Despite Trump tyranny tribes moving forward with cannabis initiatives

In defiance of sabre-rattling from the Trump Organization threatening to end tribal sovereignty the Nevada Tribal Cannabis Alliance, the New Mexico-based Acoma Pueblo, Montana's Blackfeet, the Yankton Sioux Tribe and others are all exploring the economic benefits of grow/ops.

The Yankton Sioux tribe’s decision to explore the possibility of marijuana/hemp legalization follows the not-guilty verdict handed down by a Moody County jury for Eric Hagen, president of Monarch America, for his involvement as a consultant for the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe while it attempted to establish a marijuana grow room for a proposed marijuana resort on tribal lands. [Yankton Press & Dakotan]

Recall officials of the Flandreau Santee Sioux Nation advanced their cannabis initiative after an Iowa casino on the border cut into the tribe's gaming business. Iowa's earth hater governor just signed a therapeutic cannabis bill into law.

It's pretty clear why Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard supported more gambling at the FSST casino. The State of South Dakota receives revenue from FSST through a compact with the nation.

South Dakota's earth hater Attorney General Marty Jackley is a recipient of campaign contributions from Big Pharma and Big Booze, has mounted an uphill race for governor and would stoop to anything, including the falsification of drug screens, to look tough on crime. FSST and Eric Hagen are simply soft targets for Jackley.

The hypocrisy of Jackley and the SDGOP is boundless. Jackley is a white supremacist bent on keeping tribes repressed. $20 says the State of South Dakota has paid off tribal officials to resist cannabis grow ops.

Soon-to-announce gubernatorial contender Lora Hubbel has called Jackley "pure evil." His psychopathy is legion.

South Dakota has the most draconian cannabis laws in the US: the law enforcement industry can even force catheters into urethras and penises to test possession by ingestion even as Big Pharma contributes to the campaigns of its attorney general.

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the State of South Dakota, Avera Health Care and the Pierre Police Department who forced a catheter into a 3-year-old boy causing the child to develop a staph infection in his penis.

It's time to test South Dakota's jurisdiction over nations where cannabis is legal and for tribal medical professionals to establish clinics that perform abortions on these non-contiguous parcels as islands of health care that supersede state law.

Changing gerrymandered districts in South Dakota won't fix red state failure

There is some discussion in my home state of South Dakota about whether the earth hater party's political bludgeon could be cut down to size if there were some mechanism in place to redraw districts to make voting more equitable for Democrats.

The premise would work like this: instead of having the Legislature (that is, the party in control of the Legislature) in charge of redistricting every 10 years, an independent commission would instead be given the task. The nine-person commission would include no more than three members apiece from both the Democrat[ic] and Republican parties. By doing this, the redistricting process would, in theory, be done in nonpartisan fashion, with the shadow of possible political opportunism removed from the process. [editorial, Yankton Press & Dakotan]

South Dakota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida are the most earth hater-tilted states.

This is at least as much about the flight of young people and Democrats from South Dakota than anything else. Inbound white retirees from somewhere else tapping into the state's culture of federal dependence have simply displaced progressive thought leaders so there is little mystery about that.

How are 64+ county seats and their bureaucracies either conservative or sustainable? They're not; but, it is the way Republican cronyism and patronage built barricades to democracy by providing benefits of the public dole to those who say they deplore big gubmint in a state that hates poor people.

Voter turnout is dismal in Indian Country mostly because tribal nations endure hopelessness as they compete with the stingy red moocher state government for resources.

The Wanblee district should be in Oglala Lakota County then Jackson should be rolled into Haakon, Jones and Lyman Counties. Stanley and Sully should be rolled into Hughes. Give Indian Country some clout by making Oglala Lakota, Mellette, Bennett, Todd, Gregory and Tripp one county. Dewey, Ziebach and Corson should be a county. Butte, Harding and Perkins should be one. Lawrence and Meade should be one, Fall River and Custer should be one.

Fine. Stanley might be happier being in with Lyman and the others. Combine Marshall and Brown Counties, too. East River is a dead zone: smarter people than i can figure out how to sort out that mess. Everything east of the Missouri River is Cleveland anyway.

Let’s face it: the only worse place than Pierre or Brookings to live is DC.

It's obvious this phenomenon is no accident: it has been manufactured to make the state a corporatist tax haven for an exclusive set of Republicans while over $3 trillion languishes in South Dakota banks.

The best thing to happen to my home state is for it to be covered in ten feet of ash from the Yellowstone supervolcano.

GOP on GOP violence: welfare rancher takes on SDGFP

Surprise!

Kill off apex predators like cougars then wonder why bighorn sheep contract diseases and raid hay piles.

Okay, this is funny.

As South Dakota's wildlife management bureaupublicans Game, Fish and Plunder release disease-prone bighorn sheep onto federal lands, ostensibly to knock down a cheatgrass infestation created by the failure of Black Hills forest policy, welfare ranchers are in revolt.

In 2001, the state Department of Game, Fish & Parks released 20 bighorn sheep on public land among the reddish sandstone outcrops of the Hell Canyon region, in the rural southwestern Black Hills. But the re-introduction has been a nuisance for Dan Stearns, who lives on his privately owned ranch alongside the mountain’s eastern base. GF&P officials have offered $25,000 worth of assistance to Stearns (he says it amounts to $29,000), including payments for the alfalfa eaten by wildlife, so-called “stack yards” — fenced-in areas to store hay — and specialized fencing to resist damage from wildlife or keep wildlife out entirely. They’ve also offered to haze wildlife away from Stearns’ ranch with aircraft. [Rapid City Journal]

According to the Environmental Working Group Stearns received payments totaling $63,429 from 1995 through 2014 including $34,023 in livestock subsidies.

The reasoning is hardly mysterious: it's all about the money hunting funnels into a region smothering under single-party rule. It's $280 just for the tag, not refundable.

The Grizzly Gulch Fire opened nearly 13,000 acres of overgrown and beetle-killed ponderosa pine but invasive weeds and cheatgrass moved in because cars and hunters have killed off the elk, white-tailed and mule deer.

During the Sturgis Rally riders loop through Aladdin to Hulett and Devils Tower then back through Sundance. Highways are often crowded to capacity and drunken bikers can be seen weaving over every roadway in the Black Hills. Deer are unpredictable and now join bighorn sheep as obstacles to avoid.

Ag and livestock producers in red Trump states are suffering from sagging profits, flaccid numbers, and limp resolve while earth hater welfare ranchers like Stearns and Betty Olson pay next to nothing to graze on public lands and are now out of hay after they shipped it to other welfare ranchers.

Domestic livestock have contributed to catastrophic wildfire conditions and Republican welfare ranchers are the real ecoterrorists who hate subsidies unless they benefit from them.

ip photo: cattle grazing on the Black Hills National Forest and shitting in a sensitive watershed on Boles Canyon Road.

Hubbel determined but poorly informed

Lora Hubbel is an earth hater former South Dakota legislator supposedly focused on running for her party's nomination for governor.

Hubbel and a gaggle of nutbags have been gathering signatures for a petition that would stop an opt-out. She "believes the Sioux Falls school board should have done more to inform taxpayers about a move to bring more money into schools through increasing local property taxes."

She and interested party agree on a few things: exposing Republican corruption in my home state, ending forced catheterization, policing for profit, civil asset forfeiture, and empowering pharmacists to dispense Federal Drug Administration-approved cannabis to patients suffering from debilitating diseases, disorders or conditions taxed like other prescriptions.

interested party has been lobbying her Facebook page and urging some concentration on policy instead of chasing anti-civil rights conspiracies. It's not easy. Her FB friends are mostly fucking nuts.

Cynics might question whether Lora believes campaigns are just as good as paid advertising for her businesses but if she was serious about running she'd lose the crackpot act and actually do something about property tax relief.

Despite lies from SDGOP, video lootery, payday loan sharks, domestic violence and homelessness are inextricably linked putting children at risk to more catastrophic consequences far more often than has happened in states that have legalized or lessened penalties for casual use of cannabis.

Black market cannabis not tested or subject to regulation makes America and South Dakota less safe. Legalizing and regulating a product that so many people enjoy is reasonable public policy that would align with our life/safety concerns.

Even conservatives like Lora could stand up for that.

It's the view of this columnist that to make an actual impact on South Dakota politics, instead of being creamed in the earth hater primary, Hubbel should abandon SDGOP and run as a third party or unaffiliated candidate for governor.

South Dakota should pass a corporate income tax, end video lootery, reduce the number of counties to 25, turn Dakota State University into a community college, and adopt my cannabis template: the kurtz solution painted on a thumbnail.

SD delegation joins Trump death panel; NM delegation outraged

South Dakota's earth hater congressional delegation is circling the wagons around the failed policies of the Trump White House.

The newest version of Trumpcare isn't a health care bill, it's a purge.

In a statement, U.S. Sen. Tom Udall said he has received more than 10,000 letters and emails urging him to oppose the bill, which would roll back some rules for health insurers and eventually reduce the number of low-income Americans covered under the government-funded Medicaid program. U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich called the bill a “train wreck” that “seems to be everything we feared it would be.” [Santa Fe New Mexican]

In stark contrast to the New Mexican, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reads like a bulletin from the South Dakota Republican Party.

Mike Rounds is a sleaze bag. Anyone else notice he and fellow earth haters John Thune and Krusti Noem are begging the Trump Organization to socialize agriculture for their donors as drought grips my home state? The state's governor says he believes slashing Medicaid will curb debt while putting more burden for indigent care on counties.

Sioux Falls and the Big Sioux River are dying in a toxic stew of chemically-infused feces while the South Dakota Republican Party gloats over cancer rates driving a medical industry. Rounds donor Denny Sanford is a billionaire and South Dakota is a $3 TRILLION tax haven.

Steve Rounds enjoys an unusual 30-year lease on land managed by a state agency. Rounds got the lease to the Oahe Marina from South Dakota Game, Fish and Plunder while his brother was governor and when his banker, Larry Deiter was named South Dakota Director of Insurance.

I like the idea of rolling the funding for Obamacare, Tricare, Medicare, the IHS and the VA together then offering Medicaid for all by increasing the estate tax, raising taxes on tobacco and adopting a carbon tax. Reproductive freedoms should be included with conditions just like the military does under Tricare.

Which part of crony capitalism escapes South Dakotans? Why anybody lives in South Dakota remains a mystery.

Cartoon: Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune.

Health care has always been about something bigger than politics: it's about the character of our country. https://t.co/UqLO14Hef7

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 22, 2017

Yankton wins best town, hosts Hobie regatta

Only seven readers of interested party believe South Dakota has any good towns at all but Yankton won anyway.

Hot Springs - 1(14%)
Spearditch - 1 (14%)
Yankton - 5 (71%)

"It’s a perennial favorite," said Ben Wells, the media coordinator with the Hobie Class Association, which will hold its Hobie 16/20 North American Championships at Lewis & Clark Lake this week. Yankton has previously hosted Hobie Cat national events (in 2008 and 2013), but this particular championship is on a grander scale, according to Wells. "This will be one of the larger events we’ve hosted," Wells said. Wells said there will also be a couple of teams from Cuba. [Yankton Press & Dakotan]

Fugitive Lyle Jeffs of FLDS fame was just apprehended in Yankton after pawn shop operators dropped a dime on him.

Angostura Reservoir on the Cheyenne River near Hot Springs has hosted regattas sponsored by Hobie Fleet 198 and Spearditch isn't that far from the Belle Fourche Reservoir where sailing can mean flying boats right out of the water.

One of my favorite experiences at Orman Dam was a 1990 mushroom-inspired sail at midnight under a full moon with 20 knot winds and hundred degree temps with Jack Kreitzer and Bob McNeill helping to hold the boat down as it reached for another plane.

Yes, this blogger still has a Hobie 16 but sailing in New Mexico means long road trips. Elephant Butte is not very sail-friendly and Navajo is too far. Nearby Cochiti Reservoir at the confluence of the Rio Grande and Santa Fe River is a radioactive sewer.

Above ip photo is from 2011 taken at Canyon Ferry Reservoir near Helena, Montana not far from the headwaters of the Missouri River.

SDSMA: cannabis is bad because it's illegal

interested party appears to be the only politics journal covering the South Dakota State Medical Association's white paper from early June and its obviously unanticipated foregone conclusion on cannabis as medicine.

Not surprisingly, it reads like a bulletin from the Republican Party's Drug Enforcement Administration. In fact, it relied on recommendations not from a medical doctor but from Bertha K. Madras, Ph.D, of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

SDSMA contends that although "marijuana and dronabinol decreased pain" the pharmaceutical industry produces opioids that are legal albeit highly addictive, easily abused and often deadly. South Dakota is among the worst states for opioid abuse. Besides, President Tronald Dump is sending more troops to Afghanistan to guard the opium crop essential to stocking America's opioid crisis.

Although there are different schools of thought concerning the efficacy of marijuana to treat certain medical conditions and concerning whether its possession and use ought to be decriminalized altogether, the fact remains that it is a violation of federal law and South Dakota law to possess or distribute it for any purpose. And while many states, including some close to South Dakota, have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes, writing a prescription for marijuana, even to a patient living in a state where its use and possession is legal, could result in a disciplinary proceeding brought by the SDBMOE. Accordingly, it is recommended that the practitioner not prescribe (either using a traditional prescription or a certification) marijuana unless and until changes in the law make it clear that doing so is legal, and then only when it is medically-necessary and appropriate. [Marijuana as Medicine]

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association opiate-related deaths have decreased some 33 percent in 13 states after therapeutic and casual cannabis were legalized.

Black market cannabis not tested or subject to regulation makes America and South Dakota less safe. Legalizing and regulating a product that so many people enjoy is reasonable public policy that would align with our life/safety concerns.

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]

South Dakota has the most draconian cannabis laws in the US: the law enforcement industry can even force catheters into urethras and penises to test possession by ingestion even as Big Pharma contributes to the campaigns of its attorney general.

Majority of Minnesota medical marijuana patients say treatment has provided “a great deal of benefit” https://t.co/18ybbn3ozx pic.twitter.com/HzGf9YZa7T

— The Cannabist (@cannabist) June 19, 2017

Cajete Fire expected to move into old Las Conchas, Thompson Ridge Burns

If the Cajete Fire moves beyond Los Griegos Mountain it will slow when it hits burn scars from the 2013 Thompson Ridge Fire and the 2011 Las Conchas Fire.

A Type 1 IC team took command of the incident at 0600 MDT this morning after active burning increased the size of the blaze to at least 700 acres. Extreme fire conditions have been observed. Gusty winds, high temperatures and low relative humidity continue today although a red flag warning has not been issued at post time.

The Las Conchas Fire started in late June of 2011 when an aspen tree fell onto power lines in the Jemez Mountains then quickly spread and became one of the most extensive wildland fire in New Mexico history. The Thompson Ridge Fire was the inspiration for this 2013 post. Note ponderosa pine in the photo at this Santa Fe New Mexican piece.

Wildland fires in New Mexico are common by this time of the year and at least eleven wildfires are burning.

Yesterday's ip photo was taken from the casita. So far, Baja Waldo has been mostly spared from smoke but Santa Fe and Los Alamos have been inundated causing air alerts.

Black Hills-based Wildfire Today uploaded a map of the Cajete Burn to twitter. That bare spot to the upper right of the blaze is the Valles Caldera.

Cajete Fire west of Los Alamos causes evacuations https://t.co/uGH2cnMTPb pic.twitter.com/vpss9geSJZ

— Wildfire Today (@wildfiretoday) June 16, 2017

New poll: what's the best town in South Dakota

According to readers of this blog Sturgis, Pierre and Huron are the worst towns in South Dakota. So, to balance cynicism with something else interested party wants input on the best town. Vote now or leave your choice in the comments.

My choices for worst towns in my home state are listed below with your results. Huron is assumed to be the other. Mobridge should be on the list of shit holes but missed the cut; so did Custer among others.

Sturgis
5 (25%)

Watertown
0 (0%)

Brookings
1 (5%)

Aberdeen
2 (10%)

Rapid City
0 (0%)

Sioux Falls
2 (10%)

Mitchell
2 (10%)

Pierre
4 (20%)

Other
4 (20%)

Drought could make non-meandered lakes fix moot

Since South Dakota statehood the US Army Corps of Engineers have had purview over water that flows into bodies that can support navigation.

Nearly every moving stream, intermittent or not in South Dakota, has supported a pre-settlement Amerindian or European explorer pulling and propelling a canoe over it.

In South Dakota, once it leaves its source, all surface water that flows from or through private property is owned by the state.

Property owners can harvest and possess rainwater and with a permit can pump from aquifers; but, the moment runoff reaches another body of water outside that boundary, contaminated by whatever residue it encounters along the way, within state borders, it's the property of the State of South Dakota.

Unfortunately, in South Dakota, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources is governed by those same offenders and therefore effectively neutered.

Rapid City environmental lawyer David Ganje is doing work for the South Dakota Farmers Union. He believes the legislature's fix is deeply flawed.

The summer committee of the Legislature voted approval of a nonmeandered waters bill June 2. The bill includes several workable and good provisions. Still, the committee opted for a bill that is unfinished, even for the limited, immediate issues the bill seeks to remedy. This use of public waters cannot be bought or leased by the state. If the purpose of the bill is to buy or lease property rights from private landowners, the bill does not achieve this purpose. [David Ganje]

According to KWAT Radio 2014 gubernatorial loser, Susan Wismer is supporting the fix.

Longtime Democratic politico, Nick Nemec said, "the simplest and easiest solution is to forgive all property taxes on submerged land and open it to recreation. Possibly include 50-100 foot setbacks from shore and expanded no wake zones as an answer to some of the complaints of landowners."

Largely created by tiling East River lakes are mostly eutrophic shit holes filled with toxic algae and unable to even support fish populations: why they're not tapped for irrigation instead of pumping fossil water from depleted aquifers remains a mystery.

Ranchers and farmers who pump aquifers to water hay crops are out of hay after giving it to other ag welfare recipients this Spring.

That's not self-reliance; it's moral hazard.

This legislation is simply an extension of the watershed buffer bill that has no teeth either.

Despite greater than average mountain runoff into the Missouri River permanent disaster area South Dakota is banking on drought to coax relief from the Trump Organization even as the Prairie Pothole Region suffers from the ravages of industrial agriculture.

Little wonder the federal government wants ag welfare and crop insurance reform.

Kralj crashes Smith River forum, tells it like it is

Update, 11 June, 12:13 MDT: the video was uploaded to youtube.

Larry Kralj is a brother-in-arms and icon of the Montana blogosphere. He could be my alter ego.

LK, they tell me I need anger management. What do you think? Problem is, if been fighting these no good bastards for so long that I have very little patience for them any more. I just want to get in their faces. Is that so bad? - LK

Jessica Sena is an earth hater lobbyist for the extractive industry that wants to mine on a tributary of the Smith River. The video is posted at her Facebook page with over 500 comments. Like Barrick, Tintina is traded on the Canadian market.

Environmental groups and anglers have lined up in opposition to the mine, arguing that it could harm water quality in Sheep Creek, an important spawning stream for Smith River trout. Tintina maintains that their operation will use the best mining techniques and won’t harm either stream. [Bozeman Daily Chronicle]

Kralj owns the phrase "Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers" along with many other colorful colloquialisms.

Jo Dee Black of the Great Falls Tribune covered the event but makes no mention of LK's contribution. Here is some of her Periscope of the forum but it is cut off when he entered:

Tribune's forum on Black Butte Mine https://t.co/FmTTp4HFbc

— Jo Dee Black (@GFTrib_JBlack) June 8, 2017

I don't think this mine has to be catastrophic, but the odds are there will be problems, Farling said

— Jo Dee Black (@GFTrib_JBlack) June 8, 2017

Hickey: Billie Sutton is anti-civil rights

"Prolife" is simply code for white people breeding.

My friend and former colleague Senator Billie Sutton is running for Governor. Pro-life, consistently. Christian, committed. I consider myself a Republican [P]arty defector in part because the SDGOP didn't steward its supermajority well. Billie bucked them and didn't fall in line either. And he's certainly not [the] Democrats['] dream candidate. I think he gets the South Dakota neighborliness that I've been saying [is] the way forward for the state. [Steve Hickey, Facebook post]

Rich women don't have to put up with this crap: they have full reproductive freedom while women at middle and lower income levels experience chilling effects on their rights. Women in South Dakota who can afford it simply jump on a plane and fly to Santa Fe, Minneapolis or Denver for their procedures. Imagine a woman in Standing Rock or Pine Ridge doing that.

Hickey just got back from a trip to Russia. Sometimes he actually gets it right.

Unless Sutton embraces passing a corporate income tax, reducing the number of SD counties to 25, turning Dakota State University into a community college, ending video lootery, supporting women's rights and adopting my cannabis template he is just wheeling into the fray as an SDGOP-lite asterisk.

Patrick Lalley doubles down here. Kevin Woster takes the long, long, long way around damning the SD Dems with faint praise.

Always nice to see #SouthDakota making national news. https://t.co/KLORaVfayh#Sarcasm #SDLeg #WaronWomen

— PlannedParenthoodSD (@ppSoDak) June 7, 2017

Casita is fully functional

The cost of subsidizing, manufacturing, transporting, erecting and maintaining just one wind farm turbine bat and bird killer would take a thousand subscribers off the grid. Craigslist, barter and four golf car batteries powered our new investment property for about $1200. Anyone who can afford to get off the grid should do it now.

Upper left is the charge controller, upper right is the 12V breaker box, on the counter is the inverter and underneath the counter are four 6V golf car batteries wired as two 12V. Note gray conduit holding cables coming from the rooftop array going into the breaker box. The gray cable coming out of the inverter goes through the adobe to the 120V breaker box in the building.

The workhorse inverter is a Trace 2000W 12V but a dinosaur by today's technology. We traded neighbors Lynn and Steve some dirt work for it.

After searching Craigslist Our Lady of the Arroyo found Tim, upsizing to a 24V system who had three Solarland 100W panels, a mount and the 2015 model year charge controller for $625. Delivered! That cost is about a third of their new value.

The four batteries came from Sam's Club at $85 each but we had two old cores worth $18 apiece lowering the final bill.

The water system features the pressure pump in top of image, 20 gallon pressure tank lower left and the filter on the right. Water source is a 1600 gallon tank filled by a 100 year old Aermotor windmill. Neighbor Kosta gave us the 12V pump motor for letting him use an air stapler but the brass pump itself has been remanufactured.

I did all the plumbing and interior wiring but our guru electrician, Bob wired the array, the 120 and 12V panels, batteries, charge controller and pressure switch on the tank.

A cheap one inch spade bit 10 inches long went through the adobe for pipes and wire.

This is a Bosch LP gas tankless water heater without its cover. The exhaust is taped for now but it runs great after getting the regulators figured out. Propane is a waste byproduct of natural gas wells and is usually flared off. Why not tap it instead of burning coal for electric baseboard or cove heat? The water heater and drop-in stove top are fed by a 100# Skelgas bottle salvaged from the farm in Elkton: it's stamped 1963 but passed certification with ease.

Here's a photo of the the array before the pump house was built.

Interior photos are from March. Note stained floor. New interior photos are coming soon. Prior images threaded here and here.

The rest of you still trapped in South Dakota are simply idiots.

New poll: what's the worst town in South Dakota?

Of course there are many from which to choose. Fuckwad Pat Powers cites a United Van Lines piece about inbound migration but Allied tells a different story.

Please vote at the sidebar or leave your choice in the comment section.

Lalley: SD Dems don't have a prayer without hope and change

With the Argus Leader, KSOO Radio and every other media outlet in my home state in the tank for the South Dakota Republican Party Patrick Lalley's job might indeed be better held by someone from Iraq but unfortunately Tariq Aziz is no longer available.

To be blunt, the Democrats introduced Billie Sutton to the state by putting him up on a barren stage in the middle West River ranch country. But it doesn’t look forward. Democrats haven’t held the governorship since Dick Kneip in the mid-70s. They need to change and refocus the core issues they are built upon. They need to find some way to attract middle class households from Harrisburg to Hartford to Brandon. [Patrick Lalley]

Blunt.

Exactly, Pat. Sutton is a fart in a haboob who bought Susan Wismer's mailing list now bombing my inbox begging for money. The South Dakota Democratic Party apparently learned nothing from the failure of a cowboy running for Montana's At-large congressional seat.

Unless Sutton embraces passing a corporate income tax, reducing the number of SD counties to 25, turning Dakota State University into a community college, ending video lootery and adopting my cannabis template he is just wheeling into the fray as an SDGOP-lite asterisk. No SD Dem gets a dime from me until the county chairs are filled.

Having said all that, a few leaks about Kristi Noem's dalliances could make the difference in the earth hater primary where Marty Jackley is out-financed by a factor of ten.

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.

As progressive activist Chaz Jewett said, "Again we are given a shiny penny by the South Dakota Democratic Party. When is enough enough? Options are wanted."

In the above ip photo Heck on Wheels Billie Sutton and another ineffectual legislator review the script for a skit during the 2014 Democratic SD State Convention.

Today's intersection: Afghanistan and Indian Country

Eighty percent of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan's poppy fields.

It's a place where dropping the Earth's largest non-nuclear explosive has not only resulted in blowback, an attack in Kabul that killed a hundred people and injured many more, it's driving a formidable native insurgency. The Republican-led wars there and in Iraq have cost American taxpayers some $6 TRILLION.

On March 28, 2017, the Afghan Ministry of Defence fired 1,394 officials for corruption. In 2016, 35 per cent of the Afghan security forces were killed: 6,800 soldiers and police. It is unlikely that even an increase of 5,000 U.S. troops will have an impact on the Taliban’s rush towards Kabul. The style of U.S. warfare is likely to increase civilian casualties, and the deterioration of the Afghan National Army will not raise the population’s confidence. [AlterNet]

South Dakota's Ellsworth Air Force Base has slaughtered countless civilians during the actions to protect the heroin trade keeping the Russian mob and the American Central Intelligence Agency in cash.

An editorial at Rapid City-based Native Sun News lambasted the Trump Organization.

Donald Trump is asking Congress to make drastic budget cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and to other programs that benefit the poor and elderly. Think about that: Six trillion dollars for two wars that are still ongoing and wars that have accomplished simply nothing to benefit the average American. As the infrastructures in this country continue to crumble we are spending millions to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. What about our crumbling bridges and decaying roads? The impoverished Indian reservations could have used a tiny percentage of the money wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan to rebuild our bridges and roads, to improve our failing health care system, our schools, our colleges and our tribal administration buildings. [How much have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost us?]

Trump doesn't merely push Democrats' buttons. He lays on the keys.

A recent Intercept article on the American Indian and Canadian First Nations' insurgency chronicled the cash relationship between Energy Transfer Partners, builders of the Dakota Excess Pipeline, and mercenary group TigerSwan hired to quash the demonstration forecast by interested party.

Desperation in Indian Country has long been exacerbated by the cost of American imperialism and addiction has begun to look like a gift from God.

Republican Party Is the 'Most Dangerous Organization in World History' https://t.co/NXw53Y3ckj https://t.co/jGgIZu4HD8

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) May 31, 2017

VA Sec Shulkin on med marijuana: "There may be some evidence that this is beginning to be helpful, and we’re interested in looking at that."

— Christina Wilkie (@christinawilkie) May 31, 2017

Afghanistan has become America's weapons training ground. https://t.co/f786PPYYh9

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) May 31, 2017

An American dies every 36 seconds of poverty. More in 1 year than all USA soldiers killed in all wars pic.twitter.com/GGGhHDqtSs

— Rivera Sun (@RiveraSunAuthor) June 1, 2017