Reich Mike Rounds moves to the middle as Bengs advances

Rotund reprobate rescuer Reich Mike Rounds is rattled.

With Brian Bengs forcing the South Dakota US Senate race to the center career politician Rounds says he and Democratic Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar want to return some cropland to grasslands. In my home state of South Dakota some eight million acres are salt-impacted due to seawater intrusion, fertilizer and other soil amendments, irrigation with saline water and roadway deicer applications. But, Minnesota is struggling with nitrate pollution, too.

Soils are worn out from decades of pesticides, poor farming practices and manufactured fertilizers. Aquifer sources are not considered high quality for irrigation because of their salinity levels and fossil water from limestone contains the minerals that made us human but shallow wells and waterways suffer impairment from nitrate pollution making water less available especially where aquifer levels are dwindling. 

Traditional deep-rooted prairie grasses and diverse small-grain rotations have largely been replaced by heavy corn and soybean rotations allowing the water table to rise and deposit more salt at the surface. Expanding white and brown saline patches force farmers into a loop of spending money on seeds that fail to emerge exposing the trade-off between short-term financial profitability and long-term soil health. 

Farmers would sign 10- to 15-year contracts and establish and maintain perennial grasses or non-woody vegetation like wildflowers, buckwheat or radishes. The program has additional incentives for beginning farmers and ranchers, and would prioritize contracts for poorly performing and highly erodible cropland. It would also pay landowners at a rate based on the land’s cropland value, rather than its pastureland value, which would amount to larger payments. [South Dakota Searchlight]

Yes, socialized agriculture, socialized dairies, socialized cheese, socialized livestock production, a socialized timber industry, socialized air service, socialized freight rail, a socialized nursing home industry, socialized water systems, a socialized internet and socialized infrastructure are all fine with Republicans in South Dakota but then they insist single-payer medical insurance is socialized medicine.

Big Money Mike Rounds has sat by and let the national debt more than DOUBLE in his time as a senator.

He’s rubber stamped runaway spending, tax cuts for Wall Street, and is sticking America’s children with the bill. pic.twitter.com/anqxKftXwV

— Brian Bengs (@BrianBengs) August 19, 2026

White people in South Dakota still too stupid to manage cannabis industry

With tribes in Minnesota, Nebraska and Wyoming showing white people how to cultivate, inspect and market cannabis South Dakota is still dragging behind. Nevertheless, the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s cannabis industry brings in about $700,000 annually through fees and taxes and currently there are 11 dispensaries, 11 processors and nine cultivators across that tribal nation. 

Even as home growing surged a thousand percent in the horrible red state with a reactionary Earth hater as attorney general advocates know South Dakota is leaving money on the table. But if the neanderthal South Dakota Legislature had any integrity or ethics (they don’t) they would empower the tribal nations trapped in South Dakota to be the sole cannabis producers, inspectors and distributors in the state (they won't).

Nicole Ezeh, law and public safety legislative director for the National Conference of State Legislatures, spoke to the state’s [therapeutic] cannabis board Monday. “The recreational states will still be in a bifurcated system where half of the regulatory scheme that deals with [therapeutic] cannabis products will be under schedule three, but adult use products will still be under schedule one still,” Ezeh said. [Bill Janklow's idea of public radio]

Learn more at South Dakota Searchlight.

Earth haters increasingly fearful of Bengs

Morbidly obese Earth hater, Pat Powers is wringing his unctuous little hands over Brian Bengs' appeal to South Dakota voters as short guy Reich Mike Rounds shrinks from his oath of office.

Data centers are making Mike Rounds’ Big Tech donors richer. But you?

Higher utility bills
Water drying up
… and a buzzing sound in your backyard for years to come. pic.twitter.com/w3GkdDPCjC

— Brian Bengs (@BrianBengs) August 13, 2026

I spent 26 years in the armed forces. My job as a JAG was to root out corruption and make sure our government acted ethically. With the corruption rampant, we need more watchdogs in Washington. And fewer lapdogs. pic.twitter.com/UqU6RHhXW8

— Brian Bengs (@BrianBengs) August 15, 2026

I’m uniting South Dakotans from the right, left and center to retire Big Money Mike Rounds, who believes South Dakota’s senate seat should be up at auction to the highest bidder. pic.twitter.com/7r2a1qgPKA

— Brian Bengs (@BrianBengs) August 16, 2026

South Dakota still failing women

In 2018 South Dakota ranked 50th in women's workplace environment and 38th overall in WalletHub's Best & Worst States. The red moocher state climbed to 32nd in 2019 but sank again in 2020 to surf the bottom for women’s equality at 38th and 41st in empowerment. 

In 2022, of the 25 best states for women 22 of them were blue according to rankings from WalletHub. My home state of South Dakota held 51st place for the number of women who own businesses, 49th in percentage of women who voted in 2020 but tied for 1st with North Dakota for lowest unemployment among women. The bottom 8 states for women's well-being were red. 

In 2023 20 of the 25 best states for women were blue but 17 of the worse states for women were red. North and South Dakota were still tied for first place in rates of employed women while New Mexico is still too high in rates of women living in poverty. South Dakota was 50th in women-owned businesses and 41st in women's health care and safety. 

In 2025 South Dakota was 51st in the percentage of women-owned businesses. The best 20 states for women were all blue while the 20 worst states for women were all red. In 2024 South Dakota dropped to 49th in financial literacy and 50th in financial knowledge and education. The state was the 43rd best economy in the US, 51st in percentage of businesses owned by women and 50th in innovation potential. 

Today, South Dakota is 36th in women's equality behind even Mississippi, 35th in political empowerment and 30th in workplace environment, has dropped to 50th in financial literacy is 51st in financial knowledge and education rank, 41st in innovation, 45th in human capital rank, 47th in innovation environment and 50th in share of technology companies. 

Read it all at WalletHub.

Tribes leading as Wyoming hints at loosening cannabis restrictions

A 2020 University of Wyoming survey showed 54% of the state's residents supported legalizing for adults over 21 while 85% supported legalizing therapeutic cannabis.

In 2021 the Northern Arapaho voted to decriminalize and the Eastern Shoshone General Council passed a binding resolution to operate tribally-owned cultivation and extraction facilities for cannabis-based products. Rooted in the tribe's internal legislative authority based on the Fort Bridger Treaties of 1863 and 1868 the body asserted that their exclusive land-use rights, self-governance and immunity bypass the jurisdiction of the state of Wyoming and serve as a major step toward tribal self-reliance and economic diversification. 

With the Wyoming governor's tribal liaison in attendance the Eastern Shoshone Cannabis Commission hosted a public education meeting last December to explore how a majority women and Native-owned industry could be developed on the Wind River Reservation. But just recently the state’s attorney general objected to the Trump Organization’s rescheduling of the herb.

“I think for as long as I’ve been in the legislature, [therapeutic cannabis] has been supported by a majority of Wyomingites,” Senator Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, said. “It’s gotten to the point where general legislation is supported by a majority, and even a majority of republicans support legalization.” Representative Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, said the attorney general’s objection seems “out of step” with the people of Wyoming. “I think we should have aligned with federal law on this,” Provenza said. “But also we need to go further than that. We’ve just heard too many benefits from people like veterans who use it for PTSD and people who use it for chronic pain.” [Jackson Hole News & Guide]

interested party remembers Stan Adelstein

The late Republican former South Dakota State Senator Stan Adelstein's ancestors owned a store in Kadoka adjacent to the Pine Ridge Reservation and was vested in mining interests from gold to gravel on stolen treaty lands. But Stan Adelstein became ten times the man Denny Sanford was and screwed way fewer people. 

In 1997, I performed my first of six seasons as Mother Ginger in the Black Hills Dance Theater’s production of the Nutcracker; Vanessa Short Bull danced the Sugar Plum Fairy. One of her inspirations was Maria Tallchief, America’s first major prima ballerina who was an Osage Tribal member and danced the Sugar Plum Fairy. Stan Adelstein was always at our productions even sometimes backstage.

My only personal interaction with Mr. Adelstein was in 2005 after he bought the Black Hills Fort Pierre Roundhouse in Lead. After losing the Ross Compressor Building bid to the now-defunct outfit that was casting the giant presidential heads my business partners and I turned our attention to rehabilitating the roundhouse. I made an appointment with Stan at his office in Rapid City and met with him after spraying texture so I was coated from head to toe. But after tracking drywall mud all over the carpet he sold it to Dr. Duane and Phyllis Sander of Brookings in 2007. 

Fast forward to 2010 in response to journalist Kevin Woster showing sunlight on the hiring of South Dakota War College poo peddler Pat Powers to the office of incoming Republican Secretary of State Jason Gant, Sen. Adelstein, also a Republican, exposed the War College blog as likely defamatory and called for an investigation of Gant and the SOS's alleged collusion with former employee, Pat Powers to engineer an ALEC-inspired red map strategy. 

In June 2012, Sen. Stan Adelstein formally asked Attorney General Marty Jackley to investigate the arrangement. Adelstein and critical journalists highlighted that Powers was running a private political vendor business, the Dakota Campaign Store, while drawing a $65,000 taxpayer salary to run the state's neutral election systems. Adelstein openly blasted the partisan weaponization of the office and went so far as to ask the Attorney General if impeachment or gubernatorial removal was warranted. Amid the mounting legal pressure and scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest, Powers resigned from his state post in July 2012.

Stan Adelstein gave generously to every cause, paid countless school lunch arrears and his estate probably still will. 

Loomer: Thune a Judas, daughter a leftist sympathizer

The Orange Julius is running out of patience with career socialist US Senator John Thune and so is Laura Loomer.

John Thune’s daughter, Brittany Thune-Lindberg, worked for the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers PAC, which donated to multiple anti-Trump radical Democrats from February 2013 to June 2021. Elected Democrats who received donations from the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers PAC during Brittany Thune-Lindberg’s tenure include Nancy Pelosi, Mikie Sherrill, Hakeem Jeffries, Jamie Raskin, Jon Tester, Katherine Clark, and Sherrod Brown. 

The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers PAC’s donations to Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown are telling as they occurred in 2019 and 2020, meaning that the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers PAC money donated to Tester and Brown was used in their recent election races.

Senator John "Judas" Thune of South Dakota, the Republican Senate Leader and career politician voted to confirm these six Biden cabinet nominations: Merrick Brian Garland, of Maryland, attorney general Gina Marie Raimondo, of Rhode Island, secretary of commerce; Lloyd James Austin, of Georgia, secretary of defense Antony John Blinken, of New York, secretary of state; Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg, of Indiana, secretary of transportation; Janet Louise Yellen, of California, secretary of treasury. [Laura Loomer]

In an apparent conflict of interest Mr. Thune voted to confirm Luke Lindberg in 2025 as undersecretary for trade and foreign agricultural affairs at the US Department of Agriculture. The executive director and chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said Senate rules don’t overtly bar senators from voting on the confirmation of a family member but the rules do bar members of Congress from using their office in a way that benefits family members.

After nepo baby Thune-Lindberg left the PAC she transitioned to roles in the private wealth hoarding and corporate greed sectors but today she's a christianic musician. 

Drunkard Hegseth a coke head, too?

Addictive personality disease?

Ok. I had a cocaine problem, 22 years in recovery. Pete Hegseth is high. I remember that fidgeting, that sweating, all of it. He needs drug tested. https://t.co/dr3tDcMqa3

— Chef Joe Gera 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇮🇹 (@redhotnerd) August 12, 2026

Burns: Medicare for all seems reasonable

Editor's note: there is a growing movement among Democrats and others to fund Medicare for all but this interested party likes the idea of rolling the funding for Obamacare, TriCare, Medicare, the Indian Health Service and the Veterans Health Administration together then offering Medicaid for all by increasing the estate tax, raising taxes on tobacco and adopting a carbon tax. Yes, socialized agriculture, socialized dairies, socialized cheese, socialized livestock production, a socialized timber industry, socialized air service, socialized freight rail, a socialized nursing home industry, socialized water systems and now a socialized internet are all fine with Republicans in South Dakota but then they insist single-payer medical insurance is socialized medicine.

Robert Burns is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Dean Emeritus of the Honors College at South Dakota State University. His column appears in the Brookings Beacon.

Much is being made of a progressive proposal for “Medicare for all” as we approach the 2026 midterm elections. 

There are variations of exactly what the proposal entails but agreement exists among supporters that healthcare would continue to be delivered as a combination of private and public providers — but a single public payer system would be created to pay for the healthcare goods and services provided.

Critics argue the proposal is far too radical and expensive. Proponents argue it is a reasonable proposal in response to the healthcare issue which the American public identifies as the third-leading public issue in American politics.The American healthcare issue is identified by the public and policy makers as a multipart issue involving high cost, limited access and poor results. 

Annual healthcare spending in the U.S. is nearly $5.3 trillion and accounts for approximately 18.5% of our nation’s GDP. The per capita spending is approximately $15,600.

Both the total spending and the per capita spending levels are nearly twice that of all other democratic industrialized nations, all of which provide some version of public, universal and comprehensive healthcare for the citizenry. 

The high cost of healthcare in the U.S. is traceable to multiple factors including the fact that the industry employees state of the art expensive technology and high-salaried professionals. Other factors accounting for high costs include the lack of price visibility and regulations for drugs, devices and procedures, the fee for service practice and the high administrative costs associated with administering a tangled web of scores of private and public health insurance plans.

Our highest level of global healthcare spending fails to provide the highest level of access and the best healthcare results. Access is limited by several obstacles including lack of personal funds and insurance, rural medical provider shortages, insurance restrictions on care, and lingering social and racial disparities.

The most recent government reports identify nearly 9% of the American public or approximately 28 million persons lack healthcare insurance of any type and that number is expected to increase by nearly 3.5 million during this calendar year because of Affordable Care Act insurance premium subsides being eliminated and federal funding for Medicaid being reduced by $800 million due to the One Big Beautiful Bill. 

The lack of coverage is not spread evenly across the public. Nearly 30% of households with incomes below $25,000 per year lack health insurance which explains in part why our low-income public suffer disproportionately worse health conditions. Children have a high level of health insurance coverage with approximately 5.6% being uninsured while nearly 12% of the adult public between 18 and 64 years old have no health insurance.

Our nation’s public, 65 years old and older, enjoy the highest level of coverage due to Medicare. 

High costs and an inability to afford the high costs limits access to quality care which leads to poor healthcare results in the U.S. Our life expectancy, infant mortality rates, chronic illness rates and the number of avoidable deaths all compare unfavorably with statistics and rates found in other democratic industrialized nations. The American lifestyle and a lack of emphasis on preventive health along with limited access discussed above all contribute to our poor healthcare results. 

Nothing discussed above is new to our list of public issues. We have been faced with these same healthcare realities for decades, yet our policy makers bring us only incremental change. We find some satisfaction in Medicaid and Medicare approved in the mid-1960s, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program that followed and the 2010 Affordable Care Act but the healthcare issues outlined in this essay persist. Under the current Trump Administration and the Republican controlled Congress, funding and regulation regression has been the direction of policy change in healthcare giving us even higher costs, more limited access and poorer results. Perhaps it is the right time for a leap beyond incremental change in the form of Medicare for all. 

A single integrated, regulated and funded healthcare payer system promises universal access, more efficient spending of our healthcare dollars and results competitive with the rest of our democratic industrialized cohort nations. Over 30 modern democracies have proven public funded and regulated universal and comprehensive healthcare is a more efficient and effective use of healthcare spending. 

Those who insist the proposal is a radical version of socialized medicine are invited to advance a better alternative model of healthcare that will address our current challenges of high cost, restricted access and poor results. 

The status quo promises more of the same.

Rally tally looking up!

Two bikers died in separate crashes that occurred about 15 minutes apart on Monday. C'mon, South Dakota, you can send even more Republicans home to Jesus so just try harder!

Fire up the spit!

Minnesota's off-reservation cannabis compacts a model for other states

Tribal sovereignty binds the hands of states competing for federal resources. Under the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act the Tohono O'odham Nation won its lawsuit with the State of Arizona and in 2017 it opened a casino in Glendale outside its established boundaries. 

In 2018 the Oglala Lakota Oyate bought fifty acres just off I-90 outside their Nation then legalized cannabis for all adults in 2020. According to the Lakota Times Oglala Lakota College has the equipment to test cannabis but so far the cost of constructing a lab in Pine Ridge has proved to be prohibitive.

A year ago Legacy Cannabis in Duluth was the first non-tribal retail shop to open and in February a Minneapolis building housing a Pizza Hut became one of more than a dozen non-tribal dispensaries operating in Minnesota. Customers packed into the Brooklyn Park location of RISE dispensaries on its first day of cannabis sales, one of the first privately owned facilities to open about two years after the Legislature fully legalized the herb. 

Several Tribal Nations have signed compacts with Minnesota and lead retail cannabis growth where the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is becoming a billion dollar enterprise after completing construction of a 50,000-square-foot cultivation facility that dwarfs any non-tribal operations which are capped at 30,000 square feet. The White Earth Nation was the first of Minnesota’s eleven Nations to open an off-reservation dispensary and compacts include how Minnesota taxes Tribal Nations on the sale of cannabis products to a licensed wholesaler or dispensary off-reservation.

Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) said other states and tribal nations are looking to mirror its approach — including Virginia, Wisconsin, New York, Connecticut and California, where tribal cannabis is restricted to reservation lands. Waabigwan Mashkiki, translating to “flower medicine” in Ojibwe, can barely keep up with demand as it expands operations in Mahnomen and opens retail stores across the state. Now seven tribally owned stores have opened outside of tribal land. The compacts allow each tribe to operate up to eight. [Minnesota Star-Tribune]

The closest dispensaries to the horrible red state of South Dakota are in Pipestone and Luverne, Minnesota.

Rally carnage at record pace!

Sturgis has already killed twelve Republicans as the medical and law enforcement industries are cutting fat hogs!

Beaudion suspends his campaign for US Senate

Julian Beaudion became a statesman today so odds are the US Senate race in South Dakota just pegged from safe Earth hater to toss-up!

Extreme fire weather returns to permanent disaster area

It looks like South Dakota's Earth hating governor will get another opportunity to beg the Trump Organization for more federal moola with the Bigly Fire is burning near Pactola Lake. 

Yep, so what’s not to like about six or seven month winters, a year-round wildfire season, rampant racism, chilling effects on civil rights, an extremist legislature, a repressive law enforcement industry, living in a chemical toilet, sacrifice zone, perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area?

Black bears killed on I-25 were out of food and looking for water

In 2023 there was black bear scat at the horse water tank and the trail cam didn't catch its maker but an interested party did see one at the top of Morning Sun Road about two years ago. A beekeeper in Cerrillos shot one after it broke into his honey operation and our backhoe operator saw one out here between Baja Waldo and Red Rock Roads. 

At least a dozen have been seen in suburban Albuquerque and hikers have been alerted to bear activity near water sources in Santa Fe. Our excessively dry year means there is little for them to eat even in the mountains so as they move into human spaces they've become at risk to collisions with vehicles just a few miles from where this is being typed.

Two adult black bears and two cubs were found dead Wednesday morning along Interstate 25 about five miles south of Santa Fe on Alamo Creek. A New Mexico Department of Wildlife conservation officer was dispatched to a site between La Cienega and La Bajada following a report to New Mexico State Police about the dead bears. The Los Alamos-based newsletter Boomtown documented 72 calls to county officials reporting nuisance bears in the first six months of 2026 before reporting bear break-ins earlier this month. [Santa Fe New Mexican]

Trump Organization now threatening Prairie Pothole Region

The number of acres in 'agroecosystems' has tripled since the 1940s so poor ag practices like tiling have made soils unable to absorb rainfall creating toxic runoff and flooding. 

In red states like South Dakota freedom equals the right to pollute and agriculture is the leading source of pollution in the waters of the United States. Most East River lakes are already eutrophic shit holes filled with toxic algae and unable to even support fish populations so the Prairie Pothole Region is becoming increasingly threatened by the encroachment of industrial agriculture but more irrigation means pumping from depleted aquifers mainly recharged by the Prairie Pothole Region. 

And, after massive failures of state agencies like South Dakota Game, Fish and Plunder invasive species like zebra and quagga mussels are taking over waterbodies as diving ducks like the Canvasback, Redhead, Bufflehead, Lesser Scaup, Common Goldeneye that feed on the pesky bivalves are being eliminated. 

Yes, the US Environmental Protection Agency and US Fish and Wildlife Service are within the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief the president could simply order the Army Corps of Engineers and all to stand down.

On July 24, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service opened an unusually brief, 14-day public-comment period seeking information about how it manages agricultural drainage pipes—a type of perforated pipe called drain tile—installed near federally protected wetlands. Comments are due August 7. But the information request appears to be the opening move in a process that could weaken protections for more than 28,000 conservation easements covering over 1.5 million acres in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. Simply put: drain tile installed too close to a prairie pothole would effectively drain that wetland and eliminate waterfowl and wildlife habitat. 

If the government now permits drainage systems close enough to starve them of water, the easements may survive on paper while the wetlands themselves quietly vanish—and much of America’s migratory ducks, geese, and other water birds along with them. “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering repealing the rule that protects the integrity of the Duck Stamp easements that have been purchased for generations.” [A Quiet Rule Review Could Drain the Prairie Pothole Region, America’s “Duck Factory”]

Learn more at South Dakota Searchlight.