Dakota Beacon

The biggest danger, and one that is not talked about, is the national debt and the ballooning interest rates. America currently owes $16 trillion. This does not include unfunded liabilities which make the debt much, much higher. So far, we can service this debt because of low interest rates (about 2% or about $300 billion a year). In a few years the debt will reach $20 trillion. As we continue printing money and our creditors demand higher interest payments the interest rates will increase to around 5% or more and the annual interest payment will run around $1 trillion a year. Eventual insolvency is the real fiscal cliff.

Still, the voters keep re-electing the same politicians

. . . Narcissism; There was no ice storm -- yet Heitkamp won; UND’s aviation department; What about that; The biography jumped from an Amazon ranking of 77,000 to 111; “There is a lot more that is going to come out.”; a visiting homeless family; There is a lot of good, a whole lot; KKR comes to Williston; He parties, he’s ‘Rah Rah’; both daughters died the ND way; Space Aliens Grill & Bars; ND had about 200 people over 100; DAKTOIDS. . . .

The keystone of this argument is a passage that is terrifying in its implications and is worth quoting in full: “The typical organization for collective action [interest group] within a society will … have little or no incentive to make any significant sacrifices in the interest of the society” and “there is ... no constraint on the social cost such an organization will find it expedient to impose on the society in the course of obtaining a larger share of the social output for itself” (italics in original). This means nothing less than it says: a group will kill its host, the American republic in this case, before relinquishing even a modicum of benefits for itself.

. . . consider this report from The Columbus Dispatch:  

More than one out of every five registered Ohio voters is probably ineligible to vote.

In two counties, the number of registered voters actually exceeds the voting-age population: Northwestern Ohio’s Wood County shows 109 registered voters for every 100 eligible, while in Lawrence County along the Ohio River it’s a mere 104 registered per 100 eligible.

Another 31 counties show registrations at more than 90 percent of those eligible, a rate regarded as unrealistic by most voting experts. The national average is a little more than 70 percent.

[…]Of the Buckeye State’s 7.8 million registered voters, nearly 1.6 million are regarded as “inactive.”. . .

Now consider that Obama “won” Ohio by 100,000 votes. This means that to flip the state, Democrat surrogates had to illegally “activate” only 6.25 percent of its 1.6 million inactive voters.

Perhaps the most breathtaking parallel between FDR’s and Obama’s Big Government agendas is this: In his first five years in office, FDR spent more than the previous 31 presidents combined; in eight years as president, Obama will have doubled the national debt accumulated by all 43 of his predecessors (unless, of course, Uncle Sam’s farcical finances blow up before then).

The final insult was the connivance to fix future conventions/nominations by sewing up delegate approval by the central committee.  This, alone, was enough to alienate many valuable activists at a time when we needed all we could find.  I can’t forgive this deed.  In the face of forces set to destroy our country, these folks were focusing on trying to contain and hogtie the most vital segment of the party, one they had already beaten.  They already had their man on the ticket.  Why do this – NOW?

There were no limits to how much they blamed Bush, and how much the blame worked with the Democratic base.

But even that doesn’t describe the full picture. Remarkably, Mitt Romney received fewer votes in 2012 than John McCain did in 2008, even amid the red-hot anti-Obama sentiment among conservatives and what seemed to be a genuine pro-Romney enthusiasm among Republicans.

There was a time not so long ago when serious sociologists attributed the stability of society to the fundamental building blocks of home, school and church. With the increase in non-traditional homes and families, failing schools and the liberalization of churches these institutions have failed us. Alluding to the words of Barack Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, the chickens have come home to roost. How right he was.

I marvel that, when Obama urged his followers to revenge, Mitt Romney responded not in kind -- with a call to anger, resentment, and violence -- but with a call to love. Caritas. "Love of country," he called it. That was probably his finest hour.

Why love? Love unites. Hatred divides.

Editor’s note: A version of this piece was written for the American Thinker on January 26, 2011.

We're at the halfway mark of Barack Obama's first term as president. I say "first term" because I'm confident that this isn't his last. Conservatives will not want to hear this, but I've felt all along that Obama will be a two-term president, and nothing I've seen dispels that notion.

My thinking is grounded primarily in two sets of data . . .

. . . Heitkamp won the U.S. Senate race; You’re headed in the wrong direction; The state is feeling more self-reliant; Jamestown is ready to rumble; Two Rivers Activity Center; business growth outside the Oil Patch; Jamestown College Athletic Department; Who represents North Dakota? the Legislature ignored public opinion; the end of the United Mine Workers in Coal Country; Stanton, ND -- no problem; MOST INTERESTING RUMORS; DAKTOIDS. . . .

Moreover, the president’s unceasing class-warfare rhetoric was rewarded by the electorate, as were his attacks on profits, the private sector, the wealthy, banking and investment, and the oil and natural gas industry. The Obama energy policy is advanced. Mitt Romney would have unleashed a boom for America’s domestic energy industry. That is now gone. That is a tragedy, the levels of which we will not be able to appreciate.

And what about Romney? I had my reservations, but America rejected a genuinely decent man who had the best business background of anyone who would have ever assumed the Oval Office. He was the perfect person for the perfect time.

While conservatives complain about illegal migration — ever more tepidly — I’ve been warning that it was merely an exacerbation of a larger problem: legal immigration, through which statists have been importing reliably socialist voters. This I have explained thoroughly over and over and over and over and over and over again, yet most conservatives won’t touch the issue. This is partially due to “immigrationism,” dogma stating that immigration must be a permanent and unquestioned fixture of American life (death?); partially due to pundit cowardice; and partially due to rationalization. After all, immigration is here to stay, we think, so better to shunt its scary implications to the mind’s recesses, where the rest of the wild things are. 

Understanding what is happening, though, helps us realize that we have the opportunity to formulate plans for the end game of socialism. We have only to look at the collapse of the Soviet Union to realize what our national future looks like and to act to minimize the damage to our own individual lives. Again, unfortunately, those actions we must take are the opposite of what our national economy needs, as you will see below.

Understanding what is happening, though, helps us realize that we have the opportunity to formulate plans for the end game of socialism. We have only to look at the collapse of the Soviet Union to realize what our national future looks like and to act to minimize the damage to our own individual lives. Again, unfortunately, those actions we must take are the opposite of what our national economy needs, as you will see below.

Those in charge of America's public education -- the teachers' unions and college academics -- have turned America's education system into a laboratory, with our children as the rats. They are committed to undermining the traditions, beliefs, and social structures that made America great.

Perhaps none of our choices is infallible, but we believe that they represent our best opportunity this year to help return America to its founding principles, restore our ailing economy and repair our damaged national defenses.

To that end we offer the endorsements herein and urge that those who love freedom and our country VOTE on November 6 and get your friends and families to the polls. We are facing serious threats to our freedom. We must elect people who are most likely to oppose these challenges. . . .

. . . “Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me?”; Bismarck will be the “sweet spot” in the Bakken Oil Boom; Bismarck hospitals have an acute shortage of nurses; “For the Love of North Dakota and Other Essays”; ballot measures proposing new sales taxes; 5 exceed $100 million; Fargo Beer is brewed in Black River Falls, Wisconsin; “Fighting Whatevers”; Kelley described UND as vibrant and diverse; pipelines are one of the biggest issues; Cattle from ND typically have thicker coats; Forum's "Best of 2012”; surnames beginning with SCH. . . .

Economic expansion and development is the happy consequence of people participating in an extensive market division of labor, made possible by the accumulation of capital that is wisely invested and directed by entrepreneurs. Capital accumulation and technological innovation, therefore, are vital for sustaining economic progress because they allow workers and producers to be more productive. Increases in productivity yield higher real wages and a more prosperous standard of living.

Such laws give government the latitude to punish people selectively based on whether they or their words are in political favor.

The likely response here is that I’m being obtuse. “Don’t you know, Duke, that women generally have to assume the responsibility for birth control?” But hold the phone. The feminists have long maintained that men should shoulder half the burden of contraception and that thinking otherwise is “sexist.” So why did they make that antiquated, “sexist” assumption an implicit centerpiece in their argument for government policy?

For Williams there is no separation between the material and the spiritual world. Accordingly, if death is the sundering of body and soul, it is not as simple a process as most of us think. Any death, and especially a sudden one, leaves much unfinished business in the hearts and minds of both the departed and those left behind.

A geographical repertoire creates a smorgasbord of memories. North Dakota’s autumns may produce extremes. Cold and snow interweave with warm and pleasant days. Sleet on Labor Day, temperatures ranging in the 50s and 60s in October, rain on Thanksgiving Day makes par for the course.

Where have all the liberals gone? Why, they're all "progressives" now. The term "liberal" became so unpopular that they shoved it out to the curb, without so much as a proper burial. But wait - how can we oppose progress? Well, it depends on where we're headed.

Parent and former school board member presents the facts about ND DPI candidate Tracy Potter: 

A.  Potter has a long and strong history of promoting amoral agendas.

B.    Potter is a sneak who pushes his agendas using back door methods.

C.    Tracy Potter consistently misrepresents himself. 

Let's start with liberty. It is quite reasonable that its enemies should direct their fire at its divine source. With God out of the way, they can deny, then destroy, the natural law that is "written on our hearts" - and theirs (Romans 2:15). For if God does not exist, then neither does His law. And if His law doesn't exist, then they get to make up their own.

But, by and large, escapism is not necessarily negative. It certainly has an element of emancipation in an attempt to cultivate a different reality. C. S. Lewis was fond of pointing out that the usual enemies of escape -- were jailers

This refers to the revelation in May of this year that Obama’s former literary agency, Acton & Dystel, printed a promotional booklet in 1991 that touted Obama as having been “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.” Note that this was a polished volume created at great expense by a professional outfit, and there is only one source from which its agents could have gotten the notion that Obama was born in Kenya: Obama himself.

Alexander emphasizes that he is still a neurosurgeon and a man of science, but he has been fundamentally changed. His life goal is now to help explain a new picture of reality which will show that the universe is “evolving, multi-dimensional, and completely known by a God who cares for us … deeply and fiercely.” Alexander has written “Proof of Heaven,” which Simon & Schuster will publish next month, to advance this quest.

. . . how unbelievable the Bakken story has become; the state may be producing 1.6 million barrels of oil a day; ND historically punches above its weight; about $10,000 for each resident; Tell the Bison to Go Roam Somewhere Else; Fargo has a relatively large Somali population; never living more than a few miles from the place he was born; one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps; narratives about daily life; the shaming of fatties; a heroic, dedicated advocate of Indian rights . . . .