Dakota Beacon

Once we understand the V.A., we need to determine the extent of the problem and the extent of dishonesty about the problem. It is clear that there is significant dishonesty in both of the two major components of the V.A., the Veterans' Health Administration (VHA) and the Veterans' Benefits Administration (VBA).

The MSM no longer holds a monopoly on the news, but they still exert influence. They no longer operate in a vacuum because the alternative media sees to that. The alternative media does what real journalists used to do.

Meanwhile, the MSM continues to prey upon the sentiments and dispositions of middle-America, especially the news-consuming elderly.

If Americans are being sold a bill of goods, chalk it up to the mainstream media and its low information consumers. What would we expect from a media that gives high precedence to a basketball owner’s racist rants and New Jersey governor’s non-issue “bridgegate” story while ignoring the failures of Obama administration?

Claim of a Swiss firm planning a $500 million mixed-use development in Williston, top ten counties in the nation for housing growth are in North Dakota, “I attack him,” describing a machete fight with another Somali, ZJ Wah Wa, a prominent Jamaican disc jockey, is among those arrested and will be extradited to ND, “More big farms, more small farms, fewer farms in the middle. And more farmers with off-farm jobs”, ND is the only state where German is the No. 2 language, Legislature should force UND to pick a new nickname, Naysayers predicted that the Crazy Horse (Custer’s nemesis) Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota would fail, but work still plods on, Memorial Day tornado touched down in an RV camp housing oil workers near Watford City injuring nine and destroying 15 trailers, DAKTOIDS

"Messenger of the Truth" is a new documentary about the amazing life Fr. Jerzy Popielusko (1947-1984) . . .

But what is a Reagan conservative? And what is the man’s legacy? Why is he so widely liked to this day? And what lessons can Republicans, Democrats, and even President Barack Obama learn from Ronald Reagan?

Men make choices. Women make different choices. Women choosing to juggle children and employment spend less time on the job. Women with children have good reason to seek a 9 to 5 job rather than a 60 hour work week in a high pressure or blue collar job. In fact, childless women make about the same as men.

As usual, Aristotle said it best: good men can muddle through the worst of constitutions; but bad men can wreck the best of them.

I conjecture that the college student who hopes for a lucrative career, who stands a chance in the political arena after graduating, if he should graduate at all, is the one who remains silent when the college president “protests” or publicly reprimands his classmate for not falling in line, or for expressing the wrong opinion. He will find it in his best interest, if I imagine things as they are, to keep his head down and say and do exactly what is expected of him by those who can make or destroy him. He will submit to diversity training as prostrately as any slave in Egypt submitted to the will of his Pharaoh, as fearfully as any Soviet submitted to the commands of Stalin and his politburo. If I am right in my conjecture, such a person would be well-conditioned to do all the wrong things when he entered politics, where cringing, cowering, back-peddling, back-stabbing and dissimulating would (as indeed they do) affect innocent victims outside the ivy walls.

The federal government’s intrusion (and sometimes outright obstruction) in the areas of transportation, energy, commerce, shipping, pipelines, and even charity, marital condition (LGBT “equal subsidy” activism would not have arisen if married people had not benefited from hundreds of preferential laws), political activity and other areas have to be discontinued.

 Regulation, to provide an even playing field and public safety… by all means, YES! Subsidies to special interests, mandates, and exceptions that choose winners and losers, absolutely NO. Until Americans understand that “Separate but Equal” never works in any area of discussion, we are doomed to federal tyranny in the end.

North Dakota stands out as a model that others aspire to emulate, A plan released last week was described as a “framework of action” for areas of importance to the valley, demanding that UND prohibit students from wearing clothing or gear with Fighting Sioux references, "nor will I tell you what to wear", Obama’s response, “Move to North Dakota!”, "Anderson’s administration is “cold and aloof”, ND Missouri River Stakeholders, there is nothing to stop the wind other than a few barbed wire fences, farming in ND remains risky -- the state has the nation’s greatest temperature variability, The expanded plant produces ethane, The $350 million Dakota Prairie Refinery in Dickinson is 60 percent complete, Each day, 36 100-car trains rumble through Ross, DAKTOIDS

Is it that refusal to recognize achievement is only to be applied to other people’s achievement? 

VBA employees have been fired for shredding claims so they do not have to decide them. It can easily take a year for a claim to be decided.

  How can we honor them today? We can honor them by not destroying the America they were willing to sacrifice everything for.

. . . “The sun will shine brightest on North Dakota”; it will soon have a population of 60,000; Dazzle in Grand Forks? cautions about the future of the ND oil industry; sky-high rents in Williston; the housing situation in western North Dakota; hence oil trains blow up; Bakken shale wells deplete rapidly; ND will host $1 billion of road construction; TAT’s oil revenues have become so large; everything they want with no questions asked; ND leads the nation in well-being; Father of the “World’s Largest Buffalo” died; dumped 45,000 pounds of cheese; Philippine health professionals in ND; DAKTOIDS . . . .

But if this is so and it’s okay for a homosexual man be a troop leader and go on camping trips with 11 and 12-year-old boys, why isn’t it okay to have a heterosexual man be a Girl Scout troop leader and do the same with the girls?

It goes without saying that we don’t need the First Amendment to protect a recitation of Washington’s Farewell to the Troops, the Gettysburg Address or Shakespeare’s sonnets.  Alexander Pope need not fear from the grave for his words.  But we must guard the right to those whose speech is rude, or contrary to the majority view, or original and different.  We must protect the right of the dissenter or the minority view.  America was created on this precept.  It is our hallmark. 

But they exploit this sense of helplessness and hopelessness to pose as the “rescuer” in a kind of bizarre institutionalized form of Munchausen Syndrome, perpetrating a wrong so as to profit by appearing to “right” it.

Science is an ongoing methodology in search of truth. By suppressing research that disagrees with a favorite proposition, the reputation of science as a search for truth is damaged.

Nations that carry a big stick but keep their cards close to the vest about when they will use it are seldom attacked. We have demobilized half of our stick, but we draw red lines that we do not back up with action. John Kerry¹s bluster almost got us into a war with Syria that would have been a disaster. We are now all bluster.

In 1987, as the Cold War neared its end, Ronald Reagan asserted that “any American who has ever listened to a bugler sound Taps” whether it was “halfway around the world” or on “a lonely tarmac stateside” knows “why we set aside a special day each year to honor those who have died for our country and to pray for permanent peace.”

Omdahl says ND is a fiscal anomaly among states, ELCA is losing membership and congregations, Campaigning to be conducted by surrogates, Students enrolled in the multicultural education class take a trip to Minneapolis, He peaked as a student reporter, Bill Marceil Jr and his "personal shared stuff", Minot Daily News - No Browsers Wanted, death on ND roadways, $16-20 an hour at Taco John's, Hawaii not represented, DAKTOIDS

So, if that’s the case, then why wouldn’t I believe that those miscarriages, which were lives that began at conception, are waiting in heaven, just as the lives that make it out of the womb go to the other side?

This begins to answer the other part of our question “Why”: For whom did our soldiers die? Obviously, it wasn't for themselves. They laid down their lives so that others—originally Americans, but later, people of many nationalities—might live and enjoy the blessings of liberty. Scores, if not hundreds of millions, of people are not only alive, but are free today, because Americans took up arms and laid down their lives for the sake of others. The Bible says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, ESV). Those fallen heroes, whom we remember on Memorial Day, indeed loved much.

Adolf Hitler said that since the average person had a very limited memory and a “slowness of understanding,” it was necessary to use only short, catchy slogans and repeat them often. Sound familiar?

 This choice requires short term pain for long term gain. If we want to have a strong military, we can’t continue to let spending mushroom with tens of millions of working-age Americans living lives of dependence on welfare, Obamacare, disability and a myriad of other taxpayer funded programs. We must stand up to our growing entitlement culture. For America to be strong and the world to be safe, the vast, vast majority of individual Americans must choose to work hard and not be dependent.

Citing dissenting Catholics, who are indeed numerous these days, the Times heralds the day when Pope Francis will employ his “radical new leadership style” to catch up with “the modern world [that] has left the Church behind.”

One might find it curious that both of these leading U.N. scions of the Culture of Death are Americans, considering that the U.N. has some 200 member states.

On reflection, however, it is no surprise: under the Obama Administration, the U.S. is today the most avidly pro-abortion government in the world.

Ironically, that debate was held in Washington’s Constitution Hall ­ yet only one candidate mentioned the Constitution, or its requirement for a congressional Declaration of War for such actions.

Santorum directed most of his fire that night at that lone constitutionalist, Rep. Ron Paul, whose defense of the Constitution had garnered significant support. He specifically criticized George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, which everyone else on the stage had supported.

Obama’s focus is on income redistribution. His aim is to take from those who have created and preserved the American economy and give to those whom he designates are more worthy. This is the rationale for thievery. You want it. The other guy has it. Obama will take it for you. He has mired America in unprecedented levels of debt -- $6.5 TRILLION in five years.