1/17/25

Cook, Hickey contrast Hitler/Trump

After Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds Adolf Hitler cited the ensuing panic as "evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy" then modeled his final solution on the Native American Genocide. 

Today, Republican is not just another word for Earth hater; it's another word for Nazi. 

Steve Hickey is from Kansas City, Missouri and is a Republican former South Dakota legislator and Sioux Falls pastor now teaching at Alaska Christian College. He and this interested party agree on some things like executive clemency for Leonard Peltier and reconciliation with the tribal nations trapped in South Dakota through land repatriation.

Dr. Edith Cook is Professor Emerita at Dakota Wesleyan University, lives in Saratoga, Wyoming and writes a weekly column for the Cheyenne Post.
Then Trump became part of the ‘80s debt craze: going bankrupt, and defaulting on payments for his Atlantic City Taj Mahal Casino. By 1992, Trump’s efforts collapsed under the weight of unserviceable debt, “a victim of his own prodigality as the recession deepened.” [Cook: Comparing Reagan and Trump]
In 1993, Trump henchman, Roger Stone constructed ad copy and radio scripts depicting the Mohawk Nation as violent criminals and drug dealers so Donald Trump could erect a casino. Then, after losing a lawsuit to the Tribe Trump declared war on Native America and in 2020 he used the Hitlerian model and launched a biological weapon on tribal communities. 

Now Republicans like Steve Hickey suffer from a disease that influences their eschatologies because they worship a supernatural extraterrestrial as the ‘son of god’ and believe It is coming to Earth to rule under a one-world government.
Like Trump, Hitler was duly elected by the people, in spite of a criminal record—he actually did time for a coup he attempted in Munich, but the voters didn’t care, or didn’t mind. Beginning in 1933—the year of Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship—a new “Nazi Religion” infused German churches. It demanded that all pastors sign an oath of allegiance to the Führer, to National Socialism, and to the German state, the “Reich.” Hitler ‘s rise to power seemed the answer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have been a man for our times, had he lived in our space. As it is, his courage must remind us to stand tall and call upon our resources to cope with the days ahead. [Cook: Watching Hitler]
Hickey is also a scholar who studies Dietrich Bonhoeffer and calls him a martyr but he is also a Trump apologist. 

After deleting his social media accounts in 2021 Hickey is reporting at his resurrected Faceberg page that he is in the hospital with five blood clots in his lungs following a double lung transplant.

Dying in a bunker by his own hand can't come soon enough for DonOld Trump.
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1/16/25

South Dakota politicians likely covering up Parkinson's risks from ag chemicals

This blog has been covering Chinese company Syngenta since 2010 questioning whether an elected South Dakota attorney general was getting kickbacks to cover up the effects of pesticides like atrazine on fœtal development and infants born to mothers residing near corn and soybean fields even after the US Environmental Protection Agency warned of their use. 

In 2011 plaintiffs in Kansas were dropped from a federal class action lawsuit that named Syngenta liable for a genetically modified (GM) corn seed scam but in 2017 a jury ultimately awarded affected farmers nearly $218 million in compensation. South Dakota's GOP congressional delegation stumbles all over itself to protect donors like Syngenta from their accountability for the state's impaired waters. 

Monsanto, the company that owned a strain of Franken-maize, the only genetically modified product approved for cultivation in the European Union, tried to acquire rival Syngenta in 2015 but was absorbed itself by Bayer — another chemical company that buys Republican politicians and pollutes the waters of the United States.

Boomers will recall that in 1977 the Mexican government was spraying paraquat on cannabis crops. Today, paraquat is marketed as Gramoxone, a Syngenta product linked to Parkinson's disease after multiple studies determined agricultural workers exposed to the poison face much higher likelihood of nerve damage. In 2021 Earthjustice sued the EPA challenging its reapproval of paraquat and in 2024 California passed legislation that required the Department of Pesticide Regulation to reevaluate its use after some 350,000 pounds were applied in that state during 2023 alone.

Paraquat is also a hormone disruptor that inhibits the production of testosterone and can cause gender dysphoria and birth defects in developing fœtuses.
The company, Syngenta, says that paraquat, which it produces under the name Gramoxone, "is safe for its intended and labelled use." Clayton Tucholke, who used Gramoxone for years on his farm in LaBolt, South Dakota, and has since been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, says otherwise. ['Burns me to a crisp': Farmers allege link between popular herbicide paraquat and Parkinson's disease]
A cynical observer might suspect that China is retaliating after being ripped off by the State of South Dakota in the Bendagate scandal. 

EPA could issue a final report Friday after considering 90 new scientific studies submitted by the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Whatever the ruling lawsuits will continue as plaintiffs argue Syngenta has an obligation to disclose harms from paraquat but hides them from consumers then pays off politicians like Marty Jackley. 

Learn more about the paraquat/Parkinson's link in the journal Nature.
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1/15/25

Goss, bankers wary of tariffs, see grim future under Trump

Back in 2018 Republicans like Senator John Thune (Earth hater-SD) were calling Trump tariffs a "Band-Aid" and a "false sense of security" especially for farm states. 

Today, Creighton University's Ernie Goss and ag groups like the National Corn Growers Association are sounding the alarm again about the Trump tariffs because of economic uncertainty and the potential for retaliation.
“Recession would be probably too strong of a word, but certainly it’s going to be slow going for the year in my judgement, and it’ll be a little bit slower than in 2024," Goss said. [Bill Janklow's idea of public radio]
Goss and the Business Conditions Index track the economies of nine midwestern states where supply managers remain pessimistic with some 41% signaling a recession and a significant drop off in the near future.
Looking ahead six months, economic optimism, as captured by the December Business Confidence Index, sank to 52.8 from 55.6 in November. A weak regional economy slowed purchases from abroad as the import reading slumped to 42.1 from November’s 49.1. [Mid-American Economy]
A cynical observer might suspect bankers provided gloomy outlooks to the Index for at least five months especially in midwestern swing states to sink Democratic Party prospects just as Republicans in congress stalled immigration reform because it makes sense to Earth haters that after he was elected again the Orange Julius would run America into the dirt so banks can foreclose on the whole dealio to massage auction price points.
And don't forget, as the rhetoric from the White House increases and the push to act on taxes, trade, and immigration pressures the Republican Congress to act, there's still a Farm Bill to write, regional conflicts to influence, and a federal debt limit to raise. [CoBank: 2025 rural economy will be 'squeezed, hobbled, slowed']
In Iowa where the Republican governor is among the most hated in the US cancer rates are off the charts and the list of impaired waterways increased again.

Thune is pessimistic that the incoming administration has the political capital to end the gains under Bidenomics. Read that here.
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1/14/25

Trump's ag secretary scheduled to appoint BHNF resource committee

So, after the Trump Organization gutted the National Environmental Policy Act then was thrown from the White House Hulett, Wyoming-based Neiman Enterprises closed its Hill City, South Dakota sawmill and is threatening to shutter another in Spearditch announcing layoffs and production cutbacks while blaming the US Forest Service. Neiman bought an Oregon mill in 2020 but lumber prices are depressed as wildfire salvage floods markets. 

Dave Mertz is a retired natural resource officer for the Black Hills National Forest who attended a roundtable discussion last March in Spearditch hosted by South Dakota's lone US Representative Dusty Johnson who sicced two fellow Republican congress members on Regional Forester Frank Beum and BHNF Supervisor Shawn Cochran. Cochrane was the sixth different leader in 2023 alone and 11th in the past seven years. Mertz told an interested party in July, 2024 that the Allowable Sale Quantity or ASQ on the BHNF should be about 40,000 hundred cubic feet (CCF) and that the mill in Spearditch will also close. One cubic foot of lumber is six board feet.

Today, the Black Hills Resource Advisory Committee is struggling to fill its fifteen seats after announcing requests for members in early December, 2024. Category A delegates primarily work with people in the logging, grazing and extractive industries. Category B representatives collaborate with watershed associations, environmental groups, archaeologists and hunters. Category C commissioners liaise with state and local government officials, tribal leaders, citizen groups and people involved in education. 

Applications are due 3 February; RAC applicants must live in South Dakota, preferably in Pennington County, Custer County or Lawrence County but because a Republican Earth hater has been nominated to become the next agriculture secretary and if DonOld Trump is actually inaugurated Democrats will find themselves locked out of selections for the posts.
It’s unclear what is ahead for these protection efforts as the incoming advisors to president-elect Donald Trump are recommending he waive environmental reviews to boost mining of rare earth elements according to reporting from Reuters. Lilias Jarding said the Black Hills Clean [W]ater Alliance will have to be ready to respond in real time if there are any proposals. The area is considered a sacred landscape and traditional spiritual homeland by the Oceti Sakowin but also many neighboring tribes: Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Arikara, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Crow Tribes. There are places within the Black Hills that are sacred to all these tribes, including the lands of the withdrawn area. [Water protection was made possible by diverse grass roots efforts]
The Black Hills National Forest Advisory Board is scheduled to meet on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday the grassland fire danger in Fall River County will return to the high category.
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1/10/25

Trump, Republicans inciting violence against federal employees, stealing presidency



[image or embed]

— Mike Luckovich (@mluckovich.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 2:24 PM

Just weeks before Donald Trump led his attempted autogolpe Stewart Rhodes was inciting the Oath Keepers to civil war. Rhodes formed the white supremacist militia in 2009 after Barack Obama was elected POTUS but is now serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy for his role in Trump's insurrection. 

Now, ginned up by Trump's attacks on judges, poll workers, hospitals and public officials will increase in number and severity according to the US Marshals Service. Trump adherent, Representative Harriet Hageman (Earth hater-WY) is calling for wiping out the deep state by targeting federal workers and Wyoming's governor is fanning that wildfire by rejecting at least two Bureau of Land Management resource management plans. In Wyoming members of the so-called Freedom Caucus are preparing to crash the legislative session in Cheyenne so maybe that's the next storm front of the End Times.
In the days and months leading up to a fatal July 4 shootout in Yellowstone National Park, federal prosecutors say Samson “Lucas” B. Fussner sent signals that he was planning “pro white nationalist violence.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeremy Gross and FBI Special Agent Eric Barker laid out the allegations in a verified complaint that seeks to have Fussner’s SUV, four guns and various magazines and ammunition forfeited to the government. Gross contends that all of the items were connected to a plot to carry out an act of terrorism. “In attempting to carry out an attack on the employee dining room at Canyon Lodge, and in actually shooting at federal [National Park Service] employees, Fussner intended to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct,” Gross wrote. [Yellowstone National Park shooter planned ‘Pro White Nationalist Violence,’ feds say]
It’s impossible to imagine a more committed insurrectionist than the Republican Party’s standard bearer who gleefully incites his disciples to bloodbaths for his political enemies.

But, if Chief Justice John Roberts administers the Presidential Oath of Office to Donald Trump he is violating the two oaths he took.
I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as _________ under the Constitution and laws of the United States; and that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” [Supreme Court of the United States]
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