SDPB-TV has been running the 7-part story of the Roosevelts..Theodore, Franklin and their kin and cohorts. It has been fascinating. It also seems to be an incredible contrast to the greedy short-sighted Congress Critters we put up with now.
The nearly 14 hours in this set has been (as my wife said) very entertaining important information. The series and the related book should be in every SD library and every SD school. It might provide a bit of inspiration to many...even those so propaganized by GOP humbug in South Dakota since Theodore Roosevelt stopped roaming the plains.
I have a political science degree with a minor in history and know a bit about what the Roosevelts did for the country, but I learned much from this show. We still owe a great deal to the family whether or not we are aware of what they did and even if they were also deeply flawed humans in more than a few ways.
I have never understood the hatred of the Roosevelts that has now and then been evident in South Dakota even from some whose families and lives were literally saved by FDR and his programs.
Will "Susan" and a "Susan variation" combination make for a winning Democratic gubernatorial campaign in SD? I don't really know, but the backward thinking of Republican Dennis Daugaard may make him particularly vulnerable to attacks by an accountant and a nurse.
Well, I hope the Susan Wismer-Suzy Blake combination can campaign like tornadoes ripping up the GOP mythology, but right now, this two-woman combination appears to be the furthest thing from a successful strategy.
Of course, the type of press coverage of this combo may make a lot of difference. And, will more women vote for them because it is a female team, or will more men vote against them because it is a female team? Or will SD perverse Republican tendencies and lazy Democrats make a Daugaard victory inevitable?
A nurse can be the attack dog on Daugaard's denial of "Obamacare" expansion in South Dakota and consequent loss of $45 million in health and economic impact on SD can both be territory for a medical specialist and an accountant. Do the numbers, do the damage assessment. Raise hell.
Democrats will continue to loose elections in South Dakota if they fail to perform the education function of a political party. Democrats who think "Republican meek" is a winning strategy destroy current prospects for the SD Democratic Party and insure its future complete demise in South Dakota. Make the real case for real Democratic policies, and real voters will come. Build it.
*** Stay tuned for more in the exciting tale of Susan and Suzy on the campaign trail..but remember I have an affinity for "Susan". Wife and I named our daughter Susan--- Doug Wiken
The Mitchell Daily Republic today had a story on advanced Lyme Disease which was scary. More on that later.
There was also an interesting comment on candidate Rounds in the somewhat silly "Hisses and Cheers" editorial. The "hiss" for Rounds involved Rounds inane silly claim that he would try to eliminate the US Department of Education when SD is third on the list of beneficiaries and eliminating such funding would be a disaster for SD finances and education. At least somebody besides bloggers is finally noticing and noting this problem with Rounds "common sense".
Below is the part of Hisses and Cheers critical of Rounds:
HISSES to former governor and current U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rounds for repeating, during his Friday night visit to Mitchell, his earlier call to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. The same day we printed his comments about that, we also printed a separate story revealing that South Dakota is third-most dependent among all states on federal government aid for K-12 education, receiving 16.4 percent of its K-12 budget from the feds. A man who governed a state so dependent on federal education money lacks the credibility to claim the federal government should have no role in K-12 education. Change and improve the Department of Education? Fine. But calls to abolish it strike us as unrealistic political pandering.
The story on advanced Lyme disease is scary for several reasons. It indicated the serious physical and emotional damage and pain a bite from a deer tick can generate. It also indicated that the arrogance of doctors who just know there can't be deer ticks in eastern South Dakota (even if there are deer all over) and thus an ailment can't be Lyme disease even if tests show it is. If no doctor believes such a test is valid, it is unlikely Lyme disease would ever be a diagnosis. Sort of self-fulfilling proof of absence even when the disease would be the correct diagnosis.
It is hard to read that story and not believe that a number of doctors should be sued for malpractice and dmages, but then I am neither a doctor nor a lawyer and don't even play either on TV. Source at MDR Note, this will turn into a dead link in a few days. Worth reading while it is available.
Right now, the Opinion pages of the MDR are unavailable. I will check tomorrow to see if a link to the comment is available. Here is CDC page on Lyme Disease.
*** Stay tuned and beware the ticks and mosquitoes,,,and political weasels--Doug Wiken
Coming up soon (May 15, 2014) will be an FCC hearing on "Net Neutrality" or perhaps "Net Utility". Bill Moyers had an interesting show. You can find the transcript of that. Worth reading or if you prefer the video, that is also available.
If the richest media corporations control the internet, it will be the equivalent of the days of the manufacturing robber barons, the railroads before regulation, the electric utilities before the REA, the telephone monopoly before RTA and breakup of Bell System...one provider with no competition and often inept regulation.
The corporate shills in the FCC want to claim it is not a utility that should be regulated, but some other kind of whatever that will have slow and fast lines, stop lines, go lines, toll blocks, etc. all designed to regulate what can and cannot be said on the internet or even seen because of corporate information blocks. This would be the equivalent of China or Iran censorship of the internet, but with huge corporations taking the place of the communist central committee or the Grand High Mullahs or whatever.
Howard Dean of Democracy for America is of course hammering on this as well and also trying to use it to raise funds for DFA which I guess is perhaps not a bad idea, but he has a few choice phrases worth repeating here anyway. The full text is below, but the gist of his idea is "The FCC's ... focus should be on pursuing regulations that strengthen Net Neutrality, rather than on helping the big corporations undermine it."
When I ran for president, a free and open Internet made the impossible possible.
Grassroots supporters self-organized on the relatively new "Internet" and catapulted my candidacy into the national spotlight. Volunteers, bloggers, and small donors connected through the Internet, and very nearly pulled off one of the biggest upsets in presidential campaign history -- which became the genesis for the founding of Democracy for America in 2004.
That was only the beginning. In the 10 years since, we have seen people use the Internet to create extraordinary, revolutionary change here in the United States and around the world. We elected Barack Obama president. Protesters in Tahrir Square in Egypt and the Maidan in Ukraine used a free and open Internet to overthrow oppressive regimes. They did not have to pay extra to use the bandwidth that carried the messages and videos that changed the world.
The Federal Communications Commission is now proposing to undermine the rules of the Internet that made all this possible. On May 15, the FCC is going to consider a proposal that would destroy Net Neutrality and allow the big telecoms to charge extra for carrying content. Taken to an extreme, their actions could result in political bloggers, news outlets, and even organizations like DFA being silenced because the powers that be don't like our message -- or because we can't pay their sky-high rates.
I am committed -- as are 63,709 Americans who have signed DFA's petition -- to Net Neutrality policies that preserve a free and open Internet. No matter what happens at the May 15 meeting, we are going to go on offense over the coming weeks to influence the FCC and Congress to adopt strong Net Neutrality rules -- and we can't do it without you.
Here's why this matters. The participatory, inclusive nature of the Internet, particularly social networks, has enabled First Globals (also known as the Millennial generation) to make their voices heard on a larger scale. They connect across geographic, socio-economic, religious, and ethnic barriers, in many cases becoming more empathetic and more likely to act.
This phenomenon is reinforced by First Globals' parents, who, having lived through the tumultuous 1960's and 70's, encourage their First Global children to stand up for what they believe in and show them respect for doing so, thus imbuing them with a sense of responsibility and ambition to do good.
Together, across the generations, people are using a free and open Internet to overcome the barriers created by large corporations and oppressive regimes. The FCC's job ought to be helping that work continue. Their focus should be on pursuing regulations that strengthen Net Neutrality, rather than help the big corporations undermine it.
It appears that the so-called mainstream media views the shutdown mess in Washington, DC, as one or more of these: 1. A Staring Contest, 2. Ideological crusade, and who knows what else. It should have more prosaic analogies. It is not a TEA PARTY crusade, it is a suicidal TEA PARTY Jihad. It is not a matter of who can stare the longest, it is a childish pissing or farting contest that sullies the dignity and integrity of the United States of America and dirties us all..
This isn't a matter of "because it is my ball", this is more like "It is your ball, so I am going to destroy it." Giving Obama an ultimatum to compromise on the uncompromisable or else may have seemed like a wonderful bargaining ploy, but likely was more likely just a miserable nasty bit of gamesmanship aiming at the equivalent of dumping the chessboard or blowing up the political arena. The TEA party GOP is cutting off its nose to spite reality.
The TEA PARTY absolute mythology or else is a foreign tactic and ideology that has no real place or useful function in a working democracy. It is alien anomaly to generations of our political culture and history.. It is a political cancer.
*** Stay tuned and I hope you and I don't need federal assistance in the near future--- Doug Wiken
Americans are rightly a bit suspicious of Obama's pleading for war on Syria. All of us no matter what political orientation have reason to be very suspicious and locked into wanting real proof and independent verification. LBJ produced a fraudulent reason for war in Vietnam with the Tonken Bay resolution. Reagan invaded Granada of all places for little or no reason. One of the Bushes took us into Panama. And then there was Junior Bush taking us into war in Iraq after putting Colin Powell in front of the world with fraudulent irrelevant "evidence". And we now have continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which seem to have accomplished only making Americans hated by more people in more parts of the world.
Our military boondoggles and the incredible military waste and deficits going with them make a good case for modern isolationism. Military spending is doubly bad for the economy. It takes money out of the economy to produce goods we cannot purchase thus increasing inflation and preventing better options. It can be hazardous to our social, political, scientific, technological, physical and economic health.
Perhaps we will at some time be shown there are a dozen smoking guns that can remove all doubt about the wisdom of Obama's militarism, but it also seems that Bashar al-Assad held his own in an hour long interview by Charlie Rose. Rose seemed to me to edge into the area of being just plain obnoxious in presenting assertions as proven facts, but al-Assad stayed cool and also on script.
In any case, the treaties on use of poison gas are an international responsibility to enforce. This is not something the US is obligated to or should act on unilaterally and be justified only on general humanitarian ground and specious argument and evidence.
Perhaps all Islamic countries are so enmeshed in religious lunacy that completely senseless behavior can be explained even if counterproductive; but, it does not seem rational for the Bashar al-Assad regime to use of chemical weapons. Any use of chemical warfare seems rationally as being only counter productive to the goals of the regime. On the other hand, it seems entirely rational that rebels or terrorists opposing Basha al-Assad might use such weapons to discredit the regime and gain support from other powers which might otherwise find them as repulsive, retrograde, backward murderous fanatics. .But, the whole middle east seems at least partly insane to me and the last thing we might be able to actually expect from the region is rationality from any side of any issue there. Assertions by any side there should be viewed with our deep and continuing suspicion. We also might want to consider the arguments of climate scientists that global warming generates the droughts and poverty driven unrest that leads to rebellion and government incompetence in handling legitimate complaints aggravates the problem and adds fire to the rebels or terrorists..
Before the US spends one more dime on dumping weaponry into desert sand, we should be aggressively pursuing development of conservation, wind, solar, and hydropower and development of Thorium nuclear power systems. Couple wind and solar energy with devices such as reverse energy cells to produce conventional fuels without adding more carbon to our atmosphere and environment. The goal should be complete independence of the US from fossil fuels in any Islamic country on any continent at any time for any reason...
Pull all of our embassies out of every Islamic country and completely sever economic and social connections with all of them. They only take our money and then hate us as it is and more futile wars with us on any side of one or another religious sects will only make deeper and more dangerous the hate of all of them in every retrograde sect.
Our entry into previous mideast wars and in other backward areas have produced few positive benefits to the US National or Domestic interest and in fact generated almost nothing but negative consequences for us. It is time we realized that every time an Islamicist kills another Islamicist, the US benefits indirectly. It is not in our interest to stop the killing and it is also not in our interest to engage in the killing ourselves and it is certainly not in our interest to lose more American lives in pursuit of placating religious fantasy.
The new reality must be that we have nothing to gain by dealing with those separated from reality by religious insanity.
*** Stay tuned, but do your own research on alternate energy and do your part for pushing the US to a sensible US international policy by more rational domestic policy -- Doug Wiken
This week, The Winner Advocate had a long story on Gordon Horgen. And yesterday, Thursday September 5, 2013 was Gordon Horgen Day in South Dakota. It took me awhile to find the Governor's Executive Proclamations at the South Dakota Secretary of State website. Below is a link to the PDF file:.Gordon Horgen taught science classes at Winner High School starting in 1961 until he retired just a few years ago. That was not mentioned in the proclamation.
I talked to Gordon's wife of 47 years, Joyce, last night and she asked me to visit Gordon at the Winner Regional Health Care Long-term Care facility.. I stopped in for a few minutes today. Sadly, Gordon is suffering from a form of dementia and while he recognized me, a short onversation today was a bit disjointed. See my previous post here on Alzheimer's Disease, Normal Hdrocephalic Pressure, etc. There is information there on Lewy Body Dementia and at the link below:
Our two children both learned a lot of high school chemistry in Gordon Horgen's classes at Winner High School. Thanks to Governor Daugaard for recognizing Gordon Horgen's contributions to education and the Winner community.
Visiting a nursing home is a jolting reminder that we might want to be spending more money on medical research and forget about dumping $billions into interminable religious wars in the Middle East. Sarin gas, Tomahawk missiiles, armed drones, and bombers are not needed to generate ssufficient misery as it is.
*** Stay tuned for news that is more good news and less bad news--- Doug Wiken
If you have been watching Sioux Falls television in the last week, be prepared for another two weeks of BS about our wonderful Senator Thune from the American Chemical Counsel. Just in case you missed the pollution of the air and airwaves ad, you can view Thune's wonderfulness in the eyes of cousins of the fossil fuels industry at link below:
You will notice that they laud him for his fictional hard work instead of his never-ending empty blather on behalf of his fellow retrograde Republicans in Congress. They also claim he is excited and thrilled to help small businesses and making sure that less government means more jobs (an impossible task incidentally).
If you have actually paid any attention to the congressional retrograde Republicans in their continuing attempt to make sure apparently that President Obama doesn't get a third term, you will know that small business and jobs are actually about the last things on their minds. Sen. Mitch McConnell, nutcase from the South, said the GOP first priority should be making certain Obama had only one term. See some video of the kind of thinking that has hampered job recovery and economic recovery for going on six years now below. The GOP hasn't given up yet on keeping Obama out of the White House by trying to rerun the Hoover campaign ideas..
John Thune has figuratively marched down the aisle with Mitch on his arm. Thune is about as interested in small business as were Henry Ford and the Rockefeller monopolists. Thune is about as interested in the environment and science as the Bible Beaters in the Scopes trial.were.
So, if you are going to break down and call Sen. Thune at 1-202-224-3121 as a result of the chemistry industry propaganda, let him know you are not amused by this double talk from the representative of polluted rivers, busted pipelines, hazy skies, wild fracking chemicals, drugs with more deadly side-effects than remedy and all the other threats to our and your children's health and safety.
Thune, like the rest of his smiling Republican co-conspirators could give a tinker's damn about we little people out here in the boondocks or our economic health and prosperity. He and They are interested only in spewing the already discredited GOP economic mythology as a campaign tactic. By now even somebody with an irrelevant Bible education like Thune has to know better.
Perhaps we can start running TV ads urging people to call Thune's bluff, bluster and buffoonery. Anybody with enough money to see if KELO wants more business?
*** Stay tuned. The political season has not re-started yet because it never ends with the Republicans and their big money supporters--- Doug Wiken
AMERICAN SCIENCE in the Sept-Oct 2013 issue pages 352 to 359 is an article titled "Lifelong Impact of Early Self-Control. subtitled Childhood self-discipline predicts adult qualtity of life. This is based on a set of long-term studies and the implications are great for education and educators, parents, legislators, and taxpayers. I realize that sounds almost too good to be true and an awful lot like snake oil and I urge you if you are in any of the categories that you read the whole article and not just my attempt to summarize.
The authors Terrie E. Moffitt, Ricie Poulton, and Avsalom Caspi start off with what seems to be an assertion but is followed with lots of data.
"The capacity for self-control over our thoughts and actions is a fundamental human faculty. But the inability to make use of that capacity can our greatest personal failure especially in today's fast-paced, fast-food world of endliess possiblility, distraction, and temptation...."
The studies used include a study of differences in outcomes for twins when one showed self-control early and the other did not is part of their cohort of studies. Another involves outcomes of Head Start students. A third is a longitudinal study about 1000 New Zealanders studied at intervals of one to three years for nearly forty years. This is the Dunedin Study.
I can't put all of that data and information in here, but a perhaps too simple or sweeping condensation of that information leads to several important conclusions.
To their own surprise, the 40-year study of 1000 students showed that early self-control was as signficicant or more significant in results of accomplishment and success than high or low intelligence, richness or poorness, with results correlating with levels of self-control. The data indicates that children with early lack of self-control grew up to be adults with more financial problems and difficulties. Also shown was that 80% of those convicted of criminal offenses came from the cohort's two lowest quintiles of childhood self-control. Overall, those with lower self-control also appear to be the least skilled in parenting ability. This implies that a child's low self-control can cause disadvantages for the next generation.
We can be suspicious of data which seems to show so much but these studies seem to isolate self-control from other variables. The twins study was important in this.
Without detailing more of the data, the following may be the more important aspects for teachers and lawmakers. Self-control can be influenced by classroom instruction aimed at producing it in young children and the benfits carry into adulthood Teens and adults can also improve self-control. Innovative policies putting more emphasis on self-control can have signficant impact on a whole panoply of costs in areas of crime control, social welfare, and education. This increased effort in areas of self-control might lessen the need for restrictive laws that put penalties on failure to exercise self-control such as banning smoking in public places, seatbelts and helmet laws, etc. While the authors do not make this statement, it seems that it is far more rational for society to improve early childhood education than to spend more and more money on courts, prisons, and punishment.
Demographic changes make such programs to increase self-control even more important. With a combinatin of fewer children and older populations, the self-control abilities of all ages becomes more and more important.
I hope you will take time to find this magazine and read the full article since my summary here does not do full justice to the quality of the studies, the article or to the implications.
*** Stay tuned and be glad that Marian McPartland lived until she was 95. May the "jazz pianist" rest in peace. My wife and I saw her in a free performance at Rochester, NY over 40 years ago. We did not realize her contributions at the time, but we sure enjoyed the concert and years of radio at SDPB-Radio--- 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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