Northern Valley Beacon

Tim Giago on Sen. Tim Johnson and his illness

2006-12-24T12:30:00.000-09:00

Tim Giago again shows why the Lakota influence is so important in shaping the character of South Dakota. Here is his column on Tim Johnson:

You can take the entire population of South Dakota and put it into Albuquerque and just about break-even. In fact, South Dakota's population might come up a little short. While most of the rural counties in this state continue to lose population, the counties located on the nine Indian reservations in the state continue to grow.
The new jobs provided by the advent of Indian casinos are bringing the Indian people home, although on most of the reservations unemployment still hovers around 50 percent.
When Tim Johnson, D-S.D., ran for re-election against John Thune in 2002, the growing political acumen on the Indian reservations came sharply into play. As the vote tallies came to a conclusion and with only one major precinct still not reporting, Thune led Johnson by about 3,000 votes, and there are those who say that the champagne bottles were about to be pulled from the ice buckets.
The lonely, yet populous precinct yet to report was on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The hearts of John Thune's supporters sank as the count came in and the Lakota voters overwhelmingly got behind Johnson and he squeaked out a 574-vote lead that held.
Although he has spent 10 years in the U.S. Senate, Tim Johnson was the quiet man that was hardly noticed on a national level. He did his job efficiently and without fanfare. He made it a point to seek out the Indian leadership in his home state and discuss the issues important to them. There is not one senator in Washington that has more knowledge about Indian affairs than Tim Johnson.

That is why it came as a frightening shock to nearly every Indian in the state when Johnson fell ill with bleeding in his brain recently. At the Lakota Nation Invitational Basketball Tournament, a 30-year-old annual event that brings nearly 10,000 Indians to Rapid City each December, the conversations of the people centered on the condition of Johnson.
One could not walk through the lobbies of any of the hotels and motels without observing Lakota people scanning the headline of the local daily newspaper that read, "Johnson Recovery Probable." Televisions situated in the lobbies were tuned to CNN or MSNBC to get the latest medical reports.People were talking about how Johnson got behind the Pya Wiconi Project (New Life) to bring fresh water to the reservations and about how he fought the Bush administration to get funds restored to the Indian Health Service.
While the people of South Dakota worried about Johnson's recovery and for the welfare of his wife, Barbara, and their children, the talking heads of the national media speculated about how the balance in the Senate would shake out in the event of Johnson's death or incapacitation. "They are like a bunch of vultures," said one elderly Lakota man.
I must say that I was appalled when I heard that a reporter from back East called the office of Republican governor of South Dakota Mike Rounds, and said, "I understand you have already picked a Republican to replace Sen. Johnson and I was wondering who it is?
South Dakotans may be considered out-of-touch or even a little backward, but at least we try to refrain from such acts of rudeness and inconsideration of people during their times of grief and concern. We are a small state where 10 percent to 12 percent of the total population is American Indian, but in times of tragedy and sorrow, we all come together as one. Let me just add that today all of our hopes and prayers, whether in Lakota or English, are for the quick and safe recovery of Tim Johnson, a man who never needed or wanted to be in the spotlight.

Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association. He can be reached at najournalists@rushmore.com.

Ben Franklin wrote The Bloggers Creed

2006-12-24T11:52:00.000-09:00

Read it here.

The bird of dawning sings all night long

2006-12-24T11:15:00.000-09:00

Click here.

Change of address

2006-12-21T17:56:00.000-09:00

The Northern Valley Beacon is switching over to Beta format and will have this new address:

http://northernvalleybeacon.blogspot.com/

Remembrance of woodsheds past

2006-12-21T16:13:00.000-09:00

When I first moved to Aberdeen, I purchased a speculation house on Casper Ave. and did all those things one does to customize it. Among those things was the building of a large patio-deck area, a covered barbecue area, and a woodshed where I kept barbecuing and grilling equipment and a good supply of firewood for the two fireplaces in the house. That woodshed was the subject of an angry, raging telephone call from a neighbor woman.

She said my daughter was using the woodshed to contribute to the sexual delinquency of her son, as the child of a professor might be assumed to do, and if I did not do something about my woodshed, she was going to have the police do it.

The problem was that I did not have any children at the time. A neighbor helped me solve what the woman was raging about. There was a group of children in the neighborhood around the age of five. A little girl down the street like to play dolls and the like on my patio. And no, I did not storm out in my pork pie hat and tell the kids to get out of my yard. Apparently, the children started to use my woodshed to play house and such, and, as children tend to do, began their studies of gynecological and genito-urinary phenomena. The little boy whose mother flew into such a hissy fit told of the goings-on, and mama went ballistic.

Other neighbors explained to the woman that I had no children, that I was seldom home during the play-time hours because of my duties as a professor and media advisor, and the household had other problems that diverted attention away from my backyard. The matter was solved with a padlock, which was a damned nuisance. The woman, who would neither speak to me or even look at me, responded to the neighbors that I might not have children but a professor could be expected to maintain a disorderly house of some kind to destroy the social fabric.

Once again, I find I have a virtual woodshed of ill repute. Todd Epp claims I took him to the woodshed and stuck out my nasty little Ph.D. at him. Here we go again.

Ph.D.s inspire resentful attitudes. They appear to be something one finds in a Crackerjack box. Or ordered from Sears when it was still in the mail-order business. Or obtained by attending three week-end workshops offered by Nova University in Florida. To those of us who obtained them, they were a minimum credential for being a professor. To many folks, Ph.D.s are a contrived, personal affront. Old men in pork pie hats and trench coats stalk the streets and expose them to unwary innocents.

But the post below which moved Todd Epp to such effusive indignation was not, as he claims, a personal attack on him or anyone else. It was a commentary on how denial, denigration, and delusion have become dominant modes of presentation in mass communications. Our own country has assumed the techniques of Baghdad Bob in attempting to control the information the public receives. I noted that it is not only national leaders who use the technique, but that it affects local situations, too.

The South Dakota blogosquare is not exempt from the selective, motive-driven manipulation of facts. Without naming anyone personally, I cited some examples of where information is so wrapped in boastful self-promotion that the information is obscured and, in some cases, smothered by the verbal accoutrement that attends it.

I am not a great admirer of the media. News is seldom written and produced to provide the public with a clear, accurate, and carefully crafted accounting of what is going on in the world. News organizations are in the business of selling advertising and delivering an audience for that advertising. Hard news does not attract audiences. The old criteria of news value has metamorphosed into how stories can be dummied down to appeal to base appetites. Those criteria are audience, impact, proximity, timeliness, prominence, unusualness, and conflict. News production has gone from identifying those elements in individual events to making sure every "reality" occasion is charged with them.

The handling of Sen. Tim Johnson's health was one of those cases where prominence and timeliness would at one time have been the focus of the story. What happened to a prominent man and his progress would have been the emphasis. But today's news coverage requires full titillation of the audience, and that means that impact and conflict will have to be emphasized to raise as much controversy as possible.

I am now going to do the very thing that I find so objectionable. Here goes: what would have been a minor sidebar for the story became its major theme: what would happen to the U.S. Senate if Tim Johnson died or was rendered incapable of serving out his term. A simple little exposition on the procedures would have sufficed. But the buzzards saw that they could speculate about a change in Senate leadership complete with all the mud-wrestling nastiness and they took to circling the patient. Almost every news story took the shape of stating the latest information from the medical authorities and family with the larger part of the story being devoted to a repetition of the process of succession in the event of the Senator's demise. Speculations which were not even a remote eventuality based upon the information available became the news story. And in writing about the speculations, I am reinforcing them.

In decrying the media buzzards, blogs only re-emphasized this morbid ritual in what passes for news. While condemning the buzzard chatter, they reinforced its prominence in the story. I don't think the public has devolved so deeply into media-induced dementia that it needs to be told of the seriousness of Sen. Johnson's episode and the possible outcomes. But the media had its carrion squads standing by.

Blogs on rare occasions review journalism in a way that shows directions for improvement. Some more than others. But in general blogs with news pretenses work the opposite way. They take the failures of journalism and exacerbate them and amplify them. That is what happened with the Sen. Johnson story.

I am sorry. I find it the depth of self-absorbed absurdity to send obligatory best wishes to the Sen. and his family while keeping an overt and offensive death watch because it is more titillating than straigtforward medical reports. The well-wishing may be meant sincerely, but its context calls it into question.

The South Dakota blogs I alluded to--and not by name--happened to offer an occasion for tracing how a spurious speculation by an alleged physician on a very partisan blog got pulled into the "news" and perpetuated.

It would have been one thing for a columnist or blogger to do a piece on the informational dysfunction generated from the Johnson story. It is another to include that as part of the general news about the Senator's recovery.

To assess the real appeal of blogs, one need just review their comments sections. Some edit the comments. Others don't. But the comments illustrate with abundance that blogs do little to increase or enhance the quality of information and thought. The potential of the Internet is being compromised

When Baghdad Bob became Emperor of America (or it must be the water)

2006-12-20T17:56:00.000-09:00

In 2003, when our troops invaded Iraq and moved relentlessly into Baghdad, our nation was fairly complacent because we had few casualties. And we had Baghdad Bob to provide the comic relief. Remember him? He is the Saddam public relations man who kept insisting that the Iraqi army was winning and that western press accounts of the advancing invasion were fabricated and false.

It turns out he became the consultant to the U.S. regime. First, we had the President and Vice President insisting that there were weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al Qaida. Then when it became apparent that our invasion had inspired an insurgency, military commanders insisted that there was no guerilla war taking place. As the death count ineluctably mounted toward the figure of 3,000 U.S. soldiers dead--which number we will most likely reach before year's end--and no evidence that Iraq's puppet democracy could exist without us pulling the strings, the administration insisted we were winning the war. And despite tens of thousands killed between the Sunnis and Shiites, and a million displaced, we have the insistence that there is no civil war in Iraq.

Baghdad Bob may have been a lousy minister of propaganda, but he sure was a good teacher. And Bush, Cheney and their skulking minions were sure good students. For a time, our nation lived a lie.

Baghdad Bob seems to have found work in South Dakota. Or he has imported some bottled Baghdad water here. The Three-Ds have infested South Dakota. They are Denial, Denigration, and Delusion. Along with flouride, the Three-Ds are additives to water, and the political portion of the South Dakota blogosphere, as they like to call themselves, are imbibing mightily.

They keep recycling news stories from the media about Sen. Johnson's health, and then crow and chortle over how superior they are performing compared with the media. I have checked the major news organizations for updates and found them timely, accurate, and, of course, free of the self-preening posturing. But the blogosquare keeps insisting that it is doing something the media is not.

There is a bonus. One blog posted a speculation by a man on one of the national dingbat blogs who claimed to be a neurologist or something of the kind. He suggested that the positive prognoses about Sen. Johnson may be wishful thinking and he provided a more dire prognosis. In the name of truth and accuracy. And in violation of the ethical rule adhered to by most physicians that it is okay to provide general background information on a medical condition, but one never speculates and never provides an expert diagnosis without having seen the patient, seen the patient's charts, examined the imaging of the portion of the body in question, and without obtaining the family's permission. But some blogs, as they are wont to do, circulated the dire prognosis with the usual self-acclaim for outperforming the press. And, of course, they all sent their best wishes to Sen. Johnson and his family. In these reports, they seem to have departed from Baghdad Bob's teachings. He always accentuated the positive--despite risking absurdity.

And then we have the poliblogs chortling with orgasmic glee over the fact that they have outperformed the press. Some even presume to offer a press review. For example, one criticized David Kranz's Argus Leader column for not rehashing the details of an e-mail that Sen. Klouchek sent to newspapers. Apparently, Baghdad Bob does not teach the distinction between a column and a news story. But that might be lost on polibloggers, anyway. And he certainly pays little heed to every journalism text that warns that certain factual accusations made in a quotation can still leave the medium liable for a lawsuit, even if the information is contained in a verified quotation. Some poliblogs do indeed outperform the press in certains acts of ignorance and self-stroking.

We are very critical of the press. We have participated in reviews that assert that South Dakota contains some of the worst news organizations in the nation and that they could not be worse. But when we said that, we hadn't experienced the poliblogs.

In our house, we are boiling all the water. And I swear I just saw Baghdad Bob ringing a bell outside of Wal-Mart.

Using the Internet constructively

2006-12-16T17:58:00.000-09:00

Professor colleagues of mine at NSU (I hold emeritus rank), Ken Blanchard and Jon Schaff, have provided some fine information in regard to Abraham Lincoln. We share an admiration and high appraisals of him based upon what he actually did and said. He represents what a person of humble and unprivileged origins can do in America--and I don't think any of us would suggest that some of his actions are above criticism.

Professor Schaff addresses the point of people making significant scholarly and artisitic contributions, even though they do not hold the formal credentials. In particular, he cites the superb work of Shelby Foote on the Civil War. Shelby Foote was featured in Ken Burns' documentary.

In that regard, I add that the most comprehensive Internet site on the Civil War is maintained at Dakota State University in Madison. The person who has put it together is Jim Janke, who is not a professional historian. He does have a number of those letters after his name which cause some offense in the populist climate. He has a Ph.D. in chemistry. However, his professorial rank at DWU is in the field of business and finance. Still, he produces a Civil War resource that is invaluable to scholars and re-enactors alike. I give the whole address of his site following:

http://homepages.dsu.edu/jankej/civilwar/civilwar.htm

Ken Blanchard thinks I am a bit testy in my statement that watching the re-enactments of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates on C-Span made me ponder the fact that people stood for three or more hours to listen to the debates with extended and elaborated arguments in contrast to the reductive quips that pass for discourse on blogs. Ken makes the point that the debates were the only show in town back then. I would like to expand a bit on the mental climate in which the debates were held in Illinois between the Black Hawk War in 1832 and the Civil War.

The early settlers in Illinois were not a particularly savory lot. Society was held in a state of fear by a group that observers of the time called "butcher knife boys." They wore sharpened butcher knives in their belts and were quick to brandish and use them on anyone to whom they took offense. An early governor of Illinois noted that any politician who wanted to be elected had to have the endorsement of these men. They were part of the rough river men and migrants from the South who engaged in face-ripping fights for the sport.

At the time Lincoln was starting his political career, the voting was done orally in large meetings. One observer of that political climate stated that the butcher knife crowd voted loudly and "not infrequently."

In his riding of the legal circuit and political appearances, Lincoln had the abilitiy to mollify and gain the support of these people. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates were a huge change in the politics of the time. The one at Ottawa brought 12,000 people to a town of 10,000.

I need to add that the towns of Ottawa, Galesburg, and Freeport were major stations on the Underground Railroad, which was running extra trains at the time of the debates. In the midst of frontier lawlessness and belligerence, people were beginning to clamor for a society that promoted freedom, equality, and justice. They were getting tired of gangs like the Banditti of the Prairie who intimidated and preyed on the people of the region, and they saw a politics of learned persuasion as the preferred option.

I am of the opinion that Internet resources can be used to restore some of that regard for real discussion and deliberation to a political system that has been reduced by 30-second sound bites. We may have arrived at that time. I don't know.

I have not been able to devote much attention to the Internet stuff in recent weeks, but will be addressing the issue with some work that is in process.

But I must say, I appreciate the exchanges on Abraham Lincoln. Just as one can't have too many trumpet players, one can't study him enough.

Rest easy and get well, Tim. The troops are rallying.

2006-12-14T02:35:00.000-09:00

Tim Johnson has never missed an opportunity to meet and talk with his constituents. He is one of the hardest working senators, one of incredible integrity, and a man who makes "politician" an honorable and respected word.

He and his family have set standards for what it is to be an American. His current illness is not the first time they have been thrust into the public spotlight by adversity.

Barbara Johnson is a breast cancer survivor who has become an advocate for prevention and early diagnosis and has taken the message of good will, hope, and courage throughout the world. She went to China to share her experience and recovery with women in that country.

Their son was among the first airborne troops in Afghanistan when we decided to hunt down Al Qaeda.

The Johnson family has has taken leadership in the struggles that that threaten humankind and our democracy. We know Tim will put the determination and fight into his recovery that he and his family have shown in the past.

Our best thoughts and prayers are with him and his family. And our encouragement and appreciation go to his staff as they carry on the important work of Tim's office in South Dakota. In Aberdeen, they are Sharon, Katy, and Tonya. It's like neighbors helping a farmer with his harvest when he falls ill. It's how we insure that someone's work counts and is carried forward. Our honor is in our efforts to help and take up as much of Tim's burden as possible so that he can recover knowing that his work is acknowledged, appreciated, and being carried forward until he returns to lead us once again.

What would Lincoln do?

2006-12-09T03:00:00.000-09:00

We live in a time when Abraham Lincoln's presence is obvious. He is the lead subject of a national magazine edition. Bloggers, as happened in South Dakota this past week, post on him and discuss him almost as much as they discuss each other. Scholarly web sites are filled with lively exchanges of information about him. There is a reason.

Whenever our country reaches a time when political hostilities threaten to divide the people into warring camps, our own Civil War is invoked. The nation survived it, and we ask how, and we are ultimately led to Abraham Lincoln.

No major figure in American history was as vilified or made fun of as much as Abraham Lincoln. And no American figure has received as much analytical attention as Lincoln. The continuing fascination with and relevance of Lincoln comes from his unpretentious and ordinary manhood. He had only about a year of formal schooling, he had his share of failures, he said some intemperate things (one of which led him to a duel which he was talked out of at the last minute), and he was plagued by depression and doubt. But he is a demonstration of what a person of undistinguished origins can accomplish. And 150 years of constant scholarship, analysis, and criticism have distilled the essential character of Lincoln from the dross that swirls around any American who reaches distinction. Lincoln had all the attributes that can drive a person, but he also had a unique intellect and character. What distinguishes Lincoln is that through all the vilification and denunciation and assassinaiton plots against him, he was without malice. Historian Richard Hofstadter in American Political Tradition sums up this quality and why it is so pertinent to our own time:

Lincoln's rage for personal success, his external and worldly ambition, was quieted when he entered the White House, and he was at last left alone to reckon with himself. To be confronted with the fruits of his victory only to find that it meant choosing between life and death for others was immensely sobering.... In one of his rare moments of self-revelation he is reported to have said: "Now I don't know what the soul is, but whatever it is, I know that it can humble itself."...Lincoln's utter lack of personal malice during these years, his humane detachment, his tragic sense of life has no parallel in political history....Lincoln was moved by the wounded and dying men, moved as no one in a place of power can afford to be....For him it was impossible to drift into the habitual callousness of the sort of officialdom that sees men only as pawns to be shifted here and there and "expended" at the will of others. It was a symbolic thing that his office was so constantly open, that he made himself more accessible than any other chief executive in our history. ...Is it possible to recall anyone else in modern history who could exercise so
much power and yet feel so slightly the private corruption that goes with it? Here, perhaps, is the best measure of Lincoln's personal eminence in the human calendar--that he was chastened and not intoxicated by power.

Carl Sandburg captures a moment of that personal eminence in his biography of Lincoln. Lincoln insisted on visiting the sick and wounded soldiers during the Civil War. On one occasion an army doctor told him he did not want to venture into one of the hospital tents because rebel prisoners were in it. "That is just where I want to go," said Lincoln, and he went from cot to cot shaking hands with the prisoners. When he reached the bed of a Confederate colonel, the man said, "Mr. President, do you know to whom you offer your hand?" Lincoln said, "I do not." The colonel said, Well, you offer it to a Confederate colonel who has fought you as hard as he could for four years." And Lincoln said, "Well, I hope a Confederate colonel will not refuse me his hand." And the colonel clasped Lincoln's hand in both of his as they exchanged respect and admiration.

Another aspect of that man and that time that reflects on what we may becoming is the Lincoln-Douglas debates. In the late summer and early fall of 1994, C-Span sponsored re-enactments of the debates at the seven localities in Illinois where they were held. Four of those sites were in the coverage area of the newspaper I worked for, and I had visited those sites many years before with a sense of their being hallowed ground. Then when the C-Span series of recreations was planned, a higher education institution with which I was associated offered credit in history, political science, and rhetorical studies to students who wanted to do independent study. I was privileged to work with some students in communicaitons and rhetorical studies to develop study plans. The re-enactments were preceded by 90-minute previews of each debate. In the debates, the first debater was given an hour to make his case, the second debater was given an hour and a half to respond, and the first debater was then given a half hour for rebuttal. The debates themselves took about three hours. The sites of the seven debates are shown on the map to the right.

I found it strangely pleasant to sit before the television for those Saturday afternoons in 1994 and see my home state and contemplate how thousands and thousands of people would gather for three hours and listen to the extended arguments and comments of politicians. I think now how this contasts with the reductive and distorting quips that pass for political commentary on blogs.

But those Saturday afternoons were well spent because I had the chance to participate in the study of those debates with students who were exploring the essential character of America and why this democracy, which people like Thomas Carlyle thought was an absurdity, succeeded.

The videos of those re-enactments are available from C-Span, and my colleagues inform me they are available at about $40 a debate at this time.

It may well be true that the kind of discourse which provided the impetus behind our nation's emergence from its darkest hour is no longer relevant to our time. But some of us will still look to Lincoln, not out of hero worship, but for the highly refined and tested knowledge of what it took for America to avoid disintegration and to survive 146 years ago.

Saving President Lincoln

2006-12-07T15:46:00.000-09:00

[This is reprinted from an academic web site.]
President Lincoln is the subject of much commentary of late. Some of it enhances the appreciation for him. Some misinforms.

I am a native of Illinois. I grew up in a home where two objects of reverence were on prominent display in the living room. One was a large edition of the King James Version of the Bible in which the family history was maintained. The other was a bust of Abraham Lincoln.

Both of my parents were schooled in Illinois and well indoctrinated in Lincoln history and lore . Working people of Illinois had a special regard for Lincoln. I remember a family vacation to New Salem and Springfield to see Lincoln's home and tomb. We dressed in our Sunday finest to denote the proper respect accorded to Lincoln. He is an important intellectual touchstone for me.

Lincoln is the subject of the lead article for the Dec. 4 edition of U.S. News & World Report. Lincoln was mentioned yesterday on a number of web pages and blogs, including Todd Epp's, which has a headline asking if Lincoln is the great emancipator or executioner. The occasion is that December 6, 1863, is the day Lincoln signed an order for the execution of 39 eastern Sioux who participated in the the Sioux Uprising of 1862. Todd provides a link to an expanded account of Lincoln's role in ordering the executions, which gives the full background, but some of it is in error.

Lincoln was in attendance at national tragedies which get the "most" designation. He gave the Gettysburg Address after a battle in which the most Americans were killed. The Sioux uprising of 1862 was one in which the most settlers--350--were massacred. And he signed that execution order for 38 Sioux to be hung, the most people to be killed in one mass execution. One of the original 39 was eventually pardoned.

In response to the uprising, Lincoln sent Gen. Pope to Minnesota to handle the matter militarily. This account is from David Herbert Donald's Lincoln. Pope did not like Lincoln, but switched his animosity from the President to the Sioux. He said, "It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux..." He arrested 1,500 Sioux men, women, and children and covened a military commission to try them. Lincoln sent a Dept. of Interior official (who later became Secretary) to Minnesota to investigate the problems and he consulted with Episcopal Bishop Henry B. Whipple. He soon learned that the Sioux were responding to fraud and embezzlement by the Indian agents. Pope's commissions came up with a list of 303 Sioux who were found guilty and to be executed. Lincoln ordered Pope not to stage any executions without the President's express order.

After consulting with his cabinet agencies on how to proceed, Lincoln ordered the records of the 303 Sioux to be sent to him. He went through the record of each condemned Sioux to sort out those who were guilty of the crimes of murder and rape from those who participated in the uprising. He ended up with the list of 39 men, which he wrote out in his own hand.

Pope said that if the entire list of 303 were not executed, the people of Minnesota would massacre all the Indians in the territory in revenge. Governor Ramsey also threatened that if they were not all executed, the people would extract private revenge. The resentment against Lincoln and his cabinet among the people of Minnesota cost the Republicans votes in the election of 1864 and Ramsey told him he could have won with a larger majority if he had hanged more Indians. Lincoln replied, "I could not afford to hang men for votes."

As a professor who teaches American literature and has a specialty in American Indian literature, I have come across the array of attitudes regarding Lincoln's handling of the execution order. Most people acknowledge the fact that Lincoln reprieved 264 men who were listed for execution by personally reviewing the cases and sanctioning the hanging of the eventual 38 who had committed heinous crimes. He also called the corrupt officials whose actions fomented the uprising into account. Some people, including members of the Sioux nation, castigate Lincoln for authorizing the execution of any Indians. On the other hand, many Dakota people, disapproved of the atrocities committed during the uprising and thought those who committed them had violated sacrosanct tribal rules. Participants in the uprising were recruited as Army scouts and helped control the renegade bands that roamed through the Dakota territory.

An account of the aftermath of the uprising is provided by one of South Dakota's first authors, Charles Alexander Eastman, a Dakota. As a boy, Eastman had been sent to Canada to live with his grandmother and keep him out of the conflicts surrounding Sitting Bull and the Sioux in the U.S. His father was one of the Sioux sentenced to death and then imprisoned at Davenport, Iowa. He was then pardoned by Lincoln. After homesteading near Flandreau, S.D., his father walked to Canada to get his son, who he took back to the U.S., entered him into the Indian Normal School at Flandreau, then sent him to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and then to Dartmouth and Boston University, where Eastman obtain a doctor's degree in medicine. Eastman was the physician in attendance at the Wounded Knee Massacre.

While people may disagree over the actions in response to the Sioux uprising, Lincoln brought a degree of diligence and integrity to the matter that angered people on both sides. He admitted having little knowledge and experience with Indian issues, but he tried to sort out the circumstances in a way that that adhered to the concepts of equality, liberty, honesty, and justice.

Lincoln was a literary man. He distrusted novels, biographies, and histories, but he had a compelling interest in the structure and resources of the English language and in the use of rhetoric as an intellectual and moral reference. He could quote prodigiously from the Bible and Shakespeare, and could recite poetry from Robert Burns and Oliver Wendell Holmes from memory. He saw the compression and precision of the language of poetry as hugely powerful, and he was drawn to poems that contained a story. He studied and admired the work of Thomas Paine. And he loved the theater, which was where he spent his last conscious moments, and the opera, and studied how the power and force of drama could be brought to bear on the genres of discourse.

The literary profession has allowed itself to be marginalized into the interpretation of imaginative literature--fiction and poetry-- to the point that it has left the literary analysis of written and oral rhetoric to other discplines. Consequently, there is little literary scholarship on Lincoln published in recent times. Two recent books, one written by a theologian and another by a historian, offer extended studies of two of Lincoln's most important speeches. One is Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural by Ronald C. White (Simon & Schuster, 2002), and the one featured in this week's U.S. News is The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knew by Gabor Boritt (Simon & Schuster, 2006). That is not to say that literary scholars have abandoned Lincoln's work as a rich subject worth studying. Professors at regional colleges keep the literary work alive. At the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, papers from Millikin University at Decatur, the former Sangamon State University in Springfield (its absorption into the U. of Illinois is a sad story of how little tolerance there is for innovative education), the U. of Illinois--Chicago Circle, Knox College in Galesburg, and Grinnell College in Iowa have kept the Lincoln literary studies going in the past decade. But English programs have largely been reduced to service tutorials in spelling, punctuation, and the trivial aspects of grammar.

The problem with the Internet and blogging is that it sets tabloid journalism, if one can call it journalism, as the standard for writing and discussion. We literary scholars need to reassert our discipline to see if we can't save President Lincoln from the tabloids.

That whooshing sound is Homestake being flushed out of contention

2006-11-28T23:30:00.000-09:00

Homestake Mine

The news came during Thanksgiving weekend. The water collecting in the 8,000-foot deep Homestake Goldmine has reached the 5,600-foot level.

Doug Wiken at Dakota Today has posted on the matter. He cites the water as an example of mismanagement by the party in power.

Barrick Gold, who recently turned over the mine to the State of South Dakota, stalled in the negotiations to turn the mine over to the state for development as the site of the Deep Underground Science and Engineerng Laboratory. Barrick wanted to be assured that it would have no environmental liabilities if it turned the mine over to the state. The state did not want to get stuck with any huge environmental problems. And so, the negotiations seem stalled at times, and Barrick turned off the pumps that keep the mine dry. Barrick said it would be less costly to pump the mine out once plans for a laboratory were set than to keep them running. However, the scientists who originally promoted turning the old gold mine into an underground laboratory were more concerned about the possibility of doing any more science in the mine. The scientific community, as reported in the Whyfiles , thought "A waterlogged mine would be useless as a research vessel, but clearing it out would take years and millions of dollars. It would also stall the project that scientists are already restless to get moving."

Physicist Wick Haxton of the University of Washington led the group of physicists who had near-unanimous support from their colleagues throughout the U.S. and Canada for the proposal to convert Homestake into a national underground laboratory. But when the pumps were turned off, he said, "Our fondest hope is that [the proposal] will go through before water reaches 7400 foot level, where we do our major work.

As of this month, that level was under 1800 feet of water.

Water in the Homestake Mine was reported by the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority to be at the 5600 foot level as of November 6.

Shortly after the pumps were turned off, Haxton and the large majority of
his physicist colleagues abandoned the Homestake plan and started looking for other places to do their scientific research and experiments.

The National Science Foundation, which will select the site where the federal money for an underground lab will go, kept hopes for Homestake alive when it designated Homestake and Henderson Mine in Colorado as the finalists in the selection process. Extensive plans for the construction of a national underground laboratory are due from each of the sites on January 9.

In early October, I had a chance to visit the Henderson site and people from the academic and scientific communities who support it. As I explained then (October 9 archives) the Henderson site lacks some of the potential of Homestake. But it has the active interest and support of its academic community and within a few hours drive, researchers and their
families have access to the resources of the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, the Colorado School of Mines, and the 3-institution Auraria Campus in Denver. In addition, Henderson has a professor-scientist led group, the Colorado Alliance for Underground Science and Engineering, and a more diverse group called the Arapahoe Project working to develop and promote the site.

A crucial factor to be decided in the selection process is the level of local expertise and support that each site can muster. The South Dakota higher education community appears not to be involved in the Homestake project at all. Many scientists who once promoted Homestake now dismiss it as something of a hare-brained economic development scheme. In contrast, Colorado has institutions and personnel who are consulted, who are interested, and who are ready to begin work at the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory the minute they are given the go ahead.

As stated, Homestake has geological potential that is unmatched in the U.S. But other places have the human resources, talent, and academic interest that weighs heavier and heavier as the water inches up in the abandoned mine shafts at Homestake.

Among the DUSEL supporters, the advice is that Homestake is a long shot at this point. The rising waters seem to be washing it out of contention. South Dakota simply has never demonstrated the respect and interest for higher education and research that is an increasingly important factor in deciding where the DUSEL should be located.

A Thanksgiving compromised by Islam's burden

2006-11-24T14:36:00.000-09:00

As the civil war in Iraq intensifies (and don't try any of that semantic shit with me about what defines civil war), one must wonder if Islam has any interest at all in bettering and helping human beings. Shiites, who believe that the religion's authority is invested in its clerics by lines of succession, and the Sunni, who believe that the authority is invested in the Koran and the customs of the sect, are killing each other over that ostensible difference. But we saw the same violence, although not in the same magnitude, between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

There is an understandable and growing cynicism among people about whether religion has any role or relevance in the quality of human life and human affairs. It seems to be the issue over which people find more occasions these days to vilify and harm each other than to extend understanding, good will, and peace.

Christianity has its divisions. Some put priority on the Old Testament which records wars and demonstrates the eye-for-an-eye principle. Others see the New Law in the New Testament as specified in the Beatitudes as the essential characteristics of Christianity. Damned few Christians actually believe or practice the instructions of Jesus Christ. But professing Christianity and a belief in the teachings of Christ are customary facades behind which lurk all manner of wicked and evil motives.

At least most Christians profess the message of good will to all people and peace on earth. At least on their Christmas cards, and increasingly in those gaudy light displays they put up in their yards. It is a nice pretense. And in this age, pretense is about all we have that we can depend on.

Islam makes no pretense to good will and peace. While some sectarian spokespeople insist that the Muslim religion advocates good will toward humankind and peace on earth, events of the 21st century make that terribly hard to take seriously. 9/11 when suicide bombers shouted "God is great" as they crashed jet plans into the World Trade Center are hardly examples of beneficence. Neither is Iran's constant threats against Israel and the U.S. And most plots by Muslims against the rest of word, whether successfully completed or in the planning process, take place with mosques as central in their instigation and planning. The first attack on the World Trade Center is a case in point.

This is a bit frightening because 20 percent of the world's population claims to be Muslim. And we have still to witness evidence that the religion has any restraints, let alone any prohibitions, against committing mass atrocities on the rest of the world.

Those of us in democratic countries are reluctant to suggest that Islam is the vector of the mass atrocities. Ironically, if the fact that Islam seems to have the franchise on the violence and atrocities committed on the world is pointed out, the Muslims go into a frenzied rage that their religion is being disrespected. But Islam has proven to be both the motive and means for atrocities committed in the name of Allah.

The Muslim clerics who were removed from a plane because other passengers, who have been told to report any suspicious activity, became alarmed have protested that they are victims of profiling and stereotyping. It has been the relentless string of atrocities committed in the name of Islam, not indoctrination by the American government, that has earned the distrust not only of Americans, but much of the world. It is regrettable that they may have been falsely suspected, but rather than railing at American society, they had better work at restoring some credibility of decency to their sect. The world has been given good and sufficient cause to be wary of the goings-on within Islam.

Humans tend toward factionalism. Madison noted this in the 10th Federalist Paper:

So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

Madison recommends our republican form of democracy as the means to moderate the passions that cause human strife. As we have seen in Iraq, that form of moderation does not have much of chance where people kill each other for reasons of exercising power and imposing their wills on other people.

We Americans, in particular, tend strongly to let people have their own religious beliefs. This causes a predicament when Islamic religious doctrine is given as the basis for the terrorist war being waged on our country. But there is a semantic way out of this dilemma that does not violate the Constitutional principles most of us revere.

It lies in the doctrine of separation of church and state, as orginally and most eloquently outlined by Roger Williams. He said:

But if a Man hold forth or profess any Error or false way, with a boisterous and arrogant spirit, to the disturbance of Civil peace, he may be justly punished according to the quality and measure of the disturbance caused by him...

The semantic problem is that poltical powers are being exercised under the cloak of Muslim religion. At this point in the atrocities committed, it may be time to remove the designation of "religion" from Islam and recognize it as a subversive political force, just as we have treated other subversive plots against our country in the past.

If Islam in general is not bent on carrying out a jihad against the western world, it has a formidable task in the face of 21st century history in establishing that it is a religion, not a political movement bent upon dominating or destroying the rest of the world.

We have bodies killed in the act of atrocities strewn throughout the world that speak to the ill will and violence committed in the name of a religion. Who is to blame but the people who commit and condone such violence if the rest of the world looks at Islam as a political force bent on domination and violence, not as a religion bent on uplifting humankind?

The new racism centered right here at home

2006-11-21T14:50:00.000-09:00

The assassination of a government minister of industry in Lebanon added another few stones of despair to the hopeless morass of the Middle East. At some point we have to ask with the psalmist, "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" David answers his own question, "The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and his soul hates the lover of violence." And then he predicts that the lord shall destroy the wicked. But that does not offer much hope for Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and that part of the world which exercises violence and atrocities as a mandate of religious doctrine.

The fact is that what is happening to people in the Middle East makes the Holocaust look like a minor chink in the foundations of human decency. Aside from the horrendous moral and political bungling of the U.S. incursion into Iraq, the Muslim jihad against the world is a massive attack against the foundations of human society. Democracy is certainly a casualty.

As counterproductive as it is economically, the free world may have to set up border fences and isolate itself from the insidious forces that love violence and hate the very soul of peace and good will toward people.

To engage hatred and atrocity is to descend to its level and to allow it to enter in to our own thinking and behavior. The very foundation of peace and good will has been destroyed, and those who advocate it can practice it only on their own.

Because while we are focused on a horrifyingly obscence war, we are losing some battles against hatred in our own back yard. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said when he was asked to respond to a slavery issue a thousand miles away, "Go love thy infant, love thy woodchopper...Thy love afar is spite at home." The seeds of hatred have sprouted and sent their wicked tentacles throughout our own community here in Aberdeen. We should not let the massive atrocities in the middle east misdirect our attention from the malignant forces thriving here at home.

The latest symptom of that malignancy involves a beef plant being planned in Aberdeen. Some people think it will bring stench, noise, and nuisance to the community. Some home owners nearest the plant are suing the promoters for the presumed decline in their property values it will bring. But other people are ranting and raging against the people it might attract.

A loyal correspondent of mine has provided me with reams of discussion from newspaper discussion boards and blog commentaries, and they are full of racist invective. Mostly, they object to the idea of minorities coming to Aberdeen. They assume that the crime rate will soar and the community will turn into a ghetto. Here is an example from a newspaper discussion board:

In some ways I cannot wait until I prove to the blind folks that this beef plant will cause untold misery and damage to the community. It may take some time but just remember all your feel good comments about how we should live together in peace and harmony. Those words will haunt not only you but others who do not have a clue.
While we wait, put bars on your windows, alarms on your house, bullet proof vests for your kids to stop the knife and bullet attacks, anchor down everything you have that is valuable, buy a steering wheel lock and car alarm, and hold on
tight. It is going to be a heck of a ride.

Others attribute the expected rise in crime and cultural devastation to the assumption that the influx of minority will be mostly illegal aliens. Some of the writers cite the experiences of other cities that have had packing plants as evidence that hordes of races with moral defects and criminal agendas will descend upon the town. They cite as evidence the rantings of people from those towns who have their own racist axes to grind.

Actually, the lawsuits against the beef plant may have zoning, property value, and nuisance issues as their pretext, but the speech of many involved very quickly reveals that their real motives deal with people of various colors--particularly those of Latino and Asian backgrounds.

People dismiss the racist tirades and hate as the product of a few people on discussion boards and blogs because they seem to comprise a small minority. Consultants who analyze such matters point out that these voices tend to dominate the discussions they participate in, and that is the real point of significance in examining how a community reacts to racism and hate speech. In the case of the newspaper discussion boards, the presence of such raging without requirements for valid evidence to support the statements and without any kind of editorial remonstrance is a tacit expression of at least part of the community leadership.

While the sectarian violence in Iraq casts a deep, seething shadow on the any prospects for democracy in the middle east, the rumblings of racist and class hatred in Aberdeen are signs that the foundations of democracy and civil government are under siege in our own town.

We can't help but wonder how much the war on Iraq and the moral chaos it has created in the world contributes to the racist, hate-filled mindset in Aberdeen. Whatever the source and occasion for this hatred, it needs to be dealt with. We need to divert our attention away from our global identity and assess just how we are doing here at home.

America seems to be slipping under the tide of malice that is rising in the world.

Sorry, Dr. B., I got impatient with some silly answers

2006-11-17T14:56:00.000-09:00

Another chance to identify.

Here is a better shot of a pork pie hat which includes the crown. However, this man has the brim up, and his face is turned away. I am a down-brimmer. Here is the same instrument, same caliber of talent as Coleman Hawkins.

The man singing with him is a good clue as to the time of the photo.

Hey, Epp. You diggin this?

Epp outed me. See for yourself.

2006-11-13T22:57:00.000-09:00

How do I wear my pork pie brim? See for yourself.

(If you know who my alter ego is, I'll give you an Al Sharpton campaign button.)

South Dakota blogs on the propagation, care, and feeding of bigotry

2006-11-13T12:30:00.000-09:00

.A story circulated in the South Dakota press about an incident concerning an SDSU student who was attending the FFA convention where American Idol winner Carrie Underwood was appearing. The South Dakota student led a walkout during Underwood's performance because Ms. Underwood is a vegetarian and a member of the Humane Society. Jerry Hinkle of the Holabird Advocate has the best commentary on the manner in which he nominates the protestor for the PEDA (People Eating Delicious Animals Award). The young woman, Amanda Nolz, protested that Carrie Underwood was undermining animal agriculture that works so hard to provide food for the rest of us.

The problem was that Ms. Nolz charged Ms. Underwood with being a member of the humane society and an activist against meat-producing agriculture. Ms. Underwood is a vegetarian. So, Ms. Nolz passed out flyers at the FFA convention urging attendees to walk out when Ms. Underwood took the stage. Quite a few apparently did.

The story got a play in the blogs, with South Dakota War College lauding Ms. Nolz for her courage to take a stand. Then, some commentators asked who did the booking of a vegetarian and humane advocate for an FFA convention. We assume Ms. Underwood was booked for her talent as a singer, not her personal diet and attitude toward animals.

I suppose, by the standards of some bloggers, I am an activist against animal agriculture, although I have a freezer full of Brown County beef and have dabbled in the livestock business. Our family dog, Ingrid, is a greyhound rescued from the Denver track (she placed in 84 of the 86 races she ran there). In the photo, she is doing her impression of roadkill. The snowshoe Siamese, Simon, was found hung up in a chain link fence on Skyline Drive in Rapid City. Ziggy, the silver tabby, was adopted from a woman in Britton who rescues and finds homes for cats. Harboring animals such as these surely makes me an enemy of animal agriculture.

I also have a large vegetable garden on the banks of the James River. I eat veggies along with the beef, pork, poultry, and fish. Boycott me, baby.

The newspaper I worked for as farm editor was a big supporter of FFA and 4-H activities. (All of my children have been in 4-H.) I often had kids accompany me on my rounds as apprentices. (For obvious reasons, I am avoiding the term "intern.") It was made clear to us editors that our tasks as mentors was to give the young people experience and to guide them in the kind of behavior and conduct that produced good results. If a young person made a mistake, like confusing PETA with the humane society, we were expected to point out the error. If they chose to commit an act of rudeness against someone because they objected to that someone's personal tastes and preferences, we were expected to discourage them from displays of bad manners and suggest that there was a big difference between acting out on the basis of a bigotry and taking a stance on moral and ethical issues.

But in South Dakota blogs, young people get applauded for acting out of error and being rude. Ironically, shortly after Ms. Underwood appeared at the FFA convention, she won the CMA female vocalist of the year award.

Unfortunately, the War College missed a chance to laud what looked like some resentful shenanigans by competing singers. But we are sure the blog would have lauded any bad manners shown toward Ms. Underwood if it could.

The fostering of ignorant resentment is a non-partisan activity with blogs. I hit the bigot button bigtime on a liberal blog with a commentary on an incident in Aberdeen on election over the Referred Law 6 campaigns. Some young people who were pressed into service acted out in such a way that their actions received an extensive commentary on the editorial page of the local newspaper. I wrote a commentary in which the main point was that, yes, sometimes young people make blunders and get out of hand (see below), but we older people have to assume responsibility for such behavior because we do not offer effective support and guidance. And I said young people do tend to get full of themselves and make blunders, but I also said older people do no better. I was portraying a barrier that exists between the older and the young. It is something that impedes campaigns.

My comments triggered Todd Epp's stereotype machine. He said he could envision "The Newk hiking his pants up to his nipples, putting on a pork pie hat, wearing a powder blue polyester short-sleeved jumpsuit, and screaming out his front door, "You kids get of the yard!"

He left out the part about stealing, stinking, wearing loose shoes, and lusting after white women. Oh, that's another stereotype. Not the ageist one. But what's the difference?

I did raise some concerns about the factionalism in high schools as a reflection of the divisions within adult society. Todd says it all sounds like his high school experience and kids survived it and went on to become productive adults. He referred to the 20-year-old film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." That is another irony, because while the film was popular with the younger set, critics termed it an exercise in stereotypes that exploited the resentments of the young. But the subject of factions and their effect on the educational process is something that educators discuss and try to deal with every day.

The fact is that there are many kids who do not survive. They drop out or get lost along the way. One of the huge frauds in the No Child Left Behind program is that school systems are not reporting the drop-out rates. In the post below, I relate the way in which young people themselves recognized and dealt with the divisivenss in their schools--which I state is a projection of the divisions in the larger culture. But this was treated as the rant of an old fool bashing kids.

It is probably easier and more pleasurable to construct a stereotype than to read the actual words and attend to the actual points.

Kids have a lot to learn and deal with. Sometimes they make mistakes. So do adults. That's why we have education. As someone who spent 30 years in classrooms and have two teen-age children, I am well aware of what kids face, what they do, and why they do it. Analyzing the impediments to their learning is not kid bashing.

I know I also raise much resentment because I find blogs to be ignorant, petty, mean, and prejudiced. Like Todd Epp says in regard to another blogger, I think their main value often is that they reveal a level of thought and expression that we ostensibly, at least, would like to surmount.

Having one's words misrepresented and given some ridiculously untenable interpretations has become an essential feature of web logging. Blogging is a kind of pack commentary. Todd raised a stereotype, and people who obviously had not read my post chimed in with charges that my post said things that it absolutely did not.

I do not recommend that young people read blogs unless they want examples of what to avoid. And as for petty bigotry. As long as we have blogs, it will be alive and well and will endure. But not if I can help it.

Bad day at Sixth Avenue and Dakota Street

2006-11-12T13:44:00.000-09:00

Last Tuesday, gangs of teen-agers gathered on the south corners of the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Dakota Street at the behest of anti-abortion and pro-choice organizations to carry signs and demonstrate the positions of their sponsors on Referred Law 6. For those who are not familiar with Aberdeen, Sixth Avenue is the main drag. It is also U.S. 12. As you drive in from the east, you will pass the major implement dealers, the airport, Wal-Mart, Menards, Target, what is left of the mall, fast-food outlets, motels, the library, a multitude of strip malls, and on it goes out to the cattle farms and ranches to the west. The corner of Sixth and Dakota features Burger King, KFC, a bank, and an outfit that sells hot tubs. The anti-abortion demonstrators camped in front of the hot tubs. The pro-choice demonstrators were in front of "have it your way" Burger King.

The anti-abortion people had their teen-age surrogates out there first. When the pro-choice organizations heard this, they lined up kids to represent the opposition viewpoint. Nothing wrong with that. Except that they were kids.

Some vile exchanges took place between the demonstrator camps and between them and passing motorists. The vileness had little to do with the convictions of the demonstrators. It has more to do with the culture of the young and what--much as we deny it--our high schools have turned into. We are a viciously divided society, and the attitudes of our culture are reflected in the bitter and often dangerous factions that create the social atmosphere of our high schools. While the administrative and teaching staffs of our schools try their hardest every day to moderate the factionalism and turn the focus to education, their efforts cannot compensate for the rip-tides of hatred that surge through teen-age society and carry young people out to angry, stormy seas.

Teen-age culture is angry and bigoted. It is divided into factions. Over the years when I have asked freshmen students to write analytical papers about their educational experiences, they all acknowledge the divisions of students into the popular kids, the preppies, the gangstas, the motor heads, the druggies, the gothics, the jocks, and on and on. The papers all reflected a bitter disdain held by the factions toward each other. They were remarkable in that only an isolated few reflected any inclination toward tolerance, good will, and the acceptance of differences. To someone of my age, this is not familiar territory. While there were social factions in high schools of my day, the student body was not divided by them. People of varying backgrounds and varying interests were more involved with including diversity rather than finding social pretexts for exclusion. I have two high school-aged children, and I am troubled and puzzled by the attitudes they hold toward their peers. I also recognize that I am part of a group that they disdain. I am old. I have nothing I can communicate. My life and its experiences are irrelevant. Their attitudes are shaped by popular culture and peers.

As a long-time political operative and "adviser," I have been critical of the way election campaigns are run. Major political figures hire young operatives from out-of-state to come in and run their campaign offices. I have no problem with that. They work cheap, they put in horrendously long hours, and they invest a level of energy that is daunting. The problem is that they are young. Their inexperience and their youthful presumptions often damage campaigns.

I am not suggesting that we elders can do any better. Many older people are mired in the well-this-is-the-way-we-used-to-do-it mode. They are not particularly tolerant of youthful presumption. A few years ago, I suggested that a board of experienced people in the county be organized to consult with the young campaign staffs and show them around the county so that they would know who was who and what was what. Initially, the advisers did head off some potentially harmful intra-party gaffs and some mistakes in organizing supporters. But the sense of self-importance and impatience of the young soon prevailed, and they tended to dismiss the information given by the more experienced hands. When mature people realize that their efforts are an annoyance to the campaign staffs, they tend to withdraw from campaign activities. After this last election, I am more convinced than ever that political parties need to find a way to utilize the knowledge from experience and the energy of youth in coordinated ways. It would civilize campaigns considerably.

What happened on Sixth Avenue last Tuesday was as much a problem with the mindless factionalism of youth as it was with the issue at hand. The kids were responding much like they do at confrontations with fans from opposing sports teams. There was an element of juvenile exhibitionism that soon turns to anger and confrontation. The groups yelled insults at each other. One group had a bull horn and shouted every insult they could remember from the Comedy Channel. For them, the whole experience was something of a lark, but it turned to anger and got out-of-control and the police were called quite a few times.

I had a discussion with some of the young demonstrators and asked if they thought their behavior was making a positive statement for the pro-choice side. They looked at me with that what-has-that-to-do-with-it? look and showed the resentment that the young often have for the old. Some of us called the headquarters of the sponsoring organization that pays the local staff members, and they ordered the staff to either establish some decorum or send the young demonstrators home. Things quietened down, but for many witnesses the confrontations were not forgotten. They carry images and incidents that for them characerterizes the sides of the abortion debate.

We cannot blame the kids for their excesses. Adults showed the same anger and intolerance in their letters to the editors--except that editors will not allow such abusive and profane language. Many bloggers framed the debate in terms of hostility and hatred, too. Blogs often reveal character. The kids and their propensity for getting vicious and acting out bring to the surface the attitudes and values that drive our general culture. While we may lament and shame our youth for their behavior, we cannot face the fact that they are expressing the attitudes and values of the culture that is shaping them. We adults have created that culture, but we have little influence in controlling its results.

The week before the election, I stopped by the printer to pick up some campaign literature we had ordered. As I came in the door, a woman behind the counter said, "Brown County Democrats, right.?" Before I could say yes, another woman customer snarled something about Democrats and gave an evil derisive laugh. This little episode is what was being replayed and intensified out on Sixth Avenue on election day.

Our children did not do us proud that day. But they are expressions of what they learn from us. Don't disparage the kids. Examine our failings as a culture and a society.

Here is a link to another account of this incident: http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/opinion/15994091.htm

Let's choose up sides and smell armpits

2006-11-11T21:42:00.000-09:00

The post-election drivel in the media and in the blogs is enough to gag a maggot. (From the headline, you can probably tell this is cliche day.) This was driven home when we attended a Veterans Day program featuring the 147th FA Army band in Huron. We were asked how we regarded politics and elections in those days when our asses were covered in khaki and olive drab. (Camouflage is so gauche.)

Neither in civilian life or in the military did our political orientations enter in to our relationships with other people. The kind of political divisions in our country did not enter in until people like Rush Limbaugh and his minions started equating liberalism with the kind of social divisions that once divided white folks and black folks. While I was in the service and in general life up through the 1980s, political beliefs were personal preferences of the same magnitude as automobile and cologne preferences. They were not forces that divided society, but were part of the array of individuality that we cherished. Our political preferences were not freighted with hate propaganda a la Limbaugh.

In the military, our focus was on the job we had to do. Relationships were formed on the cooperative enterprise of getting the job done. A difference was that we had no reason to question the motives of our commander in chief for assigning us our tasks or the intellectual competence or moral integrity of the higher commands in ordering us to do those jobs.

That is not true today. Mired down in an Orwellian war that cannot possibly be "won" through military means, our country is very much divided. After the election the self-appointed idiot corps has started in carping about how much the Democrats are becoming conservative as a means to alleviate the sting of rejection of the Republicans. Voters, they contend, did not vote against Republicans, they voted for Democrats gone conservative. In their pronouncements they apply the Forest Gump principle: stupid is as stupid does.

In the field of general semantics, an error of thought and perception is called the two-prong mode of thinking. People possessed by this mode of thinking are hung up on the two-pronged horns of a dilemma. Things are either black or white, hot or cold, liberal or conservative. In this mode of thought, people cannot see the total spectrum of situation and belief on which society arrays itself. It is not divided according to some simple-minded choice of two extremes. The fact is that the Democratic Party has never been totally "liberal" (and watch for the invidious definition imposed on the term by Limbaughites) or "conservative." It has largely been composed of people who see problems and are looking for ways to solve them. It is the self-professed "conservatives" who define themselves according to some party-line doctrine.

While the commentators may try to portray the upcoming sessions of Congress as tussles between liberal and conservative beliefs, the real task is how to solve problems, like

what to do about Iraq
the pogrom against the middle class
the number of people who cannot afford healthcare
the regimentation of education
the immigration problems
the undermining of our democratic privileges and freedoms

Let those who want to divide themselves up into hostile groups and sniff each others armpits inhale to their hearts' (or their nostrils') content. Let the rest of us get on with the business of the country. That is what election 2006 was all about.

We salute you. We will remember you.

2006-11-10T14:15:00.000-09:00

Honor our military. Stop killing them.

2006-11-10T11:30:00.000-09:00

As a veteran, I can attest that nothing is more infuriating than people who mouth all the platitudes about honoring our troops, and then support actions which designate them as expendable and disposable. For this Veterans Day, it would be nice to see our troops honored as something other than cannon fodder.

Today, a veteran from the Iraq debacle was interviewed on CNN because he was self-employed and while he was serving his country, his business was damaged and he returned to a $100,000 debt. When asked if he would go back to Iraq, he said yes. Anything positive he could do to help keep his comrades in arms alive, he would do. His statement expresses the deep sorrow and regret over the loss of lives, especially when those losses cannot be justified on the basis of our country's security and lifting the weight of oppression off of a people who want to be free.

While the pussies among us are whining and prattling over "bi-partisan" possibilities with the Democratic congress which will take power in January, the real political battle is shaping up. Six months before our invasion of Iraq, many people, including incoming Sen. Webb from Virginia, were warning of the false premise of the invasion and the terrorism and violence it would inspire. Webb is a Viet Nam veteran and was Secretary of the Navy under Reagan. He ain't no pussy.

A journalist who has also warned about the false premise and utter foolery of the war on Iraq is Joseph Galloway. He wrote, "We were Soldiers, and Young," which was made into a film. No one's voice has spoken out against the waste and tragedy of lives taken by unwarranted, poorly planned and executed military action like he has.

In honor of veterans, it is fitting to reprint in its entirety his column from today's newspapers. It lists the way we can honor our soldiers and our veterans and set this nation on the right course.

Posted on Fri, Nov. 10, 2006

New Congress needs revised defense 'to do' list

Better late than never.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is gone, but there's little time for celebration, even for those of us who long ago began calling for his removal. The damage that men do lives after them, and it's time at last for an accounting. The nation's voters have spoken, and it's reasonable to expect that the Congress finally will begin to exercise some oversight of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after five years of serving as rubber stamp and doormats.

Can you spell "subpoena"?

For the Democrats who will soon take charge of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate, too, here's a preliminary laundry list of some of the things that need doing:

• A comprehensive investigation of the pre-war intelligence on Iraq and how it was perverted, how the mine was salted, and by whom.

• A thorough investigation of what pre-war advice was offered by senior American military commanders on troop strength, equipment requirements and strategy and tactics. Did even one general ignore the bullying from on high and ask for more troops, and how did Rumsfeld respond?

• Why did the Pentagon send American troops into battle without enough armored vests, armored vehicles, rifles, ammunition, food and water? Who's responsible for that debacle, which cost so much in blood and money?

• Where did our money go? Billions of dollars of taxpayer money disappeared down various rat holes in Iraq, forked over to contractors without even so much as a handwritten receipt. Who got the money? What did they do for it?

• What about those no-bid Defense Department contracts that were parceled out to the Halliburtons and KBRs and Blackwaters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other more costly weapons and equipment contracts that went to big defense industry conglomerates accustomed to writing very generous checks to the Republicans?

• Why did an administration that was hell-bent on going to war, with the inevitable and terrible human casualties among our troops, consistently under-fund the Veterans Administration, which is charged with caring for our wounded and disabled?

• What's been the effect of the grotesque politicization of the selection and promotion system for senior military commanders by the office of the secretary of defense?

• Who at the top bears responsibility for the torture and mistreatment of prisoners and detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and the Guantanamo detention camp? A score of Pentagon investigations got to the bottom of the chain of command but declared that the top, in Rumsfeld's office and the White House, was innocent.

• Who's responsible for breaking our understrength Army and Marine Corps with endless combat duty tours in Iraq and Afghanistan? Who stubbornly refused even to consider the inevitable consequences of an Army so tied down trying to man these wars that it no longer could react to an emergency anywhere else in a dangerous world?

Simply put, the jig is up. President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld have come to the end of their free ride. No longer can they act without thought or ignore the boundaries of the Constitution, the law and common sense.
Did they really think they could get away with all of this without ever being called to answer to history and the American people?

They all deserve what's about to descend on their heads. They deserve every subpoena. They deserve every indictment. Most of all, they deserve a reserved place atop the ash heap of history.

Joseph L. Galloway is a columnist for McClatchy Tribune Information Services. His column appears most Fridays. Readers may write to him at: P.O. Box 399, Bayside, Texas 78340; e-mail: jlgalloway@2cs.com.
_

I'M IN LOVE WITH NANCY PELOSI

2006-11-09T19:30:00.000-09:00

So, there.

I'll be happy to call her Madam Speaker. And if she became Commander-in-Chief, I'd re-enlist. At my age. There is something about women with brains. Actually, there is something about anybody with brains.

There is a bright day coming.

Election day thoughts on the failures of democracies

2006-11-07T16:55:00.000-09:00

Nothing is more stupid than party leaders getting on television and radio and radiating optimism about how their party is going to win an election. When anyone does this, I lose immense amounts of respect for the person. It is as unseemly as abusing oneself on the busiest traffic corner in town. Aside from a few folks who are custodial patients at some developmental institution, I do not know of anyone who is impaired enough to believe this crap.

I will excuse a few people who get on the news shows and talk about polls. I used to run polls. Therefore, I know what transitory and tentative information they give. That most of them turn out to be fairly accurate does not change the fact that the polling samples can shift their intentions in a matter of hours. They are interesting gauges for political campaigns to test how they are doing, but they are not good predictors. People often do not do what they say they will do.

And that gets to the subject of failures of democracy. It is one thing to recognize that American democracy is an exquisitely crafted system that has worked well, for the most part, for 217 years under the Constitution, despite the dire predictions of the Old World. But our democracy is driven by the will of the people. And there are significant numbers of people out there who do not like democracy or who like it only when it gives them privileges and denies others equal privileges. They are those who imagine they form some kind of authority that has the right to disenfranchise--the military term is "fuck over"--other people. Such is the case with Referred Law 6 in South Dakota. This law was developed by a sham procedure in one of the most fraudulent processes to ever go through a so-called democratic legislative process. And very few people protested the fraud. That does not give much confidence in democracy.

A huge majority of people agree that some rules have to be established regarding abortion. And most people who identify themselves a pro-choice object to a law whose supporters have even spoken out in favor of the requirement that a child conceived through rape be carried to term.
Such rules, however, have to be built upon real science, not the voodoo-get-them-rosaries-on-the-ovaries fraud pulled upon the people of South Dakota, and built with the rights of women and judgments of physicians protected, and worked out with the knowledge that genuine mutual agreements will be needed.

I do not trust the people to vote for good things in South Dakota. A very significant portion of the electorate could care less about freedom, equality, and justice. They want to feel like the ruling class by interfering with and hurting other people. That is the only thing that gives them a sense of pleasure and well-being. Why do I say that? Because people take Sibson seriously and give him immense amounts of attention. Those same people will go off an insane rage over a legitimate policy agreement that is backed by sound information and rigorous thinking. In tolerating Sibby, a large sector has declared its values. And they are the opposite of what freedom, equality, and justice is supposed to be all about.

South Dakota and the U.S. is quite capable of voting itself out of democracy. George W. Bush has carried us to the edge of the authoritarian abyss.

I have no predictions about what is happening today. I do have contingency plans. At this time in our history, some other countries are operating on American-inspired principles much better than America is. It may be time to move on. Or find ways to reignite the American Revolution. But the stage is better set for angry insurrection that cannot lead to a rejuvenation of democracy. What we did to Iraq we are poised to do to ourselves.

RED ALERT. Hide your face. Cheney is coming.

2006-11-06T10:28:00.000-09:00

Vice President Cheney's office announced that he is coming to South Dakota tomorrow on a hunting trip. Reporters asked, "Pheasants?" "No," said the press secretary, "he comes for the great faces. He's grabbed his gun and it's full steam ahead."

The only "winners" in the war on Iraq are the contractors

2006-11-04T13:00:00.000-09:00

The most dismaying aspect of the war on Iraq is that the people who have sent our troops there seem to consider them disposable and expendable. They give them words of honor and praise, but they don't honor their lives by taking competent military measures to keep them alive. Contrast this attitude with the billions of dollars of our money that is going to the benefit of contractors, who are engaged in a huge rip-off of our country while doing little to rebuild Iraq. Evidence indicates that the only organization really helping to rebuild Iraq is the U.S Army Corps of Engineers.

While there is a Senate investigation into profiteering, shoddy work and tactics, and dishonesty, few people are investigating how much the rip-offs by the contractors have contributed to the insurgency.

A lengthy story on the matter is in the Washington Post.

Big Brother's little siblings try their hand

2006-11-04T12:30:00.000-09:00

During the week, a story broke that a government website was taken down because it contained information on how to go about making an atomic bomb. The web site contained documents from Iraq and was put up at the urging of some Republican senators who thought it might contain that information to support the Bush regime's claims for going to war: that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had links with Al Qaida.

Based upon a lengthy account in the New York Times, some bloggers are claiming that the newspaper has produced evidence that Saddam Hussein did in fact have weapons of mass destruction. They base their claim on this paragraph:

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

The bloggers claim that the last sentence is evidence that George W. Bush was right in his claim of weapons of mass destruction.

The bloggers, as is typical of the neo-regressive mentality, leave out the entire context of the news report. The documents cited were written by weapons inspectors who were charged after the Gulf War with seeing that Iraq was not continuing its program of making unconventional weapons. The reports deal with their findings, and the sentence that says Iraqi "scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away," the story is recounting the state of affairs at the time the work of the scientists was disrupted by the 1991 Gulf War. This is not new or startling information.

It is just more evidence of the malevolent dishonesty and mental incompetence that possesses the George W. Bush regime. They are earnest in their efforts to deceive the people and put them under totalitarian rule.

Revising and suppressing George Orwell

2006-11-02T15:42:00.000-09:00

Todd Epp was on a panel at Augustana College (the Norwegian branch in Sioux Falls) that discussed Orwell's 1984. The discussion prefaces a play version that is coming to Sioux Falls. There is a reason that Orwell and 1984 are being examined and discussed extensively throughout the United States: most of the symptoms of a society going totalitarian that Orwell portrayed in his novel have become stunningly apparent in the U.S.A. of the 21st century.

I was not at the discussion, so I have to rely on news accounts of what was said. But the Argus Leader reported that Todd said that three slogans emphasized in the novel have become the hallmarks of the Bush administration:

War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength

The first slogan, Todd said, mirrors the foreign policy of the Bush administration, and the last reflects its efforts to frustrate the press and keep the public from having any knowledge of how it operates.

The newspaper account earned Todd one of those scurrilous personal attacks which is the blog South Dakota Politics most distinquishing aspect. When some of the posters on that blog encounter something that refutes their mindset, they launch into a barrage of insult and abuse (often based upon their other characteristic device of misquotation) that asserts that their erstwhile opponent is not only bereft of reason but has some defect of mentality that makes them incapable of reason. This time Todd Epp was portrayed as having a straw brain, like the scarecrow of Oz fame. This kind of playground invective is what the blogger has in the past called witty repartee.

The poster asserts that Todd Epp's parallels are absurd: "No reasonable person could suppose that the Newspeak slogans of 1984 "fit" this or any other administration." He prefaces this comment with the charge that Todd Epp "now deems himself a professor, qualified to comment on literature."

Many blogs, such as SDP, are often the product of personality issues. Todd Epp being selected to speak on 1984 obviously piqued a sense of unique eminence and the wounded ego replied through a blog. But 1984 is what is termed a thesis novel of cultural criticism. Orwell's career included being a colonial police officer, a participant on the communist side of the Spanish Civil War, and later a propaganda analyst for the British government. He was a student of how totalitarianism became instituted, and 1984 is a fictional examination of the principles he identified. While many readers assumed that 1984 was a critique of the Soviet Union, it was a novel that dealt with how some of the techniques of repression and control used in the Soviet Union were a threat even within democratic societies.

Orwell noted that the totalitarian impulse was a constant in human society, and that democracy is in a constant struggle with it. There are certain human traits that could be manipulated into dominance through the use of the electronic media. This is a major theme in the novel, and his description of it has a startling accuracy for how the media is used today to set up and elicit conditioned responses from a large portion of the populace.

The war on Iraq has precise parallels to how war was fomented and maintained as a neverending means of keeping the population of Oceania under the control under the pretense of patriotism. People are never as cohesive as when they perceive an enemy that threatens them. Bush used the impetus from 9/11 to launch the war on Iraq, although the reasons he gave at the time--WMDs and links to Al Qaida--were proven to be totally false. But once the war was launched, his adminstration had a means to manipulate a trusting populace into seeing him as the Big Brother that was making them secure and protecting them from terrorists. Dissidents were, as is described in detail in the novel, as enemies of the state. Forty-some percent of U.S. citizens objected to the war on Iraq, but they were portrayed by the Bush administration as unpatriotic enemies of the people and traitors. Recall the ads run during the Daschle campaign that pictured him with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden because he had criticised the rush to combat and the eschewal of diplomacy in attacking Iraq. That same technique was used in the attack on Todd Epp when he was portrayed by a picture of the straw-brained scarecrow. We call this scurrilous propaganda. Totalitarian minds call it witty repartee.

It does not take a professor of literature--such as me (I have taught 1984 18 or 20 times)--or even an undergraduate English literature major such as Todd Epp to be able to read the parallels between the regime of Oceania and the regime of George Bush in waging a war as a means of retaining internal political power. He tells us that our peace is dependent on this war, hence, War is peace. The ploy worked. It got him re-elected in 2004. But now a majority of Americans see the wrongness and the self-destructive dangers of a war designed to do nothing but maintain the top leader's role of commander in chief.

This is one of the main reasons 1984 has a resurgence of interest and relevance. It fits our current situation.

Freedom is slavery reflects that argument that our insistence upon the Constitutional guarantees of freedom from illegal search and seizure, due process, and equality will make us slaves to Islamic terrorism, if we insist upon them. They impeded Big Brother's efforts to keep us safe. Therefore, we must relinquish them. This Newspeak argument is carefully laid out in the novel and it is precisely the kind of reasoning used by the Bush administration to justify its curtailments of personal privacy and due process.

And, of course, nearly every working journalist in D.C. has pointed out that the Bush adminstration has been the most secretive in our history. What the people don't know won't hurt them. But most of what the people don't know won't hurt the Bush regime. But the people are now in the know.

In writings other than 1984, Orwell gives more analytic perspectives on how totalitarianism works. I append some here. They are even more salient in defining some of the tactics of the Bush administration than 1984.

Here is a paragraph from "The Prevention of Literature:"

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." "

And this:

"The organized lying practiced by totalitarian states is not, as is sometimes claimed, a temporary expedient of the same nature as military deception. It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that would still continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary. Among intelligent Communists there is an underground legend to the effect that although the Russian government is obliged now to deal in lying propaganda, frame-up trials, and so forth, it is secretly recording the true facts and will publish them at some future time. We can, I believe, be quite certain that this is not the case, because the mentality implied by such an action is that of a liberal historian who believes that the past cannot be altered and that a correct knowledge of history is valuable as a matter of course. From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy -- or even two orthodoxies, as often happens -- good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading."

And more:

"The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or on the other hand, that modern physics has proven that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one's senses is simply vulgar philistinism. A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist. Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific textbook, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical fact. It is at the point where literature and politics cross that totalitarianism exerts its greatest pressure on the intellectual. The exact sciences are not, at this date, menaced to anything like the same extent. This partly accounts for the fact that in all countries it is easier for the scientists than for the writers to line up behind their respective governments."

Then, read the whole of his "Politics and the English Language."

Those who lust for totalitarian control over others will always resort to personal attacks and denigrations against those who threaten freedom for them. Wear your scarecrow mantel as a badge of honor, Mr. Epp. And keep reading and writing. That's what really scares them.

Pravda Jr. endorses state control of ovaries

2006-11-02T12:54:00.000-09:00

The Aberdeen American News is a wretched rag. While it makes token efforts to look like a newspaper, it models itself after the old Pravda in that it selects what it publishes based upon a mind control doctrine in which the editors determine what the public should and should not read. We are not condemning its right to voice opinions on its editorial page, although we reserve our right to point out that its endorsements this election season exceed its own standards of incoherent stupidity. Nothing that the American News takes a stance on seems to have any connection with reality.

Today, it endorsed HB1215, Referred Law 6, the abortion ban. That is the newspaper's right.

What is not right is its effort to control public opinion.
The letters-to-the-editor columns have been filled with letters urging a yes vote on Referred Law 6, with sometimes one letter urging a no vote appearing on the page as a cover-your-ass token against charges of manipulating the letters published. We know there have been many letters in opposition to the ban. The Aberdeen office of the Campaign for Healthy Families claims that they have at least a dozen complaints filed that letters opposing Referred Law 6 have been submitted but never published by the American News.

The Aberdeen Abominable Newsfraud has never made but the most cursory efforts--for the sake of appearance only--to publish comprehensive, accurate, and documented news. Rather, it adheres to party-line control so that what ekes out reflects a world that exists only in the mind of a few editors who dream the totalitarian dream. And that is because they are incompetent journalists.

Our main opposition to Referred Law 6 is that it is based upon the presumption that the state needs to take control of women's ovaries because the women are not morally competent to determine their reproductive choices. It omits any exceptions for rape and incest, meaning that women who may be impregnated in such situations will be forced to carry the genetic strains of rapists and relatives suffering demented perversions to term. In a state that likes to build prisons and hunt offenders of bad laws as a malicious sport, this measure seems calculated to maintain a good supply of game. It does for the slavering righteous what Pheasants Forever and Ducks Unlimited do for sportsmen who have not graduated to human game. And like the slaveowners of yore who forced slave women to carry to term the get of the owners themselves to keep the labor supply filled, women in South Dakota will be given the experience of having their bodies taken over by the state, which will have nothing to do with the get produced once it has emerged from the womb. Not at least until said get qualifies as fodder for the criminal justice system. The proponents of the abortion ban claim that "science" has shown that each zygote is a unique human being right from the moment that sperm penetrates egg. What science knows is that each zygote has the potential of becoming a human being, and it also knows that there is such a thing as a bad seed in which a woman will be forced to bring to term an organism genetically destined to offenses against humanity, if that is what its uniqueness entails.

The abortion ban itself was conceived in a fraudulent legislative process. It formed a Task Force which stacked the materials it examined so that it heard only people who want to impose totalitarian restrictions on women and dismissed in their report the few people who were allowed to speak in oppostion to the subjugation of women. The Task Force states that its conclusions that a human life is formed immediately upon fertilization are supported by scientific advances since 1973. The scientific advances have been in the ability to capture images of the corporeal development, but also in the ability to measure the degree of sentience. A zygote becomes a fetus and a fetus becomes an organism capable of sensation and the potential for viability as a human late into the development. HB1215 contains fraudulent statements about science and about the puppets the Task Force selected to support their predetermined case.

One need not read any further than the first paragraph of HB1215 to see what a sham this law is based upon. This law never received the kind of critical debate that such legislation should receive in a truly democratic system. The law itself was conceived through a kind of forcible rape that a single-party system can commit on its constituents and get away with.

We sympathize with people who sincerely oppose abortion. We do not sympathize with people who use the issue to open the door to totalitarian control of the most private, personal, and vital factor that women have to face in determining their own lives. It takes a journalistic fraud in complicity with the scheming dictators to dupe the public into accepting subservience in the name of a false morality. The lies in the first paragraph of the law should be enough to condemn it. It asserts that the right-to-life of a zygote supercedes the right of a woman to determine her own life and whether she should allow her body to be the host for an organism that has no human viability.

Enough said. If this law is approved by voters, people who want true liberty, equality, and justice may well have to make some relocation plans.

Here is the first paragraph:

The Legislature accepts and concurs with the conclusion of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, based upon written materials, scientific studies, and testimony of witnesses presented to the task force, that life begins at the time of conception, a conclusion confirmed by scientific advances since the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, including the fact that each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization. Moreover, the Legislature finds, based upon the conclusions of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, and in recognition of the technological advances and medical experience and body of knowledge about abortions produced and made available since the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, that to fully protect the rights, interests, and health of the pregnant mother, the rights, interest, and life of her unborn child, and the mother's fundamental natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child, abortions in South Dakota should be prohibited. Moreover, the Legislature finds that the guarantee of due process of law under the Constitution of South Dakota applies equally to born and unborn human beings, and that under the Constitution of South Dakota, a pregnant mother and her unborn child, each possess a natural and inalienable right to life.

Sen. Schoenbeck tries to keep hands off Gropegate--at first

2006-10-28T11:16:00.000-08:00

Bob Mercer's coverage of the Gropegate business has received acknowledgement from two other blogs. And he added to this in Friday's Aberdeen American News with more evidence that suggests that Sen. Lee Schoenbeck is indulging in some political opportunism in handling the issue the way he did a few weeks before the election.

Todd Epp, who responded to one of my posts about Mercer's coverage and raised a question about whether the reporter had an agenda reprints an e-mail from Mercer that explains Mercer's decision to become Bill Janklow's press secretary. In the letter, Bob states that he is registered as an independent voter. I, too, assumed he was a Republican, because press secretaries are usually chosen for their dedication and support of a viewpoint. Not the case here, Bob explains. His decision had more to do with the quality of communications between state government and the press.

Mt. Blogmore has also lauded Mercer's coverage and "bulldog" qualities in never letting the strands of a story get out of grasp.

On Friday, Mercer's story said that Schoenbeck had been aware of the rumors whirling around Dan Sutton since last winter. [You have to get the hard copy of the newspaper to retrieve the story.] Schoenbeck, the chief officer of the State Senate, did nothing until the page's father, Dennis Wiese, wrote a formal complaint. Neither did Schoenbeck attend any meetings of the legislative executive committee, which deals with disciplinary matters involving legislators.

Although a blog broke the story, Mercer has done the most comprehensive reporting on the affair. The Argus Leader has had some informing stories, too. But the story shows the fracture line between what blogs do and what genuine journalism does. Most of the blogs wallow in Sibbyesque whining and snarking about the mainstream media and their leftist leanings and dilatoriness in reporting stuff that does not conform to their anti-rightwing agenda.

We do have media in South Dakota that have a strict agenda in manipulating commentary and letters-to-the-editor to reflect their editorial bias. It is not hard to find party-line editing in the South Dakota media. They often suppress news that does not conform to their political affections. They justify this bias by claiming that they are serving the interests of their readers.

In this case, Mercer has produced stories that get beyond the personal preferences of bloggers into the real issues. And there will be plenty more to come.

Huge Brown County Democrat Rally on Sunday

2006-10-26T22:00:00.000-08:00

Sen. Tim Johnson
Rep. Stephanie Herseth
Governor candidate Jack Billion
School and Public Lands candidate Bryce Healy
PUC candidate Steve Kolbeck
Attorney General Candidate Ron Volesky
District 2 candidates: Sen. Jim Hundstad, Rep. Paul Dennert, Rep. Burt Elliott
District 3 candidates: Al Hoerth for Senate; Tom Black and Ted Kneebone for House
Brown County Commissioner Tom Fischbach

Time for the rally: 5 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 29. Place: Aberdeen Eagles Club, 316 S. 2nd St.

Music, food, and it's free. We will pass a hat. A BIG hat.

However, the main thing is to come, talk to the candidates, get updated on issues, and get yourself primed to vote. Also get others primed to vote.

For those of you who want to help get out the vote, literature drop squads will gather at the Coordinated Campaign Office, 18 2nd Ave. SW, at noon Sunday. That's when we'll start serving pizza to fortify the participants. Sen. Johnson and Jack Billion will stop by the office at 12:45 p.m. to rally the troops and lead the literature charge.

You think it is time for something in Pierre to be done right? This is your chance to help make it happen.

Hell, yes, cut and run

2006-10-26T20:05:00.000-08:00

Cut out the deception, the conniving, and the incompetence and run this war to a reasonable, honorable conclusion. America has been drug down far enough and America has lost 2,800 more of its finest people than was needed or in any way justified.

If this war did one-tenth for Iraq and the U.S.A. as it did for Halliburton, we might give someone in the Bush administration a chit of credit. But this is insane. And obscene.

It is time we really honor our troops by not getting them killed and maimed. And it is time we honor the principles of our country once again by making reparations to those whose lives we have damaged. It may well be more than this country has the resources, moral or material, to do.

Wind: you might break it but you won't own it

2006-10-26T13:31:00.000-08:00

It's called Tatanka Wind Power, LLC. That has a nice Dakota ring to it because "tatanka" is the Lakota word for bull bison. Tatanka Wind Power has announced plans to build a ten-mile power transmission line through Dickey County, North Dakota, to connect with a main transmission line owned by Montana-Dakota Utilities Co.

Tatanka plans to put up 120 wind turbines along the North Dakota-South Dakota border. They would be divided equally between the states so that each state will produce 90 megawatts of electricity.

Dickey County, for which Ellendale is the county seat, had a wind turbine project in the works about a year and a half ago. However, when a township drew up zoning restrictions to insure that the structures would not have an adverse impact on individual farmers, the companies involved in the scheme canceled the plans. The major company involved in that scheme was headquartered in Florida.

Tatanka Wind Power, LLC, is owned by Acciona Wind Energy USA, LLC, which, in turn, is a subsidiary of Acciona SA headquartered in Madrid, Spain.

The South Dakota turbines to be built by Tatanka will be located in McPherson County

Northwestern Energy, which is the privately-owned utility that supplies gas and electricity to the Aberdeen area, as well as much of South Dakota, has been approved by the PUC for sale to an Australian Company, Babcock and Brown Infrastructure, Ltd., headquartered in Sydney.

During the summer of 2005, interest in wind energy by individual farmers was spurred when Deere & Co. announced a program through its credit corporation to finance wind turbines for individual farmers who could join with neighboring farmers to produce megawatts of electricity through a network of turbines. Organization and support from farm organizations and electric cooperatives never materialized. Farmers and land-owners who were interested in supporting production facilities found it near impossible to obtain information on how to work with state regulations and get access to transmission lines. It became clear that the power industry is not interested in production facilities that are not wholly owned and controlled by private companies, many of them foreign.

While there is wind being generated about energy independence, the fact is that foreign corporations are moving into control of the U.S. energy market.

Here is an issue for Steve Kolbeck, candidate for the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission.

Rep. Al Novstrup provides a taste of tyranny

2006-10-25T11:59:00.000-08:00

For most people who are against Referred Law 6, the abortion ban in South Dakota, their concerns are that a totalitarian principle that is designed to exercise control over vital, personal decisions is being pushed on the people behind a humanitarian facade. Despite all the baby-killer shouts and fury from the anti-freedom forces, hardly anyone is in favor of abortion. But the aspects of tryanny are in the totality of the ban.

In the time of slavery, slaves were encouraged to breed and have children. As soon as a woman became pregnant, the slave-holders asserted ownership over the incipient child. The woman was required to bring the fetus to term because it represented a salable asset to the slave-owner. Often, after the child was born and was weened, it would be taken from the mother and put into a regimen to train it for slavehood. Slave-owners inflicted terrible punishments on women who did not carry the chattel to term, whether deliberately or accidentally.

This control over women's bodies and lives is the major objection to the abortion ban. It announces that the state becomes the owner of women's bodies when they are pregnant and reduces women to the status of slaves to the state--although the state avoids any pecuniary or moral responsibility for the offspring that are produced by forced pregnancies, even if they result from rape or incest. The ban makes it a criminal offense not to carry a pregnancy to term.

Rep. Al Novstrup, R-Disrict 3, gave a demonstration of the despotic attitudes and actions of ban supporters at a forum at Northern State University early this month.

United Campus Ministries sponsored two sessions, one at noon and another at 5:30 p.m., on the Northern campus for the purpose of discussing the abortion ban. John Baskins of the UCM could not find anyone to speak against the ban. While I was out-of-town on an extended business trip, he left two messages on my answering machine asking if I would speak against the ban. Because of the rush of work at this time, days passed after I returned before I played back the telephone messages. However, I would have declined to appear at the forums.

People who are against the ban know better than to engage the anti-freedom forces in any kind of discussion. The Vote-Yes-For-Loss-of-Rights forces have carried their campaign to the point that anyone who engages them can be guaranteed to be insulted, abused, and subjected to the most inane and insane level of name-calling and vilification. The proponents of the ban come armed with all manner of false information (such as the totally fraudulent "study" report sponsored by the state legislature), and the public interest is not served by allowing them to give a recital of their lies and accusations.

Staff members of the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families were invited to speak to the forums, but they declined. They did set up an information table in the lobby of the Union where the forums were to be held. They put up a sign on the table that said:

"The views of the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families will not be represented here today."

After the afternoon forum, Al Novstrup took it upon himself to remove the sign. As the sign did not advocate anything but merely informed people in the Union that the group would not be speaking, no one can figure why Novstrup did that, other than to put on a demonstration of tyrannical power.

When the noon session was over, Lindsey of the campaign staff approached Novstrup, who had the sign rolled up under his arm, in the lobby and asked if she could have the sign back. Novstrup held it out to her, but when she reached out to take it, he withdrew it and put it back under his arm.

This is the quality of representation District 3 has in Pierre.

The forums were not well attended. In fact, no one who opposes the ban appears to have shown up other than Campaign staff members who came to monitor the proceedings.

For the noon session, the attendees were Novstrup, his son David (also a candidate for the state house), David's wife Holly, attorney Rory King, Martin Albl of Presentation College, and two or three people wearing Vote Yes t-shirts.

At the evening session were Al Novstrup, his wife and daughter and a friend, two other women from Vote Yes, and a man who did not identify himself.

Novstrup recited his cant at the evening session. He stated that there were 30-50 women who had abortions and testified against before the state legislative committee. He did not mention that they were carefully pre-screened to insure their testimony supported the contrivers of the ban. He claimed that the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision announced that "abortion is good for women." He said the ban is a matter of due process. If a fetus had the same rights to due process that a serial killer has, he said, he would vote against the ban. If a fetus had the same 20-year window of appeals and delays that a convicted serial killerhas, the ban would not be needed.

He spoke against the evils of Planned Parenthood. He said they make their money from abortion and tell women that the fetus is "just a clump of tissue." Women counseled by Planned Parenthood do not see a doctor, he claimed, until they are on the operating table. He stated that 96 percent of abortions are for convenience and 80 percent are for birth control.

Attorney Rory King took a theological tack. He claimed that churches preached that abortion was wrong until the 1960s when they were infected by radical feminism. He claimed that pastors who were against the ban had abandoned God and scripture and had surrendered to the abortionists.

Thus are the actions and incisive minds of Al Novstrup and his merry band.

[This account is from interviews with and notes taken by Lindsey and John of the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families.]

This is journalism: a lesson from Bob Mercer

2006-10-24T18:29:00.000-08:00

Nobody has worked the Gropegate story with the thoroughness and enterprise and accuracy that Bob Mercer has. Plus, he has the contacts in Pierre to get questions answered.

Today he gave a lengthy account of the whole affair in the Aberdeen American News with Sen. Lee Schoenbeck's letter of ultimatum to Sen. Dan Sutton run as a sidebar.

The letter read in context with the facts stated by Bob Mercer show that Schoenbeck was clearly pushing and did not have all the facts correctly.

So, the state senate has a chance to work this out.

Bob Mercer wrote one of the best feature stories for the American News when he was its statehouse and political reporter that I have seen in a newspaper. On his way to work early one morning, he saw a bunch of hoboes gathered around a little campfire along the railroad. He bought a six pack and joined them to get a story of who they were and what the life of a hobo was like in the late 20th century.

I admire the story. Although I have been told that my own journalistic cajones would be my death, I do not have that mix of personality and enterprise that could get such a good story from tramps I happened to spot on my way to work. Bob Mercer does journalism.

Thank God for Bob Mercer and the true professionals in the South Dakota press corps. They clean and clear up the informational messes dropped along the way by bloggers.

I think we need to start a Golden Pen and Shovel Award for the journalistic professionals that can give us orderly, straight facts in the midst of web log chaos.

And the Eppilogue has another nomination in the offing in from an interview with Jonathan Ellis who explained the reasons of verfication that caused the newspaper to play the Dan Sutton story differently from the Bob Sahr story.

If we aren't careful, we might find government proceedings in South Dakota getting full and accurate coverage.

While bloggers like to form mutual admiration societies and tell each other how important they are in poltical discussion, they are really creating only more work for the real journalists. They could help. But most of them have neither ability or interest to go beyond inflicting the political environment with their little opinions.

This episode shows who does the real, heavy work.

The Gropegate mob still feeling around for the issues

2006-10-24T11:55:00.000-08:00

The Argus Leader carried a story today that the Governor has been requested to convene a special legislative session to deal with the misconduct charges against Sen. Dan Sutton, a Democrat from Flandreau. It asked for a reaction to the request from Sutton's attorney, Mike Butler:

Butler, a prominent criminal defense lawyer who represents Sutton, said the idea "borders on an anti-Democratic power play."
"People are attempting to influence the outcome of elections," Butler said. "And I hope the governor exercises some restraint here and trusts the investigative process of the attorney general's office and the Division of Criminal Investigation to do their jobs ... and not act impulsively as some people are inclined to do."

In the minds of some bloggers, the quotation from Butler about "an anti-Democratic power play" got contorted into the charge that the father of the page who made the misconduct complaint is trying to destroy the Democratic Party, and that the Argus Leader is promoting that story. Aside from quoting Mike Butler on the power play idea, we can find no mention of an attempt to destroy the Democratic Party. Some bloggers have demonstrated a prodigious abililty to treat news stories like Rorschach blots on which they impose their own fantasies and designs. Actuality is seldom anything like they represent it to be.

The power play idea is brought up by Bob Mercer, who has worked as a political reporter for the Aberdeen American News, the Rapid City Journal, and now reports political news and writes columns as a syndicated correspondent. He was Bill Janklow's press secretary. In his Capitol Notebook column which appeared last Saturday in the Aberdeen American News, he recounts that reporters had heard the rumors that Dan Sutton was under investigation last spring, but did not pursue the story when no action was taken by officials. Mercer outlines what he sees as a power play by Sen. Lee Schoenbeck, the state senate majority leader. He leads his story this way:

"The blunt threat that Sen. Lee Schoenbeck made to Sen. Dan Sutton was supposed to be an offer that couldn't be refused."

He picks up the story this way:

"Then a month before the Nov. 7 elections, with Republicans in danger of least at least some seats in the Senate, and their majority possibly in danger, the father of the page--a prominent Democrat--took his complaint about the matter to Schoenbeck.

"The letter sent by Schoenbeck, R-Watertown, to Sutton lit the fuse for an explosion of publicity about the case. The follow-up letter by Senate Democratic leader Garry Moore of Yankton to the rest of the Democratic senators blew the matter wide open.

"Suddenly an unsubstantiated rumor became a news story because of the course of action taken by Schoenbeck in his role as the Senate's top elected officer.

"Schoenbeck's official letter, explaining to Sutton this his resignation would mean no Senate investigation, was an ultimatum. When Schoenbeck officially threatened a sitting senator with possible expulsion, Schoenbeck's action demanded a news story, regardless of what the underlying reasons might be.

"Hindsight suggests there could have been better ways for the Senate's leadership to handle this matter. With his letter Schoenbeck, who has made no secret of his desire to run for governor in 2010, put himself in a no-win situation right alongside Sutton.

"To some people, Schoenbeck's Godfather-like threat to Sutton looked like a Republican playing power politics a few weeks before the Nov. 7 elections.

"Among other people, an opposite question was being asked.

"Why would Schoebeck be willing to let a senator, accused of serioius improper conduct, resign rather than face official disciplinary action by the Senate? With the congressional page scandal looming, the last thing Schoenbeck wanted was to be accused of sweeping under the rug a complaint from a page's parent.

"But Schoenbeck's letter to Sutton also put Moore in a no-win situation.

"Moore said he didn't know about the allegations against Sutton until two weeks ago, when Schoenbeck called him. Moore said he preferred that the Legislature's executive board look into the matter, rather than proceed directly on the route that Schoenbeck took.

"By refusing to join Schoenbeck in signing the letter to Sutton, Moore faced the potential accusation that he wanted to cover up the matter. So Moore's subsequent letter to his fellow Democrats served as defense for himself while also making his caucus members aware of what was happening.

"But the Moore letter also back-fired on him and the Democrats. His letter made it appear to some reporters for other news organizations that Moore and his Democratic caucus led the charge against Sutton.

"That worked to the short-term benefit of Schoenbeck and the Republicans, by putting the spotlight on the other party. Moore was left to issue a statewide announcement Thursday clarifying that he wasn't calling on Sutton to resign.

...

"Now that it's partially out in the open, this matter could vibrate far beyond what did or didn't happen in Sutton's motel room in Fort Pierre, where the page was staying with his parents' permission.

"Much more significantly, the matter might turn attention to the failed Ridgefield Farms beef-processing project, and the roles of key people involved in it, as efforts for its start-up failed first in Huron and then in Flandreau.

Mercer goes on to explain that Dennis Wiese, the former Farmers Union president, was the lead figure in bringing the Ridgefield scheme to Flandreau and worked as a paid consultant for the firm. The Flandreau city council appropriated $750,000 to entice Ridgefield to Flandreau and the Flandreau Development Corp, of which Sutton was the president, gave the firm $100,000 to move its offices to Flandreau. As president of the Development Corp., Sutton sat on the board of directors of Ridgefield Farms. The Flandreau interests, led by Sutton, are trying to recoup the money provided to Ridgefield.

Mercer continues:

"Here is the connection between the page matter and the Ridgefield matter: Schoenbeck's ultimatum letter to Sutton was also sent by Schoenbeck to Wiese.

"A number of key legislators were involved in the run-up to the decision to send the ultimatum letter to Sutton.

"It has become evident in recent days they were not aware of the full background of events unfolding in Flandreau involving Wiese and Sutton.

"The story regarding the page father's complaint against Sutton could become much bigger, and much less clear cut , as more of the background and identities of the people come to light, in both the page complaint and the politics of Ridgefield in Flandreau. "

The power play, if any, involves Republicans using some fractiousness in the Democratic Party to political advantage. With a post-election special session on the horizon to investigate a sitting Democratic senator, the Republicans can hope for some votes to fall their way.

Before the June primary, we were aware that people who had worked with Wiese in the Farmers Union kept their distance from him in his run for the governor candidacy. And some routine questions about the Ridgefield Farms relationships in Huron and Flandreau were met with snarls.

But we still can't find any reference to attempts to destroy the Democratic Party, except on few blogs, whose Rorschach blots seem to have the story.

When Deep Throat gets confused with Lower Colon

2006-10-22T23:50:00.000-08:00

Attention spans seem to have been conditioned by the length of time a computer CPU can hold some digits. Human memories that are connected to cyberspace cannot seem to hold information from one web log post to another. And so, now I am accused of being a defender and apologist for the main stream media. This is because I am very critical of the handling of Gropegate by the the South Dakota blog mob. But I have written more posts critical of the press than I have of web logs.

First of all, there is no main stream media in South Dakota. Two newspapers do rise occasionally to the level of reportage and writing that characterizes the best and most prominent journalistic enterprises, but the rest of the media float on the backwash of village gossip. A few weeklies practice a level of community journalism that tries to rise above the mean and terribly destructive fractiousness that courses through the villages and turns them into fuming wastelands. Mostly, the media suffer from insufficiency of intellects and discerning knowledge. They are caught between trying to emulate their perception of what the truly influential media does and serving a declining revenue source of advertisers. The news business has been debilitated by competing for audiences with entertainment and by trying to serve the fractious interests of people who divide the world into two classes and form their identities on one of those sides. This is the brain-soft mentality induced by the media that Orwell tried to warn us about.

I am no defender of the news media. I am a defender and an advocate for the media as the Fourth Estate, a virtual arm of government that informs the public what their government is doing and is ever vigilant for signs of incompetence, dishonesty, and tyranny. The press is given an inordinate amount of freedom and power to serve that end, and when news media compromise that function, I get testy. And when news media do not maintain the standards of performance established by 400-some years of practice in America, I get a hopeless, sinking feeling.

I am very critical of web logs. My criticism is that web logs are either the products of a partisan agenda or individual egos. Usually both. As such, they make no pretense of trying to discern what is true and what is not. My colleague Dr. Silas, who directed the information-gathering and categorization for the Press Project, which examined the integrity of information that compromised the election campaign of 2004, has likened many web logs to the writing on public restroom walls. And the issue is not whether the blogs adhere to the rules of journalism. The issue is that they don't follow the basic requisites of expository writing and writing which purports to advance viewpoints based upon a review of facts and the application of reason. Dr. Silas confirms what most of us observe: that most web postings are ad hominem attacks and fabrications and misrepresentations of what other people have said, thought, or done.

So, when some bloggers contend that blogs perform a function that the media does not, I take issue based on the facts. My concern is not that I am inherently against blogs. What the hell are you reading here, if you've gotten this far? My contention is that blogs can be an immensely valuable addition to the exchange of information, but not when one must assess every utterance for its competence, its accuracy, and its integrity of purpose. A great many blog posts can be filed in the false information category. And most of the rest can be filed under one of the categories of rhetorical fallacy. The answer offered by some blog promoters is that we should turn on our bullshit detectors and turn up our critical thinking apparatus and decide for ourselves. The fallacy in that is who has time or resources to check out facts to that degree? That is why writers and editors are so important to the flow of information. They do the critical work of establishing some standard of truth and reliability.

A recent comment suggested that I may be hung up on an English professor's fussy definitions of what comprises an acceptable piece of writing. I admit that I am repulsed by the bad writing in many blogs, and I don't mean just the typographical errors and grammatical mishaps. Slovenly writing denotes slovenly minds. But before I ever ventured into a college classroom, I spent about 13 years behind the typewriter (remember those?) and on editorial desks. Journalists who mishandled information in the way that the Gropegate story has meandered very quickly became ex-journalists. And I helped quite a few find their way to the street.

My last full-time position as a working journalist was as the editor of the farm and business sections of a newspaper in a fairly good sized metropolitan area that had three other daily newspapers (I started out on the sports desk of one of the others), and I also coordinated the coverage of higher education, coordinated opinion surveys with other media, and was coordinator of investigative reporting projects. Much of the investigative reporting was done in concert with reporters from the competing media, and because I was reporting and editing matters concerning the economy, most of the leads we developed on stories for investigative work involved the business community. However, on occasion I was assigned to work on political stories, too. I had training in finding documentary evidence that corroborated what witnesses could tell us.

Investigative teams I worked with produced stories that led to 18 convictions for major crimes, and 70-some law enforcement actions, mostly involving consumer fraud. In preparing those stories, I think we spent as much time in the corporate counsel's office as we did developing the information. Our publishers would not let us get anything into print that was not absolutely nailed. While news media have the right to say what they want in the form of an opinion on the performance of public officials, entertainers, and anyone else offering something for public consumption under the fair comment and criticism rules, they do not have the right to make false or erroneous statements of fact. Journalistic investigative pieces have to be prepared with the same care as court cases or the media can end paying liabilities that will drive them into bankruptcy.

Major newspapers are approached every day by attorneys who represent clients who claim they have been unfairly damaged by news stories. In most cases the claims are dismissed because the stories are true and the reporters have the records and evidence to support them. In a number of other cases, the complainants have been stung by a criticism that falls under the fair comment and criticism rule. In the few cases where media realize they have committed an error, they work hard for an out-of-court settlement. Few cases make it to litigation. But journalists work under that kind of stringent requirement for accuracy.

Bloggers don't.

The self-preening and crowing of bloggers over how they have displaced the news media in breaking important stories and forcing them to play catch-up is inane. They perceive that they are a force that drives the new age of information and they crow like the roosters that assume that their noise is what makes the sun come up. The people working on the data categorized for the Press Project say evidence shows that blogs are the effects not the motivators of political dialogue. Dr. Silas says that what shows up on blogs are like the skin eruptions that are symptoms of some virulent strain coursing through the body. They are often the public expression of some political strategy that has its origins in the fetid precincts of political operatives. Communications analysts can trace the provenance of many political blog posts to such origins.

Bloggers, like members of the press, are on safe ground as long as they confine their remarks to opinion. When they begin to report facts, the rules of accuracy and evidence kick in. And that leads us back to Gropegate.

We were given notice last M0nday that storm clouds were gathering on the horizon and a state senator was targeted for a lightening strike. In that "teaser" for things to come SDWC mentioned a letter that set the matter in motion:

This letter from President Pro Tempore Schoenbeck in turn set off a letter in support of Schoenbeck's position from Senate Minority Leader Garry Moore. I'm told he sent this to other members of the Democratic Party.

This was the first mistake. It misrepresented the reaction of Sen. Minoritiy Leader Moore and I, among others, took the statement on its face value. Sen. Moore did not support Schoenbeck's position. He shared the concern over the complaint that had been filed and acknowledged that it had to be dealt with, but in every other aspect, he rebuked Schoenbeck.

It turns out that Schoenbeck had issued a letter to Sen. Dan Sutton that was what reporter Bob Mercer called a godfather-like offer he did not think Sutton could refuse. He told Sutton he could either resign from the Senate or be subjected to an investigation through which he could be the subject of a special session. Sen. Moore did not "support Schoenbeck's position," but instead called for procedures for due process to be put in place should such an occasion ever arise again.

While many bloggers and some reporters claim to have been aware of the allegations made against Sen. Sutton since last February, Sen. Moore appears to have been blind-sided by the whole business. He did not join Schoenbeck's call for a resignation, but was perturbed that the matter had not been reported to him. This was misrepresented, and we were led to think that Moore endorsed Schoenbeck's tactic.

Some of the bloggers are pointing their querulous, shaking fingers (Work on that one, BOJ.) at the news media for sitting on the story while publishing news of allegations against Bob Sahr. I know nothing of the details of all this. All I know is that Bob Sahr withdrew from his race for the PUC, but Dan Sutton is standing firm in his race for the Senate.

And some bloggers are giving sanctimonious testimony that the blogs did not attach any names to their rumor mongering. The journalists did. That is not hard to understand. In journalism, there is no story if there is not an identity. Things don't happen to figments and figments are not perpetrators. To report a story without a name is like reporting an earthquake that happened on a planet somewhere. One does not have to get past the first chapters of a good journalism text to understand why that principle is an imperative. Names of victims can be withheld for discretionary reasons, but when they are the effective accusers, the accused has a right to face them and the public has right to know who they are. Juvenile protections expire at the age of 18.

Bob Mercer is the only journalist I am aware of right now who says he heard the rumor nine months ago. He claims that the media was not given any reason to believe that the story was other than "unsubstantiated gossip." In that nine months, the Attorney General's office apparently did not think the charge merited formal action.

The story broke with Lee Schoenbeck's letter, which he copied to Dennis Wiese, Sen. Garry Moore, and other legislative leaders. He says his action was spurred by Dennis Wiese deciding to push the matter because of the notoriety given the Mark Foley's antics in the U.S. House. The only documentation offered was a paragraph from Garry Moore's letter to Schoenbeck, and it was misrepresented in content and context.

This was not a case of a brave blogger sitting in his jammies revealing true events. It was a case of someone getting a smidgen of information and building all manner of inaccuracies and speculations on it.

News accounts have since pieced together the sequence of events and reported what the letters actually said. But the merry little band of bloggers have been so busy congratulating themselves and celebrating that they have still to notice.

The fact that the page was sharing a motel room with Sen. Sutton through an arrangment with his parents, and the fact that Sutton and Dennis Wiese who were collaborators in the beef plant project in Flandreau are, of course, dismissed as irrelevant because such information emphasizes the absence of even the most casual and cursory checking in getting a context for this story. The beef plant project collapsed and Dan Sutton is involved in trying to recover some money--to the tune of $850,000--that people in Flandreau would like to have back. The two men are now adversaries. Of course, that is irrelevant.

If this exercise is a demonstration in seeking truth, then pigs can indeed fly and we will await the Sibson Revised Standard Version of the Bible so that we may know the truth

The blogs have done what they do well. They have unleashed gossip, speculation, accusation, and condemnation. They have set in motion a story for which they feel no responsibility for supplying the complete facts.

This is not a contest between blogs and the traditional news media. If a blog broke this story in an accurate, credible, and responsible way, I would be the first to congratulate its authors. This story broke a few weeks before an election. I suspect that it is a boil on the ass of a raging political corpus.

I am still waiting for a complete account, whether from a news medium or a blogger. At this point, there will be hell to pay no matter which way this story breaks.

Let's see who can truly serve the truth. If bloggers can suspend their self-aggrandizement long enough to do the job, more power to them.

Gropegate turns into a fumble

2006-10-21T08:43:00.000-08:00

Bob Mercer, in today's Capitol Notebook in the Aberdeen American News (the story is not online) tells why the professional media did not touch this story. When reporters learned that a complaint was made about a state senator making sexual advances to a page, they also learned that the complaint was turned over to the Attorney General's office for investigation, and when no charges or further action were taken, they dismissed the charge as "unsubstantiated gossip."

Just a month before election, the story was ratcheted up when the father of the page pursued his complaint and Sen. Lee Schoenbeck, the state senate majority leader, sent a letter to Sen. Dan Sutton telling him to resign or be subjected to a legislative investigation. Sen. Sutton did not resign, but is fighting the charge. Sen. Gary Moore, the minority leader, refused to participate in the ultimatum and instead recommended that the legilslative body pursue investigation and due process in resolving the matter.

Bob Mercer does not mention the role that bloggers played in pushing the story, but from the outset there were many very basic things wrong with the facts and context they presented. The errors and general botching of the story by blogs was compounded by the degraded meanness of the comments added. Two blog commentators perceived the dangers in the story as presented. Jerry Hinkle cautioned that the charges had not been substantiated and that Sen. Sutton still had the right to a hearing and the procedures of due process. Prof. Jon Schaff warned that if the allegations were found to be untrue, there would be hell to pay.

None of the blog posts which purported to be breaking the story contained the basic ingredients of verfication, meticulous citation of the facts, or statements from people involved that would be required in a legitimate news story. Although they referred to the letters from the senators, they did not accurately characterize how the letters pursued the legal responsibilities of a legislative body in monitoring its affairs or what positions were stated by the senators involved. Their reports were based upon vague charges inflated by prurient innuendo and implication, and, of course, downright mean and trivial-nasty partisanship.

Some salient facts not reflected in the report are that the page, the son of former Farmers Union president and gubernatorial candidate Dennis Wiese, was sharing a motel room with Sen. Sutton with his parents' consent. Dennis Wiese, as president of the Farmers Union, was involved in locating a beef packing plant in Huron that would share the water and waste disposal infrastructure with the new turkey processing plant that opened there this year. For reasons that are unclear because of South Dakota's rules that protect corporations and their interactions with government agencies, the deal between Huron and Ridgefield Farms, the packing plant operator, was broken when local investors withdrew their money. The proposed operation was moved to Flandreau. As president of Flandreau's development group, Dan Sutton sat on the Ridgefield board of directors to promote the group's interests. Flandreau provided $750,000 to the project and an additional $100,000 to finance the move of the Ridgefield offices from Huron to Flandreau.

Dennis Wiese was a key figure in the Ridgefield schemes and was a paid consultant for the outfit. The project collapsed this past summer and Wiese's job was no more. Dan Sutton has figured prominently in trying to recover the Flandreau money that was contributed to the scheme.

Bob Mercer further points out that Dennis Wiese was given a copy of Schoenbeck's ultimatum letter to Dan Sutton. He says that the more information revealed on the matter the more unclear it will become. And Prof. Schaff's warning that there might be hell to pay seems accurate, because the flames are lapping the asses of a lot of people.

And once again the blogosphere appears to be the realm of partisan hacks and dupes.

Oh, where are the palatial, fellatial halls of yesteryear?

2006-10-19T21:45:00.000-08:00

The congregation was assembled in the sanctuary naked with the priest. The sanctuary had been converted into a huge sauna because the guitar masses no longer worked at speaking to the youth, or to those who thought they knew what spoke to the youth. The congregation was sweating. Some had towels in their laps. It was a congregational rule that erections had to be kept under wraps. For teenage boys, erections are a constant. They need no provocation. So mounds of towels were piled in the laps of some who also were bearing sullen faces. But not in the laps of teenage boys. None of those had shown up.

There was no provocation among the congregates. Most of them were swathed in sagging flesh that provoked only thoughts of the gargoyles on the eaves of the church. The appropriate meditation was from the Bethel AME church down the street: God sure do love ugly. But no one in the congregation knew the text.

The kiss of peace was modified into a group grope. It was a way of saying, we love you, you ain't so ugly after all, and who else will do it?

Of course, this never happened, as far as I know. But while our young people are being wasted on the streets of Iraq and Iraqis are being wasted by the dozens each day, it is the kind of thing we are talking about.

This is a meditation on groping. Most people do not know the efficacy of a good grope. I do. As a young man, I knew the office building elevators in Chicago's skyscrapers at 5 p.m. on a Friday night. The elevators were packed. To keep people off your feet or from rubbing their rancid bodily juices on you, a good grope or pinch on the ass was a defensive measure. To get access to your transportation awaiting to chariot you off to your weekend revels, a good grope kept fat, dragging asses from impeding your egress. It also produced shrieks. Some of indignation. Some of delight. Some gropes were purely accidental, like when you tried to reach into your pocket for your keys, your el fare, or a handkerchief. They were a fact of life.

When a young man was the recipient of a well-aimed grope, he had two choices. Maybe three. He could unzip his fly. Or he could punch out the perpetrator. He most definitely would not go home and tell his daddy. If I were to report to my dad that someone groped me, he would ask what kind of situation I had gotten myself into and what the hell did I expect him to do about it? One took care of those matters oneself. It was hard enough to explain to dad how the muffler got blown off the car, and other life-threatening situations.

I do not make light of sexual harrassment. I have served on review panels that examine evidence in cases of sexual harrassment and decide whether the charges have merit, have no merit, or are downright false. About half the cases are compelling. I know of three deans who were discharged from one college for sexual harrassment. I also know of cases that were exaggerated, false, or vengeful. It has been very difficult to get legitimate due process into the determination of sexual harrassment complaints. Make no mistake about it: I believe that people who are guilty of sexual harrassment should receive appropriate discipline. I also believe that people who make false charges should be held liable.

I also believe that the procedures for dealing with sexual harrassment complaints should be specific, rigorous, and swift. When such a complaint is reported and the investigating office takes nine months and produces no determination, but the gossip mongers and eventually the press gets ahold of the accusations and turn it into a drool circus for the vicarious groping fanatics out there, society becomes the perverse offenders. That is what has happened in the case of the complaints against Sen. Dan Sutton in the South Dakota legislature.

When a grope allegation gets the kind of public notice and press that the latest episode in gropegate has received, there is really something demented and dysfunctional in our entire culture.

Oh, and you know what worked better than a grope or a pinch on those rush hour elevators? The shock unit off a cattle prod.

But with the images of priests and altar boys lolling nude in saunas and adults consorting with goofy adolescents, it is truly hard to take the world very seriously. People do dumb things. Are we going to design a criminal code around stupidity? Or can we somehow bring some intelligence and proportion into these matters?

It is doubtful.

Dumb and Dumber grope for news

2006-10-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

Bloggers in South Dakota are having a suckfest telling each other how great it is that blogs broke the news on a legislative groping allegation while the main stream media diddled around with their fingers up...well, you know the drill. The blogs do one thing, even though it is inadvertent. They emphasize that state government in South Dakota is at its most benevolent a Three Stooges business, and at its most menacing a closed frranchise modeled after the meanest banana belt dictatorships.

First of all, there is no main stream media in South Dakota. Even the best journalistic efforts, the Rapid City Journal and Sioux Falls Argus Leader, operate with the small-minded peevishness of the back-country provincials as their dominant editorial concern. It has to be that way. They have to sell advertising to the perpetually peevish to survive. But with their tabloid mentality, bloggers drag the airing of public issues to even a lower, meaner, more petty level. A few try to keep their posts above the level of constant personal attack and witless insult and abuse, but most eventually are subsumed by the pernicious intolerance and stupidity that characterizes most political blogs. No media in South Dakota, especially web logs, are trying to set standards of thought and expression that can lift humans out the mean morass that is politics today, especially in South Dakota.

The abortion issue has rendered many people into a state of non compos mentis from which it is doubtful they can recover. Our Libertarian candidate for the U.S. House has the best take on the subject: it is impossible to discuss it in South Dakota with reason and intelligence. It is one of those sham issues that inspires hatreds and animosities rather than any workable solutions to the problem it alleges to address. In actuality, it is part of that phalanx of diversions of mind that George Orwell described in the softening of the human mentality in preparation for its total subjugation to a totalitarian state. These include the obsessions with slandering, accusing fellow citizens of all the ills and evils in the universe, the lewd, salacious, sensational, even if viewed from a self-righteous indignation. It is the technique of misdirection.

While the pubic clamors over the allegation of a state senator groping a page, it ignores the fact that its government and its fourth estate are dysfunctional.

The case in question is said to have been reported in February. We say "is said to have been reported" because it is all word of mouth. No one has produced a record of the complaint or just what it accuses. It is said to have been turned over to the Attorney General's office for criminal investigation. In South Dakota, such matters are at the discretion of the officials in mini-Kremlin at Pierre. There is no way for the people to know if their interests and the interests of accountability and justice are being served. No one knows how the AG handled or responded, other than to say it is under investigation. Investigating alleged gropes is tough, we know. There might not be any DNA involved.

Then when the Mark Foley matter heated up, a father is said to have been excited into inquiring more aggressively about his grope allegation. This resulted in letters sent to the accused senator and exchanged between senate officers. A blogger got a hold of one of these letters, did a National Enquirer-type hyping of the fact that something bad was about to break in Pierre, and then published a paragraph from Sen. Moore's letter, which spoke to the need for the allegations to be handled through procedures that guarantee fairness and due process for both sides.

Perhaps, the gossip vine did motivate newspaper journalists into more aggressively digging into the story. Whatever. But now the names of both the accusers and the accused have been revealed and the game is getting rough. The bloggers are complaining that names are revealed and people are being subjected to public humiliation. Brilliant bloggers.

There is a rule in law and, therefore, in journalism that crimes and other things do not happen anonymously. Perpetrators are not anonymous. Victims are not anonymous. Names make news. They make news because they identify the specific and actual. The accused are presumed to have the right to face and respond to their accusers. But, oh my, in South Dakota, the media is being irresponsible and nasty when it spoils the malicious gossip game by citing actual people and actual accusations and tells a real story. Where the hell did the bloggers think their precious story was going to go? To a Mother Goose anthology?

While citizens now have some specific names around which they can weave their malicious conjectures, they also have evidence of how competent and efficient and honest their government is. But we can rest assured that the quality of government will not get mentioned while the bloggers and other gossips congratulate themselves on breaking the story, counting the hits their sites get, and offering their precious opinions, while letting the facts the languish.

It is tempting to point out that we have some high-priority issues in the state like a regressive tax system, closed and repressive government, an alarming number of people without health insurance, an inadequately funded education system, a pubic besieged by sham issues. But given the level of thinking demonstrated by most political blogs in the state, it might be better for us all if they confined themselves to the contemplation of groping allegations and the mean and nasty accusations they will surely assert.

People with some real interest in building the state will have to learn to get their information elsewhere. Actually, they already have.

Education in Districts 2 and 3 and the need for it elsewhere

2006-10-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

Or does the Newspeak language of contemporary politics and grammar mix?

Politics have gotten so f#@&ing stupid of late that one is not merely ashamed at times to be part of South Dakota, but of the whole human race. But that is a reminder, just as is the Hamas control over Palestine, that democracy does not always work out for the best. Sometimes the people screw up. Or are terrifyingly ignorant.

However, we have some self-appointed campaign experts in South Dakota who often posture as informed consultants when they frame their petty, mean, and often absurd political attacks. One of the lastest concerns my district, District 3, which is the product of the Republican legislature gerrymandering the Democrats out of the picture. As a result, District 3 resembles a bull snake trying to have sex with an octopus.

A post on South Dakota War College cites a television feature broadcast by KELO-TV that is one of those side-bar stories about the fact that the two Republican candidates for the State House are father and son Al and David Novstrup. We saw the KELO video truck outside our house last week taping the campaign signs across the street from us because, we assume, they feature signs from the two candidates in juxtaposition (which might be a good name for what a horny bullsnake might try with a coy octopus). KELO did not tape our forest of yard signs, which feature the opposing candidates. The theme of the KELO report was the matter of name recognition and that a Novstrup in the House might be worth two in the Bush-oriented state legislature.

Democratic candidates Ted Kneebone and Tom Black were interviewed and went along with the theme on how they are dealing with the name recognition matter. Ted asked how could anyone forget a name like Kneebone? Tom talked about knocking on doors in the district and getting to meet as many people as possible. Then the story deals with how the Novstrups are trying to project separate identities to the electorate.

SDWC reproduces the entire transcript in its Saturday post. It follows it with this comment:

It looks like the Dems are trying to insinuate that the Norvstrups [Well, so much for name recognition.) live in the same household, which couldn't be further from the truth. They live across town from each other with their respective spouses..

We cannot for the life of us find any place in the story where the Democrats insinuated anything in the nature of a family stance on issues. Furthermore, KELO, not Democrats, wrote the story, and if there is any implication, it is theirs. But we could not find what qualifies as an insinuation anywhere in the story, although people with a few operational brain cells who have lived on the planet long enough to know the nature of families might make a surmise on their own.

And I might make that surmise on the basis of a performance that the Novstrup family singers, which included Al and David, made at the Brown County Fair when they converged en chorus on the booth of the Committee for Healthy Families. When they chanted their anti-choice cant, they were clearly on the same page and really sounded like they were singing with the same voice. But we would never insinuate anything from that.

If you need a good example of an insinuation, read this:

The Grapes of Wrath?

One reader reported to me today that they observed State Senator Duane Sutton's daughter at the Gypsy Day parade in Aberdeen wearing an Al Hoerth t-shirt and handing out stickers for same.They were kind of surprised, because they thought she was a member of the Teenage Republicans.Of course, this comes after Isaac Latterell defeated her father in the Republican primary.

.

Now that is as good an example of insinuation as we can find. It comes from a Sept. 30 posting on SDWC.

This kind of campaigning gets damned tiresome. It is so petty, mean, and ignorant. With the real issues facing South Dakota, we don't need any more campaigning on the level of town-cafe character assassination and malicious gossip. We hope the voters out there recognize that there is one party which bases almost its total campaign on stupid accusations and mean representations about other people. There is a choice.

In South Dakota, education is a perennial issue, largely because the state is at the bottom of the list of 50 states for the way it funds and supports education. Our teachers are the lowest paid in the nation. Many districts are coming up short and having to cut programs and services.

So what is Al Novstrup's answer? Merit pay. On the candidate's forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters he said he has an abiding interest education and would like to see the best teachers get rewarded.

Merit pay has been a favorite topic during the last quarter century among politicians. It has been tried. Why is it still a topic to be proposed? Because it does not work.

Why doesn't it work? Because the vast percentage of teachers do their jobs competently and diligently. When administrators cite some teachers for merit pay, they find that they have created a divisions among their staff and anger and alienation supplants the kind of cooperation and cohesion that is required of a faculty to administer effective educational programs.

We have no doubt that education has problems to solve and needs to meet. It always has. It always will. That's the nature of the educational enterprise. But dividing teachers into groups of superior and inferior and creating alienations never addresses the real problems. Such tactics are a major part of the problems.

South Dakota Districts 2 and 3 have Democratic candidates who can address education with more knowledge and more proven expertise than any slate of candidates in the state.

District 2 Senate candidate Jim Hundstad, now a farmer, taught for many years in Brown County schools before taking charge of the family farm. Rep. Burt Elliott is a current teacher at Aberdeen Central, and is thought so highly of that he was asked to give the commencement address at graduation this past May. Rep. Paul Dennert has farmed all his life, but he has been active in 4-H and school business and is well steeped in the processes and programs of effective education. Paul is also the County's resident expert on state finances and budget.

In District 3, Senate candidate Al Hoerth just retired as a teacher at Aberdeen Central, and is well respected by students and parents. That just might be why young Ms. Sutton was working in his behalf at the Gypsy Day Parade. Ted Kneebone is a retired librarian and worked last at the South Dakota School for the Visually Handicapped, where he taught and worked closely with the special education programs. Tom Black is not a teacher, but trained as one.

In education, we have a lot to talk about and many people in Districts 2 and 3 who are qualified, able, and willing to address these issues with vast knowledge, intelligence, and respect.

We cannot help but contemplate what a change in atmosphere and attitude can be brought to Pierre if they all got elected. We might get some important things done. Like straightening out the bull snake and chasing the octopus back to its appropriate habitat.

Just because you can't fix stupid doesn't mean you have to endorse it

2006-10-12T12:30:00.000-08:00

At one time I wrote columns for the Aberdeen American News. I did so fully aware that it was designated by the press review at the old Northwest Database, one of the first online bulletin boards, as the worst newspaper of its size in the upper Midwest. It earned that epithet not only because it sacrificed its editorial integrity to its small-minded politics, but because it was so doggedly incompetent. Over time, it has had many competent workers, but they have never been able to outweigh what seem to be the glandular discharges of its core battery of duds. Someone there propagates the idea that incompetence and mental insufficiency somehow speaks to and for the loyal readers, and it does that by appointing editors who insure that any piece that threatens to assert some intelligence will never make it into print.

I quite writing columns for the American News after it allowed another of its columnists to violate the most sacrosanct rule of journalism by allowing him to misquote and falsely portray what someone else had written elsewhere. The editors response was that, well, it was his opinion of what was said and he expressed it. Quoting and paraphrasing what someone says is not a matter of opinion. One either gets it accurate and clear or one doesn't. In this case one didn't. But that rule of journalism seems far beyond the ken of the collective intelligence at the American News.

And I admit I quit for another reason. Professional ego was at stake. As a local columnist, I was being identified with some of that incredibly incompetent thinking and writing and general intellectual failure that is the stuff that the editors at the American News think is what their readers clamor for. And when I quit writing for the American News, I let my subscription lapse. I don't know what its going on there. That is like not living next door to a feed lot. I enjoy the freedom from stench.

But occasionally one of the American News exercises in stupid is noted by another newspaper. This time an editorial was cited at the Rapid City Journal's web log Mount Blogmore under the title "Aberdeen disaster-aid editorial." Mount Blogmore posted links that gave access to the American News editorial and the material it was reacting to.

The Aberdeen American News editorial on Sunday, Oct. 6, was headed "Get facts straight beforre slinging political mud." It was objecting to the fact that the Environmental Working Group in Washington, D.C., had issued a press release on the fact that there are a significant number of farmers in the Great Plains who are near-perpetual recipients of disaster aid. The news packet from EWG specifies that South Dakota ranks third behind Texas and North Dakota for payments to operations with chronic disasters, like 11 or more years out of the last 21. Actually, there are some farmers in South Dakota who have received disaster payments for 15 out of the last 21 years. The state ranks second in the number of farmers who received such aid in at least 11 of the last 21 years.

The American News editorial claims that EWG slimed South Dakota farmers in presenting its statistics and did not look at the facts. And it ends it editorial with the threat that if we don't continue the disaster-aid payments, we will all end up paying more for food.

The Aberdeen American News misrepresents and misquotes the EWG news releases. EWG goes to great and careful length to support disaster-aid payments to farmers, but it questions those whose operations are in a chronic state of disaster. And most farmers will tell you that they resent operations which make more from agricultural welfare programs than they do the production of crops and livestock. But the American News chose to ignore that part of the news packet. Instead it goes into its petulant, stupid whine about maligning South Dakota farmers.

It also ignores the fact that the farmers who are the chronic recipients of disaster-aid are listed by name, the number of years they have received the aid out of the last 21, and the total amount they have received. In South Dakota, 2,550 farmers received disaster payments for 11 or more years between 1985 and 2005 totaling $266,038,999. You can click on the link provided above and see who they are and how much they have received. And, yes, you might find friends and neighbors among them.

EWG did not slime anyone. It laid out some disturbing facts. And it provides information as to why many Congress people, both Republican and Democrats from urban areas, are under pressure from their constituents to cut some of the excesses in farm aid. Put this information together with the fact that $1.3 billion in farm subsidies last year went to people who don't farm.

Now this next statement is one of the type that the Aberdeen American News, its columnists, and its editors have the greatest trouble with. It is called a qualification. It goes like this: EWG is not against disaster aid; neither am I. What I fear is that legitimate family-run operations are being lumped with operations that farm the government more than they do the land. Congress is having trouble coming up with disaster-aid legislation. The National Farmers Union is pressing for it to help those who have been damaged severely by drought. But what is making it difficult for that legislation is the knowledge among many lawmakers that so much of what they appropriate seems to be subsidizing operations that simply are not viable agricultural enterprises. They survive on constant payments by the government. Urban taxpayers see money going to farm welfare when then have schools and infrastructure in need of attention and help.

I posted it elsewhere. Ronald Reagan brought this attitude to form when he chided the welfare queen driving to the welfare office in her pink Cadillac to pick up her welfare check. Well, in urban centers, there is an image of the man in the big hat and cowboy boots driving to the farm services office in his white Town Car to pick up his subsidy check.

In order to keep the farm economy stabilized and to keep farms from being abandoned to corporate entities, we need farm programs that deal with the real issues of agriculture.

What we don't need is a bunch of raging incompetents misrepresenting the discussion and facts about something as important as agricultural policy. There is no professional excuse for misrepresenting the EWG report in the way that the Aberdeen American News did. The general tenor of malicious and stupid politics today is fed by reports like that. The democracy is dependent upon journalism that is honest, accurate, and at least minimally competent.

The Aberdeen newspaper has new owners. We wonder if they expect reasonable levels of journalistic competence.

They could contribute much to the quality of our democracy if they did.

Saving Northern State University

2006-10-11T11:56:00.000-08:00

Last week was one of those weeks of the kind that was rough when I was half the age I am now. It was preceded by an intensive week of 16-hour days catching up on and finishing an editorial project due Oct. 1. I got it submitted electronically at 1 a.m. Oct. 2, and then at 6 a.m. left for a trip that involved more academic work. It was busy, hectic, but enjoyable because I got to visit a number of universities and the Henderson Mine that is in competition with Homestake for being the site of the national Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory.

During one of the low-key moments, I was on a campus with some time to spend before an appointment when I was invited to sit in on a rehearsal of a concert wind ensemble. The small-world syndrome was at play. The ensemble included a player who attended Northern for a time and the conductor had applied for a job there, but was turned down. That rehearsal was a revisit to the reasons a university campus can be such an exciting and invigorating place. For an hour and half, I watched some of the most intensive and productive work I have witnessed in some time.

First of all, the players were selected by audition, so they had the essentials of musicianship under command. Then they were expected to come to rehearsal knowing the music and giving it their total concentration. The conductor worked through four compositions during the session. He would stop the group, say a few words about what he wanted refined or played differently, refer to the measure in the arrangement, count off the tempo, and they played immediately. Usually, they played what he asked the first time. It was both an exhausting and exhilirating experience to see people work that hard and that successfully.

After the rehearsal was over, a colleague I was with commented that if professors held that level of expectation and worked students that hard at Northern, they would be considered abusive and unresponsive to student needs.

NSU experienced an 8 percent decline in enrollments this year. It has been in a trend of decline for some years. The level of expectations and the work required of students has much to do with its reputation and the reason students come there.

During the 20 years I taught there, I was well aware of the culture of anti-intellectualism and anti-achievement that pervades the NSU campus. However, students and faculty with talent, purpose, and the desire to learn and work kept the anti-achievement forces in check. Still, I recall vividly a commencement address by a highly respected member of the Northern faculty in which the humanities requirements for the liberal arts degree were derided and ridiculed. I recall those Friday afternoons when the drinking age was 18 and students had refrigerators stocked with beer in their dorm rooms, and the beer breath in the classroom from the few who showed up could make your eyes water. And I recall when, as an officer in a faculty organization, I was asked if our legal counsel could help two young women in a residence hall terminate their rental agreements. They were harassed by other students because they spent time in their rooms studying. Their floor mates said that by being prepared for classes, they were making life difficult for other students. We got them moved out and into an off-campus apartment, but that did not end the problem. Some of the students from the residence hall converged outside their apartment and rang the door bell and made a commotion in the neighborhood that did not end until they were hauled off in police cruisers. And I can remember the campus being stunned when two major companies declined to come to an employment fair. They said they had not found the campus to supply the level of talent and knowledge that they required.

Perhaps, the most difficult moment I recall came at a college recruiting fair in Sioux Falls. Various colleges and universities put up tables and booths in a large convention center so that high school students and their parents could shop around and talk with faculty from the schools. Groups of giggling and smirking students kept going by our booth making comments about Northern State Junior High School. Despite the credible work of faculty and students at Northern, its reputation was being formed by the anti-achievers and the perpetual partiers. The moment was a stunning and revealing one for the faculty who were present.

Northern's primary problem is the Board of Regents. The Board is composed of political appointees who hold the requisite views for the party in power, but few have any knowledge or experience of how education actually works. In a word, most of them are bean counters. They hire administrators to carry out their dictates to run the campus like a business, not to lead it to a high level of academic performance. Over the years I have been connected with Northern, the programs have been cut and the faculty treated like low-level academic serfs.

In order to generate tuition to keep the university running, the school accepts almost anybody who applies. Although it, like its sister universities, states entrance requirements, it ignores them. ACT scores, high school transcripts, and grade point averages are set as criteria for college admission, but they are overlooked in favor of filling classrooms with relatively warm bodies that can pay tuition and fees.

As a faculty who was involved in the design and administration of placement tests for students, I worked with the statistics. In one freshman class I recall, 54 percent of the incoming freshmen did not meet the admission requirements stated by the university. The absurd part is that the Board of Regents complain about how many incoming students need remedial and development work because of inadequate high school preparation. They set a practice of accepting anyone who can pay tuition, to subsidize the "real" students, and then they contend that the high schools are not doing their job. If the high schools have provided a fair assessment of student performance and potential on their transcripts, they have done their job. Another ploy of the regents is that they admit hordes of students who need developmental course work, but they put a limit on how many developmental programs can be offered. Consequently, a great number of students who are not prepared for college-level work are admitted into college courses.

However, in most places, students who have not performed well in high school have a route to college. They generally attend community college classes to bring their language, math, and science skills up to a level that permits them to enter college-level classes with some chance of success.

At Northern, we offered remedial classes. Students resent deeply being placed into a "bonehead" English or math class. So we tried the laboratory route to try to deal with the resentment and obstinence that being stigmatized by the "remedial" label creates. Every scheme we tried was crippled at the outset by the limitation of funds. One of our more successful programs had regular faculty on duty in the writing laboratory to oversee the work of assistants who worked with the students. When it comes to writing, we know that a great majority of students improve to the college level if they are required to write every day and if their writing is reviewed by competent instructors. That program devolved into ineffectiveness when the university decided it could not afford to assign regular faculty to supervise the instruction.

When regular faculty supervision was dropped, the instruction was left to other students who often did not engage the needs. One student told me her sessions in the writing laboratory were taken up with her tutor bragging ab0ut the fact that she was teaching other college students in writing.

The drag-down is that underprepared students are admitted into regular college classes. If the faculty maintains high standards of performance and gives grades that actually reflect student performance, they are rebuked for their teaching by administrators and complained about by students who can't handle the work. And so, they dummy down the courses. One of my advisees who wanted to major in science told me that in a year of a college course at Northern, she had not covered any material that she had not had in high school.

That conflict between bringing the underprepared up to par and meeting the levels of better students is Northern's major problem.

Many schools in the past quarter century have raised their standards by establishing enrollment caps. They do not admit students who show no record of academic success or interest, and they do not hesitate to flunk out those who can't or won't do the work. But when a school is financially tied to admitting the underprepared, it does have some obligation to offer them a chance.

Northern is not to be faulted for admitting students with poor high school records. It has traditionally been an institution that has offered students of meager backgrounds some knowledge and skills that permit them to compete in the larger national community. While admissions policies set the stage for academic success, they are not the only factor. The reputation of a college or university is not built upon the level at which students enter, but the competitive level they have achieved when they graduate. And that means offering enough courses at a level of instruction that enable students to be competitive with graduates from the more prestigious institutions.

When Northern graduates are vigorously recruited and show a high level of matriculation into graduate schools, the university's reputation will change. For most of my tenure at Northern, I spent many hours writing letters of reference for our education majors who were going into language arts instruction. They were considered competent, well-prepared, and were sought after throughout the nation. Our students were placed from California to Massachusetts, and no institution had as many graduates teaching in South Dakota schools as Northern. But problems at the administrative level soon trickled down to the faculty level, and a reputation that had been built up over for almost a century was wiped out in a decade.

As suggested above, Northern has not had leadership that has promoted genuine academic achievement among faculty or students. One of the recent presidents believed that image was everything. While he was tinkering with staffing and programs that were hidden by public relations programs, he insisted that "you are what you appear to be." One history professor earned the president's everlasting ire when he said, "And we appear to be liars." The fact is that in education, public relations and image cannot disguise the actual level of achievement of faculty and students.

Savvy guidance counselors tell students and parents what the tell-tale signs of an inferior institution are:

1. A faculty that competes for eminence by demeaning other faculty, whether on the individual, departmental, or division level. Insitutions with faculty who do not respect each other and engage in back-biting and fractious politics are never academically strong.

2. A student body that shows little sign of academic activity. Check out the library and the computer laboratories, the counselors say. If they are busy, that means students are working. If they are sparsely populated, that means not much intellectual activity is taking place.

3. Where do the school guides rank the insitution and on what basis? NSU ranks in the fourth tier of the U.S. News ranking, for example. That means it ranks with the bottom one-fourth of U.S. colleges.

Northern has been a valuable asset to South Dakota and the region. It has served as a cultural beacon and educational opportunity. It distinguished itself recently when it helped many of the 800 employees of Imprimus, a computer peripherals manufacturer, develop skills and credentials that made it possible for them to find good employment when the company closed its plant in Aberdeen and moved to the Pacific Rim. It performed a similar service during the agricultural crisis of the late 1980s when many farm families were displaced and had to reestablish their lives on a different basis.

The question with Northern is all academic. It simply needs to let the achievers, not the connivers, set the pace and determine its reputation. Then students will come.

Old professors never die; they end up in mine shafts (but maybe not Homestake)

2006-10-09T10:31:00.000-08:00

Colorado has a higher education corridor. Within a distance of 65 miles between Denver and Ft. Collins along I-25 are three major state universities: Colorado State in Ft. Collins, the Universitiy of Northern Colorado in Greeley, and the University of Colorado in Boulder. In Denver itself is the Auraria Campus which is home to a community college, Metropolitan State College of Denver, and departments of the University of Colorado. West from I-25 on I-70, just a few miles outside of Denver, are a couple of routes to Golden, home of the Colorado School of Mines. About 50 miles west of Denver just off of I-70 on route 40 is Empire, Colorado, where the Henderson Mine (photo above) is situated.

The Henderson Mine is the competitor with South Dakota's Homestake Goldmine, which the state now owns, for the site for the national Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. Homestake and Henderson have been announced as finalists as choices for the site by the National Science Foundation and were each given a half million dollars to come up with detailed proposals for such a laboratory.

The National Science Foundation had originally planned to announce the site in December, but has postponed that decision until early in 2007. Last week it announced that it would accept proposals for other sites until January 9, 2007, and make its announcement of the final selection in the spring. In actuality that last call for proposals is to make sure that all factors that have to be taken into consideration for locating a single research and experiment site are brought to the attention of the Foundation and given thorough consideration.

When the DUSEL was first proposed by scientists who were using Homestake, it had no competition. A long list of factors made it an obvious and advantageous site. But the State of South Dakota got embroiled in negotiations regarding liabilities with Homestake's owners, Barrick Gold of Canada. The owners shut off the pumps that keep the mine dry and it started filling up with water. Most of the scientists who had supported Homestake realized that they had better look for other sites if they were ever to carry out the experiments and the research that require a deep underground facility. And so the competition was opened up with Homestake and Henderson being selected as finalists.

Homestake has been turned over to South Dakota and is under the supervision of the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority, headed by Dave Snyder, which has responsibility for its development. The Authority has solicited experiments from scientists and is working on a proposal details. Sioux Falls philanthropist T. Denny Stanford has pledged $70 million to Homestake if it is selected as the DUSEL site. Some scientists have suggested that the Stanford offer makes them wary. The DUSEL proposal for Homestake has been largely touted as an economic development project for South Dakota.

Many nations, including Canada, have established deep underground laboratories, and scientists fear that the kind of delay with legal issues and shaft flooding by Barrick Gold that obstructed the Homestake plans will cause further delay when private interests with economic development or political agendas get involved. The development time line is a crucial issue to scientists with experiments and research that need the underground laboratory.

The history of the development of the Henderson Mine proposal contrasts sharply with South Dakota's Homestake proposal. The Henderson plans are being formulated by a consortium of interested parties called the Colorado Alliance for Underground Science and Engineering (CAUSE). Cause consists of mine owner Phelps Dodge corporation, faculty from Colorado State University, whose physicist Bob Wilson is coordinating the project, the Colorado School of Mines, and a nonprofit group called the Arapahoe Project. The Arapahoe Project has contacts with scientists from other prominent university systems in places as far off as New York and California. CAUSE has a time line in place for the laboratory that calls for construction to begin in 2010 and the lab to be operational in 2015.

The proposals asked for by the NSF necessarily deal with matters of geology, engineering, and technical aspects of the laboratory, but the scientists emphasize that intellectual environment plays a huge role. Research universities along Colorado's higher education corridor have taken a leadership role in developing the Henderson plans. In South Dakota, the state's professors and scientists are not much involved. South Dakota ranks at the bottom of states in regard to its support of research, and this factor has a huge aspect for scientists who want to get on with their work.

CAUSE has made careful connections with the academic and scientific communities in developing its proposals. In contrast, the South Dakota proposal is largely a political enterprise with the governor using it prominently in his re-election campaign.

In a story by Pat Ferrier of the Ft. Collins Coloradoan, reviewers of the Henderson plan were quoted as saying it offered a "first rate scientific and engineering research program." Dave Snyder of the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority declined to comment on prospects for the Homestake proposal other than to say work was continuing. However, rather than comment about how much South Dakota universities could contribute to the program, he said that the selection of Homestake as the DUSEL site could "enhance our universities and even the K-12 population of students."

South Dakota has neither the history or the current attitude regarding intellectual work that makes it very attractive for intellectual workers. On the other hand, the Colorado higher education corridor offers the physical access to higher education institutions with vigorous research programs, and it offers the intellectual and cultural environment that supports and augments research and intellectual work.

From the standpoint of the people who do the academic research and work, Homestake seems to have been flooded out of contention.

Congress guts the Bill of Rights

2006-09-30T09:40:00.000-08:00

For a time, some Republican Senators resisted George W. Bush's quest for totalitarian power in their objections to the detainee bill he asked from them. Negotiations were held, compromises made, and the President won.

Well, for a time we were encouraged that there seemed to be a non-partisan stance in favor of civil rights.

The bill has been reported by the press to deal with terrorists taken prisoner. What the press has ignored is that the bill gives the president the power to designate even American citizens as terrorists or terrorist supporters and deny them the legal due process required by the law.

An analysis on TPM Cafe makes the case that the bill largely repeals the Bill of Rights:

Of the original 10 amendments to the Constitution of 1787 - IV, V, VI, VII and VIII are directed at arrest, trial and punishment. The bill passed by the Senate yesterday, and already rubber stamped by the house, effectively repeals all of these Amendments, because it allows a class of people declared by executive fiat to be treated in a manner which is separate from the rest of the judicial system.

All three of South Dakota's Congresspeople voted for this bill, and their staff members have received calls and have given statements on their votes. Sen. Johnson voted for the Military Tribunal Bill, but he did acknowledge the problems:

But in this case, the President is asking that we expand the definition of an enemy combatant. It isn't just people we capture on the battlefield anymore. It might be your next door neighbor who is in this country legally. And this legislation would allow them to be taken into custody without being told charges or seeing evidence or having access to lawyers and without hearings. That is a very strong use of the American power against people who are here legally.

Johnson offers the hope that the spirit of the Constitutional guarantees will be observed when American citizens are involved, and he suggested that the bill should have a sunset provision so that Congress can review whether the Bill of Rights was abused or ignored. And he states that the bill will eventually have to stand challenge in the Supreme Court.

That is a lot of comfort. One of the most devastating aspects of the Military Tribunal Bill is that it takes the appeal process away from the courts and makes them relevant at the whim of the president. With the mental acuity and motives demonstrated by the president currently in power, that should scare the bejesus out of us--including Sen. Johnson and Rep. Herseth.

One of our correspondents has pointed out that the country is so focused on insurgents and the atrocities committed daily in Iraq and, now, Afghanistan that it does not see that true American democrats are being given more reasons everyday why an insurgency of some kind in America may be necessary to preserve the human rights our country stands for. Hopefully, that insurgency will be in the form of a challenge that reaches the Supreme Court. We hope our preservation of the Bill of Rights will not rest upon our exercise of our Second Amendment rights.

But with the way the world is going and the mentality of the American rightwing, we are facing either a renaissance of our principles or a renewal of our revolution.

The New York Times has one of the more definitive analyses of the Military Tribunal Bill.

Hey, Dr. Rice, we checked and you were wrong.

2006-09-26T22:25:00.000-08:00

When Bill Clinton upbraided Chris Wallace and Faux News for trying to ensnare him, he stated that he tried and failed to stop bin Laden. He said, “When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy…” for the incoming administration.
During her interview with the New York Post (a sister medium with Fox News owned by Rupert Murdoch), Condi Rice said his statement was false. “We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda,” she said, and advised people to consult the 9/11 Commission Report to see what actually occurred. She added that during the nine months before 9/11, the Bush administration did as much as the Clinton administration in combating terrorism.

She said if we want to see the facts, check the 9/11 Commissin Report. We did. And we found that the Report confirms Bill Clinton's version.

For the documented passages from the report that refute Condi Rice's version, go here.

Bill Clinton takes on Big Brother

2006-09-25T14:23:00.000-08:00

The current Bush administration and its political values and tactics so dear to the hearts of the ruling faction within the Republican Party has been identified as "Orwellian" to the point that the term has little meaning. In fact, the term is probably misleading.

The Bush administration does not emulate George Orwell's political stances. It emulates what Orwell tried to warn about and explain. Orwell understood the totalitarian impulse in people who seek power over other people. And he understood how technology can be used to enslave people rather than free them from oppression and drudgery. In probing that use of technology, Orwell also delineates how language can be subverted and perverted to deceive and manipulate people through forms of mind control so that they give up their basic rights and freedoms.

Orwell understood this process from personal experience. He allied himself with the Communist side in the Spanish Civil War and soon was confronted with the power-mad deviousness that drove the leaders of the Communist Party. Ernest Hemingway, by the way, also portrays this aspect in his work. Then Orwell examined how the Nazi and Fascist parties appealed to people of Europe and got their support in imposing totalitarian regimes on Germany and France. We Americans tend to honor the efforts of the resistance and underground so much that we forget that the Nazis had sympathizers, supporters, and collaborators in the countries that they took over. The Vichy French are a prime example.

From the time that Bush sent his propaganda shock troops to Florida during his contested election in 2000, we have been witness to a regime that shamelessly employs the tactics described by Orwell to hold the people in a mental thralldom.

The first thing it does is to make villains and miscreants out of its opponents. During the contested election in 2000, Bush and his totalitarian cronies vilified anyone who came down to Florida to look after Democratic interests in the election--the accusations of perfidy and nefarious purpose were aimed at Al Gore and his lawyers and any Democrat leaders, such as Tom Daschle, who went to Florida to see what was going on. That is the point at which we developed a strong antipathy to George W. Bush. We saw him and his minions using the propaganda techniques of massive slander and character assassination to make any members of the opposition into untrustworthy villains.

And, no doubt, their efforts worked. When the Supreme Court in effect appointed George W. Bush president, we knew we were losing America to totalitarian ambitions.

That is the first technique at which he was successful: to portray the opposition as enemies of the people. All one had to do is listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Pat Robertson, or any of the nighttime fascists on talk radio to hear the message and how many people fell for it.

The next thing Orwellian totalitarians do is create a war so that the people have a perpetual enemy on which to focus so that Big Brother can claim he is protecting them and making them secure and so that they ignore everything else by focusing on the threat constantly held before them. Bush got lucky. He got 9/11. And he was able to use the abstract and undefinable concerns of combating terror to create that war that people of his political orientation need to keep the nation in line. It was, indeed, a contrived war and a matter of wagging the dog. We even had film titled "Wagging the Dog" that chronicled how a power-mad regime could create a war that kept the people in fear and directing their hatred and energies channeled in the ruts of deception. But the Bush regime was successful. A majority of the people groveled before the regime for protection, and anyone who spoke out against the war was labeled unpatriotic, traitorous, and cowardly. And the people fell for it. Again, review the Thune campaign against Tom Daschle. South Dakota is under the rule of what we might call the Vichy Americans.

The hatred generated by the false accusations and malevolent contrivances against Tom Daschle won. And we knew again that America had taken a giant step into totalitarianism.

On the national level, we need not review the loss of civil liberties, the insistence upon vicious and cruel oppressions in the name of security, the massive deceptions, and the hate-based initiatives used to build the regime's hold on the people. On the state level, we need not review for the real democrats the most closed and repressive state government in the nation, the exercise in voodoo studies that produced a "task force" report that justifies the proposal to enslave and make brood sows out of pregnant women, or attitudes of malice and hatred that shape the state culture. Just read the regressive blogs, if you do need reminding.

And then we come to Bill Clinton. In the early nights of his presidence, the insidious voices of talk radio began circulating charges that he had assembled hit squads to murder his opponents. And the portrayals of monsterhood, upon which the right wing is so dependent, grew from there. Bill Clinton and his advisers, however, held to the idea that no charge should go unanswered. And if there is information that proves the falseness of the charges, no matter how ridiculous and outrageous, it should be stated. Eventually, the constant and low-key refutations of the night-radio nonsense, prevailed. But every other pretext for vilifying Bill Clinton was a major political industry. Unfortunately, His Horniness did not help matters when his personal assignations were revealed.

As a former president, he had enough. The Bush regime has tried to divert attention away from its war based on lies, its gross incompetence, and its devious politics by focusing on what Bill Clinton did and did not do to create the current state of affairs regarding terrorism. Clinton finally consented to be interviewed by the official Bush state news agency, Fox News. He knew he was being set up. He came prepared to answer.

The Bush regime assaults against anyone who disagrees with him have unfortunately produced demonstrations of cowardice among Democrats. People are so fearful of being called traitors, unpatriotic, obstructionists, liberals, and all those things that the conservative programs for perverting and subverting the language have produced in the national vocabulary, that they have submitted rather than resisted.

Bill Clinton made his case yesterday. That gives some hope that true freedom, equality, and justice might survive in America. But not a hell of a lot. Bush and John Thune were elected. A majority have chosen their sellouts to the power-mongers over a vigorous and honest examination of issues. Bill Clinton might remind us of what it is like to have leaders who do not simply hand the Bushites the Vaseline with the admonition to be gentle. But the quality of democracy depends on what the voters decide, and people who want true, American democracy instead of Orwellian wars and deceptions and revocations of freedom better get used to the idea that they might not get it in America. The people who want to cower behind and grovel before Big Brother outnumber them.

The greatest generation is dying out. And look what has replaced it. Just look at the war on Iraq. Just read the right-wing blogs. While we have honorable soldiers obeying their commander in chief and we have people who see this war as one of the greatest moral perversions in history, we have more Vichy Americans who hope to gain some security and personal gain by submitting to Big Brother.

Hugo Chavez to be guest lecturer at John Thune School of Political Science

2006-09-23T11:26:00.000-08:00

Hugo Chavez, whose name-calling of George W. Bush was rebuked by Charlie Rangel and Nancy Pelosi, will come to South Dakota to lecture and learn at the John Thune School of Political Science and Blogging.

[Hey, Blind Orange Julius, how many fingers do you see? ]

Chavez is particularly interested to study Thune's campaign against Tom Daschle in which his supporters pictured Daschle along side Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. "Who would I picture George Bush next to?" he wants to know. He also was interested in how to turn house ownership into a liability and how he could contrive the charge that Bush wants to give up Laura for a beauty queen. "You people have lots of moral authority I can borrow from. I'll give you heating oil in return," he promised.

The Pope gets a taste of South Dakota politics

2006-09-19T13:48:00.000-08:00

Muslims are rioting and committing violence because of something Pope Benedict said in a lecture at the University of Regensburg. His words have been contorted into an occasion for violence.

There are two main factors in the Muslim reaction against the Pope: an incompetent press and a malevolent rage to avert the facts by those who contrive justifications for their transgressions against humanity.

The Pope is getting pilloried, figuratively and in effigy throughout Islam, for quoting a Byzantine Emperor, Manuel II Paleologos, in a 1391 A.D. conversation he had with a Persian scholar on religion in which the subject of the jihad, the holy war, was broached. Here is the quotation as the Pope presented it and as reported in the press:

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

The press presents only those words that might inflame those looking for some reason to posture their outrage. It omits the next part of the quotation, which the Pope included.

God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death....

But the press totally ignored the reason the Pope was making these citations from a 14th century conversation. He was addressing the relationships between reason, as demonstrated through science, and faith, and he was engaging in a dialogue that is obviously prompted by the mass atrocities that have become the hallmark of the 21st century. Here is Pope Benedict’s all-important thesis statement which his lecture addresses:

This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.

What happened to Pope Benedict is what a blogging colleague recently referred to as being “Newquisted.” He was referring to the practice that I strongly condemn of people taking other people’s words and making false paraphrases, taking them out their syntactic context to alter their meaning, distorting them into some pretext for outrage. This is the old straw man technique of propaganda and fallacious reasoning. It is done by contriving another person’s words so that they can be easily refuted or made the object of outrage, which justifies assassination of character or person in the minds of the authors of the propaganda.

The strategy behind misrepresentation of words is to hope that the outrage displayed will sufficiently characterize the words to other people and form their perceptions of them. The words themselves are dismissed.

Pope Benedict’s quotation of the Byzantine emperor were taken out of context—both the emperor’s and the Pope’s. Islamic radicals (a euphemistic term, if there ever was one) contrived the quotation from six centuries ago into a personal insult to Mohammed from the Pope. And so the rage in the world gets fed by a transparent, easily checked lie.

The press is fully implicated in the lie. News organizations are more about trying to get an audience than about giving carefully checked news stories. Watching the Muslims burn effigies of the Pope is far more arresting to the people out there than is a carefully presented summation of the Pope’s lecture at his old university. News organizations do not serve higher intelligences, and so the personnel doing the reporting can find potentially inflammatory sound bites but they cannot comprehend or report an act of communication that speaks to a complex issue. Instead of opening a dialogue on the sectarian violence that grips the world, the reporting of the Pope’s words inflamed the violent.

The Pope broached an issue that anyone who has had a religions of the world course is aware of. I am not a Catholic. I am a Lutheran. I graduated from a Lutheran College, which shared a campus with a seminary and required courses in religion for graduation. I minored in philosophy and religion, I taught at the college, and was a church councilman and synod representative. As Lutherans have carried on the scholastic tradition that the Pope was engaging in at Regensburg, I found his lecture significant.

He was initiating a dialogue on the issue that is consuming much of the western world: the mass atrocities committed in the name of Allah.

The Pope obliquely presented an issue that sends political and religious leaders into the bunkers. He brought up the three laws at issue: the Koran, the Old Testament, and the New Testament. He did so because there are issues that need resolution in order to end the violence that grips the world. The New Law, as the New Testament is referred to, militates against hatred and violence. The history of Christians battling each other, such as in North Ireland, is not escapable, but neither is the theological basis for good will and peace. The Pope spent a great deal of his lecture outlining how that theological call for peace is formed through the Greek tradition of intellect and how it has been regarded in theology through time. His point is that reason and faith together lead to respect and peace.

The problem facing religious leaders, particularly Christians and leaders of other peace-promoting religions, is that Islam has no overtly stated theological constraints against violence. That is why the face of Islam to much of the world is one of vicious atrocity.

Manuel II’s words about Mohammed connect with a face of Islam that is inescapable. While some Muslim scholars and clerics state that Islam is a religion of peace and compassion, their claims are feeble in the face of 9/11, the violence in Iraq, the acts of Al Qaida throughout the world, and the Muslim leaders who applaud those acts.

Islam is, simply, a vector for violence. Islamic atrocities are planned and supported through mosques.

If there are Muslim leaders and mosques that do not believe the jihad is the imperative of their faith, then Pope Benedict has extended an opportunity to talk about it and explain it to the world. He broached the subject in a scholastic setting, but it was appropriated by those who intend violence upon the world.

Sadly, until the people who are the stewards of the language—journalists, teachers, and theologians—demonstrate the integrity of the language, the inflammatory and the violent will prevail. The final words of Pope Benedict’s lecture, which were not reported either, lay out the task:

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the program with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. “Not to act reasonably (with logos) is contrary to the nature of God”, said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

The ham-fisted bludgeon strikes again--sort of

2006-09-16T12:06:00.000-08:00

Humor, satire, and parody have been important parts of American politics since Ben Franklin (and before him in the colonies). However, there is a huge literary distinction between humor that is sharp-witted and exposes some absurdities in the political system and humor that is dull-witted, bludgeoning and exposes the minds of the peope who think it is funny. Totalitarian movements have been predicated on that last kind of pretense to humor. When the Nazis mounted their hate campaign against the Jews they used debased stereotypes, false portrayals, and that school-yard-bully brand of taunt and derision to pull the witless into their way of thinking. In the Soviet Union, true wit is a main factor in helping to bring down the old Marxist regime. However, the party used those stereotype-filled portrayals of the capitalistic west to foment anger and hatred.

In comtemporary America, the bully-bludgeons are at work on what they call "liberals." Radio talk show Tammy Bruce, for example, contends that narcissism, the ardent fascination and absorption with one's self, is an identifying characteristic of liberalism. She suggest that this endemic defect of psychology and character is the motivating factor in liberalism.

While her "diagnosis" has absolutely no rational credibility, it is the kind of thing that appeals to the witless need for something to hate that possesses an alarming number of Americans. It is the kind of mass slander that the Nazis carried out against the Jews and the Soviets carried out against the west in order to martial support for their regimes. To the regressives in the conservative camp, liberalism is a huge threat, and they try to personalize it. Two South Dakota blogs (being joined by numerous others of late) typify the need to slander, assassinate character, and offer malevolent stereotypes of anyone who does not bow to their party line.

Following is an e-mail I received from members of the regressive camp. Under the guise of a "joke," it manages to cast its witless aspersions on almost everything and anything that does not fit their stereotyped view of the world. They did, however, leave out the Jews and western capitalists. And in its stunning stupidity, it reveals that the biggest issue in American politics today is, in fact, mental health.

Upcoming 2006 Democratic Convention agenda

6:00 p.m. - Opening flag burning ceremony.

6:05 p.m. - Opening prayers by Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton

6:30 p.m. - Anti-war concert by Barbara Streisand.

6:40 p.m. - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.

7:00 p.m. - Tribute theme to France.

7:10 p.m. - Collect offerings for al-Zawahari defense fund.

7:25 p.m. - Tribute theme to Germany.

7:45 p.m. - Anti-war rally (Moderated by Michael Moore)

8:25 p.m. - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.8:30 p.m. - Terrorist appeasement workshop.

9:00 p.m. - Gay marriage ceremony (both male and female couples)

9:30 p.m. - * Intermission *

10:00 p.m. - Posting the Iraqi Colors by Sean Penn and Tim Robbins

10:10 p.m. - Re-enactment of Kerry's fake medal toss.

10:20 p.m. - Cameo by Dean 'Yeeearrrrrrrg!'

10:30 p.m. - Abortion demonstration by N.A.R.A.L.

10:40 p.m. - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.

1 0:50 p.m. - Pledge of allegiance to the UN.

11:00 p.m. - Multiple gay marriage ceremony (threesomes, mixed and same sex). Rep. Barney Frank (D,Mass.), Sponsor

11:15 p.m. - Maximizing Welfare workshop.

11:30 p.m. - 'Free Saddam pep rally led by Jane Fonda.

11:59 p.m. - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.

12:00 a.m. - Nomination of democratic candidate.

With any luck maybe we can get Ted Kennedy to drive Hillary home from the convention?

Butchdog Jones
Nuke em' til they glow.Then shoot em' in the dark!

Democracy turns totalitarian as Snowball and Napoleon battle for control

2006-09-13T09:26:00.000-08:00

It has been a tough week for honesty, integrity, and truth.

We often point out how the political propaganda, especially from the regressive right, matches exactly what George Orwell describes in detail in 1984. We have not paid enough attention to his other book, Animal Farm, that chronicles the sinking of an organization from incompetence to quasi-democracy to totalitarianism. We forget to remind ourselves that even in the best-working democracies, such as ours, the totalitarian impulse has possession of many people. They are not interested in freedom, equality, and justice, but in imposing their wills and their, often warped, views of the universe on the rest of us. In Animal Farm, the pigs Snowball and Napoleon engage in an intense, vicious contest to see which one imposes his brand of totalitarianism on the Animal Farm. And so it goes across America this week.

As is customary, George W. Bush led the charge by accusing the opponents of the war on Iraq on wanting to capitulate to terrorists and give Iraq and the Mideast over to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Islamic terrorists, who are reenacting the struggle for power of Snowball and Napoleon in their own land.

Bush has often characterized the anti-war policy as "cut and run." He is right up to a point. Many people want to cut the incompetence that has poured $300 billion and 2,700 American lives into Iraq. And they want the war to be run consistent with workable and legitimate military and diplomatic objectives. Members of the U.S. military come down on both sides of the issue, but more and more their dissatisfaction with Bush's entire concept and conduct of the war is expressed.

The main objection to Bush's characterization, often ignored by the press, is that his "cut and run" characterization deliberately and grossly misrepresents what the opponents of the war want to happen. He simply advances a lie to slander the character and motives of his opponents. Of course, George W. cannot afford to directly address the plans advocated by the many people who see no way we can win this war without a major military assault and total occupation of the country. If he acknowledges the arguments of his opponents, he has to face the gross incompetence and the deviousness with which he got us into the war.

And so the 5-year memorial to the people who lost their lives in 9/11 was turned into a huge propaganda event that scarificed respect, truth, and integrity to the pouring of more billions into Iraq and raising the death toll of Amerians and Iraqis.

On the state front, the same kind of Soviet-like propaganda involved the DM&E Railroad. From the outset, the plans for the railroad have had objections from people along the route who do not want it running through the center of their towns. This is something the citizens of a community have the right to question and object to. But not in the minds of the henchmen of Snowball and Napoleon. The DM&E managed to suppress the objections until it hit Rochester, Minnesota, home of the Mayo Clinic. There is no secret to the objection. The people do not want "Railroad Avenue" running through the center of their town to disrupt, interfere, and create the obstacles and detractions.

The Mayo Clinic people are taking the lead in attempting to get the railroad to run around the town instead of through it. The totalitarian forces have distorted by insisting that Mayo and its supporters are trying to kill the whole railroad plan. The KGB is out in force posting this contention.

Mayo enlisted the help of Tom Daschle and Bill Janklow to work on the issue and bring it to a resolution that is favorable to Rochester. The thought police have launched campaigns of slander and character assassination against the men. If you read the blogs vilifying them--and it is not recommended that you do if you retain much hope for humanity--you will not find one word about what the real issue is and what the proposed solutions are. All you hear is that Daschle and Janklow are trying to get revenge on South Dakotans because they lost their political offices.

The week of 9/11 was intended to be a respectful memorial. Instead it produced the intention to sacrifice more of our nation to the mindless atrocities of Islamic murder squads. On the state level, it showed people using Animal Farm as a script for their totalitarian designs.

And as in that book, democracy is in jeopardy again. If you don't believe it, just read what the minions of totalitarianism are saying.

The campaign for closed government goes into high gear

2006-09-07T14:20:00.000-08:00

The author of South Dakota War College advises political candidates not to submit the National Political Awareness Test through which Project Vote Smart collects and profiles the positions of political candidates on prominent issues in election campaigns. His reasoning is that opponents can use the information against you. PP claims that his stance is based totally on what wins elections. His recommendation is based upon the idea that saying anything of substance and taking a stance is political suicide. So, candidates, keep your political opinions to yourself. Someone over at one of those regressive blogs might take your words and change them, misquote them, put them in a false context, and defeat you in an election.

We hear some out there call for "reasoned, respectful debate," but then we are told that facts and worked-out opinions and the other stuff that comprises debate will only get you into trouble.

South Dakota War College does not pretend, that I have ever seen, to address the matters of how political information is gathered and how stances are examined and opinions are formed. But some of the commenters on his blog do pontificate on the matter and reveal some of the deeper problems in South Dakota politics. (Should I have capitalized that last word?)

One shining defender of integrity and accuracy says a questionaire with yes or no answers by some outside special interest is a disservice. First of all, the NATP provides a full range of responses to each issue and also provides a space where candidates can elaborate and explain their answers. Secondly, Project Vote Smart is a bi-partisan effort to get campaigns to address issues instead of get bogged down with personal attacks and false claims and the malevolent paraphernalia that comprises so much of what goes on during campaigns. And in political blogs. This brilliant commentator says he would rather have his candidates explain their positions to him rather than some outside interest group. Oh, we forgot how informative political ads are and news accounts and how most people flock around each and every candidate, clamor to have campaign points explained to them, and keep notes to use in the election booth.

I confess that I was a supporter of Project Vote Smart from its outset. I taught journalism. I practiced journalism. And like most journalists, I realized that candidates seldom have available any information about the most important issues on which they have to act and vote. Project Vote Smart provides a file that tracks politicians' stances and is working on files of their voting records. In some places, such information is available through various organizations, such as press consortiums that assemble files of their positions and speeches and score cards on elected officials. In South Dakota, this kind of information is scarce and hard to get. Project Vote Smart is simply a boon to public information, and in South Dakota that is considered dangerous.

Then we have a commentator who celebrates the folksy approach to politics. He says,

"Thank goodness South Dakota is still full of voters who want to look candidates in the eye while they shake their hand and make a decision based on something other than campaign literature and answers to surveys."

A smile, a hand shake, and eye contact are all that's really needed to make a political decision. Now anyone who has canvassed for a campaign, which includes me, knows that the main concern of a candidate is to let people know who you are in the hopes that they will be able to make an identification when they go into the voting booth. That can help. But the fact is that most people vote according to their prejudices and biases and the misinformation they prefer to believe. But, of course, it would violate some basic trust and be counter to the purpose of effective government if they ever consulted campaign literature and profiles of candidates' stances and inclinations.

South Dakota is rated by the Better Government Association in a study funded by the Ford Foundation as the most closed, repressive, and inaccessible government of the 50 states. People just don't know what is going on. And it becomes apparent from the words of commentators on SDWC that they don't want to know.

Life is much more comfortable when you don't have to deal with real issues and information. South Dakota is a haven from such stuff. And that haven is threatened when voters actually check out what candidates think and say and do.

Woops. SDEA endorses Brown County Democrats

2006-09-07T08:04:00.000-08:00

The SDEA Education Political Action Committee (EPIC) interviews South Dakota legislative candidates each election cycle on issues of public education. EPIC has a record of endorsing more Democrat candidates than Republican. That causes much whining and gnashing of teeth over in the Republican camp.

Within factions of the Republican Party, dismantling public education is part of the platform. In South Dakota public education is underfunded and generally dismissed as a taxpayers' nuisance.

EPIC has endorsed the following candidates in Brown County:

District 2

Senate
Jim Hundstad

House of Representatives:
H. Paul Dennert
Burt Elliott

District 3

[No recommendation for Senate]

House of Representatives

Tom Black
Ted Kneebone

Jim Hundstad, Burt Elliott, and Ted Kneebone have all been teachers, with Burt Elliott currently a teacher at Aberdeen Central. District 3 Senate candidate, Al Hoerth, who came into the race too late for an interview, retired from Aberdeen Central this spring.

If you want to see what teachers face in South Dakota and the reasons that bright and talented students go to other states to teach, if that is their calling, read the post regarding the EPIC endorsements on South Dakota War College and the thread of comments. This thread may represent what controls education in South Dakota more than we like to admit.

Where do you run a railroad?

2006-09-06T08:52:00.000-08:00

The DM&E Railroad has the support of people who see it as the great revitalizer for towns suffering decline, such as Huron. While the railroad may have ultimate merit, the questions raised by its critics are generally dismissed or totally ignored by the supporters.

A nagging aspect is the special legislation that permits DM&E to apply for a huge federal loan. While the main purpose of the railroad is to haul coal from mines to electrical generating stations, its plans include plenty of pork and privilege. That is troublesome, and leads to another question.

The biggest argument for the railroad is that it can be a big factor in our energy supply. While we hear so much about cutting our dependence on foreign oil and moving to cleaner sources of fuel, we are also constantly besieged with pronouncements of "experts" who say that we cannot make a mass conversion to clean, renewable fuels. Still, we heard one discussion from clean energy advocates that if we spent the same money on an energy infrastructure that we spent on the war on Iraq, we could build the needed powers lines to conduct windpower, convert to hydrogen fuel, develop and improve bio-based fuels, and utilize the advances made in solar power. But that raises the question of how much of a future the DM&E would have. Are the nay-sayers against alternative fuels trying to create a reason for enterprises like the DM&E in spite of the need and potential to convert to other fuels?

From the outset, the DM&E plan has raised questions about where it will run its tracks. One benefit that came from the abandonment of rail lines in the 1970s and the removal of tracks was that towns were made safer and rail traffic did not interfere with other forms of traffic. It was often said that if railroads made a comeback, there would have to be new requirements for safety and traffic flow about where they could run their tracks. That is the essential argument with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. The folks there do not want a railroad to mess up the town and be the cause of traffic problems. People in Aberdeen, S.D., should understand that. They know the essential value of the Second Street overpass and can remember the hassles a few years back when the overpass was being replaced and they had to wait at rail crossings constantly. Where the tracks run is not a trivial consideration.

One other thing about the DM&E. Ask someone connected with Burlington Northern Santa Fe what their attitude is. Their attitude is that they can haul the coal east from Wyoming just as well as DM&E. And other rail lines out of Aberdeen into North Dakota and east are being upgraded to handle heavy grain and coal trains.

The concerns about the DM&E do not come from just the Mayo Clinic. Its competitors have some opinions and plans, too.

Life in Aberdeen

2006-09-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

While I was a candidate for the state house, I asked a market research organization I work for from time to time if I could use data from some of their studies in the campaign. They finally answered back and told me what I could use and what was considered proprietary information paid for by their clients.

Begin with the fact that the area that comprises the Aberdeen "micropolitan" region consists of about 14 counties. In the mid-1980s, it led the nation in the rate of outmigration of people, according to data cited by Dun & Bradstreet. The severity of the outmigration and lack of inmigration can be seen in the statistic that, during the same time period, the enrollment in the Aberdeen Public School District dropped by 6,000 students. The big question facing government and civic leaders is whether that bleeding away of young people has slowed down or stopped and what that demographic trend portends for the community and the region.

The slump in Aberdeen population was related closely to the demise of the railroads. When Aberdeen was, in fact, a hub for the intersection of five railroads, it was a distribution center for the region. In other words, goods and materials came to Aberdeen and were distributed from there throughout the region. That role formed the economic structure of the town. People from the region came to Aberdeen to do business because that is where the goods and services were centered. A pattern of life involved people coming to town from the rural areas to shop. They, then, ate dinner in town and went to a movie or some other entertainment before heading home.

The biggest factor in the decline of business and population in Aberdeen has been the consolidation of farming and ranching. In one of the market studies, that counted how many farmsteads have been abandoned and/or demolished, 80 percent of the placesin South Dakota that once accommodated families in rural areas and small towns became vacant in the late 20th century. This decline in occupied homes correlates with the decline in small businesses in small towns.

Another way of looking at the matter is that farm productivity is rising, but the ability of an acre of land to sustain the people working it has dropped by as much as 80 percent. The cost-price squeeze that farmers have experienced has had a severe effect on both the demographics and the economy of the regioin. All of what is referred to as the Buffalo Commons region has experienced this decline, but the Aberdeen micropolitan area has felt it with particular severity.

A point made by market analysts who have been brought in to advise planners over the years is that Aberdeen would need to regain its role as a distribution center or replace that role with something else. There is a history of resistance to changing the patterns of life in Aberdeen, and that resistance aggravated the decline in working-age population.

When large organizations invest in a community by building large facilities, they do so on the basis of detailed and thoroughly analyzed market studies. For example, at one time Osco Drug intended to expand by building an Osco-Buttery store on Sixth Ave. That plan was canceled and Osco eventually pulled out of Aberdeen altogether. Other drug stores that closed at about the same time were a Walgreen agency and a White Drug Store. Their revenues were either stagnant or falling, and market studies did not show that revenues had any possibility of rising again. When I came to Aberdeen, there were four men's stores on Main Street along with two department stores, and another men's store in Super City Mall. The two department stores closed and later reopened at Lakeview Mall, but there are no men's stores in town. This signifies how cultural patterns intertwine with economic factors in affecting the character of communities.

Some things have changed in the economic picture. Menards is expanding to build its Aberdeen store into one of its biggest facilities. Wal-Mart is doing the same. Walgreens has been looking at properties. One hears murmurs that Target is planning an expansion.

Some of Aberdeen's role as a distribution center has been regained. Contractors from the region come into Menards, for example, to pick up supplies as soon as the store opens. Its parking lot shows cars from other counties and North Dakota in the lot at closing. Wal-Mart shows a similar pattern of traffic. Ardo is one of the biggest John Deere dealers in the upper Midwest. Some of the automobile dealers in Aberdeen now carry some of the biggest inventories in the region.

The expansion of U.S. 12 to four-lanes to I-29 has facilitated traffic to and from Aberdeen, especially for trucks. However, railroad upgrades have contributed, too. The proposed beef processing plant in Aberdeen falls into the pattern of a distribution center.

One problem is in the division of the local economy between production and service. The financial industry, particularly debt-collection, has seen some growth in Aberdeen, but manufacturing and the creation of marketable entities lags. Firms dependent upon high-tech operations have not succeeded in Aberdeen.

The problem for people who make policy is that the region offers a rural way of life that is attractive, but it does not have the kind of jobs needed to sustain people who prefer that way of life. Its best chance of attracting those kind of jobs is to continue development of the community as a distribution center.

What needs to be studied is just how that can be done. And that gets into the quality of educational programs that prepare people for the kind of creative and intellectual enterprises that expand the economy by expanding the culture. When young people leave a community because it does not afford them the cultural opportunities, the economic opportunities, or the lifestyle they want, there are many people whose attitude is good riddance.

These are tough issues. Is anyone out there confronting them?

A meditation for Labor Day

2006-08-28T23:04:00.000-08:00

Pay is low, productivity is high, there still aren't enough jobs, and wages are losing ground to prices. Happy Labor Day.

Read the whole account in the Star Tribune.

The anti-abortion militants miscarry

2006-08-28T18:56:00.000-08:00

The physician from Aberdeen said to the young people manning the Campaign for Healthy Families booth at the Brown County Fair, "You people are disgusting."

That was after he so brilliantly displayed some syllogistic thinking. The pattern for his syllogism is:

Men are living creatures.
Dogs are living creatures.
Therefore dogs are men.

His version ran like this:

Humans are living creatures.
Zygotes are living creatures.
Therefore zygotes are humans.

Zygotes can become incipient humans if they are nurtured by someone who desires to take the time, the special effort, and the personal sacrifice to bring them to that point. The good doctor claims that science has changed the definition of a zygote from the "union of two gametes" to a "full-fledged person." He said, "A zygote is a person." We have not been able to locate the scientific literature that makes that assertion, but this M.D. says it is an accomplished fact of scientific knowledge.

The doctor asked how killing babies relates to the healthy families. In the argument and accusations over abortion, one gets the feeling that the anti-abortion ragers are not so much interested in saving life as having a pretext to call someone a "baby-killer." As one of our correspondents pointed out via e-mail, the epithet "baby-killer" takes on the same aspect as when good Germans called Jews "Christ-killers." A semantic need is the real issue. They need a pretext to express hatred and vilification against someone.

Well, the good physician, who eventually left the booth to presumably heal the sick and succor the afflicted, was not alone. The Novstrup family singers were also there. Al and David Novstrup make up the Republican slate for the South Dakota House of Representatives for District 3.

The song they sang was "When does life begin?" Al boomed forth with the chorus, "We KNOW when life begins." The question is probably "When does human life begin?" There is a lot of life swarming all around us. Everytime we swab out the toilet with Lysol, we take thousands, perhaps millions, of lives. Those creatures were with life, until we decided to tidy up the bowl. Murder is committed in the household every day.

Then the Novstrup genius went to work with "When do you get rights?" The gremlin in the background muttered, "When get the honkies get scared enough of you that they'll give them to you." But that was followed with "How do you balance out the rights of the unborn vs. the rights of the mother." The gremlin said, "With the South Dakota abortion ban, the mother has rights? Where? When? How?" The gremlin is right. The South Dakota Abortion ban gives the state all the rights. The mother has no voice in whether she wants to develop a zygote into a human. And she ain't gonna have no rights until she can scare the honkies into allowing her some.

Young David Novstrup piped up with the penetrating observation that an abortion "punishes two people." To which the gremlin interjected, "How long does the punishment go on when a woman is forced to carry a zygote to term when she really does not have the resources for doing so?" Impertinent imp.

Spouse Novstrup said that "Rape and incest were only one percent of all pregnancy cases. That is not enough to matter." Not even to the woman who is forced to carry to term the child of someone she has reason to loathe and despise. Such things don't matter.

The fact is that no one, except a few misanthropes, regards abortion as anything other than a desperate medical measure for women who find themselves in desperate circumstances. Forcing women to develop zygotes into viable humans is a return to slavery, when women were forced to give birth to increase the slaveholdings and wealth of their masters.

The entire anti-abortion movement hinges on their semantic insistence that life begins when sperm meets egg, and sometimes before. This is religious doctrine for some sects. There is also theological grounds for giving women special, individual privilege in deciding how and when to bear children. But those grounds are ignored by certain church groups which are more interested in forcing their doctrine on others.

The biggest problem with the anti-abortion militants is that their claim to caring about saving life rings so hollow. If they cared, they would seem to demonstrate more respect for the living.

You disgusting people, you baby-killers, hear that?

[This acc0unt was taken from notes supplied and verified by Dena, Lindsey, and John.]

UPDATE: The Koran Curtain is up

2006-08-27T17:30:00.000-08:00

See the news below that broke on Sunday.

A number of we old Cold Warriors have had a sense of deja vu. I was a guided missile technician on the old Nike Ajax system. It was designed for air defense. We could track and shoot down menacing aircraft headed our way, and the system was primarily designed to protect against bombers that could deliver nuclear war heads. At that time, Intercontinental Ballastic Missiles and Intermediate Range Missiles were in stages of development. When my package unit was sent to Germany to convert anti-aircraft gun battalions to guided missiles, we discovered something else we could do with Nikes.

A missile battalion consists of four batteries. In a rotating system, one battery is kept on full alert at all times. That means that personnel are on the equipment and the missiles are ready and can fire at a target in minutes. The nights get long on full alert status and the personnel found things to do, like track targets flying the border in East Germany or doing nerdy things with the analog computer, or in general finding ways to relieve the boredom while maintaining vigilance.

A characteristic of the Nike missile was that it was boosted up to a very high altitude and dove down on its target at supersonic speeds. Some personnel began using the clutter plots on the radar to locate very sensitive targets within their range. They were able to lock the target-tracking radar on a ground target and hold it there. If a Nike were fired, it would act like a precision bomb and crash into a target with tremendous accuracy. It did not take long until we found "special warheads" being stored in our munitions bunkers. And it did not take long before a list of ground targets within our range was posted complete with coordinates. We surmised the new warheads included nuclear devices.

Before I left Germany, the battalion began to prepare for being upgraded from Nike Ajax to the Nike Hercules system. Part of that preparation was to accommodate the Hercules ability to take out possible ICBMs and IRBMs and to hit ground targets. Some of the warheads being shipped to the munitions bunkers were clearly labeled radioactive nuclear.

When NATO deployed ICBMs and IRBMs, the targets were already established. The targets are locked into their guidance system and they do not need ground-based radar to steer them to their target once they are aloft. That is a reason that the Cold War remained in a state of restraint. The Soviet Union knew that its most sensitive targets were locked into the guidance units of some guided missiles, and it knew that other missiles could be directed wherever we wanted them by radar commands. This is the capability of ship and submarine-based missiles. The folks behind the Iron Curtain were busy cataloging and recording coordinates for our most sensistive targets. This knowledge kept the world in a state of restraint and deadlock.

Here is where the deja vu comes in. We old missilemen cannot help but assume that in the long hours of the night, some crewmen are programming missiles for Iran and North Korea and crucial targets of some other Islamic belligerents.

The difference is the suicidal aspect of Islamic militants. They might launch a nuclear strike even knowing that western forces could turn entire nations into martyrs in a few hours. Would the threat of total annihilation be a deterrent to nuclear aggression?

Probably not. The Islamic militants are convinced that the infidels, which includes almost everybody but them, are out to commit genocide against Islam. The factors of the western world that eventually led to the dismantling of the Iron Curtain are the very things Islam regards as sinful and decadent.

Nevertheless, we would be foolish not to have our targets plotted and our missiles ready. And my old fellow-missilemen are looking for signs of some missile silos being reactivated in the Dakotas. In 1990, as the old Soviet regimes toppled down, it never occured to us that a Koran Curtain was being woven.

This story appeared in Sunday's The New York Times:

Iran Tests Submarine-to-Surface Missile

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 27, 2006
Filed at 12:19 p.m. ET
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran test fired a new submarine-to-surface missile during war games in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, a show of military might amid a standoff with the West over its nuclear activities.
A brief video clip showed the long-range missile, called Thaqeb, or Saturn, exiting the water and hitting a target on the water's surface within less than a mile. The test came as part of large-scale military exercises that began Aug. 19.

''The army successfully test fired a top speed long-range sub-to-surface missile off the Persian Gulf,'' the navy commander, Gen. Sajjad Kouchaki, said on state-run television.

Iran routinely has held war games over the past two decades to improve its combat readiness and to test equipment including missiles, tanks and armored personnel carriers.

But Sunday's firing of the missile came as Iran remains defiant just five days before a deadline imposed by the U.N. Security Council for Tehran to suspend the enrichment of uranium, which can produce both reactor fuel and material usable in nuclear warheads.

Iran said last week it is open to negotiations but it refused any immediate suspension, calling the deadline illegal.

Tehran has expressed worry about Israeli threats to destroy its nuclear facilities, which the West contends could be used to make a bomb but which Iran insists are for the peaceful purpose of generating electricity. The Islamic country also is concerned about the U.S. military presence in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan.

In an advance for Iran's weapons industry, the Thaqeb is the country's first missile fired from underwater that flies above the surface to strike its target, adding to the country's repertoire of weapons that can hit ships in the Gulf.

Iran's current arsenal includes several types of torpedoes -- including the ''Hoot,'' Farsi for ''whale,'' which was tested for the first time in April and is capable of moving at some 223 mph, up to four times faster than a normal torpedo.

I've got one, you've got one, all God's children have reptilian cortexes

2006-08-24T16:57:00.000-08:00

The policy of the NVB is not to directly engage in direct disputes or exchanges with other blogs. That does not preclude our correcting falsehoods or commenting on perfidious tactics that mark the descent of American politics into the primal rituals of degeneration and malice that are the preconditions for violence, as in places like Iraq. Look at the quality of democracy brought to Iraq, and you have a glimpse of what the current regime in power is doing for us. Shiites/Sunnis, red states/blue states, conservatives/liberals, the divisions are defined and the words that provoke mindless hostilities make up a good portion of the verbal environment. They are directed at what some communications theorists call "reptilian hot buttons." They circumvent the centers of higher order thinking and stimulate the primal instincts of fright, flight, fight, and domination.

Except for a few blogs that have established reputations for accurate information and reasoned analysis, I pay little attention to political blogs. When the Northern Valley Beacon becomes the subject of blog posts that misrepresent its words and thoughts, I generally would not be aware of them if other people did not call them to my attention and urge me to make a corrective response.

My writing has been accused of being hysterical. I suppose it appears that way when I happen to strike some hot buttons and inadvertently send their possessors into hysterical, uncontrollable frenzies of denial, denigration, and accusation. It takes the active application of the higher regions of thought to connect subjects to predicates, sentences to their grammatical referrants, and paragraphs to the thesis they are developing. When the reptilian hot button is struck, only those words and phrases that elicit the hysteria and its primal malevolence matter to those in the throes of instinctual response. On the other hand, some are versed enough in communication theory to isolate words from their semantic contexts and contort them into missiles directed at reptilian hot buttons. They know that they will strike the hot buttons of hatred and aggression in a number of people out there.

Brain theory, rhetoric studies, and communications theory converged about a half century ago when advertisers began what they called motivational research. (I was employed by an advertising agency that was a leader in this field in the mid-1950s.) Their aim was to find ways of controlling and prompting human responses to messages so that people could be programmed to uncontrollably buy what the advertisers promoted. Two major theories of pyschology came into play. One was behaviorism which posits that all animals, including humans, can be conditioned to give a desired response on command. The other was brain theory, which recognized that the first layer of the human brain is a primitive one we share with reptiles and messages that appeal to that layer of the brain and circumvent the more complex layers can produce behaviors in humans that are determined by the messages they are hit with.

The brain's three layers are: Brain One, the reptilian cortex or R complex; Brain Two: the limbic system or "old mammalian brain," which is wrapped around Brain One; and Brain Three, the neocortex, or cerebrum, which is wrapped around Brain Two and is the center of higher order perception and thinking. The brain is also divided into lobes which are connected and coordinated through a complex "wiring" system.

Some advertisers and some political factions are mainly interested in brain and communication research to find ways to control humans and human behavior. Political operatives have found the reptilian hot buttons and are particularly interested in finding ways to elicit responses. Much political advertising and communications is directed at those hot buttons. It is a given that many people are aware when someone is trying to condition them into a predetermined response or an uncontrolled reaction on the reptilian level, and they take offense at the attempts to control them. But many people are vulnerable. When they are asked why they voted the way they have, they come up with a message that was aimed right at their reptilian cortex, and they responded instinctively.

John Thune's campaign against Tom Daschle was aimed at the R complex. When people were presented with pictures of Tom Daschle with Saddam Hussein and Osam bin Laden, with the contention that his house in D.C. was a badge of abandoning his own, with the message that he abandoned a wife and family for a beauty queen, people did not question the veracity of those messages. They reacted with a mindless rage, like animals being threatened. They did not ask if the messages were true or accurate; they simply reacted to the hatred the messages inspired in them. Big Brother was jerking them around.

One of the most prominent theorists of the reptilian cortex is Clotaire Rapaille, who has been featured on PBS' Frontline. He sums up the success of the reptilian approach:

I don't care what you're going to tell me intellectually. I don't care. Give me the reptilian. Why? Because the reptilian always wins.

No one disputes that the reptilian wins. Communicators and students of rhetoric have been fully aware of why for years. George Orwell's 1984 is a depiction of behaviorism and reptilian programs at work in conjunction with communications technology to produce humans that are easily controlled by the state.

Rapaille makes the point that "It's absolutely crucial for anybody in communication -- and that could be journalists, TV, media, all of it, or marketing people -- if you want to appeal to people, it's absolutely crucial to understand what I call the reptilian hot button. If you don't have a reptilian hot button, then you have to deal with the cortex; you have to work on price issues and stuff like that. "

The issue is not whether the reptilian works. The issue is whether striking for the reptilian or conditioning humans like Pavlovian dogs is morally defensible. It is the antithesis of the human philosophy that has produced democracy.

When political operatives, such as the author of South Dakota War College, give advice on what works, they are usually shaping messages for the reptilian. Some weeks ago I stated that the political practices advocated on the War College blog were the politics of the reptilian cortex. They pursue a particular theory based upon the idea that most humans are too busy to employ their neocortex in interpreting the messages directed at them, so that political messages must be reduced to the slogan or the postcard or the 15-second sound bite if they are to be apprehended by today's human. In practice, that means they are reduced to something that will hit at the reptilian-level reactions of the audience.

I took issue with some quotations of mine that were simply false. They were false because they did not follow the basic rules of paraphrase and they were misquotations, although misquotation that definitely sent the herd of regressive dinosaurs out there into a rage. They raged at the term "politics of the reptilian cortex." They assumed they were being called names, but I was using a term that is well known in the fields of communication and rhetoric, a term that refers to a particular philosophy of communication and its practice.

That is another tactic that is used by the reptilian advocates. They excise and contort sentences down to reptilian missives that generally have nothing to do with what was originally stated. Then they rage and accuse and call names, and say, "See this unthinking rage I am in? Well, that nasty person over there did this to me. He is a bad person." They hope that careless readers will suspend Brains Two and Three and let Brain One substitute their rage for what was actually said or done. This is the put-all-your-asps-in-one-basket theory of political propaganda.

Communications aimed at the reptilian cortex is so reductive that it is inherently dishonest. It is dishonest because it misrepresents other people. Often the distortion and misrepresentation comes about because mentalities dominated by the reptilian cannot apprehend complex messages and must reduce them to something they can rage about.

The antidote to repilitan messaging is education. People who recognize tactics that try to excite the primitive nervous system into taking over the centers of knowledge and rationality resent the attempts at mind control. Furthermore, they tend to recognize the fallacies inherent in such messaging. To them, the purpose of the mindful life is to surmount the vestiges of our evolutionary past and maintain discourse that is honest, accurate, and respectful of language, if not other people. Political blogs tend to disqualify themselves from that kind of discourse because their main reason for being is to insult, abuse, malign, and cast scurrility upon their opposition.

When bloggers nearly always accompany their posts with comments meant to be destructive and belittling of personality, they show that they are more interested in destroying character than in building purposeful discourse. And, in those who value language and the processes of informed debate, they inspire revulsion. That is why I was and remain so revolted by the campaign of John Thune, the Swift Boaters, and those who lie, even if they don't know any better.

The field of rhetoric had to confront some new fronts with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Scholars saw rhetoric being used to control, damage, and destroy people. One of the leaders in studying rhetoric was Chaim Perelman. He was also a leader in the resistance movement in Belgium. He contended that set forms of rhetoric established in the classical world led the mind in channels that sometimes ignored the realities and circumstances in which people actually lived. He called for argumentation that establishes the structure of reality--recognizing, in essence, rhetoric that incorporates the highest regions of perception and rationality into the premises it advances.

Most American politics is of the reptilian sort. That is because most political discourse is conducted by media ads that do not serve the higher reaches of the human brain. Rather they pander to the reptilian.

If democracy is to survive and expand, we have to transcend the reptilian. And that is why I not only spend little time paying attention to political blogs; I make exceptional effort to avoid some.

The reptilian is more dangerous to America than Islamic militancy or Marxist subversion. We prefer to expend our efforts on more hopeful aspects of the human mind.

How low can we sink?

2006-08-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

You begin with some irrefutable facts that make South Dakota a very bad place to live for those who revere freedom, equality, and justice:

The state has the lowest average wage in the nation.
The state has the poorest counties in the nation.
The state has the most closed and repressive government in the nation.
The state is among the lowest in its support of public education.
The state is the lowest in the support of research, scientific and scholarly.
The state has some of the most discriminatory and repressive labor laws in the nation.
The state ranks at the top for the support and accommodation of sweat shop business schemes that exploit taxpayers and workers.

The list of where the state ranks at the bottom of social, cultural, and the more uplifting enterprises goes on and on.

So, how is a state allowed to remain such an unattractive place for many people? The fact is that many people in South Dakota have deep roots here, find aspects of life here to their liking and advantage, and they want to make things better. They are the first to admit that they aren't very successful.

Why? The answer is South Dakota politics. South Dakota politics is what I call the town cafe variety.

One of my favorite assignments in critical analysis was for students to profile their hometowns with objective data illustrated by their personal observations. I admit that I liked the exercise because it was a way to learn about places when you did not have the opportunity to actually go visit them. I have read thousands of such papers. And one thing emerged in the papers about the small towns that seemed to be a constant: their town cafes.

While some students were amusedly tolerant of the town cafes, I cannot think of an example where students found much positive about them. In fact, most students deplored them and thought the town would be better off without them.

What they deplored was the fact that people, mostly seniors, gathered in them over coffee at various times of the day and generated malicious gossip about everything and everybody. My colleagues in social psychology explain the causes of this activity, but I will not go into a detailed explanation. It is a matter of resentment of others, a need to exercise some kind of power over other people, and a need to feel that "we" are better than "them." High school students seemed to be a special victims of the maligning and the defamations .

As I read what are allegedly political blogs in South Dakota I find the malicious gossip from town cafes being promoted as political commentary. Perhaps the latest example concerned governot candidate Jack Billion. Dr. Billion is against the South Dakota abortion ban because he thinks it intrudes government into decisions that should be left to individuals in consultation with their physicians and their spiritual counselors. His brother, also a physician, is for the ban. He is among those who believe that life in the womb needs the same protections as a fully formed and functioning human. So, there is a disagreement in a family.

Jack Billion's opponents trotted out the malign forces from the town cafes to start the gossip mills grinding away. The result was one of those nasty, debased series of exchanges that makes one ashamed to be part of the human race. They could not wait to intrude into family affairs and apply their malign conjectures and maledictions to the Billion family.

This is what politics has become. It is the rule in South Dakota. Bloggers think defamation is smart politics. Yes. It wins elections. But it destroys the reasons people want to live in America. Or South Dakota. Or anywhere. There is no democracy when malignant power rules.

Like our ancestors who came to America to get away from the malicious and tyrannical discriminations and denials that ruled Old Word culture, we keep looking for places where America might start anew. We work for candidates who represent progress and decency. But we are realistic. These are the politics that have kept South Dakota so low in measures of freedom, equality, opportunity, and justice.

It pays to have options.

Requiem for patriotism

2006-08-16T18:46:00.000-08:00

Spec. Joe Darby had nothing to do with the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but he provided support services and materials for soldiers who did attend to the prisoners. One day, a fellow soldier gave him a CD of pictures that he said Joe ought to see. Spec. Darby saved the CD on his computer and gave the original back to the soldier. Some days later, he called them up.

Spec. Darby started asking hypothetical questions of his fellow soldiers. He asked what they would do if they came into possession of photographs that showed U.S. soldiers committing acts that were against military law. He consulted with a senior NCO he respected. Finally, he took the pictures to the Army's Criminal Investigation Division.

The pictures were the ones of U.S. military personnel abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib that made the headlines throughout the U.S.

Joe Darby had to be protected from his fellow soldiers. He was called a traitor by people in his hometown. In the minds of many Americans, Joe Darby did something wrong.

What he did wrong was adhere to the enlisted personnel's oath that every soldier makes when entering the service. He abided by the rules in the Universal Code of Military Justice. More fundamentally, he saw fellow soldiers committing violence and degradation on other people, and he provided evidence to the military authorities.

Joe Darby received some commendations from high commanders. But he was vilified and reviled by some fellow soldiers and Americans here at home.

It's just a reminder that the sense of integrity and decency that once characterized America is significantly diminished in some quarters.

And ultimately, this is what our elections are about. Will the forces of deceit, degradation, and violence upon other people win again?

South Dakota Politics implicated in death of southern belle

2006-08-03T22:50:00.000-08:00

By Roland Walter

I started to write an in-your-face snarky post entitled Shorter Ken Blanchard. Then my opening line was going to be: “Mel Gibson is a bigot but I still like some of his movies and Roland Walter is full of crap because Chad Shulte did lie.” That was Ken’s basic response to my previous post on this site, but just to be clear, I am not quoting him directly. I included the quotation marks to indicate I was writing kind of a mocking parody of what he really said—that being the snarky part. And so you know, I’m offering all these explanations of my true intent in case Ken reads this, as I wouldn’t want to be accused of deliberately misquoting him (lying) as happened when Chad employed what was likely a similar rhetorical technique.

Anyway, I had started this post when I got a message from my gracious host on this site, David Newquist, saying he had just received a message in the comments section. It was from a Blanche Dubois, Baton Rouge, La., and formerly of New Orleans. She was in her nineties, lived in a nursing home, loved to read blogs and had been displaced by last summer’s flooding. She wrote as follows:

My dearest Dr. Blanchard,

I do so enjoy reading your wonderful prose at South Dakota Politics. You and Jon Schaff always calling each other professor—you’re so courteous and your employer must be so proud to be associated with all the things you have to say. Oh yes, and it’s so nice the way you have so many friends that write with you and you all stick up for each other. I myself have to depend on the kindness of strangers.

Anyway, I read the piece you wrote about that handsome Mel Gibson being a bigot or something. Then I read that part where you said you still think that sweet boy Chad Shulte lies even though somebody named Roland Walter thinks he doesn’t and I just had to write to you. But then I couldn’t find anywhere on your blog to leave a message (you really should get that fixed) so I ended up at this Beacon place because of a link in your story. I do so hope you get to read this.

It’s so wonderful that you took time to respond to the silly ramblings of that Roland person. Roland sounds like a French name doesn’t it? I wonder if he’s handsome; I bet he is.

Oh, but I do digress. I’m writing because I was trying to understand why you left out the part where Roland tried to explain why poor Chad might not have been lying, you know, how putting the word shorter in the title was supposed to explain how his next words weren’t a real quote. I mean you being a professor and all, I thought you would want to explain all the details so we would all know the truth about what that dear boy meant or if you weren’t really sure, you would just give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“Wait a minute! Oh my! Oh my, oh my, oh my! I just had this horrible thought that you might have done that on purpose. Maybe you attacked poor Chad about lying to discredit him so people won’t pay attention to what he really says. Maybe you left out part of what Roland said so you could say he was wrong even if maybe he wasn’t. I think maybe you tried to play us all for fools. Oh please, please say it isn’t so! I’m so upset; my heart is racing. It’s all just so awf…

And that was the end of her message (ellipsis mine) except for a random bunch of letters and then hhhhhhhhhh for about twenty lines. I became concerned and started making calls to Baton Rouge nursing homes. My worst fears were soon confirmed. I found the home where she had lived. Poor Blanche had been typing merrily at a computer in a commons area. Suddenly those around her noticed she was becoming quite agitated and then she fell face first into her keyboard, which, of course, would explain the random letters and h’s. She was dead, cut down in the prime of life after truly understanding the forms of argument so often employed at SDP.

So be warned, reading the posts at SDP can be hazardous to your health. Worse yet, it could kill you.

Disclaimer: Dave received no such comment. Blanche Dubois existed only as a fictional character and thus could not have said the things attributed to her. While certain things she was quoted as saying may be true, reading SDP has never killed anyone—at least to my knowledge. However, I have personally experienced eyestrain and indigestion while reading
certain posts.

And a note from Newquist: The NVB has had a long-held policy not to engage in exchanges with other blogs. However, its gate-keeper is an old editor and professor who has toiled far into too many nights over dull, clumsy prose that some poor soul obviously thought was brilliant. Then on those dank and dreary nights, some genuine wit and talent would flash across the verbal firmament. Those writers always got published or received A's out of totally selfish reasons. They rescued one who toiled in the dreariness from despair. And so, I post this effort from Walt.

NSU alumnus really gets pissed

2006-08-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

[Editors note: We do not normally respond to the exercises in intellectual dereliction and scurrility from Sibby and South Dakota Politics. But when someone sends us an item on the utter dereliction of fact, reason, and integrity, we will post it. Walt nails this situation exactly as the academic profession has regarded it for the last 80 years or so.]

Schaff and Blanchard up to necks in denial
In need of lifeboat while Gibson tosses them anchor.

By Roland Walter

I wonder what South Dakota Politics bloggers Jon Schaff and Ken Blanchard think happened when Mel Gibson delivered his Friday-morning drunken slurs and threats against Jews, female deputies and others? It seems to me any reasonable person would conclude that Gibson outed himself as an unhinged, self-righteous, anti-Semitic bigot, hate-monger, bully, and sexist. But it appears Jon thinks otherwise and Ken gets a bit overwrought when someone questions that position.

With that in mind, lets retrace a few things Jon has said about Mel lately as well as some criticism Ken has leveled against Chad Shulte over at the Clean Cut Kid blog site. In a post entitled “Shorter Jon Schaff,” Chad summarized an earlier post by Jon to say: "A drunk Mel Gibson can make all the racial slurs he wants because he made a great movie about Christ." Ken then complained in a subsequent SDP post saying no such quote appeared anywhere in Jon’s post, pretty much called Chad a liar, and also said, “Professor Schaff clearly states that Gibson's career ought to suffer, and hopes that Gibson will be punished in court, exactly the opposite of what Chad implies in his post.”

Indeed he did and had Jon’s comments stopped there, they would simply have been a penetrating glimpse into the obvious and Chad’s post would have been unwarranted. But no, Jon had more to say such as: “There is a temptation to dump on Gibson because of the rather public piety of 'The Passion of the Christ,' ” and “I suppose some annoyed by Gibson's public profession of faith will revel in his fall.”

That leads me to ask, who “dumped” on Gibson for the “public piety of The Passion of the Christ” and who is “annoyed by his public profession of faith”? Maybe someone somewhere did and is, but in general, I suspect Jon is defending him against straw man attacks conjured up by Gibson apologists. I might even conclude he’s trying to detract from the real criticism of Gibson and his movie, which has overwhelmingly been concern about anti-Semitism. And considering his Friday-morning remarks about Jews, is there any real question about the validity of that concern?

I think not and it logically follows then that the movie was not so much a retelling of Christ’s selfless suffering to atone for the sins of man as it was a denunciation of Jew’s for their role in his execution. Moreover, there is little doubt the extreme violence depicted was meant to further malign Jews as unsympathetic sadists. In other words, this movie was premeditated Jew bashing on a grand scale. The only thing I can begin to “revel” in is that the events of Friday morning have worked to discredit the zealous Jew-hater who directed and co-wrote it. And even that is tempered by the fact that, thanks to a lot of well-intentioned moviegoers, Gibson made a few hundred million dollars which he can still use to spread additional vitriol against any person or group he dislikes.

Jon went on to say, “Among Mel Gibson's many sins is the sin of hypocrisy. It is a bad sin, but I know a worse one. To avoid the error of hypocrisy one must believe in nothing. That Gibson is a hypocrite is axiomatic: we are all hypocrites in that we all fail to live up to our own standards. Gibson's sins no more discredit his religious convictions than, say, the likelihood that Martin Luther King was unfaithful to his wife destroys his moral authority (not to compare Mel Gibson to MLK).”

Excuse me, but these comments have no basis in reality. Exactly which of his own “standards” did Gibson fail to live up to? His “religious convictions” have nothing to do with Christian values of compassion and forgiveness. They instead have to do with the hate and self-righteousness embodied in bigotry, which are standards he did live up to. So his sin is not the hypocrisy of failing to live up to his personal standards; it is the hypocrisy of professing Christian ideals and hiding behind them while promoting bigotry. So from where did he ever or should he now derive any “moral authority”? Furthermore, wouldn’t we all be better off if Gibson believed in nothing rather than the antisocial, anti-Semitic and, yes, anti-Christian things he does?

It is nice that Jon tried to refrain from comparing Mel Gibson to MLK—well, kind of, sort of tried. In fact, he does compare their actions so I also must ask, what the hell does Martin Luther King’s alleged or actual infidelity have to do with Gibson’s Jew bashing? But for the efforts of those who sought to discredit him, any affair MLK may have had could affect only those directly involved. He didn’t, after all, publicly promote promiscuity.

Gibson, on the other hand, has purposely and publicly promoted anti-Semitism. To any extent he was successful in driving a wedge between Christian and Jew, Gibson’s hate mongering has hurt millions. So any comparison of his actions to those of MLK, a man who sought to reconcile differences between races, are totally bogus and to even mention his name in conjunction with Gibson is preposterous and defamatory in the extreme.

As for Ken, what did he think “shorter” referred to in Chad’s first post, a change in Jon’s physical stature? Chad didn’t lie, he simply interpreted Jon’s post and summarized it in one simple line. To my mind, he pretty much got it right. Ken may, of course, disagree and he has every right to offer a rebuttal. But going off on a rant about lies, well, not so much.

Continued exchanges between CCK and SDP have sometimes devolved into something akin to a urine-soaked free-for-all. For now, this site remains high and dry and I hope it remains so. But I can’t resist one final note that very well may change that situation.

I’ve noticed Ken and Jon get a bit annoyed when Chad or others question why their employer, Northern State University, lets them express the opinions they do while keeping them on staff. With that, I direct the next few lines directly to the two of them. Yes, you have the right to blog on your own time and to express your own opinions. Yes, you include occasional disclaimers to note your opinions are not endorsed by NSU. But here’s at least one problem. You constantly refer to each other as Professor Schaff and Professor Blanchard, but not all such posts include disclaimers.

The title of professor is reserved for active faculty of an institution of higher learning—in this case NSU. Otherwise, you would simply be Jon and Ken or Dr. S and Dr. B. or whatever. By using the title professor, you knowingly or inadvertently (and since your educated men it certainly should be knowingly) add the weight of your positions at NSU to your comments. That means anything you write under that title should be subjected to the rigors of academic discourse, you know, things like drawing conclusions from well documented fact rather than opinion and being motivated by a desire to find truth rather than promoting political agendas. Few if any of your blog posts do meet or could reasonably be expected to meet these high standards and so long as you refrain from using the professor title, they don’t have to. So as you blog, I simply ask that you at the very least quit calling each other professor. In fact, as an NSU graduate who profoundly disagrees with nearly every political opinion (pronouncement) you post, I take sincere offense and most adamantly insist that you do.

A statement on withdrawal

2006-08-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

I withdrew as a District 3 candidate for the South Dakota House last week.

As is usual with political announcements in South Dakota, the Ministry of Truth has taken over the announcements concerning the District 3 slate and applied its malicious creativity. It never misses a chance to malign and slander. It's too bad the party sponsoring the Ministry of Truth is not as successful at building the state as it is tearing down personalities.

When petititions were due in April, I made clear that I had some family circumstances that took priority and might intrude on my ability to give a campaign the time and energy it needed. I have been out-of-state attending to family illnesses about half the time during the 2006. I have a contract to do some work as a member of the editorial board for the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, and that work got seriously behind schedule.

Later this spring, other members in my family developed health issues related to aging. As I am retired and have a flexible work schedule, I am the one depended on to attend to family matters for those who have jobs that require their presence. The deadlines for my editorial obligations, which have been extended for me, coincide with the November election. In order to meet those obligations, I simply would not have the opportunity to conduct the kind of campaign that needs to be waged in District 3. I will have to be working at the editorial research and writing full-time for the rest of the year.

The article in the Aberdeen American News does not accurately portray the circumstances behind the shift of the Democratic ballot in District 3. However, in South Dakota politics, facts do not much matter. I will not be more specific about the matters besetting my family because it does not deserve or need to be exposed to the malignancy that possesses South Dakota politics.

My first-priority issue as a candidate was open government. South Dakota ranks absolute last in the U.S. in open government and access by its citizens because of its inadequate and repressive laws and the consequent government-by-subterfuge. I regret that I may miss an opportunity to try to introduce appropriate legislation to open up government commensurate with the standards in other states. A state government that operates by private treaties and secret plans cannot represent the people. It represents the interests only of an inside clique. I have no delusions that any legislation that would implement democracy by the people for the people will ever make it out of committee as long as Republicans are the majority party. Still, it would put the facts of repressive and devious government on the table.

There are other ways to approach the problems of South Dakota government, and as opportunity permits, I hope to pursue those approaches. But I will always put service to my family above politics.

Anatomy of some lies

2006-07-26T12:05:00.000-08:00

I owe a debt of gratitude to South Dakota War College for putting on a demonstration of what I discuss in the previous post. I cited SDWC because the blog endorsed a lie. Creating a falsehood through a dishonest paraphrase and by isolating a comment or question from the context it references is lying. A false paraphrase is not a matter of interpretation. In this case, it is a matter of turning a rhetorical question into an assertion in which the paraphraser inserts his/her own words and meaning. Changing a question into an assertion is a deliberate act of altering grammatical structure. . It is intentional and overt. No more evidence that a deliberate distortion has taken place is needed. No matter how hard the Ministry of Truth strains to justify it.

The paraphrase of my comment posted on South Dakota Politics does not restate the original facts or ideas fully and clearly. It substitutes words and infers meanings that are nowhere suggested in the original comment.

In the field of editing this tactic is called subreption. Subreption is calculated misrepresentation through concealment of the facts and making inferences drawn from such misrepresentations. Professors and journalists are fired for it. Students are failed for it. Bloggers flourish on it.

I called out SDWC on the basis of the false representation of what I said in a blog comment. I know that SDWC thinks of itself as the stone tablet of campaign tactics. I know that SDWC flies into indignant outrage at anyone who does not take its "advice" as scripture and divine law.

I have been involved in political campaigns for more years than, I think, the author of SDWC has lived. I have been involved as a journalist who has covered campaigns and issues. And although my positions as a newspaper editor and then a college professor prevented me from taking a partisan stance, I was involved in the Republican Party as an issues analyst and campaign strategist. SDWC insists that I don't "get it." The author presumes that I am a retired professor possessed of an elitist attitude who cannot connect with the idea of what it takes to win an election. He says my concern is about asserting my "intellectual superiority" while his concern is about winning.

That is another way of saying that his focus is bitch fights. Mine is how to implement democracy in the State of South Dakota. And that gets into a very fundamental and huge difference between the political philosophies we embrace.

SDWC belongs to the professional athletic brand of politicking. It believes that candidates are at fault if they do not regard the voters as conditioned organisms just waiting to be given the right stimulus to trigger a desired respone. Candidates lose elections because they are not adept a manipulating the preconceived prejudices and gratifications of the voters.

I do not believe that politicians lose elections because they have not deftly manipulated the conditioned responses in the voters. I believe that voters are given the opportunity to exercise rational choice. When they vote for certain candidates and rejects others, they are exercising their choices. They are not merely reacting to stimuli that they have been conditioned to respond to. So, voters generally get what they want. And they, in a democracy such as ours, are ultimately responsible for what they get.

SDWC sees politics in terms of slogans that fit on postcards. We see politics as issues that require exhaustive study and debate. It is exceptonally patronizing to the voters to think that ultimately they only respond to and remember phrases and slogans. Patronization is the ultimate insult.

This is not to say that a considerable number of people do not vote according to misinformation, prejudice, and seething bigotry that political operatives stimulate as the basis for the way they vote. Yes, there are people out there who are like Pavlov's dogs and they salivate on command.

SDWC's philosophy on political campaigning is borrowed from consumer advertising. It is the philosophy that sells toothpaste by promising more and better sex with its use. It is the philosophy of tying one's messages to the prospect of gratification, not to the effort needed to make democracy truly work. The advice I got from SDWC was that I should not make statements that might upset some people's perceptions of themselves and their communities. Rather, I should wrap myself in meaningless platitudes and grovel and fawn. I do not question that the tactic works. It is the basis for one-party government in South Dakota.

I do not question that character assassination and personal attacks with patent falsehoods, subreptions, and distortions do not work. They got John Thune elected.

These are the factors that make South Dakota rank in the bottom of states for the basic qualities that define democracy. It ranks last for open government and citizen access. It ranks last for justice in its labor laws. It ranks at the bottom for its rate of poverty. It ranks last for what it invests in scientific and academic research. It ranks last for what it pays teachers. It hovers near the botton on the way it funds education. It has the lowest average wage in the nation. And the list goes on and on. And people vote for this status quo.

The task of political candidates is not to see how obsequious they can be in the hopes that a negligent electorate might put them if office. It is to address the quality of democracy. And of course the party that has put the state in the condition it is takes offense when anyone points out that the state has problems that need fixing.

***

SDWC has designed a postcard that features quotations of mine. All of them are presented in the same way. They contain no reference at all as to what occasioned them or what subject they are addressing. They are all models of the act of subreption.

SDWC explains that this postcard is what an opponent of mine could send out. I give my reponses.

SDWC promotes and endorses repression

The quotation from me cited was, "However, that tactic still works in McPherson County, which a campaigner from the last election says is a hotbed of intolerance and repression."

Even people in remedial classes would ask, "What tactic? What is being talked about?" SDWC assumes no one will ask that.

The post from which this was taken was on the use of deceptive, hate-inspiring terms in trying to define the opposition. It was made by explaining why voters in McPherson County voted overwhelmingly for an ultra-regressive in the primary. It quotes a campaign worker. It comes out of situation in which campaign workers refused to go into McPherson County because of aggressive abuse they received there. They were called baby-killers, anti-lifers, and the death squad. To me, it is important to identify pockets of this kind of activity. It is important to let people know what kind of reputation they have earned. And it is important to let other voters know the quality of thought and expression coming from an area.

Most of the letters-to-the-editor of the meanest, nastiest sort in our local newspaper emanate from McPherson County. People who want honest campaigns and workable democracy have a right to know who is working against them. They have a right to know that they have candidates who do not cater to that kind of politics.

SDWC advocates for closed, secret government

"Democracy is failing, and Aberdeen is a case study of how and why."

I am not sure of where this quotation was taken from. I can't find it in the NVB archives, but I have notes from a presentation on open government in which I stated this.

The point was that the essential principles of open government of the people, by the people, and for the people are being violated in America. South Dakota does not have laws which require open government. Rather, it has laws that make closed, secret government possible.

Aberdeen has had a series of incidents in which the workings of city government have been kept secret. It had some personnel crises in the police department in which personnel who were wrongly fired were bought off. It had a murder investigation in which a ruling of suicide made and all evidence involved in that ruling was suppressed. An elected official claimed that the taxpayers of Aberdeen were told all they need to know. It has non-profit agencies supported in part by taxpayer money that do not file reports of their activities or financial statements where people can review them.

Why would someone who expressed a concern about closed local government be considered controversial and inflammatory? Well, the people who want government closed and secret might find it to their benefit to keep it that way. I think it needs changing. Fast.

SDWC defends racism

"People will go where they can realize the promise of America. Where does that leave Aberdeen?" This is another quotation of mine.

It is from a post regarding the fact that people came to an open meeting about rezoning some land in Aberdeen for a beef processing plant and protested the kind of people it might attract to the community. The protest also was expressed through some neo-Nazi postings on a newspaper discussion board.

My point leading up the quotation cited is obvious. When people have a choice, they will not come to communities that discriminate against them and oppress them. What is so outrageous about calling attention to racial attitudes and their adverse effect on the development of community?

Beats me.

SDWC wants to drive off scientists and promote incompetence.

The quotation cited by SDWC is: "The Homestake Goldmine story is one of the most fucked-up accounts of what is going on with taxpayer money that George Orwell or Forest Gump could imagine."

Yes, I borrowed a term from the military vernacular that some people think is naughty. The quotation comes from a lengthy two-part posting on Homestake.

First of all, I am for Homestake's conversion into a Deep Underground Science and Engineering laboratory. You can go to the DUSEL webpage and see I am listed among the original supporters. I work with scientists in preparing technical reports and scientific papers regarding their research. The conversion of Homestake was orginally proposed by scientists and hundreds of leading scientists signed on to achieve that conversion.

The owner of the mine, Barrick Gold, balked over some liability issues and insisted that the state take responsibility for any clean-ups from mining acitivity that would occur. The first big screw-up came when Barrick turned off the pumps and let the mine start filling with water. That sent many scientist looking for other places to plan and conduct their research.

Then the Governor tried to salvage the project by promoting it as an economic development scheme. That drove off nearly all the remaining scientists in support of Homestake. They cannot work with business interests looking over their shoulders and pushing for research that can make money for them. Pure research does not work that way.

Many of the scientists who looked forward to working at Homestake found alternative places to set up their experiments. They will not come to Homestake. The mine is one of two now in contention for designation as the national DUSEL. Many people screwed up because they did not listen to the scientists. The mine has unique features that make it ideal for small particle research, but the attitudes of people involved make scientists wary. Colorado offers a much better social and intellectual climate. The kind of screw-ups that drove scientists off who were already committted to Homestake did not have to happen.

What is wrong about pointing out a colossal screw-up that the tax-payers have to cover? Oh, yeah, it might call attention to how that one-party government operates.

***

I do not think that SDWC advocates oppression, racism, secret government, and incompetent blundering. But in making subreptions of my quotations, he would define himself as opposed to correcting some very serious matters that degrade the quality of life in South Dakota.

And his statement about my not liking South Dakota is one he does not have the moral or intellectual right to make. There are things in South Dakota I do not like. There are many matters that need correcting.

Before problems can be solved, they need to be identified and defined. That is what democratic politics is about. It is not about false and inflammatory portrayals of individuals.

The political forces in power hold the state in thrall. They have a vested interest in keeping it that way, both for economic and political reasons. True freedom, equality, and justice is a threat to them. Political workers who advocate those democratic values are a threat to them. And so we get the kind of campaigns based upon slander and personal attack. It is in the interest of the powers that be not to let issues get brought up and examined.

Subreption is a form of lying. Another rhetorical question: Do we want a political regime that bases its power on lying, or do we want one that can actually build the state?

The Swift Boats are launched and the lies are a-flying

2006-07-24T22:00:00.000-08:00

You can tell that the 2006 election campaign is underway. The Ministry of Truth (as Orwell called it) is out in full force to demolish the language by misrepresenting words and to exterminate any thoughts and ideas that do not conform to its party line.

Some comments I made recently concerning what the U.S. flag symbolizes became grist for the Ministry of Truth processes of distortion, fraud, and malicious misrepresentation that has become the official mantra of elements of the Republican Party. The blog South Dakota War College joined forces with with South Dakota Politics, an established leader in the business of defamation, to make some crude forgeries of language, which they attributed to me.

I am a candidate for the state legislature. That is the apparent motive behind the falsification of the comments I made in response to a posting on Clean Cut Kid’s blog. I can envision the would-be character assassins slobbering over their keyboards at the thought of taking a real, live candidate out with their dishonest little missives. After making some points about the fact that a symbol, like the flag, is not the thing it symbolizes, I ended with what is an obvious rhetorical question to those literate and educated enough to read it:

“And if the flag represents what this nation has become under George W. Bush, well do you really want to salute it?”

The Ministry of Truth’s puppet at South Dakota Politics transformed that question into this post.

“Newquist: Our Flag Isn’t Worth Saluting,” read the headline.

The comment, which did provide a link to my original comment, was: “David Newquist, Democratic candidate for the state legislature, questions whether the American flag is even worth saluting any more.”

While the comment provided a link, the false paraphrase was made under the assumption that a goodly number of the dupes who feed on degraded language and acts of verbal vandalism would not have the interest or integrity or the ability to read the original words in their full context.

South Dakota War College endorsed the false paraphrase.

My comment addressed the matter of whether the Bush administration has upheld the standards of liberty, equality, justice, and integrity that the flag is supposed to stand for. Deliberately misconstruing the question into the statement that I am advocating disrespect to the flag is a dishonest and grossly incompetent paraphrase. The basic rule of the paraphrase, no matter what venue it appears in, is that it must restate the original facts or ideas fully and correctly. Falsification through misquotation is a standard practice at the Ministry of Truth.

Ironically, the henchmen at South Dakota Politics took orgasmic delight when Professor Ward Churchill, a paragon of left-wing extremism in their eyes, was fired from the University of Colorado for misrepresenting material he cited in his work. Still, South Dakota Politics does not hesitate to engage in precisely the same acts of verbal fraud when it sets someone up for their dirty little verbal tricks.

The intellectual and moral deficiencies do not end there. They presume to portray my relationship and my regard for the flag. I am a veteran. I served under the flag of the United States of America. I served the republic for which it stands. And I am proud of that service. Too proud to let a couple of moral and intellectual incompetents denigrate my patriotism.

I served in Germany as a guided missile crewman and instructor. Our missile batteries kept 24/7 surveillance and readiness to respond to any threats to the NATO countries. Just as important as our efforts to meet any attack with immediate response was our work to cut through the propaganda clutter so that the messages of freedom, equality, and justice got through clearly on both sides of the Iron Curtain. That work is eventually what brought that curtain down.

On the NATO side of the Iron Curtain, we had two forces that circulated propaganda. One was a Marxist-based group that tried to foment revolution and the takeover of Europe by a Marxist regime through inspiring hatred of the U.S. through elaborate and nasty falsehoods. The other force was the remaining residue of Nazi Germany. Both groups practiced the same propaganda techniques. They directed contempt and derision at democratic leaders and democratic people. They characterized America as the source of all the world’s ills, much like the current crop of regressives in America and elsewhere do with what they regard as liberals. In order to give credence to their denigrations, they made false and inflammatory statements about American values and policy by making deliberate misquotations, taking words out of context, and substituting their own language and version of events for what was really said and what really happened.

It was part of our job to analyze and explain how the false representations were made. I never thought I’d be doing the same in the country that I served. The regressives in America have embraced the oppression, the bellicose nationalism, the dictatorial control, and the intrusion into private lives that characterize fascism. Constant ad hominem attacks by the regressives serve that end.

South Dakota Politics and South Dakota War College are symptoms of the degradation of American politics. Issues cannot be examined and discussed. They can only demonstrate a vicious disrespect and a seething hatred for people who do not subscribe to their party line. They always meet opposing viewpoints with a rolling of the eyes and a defamation of personhood and personality. This is the politics of the lower order creatures clawing and pecking their way to a higher status within the dog pack or the chicken flock. It is the politics of the reptilian cortex. They stand for the opposite of the freedom, equality, and justice that are the driving principles of American democracy. I fought against these kind of political tactics in the military service. I fight against them now.

When a couple of petit-jihadists denigrate my patriotism and my service to my country through a contrived misconstrual of my words, they define themselves as enemies of what the flag truly represents. At least the flag that I served under.

The task facing America is to lift politics out of the intellectual dereliction into which it has fallen. Blogs such as South Dakota Politics and South Dakota War College demonstrate a massive failure in education. In the late 1960s and early 1970s we stopped teaching the principles of rhetoric as part of our college composition courses. Students, who were raging for “self-expression” found it boring and irrelevant. Most students coming out of high schools and colleges do not know or understand the moral responsibility of an accurate paraphrase or an accurate representation of other people’s words and thoughts. We educators caved in to the demands of our “market.” Blogs throughout the country show that many of our citizens have no concept of what comprises verbal integrity and rigorous discussion. That is why education, along with the issues of health care, environment, a sound economy that can sustain our own people, and social security needs addressing.

But education remains the first priority that makes creative solutions to the other problems possible. We still have to educate people to be capable of living in a democracy. Misquotation and taking words out of context are forms of lying. It isn't all that difficult a concept to grasp.

No, it's not a flock of ducks. The anti-abortion road show came to town.

2006-07-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

The quacking got deafening.

They like to call themselves right-to-life because it sounds better than anti-personal-choice.

They came to town last week to drum up support for the anti-abortion bill in South Dakota that is the subject of a referendum on the general election ballot this November.

A local physician was invited to address the group of 100. The attack point is the Roe vs. Wade decision of the Supreme Court. The good doctor said, according to the local newspaper, that at the time of the decision, the Supreme Court justices ruled they could not determine when life begins.

That is not what the decision stated. It stated that if authorities in the fields of medicine, philosophy, and theology could not reach a consensus on when life begins, the judiciary was not in a position to make a ruling based upon sound data and reasoning.

The doctor says that there is a wealth of new scientific knowledge that clearly shows that life begins at conception. In 1973, the Supreme Court understood that a rudimentary organism was initiated when sperm attached itself to egg. The question is a matter of at what point that organism becomes a viable, sentient being. There has, in fact, been no definitive scientific determinations of when viable, sentient life begins. Rather, there has been a proliferation of the contoversy, much of it based on old religious dicta and voodoo science.

Then the doctor commented on the report from the South Dakota Abortion Task Force whose findings led to the abortion ban to be voted upon this fall. He said that many South Dakota doctors have voiced opposition to the report, but that the vast majority of those have admitted they read it.

Here is where the quacking gets ear-shattering. We wonder what scientific polling organization surveyed South Dakota physicians to determine how many doctors voiced opposition. How were the questions in the poll phrased to indicate how many admitted they had not read it? Or did the good doctor take this poll himself? Or is this another false representation driven by another mindless and dishonest zealot? Is "science" being represented by the likes of this doctor?

We did not poll South Dakota physicians. We had a conversation with one in which we asked if he had read the Abortion Task Force Report. He said he glanced at it, and when he saw that it was not writtten or intended to be a scientific proposition supported by a careful documentation of scientific evidence, he did not finish it. He put it aside because the fraudulent citations of scientific evidence and the deliberate miscontrual of the studies mentioned was sheer quackery.

The report consists of claiming testimony that supports its authors' position and refutes the validity of anyone whose views do not agree with the authors. It lauds the testimony of the anti-abortion witnesses and dimisses everything else. It makes no attempt at rational analysis. There is absolutely no review of the scientific literature and no critical balancing of the viewpoints cited.

And we, who have read the report, note that it is a classic example of logical fallacies, and the misuse of documentation. If anyone needs a good example of how to lie with alleged documention, the Task Force report is a prime one.

If what the abortion ban and its proponents represent is science, we have regressed back beyong the Dark Ages into the primordial mists.

The campaign of 2006 is going to be one of the 21st century against the 8th.

Serbia Deploys Peacekeeping Forces To U.S.

2006-07-07T19:05:00.000-08:00

[Here is a piece from The Onion we could not resist reprinting.]

BELGRADE–Serbian president Vojislav Kostunica deployed more than 30,000 peacekeeping troops to the U.S. Monday, pledging full support to the troubled North American nation as it struggles to establish democracy.

"We must do all we can to support free elections in America and allow democracy to gain a foothold there," Kostunica said. "The U.S. is a major player in the Western Hemisphere and its continued stability is vital to Serbian interests in that region."

Kostunica urged Al Gore, the U.S. opposition-party leader who is refusing to recognize the nation's Nov. 7 election results, to "let the democratic process take its course."

"Mr. Gore needs to acknowledge the will of the people and concede that he has lost this election," Kostunica said. "Until America's political figures learn to respect the institutions that have been put in place, the nation will never be a true democracy."

Serbian forces have been stationed throughout the U.S., with an emphasis on certain trouble zones. Among them are Oregon, Florida, and eastern Tennessee, where Gore set up headquarters in Bush territory. An additional 10,000 troops are expected to arrive in the capital city of Washington, D.C. by Friday.

Though Kostunica has pledged to work with U.S. leaders, he did not rule out the possibility of economic sanctions if the crisis is not resolved soon.

"For democracy to take root and flourish, it must be planted in the rich soil of liberty. And the cornerstone of liberty is elections free of tampering or corruption," Kostunica said. "Should America prove itself incapable of learning this lesson on its own, the international community may be forced to take stronger measures."

Hurry, build some gas ovens, papa. The immigrants are coming

2006-07-07T08:27:00.000-08:00

Some local business people have obtained necessary rezoning to build a proposed beef-processing plant at Aberdeen. As happened when Aberdeen was in the running for a turkey processing plant, a significant number of people have ranted and raged about the kind of people such enterprises would attract. The Aberdeen American News reported this reaction at a hearing on the rezoning:

Some audience members were more blunt. Jerry Mork of Aberdeen said the plant would create "a new underclass of citizen." The crime rate will go up and it won't be safe to walk city streets at night, Mork said. He said he recently moved back to Aberdeen from Grand Island, Neb., where a meat-packing plant has caused serious problems.

"If this foolishness gets approved...your (city) slogan needs to be 'Life was good in Aberdeen,'" Mork said, referencing the "Life is good in Aberdeen" motto.

Some very disturbed citizens have e-mailed me with a link to the Aberdeen American News discussion board, which contains a number of comments in a similar vein. When people on the board point out that such comments are racist and discriminatory, the commenters get indignant. They aren't racist, they insist, they are just concerned about the ethnic purity and the social conditions of pristine little Aberdeen.

I received the e-mails because I am a candidate for the state legislature and the writers expect their representatives, present and potential, to do something. The authors of the racist comments may be a minority, but they do succeed in coloring the whole community with a brush of intolerance, ignorance, and hatred. The ultimate issue arising from such a reaction is, as one correspondent put it, why any business would come to Aberdeen when its potential employees will be greeted with prejudice, malice, and discrimination. Having worked for consulting firms that have done attitude surveys in market areas, I say unequivocally that businesses do not come into communities where their workers will be subjected to ethnic and class discrimination. It affects productivity and quality and creates problems that savvy businesses know they have to avoid. So, even if the hatred exists among a small minority, shrewd business owners know it is an insidious force that can kill a business that is trying to get underway.

I come from immigrants. All of my grandparents came from Sweden. When I was a child, I heard every Polish joke cast as a Swede joke. The Swedes came to Moline, Ill., in droves to work in John Deere's factories, and they were charged with overrunning the community and creating an underclass that had difficulty with English, was inherently stupid, and did not wash their pits sufficiently.

South Dakota has a long reputation for its racial intolerance. Alexander McKenzie, once the boss of the Dakota Territory, attributed the Swedes with genetic mental defects. The author of the Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, wrote a couple of newspaper editorials in Aberdeen calling for the extermination of the Sioux. Hutterites and other German-speaking people were driven out of South Dakota during our conflicts with Germany. I still hear the terms "niggers" and "prairie niggers" coming out the mouths of people regarded as solid citizens.

There is not much a state legislature can do to cure endemic hatred and racism and malevolent bigotry. Legislation cannot eliminate ill will toward humans and the desire for ethnic strife and its ensuing violence. One commentator in the discussion thread suggested that the 2,500 soldiers who have died in Iraq did so to preserve his right to express his hatred against immigrants. Legislation can only indirectly counter this kind of thinking.

There are two major things that can work to identify and contain the sources of hatred. The first is absolutely open government. Legislation, as has been enacted in most other states, can require that every government activity that affects the people be done in the open and with public access to its records. Some people connected with government who are posturing for the Aberdeen beef plant are the very people I have heard in private settings make vicious comments about ethnic minorities and the working class in general. If all government functions were done in the open, the people would at least know what kind of thought processes and aspects of character were shaping their community.

The other matter that could use legislative help is education. Education has failed the people of South Dakota. It has failed because it is run by politicians who feel indebted to a power structure that really does not want public education and fails to give it adequate funding and adequate freedom for competent and dutiful teachers to do their jobs.

As for Aberdeen, I don't think any legislation can change the justified perception that it is a town held hostage by ethnic intolerance and is a backwater of mainstream America. The problem can be addressed by the community's journalists, its churches, and its schools if the teachers had the authority and support to banish the class discrimination and hatred from their schools. Anyone who is connected with education, whether as a teacher, a parent, or an alert observer, knows that social forces in schools are an obstacle to learning for some kids and is, in fact, creating a new class of alienated children and dropouts.

Businesses will go where they can operate without social obstacles interfering with their operation. People will go where they can realize the promise of America. Where does that leave Aberdeen?

(And, hey, SDP and War College, that is a rhetorical question.)

Why blogs suck

2006-07-06T09:25:00.000-08:00

We have received some inquiries as to why there is diminished activity on progressive web logs and if I plan to resume the frequent posting level we once did.

I have never believed that blogs are particularly valuable or effective. If one believes that playground bickering and insult and abuse is significant political discourse, then one might want to keep breasted on what is being said on blogs. The only people who believe that blogs contribute information and insights into political discussions are bloggers. They like to think that they comprise a nifty little sorority (or fraternity, if you prefer) of commentators that utilize the technology in ways that are revolutionizing politics. But most blogging commentary is the kind of thing one finds on public restroom walls or down at the local tavern when the hour gets late and brains falter.

This is not to say that blogs do not represent some political attitudes. They are probably more a symptom of political attitudes than they are a cause, however.

When the Press Project got its funding and personnel together after the election of 2004 to make a catalog of rhetoric from that election in the upper Midwest, the participants raised the question of whether blogs should be included. The analysts who did the collecting and classifying of rhetoric were largely professors and journalists. Initially, none of them wanted to examine blogs. They did not think the level of scurrility and defamatory content warranted serious consideration. The director of the Project decided they should be included and found that, at first, he had to do the work himself.

The section of the Press Project report on blogs affirms what many suspected. Blogs are more the products of adolescent egos than they are of mature, well-informed brains. Bloggers spend an inordinate amount of time stroking their own erectile little egos than engaging in real political intercourse. The audience, therefore, is limited because the vast majority of people do not enjoy watching others trying to get off or participating in a circle jerk.

The Press Project did a small survey as part of its analysis of blogs to see how informed, educated people regard them. Some points:

While blogs like to claim that they are alternatives to the mainstream media, readers also realized that the information they present does not go through the fact-checking editorial process that the better media require. Although the media do make mistakes, readers think they attempt to be reliable and blogs do not.
The lack of editorial process shows up in the writing itself. Bloggers tend to think they are clever, witty, and original--notions they would be disabused of if their copy went over the desks of competent editors.
Most people think that reading blogs takes a tremendous amount of time to obtain a balanced perspective on an issue, and it is time wasted.
Bloggers are offensively cliquish.
The level of nastiness on blogs is the kind of politics most people wish to avoid.

Another factor is that most people do not like the on-line versions of newspapers and electronic media. They find they do not get a full version of the news--something that has gotten more pronounced as major media try to streamline and unclutter their web pages. And readers find pop-ups tremendously annoying and discouraging .

This is not to say that the readers are not very critical of the main stream media. They think that many smaller news organizations are no better than the blogs.

Blogs that received some good reviews from the public are Josh Marshall's "Talking Points Memo" because it tracks and develops the stories it chooses to emphasize. But in the upper Midwest, some of the web sites that received the highest confidence from readers were the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press pages. They wished that their local areas were covered as thoroughly as those newspapers cover Minnesota. They also cited the CNN, MSNBC, PBS web sites and the Google News summary as ones they frequented and found helpful and reliable. In South Dakota, educated people found Mount Blogmore a site of note. It is moderated by working journalists

Dr. Silas who oversaw the Press Project says that the mainstream news media may take much criticism from the public, but it still has a credibility factor that eclipses blogs. The publishers and producers of mainstream news organizations, he says, are missing the point if they try to compete with blogs.

The conclusion is that blogs will be with us, but that the Internet in many ways has complicated the process of disseminating information and is cumbersome and time-consuming. Busy people turn to the Internet when they want specific information, and they use search engines first.

Is blogging on the wane? Not really. It is of interest mostly to bloggers, however. Some serious political operatives are looking for more credible ways to get their messages out and engage in discussion. But as long as there are people who believe in their own preciousness, there will be blogs.

Renewable energy? It's a matter of will

2006-07-05T12:05:00.000-08:00

A Washington Post columnist says that global warming is an engineering problem, so we common folks can't do much about it. In my home state of Illinois, some engineers are trying to figure out how to turn the state's massive coal supply (it contains more energy that Saudi Arabia) into truck fuel. However, the process releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, which is the major cause of global warming.

Can we be energy independent in a short time? Yes. But the problem is that the solutions to economical, reliable, and abundant energy are tied up by people with schemes who are hoping to make a windfall.

In South Dakota, wind energy is a tremendous possibility. So, why is there no development? Because the policies governing wind energy favor corporations who want to put in mega-watt generators that tower in the air and require the leasing of private land. Then there is the transmission line matter and who would buy the energy produced.

As one engineer put it, we can build and maintain an interstate highway system, but we can't come up with a way to put up electric lines that can carry energy across the nation. The reason? Corporations. They want to control the lines.

There is a solution to wind energy that few people talk about. Instead of putting up mega-watt turbines that cost about $1 million a piece, there are smaller units that run between $50,000 to $100,000 and can run a farmstead with surplus energy sold to a distributor or they can run an electrolysis unit which produces hydrogen out of water. Here is how the National Renewable Energy Laboratory describes the possibility:

Renewable energy sources such as photovoltaics (PV), wind, biomass, hydro and geothermal can provide clean and sustainable electricity for our nation. However, some types renewable energy are limited by the fact that they have intermittent and seasonal energy production. One solution to this problem is to produce hydrogen through the electrolysis of water and use that hydrogen in a fuel cell to produce electricity during times of low power production or during peak demand or to use the hydrogen in fuel cell vehicles.

In South Dakota and in most places, the people in government who deal with energy issues are more devoted to helping corporations make profits from energy than in finding ways for small, independent producers to break their dependency on corporate-controlled energy and to become self-sufficient. Wind-hydrogen power could make farming profitable again.

This is a big issue facing South Dakota. It requires electing officials who have the will to build the state and help the people.

The unfinished business of liberty

2006-07-04T20:43:00.000-08:00

Independence Day is a time when attacks of intellectual nausea can be fatal. The smarmy, the fatuous, and the flat-out stupid (as Ron White says, stupid can't be fixed) use the occasion to make patriotism and the celebration of our nation's real virtues demented exercises. The Fourth of July is not merely a time of celebration, but is a time of reflection on how well the nation is living up to the precepts announced in the Declaration of Independence.

In 1852, an ex-slave and master orator, Frederick Douglass, gave a speech titled "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" He acknowledged the force of American democracy in the world, but he also stressed that not everyone in America had the benefits of that force--in his time, particularly the slaves:

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

He honored America, but with reservation because of its unfinished business in bringing liberty, equality, and justice to all its people. Today he would be called a traitor, anti-American, and all those other epithets used by the political Babitts to cram their calendar-art patriotism down the nation's collective throat. His words still ring true.

We, as did Frederick Douglass in 1852, hope the day will come when all Americans can celebrate America. But its business is far from done.

We are not so much interested in mindlessly flying the flag and talking about the advantages of our nation as we are in making those advantages available to all people. It is meet and salutary to celebrate our country.

But tomorrow we have to attend to unfinished business. And it will not be pleasant work. The enemies of freedom, equality, and liberty from within our country are as threatening as the terrorists from without. They attack, however, by insidious means. Read the neo-regressive blogs, if you must remind yourselves who must be included among the enemies of liberty. But be prepared for massive bouts of intellectual nausea.

Just as Frederick Douglass encouraged the fight against slavery and those who would deprive Americans of their inalienable rights, so we recognize the huge fight confronting us to take America back from those who see political success only in how many people may be maligned and oppressed.

We have a chance to finish the business of liberty with the election of 2006. And that is what we are reflecting on today. Tomorrow is time for action.

Happy Fourth of July. May it be really happy next year.

Kicking poverty up a notch

2006-06-27T10:37:00.000-08:00

According to the Kids Count report, 1 million more children lived in poverty by 2004 than did in the year 2000.

South Dakota, however, ranked 14 in the nation for the well being of children in the report sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. Fifteen percent of the state's children live in poverty, accord to the report.

North Dakota ranked number 9 in the nation for the well being of children. The number 1 state was New Hampshire, with Mississippi coming in last.

Firing Ward Churchill

2006-06-26T21:45:00.000-08:00

A lot of folks could not care less that the Chancellor at the University of Colorado has recommended that Prof. Ward Churchill be fired. His name is not familiar to most people, and is of interest largely to other professors and members of the ultra-regressive movement who wish some extreme vengeance on him. They do so because he called the victims of 9/11 "little Eichmanns" as participants in a culture that, in his mind, systematically implements racial repression and genocide.

My interest in Churchill stems from the fact that I engaged in research on Native American literature and culture when no courses were offered on it in prominent universities, and I had the privilege of introducing and teaching courses on the subject. Churchill is a professor of ethnic studies and has written extensively on Native American issues.

While I may take some exception to Churchill's "little Eichmanns" comments, I also acknowledge that they have some merit as cultural criticism, but that Churchill certainly had the right to make them. They provide the motive behind the raging call to vaporize Churchill.

However:

The reasons that the Chancellor has for recommending Churchill's dismissal arise from charges of misconduct in research: plagiarism, fabrication, scholarly slovenliness, and general dishonesty. While the charges were clearly promoted by those engaged in a political vendetta against Churchill, a committee was assigned the task of investigating the charges on their own merits. It was called the Investigative Committee of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct of the University of Colorado at Boulder. This committee did an exhaustive job of examining the truth and accuracy of representations Churchill did in his scholarship. Their findings concluded that Churchills had committed what amounts to academic fraud in the way he represented historical and scholarly documents.

Academic dishonesty is the charge on which Churchill's dismissal is based.

He has the right to appeal and argue his side. He gets the benefit of academic due process.

The sad thing is that Ward Churchill's transgressions are not unique. There are professors who routinely misrepresent what other people write and say, who draw conclusions that are based on no systematic assemblage of facts or rigorous critical reasoning, who constantly violate the protections of academic free speech.

I hope that Professor Churchill's appeals process will be long and meticulous. However, I hope the occasion puts universities in general on notice that they, like the University of Colorado, should be more responsive to matters of honesty, integrity, and competence issuing from their campuses. I can easily make up a list of professors I have encountered who violate the standards of academic honesty and competence more flagrantly that Professor Churchill did.

I wish him the best. I can't wish the same for some others I have encountered. The universities and the country would be vastly improved if they did not hold academic positions. It is a matter of honesty and competence. Not free speech.

You want to know the truth? Of course not.

2006-06-26T11:16:00.000-08:00

The playground bullies I recall were also possessed of the dimmest wits in school. But they had an instinctive understanding of how dog packs and chicken flocks work. They knew that they could always count on a sufficient number of fellow dimwits to cower behind them as they carried out their assaults on those they targeted for their predations . Their targets were usually the kids with gifted brains who were more interested in the higher laws of humankind than in exercises of brute strength and domination.

The bullies and their dimwit coalition had a favorite tactic. They ridiculed, belittled, taunted, called names, and put on great displays of peevishness, resentment, and disrespect for the kids with greater endowments of mind, good will, and grace than they had.

This technique has become the official doctrine of the Republican Party. The motto seems to be: Deception, meanness, and personal belittlement can always triumph over issues and character. And among the bully-backers, it works.

When Eric Abrahamson was announced as Jack Billion's choice as a candidate for S.D. lieutenant governor, the sullen and spiteful bully-backers spewed forth their usual repertoire of personal belittlement.

Immediately, they focused on Eric Abrahamson's office as chair of the state library board and tried to belittle his stand on an incident involving the board's web site.

The incident involved the Governor removing a link to the Planned Parenthood web page ostensibly because it contained information "inappropriate" for children of a certain age. This, of course, comes from a leader of the political party so hellbent on making Newspeak the official language of the country. With the announcement of Eric Abrahamson's candidacy, the bully-backers misrepresented the issue and tried to paint it as a matter of seamy fatuity when, in fact, it was a matter of democratic principle.

Here is the story as told at the SDDP conventioin.

When a parent viewed the State Library Website, the person made an objection to the inclusion of the Planned Parenthood link. The person received a hearing from the board, and it voted unanimously to keep the link along with the others that it provided.

A protest was sent to the Governor about the link, who referred the matter to the State Library Board. Again, the Board voted unanimously to retain all the links provided.

Then the Catholic Bishop from the Sioux Falls diocese wrote the governor a letter criticizing the inclusion of the Planned Parenthood link on the state website. The Governor ordered it removed. This time the State Library Board, except for Eric Abrahamson, voted to remove it.

The term "bully pulpit" has taken on a new meaning. State government has a direct line to the Vatican through the Sioux Falls Bishopric. And in this case that is where the governing gets done. And, by golly, the folks in those offices know how to manipulate the dog pack.

George Orwell drops in on the SDDP convention

2006-06-26T10:30:00.000-08:00

During the debate on resolutions regarding HB 1215, the abortion ban, and other threats to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, at the South Dakota Democratic Convention, the recurrence of a certain term revealed how deeply brain-washing techniques have penetrated our culture.

The term "pro-life" kept popping out of the mouth of hapless speakers. The term is a phony coinage. It came about when anti-abortion people realized that there were two problems with being called anti-abortion advocates. The first is that "anti-abortion" is a term of negativism, and politically it appears more advantageous to be for something. The second problem is that the anti-abortion forces were being recognized as obsessed with a single issue. So, some people contrived the term "pro-life" to attempt evade the more precise label of "anti-abortion" and to disguise that the anti-abortion program extends to gaining jackboot control over medical decisions, personal decisions, and who can control the information involved in such decisions.

The term "pro-life" was coined to project a false implication. The opposite of pro-life is anti-life or pro-death. The idea behind the coined term is to suggest that those who do not adhere to the doctrines of the anti-abortionists are against life itself. Most people recognize the stupidly malicious implication and the crude motives behind use of the term. However, constant repetition has made it common usage to the unwary.
(Note: This passage was deleted for some technical reason from the original post, and an alert colleague picked it up.)

Of course, as is so painfully obvious in the process through which HB 1215 was signed into law, the anti-abortion forces are anything but pro-life. They have contrived to criminalize anyone who does not accept their intrusion and domination into personal life, who does not accept their primitive superstition and phony science, and who does not accept the dictation of public policy by officials of the totalitarian churches.

The Republicans must have read George Orwell at some time, because they have been successful at getting the false term "pro-life" used by journalists and ordinary people. Orwell recognized early on how eletronic media could be manipulated as a device of operant conditioning by
saturating the culture with terms that the totalitarian forces wanted substituted for the more accurate and truthful terms. Like animals that learn to bark and roll over for a treat or for relief from negative conditioining--punishment--people have absorbed this false term into the language.

I suggested to some voting delegates at the convention that they should get up and admonish speakers when they used the term "pro-life" instead of "anti-abortion." People have the right to be anti-abortion, but they do not have the right to use a deceptive and dishonest term to hide their true motives.

If you substituted the term "anti-abortion" for every time "pro-life" was used on the convention floor, you would have quite a different debate.

As the 2006 campaign progresses, we need communications watchdogs to point out whenever counterfeit terms such as "pro-life" are used and to check the facts of everything said.

We got a late start with Factcheck.org and the upper midwest Press Project in the 2004 campaign. This time we need to get it right.

It's "anti-abortion," stupid, not "pro-life."

New candidate for District 3 Senate

2006-06-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

Al Hoerth has consented to run as the Democrat candidate for the District 3 Senate seat.

Other realignments may be announced after the party's state convention this weekend.

Duane Sutton's aborted run as a Democrat

2006-06-21T10:15:00.000-08:00

The story is out. I can now give an expanded version.

Duane Sutton lost his District 3 seat in the South Dakota Senate by 17 votes in the primary. He was beat out by Isaac Latterell who became a challenger because Sutton voted against the abortion ban.

In Brown County, Latterell launched a sign campaign. His supporters put his signs up almost invariably next to those green "Vote Pro-life" signs. Signs were about all the campaigning that was done. But Brown County preferred Sutton by 47 votes. Sutton received 530 votes to Latterell's 483. Sutton received some support from Democrats in Brown County.

The "pro-life" label is beginning to wear thin in Brown County. As one Sutton supporter put it, "Who in the hell are they implying is pro-death?" The anti-abortion forces are being identified as such, and their angry accusations and constant use of the term "baby-killer" against those who do not believe as they do contradicts their claims as guardians of humanity and life. However, that tactic still works in McPherson C0unty, which a campaigner from the last election says is a hotbed of intolerance and repression. Latterell won the election by 64 votes in McPherson County, getting 130 votes to Sutton's 66. A slightly better voter turnout in Brown County would probably have swung the election in Sutton's favor.

Duane Sutton called up the head of the Brown County Democrats and inquired about switching parties and running as a Democrat. This would require one of the candidates running for the legislature this fall to withdraw, and a reorganized ballot to be submittted to the Secretary of State by the county executive committee by the last Tuesday in August.

Sutton's inquiry sent pro-choice people from both parties to buzzing like crazy. Many assumed his Democratic candidacy was a done deal, and were already celebrating his defection. He is a popular candidate in District 3 and is a member of the Mainstream Coalition that has bunched up the panties of so many Republicans. His partisanship is temperate and he has expressed discomfort with the hardline tactics that take place in Pierre. He had support from Democrats and Republicans who think that the abortion issue is a diversion away from the many issues that confront the state. If there is a bi-partsan element in Brown County, it is based upon recognizing the many issues that are ignored while so many people fret and rage over abortion and kuchen. Sutton could have been a contender.

Clearly, Sutton felt betrayed by the Republican Party, which mounted a single-issue candidate and appeared to ignore how Sutton represented it in the past.

However, before he had a scheduled meeting with the Brown County Democratic Central Committee, Sutton called and said he had changed his mind. While he had the serious consideration of members of the Central Committee and the Democrat state delegation from District 2, his candidacy would not have been a slam dunk. Sutton did meet with the Central Committee to review the recruiting of new candidates in light of the changed circumstance for the general election.

The labor factor in the party has serious reservations about Sutton's position on wages, collective bargaining, and workplace issues. When the possibility of his candidacy became known, veterans expressed fierce opposition. Some educators do not think he has a realistic grasp on educational funding and teacher pay.

Had Sutton run as a Democrat, he would have risked alienating the 52 percent of Republicans in Brown County who voted for him. A few may have voted for him, but the hard political fact in South Dakota is that party label means one hell of a lot more than stance on issues or legislative competence. Many would resent the party switch.

There is an element of irony. District 3 is one of the most grotesque gerry-manders in the nation. It would do Tom Delay proud. In the redistricting squabble, an amendment sponsored by Duane Sutton is what put a slice of McPherson County in the District.

South Dakota proposes plan to keep teachers out of the state

2006-06-19T18:30:00.000-08:00

The latest scheme to do something about South Dakota's ranking as the lowest in teacher pay harks back to the ante-bellum south. Gov. Rounds and his resident educational suck, Melmer, propose to categorize teachers as house niggers, field niggers, and all-around niggers and create a pay differential on how well ol' massa likes them.

Currently, pay differentials are based upon upgraded education, years of service, and in some cases evaluations by peers and adminstrators.

If the new plan, covered today in the Argus Leader and posted on the Kremlin home page from Pierre, goes into effect, why would anyone want to teach in South Dakota? Why would knowledgeable parents send their kids to school there?

Here is a piece on merit pay we did last November:

Governor Rounds is proposing to do something about South Dakota's perennial ranking as paying its teachers the lowest in the nation by raising the spectre of merit pay. In the last 20 years, there is an abundance of data to show that merit pay does not work and precisely why it does not work.

I once believed in it. Merit pay seems so logical and so fair. People who do the best work should get the highest pay. As a faculty negotiator, I helped design and implement a merit system. I was proud of it. I had put immense amounts of work into it. Consequently, I was one of the last people to admit to the fact that there is no way merit pay can work. I was often called upon as a consultant and adjudicator for other systems that were trying to implement the concept. It took years of trying to fine-tune the concept, until I was forced to look at the data and the havoc it created at schools throughout the nation.

The first premise of merit pay that is wrong is that a faculty (or any other group of workers) can be ranked from the best performers to the worst. While there are a few people with natural gifts that make them appear very good at their jobs and while there are a few who are miserable, 95 percent of the teachers on a faculty work hard, are effective, and produce equal results. They have different strengths and weaknesses, but intelligent, mature teachers learn to use their strengths and improve their weak areas. In deciding merit pay, people are forced to compare apples with oranges with avocados with tomatoes with potatoes with orchids, and on and on. Merit is not as easy to determine as we like to think. Every teacher thinks he/she is doing a superior job and deserves merit. Ninety-five percent of them, usually more, are right.

Here are the points on which merit fails, as noted in experiences of the last 20 years:

Adminstrators reward their favorites and punish those they feel threatened by or take issue with. Invariably. The range of subjectivity in the awarding of merit varies, but personal preference and prejudice are always present.
Merit pay turns colleagues into rivals, often enemies, as people compete for pay. As they contend against each other, people stop cooperating and working together for mutual goals. It is not unusual for an incredibly effective teaching team to be turned into a seething vipers nest.
The damage done to people who are effective and valuable teachers is irrevocable when they are compared as inferior to colleagues. They are lost to the system they are in, whether they stay in it or move on. The indignity of having their colleagues ranked as their superiors is fatal to the sense of professional responsibility teachers have.
Merit pay can almost work, when it is based upon performance objectives that teachers work out with their administrators. Those plans fail, however, when any form of ranking is used. And because of the money required for such a plan, rankings generally ensue.
Merit pay is based upon an assumed set of inequalities. It undercuts any notions of equality and fair play and affects morale very negatively. It is a tacit refutation of our American ideal of equality.
The rivalries and animosities that arise from merit competitions are generally permanent. Personal relationships affected by any hint of superiority and inferiority are damaged forever.

I can tell a multitude of tales about my observations. One of the most telling involves a school that was unsually successful in getting students to write at a very high level of performance. The Dakota Writing Project, of which I was a co-director at the time, obtained a grant to refine the school's writing program and use it as a model that other schools could observe and borrow ideas from. The school board, with the concurrence of the faculty, introduced merit. Within a semester, the teachers in the program stopped sharing information. Faculty meetings which had once been a mother lode of useful information turned into silent, resentful ordeals. Within a year, many of the teachers who had been friends tended to avoid any personal or professional contact with each other. When the first merit awards came out, the faculty had such little interest in the program that we had to withdraw the grant funding. At the end of the second year, half of the teachers in the program had found other jobs, mostly outside of teaching. The other half stayed on and did their jobs by avoiding each other. The student writers dropped from being some of the best performing in the state to being among the worst.

Merit pay seems like a great idea. But because it involves designating some people as better than others, it is one of the most destructive programs that can be put into place. Especially in education.

Bush wrote the book on how to make Iraq the worst possible situation

2006-06-17T12:30:00.000-08:00

George Bush flew to Iraq last week to create one of those photo-opportunities that flatters the press into obsequious sucking. In a follow up press conference, he commented that an untimely withdrawal of troops would create the worst possible situation in Iraq. He should know. He wrote the book on creating the worst possible situation in that country.

His trip to Iraq was to shift attention away from the many troubles the military is facing there by focusing on the installation of an Iraqi government. The administration managed to get both houses of Congress to put forth initiatives on which the members voted concerning Iraq. This is the technique of misdirection.

In the ensuing debate, administration supporters have accused war critics of not wanting to win, of failing to support the troops, of being soft in the war on terror. These must be either the most dishonest or stupid--or both--people in the country. The Bush war on Iraq set up 2,500 American troops for slaughter. A slaughter that would not be necessary if false information was not used to manipulate the country into war. For those who had doubts about the original reasons for war on Iraq, such as Hans Blix, the Bush administration set up a campaign of malignity that ranks right up there with Nazi-Germany and the Soviet Union for slandering people it wants to portray as enemies of the state.

Now the justification for the war on Iraq is that it removed Saddam Hussein. No doubt, Hussein is one of the leading criminals against humanity, but he shares the billing with dozens of leaders throughout the world. The question is if we intend to take out those others who commit crimes against humanity, also. It is insulting to people of intelligence and good will to be inflicted with rhetoric so stupid and so dishonest.

But it does seem to divert attention away from some hard facts about Iraq. We have compiled quite a record of misconduct in this war with the handling of interrogations that are considered illegal by our own military rules and with the killing of civilians, such as the 24 in Haditha.

Dr. Silas, who was in Viet Nam and became a drill sergeant, and I had an exchange of e-mails on the responsibility of the commands over their soldiers. We recalled that as military instructors, we were told that we would be held responsible for any misconduct of personnel while they were under our direction. That made us hard-asses, to use the military nomenclature. When we were delegated responsibility for the behavior of troops under our supervision, we were told very clearly that we were acting in behalf of the command all the way up to the commander-in-chief. The rule was, "If you fuck up, the whole country fucks up." And so it was.

Because of the way military orders and tasks were established, I have never been able to understand what was going on at Abu Ghraib. I understand some things about what might have happened at Haditha. But I also understand that not all people who wear the uniforms of their country are models of good will, meticulous conduct, and lofty character. There are those who live to satisfy a blood lust. There are those totally devoted to self-gratification. And there are those who live with a driving resentment and schemes of revenge against someone for some reason. If they fuck up, the whole country fucks up. In Iraq, they fucked up.

In Iraq, George Bush fucked up. Royally. His trip to Baghdad and his "stay the course" song should not divert attention away from the misperformance that has got us into and kept us in this war.

Yes, something needed to be done about Iraq. But making it the worst possible situation our troops and our country could be in was not what needed to be done.

We support our troops who loyally and bravely do what they are ordered by the command. We do not support a command devoted to fucking up and covering up.

America needs to be a model of humane decency, not a model of perfidy and moral incompetence. That's what our founders wanted it to be. That ideal is what the Bush administration tries so hard to destroy.

Check out this analysis in the Chicago Tribune.

Alito: Another little nail in the coffin of liberty

2006-06-16T23:41:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court changed the rules yesterday. It has been a rule that when police charge into a place to conduct a search for criminal evidence, they must first knock and announce who they are. In the past, courts have barred any evidenced gathered if the rule was not follow from admission to criminal trials. It was called the "exclusionary rule." The Supreme Court yesterday decided that evidence gathered without knocking and announcing could be admitted into trial. New Justice Alito along with new Chief Justice Roberts were among those who gutted the exclusionary rule.

The argument made by Justice Scalia was, essentially, that criminals got off when the police did not precisely follow the rules and that the social costs are too high.

This is one rule that was never intended to give comfort to the criminals. They have little chance to hide evidence in the few seconds between a knock and announcement of who is about to enter and the actual entrance of the police. The rule was one in a phalanx of rules designed to prevent the violation of Constitutional rights of citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. It made the police take a methodical approach to insure that any evidence gathered was done so in a manner that established the credibility of the evidence and gave the subjects of searches a chance at due process of law. It was a rule that grew out of police-state tactics in which Constitional rights and due process of law were flouted by police departments.

O. J. Simpson was acquitted on the basis of reasonable doubt raised by the possibility that the police had planted evidence. People in Honkeyland have never understood the case. Simpson's lawyers got the case moved from a suburban jurisdiction to an inner city one. They knew that people in that jurisdiction, whether black, white, or Latino, were well indoctrinated into police tactics of beatings, framings, and planted evidence. The legal team knew that if they could establish a credible possibility that the police planted evidenced, their client would most likely be acquitted. Bad police tactics were something people in that neighborhood witnessed all the time.

And so, now that police do not have to knock and announce who they are, we have taken another step into the police state that is the dear aspiration of so many who call themselves conservatives today.

However, Nathan Newman at TPM Cafe points out a possible conflict. The same conservatives who love the idea that police do not need to follow any rules for certain types of people are fond of the "Castle Doctrine." That doctrine is one in which if you believe someone has intruded in your home to do you harm, you have the right to blast the person away. Nathan Newman raises the issue of whether the Castle Doctrine can be invoked if some police who fail to knock and announce get blown away.

We have a strong hunch that the Castle Doctrine will apply only to people of certain ethnic strains and creeds.

Snarks, and other lower-life forms

2006-06-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

We have a rather comprehensive posting in process on why we, among other people, have greatly reduced our blogging activity. In a few words, the reason is simple: blogs are not credible sources of information and informed opinion. They have as much credibility to the discerning intelligence as the graffitti in roadside outhouses.

Blogs are the habitat of the marginal. When the Press Project released its compilation of news stories and blog postings from the election of 2004 and its aftermath, it became apparent that the people who dismissed weblogs as the precinct of floundering adolescents were right.

A good example of what characterizes the sulking, mean, and not-terribly-intelligent fare of blogs occurred on Mt. Blogmore when a former legislator presumed to give a definitive assessment of the upcoming election:

"Whoever thought a retired surgeon from Sioux Falls is going to be elected governor is a bit deluded," he wrote. This was touted by a Republican blog as astute.

It contains all the requirements of the regressive repertoire of rhetoric. It finds being a retired surgeon an occasion to be dismissive about a candidates intellect and ability. And it has the requisite suggestion that anyone who supports the retired surgeon has mental debilities. In South Dakota blogdome of regression, this kind of witless insult is considered "witty repartee."

Democrats may or may not make big inroads into the statehouse this year. In a culture which tolerates and even reveres political rhetoric of the kind displayed above, quality of mind and character are not considered attributes. But at least the Democrats can refrain from joining in petty, snarky belittlement as a form of political discourse.

It is rhetoric such as this that makes bright, educated people long for other places. More than children are being left behind. It is also why progressive blogs have greatly reduced their activity.

The divide broadens. So does ignorance.

2006-06-08T10:30:00.000-08:00

If you drove around Aberdeen before the primary, you would notice that Isaac Latterell, the Republican winner of the primary for the District 3 Senate seat, had quite a few signs out. They were nearly always paired with a green “Vote Pro-Life” sign. Latterell’s anti-abortion stance is the only thing we know about his politics. If he is like most of the anti-abortion fanatics, it is probably the only issue he really cares about.

Not too many years ago, the term “pro-life” would have been derided into oblivion by educated people. People with educations had been given enough knowledge about rhetoric to know that the term “pro-life” is contrived on a false implication. And they know that “pro-life” is meant to avoid the negative connotations of being anti-abortion. The term is meant to avoid the message that anti-abortionists are against anything and to suggest that they are for something.

The false implication in “pro-life” is that the people who do not so identify themselves are pro-death. The only pro-death people we are aware of are a few serial killers and Al Qaida. They are members of cults that literally live to bring death to other people. The anti-abortion people are not content to state their opposition to abortion. They want to suggest that anyone who does not fully endorse their position is pro-death.

When the Democratic Party had students canvassing neighborhoods in Sioux Falls during the 2002 election to see if anyone needed a ride to the polls, they were followed by other young people who yelled “baby-killers” at them. The scene was recorded by a national news organization. That is the point when we realized that the anti-abortion people had crossed the line from rational debate and objection to mindless name-calling. The contradiction is that people who claim to protect life have a malicious and destructive attitude toward the living.

Most people do not approve of abortion, but think it is a medical procedure that is sometimes necessary and needs to be kept a personal matter between patients and their doctors. The anti-abortion people further reveal their despotic ambitions by their stances on contraception and sexual orientation. They unabashedly wish to dictate how private citizens should conduct themselves in their bedrooms. And the statements and attitudes they display reveal that they have totalitarian ambitions, and that abortion is a stalking horse for a larger program of repression and discrimination.

“Pro-life” is a phony euphemism for anti-choice, anti-liberty, and anti-self determination. The antis won an election in District 3 when their anti candidate, Isaac Latterell, won the primary over long-time Republican legislator Duane Sutton. Duane Sutton was part of the Main Stream Coalition, a group of lawmakers who wanted to break the mindless, lockstep march into extremism of the Republican Party, and therefore, the state legislature, and address the real issues of the state: taxes, education, health care, open government, and economic opportunity. The Republican anti forces vilified them. Members of the Mainstream Coalition lost to the anti forces in the Republican primary.

This loss has caused the regressive bloggers and commentators to announce that South Dakota is undergoing a conservative take-over. We say no. The election shows that the Republican Party is undergoing a takeover by its regressive faction. Nothing lights up the regressive eye like the prospect of imposing their will on and controlling even the most intimate aspects of life of other people. They have a dream. It is a dream of a totalitarian society.

A deep look into Duane Sutton’s loss to Isaac Latterell provides evidence that the regressive movement did a good job of getting out the vote and wagging the Republican Party. Here are the hard statistics on the primary race:

Duane Sutton won in Brown County by 17 votes. He had 500 votes to Latterell’s 483.

Duane Sutton lost in the three precincts of McPherson County. He had 66 votes to Laterell’s 130.

McPherson County, a center of regressive antis, won the election for Latterell. The total for District 3 was Sutton 566 votes, Latterell 613 votes, a difference of 47.

Brown County turned out only 11 percent of its registered voters. McPherson County turned out 20 percent. Democrats in both counties turned out 16 percent of their voters.

The evidence indicates that the anti-forces in McPherson County successfully rallied and determined the Republican primary in District 3.

Does this mean that a regressive take-over is imminent? Duane Sutton had 566 Republicans vote for him. But 1,632 Brown County Democrats went to the polls on Tuesday. McPherson got out 59 of its 364 registered Democrats.

With half the Republicans siding with the Mainstream Coalition candidate and three times that many Democrats voting, a takeover by the regressive anti faction does not seem like a very logical projection.

It seems like a good chance for the Democrats and the cross-party allies they can cultivate to become very serious players in state government.

Reading "Lolita" in Pierre, South Dakota

2006-06-02T09:12:00.000-08:00

Read it here.

South Dakota gets huge demerits on Indian voting rights

2006-05-18T10:45:00.000-08:00

A report summarized by Kevin Woster in the Rapid City Journal gives South Dakota a scathing rebuke for its failure to obey the law on Indian voting rights.

Do you really have to be mean and stupid to win an election?

2006-05-15T20:30:00.000-08:00

The Republican blogger at South Dakota War College opines that Democratic candidates for governor Jack Billion and Dennis Wiese have to give up their gentlemanly good-will and resort to a Jerry Springer-like brawl in order to "differeniate" themselves from each other.

The assumption behind this contention is that voters are too stupid to discern differences in policy and approach unless the contenders degrade into vicious ad hominem assaults on each other that render them unfit to hold democratic office. It happened four years ago in the Republican primary, and look what we ended up with.

Jack Billion and Dennis Wiese have appeared in this county on multiple occasions at the same meetings and have managed to convey their individual talents and approaches without acting like idiot brats fighting over the big Teddy Bear at the day care. But to those savants who presume to comment on politics and the arts of human communication on blogs, reasoned rhetoric, good will, and benevolent purpose are beyond their experience and comprehension.

The underlying attitude comes through in a comment on Mount Blogmore. A responder conjectures that when people are facing the moment of political death, those who are educated in the literary arts will be crying for momma while earnest and honest cretins like Sibby will be saying the right thing.

This anti-intellectual malevolence is why young people of talent and promise have to leave South Dakota. Some of us hope to find ways to change the provincial retardedness of South Dakota that is so deeply rooted in a culture of churlishness that resents education, informed and civil discussion, and the genuine belief that all people are equal and should be treated that way.

Jack Billion and Dennis Wiese provide the state its biggest hope of being a better part of American democracy. God forbid that they ever act like their seething opposition wants them to. For the sake of an uplifting life and new hope on the Buffalo Commons, it is important to let them know that the standard they have set may, in fact, be our last best hope.

It's not just abortion, stupid

2006-04-27T07:38:00.000-08:00

As a couple of blogs point out today, the abortion ban has galvanized the Democratic Party in South Dakota. That is probably so. But abortion is not the main issue at stake.

I know of no one, including women who have had abortions, who approves of abortion as a routine method of handling unwanted pregnancies. While the right-wingdingbats can sit at their keyboards, drool running down their chins, calling pro-choice people baby-killers, murderers, zygote-squelchers, and whatever else they dream up in their hateful frenzies, the huge majority of people are concerned about abortion and the social issues of which it is a part. That huge majority knows that the abortion ban does not address the problem. They prefer to let individuals and their physicians address the problems that result in the consideration of abortion as an option.

The abortion ban is the most salient symptom of how democracy can fail. It came out of a legislature that is run like a Pierre politburo. While people find it a preposterous piece of legislation, they also have come to recognize how the hearings held on the bill and its drafting were a sham exercise in democracy through which people with tyrannical ambitions tried to dupe the electorate while it imposed its perverse will on the people.

The abortion ban is merely one way a totalitarian faction is trying to subvert democracy and criminalize those people who hold political viewpoints different from theirs. The script is right out of Orwell's 1984. While undergoing a brain-washing session, the protagonist is told by an indoctrinator:

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power... We know that no one every seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end...The objection of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

Citizens who have informed themselves as to what the abortion ban will do, how it came about, and who is behind it realize that the humane claims behind it are a sham. If they were interested in saving lives, they would be addressing the grotesque and damaging inequities afflicting people in the state. They have found a way to impose power on people who might otherwise make individual decisions and try to live their lives on their own terms.

The propaganda coming out of the right-wingdingnut faction reflects another of their beliefs, often expressed on their blogs. In an afteword, Eric Fromm summarizes the underlying premise of the propaganda:

"'Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else...whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.' If this is so, then by controlling men's minds the Party controls truth...'the leaders of the Party do not even pretend that their system is intended to make man happier, because men being frail and
cowardly creatures, want to escape freedom and are unable to face the truth. The leaders are aware of the fact that they have only one aim, and that is power...And power means the capacity to inflict unlimited pain and suffering to another human being.' Power, then, for them creates reality, it creates truth."

If blogs serve any purpose in politics today, they allow people to examine the thought and expression of political factions. If you surf through some of the wingnut blogs, you will find Orwell's description of insidious totalitarian purpose expressed time and again.

Abortion is the cover issue. Look at other issues such as the secretizing of government, the closing of public records, the assaults against public broadcasting and public education--which might act as sources of information that the rightwingdings don't want you to hear. And look at the regressive and punitive tax system in South Dakota.

If there is a regeneration of political interest in South Dakota, it is because people realize the issue is their freedom and power for power's sake.