South Dakota
updated
11:00 a.m.
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As Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin announces the coming December birth of her first child, her Brookings neighbor PP offers the predictable political spin , turning her joyous event into a critique of her position on abortion. He suggests Herseth Sandlin's position on abortion is simply youthful folly and that having a child may open her eyes. Stephanie's pregnancy is none of our busin...
Madville Times - 6:10 a.m. - 2 clicks 
Rumors that’ve been quietly circulating for the last couple weeks appear true monkeyballers: South Dakota Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is pregnant. The email went out today from Stephanie, and now it’s on the Argus website (click here). How does this affect her 2008 election? Well, I’d guess her as yet little know GOP challenger from Rapid City is ready to pull th...
SouthDakotaMac - Wed 5:32 p.m. - 12 clicks
South Dakota takes a step toward its beta test of state income tax this coming Monday (July 28) as the Agricultural Land Assessment Implementation and Oversight Advisory Task Force holds its first meeting in Pierre (State Capitol Building, LCR 1 & 2, 10:00 a.m.). The 14-member task force (and only one lady— Rep. Kristi Noem , R-6/Castlewood—in the group*? hmm...) will try to figu...
Madville Times - Wed 8:07 a.m. - 7 clicks
I don't expect much useful news from the new official online propaganda organ of the South Dakota Republican Party, the Republican Tide blog. "Tide"? Where do you guys think you are, Virginia? But my Republican friends at least get credit for buying all their propaganda locally : For those of you who were wondering- only South Dakota residents will be posting on this blog. [Jason Glodt, politi...
Madville Times - Wed 8:07 a.m. - 5 clicks
Think your fuel bill is high? Imagine if you had 26 trucks using a half million gallons of fuel a year. KJAM reports that Jerry Johnson, co-owner of Madison's B&G Transportation , is using conservation and speed limits to save on fuel costs. They've set the governors on the trucks to 65 mph, idling less, and reducing deadhead miles . (Silly me: and I thought listening to Jerry Garcia wo...
Madville Times - Tue 11:34 a.m. - 10 clicks
If you're coming to Madison on US 81 from the south or SD 34 from the west, watch out for chips—not Ponch and John , but rock . KJAM alerts us that the state Department of Transportation is doing chip deal work on seven stretches of highway in southeast South Dakota. The roads under repair : US 81 from SD 34 south 11 miles – length 11.0 miles; SD 34 & US 81 1\2 mile west of the South J...
Madville Times - Mon 11:04 p.m. - 12 clicks
Governor Rounds has appointed seven men to the South Dakota Underground Pipeline Task Force, as called for by this year's Senate Bill 190. Remember SB 190? That was the bill that, in its original form , would have imposed a two-cents-per-barrel fee on crude oil pumped through the state. With the Keystone pipeline project no expanding to ship 1.1 million barrels per day across the Plains, that's...
Madville Times - Mon 11:04 p.m. - 10 clicks
Revenue for road construction and repair is declining. The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission concluded this year that the United States needs to spend $225 billion dollars a year for the next 50 years to upgrade and maintain our ground transportation system; current federal, state, and local spending combined is $90 billion a year. South Dakota is feeling the...
Madville Times - Sun 2:35 p.m. - 15 clicks
TransCanada and partner ConocoPhillips are announcing a half-million barrel expansion of the Keystone pipeline project. The pipeline planned for eastern South Dakota should open with 435,000 barrels per day, then increase to 590,000 per day. If I'm reading TransCanada's information correctly, the Phase II expansion across West River and down to the Gulf of Mexico will increase the capacity of ...
Madville Times - Thu 2:35 p.m. - 13 clicks
The widespread anger and confusion over Governor Dumb Dumb’s decision to shove a new license registration online service into action long before it was ready is causing problems across the state. Check out today’s wrap-up [click here] from the Watertown Public Opinion where the Codington County Treasurer’s office is shutting down to catch up with the data entry backlog created by Ro...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 17 - 15 clicks
Perusing campaign websites tonight, I find that three of our four big statewide candidates—GOP Senate candidate Joel Dykstra and both contenders for South Dakota's lone House seat, the GOP's Chris Lien and Dem incumbent Stephanie Herseth Sandlin —have campaign blogs. Senator Tim Johnson has presences on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr, but the Dem incumbent still has no b...
Madville Times - Jul 17 - 10 clicks
Ron Branson continues beating the drum of legally bogus and idiotic claims of fraud in his latest rant and rave. Today's again deals with Attorney General Larry Long's ballot explanation and the South Dakota Legislature unanimously passing a resolution urging voters to vote against Amendment E. According to Branson's keen and insightful analysis, "it behooves the F.B.I. to move in swiftly and ...
Progressive on the Prarie - Jul 16 - 9 clicks
Okay, maybe it's not really over but the polls are open, the voters are casting their ballots and the campaigns are in their last gasp. I moved my blog away from politics because of the level of political discourse in this country. I have to say, though, that jousting with South Dakota JAILer-in-chief Bill Stegmeier, Bonnie "Shriek" Russell, Jake Hanes and the JAILer in Worthing who was capabl...
Progressive on the Prarie - Jul 16 - 10 clicks
My initial reaction to the election results? KELO might want to think about evaluating what polling firm it uses. (For what it's worth, a quick review shows its also missed on the outcome of both the "gay marriage amendment" and the property tax initiative, with the error on the latter being almost as large as the error on the final results on JAIL. In contrast, the Watertown Public Opinion's ...
Progressive on the Prarie - Jul 16 - 7 clicks
I was thinking of doing a brief roundup on South Dakota blog election coverage but came across a post that beats them all. Go read Scott Hudson's post-election wrap-up, where his "Get Out of Town" stylings nails the "boneheads" of election day . It always rains like hell on the loser's day parade. "Broadway," Goo Goo Dolls, Dizzy up the Girl ...
Progressive on the Prarie - Jul 16 - 7 clicks
No, not as in "Diana Ross and." The South Dakota Supremes. In a decision handed down today, the Supreme Court helped Kevin Costner keep the Midnight Star casino in Deadwood going and saved him hundreds of thousands of dollars in the dissolution of a limited partnership that currently operates the it. From a legal standpoint, the case resolves questions about the legal rules South Dakota court...
Progressive on the Prarie - Jul 16 - 8 clicks
First, I will ackowledge stealing this idea from Vonnegut's Asshole (and that's a sentence that is incapable of sounding quite right). It occasionally looks at some of the, shall we say, odd search terms that bring viewers to the site. While I still get plenty of hits from searches like those using "Stephanie Herseth" and words like lesbian, hottie, boyfriend or naked, those aren't the ones th...
Progressive on the Prarie - Jul 16 - 10 clicks
Chad at CCK points us to a study purportedly showing that the more psychotic a voter is , the more likely they were to vote for Bush. I missed this NPR story on " reading the law " when it aired. I recall watching Archie Bangs of Rapid City in the courtroom when I was a reporter. He was purported to be the last South Dakota lawyer to have been admitted by "reading the law" and he was a to...
Progressive on the Prarie - Jul 16 - 8 clicks
Wait a little bit and you can hear the Whine of the West, GOP Sen. Bill Napoli , add his two cents to any news controversy. This time it’s WaitGate , and the political has-been Napoli is doing to dirty work of blaming the mess created by Governor Dumb Dumb’s incompetent license plate software on the victims of Rounds’ screw ups. The target this time: A Democrat, Minnehaha County T...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 4 clicks
Governor Dumb Dumb took his little bitch slap from Republican legislators on the Legislative Executive Board, angry over Rounds’ illegal double tax on ethanol blender pumps across South Dakota. In an official letter of reprimand ( seen by clicking here next to the article on the Argus website), the Executive Board said Rounds’ double tax “is the equivalent of passing a tax increa...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 4 clicks
BREAKING NEWS: EPPO, THE WONDER BLOGGER GOES MAC =South Dakota Watch Old guy starts throwing in ancient guy into his talking points...good game everyone =PoliWire Franken For Minnesota =My Way God still unsure of McCain, let the obscene pandering begin =MSNBC Senator Graham accidentally tells the truth about McCain plan (with video) =Huffington ================================...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 3 clicks
CNN has done what South Dakota’s media has neglected to do [ see the video here ], and that’s to put together the big picture story on the sham refinery land grab by the so-called Gorilla Project . You may recall, the Hyperion Energy concept was shrouded in secrecy, aided largely by Governor Dumb Dumb . Now Mike Rounds’ chickens are coming home to roost and Union County is bitt...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 3 clicks
There’s a new town in town, if you’re living in a community with a county courthouse. It’s called RoundsVille , and it’s populated from opening to close of business each day by the lineup of hapless, waiting taxpayers pissed off by Mike Rounds’ stupid new software to process license plate transactions. Because somebody didn’t fully inspect the software BEFORE forcing it into use, ...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 3 clicks
Governor Dumb Dumb’s visiting with two Minnehaha County commissioners about why his administration refuses to admit their incompetence with a new underdeveloped software designed to handle license renewal transactions. The big question is: Is Rounds willing to say he screwed up … or will he pigheadedly continue implementing a software system that clogs the license transactions and has need...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 3 clicks
Is Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard against Economic Development in South Dakota? Why does Junior Dumb Dumb oppose the Sanford Research project on stem cells in our state? If morality is the issue and Daugaard thinks state-sponsored gambling is good for state government, why isn’t stem cell research good for South Dakota when it saves lives? Is state revenue more important than lives? Is Daugaar...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 4 clicks
Governor Dumb Dumb’s budget sock puppet Jason Dilges dished out a little bitch slappin’ back at legislators who dared to question Rounds’ honesty over funding the Imperial Governor’s Royal Laptops for High Schoolers boondoggle Tuesday. Then he got back a little slappy-slappy. Says Dilges, it’s two years too late to protest the $18 million laptop boondoggle, which competes for cash...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 3 clicks
Attorney General Larry Long says political considerations had no influence with how the state treated former Republican Rep. Ted Klaudt . Questions about the delay between the state’s knowledge of allegations of raping two foster daughters (in March 2006) and Klaudt’s arrest (in May 2007, long after the 2006 state senate election which Klaudt lost) were voiced by Steve Emery, an attorn...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 3 clicks
Governor Dumb Dumb’s budgetary shell game with the S.D. Legislature keeps reaping one bitch slap after the other. The big theme here is the abuse of power and Dumb Dumb’s snarky arrogance. Today’s Argus editorial ( click here ) follows yet another article about how pissed Republican legislators are at Rounds ( click here ). At issue is how can Rounds find $770,000 from the state’s...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 2 clicks
For those who remember the days in June 1968, the TV footage comes back in snippets. The shock on Wednesday morning that moments after winning California and South Dakota, he was shot. Twenty-six hours later, he died in the L.A. hospital. We watched the scenes on television. Miles of lines of mourners paid last respects in New York City. Then came the slow train ride to Washington, D.C., and ...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 2 clicks
Incumbent Governor Mike Rounds is now claiming prosperity has hit South Dakota, according to the Keloland website . Let’s go to Wal-Mart kids and spend our new-found wealth!!! Reports say the state’s gross state product was nearly $34 billion in 2007, and Mikey thinks that means his plan is working. “Not only did we accomplish our goal of increasing the state’s GSP by $10 billion by ...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 2 clicks
War hero, presidential candidate, timeless statesman, U.S. Senator, Ambassador and proud South Dakotan George S. McGovern was named with former Senator Bob Dole , R-Kan., as the winners of the 2008 World Food Prize. The men, who founded the global school lunch project called the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, will share a $250,0...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 4 clicks
Well, the Legislative Appropriations Committee watched as Governor Dumb Dumb’s crew tried to whitewash their attempts to hide and shuffle money so that Rounds can override legislative intent and spend money on his laptops for high schoolers program – shoving aside the notion that the constitution’s separation of powers ( not you PP ) prohibits him from doing so … and the fact that legi...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 2 clicks
Legislature, You Ignorant Slut =Argus James Dobson is a fruitcake =MSNBC Bush: Politics, Not People Nader: Still a Jackass =Huffington Rolling Stone and the oPod =Rolling Stone SouthDakotaMac returns to the morning headlines =SouthDakotaMac ...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 4 clicks
This item is just in from the Associated Press. After 30 years of one-party rule in Pierre in which education is considered a tax liability rather than an asset, South Dakota’s rate of locking up kids for crimes is now three times greater than the national average. Read the news item here from the Rapid City Journal website . This is an outrage. Governor Dumb Dumb refuses to con...
SouthDakotaMac - Jul 16 - 2 clicks
