Dakota Beacon

. . . “Blizzard brings North Dakota to a standstill”; “It was my first time driving in snow”; a new record flood; a nationally syndicated loudmouth; “The people are fed up” ; We are being neglected as a tribe; 7 of 10 American Indians now live in metro areas; McKenzie County is a demolition derby; There is no official report about the murders; bittersweet resolution; the nation’s third highest state income tax rate; Let the Buyer Beware; sounded like a herd of horses; Leona was one of 16 children . . . .

How 'bout something light. Here's a "good news" -- "bad news"  joke. The good news is juncos and robins have arrived. The bad news is that  the Redpolls have not yet flown north to the arctic for the summer.

As I waited at what was later revealed to me as the most dangerous bus station in Chicago for my pickup from the dealer, I could not help but remember Benjamin Pryor and Richard E. Browne Jr. from my basic training outfit in Fort Ord, California. Richard was a well spoken black man from an upper middle class neighborhood in Los Angeles, and Benny was a street-smart survivor from the south side of Chicago.

. . . a period of growth and greater economic diversity; Don’t make promises you cannot afford to keep; a critical shortage of affordable housing in the Bakken region counties; The “short sale” was scrutinized by the Modesto Bee; The word is rigor. That’s what the North Dakota system lacks; Rough Rider Hall of Fame in the ND Capitol; the state is vulnerable to corruption; 90 percent of the county’s social services clients are Indian; But the bad guys are increasing faster; the obituaries of interesting Nodaks; he farmed until the time of his death . . . .

In 1913, when the progressive income tax began (and the first 1040 form, with instructions, was only four pages long), the top rate was a mere 7 percent, applied only to the fabulously wealthy (incomes above $500,000). By the time Woodrow Wilson left office in 1921, the great progressive had hiked the upper rate to 73 percent. World War I (for America, 1917-18) had given Wilson a short-term justification, but so did Wilson’s passion for a robust “administrative state.”

Disagreeing with Wilson were the Republication administrations of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, his immediate successors. Along with their Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, they reduced the upper rate, eventually bringing it down to 25 percent by 1925. In response, the total revenue to the federal Treasury increased significantly, from $700 million to $1 billion, and the budget was repeatedly in surplus.

"A dignified climb-down." Well, Black has written books on both FDR and Nixon, so it's not surprising that he is willing to condemn the "reprehensible" but manages to avoid altogether the mention of "truth" and "sin" - outrages which would cause the world to react with "scorn and incredulity." After all, the Church's teaching on sexual morality merely "assists the Church's numerous and influential enemies in discounting its moral influence" because, remember, "billions" reject the notion of sexual morality, don't they?

He said that being the richest nation on earth begs the question, "If we're so rich, why are we so broke?" The "we" he refers to is not the American worker; it is the government. Harkin sees America not as a land of free people or a nation governed by the people. He believes America is the government; its citizens are simply workers whose efforts, savings, and property belong to the government to take as it sees fit.

The problem  is made manifest in connecting Obama with his failing policies. For too many Americans, there is no connection between Obama's agenda and the direction 
in which the country is headed.

Things got so bad that the British electorate was willing to elect a bona fide conservative to run their government: Margaret Thatcher. This was not some squishy moderate that we in the United States would have called a Rockefeller Republican or (today) a RINO. This was the real McCoy; the genuine article. Here was a new leader who actually understood and could articulate what was wrong with Britain—and had the courage to do something about it.

. . . ND had the fastest personal income growth of all states; ND was creating the basis for a stronger economy; Go to ND fellows -- that’s where the money is; Wheat is still king; UND team never hit its stride; They will always be the Sioux to me; a group of elite, athlete scientists; U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer; Like Father Like Son; Punch a grandfather, go to jail!  he was nabbed with 7.5 pounds of marijuana; Counterfeit clothing in Jamestown? More of the classic ND way of dying; The Pettibone native was a steady person . . . .

. . . a major flood alert; “Toughest Weather City”; toughest abortion laws in the nation; ‘everyone gets a say’ on all issues; $27 million addition to the downtown Civic Center; Grafton officials have a novel idea; Epping is a flyspeck town on the BNSF railroad; the mining and hauling of fracking sand; the Elkhorn Ranch; a drunken couple with no seat belts; two people died in an early morning camper fire; The SD Highway Patrol established a special squad; worked in coal mines during high school; DAKTOIDS . . . .

Before you can debate whether or not there is a right to a thing, you have to know what that thing is. What is marriage? If we agree that it’s the union between a man and woman, then there is no argument because no one is trying to stop any adult American from entering into such a union. Ah, but the anti-marriage (liberal) side will reject this time-honored definition, and this brings us to the point: the marriage debate is not a matter of rights.

We do know, however, that progressives are happy to do with marriage what they do with everything: hand it over to the federal government. Render under government what is government’s. And what is government’s province? It’s anything progressives decide.

Theodosian code banned depraved practices

Every socialist, communist, leftist and fascist has opposed religion. They will permit only one object of faith and that object is the State. Religion is a competitor, and therefore a threat, for which statists have no tolerance. They will go to great lengths to convince people there is no God worthy of their faith except the State.

As I said above, I am not a Roman Catholic.

But, I can like this Pope.

. . . Finally -- some balance! . . . only 15 of the state’s 53 counties were losers; county-by-county health rankings in ND; “Home of the Fighting Sioux”; beware what you wish for, you just might get it; Shirvani was “off to a bit of a rocky start; praised the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela; the dominant voices in their households; she is a victim of Google-type fat-bashing; non-tribal victims and accused; Minnesota companies; Murder in the Oil Patch; rarely is so much expected of one person; DAKTOIDS . . . .

Vladimir Lenin once said that we would sell the communists the rope with which they hang us — little did he know that we’d end up giving it away.

The financial fire brigade knew this and decided to impose a condition on the Cypriot government in order to gain access to any capital infusion for the banks. The condition is that the Cypriot government had to steal depositors’ money.

It seems absolutely paramount that the Republican Party stop dead in its tracks and look at the road map.  Just where does it want to go? 

Isn’t it past time to offer alternatives?  There is no reason in the world why our kids are forced into this one-size-fits-none system while we all go broke paying for Planned Parenthood and union community organizers. 

Some will charge that Clinton has embraced gay marriage out of political opportunism, that she sees the direction of her party, and therefore looking ahead to the 2016 presidential race, there's no way she would oppose gay marriage.

Perhaps there’s some truth to the claims, but I interpret her position as steadily evolving. It's an honest shift, one that thrills liberals.

"In a scathing letter, Mayor Nutter last week requested that the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission consider whether the magazine and Huber deserved to be rebuked for the article." Why is this significant? Well, when we hear about Englishmen, Canadians, Australians, Swedes, or other Westerners being imprisoned or fined for criticizing Islam or homosexuality — yes, this does happen — guess what the instruments of their oppression are.

Human-relations commissions.

One salient reason the United States has never been invaded by a foreign power is because the population has remained armed under the rights guaranteed by the second amendment to the Constitution.

Then the Guardian told us in 2003 that, “…Bhutan, the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan's first crime wave — murder, fraud, drug offences.” The serpent had struck again.

But, as happens when there is oil money involved, greed and mission creep took over the project, and now the entity created by the legislature has gone into the business of lobbying against private water providers – writing letters to the water commission demanding that permits be denied any time a private business wants to operate in what they consider “their territory”.   

In response to recently being diagnosed with a rare and terminal type of brain cancer, sitcom star Valerie Harper declared, “we are all terminal.”

Upon his death in January 1924, Lenin’s body was embalmed and preserved in a tomb, actually a shrine, in Red Square, whereby the faithful could forever honor the Great One. Etched in the marble holding the Bolshevik godfather’s body is this inscription: “Lenin: The Savior of the World.”

For an atheist state angrily committed to a war on religion, this would seem odd. In fact, however, it is precisely what we came to expect from communist regimes.

The terms conservative and liberal are relatively new; in saner ages, there was no right and left, only right and wrong. That is the mindset we must recapture today, and it's why I long ago stopped calling myself a conservative.

This noxious notion lies at the heart of the "Bush Doctrine." It has been inherited and enhanced by Obama. And the Republican Party must confront it head-on and repudiate it. It absolves hubris and power-lust. It rejects limits - moral, constitutional, and metaphysical. It conjures up an endless parade of Hitlers - Saddam, Osama, Ahmadenijad - and justifies lethal, secret, and unconstitutional means to eliminate them and all others deemed evildoers.

 The Bush Doctrine is the father of the poisonous Obama Doctrine that Rand Paul condemned for thirteen hours last week. That explains the contemptuous response from Senators McCain and Graham. They are joined at the hip with the Bush Doctrine. They are bound to its failure like a ball and chain. No wonder they resent the truth-teller

Whether you like it or hate it, it was not at all irrelevant to Irish history and quite possibly had more to do with that history than Synge or Yeats or O’Casey.  So, no apologies for Irish-American Tin Pan Alley songs from me.