Hmmm...

I wonder what

Rick Weiland is

up to these days?
I've still got his

old logo over here.

Okay, the decision to have trials for terrorists in non-military courts?

Yea? Or Nay. What is the opinion on the Forum? I'll start. I think it's good in some cases, not in others. Depends on the nature of the evidence. And I'll admit that there is a part of me that feels some of those boys should have been shot on site. That's my version of a proper "military trial."

So... I'm trying to get past that "shoot the bastards" instinct philosophically. Help me out here.

Considering the "opt-out" public option. Calling all candidates.

It sounds like states may have a choice as to whether they want to participate in a public health insurance program if Congress passes (and Obama signs) a health care reform bill with an opt-out clause.

As best I can tell, the states will have this option after a year or so of the federal laws passage. If this happens, it seems to me to be a readymade key component of any state legislator candidate or gubernatorial candidate's platform. So how about it candidates? Potential candidates? Forumpians? Should South Dakota opt in? Or opt out?

Howie? Heidpriem? Anyone... anyone... Bueller?

Madville Times's straw poll shows SHS up the creek without a paddle.

Of course there are scientific polls being taken surely, but the one Cory has here is pretty interesting. How far off can it be, Dems? Heidelberger's nut graf: "The number I'd worry about if I were sitting in 331 Cannon or the Sioux Falls office: only 11% of respondents on this Democrat-leaning blog rejected a primary on the basis of SHS being "the best."

Hey Facebookers, wanna see how welcome outsider ideas are in greater Red Owl, South Dakota?

On a post below, "Jingles" invites me to come see the progress

on the new bridge out Red Owl way.

Not sure I'd much enjoy the company, rd.

I'm just sayin...

Grapes of wrath

The exchange following Bill’s posting regarding Sam Hurst’s views prompted me to write about some things I think about a lot. I was raised on a ranch in the northeastern corner of Wyoming. From the time I was five until I was 25, whenever I wasn’t in school or church I was riding horseback with my dad (who never learned to drive). I left the ranch in 1983 as a result of stupid personal choices and Jimmy Carter’s 21% operating money.

I think my family’s story is the prototype for ranching on the high plains. My great-grandfather came to the Hills in 1876 and operated freight outfits (bull teams) between Pierre and the mines and from Cheyenne to Deadwood as well. He was a state senator from Minnesela in the 1892-93 session. After the US finished violating its treaties with the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne, great tracts of Nebraska, So. Dak., No. Dak, Montana and Wyoming were opened to homesteaders. My grandmother and her mother moved from Council BLuffs in 1904 to homestead along Bull Creek a few miles north of the Belle Fourche River in Crook Co., WY. My grandfather had a neighboring plot. They married their land and hearts.

Lucille King (my father's mother) sits in hammock to left of her cabin in 1904. Wisps of the logs still exist.

By 1932, just about every square mile (640 acres) in the high plains had a shack and a little dam or fence (you had to do that much to “prove up” and get title). My dad was the last registered homesteader in Crook Co., in 1932. During the depression and dust bowl days, he and his father bought up homesteads one after another at prices from 25¢ to $1 an acre, as people who were starving on their section of sagebrush and cactus headed for someplace else as fast as their buckboards and Model As would take them. The ranch I grew up on was about 38000 acres deeded and 10000 government lease (land that was too sparse to have attracted a homesteader). The crumpling shacks every mile or so displayed the state of the dreams of their builders.

Wilbur Newland (my grandfather, in necktie) sits with my uncle Thomas and my father (bottom right), Jim Newland, and Josie and Charles Brannum in 1922.

In a side-note that is too Steinbeckian, my mother married a sailor in 1933 and rode freights from Iowa to the Hills, where they worked on ranches west of Belle Fourche, including my grandfather's ranch. During WWII they moved to Anaconda, Mont., to work in the copper mine, where her husband died. She moved back to marry my dad.

Dad took advantage of government cost-share programs to build a reservoir on just about every drainage on the place, and to cross-fence for better pasture utilization. A number of folks said it was the best-watered ranch in Wyoming. His goal was to make it so cows didn’t have to walk more than a half-mile to water, thus assuring even grazing. There were over 200 miles of fence on a piece of land roughly 10 miles by 7 miles.

During WWII and through the ‘60s, ranchers like my dad did pretty well, cultivating their herds and selling registered bulls to one another to develop bloodlines that gained weight well. Then a combination of droughts and the withdrawal of a variety of subsidies slowed the gravy train considerably. Corporate farms and feedlots began dictating (lowering) prices. The giant corporate buyers (McDonalds) began encouraging the destruction of the rainforest in South America to provide pasture for cheap meat. Tax laws became less friendly. A series of Farm Home Administration “disaster loan” programs provided easy operating money to thousands of ranchers (like me) who couldn’t then repay them, and thousands of ranches went into default to the government, and were resold to big corps and and absentee rich folks who didn’t need to make a living on their places.

There’s much more to the story, but what I see generally is a series of artificialities compounding throughout the 20th century to give three or four or five generations of ranchers both an unrealistic feeling of heritage and a real feeling of betrayal. The 21st century will be one of divestment of ranching as we know it on the high plains. The small towns will disappear except for a few centered around gas stations on the interstates. The people will gather more and more in ever-growing population centers to eke out their existences working in dollar stores.

The worm has turned. From a heritage based on genocide and betrayal, high plains ranchers have been in turn betrayed by the same entity, which will give the spoils to the international corporations/bankers. Our children and grandchildren will reap the dust.

Alright then, no more complaining.

Bitch, bitch, bitch. Government this, congress that, judicial activists blah blah blah. But when it comes time to actually do something about it, Forumpians, only a very few of us are even interested, judging by the Sabato poll at right. Oh well. We'll just have to leave it to the next generation, I guess. Meanwhile, bitch, bitch, bitch... ad infinitum.

It's a laccolith.

Thanks to That One Guy, we now know that the object below is actually a micro version of the whole Black Hills formation. And that it's also know as "Green Mountain" or "Little Sundance Dome." I like the latter, so as not to confuse it with the Green Mountain Coffee file folder in my mental hard drive.

Here's some more info and a picture of the formation at ground level from an old geology book*. I'm guessing

we're looking roughly south to north.

____________________________

*Geology, physical and historical, Volume 2

By Herdman Fitzgerald Cleland

Would Marking's approach work?

Ok, Kevin Woster seemed a little impatient with Mr. Marking yesterday.

I bet we can do better.

BT, I see how your idea would allow a majority of SD voters to guide your vote on legislation from other states, but how would you use your process to develop and introduce new legislation on behalf of your fellow South Dakotans (i.e. how can we help you write and propose new laws?)

And do you really think you could avoid forming opinions until the votes were all in?

And finally, given all that initial reasoned objectivity, when and how do you turn it into emotionally passionate advocacy... or do you?

Any geologists out there? What is that thing?

CLICK ON PICTURES TO ENLARGE
Yesterday, we drove to Gillette, Wyo. to help celebrate my wife's aunt's 90th birthday. On the way home as we went by Sundance mountain, I started wondering how all of that looked from the top... you know, Devils Tower, Sundance Mountain... the whole area. So this morning I was looking at Sundance on Google Earth and noticed this almost perfectly circular formation just east and a little north of the Sundance mountain. (Upper right in this screen shot.) Anybody know anything about it? Does it have a name? Is it an "intrusion," a volcano? A really, really big fossilized buffalo chip? Or what?

Great discussion today on Meet the Press about education reform.

Any time you see Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich on the same side as Barack Obama, it's probably time to pay close attention.

Holy smokes! Hurst Hammers Herseth.

Read this.

Excerpts:

By recent accounts Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin is exasperated with the base of her party...maybe a little angry, but mostly exasperated. Not with everyone, just those unwieldy populists. Those "liberals" who don't understand politics in the real world.

She is choking on the bone of incumbent lament. Powerful members of Congress can't exactly go around saying that their constituents are dumb, but in her private moments, she thinks, "Why don't these people trust me?" For three-term incumbents like Herseth-Sandlin, just beginning to earn a little Capitol Hill juice, the lament evolves ever so slightly from, "Why don't the people back home trust me?" to "These people need to trust me." This is the voice of condescension that suggests, "I have influence. I know how Washington works. I know what's best for South Dakota."

This incumbent's lament was given voice recently by former Democratic Party chairwoman Judy Olson Duhamel. In an Open Letter to Democrats, Olson Duhamel defended Congresswoman Herseth-Sandlin's opposition to the House health reform bill: "I'd ask you to consider the fact that her comprehension of the complexity of health care issues is far greater (my emphasis) than the understanding that most of us have." Really?

....

In the end, Herseth-Sandlin is in trouble with her base because she has never had to develop a relationship with her base. In six elections she has never had a primary, and as a result, she has never been tested as a Democrat. She does not owe allegiance to the base on any core values. She operates on the assumption that the base owes its allegiance to her.

————————————————————

Okay, I left out the really hot stuff. Be sure to go to Dakotaday.com and finish reading the essay there.

Sam has a great website. I encourage you to bookmark it and check in on him from time to time. Unlike me, Sam holds his fire until he has something really good to say. I think that's what they call a... ummm.. good writer.

Great post on alternative energy by Cory today.

Check it out.

Thanks, Cory!

Super.

Here's his lede:

Think big: Ned Hodgman at Understanding Government points us toward a Nov. 2009 Scientific American article that lays out a plan to power the planet entirely with renewable energy and eliminate fossil fuels by 2030.

You should only use the dictionary when you know I'm right

Politicians play fraudulent word-games to avoid responsibility for their actions. For example, check out this ABC interview from September 20 between George Stephanopoulos and President Obama (entire transcript here):

STEPHANOPOULOS: "I don't think I'm making it up (that you're going to raise taxes). Merriam Webster's Dictionary: 'Tax: a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.'"

OBAMA: "George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition."

Does the Prez believe that words should be defined to suit his personal needs, instead of by common usage as reflected in an authoritative dictionary?

Declan McCullagh, a CBS News blogger, says:

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

[My source for this is primarily DownsizeDC.org, my favorite lobbying organization.]