I just checked the Winner Regional Airport 3-day weather and that indicates we have gotten about 2.75 inches of rain in the past 3 days. That is about what I guessed by sticking a finger in a dogfood dish. Enough rain fast enough to bring the water level up in some near empty stock ponds. Unfortunately, we haven't seen water running like this for a couple of years. And unfortunately, it is too late to save a lot of cedar trees which have turned brown from the combination of an insect attack and drought. [[ Note of May 21, 2013: Another 0.12 inches today and more predicted for tonight. Not much sunshine and high temperature only about 50 degrees, so most of it is soaking in.
Mostly we get our weather from KELO-TV. Now and then their weather predictions and reports for this south-central part of South Dakota might be for another planet, but mostly they get it mostly right. KELO this evening broadcast their much hyped 60-year one hour summary of the past 60 years of KELO-TV in South Dakota. They hyped the weather coverage. They hyped the news coverage. They hyped their collection of historic TV video tape and digital conversions, etc. They told us how wonderfully prexcient Joe Floyd was in founding KELO.
What they did not mention was the fundraising Floyd did in Tripp County years ago to raise money to get a signal out to these boondocks. Apparently $25 per family. Most of the people who dumped money into KELO are now dead and most certainly did not end up owning shares in the profitable company.
While nit-picking, I thought it was a bit unseemly to put something like four commercials on every 5 minutes through the one-hour program. If they so respect news coverage and all the other good stuff they hyped, one might think they could have sung their own praises without filling the hour with distracting commercials. After all, 60 years of broadcasting is about 350,000 hours of broadcasting. 1 hour not loaded with ads is a rather insignificant part of the total time. Overall, I would guess there was less actual information time in the one-hour show than time spent hyping the program for the past few weeks. While being mildly interesting, the show was overall rather disappointing and shallow.
The rain is nice however even if the mud is a bit annoying.
One more obnoxious relatively new practice at KELO news is hyping a bit of news during the day as if it is important, but all that is is a teaser ad for the REALLY, REALLY BIG SHOW which will be on the 10 PM news or following it. This is the kind of crap that petty late-night TV ads do or was the running catch of old cliff-hanger serials. It is unbecoming for a serious news organization. It has the smell of desperation gimmicks to build audience for the nightly news.
*** Stay tuned..back to the Republican Retrograde Obstructionists soon--- Doug Wiken
Interesting that Republicans in Congress and mouthpieces of the very rich or very bigoted are yammering about the Libya ambassador murder and IRS scrutiny of tax-exempt organization applications amount to the equivalent of Watergate and are the stuff of impeachment. (Added link May 20, 2013: John Dean who knows about Watergate and the real stuff of impeachment disagrees with current herd of obstructionis GOP congress critters.) And a bit more about or from John Dean's perspective on GOP smoke and mirrors substance-free scandal mongering.
It is hard to look at this froth and foam from the GOP and not think that Obama's half-Black ancestory is the reason for their ire and retrograde obstructionism in Congress because most of the GOP yammer is fluff, foam, hypocrisy, and discredited or unprovable mythology or concerns many of the same things Republicans have known and ignored when it concerned their own white officials and politicians...
Bush1 or Reagan decided not to hire more IRS accountants to scrutinize corporation tax dodging and evasion. They decided to hire accountants to target (a misleading term) hair dressers, independent carpenters, independent mechanics, waitresses and waiters, farmers, and other self-employed, et al. The GOP feeling was that it was a lot easier to terrorize small people than corporations with dozens of attorneys.
Republicans in local and state governments regularly try to profile groups or ethnics for special law enforcement targetings and wonder why Hispanics should not be targeted for car license checks, etc. Like Willy Sutton "robbing banks because that is where the money is**", the GOP wants long-hairs, ethnics, and small people driving old cars to be targeted for enforcement. But, "profiling" political action groups funded by the likes of Koch Industries and brothers, is supposed to be an impeachable offense. (***Note: Snopes says that Willie Sutton never said that)
Republicans in the Carter years spent a lot of time attaching and demeaning President Carter for his micro-management. Now they are attacking Obama because he hasn't micro-managed a few hundred agencies and departments. Charles Krauthammer on Public TV "Inside Washington" just finished saying, "Obama is a bystander." Actually, the GOP obstructionists are trying to pretend that Obama is an obvious liar, and he just must have had his fingers in micro-managing the IRS scrutiny of Koch-organized "non-profit" political groups...after all, their Nixon sure did.
And then we get to Ben Ghazi and the murder of a US Ambassador and three aides. Hillary Clinton had it right when she chastized the retrograde Republicans by saying that it made no policy difference whether or not the ambassador was reported in early reports as being killed by demonstrators or terrorists. Sen. McCain has been on the attack ever since. McCain has made dozens of misleading or faulty reports on the Sabbath gasbag circuit , but he and most media have apparently forgot about all his misleading blather. Rachel Maddow put his multiple Sunday falsities up as video. McCain got his "Pinochios" awards. I linked to those in a previous Dakota Today post.
To make the current investigation even more telling on the GOP fraudulent investigation, they have been altering the e-mails released by the Obama administration. Churchill said, "History will be kind, because I intend to write it." CBS and Huffington have the details of the document modification. . The GOP has decided not just to write history, but to alter history by altering the facts. They have apparently figured out that not only can they have their own opinions, but they can also adjust the facts to fit their mythology. And a follow-up addition of May 20, 2013. Mother Jones of "It's Official" and Reid Blog has longer summary.
And then of course, when it comes to misleading statements, the GOP Congress Critters have apparently forgotten all about the investigation they never made when President Bush2 landed on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit and boasted that "The war is a mission accomplished.". Where were the GOP congress critters calling for independent prosecutors, heads to roll and impeachment then?
Of course, Bush is not Black or even half-black. Bush is excused. Obama is not.
Now Republican Congress critters, are busy making fog by the ton. My guess now is that no legislation of any consequence which relates to the IRS or Ben Ghazi will result from these investigations. Republicans have gone from voting over 30 times to kill the Affordable Health Act, they are now generating hearings of non-issues or irrelevant events and even talk about non-issues or irrelevant events. The lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation tells GOP non-legislating is a strategy and scandalmania fits it well.
And as of May 18, 2013 another fine bit of GOP hypocrisy. Joe Scarborough now raving upset about scrutingy of TEA party non-tax pleading wanted to eliminate tax exemtion for the NAACP.
Another addition of May 20, George Will when blathering about the "scandal" of scrutinizing TEA party and IRS quoted the "The power to tax is the power to destroy". What Will neglected mentioning however was that this was all about the power to un-tax.
Citizens of the US should start their own investigation of how GOP retrograde Congress Critters are failing to be true to their own oaths of office and for pledging fealty to right-wing kooks and Kochs.
*** Stay tuned, the GOP will make more fog and spew more mythology, books will be written--- Doug Wiken
Just when I thought we were going to see a spring without significant moisture, be get a half inch of rain that came down for awhile like Mother Nature really meant more than another farmer fooler mist. Of course some people had already watered lawns. That is almost as good and indicator as Pamida or now Shopko bringing in garden plantings just before a snowstorm or blizzard. South Dakota of all Places.
And HOLY COW, CBS has Sherlock Holmes engaging with Moriarity or a woman, Irene Adler? claiming to be Moriarity. More twists and turns.than a slimy eel chasing a red herring on ice. It has twists and turns, but doesn't seem to have the humor of the current British TV version on PBS a few months ago. Anyway, there are more important issues being generated by the GOP congress critters. On second thought the GOP retrograde obstuctionists are generating mostly fog . More on that "weather" in a coming post.
*** Stay tuned even if you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to see through the GOP---Doug Wiken
Drat, I missed it, but John Thune was honored last night on David Letterman Show. He was named stooge of the night. Finally his work is recognized. One of my friends called and asked if I had seen it. Guess I must have flipped over to the Charlie Rose Show.
Time now for “Stooge of the Night!”
Tonight’s Stooge: Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota.
DAVE: “South Dakota Senator John Thune voted ‘NO’ on gun reform
legislation despite the fact that 79% of voters in his state are in
favor of background checks for gun buyers. Senator Thune has an A-plus
rating from the NRA, which is awarded to those who are regularly seen
wearing a coonskin cap.
John Thune . . . . he’s our ‘Stooge of the Night.’”
Almost warms the cockles of the heart to see Thune get such an award.
*** Stay tuned, but not sure I will watch Letterman unless he learns about Kristi Noem. She provides enough material to be Stooge of the Night every night for a month--- Doug Wiken
Cat photos are notorious on the internet. I have a terrible time photographing cats. They either take off or move up to paw or lick a camera. My daughter and SIL have a cat named Polly. After about 3 days, Polly decided we were not intent on immediately killing her and sat still for the photo below.
Click on image for a larger version.
Polly is "Polly" because she is a polydactyl cat which means she has extra toes compared to the usual SD barn cat.
Below is a Kat of a whole different nature. I fell asleep with the TV on and didn't wake up until about 2:15 AM. A late, late broadcast of Austin City limits was on. The "Jazz amd cross" singer had a voice like an impish angel...understandable too which is nice with my old ears. Image is photo of TV screen.
In the mixed bag of news today from GWTC or Golden West Technologies, we get news of a coming phone rate increase they claim is mandated by the FCC, but they will be letting West River customers call free to other West River customers and East River customers will be able to call other East River Customers. This seems like a totally irrelevant separation. For that "benefit" to mean anything to us, we would need to be able to also call eastern SD free. This half-step is not quite enough to persuade many people to forget about cell phones and stop disconnecting land lines.
Below is image with text from GWTC. On second and third reading, I am not sure if this means that GWTC rates were too high and adding on enhanced long-distance was a way to maintain the high rates, or for some reason, rates were too low and had to be raised and adding enhanced long-distance makes that increase more palatable.
Below is image with SD map showing GWTC exchanges.
On the other hand, yesterday, a cable plow, trencher, layer, whatever was unloaded in a road ditch near our farm. Photo of the D6HLGP Series II Cat and the Bron V100 slit trencher are below. Click on image for a larger version.
This big hunk of steel is apparently owned by NexLevel,LLC of Maple River, MN which company is laying the fiber-optic cable for rural Tripp County. This should make internet service a bit faster here.
Guys working for GWTC said the actual cable placing will start sometime after May 23, 2013 which will give me some time to move junk around to make way for the machinery and cable. They said project was expected to be finished by September 30, 2013. There will be no service on the old copper coaxial line as the fiber-optic system is phased in.
*** Stay tuned for more on electrons converted to light and light to electrons. Gee whiz.--- Doug Wiken
You may have noticed my bold type near the top of the page regarding a foolish journalistic propensity. There may be a better way to express that. A SD graduate student is surveying SD Blogs for a master's thesis. I actually spent some time answering the questions. Well, I was really tired of what I had been doing and it was a good excuse to do something else, but anyway, I did think a bit more about "balanced journalism" Also, a Bill Moyers and Company show kind of filled in some blanks.
Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann are reporters/commentators who strive to be bi-partisan in their reporting. Even so, they have found the idea of balancing actually unbalanced factors in the name of "balance journalism" is part of our current problems. Reporters, newspapers, and TV news that attempts to balance what the GOP has been doing to thwart Obama and what Democrats and Obama are doing is a fools errand.
I hope you find that interesting. Meanwhile back here, I think perhaps a better definition of balanced journalism is not that there must be some kind of equality presented between unequals, but that journalists (as should scientists) should give alternate positions or sides balanced scrutiny and analysis. The same kind of hard-nosed evaluation of Side A should be given to Side B or to Perspective A and Perspective B, and then let the chips fall where they may.
Journalists should not accept GOP mythology on economics as reality. Give it the same kind of tough analysis and don't let circular arguments and fallacious history go unchallenged. Do the same kind of tough analysis on the Democratic arguments and relate both to reality on the ground, or in the economy, or in relation to accurate historical accounts.
I hope this doesn't all just sound like Sunday school preaching, but a foolish Press balance means between unequals or an inappropriate meaning for balanced journalism really endangers our Democracy and it helps maintain GOP retrograde obstruction as somehow equal to really trying to solve our social and economic problems.
*** Stay tuned, for more unbalanced "journalism". We try harder to maintain inequality between unequals--- Doug Wiken.
Getting a Driver's License in SD is a royal pain in the rear. I have had SD learners and drivers permits or drivers licenses since 1957. Might it be reasonable to expect the state to have records of that and not demand an original birth certificate (Costs $20 and ironically, a Drivers License is required for ID to get one)? Two Utility bills with home address, a social security card or valid passport.. We had to provide the same damn information the last time we got a Driver's License. Might it be reasonable to expect that such a drivers's license already with all documention is sufficient proof to get another one?
The Department of Public Safety officials here were personable and efficient. But, I do wonder how they can keep working such an idiotic system. It is hard not to got through this pain in the rear without thinking that the real function is to make it hard for poor people and minorities such as Native Americans to get a Driver's license and thus be able to vote.
Has anyone yet discovered any evidence that there has been any significant attempt to get drivers licenses fraudulently in South Dakota? My guess is that 80% or so of applicants have had SD Drivers Licenses for years and probably have lived in the same place for 30 or more years.
Another question for SD Legislators and officials. Why do we need such a ponderous identification when states like Arizona loaded with illegal aliens requires barely any identification?
The system makes it even harder for women to get a license. It is discriminatory in that regard. They need marriage licenses as well as all the other crap....and just like Birth Certificates, they need ...you guessed it...a drivers license to get a copy.
Did any thoughtful SD legislator of official bother to ask himself if this mess made sense?
*** Stay tuned, but watch out for old geezers with new Driver's Licenses--- Doug Wiken
South Dakota newspapers have been making a mediocre case for an internet sales tax apparently as a way of pandering to their advertisers as they poke a stick in their reader's eyes. A tax increase is a tax increase just as a skunk by another names stinks the same.
My argument against the endrun around the US Constitution commerce clause is that it is a huge intrusion into privacy with all kinds of data bases being required to make the baling wire mess work. If it passes be prepared to pay taxes you don't owe and let every state in the country know what you buy.
Newspapers whine that the poor brick and mortar stores are disadvantaged by having to collect sales taxes from their customers while distant catalog or internet sales don't require such collection. Judges twist their corrupt minds into knots by justifiying a "use" tax which only applies to purchases from an out-of-state seller.
Justification for distant transaction taxes by states and local governments is a perversion of good sense, good taxaction, and an insult to the US Constitution the wingnut right regularly claim to worship as if it it the 10 commandments on the lips of God...well at least as far as it concerns guns and ammunition.
I don't care if I have to pay taxes on internet purchases or distant transactions because the few percent taxes is not why I or anybody else buys from a distant seller. We buy because the product is not available locally or even in state. We buy because local or instate marketers rip us off with prices two or three times the national price. A sales tax is not the reason for not buying from your friendly local smiling ripoff artist.
Very frankly, the arguments for further extension of state and local sales taxes to internet or other distant taxes are pure, unadulterated, stagnant bullshit.
If there is to be a tax on distant transactions, it should apply to all such trnasactions and it should be a federal tax 90% refunded to states on the basis of population rather than sales. It should apply to stocks and bonds as well as chastity belts, Viagra, tampons, or whatever else the states are eager to get into a data base relating you to sales.
A federal tax will not require data be kept on sellers location, buyers location, or even what is purchased. If this is to be a national tax, it should be administered by the federal government which can just add a line to the 1040.
There is no need for tremendous growth of state Revenue department staffs or databases and so-called "tax fairness" is a smokescreen for simple tax increase.
Let your legislators know you are not impressed with the state's incredibly stupid, privacy intruding sales tax consortia mechanisms too similar to Rube Goldberg contraptions.. and let your newspapers and Governor Daugaard know you are not impressed with their BS.
*** Stay tuned. You will not be taxed for reading this YET, but give the bastards some time and they might find taxable value in the information here.--- Doug Wiken
The same Republicans in Congress who have driven the US and US economy into a ditch by refusing to do anything whatsoever which might hint that Obama was not just dirt in the gears. They demanded budget cuts and refused to tax the greed heads who milk our systems and fail to pay significant taxes.
Consequently, parks are being closed and Air Traffic Controllers are being put on leave. And, wonder of wonders that slows down air travel and aggravates air travelers or airport sitters and waiters. Jumping right on this are the same Republicans who made this mess suddenly discovering the woes of travelers and starting congressional inquiries. I guess they can't remember what they did a few months and years ago.
But, the ultimate GOP hypocrisy is attacking Obama and his administration for long waits and even possible cancellations in the wake of a wave of furloughs hitting air traffic controllers. I guess these GOP hypocrites have forgotten that Ronald Reagan, patron saint of GOP economic mythology, fired all the air traffic controllers when he was President.
GOP conservatives only want to remember part of the story. They forget the glorious failures consequent to their glorious imposition of their economic and anti-labor mythology.
*** Stay tuned ..you might as well, flying anywhere is a pain--- Doug Wiken.
Residents of South Dakota. Check your broadband speed with the SD Speedtest. Your test will both let you know how speedy is your ISP and also help get us better service in South Dakota.
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