South Dakota War College

Not that anyone in Pierre should be nervous when those things come out of my mouth, but this afternoon, I'm not talking about the town of my youth where I usually cause trouble with things on the ballot. Today, I'm in Brookings with the family. I was out mowing the lawn with the new (used) mower, where a piece of crumpled paper was found on my lawn. What was it? A flyer for the anti-Lowe's-subsidy people. If you recall, the City of Brookings is providing Lowe's a huge incentive package to locate in Brookings, as opposed to another area. And some people don't really like it. Check out http://www.brookingsclearchoice.com where they've done a just "ok" job of laying out their argument. I would have done it differently. Some of the best arguments in support of their position are buried in the website as opposed to being the primary focus. I suspect that it's because of the homegrown nature of the effort. I don't know that they have anyone with...

Light posting this weekend. I'm on my way to Brookings to spend time with the fam. I have a birthday boy who turns 4 on Sunday. I need a weekend with 'the fam.' As I get home to be on my way after gassing up, I got a rejection letter for a job that I really wanted. And I thought it was my best interview ever. Rats. I'll have a post on something this weekend. I might tell the story of my son's birth on 9/11 - (yes, That 9/11) it's actually pretty compelling.

If you recall the GOP meeting originally scheduled for this weekend.. You know, the meeting that I was going on about most of last week regarding the effort to gut the party convention. That rescheduled meeting now has a time and date - Saturday, 1 p.m., on October 1st here in Pierre. No location was set in the letter what went out from Max Wetx, State GOP Director, but it's safe to assume it's the Ramkota or Kings Inn. As soon as I know, I'll post it. The upside of the date change is that now the issue of cutting nearly 1500 potential delegates out of the convention process has some more time for discussion. The downside of the date change? That's the exact same day as the South Dakota Federation of Republican Women's board meeting in Custer. The same Republican Women whose guaranteed representation at convention of 954 will drop approximately 86.4% to 130 spots guaranteed for women. Stay tuned to see if the meeting is reschduled once again.

Check out this great story on Yahoo News from the Associated Press about businesses getting 9/11 disaster recovery loans that... Well, some are saying that they may have been a bit removed from the situation, and not quite so affected as others. A South Dakota Radio Station was highlighted as one of the loans that the media is seriously calling into question. From the AP Article: Karl Grimmelmann, general manager of KBFS-AM "Hit Kickin' Country" in Belle Fourche, S.D., borrowed $135,000 from SBA's disaster program after learning about it from a news release. He said his station was forced to pay more money to cover national news and also lost advertisers. "Everybody started holding onto their money, plain and simple," he said.

As much as it galls me, Hat Tip to KELO for noting the Sioux Falls Hurricaine Katrina Relief Coordination weblog . I've added them to my RSS feeds. That's Katrina Relief, not the goofs who live in "KELO land." Where is KELO land, anyway? Is that somewhere near Loompa Land? "Wavy" aside, Thank god for KSFY . Speaking of feeds, I'm still struggling with the RSS feeds for black marks on wood pulp , one of the best SD Blogs out there, ever since they upgraded to the latest version of word press. RadioActive Chief , another excellent blog is also suffering from similar RSS problems for me. So, give them some love.

I had word in the last couple of days that I might actually get my two long overdue 10 questions sent in. I'm looking for them sometime next week, and despite being a little tardy, they are both timely, and should be pretty good. I also was speaking with another colleague who is considering offering me chapters of his master's thesis on South Dakota campaign advertising. I'm hoping we can make this deal work, because they should make for fascinating reading. In his research process, he had to go to one of the university archives in OK or AZ (I forget which) for political commercials to get data - and he had the opportunity to review South Dakota political ads going back several years. In the meantime, for true students of the craft check out the PBS reference " The :30 Second candidate ." Better yet, check out this on-line link page for political advertising and commercials from the University of Iowa .

When I do campaign photography, it's not an exaggeration when I say I that for every 100 photos I take, I might find six or seven that I like. If there aren't any, or one that's just on the cusp of being good, I sometimes have to make my own. What tools should you use for high end photo editing? You could spend $559 on Adobe Photoshop CS2 . Or you could get Photoshop Elements (about $59 at Amazon.com ). My choice? Paint Shop Pro, which should give you all the layering tools that allow you to perform these easy edits in a $89 package with just about everything that the full version of Photoshop has. Anyway, for our example, what I envisioned is that I needed to find a decent campaign photo and make it better. So, after going on the hunt, I found the perfect example in this campaign photo from Attorney General Larry Long's 2004 campaign. (Now, don't take this as my saying I don't like the photo. I would be happy to use it in any campaign material as is.) This p...

A couple weeks back I tried to start a contest. Which went nowhere, because nobody entered. So, I'm starting a new one to use some of my evening time. Why am I trying to occupy my time? I think it could be a symptom of being in Pierre, while the rest of the family is in Brookings. It is really the pits, and I miss yelling at my kids to quit fighting with each other. Actually, I miss them and my better half terribly. As of yesterday, I dodged having to deal with the GOP bylaw change for a while. And it also looks like I'm off the hook on another city referral at the moment. So, how can I exercise my skills? I was faced with a quandry, and then I re-read my hot/not post from last night, and I struck on a really novel idea. And I smiled a gleeful, but mischevous smile. As you can probably tell, I really don't care for Larry Weiss as a city commissioner. I'm sure he's personally a decent person, but as a city commissioner, I think he's terrible. During this years...

Any of this discussion is meant to be applicable for a week's time. And like any other activity in politics, consider it all stale in about a week. And let it fade from your memory. Just like Jello with cool whip, a refreshing and fluffy look at what's going on around the state. Taking this week's temperature - What's hot on September 7th? Hot City of Pierre rejecting tax & fee increases tonight until studies can be completed on areas that can be cut. Way to go Commissioners Glodt, Gill & Schwellenbach. Not Sorry, but big thumbs down for the Mayor and Commissioner Larry Weiss who were set to tax before they considered cutting spending. (Hint: try it the other way around. It sticks in the voter's craw a lot less.) For those wanting to start a career in politics, Commissioner Weiss is up for election this next spring. Just tell me who to make the campaign contribution out to. Hot GOP smartly takes a step back from changing the bylaws for a moment, allowin...

I've asked him about the whole "the ditty bops" thing before, and he talks about them from time to time on his blog. But in one of his most recent posts , the Holabird Advocate talks about a recent sojurne to Texas to see the Ditty Bops open for Tori Amos. So, I break down and take some time to actually listen them. And I have to confess, from poking around on their website, I do like the music. Its realy good. To me, it sounds like stripped down acoustic rock melded with bluegrass music. Darn you Jerry. I'm getting hooked on this stuff. Now I have to buy it. (just kidding. Thanks for promoting this group in SD. They're good enough to really go places.)

As reported in Celeste Calvitto's column in the Rapid City Journal , the MAINstream Coalition is set to meet in Sioux Falls on 9/14 in an informational meeting similar to one already held in Rapid City. If you recall the column from a while back, Linda Viken and Judy Olson Duhamel gushed all over them. And Judy recently tooted about the coalition a couple days ago in the SDDP " Blue Note blog ". Getting back to the RCJ article, Celeste interviewed Republican State Senator Ed Olson for an updated status of the group, and had this to say: Olson serves as executive director of the organization. The other founders are Republican Sens. Stan Adelstein, Royal "Mac" McCracken and J.P. Duniphan, all of Rapid City, Sen. Duane Sutton of Aberdeen, and Sens. Tom Dempster and Dave Knudson, Sioux Falls. Adelstein is underwriting Olson's salary and the start-up costs of the group. Olson said that after a board is in place, "the senators will disappear." He is l...

A couple of updates over the lunch hour: Hot off the press, apparently the SDGOP is postponing it's central committee meeting in Huron on Saturday. The report I was given was they there was a concern that the meeting notice might not have been adequate, and that the meeting was going to be postponed until the end of September or shortly thereafter. Delaying it isn't bad. Good job to the party leaders for allowing more time for discussion. And I do know that those people (like me) who are against the bylaw change aren't going to be easily swayed. A couple of days ago, I had a nice note from one of the highest ranking GOP Party officials (who is also against it) that an effort to get rid of the precinct committeepeople from convention had been tried once before, and it went down in flames that time too. That person's rationale why the change was a terrible thing? They wrote to me and noted the following: I might comment that I was one of those precinct people that got fu...

In 1990, Tom Daschle and Larry Pressler were our Senators, John Thune was State GOP Executive Director, and Tim Johnson as our Congressman was battling it out with Rapid City Republican challenger Don Frankenfeld. No big story here. I was just taking some pictures of stuff for eBay , and I came across this old bumper sticker from my collection.

In honor of the new website unveiling, the SDDP has on their website an auction offering of political memorabilia by Willie Nelson. "Monumental Blue (Vote Blue) Painted Canvas Signed by Willie Nelson." They're doing this to raise money for the SDDP. There's several photos of it on the SDDP website, and a fanboy picture of SDDP Executive Director Jason Schulte with Willie Nelson in promotion of the item. Now, knowing a little about art (only a little) from 15 years of auctions and personal property appraisals, I'm thinking that it's a little puffery, because of some of the photos on what they're auctioning aren't reproduced in a painted medium. If it actually is on canvas, my guess is that it's what's called a giclee' (pronounced gee-clay), a graphic reproduced by a super high quality injet printer on canvas. I've made no secret of the fact that I love political memorabilia. It's been an on and off again hobby of mine for nearly tw...

In the interest of being unbiased, I would like to take the opportunity to offer a blog post to the opposing point of view as to why the South Dakota Republican Party should cut 70% of volunteers and supporters from the Republican State Convention process. So, whomever stands opposed to the current bylaws, and supports the measure to put them back where they were 20 years ago, please click here to e-mail me . I will give you as much space on my blog as you want. Unfettered, and without editorial comment from me. I pride myself on my analytical ability. I'm a crack researcher and can take materials from an extensive range of sources and distill it down to something simple and easy for a neophyte to an issue to understand. The problem with the proposed State Republican Party bylaw change is that I can't find anything that provides a valid reason to reduce the representation at GOP State Conventions. If I've found anything on it looking at a national basis, it has all been c...