Dakota Beacon

Freedom from foreign oil has an intrinsic emotional appeal. Alternatively, there is something admirable about a skeptic who, with reasoned observations, challenges conventional wisdom and crowd mentality.

As it was with Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” so it is with author Robert Bryce’s 2008 book “Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence.”

Term limits are not a substitute for an active, engaged electorate.  Unless you correct the real problems of apathy, ignorance and corruption at home, the replacements won’t be any better than what we complain of today.  Do we really need a new law to tell us one more thing we have to do or can’t do, when we have already, thanks to an ingenious Constitution, the means to work our will and assert, in no uncertain terms, our power?  They didn’t need “term limits” in Utah!

We should go slowly on amending our Constitution!

We've had record crops but are barely managing to generate enough supply. There are some other factors too, like demand coming from China.

Record crops and supplies will not continue forever and there is a disaster coming up because of the false sense of security
our thoughtless governmental policies have set us up for.

When the inevitable drought comes, we will not have an extra 30%+ for ethanol.

Lets  require  voters to pass a test on their constitutional knowledge, before being able to vote?  No knowledge, no voting!   That is a standard in the naturalization process.  Voting may be a right, but rights come with  responsibilities.  Why not ask the political parties to co-sponsor training sessions on the constitution.  Care is required here as we have some Constitutional lawyers, who think the document is out of date and an evolving document. (know who I mean?)

I would venture to guess that most of the liberals or progressives in this nation would ascribe to Darwin’s theory.  Yet, these are the same people who believe that the STATE should be the caretaker of all its citizens.  It is the role of the STATE to enforce equality and fairness not only in opportunity, but also in results.  In the evolutionary development of humans, only the strong survived, but now liberals determined to deny evolution its role and keep around those who are unwilling to adapt and change, but remain entrenched in their lifestyles.  These, if liberals were true evolutionist, should be allowed to disappear for the betterment of the human race.

How will this $20 billion slush fund be distributed? Will this preclude legal court actions?  Who will get preference in satisfaction of their claims – will it be handled like the car dealership closings?  A deal was made last week.  BP got something for the $20 billion.  It is probable that it was nothing but payment to call off the Attorney General.  Will this episode mark the end of our experiment in Fascism or just a milestone on the narrowing path to its establishment?  These questions must remain at the forefront as we approach the November elections. God help us if the Republican response to this affair is an indication of their capacity to lead.

Doctors turning away from Medicare and Medicaid and more and more people turning to emergency rooms. Gee, isn't this kinda sorta what happened in the early stages of the downfall of British health care?

Democrats are responsible for the fact that BP is drilling in 5,000 feet of water rather than in places like Alaska or shallow water where these leaks are quickly fixed and not noticed. Because of the votes of Democrats like Pomeroy, companies must drill where leaks are nearly impossible to cap.

So on Tuesday, June 15^th, there was an election in a village in New York.  In preparation, the locality had six forums in English and six in Spanish to explain a new, federally mandated scheme to the voters.  It created various ways of publicizing the election — with tote bags, lawn signs and tee shirts stating “Your voice, your vote, your village”; and reminders in the form of TV spots, brochures and handouts given to schoolchildren, in both English and Spanish — all of which had to be approved by the Department of  Injustice.  It also hired a “non-profit” election research and reform group called FairVote to provide consultation services (our tax money at work — again).  And, when it came time to cast the votes, “federal observers” were on site . . . watching. 

So once again the compassionate, inclusive left is Balkanizing us.  I just wonder what their quota prescription will be when it comes time to partition the nation. 

The stark truth constitutes good news and here's why. Just as Presidents Wilson, FDR, and LBJ failed to do anything but devastate the economy, so too will Obama do nothing but hurt the economy. Obama will fail--in a huge way--and the failure will be good for the future because today's Americans are not like FDR's Americans. The American people today will not long tolerate failure on so grand a scale as Obama will orchestrate. The cleansing of the massive failure will begin in 2010 and kick into high gear in 2012.

It is easy these days for us to take the founding of our country, the Founding Fathers themselves, the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, even our precious Constitution, for granted. After all, it happened such a long, long time ago; and most school textbooks and curriculums mention it rarely it seems, often just in passing.

The main reason it seems to me, that some textbook writers, schools and teachers are eliminating the story of our Founding Fathers and our Nation, is because that story cannot be told without mentioning, without talking about, the dominant role that God and religion played in the founding and forging of our country.

Call and response, Casino Island, diabolical strategy, ND handles certain matters differently than other states, farmers don’t have clock minds, the board needs more backbone, Concordia College President Pam Joicoeur, "Yeah, that’s two this year", arrested for pistol-whipping her husband, ND-side flood diversion, we have North Dakota covered, That perennial enemy, the Fargo Forum, ND is the future energy capital of North America

Chris Matthews and the other leg-tinglers invented an Obama that doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, they’re stuck with the one that does, and it will be interesting to see whether he’s capable of plugging the leak in his own support. If not, who knows what the tide might wash up?

Five teachers confronted by the above chart of teacher pay commented “There can’t be any teachers earning over one hundred thousand dollars in compensation per year…this chart must include administrators.”

Those five disbelieving teachers struck a chord concerning the irony of 10.3% of teachers being paid so poorly by the same system in which 7.6% are richly rewarded with annualized compensation over $100,000.

Amending the Constitution requires prodigious effort. That is why it has been done fewer than 20 times since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Rather than knock ourselves out trying to amend the Constitution, let’s strive to restore a correct understanding of the Constitution. We don’t need to amend the Constitution as much as we need to read it, understand it, and abide by it.

The founders have given us the only tool we need to put an end to deficit spending. Let’s begin using it.

George Washington's choice of words is significant; he had little formal education and was not an original or even especially trenchant thinker. His language merely reflects the consensus of America's revolutionary generation, and for that reason is a reliable guide to a misunderstood period in American history. It also shows how completely out of touch Abraham Lincoln was with "the fathers" he claimed to speak for.

Having read AARP ads promoting the Obama Heath Bill, and the “form” letters thanking Rep. Earl Pomeroy for his support of that bill, I feel moved to respond.  First, I ask my former students in Mandan High School, Regent High School, Goodrich High School, and elsewhere, to remember “critical thinking,” which has, as its only goal, truth.  Those students who learned the “truth” of “share the wealth” which George Orwell demonstrated in Animal Farm when I “equalized their grades” will remember that no passing student ever voted for the system, and no failing student ever voted against it.  The honor students could not get the administration to fire me, BECAUSE I was the only teacher in the entire system with NO FAILING students!  You ex-students out there, don’t forget how you felt when I took your hard-earned grades, and shared them with someone “more needy,” in MY judgement, but in yours, who had earned failure!. 

Well, the Board of Higher Education decided to get rid of the UND Sioux logo (odd how they had a meeting the day after the State Supreme Court ruled that they could, almost like it was planned). This is the wrong thing to do for so many reasons, I will name only a couple. First, a large majority of the Sioux Tribal members approve of the name, and yet a majority of the Board of Higher Education doesn’t recognize this. Second.....

The seen versus the unseen--. This is the essence of the sleight-of-hand game played by politicians and policy makers with constituents at all levels of government. That’s what TARP, the “stimulus,” the bailouts and the handouts are all about.

The “Broken Window Fallacy” illustrates the error of government economic planning. Politicians and bureaucrats capitalize on this fallacy -- as well as public economic illiteracy -- every day to their own advantage.

In the end, America is left to extend and pretend. With a National Debt of $12.4 trillion and $4.4 billion of debt being added to that number every day, no amount of obfuscation by the Federal Reserve, elite bankers and corrupt politicians will successfully camouflage the road to ruin we are on. Is it too late to turn back? Until Americans experience another dose of horrific pain inflicted upon them by the ruling elite, they will not learn the simple lesson:

“You can’t always get what you want,

but you get what you need.”

Being self-centered leads inevitably to hating others who are obstacles to selfish desires. What is "natural" in fallen human nature easily descends to the diabolical. And our modern, post-Christian, liberal culture treats the self-centered life as normal, rejecting abortion laws as tyrannical impositions on what has been called "the imperial self." Most of those who favor legal abortion now support even "partial-birth" abortion.

To paraphrase Our Lord, greater hatred hath no parent than to kill the child. No false compassion should be allowed to create illusions about this terrifying fact of human nature.

Working on a lignite coal mine for fifteen years caused me to become extremely proud of the environmentally responsible way in which North Dakotans efficiently mine coal while reclaiming the land to a condition better than that which existed prior to mining. All North Dakotans should be equally proud of efforts, over the last three decades, of North Dakota’s coal-fired power plants to reduce pollutants through the implementation of a quite regular series of newly discovered and extremely expensive pollutant reduction technologies.

From this personal background of knowledge and experience was borne a healthy skepticism regarding any “politician” claiming responsibility for “creating” a vibrant North Dakota economy. We all understand that the Real American Heroes are those that perform the work and exhibit the courage required to actually produce a needed product or a valued service while respecting our natural environment.

Helen Thomas’s recent comments—on Israel—again thrilled the enemy. In calling for Jews to leave Israel, Thomas (no exaggeration) toed the party line of Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, of Osama Bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

That’s a dubious achievement for the dean of White House correspondents. I’m impressed that her liberal colleagues are finally offended.

A speech by Link in 1973, the current energy boom, “Nope. That’s what cardboard boxes are for.”, actress Angie Dickinson, Red River Basin Commission’s decision, rain this year is six inches ahead of normal, ND is the only state without a graduated driver’s license program, says the 1918 epidemic in ND kicked off in New Rockford, “a busy anthill”, the Indian view of killing an animal for food, Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, 100 percent smoke-free

In recent months, a lot of Americans have said to me that they had no idea the new president would feel so “weird”. But, in fact, he’s not weird. True, he’s not, even in Democrat terms, a political figure – as, say, Clinton or Biden are. Instead, he’s the product of the broader culture: There are millions of people like Barack Obama, the eternal students of a vast lethargic transnational campus for whom global compassion and the multicultural pose are merely the modish gloss on a cult of radical grandiose narcissism. As someone once said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”  When you’ve spent that long waiting in line for yourself, it’s bound to be a disappointment.

Today, out-going Senator Byron Dorgan and Senator Kent Conrad  both voted against the Murkowski Amendment, which would have stopped the EPA and the Obama Administration from unilaterally imposing many of the provisions found in the left-wing Cap & Trade ("Cap & Tax") Global Warming Agenda. 

Her new book is a thoughtful examination of the past three decades of educational reform, Ravitch offers a breath of fresh air in today’s typical political wrangling that too often devolves into mere attempts to ‘win’ rather than seeking truth. Ravitch’s political connections run deep, but she is an accomplished historian and in The Death and Life, her historical instincts serve her well.

It is in Ravitch’s salient critique of the education market that, consciously or not, she reflects a traditional conservatism frequently forgotten in today’s extreme individualism and cult of efficiency political milieu.” Through “allusions to the loss of both religion and traditional values,” Dr. Edwards keenly observes, Ravitch ultimately defines “the largely unstated message of the book: schools decline when society declines.