I Make Sense

IT'S ON!

2005-04-15T13:20:00.000-06:00

My new blog is up...

Here's the address

http://endstandards.blogspot.com

Come check it out

So that didn't last long...

2005-04-14T20:00:00.000-06:00

I've already started building my new blog...

A little less politics, a little more computer stuff, a lot more random thoughts.

I'm still toying with the name, but right now i'm leaning towards </Standards> . I'll explain what it means if I go with it and I'll let everyone know where its located at as well.

Thanks
HRYK.
(oh yeah, that anonymous bullshit just might end too)

Done Dundee

2005-03-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

If you haven't noticed I haven't blogged for weeks. I'm gonna be done, I got a wedding to get through and that whole graduating and going to law school thing too. I want to thank everyone who linked to me, especially Wes and Ryne.

I'll most likely start blogging again at some point in the somewhat near future. Wheter it be political or not, I don't know, but I doubt I'll be able to keep my opinions to myself.
Peace out.

State of the Union

2005-02-02T23:05:00.000-07:00

So I missed the live speech, watching the rerun right now...

First thought: anyone else notice who Kerry was standing next to? Sen Tim Johnson. I got nothing more on this, just an observation.

PS. I'll keep blogging sporadically at best for the next couple of months.

Dem's idol collected coin too

2005-01-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

As just about everyone should know, the dems in SD have been making a big hubbub about a couple of SD rep bloggers who were paid as consultants for the Thune campaign.

It looks like Kos, the democratic bloggers equivalent to God, was also on the take, not just on the take... Selling his airtime.

zonkette: Financially Interested Blogging:
On Dean’s campaign, we paid Markos and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean. We paid them over twice as much as we paid two staffers of similar backgrounds, and they had several other clients.

While they ended up also providing useful advice, the initial reason for our outreach was explicitly to buy their airtime. To be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment -- but it was very clearly, internally, our goal.

This is all over the blogosphere, everywhere. But not on the SD dems blogs. The SD conservative bloggers were willing to openly discuss Thune's payment to two DBA members, one even openly criticized them. Whether we agreed or not we were not afraid to talk about it.

Come on Ben, Come on Todd, what are your thoughts?

I'll take it...

2005-01-12T16:16:00.000-07:00

Trent Dlugosh has a post challenging SD bloggers to take an oath here.

"'Jeffrey Dubner, from the online site of the American Prospect, suggests commentators take an oath:
'I swear that I have never taken money -- whether directly or indirectly -- from any political campaign or government agency -- whether federal, state, or local -- in exchange for any service performed in my job as a journalist (or commentator, or blogger, or whatever you think I should be called).''

I am willing to take that oath. I challenge all other South Dakota bloggers to do the same, left and right both."

Sure I'll take the oath, I don't think it is necessary, but I'll take it. Blogs are journals of opinion, not news sources. Does Mr. Dubner or Mr. Dlugosh expect me to take the Hypocratic Oath that a doctor would if I intend to pull out a tooth, or apply a band-aid? I know what the SD left blogs are trying to do, and they're doing a decent job at making people believe that these blogs purported to be news sources so they should be judged the same way as news sources. The fact is they didn't and they shouldn't. Regardless of who was paying their bills.

E-file shenanigans

2005-01-08T18:27:00.000-07:00

/. has a post about taxes (slashdot? taxes? huh?) that got me thinking about something. Here's their quote

Slashdot | Tax Time Again: Any Linux Solutions? -
As a Linux user, I've used Intuits Turbo Tax On The Web in the past but I don't like paying someone $20 to $30 to submit my forms. For the last few years I've been filling out the forms by hand and mailing them for $0.37 instead. Call me cheap. The IRS has a target of 80% of all taxpayers using e-file in the near future. Does anyone know where the 'free and open' solution is? Do we need to petition the IRS? Currently the IRS seems to be protecting their 'approved e-file partners' profit margins in the name of a security layer. (I call shenanigans!)" So how will you be doing this year's taxes? I'd settle for a good PDF editor to neatly complete the IRS's PDF forms.

Good point. Why can't we get a secure free .gov site to file our taxes electronically? too many eggs in one basket? Last year I did mine online through a site called taxslayer.com I was happy with them last year and I will use them again this year. Last year my filing fee was waved because, well, I'm a full time student who doesn't make that much money (If was free last year anyways, I don't see anything suggesting it would be offering the same deal this year).

Like the /. post says, it should not cost me 20-30 bucks just to do something that I am already required by law to do anyways. If taxslayer won't offer the same deal they did last year, I'm going to be spending .37 cents as well, and make some johnny pencilpusher try and read my hand writing. bwaha, bwahaha, mbwahahahahaha ya, that's my evil laugh... what of it?

Abourezk and Fonda, a match made in hades

2005-01-08T18:07:00.000-07:00

THAT TITLE IS JUST A JOKE, DON'T SUE ME FOR LIBEL.
I REALIZE NEITHER OR THEM ARE ACTUALLY THE DEVIL.

I'm sure many of you have heard this story a while back. Former SD Senator Jim Abourezk (yes, that Abourezk) sued a website that was run by a teenager in Pennsylvania for libel after the youngster put him on a Traitor list (www.probush.com". Well recently Hanoi Jane Fonda was added to Abourezk's lawsuit. The RCJ has a story about this site.

Rapid City Journal: Site won't fight adding Fonda to suit -
An Internet site that calls former U.S. Sen. James Abourezk a traitor will not legally oppose adding Jane Fonda and another woman to Abourezk's lawsuit against the Web page, according to court documents.

Abourezk, who's of Arab descent, was a Democratic U.S. senator from 1973 to 1979 and now practices law in Sioux Falls.

He accused ProBush.com of libel for putting him on a "traitor's list" for criticizing President Bush.
...
Abourezk, who seeks $2 million in actual damages, $3 million in punitive damages and a retraction, had been critical of the war in Iraq. He was part of a four-person delegation that traveled to Syria and Iraq in 2002.

ProBush.com has said in court documents that the First Amendment protects political statements such as those on the Web site, labeling the list "satirical and politically expressive."

Atop the "traitor list" page is this statement: "Parody. Not to be taken seriously. These ‘traitors' are not legal traitors of the United States."

I'm pretty sure that Larry Flint cleared up this whole constitutional protection for parody a while back. His case set precedent protecting parody about politicians that is much more harmful to their character and prestige than simply putting his name on a list on the internet.

And while i'm on the subject had anyone from South Dakota, or anyone else who might deal with Mr. Abourezk profesionally, even heard of the site Probush.com before Abourezk sued? I sure hadn't. I'm willing to bet that the only way Abourezk found out about this list is by googleing himself one day.

This lawsuit is ridiculous, anyone with even a minor understanding of the law knows that. Even Mr. Abourezk and his co-council in the case (and author of at least 3 blogs), Mr Epp, know that it is ridiculous. This lawsuit was simply brought forward to try and strong arm this teenager. That's how these things work, Abourezk figured that the kid couldn't afford an expensive lawsuit and would have to cave and remove Abourezk's name from his list. It's a good thing that there are groups out there that stand up for the true meaning of the constitution (not like the ACLU) and help the kind of people like the defendant's in this case.

Freakin' Sweet Tech - I

2005-01-06T21:21:00.000-07:00

/. has just posted this

Gigabit Transfer Rates Over Power Lines?:
Penn State engineers, Pouyan Amirshahi and Mohsen Kavehrad, estimated in a research paper released Wednesday that their system could deliver data at close to one gigabit per second over medium-voltage electrical lines in ideal conditions, with speeds of hundreds of megabits per second available to home users.

This would be sweet, so sweet, imagine the rampant bittorent use that would happen with transfer rates like THAT. The RIAA has gotta be loving this information.

Reid pushes Dems to blog

2005-01-06T16:09:00.000-07:00

Professor Lauck posts the following story from Congress Daily

SENATE DEMS TALK RELIGION AND BLOGGERS AT RETREAT -

Catholic members of the Senate Democratic Caucus warned their colleagues Wednesday the party must find a way to bridge the religion gap between the Democratic Party and voters of faith to regain control of the chamber, Democratic sources said. The warning came during a day-long retreat convened by Minority Leader Reid. Democrats also discussed the role of Web logs last year, focusing on the November defeat of former Minority Leader Daschle.

Yada yada yada. Same old news, but the Professor also comments on the story...

Sources also tell SDP that Senator Reid copied off articles about the Dakota Blog Alliance and distributed them to Democratic Senators as "must read" items. Reid said Democrats up for re-election in 2006 need to hire bloggers and organize pro-Democratic bloggers in their home states.

Here's my question, does anybody actually want to read a campaign's blog? Did anybody read Bush's blog? not Blogs for Bush, but Bush's Blog? How about The Daschle Digest? anyone? Campaign blogs are boring and lack the same kind of tone that make other blogs daily reads. Additionally if politicians start saturating the market with boring blogs they simply won't be effective. Bloggers like the DBA came together because of their interest in the topics, not because they were paid to start up. Blog groups will naturally come together if they have similar views anyways, I doubt alliances will be very effective if a candidate or party tries to organize them.

South Dakota Politics: January 3, 2005 - January 9, 2005

Daschle's Pension.

2005-01-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

Steve Sibson at sibby online has posted a story this morning in which he links to this story...

For lawmakers, pain of defeat eased by generout pensions -
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle's 26-year political career ended with defeat in the November elections, but he did take home a consolation prize: a pension that in its first year will total $121,233.

The 57-year old South Dakotan can also look forward to receiving about $5 million in pension benefits over his expected lifetime for his service in the House and Senate, according to the National Taxpayers Union.

Sibby goes on to say

As the rest of us get ripped off by the government’s Social Security program, the ripped off money is used to fund their cushy retirement...

The $44,000 amounts to over $3,500 per month. That’s about three times higher than the rest of us get to "augment" our retirement with. Of course Daschle’s $121,233 will only augment his wife’s hundreds of thousands of dollars she receives from lobbying.

I am by no means against pensions for legislators, but come on, 5 million dollars? 120k pension for a job that paid 175k? This seems a little outlandish to me. And I'm not just complaining because it's Daschle that's getting this much, The story points out Republican congressman Phil Crane and Doug Bereuter, both of whom are pocketing over 100k a year. Seems to me that it wouldn't hurt any of these guys to cut the pension by about 20k across the board.

I'm back-ish

2005-01-05T19:22:00.000-07:00

Well I'm back from the vacation, have been for a while now actually, just been doing other things instead of blogging. I'll probably get back into it at the old pace once classes start in about a week.

Man a lot of stuff has happened since I've been gone.

Yuschenko won, the Tsunami, Thune sworn in, big news stuff.

Tomorrow I have to call one of my least favorite state senators (from RC, I'll give you one guess who it is) because he mentioned to my mom that he wanted me to shadow him at the caucus meetings this upcoming legislative session, and man, if the abortion bill comes up again like Rounds has hinted he would support I would be right in the thick of things, especially since said state senator was one of the leading opposers to the 2004 bill.

I'll keep the blog posted if I go and if anything interesting happens.

Merry CHRISTmas

2004-12-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

I will probably not be actively blogging during the holiday from now through new years. I'm heading down to Rapid City tonight to be with the fam and then on the 26th I'm heading east river to be with the fiance. Dial up is an option, but not one that I'm likely to take up.

SNL video hosting

2004-12-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

Welcome WesRoth.com Readers...

I'm helping out with hosting a mirror to the controvercial SNL cartoon file.

Here's the link.

Amazing story

2004-12-19T22:37:00.000-07:00

Check out this email that was sent from a soldier in Iraq, and how an iraqi girl saved an entire US patrol over at BLACKFIVE: The Heart of America

another test

2004-12-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

asd

Politician Won't Say Pledge, May Be Recalled.

2004-12-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

Politician Who Won't Say Pledge Of Allegiance May Be Recalled:
"I have not been standing for the Pledge of Allegiance due to a conflict I have with the wording of the pledge, specifically the words 'under God,'" Councilman David Habecker said.

Sound familiar? It should Rapid City.

Perhaps we should do the same to our beloved Tom Murphy? The same district who sends Sam Kookier, a good conservative, (sp?) to city hall sends a transexual, socialist, secularist who won't even stand for the pledge.

test post

2004-12-15T21:06:00.001-07:00

ASDASDad

test post

2004-12-15T21:06:00.000-07:00

changing things around... making sure atom still works.

More from Ukraine

2004-12-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

"The Blue" Tries To Set Orange Tents on Fire in Simferopol
On the evening of December 14, after Viktor Yanukovych addressed his supporters in Lenin Square, a group of these supporters destroyed several opposition tents with Orange signs and tried to set them on fire.
...
A witness, journalist Nikolay Borysenko, said, "When they overturned the Yushchenko supporters' tents, the crowd began to burn stacks of the popular "Our Krym" newspaper and jump around the fire. It very much reminiscent of 1930s Germany." He also saud that he had called the police, in vain, when the attackers were trying to burn the tents.

That story pretty much speaks for itself. Why is it that the sensitive caring left is always the one who's rallies end up violent? Can you seriously remember a group of conservatives who's political gathering ended up being a riot?

New Forms of Falsification - Double Responsibility
Based on information from Lviv news program, Reporter, Yanukovych supporters have started printing duplicate passports. There are reasons to suspect that these passports will be used by Yanukovych supporters who are willing to "actively" vote multiple times on Election Day in the event absentee ballots are nullified.

Does anyone really think that this will work? I mean in the broader sense of the whole thing. If you look at the maps over at SCSUscholars those regions (states? provinces? whatever they're called) that are light orange are going to be bright orange. The light oranges are going to bleed over into the east and Yuschenko is going to take it to the house. If he doesn't then the entire world will have even less respect for those elections as they did for the last.

On the dioxin note: Yuschenko apparently had 6000 times the normal amount of dioxin in his blood. The second highest concentration ever recorded in a human.

Obligatory post of the day

2004-12-14T20:37:00.000-07:00

I had two finals today, one tough one tomorrow at 8 and another on Friday, so the posts have been light, obviously.

I'm in the middle of studying Early Political Philosophy right now with Legal Env. of Business on the backburner. Of course there's always gotta be something distracting me from studying so I download MovableType, playing around with that on the server where my "real" website is hosted (www.BHTrails.com) I've got zero experience with sql and really none with perl either (I'm an STF at BH, but we're discouraged from learning stuff that the incoming freshmen next year won't be able to do). So anyways, be on the look out for my blog moving, or I may completely blow the whole thing off and stick with blogspot.

In closing let me just throw out a pet-peve I have. Feeds with only a few lines of the posts in it. Come on POWERLINE!

Yushchenko's staff suspects Russia

2004-12-12T15:59:00.000-07:00

ABC News: Yushchenko Aide Alleges 'KGB' Plot:
When asked by ABC News' Bill Weir if the Russian government, and specifically President Vladimir Putin, had anything to do with the poisoning, Yushchenko chief of staff Oleh Rybachuk said: "I am not very positive about government, but what I might say that was Soviet Union ... sort of KGB experts are clearly involved in this plot.
...
Rybachuk added that Yushchenko had been forewarned of the plot. "I actually talked to [Yushchenko] in late July when getting messages from both Ukrainian and Russian ex-secret service agents saying there was a plot and poisoning is number one," he said. Rybachuk said the agents told Yushchenko the goal would not be to kill him but to make him an "invalid" in order to knock him out of the campaign.

And apparently some people think that Yanukovych himself is a KGB agent...

Yanukovych is allegedly a KGB agent:
H. Omelchenko alleges that V. Yanukovych is an agent of the KGB and that his campaign for the Presidency is an operation of the Russian Special Services. But he denies the presence of Russian Special Forces in Ukraine.

He commented on this during a live radio program on NART. "I know the surname of the officer who enlisted him. He is now a KGB lieutenant-general of the Ukrainian RSR reserves, lives in Ukraine, and is a citizen of Ukraine... he lives in the south, his name begins with 'O'; I will not say anything more," said H. Omelchenko.

"The Russian Secret Service, including analytical psychologists, took practically everything into account to ensure that Yanukovych wins the presidency. He would then be completely directed by the Russian Secret Service and, especially, by the president of Russia, Putin. They did not take one thing into account: that the Ukrainian people will rise up in peaceful revolution," stated the parliament member. At the same time, Omelchenko confirms that he personally inspected the facilities of the Presidential Administration when it had been thought that the Russian Special Forces squads were camped there. He did not find any foreign troops. He considers this information to be a rumor deliberately spread so that protestors would be provoked into aggression by which blood would then be shed, and a State of Emergency could be declared.

It takes a whole lot for a guy like me in South Dakota to get interested in Ukrainian politics, but here I am, writing about this wearing a bright orange shirt... Of course it says Dusty Johnson on it, but oh well.

I got money.... Who cares???

2004-12-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

If you somehow got to this site, then you probably linked here from someone interested in South Dakota in some way. If you're interested in South Dakota in some way and are on blogs then you've probably heard about the DBA. If you've read the DBA's recently then you know about the "controversy" about two DBA members, John Lauck and Jason Van Beek, who got paid by Thune's campaign.

Background:
Sibby Online
Ryne McClaren
CQ 1
CQ 2
CQ 3
SDP 1
SDP 2
SDP 3
SDP 4
Powerline
Irrec MusWally and Ryne have a bunch of posts at IM. Scroll through the site.

and posts from the evil empire: (I'm reading them so you don't have to)
CBSThe death groan before the "Bush Memo's" report comes back.

ThunevSD:
It always facinates me how the party of personal responsiblity can't seem to take any. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo aren't bad because Saddam's torture chambers where worse. I may be ethically challenged but Dan Rather is worse. It's ridiculous.

This is not a matter of taking responsibility or not, It's about the left making a big deal out of nothing.

DailyCockus 1:
Lauck, meanwhile, has zero credibility on the Thune race, he may have violated the Board of Regents rules about professor's extra curricular activities, and now he is peddling a book about the Daschle race.

Firstly, with no times for postings over at DVT there is absolutely no proof that Lauck broke any regents policies, even if there were posts in the middle of the day who's to say that he didn't post from his house? I'm sure that he owns a computer, maybe even a *GASP* portable laptop that he could have taken with him to the campus. Secondly, it's a professor's job to get published. If the book that he is "peddling" has one drip of history in it, guess what... He's doing exactly what he's paid to do.

PrairieProgressive:
I don't have a problem with either getting paid for "research consulting." What is bothersome is the lack of candor. Strikes me that when you are bashing and trashing someone day in and day out, some semblance of propriety or integrity might prompt you to mention to blog visitors that you're on the payroll of the opponent's campaign. But then, why would a campaign preaching moral values worry about things like that?

August 9, 2004. Who would have thought that the Argus Leader would present evidence AGAINST the left in this state. On August 9, 2004 the Argus Leader informed everyone who wished to read their newspaper, most of the people in this state, that John Lauck was a paid consultant of the John Thune for US Senate Campaign. I guess I would think that if the most prominant newspaper in the state gave disclosure for you, you wouldn't have to. Not like you'd have to to begin with.

DailyCockus 2:
"Daschle v. Thune" and "South Dakota Politics" were and forever will be paid advertisements by John Thune.

SDP was founded LONG before Thune even announced his intention to run for Senate. Strike 1.

Let me just throw this out there right now. If you ever, evah evah evah evah EVAH, had any delusions about ANY politically oriented blog being non-partisan. If you think that any blog made up predominately of political news isn't pushing an agenda, I got a bridge in Owakoma to sell you.

Secondly, they weren't "Paid to Blog". They were paid as research consultants. They Researched, They Consulted, Then they blogged. Nothing wrong there.

I got paid this summer by the Republican Party, I'm blogging after the fact, I was trying to defeat Daschle, WHO GIVES A CRAP!?!?!? People talk about the DBA members in question as having "no credibility". Again, who says blogs have credibility to begin with? People used to say that you shouldn't believe anything that you read on the internet because anyone with a computer and a little know how could start a webpage and put whatever they want on it. Now, with blogs, you don't even need a little know how. Any schmo with a pulse can run a blog.

The bloggers never claimed to be fair, they don't have to. The day a blog, an online log of opinions, needs a disclaimer as to who you work for, is the day that free speech is truly threatened.

Wadhams working again

2004-12-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

Wadhams joins staff of Virginia senator:
Wadhams starts work early next month as chief of staff for Sen. George Allen, a potential 2008 presidential candidate.

If Karl Rove is The Architect then Dick Wadhams is The Foreman. Pfeiffer and Hildebrand? They're just the garbage men

IT'S DONE

2004-12-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

Frequent readers will know that I've been quite preocupied with a paper I had to get done.

Well 24 hours of working on it over 4 days later.

ES FINITO
(I don't konw if that's the right Spanish for it, and frankly do not care right now)

it weighs in at a lofty 25 pages and 181Kb in .doc