Latest from SD Political Blogs

I think they forgot about Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and a few other things. When the perpetually outraged give up on trying to explain why they’re mad.

Pat Powers — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 14:23:03 +0000

The perpetually outraged Indivisible Rapid City people are outraged again. When your tagline is “Working to empower all citizens to find their voice in rapid city so we can help stop President Trump,” you get a flavor of what Indivisible RC’s focus is.

I’ve been forwarded a copy of an e-mail that went out from their partner group “Democracy in Action,” announcing Indivisible Rapid City’s outrage/protest for the day:

Dear DIA members:

Because of concern raised by the President’s Nato and Helsinki behaviors this past week, Indivisible Rapid City has organized a rally to bring people out on Friday night. The event organizers wrote that the president’s actions and words clearly show that he is not fulfilling his oath to, “…faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Our republican controlled congress is also failing to uphold their oath to, “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

This has led us to what is likely the most significant crisis our democracy has ever faced. Please join us in a demonstration demanding that our democracy be protected from the domestic enemies that have let a foreign enemy to be the puppeteer controlling two of our three branches of government.

We will have some signs to share but we do encourage people to bring their own as well. Please remember to keep the signs family friendly. Should we have counter protesters please remember that they are exercising their First Amendment rights just as we are and do not engage with them.”

DEFENDING OUR DEMOCRACY
FRIDAY JULY 20 7 PM
MEMORIAL PARK, CORNER OF 5TH AND OMAHA

So, the most significant crisis our democracy has ever faced wasn’t the Civil War. It wasn’t Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War or even 9/11.

It’s a vague claim about President Trump, Nato, Helsinki, and the legislative branch not… not doing something. I’m not sure what they’re supposed to do, because that’s pretty vague in their e-mail blast as well, but it has something to do with a foreign enemy.

That’s the problem with being perpetually outraged. It has something to do with President Trump, Indivisible Rapid City is outraged (as usual)…. and they’ll fill in the rest of the details as they go.

Charting Different Political Universes

Kal Lis — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 14:09:13 +0000

I know! I need to move on! The fact that political affiliation seemingly determines the color of the sky one sees fascinates and worries me.

The following chart from Axios provides a solid visual of how Republicans see Trump far differently than independents or Democrats. I am not vouching for the poll's methodology, but the visual illustrates the diametrically opposed views of Trump I have been reading and deepens my belief that gap is widening dangerously.

Axios online poll conducted June 16-17.

Rounds, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Cyber Subcommittee, Signs Onto Secure Elections Act

Pat Powers — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 13:16:05 +0000

Rounds, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Cyber Subcommittee, Signs Onto Secure Elections Act

WASHINGTON– U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Cybersecurity Subcommittee, today signed onto the bipartisan Secure Elections Act. This legislation would strengthen America’s election cybersecurity and protect against the possibility of future foreign interference by streamlining cybersecurity information-sharing between federal intelligence entities and state election agencies and providing security clearances to state election officials.

“Free and fair elections are a cornerstone of our democracy,” said Rounds. “Countless Americans have died fighting for our ability to choose our leaders safely, freely and with high confidence in our system. Our adversaries are attacking our election system. While each state should continue to independently take responsibility for its own election process, we can help improve security by taking necessary steps to help safeguard our system and protect our democracy. Our legislation accomplishes this by streamlining information-sharing between intelligence agencies and providing states with additional tools to upgrade election security.”

The Secure Elections Act was introduced earlier this year by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.). In addition to Rounds, the bill is cosponsored by Sens. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Kamala Harris (D-Cali.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).

###

King, Lederman are pink slime

larry kurtz — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 13:15:59 +0000

Steve King and Dan Lederman make pink slime look um um good.

I found myself looking at my own personal ledger. And what I found, was that I owe a debt for many things. I am so far in the red, I need to start paying that tremendous debt back. Because these are debts I owe to my family for their love and support over the years. [Dan Lederman]

Sleaze and crime built Dan's business. He spent $50,000 to buy a seat in the legislature flaunting the same class by throwing it away resigning after the 2015 session then forcing his way into the chair of South Dakota's earth hater party.

When a HuffPost reporter on Capitol Hill Tuesday asked King about his retweet of a neo-Nazi, the congressman said all of his tweets are “true and objective.” On Wednesday, when the same reporter asked King if he is a white supremacist or a white nationalist, the congressman didn’t deny the allegation. Zoé Samudzi, co-author of the book As Black As Resistance, says King is a white nationalist and sees a couple possible explanations for why the GOP is so quiet about King. Republicans, she told HuffPost, either see King as “a problem and are too afraid of bucking party convention” to denounce him. Or “they’re similarly invested in the politics that he holds.” [Steve King Is A White Supremacist, And The GOP Doesn’t Care]

SD Farmer Testifies on Tariff Impact before Noem’s Committee

Pat Powers — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 13:14:47 +0000

SD Farmer Testifies on Tariff Impact before Noem’s Committee

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Kristi Noem today welcomed Scott VanderWal, a Volga-area farmer and president of the South Dakota Farm Bureau, to testify on the impact of China’s retaliatory tariffs. Hosted by the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee of which Noem is a member, the hearing gave Congress the opportunity to learn about the effects of tariffs on U.S. agriculture and rural communities.

“For years, China has exploited the American people, and they need to be held accountable for that. But farmers and ranchers can’t afford China’s retaliatory tariffs,” said Noem. “Especially given the national security risks that would come if another country controls our food supply, the administration must help provide a strong safety net for America’s producers. I am grateful to Scott VanderWal for sharing his perspective and hopeful it offered Congress a new perspective on the incredible burden producers are bearing.”

“Since 2014, the American farmer’s income has fallen 52 percent. Now, farmers are dealing with big shifts in the commodity markets because of trade and tariff threats,” saidVanderWal. “We understand other countries, particularly China, have not played fairly, and we respect President Trump’s desire to remedy those situations. The problem is, those countries know just where to punch us back in a dispute by targeting our agriculture products. Through no fault of our own, and unintentionally, our industry ends up being used for leverage. We must get back to the table and get these issues worked out. If we cannot do that, the consequences are dire.”

This spring, Noem led 46 members of the U.S. House of Representatives in a letter to President Trump on the issue. The letter warned: “All our hard-won gains in Farm Country are at serious risk of being wiped away because China is threatening retaliation against American farmers.” In July, she also partnered with Sens. John Thune and Mike Rounds inurging the Administration to prioritize ag producers.

###

Josh Haeder, Candidate for State Treasurer speaking Monday in Brookings

Pat Powers — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 02:16:23 +0000

From my mailbox:

Bomb materials, AntiFa clothing, police-hate materials seized in Sioux Falls

Pat Powers — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 23:57:22 +0000

I’m not sure what more person has to say about this. Person stockpiling scary amounts of bomb making materials & illegal firearms also in possession of radical liberal AntiFa clothing:

Bomb-making materials have been found at the apartment of a burglary suspect in Sioux Falls.

“…identified as ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder mixed together, which that compound, there is no legal purpose for it. It is an explosive.” says Captain Jason Gearman with the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Department.

Gearman says they also found an ‘Antifa’ coat and indications of extreme hatred for the police, fire and the government, and an improvised explosive device in the suspect’s vehicle. Also, some illegal firearms.

“Pretty safe to say that we stopped something from happening. Again, we don’t know what that is.”

Read it here.

That should give people pause that violent AntiFa protesters are here in South Dakota.

Are South Dakota's Republican Leaders Running A Caucus, A Kids Club, Or A Cult?

Kal Lis — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 22:14:44 +0000

Dakota Free Press, Dakota War College, and Right Side South Dakota all cover a letter Republican cause leaders sent to Republican legislative candidates. (Given how Blogger seems to load slowly, I am not going to paste images of the letter which one can find at all three sites.)

I really don't know if the letter is recruiting people to a meeting to indoctrinate them into a cult or is an adult version of "Do you like me? Please check yes or no."

The letter begins, "As we just celebrated the birthday of our great country, we take time to pause and reflect how important it is for our great state of South Dakota to have a strong and united Republican caucus. We have all agreed and wish to share the following points . . . "

Translation: We're the cool kids and we want you to be cool kids to. Nothing cool has happened without us. If you want to be a cool kid, we have decided you have to do everything we say.

Later, the letter says , "All members will be expected to maintain the highest degree of confidentiality within the caucus."

Translation: Don't tell anyone our secret passwords or show anyone our secret handshake. Whatever you do, don't mention that thing with the pocketknife and candle! (I'll leave the rant about transparency for another post.)

The letter continues, "History dictates that members of the Senate and House Republican Majority Caucuses, respectively, have been considered and assigned for positions of chair and vice chair of committees. Members of minority caucuses are not considered for these positions."

Translation: Did we tell you we're the cool kids? Yeah, just remember, we're really freakin' cool!

Later, the caucus leaders pour on the charm: "We consider the Senate and House Republican Majority Caucuses to be a family of Republicans working together to ensure that conservative Republican principles are protected and preserved in South Dakota."

Translation: We love you. You need our love to be whole. We'll be just like mommy and daddy but without the vegetables. If you accept our love everything will be great all over. Remember, mommy and daddy make you eat yucky stuff, but we love you.

The charm ends with the next sentence, however. "Therefore it requires you to be a sole member of the Senate or House Republican Majority Cause, respectively.

Translation: We have the only good ideas and a monopoly on all that is right. We're like that Joshua guy in the Bible, and you have to choose us or nothing. Remember we're on the side of freedom and good stuff. Also, you won't be one of the cool kids if talk to anyone isn't one of us.

I would prefer my legislators to be adults who are able to think independently not members of a kids club or a cult. Republican leaders, however, seem to value conformity, secrecy, and a forced show of unity.

Senator Stace Nelson (predictably) does not like fact that Republican Leadership is not going to fund those running under different caucus banner

Pat Powers — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 22:09:14 +0000

Predictably, South Dakota State Senator Stace Nelson, who helped to run primary candidates against incumbent legislators, and set up a caucus to oppose the Republican House and Senate Caucuses, is grousing that he will be cut off from the Republican Caucus if he continues to attack it, after the letter asking candidates if they intend to be a member of the Republican Caucus:

On Jul 16, 2018, at 8:51 PM, Stace Nelson <Stace.Nelson@sdlegislature.gov> wrote:

ALCON,
Myself, other legislators, as well as candidates, in both the House & Senate, reportedly received a version of this “memorandum” demanding fealty, forced total confidentiality in violation of SD Constitution Article 3 Section 15, and to be a “sole (sic) member of the Senate..” caucus or face summary disciplinary actions to include exclusion or loss of official Legislature Committee Chair & Vice Chair positions.

This edict contains provisions that effectively offers a quid pro quo bribe or illegal disciplinary action extortion if current/future perspective legislators do or do not comply. The edict specifically indicates it seeks to influence official actions of legislators. Legislators who agree to these terms may very well be in violation of their SD Constitutional Oath of Office in Article 3 section 8 and subject to disqualification and removal http://www.sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/Constitution/DisplayStatute.aspx?Type=Statute&Statute=0N-3-8

The edict violates the 1st Amendment rights of Republican legislators rights to peacefully assemble, as well as It seeks to illegally punish and restrict legislators engaged in religious activities in the Wednesday Catacomb Caucuses, and the Catholic Caucus.

Senator Greenfield has indicated this was NOT sent with his approval, my understanding is Senator Maher indicates the same. Senator Curd has not responded to my inquiry.

In that this letter could be rightfully viewed as a violation of SDCL 22-12A-4, I am reporting it so as not to be considered an active participant in what could be construed as a conspiracy to commit a felonious violation of SD law.

Stace Nelson, Senator District 19 (Hanson, McCook, Douglas, Hutchinson, Bon Homme Counties)
Vice Chair Senate Commerce & Energy Committee
Senate Judiciary Committee
Senate Local Government Committee

I’m thinking he might have to get used to not being a vice-chair of Commerce and Energy if he continues to attack the Republican Caucus.

Considering he set up his little club “TO STAND APART FROM CORRUPTION AND LIBERAL DIRECTION WITHIN GOP RANKS,” as he termed it in capital letters, I’m not sure why he’s crying about being told he’s welcome to do whatever he wants to set up a competing caucus, but not to expect any support, or the ability to choose who caucus GOP Leadership is.

If he didn’t want to attack GOP Leadership so he could lay in his bed of thorns, I’m not sure why he created it in the first place.

Battle of the Constitution Party Conventions!

Pat Powers — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 19:23:53 +0000

So, how does this work?

Lora Hubbel provides notice of an August convention the day before the abortive July Constitution Party convention, claiming she’s Chairman.

Lori Stacey provides notice of an August convention the day after the abortive July Constitution Party convention, claiming she’s Chairman.

If Lora Hubbel is chair, how is she chair since she’d resigned, and left the Constitution Party in the meantime, and was a Republican for a while. If Lori Stacey is chair, what about that letter from Frank Fluckinger, the national chair removing her from office?

Get the popcorn!

New Approach South Dakota lobbying readers for cannabis legislation

larry kurtz — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 18:22:29 +0000

PennCo Dems hitting the beaten path

larry kurtz — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 18:04:52 +0000

And now I'm 64....

larry kurtz — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 17:34:58 +0000

Happy Birthday: Harriet Nelson, Nelson Mandela, John Glenn, Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Branson, Ricky Skaggs, Vin Diesel, and this interested party.

A Minor Musing About The Loss Of Truth

Kal Lis — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 15:09:22 +0000

Daniel Dale, Washington Bureau Chief of the Toronto Star, has taken upon himself the herculean effort of keeping track of every false claim President Donald Trump has made while in office. The total as of this writing is 2029. During the last week of June and the first week of July 2018 Trump made 100 false claims each week.

Let's be clear, Presidents Obama, George. W. Bush, Clinton, and George H.W. Bush all made claims shown to be false. The statements "...if you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor ..."; "Mission Accomplished"; "I did not have sexual relations with that woman . . ."; and "Read my lips: No new taxes" have all become punch lines.

Still each of Trump's predecessors understood what former President Obama said yesterday during his Mandela lecture:

We see it in state-sponsored propaganda; we see it in internet driven fabrications, we see it in the blurring of lines between news and entertainment, we see the utter loss of shame among political leaders where they’re caught in a lie and they just double down and they lie some more. Politicians have always lied, but it used to be if you caught them lying they’d be like, “Oh man.” Now they just keep on lying.

Meanwhile President Trump was asserting:

It should have been obvious, I thought it would be obvious but I would like to clarify just in case it wasn’t. In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word “would” instead of “wouldn’t.” The sentence should have been “I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t” or “why it wouldn’t be Russia.” So just to repeat it, I said the word “would” instead of “wouldn’t,” and the sentence should have been, and I thought I would be maybe a little bit unclear on the transcript or unclear on the actual video.

The sentence should have been “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia,” sort of a double negative. So you can put that in and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself. I have on numerous occasions noted our intelligence findings that Russians attempted to interfere in our elections.

In schools, the young'uns are often told to use context clues, so let's look at the original comments for some context from the Helsinki press conference transcript.

TRUMP: So let me just say that we have two thoughts. You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server. Why haven't they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?

I've been wondering that. I've been asking that for months and months and I've been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying?

With that being said, all I can do is ask the question.

My people came to me, Dan Coates, came to me and some others they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia.

I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server but I have, I have confidence in both parties.

I really believe that this will probably go on for a while but I don't think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server. What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC?

Where are those servers? They're missing. Where are they? What happened to Hillary Clinton's emails? 33,000 emails gone, just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn't be gone so easily.

I think it's a disgrace that we can't get Hillary Clinton's thirty three thousand e-mails.

I have great confidence in my intelligence people but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is an incredible offer.

He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators, with respect to the 12 people. I think that's an incredible offer. Ok? Thank you. [emphasis mine]

Given the fact that he questions the FBI handling of Hillary Clinton's email server and says Putin "was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today," it beggars belief that he meant to say "wouldn't." Of course, Trump made it very clear that he himself doesn't believe what he just said when he later asserted, "I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place. It could be other people also. There’s a lot of people out there."

The result of yesterday's speeches was that the members of the various populist tribes all issued social media pronouncements reminding the world about Obama's statement about keeping one's doctor. The #neverTrump tribal members all pointed out that Trump could not have meant what he said.

Those predictable responses are dangerous. First, the "everybody does it" or "what about that one time" never move to the key question "HOW DO WE FIX THE PROBLEM?" (Yes, I am shouting.)

The most recent and best example of the failure of "your guy did it too" is the family separation situation. The fact that Presidents Trump, Obama, and George W. Bush all separated families at the border and housed children in cages does not justify the practice. Pointing out that Obama and Bush did it does not mean Trump should continue the practice. It does nothing to help create policy that distinguishes refugees from migrants and it does not create a policy on legal migration. Pointing out the sins of previous administrations leaves kids in cages without their parents.

Lying and the justification of one's preferred leader's lies over the lies of whoever preceded or followed him not only leads to bad policy; it also destroys democracy's foundation by encouraging the lying and weakening curiosity. Former President Obama made the point eloquently yesterday,

And, as with the denial of rights, the denial of facts runs counter to democracy, it could be its undoing, which is why we must zealously protect independent media; and we have to guard against the tendency for social media to become purely a platform for spectacle, outrage, or disinformation; and we have to insist that our schools teach critical thinking to our young people, not just blind obedience.

I don't know how to solve the problem of habitual liars. I was always tempted to require my Debate II to students to read "On Bullshit" as way to deal with false claims. I never gave in to that temptation. I commend it to everyone now. I also ask that everyone start asking "What caused the problem?" and "How can we fix it?" before screaming "What about that time that . . ."

GOP Legislative Leaders drop the hammer on members forming competing caucuses.

Pat Powers — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 13:56:35 +0000

Republican Leaders in the State House and State Senate have drawn a line in the sand this week with regards to legislators setting up renegade caucuses raising their own money and setting their own agenda separate from that of the Republican Caucus.

(I think they’re looking at you and your cherry-picked scorecard caucus, Senator Nelson)

A letter went out, and it’s telling prospective legislators that there are expectations if they’re going to be part of the Republican caucus. And Commandment #1 is thou shalt have no caucus before us:

Basically, it asks them for a commitment to show up & not be a jerk. And that if they intend to be a member of a non-Republican caucus, it informs them they will not dedicate resources to their campaign, nor will they be considered for leadership positions.

I suspect that this comes in response to Senator Stace Nelson, who spent altogether too much time plotting with Democrats against GOP Leadership, and announced the formation of his own caucus, with the intent of competing with the Republican caucus to raise money for the people he likes. Which seems an appropriate reason to draw a line in the sand before the caucus starts dedicating money into the legislative races.

In other words, if they want to be a member of the Republican caucus, they’d love to have them, and will assist them.

If not.. and hey want to form their own caucus, or join the Constitution or Democrat Parties… well, they can’t say they haven’t been warned.

Dems attacking GOP for 15 minute speech, but seem to have forgotten about Dem staffer who is in prison for spying.

Pat Powers — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 19:38:10 +0000

I’m assuming by now everyone has read the story about the gal, Maria Butina, the gal who has been charged with being an unreported foreign agent. If you remember back in 1980, President Carter’s brother Billy had similar accusations leveled against him for doing the same for Libya.

Surprisingly, South Dakota Democrats, trying to not look inept for once, have blasted out a press release attacking the GOP, because Butina spoke for about 15 minutes at TAR Camp several years ago:

SDDP Executive Director Sam Parkinson released the following statement after Maria Butina, a Russian woman who, along with current GOP congressional candidate Dusty Johnson, spoke at the 2015 SDGOP Teenage Republicans Camp, was arrested yesterday and charged with conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of the Russian government with the goal of infiltrating American political organizations:

“The SDGOP owes the people of South Dakota a detailed explanation of how Ms. Butina came to speak at their Teenage Republican Camp at the same time she began her efforts to infiltrate and influence American political organizations, and what relationship, if any, she has with their organization or any of their candidates and elected officials.

Read that here.

As one of 25-30 speakers addressing the kids, during her 15 minute talk abut gun rights Butina was unable to infiltrate the Teenage Republicans, since she was no longer a teenager.

Although, I do see a couple kids wearing red shirts. I promise you, we’ll keep our eye on those kids.

That being said, it’s interesting that Democrats are taking such interest about an unregistered foreign agent standing in front of high school kids. Because they are surprisingly quiet about the woman who served on the staff of South Dakota Dem elected officials (PUC and US Senate) who was convicted of espionage against the US, spying for nearly 30 years before being caught:

Unbeknownst to their large families and lifelong friends, Kendall was Cuba’s Agent 202 and Gwen Agent 123 or E-634—spies dedicated not just to each other but also to what they saw as Fidel Castro’s socialist nirvana in the Caribbean.

And despite their enjoying every benefit that US citizenship and residence can bestow, the government alleges that they nursed a deep-seated rage against the United States.

and..

Cuba bonded Kendall and Gwen Myers together. They met in Washington sometime after 1976, when she moved here, fired by a starry-eyed idealism.

She had been a constituent case worker for Senator James Abourezk, a liberal Democrat, in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and had landed a low-level job on his Capitol Hill staff. Among her colleagues were Tom Daschle, later Senate majority leader, and Pete Rouse, now a senior adviser to President Obama.

One of Abourezk’s passions was Cuba and ending the economic embargo. He visited the island several times, including taking a basketball team to Havana in 1977 as part of a group from South Dakota.

Abourezk recalls: “At the welcoming banquet, I told them, ‘This is the biggest gathering of Americans in Cuba since the Bay of Pigs invasion.’ The Cubans tore the roof off laughing.”

At the banquet, Abourezk took out his guitar and sang country numbers and the Cuban patriotic song “Guantanamera” with Teofilo Acosta, a former first secretary at the Cuban Mission to the UN and a known senior DGI clandestine operative. Afterward, Abourezk declared: “I’ll tell you one thing—these Communists got rhythm.”

and…

After her arrest, the first person Gwen called was former senator Abourezk. He recalls: “They had her in the FBI lockup, and a woman FBI agent called me on the phone and said, ‘Gwen Myers wants to speak to you.’

Read the entire story here.

So, while Dems are raising cain about the mote in the eye of Republicans, they’re being pretty darned quiet about the log in their own.

An Update On Signing Up For Campaign Newsletters

Kal Lis — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 13:22:49 +0000

Last week I bemoaned the fact that I could not sign up for campaign spam for some of the candidates for statewide office in South Dakota. In the past week, Tim Bjorkman has updated his website. The site now looks professional done and no longer has a mile of empty blue space. It matches the claims in this Bjorkman tweet

We’re please to announce the new website for the campaign is up and running! https://t.co/O8m2DgToxZ There you can sign up for our newsletter and keep up to date with the campaign. #ImwithTim pic.twitter.com/71avFJQmaM
— Tim Bjorkman (@TimBjorkmanSD) July 13, 2018

On the other hand, Jason Ravnsborg's site still fails to provide a space for newsletter signup and Steve Huff's name is still spelled Steve Hff.

South Dakota's Republican Leaders Are A Complacent Lot

John Tsitrian — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 13:10:28 +0000

What is it about the idea of bold leadership that makes South Dakota's Republican
No Offense, But . . .
Elephants Should Be Embarrassed
officials run for cover? On the state level there's a bridge between the functions of management and leadership that I don't think has been traversed since, like him or not, Bill Janklow was governor about 20 years ago. Last Monday Governor Dennis Daugaard was celebrating the state's $17 million surplus--South Dakota's seventh consecutive year in the black--by claiming that a structurally balanced budget "was my number one priority when I took office and it still is as I finish my term as Governor." I don't get how the modifier "structurally" has any relevance in a state where ongoing revenues are impossible to predict, given the volatile nature of the commodity markets that dominate our state's agriculturally-dependent economy. Laudable as it may sound, Daugaard's commitment doesn't mean much in a state that has had a balanced-budget amendment in its Constitution since 2012. Basically, Daugaard is congratulating his administration for adhering to the state constitution. Rather than sending his lame-duck governorship off with gratuitous fanfare, a requiem for Daugaard's years in the statehouse seems appropriate. Consider that on a per capita basis, South Dakota's GDP growth has persistently lagged the nation and the region. Daugaard gets some credit for navigating the revenue shortfalls that have plagued this state in recent years, but on providing the strong and visionary leadership it takes to advance South Dakota's economy forcefully enough to keep up with the rest of the country, he rates a "meh."
On the federal level, the situation is much the same. Our GOP trio of Kristi Noem in the U.S. House and Mike Rounds and John Thune in the Senate are mired in complacency. They seem helpless to do anything about the looming financial catastrophe that will strike South Dakota farmers as President Trump's trade war unfolds. Noem meekly said recently that falling commodity prices "are very concerning to me." His Trump-deference in full view, Mike Rounds was on Meet The Press last week telling Mike Todd that South Dakota farmers "need to share and continue to share their concerns." A month ago John Thune was belaboring the obvious by telling Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross that a trade war would have a "harmful effect" on farmers. Apparently, expressing concern and telling farmers they have to speak up for themselves is the closest the three of these can come to pushing for congressional action that might offset President Trump's potentially ruinous trade shenanigans. As for Republican Congressional candidate Dusty Johnson, he's part of the do-nothing cabal. He told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader last week that "congressional involvement, at least at this time, is going to inject more politics into it." To Johnson fending off the collapse of farm commodity prices is a political event, to be shunned by our state's elected officials . . . "at least at this time." So when is the "right time" to act? Johnson doesn't have a clue. The wussiness goes on. Our congresspeople need to live up to their job description as "representatives." Their wordplay hasn't stemmed the financial slaughter occurring in our ag sector. Political intimidation from the Trump administration has paralyzed our federal reps.

Wieczorek no threat to Bjorkman

larry kurtz — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 12:46:48 +0000

Ron Wieczorek submitted around 4,000 signatures for his unaffiliated run for South Dakota's lone US House seat.

He isn’t critical of President Trump’s recent tariffs, noting that “25 years of free trade has brought the American manufacturers to its knees.” [Yankton Press & Dakotan]

If Wieczorek takes 6% of the earth hater vote, George Hendickson takes 6% and the Constitution Party's candidate Neal Tapio takes at least 6% Democrat Tim Bjorkman will sail into office without even breaking a sweat especially now after it's been revealed the earth hater nominee has ties to the Russian mob.

Cook Political Report has yet to rate the contest.

Maria Butina - USD flyer, w/ Keene-Torshin Gov.Walker 4/15, w/ ex NRA president Jim Porter, at Teenage Republicans Camp Black Hills.

Is Senator Mike Rounds Asserting Donald Trump Tells Bigger Lies Than Putin?

Kal Lis — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 23:48:14 +0000

I cut and paste. You decide.

Sen Rounds with what I believe was a defense of the president: pic.twitter.com/NpPUB8dkt9
— Erica Werner (@ericawerner) July 16, 2018

Some people seem confused, so here's the rest of what Rounds had to say: pic.twitter.com/SqTgvAJF2o
— Erica Werner (@ericawerner) July 16, 2018

Release: Judge permanently pulls IM26 from the South Dakota Ballot

Pat Powers — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 22:02:55 +0000

Judge permanently pulls IM26 from the South Dakota Ballot

Sioux Falls, SD (July 16, 2018) – Today, Hughes County Circuit Court Judge Patricia DeVaney issued an order to permanently remove Initiated Measure (IM) 26, the deceptive prescription drug ballot issue, from South Dakota’s November 2018 ballot. Judge DeVaney’s ruling found that proponents of the ballot issue had improperly circulated IM26 petitions under South Dakota law which led to signatures being disqualified. The number of remaining valid signatures was far below the threshold required to qualify for the ballot.

Sherry Kurtz-Anderson, the spokesperson for South Dakotans Against the Deceptive Rx Ballot Issue, the coalition formed to oppose IM26, issued the following statement in the wake of the Court’s decision:

“IM26 was about deception from the beginning. Proponents of this deceptive proposal took a bad idea rejected by voters in California and Ohio, funded it with contributions from an out-of-state health care organization and violated the law in attempting to qualify it for the ballot. We applaud Judge DeVaney for seeing through this deception, applying the clear requirements of South Dakota law, and protecting South Dakota voters and the integrity of the initiative process with her ruling.”

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:

South Dakotans Against the Deceptive Rx Ballot Issue filed the complaint in the Hughes County Circuit Court in May 2018 following the certification of the petitions submitted by proponents to the South Dakota Secretary of State. While the Secretary of State followed the statutory requirements in reviewing the signatures, her office is not required to review the circulator oaths or the circulators’ qualifications as South Dakota residents. A court challenge was the only option to address unqualified circulators or improperly circulated petitions.

Washington insider, political activist and failed political candidate Rick Weiland led the IM26 effort in South Dakota. For Michael Weinstein, the CEO of the California-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation that funded the South Dakota measure, being kicked off the ballot in South Dakota is strike three after losing similar measures in both California and Ohio.

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The legacy of malice

David Newquist — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 20:18:40 +0000

Shortly before I moved to South Dakota, my next door neighbor, who taught law enforcement at a community college, ran for county sheriff. He was running against a man who was active in politics and was a bit of a character. The opponent was serving as county coroner and he put emergency lights on top of his car and went buzzing around town as if he was always on his way to an emergency. It was a joke around town because you don't need lights and sirens for trips to the morgue. However, aside from such idiosyncrasies, he had a reputation for being a very nice and energetic man and he was well known throughout the county.

I was a registered Republican at the time, but not at all active in politics and I never voted straight ticket, My next door neighbor was running as a Republican and the woman who was serving as party precinct chair lived just down the street and stopped to chat up the party candidates when we met on the street.

My neighbor launched a campaign that had a very negative element, as his ads and statements ridiculed his opponent in an insulting, mean-spirited way. Most people, including the woman who was precinct chair, thought the negative campaigning was sure to lose the election. The majority of people reacted strongly to negative, personal insults in campaigns and the conventional wisdom of most was that it reflected low character on the person who used it and turned people against them.

My neighbor won the election, much to the surprise of most people. Many political strategists in both parties noted that negative campaigning, particularly of the personally insulting kind, had never worked before and backfired on those who tried to use it, but it seemed to have worked in this instance. Did it mean that the public had changed? That negative campaigning would be effectively used? Apparently so. That time marked a shift away from campaigns that centered on what candidates would do to campaigns that engaged in personal attacks against opponents. Since that election, I've seen negative campaigning grow to the point to where it is considered a necessary aspect of a successful campaign. Advocates of personal defamation as part of the political process say that it works. Election results indicate they are right.

The South Dakota GOP finds defamatory campaigning so effective that it has become the major "strategy" in its campaigns. Defaming and misrepresenting opponents dominates. On the national level, Trump has turned insult, abuse, and mendacity into a national agenda. However, if South Dakota can claim national leadership in any area of human endeavor, it is in negative campaigning. The
Daschle-Thune campaign provides the paradigm for using malice as the predominant motive in a campaign.

The Daschle campaign and the Brown County Democrats ran their campaigns out of a large storefront on downtown Main Street. The Daschle campaign manager set up a back office he called the "war room." In it, he posted all the ads and statements that the Thune campaign issued against
Daschle. One newspaper ad pictured Daschle with Osama bin Laden and Iraq's Saddam Hussein with the implication they were all somehow allied. Another claimed that Daschle abandoned his first wife for a beauty queen. And there were blog printouts and news accounts of what Thune said at his public appearances. One of Thune's hired character assassins wrote a book about the campaign which, of course, never admits that the fundamental; strategy of Thune's campaign was to create malice against Daschle and anyone or anything associated with him. After the election, a political scientist and some journalists suggested that the campaign materials should be reviewed to analyze how the press was manipulated and responded to the negative materials of the campaign. Some funds were generated to organize what was titled The Press Project, which was conceived largely as a fact-checking enterprise. The materials collected in the Aberdeen campaign office provided a substantial start for the review. A professor of writing and journalism and dean of a program who was on a pre-retirement sabbatical from an eastern university was engaged to set up and direct the project in its initial stages. Professor John had visited the Dakotas with a close professional colleague originally from South Dakota and for many years they had neighboring summer homes near Detroit Lakes, where he was working on a sabbatical project and where he was directing the startup on The Press Project. At the very beginning right after New Years in 2005, the friend who had introduced him to the Dakotas died of cancer. Professor John kept working on the project which had been moved to Fargo for his convenience, but he indicated that he would be able to spend less time in starting up the project than he originally intended. Initially, The Press Project intended to focus on only the traditional media. Blogs were very recent and surveys showed that extremely few people were aware of them, let alone read them. The professor decided that blogs had to be included because they most clearly defined the tenor of the Thune campaign.

He arranged for a young political scientist to work into the directorship of the Project, and turned his attention to his own project and preparing to return to his job for a year before retiring. Another Project worker was a young woman who was an early contributor to the Northern Valley Beacon. She reported that the professor had become very dispirited as he analyzed the materials. After he turned over the project to the political scientist, he commented how demoralizing dealing with the campaign materials was for him. He said that the misrepresentations and defamations could be fact-checked, but the malice behind them was the dominating factor in the campaign. They were made with no regard for the collateral damage it did to people. He commented that what needed close study was the audience that accepted such campaign tactics.

The Press Project came to a halt when the young political scientist quit to join a more prestigious project, stating that what happened in South Dakota was a provincial anomaly of little importance to the rest of America. (The Trump phenomenon proved him wrong.) So, we packed up the materials in archive boxes and put them in a storage unit with the expectation that the work would resume. As time passed The Project receded into the background of political business, and I have lost track of where the materials are.

One of the things that the professor found alarming was that in a state whose media have a notorious "conservative" slant, the Thune campaign contended that it, particularly the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, showed a personal partiality for Tom Daschle. The evidence showed that for the most part Thune was, in fact, receiving idolizing treatment from the media, treating him like a "rock star." In an account by the Aberdeen American News, that term was actually used.

The late David Kranz was a particular target of the Thune campaign. I had met him in his professional capacity, but we were remote acquaintances. He was considered by other journalists and political operatives to have the most extensive, insightful knowledge of South Dakota politics of anyone in the state. Professor John said that the attacks on Kranz were "malicious contortions" of his work which the Project should expose in detail. The professor left some analysis of the attacks, but they were never followed up. Professor John was an expert in writing and rhetoric, but his successor was a political scientist and placed more emphasis on the social effects of the campaign rather than analyzing its truthfulness and defamatory constructs. The professor noted that the fundamental premise of Thune's campaign was character defamation against Daschle, which included assailing the character of anyone associated with Daschle in a positive way. Thune's record in Congress was one of fecklessness and indolence in comparison with Daschle's. Rather than risk comparisons, the Thune campaign carpet-bombed Daschle's character, including that of anyone around him.

Through my associates, I kept hearing that David Kranz was deeply troubled and hurt by the attacks on him, insisting that most of what was said was not true. And I heard that he was struggling with health issues.

Professor John said that the Thune campaign left South Dakota with a legacy of malice which will be recorded in the many lives it affected. Kranz's long-time colleague Kevin Woster brought that legacy up in his lengthy tribute on the occasion of Kranz's death. He referred to the memorial given at the funeral by former Argus Leader editor Randall Beck, whose tenure at the newspaper included the 2004 campaign cycle. Beck spoke of "the 'false, malicious attacks on his character' from which, Beck rightly said, Kranz never quite recovered."

Woster writes, "Most of us would have returned fire against such an onslaught. Kranz did not. Could not. 'It was not in him to fight back,' Beck said."

The legacy of malice has not yet been presented in a comprehensive account of the Daschle-Thune campaign. But it keeps cropping up in the lives of those who were hurt by it. Much to the discredit of the voters in South Dakota, it works. And the election of Donald Trump is an indication of depravity in the national population. Good will is not part of the GOP agenda.

The family and friends who were collateral casualties of the character assassination blitz against Tom Daschle are the evidence of that legacy of malice. It is one thing to cite negative things when they are true about a candidate. But contriving falsehoods solely for the purpose of defaming a person in the eyes of the public is decadence that kills off the better angels. Such tactics leave a trail of distrusting and damaged people. And that is our legacy of malice.

It's Tough To Make Sense Of The World When People React As If They're In A Comic Book Multiverse

Kal Lis — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 19:33:11 +0000

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held their summit today. Following their one on one meeting, they held a joint press conference. Reactions to the press conference were fairly uniform. CNN called it "The most shameful, stunning moment of the Trump presidency." Senator John McCain said,

“No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are—a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. American presidents must be the champions of that cause if it is to succeed. Americans are waiting and hoping for President Trump to embrace that sacred responsibility. One can only hope they are not waiting totally in vain.”

Even folks who should be reliable Trump supporters like the daughter of the U.S. Ambassador to Russia and a Fox News Anchor are outraged.

No negotiation is worth throwing your own people and country under the bus.
— Abby Huntsman (@HuntsmanAbby) July 16, 2018

CBN's David Brody calls it "plain bad."

Conservatives defending @realDonaldTrump after his press conference w/ Vladimir Putin are not being intellectually honest. It was just plain bad. “Both countries responsible” on election meddling? That’s the moral equivalence stuff they hit @BarackObama on...
— David Brody (@TheBrodyFile) July 16, 2018

And yet, there is one political group that can praise Trump's performance, the leaders of religious right.

Thank you @POTUS @realDonaldTrump for pursuing peace above politics. https://t.co/31P23JMW8v
— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) July 16, 2018

Graham doesn't seem to be alone. As Brody notes, there are other religious conservatives defending Trump's performance.

The only analogy I have is the DC Comics multiverse. On one Earth-1, there's the Justice League; Earth-X is populated by evil doppelgangers known as the Crime Syndicate of America. I am not trying to make light of the situation or hype today's events. I am trying to underscore the fact that it seems as if it will soon be impossible for Americans to discuss any event because they they won't be seeing the same facts. The Republic works when people argue interpretations of agreed on facts. I don't know if it works when groups of citizens live in two different universes and refuse to agree on both facts and interpretation.

Constitution Party squabble could lead to election of new officers

larry kurtz — Sun, 15 Jul 2018 17:39:59 +0000

Lori Stacey is Mid-Western States Regional Co-Chairman of the Constitution Party of the United States and chair of the Constitution Party of South Dakota.

There was a coup attempt yesterday to hijack the Constitution Party of South Dakota at their state convention. Chair Lori Stacey was advised not to even attend for fear of possible bodily harm. Orchestrating the coup attempt were Gordon Howie, Lora Hubbel and the national chairman who want Stacey removed.

In an exclusive interview with Stacey she told The Dakota Progressive the national party chair has been "sliming" her for years and has even threatened her physically. She said many in the party want him out and "has been a problem for many good people" but that he "will now be toast."

Gordon Howie is bankrupt huckster who wants her job and Lora Hubbel is a perennial political opportunist. Stacey said they just "messed everything up" and made the convention look like "a laughing stock." They drove people away who would have run for office and that Howie and Hubbel hijacked the gathering instead of letting her (Stacey) preside over it as planned. "They we're stupid snakes and cost us everything I fought for. Some of these people were my friends and they stabbed me and the party," she said.

So far Stacey is rejecting the idea of inviting a successor but is conceding the election of new officers is not impossible because of the potential power the party wields in statewide elections.

The party expects to reconvene at a later date TBA.

Inflation Wipes Out Wage Gains: So Much Winning

Kal Lis — Sun, 15 Jul 2018 12:49:55 +0000

The Chicago Tribune points to the fact that workers like farmers are feeling the brunt of the trade war.

The cost of food, shelter and gas have all risen significantly in the past year. Gas skyrocketed more than 24 percent, rent for a primary residence jumped 3.6 percent and meals at restaurants and cafeterias rose 2.8 percent.

Prices have risen roughly at the same rate as wages, erasing any gains workers may have hoped to realize via bigger paychecks.

"While the labor market remains historically tight, the pace of U.S. inflation is now outpacing wage gains late in the business cycle," said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, an audit and advisory firm. "The U.S. is now ensnared in a three front trade war which will in the near to medium term result in higher prices."

For workers, more pain may be coming, as economists are concerned that prices could rise further due to President Trumps tariffs on many foreign imports. Trump put a 20 tariff on foreign washing machines earlier this year, and the inflation report Thursday showed more than a 13 percent spike in laundry equipment over the same period last year.

"Expect rising transportation costs to start getting passed on to us, along with the tariff induced jump in costs," said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer of Bleakley Advisory Group.

This article reminded me of another time WIN was a key part of the political discussion. During the 70s, it stood for "whip inflation now." There were even pins.

Whip Inflation Now pin circa 1974
From Wikipedia

We're nowhere near the levels of inflation that existed in the 1970s. Trump's policies may, however, be creating the conditions that will produce double digit inflation. Trump stole "Make America Great" from Reagan. With his love of "winning," he has a ready made slogan used during the Ford administration.

And The Dog Whistles Yet Remain

Kal Lis — Sat, 14 Jul 2018 15:03:39 +0000

According to the counter on my sidebar, I have written more posts in June and July than I did in the years 2016 and 2017 combined. I should match my 2015 yearly total in a few days.

Honesty compels me to admit that in addition to not writing posts, I didn't read South Dakota blogs as much as I should have the past few years. That lack of reading was especially pronounced from October through March and during May and June when debate season or nationals preparation was in full swing. There was not enough caffeine in the world to provide enough energy to get me past teaching and coaching.

While reacquainting myself with the South Dakota blogosphere, I've learned Bob Ellis has stopped blogging, seen that Sibby is still obsessed with Cory Heidelberger but hasn't posted anything in a few months, and noticed what I believe is a decrease in the number of regular commenters on Dakota War College and Dakota Free Press. The latter observation may be a function of age and not actually be fact.

On Right Side South Dakota, however, Brad Ford remains unchanged. He still tosses out dog whistles like this insinuation that, despite libraries worth of evidence to the contrary, slaves must have been well cared for.

The family’s workhorse (“Old Doc”) seems to symbolize the difference between then and now. Cash outlay was minimal over the 34 years of the horse’s life. Food was free from the harvests. There were no veterinary bills or insurance policies needed: “Since the horses had the hard work to do, and would as busy as the men all summer, simple wisdom demanded that they be treated considerately. During the first week or so of plowing days they were permitted to stop for frequent rests, because their muscles were soft from the comparative idleness of winter. On warm days, when their breathing become fast, the plow was stopped to allow them to cool off.”

Of course, farmers today are just as motivated to care for their expensive machinery to prevent breakdowns. It seems just as likely that plantation farmers in the Old South would have done likewise. McMillen suggests that such practicality is built right into the natural order: “The cow permits herself to be milked, and the sheep yields up her wool. The horse, despite his great strength, stupidly lets man make him into a slave laborer” in exchange for ample food, comfortable housing, and parent-like care. [emphasis mine]

Ford's ignoring the horrors of slavery are bad enough, but the paragraph's structure and the placing of the quotation not only furthers the idea that "plantation owners in the Old South" not only provided "ample food, comfortable housing, and parent-like care" but also that slave labor is part of "the natural order." More importantly, Ford's placement of the quotation likens humans to horses and impugns the intelligence of a whole race.

Perhaps the South Dakota blogosphere made the collective decision to ignore Ford while I wasn't looking. Perhaps I should ignore him too. That decision would certainly keep my blood pressure in check. I retain, however, a silly notion that humans are created equal and that it might be better for the world if one points out that no natural order exists where humans should be treated like animals.

Howie: SDGOP is toast

larry kurtz — Sat, 14 Jul 2018 13:07:14 +0000

He's running.

In South Dakota, the Constitution Party is going to be the Tea Party on steroids. It is the worst nightmare of the Party bosses who have had a strangle-hold on their respective parties. [Gordon Howie]

Principled conservatives are already fighting back against the South Dakota Republican Party insiders in Rapid City. Pierre is broken and the only way to fix it is to have Republicans lose several races to Democrats. Fact is: the best way to a strong two party system in South Dakota is for arch-conservatives to launch an alt-right party. South Dakota's most ardent citizens for liberty are recruiting conservatives to run not just in statewide elections but for the legislature, too.

Liz May, Tonchi Weaver, Steve Livermont, Dan Kaiser, Neal Tapio, Shad Olson, Florence Thompson, Stace Nelson, Gordon Howie, Lora Hubbel and Scott Jones could be among candidates fleeing the SDGOP for the Libertarian and Constitution Parties.

SD Republican Party... Moving Left?? https://t.co/BX1Groj1sB
— Gordon Howie (@GordonHowieSD) June 25, 2018

The Blogger Doth Protest Too Much Methinks

Kal Lis — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 22:15:33 +0000

It likely reflects poorly on my character that I enjoy using literary allusions to refer to everyday occurrences. In the case, this post's title refers to the fact that South Dakota War College has posted at least 6 posts referencing the fact that the Democrats must reconvene in August to properly certify their candidates for constitutional offices in South Dakota.

Were I a Republican insider, I would chortle a bit at a major unforced error. I don't believe that this incident is worth six posts worth of pointing and giggling. Further, Dakota War College's latest post, implies that Republicans presented Democrats with a gift and states that "Democrats should be thanking the GOP" for pointing out the error "in the interest of transparency."

Transparency is not a term I would use to describe a party that dominates the legislature but keeps its caucus closed. Also, I have never associated the South Dakota Republicans with benevolence. If anything, they are ruthlessly efficient.

That nature reminds me of a few classics, chiefly The Iliad which features the ruthlessly efficient killing machine Achilles and The Aeneid which contains the story of the Trojan Horse. South Dakota Democrats would do well to remember one of the key lines from The Aeneid, "I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts." This "gift," like that famous giant wooden horse may not be given with good intent and Democrats should exercise due caution.

Lakota Oglala Oyate embraces self-reliance

larry kurtz — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 17:29:48 +0000

East River South Dakota has been destroyed but West River can still be saved.

In an era when western states are scrambling to preserve habitat for bison, wapiti, bighorn sheep, pronghorns, deer, the threatened Greater sage grouse and all the other wildlife at risk to the Republican Party how is running nurseries for introduced species like wild horses and burros either conservative or sustainable?

Tribes don’t want help from the State of South Dakota or any other western state unless it’s government to government. Historically unserved or underserved by conventional financial institutions Native communities have been largely isolated from the food web. At least one American Indian tribe in South Dakota has shown interest in operating an abattoir where horse meat is an economic development opportunity. Citi is quietly seeking a piece of tribal gaming announcing a 'major contribution' in support of Native Community Development Financial Institutions.

The buffalo nation is strong. Its circle is being mended. These were the thoughts Bamm Brewer shared at the Grand Opening ceremony for the Charging Buffalo Meat House, the reservation’s first meat processing facility, located 6 miles west of Pine Ridge Village. Created with funding from One Spirit, a Native American service organization founded to assist and support this nation’s First People, the meat house is the brainchild of Jeri Baker, the group’s director and Brewer, the organization’s food manager. “Right now, we’re feeding, providing food for, about 5,000 people,” Baker commented. “But when you look at the diet-related disease that’s here, 50 percent of the people have diabetes. Many more are at risk of diabetes. Traditionally, that was not the case. Historically, diabetes was unknown among this population.” The facility currently employs 8 to 10 people. But within the next 4 to 5 years as the tribe’s buffalo herd grows, and as the first meat processing house on Pine Ridge begins providing services to local cattlemen and contributing to the reservation’s economy, the sky could be the limit. [Jim Kent, Lakota Country Times]

Human successes hunting with dogs likely contributed to the extinction of several species and the domestication of some camelids maybe for 11,000 years. The relatively small distance between the Canadian River in New Mexico and the Missouri at Fort Peck reminds me again how the earliest humans in North America thwarted by glaciers, the dire wolf, and Smilodon on everything north of the Sangre de Cristos terminating at Santa Fe, blazed the Pecos Trail from west to east into the southern Great Plains and Mississippi Valley to find an inland paradise teeming with prey.

So, the question remains: should rewilding efforts seek to restore sustainable wild lands to Pleistocene Era conditions or let the Anthropocene lay waste desertifying precious resources changing the landscape forever leaving survivors to cleave out habitable zones forsaking native species?

Northern Colorado has just added a bison herd. The Oglala, Pawnee and Comanche National Grasslands are not far away. The Thunder Basin National Grassland in Wyoming is managed by offices in Colorado. The Fort Pierre National Grassland in South Dakota is managed from Nebraska. It merely takes the political will to build corridors for bison, other ungulates and their associated predators over public and leased private land into the Oglala National Grassland in Nebraska, Wyoming's Thunder Basin National Grassland to North and South Dakota then to the Northern Cheyenne, Crow and Fort Peck nations in Montana.

After bison reach sustainable levels agreed upon by the stakeholders allow private and other public herds like the one at Wind Cave National Park with microchips to join the public herd and be harvested according to the market or population pressures. Hybrid herds should be assessed on a case by case basis and some individuals could join the main herd.

The South Dakota Democratic Party should advocate for paying the tribes and settling the Black Hills Claim, dissolving the Black Hills National Forest, moving management of the land from the US Department of Agriculture into the Department of Interior; and, in cooperation with Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Forestry and Wildfire Management. Mato Paha (Bear Butte), the associated national grasslands and the Sioux Ranger District of the Custer/Gallatin National Forest should be included in the move.

Rewild it and rename it Okawita Paha National Monument eventually becoming part of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge connecting the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge in Montana along the Missouri River to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with a corridor from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon.

Preparing For Our Robot Overlords

Kal Lis — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 16:27:22 +0000

I may be committing nostalgia without a licence but I seem to remember a distant golden age of blogging when bloggers used some of their posts to engage in conversation that involved agreement or disagreement but not sniping. This morning Cory at Dakota Free Press was kind enough to mention this post about AI and truth and elaborate on his efforts at "preparation for and resistance to robopropaganda" His list includes not allowing anonymous comments and a healthy dose of Asimov.

I'd like to add four other preparations as we await the coming of our robot overlords

1. Read books.

2. Read old books. I'll defer to C.S. Lewis for rationale.

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions.

3. Memorize Orwell's "Politics and the English Language."

4. Finally, just think. Heck, that advice is even in the Bible.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Pillager pets pig

larry kurtz — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 14:15:48 +0000

What do these two men have in common other than being earth haters? They're both crooks.

Always great to get a few minutes with @SenJohnThune pic.twitter.com/C8p1wPBSVR
— Pat Powers (@SoDakCampaigns) July 10, 2018

Looking At The Closing Of The Bob Mercer Bureau Like A Debate Judge

Kal Lis — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 14:15:10 +0000

Sometimes I get the feeling that debaters, debate coaches, former debaters, and former debate coaches are the only people who read this blog. On the possibility that normal human beings drop by from time to time, I need to clarify a few terms.

Debate judges have preferences, but because it's debate, they use a fancy word like paradigms. On the one end of the spectrum is the games player who believes the resolution does not matter. Debate can be about the act of debating or the importance of Dr. Seuss or involve interpretative dance rather than a spoken case. (To the best of my knowledge, no high school judge in South Dakota fits this category.) On the other end of the spectrum is the lay judge who sees one or two rounds a season and is nearly impossible to prepare for. Needless to say, if a games player and a lay judge serve on a three judge panel, their decisions will nearly always differ.

Online reflections on the Aberdeen American News decision to close its Pierre bureau remind me of ballots I have read by judges who were on opposite ends of the judging spectrum as they adjudicated the same round.

From Charlie Hoffman commenting at Dakota War College,

40 some years ago I remember my father saying that the problem in America is too many people just don’t give a damn. Today he would obviously be saying that the problem in America is too many people just don’t give a damn about the truth, they make their own up. Bob Mercer very well could be South Dakota’s last bastion of unbiased journalism based purely on facts.

Then there's this Larry Kurz tweet

Important to remember @pierremercer has been the voice of South Dakota politics sanitization since Bill Janklow raided the whorehouses in Deadwood to distract from his role in the murder of Jancita Eagle Deer. #sdleg
— interested party (@larry_kurtz) July 12, 2018

I'll try to be a tabula rasa judge on this one. South Dakota government is a musty old boys club that needs to be exposed to a lot more reporting. As he reports on state government on a full time basis, Mercer does yeoman work. Many of the committee and commission meetings he covered sound more painful than a novice debate round where all of the debaters read arguments they don't understand because varsity debaters have provided the novice the arguments two minutes before the round began.

Unless we make frequent trips to Pierre, Mercer's coverage is the only way many of us learn about the legislative and administrative sausage making. Mercer's opinion columns and blog posts reflect his Republican preferences, but if newspapers don't distinguish between news and opinion as they publish those columns that's on the publisher not the writer.

The bean counters boot Bob Mercer

David Newquist — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 19:07:56 +0000

The Aberdeen American News announced that Bob Mercer is among 11 employees laid off today. Here is executive editor J.J. Perry's explanation:

Bob Mercer’s situation is a little different. He is based in Pierre, and his work is sold by our company to other news outlets in South Dakota. Those subscriptions helped offset some of the cost, but not enough.

Rather than an immediate layoff, the Capitol Bureau in Pierre will remain open through the end of September. That will give our member papers enough time to decide how to proceed with their coverage, including of our new governor and the legislative session that opens in January.

My deep hope is that one of the other subscriber newspapers can pick up the Capitol Bureau position, and we can subscribe or otherwise subsidize some version of what the American News has been able to provide for nearly 10 years.

The layoffs come in response to a lack of operating capital. What is obvious in Mercer's dismissal is that essential journalistic coverage is not much of a consideration. Bob Mercer and the AP are the only coverage of state government in the state. If editorial responsibility were a factor in the decision, a first concern would be that state government be covered and kept under scrutiny. However, such journalistic concerns are not important in the world of bean counting. In other words the primary reason that the press receives First Amendment rights is dismissed.

The South Dakota press has a reputation for deficient journalism, and the tradition continues.

Stuefen leaves governor's economic post

larry kurtz — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 15:19:12 +0000

Randy Stuefen must be exceedingly disappointed South Dakota’s economy is in the shitter.

Stuefen is also a St. Mary's alumnus and was a senior when I was a freshman at Elkton High School. As many young Elkton men did he went into the US Air Force after graduation during the Vietnam era then returned home to enroll at South Dakota State University on the GI Bill. In those days returning service members brought Sansui and Pioneer stereo equipment back to the States.

He turned me on to Mason Proffit, Commander Cody, Dr. Hook, Thai stick, Panama Red and Michoacán.

Around 1972 he and his brother, my boyhood friend Roger, left their folks' house and rented a space in the Hawrysh Apartments in Brookings. Roger dropped out of SDSU right after their mother died but Randy introduced me to Mark (Spiro) Speirs, Paul Anderson and Gary (Hairy) Ellingson when they lived in the Sugar Shack near downtown Brookings.

When Paul got married in the mid-80s Spiro, Art Young and i enlisted Spearditch pilot Mark Farrier to fly us to Madison but during our return flight a tornadic thunderstorm forced us to land at the Pierre Airport. By sheer coincidence as we were walking out to get something to eat Randy and his wife, Betty just happened to be driving by, took us to dinner then put us up for the night.

After graduate school Randy moved to Vermillion, joined the University of South Dakota faculty then developed a theory of South Dakota’s dual rural and urban economies. Last i saw Stuefen was at the Bay Leaf Cafe in Spearditch somewhere around 1997.

He joined Denny Daugaard's Council of Economic Advisers in 2012 and was just succeeded by former SDSU president David Chicoine.

Previously posted at The Dakota Progressive.

Let's Get Digital

Kal Lis — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 14:29:54 +0000

Last month The Washington Post reported that China had hacked a United States Navy contractor and stole "massive amounts of highly sensitive data related to undersea warfare — including secret plans to develop a supersonic anti-ship missile for use on U.S. submarines by 2020, according to American officials."

This morning, Forbes covers a report on the "Digital South" The article's graphic shows the United States has "stalled out" when it comes to digital innovation.

Axios reports on a Center for a New American Security study that contends [a]dvances in artificial intelligence are supercharging propaganda, espionage, and cybercrime [portend] 'the end of truth'" Axios continues,

Why it matters: Cybercriminals and governments are stocking up on the AI capabilities that will define the next generation of conflict. At the same time, automation and the rise of fake information are stirring up unrest. Together, these forces can turn society upside down.

The report concludes, "I don't think we as a society are prepared for this." [emphasis in original]

Taken together, the three articles point to the fact that when it comes to the digital age, the nation is vulnerable, stagnant, and unprepared for the future. I'm certain we're not prepared for a future filled with "so-called 'deepfakes,' or AI-doctored videos falsely showing people saying or doing something,"

Both the political right and the political left seem determined to continue the cultural trench warfare that has gone on inside the country for decades. The President seems more concerned about planning military parades, fighting with the nation's allies, and copying up to dictators than with preparing for future threats. Congress seems more concerned about doing nothing than than building a secure digital infrastructure. No one is equipped to teach how to deal with a world that doesn't allow an one to trust one's sight or hearing to determine whether someone actually performed an action. At least we'll have good cat memes.

South Dakota Democrats Embrace Roundup-Ready Hemp

larry kurtz — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 13:22:37 +0000

For the record, this blog can't support widespread growing of industrial cannabis (hemp), especially on tribal lands: it is an invasive species capable of overgrowing native grasses.

The bad news is that the newly-released platform and resolutions adopted by the South Dakota Democratic Party at their state convention make no mention of cannabis but they do adopt language that explores the cultivation of Roundup-Ready hemp.

The good news is that they have the opportunity to reconvene and address their mistakes after buggering legal rules.

Why anyone would want to buy genetically modified hemp seed from Bayer CropScience/Monsanto or some other earth hater every year remains a mystery.

The never ending wall of hemp I am tasked with cutting down to make way for prairie grass #helpme ;) pic.twitter.com/0cEyqQYjaY
— Jane Fleming Kleeb (@janekleeb) June 27, 2015

In North Dakota, supporters of legalizing marijuana push for vote https://t.co/NfEuz8b5di pic.twitter.com/aG7UifGM71
— The Daily Republic (@dailyrepublic) July 12, 2018

Lake Mitchell: red state failure on parade

larry kurtz — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 13:05:33 +0000

It's not the heat; it's the stupidity.

Instead of suing industrial agriculture for its role in making Lake Mitchell a shit hole the City of Mitchell is out begging the feds to pay for the cleanup.

Currently, the lake is tested in three locations once a week from mid-May through September, and each test costs between $40 and $60. The samples are sent to Nebraska to be tested, as there is no testing equipment closer. That means it takes several days to get the results of the tests. It was agreed at the meeting that more frequent testing needs to be done to have enough data to get grant money, and some suggestions on how to do this included hiring an intern to perform the tests, purchasing testing equipment to eliminate the need to send the samples to Nebraska. [Mitchell Daily Republic]

Advisories to avoid contact with the lake have been issued due to chlorophyll and phosphorus contamination. Even visitation to Mitchell's Corn Palace is evaporating because of the stench.

What do you expect when earth hater Eldon Roth of Beef Products, Inc. is South Dakota's fattest donor? It's not just Lake Mitchell; every lake and waterway in eastern South Dakota is a shit hole because of poor agricultural practices.

Why has a Nebraska firm been retained to do the work? Because apparently there are no companies in South Dakota with the expertise.

And where is Mitchell native Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson? Raising money for his own self-gratification, of course. Anyone who believes it's only going to cost $7.62 million to fix Lake Mitchell is delusional.

These episodes aren't self-reliance; they're moral hazard.

A Musing About Perspective, Kavanaugh, Summits, And Normality

Kal Lis — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 13:16:20 +0000

It may be a week for the history books. On Monday, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to to be the next justice on the Supreme Court. Today, he's at the NATO Summit, and later this week he'll meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The following tweets may provide some prospective on Kavanaugh and provide some guidance for what promises to be a week and summer of sturm und drang.

First, there's this portion of a Susan Hennessey thread.

It can be hard for me to disentangle Trump as a true threat to the Republic from the Republican party with which I often strenuously disagree. I try to ask myself what Jeb or Mitt would do. If answer is same, then it’s just politics. /1
— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) July 10, 2018

Any ordinary Republican president would be nominating Kavanaugh or Hardiman (or someone similar). Both are decent people who respect the rule of law. Both are significantly right of Kennedy and will reshape the court, I believe for the worse. /2
— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) July 10, 2018

I wish a different president were picking someone else. I think what happened to Garland is deeply unjust. But I think it’s worth acknowledging—absurd Trumpian pageantry aside—tonight is politics as usual. /3
— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) July 10, 2018

Second, there's this Leon Wood tweet

Any one of the republicans realistically running for president would have made two equally good picks for SCOTUS, without all the crap that makes Trump and Trumpism a cancer. https://t.co/tTYHuZNOHb
— Leon Wolf (@LeonHWolf) July 10, 2018

While Hennessey and Wood disagree about whether Kavanaugh is a good pick, they agree that Trump is a deleterious influence on the Republic. They also agree that Kavanaugh is a pick any Republican President would have made. As Hennessy succinctly puts it, the Kavanaugh nomination "is politics as usual."

What's not politically usual, however is a President strongly criticizing allies on the eve of a summit, praising a dictator NATO was designed to confront, and imposing tariffs at a whim. It is also highly unusual to randomly pardon people for arson and occupying government property so soon after they have been sentenced.

I don't know if Republicans in the House and Senate will ever develop a spine let alone the adamantium infused one necessary to confront Trump, a juvenile, stubborn, vile man who has the hubris of a tragic hero. I know the Democrats want to pick up every gauntlet Trump throws down. There may be some political genius who knows how to fight all of these fights at once, but he or she is remaining quiet. Absent expert leadership, it might be best to fight to keep the abnormal from becoming normal and allowing the normal, no matter how bad, to remain a fight for another time.

During this week and the rest of the summer Putin may well back the United States into a corner as the American and world's economies begin a dangerous downward spiral because of Trump's foolish trade war. Returning to normal may not be possible if those events transpire; normality may be possible if the worst event of the summer is Kavanaugh's confirmation.

In Some Cases, Signing Up For Campaign Newsletters Is Harder Than It Should Be

Kal Lis — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 21:32:25 +0000

The last time I was actively blogging during an election was 2014. It seemed, therefore, prudent to get signed up for campaign emails and look for party platform points to nitpick. Today is hot, humid, and uncomfortable, so I thought it would be a great time sign up for campaign spam from Noem, Sutton, Bjorkman, Johnson, Ravnsborg, Seiler, Frederick, Barnett, Haeder, Matson, Cool, and Sattgast. I also thought the party websites along with the individual campaign sites would make that task easy. I was proved wrong in several instances.

Both the South Dakota Republicans' and Democrats' sites could be easier to navigate. It takes a few clicks to discover party platforms, the party officers, and their elected officials. One can sign up for spam, find party offices, and click buttons to donate or volunteer. As of this writing, however, neither party has a link or tab with a list of their 2018 candidates for statewide office. Maybe I'm feeling the lack of caffeine or am angry about the weather, but I should not have to consult Ballotpedia to discover South Dakota's statewide candidates. (I did eventually find the Democratic candidates on their blog page.)

On to the candidates. Both Kristi Noem and Billie Sutton make it easy to sign up for campaign updates. Both have policy positions. I do wish Sutton's were not hidden under the "Meet Billie" tab and I wish that Noem's site did not feature an annoying "Meet Larry" video pop up, but the sites are usable and reasonably easy to navigate.

The Dusty Johnson home page may be my favorite. It's uncluttered and easy to navigate. Signing up for email updates was easy. On the other hand, I couldn't find a way to subscribe to a Tim Bjorkman newsletter and there is a whole bunch of empty blue between the "Tim on Twitter" and "Tim on Facebook" sections of the home page. Both sites, however, have easy to find information about the candidates' respective positions.

In the Attorney General's race, Randy Seiler's home page has a lot of stuff on it, but it's clean enough so that I don't feel as if information is slapping me in the face. It's also easy to sign up for campaign updates. Jason Ravnsborg, like Bjorkman, doesn't seem to have a spot to sign up for a newsletter. Like Seiler the site is busy but not annoyingly so. Ravnsborg does, however, misspell the name of one of his endorsers: "YANKTON, SD - Yankton Attorney Steve Hff endorses Attorney General Candidate Jason Ravnsborg." I'm willing to cut amateur bloggers and local candidates a break, but an attorney general candidate should be a bit more careful. Misspellings in a legal brief may have numerous unintended consequences. Also, Steve Huff's son debated for me. Both Steve and his son are wonderful human beings who treated me well over the past year, so they should get proper due. Besides, Huff is not that hard to spell.

Running down the rest of the statewide candidates web presence and newsletter availability. Alexandra Fredrick the Democratic candidate for South Dakota Secretary of State is using a Facebook page, but I couldn't find a spot to sign up for a newsletter. Googling "Steve Barnett Secretary of State" did not produce a campaign web page. In the State Treasurer's race, both Aaron Matson and Josh Haeder have Facebook pages. I could find links to donate or volunteer on Matson's page but there doesn't seem to be a spot to sign up for updates. Haeder also has a campaign website that seems to be a work in progress. That page allows one to sign up for a newsletter, but the Mail Chimp link is apparently broken. Finally, Googling "Tim Cool for South Dakota Auditor" produced no campaign web page. Republican Rich Sattgast has a Facebook page with a broken link for Sattgast for Auditor.

It's admittedly early in the campaign season, and I expect pages to be created and updated, but I honestly thought all candidates for statewide office would be eager to send me campaign spam.

Is Kristi Noem Running Scared?

Kal Lis — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 16:15:58 +0000

Let's begin with the caveat that I expect Noem to be elected governor in November. She has won two statewide Republican primaries and has been elected to Congress four times. That said, some recent events lead to the belief that she's not running a campaign based on confidence.

First, she selected Larry Rhoden to be her running mate. Rhoden's most obvious contribution to the ticket is the fact that he provides a West River geographic balance. This selection seemingly indicates she's worried that Democratic candidate Billie Sutton will cut deeply into her West River advantage, something Republicans in general and Noem, as she showed in her primary victory over Marty Jackley, in particular enjoys.

Second, the South Dakota Republican Party's predictably over-the-top response to a silly tweet mentions Billie Sutton twice as much as it mentions Samuel Parkinson, the tweet's author. It mentions no other Democratic state-wide candidate. The emphasis on Sutton alone seems curious.

Finally, there's a ridiculous press release posing as a fact sheet that claims Sutton is a "Pierre insider" who will be unable to "upset the status quo." Had Democrats been in charge of the legislature or the held the governor's office in recent memory, that charge might have merit. However, Republicans who have been in charge. If Noem is truly an outsider to the Pierre political culture, she must be claiming that she has not actively been working with Republican governors and legislative leaders when she was representing South Dakota in Washington, a dubious claim at best.

Further, if being in Pierre in the minority "for nearly a decade" makes Sutton an insider what does being in Pierre in the majority since 2001 make Rhoden? I doubt the correct answer is "outsider."

The farcical insider/outsider rhetoric pales in comparison to one of the chief proofs of Sutton's status as an insider: Sutton's "grandfather was the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in 1978." If one is to judge a person's insider status by what a grandfather's did in 1978, I must be a medium or a mortician, a dead person insider if you will, because both of my grandfathers died prior to 1978.

As I said in the first paragraph, I expect Noem to win. I would also expect a confident candidate and party to act as such and campaign on issues not vague slogans juvenile insinuations with no logical backing.

The American Republic: December 7, 1787-July, 8, 2018 RIP

Kal Lis — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 14:14:19 +0000

It's been a heck of run, but nothing humans create lasts forever.

Yesterday, Jonathan Chait published a thought piece entitled "Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler? A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion." The general theory behind Chait's piece is that Donald Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987.

Meanwhile The Daily Beast recently posted an article on the QAnon conspiracy theory. Will Sommer sums up the theory

Plotters in the deep state tried to shoot down Air Force One and foil President Trump’s North Korea summit. A cabal of global elites, including top figures in Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the intelligence agencies, are responsible for nearly all the evil in the world. And now Trump is going to fix it all with thousands of sealed indictments, sending the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama straight to Guantanamo Bay.

Or at least that’s how the world is going for the believers of QAnon. . .

Perhaps this post's title is a bit over dramatic. The physician may have just told the Republic to go home, hug its children, and get its affairs in order. Let's run through a few reasons that these theories, plausible or not, are worrisome. (We'll leave aside the obvious point that if either is true, the Republic obviously has been destroyed.)

First, we've admittedly had nutty theories throughout our history: the Masons are running everything; electing JFK will create a Catholic theocracy, and 9/11 was an inside job come to mind rather quickly. There may have been a "Custer was set up" theory in 1876. These two theories seem different in kind and degree. Both are large, structured in a way that demands opponents prove a negative, and place rot at the very core of the government.

Second, a democratic republic exists on the premise that certain truths are shared by all. It's unclear that one who accepts the QAnon theory can even have a cup of coffee with someone who believes Chait's theory plausible. Even a young earth creationist and an atheist who accepts string theory as fact can agree that a sunset is pretty. These two camps, however, live in realities where the sky has vastly different hues.

Finally, there are a few what ifs. If Trump is impeached or indicted, how will the QAnon folk react? What will they do if he loses in 2020? Likewise, what will those who take Chait's analysis to heart do if Trump wins in 2020? What will either side do if Democrats win the House but control of the Senate rests on a handful of disputed ballots in the North Dakota Senate race?

If my Twitter feed is any indication, some folks hold the QAnon theory with a fervor that makes overzealous missionaries jealous. The Chait article is recent enough that it hasn't gained much traction, but given time, it likely will. In 1964, Barry Goldwater claimed, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. . ." He was wrong; as Aristotle showed centuries earlier, extremism is always a vice. In Federalist 10, Madison lays out the risks of faction. The factions that either of these theories create could well end the project Madison started

Montana Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers spotlighted for worshiping Trump

larry kurtz — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 12:48:59 +0000

Kevin Christofferson and Christopher Lebsock preach from the Diocese of Helena; Garrett Nelson and Ryan Erlenbush minister in the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings.

A Roman Catholic bishop in Montana has criticized four priests who attended President Donald Trump's rally in Great Falls last week for wearing their black clerical garb while prominently seated in the front row directly behind the president. Bishop Michael Warfel of the Great Falls-Billings diocese was not aware the priests would be in attendance and was shocked to see them in a prominent location in clerical attire, he said in a letter posted on the diocese's Facebook page. [Great Falls Tribune]

Like a dozen other US Roman churches have done the Helena, Montana chapter of the sect faced 362 claims of sexual abuse and filed for bankruptcy.

Both South Dakota dioceses are up to their areolae in debt to the white christianic ruling class for covering up crimes committed by pederastic priests where Catholic congregations and the state's legislature have engaged in obstruction of justice for decades.

Catholicism is hope like syphilis is charity.

If they want to MAGA with their little signs they need to be paying taxes! pic.twitter.com/vPz2GrFfIu
— phil h (@LCNM99) July 7, 2018

In South Dakota, We're All Soybean Farmers

John Tsitrian — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 12:32:16 +0000

The South Dakota Farm Bureau doesn't have much in the way of moxie these days. Its president, Scott VanderWal was on KELO-radio last Friday acknowledging the devastating potential of President Trump's tariffs on our state's corn and soybean farmers. He sounded the appropriate call for alarm by noting that "if we disrupt trade like we are now with the farm economy in poor shape . . . it's going to be economically devastating." The prospect of farmers selling this year's crop at prices a good fifteen to twenty percent lower than what markets were expecting last Spring, just before Trump's trade war-fixation turned into policy has walloped South Dakota's farmers.
"Devastating" was certainly the right word to describe the situation, but that's where the
SD Farmers Talk Soybeans To China
August, 2017
strong language ended. The logical follow-up to VanderWal's alarming prognosis would seem to have been a call to action but what we got instead was a call to timidity. He said South Dakota's farmers need to make their voices heard in Washington, "but we have to be careful how we do that because he (Trump) doesn't respond to attacks very well, or perceived attacks." That squeamishness is probably the reason our politically wimpish congressional delegation hasn't been more forceful in criticizing, if not altogether condemning, Trump's tariff gambit. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like a much more muscular response to the president's threat of financial devastation to South Dakota's farmers is in order. With Trump, vapidity won't get it. If the Farm Bureau's approach to the financial armageddon predicted by VanderWal were limited to its members, there wouldn't be much reason for the rest of us South Dakotans to stick our noses into their business. But as we've heard relentlessly for the past few years, persistent softness in farm income has hurt the state's overall economy. To a real extent, all of us in South Dakota are farmers, dependent as we are on the condition of our crops and the money they bring in to the state.
South Dakota's current soybean crop has experienced a $500 million paper loss since last Spring's market peak. That's a lot of pain for a small state like ours to absorb. We all have a stake in this. What's more, the need for getting through to Trump about the "devastating" potential of his trade policies isn't just a short-term thing. There are long-term urgencies to contend with. Agricultural media have been bursting with news about how China, the world's largest soybean importer, is making it a national policy to build domestic supplies by subsidizing its farmers heavily and seeking new suppliers, including Russia, to replace an American source that has suddenly turned toxic in a geo-political sense. Considering that about half of the U.S.A.'s annual soybean harvest of 4 billion bushels is exported and that two-thirds of those exports go to China, we're talking about a serious game-changer here. Even if China's rapacious demand for soybeans forces the country to take a while before it weans itself away from American supplies altogether, we run the risk of this game of tariff-chicken becoming a catalyst for changes in Chinese buying behavior that in turn creates a new network of suppliers for Americans to compete against. In that scenario, the downward pressure on prices will be persistent and painful.

Can we try again, America?

David Newquist — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 20:14:45 +0000

American literature is not just fiction, poetry, and drama. It includes all the recording of events and rhetorical exchanges of the founding and development of our country. It is a unique national literature because it not only recorded the thrust and details of the founding of the United States, but it played a major role in defining and enabling the quest for freedom, equality, and justice. I have had the privilege of teaching American literature from the early pre-colonial journals of exploration to the poetry of minorities and women in our time pushing to realize full equality and the fiction that satirizes the ignorance and bigotry that blemishes American life. The force of American life has been to confront the failures of democracy and to work and struggle to correct them.

All four of my grandparents were emigrants from Sweden. Two of them died before I was born, my father's father died when I was very young, but my mother's mother, who became an invalid after breaking her hip, lived in my family household for 16 years until she died at the age of 98. She is the only grandparent with which I could talk as I grew up.

There was a strange bit of folklore that floated around some of my aunts and uncles that my grandmother's family descended from royalty. My grandmother and her sisters emigrated to America as single women, while their brothers stayed in Sweden. Her sisters settled in Minneapolis where they married successful businessmen. My grandmother was abandoned on the frontier with her eight children who survived infancy. The family story was how my mother and her seven brothers collaborated to help the family survive on the frontier. My cousins and I asked my grandmother about the "old country" and if it was true that we were descended from royalty. (Relatives who checked the genealogy found it not to be true.) She avoided talking much about the old country and brushed off questions about royalty by saying in her heavy Swedish accent "that's the kind of thing we left Sweden to get away from." My grandmother found the story of her impoverished struggle on the frontier of far more importance than any memories and connections with Sweden.

I found the reason for her preference of her American story by reading the novel "The Emigrants" by Vilhelm Moberg and seeing its film version. I used the film as an introduction to the American Literature survey because it provides such a relevant context to the story of America and what motivated its immigrants. The Sweden my grandmother and her sisters left operated in the feudal tradition. It offered nothing but a life of serfdom for them. Their family tried to lure them back with offers of money, but to my grandmother life as a poor person in America was preferable to life under masters in the old country. That is why she told stories of sending her sons out along the railroad tracks to scrabble for coal that had fallen off the locomotives so they could heat the house and eschewed stories about life in the old world. She told a story congruent with the narratives in much of American literature.

The American story is one of confronting its moral failures. A lingering failure involves what white immigrants did to Native America. There have always been people in America who favor depravity over decency. Slavery was accommodated in the Constitution, but a strong constituency understood the wrongness of it. Even though he owned slaves, Jefferson warned of the moral decay it threatened to the country. The country went to war over it, and the side represented by America's greatest president won, and his great intelligence and his monumental words guided the nation through a civil war and its Jim Crow aftermath. The spirit of Lincoln prevailed throughout the civil rights era, which addressed racial, gender, and religious discrimination. His actions and words continue to inform and inspire. His speeches are a part of America's story. But they have not provided much solace or comfort to Native America.

The nation's struggle to make the principles expressed in its founding manifest in the life of its people is a story of setbacks, but an ineluctable quest for freedom, equality, and justice for all.

Then came Trump. Trump is the representative and manifestation of everything that Lincoln worked against. Lincoln worked to unite the nation under the principles of American democracy, but Trump derides and destroys those principles, and has divided the nation. That division is along the racial lines of the Civil War. The latest polls show that 49 percent of Americans recognize Trump's racist mindset.

Trump has defined what divides America. And what divides America is not political beliefs on how the country should be run. What divides America is basic moral beliefs. Support for Trump is an overt avowal of greed, malice, dishonesty, fraud, and cruelty as the preferred traits of American character. Not a word that comes out of Trump or his administration can be believed or trusted, unless it is a word of insult, abuse, or malice. Those are traits with which people of decency and aspiration for good cannot reconcile.

There are those who think the revilement of Trump voters will cause a surge of support for him. They do not understand that submission to their values is a reversal of the democratic progress and the acceptance of degeneration as a condition of life. Even the conservatives who reject Trump as a legitimate leader are beginning to suggest that mere demonstration against him and verbal protest are not enough. Stronger measures are needed which could well bring down the country.

Those who truly believe in liberty, equality, and justice may have to regroup and find different circumstances and different places to practice the principles of democracy that they strive for. Those principles are too valuable and essential to allow to fall into decay by the corruption that Trump and his disciples have injected into America.

The ideas and processes are well recorded and explained in our literature. We have the stuff with which to try again.

US Attorney for the District of South Dakota attends PRIDE event

larry kurtz — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 14:26:51 +0000

Pandering plague Pat Powers is skewering Democratic attorney general nominee Randy Seiler for attending a South Dakota PRIDE event in Pierre even though the Trump-appointed US Attorney for the District of South Dakota attended a similar event in June in Sioux Falls.

The U.S. Department of Justice enforces a number of laws that prohibit various forms of discrimination in areas covering employment, education, housing, police practices, and other Department-funded programs. Although these laws do not explicitly refer to sexual orientation or gender identity, they prohibit sex discrimination, which protects all people from gender-based discrimination. If you believe you have been discriminated against, or that your civil rights have been violated, please contact the Civil Rights Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office by calling (605) 330-4400, or by sending an email to Alison.Ramsdell@usdoj.gov. [U.S. Attorney’s Office Participates in Sioux Falls PRIDE Festival]

Pernicious Pug Powers, who makes a stopped clock look like a well-greased machine, salts his blog comment section with a seemingly infinite variety of aliases who threaten and jeer his political enemies. Most of his kids suffer from horrible afflictions.

That SDGOP condones, encourages and even pays Pat Powers to threaten, malign, bully and libel women while their party standard-bearers preach the protection of women is a measure of hypocrisy that strains human gauges.

He has long been banned from this and other South Dakota related sites because of a constant stream of bigotry, misogyny and other hate speech.

South Dakota Prosecutor Timothy M. Maher recognized for Superior Performance in Indian Country, at a ceremony in Washington, DC, on June 15, 2018. pic.twitter.com/UrLO46WBTt
— SD U.S. Attorney (@DSDNews1) June 22, 2018

Thune selling out Indian County

larry kurtz — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 13:04:29 +0000

During a speech to donors in Sioux Falls Sen. John Thune (earth hater-SD) said access to telecommunications is just too hard for some rural areas.

New FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, proposed an order to change the way ISPs are classified and how they operate. The FCC’s proposal could -- and likely will -- drastically affect the internet as you know it. Chairman Pai is touting the proposal as an opportunity for consumers as well as providers, but many people believe consumers in low-income areas and areas with little or no infrastructure, such as Indian reservations, will suffer the most. [Native Sun News posted at indianz

Republicans hate American Indians, too.

The Federal Communications Commission is refusing to reverse a decision that will take a broadband subsidy away from many American Indians. The petitioners' court case against the FCC is ongoing, with final briefs from both sides due by August 27. [FCC stands by decision to raise broadband prices on American Indians]

Thune is a top recipient of dollars from telecom.

The paper trail is clear: John Thune made Congress look the other way as Russia and Cambridge Analytica infiltrated Facebook.

The real travesty is that US Senators went to Russia when their Democratic colleagues have been denied visas. Back in January, GOP senators cancelled their trip over that. #mtpol https://t.co/7rx1mYdvLg
— David C.W. Parker (@dparkermontana) July 7, 2018

South Dakota eschews good health

larry kurtz — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 12:36:40 +0000

South Dakota is run by fat, mentally ill people.

The best exercise rates in the Mount Rushmore State can be found with non-working men, ages 18-64. with nearly a third (28.9 percent) engaging in regular physical activity. Non-working women in South Dakota have the state's lowest exercise levels, with just under ten percent (9.8 percent) participating. [KSOO]

A study recently published in the Journal of Rural Health found the suicide rate for farmers is not only the highest of any occupation in America, it's spiking because of a lack of ready access to mental health care services.

Which parts of six month winters, rampant racism, chilling effects on civil rights and an extremist legislature escape you people?

South Dakota ranks 30th among the nation's 50 states for obesity. Read more on health in the Rushmore state here: https://t.co/b4uEXSzxSX #SDbythenumbers pic.twitter.com/4T8VgxLyCI
— SD Dashboard (@SDdashboard) July 7, 2018

Some Musings About Guns, Unlocked Cars, And Responsibility

Kal Lis — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 01:12:17 +0000

A quick search of the blog will find posts opposing South Dakota's school sentinel plan, musings about guns being a fetish, and implications, if not direct statements, that the nation has too many guns.

I haven't changed any of those opinions during the past few years when this blog was relatively dormant. The best case scenario for a school sentinel involves gunshot wounds with nary a tourniquet in sight. I continue to be befuddled by straight white males whose fetishes involve guns rather than a red-headed dominatrix. The United States has at least 265 million guns, more than enough for every adult to own one.

I try to understand other viewpoints. Many of the everyday carry gear folk that I follow on YouTube do gun videos. A few months ago, after one the mass shootings, YouTube began limiting some gun content. One of the people I follow, The Last Boy Scout, published this short video in response:

At about 31 seconds in, Lane says, "I don't carry a gun because I hate the government. I carry a gun because governing myself is my first responsibility." At 53 seconds in he says, "I don't carry a gun to feel like a man. I carry a gun because I am a man and because men take care of themselves and the people they love." Finally, at 1:10, he concludes, "I don't carry a gun because I love guns; I carry a gun because I love life, and I love the people who make my life worth living."

In short, the video asserts that people carry guns because it's the responsible thing to do.

I thought about this video a few weeks ago when Dakota War College took issue with a proposed Sioux Falls City ordinance designed to "penalize gun owners who don't keep their firearms locked up." I was reminded of it again when reading this South DaCola post.

South DaCola links to this Keloland report that quotes Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead:

"You know, because you would be taking legit, lawful gun owners and making them criminals because we're trying to prevent other criminals from stealing their guns. I hate to make lawful gun owners into criminals," said Milstead.

Milstead says he would much prefer gun owners just do what they're supposed to; which is lock up the dangerous weapon they don't want being used to hurt others.

"You'd feel horrible if your gun was stolen out of your car, where you'd left it unlocked. And ultimately it ends up being used by somebody to kill somebody, to rob somebody, to commit a violent crime," said Milstead.

Logic would dictate that loving "the people who make make . . . life worth living," "taking care of themselves and the people they love," and accepting that "governing myself is my first responsibility" implies locking up guns safely when the weapons are not in use. And yet, if gun owners fail to fulfill their responsibility, the only recourse their fellow citizens have is to hope the irresponsible party feels "horrible" if the gun is "stolen from an unlocked car" and "ultimately it ends up being used by somebody to kill somebody, to rob somebody, to commit a violent crime."

"Feeling horrible" is an emotion that ought to accompany accidentally spilling a glass of red wine on a woman's white dress. In that situation, the emotion should be accompanied by the responsible action of paying to clean or replace the dress. Making it easier to "kill somebody, to rob somebody, [and] to commit a violent crime" should have a consequence beyond one that comes with ruining a dress, but apparently in South Dakota, gun ownership is only about rights not responsibility.

Aanning: South Dakota still covering up Folkens' wrongful death

larry kurtz — Sun, 08 Jul 2018 13:27:21 +0000

State Senator Stace Nelson has called his experience trying to track down documents in Brady Folkens' wrongful death has been fraught with "BS excuses and obfuscation."

Take home points: Death certificates of patients who die from mistakes, errors, or accidents by physicians or hospitals almost never reveal that sad fact - and that their dying from complications was largely preventable. Example: when seventeen-year old Brady Folkens suddenly died on December 21, 2013, while in a South Dakota juvenile detention facility, the pathologist listed the cause of death as coming from a virus, despite multiple tests showing Brady never had a virus infection. We believe the state authorities pressured the pathologist to produce a Death Certificate covering up the medical negligence causing Brady Folkens' death... [Dr. Lars Aanning]

The state of South Dakota and Sioux Valley Hospital split the burden of a $1.25 Million settlement after the death of Gina Score.

Last Chance to reserve your seat for the hottest political event in South Dakota!

South Dakota — Sun, 08 Jul 2018 00:16:03 +0000

Members of the public, press and all members of the Constitution Party are encouraged to attend our historic 2018 State Nominating Convention as we embark on a Patriots' journey back to constitutionally-limited government!

So far, we have a 3-way race for CP nomination for Governor, legislative candidates and others jumping into SD races.

You MUST register to reserve your seat for this historic political event!

When: July 14,2018 starting at 3:00pm cst.
Where: American Legion Post #15, 1701 W. Legion Drive in Sioux Falls

This is the first time ALL Constitution Party candidates will be nominated by convention and then immediately go onto the General Election ballot in November! You won't want to miss this exciting historic event.

Last chance to reserve your seat!