All sixteen horses were in the same place at the same time and with the arrival of two new breeding age stallions no doubt the mares are pregnant again. But with the end of civilization at hand having more ponies is probably a good thing, right?
3/2/25
Odenbach: make America great again but not upstream of my house
It's no secret South Dakota is a chemical toilet since Republican is simply another word for Earth hater. Recall that the South Dakota Republican Party ceded authority to the US Environmental Protection Agency and Nuclear Regulatory Commission for uranium mining in the Black Hills after the legislature realized there is no competent oversight from state agencies.
Stripping public lands, ending sanctions on Russian timber and slapping tariffs on Canadian lumber? What a shocker.
But several months ago House Majority Leader Scott Odenbach (R-Spearditch) shared several graphics at his Faceberg page from the state's 2022 report of impaired waterways in South Dakota with concerns that Spearditch Creek might look like the Big Sioux River one day. A Canada-based company with an office in Lead (where they don't pay any corporate income taxes) wants to mine on 46,000 acres in the Spearditch Creek watershed leased from Barrick, another Canadian exploiter. The Black Hills region is a de facto part of the American Redoubt so Rep. Odenbach is tapped into the survivalist real estate boom, too.
He penned an op-ed published in an East River paper.
Dare we ask, do we want or need more open-pit mining in this area? Will another hundred septic tanks upstream from your house make your quality of life better? HCR 6010 is just saying the quiet part out loud. [VIEWPOINT | Protecting the Black Hills]Odenbach's resolution has Democratic support but how can a legislator who believes America is only great when Republican presidents are in power revere an executive who is slashing the EPA, promising to clearcut the Black Hills National Forest, pledging to mine public lands sacred to Indigenous peoples, erasing the workforce and putting septic systems in sensitive habitats all in the name of making America great again?
2/28/25
Red flag warning for red states is all too familiar
Welcome to Hell, Trumpers.
2/25/25
NorthWestern Energy drafts bill to shield Montana utilities from wildfire liability
Now, as utilities scramble to avoid liability for wildfires, insurance companies are bilking homeowners in the wildland urban interface and denying coverage interfering with mortgages, real estate values and property ownership. NorthWestern Energy, Pacific Gas and Electric, Xcel, Black Hills Energy, Hawaiian Electric Company and Public Service of New Mexico or PNM are all responsible for massive blazes causing billions in damages.
In 2021 power lines owned by NWE caused a wildfire that destroyed most of Denton, Montana and liability lawsuits from that incident are still being litigated. Drafted in part by NWE, Kalispell Earth hater Amy Regier is lead sponsor of Montana House Bill 490 that would protect utilities from liability for wildfires they start.
Some of the state’s largest insurance companies also spoke against the bill, because it would make it harder for them to recover costs associated with fire damages. They said that could ultimately lead to homeowners paying higher premiums, or could cause companies to stop insuring homes in Montana. The state auditor’s office opposed the bill for similar reasons. [Bill would shield utility companies from wildfire liability]A wildfire sparked by a distribution line owned by Mountrail-Williams Electric Co-op killed two people in North Dakota in 2024. Power lines owned by Southern California Edison are being blamed for the Eaton Fire.
On Monday Democratic former South Dakota legislator, Nick Nemec told an interested party that a wildfire in his part of Hyde County right now would be catastrophic.
The grassland fire danger index will be in the extreme category Tuesday for much of South Dakota and Nebraska.
2/24/25
Ecoterrorist ETP launches SLAPP suit against water protectors
In 2014 Republican South Dakota then-Representative Kristi Noem enjoyed a $2500 face lift from ETP, the Texas company that gave nearly $321,000 to Republicans that cycle hoping to buy permits for an ecocidal 1,100-mile pipeline intended to move 450,000 barrels of North Dakota crude daily to Illinois. After the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed for an injunction against the US Army Corps of Engineers to stop the disastrous project in 2016, American Indian activists launched an international wave of resistance to the Texas grab on water crossings and trust lands in northern plains states.
After National Guard troops and other mercenaries brutalized many of the thousands of demonstrators camped on federal land near Cannon Ball, North Dakota over 800 people were arrested or charged between early August, 2016 and late February, 2017. Trump apparatchiks even referred to the Indigenous Americans and their compatriots as jihadists or insurgents. In August, 2017 attorneys for Greenpeace and other water protectors called on a judge to dismiss as an attack on free speech the predictable frivolous lawsuit filed by ETP in the aftermath of the civil protest.
In 2020 in a major victory for the Native American tribes and environmental groups fighting against the project a federal judge ordered the Corps to conduct a full environmental review. Then in 2024 the Biden administration and Congress affirmed tribal sovereignty and told the Corps that their Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Dakota Excess pipeline underestimated its climate impacts.
Energy Transfer, the Big Oil corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, is seeking $300 million in damages from Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International, accusing these organizations of playing a central role in organizing the Indigenous-led resistance to the pipeline back in 2016. The lawsuit is one of the largest Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) cases ever filed, and one of the biggest cases to go to court in North Dakota. Trial begins on February 24, 2025. These types of cases masquerade as ordinary civil lawsuits, but their true purpose is to retaliate against those who speak out against harms. Such meritless lawsuits are meant to silence or bankrupt opponents by dragging defendants through a long, lengthy, expensive legal process. [Greenpeace organizations go to trial on high-stakes SLAPP lawsuit that could redefine protest rights]Learn more at the North Dakota Monitor.
2/23/25
40 acres for sale near Madrid, New Mexico
2/21/25
Author: Trump intended to run the world, updated
Update, 22 February: this post has been and is being edited.
Call me old fashioned, but being Russia’s KGB agent “Krasnov” since 1987 should disqualify Trump from being President of the United States. Retroactively, immediately, and forever.
— Andrea Junker (@Strandjunker) February 22, 2025
Musk, Vance and their support for the anti-American, pro-Russian German far-right From Jamie Kirchik www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/o...
— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) February 22, 2025 at 10:03 AM
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It's an open secret that the Trump Organization is an equal opportunity money launderer for Russia, the CIA and dark state financiers for decades. The Guardian reported on it back in 2021 and it got them sideways with Elon Musk so they left Xitter.
So, there is little doubt in my mind that damning evidence linking the Trump Organization to Russia was destroyed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on 9/11 and it’s impossible the Obama administration didn’t know Donald Trump was installed through a vast white wing conspiracy with hostile foreign actors with the full knowledge of US Senators like John Thune.
Michelle Obama knows all of this, too since they are threatening her daughters and according to reports Elon Musk is using his own son as a human shield. Trump's assault on black leaders is retribution for the Obama agenda.
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 a cynical observer might wonder how long Trump and Tulsi Gabbard have been laundering proceeds for Syria's $10 billion captagon industry.
A second ex-senior KGB spy chief said, Trump was recruited and worked as a Russian intelligence services asset for many years. And what they both said aligns with the Mueller report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report that Marco Rubio supervised.
Former Chairman of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (KNB) Alnur Mussayev claims that the Soviet KGB recruited Donald Trump before the collapse of the USSR, assigning him the alias Krasnov. He claimed that the U.S. political elite is well aware of Trump’s dependence on the Kremlin but cannot openly acknowledge it due to the country’s global standing. [Inside Soviet recruitment: Kazakhstan’s former security chief claims Trump was a KGB asset]
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Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump stole the 2024 election by lying to Latinos and Black men about migrants taking their jobs; and through stochastic terrorism they threatened violence against millions of people especially of color who otherwise would have showed up at polling places to vote. And with the confirmation of Kash Patel the Federal Bureau of Investigation is on the path to become the Stasi, the repressive secret police that crushed dissent in East Germany until 1990.Anne Applebaum is an American journalist and member of the Council on Foreign Relations who covers "Putinism," calls what is happening in the US executive branch, "regime change" and is married to Poland's version of the US Secretary of State. She talked about her latest book, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want To Run The World on NPR's Fresh Air.
Hungary's Viktor Orbán steals elections, is a darling of the far white wing, has been a kleptocrat for decades and is likely the successor to the captagon trade.
And Hungary's a very important country for Americans to understand because Hungary is a country that elected democratically a leader, Viktor Orban, who then initially - mostly legally - slowly eliminated many of the checks and balances, many of the institutions of Hungarian democracy, making it impossible for him to lose an election. So he culled the Hungarian civil service by changing labor laws, replacing professional civil servants with members of his party. He changed the nature of the Hungarian courts over a period of time. He captured Hungarian media, both through putting pressure - financial pressure on independent media, empowering oligarchs and people around him, businessmen who are close to him to buy or take over Hungarian media and then transform their nature. And slowly over time, he also repeatedly changed the constitution, which enabled him to change the way elections are run. [Journalist describes Trump's movements as a 'regime change' towards authoritarianism]It sure looks like the Trump Organization intends to fire the scientists working for the public good so more microplastics, antibiotics and pesticides can be broadcast throughout the food web and introduced into wild spaces while the elites and shareholders enjoy the spoils of capitalism.
The fact of the matter is that America, as embodied by this administration, is no longer allies with our traditional allies. That is over. America's allies are now Putin, the AfD, Viktor Orban, and other far-right, fascist regimes.
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe.bsky.social) February 19, 2025 at 1:29 PM
2/19/25
Earth haters could appeal after federal judge rules in Gila cattle case
All waterways in the US Mountain West are endangered and that cattle have been allowed into national forests and other public ground is a crime that needs to end.
Whether it’s American Prairie’s bison grazing on Bureau of Land Management ground in Montana or the US Department of Agriculture killing cattle on the Gila National Forest or shooting wolves from helicopters or running over them with snowmobiles or bailing out ranchers after wildfires socialized grazing just isn’t enough to keep some Republicans happy.
After the 2022 Black Fire erased 325,000 acres of the forage base for elk and other cervids on the Gila removing rampaging cattle became an imperative to protect wilderness so contractors with the US Department of Agriculture's Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service or APHIS shot some 84 invasive beeves in 2022 and 2023. Managers with the GNF knew there were still critters infesting public lands so officials took comments on another round of lethal removals but decided not to pursue those plans after the Forest Service found just twenty.
In 2023 the Center for Biological Diversity sued the US Fish and Wildlife Service because of that agency's failure to better protect the Gila River from erosion caused by livestock and wild cattle.
Earlier this year US District Court Judge for the District of New Mexico James O. Browning ruled that feral cattle on the Gila are not domestic livestock in a 241 page response to a lawsuit brought by the NM Cattle Growers' Association and other petitioners who graze livestock on public lands for pennies per head. The Cattle Growers’ Association is not known for accuracy or precision and an appeal of the decision had not been announced at post time.
The Forest Service contended in their response to the suit that the feral cattle in the Gila — descendants of a herd abandoned in the 1970s on the Redstone grazing allotment at the northern edge of the Silver City Ranger District — have not been raised or kept by humans for generations, so therefore do not qualify as livestock. The cattle, the Forest Service argued in the response, are destructive to the riparian areas of the Gila Wilderness and also pose a danger to hikers and others who go to the forest for recreation. [Cattle Growers skeptical of ruling in feral cow case]
Gila National Forest officials received more than 5,000 public comments that supported removing feral cattle from the wilderness — which is critical habitat for several endangered and threatened species, including Mexican spotted owls, yellow-billed cuckoos and more.
— Center for Biological Diversity (@biologicaldiversity.org) January 30, 2025 at 10:55 AM
2/16/25
Polluting pork industry GOP Nebraska governor calls for nitrate study
Republicans in red states are howling because the federal government is buying land to protect it from desertification so groundwater depletion and the absence of public land is draining the Ogallala or High Plains Aquifer six and a half times faster than its recharge rate and nearly all the groundwater sampled from it is contaminated with uranium and nitrates from industrial agriculture.
In 2008 after Nebraska's 1978 median nitrate level doubled lab tests showed a few municipal wells were exceeding the US Environmental Protection Agency limit for uranium when samples jumped as high as 57 parts per billion. In 2011 one irrigation well just four miles from a municipal water source tested 322 parts per billion of uranium or more than 10 times the legal limit for drinking water set by EPA.
In a 2015 study researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln reported that 78 percent of groundwater samples from the Ogallala Formation found with unsafe concentrations of uranium were also contaminated with nitrates from farming. Researchers learned that nitrates at levels near the 10-parts-per-million legal limit release uranium into the state’s groundwater, which provides drinking water for 85 percent of Nebraskans.
Towns in Nebraska are stepping up sampling municipal supplies where nitrate levels are still rising but the owners of private wells are not. Jim Pillen, the state's Republican governor is a major contributor to nitrate impairment but he wants a study that will pin the blame on farmers. Suggesting that irony is not completely dead, wells in the Republican River basin are the most severely threatened by nitrate poisoning.
Bacteria in human bodies can turn nitrate, a colorless, tasteless and odorless chemical, into nitrite and then convert it to nitrosamine, a known probable carcinogen. Out of nearly 29,000 private well owners the state reached out to, only 3,478 samples were sent back. The state study happened because it’s a step toward Pillen’s goal of reducing overapplication of nitrogen fertilizers, said Laura Strimple, the governor’s spokesperson, in an email statement. [Many Nebraskans still under threat of high nitrate in drinking water, report finds]After public outcry scuttled its eminent domain scam federally subsidized Sioux Falls, South Dakota chemical company POET, that enables nitrate pollution to grow corn for ethanol, has entered an agreement to transport waste carbon dioxide through Nebraska in an existing natural gas pipeline to a sequestration site in Wyoming according to a press release.
Learn how Flatwater Free Press reporter Yanqi Xu uncovered extensive nitrate pollution in Nebraska, including from the governor’s hog farms. healthjournalism.org/blog/2024/01...
— Association of Health Care Journalists (@healthjournalism.org) January 30, 2024 at 8:37 AM
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2/10/25
Metal tariffs could restart landfill mining
Brohm was an Australian company recruited by a now-dead Republican governor who gutted environmental protection in South Dakota. In the pre-cellphone days Brohm and this former Twin City Fruit marketing associate shared a radio telephone party line where managers plotting an environmental disaster at the Gilt Edge site unwittingly leaked the news to anyone listening.
Disadvantaged populations have been subject to mining-driven environmental racism for hundreds if not thousands of years and in 2014 Nobel Prize winner, Professor Paul Krugman warned Americans that Earth hating Republicans want to make America one big strip mine.
Currently, the US is 100% reliant on foreign sources of the gallium that's used for integrated circuits and light emitting diodes or LEDs. According to the US Geological Survey the nation imports most of its bauxite and alumina so instead of ripping up ground in America recycling aluminum is mostly working but there is so much metal buried in landfills that if we mined those we'd import even less. Electronic waste containing copper, gold and platinum is valued at nearly $100 billion but only 4% is repurposed while new mines are currently being permitted in Montana and Arizona.
Today, visitors and skiers at Terry Peak in the occupied Black Hills are increasingly concerned by the encroachment of a massive tailings pile and ever-widening mining scars from decades of scorched earth. But the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming are hardly the only public lands plundered by foreign companies under cover of the General Mining Law of 1872 that was enacted to settle Civil War debt and rob Indigenous peoples of their homes and human rights.
Until it closed in 1939 the Tererro Mine in the headwaters of the Pecos River took gold, lead and other metals then left piles of toxic waste rock in their place. After major flooding in 1991 when sulfuric acid, aluminum and zinc swept into the river miner Freeport-McMoRan was held responsible for the deaths of some 100,000 Rio Grande cutthroat trout and for the subsequent decades of acid mine drainage.
Learn more from the World Economic Forum.
Last time Trump levied similar steel tariffs, it led to an increase of~ 1,000 jobs in steel production -- but 75,000 *fewer* manufacturing jobs in downstream firms where steel or aluminum are an input into production. econofact.org/steel-tariff...
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) February 9, 2025 at 4:15 PM
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2/9/25
SD county named for a war criminal whining about maintaining FS roads
A state park, a peak, a county and a town in the Black Hills are named after a murdererous war criminal.
At the courthouse in a South Dakota county named for a war criminal Patrick Pipkin and members of a religious splinter group bought a 140 acre compound for a fraction of its value in 2021 that was built in 2005 by now-jailed polygamist Warren Jeffs.
The United States Forest Service paid Custer County $166,978.15 to maintain its roads in the county that the public travels on, also known as Schedule A roads in county highway department parlance. At the Jan. 22 meeting of the Custer County Commission, county highway superintendent Jess Doyle presented an update to the commission that showed in 2024 the county spent nearly $1.7 million in county taxpayer money maintaining those same roads, showing that while the Forest Service does give the county some money—and free gravel—the cost of maintaining its roads still far exceeds what the county receives to do so. Also discussed at the meeting was the National Wilderness Preservation System, in which there is potentially nearly 7,000 acres of county land that the government is eyeing as potential designated Wilderness area. The lands are already part of the Black Hills National Forest. [War Criminal County Chronicle]
Now imagine if the county commission was landlocked within a tribal preserve where access is limited by that government instead of enjoying the fruits that the National Forest System provides to the towns in the Black Hills.
Remanding lands in the public domain to the tribal communities from whom they were seized can’t happen soon enough. But as much as this interested party would like to see a Forest and Land Management Service within the Interior Department a Trump administration consolidation will cause catastrophic damage to both the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.
2/8/25
Colorado rethinking semiautomatic rifle ban as Trump seizes power
Colorado is considering the ban of some semiautomatic firearms but now that American democracy is facing a constitutional crisis Governor Jared Polis says he's skeptical about restricting those weapons after Donald Trump began his Fujimori-style autogolpe and civil war is looming.
One Democratic cosponsor, Sen. Marc Snyder of Manitou Springs, now says he won’t vote for the measure, citing doubts over its reach and concerns from his constituents. The governor said in deciding whether to sign or veto the bill he wants “to make sure it doesn’t interfere with legal, law-abiding gun owners in our state for hunting, for home defense or sport.” [Colorado Senate debate on bill banning manufacture, sale of semiautomatic guns delayed amid negotiations with Jared Polis]Trump's "Coup Klux Klan" has been assaulting Colorado neighborhoods threatening local control, angering American citizens who know it's only a civil violation to be in the country without authorization and as of Friday no one has been charged but communities are bracing for violent blowback.
“If they don’t trust law enforcement, they probably won’t go to them and tell them, hey there is a dangerous thing happening in my neighborhood,” said Laura Lunn, an immigration attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, who works out of the GEO detention center, which houses immigrants. “When you blur the lines between these different agencies, you are causing distrust within the community of both agencies.” [Immigration raids in Colorado, both highly visible and cloaked in secrecy, rattle advocates and local authorities]Trump is escalating militant tactics that mirror Ruby Ridge and Waco but his actions are deeply reminiscent of the 1992 autocoup perpetrated by Alberto Fujimori who dismissed the legislative and judicial branches of the Peruvian government and claimed their powers for himself. Like Fujimori Trump is a career criminal and convicted felon whose offspring are reactionary toadies.
Jared Polis is a patriot who supports the Second Amendment, the US Department of Education and the expansion of passenger rail.
Trump Claims He Can Overrule Constitution With Executive Order Because Of Little-Known ‘No One Will Stop Me’ Loophole
— The Onion (@theonion.com) February 8, 2025 at 9:56 AM
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2/6/25
Migrants not showing up for work, momentum building for general strike
The California Farm Bureau says fears in the Central Valley have led to migrant farmworkers not showing up for work, which has virtually halted the area's citrus harvest. https://t.co/A2giCQaert
— Vera Bergengruen (@VeraMBergen) January 27, 2025
General strike.
— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis.bsky.social) February 2, 2025 at 5:38 AM
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— Wilson Cruz (@wilsoncruz.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 11:17 AM
2/4/25
RCFD: grass fires nearly doubled in 2024; governor wants fireworks anyway
This week the Rapid City Fire Department announced it responded to more than 250 fire calls in 2024, reported a 92% increase in blazes where flashy one hour fuels were involved and is concerned 2025 will be worse.
The late Bill Gabbert worked as a wildland firefighter in California for twenty years before retiring in the Black Hills where he wrote as an expert on wildland fire. Using metrics that measure the probability of ignition or PI he took a firm stand on the risk of wildfire starts after a return of pyrotechnics to Mount Rushmore National Memorial where he was Fire Management Officer for four years.
Recall that during President Barack Obama's first term fireworks were banned at Six Grandfathers because of repeated wildfire starts during red flag conditions and residual chemicals leaching into groundwater supplies. Former Superintendent Cheryle Schreier fled the Park Service and retired after criticism for her outspoken opinion on the rockets at Rushmore in the occupied Black Hills saying she spoke out for the right reasons.
Now the Trump Organization is threatening the French and Battle Creek watersheds again. So, in post-truth South Dakota the new governor has invited a convicted felon who is leading a treasonous autogolpe to soil the land of Black Elk after North Dakota's former governor suspends disbelief for Independence Day.
1/30/25
New Mexico, Colorado exploring additional geothermal potential, whither South Dakota?
In 2021 the Bureau of Land Management sold a geothermal lease in Hidalgo County, New Mexico despite a 2016 blowout near a $43 million geothermal electricity plant erected by Cyrq Energy in 2013 when Republican Susana Martinez was governor. Cyrq Energy has four working geothermal projects including Lightning Dock Geothermal Power Plant near Animas. It's a 15.3 MW binary geothermal plant with two production wells and 7 injection wells that sells power to Public Service of New Mexico (PNM) with firm baseload power. In December, 2024 the BLM sold geothermal leases on seven parcels totaling 4,468 acres in Doña Ana County.
Using an enhanced geothermal system (EGS) at its Project Red site in northern Nevada Google-financed Fervo Energy completed a full-scale, 30-day well test able to generate 3.5 megawatts or enough electricity to power over 2,600 homes full time. Fervo employs a hydro-shearing process and believes it can deliver about 400 megawatts by 2028 or enough electricity to power 300,000 homes at once from half a dozen other sites across the western US. In 2024 the BLM approved the Fervo Cape Geothermal Power Project in Beaver County, Utah which has the potential to generate up to 2 gigawatts (GW) or enough energy to supply over 2 million homes.
Colorado could tap orphaned oil and gas wells to supply hot water for electricity generation especially now that the state is falling behind on its own self-imposed emissions-reducing mandates.
Colorado is interested in geothermal as a way to supplement other renewable energy resources, as the state looks to end coal production by 2030 and reach 100% net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. [What is geothermal energy, and how are states in the Mountain West promoting and regulating it?]In South Dakota’s Black Hills the US Department of Energy, New Mexico's Sandia Labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory, South Dakota School of Mines and others are collaborating on the potential for generating electricity using EGS but Hot Springs, Belle Fourche, Philip and Midland also enjoy untapped geothermal resources.
1/28/25
Former Rapid City cleric blasts administration over raids
Sanctuary or the right of refuge is the ancient implied inviolate protection of the oppressed through ecclesiastical immunity where refugees and fugitives are afforded adequate time for penitence free of persecution from political and legal interdiction adopted by the Roman Church centuries ago.
In 2018 Cupich's predecessor was accused of covering up sex crimes in Pennsylvania after a grand jury found the church hid predator priests from prosecution.
Today, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago is pushing back on plans by the Trump Organization to raid churches and schools.
“The Catholic community stands with the people of Chicago in speaking out in defence of the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers. Similarly, if the reports are true, it should be known that we would oppose any plan that includes a mass deportation of U.S. citizens born of undocumented parents,” he said. “For members of faith communities, the threatened mass deportations also leave us with the searing question, ‘What is God telling us in this moment?’” he asked, calling for a collective examination of conscience. [Cardinal Cupich: We oppose any immigrant mass deportation plan]Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and General Michael Flynn are modern Falangists financed by the John Birch Society. Many catholic schools are in the Hillsdale bubble because the curriculum ignores the church’s role in the Native American Genocide and Opus Dei is a cult of Fascists.
Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a separate statement also criticized some of Trump's wide-reaching executive orders on immigration. ['Look in the mirror': Vance knocks Catholic organization for criticizing Trump immigration policy]In 2023 Pope Francis sacked an apostate who endorsed the phrase: "You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat" and today Francis calls the deportation scheme a "disgrace."
The full Cupich statement is linked here.
1/27/25
Grassland fire danger grips South Dakota again
1/25/25
Haaland clearly the frontrunner for NM governor
My home state of South Dakota will suffer brain drain for years to come and New Mexico has its own set of challenges but living where the Republican Party is virtually meaningless and Democrats rule is well worth it.
In 2012 Martin Heinrich defeated Republican Heather Wilson, his predecessor in Congress and today thanks to efforts led by Senator Heinrich bison have become America's National Mammal, Amtrak's Southwest Chief is still chugging, the Gila River is no longer in danger of being diverted, Chaco Culture National Historical Park enjoys greater protection from the extractive industry and he is leading the reform of the Mining Law of 1872. He is a smart, telegenic, pragmatic statesman in a state where a Democrat can easily keep the seat.
Now, after securing the release of Leonard Peltier from federal prison former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is refocusing her attention home in New Mexico and Sen. Heinrich is staying to fight the Orange Julius in DC.
His decision not to launch a gubernatorial campaign could clear the way for former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to be the highest-profile candidate in the race. She attended the opening day of the 60-day New Mexico legislative session in Santa Fe this week and received a loud ovation from Democratic lawmakers when introduced in the House chamber. [Martin Heinrich rules out run for governor, citing high stakes in Washington]The Earth haters will likely nominate Nella Domenici who lost bigly to Sen. Heinrich.
In 2012 I organized for @Barack Obama in Indian Country. Our mission was simple, leave no voice unheard. Today that mission has never been more important.
— Deb Haaland (@debhaalandnm.bsky.social) January 24, 2025 at 8:19 PM
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1/24/25
Wyoming Republicans will likely doom another Indigenous historic site
There are at least 23 prehistoric sites near Devils Tower National Monument, some of which are archaeological treasures eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. So in 2023 during a review of its resource management plan (RMP) the Newcastle, Wyoming office of the US Bureau of Land Management identified the Little Missouri Antelope Trap as an area of critical concern or ACEC.
Ogden Driskill is an Earth hating Wyoming legislator running cattle near Mahto Tipila in the Belle Fourche River watershed. But even Driskill isn't white enough for some Trumpers and faced a solid write-in campaign from a former chair of the Crook County Republican Party. Crook County is home to the Little Missouri Antelope Trap.
Since at least 2021 Wyoming's two Earth hating US Senators have introduced legislation that would cancel Indigenous culture at America's first national monument so the preservation of another ACEC is likely doomed especially now that a US president who hates Native Americans is slashing history.
"In the interior, there are a series of wooden juniper drive-line structures and there is a physical antelope trap where Native American Indian tribes came to hunt for significant periods of time across the land-scape," says Chad Krause, Field Manager for the BLM's Newcastle Field Office. There's only one existing ACEC in the management area overseen by the Newcastle Field Office. The cur-rent plan, which was approved in 1999, includes Whoopup Canyon east of Newcastle. "It has petroglyphs that are around 11,000 years old," Krause says. The proposed area has public access via the Little Missouri Road and is a popular hunting area for – unsurprisingly – antelope. What made this site stand out, he says, was partly the information gathered from the tribes and partly the manageability of the location. [BLM proposes new protected area]Learn more at Salon.
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1/21/25
SD agro-terrorists push bill to hide ecoterrorism
In 2015 concern over the further contamination of shallow aquifers that supply water to a third of East River caused the Clay County Planning and Zoning Board to table for the second time in as many weeks changing ordinances governing concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs. In 2018 South Dakota State University President Barry Dunn told WNAX radio that state residents should just accept the fact that the Big Sioux River is a shit hole.
But now an Earth hating South Dakota legislator from Madison wants to allow eminent domain and trespass for some pipeline operators but also wants to protect CAFOs from scrutiny. Casey Crabtree admits that the cases of criminal trespass at CAFOs don't even exist but ignores the fact that those operations are in fact agro-terrorists themselves.
But lobbyist and ecoterrorist American Farm Bureau Federation is pushing a bill that would bar what used to be South Dakota's environmental watchdog from even releasing the locations of CAFOs in the red moocher state to anyone unless required by federal law. CAFOs in the chemical toilet routinely violate state regulations and flagrantly flout federal pollution standards.
The restriction on obtaining information about CAFOs worries Jay Gilbertson, manager of the East Dakota Water Development District, which promotes conservation and management of water resources in eastern South Dakota. "But when it comes to animal feeding operations, if you really want to know, you have to go to Pierre, and try to get in the DANR building and dig through the paper files? That would just be silly." [Bill to protect farms from spying could limit access to CAFO data]Add the absence of cultural fire, the extirpation of apex predators, the resulting rise of mesopredators, increased numbers of domestic livestock then stir in a melange of industrial chemicals with climate change and voila: red state collapse on parade!
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 an educator who was an assistant professor 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.
Under lighting a subject is often used in horror movies, and photos, to make someone look unsettling and evil.
— Jesus Freakin Congress (@TheJFreakinC) January 16, 2025
Think of how you hold a flashlight under your face to tell a spooky story… this portrait is heavily under lit.
It should also be pointed out that his facial… pic.twitter.com/4t1L3592y4
When Trump pardons 1,000 convicted insurrectionist he will be forming his army whose allegiance only to him. Clockwork Orange 2.0. The Proud Boys arrived at the Washington Monument at 10am I followed them towards the Capitol then went back to the Ellipse to hear Trump speak. pic.twitter.com/1dhJzf4k9b
— Sandi Bachom 📹 (@sandibachom) January 6, 2025
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.
Expert witnesses can make a case or break it. That tension has become increasingly apparent in litigation involving over 7,000 people who claim exposure to Syngenta’s herbicide paraquat caused them to develop Parkinson’s, writes columnist @JgreeneJenna https://t.co/O8u9qM7xdx pic.twitter.com/xpxsWCSpOX
— Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) December 6, 2024
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.
Jacking up the bill to We, the People are the usual suspects including the US Chamber of Commerce, Bayer, American Crystal Sugar, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Koch cabal. https://t.co/kcwg5d8cSr #wotus https://t.co/ruUJ84Wig0
— interested party (@larry_kurtz) May 22, 2024
1/14/25
Trump's ag secretary scheduled to appoint BHNF resource committee
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.
1/10/25
Trump, Republicans inciting violence against federal employees, stealing presidency
— Mike Luckovich (@mluckovich.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 2:24 PM
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]
“A little over a year ago, Roberts issued a highly unusual public statement that lashed back at Trump’s claims that many federal judges are nakedly partisan and illegitimate.” https://t.co/7QrcbjmNvW
— interested party (@larry_kurtz) December 31, 2019
“While his wife ran around helping Trump with his coup, Thomas was the senior firebrand in a coup of extremists on the court. They yanked power away from John Roberts and are defying the majority will in this country in ways that are terrifying.” https://t.co/fhX7qwi3ds
— interested party (@larry_kurtz) June 25, 2022
1/9/25
Blue state Minnesota compels pipeline company to work with tribes at sacred site
So, how is it that Republicans are militantly divided over the utility of eminent domain for private enterprise for pipelines to move CO2 but are just fine with employing it for the entrepreneurial transport of oil and gas?
In 2012 and 2013 ONEOK drove piplelines through sage grouse habitat in eastern Montana and Wyoming with little pushback from residents even though a segment of a newly-built high pressure TransCanada gas pipeline exploded 20 miles west of Gillette, Wyoming. In 2018 ONEOK drove yet another gas pipeline that runs parallel to its existing ones right through at least 23 prehistoric sites near Devils Tower National Monument, some of which are archaeological treasures eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Even though the US Army Corps of Engineers is required to perform archaeological surveys of major river and stream crossings imagine these projects going through cemeteries where people of European descent are buried.
In southwestern Minnesota Pipestone National Monument is still an oasis but now it's surrounded by Earth hating Republicans, glyphosate-saturated cornfields and overkill concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs.
On Tuesday members of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission rescinded a September decision to grant a specific route permit for a gas line near Pipestone National Monument, a site sacred to tribal nations. Magellan Pipeline Company supplies over half of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel used by consumers in eastern North Dakota, eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota. The company is owned by ONEOK, Inc., an Oklahoma-based company. [Minnesota regulators require studies along possible routes before pipeline construction near sacred site]It's not impossible Pipestone will be an Amtrak stop someday.
Image: Indian Country Today Media.
1/8/25
Number of refugees moving to South Dakota accelerating
In 2024 South Dakota dropped to 49th in financial literacy and 50th in financial knowledge and education despite the 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. Quizzically known as the Land of Infinite Variety the state is 40th in overall innovation, 45th in innovation environment, 50th in share of technology companies and is still 47th in R&D spending per capita. South Dakota is 24th of states where workers are fleeing their jobs, 35th in women's health and safety, 47th in road and bridge infrastructure and 51st in elder protections.
But as young people and Democrats flee South Dakota more people of color are doing the work in the red moocher state. Meat processors and industrial agriculture employ the greatest numbers of Hispanics in South Dakota. Spanish speakers prop up the federally subsidized dairy industry East River but in Huron Karen refugees slaughter and process turkeys. The crony capitalism that keeps South Dakota one of the worst states for the working class decimates lands promised to native peoples by treaty while my home town of Elkton struggles to find enough housing for migrant workers who often live in squalor.
South Dakota is home to about 39,900 recent immigrants or about 4.3% of the state's population and more than 280 refugees resettled in South Dakota so far in July during the fiscal year 2024 compared to 206 in all of 2023.
The extreme white wing in South Dakota is losing it not because nearly half of students qualify for free or reduced lunches and some 3,500 students receive special education support but because new residents in South Dakota are migrants from Muslim countries like Afghanistan, South Sudan and Ethiopia. Nebraska and Iowa are also seeing surges in immigration but Brookings and Moody Counties in South Dakota are homes to more people from Guatemala and other Central American nations.
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