Rubio, Eastwood upstage Willard

Senator Marco Rubio (earth hater-FL) is the leading contender for his party's 2016 nomination for president. As he ignored the waiting-in-the-wings presumed nominee during his speech, it became abundantly clear that 2012 is a lost cause for the floundering GOP.

Chris Cillizza:

It’s uniquely possible that we will look back in four or eight years to this night as the time when it became clear Rubio had that something special that made him a force to be reckoned with in presidential politics.

Even aging Outlaw Josie Wales star, Clint Eastwood, seemed to agree that officios make lousy actors:

Clint Eastwood's RNC speech was to imaginary Obama in an empty chair. I'm drafting a DNC speech to imaginary Romney in an empty factory." — George Takei, Mr. Sulu of "Star Trek."

RT @billmaher: Wow. Who knew Clint Eastwood was such a down the line rightwing asshole?

RT @TheRealRoseanne: RNC convention: tales of the crypt. Retweeted by Babes of NPR.

Cillizza, again:

There are no words for what the actor did on the convention stage Thursday night.

When Willard took the podium, this interested party thought: "it's bedtime, Bonzo," then engaged in some sex worship to Our Lady of the Arroyo.

Ron Paul strategist, Doug Wead told Kevin Kervick at The Examiner:

Governor Romney threatened to drop a "media A-Bomb" to "destroy forever the name Ron Paul" by producing commercials and advertising that would destroy his name and reputation. Voters are wondering that if Governor Romney would resort to intimidation tactics as a candidate, what would he be like as President of the people of the United States?

Someone said that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who oversaw the raping of American electoral process by helping to install his brother as Commander in Chief, spoke at the earth haters' convention and instructed President Obama to quit blaming his predecessor. From The El Paso Times:

Veterans struggling with mental-health and substance-abuse problems are expected to benefit from an executive order President Barack Obama is scheduled to sign Friday before he arrives at Fort Bliss. [A]cross the country, the VA and the military are competing with the private sector for a relatively small number of mental-health professionals.

As anniversary of I-35W bridge collapse approaches, hundreds of thousands of bridges in US given grade of 'D' by engineers: map.

RNC kills facts; Checkers still dead

A live stream from Huffington Post provided the night's entertainment and elicited howls of laughter that echoed through the arroyo.

RT @NicholsUprising: Mitch McConnell starts convention w/telling reference to "Mitt Ryan..." Pretty much sums up where the night is headed. @thenation @edshow

rand paul's voice is a kazoo: he just invoked the white horse prophesy, cites ronny reagan, takes a cheap shot at army corps of engineers.

thune ignores american genocide: touts european takeover of continent. politifact called one comment, "a load of manure."

omg: did w marry his mother or what?

RT @ZerlinaMaxwell: I'm so embarrassed. #RNC2012

McCain clearly up after his bedtime: what time is it?

romney: israel not dead. preparing to move it to utah.

Condi: an Emperor Palpatine will guide us to the light. amerikan entitlement doesn't include membership at Augusta.

Huck flies Checkers flag.

RT @daveweigel: There's a two-drink minimum during Tim Pawlenty's speech.

Tim Pawlenty wouldn't know a community organizer unless he hired one: this guy caved under pressure from michele bachmann, fer crissakes.

ryan: your mom should be building bullets with recycled uranium to sell to syria or yemen!

ryan on veterans: we thank them (the poor schmucks).

42% of global military expenditures: ryan skips that dealio.

Ryan: best kind of church has a comfortable relationship with your pocket: government? not so much. the central planners swarming to repossess ryan's soul

RT @jeremyscahill: I get it. They are trying to overwhelm the Politifact system. Clever.

ryan: god, guns, guts, yeeahhhh!

Best speech of the pathetic pickings came from New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez: amazing what immersion in cultural diversity can do for an Texas oil-greased Republican.

interested party among most clicked headlines at lefty blogs.

GOP scrambling to remove Gary Johnson from state ballots

In Oklahoma, Libertarian former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson is on the ballot on the Americans Elect ticket.

Intent on draining the resources of a competing candidate, the R-money/Ryan campaign, is using some clumsy legal gymnastics in its rush to keep Johnson off the ballot in Iowa, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Spliced from two pieces by Karl Dickey in the The Examiner:

Ron Paul and his supporters have been effectively given 'the boot' by the Republican Party as it continues to manipulate the process channeling the nomination process in Mitt Romney's favor. Jay Kramer, a Mitt Romney campaign supporter from Washington, D.C., filed a challenge on Friday to keep Libertarian candidate for President, Gov. Gary Johnson, from appearing on the Iowa ballot in November.

Governor Johnson is generating a good media buzz. Historian Doug Wead has been an advisor to the Ron Paul campaign: he appeared today with the Political Junkies on NPR's Talk of the Nation where Gary Johnson's name came up.

Johnson needs to poll at a minimum of 15 percent nationally to participate in debates with President Obama and that white Mormon earth hater from Massachusetts. Johnson's blog quotes a recent story from Erin McPike at RealClearPolitcs:

It’s all tied to getting matching funds from the Federal Election Commission to compete in future elections, because the Johnson team is certain once more voters are informed of Libertarian positions, large swaths of the electorate will swing their way.

From Politifact:

PPP polls have shown Johnson at 15 percent in his home state of New Mexico, 9 percent in Arizona, 8 percent in Montana and 7 percent in New Hampshire. A poll conducted by ORC International for the libertarian magazine Reason found Johnson taking 6 percent in Wisconsin.

Now breaking: RNC considering plank that includes unfunded mandatory clitoridectomies. More to come….

Last night, the International Space Station flew over the Galisteo Basin from north to south with a nearly full moon to the wows of at least three lucky witnesses: 3 or 4 minutes probably.

Barrick liquidating assets: Open Cut for sale...to China?

The State of South Dakota is suing the Army Corps of Engineers to determine ownership of so-called 'surplus water.'

Tribes believe that they own the water.

AG Jacklow is engaging in legal sock-puppetry. By suing the corps over surplus water he is forcing them to pay for the clean up of a century of mine tailings and organic effluent that has saturated the banks of the Belle Fourche/Cheyenne River system then depositing many tons of toxic silt into Lake Oahe and the other downstream dams after 1962 now displacing many acre-feet of water.

Hidden agenda? The state has a $83 million dollar surplus but would argue it can’t afford to dredge and treat the dams so it expects taxpayers to do it. Ag and livestock special interests likely contribute the most poison crap to the system followed by human-based pharma/chemical toiletries.

Barrick Mining Company is on the hook for most of the worst shit: it's armed to the teeth with a bank of lawyers and lobbyists. The State enjoyed royalties and severance taxes.

Todd Duex is the local representative for the Canadian firm. It owns most of the rights to water in the Northern Black Hills: water destined for the proposed Deadwood Standard Project.

The Globe and Mail tells readers that as confidence in the mining supercycle collapses, China is sucking up its assets:

Pointed questions are beginning to swirl around Nigel Wright, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff, and whether he used his position to further the financial interests of friends at Barrick Gold Corp. Ethics commissioner Mary Dawson is following up with Mr. Wright after the disclosure that he was lobbied twice by Barrick, the world’s largest gold producer, in May.

Not long after Homestake Mining Company announced its intent to close operations in Lead, we were listening to this NPR story about an ice climbing park in Ouray, Colorado, a former mining town that has remade itself by farming ice. My daughters' mother turned to me and said: "Wow, they should do that in the Open Cut."

It was if she had spoken with the Voice of God.  The very next day I made an appointment and met with Bruce Breid, the general manager charged with the mine's mothballing, an aerial photo of the pit displayed on the wall behind his desk.

"What a brilliant idea, Mr. Kurtz, we have water here, here, and here," Mr. Breid said, pointing to locations at the rim near the Homestake Visitor Center. "Can you provide a legal instrument holding Homestake harmless?"

Right. There was that.

Though not a climber myself, more research led me to locals, some of whom had actually climbed some of the natural seeps deep in the pit while working for subcontract miners.

The horseshoe-shaped bowl directly under the Visitors Center is geologically sound, anchors for top roping easy to place. I have spoken to every Lead mayor since; the desired property is in the city limits. Barrick, the current owner has resisted any discussion of the concept. The Authority governing development of the Lab looks at me like deer in headlights.

The Open Cut contributes about 11% of the water to the mine being pumped for the Lab, the ice climbing park would add another 5000 gallons or so. If a clay liner would be applied to the floor of the pit, the resulting reservoir (yes, acidic mine runoff mostly) could be tapped for emergency fire-fighting or diverted to the treatment facility for water from Sawpit Gulch in Central City. I think some of that is already happening.

Barrick returned some Wyoming holdings to the tribes; and, after it takes responsibility for its complicity in the destruction of the Missouri River Basin it should divest of its remaining holdings in the sacred Black Hills remanding them to the owners by treaty.

Lead has a long wait before the Lab starts producing the number of jobs needed to sustain the community now. Hope they hang on.

Bakken pipeline could mean the end for Wyo sage grouse

The headwaters of the Little Missouri River, historically called Wakpa Chan Shoka, are in northeastern Wyoming. The river flows from south to north through parts of Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and the rugged badlands and rolling prairie of western North Dakota. --USGS

WyoFile's Dustin Bleizeffer:

The greater sage grouse — the West’s best metric for the health of the western prairie ecosystem — is teetering on the edge of an Endangered Species Act listing. Yet just one nasty wildfire in the wrong place, or one more major outbreak of the West Nile Virus, and the greater sage grouse may become functionally extinct in the Powder River Basin, erasing a critical lifeline for genetic diversification between other sage grouse populations in Wyoming and Montana, according to wildlife biologists.

Construction has begun on the Bakken Pipeline originating near Sidney, Montana. If completed, it would transport raw natural gas liquids (NGLs) south through easternmost Montana and Wyoming into northern Colorado, where it would connect to the existing Overland Pass Pipeline.

KW sez:

[W]ork is scheduled to start on the Crook County section of the pipeline — the last to begin — within the next 10 days. But the issue is important enough to keep pursuing, said Charles Nicholas of rural Spearfish, a member of the Lawrence County Conservation District Board of Supervisors. Nicholas and other critics of the pipeline route worry that the unstable geology — including gypsum-karst formations that can produce sinkholes more than 100 feet across — of the Wyoming valley between Beulah and Sundance makes it unsuitable for pipeline construction and energy transport. At the request of Crook County Commission members, ONEOK will host an open house about the pipeline from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday at the courthouse in Sundance.

While this thing would breach scores of waterways, the proposed pipeline would cross the Little Missouri just south of the Montana border town of Capitol closely paralleling the river for many miles.

It would intersect with the Belle Fourche River just west of Belle, the Redwater River between Aladdin and Beulah, the Cheyenne River near Mule Creek Junction west of Edgemont, and the North Platte near Fort Laramie terminating at the divide with the South Platte River not far from the tiny Colorado hamlet of Last Chance that was reduced to a pile of rubble by a recent wildfire.

Two days ago a red flag warning was issued for the entire area affected by this proposed pipeline.

Powers, South Dakotans rejoice at more killings

And then there were three scheduled for crucifixion in Sioux Falls.

If it ain't guns, it's a hangin'

Republican heart-throb Attorney General Marty Jackley, the darling of the prison/industrial complex in crime-ravaged South Dakota and fresh off investigating PPgate, pronounced that he will soon host an announcement to announce the annihilation of a 22-year veteran of death row.

This blurb appeared in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader:

A court hearing is scheduled for Wednesday in Sioux Falls to set the execution date. Jackley said in a news release that he will request the date be set within 90 to 120 days.

Sure, I believe that state-imposed capital punishment is nothing short of torture; but, this Moeller guy is a slimeball and slicing his brain up after a lethal injection would likely expose an industry quizzically calling itself Corrections (they apparently failed at correcting Donald...right?) as just another red state perp contemplating the refusal of Medicaid in an era when access to free mental health care should have been included in the Affordable Care Act during the first go-round.

Formerly influential blogger, Pat Powers is now officially persona non grata even among the earth hater party in South Dakota. Out of boredom and poor blog traffic he has recently been trolling progressive blogs using a multitude of pseudonyms.

Whad'ya think: should he donate his brain to science? Readers of interested party believe so unanimously #donaldmoellersbrain

Pe' Sla auction cancelled

lastrealindians is reporting that the property has moved to a private listing.

Jodi Rave reposted a notice from Brock Auctions:

UPDATE: AUCTION CANCELLED ON DIRECTION OF OWNERS' REPRESENTATIVE.

Chase Iron Eyes, Rosalie Little Thunder and others appeared with host Karl Gehrke earlier today on Dakota Midday, the flagship program on Bill Janklow's idea of public radio.

Ruth Moon's story in the RCJ.

I went looking for the geology of the area: nothing yet; it is similar to the Jemez Caldera in New Mexico.

The authors of this 1997 ethnohistory piece could find no prior tribal mention before the Lakota assumed primary control around 1750 after acquiring the horse in 1742.

An interesting intersection with the cancellation is this release from the Union Nations Special Rapporteur, James Anaya.

There is evolving development in Kimberly Craven’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court: her 52-page petition for writ of certiorari in the appeal of the Cobell settlement was filed with the court on August 20.

Noem flip flops through Dakotafest performance

Omg: what a bloodbath. Democratic US House candidate Matt Varilek reduced placeholder Kristi Noem to a blithering idiot.

She was on defense from her opening remarks all the way to her closer. Her lack of confidence bled through each rehearsed paragraph and was plainly punctuated when she deviated from her script.

Throughout the debate Noem vacillated between her save the farmer at any cost speech to her government is bad rant while barely even batting those mascara-caked lashes.

Even though her trucked-in rooters committed numerous breaches of decorum, Varilek kept his composure and offered his rebuttals with authority. An online Argus Leader poll scored the debate for Varilek 66-30.

South Dakota Representative Kristi Noem co-sponsored a bill, along with more than 200 other members of Congress, including Missouri's Todd Akin, to tighten restrictions on federal funding for abortions.

According to Open Congress: "Noem and Akin have voted together 1420 times on roll call votes since January, 2007 in votes where neither abstained, representing a voting similarity of 92%." Noem entered Congress in 2011.

KTIV's Kristen Johnson quotes Noem after a question about Akin's recent misogynistic comments:

Oh, I think they were tragic, and he really needs to get with his family and make some decision as to his future.

Flip, entitled, and wrong. At this post there has been no mention in Noem's twitter feed or any credible attempt to distance herself from her party's and Akin's despicable ignorance.

Who tweeted this? The post is nearly viral.

Court orders new cross-state pollution rules; Big Stone off hook?

Image: Minnesota Public Radio

Bloomberg's Sara Forden and Tom Schoenberg are reporting that:

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington today sided with more than three dozen challengers to the EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which imposes caps on emissions for 27 states. The rule was put on hold by the court while it considered the legality of the regulation. The court ordered the agency to enforce a 2005 rule known as the Clear Air Interstate Rule, until a viable replacement to the cross-state pollution rule is made.

RT @plainsjustice

The Natural Resources Defense Coucil has issued a press release. Here is a snip:

“This decision allows harmful power plant air pollution to continue to aggravate major health problems and foul up our air. This is a loss for all of us, but especially for those living downwind from major polluters,” said John Walke, clean air director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey released a statement:

Implementation of the Transport Rule would save lives and money in Massachusetts and across the country. Cutting down on dangerous pollution traveling across state lines means cleaner air, clearer lungs and healthier lives for families across the Bay State and nationwide. I urge the Obama administration to appeal this misguided decision by the courts so that Massachusetts and other states impacted by harmful emissions from old, polluting coal plants can clean up their air.

South Dakota's Big Stone Power Plant must be sighing relief.

Live long and prosper at Santa Fe Indian Market: updated

Posting early as we're headed to town for the Santa Fe Indian Market: photos to follow. Many Native writers including Mark Trahant and Renee Holt are in town for the show.


Click on any of these photos for better view:

The Means Justifies the End, Angela Babby

Babby will be showing in the Dahl, Rapid City soon

This guy is fucking funny. Ricardo Caté's strip, Without Reservations appears in The Santa Fe New Mexican. The Santo Domingo Pueblo is just down I-25 and had many booths.

Hundreds of booths: many millions of dollars worth of jaw-dropping work. Mostly Hopi and Navajo: many pueblos within New Mexico and Arizona were represented.

Great participation from tribes within South Dakota. Saw several Cherokee, Paiute, Lummi. There was a Blackfeet booth, Red Lake and Turtle Mountain Chippewa, Penobscot, the inaugural First Nations' entry: NA-kota, Sisseton-Wahpeton, Athabascan....

Blogger survives serious stupidity

So, there's this felonious neighbor with a nearly uncontrolled brindle pit bull on Red Rock Road. The dog chases cars, threatens walkers and cyclists: pretty much a bad dog.

Night before last, while dining at Harry's Roadhouse a cloudburst filled the Galisteo River to overfull. After dinner we watched as a videographer recorded the arroyos as torrents while they made a mess of the already ragged ranch road.

We took the higher Baja Waldo Road because two other neighbors were extracting an SUV that had failed the first ford on Red Rock. The last crossing looked gnarly so my date walked back to the ranch knowing about the bad dog while this blogger negotiated the sandbars that had formed on each side of the arroyo and where someone before me obviously had gotten stuck on the other side: the banks were very steep.

Flooring it, the AWD rig made it through the water but got stuck on the ranch side so I started for the pickup to pull it out. Cue the nasty neighbor with the bad dog loping out ahead of his truck. I heard a grunt from the cab and the weaponized animal lunged for me.

I shouted "NO" and it stopped as I slid by the rundown pickup briefly turning my back on the dog. I felt it at my calves so I wheeled around and shouted at it again while the neighbor did nothing but say, "are you going to leave that there?" gesturing to my rig.

"I going to get the pickup to pull it out," I said.

He mumbles, "I have a chain."

"Call that thing off!" I yelled, pointing at the dog.

"C'mon, Lily." The dog ignored him several times before it jumped into his truck.

He turned around and backed down to the front of my rig, got out of the cab put his elbow on the bedwall and said, "How much money you got? This is a cash deal."

I shouted, "Fuck you!" walked to the ranch house, got the pickup and a driver, then jerked my rig out of the sandbar in the dark.

Next morning, I strapped on my camp gun, a Browning .22 and began working the road with my host's Kubota: it has a front-end loader and a three-point blade.

The arroyo where I got stuck took about an hour (better, but still wet). The tractor took to a washout closer to the ranch when the pit bull appeared out of nowhere, teeth bared.

I put one in the chamber and fired a round into the air. The neighbor appeared then began taking pictures with his camera phone. After repairing the washout, I put the tractor into high gear, went past the neighbor and headed back to the ranch.

The dog chomped at the left front tire; so, after I fired off two more rounds into the air, it fled.

While I finishing filling the washouts at the top of my host's driveway the neighbor appeared to talk on his phone from a safe distance. About a half-hour later two Santa Fe County deputies appeared at the top of the driveway.

I turned off the tractor and asked, "you guys got a warrant?"

"Don't need one," one said.

Reflexively, my hand went for my pistol thinking I could throw it into the desert: they had their 9MMs on me, ordered me off the tractor, made me kneel, took the .22 and cuffed me. I began apologizing immediately having realized what an idiot I was.

They sat me on the front tire of the tractor and made me spill my guts. I recounted the previous night's story replete with my host's history with the dog. One deputy put me in the backseat of a cruiser and interrogated the neighbor (he had hidden the dog).

From the back seat of the cop car I watched as the tone clearly changed from my aggression to his felony record. One deputy came back to me, let me out, uncuffed me and put my pistol back into my holster while reserving its magazine and remaining bullets.

"Mr. Kurtz, we're not going to charge you, you may go back to work; but, we called Animal Control to cite your neighbor," the deputy said.

Having lost my will to continue working, I went back to the house for multiple bowls and to reflect on the events. In another half-hour the Animal Control guys appeared in the yard with the lead deputy.

While the deputy handed me the magazine and bullets the Animal Control guys scolded me for not reporting the dog a long time ago and for taking matters into my own hands.

Did I sleep last night after having come so close to being dead? No, I did not.

The road still needs lots of work.

Janklow still dead...too

South Dakota is The Land of Infinite Entitlement.

From South Dakota Magazine:

At a rural intersection near Trent on this day in 2003, U.S. Representative and former four-term Governor Bill Janklow ran his white Cadillac through a stop sign and collided with 55-year-old Minnesotan motorcyclist Randy Scott.

The collision was fatal for Scott, who was thrown from his motorcycle and killed instantly. Janklow emerged with a broken hand and bleeding on the brain; but his political career would be devastated. Janklow had been driving at least 70 miles per hour; although he claimed his wreckless [sic] driving was a result of his diabetes, Janklow was convicted of second-degree manslaughter by a Moody County jury. He would serve 100 days in jail. Janklow was stripped of his law license, which was later reinstated, and resigned his seat in Congress after serving just a year. A $25 million wrongful death suit has been filed by the Scott family against Janklow.

After his political collapse Janklow worked as a lawyer and lobbyist, then died a miserable, pain-stricken, broken man.

When I was 5, near Madrid, President Eisenhower and Generalissimo Franco drove by me in a motorcade to wage war against the Soviet Union together.

We won, right?

In a few short days Willard Romney and Paul Ryan will drive by in a motorcade to bring Generalissimo Franco from the grave to begin a new holy war.

Pro-life or just pro-ethnic cleansing?

President Carter gets prime-time slot: POLITICO.

Janklow still dead

From South Dakota Magazine:

August 16

At a rural intersection near Trent on this day in 2003, U.S. Representative and former four-term Governor Bill Janklow ran his white Cadillac through a stop sign and collided with 55-year-old Minnesotan motorcyclist Randy Scott. The collision was fatal for Scott, who was thrown from his motorcycle and killed instantly. Janklow emerged with a broken hand and bleeding on the brain; but his political career would be devastated. Janklow had been driving at least 70 miles per hour; although he claimed his wreckless [sic] driving was a result of his diabetes, Janklow was convicted of second-degree manslaughter by a Moody County jury. He would serve 100 days in jail. Janklow was stripped of his law license, which was later reinstated, and resigned his seat in Congress after serving just a year. A $25 million wrongful death suit has been filed by the Scott family against Janklow. Today, Janklow works as a lawyer and lobbyist.

South Dakota: The Land of Infinite Entitlement.

Hopkins, Iron Eyes: tribes raising reserves to bid on Black Hills parcel

Ruth Hopkins (Sisseton-Wahpeton/Mdewakanton/Hunkpapa) is a writer, speaker, former science professor and tribal attorney; she's a columnist for Indian Country Today Media Network and LastRealIndians.com, too.

She has written a passionate appeal for donations to fund reserves to bid on an historic Central Hills parcel:

Black Hills were wrongfully taken from us. We need your help. Pray for us and our efforts to save Pe’ Sla. Share this story. Contact your congressman and voice your concerns for Pe’ Sla, the Oceti Sakowin sacred site that’s on the auction block. Contribute to our cause to buy back Pe’ Sla. Donations may be made online with LastRealIndians here or through the Rosebud Sioux Tribe/Pe Sla, 11 Legion Ave., P.O. Box 430, Rosebud, SD 57570. All donations to the Tribe are tax-deductible and will only be used toward the purchase of Pe Sla.

Santa Fe schoolkids forcing decision on plastic bag ban; chemical toilet not yet dead

Packaging, packaging, packaging!

To fix the global economy: "Put a price on carbon." --Jessica Mathews president, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

@BenjySarlin:

Obama talks up wind today. Romney talks up coal. We're 2/5 of the way to summoning Captain Planet.

KCRW's To the Point:

25% of the world now bans plastic bags, and Los Angeles County is one of a growing number of US communities getting on board. Will the limits of cloth bags like Grandma used to carry require thinking about what goes in them?

From a piece by Julie Ann Grimm in the Santa Fe New Mexican:

Fifth-grader Sofia Ortiz waited for nearly an hour to speak her piece to Santa Fe city councilors. Ortiz, 10, read in The New Mexican about a vote this year by the city of Los Angeles to prohibit single-use plastic bags at retail stores. She wants Santa Fe to “share that same kind of leadership,” she told councilors, and she promised to help. Staff in the Economic Development Division and members of the city Business and Quality of Life Committee are working on a draft proposal for a way to limit plastic-bag use at retail stores in the city. The topic is slated for discussion at the committee’s 11 a.m. meeting Tuesday at City Hall.

From Biomass Magazine:

200 billion pounds of plastic is produced every year. Due to the technical limitations or inconvenience of recycling, only a fraction of that material resurfaces in new plastic products. It takes no imagination whatsoever to throw away plastic and doom it to the fate of a thousand years in a landfill, but plastic waste doesn’t just threaten terra firma.

Paper, plastic...or hemp: broken pipelines and 70 million acres of collapsed pine forest. What a way to run an empire.

Today’s weird news, chemical toilet not dead yet:

Residents of Wyoming, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Vermont expect the least improvement.--Gallup.

New Mexico scores well, too.

Bill McKibben on today's To the Point.

Romney/Ryan: Sibson, crackers left stranded

What could Southern Talibangelicalistas find to like in a Mormon/HRKD ticket anyway?

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's minions dropped the ball on Wade Michael Page then Willard Romney selected an untested politician from the state: how conservative.

South Dakota's ultra-theocon, Steve Sibson laments:

The GOP won’t win if they do accept the cease fire. They can’t win if they do. America will lose no matter who wins. This election is irrelevant. Such is the case when pragmatism trumps principles. It is a dog fight, Darwinian survivalism where the one who attracts the most mud loses.

Romney’s LDS and Ryan’s church are two of the biggest NGOs on the planet hiring the best paid lobbyists and employing a myriad; so, gutting the federal budget while allowing those Ponzi schemes to survive is so beyond what the Founders envisioned it leaves nothing to the imagination.





Libertarian Gary Johnson: canvass the South, bud.

Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers* done in by democracy

South Dakota is exporting its failed state status to pederastic Pennsylvania.

That's evidenced by former Rapid City bishop, Charlie Chaput, currently under fire for not doing enough to remove pedophile clergy.

Even his own cult members are akimbo. Max Lindenman assails the short guy running the Diocese of Brotherly Love in a catholic blog called Patheos with a post called Chaput and the Republic of Chickens:

“Democracy,” he told an audience at the Napa Institute this past July 26th, “is not an end in itself.” The mainstreaming of American Catholicism hasn’t made America more Christian, much less more Catholic; instead, it’s weakened Catholic witness. “Sooner or later,” Chaput warned, “a nation based on a degraded notion of liberty, on license rather than real freedom — in other words, a nation of abortion, disordered sexuality, consumer greed and indifference to immigrants and the poor — will not be worthy of its founding ideals.” Chaput might well approve some re-distribution of wealth. If there is a close-knit, censorious village somewhere missing an idiot, let it keep looking.

Religious freedom apparently implies fucking whomever you please regardless of whether it's legal or moral.

We know that Opus Dei is a cult of Fascists: now the 1% has selected two wounded rabid cult members as the standard-bearers for its earth hater party.

*Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers℠ is a service mark of Larry Kralj, Environmental Rangers.

Independents fleeing dying TEA Party; Romney's Bain built with money from Latin death squads

RT@billmaher: But thanks Mitt for not announcing VP till this week when I go back on the air – c u and ur boyfriend Friday night!

Romney/Ryan republicans religionize retching, wrench raillery, then roar rather ridiculously and riotously:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is facing new scrutiny over revelations he founded the private equity firm Bain Capital with investments from Central American elites linked to death squads in El Salvador. After initially struggling to find investors, Romney traveled to Miami in 1983 to win pledges of $9 million, 40 percent of Bain’s start-up money. Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador during the 1980s. --Ryan Grim interviewed at DemocracyNow!

Robert Taylor at PolicyMic:

Back in 2007 while campaigning for the Republican nomination, Romney was asked by a wheelchair-bound man with a rare case of muscular dystrophy whether or not Romney would arrest him and/or his doctors who prescribed him marijuana. Romney turned his back on him and robotically reiterated his stance against medical marijuana.

From the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:

More Americans now think that members of Congress who support the Tea Party are having a negative effect than said that in January, at the start of the new Congress. Currently, 29% judge the impact of Tea Party supporters as mostly negative compared with 22% who see their impact as mostly positive. At the beginning of the year, the balance of opinion was just the opposite: 27% said that Tea Party members in Congress would have a positive impact, while 18% expected a negative effect. The balance of opinion has changed the most among political independents. In January, by a margin of 29% to 14% independents expected that Tea Party members would have a positive effect. Currently, about as many independents say Tea Party members in Congress are having a negative effect (28%) as a positive effect (24%).

Now that Willard has chosen a rabid, desperately wounded catholic as a running mate, independents will flee the earth hater party in search of a more secular candidate like Gary Johnson. South Dakota and Montana might even go blue.

Kristi Noem: Member Insurance Likely Flip-flopping.

Some shots of East River

evidence of a dying culture

Moody County

more Yeo Cemetery

He served

Oak Lake a little piece of the North Woods 

Oak Lake in extreme eastern South Dakota is a Brookings water supply.  

A phallus competes for the skyline with ubiquitous wind turbines on Buffalo Ridge

no evidence of pine beetles, this grove likely killed by spray

Central Hills collapsing

East River photos after the jump.

Predicted for at least ten years, Hill City is now in deep shit.

Cattle grazing has sealed the town's fate: every pine tree within twenty miles is dead or dying. Catastrophic wildfire is merely a matter of time. Silver City, Deerfield, Edelweiss, Rockerville: all could be toast in as little as two hours.

Most of the these photos were taken on south Castle Creek, not far as the crow flies from Pe Sla:

green-dyed weed killer sprayed willy-nilly

cattle shitting in sensitive watershed

diversity preserving some zones

Authorities overwhelmed with reports of crazies

Today's intersection: mass murder and global warming. Let's review:

Timothy McVeigh was 27, Eric Robert Rudolph, part of the Christian Identity movement, was 30, Eric Harris was 18 and Dylan Klebold, 17, Seung-Hui Cho was 23, Nidal Hasan was 39, Jared Loughner, 22. Average age--25 years. The acts of domestic terrorism were all committed by these guys in red states.

All seven men were victims of bullying, isolation, and ostracism. All seven had histories of extensive video game exposure and easy access to firearms. Distrust of government was a factor in most, if not all of these episodes. Ted Kaczynski, likely master of the minds in all these events, punctuates this post since he resided in Montana, a red state when, at 36, his activism morphed. His case changes the average age to 26.5.

Bruce Edwards Ivins, the 55 year-old Zionist and anti-abortion anthrax weaponizer, deserves dyshonorable mention maybe because Maryland is a solidly blue state.

ip poll voters tell us that Jared Loughner's date with his story was not the result of rhetoric from the established Republican hate-speech machine (85%), although 14% of voting readers know better. Four respondents, however, tell us that they know a total of 65 people capable of desperate violence.

These latest findings scare the shit out of me and for the record, the author of ip does not vote on these polls.

Tucson is an ancient and strategic crossroads, a conspiracy analyst's wet dream.  Anyone that believes Jared Loughner is a random occurrence is likely terrifyingly mistaken.

Nina Totenberg interview on Arizona's KJZZ:

The Casper Star-Trib is always a trip into weirdness. Check this out:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation may be investigating the sovereign citizen movement in Wyoming, an agency spokesman said. "I can neither confirm nor deny that an investigation exists; this is a very sensitive subject," Dave Joly, spokesman for the FBI's regional office in Denver, said in March. Sovereigns who have embraced violence or the overt potential for it include:
•Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols in 1995.
•The Montana Freemen in 1996.
•Scott Roeder, who killed abortion doctor Joe Tiller in Wichita, Kan., in May 2009.
•Jerry Kane and his son Joseph Kane, who gunned down two policemen during a traffic stop in West Memphis, Ark., in May 2010.

Tom Morton of the Trib is doing a series on Wyoming's slide into red state failure. He goes on to say:

Jared Loughner, who in January killed six people and wounded more than a dozen others, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, had used the language and cited causes popular among some sovereigns, according to his writings and video statements, said movement-watcher J.J. MacNab. Some sovereigns locally and nationally have said Loughner's primary target was Arizona Chief U.S. District Judge John Roll because he had recently ruled against a program of President Obama.

What a surprise.

These events have mostly urban commonality occurring at greater frequency if temperatures from 1951-1980 are "normal:"

"The really hot spots certainly move around," Kevin Trenberth, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, said in a recent NPR interview. "You know, last year it was in the South, in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma. The previous year it was in Russia. The outstanding event in 2009 was down in Australia."

A former Koch-funded scientist recently acknowledged that the Anthropocene likely began about 270 years ago.