Dakota Beacon

As a kid, I enjoyed hanging around adults in conversation. These were grown-ups at play in a silly sort of way. In their words, jargon, and gestures they resembled actors on a living room stage.

Now, as an adult, participating in conversation transitions into more than a spectator sport. Swapping information, sharing stories, and trading ideas with friends hints of quiet leisure. Before radio, TV, and smart devices, conversation in the salons of Europe provided stimulating entertainment. Even today, coffee houses and cafes still offer fine opportunities for pleasant conversation. Talk is cheap and chatting is an inexpensive form of recreation.

Should inheritance taxes be increased? Or should they be abolished? In this article, economist Dr. Mark Hendrickson responds to a recent New York Times article that called for the tax to go up. Hendrickson writes, “Calls to raise inheritance taxes stem from two common failings, one moral, one intellectual.”

It's Sunday - time for a "pick-me-up" and there isn't much more upbeat than a Bobby Darin finger-snapping song.  Darin was a phenomenal star, versatile, with a great sense of humor.  He was a popular guest on many of his era's top entertainment TV shows and had a couple of his own as well.  A songwriter, singer, actor, impressionist, Darin was a unique star.  He really did it all in the entertainment business, on both sides of the camera, as a business manager and producer, mentor, creator and performer.  During his all-too-short lifetime, few were aware of the stresses which both challenged and drove him - his serious lifelong illness, his heartbreak in learning of his true parentage, his devotion to his son, Dodd, his love for the women in his life.  His remarkable intelligence was really no secret to those who were familiar with his work.  Let's take a look back at one of America's greatest entertainers - Bobby Darin.

Can you handle the truth?  Or do you want to continue the stream of lies gushing at you as from a fire hose from the media?  If you question their narrative you are taken down.  If you offer information they have not approved or seek to explore options they don't endorse, you're "out".  We can see with our own eyes the prevarication of the so-called "experts" - people like Fauci, who are filmed blatantly throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game and then sitting cheek-by-jowel with companions and not wearing the mandated mask.  We can look at nations such as Sweden, which took an entirely different and more constructive approach to the "pandemic".  We can consider the evidence that well-known, accepted drugs provide effective treatment and even cures.  We can examine and verify statistics that are thrown around - shocking statistics (like 100% infection in the state of Florida).  Or . . . we can sit back in our masks and eat whatever CNN and other leftist organs feed us.  Your choice.  If you are inclined to question, then it is time to take down the leftist media that has been playing us, using us and our very lives as pawns in their shabby game.

Satisfy your own curiosity and do a word search for Turning Point USA and Blexit. Then, let’s see what happens in November.

Speaking of good news and potential Democrat voters, where are the caravans of illegal aliens storming our southern boarder? Whatever happened to the coverage of illegals from El Salvador and Nicaragua marching through Mexico on highways and freight trains heading toward the US? Your guess is as good as mine. Rest assured, if the news would hurt President Trump’s re-election bid it would be top story. The media would have spun the migration to hurt Trump. For some reason the media, Democrats, and illegals all lost interest. Maybe this group is losing the PR battle with the American people.

Has anyone heard these news items reported?

The media, nationally and locally across the country, has been in a mad frenzy to push senseless responses to COVID-19.  One of the more alarming and totalitarian ideas is the "mask mandate".  State after state is falling prey to this lunacy, without the scantest reference to real scientific evidence in its favor, much less the possibility that it could result in long-term suffering, On July 25, the Grand Forks Herald published an opinion piece by one Jim Shaw, purportedly a "columnist" somewhere, which promotes enfocement of mask-wearing in all public places.  His rant is riddled with factual errors and distortions , which are addressed in this article.  

The Venezuelan Warning

Socialists were elected in not less than five very close elections in Venezuela. The Venezuelan voters were perfectly happy with the nationalization of their oil companies in the early years. Stealing from corporations was justifiable for the “good of all”. As more of Venezuelan society was converted to government ownership and oil profits fell, the economy began to suffer, as it always has under socialism... everywhere it has been tried. Cuban mercenaries were brought in to personally monitor each and every government official to insure compliance with the “elected dictatorship”. Business owners fled for their lives as their businesses were swallowed up by the “elected dictatorship”. The cry of socialism is “Workers of the World, Unite”. No matter how “united” the workers of Venezuela were, they could not miraculously bring efficiency to bureaucracies of government. Most of the workers (the ones not murdered for doing so) left for greener pastures. The result is a failed state where totalitarian dictatorship holds on by its fingernails as suffering reaches daily new heights in Venezuela.

We Can be the New Venezuela

DAPL DEVELOPER ENERGY TRANSFER; THE PANDEMIC PICTURE IN ND; HE’S SEEN ENOUGH; DELAYED SHOCK; THE COAL CREEK STATION; THEY’RE HIGH NEEDS; TIME FOR A CHANGE?; DO YOU HEAR A CHOKING SOUND?; THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT!; SHOW MORE RESPECT; DAKTOIDS

Daily, the mainstream media reports that the number of positive COVID-19 cases in the United States is up dramatically this summer. Yet the death rates are still well below the numbers from April and early May. Why are the death rates across the country much lower during a time when the number of new cases is skyrocketing? In this article, Dr. Gary Welton examines the data and offers six factors that may be playing a role.

Over the course of one summer we have seen the loss of most of our constitutional rights - rights which our forefathers secured (or thought they had) through bitter struggle and extreme personal risk.  For over two cienturies we have enjoyed these rights and prospered with them.  Suddenly an illness imported from China has been the excuse for abandonment of our culture of freedom.  I am not objecting to emergency measures intended to protect citizens in time of disaster.  I am talking about powers assumed under the guise of an emergency - an emergency that somehow never goes away.  Did we, in one summer, determine that we can no longer live as a free people?  Because this has been going on too long to be legitimately called an "emergency".  It has become totalitariansim.  It must be stopped before ii is too late.  This is an open letter to members of Minnesota's state legislature.  Every two years they put their signs up in yards, they knock on doors and pass out literature to persuade us that it is important to vote for them.  So - is it?  

Many black leaders would quarrel over BLM’s choice of heroes because BLM’s choices are restricted to the victim narrative. Lawrence Jones, Larry Elder, Leo Terrell, Robert Woodson, Shelby Steele, Walter E. Williams, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Candace Owens, and more beg to differ.

As Bob Woodson says, “BLM has appropriated the authority of the Civil Rights movement to promote insurrection.” And, “There is no excuse for 18 and 19-year-old black males to claim an exemption from personal responsibility to riot, loot, and destroy under the rubric of ‘institutional racism’.” Shelby Steele echoes, “…our culture is unique from other communities because we are the only community that caters to the bottom denominator of our society.” Regarding Floyd, Candace Owens says, “But we are unique in that we are the only people that fight and scream and demand support for the people in our community that are up to no good.” In BLM’s arrogance, they claim the biggest threat to young black men is police. BLM ignores crime by young black men committed against their own.

Is the greater public, both black and white, being bamboozled and duped into silence by the Marxist-led BLM narrative with the help of the media’s PR scam? You decide.

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We are being lied to and because of that, people are dying needlessly.  Watch.

It seems as though America has lost its collective mind.  People are screaming obscenities, assaulting each other, committing acts of violence, all the while we are acquiescing to calls for disbanding the police.  Does anyone remember the America of a few years ago?  The golden age of Ronald Reagan - or even a year ago?  People seem to have descended into madness, some involved in mayhem and random murder and destruction and others neurotically obsessed with trying to hid from or outrun a virus.  It really is insanity.

Our nation has been under attack all summer.  So far nothing has stopped the violence.  Far from curtailing the lawlessness, the mayors of our great cities have been siding with the attackers.  It has been an  orgy.  It is time  - past time - to put an end to this and let the perpetrators know once and for all that we will not tolerate this in America.

We are admonished to go along to get along.  Don't make waves.  It's no big deal.  What difference does it make - just keep quiet and do as you're told.  It's good for the public, it's safer this way.  You don't want to create a problem, do you?  So you dutifully put on your little face mask.  You carefully practice awkward "social distancing", standing six feet apart everywhere.  You carefully choreograph your grocery shopping so as not to go the "wrong way" down an aisle.  You have all but severed your real-life friendships, living online now, skyping, living "virtually".  Dinner parties are a thing of the past, as are family reunions.  Remember the festivals and fairs you once attended?  THe concerts?  The dances?  The birthday parties with friends?  It all seems long ago.  It was.  We have been "shut down" for months now.  News flash:  there is no end.  

Summertime 2020 is Covid-19 sequestration time and a good time to catch up on books new and old. What I am reading (and re-reading) I can recommend to others. A dozen more books could be added to the list, but I’ll constrain myself to a few.

DAPL LEGAL BATTLES BEGIN; ECONOMIC DEVASTATION; DAPL HAS ALLIES; GOVERNOR BURGUM EFFORT FOR STANDING ROCK; WE STILL NEED POLICE; BYE-BYE GF BIG RETAILERS; WHAT A DEAL!; PRAIRIE KIDS DID WELL; QUITE A LIFE!; NOT A NICE THING TO SAY!; PAWNING AN HEIRLOOM; DAKTOIDS

Are there times when you feel like a stranger in your own country?  

LWVUS claims to be a nonpartisan organization that empowers the American people to take control of their democracy by registering voters, giving them a trusted nonpartisan source for issue, candidate, and ballot information, to ensure a political system that serves the needs of all people, not just special interests. LWVUS sponsors education and outreach programs to communicate their agenda and hold elected officials accountable to LWVUS..

For over six years, the Little Sisters of the Poor has had to defend itself against the federal government, and more recently, two state governments. By a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court last week awarded the nuns a victory. In this article, constitutional scholar Dr. John Sparks reviews the case and cautions, “the Little Sisters have won this round—though it is a qualified victory. A new administration could revamp the contraceptive regulations fashioning them to be narrower, like those of the Obama era.”

It’s time to get over it. No American Black today experiences slavery. No American White today is a slave master. Slavery must not be the catalyst for progressive social justice reforms. Nevertheless, progressives and liberals claim slavery as a “debt that will never be paid.” Intellectuals criticize slavery as the historic evil of “our society” but never acknowledge that Western civilization was the first to turn against slavery. For a century Western civilization destroyed slavery within itself and then around the world through military power in the age of imperialism. America overcame slavery’s stigma to create the freest nation on earth. Today, people flock here, legally and illegally, to experience freedom.

 America must free itself of slave talk and stop chaining itself to the sensitivity of slavery.

It is astounding… unbelievable… but so true... that people who vote Democrat view Socialism as government philanthropy. Philanthropy... the desire to promote the welfare of others, expressed especially by the generous donation of money to good causes. This is why I suggest to all conservatives that most Democrats are not “bad people”… they simply want to help those in need.

Grassroots movements in America are seeking to establish socialism through democratic activism. Some of these movements even claim that a Christian is obligated to support socialist economies or else he or she does not truly follow Christ's command to “love your neighbor as yourself”. No wonder that so many Americans are attracted to this ideology!

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Once in a while a remarkable voice comes along.  We are so lucky when that happens.  There are some wonderful singers out there and among the best is Nana Mouskouri.

Have conservatives finally been driven to insanity?  If not, how can we account for this harping on opening up the schools and getting the kids herded back into their indoctrination sessions?  I mean, that was working so well.

Self-loathing and artificual guilt is a very serious mental illness.  We are imposing this sickness on our people in America.  There are plenty of actors who are joining in this imposition of insanity.  It is entirely up to us to resist this and call it out for what it is - bullying and cult indoctrination - brain-washing.  The North Koreans and Chinese have done this for a long time - if you are contemporary with me, you were familiar with the term "brain-washing" when you were in grade school.  It is now being used by local government entities as well as corporations to "tranquilize" or neutralize thinking Americans.  We need to be aware of it and we need to fight back, and we must not wait another day to do so.  Every day we let this go on without challenge, it will be that much more difficult to fight against - and we dare not capitulate to it - it is evil.

This is not a drill.

On June 30, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that gave a substantial victory for religious education and for parents who choose to make use of tax credits, vouchers, and scholarships offered to them by state governments while attending religious schools. In this article, constitutional scholar Dr. John Sparks reviews the decision and argues that, “Roberts’ opinion also effectively ends the ability of state governments to discriminate against religious education.”

Democrats opted for Joe Biden as their nominee. No matter that he holds a weak resume. Biden is linked to Obama and Obama is still popular. Some think a President Biden might be convinced to resign due to age and mental health. His VP would rule the rest of his four-year term.

Or, maybe not. Instead, Biden could occupy the Oval Office for four years with surrogates exercising power. Decisions would be made in his name with his blessing and complicity. The country would be manipulated for the benefit of the Ruling Class, the elite – both Left and Right.