Dakota Beacon

The bottom line of all government is compulsion. Unless a whole nation could be unanimous, this must always mean the imposition of some people's views on others who do not accept them. Yet the project of American politics has always been to keep compulsion at a minimum, and to keep before us the ideal of government by persuasion. This requires an ethos of fair and civil discussion. The sad fact is that American liberals, normally eloquent champions of free speech, have in this case, by countenancing and encouraging the defaming of anti-abortion forces and the misrepresenting of their goals, done much to corrupt that ethos.

We have come to expect a lot of lying.  Supposedly there was going to be some fact-checking, but, as usual, the Democrats largely get a pass.  Herewith is my own initial opinion.  Pence seemed to look more at home at a cotillion than at a debate.  Most conservative opinion is that he did a great job.  I don't necessarily agree.  Let's hope that people are becoming jaded enough to do their own fact-checking.  

A different autumn arrives in due time – the autumn of our life. By then many have reached their zenith and have retired or contemplate doing so. Such an occasion offers a period to reminisce on decades past including the good, the bad, and the mediocre. Photo albums, diaries, and chats with adult children bring back memories long forgotten.

Over the past month we sorted through and organized a few book-boxes of letters. Letters from parents, letters to parents, letters between us when we first met, letters pre-dating our friendship, letters after marriage, letters between us from Korea and Vietnam – on and on.

We have a very real sickness in the United States - a mental illness which has people ghoulishly looking for bad news in the COVID fight, people who would rather see President Trump weak, perhaps dying in some ICU, who openly and admittedly resent his ongoing and impressive recovery.  It is true that not everyone is affected the same way by the virus.  Some have had slight illness, some are asymptomatic and others suffer more severe illness and even death.  We normally don't go around blaming those who don't die of the illness.  Except if the patient is Donald Trump.  Does this sound even remotely "normal"?  No - not to me either.

TAKE BACK BROADWAY; RUSTING HOSPITAL; WHY NOT US?; SPIKING; STILL IN TROUBLE; THE PLAINS ART MUSEUM; THE BANK OF ND; CARSON WENTZ; IMMERSION; FRAUDSTERS; DON’T COME HERE!; CONCORDIA RESTRUCTURES

I'm indulging myself today!  It's Sunday!  I am going to share some great dancing on some classic vintage film by one of my own all-time favorite actors and dancers.  George Raft came up the hard way.   Born in Hell's Kitchen, his boyhood friends were future mobsters.  He quit school at age 12, pursued a motley career, everything from prize fighter to taxi dancer.  He was undisputed King of the Charleston but he could do a lot more than that on the dance floor.  His persona as a tough guy limited his casting unfortunately.  He really didn't want to play "bad guys", but as with his friend Jimmy Cagney, this is what the industry demanded.  

Independent journalist James O'Keefe has undertaken to expose the massive voter fraud going on in Minneapolis.  Of course, it isn't just happening there, but he got the goods on Ilhan Omar's operation in that beleaguered city, so we can start there.  Obviously something is seriously amiss in a city where a woman who has been involved in so many scandals can be elected to high office.  We basically knew, but O'Keefe reveals some nuts and bolts in the works.  The Democrat-controlled press was quick to try to control the damage, throwing stones at one of his chief witnesses, Omar Jamal.  The Project Veritas video is linked in this story, so please watch it in view of the attack upon it and come to your own conclusion.  I would say that O'Keefe has some very convincing footage here.  

Publisher's Note: Joe Sobran's depiction of the perpetual rage of anti-Catholicism is as apt today as it was when he penned this column in 2002. Today marks the 10th anniversary of his passing. May he rest in peace.

If KKK.com or AryanNation.com redirected to the Trump/Pence campaign website, it would be a major story that the media would use, mercilessly, to tar the president. Why, Trump was asked at Tuesday night’s debate, again, to disavow white supremacists even though he has done so in the past and has no association with them. This is why it’s striking that Democratic nominee Joe Biden isn’t ever asked about a certain curious fact:

The domain Antifa.com resolves not to an explicitly Antifa-oriented site — but to the Biden/Harris campaign webpage.

It seems we have a new discipline in some of our colleges and universities.  I use the term inadvisedly.  You might find this an interesting sidebar to the haranguing that seems to apply solely to those on the right, and Trump in particular.  We must all remember that we are a Nation of Hate, that we all have White Privilege, yada, yada, yada.  So in the spirit of revolution, take a look at what's happening in Wichita Falls, Texas, to one professor.  Be sure you watch the video embedded in the article linked!  If you have college-bound kids, you might want to re-think that.  

I don't know what we were supposed to expect.  Of course Trump assured us Biden would crumble, many doubted whether he could hold up for 90 minutes and he was refused two breaks (presumably due to the side effects of the mind enhancement drugs he was supposedly administered).  It was well for everyone concerned that he was denied this - if he had come back from a break Trump would have had some dig and he would have been righteously insulted, even though probably legitimately outed.  He would have looked worse and Trump would have looked worse.  It was a mess and not made any better by the awful performance of Chris Wallace.  Will there be another?  One almost hopes not, but it was left so tattered as to almost require a reset.  I cannnot say I look forward to it or to the Pence-Harris bout either.  Let's hope it creates more light and less heat.

HANGING ON; WEATHER & TRADE; WINNERS & LOSERS; AIRLINE PASSENGER NUMBERS; PROTEST AT FARGO FORUM; OIL PATCH POPULATIONS?; TOP COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES; HOPITAL COSTRS; FILIPINO NURSES; HOTSPOT; "HIGH AND STAYING HIGH"; DAKTOIDS

For those assuming there’s some greater correlation between so-called “secularism” and what’s true, the birth of Nazism, fascism, Marxism and other sordid and sundry isms says otherwise.

There is only the true and the untrue — anything obscuring this reality is dark unreality.

And the truth about Amy Coney Barrett is, quite possibly, not that the Democrats are afraid she’ll impose Catholicism. They’re perhaps afraid that because she honors God, she’ll also honor her oath and impose constitutionalism.

Most of us have experienced the unfortunate effects of coronavirus in terms of social meltdown.  Not only are many of our jobs gone and our livelihoods disrupted or destroyed, but we are seeing the adverse effects of this engineered panic in social behavior.  Who knew that our families would be destroyed not by the disease itself but by the response prescribed by people in lab coats who apparently regard us as subjects in their experiment.  Who knew that we could be forcibly thrown out of a fast food restaurant when asking about meal deals, who ever thought we'd have to try to sneak into a grocery store and hope not to get caught without a mask while filling our cart with merchandise we were planning to purchase?  Who thought their friends would begin calling them names?  All this and more is courtesy of the tag-team of government and what passes these days for "science".  Actually, the science is controverted by fact - look at Sweden.  John Waters has an article out in Front Page which explores the human conscience when it is played upon by the forces of evil and how "ordinary" people's personalities and behavior can be twisted out of all normal bounds and our social constructs torn apart by imposing on the "good will" of people who would rather not think for themselves.  

With the 2020 elections upon us, many have heard the pros and cons of voting by mail. To clarify, absentee voting requires the citizen to proactively request a ballot and identify themselves to the satisfaction of the state. Universal mail-in voting, on the other hand, authorizes a state to dispense ballots to people carte blanche, no questions asked.

During the 2012 presidential election Mitt Romney challenged Barack Obama, and the Democrats opposed mail-in voting. A revealing New York Times article titled “As More Vote by Mail, Faulty Ballots Could Impact Elections” [10/6/12] exposed the risks of mail-in voting. The article is still available online. Democrat leaders were against mail-in voting before they were for it.

Despite the astounding success of the free enterprise system in producing unprecedented prosperity, antagonism toward capitalism is growing and popular politicians are adopting platforms that are essentially socialist. Why is this happening in America? In this article, Dr. Mark Hendrickson looks at the world per capita wealth over the last 2000 years and argues, “The present fascination with socialism and hatred of capitalism reflects a combination of willful historical blindness, lack of simple common sense, and inexcusable economic ignorance.”

Joe Biden's stumbling gaffes have been rich ground for the humor of some.  It is true, in all honesty, that one cannot help but smile when thinking of the challenge before his sign language interpreters.  But this is only momentarily amusing - it is wrong on so many levels.  First, the man himself is being stripped of his dignity.  We might never have been fans of him.  His and his family's corruption are legend and so is his own behavior (I remember specifically his treatment of Robert Bork).  Yet anyone, whatever his failings and shortcomings, should retain at least some dignity.  Biden is now deprived of that.  The people of America, even as they may be sniggering among themselves over his incredible gaffes, they, too, are being abused.  They are used as the other part of the tool which Biden is viewed as by his party.  What a bunch of rubes they must think we are.  But these people - the people running the Democrat Party - are putting a great nation at risk.  They are putting the free world at risk.  Hey - they are putting the whole world at risk.  This abuse needs to stop.  These abusers need to be stopped.  The only mechanism we have to stop it is a fair election.  Pleae believe this and act accordingly.  Vote in person.

UNWANTED DISTINCTION; "CAPTAIN NO"; ROOSEVELT LIBRARY ARCHITECT; BRIDGE OVER LITTLE MISSOURI; POSSIBLE GOOD DAPL NEWS; COMPALINER TAKEN ABACK; AMAATEUR DERAILER; SD PRARIE FATALITY; NO LAST WORD YET; ETHNIC STEREOTYPED CRIMINALS; DAKTOIDS

Anyone counseling against virtue — as the race activists do — is the worst enemy a people could have. In fact, this is why Rev. Peterson called BLM “worse than the Ku Klux Klan”: It’s doubtful that even the most clever white supremacist would think to, or could, convince blacks that virtue is vice.

But Democrat-enabling, and enabled, organizations — teachers’ unions, BLM, academia, etc. — are doing just that. And why? Well, since poor, dependent people vote Democrat by wide margins, a cynic could think that the Democrats would want to make the poor and dependent class as large as possible.

What’s for sure is that virtuous people rarely support leftists. So if I were an amoral modern Democrat lusting after power, I’d peddle vice, too.

We are at a crossroads right now.  We have multiple issues before us and each is pressing.  It is easy to get lost in the stream (or fire hose) of immediate issues, but just as one must attend to the functional soundness of a building before putting on the wallpaper, it is important to know what is going on under the rocks - where the Biden family has been at work these many years.  Glenn Beck rolled a few of these rocks over in his recent expose.  Before you decide your vote isn't important, or you think "Sleepy Joe" isn't so bad and would be "safe enough", please read on, and check out the links.  This is a dangerous time for America.

Anyone counseling against virtue — as the race activists do — is the worst enemy a people could have. In fact, this is why Rev. Peterson called BLM “worse than the Ku Klux Klan”: It’s doubtful that even the most clever white supremacist would think to, or could, convince blacks that virtue is vice.

But Democrat-enabling, and enabled, organizations — teachers’ unions, BLM, academia, etc. — are doing just that. And why? Well, since poor, dependent people vote Democrat by wide margins, a cynic could think that the Democrats would want to make the poor and dependent class as large as possible.

What’s for sure is that virtuous people rarely support leftists. So if I were an amoral modern Democrat lusting after power, I’d peddle vice, too.

Here is the travesty of moral narcissism. The emotional demarcation established by moral narcissism creates a cultural divide like no other. We are emotionally divided because we are ideologically divided. We so closely identify with our own ideals that we cannot see the world with clarity. Result? We end up living in silent separation from each other not willing to risk further alienation with friends and family. Relevant subjects never get addressed. Why? Because one or more parties declare “I Know Best” and no one wants to be cancelled.

We are in a real crisis in America right  now, acording to Captain Obvious.  We must decide how to deal with it.  Our local and state governments are more interested in enforcing distancing and mask mandates than in restoring order and stopping the violence in our cities, it seems.  It is now the moment of truth.  Are we ready to abandon civilization and go with a frontier-style every-man-for-himself culture or will we stick with the sytem which has served to create the most successful nation in history with the greatest wealth and most freedom man has ever known?  It is going to be up to you to decide and it isn't gong to be enough to just vote for Trump.  We need a strong and sensible Senate and House, we need competent and sane mayors, city councils, governors and state legislatures.   Nothing less will preserve our union.  It is crunch time.  And we need to stop lying and blaming phantom "racism" for the breakdown of law and order.

In the strange pretzel logic of 2020, Twitter has in one move both condemned and protected Joe Biden for his indecent fondling of a little girl while at a public ceremony honoring her parents.  How low does this go?   Biden, one would have thought, went low enough, but Twitter says his behavior is so unacceptable, so egregious . . . that no one dare re-tweet it.  How's that for logic?  They run interference for a child groper.  Good show, Twitter.

THE DIRT DEVIL GOT HIM; IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED; THE CENSUS; INDIAN COUNTRY CENSUS; DIVERSION INCENTIVE; NO RECLAMATION GUARANTEE; RETURNING STUDENT VIRUS SURPRISE; CRIMINAL JUSTICE; POLITICALLY CORRECT?; LLOYD'S TAKE; STUGIS SUPERSPREADER; MINNEAPOLIS QUANDARY; DAKTOIDS

it's a lovely day so I hope you've spent some of it outdoors doing something fun (I did).  But it's Sunday, so I have even more for you!  Today I've been listening to Herb Alpert.  Alpert is a man of many talents - most of us know his trumpet sound but he's done more than that.  Meet Herb Alpert and then sit back and listen to some great Alpert hits. 

Last week marked 75 years since surrender documents were signed aboard the USS Missouri, designating the day as the official Victory over Japan Day and the end of World War II. To help honor the occasion, Dr. James Thrasher shares a personal story of his father’s service to our nation in WWII. Thrasher, who recently found 133 letters written by his father during the war, writes, “I have carefully opened and read each letter. These letters reveal the experiences, fears, feelings, hopes, and dreams of a sailor. I had no idea regarding what my dad went through from boot camp to the news that the war was over.”

Our national election occurs in eight weeks and the choice of presidential candidates could not be starker. One candidate exemplifies the “rules for thee, but not for me” driver of the hard left. The other candidate comes under severe criticism for easing the rules and regulations on the common man. Trump’s supporters have never left him. If anything, the continuing assaults on his administration, himself, and his family have only hardened, if not expanded, his constituency. Defined by their sense of moral superiority, his opponents have tried everything under the sun to terminate his presidency. Yet, he is still present for duty – and may well be re-elected. This cold attempt illustrates the failed, inept looney-left leadership at the helm of Democrats, the media, and the Never-Trumpers. What better way to describe this cabal of sorry narcissistic leaders than as “ham-fisted” and “maladroit.”

Those in authoritiy have been working around the clock to turn Americans against one another and against America and American ideals.  It reaches from the highest levels of our federal government all the way to our nursurey schools.  Please take a look at some examples of this.  We can't survive this kind of social programming.  We cannot go forward on a diet of hate.  This stuff is ugly.  It is evil.  And it is all around us.  Our kids are fed a steady diet of this and it is reinforced every day of their lives throughout their careers.  It needs to stop.  Trump did the right thing but it is only a beginning.  We must all work to get rid of the rest of this sickness.

BLINKING AMBER LIGHT; RELUCTANT MOVE; STATE-OWNED OIL WELLS; DAPL; USE CAUTION ON MINIMUM WAGE; HEARTS ARE THROBBING; HEAD FAKE?; COAL CREEK; THREE SCENARIOS; THE THEODORE ROOSEVELT TRIANGLE; THE OTTO BREMER TRUST; UNSETTLING REPORTS; IMPROVE YOUR PELICAN IQ; DAKTOIDS