A South Dakota Moderate

Silly me, I always thought the purpose of a campaign event was to get as many people as possible to show up. Apparently Hillary Clinton has another idea as her surprise visit to Rapid City this afternoon would attest.

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton made a surprise trip to Rapid City today, making a stop at a local bakery.

Clinton, who made a campaign stop in Bath in northeastern South Dakota earlier in the day, stopped at Jerry’s Cakes and Doughnuts on east Omaha Street sometime after 1:15 p.m. today.

Maybe she just had a craving for a good doughnut…

This ruling will surely get the religious right going.

The California Supreme Court has overturned a ban on gay marriage, paving the way for California to become the second state where gay and lesbian residents can marry.

The case involved a series of lawsuits seeking to overturn a voter- approved law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

With the ruling, California could become the second state after Massachusetts where gay and lesbian residents can marry.

“What happens in California, either way, will have a huge impact around the nation. It will set the tone,” said Geoffrey Kors, executive director of the gay rights group Equality California.

On a similar note, it looks like Focus on the Family is back at work trying to tell everyone what they should be able to watch and again Lodgenet is in the middle.

If Colorado Springs-based media ministry Focus on the Family gets its way, guests of Marriott hotels won’t be able to tune into adult movies in their rooms.

Tom Minnery, a senior vice president for Focus on the Family, and other conservative Christian leaders Wednesday urged Marriott International executives to stop offering in-room pornographic movies.

Marriott is in the group’s cross hairs because they are one of the largest chains that provide in room movies and as it happens, South Dakota’s own Lodgnet is their primary in room entertainment provider. Nothing new to Lodgenet though, being in the gun sights of religious groups is just another day in the life of the Sioux Falls based entertainment company.

A day after losing by 40 point in West Virginia, Barack Obama is still making more positive news than Hilary Clinton who still blindly believes that she will be the nominee.

First the powerful abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America threw their support to Barack Obama.

NARAL president Nancy Keenan said in a statement: “Today, we are proud to put our organization’s grassroots and political support behind the pro-choice candidate whom we believe will secure the Democratic nomination and advance to the general election. That candidate is Senator Obama.”

And just a little while ago, former candidate John Edwards officially endorsed Obama as well.

Democrat John Edwards is endorsing former rival Barack Obama, fresh signs of the party establishment embracing the likely nominee even as Hillary Rodham Clinton refuses to give up her long-shot candidacy.

Edwards was to appear with Obama in Grand Rapids, Mich., as Obama campaigns in a critical general election battleground state.

The Edwards endorsement officially brings to an end one of the longer political suck-up periods in recent memory as both Hillary and Obama had been seeking an Edwards endorsement since he dropped out of the race several months ago. So much for the bump that Clinton expected after her big victory…

Just received in my inbox, details of Barack Obama’s Sioux Falls event this Friday

Please join Barack Obama for a One-Stop Early Vote Rally in Sioux Falls, where he’ll talk about his vision for bringing America together and creating the kind of change we can believe in.

One-Stop Early Vote Rally in Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls Arena
1201 N. West Ave.
Sioux Falls, SD 57104

Friday, May 16th
Doors Open: 5:00 p.m.
Program Begins: 7:00 p.m.

Updated Below

I guess we all need to make some sort of sacrifice because of the war in Iraq.

US President George W. Bush said in an interview out Tuesday that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of US soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, now in its sixth year.

“I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal,” he said in an interview for Yahoo! News and Politico magazine.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them.”

Does he have even the smallest clue as to how that sounds?

UPDATE: Not only does Bush seem clueless about how this sounds, it appears he lied about it as well. And finally, Keith Olbermann puts the whole Bush Yahoo/Politico interview in perspective.

Last night I commented on how Hillary was proclaiming that her West Virginia victory was just more proof that she appeals to the core base that will propel her and not Obama to the White House. The New York Times takes that premise and runs with it and gives us some interesting facts, some from last night’s landslide and some from Clinton herself.

First some interesting numbers from last night and probably the major reason why Obama didn’t even attempt to improve his West Virginia showing.

The number of white Democratic voters who said race had influenced their choices on Tuesday was among the highest recorded in voter surveys in the nomination fight. Two in 10 white West Virginia voters said race was an important factor in their votes. More than 8 in 10 who said it factored in their votes backed Mrs. Clinton, according to exit polls.

So winning a state with a large population like the women in the video I linked to yesterday, one of whom swears despite being told otherwise that Obama is a Muslim and where 20% of the Democrats voting were willing to say that race is an important factor (how many were not willing to say but felt that way?), is a tremendous victory that should endear her to the remaining uncommitted super delegates (her one and only chance to get the nomination)?

According to Clinton, there is something else about West Virginia other than the racial component that proves that she should be the nominee.

As the Clinton campaign noted in a strategy memo on Tuesday, no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916. Bill Clinton carried it in 1992 and 1996. Al Gore and John Kerry lost the state in 2000 and 2004, respectively.

So she says that because she has history on her side she should be chosen despite losing the popular vote and the overall delegate count? So what about this?

The argument is not without flaw. For one thing, Democratic candidates have lost West Virginia’s primary, gone on to win the nomination, and then won West Virginia in the general election anyway. For another, as Matt Yglesias noted in a mocking tone, “[N]o Democrat has won the White House without carrying Minnesota since 1912 (it went for Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose party) so given that Obama won Minnesota and Clinton won West Virginia, McCain is guaranteed to win the general election unless the eventual nominee can somehow completely replicate the social and political conditions prevailing in pre-WWI America.”

Funny thing about spin, it can be spun many different ways, often times to the detriment of the one doing the spinning. Also, should West Virginia be used as a basis for any major trends on a national level? As with what will happen here on June 3rd when we go through the motions, I hope not.

Got this in the email inbox this evening after Hillary’s landslide in West Virginia

After tonight’s tremendous victory here in West Virginia, it’s clear that the pundits declaring this race over have it all wrong. The voters in West Virginia spoke loud and clear — they want this contest to go on.

I’m listening to the voters — and to you.

With your help, I’m going to carry the energy of tonight’s victory into the next contests in Kentucky and Oregon. And just as always, I’ll be depending on you to share every step of this journey with me. You have worked your heart out, put yourself on the line for what you believe in, and given generously. And I’m not about to turn my back on you.

We’ve proved conventional wisdom wrong time and again in this race. We did it again tonight in West Virginia. Let’s keep going.

Thank you,

Is this win in West Virginia really that tremendous considering the uphill battle Obama had to overcome based on the makeup of the population there? Well at least it will give us 2 more visits from the Clinton’s even despite their $20 million campaign shortfall and few prospects of getting the nomination.

As the fight continues over retooled FISA laws that would give the US Government more power to legally spy on us without warrants and that would give telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for what has already occurred, the LA Times tells us just how much losing some of our civil liberties has helped to this point.

The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court — one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing — has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously.

The trends, visible in new government data and a private analysis of Justice Department records, are worrisome to civil liberties groups and some legal scholars. They say it is further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens without much to show for it. (emphasis added)

Isn’t it nice that giving up our rights is working so well? Maybe we can waterboard a few more people to get these numbers up to where they should be…

Not sure how long this YouTube video will last on line but here is SNL’s Hillary Clinton satirical speech (yes Randell, this is how satire is accomplished) on why she isn’t leaving the race from last night’s show.

You may or may not have noticed that things here were awful quiet yesterday. For months I have been fighting a very temperamental Microsoft Vista PC that often would not shut down, wouldn’t let me install programs or drivers, and just was a general pain in the a**. All during those months I had been burning up Google looking for fixes for my troubles only to find out that my problems were minor compared to many.

To make a long story shorter. I had held out hope that SP1 for Vista would fix the long list of issues with this operating system and yesterday after attempting to update Quicken only to have it corrupted to the point where it would no longer load, I decided to set aside some time to get and install SP1 after reading awhile back that it had finally been released. 4 hours later (only a 65mb file) I finally got SP1 installed and after a number of reboots I was finally ready to put it through it’s paces.

To my utter disgust, none of the issues I had originally were fixed, it still wouldn’t shut down, I still couldn’t load software, and new to the list, all my user settings including my iTunes library had disappeared. To put the icing on the cake, the PC now ran so slow that it was pretty much useless.

Ok, so what was plan B? I figured I should go back to the point before installing SP1, at least the PC was usable. So I went to Windows restore to go back to the restore point that I had set before the upgrade and of course I discovered that not only had that restore point disappeared, every one that I once had was now gone! Thank you Bill Gates, may I have another?

I had hoped that Microsoft had learned from Windows ME that rushing a product to market and then expecting it’s users to wait patiently for them to fix it once it was released would not fly. Obviously I was wrong so Mr Gates, my latest hair pulling experience with one of your products will be my last. I did something yesterday evening that at one time I said I would never do, I bought a Mac…

I wasn’t able to get any usable pictures with my ridiculously horrible camera phone and the driving rain but it seems that the Ron Paul army hasn’t taken the suspension of his campaign too seriously. Driving through Watertown today I noticed a large Ron Paul for President sign on in a parking lot on US212 and an even larger billboard on SD20 just Southeast of the airport labeled as being paid for by “Friends of Ron Paul”.

Paul managed to get 16% of the vote in Pennsylvania and McCain isn’t necessarily wowing GOP voters in the more recent primaries even after getting the required delegates for the nomination. So the question is, will the South Dakota battalion of the Ron Paul army be able to surpass PA’s numbers?

Speaking of numbers like $11.4 million, last night’s primaries in North Carolina and Indiana along with Pennsylvania a few weeks ago gave us another interesting number. Even though John McCain has long since wrapped up the GOP nomination, over 435,000 people voted for a Republican other than McCain in the last 3 primaries.

And no, I am not talking about the almost comical Operation Chaos campaign by Rush Limbaugh that sought to get his “ditto heads” to throw the vote Hillary’s way and that Obama is saying at least in some way affected Indiana last night. In the last 3 primaries, almost 25% of the Republican votes cast were for someone else even though McCain has already sewn up the nomination.

Just some food for thought.