Thirteen of the free-roaming horses found their way to the top of the mesa and reminded a blogger to fill the tank with water.
Alph and Shaggy recognized an interested party.
12/24/25
Wrede, others: wolves and cougars essential
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.
John Wrede studied Park Management and Wildlife Management at South Dakota State University, had a long career with SD Game, Fish and Parks and lives in the Black Hills. He has called what South Dakota Republicans have done to habitat, "managerially inexcusable" and is concerned about Dusty Johnson's lack of forest acumen. The following appears at his Faceberg page and has been only lightly edited but mostly reformatted for easier reading here.
In the early 2000's when the cougar had almost fully developed a viable population in the Black Hills and obligatory dispersal of mostly young males was occurring with some regularity; social hand wringing and angry nimrod demands to kill them all due to the belief these apex predators were trashing deer and elk populations and threatening to ambush small children, pets and livestock was loud, irrational and politically caustic. The general theme among gun toters, livestock interests, urban dwellers with the wildlife knowledge of a cement truck, demanded either eliminating the species from the state entirely or excessive hunter harvest to reduce population numbers down below viability. In other words, the public intolerance for this species was nearly pegged out.
Now, 25 years later, Elk densities are greater than they've been since the late 1950's, deer numbers in the Black Hills are recovering from severe overharvest starting in 2005 and disastrous, continuing habitat issues; there are few if any confirmed records of livestock depredation in the Black Hills, virtually no fatal or even injurious attacks on humans, and no small children savagely killed, carried off and devoured. Harvest quotas haven't been met since a hunting season was established. The only down side to cougars in the Black Hills is an imbalanced and ecologically threatened social structure, age and sex ratios of a cougar population. And the science from Washington State's Large Carnivore Laboratory predicted all of it.
If SDSU or some other credible research institution under took something like this for Mountain Lions in the State of South Dakota, I'm pretty confident that the results would be the same. [John Wrede]
12/21/25
It IS happening here. Philip Roth predicted Emperor Trump: Beatty
State capitalism. MAGA Marxism. Crony capitalism: NPR analyst, Jack Beatty compares the Trump era to Philip Roth's 2004 novel The Plot Against America in which Roth imagines a world where aviator and isolationist Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 US presidential election as Lindbergh negotiates with Hitler. Learn more here.
Nuno Loureiro, the late director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was a renowned physicist whose recent murder has been connected in news reports to speculation surrounding a nuclear fusion merger deal involving Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). There is no evidence of a direct, formal working relationship between Loureiro and Donald Trump, but recent events have drawn the two names together in public discussion. The suspect, who later died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, was a former acquaintance from Loureiro's time in Portugal. The timing of the murder, just days before the TMTG announcement, led to a significant amount of online speculation and conspiracy theories suggesting a link between his death and the financial interests of fusion companies, including those merging with Trump Media. [Google AI]
12/20/25
Trump, Earth haters being trashed in new polls
"Trump acts like a dictator" Agree: 56% Disagree: 43% AtlasIntel / Dec 19, 2025
— Polling USA (@usapolling.bsky.social) December 20, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Net-Approval Of: Rubio: -16% Bessent: -17% Gabbard: -18% RFK Jr: -23% Hegseth: -24% Lutnick: -24% Noem: -29% Patel: -34% Bondi: -41% AtlasIntel / Dec 19, 2025
— Polling USA (@usapolling.bsky.social) December 20, 2025 at 2:24 PM
"Do you have a positive or negative image of Donald Trump" Negative: 60% (+4) Positive: 38% (-4) AtlasIntel / Dec 19, 2025 (% Change With Nov 2025)
— Polling USA (@usapolling.bsky.social) December 20, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Support For US Financial Support For Israel: Oppose: 62% Support: 20% Unsure: 18% AtlasIntel / Dec 19, 2025
— Polling USA (@usapolling.bsky.social) December 20, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Support For: Subsidies For Clean Energy: 60% Reinstating Roe v. Wade: 57% Tax Hikes On The Rich: 57% Legalize Weed: 53% Affirmative Action: 48% Recognize Palestine: 47% Withdraw From Paris Accords: 38% Repeal Obamacare: 33% Withdraw From NATO: 26% AtlasIntel / Dec 19, 2025
— Polling USA (@usapolling.bsky.social) December 20, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Trump Net-Approval On: Immigration: -16% Safeguarding Democracy: -21% China/US Competition: -21% Economy/Jobs: -25% Healthcare: -35% National Debt: -36% AtlasIntel / Dec 19, 2025
— Polling USA (@usapolling.bsky.social) December 20, 2025 at 2:25 PM
12/19/25
Earth haters will debate in April
Careful Pat, don't get any on you.
This will be big. Honored to be on the panel with THE Jonathan Ellis. "Forum Communications and The Dakota Scout hosting Republican gubernatorial debate on April 27." All four candidates have committed to the debate that will be broadcast statewide on KSFL-TV in Sioux Falls and NewsCenter1 in Rapid City, and streamed digitally at Sioux Falls Live, Mitchell Republic and The Dakota Scout. [Patrick Lalley (subscription required)]
Yikes. Gettysburg grooming children?
Taylor Kusser is a fifth grader at Gettysburg Elementary.
Gettysburg, South Dakota is already known for its bigotry but at a time when a sitting US president is legitimately accused of raping children how is grooming fifth graders appropriate?In Sioux Falls, 18 year old Elijaeh Simon was apparently empowered by DonOld Trump's indiscretions then allegedly kidnapped and raped an eleven year old girl!
Failed red state slow to recover from Earth's wrath
Downed power lines, unrepentant utilities, uprooted trees, wildfires, school closures, collapsed buildings, the gnashing of teeth and red state failure all fall at the feet of South Dakota Republicans.
Mostly Republican counties are at extremely high risk of wildfire again on Friday.
12/18/25
Earth hater Tobin sending mixed signals
The introduction of the Chinese ring-necked pheasant to South Dakota is one of most destructive examples of ecoterrorism in US history and has heralded the near eradication of habitat for native wild turkeys and grouse. Now, the extermination of native species to prop up the pheasant industry is in full force after another Earth hating Republican governor and legislature extended bounties on raccoons and skunks known to feed on prolific invasive zebra mussels.
Erin Tobin is an Earth hater running for the South Dakota Senate in District 21. She and her fellow Trump whores are courting donor, Brandon Maddox.
In South Dakota over a hundred native species are at risk to the Republican Party including the endangered pallid sturgeon, paddlefish, black footed ferret, northern long-eared bat, the black-backed woodpecker that feeds on bark beetles and a bird that actually walks underwater – the American dipper plus the occasional black bear, moose and wolf, just to name a few.
Republican counties are ground zero for Thursday's burn environment
Grid failures, hundred mile an hour wind gusts, school closures and wildfires will plague red counties again Thursday and Friday.
12/16/25
Brookings admits new water treatment plant can't remove all the forever chemicals
In 2017, a Minnesota-based company with an operation in Brookings, South Dakota hoped to drive attention from a $5 billion lawsuit over its manufactured forever chemicals that cause cancers and spontaneous abortions with a name change in its health care division.
3M faced numerous other PFAS lawsuits and reached a separate, much larger $10.3 billion to $12.5 billion settlement in 2023 to resolve claims by public water systems across the United States over PFAS contamination.
3M knew how bad the contamination risk was since at least the 1950s but waited until 1978 before it warned its own employees including my own sister who worked at the Brookings facility from 1974 until her death in 1995. The firm didn't notify the US Environmental Protection Agency either until 1998 when a company toxicologist noted those substances in fish, birds and other wildlife but continues manufacturing the poisonous chemicals yet today.
In 2024 nine of eleven sites below Watertown tested positive for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances including a hot spot in Falls Park in Sioux Falls but researchers found thirty two samples with nine types of PFAS compounds all the way to the Iowa border. That same year Brookings provided rain catchment barrels with hopes to reduce stormwater runoff.
In October, 2025 the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe filed a lawsuit against 3M in federal court, saying that the company polluted its lakes, drinking water and wildlife with the toxic chemicals.
Now, after spending some $70 million granted by federal and state governments on a water treatment plant Brookings officials have admitted the system fails at removing all the PFAS created mostly by 3M. Contaminated stormwater often overwhelms the collection pond on Solventum (3M) property then spreads the contaminants into aquifer recharges, to soils under George S. Mickelson Middle School and to the already polluted Big Sioux River.
South Dakota State University in Brookings has begun using a liquid chromatography triple quadrupole mass spectrometer to test surface water and the groundwater that traverses within the food chain according to assistant professor and coordinator of the Campus Core Mass Spectrometry Facility, M. Nurul Islam. Professor Islam could be arrested and deported if the ICE raid scheduled for Brookings targets him because the State Senators and Representatives of Brookings County and the Mayor of Brookings are all Republicans.
The Biden administration set limits on the chemicals as testing found them in nearly half of Americans’ drinking water but the Trump Organization is weakening life safety standards. So, with drought taking hold in eastern South Dakota we should be sending thoughts and prayers in advance for the wretched masses that have poisoned their own wells and tapped into big gubmint to water glyphosate-treated lawns while they complain about the protections for Waters of the United States or WOTUS.
12/13/25
Rapid City's Laura Armstrong would be a formidable gubernatorial candidate
Editor's note: In the years after my 1997 vision at Orman Dam, a quest for redemption overtook me. I pursued numerous concepts nearly simultaneously including a recycling initiative that would look much like Rapid City's Material Recovery Facility does today: metals, paper, plastics, glass, the whole schmear.
Laura Armstrong is a local speech language pathologist who served on the Rapid City Common Council from 2017-2023, twice as Council President. This interested party has asked her to enter the Democratic gubernatorial primary so elderly spoiler Rick Knobe stays out of the race.
But let's be honest: this isn't about markets. It's about leadership. Or more accurately, the lack of it.At the Dec. 1 City Council meeting, City Hall voted to raise waste service fees and cut recycling pickup in half. And they did so while admitting that our landfill is nearly full, the cost of the last waste cell doubled from projections, and we only have about twenty-five years of capacity left. We are running out of room, out of time and- apparently -out of vision.The city now acknowledges not everything we carefully rinse and place into our blue bins is actually recycled. Plastics labeled three through seven simply end up in the landfill, because markets are unstable. Glass is often crushed and discarded. Shiny cardboard goes straight to the trash heap. Even the city's own outreach staff confirms that major categories of recyclables are landfilled because we lack the local capacity to do anything else with them. If this is the best we can do, then why aren't we doing more to change it?It appears we have a problem of short-sightedness. The Material Recovery Facility (MRF) does impressive work with the limited tools it has. It is old but functional; and thankfully, staffed with dedicated workers making the most of aging equipment. And yes, it generates revenue: Around $350,000 a year. But the bigger story, the one city leaders seem unwilling to confront, is that our current system is fundamentally reactive, not proactive.We increase fees instead of increasing capacity. We reduce services instead of expanding partnerships.We shrug at global markets instead of building local solutions. And all of this in a state that is growing by thousands of new residents every year-people who bring with them jobs, families, energy, and yes, their garbage. Yet our planning for solid waste has not kept pace with our growth. Leadership matters, and on this issue, leadership has been missing.Years ago, I approached the School of Mines to explore a potential collaboration for local waste innovation, recycling science, and sustainable materials research. That conversation could have sparked a long-term partnership between our city and one of the nation's most respected engineering institutions. We have worldclass minds right here in Rapid City. People from all over the world come to our local university to learn, innovate, and take on the complex problems that shape our future.Why weren't we leveraging that talent? Why aren't we now? Imagine the workforce development opportunities. Imagine local businesses built around materials recovery. Imagine becoming a regional center for waste innovation, instead of a regional dumping ground.We could be training engineers, creating jobs, and establishing Rapid City as a leader in sustainable waste solutions across the Upper Midwest. Instead, we are patching gaps and raising rates.Our landfill is reportedly $8.3 million in the hole. That number will only grow unless we do the work now to rethink our waste stream, engage real partners, and invest in solutions that reduce what we bury in the ground.Other communities have already moved in this direction: waste-to-energy technologies, reprocessing clusters, advanced sorting systems, and public-private innovation labs. Rapid City has the brainpower, the institutional partners, and the regional role to lead. What we lack is leadership willing to do more than approve annual fee hikes and incremental service cuts.I believe we can choose a better path. Residents deserve a system that innovates, not one that throws up its hands. We deserve planning, not patchwork. We deserve leaders who understand that waste management is not a burden-it is an opportunity.Rapid City can either plan for the future or keep paying for the past. That starts with engaging in real, productive conversations with the School of Mines and other regional universities-institutions filled with people who come here to learn, innovate, and tackle the complex problems that shape our future. Let's bring those experts, alongside industry partners and community leaders, to the table. Let's choose meaningful, forward-looking solutions instead of settling for higher bills and smaller bins.
You miserable bastards
For my family and pals in the Black Hills and northern plains: yep, that’s 60° at sunset in rural Santa Fe County.
12/12/25
Guest post: DWC is Cream of Bullshit Soup
Editor's note: Speaking of the unctuous Pat Powers, a morbidly obese white man who spews nonsense in support of South Dakota Republicants who with his butt buddy Jason Gant, left a mess at the Secretary of State's office. After bringing order to some of the chaos in the Gant/Powers hack job SDSOS Shantel Krebs said a half million documents were deleted.
"I want to clarify that the corporations system or website was on an outside server. And it was not on the state's information and technology--state sanctioned and state secured--server," Krebs said. "We're sitting at about 90,000 of those documents reviewed so far; we started at the current year and are working our way backwards. We started at 2015 and we're done with 2014 and 2013 and we're working on 2012," Krebs said.Now, at his Faceberg page South Dakota's most vociferous former teevee anchor, Shad Olson is calling out fat Pat's role in Pierre's culture of corruption.
If Lindsay Graham and John McCain lived in South Dakota, rest assured, Pat Powers and the (South) Dakota War College would be their reading material of choice. Probably on the toilet. And probably when they’re not catching up on Tavistock Institute literature or checking their endorsements from the Southern Poverty Law Center or planning new ways to flip the demographics of the country to benefit the United States Chamber of Commerce and the DNC. Pat would be their boy just like Americans for Prosperity is their Daddy. And Donald Trump would call the whole steaming pile of functionalized fiction, “Fake News.” Next.For most of 20 years, Pat’s fake blog, Dakota War College, has served as the direct propagandized bully pulpit of a paper mache Republican party that has presided over the most corrupt era of public administration in South Dakota history. Dead bodies and millions of dollars missing in bungled programs and misappropriated grant money frosted with squelched investigations and quashed evidence and a surprisingly missing allowance of a normally perfunctory independent investigation to sort any of it out.No concern for transparency. No time for explanations, public trust be damned. And certainly not an honest investigative peep about scandals like EB-5 and Gear Up from moderate GOP water boy, Pat Powers, on his smallish web operation that draws fewer daily visitors than a kissing booth at a leper colony.Instead, readers and viewers are treated to what Pat makes his paycheck for: Personal attacks on any conservative critic of the GOP machine and anyone else who dares dissent from the milquetoast Democrat-lite of the South Dakota Republican bourgeoisie and their cookie cutter assumed line of bureaucratic ascendancy that ensures friends go unpunished and promoted and naysayers feel the wrath of the RINO. And it’s all according to plan. Stamp my pay stub, if you please.Back in the toddler years of internet journalism just after the millennium, it became apparent even to the pedestrian intellects that serve as the brain trust of the SDGOP that it might be useful to build a standalone blog or news site that could be used to carry water for the moderate elephant against the growing din of independent journalists and patriot voices that were quickly supplanting the mainstream media as the credible scribes and describers of local political theatre. They were right. Hogs and acorns and broken clocks, don’t you know.In short order, the search was on to find someone of requisite skill, articulate eloquence and credibility to honcho such an effort in captaining the newest set artillery piece in the South Dakota Republican armada. Short of those deluxe prerequisites, the need was for a middling ability “Yes Man,” of any description willing to serve as a mercenary propagandist masquerading as an objective reporter. You get what you settle for. And so it was in that grimy embryonic process on a certain day long ago that my office landline in a local television newsroom chirped to life with the car salesman voice of a party acolyte who tried to schmooze me into accepting a job.What would it take to lure you away from what you’re doing now? We’d really be interested in making an offer. Let’s make this happen. Yada and yada.With a couple Emmys to my name and a wall full of hardware from various organizations specializing in self-congratulatory plaques and journalistic trinkets of ego and pecking order, big city job offers were frequent and frequently ignored. But an in-state offer had my attention. I had but one question. “Will I have the freedom to report honestly on the actions and policy and legislative process of both parties, regardless of whose interests are at stake or whose sacred cow is rendered hamburger?” I asked, knowing the answer.In the Rushmore State where Founding Fathers adorn a mountainside, you’d think that Republicans in charge would be the purest of the lot. Reddest of the Red. Conservative as the day is long. In fact, the opposite is true. As often happens whenever and wherever the Republican label is an automatic 20-point head start at the ballot box or country club cocktail circuit, Democrat name changers are the bulk of the GOP elite and South Dakota suffers as many heavy red states do with an infestation of RINO politicians at every level of government. The present chair of the South Dakota GOP Central Committee was most recently a registered Democrat in Iowa. The GOP Lieutenant Governor nominee this time around voted Carter over Reagan in 1980 and sports one of the bluest legislative records by any ‘Republocrat,’ in state history. In fact, that tendency toward masquerade Republicanism is so pervasive that even the opposing party takes pot shots. At a legislative soiree signaling the end of the 2018 session, South Dakota Democrat Gubernatorial Candidate [Billie] Sutton scored the line of the decade and brought down the house by giving a mock award and open thanks to outgoing Governor Dennis Daugaard, as “the best Democrat Governor in state history.” It might have been tongue-in-cheek if it weren’t so obviously true.Knowing all of this as I did and do, the telephoned sales pitch that winter’s day left no doubt that expectations would be to promote mainstream party favorites, controlled quantities and compromised political toadies, while bashing independent voices, relegating, ridiculing and suppressing truly conservative grassroots candidates and killing off natural leaders who pose threat to the status quo. Protect the establishment. Destroy conservatives. Ignore reality. Construct fantasy for the benefit of the GOP elite. Provide ample lubrication to the public political shiv job by the marionettes in Pierre and covering fire for the RINO herd. After an uncomfortable silence that reeked of ethical halitosis, my question produced a muddle of stumbles and guttural posturing that sources typically engage in when attempting to prevaricate in real time without a facility for ad lib. I expressed polite thanks for the interest and hung up. I might have sprayed the phone handset with Lysol.In the years since that conversation I watched with quizzical bemusement as Dakota War College was commandeered to fill that void and has undertaken exactly the prescribed task of protecting the mainstream moderate GOP brand with bonus accoutrement of a meanness of spirit and viciousness at the feast that bely the unhappy blunderings of an operator who found himself rejected by actual media enterprises (when those still mattered) and is taking it out on the people his bosses tell him and pay him to hate. Sources tell me that a salary of $70k a year from benefactors of the South Dakota GOP, plus ad revenue in election years by establishment cronies (or some reasonable facsimile thereof in the same ballpark) is the going rate to get a man to surrender his principles and maintain the pretense of an independent news medium that is every bit as phony-baloney as CNN, MSNBC and the big three and every bit as false as the imitation naugahyde elephant suits that the Dan Lederman’s, Jeff Partridge’s, Dave Roetman’s and Dennis Daugaard’s of the world pull over the eyes of kindly South Dakota folk who are just too polite and trusting not to believe the very best about what their leadership promises and their RINO blogs reinforce.Bread and circuses to distract from voting records and Pierre chicanery that would make Rod Blagojevich and Al Sharpton blush.Under Pat’s watchful and twitchy eye and at the behest of those holding his digital leash, people who dare question the establishment narrative are punished, made fun of, shamed and ridiculed in a scene straight out of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, complete with banner headline balderdash and ardent flourish. Conservatives and candidates saying exactly the things that elected Donald Trump in 2016 are tin foil hat conspiracists, UFO believers and black helicopter paranoids deserving of being forever shamed from polite society. Meanwhile, the effete coterie of South Dakota’s Republican blue-bloods (emphasis on the blue) are thrown rose petals and scented kerchiefs and mints for pillows for behaving like an embarrassing political hybrid of Eddie Haskell and Nelson Rockefeller, minus the cash.Thankfully, the present awakening to the media deception of the globalist cabal is not limited to CNN and all the demon voices that President Donald Trump has rightfully identified as enemies to the American people, guilty of near fatal deceitfulness that has sown enough confusion and misinformation to bring us to the divided brink of civil conflict in the United States.It’s understood that Donald Trump is a third-party President assailed from both sides of the fake binary system by exactly those same type of poseurs that inhabit the South Dakota RINO club, forever interested only in perpetuation of political control and an agenda that has as afterthought the wellbeing of American fortunes. At a time when it has never been more crucial to discern actual members of the populist-conservative team from those who are coopting the name and the brand for fun and profit, add to that list anyone who has sold the luxury of their integrity at auction for a few thousand dollars of ad revenue from the establishment candidates who bash Trump populism, wax neophyte on international trade and then spend their establishment campaign dollars giving the false impression that Dakota War College is anything but Josef Goebbels with a web address and a weakness for super size fries.If politics is show business for ugly people, being the media show organ for those people must be an assignment from one of Dante’s deepest and most miserable rings of hell. For that, and even as the clock winds down on the neoconservative falsity that gave him his position, Pat has my genuine pity and my thankfulness, for willingly filling a thankless job that one can only guess has filled his pockets and emptied his soul with equal facility. And all of that for what some might make in an average month in the commodities futures trade.Everyone has a price, I guess. Everyone has a price paid for bargains made.In the words of President Trump, fake news.You haven’t been called.Next.
Guest post: farmers need markets not bribes
South Dakotan Julian Beaudion is the Democratic candidate for US Senate. He heard the frustration with the Trump Organization at the SD Farmers Union annual meeting in Huron.
Yesterday, I attended the 110th Annual South Dakota Farmers Union Convention and spent time with farmers and ranchers from every corner of our state. I heard the same message I have been hearing all across South Dakota. Rural communities need leaders who listen, show up, and deliver.We talked about rising input costs, tight margins, and the uncertainty many producers are facing right now. We also talked about the urgent need to pass a strong farm bill that works for producers and rural towns, not just corporate interests. While the current farm bailout may provide short-term relief, it is not a long-term plan. South Dakota farmers need solutions that bring stability and certainty so families can plan for next season and the next generation.I also joined the Farmers Union policy discussion, where producers spoke directly about what is working, what is not, and where the system is falling short. The conversations were honest, practical, and rooted in real life.Across this campaign, I have heard the same priorities again and again. Farmers want fair cattle markets with real competition and clear pricing. They want strong enforcement of competition laws so that consolidation does not squeeze family operations. Many also raised the right to repair, so producers can fix their own equipment and control costs when time matters most.There was also strong concern about foreign ownership in key parts of our food system. I heard broad support for moving toward mandatory country-of-origin labeling. These steps protect producers, strengthen our supply chain, and help consumers know where their food comes from.Farmers also talked about raising families in rural South Dakota. Rural childcare and after-school programs matter so that farm families can work, hire help, and keep small towns growing. At the same time, we should protect SNAP for kids and seniors, stop EBT theft, and make sure these programs are run with integrity.South Dakota’s farmers, ranchers, and rural communities deserve leadership that focuses on real solutions, not short-term fixes. If you believe in standing up for family farms and small towns, I invite you to join this campaign and help us build a stronger future for South Dakota.
12/11/25
South Dakota farmers warned of collapse
Yes, the grassland fire danger index will reach the very high category again Thursday for much of the chemical toilet, sacrifice zone, perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area that South Dakota is today.
Learn more at Bill Janklow's idea of public radio.
Page One in Sioux Falls, S.D.:
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) December 11, 2025 at 4:23 AM
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12/9/25
Extreme wildfire danger licks at chemical toilet
The grassland fire danger index will reach the extreme category this afternoon. Extreme weather conditions and very low moisture content of grasses, and other dry organic material on the ground, indicate that critical burning conditions exist. All fires have the potential to become large and spread quickly becoming erratic with extreme behavioral characteristics. No outdoor burning should take place.
This isn't national forest being blocked from fuel treatments by radical environmentalists; it's Republican ranch land decimated by a century of poor management practices and if livestock grazing is the key to preventing wildfires why is ranch country still suffering from near daily high even extreme grassland fire danger indices? Because Republicans are evil.
Just a hundred and fifty years ago bison, wapiti, bighorn sheep, pronghorns and deer cleared the grasses driving western South Dakota's fire years. If grasses remained in the fall tribes burned the rest.
Fire departments are struggling with aging fleets, broken-down equipment, and wait times of up to four years for new trucks that now cost double what they did before 2020. https://t.co/XrUoyZG9TZ pic.twitter.com/G0V6McwiNl
— KOTA Territory News (@kotatweets) December 9, 2025
12/8/25
Kristi Noem will go or be fired
Three former Department of Homeland Security officials have made it clear that either Kristi Noem will resign early in the new year or Herr Trump will fire her and replace her with Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin who is leaving that post. It has been reported that South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds will resign and Mrs. Noem will run for that seat in 2026. The Rounds campaign bank account is a tiny fraction of Noem's. Learn more at Raw Story. Image: Marty Two Bulls.
BREAKING: DHS Secy. Kristi Noem is on "thin ice," as President Trump considers removing her as early as January 2026. MS NOW's Jake Traylor has the latest
— MS NOW (@ms.now) December 8, 2025 at 8:57 AM
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12/7/25
More proof Bengs needs to run in the SD Democratic Senate primary
This interested party has been urging Brian Bengs to run in the South Dakota Democratic Party Senate primary or suspend his campaign and stand for SDAG at the 2026 Democratic State Convention. If all South Dakota Democrats and most unaffiliated voters do that maybe it will sink in. Bengs has less than $30,000 in the bank and Julian Beaudion has a little over $31,000 on hand. Learn more here.
PPP poll | 11/13-11/14 RV
— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) December 5, 2025
South Dakota Senate (informed ballot)
⬜️Brian Bengs 42%
🟥Mike Rounds 39% (incumbent)
(Poll sponsored by Bengs) https://t.co/Ag6AFbvCtb pic.twitter.com/W9FklvOkXS
Survey 160 poll | 11/6-11/12 RV Generic congressional ballot 2026 🟦Democratic 46% 🟥Republican 39% — President Trump approval Disapprove 61% Approve 36% www.survey160.com/methodologic...
— Poll Tracker 📊 (@polltracker.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 10:35 AM
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12/6/25
More people are fleeing South Dakota
Few policymakers dispute the reasons educated people are fleeing my home state of South Dakota. The state's governor is a reactionary cracker. Infrastructure is crumbling. Industrial agriculture is smothering wildlife habitat. Churches are girding for gun violence. Meth has replaced alcohol as the state’s drug of choice. Pierre’s culture of corruption and attacks on kids have ended open government. Native wildlife are being exterminated to make way for disease-ridden domestic livestock and exotic fowl. Jails far outnumber colleges. Bankers continue to enslave landowners and the state’s medical industry triopoly operates without scrutiny.
South Dakota ranks 9th in the top 10 of outbound states. The study said 56% moved out while 44% moved in during 2024. It’s the second year in a row more people have left the state than moved in, according to the study. [KELO teevee]Freedom? Sobriety checkpoints are being conducted in Bennett, Brule, Butte, Codington, Custer, Day, Hughes, Jerauld, Lincoln, Meade, Minnehaha, Moody, Pennington, Walworth, and Yankton Counties.
12/5/25
After midterm elections Democrats likely to impeach SCOTUS Justices, too
In January, 2027 after the Democrats retake the US House and Senate they will elect Hakeem Jeffries Speaker of the House, Amy Klobuchar Senate Majority Leader, impeach and remove Trump and JD Vance then Jeffries will become President of the United States. After that, Democrats will annul the Nazist legacy left by the corrupt Trump Organization then impeach Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas if DonOld Trump's rant is any indication.
In a Truth Social post, the president warned that his opponents in Congress aimed to bring down the nation's top court by flooding it with multiple new justices — and that they'd do it on the first day that they won election. [Raw Story]Cult member Ginni Thomas, the Council for National Policy and others in the extreme white wing of the Republican Party have successfully engineered a scheme to use the packed Court to undo constitutional rights.
Articles of impeachment have been drafted against War Secretary Pete Hegseth for his role in the murders of civilians in the Caribbean and for mishandling classified information.
12/3/25
Empire?
The Founding Fathers of the United States were deeply, even profoundly, influenced by the rise and the collapse of the Roman Republic. They knew their Plutarch, their Livy, their Polybius, and their Tacitus (especially Jefferson). John Adams considered himself the American Cicero, George Mason the American Cato, and George Washington the American Cincinnatus. [Clay Jenkinson]
12/2/25
Retiring Minnesota Senator on full IDGAF
Doesn’t this guy have a day job?
— Tina Smith (@smith.senate.gov) December 2, 2025 at 11:30 AM
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Trump tariffs trashing Midwest, South Dakota
The November Business Conditions Index for South Dakota dropped below growth neutral falling to 49.1 from October’s 51.2 and the average weekly number of workers in the state receiving unemployment compensation is 5.1% higher. The US Dollar is in the shitter and suicide rates in the ag section are spiking.
For the ninth time in 2025, the region’s overall or Rural Mainstreet Index sank below growth neutral. Approximately, 31.8% of bankers reported that the rural economy was in a recession. For the 18th time in the past 19 months, farmland prices sank below growth neutral. Approximately, 58.3% of bankers expect farmland prices to fall in 2026, with an average decline of 3.1% for all survey participants. On average, bank CEOs expect 18.3% of farmers and ranchers in their area to record negative cash flow for 2025. Farm equipment sales dropped below growth neutral for the 27th straight month. According to trade data from the International Trade Association (ITA), regional exports of agriculture goods and livestock for the first eight months of 2025, compared to the same period in 2024, fell by 5.9%.
12/1/25
Guest post: Pat Powers has "the IQ of a Brillo pad"
At his Faceberg page Shad Olson is exposing the war raging within the South Dakota Republican Party.
Today, the Jon Hansen mouthpieces are laughing nervously at themselves for their open alliances with the likes of fired SDGOP RINO blogger Pat Powers and now, with the always biased and suspect mainstream press. (Because they all play for the same team.)You're no longer just "frenemies" when you've shared a dozen War College posts smearing the people you hate. You're a partner and friend.I'm quite sure Katie and PP text and spoon in their off time.Toby Doeden appears to have been avoiding an overt attack against Jon Hansen by editing a KELO-TV piece... and they're mad about it, and openly celebrating another Pat Powers hit piece against Doeden, oblivious to the fact that being attacked by either Pat Powers or a network television station is gold standard certification of grassroots authenticity.These people have the IQ of a Brillo pad, so long as it hasn't been used to scrub a dog's dish or a toilet or any other environment teeming with single celled organic lifeforms. They're correct on one point alone: They're not living in reality and haven't been for some time.Still waiting for the "massive copyright lawsuit" these brain surgeons were predicting yesterday. Waiting....waiting....
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