Dakota Today

Senator Johnson wants us to support veterans benefits

I suppose all the bloggers and their dogs got the e-mail from Sen. Tim Johnson requesting support of a new GI bill for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. A copy is in the continuation of this post.

I guess I am a supporter of such aid. Our government and our politicians have sent soldiers off to Iraq on the basis of a big lie and a fool's errand. Johnson supported that folly. I guess he owes something to those who believed him and others who told them it was worthwhile to be in Iraq.

What I don't understand now however is why Johnson thinks my letter to any congressman or senator would be effective when both he and Senator Daschle and staff of Stephanie ignored every letter, call, and e-mail, and blog post l I made indicating it was folly to support Bush war powers and the war that followed in Iraq.

Even as a farmer, I would support a GI bill of some kind even if it meant reducing the ag subsidy payments to the equivalent of two minimum wages annually and using the savings for veteran's benefits. Hell, they might even use some of that to pay for hearing aids for all the WWII vets who are going deaf.

While hammering on this great waste of time, I remember that when one of my uncles was released from a VA hospital for home care after his surgery and the VA also dropping him on a floor and breaking his hip, that the prescriptions they sent with him would have killed him in a matter of days. Local home health workers noticed the gross error.

So what you say? Well, in the recent news, have been stories of veterans of the Iraq war getting back home all shot up or messed up mentally or both and being given prescriptions which have actually killed them. By now they have had about 20 years to solve those problems.

Read the e-mail in the continuation. Maybe they ought to also think a bit about aiding those students who want to go to attend engineering and science colleges and universities so they can help reduce or eliminate our dependence on middle east oil..whether or not they are veterans or not.

**Stay tuned anyway, and maybe you can send letters that will influence the politicos in DC to do the right thing this time --- Doug Wiken

**Is Bush actually right about something? Ethanol?

President Bush mentioned Ethanol in his press conference. The Farm Journal ever searching for good news about Republicans has the report below.

Bush: Ethanol Not To Blame for Food Prices 4/30/2008 By Jeanne Bernick, Farm Journal Crops and Issues Editor

While some antihunger activists point to the biofuels industry as exacerbating world hunger by diverting crop needs, President Bush said Tuesday he believes corn-based ethanol is responsible for only a small part of rising food prices. Weather, increased food demand and energy prices are the key drivers of current global food inflation, according to President Bush’s remarks during a press conference in the White House Rose Garden.

“And the truth of the matter is, it's in our national interests that our farmers grow energy, as opposed to us purchasing energy from parts of the world that are unstable or may not like us,” President Bush told reporters.

Bush said high crop prices should not slow biofuel efforts and that the high price of gasoline is going to spur more investment in ethanol as an alternative to gasoline.

More at the LINK below:
NWLINK Farm Journal Crop News

This is important to corn farmers, but the information needs to also get to food consumers who are getting a figurative line of bologna from food corporations. Bush like a stopped clock with eight years on the dial is actually right about once.

The whole thing is however besides the real point. Bush War, Inc. in Iraq has squandered thousands of lives and enough of the taxpayers, past, present, and future, money to convert about a third of all the US energy used to wind energy sources. That needs to be the "moon project" and the sooner the better. The quicker the US is separated from the lunatic religious fanatics of the mideast, the better.

To paraphrase a Bible saying, "What do we profit if we gain all the oil from the terrorists and lose the whole world to global boiling."

** Some fodder on animal factory stench and pollution..or Pew on pew.

Native Americans in South Dakota protesting a hog farm conveniently stuck into an area surrounded by tribal land might have a little more ammunition for their cause. Highway patrolmen should be required to ride with a hog in their back seat if they think aiding an out-of-state hog factory is such a good idea. I would guess some of the Native Americans might then wonder which is the actual pig, but that is another matter of Highway Patrol public relations problems.

To be taken more seriously than a modest proposal of a pig in every back seat however, are thousands of pigs in your backyard.

Washington, DC - 04/29/2008 - The current industrial farm animal production (IFAP) system often poses unacceptable risks to public health, the environment and the welfare of the animals themselves, according to an extensive 2½-year examination conducted by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (PCIFAP), in a study released today.

Commissioners have determined that the negative effects of the IFAP system are too great and the scientific evidence is too strong to ignore. Significant changes must be implemented and must start now. And while some areas of animal agriculture have recognized these threats and have taken action, it is clear that the industry has a long way to go.

MORE BELOW IN CONTINUATION OR AT THE SITE Source. The Omaha World Herald carried the story today with a blurb on the front page pointing to the story on page 5. The paper also had a story indicating the problems with putting personal information about family matters in a personal blog with some of the problems that resulted for Nebraska bloggers.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=38438

http://snipurl.com/26jwk

The complete Pew article is in the continuation of this post. Worth reading if you care about the differences between an actual farm and a factory.

**Stay tuned even if you have never smelled the stench of hogs. It is a stink that can carry for miles and never leaves the clothes of those around hogs--- Doug Wiken

**This and that..

Saw the first dandilions I have seen blooming this year. Must be a near certain indication that spring is here. Also, the end of April is rapidly approaching and that means property taxes are due in South Dakota. Damn, are they ever a reminder of how upside down the SD tax system really is. When RE taxes start pushing $20 per acre, it is time some of the people living in towns and cities and making good money as some of them fill the schools with kids need to be picking up their fair share of the taxes. Perhaps a few of the corporations doing business in SD could kick a few bucks into an education fund too. I don't notice the chain marketers charge less here because they don't have to pay a state corporate income tax as they do in other states.

The schools consolidate and should get more efficient and teach better and cost less. It looks to me that all that actually happens is that administrator salaries go ever higher and the school years get shorter. And, oh yeah, the real estate taxes keep going up even if special assessment op outs are required.

And, unless my eyes are also playing tricks on me, it appears the Rapid City Journal dead tree version has a new format. I don't particularly care for it. Maybe some of the artsy types can explain why a paper that looks like propaganda from a farm credit publication is a better typeface, etc. etc. than some good old newspaperery looking text. The fine fonts must save some of that ink the papers buy by the barrel.

And then there is George Bush. I watched the weasel trying to blame his economic, political, and diplomatic foul ups on congress this morning. And on the war, Bush doesn't just move the goal posts, he makes them dance.
What a bunch of spineless wimps there are in the White House Press Corps. They might as well be the Whitehouse Press Corpse.

Where is the "Mr. President, you are questioning my motives. I am searching for truth here. If that motive is at cross purposes with yours, just what are your motives, sir?" Gutless damn wimps. Speaking truth to the Texas Twit in power is absolutely the last thing on their tiny minds.

Bush goes on and on about the never-ending fight against terror and how we are making progress against it in Iraq and Afghanistan. I must have been dreaming, but I would swear I remember the smirking weasel in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier with a big "Mission Accomplished" sign behind him.

Bob Schieffer of CBS correctly summarized the Bush speech as a political gasp of somekind..an attempt to shift blame. Then Schieffer went on to say that it really was true however that Congress did not have an energy policy.

Hmmm. How the hell are we supposed to know what kind of an energy policy the US has? Cheney held secret meetings on energy policy and so far it seems to me that nobody including Bob Schieffer and the rest of us outside of the collection of aiders and abettors in the White House know what that policy is. It seems without knowing of course to just be to drive the price of fuel so high that agriculture and travel grind to a screeching halt.

Bush is just too, too cute by half at least. He reminds me of all the smart ass arrogant prick frat rats I ran into on college campuses and the worst of them pale in comparison to the Texas Twit.

What we need in the White House of course is a dry drunk that all the barflies would just love to sit with and toss back a few. Oh wait, I must be dreaming again.

***Stay tuned, keep your eyes open even when you think you are dreaming--- Doug Wiken

**GPS shows distance between stalker and potential victim

Finally, why has this taken so long?

Police stations in Massachusetts have turned to modern technology to crack down on known stalkers. Those convicted as dangerous individuals are now being attached to satellite monitoring devices that electronically notify the authorities when a stalker is too close to their victim. The messages are sent automatically, meaning that the police could potentially stop an attack before the opportunity presents itself. (Source: topix.com) NWL to Infopackets story on GPS and Stalker monitoring

http://snipurl.com/26ce0

Putting GPS transmitters on parolees, etc. has been available for years. It seemed obvious to me years ago that putting such transmitters on stalker victims and then knowing the distance between them might have made judge's protection orders actually mean something without also bankrupting taxpayers and producing a massive gestapo snooping system running night and day.

SD AG Long has advanced good ideas in relation to keeping drunk drivers out of jail, but also off the roads driving drunk and still working to support their families. He needs to now push for this advancement and the SD Court system should also be very interested in this.

*** Stay tuned even if the BushSpies, Inc. already have your every keystroke recorded somewhere--- Doug Wiken

**Rev. Wright does a pretty good job

I have been reading a lot of froth about the Rev. Wright who happens to be ..wink, wink, nod..Barrack Obama's local minister. So far not much of what I have seen him say that is in the context of more of what he says has been particularly terrible unless Democrats are deeply worried about losing Dick Cheney's vote in the general election.

The controversialists in the press are wringing their hands about the Rev. Wright's terrible impact on the Obama campaign. The "ain't it awful" crowd is just too concerned and upset about this to take it seriously. The Rev. Wright pretty well summed up a lot of my white guy's bitterness about Bush, Inc.

And, while we are talking about strange things said by ministers that we could just get oh so terribly upset about, perhaps we should remember what Jerry Falwell said about 9-11 and then apologized for ..of course, it might not be nice to kick a man of the clothe around now that he has croaked, but take a look at the link below:
Jerry Falwell Apologizes for his 9-11 comments I suspect other rightwing ministers white or otherwise have said equally stupid things about 9-11, etc.

Of course, the Rev. Wright controversy pales into insignificance compared to the horror that are photos of Miley Vanilla..er Cyrus, otherwise known as Hannah Montana...never to be confused with Patsy Montana...that apparently grace the pages of Vanity Fair which might better be called Vanity Fare.

Oh, and apparently Ken Blanchard wants to know how many of the angels dancing on the head of a pin are blessed or damned and what monumental difference that makes in the world of partisan sniping.

***Stay tuned..maybe John Edwards can be the compromise candidate-- Doug Wiken

**What about Janklow and the ARGUS this time?

The Sunday ARGUS and that of today (April 28, 2008) has articles on the "Janklow 36". It is a follow up on some prisoners dumped out of the SD State Prison because of crowding and told to get out of South Dakota and not return some 30 years or so ago.

The ARGUS has followed up on the lives of some of these people. And, to probably nobody's astonishment have found that too many of them ended up following their criminal instincts and getting re-arrested and imprisoned again, etc. etc. Some blessed their lucky Janklow stars and took advantage of the unexpected freedom and made good of the rest of their lives.

I am certainly no apologist for Bill Janklow. But, it must be said about this that he put himself in a position where he could be blamed for his opinion and actions or credited and he may not have had to do that.

But, the more important point that the ARGUS is omitting or fails to recognize is that for their report to have any validity, the life of these "lucky" prisoners must be compared with similar lives of those released after they had served their full sentences back in those days.

My guess is they would have found a very similar recidivism rate and also a similar success rate if they compared this group of "Janklow 36" and and a "Random 36" from those days. The ARGUS is "Willy Horton-ing" Bill Janklow. I hope he now as a little sympathy for Gov. Dukakis and a bit of disdain for the shrill GOP rightwing attack ads like the "Swiftboaters", etc.

And, if I got something wrong in this post let me know. I am writing it without benefit of having the paper in front of me and Janklow is unlikely to be providing me with any inside information.

I have found many things to criticize Bill Janklow for, but I don't think his early release of these few prisoners is something that should be hung around his neck like a permanently rotting albatross.

***Stay tuned...maybe I will come to my partisan senses again--- Doug Wiken

**Closing the deal and no deal

Hillary supporters and press molehill into mountains corporate media controversialists are claiming that Obama "just can't close a deal".

Perhaps Obama hasn't had any experience with closing cattle futures hot deals. I would have thought the Hillary apologists might have thought twice about even mentioning the word "deal" in their propaganda.

Meanwhile back on the home front, speaking of deals, the local Pamida discount store passed out some coupons yesterday that offered a 50% discount on Micro Innovations computer accessories.. That sounded like not too bad a deal, so I went back today to check. Buried in the fine text of the coupon was something to the effect of ""excludes clearance items and no other discounts apply". Strange coincidence, every Micro Innovation computer accessory on the rack had a yellow "Clearance" price tag even if there had been no reduction from the regular price or one showed a reduction from $29.95 to "$29.00. Turned out that any of the accessories I had thought useful had already been sold, but this super coupon coupled with an everything clearance-price deal was the most inventive merchandising artistry I have seen.

**Stay tuned even if this line is just a closing deal--- Doug Wiken