Montana Irish Festival, An Rí Rá. It turned out very well. I think the Copper Ceili Stage was a great addition to the entertainment part of the festival. It allowed for more excellent performers to showcase their talent.

We’ve uploaded a few photos of the festival to our Flickr and remember that you can add your photos to our pool.

On the subject of our newest addition to BT, Mr. Bill Foley, I’d like to once again extend a thank you to him for accepting our invitation to join. We are very happy to have him on board. ButteTalk will be seeing positive changes in the near future.

We have just added a new writer to our site. It’s a secret though. We’ll let him/her introduce himself/herself.

This will be an awesome addition to the BT team and we’re very excited. Check back often! We’ve got a lot of great things in store for you!

How special.

Seems over the weekend, while Marx and I were busy busy with Evel Days and everything else in our full, rich lives in Butte, ButteTalk had its first troll.

See, when a new person posts a comment to BT, we have to approve it before it appears on the site. Sometimes, when we’re not around, we don’t get to it right away. Friday, our visitor made his first appearance and left us this interesting little missive in the comments on the About page.

Typically BUTTE that there is a Jon Tester DEMOCRAT for Senate advertisement at the top of this BUTTE blog. Too bad so many people in Butte who calls themselves DEMOCRATS cannot admit that in the year 2006 that they are really Republicans!

Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt and many good old Irish Catholic hard rock miners would not support Gay Marriage and Abortion and ILLEGAL immigration and these are the issues of today’s DEMOCRATIC party among other morally banktrupt ideas of these New England elitists!

I am a UNION member and I left the NEW Democrtic Party in 1994. It is not what it used to be and it does not represent todays working Americans. It lacks values and cares more about ILLEGALS then we citizens! I will vote for BURNS thank you very much and so should Butte AMERICA!

Where to begin? How about with “Butte AMERICA?”

One of the most awesome things about Butte is that it’s part of America and here in America, we still have the freedom to have our own political viewpoints.

Well, let me tell you something, JP. (Oh did I mention his name is JP?) I am not a registered Democrat. As a party, they tend to be too conservative for me. All of those issues you list, like gay marriage, and my reproductive rights? You may be downright appalled to learn that my opinions GREATLY, VASTLY differ from yours. And so do the opinions of many, many of the people who live right here in my dear Butte. Believe me, “New England elitists” are much more likely to agree with you than I am.

Actually, when it comes to illegal immigration, our viewpoints probably intersect more than you would expect–but since it’s often used as a racist’s code word, I am fairly wary of actually agreeing with you since you vehemently CAPITALIZED the word “illegal” to make a point.

Then on Sunday, our good friend JP was back again. When he found that his comment was not visible on the About page, he tried it again. This time he used a different aol.com email address though.

If this is a Butte Blog than remove the TESTER for Senate ad. at the top of this page? My sister lives in Butte and my mother was raised in Butte and my grandfather worked the “Power” company and I was thrilled to see a Butte resident with a Burns for Senate yard sign a few weeks ago!

The Democratic Party no longer cares for we union members as they once did for hardrock union members in Butte!

Strange…. I notice that he says that his sister lives here, his mother was raised here but he made no mention of living here himself. Odd…. Could it be because his IP address traces back to Illiniois? And not only that–he’s been posting these comments from – *GASP* – his work computer. I won’t say who his employer is, but I will say that he works in a bankruptcy-ridden industry.

In any event, I’m your typical Butte native this way: I don’t like out-of-town or out-of-state numbnuts telling me what I should think or what Butte should think or how Butte should be.

Besides. Butte-Silver Bow is the bluest county in the state. Who is shocked when a Butte blog supports a Democrat? Apparently just JP.

I’m going to go ahead and give JP the benefit of the doubt here. I guess he could live somewhere in Montana and plan on voting for Conrad Burns. Surely he wouldn’t live in another state and continue to absentee vote in Montana? That would be wrong.

JP, I’m going to point you to a post we made here on BT when we first added the Tester for Senate banner to the site. Basically what it says is that we put that there of our own volition because we believe Jon is the best option for this state in this election. It is not a paid advertisement. It is an independent endorsement reflecting our personal opinions as protected under the Constitution of the United States of America.

So yeah, we’re not going to remove it.

I have met both Jon Tester and Conrad Burns in person. I have shaken their hands. I have spoken with each of them. And I offer up my endorsement based on my prior knowledge of their positions, the impressions I got at those meetings, and on their respective records of conduct and decorum. (Notice how Jon’s wiki page doesn’t even have a subheading called Criticism and controversy?)

It is a rare and unique thing about Montana that a young woman such as myself has had the chance to meet both these men and even get to walk away with an impression. Yet I have, and I stand by my opinion that Jon is the man I hope Butte chooses on election day.

So, JP. If you’re wondering why your comments never showed up on that page, I hope that explains why. Feel free to comment on this post. Maybe I’ll even approve your comments. Guess that will just depend.

We pay for this website and we reserve the right to decide on the content it contains.

Edit: Apparently JP is hard at work trolling over at the Montana Standard’s website too.

The link has been fixed–the Standard moved the article.

Butte Talk has recently added its newest writer, Murphy. Murphy is a friend of both Delaney and I and we invited him to blog with us. He’s an excellent writer and will make great contributions to this website and to this town. Welcome Murphy!

As you can see, BT is back to normal after another awesome Fourth of July in Butte, America. Hopefully all of your celebrating went fantastically and no problems arose.

I’d also like to take a moment to thank Brooks Hanna for the awesome firworks display.

I think we’ll keep up a tradition in changing the layout every once and awhile for different things going on around town. Feel free to tell us what you think. We really appreciate comments and stuff.

That’s it for now.. Have a great day!

Sorry we haven’t been blogging too much lately. I’ve been out of town and Delaney hasn’t been feeling very “bloggy” :roll: I guess I have to do everything around here.

So in case you didn’t know, Butte and the Berkeley Pit were the topic of a segment on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t worry. Someone put it on YouTube, and here’s your chance.

Personally, I think Butte should be honored to be made fun of and we are already well practiced at making lemonade out of lemons so here’s another opportunity to do just that. Besides, it really is funny. Fritz Daily did a great job, too. He’s a good advocate for Butte.

We’ll be back with more Butte-related posts soon. Sorry for the unintentional hiatus. :razz:

You may have noticed that we were offline for the past few days. Our hosting service had to upgrade our sever and it took longer than expected. We’re back online now though and ready for a very exciting summer in the Mining City!

For those of you who tried to visit our site yesterday, you may have been suprised to see that we were offline. This was due to a server problem and every account on that server experienced the same problem.

Now, we’re back online and strong as ever. We’ve got a lot of great things planned so be sure to check back.

Marx was way too tired after all the excitement of the DCK Butte premiere last night to write anything. Don’t worry, his review is coming. Just delayed a little…..

Stay Tuned….