Dakota Beacon

Some carols dating back several hundred years still present Christ’s message unchanged. They sing of God arriving in human form. The 18th century Latin hymn “O Come All Ye Faithful” is a wonderful example.

Why would he do a thing like that? the cities are loath to see enrollment declines; administrators cut and eliminated academic departments; needs of the tribe “were pushed aside in favor of political grandstanding; problems on ND Indian reservations; hand out free cell phones; Leith has been in a state of near hysteria; Best Performing Small Cities; Work to solve its challenges but don’t suffocate it; the phenomenally successful Timbit; Campers and RVs trickle south from ND; crashes on the Red River bridge; Tough times don’t last but tough people do; leaving only two smoking concrete elevator shafts; leftover cash in their campaign funds; ND is noted for a high level of social capital; Would you enjoy a leisurely trip?

What now passes for journalism in the MSM has become a triviality not to be taken seriously. It is little wonder the greater public turns to alternative media sources for their news.

We may not have too long to wait.  Unemployment is rising, jobs are shrinking, and federal policies are making it virtually impossible for new businesses to start.  Thousands of new federal regulations are driving the cost of energy up as regulations are forcing the closing of plants that produce our electricity.  America’s respect and standing in the world is, arguably, at an all time low and sinking.

. . . Wall Street 24/7 again ranked ND the best-run state; solve the challenges of the oil and gas boom; the number of millionaires; my son has a right to flunk out; Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem effectively threw up his hands; Is Marcus Jundt a loud mouth; four rural carriers quit with little or no notice; Eight Bison fans were merrily tailgating; The problem is especially acute in notoriously frigid Minot; On a global basis, we’re still the prettiest pig in the trough; The buoy reported water quality and location. The county is constructing a new $4 million courthouse. Babe and the Blue Ox don’t do it. The Marvelous Fish House; DAKTOIDS . . . .

If people get out of the residential property business because they feel their control of their own business is compromised, the choices for renters diminishes.  What would make you get in or get out of renting to tenants?

Gratitude has also been shown to protect from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, and bitterness, and may even offer some protection against psychiatric disorders. On the positive side, gratitude promotes happiness, altruism, joy, love, and enthusiasm.

The one thing we must not do is try to manipulate history so as to get a result that is comfortable for us today.  Even if we’d like it to be Communists or Cubans, Free or Communist, or Syrians or whomever, we need to let the facts we can discover tell us their story. 

“The enemy sits in Moscow,” Reagan told Joey Bishop. “I call him an enemy because I believe he has proven this, by deed, in the Middle East. The actions of the enemy led to and precipitated the tragedy of last night.”

Before knowing the facts, our community organizer-in-chief condemned the killing, telling the public that if he had a son, his son would look, and presumably act, like the thuggish teen. Heightening the national hype, he went on to tell the public how, as a black man, he experienced racial profiling; when he walked by cars occupied by white people, he could hear them locking their doors.

When a pro-abortion black candidate defeats a white pro-life candidate, Catholic bishops applaud the black man's victory in the name of "humanity." When a black pro-life candidate is defeated by a white, pro-abortion candidate, the bishops are silent.  Does this make sense?

Of course, we have a DoJ that dropped a voter-intimidation case against Black Panthers caught on video wielding nightsticks and intimidating white voters; and an attorney general who, a DoJ whistleblower tells us, carried a card in his wallet that essentially states, “Blackness is more important than anything, and the black US attorney has common cause with the black criminal.”

His latest expedient: Give insurance companies the option to let people keep health plans that the government claims are “substandard” for another year. Note that Obama doesn’t want to do this legislatively. Rather, in a move that even screaming socialist Howard Dean suggests is unconstitutional, the king will grant you a stay of execution. Of course, this only delays the inevitable.

Gratitude has also been shown to protect from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, and bitterness, and may even offer some protection against psychiatric disorders. On the positive side, gratitude promotes happiness, altruism, joy, love, and enthusiasm. In fact, research suggests that the effect of gratitude is larger than the effects of optimism, hope, or compassion.

We are witnessing the disappearance of portions of our vocabulary. If we no longer embrace the ideas behind cultural standards, then there is no need to express the ideas in words. These are words less heard in conversation, literature, TV and movies. Who needs words conveying an obsolete sense of right and wrong, good and evil?

He quoted Martin Luther King, "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

. . . Is ND government spending essential or extravagant? the grand delusion that ND schools and students excel; the overall scores of ND students dropped; still drinking the Cool-Aid; they may be a minority party for a long time; charged with burning the Lone Steer hotel in Steele; a TV reporter was attacked at the Spirit Lake Reservation; Alfonso Rodriguez’s death sentence; the scandal at Dickinson State; new method of measuring poverty; wind farm in Stutsman County; Ethanol fuel is now the No. 1 use for corn in America; rural life early in the last century; DAKTOIDS . . . .

Today, the American military is on the verge of becoming weaker than it was in 1939 when Hitler started his European rampage and Japan pushed its aggression into Asia.

Given what we now know about Kennedy’s faith and family life, some of the claims clergy made are misleading and ironic.

The experience that haunted him the most happened on the aircraft carrier Essex during World War II.

After corralling medical care and food production and imposing onerous taxation and regulation, what else can be done to subdue a population? Whatever remains can be accomplished through Executive Orders.

“So,” Darren told me, “I touched the hand of a man who touched the hand of a Civil War vet who in turn touched the hand of a Revolutionary War vet. We are not a very old country.”

As Cardinal Dolan has affirmed, the bishops seem to have a phobia of their own when it comes to teaching the basic moral truths of the Catholic faith.

Could this be why they're losing in their efforts to defend the sacredness of marriage?

As George Santayana wrote, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Today, many young Germans do not have a vivid recollection of those last days of communism.
In addition to remembering those who contributed to the weakening of the Soviet Union and helped to strengthen the free society, Nov. 9 is an ideal day to take stock.

High unemployment is a winning strategy for today's political class. It facilitates an ever-expanding government.

. . . now Marvel Comics is giving us a female Muslim superheroine.

Meanwhile, it seems that none of our country’s senior intelligence officials thought it worth the time and effort to keep an eye on the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston before they exploded two bombs at the Boston Marathon — even though both brothers were growing more radical by the week, had set up a terrorist-type website, and one of them had traveled to Dagestan, and after returning to the U.S. was the subject of a tip from Russian intelligence.

It is Obama's ideological considerations that dominate his policies. If thirty-two million uninsured were truly the issue, the cost to cover them would have been much cheaper than implementing the "Affordable Care Act."

A lot of people don’t care about JPMorgan Chase’s vicissitudes. “They’re just a bunch of corrupt Wall Street fat cats”; “They can afford it”; “It serves them right”—seem to be the yawning reaction of a largely apathetic public. If those who are indifferent to this episode were to understand what’s at stake here, they wouldn’t be so sanguine.

Instead, the bishops have spent their energies advocating political issues on which good Catholics disagree.

Those receiving the highest priority from the conference's burgeoning bureaucracy are passing amnesty for illegal aliens and opposing any reduction in the rate of growth in federal welfare spending.

Once more, the bishops are dividing the faithful when they need to unite them.