Dakota Today

**Newt Gingrich..still crazy after all these years..and wives

I did not catch all of Newt Gingrich going ballistic this morning on ABC or CBS morning blather, but below from the Huffington Post is what I mostly heard, but with a few of the HP poster's comments included.

Reacting to the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America - who recently affirmed, by 5-4 decision, our Constitutional rights of due process of law, accorded by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America - former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich came visibly unglued, and called the decision the worst since Dred Scott.
 GINGRICH: I will say, I think the recent Supreme Court decision to turn over to a local district judge decisions of national security and life and death that should be made by the president and the congress is the most extraordinarily arrogant and destructive decision the Supreme Court has made in it's history.
REID: In it's history?
GINGRICH: In it's history. Worse than Dred Scott, for the following reason: The court has now knowingly stepped in, this morning's newspaper say, smugglers had actually gotten the design of a nuclear weapon, that we now have the evidence that people out there had a nuclear weapon design. And this court is saying that any random district judge, based on whatever their personal caprice is, whatever their personal ideological bias, can intervene with a terrorist in such a way. Gingrich went on to slam Obama for supporting the decision. "The problem with Obama is that he's wrong...He applauded this court decision. This court decision is a disaster and it could cost us a city." Then Gingrich referred to district judges - all of them! - as "nutcake."

Naturally, it's Gingrich, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who are nutcake, and I wonder if I can sum up why that is any better then the headline of a recent post on Jezebel: "According to Scalia, People Only Get Rights When There's Nothing At Stake." Nope! Turns out I could not have possibly said it better! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/15/gingrich-rails-at-supreme_n_107214.html http://snipurl.com/2iz4c

Are we going to have months of the same old same old crap from the Republican noise machine? After years of Gingrich in Congress and Shrub in the White House as a consequence of the gullible believing these raving loons, one might expect this kind of inflated rhetoric would not go unchallenged by press and people who are normal.
***Stay tuned even if it might not rain tomorrow and Newt's sky might not fall as the result of a court decision suggesting the constitution means something despite Bush smoke and mirrors about a unitary presidency immune to logic, facts, history, congress, and courts-- Doug Wiken

** And more about lying about Bush lies..the Kucinich Impeachment articles

Below is a link to a pdf file with the kind of details SD Politics and the loons who still believe Bush knows truth from fiction need to read.  It is a pdf file with Rep. Dennis Kuchinich's details on articles of impeachment.  This would all be so much simpler if some braindead female was intent on sucking Bush's dick, then he would have been impeached long ago.  Cowards in Congress and wingnuts have got to keep their priorities straight.

PDF with Bush Impeachment Articles..No Sex involved However

**Stay tuned  and remember politicians are loath to outright say, "The SOB is a liar or a crook"..it is professional courtesy like why rattlesnakes don't bite lawyers--- 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

**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

**Actual image reflected in Dick Cheney's Glasses

You saw it on TV, you've seen it in blogs, but you really didn't know what was reflected in Dick Cheney's glasses until now. See the real deal in THE DICK's glasses straight from Ludefisk Images compliments of Ole and Lena, award winning photographers.

Meanwhile, the rightwing, Hillary, and McAncient are trying to pin an "elitist" label on B. Obama for noting that some voters are "bitter" about the consequences of NAFTA and war costs on their jobs and taxes. Imagine that. I guess Hillary and McCain are so insulated from the real world that they just can't imagine we might be just a tad bit pissed off at their blunders, lies, and incompetence.

**Stay tuned, I may get around to noting the lunacy being spewed by RR (not Ronald Reagan) at the remnants of Mt. Blogmore--- Doug Wiken

**4000 US lives wasted in Iraq, Trillions squandered, What's $30 Billion?

Isn't this all just too special. The Bush administration doesn't want to create a welfare state for homeowners boxed in on mortgages, but is willing to pony up $30 Billion to bailout big banks, brokers and mortgage finaglers. Of course that amount is a pittance compared to what has already been squandered in Iraq.

Republican "responsibility" starts and ends with "Borrow and Squander". Incidentally, the $30 Billion Bush, Inc. is willing to dump into failing big business is about $100 per man, woman, and child in the US. Would the US economy be better off with dumping $100 per person into the economy instead of into bailing out overpaid executives and stockholders riding on a wave of speculative optimism? [A Paul Krugman article indicates the bailout may be as large as $400 Billion and even that may not be sufficient without other changes]

A few posts ago, the money dumped into Bear Stearns was previously noted by Greg Palast as he suggested that the Eliot Spitzer "affair" was more a diversion from the real economic problems than anything else. That huge money dump has now been followed up with JP Morgan bank buying up Bear Stearns for $2 per share..shares which were selling for $150 just a few months ago. Even associating a high-priced whore with Eliot Spitzer was not however enough to divert the opinion of every American.

This forced merger generates an even more huge concentration of wealth and economic power in the hands of even fewer people. It may be time to start thinking about the logic of collective wisdom and knowledge. Even the logic of crowds may be better than ever more concentration of power and wealth in the hands of an ever smaller "crowd".

I have wondered how any humans can be so incredibly intelligent and wise that they can handle the full demands of huge operations like the US Government and businesses that have control of huge markets. I think we will be seeing more evidence that mere mortals are mere mortals no matter how many million they may be paid by other mere mortals deciding they too are minor gods and godesses of the government and economy.

Wall Street, we have a problem. How many more businesses have stock prices inflated beyond any reason or logic and which will come tumbling down from $150 to $2 in a matter of months?

Let's remember that all the cheap easy to exploit resources of the US have pretty much been converted into scarce or expensive resources. There are no longer resources that can be pissed away on mindless wars without huge consequences for the "General Welfare" of the United States.

The conspiracy between Bush,Inc and big business shares much in common with the failed fascism and corporatism of wartime Italy.

Perhaps what is really needed is a cascading collapse of the huge corporations with the debris ending up in a crowd of wisdom.
[On edit later, a link predicting a mess: NWLINK to Truthout on Walker

**Stay tuned even if your retirement disappeared with Bear Stearns transfer to JP Morgan--- Doug Wiken

**Modest Proposal-- It all fits together

News from the legislative cutting edge..well sort of...Let the 10 year olds hunt and if they are old enough to hunt well...

By golly, the legislative plan for pandering to every special interest is starting to fit together. They can suck up to the NRA and the liquor special interests in no time at all.

If 10 year olds are old enough to carry rifles and shotguns, they are old enough to defend our country against invading crows and feral cats and if they are old enough to do that, they should be old enough to drink.

Yup, put all that SD legislature logic together and you venture into the fields of the absurd. Here's another area of the legislature missing the obvious solution in search of a protect-the-special-interests solution that appears to do something good, but ....well.... read on.

Liquor licenses are being resold for ridiculous amounts. Apparently some have sold for over $100,000. To solve this problem, the legislature opens up a whole no category of liquor licenses. Let's look at the obvious solution.

Liquor licenses go with a business when it is sold, but they can not be transferred by the current holder. The new owner of a liquor business has the first option to purchase the terminated license from the city or county at the regular license fee.

There is absolutely no reason to allow private businesses or individuals to convert a public license into a small goldmine. There is no reason liquor licenses should be any more valuable than the license plate on a junked car.

Incidentally, the last Scientific American has an article on the "white matter" in our brains. Apparently it is important in the way brain pathways are laid out. At specific ages, some pathways are essentially locked and others are still open to change. Some of the rational decision areas are not complete until around age 26. Some language functions are essentially locked at a very young age. Our brains find no reason to store or retain the ability to recognize speech sounds that are not used in a particular language. Wait too long, and an adult learning a language will never get it quite right. Our brains just plain become unable to recognize some of the speech sounds except for the primary language.

Another interesting finding involves the relationship between a mother smoking while pregnant or children being exposed to tobacco smoke. There is a good correlation between such exposure and tone deafness in children. A specific area of brain cell damage has been identified. Now you can understand why some kids can listen to the damnedest most aggravating musical noise and find nothing wrong with it. You also might now understand why kids and guns and kids and booze really don't go together. Buy the Scientific American and see if you can understand the details and implications better than I did.

**Stay tuned even if you are irony-impaired or satire-challenged--- Doug Wiken

**Get those dudes DNA stat..highest crime rate per capita

Headlines in papers and a few TV and radio stories indicate the South Dakota legislature thinks that everybody arrested whether guilty or innocent should be required to provide DNA evidence via a cotton swab test of saliva or mouth cells..or some such.

I guess perhaps everybody arrested guilty or innocent should be required to have a brand on their forehead saying, "I was first arrested MM/DD/YY".

But, if we are willing to misuse statistics in the same way the gun nut legislators supporting campus posses and misuse them in the same way the loons opposed to seat belt laws on the highways do, then we ought to use statistics in support of a modest proposal.

As part of the House and Senate ethics rules in South Dakota, all legislators should be swabbed and tattooed if we look at the number of rapes, etc. per legislator compared to the general population. And then there are all those stories of wild life in Pierre during the sessions, no telling what that does to crime and health statistics...might even be useful in some paternity suits.

Yup, swab those dudes for suspicious DNA and hereditary brain disorders before they ever get a chance to say, "I so move" unless it is in a restroom with Larry Craig.

And off this subject for a minute or so. The US Congress has nothing better to do than have a star chamber hearing on drugs and baseball. Must have a huge impact on the economy and the deficit and no doubt will help get the US out of Iraq and put a stop to the Bush destruction of citizen civil rights. Yah sure.

We are not getting enough realism or idealism out of our pay for legislators.

**Stay tuned even if you are wondering how big the swabs would have to be to get DNA from legislators' mouths--- Doug Wiken

**The SD Legislature Statistics vs. Anecdotes

A previous post suggests the lunacy of the SD Legislature in pushing for nearly unlimited gun possession on SD campuses. The legislature apparently basis the idea on isolated events in other states and anecdotal testimony filled with supposition and assumptions.

What the legislature ignores is more significant than a random event here or there. It is statistics that have been collected from a large number of events. One of these might be deaths from accidental gunfire. Another might be statistics on whole colleges and states concerning depression and attempted suicides by college students.

This kind of "logic" was used for many years as an excuse by the SD legislature to fail to put in any kind of meaningful mandatory seatbelt use laws. There were statistics and data from several countries, from test labs, from experience, etc. etc. that strongly suggested if not completely proved the wisdom of such legislation. But for years, the legislature resisted this partly based on anecdotal stories of rare crash events with miracles of random physics saving somebody "because the weren't wearing seatbelts". Or, the perhaps one in a million crash where somebody drowned after going of a bridge or into a canal wearing seatbelts.

I expect all of us temper our views on issues by our experience, but legislators and governors have an obligation to look at valid data and statistics that provide a larger view which may not fit either conventional or unconventional opinion or narrow odd experiences.

The legislature supporting campus guntotting posses is a prime indicator of failing legislative processes and thought..or undue influence by special interest lobbies who really don't give a rat's rear about good public policy as long as their wheel is greased and their ox is not gored. We deserve better thinking, better realism, and better idealism from our government.

***Stay tuned, there will probably be more nonsense in the name of policy to come before the legislature folds up for another year--- Doug Wiken

**Blood and Brains on the Dorm Room Ceiling

The South Dakota Legislature in its infinitely finite wisdom has decided that college students on regential institutions should be allowed to wander around with firearms on campus.

I have not yet heard of any deadly threats on campuses warranting a student army and faculty office corp ready to kill immediately if some idiot student pulls out a chocolate pistol for a girl on Valentine's Day. Dumber things have happened on campuses.

More seriously, the real problem with this idea has been presented indirectly in news stories in SD papers this summer and on national TV news. SD colleges like colleges in some other states have a very high attempted suicide rate. Some campuses in SD have gotten grants to study the problem on their campuses.

Allowing guns on campuses will turn attempted suicides into completed suicides. My guess is this would be more likely to happen before a posse of students and professors blew the brains out of some attacker storming the campus. In fact, suicide by guns in the hands of other students might replace suicide by dumb cop.

Now and then the SD Legislature does things so incredibly stupid in the interests of pandering to neanderthal special interest groups that they almost defy rational discussion. Welcome to the SD Legislative Asylum...only days to go.

***Stay tuned and stay mentally healthy...don't associate with South Dakota legislators..apparently lunacy is contagious there--- Doug Wiken