Commercial teevee created Trump

When anyone over 45 stops to ask themselves how TF did we get to a point where a cancelled TV game show host, who is wildly unfit for the office of dog catcher, much less a SECOND term as president got elected, Neil Postman tried to warn us decades ago.

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— Darick (@darickr.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 10:14 AM

Until the Vietnam War school shootings were rare and scattered but after commercial teevee brought the carnage into every American living room something changed. 

So how did we get here and how did a career criminal like DonOld Trump reach his under-educated, gullible audience? People exposed as children to teevee are more likely to vote for populist politicians.

Television has conditioned us to tolerate visually entertaining material measured out in spoonfuls of time, to the detriment of rational public discourse and reasoned public affairs. In this eloquent, persuasive book, Neil Postman alerts us to the real and present dangers of this state of affairs, and offers compelling suggestions as to how to withstand the media onslaught. Before we hand over politics, education, religion, and journalism to the show business demands of the television age, we must recognize the ways in which the media shape our lives and the ways we can, in turn, shape them to serve out highest goals. [Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business]

College graduates make up 43% of the electorate and 55% voted for Vice President Harris while 56% of voters without degrees voted for Trump because Generation X is a disease.

Natives push back on faulty exit poll

In an effort to reverse voter apathy in Indian Country the Montana Democratic Party became the first state party to formally include Indigenous as equitable partners. Montana is home to 12 Indigenous languages three of which are at risk of going extinct after Donald Trump weaponized a novel coronavirus strain killing many Assiniboine, Gros Ventre and Montana Salish elders. 

Trump hates American Indians so deeply after losing a 1993 casino case under the 1988 Indian Gaming Act he deployed Covid as a biological weapon in 2020 to exterminate as many Indigenous people as he could and so far he has gotten away with attempted genocide. 

So an exit poll conducted by the National Election Pool and Edison Research then released by NBC of 229 voters who self-identified as Natives that showed Trump winning a majority of NDNs is facing a backlash especially since none of the persons polled were on reservation properties. Even the Indigenous Journalists Association called the poll “highly misleading and irresponsible.” 

For example, in counties with majority Native populations, support for the Democratic candidate was larger than support for the Republican candidate in states such as Montana (67% to 28%), North Dakota (72% to 27%), South Dakota (63% to 33%), and Wisconsin (87% to 12%). [Native American Organizations Respond to Flawed NBC Exit Poll]

President Joe Biden restored the White House Tribal Nations Summit after the former guy declared war on Indian Country and undercounted Indigenous Americans because Republicans want citizens to believe democracy isn’t for everybody. 

November is Native American Heritage Month. 

Women and Democrats did well in parts of North Dakota, too.

On the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, 92% of voters cast their ballots for Kamala Harris. On the Menominee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin, 80% voted for Harris. In Apache County, Arizona, where the Navajo Nation accounts for two-thirds of the population, 58% voted for Harris compared to 39% for Trump. [Getting the Native Vote Right; The National Media Should Not Rely on Self-Identified “Wannabes”]

Reservation counties in Montana voted overwhelmingly for Democratic Senator Jon Tester. 

During Montana's last legislative session Trump worshiping reactionary Republicans moved to cut funding for Native cultural preservation. Outside Montana’s reservations the state has become the new Orange County, California where the Last Best Place is becoming the next best strip mine and a welfare rancher's wet dream. A transplant to Montana, the state's christianic Republican governor was the richest member of Congress who literally bought his seat in the state’s Executive Branch.

Allison Neswood, a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, said Native voters face a range of issues. “These barriers are structural, you know, rooted in the history of colonialism,” explained Neswood. [Native voters still face barriers to election participation]

Learn more at Big Horn County News.

ip photo from the 2012 Santa Fe Indian Market: The Means Justifies the End, Angela Babby.

Red state failure brings extreme fire danger to South Dakota

Yep, the grassland fire danger index will reach the extreme category again today for much of Kristi Noem's stupid red state.

Another study warns that aspen is at risk to grazing

The Mountain West and Black Hills have been home to much larger aspen communities in the fairly recent past. Because it reproduces clonally underground from adult trees aspen (Populus tremuloides) is one of the first plants to reestablish after fire. The timber industry doesn’t like prescribed fire because burns release aspen and kill pine species. Ponderosa pine sucks billions of gallons from aquifer recharges, needles absorb heat and accelerate snow melt while aspen leaves reflect sunlight in the summer months and hold snowpacks in winter. Insects like the mountain pine beetle and spruce bud worm can help promote drought- and fire-tolerant species like aspen. 

A study released in October by Northern Arizona University's Ecological Restoration Institute revealed that animal grazing and wildfire management have contributed to the decline of aspen trees in the area.

Although aspens can produce seeds, the most successful method of reproduction occurs when new sprouts, known as “suckers,” grow out of the root system of an existing tree. The suckers are growing back after disturbances, but cannot reach maturity due to elk grazing and lack of resources from prolonged drought and rising temperatures. [Drought, higher temperatures, hungry elk threaten aspen trees near Flagstaff]

Yep, kill off apex predators like grizzlies, wolves and cougars, spray atrazine, neonicotinoids and glyphosate on everything then wonder why cervids like deer and wapiti contract a prion contagion like chronic wasting disease. 

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Pope speaks truth to Jewish war crimes

President Harry Truman failed the United States and world peace by recognizing the illegal creation of Israel.

Today no Middle East leader is more unstable than Benjamin Netanyahu and there is no more rabid state sponsor of terrorism than Israel so the pontiff wants an investigation of the genocide Jews are perpetrating in Gaza.

“According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” the pope said in excerpts published Sunday by the Italian daily La Stampa. “We should investigate carefully to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies,” he added. [Associated Press]

In 2015 Pope Francis backed President Barack Obama's groundbreaking action with Iran. But in 2024 young voters who turned out en masse for Pres. Obama in 2008 and 2012 turned up their noses at Vice President Kamala Harris over the Biden administration's support for Israel's war crimes in Gaza so Trump won in states where Democratic senators also won.

And last November, His Eminence sacked an apostate who is an open opponent of women's rights, rejects a vaccine that prevents COVID-19, is critical of the pope’s stance on LGBTQ rights and endorsed the phrase, "you cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat." Then in January Francis banned John Nienstedt from any public ministries in all of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Now, the pontiff is pondering pink slips for a plurality of predatory pulpiteers.

Zionists, terrorists, war criminals: just a few truths being spoken to power. 

Kakistocracy is now kakistublicanism

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson called GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump a "pussy" during a 2016 Libertarian presidential debate in Mississippi after Trump referred to "Little" Marco using the “P” word. Marco Rubio isn't just a lousy money manager he's a serial con man who has misused Republican credit cards on spending sprees that rocked his 2016 campaign and put him deeply into debt.

When Marco Rubio was majority whip of the Florida House of Representatives, he used his official position to urge state regulators to grant a real estate license to his brother-in-law, a convicted cocaine trafficker who had been released from prison 20 months earlier, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. [Washington Post]

The night in 1983 before Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was popped for heroin possession at Rapid City Regional Airport he was partying with us at Durty Nelly's in the basement of the Franklin Hotel in Deadwood. Bobby, who's just a couple months older than this interested party suffers from spasmodic dysphonia and as a misanthrope who's just a shadow of his father much like Donald Trump who would kill 'em all and let White Jesus sort 'em out enjoys a strong following among anarchists and anti-vaxxers. And today after convincing one of his wives to take her own life and decades of womanizing Kennedy is just fucking nuts and it's likely he’s in Jeffrey Epstein's black book.

Contrast him with President Barack Obama's pick for Health and Human Services Secretary, former Senate Majority Leader and fellow Democrat Tom Daschle. Until he withdrew amid accusations that he failed to pay more than $140,000 in taxes and interest on a car and driver provided by a wealthy Democratic fundraiser Daschle was widely expected to push Congress toward a Medicaid-for-all health care plan. But in the weeks before Big Pharma-backed Max Baucus soundly rejected single-payer medical insurance and guided the passing of what would become the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare.

Tribal nations see South Dakota's current Republican governor as a terrifying pick for Homeland Security since she detests Indigenous Americans at least as deeply as Trump does.

Rubio is on board with the Convention of States phantasm as is Florida's insane governor who will simply appoint some other Earth hater to finish Marco's term so expect the US invasion of Cuba.

Rubio just said Putin poisons people with "plutonium." A man near me corrects him under his breath: "Polonium. Close enough."

— Rebecca Buck (@RebeccaBuck) January 23, 2016

Drill baby drill is really about mining crypto, abetting Russia

Amid the continual sturm and drang from Senator John Thune (Earth hater-SD) is a constant harangue at his Faceberg page from the far white wing of his political party who revere Donald Trump's patron, Vladimir Putin. And, with Mitch McConnell going away Thune will find himself straddling a very rickety fence especially after voting to aid Ukraine in her fight against King Vlad. 

Stopping the Keystone XL pipeline helped Vlad the Impaler raise the petrodollars he needed to wage war on Ukraine but some eighty percent of the world's oil transactions are priced in dollars subject to enforcement actions by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice.

Russia is extremely dependent on oil revenues. If something happens to this resource, Russians will face extremely difficult conditions, as they will be cut off from external markets, said Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Professor of Economics Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and advisor to the Chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, Andriy Pyshnyy, in an interview with Ekonomichna Pravda. “If they have petrodollars, then [the economic resource for continuing the war will last for – ed.] a very long time. But if petrodollars run out, then the Russian economy will end within a year,” said Gorodnichenko. [RUSSIAN ECONOMY TO COLLAPSE WITHIN A YEAR WITHOUT PETRODOLLARS, SAYS BERKELEY PROFESSOR]

In September Sibanye-Stillwater mining company in Montana announced the ending some 800 jobs after Russia flooded the world palladium market sinking Democratic Senator Jon Tester's reelection. 

There is little doubt in my mind that damning evidence linking Trump to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Russia was destroyed on 9/11. In 2018 KSA Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi who was investigating the Trump Organization and Jared Kushner's blood money infusions. 

So why does TrumpWorld want to ditch the US Dollar for crypto? At about half of California’s gross domestic product Russia is virtually irrelevant in the global marketplace and destined to become a Chinese client state sooner than later.

In May, the Biden administration ordered a crypto-mining operation in Cheyenne to divest due to its proximity to F.E. Warren Air Force Base and national security concerns associated with speculations about the business’s ties to the Chinese government. Though they have not publicly stated where they will source the energy for the operations or whether they will try to increase energy consumption there, as well, the former owner of the land at Front Range Business Park, MineOne Partners Limited, previously told the WTE that their Bitcoin mining operation had an energy agreement with Black Hills Energy to deliver up to 45 MW of electric service, with potential to expand to 75 MW. [Company moves into former crypto mine that Biden ordered to leave for national security concerns]

South Dakota's K Street-owned christofascist don Juan Thune was a lobbyist for industrial chemical companies before his handlers bought him a blogger and a Senate seat. Then he went to DC as one of America's least wealthy politicians but after nearly two decades in the swamp and helping to pack the Federal Communications Commission with Trump stooges he's rich.

North Dakota's governor and Interior pick is a crypto guy, too.

Learn more at Alternative Radio.

2018 image of Thune and others in Moscow is from the Washington Post.

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Tribal cannabis will grow in South Dakota after ballot assaults

Nineteen tribes have built dispensaries near casinos so far including in South Dakota where the state’s Republican governor and catholic attorney general are confirmed racists. Tribal casinos are small banks and as of May, 2024 forty seven Native cannabis retailers are operating fifty seven stores in nine states for a gain of some thirty percent since January, 2023. 

Nez Perce citizen, Mary Jane Oatman is executive director of the Indigenous Cannabis Association. In 2022 she spoke at the organization's conference in Milwaukee as did Rich Tall Bear Westerman (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate). ICA sees a banking future with Green Check Verified that connects thousands of cannabis businesses with financial service providers.

“Tribes are embracing sovereignty in the cannabis industry as an emerging multi-billion dollar forecast, but they’re doing it in a way that’s not as fast and fancy as what happened with gaming because there’s a lack of guidance,” Oatman said. “They don’t have that same infrastructure.” [Tribal Cannabis growth threatened by banks]

Another non-tribal retailer has folded its tent and more are expected to follow as the number of therapeutic cannabis permits declined and voters in South Dakota protected tribal cannabis.

Chairman Peter Lengkeek of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe isn’t too worried. The tribe’s dispensary has been lucrative for the South Dakota tribe and he expects it will continue to be successful. In addition to owning and operating the High Plainz Dispensary in Fort Thompson, South Dakota, the tribe cultivates marijuana [sic], using grazing and agriculture lands that were previously leased out. The tribe currently is cultivating about 13,000 acres of formerly leased lands. “We took back our lands that historically were leased out for pennies allowing non-Indians to create generational wealth for themselves,” Lengkeek said. “We’re planting and harvesting our own crop. We have become more self-sufficient.” [Native Vote 2024: Marijuana measures could impact tribal businesses]

Perhaps the biggest cannabis competition facing tribal communities trapped in South Dakota is the likelihood that Minnesota border towns will capitalize on red state failure.

Racist city might not see a Trump bronze until after he leaves office again or croaks early

James Maher has produced bronzes of many of the horrific losers in US presidential history for the City of Presidents Foundation: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Woodrow Wilson, Hoobert Heever, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. 

Now, after admitting he doesn't loathe the 45th President of the United States Maher is nearing the completion of a sculpture of Donald Trump at a cost of at least $100,000. But the likenesses are normally not placed until a president is gone from office for two years and no location has been chosen for the cast of the convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and career criminal.

But here's the dealio: Trump lost in 2020 to Pres. Joe Biden by fetching nearly the same number of votes he won with — 74,216,747 and 74,848,942 in 2024. Joe won with 81,268,867 but Vice President Kamala Harris has only received 71,260,728 in counting so far hence it was only a landslide in the Electoral College. 

So where are the 10,000,000 votes? Trump convinced Latinos and Black men that migrants were taking their jobs and threatened other people of color who showed up to vote at polling places. Young voters who turned out en masse for Pres. Barack Obama turned up their noses at VP Harris over the Biden administration's support for Israel's war crimes in Gaza so Trump won in states where Democratic senators also won. Harris won 30 of New Mexico’s 33 counties.

There is a push for Joe to step down so Kamala can spoil Trump’s 47 merch!

Although the bronze of Joe hasn’t even been commissioned the racists who visit Rapid City might just have to wait until the Orange Julius is dead and gone.

BLM, FS moving to Trump-proof ancestral Pueblo lands

Our neighbors to the west, the Jemez, Cochiti and Zia Pueblos, the Santo Domingo and San Felipe reservations, were hit hard by the Trump Virus where tribal authorities have been restricting travel for non-members. New Mexico is home to twenty three Indigenous nations.

Established by President Bill Clinton in 2001, Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument is just across I-25 from the Baja Waldo/Red Rock community and is one of the most popular national monuments in New Mexico.

The Monument was temporarily closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, BLM and Cochiti Pueblo jointly agreed to maintain the closure after pandemic restrictions were lifted in order to renegotiate operations of the Monument. In keeping with the Biden-Harris administration’s priorities of honoring Tribal sovereignty and the federal trust responsibility and respecting the ties that native and traditional communities have to public lands, the BLM and Cochiti Pueblo entered into an agreement under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act that will allow Cochiti Pueblo to take on day-to-day operations of the Monument. [BLM, Cochiti Pueblo announce reopening of Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument]

On 18 April Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced protections for 4,200 acres in New Mexico for lands sacred to the Santa Ana and San Felipe Pueblos. In Arizona she signed historic agreements with the Colorado River Indian Tribes and pledged $14.5 to the Navajo, Hopi and San Carlos Apache to electrify homes. 

Los Alamos County is a member of the Coalition of Sustainable Communities New Mexico and the city has been part of Local Governments for Sustainability since this interested party has lived in the state. LANL boasts its electricity needs are 31% carbon pollution-free so the National Nuclear Security Administration wants to erect a transmission line across the Caja del Rio wilderness from a substation that generates some of its power from a photovoltaic array.

Today, leadership from the Bureau of Land Management, the USDA Forest Service, and the Pueblo of Tesuque signed a memorandum of understanding to co-steward culturally significant Tribal places located on public lands of the Caja del Río Plateau west of Santa Fe, N.M. This agreement establishes a framework to collaboratively ensure the protection, preservation, and access to culturally significant Pueblo sites within the boundaries of land managed by federal agencies. In 2021, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack signed Joint Secretarial Order 3403 to ensure agencies manage federal lands and waters in a manner that seeks to protect the treaty, religious, subsistence, and cultural interests of federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native Tribes and the Native Hawaiian Community. [The Pueblo of Tesuque, Bureau of Land Management, and USDA Forest Service to co-steward the Caja del Río Plateau]

A settlement has been reached in the Jemez Pueblo's long dispute with the National Park Service to occupy a portion of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. A co-stewardship agreement is in place between the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve in Idaho.

In Colorado, Senator John Hickenlooper is taking fire from Republicans opposed to the creation of the Dolores River National Monument. Republicans in Arizona and Utah are challenging Pres. Biden's authority to limit grazing permits and uranium mining on Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument and on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. 

Kristi Noem’s father hated American Indians, she hates Indians and Donald Trump hates Indians so moving to prevent a convicted felon and his mob from seizing ancestral lands from Indigenous people again needs to happen fast.

Learn more at the Associated Press.

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Winter is coming

We're fucked.

Bankers, corn and soybean glut driving farmers off the land as drought grips upper MO basin

Republicans aren't anxious to write a new farm bill because the current agriculture recession makes the Biden/Harris administration look bad. 

Matt Bruner supported Ted Cruz when he was a South Dakota delegate to the 2016 Republican convention. Bruner farms near Carthage where he has taken some $3500 in federal subsidies, supports candidates in the far white wing and even Republican former legislator, Steve Hickey called him a racist. When pressed by an interested party on Faceberg recently Bruner said he doesn't care whether a farm bill is passed after he posted a picture of rotten corn saying, "but it's not actually black. Thus, it's Kamala corn."

Farmers are taking out loans at a rate and scale not seen in years as weakened crop prices weigh on the agricultural sector, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Farmers are grappling with weakened global demand and a glut of corn and soybeans, which has contributed to a decline in the prices paid to producers. [Farm Loans Soar as Ag Economy Deteriorates]

Especially without a farm bill economists like Creighton University's Ernie Goss and ag groups like the National Corn Growers Association are sounding the alarm about the Trump tariffs. According to the most recent findings from WalletHub 75% of Americans expect a recession if Trump is elected. 60% of Americans think the economy is improving and 68% are concerned that cutting interest rates will make inflation worse. 

Ag producers have destroyed shelter belts to plant industrial crops that deplete aquifers and now drought is blowing toxin-laden topsoil into downwind states. Spring wildfire seasons begin in eastern Colorado, western Kansas, the panhandles of Oklahoma, Texas and other Republican-held areas where moral hazard and poor ranching practices routinely decimate the high plains.

Going back to 1950, 66% of all U.S. farms — 3.75 million farms in total — have stopped producing. The number of acres farmed has dropped by 323 million, which is roughly double the size of Texas. Agriculture experts worry as family farms across America gasp to stay afloat and go broke. [American Family Farms Going Broke]

In February two tracts of farmland in Iowa sold for nearly $30,000 an acre and in March some farmland in that state sold for $26,000 an acre. Today, land is selling for $17,000 and $20,000 per acre but there were also fourteen "no sales" in the state. In Iowa voluntary buffer strips and other conservation practices have simply failed desertifying parts of the state and causing the Raccoon River to be named one of the most endangered waterways in the United Snakes. 

Summit Carbon Solutions wants to dig a $4.5 billion pipeline that would rip up over 700 miles of unceded tribal lands where thousands of Indigenous Americans are buried then pump carbon dioxide to some sacrifice zone in occupied North Dakota ostensibly to be sequestered. According to Iowa State University some land impacted by pipelines never recovers from the disturbance. 

Iowa's Republican governor is the most hated by a state's constituency in the country.

David Andrews’ farm is about nine miles away from the small, aptly named Iowa town of State Center. The 160-acre farm has been in his family since 1865, and Andrews grew up there. So, 30 years ago, he decided to plant 60- to 100-foot strips of tall grasses within and along the edges of fields to prevent erosion. To pay for it, he enrolled a total of 14 acres, made up of those strips, in the federal government’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Project 2025, a conservative Republican presidential transition blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, proposes eliminating CRP. Project 2025 says farmers should not be allowed to get commodity payments if they get crop insurance subsidies. In Rep. Dusty Johnson’s case, when asked about conservation programs at the May equipment manufacturers’ panel, he answered with political dexterity, praising conservation programs but indicating he may in fact be on board with the RSC proposal to eliminate CRP. [Republican Plans for Ag Policy May Bring Big Changes to Farm Country]

The US Army Corps of Engineers has put the upper Missouri River Basin on drought management status and tribes want to see the river managed more sustainably.

Despite Republican bellicosity the US Department of Agriculture has given South Dakota another $83 million for grassland conservation.

A respected Iowa poll just found that a majority of voters in that state support Vice President Kamala Harris for POTUS.

Learn more at E&E News.

Rapid City finally takes blogger's advice

Update: "Pennington County Human Services is providing a one-time, one-way bus ticket for [Client's Name] to [Destination]. By accepting this assistance, I understand that this bus ticket support is intended as a one-time service. I acknowledge that my use of this service may preclude me from receiving bus ticket assistance in the future at the discretion of Pennington County Human Services."

###

Back in 2016 this blogger urged Rapid City to help unhoused people apply for Medicaid and give folks without places to live $1000 vouchers so they can flee South Dakota and its brutal winters.

2020 presidential candidate, Andrew Yang wanted to implement a universal basic income of $12,000 a year and guaranteed income (GI) demonstration projects are underway in several states including in New Mexico. That same year Republican former mayor Steve Allender said it costs Rapid City some $15 million every year to address homelessness. Even Palestinian refugee and Muslim Hani Shafai wants to house Rapid City's perpetual homeless population.

Harley owners, some of whom have ties to clubs with nefarious pasts and many of them pre-1970s graduates of Spearditch High School, cruise the streets in summer and then recuse themselves from the horrible Lawrence County winters for warmer white compounds in Scottsdale, Marana, Sedona or Mesa. Often, there are elderly parents in one of the ubiquitous long-term care facilities and cemeteries. These obese Republican slackers taking advantage of the dynasty trust industry are now fleeing the frozen tundra in their RVs ahead of another six-month winter and strings of below-zero days.

Denver and Albuquerque are converting empty office buildings to apartments. Las Cruces will be in the mid-60s and low 70s all week, El Paso and Tucson will be, too and Phoenix will be in the mid-70s.

Click on the image for a better look.

Noem in line to warp civil service, BLM

The Government Accountability Office documented more than 350 incidents of threats and assaults against federal land management employees during the Obama years but spurred by Donald Trump there have been many more culminating in an attack on the US Capitol. Not just the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and at least 15 other federal agencies also suffered hits to morale while in the clutches of the Trump Organization. 

A survey conducted by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) showed that during the Trump years the BLM was plagued by staff shortages, high turnover and partisan rancor. Civil service is on the ballot again as those of us who love the Earth fret the possibility that the unitary executive will not be a Democrat. Yes, Interior, the US Environmental Protection Agency and US Fish and Wildlife Service are within the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief the president could simply order elements of the administrative state to stand down. 

South Dakota's Earth hating, compliant, infidelitous, jaded or all the above governor has been fingered for a having a fling with Trump henchman, Corey Lewandowski so she has hoed her way to the queue for a post within the Cabinet. To cover up her past criticisms of Trump she even deleted her old twitter feed so the Bureau of Land Management is probably in her sights.

That means the Interior Department — a vast agency that oversees public lands, the national parks, Western water conservation and endangered species protections — is sure to witness drastic policy shifts if Trump reclaims the White House in January. Arguably, the most significant Interior workforce change during the Trump years was the relocation of the Bureau of Land Management’s national headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. The Trump administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service moved to rewrite the ESA regulations that determine how critical habitat is defined and whether costs are tallied as part of a threatened or endangered listing decision. [Trump 2.0 would bring whiplash to Interior Department]

In a related story, a new study has revealed that heavy metals in the wildfire retardants that the Forest Service and other agencies use leach into waterways. One third of the Earth's tree species are at risk to extinction according to the United Nations.

Also, Mormons are splitting with Trump over his deportation rants.

Midwestern Trump states, ag groups still pessimistic: Goss

Especially without a farm bill economists like Creighton University's Ernie Goss and ag groups like the National Corn Growers Association are sounding the alarm about the Trump tariffs.

Goss and the Business Conditions Index track the economies of nine midwestern states. Those Trump states have lost some 3700 jobs in the last five months including South Dakota where unemployment is ticking up while losing more manufacturing opportunities. Supply managers remain pessimistic with some 41% signaling a recession and a significant drop off in the next six months. 

WalletHub sez 54% of Americans say the Federal Reserve's September rate cut saved them money but South Dakota has dropped to 49th in financial literacy and 50th in financial knowledge and education despite the state's Republican governor's pathological Pollyannaism. The state is the 43rd best economy in the US, 51st in percentage of businesses owned by women and 50th in innovation potential. Because of talent flight and brain drain in 2023 South Dakota was among the least innovative states, ranked 50th in venture capital spending per capita, 47th in R&D spending and 51st in share of tech companies. South Dakota is 24th of states where workers are fleeing their jobs, 35th in women's health and safety and 47th in road and bridge infrastructure. 

According to the most recent findings from WalletHub 75% of Americans expect a recession if Trump is elected.  60% of Americans think the economy is improving and 68% are concerned that cutting interest rates will make inflation worse.

October's wholesale price gauge also continued to fall to 56.5 from 56.6 in September, indicating cooling inflationary pressures. However, Goss says supply managers remain pessimistic regarding the economic outlook, with roughly 41% expecting a recession--citing supply chain disruptions as the top concern. [Goss: October BCI numbers a mixed bag]

Review the WalletHub release linked here.

SDGOP tampering with reliable voting blocs

Republican voters in South Dakota get special treatment. 

Meals on Wheels offers more than just food — it's a vehicle for outreach to the biggest Republican voter bloc in South Dakota but it's just one way the SDGOP keeps people who draw Social Security alive and pay the property taxes that fund red state failure. Well, until now anyway.

Insurance agent Ryan Maher is an Earth hater state senator from Isabel, South Dakota who is greased by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Qochtopus. Maher's political party is all about South Dakota being a perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area where socialized agriculture, socialized livestock grazing, socialized coal, socialized military insurance, socialized timber harvest and a virtual medical industry triopoly are simply ways of life.

The Department of Human Services has put Western SD Senior Services Inc. on notice that closures of meal programs in Timber Lake, Hot Springs, Dupree, Bison, Martin, Wall, and Faith could bring legal action and the loss of millions in public funds. Western SD Senior Services is under contract with the state through September 2025 and received reimbursements from the state totaling $2,279,461 in fiscal year 2024. Sen. Ryan Maher told The Dakota Scout this week that he’s urging his colleagues on the Government Operations and Audit Committee (GOAC) to look into the matter after he received calls from Western SD Senior Services subcontractors — restaurants and food service businesses hired to prepare and deliver meals — complaining they haven’t been paid since as far back as December. [Meals On Wheels Shuttering In Seven Western South Dakota Communities]

So, the more Republican South Dakota gets the stingier and more cruel the residents become. Not only has the SDGOP failed Indigenous Americans by not expanding Medicaid it has failed veterans and the elderly: its historically loyal voter base. But hey, if Tony Venhuizen wants to feed from the Qochtopus gravy train he has to prove he’s numbed to the misery, hopelessness and despair his father-in-law and political party have heaped on South Dakotans.

In a related story Rapid City Area Schools has turned to panhandling to pay student lunch debt because the state's Republican governor is a miserly solipsist. 

Project 2025 proves Republicans hate American Indians

Republican is simply another word for Earth hater but the cult of Trump clearly hates Native Americans, too.

After the Bureau of Land Management held livestock production scoping sessions in February, 2020 the Trump Organization ended protections for endangered species and public lands because ranchers insist grazing cattle reduces wildfire risks despite copious evidence and strong arguments to the contrary. Nevertheless, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and American Farm Bureau Federation pushed for the capture and slaughter of some 130,000 wild and feral horses over 10 years at an estimated cost of $1 billion. Especially in Wyoming horse gathers are actively taking place.

But the extreme white wing of the Republican Party wants a not so civil war over critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI because oligarchs fear an admission of guilt implies liability and they will be compelled to pay reparations to Indigenous and to the descendants of enslaved people. Trump's acting but unlawful Interior Secretary William Perry Pendley hates American Indigenous, too. 

Attorneys are gathering even more evidence that the Trump Organization committed crimes against humanity throughout Indian Country not only by slow-walking resources to reservations during a pandemic but by undercounting Indigenous populations during the 2020 Census. Donald Trump even killed the White House Tribal Nations Summit because he loathes Native Americans after lawsuits he lost in federal court over casinos.

Wetiko is an Algonquin word for a cannibalistic spirit that is driven by greed, excess, and selfish consumption (in Ojibwa it is windigo, wintiko in Powhatan). Now that the veils obscuring wetiko are starting to be lifted, let us give birth to, and become, living antigens, embracing the polyculture of ideas that are challenging the monoculture of wetiko capitalism. [Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition]

Colorado's mineral extraction industries have effectively stolen over $500 billion from the Apache of Oklahoma, Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, Comanche, Kiowa, Northern Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, Shoshone, Ute Tribe of Utah, Southern Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute. Under the 1906 Antiquities Act and the America the Beautiful initiative President Joe Biden has moved to create the 400,000-acre Dolores River Canyon Country National Monument in Mesa and Montrose counties in Colorado but imagine the blowback if Pres. Biden remands that land back to the Ute Nation.

Outside the section on the Interior Department, substantive policy on Indian Country is slim. The section on the Department of Justice makes no mention of the long-standing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples, despite “renewing” a “focus on violent crime,” instead highlighting things like drug cartels and protections for protesters at abortion clinics. The section including the Indian Health Service acknowledges that “reforms are needed,” but lacks any detail concerning those reforms or information on how the federal government will fulfill its responsibility to provide tribes health care. Given the overall attempt by Project 2025 to reverse the Biden administration’s focus on climate, it’s all but certain that tribes would not receive continued support for climate resilience efforts under the Project’s vision. [What Project 2025 has to say about Native communities]

Learn more at ProPublica.

Our WY/NE Wild Horse & Burro Program lead, June Wendlandt, was featured on @WyomingPBS in "Wind River Wild Horse Sanctuary," showing how the off-range pasture provides a home for non-adoptable wild horses while balancing conservation with cattle ranching. https://t.co/QsZakpFYEr

— BLMWyoming (@BLMWyoming) October 23, 2024

SDGOP on collision course in Pierre

Fading South Dakota Republican Party puffer, Pat Powers has members in his own zone in his crosshairs taking on ideological purists like Chris Larson. Larson has a pile of his own at Substack and shared his thoughts with an interested party.

Lil PP is as relevant to the future of SDGOP as Joe Biden is to the D party. IMO, the Grassroots Patriot movement in SD is on a trajectory to take over the party from the RINOs that have provem themselves beholden to special interests at the expense of We the People. More & more of us have awoken to the realization that we are being governed by the Wizard of Oz, metaphorically speaking.

In 1888 L. Frank Baum of Oz fame began editing the South Dakota newspaper The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer where he advocated for the extermination of American Indians.

Distributed amplification, also known as filling the zone with shit, is drowning the SDGOP and even the cheese baiting the trap is coated in it making the next legislative session just another septic system flush.

Jack o' Lantern filled with raw sewage expected to stiff ABQ again

Update. 

Trump’s last visit to Albuquerque, in 2019, resulted in the city billing his campaign more than $200,000 — a sum that remains unpaid and has climbed to $444,986 with interest, according to the city of Albuquerque. [Democrat-controlled State Land Office says sublease quashes parking plans for Trump rally]

### 

Update.

The rally is instead slated to take place Thursday at noon at a private hangar owned by CSI Aviation near the Albuquerque International Sunport, according to Trump’s campaign website. The president of CIA Aviation is former state Republican Party chairman Allen Weh, who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2014. [Trump wanted the ABQ convention center for his campaign stump]

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After Donald Trump's plane was diverted to Billings where he still owes $43,000 from a 2018 visit he stiffed eight thousand of his supporters for an hour and a half before introducing his disgraced and demoted drug dealer to the audience. Convicted felon and stochastic terrorist Trump still owes El Paso, Texas over a half million dollars and screwed Albuquerque out of $211,000 after a 2019 mudfest in Rio Rancho.

The Secretary of State’s Office released data early Friday showing more than 324,000 of the state’s 1.36 million registered voters already had cast either absentee or early in-person ballots, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans 162,000-115,000. Nearly 44,000 unaffiliated voters had cast ballots. A little under a third of Santa Fe County’s 112,000 registered voters had cast ballots. The 25,000 Democratic county voters weighing in early, either absentee or in person, led Republicans 5-to-1. [GOP: Trump scheduled to make Halloween visit to New Mexico]

In a related story, a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of former Otero County Commissioner and Cowboys 4 Trump insurrectionist, Couy Griffin for his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. 

ip image: plenty of New Mexicans turned out for early voting at the Southside Library in Santa Fe.

A rotund orange mass will be coming to ABQ on Halloween, and we're not talking about a pumpkin. Even though he still owes ABQ $$ from his last visit, the incoherent insurrectionist who's been found liable for rape will come back to the state he's already lost by 8% and 10%. https://t.co/cAuchFAeEt

— Democratic Party of New Mexico (@NMDEMS) October 27, 2024

Biden apology a start: NDN Collective

As part of an English-only movement that flourishes even today in parts of the US there were some 332 institutions that indoctrinated Indigenous children in 29 states. Oklahoma had 78, Arizona was home to 59, New Mexico had 52 and there were 23 in occupied South Dakota. 59 were in the clutches of catholics. 

In 1948 Congress gave the land belonging to the Indian Boarding School in west Rapid City to the City, the School District, the South Dakota National Guard, various churches and the Native Community - except the Native Community never got theirs. 

Leonard Peltier attended the Flandreau Indian School in the late 1950s where my mom practice-taught in the mid 1960s and learned first hand how Indigenous Americans were made to write in English. 

In 2012 the Rapid City Journal refused to publish journalist Jim Kent's column on boarding schools.

In a letter dated 24 April, 2020 US Representative Deb Haaland (D- NM, 1st District) and Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ, 3rd District) asked for a grant of clemency and the release of Prisoner of War Peltier, a tribal citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. In May, 2020 Peltier applied for a compassionate release because of the coronavirus outbreak but it was denied by the Trump Organization because Donald Trump detests American Indians. In November, 2020 Native Americans overwhelmingly turned out to vote for Joe Biden then Deb Haaland became Secretary of the Interior. 

NDN Collective has purchased a home on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in anticipation of Leonard Peltier's release.

“Apologies must include meaningful action to repair the harm done – otherwise, they are just manipulative tools giving the semblance of care to distract from continued wrongdoing. Biden can and should make his apology real by:

Passing the U.S. Truth & Healing Commission Bill to ensure continued funding and support for the relatives who survived boarding schools;

Granting immediate Executive Clemency for boarding school survivor Leonard Peltier, freeing him from his 50 year incarceration;

Immediately investing in Indigenous language and cultural revitalization programs; Rescinding all medals of honor awarded to US soldiers for the massacre at Wounded Knee, in which 300 unarmed Lakota people – mostly women and children – were slaughtered;

Instructing the Bureau of Indian Education to conduct a full-scale investigation into failure by the Tuba City Boarding School system to address egregious misconduct and support the nationwide reforms being demanded by parents and students to keep children safe at BIE run schools." [NDN COLLECTIVE RESPONDS TO PRESIDENT BIDEN’S PLANNED APOLOGY FOR U.S. GOVERNMENT’S ROLE IN NATIVE BOARDING SCHOOLS]

In a related story, because the Roman church is being sued into bankruptcy, nuns in some orders are getting involved in activist capitalism to force social change.

Learn more at Cronkite News.

Although an apology is the least a US President can do for over 150 years of taking our children away from our lands and communities, we deserve more. Meaningful apologies require actionable steps toward accountability, healing, and repair. #NoApologyWithoutAction

— NDN Collective (@ndncollective) October 25, 2024

Republicans using farm bill as a political weapon

Republicans aren't anxious to write a new farm bill because the current agriculture recession makes the Biden/Harris administration look bad.  

In May, Chair of the House Committee on Agriculture, Representative Glenn Thompson (Earth hater-PA), introduced HR 84676, the "Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2024," in Congress. He leads all comers in campaign cash harvested from the worst offenders. 

Bankers remain gloomy as farmland prices fell, farm equipment sales sank and the overall Rural Mainstreet Index slumped for the tenth straight month while regional exports of agriculture goods and livestock for 2024 year-to-date were down 4.1% from the same period in 2023. High natural gas prices that make it more expensive to power grain dryers amid record harvests are contributing to cost spikes so some utilities want to raise rates exacerbating a rise in inflation. Failed red state South Dakota also suffers the ninth highest energy costs in the United States because Republicans give free rein to monopolistic predators like Montana/Dakota Utilities, Black Hills Energy and Summit Carbon Solutions masquerading as your friends and bilking South Dakota residents while filling lakes with mercury and suing landowners for access. 

According to Creighton University's Ernie Goss rising interest rates and inflation are already affecting the supply chain but those conditions seem like a problem only for those of us who aren’t billionaires. That land-locked states have higher inflation rates should come as little surprise as transportation costs mount but as fuel prices increase emissions should decrease reducing the rise in greenhouse gases.

Basically, Doug Johnson, who heads up Johnson Ag Outlook, said supply is out of sync with demand in ways the industry couldn’t predict. By creating new demand, for example, low corn prices could drive up ethanol production. [American farmers are feeling gloomy]

Just like on border politics Earth hating Republicans are dragging their feet on the farm bill to make Democrats look like the villains and to elevate a convicted felon.

Learn more at Progressive Farmer.

State of South Dakota involved in massive coverup of Brady Folkens' death: Aanning

Just before Christmas in 2013 Brady Folkens of Brookings died in state custody after an unqualified medical attendant allegedly administered a lethal dose of the antibiotic minocycline to the teen at the former State Treatment and Rehabilitation (STAR) Academy in a South Dakota county named for a war criminal. But in a 2014 phone interview, Brady's mom, Dawn Van Ballegooyen told this blog he never had a previous acne condition that required an antibiotic and in 2016 Jonathan Ellis formerly of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader called out the State of South Dakota for covering up the truth in Brady's death.  

Avera McKennan Hospital pathologist, Raed A. Sulaiman ruled Brady’s fatal lymphocytic myocarditis was caused by Parvovirus B19 and not anaphylaxis.

After a public whimper petered out the death camp was shuttered and the sprawling property carved from the heart of Indian Country put up for auction. The stigmatized site was sold four times at sequentially reduced prices after the first buyer bounced a check to the state, the financing was unworkable or the scope of work proved too great.

In forensic autopsies where state authorities are concerned over their liability for wrongful death suits and their pathologist has already committed to being complicit in covering up the real cause of death, virtually no other pathologist will challenge the false diagnosis with a truthful cause of death. When responding to Dawn’s suspicion that Dr. Sulaiman was not truthful, the South Dakota Board of Medical and Osteopathic Examiners stated that their experts fully exonerated Dr. Sulaiman from any faults and that his autopsy result was “absolutely” correct. This proves that the SDBMOE is complicit in the coverup of Brady’s death[.] Both Dawn and I met with Marty Jackley at his office in Pierre and subsequently submitted a lengthy and minutely documented affidavit asking for an investigation into the coverup of Brady’s death – specifically focusing on the role of Craig Ambach heading Risk Management, present at every hearing during Dawn’s sabotaged litigation. [Dr. Lars Aanning]

This interested party believes the Governor's Office of Risk Management also covered up evidence after Jason Ravnsborg killed Joe Boever.

Upgrades likely coming to NMRX

When Democratic Governor Bill Richardson found the money to build the New Mexico Rail Runner Express or NMRX it was intended to serve communities from El Paso to Denver but that has yet to materialize since it began service in 2006. Rail enthusiasts have been shoving the NM Legislature to equip it to operate as designed even as Colorado sorts out ways to add service between Trinidad and Denver.

As ridership continues to rise for the state’s large commuter rail, concerns are being raised about the number of passengers it carries to offset CO2 emissions. The Rail Runner transports thousands of riders throughout the day, but a recent newsletter from the Legislative Finance Committee said ridership needs to go up if the train wants to offset its carbon footprint. However, they want to purchase more energy-efficient locomotives eventually. [Concerned raised over Rail Runner’s carbon emissions]

On Monday NPR aired a segment that highlighted a $64 million federal grant Texas received for high speed rail. Listen here. 

California has replaced two diesel-electric commuter trains with zero emission locomotives. Read more about building certainty into California Air Resources Board's electric transition linked here.

ip image: Santa Fe Railyard.

Rapid City's Eccarius channeling racist Tanton

At his Faceberg page Republican former South Dakota legislator and retired Rapid City ophthalmologist Scott Eccarius releases racist tirades especially against asylum seekers. He and this interested party clashed at the Protecting South Dakota Kids page where he argued against free will and reproductive rights; but he didn't get to rabid racism on his own. 

Michigan ophthalmologist, John Tanton held white nationalist beliefs and wrote that to maintain American culture, “a European-American majority” is required. Tanton died in 2019.

In 1975, he wrote a paper titled “The Case for Passive Eugenics” and would later, in a letter to eugenicist Robert Graham, a millionaire businessman known for starting a sperm bank for geniuses, clarify his goals. Tanton’s ideas could also be found in the proclamations of the prominent “alt-right” white nationalist leader Richard Spencer. And Tanton’s ideas could be heard on Fox News. “The left used to care about the environment, the land, the water, the animals,” Tucker Carlson said on his show on Dec. 17, 2018. [The Ghosts of John Tanton]

Moving Rapid City railyard could speed passenger service

My proposal for passenger rail from Minneapolis to Denver is a route from the Twin Cities to Mankato on the right of way owned by the Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad to Brookings, South Dakota and Pierre then to Rapid City and to Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway tracks at Alliance via Chadron, Nebraska then to Cheyenne, Wyoming and Denver. Service to Sioux Falls and Omaha could diverge at Florence, Minnesota but a route in the I-90 median between Sioux Falls and Rapid City should also be explored. 

Construction costs are very high for passenger rail between Minneapolis and Denver because significant track upgrades are needed especially in South Dakota. In east Rapid City, the abandoned Milwaukee Line that used to connect with Sioux Falls dead ends at the junction of SD44 and E. St. Patrick Street. The RCPE divides sending traffic north and west to Colony, Wyoming and east to Pierre. There is no intersection of the two rail beds and at this time there is no intention to secure leases for a new right of way from Colony to Gillette where passenger service could be developed in the future.

With help from a consultant Cheyenne's Metropolitan Planning Organization’s passenger rail location study has identified six potential station locations: the Union Pacific Depot in downtown Cheyenne, the Reed Avenue Corridor, an area near Old Happy Jack Road, the BNSF railyard northwest of downtown, a site next to FE Warren AFB, and along Terry Ranch Road.

Kip Harrington is Rapid City's Community Long-range Planning Manager.

“There are a lot of railroad grant programs out there available," Harrington said. "We have spoken to the railroad about it, they’re all in favor of moving the railyard, except they don’t want to pay for it. So they’re looking for some other funding opportunity, so that’s something we’ll work on once we have the recommendations from this study.” [Bill Janklow's idea of public radio]

The Railyard Relocation and Railway Configuration Study is linked here.

Learn more at Colorado Public Radio.

Pastor sounding the alarm on NAR

Within the New Apostolic Reformation, dominion theology supposes christians must control the seven “mountains” of government, education, media, arts and entertainment, religion, family, and business in order to establish a global christianic theocracy and prepare the world for Jesus’ return.

South Dakota's Earth hating governor is up to her areolae in this stuff.

On Wednesday KANW aired a terrifying episode of Reveal that chronicles the rise of NAR among the radical white wing of the Republican Party. It features The Reverend Rob Schenck as he comes to realize the depth of the evil that Donald Trump has tapped into. Schenck has an essay in the November-December issue of Mother Jones.

It took years for the scales to fall from my eyes. A major turning point occurred when I took a leave of absence from Faith and Action to pursue a late-in-life doctorate. Part of my research involved the German Christian movement of the 1930s, which supported the Nazi Party. One of the most respected Bible scholars of that period, Paul Althaus, declared Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship to be a “gift and miracle from God.” I began to suspect that we evangelicals were similarly allowing our faith to be co-opted for political purposes. Devastating consequences seemed inevitable for evangelicalism and for our country. [Confessions of a (Former) Christian Nationalist]

Listen to the Reveal broadcast linked here.