Aanning makes statement on death of Brady Folkens

Retired Yankton surgeon and patient advocate Lars Aanning has updated a piece Jonathan Ellis wrote on Brookings teen, Brady Folkens who died after misdiagnosis and treatment he received in a state-operated detention facility.

Negligent medical care, a false autopsy, forged letters from the state licensing board, and an indifferent wall of silence mandated by the state risk managers are only the tip of the iceberg in this young boy's unnecessary death. South Dakota's leadership (the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and their appointees) and their co-conspirators (the Avera leadership in Sioux Falls) have cruelly stiffed the mother of Brady Folkens in her unrelenting struggle to seek closure. Never since the moment Brady unexpectedly died at Avera McKennon Hospital has any one of these enablers ever reached out to Dawn Van Ballygooyen to express sympathy, give condolence, or comfort her for her loss. Their conspiratorial silence and evasion of credibility is simply stunning and, very frankly, basically un-American...[comment, Dr. Lars Aanning]

The issue of medical negligence has yet to be resolved.

The defendants in a lawsuit stemming from the December 2013 death of a boy in state custody at the former State Treatment and Rehabilitation (STAR) Academy received a victory earlier this month when a Seventh Circuit Court judge awarded them a partial summary judgment, dismissing a pair of the claims made in the lawsuit. The suit seeks an unspecified amount, including attorney fees, medical and funeral expenses and punitive damages. [Custer County Chronicle]

This blog has covered the story, too.

The now-shuttered STAR Academy has been offered for sale to the public. Its predecessor Custer State Hospital has a macabre history of its own.

Today in hypocrisy: SD adds video lootery machines as Noem decries addiction

Pierre is a miniature Albuquerque where money and power come from the addiction to a Breaking Bad video lootery.

The new generation of video lottery terminals now produces more net machine income than the original terminals do, even though nearly twice as many old-style machines are still in the market, according to a South Dakota Lottery official. [Bob Mercer]

And:

The rate of violent crime in South Dakota nearly doubled between 2005 and 2015, according to the FBI. No community – no family – is immune to addiction. [some Kristi Noem staffer]

Dennis Daugaard is Walter White. Marty Jackley is Saul Goodman. Jim Seward is Mike Ehrmantraut. Kevin Schieffer is Gustavo Fring. Tony Venhuizen is Jesse Pinkman. Melody Schopp is Skyler White. Deb Peters is Lydia Rodarte-Quayle. Jeff Sveen is Todd Alquist. Richard Benda is Gale Boetticher. Frank Farrar is Hector Salamanca. Joop Bollen is Declan. Mike Rounds is Ted Beneke. Kristi Noem is Marie Schrader. Nicole Westerhuis is Jane. Scott Westerhuis is Jack Welker. Conner Westerhuis is Drew Sharp. Kathryn Johnson is Gretchen Schwartz. Doyle Estes is Elliot Schwartz.

Pat Powers is Huell Babineaux.

The Division of Criminal Investigation is the Albuquerque Police Department. Stace Nelson is Hank Schrader. Bob Mercer is Gomey.

North Dakota finalizing therapeutic cannabis rules

South Dakota's more forward-looking neighbor to the north is growing interest in cannabis as therapy.

North Dakota voters passed Measure 5 in 2016 and this year the legislature drafted rules then a Republican governor signed it into law.

The North Dakota Department of Health, Division of Medical Marijuana has received more than a hundred letters of intent to apply to be either a grower or a dispensary.

Instead of a profit motive North Dakota's future 'compassion centers' empower providers with a more patient-centered model. So far, two growers with a thousand plant limit each and eight dispensaries are allowed in the state. The department has the authority to increase that number as demand swells.

Labs are being sought to ensure the medication is free of contaminants and will be packaged in containers that minimize its appeal to minors.

Administrative rules are expected to be finalized within a fortnight.

North Dakota is one of several red states where drugs synthesized from Afghanistan's opium poppies are taking a toll on residents. Montana and New Mexico are both considering adding cannabis to state patient care guidelines as an alternative to prescription drugs.

University of New Mexico researchers and the Industrial Rehabilitation Clinics of Albuquerque have released findings that showed 71% of patients either ceased or reduced their use of manufactured opioids within 6 months of enrolling in that state's medical cannabis program.

Even the conservative Rapid City Journal sees the future of cannabis.

God might not be enough for northern tier religious states: they lead the nation in anti-depressant use.

Unfortunately, in further outrage, the Trump Organization wants to compel states to release cannabis patient information to the federal government.

Researchers and pharmacologists agree: cannabis is a safe and effective palliative.

As another brutal winter begins its descent on the Great Plains leaving residents on the verge of suicide this writer still sees some hope for the frozen tundra.

Newspaper in town, county named for war criminal howls foul

Oh, the hypocrisy!

Watch your backsides, George and Thomas! You, too, Roosevelt and Lincoln. You must certainly have been racists in the past because you were white men and only white men are racists. There are youthful, intolerant lib zealots out there today who are gunning for you. The four faces on Mount Rushmore should be safe for now, but we’re not so sure about the three Confederate war figures carved at Stone Mountain in Georgia. It is now owned by the state. [Custer County Chronicle]

South Dakota is home to numerous sculptures that idolize genocide visited upon American Indians.

Mount Rushmore is the state's premier example of racist ideology. Its sculptor was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Calling him a rapist some twitter accounts are calling for the removal of Rapid City's statue of Bill Clinton. Fact is: most of the downtown statuary depict slave owners and figures in history that ordered the murders of Natives.

Thomas Jefferson kept Sally Hemings as a sex slave fathering her six children born after the death of his wife, Martha Jefferson. If alive today he'd be surprised there were any American Indians surviving at all.

Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren drove thousands from their lands and to their deaths over the Trail of Tears. Abraham Lincoln hanged thirty eight Dakota just for spite.

Theodore Roosevelt said, "the only good Indians are the dead Indians."

George Custer, Phil Sheridan, George Crook and William Harney all committed crimes against humanity yet their names still besmirch numerous government and geographical features.

Revisionist history turned the Wounded Knee Massacre into a battle where soldiers were awarded medals of honor then a peak or town in the Black Hills and a national forest were named after a murderer like George Armstrong Custer. Crook City near Whitewood and Crook's Tower, one of the 7000 footers in the Black Hills, were named after a war criminal.

In the early days of South Dakota statehood Indian agents embezzled federal funds meant for tribal nations, just like James McLaughlin did.

Little has changed.

Until he allegedly killed his family and himself Scott Westerhuis stole from an American Indian education fund since Mike Rounds was governor.

Habitat destruction, watershed ruination, native species extirpation, rampant ecocide, statewide corruption: this is today's South Dakota.

This blogger has been arguing for Lakota names on South Dakota's geological features for at least twenty years. It is the opinion of this blog now that the mountain is named for Black Elk it should be in the Lakota language: loosely translated as Paha Heȟáka Sápa.

It's not that Black Elk Peak has been renamed for a Lakota holy man that irks earth haters like John Thune, Denny Daugaard and Pat Powers it's that the mountain has been named after a Lakota holy man who rebuked the Roman Church.

No doubt frequent contributor to Pat's Pissoir, Troy Jones, is perfectly happy if the names Stalingrad and Rhodesia were still in practical use.

The story of Black Elk is fraught with historical myth making as historians and academics have questioned the accuracy of John Neihardt’s account in his book “Black Elk Speaks”. Indeed the book is not only a poor historical text but it is also a disputable biography. Neihardt is not only guilty of constructing a “noble savage” caricature of Black Elk and North American Indians but also of engaging in exaggerations and alterations to the translations of his notes to make the story more palatable to white and European markets. The book is as much about Neihardt as it about Black Elk and it should be read in the same context as a novel would be. [comment, Jon Lauck, South Dakota Republican Party]

Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk) returned to Lakota ways after he realized the Roman Church was committing crimes against his people.

Damian Costello's monograph on Black Elk, the Oglala holy man, is the latest in a growing number of scholarly contributions to the controversial topic of Black Elk's religious identity. Was Black Elk truly a wicasta wakan, a holy man, who only became a Catholic convert as a result of the colonial pressures endemic to the reservation system? Or was Black Elk actually a devout catechist, whose "Great Vision" was unnecessarily bereft of its Christian message because John G. Neihardt desired a romanticized and non-Christian Indian narrative? First, tribal nations such as the Lakota are still under the yoke of colonialism and, as such, are engaged in a process of decolonization rather than postcolonialism. Second, taking [Lamin] Sanneh's perspective and arbitrarily applying it to early twentieth-century Lakota history only serves as a way of making excuses for historic wrongs that both Protestant and Catholic churches committed against the Lakota people. [excerpt, Black Elk: Colonialism and Lakota Catholicism (review)]

After leading the charge on Black Elk Peak Basil Braveheart has turned his sights on Battle Mountain in Fall River County.

Get Custer's name off a South Dakota state park, a mountain, a county and a town? What a great idea!

It's time for the State of South Dakota to abandon Bear Butte State Park that it claimed through colonization and remand it to the tribes for governance so they can restore its name to Mato Paha and for the US Park Service to add the name Mahto Tipila to Devils Tower National Monument.

Rounds continuing personal vendetta against US military, getting schooled by corps

South Dakota's junior senator has been all short guy this week.

Recall South Dakota's quisling earth hater former governor Mike Rounds built a house in a swamp that flooded then received a generous self-reimbursement from insurance coverage underwritten by his own company knowing Lake Sharpe is filling with silt. He's been blaming the US Army Corps of Engineers for that fraud ever since.

Rounds has been grandstanding in Pierre trying to overcome his lack of effectiveness in the US Senate.

“A healthy, well-managed river is critical to the communities along it,” Rounds said in his opening statement. Paul Lepisto, a regional official for the Izaak Walton League, said the Missouri River is one of the most altered eco-systems on earth as a result of the six dams. [Watertown Public Opinion]

The corps might be finally getting through to the little guy. There is nothing healthy about six dams in a threatened ecosystem.

The risk to upper basin states and Indian tribes is that once water is regulated as surplus water, and once it is consumed by end-users, it becomes that much harder to later re-institute the original legal, as well as declared beneficial uses of the water. [David Ganje]

Lewis and Clark Lake is thirty percent full of toxic sediment. The impoundment is dealing with newly-discovered invasive species which are causing problems to equipment.

Despite run-off of about 115 percent of normal officials at the Omaha-based US Army Corps of Engineers again canceled the Spring pulse for endangered species habitat on the upper Missouri River.

Nearly a century of residue from Black Hills Mining District affects millions of cubic yards of riparian habitat all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Although the Oahe Dam was completed in 1962 sequestering most of the silt the soils of the Belle Fourche and Cheyenne Rivers are inculcated with arsenic at levels that have killed cattle. Endangered pallid sturgeon, paddlefish, catfish and most other organisms cope with lethal levels of mercury throughout the South Dakota portion of the Missouri River.

The closest Mike Rounds has ever gotten to military service is acting as commander-in-chief of South Dakota's National Guard.

The withdrawal of Jim DeMint elevated water warrior Senator Roy Blunt (earth hater-MO) to lead his assault from the lower Missouri River basin so the path leads right to Blunt's front door.

It's time for South Dakota's press to investigate the collusion between the state and polluters instead of pandering to the South Dakota Republican Party as it destroys watersheds by deconstructing the Waters of the United States rule protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

GOP, Jackley donors are killing South Dakotans

Cross-state pollution? Say it ain't so, Marty.

South Dakota suffers the highest breast cancer rates in America due in large part to emissions from coal-fired electricity generating plants in Montana and Wyoming.

How bad does it have to get before Marty Jackley files lawsuits against Black Hills Energy, Basin Electric, NorthWestern Energy, Otter Tail and/or the Colstrip Generating Station?

Jackley got campaign cash from NWE last cycle; so did a bunch of other South Dakota Republicans.

Colstrip's co-operator, Talen Energy gives far more campaign cash to Republicans. Puget Sound Energy gave loads to Max Baucus.

Montana's Department of Environmental Quality will oversee the cleanup and remediation of power plants. It is currently working with Colstrip owners on cleanup plans for the coal ash ponds servicing the power plants. Those ponds of toxic coal ash and water have contaminated Colstrip groundwater over the last 30 years. In 2015, it was the nation's 15th-largest producer of greenhouse gases, emitting 13.5 million metric tons annually, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It was the Sierra Club, in partnership with the Montana Environmental Information Center, that brought against Puget and Talen the clean air lawsuit that ended in the companies agreeing to shutter Colstrip's two oldest units. [Tom Lutey, Billings Gazette]

Xcel Energy enjoyed a 4 percent rate hike from the South Dakota Public Utility Cartel (SDPUC) but reduced its request in Colorado.

In 2014, Xcel gave $10,000 to Mike Rounds, $2,500 to John Thune and $4,250 to Kristi Noem. In 2016 Black Hills Corp. gave Thune and Noem wads of cash, too. Basin Electric doled out $270,000 in 2016 alone. Oil and gas found Mike Rounds' zerk, too.

No taxes, a compliant regulator and cheap labor make South Dakota the perfect dumping ground for earth killers like coal.

Now we know why South Dakota's GOP congressional delegation wants cheap dirty coal.

Environmental group Environment America in January 2011 released a report ranking power plants according to the amount of mercury the plant emits into the air and soil. The group, using EPA data, ranked a Montana power company the 11th-largest coal-fired polluter of mercury in the nation and the worst among those in Western states. According to its report, ”Dirty Energy’s Assault on our Health: Mercury,” Colstrip Steam Electric Station emitted 1,490 pounds of mercury in 2009. This accounted for most of the 1,726 pounds of mercury released by all of Montana’s power plants that year. [SourceWatch]

From the Rapid City Journal:

Coal-fired power plants like those operating across the region are easy targets when it comes to fixing blame for mercury pollution, because they do release mercury in their emissions. Trevor Selch, a former South Dakota State University doctoral student now working as a biologist in Montana, did research on the mercury impacts in South Dakota from 2004 to 2007. He sampled about 1,000 fish for mercury during that time and saw strong evidence of “the reservoir effect.”

Here is more from the eastern South Dakota chapter of the Sierra Club:

Anglers who come to South Dakota for toxin-free fishing may soon lose that luxury and South Dakota, in turn, will lose the revenue from fishing tourism. Mercury contamination is harder to repair than farm run-off---like cleaning up mercury from a broken thermometer, it's hard to do. Also, the costly burden of clean-up is too often on the State and local governments and not the polluter. Since mercury removal is often too much for state governments; it is easier to tell the public not to eat the fish.

Republicans are evil.

The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission is staffed by Republicans so they're pushovers for rate increases by companies who bankroll their elections to the posts they hold.

Public Service New Mexico (PNM) was denied a rate increase because that state has a vigorous two party system where steamrolling over the state's power commission, made up of representatives from both political parties, is improbable. PNM has been sent back to the drawing board to rewrite its proposal for an increase.

Imagine such folly happening in South Dakota.

Despite all this, some 15 states are currently petitioning in Federal court to thwart President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which seeks to cut carbon emissions from power plants within the next 15 years. These states include West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Some of these states, such as West Virginia, are heavily reliant on the coal industry. Others simply don’t like the federal government. [Moyers and Company]

As Kristie Fiegen circles the drain wracked by cancer caused by Jackley's partisanship South Dakotans wholly expect their GOP governor to appoint another campaign donor to the post after she croaks.

It's not bad enough that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has enjoyed greasing from coal-backed utilities the Bureau of Land Management lets these rapers mine on public lands for next to nothing.

July was the hottest month in recorded history driven in large part by greenhouse gases emitted by mining and burning coal.

Socialized military, socialized timber harvest, socialized ag and livestock industries and socialized coal: GOP hypocrisy on parade.

If South Dakota had a Democratic attorney general she'd sue Montana and Wyoming for the toxic legacy created by Colstrip, Basin Electric and Black Hills Energy.

Rapid City, South Dakota awash in offensive racist statuary and symbols

South Dakota is home to numerous sculptures that idolize genocide visited upon American Indians.

Mount Rushmore is the state's premier example of racist ideology. Its sculptor was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Calling him a rapist some twitter accounts are calling for the removal of Rapid City's statue of Bill Clinton. Fact is: most of the downtown statuary depict slave owners and figures in history that ordered the murders of Natives.

Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren drove thousands from their lands and to their deaths over the Trail of Tears.

The United States was founded on the backs of slaves as systematic genocide became a way of life for white christians quoting scripture as they slaughtered their fellow humans. After colonizers realized enslaved American Indians had no resistance to diseases brought from the Old World, Africans were imported to do the dirty work.

In the early twentieth century after President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House white supremacists began erecting statuary commemorating and celebrating treason in the United States.

Confederate flags routinely fly in Rapid City showing support for racism in like-minded states, South Carolina and Mississippi. Many more come out during the Sturgis Rally.

Moody and Pennington Counties struggle with racism on a local level.

As bikers in the Black Hills can still be seen flaunting their racist bents flying the flag of slavery from their machines Gettysburg, South Dakota remains a white supremacist stronghold.

The Potter County city of Gettysburg will not be removing the Confederate Flag from patches of the police department. ["...Without the war, and without the Battle of Gettysburg, we would not be the same City that we are. The Chief of Police, Bill Wainman, the Mayor, Bill Wuttke, and the City Council have no intentions of changing the police patch."]

Read that here.

Helena, Montana has removed its Confederate shrine after outcry from the state's American Indian legislative caucus.

Over eight hundred people were arrested and gassed outside Standing Rock during the Dakota Excess demonstrations, 155 arrested in Ferguson and only four were arrested in Charlottesville.

Not really South; not really Dakota.

George Custer, Phil Sheridan, George Crook and William Harney all committed crimes against humanity yet their names still besmirch numerous government and geographical features.

New Mexico endures multitudinous symbols of conquest, genocide and colonization, too.

Right to life? Not if you're non-white in America.

Cartoon: A stain on the country https://t.co/Nbbhxe2oQ4

— Mexican Judge (@laloalcaraz) August 19, 2017

WWRMD? pic.twitter.com/41mmqkXmj5

— NDG (@ndged) August 19, 2017

Researchers and pharmacologists agree: cannabis is safe and effective

The New Mexico Department of Health will collect nearly $3 million from just thirty five growers for 14,550 cannabis licenses through July 2018.

University of New Mexico researchers and the Industrial Rehabilitation Clinics of Albuquerque have released findings that showed 71% of patients either ceased or reduced their use of manufactured opioids within 6 months of enrolling in the state medical cannabis program.

The study is the first of its kind examining individual patients enrolled in the medical cannabis program comparing similar patients otherwise not enrolled.

If there is one observation I feel compelled to share after five years in the cannabis industry, it is that I do believe that all cannabis use is medical. When the modern medical cannabis movement began a little over a decade ago, very little was remembered about the benefits that the cannabis plant has to offer. The phytocannabinoids produced by the plant are in essence exactly what the body needs to maintain a healthy, balanced endocannabinoid system. So if you think you are a recreational user of cannabis, you might want to think again. [Erica Freeman]

Produced at WUNC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, The People's Pharmacy has aired numerous programs of its 1091 broadcasts on the therapeutic and casual ingestion of cannabis.

Saturday morning is when Bill Janklow's idea of public radio airs the show hosted by two pharmacologists.

Our guest, David Casarett, MD, certainly doubted that there was much evidence to support medical applications of marijuana. But as a palliative care physician, he was curious. The evidence he found convinced his that there is a case to be made in some situations.

Listen to a podcast here.

Even the conservative Rapid City Journal sees the future of cannabis.

Delaware Valley University, which is one of the top providers of agriculture degrees in Pennsylvania, offers students a chance to study hydroponics — a system for growing plants without soil and a technique used in the cannabis industry. By working with such plants as basil, students can gain specialized skills that can be applied to jobs in the medical marijuana industry. But interim dean Christopher Tipping said he is asked about it "all the time." His constant reply: "I'll teach you how to grow a tomato, and if you can grow a tomato, you can grow cannabis." [More college students seek cannabis career]

God might not be enough for northern tier religious states: they lead the nation in anti-depressant use.

The lab in the former Homestake Mine pumps thousands of gallons of hot water into Whitewood Creek every day: too bad nobody gets it could heat greenhouses.

Rapid City could drill for hot water to heat greenhouses and make life less hostile for its residents.

As another brutal winter begins its descent on the Great Plains leaving residents on the verge of suicide this writer still sees some hope for my home state.

Jackley entraps nine to look tough on crime

Thanks to Marty Jackley's selective enforcement white thugs have carte blanche to commit flagrant criminal acts during the Sturgis Rally. A long history of lawlessness can make the event highly virulent attracting common parasites who breed in the cesspools of human existence.

Nine men from South Dakota and across the country have been charged with a number of sex crimes--including some involving minors. [KELO teevee]

If a government agent sends a man a pornographic image of a teenage girl then prosecutes him for possession of the photo that’s entrapment.

Entrapment is nothing new at the Rally. Jackley has routinely used government agents to deceive unwitting tourists in South Dakota to advance his political career.

Jackley's thugs planted evidence of cannabis use on former Butte County States Attorney Heather Plunkett that got her fired and prosecuted.

To his credit Jackley's behavior has caused visitation in Sturgis to fall to lows not seen since 1990 even as more riders kill themselves and drive record business to Rapid City Regional.

Sturgis was recently voted worst town in South Dakota by readers of interested party.

That Jackley is raising campaign money grandstanding as some champion of white rule as South Dakota's culture of racism is being tried in the court of public opinion is vertiginous in its hubris.

If only Marty's office could be more transparent about the Bendagate Affair and his party's culture of corruption than about his egomaniacal intention to run up the GOP ladder.

American Indians in Montana want removal of memorial to treason; whither South Dakota?

The United States was founded on the backs of slaves as systematic genocide became a way of life for white christians quoting scripture as they slaughtered their fellow humans. After colonizers realized enslaved American Indians had no resistance to diseases brought from the Old World, Africans were imported to do the dirty work.

In the early twentieth century after President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House white supremacists began erecting statuary commemorating and celebrating treason in the United States.

Members of the American Indian Caucus in the Montana Legislature are calling for the city of Helena to remove a Confederate memorial that sits in a city park. In their letter, members of the American Indian Caucus said white nationalists, neo-Nazis, members of the alt-right and any other groups that propagate hate, discrimination, violence and bigotry have no place in this country. [Helena Independent Record]

Confederate flags routinely fly in Rapid City showing support for racism in like-minded states, South Carolina and Mississippi. Many more come out during the Sturgis Rally.

Channeling the Bundy domestic terrorists who laid siege on Harney County, Oregon Rep. Lee Schoenbeck (RWNJ-Watertown) embraces white privilege every day.

Rosebud rapper, Frank Waln, is a survivor of genocide visited against tribal nations.

Moody and Pennington Counties struggle with racism on a local level.

As bikers in the Black Hills can still be seen flaunting their racist bents flying the flag of slavery from their machines Gettysburg, South Dakota remains a white supremacist stronghold.

The Potter County city of Gettysburg will not be removing the Confederate Flag from patches of the police department. ["...Without the war, and without the Battle of Gettysburg, we would not be the same City that we are. The Chief of Police, Bill Wainman, the Mayor, Bill Wuttke, and the City Council have no intentions of changing the police patch."]

Read that here.

Over eight hundred people were arrested outside Standing Rock during the Dakota Excess demonstrations, 155 arrested in Ferguson and only four were arrested in Charlottesville.

Not really South; not really Dakota.

Right to life? Not if you're non-white in America or South Dakota.

I'm just saying! He Sapa kin Lakota kin tawapi pic.twitter.com/E7eENoJuDa

— Matt Remle (@wakiyan7) August 15, 2017

Casita reaches the end

This is from a year ago today.

It's ready for guests but it's kinda hard to let go and start another project. Thirteen and a half months just flew by. Click on any image for better looks.

This is the rear elevation. Note the two hundred gallon rain barrel.

Here's a shot out the front door with the Ortiz Mountains about five miles as the buzzard flies.

Our Lady of the Arroyo is having some girls up here today. The blog hosted the geezers here last Tuesday. It looks good.

Unruh groping for peak "ick factor"

I caught this LTE the other day in the paper and thought I'd expose another charlatan in the South Dakota Republican Party.

Allen Unruh is an Elkton boy: his family was run out of town after his father, also a "chiropractic physician," was caught molesting children during exams at a time in South Dakota history when quacks enjoyed intimate physical contact with boys to determine who would participate in school sports.

You see this all the time with Talibangelicals: someone threatens to out one as a serial molester, he runs an op-ed in the paper then diverts some cash he raises from sermonizing wedge issues to shut up the people he's raped or groped.

Think of it as the Bill Cosby Effect: the more sanctimonious the speech the more cash gets raised to hide career criminal behavior.

It does make one wonder if all the chiropractors in South Dakota are intellectually incompetent or just thugs. Fred Deutsch and Jeff Monroe want to end women's civil rights, Scott Munsterman groped at least one teen and Allen Unruh wants to rewrite history by leaving Native genocide and human-caused climate change out of school curricula. These are "pro-life" people who rabidly embrace state-sponsored killing of persons convicted of capital crimes.

There are additional benefits of health insurance through the Healthcare.gov Marketplace like plans that offer covfefe for chiropractic or acupuncture services.

Two of South Dakota's earth hater delegation receive their medical benefits from Obamacare. Rep. Kristi Noem has a full ride and Sen. John Thune is on the DC HealthLink Obamacare exchange.

The red moocher state's junior senator hasn't shared the source of his medical benefits with media but it's believed he is covered by the insurance company he owns and will be eligible for Medicare before his term ends.

Republicans are infamous for killing the VA and IHS while government-run health care like CHAMPUS and TRICARE have been working for decades. My siblings and i were all born in government hospitals.

Sanford, Avera and Rapid City Regional enjoy virtual medical industry monopolies in their markets.

Kinda makes ya sick, init?

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.

Earth haters like Allen Unruh can squawk all they want about "socialized medicine" or "government-run health care." South Dakota is already a perpetual welfare state and permanent federal disaster area. It leads the US in breast cancer rates and is one of seven states that would be devastated by the repeal of Obamacare.

Chiropractic and acupuncture are palliatives at best while cannabis is a proven effective therapy.

Unruh's a sleaze ball of biblical proportions. He authored the Obama impeachment resolution adopted by SDGOP. Right Wing Watch has someone following his hijinx, too.

It's just creepy. You just can't unrub this guy enough.

Good one Larry. My hometown chiropractic quack required excess nudity from female patients, then just had to pull back robes to expose breaststroke or genitals. This was all in the course of "treatment", of course. I doubt they're All pervs, just a high percentage. BTW, I saw Unruh at a legislative hearing about 10 years ago. He has a very high "ick" factor. Made my skin crawl. Ugh. [comment, Deb Geelsdottir, August 17, 2015]

Republicans are evil. Children are born atheists.

Turn your head and cough.

Republican logic.. pic.twitter.com/5dW0mJo693

— Greg Hogben (@MyDaughtersArmy) August 13, 2015

Today's intersection: death with dignity and suicide by cop

South Dakota is mulling a potential ballot measure that would hold harmless physicians who assist patients with terminal illnesses in ending their own lives.

One earth hater legislator, quack Fred Deutsch, has been raising campaign cash gallivanting around the red moocher state with a crusade calling the initiative "Don't Eat Grandma" or something.

End-of-life care presents a great opportunity for pharmacists to exercise their expertise. Physicians and pharmacists must contemplate the implications of death with dignity laws on their personal beliefs and future practice to provide empathy, understanding, and the best possible care to their patients. [Death With Dignity: A Right or a Crime?]

But ya know? A state-ordered lethal injection isn't criminal justice; it's suicide by cop. Hell is life in the South Dakota State Penitentiary or in a Colorado SuperMax.

It does make one wonder if all the chiropractors in South Dakota are intellectually incompetent or just thugs. Deutsch and Jeff Monroe want to end women's civil rights, Scott Munsterman groped at least one teen and Allen Unruh wants to rewrite history by leaving Native genocide and human-caused climate change out of school curricula. These are "pro-life" people who rabidly embrace state-sponsored killing of persons convicted of capital crimes.

These people aren't interested in compassion: they want big government nanny state control over every aspect of peoples' lives, abhor cultural diversity and perceive the electorate as rabble.

This blog doesn't have a god in the fight but since the South Dakota Republican establishment mouthpiece suffers from hypocritheocrisy and misogyny, can't bear dissent and deletes or ridicules comments from dissenters this post will have to do.

It'd be scary if it weren't so Stoogesque, Marxistic or Mouseketeerian. But, applaud Deutsch's efforts diverting attention from his party's culture of corruption where murders and their covers up are commonplace by clogging the legislative session with christianic religionist argle-bargle.

South Dakota deserves the legislature it endures.

Church still leaving trail of tears, fears

“I evolved past the ridiculous dogma that you start seeing when you look more broadly at the world.”

South Dakota's Ku Klux Klan opposed Roman Catholicism because it feared Catholic involvement in politics.

After a cassock with ties to the Sioux Falls diocese resigned amid clergy crimes, jaws are still dropping. When Bob Carlson was bishop of the Sioux Falls chapter of the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers he testified for the defense at Bill Janklow's manslaughter trial.

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

Boston's disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law lives amidst splendor in Rome after resigning his office.

Since 2011, and as recently as this week—long after the specter of child sexual abuse by priests faded from the public scrutiny that peaked in the decade before—Brad Hall has filed 74 lawsuits on behalf of abuse survivors against priests from the archdiocese, which includes Albuquerque. In fact, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe is currently battling an effort by Hall to unseal what could be tens of thousands of pages of church records that were handed over as part of a series of lawsuits. It’s unclear how much priest sex abuse has cost the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. The Dallas Charter prevents bishops from demanding confidential settlements. [Santa Fe Reporter]

Although nothing untoward ever happened to me as an altar boy at Our Lady of Good Counsel my girlfriend in high school told me their family attended Mass elsewhere because Father Louis J. Miller had done something bad and was transferred to the Elkton parish under Sioux Falls, South Dakota cleric, Lambert Hoch who was born in Elkton.

Louis Miller was elevated to monsignor then was decapitated in an automobile accident near Pierre in 1968. Leonard Fox, the guy who succeeded him, was an asshole who drove me from catholicism.

The leader of the Church is slowly cleaning house of pederastic predators but is taking heat from Republicans for his stance on curbing human-induced climate change and from progressives for his intent to canonize a colonizer accused of raping children.

Ireland and Australia are leading calls to prosecute the cult's leaders.

Religion is a mental illness and the Roman Church is a criminal enterprise whose catechism is based on lies.

As lawsuits and the US Department of Justice swamp the Church of the Holy Roman Kiddie Diddlers the future of the religious cult isn't looking very rosy.

Trump, Wilson offer Ellsworth airmen, aircraft as bait to North Korea

Donald Trump is fully capable of blowing up the world in a fit of pique to prove he's not a wimp.

America's mentally disturbed Cheeto-dusted Führer and his Air Force Secretary have just painted a bull's eye on Rapid City.

Earlier this month, 350 airmen and six B-1 bombers were deployed to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. The bombers are flying show of force missions near North Korea as tensions grow over that country’s nuclear weapons program and threats of striking the U.S. mainland with intercontinental ballistic missiles. [KEVN teevee]

Well, at least America no longer has to wonder what Trump's Kompromat Cabinet will do to the Earth and Rapid City.

US imperialism created the Somali refugee crisis where ISIL chickens are coming home to roost in Minnesota now Syrians are fleeing another Israeli/American war of aggression and taking its toll on American airmen in South Dakota and other remote locations.

But you know what scares me? Someone from Yemen, Afghanistan or somewhere rolling a truck bomb into Rapid City Central High School or the School of Mines after an Ellsworth-based drone pilot targets a wedding party or religious service.

It's just a matter of time until Trump and Heather Wilson bring Hell to breakfast in Rapid City.

Meeting with pilots. pic.twitter.com/ONtYYSGjHa

— Heather Wilson (@HeatherAnWilson) August 6, 2017

Gohn is not what she says she is

This columnist is not convinced a person's sexual preference is determined at conception or at birth.

I have lived with or near more LGBTQ people than many have and every story is different: from hatred of a parent to exposure to hormone-producing environmental contaminants. Even embarrassment because of the absence of a circumcision has been cited.

Women bullied or abused by parents for most of their adolescence and men growing up with cold or absent fathers have been reasons given for personal choices.

Miranda Gohn is not looking to lead a movement. Her life is too private for that. The 51-year-old Aberdeen native, who was born with male anatomy but underwent sex reassignment surgery and lives as a female, planned to buy a home in Sioux Falls but has changed course and will reside in the Twin Cities. A few months ago, she saw her father for the first time in 15 years, a nervous reunion for both. He refused to call her Miranda and asked if she regretted what she had done. Gohn responded that she did not. [Sioux Falls Argus Leader]

For someone who says she's private and isn't looking to lead a movement Gohn has become a serial internet troll. She is a rabid anti-cannabis crusader who believes ten year olds can declare their gender identities but adults have no cannabis rights.

Born Jonathan (Jon) Gohn says she's a Democrat but that's a lie, too.

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]

The perceived evils surrounding cannabis already exist but continuing to reward a black market is neither conservative nor sustainable. Unrestrained capitalism has killed millions during the war on drugs with zero results: a moral hazard instead of self-reliance.

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.

I began life left-handed but my father switched me because his experience in the military taught him the Service was geared for the right-handed. Although I've never had sexual contact with another man in 63 years there was a time when androgyny seemed right for me.

Minnesota has legalized cannabis for some therapies and is now studying its sex industry.

Maybe Miranda can find a job as an escort.

SD cannabis initiative includes American Indian participation

Spearditch businessman John Dale wants “An Initiated Measure to Legalize All Quantities of Marijuana and to Make Other Changes to State Law Involving Marijuana” to position American Indian producers first in a free-market environment.

Dale’s petition differs from two other ballot initiatives being circulated by New Approach South Dakota because it removes all felony and misdemeanor charges for growing, ingesting, some home growing and includes immunity from state interference.

His proposal prohibits marijuana use by people under 21 years of age. Violations would be punished by community service and product confiscation. Testing of seized goods would ensue, with the goal of identifying, tracking, and thereby deflating black market supplies. The modifications are designed to give legislators flexibility to adjust the law as results change the market, Dale notes. “It doesn’t try to set everything in stone,” he says. [Native Sun News]

Attorney General Marty Jackley practically rewrote the petition.

Republican state lawmaker Liz May has even called for state/tribal compacts.

Tribal casinos are already in the banking business as the cannabis industry is looking for places to enter the financial markets. Even bankers see economic development potential.

Whatever perceived evils surrounding cannabis already exist and continuing to reward a black market is neither conservative nor sustainable. Unrestrained capitalism has killed millions during the war on drugs with zero results: a moral hazard instead of self-reliance.

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.

This blog sees little value in the widespread cultivation of hemp especially on tribal lands: it is an invasive species capable of overgrowing native grasses and easily migrates into adjacent lands. Why anyone would want to buy genetically engineered seed from Monsanto or some other earth hater every year remains a mystery.

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.

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.

Initiated law is a blunt instrument: cannabis statutes need to be palpated in committee then transplanted into the legislative body.

The Pojoaque Pueblo just dropped a lawsuit against the State of New Mexico and signed a new gaming compact.

Indian casinos are small banks. Let’s ensure that cannabis cultivation and distribution stay out of the hands of Big Dope. It’s time to enter compacts with the tribes, let them distribute on the rez, on off-reservation properties and in Deadwood.

Today in ecocide: Friday farming FUBARs

Bob Beck is Wyoming Public Media's News Director. Not long ago he began an interview with Senator John Bare Asso (earth hater-WY) asking the question: "Senator, why do you hate the environment?"

A Mother Jones piece tells readers when the GOP began hating the Earth:

According to a new study in the journal Social Science Research, the key change actually began around the year 1991—when the Soviet Union fell. "The conservative movement replaced the 'Red Scare' with a new 'Green Scare' and became increasingly hostile to environmental protection at that time," argues sociologist Aaron McCright of Michigan State University and two colleagues. [Chris Mooney, When Did Republicans Start Hating the Environment?]

Obit: Helen High Hawk-Kills Crow Indian via Bennett County Booster.

Via Tom Lutey eastern Montana welfare farmers hate pallid sturgeon: Billings Gazette.

Via South Dakota Magazine: on this date in 1892 Charles H. Bates placed the last quartzite boundary marker on the spot where ND, SD & MT converge today.

Tong Wang: livestock producers practice destructive continuous grazing via Bill Janklow's idea of public radio.

Largest Dead Zone ever has been created by pollution from ag and developed land runoff in the Mississippi River watershed: Gizmodo.

"If everyone substituted beans for beef, the U.S. could almost meet climate goals:" The Atlantic.

Republican is simply another word for earth hater: Billings Gazette.

Let's see: aerosolized slurry combined with wildfire smoke laden with mercury and other heavy metal oxides. What could go wrong?

Scientists tally the huge environmental impact of feeding meat to our cats and dogs: LA Times.

Humans are weapons of mass destruction: Smithsonian Magazine.

South Dakota beekeeper Adee blames neonicotinoids for colony losses: WNAX.

Dicamba Injury Reported In The Western Corn Belt: WNAX.

Bandidos, Vagos expected to bring feud, human trafficking to Sturgis®

A 2015 shootout in Waco, Texas resulted in the deaths of and injuries to several members of motorcycle clubs encouraged by a law enforcement industry that benefits from programs like Policing for Profit. Cops usually just turn away from the misery of forced prostitution that often plies kidnap victims to become playthings for abusive men.

The same is the case during the Sturgis Rally where girls as young as ten are bought and sold like methamphetamine, Wild Turkey or souvenir t-shirts.

Thanks to selective enforcement white thugs have carte blanche to commit flagrant criminal acts during the Rally. A long history of lawlessness can make the event highly virulent attracting common parasites who breed in the cesspools of human existence.

Santa Fe police have arrested a man in a motorcycle-gang shooting that led to a lockdown of Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center. But police are not releasing the names of either the suspect or the man who was wounded Saturday. Police say the victim, a member of the Vagos Motorcycle Club, could become a target of rival Bandidos Motorcycle Club members if his name became public. [Santa Fe New Mexican]

Gangs of armed men with mental illnesses and addictions to meth power their way into western South Dakota every year; and, accepted outlaw biker cultures routinely traffic in illicit behaviors that would otherwise be subject to legal interdiction.

But, a red moocher state like South Dakota is powered by sin: video lootery, a loan shark industry that preys on the least fortunate and a too-big-to-jail banking racket fill in the gaps created by lobbyists who enjoy the protection of single-party tyranny. Desperate to pay off those who benefit the entrenched Republican establishment criminals have a champion sitting as attorney general.

Marty Jackley has proved his commitment to his political party while ignoring the plights of those living at the margins of South Dakota society and lives to reap the spoils of those exploits. His minions are going through the motions of pretending to care about order during the Rally even as the state plots the financial gains from rape and plunder.

The Sons of Silence, Bandidos and Hells Angels control organized crime in the Black Hills area where members have infiltrated nearly every community even operating Rapid City's Cornerstone Rescue Mission as a front for their activities. The Bandidos have a fortified compound in Rapid Valley and the Hells Angels own many properties in the area including the Cottonwood in Spearfish.

As hypocrisy reigns supreme at the highest levels of power in South Dakota residents will endure another Sturgis Rally where this year fewer attendees will spend an average of a thousand dollars each so the sitting governor can crow about his leadership and self-reliance while moral hazards pay the bills.

Crimes are what the other guy does but in South Dakota during the Rally nobody cares.

Costs to South Dakota's law enforcement industry cut into whatever profits the state enjoyed from selectively arresting those "docile" offenders.

That's why cops' lives suck. Little wonder LEOs abuse their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and occasionally murder their wives.

So, hats off to those who resist the drunken social engineering white people employ while defiling He Sapa!

I-25E proposed

The Trump Organization is pledging to kill passenger rail service.

The speed limit on Nebraska 71 is 60 miles per hour on the 75 miles of bone-dry high prairie grassland between Crawford and Scottsbluff: it's potentially deadly during a blizzard.

US18/US85 between Hot Springs, South Dakota and Lusk, Wyoming is no better; besides, I-25, especially through the Denver metro, sucks at biblical proportions: so does flying through DIA with its likelihood of a strip search.

Construction on the estimated half-billion dollar Heartland Expressway connecting Rapid City with I-80 in Nebraska or Wyoming (nobody knows) is glacial if not completely stalled while traffic between the Black Hills and Denver continues to increase as does the volume between Denver and Santa Fe.

Is there any political will to construct an I-25E from Trinidad to Rapid City through Scottsbluff?

I-80 is a barrier to Wyoming's migratory pronghorn. They rarely cross the busy freeway. Here is a story of one that went to the other side. pic.twitter.com/Y3zlA8ZbRO

— Matthew Kauffman (@wyokauffman) August 1, 2017

Newly re-launched website w/photos of wildlife using crossings in the I-90 Snoqualmie Pass East Project WA https://t.co/S7unLDsmPA pic.twitter.com/e3bqckD3ee

— Kathy Zeller 🐾 (@kzeller) August 1, 2017

American football is a tool of fascism

A study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found 110 out of 111 brains of those who played in the NFL had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

In the study, researchers examined the brains of 202 deceased former football players at all levels. Nearly 88 percent of all the brains, 177, had CTE. Three of 14 who had played only in high school had CTE, 48 of 53 college players, 9 of 14 semiprofessional players, and 7 of 8 Canadian Football League players. [NPR]

A University of South Dakota coach retired ahead of his sport's descent into the dustbin of history: Sioux Falls Argus Leader.

Dr. Steven Miles said an outright ban on youth football would be unrealistic. But he is among the first to recommend removing football from schools, where the pressure of school spirit or being the only kid big enough to play nose guard can rope players into a sport in which 5 percent to 20 percent of players suffer concussions each season. Miles, who has studied war crimes and torture, is surprised he hasn’t received more criticism, considering how Friday night varsity games are embedded in American culture.

Read it all here.

Cannabis has been shown to be an effective palliative for those suffering the effects of CTE.

The only difference between American football and Roman gladiators is the losing team isn't fed to the lions.

Deadwood's downturn could be reversed

Sturgis Rally organizers are saying that annual event could see the fewest riders in decades.

Director of Deadwood Gaming Association Mike Rodman says the industry is looking at 11 million dollars below its historic peak.

To date, district officials have held close to 20 public meetings and recently combined the resulting feedback with building plans submitted by consultant Foster Jacobs, and Johnson to arrive at a solid decision to follow [S]uperintendent Dr. Dan Leikvold’s recommendation to a long-term commitment to the Deadwood Elementary School building, monitoring of enrollment over the next five years, and if enrollment warrants, closure or repurposing of the middle school building. [Black Hills Pioneer]

So, opium use is as historic in Deadwood as gambling. The Gulch makes the logical location for a cannabis-friendly zone.

Enter the Grateful Deadwood High Cannabusiness Institute.

The first step in the upcoming Lead-Deadwood School District’s facilities study confirms what district officials have known for some time. A look into student enrollment projections by consulting firm Foster Jacobs & Johnson, Inc. recently revealed that projected student enrollment is expected to continue to decline to around 513 in 2025-2026, from the 682 tally taken during the 2015-16 school year, nearly a 170-student dip. [Black Hills Pioneer]

The building that has been home to the Deadwood High School Bears now Lead-Deadwood Elementary came to mind at my conclusion to make Deadwood an adult destination.

The four options presented were: one, continue with status quo. Option two would entail committing to a significant overhaul of the building. Option three would be to abandon the building and look for a new spot in Deadwood to build a new building. Or option four, to enhance the footprint of the Lead campus and move the elementary school to Lead. [Black Hills Pioneer]

This building is perfect for Deadwood's cannabis experiment. Under a compact with tribal nations and Black Hills State University with oversight from the South Dakota Gaming Commission create a campus with degrees in cannabusiness and tourism. Train casino workers and poker dealers.

James P. Gray in the LA Times reprinted in Cannabis News:

Holland decriminalized marijuana back in the 1970s, its minister of health stated that they had only half the marijuana usage per capita in their country as we do in ours – for both adults and for teenagers! And he went on to explain why by saying that “we have succeeded in making pot boring.” A system in which marijuana is no longer sold illegally and also is not advertised commercially will achieve the same results.

Meth and opioids are overrunning South Dakota just like in the rest of the US. Heroin, too. Direct law enforcement efforts to stem that scourge and leave cannabis to the professionals.

Hey Deadwood, get Representative Timothy Johns to author and sponsor a bill to get the constitution changed.

Who's with me?