Dakota Today

*** Varilek's experience did not help him with marriage/union issue and distinction

I received Varilek's campaign flyer this morning.  It makes his position a bit clearer on gay unions, but it still makes no sense.  There is no reason for any politician to discuss religious "marriage" rites.   It is appropriate to discuss state civil "union" law and regulations.

Varilek with his experience should know better and clearly maintain the distinction.  This is a significant blunder on his part and it is not a good omen.  It appears that this Democratic candidate is more of the Casper Milquetoast Democratic approach that guarantees the SD Democratic Party will be only a pale shadow in the sand.

Barth needs to get out of Sioux Falls and start banging on doors.  If he has anything at all on the ball, he needs to actually start running a campaign.

*** Stay tuned and maintain those distinctions that clarify --- Doug Wiken

*** Thunder and sprinkles

Not a whole lot of news here.  I hear thunder and see lightning and we have a drizzle almost heavy enough to keep car windshield wipers from squeaking. [[ Note of April 13, 2012: Winner, SD got about 1/2 inch of rain last evening.]]]  [[[ And, another weather note.  56mph winds at Winner today.  Perhaps about 3/4 inch more rain.  Something like a rain blizzard.  Three-Day Winner, SD Weather Information }}}}

I found a gizmo at the local Ace Hardware store that I had not seen in stores for years. It is a luminescent nightlight made by Leviton.  It uses 0.03 watts and puts out enough light to see objects, but not to keep you awake all night.   The low wattage means at 10 cents /kwhr, that it costs only about 3 cents a year to keep it glowing continuously.  I have some old ones that have been running for years.  It is Leviton Cool Glow Guide Light #16509.

If you are interested in these lights, while local store charged $9.47 for a two-pack, that same two-pack is available from Amazon for under $6.00.  Many interesting comments at Amazon as well

I bought these to use as indicator lights, but more on that another day.

*** Stay tuned even if a green glow of anykind scares you worse than Republican politicians on the loose--- Doug Wiken

 

*** Selective Ire, SCOTUS hypocrisy, GOP AG nonsense

The Affordable Care provisions for “mandatory insurance” are insignificant compared to what some court decisions have done. Court decisions allowing private property to be essentially confiscated so that a commercial venture can exploit their land certainly act to put government enforcement into commerce that aids particular interests. Government support of forcing landowners to provide land or leases to utilities or highways also act similarly.

We are taxed to give military contractors huge amounts of government largesse even if we don’t agree with the policies that seem to require such expense. Men have been enslaved in the military via the draft laws.

We pay taxes on property to educate other people’s children and pay school administrators far out of proportion to their contribution to education.

We pay extra property taxes so that religious and “patriotic” organizations and “non-profit” hospitals do not pay property taxes.

SCOTUS decisions to magically convert corporations into humans have worked all kinds of mischief and with the Citizens United decision made most of us who are not obscenely rich irrelevant in political speech.

The court and Congress have already done things which make the Affordable Care Act seem irrelevant by comparison. This is selective ire aided and abetted by partisan attorney Generals of states who are intent on helping Mitch McConnell make certain his primary job of making sure Obama is denied a second term is not wasted effort.

The real irony of all of this is that the partisan attacks on this in the courts are only possible because of the partisan obstructionism in Congress to better legislation by Retrograde GOP.

SD AG Jackley will be on SDPB-Radio Midday today.  Some questions you might ask below. but which almost certainly will not be asked by SDPB moderators.

Anything related to the points made in prior paragraphs, but also these.

1.  What information from the National Republican headquarters convinced SD AG to join the suit?

2.  Is Jackley willing to allow people to die at hospital emergency doors because they have no insurance or finances?   If not, why does he think it is inappropriate that all have some kind of insurance coverage?

3.  Does Jackley think it is inappropriate that offspring under 28 be covered by affordable insurance held by their parents?

4.  Is Jackley provided health insurance or health insurance support as part of his state employment?

5.  Does Jackley think we all should pay extra taxes so that Congress Critters can get nearly free unlimited health insurance?

Surely you can think of a few more questions for our partisan SD Attorney General.

*** Stay tuned even if SCOTUS processes are as mystifying as quantum physics to you-- Doug Wiken

 

*** Words, etc....and not about any Jeff Lundberg

OK, a few years ago I was listening to Fresh Air on SDPB-Radio.  It was an interesting and probably humorous program on linguistics.  I wrote down two words from that program. "Albescent"and "sesquipedalion" and a name "Jeff Lundberg".  Today, I found that scribbled on the envelope I had used as a notepad perhaps in 2008 based on the postmark..

After putting in a few posts here with words that at least I was not familiar with, but which seemed worth using here anyway, I thought using the words on the envelope might also be appropriate.  D.E. Bishop commented on her fun with words after reading the  post about words here.

So if you like words and may be accused now and then of using the "foot and a half long" ten-dollar terms, you may have a sesquipedalion character or characteristic or be using sesqipedalion words.  So what does it mean?  I didn't know.  But compliments of a dictionary "Sesquipedalion" .  And for no particular reason "albescent" other than  that it was also on the envelope..

Oh, and about the "Jeff Lundberg" who I thought was imparting all that interesting word blather.  I could not find anything in Google that related to words or linguistics related to him.  But, wonder of wonders  Google knew a doofus was searching and suggested "Geoffrey Nunberg" as a search term. Eureka! or something like that. I should have known better anyway since my name sometimes ends up spelled something like "Dug Weaken" when a person listening on the phone scribbles it down and now and then we see in shoppers some ad called in ending up in written something like "Jeep, 75,000 miles, includes attached wench". .

Check Geoffry Nunberg_Homepage.  Now, might I gently suggest to program hosts interviewing people out there in that vast radio land, spell your guest's names.  The name may seem incredibly obvious to you since you already know it  or if it is something like "Newt Gingrich"or "Barack Obama", but not all your listeners may have the slightest clue of what that name actually is when they hear it for the first time ever on a not-so-great radio-- even if it is FM  Out here in the boondocks, not all of us know all about even famous professors, authors, or Nobel laureates.. or for that matter even the name of the latest celebrity appearing on CBS Morning talking about recent divorce or flings.  Especially since in this case, there are also apparently a bunch of Jeff Lundbergs innocent of any reason to show up here..

*** Stay tuned even if you are never verbose, never pedantic, never wrong, and can care less if somebody notes there is a sesquipedalian air about you or your verbiage-- Doug Wiken

 

*** Had food-borne diarrhea? Got Sequela ? Thank de-regulators

April 2012 Scientific American has an interesting story concerning "Food Poisoning's Hidden Legacy."  Most of us probably assume food poisoning means a few days of vomiting and diarrhea and that is it.  Following up on long term effects of such food borne illness leads to more serious conclusions however.

The longer term consequences of illnesses  (Sequela) caused by Salmonella and Shigella infections include reactive arthritis, urinary tract problems, eye problems.  And after illness caused by campylobacter ,illnesses which may follow include Guillain-Barre syndrome and ulcerative colitis.  After illnesses caused by Escherichia coli 0157:H7, may include kidney failure and diabetes.

Find the magazine and read the article if you want information on the statistical studies supporting the idea that serious chromic health problems can result from contaminated food. The information on long-term sequelae  was determined by research on "unearthed" data buried in medical literature.

One of the data studies concerned Walkerton in Ontario Canada which had a serious E.coli illness that hit about half the population. The 2002 study (data study 2010) indicated those with the E.coli illness had a 33 percent greater liklihood of high blood pressure, a 210 percent greater chance of heart attack or stroke, and a 340 percent greater risk of kidney problems in the eight years following the outbreak.

The real plea of the SA article is for better studies of long term consequences of food-borne illness. I do wonder if those who did not get the disease initially had greater resistance of some kind...or if they just were not physically exposed to the initial E.coli.

The author, Maryn McKenna, concludes with

"We want to establish the true burden of disease because that is what policy makers use to decide what is a public health priority," says Barbar Kowalcyk, [The co-founder of the non-profit Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention], "as long as we focus only on the acute form of foodborne illness and nothe long-term health consequences, we will underestimate how significan a problem this is."

Now, consider these long-term illnesses a possible consequence of the past and current retrograde Republican opposition to "big government", opposition to scientific analysis of health data, opposition to food processing inspections, de-regulation and anti-regulations efforts, and pervasive pandering to religious and economic mythology.  Richard Nixon made progress with his push for the Environoment Protection Agency. But his party member's partisan mythology can bite you in the rear.

Scientific American does not have a link for this article yet.  A group mentioned in the article should be mentioned here however.   STOP Food-Borne Illnesses Org

*** Stay tuned and think at least twice before eating half-raw meat and unwashed fruit and vegetables shipped in from who-knows-where --- Doug Wiken

*** The difference between Romney and Newt

A friend remembered a description of Mitt Gingrish made by another GOP candidate:" Mitt is a well-lubricated windvane."

After listening to Newt a few times too often, I have decided he is a rusty windvane with some mighty nasty slash-inducing sharp edges.

I am not an unbiased observer by any means, but it appears that the GOP primary voters are intent on making sure no really good candidate enters or survives their primary system.  I am less than thrilled with the corporatism demonstrated by Obama, but despite that, he is several levels of magnitude better than the surviving GOP candidates.

*** Stay tuned, the primary marathon is yet young --- Doug Wiken

 

*** Janklow remembered on SDPB-TV.

SD PB-TV is running at least an hour of Janklowisms. Helping us to remember.

For every 50 words of sense, there are 5,000 words of bombastic blather.  I am remembering all right, but remembering why I never cared for him.  He claimed to take the hard way when usually he was exploiting the easiest rhetorical rattle of the last refuge of the scoundrel or attacking somebody or something in order to elevate his position no matter how irrelevant..

No mention yet of his wonderful idea to import toxic trash and garbage to dumps in South Dakota, nor mention of his wonderful idea to suck the Madison Aquifier dry by pumping coal slurry to Arkansas.

An accurate history of Janklow will not be written this week, but it will get written when his political appointees finish wiping their tears.

*** Stay tuned for better days-- Doug Wiken

 

*** Happy New Year 2012

Whole lot of raucus noise promoted as music on TV around midnight and the start of a new year.  The actual news around here today was the miserable cold wind that blew in this afternoon.  Below is a New Years Greeting image for readers of Dakota Today.  Click on the image for a larger version.  It was either these or the GOP presidential candidates polluting the air and airwaves in Iowa.

Celebrate sensibly and drive sober.  We want you to be around next year to read the breathless prose or whatever it is around here.  No sense keeping all the nonsense just for New Year's Day.

*** Stay tuned even if there will be no new editor or morning news celebrities here next year---- Doug Wiken

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*** AT&T cellphones return us to 8-party lines of years ago

About 40 years ago here in rural Tripp County South Dakota, the only phones available were party line phones.  Some of these had 8 families using them on a first-come first- served basis.  These phones made sure gossip spread mighty fast, but if one of the old yakking forever redundantly ladies got on, it was faster to drive 8 miles to town than wait for a useable phone.

That was the system while US West/ AT&T owned this system.  Finally we got much better lines and single-party service.  I had not thought much about those bad old days until today.

AT&T cellphone system must have more than 4 users at a time today, because it just is not working.  Even if a connection is made, there is no telling what you might hear.  High pitches scrreeeeeech over the voice which might appeal to Alvin and the Chipmonks, but is muddled noise to me.  Or, normal voice tone with clipped, chopped words nobody can understand.. not even slow talkers of America.

Mostly the phones don't even connect at all.  No message of non-connection, just the phone dead silent for 20 seconds or so with maybe a single dial tone.

Perhaps FCC and SDPUC could get one of those third-world cellphone systems to come in here with better technology and better service.

**** Stay tuned, and keep dialing. Learn to use smokesignals---- Doug Wiken

*** Ever wonder why a few pounds of plastic TV cost so much?

LCD panel prices have apparently been fixed.  Makers pay millions in penalties.

Read the InfoPackets Story

Whitch starts with paragraph below.  Information from Bloomberg News and Business Week.

Some major television manufacturers have been forced to pay a fine of $388 million for their actions in driving up the price of LCD (liquid crystal display) televisions. There's a good chance a TV in your home right now (or at one time) can be counted among the devices sold at inflated prices.

Price rigging seems to suggest that the GOP constant blather about regulation working against capitalism and growth is total hogwash.  Manufacturers, bankers, insurance, drug manufacturers, health care, whatever without regulation, fix prices and screw consumers or dump dangerous products into the hands of consumers.  The GOP red in tooth and claw ideas on regulation are another bit of their mindless economic mythology what makes the Republican Party irrelevant in solving the problems that beset society, our nation, our enviroment, and our world.  Consign them to the dust bins of history.

*** Stay tuned even if you are not in the mood to Remedy and Reset America back on rational tracks and headed in the right direction --- Doug Wiken