Dakota Beacon

By the time you read this, there’s a good chance that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will have held the Fed’s first press conference ... Leading up to this historic moment, the popular press has repeated a well-rehearsed rhetorical dance as it reports on the monthly release of the Consumer Price Index. Those who should know better repeat the mantra that, while food and energy prices may have increased, so-called core inflation … remain[s] flat as a pancake…. Unfortunately, things are not as rosy as we are being told. Food and beverage prices increased at an annual rate of 8.4 percent. Prices of household fuel and utilities, the housing expenses that everyone does have, rose at an annual rate of 7.2 percent. Transportation prices, which include prices of automobiles, gasoline, and public transportation, rose at an annual rate of 26.4 percent. Normal people who live their lives outside the Beltway know that the prices of the goods they buy are generally rising. They do not have to wait to be told by the experts.

Those of you (and that would be most of you) who know this man can appreciate it when I say-of all the voices I have ever heard, of all the lessons I have learned, of all the opinions I have ever had which have been forged into convictions on the anvil of life, I can honestly say that none has had the power to change and keep me on the right track as that of this one man.

Thank you Senator Freborg.  Layton, you've been like a father to me.

Catron hits the nail on the head. AARP management betrayed current members to gain hoards of future members. Catron further points out,

If America’s seniors ever figure out that AARP’s endorsement of ObamaCare was a cynical strategy to bilk the elderly, the seniors’ group will begin hemorrhaging members as quickly as its fellow Quisling, the AMA, has lost physicians.

So then, let me ask again. If you are still a member of AARP, why?

The day of reckoning for this national financial train wreck is approaching much faster than you think. The federal government’s current policies of extend and pretend will no longer appease the financial markets. If our politicians don’t fix the nation’s debt problem on their own terms now, with substantive and credible policy changes, then the financial markets will fix the problem for them later. Specifically, later is sometime between now and the November 2012 elections. The clock is ticking.

The old-timers will always pride themselves in their “small town” atmosphere. Some, however, may have to figure out how to deal with their personal behavior, a behavior that alienates. Treating newcomers with rumor, innuendo and gossip is nothing new. Relegating them to a place as second class citizens may be deadly. A few bad eggs can ruin renewal for everyone.

Something as simple as practicing the “Golden Rule” costs nothing and is infinitely more valuable than dollars from politicians.

“I was elected by the people of New Jersey to manage this fiscal debacle and I came here to do that.  I came here to govern, not to worry about getting re-elected.” - Chris Christy

The North Dakota House of Representatives has it right in this session. Each of us must now call our legislators in the Senate and our friends in the Dalrymple administration and let them know how we feel about the “equality of poverty” that is socialism… and to defund the “Centers of Mediocrity”.

In order to "shore-up" the pension fund, those figures have to increase to 11.75% for teachers, and 12.75% for school districts by 2014.

In the coming years, you can be assured that local school districts will be complaining about the new unfunded mandates place on them by this plan.  The sad part is - they are right.  This pension shore-up/bailout will eat into state spending designed to buy-down local property tax rates (which is bad policy in the first place).

Once again the Obama administration has taught us something. A “premier” employer treats adults like children, demands that the child-adults allow wiser adult-adults to resolve conflicts, and perpetuates the fallacy that a behavior that has survived since the dawn of humankind will evaporate under decree from the wise ones.

How appropriate for the 2011 Health and Human Services Department. Quintessentially Obamaesque.

Since we as citizens have interest in the economic success of “our car company”, it will be mandatory, and Constitutionally defensible, that the Volt be your next car purchase.

From time to time there have been external enemies at our gates; there has always been the enemy within, the hidden and malignant inertia that foreshadows more certain destruction of our life and future than any nuclear warhead.  There can be no darker or more devastating tragedy than the death of man’s faith in himself, and IN HIS POWER TO DIRECT HIS FUTURE.

Two other things that aren’t in the eye of the beholder are the statuses “coward” and “jerk.”  That is to say, I have to laugh at all these “brave artists™” who puff up their chicken chests about “tackling tradition.”  Not only is bragging about a stand against tradition in an apostatic, irreverent secular age a bit like bragging about burning churches in Egypt, but also ask whose traditions they’re attacking.  It’s easy to target Christians because it’s all reward and no risk: The media give you lots of attention, and you’ll taste neither the steel of political correctness’ career-rending blade nor that of those who would slowly cut your brave little head off.  Want to really be courageous?  Try mocking the Religion of Peace™.  Come on, Serrano et al., I dare you.

I double dare you.

In a Washington area newspaper letter to the editor, Professor Caffrey writes:

What do the unfolding nuclear tragedy in Japan and our refusal to address global warming have in common?  Both are rooted in the willful disregard of science.

Caffrey then spends the next 316 words weaving flawed argument after flawed argument into a tapestry of fallacy and illogic in which the professor not only sounds the usual global alarmist siren of “catastrophic,” human-caused warming of the “global climate,” but also manages to drag in utterly unrelated points. Caffrey uses the non-sequiturs to imply that killing jobs supported by “[e]normous coal and oil deposits” would “strengthen us as a nation[.]” Then after offering up additional non-sequiturs, Caffrey finally arrives at his true objective: to promote an upcoming talk in which a “medical professor” committed to “saving lives” will discuss the dangers presented by “global warming.”

Consider the infamous "Dark Ages" - from the fall of the Roman Empire to the high Middle Ages. During this period, Christianity gradually spread over Europe and quietly eliminated and mitigated most of the everyday barbarisms of the Classical world: abortion, infanticide, slavery, pederasty, divorce, crucifixion (once a common punishment for petty crimes).

Some of these practices have lately made a comeback in the name of "progress," but the fact remains that the so-called Dark Ages were an era of unparalleled moral reform. Christianity raised the moral standards of a continent; we may, if we choose, congratulate ourselves on lowering those standards again, but to speak as if Christianity's chief historical effect had been to increase violence and cruelty is sheer nonsense - and malicious nonsense at that.

No government has the power to confer civil rights on its citizens, no matter how benevolent that bequest may be.  Instead man has certain rights by virtue of his humanity which are conferred (if by anyone), by his Creator.  Therefore, they are a possession to be protected rather than a gift or a benefit to be given or taken away.

Whether a Christian or just a Deist, he certainly had a firm faith in the Providence of a transcendent God who ordered the universe.  To me, THAT is Common Sense to believe in!

The last line attracted a bit of attention, but the "shared values" - ie, the fetid bromides of conventional wisdom - are worth decoding, too:

"Education of our children" means more spending on an abusive and wasteful unionized educrat monopoly; "growth of our economy" means more spending on stimulus funding for community-organizer grant applications; "how we defend our country" means more spending on defense welfare for wealthy allies; "our security and civil liberties" means more spending on legions of crack TSA crotch fondlers; "how we respect our seniors" means more spending on entitlements for an ever more dependent citizenry whose sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make any sense.

Check the numbers, Valley City is in the flooding bull’s-eye, living with stress and anxiety on an island, a grim warning about Devils Lake, Annabelle Homes, a Minneapolis developer, $370 million for roads damaged by oil traffic, was that the state should not overreact to short-term problems, Time to sharpen the plow blades, Healthy Oilseeds, suspected fraud, Whitey’s Cafe in East Grand Forks, “Never the twain shall meet”, DAKTOIDS

Once a gazillionaire owns two yachts, four homes, and ten cars, regularly eats $25,000-a-kilo Almas caviar, enjoys unlimited top-notch medical care, and travels around the world all year long, does gathering a-hundred gazillion dollars more to support ten yachts, a palace or two, a container ship full of Rolls-Royces, and every-Friday-night dinners at Central Park West’s Jean-Georges Restaurant put yet a bigger smile on the gazillionaire’s face or render said gazillionaire immune to death?

Really, Professor Stiglitz, can’t your immense, hay-wired, progressive brain do better?

For many Americans, April 15 marked Tax Day. But it also marked an event much more redeeming. On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball. The executive who signed the talented athlete was Branch Rickey, President of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Recently, CNN reported that Branch Rickey’s faith was a strong motivation for his decision to sign Robinson. Now that’s an angle that rarely gets acknowledged, but should, especially this week that many of us celebrate as the most holy in our faith.

On a spending binge for decades, congress and the president expect us to pay for part of their excess and then borrow the rest. Spending money they don’t have, congress added almost $3 trillion to the national debt in the last 2 years. THREE TRILLION. That’s a 3 with 12 zeros. At this rate congress will grow the debt by at least $2 trillion a year for the next 10 years unless corrected. That’s a recipe for America’s economic disaster. Entitlement programs and interest on the debt are the major driving factors.

Dismissing serious federal budget reductions by claiming it hurts the elderly and children is a political canard, a scare tactic, partisan, the same old same old.

The 2011 Political Landscape of the State of North Dakota in comparison to the 2008 Republican Platform. First of a Series.

If many of these Senators expect to be re-elected, they have a lot of explaining to do!

My personal hope is that many will retire, leaving future tough choices to new leaders with a backbone.

The hard truth is that we are not in trouble because we haven’t been thieving from the “rich” fast enough.  We are in deep, deep trouble because we spend too much.  Our federal government is spending money at an ever faster rate.  We cannot sustain it.  We cannot feed this monster any more.  Kari was right about it being George Bush’s fault.  He spent like a whole Russian navy on a binge.  The current administration is just a continuation, speeding ever faster, of the same irresponsible spending in which Bush engaged.

Vegas is no longer the world’s biggest gambling resort; America is. Barack Obama says we need to “win the future”, and one more roll of the dice should do it: a trillion dollars of chips on the stimulus came up empty but let’s pile another couple trillion on ObamaCare, and “high-speed rail”, and “green jobs” and “broadband access”…  And all the while Wayne Newton is singing “Danke Schoen” in Chinese. But don’t worry, we’re not just throwing our money away. We’re playing to a system! The President calls it “investing in the future”.

What a rush of pride I felt when I saw my Soldier strolling towards us.  He walks like a soldier.  He’s proud to be a soldier.  His basic training made him a man.... his AIT is making him a mature, professional and responsible member of our armed forces.  What a blessing he is.  I look at him and think, “He could be deployed.”  “He could and probably will be put in harms way.”  He’s my grandson!

Prof. Omdahl’s comments are based on so much misinformation and disinformation, not to mention plain old lack of information (but no shortage of pontification) that it is difficult to respond fully to his assertions here.  We suggest that he take seriously what so many North Dakota voters have already taken seriously—the abolition of the property tax—and present his revised opinions in a future column.

It took Democrats a while to get there, but, finally, almost a century after the start of the Bolshevik Revolution and Margaret Sanger’s organization, they’ve arrived at where the Soviets and Sanger found common ground. They indeed act as if, as Sanger said about Stalin’s Russia, ‘birth control … is part of the regular service of the government.

What struck me in recently re-reading this article is how Democrats in America have arrived at Sanger’s ideal, where Planned Parenthood’s services have become, in their mind, ‘part of the regular welfare service of the government’—just like Stalinist Russia…. The saddest thing is that neither they, nor their supporters, nor America, seem to comprehend the outrageousness of their position.