Dakota Beacon

A time of lockdown offers plenty of time to read and ponder the age-old teachings of the Bible. Time spent reflecting on the wisdom in the Scripture is time well spent. The Old and New Testaments give rich insight into our lives, ourselves, and our circumstances.

Consider a few topics providing an ample boost to the reader’s spirit. Different Bible versions offer various renderings. Those cited below include the King James Version (KJV), the New King James Version (NKJV), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), and the New American Standard Bible (NASB).

The following are only a few of the many verses that could be cited on the selected topics....

When I speak of a hoax and The Virus, I don’t mean there isn’t in our population a pathogen identified as SARS-CoV-2 or, as the “unwoke” might say, the Wuhan Flu. As with past respiratory diseases, it’s also dangerous to the vulnerable. But as data increasingly show — and as I and some others have been saying all along — this current situation is very different from past pandemics in one significant and deadly way: It’s not being treated as only a medical/health issue.

It’s being treated as a political issue.

And as the Soviet Union’s Lysenkoism demonstrated, politics kills science.

In our haste to find a solution to the world-wide crisis dumped on us this winter by China's rogue communist government, it is understandable that we are anxious to see something make it go away.  Everyone is demanding a vaccine.  President Trump, as usual, hears the crowd.  As usual he wants to give them what they want.  As usual he has tossed out there a contest to reward whomever comes up the winning formula and the rules are pretty slack.  We have no protection, in other words.

COVID - AROUND THE REGION; WOEFULLY LACKING IN URGENCY; "IT'S NOT THAT PEOPLE AREN'T TRYING"; CONTRACT TRACING ND; IRONY OF THEIR SITUATION; TOO MANY COLLEGES; LEE ENTERPRISES; ROOSEVELT LIBRARY; BOMBERS COME HOME TO MINOT; JAMESTOWN'S LADDER TRUCK DIED; DAKTOIDS

It's Sunday!  I get to do whatever I like here - and there isn't much I like better than dogs!  Hope you enjoy the Sunday respite.

Several weeks ago I predicted this.  Tenants are finding that they cannot pay rent.  There is a solution but sadly, it won't make any of our legislators rich, so it won't be tried.

In looking back on this era of coronavirus terrorism (because that's what it is) we might decide that the illness we were hoping to defeat was not the real problem.  There is another opportunistic virus which is taking hold throughout our nation - BICS.  This is potentially more dangerous than the coronavirus we are trying to conquer.  It is possible that it will be far more difficult to irradicate.

Let us now discuss what the founders did not intend with regard to voting. They did not intend that voters perform their duty other than in person, so as to verify their visually documented identity, residence, age, and citizenship. They did not intend that voting should occur on multiple dates or over an extended period of time, so that the voters would all be voting under the same surrounding events and circumstances. They did not intend that the time of voting would change from year to year, because they desired to foster familiarity with the time and manner of the election toward repetitive participation of qualified voters. They did not intend that voting could be delayed, for any reason, because they were familiar with such delays being used by the King of England to perpetuate the status quo. And perhaps most importantly, they did not intend voting to be easily accomplished by mail, because to do so would be to unduly delay the tabulation of results, allowing mysterious “boxes of ballots” to be “found” in automobile trunks, corners of government offices, and only God knows where else!

While Francis was being “purged and marginalized,” the editors of Commentary, National Review, and First Things were maintaining that America should use its military power to spread “democracy” around the globe, particularly in the Middle East, while welcoming globalization in the form of free trade and mass immigration. These positions reflected a belief that America wasn't a real country inhabited by a real people, but a mere incubator of ideas, and its people were worthwhile only insofar as they embodied neoconservative ideas.

As a result of such profoundly misguided thinking, thousands of American lives were lost and hundreds of billions of American dollars were wasted on pointless wars in the Middle East, which continue down to this day. Meanwhile tens of thousands of American factories were closed and millions of American manufacturing jobs were lost, while Communist China became the main beneficiary of America’s de-industrialization.

We know what the CCP has done to our lives - our health, our economy.  The stress is killing Anericans.  Many lives will be lost - we have lost some 60,000 to date to the disease itself, and our other losses in terms of life and economy will dwarf that.  Unless we want to train the CCP to do this again we will need to take very strong action against that rogue regime.

Some things never change. As the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes points out, “There is no new thing under the sun.”

Long before Trump became president and called out the mainstream media (MSM) for what it is – fake news – many Americans had already begun to suspect as much.

For years the MSM served as the propaganda arm of liberals, progressives, and the Democrat Party. When the prevailing media outlets carry water for the left, can anybody, trust them?

This headline should surprise no one.  Our Congress and our Administration seems not to have an inkling about what is in the Constitution.  It might be well to require that anyone who wants to vote in a federal election pass a simple test to determine whether he has ever even read the document that governs our nation.  If not, he should not be voting.  We might have an entirely different outlook - a far rosier future - if we require the same for anyone whose name appears on a ballot, for any office.  

A vaccine and treatment protocols for Covid-19 that facilitates a timely return to normal commercial activity demands that the FDA immediately implement just-in-time solutions. In the past, this bloated and sloth-like government agency has systematically increased the cost and duration of its drug regulating responsibilities, likely due to its biggest mistake in its history.

NO THUMP ON YOUR  PORCH; ALTRU HEALTH SYSTEMS IN GF; MINOT FIRES CITY MANAGER; COVID-19 ROUNDUP; LM WIND POWER IN GF; TIP OF THE ICEBERG; IDENTITY-BASED CONCERNS; BOBCAT RESUMES IN BISMARCK, GWINNER AND WAHPETON; COAL CREED STATION; MCLEAND COUNTY COMMISSIONERS STYMIE WIND DEVELOPMENT; DAKTOIDS

This past week was the birthday of William Shakespeare.  This amazingly insightful and skillful playwright not only gave us his own talents, but he inspired the art of many more great performers and composers.  His works have been translated into nearly all languages, into opera, ballet, have been interpreted on the stage and in movies.   I have found a few of my favorites (with emphasis on "few" - there is no way to include everything I find delightful of Shakespeare's art!)  It's all worth the time to watch and listen to . . . and ponder.  And right now we have the time.

Even as China tries to strongarm its trading partners to foist Huawei on them and take over their communications infrastructure (as they did with France) in exchange for the medical supplies which they have collected and hoarded, so that these countries can address the urgent need brought upon them by the virus which China lied about and allowed to proliferate around the world (regardless of whether they developed it or stored it in their labs or not), this same Chinese communist government is technically not able to provide basic sustenance for its own people through its own agriculture.  Oh, well, that's okay.  We can make trade agreements that will ease their burden so they can continue what they, themselves, term "unrestricted warfare".  This warfare is not a visible military attack, but one of psychological warfare, communications, economic domination, all subscribed to officially by the Chinese communist government.  We enable this with every shipment of wheat, every tangerine we sell them.  With it we are selling our own nation to them.  Without our support they would have to focus their energies on agriculture, not virus labs or taking over communications networks and infrastructure.  They smugly hold us hostage to the crisis they have created while being unable, in the clutch, to feed themselves.  It is time to re-evaluate our policy of trading with the Chinese communists

Who knew? Seventy-one years after George Orwell penned his novel 1984 the United States would devolve into Orwell’s prototype in the name of “public health and safety.” Nineteen Eighty-Four focuses on the consequences of government over-reach, totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of all persons and behaviors within society. Some have identified this as the slow death of civil liberties in the name of public safety.

The Bill of Rights, as part of our US Constitution, explicitly informed the federal government what it could NOT do. Writers of the Bill of Rights were influenced by ideals from Reformation thinking (1517-1648). They also were well acquainted with the Black Death (1347), Great Plague (1665), and other pandemics. The authors knew what they were thinking when they wrote.

The AP reports that New Jersey and Florida are using drones with pre-recorded messages to disperse open-air gatherings. Monitoring people is surveillance and surveillance is search, an illegal search. Some governors and mayors are asking neighbors to rat on others. Freedom of assembly? Right to privacy? Reflect on Orwell’s 1984 for a clear, concise portrayal of repressive regimentation.

In the end the American people, not governments, will determine the end of the lockdown.

ND AND REGION CORONAVIRUS RUNDOWN; GOV GETS HIGH GRADES; DR. MICHAEL OSTERHOLM; PROSPERITY AND POPULATION IN ND; BRANDON BOCHENSKI; EVEN THE MIGHTY ADJUST; MAYO CLINIC TO CUT SALARIES; WHO KNEW - NATIVE WOMEN AS SEX OBJECTS?; LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES; DAKTOIDS

While we are understandably preoccupied with stories swirling about the coronavirus pandemic, there are numerous other crises in the making around the world, some of it very close to home.  A former doctor associated with the Mayo Clinic was arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport on March 19.  He is from Pakistan.  He seems like a friendly fellow - he smiles at all the Kaffirs, although it pains him.  His dream, you see, is to kill as many of us as possible.

Here is the conundrum. The federal government told people not to go to work, to stay at home, and to limit personal contacts. The intent was to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus. This effectively shut down the economy. In doing so, the federal government incurred responsibility to repair the damage. This led to enacting the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). The crisis is at hand but most people have not thought about what happens after the stimulus kicks in. It surely comes with a financial and possibly a political price.

As a highly combustible material object, the medieval church is an apt symbol of worldly mutability and transience, as expressed in the double connotation of the Christian liturgical formula “ashes to ashes.”

Marvel not at the gold and the expense but at the craftsmanship of the work. Bright is the noble work; but, being nobly bright, the work
Should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights, To the True Light where Christ is the true door. In what manner it be inherent in this world the golden door defines: The dull mind rises to truth, through that which is material.

Like Notre Dame, medieval churches are thus celebrations and fortresses of the religious, intellectual, and moral traditions and norms that have sustained Western Civilization since antiquity, and are now everywhere under attack by the vandals of post-modernism. Isn’t the potential loss of that, too, what the people of Paris and throughout the world were — at least subliminally — mourning?

Is that headline too "yellow"?  Can we still say "yellow" with respect to journalism?  I don't know.  I don't care either.  Anyway, this Highly Important Person at Harvard is scared stiff that you will be using this time to homeschool your child without "supervision" by your betters.  That about sums it up.  You can't teach the Thoughts of Mao as well as - no, wait!  That's not Bartholet, the author of the diatribe against homeschooling - that's her colleague in the Biology Department, Dr. Charles Lieber, under arrest for compromising our national security by attempting to smuggle biological research into the hands of the Red Chinese authors of our current pandemic.  

Many consumers are seeing very low prices as they fill up their vehicles. Why has the price of gas tumbled so low? In this article, economist Dr. Mark Hendrickson answers this question and writes, “Today’s bargain-basement price for gas makes me sad. As a consumer, of course, I prefer to pay lower prices than higher price for the things I buy. But as an American and a human being, I’m sad. That is because the reason why gas is so cheap is that our economy and society have been crippled by the grim pandemic that dominates our headlines.”

A sudden mushrooming of COVID-19 cases points up the need for wearing a mask when you go into public buildings.  128 employees of a local manufacturing plant have tested positive.  A few of them had gone to Arizona on spring break and came back with the virus.  Of course they felt ok.  They went to work.  They shopped for groceries.  They put gas in their cars.  They went on with their lives.  They went to work.  For two or three weeks now they have been in our midst, most of them not wearing any kind of face covering.  That is the danger with this virus.  Unlike the Spanish flu, where people would be exposed in the morning and be deathly ill by nighfall, this virus is insidious - we are exposed without knowing it and expose others the same way.  

Models are just that – models, prototypes, mathematical equations based on stated or unstated assumptions. Models receive data in the form of variables and then compute projections. If the left-hand side of the equation does not replicate reality, the right-hand side can only represent gibberish. GIGO -- garbage in, garbage out. Pity the public upon whom such projections are bestowed. That is where we are with the Wuhan virus shutdown.

Models must be scrutinized for errors in assumptions, data selection, or abuse in application. Too often a missing perspective or context will skew the outcome. I have some familiarity with modeling outcomes. In 1987 my boss and I, working for AGS Management Systems, marketed project management software to Dr. Fauci.

Reflect on these numbers. We don’t know the number of people who will contract the Wuhan Flu. Wild guesses range from 0.02% to 0.8%. We do know that 98% of those who catch it will recover. Contrast this with declining model estimated death tolls of 2.2 million, then 240,000, then 100,000, then 81,000. Any deaths are sad. Compare this to the 2018-2019 flu death toll of 34,200 and the 2017-2018 flu death toll of 61,000. In 2019 US deaths from all causes totaled 8,782 daily. Do people die with or from the Wuhan Flu? Models count “from” regardless of other underlying illnesses.

NOT A SURPRISING DISCOVERY; MINNESOTA GOV. TIM WALZ; MEET IN THE MIDDLE?; SD MAY BE WAVERING; SWEDEN APPROACH; DAVID FLYNN EXONOMIST; ALTRU CIRCLING THE WAGONS; RURAL MINNESOTA HOSPITALS; BISMARCK TRIBUNE FURLOGH; PRINTED NEWSPAPERS ARE COLLAPSING; LIFE IS NOT GREENER; YOUR'E GOING TO MAKE IT AFTER ALL; TRAGEDIES WITHIN A TRAGEDY; MINNESOTA'S POPULATION; DAKTOIDS

My daughter sent me this and its so good I can't wait to share it!  We all need a bit of time out to allow great music to take us away for an hour or two.

There may be no word for "Goodbye" in the Lakota language, or the Ojibwe language, but nevertheless we will see no more of the Indian girl on the Land O' Lakes packaging.  She, like the UND Sious warrior and many other images of Indian heritage, will vanish.  This pleases some members of the ND State legislature and some others who seem to have no idea of future generations' connection with their history.  As we relentlessly purge our surroundings of our cultural heritage, from the imagery of Indians to any other references, musical or literary, these cultural heritages will disappear, lost forever.  We can only lament this loss.

We can't allow the fight against a coronavirus from China to destroy the foundation of our freedom.

It would be tempting when this is finally over to just go back to work with a sigh of relief.  That would be a mistake.  This disaster was no accident.  It's timing may be have been accidental, but its creation was a deliberate act.  We need to acknowledge this and take appropriate action to ensure that it will not be repeated - ever.  Ultimately this will requre the dissolution of the communist government in mainland China.  It was the mistaken policies promoted by President Nixon and his incompetent or ill-intentioned advisors, including the perennial and unfortunate Henry Kissinger, which has finally born this ugly fruit.  It is up to us - our generation - to put an end to it.  Our government has had a hand in policies which have encouraged this outcome.  We can do much to make sure this is the last pandemic we see created in China.  And there is a lot you can do about it.