Dakota Beacon

At some point, we may well replace coal and oil with some cheaper and easier technology, but in the meantime, oil is still much cheaper than bottled water and coal still provides half of our domestic energy. On the other hand, if one really does believe that man-made climate change is an impending disaster worthy of dismantling our economy, then it may be rational to argue for a shutdown of oil, coal, and other industries.

High-profile ‘climate-change’ alarmists have been backtracking following recent revelations of significant errors and outright fraud involving the so-called scientific global-warming ‘consensus. In recapping prior attempts to revolutionize our transportation system, Mr. Skorup assesses current prospects for a similar technological revolution alongside the purported benefits and probably costs.

The next step in the debate over government healthcare will be in the courts.  Already a dozen states have announced their intentions to challenge the constitutionality of the new law. 

The healthcare issue will likely get pushed out of the forefront - already, new calls to push both Cap & Trade and Union Card-Check before the summer recess are being made.  The theory being: if the liberals are going to get kicked out anyways, they might as well shove though everything they can - regardless of the Constitution.

I heard this possibility months ago and thought it kind of wacky then. But as times goes by and it is obvious that Tracy Potter would get smeared....Dorgan will be making a special announcement this morning at 10:00 a.m. in Bismarck. According to AP people think he is getting back in the race.

Was this all just a giant fake-out to begin with?

The Constitution originally provided for a Senate that represented the states rather than the voters. A popularly elected Senate that can easily end debate is no check at all on the House of Representatives. The people need to be educated about the intent of the Framers when they established the system of delay and deliberation as a protection against the tyranny of popular passions. Perhaps then the Senate will be able once more to serve as a needed brake on reckless legislation. Perhaps then we could even return to the original way of selecting Senators. The Senate was once a far, far better place. It should return to its roots. 

Senator Kent Conrad is busy barnstorming the state defend the government-run healthcare plan.

Senator Conrad can say it is not government-run healthcare until he is blue in the face.  But the following list of 159 new government boards and commissions created by the new healthcare law.

For better or worse, the Republican and Democrat parties in North Dakota have held their conventions.  If you participated, you are to be thanked and congratulated.  If not, and if you don’t like what you’ve got that’s too bad.  Now the decision you will have to make is which of the two major parties do you want to support?  What we need is some input into the system we have.  Let this be the last year you patriots sit out the process.  You’ve been protesting now for a year.  In that time you could have taken over one or both parties (many Democrats feel the same disconnect Conservative Republicans feel) and been on the road to recovery for this nation!  Instead, too many of you have taken the attitude that neither party is “pure” enough. Just ask yourselves why.

At the current rate, military veterans and retirees can look forward to fighting over budget scraps doled out by an ungrateful congress after “higher” priorities are funded. It was never supposed to be like this. It is ethically and morally correct that promises made to veterans and retirees decades ago be kept.

If military veterans and retirees must do battle with other government departments for a diminishing slice of the health care pie, then they are up for one more fight.

When large percentages of the people view government as the goal and not the means, then these people have no interest at all in keeping government modest, tame, and neutral.  Instead, government becomes the Cossack of their lusts.  The sabers and whips are, rightly (they think) used to punish and to intimidate all voices and all groups which oppose them.  The end-game is predictably atrocious:  ask the Jews of Germany, the Sudras of India, or the blacks of the Reconstruction South.  Democracy was the enemy of each of these tortured souls of humanity.

A  cannibal was walking through the jungle and came upon a restaurant operated by a fellow cannibal.  Feeling somewhat hungry, he sat down and looked over the menu.

    +Tourist:                                         $5.00
    +Broiled  Missionary:                      $10.00
    +Fried  Explorer:                             $15.00
    +Baked  Democrat :                        $100.00

Election after election Democrats and their media passed out the Cool Aid. Seniors drank it. In life we are many times surprised when we learn who our friends really are. Unfortunately for seniors, it’s probably too late.

An editorial in the Fargo Forum says that North Dakotans should be “disappointed in Representative Earl Pomeroy and Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad for going against the sentiments of a majority of North Dakotans” and voting for a “deeply flawed overhaul of the nation’s health care system.”

Personally, I think “disappointed” is a drastic understatement of the situation. I think that all North Dakotans should be “embarrassed” that the men we elected to speak and to vote for us, for the good of our state and our country,  in Washington, D.C.;  knowingly and deliberately went against the obvious wishes of over 60% of the citizens and the voters of our state.

Jennifer Burns’ new biography of Ayn Rand, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, is a welcome contribution to this growing body of literature. Burns has produced a thoroughly researched and critical (but fair) study of one of the conservative movement’s most influential and colorful thinkers. The book is in part a sobering cautionary tale for conservatives. The narrative offers at least three timely lessons worth noting. Among them are words of caution about “radical individualism,” “troubling contradictions in a representative democracy,” and “myopic dogmatism.”  Ideologues on both the right and the left have often fallen into this sort of blinkered sectarianism, speaking only to true believers and dividing the world neatly into enlightened individualists and crude collectivists.

Briefly, the FairTax Act of 2009 (with only 79 pages) is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including:

    * A progressive national retail sales tax.

    * A prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the

       the poverty level.

• Dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality.   
• * Repeal of the 16th Amendment through companion legislation.

This proposed communist invasion of our personal freedoms must be fought back and defeated... and we the people cannot rest until the victory is attained and our liberties once again are secured. But I want to encourage you to take heart... and do not despair... for the battle is already won and the outcome is certain because right has always triumphed over wrong in the end, and I remind you again my friends... God is in control.

have fun with it and go kick some butt, This has been a Carrington year, the safety of teenage drivers, The town of 300 may have to leave, financial problems at NDSU, there are few suprises, Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, It was in retirement that Nick bloomed, a compelling case for a N.D. unicameral legislature, ND grew by about 5,400 residents, The Health Care Bil,  Polls show Pomeroy lagging his opponent, THIS AND THAT

There was, of course, nothing unpredictable about Sunday’s health-care vote.  It was fairly obvious that the Chicago mobsters would, using the Escobarian silver-or-lead tactic, scare up the votes needed to pass Obama’s baby.  It was plain that “pro-life” Democrats such as Bart Stupak would, after the requisite posturing, find the rationalization they needed to cast aside a position that was never really a principle.  That it came in the form of an executive order with the credibility of the Hitler-Stalin Pact is of little consequence.  It was also predictable that the Monday after would bring talk about the extinguishment of liberty and the republic, and heads hanging so low that good Americans could look up and see their shoelaces. 

There's a sucker born every minute, P.T. Barnum observed, and the sales of these atheist tracts, of which god Is Not Great is only one, argue that he was guilty of gross understatement. On the one hand, Hitchens ascribes religion to "wish-thinking"; on the other, he blames it for creating a horrible and wholly false vision of Hell. Well, which is it? I can say only that it seems to me obvious which side is guilty of wishful thinking, starting with the pleasant idea that we will never have to answer for our sins.

From the guy who is in North Dakota working on the "Read The Bill" initiated measure, Jerrol asks the simple question as to if it is right that as soon as a legislator takes someone’s word for the contents of a bill, and doesn’t personally read and study it, that legislator is representing the person who gave the advice, not you or me?

 Our congress and president cannot and will not curtail the spending even as they see the revenue coming in is inadequate, the frightening deficits grow, and the national debt balloons to predicted levels of 13 or 14 trillion dollars by year’s end. In spite of all that the Democrat majority, driven by their progressive members, have not given up on the agenda they came into Washington to do; that is they intend to pass into law one of the biggest entitlement (spending) programs ever in U.S. history called Health Care Reform. Never mind that the country is in recession, people are unemployed at levels not seen since the Great Depression, and the nation is trillions of dollars in debt. They are planning to do it. President Obama has said that we are on the verge of making history. Over the coming years we will find is the cost of “History”.

Is American foreign policy in a meltdown prompted by the Obama administration’s focus on radicalizing the American healthcare industry while negating any remnants of American ‘exceptionalism’ in U.S. foreign policy? If so, a nuclear capable Iran may embolden Israel’s enemies into renewed attacks by Hamas guerrillas in Gaza and from southern Lebanon, where fanatically determined Hezbollah units, well armed and trained by Iran and Syria, stand ready to attack. Washington will condemn the aggressors as well as the inevitable strong responses by Israel, but will do nothing to support Israel. In that case, American foreign policy, whether from ineptitude or chicanery, will have engendered a Middle Eastern catastrophe.

Bismarck - Today the North Dakota Policy Council launched Sunshine on Cities, an interactive website containing vital budget data for most cities and towns in North Dakota. The website is very similar to Sunshine on Schools, which was launched in April 2008.

The Religious Left, from ‘social justice’ Catholic nuns and Protestant ministers to the Democratic Speaker of the House and president of the United States, have been incessantly claiming God’s advocacy of their healthcare reform. That’s no surprise, just as it’s no surprise that the press is not only not outraged but silently supportive. There’s nary a whimper, let alone howls, of ‘separation of church and state!

Every Bush mention of God was a signal, somehow, that this Bible-quoting ‘simpleton’ was trying to transform America into a ‘theocracy.’” Yet, Dr. Kengor knew that certain politicians would “say the same as Bush, or much worse—with no backlash from the secular media. Quite the contrary, liberals would roll out the red carpet, enthusiastically welcoming faith into the public square.” “Consider a few examples, most telling in light of passage of the healthcare bill.

There are a lot of bright folks among us. The professional politicians we elect and re-elect which dispense laws from on high are not among them. They are certainly not the best and the brightest. They are, however, the true alchemists of the twenty-first century. The more dishonest ones sometimes succeed. For their personal gain they’re able to turn manure into gold.

Government-Run Healthcare has passed.

Congressman Pomeroy broke his promise.

What can you do to help?

Americans have become calloused to that perversion of republican democracy which comes in the form of political payola to blocks of voters in return for their reflexive support.  This is bad for good governance, but it is not terminal illness.   The concept of the general welfare – helping all Americans through commonly used programs like highways and harbors – has been redefined to mean its opposite, the welfare of defined groups.  As malodorous as the Cornhusker Kickback and the Second Louisiana Purchase may be, this sort massive graft does not murder liberty. 

"The people of North Dakota opposed this bill and the philosophy behind it.  Congressman Pomeroy ignored the will of the people, as well as his own previous declarations.  It will not be forgotten."

For a government regulatory hearing, the testimony was livelier than usual. The porn star Madelyne Hernandez recalled an especially grueling scene in which she had been obliged to have sex with 75 men. The bureaucrats nodded thoughtfully, no doubt contemplating another languorous 18-month committee assignment looking into capping the number of group-sex participants at 60 per scene. In future, if a porn actress finds 75 men waiting for her on the set, they’ll be bureaucrats from Sacramento’s Condom Enforcement Squad.

Obama and Pelosi are strongarming swing-state Congressmen into taking one for the deem. It’s appropriate that it should take banana republic maneuvers to ram this through, because it’s about government so powerful it can make up the rules as it goes along. Maybe regulators should roll a giant condom over the Capitol before it fatally infects the rest of us.

NDSU got ahead of its resources, ND may be taking its economic boom for granted, A strange legal and political battle, He used Rep. Earl Pomeroy as an example, the Red River Valley has grown wetter, everyone is wary and prepared, Flooding is becoming intolerable, people down river will take political action, WCHA disqualified Frattin, Minnesota fans were angry with everybody, Hoeven settled into the driver's seat

America, which is a nation of citizens who chose to migrate here from all over the world, views the whole of mankind as its friends.  Americans overflow with generosity to the poor and the persecuted throughout the world and many Americans travel at their own expense to dangerous places to bring hope and help to wretched peoples.  Does this sound like the actions of a people poisoned by racial and religious bigotry?  Only in that odd and isolated colony called Hollywood.