Dakota Beacon

When my kids were little they used to discover all kinds of things in the back yard. One day, our 5 year old daughter found a dead bird, and she got very upset and started to cry. We did everything we could to comfort her and make her forget about the dead bird. My wife said that she should think about pretty flowers and swimming at the swimming pool. I said she should think about the little calves down at the farm and of riding motorcycle out in the badlands. She wouldn’t eat her supper, and we kept it up with happy thoughts about caterpillars, and butterflies, and thoughts of our upcoming trip to Denver. Finally, she started to eat and was much happier. Then her little 3 year old brother came up with something she could think about –

After this new knowledge of such a great man living quietly right here in Bismarck, in light of all the pompous self-idolizing rhetoric of so many people in the “serve the needy” or the “volunteering in the community,” believing they can “help’ any one else, yet have not acquired any of the compassion, ethics, goodness to even “give anything of worth to any person or entity.  One cannot give to others what one has not first acquired himself: To pretend to share something you don’t have, is fraud.

What the protestors are calling for is the strong arm of government to confiscate even more of America’s real wealth to continue funding the excesses and irresponsible management by government over the last 70 years.  They’re calling for massive tax increases on private earnings and wealth.  This will destroy America’s ability to create any wealth or prosperity, sinking America into bankruptcy and third world status.  Unless Americans become savvy and do so quickly, it is likely elected officials will impose massive tax increases, guaranteeing America’s demise.
The private sector is ruled by the laws of human nature and fiscal rationality. It will respond to more taxes in the only way it can.  The private economy will stop producing.  This isn’t a possibility – it’s a certainty.

If you call the U.S. Postal Service to make such a crazy suggestion, I will guarantee you that you will have an opportunity first hand to experience the governmental bureaucracy monopoly hand-off, “we will look into it”, Kabuki dance. When you are done call Senator Conrad and thank him for voting ObamaCare into law.

Nothing new at this point, UND Fighting Sioux controversy, Olson thinks the NCAA scapegoated UND, prophets of doom --, “Why won’t Grand Forks grow?”, Energy and Spirit of North Dakota, Kuwait on the Prairie, Agriculture is going to have to be cut, Sen. Kent Conrad in Devils Lake , FLOODARAMA!

Why such appalling duplicity from a senator who claims to be pro-life?

North Dakotans expect and deserve integrity in their legislators. The “initiated measure process” that Olafson recommends is not meant to be the only way voters can be fairly and accurately represented in the state government.

We expect and deserve honesty in the committee process and a transparent vote on each bill. Olafson’s refusal to grant either is a betrayal of his obligation not only to his district but also to the state.

At this stage, nothing does more damage to our “full faith and credit” than business as usual. If you’re going to bandy glib, witless al Qaeda analogies, the conventional wisdom Paul O’Neill represents is the real suicide bomb here. Men like O’Neill and Geithner think they’re quantitatively easing American decline. They’re not. They’re quantitatively accelerating American collapse.

Onward and upward!

As long as we continue our suicidal immigration policies—where 85 percent of newcomers hail from the Third World and Asia (thanks, Ted Kennedy)—the only thing that will be in question about our descent into socialism, and perhaps beyond, is the rate.

Many voters, too emotionally spent to keep staring down the nightmare bounded by January 20, 2009 and November 5, 2012, will take comfort in seductive lies before heading to the polls on November 6.  By then the lies will have grown to immense proportions.  Democrats and mainstream media will have repeated the lies ad nauseam.  Big lies might keep enough big liars in the White House and Congress to perpetuate the biggest lie of all: that a big-spending and yet flat-broke syndicate run by ruling-class mobsters can engineer societal nirvana.

By the time you read this, there’s a good chance that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will have held the Fed’s first press conference ... Leading up to this historic moment, the popular press has repeated a well-rehearsed rhetorical dance as it reports on the monthly release of the Consumer Price Index. Those who should know better repeat the mantra that, while food and energy prices may have increased, so-called core inflation … remain[s] flat as a pancake…. Unfortunately, things are not as rosy as we are being told. Food and beverage prices increased at an annual rate of 8.4 percent. Prices of household fuel and utilities, the housing expenses that everyone does have, rose at an annual rate of 7.2 percent. Transportation prices, which include prices of automobiles, gasoline, and public transportation, rose at an annual rate of 26.4 percent. Normal people who live their lives outside the Beltway know that the prices of the goods they buy are generally rising. They do not have to wait to be told by the experts.

Those of you (and that would be most of you) who know this man can appreciate it when I say-of all the voices I have ever heard, of all the lessons I have learned, of all the opinions I have ever had which have been forged into convictions on the anvil of life, I can honestly say that none has had the power to change and keep me on the right track as that of this one man.

Thank you Senator Freborg.  Layton, you've been like a father to me.

Catron hits the nail on the head. AARP management betrayed current members to gain hoards of future members. Catron further points out,

If America’s seniors ever figure out that AARP’s endorsement of ObamaCare was a cynical strategy to bilk the elderly, the seniors’ group will begin hemorrhaging members as quickly as its fellow Quisling, the AMA, has lost physicians.

So then, let me ask again. If you are still a member of AARP, why?

The day of reckoning for this national financial train wreck is approaching much faster than you think. The federal government’s current policies of extend and pretend will no longer appease the financial markets. If our politicians don’t fix the nation’s debt problem on their own terms now, with substantive and credible policy changes, then the financial markets will fix the problem for them later. Specifically, later is sometime between now and the November 2012 elections. The clock is ticking.

The old-timers will always pride themselves in their “small town” atmosphere. Some, however, may have to figure out how to deal with their personal behavior, a behavior that alienates. Treating newcomers with rumor, innuendo and gossip is nothing new. Relegating them to a place as second class citizens may be deadly. A few bad eggs can ruin renewal for everyone.

Something as simple as practicing the “Golden Rule” costs nothing and is infinitely more valuable than dollars from politicians.

“I was elected by the people of New Jersey to manage this fiscal debacle and I came here to do that.  I came here to govern, not to worry about getting re-elected.” - Chris Christy

The North Dakota House of Representatives has it right in this session. Each of us must now call our legislators in the Senate and our friends in the Dalrymple administration and let them know how we feel about the “equality of poverty” that is socialism… and to defund the “Centers of Mediocrity”.

In order to "shore-up" the pension fund, those figures have to increase to 11.75% for teachers, and 12.75% for school districts by 2014.

In the coming years, you can be assured that local school districts will be complaining about the new unfunded mandates place on them by this plan.  The sad part is - they are right.  This pension shore-up/bailout will eat into state spending designed to buy-down local property tax rates (which is bad policy in the first place).

Once again the Obama administration has taught us something. A “premier” employer treats adults like children, demands that the child-adults allow wiser adult-adults to resolve conflicts, and perpetuates the fallacy that a behavior that has survived since the dawn of humankind will evaporate under decree from the wise ones.

How appropriate for the 2011 Health and Human Services Department. Quintessentially Obamaesque.

Since we as citizens have interest in the economic success of “our car company”, it will be mandatory, and Constitutionally defensible, that the Volt be your next car purchase.

From time to time there have been external enemies at our gates; there has always been the enemy within, the hidden and malignant inertia that foreshadows more certain destruction of our life and future than any nuclear warhead.  There can be no darker or more devastating tragedy than the death of man’s faith in himself, and IN HIS POWER TO DIRECT HIS FUTURE.

Two other things that aren’t in the eye of the beholder are the statuses “coward” and “jerk.”  That is to say, I have to laugh at all these “brave artists™” who puff up their chicken chests about “tackling tradition.”  Not only is bragging about a stand against tradition in an apostatic, irreverent secular age a bit like bragging about burning churches in Egypt, but also ask whose traditions they’re attacking.  It’s easy to target Christians because it’s all reward and no risk: The media give you lots of attention, and you’ll taste neither the steel of political correctness’ career-rending blade nor that of those who would slowly cut your brave little head off.  Want to really be courageous?  Try mocking the Religion of Peace™.  Come on, Serrano et al., I dare you.

I double dare you.

In a Washington area newspaper letter to the editor, Professor Caffrey writes:

What do the unfolding nuclear tragedy in Japan and our refusal to address global warming have in common?  Both are rooted in the willful disregard of science.

Caffrey then spends the next 316 words weaving flawed argument after flawed argument into a tapestry of fallacy and illogic in which the professor not only sounds the usual global alarmist siren of “catastrophic,” human-caused warming of the “global climate,” but also manages to drag in utterly unrelated points. Caffrey uses the non-sequiturs to imply that killing jobs supported by “[e]normous coal and oil deposits” would “strengthen us as a nation[.]” Then after offering up additional non-sequiturs, Caffrey finally arrives at his true objective: to promote an upcoming talk in which a “medical professor” committed to “saving lives” will discuss the dangers presented by “global warming.”

Consider the infamous "Dark Ages" - from the fall of the Roman Empire to the high Middle Ages. During this period, Christianity gradually spread over Europe and quietly eliminated and mitigated most of the everyday barbarisms of the Classical world: abortion, infanticide, slavery, pederasty, divorce, crucifixion (once a common punishment for petty crimes).

Some of these practices have lately made a comeback in the name of "progress," but the fact remains that the so-called Dark Ages were an era of unparalleled moral reform. Christianity raised the moral standards of a continent; we may, if we choose, congratulate ourselves on lowering those standards again, but to speak as if Christianity's chief historical effect had been to increase violence and cruelty is sheer nonsense - and malicious nonsense at that.

No government has the power to confer civil rights on its citizens, no matter how benevolent that bequest may be.  Instead man has certain rights by virtue of his humanity which are conferred (if by anyone), by his Creator.  Therefore, they are a possession to be protected rather than a gift or a benefit to be given or taken away.

Whether a Christian or just a Deist, he certainly had a firm faith in the Providence of a transcendent God who ordered the universe.  To me, THAT is Common Sense to believe in!

The last line attracted a bit of attention, but the "shared values" - ie, the fetid bromides of conventional wisdom - are worth decoding, too:

"Education of our children" means more spending on an abusive and wasteful unionized educrat monopoly; "growth of our economy" means more spending on stimulus funding for community-organizer grant applications; "how we defend our country" means more spending on defense welfare for wealthy allies; "our security and civil liberties" means more spending on legions of crack TSA crotch fondlers; "how we respect our seniors" means more spending on entitlements for an ever more dependent citizenry whose sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make any sense.

Check the numbers, Valley City is in the flooding bull’s-eye, living with stress and anxiety on an island, a grim warning about Devils Lake, Annabelle Homes, a Minneapolis developer, $370 million for roads damaged by oil traffic, was that the state should not overreact to short-term problems, Time to sharpen the plow blades, Healthy Oilseeds, suspected fraud, Whitey’s Cafe in East Grand Forks, “Never the twain shall meet”, DAKTOIDS

Once a gazillionaire owns two yachts, four homes, and ten cars, regularly eats $25,000-a-kilo Almas caviar, enjoys unlimited top-notch medical care, and travels around the world all year long, does gathering a-hundred gazillion dollars more to support ten yachts, a palace or two, a container ship full of Rolls-Royces, and every-Friday-night dinners at Central Park West’s Jean-Georges Restaurant put yet a bigger smile on the gazillionaire’s face or render said gazillionaire immune to death?

Really, Professor Stiglitz, can’t your immense, hay-wired, progressive brain do better?