11/28/16

Thune responsible for Facebook's fake news

Senator John Thune (earth hater-SD) has flip-flopped on Donald Trump's legitimacy so many times it looks like he's been bought.
Mr. Thune also asked directly whether the curators had “in fact manipulated the content,” something Facebook denied in a statement on Monday. Among Facebook users, 63 percent consider the platform to be a news service, according to a Pew Study. The company could ignore or refuse to comply with Mr. Thune’s requests on First Amendment grounds, said Floyd Abrams, a leading First Amendment lawyer. [New York Times]
After his Republican overlords stuffed his war chest Thune reversed his rejection of Trump in just a matter of days.
Once Donald Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination, Thune started showing up on vice presidential short lists before Indiana Gov. Mike Pence got the nod. By October, after disclosure of taped remarks in which Trump discussed groping women without their consent, Thune called on the billionaire businessman to withdraw from the race in favor of Pence.

HARWOOD: The head of the NSA said (Monday) at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council that no one should have any doubt that Russia got involved in our election for the purpose of achieving a specific effect. Are you concerned about Donald Trump's position on Russia, closeness with Russia, and Russia's role in this election?

 THUNE: Russia is constantly looking for ways to undermine and disrupt our democratic systems. I mean, I think they wanted to create doubt, and skepticism, and anything they can do to raise questions about that. So sure. [CNBC]
Thune and Federal Bureau of Investigation czar, James Comey play basketball together. Thune is part of the vast right wing conspiracy that knows about Trump’s appeal to white evangelicals who will stop at nothing to beat Hillary Clinton.

If Thune can be such a spectacular liar it does make one wonder whether he has a direct connection to Russia, too.


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11/19/16

South Dakota law enforcement industry thrives on racism

Administrators from the Rapid City, Pennington County and state Highway Patrol law enforcement industry converged on Rapid City in the latest round of talks designed to address racism in South Dakota.
Rapid City Police Chief Karl Jegeris admitted that historic injustices still weigh on perceptions in the community. Chief Deputy Pennington County Sheriff Willy Whelchel agreed. "We do have a divide," he said. [KOTA teevee]
According to Bill Janklow's idea of public radio, Vaughn Vargas, a Cheyenne River Sioux tribal member and the Rapid City Police Department Community Advisory Coordinator, said law enforcement must be the first to set a good example.

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, said the forum turned into a discussion about how great South Dakota police departments are at enforcing the law and didn’t include nearly enough input from South Dakota's American Indian community.

Racism is endemic in South Dakota, especially in reservation border towns like Rapid City. In 2011 South Dakota's 7th Judicial Circuit Court Judge A.P. (Pete) Fuller was removed after reminding residents that RCPD is made up of "a bunch of racists."

Pennington County's behavior has been called shocking. The state seizes about 750 American Indian kids every year reaping nearly a billion federal dollars since the Indian Child Welfare Act was signed into law. This interested party has direct knowledge of abuses visited upon families by employees of the state from 1994 to 2000 and is all too close to this story. Mike Monahan helped. Here's his phone number: (605) 722-3957.

On the public dole Pennington County sent deputies and the State of South Dakota sent state troopers to beat up water protectors standing up at Standing Rock. How that translates to trust and civility between Whitey and tribal members remains a mystery.

Public broadcasting in South Dakota serves at the pleasure of the state's earth hater legislature and like every other media outlet in that chemical toilet it's a mouthpiece for the South Dakota Republican Party.

Cops' lives suck. Little wonder they abuse their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and even occasionally murder their wives.

If South Dakota was serious about truth and reconciliation it would stand down, shut up and take the punishment it deserves.
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11/11/16

Keillor: give Trumpers enough rope to hang themselves

If I could go back in time I'd kill baby Fred Trump.

When Garrison Keillor opened A Prairie Home Campanion in the Rapid City Civic Center Theatre on November 20, 1999 he cited a statistic that Pennington County has the highest per capita gun ownership in the United States. A nervous chuckle rolled through the audience.
The Trumpers never expected their guy to actually win the thing, and that’s their problem now. They wanted only to whoop and yell, boo at the H-word, wear profane T-shirts, maybe grab a crotch or two, jump in the RV with a couple of six-packs and go out and shoot some spotted owls. The past year of politics has taught us absolutely nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. The future is scary. Let the uneducated have their day. [Garrison Keilor, Trump voters will not like what happens next]
The annual White House Tribal Summit will be going away under a President Trump.

Donald Trump's fellow earth haters are already balking at his plan to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure improvements and his federal trial on fraud charges is scheduled for 28 November.

The Republicans calling for calm is hypocrisy on Viagra. Had Clinton won the electoral college and Trump the popular vote white people would be slaughtering each other in the streets.

Pray the Yellowstone supervolcano will erase the Trump majority in the high plains.

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11/9/16

God damn America


Let's face it: Clinton's choice of Tim Kaine was a cowardly act. Bernie Sanders or Brian Schweitzer would have been far better running mates.

Clinton was squishy on cannabis rights and lost in most states where it won. She should have picked a running mate from the western United States. She didn't visit a single tribal nation and refused comment on the Dakota Access Pipeline. She ran a scripted, stuffy campaign and never let her freak flag fly.

One sentence might have altered the outcome. "But, unlike some others, I did inhale."


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11/8/16

USFWS inching closer to Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge


One image shows why President Thomas Jefferson used an executive order to defy the US Constitution, began the Native American Genocide and purchased the Louisiana Territory from a country that didn't even own it.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife is proposing a dramatic reorganization of its National Wildlife Refuge system in Montana and seven other states that would result in significant staff and program cuts. U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials said the “Realignment Strategy Staffing Framework” was a draft document that had been in the works for three years. “Status quo is not an option,” said the report. “We cannot operate with high numbers of vacant positions on organizational charts while we try to continue to do the work of those vacant positions – it is simply not sustainable.” Instead of assigning staff members to specific refuges, the positions for each district are pooled, without an indication of where people will be headquartered. [Missoulian]
Included in the plan is the CM Russell National Wildlife Refuge on the Missouri River in Montana and the Prairie Pothole Region.

Rewilding is happening!
Sportsmen for Bison’s initial focus is the tremendous opportunity to restore bison at Montana’s million-acre Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR). The refuge – which, yes, hunters helped pay for – is ideal, prairie bison habitat adjacent to several million additional acres of public lands. And, in case you’re wondering, the CMR welcomes hunting and is regarded as one of North America’s premier big-game hunting areas. The area could easily accommodate thousands of wild, wide-ranging bison. [National Wildlife Federation]
And:
On the cold and stormy evening of Oct. 20, 2005, 16 American bison were released on the grasslands of northeast Montana. The bison, from Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, roamed out into a prairie landscape the species had not inhabited for 120 years. In the midst of the herd a calf bolts, its rust-colored coat standing out from the nearby adults. The calf finds its mother and begins to nurse. The herd moves quietly beneath an impossible sky.
Read the rest here.

Invasive species are plaguing the main stem dams on the Missouri River. Accumulated mercury in large fish causes spontaneous abortions yet record non-native salmon in Lake Oahe go untested.

Christopher Guy, assistant unit leader with the US Geological Survey Montana Cooperative Fishery Unit and professor at Montana State University, joined Dakota Midday host Karl Gerhke on Bill Janklow's idea of public radio to talk about the importance of recent findings on the endangered pallid sturgeon in the upper Missouri River basin.
According to American Rivers, an advocacy group that tracks U.S. dam removals, 72 dams in 19 states were torn down in 2014, a record. That is roughly double the annual number from 10 years ago. Some 1,185 dams have been removed since 1912, according to the group. The fleet of U.S. dams, however, is still enormous. The Army Corps of Engineers counts at least 87,000 dams in its database. Removing dams produces its own benefits. Public safety is enhanced by reducing the risk of a dam failure, and moribund freshwater fisheries are rejuvenated when a segmented river is reconnected. [Circle of Blue]
Below the Missouri River dams pallid sturgeon are showing signs of recovery but above?

Surprise!
Pallid sturgeon come from a genetic line that has lived on this planet for tens of millions of years; yet it has been decades since anyone has documented any of the enormous fish successfully producing young that survive to adulthood in the upper Missouri River basin. Now, fisheries scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey, Montana State University and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have shown why, detailing for the first time the biological mechanism that has caused the long decline of pallid sturgeon in the Missouri River and led to its being placed on the endangered species list 25 years ago.
In a paper published this week in the journal Fisheries, the scientists show that oxygen-depleted dead zones between dams in the upper Missouri River are directly linked with the failure of endangered pallid sturgeon hatched embryos to survive to adulthood. Given what the new research shows about how no oxygen is available to hatched pallid sturgeon embryos, the authors of the paper propose that officials will need to consider innovative approaches to managing Missouri River reservoirs for pallid sturgeon conservation to have a chance. [press release, US Geological Survey]
The extirpation of bison, cougars and wolves has created explosive wildfire conditions in the Greater Missouri Basin. Wildlife Services, part of the US Department of Agriculture, wants to exterminate a wolf pack that killed nineteen elk in a Wyoming refuge that feeds and over-winters the ungulates. Elk in the region are dying en masse from Chronic Wasting Disease that researchers say results from the federal government feeding of elk in close proximity. Feral horses and burros are destroying vast swaths of public land.

We all know this: unless the West embraces rewilding on portions of the Missouri River basin west of a north/south line from Oacoma, South Dakota through the CM Russell National Wildlife Refuge to Yellowstone National Park then to the Yukon water wars will clog the courts leaving violent armed vigilantism to settle disputes.

The feds should buy out landowners unwilling to lease for wildlife corridors.

President Obama: decertify the dinosaurs that are the main stem dams, tear the earth fuckers down and rewild the West.
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11/2/16

Casita getting stuccoed


Front elevation. To prevent rain from penetrating adobes tops of parapet walls are rounded with mesh and are nearly stuccoed. Click on any image for a better look. More here.



Curious creature praying for rain
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11/1/16

Heidelberger full of shit; cannabis on ballot helps Democratic turnout

Not really South, not really Dakota: the state represents everything that is wrong with America. 2016 could be the year the South Dakota Democratic Party dies in a whimpering puddle.

As Democrats flee South Dakota fake progressive and dry drunk Cory Heidelberger is losing his District 3 statehouse bid to earth hater Al Novstrup.
So, legalization initiatives have a clear Democratic benefit. Democratic-leaning voters, who otherwise might have stayed home, could turn out to vote on marijuana reform. Some may leave other parts of the ballot blank, but Democrats could see a meaningful benefit overall. In a race that is close, a few thousand votes here or there could force an incumbent Republican Senator to pack up his office or shift a state’s electoral votes from red to blue. [Brookings Institution]
Since Heidelberger began blogging Democratic registration numbers have gone right down the toilet.

According to Pierre insider Jim Mehlhaff my reputation is well known to the victims of Stockholm Syndrome who still live there. Even if South Dakota ballot issues pass the state's extremist legislature will overturn them anyway. Another indicator that SD Dems are done in South Dakota? Marty Jackley is leading on legal cannabis.

Paula Hawks' dad, Hugh Hagel has been liking my anti-SDGOP comments in the Argus Leader.

Primaries are expensive and allow far too much mischief: since turnout is so pathetic especially during midterms the drain-circling South Dakota Democratic Party should end them and choose candidates at the state conventions.

Indian casinos are small banks. It's time for states to enter cannabis compacts with tribal nations.
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