South Dakota War College

Another weekend, another trip to Brookings. I got in at a decent time last night, and actually had some time to spend with the wife and kids before I fell asleep on the couch. I'm probably going to hang out here at home this weekend, since the college kids are coming back, and you won't be able to get to Wal-Mart or HyVee for a week or two. Interesting stuff happening here in Brookings on the Lowe's measure by the local city commission. If you're not familiar with it, the Brookings City Commission voted to spend a boatload of money (millions) in incentives to bring Lowe's to town. There's a lot of people in favor of it (econ development types), and lots (competing businesses) against it. I'm not sure myself why Lowe's is worth all the money they're going to spend on it - it's not like they're bringing another 3M or Larson Manufacturing to town. (I'd prefer Menards myself). I don't profess to know enough about the issue to say "y...

I must chime in and agree with the rest of the SD BlogOSphere, in commenting what a remarkable job the Congressional Delegation and the Governor did in saving Ellsworth Air Force Base. I watched it on the computer this morning, and you could tell when it came time to vote, that sucker sure seemed to be a slam dunk at that point. To the Governor, Senator's Thune and Johnson, and Congresswoman Herseth: Not Bad. Not bad at all.

I think I've got what I was looking for on my 200th post. One of my friends who has been in the news lately agreed to do a "10 questions with" for me (as I still wait for the other one hanging ut there). I just sent the questions off to him tonight, and as always, it should be topical, interesting, informative, and it's intended to hit on a couple things that the MSM might not have probed when they interviewed him this past week. I have another one after that I'm already working on. All I need to do is to see if they'll agree to do it. But I'm also finding myself noticing I've been rather sexist on the 10q's up to now, so whatever I do after that, I should try to do one involving a political/public figure of the opposite gender. Stay tuned.

Because the red ones actually DO melt in your hand... Oh, the other MM. (That's been happening a bit lately.) I had promised to clarify my opposition to the Medical Marijuana Ballot Initiative that Bob Newland had stated his case for a few posts back in the last "10 questions with" edition. And to be true to my word, here's 5 quick reasons why the SD War College is dead set against the Medical Marijuana Ballot initiative . #1 Marijuana is illegal. To state it simply; It is not legal in a house. It is not legal with a mouse. It is not legal in a boat. It is not legal with a goat. (You get the point.) It is my strongest belief that the movement to legalize it for self-administered medical use will open the flood gates for a more relaxed attitude towards casual use, and a more widespread use of the drug illegally in society. We can barely keep it away from kids now while it's completely illegal. Making it partially legal is not going to help that any. #2 Selling or...

Clearly, we're in the doldrums of waiting for a political season to start. Yes, I know it was first starting to get weird when I offered that I thought the DEM self-labeled animal activist staffer could possibly have a problem relating to a group like the stockgrowers. Which quickly proceeded downhill into beef bucks and tamales . Now, the back and forth is beginning with Sibby initmating in jest that some of the Dem bloggers should prepare to commit seppuku , since we may get Ellsworth removed from the base closure list. And in turn, Thune Watch is demanding that Sibby apologize for suggesting so, because it was "wholly inappropriate" and "completely insensitive and trivializes the tragedy of suicide." Can't we all just get along like our elected officials ? No? OK. Never mind.

I'm going to try this a day or so early, so people can wish people on this list a happy birthday (at least the ones still alive). August 26th brings us a several legislative birthdays: Craig, William D. 8-26-1849 Schultz, Peter H. 8-26-1869 McGinity, I. J. 8-26-1876 Fowler, Carl 8-26-1884 Cundill, Frank 8-26-1887 Bierwagen, M. E. 8-26-1898 Gilbertson, Marvin T. 8-26-1906 Johnson, Roy M. 8-26-1908 Tubbs, W. A. 'Bill' 8-26-1912 Haley, Patrick E. 'Pat' 8-26-1949 Deadrick, Thomas J. 8-26-1952 And you can click on their names for some info on when and how they served. (Courtesy of the LRC.) For some some reason, Bill Tubbs always called me "Haps." Those of you familiar with my true identity will find this as odd as I always did. Despite that, I always thouht he was a decent guy. Bill passed aw...

Remarkably, there was a mention of Koffing today in the Rapid City Journal . You know, the noxious gas pokemon. Apparently he's leading the state liquor tax effort. Don't know Koffing? According to Wikipedia : Koffing resembles a purple floating sphere with large pores over its surface that release poisonous gas. It has two eyes, a vacant, blissful expression and a skull and crossbones pattern (a universal symbol for poison ) on its front. Koffing's thin, filmy, slightly transparent body stores a collection of highly toxic gases that swirl in its insides. Koffing concocts its internal gases and increases their toxicity by mixing raw garbage , setting off complex chemical reactions whose rate and products are proportional to the area temperature. If the temperature rises too high, however, there is a chance that the pressure exercised by the gases on Koffing's body will become too great, causing it to expand and finally explode. All of this leads on...

I've been sitting on this 10 Q for a while, as I have one ahead of it that's very timely, but the person who has it has not had a chance to get it to me yet (they're busy with a project that's in the news). But, really, this one is equally as good and informative. So, how does a conservative Republican like myself write an introduction for Libertarian party member and Medical Marijuana spokesperson Bob Newland? I'm not sure. What is the phrase thrown about by Evangelical Christians? "Loving the sinner, but not the sin?" I fully support Bob's right to his opinion, and I will defend his right to free speech. But, by the same token, I'm against the MM measure, myself. And at some point down the line, I'll detail why. But giving credit where credit is due, Bob's an intelligent and articulate guy. He's been around the political scene for many years as a Libertarian candidate, and to his credit has long carried the banner for that party in So...

I note that there have been comments in the SDBlogOSphere today about the Rev. Pat Robertson. You know, the former 1988 Presidential candidate who is now saying we should assassinate the leader of Venezuela . Despite my disagreement with the rest of his position on other Republicans, I have to concur with CCK . Pat Robertson is clearly off of his rocker. And people like that do not do the Republican Party any good. In fact, I find him repugnant. I consider myself a Republican with conservative views on government and society. And I'm very active in campaigns and politics. When I'm working in a campaign, my job is to convince the 60% of voters who sit on the great and vast fence to go my way, as opposed to the way of another candidate. And when I and others in my position are trying to use logic and reason to convince voters, then this guy comes along and says we should kill foreign presidents. Before someone else points it out, yes, I'm aware of his other sins. Lets all a...

As a Stanley Kubrick fan (although, I never understood Eyes Wide Shut) I always love 2001: A Space Odyssey. My favorite part is when the monkeys are around the mysterious black monolith and they are touched by a spark of intelligence, which evolves them, enabling them to kick some major pre-human monkey butt. Darwinism/Intelligent design argument on South Dakota Lawyer aside, what got me thinking of all of this is looking at the success of the efforts of Bill Napoli's group in collecting the signatures for the STOP2006 petitions. I've noted a couple of times that much like the MAINstream Moderate Group , there had been a group of conservative Republicans who had bonded together. And it only lasted a few months before it fizzled out. But now we have STOP2006, a new effort rising from the political gene pool, which seems to be kicking some butt in the signature collection department. Right off, they are more active than the prior conservative group. I get e-mail updates from the...

While I was in transit around the state last week, the Pennington County Commission snuck a petition filing into the Secretary of State's office. So, what's it about? Many, many months back, I had been a finalist for a position with State County Commission organization, and it was specifically noted that they were looking at having the state organization bring forth a ballot measure dealing with a tax on alcoholic beverages for additional revenue dedicated to the counties. So why is it being brought forth as a measure by a single county? In the Rapid City Journal article, County Proposes New Tax on Liquor the commission explained why they couldn't wait for the State Association of County Commissioners: The commission tried to get an initiated measure on the ballot last year that would have imposed a nickel-per-drink tax, but the effort died in March, primarily because commissioners didn't believe there was enough time to circulate petitions for an early May deadline fo...

Interesting article saturday in the Aberdeen American News : Says state's politicians work with each other, not against Washington politicians could stand to act more like South Dakotans. That was one of the conclusions from Rep. Stephanie Herseth's Friday lunchtime visit with the Aberdeen Area Chamber of Commerce's Government Affairs Committee at the Ramada Inn. While South Dakotans are able to work together well despite differences, that's not always the case on Capitol Hill, Herseth said. In reflecting on her still young career, Herseth said she was struck by how much divisiveness there was in Washington when she got there after winning a special election in June 2004. With the general election approaching, tension was high between the parties, Herseth said. That was especially true in the House. So much so, Herseth said, that some lawmakers wouldn't talk to peers who weren't in the same party. With 2005 not being an election year, things have been bet...

My site statistics are telling me that people are spending sometimes over 100 minutes at a time on my blog. Unfortunately, they're probably waiting for things to load. Sorry about that. I've noticed it, Corey Vilhauer pointed it out, and others have brought it up. To help reduce load times, I've changed to archiving weekly instead of monthly, and I've reduced the active RSS feed listing to about 30 from 50. It should help a little. The RSS feed feature is popular, but at the same time, it can be a drag on the system. I did finish the template tonight. And I think it's really slick. the only thing I've got left to do to make it live is to find some permanent image/file hosting. It's "temporarily parked" at the moment. I've reduced some of the text size, so I can squeeze it across 3 columns, and fit more links. I have scrolling pictures of South Dakota political notables that I can change at will. (I even have a photo of Todd Epp up in the test s...

My wife, (MP) and I got into a discussion the other day about official (and not so official) campaign photographs. She was noticing that a friend of mine has a campaign photo that's getting a little dated. It's not that it's bad, but the hair doesn't look "correct," and the suit is looking out of style. It's not that he'a bad dresser, but you would think that from the photo. I was looking at photos for another political figure for the new blog design I'm working on, and I noticed a different politician's current publicity photo was clearly taken in about 1988. He has much, much less hair now. I hope the suit (and tie) he was wearing in the photo have now been burned by his spouse. For some odd reason, many politicians seem to be trying to hold on to their youth through campaign photographs. Despite the fact that you might see a publicity photo for an event, and when you show up, you wonder "Who is that? That's not the person in the...

I went to bed about 11:30, but I'm back up because I couldn't just let it sit until the morning. I've got a new toy. Or at least a new template. I'm busy building the next incarnation of the South Dakota War College blog. What don't I like about the current incarnation? It's bordering on cluttered because of all the stuff I'm trying to do. I also noticed a little drop in loading speed lately. I need the links. I need the RSS feeds. Oh yeah, that place for the commentary is pretty important too. It's like my desk. Everything on it is important, I just need to organize the piles from time to time. I'm looking for something just a little more stylish as well. CCK had a makeover a while back. So did PIADW . Now I'm looking to get away from using the same template held by the several thousand lighthouse enthusiast blogs. Yes, it's a lighthouse. I'm the frickin' War College, and I have a lighthouse on my page. So, it's got to go....