Weather is rotten, but so far not nearly as rotten here as elsewhere in SD. We were awakened about 4 AM last night when it sounded like house was being blasted with heavy pouring rain. But when I looked out, we were getting sleet and that was a lot like getting pelted with small marbles. Maybe an inch of that accumulated and then a few hours of something approaching clearing. Not too long ago, snow started falling in a 20mph wind. Temperature still around 34F, but chill factor more like 20F. So far roads are warm enough that snow and sleet has melted off.
On a totally different tack, I put a Patsy Cline CD into the car player. Unlike the slurred, mumbling that seems a current fashion every word of her mostly sad songs is easily understood. Classics like "Crazy", "San Antonio Rose", "Back in Babies Arms Again" and a few I have never heard before all remind me of what a loss that plane crash that killed her and others really was.
Hope the weather is better for you that that here, and I hope we all get back to something a bit warmer and drier. And I hope TV weather forecasters get over their apparent glee about relating blizzard forecasts and weather compared to one more gray drizzly day with moderate wind and temperature.
***Stay tuned for more of fhis less than profound Information---- Doug Wiken
I suppose all are waiting with bated breath for an orderered list of some of Shopko's $5 pr $6 Christmas CDS. I have squandered some time and money on these. It became kind of an exercise.
Sort of goes like the following, but each CD has some strengths and weaknesses. Your mileage may vary. 1. Andy Williams---"Personal Christmas Collection", 2. John Denver--Rocky Mountain Christmas, 3. Country Christmas with 10 singers including Brooks and Dunn,Kenny Chesney, Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley and others including a comedy song or sorts "Merry Christmas from the Family" sung by Montgomery Gentry. 4. Frank Sinatra, "Christmas Songs by", 5 Johnny Cash--The Classic Christmas Album. This might be the most "joyous, happy" CD of the bunch. 6. Burl Ives "The best of Burl Ives Christmas Collection.. He has a few sort of affected voices, but mostly not bad and like previous easily understood. 7. Jingle All The Way--10 Holiday Classics with a real mix of styles from Bing Crosby to Nat King Cole with Beach Boys too. 8. Martina McBride "The Classic Christmas Album" Pretty much clear and understandable. 9 Barbra Streisand "A Christmas Album". Good singing, but maybe not the best selection of songs.10. Elvis Presley " It is Christmas Time". I just don't think his style mixes well with Christmas music. A couple are good, but otherwise a very mixed bag.
I suspect I have wasted enough of mine and your time on this, it became kind of an exercise. I know some people working in retail stores hate Christmas music because the have to listen to it over and over nearly solid all day and evening and day after day. There is a lot of duplication in songs over all the the CDs. My preference is for easily understood and without a lot of hokey or pretentious vocal styling.
Merry Christmas All. Not sure if we will put together a "card" or letter.
Because "South Dakota" has "south" in it does require our legislature to waste time on redneck, TEA Party nonsense. South Dakota has real issues that don't involve trying to establish dependent fetal tissue as a person qualifying on that basis for medical care whether the mother is a US citizen or an illegal alien.
Nor does the South Dakota legislature need to waste time on amendments to the US Constitution to "balance the budget". That nonsense was shot down this afternoon, but an unfortunately large number of legislators that it a good idea. The logic used in the session was interesting to say the least. The proponents of this legislation support it totally on the basis of fear that the US is headed for economic collapse and all kinds of other fearful consequences. Then same proponents in same speech whine that the federal government passes "unfunded mandates" that should be completely funded of course.
I am in favor of fair pay for legislators, but when they waste an unfortunate amount of time pushing southern redneck nonsense and economic mythology and ALEC self-serving deception, it is hard to see any justification for one red cent of additional pay.
***Stay tuned, at least the weather is promised to improve some. None too soon.-- Doug Wiken
A couple days ago I heard a doctor on CBS Morning or some such saying that females react to certain drugs differently than males. This after 20 years or so of doctors giving females a dose twice as large as appropriate, the FDA changes some dose recommendations.
And at the same time, we see Avera and Sanford advertising they will study patient DNA to determine appropriate medication. A first step that usually doesn't require complex advanced science might be just determining if your patient happens to be male or female.
*** Stay tuned and stay warm for a few more weeks--- Doug Wiken
OPINION:Governor Daugaard's opposition to SD accepting $45 million or so to make healthcare better for South Dakota's poor is absurd. His logic is instead pure ideological mythology BS. The program expansion in South Dakota should have happened months ago. Daugaard is not representing South Dakotans on this issue, he is playing puppet for the national wingnut retrogressive Republicans who oppose anything supported by President Obama and for the worst of irrelevant excuses.
BUT, South Dakota insurers, hospitals, clinics, etc. should be required to reduce charges to cash paying patients and clients and also for insurance providers, etc. There would be very significant reductions of hospitals stuck with patient bad debt, etc. If the benefits of expanding Medicare-Medicade in South Dakota is not monitored, the program will be an unmerited windfall for the medical and insurance industries.
The South Dakota legislature can do something to benefit all of us. They could also use this to try out the expanded powers of the SD Insurance Commission. Without any real enforcement powers for many years, it was another typical Republican program giving only the illusion it served some useful regulatory purpose.
In the usual corporate trash in the Rapid City Journal opinion page is a column by Charles Krauthammer that reaches new lows-- even for Krauthammer. In the Journal, it is titled "Why is Obama Kicking Canada around".
Krauthammer claims that the XL Pipeline is a settled matter and we are leaving Canada hanging humiliated, disrespected undeservedly and supremely. And Krauthammer rues Canada's lack of loud outrage (and I assume Krauthammer would also prefer Canada to be making really vicious attacks on Obama personally).
Krauthammer claims no environmental threats from the XL Pipeline. He claims the only reason for not approving XL is narrow partisan politics. We might wonder if the Republicans loud support for XL is not also narrow partisanship driven by huge contributions from the fossil fuel industries. Krauthammer claims unless XL is built, tar sands oil will go to China. He claims "thousands of jobs" will be lost because a "shovel-ready" project is not approved. This job claim has been admitted by Trans-Canada to have been grossly overestimated.
In short, Krauthammer is full of crude oil pollutants up to his ugly ears.
Trans-Canada has told Bloomberg news that the primary purpose of XL is to get crude oil out of the midwest in order to drive up gasoline and diesel prices 20 to 30 cents per gallon. The crude oil will end up as foreign oil exported from the Texas gulf coast.
And the environmental issues are actually not settled... or if settled, certainly not in the way liked by XL Pipeline supporters. Krauthammer mentions dangers of rail transportation of crude and the crashes and explosions recently in the news. The dangers may exist, but they can be eliminated or greatly reduced by tough government regulation of railroads.
While Krauthammer is shedding crocodile tears for Canada in his attemt to malign Obama, he neglects mentioning the many years Canada had high taxes on US goods in order to "protect Canada's infant industries"., Krauthammer also fails to note the Chinese government investment in tar sands oil and related oil systems.
Currently, oil produced from US domestic wells cannot be exported. The oil industry is lobbying to get that changed however. In the meantime, I assume the refiners can use Canadian tar sands crude and export it at will. So, Krauthammer's concern about China getting the oil is irrelevant. China will get the oil whether it leaves the Texas gulf ports or from the ports in the Canadian Pacific coast. Either way, the Tar Sands Crude is expensive to mine, separate from sand, and dilute with other chemicals to make it possible to pump it through pipelines. Those process are all environmentally dirty compared to oil from Bakken crude for example.
The XL Pipeline would also cross southern South Dakota near Ogalalla aquifer wells for Winner, SD, Colome, SD, Gregory, SD, and probably also for rural water systems. It also crosses several rivers and streams in South Dakota. With a 36-inch line moving crude with very high pressures, it would not take long to generate major dangerous pollution with crude oil and dangerous solvents entering SD waters.
Too many years ago when Wakonda High School and Irene High School were separate entities and basketball rivals and before the Irene-Wakonda School District, the Wakonda, SD, bus riders would serenade Irene, SD after ball games.
We would toss the bus windows down and sing "Irene, Good night Irene" with as much volume as we could muster whether or not the Irene Cardinals defeated the Wakonda Warriors or not. Folk music still wasn't much at that time, but it was a time when the 1953 very popular song was still remembered even if we weren't aware of the writer or the political relations related to him or even much about folk music. And we were certainly unaware of his fight with the House UnAmerican Activities committee.
[[[Note of Feb2,2014]]]: A friend who knows a lot more about music than I do reminded me that Pete Seeger did not write "Good Night Irene". It was actually written by Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter around 1933. The song became a big hit when The Weavers (including Pete Seeger) had a big hit with it in 1950. "Good Night, Irene" was on the music charts for 25 weeks.
Prairie Progressive found the story. I heard about the latest data on the imbalance of wealth in the world a week or two ago. Prairie Progressive found it.
This should suggest some changes in taxation might make sense. Also, some really, really high taxes on windfall income amounts over the US President's salary. But we should not hold our breath. The US Congress, Democrats and Republicans, have sold their rotten souls to the richest corporations and individuals and 99.9% of us are the worse off for it. The US Congress has reached the point of being despicable in fawning abeyance to the wishes very, very, very rich.
Weather has really turned. Temperature this morning was around 44F. Wind started blowing hard enough to shake this old house and in about five minutes temperature dropped 10F degrees down to around 32F. 10 minutes later, it was 29F. In the five hours since, wind has been blowing around 20mph and temperature is now 12F.
*** Stay tuned and keep warm even if you can't burn $100 bills to keep warm---Doug Wiken
NEWS; The frigid weather here convinced my wife to check on getting some propane, She quickly learned that the price had soared to something over $3.00 per gallon and they would not deliver any unless tank was down below 50 gallons. The tank was still about half full. When we filled it last December, I think it was around $1.60 per gallon plus or minus 30 cents or so. Anyway, the link below has some information on the surge in prices and the diminished supply.
Pipeline maintenance, pipeline flow reversals, extra crop drying load, etc. It appears only two actual propane sources for the midwest.
WEATHER: About time for the Rural Electric to get out their heating comparisons again. This will make electric heat look good especially if with a ground source heat pump. Maybe that will be a summer project. Temperature has warmed up today from negative 4 or 6 F degrees to around 20F. According to KELO forecast at 5:00PM, south winds should warm up the area over night. Winter seems like it has already lasted forever and we haven't had anything as dreadful as NE South Dakota and western Minnesota.
*** Stay tuned and keep your butt warm, seal the window cracks, buy some more insulation--- The winter is still young--- Doug Wiken.
OPINION; We buy a few jugs of cranberry juice a year. I also like "craisons" in breakfast oatmeal although plain old raisins, apple, and nuts improves the horse food too. Yesterday, I saw the Ocean Spray Cranberry juice on sale at Shopko at 2 for $6.00. I grabbed a couple and noticed the label had "New look, Same great Taste" in a yellow block. See the image below with an old 64oz bottle and an enlarged "newlabel", and the shrunken to 60oz bottle with the label. Click on image for a larger view.
The goblet contains four ounces of cranberry juice. It is about 1/15 of the 60oz bottle or at $3.00 for the bottle, the equivalent of about 20 cents of juice. I guess for every fifteen of the new bottles, they sell the equivalent of one more bottle at zero cost. I expect this kind of misleading packaging from Kraft and ice cream makers, but Ocean Spray is an agricultural cooperative. It was a bit of a surprise. I seriously doubt they were deluged with demands from consumers for new shrunken containers.
Incidentally, if you know where it is possible to purchase a few more goblets like that in the photo, please let me know.
*** Stay tuned even if the mere mention of cranberry only reminds you of two yokels standing in water up to their waists--- 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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