Sibby Online

Blogging conference coverage

Too bad for those of you who did not attend the Dakota Blog Alliance conference at Augustana College in Sioux Falls today. I had a great time and enjoyed meeting in person the Sibby Online readers who attended. Here is a link to KSFY TV’s coverage. There is also an AP report that has been picked up by the Aberdeen News. I want to say more, but it's time to rest.

Daschle obstructs highway bill

Senator Kit Carson blames the Daschle led filibuster for holding up highway bill:

U.S. Sen. Kit Bond is not giving up on the passage this year of the highway bill that is currently tied up in the U.S. Senate, but he noted Thursday during a visit to the Hannibal riverfront that time is running out on it.

"We are suffering because of the 15-week delay as a result of filibustering from moving forward on the highway bill. That (filibustering) has really made it very difficult," said Bond, who is the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee. "I'm not going to say it is impossible, but it will be very difficult to get a good highway bill passed this year. We're going to continue to work on that. I know how important Highway 36 and Highway 61 are, and the roads for the entire state of Missouri."
The senator vowed that if time runs out this year on the highway bill, efforts will be made to "do it right next year."

Bond said Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) has led the filibustering effort in the Senate, which has not been limited to strictly the transportation bill.

"We have faced the problem with filibusters on about everything we've got," said the three-term senator.

Daschle takes credit for Bush Administration action

The Aberdeen News is reporting on the Department of Interior’s decision to take the prairie dog off the protected list:

The U.S. Interior Department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the black-tailed prairie dog is being removed from the endangered species candidate list.

John Thune issued a press release blasting Daschle for taking credit for something John Thune worked with the Bush Administration on to accomplish:

THUNE LAUDS FEDERAL PRAIRIE DOG DECISION

Says Daschle is "election year convert" to prairie dog issue

SIOUX FALLS - South Dakota Republican Senate candidate John Thune today lauded the U.S. Department of Interior for removing the black-tailed prairie dog from the endangered species candidate list and Thune saidSenate Minority Leader Tom Daschle was an "election year convert" on the issue.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton cited a town meeting she attended hosted by Thune for west river ranchers two years ago in Rapid City as the beginning of the process to de-list the prairie dog.

"I applaud the Department of the Interior for this common sense decision to remove the prairie dog from the endangered species candidate list," Thune said. "But this process started two years ago, not when Tom Daschle suddenly realized several months ago he would be in a tough reelection campaign."

"Two years ago, the silence from Tom Daschle was deafening when Secretary Norton agreed to my request to consider de-listing the prairie dog after attending my town meeting with west river ranchers," Thune said. "Tom Daschle's sudden interest was nothing short of an election year conversion."

Thune's town meeting was held in August 2002 in Rapid City with Secretary Norton while Daschle first expressed support for de-listing the prairie dog more than a year later in December 2003.

Thune: Don’t obstruct CIA nomination

John Thune has issued this press release:

THUNE TO DASCHLE:
DON'T OBSTRUCT CIA NOMINATION

SIOUX FALLS - South Dakota Republican Senate candidate John Thune today called on Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle not obstruct the nomination of U.S. Rep. Porter Goss to lead the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

"I know Porter Goss very well having served with him in Congress and I strongly support him to head the CIA," Thune said. "Senator Daschle's silence on whether he supports the Goss nomination is disconcerting given the deep national security concerns of our nation."

As the Senate Democratic Leader, Daschle has been the partisan point man to obstruct 32 federal judicial nominations in addition to obstructing welfare reform reauthorization, medical liability reform, bankruptcy reform, energy/ethanol legislation, repeal of the marriage penalty tax, repeal of the death tax, a constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration, and the Federal Marriage Amendment to ban gay marriage.

"I urge Senator Daschle to not obstruct yet another important nomination in the U.S. Senate."

Goss was elected to Congress from Florida in 1988. Thune served with Goss from 1997 to 2003 while Thune was South Dakota's lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Goss was a CIA case officer for nine years before being elected to Congress where he has chaired the House Intelligence Committee for the past eight years.

"Porter Goss is uniquely qualified to head the CIA," Thune said. "His CIA career is impressive and impeccable but he has not hesitated to provide critical oversight of the agency as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Daschle's silence comes during a week when he is ducking two debates with Thune sponsored by the Sioux Empire Fair, KSFY-TV, Associated School Boards of South Dakota, and School Administrators of South Dakota.

Daschle doesn’t understand Economics 101

I still remember Tom Daschle’s absurd statement that tax cuts cause recessions. Today all should know what I knew back then, Daschle doesn’t understand Economics 101. Walter E. Williams’s has more on Economics 101. Excerpt:

Economic ignorance allows us to fall easy prey to political charlatans and demagogues, so how about a little Economics 101?

How many times have we heard "free tuition," "free health care" and free you-name-it? If a particular good or service is truly free, we can have as much of it as we want without the sacrifice of other goods or services. Take a "free" library – is it really free? The answer is no. Had the library not been built, that $50 million could have purchased something else. That something else sacrificed is the cost of the library. While users of the library might pay a zero price, zero price and free are not one and the same. So when politicians talk about providing something free, ask them to identify the beneficent Santa Claus or tooth fairy.

I believe I know the beneficent…the taxpayers. Not to mention the recipients of government handouts self-dignity.

Michael Moore a Leninist

I still remember when David Horowitz told me that Michael Moore is a Leninist. Bejamin Shapiro’s column just happens to make the same argument. Excerpt (I highly recomment reading the whole thing):

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, and the czar committed to Russian involvement, Lenin saw his chance: He could seize power by undermining czarism through anti-war activity. "[B]ut for the war," he wrote, "Russia could have gone on living for years and decades without a revolution against the capitalists." Lenin encouraged soldiers "to turn their guns on their officers" and stated that military disaster should be exploited to "hasten the destruction ... of the capitalist class."

Meanwhile, Lenin also labeled colonialism an intrinsic evil of the capitalist system. Lenin said in "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" that "imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system ... Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of 'advanced' countries."

Lenin's goals, then, were: 1) to undermine the legitimacy of the ruling czarist system, 2) to do so through anti-war activity, and 3) to undermine capitalism by denouncing it as exploitative.

Lenin had an "excuse" for undermining the czarist system of government – it was dictatorial, even if Lenin and his successors would end up as far more brutal dictators than any of the czars.

Michael Moore has no excuse. America is a republic, and Moore is a threat to the republic.

He appears to pursue Lenin's goals. After dropping out of University of Michigan-Flint to pursue political activism, Moore started the Flint Voice, an alternative newspaper that became the Michigan Voice. Soon, he edited the radical-left Mother Jones magazine, where he was fired, supposedly for backing the communist Sandinista rebels.

Now he is a big backer of the terrorists in Iraq.

Media unfair to Vietnam Veterans…again

Ann Coulter, who was censored during the Democrat Convention by the USA Today, which is owned by the same parent company who ownd the Argus Leader, has a column regarding the media’s lack of coverage on the Swift Boat veterans. Excerpt:

Kerry is demanding to be made president on the basis of spending four months in Vietnam 35 years ago. And yet the men who know what he did during those four months don't think he's fit to be dogcatcher. That seems newsworthy to me, but I must be wrong since the media have engineered a total blackout of the Swift Boat Veterans.

In May, the Swiftees held a spellbinding press conference in Washington, D.C. In front of a photo being used by the Kerry campaign to tout Kerry's war service, the officers stood up, one by one, pointed to their own faces in the campaign photo, and announced that they believed Kerry unfit for command. Only one officer in the photo supports Kerry for president. Seventeen say he is not fit to be president.
The press covered it much as they covered Paula Jones' first press conference.

With the media playing their usual role as Truth Commissar for the now-dead Soviet Union, the Swiftees are having to purchase ad time in order to be heard. No Tim Russert interviews, no "Today" show appearances, no New York Times editorials or Vanity Fair hagiographies for these heretics against the liberal religion. The only way Swift Boat Veterans for Truth could get less attention would be to go on "Air America" radio.

If the 254 veterans against Kerry got one-tenth as much media coverage for calling Kerry a liar as Clown Joe Wilson did for calling Bush a liar, the veterans wouldn't need to buy ad time to get their message out. (Wilson, you'll recall, was a media darling for six or seven months before being exposed as a fantasist by Senate investigators.)

With their commitment to free speech and a robust exchange of ideas (i.e., "child pornography" and "sedition"), the Democratic National Committee is threatening to sue TV stations that run the Swift Boat Veterans' paid ads. Sue? Can you tell already that there are two lawyers at the top of the Democratic ticket? These are the same people who accuse John Ashcroft of shredding the Bill of Rights. WHY ISN'T THE PRESS COVERING THIS??? Wait, now I remember. OK, never mind. (Contribute to the Swift Boat Veterans here.)

Now this is Censorship

From FoxNews:

The anti-abortion group Wisconsin Right to Life is airing a TV spot and radio ads about blocked judicial nominees aimed at Wisconsin Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold and Herbert Kohl .

But come this weekend, the ad campaign will be illegal because of whom it's targeting.
Under the provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, special interest groups are prohibited from running corporate-funded radio and TV ads that mention a candidate's name within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. Feingold is on the ballot Sept. 14.

And also NewsMax has this:

Insider Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, when asked by The Hill when an endorsement by the NRA might be forthcoming, said, "I think September 14 would make a good date."

The assault weapons ban renewal has become a litmus test issue for the NRA, the nation's largest gun rights organization.

But sources close to the NRA's leadership tell NewsMax that all is not rosy between the gun group and the Bush White House.

The main bone of resentment is over President Bush's signature on the McCain-Feingold law, which the NRA believes may have effectively neutered their political muscle for years to come.

And the Supreme Court ruled that the McCain-Feingold law is constitutional. Perhaps the Republicans who for political reasons decided to vote for this bill banked on the Supreme Court to instead shoot this attack on our freedoms down.

It is unfortunate that the media pushed this as a way to get money out of politics. In South Dakota, we now know that Tom Daschle has plenty of money as he has run ads for over a year. Plus the same media is using it’s bias to his favor. So what’s a person who believes in protecting life before and after birth to do now?

DVT hits the nail on the head

DVT perfectly explains the unfair bias at the Argus Leader:

In a similar vein, the Argus Leader won't scrutinize Daschle's actual record, which will then be criticized by Republicans, who will then be subject to the charge of launching "negative attacks." This has been the pattern in past stories where the Argus could simply have examined Daschle's record and reported the facts, but instead one gets the typical "Thune Charges..." or "Thune Claims..." stories.

In another post, DVT's analysis was also right on the mark:

Remember the 8 possible items from the past few days that Kranz could have written about today that weren't helpful to Senate Daschle? None of them saw the light of day. This is one of the realities of this race that many of my out-of-state readers need to be aware of--just because there's a major story about Daschle in The New York Times, Roll Call, the Washington Times or whatever doesn't mean it gets through the Argus Leader filter and the voters of South Dakota actually learn about it. This is why I think the Argus is distorting the democratic process.

I received an email from one out-of- state reader who is fully aware of a major problem regarding the democratic process in South Dakota.

From the mail bag

I received am email from a guy in Georgia whose wife is originally from my hometown of Mitchell, SD. I thought this was worth sharing:

Watching SD politics from afar has always been of interest to me. It is absolutely amazing how Tom Dashle projects two completely opposite political faces, one for the home folks, and one for the rest of America. Those of us with access to a variety of media recognize him as a far left wing liberal who will employ any tactic to obstruct President Bush, whether it be the War on Terror, or the domestic agenda. On the other hand, far too many South Dakota residents believe Senator Dashle is serving their best interests, even though his actual voting record is almost completely opposite the so-called "news reports" about him that appears in the Argus Leader.

Web Logs like your own and the Fox News Channel are making it possible for the average South Dakotan to find out what really goes on in Dashle's Washington office. Keep up the good work! You can be successful. We got rid of Democrat Senator Max Cleland down here after he voted 11 times against the formation of the Homeland Security Department in 2002 (a campaign that was led by then Senate Majority Leader Tom Dashle). We would never have learned about that record if it had been left up to the local Atlanta Newspapers and TV stations. We had to tune into Fox News to find out that Max was saying one thing to his constituents when he was home and voting against their wishes when he got back to Washington. Does that sound familiar to you?

Yes it does…and it is emails like that the give me motivation to blog. For more on “Why I Blog?" Come to the conference on Saturday.